Dear Editor

...Thus, sds and the black militants might bring about both the destruction of the American university system and the renaissance of McCarthyism that they so obviously desire...

...He has obviously failed to study the historical record of the system he deprecates...

...The radicals believe it is the "power structure" that prevents the realization of their ideas, and yet often inconsistently choose tactics which would work only if that power structure were likely to crumble before the noise of riotous demonstrations...

...Christopher Stiles...

...Lekachman's suggestion that the Harvard officials should have taken upon themselves the responsibility for clearing University Hall is even more unrealistic...

...New York City James Michel Despite your otherwise admirable coverage of the Harvard events, I am provoked to rise to a point of order by a passage in Robert Lekachman's article...

...April 14) exhibits a curiously abivalent attitude toward the possibility of a coalition between the Italian Communist party and the democratic Left or Center...

...Those intellectuals, Yanqui and native, who think that fundamental social change will occur through guerrilla warfare are engaging in altogether destructive, romantic and Utopian nonsense...

...At an institution where I have teaching responsibilities, in the circumstances outlined, yes...

...amazingly enough, legal grounds...

...The sds trump card is the brutal behavior of American policemen...

...This is both true and irrelevant...

...In his last sentence, however, Senigallia describes the Communists as "an opponent who would never give [the democratic forces] a second chance," presumably having converted himself to opposing an "opening to the ultra-Left" in the proceeding two pages...

...Lekachman notes on page four that "The law holds a person legally responsible for the natural and probable consequences of his acts...

...Tyler's solicitousness for the "in-between" leads him to some truly amazing positions, including, apparently, a kind of left-handed rationalization of lynching Indians and Negroes...

...The questions of university expansion, of university-sponsored defense research, of rotc, and of the university's relations with the poor and the blacks are all real dilemmas, not manifestations of the Oedipus complex or of a historically "anachronistic" romanticism...

...therefore, if the students were "legally responsible for the natural and probable consequences" of the occupation, they had to expect a bust...

...Chicago, III...

...DEAR EDITOR HARVARD Although glad to see The New Leader publish at least one article that attempted to comprehend this year's student revolutionaries, I nevertheless feel that in his effort to do the strikers justice (and there is some justice to their case...

...after all, unlawful...

...Elizabeth Bolton UTOPIA...

...Now the "in thing" is for black militants to adopt the separatism we used to accuse the capitalist system of fomenting...

...Brooklyn, NY...

...To a poor wasp like this writer, the Ford Foundation and the liberal Episcopal bishops who find "everything that is black is beautiful" are repugnant...

...Why should the administration alone bear such an odious responsibility...

...I suspect we have all written letters which we chose not to mail after we read the original...

...Carl Landauer Professor of Economics, University of California SOCIAL CHANGE Two pieces in your April 28 issue were exceptionally penetrating and perceptive: "Latin America's Divided Left...

...The exchange between the radical critics of liberalism and the anticritics is becoming monotonous, with the same arguments repeated over and over again, but we cannot stop the dialogue...

...But this is no longer inevitable...

...We probably won't be able to, and 1970 may well be a year of persecution for the Left in general...

...In any case, Lekachman has completely misconstrued the purpose of an sds-type "confrontation...

...TYLER If Gus Tyler weren't so set upon pushing his "Insurrection of the In-Betweens" idea (NL, April 28), he might have time to notice that whatever the worries of the American middle class, the worries of the poor are surely greater...

...I have not seen such a program—aside, of course, from the postulates with which liberal Socialists and reformers have confronted the holders of privilege and which the New Left mentions only with scorn...

...He begins by noting that "the Cold War mentality has been replaced here by a new pragmatic trend toward national coexistence with the PCI...

...At Harvard, no...

...Actions such as the one perpetrated by Harvard SDS are...

...The mindless sds storm troopers, the Black Panthers, the black students with guns and their white Establishment allies, have to be experienced to be believed...

...On the rotc matter, what counts is not what agency outside of a faculty selects a colleague, it is that tiny agency should have that privilege...

...But university administrations and faculties face the necessity of acting according to their own principles, not those of sds, and a sensitive regard to these principles relegates the use of force to the last place, not first, as a reaction...

...ANTI-SDS BACKLASH The tragedy of the events chronicled in your special issue, "Springtime at Harvard" (NL, April 28...

...What other framework promises more...

...Detroit, Mich...

...It seems to me that good manners in this case happen to coincide with sound jurisprudence and accurate research...

