Confrontation at San Francisco State
Goldman, Ralph M.
THE OPEN SOCIETY—insofar as it actually is open and fulfills its claims—is a standing invitation to trouble. Its liberties, tolerance, and constraints upon powerful minorities invite attack,...
...In the roster of names mentioned for condemnation or praise he never referred to his fellow-Panther, George Murray...
...Faculty endorsement of President Summerskill was unanimous, for example, after the December 6, 1967, rioting, even as the Trustees humiliated him...
...Liberals vs...
...the worse the crisis, the more quickly will faculty and students depart from the campus...
...And in these classrooms, the students' views and concerns are to be taken raw, to be milled RALPH M. GOLDMAN and refined by the insights of academic disciplines and by the tests of reason and evidence...
...THE OPEN SOCIETY—insofar as it actually is open and fulfills its claims—is a standing invitation to trouble...
...Democrats vs...
...The Ten Demands, in brief, called for: (1) immediate transfer of all Black Studies courses into the Black Studies Department, with full pay for their instructors...
...This minority often has the appearance and the idiom of revolutionary idealism, but seldom the sustained anger and patience of the classic revolutionaries...
...Confrontationism" is such a new technology...
...STATE sometimes referred to as the Silent Majority —are older, married, parents, career-oriented, and employed at a full- or part-time job...
...Was Local 1352 really a "union...
...Faculty in California higher education have an unusual number of organizations seeking to represent them...
...As he angrily called a halt to his many weeks of negotiating effort, Johns charged that the Trustees were closely "prepared to fight it to a finish" regardless of the consequences for the faculty, the students, the College, or the City of San Francisco...
...On October 28, Murray, back in San Francisco, called for a strike of black and brown students on November 6, the day after Election Day...
...Carlton Goodlett —physician, publisher, and often considered "dean" of San Francisco's Negro leaders— joined the demonstrations, submitted to arrest, and was released on bail quickly enough to appear for interviews on TV...
...At his January 14 press conference, Governor Reagan was explicit about the "preponderance" of the liberal political viewpoint on college and university faculties...
...This demonstration led to rioting, including an attempt to burn down the college book store...
...Chancellor Dumke i-sued a pub i A critique of Hare's proposal on educational, political, and other grounds was made by John H. Bunzel, chairman of the College's Department of Political Science, in The Public Interest (Fall, 1968...
...The faculty and San Francisco community leaders promptly applauded Summerskill's restraint...
...Among the consequences already in view was an unofficial estimate that enrollment for the spring semester would be down by 30 per cent...
...Democratic candidate Cranston was for organizational reform in higher education and expanded educational opportunities for all...
...Finally, the roster of AFT demands, which included support for the student demands, changed from week to week...
...George Orwell saw the danger of this characteristic of confrontationism when he wrote the slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE...
...The faculty's presidential recruitment committee, weary of looking for leadership from off-campus, proposed five names, the usual number to be nominated, to the Chancellor and Trustees...
...Instant Equality elevates minorities in another way...
...The California Teachers Association, of mainly elementary and secondary school teachers, has a relatively small California College and University Faculty Association (CCUFA...
...The College has a faculty of 900 regular (i.e., voting) and 550 part-time (i.e., nonvoting) members—a faculty body of 1,450 in all...
...Nearly 60 academic departments offer a full array of bachelor's and master's degrees, teaching credentials, and other certificates...
...others were impossible to implement (e.g., not allowing the Trustees to dissolve Black Studies programs) . On November 6 the BSU strike began with a noon rally attended by an estimated 2,000 students...
...Applications for special admission students were processed...
...The sustained television and press coverage has equated Varnado, Murray, and other student militants with the Governor, the Mayor, and the College's numerous presidents...
...Its incomplete facts may become permanent public illusions...
...or out of the separationist demands of militant Negroes whose "integration" into the grand opportunities of American life has been one's goal for decades...
...e.g., President Hayakawa's lone attack upon the strikers' sound truck—very photogenic...
...Do they recognize how much they have already won...
...voting against the strike: 464, or 64 per cent...
...The electric response to Smith's resignation as Dean of Education in 1964 was the first faculty protest against second-class status in California higher education...
...By April 16, Hare submitted a formal proposal for a Department of Black Studies to be established by September, 1968...
...New black administrators were recruited, including Dr...
...The danger is more than semantic...
...STATE black as the basis for a return to separatebutequal arrangements in education...
...But the 1964 con CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...Reagan can dramatically speak of "using bayonets," but it is Alioto's police force that has the daytoday dirty job...
...Traditional confrontations have been potent weapons of dissent in open societies...
...Blacks vs...
...The current agony of most of this Busy Majority— black, white, and brown—is indeed something to behold, if only those who report the news would behold it...
...Why struggle with cut-backs of college resources in budget-writing sessions when campus crises will do the job with less effort...
...Further, the ACSCP was the faculty's chosen bargaining agent...
...S. I. Hayakawa, the renowned semanticist whose name had been associated with the College for years, as Interim Acting President...
