VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
60’s tyranny ending
MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN THE BATTLE AGAINST ACADEMIC TYRANNY FROM THE 60’S
by Leonard Magruder
September 20, 2003
David Horowitz told the following story in a recent article in FrontPageMagazine:
“A student at Bowling Green University in Ohio had enrolled in the ROTC program and was planning on getting a commission in the Army upon graduation. In his last term he decided to take a lecture course on the Vietnam War. The professor turned out to be a ‘60s leftist who regarded America as an imperialist monster and the Vietnam War an expression of America’s inherent racism and capitalist greed... he could not resist the temptation to single out the uniform-clad student as a symbol of the imperialist enemy he was lecturing about. The student went to the professor and asked for permission to withdraw from the course. Permission was denied. He stayed in the course but could not overcome the professor’s hatred for someone who was defending this country and the freedoms we all enjoy. At the end of the term, the professor gave the student a failing grade.
What has happened to our colleges and universities when a person who decides to serve his country can be, in essence, blacklisted?”
It is hard to believe that this still goes on this many years after the war. But it does. It is based on the ongoing need of so many on campus to vindicate their arguments of “imperialism. racism, and greed” and it is the decades-long perpetuation of these views that metasticized into the tyrannies in higher education that we see today, as in multiculturalism, speech codes, gender feminism, political correctness, and dormitory re-education. It also led to the recent proliferation of websites and organizations where students are complaining. The latest is Students for Academic Freedom, with 70 new chapters on campuses around the nation.
Says Horowitz, “Over the last two years, I’ve spoken at more than 30 colleges and universities, and I’ve come to this conclusion: Our institutions of higher learning must have an “Academic Bill of Rights” that stresses intellectual diversity, that demands balance in reading lists, that recognizes that political partisanship by professors in the classroom is an abuse of students’ academic freedom, that the inequity in funding of student organizations and visiting speakers is unacceptable, and that a learning environment hostile to conservatives is unacceptable. I am working right now to get legislatures and university boards to ratify the “Academic Bill of Rights,” and already I can report that Colorado, Georgia and Missouri lawmakers are on the verge of doing just that.”
“These goals are very similar to those of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, we therefore welcome this new organization to the ranks of those calling for academic freedom, and will do what we can to promote this new organization.”
And Horowitz has the key to it, working through legislatures. As we said recently in a press release, “After years of getting no response to our appeals for dialouge, we know now that reform cannot come with from within the university. It can only come about by pressure on, and from, alumni, trustees, and legislatures. It is up to outside forces to either demand free dialogue on the issues, or fire those who are suppressing free speech.”
At the same time, problems have developed similar to those we have experienced.
“In a series of stories,” said Horowitz, “published in major Colorado newspapers, it was annoounced that our new organization, Students for Acaemic Freedom, was seeking the passage of legislation that would mandate a certain quota of conservative professors in the classrooms of all public universities in the state. In making such statements, the Colorado press vastly misinterpreted the aims of Students for Academic Freedom. A professor’s political and religous beliefs should not be a matter of consideration at all. That’s the point we’re trying to drive home.”
Said Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, the state Senate minority leader, “There is something chilling and troubling about such a movment like this. They are going to create a climate of fear in our universites.” Governor of Colorado Bill Owens, however, said he supports the plan, and repeated his belief that political science departments are loaded with liberal Democrats and should have more balance. Tim Foster, Director of the Colorado Commission of Higher Education at a meeting Monday of the faculty council at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told professors that he saw some substance in Horowitz’s criticism of academia. GOP leaders hope to pass next year a plan that calls for implementing the Academic Bill of Rights, either through legislation or the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. Meanwhile, reports of inappropriate political diatribes in the classroom have been pouring in from across the country to SAF, many of these accounts from students at Duke, Brown, and other major universities.
In other comments Horowitz pointed out two phenomenon that characterize academia today, a pathological bias to the left, and hiring practices to protect that bias. The purpose of our Commentary today is to show that these problems began with the radicals of the 60’s, growing worse with time. Mr. Magruder, now president of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, was one of the first to publicly protest these trends, seen in the following examples of leftist media and academic bias and bigotry in hiring.
The following are two newspaper accounts of a one-man protest by Mr. Magruder at the University of Colorado in 1972 the day after a massive and violent anti-war protest during which one person was killed. During the 60’s -70’s he did this at a number of universities in the first public warnings anywhere that the anti-war protests rested on a new and intolerant philosophy on campus that would have dire consequences for academic freedom down the road. (During these same years David Horowitz was Co-editor of the radical magazine “Ramparts,” and a major figure in the anti-war movement. Later he had “second thoughts “ and is now a major figure in the fight for truth.) This protest in Colorado was the high point of the Magruder protests of the 70’s. Walking alone into the Student Union Quadrangle, surrounded by stoned and menacing hippies and radicals, he handed out literature denouncing the anti-war movement, as reported in this news story.
