PAG! 2
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1 969
(ijmimtMthiK
A new offensive
A new offensive is being launched against the
- ROTC forces which are entrenched on college cam
puses. And it's the American Civil Liberties Union
that is marshalling for the attack ... not the
SDS. (You surely remember the SDS, don't you.
Someone must remember. Or maybe they've even
forgotten themselves.)
THE ACLU IS making three suggestions.
(1) ROTC should not be compulsory anywhere
because "academic freedom cannot flourish where
an element of coercion is present"
(2) Credit should be given only to courses ao
ceptable to and under the control of "the regular
' faculty."
I. (3) ROTC instructors should not have
academic rank unless they are "members of a
norma academic department subject to regular
procedures."
All three points are valid and significant
war -
FIRST, COMPULSION to enroll in any class
or area is a denial of academic freedom (and
that includes the damn language requirement, too).
Fortunately, the University of Nebraska already
came to the same conclusion.
Second, academic credit should be withheld
from marching courses and labs in which right
' faces outweigh right answers. Although the non
""" academic nature of certain courses is not peculiar
to, ROTC,. it is here that the problem is most ...
obvious. "! '"
The final point is, however, the most telling
against ROTC in an educational community. Why
,i should instructors, selected by the Armed Services
r and not by the Regents, be awarded the same
status as the knowledgeable men of academia?
Some ROTC instructors barely belong in an
Intellectual community, much less as instructors
therein.
IF YOUNG COLLEGE men want military
training, then fine. Let them attend evening classes
at reserve headquarters.
But the time has come for the non-academic
ROTC to be removed from campus.
Edlcenogle
Inside report Fear grips Berkeley
by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
Berkeley, Cal. More ominious to the future
of the University of California at Berkeley than
tlie daily campus confrontation between helmeted
state highway patrolmen and long-haired
demonstrators is the cold, quiet fear now gripping
the faculty,
Ever since the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65
transformed Berkeley into a cockpit for agitation,
professors have criticized student radicals only at
the price of rising vituperation from them. Now,
faculty members feel, that price is going up. The
fear of disruption of their classrooms and even
of physical violence is nv endemic among non
radical faculty members.
If the fear becomes reality, Berkeley could
be headed for the same catastrophe as an educa
tional institution that is now wrecking San Fran
cisco State College across the bay. Berkeley is
one of the greatest U.S. universities. Thus its
degeneration well along right now is a tragedy
of national proportions.
THE SAD COURSE of events here was
predicted to us almost four years ago by worried
liberal professors. They forecast descent into chaos
unless Roger Heyns, then newly arrived as
Berkeley's chancellor, imposed much sterner
discipline on the student rebels. Significantly, every
one of those professors has since deoarted for
calmer campuses.
In contrast to past presidents of San Francisco
State, Heyns is no idealist coddling the revolu
tionaries. He believes they can actually destroy
the university. But as a social psychologist, Heyns
has used elaborate strategies efforts at concilia
tion and continuous negotiation rather than stern,
implacable discipline.
As a result Berkeley over the past five years
has become a haven for agitators a fact that
has inexorably transformed the campus here.
Students and faculty members fascinated by the
tactics of radical politics have swarmed into
Berkeley; each year there are mass transfers of
students from other, tamer branches of the
University of California who want to be "where
Anti-iiitellectualism
in Governor's and
Regent's offices is
enhanced by the
campus disorder
YOU SAY YOuS. SDN HOPES TO CNTEft THE UMlvERSfTY
SOME PKtl SO DO l,MMAM SO 60I.
the action is." Conversely, many students and
faculty members most interested in the prosaic
business of higher education avoid Berkeley.
THIS HAS BASICALLY distorted the view of
pontics 'given the student here. Conventional
politics that is, Republican or Democratic
is absent. Of the incessant speech-making from
the steps of Sproul Plaza, 90 percent is of left-wing
radical nature.
Thus, Berkeley is fertile soil for the hard-core
300 or so trouble-seeking student radicals out of
a student body of 28,000 plus some non-student
auxiliaries (having sympathy of perhaps 5,000 other
students). When the university administration
dragged its heels in beginning a black studies pro
gram, the radicals black and white found
the perfect crucible for provoking a crisis.
Moreover, radical faculty members have lob
bied strenuously against strong reprisal by
Chancellor Heyns. They are now protesting publicly
the presence of highway patrolmen, neglecting to
mention that reinforcements were summoned only
because of growing violence. Before the patrolmen
arrived, demonstrators would "serpentine" in and
out of university buildings, smashing windows and
destroying property.
