To the Editor:

I could not believe my eyes when I read, in Tom Bethell’s fine article, “Liberalism, Stanford-Style” [January], John Manley’s fatuous argument that the presence and autonomy of the Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus undermine the “idea” of a university, which he describes as “nonpartisanship, objectivity, and a rejection of overt and covert political participation.”

Those of us who were at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement indelibly remember that the central issue in that affair was precisely the right of members of the university “community” (loosely defined) to use campus facilities for overtly political activities—to organize, to recruit, to propagandize, to raise funds, and to plot off-campus actions. This “right” was proclaimed in the most absolute, uncompromising terms as essential to the very concept of a university, and it was ringingly affirmed in the Academic Senate by a faculty vote in the ratio of 8 to 1. Then it was the minority opposition that was vainly arguing that a public university should remain “nonpartisan” and “free of overt political activities.”

What leaves one breathless is seeing how effortlessly “liberals” slide 180 degrees over to the opposite position now that the political activities on campus are perceived by them as conservative. Can it really be that Professors Manley and Rebholz are so devoid of historical memory, of introspection, or of commitment to principled reasoning that, without the slightest pause, they can now espouse a public position flatly refuting what is widely touted to be the key accomplishment of the Free Speech Movement? Or are they merely opportunistic, sententious liars, grabbing whatever rhetorical weapon seems handy and effective at the moment—hoping that the rest of us have forgotten recent history?

William R. Havender
Berkeley, California

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