In March 1965, the first "teach-in" to protest the Vietnam war was held at the University of Michigan and Bundy was challenged to a debate, which he declined, saying in a public letter "if your letter came to me for grading as a professor, I would not be able to give it high marks". Subsequently, Bundy accepted a challenge from George McTurnan Kahin, a Cornell University professor who specialized in Southeast Asia, for a public debate to be televised live on 15 May 1965. Johnson did not want the debate to take place, fearing that Bundy might lose. Johnson arranged to sent Bundy to the Dominican Republic, causing him to miss the debate. One of the debate's organizers, Barry Commoner, a biologist at the University of Washington, stated that Bundy might give other professors bad marks for their letters, but he "has turned in a terrible record on attendance". When the "Harvard Crimson" newspaper ran an editorial criticizing the Vietnam War, Bundy who always closely followed developments at Harvard, wrote a 11-page rebuttal criticizing the editorial and compared the editors of the "Harvard Crimson" to the appeasers of the 1930s.