Schlesinger on Dow

(The following letter was addressed to Robert W. Haney, Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Adams House, in response to the form letter sent to students admonished for participation in the Dow sit-in.)

Dear Mr. Haney:

I am a graduate of Harvard College and a one-time member of the Harvard Faculty. I was also an undergraduate member and later an associate of Adams House. Nor am I unsympathetic with the broad principles laid down by the Harvard Administration and Faculty in connection with the recent episode involving the travelling salesman from Dow Chemical.

I now find myself, as the parent of a Harvard undergraduate, the recipient of your singular form letter of November 3, circulated in your capacity as Senior Tutor of Adams House. You begin: "I enclose for your information a copy of a letter that I have just sent to your son. I regret the sternness of its tone." I do not care one way or the other about your tone: be as stern as your conception of yourself requires. I am struck, however, by the quite insufferable insensitivity and stuffiness of your letter. I do regret the sense of moral superiority that produces self-righteous judgments about student behavior in 1967 without serious acknowledgment of the possibility that the continued enlargement of the war in Vietnam might create deeply troubling moral and intellectual problems for this college generation.

Is it not conceivable that concern over the incessant widening of this ghastly war amounts to something a little more than what you vacuously call "your son's moral objections to various features of our society?" Is it not barely conceivable that a war which posterity will very likely regard as the most unintelligible in our history might justifiably produce a certain mild disquietude on the part of those who may be called upon to fight it?

If a reasonably intelligent or humane man had written your letter, he would have begun with a generous and candid recognition of the stringent moral and emotional predicament created for young men today by the war in Vietnam. Recognizing this, he would then have moved on to the problem raised by the drummer from Dow. He would properly and vigorously have condemned the physical detention of this hapless individual. But he would also have distinguished, as your letter did not, between my son and many others, whose only offense was a subsequent expression of solidarity through handing in their bursar's cards--doubtless a mistaken gesture, but not an unsympathetic one and hardly one deserving the lofty condemnation expressed in your letters.

Your letter to me, and your even more pompous letter to my son, show no glint of comprehension of what is self evidently a most difficult and agonizing problem. It is entirely possible to defend Dow Chemical's right to destroy its corporate reputation by sending its agents to the Harvard Yard--and I would agree with you on this--without implying, as your letters do, that the protection of suppliers of napalm is a virtuous cause and that all sin lies with those who, in a groping and adolescent way are, trying to preserve their university from what they regard as complicity in a disastrous natonal course.

I would like to propose a deal to you and your like-minded colleagues in the Harvard Administration. If the undergraduates agree to respect the personal freedom of travelling salesmen making a Harvard pitch, is it remotely possible that you might respect the depth of concern which leads intelligent and conscientious students to protest a course of policy probably unsurpassed in our history for folly and futility? Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.