by Anthony Flint

CAMBRIDGE, Monday, Sep. 11, 1995, (The Boston Globe) - It was perhaps entirely fitting that the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, finished his swing through Boston yesterday with a visit to Harvard University, the heart of academia.

The free Tibet movement, many say, is rapidly becoming a campus cause celebre for the 1990s, hugely popular among student activists, much as ending apartheid in South Africa was in the 80s.

It's catching on like wildfire, said Gray Tuttle, a graduate student in East Asian studies and organizer of the Harvard Tibetan Connection. It is an issue of justice.

The Dalai Lama met with dozens of student activists from the area and across the nation at Harvard yesterday. While he preached his standard program of nonviolence and compassion as the solution to political conflict, the students said they were eager to organize demonstrations, to pressure the US government to make Tibet an issue in relations with China.

There was also discussion of starting a boycott of Chinese-made goods and pressuring their colleges and universities to divest holdings in companies that do business with China - a chief tactic of the campus anti-apartheid movement in the 80s.

A handful of activists and several American celebrities, such as the actor Richard Gere, have been promoting the free Tibet cause for many years.

That tradition continued yesterday, as Adam Yauch, singer with the group the Beastie Boys, joined the students, and singers Steve Tyler of Aerosmith and Carly Simon took front-row seats at the Dalai Lamas speech later in the afternoon at the Kennedy School of Government.

But student activism on the issue has grown exponentially over the last year, with the formation of some 40 free-Tibet groups on campuses across the country.

We want to educate the American public about the tragedy we call the Tibetan occupation, said Robert Finger, a student leader from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

David Jacobs, an organizer from Oberlin College in Ohio, said a national conference is planned for Oct. 28.

China invaded Tibet in 1949 and crushed an uprising 10 years later that forced the Dalai Lama and intellectual and religious leaders into exile in nearby India. Chinese people have been given financial incentives to move to Tibet, and they outnumber indigenous Tibetans in most cities.

Thousands of ancient Tibetan monasteries and libraries have been destroyed, and human rights organizations say the Chinese have killed up to 1 million Tibetans and imprisoned many more.

The 14th Dalai Lama, whose given name is Tenzin Gyatso, was proclaimed the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama in 1935 and was named head of Tibet's government in 1949 at 14 years old.

He is comparable to the pope, except that the Buddhist religion is so interwoven in Tibetan society that he essentially serves as its exiled secular leader as well.

I really appreciate your sense of concern of others suffering. That comes from human affection, the Dalai Lama told the students. But, he added, you can help, but the real solution must be found between Tibetans and the Chinese.

Accordingly, the best thing students can do, he said, is talk to fellow students from China, who he said get only official pronouncements from the Chinese Government about Tibet.

Many students want to do more. And as in any popular movement there is a split: some, like Lobsang Sangay, a fellow at Harvard Law School and a member of the Tibetan Youth Congress, would not rule out violence as a means to oppose the Chinese.

Most others align themselves with the Dalai Lamas emphasis on nonviolence, though they express sympathy with those who are frustrated at the cultural toll the Chinese occupation is taking. There is a very hopeless feeling in Tibet, said Cinna Hunter, a graduate student at Boston University.

Greg Alling, a graduate student at Columbia University, said many students get involved through an initial interest in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture, but that a concern for human rights, freedom and democracy builds quickly as well.

Things are really coming together all at once, Alling said, noting interest in the conference on women in Beijing and growing distaste among American officials for the tactics of the Chinese government generally.

China is seen by some students as the last big enemy of freedom, now that the Soviet Union has disintegrated, he said.

In the morning yesterday, the Dalai Lama met with Tibetans at the Charles Hotel. Later in the afternoon he spoke to a packed auditorium at the Kennedy School, where he called on America to support his plan to start negotiations with the Chinese.

I've made every attempt to save Tibet, he said. Historically, Tibet is an independent nation. I am appealing to the international people and now I am appealing to you. Help me free Tibet from the Chinese.