4 OPINION Page 4 Thursday, November 17, 1983 The Michigan Daily Freedom and the fear of nuclear war I have full sympathy for all champions of freedom. I have seen many forms of unfreedom and oppression in my life-time. When I was 121I joined the freedom fighters in Nazi-occupied Poland. I was 14 when I took part in the War- saw uprising. I have seen and experienced various forms of suppression many times sin- ce. So it goes without saying that freedom is precious to me. Yet of late I have seen curious contortions of freedom. The notion of "freedom" has been used as a football field of politics and all kinds of vested interests. When I hear Soviet dissidents talking about freedom, it rings genuine. When I hear the President of Harvard University defending freedom of research against possible limitations of military resear- ch, it rings less genuine. WHY? Mainly because the president of Har- vard is not free to express his own personal opinion but rather must voice one that agrees with the vested interests of the university. He speaks not as a human being but as a head of a corporation. He thus speaks out of his essential unfreedom: He says what the corporation wan- ts him to say. This is not a genuine voice of freedom. So I reason: A stand for vested interests and a stand for freedom are two different things. We should not confuse the two. The first con- clusion therefore is that those engaged in military research, and who derive huge benefits from it, speak not on behalf of freedom, but on behalf of their vested interests. Yet the issue is not so simple. We all know it. The issue of freedom is one of the most impor- tant, and one of the most delicate in our times. Let us approach it with caution and prudence - without assuming that any of us is a unique spokesman for freedom, or the sole repository of truth regarding freedom. For this reason, I am not especially impressed by the opinion of the president of Harvard, or president of any other university for that matter; for each represents not so much his individual voice of conscience but more likely the vested interests of the institution; and none is necessarily more valuable than an individual opinion of a student. Let us be clear about it: We do not have experts on freedom - academic or otherwise. Freedom is part of a larger perspec- tive on human life within the context of a society. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU proclaimed in his famous treatise The Social Contract that "Man is born free and wherever we look we see him in chains." Rousseau was a loveable romantic. Yet, we have to disagree with his concept of freedom. No, we are not born free. We are born bound. Life is a journey out of bon- dage. Freedom is not given to us on a silver platter. We have to win freedom to possess it. And then we must continually demonstrate that we deserve it. During the last seven centuries, the univer- sities have demonstrated that they deserve freedom. The universities from the start were the cradles of Enlightenment, resolute seekers of truth, originators of knowledge which is life- enhancing. These were the premises and, by and large, the universities lived up to them. We have inherited the platform of freedom because of what universities have accom- plished historically. Let me repeat, the traditional function of the university - and its most important function - has been the generation of knowledge that is useful, that is life-enhancing. In this sense the university is a nurturer of life. It has never been a part of the university's agenda to con- tribute to death. The freedom of the university must be seen in the context of life, and not in the context of death. WE MUST NOT be duped by any coercive ideology while pursuing our quest for knowledge, truth, and enlightenment. We have too often seen the tyrannizing clutches of the Marxist ideology suppressing freedom in the Communist countries not to be alarmed by the sight of any creed that wants to curtail our freedom of research and expression. While this is unquestioned, let us examine what students and protests against military research are saying. They are not against academic freedom. They are not against any other freedom. They are for freedom. They cham- By Henryk Skolimowski pion the most important form of freedom - the freedom to live. This we must examine with a due care. They are saying that insofar as we are engaged in creating weapons of mass destruc- tion, we are not nurturing life; we are working toward the destruction of life - maybe of all life on the planet. Such a destruction is con- sidered criminal by many. Insofar as we are 'The students are really telling us (if we have the patience to listen) that they think they have two or three years to live. And some of them are convin- ced of that. It is therefore the highest imperative for them to stop this destruc- tive Moloch of the machinery of nuclear war.' (or may be) contributing to such a destruction we are (or may be) contributing to criminal ac- tivities. And here is the crux of their argument: There should be freedom for all who contribute to the riches of life - however