THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9507050087
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, MASS. LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
More than 130 years after the end of the Civil War, a battle is brewing at Harvard University over whether to memorialize alumni who died fighting for the South.
The debate has been rekindled by a multimillion-dollar renovation of Harvard's Memorial Hall, a giant Gothic structure that was built five years after the war to honor the Union war dead.
One-third of Harvard alumni who fought in the Civil War fought on the side of the Confederacy, but the deed for Memorial Hall says their names cannot be displayed there.
An alumni panel is studying whether to inscribe the names of the Confederate soldiers in Memorial Church, where Harvard men who died in other wars - including one who fought for Nazi Germany - are listed.
``What is being asked now is whether it would be an action that would be one of reconciliation and healing, or whether it would be more divisive,'' said Robert Shapiro, a Boston attorney who heads the panel.
The argument against, Shapiro said, is that, ``whatever the intention, it could be seen as in some way an endorsement of either the Confederacy itself or of the policies for which the Confederacy fought. It's certainly not intended to be, but these are still very charged issues.''
An argument for inscribing the names, Shapiro said, is to ``recognize the historic fact that people could study side by side and then go off and shoot or kill each other.''
Jack Reardon, Harvard's alumni director, proposes listing the names of all the university's Civil War dead together, with no mention of political allegiances.
``The fact of the matter is that Harvard alumni who died in a cause they believed in, even on the side of Germany, have been memorialized here, but this group of people has not,'' Reardon said.
Yale and Princeton universities and the U.S. military academy, West Point, are among the institutions with memorials that include Confederate alumni.
At Harvard, ``this is not a new question,'' said Shapiro, a 1972 graduate who also went to Harvard Law School. ``It's probably come up periodically since Memorial Hall was built.''
Constructed in 1870, Memorial Hall honors only those who died in Union uniform, roughly 140 Harvard grads. Missing are the names of the 68 Confederate dead who graduated from Harvard.
Workers are restoring the hall's 80-foot ceilings, its 17 Tiffany stained-glass windows and other details at a cost of more than $19 million.
The study committee is to make a recommendation to the university president and board of overseers. That is not likely to occur until after an alumni association meeting in October, Harvard officials said.
KEYWORDS: CONFEDERATE CIVIL WAR by CNB