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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: ROB BEATTIE
Kissinger
THE ALMOST'UNANIMOUS enthusiasm
with which Prof. Henry Kissinger's ap-
pointment has been received by estab-
lishment intellectuals is not without
significance. It not only demonstrates the
extent to which the chambers of foreign
policy-making have become an ideologic-
ally closed club; it also highlights h o w
self-perpetuating this club has become.
Kissinger, who will be Nixon's advisor
on national security, is considered a
"moderate Republican."' The New York
Times's list of those who applauded his
appointment includes Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, George
Kennan, Adam Yarmolinsky, Francis M.
Bator and James Reston, who threw in
his paean to the Harvard political scien-
tist in an editorial page column.
The eye scans this list in vain for a
moderate Republican. Why should this
array of liberal Democrats wax so ebul-
lient over the nomination of a Republi-
can? They could not have feared t h e
naming of someone f a r to Kissinger's
right, because it is hard to think of an
expert on national defense with suffi-
ciently general experience who h o 1 d s
strong conservative convictions.
INDEED, ideological diversity is not one
of the characteristics of this nation's
tiny clutch of academic defense special-
ists. And Kissinger is no dissenter from
the m'ajor outlines of post-war American
policies.
A strong Europe-firster who was born
in Germany, Kissinger in theory advo-
pates strengthing NATO. Even if it was,
possible to beef up the Atlantic alliance,
such a move would hardly represent a
major shift in American foreign policy.
And it is doubtful whether it is possible.
Defense department studies show that
NATO is currently far stronger militarily
than the Warsaw pact, so the advantages
of increasing alliance spending on arma-
ments would be at best negligible. Fur-
thermore, the Europeans are convinced
that any conflict on the continent will
inevitably unleash nuclear weapons; per-
suading our allies of the value of higher
expenditures on conventional weapons
will not be easy.
Kissinger has been a proponent of the
non-proliferation treaty and was one of
the first of the defense intellectuals to
argue for a "stable nuclear deterrent."
To work in practice, stable deterrence re-
quires the maintenance of the delicate
psychological balances needed to con-
vince nuclear adversaries that their po-
sitions - are secure.
Any jolting of these balances, such as
the construction of a thick Anti-ballistic
missile system or increased spending to
obtain military superiority - two of Nix-
on's scarier campaign proposals - would
render deterrence unstable. Consequent-
ly, Kissinger can be expected to h oI1 d
forth strongly against such measures in
future White House policy debates.
HIS 1POSITIONS, then, do not vary sub-
stantially with those of such estab-
lishment liberals as Schlesinger and Gal-
braith. The differences are in emphasis
- as in the case of our policy towards
NATO - and not in basic goals. This, of
course, is the problem. Our foreign pol-
icy has been made by consensus for so
long that t h e r e are no more critics.
Among academic defense experts, critics
both on the left and on the right are few
in number and less influential even than
their numbers warrant. Only in the So-
viet Union are policies formulated with
a i o r e dangerous lack of competing
views. Ideologically, Kissinger will be the
McGeorge Bundy or Walt Whitman Ros-
tow of the Nixon administration.
That he will be is not so much because
he is not really a Republican, as the Wil-
liam Buckleys will almost certainly con-
tend, as because the credulity range with-
in defense policy councils is inordinately
narrow. Genuine radical and left-liberal
professors with expertise in defense ar-
eas, for example, regularly tone down
their arguments for fear of losing any
influence at all in the state and defense
departments. -
That their fears are well founded is
illustrated by an incident that occurred
under the Kennedy administration. Dur-
ing the inner sanctum debates at the
time of the Cuban missile crisis, Adlai
Stevenson argued against the naval
blockade. He contended, not unreason-
ably, that t h e installation of offensive.
nuclear weapons in Cuba did not endan-
ger our security, since Russia's f i r s t
strike. capacity from other launching
sites was already far more than needed.
The removal of the missiles could have
been engineered through a swap with the
Soviet Union for the removal of our mis-
siles in Turkey, a step which President
Kennedy had previously favored. Indeed
Khruschev later proposed such a trade.)
