Word: actionable
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...This need to direct attention toward changing attitudes rather than changing official policies produces a strong proclivity toward ever greater levels of violence. To wrench emotions, an action must be dramatic; to be dramatic, it must be unique; to be unique in America in 1969 it is increasingly necessary to be violent. A student picket line in 1960 was an event with some emotional impact; a picket line in 1969 is hardly likely to prompt even intellectual curiosity. Occupying a building is almost passe. Peaceful protests may still be effective in changing government practices but they do not have...
...abolition of ROTC, a more sensitive University attitude toward its surroundings, and a separation between the defense establishment and the University in both the natural and social sciences are all desirable objectives. However, the commend-ability of these aims does not automatically establish a normative justification for any action carried out to achieve them. Political morality requires that an action be effective not merely well-intentioned, and that the actors be in some position to suffer any potentially undesirable consequences arising from their own acts...
Students are likely to secure reform within the university through means short of direct violent action. They may help to bring pressure on the government to end the war through activity in the societies at large. However, violent activity against the university with an aim to purify it of the sins which it shares with the rest of society is likely merely to weaken the university without appreciably depriving the Defense Department or anyone else of the services they now receive...
...potential gains from violent action are not large; the cost, the destruction of the university as a potential critic of the society, is significant. Furthermore, white students are not likely to suffer the brunt of any penalties which society may impose because of disruption on the campus...
...several centers of influence and an intellectual community which is not committed to an official policy which it may have played a part in concocting. However, this is not to say that the university's refusal to service certain outside groups would deprive them of any essential output. Action against the university may lighten the burden of the soul, but it will have only a limited effect in achieving wider change...