Hill
. 1v Idit
"And on your left is Alcatraz, the new
home of San Francisco State College."
FACULTY PRESSURES against strong action
Have made Heyns sluggish in cracking down on
student rebels, and the Board of Regents, newly
packed with conservatives by Gov. Ronald Reagan,
has now for the first time seized control of soma
student disciplinary problems at Reagan's urging.
One regent, an anti-Reagan moderate, while
regretting the power grasp by a politically-appointed
body, told us Heyns left him no choice
but to go along with the Governor.
Indeed, the anti-intellectualism In both th
Governor's office and the Board of Regents is
greatly enhanced by the campus disorder. With
the general public pro-Reagan and anti-Berkeley,
the Governor's narrow view of the university as
fundamentally a teaching institution with little
creative or research activities is helped.
All that can be safely predicted next for this
tormented university is the almost carta fa
departure of Heyns, perhaps by resignation but
more likely by vote of the regents, before the
fall term.
For the regents to find any qualified accessor
will be no small accomplishment Because if the
new chancellor is to save Berkeley, It may take
a miracle.
e) MM.
Committee on American entanglements
by Flora Lewis '
' Washington Sen. Stuart Symington (D.-Mo.),
who knows the Pentagon from the inside as a
former secretary of the Air Force, has now
organized his subcommittee on American foreign
" entanglements.
The official name is the Subcommittee on VS.
Secarlty Agreements and Commitments Abroad,
and that is just what he means to look into, to
find out how this country stumbles into pledges
that can lead to war. The Vietnamese mess is
excluded from the inquiry, which will last at least
a year and probably two. But it was precisely
Vietnam that prompted the study on how to prevent
that happening again.
One of the first cases the subcommittee will
dig into, though not the only one, is current
negotiations on renewal of American base rights
in Spain. The Spanish base story is practically
a textbook example of bow attempts to get im
mediate military advantage can launch the U.S.
into policy fiascos.
THE JOINT CHIEFS of Staff want to keep
the three U.S. bases in Spain, but the Spanish
price is exorbitant $700 million in weapons for
five more years. Secret military negotiations with
the Spaniards have led to a sharp dispute between
the Pentagon and the State Department, which
takes a longer-range, wary view of U.S. involve
ment supporting the Franco government
So the Spanish case is also becoming a textbook
example of the struggle between the military and
flie diplomats for influence on American foreign
policy. In the last 20 years, there has been a
shift of weight, which has been developing gradually
but is cumulatively dramatic. Under President
Truman, the military had to get State Department
approval for almost every move, even minor, that
they wanted to make abroad. Now, insiders feel,
there has been almost a complete reversal State
can hardly act if the military disagrees. Only the
President has the power to rule where the balance
should be.
PRESIDENT NIXON has not yet used that
power. In the meantime, the Spanish case is one
of the several signs that the military are pushing
even further to capture ground left in dispute until
(he President decides.
The importance of Symington's subcommittee
Is all the greater because even though they argue
angrily, the executive departments want to do it
secretly, out of sight of the public, who must pay
in the end, and even out of sight of the Congress,
which must vote the means to fulfill America's
foreign pledges.
When staff members of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee heard about the Pentagon
State row over Spain, they checked both
departments. They were assured by both that
everything was in order, mere was no need to
worry about the talks with Spain.
THESE ASSURANCES came just when the
trouble was at its peak. It wasn't until the story
III I.I.
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AlfYGUSSTIOUS
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was published here that the senators were told
the truth.
Rightly, Symington intends to proceed quietly
and carefully. The underlying issue is too fateful
to use it for sensational value. The composition of
the subcommittee also augurs a sober, serious probe,
neither a mindless ontribution to those' who
would try to turn the global clock back to an
isolationist America nor a headline-hunt for
scapegoats.
The Democratic members apart from Sym
ington are Senators Fulbright, Sparkman and
Mansfield. The Republicans are Senators Aiken,
Cooper and Javits. These are men who understand
both the enormity of American power and its
limits.
THE CASE of the Spanish bases shews how
complex, how subtle, how inadvertent at times
is the process ol committing the U.S. to foreign
countries. It raises questions which go much farther
than Spain, which go all around the world and
to the heart of Washington.
But it is also a case in itself. The deadline
for settling it is still March 26, and the immediate
question is still what the U.S. should pay Spain.
