Letters

...Ruti Teitel Anti-Defamation League New York, New York Nat Hentoff is mistaken when he asserts, "In the light and heat of free-speech wars, the cults can be expected to wither away...

...The Supreme Court held in the school prayer cases of the 1960s that the voluntariness of the prayer (students could always leave during the prayer period) was irrelevant to the establishment problem posed when these activities are conducted under the approving aegis of the schools, and with the benefit of a captive audience gathered pursuant to the state attendance laws...

...he was quite explicit about and critical of "major atrocities and oppression" under Pol Pot...

...These cultists flourish in America's open society...

...It is immoral and unconstitutional...

...This is accomplished by many little tricks of tone, stress, and suppression, but among the major instruments I will note two...

...But where has the conscience appeared as regards the people still living in Laos and Vietnam, as opposed to the expatriates and Pol Pot troops on the Cambodian border...

...Let's be clear about what is at stake...

...Some of the Bishops' suggestions are worthy, but the source offends me...

...How this is to be achieved without impermissible teacher entanglement in the clubs is difficult to imagine...

...For a useful publication to help you monitor what's going on, there is Equal Access: A Practical Guide, Commission on Law and Social Action, American Jewish Congress, 15 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028...

...Unfortunately, that is not even true in the universities where we are talking about young adults, not children...

...We pointed out that in this case, where press attention would perhaps have helped the victims, the press was (and remains) silent...

...According to the Act, the meetings would occur "during non-instructional time," defined as "time set aside by the school before actual classroom instruction begins or after actual classroom instruction ends...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...Our leadership must guard against their false teachings...

...The quality of the legal analysis in Teitel's letter is further illustrated by her charge that there will be teacher "supervision" of this alleged organized group worship...

...Fill out a call slip for the book you need and submit it at that desk over there...

...It will take some years and a number of court decisions before interpretations of Equal Access become uniform...

...Shawcross's own "quality of mercy" turns out to be very limited...

...He did focus heavily on the press campaign, not only in response to its serious fabrications, but also because it was not helping the Cambodians and was not intended to help them...

...One is his emphasis on the aid efforts of the West, which, while bungled, display conscience and humanism...

...Actually, it was Al Jolson in the original version of The Jazz Singer who popularized that line...

...Four Court of Appeals decisions have similarly found that, notwithstanding the student-initiation of equal-access prayer clubs, there is too much state involvement when these religious activities are organized in the schools...

...In seeking to refute this special status of religion and equating it with chess and everything else, the Equal Access Act is a misguided venture...

...Librarian: "Well, juniors are not allowed in the stacks...

...His jurisdiction is elsewhere...

...Steif quotes Shawcross about Noam Chomsky seeing only a "vast and unprecedented" propaganda campaign against the Khmer Rouge...

...response...

...Furthermore, there is nothing in the new law that would prevent a principal from simply mandating that there be no extracurricular activity during the school day—provided all the clubs, secular and religious, can meet before or after school...

...He never uses this ploy to explain away Vietnamese actions...

...An important feature of Shawcross's latest book and his past writings is his failure to spell out constructive solutions that would have been useful in responding to the Pol Pot killings...

...to the late Jimmy Durante...

...invasion of distant Cambodia...

...Under the Constitution, you can have political clubs without having religious activities in the public schools...

...Chomsky wrote only one small article in The Nation in 1977 (in collaboration with the writer of this letter), and this article was ignored...

...It may prove equally appropriate...

...In her very own analysis of Equal Access in an Anti-Defamation League pamphlet, Religion and the Public Schools/The Aftermath of "Equal Access," Teitel correctly points out that teacher supervision under the law is for "custodial purposes" only—that is, to see that the kids don't break the windows or eat the erasers...

...According to Shawcross, Chomsky's criticisms were influential in muting Western concern over Cambodia...

...In a public school, religious speech cannot come at the direction of school officials but rather must be initiated by the students themselves...

...That the horrendous destruction wreaked by a distant Western industrial power on a peasant society, social revolution, and boycott would inevitably cause a large exodus he never hints at...

...Further, under the Act, this religious activity is not limited to the high schools...

...Once upon a time I overheard this conversation at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library: Frustrated student: "But I need to get into the stacks to do research for my class assignment...

...LETTERS to the Editor Of course state-church battles are decided on whether the state is providing its imprimatur to religion...

