UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
NOVEMBER 27,1978
Militarism lurks near
A new wave of militarism lurks at the threshold of higher education in America.
The lurker is a brainchild of the Department of Defense, who, with a frightening lack of publicity, is considering a plan that would open the doors of education to direct military influence.
The plan, according to the Nov. 11 issue of Saturday Review, is designed to prevent a "head-on struggle" between colleges and the military for the recruitment of the nation's youth.
Given the problems of American universities and colleges with declining enrollments and increasing expenses, the military has a perfect sales pitch—referred to as a partnership.
It would be naive to accept the plan as financially expedient. On the surface the plan may seem innocuous, but it is inevitable the military funding would have an effect on higher education—its goals and philosophy.
THE PENTAGON agrees to give financial help to colleges in return for the opportunity to provide military training.
To the Pentagon, however, the plan would be nothing less than a godsend in face of the military's bleak recruitment outlook.
Thomas Carr, director of defense education for the defense department.
said recently, "Assuming the nation will need to maintain an active-duty military force of about 2.1 million, then in the next five to 10 years the military must recruit more than one out of three male 18-year-olds."
A PROGRAM of "cooperative ventures" between the military and colleges, Carr said, will greatly improve the military's recruitment and cankeep colleges out of bankruptcy.
He went on to predict, according to Saturday Review, that the military would become the largest degree granting institution in the world if the plan is adopted. And the union of civilian education and military training will be the military to become a "major instrument for youth socialization."
It is a frightening thought that the tentacles of militarism could choke the spirit of social freedom found in higher education, but it is no exaggeration.
Carr said the military would assume "a large portion of the role once dominated by the family, the church, the school and the civilian work set."
Clearly the Pentagon plan reeks of a militarist intolerable in our society. A threat exists, not to a small group of people, but to all Americans.
The doors of higher education must be bolted and barred. The lurker must be kept at bay.
Ideals separate leaders from wielders of power
By JAMES MACGREGOR BURNS N.Y. Times Feature
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass—We live in an era of tillering with power and a deep sense of purpose.
Many of us grew up in a time of power-wilders like Hitler and Stalin, who could destroy overnight, it seemed, whole nations. And the more we lived with them, We lived in the era of leaders like Wilson and Gandhi, of Mann and Stravinsky, of Freud and Einstein, of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, later of John and Robert McNamara, of Martin Luther King and Goldel Miel.
Power-wielders respond to their targets' needs; if they bother to respond at all—only to the extent necessary to fulfill their own power goals.
THE CRISIS of leadership today is not only the mediocrity of so many of those in power; this is nothing new. It lies also in our failure to distinguish ourselves from others to distrust it from more power-holding.
Leaders, on the other hand, emerge from,
and always return to, the genuine and per-
fect character of the teacher.
IN THIS engagement with their followers,
leaders' own motives may become trans-
formative.
Truly great and creative leaders do something more. They arouse people's hopes and aspirations and expectations, convert social needs into political demands, and rise to higher levels of leadership as they respond to those demands.
Work in psychology has indicated that as "lower" needs such as food and safety are met, "higher" needs of affection and self-esteem and aesthetic and intellectual creativity are enhanced. In the growing engagement between leader and follower, the motives and behavior of each may be transformed to the point where all members follow these. This happens with the finest kind of teacher-student relationship.
Such creative leaders are neither simply "born" nor "made." They arise out of the most complex psychological and social interactions, in the family and school and work group.
Many famous leaders—F.D.R. and Churchill, for example—displayed few leadership qualities in their early years. Some leadership emerges out of personal crisis, as in the case of the humiliation insisted on during his early manhood in South Africa.
GREAT LEADERSHIP arises out of great conflict.
the 1980s produced a sunburst of such leadership in the United States, in large part because men like Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison had been engaged in the most intense combat, first against England and then among themselves.
The 1930s were another period of conflict and creative leadership, here and abroad. Great leaders are usually fervently loved and deeply hated, as Roosevelt was, because they fight for goals far nobler than their own self-interest. Going to jail, or to a prison, is not an easy test of good test of revolutionaries' potential leadership, though it does not guarantee it.
The ultimate test of leadership is actual, intended change, based on leaders' stated principles, change that shapes the day-to-day lives of the ordinary people.
THE LEADERSHIP of David Lilienthal in creating the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s is a classic example of purposeful leadership that brings such results. Lilienthal saw his role as one of not mere organization and management, important though were, of liberating human energies, inspiring people to action—as creative artists, as art or music, Lilienthal once said, "on almost poetic and religious function."
Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality, and tested by the achieving of results measured by original purpose.
It is to move from the game of chess in which masters manipulate pieces to a game of kings and commoners in which the chessmen come alive, the bishops and knights are moved, the rooks and squares with their own motives, and the chessboard becomes an arena of human possibility.
