The Campus Crisis

...While he perceptively describes some of the major problems facing European university students—overcrowding of classes, scandalous academic conditions, and a disillusionment with parliamentary political parties—he does not discuss the programs of European student radicals in any detail...

...One of the book's major flaws is the lack of attention—a mere four pages •—given to the developing areas...

...Most of The Student Revolution is devoted to a consideration of student activism in Western Europe, Japan, and in the developing countries...

...The journalistic style of the book fits in well with its format...

...Black studies are included in their discussion, as is the generally neglected subject of high school activism...

...Fred Libby's story should be widely read and enshrined in history as an outstanding example of American idealism...

...Califano suggests, for example, that students must be given more control over their lives—they must have a "piece of the action...

...10960 ican education and society and trace their conversion to radicalism...

...Both Rapoport and Kirshbaum started out their college careers as liberals, but are now radicals...

...His book not only presents an analysis, of sorts, of student unrest but also contains some possible solutions to the problem...

...On the contrary, the only governments actually overthrown by students have been in such countries as South Korea, Turkey, and Indonesia...

...5.95...

...The authors have, not surprisingly, picked some of the most active campuses, including Wisconsin, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell, and Harvard...

...The book is billed as a "report" on student unrest and student power, and it is a sensitive, although by no means unbiased, portrait of a crisis...

...That is a particularly difficult problem to solve, not only in the universities but in society at large...

...And it would seem that student radicals will not be bought off with clearly "token" concessions such as the elimination of some dormitory regulations...

...Perhaps the more significant volume is The Student Revolution, by Joseph Califano, Jr...

...These two short volumes were funded by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation's Commission on Higher Education respectively, and perhaps reflect the effort of the liberal "establishment" to understand and deal with the campus crisis...

...Random House...

...The more interesting of the two books, Is the Library Burning...

...Califano's foreign visits are reported too briefly to allow for useful discussion...

...This elitist notion may be correct, but it has little to do with student activism, since it has been shown by a number of researchers that an overwhelming majority of activists are able students from well-to-do families who would attend college in any case...

...Califano says that student movements in the developing countries have not been as dramatic as those in the West...

...a moving recital of a gallant attempt to prevent a conflict which cost tens of thousands of American lives, vast treasure and, even more serious, paved the way for an unprecedented militarism and aggressiveness on the part of the United States...

...Separate chapters are devoted to the roles of faculty (largely at the University of Wisconsin), administrators (at Cornell and Berkeley), and students...

...by Roger Rapoport and Laurence J. Kirshbaum, is essentially a series of short case studies of different aspects of the campus crisis at several universities...

...Califano believes that college education is not appropriate for everyone and that serious reconsideration of the commitment to mass higher education should be undertaken...

...Corporate control of major institutions, including the universities, does not easily give way to some kind of participatory democracy...

...Senator Ernest Gruenino "It will strike a responsible and nostalgic chord among those of us who have worked and continue to work, for peace...

...Former U.S...

...Reviewed by Philip G. Altbach If the major American foundations are concerned about student unrest, it must be a serious social problem...

...Both books are lively and well written, although neither provides a clear, overall picture of the causes of student activism...

...The authors, both under thirty, have had substantial journalistic experience as editors of the Michigan Daily...

...The book is too short...

...As the authors point out, the campus crisis is related directly and dramatically to the broader social problems which this country faces...

...180 pp...

...If these two books are the most constructive analyses of American universities that large amounts of money can buy, then we are indeed in trouble...

...is a case study in the radicalization of sensitive young people...

...In a prologue and epilogue, they express their disillusionment with Amer"A factual account...

...Califano, an assistant for domestic affairs in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, was asked by the Ford Foundation to undertake an international study of student activism immediately after he left the Government...

...But it should serve especially as inspiration for those increasing numbers of persons who yearn for peace, but say, 'What can I, one person, do?'" —Former Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin $5.00 FELLOWSHIP PUBLICATIONS Box 271, Nyack, N.Y...

...Administrators will read these books in vain if they are searching for easy solutions to their problems...

...Despite sponsorship of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, directed by Clark Kerr, this is a radical and highly pessimistic book...

...Most of Califano's suggestions, if taken seriously, would substantially alter some key aspects of American society and seem, particularly in the age of Richard Nixon, to be Utopian...

...There are few prescriptions for change in this chronicle of how American higher education has failed to respond to students, how administrators and faculties, however well meaning, have failed to make meaningful reforms, and how the situation is bound to become worse...