Lewis Tackles Free Speech Issues

In a long and eventful meeting last night, the Undergraduate Council heard Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 speak, voted on a constitutional amendment and was ousted from its Sever Hall meeting place.

Lewis, the latest in a string of administrators invited to speak to the council, emphasized the importance of the Faculty’s ongoing curricular review, said academic ranking among students should be reevaluated and addressed free speech issues.

“It seems to me inevitable that the free speech issue is one of the issues that will be confronted,” he said. “There’s a need to get some discussion out.”

In response to one representative’s question, Lewis said “it might indeed be time” to consider establishing a student-faculty committee on free speech.

“If a war starts in Iraq, beyond the current war in the Middle East, that involves the United States, I’m sure these issues are going to be hot,” Lewis said.

His comments come after the English department’s decision last week to cancel and then re-invite Tom Paulin—an award-winning Irish poet who has expressed controversial anti-Israeli views—to a prestigious speaking engagement at Harvard.

The re-invitation stemmed from concerns among English department faculty about perceptions that a cancellation would be an abridgment of free speech.

On Thursday, WordsWorth bookstore in Harvard Square cancelled an appearance by William Langewiesche, author of a controversial book on Sept. 11, after local firefighters protested the visit.

Also last week, members of the Black Law Students Association called for Harvard Law School (HLS) to adopt an anti-harassment policy protecting students from racial insensitivity. The call alarmed some HLS faculty, who claimed that such a measure would limit free speech.

Lewis also talked about the possibility of reconsidering the way the College evaluates its students’ academic work.

“It creates a kind of de facto sense that we highly value competition among individuals,” he said.

At a Faculty Council meeting last month, Lewis announced his plan to abolish the Dean’s List, which currently includes 92 percent of upperclass students.

Lewis said that while academic ranking may reflect students’ performance in blue books, it does not take into account interpersonal abilities.

“Graduates’ success in life is going to be affected by their capacity to persuade people”—a skill that is “pretty much not taught anywhere in the curriculum,” he said.

After his talk, Lewis took questions from the council on a variety of topics, including space for student groups, integrating academics and extracurricular activities, first-year students’ involvement in extracurriculars and the prospect of having student members of the Administrative Board.

Lewis called the lack of space for student groups his “nightmare” and added,

“I wish I had something happy or encouraging to say on the subject.”

Citing the loss of the Rieman Dance Center, Lewis said the College might need to consider renting space in the Harvard Square area.

The dean also acknowledged similarities between the academic and extracurricular spheres—particularly in artistic endeavors—that the College does not recognize when awarding academic credit.

“It’s just very, very odd that you have courses where you read Shakespeare’s plays, and you have [extracurricular] groups that perform Shakespeare’s plays, and there’s almost no connection between the two,” he said.

“It seems perfectly reasonable that you have faculty oversight or guidance” for some extracurricular groups, he added.

But Lewis dismissed the possibility of allowing students to sit on the Administrative Board, saying that he’d “need to be persuaded that we’re making lots of bad decisions” in order to take that step.

Although the council asked him multiple questions about the University’s sexual harassment policy, Lewis declined to add to his past comments on the issue.

Bills and a Hasty Exit

After Lewis departed, the council considered and passed a resolution recommending that Harvard University Dining Services serve Fair Trade coffee in dining halls daily. According to the resolution, the Fair Trade system “ensures subsistence level prices for Third World farmers” by paying them an above-market rate of $1.26 per pound.

The council also voted on a constitutional amendment that would guarantee each House or first-year district representation on each of the council’s three committees. The amendment would also make it more difficult for council members to switch from one committee to the next.

Although the council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the amendment last night, representatives have one week to change their votes, and the final count will be announced at next Sunday’s meeting.

The council also approved a grant to the Harvard Asian Baptist Student Koinonia (ABSK).

Last week, grants to the Harvard Radcliffe Christian Fellowship and ABSK were tabled because of fears that the groups discriminate on the basis of religion and that supporting the organizations would violate the council’s constitution.

The grant to the Christian Fellowship remains tabled because administrators are currently investigating the group’s practices, according to Finance Committee Chair Jessica P. Lau ’04.

Last week, Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 stressed the need to determine accurately whether student groups wrongfully discriminate.

“I feel strongly that all of our student groups in order to have recognition from the College need to be non-discriminatory,” Illingworth said, adding that he “would intervene” if the student groups “were discriminatory or supporting groups that discriminate.”

As the council was approving its final bill of the night—a measure allocating $500 for the council to co-sponsor a dinner with student group leaders and administrators—a security guard barged into the room and warned the council that it had to vacate its Sever Hall meeting place because the building had to be locked for the night.

Hastening its vote, the council obliged.

—Anne K. Kofol contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.