The following are excerpts from selected staff editorials that appeared in The Crimson during the last academic year.

Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. '53 is the focus of yet another controversy at Harvard. That's certainly nothing new. What was new, fortunately, was the campus reaction.

Last week, Mansfield testified at the Denver trial of the Colorado state constitution's Amendment Two, the law that prevents Colorado cities from enacting gay rights statutes...

The College's Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association (BGLSA) was outraged by Mansfield's testimony...

But besides the meetings and posters, the BGLSA offered something that is too often missing during campus debates: a sincere defense of Mansfield's freedom of speech and, even more importantly, a invitation for him to discuss the issue... October 27, 1993

The revamped Holyoke Center shopping area is bright, flashy and modern....Holyoke Center is now a piece of an ongoing trend: the mall-ification of Harvard Square...

But we have to question the business sense behind Harvard Real Estate's (HRE) apparent decision to pursue the yuppie market. While the trend might lead to big profits in the short run, HRE could well be bartering away the future of the Square...

And another thing. That huge "Shops by Harvard Yard" sign by Massachusetts Avenue--we think it's ugly and gaudy and call for its immediate and complete removal...   November 10, 1993

Since 1991, the Harvard community has marveled at the tremendous growth within the Department of Afro-American Studies. With the appointment of Cornel R. West '74, Harvard's Afro-Am department has established itself as the country's unequivocal center of Afro-Am scholarship...

It only goes to show what a little commitment can do. Three years ago, when West refused a tenured post in Afro-Am, the department had only one tenured professor and a small, embitered group of concentrators who were certain that Harvard was not taking their needs seriously. Since the, Afro-Am has been transformed--not only because of [DuBois Professor of the Humanities and Afro-Am chair Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s] charismatic leadership, but also because [former President Derek C. Bok and former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky ] were willing to devote the resources to rebuilding Afro-Am.   November 19, 1993

The headline in The Harvard Gazette, the University's propaganda organ, put it euphemistically: "Museum Staff to Be Restructured." The staff of Harvard's Semitic Museum wasn't "restructured"--it was fired...

As more facts have emerged about the struggle over the museum, it has become clear that [Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles'] decision to sack the museum's 10-member staff...was not a tough-minded act to courage, but a misguided act to cowardice in the fact of a tenured professor's power play...

Rather than "restructuring" the museum, Harvard should revitalize it by raising money, keeping the staff and seeking new exhibitions that attract students, faculty and the wider community to his unique and valuable resource.   December 8, 1993

...After all the recent controversy surrounding the Expository Writing program--culminating in the December resignation of its embattled director, Richard C. Marius--we would expect Harvard administrators search for Marius' replacement...

Several Expos staffers have told The Crimson that the administration has all but guaranteed Marius' post of his current associate director, Nancy Sommers...