Disturbing The War

A set of three letters: The first is from Richard S. Bogart, for Students for a Democratic Society, to President Sterling, Oct. 25, 1967, requesting that the CIA and war-oriented corporations be denied use of Stanford facilities for recruitment activities. The second is from Richard W. Lyman, Vice President and Provost, to Richard S. Bogart, Oct. 30, 1967; and the third is from Richard W. Lyman to The Stanford Daily, Nov. 1, 1967.

In Fall Quarter of 1968 and the Winter Quarter of 1969, a Public Broadcasting Laboratories team led by filmmaker Don Lenzer followed members of the Stanford Chapter of Students for a Democratic Society to meetings, parties, rallies, and protests. Their 90-minute documentary, Fathers and Sons, was broadcast in the Spring of 1969.

The Interim Judicial Body (IJB) verdict shared the May 3, 1968 Stanford Daily front page with a report on the police assault on Columbia protestors. In IJB Finds Demonstrators Guilty; Ask Suspensions, Michael Sweeney reported on the all-faculty IJB overruling a decision of the ASSU Judiciary Council, finding seven students guilty of violating the University demonstrations policy during a protest against CIA recruiting. In Students Versus Police, A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times reported on the clash at Columbia University.

As University President J. E. Wallace Sterling issued a statement rejecting student demands on the judicial controversy, one hundred forty students meeting last night in Tresidder Memorial Union voted to stage some sort of militant demonstration at noon today starting in White Plaza.

Press Release from the Student Press Committee covering student demands and the student occupation of a University administrative building.

Lenny Siegel’s analysis of the May, 1968 sit-in, written in the summer of 1968. I don’t remember writing this. I must have sent it to other SDS chapters. Five decades later, I find it amazing or strange that I was already formulating lessons learned at age 19.

May 8, 1968 letter to the Stanford faculty from concerned students asking for support.

Phillip Taubman’s report, Sit-In Ended As Academic Council Supports Amnesty, No Suspensions, The Stanford Daily, May 9, 1968.

A statement on leaving the Old Union Building. I don’t think I wrote that paragraph, but it represented the kernel of the New Left ideology that I had embraced: people have a right to control the institutions that affect their lives.