Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR REBELLION AT BERKELEY THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. Like President Clark Kerr's The Uses of the...
...Second, on the issue of campus involvement in the community ("mounting action," etc...
...On December 8, the Campus Academic Senate, by a vote of over 800 to 115, passed a resolution containing the entire essence of the FSM position...
...No doubt a new version of the medieval argument a contingentia...
...the civil liberties issue involved, which was important enough for the ACLU to put out an l l-page memorandum on it, is slighted...
...But if they are used to explain away reality, we enter a make-believe world, where no real issues exist...
...Thomas N. Burbridge, a leading NAACP militant in San Francisco...
...and it cannot be denied that Feuer and the others opposing the FSM position-adopted by an overwhelming 7-1 majority of the Academic Senate-were lined up with ex-Senator Knowland and the whole crop of local racists who resented the campus being used as a recruiting ground for civil rights activity...
...Arrested demonstrators, some still out on bail, face full legal punishment for their actions, including at one time nine months' imprisonment for Dr...
...Its decision to single out and punish the leadership of any defiance was unwise...
...All that changed in 1960, as is obvious to any newspaper reader, but Feuer dismisses this motivating factor with a single paragraph, as if social action can be separated from social purpose...
...Students are particularly concerned about the pressures that business interests may exert on the administration to restrict the activities of civil rights groups on the campus...
...Feuer states that Jack We in berg "is a characteristic member of the student movement" on account of his current non-student status...
...Some graduate students have taken from a summer to two years' "sabbatical leave" to participate in these activities, with idealistic motivations...
...I will content myself with a few remarks...
...Tucson, Ariz...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...These second generationists have worked themselves into a sickly frenzy, declaiming in phrases utterly disproportionate to reality how they are ready to lay their lives down for the First Amendment, and they take a perverse pleasure in the easy game of heckling and defying deans...
...Personally, I would never put on a "Degenerate Art" exhibition of the films of Godard & Co., or of Mekas & Co...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...Its decision to move by unilateral administrative decree, permitting only acceptance or defiance of this decree, was unwise...
...To return to the question of evidence and data: Many observers of the students' behavior have commented on their dignity and self-control...
...In fact, I wouldn't bother to exhibit such bores at all...
...I hope I have shown that...
...A few graduate students in the political science department conducted a survey of 598 of the approximately 800 students who were arrested at the Sproul Hall sit-in...
...It ill-behooves anyone who arrogates to himself the term democrat to opt for more restriction on freedom than we already have in the United States, and to vote for placing the university in the business of rationing political conduct and expression...
...It offers nothing but wild and generalized name-calling unsupported by any evidence ("a curious coalition of disaffected intellectual drifters," "neurotic young women," "homosexuals in search of 'camp,''' "young people too lazy to read," "gadgeteers," "youths who had never sat down with their Shakespeare," "fingernail-biting wives escaping from home life," etc...
...NEAL BLUMENFELD, M.D...
...Feuer writes that Cal "is probably the freest of any major university in the United States...
...That is not to say that all is permissible under that banner, but only that to entirely dismiss the motive force is to defeat any attempt to grapple with the issues in the real world...
...In addition to the ignoring of the reality issue in the above quote, we might question its merits as psychosocial speculation...
...But if Tuten will not accept my attempted explanations of the strange success of such films as a "serious analysis," why doesn't he submit his own...
...There is a further problem, in making psychologic analyses, which he illuminates: This is the error of describing latent motives in terms suggesting universal application-e.g., any example of rebellion partakes of childhood wishes to rebel against parents...
...This resolution, wholeheartedly applauded by the students, was adopted by a vote of 824 to 115...
...AND MRS...
...In any case, in describing what he imagines to be a new generation of moviegoers as "a curious coalition [friends perhaps of the "curious crew"?] of disaffected intellectual drifters, neurotic young women, homosexuals...
...The search for freedom to advocate off campus action on the campus is a search for the right to effectuate the fight against racial injustice and discrimination...
...I would urge him to see any or all of these, and then try to take up cudgels in behalf of them and their high-sounding critical champions...
...The nature of your humanity, Miss Sontag...
...Feuer's analyses are frequently used in place of, rather than in conjunction with, an account of the overt issues: In particular...
...That was the rule at Cal, however, pre-FSM...
