Correspondents' Correspondence

...And in a subsequent Spectator article he argued that Jews identified with the victims of atrocities at the expense of their reason...

...Dean Rusk, who survived longer than any secretary of state except one, followed still another course...

...Unlike their counterparts at U.S...

...When questioned about the Dacca massacres, Blake replied, "I must say he didn't seem like the sort of chap who'd commit atrocities...

...After an emotional faculty debate last February 11, the nomination was rejected 155-153...

...Neither of the major political groups on campus, the Labor Club or the Conservative Club, took any action concerning the dispute...

...But the heated arguments over the degree for her father have hardly been forgotten, and they are likely to permanently affect university policy...

...At no step along the way has the State Department appeared to foresee or even understand what was happening there...

...Thus, if talks fail, they do so with a bang, not a whimper...

...Meanwhile in the Mideast, the Kissinger shuttle has finally run out of gas, with the Secretary candidly describing the diplomatic collapse as his "failure...

...To a reporter from the Daily Telegraph he added, "It is simply an anti-Establishment, Left-wing vote...

...The Pakistani paper Dawn announced in its February 14 issue that 70 per cent of those who favored denying the honor were Zionists...

...A negotiator is too close to the trees to see the forest, too prone to give something away because his own prestige is at stake, or, oppositely, to harden his stand out of personal pique...

...The second lesson said to be demonstrated by recent events is that a single mind, no matter how brilliant and well-organized, cannot deal with everything at once...

...It is strongly felt that in both instances the U.S...

...Richard Gombrich, one of the most outspoken opponents, was identified as a "Jew of Australian origins...

...In Cambodia and Vietnam, the end appears to be at hand after an expenditure of approximately $150 billion and 50,000 American lives...

...This reflected what the New Statesman described as a split between "that part of Oxford University which enjoys the relaxed company of successful old-boy statesmen and that which does not, or at least does not admire them without scrutiny...

...He always turned the department over to an assistant when he was out of the country, and he carried written instructions with him that he did not go beyond without clearance from Washington...

...Following these remarks, a number of dons, along with over 70 students, picketed Trevor-Roper's lecture...

...The Arab-Israeli diplomatic battleground is expected to be Geneva, and what will happen now is anyone's guess...

...Prominent supporters of the degree included Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper and Lord Blake, Provost of Queens College, both of whom were teaching at Christ Church when Bhutto was studying there...

...But to offer a degree to him and then take it back is an insult...

...Perhaps the darkest aspects of the whole affair were the references made by Bhutto backers to Zionists and Jews...

...At the moment, the only Bhutto being discussed at Oxford is the Prime Minister's daughter, Benazir, who is standing for a high office in the Oxford Union, the famed debating society...

...Moreover, as we have seen in the last few weeks, when the top policymaker is also at the bargaining table, maximum attention is focused on the process and public expectations are built up to what is often an unrealistic height...

...The Bhutto Affair Oxford-To the members of the Hebdomadal Council, the governing body of Oxford University, it must have seemed like a routine gesture to one of their own who made good...

...Currently run by a 28-man military council with strong ties to the Communists and other radical political parties, the country is widely believed to have become an open arena for espionage and foul play, not only by the CIA and the KGB, but also by intelligence agents from West Germany, Spain, Sweden, and who knows where else...

...universities, students at Oxford have never sought a direct voice in shaping university policy...

...In Portugal a democratic coup d'etat has taken an abrupt Left and anti-American turn following an abortive Right-wing takeover on March 11...

...The psychological fallout from the Mideast failure would, in all likelihood, have been far less damaging had Washington sent a State Department professional to fly between Egypt and Israel...

...Two important lessons are being drawn here from all this...

...The first is that the man making policy should not do the negotiating as well...

...This may account for much of the recent speculation-some of it deriving from the Secretary's intimates in the face of official statements to the contrary-that he may throw in the towel and leave Washington by the end of the year.-Walter R. Gordon...

...Can't say myself...

