Fridae

The president of Harvard University has apologised for the gay witch-hunts, which resulted in two suicides after a university court found 14 men "guilty" of being homosexual in 1920.

Fifteen Minutes, the weekend magazine of The Harvard Crimson, the school's daily newspaper, published the report after a reporter pleaded with school officials for six months to hand over 500 pages of documents outlining the "secret court." The report also detailed how the prestigious American university spent decades attempting to keep the "court" and its proceedings from ever being discovered.

As reported in the magazine, the secret tribunal was set up after a 21-year-old student committed suicide, and his family uncovered letters describing homosexual affairs and "faggoty parties" in dorm rooms that he and others attended. Word of gay parties on campus reached Harvard officials after his family turned over the letters to the school.

The tribunal comprising five deans and professors was quickly set up by the then president of the school to interrogate the men accused of engaging in homosexual acts, which at the time was considered unnatural.

As a result, two of the accused men committed suicide, six students were expelled, one teacher dismissed, an alumnus blackballed and two straight students were being asked to leave the school for associating with homosexuals.

"These reports of events long ago are extremely disturbing. They are part of the past that we have rightly left behind," Harvard president Lawrence Summers wrote in a statement to the Crimson.

"I want to express our deep regret for the way this situation was handled, as well as the anguish the students and their families must have experienced eight decades ago."

Summers called the episode "abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university."

"We are a better and more just community today because those attitudes have changed as much as they have," he said.

Harvard today includes sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy and supports numerous GLBT social and academic groups.