Savage rage of students

Title

Creator

Jennings, Frank G.

Language

English

Year

1968

Subject

Columbia University.

Universities and colleges -- United States.

Universities and colleges -- Paris, France.

College students -- Public demonstrations.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

From the Saturday Review, June 15, 1968.

This article explains the causes of university student riots, particularly those in Columbia and Paris.

Fulltext

■ This article explains the causes of university stu dent riots, particularly those in Columbia and Paris. SAVAGE RAGE OF STUDENTS Columbia University is an institution of great academic power and performance. It has not been served well by its chief executive officers since before the days when Dwight David Eisenhower used its presidency as a dry run for a bigger job. Its trustees — all men of position, distinction, financial re sources, and significant con nections — oversee the gov ernance of the collection of colleges and graduate schools as though it were a “conglo merate” enterprise dealing in real estate, weaponry, and pharmaceuticals. They are in occasional communication with Grayson Kirk, who has served as Columbia’s pres ident since the winter of 1951. Before troubles early this year, he had been con templating his happy retire ment. President Kirk is known to have been on speaking terms with several members of the senior faculty, but he has never evinced any press ing need for their support and counsel in the conduct of his office. The senior fa culty, able and respected scholars all, in their turn have rarely indicated that they felt grievance because of their consequently light work load. They have been known on occasion to socia lize with some of the junior faculty and a few especially bright graduate students. The junior faculty — most of them aged thirty, plus or minus five years — fraternize more freely with the students, share some of their insecuri ties, many of their dreams, and most of their anger against society in its various middle-aged, middle-class as pects. The male graduate stu dents have spent their under graduate years sometimes in search of a “field” or “ma jor” but always in a struggle to maintain a grade average high enough to withstand August 1968 21 the military draft and to as sure themselves a place in one of Columbia’s prestigious graduate schools. Now that they have achieved graduate status and have some notion about the best way to spend their lives, they are uncom fortably contemplating their imminent exposure to the newly democratized opera tions of the Selective Service process. This plight is shar ed by the graduating seniors of Columbia College and every other healthy young university man in the coun try. Most of the students and some of the junior faculty share with their fellows else where in the world an insa tiable eagerness to make this world a little safer to live in and a little more generous to live through. They are gen erally better-educated and more intelligent than preced ing student, generations. They are less conforming, less respectful of mere au thority, and more openly cri tical of anyone or any group that diminishes (in their judgment) the possibilities of improving the human condition. They hate the war in Viet nam; they hate malfeasance in high office; they hate so cial and economic inequities; they hate compromise or ex pediency and deferral of payment on any moral debt. They believe that the world can be made better now, and are convinced that they could do the job, if they were bet ter educated — but they feel that they have been vic tims of pedagogical malprac tice. They have abundant and heavily documented evi dence. The protesting students have allies among the mid dle-aged, middle-class wielders of power and none more articulate than Harold Howe II, the United States Com missioner of Education. In a recent address to the Am erican Association of Univer sity Professors he used lan guage almost as harsh as the student’s to present a bill of indictment every bit as pre cise as they would offer. He accused the professors and their associate administrators of neglecting the campus world to the detriment of their students: “The profes sors are largely responsible for the student’s disenchant 22 Panorama ment with their world.” He accused the administrators of being “inadequate, and unreasonably inflexible” in their approach to the needs of students. He said that the professors do not teach very well and what they teach is not very relevant to the lives of their students. Finally, in warning the universities to initiate and accept change, the commissioner declared that he had learned from experience “. . . that the best way to accomplish anything is to aggravate somebody sufficiently to get him in terested in taking action.” Columbia, as one of this nation’s ancient seats of learning, possesses a substan tial — though, of course, in adequate — endowment, al most half of which is in Man hattan real estate. This is some of the most valuable acreage on the planet. Since World War II, the university has been increasing its hold ings in its near neighborhood for almost prudential rea sons. It is in a period of very rapid physical growth. It has to attract talented and finicky new faculty, and must therefore make its sur rounding community attrac tive to them. Unforuniately for this purpose, the sur rounding community on the south, east, and north is Har lem, mostly Negro and Puer to Rican and nearly all very poor. Every act of reclamation by the university is seen, with almost complete justification, to be an act of depredation against the poor of the neighbood. Most of the belated attempts by Columbia, even with the alert largess of the Ford Foundation, to improve conditions of life for its sur rounding poor have not been met with cries of joy. It is almost irresistible to suggest that the causes of student unrest at the Sor bonne are generically related to those at Columbia — high academic pressures to meet the scholarly demands of “ir relevant” courses, overcrowd ed classrooms, unresponsive a d m i nistrators, antiquated and inappropriate rules and regulations, and, of course, the demand for “particupatory democracy.” The French university sys tem, they declared, is sup posed to be for free inquiry, but the Government wants the university to serve the August 1968 23 needs of business and indus try. The students say that they do not want to become tomorrow’s policemen; they do not want to become part of some impersonal world machine. Initially, the population of Paris, which has rarely been sympathetic to students, went about its daily affairs mutter ing about the behavior of les fils de papa, the pampered sons of the petit bourgeois. The administration of the university became increasing ly anxious, most especially about a tiny group of ultra rightist students known as the Occident, whom the admi nistration feared might at tack the activists and preci pitate a riot. Thus on Friday, May 3, the Rector of the Sorbonne closed that ancient institu tion for the first time since its misty beginings in the thirteenth century. The stu dents responded with even more vigorous protests, and the administration, acting precisely as did that of Co lumbia University, called in the police, committing in the eyes of the students and the faculty an unpardonable sac rilege. Never had the hallowed precincts of the Sorbonne been so desecrated. What followed was the feared bloody riot, in which thou sands were injured, scores seriously, in which the “flics” the Paris police who have a capacity for brutality unmatchable in this country, stormed the hastily erected barricades in the streets of the Latin Quarter. The French students, who, unlike their American counterparts, do not hesitate to do battle with the police, turned to the traditional weapon of revolutionary streets, the pav ing stones. When the smoke of the first engagement clear ed and the people of Paris understood what had hap pened, they rose in support of the students, and the trade unions joined in a now united front to present Gen eral Charles de Gaulle with a 10th anniversary present of a general strike that has pa ralyzed the commerce and industry of France. Both American and French students are clearly reacting against a profound malaise in their countries. The French students sees his gov24 Panorama emment wasting its substance in attempting, quixotically, to become a significant nu clear power, at an intolerable cost to the quality of life in France. The American stu dent, with the unavoidable evidence of the Vietnam war always before him, and with the so-called war on poverty faltering on every front be cause of what he sees as wrongly diverted funds, is in a savage rage against his government. Youth needs allies with older necessary skills than it possesses. It needs people with practical knowledge of social plumbing. It needs the help of middle-class, mid dle-aged artisans who will not “study” them, who will unself-consciously join in the “restructuring” that every society must continually be about if it is to become fairer than its history. Today neither Columbia, nor the Sorbonne, nor any significant center of learn ing in the world is a true community of scholars. The “savage rage” of youth has given the universities the promise of an option to be come such communities — to the extent that they enter fully into the world in which they exist, to the extent, in Robert M. Hutchin’s phrase, they are willing to assume the salient role of critic of the society. It is for them to provide the data on ethics that the politician, the states man, the priest, the soldier, and the city planner can act upon to make this world safe for the humane use of hu man beings. — By Frank G. Jennings in the Saturday Re view, June 15, 1968. August 1968 25

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