Harberger

To the Editors of the Crimson:

It now appears that despite a variety of appeals to morality, reason and institutional self-interest, the President of the University does indeed intend to appoint Arnold Harberger. Harberger tells us that he will not come to Harvard "under a cloud." We write to urge every student, faculty member, and other employees of the University who have any decency and self-respect to help turn the cloud into a full scale thunderstorm.

Arnold Harberger is now and has been for some time the paid flunky of a vicious fascist government which engages in torture, murder even outside its own borders, and wholesale economic immiseration of a large fraction of the people under its control. Harberger's disingenuous attempt to distinguish between the government of Chile and government-owned corporations may impress the legal mind, but it strikes most of us as a distinction without a difference. The fact, which cannot be evaded by childish sophistries, is that Harberger directly and through his students and disciples is a principal architect of Chile's oppressive economic program. In the New York Times of February 7, he says that he is only a technician. "People who criticize this attitude for an alleged neglect of non-economic consideration," he says, "usually have in mind such things as morality, democracy and justice." He makes it clear that "such things as morality, democracy and justice" are not on his mind.

It would be hypocritical of us to claim that we oppose Harberger's appointment because it would be bad for the image and future of H.I.I.D. In fact, Harberger's political activities are simply the most advanced form of activity implicit in such a developing agency. Rather, we oppose his appointment because we do not wish to have him in our midst. It is a matter, as we said before, of simple self-respect. Yours sincerely,   Richard C. Lewontin   Ruth Hubbard   Museum of Comparative Zoology   Harvard University