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As the Moratorium idea mushroomed, some politicians hustled to get on the bandwagon and others less sympathetic found themselves hesitating to criticize the burgeoning movement. Businessmen and school boards wrestled with the problem of whether to close for the day, feeling that to shut down would be unfair to workers and students who support the war or do not wish to participate in M-day. The question was:
Should institutions themselves take a stand?
Seymour Martin Lipset, a Harvard professor and a foe of the war, thought not.* He put his case with vigor: "As much as I want us to do everything as individuals, as members of the Harvard faculty and citizens of this country to point out to our Government how much we detest the war and what we want done about it, I cannot bring myself to feel that we should turn on what has been a basic aspect of academic freedom and political liberty—that universities qua universities do not take political stands." On many campuses, support for the Moratorium became a matter of fashion and conformity; opposition to it could only invite scorn.
The momentum of dissent was clearly building. In June, just after the Midway troop-withdrawal announcement, Nixon's handling of the war was narrowly approved in a Louis Harris sampling, 47% to 45%. In mid-September, it was rejected in a Harris poll, 57% to 35%. Six Viet Nam experts at Santa Monica's Rand Corp., which started as an Air Force-financed research facility and still depends heavily on Pentagon contracts, wrote the New York Times last week to demand unilateral withdrawal by the U.S. (but four of their colleagues, equally expert, disagreed in a letter to the Washington Post). Making common cause with their students, the presidents of 79 U.S. colleges and universities signed a joint statement calling for an accelerated U.S. pull-out from Viet Nam. M-day has ecumenical support among religious leaders. Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing endorsed the Moratorium; so have the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, and Rabbi Jacob Rudin, president of the Synagogue Council of America.
The Johnson Parallel