NELC Students Mistaken

We wish to laud the loyalty of the four graduate students in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC) who came to the defense of their professor, Lawrence E. Stager, in their letter to you published on December 10, 1993. But since they are also candidates for a degree at a university whose motto is "Veritas," we wish to correct some of their erroneous statements.

To begin with, instead of referring to the "restructuring of the Semitic Museum," which the students (and the Harvard administration) keep doing, "the firing of the Semitic Museum's staff" is a far more accurate term.

We do not know where the students found the statement which we supposedly sent to Dean Knowles saying that the report, and we quote: "[g]ave too much weight to academic needs of the NELC department and too little to the 'public component of the museum.'" The truth is that for years we worked with NELC and other members of the Harvard faculty in planning our public programs and our publications. We sponsored an academic symposium in 1982 with Professor Isadore Twersky which resulted in a book publication; we curated the exhibit "Harvard's Arabian Nights" when Professor Muhsin Mahdi published a book about the One Thousand and One Nights; with Professor Shinasi Tekin we published The Imperial Self Portrait, a book of historic photographs of the Ottoman Empire. For years photographer Elizabeth Carella provided negatives and prints for NELC publications free of charge. Over the past decade we sponsored some 70 lectures (mostly archaeological lectures), many at the request of NELC. The students write as if we objected to the "educational needs of Harvard students and faculty." To use phrase borrowed from the students: "This statement is ludicrous."

As students of ancient civilization, they would have benefited from a little research into the history of the Semitic Museum. The very collections they accuse the current staff of "neglecting," were actually rescued, gathered and re-catalogued by Dr. Carney Gavin and group of students and volunteers when, as the result of the recommendations of an earlier faculty advisory committee, in 1957, the card catalogue was burnt, the display cases were tossed out of the museum's upper floors, and the archaeological collection was dispersed--some to be lost forever.

As to the salaries and qualifications of the current staff, we will let the reviews of our exhibitions and lecture series, our publications, and our colleagues at sister institutions all over the world speak for themselves. (May we know how information from our personnel files was available to Stager's students?) We would be glad to share with the students some of the dozens of letters which have been written on our behalf by professors, curators and other school since Stager began his campaign against Gavin and the museum's staff.

And now to the famous fax faux pas. We are grateful to Eileen Caves, Stager's assistant, for shedding light on the technical and ethical aspects of reading other people's communications (Crimson, December 11, 1993). Caves assures us that Stager consulted with the general counsel's office regarding the legality of reading the carbon copies in the cartridge of the fax machine. Stager, Caves continues, was told that the carbon could be classified as "abandoned material that was left in a public place," and was therefore public information. Since Caves transcribed faxes over a long period of time, she must have removed cartridges from the fax machine, put them in the trash where they became "abandoned material," then lifted them out and transcribed them. "I wouldn't have done it," Caves added. "But we were desperate." Why were they so desperate? Because they were afraid that Gavin would actually succeed in balancing the museum's deficit. Had that happened, the firing of Gavin and the staff would have been far more difficult and Stager was "desperate" that this should not happen.

Since no one at Harvard has so far publicity denounced Stager's behavior, we should not be astonished that his students condone his actions. Deeds speak louder than words, and there is no use in offering students two hundred courses in ethics, when a senior faculty member sees nothing wrong in spying on his staff (as well as having access to all the faxes sent by NELC and by the Center for Jewish Studies who share the same fax machine.) We do not care whether reading letters not addressed to him was legal or not, and would like to refer the students to a higher ethical and moral law, one instituted in Germany a thousand years ago by Rabbenu Gershom ben Judah Ma'or Ha'golah who called for a herem, a ban, to be imposed on those who read other peoples' letters. The Staff of the Semitic Museum (until December 17, 1993)