Free Speech

To The Editors of The Crimson:

The reports in The Crimson of reactions by some Harvard Law students and faculty to the American Indian Law School Association's invitation to a PLO official left me both pleased and dissatisfied. Pleased because members of ALLSA had the good sense to exercise their right in a free society and at one of America's finest universities to ignore the ill-considered pressure from their Jewish peers and to hear any speaker they like. Pleased because I concur with Prof. Alan Dershowitz's remark that a PLO official has the full right of free speech at Harvard just as those opposing him have the full right to express opposition.

However, I was mildly dissatisfied that Prof. Dershowitz didn't carry him observation one step further--to observe that, in the context of Harvard University and any other serious school, a certain edge must be accorded free speech. The right of opposition, while recognized, is not quite equivalent to it, as Prof. Dershowitz intimates. Since the mid-1960s the experience has been plain enough ideological military among the Left, feminists, black ethnocentrists. Third Worlders, the Right, and Jewish ethnocentrists display little appreciation of the delicate states of free speech in our type of pluralist society. These ideological militants must have it brought home to them that their right of opposition, often either hinting at or openly proclaiming the right of censorship, is not quite equivalent to the right of free speech. The latter for a place like Harvard, ought to be our primary obligation.

While Prof. Dershowitz's missing the opportunity to underline this primary obligation was mildly dissatisfying. Law School Dean James Vorenberg's reaction to the PLO official's visit was, for me, dismaying. It strikes me as bad form for the Dean of Harvard Law School--an institution with a reasonably good tradition in free speech matters--to appear to be playing politics with free speech issues. Surely he knows no one here--at least no serious person here--questions his preference "to exercise my own First Amendment rights and not speak." It happens that by withdrawing from delivering the welcoming speech at the forthcoming conference on indigenous people's rights Dean Vorenberg, whether he appreciates it or not, is, at the lead, discouraging participation in the conference and, at the worst, aiding and abetting those who would such the conference altogether--or at least the PLO official's role in it. It is unfortunate that the Harvard Law School Dean did not follow Prof. Dershowitz's wiser counsel--deliver the welcoming speech and include his own views on the PLO. Free speech would have been much better served by this. Martin Killson.   Professor of Government