Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Discovering IDA, 1967--Part 3

After completing the research paper, I wrote a folk song condemning both Columbia’s complicity with the Pentagon and U.S scientists who immorally served the U.S. war machine. The folk song, patterned somewhat after Dylan’s “Masters of War,” was titled “Bloody Minds” and contained the following lyrics:

Come, you bloody minds
Look what I done find
I done did research
IDA exists
Laugh between your walls
Sit behind your desks
Watch your missiles fall
IDA exists.

The value-free school
Your mask we see right through
The weapons of the Pentagon
Their brains procured by you.

Godly Grayson Kirk
On the board he knits
Smokes upon his pipe
While his bombers bite
Problems he assigns:
“How to make men die?”
Professors they plan
Death for Viet Nam.

In ’56 to serve Defense
Five schools they did combine
Four years later
Columbia
It joined the bloody minds.

City slums they rot
People live in lots
Atoms to destroy
They’re your little toys
Oh, they pay you well
To create a hell
Did you see the news?
Twelve women they slew.

A division
Its name Jason
In summer they study
They meet, they talk
They plan, they plot
Counterinsurgency.

Lovers they must part
Lamps they now are dark
Knowledge turned to swords
Kirk sits on the board
Schools changed into guns
For the Pentagon
Students now they learn:
How to make kids burn.

You stand in class
You spout your facts
A noble scientist
But then at night
You join the fight
You do secret research.

Murder poor peasants
With the tools you sent
Orphan thin children
Help the bastards win
Kill them with your mind
Paralyze their spines
Someday you will die
And in slime you’ll lie.

Prior to March 1967, IDA had rarely been mentioned in the U.S. Establishment mass media or in the left, underground or campus press. A few Establishment magazine articles on IDA had appeared between 1956 and 1967 and IDA had been mentioned in a few books for academic specialists published by university presses. But the New York Times had barely acknowledged its existence. The Rand Institute, not the Institute for Defense Analyses, was the military-oriented think-tank that had received most of the Establishment mass media publicity prior to March 1967. After March 1967, IDA began to receive more mention in the Columbia Daily Spectator and in left newspapers and magazines like New Left Notes, the Worker, the [U.S.] Guardian and Viet Report. But the U.S. Establishment’s mass media still refused to mention IDA. After my name appeared in some leftist publications in reference to the Columbia-IDA revelation, the FBI opened a file on me and started to investigate me using information provided by the Columbia University Registrar’s Office, according to my de-classified FBI files.

Columbia’s IDA affiliation came to also symbolize the degree to which Columbia University’s research budget was dependent on receiving Pentagon basic and unsolicited research contracts. Like most elite U.S. universities, Columbia was dependent on corporate research funds and Pentagon research funds for financing much of its institutional research activity.

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Discovering IDA, 1967--Part 2

The Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] Annual Reports also revealed that Columbia University President Grayson Kirk was not only a trustee of IDA, but was also on the executive committee of IDA’s board of trustees. They described and bragged about the military applications of weapons research work that, under university sponsorship, IDA research workers engaged in at IDA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, in cooperation with Pentagon officials, using language like the following:

“As the oldest division of the Institute, the Weapons Systems Evaluation Division [WSED] celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. During the past decade, the primary WSED mission has been to conduct analyses and evaluations of operational and future weapons systems for the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group [WSEG] in response to the needs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and other components of the Office of the Secretary of Defense…Added emphasis has in recent years been placed on studies of military logistics and operations in Southeast Asia and on studies of anti-submarine warfare….

“During the past year, the Division continued its substantial efforts in evaluating ballistic missile capabilities. It also studied low-altitude aircraft operation from both offensive and defensive points of view…studied fire support of counterinsurgency situations…Other studies that were completed during the year dealt with various topics, including…Southeast Asia problems….

