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University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1965-1967
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[handwritten] DMSR 1/22/67 P. 2 (of 2) Protesters Called 'Ignorant Kids' PROTESTERS--- Continued from Page One try to stop him from talking to people." It should be noted that university officials are always concerned that the taxpayers are going to think these are typical students. No Typical Student Well, at a university there's no such thing as typical. Last week's protesters - about half of them members of the left-wing group, Students for a Democratic Society -- are but a handful against the total enrollment of 17,700. The number of studnets who were interviewed for CIA jobs easily doubled the number of protesters. One member of a right-wing group, Young Americas for Freedom, tried to persuade about 200 listeners that they should go have a stomp-in on the sit-ins. But the protesters are important. Important because they represent a movement on today's college campuses and because they give focus to and represent certain ideas in American society. But the protest is not particularly intellectual. The CIA protesters sent an open letter to University President Howard Bowen. In it was this sentence: "Being a secret, violent, and dictatorial agency, we believe the CIA has no place in a 'university community openly pursuing truth and objectivity'." That sentence can honestly be parsed to mean: "We are a secret, violent, and dictatorial agency and we believe the CIA has no place openly pursing truth and objectivity in a university community." As one observer put it: "They hanged themselves on a dangling participle." "Ignorant Kids" A university professor, who supports the protesters' view of the CIA, had this to say: "These kids are basically ignorant. "I've told them you don't solve a problem by picketing it. You solve a problem by applying scientific method to it." It has been suggested that today's college protest groups hav ea playground vision of the world: there are good guys and bad guys only: that the only rights to respect are your own. There' s a strange negativism: "We don't know what we want. We know what we don't want." There's a child-like quality that can only be labeled "I want to believe." The university professor was asked why the protesters could wend their way through the illogic of infringing upon someone's freedom because they thought someone was infringing upon freedom. "Protest groups almost always end up by imitating what they are protesting," he replied. He used World War II as an example. The Nazis said all Jews were evil. Therefore, the forces that rose up against the Nazis said all Nazis were evil. Neither thesis had room for individual good or individual bad. "It's half-baked," he said. "These kids scoop up these ideas in a half-baked fashion - they pick up the slogans fast. "But all the rest - the responsible ideas that formed the attitude - they're slow in getting. They don't respond." He sees last Tuesday's hall-barricading this way: "When these groups are insecure, they get mean. History shows that if a group is sure of the rightness of its own cause, there's no panic. Instead, there's serenity." Creating Elements The factors that have created the protesters are best mentioned as questions. Does it have something to do with the fact that the civil rights movement didn't, and doesn't, lend itself to a dramatic solution? That there is a valid view that the United States, in conducting the Vietnam War, is a vicious colonial power subjugating the natives? That, although there has been almost constant war and the threat of death of the world, the protesters in their 20 or 25 years of life have never felt anything but comfort? That the United States is conducting one of history's great experiments - mass education?
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[handwritten] DMSR 1/22/67 P. 2 (of 2) Protesters Called 'Ignorant Kids' PROTESTERS--- Continued from Page One try to stop him from talking to people." It should be noted that university officials are always concerned that the taxpayers are going to think these are typical students. No Typical Student Well, at a university there's no such thing as typical. Last week's protesters - about half of them members of the left-wing group, Students for a Democratic Society -- are but a handful against the total enrollment of 17,700. The number of studnets who were interviewed for CIA jobs easily doubled the number of protesters. One member of a right-wing group, Young Americas for Freedom, tried to persuade about 200 listeners that they should go have a stomp-in on the sit-ins. But the protesters are important. Important because they represent a movement on today's college campuses and because they give focus to and represent certain ideas in American society. But the protest is not particularly intellectual. The CIA protesters sent an open letter to University President Howard Bowen. In it was this sentence: "Being a secret, violent, and dictatorial agency, we believe the CIA has no place in a 'university community openly pursuing truth and objectivity'." That sentence can honestly be parsed to mean: "We are a secret, violent, and dictatorial agency and we believe the CIA has no place openly pursing truth and objectivity in a university community." As one observer put it: "They hanged themselves on a dangling participle." "Ignorant Kids" A university professor, who supports the protesters' view of the CIA, had this to say: "These kids are basically ignorant. "I've told them you don't solve a problem by picketing it. You solve a problem by applying scientific method to it." It has been suggested that today's college protest groups hav ea playground vision of the world: there are good guys and bad guys only: that the only rights to respect are your own. There' s a strange negativism: "We don't know what we want. We know what we don't want." There's a child-like quality that can only be labeled "I want to believe." The university professor was asked why the protesters could wend their way through the illogic of infringing upon someone's freedom because they thought someone was infringing upon freedom. "Protest groups almost always end up by imitating what they are protesting," he replied. He used World War II as an example. The Nazis said all Jews were evil. Therefore, the forces that rose up against the Nazis said all Nazis were evil. Neither thesis had room for individual good or individual bad. "It's half-baked," he said. "These kids scoop up these ideas in a half-baked fashion - they pick up the slogans fast. "But all the rest - the responsible ideas that formed the attitude - they're slow in getting. They don't respond." He sees last Tuesday's hall-barricading this way: "When these groups are insecure, they get mean. History shows that if a group is sure of the rightness of its own cause, there's no panic. Instead, there's serenity." Creating Elements The factors that have created the protesters are best mentioned as questions. Does it have something to do with the fact that the civil rights movement didn't, and doesn't, lend itself to a dramatic solution? That there is a valid view that the United States, in conducting the Vietnam War, is a vicious colonial power subjugating the natives? That, although there has been almost constant war and the threat of death of the world, the protesters in their 20 or 25 years of life have never felt anything but comfort? That the United States is conducting one of history's great experiments - mass education?
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