2 Students to Join Falwell In Oxford Debate on Nukes

Two Harvard debaters will speak on the morality of nuclear weapons along side Reverend Jerry Falwell and New Zealand's prime minister this Friday at the Oxford Union, a prestigious debating society.

Christopher M. Keyser '82, a third-year law student, will team up with the Moral Majority leader in the white he affair. Opposing them will be David R. Lange, whose government has a hard-line anti-nuclear policy, and John M. Nicholson, a Harness Fellow (similar to a Rhodes Scholar)

Lange and Nicholson, an Oxford graduate and 1983 world parliamentary debating champion, will support the motion that "the threatened use of nuclear weapons is morally indefensible," Keyser said last night.

Liberals and Conservatives have been debating at the Oxford Union for 162 years, often in the company of political giants. Five Union presidents have gone on to become British Prime Ministers.

"It has been called the playground of power," said Andrew Sullivan, a former Union president and now Kennedy School of Government student "The Union has a unique place in the British political journalistic and establishment."

Nicholson now coaches Harvard debaters. "Officially, he's the Ayatollah, not the coach," said Michael C. Dorf '86, president of Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society, adding. We told him he could pick any title he wanted and he chose that one. He's been very helpful."

Keyser, the ex-president of the Harvard Debate Council, spoke at the Oxford Union last year with U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38 when the two opposed the motion. "The foreign policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are morally indistinguishable."

"They look for people who will ally naturally with one side or the other," he added Nicolson. Dorf says. has gamed a reputation as an outspoken liberal, while Keyser has taken the conservative side on many issues in the past.

Lange made headlines recently when he refused to let a U.S. destroyer dock in New Zealand because the Navy would not carrying nuclear weapons.

Keyset said he expects the Union to support the motion to condemn nuclear weapons as immoral.

"It's much easier to vote for this resolution than against it. It's the more emotional side." Keyser said, adding that "the initial reaction will probably be negative towards Falwell although that may change when be speaks. He's a very reasonable speaker."

Keyser and Falwell will meet two days before the debate to coordinate their arguments "I don't expect to agree with everything Jerry Falwell says, but it's not as though the speakers must have a uniform voice in this type of debate, "Keyser said.

Harvard's Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society has not been to England in five years.