Johnson Administration Research Articles

Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961-1969

Journal Article Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961–1969 Get access Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961–1969. By Clarkin Thomas. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. xiv + 376 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) Carter Jones Meyer Carter Jones Meyer Ramapo College of New Jersey Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 33, Issue 2, Summer 2002, Pages 228–229, https://doi.org/10.2307/4144818 Published: 01 May 2002

A Missed Opportunity for Peace in Vietnam—1966

Historians often point to the Geneva Conference in 1954 or South Vietnamese domestic turmoil in 1963 and 1964 as occasions when the U.S. might have avoided its eventual involvement in the Vietnam War. This article argues that the 1966 Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam also presented members of the Johnson administration with an opportunity to get out of Vietnam, but fear of the domestic and international repercussions from an American withdrawal rendered them incapable of pulling out. In rejecting withdrawal, Johnson and his advisors missed another chance to depart from Vietnam with far less political damage than some feared; pervasive dissatisfaction in Congress over the conflict, mounting questions among American citizens about the hostilities, and the realization among some officials that the nation had become hopelessly stalemated in a war few wanted to fight all made withdrawal a politically viable option.

Lyndon Johnson, Community Action, and Management of the Administrative State

The Community Action Program (CAP) was one of the highest‐profile but least successful of President Johnson's Great Society programs. Pluralist and neo‐Marxist theories hold that the origins of CAP and the problems that the program encountered were rooted in the politics of interest group and racial conflict, respectively. Drawing on archival evidence, this article turns attention to the important, yet forgotten, administrative dimension of CAP. The decentralized features of CAP were developed as a strategy to manage the federal bureaucracy and avoid conflict with Congress. Ultimately, CAP floundered as the decentralized control of the program freed it from the political control of the White House. The article concludes with a discussion of the problems presidents face in managing the federal bureaucracy and how the development of CAP reflects Johnson's management style in enacting domestic policy goals.

Federal Indian policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 1961-1969

Federal Indian policy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 1961-1969

Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics

He was as recognizable by his mellifluous voice as by his rumpled appearance. Everett McKinley Dirksen was one of the most colorful American politicians of the twentieth century and was considered by some the most powerful man in Congress. Now Byron Hulsey takes a new look at the senator from Illinois to show how his interactions with the White House made him a pivotal figure in American during the Cold War era. Hulsey traces Dirksen's relationships with four presidents to show how the senator shifted from being a major Republican critic of Truman to an ardent Republican supporter of LBJ. Dirksen learned politics from Eisenhower and became Ike's most trusted confidant on Capitol Hill; then as Senate Minority Leader he played a key role in furthering the ambitious goals of the Johnson administration. Hulsey analyzes the reasons for Dirksen's dramatic policy reversals, telling how the senator who in 1950 warned of the dangers of a leviathan executive came to embrace the power of the presidential office to provide for the social welfare, contain the spread of communism, and guarantee civil rights. Drawing on primary sources at the Johnson presidential library and the Dirksen Congressional Center, Hulsey shows how the senator combined legislative craftsmanship with the ability to get bills passed. He links Dirksen to the issues and events that shaped the 1950s and 1960s and tells how the Johnson-Dirksen coalition moved domestic policy forward through civil rights legislation but ran aground on the insurmountable problem of Vietnam. Hulsey also uses Dirksen's career to explore change, continuity, and conflict in the Republican Party over two decades. He explains how the GOP evolved through internal political and ideological tensions from the Taft-Eisenhower contest through the McCarthy era to the beginning of Nixon administration, revealing Dirksen's role in that process. By the time of Dirksen's death in 1969, the Vietnam War, the explosion of urban riots, and President Nixon's preference for the of resentment put an end to the suprapartisan spirit. Hulsey's book recreates a Washington milieu the likes of which may never be seen again, offering a lens for viewing postwar American while painting the definitive political portrait of one of our most remarkable leaders.