LIBERAL UNIVERSITY FACULTIES HIT IN ONE- MAN PROTEST AT CU
BOULDER DAILY CAMERA - Thursday, June 22, 1972
Leonard Magruder, a psychologist on contract with the State of Colorado, Department of Institutions, today held a one-man protest on the University of Colorado campus here. He distributed literature to students announcing a new movement to reform American universities to be called University Liberation, (later changed to Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform). Magruder, a former instructor of psycholgy at Southern Methodist University and the University of North Dakota, said that recent statements by Vice-President Spiro Agnew with regard to the growing intolerance within academic circles were very well founded, and that the situation was far more critical that the public realized. American universities, he said, were being tyrannized by what he called a “liberal-atheist-humanist” complex that was destroying academic freedom and turning the universities into instuments of indoctrination, irrationality, and subversion.” He said of liberal faculties tht they were engaged in a vast hypocrisy, that of pretending to a moral leadership of society after decades of debunking morality, values, and religion. a hypocrisy being reflected in a dangerous neo-fascist combination of self-righteousness with violence on the part of students.”
UNI- LIB TO BE INTRODUCED AT CU
“ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS” THURS. -JUNE- 22, DENVER, COLO - UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
A psychologist employed by the State Department of Institutions said Wednesday that American universities had become breeding grounds for “indoctrination, irrationality, and subversion.” “American universities are being tyrannized by a “liberal-atheist-humanist” complex that is destroying academic freedom,” said Magruder, a former psychology professor at Southern Methodist University.
He said his new reform movement would be called University Liberation (Uni-Lib) “as a new national forum to reconstruct the universites through dialouge between the public and faculties.”
A few days later, June 29, Mr. Magruder received a letter from the Office of the Vice-President, from Arthur J. Sohmer, Administrative Assistant to Vice-President Agnew, who wrote, “... he was grateful for your expression of support and was interested to learn of your own views and efforts with respect to what you feel is the crisis in America’s universities particularly in the field of the social sciences. As you know, the Vice-President believes that the protection of academic freedom should be a matter of major concern to every American.”
As to how the media had performed on this occasion, here is a description from “The War on the Home Front,” the history of V.V.A.R. It looks like the media is again up to its old tricks of censorship in the case of Students for Academic Freedom.
“Covered by all Denver and Boulder newspapers and television stations, the national media, whose local affiliates such as The Associated Press and The United Press had sent the story out on the national wire, still refused to mention the protest, refusing to let Mr. Magruder join the debate on the issues of the hour. Only liberals could play. At the time Mr. Magruder, a psychologist, was Special Consultant to the State of Colorado in the field of mental retardation. But the material that he handed out that day to the students was incompatible with the media’s “advocacy journalism,” at a time when the most inane statements on Vietnam of obscure liberals were being given national attention.
It was this suppression of opinion contrary to views on the war by left/liberals in the university and the media, and the use of these institutions as instruments of indoctrination and propaganda, that created the polarization and breakdown in national debate in the 60’s leading to the loss of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Only one year or so earlier Mr. Magruder had held another of his one-man protests at the Univ. of Nevada in Las Vegas followed by a lecture. This took place one day after there had been a massive anti-war demonstration in the city. “The Las -Vegas Review Journal” carried the following headline the next day:
MAGRUDER CRITICAL OF LIBERALS
THE LAS-VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL- Saturday, March 13, 1971
“Leonard Magruder, Director of the Inter-Church Counseling Center, stated at a lecture at the UNLV that he would lead the public in marches on the American university to demand freedom for students from moral and intellectual oppresson by liberal faculties.
The American student, said Mr. Magruder, was the slave and tool of a liberal-atheist-humanist complex that was turning them into a dangerously neofascist force to impose their views on society. Speaking on the topic, “Psychology is Dead,” Mr. Magruder said of the field of psychology that it was a good example of the bankruptcy of liberal thought. It was promoting, he said, a false understanding of man that was proving incapable of dealing with such social ill as crime, violence, prejudice, and mental illness. He cited extensive research to show that contemporary psychotherapy was ineffective, and charged the field with being pseudo-scientific.”