...AFT vs...
...The most conservative members of the Board of Trustees, for example, have raised the obvious liberal questions about nondiscrimination in hiring practices of the Black Studies Department...
...only one—Robert R. Smith—had a distinguished administrative record as former Dean of the College's outstanding School of Education...
...This is the largest system of public higher education in the Western Hemisphere, established under a "Master Plan for Higher Education" by the Donahoe Act of 1960...
...Like Governor Reagan, Rafferty made much of campus unrest...
...The faculty supported, by a 2-1 vote, President Smith's agreement to have a continuing convocation...
...For, if WAR equals PEACE, why worry about either...
...AFT Local 1352 at San Francisco State is particularly confrontationist in approach...
...Can they turn off the violence...
...Even this oversimplified summary of a liberal view of education makes it easier to understand why liberals are committed to tuitionfree higher education, continuing curriculum innovation, active community involvement by both students and teachers, open admissions to all who wish to enroll, and ever-increasing appropriations to support the educational enterprise...
...On November 12, the full faculty began a week of nearly continuous general meetings in lieu of teaching classes, while black mil itants marched in and out of classes that were being taught...
...This is liberal vocabulary, but without liberal intent...
...Nearby, Murray delivered a speech to assembled students about killing the "white op pressors...
...Obviously, in their judgment, the educational cri,is could be dealt with some other year...
...His "trust and faith" lies "in the students' ability to hear varying points of view and to make . . . an intelligent decision...
...If the open society has a chronic disability, however, it is its difficulty in recognizing and adjusting quickly to the new technologies of its assailants...
...Did it not function more like a political group...
...The Chronicle of Confrontations FALL AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE turned out to be a continuing TV special...
...Above all, it "worked...
...Instant Replay provides the prompt publicity necessary to confrontationism...
...February 16, 1969 FOR MONTHS Governor Reagan had served as the principal public confrontationist for the Chancellor and the 21 Trustees...
...212, or 57 per cent, opposed the strike...
...7) dismissal of the Student Financial Aid officer, to be replaced by a black person...
...The demonstration quickly became a violent confrontation...
...In the midst of the ensuing marathon negotiations between militants and administrators, Summerskill departed for Ethiopia on a long-arranged consulting mission for the Ford Foundation...
...Some were already in effect (e.g., Black Studies Department...
...It inaugurated a vigorous membership drive, and within a month claimed 400 members and the support of 60-80 per cent of the faculty...
...In the light of Instant Majoritarianism, their actions were far more significant than the pronouncements of a committee of Negro ministers who con demned violence and urged moderation...
...With the inadvertent aid of television and other mass media, Instant Majoritarianism threatens to make "due process" and the more traditional modes of petition and dissent not obsolete but irrelevant in America...
...It has been equipped by the great mechanical revolution in modern communications...
...In this technological attribute lies the very difficult problem of professionalism in American journalism...
...Another example is Reagan's objection to limiting instruction to any single philosophy or ideology...
...How else will the coverage compete with other exciting news for the evening broadcasts...
...To illustrate the first prospect, consider the action of the SF State Academic Senate in establishing a special committee made up of only the black members of the full-time faculty to create in turn a special personnel committee to determine the retention and promotion of Dr...
...For some answers, he sug gests, "one must go all the way back to the late 1950's, when the Master Plan...
...A logical line of questioning can usually cut to the truth of a newsworthy situation with greater precision than the meat-ax of a reporter's insult...
...Witness the ambivalence of campus liberals—whether at SF State, Berkeley, or Columbia—union liberals, and civil-rights liberals...
...1 As these activities went on, Summerskill also took steps to recruit additional Negro faculty and administrators...
...the expert analyses can come later...
...several departments, with interna tional reputations, have some faculty more qualified than their counterparts at the Uni versity for doctoral instruction...
...Juan Martinez, a temporary instructor in history...
...Some black militants made guerrilla-type raids into various offices and classrooms...
...STATE When classes resumed on January 6, little had changed, but the dramatis personae had grown remarkably, including a citizens' committee appointed by Mayor Alioto, the San Francisco Area Labor Council, professional arbitrators, and others...
...ThirdWorld leadership tends to be predominantly Mexican-American or Latin-American...
...Instant Majoritarianism...
...At San Francisco State, few events have united the faculty more quickly than some high-handed action by the Trustees or the Chancellor...
...Instant Replay reports "the action" before further information can arrive to provide a context for the action...
...Alioto the moderator has trouble getting balanced San Francisco coverage...
...The third attribute of confrontationism is RALPH M. GOLDMAN Instant Replay...
...During the next two days, confrontationists came from every direction...
...Most students at San Francisco State CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...The local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers called for a strike on December 16, but Hayakawa sud denly announced the beginning of the Christ mas vacation a week early, on December 16...
