Disturbing The War

Reprinted from the Peninsula Observer, August 26, 1968

Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board of the Atomic Energy Commission in the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Spring, 1954.

A fifty-page guide and critique of Leland’s farm, by Stanford SDS, with information a student new to Stanford and new to the area would like to have: information on Stanford, SRI, transportation, radio stations, etc.

See David Pugh’s comments 15 minutes into this documentary film.

A guide prepared by members and associates of the Stanford chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. 43 pages plus title pages, table of contents, etc.

Because of the work of SRI and some Stanford professors in Thailand, we did not limit ourselves to Vietnam or even Indochina.

To its credit, Stanford University now hosts an informative, moving project telling the story of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America.

While SDS was calling for a rally-caravan to protest of SRI’s involvement in classified military research, President Glaser was forming a twelve-person committee to examine the University’s ties with SRI. Its asigned purpose was not to review SRI’s war and counterinsurgency work, so we published a poster-sized critique called the Street Wall Journal.

Fathers and Sons, Public Broadcasting Laboratories, running about 90 minutes, was broadcast first in April, 1969, during the April Third Movement. We transferred our somewhat degraded 16mm-film copy to VHS then DVD then to YouTube. The events in the film are not in chronological order

The SDS sponsored a four-hour long session as part of their Greet Pitzer Week.

On January 4, 1969, Fred Cohen, Leonard Siegel, and Marc Weiss proposed a strategy titled, A Proposal for Strategy for Stanford S.D.S. In March, Ed Montgomery, the San Francisco Examiner’s FBI-connected reporter, wrote a front page exposé about this confidential memo for top echelon SDS members in which SDS leaders plotted to disrupt a Trustee meeting.

A3M 1968–1969 Position Papers are posted online in the A3M Historical Archive.

Leonard Siegel’s January, 1969 proposal to organize SDS.

“General strategy, analysis and ideology, organization, and winter action-education program,” by David Pugh

January 14, 1969 invitation to join an open meeting of the Stanford Board of Trustees and a list of demands to be made to the Board.

This event was included near the beginning of documentary film, Fathers and Sons.

Four-page statement of defendants published by Stanford SDS, March, 1969.

During our judicial process, the Black Students Union was pursuing its own demands on the University. A group of black students destroyed property in the Stanford bookstore as part of their protest. Madelyn Spatt, “Militant Blacks Raid Bookstore, Pitzer’s Absence Causes Fury,” The Stanford Daily, February 21, 1969, p. 1.

Report of the Stanford Judicial Council proceedings regarding the allegations that students had disrupted a meeting of the University Board of Trustees on January 14. The document includes the steps taken by the Judicial Council, its judgment in the case, and its recommendations to President Pitzer. The Statement is 20 pages long.

On March 3, 1969. The Stanford Daily published an editorial titled, SDS Strikes Out. It proved to be premature.

I find it interesting how closely Stanford’s administration was following events at other campuses. On March 3, 1969, The National Observer printed a February 17, 1969 letter by Father Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame University. Trustee Thomas Pike sent a note to Pitzer about the Hesburgh statement. Pitzer’s March 10, 1969 reply to Pike, along with Hesburgh’s letter and a letter from Hesburgh to President Nixon, are in this file.

The March 31, 1969 Peninsula Observer published a report titled, Trustees Routed: Transcript of the Meeting, reporting on the March 11 meeting between students and trustees.

Nick Selby ended up joining the April Third Movement after penning a Stanford Daily column in which he stated, Clearly, and thankfully, the normal processes of AEL have been obstructed; and in which he asked such questions as, Is it the normal business of the university to engage in research involving radar jamming so that United States bombers may attack North Vietnam without fear of surface-to-air (SAM) missile retaliation?

Petition urging that SRI be brought under closer control by the University community and that no further Chemical-Biological Warfare or counter-insurgency contracts be accepted by SRI. The petition lists twenty-four sponsors.