Peace Alliance Petitioning To Stop MX

The Harvard Radcliffe Peace Alliance is launching a petition drive with other Boston area peace groups in an effort to stop the deployment of the MX missile.

The petitions include a statement condemning the MX missile written by several MIT professors for the Intercollegiate Coalition Against Nuclear War, the group coordinating the Boston effort.

Peace On Earth

The Peace Alliance replaced large portions of the MIT draft with a short description of the MX missile on the advice of Harvard professors and students, Judith A. Clark, Peace Alliance member and a graduate student at the School of Education, said yesterday.

The petitions list as "initial supporters" John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus, Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, George Kistiakowsky, Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, and several other Harvard professors.

Mendelsohn said yesterday he supports the petition drive because he believes "the MX missile can only lead to further destabilization and escalation of the arms race."

Kistiakowsky said he objects to the "terrible ecological damage" he believes the MX missile deployment will cause. "More earth will have to be moved than ever before in human history," he added.

The Harvard Radcliffe Anti-Nuclear Alliance has also endorsed the petition drive and is part of "a loose coalition of Harvard supporters," Clark said yesterday.

The Peace Alliance plans to collect about 500 signatures in the next three weeks and raise money to pay for further anti-MX publicity, Thomas E. Canel '83, a member of the Peace Alliance, said yesterday.

The peace alliance is a member of an unmbrella organization including groups from MIT, Boston College, and Northeastern University, coalition chairman Rosaria Salerno said yesterday. She added that the organization hopes to buy an ad in the New York Times or the Boston Globe.

Peace Alliance members will leave petitions in all student mailboxes if they do not collect 500 signatures soon. Vassos Hadzilacos, an Alliance member and a first year graduate student in applied math, said yesterday.