Testimonial letter from Arthur W. Biddle

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This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.

This letter is from Arthur W. Biddle PhD. It is "Exhibit A-981" in the Noles collection.

The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.

The University of Vermont
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
315 OLD MILL
BURLINGTON, VERMONT 05405-0114
July 19, 1983

Mr. Robert Kruger
District Director, INS
Portland, Oregon

Dear Sir:

I understand that Rajneesh has applied for a temporary visa as a religious worker. As a humanist and a teacher of literature, I support his application. I have read several of his books and found them of high moral and ethical value and of exceptional literary merit. Although I am not a follower of Rajneesh, what I know of his work persuades me that he has made a valuable contribution to American culture.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Arthur W. Biddle
An Equal Opportunity Employer


(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)