Illiberal Liberals

DID IT EVER strike you as funny that liberals on campus are called liberals. One would assume that liberals would be ardent supporters of liberalism--that they would think individual rights and freedoms are paramount values, that they would fight for the rights of people to freely express themselves, and above all else, that they would be tolerant of other opinions.

But a growing number of liberals at Harvard have demonstrated recently that they are neither tolerant nor consistent in their support of free speech. As a result, their hold on their own name is slowly slipping away.

Tell a liberal you don't support divestment, and he's liable to call you a paternalistic stooge of the establishment--as if one of the most complex issues of our time is something that can be reduced to one, and only one, moral and effective path.

Liberals at Harvard refuse to accept the fact that rational, sensitive, informed people can disagree with them. That's the definition of tolerance.

The construction of the shantytown in the Yard is just another example of intolerance. SASC doesn't have to say anything; the shanties embody, with typical liberal arrogance, the attitude that: "you don't really really understand apartheid, so we're here to show you what it's really like."

Shanties do not address the convictions of Corporation members that their policy is more responsible. Nor do they help give President Derek C. Bok and his cohort a face-saving way out should their convictions ever change.

Instead, shanties embarass the administration and demonstrate not the moral pulchritude of Bok, but the moral self-righteousness of campus liberals.

Unfortunately, the shanties are but the culmination of liberal tactics that violently oppose liberalism. Student liberals have harassed speakers of viewpoints they don't hold in a manner contrary to the ideals of free speech.

It is the "us" versus "them" mentality which allows these non-liberal practices to take place. If everything "they" say is wrong, why tolerate their presence on campus? If everything "they" say is wrong, why let them speak?

And so Caspar Weinberger, a Harvard graduate, is met with rotten eggs and racuous protest. Thus last spring, a South African diplomat was blockaded at Lowell House, and a sit-in disrupted business at 17 Quincy St. And while students in the Committee on Central America did not themselves disrupt the speech by a Contra rebel this spring, they were hardly critical after it was broken up by other protesters.

Intolerance, self-righteousness, and non-liberalism is a very bad message for any university to be giving to outsiders, and the fact that Harvard is one of the most respected educational institutions makes this message even worse. We should stand for tolerance, not intolerance. We should stand for freedom of speech, not freedom to disrupt speakers. We should stand for the open mind, not the closed one.

BUT AN OPEN mind is what campus liberals lack most. Whenever a new issue presents itself in the national media, liberals only need look at where conservatives stand to determine their position. Instead of carefully analysing each question, liberals automatically take the opposite position as the conservatives or the Republicans or the Reagan Administration.

Many liberals fail to understand that just because the Corporation disagrees with their arguments on divestment doesn't mean that it isn't listening to what they say. Nor does it mean that the Corporation is absolutely wrong.

These liberals are the same people who struggle to help Blacks gain their freedom in South Africa. They fail to realize that white South Africans believe they are as right in what they do, as liberals here at Harvard think their cause is right. The whites, intolerant of criticism and confident that freely-speaking Blacks would have nothing to offer, squelch free speech for Blacks.

Whites think they're right and Blacks are wrong, and they use their strength to end discussion. Campus liberals think they're right and a consul from South Africa is wrong, and they use their strength in numbers to end discussion. Where's the moral difference.

Intolerant and arrogant campus liberals should look to South Africa to see where intolerance and arrogance can get you when carried to an extreme. They should see where a country can go when its most educated people fail to challenge their own convictions.

Right now, campus liberals really don't deserve to be called liberals. They should be called non-liberal, anti-conservative, or something like that. To regain their name, they must reevaluate their attitude toward debate and reconsider the tactics they find acceptable to further their goals. They must accept diversity of opinion, and they must listen to and understand what their foes have to say.