...This position in no way implies intent or desire to engage in illegal action, but expresses the belief that the university is not the appropriate institution to make judgments on the legality of the content of speech or advocacy...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...What, for instance, is a "sickly frenzy...
...To begin with, they are a confession of intellectual inadequacy-but even were Simon able to yoke some intellectual content to the service of his hostility, comments like these invariably (and rightly") provoke such animosity as to create an atmosphere in which serious discussion is impossible...
...and descends, finally to gratuitous, specific, personal abuse-and to abuse of the foulest kind...
...That has always been the essence of the dispute, and the faculty, after the sit-in...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...The background and root of the fight is in the tremendous concern for civil rights infusing the current college-age generation with a feeling of meaning, purpose and, most important of all, involvement...
...The Senate, after soundly rejecting an amendment by Professor Feuer himself, passed by a vote of 824-115 a five-point proposal concerning regulation of speech and advocacy on the campus...
...And, even if the professor were right about the "perverse pleasure,II would it be an "easy game" defying deans, risking one's academic career (and one's entire career, if arrested...
...It is indeed shameful that the news media have not accepted their civic responsibility to report this entire stream of events without gross distortion and "red-baiting...
...Feuer's subtitle was "The New Multiversity: Ideology and Reality...
...Professor Feuer's article has a certain ring of truth because of his accurate reporting and analysis of selected events...
...CURIOUS COALITION' Simon ("Escapism into Art," NL...
...Most of them plan to continue their interrupted educations...
...New York City HUGH STRAUSS John Simon replies: When a critic confuses criticism with autobiography, it may well be that an attack on his or her work will be-must be-an argument ad hominem...
...But what sort of argument is Tuten's, when he transmogrifies my parallel statements about kids who haven't read Shakespeare and know nothing about the tine arts into a causal relationship, i.e., are unable to recognize a painting as a result of not having read Shakespeare...
...Maoist, beatnik...
...Their gestures are curiously the same as those of their fathers in the '30s-the same mixture of arrogance and dictatorial attitudes, alternating with humility and self-sacrificial masochism...
...The faculty majority agreed with the students that as long as the police were around to take care of any such illegal conduct it ill-behooved a university to intrude itself into the area of speech, ideas and political action...
...Which phrases are "utterly disproportionate to reality...
...However, I disagree with his characterization of the students' activities...
...By offering the amendment, as well as by the tone of his article, Feuer clearly indicated that he does not understand the essence of the free speech issue...
...It becomes clear that psychological terms are used without supporting data in a denigrating way-they become the tools of a psycho-logic McCarthyism...
...not noted for recently eulogizing the students...
...Overall, however, the selectivity is such that he has created a distorted picture of the Free Speech Movement...
...The rules at Cal have been repressive of free speech for many years, but have remained generally unchallenged by students, in part because, I believe, they have had little they wanted to say or do...
...from a base of little reality, he has given us much ideology, and a considerable portion of that has been unproven and biased...
...Or does he think A Woman Is a Woman is just dandy...
...It becomes obvious that this kind of psychological analysis is readily abused and can serve as a cloak for our everyday prejudices...
...MALCOLM BURNSTEIN I regret that THE NEW LEADER has seen fit to publish Professor Lewis Feuer's contemptuous (and contemptible) attack on the students of the Free Speech Movement of the University of California...
...in publicly airing and debating their often-profound disagreements...
...F. T. SHELL Lewis Feuer's article consists mainly of speculations about the inner motives of the parties to the Berkeley dispute (but principally the students and their supporters...
...Not only are the incidents reported incorrectly, but the continual use of "guilt by association" analogies is more typical of a small town reporter than a supposedly rational professor...
...VINCENT DE LANY After reading Professor Feuer's article on the "Rebellion at Berkeley," we question the integrity of THE NEW LEADER...
...was] made after my article was written...
...Who, then, is Feuer's "forlorn crackpot...
...KENNETH SANDERSON (As Professor Feuer points out in his "Reply" in this issue, "the proposal I made to the Academic Senate...
...about the students' ability to trust people over 30-especially those whose egos do not admit of younger people being capable of thinking for themselves, and who are afraid of new thoughts...
...if-as he shows-there were both immediate and general grievances at stake, I hope that the NEW LEADER will open its pages to a fuller discussion of the significant issues...
...Lewis S. Feuer's significant article, "Rebellion at Berkeley," requires clarification in many respects...
