Marius 'Unhired' as Gore Aide

To put it mildly, things were going well for Harvard's Senior Lecturer on English, Richard C. Marius, in early July.

Marius, who helped Vice President Al Gore '69 write at least two speeches in the past, had accepted an offer to do the job full time.

Marius, 62, got a year-long leave of absence approved by Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles; he'd rented out his Belmont house; and he'd even started packing. Everything was in place for the bowtie-wearing former Expository Writing director to be Gore's new chief speech writer.

Then, on July 9, everything changed. Marius received a message in an early morning telephone call from Gore's communications director, Lorraine Voles.

He had been "unhired."

The reason for the change of heart was the allegation, stemming from a Harvard Magazine article he wrote in in their memory, believe that that horror gives them the right to inflict horror on others," he wrote. "Winternitz's account of the Shin Bet, the Israeli secret police, is eerily similar to the stories of the Nazi Gestapo... [with] arbitrary arrests in the middle of the night, imprisonment without trial, beatings, refined tortures, murder...."

Marius' review was followed by a flurry of angry letters. And the prospect that the review could embarrass the vice president--or alienate constituents--was apparently enough to get Marius the axe.

Marius vigorously denied the charges that he is anti-Semitic. And he maintained this summer that there is more to the story that meets the eye.

He said that what happened to him is not a case of his past coming to haunt him. Instead, Marius said that the incident is more a reflections of the personal influence of Harvard Social Studies Lecturer Martin H. Peretz

Peretz, who was Gore's tutor at dent and Peretz also celebrated together.

And when Peretz heard of Marius' appointment, he was less than thrilled.

"You have to make a moral and intellectual judgment on someone who compares Jews to Nazis," Peretz said this summer. "This is not a matter of someone being just pro-Palestinian, a legitimate public position. When [Gore] saw this, he had to make a decision."

Peretz maintained that several staffers in Gore's office had learned about the 1992 controversy over Marius through independent sources.

But Marius said Peretz had told Gore that Marius was an anti-Semite as early as 1993.

Though he said he is not angry with Peretz, Marius equated the lecturer to a Jewish version of Robertson in the Wednesday Washington Post article that broke the story of his unhiring.

Marius' return to Harvard was approved swiftly by University Hall. And he said he has no regrets, despite the lost opportunity.

"My conscience is absolutely-clear," he said. "I'm sorry to be missed by people, but what I've said all my life is down there in black and white. I feel very peaceful about the whole thing."