If the Faculty Committee on Student Activities follows the HCUA's recommendation to refuse recognition to the new African and Afro-American Students' Association, its action will be an unwarranted interference in the political life of undergraduates. The last thing it will be is proof that the University refuses to tolerate racial discrimination. (In the final clubs, after all, discrimination continues to exist without a peep from either the HCUA or the Deanery.)
The real issue here is not the injustice of discrimination but the injustice of University control over student political organizations. Harvard is built on the principle that the duty to pursue the truth implies the right to hear all points of view. This principle is important, so important that the University should treat political groups as a class by themselves, instead of lumping them together with musical groups, social groups, and the like.
The African and Afro-American Students' Association is a political group. It feels that it can best express its version of the truth about society by excluding white people and other non-Negroes. A discriminatory membership policy is part of the ideology of this group; punishing it for its membership policy by withholding the privileges granted other undergraduate political groups would be punishing it for its ideology.
The Association has a right to these privileges: use of Harvard buildings and the Harvard name. If there were a Harvard White Citizens Council, whose ideology dictated exclusion of non-whites from membership, it would have a right to the same privileges.
Recognition should be automatically granted to any political club which meets the minimum requirement of submitting a constitution and a list of members and officers for the University's records. In announcing this policy, the University should make it clear that recognition of a club does not in any way imply approval, either of its ideas or its membership clauses. The Harvard name should not be a stamp of approval, but a symbol of the University's toleration of all points of view.