...For example, at no point in the book does he express the slightest sympathetic understanding of the fact that Vietnam was left shattered in 1975, and was boycotted thereafter by the U.S.-led alliance...

...I grant you that some cults, when they come into the "free speech wars" now open on high school campuses, will be exposed as false and simply die away...

...While Hentoff claims that "now the process of conversion takes place under insulated, carefully controlled conditions," and contrasts this with the free-speech environment that will prevail in the public schools under the Equal Access Act, the reality is that "equal access" exists at the university level, where the conditions are far from insulated and carefully controlled, and still there are the many cult recruits...

...David Howell Bethlehem, Pennsylvania The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...If it turns out that an outside member of Youth for Christ actually takes over a club, then the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress, and Ruti Teitel will go to court and straighten out the violation of the law...

...Joseph P. Disch Pleasant Hill, California Reader, Stay Home Steven J. Hoekstra's Last Word, "Reader, Stay Home" (February issue), evoked memories...

...Students as young as eleven would be able to engage in organized worship clubs either during the school day or right before and after, monitored perhaps by their favorite teacher and role model...

...The legislative history of the bill, underlined by a colloquy on the Senate floor (June 27, 1984, Congressional Record S. 8360) between Senators Mark Hatfield and Lowell Weicker, makes clear that the intent of the measure is to reassure Ruti Teitel...

...The cults and their influence could have tragic consequences...

...Nat Hentoff New York, New York The Quality of Mercy9 William Steif s review of William Shawcross's The Quality of Mercy (Books, January issue) completely misses the book's biases, scholarly gaffes, and significance as a New Cold War tract...

...As to the possibility of proselytism and control of impressionable young school children, Hentoff believes that "in the light and heat of free-speech wars, the cults can be expected to wither away...

...Bruce E. Johansen Omaha, Nebraska Your article "Reagan II" (January issue) attributed President Reagan's remark "You ain't seen nuttin' yet...

...Student: "But it's a graduate course...

...Chomsky and I have stressed that there was nothing practical that could have been done in the Pol Pot era, and that the hysteria in the West, so actively sponsored by The Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, was mainly for ideological mobilization...

...For the Catholic Bishops to propose taking money from me and giving it to someone else is altruism and collectivism at its worst...

...These organized religious activities would go on either just at the end of the school day, when students and teachers are still at the school, or even during the school day...

...While outside religious leaders under the Act "may not direct, conduct, control or regularly attend activities of student groups," they are, Hentoff fails to mention, permitted to attend and participate...

...Finally, with regard to whether junior high school kids can handle all this, it is, as the Supreme Court has said, "out of a multitude of tongues" that students best learn—a multitude of religious as well as secular tongues...

...There had been a change in policy, as abrupt and dramatic as Oceania's policy on Eastasia...

...While villainizing Vietnam, Shawcross masterfully takes the United States and its Asian allies off the hook...

...Malcolm's mother was pregnant when the Klan busted up the house, but his father, a minister, decided to stay in Omaha until his son, who came to be known as Malcolm X, was born...

...Sure, that's what freedom is...

...Librarian: "We don't allow undergraduates in the stacks...

...We pointed out that at the same time that Pol Pot was ruling by extreme terror, East Timor was being invaded by Indonesia, using U.S...

...Next semester I overheard another conversation, somewhat different: Librarian: "No, dear, I'm sorry, we just don't have personnel to go running around getting your books for you...

...Graduate students may submit call slips, but undergraduates must go into the stacks and get their own books for themselves...

...This is demonstrably false...

...However, the more organized and better trained are not likely to...

...Answering a question from Weicker, Hatfield, a prime mover of the bill, said that "formalized religious ritual" in public schools is not allowed...

...Only graduate students are allowed to have stack permits...

...But this law makes it clear that these clubs have to be student initiated and student directed, and if they are, according to the very specific provisions of Equal Access, then there is no state imprimatur...

...With regard to outside religious figures coming in and participating in student-initiated religious clubs, the relevant language of the law is: "Nonschool persons may not direct, conduct, control, or regularly attend activities of student groups...

...Smith Norwood, Massachusetts Religion in the Schools Nat Hentoffs "The Fourth R" (December issue), advocating student-initiated religious meetings in our public schools pursuant to the newly enacted Equal Access Act, reflects serious errors in constitutional analysis and naivete concerning the role of religion in the public schools...

...A second is his downplaying of the Free World's consistent support of Pol Pot since his ouster by the Vietnamese...

