The Week

Pressure is building for a ceiling (low) on campaign donations and spending. Newest impetus: testimony of Joseph Califano, counsel to the Democratic National Committee, that millionaire Stewart R. Mott offered “up to $5 million” to the Humphrey campaign, provided Humphrey switched to a more doveish position on Vietnam. Mott tried, said Califano, “to purchase his own foreign policy for 200 million Americans.” Remember the good old days, when millionaires were content to buy politicians as-is?

It seems the rope-merchants are showing reluctance to supply their hangmen. Alumni contributions to Princeton University, as to many an ivied sister, still have not achieved their 1968-69 level. Why? E.g., from a recent column in the Princetonian by Professor Hayes of Princeton’s Politics Department: “The incarceration of Professor Angela Y. Davis once again serves notice to all African people that the tentacles of racism and repression are realities of American society. . . . The whole question of Angela getting a just trial seems perilous at this point, for Marin County, a suburb of San Francisco, is white, racist, wealthy, and extremely conservative. . . . Free Angela Davis now!” And what are the Princeton administrators doing about alumni reluctance to support this sort of thing? They are searching the campus for student conservatives, publicizing them in the Alumni Weekly, getting them to speak to alumni groups, even clipping their newspaper ads and sending them to alums. All to prove how extremely conservative Princeton really is, and how suitable a recipient of conservative alumni cash. Who knows, if the financial squeeze continues, we may even see a card-carrying conservative at the front desk of Nassau Hall, and President Goheen publicly insisting that some of his best friends are conservatives.

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Pressure is building for a ceiling (low) on campaign donations and spending. Newest impetus: testimony of Joseph Califano, counsel to the Democratic National Committee, that millionaire Stewart R. Mott offered “up to $5 million” to the Humphrey campaign, provided Humphrey switched to a more doveish position on Vietnam. Mott tried, said Califano, “to purchase his own foreign policy for 200 million Americans.” Remember the good old days, when millionaires were content to buy politicians as-is?

It seems the rope-merchants are showing reluctance to supply their hangmen. Alumni contributions to Princeton University, as to many an ivied sister, still have not achieved their 1968-69 level. Why? E.g., from a recent column in the Princetonian by Professor Hayes of Princeton’s Politics Department: “The incarceration of Professor Angela Y. Davis once again serves notice to all African people that the tentacles of racism and repression are realities of American society. . . . The whole question of Angela getting a just trial seems perilous at this point, for Marin County, a suburb of San Francisco, is white, racist, wealthy, and extremely conservative. . . . Free Angela Davis now!” And what are the Princeton administrators doing about alumni reluctance to support this sort of thing? They are searching the campus for student conservatives, publicizing them in the Alumni Weekly, getting them to speak to alumni groups, even clipping their newspaper ads and sending them to alums. All to prove how extremely conservative Princeton really is, and how suitable a recipient of conservative alumni cash. Who knows, if the financial squeeze continues, we may even see a card-carrying conservative at the front desk of Nassau Hall, and President Goheen publicly insisting that some of his best friends are conservatives.