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Campus "Unrest" demonstrations and consequences, 1970-1971

Newsletter: MEASURE, Documentary Supplements No. 3 Page 4

a peace now shattered all too often by those who have cried loudest for peace in the world? There is no panacea with which this can be quickly done. We cannot abolish history or retrieve all the errors of the past, both of omission and commission. But I wish to submit an educational strategy that has recommended itself, as a possible first, tentative step, to the officers and members of  University Centers for Rational Alternatives, This strategy based on study of scores of educational disorders, is designed to work towards preventing outbreaks of violence on campuses so far as possible, and possibly to limit or contain it whenever it occurs, by methods acceptable to the overwhelming majority of the university community. The particular proposals that the strategy involves stem from a union of experience and common sense. They are not to be blindly followed anywhere or everywhere. On the contrary, they need to be intelligently adapted to specific emergencies. 
A. The first thing to do is to convoke a representative assembly of the constituent parts of the university community - faculty, students and administrators. Its chief business should be to draft the principles that are to serve as guidelines affecting the expression of dissent on any matter of interest to the academy, whether great or small. The drafting of such principles should be followed by the drafting of specific rules of implementation, that spell out clearly - among other things - the kinds of conduct and behavior that shall constitute prima facie violations of the limits of legitimate dissent. At the beginning of each academic year, the principles and rules established in this way should be examined and either reaffirmed or modified in the light of experience. Pains should be taken to make this reappraisal an intellectually meaningful experience, not a mechanical ritual of academic piety. Academic due process should be linked up with rational process and - mitatis mutandis - with due process generally, so that conclusions will not only be fair but will be seen to be fair. 
B. The rules implementing the principles should make provision for the establishment of a representative faculty - student discipline committee. The procedures for conducting hearings and the rules of behavior for defendants, complainants and witnesses should be explicitly endorsed by the academic community or its representatives. The rules should clearly set forth the sanctions to be invoked against members of the academic community, whether students, teachers, or administrators, who disrupt the judicial proceedings of the discipline committee
C. Violations of rules should be promptly punished by the appropriate agreed upon sanctions. 
D. In the event of forcible disruption of the academic process, faculty and student marshals, equipped with cameras, should be empowered by the academic community to maintain order, report participants, and remain in liaison with the responsible officers of the university. 
E. When a situation acquires a gravity beyond the power of faculty and student marshals to cope with it, the administrative authorities, after consultation with the executive or other appropriate committee of the academic community, should apply to the courts for injunctive relief, without suspending their own sanctions#
F. If the court injunction is disregarded, its enforcement should be left to the civil authorities. 
G. If and when matters reach an extreme pass and hazards of life an limb  - caused by arson, assault, vandalism or whatever - can be contained only the use of police power, faculty and student marshals should accompany law enforcement officers, so that their mission may more probably be accomplished without horse where resistance is not offered and with minimum force where it is. 
H. Where the scale of violence - for example, through intervention by large outside, nonstudent forces, as can happen in urban centers - takes on a magnitude that makes the previous steps inadequate or creates an atmosphere in which teaching and learning are impossible, the university may have to shut down for a limited period, and the preservation of life and academic property entrusted to the civil authorities. In such a case, before reopening, university sanctions against those found guilty of violence or inciting to violence, whether students or members of the faculty, should be strictly enforced. Amnesty for crimes of "academic genocide" can only invite their repetition. 
The above strategy is designed to forestall costly and senseless violence, preserve or restore peace on the campus, and obviate the inescapable punitive legislation that continued violence will precipitate 1 I wish to conclude, however, with the reminder that in the long run the most serious threat to the integrity of teaching and learning comes not from the criminal violence of extremists but from measures of appeasement and capitulation, adopted in the vain hope of curbing their frenzy. The wounds that will prove the most dangerous to the survival of academic freedom - without which the university is undeserving of its name - are the wounds that the academy inflicts on itself, in the course of bewildered and hysterical efforts to ward off further attacks by its enemies, chiefly its enemies within its own walls. 
The history of American higher education is a history of change. Violence has never played an appreciable role in that history. It need not play a role today if it is recognized that the university is not responsible for the existence of war, poverty, and similar evils; that the solution of thes and allied problems lies in the hands of the democratic citizenry and not of a privileged elite; and that the primary function of higher education is the quest for knowledge, wisdom and vision - not the conquest of political power. The universities can by indirection help in the solution of "major social and foreign policy problems" by providing the knowledge, wisdom and vision required for intelligent action - but only if it retains its relative autonomy and objectivity and freedom from partisan political bias. 

