Sources of Student Rebellion: How Shall We Understand the Columbia Uprising?

...the decline of interest in teaching...

...anti-dogmatism.2 This divorce of values from "doctrinaire ideological interpretations of events" (Flacks) or from "concrete visions of political objectives" bears an important relation to what I have called the isolation of the students from major institutional involvements and to the political discontinuity of the fifties...

...he transmits without interruption to tiers upon tiers of students, the American classroom is often characterized, by a give-andtake that blurs the inequality between professor and student...

...Negro community...

...the feelings and sentiments...

...ly are izttelligent., and., and p, learn...

...The students see themselves as suffering political frustrations similar to those of the SOURCES OF STUDENT REBELLION Negroes...

...is ,Qftet} a cry about their sense that the faculty, cares little .about teach ing...

...that is, radical parents transmitted basic values that might motivate radical attitudes but did not pass on specific political beliefs and norms...

...Roughly, the older faculty was shaped by the politics of the thirties and their aftermaths...

...We may assume, at least for the sake of argument, that Mark Rudd and his SDS followers deliberately sought a "confrontation" with the University in order to "radicalize" the students by "disrupting" the University...

...While not ,particularly new...

...T T HERE are ironies here...

...The students believe, says Flacks, that the university "ought to be moral," and Columbia was an attempt to make the institution moral...

...The identification increases their receptivity to the rhetoric...

...In the earlier movement black and white youth could wk together in community, but now Black Power has excluded the white students...

...Here again the activists differ from a previous generation of student radicals...

...But this is not the whole story...

...The present generation of college students has had a more frustrating and limited political experience in terms of organization and range of contact outside the white middle class...

...The strength of the movement that culminated in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 was a moral appeal that relied almost wholly on the "core values...

...Superficially, it would seem that the rejection of middleclass status means a decline in what sociologists call "mobility orientation...

...Youth" as a social phenomenon and college students in particular are a continuing focus of attention...

...Still, education remained a passport to a different social world...

...Younger professors are more apt to see themselves as part of a "dissenting academy" in which an individual's politics has an intimate relation to his scholarly work...

...put the matter succinctly:• "Teaohin ; is .how a, scholar...

...Second, since the social sciences focus on political and social problems, some students undoubtedly come to political consciousness through their academic interests—or are drawn to the social sciences through their political interests...

...This awareness is heightened by the high level of interaction among college students in contemporary America...

...Mangy do come from...

...First, both in the United States and elsewhere, the main body of student activists seems to come from these disciplines...

...Finally, and perhaps most important, it is the social sciences that give the contemporary student radicals their concepts of man and society...

...ail., these fae s are highly, salient for • today's studentg...

...of the .Negro' .com' munity...

...But it may not be wholly true...

...And during that period there was also a growing emphasis on the values of traditional liberal thought...

...Keniston reports there was an absence in his interviews of "articulated interpretations of history and political life, and concrete visions of political objectives," but there was a "strong, if often largely implicit, belief in a set of moral principles: justice, decency, equality, responsibility, nonviolence, and fairness...

...This is an -attractive analysis' and ,rakes some superficial sense,'.but the :actuality is -much- more 'complex.' The' students., mistake the nature of the college as a community ; -icy definition a college .cannot be...

...both- they and...

...The conflict, then, revolves about differences in both political and professional orientations...

...Again, a contrast with the radicals of the thirties...

...In very gross terms, college students are caught in a prolonged adolescence, if the latter is conceived of as a stage in which childhood has been left behind but adult roles have not yet been assumed...

...the other students...

...because, if one, takes • the-, notion'of= the coilege.a conununjty se1`iausiy, ' .there are no insxitutional channels z thrpngh whichthe students can exert...

...Reports on the students activists of the sixties agree that they are the children of parents who are liberal to Left in their politics...

...This implies that "mobility orientation" may also entail something else: a desire or need for the sheer challenge and experience of new social worlds, quite apart from the other rewards of mobility...

