Elimination of Salzburg Protested

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Few things have over disturbed me quite so much as the thoughtless, senseless and stupid action of the Student Council's Combined Charities Committee in removing the Salzburg Seminar from the list of Harvard-supported charities. But I have derived what consolation I might from the assumption that this ill-considered move was born in ignorance of what the Seminar is doing, since I cannot imagine that rational men, presumably the representatives of rational men, could conduct themselves in such a manner were they in possession of any of the facts.

Ray of Hope

The Salzburg Seminar in American Studies is one of the few rays of hope in the gloom of world tension and misunderstanding. It is a real, positive and dynamic force the effect of which has been felt in every corner of free Europe. Its prestige on the continent is revealed by even the most cursory examination into the intensity of the competition among European intellectuals for the opportunity to attend one of its sessions.

The esteem with which it is held in America is obvious from the number and the caliber of distinguished American scholars who travel to Salzburg to serve there as members of the Seminar's faculty, without remuneration. The Seminar undertakes with remarkable, if not unqualified, success to explain America to Europe. This is done at Salzburg by many of our most brilliant and articulate scholars speaking to those who do now or in the near future will, influence the public opinion of Europe.

Seminar Deficiencies

I, among others, am not completely happy with the way in which the Seminar is being run from its European offices, I have made my reasons for this abundantly clear in recent communications to the officials, both at Cambridge and Salzburg. But it is precisely because I care so much about the continuing exploitation of the Seminar's magnificent potential that I have bothered to criticize it. If the Student Council's committee has any valid criticism, it certainly should take them up with the proper authorities, but not enter upon a course of action which will not only materially injure the Seminar, but also will reflect to the lasting discredit of the Student Council.

The charge that the Salzburg Seminar no longer has any connection with Harvard is groundless. It was conceived, inspired and originally supported by Harvard men. There has been at least one member of the Harvard faculty on the Seminar's faculty in almost every session since its inception from the first when the renowned F. O. Matthiessen helped give birth to the Salzburg idea to the most recent in which another great American scholar, Harry Levin, gave insights into the American mind which even American students are seldom privileged to hear, let alone Europeans.

Every American student at the Seminar comes from Harvard. The central offices of the Seminar are in Cambridge. Harvard students who have attended the Seminar serve on its Board of Directors and help to choose participants (from Harvard) for subsequent sessions. The first speech which the Director makes to the assembled participants at the opening of the session at Salzburg, as well as the last speech at its close, is devoted to the role which Harvard has played and is playing (or was playing until the Combined Charities Committee of the Student Council decided that the opinions of the overwhelming majority of the responsible intelligentsia on two continents were erroneous) in this valuable adventure in international understanding.

Benevolent Spirit

Throughout the Seminar the brooding and benevolent spirit of Harvard is manifest in innumerable ways. And in the speech which he interrupted his vacation to give at Schloss Leopoldskron, the home of the Salzburg Seminar, High Commissioner James Bryant Conant expressed a justifiable pride in Harvard's role in the Seminar's history.

I, for one, certainly hope that the Student Council will move with dispatch to rescind this absurd action which it has attempted to justify with some of the most amazingly unintelligent, illogical, and ingeniously inconsistent reasoning I have ever read. Hoger Allan Moore, '53, 1L