Freedom of Speech

When Gerhart Eisler spoke in the New Lecture Hall last April, there was a heckling element in the crowd which gave an annoying demonstration of contempt for the First Amendment. And when Gerhart Eisler spoke in Emerson D on Monday night, there was also a demonstration--a quiet and amiable demonstration of willingness to hear Marxist theories from a German Communist. There could be little doubt that the vast majority of Eisler's listeners disagreed emphatically with practically everything he said. Yet there were no outbursts of protest, no low-level practical jokes, no heckling.

And that was altogether heartening. It was also heartening that a man like Gerhart Eisler was able to speak in Harvard University. Officials in many institutions would have been horrified even at the thought of giving a lecture hall to an international Communist. ("What would the alumni say? What would the conservative press say?") Harvard's administration happily disregarded these and other outside pressures; Harvard undergraduates had the right to listen to Eisler or to stay away from the meeting.

Harvard cannot claim sainthood in the matter of tolerance, but it is interesting to compare the recent Eisler episode--or rather the lack of an "episode"--with instances of egg-throwing and organized hectoring by self-appointed student vigilantes that have dogged "free institutions of learning" throughout the country. The College itself had a disagreeable taste of this last year in the case of the anti-draft meeting in Sanders Theater. That was something most undergraduates were sorry about. The orderly attention to Gerhart Eisler Monday night, on the other hand, was something to be a little proud of.