It was sad. Long-haired maidens with steel-rimmed glasses and dungareeclad ~'ouths themselves had to carry the SDS-made signs meant to show the widespread, grass roots, local hatred of "the people" for Columbia University. By 3:00, however, nearly 400 students and outsiders had gathered at Amsterdam Avenue, on the west sidewalk between 115th and 116th Streets. The mood was half-angr~', half-festive. Many of the ~'oung leftists were decorated in red-red scarves, red armbands, red berets, and red Indian headbands. They held lots of balloons, many of them red, but some blue, yellow, and green. There were six large red flags on six-foot poles in their midst. The whole scene was reminiscent of a "Red Guard" rallv in Communist China-only with ;nuch less grimness. The youth carried signs: "People Power," "Graduation-in the Streets," "St. John the DiYine, Inc,," and "No Degree for Scab Dubinsk~'." About 300 police, including 20 on horseback, held the students in the appointed area. \Vhile the protestors were waiting for their graduating friends to walk out of the Commencement exercises, thev . were addressed bv . a succession of speakers who spoke from on top of a parked automobile with a bullhorn. The most interesting was SDS national leader Carl Oglesby. \'\Tearing a brown leather jacket and sunglasses, he told the demonstrators, "For the first time American college students belong to historY." Said Oglesby: "Our revolt doesn't stop at the oceans. It's worldwide. What's it all about? Each college and countr~' has its own issues. But underneath them all is the common feeling that the old order is falling apart. If it were not for the rotten police and militarv, we and our Chinese brothers would be in solidarity and at peace. We've got to create a new order. The persons in power, the older people around, cannot solve the problems. Thev cannot see the future. Only we can address the problems with imagination, insight, and vision. OnhJ we can see the future." "Vhen he was finished there were cheers, and shouts of "Strike, Strike, Strike" which were accompanied by stiff one-ann salutes -almost Jazi-like-with the two-fingered V's stabbing the air. 94
A university LS not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. RICHARD HOFSTADTER SuddenlY,
someone
announced,
"The~,'re c~ming out." and the crowd of protestors roared. "Listen," said the student speaker, holding up a transistor radio, "You can hear Bob Dylan singing 'Times Thev Are A-Changing.' It's coming from inside St. John's Cathedral!" Inside the huge church, several thousand degree receipients and their parents and professors had gathered for the solemn, dignity-stuffed rite. President Kirk had, in an extraordinarv move, turned oyer the traditional presidential Commencement address to DeWitt Clinton Professor of History Richard Hofstadter, one of the world's leading historians. Given the anti-Administration sentiment, and the special dissatisfaction with Dr. Kirk, nearly everyone agreed it was a wise move by the president. Professor Hofstadter, father himself of an angry, dissenting son, spoke about the onl~' subject an~'one wanted to hear about: the state of Columbia University and academic freedom. For a long time, Columbia University has been part of my life. I came here as a graduate student in 1937, returned as a member of the faculty in 1946, and have since remained. In these years, I have had at this University many admired and cherished colleagues, and many able students. In this respect, I am but one of a large company of faculty members who, differing as they do on many matters, are alike in their sense of thc greatness of this institution and in their affection for it. In the hour of its most terrible trial, it could surely have found a great many of US willing to speak.... A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind-a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into tru ths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned-not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politiCS and war, of
sex and morals, of property and national loyalty. It is governed by the idea of academic freedom, applicable both to faculty and students. . . . A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. "Vith all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.... Some people argue that because the modern university, whether public or private, is supported by and is part of the larger society, it therefore shares in all the evils of society, and must be quite ruthlessly revolutionized as a necessary step in social reform, or even in social revolution. That universities do share in, and may even in some respects propagate, certain ills of the society seems to me undeniable. But to imagine that the best way to change a social order is to start by assaulting its most accessible centers of thought and study and criticism is not only to show a complete disregard for the intrinsic character of the university but also to develop a curiously self-destructive strategy for social change. If an attempt is made to politicize completely our primary centers of free argument and inqUiry, they will only in the end be forced to lose their character and be reduced to centers of vocational training, nothing more. . . . The technique of the forceable occupation and closure of a university's buildings with the intention of bringing its activities to a halt is no ordinary bargaining device-it is a thrust at the vitals of university life. It is a powerful device for control by a determined minority, and its continued use would be fatal to any university.... This brings me to our own problem. Our history and situation, our own mistakes, have done a great deal to create this problem; but it must not be regarded as an isolated incident, since it is only the most severe, among American universities, of a number of such incidents. Vve are at a crisis point in the history of American education and probably in that of the Western world. Not only in J ew York and Berkeley, but in Madrid and Paris. Rome, Berlin, and London, and on many college and university campuses throughout this country, students are disaffected, restive and rebellious. . . . Here at Columbia, we have suffered a disaster whose precise dimensions it is impossible to state, because the story is not yet finished, and the measure of our loss still depends upon what we do. For every crisis, for every disaster, there has to be some constructive response. At Columbia the constructive response has been a call for university refonn .... Columbia is a great-and in the way Americans must reckon time-an ancient university. In this immense, rich COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY