American Professors Censure Greek Academic Suppression

An organization of Greek students in the U.S. recently collected over 800 faculty signatures, including 152 from Harvard, for a petition protesting the Greek regime's repression of academic freedom.

A leader of the organization, who asked to remain anonymous, said yesterday that repression of academic freedoms and police brutality in Greece brought together the Greek students of American universities and molded them into an unofficial organization.

Constantine I. Tountas, President of the University of Athens, said yesterday referring to the actions of the organization, that the Greek government is very sensitive to demonstrations and international appeals.

Tountas said that he and the faculty council of the university have resigned because they could not bring about elections of student leaders representing the majority of students of the University of Athens.

Student Elections

Tountas said that only an estimated 17-18 per cent of the student body voted in the last elections.

Tountas denied that the protestors in Greek universities have communist or leftist associations and said that many of them are "excellent people, with strong democratic beliefs."

Kingman Brewster Jr., president of Yale University, Walter A. Rosenblith, provost of MIT, and Robert Ketchum, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University are among the petition's signatories.

Faculty sources have said the President Bok was approached in March with the same petition. The sources said that Bok did not sign because he did not want to establish a precedent of petition signing.

Bok was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Salvador Luria, MIT professor of Biology, Kenneth J. Arrow, professor of Economics, Willis E. Lamb, Pale professor of Physics, all Nobel prize winners endorsed the petition.