Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS The University -- I: The Numbers Policy F .. 77 = Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail NEws PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: CAROLYN MIEGEL Classified Research: Its OK As Long As Nobody Gets Killed CANE DOESN'T HAVE to quarrel with the conclusion of the Senate Assembly Committee on Research Policies' just- issued report on classifed research to realize that the group didn't do its job. Certainly the committee has every right to its conclusion that classified re- search is O.K. as long as it doesn't kill 4nyone and the nature of the work and its sponsor are identified. The tragic flaw in the report is that i never bothers to ask the philosophical or substantive questions surrounding the $10.3 in classified research done at the University. It never asks whether or not classified research is right or wrong: "The policy followed by an institution at which classified research is already being done need not coincide with the policy which would be chosen by an in- stitution in which traditionally there was no such research," says the com- mittee." A different balance of principle is involved in each case." We are told repeatedly that the ques- tlon must be examined in practical terms. Thus the reports hems and haws. "Secrecy per se has no positive value" but "classified research contributes to the same academic values as open re- search." NOT ONLY does the committee refuse to tell us whether classified research is good or bad, it suggests that members of a proposed new review committee to examine all proposals for classified work should. not be for or against such re- search: "Anyone committed to the extreme position that 'any classified research' is appropriate or the other extreme that no classified research is appropriate should decline to serve on the review committee since he would not contribute to making the kinds of considered judg- ments, case by case, envisaged as neces- s'ry for a defensible University stance, vis-a-vis classifed research." And just in case any extremists op- posed to classified research should get on the committee, the vice-president for research is given a veto right over com- mtttee decisions. Y SKIRTING any of the fundamental questions surrounding classified work the research committee finds it easy to write a report that maintains the status quo almost completely. ,The touchiest issue, the University's $1 million classified counter - insurgency project in Thailand,.isn't even mention- ed. In fact the entire 13 page report doesn't even mention "Thailand" itself. Similarly, many other questions go unanswered: Should the engineering school be allowed to give the Army another classified course in "electronic warfare? Should Willow Run scientists t'ke industrial style contracts to work on development on new ICBM's? Should the University build multi-million dollar observatories in Hawaii for secret obser- vations of of ICBM's and satellites? These are just a few of the questions that the general university community wanted answered. But instead of answer- ing them the committee came up with a vague set of recommendations that could actually increase the amount of classified research done at the school. All four recommendations would cut just one $261,192 projeet in Thai- land. The project is so secret that its name, sponsor, purpose and researchers involved are classified. It will expire in July, 1968 probably before the new recommendations are implemented. IN ThE CASE of Policy IV the commit- tee has actually expanded the grounds for acceptance of classified research. Be- fore, the Univesrity took research largely because the "basic science or engineering would result in the generation of funda- mental new knowledge." Opposition to the Thailand work - where the University was teaching the Royal Thai Air Force how to ferret out Communist guerillas - was based on the fact that the project did not fulfill the University's own criteria. The project did not generate "funda- BUT INSTEAD of dealing with this argument, the committee actually recommended broadening the criteria for accepting Thailand style projects. It said a contract is acceptable if "it will con- tribute significantly to enhancing the research capability of the investigator or hiz research unit." With this new policy researchers now would be able to take on more Thailand style work. Any researcher can justify a secret project on the grounds that it will "enhance" his "research capability." The committee also makes the pre- posterous claim that cutting out classi- fied research is a threat to academic freedom. Much like the Southern sheriff who claims that a Negro victim "cracked his own skull by falling on the floor," we are told: "Elimination of classified research would result in a broad categorical re- straint on the freedom of some staff members to choose the area of inquiry in which they wish to work ... Arbitrary cessation (of classified research) would be inconsistent with the principle of freedom of inquiry ... "To restrict arbitrarily the scholarly activities of its faculty members on some concept of what a University ought to be' is to do violence to one of the main prin- ciples which a university should uphold." EVERYTHING is backwards. It was the classified researchers who decided on a "categorical restraint" on their own "freedom" when they accepted secret work. What kind of "freedom of inquiry" is being threatened when a classified re- searcher can't discuss his work with others, or publish his resluts openly? In- deed the Willow Run Labs doesn't feel "free" enough to make public a full list of what it is doing. The classified researchers have en- tered into a contract to "restrict arbitr- arily" their own "scholarly activities" so that no one outside their priveleged, secret world can find out what they are doing. (WRL officials still won't admit what they are working on in