THE POSITION .Stevenson took, how-
ever, convinced the Kennedys t h a t
Stevenson wasn't "tough enough." The
issue, apparently, was proving America's
manhood, and our government, while re-
sisting the hoarse cries for bombing
Cuba voiced by some fringe generals,
thought it necessary to go to the brink
of nuclear war to establish our masculin-
ity.
Within the confines of t h i s narrow
range of acceptable opinions, Kissinger
will be a responsible voice in the Nixon
administration. Indeed, within the Nixon
administration he may become a liberal
martyr. He will resist pressure from the
Strangegloves in the military, but he will
be endemically unable to question the
fundamental assumptions of American
policies, such as the necessity of a healthy
Atlantic alliance. Intellectual incest has
been carried to such an extreme among
the clan of defense experts that they are
all, more or 1 e s s, Henry Kissinger. It
would have been hard not to appoint him.
-URBAN LEHNER
Editorial Director
Of
By WALTER SHAPIR
Associate Editorial Direct
N A STRANGE way, th
week of a semester is inv
full of almost tragicritui
By dint of hastily written
and recopied class notes, s
are grappling with the loo
of another all too brief se
And for a few moments
this last minuts frantic p
are all haunted by the vi
some educational migh
beens.
At moments like this, w
ingly wonder whether the
something fundamentally
with the entire education
tem. But this sense of uneas
only a passing annoyan
few of Us follow these i
doubts back to their prime
gins.
FRESHMEN BRING t
University a prefabricated
tional attitude, molded to
survival in our public sch
tems. There students are
tioned to regard the teach
veritable fount of wisdor
spews forth unchalle
truths and defines the par
of acceptable class discuss
From high school to th
uate seminar, most studen
tinue to regard education
sort of socially sanctionedg
which the winner accumula
best grades with the lea
penditure of effort.-
When a student imbued
these perverted values ent
University, he is confronte
a mass lecture system whi
advertently encourages the
tuation of the worst of th
cational attitudes spawned
secondary schools.
The mass lecture system
logical outgrowth of an
tional theory held by mos
copied no
RO universities in this country. This
or theory contends that freshmen
e 1 a s t and sophomores must undergo an
ariably initiation period of large lecture
aria. classes until they are sufficiently
papers intellectually mature to handle
seminars.
tudents
se ends MONEY FOR STATE institu-
mester. tions such as the University is
during appropriated largely on the basis
ace, we of the enrollment of freshmen and
sion of sophomores. However, this Uni-
it-have- versity and most others, contrive
,e fleet-.to divert a disproportionate
amount of these funds to pay for
re isn't the education of upperclassmen
wrong and graduate students, who a r e
ial sys- deemed worthy of far more in-
siness is dividual attention than incoming
ce, and freshmen
internal
oval ori- BUT WHAT financial calcula-
tions neglect are the educational
to the costs of such a hierarchical sys-
tem.
educa-
ensure Confronted with three or four
ool sys- large lecture courses during his
condi- first semester, a freshman is
ier as a quickly transformed into a kind of
n who legal stenographer, concerned only
ngeable with meticulously recording the
ameters verbatim proceedings of the class-
ions. es he attends.
e grad- A result of such a one way edu-
its con- cational system is that it does
n as a little to develop a student's intel-
game in lectual assertiveness or his criti-
ates the ical thinking. Students are as sub-
ast ex- servient to their professors as they
were to their high school teach-
w i t h ers. The resulting intellectual tim-
ters the idity totally destroys the value of
ed with these upperclass seminars.
iich in-
perpe- WE HAVE all been exposed to
he edu- the results of this intellectual con-
I by the ditioning that inadvertently leads
to an emphasis of student apathy
a is the and disinterest.
educa- Remember those terribly em-
st large barrassed silences when a well-
rides,
of
meaning professor attempted to
alter the one-way monotony of
mass education by asking for
questions or even trying to spark
a discussion.
A few students busied them-
selves with wiping their glasses,
two others coughed nervously, the
remainder either peered blankly
into their open notebooks or look-
ed intently at the blackboard.
Finally, as a kind of verbal testa-
ment to our mutual failings, the
professors attempted to recover
face by saying hurriedly, "Well,
as I was saying in my lecture ..."
