Up Against the Statler-Hilton Wall
Robbins, Richard
THE DEMAND FOR DEEPER CHANGE in American society is an encouraging sign. Liberals, affirming their faith in the country, concede "the system" remains obdurate and search for policies...
...Ohmann is shocked that "a meritocracy of scholarship" governs the MLA, that so many of the papers are trivial, that the chances of an activist nonpublishing scholar from a small Midwest school of being elected president of MLA are nil...
...But if we are genuinely interested in significant social change, then the consequences of this corridor activism seem, to me at least, of little importance compared to what could be done by the same people in national and local political groups...
...Clearly the APSA requires internal reform...
...Why did community health care have so small a place in medical school curricula...
...Did the SLM accomplish anything at San Francisco on this count...
...But when Professor Lynd, as President Lynd, proposes to infuse the profession with "guerrilla history" and "street history"—whatever that means—it is enough to make one vote for Palmer, automatically...
...Could not the association take no position qua group on these external problems while encouraging its members to follow their individual political consciences when they return to their communities...
...Some observers are nevertheless prepared to concede that the insurgents have at least brought in a fresh perspective, new faces, a certain zest for annual meetings previously cut to a stuffy formula...
...Has the great effort to unseat the internal Establishment and transform the bland annual meeting accomplished something of value...
...I have read the voluminous reports of the proceedings of the following societies (as well as brief accounts of others) : The Modern Language Association, The American Political Science Association, The American Psychological Association, The National Council of Churches, The American Historical Association, the Unitarian-Universalist Association, The American Psychiatric Association, the national associations of Catholic bishops, of Reformed Jews, of Episcopalians, of specialists on Asian and on African studies...
...This is a challenge of far greater importance than that internal restructuring of "oligarchical tendencies" which occupies so much time in "softer" fields such as the social sciences and humanities...
...In any event, since the AMA and the ABA do indeed seek to wield power on a national scale, the place to contest them politically is all year long in Washington, not for a week in the New York Hilton...
...And who tilled the vast expanses of land...
...The American Dental Association, out of concern for the health of American children, is not deterred from moving out into the political community where interest groups are in conflict over fluoridation of the water supply in cities throughout the country...
...The meetings come to seem flat, stale, and unprofitable, there in the Sheratons and Hiltons, while outside Watts bums and Saigon makes a mockery of American purpose...
...And the beautiful, all-powerful force called love magically takes away all of their personal frustrations...
...Here it suffices to say the ASA leadership would be astonished to discover it commands such vast power...
...Followed by more meetings...
...H H OW IS THIS INTERNAL CONFLICT manifested...
...it discourages us from struggling to solve our problems...
...to Nazism...
...Sandra Biblarz in et at, Fall 1969 RICHARD ROBBINS radicals to work in, around, and in spite of institutions of higher education...
...to Noam Chomsky (not the MLA) on the importance of the dissent ing intellectual...
...This line hurts people...
...Where the delegates have in some measure actually contributed to "shaking up the system" or "reexamining our national priorities," they have probably done so back home...
...Not really...
...There are those, however, far more politically engaged in the broad sense than I am, who would nonetheless take a contrary view...
...I have not looked closely at the scientific, engineering, chemical-corporate associations...
...The ASA is about what it was, no better, no worse...
...There is just no nationwide, all-disciplines scholarly group that can possibly compete with political parties or trade unions...
...The program cover The Higher Criticism ROMEO AND JULIET may be about some people who lived a long time ago, but it's chock-full of the kind of idealistic lies that help keep capitalism going today...
...If our professional society is a microcosm of everything that's wrong with the society, then why not begin at home...
...Middle-aged professionals and scholars are paid, after all, by "the system" to teach students, address readers, treat patients, defend clients, design buildings...
...What they are entitled to say is simply that if there is something called a decent and humane society, then we, a group of specialists meeting here in Pittsburgh, want to call attention to what seems to us an assault upon that decency and humaneness...
