Sacrifices of the Past

To the editors:

Your Sept. 27 editorial, “Bad News, Survey Says,” is a startling—and most refreshing—clarion to accountability for Harvard’s current student body. Regardless of whether such incongruities between the call for action and the reluctance to act stem from youth, hypocrisy or a malignant sense of entitlement, your argument rightly confronts students with the impotence of words in the absence of commensurate deeds.

One can only hope that Harvard’s present generation will look to University landmarks like Memorial Hall, Memorial Church and the murals in Widener Library and realize that these enduring icons to freedom were forged out of convictions backed by palpable—indeed, often ultimate—self-sacrifice on behalf of our Republic.

Paul D. Korchin

Nome, Alaska

Sept. 27, 2001