Bennett Returns Fire at Pro-War Teach-In

While battles rage in Iraq, prominent conservative thinker William J. Bennett is waging a parallel struggle in this country to win the hearts and minds of the nation’s college students.

On Wednesday night, he took his case to UCLA, asking an audience of about 300 students to consider the arguments in favor of the war in Iraq and a broader attack on terrorism.

“Did we have ... sufficient reason and motivation and justification to go into Iraq?” Bennett asked his polite and attentive audience at Ackerman Union. “Absolutely.... It’s a dangerous world. It’s a particularly dangerous world since 9/11. The threshold for action has been lowered.”

Bennett is determined that teach-ins, a concept born during the antiwar protests of the 1960s, not be the exclusive province of liberals and leftists. This, in fact, was the third pro-war teach-in -- the first on the West Coast -- led by the former U.S. drug czar and education secretary on college campuses.

Colleges often are considered a bastion of antiwar sentiment, but Bennett and similarly minded compatriots representing an organization dubbed Americans for Victory Over Terrorism say they are trying to cut through what they regard as the overwhelmingly liberal rhetoric of university professors. Bennett, one of the most outspoken members of former President Reagan’s Cabinet, was joined by R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995 and currently a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; and L. Paul Bremer III, a State Department counterterrorism chief from 1986 to 1989.

The conservative initiative, funded by private donations and foundation grants, was launched in March 2002 by Bennett as an offshoot of his Washington-based Empower America think tank.

“We want to answer some of the slanderous remarks and accusations, and in some cases lies, that are made by those in the antiwar crowd,” said initiative spokesman Jeff Kwitowski in a telephone interview preceding the teach-in. “We want to answer those in a serious matter, with facts and with serious intellectual arguments, not just cheap slogans.”

Although attendance was relatively sparse compared to recent turnouts for war opponents like Gore Vidal and Edward Said, some students clearly appreciated the effort. Ben Storm, a 22-year-old graduate psychology student, said he attended because he backs the war in Iraq and believes it is hard to find people voicing similar sentiments on campus.

“When I think of UCLA, I think of a very liberal school, and biased in that direction,” Storm said. “The majority of people on this campus never heard these arguments before and I think if they did, they probably would be more in agreement” with the war in Iraq.

Henry Kerner, who earned his bachelor’s degree from UCLA in 1989 and now is a prosecutor in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said that he came to the teach-in because he was curious.

“I was surprised to see how people were listening, there was polite applause. I don’t think everyone agreed, but they were open-minded.... I was really proud of my alma mater.”

Antiwar protests were muted: A few questioned the speakers’ hawkish outlooks and political philosophies, and a group of a half-dozen people wearing “Women for Peace” buttons held antiwar banners.

Bennett, a PhD in philosophy who taught at Harvard and other universities before joining the Reagan administration, contends that most of the hostility to conservative causes on college campuses comes from the faculty, not the students.

“Usually, you get something of a chill from the faculty and administration,” Bennett said before his forum. “We’re not welcomed to campus by any adults.”

Bennett has some experience with big chills. In 1988, he drew sharp criticism for ridiculing changes in Stanford’s required Western Civilization course that were aimed at reflecting the achievement of women and minorities. He said Stanford, like most universities, was controlled by a “left-wing political agenda,” which he described as a combination of Marxism and feminism.

He made headlines throughout his tenure as Education secretary by, for instance, calling teacher unions “the blob” of school bureaucracy and dubbing instruction for children in ghetto schools “Jim Crow math and back-of-the-bus science.”

The student turnout at the previous two Americans for Victory Over Terrorism sessions, he said, was strong. The first was held at George Washington University in Washington in the fall, the second at Columbia University in New York in February.

Bennett said the session at Columbia drew a crowd of 600, and that the tone was civil, with the crowd cheering at some remarks. An estimated 100 protesters lined up in the cold outside to denounce the speakers at the session.

“We tend to get demonstrators, and then a larger number of people who just want to hear,” Bennett said.

Andrew Jones, chairman of the UCLA Bruin Republicans, the student group that sponsored Bennett’s appearance, said, “It’s a reflection of how far gone the campuses are that you have to bring in outside speakers simply to present something that 70% of the U.S. population agrees with.”

More conservative viewpoints “ought to be something presented in the classroom,” Jones added.

But Joyce Appleby, an emerita professor of history at UCLA, disputed the notion that conservative or hawkish ideas are marginalized on campus. She also questioned whether students are more conservative than their professors.

Appleby said the main difference is that “members of the faculty have a good idea what they think about foreign policy, America’s role in the world, the Cold War and the war on terrorism,” while most students still are forming their opinions on those issues.