...They have had some sporadic disruptions RICHARD ROBBINS young doctors rushing to the AMA microphones on the platform to speak passionately to conservative colleagues from Dubuque on the appalling health conditions in the ghetto...
...In this nonradical way was Pitirim Sorokin finally elected to the ASA presidency he very much deserved...
...Liberals, affirming their faith in the country, concede "the system" remains obdurate and search for policies beyond the New Deal...
...Particular congressmen are singled out for special awards, and internships with Congress are funneled through the same small group in the APSA...
...Hopefully, through one's work and after work, one could say and do something relevant about the condition of American life...
...And the whole system is further reinforced by preselected slates for office in place of elections...
...what is their association going to do about it...
...From the great wash of oratory at these conventions and the stacks of leaflets turned out during Christmas and Labor Day holidays, I have been able to sift out two basic considerations: the internal and the external, each representing a common effort to challenge power and to democratize a system...
...At least those in the humanities associations recognize the limits of their influence, so that insurgency is largely confined to "opening up" one's own organization...
...Nicolaus about this odd assumption elsewhere...
...Or write a powerful tract, alone, in one's study...
...For background I am indebted to the editors of the Antioch Review (Fall 1969) who devote an issue to the politics of scholarship...
...Otherwise, would not the association be impinging on the civil liberties of dissenters within its own ranks if in its own name it passed a resolution in behalf of the total membership...
...They fall back, then, on their work...
...The insurgents, "the most militant caucus in the social sciences," won a majority at the meeting on various resolutions...
...But the net result, sadly, was all style and mood, a politics of theater...
...Wolfe writes wistfully and somewhat enviously of Mr...
...Which is not to say that all is trivia...
...It is understood that the denunciation of Mayor Daley will not really restructure the politics of Chicago, or a denunciation of the war deter the generals in Saigon...
...Take the AAAS: its increasing responsiveness to public isues has been the re sult of policy changes initiated by the federal government, Congress in particular...
...In a critical article on a not-very-interesting educational magazine funded by the Esso Foundation at nearly half a million dollars, DISSENT is given high praise for producing a valuable journal of opinion for only $50,000 a year, no strings attached to big money...
...The war continues, the urban problems get worse, the police manhandle protesters...
...A radical black caucus, organized at the Montreal meetings of the African Studies Association, engaged in a continuing series of disruptions against those giving papers, black and white scholars alike...
...Robbins, from a variety of points of view.--En...
...One would expect to find a more open, creative approach to, say, teaching and research in American history...
...Thus, we are told, Max Weber's primary goal was to conduct "an epic campaign against Marx" which led Weber eventually to an emphasis on value-free sociology and the bureaucratization of modern life, which led...
...Given limited gains and possible dangers, a reasonable version of the traditional approach— the "liberal" approach if you like —still appears to me worth preserving: attend the annual meetings if you need a job, want to give a paper you think is worthwhile, or if you would like to spend a few days with colleagues who share your discipline...
...I'm confident my own dentist would vote "for...
...Nicolaus attributes to it...
...In all these were rival political groups...
...The membership claims no special wisdom...
...Real elections are better than pro forma elections anytime...
...I think it should...
...Yet there is not a single word in his article to show the results of his conversion unless by "socialism" you mean supporting a young professor, Louis Kampf, for president of the MLA against an older professor, or indulging oneself in easy contempt for convention papers on "Arboreal Figures in the Golden Age Sonnet...
...The late Professor Sorokin, once secretary to Kerensky, a distinguished sociologist, a bitter critic of "sensate" contemporary society and of superficial methodology in sociology—and the last possible man to choose as a revolutionary hero...
...A few have been fired— that should be fought vigorously by all of us...
...So far, no more than the MLA situation...
...Whether their intent is to make the association "more responsive" or to "radicalize our profession," the results are clear: the politicalization of what have traditionally been limited-purpose organizations...
...New Left sources are cited as unfailingly correct, other scholars and associations are invariably assumed to be part of an interlocking directorate controlling research resources and inhibiting free inquiry—David Riesman and Kenneth Keniston are singled out...
...Possibly...
