£ick1an Bali4
Seventy-Sixth Year
t - EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
Where Opinions Are Free. 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN APBOR, MICH. NEWS PHONE: 764-0552
truth Wil Prevail
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: JOHN MEREDITH
stribution Changes:
Inadequate, Ineffective
Getti nQg
IN FISCAL YEAR 1963-64 (the
"FY" is simply a term used to
confuse laymen by changing the
beginning of the year from Jan. 1
to July 1, a compromise, I suppose
with the Jewish New Year), the
University received $14.6 million
in student fees, $38.2 million in
general funds from the state, $42.3
million from the federal govern-
ment and $7.4 million in gifts and
grants.
These are the funds which pay
for. most of the instructional and
research activities of the Univer-
sity.
The fact that there is such di-
versity among the sources of rev-
enue for the University has been
used to great advantage by ad-
ministrators here and is one of the
reasons for the strengths of the
University.
Groups in competition for the
University's services can be bal-
anced and counter balanced and,
with judicious use of pleas, ex-
hortations, stirring orations and
subtle hints, the University is able
to stay on the thin line that spells
strong financial backing for what
the University-not those handing
out the money-want to do.
When you get right down to it,
you won't find much support' in
Lansing for the scholar-l'esearch-,
er-sometimes-teacher in humani-
ties of even in many social or
natural sciences. Nevertheless
these faculty, and they are pretty
well supported, are the heart of
the University.
THE REGENTS last Friday approved a
new system of distribution require-
ments, proposed by the faculty curriculum
committee, which will go into effect at
the end of the present academic year.
The new setup was hailed as "liberaliz-
ed" from all quarters. But it is not sig-
nificantly more liberal than the old sys-
tem.
The curriculum committee insisted on
maintaining an extreme aura of secrecy
while discussing distribution requirements
in the fall of 1964 and offered vague
intimations that the lofty task of study-
ing "the whole philosophy behind distri-
bution requirements" was being under-
taken.
With all this, one would have expected
some terribly radical plan for curricu-
lum reform to have been unveiled this
fall. What a disappointment!
Via a few simple structural adjust-
ments, students are granted some small
,addition to their freedom of choice over
courses. However, the committee certain-
ly failed to really alter the philosophy
behind requirements, ignoring the truly
experimental curriculums which are prov-
ing very successful at progressive univer-
sities across the nation - Swarthmore,
Rice, Columbia, Wayne.
THE THREE AREAS of curriculum most
often attacked - freshman composi-
tion, language and natural sciences-
were given practically no consideration.
Instead of requiring the freshman to
take a one-semester composition course
in which he writes on abstract topics us-
ually unrelated to the rest of his studies,
why not abolish the requirement and
have professors submit written evalua-
tions of each freshman student's writing,
based on the papers he has submitted for
each class, to be attached to his tran-
script?
Students are- still required to achieve
a fourth-semester proficiency in one for-
eign language. The utility of such a re-
quirement is dubious. In fact, the lan-
guage requirement ought to be complete-
ly abolished.
The most cogent arguments advanced
for a language requirement are:
-Graduate schools require the knowl-
edge of two foreign languages.,
-Students learn the culture of a for-
eign people through the study of litera-
ture and even the study of syntax and
speech patterns.
-With the increasing number of stu-
dents traveling in Europe, study of an-
guages will enable them to communicate
with the natives more effectively.
BUT THESE THREE arguments can be
effectively rebutted:
-By the time one is ready to demon-
strate his proficiency in a foreign 'lan-
guage for his doctorate, no sooner than
five years after his undergraduate lan-
guage training, he very likely has forgot-
ten much of what he learned as a fresh-
man or sophomore and must be tutored
or at least study independently a con-
siderable deal.
Editorial Staff
ROBERT .OHNSTON. Editor
LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM ROBERT HIPPLER
Managing Editor Acting Editorial Director
JUDITH FIET.D ............s...Personnel Director
LAUREN BAHR .... Assoate Managing Editor
JUDITH WARREN Assistant Managing Editor
GAIL BLTTMBERG .............. Magazine Editor
PETER SARASOHN ..............Contributing Editor
LLOYD RAFF ..... .... .... Acting Sports Editor
SHELDON DAVIS...............Acting Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Robert Carney Clarence Fanto,
Mark R. Kilingsworth, John Meredith, Leonard
Pratt, Bruce Wasserstein.
