Word: recent
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That's why recent actions by the Committee on Central America (COCA) are so appropriate. Confronting the predominantly middle- and upper-middle-class Harvard community with the current realities of Central America--forcing us to think about what's going on down there--is a job that no one else in the University has taken on. And it's a job that needs to be done...
...share a tendency to reject all activist militance as empty militance. Conservatives predictably reject nearly all student activism as overblown. Leftists themselves are also to blame, though, for rejecting innovative options. Reluctant to appear too radical, activists here rarely deviate from the norm of University Hall rallies. COCA's recent tactics are undoubtedly militant, and unusual for Harvard, but they are anything but empty...
...cannot display any quantitative evidence that COCA's actions have had any effect on the thoughts and discussions of Harvard students in recent weeks. Still, it is likely that there has, indeed, been an effect. The actions have provoked some discussion in the campus press. And surely not every one of the 900 students who received draft notices shrugged it off as junk mail...
...understandable that some students have been frightened or upset by COCA's recent tactics. But their fear and anger should not be ultimately directed at COCA. Rather, we should be broad-sighted enough to realize that the real terror resides not in COCA's actions but in the right-wing atrocities our government, for all intents and purposes, is financing in El Salvador. And to acknowledge that COCA is turning such abstract "right-wing atrocities" into something tangible to Harvard students...
...recent events were clearly not an outpouring of nationalism, but a celebration of freedom. The destruction of the wall was not seen as the sign of regaining German strength (after all, it is Mikhail Gorbachev, not Germany, who was largely responsible for the dramatic changes), but the reunion with relatives, old and new friends was celebrated. Contrast this, for example, to the Anschluss of Austria or the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, where people cheered at parading tanks and soldiers. I think the difference could hardly be more striking...