Word: kashani
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Last year, for example, one week after the day-long SASC sit-in at the Harvard Corporation's headquarters at 17 Quincy St., Kashani invited the South African consulate general to address a closed meeting of conservative at Lowell House. A mob of students, including many SASC members, blockaded Lowell House, preventing the departure of the South African diplomat until the police were able to extricate him. Following this incident, the University revived a Vietnam-era disciplinary committee which eventually placed 10 students--all SASC members--on academic probation for the Lowell blockade...
This incident "was nothing but a ploy to anger the liberal community," says SASC member Evan O. Grossman '87-88, who currently works for a Massachusetts Democrat. "I think most members of the liberal wing would argue that Kashani is a grandstander. They view him as someone who likes to be annoying...
...Kashani doesn't quite see the incident in exactly those terms. The impetus behind inviting a representative of the government, Kashani says, was that "if you want to know where SA is going right now, then you have to ask them. Now if the situation changes, if there's a revolution, all that will change...
Which isn't to say that Kashani was happy about how the incident turned out. "If we did it again we'd set up a forum or we'd have someone else speaking for an opposing viewpoint, and also we wouldn't ask him to speak on apartheid. We'd ask him to speak on security issues, on issues of Soviet involvement in Southern Africa, and the Cape route and the minerals, and that sort of thing, and in a long term strategic sense more important...
...KASHANI'S FOREIGN POLICY interests have also led him to the Harvard Model United Nations, which is run by the International Relations Council. However, even here, he has managed to stir some controversy...