Hillel and BSA Have Led the Fight

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I was shocked and saddened to read Jacinda T. Townsend's letter in The Crimson (March 6, 1991).

Shocked, because Townsend's allegations were completely false and totally misrepresented Hillel's actions of the past week, as anyone who followed the story of the flags ought to know. Saddened, because Townsend's example of morality and compassion is diluted by a bitterness, the source of which I do not understand. It is now especially important to address some points in her letter so that the Harvard community can understand the amount of sensitivity and care that Hillel has put into dealing with this important issue.

The accusation that Hillel attacked the BSA for the display of the swastika is simply not true. When did Hillel do anything that could possibly be perceived as an attack on the BSA or, for that matter, on any part of the Harvard community?

If anything, we have made sure every step of the way to coordinate our actions with the BSA to make sure we would not do anything to which the BSA objected. Our joint statement should have made it clear to everyone that we were united against both the Confederate flag and the swastika. Not only have we succeeded in preserving the relationship between Hillel and the BSA, we have strengthened it enormously.

Hillel did not publicly condemn Townsend individually, nor did we organize any protest against the swastika, even though walking by the swastika calls up the sickening images of our great-grandparents being incinerated inside their synagogues. We refrained from public protest in order to prevent even the most cynical from mistakenly seeing the act of one individual as anything more than that. Where anyone could get the notion that Hillel and the Jewish community framed her protest as "an expression of the entire Black community, I have no idea.

It was because we sympathized with the cause and feared that someone else might blow this up into a false Black-Jewish dispute that we were extremely careful to do nothing but work closely with the BSA to persuade Townsend that her form of protest was too hurtful.

As Townsend herself says, the swastika has "no real purpose in today's society except to hurt people." The point we made privately, and the point I would like to make publicly now, is that even a just cause must be pursued only in a moral fashion. Otherwise, the protester stoops to the level of those he or she is protesting against.

We all know why the swastika was put up. It was not an anti-Semitic act, nor should anyone perceive it as such. It was put up in order to shock the Harvard community into an understanding of what the Confederate flag means for Black people.

When the swastika finally came down, I was pleased that a good example was set for this community. Someone had finally shown the moral strength to remove a symbol after finding out that it caused pain, just as those with the Confederate flags should do. It is the right thing, the compassionate thing to do.

This has always been our position, and as for the accusation that "Hillel and other members of the Jewish community...have chosen not to unite with other communities to eliminate the displays of such racist and odious symbols," nothing could be further from the truth.

To set the record straight, Hillel has been the most active group on this campus, aside from the BSA, in the protest against the Confederate flags. Throughout the controversy I emphasized that our united stand with the BSA and with other minority groups will not end now or ever. At the BSA-sponsored eat-ins, the majority of the non-Black participants were from Hillel, and I addressed the protesters and spoke out against the Confederate flags. In addition, Hillel is working with an alliance of other minority groups on further protests and community projects.

As our namesake, the great sage Hillel, said, "If I am for myself alone, what am I?" We continue to work with the BSA and other minority groups to address issues of sensitivity on this campus. I hope that all will recognize those efforts as strong, firm stands for respect and pluralism. Daniel J. Libenson '92   Chair, Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel