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Campus "Unrest" demonstrations and consequences, 1970-1971

Newsletter: MEASURE, Documentary Supplements No. 3 Page 3

rule, no matter what the deceptive rhetoric in which such threats were clothed. 
Actually the university community is not homogenous. The most militant student factions are small minorities. And they make no bones about their hostility to democracy, their scorn for rational process. Their heroes are the leaders of the most ruthless dictatorships - Lenin, Mao-tse-tung, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Ch Guevara. They openly declare that the "major social and foreign problems of our society" can never be solved to their satisfaction and that their goal is the destruction of our society. 

How then account for their influence for their ability to create a major crisis in American higher education? There are many reasons. Among them are the great publicly build up that extremist student groups and their irresponsible leaders have received in the mass media. (Liberal students who do not threaten to blow up computers are not news, no matter how intelligent their programs of educational reform.)
More important is administrative cowardice, and in consequence of this cowardice, administrative connivance. The scenario runs something like this. Different extremist groups vie with each other in making all sorts of demands on the university administration, coupled with a threat to tear the university apart. In hopes of winning them over, or of purchasing peace, the administration, often with the support of the faculty, yields to at least some of the demands at the same time granting amnesty for defiance of rules governing student conduct. The mood of "peace at any price" together with actual fear of physical harassment, becomes dominant. The extremists escalate their demands until administration and faculties, to avoid a new confrontation, yield on issues that politicalize the campus. Thus the university is "saved" by transforming, indeed reversing, its raison d'etre. A handful of extremists gain considerable prestige, while those who disagree with them appear ineffectual. Violence and the threat of violence seem to pay. Or, if the administration resists but violence gets out of hand, and measures of meeting it also get out of hand (as at Kent State), a sense of collective guilt weakens the will to resistance of almost all administrators; faculty bodies are weakened in the same way;l and again the end result is cowardice and the illusion that violence can be made to pay. 
An obvious consequence of the politicalization of the university is erosion of academic freedom - of the right to teach and the right to learn - of both faculty and students. Once a university as a corporate body takes a political stand, teachers who disagree with that stand are harassed. When classes are suspended for purposes of political demonstration, or when universities are closed down by student "strikes" the teacher's freedom to teach has been abridged or the right of nonstriking students freely to attend their classes has been destroyed. Even before recent events led some prestigious universities to mobilize their educational resources to influence Congress to take particular political actions, or led many of their students and some of their teachers to strike in behalf of causes that had nothing to do with educational issues (as in the case of the Yale strike on behalf of the Black Panthers), or led administrators to encourage the closing down of their institutions in the fall (as at Princeton) to permit electioneering for so-called "peace candidates" - even before these events, intimidation of faculty members and students by student extremists has become widespread. 
It is no exaggeration to say that on many American campuses today academic freedom has become severely crippled. Certain extremist groups have interfered with the rights of students and faculty to hear views that disagree with the rights of students and faculty to hear views that disagree with or challenge their own. The consequence of the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkeley is that in many areas free speech has disappeared at that campus. And not only at Berkeley! At scores of universities extremist speakers representing revolutionary or antigovernment points of view are made welcome, but the meetings of other groups either critical of the extremists or offering forums to contrary positions are not tolerated. Their meetings are disrupted. Their speakers are shouted down, sometimes assaulted. While spokesmen for movements hostile to the government have unlimited freedom to incite to violent action in opposing governmental policies spokesmen for these policies are often barred from campuses or can appear only under heavy police escort. By and large in the affected institutions, faculty and administration either remain silent or issue ineffectual news releases mildly depricating the worst excesses. Even when official guests of the university have been insulted or scandalously mistreated. the administrations and faculty bodies seem loath to invoke or enforce disciplinary action. 
On some campuses, fanatical student extremists have disrupted with relative impunity classes of professors of whom they have disapproved. Both students and faculty members have been threatened with bodily harm. On other campuses, similar elements have refused to permit student bodies to choose freely among curricular options relating to subjects connected with national defense, or have refused to abide by the majority student decision, once it was expressed, Scientists whose projects these fanatics have declared to be not in the public interest have been denounced, and attacks have been made against their laboratories. Most shameful of all, student fanatics have received the support of faculty allies, who have encouraged and extenuated attacks on the academic freedom of their professional colleagues. 
In view of the foregoing arguments and the mountains of evidence that can be cited, it is clearly demonstrable that universities that permit themselves to be politicalized are betraying their mission to serve as "citadels of reason, sanity, and civility in a deeply troubled world." Although opportunistic administrators with flexible backbones have opened the doors of their institutions to academic vandals,, in the last analysis it has been the faculties who have been chiefly responsible for the decline in academic freedom. For the have lacked moral courage to uphold the professional standards of their calling as teachers and seekers of truth. 