A Prophet Without Honor: Hans Morgenthau and the War in Vietnam, 1955–1965

yet he used the language of realism to argue that the war in Vietnam did little to serve American interests. Ideological distinctions between communism and anticommunism, he contended, did little to explain the complex dynamics of Vietnamese nationalism and anticolonialism. He feared that military involvement in Vietnam might provoke Chinese intervention as it had in Korea. Further, the United States needed to set aside what Morgenthau saw as its moralistic tendencies and accept the inevitability of compromise. He urged policymakers to substitute economic for military aid, even while warning of the limits of American in uence. Early on, Morgenthau asserted that linking U.S. policy to the Diem regime in South Vietnam would likely require an extensive commitment of resources and, in the end, prove self-defeating. His early articles sought to instruct policymakers and the public alike on what he saw as the realities in Vietnam, and they bore the marks of his liberalism and his realist perspective. His position as an academic expert granted him both the privilege and the responsibility of “speaking truth to power,” Morgenthau believed. Yet, as the war continued, he became increasingly aware of the limits of his influence, and with this awareness came a more deeply engaged opposition to U.S. policy. Morgenthau castigated the Johnson administration for its efforts to sti e dissent, challenging Cold War notions of consensus and patriotism that equated disagreement with disloyalty. Moreover, by 1965 he increasingly viewed the war not only as ill-suited to American interests but also as morally wrong. Critics had long equated Morgenthau’s brand of realism with an almost cynical amorality, rendering this turn to moral engagement all the more striking. His later articles associated the war with genocide and invoked normative standards of just war. Embracing American exceptionalism, Morgenthau dubbed Vietnam “Metternich’s war fought by the nation of Jefferson and Lincoln.”87 Morgenthau’s views had changed, but so too had antiwar opinion. By the late 1960s a more radical criticism of American politics and society had taken root on the left. These opponents of the war blamed liberalism and an understanding of international relations rooted in power politics and national interests 446 PaciŽ c Historical Review 87. Morgenthau, “What Ails America?” 19. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.200 on Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:43:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms for American mistakes in Vietnam and elsewhere. Many of them called U.S. power itself, rather than the misguided decisions that led to its use, immoral. Meanwhile, those establishment Ž gures who remained supporters of American policy saw liberal defectors like Morgenthau, no less than members of the radical left, as traitors. As a nationally known intellectual, Morgenthau’s views helped shape public opinion and policy in the 1950s. By the end of the 1960s, however, he found himself ostracized by an establishment bent on victory in Vietnam as well as by a radical antiwar movement that distrusted intellectual liberals and realist theories. Thus, Hans Morgenthau became an outcast in a world he had helped create, a prophet without honor in his own house. Since 1955 he had devoted thousands of words to criticism and warning about the disaster that awaited the American commitment in Vietnam, yet he proved unable to change the policies he opposed. Instead, he watched as his warnings went unheeded, his prophesies came to pass, and his own ideas and beliefs were held responsible. Hans Morgenthau and Vietnam 447 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.200 on Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:43:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Forging the Anglo‐American global defence partnership: Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and the Washington summit, December 1964

This article investigates the initial phase of the relationship between the Harold Wilson government and the Lyndon Johnson administration. Despite the generally held view that relations between these two countries were neither warm or close or that Wilson was more anxious to establish a close partnership with the United States than Johnson was with Britain, the article will show that this view is rather superficial. On the contrary, it was the Johnson administration which lacked confidence in dealing with the Wilson government for several reasons. The British leadership fought its corner very well, and used Britain's ability to play a world role as a means of influencing the USA. Indeed, no other single Western ally was equal to the USA, and thus a close relationship with the USA did not necessarily mean that the other country had to have equal power and strength to the USA.