...Very little else could attract or hold such faculty, for the teaching load is still an anachronistic 12 hours (nearly double the load of comparable institutions), the salary scale runs between B and C according to ratings by the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), and research support, sabbaticals, stenographic help, administrative services, and other normal tools of academia are almost nonexistent...
...The San Francisco Labor Council, which after much stalling endorsed the strike, had some difficulties in convincing other unions that the College strike was real...
...He did not reckon with the confrontationists...
...Another prominent Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver, it should be noted, was scheduled to teach Social Analysis 139X across the Bay at Berkeley...
...Running for United States Senator were an outspoken liberal Democrat, Alan Cranston, and an outspoken con°ervative Republican, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Max Rafferty...
...On February 9, 1968, he appointed Dr...
...President Summerskill adopted tactics designed to avoid a police-student confrontation...
...At the Trustees' meeting, San Francisco State officials were presenting the case for a Black Studies Department, which was then authorized...
...In California, the liberals run the immediate risk of losing their basic idiom, either by letting it fumble out of their own hands or by having it stolen right out from under their typewriter ribbons by the conservative confrontationists...
...RALPH M. GOLDMAN For several years its 60-100 members have frequently thrown up a picket line or talked strike...
...for Alioto, divisions among such fellow-Democrats as anti-Trustee Robert R. Smith and pro-Trustee Hayakawa can only be reflected in the 1970 balloting...
...These are precisely the people presently most confused and distraught about contemporary confrontationism...
...CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...It worked so well that those incomparable technologists, the United States Army, finally stole the patent rights at the Army-McCarthy hearings...
...Most significant ly, the student militants have brought running to their side older Negro leaders who cannot afford to be bypassed...
...CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...The summer months were hectic...
...Hare and Dean White, held a press conference to issue Ten Demands and the formal strike call...
...An ad hoc organization, Faculties for the Defense of Education, sprung up on the campuses, again demonstrating the degree of faculty hostility, and receiving only Trustee scorn...
...At the same time, many of the "strikers" kept leaving the picket lines to teach their classes—usually off-campus—or attend to normal committee, research, or other campus duties...
...While the televised debates were going on, Smith departed for a meeting with the Trustee in Los Angeles...
...Poor judgment and little skill are disastrous in such a contest, as the liberal faculties have and will undoubtedly continue to learn...
...The acrimony between the faculties of the state colleges and the Trustees is everywhere evident...
...Today, confrontationism is being practiced on the nation's campuses, where the open society is most open and often most vulnerable...
...Conservatives, on the other hand, tend toward an elitist conception of education...
...Action is an essential ingredient of good TV camera work, even if the cameraman has to provoke the action...
...Power" is often more in the eyes of the viewer than in the resources of the "powerful...
...Nothing came of the request, a lesson in its own limitations that should not have been lost on the faculties...
...The ACSCP, on January 13, announced the results of a secret mail-ballot of the entire faculty on whether or not they supported the AFT strike...
...As liberal a faculty as that of San Francisco State would be untrue to its basic educational ideology if it did not interpret many of the student and faculty strike demands as worthy of support...
...STATE frontation was old-fashioned: petitions, speeches, a resignation, action at the legislature, and no TV...
...The faculty, by attracting sponsored educational and research projects, has added between $5 million and $6 million to this thin budgetary soup...
...On the California ballot at this same time were such nominees for President as Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and, for the Peace and Freedom Party, Eldridge Cleaver...
...The current reportorial style of badgering rather than interviewing a public figure illustrates the problem...
...National AFT organizers, after failing to get it to soft-pedal Vietnam, the draft, and other nonunion issues, decided to let this local go its own way...
...Joseph White as Dean of Undergraduate Studies, who was made responsible for administrative supervision of the new Department of Black Studies...
...Instant Majoritarianism seems to be a byproduct of our patent-medicine culture, wherein small pills are sold as quick cures for large illnesses...
...Work on the Black Studies curriculum was pressed forward, and in September President Smith created a Department of Black Studies, with Hare as Acting Chairman...
...the prominence of Jerry Varnado, a BSU spokesman who quotes regularly from Che Guevara and whose television appeals are to "the beautiful black people out there...
...This process gets to the point where tactical inventiveness is the order of the day for all sides...
...some asked the instructor for permission...
...The non-AFT faculty's problem vis a vis the AFT was semantic as well as practical...
...Reagan can safely refuse to negotiate with the militants and the strikers, whereas Alioto, immediately at the tangled scene, has little choice but to seek an avenue toward negotiation, difficult as confrontationism makes this...
...But at 8:00 A.M., Monday, De cember 2, as students and militants returned to campus, Acting President Hayakawa, decked out in the tam-o-shanter that has be come his campaign symbol, strode over to a striker's sound truck and wrestled for con trol of the equipment...
...The danger lies in compressing a many-sided problem into a twosided one and in equating the two elements in every dichotomy...
...These views make the educational conservatives like Reagan and Rafferty eager and provocative con frontationists...
...Powerfulness," therefore, is being so perceived by others, usually on the basis of something real and observable such as many guns, much money, many words, or most votes...