...Our man on the Democratic Left at least shares the liberal's concern and the radical's frustration...
...This tight conspiracy comes right down to the 1969 convention in San Francisco— another transfer from Mayor Daley's Chicago—where Nicolaus finds sociology in deepest decline, "Simmel/Coser and Billy Graham, the left wing of functionalism and * Martin Nicolaus, "Remarks at ASA Convention," and Richard Robbins, "Who Will Liberate the Sociology Liberation Movement...
...Moreover, it threatens to ruin the legitimate interest of many young sociologists in internal restructuring...
...The American Political Science Association (APSA), a very large and influential group disposing an annual budget of $2.5 million, represents a somewhat different and possibly important story, for here the question of internal restructuring does have some bearing on the external structure...
...it lacks the skill for playing such a role, even if it wanted to...
...But again, would internal restructuring, however more significant than in the other cases, make a difference in the direction Nixonism will take on national policy...
...As a matter of fact, when for a time the New Left sociologists came to power in the department of sociology at Simon Fraser University they proceeded to a repressive intolerance which meant open hostility to recruiting any sociologist not conforming to their party line...
...the right wing of Richard Nixon," brought together in political coalition...
...From Challenge, (organ of the Progressive Labor party), September 1969 RICHARD ROBBINS shows C. Wright Mills, blind-folded, motorcycle behind, being shot down in front of the Pentagon by a firing squad of conventional sociologists...
...Better still, spend more energy on those academic organizations directly involved in the political process...
...Nearly all the young anthropologists in that packed room were for it, but no one could say just what it was...
...As for law and medicine, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association are too conservatively entrenched to warrant a sustained effort at making them more progressive from within...
...When a nationally-known scholar is forceful enough to break through to a broader public, he does so on his own, in speech and print, and by joining with others in a political movement—far more than by trying to mobilize his professional association...
...New Leftists, despairing of "the system," may yet move on from rhetoric and anger to disciplined action—and, then again, may not...
...We listen to a Hans Morgenthau (not the political science association) on the tragedy of Vietnam...
...For all the slipshod material, however, the Antioch Review presents a useful compilation, especially on the three cases I have chosen: The Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Sociological Association (ASA), and the American Political Science Association (APSA...
...let there be professionalism with a human face...
...It is difficult to generalize: each association has different problems...
...The result, Wolfe holds, is a "new conservative" political science, too closely linked with, and deferential to, Congress and the regulatory agencies...
...The association of Asian scholars has been compelled to give more attention to contemporary China, less to the ancient dynasties...
...Otherwise, don't go...
...The tactics of the insurgents—mostly radical— ranged from forceful debate to dramatic demonstration to milling about...
...Much is wrong with the sociological discipline, to be sure...
...Sorokin Lives...
...Seeking to persuade us that the opposite is true, the Sociology Liberation Movement only succeeds in moving toward a conspiratorial theory that bears little relationship to the society the SLM criticizes so severely...
...This effort to make the annual conventions bear the weight of an activity they were never designed to sustain is clearly the result of a rising level of frustration among a minority of younger professionals...
...But there is more...
...Why, in law school, was there too much on torts and too little UP AGAINST THE STATLER-HILTON WALL on law and poverty...
...Some holding this view would be willing to modify so strict a definition when it could be shown that the vital interests of the professors were directly threatened...
...The "domestication" of Marxism and the end-of-ideology thesis in American sociology is a matter for serious debate...
...perhaps the safest conclusion there is that these groups are being pressed into consideration of a really vital problem: the imbalance in natural science research arising from excessive involvement with defense agencies and corporations...
...Meanwhile older delegates, some conservative and some, ironically, more genuinely radical than the young Turks attacking them, react to the insurgent groups with pain and anger...
...Nicolaus's "reactionary" ASA where even nominations, let alone elections, can be overturned by members' write-in votes...
...Yet it is simply not important enough on the national scene to perform the powerful servicing function Mr...
...in The American Sociologist, May 1969...
...I have argued with Mr...
