A Time to Listen

The newest thing in attending commencement exercises is walking out on them; thus can the grim and hot-eyed war protester strike at the Government at the cost of some hapless official waiting in cap and gown for the honorary degree that the protesters conceive to be a seal of approval for the war.

At New York University last week, President James Hester had hardly pronounced the name "Robert Strange McNamara" when a dozen N.Y.U. faculty members and 131 violet-robed graduates walked silently up a grassy aisle and out of their commencement exercises to protest U.S. military action in Viet Nam. McNamara smiled slightly and gamely praised "the orderliness" of the students who walked out.

The 2,700 students who remained cheered his name, and in the commencement speech U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg said that "no man has better served his country" or "more by his actions demonstrated an abiding attachment to peace and freedom" than the Defense Secretary. Rebuking the demonstrators, who had been guided by Associate Psychology Professor Philip G. Zimbardo and backed by pickets elsewhere on campus bearing signs reading NO HONORS FOR WAR CRIMINALS, Goldberg argued that the Government listens when citizens speak but a "democratic dialogue" requires that citizens also listen when government speaks. Protesters, he said, should "hear what I have to say and form a judgment about what I am going to say after they have heard it and not before."

Compassionate Helmsman. In an earlier but more dramatic confrontation at Amherst, McNamara, having heard rumors of impending protest, met 500 students and faculty before the commencement ceremonies, quipping, "I am told that this question session is a requirement to get an honorary degree at Amherst." He coolly answered sharp but politely put questions for more than an hour. When a student told him that some seniors would wear white arm bands and walk out to protest his honorary degree, McNamara said he respected their position because "I don't think we want to deny the freedom here that we are fighting for the Vietnamese to have."

When 36 graduates showed up with the arm bands and 16 walked out, the rest of the Amherst audience rose and loudly applauded Amherst President Calvin Plimpton's mention of McNamara. Moved by the ovation, Plimpton haltingly read the McNamara citation. His voice broke as he said: "You have displayed an integrity so unquestioned that, while I would still prefer to go myself, I am willing to trust my sons [he has three, aged 14 to 24] to your administration, knowing that there is an intellectual and compassionate human at the helm." As the honoris causa hood was placed over McNamara's head, the crowd stood again and clapped.

Arrogant Assumptions. Not surprisingly, academic protests were on the minds of many commencement speakers across the U.S. Nearly all praised the new activism, but nearly all also added warnings. Richard Nixon, speaking at the University of Rochester, said that he did not "question the patriotism of the protesters," but when a protester uses "the forum of a university to proclaim that he welcomes victory for the enemy in a shooting war, he crosses the line between liberty and license." Michigan State President John Hannah argued at the University of Maryland that "because we agree that each man is entitled to his own opinion does not mean that every man's opinion is worth as much as that of any other person." Hannah deplored "the arrogant assumption on the part of a few students that because they were born with brains they are chosen by Providence to make careers of criticism."

At Alfred University, Samuel B. Gould, president of the State University of New York, said the "disquieting element" in student activism is that "it is not often enough accompanied by the presentation of practical solutions to the state of affairs being protested." At Smith, Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued that "when issues are complex and ambiguous, as in Viet Nam, mass demonstrations run the risk of lowering the rationality of discussion."

Despite the topicality of student protest, most speakers who took a broad look at the college generation fell far short of despair. Robert Rankin, associate director of the Danforth Foundation, told University of Redlands graduates that "you embody less silliness, a greater degree of personal maturity, more concern about humanity, and more candor and integrity than any student generation in this century."

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