The President Is Listening

PRESIDENT Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia caused an extraordinary upwelling of dissent within the U.S.--a surge of dismay and protest that Nixon himself did not fully anticipate. Campuses responded with all forms of protest, including mass strikes and a quickly organized march on Washington after four students were killed during a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio. In that tragic week, the President acknowledged that he needed direct lines of communication with the nation's campuses. He soon enlisted two highly regarded university administrators, Chancellor Alexander Heard of Vanderbilt and President James Cheek of largely black Howard University, as ambassadors to the White House from academe.

During two months of lengthy meetings with Nixon and top members of the Administration, Heard, as the President's special adviser, and Cheek, as Heard's consultant, offered the President some unvarnished advice, and last week the substance of it was made public. Nixon and the students, they said, are not talking the same language. The students who disagree with the President's policies do so out of deep and sincere conviction, they reported, and if he is to lead the nation successfully, he ignores them at his peril.

Bark Off. In a 40-page memorandum released by the White House, Heard and Cheek made a twofold plea to the President. He should take serious steps to increase his awareness of the genuine concerns of his two most alienated constituencies, the young and the blacks. And he should make it clear to both groups that he not only understands their views but also takes them into account in making national policy, even if he disagrees with what they have to say (see box).

In a personal statement, Heard gave the President full marks for paying close attention during four private meetings. "The President made clear to us his serious concern over campus developments," Heard said. "He has displayed openness and a searching interest in what we had to say about campus beliefs and their significance for public policy and national leadership. I judge the mission to have been worthwhile." Last week he told reporters: "I believe the President and his assistants are much more fully aware of the scope and the depth of concerns on the campuses and in the black community than they were two months ago."

Since the Heard-Cheek critique gave it to the President with the bark off, why did Nixon make it public? One White House aide suggests: "Maybe it was to indicate that he is willing to listen, and is not ashamed of the fact that he's listening."

Understanding Parameters. On many counts, there is evidence that Nixon is indeed listening. One Heard-Cheek recommendation was that the President should give special responsibility to a senior White House staff member for liaison with higher education; Nixon has already designated Robert Finch, the former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, to carry out that task. Finch is one of Nixon's more liberal counsellors. Heard and Cheek proposed that Nixon give special aid to colleges primarily serving black youth; last week Finch announced that funds in the new federal budget for those purposes will be increased from $80 million to $100 million. The two university heads urged extra federal aid to poor students, white and black; the Administration's higher-education bill incorporates that proposal.

The memorandum includes other suggestions that are more tenuous, and therefore more difficult for the Administration to act on so specifically. The President should "increase his exposure" to representatives of both the black and the academic communities. He should "take initiatives welcoming young people into political and governmental processes." He should try to grasp why the blacks and the young fear repression; justified or not, that fear is a political reality with which he must deal. And the President should "use the moral influence of his office in new ways designed to reduce racial tensions and help develop a climate of racial understanding." None of those things can be done overnight, but the fact that Nixon was willing to make his chastisement public suggests--as Finch put it in bureaucratese--that the President at least understands "the parameters of the problem."

Not in Order. As Heard and Cheek were phasing out their study of the desperation that Kent State brought to the surface, the surprising results of an FBI investigation of what actually happened on that warm and tragic May 4 noon came to light in the Akron Beacon Journal. Officials of the Ohio National Guard argued from the start that their men fired in frantic self-defense against snipers and against a tightening noose of students throwing rocks and bottles. Not so, according to the FBI reconstruction of what really took place: the Guardsmen were not surrounded by demonstrators, they had not run out of tear gas, and they could have kept the situation under control without firing into the crowd.

A Justice Department report, prepared for Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane after an investigation by more than 100 FBI agents, advised that six of the Guardsmen could be criminally charged; the shootings "were not necessary and not in order." According to the FBI, no Guardsman had been injured at the time of the shootings, and none of them were in danger of their lives. One shot at a student who was merely making an obscene gesture. During the eleven seconds of firing, says the FBI, 13 students were hit by bullets. Nine of the 13 victims were struck in the side or in the back, which suggests that they were not challenging the Guardsmen frontally when shot. After the fusillade, one Guardsman reportedly shouted hysterically: "I shot two teenagers! I shot two teen-agers!"

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