Campus Wars: The Peace Movement At American State Universities in the Vietnam Era

by Kenneth J. Heineman

"At the same time that the dangerous war was being fought in the jungles of Vietnam, Campus Wars were being fought in the United States by antiwar protesters. Kenneth J. Heineman found that the campus peace campaign was first spurred at state universities rather than at the big-name colleges. His useful book examines the outside forces, like military contracts and local communities, that led to antiwar protests on campus."
—Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times
"Shedding light on the drastic change in the social and cultural roles of campus life, Campus Wars looks at the way in which the campus peace campaign took hold and became a national movement."
— History Today
"Heineman's prodigious research in a variety of sources allows him to deal with matters of class, gender, and religion, as well as ideology. He convincingly demonstrates that, just as state universities represented the heartland of America, so their student protest movements illustrated the real depth of the anguish over US involvement in Vietnam. Highly recommended."
— Choice
"Represents an enormous amount of labor and fills many gaps in our knowledge of the anti-war movement and the student left."
—Irwin Unger, author of These United States
The 1960s left us with some striking images of American universities: Berkeley activists orating about free speech atop a surrounded police car; Harvard SDSers waylaying then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; Columbia student radicals occupying campus buildings; and black militant Cornell students brandishing rifles, to name just a few. Tellingly, the most powerful and notorious image of campus protest is that of a teenage runaway, arms outstretched in anguish, kneeling beside the bloodied corpse of Jeff Miller at Kent State University.
While much attention has been paid to the role of elite schools in fomenting student radicalism, it was actually at state institutions, such as Kent State, Michigan State, SUNY, and Penn State, where anti-Vietnam war protest blossomed. Kenneth Heineman has pored over dozens of student newspapers, government documents, and personal archives, interviewed scores of activists, and attended activist reunions in an effort to recreate the origins of this historic movement. In Campus Wars , he presents his findings, examining the involvement of state universities in military research — and the attitudes of students, faculty, clergy, and administrators thereto — and the manner in which the campus peace campaign took hold and spread to become a national movement. Recreating watershed moments in dramatic narrative fashion, this engaging book is both a revisionist history and an important addition to the chronicle of the Vietnam War era.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

1 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because a colleague and I are exploring a research project on the anti-war movement in Fargo & Moorhead during the Vietnam War. The author did extensive research on Kent State, Penn State, Michigan State, and SUNY-Buffalo, looking specifically at non-elite campuses. I am a pacifist who did two years of alternative service during the war, but I had not realized (or maybe had forgotten) how widespread and intense the hatred and violence was on both sides. It's a generally depressing and alarming book that does end on an optimistic note with the 1972 trial of the Catholic draft board attackers in Buffalo who had their convictions overturned by their trial judge. There is hope for principled non-violence.

[Christopher]

Very informative and liked the approach of public universities

[William Jr. · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a period piece describing events on four American campuses in the late 1960s in detail, and many other campuses in general terms, Campus Wars has value -- but only if the serious researcher uses it as just one of multiple sources of information. Mr. Heineman seems to have an edge to his writing. He comes at his material with many predetermined impressions, and selectively chooses interview subjects and sources to support his conclusions. He overlooks other research that might have given this book a better following. I experienced nearly all of the events that he describes with respect to Kent State University, yet he comes up with sources decades after the facts that only a revisionist, amateur historian would find. He takes aim at university administrators in general, yet rarely cites any of their own work or their own writing in placing the period in context. His heavy preference is for the words and activities of the SDS, their antecedents and their cousins. If the reader is looking for after-action quotes and the clipped version of what happened behind the scenes within the anti-war movement, this book offers limited satisfaction. The 38 pages of citations and the 21 pages of index might make this seem like a balanced and well-researched book, but don't be fooled by that.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was there, of course, during the "campus wars" (that's my college right on the cover) so it was interesting to read the history and analysis this author writes. He mostly gets things right, but in spite of his extensive research (50 pages of footnotes) I think he got some things wrong, mostly as he discusses the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of many of the peace activists and using these to explain their actions. Nevertheless he was mostly on target with dissecting the movement(s).