Letters to the Editor

Revisiting the Sixties

As I read the excerpt from Richard Lyman’s book (“At the Hands of the Radicals,” January/February), I was reminded of the unfortunate disconnect between the generations in that era. The student movement, in which I participated, was sorely in need of mentoring. We needed guidance from elders who could address the question that mattered most to us: how do we stop our country from doing catastrophic damage to the small country of Vietnam? With a few notable exceptions, including religion professor Robert McAfee Brown, who was repeatedly arrested at the Oakland Army Induction Center, the elders of the Stanford community weren’t leaders in the antiwar movement.

Richard Lyman’s writing reveals the mindset that prevented him from being a mentor to students of that era. Lyman says about the student objection to the University’s contracts with the Defense Department for classified research, “Critics of the war were not interested in the possible virtues of having university scientists be the ones to advise the military.” Does Lyman believe that having “university scientists” involved in, say, development of the technology for precision bombing, could somehow make the war-making more humane? And even if that dubious claim were true, the students’ goal was to end the war, not to prosecute it more intelligently or humanely.

One of the lessons of Vietnam (for some of us) came from the irony that the people who led us into that tragic war were widely considered “the best and the brightest.” That term was applied by author David Halberstam to Harvard grad John F. Kennedy and his team that included Robert McNamara, Phi Beta Kappa at UC Berkeley, and McGeorge Bundy, a Yale grad. Vietnam revealed that there is a gap between scholarly training and wisdom. This was a popularly understood truth in the ancient world, as in the biblical passage, “You have hidden these things from the learned and revealed them to little children.” Lyman reveals that the Stanford leadership didn’t understand what the students understood—that wars can be stopped if enough people withdraw their support in tangible ways: stop going to fight, stop paying for it, and stop collaborating with the war effort.

The student movement had its own version of the hubris of the best and the brightest. If their elders didn’t “get it” about the war, that made the students more astute than their elders. The consequences of this hubris are evident in Lyman’s book.

Given the highly competitive admissions process, and the value placed on excellence, I wonder if there is any way that elite universities can avoid sending the message to their students (or their professors) that they are better than others. That message is highly seductive. And it handicaps those who believe it, as it’s harder to learn if you are in denial about your own ignorance. It sometimes takes a tragedy to penetrate the denial.

The tragic consequences of American foreign policy over the last 60 years should have taught us some humility. With the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, it appears we have more to learn.

Rick Longinotti, ’74
Santa Cruz, California

I was a student at Stanford from 1969 to 1973 and witnessed firsthand many of the events that Lyman describes. Why did you not present other perspectives, such as by protesters and bystanders? I and many others like me who protested the war in Vietnam did not support “trashing” (breaking windows and other property damage), and I am convinced that most of this was done by dedicated rabble-rousers or even plants hired by police or federal agents to discredit the antiwar movement. Further, Lyman makes gross overgeneralizations, such as, “there was a confused sit-in at the Old Union in which some 50 sheriff’s deputies swept into the building without warning and arrested 22 people while the rest fled, hurling rocks at the police as they went.” Lyman talks about the protesters as though they are a single unit; in reality, there was an enormous disparity of opinion about the wisdom of throwing rocks and other tactics. It’s not like all the protesters at the Old Union picked up rocks en masse and started hurling them. Lyman talks about the protesters’ “mindless atrocities,” but nowhere in the article does he even address the ultimate mindless atrocities happening in Vietnam, Cambodia and eventually Kent State and Jackson State, where innocent protesters were shot in cold blood.

Yes, Stanford was crazy back then. I recall a minor fight breaking out in my dorm, and suddenly I look up to see half dozen tac squad police storming down our hallway. Every night, helicopters flew overhead with searchlights beaming down on us, making us feel like we were in a police state. I sympathize with Lyman’s fear for his life, but all our lives were at risk. Many of us were drafted to fight in a war in which we didn’t believe, a war that dragged on nearly two decades, and which killed more than 10 times as many American soldiers as those who have died so far in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lyman has never acknowledged the big picture of what was going on. Stanford has had a role in right-wing political planning for years, or haven’t you heard of the Hoover Institution? If you want to do a piece on a controversial time such as this, don’t just be a shill for a former president’s book by the University press and present only his side of it. Do a little responsible journalism. There are plenty of other voices to be heard.

