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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1967
NIGHT EDITOR: MARK LEVIN
i
Laboratory Helps Ferret
Out North east Reds
THE GOVERNMENT has developed,
with the assistance of scientists at
the University of Michigan, an aerial
reconnaissance laboratory designed to
help find jungle hiding places of com-
munist terrorists in the Northeast, a
high-ranking official connected with
Air Force activity against the commun-
ists reported yesterday.
The laboratory has proved "very suc-
cessful in locating bands of terrorists
in the jungles," he said.
When the bands are found, joint
civil-police military units are sent in
t6 capture them.
Details of the laboratory and its
operation cannot be divulged at pres-
ent.
MEANWHILE, in a dispatch from Ann
Arbor, Michigan, AP reported that
the Michigan Daily, the university stu-
dent newppaper, carried a front-page
story of the work of the university
scientists in developing the laboratory
with Thai officials.
The story was the first of a four-
part series outlining what it said were
the kinds of work done by the univer-
sity under 21.5 million dollars (430
million baht) in U.S. Department of
Defense contracts.
It said about 9.7 million dollars (144
million baht) of this work is clasified
as secret.
In addition to working with Thais
in Thailand, the paper said, university
scientists have been training "twenty
to thirty" Thai military men in re-
connaissance techniques both at the
university and in Thailand.
ABOUT A HALF dozen scientists, led
by project director Joseph O. Mor-
gan of the school's infra-red physics
laboratory, reportedly made several
trips to Bangkok to help develop the
laboratory.
--THE BANGKOK (THAILAND) POST,
FRONT PAGE, OCTOBER 20, 1967
Bp PETER STEINBERGER
The author is a graduate of the
Eniversity Law School, and is pres-
ently the chairman of the Joint
Judiciary Committee and a grad-
uate student in sociology.
MR. WASSERSTEIN'S letter, in
Thursday's Daily, makes sev-
eral points I have heard before, in
The Daily and in conversation. I
think that they are incorrect, and
that they reflect the academic's
voice which comes from lecturing
others for a living, and to which
VIr. Wasserstein, as ex-editorial
writer, has perhaps succumbed of
too much complacency before the
°acts).
If I understand him, he says
that radicals have "a mental
block": they see themselves as
faultless; they hypocitically com-
plain of police brutality or Na-
tional Guard segregation while
hemselves advocating violence
and lacking Negro support; they
do not know how to construct a
political program with mass ap-
peal, and so they' turn in frustra-
tion away from party politics and
toward violence.
One at a time.
Do radicals, as distinct from
>ther humans, see themselves as
flawless? The statement can't be
wholly true, for I myself (of ra-
dical sympathies, at least) am ut-
terly reasonable, modest, and
ready (when the facts demand it)
to admit myself wrong. My friends
think otherwise, but that's bacause
they have a "mental block." On
the other hand, I have argued with
Mr. Wasserstein, and, quite ob-
jectively, found him pig-headed.
Are radicals'. hypocrites (more
so, that is than nonradicals) ? If
someone is a hypocrite (or pig-
headed) on a point we disagree
with, we spot it; if we share his
views, we don't. I think this is a
partial explanation of the Wasser-
stein findings. (I have found, on
the other hand, that all liberals
are hypocrites, by which trait they
distinguish themselves from me
and my radical acquiantance.) An-
other possible explanation is this:
that Wassersteinian investigators
tend to think, "If a set of words
would be hypocrisy when I say
them, with my beliefs and mean-
ings, then they must mean the
same thing, and so be hypocrisy,
when others use them." Thus, one
might "decide" that when the Dai-
ly reporter referred to the "Na-
tional Guard (all white)," his
point was that Guardsmen are
bigots for not recruiting Negroes;
to say this, and hide mention of
the mostly-white character of the
protesters, and the well-integrated
federal combat troops, would be
hypocrisy. True enough. But sup-
pose the reporter meant to suggest
that the combat troops, who are
sent to die, are one-third negro,
but the sons of middle-classwhite
America stay in the National
Guard, and defend the flag against
-flower children.
HIS REFERENCE, if this was
its meaning, would not be hypo-
crisy. Similarly for a criticism of
police brutality coupled with praise
for protesters' violence: if one sees
a qualitative identity in the two,
this is hypocrisy. But not so, when
one believes the two are qualita-
tively distinct.
If course I suppose even radi-
cals may speak hypocrisy. But you
have to be a conceited fool to con-
demn them for it before you know
what they meant by what they
said.
Have radicals turned to violence
because they are frustrated by
their failure at party politics?
First, what failure at party poli-
tics? I fear that Mr. Wasserstein
believes that radicals aren't in the
Great Consensus because they
don't know how to get there. Oth-
erwise stated: "If you're so smart,
why aren't you rich?") Radicals,
like other people, know how to
build a program which would, un-
der present conditions, "appeal to
a broad spectrum of the American
people": you build it out of Gallup
polls and racism.
