In "The Campus War: A Sympathetic Look at the University in Agony" (1971), Searle investigates the causes behind the campus protests of the era. In it he declares: "I have been attacked by both the House Un-American Activities Committee and... several radical polemicists... Stylistically, the attacks are interestingly similar. Both rely heavily on insinuation and innuendo, and both display a hatredone might almost say terrorof close analysis and dissection of argument." He asserts that "My wife was threatened that I (and other members of the administration) would be assassinated or violently attacked."