Faculty Convocation Asks U.S. Withdrawal, Denies Strike Support

The Faculty, in a convocation yesterday after its regular meeting, voted to demand the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Southeast Asia.

But it overwhelmingly refused to support the other demands of Monday night's strike meeting-including the immediate termination of ROTC and Defense Department research on campus and the granting of automatic credit to students for their Spring courses.

The motion demanding immediate withdrawal, introduced by Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, was the less popular of two anti-war resolutions which the Faculty passed yesterday.

The other resolution-proposed by Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor-read in full: "The Faculty deplores the expansion of the war in Southeast Asia and urges the President to proceed to a speedy and complete withdrawal of American military forces from the Indochina area."

Mendelsohn's motion was more extreme, criticizing the "bankruptcy and immorality" of American involvement in Southeast Asia and President Nixon's "assumption of absolutist powers" and "promotion of a climate of repression and violence."

Vote for No Exams

Two House Masters-William Liller '49 of Adams and Jerome H. Buckley of Leverett-asked the Faculty to excuse students from their Spring exams altogether-instead of merely allowingthem to take makeups next fall, as the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life and the Faculty Council had recommended.

But Seymour Martin Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations, argued that this "would cheapen the anti-war movement. We shouldn't ask anybody to have pity on us because we're against the war."

Students wanting to postpone their Spring exams and papers to next fall must submit a petition to the Administrative Board explaining their reasons for wanting a postponement. "Any reasonable, grounded petition will be accepted," Dean May said yesterday.

Seniors who postpone their exams until the fall will not be able to graduate until next January.

Convocation

Yesterday's convocation was the second in Faculty history. The first-also concerning the war in Southeast Asia-occurred last October, after some Faculty members protested against debating political issues during a regular meeting.

Over half of the Faculty voted yesterday against adjourning the regular meeting without some discussion of the international situation. But the motion to block adjournment failed to get the two-thirds support it needed.

Only 11 Faculty members voted in favor of Monday's strike demands: 180 were opposed, and 42 abstained. Reischauer's resolution passed, 218-31-57, and Mendelsoh's 183-59-51. A third anti-war motion, introduced by George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, was defeated.

In order to leave time for the convocation, the Faculty Council scrapped two items from the regular meeting's original docket. A special meeting at 4 p.m. next Tuesday in Sanders Theatre will be devoted to one of these items an amendment offered by Roger Rosenblatt, assistant professor of English, to the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities.

At the beginning of yesterday's meeting President Pusey asked the Faculty to stand for one minute in memory of the students killed at Kent State, and announced that Harvard's flags will fly at half-mast this week in their memory. Pusey received applause later after he read his statement on Cambodia which appears on the front page of today's CRIMSON.

The Administration

The notion of a joint student-Faculty-administration strike came under attack at the convocation by Hilary W. Putnam, professor of Philosophy, Citing the punishments given to students who protested against ROTC last spring and against Harvard's "racist" employment practices last fall. Putnam said, "And we are supposed to ally with the Harvard administration against racism and against American aggression in Southeast Asia?"

Right now the Harvard administration and other college administrations are scared." Putnam added. "It is for this reason that they are desperately scrambling for cover, posing as allies of the peace movement and of black political prisoners while they serve the ruling class that murders and jails black revolutionaries and is now invading Cambodia."