James Webster, ’73
Berkeley, California

Richard Lyman’s review of the many attacks by vandals at Stanford was a reminder.

It should never be allowed to happen again even if brute force is required.

T.A. Snell, ’48
Yorba Linda, California

Richard Lyman’s memoir was admirable in its candor and comprehensiveness. But I was disturbed by his statement, “Rationality itself was widely scorned in the 1960s and suffered setbacks.” It is true that many cruel and utterly senseless acts of violence were committed on campus during that period, and they were indefensible. But the main emphasis of the local antiwar movement was on education and nonviolent resistance aimed at ending a brutal war. Students early on trained volunteers to go door-to-door in Palo Alto distributing antiwar leaflets. They organized rallies and held well-attended teach-ins featuring faculty members and other foreign policy experts. They risked long prison terms by publicly burning their draft cards. A group of faculty wives regularly stood outside the Placement Center protesting the use of campus office space by military recruiters and manufacturers of napalm and other weapons. A faculty-staff-student committee met once a week to plan antiwar activities, and several faculty members and students went to jail for sitting in at nearby military installations. The Moratorium, organized in 1969, filled both Memorial Auditorium and Memorial Church with students and local residents who came to hear Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and other distinguished speakers, including two members of Congress. The sit-in at the AEL caused inconvenience but did little if any damage and had a rational purpose: to end classified research at Stanford. Lyman’s statement, quoted at the beginning of this letter, could be better applied to the Vietnam War, itself an act of supreme irrationality.

Rachelle Marshall
Stanford, California

Judging from your cover story, the military/industrial/academic complex is alive and well at Stanford. While former president Lyman correctly recognizes that there has been a decline in rationality over the decades, it was hardly the inspiration of the civil rights movement (whose leader we commemorate on January 19), nor was it the critique of the Vietnam War that led to this decline. Rather it is the success of the acolytes of Mammon. If rationality has not retained “its place in its supposed Temple,” it has everything to do with moneychangers who have desecrated the Temple. Former President Lyman should look to himself.

Tom O’Neill, MA ’86
Livermore, California

As a participant in the A3M protests and in the occupations of Stanford’s Applied Electronics Laboratory and Encina Hall (then the administration building), I found Richard Lyman’s account of those events most interesting. It is worth noting, however, that few, if any, student participants were “revolutionaries” as labeled in the article. The majority of our group believed in the democratic process. Many, like myself, also believed in the use of nonviolent protest as a means of focusing attention on life-and-death issues that needed to be addressed. On the other hand, I did witness several members of the student opposition (ROTC, YAF and/or their sympathizers) intentionally break an interior doorway window and otherwise damage property as they aggressively roamed through Encina Hall in an apparently successful effort to bring discredit to our group and to the messages we were trying to convey. I would not have been at all surprised to find out that those same vandals had been involved in damaging Lyman’s home and other University property with that same motive in mind.

As one of the 100 or fewer student protestors remaining in Encina Hall at the end of the occupation, I can assure you that it was a relatively few hard-core radicals who wanted to stay and to engage in a confrontation with the assembled riot police. The A3M group always had been run by consensus, and the open vote by the remaining majority to vacate the building without confrontation was a clear victory for the cooler heads among us.

I was pleased to see the list of positive changes that Lyman felt had resulted, at least in part, from the turbulence of that time. I am disturbed, however, by his conclusion that “[s]tudents of the rise of fascism in Europe” could find “worrisome” the contempt which the New Left allegedly held for government. I sincerely believe that the majority of Stanford students involved in the A3M demonstrations were using the hard-won democratic right to protest injustice as a tool to bring needed reform to the system from within, and not in an attempt to destroy it from without.

Terrence L. Hall, ’72
West Bloomfield, Michigan

I attended Stanford as a graduate student from fall 1965 to fall 1967 when I received an MS in Materials Science. I was a witness to some of the happenings, but as a member of the “quiet generation” I went about my business of getting a degree. I certainly did not agree with the war and my sympathies were very much with the protesters. However, in all my years since then I have been put off by the conservative bent of Stanford because of its rich tradition of intellectual honesty.