...I am suggesting that the rejection of middle-class society and the adoption of a radical politics represents not so much an end to "mobility orientation" as a displacement from its traditional objectives...

...The disappearance of the organized Left can be traced to World War II...

...Today, however, the university often means massive lecture halls and closed-circuit television...

...The in loco parentis tradition of the American college results in a crucial restriction on the autonomy . of the students...

...This kind of interaction makes it easier to see how the curriculum is working, and thus any modifications are significantly a result of student influence...

...Students are often in the most direct contact with young professors and teaching assistants who are of a different political generation than the senior faculty...

...But if adolescence is thought of in terms of the Sturm and Drang associated with psychosexual development and resolution of problems of identity, then, as Kenneth Keniston points out,' both kinds of problems may well be on their way to resolution by the time students are in college...

...tp ,escapp, their isolation, and., they seize any...

...Th university is not "one-dimensional" (as even Herbert Marcuse concedes), but the as tivists would make it so...

...l ayy4 igh .expe ions...

...Is "participatory democracy" what their children see as the implicit political vision of these reflections...

...The assassination , pf Martin Luther King was one such chance, o ,fo{ge a link with the...

...To the extent that some "talked revolution" and remained inactive, they served as "negative models" for their children...

...Later, during the fifties, they reacted to their political experience by emphasizing the values they had "lost" and that had motivated them originally...

...Thus both at home and on the campus there was an interruption of political experience and learning...

...Columbia seniors, then, missed the "early days" when black and white students worked together under the umbrella of SNCC or CORE...

...By the same token, the situation permits influence to run the other way...

...To exist surrounded by corruption requires strong measures to protect oneself against its influence...

...Unfortunately for .them, at Columbia and: • elsewhere,, they were again, rejected , by the black students...

...In the natural sciences or engineering, for example, students are faced with a highly structured curriculum, yet it does not strike them as problematic because its logic is clear...

...of Black...

...The students' 'frustration bears 'an obvious relation tda shift in beliefs...

...Both the civilrights movement and the peace movement were such opportunities, but they only served to confirm the beliefs students brought to them...

...in some ways it has been an experience similar to that of the sectarian organizations of the thirties...

...While the student activists of the civil-rights movement could be committed to nonviolence because they saw its tactical advantages in the South, students today are more susceptible to the appeals of "resistance" and "direct action...

...As amorphous as the civil-rights movement was organizationally, the antiwar movement is even more so...

...In their attempt at transforming the world, the activists have succeeded in transforming only themselves...

...I therefore define the students as an emerging "stratum...

...In a sense this is true, because at least among the activists there is a noticeable lack of drive to "get ahead" in traditional American terms...

...A militant SDS member at Columbia entered college in 1964 when the civil-rights movement hit its peak and was being succeeded by Vietnam as the focus of attention...

...The end of the movement corresponded to the escalation of the war...

...So, for example, Max Weber's abstract discussions of authority become "relevant" through student probing, even if the instructor has other ideas of relevance...

...Another irony, remarked upon at tedious length, is that the student radicals are of middle-class origin...

...To the extent that young people are always relatively uninvolved with institutions, moral purity ("the idealism of youth") is one of their prime traits...

...Sheer size makes it more difficult for students and faculty to connect in an intellectually meaningful fashion, and the loss of interest in teaching increases professional insensitivity to the students' needs...

...The ! sheer growth :°f the university has increased its impersonality...

...What needs to be understood about Columbia is the mobilization of the students...

...It is not the first time in history that men, believing their society to be utterly corrupt and isolated from its politics, have set out to make a community and society moral...

...wasn't actively ,.con cerned with...

...way of the .dean of studgnts...The latter, however, often .fund s like the white man who has some contact with "Negro .icaders" and..passes- on to his .fellow...

...Formal education always involves a relationship between unequals in which those with greater learning define what is to be learned...

...To be entangled in in 2 "The Liberated Generation: An Exploration of the Roots of Student Protest," Journal of Social Issues, XXIII (July 1967), 52-75...