...Troublesome students and colleges must be cut back in funds and other resources, particularly those as troublesome as San Francisco State...
...Of the 551 part-time faculty, 68 per cent responded...
...Meanwhile, Summerskill had been work ing with a committee of deans to design a program of Black Studies...
...All but 800 of them live off campus and fit their studies into a tight daily schedule...
...Only in fairy tales does the mirror respond to the princess, and even there, odds are she was talking to herself...
...On November 4 the Black Student Union leadership, in the company of Dr...
...He declined to comply...
...Other Faculty Organizations...
...During the year another student group had come to the fore: the Third World Liberation Front, a loose coalition of black-, brown-, and red-skinned radicals...
...Even the ordinarily vocal Max Rafferty has taken a back-seat on the higher education issue in recent months lest his hard-line get in the way of Reagan and the Trustees...
...Only a skeleton of events will be reviewed here...
...In other words, this is Instant Majoritarianism...
...Martinez was retained in an administrative post...
...In September 1966, the College welcomed a new president, John H. Summerskill, former Vice-President for Student Affairs at Cornell...
...As the rally proceeded, student squads went into regularly scheduled classes to ask students to join them...
...Republicans...
...An Ecology of Confrontations NORTON LONG of the University of Illinois has described local urban politics as "an ecology of games...
...He urged striking students to carry guns onto campus, but it was not clear when or for what purpose...
...The longer the crisis lasts, the fresher will be its tumultuous recollections for Reagan's lawandorder campaign in 1970...
...The Police Department's Tactical Squad appeared and disappeared, taking photos and making occasional arrests...
...the incessant tactical debates within the Black Student Union...
...More than most American colleges (and in many ways more than the rest of the society of which it is inescapably a part), San Francisco State has been a proudly open campus...
...The open society is likely to be misused as much as it is used...
...Will the faculties ever come to appreciate that, under the present statutes and organization governing the State College System, they can only be losers in confrontations with the Trustees...
...All were on-campus faculty...
...In this setting, on September 26, six weeks before Election Day, the Trustees "suggested" to President Smith that he "reassign" Murray to nonteaching duties...
...In fact, it was readily determined from payroll figures (union dues are deducted from pay checks) that the AFT had only 163 members among the 900 regular faculty and 66 members among the 550 part-time faculty —hardly the claimed 400...
...These demands, said the BSU leaders, were not negotiable and indeed correct...
...The operating budget of the College, appropriated by the California legislature, is roughly $20 million a year...
...The partisan confrontation was explicit in October and November 1968...
...where the faculty senate was the first in the nation to seat student representatives as voting members, and where the concept of a student-run experimental college within the regular college had its birth...
...In this way, we have seen, the powerful come to be perceived as weak or vacillating, and the minority to be as "powerful" as a majority...
...Senate, etc...
...Some black leaders who advocate militancy because "it works" are clearly seeking leadership of the ghettos, just as the Jewish gangs of New York, the Irish gangs of Boston, and the Italian gangs of Chicago did before them...
...Instant Replay also fixes the picture of "what happened" as though it all happened at the place of greatest movement, controversy, or violence...
...His inaugural ceremonies on May 2, 1967, were enlivened by an un precedented "picket-in" by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS...
...Student strike leaders were suspended that same day, and for the next two weeks violence, police, and regular TV coverage kept the Busy Majority com pletely distracted...
...The difference between these two terms is a difference between aspiring new militant leaders and established older moderates...
...San Francisco's only black legislator, State Assemblyman Willie Brown—seriously threatened in his last election campaign by a black militant on the ballot—joined Goodlett...
...A well-timed confrontation, usually at midday when sunlight is good, is assured a place on all evening television newscasts as well as in the breakfast editions of local newspapers...
...STATE the academic year, and perhaps the entire generation will continue to submit to the initiatives of the principal practitioners of confrontationism on both sides...
...In February, 1964, Smith had created a statewide furor with a letter of resignation that blasted Chancellor Dumke and the 21 Trustees for failure to seek adequate fiscal and popular support for their sector of the state's higher education...
...At San Francisco State, the militant-moderate struggle has manifested itself in a number of ways: Minister of Information Cleaver's "put down" of Minister of Education Murray...
...Nathan Hare, a sociologist formerly at Howard University, to help design a Black Studies curriculum...
...He looked forward to a good academic year...
...The Technology of Con front ationism CONFRONTATIONISM is a strategy with a distinctive set of technological attributes: Instant Majoritarianism, Instant Equality, and Instant Replay...
...The cost of unraveling some dichotomies into the complexities they really are can become oppressive if not overwhelming...
...Unfortunately, confrontationism requires less homework than do drafting legislative bills and educating busy legislators...
...or out of the crossing of a picket line in a nonstrike called by a nonbargaining agent...
...The 21 Trustees of the State Col lege System, several of whom were appoint ees of Governor Ronald Reagan, thought otherwise...
