Word: eta
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...open letter, Bok tries to paint himself as a "good gay" by denouncing the sexism of Pi Eta while saying not a word about the deeds of Weinberger and Botha and claiming that Harvard University stands above politics. What a sick joke! This in the home of the Kennedy School, where they draw up plans for a nuclear first strike and for the starvation of Central American peasants. This is the place where Vietnam war criminal Henry Kissinger received his training. This is the campus, where napalm was invented...
...quite rightly takes up the issue of the celebrated Pi Eta Club newsletter, which depicted women in almost the lewdest, most sexist language imaginable, as a case study in which free speech must be extended to even the most offensive of communications. He goes on at length about why he issued a strong public denunciation of the letter, and how this denunciation, rather than inhibiting free speech, is part and parcel of the market-place of ideas to which free speech is supposed to contribute...
...good. But why does Bok stop, both rhetorically and in actions, at this ugly incident? At the beginning of his letter, he mentions in passing several other examples of violations of free speech at Harvard, but with the exception of the Pi Eta incident, he fails to return to them. No harsh words are reserved for those Jewish students who disrupted a speech last year by a representative of the P.L.O. nor does Bok directly condemn members of the Black Law Students Association who did not allow Jewish students to question a P.L.O. official at a symposium of their...
This imperative becomes all the more urgent if the critic, as Bok has done, gives the appearance of being picky about what he is going to criticize. What is singular about the Pi Eta incident in the free speech arena? Why action here and not in other similar instances where a voice of moral leadership was called for? Why didn't Bok take the initiative and use the Weinberger and the P.L.O. incidents to vent his spleen on the necessity of free speech...
...most revealing aspect of Bok's latest epistle may well have nothing to do with its substance, but rather with what it shows about the character of leadership in this University. Bok writes a good letter. His denunciation of the Pi Eta Club was proper. But is he willing to do more than come crashing down on the easiest target of them...