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Political scientist Alan Westin (left) and African scholar Immanuel Wallerstein '51, leaders of the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee. announcing a new plan for a last-hour solution to the sit-ins. The two, and their colleagues, labored day and night to effect a peaceful compromise, but were foiled.
did was escalate the Ad Hoc group's demands upon the Administration, while softening the castigation of the SDS-led strike!路s. As such, it was praised by the small number of leftist faculty members but criticized sharply by the moderates and conservative professors. "vVe had to establish credibility among the Left," Professor 'Vestin explained later on. In gallantly reaching for some position that would lure the SDSers out of their all-or-nothing, no compromise approach, the Ad Hoc Executive committee came into heavy fire for neglecting to consider its "credibility" among other campus groups and the outside world. "The Ad Hoc leaders keep playing to the small pack of leftwing kids as if laws, principles, institutions, and everybody else did not exist. Everything they do is directed at wooing guys who have let them know a dozen times that they don't give a damn about Columbia or free academic inquiry," said one indignant professor. The Ad Hoc Resolution recommended that the President relinquish all power over disciplinary matters at the University to a tripartite commission, and that the University statutes be revised to allow that. It urged "a new approach of collective responsibility" to SPRIl\'G, 1968
protect the Strike's leaders, a device that would punish the dedicated revolutionaries and the sympathetic sittersin with "uniform penalties." And it proposed a high-level panel to review the gym and "adopt an alternative to the present plans." As for the student rebels, the Ad Hoc leaders asked that "once the President indicates that he accepts these resolutions" the students "vacate these buildings immediately," or else the Ad Hoc faculty would no longer "interpose [them]selves between the Administration and the students." On Sunday morning, an almost hot, sunny morning, Columbia's Law School looked a bit like a medieval cathedral in modern glass and concrete dress, with hundreds of professors streaming into it in tweeds and seersuckers, looking bleary-eyed or belligerent. Outside the Law building, huddled in a corner of the bridge across Amsterdam, the radical caucus, about 25 strong, met with Drama Professor Eric Bentley the only senior teacher present. President Kirk had met their howls of protest by agreeing to let "up to 20" of the younger instructors in the faculty meeting, on a non-voting basis, if there
was room. Said Assistant Professor Greeman of the Kirk concession, "\Ve younger teachers regard this as a profound humiliation. This campus is not Alabama in 1956!" As it turned out, the Law School lecture room was so crowded with over 500 senior professors (including 100 standees) that only a few of the radical young instructors got in. At the all-faculty meeting, presided over by President Kirk, there was a standing ovation for the efforts of the steering committee of the Ad Hoc Faculty Group. Then, after considerable discussion, the collected faculty approved a resoultion drawn up largely by economist Peter Kenen '54. The document, which offered nothing specific, passed by a vote of 466 to 40. Essentially, it praised the Ad Hoc group; expressed appreciation for the "patience and restraint" of the Administration and the majority of students and faculty; pledged faculty effort for better communication with students; condemned the student "violence' and "disruption"; and called upon the SDS rebels to help resolve the crisis peaceably. The Ad Hoc resolution was introduced by Professor Westin, but he did 57