...The compression chamber for Instant Equality is the television screen and the newspaper headline, neither of which has room for more than two parties to any fight...
...By spring 1968, the California State College Academic Senate expressed its profound antipathy to both the Trustees and Chancellor Dumke by voting "no confidence" in Dumke and urging him to resign...
...He also invited various student groups to prepare innova tive curriculum proposals, which he subse RALPH M. GOLDMAN quently transmitted as a grant solicitation to the Carnegie Foundation...
...Distinguished faculty are attracted to it by life in the San Francisco Bay Area and by a student culture that is, according to David Riesman, among the half-dozen or so most distinctive in the country...
...The performance ran true to confrontationist form, with student militants condemning the "white oppressors," and walking out on the proceedings during the second day...
...and against recommendations my staff and I made...
...Bunzel has since been the target of numerous harassments, including an unexploded bomb outside his office, tire slashings, phone calls, etc...
...The dangers of this threat are inherent in the technological characteristics of confrontationism— that is, Instant Majoritarianism, Instant Equality, and Instant Replay...
...He was to teach English as a "second language" to a class made up mainly of ghetto students...
...Television cameras rolled as militants and police pushed each other on a parking lot next to the Administration building...
...The ease and cheapness of achieving Instant Equality through the technology of confrontationism is too attractive to ignore...
...STATE George Murray, the Black Panther Minister of Education, was also a part-time graduate student and part-time instructor at the College...
...Have all these values gone topsy-turvy...
...he argued that a better representation of other viewpoints needs to be achieved...
...Its description of violence may open the floodgates to otherwise inhibited violence elsewhere...
...was adopted...
...The Trustees were given the College's formal proposal for a B.A...
...As reports of a typewriter thrown out of a window, several small fires, and disrupted classes reached President Smith, he called upon the San Francisco police to restore order...
...For liberals, education is a civilizing force in human development...
...On the issues of law-and-order and campus unrest, which are bound to be prominent in the 1970 campaign, neither man could politically afford to appear weak or undecided...
...The danger of Instant Replay is of the dimension of the McCarthy Era in American history...
...Senator Joe McCarthy gave confrontationism its first major test run in America...
...On December 6, 1967, BSU and MAPS (Movement Against Political Suspensions, an ad hoc student group) conducted a well-televised demonstration to protest suspensions...
...e.g., Reagan's campaign to deny Eldridge Cleaver at the University and George Murray at the College status as temporary instructors...
...These 60 de partments of the College are distributed among 6 schools, headed by deans whose administrative and clerical staffs are laughably tiny...
...Trustees...
...President Smith was obviously not without his own confrontationist motivations...
...Speed, brevity, and action demand that the interview become a confrontation...
...On February 22, 1968, Summerskill tendered his resignation, effective in Septem ber...
...This Busy Majority tends to be liberal in outlook, too preoccupied to become campus activists, and unable financially to afford loss of course credits or school time...
...one of its faculty sponsors has been Dr...
...Johns reported near-agreement on all but one stipulation of a proposed settlement...
...3) creation of RALPH M. GOLDMAN an autonomous Black Studies Department...
...Chancellor Dumke immediately appointed Dr...
...In a televised meeting of the board, the Trustees submitted Summerskill to a humiliating interrogation...
...4) filling of all unused admissions in the special admissions program...
...Personal assault and property damage were incurred more systematically than in December...
...Instant Majoritarianism requires the presence of an adamant minority that suddenly wishes to be perceived as the majority...
...During the mid-December demonstrations, the AFT decided to piggy-back onto the student strike...
...where there are more radicals and hippies per classroom than at most other colleges...
...Then the question arose whether the AFT strike was really a "strike...
...Hare...
...In this confrontation, Reagan has several built-in advantages over Alioto...
...What remains to be seen is the judgment and skill with which the leadership of AFT Local 1352 proceeds...
...There is consequently a special poignancy in hearing the pickets shout: "Shut it down...
...degree in Black Studies...
...The situation looks worse and worse...
...Does the confusion arise out of the impulse to withhold teaching services at a time when more and better instruction is needed as a civilizing instrument...
...In fact, armies as small as the educational liberals' need extraordinary judgment in matches against larger forces...
...The stakes are therefore higher than the 1970 election or the survival of SF State...
...Nathan Hare, the Black Studies Department chairman...
...Meanwhile, Smith notified Murray of his suspension...
...FREEDOM IS SLAVERY...
...Consider the cost of destroying the deceitful notion of SEPARATE BUT EQUAL...
...Majority rule is a normal basis of power in the United States, except for those stubborn minorities who know how to filibuster in the U.S...
...State Superintendent of Public Instruction Max Rafferty is also succinct: the solution for SF State is "less students and less faculty...
...Here again, appearances—televised and headlined—are a danger to reality, but an even greater danger to reason...
