Morris B. Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee, announced here tonight that Brandeis University at Waltham, Mass. and the A J Committee have agreed to explore together the possibility of undertaking the first major project to study the impact of nonviolence on American life and in all of its historic forms. Mr. Abram, who is president-designate of Brandeis University, said that if the study proved feasible it would be done at the Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence at Brandeis.
Mr. Abram made the announcement at the annual dinner of the AJ Committee opening its 62nd annual meeting which will continue through Sunday. He addressed himself to the “problems of race, poverty and upheaval which confront us on every side.” He said that upheaval among Negroes and among students in the United States, “so far as it is reasonable and justified, is clearly the demand for fairness in the allocation of the economic fullness of American life, and a protest against the discrimination, and indeed racism, which the President’s riot commission found endemic in American society.” Mr. Abram said that at the national level, lack of commitment is present in only one organ of Government — the Congress — “which should be most directly responsive to the peoples’ wills and influence.” Nevertheless, he said, “it is a fact that Congress is fully committed to the elimination of hoof and mouth disease amongst cattle…but clearly it is not committed to the elimination of poverty, discrimination and human neglect in the United States.”
Mr. Abram said that one of the “watchwords” of the AJ Committee is “integration with identity.” It “is the guiding rule toward peace in the international arena, and particularly in the Middle East.” Israel, he said, “will be secure and will play its proper role in the development of this crucial area only if all the inhabitants come to accept this principle. Israel is, I know, prepared to play its role as an integrated part of the Middle East.” Mr. Abram said. “Prime Minister Eshkol has called for a Middle East Common Market; successive Israel governments have asked for the implementation of the Johnson plan for the allocation of water resources in the area. The present Israeli Government stands ready to work on common programs of water desalination. The block to progress on these fronts and to peace is, in my judgment, the psychological and emotional immaturity of much of the Arab world,” Mr. Abram said.
Nathan Perlmutter, director of domestic affairs, told the opening session that efforts to overcome poverty must embrace the white poor no less than the Negro poor if Americans are to understand that the war on poverty is in the interests of all. He said that “as the Negro accelerates his demands, as riots erupt and Negroes gain political power, low-income and low-middle income Americans become more resistant, saying in effect, ‘why doesn’t someone look after us?’ To dismiss such people simply as white racists makes no more sense than calling all rioters hoodlums,” Mr. Perlmutter said.
Mr. Perlmutter warned Congressmen that they have more to fear from failure to finance the recommendations of the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) than from voting a tax increase.
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