POWER IS different. Power manipulates people as they are; leadership as they could be. Power managers; leadership mobilizes. Power leaders; leadership. Power leads to corrupt, leadership to create.
Great leadership requires great fellowship. Leaders mobilize the best in their followers, who in turn demand more from their leaders. The greatness of John Kennedy in his inaugural address was not simply what he said, but in what he invoked.
In real life the most practical advice for power-holders is not to treat paws like pawns, nor prices like princes, but all persons like persons.
To move from power to leadership is to move from the arithmetic of everyday contacts and collisions to the geometry of interaction and engagement.
James MacGregor Burns is professor of political science at Williams College and
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Kennedy tops most dangerous list
Now that the elections of 1978 have been campaigned, voted, analyzed, trivialized and forbidden, politicians of both parties will be put to work for the more important contest in 1980.
The United States never finds itself short of contestants.
The presidency.
It is Kennedy, and not the conservative dinosaur Reagan, who is the most dangerous man on the list; in fact, he has killed about 50 people. He's the most dangerous man in America.
Rick Alm
SOMEHOW, THROUGH force of government, he envisions the creation of an earthly paradise free from crime, poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy.
unemployment, fear, racism and every other blight that has contributed to the misery of the human race.
Kennedy wants government to be a Big Daddy, if not a Big Brother. It would provide for citizens' needs—as long as they need what the government says they do and would protect them from harm—even though it is unlikely because they are only dependent children.
But that paternalism would be expensive.
The senator, when he dreams of transfer payments that never were, seems to forget the fact that many of those in disarray in 1890—or for that matter, in any year—would place additional burdens on him.
A politician, however, does not become dangerous to his country just because he holds strongly to a bunch of bad ideas. If he is a liberal, he would be more S.D., would present a greater threat than
His chances for success make him dangerous.
Kennedy. But McGovern disturbs nobody because he has the smell of a loser; Kennedy, meanwhile, has the look of a winner.
DURING THE entire decade of the 1970s Kennedy has died, as a White House insider put it, being "logging for president, not for himself." He was one of the wars of the past decade as the only respectable believer in the unlimited power of government to do good. And he was a strong critic of the 1980s.
at Camp David did nothing more than pull him even with Kennedy in polls asking why he wouldn't run unless Carter sinks dismay, which at least must be admitted as a lie.
His campaign forays this fall into a dozen states—including New Hampshire and Iowa, where he will play an important role he will be awarded in 1986—shrewd at him least one thing: Despite the national mood against ambitious government, he retains his popularity with voters.
Kennedy's popularity extends to the work press, which benefits him enior positions and gives him tagged along on a campaign swing before the election, all of them pestering the senator about his plans for 1980. Wherever he goes Kennedy receives presidential endorsements.
1. *question remains:* "Will he run?"
As always, it depends. Carter's triumph
THE PRESIDENTS Mideast peace already appears to be coming apart at the seams. His anti-immigration program, which was designed to relieve depression as early as the second quarter of next year, if the economy and Mideast ties fail, will pick the president's bones like a vulture.
Carter's failure will be his opportunity
Carter's failure will be his opportunity.
A Kennedy campaign will divide the country into groups and promise something to each of them. And he will give each group the power to impose the bill. That has been the politics of the Democrats from 1932 until this last election, when they discovered limited government.
And here's the danger. Kennedy can become president running on the platform of his own ideas, but he's the only one who can. And if he does, the paternalistic philosophy will seep back into government at every level, bringing higher spending and new
That Kennedy's a dangerous man.
Profits motive behind advertisements
the university Tony Lansman has a look flaak Nov. 16 from a trigger-happy skystuber who couldn't discern the reality of his own pain, this his own pure, unprodulged idealism.
I'm referring to Richard Burkard's castigation of the Kanasan for inserting an advertisement for Budweiser beer. Stated was his view: "These posters were trying to influence my sympathies regarding beer manufacturers."
Great. Dick, buddy, these people aren't asking you to like them, they want you to buy their beer. Likewise, Ford doesn't want you to 'go tell it on the mountain' and 'extol their kindness and humanitarian virtues, simply don't want you to cruise in a Chevy.'
Furthermore, Anheuser-Busch didn't have a "half-interest" in Monday's paper, they had what is called an insert, which is just another form of advertisement.
You see, they just don't get enough money from the University to cover all expenses. Just as the oligopoly (Anheuser-Busch, Ford) cannot survive unless it advertises, neither can the Kansan survive unless it accepts advertisements.
It simply means that the Kansan must accept advertisements to defray costs. That is, they want to break even or better if possible.
Concerning inserts, in order to receive the same amount of revenue from so-called propopulous, nonprofit oriented firms, (to extend your perceptions) we could of course put 200 2-1 bytake 3-inch inserts. But then you could take-by take long to read or they fall out easily.
The point is that it doesn't make any difference what kind of firm pays to put in the insert because all firms are profit-taking companies. The Ameshuser-Busch can put in a large insert.
