BY
Reading Martha Jeong’s article, “Beautiful Loot: Continuing Efforts to Repatriate Nazi-Spoiled Art” provokes similar questions relative to stolen art currently in the hands of the world’s drug lords and others in the underworld hierarchy. Some have documented that Pablo Escobar commissioned the theft of major works of art, and it is widely recognised that landmark paintings in particular are currently used as collateral in illegal trades of multi-millon dollar proportion. Jeong’s same questions apply here.
As more sophisticated recovery efforts develop monthly, the need for answers to these questions becomes more urgent.
-Jim Graham, Montgomery AL
To the Editors:
I read with some interest your lead editorial on the dispute between Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz. Your paper is run entirely by Harvard law students, and claims to be independent. I understand that your policy is not to publicly reveal the identities of the students who write your editorials, but that those students are free to step forward and take credit for their work. It behooves the author of this particular piece to do just that, and then to make any appropriate disclosures. If Professor Dershowitz is an advisor, mentor, recommender, benefactor or boss of this editorial’s author, then readers of The Record have a right to know. Objectivity, credibility, and editorial independence are not a priori givens when students enrolled in a professional program publicly evaluate controversies concerning figures of power and influence within that program.
-Curtis Brown
Hi,
The HL Record recently published an astounding editorial, which I have attached below.
I used to be involed with Justice for Palestine. I thought it supported a two-state solution only insofar as the ultimate result was consistent with universal principles of human rights including clear acceptance by Zionist colonizers that Zionist colonizer rights and privileges were in no way superior to the human rights of the native population.
Once the Zionist colonizers make complete restitution to the native population including full restoration of residence and property rights, it is highly probable that Palestinian population of the State of Israel will democratically dismantle the racist Zionist state and join with the Palestinian population of the occupied territories to create a democratic Palestinian state.
No patriotic American that believes in fundamental ideas of democracy, antiracism, and human rights could possibly object to such a result, for the government of a democratic state should correspond to the demography while only racist ethnocratic tyrannies like the Zionist State of Israel try to change the demography to correspond to the wishes of the government.
The HL Record should show some awareness of elementary Americanism, withdraw its inherently un-American call for censorship of Oct. 20, and apologize to those Harvard community members that actually believe in the ideals that form the foundation of contemporary America.
-Joachim Martillo HC ’78
Dear Editor,
It was surprising that a noteworthy publication would print an article asking a scholar, Norman Finkelstein, to be uninvited to speak. The slander and twisted insinuations of the author, who was too ashamed of his or her trashy writing to sign his or her name, merit some comment. The Harvard Hillel, a racist Jewish supremacist organization based in Cambridge, already humiliated the Harvard Bookstore by forcing them to uninvite the popular author Finkelstein. Now, another pro-Israel fanatic has slandered Norman Finkelstein with a lot of whiny nonsense that is not worthy of an educational institution. It is Jews like these who inspire anti-Semitism, as they struggle to destroy everything America stands for.
-Karin Friedemann, Boston