...To an American doing postgraduate work here, it was no less interesting for what it revealed about student and faculty roles than for the issue involved...

...No disrespect intended...

...on the international scene...

...In short, foreign-policy experts in the capital think Kissinger would be wise to exercise a little self-restraint: He should give up his personal diplomacy and let anonymous professionals conduct the blow-by-blow exchanges, or concentrate on negotiations and relinquish his policy-making National Security Council post to someone who would stay at home and mind the store...

...The Bangladesh Society, supported by a number of dons, claimed that Bhutto was partly responsible for the 1971 massacres in Dacca, and further charged that he had recently jailed some of his political opponents...

...Similar sentiments could be heard among the faculty, although as the final vote indicated, there a sharp division did emerge...

...Some veteran observers are saying that not since 1960 has so much gone so wrong so quickly...

...And when the Marxist-oriented Socialist Society called for a demonstration against the granting of the degree, less than 20 students turned out...

...As for the Mediterranean, Turkey and Greece are far from settling their Cyprus dispute, and as long as that wound continues to fester, nato's entire Southern rim is endangered...

...No, it's not right at all...

...The Left and the Jews that is...

...As one student put it: "Yes, yes, it might be that Bhutto was involved in the atrocities...

...Immediately after the second faculty vote, Trevor-Roper stated, "It's the Left...

...But a second vote on February 25 resulted in a clear 239-183 rejection-the first such turndown in Oxford's long history...

...Both hark back to classic principles of diplomacy and both are directed at Henry Kissinger, since he is the controlling figure in our entire foreign policy-national security establishment...

...Lord Blake declared in the university newspaper that opposition to the degree had been stirred up by wealthy expatriate Bangladeshis living in Oxford, and had attracted the support of "professional dissenters" such as H. L. A. Hart...

...Yet the students were not only keenly aware of the debate, but one found the Left and the Right agreeing that since the facts relating to the charges made against the Pakistani leader were unclear, it would not be proper to withdraw the degree...

...Prime Minister Zulfikur Ali Bhutto of Pakistan had studied law at Christ Church College in the early '50s, so it was surely appropriate to award him an honorary doctoral degree in civil law...

...That was the year the U-2 was shot down, the Paris summit went up in smoke, rioting forced cancellation of President Eisenhower's trip to Tokyo, and Fidel Castro became a Soviet ally...

...Thus it was understood and accepted that whether or not Bhutto should get the degree was a question for the administration and faculty to decide...

...Shortly afterward it was discovered that two individuals who were not eligible to participate in the balloting had cast negative votes, producing a tie...

...Fifteen years later, the United States suddenly finds itself in trouble in Portugal, Indochina, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Mideast...

...Not everyone shared the Council's view, however, as soon became apparent...

...In fact, members of the Hebdomadal Council, recognizing the difficulty of judging the morality of distant actions and the potential for antagonizing rival political factions, have already expressed their intention to be far more cautious in the future and to sound out faculty opinion more thoroughly before nominating active politicians for honorary degrees.-Mike Bernick Lessons for Henry Washington-The last few weeks have been a period of almost unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy, and the capital is buzzing these days with talk of the setbacks being suffered by the U.S...

...foreign policy are terribly obvious...

...response would have been far different had Kissinger been in Washington rather than Aswan...

...While Kissinger was enmeshed in the intricacies of Sinai geography and the semantics of nonbelligerency statements, Portugal and Indochina were degenerating into crises...

...There was only one Jew on our side...

...The degree controversy, the main political issue of the academic year, received widespread coverage in the national press and was a topic of much conversation in dining halls and common rooms...

...When the name was publicly submitted to the university's Congregation, the faculty body that must approve degree nominees, it met with angry opposition...

...Nothing that President Gerald Ford or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger can do-or say about the blame resting with Congress-is likely to change that fact...

...But no one seriously expects any of these options to be adopted by Kissinger, despite the fact that the shortcomings of U.S...