IF RADICALS are unpopular, it
is because at the current rate of
exchange they cannot afford the
price, in political content, of pop-
ularity, and not because they are
too stupid to sell out. And the
evils in American society that ra-
dicals do try (however spastically)
to cope with are deeply embedded
in our popular attitudes, our feel-
ings toward authority, and our
economic and political structures;
they are not going to be changed
by Dr. Spock's election to the pres-
idency.
Second, who is frustrated? Lib-
eral Democrats surely have cause
to be, (and I hope they are), but
the radicals have far more influ-
ence on events today, slight and
ambivalent as that influence is,
than they had a few years ago.
Mr. Wasserstein is perhaps sug-
gesting that radicals have gone.
sour because they have failed to
win a mass following. I can't think
of any who expected even the suc-
cess they now have; if anything,
radicals are grown r ather too
sanguine. At least the supporters
of the frustration-aggression theo-
ry of radical politics could offer us
their evidences (we see none) of
radical frustration.
Third, who is violent? Mr. Was-
serstein has decided that lifting
your own arm against your fellow
man is violent. (The radicals are
violent.) Letting the police do it
for you, however, is nonviolent.
(Mr. Wasserstein is nonviolent).
THIS VIEW of things, however
satisfying to him, must seem in-
complete to others. For surely Mr.
Wasserstein would not last long,
if the poor, the angry, the "crim-
inal," the "psychotic" and the rest
of his fellow citizens who don't
make it to Harvard Law hadrwea-
pons and confronted him free of
the police and soldiers who now
do his fighting for him.
Mr. Wasserstein is violent, and
(to paraphrase the main point of
his letter), does not seem to realize
that the violence he uses against
others may be turned around and
used against him.
Protecting the Inner Sanctum of the Pentagon NO!
4
40
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
The author was Editorial Direc-
tor of The Daily in 1966-67 and is
presently a graduate1student in
history at the University of Chi-
cago.
SINCE MANY people continue
to confuse me withnBruce Was-
serstein I find it necessary to
grace his recent letter on this page
with a reply. The self-proclaimed
point of Mr. Wasserstein's letter
is that "the radicals of the campus
seem to lack a sense that the vio-
lence they advocate can be used
against the peace movement just
as well, if not better, than in
furthering its cause."
Inherent in that sentence are
Mr. Wasserstein's two basic and
wholly unsurprising miscompre-
hensions. First, as a liberal and
like most liberals, he does not
understand what the radical cause
is. My own purpose in going to
Washington was for more than
to end the war in Vietnam (which,
I presume, is the liberal conception
of what the march was about). I
went to the Pentagon to express
my right to talk to the men in-
side. Since those men may soon
attempt to force me into their
army, I did not fel unjustified in
meeting their force in keeping me
from even talking about it to
them.
Much as I detest the war in
Vietnam, I somehow don't see the
point in stoping it just so we can
start the next one in Bolivia,
South Africa, Greece and, of
course, the next door neighbors in
Thailand and Laos. So I felt it
was necessary to say more than
"Vietnam." The troops were there
to stop the dialogue and until we
can get through them I don't
think there will be any.
MR. WASSERSTEIN'S limited
perception is not surprising how-
ever. Its consistent recurrence in
liberal circles, in fact, indicates
that we have probably struck to
the core of the problem-the lack
of popular control over the Federal
government and the use available
to the federal government of "law
and order" to keep itself above
that control.
The later is a long and involved
point. Suffice it to say that a
government that misleads its pub-
lic, employs widespread and loosely
defined police enforcement to quell
dissent, and systematically domin-
ates the media to promote its own
partisan point of view cannot be,
termed a nonviolent participator
in the democratic process. It has
the power to define what is law-
ful and what is not, and we have
witnessed a particularly ruthless
exploitation of that power by a
particularly ruthles group of men
perpetrating a particularly ruth-
less administration of a great
number of peoples' lives, both
foreign and domestic. They, quite
simply, have broken the rules of
fair play often enough to mortally
distort the system of checks and
balances; it requires a redefining
of "rights" as well as a force of
some sort to restore it.
SINCE Mr. Wasserstein was not
at the march himself, his state-
ments about demonstrators spit-
ting on the troops is understand-
able. In fact, with few exceptions
the troops were talked to in
earnest. The U.S. Marshalls, as
brutal and mindless an organiza-
tion of professional bodyguards
as ever existed,, were spit upon.
The troops, most of whom were
draftees of our age, in fact became
the point of the march.
We talked to them about the
war, about ourselves, about their
rotten lot in the armed forces for
twenty-four solid hours. Once
camped in the parking lot we real-
ized who our potential allies were;
three of them risked God-knows-
what punishment to drop their
weapons and join us.
