A Conversation at the University Centers for Rational Alternatives
A Conversation at the University Centers for Rational Alternatives Courage has never been a virtue prominent in the American professor's repertory. In the Golden Days of Klannery and...
...On the other hand the hard core minority which is really moving events-it is too busy doing "their thing" to have much strength left to vilify UCRA...
...We are extremely proud that through our publication Measure we did succeed in establishing an independent medium through which we can reach three or four thousand people who are on our mailing list and who Do read Measure...
...In another way we are not at all happy because the magnitude of the challenge does require a substantially larger response than we are able to generate...
...We just slowly grew and grew and are continuing to grow...
...In the past we never tried to do anything to cater specifically to the press or other media: whatever we got was purely accidental...
...It was immediately clear at the very onset that because of the pluralistic type of our society and of our educational system there's nothing one can suggest as an overall solution nor is there any recipe for a quick end of troubles...
...Who are the members...
...And we have in this way sufficient financial support to continue existing indefinitely...
...TODOROVICH: Let me put it this way...
...It turned out nevertheless that he was right, and the Pope was, let us say, misinformed...
...But this is how far they go...
...But to come back to your original question I would say of course yes...
...Now this is not a big opponent-if I may call them opponents at all...
...or "I share an issue of Measure with somebody else...
...So these are difficulties, but I think on the balance such a regular and normal growth gives us a more solid base on which to stand than if we enjoyed a greater abundance during the early stages...
...They obviously want to get our publications, and they read what they get...
...THE ALTERNATIVE: What is the composition of your organization...
...From reading this interview with UCRA's executive secretary Professor M. M. Todorovich, we hope you will gain an appreciation for their unique place in the contemporary struggle for the campuses and in American history...
...Most members do send us changes of address and a wealth of information about their respective campuses...
...We are happy that these propositions withstood the acid test of time...
...Still, very little action from these quarters did come our way...
...Thus we should not expect many of our tweedy-coated tape recorders to act against the barbarians intent on destroying their university...
...It is almost beyond comprehension that by a certain kind of long drawn argumentations, which I think you know perfectly well, doctrinaire persons who cannot get their views adopted and thus become bitter, justify their recourse to violence as it being the only available option...
...Even every heresy should have a way of remaining known and discussed within the academy...
...These moods die away as fast as they come and one generally enounters less prolonged hostility than people would think...
...There's a sprinkling of administrators but mostly those who were educators and then in some way graduated to become administrators...
...We are beginning to be occasionally mentioned by the various media...
...In the Golden Days of Klannery and One-Hundred-Percent Americanism when the American Protective Association attempted to bring us together and anti-semitism competed in popular thought with nativism, most professors meekly followed the tides...
...We have first a national membership from campuses all across the country and Canada...
...In practice, however, it grew into a predominantly faculty organization...
...The majority is just around, there-perhaps applauding and joining manifestation...
...One is now, I believe, in the embryonic stage in the Boston-Harvard area, but this is a local thing involving people there, and if they wish to have it, this will be fine with us...
...And yet the educational process is essentially shouldered by the faculties and if any hopeful resolution of present difficulties has to come about, it will, in our opinion, materialize after this basic element of the educational process, the faculty, raises its voice and says something in its own way, depending on the local condition...
...PROFESSOR TODOROVICH: The basic purpose when we started it was to simply arouse the awareness of the profession to a changed situation on our campuses and the need for them-the professors, teachers to do something about it...
...Events build around moods that are mostly rooted in fashionable psychological trends...
...They are sending us contributions of ten dollars, twenty-five dollars--whatever they can afford...
...We first thought the organization to be for all of those who are involved in the educational process...
...But this of course goes firstly against the very grain of the democratic process according to which if you are in a minority you are just in a minority and this may look too bad to you, but you have to assume that the only legitimate recourse is to try to persuade the majority by argument-and not by clubs and lead pipes as some militants wanted to do-that your recommendations are worth trying...
...We do not have to depend on the benevolent attitude of the media in order to have something brought to the attention of the profession...
...Actually when there are turmoils the number of souls coming to gatherings is a rather sporadic and ad hoc-ish thing...
...It is committed only to three fundamental propositions...
...When the more decent of our professors do take action to defend an open university they deserve the energetic support of all thinking students, whether conservative, moderate or liberal...
...One day maybe we will have even UCRA student-affiliated groups...
...Second, any attempt to deprive the qualified scholar and teacher of freedom to determine what he should teach and to prescribe by threats of force or class disruption how he should teach is a violation of academic freedom...
...Third, the faculty through its representatives must be continuously involved in the consideration of new problems and challenges to the educational experience...
...We would need to have more means to travel around to talk with our good members directly rather than only through telephone and by mail...
...And by being members of UCRA then teachers register their support for our principles and our positions relative to others...
...We found as we looked around that the confrontation was developing actually into a student-administration game with the faculty just somehow left in the middle, joining sometimes one camp and sometimes the other depending on the type of turmoil...
...While in a certain sense such an approach is good, in another we are generally less known than our record warrants because we are totally understaffed and underdeveloped...
...But on the other hand we encourage our members to band together into local campus groups to produce some kind of caucuses of- if I may say so, enlightened people, enlightened in what the turmoil is all about-and then try to affect the alertness of the faculties so that maybe ad hoc committees or groups can be formed to handle specific problems...
