The radical student group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) attempted several times to engage the CFIA in a debate and finally succeeded on January 5, 1971.

"The CFIA helps develop the military strength of reactionary governments to contain popular uprisings and paves the way for foreign investment," SDS spokesperson Ira D. Helfand '71 said in the highly-publicized debate.

Helfand also expressed SDS' desire to shut down the CFIA, accusing it of exploiting working people and peasants throughout the world.

The CFIA was also the target of student protest earlier in the academic year when 20 female radicals entered the building on November 24, 1970.

The group of women spray-painted and postered the walls of the CFIA with slogans such as "Victory to the NLF" and "Off this Capitalist Death."

Secret Meeting

The Crimson also reported that year that Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Stanley H. Hoffmann, former head of the Committee on Social Studies, led a group of about 15 students to Washington on December 11, 1970 for a secret meeting with Kissinger, who was then serving as President Richard M. Nixon's national security adviser.

Three of the students, Stephen J. Ellmann '72, Donald J. Gogel '71 and Rebecca J. Scott '71, refused to comment on the meeting.

Ellmann said at the time that Kissinger agreed to meet with the students under the condition that they would not discuss the meeting.

Hoffmann said last month that although it is "not impossible" that there was a meeting, he does not remember it.

"It was not of world-shaking significance," Hoffmann said.

At the time of the meeting, Kissinger was on leave from Harvard, where he served as a professor of government and a member of the executive committee of the CFIA.

Kissinger officially resigned from his Harvard posts on January 16, 1971.