Whether an exchange should be prohibited or not is in many ways an emotional question. But my guess is that most of the emotional gut reaction to it doesn’t come from the idea of letting other people take our toxic waste. It comes from the realization—and a sickening one at that—that there are people on this earth so desperately poor that they would be willing to live amongst our deadly toxic chemicals for what is to us a relative pittance. And that even if we decide not to let them take our waste, we haven’t really done anything to better their condition—only moved it out of sight and out of mind.

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of arguments against trade in toxic waste, some of which may very well be compelling. I count six of them in this column alone. But rather than engage the question, the protestors who held signs and chanted outside Loeb House have preferred to use the memo as a moral bludgeon, perversely changing the subject to Harvard’s labor policies. I support a living wage, but assuming Summers must atone for his views on toxic waste, why would giving $10.25 an hour to Harvard workers be the proper penance? Just because it’s the cause du jour?

But no one has a chance to ask those questions, in part because doing so would be talking seriously about an unspeakable memo. Perhaps Harvard should stop forwarding Summers’ memo and start reading it.

Stephen E. Sachs ’02 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.