Taking a unified policy on non-academic political issues, on the other hand, could alienate and intimidate members of the Faculty who dissent—a gesture not at all conducive to intellectual freedom, he said.

But Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Elaine Scarry said that she found such a position inconsistent with Summers’ recent articulation of the University’s stance on affirmative action.

“On affirmative action, surely there would be people who would dissent,” she said, urging reexamination of Summers’ criteria for propriety.

And some maintained that divestment, which both Summers and Verba suggested may exist outside University interests, was not at all resigned to the public sphere alone.

Bois said that the economic interests contained within questions of divestment are very closely related to University interests.

“I believe that it is inside the interest of the University to make money or not,” he said. To his mind, investment in arms technology represented “war profiteering” by the University, Bois said.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said that the Faculty would consider future discussion of divestment according to its discussion policies.

Freedom Fears

While Faculty speakers did not agree whether debates over divestment should be discussed at future faculty meetings, most concurred that questions of infringement on faculty and student intellectual liberty demanded the group’s attention.

“I personally don’t think that there’s a more important issue that a university could discuss right now,” Kirby told his colleagues. Rather than establishing a Faculty subcommittee focused on the issue, as a number of speakers suggested, Kirby recommended that the Faculty Committee itself monitor intellectual freedom at Harvard. The Faculty Council is the 18-member advisory body that discusses issues before they are brought to the full Faculty.

Some professors said that regulations of the PATRIOT Acts I and II threatened to limit their own work.

John Womack Jr., Bliss professor of Latin American history and economics, said that he had traded books with colleagues in Colombia who might have associations with terrorist organizations.

He said he feared that under post-Sept. 11 legislation, his literary exchanges could be misconstrued as domestic terrorism.

He also said he was afraid he stood to be accused of complicity if his scholarly works were to be espoused by revolutionary groups, as was the case in a 1994 Latin American coup.

“What if something I write were to be used by people who engage in violence?” he asked.