...The University Centers for Rational Alternatives was founded by vigorous intellectuals like Sidney Hook who believe freedom and democracy are preciout and worth fighting for...
...Before.that UCRA was run one hundred per cent by voluntary work...
...Composed of professors of many different political persuasions its members wish to preserve open universities and free inquiry...
...We have, of course, also a sprinkling of graduate students who find that they just don't have a real voice anywhere yet, and since they probably plan to remain committed to teaching and learning they join UCRA even at this early stage...
...TODOROVICH: First of all it's very interesting that there were very few reports of any noticeable student hostility...
...I would explain this to myself mostly by A) that the number of militant students-those who engage in this kind ofthing-is very small...
...Now, on the positive side we are for keeping the universities an open place for exchange of ideas because only by keeping it open and not yielding to any dogmatic pressure can the university discharge its duty...
...TODOROVICH: Not really, I must say...
...Now among professors-well, here I would agree that there are a few vociferous souls around, usually those who overspilled from their earlier SDS student days into the ranks of the SDS-type faculty...
...We started with a moderate goal, as kind of a pilot project in a friendly law office which was available to us after five o'clock when the regular occupants finished their jobs...
...One of the most active organizations of whose existence we know-the New University Conference-when counting all members like graduates assistants and such has no more than about nine hundred members...
...We have only two paid employees here and even this happened only after last week...
...You like to stand behind something-certain propositions or prin-ciples-and so' in the first issue of our publication Measure Professor Hook wrote a little capsule summary of what-at that time-we saw as the essence of UCRA: University Centers for Rational Alternatives has no specific program or panacea for the problems of any one troubled campus...
...And now, some people who are trying to be critical of UCRA use him as proof that UCRA shares the views of a very militant president and so on...
...Our initial obstacles were rather of a very different nature...
...On the other hand, we are not actively soliciting administrators because we would never want to look like an arm of any administration...
...Yet as I said, he was a "simple" professor at the time he joined UCRA...
...In a natural way we came to a point where, thanks to the continuous support of our membership we started to produce an impact...
...For instance the general suspicion of the profession against anything orgainized Professors became professors because they wanted to have a quiet corner where they could think, ponder and come up with some conclusions.h some conclusions...
...I think the number of campuses is approximately three hundred now...
...And so on...
...It's a minority which really does the vandalism and breaking and so on...
...Would you please send me more information...
...We would need more funds to organize regional conferences of our members where they could exchange ideas on the spot, multilaterally rather than bilaterally and through writing...
...Such faculty groups are also not very numerous...
...First, in a free university all questions are open to inquiry, discussion, and debate: none can be settled by the exercise of violence or by threats of intimidation...
...THE ALTERNATIVE: Have you had much difficulty organizing and growing...
...THE ALTERNATIVE: Have you encountered much hostility from faculty-in particular-and students...
...There are still very many people who write letters to us which read as follows: "I accidentally heard about UCRA...
...THE ALTERNATIVE: You are opposed to militant students then...
...But one can alert people-by cross-referencing them with other places-to what already happened there...
...One very interesting case in point here is San Francisco State President Hayakawa who was Professor Hayakawa when he first joined the UCRA...
...That's a negative aspect if you wish, but it's only a necessary response to a very real and pressing threat...
...To push the argument even further, it is nowadays sometimes worse to be mentioned by some people or publication than not to be mentioned at all...
...They give also a weight to whatever statement or policy pronouncement is made by the national office...
...In that sense there was no difficulty...
...it must keep open all lines' of communication among constituent groups of the university community, and work continuously for the establishment of a rational consensus on all matters of common educational concern...
...And the third proposition-I'm not paraphrasing it in exact sequential order-stipulates that we will do our best to keep all the channels of communication between all the three parts of the university open because only through clear exchange of ideas rather than through arbitrary actions from whatever quarter can a true stability and understanding be brought about...
...But Galileo Gallilei, the precursor of Newton, did not become what he is presently in the esteem of people by carrying a bomb or something like that, but by using reason...
...In addition many of such people, I think, may have drifted quite accidentally into the whole thing...
...I am a physicist and remember vividly that Galileo was at one time considered a heretic...
...TODOROVICH: Well, when you scan through the three propositions you see that UCRA is opposed to violence of any kind-intimidation and so on...
...Now, of course, you don't do such things only operationally...
...UCRA is an association of independent centers which subscribe to the three propositions above...
...We would need more funds to make wider membership drives...
...Violence has no place whatsoever on our campuses I don't think it has much place anywhere in our society, but we're limiting ourselves to the university...
...So in this way, we achieved an independence, money-wise as well as publication-wise...
...And secondly, in particular, a university should be a place where every view properly presented has the right to exist-to co-exist-with every other, and only the power of persuasion should be the one which ultimately makes one view more acceptable than the other...
...THE ALTERNATIVE: What is the purpose of University Centers for Rational Alternatives...
...I want to emphasize that we are still, today, strongly dependent and supported by the contributions from our members, the faculties of the United States...
...And we hope that this gives us a solid base for further pursuit...
...In this sense our membership has really a dual purpose...
...For information concerning membership in UCRA write UCRA, 110 West 40th Street, New York, New York 10018...
...Even as the bleak winds of Nazism began to howl through Europe the professors did not raise a very resonant hue and cry...
Vol. 4 • December 1970 • No. 2
