Mill Street: Chronicle of a Confrontation

It was already growing dark when Barney Frank '62 began to walk across the Yard to the Law School. Frank was tired, angry, and dejected. Twenty minutes before, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had been engulfed by angry students; it had been a humiliation for Frank as much as for the Secretary. For three weeks he had been at the center of preparations for the McNamara visit. He had arranged the time schedule. He had selected the 120 undergraduates who would see the Secretary. He had talked with Students for a Democratic Society. He had made arrangements with House Masters, cleared agreements with the Harvard Administration, and coordinated plans with the University Police. He had aimed all his efforts to prevent what had happened just twenty minutes before. Now as he walked to rejoin the Secretary of Defense at the Law School, his sentiments were to the point: he swore.

Clearly, this had been Barney's Baby, and he took the protest in a very personal way. The cautious hostility he had for SDS now moved closer to hate. He would say later that he believed the Harvard campus was faced with a monumental issue: whether such blatant violations of personal liberty were to be tolerated. For his part, he did not see how they could. SDS had shown itself to be profoundly "undemocratic," and their tactics deserved to be damned until they were discredited. He might have liked to undertake that fight, but as associate director of the Kennedy Institute he was not about to do it and thereby jeopardize the Institute's program. Yet, there was more to his belligerence than simple disagreement. There were the efforts of the last three weeks, and the frantic attempts to avoid embarrassment for McNamara. Three weeks of futility. Frank knew that this time he had been beaten.

His feelings may have been singular only in their intensity. Other people were--or would be--thinking similar thoughts about the afternoon's events. For the meeting of McNamara and his critics on Mill St. was not an ordinary occurrence for Harvard. It resembled no other political protest in the College's recent history. Previous demonstrations had been mild in comparison. The most memorable, perhaps, was George Wallace's visit to Cambridge in the fall of 1963. It provoked a large demonstration on Cambridge Common and picketing around Sanders Theatre. All that happened then, however, was that someone let the air out of the tires of Wallace's car. And when Madame Nhu arrived a few weeks later, angry critics marched outside Rindge Tech shouting loud enough to interrupt her speech inside several times. But neither of these incidents was anything like what happened last Monday. The reaction to McNamara caught the College's top administrators by surprise and left them cold with indignation.

Beyond Bounds

Sitting in Dean Watson's office less than an hour after the last students left Mill St., Watson and Dean Monro deplored the afternoon's events. Over and over they emphasized that this demonstration had exceeded the bounds of normal, permissible, and predictable behavior of Harvard students -- the two men simply hadn't expected it. Neither had been at the scene, and as they received more and more information, they became increasingly offended. Monro said initially that the matter would not go before the Administrative Board, because the College disliked judging any sort of political protest. The next day, having seen television films of the demonstration, he brought it before the Board. There would be no punishment now, he warned after the meeting, but "If this happens again, action will be taken."

It was only then, more than 12 hours after the Secretary of Defense left Cambridge, that the Administration of Harvard College really became involved in the McNamara visit. Before that, almost everything had been handled by the Kennedy Institute of Politics. The weeks preceeding the Secretary's arrival had not been inactive ones for the Institute. A new experimental program, designed to bring undergraduates into closer contact with public figures, was to begin, and a long list of details had to be attended. More importantly, there was political groundwork to be done if the Secretary's visit were to be successful. The Institute was fully aware that its first "honorary associate" was a controversial figure and that his presence would probably stimulate protest.

Almost three weeks before McNamara was scheduled to arrive, David M. Gordon '65, who had worked for the Institute of Politics last year, began meeting informally with Michael S. Ansara '68, one of the leaders of SDS. During most of the controversy between SDS and the Institute, Gordon was to play what Barney Frank called a "double-agent role with the consent of both sides." He was always on good speaking terms with Ansara (and therefore privy to most of SDS's plans), but his primary purpose was to protect the Institute and insure the success of its program. There was a good reason why he should have been partial to the Institute: Gordon himself had worked out the framework for the Institute's undergraduate activities during the previous year.