...but all one need recall is the late forties and the era of the other McCarthy...

...During that period activists on campus were linked to radical politics in the society as a whole by way of the organized Left...

...But more important is their mobility: not only are more students probably going to school outside their native regions, but the civil-rights movement and the peace movement have brought them together in a common enterprise...

...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT one changed the world in spite of the university and by virtue of additional experiences gained off campus...

...On the surface it looks as if the students have inherited the views of their parents, but closer examination reveals this is only partially true...

...What were those "core values" the students learned...

...In the past the American university has responded to the instrumental orientation by offering training in everything from the classics to viniculture...

...Thus the politics of the sixties has helped shape the students as a "stratum...

...Yet it ' IS: a . mistake "to concentrate on the psychological . elements alone...

...It is almost impossible for even the most cloddish student to avoid becoming aware that he belongs to a distinctive social group...

...Many, also...

...They acquired the "core values" (to use Keniston's term), but not the ideologies elaborating the values...

...A relatively easy give-and-take facilitates the communication of the teacher's values...

...This is most apparent in political life where to pursue power and to use it effectively involves a "compromise" of moral standards...

...it is easier for students to grasp what the intellectual enterprise is all about when they are in some sort of active relation with someone engaged in it...

...Yet the students want...

...Yet this too can be a source of frustration...

...Nor could the parents be used as models for behavior, for they mostly were inactive...

...they exist in a kind of social limbo...

...We must assume that students are aware of their distinctive position...

...they„weie, alive and well,, but, m"y:wereuot at, Colnmbia.in any meayningful, sense...

...The manifestoes of" a:Mark •Ruddi-or Torn Hayden strike -a , responsive chord -,and help move them • to more extreme...

...The situation is different in the social sciences...

...makes at living...

...The movement not only brought students together from all parts of the country, but it also reactivated them politically and helped create the public definition of "the students" as a specific group in the political arena...

...Is it stretching a point to suggest that the students' contempt for "ideology," their stress on the need for "human relationships," and the breaking of the barriers of "impersonality" have been influenced by the reflections of the adherents of the "old Left...

...it is . only a nominal "community...

...Obviously, one is motivated to rise in the class system_ by pecuniary and status rewards...

...During the Depression, to be sure, the uncertainty of achieving this end helped attract many to radical politics...

...The defeat "proved" to the students that their beliefs about American society were correct...

...These appeals are powerful, because they are psychologically congruent with the frustrations of the students who are also relatively insulated from countervailing ideas and experiences...

...Power and leads them to apply it to their own situation...

...This program was aided by the tactics of an inept administration...

...For the latter, a college education was often a means to middleclass status...

...It is xipt, an.integral part of bow he justifies his iife or gets his,kicks...

...If Marxism stressed the "unity of theory and practice," contemporary social science makes an opposite assumption about theory and practice...

...During the fifties, therefore, there was a break in the process of political socialization...

...The conflict is also present within the faculty...

...Yet their expectations in regard to education are quite in the American grain, for, if they do not see it as a means of mobility, they do define it instrumentally...

...One can transform the university into a base for revolution, a guerrilla camp from which to make forays into the surrounding morass of corruption...

...The point, once again, is that today's student activists are more isolated from the society than were the students of five or six years ago...

...In the social sciences and humanities the tradition of teaching in the American university is nonauthoritarian...

...And once these are gone there is no chance for the students to realize their original vision of a moral community...

...Yet a large number of working-class and lower-middleclass Americans are not highly motivated toward mobility, and they seem easily reconciled to their lack of it...

...The impersonality of the college is reflected most acutely in the distance between students and faculty;and a'^major reason for the changed relationship is...

...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT student politics is related to the relative isolation of the students as a group—a fact that emerges clearly if we take the thirties as a baseline for comparison...

...a$ an : academic -experience...

...but while the behavior of the administration helped the SDS gain support among the students, it cannot by itself account for that support...