...arms and inflicting a huge death toll...

...Shawcross has never satisfactorily explained this di-chotomous treatment...

...I don't think he understands the cults' tremendous influence on young people...

...Student: "Yes, I'm a junior, but I'm taking a graduate-level course...

...Our First Amendment prohibits establishment of religion, and recent Supreme Court decisions state that not a cent of my taxes may be spent on religions...

...The boat people are cast strictly as victims of "totalitarianism...

...Richard Sheetz Stillwater, Oklahoma The author replies: Ruti Teitel's parade of hypothetical horribles is led by a specter of "organized group worship" in the public schools as a result of the Equal Access law...

...But in the tax exemptions to churches and church businesses, I personally lose thousands of dollars to organized religion...

...And now to have these representatives of one of the richest religions advise the Government on how to spend my money is execrable...

...they have plagued the efforts of Christianity since its beginning...

...Fortunately, disallowing organized religious activities in the schools does not endanger our political free-speech rights...

...Besides its role as an antiVietnam tract, The Quality of Mercy aims to criticize the Western Left for its alleged failings on Cambodia...

...At worst, this means both before and after each period of classroom instruction, which would open the schools to having these clubs throughout the day-lunch period, student activity period, etc...

...For him, the reason for the concern in the period 19751982, was the heavy weight of conscience...

...There is no castigation of the West for what it did to Vietnam, and not the faintest indication of "mercy" toward the hundreds of thousands who remain injured and traumatized...

...The AJC also dislikes the law, but unlike Teitel focuses on what's actually in it...

...Inevitably, there will be litigation as some folks try to misshape the bill to their own ends...

...Chomsky did not "only" see a massive press campaign...

...As I wrote it, the lead came from the Autobiography of Malcolm X, the first two pages of the book's text...

...As for Richard Sheetz's objection to "cults," God does not have the authority, under the Constitution, to determine which religious speech is so "false" that it cannot be discussed in a student-initiated religious club in a public school...

...Would Ruti Teitel prefer another way...

...Hentoff refers to "religious speech" without clarifying that this includes not only discussion about religion or comparative religion class, neither of which needs statutory protection as they have never been barred, but also organized group worship...

...The establishment bar on Government endorsement of religion extends only to religious activities because our founding fathers felt that religion was different—that, as James Madison noted, it was "too personal, too sacred, too holy...

...Shawcross never commits himself...

...Is this risky...

...Daniel P.B...

...Librarian: "I thought you said you were a junior...

...Edward S. Herman Narberth, Pennsylvania Corrections Your editing of my Dateline, "The Maverick in Lincoln" (February issue), made Malcolm X's father Ernie Chambers's father...

...I guess she would so far as students are concerned—even though they need to learn the habit of free inquiry...

...The ACLU, which neither supported nor opposed the bill, said that if the law were misinterpreted to permit such practices as organized group worship, the ACLU would go into court, but added: "We hope that the legislative history developed in discussion of this statute will limit the need for such litigation...

...This group worship, pursuant to the Equal Access Act, would be conducted on school premises and under teacher supervision, as required by state law and as permitted by the Act, which bars only teacher "participation...

...Let the organized religions give up their tax breaks and their raids of all kinds on the Treasury, and the resulting wealth would finance the Bishops' good plans...

...That applies as much to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon as to Gus Hall...

...Cults are an age-old problem...

...Given this opportunity for proselytizing and recruitment by religious leaders, it is not altogether surprising that the Act requires that the clubs be supervised for voluntariness and for student "well-being...

...Its scope extends to "secondary schools," which may include junior highs, too...

...Undergraduates have to submit call slips...

...Durante's famous tag was, "Everybody's tryin' to get into da act...

...An important device used here is to say that, given the Vietnamese advance, one could only expect this kind of Thai and U.S...

...Your professor should have known better than to make that assignment...

...When they begin to infiltrate our high schools, they will probably be better prepared than their "normal" religious rivals...

...As for when the clubs can meet, all the courts so far have ruled in related cases that the kinds of clubs covered by the law are to meet before or after classes—not during the school day and not throughout the school day...

...What would have been appropriate policy...

...At best, this could mean before or after the school day, although this term is not in the statute...

...It is regrettable that Steif was not prepared to discuss serious questions such as these...

...A U.S...

...There is no way, under the bill, for a teacher or any other school official to supervise anything done by a student-initiated club...