Pusey Supports Letter by Faculty

President Pusey has issued a reply to a statement signed by more than 100 Faculty members on the protection of academic freedom at Harvard.

Pusey's letter, released yesterday, is addressed to the 108 Faculty signers of a statement that appeared in yesterday's CRIMSON. The Faculty statement came in response to the cancellation of a controversial Design School course on urban riots, and asked the administration to "take appropriate measures to assure the inviolability of instruction and examination in all duly approved courses."

Pusey replied to the request, saying, "I shall do everything in my power. . . to see that the freedom of this University continues unabated, proof against attacks however well-intentioned or from whatever quarter they may come."

But the letter, like the Faculty's earlier statement, makes no specific comments on the cancelled course, planning 11-3b "An End to Urban Violence." The course's instructor--Siegfried M. Breuning, visiting lecturer in Transportation, cancelled the course on Feb. 7 after 85 black students appeared at the first meeting to protest the course's alleged "racist" plans to "devise programs to further contain and supress" urban blacks by developing a "riot-control technology."

On academic freedom, the letter says:

* While threats to academic freedom have usually come from outside the university, "the irony and tragedy of the present is that now the threats come from within";

* "Growing numbers of students"-- spurred by reasons "largely compounded of the abhorrence of war and impatience with the slow processes of government" in solving social problems--"have chosen to exercise their frustration in the academic arena in insufficient awareness of what a university properly is";

* The goal of academic freedom imposes demands on both students and Faculty, requiring the teachers "to listen to the voice of youth" and the students "to accept the professional responsibility of the Faculty to set standards of future colleagues, and to judge the viability and worth of curricular offerings."