“The mission of the Research and Engineering Support Division [RSED] is to analyze natural phenomena and to evaluate systems that are of particular interest to the national security.
“…The Division carried out intensive studies of problems of tactical warfare and remote area conflict…

“Several of the study groups in tactical warfare systems focused on…the possibilities of airborne television reconnaissance at night, and potential methods for personnel protection, particularly for counterinsurgency operations. One of the operations research projects that was carried out was concerned with available data bases for counterinsurgency operations….”

The Annual Reports also noted that IDA’s university ties were important because it enabled the Pentagon to more easily recruit university professors to perform weapons research work who might have objected to working with a purely U.S. military-directed, non-university-affiliated organization, in language like the following:

“The Jason Division was created in 1958 as an attempt to expose outstanding university scientists—mostly physicists—to critical defense needs in the belief that they could make significant contributions to the solution of defense problems…The intent of this experimental approach was to provide a mechanism to make available to outstanding university scientists an opportunity to work regularly but not exclusively on problems of importance to the national security in a way that would not exact a career penalty.”

The Annual Reports also revealed that eleven other major universities besides Columbia—M.I.T., Princeton, Penn State, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, Tulane, Stanford, University of Illinois, Case Western Reserve and the California Institute of Technology—were also institutional members of IDA. Finally, the Annual Reports indicated that IDA’s Jason Division, which consisted of university professors, met each summer to collectively perform practically applicable counter-insurgency weapons research, using language like the following:

“In 1964 a new excursion was made. Increased Government attention to such problems as counterinsurgency, insurrection, and infiltration led to the suggestion that Jason members might be able to provide fresh insight into problems that are not entirely in the realm of physical science.”

At least three Columbia University professors, Leon Lederman, Henry Foley and a Professor of Mathematics named Bernard Koopman, were listed as being IDA Jason Division weapons development researchers.

I took a lot of notes and by the following weekend the “Columbia SDS Research Committee” paper which exposed Columbia’s IDA ties was written up and typed. In Spring 1967 there wasn’t really a “Columbia SDS Research Committee.” But because I wished to emphasize the importance of Columbia SDS, not my own individual contribution, I credited the “Columbia SDS Research Committee” with authorship of the paper.

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Discovering IDA, 1967--Part 1

In early March 1967, by accident, I discovered Columbia’s institutional affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]. It happened on a cold Saturday afternoon.

I had gone into the stacks of Butler Library to do some research for my term paper on “The Military-Industrial Complex’s Role In Determining U.S. Foreign Policy” which I had decided to write for Professor Schilling’s “American Foreign Policy II” course. I started to browse around the 350 to 355 Dewey Decimal section, thumbing through books related to the U.S. military-industrial complex, in order to get some information for my term paper.

Picking up a book on military research, titled Schools for Strategy, I slowly turned the pages until I reached the index. Just to see if, by chance, Columbia University was mentioned in relationship to Pentagon war-related research.

Sure enough, Columbia University was listed in the index. And when I started reading the indicated pages, I first felt some anger. Then I started to laugh out loud as I stood reading there alone in the stacks. “IDA stands for `Institute for Defense Analyses.’ The Institute for Defense Analyses is a think-tank like the Rand Institute, which develops weapons for the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff under the sponsorship of U.S. universities. Columbia University, without telling either its faculty, its student body, or its student newspaper, Spectator, has been institutionally sponsoring secret weapons development research for Pentagon generals since 1960. The liberal Columbia Administration, despite its talk of `value-freedom’ and political neutrality, was actually in bed with the same Pentagon that waged unjust war in Viet Nam.” These were my immediate thoughts as I read through a few pages of the book.

Ten minutes after I discovered that Columbia University was tied to a Pentagon think-tank—IDA—that I had never heard of before, I was on my way to the Butler Library stacks exit to check out the book which described Columbia’s ties to the IDA.

I immediately felt that if the Columbia Administration didn’t resign its institutional membership in IDA, the Columbia and Barnard student left might be able to create a Berkeley 1964 revolt-type situation at Columbia—as a way of effectively protesting both the insanity and immorality of U.S. military intervention in Viet Nam and the political powerlessness and lack of generational freedom felt by students in the 1960s.