And that's where it ended. The
Pentagon didn't want to talk to
us so we either left, got our heads
busted in, or were arrested. The
piddling "violence" of breaking
through loosely held troop lines
(how many men in uniform were
seriously injured through the
weekend?) was met by beatings of
those submitting to non-violent
arrest, of those camping under
permit, of those walking alone and
unarmed around the area.
BUT NOTHING compared to
the liberal press of Mr. Wasser-
stein's vein-the N.Y. Times halv-
ed the actual number of people
there, the Washington Post printed
as fact that that marchers used
gas on troopers. James Reston
shed alligator tears that no one
might preceive a situation where
people.were "engaged in actual
revolt."
I can only conclude then, that
Mr. Wasserstein's comments are
indicative not of friendly advice,
but of self-defense. We went to
Washington to confront those in
power. Liberals denied the right
and efficacy of our access to those
in power. Could it be that liberals
are in power too, and no more
desire accountability than the
"right-wing generals" whose war
this is supposed to be?
It is easy to say "I agree with
your motives but not your tactics"
when in fact your own motives are
different and the tactics pose a
threat to you. A group of white
college , students, in the process
of building a constituency, as part
of that process engaged in the
most meaningful action available
-they threatened the Established
Order. Part of that threat was in-
deed a "cataclystic break-out of
violence to reassert our identity"
-given the state of our mass and
over-regulated society that is a
productive act of revolution in it-
self.
THAT THE liberal insight is to
rather run a new presidential
candidate of a more palatable
strain seems to indicate just how
dedicated to maintaining the pres-
ent system as is the liberals really
are. You don't save a half-sunken
ship by changing captains-unless
you've got an interest in selling
the salvage.
Looking Beyond the Sit-In
WEDNESDAY'S SIT-IN protesting war
research may be an indication that
the University community is on the way
to solving the twin problems of protest
and power.
Unlike the many other campuses in the
country which recently experienced vio-
lence in protest of various aspects of the
war and the war machine, the University
was not only restrained in disbanding
the protestors, but apparently, sincere
in discussing the issues. The University
community used non-disruptive discus-
sion and peaceful protest in what was a
teach-in rather than a sit-in.
Administrators at the University must
realize the students and faculty here have
attempted alternatives to violence. The
fact that Vice-President for Research A.
Geoffrey Norman and Engineer Dean
Van Wylen and others were willing to
discuss the issues may -be indicative that
the administration, too, realizes the fact
that they must open up the democratic
channels of power and communication
and allow the students and faculty to
have a voice in University policy-making.
Frustrated students who find doors
locked and vice-presidents tight-lipped
may have no alternative but violence by
which to express their dissent. And if de-
bate is only to delay action and if dis-
cussion is backed by one-sided power,
then it means nothing. Frustration fer-
menting in time tends to curdle liberals
into radicals.
The role of a student is not that of an
administrator, nevertheless, he should
be able to ensure that when University
policies infringe on his personal or aca-
demic rights he has an effective way of
asserting his views. The success of the
teach-in shows that this University has
valid channels in which one can do this.
But the student must be more than just
heard, he must be given a role in re-
viewing university policy.
NOW, IT IS incumbent on all parties to
find a working power structure in
which the debate and conclusion which
arise from communications can be ossi-
fied into concrete policy.
Advisory committees such as Vice-
President Norman's will not work: they
tend to become stagnant unless they are
a part of the working government struc-
ture. They must be more than just tem-
porary discussion groups called arbitrarily
to discuss a transient issue.
Dr. Norman's committees have stag-
nated and so will other committees that
are set up in such fashion. There must
be a permanent student group with power
and representation that can deal with
issues such as war research when they
arise.
Letters: Clarifying the AA UP's Stand
To the Editor:
I THINK the statement of the
American Association of Uni-
versity Professors of last Satur-
day needs no defense, but as one
who participated in the delibera-
tions preceding its issuance I
think a brief comment on your
editorial of Nov. 1 is appropriate.
, The editorial criticizes the
AAUP statement on a misreading
of its words and a misunderstand-
ing of its purpose. The statement
did not say that "all demonstra-
tions are inherently evil" and did
not condemn the demonstration
planned for Wednesday afternoon
as "necessarily disruptive - ergo
intolerable."
The AAUP Council stated its
conviction that "action by indi-
viduals or groups . . . to disrupt
the operations of the institutions
in the course of demonstrations
. . . is destructive of the pursuit
of learning itself and of a free
society." Demonstrations that do
not disrupt "the regular and es-
sential operation of the institu-
tion" are neither within the words
nor the intent of the resolution.
IN THE OPINION of those at-
tending the Council its statement
was not only consistent with its
traditionally "liberal" position but
required by it. The AAUP has
spoken out against restraints of
universities and professors which
interfere with the "free search for
truth and its free exposition,"
without regard to the commit-
ment or sincerity of those who
would impose such restraints.
