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KU lectures
With Walter Cronkite's appearance here yesterday, this may not seem apropos to say, but KU is not getting its share of high-caliber visiting speakers this year.
True, during the 1968-69 school year KU has featured Mark Rudd, Julian Bond and Hosea Williams.
But at the same time, Kansas State University has had Arthur Schlessinger Jr., Sen. Mike Mansfield and Muhammad Ali, and has scheduled Gen. William Westmoreland, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Sen. Edward Brooke, James Farmer, Sen. George McGovern and Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel.
Why this contrast between KU and K-State?
To begin with, K-State is the fortunate recipient of the Landon Lecture Series. The series, supported by former Governor Alfred M. Landon and financed by K-State, last year brought Ralph McGill, Gov. Ronald Reagon, Gov. George Romney and Sen. Robert Kennedy (who also appeared at KU) to that school.
William Boyer, head of K-State's political science department and co-ordinator of the Landon series, said Landon's support "has drawn many distinguished visitors who respect the name of the former governor."
Boyer said the roster of important names in the Landon series brings to K-State many other speakers "who wish to be a part of this august company of lecturers."
Boyer is also head of K-State's convocation committee which is responsible for obtaining speakers for the university.
KU's convocations committee is simply a financing committee and is not responsible for obtaining speakers. At KU each department is responsible for booking speakers: political lecturers must be obtained by the political science department, philosophers by the philosophy department, and so forth.
Raymond Nichols, KU vice-chancellor of finance, said that for the 1968-69 school year, the convocations committee gave 11 departments $13,000, an average of about $1,200 per department.
Boyer also attributes K-State's success to "a reasonable budget."
Nichols said some speakers ask up to $3,000 for a lecture. In some instances, he said, two or more departments must pool their resources in order to obtain a speaker.
Boyer said K-State was able to secure the Landon Lecture Series partly because "we recognize Governor Landon as one of Kansas' first citizens.
"Also, to have a good lecture series, a university needs presidential support. K-State is fortunate in having a president who is interested in controversy and the interplay of ideas," Boyer said.
By TERRY KOCH
Kansan Staff Writer
THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
All rights reserved
Publishers Hall, Syndicate
'The government ought to crack down on these young radicals who feel justified in destroying public property!'
Rapping Left
By GUS diZEREGA
President Richard M. Nixon's recent decision on the development of an ABM system and the corresponding escalation of the arms race that will follow remind me of the one time in recent history when a genuine possibility of ending the arms race and achieving disarmament existed. That was in 1955, and brothers and sisters, it wasn't the nasty Russians that went back on their word. . . .
On May 10, 1955 the Soviet Union accepted the Western plan for manpower ceilings in the armed forces; the reduction of conventional armaments; the Western timetable; and the Western arrangements for the abolition of nuclear arms. In addition, the Russians proposed that UN inspectors chosen "on an international basis" by the UN would be permanently in residence in Russia with wide powers of access to military and other installations, and with the right to full information on all aspects of Russian military finance. The Russians further proposed the establishment of control posts at major ports, railway junctions, airports, and highways to guard against any surprise attack. These control posts were to be set up before any armament reduction began.
Two days later, on May 12, the U.S. answered, "We have been gratified to find that the concepts which we have put forward over a
considerable length of time, and which we have repeated many times during this past two months, have been accepted in large measure by the Soviet Union." The West then insisted on a recess.
The first Summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev was in July, and it was there that Ike put forth his "open skies" proposal of aerial inspection. This was a wholesale retreat from the Western proposals accepted by the Soviet Union. Further, it asked that the Russians give up an important military asset — secrecy — without any prospect of a program of disarmament, which would liquidate the SAC bases surrounding the USSR. It isn't hard to guess the reaction of a country which had been invaded three times in thirty years.
On August 29 the Disarmament Commission resumed meeting. The Russians tried to hold the U.S. to its pre-Summit proposals and agreements, but the Americans would talk only of "open skies". After a week of this, the U.S. delegate said: "... the United States does now place a reservation upon all of its pre-Geneva substantive positions taken in this Sub-Committee or in the Disarmament Commission, or in the UN on these questions in relationship to levels of armament." Translated, this means that the American government withdrew all the far-reaching proposals it had initiated and which the Russians
had accepted only three months before. Thus ended the best post war opportunity to end the threat of nuclear war.
The United States, for all its talk of peace, cannot and will not disarm without there first being a drastic change in the composition of our power structure. Peace is impossible when about 90 per cent of our government's budget is related to war. Can you imagine Larry Winn voting for peace when about 30 per cent of Kansas' industrial revenue comes from defense spending? Think of the time it would take for Sunflower to convert to peaceful production. How politically inconvenient!
It is this group of vested interests which opposes disarmament, advocates the ABM system, conscription and the other militarist trends in our society, and whose power and extent today is so great that Tom Hayden and Mark Pilisuk could accurately observe that America doesn't have a military-industrial complex, America is a military-industrial complex.
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year Mail subscription examinations $8 semester, 10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044 employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressly necessarily those the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.