AN OPEN LETTER
As writers and educators, we are alarmed at recent attacks
on the integrity and freedom of the academic community at the State
University of New York at Stonybrook. By staging a deliberately spec–
tacular raid on dormitories in the early morning hours of January 17,
the police of Suffolk County acted in a way difficult to justify solely on
the basis of the local government's concern for the observance of the law.
Instead, their tactics seemed calculated to discredit the administration,
intimidate the faculty, and frighten the students. Such a performance
suggests that county officials were using the enforcement of the narcotics
statutes as a pretext for expressing their hostility toward the University
community. In striking contrast, the police showed a startling disregard
for law on December 7 in failing to make arrests at all when construc–
tion workers on the campus assaulted members of the University
peacefully demonstrating against the war in Vietnam.
Perhaps the most detrimental effect of the current legislative and
judicial investigations is to jeopardize the trust and confidence that
must exist between students and teachers in a university. The decision
to subpoena eleven members of the faculty to testify, on matters involv–
ing the confidences received from students, before the Joint Legislative
Committee on Crime, and the possible summoning of them before a
Grand Jury can only work to undermine the unique relationships which
are fostered by academic institutions. We are not asking that students
be
given special legal privileges, but we do believe that faculty members
should not be pressured into betraying the confidences of students.
The inviolability of trust between teachers and students is an essential
aspect of academic freedom of inquiry, and the present crisis at Stony–
brook dramatically illuminates the need to articulate and defend this
principle and perhaps to afford it some form of legal recognition. We
protest its subversion by officials of Suffolk County and the State of
New York, and we fear its potential subversion elsewhere.
W. H. Auden
John Barth
Leo Bersani
Robert Brustein
Robert Coles
Verne Countrym.an
Frederick Crews
Martin Duberman
Ronald Dworkin
Richard Ellmann
Lillian Hellman
Irving Howe
Arthur Kinoy
Christopher Lasch
Harry Levin
Robert Lowell
Arno J. Mayer
Martin Peretz
William Phillips
Richard Poirier
Philip Rahv
Richard Schlatter
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Susan Sontag
William Styron
William Taylor
Lionel Trillin9
