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    Academic Senate Votes 82-4 to Oppose War in Iraq

    By VIC COX

    Opposition to the idea of the UCSB Academic Senate taking a stand on the looming war in Iraq, or any other issue of public policy, evaporated last week at a divisional meeting of the Senate. By a vote of 82-4, the faculty assembly agreed to "oppose a preventive war against Iraq without broad international support."
    Under Senate rules, membership of the UCSB division consists of all faculty, including instructors with at least two years service and lecturers with security of employment, and the top administrators from deans and provost up. A quorum is 40 members of the division, and the Feb. 24 meeting in the Old Little Theater more than doubled that.
    Only one person spoke against the proposal. Stephen DeCanio, professor of economics, called the resolution "a bad idea...badly drawn." He worried that this action could place the UCSB Academic Senate beside the English academics prior to World War II who vowed not to fight for king and country.
    "The Senate will lose credibility if it passes this resolution and later Iraq is found to possess weapons of mass destruction," warned DeCanio.
    Robert Potter, professor emeritus of dramatic art, disagreed, citing previous stands of the Senate during the Vietnam War. He noted that since 1965, when he became a Senate member, the institution often provided a service in keeping with its mission and its positions. After the 1970 Kent State student slayings by Ohio National Guardsmen, the Senate condemned that act and set up courses, Potter said, "to channel student energy into constructive intellectual pursuits."
    In the end, most members present sided with Potter and Charles Bazerman, professor and chair of education, who said he favored the resolution because he believed in an America that did not strike an enemy nation first and never would use nuclear weapons first. "This is the wrong way to begin a new century," he concluded of the threat to invade Iraq.
    With its vote UCSB became the second UC Senate branch to oppose the United States government's war plan. On Feb. 19, UCSC's Academic Senate voted 58-0 to oppose "unilateral U.S. military intervention in Iraq."