The Mail THE WASTELAND

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It was with considerable dismay that I read (CRIMSON, December 5, 1970) about additional portents of the incipient demise of the Soc Rel department at Harvard. Such an event would be unfortunate in itself and an unfortunate sign of the continuing failure of American universities in general and Harvard in particular to even begin to come to terms with the peculiar problems of the Geisteswissenschaften.

In the first place, the dissolution of the Soc Rel department would provide the final betrayal to the vision of Henry Murray which attempted to see beyond the confines of jealously guarded academic departments to the possibility of a unified science of man and which provided so much of the original impetus to the formation of the department. How sad to see such a marvelous hope trampled upon by myopic academic politicos eagerly staking out their narrowly confined specialist turf!

On the other hand, such dissolution and the elimination of Soc Rel as a major field would deprive undergraduates of the largest and most secure refuge from which to retain some hope of obtaining a (dare I say it?) liberal education which evades the iron claws of pain and pleasure reaching out from the board rooms of the earth to ensure an orderly transition from thinking human beings to well-disciplined, highly specialized technologists. "Cut this inter-disciplinary crap, Winkhorst, specialist discipline is the only discipline . . . Cook 'em all down to decorticated canine preparation."

Nietzsche said, long ago, "The wasteland grows." I am afraid it does.