Bok May Write Free Speech Letter

Responding to Faculty requests, President Bok may write an open letter to the Harvard community on the protection of free speech.

"That's a very distinct possibility," said Bok, who sat in on last week's meeting of the Faculty Council, the Faculty's elected executive committee, to discuss the issue.

Such a statement--which would probably not be distributed before the fall--would be the first in three years on a substantially new topic.

The Council raised the issue with Bok in the wake of the aggressive heckling which interrupted a speech in November by Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger '38 Some members of the Council were concerned that the protesters' attempts at disruption may have abridged Weinberger's rights to free speech.

Seven Previous Letters

During his 13-year tenure, Bok has written only seven open letters, including one released last spring which was largely a reiteration of a 1979 statement defending the University's position against divesting from companies doing business in South Africa.

The widely circulated letters are reserved for Bok's opinions on issues he considers important to the University.

"This [free speech] is something that really interests him," said Pierce Professor of Psychology Richard J. Herrnstein, himself embroiled in a free speech controversy during the early 1970's.

Bok stressed that he was not reaching to any particular event. "It might be just as wise to look at [free speech] when there isn't a particular event, but to make sure that we are always doing everything we can to protect people's rights," Bok said, mentioning the lag of several months since the Weinburger incident

However, he added, "That incident certainly reminds us of the problems that can arise."

Sit Down at Desk

Bok said he was uncertain what he might write because. "I haven't sat down at the desk yet." Because of his heavy schedule and the lack of a crisis, he said he probably wouldn't complete any statement until the fall.

Council members hope that Bok will determine when demonstrators go beyond the exercise of their freedom of speech and begin to infringe on the rights of others. Bok is less likely to delineate any disciplinary mechanisms that might be taken against protestors who go too far.

The issue is difficult because "you get into the line between registering disapproval and abridging someone's right to speak freely," said Bok.

Three Incidents in Last Year

In the past year three speakers have been disrupted at Harvard by aggressive hecklers--Weinberger, a Palstine Liberation Organization spokesman at the Law School and the Rev. Jerry Falwell at the Kennedy School.

"In some sense they [these incidents] may be straws in the wind. There's no crisis, but it's a good thing to talk about," said Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky. "Any violation of free speech is disturbing."

Since the Falwell protest, the Kennedy School has adopted the informal policy of warning hecklers twice before ejecting them from the speech. A recent test of the policy came last October in an Institute of Politics debate, when one heckler heeded the second warning and was not ejected.

Although he has never directly dealt with freedom of speech in a public statement, Bok has written extensively on the related issue of academic freedom, opposing restrictions on scholars regardless of their political or professional opinions.

Free Speech an Issue in 1972

The issue surfaced in Bok's first year as president. A number of students, mostly members of the now-defunct Students for a Democratic Society, interrupted many of Herrnstein's lectures in 1971-2, protesting an article he had written which concluded that a significant measure of intelligence is inherited.

Herrnstein charged two students with harrassment, but the cases were eventually dropped.

Bok rushed to Herrnstein's defense, at least in principle. "I consider such personal attacks to be deplorable regardless of their status under the rules of the University" he wrote in 1972. "Attempts to discourage free expression cannot be justified simply because they are made in an effort to protect society from allegedly harmful ideas."

In his 1982 book Bok included an entire chapter on academic freedom, refining this argument but not significantly changing his basic position.

Charles T. Kurzman contributed to this report.