Vietnam). ACTUALLY THE COMMITTEE is recom- mending that the Willow Run re- searchers retain the freedom to continue telling the rest of the University that their secret activities are no one else's business. Interestingly enough the research committee's report comes out at the same time that Cornell University has de- cided to cut off its WRL style facilty "Cornell Aeronatuics Labs." The Cornell Regents voted Monday to cut all ties with the lab which came under fire be- cause it, too, was involved in a million dollar counterinsurgency project in Thai- land. (And had also worked jointly with the Univesrity on another Thailand pro- ject). And even Michigan State said last week it doesn't have any classified re- search and won't take any except in case of national emergency. WHY IS MICHIGAN different? The answer is quite simple. This Uni- versity, as shown by the report, is more interested in maintaining the lucrative status quo then in worrying about the morality of secret research. It would prefer to take money for secret work designing better misses, figuring more efficient tactics in "electronic warfare," and helping the Royal Thai Air Force police Northeastern Thailand than trim the scope of its research activities into some kind of moral order. LEO TOLSTOY once wrote that "moral acts are distinguished form all other acts by the fact that they operate in- dependently of any predictable advant- age to ourselves or to others. No matter how dangerous the situation may be of a man who finds himself in the powers of robbers who demand that he take part in plundering, murder, and rape, a moral person cannot take part." It takes little conviction to stand up and pat yourself on the back. What takes courage is to admit that you have been slfish In the mbst and will try to clean By ROBERT KLIVANS Editorial Director IT IS ALMOST a month since the University received a new president, and though the changes are not yet earth-shak- ing, there are signs that Robben Fleming has some definite and different ideas about where Mich- igan should be headed. Many of the most important alterations were in the cards long before Fleming was brought from Wisconsin to succeed Harlan Hatcher. The retirements of Vice-Presidents Niehuss and Stir- ton (because of a new 65-year old mandatory retirement clause) could have been predicted; the resignation of Vice-President Cutler and the scheduled re- structuring of the Office of Stu- dent Affairs were the logical con- clusions of several years of rising student demands and adminis- trative mistakes. Thus, Fleming's first actions seem, by most standards, highly successful, except for those di- sciples of Paul Goodman who see any vigorous activity by the ad- ministration as the devil's own work. But if Fleming's opening efforts, including the appoint- ment of Arthur Ross as the new vice-president for state relations and planning, are appealing, they also raise certain questions. and perhapsytime will provide the only answers. WHAT particularly worries this observer is that the men now guiding the University - and most every institution in the United States - are efficient, likable bureaucrats who, perhaps from administrative over-expo- sure, often think in terms of quantity and not quality. The two factors do, of course, inter- act, and few would argue that the need for more state or federal funds is not at the heart of many of higher education's problems. Moreover, no one is insinuating that Robben Fleming, Arthur Ross, Clark Kerr, and their con- temporaries are not deeply con- cerned about the education the individual student is receiving. They are, for the most part, life- long educators, and the education offered by the University is, no doubt, their ultimate concern. But, to understand the quality of their accomplishments, we must view the nation's academic leaders' efforts in their histori- cal context, and not, like so much else in our technological society. through arstatistical analysis. In December the National Academy of Sciences, for example, pub- lished a report which charted the soaring percentage of doctorates granted by the public universities, but said little about the quality, shortcomings or attributes of the new scholars. Describing student unrest, the National Student As- sociation merely issued statistics in a report last week announcing "71 protests on 62 college cam- puses" in November and Decem- ber, with 2.7 per cent of the na- tional student body participating. And how many reports have you read computing the student-fac- ulty ratio, lamenting its decline, and computing an ideal ratio fac- tor that will make education so much more stimulating? THE PROBLEM of size versus excellence is as ancient as the universities themselves. In 1828, the classic Yale Report lauded "competition of colleges ... if it is a competition for excellence rather than for numbers." We would nod our heads in assent to this 19th century advice, bemoan the big lectures we must suffer through, and imagine low nice it would be to receive that ideal education: Mark Hopkins on one end of the log and the student on the other. But those days are past, and mass education presents problems, quantitative problems that are best solved by a leading labor statistician like Arthur Ross or a systems analyst like Califor- nia's new president, Charles Hitch. VERY SIMPLY, are the statis- ticians and administrators run- ning ahead of the problem? The United States is investing billions of dollars into education, but are we getting our dollars' worth? "When you hear educators talk about how the educational sys- tem needs more money in order to do more things, you may sus- pect that they are not talking about education." wrote Robert Hutchins, once the chancellor of Chicago. This is indeed true; for Dr. Conant nor the ideal aims of the 'community of scholars.' Rather, they are great, and greatly expanding, inages of Educiation. no different from the other role- playing