PRIVACY OF INSTRUCTION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I have encountered few things in my Harvard career more appalling than the University's reported reaction to the pamphlet circulated by the May 2nd Movement earlier this week.

Having neither heard the lecture to which May 2nd objected, nor read the statement prepared by them in reply, I can make no comment on the merits of the dispute--though I suspect that my disagreement with May 2nd is as strong on this issue as it is on almost every other. But the merits of the particular dispute are wholly irrelevant to the principle involved, which is that this sort of vigorous debate of controversial questions is something the University should be encouraging, both as the basic right of students as well as faculty, and as one of the things that makes Harvard so exciting a place to be. Indeed, after two years of teaching politics in the college, I have become sufficiently unhappy at the excessively credulous attitude which the average undergraduate brings to the classroom to welcome any show of student skepticism, even if it borders on truculence.

Apparently, however, the University Administration feels differently. From the comments attributed to the understandably anonymous source quoted in yesterday's CRIMSON, I infer that May 2nd stands accused of a crime lying halfway between unHarvard activities and lese majeste. And in one of the most spectacular displays of semantic perversion since 1984, this accusation is justified as a defense of "academic freedom."

Fortunately, in part because of the good sense of Mr. Vogel, no action is to be taken in this instance. But Dean Ford's promise that the University will act to protect the "privacy of instruction" sounds, in context, ominously like a warning against similar outbursts of intellectual impertinence. (I know of few faculty members who fear that their lectures will be over-published).

I hope that I am wrong, and that either the CRIMSON has misreported or I have misinterpreted the situation. But if I am not, I hope most faculty members will join me in shrugging off the mantle which the Dean offers to throw over us, and in reaffirming our commitment to academic freedom accurately defined. Perhaps the Administration should show less concern for the privacy of a Professor's lecture platform and more for the privacy of an undergraduate's room. Barney Frank, Ass't. Sr. Tutor, Winthrop House