"However one views the Sandinista record, we are not responsible for it. But we are complicit with what the 'contras' are doing," Steiner adds. "Let's get our human rights priorities straight."

After returning to the States, Steiner wrote to 22 congressmen and leading newspapers about his findings in Nicaragua--over and above the group's letter--and criticized current U.S. policy. Along with the letter he sent a manual that he obtained in Nicaragua. The book let presented in cartoon form instructions on how to destroy farms and burn books, among other acts of sabotage. According to Steiner, sources in Nicaragua said the manual could be traced to the CIA.

Steiner says, he plans no further political activism--but he will raise the issue of U.S. policy in Nicaragua in his class and in the law school human rights program, of which he is an organizer.

Noel McGinn

For Education School Professor Noel F. McGinn, his trip to Nicaragua in August 1983 with the Faculty Committee on Human Rights was not his first. Born in Panama, the 49-year-old McGinn has worked for years on education throughout Latin America. In 1978, on a literacy project for the Agency for International Development, he visited Nicaragua and witnessed the last days of the Somoza regime.

After returning from a two-year stint in Mexico in 1981. McGinn discovered that attitudes in the U.S. towards the Sandinistas had changed drastically. Civil war had flared up again in El Salvador, and the U.S. was coming down hard on the Sandinistas for lending support to the Salvadoran rebels.

Two years later, when organizers of the Faculty on Human Rights approached McGinn about a trip to Nicaragua, he jumped at the opportunity.

What he found was a country much changed from the Somoza days. This time, McGinn says, he witnessed wide-spread enthusiasm on the part of the people. "It was clear that the people in the street were supportive," he says. "Now they could get health and educational services. The government was offering political participation and it appeared very democratic."

Like many of his colleagues, McGinn rejects the Administration's explanation of Central American instability. Rather than laying the blame on Cuban and Soviet penetration. McGinn sees the problem as one rooted in centuries of poverty and injustice. Not does he regard the analogy with Cuba as a particularly valid one.

"The difference between Nicaragua and Cuba is that in Nicaragua there are six or so leaders, while Castro did it all on his own," he says. "Nicaragua was a popular uprising with middle-class support. It began with a junta with four priests and a conservative businessman."

But U.S. policies may force Nicaragua along the Cuban route. McGinn says. He agrees with Steiner that armed pressure against the country will militarize the Sandinistas further and push them towards heightened internal controls. "If we attack Nicaragua we will eliminate loyal opposition in the country. The Sandinistas will necessarily centralize and rule out any opposition."

McGinn, who teaches two courses on education at the Ed School and is a fellow at the Harvard Institute of International Development, will host a group of university presidents from four Central American countries who are visiting Harvard this week. The group will speak to a public forum at the Kennedy School on the role of the effects of war on their universities.

Frederick Snyder

Like McGinn, Assistant Dean of the Law School Frederick E. Snyder brought long academic involvement with Latin America to his trip to El Salvador last January. A lecturer on Latin American law, the 40-year-old Snyder teaches a course called "Law, Politics and Revolution in Latin America" and has published articles on the same subject.

Last October he organized the visit of a group of Nicaraguan officials coming to Harvard to study electoral law and political parties, witnessing first-hand the Reagan Administration's hostility to Nicaragua as the State Department delayed the granting of visas to members of the group and pushed back the date of their arrival.