terrorism. Thus, they are not only gross violators of human rights, but they threaten the peace as well. Moscow's conquest of Afghanistan, Cambodia's genocide, the use of surrogate forces to subvert African states, and Libya's sponsorship of terrorism all deserve public condemnation by the United States and other governments bilaterally and in international forums. They also deserve the condemnation of concerned private groups.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, permit me a more personal word. All my adult life I have been an academic, examining and commenting on U.S. foreign policy from the outside. This was largely true during my years with the Library of Congress, and my shorter stint with the late and honored Senator Hubert Humphrey as his foreign policy assistant. I am now moving, to borrow words from Woodrow Wilson, from the "statesmanship of thought" to the "statemanship of action." In this transition, which is not entirely easy, I assure you, I seek your understanding and support.

Already my wife and I have had more than a taste of the arena of action in which all of you have lived and which most of you have learned to endure. I refer not only to my actual work in the Human Rights Bureau for more than 3 months, but to the public controversy that has surrounded my nomination. I often feel like the man who was ridden out of town on a rail. Mark Twain asked him how he felt and he replied, "If it weren't for the honor, I would have preferred to walk."

Mr. Chairman, honest Americans-and I trust that includes everyone in this room-will not always agree on methods, but we are all united in our commitment to enlarging the frontiers of freedom and dignity and human rights in a suffering world.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to respond to questions from you and other members of this distinguished committee.

Thank you.

[Mr. Lefever's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. ERNEST W. LEFEVER

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure and honor for me to appear today as the President Reagan's designee for the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

I look forward eagerly to the challenge of relating human rights considerations to our foreign policy decisions. Throughout my career of teaching, research. lecturing, and writing I have been concerned with the interplay of ethics and public policy. Consequently, I feel very much at home in the domain of human rights and international politics.

I was brought up in a pious, Protestant, working-class family in York, Pa., where I attended public school. I worked my way through 10 years of higher education and earned a bachelor of divinity degree and a Ph. D., both in Christian ethics from Yale University. My dissertation dealt with a comparative analysis of the views of the theologian. Reinhold Niebuhr, and the National Council of Churches toward U.S. foreign policy from 1925 to 1955. For 40 years, I have been an ordained minister, but in accordance with a new church policy of removing from the roll of ordained ministers those in secular professions, I became a layman in 1979.

During my college and seminary days I was active in the U.S. civil rights movement, working with James Farmer and Bayard Rustin. I also spent six summers in voluntary work camps operated by the Church of the Brethren, serving the needs of the poor from the slums of Philadelphia to the hop-fields of Yakima County, Wash. During this period I visited several of the JapaneseAmerican relocation camps, set up after Pearl Harbor, and was instrumental

in helping to relocate in Chicago the first detainees permitted to leave these

camps.

After World War II, I went to Western Europe for a 3-year voluntary assignment with the World's Alliance of YMCA's, assisting returning German prisoners of war.

For 3 years, I was the associate executive director of the Department of International Affairs of the National Council of Churches in New York. Thereafter, I came to Washington, D.C., where I have had research or teaching assignments at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, the Library of Congress, American University, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Brookings Institution, and Georgetown University. I have written several books dealing with ethics and foreign policy and related issues, as well as numerous articles.

I am now the president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, an independent, non-profit, research organization which I established in 1976. I am proud of the quality, integrity, and independence of the Center's work and the persons associated with it as authors, conference participants, or board directors. They include:

Ronald Berman, Daniel J. Boorstin, Vladimir Bukovsky, Shelby Cullom Davis, Charles Burton Marshall, Eugene McCarthy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Paul Nitze, Michael Novak, Richard Pipes, Herman Kahn, Jack Kemp. George Kennan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Kissinger, John Tower, Irving Kristol. Clare Booth Luce, Archibald MacLeish, Arthur Burns. J. William Fulbright. Rita Hauser, S. L. Hayakawa, Sidney Hook, Paul Johnson, Charls E. Walker, Eugene Rostow, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Thomas Sowell, Herbert Stein, and George Will.

We are particularly pleased with the widespread support the Center has received from the religious community here and around the world. Among the distinguished Catholic, Protestant and Jewish laymen and theologians who have worked directly with us are Paul Ramsey of Princeton University, James Childress of the University of Virginia. Richard Neuhaus, Carl F. H. Henry, founding editor of "Christianity Today," Father Avery Dulles, S. J., of Catholic University, Father James V. Schall, S. J., of Georgetown University, and Rabbi Seymour Siegel of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Our Center publications have sold widely in all 50 states and 30 foreign countries. They are used in more than 100 colleges and universities. Especially well received in the Protestant and Catholic communities has been "Amsterdam to Nairobi," a study of the World Council of Churches' changing stance toward the Third World. A German edition of 10,000 copies of this book is about to come off the press.

My concern for a more secure and humane world has not been confined to academic research and publication. I have been an active member of various professional and public policy organizations, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), Freedom House, the Committee on the Present Danger, the Committee for a Free World, the American Society of Christian Ethics, the Society for Values in Higher Education, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars. At present. I am a member of the Values Education Commission, appointed by the Governor of Maryland.