The underlying problem is that
the student is not interested in do-
ing serious academic work when
he enters the University and the
lecture system hardens his apathy
into an almost unalterable atti-
tude toward education.
TO MAKE such a mindless sys-
tem even begin to work, coercion
must become one of its major
motivational elements. This coer-
cion primarily takes the form of
grade point averages and the aca-
demic terms which demand a
fixed amount of work to be com-
pleted according to rigid dead-
lines.
While coercion has never been
tQo popular with educational
theorists, the justification for
these academic regulations is that
under the present system they re-
present the only way of guaran-
teeing that the student will ab-
sorb at least a minimal degree of
intellectual content per semester.
Some of the more coercive as-
pacts of the University, language
and distribution requirements, are
currently under student attack.
And while the rationale for coer-
cion is weakest in regard to the
language requirement, there are
larger implications in this issue
worth examining.
The most convincing argument
advanced by the proponents of the
language requirement is that the
current regulations are the only
way most students will ever gain
a proficiency in another language.
While it is difficult to deny the
importance of a knowledge of a
foreign language for adanced
work in many fields, what is for-
gotten is that the requirement
breeds a sense of hostility in
students which all but thwarts the
practical goals of coercion.
The reason coercion is so dis-
tinctly unsuccessful in spreading
a knowledge of foreign language
is because the bulk of any intro-
ductory language sequence, unlike
most other academic programs,
consists primarily of rote memori-
zation of an entirely new vocab-
ulary and grammatical principles.
Opponents of the language re-
quirement feels that its removal
would force counselors to come
into closer contact with students
in order to persuade them of the
importance of learning a foreign
language.
ONE WONDERS whether we
shouldn't apply this same princi-
ple to the University at large and
seek to restructure undergraduate
education, so that the student de-
velops a better personal rationale
for intellectual labor than the
coercive, "I have to."
We must recognize that at-
temptsrat meaningfulmass educa-
tion are wasteful impossibilities
until we destroy the deep-seated
resistance to learning held by a
large number of undergraduates
and a significant number of grad-
uate students.
The University should consider
as its initial function - upon
which all else depends - the de-
struction of these built-in defense
mechanisms against education.
Any attempt at readjustment of
education values must proceed to
abandon the present lecture sys-
tem which tends to isolate the
student from any glimpse of the
dynamic aspects of education.
late papers
There are many forms which er been able to enroll more than
could be taken by a freshman and a fraction of Pilot freshmen due
sophomore program geared to to a shortage of funds,
make incoming students deeply in-
volved in shaping their own edu- YET THE FINANCIAL woes of
cational destinies. And it would the Pilot Program are merely sym-
be premature and arbitrary to ptomatic of the degree to which
attempt to outline any specific the University has minimized the
programs here. importance of challenging t h e
educational attitudes of its stu-
HOWEVER, IN THIS context, dents.
the Pilot Program is a hopeful ex- If education is ever to be more
periment definitely worthy of than a massive charade for the
mention. The significance of the majority of students on this cam-
program has been largely over- pus, the University must make an
shadowed by the more glamorous immediate commitment to in-
and far better financially endowed volve incoming students with di-
Residential College. rect participation in their own
While current financial reali- educational lives.
ties preclude a large scale expan- Retaining the traditional no-
sion of the Residential College tion that seminars and small
concept in the forseeable future, a classes are reserved for upper-
much more modest capital outlay classment and graduate students
would be necessary to expand the merely enhances the prospect that
Pilot Program from its current these students will not be pre-
outpost in Alice Lloyd Hall pared to take advantage of such
The philosophy behind the Pilot intimate classroom settings.
Program attempts to provide in- Unless incoming studets are
coming freshmen with an environ- Uls noigsuet r
ment in which the division be- inspired to revere education for
tween classroom and dormitory is its own sake, rather than as a
significantly lessened. Like any mythical passport to some distant
attempt to create a sense of in- kingdom, the significance of any
tellectual community, the ilotacademic reform on this campus
Program strongly promotes stu- is pathetically small,
dent involvement in their own The futile gestures of the last
educational destinies. weeks of a semester clearly Indi-
Yet from the outset the Pilot cate that coercion is no substitute
Program has been pathetically un- for student involvement.
derfunded. Just one small exam- But until students are inspired
pie of the consequences of this to discover that borrowed lecture
lack of support is that Freshman notes do not hold the key to aca-
Seminar, a course designed to re- demia, these futile posturings are
place English 123 with something destined to be repeated with the
far more content-filled, has nev- regularity of the seasons.
