1975: Triumphs and Troubles

WHILE HARVARD lulled in the calm of slow change and little protest this past year, the world saw dramatic triumph for the people of Vietnam. Our focus was turned away from the important issues at Harvard when, after thirty years of relentless fighting--and twenty years when the United States was the enemy--the National Liberation Front marched into Saigon victorious in its longstanding struggle for independence. And in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge won in its fight against the corrupt Lon Nol regime after five years of fighting.

Peace in Indochina

THE VICTORY of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front was a victory, first of all, for the people of Vietnam. Last April, for the first time in two decades, Vietnam was rid of an American onslaught and free of a barrage of bombs unprecedented in the history of the world. The thousands of refugees spawned by 30 years of war--seeking escape from bombings, marches and retreats, free-fire zones and protective reaction strikes; or ripped untimely from their homes by "strategic hamlet" programs and "forced-draft urbanizations"--have begun to return. And the people of Vietnam will benefit from a government with wide popular support, committed to equality and to industrial and agricultural development.

The victory of the Vietnamese people in shaking off a hundred years of French colonialism and of the NLF in defeating the half million American troops sent to stop them must not now obscure our memories of Vietnam. The official American response--that we need not try to learn from Vietnam but must now look toward the future, and that there should be a moratorium on recriminations--must not be heeded. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's statement, that the U.S. should not help rebuild North Vietnam--a country he did as much as anyone to destroy--must be disregarded, and Congress should allocate reparation funds for war-ravaged Vietnam immediately.

Reconstruction is not simply a matter of discharging America's debt to Vietnam--the war brought too many beyond the reach of debtors and creditors. It is more a matter of earning the astonishing friendship so many Vietnamese have expressed towards an American people that--sometimes, as in the bombing of a neutral Cambodia, unknowingly--let its government commit barbarities in its name.

Most of all it is a way of celebrating the victory of the Vietnamese people. For whatever our presidents and Congressmen say, that victory is ours as well.

One of the lessons of Vietnam that Ford would like to ignore is that more than two decades of repression by a series of corrupt regimes supported by the U.S. could not stifle the will of the Vietnamese people. Even though more than a million people died as a result of the American policy, its failure spoke--more eloquently than any polemic against the PRG--for the inadequacy of terror as a political weapon.

U.S. support for Gen. Pinochet's junta in Chile shows that Ford refuses to learn this lesson. Portugal provides still another example of the will of the people, in the form of a revolution ending 45 years of Fascism, over-coming the will of a few in power. Programs of nationalization are a welcome step toward economic equality, and we support Portugal's progress toward democratic socialism.

Ford, just last week, identified Portugal in cold war terms as a "communist element" allied with "communist elements from the East." In almost the same breath, Ford presumed to grant on behalf of all Americans in the U.S. "recognition of Spain's significance as a friend and partner." Ford's alliance with Franco's fascist government only speaks for the blindness of his foreign policy to the democratic ideals they pretend to uphold.

One to One

HARVARD'S AND Radcliffe's move to so-called equal access admissions next year will only make a gradual progress toward equalizing the number of men and women in college. For all the fanfare by a year-long study of the issue by a blue ribbon committee, some serious questions still must be answered about Harvard and Radcliffe's version of equal access.

* If equal access is a move away from quotas and "an artificially constructed student body," why has Harvard essentially promised alumni and concerned men in its community that there will be little or no change in the present male admissions quota?

* If equal access is indeed the method by which Harvard and Radcliffe intend to increase the number of women undergraduates, why do even Radcliffe administrators concede that there will be little or no change in the number of women admitted over the next few years?

* If a united admissions office will be operated by both Harvard and Radcliffe, why will there be only one dean, appointed by Harvard's president?

Beneath all the rhetoric about equal access, one fact stands out; there will be no noticeable improvement in the present 2.3 to 1 male-female ratio for at least three more years.

Harvard has the capacity right now to equalize the male-female ratio in the College, but it Goggedly resists doing so. Radcliffe, which should want to add to its numbers, does not have the power to do so. And the responsibility for an immediate equalized ratio lies with Harvard.

But since Harvard is unwilling to meet its responsibility, we support today's armband demonstration calling for 1:1 admissions. Only after the numbers of men and women are equalized at the college will its accessibility be truly equal. Until that time, equal access is just another euphemism for inequality.