It struck me then and now that Stanford and all of society could have known what was happening in Vietnam and elsewhere based on what scholars knew too well. During my undergraduate years at Loyola University in Los Angeles I had to take American history. I chose to take it in summer school at Pasadena City College in 1964. I was lucky enough to take the class covering the period from the Civil War to the present from a Stanford PhD in Asian history (I have long since forgotten his name). He brilliantly covered the entire subject matter up to the Korean conflict. He then set about to instruct us in the history and background behind both Korea and the entire Southeast Asian conflicts. In 1964 he told us what was going to happen in Vietnam based on their 3,000-year history, which was all known but apparently not understood. Basically, Ho Chi Minh may have been a socialist but not a communist. He fell in with the Russians because they would give him aid. As soon as [North Vietnam] would win, that professor predicted that Vietnam would very quickly attack China and their neighbors where China had influence. He also said they would become very Westernized and would become partners with the West and the United States.

It is ironic that the Stanford establishment stood its ground during the period in question in this article when it was teaching graduates before 1964 all the facts that put the lie to what the U.S. government was doing in Vietnam.

How much of what is wrong about the U.S. policies of at least the past eight years has been known by scholars at Stanford and elsewhere? Why not listen to those who know instead of the politicians?

Michael Harrigan, MS ’68
Ann Arbor, Michigan

President Lyman’s story describes a most distressing time at the University. Strikers occupied and damaged buildings, humiliated the trustees, smashed a police car, conducted sit-ins, threw rocks at police and at President Lyman’s house, and burned wings of the Center for Advanced Study.

The results were deplorable. As President Lyman writes, the ROTC program was eliminated, as was classified research. There was a “reformulation of academic requirements,” which led to the elimination of the D and F grades and of the Western Civilization course. The University opened coed dormitories, which was the start of the sexual revolution encouraging casual sex between uncommitted students. Ultimately it established black and Hispanic dormitories, which in effect institutionalized discrimination.

These were the results of a timid faculty and administration. Of course, other major universities—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.—followed the same course, with equally lamentable results.

About the same time (early 1969) at San Francisco State University, President S. I. Hayakawa responded to similar demands in a different way. He famously climbed on a strikers’ truck to disconnect loudspeakers. He called in the police with the result that 700 strikers were arrested. When the strike ended, the only change made was the creation of a School of Ethnic Studies.

Not long ago the D and F grades were reinstated at Stanford, and there has been a partial restoration of the Western Civilization course. But there are still coed dorms, and the ROTC is still banned.

Perhaps parents will demand a return to male and female dorms. Perhaps common sense will permit a return of the ROTC so that our soldiers can interact with University students and faculty.

Monty Phister, ’49, MS ’50
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Kudos to Richard Lyman for his thoughtful reminiscences on the Vietnam War era, which are riveting and, for all I know, perfectly accurate—unlike his account of later events. As one of the 294 students arrested in the Old Union in May of 1977, I must differ with Lyman’s assertion that “the whole thing blew over in a trice” with “not a repeat performance.” The Stanford anti-apartheid demonstration, aimed at pressuring the administration to consider divestiture from South African firms in violation of the Sullivan Rules was repeated across the nation—at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard and scores of other campuses. The movement spanned the globe and in 1985 returned to Stanford, where two more major demonstrations and a campus visit by Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu finally convinced trustees to begin divestment. By 1988, 155 universities as well as 26 states and over 90 cities had fully or partially divested; in 1986 the U.S. Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. Nelson Mandela has acknowledged that these demonstrations and the financial pressures they created were essential to the triumph over apartheid, and Clayborne Carson, professor of history and founder of the Martin Luther King Institute, has said that this wave was “perhaps the strongest student movement in Stanford’s history.” Those of us who risked our careers by putting our shoulders to the wheel of social justice are proud to have played a part in this chapter of the civil rights struggle. Although charges filed against us referred to the events as a “riot,” there was not a single act of violence or vandalism, more than 3,000 students and 80 faculty members signed the divestment petition, more than 900 rallied in White Plaza on that historic day in 1977, and the ripples of it ultimately swept down some of the mightiest walls of oppression. That Lyman remains so dismissive and even unaware of the contributions made by this movement is testimony to his vaunted “combativeness,” but it does damage to historical scholarship and perhaps even to the progress of humanity, which is the core mission of the university.