Making Vietnam History

For those of us old enough to retain vivid memories of the conflict, the Vietnam War will always remain too recent and raw to qualify as history. But as the war recedes into the middle distance of American memory, and as an entire generation reaches maturity wholly bereft of any direct exposure to the carnage in Southeast Asia or the political cacophonies it generated at home, the Vietnam War has begun to spawn a historical literature worthy of the name. David Kaiser's new book is a major entry in this lengthening list, which has grown dramatically in the last decade, in part because the end of the Cold War has provided a fresh perspective from which to view Vietnam as an episode in that larger struggle, in part because both domestic and foreign archives have made previously classified material available to researchers. American Tragedy is not really about the conduct of the Vietnam War so much as the decisions made by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations that led us to the edge and then over the abyss. For that reason, it evades an encounter with recent studies that argue, for example, that a negotiated settlement was possible in 1968, or that the Vietnamization policy instituted by General Creighton Abrams had successfully neutralized the National Liberation Front in the countryside by 1970, thereby making the central tragedy of the war the American withdrawal and the central villain in the story the anti-war movement.' Kaiser believes, and I think the bulk of the historical evidence is on his side, that the Vietnam War was both unnecessary and unwinnable. It was unnecessary because the vaunted domino theory turned out to be mostly wrong. Laos and Cambodia succumbed to the communist spell, but the remainder of Southeast Asia and the Pacific rim nations did not. And the eventual

American tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the origins of the Vietnam War

Fought as fiercely by the politicians and the public as by troops in south-east Asia, the Vietnam War - its origins, its conduct, its consequences - is still being contested. In what will become the classic account, based on newly opened archival sources, David Kaiser rewrites what we know about this conflict. reviving and expanding a venerable tradition of political, diplomatic, and military history, he shows not only why we entered the war, but also why our efforts were doomed to fall. This is the first book to draw on complete official documentation to tell the full story of how we became involved in Vietnam - and the story it tells decisively challenges widely held assumptions about the roles of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Using an enormous range of source materials from these administrations, Kaiser shows how the policies that led to the war were developed during Eisenhower's tenure and nearly implemented in the closing days of his administration in response to a crisis in Laos; how Kennedy immediately reversed course on Laos and refused for three years to follow recommendations for military action in south-east Asia; and how Eisenhower's policies re-emerged in the military intervention mounted by the Johnson administration. As he places these findings in the context of the Cold War and broader American objectives, Kaiser offers the best analysis to date of the actual beginnings of the war in Vietnam, the impact of the American advisory mission from 1962 through 1965, and the initial strategy of General Westmorland. A deft re-creation of the deliberations, actions and deceptions that brought two decades of post-World War II confidence to an ignominious end, this book offers unparalleled insight into the Vietnam War at home and abroad - and into American foreign policy in the 1960s.

Making a Difference: The Practice of Sociology

Emphasis on measurement techniques can interfere with understanding how well particular social programs in their field work. In Making a Difference: The Practice of Socioloy, Irwin Deutscher links traditional sociological concerns with applied sociology in an effort to overcome this problem. He contributes to the debate over the extent to which health, educational, and social programs initiated by the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations have been successful in intimate, human terms. Deutscher believes that the introduction of a sociological perspective can provide a positive element to interdisciplinary pursuits. This belief, as well as his fresh perspectives on both the strengths and limitations inherent in applied sociology, offer the field a revitalising lift. As such, this highly informative, thought-provoking volume will be of interest to sociologists and policy makers in health, education, crime, welfare, and housing.

The Genesis of the US–Israeli Military-Strategic Relationship and the Dimona Issue

President Kennedy was the first American president to enunciate commitment to maintaining an arms balance between Israel and its Arab neighbours. He defined the US–Israeli relationship as ‘special’. He told the Israelis that if Israel were invaded, the USA would come to its support. US diplomatic documents show that, in August 1963, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were still reserved on the question of arms for Israel, but by December 1963 their approach was already positive. In June 1963, Kennedy told his assistants that he favoured staff talks with Israel. While neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson administrations consented to military staff talks, a seminal meeting on the question of the arms balance in the Middle East in fact took place just ten days before Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's Deputy Chief of Staff, took part in that meeting. This article also discusses the question whether concern over Israel's nuclear policy (the Dimona reactor) influenced American thinking on the development of the US–Israeli defence relationship.

Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945-1969

This text covers integration of the State Department after 1945 and the subsequent appointments of Black ambassadors to Third World and African nations. Other topics include: the setbacks during the Eisenhower years and the gains achieved during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Narrative Reason and Cold War Economic Diplomacy in W. W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth

Narrative Reason and Cold War Economic Diplomacy in W. W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth Kimber Charles Pearce In the end,... a rude pragmatism shapes the content of intellectual life, and, in turn, the behavior of practical men is governed by the abstractions which men of ideas have created in an effort to give a degree of order to the world of human beings and things about them.1 Walt Whitman Rostow Questions concerning relations of social scientific discourse and public policy have been myriad and complex. Studies of the role of social scientific research in policymaking have focused on relationships of knowledge and power,2 the ways in which social scientists have gained access to policy communities,3 and histories of national conditions that have created demands for social scientific research in the policy process.4 Within the interdisciplinary rhetoric of inquiry movement that has arisen from the "linguistic turn" in social scientific and humanistic research, social scientists have been studied as advocates in the political process along with politicians , bureaucrats, media figures, interest groups, and other participants in public policy debates.5 Economists have contributed to public policy longer and in greater numbers than many of their colleagues in other disciplines. D. N. McCloskey's studies of the rhetoric of economics have demonstrated how economic theorists fuse fact and logic with the humanistic tropes of metaphor and narrative to make economic models persuasive to both general and expert audiences.6 Among eminent twentieth -century economists, American economic historian and presidential adviser Walt Whitman Rostow is one theorist who has exhibited convincingly the rhetorical skills of storytelling, metaphor-making, and model-building, yet his discourse has received scant notice in the literature of the rhetoric of economics. During the 1950s and 1960s, Rostow narrated and applied to the advocacy of Cold War foreign policy his theory of the five "stages of economic growth" as "an alternative to Karl Marx's theory of modern history."7 His model of economic Kimber Charles Pearce is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Communication Certificate Program at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 2, No. 3, 1999, pp. 395-414 ISSN 1094-8392 396 Rhetoric & Public Affairs development inspired a conceptual revolt in macroeconomics during the early 1950s against the dominant neoclassical paradigm, which held that short-period factors were the appropriate units for the statistical analysis of economic growth trends. In contrast to the mathematical imperative of the neoclassicists, such as Simon Kuznets,8 Rostow used narrative to reconstruct historical patterns and predict future trends in long-term economic growth.9 Beyond the academy, Rostow's promotion of his "stages of economic growth" narrative as a counter-theory to Marxism won the attention of policy makers in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, who used it as a blueprint to deploy foreign aid programs to contain Soviet expansionism in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. In his role as a co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies (CENIS)—a forum he established with economist Max F. Millikan in 1951 to advance developmental theory and U.S. foreign aid policy10—Rostow was called upon to assist the efforts of foreign aid advocates in the Eisenhower administration." After a decade of lobbying in the Congress and elsewhere on behalf of U.S. development aid programs, he was appointed Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs under President John F. Kennedy in 1961.12 In 1968, Rostow ended his career in government service as President Lyndon B. Johnson's National Security Adviser during the Vietnam conflict. Rostow's dual role as a leading architect of U.S. economic development programs and U.S. military escalation in South Vietnam made him a key figure both in the history of developmental economic theory and U.S. diplomacy during the Cold War. For this reason, and because of his enduring influence on postCold War policy discussions concerning regionalism and globalism, his economic discourse is singularly significant as a subject of analysis in the rhetoric of inquiry.13 Rostow's magnum opus and best known book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist...