...Thus, the Black Panther who shouts "kill, kill" (instead of teaching the English language, which he does so well), the Mexican-American student with his four-letter expletives (instead of the poetry he writes so well), the distortion on the face of the faculty member who shouts "scab" and "fink" at some long-beloved colleague, the crowding of small numbers of demonstrators into narrow parking lots and street corners to be filmed as a "mob," the RALPH M. GOLDMAN planting of stink bombs that might yet become real bombs, the starting of small skirmishes to bring out platoons of police...
...Since the thirties trade unionists and civil libertarians have been the most persistent and successful users of traditional confrontation...
...Instant Equality...
...One department—Special Education—offers a doctorate jointly with the University of California...
...Conservatives...
...8) no disciplinary action against the strikers...
...San Francisco State, one of the largest of the 18 operating colleges in the California State College System, serves more than 18,500 students...
...Contemporary confrontationism is a greater and more insidious threat to the open society than mere confusion of values and slogans...
...The "Pre-History" of the Crisis RON MoscowlTz, a long-time educational reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote on December 2: "How does a prestigi ous college like San Francisco State get in the almost helpless mess that the campus finds itself...
...A pitched battle with the cops is always productive of Instant Equality...
...The first serious violence between police and students occurred on November 13, whereupon President Smith ordered the campus shut down...
...9) prohibition of Trustee dissolution of any Black Studies programs on or off campus...
...Conversely, President Hayakawa, acting in concert with Chancellor-Trustee tactics, is a source of widespread nervousness even among his closest faculty friends...
...He acted contrary to strong representations by community leaders...
...More grave than our local problem is the question whether American society will be able to hear and attend to the legitimate, the burning problems of its students, teachers, Negroes, MexicanAmericans, and other dissidents, if it continues to be distracted by the tactics of confrontationism...
...A case study in contemporary confrontationism, in particularly complex form, may be drawn from events at San Francisco State College—where a Hyde Park-type speaker's platform, the first on any American campus, sits in mid-campus...
...Some 40 faculty members, responding to the hiring-firing due process implications of Murray's suspension, issued their own strike call if Murray was not restored to faculty status by November 12...
...It has had a large representation in the College's academic senate...
...The danger of Instant Majoritarianism lies in the persistence of illusion untied to a negotiating and legislative process...
...Any attempt to make the Black Studies Department comply with the process by which a typical department achieves its agent's autonomy [in making academic appointments in the name of the College] is hopeless...
...Right now confrontationism seems to be a strategy without a plan for termination...
...These are liberal professors instituting a segregationist dichotomy between white and CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...On the California campuses this confrontation is nothing less than a struggle for the minds and attitudes of the next generation of citizens...
...Meanwhile, state officials, particularly Governor Reagan and Chancellor Dumke, became adamant about terminating the services of faculty absent from classes...
...Do they realize how much they have already lost...
...Thus, with about 200 faculty having "resigned" and over 5,000 students having departed, the Trustees will have "solved" the San Francisco State College fiscal crisis...
...The traditional journalistic problem is to tell what is new and significant in an understandable and interesting manner...
...2) a full professorship for Dr...
...To get the cameras and the press onto the scene requires little more than phone calls reporting an imminent inflammatory pronouncement, or a rumor of plans for violence...
...Instant Replay...
...Two other confrontations developed later: one grew out of the invasion of the campus newspaper office, on November 6, by a group of Black Student Union (BSU) members—among them Black Panther leader George A. Murray—during which the paper's editor was assaulted, property was damaged...
...This conception has been embedded in the hierarchical character of higher education in California: the University has the best students and gets the most resources, the colleges rating second best, and the junior colleges even less...
...If SF State and other liberal colleges were half their present size, such reductions would penalize the "trouble-makers" and cut off the supply of "radical-liberal" citizens (who become voters) at the source...
...This technological attribute challenges the tactical ingenuity of the cops, the Establishment, and competing minorities, each eager to transmit its own "action...
...Summerskill did not call in the police, who were nonetheless on standby along neighboring streets...
...Faculties vs...
...The Political Pathology of Confrontafionism IN MANY RESPECTS, confrontation is an ancient political tactic, in which leaders of a coalition isolate a common enemy against whom they may remain united, or flush an elusive adversary out into the open, or test a specific issue or degree of strength, etc...
...In the eight years since Dumke left cam pus to become Chancellor of the California State College System, San Francisco State College has had five presidents and a heavy turnover of administrators...
...Smith called for a confrontation of his own, inviting the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the Chancellor, and their General Counsel to meet with him the next day, November 1, in San Francisco...
...the difference between the Black Panther party and the NAACP, each of which has its own internal factional version of the militant-moderate debate over tactics...
...Ordinary people, even at an off-beat college, view these manifestations as fearsome and, knowingly or not, easily attribute "power" to those who employ such appearances and tactics...
...Later, Murray explained that it was "to protect themselves from the racist administrators...
...Perhaps the largest and most active faculty-interest group in recent years has been the Association of California State College Professors (ACSCP...
...These particular false dichotomies were embedded in elaborate principles...
...the presence of black nonstudents during the more violent confrontations...