I have traveled widely in Western Europe. Africa. Asia, and Latin America. in various research and educational capacities, and I have also visited the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Thus. I have been able to observe first-hand in many parts of the world the deprivation of freedom and the assaults on human dignity. Before indicating the place of human rights considerations in foreign policy. a word about the nature of America and its external responsibilities.

AMERICA STANDS FOR FREEDOM

With all our imperfections. with the unfinished business on our national agenda. America is still the greatest nation on earth. It is, as President Reagan has said. a city set on a hill, an unfolding experiment worthy of emulation. We have been and remain a symbol of liberty and justice for all people.

We are not the oppressor which our adversaries charge and our detractors assert-sometimes with the support of the alienated and disillusioned among us. We are the offspring of Judaeo-Christian tradition, Greek philosophy. Roman law, the Magna Carta. the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address.

Despite our own trials and tribulations-which we should neither minimize nor exaggerate-we are the beacon which has drawn the huddled masses, the oppressed, the hunted and hounded, and the boat people from every corner of the globe.

We have become a symbol of hope and a refuge not because of an abstract ideology or noble words, but because of our deeds, our everyday acts of justice, our demonstration of freedom, and our compassion for the wretched of the earth. We live in a world of tragedy, suffering, and anxiety, but a world not without hope. Daily we are reminded of poverty, injustice, oppression, brutality, tyranny, and violent death.

Counterpoised against our world of free and independent states is the specter that haunts us the rise of political religions, new messianic movements that promise heaven on earth-Nazism and Communism being the two chief manifestations in our time. They reached for utopia and have given us hell.

Today, a mighty Soviet Union reaches out for military superiority over the West. It brutally oppresses its own citizens at home, holds sway over the captive nations of Eastern Europe, and extends its brutal grip-by aggression in Afghanistan, by subversion in Central America, by proxy Cuban forces in Angola and Ethiopia, and by terrorism in the Middle East.

In our quest for a more peaceful and just world, we should not underestimate the totalitarian threat to the West or the totalitarian temptation to the Third World.

AMERICAN RESPONSIBILITY

American power and wealth, plus our unique history, have made us the leader of the free world. Since World War II we have used our power with restraint and a sense of responsibility. In addition to defending our cherished values and institutions and those of our allies, we have accepted the heavy responsibility of helping to build a world community that respects diversity and encourages peaceful change. This forms the basis of our external policy.

So understood, our foreign policies strengthen the cause of freedom, dignity, and human rights around the world. To deter nuclear war will save millions of lives. To stand firm against nuclear blackmail will save millions from capitulating to tyranny.

Freedom, security, and human rights are bound together. There are no rights without security, and security becomes tyranny without justice and freedom. Dr. Andrei Sakharov underscored this point in his recent statement from exile in Gorky. He said the security of the West is indispensable to the cause of freedom in the world. As a champion of human rights in the Soviet Union, he has condemned both the invasion of Afghanistan and internal repression. The West, he added, has an obligation to prevent the expansion of totalitarianism.

SECRETARY HAIG'S VIEWS

Speaking before the American Society of Newspaper Editors recently, Secretary Haig stated three foreign policy objectives:

"First, to enlarge our capacity to influence events and to make more effective use of the full range of our moral, political, scientific, economic and miiltary resources in the pursuit of our interest;

"Second, to convince our allies, friends, and adversaries-above all, the Soviet Union-that America will act . as a trustee of freedom and peace; and "Third, to offer hope and aid to the developing countries in their aspirations for a peaceful and prosperous future."

None of these objectives can be achieved without a serious consideration of human rights-not only in the immediate sense of what is happening today, but more significantly, what may happen tomorrow.

This administration is determined to pursue a vigorous and humane foreign policy designed to protect the integrity and independence of the United States and its allies. At the same time, we will seek to develop a world community which respects diversity and fosters peaceful relations among states. In addressing all external problems, an ever-present concern will be the impact of our decisions on the freedom, dignity, and fundamental rights of all persons.

Too often the concept of human rights has been limited to a narrow range of specific violations by governments against their own people. It is our intention to broaden and deepen that concept. Assaults on the integrity of the person, such as torture, prolonged imprisonment without due process, exile under brutal conditions, and the denial of emigration are reprehensable. We must also recog

nize that human rights are more seriously violated (and often on a much larger scale) by direct or indirect aggression, the imposition of foreign control over other peoples, external subversion, genocide, and terrorism. We will also be concerned by abuses of human rights by forces seeking to overthrow existing regimes. Seen in this perspective, human rights become an inescapable concern in all our foreign policy deliberations.

AN EVEN-HANDED APPROACH

In recent years, there has been a lively debate on how best to bring human rights considerations to bear on our pursuit of national security and international order. Two fundamental points must be understood before we address specific ways and means.

First, we must recognize there is only one moral yardstick. Torture, internal exile, summary executions, harsh emigration restrictions, are always deplorable whether committed by friend, foe, or neutral, by a totalitarian, authoritarian, or democratic regime. "Geographic morality," as Edmund Burke once called it, or ideological morality will not do. We must be even-handed in our concern or we will be rightly accused of hypocracy or cynicism.