1 As printed for The Humanist, an important part of the testimony was omitted here, for lack of space. The deleted sentence reads: "It has the added advantage that, in case of failure, whether during the designing or the implementation stages, it will become obvious who the offenders are. "

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a peace now shattered all too often by those who have cried loudest for peace in the world? There is no panacea with which this can be quickly done. We cannot abolish history or retrieve all the errors of the past, both of omission and commission. But I wish to submit an educational strategy that has recommended itself, as a possible first, tentative step, to the officers and members of University Centers for Rational Alternatives, This strategy based on study of scores of educational disorders, is designed to work towards preventing outbreaks of violence on campuses so far as possible, and possibly to limit or contain it whenever it occurs, by methods acceptable to the overwhelming majority of the university community. The particular proposals that the strategy involves stem from a union of experience and common sense. They are not to be blindly followed anywhere or everywhere. On the contrary, they need to be intelligently adapted to specific emergencies. A. The first thing to do is to convoke a representative assembly of the constituent parts of the university community - faculty, students and administrators. Its chief business should be to draft the principles that are to serve as guidelines affecting the expression of dissent on any matter of interest to the academy, whether great or small. The drafting of such principles should be followed by the drafting of specific rules of implementation, that spell out clearly - among other things - the kinds of conduct and behavior that shall constitute prima facie violations of the limits of legitimate dissent. At the beginning of each academic year, the principles and rules established in this way should be examined and either reaffirmed or modified in the light of experience. Pains should be taken to make this reappraisal an intellectually meaningful experience, not a mechanical ritual of academic piety. Academic due process should be linked up with rational process and - mitatis mutandis - with due process generally, so that conclusions will not only be fair but will be seen to be fair. B. The rules implementing the principles should make provision for the establishment of a representative faculty - student discipline committee. The procedures for conducting hearings and the rules of behavior for defendants, complainants and witnesses should be explicitly endorsed by the academic community or its representatives. The rules should clearly set forth the sanctions to be invoked against members of the academic community, whether students, teachers, or administrators, who disrupt the judicial proceedings of the discipline committee C. Violations of rules should be promptly punished by the appropriate agreed upon sanctions. D. In the event of forcible disruption of the academic process, faculty and student marshals, equipped with cameras, should be empowered by the academic community to maintain order, report participants, and remain in liaison with the responsible officers of the university. E. When a situation acquires a gravity beyond the power of faculty and student marshals to cope with it, the administrative authorities, after consultation with the executive or other appropriate committee of the academic community, should apply to the courts for injunctive relief, without suspending their own sanctions# F. If the court injunction is disregarded, its enforcement should be left to the civil authorities. G. If and when matters reach an extreme pass and hazards of life an limb - caused by arson, assault, vandalism or whatever - can be contained only the use of police power, faculty and student marshals should accompany law enforcement officers, so that their mission may more probably be accomplished without horse where resistance is not offered and with minimum force where it is. H. Where the scale of violence - for example, through intervention by large outside, nonstudent forces, as can happen in urban centers - takes on a magnitude that makes the previous steps inadequate or creates an atmosphere in which teaching and learning are impossible, the university may have to shut down for a limited period, and the preservation of life and academic property entrusted to the civil authorities. In such a case, before reopening, university sanctions against those found guilty of violence or inciting to violence, whether students or members of the faculty, should be strictly enforced. Amnesty for crimes of "academic genocide" can only invite their repetition. The above strategy is designed to forestall costly and senseless violence, preserve or restore peace on the campus, and obviate the inescapable punitive legislation that continued violence will precipitate 1 I wish to conclude, however, with the reminder that in the long run the most serious threat to the integrity of teaching and learning comes not from the criminal violence of extremists but from measures of appeasement and capitulation, adopted in the vain hope of curbing their frenzy. The wounds that will prove the most dangerous to the survival of academic freedom - without which the university is undeserving of its name - are the wounds that the academy inflicts on itself, in the course of bewildered and hysterical efforts to ward off further attacks by its enemies, chiefly its enemies within its own walls. The history of American higher education is a history of change. Violence has never played an appreciable role in that history. It need not play a role today if it is recognized that the university is not responsible for the existence of war, poverty, and similar evils; that the solution of thes and allied problems lies in the hands of the democratic citizenry and not of a privileged elite; and that the primary function of higher education is the quest for knowledge, wisdom and vision - not the conquest of political power. The universities can by indirection help in the solution of "major social and foreign policy problems" by providing the knowledge, wisdom and vision required for intelligent action - but only if it retains its relative autonomy and objectivity and freedom from partisan political bias. 1 As printed for The Humanist, an important part of the testimony was omitted here, for lack of space. The deleted sentence reads: "It has the added advantage that, in case of failure, whether during the designing or the implementation stages, it will become obvious who the offenders are. "