Although the freedom of the universities is generally recognized today, the memory of enemies lists, loyalty oaths, and anti-subversive campaigns should remind us that our autonomy will always remain precarious and fragile. If we wish to preserve our independence, we should remember that society respects the freedom of academic institutions only because it assumes that they will devote themselves to the academic pursuits for which that freedom was intended.

And he continues this line of thought in his last letter:

If universities claim the right to pressure others to do what they believe is morally right, we must acknowledge that all sorts of organizations and groups may likewise feel impelled to turn the screw in behalf of standards they consider to be important and just.

President Bok is arguing that we should not use our rights in order to protect our rights. The University as an investor has the right to decide which corporations it wants to invest in on any grounds it deems appropriate. And yet, Bok argues that Harvard's decision to divest of its South African holdings would tend "to undermine the willingness of outside groups to respect the academic freedom of the University." Every consumer has the right to decide which products to buy and which not to buy and yet Bok believes that by exercising this right, Harvard will induce outsiders to "turn the screw" on the University.

A University's rights are not limited to its academic pursuits. It should be able to exercise all it rights fearlessly, without worry of outside reprisals.

Bok's last general argument is that moral decisions will cost money that could otherwise have been spent for academic purposes. But President Bok cannot honestly expect moral choices always to be completely painless. The health of this institution depends on much more than its liquidity. Bok rhetorically asks at the conclusion of his last letter "whether much will truly be lost by the reluctance of academic institutions to exert collective pressure." He, of course, does not believe the price of some amorality would be too high. After all, Harvard only contributes a small amount to the profits of these corporations. And what is that compared to the loss of freedom, independence and money the University would suffer? He suggests that Harvard should leave the moral decisions to the government: "We are more likely to achieve a better society by relying on the government to regulate corporate behavior and direct foreign policy than by encouraging private organizations to use their economic power."

Again the words of Thoreau should haunt the President:

It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience...Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards.

President Bok himself maintains that "the way in which a university addresses these questions and the answers that it gives are inescapably part of the moral education it imparts to students." If what he says is true, then the President's real message to the students of Harvard is that small acts of daring are, at times like this, futile. When he tells us that we are "naive" and "must all be linked in indirect and innumerable ways to the wrongs of the world--through the goods we buy, the taxes we pay, the services we use, the investments we make," he is teaching us to have what Lawrence Goodwyn, professor of history at Duke, called "grace in the face of corruption." Bok has told us that there must be an unavoidable conflict between what we believe and what we do. At the deepest level, our President has counseled despair.