Word: labs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Diverting Talent. The Lincoln Laboratory, for example, has developed a foliage-penetrating radar that detects Viet Cong hiding in the jungle. The Instrumentation Laboratory has designed a multiple-warhead guidance system for the Navy's Poseidon missile. Radical students, who staged a march at "I-lab" in April, insist that a university should totally shun research that is aimed at killing people. Moderate students and professors argue that the special labs' secrecy violates the academic principle of free inquiry, and more basically, that the growth of the special labs has diverted M.I.T. talent from domestic and social problems...
Last spring a special faculty-student-administration panel recommended that the labs gradually start new programs in domestic and social research, while reducing secret military work and rejecting "projects involving the actual development of a prototype weapons system, except in times of grave national emergency." The panel also urged the university to set up a standing committee of faculty, students and lab staffers to advise M.I.T. President Howard W. Johnson on which projects the labs should accept or continue to pursue. The recommendations pleased the moderate majority of M.I.T.'s faculty, which last month voted...
Unfortunately, the proposed screening committee is likely to have great trouble deciding which military projects are appropriate for the special labs. For example, all members of the special review panel judged the Poseidon program, now that it is out of the basic-research stage, improper for a university-connected lab. But they split sharply over the I-lab's work on Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. The majority defended it on the grounds that VTOLs could be used to speed civilian intercity transit and the project is "far from the production-prototype stage." By contrast, antiwar Guru Noam...
...November Action Coalition, a loose grouping of radical organizations in the Boston area, threatens a demonstration at the Instrumentation lab this week. The militants do not have much support on campus; the M.I.T. faculty gave President Johnson a standing ovation recently when he promised "to call upon the civil authorities for help" in stopping any violence. The undergraduate senate, which is the body most representative of student opinion, also endorsed Johnson's stand. Nevertheless, the special labs are taking no chances. Stout screens now cover the windows of the Instrumentation lab, and two-by-fours are on hand...
Cambridge Mayor Walter J. Sullivan was seen near I-Lab 5 just before police arrived...