The current college campus protests are bringing back reminders of when I was in college and the protests against the war in Vietnam were at their peak. As was the case then, there is much discussion about whether such activities help or hinder the resolution of the problem being addressed. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell whether what happens after protests is a cause-effect or a correlation. Below are the results of some studies to shed some light on this controversial activity:
The impact of anti-Vietnam demonstrations upon national public opinion and military indicators
"In an attempt to assess the national impact of anti-war protest, 15 major anti-Vietnam demonstrations occurring in the United States from 1965 through 1971 were analyzed for their effects upon Gallup public opinion survey data, American troop strength, and American munitions expenditures.
While weak and short-term counterproductive effects appeared for two opinion indicators, an equally likely conclusion is that the demonstrations had little or no lasting impact. The possible reasons for this finding, and its social implications, are discussed."
REFLECTIONS ON THE VIETNAM ANTIWAR MOVEMENT AND ON THE CURIOUS CALM AT THE WAR'S END
"Some years ago I did a study comparing public opinion on the war in Vietnam with public opinion on the Korean War.
Using various tests I found that, although television supposedly made Vietnam somehow unique, the wars actually affected public opinion quite similarly. Both wars were supported by the same demographic groups: the young and the well-educated, in particular. Sentiment for withdrawal and escalation was about the same and mostly came from the same groups. Moreover, the wars were about equally popular during the periods in which they were comparable; that is, while the war in Vietnam eventually became more unpopular than the Korean War, it became so only after American casualties there had substantially surpassed those of the earlier war. Trends in support for the wars followed the same course: basic support declined as U.S. casualties increased, and it did so according to the same mathematical relationship. (2)
"This similarity seems surprising because, while the two wars had many things in common, the Korean War inspired no organized public protest remotely comparable to the one generated during the Vietnam War. If one paid attention to vocal protest and to media reports about that protest during the two wars, it would certainly seem the later war was far more unpopular.
"It seems to me these findings suggest two cautions about assessing vocal protest. The first is fairly obvious:
One should be careful about assuming vocal agitators necessarily represent the masses they purport to speak for. Labor union leaders may not speak for workers, active feminists may not accurately represent women, and the Moral Majority may, as the bumper sticker suggests, be neither.
"Second, and perhaps more interestingly,
it may be that the Vietnam protest movement, at least through 1968, actually was somewhat counter-productive in its efforts to influence public opinion--that is, the war might have been somewhat more unpopular had the protest not existed."
