Word: basic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...defied the Dow julgment with similar obstructionist tactics, despite the Administration's refusal to spell out guidelines on unacceptable demonstrations and their consequences. Dow was primarily a symbolic protest aimed against the Vietnam horror and against the unresponsiveness of established authority to anti-war demands. The students' basic target was the war, not the University...
EXTRALEGAL protest over Columbia's investment policies differed from the symbolic Dow demonstration; Columbia's faculty, students, and trustees have held irreconciliable opinions on basic questions in a community where there was little confidence in the capacity of the President and trustees to govern. In this climate of mistrust, a participatory democracy (i.e., various student-faculty checks on the trustees) must exist to prevent extralegal action...
These stock explanations for the Center's non-involvement are all exaggerated but all partly true. The Center's main function is permissive support of basic research. On a limited scale, it also operates on a contract basis to supply technical assistance to public agencies. What it doesn't do is to initiate the kind of innovative social experimentation that radical and semi-radical activsts would like to see implemented in the ghetto...
...PEOPLE at the Joint Center are quite sympathetic to Roxbury exasperation. But they also defend basic research in utilitarian terms. "In a highly unquotable fashion," comments one Center member, "the function of the Center is to undermine bullshit." Joint Center studies supply data of the sort that, when supplied by the government, is highly unreliable and political. Center members are able to evaluate government programs from a more-or-less neutral position. (The most controversial policy study--The Federal Bulldozer, done by Martin Anderson--was a slashing criticism of the urban renewal program...
When Daniel Patrick Moynihan took over as director of the Center in 1966, trend-predictors expected him to chart a more policy-oriented course than his predecessors, Martin Meyerson and James Q. Wilson. While the basic orientation of the Center has remained armchair--and to all indication will remain so--the Center has begun to do policy-advising ("staff studies") with clients or agencies that request assistance, much as a consulting firm would...