I.F. Stone Praises Activism Calls for Progressive Leader

The idealism inherent in student activism is a welcome contradiction to President Carter's current lack of faith in the ability of the U.S. government to bring about reform, I.F. Stone, Atherton lecturer and a well-known American journalist, told a group of about 150 people in Winthrop House last night.

Stone compared the visionary nature of Carter's campaign to the disillusionment shown in his State of the Union Address.

"Carter successfully seduced the country in his campaign and now he claims in the State of the Union to be impotent," Stone said, adding, "There are definite grounds for divorce."

He told students not to "cop out" and lose their ideals by being "swallowed up in the world of business."

Stone and Carter is unable to provide the progressive policies necessary to cope with inflation, urban decline and unemployment.

The citizens of the United States, not their government, should push for world-wide human rights because a government "must compromise its values in a world of power politics," Stone said, adding he fears Carter's human rights campaign may lead the U.S. into another Vietnam or into a "dispute between 57 different varieties of Marxist-Leninists."

The United States needs a leader with a "willingness to face defeat, to break the ice and to get ideas across to another generation," Stone said.

Stone, who describes himself as a "resistant optimist," founded and wrote the I.F. Stone Weekly from 1953 until 1971 when he retired and halted the publication of the newspaper. He received an honorary doctorate from Amherst College and Brown University and is now an visiting scholar at American University in Washington.