If one man's academic freedom
and freedom of choice do not
necessarily end where the next
man's begins, it does not neces-
sarily follow that no man or in-
stitution in the name of exercis-
ing his own freedom.
When differences develop in the
University community as to what
the institution and its faculty
should be engaged in-a process
is required which permits a full
expression of the points of view
held by members of the commun-
-JIM HECK
-RON LANDSMAN
Humphrey Must Go Too
IT WOULD BE indecent and egregiously
unfair if, in the attempt of dumping
President Johnson, we neglected to dis-
pose of the former senior senator from
Minnesota as well,
According to the most recent Gallup
Poll, 46 per cent of the American people
wish we had never gotten involved in
the, internal affairs of Vietnam. But not
Vice-President Humphrey. His statements
Thursday before a reception in Malaysia
evince a virulent jingoism which only a
slightly besotted American Legion con-
vention could match.
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Editorial Staff
It is hard to know where to begin an
analysis of Humphrey's attack on Vietnam
critics. The lack of logic inhering in
assertions like "I don't think you prove
yourself to be an intellectual by pointing
out all our mistakes," is too obvious to
deserve mention.
But a more subtle irrationality is per-
ceptible when Humphrey blandly states,
"I don't care how many demonstrations
you have . The nation is committed." The
fact of a growing number of demonstra-
tions encompassing a larger and larger
percentage of the population would in it-
self seem to contradict the contention
that "the nation is committed." Or maybe
the vice-president defines "the nation"
differently.
IF HUMPHREY'S logic may be faulted,
his lack of any command of history is
insufferable. What can one say to gen-
eralizations like "The United States is not
what it is today because it was managed
by fools and because everybody made
mistakes. It is what it is today because
we did what we thought was best. If
ity and resolution after a deliber-
ate consideration of the issues.
It appears to me that the pro-
cess does exist here. In any event
its existence does not depend on
the responsiveness of the admin-
istration to demonstrations and
ultimata by particular individuals
or groups.
-Frank R. Kennedy
Professor of Law
Lampoon
To the Editor:
CONGRATUATIONS are clear-
ly i ordr tothat brilliant
satirist writing under the pen-
name of "John J. Carey, Professor
of Electrical Engineering." His
letter in the Tuesday Daily was
the best lampoon I have seen of
the old, guard's pathetic attempts
to discredit student groups like
SDS.
While sections are somewhat
overplayed ("p u n k s," "profes-
sional agitators," etc. are a little
too obvious, and give away the
facetious nature of the letter too
early), these blemishes are more
than compensated for elsewhere.
The call for administrators to
",live up to your responsibilities
to the Regents, to the State of
Michigan, and to the people of
the State of Michigan"-baldly
ignoring the faculty and students
of the University-is priceless.
Again, the crocodile tears over
the "inconveniencing" of the de-
fenseless ones from Washington
by Voice members are sheer in-
spiration. Likewise, the jibe about
increased student participation
in University Affairs eliminating
the "need for paid administra-
tors" must have struck uncom-
fortably close to home in more
than one Vice President's office.
All in all, the letter was a top-
notch example of political farce.
Whoever this "John J. Carey"
really is, I look forward eagerly
to chuckling along with him in
Bonehead
To the Editor:
BONEHEADED critics like Mr.
Shister should only be turned
loose on movies like "Von Ryan's
Express" or the latest John Wayne
flick. Certainly not on "The Sand
Pebbles." He may be such a con-
firmed hawk that he can see
nothing but violence.
Could The Daily possibly afford
$1.50 to send him back for a
second showing? Tell him to think
this time instead of munching
popcorn with the kiddies.
--John Siegmund
Research
To the Editor:
THE DISCUSSIONS at the re-
cent campus sit-in seemed to
center around reasons for and
methods of entirely exercising
war research from our campus.
This is both impractical and un-
realistic. First of all, some classi-
fied research is almost a prior,
necessary to the security of our
nation. For example, if we cannot
perfect an anti-missile screen, our
existence is imperilled. Despite
the cries of the pacifists,- tech-
nological inferiority to any ad-
versary is extremely dangerous
and cannot be allowed. Nor, for
obvious reasons, can all discover-
ies be made public.
Secondly, the university is the
only place capable of conducting
this research. It is only on the
campus that the minds and facili-
ties necessary can be found. Con-
sidering this, and the extremely
minor amount of classified re-
search that is being done com-
pared to nonclassified, it is unfair
for the university not to shoulder
a part of the vital burden.
The debate, then, should center
about the desirability and meth-
ods of screening-selectively lim-
iting-classified research rather
than discontinuing it altogether.
-Robert S. Loewenstein '71
'44
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"Help! I'm Getting Burned Again!"
~ JLA ;