Kathleen Gough's Fight against the Consequences of Class and Imperialism on Campus

Abstract

In 1961 the Kennedy Administration gave the green light to the CIA to reclaim Cuba by force for democratic capitalism's interests. The Bay of Pigs invasion which followed was a flop that subsequent administrations and the CIA could never abide. In October of 1962 the Kennedy Administration, smarting from its defeat at the Bay of Pigs, revealed that Soviet missiles were destined to be installed on launch pads in Cuba and effected a blockade of traffic destined for that island. The Missile Crisis, as it is known, generated small protests on several campuses, including Brandeis University where Kathleen Gough, an assistant professor there, was asked by students to give a speech at an open forum on campus. Whereas the toppling of Arbenz's government in Guatemala and Mossadegh's government in Iran in the mid - 1950s had created mild protests here and there in American universities, the Cuban missile blockade signalled a change in the size and number of political protests on several American campuses against the United States' imperialist military adventures. Even free speech platforms, so common on campuses today, and professors willing to speak on controversial issues were few and far between three decades ago. Kathleen Gough was sought out by students because of a speech she had given the previous year denouncing the above - ground testing of nuclear devices at the Nevada test site. Kathleen complied and gave a speech lambasting the United States' government, expressing a hope that Cuba would successfully defend itself against an attack from the United States. She insisted that the United States was in violation of international law, and of Cuba's sovereignty, and threatened the world with a nuclear confrontation with the U.S.S.R. Kathleen Gough's protests of the blockade were based on scholarly critiques of Cuban political economic history and of the dictatorial regimes which had received succour and support from the United States. She sought fair treatment for Castro's socialist regime which had toppled Batista's dictatorship. By 1962 it was apparent that United States policies in Latin America favoured oligarchies and dictatorships(f.2) over socialist governments or governments which raised the spectre of socialism. Thus, from 1959 the United States had sought to undermine Castro's Cuba by refusing to grant it aid, to grant it trade status or to recognize its legitimacy. The U.S.A's second big moment for the toppling ofCastro's regime, the blockade, was not left to the CIA, but was delegated to the U.S. military and foreign affairs apparatus. The protest of U.S. practices toward Cuba during the missile crisis must be put into perspective: it was small, but noticed. It preceded the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley by over a year,(f.3) and it preceded the electrifying University of Michigan teach - in on the Vietnam War by two years.(f.4) Protests of the Cuban blockade in 1962 were in step with civil rights demonstrations in the deep south, and were harbingers of campus protests of U.S. imperialist foreign policies for the next three decades. Kathleen Gough's protests of United States' nuclear testing policies and its actions toward Cuba were regarded with repugnance by the Brandeis administration. She was called into the university president's office and upbraided. Kathleen was later given to understand that she had no future at Brandeis, but the president did not so inform her. Kathleen and her husband and colleague, David Aberle, decided to move from Brandeis. David was offered a position at the University of Oregon, which he accepted. There was no permanent ladder position available for Kathleen so she was made an Honorary Research Associate. Within a year after their arrival at Oregon, the United States, in violation of the Geneva Agreements and Accords, was hip - deep in open warfare against the revolutionary National Liberation Front insurgents and North Vietnamese troops. …