As debate rages in Washington over the balance of nuclear arsenals and the effects of drastically rear ranged spending priorities, the pace of political activity has picked up considerably this semester at Harvard. The Crimson recently interviewed five prominent campus activists from the Right and the left in an effort to expose the ideas and emotions behind the demonstrations against University investments in South Africa and the rallies in favor of a U.S. arms build-up.

Raul M. Barrett conducted two interviews, one with Jamin B. Raskin `83 and Michael T. Anderson `83, organizers for the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee and the Committee on Central America, and a second with Conservative Club members Mark A. Sauter `82 and Ted Higgins `83 and club President Christoper S. Forman `83. Sauter edits the conservative bi-weekly, The Salient, and Higgins heads the Massachusetts College Republican Union. Following are excerpts with the questions paraphrased in most cases.

The Left

Crimson: How do you view yourselves politically?

Anderson: I think "radical" is as good a word as any. It really involves nothing more specific than believing that people relate in ways they are unconscious of, that are unhealthy, alienating, and self-destructive. And it's the basic belief that that has a lot more to do with politics than the pop culture that has come up in the late Seventies.

Raskin: When Mike and I call ourselves radical, we mean it in the formal sense, going to the roots and getting to the roots of problems. I think we adhere pretty closely to the old Socialist formulation of trying to abolish the power of man over man.

Crimson: How would you assess the political scene at Harvard and the widely accepted idea that there is a rising tide of conservatism on campuses?

Anderson: I think there's a latent instinct to the left in most students....to the extent that few students would have voted for Reagan, most students read Doonesbury and smile. There's a sense of passive knowledge about what things are about that's not that different from the collective awareness of the Sixties. The problem is there are other things that are more compelling that are on their minds.... You can't blame someone for wanting to get into a good professional school, to get into a good firm.

I don't think the new breed of student is necessarily conservative. I think the people who are on the political right at Harvard are looked on by the average Harvard student as much more freaks than even we are....I think what's more typical of the new breed is that people think that problems are essentially individual. Problems to do with competition, problems to do with career success--there's no such thing as a collective solution any more. And that's the error we're trying to attack.... What disturbs me pretty profoundly about the new breed of student is that he or she doesn't know how horrible it is to sell out. What that really means.

Raskin: I would say there is a direct relationship between the faltering of the American economy and the retrenchment of American students in terms of activism. The people are obsessively concerned--and rightfully so, I know that's true for myself--about having enough money to pay for college and to pay for expenses, and that's an incredible diversion of energy. I think it's things like cuts in the student loans, the draft and intervention that will bring people back into the street. When they realize that their personal problems are really political in nature.

Anderson: Although it is kind of a sad statement to say that you have to have intervention, you have to have conscription before there is a student left, if you compare where we're out now in terms of consciousness to where we were in '62-'63, we're a lot further along. People, even if they're not out in the streets yet, have some sense of where El Salvador is or for that matter Guatemala.

Crimson: What are your reactions to those students associated with conservatism at Harvard?

Raskin: I take it as a good sign that there has been something of a revitalization of the Right at Harvard because at least it shows that people are taking a side; we know where those people stand. I think more and more people are going to have to take a side in the real battle for the heart and soul of America which is shaping up for the Eighties.... They are obsessed with totalitarianism, but what they forget about is fascism. Go ask the president of the Conservative Club if he thinks there's fascism in the world today and he will say no. But how else can you explain the government of El Salvador, the government of Argentina, of Guatemala, of the Philippines, of south Africa. There is fascism in the world today and America is supporting, financing and subsidizing it... I don't think you can turn your back on Guatemala and say. "Look at Leonid Brezhnev; he's such a bad gay." It's a smoke screen.

Anderson: I don't think the issue of Right versus Left on this campus is comparing Left versus Right-wing atrocities. That's not the point; that leads to relatively stupid quibbling....If we're talking about South Africa, the issue isn't apartheid, the issue isn't cheap labor; it becomes Angola.

Raskin: The ideology of The Salient is that America can do nothing wrong abroad and nothing right in America.... They want to stop the role of government as an enemy of inequality and injustice in America, but they want America to be all over the globe in support of corporate interests. They want to make the world safe for big business.