...The state's personnel statutes prescribed that any faculty member absent from normal duties for five consecutive days shall be considered as having resigned...
...Above all, Instant Replay pushes back the thin line between appearances and reality, further confounding the Silent Majority that watches the tube at home or glances at news papers over breakfast...
...Thus, the faculty recruiting committee gave the Trustees little choice but to appoint Smith for president...
...The excep tion was a grievance procedure which he said had been "shot down" by the Trustees...
...At San Francisco State College, the day, CONFRONTATION AT S.F...
...Then, in 1965, the Trustees voted to correct an administrative error in faculty-salary budgeting by arbitrarily reducing faculty salaries by 1.8 per cent...
...The Senate's Ad Hoc Committee on the campus crisis, composed—just as is the Senate—of liberals of long standing, enunciated the ra tionalization as follows...
...others required breaches of faculty due process (e.g., automatic promotion for Hare and dismissal of the Financial Aids officer without charges...
...bad guys," and, regardless of complexities, compels the audience into dichotomous choices...
...A small explosion and several fires occurred around campus...
...The second prospect—of having the liberal idiom stolen by the conservatives—is just as insidious...
...Finally, administrators, leaders of the faculty senate, and BSU—TWLF student leaders agreed to conduct a continuing, all-day debate on television...
...The special admission program had fallen somewhat short of the authorized 400 students, and the Political Science Chairman, as noted earlier, had been critical of Hare's approach to Black Studies...
...The best way to cut through the confusion is to deal with one set of confrontationists at a time, and only with the major ones at that...
...In this way, confrontationism simplifies conflict into "good guys" vs...
...another resulted from the publication of alleged obscenities in one of the campus papers, Open Process...
...within the week he was compelled to resign because of Trustee intransigence...
...lic notice of his dismissal almost immediately thereafter...
...On May 21, 1968, TWLF, BSU, and SDS staged a demonstration demanding the retention of Martinez (whose one-year appointment was terminating), the inauguration of a Black Studies program, the special admission of 400 minority students with less-thanadmissionstandard school records, and the termination of the College's contract with the Air Force ROTC...
...Instant Replay may define the components of an event in a pattern impossible to undo by subsequent reportage...
...Under that Plan, the University bested the colleges in caliber of students to be admitted, dollar support per student, fac ulty salaries, experienced administrators, budget and curriculum flexibility, to mention but a few of the discriminatory arrangements...
...Its ideological commitment to compromise and law invite tests of its physical strength and its willingness to assume risks...
...President Summerskill called in the San Francisco police...
...On October 24, the Board of Trustees met in regular session at Fresno State College...
...Hayakawa had the Thanksgiving holiday as a respite...
...The next day Mayor Alioto asked his district attorney to look into "such exhortations to violence" to determine if a clear-and-present danger of violence existed or if a felony had or was about to be committed...
...Consider the cost of demonstrating that the conflict in Vietnam is between more parties than the United States and North Vietnam...
...Some students are simply better and smarter than others, and the social investment in them should vary accordingly...
...His credentials seemed excellent: youthful, liberal, sensitive to the aspirations of minority students, and willing to spend hours on end in discussions with the student leadership...
...These are liberals arguing for the principle that a judgment about professional competence should be (we recognize that it too often is) made on the basis of race...
...Every one of Reagan's "tough" comments—as governor—on the crisis generates statewide television coverage...
...On October 9, Presidential candidate Cleaver spoke from the college's speaker's platform, treating the crowd to a generous flow of four-letter expletives...
...They never showed up...
...He announced his resignation from the College's presidency on November 26, at the end of a 15-hour session of the Trustees...
...This dull professional dictum is quickly translated by the unprofessional into: "Tell what is lastminute and violent or controversial, and do so in one-syllable words, breathlessly...
...We have an investigation in progress and necessary action would have been taken at the appropriate time...
...But last year AFT Local 1352 had a hard time on campus...
...He simply closed the campus for the day...
...The reader is asked to remember these descriptive details, for nearly all are grist for the confrontation mill...
...By 2:00 P.M., he closed the campus for the rest of the day...
...Education inhibits prejudice and brute passion...
...the "demand" had to do with the issuance of student class rankings to draft boards...
...10) reinstatement of George Murray...
...In the days that followed, several attempts to reopen classes brought violence and the Tactical Squad back onto campus...
...Faculty rep resentatives at the meeting were similarly treated...
...Yet, San Francisco State is one of the leading urban colleges in the nation, despite the shadows cast over it by Berkeley and Stanford...
...He was then widely supported by faculty at San Francisco State and other campuses...
...Smith's response, in a public statement, was in part as follows: "The action of the Chancellor is unprecedented...
...Another conservative proposition is that education costs, hence, should be made available only to the loyal, the obedient, and the grateful...
...6) 20 teaching positions for the Black Studies Department...
...On Halloween Eve, Chancellor Dumke, citing Section 43522 of Title V of the California Administrative Code, directed President Smith to "suspend George Murray temporarily as a member of the faculty and as a student" on grounds of misconduct...