The Politics of the Peace Corps

The Politics of the Peace Corps David Burner (bio) Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman. All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. vii + 306 pp. Appendix, notes, and index. $27.95. Fritz Fischer. Making Them Like Us: Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s. Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. vii + 239 pp. Notes and index. $27.95. Elizabeth Hoffman has given more than a critically sophisticated history of the Peace Corps and of the volunteerist commitments that at the same time moved contingents of people in other countries. (Australian youth, acting outside of government, had beat the Peace Corps by several years, and the Canadians purposely got a program going just before that of their southern neighbor.) All You Need is Love is a sensitive and rounded study of the cultural and intellectual phenomena and contradictions of the age. One of the most interesting portions of the book discusses the ethos that at the dawn of the sixties motivated Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts abroad. It drew upon a rendering of existential philosophy that in place of a formal system of ethics prompts individuals to find and create their identity through active involvement in the world. The result may be proportionate to the difficulty of the action. The author centers on this way of thinking as it inspired Peace Corps volunteers. But a whole history is to be told of the humane ethos of self-discovery in action and community as it also appeared in the early Students for a Democratic Society as well as in the Mississippi civil rights movement. The early Peace Corps, then, embodied a persuasion at radical odds both with Soviet and Maoist ideology and with the left politics that later were to define race, ethnicity, and gender as ultimate categories of self-identity and political discourse. The Peace Corps was founded in a belief that human beings should be concerned for one another. The idea did, of course, include the notion that participation would bring self-definition and fulfillment to the volunteer: yet that is a realm of self-concern that is ordinarily ranked as virtuous. But you cannot sell Congress and the opportunistic portions of the public on the [End Page 491] notion that the government should—even inexpensively—do anything for anyone for no reason beyond the doing. Nor can you quickly sell the public on the idea that Americans should undergo discomfort, or that they are capable of it. All You Need is Love quotes an inquiry from one State Department official: “We feel confident that it is not the intention that Americans should have no special privileges . . . and should live on African standards” (p. 65). That particular query the supporters of the program could dispose of as abruptly as it deserved. The larger problem was that of reconciling to national goals the altruistic ambitions of the Peace Corps. At first, the reconciliation was clear enough. The founders, notably President Kennedy and the first director, Sargent Shriver, were aware that in building good will toward the United States, the effort would be a counterpoise to Communist influence in the Third World. To that extent, the Peace Corps was in accord with the Kennedy policy that combined militancy toward the Communists with some openness even toward the nonaligned nations hated by the American right. At the same time, the Peace Corps could make its contribution to the waging of the Cold War only insofar as it remained aloof from the vocabulary of that combat. Most important was that it refuse any information gathering that cold warriors might wish it to do. Possessing with some notable exceptions a fairly benign dedication to a democratic development of society and economics, foreign as well as American, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations could allow the Peace Corps to forego such combative activities. In the disastrous years of the nation’s extended war in Vietnam, however, the American left—a logical source of volunteers and support for the Peace Corps—became accustomed to seeing all policy coming from Washington as prosecuting the Cold War. They also decided that the Western objectives in that war were...

A Voice from the Wilderness: Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, 1964–1966