...Secondly, we are fed the lie that love between a man and a woman means that they get along perfectly...
...Allan Wolfe, in "Practicing the Pluralism We Preach," (also in the Fall 1969 issue of Antioch Review) is able to show in considerable detail that something like an "iron law of oligarchy" does prevail...
...It is excellent that the radical historian Staughton Lynd challenged for the presidency of the American Historical Association Prof...
...Yet, simply to "give up evenings" in behalf of Eugene McCarthy, the preparation of an ad in the Times, the organization of a peace march on Washington— all that seems not enough by half...
...For they see, and they say their elders are blind to, a new form of involvement— political confrontation within one's own professional association...
...Conservative oppression is now carried on by the modern "functionalists," a troika of Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, and Lewis Coser, aided and abetted by those who worked for Western Electric (Elton Mayo) and for the military (Samuel Stouffer...
...The conclusion that the meetings of the professional associations are relatively poor vehicles for social action is not one I reached in haste or out of pique...
...They profess open-mindedness but most of the contributors operate from the double standard I have called into question...
...If there were space to include other cases —notably the associations of historians and psychologists—I believe my initial conclusion would be reinforced: annual conventions and permanent secretariats are not substantial agencies for achieving change within one's discipline, let alone in the society at large...
...The executive director—who still remains in office —had concealed ties with the CIA...
...Or consider anthropology...
...All the same, I see nothing lost and something gained—if only symbolically—in any national professional association, whether it be of English teachers or archeologists, setting out the views of the total membership (if polled) or merely those present in convention on such issues as the draft, Vietnam, military weapons, racial injustice...
...I attended a long 1968 session in Seattle of the American Anthropological Association devoted to "radical anthropology...
...At one point the radical group crossed the street, took over the general ASA session, and sought to conduct a memorial service for Ho Chi Minh...
...I can teach "conventional history" and work hard at getting history teachersorganized in a union...
...So, scientists and social scientists would have no difficulty condemning the department of Health, Education and Welfare for maintaining a blacklist of scholars judged unacceptable on political grounds for grants and consultantships...
...Romeo and Juliet never argue...
...Clearly, in some contrast with MLA and ASA, it interlocks far too tightly with official federal government...
...In the last three years scarcely a single professional association has been able to escape at its national convention a bewildering round of caucuses and counter-caucuses, endless demands and countless resolutions, sit-ins and walk-outs, "liberation movements" (radical, black, female) followed by an organized response on the part of those uneager to be told how they "shall" or "shall not be" liberated...
...Young law students are eager to join him, their minimal salaries funded by small foundations...
...I fail to see, however, that anything terribly significant has happened, much less that the MLA is now a vital instrument of social change, as Ohmann believes...
...The radical coalition in the American Sociological Association, called the Sociology Liberation Movement, is a much more disturbing phenomenon because its young leaders built their organization around the assumption that the ASA, with its 12,000 members and million-dollar budget, is a conscious and powerful agent of conservatism in society...
...There is also a demand that direction be wrested from an encrusted Establishment, an elite coalition of the permanent secretariat and the "stars"—the most famous from the prestigious universities and corporate-research entities...
...The entrenched group in the APSA has actually functioned in many instances as a supporting arm of governmental policy aimed at preserving the status quo and curbing innovation in the political process...
...Is it fair to ask how many white radicals in the professions are willing even to discuss what a black professional like Kenneth Clark freely discusses: the issue of black separatism...
...If, however, Senator Dodd of Professor Ohmann's Connecticut were running for president of the MLA instead of for reelection to the Senate...
...Or I can teach "radical history" and work hard at infusing my students with the sense that they must do now what the Abolitionists did then...
...The only problem they have is that their families are feuding...
...Radical counter-conventions were held across the street from the Hilton...
...Some have dropped out of "the system"— that is their option, not an instance of Marcuse's "repressive tolerance...
...If in what follows I confine myself primarily to the scholarly associations in the humanities and the social sciences, what is the basis for my rather pessimistic conclusion...
...Wolfe thinks possibly...