After leaving the stacks, I spent the rest of the afternoon taking notes about Columbia’s IDA connection in the main reading room at Butler Library and looking for references to IDA in the Butler Library card catalogue. The catalogue cards which referred to IDA indicated that the annual reports of the IDA for the 1956 to 1966 years were contained in the “JX” section of Columbia’s International Law Library. After copying down the appropriate call numbers, I headed out of Butler Library and back to my Furnald Hall dorm room.

The morning after I discovered Columbia’s IDA connection was a Sunday, so I was not able to check out the International Law Library’s material on IDA. I did telephone Josh, though. Linda answered the phone in a drowsy voice which didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

“Hello.”

“Hi. This is Bob Feldman. May I speak to Josh?”

“Oh. Just a minute.”

Josh then said “Hello” in a friendlier voice.

“Hello, Josh?...This is Bob Feldman. I was doing some research in the library and I think I discovered something important for SDS to look into. Columbia University is an institutional member of something called the Institute for Defense Analyses, which is a weapons research think-tank like the Rand Institute, that develops weapons for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Josh laughed. “Well, that’s not too surprising. It’s an interesting discovery. But what would be our political demand?”

“Our demand should be that the Columbia University Administration resign its institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses,” I answered.

“That sounds like a clear-cut demand,” Josh replied. “Let me know if you find anything more about this. Bye now.” Then he hung up.

The following day I cut all my classes and spent most of the day and the two subsequent days reading the IDA annual reports which were contained in the International Law Library, but which could not be taken out of the library. The annual reports bragged about how crucial IDA was to carrying out the Pentagon’s Cold War military mission. They also bragged about how crucial a contribution university members like Columbia made to the U.S. war machine by being involved with IDA, using language like the following:

“If the Institute for Defense Analyses has produced important studies on problems in national security, much of the credit must go to the university world. Five universities gave IDA its start in 1956, and since then seven more have become Members, broadening our contact with the academic community and strengthening the direction of our corporate affairs. From these and other universities have come many of our scientists and officers, as permanent members or on leaves of absence....

"Without the efforts of these men and the cooperation of these institutions, IDA would not be what it is. We are proud to be able to grace the pages of our report with scenes of the campuses of our twelve Member Universities, as partial recognition of our debt to the entire university world."

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Into Columbia SDS, 1967--Part 14

Prior to winning the anti-class-ranking campaign, Columbia SDS was preparing to lead a strike, if necessary, and Phil Ochs came to the campus to give a free concert, in order to help build up enthusiasm for the possible strike. My sister was as into Ochs as I was at this time and she came into Manhattan from Queens to attend the concert at Columbia with me. We both were expecting Ochs to carry on the early Dylan tradition of folk protest songwriting that Dylan had abandoned. But after Ochs sang his “Nobody’s Buying Flowers From The Flower Lady” song in a deeply felt way, which moved his leftist audience, it seemed that Ochs, too, was moving away from protest songs in his new writing.

After my sister had gone back to Queens, I talked with Ted about Ochs’ performance.

“I think he was stoned when he gave the concert. I could swear that he was stoned. The way his eyes looked,” Ted said with laughter, as we sat in his dorm room. “Maybe that’s why he’s getting less political.”

Ted had started to smoke marijuana, himself, around this time. The guy he smoked most with was his new friend, Brian. Brian had entered Columbia the same year I had and lived with male roommates in an apartment on West 114th St. He was a tall guy from Hartford, Connecticut who pretty much got stoned every night, although his hair was never long. Brian came from money and politically non-radical parents. He was a gentle, reserved guy who became both very active in the Movement at Columbia and a great friend of Ted.

Brian was not into any heavy career-preparation trip and was both hedonistic and idealistic in Spring 1967. He was never reluctant to do Columbia SDS shit work and pretty much attended every Columbia SDS meeting or demonstration or rally that Ted and I attended. He also cut classes a lot like I did.

