In a Pickle! - This story by James Tobin is reprinted courtesy of the Heritage Project at the University of Michigan

Even as the strikers were firming up their plans, Boulding’s prediction was coming true, and colleagues were not speaking to each other in the halls.

Hearing the outcry from conservatives off campus, Jack Rothman noted a double standard. “Had each [signer of the strike letter] canceled a day’s classes to consult with a private corporation for a fat fee,” he said later, “no official eyebrow would have been raised. But to announce a suspension of classes because of one’s concern about issues of war and peace, that was unacceptably frivolous and irresponsible.”

Still, Rothman had thought from the first that a strike would attract only a handful of supporters. He was right. Even the moderates at the Gamsons’ meeting had signed the strike pledge out of a sense of solidarity, not because they thought it the best tactic. Now, with the date of the “work moratorium” fast approaching, only a dozen more professors had pledged to cancel classes.

“We were in a pickle,” recalled Frithjof Bergmann, a charismatic young professor of philosophy. “We had announced a strike, but the strike was fizzling. So the question was: ‘Now what?'”