Meeting informally every few days, Gordon and Ansara reviewed most of the preliminary issues. Gordon laid out his conception of the Institute and the purpose of the undergraduate program. He was particularly worried that SDS might choose to disrupt McNamara's meetings with small groups of 50 undergraduates each, and that the meetings' usefulness might be destroyed.

Ansara, like many members of SDS, doubted the value of some of the Institute's programs. He was not convinced that public figures would speak candidly even in small groups and even if their remarks were "off-the-record." And he thought it important that the honorary associates be questioned publicly about current issues within their purview. Ansara believed these arguments in the abstract; and in McNamara's case they had a special persuasiveness. McNamara engendered hatred as a symbol of the Vietnam war; his stiff personal style alienated people even more. Ansara assured Gordon that most SDS members would insist on some sort of demonstration. Nevertheless, he simultaneously pledged to do everything he could to avoid a disruption of the Secretary's private sessions with students. He was not enthralled by the meetings, but neither was he convinced that they were entirely useless. Certainly, they could do no harm and would not spoil SDS's plans.

Ansara then produced a concrete proposal: would McNamara be willing to debate an anti-war spokesman at Harvard? If he would, then a demonstration might be unnecessary. Gordon doubted that the idea would be acceptable, but said he would check out the proposal with the Institute's directors, Richard Neustadt and Frank. The answer was, as expected, a firm no.

All this happened before the idea of a debate was broached publicly. It happened before SDS decided to make the challenge official and before petitions demanding a meeting between McNamara and Robert Scheer, editor of Ramparts magazine, were circulated throughout the College and Radcliffe. But once the petitions were distributed, they collected more than 1600 names, including those of some 50 Faculty members and more than 90 teaching fellows. This put some punch behind the proposal, and it also probably began the gradual alienation of SDS and the Institute. For, by going to the community, SDS had informed the Institute -- that is, Frank and Neustadt -- that it intended to pressure them into either accepting a proposal which had already been rejected or suffering unspecified consequences. Both Frank and Neustadt, who consider themselves to be fair but hard-nosed individuals, were antagonized by this approach.

Bloody Bones

But SDS had chosen the tactic for a number of reasons First and foremost there was McNamara himself. The antipathy held towards this man by many students -- "radicals" and some non-radicals as well -- is hard to describe. It was voiced on Monday afternoon in the anguished cries of "Don't you care?" that answered the Secretary's admission that he didn't know how many civilian casualties U.S. troops had caused. Many students who heard McNamara Monday could only describe him in superlatives -- "one of the most callous, arrogant men I have ever seen," said one. So intense was two students disgust that they were prepared at first to dump bloody bones at the Secretary's feet as a gesture of protest.

McNamara's presence, it could be reasonably said, amplified the anti-war sentiment already present at Harvard. Even if some of SDS's leaders had been predisposed not to demonstrate, they would have been hard pressed to resist the will of the rest of the organization.

There were other less ideological, but still very important reasons to protest. Harvard, over the last two years, has been a frustrating place for SDS. The organization has never been able to achieve a truly wide impact; no issue has seemed clear-cut enough to attract strong, long-term support. SDS members complain about the apathy of the average Harvard student. They often yearn for something closer to a Berkeley. The Harvard student body doesn't seem to get stirred up, and the Harvard administration is difficult to offend.

This year, many members of SDS perceived a change. At the beginning of the semester, more than 1000 students (including graduate students) signed interest cards, and the initial general membership meeting atracted about 200 people. Disaffection with the war seemed to be growing, and SDS members believed that people were increasingly willing to commit themselves. Moreover, there was another stimulating issue: the draft and class rankings. SDS was virtually the only organization eager to take an active stand on the rankings.

With the visit of McNamara, SDS saw yet another opportunity to generate interest in itself and in the war. Here was a clear-cut chance to do something -- a chance for a large number of SDS members to become involved in a significant anti-war protest. There was a good deal of personal satisfaction in this prospect for more experienced SDS leaders, who anticipated shattering the stolid indifference of the Harvard campus. The McNamara visit, then, was not to be ignored. It was potentially at least, the stuff of which strong organizations are made.