DAY EDITORS : Merle Jacob, Carole Kaplan, Lynn
Metzger, Roger Rapoport, Harvey Wasserman, Dick
Wingfield, Charlotte Wolter.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS : Alice Bloch, Deborah
Blum Babette Cohn, Gail Jorgenson, Robert Kliv-
ans, Lawrence Medow, Neil Shister, Joyce Winslow.
SPORTS NIGHT EDITORS: Rick Feferman, Jim La-
Sovage, Bob McFarland, GilSamberg, Dale Sielaff,
Rick Stern, Jim Tindall, Chuck Vetzner.
Business Staff
CY WELLMAN, Business Manager
ALAN GLUECKMAN............Advertising Manager
SUSAN CRAWFORD ... . Associate Business Manager
JOYCE FEINBERG............Finance Manager
MANAGERS: Harry Bloch, BruceHillman, Marline
Kuelthau, Jeffrey Leeds, Gail Levin, Susan Perl-
stadt. Vic Ptasznik, Elizabeth Rhein, Ruth Segall,
Jill Tozer, Elizabeth WV-4man.
Some graduate disciplines, such as so-
ciology, are now waiving language re-
quirements in lieu of training in mathe-
matics.
And then, not everyone goes on to
graduate school.
-Unless a student plans to continue
study of foreign language, he probably
won't acquire a great deal of knowledge
about a foreign culture.
In the required four semesters, too
much time must be devoted to learning
grammar rules and attaining an elemen-
tary-level vocabulary to permit a stu-
dent to delve into the culture very deeply.
Courses in English on foreign litera-
ture, philosophy, history and philology
can be more useful.
-To suggest that the University should
force all students to suffer through the
language requirement because some of
them may be going to Europe is absurd.
And even many of those who have trav-
eled in Europe have found that their uni-
versity training in language really doesn't
pe'rmit them to communicate with the
people, even about things like room and
board arrangements.
It takes a program of actually living
with and constantly conversing with a
foreign people to attain much of a degree
of proficiency in their language.
The curriculum committee did, how-
ever, make one change in the language
requirement 'that it felt would be miti-
gating. A student can now "get the lan-
guage requirement out of the way" by
electing a concentrated one-year pro-
gram.
So a freshman can now waste one-half
of his year in the profound study of gram-
mar rules when he should be learning to
think critically.
IN THE AREA of natural sciences, the
committee has relieved some burden
by requiring only one lab course instead
of the previously required two-semester
lab sequence. This still does not signifi-
cantly help the liberal-arts oriented stu-
dent who is forced to elect science courses
designed to transmit specialized, techni-
cal knowledge to prospective science ma-
jors.
A program of philosophy or history of
science courses would certainly be more
relevant for liberal-arts majors.
The curriculum committee feels that
the areas of social science and humanities
have been liberalized with the option of
students to choose any three courses they
desire from each of these areas.
Yet, this program still does not allow
the student to obtain the "broad" sam-
pling that educators encourage him to
seek. It is impossible for him to obtain a
general knowledge of a significant num-
ber of the disciplines in each area. Nor
can he compare and synthesize the
knowledge from diverse courses:
Perhaps one solution would be that in-
stead of devoting each course to an iso-
lated study of a given discipline, the
University could develop a series of in-
terdisciplinary courses to study and com-
pare systems.
For instance, students could investi-
gate the techniques of the sciences of
history, psychology, sociology and philos-
ophy for studying social phenomena as
racial segregation, nationalism or protest
movements.
In the area of humanities, useful cours-
es might compare Eastern and Western
art forms or study the relationship of
the artist to the intellectual community
as a whole.
BUT SUGGESTIONS like the above for
curriculum reform at the University
need the organized backing of faculty
and students.
The two bodies now organized to study
curriculum are the faculty curriculum
committee and the student literary col-
lege steering committee. The problems of
the faculty committee have been men-
tioned.
The students of the literary college
.committee, which advises the faculty
committee, do not show indications of be-
ing innovative either. If anything, they
are even more wary of an advanced
educational reform program.
Last fall, in their discussion of distri-
bution requiirements. they actulallV made
LOOK, FOR INSTANCE, at the
University's approach to faculty
recruiting. Hypothetical Dean says
to Hot Prospect at Number One,
Two or Three department in such
and such a field (no one from
anywhere else would be consider-
ed):
"We'd like to see you at the
University, and we know you'd
really like to come. Your research
would really prosper and expand
with our great library system and
research and administrative fa-
cilities and some of the best people
in your field to help you with
advice and moral support. But
this is still a teaching university,
and if you come you will have to
do some teaching, and that means
undergraduate teaching.'