Upon ascending to the presidency January 1969, Richard Nixon commented that he had inherited a war not of his making from his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson.(1) Admittedly, the United States faced an increasingly difficult situation Vietnam at the time of Nixon's election. Yet, Nixon was being too modest by assigning responsibility for the war Vietnam to the Johnson administration alone. Indeed, during his years in the wilderness as a private citizen following his defeat the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Nixon consistently criticized Johnson's Vietnam policy. As a respected voice foreign affairs and as arguably the Republican Party's leading spokesman on Vietnam, Nixon forced the administration to acknowledge and respond to his rhetoric, which spurred Johnson to greater involvement the war. Thus, Nixon should be held at least partially responsible for the situation he confronted on his inauguration; he helped to create it. Nixon's hawkishness on the Vietnam conflict during 1964-66 has been largely ignored by students of the war.(2) Given Nixon's role the denouement of the war--and indeed America's involvement Southeast Asia during virtually the entire period from Dien Bien Phu 1954 to the fall of Saigon 1975--an understanding of Nixon's views during the years preceding his election seems critical to a complete understanding of Nixon's presidential decisions on Vietnam. This article will address those issues, focusing specifically on Nixon as a critic of America's Vietnam policies during the Johnson administration's escalation of the American presence the conflict Southeast Asia. In addition, it will examine and reaffirm the importance of domestic politics the making and understanding of U.S. foreign policy.(3) Rising from the Ashes On November 7, 1962, Richard Nixon's political career appeared to be at an end. Having just been defeated by Pat Brown the California gubernatorial election, the former vice president declared, You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, sounding like a man who planned to fade into the footnotes of history. Yet, Nixon returned almost immediately to the public spotlight and began his long journey back into contention for the presidency. First, he relocated to New York an effort to establish a base for his political ambitions. He then became the senior partner an old, conservative, and respected Wall Street law firm, which enabled him to rub shoulders with domestic and international VIPs from business and politics. Nixon also began to travel extensively, making contacts with foreign dignitaries, enhancing his knowledge of foreign affairs, and honing his rhetorical and campaign skills.(4) As a visible New York attorney, Nixon positioned himself an ideal situation for a political comeback. He could criticize political insiders without being responsible for the consequences of his actions. His nonincumbency gave him an important advantage over Johnson particular. He was free to state his objections to policy without having to account to Congress or the electorate. Nixon had the luxury of being forthright, unencumbered by the restraints of office.(5) As a result, he could rehabilitate his public image without running the risk of losing another election or being rebuked by an official constituency. In Lyndon Johnson, he had a convenient and stationary target. Constrained by the demands of the presidency and preoccupied with building the Great Society and other domestic political concerns, Johnson could not afford to devote all of his personal and institutional resources to foreign policy and Vietnam--and indeed did not want to do so.(6) Nixon, on the other hand, could hammer away at the administration's indecisiveness and lack of initiative. Despite these handicaps, Johnson retained the advantages of his office. The president of the United States has the ability to set the national agenda and to focus attention away from problems--if those problems do not become too critical or pressing. …

The Anti Sihanouk Coup d'etat in the Context of the Vietnam War

The coup d'etat against Cambodian chief of state Norodom Sihanouk in March, 1970 marked a turning point in Cambodian history. This article examines its causes, process, and outcome in the context of the war in Vietnam. Using mainly Vietnamese sources and declassified U. S. materials, the author tries to explain the structural back ground of the coup.After 1965, the Worker's Party of Vietnam (VWP) needed Chinese arms supplies via the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville due to an adequate supply via the Ho Chi Minh route to the southern theaters especially Nam Bo. The VWP tried to maintain good relations with Sihanouk and opposed the armed struggle policy of Pol Pot's Comunist Party of Cambodia (CPK) against Sihanouk regime.United State military intelligence recognized the importance of the Sihanoukville arms route as shown by reconaissance operations into Cambodia, although the Johnson administration rejected any military operations there.The Nixon administration feverd military intelligence angainst State Department and C. I. A.. The American military and diplomatic stalemate led toan aggressive policy towards the Sihanouk regime for its arms transfer to the Vietnamese liberation forces.As late as January 1970, after Sihanouk had left Cambodia for medical treatment, the White House decided to hatch the coup. Sirik Matak, then acting prime minister of the Cambodian Government, and Lon Nol's younger brother Lon Non acted as agents of the White House. Even before the coup, they had closed the Sihanoukville armes route. After the coup, the Cambodian government severed it's relations with the VWP, and despite Chinese efforts to renew arms transfer for the Vietnamese, Lon Nol never changed his mind.Nixon's aim for the coup was realized, but it's effects remained temporary. The VWP moved quickly to form an allignment between Sihanouk and Pol Pot, moving its southern main forces into Cambodia to link up with its logistic forces from Laos.The U. S. failed to gain an advantage either in the battlefields or the negotiation table. As a result the CPK gained wide areas of support both inside and outside Cambodia. The VWP failed to evaluate Pol Pot's nature at that time, the only longterm effect of the U. S. political ambitious initiated coup and the VWP reaction was the unitnentional opportunities it offerd to Pol Pot's.