The Great Race
of .1969
By STEVE ANZALONE
WHETHER ONE GETS his daily news from the New York Times or
from Chet and David, he has probably been aware lately of an
unusual absence of big news events. The news media has been using
feature stories to compensate for the news slump in this time of limbo
between two Administrations and two holidays.
This deceptiye appearance that the world has again resumed a
leisurely pace will not last long into the next year. Politics 1969 will
not move at a gracious, leisurely pace. If anything, Politics 1969 may be
seen as the Great Race.
The Great Race will be run between young sprinters carrying
the baton of radical politics and the better conditioned long-distance
runners who will be carrying the politics of appeasement.
THE WINNER WILL EARN a large element of dissatisfied people
in the country not committed to radical politics. These people may
live in the ghetto, go to college, or even attend high school in New
York City. These are the people that radicals must enlist to give their
movement any kind of lasting political significance.
At the same time, the appeasers will be out to convince the dis-
satisfied that things are not really that bad. They will argue that
radical politics is a hoax. They will try to convince the dissatisfied that
they should settle for less.
Right now, the smart money is on the appeasers--Nixon, welfare
programs, liberal Democrats, college presidents, police. After a lot of
misunderstanding and foolish mistakes, most of these are beginning
to learn how to wage an effective offensive of their own against the
radicals.
Unfortunately for radical politics, conditions in America are prob-
ably going to get better before they get noticeably worse. This will make
possible the new offense: Accommodate instead of repress.
THE RADICALS FEAR this reform movement. It could kill them.
If enough people are "co-opted" or bought out forusmall reform, their
movement will never get enough support to launch a meaningful
attack at the roots of America's sore-spots.
The appeasers will no longer assist the radicals by taking un-
popular stands against issues like student power. Now, student power
has become middle-of-the-road, a catch-all phrase symbolizing things
like moderate academic reform.
In the past, university administrators mistakedly confused student
power with radical politics. But now with the cries for a "liberated"
university, presidents and department heads are becoming convinced
that it might not be a bad idea to share a little power with the students.
Their original fears-that someone like Mark Rudd would be run-
ning the school-no longer worry them. They are learning that students
involved in decision-making will probably be reasonable. It is safe to
bring them into the decision-making process and thus pit student
against student. The radicals' base of power will then be seriously
undercut.
IN A SIMILAR WAY, city officials and police forces across the
country are slowly beginning to learn from the horrendous debacle in
Chicago that the way to suppress radical opinion is not with clubs and
MACE. The Mayor Daley's will probably no longer aid the radicals
by denying them access to public facilities.
All public officials will be less inclined to make mistakes in the
coming year. And without the mistakes of the Grayson Kirk's, the
politics of confrontation will be in real jebpardy. The radicals will no
longer have issues made for them; they wil be forced to make their own.
This was the lesson of the SDS march into the Administration Bldg.
during the student strike on election day. Once inside the building, the
strikers could not think of an issue they "could win on." President
Fleming did not create one for them by calling in the police to evict
them. They had little choice but to leave.
ERIC CHESTER POSED the question at one Radical Caucus meet-
ing, "Where does radical politics go when the war ends?" It is a
question with no immediate answer. Military research has proved to be
an ineffective issue to provoke student wrath. There are very few good
cases of flagrant violations of academic freedom. Students on all-
white campuses will not rally against something as nebulous and "in-
visible" as racism.
It is necessary to have a concrete issue like Vietnam because most
people do not respond to issues in the abstract. Foreign military inter-
vention is not an issue until people see the "boy down the block" or son
Johnny being sent to Asia. Police brutality is not an issue until Amer-
icans can see the Chicago "police riot" on television.
The radicals need good concrete issues to enlist support for their
movement. Without genuine abuses on the concrete level, support does
not increase. And radical groups like SDS must measure its power in
terms of its numbers. If they cannot increase their numbers, radical
groups are finished as a political movement.
