CRR Hears 'Conspiracy' Charges

The conspiracy trial has come to Harvard.

In a three-and-a-half hour meeting last night, a hearing panel of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities heard charges that a Physics graduate student had engaged in "criminal conspiracy" to prevent a speech by Edwin H. Land, president of the Polaroid Corporation, at Harvard last month.

The sponsors of a Physics Department colloquium cancelled Landis scheduled talk on "colorvision" shortly before it was to have begun after hearing of demonstrators' plans to approach Land at the beginning of the colloquium and question him on Polaroid's business activity in South Africa.

The day after the incident, Don Chodrow, a teaching fellow in Physics, brought charges against Allen S. Weinrub for having forced department officials to call off the speech.

Weinrub had chaired a rump meeting of about 60 persons who had gathered near the site of the colloquium an hour and a half before the scheduled talk. The meeting discussed several possible methods of making Land discuss the South Africa issue, ranging from a takeover of the podium to waiting for the question-and-answer period following his speech.

Free Speech?

Chodrow charged that Weinrub, as chairman of the rump meeting, had violated the Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities by failing to overrule discussion which advocated a violation of the resolution.

"He left the door open for free speech in the meeting and for criminal actions afterwards. He left the door open for criminal conspiracy," Chodrow said at last night's hearing.

Chodrow added that although Weinrub "did not make his feelings known." his "behavior indicated that he was in favor of preventing the speech and disrupting Mr. Land." Chodrow had written the CRR that he had seen Weinrub "prepare signs of the sort normally used at political demonstrations."

Weinrub denied that he had violated University rules, saying that "our intention was not to prevent Mr. Land from speaking" on colorvision, but rather to have him talk first on his company's involvement in South Africa, which Land has allegedly refused to discuss in public. There graduate students confirmed that W. inrub had advocated no single proposal at the meeting which he chaired.

Efforts to Sway

Chodrow said that he and other Physics grad students had been asked by Roy J. Glauber, professor of Physics, to attend the demonstrators' meeting "to see if they could sway the course of the meeting" to postpone their questions until after Land's talk.

Under questioning, Chodrow said he had not attempted to refute any of the proposals. At one point. Chodrow's legal advisor - John W. Moscow, a second-year Law student - said that "considering the hoodlums that were at the meeting. I don't blame him" for not having raised objections.

Weinrub said that the group did not want to sit quietly until the end of Land's talk because they feared that Land would bring the meeting to a close rather than answer their questions. He then came under fire from