SCHELLING ON GALBRAITH'S BOYCOTT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

While I've seen no indication that Professor Galbraith's proposed boycott of professors who do classified research for the government is going to stimulate a new movement, it does raise important questions about the personal activities of faculty members and the ways they may be involved with the government, and about the appropriate selection of target for protest. May I explain why I think his proposal is probably not workable and, if not workable, objectionable?

Let me first point out that Professor Galbraith did not propose that students boycott those professors whose research is objectionable, nor did he clarify what research would be objectionable. His reference was merely to "classified" research. I'm sure that by almost anyone's standards of wickedness (Galbraith's term) some classified research would be found unobjectionable. People concerned about the dissemination of nuclear technology, about the limitation of weapons, even about ways of ending the war in Vietnam, often require classified information to do their work or, at least, have to be exposed to classified information in doing their work and cannot do it unless they are willing to safeguard what the government calls "security." Even if the character of everybody's classified research could be ascertained, drawing the line between the objectionable and the unobjectionable, or between what any reasonable man would consider objectionable and what some reasonable men might consider to be in the public interest, would require subjective judgments. (Most classified research, incidentally, is probably unrelated to Vietnam.)

Second, much of the unclassified research that goes on would be objectionable to people who oppose any kind of war-related research; and to exclude such unclassified research would be arbitrary discrimination.

Third, "research" itself is difficult to define. Many faculty members are occasionally consultants or members of advisory boards in various agencies, or participants in government-sponsored conferences, sometimes classified, sometimes unclassified. Whether their influence is benign or malignant would be hard to judge; so would the degree of support or implied approval in attendance at a meeting at which one criticizes a government program or decision.

And if unclassified contributions had to pass the same strict test as classified work, to qualify for boycott or immunity from it, one would have to ask whether an activity like the Peace Corps is to be treated as a propaganda arm of the Johnson administration or as a benign and constructive activity. Again a judgment depends on a complex evaluation of the different purposes that a government program may serve.

Finally, are Faculty members who are unaffiliated with the government in any fashion, classified or unclassified, but who openly support the administration's policy toward Vietnam, to qualify for boycott? It seems strange to exclude them; but again the line would be hard to draw for those who neither wholly support the conduct or the war nor are wholly committed to one drastic alternative. (It is unclear to me on which side of the line Professor Galbraith would be placed.)

I could go on multiplying the difficulties of finding a reasonable line to draw between the non-university-administered activities of professors that are objectionable and those that are not, whatever one's standards of wickedness; and, further, I doubt whether there is enough consensus on standards to make it possible to draw an agreed line, even if some people think they know where to draw it. If I'm right about this, any line has to be arbitrary, as Professor Galbraith's line was arbitrary. (If Professor Galbraith interprets his original proposal as applying only to university-administered research, the line is clearer but only because more arbitrary.)

If, though, the line is arbitrary--if its purpose just to mark out an identifiable target without regard to the nature of the research itself or of the non-research activity--then, aside from the likelihood that an embarrassingly large number of angels will be caught in the netful of devils, there is the question of what is being objected to and what the purpose of the boycott is. The purpose can no longer be described as bringing pressure to bear to get objectionable activities terminated. Rather, it would look--to me, at any rate--as though a boycott were being used to induce a particular group of professors to join a boycott against the government, or to embarrass them for declining to join a boycott.

Whatever my feelings about Professor Galbraith's protest movement, I resent his proposal that students organize to coerce me into joining it. And I hope nobody stays away from Professor Galbraith's classes in a vain organized attempt to embarrass him into changing his politics. T. C. Schelling   Professor of Economics