American students and teachers on International issues

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XVII (Issue No.7) July 1965

Year

1965

Subject

Education policy

American students

Teachers

International relations

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

AMERICAN STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ON INTERNATIONAL ISSUES There are roughly five mil lion college students and teachers in the United States. This is seven times as many people as the automobile in dustry employs; 16 times as many as are involved in the entire space drive. Yet it is only in the last few months that the academic world has made a collective impact on American policy-making. Individual professors have criticised American policy in Vietnam, student rallies have been held to protest against the bomjbing of North Viet nam and to demand the eva cuation of American troops from South Vietnam, and when American troops land ed in the Dominican Repub lic a month ago students all over the nation protested alm o s t automatically. The Johnson Administration, as always sensitive to criticism, was quick to recognise the importance of these attacks. Senior State Department officials were sent out to de fend policy in Vietnam at universities all over the coun try. Respected academic fig ures who supported the of ficial American line were en couraged to make public statements in its defence. The product of this was the “teach-in”, a public de bate on the merits of the Government’s policy. These debates originated almost un noticed, at the University of Michigan on March 24. A month later they had spread right across the country. The climax came with the Wash ington teach-in of May 15, which was broadcast to more than 120 universities in 35 states. Travelling around a varie ty of campuses after this de bate I found that its au diences had been surprising, 24 Panorama not only in their numbers, but also in their character. The organizers in many uni versities had expected, and indeed feared, a Left-wing rally. Instead they found a wide cross-section of students and young faculty members genuinely trying to make up their minds. Many of them, indeed, were supporters of President Johnson’s policy, and remain ed unconverted after the teach-in. But the interesting point was that they felt suf ficiently interested and suffi ciently involved to give up a sunny Saturday afternoon in the middle of May to study the arguments of both sides. Five years ago, I was told, this would have been impos sible. That was the period of the “bland generation," of the boys with the button down collars whose aim was to secure a respectable de gree and to qualify for exe cutive training in a large corporation. But since then a great change has taken place. This is not just a matter of stu dent uniforms ?nd fashions, as some commentators have assumed. These young peo ple are not unduly bearded or unwashed, and it would be inadequate to describe them as “beatniks". After all, no one could be more politically apathetic than the original Beat Generation. Nor are they usually ado lescents in the throes of re bellion against the comfort able world of their parents. Many of them are married p o s t-graduate students or young faculty members, rea sonably contented with their lives. At the typical rally there are more young child ren playing underfoot that banners overhead. But they do feel that the ordinary ci tizen of the United States is too remote from the men who make the nation’s policy and who may one day ask them to die for it. The feeling of frustration is increased by the scale of modern American university. Professors and heads of de partments are distant figures, involved in administration or absent at conferences. Re search rather than teaching is the road to a successful academic career. It is not surprising that both young teachers and young students often feel that the system is passing them by. July 1965 One young political science teacher told me that “the Movement”, as he called it, had been going on longer than the country realized. John F. Kennedy’s election had started the new wave. Politics for the first time be came not a matter of wheel ing and dealing but a career to which someone could, li terally, devote himself. At the same time machinery was devised within which youth ful idealism could express it self, notably in the Peace Corps. In this way the self-educa tion of the American college student proceeded. Some en thusiasts joined the Peace Corps. Others went to the Southern States to work in the civil rights movement; others still to the slums of the' Northern cities to work on the poverty programme. The vast majority stayed at home, but nearly everyone had some friend or acquain tance who was actively in volved. The involvement in for eign affairs was the latest to develop. For a long time the sheer remoteness and com plexity of most international problems insulated the stu dents from them. But throughout the last year the growing newspaper pre-occupation with Vietnam has been forcing this issue on their attention. The land ings in Santo Domingo seem to have been the last straw. They have aroused an emo tional reaction which was absent from the debate on Vietnam. This has naturally led some officials and supporters of the President’s policy to attack the campus radicals for being “pro-Communist”. At best they are accused of be ing warmhearted but naive dupes of Left-wing propa ganda; at the worst it is al leged that their organizations have been infiltrated by the Communists. Workers for the various Left-wing groups are ex tremely sensitive to such charges. They have had bit ter experience of them dur ing the civil rights campaign from Southern segregationists. As a result they firmly deny in public that they know of any Communists associated with their groups. In private they are franker and more realistic. They admit that they are so loose 26 Panorama ly organised that they could easily be infiltrated. But they insist that the weight of democratic opinion among their members is so great that the elderly and bum bling American Communist party could do them little harm. One of their insurances against the possibility of Communist control is, in fact, their lack of formal or ganization. “The Movement” has no formal membership as such, no official represen tatives, no central funds. In dividual organizations, such as Students for a Democratic Society do have an office and a telephone, but their branches from campus to cam pus appear to have consider able autonomy This makes it much more difficult for any organized political party to exploit their idealism. The traditional Communist tech nique of placing party mem bers in key positions in the central organs, which has been used in the past in the trade unions, is useless here. It is much harder to say what the political views of the movement are than to ex plain what they are not. They are certainly well to the Left of either of the two main American political parties, both in domestic matters and in international affairs. But they are not all Mar xists by any means, or even Socialists in the Western Eu ropean sense of the label. The majority of those to whom I talked would not ac cept any single analysis of society in either ideological or economic terms. If it is possible to find any single doctrine to which they would all subscribe it is the impor tance of the individual and the need to protect him against the automatic forces of society, whether he is a Vietnamese peasant, a vote less Negro in Mississippi or a shopkeeper in Santo Domin goThis is both their strength and their weakness. It is their strength because it makes it very difficult, with in the American political tradition, to oppose them on matters of principle. Their opponents must either imply that they are being led astray or try to prove that the course they advocate will in fact make the lot of the indivi dual worse rather than bet ter. July 1965 27 It is their weakness because the chances of a group of loosely organized individuals affecting policy are strictly limited. They cannot work through any established poli tical organization or through the trade unions. This dimi nishes their access not only to all forms of news coverage but also to the purely practi cal help, financial and even secretarial, which is needed for a prolonged and effective campaign. Although the Am erican Press has been fair and conscientious, much of the time the students’ voices have just not been heard. This is in strong contrast with, for instance, the nuclear disarmament campaign five years ago in Great Britain. CND members were proba bly almost as widely assorted in their political views as the members of the Movement, but they enjoyed support from a political experienced minority of the Labour party and from some trade unions. The lack of permanent or ganization will also affect the future of the Movement. Students graduate and marry, crises move on to the inside pages of the newspapers and then vanish altogether, and the momentum is lost. The most permanent result of the student debate will probably be on the students themselves. The traditional response of the American citizen to any crisis, especially one in foreign policy, has been: “Don’t rock the boat. The man in the White House has all the facts, and he knows better than we do.’’ This assumption has now been rudely challenged. Some of these students are voters already; nearly all of them will be voters by the time of the next Presidential election. By then they may well have changed their minds about the merits of President Johnson’s past and present policies. But at least they will have taken the trou ble to think and inform themselves about American foreign policy in a way no earlier generation ever did. — Jeremy Wolfenden„ Washing ton. 39 PANORAMA

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