The McNamara Incident at Harvard
Greenstein, Robert M.
Robert M. Greenstein The McNamara Incident at Harvard Last November, 800 Harvard students blocked the path of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, demanding that he consent to a...
...When in such circumstances students take action that poses no physical threat to McNamara (though it did to themselves), a "courtesy backlash" is a most inappropriate response...
...But then it should be stressed that possibility cf rebuttal in debate or a legitimate questioning session had been foreclosed...
...Instead, the refusal to debate or to meet publicly with students seemed but another manifestation of the government's closing the lines of access to critics of the war, especially student critics...
...If anything, by attempting to explain "discourtesy" by an "excess of zeal," Monro and McNamara have only strayed further from understanding what the confrontation was about...
...While taking no action against any of the students involved, the Administrative Board has declared that such an incident must never be repeated...
...Secretary McNamara had arrived in Cambridge November 5 as the first honorary associate of the Kennedy In stitute of Politics...
...Students felt the least they could do was to make vocal their refusal to accept McNamara's answers to the two questions addressed to him— his answer that Phillipe Devillers' account of the origins of the war was mistaken, as it really started in 1954 when Vietcong infiltrated the South along with the Catholic refugees from the North...
...However the tactical results are viewed, there remains one aspect of the incident which could clearly have been handled in a different manner...
...and his statement that he did not know the number of civilian casualties...
...With all channels of public communication seemingly closed, SDS planned to confront McNamara as he left the second and final seminar, and to question him about the war...
...The prestige Hoffmann enjoys at Harvard would have operated in precisely the opposite manner...
...Nevertheless, the faked exit resulted in a mass of several hundred running students...
...McNamara was to speak at two off-the-record seminars, of 60 undergraduates each, chosen randomly from the more than 1200 who had expressed interest...
...Perhaps more important, this refusal also represented the persistent refusal of the government to inform the public as to many unpleasant facts of the Vietnam War, and as to the real course of U.S...
...The hint has been dropped that in case of a recurrence, the organizers might be expelled...
...Yet the essential moderation of the Harvard demonstration was such, that given the same circumstances, no repetition anywhere should pose a serious threat...
...Many at Harvard believe that in such a debate, Hoffmann, who only two weeks earlier had publicly outlined the necessity for American disengagement, would not come out second best...
...I have known or corresponded with too many equally idealistic and dedicated Southern segregationist students," one eminently liberal Harvard professor remarked, "who feel that against the power of the federal government they can only protest in a similarly aggressive way...
...The greatest expression of discontent, deliberately provoked by the Secretary, came after he compared himself in his student days to the demonstrators by declaring, "I was tougher then, and I'm tougher now...
...The basic moderation of the demonstration became apparent when the demonstrators agreed to accept, in place of a debate or question-and-answer period, McNamara's offer to remain five minutes and answer two questions...
...If he refused to debate or to answer questions, students would sit down around his car and seek to force a confrontation...
...Robert M. Greenstein The McNamara Incident at Harvard Last November, 800 Harvard students blocked the path of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, demanding that he consent to a public debate on Vietnam...
...As a result, students felt exploited by McNamara's entire visit—he was to gain the prestige and publicity by having come to Harvard to engage in discussion on Vietnam, but without ever having been confronted with a real show of opposition, without ever having publicly to defend his position against the sort of criticism that can be found in an institution such as Harvard...
...In any case, to have refused a debate with Hoffmann would have caused McNamara and the Kennedy Institute far greater embarrassment in the Harvard community In the months between November 7 and the present, tempers have abated somewhat...
...It is unfortunate that the proposed debate should have been with Robert Scheer instead of someone such as Harvard international relations expert Stanley Hoffmann...
...III A final criticism made of the demonstration has been that to allow this sort of confrontation by one group in Cambridge legitimizes its use by another group, perhaps in the South...
...And several months after it all happened, reading Harrison Salisbury's reports on the destruction of civilian villages in the North, one waits for a clarification as to what the proper level of zeal should be...
...When a man is one of the handful of most powerful persons in the world, one of the inner circle whose policy, whether right or wrong, leads to the death of thousands in the name of the American public, then he is no longer just any private individual...
...An official of the Kennedy Institute, accompanying McNamara, intercepted the questions before SDS could reach the Secretary...
...Given these circumstances, what was perhaps most amazing was the underlying orderliness of the ensuing confrontation...
...For "the fact that it was McNamara" is precisely what does matter...
...When these student moderates come to view those working against the war as irresponsible radicals, their own cynicism toward the anti-war effort is only enhanced...
...The 2700 signatures on the letter of apology suggest that many of a large group of Harvard students—those who are generally critical of American policy in Vietnam but equally critical and often derisive of most student protests —were pushed closer to the war sup porters than to its more vociferous opponents...
