Nation: Dubious Privilege

There was one area of protest on which a wide array of Americans could agree. In October, Selective Service Director Lewis Hershey advised the nation’s 4,081 draft boards to strip deferments from students and others who interfere with the draft. Since then, Congressmen, judges and university presidents, including Yale’s Kingman Brewster and Columbia’s Grayson Kirk, have protested the decision. Kirk even suspended on-campus recruiting by the armed services pending a reversal of Hershey’s harsh decree. Massachusetts’ Senator Edward Kennedy last week said the new procedure would make draft boards “both judge and jury,” and it was not surprising that young people would break the law if Hershey “indicates he will ignore the law.”

Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, speaking off the bench, describes Hershey as “a law unto himself [who] responds only to his own conversation.” The National Student Association-which has urged an end to on-campus harassment of recruiters—last week filed suit in Washington demanding an injunction against enforcement of the Hershey edict. And even though Hershey at week’s end softened his threat by absolving “lawful protesters” from priority call-up, to many ordinary Americans it seemed peculiar that the man who describes military duty as a “privilege” should extend it to those he seeks to punish.