Haverford College Holds the Center: Navigating Issues of Free Speech and Anti-War Activism in the 1960s
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2024
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open access
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Abstract
This thesis uses the Vietnam War protest movement as a case study to explore campus conflict and free speech at Haverford College. Using internal memorandums, letters, newspapers, statements, photographs, legal briefs, and interviews found in the Haverford College Special Collections and the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, this thesis analyzes how Haverford College managed anti- war activity on its campus, upheld academic freedom and freedom of speech, and applied Quaker values to campus controversies. It argues that the history of the anti-war movement at Haverford provides an example of students being able to protest effectively and constructively while also allowing for the expression of dissenting views because they were mentored by a generally supportive faculty and administration. This thesis begins with an overview of Haverford during wartime, specifically the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. This history of the tensions between Haverford’s Quaker traditions and an increasingly non-Quaker campus frames the context within which the Vietnam War would play out. The second section explores Haverford’s most notable anti-war activity between 1960 and 1965. While most students at Haverford were not opposed to the war this early in the ‘60s, there were a handful of student radicals whose actions raised awareness of the war’s moral problems. The third section explores the effects of student antiwar demonstrations, how President John Coleman evaluated Haverford’s policy on military recruitment visits, and how a protest statement at Bryn Mawr led to condemnation from alumni and administrators for violating academic freedom. The fourth section examines Haverford’s antiwar activity from 1969 to 1971. It explores how President Coleman protected Haverford from legal trouble while expressing his support for a withdrawal from Vietnam, how Haverford’s students and faculty struggled to organize for the 1969 National Vietnam Moratoriums, how Haverford’s students organized a college-wide meeting with members of Congress on May 7, 1970, moving beyond the traditional image of radical activism in the process, and how a physics professor at Haverford exposed a covert FBI surveillance program on anti-war dissidents and how the school’s administration responded to it.