Mark Hallam, ’80
Granite Bay, California

How wonderful to read in your January issue about Dr. Abraham Verghese, who allows the focus of his work as a medical doctor to be on the healing connection with his patients (“The Human Whisperer”). I’m very impressed that Stanford Medical School hired him last year expressly to promote helping students communicate with their patients as part of their medical training.

What a contrast to the article in the same issue by Richard Lyman—whose presidency at Stanford during the troubled times of the anti-Vietnam war protests in the late ’60s was marked by a sublime disregard for the concerns of the many students who took valuable time from their studies to express solidarity against the killing of people far away, as well as those of young people here in this country through the military draft. As a student at Stanford from 1966 to 1970, I am truly appalled at Lyman’s self-defensiveness 40 years later for his antagonistic approach to dealing with the justifiable fears of the young people for whom he was ultimately responsible during their years on campus. Lyman might have promoted dialogue aimed at understanding the sources of the anger and fear behind the demonstrations and rock throwing (e.g., all men were subject to being drafted into the armed forces as soon as they left college). Instead, he enforced a “them versus us” attack style that included angry tirades and scary encounters with riot-squad police—which served neither the students nor the Stanford administration and from which it took the Stanford community many years to recover.

Eve Siegel, ’70
Berkeley, California

Thank you. Your spread on Richard Lyman’s memoir of campus unrest unexpectedly illuminated my own confused and aborted sojourn at the Farm. Like my contemporary, editor Kevin Cool (“A Campus in Crisis,” First Impressions, January/February), I felt I “missed the ’60s,” but from this distance I realize I didn’t miss them by much. Lyman, I’d bet, had something to do with how thoroughly their political spirit had been expunged from campus by the time I arrived in 1977.

Neither the contemptuous tone nor the sketchy reasoning of the excerpted piece indicate that Lyman has reached an understanding of those long-ago events that could allow him to make peace with them. I would suggest that a violent society begat (and begets) violent children, and that those youth were not as different from their elders as either imagined. Here’s hoping the Obama generation has something to teach us.

Elizabeth Montgomery, ’81
Oakland, California

If Editor Kevin Cool has friends who returned from Vietnam to be spat upon by youthful war protesters, he should hurry to document this. Holy Cross College sociology professor Jerry Lembcke has carefully pursued such stories (see his 2000 NYU Press book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam). Lembcke was unable to confirm any spitting incidents. This “urban myth” has, however, been eagerly embraced by some Americans still grappling with the guilt and anger occasioned by that war, and it plays well, too, within contemporary political debate.

Lamont Lindstrom
Tulsa, Oklahoma

An Exceptional Doctor

What could be more soothing to a seething contempt for medical doctors than Susan Cohen’s beautiful article about Dr. Abraham Verghese (“The Human Whisperer,” January/February)? What doctors call professional authority I see as arrogant overconfidence, steeped with ignorance and sheer stupidity, and ludicrously validating a professional identity. I needed very much to read Cohen’s words “Verghese thinks that what draws medical students to his work is that he exposes himself as a flawed human being rather than as an all-knowing physician.”

Dr. Verghese is an exceptional artist within the medical arts who portrays by example an answer to “What makes a doctor a doctor?” akin to the way Jan Vermeer’s fine, subtle perceptions answer “What makes a Vermeer a Vermeer?” If there were a statistical distribution of decent human beings in medicine worthy of trust, he would be a “plus three sigma” exception. His colleagues, examples for the next generation only by their numbers, would skew any normalcy, and they would range from the common doctor to virulent strains of the common doctor, and at “minus three sigma” the likes of [British serial killer] Dr. Harold Shipman. They would well provoke the question, “What makes borderline art borderline art?”