organizations of the mod- ern world . . . Society is satisfied by the symbolic proof that a lot of educaiton is going on, fat syl- labi, hundreds of thousands of diplomas, bales of published re- search. And indeed, the students answered by at least a few-chief- ly efficiency minded administra- tors of the promotor-manager type rather than experienced ed- ucators. Having no deep under- standing of the true nature of a university, they will merely acept the emerging situation as a wel- come opportunity to increase the operational size, the diversity, and the public appeal of their institu- tion." 4k 1~ Is such quantity really quality? example, Clark Kerr can call for more funds claiming that the University serves the needs of society through medical and mil- itary research while continuing to educate all the students. But is it educating the students? Hutchins adds, "They are talking about the extension of the custodial system . . . a system for the non-penal accommodation of the young from the time at which they become a nuisance to their families to the time at which we are ready to have them go to work." Writer Paul Goodman, a bitter dissenter on American education, continues, advancing Hutchins' ar- gument still further: "Our colleges serve neither the national goals of are educated in the process. Most of them learn, in the great col- leges, the secret of our uniquely glamorous society, to conform and fatten. A few protest. A few dis- sent. A few quit, like rats deserting a sinking ship (and they are also drowned)." THE PROBLEM is that as pro- ducts of, and participants in, the on-going educational process, we become victims of a vocabulary that hides the real troubles we must surmount. Frederic Heim- berger, a leading professor at Ohio State University, warned in 1964, "The whole question of what the state universities can do to meet mounting enrollments and rapidly changing needs will be easily- No one is quite sure that so fatal a disintegration of leadership has occurred here. And there are cer- tain signs and programs in the Uni- versity today which suggests a deep understanding of the educa- tional dilemma and possible solu- tions. The University's Residential Col- lege, certain aspects of the Honors Program, and several newly-pro- posed experiments in curricular flexibility are seeking to fill the gap that the current academic program leaves. Whether the administrators will recognize these signs as isolated educational experiments or general paths toward excellence is the Uni- versity'smost important question. Tomorrow: Reform Proposals Letters: Wilcox Must Add Negro History Course To the Editor: THE DISCUSSION about a course in Negro History is cer- tainly timely. It is a subject to which I have given some thought. It seems to me that the term "Negro History" is unforunate, and leads to confusion, not only because many Negroes -have re- named themselves "Blacks," but also because it is a narrow term. r prefer "Afro-American History" or "Plantation American History." which implies the study of that vast area of the Western Hemi- sphere, stretching from Brazil through the United States, which was molded by African slavery and the plantation system. Such a course would naturally include a study of the African background of the slaves, as well as the impact of the institution of slavery upon the nations which developed from plantation America. IT COULD BE taught by a num- ber of professors from both the history and the anthropology de- partments, each dealing with his specialty, and by visiting lecturers, including hopefully, John Hope Franklin, Chairman of the History Department of the University of Chicago. Perhaps such a course would help attract talented young black students to the graduate history department, where their absence is conspicuous. -Gwendolyn Midlo Hall Grad-Comparative History 1 -1 - Y - t- * ..,--. ..* t a "Its Mrs. Nugent - . Patrick Lyndon has the sniffles" as silly as it is dangerous. More- over, Michigan's failure should not be generalized into an academic standard; Universities as little known as Harvard and Berkeley offer such courses. Anyway, the Department offers a course in Michigan history and, at last re- port, both the people and the state are minorities. BUT THE MOST important con- cept Dr. Wilcox puts forward is that assimilation is now on the agenda for our society and such it should be in our teaching of history. This is a restatement of Collingwood; that history is writ- ten via the a priori concerns of the authors. In effect, each gen- eration would then write history anew based now upon their par- ticular values, and this then pre- cludes the accumilation of his- torical knowledge or the possibility of value in history. A drastic judgment, but is his- tory-historical investigation and teaching--to be limited by the con- cerns or values of attitudes or even politics or sociology of con- temporary American society? Shall he then drop anything out of my field, Chinese history, that does not teach us (disregarding abstracts- like truth) how to keep Mao Tse- tung from reinstituting the Tri- bute system in South-East Asia? Finally, there have been many surveys pointing out a shortage of white Ph.Ds; nevertheless, this hasn't stopped us from studying white America including the state of Michigan. As far as Negroes go, Berkeley managed to pluck one, with irony no doubt, from Tuskegee, to teach a course and supplement the efforts of other, white, professors in studying American Negro history. --Bruce Henstell Center for Chinese Studies Masters Candidate PAP To the Editor: THE P.A.P. (Packard Avenue Playwriters) would like to point out an error in Creative Arts Festival publicity which attributes the production of "Salome" to us. "Salome" will be presented during the festival by the Lord Chamber- lain Players with whom we are not connected. The P.A.P. plans an evening of poetry at the Ark early in February. -Momus Llooch -Jocelyn