Kill Memorial For Confederacy

While I am grateful that the Board of Overseers rejected the ill-conceived HAA committee plan to memorialize the Confederate war dead, I am deeply disappointed that the Overseers lacked the courage to kill the idea outright. The Harvard community should be disturbed that this issue was handled so furtively.

There is NO good reason to memorialize renegade Harvard students who lifted arms against their nation to preserve slavery. The Overseers should have said this flat out.

The most appropriate analogy would be to a proposal to memorialize the memory of 64 Harvard students who were Nazi soldiers. If such a proposal made it to the Overseers, would there be a need for further study, or would it be summarily rejected?

Recognizing how absurd and offensive a memorial solely to Confederate soldiers would be, proponents of the idea have now tried to characterize the proposal as one for a memorial to alumni who died during the Civil War. But there is no clear precedent for such a memorial and it would cheapen the sacrifice made by Harvard's Union war dead to lump them together with those who lacked the courage to stand against the unjust and immoral regime in place in the Confederate South. There are probably a number of Harvard alumni who died doing the Devil's work, but there is no high-powered task force set-up to commemorate them. Singling out Confederate soldiers for such treatment, then, makes no sense.

Just as disturbing as the Overseers' unwillingness to take a principled stand in opposition to a memorial, is the secretive way in which this issue was handled. Alex Huppe's contention that there was an effort to have this issue "widely discussed last spring" flies in the face of common sense. Why were no minority organizations called? Why wasn't the Texan Club consulted? Why did the request for commments in the Harvard Gazette appear in June and specifically mention a summer response time? Why was, and why is, the committee's report secret and confidential? If discussion was so obviously needed, why didn't University officials pull the issue from the Board's agenda on their own? Why does the University persist in stating that reaction to the proposal was overwhelmingly favorable when a large association of Black alumni wrote to the HAA and the President of Harvard objecting to it?

All the signs suggest that somebody tried to use stealth tactics to win a battle that might be lost if waged in the open. "This should trouble the entire Harvard community. Now that this issue is in the public spotlight, the HAA or President Rudenstine should do the right thing and abandon this potentially divisive commemorative effort altogether. Patience Singleton, HLS   President, Harvard Black Law   Students Association