Brandeis Honors Playboy Executive

When Playboy Magazine recruited Harvard women two years ago to pose for its Ivy League feature, many student organizations, particularly women's groups, protested the magazine's use of sexual stereotypes.

But students at Brandeis University last week failed to criticize publicly their school's presentation of a community service award to a high-ranking Playboy executive.

"We haven't discussed it because it has not been a prime concern, but it might come up at our next meeting," Holly Zabitz, a member of the Women's Coalition at Brandeis,said yesterday.

At a $250 a plate dinner that raised over $7000 for the school, Brandeis awarded its annual citation of "distinguished service to the community and the publishing industry" to Nathaniel Lehrman, a senior vice-president of Playboy, a Brandeis official said yesterday.

Amram M. Decovney, a Brandeis vice-president, said he was not surprised that students did not protest the award because "it was given to an individual, not Playboy."

Priorities

Julie Rubin, head of the Women's Coalition, said yesterday she would not consider protesting the award "a priority."

"If any of us had discussed protesting it, I'd know about it," Rubin said, adding that "no one has protested it because none of us really know the details."

Another member of the group, Ann Glick, said she was not aware of any efforts to protest the award, but added, "Now that I know about it, I'd like to do something."

A lone public protest of the Brandeis decision came from a Belmont resident, Charles Tompkins, who wrote a letter criticizing the pornography industry to the editor of a Waltham newspaper.

Tompkin's letter echoed many of the complaints heard at Harvard last year.

"We have to get the award withdrawn," Tompkins said yesterday, "because something like that should only come from the news media, not an institution like Brandeis."

"This is not a question of obscenity," he said. "It's a question of exploiting people for mass entertainment."