To continue, a small firm is just as likely to invest in the Rhodesian chrome or South African diamond corporations—a marked attribute of right-winged, anti-poison
Nor did Anheuser-Busch merely put this poster in the Kansan. They paid for that right. You have to lay down the back jack when you can pick up the goods. That's just a fact.
Now then, why does the Kanas have to resort to this sort of thing? Because, and I suppose, it is a good reason that it is profit-motivated. What could this mean, this sphinx, this riddle, known as profit-
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
profit-mongers to be sure, as is the monopolist or oligopolist.
Recall your question, "Could it be that the paper has once more given into corporate philosophy . . . money first, philosophy later?" The answer. Nother.
It's possible that the 'anti-corporate' students are holding on to them for a bounce and demonstration in support of your position. I, for one, would like to imagine these notorious posters taking a more corporate approach to classrooms, doors, etc. Not exactly anti-corporate behavior on the part of the students, wouldn't you say?
Kind of strange, also, that large firms supply a substantial amount of student scholarships. Perhaps you've heard of the Ford Foundation, (they aren't talking about Jerry) or watched public television supported by Mobil Oil?
The Kansan is attempting to reconcile the reality of economics with the ideal of never being forced to make a decision.
On course, we assume that the Kansan represents the "totally anti-corporate student population" in its beliefs. Funky names, seem to be what wasn't an insert to be found after 5 p.m. Monday.
just check with the Cancer, Heart and Lung societies, with the United Fund, or with any non-profit organization to see how much these anti-populists donate.
Granted, it's a tax write-off to them, but at least it doesn't go into nuclear warheads, CIA plots or the bankrolls of corrupt politicians.
So you want an emphatic response to an ill-conceived and fallacious letter founded on catch phrases and constructed of distorted perceptions?
"I'll give you one. How about talk? I've got a lot of stuff to do and got fantastic results." Bian M. Farley.
Lawrence sophomore
Students must heed business philosophy To the editor
Who are you, Richard Burkard, and why are you saying these things that you say?
Hell, yes, those posters were trying to "influence your sympathies regarding beer" all advertising in the Kansas or more else, is an attempt to persuade buys.
Is the University Daily Kansan really failing to support the students by accepting an advertisement insert from Anheuser-Busch? Or is it merely offending your self-righteousness in promoting a product that you refuse to consume?
Surely you, as a journalism student aware of the need for advertising dollars to offset production costs, would not prohibit old advertisements from being used on the AbnerBusch or Ford Motor Co. simply because of their "corporate philosophy," but they would, in fact, keep you eating three years from now.
Furthermore, how can you suggest that the Karsan is wrong by "presenting a balanced viewpoint in its publication"? Isn't that what all those people who wrote in regarding that concert review were seeking?
If it's a responsible act to "thumb (your nose at money and fast-buck corporations)," what are you going to do when you enter the job market? Grow your own garden?
You requested an "emphatic response" to your letter; we are happy to oblige. Your notion that the student population on this campus is as senseless and unfounded as your letter.
The Kansan supports the students by covering all viewpoints, even those as inane to them.
Anyone who wants gainful employment as a result of a college degree had damn well better subscribe to that "corporate philosophy."
That's obviously more than we're willing to do, Richard, and we can offer only this letter to vindicate the Kansan on this matter.
Norman Harris
Salina junior
Keith Sevidge
Kansas City, Kan., junior
I am writing in reference to Richard Burkard's letter concerning the magazine Insider and two posters, Budweiser and Old Time. I have inserted in recent University Daily Kansas.
Beer, bourbon ads are OK for Kansan
Burkard wonders how the Kanaan could have let these "big business factions of the oil industry" in the newspaper. He asks, "How could you sell out the totaly anti-corporate student movement?"
I don't know where he gets his information, but I seriously doubt that the company offers him a job in Kansas in anti-corporate. Many students work for these corporations after graduation. Without corporations, many of the products that we enjoy today would not be available.
Interestingly enough, Burkard writes, "It only took me a couple of minutes to realize that these posters were trying to influence my sympathies regarding beer manufac-
That's the whole point. The function of advertising is to tell the public about a product, and to attempt to influence them to buy it. The beverage companies didn't insert the posters just so the student will have seen them and hang on his wall. They were advertising.
It is also important to realize that advertising allows the Kansan to publish the quality of newspaper that it does. The cost of such an allocation would hardly cover all the costs.
Burkard claims that the Kansan "should serve the students first." By putting in the mentioned advertisements, he says that it is obvious the Kansan has surrendered
I hardly think so. The student body is hardly homogeneous. It has different needs and interests. The companies that placed these ads apparently felt that there was a potential interest in their product at KU. I thought these ads just to be spending money.
the pro-fit mission is the basis of the free enterprise system, and advertising is a vital part of it.
Thaine A. Shetter Abilene sophomore
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