Interpreting the Young

Excerpts from the memorandum by Dr. Alexander Heard and Dr. James Cheek to the President:

WE do not believe that our national government really understands that a national crisis confronts us. The young may be trying to tell us things we ought to hear.

The President uses words that mean one thing to him but something different to many students. For example, he has emphasized that he and students both want "peace." By "peace" students mean an end to the killing immediately. To them the President seems to mean not that, but "a just peace" and "self-determination for South Viet Nam," which they see as probably meaning maintenance of a pro-American regime in Saigon, continued U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, and whatever military action is necessary to produce these ends. They do not believe Hanoi can be induced to negotiate. They find unthinkable using enough military power to force Hanoi to negotiate.

What the President regards as successes, students often regard very differently. Reducing the troop level in Viet Nam by sometime in 1971 to something over 200,000 men seems to many in government a formidable achievement. The President so proclaims it. Yet to the young, who face the draft and think on the time scale of youth, these withdrawals seem wholly inadequate. They are not seeking to avoid personal danger. Rather, they abhor personal involvement in a war they perceive as "immoral."

Fifty-eight percent of the students [in a nationwide poll] agreed with a statement that, compared to a year before, the United States had become a highly repressive society, intolerant of dissent. Among the evidences of repression often cited are: "police brutality," in a variety of forms ranging from hostility toward demonstrators to the alleged unjustifiable assaults on the Black Panther Party; curfews; prohibitions against assembly of more than a limited number of persons; sledgehammer statements by public officials impugning the motives of dissent; and discouragement of outspokenness on grounds of protocol or propriety. The arrest of students and faculty after your speech in Knoxville for "disrupting a religious service" is taken as evidence, as are the attacks by construction workers on students in New York and on the veteran and his family in St. Louis.

The President's visit to the Lincoln Memorial on May 9 was a splendid act. Reports got about, however, that the President passed pleasant queries about surfing and football. That offended students, who felt immersed in a national tragedy, like telling a joke at a funeral.

The President and some students proceed from vastly different assumptions. The President says, "America has never lost a war," as if "winning" or "losing" were the important consideration. He seems to them to hold attitudes, derived from the Cold War, such as the domino theory, and to view Communism in Southeast Asia as a source of danger to America. Wrongly or rightly, many of our best informed students do not share these assumptions.

The President speaks of maintaining "national honor" and implies that this can be done through military power. Students distressed with the failure of their country to achieve all its ambitious ideals at home and abroad think of "national honor" as something yet to be attained. They see the Viet Nam War and its effects at home as obstructing fulfillment of their concept of national honor.

Rather than emphasize what is good about America, most students emphasize what could be better about America (which frequently appears to be merely an emphasis on what is wrong with America). Therefore, any form of injustice and inequality, such as is evident in our racial problems, is taken as an indictment of the entire social system, regardless of its improvements over the past or its relative superiority over other societies.

Students, blacks and others who are disillusioned simply must feel that their President has sincerely listened to them, listened with an ear willing to learn from them. They want assurance that he has given thought to their feelings and views, and even though not always agreeing with them, has taken those feelings and views seriously into account in making national decisions. Young people, in all their variety and conditions of organization, need to be viewed as full-fledged constituents of government.

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