eccentric their research; there should be less freedom for those who engage in potentially criminal ac- tivities aimed at the destruction of the human race. They point out that there is no freedom for criminals in the society at large. Those who are harming us are kept out. And it should be so with the universities as well. LET US EXAMINE the argument a bit more closely for on the surface it sounds overly dramatic. Are researchers who contribute to weapons of mass destruction really to be viewed on par with other criminals? This is not how the present penal code views the situation. Yet let us remember the Nuremberg Trial. Those who contributed to the Nazi machine of destruction were found guilty and treated as criminals regardless whether they were or- dered to participate in atrocities or whether they did them on their own accord. The students are really telling us (if we have the patience to listen) that they think they have two or three years to live. And some of them are convinced of that. It is therefore the highest imperative for them to stop this destructive Moloch of the machinery of the nuclear war, which is relentlessly pushing us to the abyss. It is the imperative of life that guides them (the imperative of your life too!). They contend that freedom to live is the most important form of freedom. And who of us is going to deny that? Therefore a new situation has arisen whereby we must view the freedom to research vis a vis the freedom to live. All freedom is con- textual. Any form of freedom entails a corresponding responsibility. And the question is: how do we judge and assess the respon- sibility to research vis a vis our responsibility to life? The question is by no means academic. We fool ourselves if we think that first of all we are academics and our responsibility is primarily to research. First of all we are human beings. If we are all dead as a race, there will be no research to carry on. Then the issue of our responsibility to research will not be so much academic as dead - in the most profound sense of the term. That is what the students are telling us. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW has said, "Freedom means responsibility, that is why most people dread it." Though facitious the ex- pression is, it makes us aware how subtle and difficult the notion of freedom is. For this reason it must be constantly re-examined, par- ticularly as we find ourselves in new conflicting contexts. Our friend Socrates has said "Unexamined life is not worth living." We could add to this: "Unexamined freedom is not worth having." We are at the threshold of the events which have a momentous importance. When the human race is imperilled (as it is at present, all notions must be re-examined - so that we do not go pseudo-rationally to our inevitable doom. Our rationality must be re-examined too. For it must not condone the quest four death. Here therefore are my six-propositions, as an offering to the discussion of freedom: * Those who are unfree, because of their vested interests, cannot proclaim themselveh as champions of freedom. Their voice is not genuine; * Freedom is not given to us but is won ano deserved. We must justify freedom that is tern- tatively given to us by our action. Our action means responsibility. Responsibility anti freedom co-define each other. " The implicit assumption of freedom in a11 civilized societies is that it is the freedom to act for the betterment of humanity, and not against it; - Unexamined life is not worth living.. Unexamined freedom is not worth having. The imperative of research must be respected. The imperative of life must be respected even more so. And the two must be judiciously weighted against each other; * All freedom is contextual. Freedom is not an abstract logical category but one that ex- presses the prerogatives of human beings to live more amply and with more dignity than they would otherwise. The context of freedom is bound by the larger human context which determines the validity of our -notion of 4 freedom; " Freedom to live is the most fundamental form of freedom. Skolimowski is a professor in engineering humanities department. the Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Stewart Vol. XCIV-No. 62 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board A crumbling tenants union /r' . I, __ LOOK- YOU GUYS WERE FUNNY, HA , NA- BUT NO\N IT'S TIMe TO LEAVE ! O NCE one of the strongest tenants unions in the nation, the Ann Arbor Tenants Union is now in shambles. And as things stand now, students are going to pay to straighten the mess out. They shouldn't have to. The Michigan Student Assembly should continue to withhold the union's $7,300 allocation from student fees. If the tenants union needs money, it should have to approach the assembly for funds on a project by project basis, just as most other groups on campus have to do. In the last several years, the tenants union has crumbled. The staff has shrunk to just a handful of people, and some of them have not even been able to spend more than a few hours a week working. So far this term, there have not been any housing workshops, no