...What is at issue on campus is the right of students-perhaps unwisely in the eyes of some—to organize and engage in such activities, accepting the legal consequences, and gains for civil rights, without the additional penalty of University suspensions or expulsions (''double jeopardy...
...That statement is so blatantly false to anyone in this area as to be almost humorous...
...We have observed the situation on the Berkeley campus from its genesis, and it is our suggestion that you make inquiries from other "qualified" people in the campus community as to the nature and evolution of the problem...
...I am not an expert on other universities, but even San Francisco State College across the bay from Berkeley has had an open forum policy for several years without trouble-and your readers must surely know of many campuses where it is not illegal to advocate a peaceful picket line or collect money for SNCC...
...In discussing the meeting of the Regents on November 20, Feuer asserts that the "students' movement now wished the university to promulgate their right to engage in illegal action...
...In its own way, his criticism of the "Multiversily- Nulliversity" is as biting as the alluded-to pamphlet, "The Mind of Clark Kerr," by Hal Draper...
...Feuer voted with the minority, and supported his position with a speech distinguished by the assertion that students couldn't be allowed freedom to advocate off-campus illegal action or they could use the campus to plan to paint swastikas on synagogues...
...How any periodical could have considered this "among the most important articles we have ever published," as is mentioned, is beyond our comprehension...
...even worse, for an undisclosed reason (the most likely being that it discredits his own case) Feuer has chosen not even to hint at the resolution by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate -the official faculty body-that "The content of speech or advocacy should not be restricted by the University...
...Furthermore, since human motivation is often complex and contradictory, one can usually come up with a latent motive to "prove" either side of any issue...
...Judging from his letter, something certainly does provoke Hugh Strauss to animosity which makes serious discussion impossible...
...They are, in a meaningful sense, still a part of the academic community, rather than superannuated lumpen elements which exist in all college communities in the country...
...I will indulge myself to the extent of saying that he has substituted bed-baiting for red-baiting...
...Perhaps the most infuriating aspect is the use of one distortion after another...
...in which the students demonstrated the depth of their commitment, was finally persuaded to stand on the principle most of them always privately conceded...
...For instance...
...Leaving aside for the moment the question of their accuracy, such conjectures are quite legitimate if they are not put forth in lieu of an examination of the manifest issues...
...The sense of humor exhibited at rallies and at the sit-in was remarkable, and their honestness and openness at the rallies was also notable...
...The truth is that Feuer may be the living example of the Jack Weinberg dictum which he quotes, and which obviously bothers him...
...Rebellion at Berkeley," contains a colorful, if distorted, account of the events at the University of California Greek Theater on Monday, December 7. Yet there is no mention anywhere of the meeting of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate which took place the very next day...
...Contrast this with the description of the chancellor as a man of "saintly character...
...etc., Simon expects us to assume that he is seriously analyzing "the background against which we must visualize the corning of the Godards...
...I made it quite clear, in any case, that Miss Sontag's statements were about another movie by Godard, but I likewise made it clear that the two movies are very much of a kind and that, above all, I was concerned with a critical, or, rather, uncritical-or, better yet, anticritical-syndrome...
...It would be both fitting and fun to turn Feuer's weapons against himself, and speculate on the hidden motives behind both his vitriol and his passionate concern with students' sex lives...
...If-as he shows-there is more than a "battle of the generations" at stake...
...His reductionist tendencies, and failure to even cite evidence for these, have already been cited...
...I would only suggest that it is more traditional for a university to prevent the Nazi type of nonintellectual response to environment by freedom of education, discussion and action, not by repressive rules and a fear of ideas and speech...
...This becomes rather meaningless...
...It is a fact-as the New York Times reported not too long ago-that demonstrations have opened up more jobs for Negroes.In San Francisco, for instance, after years of stalling, employers have moved, in places, to hire and upgrade Negroes after the illegal sit-ins at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel and Auto Row showrooms...
...A response to many other portions of Feuer's article would be in order...
...Feuer has seriously misstated the grounds of the controversy between the administration and the FSM...
...The position taken in this statement, which was released on November 13, was that "the administration may not regulate the content of speech and political conduct, and must leave solely to the appropriate civil authorities the right of punishment for transgressions of the law...
...Not ours...
...where, for example, if some feel they have a grievance, the nature or justice of this grievance need not be considered-it is simply another case of, let us say, children rebelling against parents...
