In a long and eventful meeting last night, the Undergraduate Council heard Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 speak, voted on a constitutional amendment and was ousted from its Sever Hall meeting place.

Lewis, the latest in a string of administrators invited to speak to the council, emphasized the importance of the Faculty’s ongoing curricular review, said academic ranking among students should be reevaluated and addressed free speech issues.

“It seems to me inevitable that the free speech issue is one of the issues that will be confronted,” he said. “There’s a need to get some discussion out.”

In response to one representative’s question, Lewis said “it might indeed be time” to consider establishing a student-faculty committee on free speech.

“If a war starts in Iraq, beyond the current war in the Middle East, that involves the United States, I’m sure these issues are going to be hot,” Lewis said.

His comments come after the English department’s decision last week to cancel and then re-invite Tom Paulin—an award-winning Irish poet who has expressed controversial anti-Israeli views—to a prestigious speaking engagement at Harvard.

The re-invitation stemmed from concerns among English department faculty about perceptions that a cancellation would be an abridgment of free speech.

On Thursday, WordsWorth bookstore in Harvard Square cancelled an appearance by William Langewiesche, author of a controversial book on Sept. 11, after local firefighters protested the visit.

Also last week, members of the Black Law Students Association called for Harvard Law School (HLS) to adopt an anti-harassment policy protecting students from racial insensitivity. The call alarmed some HLS faculty, who claimed that such a measure would limit free speech.

Lewis also talked about the possibility of reconsidering the way the College evaluates its students’ academic work.

“It creates a kind of de facto sense that we highly value competition among individuals,” he said.

At a Faculty Council meeting last month, Lewis announced his plan to abolish the Dean’s List, which currently includes 92 percent of upperclass students.

Lewis said that while academic ranking may reflect students’ performance in blue books, it does not take into account interpersonal abilities.

“Graduates’ success in life is going to be affected by their capacity to persuade people”—a skill that is “pretty much not taught anywhere in the curriculum,” he said.

After his talk, Lewis took questions from the council on a variety of topics, including space for student groups, integrating academics and extracurricular activities, first-year students’ involvement in extracurriculars and the prospect of having student members of the Administrative Board.