Around the time the campaign to end class-ranking for the draft was won, I began to feel threatened, personally, by the draft. I bought myself a book which described the procedure for seeking conscientious objection. Then I went to my local draft board in Flushing to register and, on one of their forms, noted my intention to eventually seek conscientious objection status, at the same time I also applied for a 2-S deferment. I took the 2-S deferment option because I wished to continue to do anti-war institutional resistance work in the U.S. and the deferment protected me from being captured by the war machine. I felt that granting deferments to college students, but not to non-student youths, was undemocratic. Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, had even printed a letter to the editor by me on this issue during my freshman year. But as long as the 2-S deferment was an option, I had no reservations about taking it to prevent Uncle Sam from stopping my resistance to the U.S. military machine on the home front.

Once I was registered for the draft, I felt compelled to remain at Columbia in order to protect my deferment. I no longer toyed with the idea of dropping out of college. Much of my political activism was now motivated by my intense anger at being subject to the draft following my four years of college—or if I chose to drop out of Columbia. I felt trapped and enslaved by the draft. I felt that I could not plan my personal life beyond getting a college degree. I did not wish to either go to jail for draft resistance, flee to Canada, go underground, go to grad school or fight in an unjust war and have to submit to U.S. military discipline. I felt a social system that only gave those choices to its young men deserved to be overthrown.

Although certain leftist sects took the position that anti-war students should go into the U.S. military if drafted and organize against the war from within the military, and refuse to hide behind 2-S deferments, I regarded this position as unrealistic in 1967. I didn’t think anti-war organizing within the U.S. military could be as effective as campus anti-war organizing in 1967. I felt no confidence in 1967 that leftist men who went into the U.S. military could really disrupt it without ending up in military stockades or being shot in the back.

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Into Columbia SDS, 1967--Part 13

I wrote a song titled “The SDS Kids” around this time, which reflected my feeling that, prior to meeting “The SDS Kids,” all the men around me seemed cold emotionally and morally dead. As we built for a possible strike against class-ranking for the draft, life for me became one meeting after another, leafleting, bumping into other SDS people and chatting, and becoming part of a high-energy whirlwind. I had entered a world in which many people were activist and similar in value-structure to me. I wasn’t involved romantically with anyone. But I had started to forget about my love for Beth because she didn’t involve herself with Columbia SDS as an activist and didn’t even attend SDS rallies. All of a sudden I was meeting all these leftist people at once and was so busy that I almost didn’t feel lonely anymore.

One thing I liked about Columbia SDS people is that they evaluated students primarily on the basis of their politics and their level of political commitment. Columbia SDS men who were romantically involved with Barnard “chicks,” though, did have more status than unattached New Left men. Barnard leftist women who were sexually open or considered physically attractive also had higher status within Columbia SDS circles than leftist women who were unattached or not considered physically attractive. But Barnard leftist women who were politically active and energetic were still highly regarded, even if they lacked a boyfriend or were regarded as physically unattractive.

Barnard leftist women were expected to accept politically subordinate leadership roles within SDS. But neither male nor female New Leftists questioned much the male supremacist pattern of political organization within Columbia SDS until 1969.

I continued to find myself being drawn towards Teddy in a brotherly, comradely sort of way. He seemed to have sorted out the important things in life from the clutter and always had time to talk with you about anything. I also was really growing fond of Nancy, who now lived with him in the W. 115th St. apartment.

A united front was formed with other campus organizations to end class-ranking for the Selective Service System by Columbia. As a result of this united front of students, Frank—the 1967 head of Citizenship Council—drew closer to Columbia SDS circles and became more radicalized.

I had first met Frank on Election Day in NYC in 1965. In exchange for us recording voting results at a particular city polling place for NBC News’ computers, to enable NBC to project an election winner faster than CBS or ABC, Citizenship Council received some donation from NBC for Citizenship Council’s community service programs. As we returned from the polling place where we had gathered figures for NBC’s computer, Frank said: “It’s a dirty war. A totally dirty war. We never had any business going into Viet Nam after the French left. And there’s no way I’m going to serve in the military as long as we’re still in Viet Nam.”