It remains to be asked: What is to be done? What measures must be adopted to insure a receding of the flood of violence and confrontation that has engulfed so many of our colleges and universities ? How can we bring peace to the campus -

Saving...

rule, no matter what the deceptive rhetoric in which such threats were clothed. Actually the university community is not homogenous. The most militant student factions are small minorities. And they make no bones about their hostility to democracy, their scorn for rational process. Their heroes are the leaders of the most ruthless dictatorships - Lenin, Mao-tse-tung, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Ch Guevara. They openly declare that the "major social and foreign problems of our society" can never be solved to their satisfaction and that their goal is the destruction of our society. How then account for their influence for their ability to create a major crisis in American higher education? There are many reasons. Among them are the great publicly build up that extremist student groups and their irresponsible leaders have received in the mass media. (Liberal students who do not threaten to blow up computers are not news, no matter how intelligent their programs of educational reform.) More important is administrative cowardice, and in consequence of this cowardice, administrative connivance. The scenario runs something like this. Different extremist groups vie with each other in making all sorts of demands on the university administration, coupled with a threat to tear the university apart. In hopes of winning them over, or of purchasing peace, the administration, often with the support of the faculty, yields to at least some of the demands at the same time granting amnesty for defiance of rules governing student conduct. The mood of "peace at any price" together with actual fear of physical harassment, becomes dominant. The extremists escalate their demands until administration and faculties, to avoid a new confrontation, yield on issues that politicalize the campus. Thus the university is "saved" by transforming, indeed reversing, its raison d'etre. A handful of extremists gain considerable prestige, while those who disagree with them appear ineffectual. Violence and the threat of violence seem to pay. Or, if the administration resists but violence gets out of hand, and measures of meeting it also get out of hand (as at Kent State), a sense of collective guilt weakens the will to resistance of almost all administrators; faculty bodies are weakened in the same way;l and again the end result is cowardice and the illusion that violence can be made to pay. An obvious consequence of the politicalization of the university is erosion of academic freedom - of the right to teach and the right to learn - of both faculty and students. Once a university as a corporate body takes a political stand, teachers who disagree with that stand are harassed. When classes are suspended for purposes of political demonstration, or when universities are closed down by student "strikes" the teacher's freedom to teach has been abridged or the right of nonstriking students freely to attend their classes has been destroyed. Even before recent events led some prestigious universities to mobilize their educational resources to influence Congress to take particular political actions, or led many of their students and some of their teachers to strike in behalf of causes that had nothing to do with educational issues (as in the case of the Yale strike on behalf of the Black Panthers), or led administrators to encourage the closing down of their institutions in the fall (as at Princeton) to permit electioneering for so-called "peace candidates" - even before these events, intimidation of faculty members and students by student extremists has become widespread. It is no exaggeration to say that on many American campuses today academic freedom has become severely crippled. Certain extremist groups have interfered with the rights of students and faculty to hear views that disagree with the rights of students and faculty to hear views that disagree with or challenge their own. The consequence of the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkeley is that in many areas free speech has disappeared at that campus. And not only at Berkeley! At scores of universities extremist speakers representing revolutionary or antigovernment points of view are made welcome, but the meetings of other groups either critical of the extremists or offering forums to contrary positions are not tolerated. Their meetings are disrupted. Their speakers are shouted down, sometimes assaulted. While spokesmen for movements hostile to the government have unlimited freedom to incite to violent action in opposing governmental policies spokesmen for these policies are often barred from campuses or can appear only under heavy police escort. By and large in the affected institutions, faculty and administration either remain silent or issue ineffectual news releases mildly depricating the worst excesses. Even when official guests of the university have been insulted or scandalously mistreated. the administrations and faculty bodies seem loath to invoke or enforce disciplinary action. On some campuses, fanatical student extremists have disrupted with relative impunity classes of professors of whom they have disapproved. Both students and faculty members have been threatened with bodily harm. On other campuses, similar elements have refused to permit student bodies to choose freely among curricular options relating to subjects connected with national defense, or have refused to abide by the majority student decision, once it was expressed, Scientists whose projects these fanatics have declared to be not in the public interest have been denounced, and attacks have been made against their laboratories. Most shameful of all, student fanatics have received the support of faculty allies, who have encouraged and extenuated attacks on the academic freedom of their professional colleagues. In view of the foregoing arguments and the mountains of evidence that can be cited, it is clearly demonstrable that universities that permit themselves to be politicalized are betraying their mission to serve as "citadels of reason, sanity, and civility in a deeply troubled world." Although opportunistic administrators with flexible backbones have opened the doors of their institutions to academic vandals,, in the last analysis it has been the faculties who have been chiefly responsible for the decline in academic freedom. For the have lacked moral courage to uphold the professional standards of their calling as teachers and seekers of truth. It remains to be asked: What is to be done? What measures must be adopted to insure a receding of the flood of violence and confrontation that has engulfed so many of our colleges and universities ? How can we bring peace to the campus -