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Dr. Petr Beckman
Access to Energy
P. O. Box 2298
Boulder, CO  80306
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Dear Petr,

	I finally got around to looking into the question of
intimidation of the Stanford Faculty in the matter of replacing
Western Culture by Cultures, Ideas and Values.  I asked two
people, one Anthony Siegman of Electrical Engineering and the
other Carlos Camargo of the Medical School.

	Siegman has been on the Senate for some time, and this
year is on the Senate Steering Committee that prepares its
agenda.  He has been more often on the conservative side than the
liberal side in most issues where he has taken a position that I
knew about.  He was a big help in defeating the Administration's
attempt to censor the rec.humor.funny newsgroup on the grounds
that it might contain racist jokes.  At my suggestion, he got the
Steering Committee to refer the issue to the Commitee on
Libraries, which said that electronic media deserve the same
protections as printed books.  This annoyed Kennedy, who grumbled
in the Senate, attracting a letter from Siegman defending the
Steering Committee's and the Commitee on Library's position.
Kennedy gave in with ill grace.

	Siegman was annoyed by Thomas Sowell's article accusing
the faculty of having given in to intimidation.  When I asked
for a copy, he eventually sent it with the remark that it didn't
seem quite so bad on rereading.

	Carlos Camargo was the main opponent of the replacement
of Western Culture by CIV in the Senate.  He said that the
only sense in which intimidation may have occurred is that
it was made clear that the Administration favored the change.
Naturally, whether that acted to intimidate anyone is not
going to be observable.  Apparently there was no Senate
discussion of the demonstrations as a consideration.

	The sad fact is that the change had very large support in
the Faculty, although curiously enough, it was opposed by Ron
Rebholz, a well-known leftist in the English Department, whose ox
may have been gored, i.e. readings dropped that he liked to
teach.

	The demonstrations may have been a factor in forming
the Administration's position.  I don't know how to find out
about that either.  Certainly asking Kennedy wouldn't work;
he generally treats disagreement from the right with scorn,
although he is usually polite to leftist disagreement.

	I hope this is informative.

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Best Regards,
John McCarthy
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