Analysis: Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, with Response from President Nixon
The analysis of the campus unrest during the Vietnam War, particularly in the spring of 1970, offers insights into a significant period of American history marked by escalating protests and governmental responses. Following President Nixon's announcement of a controversial military incursion into Cambodia, universities across the nation experienced a surge in student protests, culminating in tragic events such as the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University. In response to the nationwide upheaval, Nixon established the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, which aimed to investigate the causes and implications of the protests. The commission's findings highlighted the war as a central source of student agitation, while also criticizing the heavy-handed tactics employed by the National Guard. Responses to the unrest were polarized, with some viewing the protests as justified expressions of dissent, while others condemned the violence. Nixon's subsequent remarks emphasized generational divides and the cultural tensions between traditional values and the emerging counterculture of youth. The complex interplay of antiwar sentiment and institutional authority during this time continues to resonate in discussions about civil dissent and social justice in contemporary society.
Analysis: Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, with Response from President Nixon
Date(s): October 1970 (report); December 12, 1970 (letter)
Genre: report
Author(s): William W. Scranton (commission chair); Richard M. Nixon (president)
Summary Overview
Campus protests against the Vietnam War had been growing in size and militancy since 1965. In the spring of 1970, it appeared that campus unrest might have been dying down as a result of President Richard M. Nixon's “Vietnamization” policy, which began a gradual reduction in US troops in South Vietnam. On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced an invasion into Cambodia to wipe out communist bases near South Vietnam's border. The Cambodian incursion set off the largest wave of student protest of the Vietnam War. The campus unrest that followed included a national student strike and shooting deaths of students at Kent State and Jackson State universities. In response, President Nixon established “The President's Commission on Campus Unrest,” chaired by former Pennsylvania governor William W. Scranton (Republican), to investigate the student protests and authorities' responses to them. The commission issued its Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest the following fall.
Defining Moment
By the spring of 1970, the phased-withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam was proceeding on schedule and antiwar protests appeared to dwindle. On April 30, 1970, however, President Nixon announced the incursion of US and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia to wipe out North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong military “sanctuaries.” The expansion of the war into an officially neutral nation at a time when many believed the war was winding down unleashed a torrent of criticism and an eruption of campus protest, both peaceful and violent.
On Friday, May 1, Kent State students in downtown Kent, Ohio, engaged in widespread acts of vandalism in response to the Cambodian invasion, including breaking shop windows, setting bonfires in the streets, and throwing bottles at police cars. The next evening, a group of campus radicals set fire to the ROTC building, which they saw as a symbol of the war. A detachment of the Ohio National Guard, exhausted from extended duty due to a violent Teamsters strike, was called in and occupied the Kent State campus. Ohio governor James Rhodes gave a press conference from Kent on May 3 in which he denounced the students as “worse than the brown shirts [Nazis] and the communist element and also the night riders [KKK] …”
On Monday, May 4, the National Guard attempted to break up a peaceful rally scheduled for noon, which provoked rock throwing from a group of students. Many students remained peaceful or were mere spectators, while others simply made their way to class. However, more militant students engaged in running battles with the Guardsmen, each group tossing tear-gas canisters back and forth. Eventually, the besieged Guard unit took position on a hill and fired into a crowd of students, killing four and wounding nine.
Following the Kent State shootings, many local residents said that they regretted the National Guard did not shoot more students, and Nixon referred to student protestors as “the bums blowing up the campuses.” The nation's polarization over the war and the antiwar protests hardened. On May 9, New York City was the scene of the “Hard Hat Riot,” in which hundreds of American, flag-waving construction workers attacked peaceful antiwar protestors in front of City Hall.
The killings at Kent State triggered a nationwide student strike, the largest in US history, in which more than 500 campuses were shut down. Then, on May 14, at Jackson State, a mostly African American university, Mississippi State Police responded to violent protests over Cambodia and local racial issues by firing a barrage of over sixty rounds into a female dormitory, killing two black male students who had retreated there.
In response to the campus uprisings, President Nixon appointed a commission headed by former Pennsylvania governor William W. Scranton, to investigate the protests and especially the killings at Kent State and Jackson State. The commission conducted numerous interviews, reviewed police and FBI reports, and examined photographs and film pertaining to the killings. The following October, it issued The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. The report described the war as the main source of student anger, condemned students who resorted to violence, and strongly criticized the use of live ammunition at Kent State and Jackson State.
Author Biography
William Warren Scranton was born on July 19, 1917 in Madison, Connecticut, to a wealthy Pennsylvania family. He graduated from Yale in 1939 and attended Yale Law School. Scranton served in a non-combat role in the Army Air Force (USAAF) during World War II. Scranton practiced law in Pennsylvania until being appointed briefly as an assistant to Secretary of State Christian Herter by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959. He was elected to Congress from a Pennsylvania district in 1960 and went on to win the Pennsylvania governorship in 1962 as a moderate Republic, serving until 1967. Scranton made a brief run for the Republican nomination for president in 1964. Scranton undertook several diplomatic missions for different presidents over his life time and served as United Nations ambassador under President Gerald R. Ford in 1976–7. Scranton passed away at the age of 96 on July 28, 2013.
Document Analysis
The “President's Commission on Campus Unrest Conclusions regarding Kent State University 1970” seeks to give a balanced report that attributes some blame to the provocations of violent protestors, but places more blame on tactical errors and the use of live ammunition by the National Guard. The report states categorically, “Violence by students on or off the campus can never be justified by any grievance, philosophy, or political idea.” On the other hand, it declares that the National Guard's “decision to disperse the [peaceful] noon rally was a serious error.” The report is especially critical of the Guardsmen having live ammunition in their rifles, stating, “The general issuance of loaded weapons to law enforcement officers engaged in controlling disorders is never justified except in the case of armed resistance….”
Although Scranton and his fellow commissioners condemn student violence, they defend peaceful protest and show sympathy for the students' concerns. Scranton writes, “For students deeply opposed to the war, the Guard was a living symbol of the military system they opposed. For other students, the Guard was an outsider on their campus, prohibiting all their rallies, even peaceful ones, ordering them about, and tear gassing them when they refused to obey.”
The written response of President Richard Nixon to William Scranton's report is marked by its single-minded focus on “youth culture” and what was often described at the time as “the generation gap.” Nixon praises Scranton for criticizing student radicals, stating, “your emphatic condemnation and rejection of the use of violence as a means of effecting change—on or off campus is welcome.” Biographers often depict Nixon as particularly concerned with the growing number of young people in revolt against traditional American culture and institutions. This is evident in Nixon's defensive, but accurate, assertion that “the traditional culture of American life has millions of adherents within the younger generation.”
What is most notable in the president's response is what it does not mention. There is little mention of the war or the decision to send troops into Cambodia. And there is practically no acknowledgement of one of the commission's main conclusions: namely, that the National Guard should not have had loaded weapons and that, as a national policy, neither the police nor the National Guard should respond to campus unrest with bullets. For Nixon, the main issue is not lethal failures by the authorities, but rather the generational tensions that were so palpable in 1970.
Bibliography and Additional Readings
Kent State: The Day the War Came Home. Dir. Chris Triffo. Single Spark Pictures, 2000. Documentary.
Michener, James. Kent State: What Happened and Why. New York: Random House, 1971. Print.
Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print.
Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (“Scranton Commission”). Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1970. Print and Web.