Hot Prospect groans and bar-
gains a little to get that teaching
requirement lowered, but finally
gives in with visions of the great
research he will be able to do.
However, Hot Prospect, though
hooked, still has to be supported.
His research and publications in-
come will be healthy but not
enough.
Hypothetical Dean goes to hypo-
thetical administrator across the
street (administrators are always
"across the street," even if they
aren't) and cries out for money-
the more the better-thus: "This
department is a shambles. Every-
one is leaving or doing too much
research or too much administer-
ing or too much consulting. Hot
Prospect is just what we need to
Michigan MAD
By ROBERT JOHNSTON
act as a catalyst for better teach-
ing, spectacular research and new,
improved morale. But HP wants
money, and so does everybody
else."
HYPOTHETICAL Administrator
smiles and rubs his chin and says
he'll see what he can do, though
he "can't promise anything," and
he begins to look about for money-
saving expedients and money-
making schemes.
He goes to see Vice-President
One and says, "We'll have to let
Hot Prospect do a little more
research and less teaching than
usual; That way we can pay him
less." But Vice-President Two im-
mediately wails, "And what will
HP do all this research in? We
have no more space. And who will
pay the indirect costs of admin-
istering and supporting his re-
search?"
Hypothetical Administrator
smiles and rubs his chin and says
he'll see what he can do.
"We'll have to go to the stu-
dents," he says, "Maybe even add
a few thousand of them. That
should bring in some money."
"But who is going to teach all
Those Millions ($$): Strategy
those students?" wails Vice-
President Three.
"More teaching fellows, larger
classes, longer lines, a longer sum-
mer." replies Hypothetical Ad-
mini-trator to Vice-President
Three at the same time that he
says to Hypothetical Dean, "We've
got to do more recruiting." In
chorus they reply, "But we need
money!" Hypothetical Adminis-
trator smiles and rubs his chin,
for now the plot is beginning to
-thicken.
HE GOES up to Lansing. "Here
are all these fine Michigan youth,
your sons and daughters, that
have a right to be educated. You
don't want us to do an inferior
job do you? It takes money, and
costs are rising astronomically."
Hypothetical Administrator
begs and cajoles, and innundates
the legislators with figures and
cost compilations and finally
comes home with the money. "It's
not enough," is the chorus loud
and long. He smiles and rubs his
chin and says he'll see what he
can do.
The next plane to Washington
sees him abroad. There are in-
numerable foundations and gov-
ernment agencies with money to
spare. He lobbies and cajoles. A
little money starts flowing. Some
of it is for research. That's all
right. The University can even
ease a little of this money into
other and more important areas.
And while he's at it he can
funnel some money into other
kinds of research in and around
Ann Arbor. That's all right too.
Where there is money there are
jobs, and jobs are the most power-
ful incentive of all in state and
local politics.
Hypothetical Administrator
comes home, is greeted with cheers
and congratulations publicly and
with banner headlines, but in the
conference room the chorus is the
same: "Money!" He smiles and
'ubs his chin and says he'll see
what he can do.
THE UNIVERSITY has many
rich graduates. Many of them love
the University, many love the foot-
ball and basketball team, many
just need something to do with
their money. So the great fund
drive is organized. Hypothetical
Administrator sends representa-
tives and vice-presidents and foot-
ball and basketball teams and
public relations men scampering
across the land to tell great tales
of the University.
The money starts coming in.
Buildings are built and properly
dedicated with fanfare and hoopla
and are quickly filled with re-
searchers and medical patients,
even students. Hypothetical Ad-
ministrator smiles and rubs his
chin and has another Manhattan.
And he deserves it-occasionally
-$9.1 million for 13,000 students
in 1939, $137 million for 27,000 in
1964.
from Russia With Love
~U \1
-r
/" J
USS-
U. S. Strategy for Peace?
By ROGER RAPOPORT
SINCE THE U.S. government ad-
mitted last week that it turned
down a Hanoi offer for peace talks
in the fall of 1964 there has been
a lot of speculation about its
good intentions.
Eric Sevareid's story on the
peace offer came after President
Johnson had been claiming for
months that Hanoi had ignored all
our peace offers.
This suggests that the United
States is really not interested in
any sort of peace talks on Viet
Nam. The truth is that such talks
would be inconsistent with our
foreign policy of peaceless co-
existence.
FEW AMERICANS realize that
in recent years peaceless coexist-
ence has been the fundamental
precept of American foreign policy.
It is based on the assumption
that peace is helltand war really
isn't so bad after all.