Agnew -Natalie Uslenghi OPINION The Daily has begun accept- ing articles from faculty, ad- ministration, and students on subjects of their choice. They are to be 600-900 words in length and should be submitted to the Editorial Director. American History To the Editor: DR. WILCOX'S LETTER (Daily, Jan. 17) contains many points open to debate. He states that the University offers no courses deal- ing with other minority groups, why then one in Negro history? VMost simply, because the fields and specialties in history are deter- mined by the interests of the his- torian, both student and teacher. He would agree, no doubt, that limiting offerings or investigation because of arbitrary boundries is * ..B.K:.......y....r... ....... .....G.................... ON BOOKS: A merica Pay s tear Ga-me I By RICHARD ANTHONY Collegiate Press service Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desir- ability of Peace: Forward by Leonard C. Lewin. 1 HE REPORT from Iron Moun- tain, as explained in the pref- ace, is a document prepared by a group of eminent scholars and ex- perts during a three-year period, from 1963 to 1966, at the request of certain high government offi- cials. The Report's major conclusion is that war, far from being just one component of United States foreign policy, is in fact the basis for the country's social structure. It argues, therefore, that the coming of a genuine peace-the absence of all war and war-mak- ing potential-would require fun- damental changes in the structure of the U.S. AMONG THE Report's other findings are the following: Economically, war, or the threat of war, generate huge spending programs outside the market sys- tem, which act as "flywheels" to keep the economy as a whole national population; it acts as a welfare system for those who would be unemployable outside the military; by means of the draft, it controls the potentially dissident young; and finally, it provides the basis for social co- hesion by proving a society's will- ingness to offer up the lives of some for the protection of all. In view of these and other func- tions of the war system, the Re- port maintains, any transition to peace will require substitute func- tions. It warns that an early movement towardhworld peace could bring on a disastrous social upheaval within the U.S. IS THE REPORT authentic? Most of thedreviewers I've run across have decided not, that it's in realitya very clever piece of satire by Lewin (a writer, and frequent contributor to Monocle, a satirical magazine published from time to time in New York). A few suggest that J. K. Galbraith may have written it. As far as I'm concerned, the question of the Report's authen- ticity is one each reader ought to decide for himself. Looking for wrote it. It is a study that raises a lot of interesting questions about the prospects for world peace. The basic approach of the author(s) of the Report is to look upon nations as systems, rather than as aggregations of people. In the Report, therefore, national events are seen as the functioning of the system, not as the pro- ducts of a series of decisions by individuals. In explaining some of the reasons why nations wage war, for example, the Report says that war "serves the same pur- pose for a society as do the holi- day, the celebration, and the orgy for the individual-the release and distribution of undifferentiated tensions." War also provides for "the dissipation of general bore- dom." Viewing nations as systems In this way is a social science habit that I don't particularlycare for, because it tends to obscure the part that individuals can play in affecting what nations do. There are some advantages to taking the Report's perspective, however. Of these, one of the most impor- tant is that the individual realizes he is really a part of the same unfamiliar mode of thought for most Americans. The U.S. doesn't have too much of a past, and such of it as there is has been largely reduced to legend (vide the deifi- cation of JFK, for a recent exam- ple), so that few interpret what this nation does in terms of what we and other nations have done in the past. Our approach is al- ways new, our circumstances in- variably unique. If one takes an historical view, though, then much of what the Report has to say seems like pain- ful truisms. After all, as the Report suggests, states have tra- ditionally been defined by the effectiveness of their warmak- ing powers. Thosethat couldn't keep up their defenses lost out, while those that were strong grew at the expense of their weaker foes. This is an oversimplication, of course, but no matter - the point is that military strength was never something that existed in- dependent of a state's internal strengths and weaknesses. A high degree of loyalty and willingness to sacrifice at home has been a pre-condition for waging war since warfare began. let for the violent inclinations of men. Furthermore, governments have come to see that simply the threat of war is often enough to channel the potential violence of a national populace, by permit- ting the maintenance of large standing armies, etc. For an example of what gov- ernments do to convince the cit- izenry that there is a real threat facing the nation, see Secretary of State Dean Rusk's comments about the "billion Chinese" who will be "armed with nuclear weap- ons." I imagine that the drum- beaters in the State Department and elsewhere must sometimes look with envy on their counter- parts in Peking, who can point to the U.S. bombings a few miles from the Chinese border when they need to muster support for Mao and his government. The importance of the threat of war is behind the distinction in the Report between peace as the absence of war, and peace as the absence of the potential for mak- ing war. It is peace of the latter kind, according to the Report, that could bring on serious social disruptions in the U.S. Whether or not the Report's nnrnl 7a s a n..vrnl 1i 4i Aa 4il 44.