SDS now began its public sparring with the Kennedy Institute. From this point on, relations between the two groups deteriorated slowly but steadily. Gordon, because he was respected by both sides and because he kept certain confidences, was still able to act as a go-between. But though he frequently talked to the antagonists, he was not able to eliminate the basic conflicts.

Part of the problem was personality friction between SDS's leaders and Barney Frank. Frank was trying desperately in every way he could to make the stay of the first and probably most important honorary associate a successful one.

Frank had been picked for the Institute job because, among other reasons, politics fascinated him and he was one of the most popular tutors in the College. But his popularity never really extended into the ranks of student "radicals." They did not dislike him; Frank and the young leftists just didn't know each other very well. Many of Frank's undergraduate connections are in Winthrop House, never known as a bastion of radicalism. Moreover, Frank was not tempermentally inclined to seek out students on the left. Though he worked in Mississippi for COFO in the summer of 1964, he had not, like many civil rights workers, cut his ties with conventional politics. Far from it, he remained a Regular Democrat (capital R and capital D), even if a very liberal one. During the past state campaign he worked for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Edward J. McCormack.

Frank personally alienated many -- if not most -- members of SDS. By the time the controversy was reaching its final stages, he was hitting them with statements such as: "If SDS can find no other legitimate channels for a protest in a University as liberal as this one, it is simply a measure of their intellectual impotence."

Frank had his own reason to be annoyed. What bothered him most (and what provoked his caustic statement) was that he was not against protest but, on the contrary, had done everything he could to see that SDS's right to protest would be both respected and protected. SDS did not seem thankful for this gesture, nor did it seem willing to reciprocate by giving assurances that the demonstration would be peaceful. These conditions, Frank thought, were within the rules of the protest game as it had been played at Harvard and as it should be played. SDS's cold unresponsiveness angered him.

On the Wednesday before McNamara was due to arrive in Cambridge, the Institute and SDS made what was to be the last serious attempt to resolve their differences. The petitions asking for a debate had already been collected, and the challenge to the Secretary of Defense was formal. Richard Neustadt called two leaders of SDS (Ansara and Eric Lessinger '68) into his office, and with Frank sought to convince them that there were good reasons for not permitting a debate. Until this time, Neustadt had remained relatively aloof from the public conflict. He had been preoccupied with a series of important lectures he was delivering at Columbia. But he was not able to dissuade either Ansara or Lessinger. Nothing was accomplished; each side held its ground, and the central difference became increasingly apparent. The Institute and SDS were talking about different things.

In the Flesh

"SDS never really wanted to negotiate," Neustadt said the evening after the McNamara confrontation. In fact, neither side ever strayed far from its basic position: the Institute was willing to guarantee a peaceful demonstration so long as McNamara was insulated from it (something SDS could have on its own any time); SDS insisted on McNamara in the flesh -- either standing before a public podium or stranded in the street. "All SDS wanted," Neustadt said, "was to embarrass the Secretary of Defense."

The reasons that Neustadt turned down a debate have been repeated endlessly, but they can bear one more review. His program for the "honorary associates" had been founded on the premise that everything these men said would be off-the-record. The Institute's undergraduate activities were aimed at bringing students into closer contact with politics; the rationale behind the associates program was that Harvard had enough public speeches by enough important people, and that real understanding could be better served by small, informal meetings. Neustadt felt it only fair that if men of public stature were to give two or more days of their time to this sort of activity, the Institute should give them something in return: first, the assurance that they wouldn't be coerced into making public statements, and second, the assurance of several days of relative tran-quality so that they could gain something themselves from contact with an academic community. And, in the case of McNamara, the case against debate seemed even more compelling. Neustadt was not about to pressure the Secretary of Defense into a session whose primary purpose would be to discredit government policies; to do so would be to violate the terms of McNamara's invitation and to surrender to unconcealed threats.

SDS took the rejection and resolved that evening (Wednesday) to answer it with a rally and a "disruptive" demonstration in the Quincy House courtyard. (Simultaneously, however, it resolved not to interrupt any of the private sessions.) Now that the possibility of debate had been formally disposed of, the major questions revolved about the nature and location of the demonstration. But things were not as simple as they seemed.

An extraneous issue had entered the controversy with the selection of the