A War Against the Young?
H., I.
SENATOR GEORGE MCGOVERN has expressed the fear that the might of American insti tutions will be rallied in "a war against the young." Irritated with campus dissent, itching for a...
...Repression is certain to exacerbate the already dangerous "generational split...
...But there is no comfort in having been "right" on this matter...
...That there is a problem of disruption on the campus, that segments of SDS have become infatuated with violence, that such tactics play into the hands of the Reagans and McClellans, that the backlash against which we have been warning seems now to be gathering force—all this is true...
...Repression will not silence campus protest, which runs far more deeply and extends far more widely than any similar mood in previous American history...
...and if reactionary legislators start butting in, they won't be solved at all...
...The number of bills presented before state legislatures aimed at students is enormous...
...And finally those teachers on the Left who have some influence with student dissidents ought to have the good sense to speak, in a tone of friendly criticism, against some of the self-destructive excesses in which New Left students have indulged...
...some have passed...
...The problems of the American campus are not going to be solved in a hurry...
...University teachers, even as they resist disruption within, should continue to resist intervention from without...
...Repression will only lead to a further and disastrous "polarization" of the society such as can benefit neither social progress nor liberal values...
...And repression will reinforce those students who have succumbed to left-authoritarian views and try to persuade their fellows that democracy is "a mere sham...
...SENATOR GEORGE MCGOVERN has expressed the fear that the might of American insti tutions will be rallied in "a war against the young...
...And in certain localities un COMMENTS AND OPINIONS warranted penalties and excessive force have been used against student demonstrators—e.g., at Dartmouth where students who had engaged in a campus sit-in were sentenced to 30 days in jail and at Berkeley, where a conflict over a park resulted in large-scale official violence by the National Guard...
...The remaining liberal voices in Congress have an immediate obligation to speak out— Teddy Kennedy's claims to liberal leadership will be tested by his candor on this issue...
...When the Congress begins to attack such problems as the Vietnam war, poverty in the ghettos, and pollution in the cities, then it will be time enough for it to worry about the campus...
...Subpoenas have gone out to several Ivy League colleges from the McClellan Committee demanding that records of dissident and dis ruptive students be turned over for inspection...
...Once begun, repression becomes a blight on the entire society, as those who remember the era of McCarthyism know only too well...
...Irritated with campus dissent, itching for a chance to crack down on radicals, hand ed convenient pretexts by the irresponsible tac tics of certain sections of the New Left, the powers-that-be in Washington, as well as in many state legislatures and local governments, are preparing, says Senator McGovern, a coun teroffensive of repression...
Vol. 16 • July 1969 • No. 4
