`Columbia'

“Oh, educate
Columbia
Pursue the truth
Columbia
Exalt the mind
Columbia
Research and find
Columbia
And humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Invite the spies
Columbia
The C.I.A.
Columbia
Give them a room
Columbia
To recruit goons
Columbia
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Help the Navy
Columbia
ROTC
Columbia
Teach a course for
Columbia
“The Art of War”
Columbia
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Secret research
Columbia
You’d best not snitch
Columbia
At Hudson Labs
Maybe some bombs?
For electric war
Design lasers
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

The Columbia protest folk song was written in Furnald Hall on the campus of Columbia University in late 1966 to protest Columbia University’s collaboration with the U.S. war machine that waged unjust war in Vietnam and the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] that overthrew the democratically-elected governments of Iran and Guatemala during the 1950s. In 2008, Columbia University still allows the CIA to recruit on campus and still allows war-related research work for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] and the Joint Warfare Analysis Center [JWAC} to be done on Columbia University’s campus. But on April 24-27, 2008 at Columbia University’s campus, there is going to be a 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1968 Columbia Anti-War Student Revolt.

Speaking of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, Time magazine reported in its May 17, 1968 issue that “protests against IDA are somewhat misplaced, since the Institute has nothing to do with the prosecution of the war in Vietnam” and “the reports generally deal with future rather than immediate technical problems.” Yet two months before the Columbia University-sponsored IDA held its 1966 Jason Division secret weapons research study session at the Dana Hall girls’ school in Wellesley, Massachusetts between June 13, 1966 and June 25, 1966, MIT Professor of Physics J.R. Zacharias stated the following in an April 15, 1966 letter to former IDA Vice-President A.G. Hill:

“A group of us have been discussing with the Department of Defense the possibility of conducting a special study of the military and technological options open to the U.S. in Vietnam…Our hope is that by re-examining the present military tactics, especially in the light of technological opportunities that may not have been adequately considered, military alternatives might emerge that would be less costly and more likely to lead to a political solution.

“The Department of Defense has shown strong interest in our conducting such a study, and discussions with the Department are now under way. A steering committee for the study will include Carl Kaysen, George Kistiakowsky, Jerome Wiesner, Eugene Skolnikoff and myself…

“We are planning an exploratory discussion meeting of the group on Wednesday, May 4, at M.I.T. and would be very pleased if you could join us. The meeting will be held in the Penthouse of the M.I.T. Faculty Club, 50 Memorial Drive, at 9:00 a.m.

“I would appreciate your keeping information about this study confidential…”

Coincidentally, in May 1968 a member of the board of directors of Time magazine’s parent company (Time Inc.) named Maurice T. Moore (the brother-in-law of Henry Luce) also sat on the Columbia University board of trustees—between the chairman of IDA’s board of trustees, William A.M. Burden, and IDA trustee and Columbia University President Grayson Kirk.

For another protest folk song about Columbia University’s complicity with the U.S. war machine during the Vietnam War Era, titled "Bloody Minds," you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” site at the following link:

www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music


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