Word: nacfulness
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Members of the radical November Action Coalition (NAC) clashed early yesterday morning with several hundred riot-equipped police in the narrow street outside M. I. T.'s Instrumentation Laboratory, but there was only one arrest...
...arguments along these lines-by the NAC and others-have pointed out one question which should be of concern to those outside their ranks: Have American universities. through design or by chance. undertaken functions-such as the development of operational weapons systems-which are incompatible with the broader humanistic values universities generally presume to promote...
Rather than making such quick classifications of "good" and "bad" activities, one may envisage a court of continuum, with fine gradations from activities largely incompatible with a university's humanist nature to activities compatible with that nature though disagreeable to some individuals. Even the Seven Demands of the NAC, for example. though advanced as a minimum program, cover a wide range of this continuum...
PEACEFUL demonstrations are clearly appropriate and necessary forms of protest against such abuses of university resources as MIRV and ABM research. But movements such as NAC too often appear to depend on crude forms of power polities to make distinctions about appropriate university activities. The tone of NAC statements suggests that they are willing to move as far along the continuum as their power allows in stopping "objectionable" university practices. "Building a movement" implies creating a political force which will at some point have enough strength to coerce other segments of the university into ending certain activities...
Besides preserving the integrity of the university, peaceful demonstration and persuasion will best serve the radical cause. The NAC procest will never "stop" research on MIRV. though it may-if it gains enough power and exacts the necessary price from the university-stop MIRV research at M.I.T. The same individuals who are doing research on MIRV at M.I.T., however, can do so equally well at other institutions-ones similar to say. the Rand Corporation-where they will be free from interference from protesting students...