Professor Cohn Attends Stanford Anti-Viet Nam War Movement Reunion

June 6, 2014

On May 16-18, Professor Marjorie Cohn helped to organize and attended the 45-year reunion of the Stanford anti-Viet Nam War movement. On April 3, 1969, 700 Stanford students voted to occupy the Applied Electronics Laboratory (AEL), where classified (secret) research on electronic warfare (radar-jamming) was being conducted at Stanford. That spawned the April Third Movement (A3M), which holds reunions every five to ten years. The sit-in at AEL, supported by a majority of Stanford students, lasted nine days, replete with a printing press in the basement to produce materials linking Stanford trustees to defense contractors. Stanford moved the objectionable research off campus, but the A3M continued with sit-ins, teach-ins, and confrontations with police in the Stanford Industrial Park. Many activists, from that era, including Professor Cohn, continue to do progressive work, drawing on their experiences during the A3M. This year, 100 people attended the reunion. They discussed the political economy of climate change, and the relationship between the counterculture of the 1960’s and the development of Silicon Valley.

Highlights of the weekend included three keynote addresses. Professor Cohn introduced and moderated the discussion after a talk by Daniel Ellsberg, who discussed “Truth-Telling: Whistleblowers in the Viet Nam and Modern Eras.”