Whose art would you like to experience? I think the exhibition Body Worlds affirms Dr. Verghese’s belief that doctors are often wounded people attracted to medicine in an attempt to heal themselves, people who’ve sought ‘a way to be in this world’ from the margins. Its creator, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who resembles the “plastinated” cadavers he’s arranged in artistic poses, said without irony his purpose is to “open the hearts of people to themselves, to their own bodies.” The cadavers, nothing more than his objects, have said nothing, other than by their poses, about the way Dr. von Hagens uses them to express to his satisfaction his own interpretation of art. . . .

A way to avoid becoming clay in the hands of “wounded people” is to avoid them. A future scanner that reviews my unique genetics with respect to the entire body of medical knowledge would “know” what’s abnormal for me, what pathology might be triggered by what cause, and custom-design my treatment. A future doctor corps, much reduced in size and comprised of physicians like Abraham Verghese, would oversee it. By then, the cadavers of Dr. Verghese’s colleagues, exposing pathology as they did in life, should be on display in an exhibition titled The Way It Used to Be. That would be beautiful.

Peter Pansing, ’67
Culver City, California

I wish to comment on the splendid article by Susan Cohen about Abraham Verghese. As I was reading it, I was reminded of another professor of medicine at Stanford, Dr. George Barnett. He taught physical diagnosis when I was a second year medical student in 1943. He would read from different works, such as Zadig by Voltaire. In this example, he used the ability of Zadig, the main character, who was able to draw conclusions from close observations of various situations. Furthermore, his bedside teaching was invaluable, where appropriate discussions ensued. He truly taught us the art of medicine, as Dr. Verghese seems to be doing.

Evelyn Ballard, ’42, MD ’46
Daly City, California

I enjoyed your article on Dr. Verghese. However, I don’t know how you can mention Dr. William Carlos Williams and not his student, Dr. Robert Coles (of Harvard), who has been teaching and writing about medicine and the arts for decades. Coles learned, early on, from accompanying Williams on his rounds in New Jersey, that the patient needs to be at the center of everything.

Jonah Sinowitz, MA ’96
Passaic, New Jersey

Orwellian Trends

Stanford student Matt Gribble states that the reason most Stanford students vote for Democratic candidates is that the Republican platform supports “racism, homophobia, sexism and religious intolerance” (“How Students Vote,” Letters, November/December). Frankly, I find his comment scary. As an early 40-something who leans conservative in most issues (although I am a vegetarian and very environmentally conscious), I have found this attitude all too common among my mostly liberal peers. Anything short of saying “any negative feelings towards a group are unfair,” “all groups are basically the same” and [implicitly] “it’s basically the white man’s fault” is dismissed as racist/sexist/etc. I genuinely believe that a logical look at the facts around us shows that sometimes these statements are not true. I believe that fairness requires an honest assessment of the data and empathy towards all. Instead, I often find Democrats shooting down those who do not believe in their views—even if based on logical reasoning—as racist, homophobic, sexist or religiously intolerant. I honestly don’t think most universities, and more broadly Western society, are open to people who look at the same set of facts but come to politically incorrect solutions. The fear of oppressing historically oppressed groups—which should be prevented—has led to an almost Orwellian shutting down of free speech. I believe that if we move away from name-calling and more towards logic and honesty and empathy towards all, we will have a much fairer world.

Michael Mackaplow, MS ’91, PhD ’96
Chicago, Illinois

We were young and we, too, had our shining, glorious moment: the election of 1960. But we were cut off at the knees on November 22, 1963. Then we lost Bobby and Martin.

Barack Obama’s election did not change American character. His election revealed our character.

Good for the young people of the 1960s. Good for today’s young people.

No, good for all of us.

Robert R. (Robb) Royse, ’63
Norman, Oklahoma

I find it truly sickening that the elite intellectual blossom of our youth finds no other reason to be proud of America than the election of their preferred candidate. Does a Stanford education not provide the knowledge of countless proud moments in our nation’s history? Does the writing of the U.S. Constitution, the bloody sacrifices at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach, or the heroism of firefighters and police on 9/11 pale in comparison?

