Student Rebels

...Nevertheless, many black colleges were run until recently by white administrators who naturally imposed white, middle-class values...

...Mass production not only co-opts the youth culture in the service of capitalism but corrupts its content toward the pop and banal...

...Higher education is being watered down, he believes, by the "craft-unionist mentality" of professors who abrogate their teaching function, at least on the undergraduate level, to pursue research...

...This is a favorite myth of administrators trying to convince the public that their students are not dissatisfied, but statistics on the percentage of student participation in demonstrations belie it...

...He believes these two branches are "the heart of the youth movement and the whole of its potential for lasting significance...

...It is to the blacks and the New Left that Miles looks for the libertarian socialism he envisions...

...blacks at Howard, for instance, conducted the first extended occupation of buildings a month before the Columbia uprising of 1968...

...Perhaps the finest service Miles performs is to tear up the threadbare theory that student protesters are a mob of sheep manipulated by a hard core of revolutionaries...

...Miles' explanation is considerably more rational...

...The range is from autobiographical to psychological accounts, with a lot of sociology and journalism in between, each book written from its author's special perspective...

...He derides the "cultural revolution" as an immature rebellion which parodies the dominant order while repudiating it...

...As a result, the atmosphere is still bourgeois, with emphasis on fraternities and sports...

...Miles claims the New Left has opened up the foreshortened political spectrum and explored the limits of permissible behavior, but he admits its lack of durable analysis or organizational success...

...For this reason The Radical Probe should be read in conjunction with Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture (Doubleday, 1968...

...Miles has written a solid book, however, which deserves a careful reading —before everyone discovers the next "in" topic...

...At public universities, relatively middle-class blacks sometimes pose as ghetto "soul brothers" and succeed in scaring administrators and winning uncritical support from white radicals—neither of whom can tell the difference...

...Activists may make a "radical probe" to test the authorities, such as seizing a building, but they won't gather broad student support unless they address real issues or frightened authorities overreact...

...He considers more truly revolutionary the near-medieval mysticism and communal living of the counter culture...

...The administrators carry on a peeling process in which first one portion, then another, of the protesters is stripped away and labeled as something less harmful until only the hard core, "that irre-ducibly bad seed," remains...

...Meanwhile, a system of community colleges siphons off the desire for knowledge and provides vocational training...

...He grants the elite role of activists but places it in the larger context of a genuine social movement...

...After sketching the outlines of student protest, Miles—who teaches political science and history at Goddard College—adds background about what he terms the industrialization of education, in which education for democracy and culture are downgraded in favor of economic growth and military research...

...Roszak's analysis is just contradictory enough that it may prove correct, considering the confusing nature of youthful rebellion...

...Roszak takes the opposite point of view: he thinks the New Left, in its reliance on ideology and traditional power concepts, accepts the establishment's assumptions...

...He is careful to point out that black influence on student protest should not be underestimated...

...Unfortunately, this background on the nature of the university occupies the longest chapter and makes the book sag in the middle...

...Reviewed by Fenwick Anderson Bookstore shelves are full of volumes on student protest, which evidently has replaced black studies as the present "in" topic...

...With the campuses currently quiet, interest may soon dwindle, but the stream of new titles from the publishers continues...

...Miles compensates for this with a fine explication of the relationship between black students and white radicals, who should be natural allies but often bicker instead...

...Among the best of them is The Radical Probe, whose author, Michael W. Miles, is young enough to sympathize with the protesters yet old enough to view the subject with some detachment and comprehension of underlying social and historical factors...

...Years from now it will appear that the direction of the youth movement was obvious, because hindsight has a clarity foresight lacks...