...to S. M. Luria and George Wald (as Nobel Prize winners and not as members of their respective associations) on the danger of supertechnology dominating science...
...to Martin Luther King (not the Negro Baptist associations) on just racial segregation...
...All right...
...Finally, the insurgents usually promise that teaching will be made more innovative...
...Where are all the peasants and workers who produced the wealth that enabled the lords and ladies to live so effortlessly...
...I would answer "yes," while recognizing that there is room here for honest difference and that the argument is not as simple and straightforward as it appears at first, even where the Vietnam war UP AGAINST THE STATLER-HILTON WALL is concerned...
...Middle-class professionals, inhabiting a territory that touches the ghetto at one end and the gold coast at the other, have been increasingly troubled as to how to make the most effective personal contribution to social change...
...But -a young doctor, socially committed, might simply refuse to join the AMA...
...On balance, I doubt it...
...This, it is said, ought to have a good effect on the scholarly professions, quite apart from resolutions on Vietnam and caucuses to put more anti-Establishment types on executive councils...
...The association's delegates are not saying that a profound knowledge of Melville converts you into an authority on the Antiballistic Missile...
...The MLA is a huge organization of English and foreign language teachers with 30,000 members and an annual budget of a million dollars...
...As a result, political conflict is forced into an internal and rather isolated frame within the associations, despite the appeals on the part of activist groups to "join up with the real world and its problems outside the walls of this hotel...
...The insurgents demand that the association be more "responsive" and democratic, the meetings more "relevant" (which seems to mean a hundred different things) and livelier...
...The line of the movie is that if only we weren't "star-crossed lovers" and "fortune's foes," if only we had better luck, we'd be happy...
...THE DEMAND FOR DEEPER CHANGE in American society is an encouraging sign...
...It's just like all the "modern" movies where you never see the workers who create the affluence of the rich capitalists...
...And Ralph Nader, all by himself and without the slightest interest in the ABA, has shown us what can be accomplished in the outer world for consumer protection...
...debate and catharsis took place...
...I think not...
...the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), our most prestigious scientific society, is more committed to weighing the impact of scientific research on public issues...
...Far better to work in nonacademic groups for political action...
...I would argue, however, that such commitment was largely forced upon the traditional groups by events in the general society...
...Granted that limited-purpose associations can get beyond their depth on these matters...
...I could cite a score of comparable examples of dogmatism and self-righteousness among the dissenting scholars which serve to vitiate some of the sensible proposals they have made and sometimes even suggest overtones of academic Stalinism updated...
...R. R. Palmer, who as vice-president would otherwise automatically have ascended to the presidency...
...First of all, the movie makes you identify with the rulers of feudal Italy, the big "lords" who controlled the land...
...Prof...
...When they saw each other for the first time, they immediately fell in love without knowing anything about each other, (except, of course, that they were both upper-class enough to be at the party of a feudal lord...
...Even if we -accept the idea that somehow ferment and fervor are bound to have a positive result, it can still be dangerous to the freedom of scholars if the assumption goes unchallenged that any "radical" insurgency is by definition on the side of truth and justice, any counterargument by definition a dreary defense of the status quo...
...Nevertheless, he is pleased—as are many other scholars who see no reason to take a heroic "socialist" posture—that the MLA voted to condemn the immoral war in Vietnam, to resist Congressional legislation aimed at repressing college dissent, and to move its last convention out of Mayor Daley's Chicago...
...Should not the departments of physics have dealt with the relationship of scientific research to military-industrial sponsorship...
...education by virtue of any activity at the meetings of national associations...
...They hold that professional associations, once embarked on this course, will bog down in endless dispute—today Vietnam, tomorrow South Africa, then Israel, Franco Spain, and so on...
...Indeed, it makes them very angry...
...For while the APSA is now undoubtedly going to become more changeoriented— to use Wolfe's language—the national government is most likely to become less change-oriented...
...Nevertheless it is worth doing...
...national associations as diverse as the librarians (who recently called for "a revolution in our profession"), the Catholic bishops, and the social workers have become aware of their obligation to crack the system of color discrimination...