Not only are the appeasers becoming less inclined to make issues
for the radicals, it is likely some radical support will revert to the liberal
Democrats as they attack Nixon. With the Democrats leading a good
attack, who needs radicals?
I
Fr
1
McCracken
YESTERDAY, President-elect Richard
Nixon appointed, Prof. Paul Mc-
Cracken of the business administration
school as chairman of his Council of
Economic Advisors.
McCracken, who formerly served on
the council during the Eisenhower ad-
ministsration, finds himself after a lapse
of eight years, heir to the most import-
ant economic post in the federal govern-
ment.
Like many of the advisors who will
surround Nixon, McCracken sees infla-
tion and the overheating of the economy
as a major problem that must be correct-
ed. '
Hopefully, McCracken will be able to
achieve price stability without aggravat-
ing the nation's social problems.
IN A SPEECH in Montreal last October,
McCracken said, "While we can never
be complacent about any unemployment,
with the unemployment rate at the third-
quarter level of 3.6 percent, the economy
was experiencing heavy price-cost pres-
sures."
McCracken believes he can keep our
work force at virtual full-employment
while cutting inflation.
are held under 2.5 percent per year,
average family income will be close to
$11,000 by the middle of the next de-
cade.
He seeks "some form of more rational
and generalized income maintenance "to
achieve effective redistribution of in-
come between white and nonwhite mem-
bers of the work force through govern-
ment expenditure programs.
,McCracken believes his policies pre-
sent a "fundamentally liberal strategy of
economic and social policy." However, the
'probability that "liberal" goals like Mc-
Crackens can be achieved is highly
doubtful in light of certain campaign
statements Nixon made last fall.
Nixon maintained there is a "security
gap" in U.S. armed forces and will pro-
bably favor major defense spending for
research projects and for full-scale anti-
ballistic missile system - which could
cost upwards of $70 billion.
Furthermore, the whole question of
"risking unemployment," and changing
the tax structure to cool our overheated
economy, is essentially a problem created
by the expense of the Vietnam War.
'Er'KT TTCI TTTTTVKTrT T _ nnei1'iffMr-
HOWARD KOHN ggll
In praise of folly
For Sale: Male, 18, guaranteed for 120
credit hours or life (whichever comes first).
JIMMY J. JAMES came to the University to
beat the system.
Because of his deferment he could escape
the inhumanity of the military without going
to jail. Because his parents paid the bills he
could avoid the indignity of work without going
in debt.
Jimmy J. James had a lot going for him.
He learned enough' to be an expert but not
enough to be a thinker, the best combination un-
der the circumstances. His ideas were fertile and
his feelings sterile.
He learned how to lisp in French. He learned
the alphabetical order of every insect in the
genus cucaracha, which includes cockroaches.
When he cut classes he bragged. When he got
an 'A' despite cutting classes he bragged even
more.
"THIS IS THE WAY it should be," said Jimmy
J. James. "I have forsworn the temptations of
the degree-and-profit world. I am a student. I
study what is extraneous and I learn what is use-
less."'
Yet deep down, under the footnotes of his
honors thesis, he could see the wholesalers of
and Robert's Rules of Order without believing
either. He could sign petitions without reading
them.
So he changed his allegiance to a more liber-
ating creed than academics. And he joined the
forces of the Lone Ranger boy scouts and the
Jackie Robinson pink panthers.
"THIS IS THE WAY IT should be," said
Jimmy J. James. "I have exposed the emptiness
of grades and research papers..I am a radical.
I am the most loyal and the most cynical and the
most apathetic revolutionary of them all."
But still the profiteers smiled and waited. Now
there were other recruiters with them, recruiters
who promised sweat and infections instead of
martinis and vacations.
Jimmy J. James tried not to panic. He work-
ed harder at beating the system. He prepared
more speeches for noon rallies. He sent more hate
letters to HUAC.
And he took his work more seriously. He
stopped reading Green Hornet comic books and
playing all-night card games.
But the others told him he would n e e d
more organization and more discipline if he was
to remain free from the bureaucracy of the sys-
tem.
And so Jimmy J. James learned about The
-w