The policy was implemented af-
ter military officials explained to
the State Department that the
United States has oftenlost at
the conference table but has never
lost an inch on the battlefield.
The basic precept of peaceless
coexistence is that Communism
is bad. Hence our country backs
such upright non-Communist na-
tions as Spain and Formosa while
opposing such totalitarian Com-
munist concentration camps as
Yugoslavia and Russia.
ON A MOMENT'S notice our
nation will oppose Communism
anywhere it rears its ugly head.
Sometimes the United States gives
allies like Turkey, India and Paki-
stan weapons to defend their bor-
ders against Communist aggres-
sion.
While the Communists cannot
be depended on to violate the
borders, still peaceless coexistence
is maintained anyway. Turkey, for
example used its American arms
to bombard Cyprus while India
and Pakistan took on each other.
Sometimes the United States is
not able to get a war off the
ground. The Bay of Pigs incident
in Cuba illustrated that.
However the United States was
much more successful in its ef-
forts to start a war against Viet
Nam. We began by backing the
Diem government, which called off
free elections stipulated by the
Geneva treaty. (Diem would have
lost to Ho Chi Minh 4 to 1 ac-
cording to President Eisenhower.
We stayed on to provide military
advice to ten different South Viet-
namese governments.
Critics of the United States
claim that the country has no
right to be in Viet Nam because
the 1954 Geneva agreement stipu-
lated that foreign troops must stay
out of the country. This criticism
is unjustified, however, because
the United States never signed the
Geneva agreement.
THE MOST RECENT imple-
mentation of peaceless coexistence
was in the Dominican Republic
where it took some 30,000 Marines
to handle the 57 Communists who
were sparking the revolution there.
Where the mighty arm of the
U.S. government will next strike
a blow against some poor insigni-
ficant little country is open to
conjecture.
But farsighted military planners
are now hard at work on a C-5
superjet transport fleet that can
put 15,000 troops, their tanks,
trucks, and 'guns anyhere in the
world in less than a day.
The C-5 will be used to stop
brushfire wars.
HENCE it is plain to see that
the State Department planners
from their office in the foggy bot-
tom section of Washington are on
top of the situation. It makes you
proud to be an American.
I 96.._
_ j
Letters: Did Johnson Lie About Viet Nam?
To the Editor:
IN FRIDAY'S DAILY I suggested
that the lies of our President
are difficult for minds raised to
trust and respect our leaders to
accept. We may have a strong
tendency to simply refuse to be-
lieve that our President could lie,
could say Hanoi was unwilling to
negotiate and lead us to believe
that there was no alternative to
his sending young Americans and
Vietnamese to their death.
Jim Martin's letter in Satur-
day's Daily is an impressive mani-
festation of just such a tendency.
Indeed, Mr. Martin takes heroical-
ly upon himself the onus of at-
tempting what not even the most
brazen of the administration's
apologists has tried-to convince
us that the President has not
actually lied after all. His argu-
ment is extraordinary.
Although Mr. Martin claims
that I have not demonstrated that
President Johnson lied, he does
not dispute the New York Times
story I referred to (revealing se-
cret testimony of high govern-
ment officials at secret hearings
of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee) which does clearly
demonstrate that our
and his administration
to us about the Santo
intervention. Thus his
without foundation.
President
have lied
Domingo
claim is
MR. MARTIN CLAIMS that I
have not demonstrated President
Johnson lied at his press con-
ference on July 13th, 1965 when
he said, "I must say that candor
compels me to tell you that there
has not been the slightest indica-
tion that the other side is interest-
ed in negotiation or unconditional
discussions, although the United
States has made some dozen at-
tempts to bring 'that about."
What does he give us to sub-
stantiate this claim? He finds
great significance in what he takes
to be the present tense (marking
its occurrence with an exclamation
point!) of the sentence as in-
dicated by "is" in the phrase "the
other side is interested in nego-
tiations or unconditional discus-
sions."
Astonishingly, he seems to be-
lieve this shows that the President
was thus speaking of willingness
"at or about" the time that he
spoke, and thus previous willing-
ness -on Hanoi's part "is irrele-
vant."
But in order for our President
to avail himself of the defense
Mr. Martin 'proffers, he would
have to have said "there is not
the slightest indication that the
other side is interested."
The President, however, must
be denied Mr. Martin's succor.
Not only did he say "there has not
been the slightest indication," but
he also spoke of some dozen at-
tempts at such talks which the
United States "has made."
