7: Iconoclasts Among the Cornfields: The Right-Wing Assault on Freedom of Expression in Indiana Higher Education

On October 31, 1967, amidst the growing opposition to the draft and the U.S. military presence in Vietnam that was increasingly making every American college campus the image of revolutionary ferment in the popular imagination, Secretary of State Dean Rusk arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, to speak on the campus of Indiana University (IU). The local chapter of the Committee to End the War in Vietnam had circulated a flyer instructing antiwar students how to “welcome” Rusk: “When Rusk receives the customary IU standing ovation following his introduction by [President] Elvis J. Stahr, remain seated… Heckling has always been part of the great American tradition. Uphold this tradition.” The students’ flyer concluded, “We must show the warmakers that they can no longer come to the heartland of America and expect to find unthinking acceptance of America’s current disastrous foreign policy” (Committee to End the War in Vietnam, 1967). Dressed all in black or wearing black armbands, the students chanted at the conclusion of his speech: “Hell no, we won’t go!”