Word: goldberg
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Students for a Democratic Society felt that the Johnson Administration had consciously failed to confront those critics of the war who questioned its very premises, moral and political. SDS saw the McNamara visit and, later, the Goldberg visit as prime opportunities to force the long-awaited confrontation. But the policy-makers at the Kennedy Institute, until the disruptive demonstration on Mill St., underestimated the frustration and consequent furor of the anti-war movement. In keeping with the original formulation of the Honorary Associate Program, any debate with McNamara was categorically ruled...
...January 23, Michael Traugot, an SDS cochairman, wrote Neustadt to ask for an open debate between Goldberg, the next Associate, and "a serious critic of our government's Vietnam policy." Officials of the Institute, of course, continued to believe that a debate--with lengthy statements and rebuttals by Goldberg--would undermine the whole Honorary Associate program...
Then, on February 2, Goldberg wrote Neustadt requesting a public meeting at which he would answer questions about American foreign policy. What motivated this request remains unclear, but an understated problem of "saving face" immediately arose: how could the Institute sponsor a public meeting without abandoning the position it had held to so firmly during the McNamara visit...
...Price, dean of the Kennedy School of Government (of which the Institute is a part) came to the rescue by offering to release Goldberg for a limited period to the jurisdiction of Dean Ford, who would sponsor the meeting. The confrontation could then be held under the nominal auspices of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences--and when it was over, Goldberg would reach his original destination: the Institute...
...also faced some difficulty when it found out about Goldberg's request. Despite the vagueness of Goldberg's language, SDS quickly recognized that a formal debate was out of the question...