group, Alumni for a New Columbia, supported the SDS demands out of "outrage against the Administration for violating the Columbia family atmosphere by bringing policemen on the campus." Dwight MacDonald, wearing a purple-and-white shirt, a lavendar silk tie, a black-and-white checked suit, a "McCarthy for President" button, and a Kentucky colonel beard, said, "What vou've done here is a little like the Boston Tea Party." He, being an anarchist, asked why, among the six red flags, there were no black ones for "my anarchistic taste." MacDonald generallv praised the rebels in a rambling fashion, but then drew a shower of hisses from the leftists when he said, ''I'm for your revolution; but if you carryon your tactics too long, you'll destroy Columbia University. I don't think our best universities ought to be used to start a social revolution in this country." When Dr. Erich Fromm got up to speak, everyone stood up and gave him an ovation. He is a small, neat man, and looked like a small-town banker in his gold-rimmed glasses, gray suit, white shirt, and dark red tie. "Our society is approaching a low grade schizophrenia," the noted psychiatrist said, "a split between the mind and the heart." Fromm contended that rationally we all plan beautifully for maximum efficiency, productivity, and conh'ol, but more and mcwe we leave out human factorsthe need for joy, love, friendship. We are programming our society for profits and power, not people's sanity and togetherness or the preservation and advance of beauty, he said. "I for one welcome this revolution. It is a revolution for life!" When he sat down, he received another ovation, and numerous shouts of "Bravo!" Harold Taylor also was cheered enthusiastically, though his speech was full of statements like "Education, like love, is an art that can be practiced anywhere," and vague urgings like "It's up to your generation to fill this demoCl'acy with new content." He asserted today's leading colleges and universities have lost all sense of purpose. They amass knowledge but neglect to teach the young or to apply their knowledge to society's critical problems, he said. He concluded, "As 96
the only worKing college administrator among you, I confer upon you all the B.A. degree: Beatification of the Arts." After Taylor had finished, most persons were weary from all the talk, but SDS leader David Gilbert rose as the seventh (and unscheduled) speaker. He said, "If we made mistakes it was because we were too modest," and added, "We're part of a struggle that will go on for a long, long time. It will require great daring and terrific dedication." Gilbert then announced the opening of SDS's Summer Liberation School in the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house at 534 West 114th Street. (The house was immediately renamed by wits Sigma Delta Sigma.) And, he invited everyone down to Morningside Park for the post-Commencement frolics, where, he said, "We will expand our alliances with the people we need to overthrow the power structure." The Counter-Commencement ended with the radical Rev. William Starr praying for "the rebels who cry out against the evils of our time," and asking God to "give us the power to transform this world." The student leftists, with six red flag carriers up front, marched almost triumphantly down to Morningside Park. There were few Negroes to join tLem, but it didn't seem to disturb them too much. A good time was had by all. Throughout the six weeks of turmoil one thing seemed particularly evident to manv of those observers of the Columbia r~bellion who were able to remain fairly objective, compassionate, and insightful. That was the touching and almost desperate longing of many of the radical students to establish stronger bonds with other persons, to find new purpose and loyalties, to win a greater measure of esteem, importance, and status. Powerlessness corrupts, and absolute powerlessness tends to corrupt absolutely. The word "alienation" has become a bag into which every sin, anxiety, and shortcoming has been thrown, but it was on everyone's lips. It may be that there is a profound irony at the root of much of the campus turmoil-or at the root of modern man's turmoil, for it is not only the students who are unhappy. As M.LT. political scientist Lucian Pye and a few others have suggested, the increas-
Stu.dent protestors entermg M omingside Park tor a post-Commencement pic11lc.
ing spread in America of both equalitarian democracy and meritocratic industrialism may be bringing also in路 creasing alienation, coldness, and dis路 satisfaction. That is, the very rationality of modern democracy, with its tendencies toward ever greater equality, both economic and social, and toward more extensive individualism, may produce inevitably a loss of Cl)ffi路 munity, of personal attachments, of traditional loyalities, of stable status settings. And large-scale organizations in business, labor, government, the military, and even higher educationwith their emphasis cn rational procedures, promotions, and placementmav eliminate not only irrational actions such as discrimination because of color or national background but also irrational things like intimate friendships, small clubs, loyalties to position, place, or institution, and a recognizable sense of purpose. The ties that bind are often irrational, not rational and calculating. Heat and light may not mix as easily as scotch and soda, or sex and politics. If this is the case, it is no wonder that a whole new order is called for among some segments of the young. But what kind of new order? No one knows, especially the young. How can contemporary America make a cornucopia of goods and make love at the same time? (Both are desired.) It may be the greatest question of our time. Whether it is or not, it is a question that most top persons in leading colleges and universities hardly recognize, much less address themselves to. They are working feverishly on manufacturing greater rationality, but in doing so, largely without heed to consequences, they may be making things worse. Obviously, it is time for stocktaking, for self-appraisal. That is the mood in which many Columbia students, faculty, and administrators left for the summer, or decided to stay on Morningside for the summer in order to tackle reforms. "The clash of doctrines is not a disaster; it is an opportunity," said Alfred North Whitehead. Columbia University may demonsh'ate whether Whitehead was right. COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
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