GALLO'S RIGHT TO BE HEARD

To the Editors of The Crimson:

An incident that occurred Tuesday evening--the night of November 5th--seems to me to have brought to a head in an extreme form an issue that has been a constant question for at least as long as I have been at Harvard. Early that evening, pamphlets apparently issued by the Gallo win company had been distributed to all the mailboxes at Radcliffe. I assume they were also distributed at Harvard. A few hours later, several members of one of Harvard-Radcliffe's radical organizations removed the pamphlets from all the mailboxes at South and North Houses and destroyed them.

There are several minor issues at point here. The Gallo pamphlets were apparently not distributed by any Harvard-Radcliffe group; it may have been illegal for them to be placed in our mailboxes. It may also have been illegal for those persons who removed them to do so.

But what is really at stake here is the continued existence of free speech at this university. Leftist organizations at Harvard-Radcliffe have in past weeks been publicizing the fight of the United Farm Workers against the Gallo wine company; they have largely succeeded in enforcing a local boycott of Gallo products. The justice of their cause is not in question here; it is not relevant. What is, is that these efforts have not been obstructed; these groups have been free to publicize their cause. Now they are attempting to keep Gallo from making its side of the case known. The problem is clear cut.

It has not always been so. Previously we have seen cases where a speaker's appearance or a movie's showing was opposed. The argument has been made that these cases were not simply cases of free speech, because the speaker or film was appearing under Harvard-Radcliffe auspices, obtaining an audience and a tacit endorsement not available to the left. The demand in these cases has usually been that if the speaker appears, he be followed or debated by an authority of opposite persuasion and equal standing to allow both points of view exposure.

This is not a similar circumstance. The anti-Gallo point of view has been fully aired and his widely known. One pamphlet hardly seems an equivalent representation of the pro-Gallo side. Gallo has not asked that it be allowed to have a speaker on campus or to picket the headquarters of any of the organizations opposing it.

Are we to shrug this off with a cynical, "Well, the Gallo pamphlet was probably a pack of lies," or an, "After all, the leftists are right, so it's OK if they don't let Gallo be heard?" If the right to be heard has come to be dependent on any one group's assessment of the truth, free speech is dead. Our radical organizations may be correct today; if they are wrong tomorrow, how shall we let it be known? And if those on the far right manage to keep us from speaking tomorrow, how shall we of the left appeal to the undecided center for our right to be heard? If we prevent Gallo from making its case heard, it is our own freedom we are killing. Joseph Low Karmel '76