Dear Editor

...London Martin Trow Green Re Harris Green's review of Robert Anderson's Solitaire ("Six Plays in Search of Theater," NL, November 29) Fie, gentlemen' Galsworthy's short story "The Machine Breaks Down'"' Nay??E M Forster's, contained in his collection...

...New York City Gene Sosin Director of Broadcast Planning Clarification The many editorial changes made, in my absence abroad, substantially changed the meaning of my essay published under the title "Can a Captive Audience Learn9" in your special issue ("What Are We Trying to Teach Our Children...

...NL, November 15) A reader would believe that I am hostile to the movement toward universal higher education, whereas in fact I warmly support many of the forms that the expansion of educational opportunity is taking in America...

...Goodman first tries to make fun of the people on the letterhead of one of the sponsoring organizations, the Committee for Public Justice (The other one, Princeton University, may have been a little tough for his blunt rapier ) But William F Buckley Jr devoted an entire column to just that sort of criticism of the FBI conference, and Buckley is clearly Goodman's master at the argumentum ad hominem Then Goodman insinuates (1950s fashion), by reference to the Left-liberal organizations and journals with which some of the conference participants have been involved over the decades, that the whole thing was a fellow-traveling plot...

...Walter Goodman replies Those who read my article may recall, despite the smoke thrown up by the offended correspondents, that my criticism of the Prince ton conference was not that the participants were unqualified to discuss the FBI, or that they should be disqualified from doing so, or that the FBI does not warrant discussion What troubled me was that the sponsors had billed their meeting as "objective," "nonpartisan" and scholarly," and that the Committee for Public Justice was using the name of Princeton University for its own purposes??not dishonorable purposes, but not those of a university Most of the participants??and all the conference stars, including Mr Neier and Professor Countryman??were brought to Princeton to make a case against the FBI to which the Committee for Public Justice was already committed Such an event, as I wrote, can be useful??yet no matter how honest or informative any of the individual contributions, their collective purpose ran counter to the spirit of scholarship and threatened the integrity of the university I am sorry that my sometime friends in the civil liberties area should have such difficulty in distinguishing between the promotion of a cause, however worthy, and the search for truth...

...Dear Editor Goodman Although I presented a paper on the second day of the Princeton meeting on the FBI, I was able to be there only on that day Walter Goodman ("How Not to Take on the FBI," NL, November 29), who attended "part" of the meeting, apparently did not attend that day or even he would have reported (1) that the FBI got a better defense from a panel of former Justice Department officials than it did from the inept contributions of a pair from Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, and (2) that I, for one, explicitly took the position that the same prohibitions should apply to the FBI's use of informers and electronics on the KKK as on the SDS??and that Burke Marshall expressly agreed with me...

...the Birch Society or say, SDS), where political surveillance patently violates the First Amendment...

...But Goodman's partial report is fully m character As in his previous writings, his position is that anyone whose views are not acceptable to him is not competent to discuss such matters as the FBI or the House Tin-American Activities Committee??and is, in addition, a ape subject for treatment by Good man's technique of guilt by association Unfortunately, those whose views meet with his approval seem to have no understanding of or interest in civil liberties Cambridge, Mass Vern Countryman Professor of Law, Harvard University...

...P S I am instructed to inform you that both the Committee for Public Justice and Norman Dorsen will abstain from replying in their knowledge of this letter having been written to The New Leader??HS...

...Goodman's sport is unworthy The New Leader might more helpfully deal with the issues raised at the conference the FBI's uncontrolled autonomy, its questionable methods and priorities, and the need for congressional or other public supervision of our secret police New York City Henry Schwarzschild...

...I was one of the people who prepared a paper for the Princeton conference If and when Goodman is able to point out deficiencies in the content of my paper, I welcome his criticism I rather doubt that kind of criticism will he forthcoming...

...In his passion to identify the Reds and Pinks at the conference, he includes the ACLU in his List, this should make the ECLC and NLG people smile wanly But he finds no room for mention of leading panelists like Victor Nava-sky of the New York Tunes Magazine (for which Goodman has been known to work) and author of Kennedy Justice, or Nat Lewin, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, or John T Elliff of Brandeis University (who is just plain too young to fall into Goodman's 20-years-out-of-date categories) or Walter Pincus, formerly of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Washington Post or Arthur Schlesinger Jr , or Andrew Young...

