Staff Jumps to Conclusions

The staff is right to suspect the administration isn't telling the truth about the Foundation's move out of University Hall. But then, without sufficient facts, it leaps to the conclusion that it's all because of an administrative vendetta against Foundation Director S. Allen Counter.

There is plenty not to like about Counter. During our first year, we remember being appalled by a letter he wrote to The Crimson, a letter in which he said Crimson editors "active in Hillel" were basically out to get him. Counter is intelligent enough to know that those statements played into the widely-held prejudice that Jews control the media. We were appalled at what we consider to be the most bald-faced example of anti-Semitism we've ever witnessed on this campus.

But in focusing its editorial so closely on Counter, the staff misses the larger point. Minority students--like minority workers and minority faculty--have legitimate beefs about how Harvard treats them and their concerns. In the divestment movement of the 1980s, in the push for ethnic studies, in the concern over Harvard police treatment of Black students, the University has for years followed the same strategy for dealing with objections raised by minorities: tell them you care, and them wait them out, until they graduate or find jobs elsewhere.

The problem with the staff's position is that it falls to consider the furor over the Foundation office in this larger context. This episode wouldn't be a big deal if Harvard had a history of being honest about race relations. But it doesn't.

The editorial also fails to consider the whole Counter (a difficult proposition to be sure, given that the Foundation director has--unwisely, we think--stopped granting interviews to this newspaper). For all his sins, Counter is admired and respected by a significant number of thoughtful, sensitive students who work with the Foundation. And the Foundation, by the staff's own admission, has had some succeed.

For those reasons, the staff needs to take greater care with its opinions about Counter, the Harvard Foundation and race relations.