Word: sds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Almost three weeks before McNamara was scheduled to arrive, David M. Gordon '65, who had worked for the Institute of Politics last year, began meeting informally with Michael S. Ansara '68, one of the leaders of SDS. During most of the controversy between SDS and the Institute, Gordon was to play what Barney Frank called a "double-agent role with the consent of both sides." He was always on good speaking terms with Ansara (and therefore privy to most of SDS's plans), but his primary purpose was to protect the Institute and insure the success of its program. There...
Meeting informally every few days, Gordon and Ansara reviewed most of the preliminary issues. Gordon laid out his conception of the Institute and the purpose of the undergraduate program. He was particularly worried that SDS might choose to disrupt McNamara's meetings with small groups of 50 undergraduates each, and that the meetings' usefulness might be destroyed...
Ansara, like many members of SDS, doubted the value of some of the Institute's programs. He was not convinced that public figures would speak candidly even in small groups and even if their remarks were "off-the-record." And he thought it important that the honorary associates be questioned publicly about current issues within their purview. Ansara believed these arguments in the abstract; and in McNamara's case they had a special persuasiveness. McNamara engendered hatred as a symbol of the Vietnam war; his stiff personal style alienated people even more. Ansara assured Gordon that most SDS members would...
...this happened before the idea of a debate was broached publicly. It happened before SDS decided to make the challenge official and before petitions demanding a meeting between McNamara and Robert Scheer, editor of Ramparts magazine, were circulated throughout the College and Radcliffe. But once the petitions were distributed, they collected more than 1600 names, including those of some 50 Faculty members and more than 90 teaching fellows. This put some punch behind the proposal, and it also probably began the gradual alienation of SDS and the Institute. For, by going to the community, SDS had informed the Institute -- that...
...SDS had chosen the tactic for a number of reasons First and foremost there was McNamara himself. The antipathy held towards this man by many students -- "radicals" and some non-radicals as well -- is hard to describe. It was voiced on Monday afternoon in the anguished cries of "Don't you care?" that answered the Secretary's admission that he didn't know how many civilian casualties U.S. troops had caused. Many students who heard McNamara Monday could only describe him in superlatives -- "one of the most callous, arrogant men I have ever seen," said one. So intense...