LETTER: Divine Intervention

To the Editor: Unfortunately, in the esteemed universities of Western society, Penn included, the spiritual and intellectual life are often deemed mutually exclusive and incongruous. The reality of the spiritual life is considered, at best, something to be kept to yourself and, at worst, feeble-minded and invalid. In the academic arena meant to foster the free exchange of ideas, any mention of a thought that was catalyzed by a belief in a divine presence is pronounced unacceptable on the grounds that it might offend those who disagree. The prevailing intolerance amounts to a censor mentality which, paradoxically, is often carried out in the name of open-mindedness and acceptance of diverse beliefs. Aren't many of the words of those giants of inspiration, Ghandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., neither acceptable readings nor material for discussion because they mention the divine? Would the humanist of our own time, Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia, whose opinion that the most threatening phenomenon of modern society is "a spiritual crisis," "a forgetting of God," be expected to censor himself -- as he was by the previous regime -- of such statements, if he were a lecturer at Penn? ELLEN BARTON Graduate Student Medical School