Speaking Loudly and Carrying a Big Stick

He's soft spoken in conversation. But when riled, he becomes passionate. And his friends--and opponents--remark that he is hardly one to shy from controversy. Colin V. Gallagher, although not the most high-profile member of the class of 1991, has made a name for himself as someone who speaks loudly and sometimes acts impulsively about what he considers important.

While working with divestment and other issues since the spring of last year on the Undergraduate Council and as the head of Harvard Students for Silber, Gallagher has thrust himself into the limelight, although often unintentionally.

Gallagher's interest in politics, he says, originated from his parents always encouraging him to take an active role in political discourse. Until he came to Harvard, however, he felt stifled by California's "anti-intellectual" atmosphere.

Born in Mountain View, Ca., near Stanford, he has lived in northern California most of his life. Like many students, he thought of Harvard as an option not only because of its prestige but as a new venue. Being from California. He'd never had that much contact with or knowledge of the East Coast and hoped to find something different far from home.

Gallagher attended a small private prep school, Catherine Branson School, which had "a maximum of 320 students at any time" and whose environment was much different from Harvard's. Something was missing. The "anti- intellectualism" in his home state which first made him look East, where he says he's "encountered less here," was pervasive in high school.

He doesn't know which part of the country he prefers, despite the bitter New England winters. And while he's found Harvard to be a place where political debate thrives, "on any issue, it seems to be between diametrically opposed sides not interested in seeking any common ground."

Ironically, Gallagher's major political activity until junior year consisted of occasional letters to various campus publications. He was unable to become more politically active his first year because he spent the first few months trekking to MIT for Army ROTC.

But that changed in late October of his first year, when he had an accident which disqualified him from participating in the program. He left a book in an MIT classroom, and he broke his arm after tripping on a driveway chain guard while running across the campus to retrieve the book. He considered suing MIT, but regained the scholarship in the spring.

By the spring, his family had discovered that his mother had a malignant brain tumor (she died two years ago). Because he anticipated having to return often to California to see her and because he wanted to have summers free to stay at home, he decided not to renew his participation in ROTC. And, he says, "Regardless of the political issues involved, another reason was I didn't really want to commit to the military. It wasn't really what I wanted to be tied down to after college."

Although he made a number of close friendships in his first year, he sometimes felt he was "one of the people the admissions committee picked to say, 'God, look at what he's doing'" about the other members of his class. His first two years at Harvard gave him little opportunity to be politically active.

BUT EVEN WITHOUT formal political activism, his first-year roommates say that Gallagher was always one to join in heated debate. "He's always been incredibly opinionated, but it's sometimes difficult to say whether it's because he knows a lot or just because he likes being provacative," says Carl B. Fox '91.

Gallagher has gained a reputation as being adamently "anti-P.C.," something that has occasionally been apparent in his debates at the UC, and he heartily embraces the characterization. "Colin strikes me as a contrarian who's out to shock," James M. Harmon '93 says.

But his first-year roommate and fellow Silber supporter Guido Guidotti '91 counters that, "What was apparent about Colin from the beginning was his passion. Colin is a very passionate person who doesn't check his idea if he thinks they'll go against the system, against the politically correct."

Gallagher, who supported UC efforts to urge the University to sell its holdings in South Africa, says that a tendency to debate on the margins was very apparent in the Council. Debate was often heated and informative, he says, but students were unable to deal with the nuances of political arguments.

"When we took a stand on something like divestment one week, we didn't know how to deal with another issue, like condemning Winnie Mandela's own excesses the next week," Gallagher says.

He maintains, however, that his expectation that the UC "was a chance for some really honest political debate across a broad spectrum" has not been disappointed. This year, however, he was more disappointed with the amount of debate. "In dealing with controversial issues like the Confederate Flag, the council has been way too eager to cut off debate and vote one way or another," he says.

Although he joined the council last school year in part to debate, Gallagher also felt that, despite the Administration often only paying it lip service, "there was a lot student government could accomplish." Although he may have seemed, as Harmon, a former UC representative says, someone who "has no other real agenda besides getting in The Crimson," "Gallagher points proudly to several concrete accomplishments in his time on the UC. Fellow Mather residents said they were satisfied with his work on the Council. He acted as a student representative to the Faculty's Core Curriculum committee and on that body's subcommittee on Historical Studies.

Gallagher, who Fox says "doesn't have much respect for bureaucracy," found the committee meetings deathly boring. But Gallagher did find it "interesting to see Rosovsky chair a meeting and then cut debate off, saying, 'Alright, a decision has been made.'"

