Hoover's Hello

"MILLIONS of college students are returning to campuses throughout the country to begin the Fall semester. They represent both the hope and shape of the future. From the standpoint of educational opportunities and intelligence, they are far better equipped than any preceding generation to participate constructively in developing solutions to the many complex problems confronting our Nation."

The official prose is J. Edgar Hoover's, but most of the director's message in the most recent FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin is not so cheerful. He is warning "educators, public officals and law enforcement officers" not to ignore "the revolutionary terrorism invading college campuses."

"Under the guise of academic freedom and freedom of speech," Hoover explains, students really are treacherously seeking "a confrontation with established authority," and even dare to try "to 'restructure' our society."

Academic freedom and freedom of speech have been making their appearance more and more often in the subordinate clauses of the rhetoric of 1968 ("Although our nation has always cherished the right of dissent, we cannot...") and unhappily Hoover's call to repression is not just the babble of one senile totem.

A housewife asked Richard Nixon in his first "citizen's panel" campaign TV show, what he thought about all the Commies teaching our youths on college campuses. Nixon explained ponderously that learning about communism is a good thing (know your enemy) but that those who actually advocate a subversive line ought not to be tolerated.

Hoover's scare message is expected to give momentum to a congressional measure, now in conference, which would require universities to cut off federal aid to students who are disciplined for taking part in campus demonstrations. Similar demands for political purity may be fastened on to Defense Department grants which support scientific research.

President Pusey last winter told students angry with Harvard's silence on the Vietnam War, that the University collectively takes political stands only when threatened. 1968-69 may be the year when even by that cautious standard, Harvard can no longer afford political neutrality.