The Franco government not only demands a high
price, it wants only weapons. The Spanish-American
argument would not be quite the same if Madrid
wanted to use the value of its military real estate
to propel Spain through the economic sound bar
rier. The price might look different if it were to
be paid in road-building machinery, irrigation
equipment, construction equipment, things that
would give the poverty-stricken Spanish people a
share in the military windlaU of their
geography.
But generals are military men. Generals
dominate Spain. So there is also an issue of whether
the VS. will mistake the interest of Spanish
generals as the interest of all Spain.
tc , HnnOty. Inc.
Campus opinion . . .
'Sticking left
feet in mouth'
Dear Editor,
The highly laudable efforts of Mike Hayman.
the Daily Nebraskan, March 3, 19C9, page 4, reflect
the creativenesg and capabilities of an involved
journalist capturing the temper of the nation's only
Unicameral.
There can be no better way to reveal a politi
cian's irresponsibility than by photographing him
in the act of sticking both his left feet into his
mouth No editorial analysis could so drarnatica"y
reflect how the Nebraska electoral? has consistently
sent uninformed, non-thinking. poVntia! do-nothings
to the capitol to represent their interests.
Although in disgust and with mi-giving' at
the necessity. I request that you make Vr.
Ilavman's article a regular feature in Uw aily
Nebraskao Perhaps it may enlitrhten "We 'he
people" 1o our mistakes a voters and fry i 'e
a mirror for thop 'ncpf. -w'f-in'.ereed 'a'e
senators hu leed mi, an -prrmiJf-rs of -?r
failures a representatives of the public inKTexl.
G. Depute
There is a vast room in which are stored
all of America's material riches. Inside, white met
are orgiastically plundering that wealth. Outside
the door, a long corridor is teeming with black
(and red, yellow, etc.) people. For hundreds of
years, in hundreds of different ways, they have
knocked and pleaded for the door to be unlocked.
One black man desperately decides to toss a
rock through the window so that be can get inside
to share the goodies. Another even more desperate
individual decides that, since he is forever to be
excluded, be will set the whole room afire and
destroy what is inside.
But another seemingly more enlightened man
suggests that the black people simply ha vent been
framing their demands in the right language. The
white man's mother tongue is power. And if blade
people can collect all their toothpicks of power
and with them build a huge battering ram, then
they can knock down that barrier that has bees
heretofore inpenetrable.
THAT'S BLACK Power, according to the senior
editor of Ebony magazine. One of those toothpicks
is situated on the campus of the University of
Nebraska. While many of our University's vested
organizations struggle to justify their continued ex
istence, a relatively new group is being established
whose presence doesn't require any apologies.
The Afro-American Collegiate Society, under
its capable president, law student Wayne Williams,
is contributing significantly to the process of total
education. The observance of Negro History Week
and the presentation of a six-part CBS film series
on Black America were worftwhfle e!5'"w.
Both, while giving black students a sense of unity
and achievement, were directed primarily at as
unaware and oft-insensitive white student body.
The black man's traditional deference to white
leadership is an outdated phenomenon. Competent
black people are suggesting that it is time for
whites to receive rather than give advice, to follow
instead of lead. It is one thing to "accept" a
Negro's claim to social and political equality; quite
another to recognize and obey his authority at
appropriate times.
When te black man has been admitted oa
genuinely equal terms to the white man's egotistical
struggle for authority and recognition, a healthy
stride will have been taken toward the elimination -ol
race prejudice.
THE MOST typical question posed by the
"white liberal" to the "black militant" is, "I'm
willing and eager to help you, but what can I
do?" The answer always seems to be, "Don't wor
ty about helping me. Your help is needed by
your white brothers who don't bke me and won't
let me be a man." And the white liberal goes
away disappointed, because he had hoped to be
asked to "go down to the ghetto" and play with
some little black kids that he and bif friends
when they're alone, call pickaninnies. That would
be something dramatic and noticable.
It's behind his back that the Negro needs help.
Thofce candid references that past among whites
about "coons", and "jigs," and 24th and Lake
are out of the black man's reach. He cannot defend
himself against insults made in his absence.
Only white men of good conscience can
eliminate these enclaves of prejudice which thrive
in lily-white refuzes that we build in order to
establish or maintain some semblance of security.
Those of us who ,'ive our tacit support to racist
insV.uNTis and ex;ressions, who derive full ad
vantage ' -n : y, em which defines us "in" and
ih black nr n "out", are failing to do the tank
whidn tiun rihu'uljy ken assigned to us.
!