...is that moderates apparently have not yet learned that the radical protesters of the Students for a Democratic Society are committed to the idea that no society in which people are allowed to dissent from the radical position can be democratic...

...The struggle between these elements, not only in Italy, but all over Europe, is one of the most momentous aspects of the contemporary political scene...

...As for Tyler's fear of a Right-wing middle-income backlash in this country, the wonder is that it has not already come about...

...New York City Benjamin Rosenblat Elliott Abrams replies: My statement that "banking is central to capitalism" does not imply that banks cannot also be important in pre-, post- and non-capitalist countries...

...It will cost billions of dollars to develop the mineral resources of Brazil, the giant of Latin America...

...In what direction will Yerbst "break out...

...Again and again, one has to ask the antiliberal radicals: Where is your real Utopia...

...the review by William P. Lineberry, and Gus Tyler's "Insurrection of the In-Betweens...

...What starts usually, and certainly at Harvard, as a violation of property rights ends as outrageous assaults upon individuals...

...New York City Roger Starr Robert Lekachman replies: James Michel's thoughtful letter misconstrues my interpretation of sds tactics...

...The PCI is not monolithic...

...All we hear from the critics are slogans such as "participatory democracy," which prove the poorer in realizable content the more they are examined...

...Lekachman, a good liberal who undoubtedly subscribes to the Supreme Court's dictum that illegally obtained evidence may not be introduced in court, nevertheless chose to refer to the contents of a letter allegedly written by Dean Ford of Harvard College and purportedly stolen by the trespassers...

...I agree with Lineberry that our southern neighbors need massive doses of capital and technological aid...

...But if such a crackdown occurs, how can we restrict it only to the most nihilistic lunatics...

...The abortive occupations of Fayerweather and Mathematics halls at Columbia University on April 29 may indicate that student and faculty sentiment has shifted decisively against sds—so decisively, one hopes, that they will never again dare to attempt a similar action...

...After all, the trespassers presumably found only a carbon copy of the original...

...I still find it startling that the Harvard faculty was for so long willing to accept as a member a military officer upon whose competence as a scholar it never passed...

...On the other hand, there exist forces which seem to be groping toward the notion of a democratic, albeit radical, Communist party...

...Moreover, since the Harvard faculty voted to deprive the rotc commander of his professorial rank, it is apparent that this can no longer be used to justify the demand that black students be allowed to select the members of the Black Studies Department...

...Would I have been willing to help clear the building...

...That someone else, under still less ambiguous circumstances, should have done the prying doesn't remove from me the onus of having made literary advantage of his ill-gotten gains...

...Lekachman makes it clear that he dislikes "SDS authoritarianism, manipulation and simple-minded rhetoric," and seems to be unequivocally opposed to the occupation of Harvard's University Hall...

...The occupiers did not simply wish to focus attention upon certain dubious university activities...

...While I am willing to concede a certain ambivalence toward reading upside down the letters that may be on the desk of a man to whose office I have been invited, my conscience does stop at riffling through his desk drawers when he leaves me for a moment to visit the men's room...

...The first is that in a crisis-type of situation, many activists develop a highly Messianic psychology, and feel that undergoing some kind of painful experience will consecrate their action—a symbolic martyrdom and baptism of fire...

...in his article "Italy Thinks the Unthinkable" (NL...

...Yet he condemns the calling of the police, not merely on practical grounds (for the police aggravate an already volatile situation), but also on moral and...

...I definitely believe that the next couple of weeks will be critical in the history of American higher education...

...Apparently, however, this is supposed to apply only to university presidents, and not to disrupters of universities...

...Robert Lekachman is responsible for at least two glaring inconsistencies ("The Brighter Side," NL, April 28...

...Every undergraduate who has had Economics 1 knows that pre-, post- and non-capitalist economies have banking systems...

...Although I share Roger Starr's distaste for invasion of privacy, the letter in question was printed in its entirety by the Harvard Crimson and extensively discussed in the Boston and New York press...

...It will require billions more to remove its poorer citizens from poverty, squalor and despair...

...It is difficult to know what we can do with this disruptive minority...

...One wishes that Senigallia had examined the Italian Communist party in greater detail...

...Would he have been willing to help clear the building...

...Philadelphia, Pa...

...This seems to indicate that he is not hostile to such a coexistence...

...Lekachman says that he opposed the occupation...

