Words and Deeds

LAST WEEK'S resurgence of anti-apartheid activity once again brought to the foreground the depth of the emotional feeling the divestiture issue raises on campus. More that 5000 students thronged the Yard to hear the Rev. Jesse I. Jackson denounce Harvard's ties to South Africa, and then some 75 staged an all-night vigil outside Massachusetts Hall. If there were any doubts as to whether the campus divestiture movement would be able to summon the strength for another spring drive, they were decisively dispelled.

One campus figural armed large in the events of the week, if for no other reason than his noticeable absence-President Bok. Bok was reported to be busy or working in an office in the Kennedy School, in order to avoid a confrontation with the students massed outside his office.

Bok may well have had good reasons for his absence, and perhaps he genuinely could not have rearranged his busy schedule to make an appearance during Thursday's events, even ever night to greet the members of the encampment. It is not the place of protesters to set President Bok's daily agenda. However, larger questions remain about the president's public role in the divestiture debate. There is no doubt that the president has forthrightly and repeatedly made public the grounds of his opposition to divestiture-mostly through the issuance of several open letters on the subject-but he has yet really to defend his position in the glare of public attention.

Bok to date has not submitted himself and-the University to a public debate on what has become the predominant campus issue of the decade A public forum in which Bok, not an adviser, is forced to confront his opponents on the issue is clearly called for in light of the growing campus concern about divestiture, Furthermore, the leaders of the divestiture movement are owed a meeting with the president to air their grievances.

SETTING OUT one's views in print for all to see is one thing, Defending one's position in reasoned debate with one's adversaries is another. The imperative to do so is especially urgent given the president's professed long-standing devotion to making the University a tree "market place for' ideas." Let Bok match his rhetoric with his deeds.