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Campus "Unrest" demonstrations and consequences, 1970-1971

Newsletter: MEASURE, Documentary Supplements No. 2 Page 2

A UNIVERSITY COMMITTED TO LEARNING 

A BRIEF TALK BY EDWARD CHALFANT 

Allow me to begin by explaining why it is that I have been asked here t speak, instead of some other person. 
Until last year, I was a university teacher who divided his energies between two main activities. On the one hand, I taught. I faithfully appeared in the classroom, in fact never once in twenty years missed a class. My preference was to have a five-day-a-week teaching schedules, and sometimes this schedule required that I teach four different advanced undergraduate courses. For instance, in a given semester, I might teach Shakespeare, American Literature, a seminar in American Studies, and a seminar on major American authors - such authors, say, as Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, or Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. On the other hand, during all the time I could save for teaching, I faithfully worked on a project - a three volume biography of American writer Henry Adams, which, after twenty five years of part-time labor, was about two-thirds completed. Much of the work I was able to do as a biographer I did in Europe during the summers, first in Paris, then in London. 
But now the pattern is broken. I am still teaching four different courses. I still make my students write a great many papers, and I still try to hurry away from the campus each day to the shelter of my quiet home near Central Park in New York in order to read and painstakingly correct their papers. But the English Department of which I have long been a member is experiencing unprecedented stresses and strains. In 1968, the Department refused to give tenure to one of its younger members, who had decided not to complete his graduate work. There was a tremendous row about that. In 1969, I failed the teacher's most conspicuous student supporter for plagiarism, and there was  a second, smaller row about that. Moreover, because I live only a mile or so from Columbia University and used to be a student there, I was both willing and able to be an eye witness of the great "revolution" on that campus in April two years ago. These experiences made me realize that I would be happier if I made some changes in what I was doing. So I stopped my work as a biographer, gave up my summers in Europe, became one of the leaders of a new national organization of university teachers, was made editor of its newsletter, and now I find myself joining with other people in many places to ask the very timely and serious question: "what sort of universities do we want to have in the United States?"
The question is serious partly because we can probably have whatever kind of universities we want. We seem to be in possession of a once in a lifetime opportunity, It would be fair to say that the universities in this country in the last hundred years have grown astoundingly, and it would also be fair to say that they have steadily changed, a bit at a time, with enormous speed. They are changing so fast in so many respects, and the changes and impinging on each other in so many ways, that it will not be long before it becomes evident to all concerned that the universities are "up for grabs" as the saying goes. You may think these expressions too strong, but our universities today are full of people who accept the idea that changes, being changes, must necessarily be "reforms" and must therefore be good. Anything labeled as change is more than likely to be approved, with or without examination. The result is ever worsening turmoil, and the question who will win and who will lose as a consequence of the turmoil cannot be answered without looking below the surface of events at the currents running beneath. 
Because I am the editor of a national faculty newsletter, I see a lot

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A UNIVERSITY COMMITTED TO LEARNING A BRIEF TALK BY EDWARD CHALFANT Allow me to begin by explaining why it is that I have been asked here t speak, instead of some other person. Until last year, I was a university teacher who divided his energies between two main activities. On the one hand, I taught. I faithfully appeared in the classroom, in fact never once in twenty years missed a class. My preference was to have a five-day-a-week teaching schedules, and sometimes this schedule required that I teach four different advanced undergraduate courses. For instance, in a given semester, I might teach Shakespeare, American Literature, a seminar in American Studies, and a seminar on major American authors - such authors, say, as Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, or Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. On the other hand, during all the time I could save for teaching, I faithfully worked on a project - a three volume biography of American writer Henry Adams, which, after twenty five years of part-time labor, was about two-thirds completed. Much of the work I was able to do as a biographer I did in Europe during the summers, first in Paris, then in London. But now the pattern is broken. I am still teaching four different courses. I still make my students write a great many papers, and I still try to hurry away from the campus each day to the shelter of my quiet home near Central Park in New York in order to read and painstakingly correct their papers. But the English Department of which I have long been a member is experiencing unprecedented stresses and strains. In 1968, the Department refused to give tenure to one of its younger members, who had decided not to complete his graduate work. There was a tremendous row about that. In 1969, I failed the teacher's most conspicuous student supporter for plagiarism, and there was a second, smaller row about that. Moreover, because I live only a mile or so from Columbia University and used to be a student there, I was both willing and able to be an eye witness of the great "revolution" on that campus in April two years ago. These experiences made me realize that I would be happier if I made some changes in what I was doing. So I stopped my work as a biographer, gave up my summers in Europe, became one of the leaders of a new national organization of university teachers, was made editor of its newsletter, and now I find myself joining with other people in many places to ask the very timely and serious question: "what sort of universities do we want to have in the United States?" The question is serious partly because we can probably have whatever kind of universities we want. We seem to be in possession of a once in a lifetime opportunity, It would be fair to say that the universities in this country in the last hundred years have grown astoundingly, and it would also be fair to say that they have steadily changed, a bit at a time, with enormous speed. They are changing so fast in so many respects, and the changes and impinging on each other in so many ways, that it will not be long before it becomes evident to all concerned that the universities are "up for grabs" as the saying goes. You may think these expressions too strong, but our universities today are full of people who accept the idea that changes, being changes, must necessarily be "reforms" and must therefore be good. Anything labeled as change is more than likely to be approved, with or without examination. The result is ever worsening turmoil, and the question who will win and who will lose as a consequence of the turmoil cannot be answered without looking below the surface of events at the currents running beneath. Because I am the editor of a national faculty newsletter, I see a lot