In connection with the charge by Mr. Horowitz that faculty hiring practices are often based on a person’s religious or political stance, this practice has gone on for decades. In one of the first warnings anywhere that there would be serious trouble on the American campus over Vietnam and that hiring practices were beginning to weed out the “politically incorrect,” Mr. Magruder walked into the office of President William Tate of Southern Methodist University and publicly returned to him the M.A. degree he had earned there in Psychology in a dual protest against the growing turmoil over Vietnam and the new bias in hiring practices.
DEGREE RETURNED BY EX-INSTRUCTOR IN SMU PROTEST
THE DALLAS TIMES-HERALD- April 28, 1967
“Leonard Magruder, a former instructor in psychology at Southern Methodist University where he received his Masters degree, has returned that degree to SMU in a dual protest. Magruder said his action was “to protest his claim of being told he would not be rehired because three of his colleagues objected to his Methodist convictions.” A related article in another newspaper, “The Dallas Morning News,” said, “Persons in the psychology department in secret conspired to purge Magruder of his position on the faculty because (which the chairman actually told him in person) they objected to his belief in God which they contended had no place in the study of psychology.” “What happened to me was totalitarian,” said Mr. Magruder. “It reflects the spirit of the liberal intellectuals who are tyrannizing our univerities and who are in process of betraying the very foundations of Western civilization. Student unrest over Vitnam, with its fascist overtones, is a direct product of the universities themselves. It is obvious that the campus is going to avoid the war by lying about it, and that the Left is going to exploit the situation to help Hanoi.”
On May 10, 1981, after that betrayal was complete and South Vietnam had fallen, Mr. Magruder publicly resigned his position as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Suffolk County Community College, N.Y., at a rally given by him and his students to honor the returned veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The next day the front page of the college newspaper read:
PROFESSOR RESIGNS FOR VETS
THE COMPASS - May 11. 1981
“On Thursday a rally was held in front of the Babylon Student Center, organized by Leonard Magruder, Assistant Professor of Psychology and his students for the purpose of honoring Vietnam veterans. Magruder began the rally by announcing he had resigned. In a letter to the college president he said he was doing this, “To protest the damage done to the Vietnam veteran by the erroneous views of liberals in the university and the media in the 60’s and their perpetuation of those views. America needs what the Vietnam veterans have to offer and hopefully this action will cause others to become concerned about their cause.”
The Compass article also stated, “It was estimated that the overall attendance totalled between three and four hundred people. “Newsday” had been notified of the rally in advance and, although a reporter was present, the newspaper did not publish the event. “Reporters from “Newsday,”only 26 miles down the road, did not like the posters the students carried attacking anti-war leaders such as Abbie Hoffman and Jane Fonda, nor did they like what Magruder said about “a worthy cause” in a speech that day to the veterans present.”
Now we are in mortal combat with terrorists dedicated to killing all Americans. And there are serious questions as to whether the university is once again misperceiving the situation. Some very stupid things have been said and much anti-American rhetoric all too reminiscent of the 60’s.
Therefore, we welcome the fact that every major university will shortly have a chapter of Students for Academic Freedom to help insure that the Left does not have the field to itself as it did in the 60’s.
In October [2003] there will be another protest. Mr. Magruder will show two parts of the 4-part new series on the Vietnam War, “The Long Way Home Project” to students at the Univ. of Kansas. Introduced by General Norman Schwartzkopf, and a definitive expose of the myths of the anti-war movement, PBS has refused to air the series even thouogh it passed their division on historical accuracy. Also to be protested, the continued use at too many universities, including the Univ. of Kansas, of Karnow’s leftist apologetic,”A Vietnam History.”
The theme of the week-long program is “Forbidden Questions,” taken from the statement of Leon Botstein, President of Bard College that,”The American university has become a culture of forbidden questions.” Films on two other “forbidden questions” will be shown, one on Intelligent Design, and one on Terrorism in America. The week-long program will also be a show of solidarity with Students for Academic Freedom and will encourage students to join that organization.
If you are interested in starting up an SAF chapter or inviting David Horowitz to speak on your campus, please contact him at 202-969-2467 or at Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.
A packet of copies of all the news stories mentioned in this article will be sent to all who ask. Copies of Mr. Magruder’s 60-page history, “The War on the Home Front” are available for reproduction and mailing costs of $5. Please go to www.v-v-a-r.org for more information about ordering.
“During an era when it was both politically incorrect and uncool to show support for the American men and women in uniform, Leonard Magruder was one of the comparatively few members of academia to publicly stand by and stand up for those warriors fighting Americas’s most divisive war. This monograh is a testament to Magruder’s loyalty to the veterans of Vietnam and to the steadfastness of his convictions.” - Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam combat veteran and noted war historian, author of seven published books, including “Vietnam in Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars” and “Warfare and Armed Conflict.”
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Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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