Lessons from Amherst:

...The white males, of course, are the most guilty of all, but nobody escapes the dragnet...

...There is Something unsettling in all of this...

...events invite serious reflection on why such racial eruption should be occurring now, and often at places noted for the liberal orientation of their faculty, student body, and administration, as well as on what sorts of response seem both effective and appropriate...

...The danger in overextending the notion of racism and the notion of "harm" is that the distance between a punch in the face and a murmured innuendo gets elided and seems to call for equally harsh responses-if, that is, one accepts the collective guilt thesis...

...they seek both a positive exclusiveness as well as vehicles for inclusivity on terms that do not mean they must forgo their "blackness...

...The tacit presumption underlying the workshop and support groups is that regulating behavior and achieving civility are not enough...

...Whatever the merits of this resolution of a volatile situation-and some have complained that many of the demands bear little relation to the precipitating incident-these unhappy...

...Unsurprisingly, black students strive to maintain some sense of their particular history and identity...

...It seems a rather unfair burden to saddle a massive load of guilt on every eighteen-year-old who enters the university: you may not know it but you are by definition racist, sexist, and homophobic...

...The latest incident led to the occupation of a campus building by a group of approximately 100 minority students who used the occasion to protest racial violence and to put forward a list of demands that constituted what University Chancellor Joseph Duffey tagged an "agenda for...

...additional lobbying for state funding to support higher stipends for "some graduate students...

...of 1986 when a melee, following the defeat of the Boston Red Sox by the New York Mets, fragmented into a racial brawl on the part of a small number of students...

...and opening discussions with the university.food services to "broaden dining-commons menus to include ethnic foods...

...promise of funding for cultural events and "affirmation" of New Africa House as an education and cultural center for Afro-American and "other third-world students...

...This suggests that prevention of such abuse would all but eliminate these incidents...

...There are perils lurking everywhere, in under- and over-reacting alike, and in the modes of reaction selected as a response...

...Chancellor Duffey, in a memorandum, noted: "Ninety-five percent of all incidents involving abuse, assault, and harassment on this campus involve the abuse of alcohol...

...Having been brought into the big public as well as elite private institutions, minority students face a dilemma: do they strive to integrate one-by-one or maintain their racial and ethnic distinctiveness...

...Her most recent book is Women and War (Basic Books...

...But that is precisely what the University of Massachusetts and other institutions confronted with racial troubles and minority demands must face and confront with imagination and moral sensitivity...

...More recently, two black males were allegedly harassed and physk cally attacked, and the white girlfriend of one of them verbally abused, by a group of five white males of whom four are students at the university...

...Racism would not, of course, be eliminated, but a more civil environment is one within which intellectually robust ways to create racial awareness, to promote interracial contacts, and to appreciate cultural diversity would result...

...In the wake of the student occupation and the negotiated settlement, what has followed at the university is not civic peace but more reported (albeit less serious) racial incidents together with a two-day "moratorium," during which professors were enjoined either to devote their classes to discussing racism, sexism, and homophobia, or to release their students to attend one of dozens of workshops or "support groups" designed to bring racism (and all the rest) to the surface, to confront it, and to begin to extirpate it...

...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Jean Bethke Elshtain, teacher and author, has spent fifteen years at the University of Massachusetts and twenty-two years in the Northeast...

...Eradicating racism turns into a group therapeutic endeavor...

...action...

...I have in mind authentic education, not defensive reeducation with its agitprop connotations...

...One is brought up immediately against the strengths and limits of our wider political culture, a volatile mix of "live-and-let-live civility" together with "your-beliefs-are-my-business" notions of civic virtue...

...Every single one of the documented incidents occurred after midnight and involved alcohol.'' Alcohol as a contributing factor is clear...

...As to why now, I shall hazard a few guesses...

...She will soon take up her new post as Centennial Prpfessor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University...

...My hunch is that, over the long-haul, the upshot of such endeavors will not be a purified, racist-free, collective, student consciousness but a simmering backlog of resentment at being labeled as racist, even if one has never committed a racist act nor uttered a racist slur...

...It is difficult for any institution devoted to inclusivity and to judgment on individual merit to sort out group demands for space within which to shore-up their group identity...

...Everyone, in this scheme of things, is guilty and no one gets to be proven innocent-unless one is a member of the group against which collective racism, whether overt or covert, is directed...

...LESSONS FROM AMHERST DRAGNET OR AGENDA FOR ACTION...

...Several of the most troubling and visible of these racial events have occurred on my own campus, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an institution known for its left-leaning politics and robust activism...

...HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST GERMANYEAST GERMANY...

...The article goes on to describe ra- cial incidents at the University of Michigan, nastiness from Dartmouth to Rutgers...

...There was the by-now notorious "World Series Riot...

...priority in the use of New Africa House to those courses that deal with third-world issues and concerns...

...One academic dean, perturbed by what he considers the overextension, hence thinning out, of what is to count as a serious infraction, told me: "We've managed to create free environments throughout this campus...

...Why not alcohol-free environments...

...That this is often the issue becomes clear if one looks at the numbers: there are 700 black students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, out of a student body of 25,000...

...One must go into people's minds and "reeducate" them-a favorite word- in order to root out the racism that is there by definition...

...The six-day occupation ended peacefully after the protestors and the chancellor agreed to a shopping list of reforms, including revisions in the Code of Student Conduct toughening up restrictions against and punishment of' 'acts of racial violence or repeated racial harassment, either verbal or physical...

...additional funding for various scholarship and financial aid programs...

...And, of course, wide latitude to define what counts as such is lodged in the hands of those who begin with the assumption that racism is so endemic and so pervasive that swift condemnation of the perpetrators of violent acts and a wider university commitment to cultural and racial diversity, with a curriculum and staff to match, does not suffice...

...creation of a monitoring committee to meet with the chancellor on a regular basis in order to evaluate "progress" on student concerns...

...a special allocation to support stipends to students in third-world organizations serving as tutors...