News

Pro-Palestine Encampment Represents First Major Test for Harvard President Alan Garber

News

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Condemns Antisemitism at U.S. Colleges Amid Encampment at Harvard

News

‘A Joke’: Nikole Hannah-Jones Says Harvard Should Spend More on Legacy of Slavery Initiative

News

Massachusetts ACLU Demands Harvard Reinstate PSC in Letter

News

LIVE UPDATES: Pro-Palestine Protesters Begin Encampment in Harvard Yard

Bundy to Confront Critics In First Open Discussion

Faculty, Students Quiz Him Today

By Donald E. Graham

McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, will answer questions on the administration's foreign policy in Lowell Lecture Hall at 4 p.m. this afternoon.

Bundy will also deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Sanders Theatre.

Today's meeting, sponsored by the CRIMSON and the Harvard Graduate Politics Club, marks the first time that Bundy has been questioned by critics of administration policy since the bombing of North Vietnam began in early February.

Bundy, who has been identified in newspaper reports as one of the proponents of the administration policy of bombings in Vietnam, is expected to make a brief opening statement before answering questions from a panel of two undergraduates, a graduate student, and three Faculty members. There will also be a period for questions from the floor.

Faculty members at M.I.T. and Boston University were planning last night to picket today's meeting. A spokesman for the picketers said he expected 40 to 50 marchers would be on hand to "protest against the policies Bundy represents."

Kaysen Suggested Forum

The meeting will be chaired by Carl Kaysen, Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, whose suggestion to Bundy prompted the former Dean of the Faculty to agree to the panel session.

In a telephone conversation last week, Kaysen told Bundy that a protest was being planned for Bundy's Phi Beta Kappa Oration Tuesday morning. The two men agreed that today's meeting should be arranged to give critics of administration policy a chance to question Bundy.

The panelists will be Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, professor of History and Government; Albert M. Craig, associate professor of Japanese History; Thomas Skidmore, assistant professor of History; David Butler, president of the Harvard Graduate Politics Club; Alan Gilbert '65, on officer of Harvard-Radcliffe chapter of the May Second Movement; and Michael D. Lerner '65, a member of the CRIMSON editorial board.

Schwartz Critical at 'Teach-In'

Schwartz, who lectures in Government 217, a course in the government of modern China, spoke critically of the Administration's Asian policy at Harvard's teach in" April 14.

Craig, who lectures in Social Sciences 111, "History of Far Eastern Civilization," said last night that he is "critical of same aspects of American policy in Asia. There has been a vagueness in government statements as to what we're doing there," he explained. "There have been a series of relatively optimistic statements by government spokesmen, but it does not seem to me that the policies we are following will necessarily lead to success."

Skidmore, a specialist in the history of Latin America, said yesterday that he hoped to ask Bundy "why the government has apparently shifted its support away from the Bosch-type, liberal government in Latin America." He said he was critical of American policy in the Dominican Republic although "I would not grant to be identified with the view that he has been a disaster--the final results are still up in the air."

Gilbert is an officer of the May Second Movement, an organization opposing American policy in Southeast Asia. M-2-M as organized almost a dozen demonstrations at Harvard this year in opposition to U.S. Vietnamese policy.

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

Tags