Word: vietnams
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Although most of the new activism has been directed toward particular campus issues, a growing impatience with the Vietnam War is its raison d'etre. Strong student commitment against the war effort has spiraled, increasing by more than one-third in the last year. In fact, student criticism and military escalation seem to be increasing in a dialectic manner...
This lever works on all students, hawk, or dove, and inevitably raises the war to a personal life and death matter. In a few months every senior will have to decide whether or not he is willing to die in Vietnam. Still the lines are forming for graduate fellowships and nobody seems to be very much alarmed. In a short time they will be, and the resulting shift in perspective will be greater at Harvard than anywhere else...
...demonstartors were symbolically protesting against America's so-called war machine and against Dow, which supplies most of the napalm used in Vietnam. But the protest was irrelevant and inappropriate since a change in Dow's policies will not stop the war or even obstruct the use of napalm. If Dow suddenly refused to manufacture napalm, there are dozens of companies that would vie for the government contract to carry on production...
...some other form of non-obstructive protest. That would have been acceptable. But some of the leaders were determined to take more radical action. There is nothing sacrosanct about this country's laws, but only a transcendent moral issue can justify their violation. The Administration's policy in Vietnam may be futile and indefensible, but it is not so immoral as to justify the obstruction of an individual's right of free speech and movement...
...even if the Administration is acting immorally in Vietnam, the traditional, legal methods of protest and persuasion are far from bankrupt. Cambridge's November 7th ballot will contain a resolution opposing the war in Vietnam, and many anti-war advocates are campaigning for the resolution. An increasing number of Congressmen and Senators have abandoned their pro-Administration viewpoints. And the latest Gallup Poll indicates that 46 per cent of the population now believes it was a mistake to become involved in Vietnam...