When not extolling the virtues of manliness, Professor Mansfield enjoys needling his liberal academic colleaugues. A conservative voice in the wildnerness, he rose at a recent faculty meeting to ask Harvard President Neil Rudenstine to address the disruption of an earlier meeting by students participating in the April 9 "Rally for Justice." Below is the text of his remarks:

Professor Mansfield: I am Harvey Mansfield in the Government Department. I have a question. It concerns the resounding silence regarding the disruptive demonstration of our meeting last time from our leaders here at the polished table. I'm wondering why we have not heard any adverse or instructive comment to the university community at large and to our students in particular. 

I can understand why the President would not want to raise a question in his own regard, although it was a very nasty trick that that undergraduate at our last meeting played on him  - a student used a pager to quiet the crowd outside while he asked his question, and then used the same pager to try to drown out the President's response to the question. So I think you might pass that over, perhaps. I do point out that on the list of Aristotle's Eleven Moral Virtues is one called "right anger." It's a virtue to get angry for the right reason, on the right occasion, in the right way, and for the right length of time. I may be sorry I said that. [laughter] 

But what about our faculty? I think the faculty has a right to carry on our deliberations in calm and quiet. At our last meeting, at least the beginning, we were drowned out. That was an attempt at intimidation from the outside, and it was a kind of direct attack on the very idea, or at least the very practice of reasoned deliberation. They were trying to prevent us from hearing ourselves thinking. 

And third, I think something should be said to the students. It is childish for them to pound bongo drums and chant slogans: "Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man, close those sweatshops as fast as you can." And then when you combine this childishness or puerility with the element of intimidation, the result is, I think, quite unattractive. So I am wondering if any of you have any comment along these lines.