If the President actually meant
the sentence in the implausible
way Martin says he did (meant
only willingness "at or about" the
time he spoke, so that previous
willingness was irrelevant), why
is it that Johnson himself regards
these previous attempts as rele-
vant enough to include them in
the very same sentence?
MR. MARTIN also refers to a
question I asked about the war.
Suppose, as Jack Langguth of the
New York Times and others sug-
gest, we can win the war by con-
tinuing to use our bombers on the
South Vietnamese countryside if
we are prepared to kill 2 or 3
civilians for every enemy soldier:
what considerations could justify
this slaughter? It is disconcerting,
though most revealing, to find
that Mr. Martain claims that this
is merely a rhetorical question.
In answer to it he presents us
with a situation containing a fron-
tier family, attacking Indians, and
hostage children, which he says
he thinks is analogous to the situ-
ation I describe.
There is precious little to com-
pensate us for the mental feat of
taking this distressingly simplistic
and wildly disanalogous construc-
tion seriously. Such nonsense re-
quires, if anything, forebearance.
H o w e v e r, after negotiating
through it we are shortly amazed
to find Mr. Martin drawing upon
it to ask (with a negative answer
waiting coyly in the wings) "Who
can condemn South Viet Nam and
the United States for defending
the South Vietnamese even though
it entails the loss of large num-
bers of South Vietnamese?"
SUCH "ARGUMENTS" are bad
enough in their own right, but
they become all the more appal-
ling when used to justify the
killing by our government of
thousands of helpless and inno-
cent Vietnamese men, women and
children who have never asked us
there to so "defend" them.
We are killing civilians not at
the invitation of the countless
thousands of present and potential
victims of our policy of mass
slaughter, but at the "request" of
the succession of generals whose
unpopular regimes stay in power
only with the backing and ap-
proval of the United States.
Lastly, and incredibly, Mr. Mar-
tin says that I apparently believe
that Communism is not so bad as
slavery. Unless he is also laying
claim to clairvoyance, his assertion
is exemplary for its lack of foun-
dation, since I do not discuss (or
even mention) slavery or Com-
munism, nor a fortiori, do I com-
pare the latter favorably with the
former. But perhaps having such
beliefs so groundlessly attributed
to one is today's price for speaking
out against the war.
-Frederic Korn
Dept. of Philosophy
Joseph Alsop: The Coming Boost in Defense Funds
EDITOR'S NOTE: Joseph Al-
sop is substituting for Walter
Lippmann for the three weeks
of Lippmann's vacation.
WASHINGTON - Despite the
widespread excitement about
the successful government pres-
sure on aluminum and copper
prices, the key argument for the
government's intervention has not
yet been publicly revealed.
The President and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara were
in fact persuaded that it was
urgent to secure price rollbacks
simply because they knew they
worn an,-.. ftohn',n fn n'Rk fnr. n
fense spending then rose rather
rapidly to over $50 billion per
annum; and this happened, more-
over, when the American gross
national product was about $350
billion per annum.
Today, in sharp contrast, our
GNP is at the $700 billion level;
and last year's defense budget
was above $50 billion. Hence the
coming increase, massive though
it will certainly be, should have
nothing like the economically de-
forming effects of the Korea-time
defense increases.
The President, his economic ad-
visers and Secretary McNamara
usual, President Johnson has bat-
tened every hatch, laid his black-
snake whip on every official back
and taken every other imaginable
precaution to make sure the coun-
try does not get the facts until
he chooses to announce them.
AS USUAL, all these character-
istic Presidential goings on are
quite illogical; for a whopping in-
crease in defense outlays is much
less likely to cause alarm and
confusion if there has been enough
advance discussion of the problem
to cause people to discount the
official news in the President's
vv.D.,.,PCa at.
summer's supplemental defense
appropriation of $1.7 billion main-
ly to "buy capacity," as he has
put it.
If the capacity is used to the
full, as Secretary McNamara must
suppose it may have to be, huge
hardware orders are plainly going
to be placed. The final size of
these orders will, in turn, depend
on whether Gen. Westmoreland
has correctly calculated his supply
requirements for the next 12
months.
THERE IS some feeling in the
Pentagon that the members of
Pentagon will have to be increased
by about $10 billion. Much less
would be rather surprising, and
an increase above $10 billion-say
of 12 or 13 billion-is perhaps not
unlikely.
For the reasons already pointed
out, there is the widest difference
between this defense increase
arising from the Vietnamese War
and the much bigger increase that
arose from the Korean War. The
real thing to fear, in truth, is
probably not resulting superheat-
ing of the economy; which the ad-
ministration is already working to
prevent.