To the Editor:

With the best of intentions, I am sure, T. R. Marmor [“Banfield’s ‘Heresy,’” July] is unjust to Harvard University in suggesting that I left because I was being persecuted. The fact is that to the best of my recollection no student was ever rude to me, although many certainly disliked what they thought I stood for. As for my faculty colleagues, I never had a sense of being disapproved by them, much less of being interfered with. And I never had the slightest doubt that the administration would protect my rights if anyone were to infringe them.

I am not contending that Harvard was (or is) always perfectly correct in such matters: only that it was so in my case and that I left for reasons having nothing whatever to do with opinions, mine or anyone else’s.

Edward C. Banfield
The Fels Center of Government
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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