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5. “We must stop what we oppose”: Dow
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136 5 “We must stop what we oppose” Dow Dow,” as it came to be known by Mad i son ac ti vists and oth ers, was the cul mi na tion of the par a doxes of Cold War–era higher ed u ca tion at the Uni ver sity of Wis con sin. Blend ing to gether pro tests against the war in Viet nam, the role of cor po ra tions in sup ply ing the American mil i tary, and es pe cially the uni ver sity for its part in the “war ma chine,” the Oc to ber 1967 dem on stra tion against Dow Chem i cal Company’s cam pus inter views shat tered the in creas ingly frag ile peace that had ex isted since the con clu sion of the draft sit-in just over a year ear lier. The dem on stra tion in cluded cam pus and city po lice for cibly re mov ing hun dreds of pro test ers who were block ing the Dow inter views and then skir mish ing for more than two hours with a crowd of per haps three thou sand pro test ers and on look ers. It rep re sented a full-throttled shift from “protest to re sis tance” among many in Madison’s New Left, and it intro duced a pe riod of late six ties ac ti vism that was marked by in creas ingly con fron ta tional tac tics as the war in Viet nam con tin ued to rage into the early 1970s.1 The contra dic tions in Cold War–era higher ed u ca tion had been build ing since the years im me di ately after World War II, but it was not until the mid dle and late six ties that they came fully into the open. Coop er a tion between uni ver sities and the fed eral govern ment that had been hap haz ard in the years fol low ing World War II had be come or ga nized and rou tine, with major uni ver sities like Wis con sin stead ily in creas ing their re search bud gets and de riv ing more and more of those dol lars from an ex pand ing menu of fed eral agen cies, in clud ing many with na tional se cur ity inter ests. Mean while, even as uni ver sities “We must stop what we oppose” E 137 had taken an in creas ingly cen tral role in the Cold War strug gle, they had also be come cen ters for dis sent against American foreign and do mes tic pol icy. With the growth of the stu dent move ment and the de vel op ment of a net work of stu dent or gan iza tions, in clud ing jour nals like Stud ies on the Left and Rad i cal Amer ica (the lat ter founded in Mad i son in 1967), there emerged the foun da tion key to a pow er ful protest move ment. Just as sig nifi cant, the in creas ing im por tance of uni ver sity ed u ca tion and the flow of fed eral funds into uni ver sity cof fers under wrote much of the mas sive ex pan sion of stu dent en roll ment in the 1950s and 1960s. By the time that stu dents met to pre pare for Dow inter view ers to ar rive on cam pus in the fall of 1967, there were thirty-three thou sand stu dents in Mad i son, more than dou ble the en roll ment of a decade ear lier. Dow’s man u fac ture of na palm for the U.S. mil i tary was a crit i cal ele ment in the dem on stra tion, but it was only the cat a lyst for a much broader con fron ta tion over the de vel op ment of the Cold War uni ver sity that was at the heart of much of six ties protest. It was the university’s role in the war—“com plic ity” or even worse, many stu dents argued—that height ened the stakes for this dem on stra tion, rais ing fun da men tal is sues about the role of the uni ver sity and the re la...