NO RED-BAITING

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Tim Gould's article of January 9 maintains that calling the Progressive Labor Party "Maoist" is "dangerously close to red-baiting." Such an assertion defies any criterion of reason and is particularly outrageous coming from a member of SDS, the only organization at Harvard that has engaged in tactics resembling red-baiting in recent years.

Genuine red-baiting can take two forms: describing someone who is not a Communist as one, or arguing that Communists (or Socialists) should be denied civil liberties. It is not red-baiting to describe SDS as a revolutionary communist organization; that is how its own leaders describe it. It is the equivalent of red-baiting to call Democratic Socialists "Social Fascists," as SDS members have done repeatedly in the last year. Ben Ross '71