Second, we must recognize that there are morale and political limits to what the United States Government can and should do to modify the internal behavior of another sovereign state. We wish that all peoples enjoyed the blessings of liberty as we do, but wishing, or preaching, or threatening will not make it so. In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions, and her prayers. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

We Americans have had much given to us and much will be required of us. but it is dangerous to indulge in what Denis Brogan once called "the illusion of American omnipotence," the erstwhile tendency of some of our countrymen to overestimate our capacity to mold the institutions and practices of other societies.

MANDATE FOR EFFECTIVENESS

These cautions about the limits of our influence are not an occasion for despair. Only when we know what we can do and cannot do can we act with realism and effectiveness.

To achieve better results, this Administration will pursue a balanced and more coherent application of human rights considerations consistent with a civilized understanding of our national interest. The policies of the last Administration have been less than effective and have at times confused both friend and foe.

Our point of departure will be the mandate of the American people in last November's election. It should be abundantly clear as I embark upon my new duties, that I will fully and faithfully carry out every law now on the statute books, but a new Administration cannot, indeed should not, simply continue what has gone on in the immediate past.

Any changes we may seek will in no way diminish our national concern for the brutalized and oppressed. As President Reagan so e'oquently said at the Holocaust ceremonies: "Never shall it be forgotten for a moment that wherever it is taking place in the world-the persecution of people for their religious beliefs" or any other reason is a matter of American concern.

There are four specific ways the U.S. Government, with the support of the American people, can advance the cause of freedom and dignity beyond our borders:

1. Perhaps the most significant contribution we can make is to remain a living example of a society which strives successfully to guarantee the full range of human rights for all our citizens. But this is not enough.

2. We must stand by our allies and friends when their survival as independent states is jeopardized by external military pressures or political subversion. In some cases we must provide economic or military aid to a besieged ally whose human rights record is not blameless. In doing so we should not condone its abuses, but it would be tragic if in the name of human rights we withheld vital aid and thus helped to pave the way for a far more repressive successor regime. Sound ethics and wise statesmanship often confront us with an agonizing choice between the lesser of two evils. This is always uncomfortable, but it is inescapable.

3. The channels of quiet diplomacy provide a more effective way to encourage greater respect for human rights and to correct abuses than public scolding and threats. This is the preferred approach, especially to friendly and allied governments that pursue constructive foreign policies. An atmosphere of mutual respect and sovereign equality is more conductive to persuasion than one of hostility and alienation. Public preaching invites the charge of arrogance. Our friends deserve quiet support and public encouragement in their quest for a more humane society. We must learn their respect by being a steadfast ally, rather than an erratic and capricious partner given to moral posturing. We should be concerned more with results than rhetoric, with doing good rather than feeling good.

4. In the face of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights-genocide, aggression, external subversion, or terrorism-by any government, it is appropriate for the United States to engage in public condemnation. At present such gross violations are perpetrated largely by adversary states, notably the Soviet Union. Most communist regimes brutalize their own people, and some of them are engaged in exporting their repressive systems by subversion and terrorism. Thus, they are not only gross violators of human rights, but they threaten the peace as well. Moscow's conquest of Afghanistan, Cambodia's genocide, the use of surrogate forces to subvert African states, and Libya's sponsorship of terrorism all deserve public condemnation by the United States and other governments and by private groups.

In conclusion, permit me a more personal word. All my adult life I have been an academic, examining foreign policy from the "outside". This was true during my years with the Library of Congress and my shorter stint as the late Senator Humphrey's foreign policy assistant. Now I am moving, to use Woodrow Wilson's language from the "statesmanship of thought" to the "statesmanship of action." I seek your advice and understanding as I make this transition.

Already my wife and I have had more than a taste of the arena of action in which you all have lived. I refer not only to my actual work in the Human Rights Bureau for more than three months, but to the public controversy that has surrounded my nomination. I often feel like the man who was ridden out of town on a rail. Mark Twain asked him how he felt. He replied: "If it weren't for the honor, I would have preferred to walk."

Honest Americans will not always agree on methods, but we are united in our commitment to enlarging the frontiers of freedom and dignity in a suffering world.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Lefever.

As I discussed with you, this experience that you and your family will go through in a confirmation hearing is a unique aspect of our constitutional duties, and I can assure you the hearing will be no longer than that of Secretary Haig and no rougher than that of Deputy Secretary Clark.

But I think you are fully prepared because this is an important. post, and you yourself are a controversial figure, as is witnessed by the fact that I decided to move your hearing from the Foreign Relations Committee room to this room today. We are able to accommodate with standing room only the number of people who are here to support or in the panel tomorrow speak against you.

But there will be a fair hearing, as you know, before this committee, and our intensity of interest will only reflect the feeling that we have that this is a very important post and it is a symbol to the whole world of what America stands for.

We will observe a 10-minute rule, members of the committee. The lights are over on the other side. Because, Dr. Lefever there was a request that we have 3 days of hearings, and taking into account the heavy schedules that all the members of this committee have, I have decided to do it in 2 full days, and hopefully we can complete it by tomorrow night then.