Word: mcnamara
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Further causes determined the particular form of the confrontation. Richard Neustdat, head of the Kennedy Institute, turned down a petition signed by over 1600 students, 93 teaching fellows, and 52 faculty for McNamara to debate Robert Scheer, editor of Ramparts. He stated academic reasons for this decision, including the "difficulty" of attracting national figures to the Institute. That a public debate should "embarrass" or "upset" a cabinet member, can only demonstrate that he has some lapse of rationality in his record, which he would like to hide. This makes the decision not to debate a political one, motivated...
That this decision was not moti-shown by the informal offer made to a representative of SDS by a close associate of McNamara's: McNamara might meet privately with your organization if you will drop the issue of a public debate. SDS did not fall for this ploy. Barney Frank, the Kennedy Institute's liaison with undergraduate affairs, offered to arrange the personal presentation of the petition to Secretary McNamara as he arrived at Eliot House on Sunday. The SDS representatives were then told that Frank would take the petitions himself. That he did, in spite of our best efforts...
Further ploys, including lying about McNamara's schedule on Monday and the use of decoy cars, failed to frustrate our attempts to confront McNamara in public at Quincy House. They did, however, succeed in turning the planned silent confrontation into a mass of running people angry at the deception characteristic of both the government's Vietnam policy and the Institute's evasion of its responsibility to the public. In spite of this, and of McNamara's "tougher-than-thou" attitude, he suffered nothing worse than considerable, and deserved, embarrassment. Meanwhile rowdy students managed to create the sound and smell...
Since the views of Deans are sometimes all too readily dismissed as expressions of pious paternalism, may I express my shame and revulsion on seeing (over national television) the disgraceful treatment accorded Secretary McNamara by some members of the Harvard community. If the purpose of the student gathering was to convey certain views to Secretary McNamara -- and the manner in which the meeting was conducted leaves one with serious doubts about the validity of that premise--one can hardly think of a way less calculated to succeed and more likely to alienate the listener. Understandably Secretary McNamara, who seemed initially...
...impression is that many of those people signing the petition condemning Harvard students' breach of decorum during the visit of Secretary McNamara are doing so on grounds of etiquette and ignoring the more basic political issues. Justifications for extremist behavior, even of the mild sort witnessed at Harvard, are often very difficult to understand from the standpoint of an established society or an established policy. For people sincerely opposed to the war in Vietnam on reasoned grounds, I see three justifications for the treatment accorded McNamara...