...The sole issue to Dean Monro and the Administrative Board was that an organization assumed the right to restrain physically and force its will on an individual...
...Such an association with the Kennedy Institute becomes irrelevant, however, when the following morning the same man will be back at his desk as a major architect of the Vietnam War...
...policy in Southeast Asia...
...The issue has assumed particularly serious proportions at Harvard, as a result of the strong reaction of both the traditionally lenient university administration and a large section of the student body...
...The university is correct in feeling it could not tolerate such harassment of a faculty member...
...To raise the issue of courtesy is, as philosophy professor Hilary Putnam put it, "to miss what the opposition to this war is all about...
...That the incident may, however, have been a tactical error remains an open question...
...11 In these five minutes, heckling simply was not as great as edited television tapes seemed to indicate...
...The issue comes down to exercising physical force on one person because you don't believe in his politics...
...For the university to react with threats of serious action in the future, after students who have been refused a public dialogue accept a five-minute question period, is quite out of place, especially when these same students may soon them selves be drafted to fight in Vietnam...
...The refusal seemed another example of the Johnson Administration's failure to meet its critics on even ground...
...Dean Monro met several times with SDS members (although the administration has reaffirmed its determination to take strong action if such an incident should be repeated), and McNamara replied to Monro that no apology was necessary...
...The Harvard SDS chapter (Students for a Democratic Society) had repeatedly attempted to get Institute director Richard Neustadt to present McNamara in some public setting and had circulated a petition signed by 1600 students, 93 teaching fellows, and 52 faculty members calling for a debate with Robert Scheer...
...It was McNamara but that doesn't make any difference...
...To allow university officials to be forcibly made to speak against their wishes, it was claimed, would set a dangerous precedent threatening academic freedom...
...McNamara could be heard...
...A debate between McNamara and Hoffmann might have had a tremendous impact on those same moderates alienated by the confrontation...
...The demonstrators thereby touched off a controversy on the tactics of confrontation, a controversy which continues to plague the student anti-war movement...
...Kennedy Institute officials attempted to forestall this by staging a faked exit, complete with a fake get-away car, to draw demonstrators to the wrong side of the building...
...It is quite possible that the demonstration only brought to the surface already existing divisions in student attitudes toward any form of Vietnam protest at all...
...When McNamara arrived for the first seminar, members of SDS attempted to present him with a sheet of questions about the war...
...In his report to the Harvard faculty on the affair, Dean Monro adopted the same tone—the demonstration was the result of this peculiar "excess of zeal...
...If the Attorney General were to visit a Southern university to discuss integration but refused to defend it publicly, what complain could one have if a group of segregationist students nonviolently restrained him so that he had to debate such an issue for several minutes...
...To be sure, there was some heckling by scattered individuals, but what appeared in newsreels as mass heckling by an angry mob was largely roars of disapproval to the Secretary's statements...
...Critics of SDS material, who often complain of its simplistic moralism, were surprised by the sophistication of the questions...
...If demonstrators had to run to meet McNamara, they warned, control might give way...
...At the same time, one of the most striking aspects of the demonstration was its mobilization of several hundred previously passive opponents of the war into their first public protest...
...Where then lies the distressing "discourtesy...
...Never was the Secretary in the slightest danger of physical harm...
...The difference between Robert McNamara and regular officers of Harvard should have been clear to Dean Monro...
...And 2700 Harvard students disassoc: ated themselves from the demonstrators by apologizing for "the unruly behavior of a small group...
...The reasoning of the deans might become valid if adequate channels of communication had remained open...
...Any points Scheer might have scored would have been undercut by the uneasiness that many feel toward his politics...
...The university, to its credit, has never made an issue of heckling...
...Most of those more cautious war critics who signed the apology may continue to be disdainful toward any activism and may never be motivated to protest against the war...
...If the student anti-war movement is to become more effective, it must win over rather than alienate such potential supporters...
...Immediately following the incident, Dean John Monro dispatched an apology to McNamara for "the discourteous and unruly confrontation forced upon you...
...He excused the action of his student foes by attributing it to their allowing "zeal to exceed judgment...
...The Institute issued a firm refusal...
...The gap at Harvard between demonstrators and more cautious critics of the war may have widened seriously because of the incident...
...SDS leaders had informed Institute officials that if McNamara left by the front entrance, all would be kept under control by marshals...
...Since this represents more than twice the membership of all anti-war groups on campus, and far more than had participated in any previous Vietnam demonstration, some have seen the incident as a tactical success...
...The students, then, saw the demonstration as the only alternative remaining open for public dialogue with McNamara the policy-maker, and for public opposition to McNamara the symbol of a vicious war...
...To bolster their case, members of the administration pointed out that as an honorary associate of the Kennedy Institute, McNamara was at the time a member of the university...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