lobbying, and very little counseling - no one seems to be able to know exac- tly how much - all things a tenants union should be doing. The union has also been hampered by internal disputes. Recently, two members of the Tenant/Landlord Resource Center, an offshoot of AATU which was supposed to cooperate with the union, tried to convince MSA to give AATU's money to the resource center instead. The incident snowballed into a rather amusing display of name calling and locking each other out of the AATU office. Amusing that is, until one realizes that students could pay $7,300 for this type of behavior. A strong tenants union once was, and still could be a great benefit for studen- ts. There is lobbying which could be done, and tenants who do need help. But the tenants union is not doing the job, and there is no evidence to suggest it will begin to in the future. In the last few years it has become a hole into which thousands of student dollars get sucked and little if anything comes out. Because of this, the tenants union should lose the privilege of automatically receiving funds each year. If it needs money for a workshop, or a specific lobbying project, the union should approach MSA. And if MSA deems that project worthwhile, the union should get money to carry it out. The tenants union, however, is sim- ply not effective enough to warrant a blanket allocation. Until members can pull the organization back together, MSA should cut them off. .; '" -9 ,,i RFALLY WANT YOU GUYS TO LEAVE/ THIS IS GETTING Sf- 1 IOUS-- YOU'R E ALL IN BIG TROUBLE I'M GONNA' E3PCIALLY TME PRO- TPHET PROFESSOR STUFF? INELL, T. DON'T TMH IN,, S--HEY YOU'RE. GETTING BEAN DIP ON NW MODEL. TET FIGHTER! I4 4 /z: HELLO, HAROLD- WHAT SHOULD I DO WITR THESE "NUGLEAp SAINTS" PEOPLE ?,,, NOTHING ?, YOU THINK. ITS KINDA' CUTE7,,, ev I4 14 i LETTERS TO THE DAILY: And where is your labProf. Einhorn? Undefendable prices NTERESTED in making an 8 million percent profit margin on a cheap wrench? If so, the Pentagon is the customer for you. That's.the percentage profit General Dynamics made by selling a 12 cent wrench to the Department of Defense for $9,609. General Dynamics can get away with charging such gross prices because the Pentagon never asks any private industry. The bill makes quite a bit of sense in- the face of a record peacetime defense budget that somehow leaves current U.S. forces spread thin. A big reason why is the lack of competition among defense suppliers. The current policy allows Boeing to charge $1,118.26 for a plastic cap to protect the leg of a stool in the AWACS radar plane. The policy Pyinnc wy a,, a n i,, i U qr fnr To the Daily: I would like to respond to physics Prof. Martin Einhorn's letter ("PSN aims at 'ill- conceived goals,'" Daily, November 9). As I am to understand, his op- position to the recent sit-in staged by the Progressive Student Net- work is based on the notion that such protest is far-fetched and misconstrued. Let me say that, with ill-respect for Professor Thomas Senior's research on electromagnetic pulse (EMP), his work directly contributes to the military build-up machine. It is fact that his research, and research of this type also being conducted on this campus, is fun- ded by the Department of Defen- se, an organization whose in- terests lie not in furthering the transmission of knowledge, but in maintaining a national security United States to destroy all of the Soviet Union's 7,500 land-based nuclear missiles instantly (it seems ironic to me that a small truck loaded with dynamite is able to penetrate American for- ces with such ease). When research with obvious militaristic intentions is taking place on our own campus, funded with our own tax and tuition dollars, I feel one must actively question such research and its value to the people by which it is funded. It is sad that our legislators and pedagogues con- tinually insist that such research may have civilian application in light of the corruptness of the BLOOM COUNTY government that uses it and its obvious militaristic intentions. One even directly contributing to this unleashed insanity, already blown out of proportion (pardon the pun) by the billions of dollars spent, is guilty of ignorance of the most important problem citizens of the world must address today. I laud you for initiating a course on nuclear weapons and nuclear war, but I question your sincerity in this at- tempt to educate the student. It is this frustrating hypocrisy that provokes such recent events as the sit-in. The intent of this "normal, healthy student ac- tivism" is not to overthrow, as you imply, but to firmly and peacefully regain the rights as human beings to live without the constant fear of a nuclear war. I should hope that such activism prompts the minds of students and professors feeling indifferent about the perils of a nuclear holocaust and that it encourages an active participation in the decision-making process here at the University. Now where did you say your 4 laboratory is located? - Stephen Lantos November 11 by Berke Breathed l / ATTENTION, INTRV17ER '(H15 15 1HE CENTRAL I.R.5. WAT.. 16 Y HecR Utz (AL CCT 115' i