Frank was a beardless, thin guy of about 6 feet, who usually wore glasses. He had grown up in Douglaston Manor, on the other side of the tracks from the Beech Hills development where I had lived as a child. The son of an upper-middle-class white Catholic medical doctor, Frank was a good-natured, easygoing, non-materialistic, socially concerned, anti-racist liberal when I first met him.

Frank didn’t dress bohemian in February 1967, had short hair and did not consider himself a freak at that time. But he kept himself awake in his Furnald Hall single dorm room during his 1966-67 senior year at Columbia by taking Dexedrine. Frank used to get his Dexedrine from his father’s supply in Douglaston Manor. He shared some of the Dexedrine with me that spring one night, when I had to stay up all night to study for a final.

Because Frank more accurately reflected the pre-radicalized mass political mood at Columbia, he—not anyone from Columbia SDS—was the chief spokesperson at the mass united front vigil we held outside Low Library, prior to a trustees meeting which was to decide whether to continue sending class-ranking information to the U.S. draft boards. The Columbia Administration, on this occasion, conceded to our demand and class-rankings were no longer sent by Columbia to the draft boards.

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Into Columbia SDS, 1967--Part 12

February 1967 remained hectic, with SDS activity on two fronts at Columbia. The Columbia Administration went ahead with its disciplinary action against the PL-led students who had sat-in against the CIA’s campus recruitment. A hearing was held around the time that Ramparts Magazine was disclosing how the CIA had secretly used many “non-profit” U.S. educational foundations as conduits to finance non-leftist political organizations like the National Student Association [NSA], and activities in which people like Gloria Steinem, Allard Lowenstein and Barney Frank participated in during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The anti-class-ranking campaign was also beginning to reach out to both liberal student leaders of the Columbia Citizenship Council and the Undergraduate Dormitory Council [UDC] and to the broad mass of liberal Columbia College students. A characteristic tendency of Columbia SDS in 1967 was to ignore mass organizing at Barnard and neglect to make any real attempt to mobilize Barnard women against the institutionalized male-supremacist nature of Columbia. I did set up a Brooks Hall lounge dormitory meeting at Barnard in which Gadfly’s editor, Paul, and Professor Stade spoke out against the U.S. war machine before a small group of Barnard students, who floated in and out. But we all generally assumed that only anti-war men at Columbia were qualified to be featured at SDS public meetings. Only on rare occasions was the “exceptional” leftist woman allowed to speak at SDS-sponsored educational events. Yet New Left women at Barnard and Columbia did not vocally protest against SDS’ male chauvinist political practice in 1967.

I didn’t relate much to the disciplinary hearing of the anti-CIA students, because the hearing was initially closed to most leftist students. According to de-classified NYPD “Red Squad” documents, however, a New York City undercover cop attended these hearing sessions and made notes that listed the names of those students and professors who also attended the hearing sessions, for “Red Squad” files.

I did spend time listening to the rapidly improving campus sundial oratory of Paul:

“The CIA is a criminal organization. It respects no rules of international law. It abides by no morality—except for the morality of Goring, Goebbels and Hitler. Columbia University President Kirk directs the Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation acted as a conduit for CIA funds. Columbia University awarded an honorary degree to Allen Dulles in the 1950s in order to legitimize CIA Director Dulles’ role in ordering CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala.”

Paul spoke in a fiery way. His face reddened with outrage when he described from the sundial how current U.S. foreign policies violated Jeffersonian principles of democracy.

Ted also felt Paul had become an increasingly effective orator. But in his dorm room one night, Ted cited one reservation he had about Paul’s 1967 politics:

“He doesn’t argue against the war from either a New Leftist or a Marxist ideological perspective. But just from a militant liberal democratic, constitutionalist perspective. He ends up perpetuating illusions that the U.S. Constitution and Jefferson’s political thought genuinely reflect a commitment to a truly democratic society. We want to rid people of these illusions.”