...Under this Plan the University (now with nine campuses around the state) was to specialize, as it always had, in professional training and "the research function...
...There is the conservative, strictly bread-and-butter, more than 100,000 civil-servant strong California State Employees Association (CSEA), which has a special section for college faculty...
...But logical questioning is taken to be a bore, both on TV and in the headline that must be distilled from the event...
...Hence, the schools must make their classrooms available to everyone, at whatever financial cost to society...
...At San Francisco State, one could call the criss-crossing lines of battle "an ecology of confrontations...
...Militancy" sometimes becomes a euphemism for violence or the threat thereof...
...Thus each party, by definition, is half the story, half the conflict, and equally as important as the other...
...The two-year junior colleges— now numbering more than 80—constitute a third component of higher education...
...The proportion of doctorate degrees among the newly hired faculty has dropped sharply in recent years, leading to a disproportionate number of part-time faculty (whose role in faculty affairs is a hidden dimension in the current crisis) . The 18 campuses of the California State College System serve over 200,000 students with a corps of more than 8,000 full-time faculty...
...Smith, with remarkable understatement, observed that Trustees' intervention in a faculty personnel matter without explicit charges was "most unusual...
...Less clear at that time were the makings of a confrontation in 1970, when Governor Reagan would run for re-election and San Francisco's Mayor Alioto would be his likeliest Democratic opponent...
...You will not have the luxury of nice distinctions or Byzantine excuses...
...5) admission of all black applicants into the College, regardless of number...
...in many circumstances, it operates as an imperfect mechanism—not equally or immediately open to all its members...
...As far as San Francisco State College and the Bay Area are concerned, an immediate question pertains to the judgment and skill of the black militants themselves...
...In short, confrontationism, by rendering the liberals self-contradictory or speechless, has afforded the conservative confrontationists an opportunity to co-opt the language of liberalism as part of their campaign to undermine liberalism...
...How things appeared on campus often had more to do with struggles in arenas distant from the College...
...Will the faculties find the skills needed to tackle the large tasks of designing and promoting new legislation for their self-governance and public accountability...
...The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) , strong at the University, has only recently begun to emerge on college campuses...
...Confrontationism, on the other hand, employs appearances and illusion rather than observable realities in order to elicit perceptions of "powerfulness...
...IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH...
...Reagan, whose winding past includes the presidency of an actor's union, issued a "you-can't-have-your-cakeandeat-it" challenge, recalling that workers really on strike usually really withhold services and really lose their salaries...
...ACSCP's most vigorous challenger has been the American Federation of Teachers (AFT...
...Not because [that Department] hasn't a legitimate program with standards, but because we are white and they are black, and because this is no time for whites to say to blacks: "You must convince us of your standards before you proceed...
...Republican candidate Rafferty was for law-and-order on the campuses, for "cleaning out" radical professors and hippie students...
...On January 3, its president, Gary Hawkins, announced to faculty members not belonging to AFT: "Violating our picket line will be interpreted to mean that you have chosen to be with the Trustees and against us...
...significant segregationist and military behaviors were the consequence of each...
...Can they turn off an ill-prepared and poorly-supported "strike" without giving unionism in higher education a permanent setback...
...The economics of screen space and newspaper paragraphs is such that third, fourth, and other parties are necessarily shunted off-stage...
...The strike had not been called in a unionlike way, that is, before rather than after negotiating efforts had been initiated...
...Since the campus is state property, city police may come onto it only on the invitation of the state official in charge, in this case, Summerskill...
...Many of the non-AFT faculty, with years of commitment to unionism and liberal causes, found themselves called "fink" and "scab" as they did what they never dreamed they would some day do, that is, cross a picket line...
...Property damage was light, and the militants were de nied their confrontation...
...Negroes...
...The only confrontationists among the faculty organizations are the AFT leaders, and they have acted accordingly...
...The colleges, many of them still state normal schools, were grouped together under a new board of trustees to function primarily as "teaching institutions...
...In his initial address to the faculty, President Smith outlined elaborate plans for experiment and change...
...A principal architect of the Plan was Glenn S. Dumke, then president of San Francisco State College (1957-61) and now chancellor of the entire California State College System...
...Its liberties, tolerance, and constraints upon powerful minorities invite attack, license, and violence by the aggrieved, short-tempered, and politically unskilled...
...The latter were flushed out of their relative silence on February 11 by George Johns, Secretary of the San Francisco Labor Council...
...And when the Academic Senate asked the faculty which organization should serve as its bargaining agent, AFT lost out by a small margin to ACSCP...
...Of the 900 regular faculty, 80 per cent cast ballots...
...On October 18 two bomb-like contraptions were found on campus: one at the Admissions office, and the other at the door of the Political Science Chairman...
...Its unrepresentativeness and exaggerations may disrupt a firmly established public consensus...
...Problems came upon Summerskill from the very beginning...
Vol. 16 • March 1969 • No. 2