Expanding Coverage of Diversity beyond Ethnicity and Race

Many journalism educators are seeking better knowledge about how to train to be effective in writing about diverse peoples and viewpoints. In this effort, three documents lay groundwork for diversity reporting -- Hutchins Commission and Kerner Commission reports as well as Standard 12 of Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). In 1947, Commission on Freedom of Press in its report, A Free and Responsible Press, recommended that news media foster discussions on salient social issues while making sure they presented views of different sectors of population. For journalists, this meant, the projection of a representative picture of constituent groups in society. At heart of Hutchins Commission report was concern that democracy could not work effectively if media failed to represent diverse social groups, not only weaknesses and vices, but their common humanity. Two decades later, National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders created by Johnson administration examined causes of civil unrests and riots in United States cities during mid-1960s. Its report, commonly known as Kerner Commission Report for its chair Otto Kerner, pointed out that a fundamental problem of news media had been their failure to report adequately on race relations and ghetto problems. The commission found that television and newspapers portrayed a world which was almost totally white, both in appearance and attitude. In their coverage of African Americans and inner cities, media had not shown blacks in routine contexts and everyday affairs, and they did little to provide depth to racial issues and to promote an understanding of what it could be like to live in poor neighborhoods of country. Some specific journalistic practices were considered problematic. For example, in coverage of inner cities, very few diverse sources were used as journalists relied disproportionately on police and other officials. Numerous recommendations were made by Kerner Commission to improve coverage. Among suggestions, commission called for an intensified effort by media industry to recruit and hire African Americans. In addition, it urged media to make contacts and find more sources in inner cities; observation was made that black media could be especially helpful in this endeavor. Finally, Kerner Commission stressed that African Americans and their lives had to be integrated into different sections of television and newspaper news and that they should not be disproportionately present or absent in any specific kind of news. Finally, just as Hutchins Commission and Kerner Commission reports were crucial documents for national media -- pointing out problems and suggesting changes in ways news is produced-the Standard 12 resolution written by Accrediting Council has important repercussions for journalism departments and education. The initial resolution written in 1984, titled Minorities and Female Representation, sets goals for departments as far as recruiting and retaining minority and faculty. In 1992, Standard 12 was revised and a new component was added emphasizing curriculum. In short, curriculum had to `prepare to understand, cover, communicate with, and relate to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and otherwise diverse society' (Ruggles,1993). Standard 12 also called for innovative and creative ways for achieving these goals. After revisions to Standard 12 in 1997, emphasis remained on preparing students to serve... a diverse society (ACEJMC, 1997). Despite variety of reports and recommendations, studies have found only minimal improvements in diversity of media and journalism education (Izard, 1990; Lawrence, 1990; Weaver & Wilhot, 1991; Wilson & Gutierrez, 1995). …

Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (review)