...Throughout this controversy, the students have eschewed the kind of namecalling in which Feuer indulges with his Stalinist...
...The Academic Senate-again, the faculty, not the "limpniks"-further specifically repudiated the position of none other than Professor Lewis Feuer by rejecting 737-284 an amend ment he offered that would have allowed some university restrictions on the content of speech...
...There is no account of the First Amendment issue...
...Oakland, Calif...
...student leaders could be called "smirking rebels against authority" or "heroic defenders of their identity against paternalistic oppression...
...That meeting of the Academic Senate has changed the entire complexion of the Berkeley struggle, and certainly puts Professor Feuer's theories about "alienation" in a new light...
...The university must make the state safe for ideas, not from ideas...
...Let me hope that it is merely that be has not seen the films Godard has been turning out recently...
...November 23), who obviously has sat down with his Shakespeare and who, as a result, can "distinguish between a painting and a bit of dribbling," doees not seem to under stand the difference between criticism and argument ad hominem...
...Such ill-natured comments, whatever they might indicate about the "humanity" of their author, however morally objectionable they might be, are intellectually objectionable and for that reason should not have been published...
...An official statement of the student movement, the Free Speech Movement, made the wish of the student movement explicit...
...Even the Board of Regents...
...Their moral commitment, or search for meaning in life-unwise in the eyes of some-has indeed given them a leading voice in the student movement...
...Simon's critical approach is in the spirit with which Professor Adolf Ziegler organized the exhibition of "Degenerate Art" in Munich, in 1937...
...First, the administration's initiative in attempting to choke off political activities on campus in an emotion-laden national election year, capping a national struggle for civil rights, was unwise...
...For example, whatever Simon may feel about the nature of Susan Sontag's humanity and its relationship to her analysis of Vivre sa Vie, he should realize that Sontag's thoughts about Vivre sa Vie might not represent her ideas on A Woman Is a Woman, the film he is obstensibly reviewing...
...His documentation of the "brain drain" at the University of California at Berkeley, where only a fraction of the faculty's time is directed toward the undergraduates, in a bureaucratic setting, is a clear statement...
...It turned out that 61 of the 598 were not enrolled at the Berkeley campus of the University of California at the time of the survey...
...Certainly there exist professors who have taken a neutral stand and who can much more accurately report the facts without recourse to dubious literary tactics and biased analogies to support obviously preconceived conclusions...
...Before he dismisses a serious argument as just another adolescent revolt, Feuer would do well to verify his own emotional maturity...
...An illuminating example is the following quote...
...This proposal met virtually all of the free speech demands of the protesting students, and its passage is perhaps the most significant event in the entire controversy to date...
...radical, limpnik characterizations...
...paid tribute to their moral-dedication to civil rights and liberties...
...What we must assume, however, is that Mr...
...The several-month war on that longstanding administration timidity, bowing to pressure, and un-American interference with student political freedom is variously described by Feuer in condescending, opprobious, offensive, and red-baiting terminology...
...If one throws in a few spicy adjectives along with the jargon, an impressive case can be made...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...In the meantime I would have him read Miss Sontag's piece in the Nation, April 13, 1964, in which she praises a film-maker's "sensibility based on indiscriminateness, without ideas, beyond negation...
...However, if less diverting, it is more important to refute him on logical and evidential grounds, and leave him to himself to consider both the morality of, and that lying behind, his article...
...however, the preceding remarks indicate the tone and character of much of the inaccuracy that is prevalent in Feuer's essay...
...MARVIN SHINBROT Assistant Professor Mathematics Department University of California Lewis Feuer's article...
...CHARLES H. SHAIN . . . I have been, throughout most of the controversy, voluntary legal advisor to the Free Speech Movement, and am as conversant with the facts and substance of the fight as is Lewis Feuer...
...At Cal, ideas were fine, but not action, and injustice may have been an evil to be fought, but not with money, and certainly not close to home...
...Like President Clark Kerr's The Uses of the University, there is much that can be learned from Professor Lewis Feuer's "Rebellion at Berkeley" (NL, December 21...
...New York City FREDERIC TUTEN I do not understand how the editors of a serious intellectual publication could have permitted the publication of John Simon's "review," "Escapism into Art...
Vol. 48 • January 1965 • No. 1