His most important contribution to the UC, he thinks, was a proposal he succeeded in getting passed that council ad hoc committees be reviewed each year so that they do not outlive their usefulness.

ALTHOUGH A PROMINENT council member for over a year, Gallagher is most well-known as the head of Harvard Students for Silber this past fall.

A registered Democrat who describes himelf as conservative on social issues and "pretty left on most foreign policy" and economic issues, Gallagher explains that Silber's willingness to bring up issues that no other politician would touch attracted him to the Boston University president. Only Silber would bring "some fresh thinking about the most closely-held ideas the Democrats have held since the 1960s. Unfortunately he tended to express them in a blunt, sometimes offensive way."

Guidotti says that "Colin's temperament is very much like John Silber's. He's unafraid to make certain statements and willing to work as vigorously as possible for what he believes. If John Silber were to have a lookalike on the Harvard campus, it would be Colin."

Another fellow Silber supporter and Mather resident, Andrew J. Mirabella '91, says that, while he doesn't think Gallagher picks fights intentionally, he seemed to thrive on "fighting constant battles against people who were saying that Silber was a pig."

This very temperament may have caused him to run afoul of the Democratic Club last fall while working for Silber. When the issue of Harvard Democrats working for Silber's campaign first came up early in the fall, members were quoted as saying that no one in the group had yet organized to work with the campaign. "We said we weren't formally supporting him, and it came out in The Crimson as though we weren't endorsing him," says former President of the Democratic Club Neil A. Cooper '91.

Some, including Gallagher, interpreted the club's inaction as a formal rejection of the party's nominated candidate. Gallagher jumped into the fray and succeeded in ruffling not a few feathers in the club. "I thought he was a Republican until the day I heard he was going to organize for Silber," Harmon, then president of the Democratic Club, says. "We talked to Colin and some of the students for Silber about working within the Club. They didn't say no, but they didn't really do it either."

Harmon says he questions Gallagher's seriousness about actually working for Silber rather than attempting to cause a stir. If Gallagher had worked within the club, Harmon believes, "some people who were sort of undecided could have come over to Silber. There were certainly some people who did work for Silber and working within the club would have definitely helped his cause."

Cooper, however, says that while he finds Gallagher an enigmatic political figure, he doesn't question his motives in not working within the Democratic Club in his efforts for Silber. "He said he wanted as many different people in the group as possible and thought that working in the club would have limited that," Cooper says. "He has his principles and does some interesting things sometimes on impulse, but on a personal level, he's a nice guy."

Despite Silber's defeat, Gallagher says he hopes that the Kant scholar runs against Senator Edward M. Kennedy '54-'56 when the senior senator from Massachusetts is up for reelection in 1996.

GIVEN THE LACK of support for Silber at Harvard, Gallagher was able to gain enough notoriety by tabling for the candidate in front of Widener Library. After having argued with countless students and faculty members while tabling, it was at a Support the Troops rally on Widener steps this winter that Gallagher thrust himself into the spotlight.

Like many students, Gallagher was ambivalent about the war until it actually began. He realized that there were reasons to go to war, but would have preferred that sanctions had been more honestly pursued as an option. "I don't think anyone opposed to or in support of the war had any illusions about the nature of Saddam Hussein," he says. "But I think he would have been forced to back down without a war."

He expressed his displeasure with the war by attempting to burn a Kuwaiti flag at the rally. Although he somewhat regrets his action now, Gallagher insists there was a point to it. He "couldn't ignore the character of the regimes we were bailing out... It was like the Americans were being the mercenaries for an Arab sheikdom."

On the night of the rally, Gallagher stood behind the approved speakers, trying to light the nylon flag for more than 10 minutes to the jeers of the crowd, many of whom didn't know whether it was an Iraqi or a Kuwaiti flag. Several students tried to wrestle the flag from him, but Gallagher held on so tightly that a scuffle ensued.

The war also disrupted Gallagher's life in less conspicuous ways. His History and Literature thesis was due March 1, and he and a friend joked about the possibility that the war would end before they finished their tomes. As it turned out, that was exactly what happened.

ALTHOUGH HIS plans for the distant future are uncertain, Gallagher will be going enrolling next fall in UCLA's M.A./Ph.D. program in history. Before that, he plans to travel to Israel and the Near East this summer. Career plans include such things as television journalism or a professorship.

Guidotti, however, thinks Gallagher is fated for something more high profile. "I wouldn't be surprised if Colin does get into some political work in the future," he speculates