But shouldn't he be allowed to teach anyway? A coalition of unions, both on campus (the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers) and in Boston, think not. They say Hoge should be kicked out of the Institute of Politics (IOP), which named him as one of its fellows for this fall. Joining them is the director of the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH), Joshua E. Burstein '93. Pretty strange reasoning for a civil libertarian, even though he's acting independently of CLUH.
Burstein, who has a personal stake in the issue since his father worked for The Daily News and died of a heart attack during the strike, is right to attack Hoge's political views on strikes. But those views should not be enough to keep Hoge from teaching his study group. Granted, Burstein doesn't plan to blockade the IOP, but he does want Hoge removed.
If the IOP screened out all potential fellows who engaged in some arbitrary set of Bad Things, they would lose the political diversity which make the study groups successful--or at least somewhat interesting. As John W. Roberts, director of the local American Civil Liberties Union, told The Crimson in what was purportedly a defense of Burstein, "Well, you don't want anyone drummed out because of their message." Exactly.
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OUTRAGE NUMBER THREE:
Most of the world's scientists disagree with his work. The chair of Harvard's Earth and Planetary Sciences department, Michael B. McElroy, called his conclusions "way on the fringe." But White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu loves him.
He's MIT's Sloan Professor of Meteorology Richard S. Lindzen '60. His specialty is global warming, which he thinks is bunk. The business world and conservatives who oppose emissions standards love him for this--Fortune (?) magazine even featured him in a cover issue last spring.
Lindzen says he has never advised the Bush Administration in any formal way on environmental policies, but admits that he and Sununu have "talked about warming."
The controversial chief of staff fancies himself as the real science expert in the White House (although the job of science adviser officially belongs to another conservative scientist, D. Allan Bromley). Unfortunately, this means the administration opposes many global environmental protections.
Just last week the U.S. refused to sign an international treaty in Nairobi, Kenya, which would impose mandatory cuts in heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide, even though this country is responsible for 25 percent of all the carbon dioxide dumped into the air.
Perhaps the president should look beyond armchair environmentalists and darlings of corporate America for advice on the environment.