Rebel Flag Flies At Liberal Harvard -- Tribute To Old South Stirs Free-Speech Flap

BOSTON - She sports white bucks and spouts conservative rhetoric, and if the Confederate flag hung outside her dorm window had failed to spark a reaction, Harvard senior Brigit Kerrigan might have been disappointed.

"I thrive on controversial situations," said the 21-year-old pre-law student.

Though Kerrigan says she hung her flag out of regional pride (she is from a Washington, D.C., suburb), she seems to relish sticking it in the ear of what she labels Harvard's Northeastern liberal establishment. "If they talk about diversity, they're gonna get it. If they talk about tolerance, they better be ready to have it."

The flag she's been displaying in her fourth-floor dormer since February has created a conundrum for Harvard, which, like many universities, is struggling to "reconcile the rights of free speech with a desire to avoid racial tension," as outgoing Harvard president Derek Bok wrote in a recent editorial in which he condemned Kerrigan's action as "insensitive and unwise."

Kerrigan's flag has provoked a protest march, meetings with dorm monitors, two university forums, letters to the editor and editorials in the Harvard Crimson and other student publications - all pressuring her to take it down.

Kerrigan answers questions, "Yes, ma'am," and refers to classmates with the honorific "Mr." as she lays out lawyerly arguments for free speech with phrases that are by now well honed. At this point everyone realizes that Kerrigan's flag is going to be part of Kirkland House as long as she is, which means through the end of this semester when she returns to the University of Virginia for law school.

Active in conservative student politics, last year she helped start a new conservative publication, the Peninsula, which attacked affirmative action, feminism, homelessness and other issues dear to the hearts of liberals.

She is quick to outline the arguments for her behavior: Every flag and symbol is offensive to someone, even Old Glory; she has a free-speech right to display the flag of her choosing; the Confederate flag is misinterpreted because U.S. history is poorly taught and understood. She says she is pleased by dining-hall discussions about the Civil War, including one she participated in, which the controversy has also triggered.

"I've taken American history classes here and they've mostly struck me as Northeastern intellectual history with a primary emphasis on people who went to Harvard," she said with a laugh.

She thinks the university culture is biased against the South, pointing to the fact that while Harvard students who fought for the Axis powers are honored with Allied dead at Memorial Church, only Union dead are listed in Memorial Hall.

Kerrigan is adamant that her flag is not a racist symbol. "The South cannot be made the moral workhorse for the burden of racism." She cites long-reported racial problems in South Boston.

Though she argues her case like the lawyer she wants to become, Kerrigan's feelings about the Stars and Bars are highly romantic. Asked what the flag means to her, she gazes up at the sky, as though searching for adjectives among the highest clouds: "All that is noble and young and rebellious and brave. Tenacity in the darkest hour. Respect for truth, integrity, character and duty. That is the flag for the war for Southern independence."

For most of her life, Kerrigan has lived in Great Falls, Va., a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., where her interests included riding and polo. Her mother works for the National Institutes of Health and her father runs a trade association for chewing tobacco.

She sidesteps questions about her early years in Arizona and Massachusetts.

"You can be born in Alaska and still be Southern," she said. "It's a state of mind."

Her defensiveness about discussing her background has only been sharpened by a recent controversial full-page Crimson article, ". . . Who Is Bridget Kerrigan?," that put her under a microscope. After tracking down old acquaintances, the author devoted two paragraphs just to questioning the genuineness of her Southern accent. More painfully, he also dredged up the fact that she was the driver in a car accident that killed her best friend when she was in the 12th grade. This was relevant, he said, because her long recovery was pivotal to her embrace of conservative politics.

"It broke my heart," said Kerrigan of the article. "It focused on things that were not only irrelevant, but so painful to me."

She called the story "implied blackmail," saying that fear of it made her consider removing the flag. "But if I had, I would have been caving in to terrorists."

But the most painful experience for her was an open meeting at her dorm about the flag, which she described as a "lynching," and a letter "To the Kirkland House Community" written by her faculty housemasters and delivered to all her dorm mates.

It said in part: "Since Bridget (sic) is unwilling to join this community spirit by removing her flag, we shall try to concentrate our attention on the positive qualities and personalities among us, set aside our sadness over this situation, and move forward with confidence that the action of one individual need not undermine all that is admirable about this House."

Watching Brigit Kerrigan standing on the steps of Kirkland House, interrupting her interview to greet curious passing students with nods, quips and her 500-watt smile, is to see someone who takes popularity seriously.

Yet she is philosophical about the fact that many people who were once friendly are now distant:

"Now that school's ending, it's probably for the best that before I start sending wedding presents and postcards, I know who my real friends are."