Letters to the editor should be of reasonable length and must be signed. The name of the sender will be withheld upon request.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In order to justify Communist teachers. Robert Wolff in Wednesday's CRIMSON made certain assumptions and inferences which I should like to analyze in the capacity of self-appointed representative for a large number of Harvard students who oppose his central thesis.

It is generally agreed that the primary purpose of a university is to provide a medium in which ideas of various and sundry views may be voiced competently. This function is so important that it cannot be over-emphasized. However, does this mean that in order to expound the dogmas of Marxism one must necessarily be a member of the Communist Party? To give a course that deals adequately with the Conservative Party of Great Britain does the instructor have to belong to it? I think not... In order to have the views of communism expressed, it does not follow that this must be done by a cardholder of the Party. This University offers many courses in which Marxism is competently presented as an objective entity in an unblased analytical approach.

The reason why the cardholders should not be allowed to teach and why the Communist Party should be disbanded is implicitly found in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, to which Mr. Wolff has already made reference. This treatise certainly contains the best arguments possible for the necessity of a "free market-place of ideas," as Justice Holmes used the term. Yet if one critically reads this essay, he will find that Mill does not advocate an unqualifiedly free market-place. He states that "as soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it" and that "disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good than whips and scourges, either of the literal or metaphorical sort." In still another passage concerning the desirability for the liberty of the individual, Mill advocates "the freedom to unite, (but only) for any purpose not involving harm to others.... Today Mill would undoubtedly say that anyone who seeks the forcible overthrow of the government by revolutionary means, as does every member of the Communist Party by definition, has violated these values.

Thus, by believing that a cardholder should not be allowed to teach does not mean, as Dr. Wolff seems to feel, that President Conant and those who agree with him no longer believe in Mill's theory: viz, that society, when presented with all the possible view-points on a problem will in the long run choose that which is nearest the truth.... Though I do not advocate it, the Marxist theory will still be in existence and will continue to compete with other ideas for public acceptance regardless of whether there are Communist teachers or not; the reason why they should not teach is a completely different question which has been basically answered by the above quotations from Mill. Harold Schwab '53