...Of course, the pressures upon 18th-century Pennsylvania settlers and New York's Catholic immigrants during the Civil War were considerable...

...And if you gently remind any of these pseudo-liberal types that 70 per cent of our nation's poor are white, you are a bigot, a fascist, and perhaps even a "pig...

...Black and white, unite and fight...

...Finally, Lekachman obviously believes that rotc commanders should not have academic status...

...these beleaguered gentlemen are selected by The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...

...The second reason is that a police intrusion upon the campus was bound to create feelings of widespread—and exaggerated—revulsion, would contribute to the general sense of anarchy and urgency, and would also give many previously noninvolved students feelings of guilt...

...In his reply to Gus Tyler's "Puncturing the Liberal Illusion" (NL, March 3), George Yerbst declares once more ("Dear Editor," NL...

...It is extremely difficult to see how any university will be able to function without a crackdown on the hard-core dissidents...

...Irving Feinberg BLACK CAPITALISM Elliott Abrams' assertion ("Black Capitalism and Black Banks," NL, March 17) that "banking is central to capitalism" is blatant nonsense...

...the Defense Department...

...Of course sds started it all...

...And if we want to avoid another Cuba, we had better help South America achieve geniune economic growth and political stability...

...March 31) that parliamentary democracy is "undemocratic democracy," that no good work can succeed within the system, that it is necessary to "break out of parliamentary democracy...

...Clearly, there are old-line Stalinists who still serve the Soviet Union and would indulge in any kind of deceit and dirty dealing that Moscow might desire...

...Senigallia seems to assume that in a coalition the neo-Stalinists would necessarily come to dominate, as they did, say, in the 1944-48 Czech coalition of Communists and non-Communists...

...I cannot imagine what ethical or journalistic purpose would have been served by my ignoring its existence...

...It is precisely because sds wants to be "busted" that university administrations must actually exhaust—and what is equally important, be seen to exhaust—every other alternative before accepting the role extended to them by sds...

...For this there are essentially two reasons...

...He claims "it is well worth observing that if an ROTC unit can nominate its commander as a member of the Harvard faculty, there is no logical reason why the black students should not nominate their own faculty...

...On page five, Lekachman makes an even more arguable assertion than the one about summoning the police...

...In any case, civilization is based upon the notion that normal adult members of a society can distinguish right from wrong and are prepared to act upon that distinction...

...Yet how can a university repress them in the name of freedom...

...If you can rationalize the draft riots, you can rationalize anything...

...Abrams is challenged to name one present noncapitalist country anywhere in the world without banks...

...I want to make it clear that I am genuinely pleased that a senior academic like Robert Lekachman attempted to treat the student revolutionists with more sympathy and understanding than is usually the case with men in his position...

...The recent events at Harvard, at Columbia, at Cornell, at San Francisco State and elsewhere seem to indicate that the black and white revolutionaries will stop at nothing to destroy freedom of speech and study...

...For though many, if not most, of the positions and actions taken by the extremist students are obtuse and nihilistic, it remains true that there are objective and compelling reasons for dissent in this country at this time...

...They almost certainly wanted to be busted...

...Though it might be possible for the Stalinists to seduce their hypothetical coalition partners (whether Christian Democrats or Socialists), it seems more likely that the democratic parties would seduce the moderate Communists...

...If the two situations are truly analogous, as he claims, then doesn't it follow that the black students should not choose their faculty either...

...In the 1930s some of us believed in the slogan...

...For understanding this, Lekachman deserves to be applauded, and I, for one, applaud him...

...But before the resistance of the power structure can even be tested, it would have to be confronted with a program sustainable by reasoned argument...

...I would have preferred Lekachman to leave out any reference to the contents of Dean Ford's letter in his article, unless Dean Ford or the recipient of the letter chose to release its contents publicly...

...To me it is imperative to unite a majority on a program of wide-ranging social change, both domestic and foreign...

...Although the enormous body of social welfare laws enacted during the last 35 years has left much misery unremedied, it has at least relieved enough helplessness to sustain the hope that much more can be done, essentially within the framework of existing political institutions...

...It seems to me that the Supreme Court spelled out not merely what should be binding in a court of law, but a standard of conduct appropriate for serious journalists and writers...

...Walter Storey ITALY Silvio Senigallia...

...Now it so happens that ROTC units do not appoint their commanders...

...But the difficulties of the Negroes and the Indians were much worse...

...Berkeley, Calif...