1966: The Last Time...

University officials said yesterday's events marked the first time since 1966 that students forcibly prevented a visiting dignitary from leaving the site of a Harvard appearance. The last such incident, which involved then-Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and a mob of 800, was the first major event of the Vietnam protest movement at Harvard. This is some of what The Crimson reported on November 8, 1966:

Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was mobbed by some 800 demonstrators and forced from his car as he attempted to leave Quincy House late yesterday afternoon.

The University Police car in which the secretary rode was blocked by over 100 SDS [Student for a Democratic Society] protesters sitting in front of and behind it as it tried to move down Mill Street. Finally, McNamara emerged from the car in to the jeering crowd and was hoisted up on the hood of a convertible parked at the curb in front of McKinlock Hall.

McNamara had been visiting Quincy House to lunch and talk off-the-record with the small groups of undergraduates as part of the Kennedy Institute's Honorary Associates program.

On the car's hood he agreed to face questions from the crowd "for five minutes" about American involvement in the Vietnam War.

With his face visibly tightened and grim, he yelled into the SDS member's microphone. "I spent four of the happiest years at the Berkeley campus doing some of the same things you're doing here." But there was one important difference. "I was tougher and more courteous."

After some catcalls including "murderer" and "fascist," the secretary replied with vehemence. "And I was tougher then and I'm tougher now."