strategy, apparently on the theory that
protest activities defy effective definition
and that, by spelling out punishment,it
might paint itself into a corner. The
deans are relying on the powerof precedent.
An informal Gospel has grown up
about the Dow demonstration, and the
quick formation of the student faculty
committee is part of it. Book Oneof the
Gospel says that the incident, despite
its inconveniences, was “healthy” for
the university—that it laid bare many
of the students’ deep frustrations and
opened the way for a better understanding of the war’s impact on the university. Book Two says that the reason
Harvard was so successful in resolving
the problem without splintering the
community was the smallness of its
full-time professional administration and
the easiness of faculty-student dialogue.
Book Three contends that, even in a
disorderly demonstration, Harvard men
acted with restraint: after all, they did
let Leavitt go, they always permitted the
deans free access to Leavitt’s room, and
never once during the protest was anyone, regardless of viewpoint, shouted
down by the demonstrators.
There is more than a skeleton of
truth to each of these claims. It is also
true that they have given rise to some
feeling of self-satisfaction and complacency: Fortune has tested her, and Harvard, as always, has survived. As long
as the war continues, that feeling will
probably be misplaced. Most Harvard
students have come to oppose the war
for fundamentally different reasons:
moral (“Why are we burning babies in
Vietnam?”); political (We’re drastically
overextended, trying to achieve impossible goals at the cost of destroying
America drastically”); and personal
(“General Hershey, why don’t you leave
me alone?”).
These
differences
War movement
deny
a certain
the
anti-
coherence,
draft-resistant movement, small to begin with, is still small, but getting larger.
Students’ respect for established authority diminishes because the established
means and institutions seem totally unresponsive to their anger. They come to
believe that, as Barrington Moore, Jr., a
lecturer on sociology, noted: “No system of law and order has been politi-
cally neutral in practice. At the present
moment in the United States, law and
order protect those who conduct, support, and profit from a war that more
and more of us regard as atrociously
cruel and strategically stupid.”
For students, this apparent rigidity is
especially frustrating, because their
political time horizon is measured indays and
decades.
months,
not
years
and
This does not mean that a whole
generation of Harvard students is being
irreparably “alienated.” The Dow demonstration posed the problem of putting
opposition to Vietnam policy above
allegiance to the established institutions
and procedures which created that policy; an overwhelming number of students still believe that Lyndon Johnson’s government is legitimate, even if
they think it is stupid, wicked, and
wrong.
The balance is tipping, however, and
no doubt will continue to tip. The irony
is that, when more and and more people
at Harvard are coming to view the war
with greater and greater horror, protest
against the war is focusing on, or at,
the university. This is a measure of the
accelerating anger of many students,
and the seeming ineffectiveness of out-
side demonstration. The weekend before
the Harvard Dow protest, many Harvard students had journeyed to Washington for the march against the Pentagon. It was, for some, a profoundly disilusioning, frightening experience; it
contributed to the anger and frustration
that produced the Dow sit-in 4 days
later.
Some students and faculty believe
the antiwar outrage has given rise to a
romantic vision of politics and reality—
a fuzzy fantasy that leads to the attacking of the university, however indirectly, for the war. Even some of the
earliest critics of American involvement
have raised this point. One apparent reaction—to the frustration and the sometime student feeling that the university
is side-stepping the war issue—has been
the formation of several informal student-faculty ventures to channel their
protest together.
The history of the antiwar protest, at
Harvard at least, is that it is unpredictable. The frenzy of the Dow demonstration and its aftermath have both
frightened many students—very few
really want to get kicked out—and re-
lieved the tension. This disappoints some
radicals who insist the war is so bad
that one cannot cease to be demon-
strably angry. But the war continues.
Each incoming Harvard class enters
with a more developed antiwar con-
sciousness than its predecessor. Someday the unpredictability of passion may
return to Harvard, and, if it does, the
next “intolerable” demonstration may
not have a “healthy” ending.
—RopsertT J. SAMUELSON
Un-American Activities: Court Rule
Aids Stamler in Contempt Case
even at a place like Harvard. Those
faculty members and students who first
opposed the war on essentially moral
grounds have been—-and continue to
be—the most vocal, the most angry
critics of the conflict. But as the
frustration of fruitless protest builds,
as the war moves unfalteringly forward,
and as the threat of the draft lurks
closer for many, the reasons for oppos-
ing the war blur: moral arguments are
made by those whose first opposition
was political, More and more students
borrow the “radical” perspective, because the “radicals” have been proved
consistently
1294
“right”
by
events.
The
Two and a half years after Jeremiah
Stamler, a distinguished medical researcher in Chicago, was subpoenaed
by the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), a three-man U.S.
District Court has ruled, as the result
of action initiated by Stamler and two
others, that HUAC must defend its
constitutionality. The significance of the
action, Stamler’s legal counsel noted,is
that “the validity of the Committee’s
enabling act and procedures will be
tried.”
Stamler was one of 16 persons sub-
poenaed by HUAC in May 1965 to
testify during its hearings on Communist activities in the Chicago area
(Science, 23 July 1965). The District
Court ruling follows two civil suits
filed against the committee and a crim-
inal indictment charging Stamler and
two other defendants with contempt of
Congress.
What is significant in the Stamler
case is that he, an employee of the
city of Chicago, chose, along with Mrs.
SCIENCE, WOL. 158