...the students are, isolated from the wider political arena...

...progres^ivc" households and have high expectations' that be g,''away,, at college" will ,give • therump^ °,gel c ud a tonomy...

...Consequently, there is still more disparity of status between faculty and students, which aggravates still more the generational conflict...

...Student attitudes, in turn, tend to be reinforced by the attitudes of a part of the faculty...

...When there is a commitment to teaching on the part of the instructor and an open classroom situation, the instructor's lecture becomes "adjusted" or more closely "fitted" to the expressed interests of the students...

...By contrast to the European model, in which the professor is defined as the sole repository of knowledge that...

...aspects of the position of the ,students within, the university ..are by, this time well-known...

...It was easy to carry over the moral attitudes of the civil rights movement, and the moral energies of that movement were channeled into the antiwar movement...

...As might be expected, its course was similar: moral purity in action has rarely served the ends of justice and freedom...

...S S oME...

...What Was put up "against the wall" at Columbia was their inherited values...

...The experience of both movements has enhanced the students' sense of isolation and reinforced their belief in the essential rightness of their moral commitments...

...Older social scientists have a tendency to disengage their purely scholarly concerns from their political commitments...

...In social science departments there is another, related difference...

...The very language of the society calls attention to this apartness of the students...

...The younger the faculty member, the more his political experience is likely to be that of the sixties...

...their parents speak of them as being "away at college...

...a guerrilla camp is pervaded by the purity of dogmatism and the certitudes of authoritarianism...

...fig .' e groes in the, social structure...

...The scene of action, becomes the university, less because the students are concerned with the university as such than 'that there, is singly no other place for the 'kind of action they wish.;, Put another -way, the university for the students has almost, the same significance as the ghetto for the .black ,militants...

...For some, one result of the reexamination of radical theory was the notion of "the end of ideology...

...A rereading of the early issues of DISSENT, for example, shows that the anti-Stalinist Left tended to make a virtue out of the necessity of non-organizational existence, and this was allied to a vigorous questioning of the traditional premises of radical politics...

...Martin Duberman has...

...as , a community...

...There is, of course, the technology of mass communications that makes student activists almost instantly familiar with each others' activities...

...antiauthoritarianism...

...Today the radical student enters college from that world...

...students now are psychologically prepared by their social-sitlatioit for a 1nore radical rhetoric and behavior...

...The movement brought victory and defeat: victory because it produced the Civil Rights Acts, defeat because it became apparent that little had changed in the day-to-day life of the Negro...

...Here choices of curriculum are ambiguous...

...It is not really a total defeat, since the movement can take a good part of the credit for whatever changes in public policy and opinion that have occurred...

...It is easy ; for, the activists to• defer the situation 'in cur t .political.;je ms<c.°If,.the, students are "ray" . Negroes, they nit .s ek power within the community, to_.rectify.,their conditions,, ;This analysis .,rnakessense to...

...tAe university...

...But that means the end of the university, for its ruling principles are the necessity for the free play of the mind and the acceptance of uncertainty...

...But understanding—placing an event in the context of other events, past and present, and showing sensible linkages among them—is a prerequisite for explanation...

...on campus the student is often more confined than if he-'were living in a "progres' sire" household1...

...opportunity ' to do so...

...The older radical ideologies taught the students (correctly) that the university could not set itself "against the mainstream of American life...

...It is a sectarian style and outlook without the experience of the sectarian organization...

...Another result can be seen again in DISSENT: a focusing of attention on mass culture and a preoccupation with "the quality of life...

...During this period there was the vast disillusionment of those who had been caught up in the Stalinoid Left and their subsequent lapse into political apathy...

...a class and style of life they seemingly detest...

...By contrast, the contemporary student attracted to radical sentiments cannot find the same entrance to the political arena because radical politics has fragmented into a collection of "tendencies...

...What is distinctive about contemporary 1 In Young Radicals, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968...

...This also allows student interests and needs to feed back upon the curriculum...