Affirmative Action

AFTER THREE YEARS of legally mandated planning for its affirmative action program, the University continues to take a basically obstructionist attitude towards bringing increased numbers of minorities and women into the faculty and administration.

Walter J. Leonard, the University's affirmative action officer, criticized the administration last March for its in action, saying. "Not only have we not progressed a great deal since October 1971, but I fear we have moved backward in a number of areas."

In the last few years, there has been a high turnover in administration officials, but not one opening has been filled by a minority or woman candidate. It is, as Leonard's report noted, "difficult to explain or believe" that the English and History Departments cannot find "a black man or woman in the country with the qualifications to hold a position in their august departments."

Affirmative action depends upon the good faith of the individuals who make hiring decisions, and many of the individuals at Harvard have shown an unwillingness to change Harvard's traditional, old-boy system of hiring.

To remedy the situation, the University should establish a new tier of faculty and administration search committees with significant numbers of minorities and women on them. It should give particular attention to stepping up recruiting efforts at the graduate schools, a primary source for junior faculty.

Negligent Recruiting

THE COLLEGE and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences this year witnessed yet another decline in the number of minority applicants to the two schools--and this time the drop was the worst it has been in several years. As a result, Dean Rosovsky and President Bok in March called for a review of minority recruiting in an effort to determine why minority students, and blacks in particular, are shying away from Harvard. Decreasing minority applications to colleges has been a national trend this past year and the reasons for it are complex. It is clear that any committee that Bok and Rosovsky form to look into the question will not be able to resolve the issues. But Harvard's admissions office should promote more recruiting among public schools, and less at private institutions to combat this trend.

Another minor problem is that some local alumni recruiters working for the Harvard Clubs of major metropolitan areas believe unqualified black candidates are being admitted to Harvard in favor of what they say are more qualified white candidates. According to David L. Evans, associate director of Harvard admissions, some of these recruiters are discouraging minority candidates from applying here, telling them that the only reason they would be admitted is because of reverse discrimination. Recruiters perform a valuable service for Harvard voluntarily, but the few alumni recruiters responsible for out-right racist behavior should be told by L. Fred Jewett, dean of Harvard admissions, that their services are no longer needed, and he should seek out recruiters who are committed to finding black applicants.

Individual departments' faculties who are responsible for admitting students at the graduate school level have failed continually to conduct searches for qualified minority candidates. The situation will not improve until these people are sensitized to the importance of increasing the size of the minority applicant pool so that there is a better likelihood of admitting more minority students.

Med School Power Plant

HARVARD'S PROPOSED $50-million total energy power plant, which would serve the Medical School and medical related institutions in the Mission Hill area of Boston, sounds like a good idea if it will save the University money, as Harvard officials claim.

However, before a power plant of such massive scale and potentially disruptive nature can even be built, there are other considerations more pressing than anticipated dollars savings that must be examined.

The first consideration is the power plant's neighbors, the 17,000 residents in Mission Hill who may have to live every day with the possible hazards resulting from the planned power plant. Many residents are deeply dissatisfied with the proposal. Because of this dissatisfaction it is necessary to examine alternatives to the plant itself, even at the risk of stopping the plant altogether.

A recently released environmental impact statement on the plant says that the planned location for the plant is the only practical location and that despite potential smoke fumes, loud noise and heavy construction, the plant will cause only minimal damage to the environment.

The impact statement is not an adequate or accurate study of the plant and its potential environmental dangers. The Boston Redevelopment Authority which has final say on whether the plant be built should commission another study, this time with a more thorough examination of plant alternatives and proper Mission Hill community input. If this input, easily obtained by talking to the Mission Hill Planning Commission, which represents the whole region, had previously been utilized, the environmental study may have reached a different conclusion regarding the plant's feasibility.

If there are viable alternatives, and if the majority of Mission Hill residents are against the plant, then it must be built elsewhere or not at all.

Save the Archives

THE UNIVERSITY is making its last bid to keep the John F. Kennedy Library archives in Cambridge by offering land near the Business School for the Kennedy museum. The proposal is a good one and should be embraced by the library corporation and various community groups that did not want the whole complex in the MBTA subway yards across the street from Eliot House.

Not only is the proposal feasible--a museum right off the turnpike with adequate access and potentially ample parking should be attractive to the library corporation--but Harvard finally appears to be proceeding in the correct manner to convince community leaders to support the Allston site.

