Group Asks Students to Write More 'Socially Useful' Papers

A group sponsored by Quakers has asked Harvard students to make their studies "socially useful" by shifting paper topics to such areas as corporate ties to the military and the role of capitalism in medical care.

New England Action Research (NEAR), a monitoring group that collects "dossiers" on business and government, has accumulated almost 16 drawers of files open to use by Harvard students and others, Susan Koff, a part-time staffer, said yesterday. The files contain raw data on links between university, corporate and military activities in the area.

"New England is a real home for the technology of the electronic battlefield." Koff said. "We want to develop a deeper idea of how the military-industrial complex operates here." The activities of General Electric and Honeywell--prime contractors with the Department of Defense--are watched with particular emphasis, she said.

Most of NEAR's information comes from government agencies and industry publications.

Besides firms involved with the military, NEAR scrutinizes corporations delivering health care, which Koff claimed now control and distort the system in pursuit on profit.

NEAR began when non-violent activists in Cambridge decided, over a year ago, to move from "direct confrontation" with the military-industrial complex to detailed study of it, Koff said. With financial backing and office space from the American Friends Service Committee, and antiwar group located in Inman Square, a full-time NEAR staff member and two part-time workers have been piling up reams of official statistics and bulletins.

The staffers--whose intelligence-gathering activities have yet to invite any countermoves by the FBI-would welcome help in filing the continuing inflow of material, Koff said.