Old Ghosts and a Bow from the Crackerjack King
During last week's demonstrations, marches and sit-outs to protest Harvard's support of apartheid, an image of myself as a scrawny 12-year-old kid standing in a deserted Harvard Square one afternoon nine years ago repeatedly crossed my mind. Shops had closed early, their windows boarded up, in anticipation of a demonstration later that night.
Life went on as usual last week in the Square except for some traffic tie-ups caused by the marches, but the events of last week raised the distinct possibility that this image may soon recur as more than just a memory.
That 3500 students got together the week before reading period to do anything other than study for exams and write papers is nothing short of earth-shattering. Although this fervor is already diminishing as exams approach, students are likely to pick up next fall where they leave off now.
Unless Harvard accedes to student demands, Harvard Square may once again become deserted. But don't hold your breath waiting for such a decision. As Danny Schecter, news director for radio station WBCN, pointed out in last Monday's teach-in at Sanders Theater, such reluctance to challenge corporations should be expected from a body called "The Corporation."
It is ironic that a person, who in his position as dean of the Faculty during the strike in 1969 was all too familiar with the deserted Square, will speak here next Wednesday. McGeorge Bundy will give a talk entitled "Bombs at Bay, or the Dog that has not Barked so Far: Reflections on the Avoidance of Nuclear War Since 1945" in the auditorium of the Yenching Institute, 2 Divinity ave., at 4 p.m.
"Nuclear Arms Control" will also be the topic of Monday's session of the Cambridge Forum in the MIT Chapel at 4 p.m. The participants will include Jack Ruina, professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, and Kosta Tsipis, senior researcher at MIT's Center for International Studies.
Wednesday's Cambridge Forum at 3 Church St. will feature John K. Fairbank, Higginson Professor of History Emeritus and former mentor of History 1711, "The United States and East Asia." Fairbank will discuss "Failure and Success: The Chinese Revolution" at 8 p.m.
Another view of this week's favorite subject will be presented by Sen. John C. Culver '54 (D-Iowa). He will give "A Congressional Perspective on Arms Control" in seminar room 1 of the Center for International Affairs, 6 Divinity Ave., at 4 p.m.
Culver is a member of the Armed Services Committee and recently returned from a trip to Europe to study NATO. (If I didn't include this item my roommate, who will work for Culver this summer and who is bigger than me, would have killed me. I'll bet you didn't realize how dangerous journalism is.)
Culver's colleague, Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wisc.), will speak on "District Redlining," the policy of some banks to refuse loans to residents of certain rundown neighborhoods, in Gund Hall's Piper Auditorium Saturday at 4 p.m.
Harvard's Chicano population will celebrate Cinco De Mayo, a Mexican holiday analogous to the Fourth of July, this weekend with a three-day symposium commencing this evening and finishing with a fiesta Saturday night.
The conference will look at three problems Chicanos face: immigration, acculturation and the role of women. Organizers stress that the symposium is open to all. One of its primary purposes is to "let people outside our culture know about us," Salvador Barajas '81, one of the organizers, said Tuesday.
Beginning at 7:30 tonight in the Gutman Library Conference room three speakers will discuss the predicament of illegal immigrants who must endure poor working conditions, low wages and accusations that they are taking away other people's jobs, a charge that is "largely untrue because the jobs they take are ones nobody else wants" because of the poor working conditions, Barajas said.
Bert Corona, former director of CASA, a Los Angeles-based group which lobbies for progressive immigration legislation, will speak at 7:30 followed by Timothy Whalen, acting district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service who will present Carter's plan for dealing with the immigration problem. Jose Medina, former director of the Centro de Immigration at Georgetown University Law School, will respond to the Carter plan at 9 p.m.
Acculturation and women will be discussed tomorrow in Gutman and on Saturday, a Latino Health Conference will be held between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. in the Harvard Medical School's Countway Library. Then comes the party at 7 p.m. in the Ropes and Gray Room of the Pound Building at the Law School.
The Law School will also be the scene of some excitement tomorrow night when Bowie Kuhn, commissioner and imperial majesty of baseball, will be the guest of the Law School Forum. Peanut and crackerjack aficionados will want to be in the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall well before the first pitch is thrown at 8 p.m. to ensure they get box seats.
Campus crackerjack cravers.