...And if you are genuinely committed to social change, organize a rival association...
...In future issues we will print other articles on the topics raised by Mr...
...Who prepared the food...
...Buttons were distributed: Sorokin Lives...
...The general business meeting, once lost in obscurity, is now packed to the walls, reverberating to cries of "point of order...
...L L ET ME touch briefly on the external problem that I have drawn from the round of annual meetings: should limited-purpose associations pass resolutions for and against a multitude of domestic and international policies adopted by one's own and other governments...
...A A LL THIS POLITICAL ACTIVITY makes for livelier—though sometimes uglier—annual conventions...
...The frustration is compounded by initiation into the annual ritual of the national meetings where jobs are sought, papers heard, friendships renewed...
...Yet the Antioch editors permit one of the contributors to charge, with absolutely no basis in fact, that one of DISSENT's editors is a willing participant in undercover research for the federal government...
...But what are we to make of those in the black caucus who insisted that only Africans or black Americans could have the special insights to be specialists in this field...
...Martin Nicolaus, writing on "The Professional Organization of Sociology—a View UP AGAINST THE STATLER-HILTON WALL from Below," insists that the sociologists play an important part in legitimizing the oppressive class structure in America...
...The establishment of an interim governing board, half black and half white, did not meet that question...
...The science action groups within the AAAS, with their rhetoric ("Science for the People") and their penchant for convention confrontation ("we invite community action groups to come in andtell it like it is to the scientists"), are actually turning away from the very national power structure they view as the core of the problem toward localism...
...For some younger professionals and scholars this pluralism of choice seems unsatisfying...
...None of the Montagues or Capulets ever did a minute's work...
...The fact is that, with few exceptions, these associations, drawn heavily from the univerisities, do not have much of a capacity qua groups to alter the shape of our society...
...Would the SLM have honored a request from the floor for equal time for memorial services for Norman Thomas...
...For all those along the political spectrum the question is not what to do, but how to do it...
...Richard Ohmann, chancellor pro tern of Wesleyan University, who writes on establishment control of the Modern Language Association, is described by the editors as "one of the few scholars `. . . ever converted to socialism by writing my doctoral dissertation.' However, it took him ten years to realize the experience could be put to use...
...Yet most of these people remain regularly employed in the universities...
...they seemed to have no time for anything but lavish parties and squabbles...
...Much ado about nothing (Shakespeare...
...All laudable...
...But who sewed all the beautiful clothes...
...Out of concern for the needless deaths of Vietnamese men, women, and children massacred by American soldiers at Songmy, should not the American Dental Association vote a condemnation of our own government at its next convention for permitting this atrocity to take place...
...Given the demands of work and family, few can "give up everything" to become full-time activists...
...The frustration is compounded by a retrospective view of graduate school...
...But the SLM's internal-external ideology only compounds confusion...
...Its sporadic involvement in dubious work for the government abroad—Project Camelot in Chile, Michigan State's "pacification" work in Vietnam—reflect the naivete and obtuseness (and maybe greed) of some sociologists, not their integration into some vast sociological power elite...
...But I have yet to see exuberance of spirit translated into meaningful reforms in graduate UP AGAINST THE STATLER-HILTON WALL...
...Still, let us be candid...
...I am with Chancellor-socialist Ohmann to that degree at least...
...Which is what some New Left people have come to realize in forming the New University Conference, "a national organization of Deep Thoughts: New Left Department Changing the grading system [in universities] as a reform may be called counter-revolutionary because it obscures the nature ofthe university and ruling class interests, siphons off well-intentioned energies which could be attacking the ruling class, createsa false consciousness, and changes little ornothing...
...In my own profession of sociology, for example, the New Left faction has been insisting that "a wave of repression" has been sweeping the academy in our discipline...
...T T HREE CASE HISTORIES, perhaps not completely representative but characteristic of the intensity of conflict, will bear me out, I think, in asserting the limited value of confrontation politics in professional conventions...
Vol. 17 • March 1970 • No. 2