The people in the government and community affairs office have taken an aggressive and open attitude that has always been needed to win the support of Cambridge's diversified communities. By meeting with local leaders and explaining the plan as well as possible, and hiring out consultants to answer community questions about traffic and crowd spillovers, the University has squarely put the onus of keeping the archives on the community groups, most of which said formerly that they wanted the archives to come to Cambridge.

A community leader from the Riverside-Cambridgeport area was right when he said last week that if Harvard had been this open in discussions from the beginning there would not be the animosity that now exists between Harvard and Cambridge over the Kennedy Library.

The Kennedy Library Corporation should accept Harvard's admittedly last-minute, but workable proposal to split the archives and the museum.

Harvard should not, however, be willing to give unlimited amounts of money to the Kennedy Library Corporation to meet its demands for financing if the site is in Cambridge. Instead it should weigh the value of the archives against the other priorities of running an educational institution and establish a reasonable limit to the money it is willing to pay for the presence in Cambridge of the Kennedy archives.

DuBois Institute

THE W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American research offers one of the few hopes for easing the myriad problems the University has with the hiring and recruitment of black people and the teaching of Afro-American Studies. If set up properly, the institute will attract top-quality black graduate students and professors, alleviating a shortage at Harvard that is now shameful. It will establish Harvard as a leader in the field of Afro-American Studies and strengthen the Afro-American Studies Department with an excellent research facility.

The Institute's considerable promise, however, should not be kept from some of the people who might benefit from it. The Institute should include undergraduates in its programs and in its planning, and should be tied to the local black community as well--ties that would not adversely affect the quality of the scholarship there. The DuBois Institute Student Coalition's goals of gaining roles for undergraduates and the community in the institute are admirable ones.

The Mass. Hall sit-in conducted by the members of DISC last April underscored Advisory Committee Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer's complete denial of their proposals' legitimacy, and, when Brimmer would not relent, Bok's failure to openly address the issues Brimmer especially, should not have excluded DISC so off-handedly. But now that it has rightly begun to recognize DISC, the DuBois advisory board should continue to listen to the groups' ideas and incorporate them into its conception of the Institute.

Support the Union

LAST SPRING, the Medical Area Employees Organizing Committee affiliated itself with District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America, in its drive to form a union for clerical and technical employees in the Medical Area. The unionizing effort has won the support of a vast majority of Medical Area workers, but Harvard has opposed the formation of the union, contending that the Medical Area is an "inappropriate bargaining unit" under the National Labor Relations Act. National Labor Relations Board hearings were held to determine whether Medical Area Employees share "a separate community of interest."

When the board decides if a union-forming election should be held, it should dismiss Harvard's protests, and allow Medical Area employees their own collective bargaining unit. District 65's lawyers have shown that the Medical Area is very much a separate entity within the larger University. And Harvard's claim that the union should include workers throughout the University is little more than an attempt to head off a union altogether. The organizing drive in Cambridge is far less advanced than that at the Medical Area, and a decision by the NLRB against a Medical Area union would be a serious blow to the District 65's already limited efforts in Cambridge.

The Edelin Case

IN MID-FEBRUARY a Boston jury convicted a City Hospital obstetrician of manslaughter for the death of a fetus. Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin had aborted the fetus during an October 3, 1973, operation on a 17-year-old pregnant woman. Abortion, however, was not the issue, according to the prosecution. Newman A. Flanagan, the prosecutor, argued that the special nature of the operation produced, for a least one split second, a live birth, and that the subsequent death of the "baby" constituted an act of manslaughter.

Flanagan knew full well that abortion was protected by a 1973 Supreme Court ruling, so he redefined abortion as a process that can result in birth. Under such a definition, Edelin's crime occurred not in the course of an abortion, but after that abortion was over, when the fetus was no longer a fetus, but a human being.

The assistant district attorney's forensic legerdemain neatly circumvented the Supreme Court's landmark decision by prosecuting a doctor for an abortion without saying as much. The conviction, returned by a largely-Catholic jury, has, in turn, successfully intimidated obstetricians from performing second trimester abortions, especially those of the kind Edelin executed.

This is not the place to defend either a woman's right to determine the outcome of an unwanted pregnancy in consultation with a physician, or the right of a physician to exercise his best judgement. The Edelin decision and the continued prosecution of other City Hospital doctors are outrages to these rights. It is encouraging that Edelin is appalling the conviction, and that a state law that attempts to duplicate the effects of the decision in Rhode Island has been rejected by the courts. But it is regrettable that such a process of salvaging alienated rights ever had to begin.