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Note: To view the pictures in original size, place your mouse on the picture and click.
The Indiana University South Bend Archives holds many, many interesting
things… More keep getting uncovered and “discovered” each week, in fact!
Recently, Archives Student Intern Scott Sandberg (who is completing his Masters
in Library and Archival Science at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee)
found a particularly exciting bit of IU South Bend history. Scott’s been working
with the papers of former IU South Bend Chancellor Les Wolfson, who was
Chancellor from 1964 to 1988. It’s no small feat, as the collection numbers over
eighty sizable boxes’ worth of correspondence, flyers, newsletters, and even
photographs and a phonograph record!
Scott came to me and said that he’d found correspondence between Wolfson and
President Richard Nixon! Wolfson was writing to then President Nixon at a
particularly turbulent time in our nation’s history. It was also a turbulent
time on America’s campuses as well.
Wolfson wrote to Nixon on May 5th, 1970, one day after the tragic shootings of
Kent State University students who were protesting the escalation of the Vietnam
War. On May 4th, l970 Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of Kent State
University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students.
At this time, Nixon was moving towards his “Vietnamisation” of the war – that
is, replacing U.S. troops with Vietnamese troops. However, early in 1970, Nixon
ordered an attack on Northern Vietnamese cells in Cambodia, a neighbor of
Vietnam. America responded with many peaceful – and some violent -
demonstrations all over. Many of these demonstrations were on college and
university campuses.
No doubt Chancellor Wolfson feared that the IU South Bend campus would join in
on a nationwide student strike which caused hundreds of American colleges and
universities to close (this did indeed happen) when he wrote to President Nixon.
He used rather strong language with President Nixon: “I write to express my deep
dismay at the extension of the war to Cambodia, and urge you to re-consider
immediately the dire consequences of such an action… I grieve too at the deaths
of the students at Kent State University. While the causes of violence are many
and complex, certainly one cause over which you can exercise considerable
control is the inflammatory language used by high public officials in their
comments on the crises of our time.”
President Nixon wrote back to Chancellor Wolfson on June 24th 1970: “Your recent
message expresses the deep concern which all of us must feel toward the
challenges facing our country. The recent deaths at Kent State University and
elsewhere have gravely saddened the nation…” President Nixon goes on to defend
his decision to invade Cambodia, “Contrary to an impression many have received,
the Cambodia mission does not represent an expansion of the war in Vietnam. I
made the decision to undertake this action for the very reason that the
dissidents are demonstrating: to end the war sooner”. This letter is written on
official White House stationary, and signed by Nixon. There is a subsequent
letter (of May 14th) of support for Chancellor’s letter to Nixon signed by over
fifty IU South Bend faculty members.
IU South Bend students did indeed go on a Strike in solidarity with other
American college and university campuses as well as the peace movement more
broadly. 
It was co-sponsored by the IUSB Coalition for Peace
and the National Student Association, and was known as “IUSB Cambodia Week”,
held from May 4th to May 9th to “Protest President Nixon’s Southeast Asian
Policies of Murder”.
The week was scheduled with events on campus such as a reading of war dead and
ceremonial digging of a grave on campus (see related photo from The Preface);
talks by student government members; guerilla theater; a teach-in on draft
resistance, a history of Cambodia, Southeast Asia, and the United States; a rock
concert; and a mass march with the wider community in downtown South Bend on
March 9th (see related photo from The Preface). It can be noted that
Alice Wolfson, the Chancellor’s daughter, an IU South Bend student, participated
in the demonstration, and was in charge of the campus demonstration of reading
of war dead and digging of the ceremonial grave.
President Nixon established his “President's Commission on Campus Unrest” on
June 13th, 1970. The IU South Bend Archives holds an intact copy of this “Survey
of Institutions of Higher Education for the President's Commission on Campus
Unrest.” It’s not clear if Chancellor Wolfson ever did comply by filling out and
sending this survey to the White House – the copy held by the Archives is void
of answers to the questions.
It should be noted, too, that there were student groups on the IU South Bend
campus that had leftist inclinations previous to this – the Chancellor Wolfson
Collection also contains a folder of The IUSB Recourse (“Perpetrated
Weekly”), which was published by the IU South Bend chapter of Students for a
Democratic Society (otherwise known as SDS). Active in the civil rights movement
and the anti-war movement, SDS was a national point for radical student
organization and activity. It eventually dissolved into splinter groups, with
its largest component being the likewise radical Weathermen (who, in part,
called for revolution and the forceful overthrow of the U.S. government, and,
through the 1970s bombed several corporations and police stations around the
U.S.).
If you are interested in these important parts of our campus’ history, please
feel free to get in touch with me! I love for this material to get out to the
public! Feel free to e-mail me (astankra@iusb.edu)
or telephone me (574-386-7878).
Alison Stankrauff
Archivist and Assistant Librarian
Franklin D. Schurz Library
Indiana University South Bend
P.O. Box 7111
South Bend, Indiana 46634
(574) 520-4392
astankra@iusb.edu
NOTE: The scanned items come from the following locations in the IU South Bend
Archives:
- Scan of the IUSB Cambodia Week Strike from the Chancellor Wolfson Collection,
Box 10, File 3: “IUSB Coalition for Peace, 1970”.
- Image of the reading of war dead and ceremonial digging of a grave on campus
from The Preface, May 14, 1970 (Box #1 of The Preface Collection).
- Image of the mass march with the wider community in downtown South Bend on
March 9th, 1970 from The Preface, May 14, 1970 (Box #1 of The Preface
Collection).
Compiled by Alison Stankrauff, Indiana University South Bend Archivist, March
2007.
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