Perhaps they were misquoted. Let us hope so, for the sake of this country.

Peter Wilson
Los Angeles, California

Slip-Slidin’ Away

I was moved to write this note by the picture of Tom Wyman with his slide rule (“Calculating Collector,” Red All Over, January/February). It was reminiscent of the time when as a freshman I realized I would have to learn how to use this crazy-looking instrument in order to pass my Chem 1 course. I learned to love it, used it often and only just discarded it with some regret.

Chris Boddum, ’61
Oakland, California

God and Gods

Contrast the phrase “no god but God” quoted in your red box under the article “Muslim Like Me” (Showcase, November/December) with the commandment to Judeo-Christians, “Thou shalt have no other god before me.” The latter admits to the existence of other gods, but admonishes not to worship them as a primary god. The Muslim statement denies the existence of other gods.

Abigail Beutler, MS ’65
Nashua, New Hampshire

Missing the Point

James Kurfess and Martin Hertzberg (“Blowing Hot and Cold,” Letters, November/December) missed the point of Adam Wolf’s article (“The Big Thaw,” September/October ) and missed it widely. I no more want to hear a roll call of divergent theories every time global warming is mentioned than I want Annie Proulx to preface every story with the caveat that some ranchers in Wyoming live happy, fulfilling lives that don’t include mawing despair and brutality. What I read was a story of adventure, science and bloody history; it’s enough to make me wish that I’d gone to Stanford where, apparently, those qualities are valued. Cheers for the great article.

Sara Burlingame
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Global warming is a subject worthy of serious debate but Alex Cannara’s sardonic (I really mean snotty) carping against critics of the theory (“Let’s Play It Safe,” Letters, January/February) and especially ridiculing members of the Classes of ’50, ’59 and ’62 who had the temerity to question the causation and severity of global warming (“Blowing Hot and Cold,” Letters, November/December) glides over the fact that these objectors were not Silicon Valley electrical engineers with doctorates in education but were geoscientists with intimate knowledge of the planet’s history. He further dismisses them as being spokesmen for the oil companies. I could fill this page with the names of published climate and earth scientists associated with international academic, governmental and private research organizations totally unconnected with industry. On the other hand, many of the proponents of global warming and its dire consequences depend on grants from organizations and governments that advocate drastic costly and disruptive measures to counter an imagined threat. Even so, an August 2007 survey of 539 total published papers on climate change from 2004-2007 shows that less than half of the authors endorsed the global warming theory. This is no consensus and there appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate change alarm.

An attitude of intolerance of opposing scientific theory is not conducive to the search for the truth and responsible subsequent actions.

Harry Ptasynski, ’49
Casper, Wyoming

Quiz Fizzle

Reading the article about “Stanford in Jeopardy!” got me thinking about how many alumni have been on the show (Red All Over, January/February). I was selected to play and on July 1, 2004, I had the misfortune of being a victim to the all-time Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings. The experience was amazing, although I wish I had won a few games so I could have told some Stanford stories during the contestant interview.

Chris Mason, MS ’01
Calgary, Alberta

Minding Our Business

In his January/February column, President Hennessy emphasizes “leadership” as a major contribution Stanford makes to education (“What Leadership Looks Like”). Certainly that has been true in technology: witness Silicon Valley leaders such as those of Hewlett-Packard, Google and many other technology companies. Or consider law: recently four out of nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court were educated at Stanford. Among leaders in science there are many Nobel winners who have come from, or at least been at, Stanford. Similarly our country’s leaders in medicine, economics, education and several other fields have come from our University.

But for the past decade, there has been a critical need for U.S. leaders in business. So it is with dismay that I ask: why does the GSB “invest” more than a third of its world-class resources (facilities and teaching staff) training students from other countries? Obviously that’s a generous contribution to foreign aid, but is that a gift that our privately funded (by mostly U.S. citizens) University should make? Is it even consistent with the charter and mission of Stanford? How is it of measurable value to our country to train business leaders of other countries, rather than our own?

Charles A. Eldon, ’48, MBA ’50
Sierra Vista, Arizona