...A 'roomful of civil libertarians' was evidently too much for Goodman, who left after the first day of the two-day meeting and thus missed some proceedings that a responsible tournalist (to say nothing of a scholar) should have heard before writing a critique of the meeting He was grateful, it seems for the relief from all this overcommitment to liberty Vincent Broderick afforded when he took exception to the tone of some things said by several panelists Goodman would have been heartbroken to hear the former New York City Police Commissioner comment, on the second day, that the FBI hadn't had a new idea in 50 years ("which takes us back to the early '20s and Hoover's leadership of the Palmer Raids) John M Doar, whose paper praised the FBT for permitting itself to be dragged into the civil rights struggles of the 160s, was sharply asked whether the reluctance and ineffectiveness of Federal authorities m assuring the constitutional rights of Southern blacks did not measurably contribute to the deep disaffection from government that has since pervaded the black and radical communities Goodman's cute little crack about the use of FBI informers against the KKK being as welcome to the conferees as the use of informers against the SDS would have been abhorrent typically ignores Professor Tom Emerson's sophisticated legal distinction (agree with it or not) between organizations committed to violence (KKK or, say, the Weathermen) and political extremists (e.g...

...The Celestial Omnibus This is the first gaffe I have seen in almost 20 years of reading your excellent magazine Houston Edward J Soplz...

...Soviet Jews Myron Kolatch's eye witness description of the Babi Yar ceremony on September 29 ('Traveling Among Jews in the USSR," NL, November 29) provided grim confirmation of the Soviet regime's persistent efforts to mute and distort the truth of the tragedy and to prevent Soviet Jews from mourning their dead NL readers may be interested in how Radio Liberty commemorated this 30th anniversary of the Nazi massacre During the last week in September (1) Anatoli Kuznetsoy's book, Babi Yar, was serialized in full, with the author himself reading those parts which had been censored in the Soviet edition (2) Yevtushenko's recording of his famous poem, 'Babi Yar," which he can no longer recite to cheering young Russians in crowded halls, was rebroadcast along with the poet's account of how he came to write it (3) The "Babi Yar" passage from the banned Thirteenth Symphony by Shostakovich was offered to our listeners in two recordings??one by the Moscow Philharmonic (sold abroad only) and the other by the Philadelphia Orchestra Other special broadcasts included the reading of the Ukrainian samizdat text of a speech Ivan Dzyuba delivered at the ravine in September 1966, a Yom Kippur program with the Hebrew prayer for the dead, Marian Melman's reading in Yiddish of the poem "Martyrs" by Aleksandr Belousov, a Russian who taught himself Yiddish Radio Liberty has also scheduled for broadcast Kolatch's revealing report as part of our policy to give the Soviet public a broader perspective on internal events suppressed in the official media...

...For example, the essay as published has me say, "We cannot afford to further swell the range of activities rewarded with academic credits, to further blur the distinction between living and learning " On the contrary, m the future we certainly will award academic credit for a wider range of activities, and indeed must if we are to preserve more traditional standards in any part of our system of higher education My essay as written attempted to discuss some of the problems engendered by the movement toward universal higher education, but does not condemn this broad extension of educational opportunity, which in my view is both inevitable and desirable...

...It seems to me legitimate to attack inadequacies in scholarship by pointing out deficiencies m research or errors of fact On the other hand, an attack on inadequacies in scholarship which is based entirely on the political associations of the people responsible for the scholar ship is low-grade name-calling That is the kindest way I can characterize Walter Goodman's article about the conference on the FBI at Princeton sponsored by the Committee for Public Justice...

...New York City Aryeh Neier Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union...

...Reading Walter Goodman's churlish critique of the Princeton conference on the FBI, one guesses that his idea of objective scholarship would be a conference on crime in the United States at which there are as many people who favor crime as there are opposed It ill becomes Goodman to complain m print about a lack of scholarliness at the conference when he (a) missed about half of its sessions, (b) writes almost entirely about the "partisan" personalities at the conference, with much innuendo about their political histories, but with hardly any concern for the content of the lengthy prepared papers or the intensive and often adversary discussions these engendered and (c) knows (or should know) that some admirers of the FBI were present (at the expense of the convenors) and that numerous others had been invited but declined...