In February 1967, Ted was the Columbia SDS agitator who initiated the anti-class-ranking campaign by standing up on a wall in front of Hamilton Hall, between the 9 o’clock and 10 o’clock classes, and addressing three other Columbia SDS guys. While he attempted to harangue them, large numbers of students apathetically walked by him. Many of these Columbia students glanced at Ted with a condescending smirk as they passed by him.

Ted’s oratorical style was more verbose and pedantic, as well as less emotional and concise, than Paul’s style. But his political summations were more traditionally Marxist. Paul was much better at using hecklers to stir up leftist mass moral passion, because he could quickly think up an emotionally and verbally good response to a right-wing heckler. Ted was less quick and witty than Paul at retorting to hecklers. Although Ted explained SDS positions very logically, he was sometimes too long-winded and not verbally flashy enough to stir up student mass emotions. He usually sounded more like a super-logical leftist intellectual than a charismatic orator.

Columbia SDS Memories Revisited: Into Columbia SDS, 1967--Part 11

Around this same time, a regional SDS conference was held in Princeton, New Jersey one weekend. Eliezer and I took a bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 40th St. and Eighth Ave. late Friday afternoon. We arrived on Princeton University’s dead, deserted campus by early evening. In the large lecture room where the SDS conference was being held I noticed other Columbia SDS people, who had come to Princeton by car. SDS people from other New York City area chapters were also there, reminding me that SDS was more than what happened at Columbia.

At this Princeton conference, Dave read “The Port Authority Statement,” which he had written with Bob Gottlieb and Gerry Tenney. "The Port Authority Statement" was intended to be an updated equivalent of the "Port Huron Statement" of early National SDS. Its basic argument was that “the new working-class” of technocrats, technicians and middle-class professionals was going to be the agent of Revolution in the United States, instead of the traditional industrial working-class—which was declining in numbers and social power because of technological change.

After Dave read his "Port Authority Statement", an elderly editor or former editor of some Old Left publication looked perturbed and unimpressed. In a dogmatic, Old Left-chauvinist, intellectually elitist way, he argued that the New Left of the 1960s was “wrong to write off the industrial working-class under capitalism” and that “the new working-class theory” was “non-Marxist” and “made no sense.”

Yet in 1967, given the general political passivity of U.S. industrial workers in relationship to the U.S. war machine, and given the growing enthusiasm of white middle-class, pre-professional college students for radical politics, Dave’s “New Working-Class Theory” seemed to explain reality. New Leftists around Columbia were guided by New Working-Class theory political conceptions when they organized during the next year.

The Old Left editor’s argument against the New Working-Class theory was snickered at by most of the younger generation SDS people. Not just because of our ageism in relationship to Old Leftists of the older generation, but also because his description of the U.S. industrial working-class in the 1960s seemed inaccurate. The Old Left editor’s picture of the industrial working-class seemed like a result of wishful thinking and not a picture that was based on concrete investigation, observation and interaction with 60s industrial workers on the factory shop floor.

I can’t recall anything else about the Princeton conference meeting. Ted and Harvey were going back to New York City after the Friday night meeting and there was extra room in the car they were traveling in. Because the conference seemed boring, unproductive and irrelevant to mass organizing at Columbia, I was glad to get a lift back in the same car in which Ted, Harvey and Ted’s woman friend Judith were leaving early in. Eliezer stayed longer in Princeton and traveled back to New York City on a bus alone.

On the drive back from Princeton, Harvey sat next to me in the backseat and we talked about our lives, while rock music played over the car radio and other people in the crowded car engaged in other conversation.

“I was in Brooklyn CORE in the early 60s. And it amazed me to learn how racist the System was. And I used to play some guitar and write poetry. But it’s not enough just to be an artist. The point of life is to be a revolutionary and a communist, Bob. Marxist-Leninism, not C. Wright Mills, does explain the world. It really does explain how to end not only the Viet Nam War, but all future wars,” Harvey earnestly said at one point. In the crowded car, Harvey sounded so intellectually certain of his values, of his political ideology and of his purpose in life—and so morally motivated—that I really felt that Columbia SDS could, in fact, not only organize the whole Columbia and Barnard student body into the radical movement, but also the whole United States.