...Some of Richard Flacks's categorizations of "themes of protest" show the same values at play: romanticism...

...there are pbjective .components in the situation that make the rhetoric of student power seem persuasive...

...It is a mistake, of course, to say that there have been no opportunities for political education outside the university...

...Some who maintained a radical identity during the political desert of the Eisenhower years gave much thought to the "human values" that were lost sight of in the organized radical life of the thirties...

...Though not many belong to the kinds of movements that flourished in the thirties, the students have, as it were, created for themselves or been forced into a situation in which they suffer some of the consequences of the radical sect...

...However, the latter has not resulted in even the partial victory of the earlier movement...

...In some parts of the American university this is still axiomatic, because there is relatively little question about knowledge and its relevance to given ends...

...SOURCES OF STUDENT REBELLION stitutions, whether as parent, worker, or member of a political organization, means that one must live with the ambiguities of social organization and human motives and self-deceptions...

...positions...

...A.t Colwn bia at least, the faculty...

...We need to understand, first, the factors predisposing students to a positive response to the SDS group, and, second, the Columbia SDS as an extreme manifestation of a more widespread student state of mind...

...In their demand for "relevance" the students are being all-too-American: it is a demand that management of revolutions be added to the curriculum along with hotel management...

...of the college...

...the students, exaggerate ari çn they Slen tify .themselve$ with Negroes buf, one pann say 'off the students, ,as .ode ys of...

...Others talked of "ideolo ;y" and traditional radical beliefs as if they were a plague from which we had been mercifully delivered...

...t f .,ale •in then university buts not of the nniver y. Qr...

...influence for change.., Like .the Southern Negroes they are outside, the .system,.and..their •voices,are beard only by...

...These developments in the social sciences are of some relevance to the overall problem...

...they are subjects of both academic monographs and TV shows...

...Rather, the college is seen as part of a circular track starting and ending at a middle-class suburb...

...o put it another ;way, students are p, omise4„ ip portunities which canno.t be realized within the university, as now structured...

...a dem,oeratic MURRAY HAUSKNECHT system in which on matters such as curriculum, for example, one can apply notions like "one man, one vote...

...Students then seek what they cannot find in the classrooms...

...The term suggests a three-dimensional image of the social structure, within which students float with few and tenuous ties to major social institutions...

...The, cry of ".impersonality...

...They have had little or no experience of organizing communities, of living with their own organizational structure, of dealing with the problems of "participatory democracy...

...The absence of radical organizational life would make the transmission of the ideologies to the young extremely difficult, and the commitment of the parents to these ideologies was itself severely shaken, either as a result of self-questioning or the political climate of the fifties...

...The fragmentation of the Left also meant that those in college had no way of participating in radical politics, and so students had little opportunity for political development away from home...

...Power and virginity are mortal enemies...

...In an earlier generation young radicals lost their purity rather quickly, because it was difficult to maintain it as a member of the organized Left...

...Still, the protest has been a history of frustration, another clear "proof" to the students of the corrupt nature of the society...

...An insistence on moral purity, the hatred of "hypocrisy"—those admirable and exasperating qualities apparent in any encounter with college students—can only be maintained when there is a minimum of institutional involvements...

...Presupposing a distinctive "student consciousness" suggests a Marxist perspective as a starting point, and this has the immediate advantage of precluding a psychological definition of student activism as "adolescent rebellion...

...moral purity...

...whites...

...his education is not a path to a new world...

...Yet they are a peculiar "stratum" because they are barred from adult roles...

...Only when there are few opportunities to receive this off-campus education is there a tendency to shift the burden to the university...

...Unlike an older generation of radicals whose political vocabulary was drawn from Marxist theory, student radicalism draws its vocabulary from sociol SOURCES OF STUDENT REBELLION ogy and psychoanalysis...

...egalitarianism...

...But there has been some change in their beliefs, and to understand the change it is necessary to distinguish between generations of student activists...

...In any event, the rejection of middle-class status among many college students signals a change in the significance of a college education...