Book Reviews 151 therefore totalitarian___The most elementary study of history teaches that political science as it was reintroduced at the time of America's founding produced one of the most profound criticisms of the excesses of abstract ideological thought. By what sort of perverse logic would one wish to group together the best hope for mankind with a doctrine that would doom the world to despotism?" (249). And, third, assigning causality to "civilization" as a unit of analysis ignores the larger unit of human nature or the human race as well as the smaller unit of the political regime. Professor Ceaser has presented the intellectual community with a provocative thesis, one that challenges the new orthodoxy and seeks to restore the balance between intellectual activity and political action. It will undoubtedly antagonize certain ideologues whose response is likely to be to attempt to ignore it. But this is a book that should not be ignored: scholars in political science and rhetoric who confront it will learn from it. Graduate students in rhetoric, particularly, ought to read this book; they will find it refreshing and engaging, written as it is with grace, clarity and wit, qualities they do not frequently encounter in the theory-sodden tomes they are often required to read. Professor Ceaser has also presented the intellectual community with the gift of insight that grows from a capacious mind and a lifetime of erudition. Eloquently, wisely, and humanely he has focused our attention on the need to come to grips with the "symbolic America" fashioned for us and to "rediscover the real America" (250). James R. Andrews Indiana University Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. By H. R. McMaster. New York: Harper Collins, 1997; pp. xvi + 434. $27.50. In 1954, after the French had lost ground against the tenacious Vietminh and after the history-changing battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned President Eisenhower not to become involved in a land war in Vietnam. The president listened. Later, Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgeway said that he was proud of fighting against some "harebrained tactical schemes which would have cost the lives of some thousands of men."1 One of those schemes was Indo China intervention . H. R. McMaster has written a compelling book in which he demonstrates how President Lyndon B. Johnson did not enjoy such advice from his Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Johnson administration's policy of graduated pressure against North Vietnam was fundamentally flawed. Although Johnson's Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized such a flaw, they were "unable to articulate effectively ... their objections to alternatives" (327). 152 Rhetoric & Public Affairs There were other reasons for Johnson's faulty decision making, though. As McMaster explains, Lyndon Johnson surrounded himself with civilian advisers, the chief of whom was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who dominated the policy-making process. Three mutually related facts supported such domination: "the chief's ineffectiveness as an advisory group, Johnson's profound insecurity, and the President's related unwillingness to entertain divergent views on the subject of Vietnam" (61). Eventually, civilians and military officers went to war with dramatically different objectives in mind. The military wanted to win the war. Although the civilians' objectives were largely undefined, they wanted to achieve a kind of stalemate , preventing either side from winning (306). Dereliction of Duty has many strengths. McMaster has drawn upon a wealth of recently declassified documents, including the official history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as interviews with key players such as Dr. Walt Rostow and General William Westmoreland, USA (Ret). Also, as explained in the book's preface, the military role in Vietnam decision making has been little understood and largely overlooked . This book fills that gap. Worth special mention, too, is the way McMaster meticulously uncovers major flaws in the decision-making process. President Johnson's obsession with consensus is an old idea as is the amount of conflict that, ironically, permeated the administration . However, McMaster adds depth to these ideas with new information, demonstrating that there was enough blame to be shared by all. The process...

Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating the Waters of Academic Freedom at Fisk University during Charles S. Johnson's Administration (1946-1956)

A prominent sociologist and race relations activist, Charles S. Johnson dedicated his life to the advancement of Blacks. His presidency at Fisk University, a historically Black college, was the culmination of his career. During the latter part of his administration, he faced a dilemma involving an outspoken professor named Lee Lorch, who, in 1954, was accused of being a communist. Johnson and the Board of Trustees dismissed Lorch because he refused to answer a congressional committee's questions about his previous political affiliations. In 1959, the American Association of University Professors found the late President Johnson guilty of violating the principles of academic freedom. This article explores the ways in which academic freedom, civil liberties, and civil rights clashed in the Lee Lorch case. Furthermore, it examines the ways in which the setting of a historically Black college alters traditional assumptions about the application of these principles.

Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating the Waters of Academic Freedom at Fisk University During Charles S. Johnson's Administration (1946–1956)

A prominent sociologist and race relations activist, Charles S. Johnson dedicated his life to the advancement of Blacks. His presidency at Fisk University, a historically Black college, was the culmination of his career. During the latter part of his administration, he faced a dilemma involving an outspoken professor named Lee Lorch, who, in 1954, was accused of being a communist. Johnson and the Board of Trustees dismissed Lorch because he refused to answer a congressional committee's questions about his previous political affiliations. In 1959, the American Association of University Professors found the late President Johnson guilty of violating the principles of academic freedom. This article explores the ways in which academic freedom, civil liberties, and civil rights clashed in the Lee Lorch case. Furthermore, it examines the ways in which the setting of a historically Black college alters traditional assumptions about the application of these principles.