The following exchange grew out of Nathan Glazer's article, “What Happened at Berkeley,” which appeared in last month's issue. Both Philip Selznick and Mr. Glazer are professors of sociology at Berkeley.
Philip Selznick: Professor Nathan Glazer's account of the student protest at Berkeley, published last month, is distressing to many who have been close to the events. This is hardly surprising, for Glazer is associated with a policy overwhelmingly rejected by the Berkeley faculty. He has, I am sorry to say, obscured the basic issues, faltered in his assessment of the moral quality of the students' actions, and misread the role of the faculty. I am grateful for the opportunity to present a different interpretation.
Professor Glazer says that he is “filled with foreboding.” There is indeed much to worry about, and the ultimate effects of the protest cannot now be fully assessed. Nevertheless, I am not inclined to wring my hands. Something basically good has happened here. If we still have something to teach our students about the relation of means to ends (and I believe we have), it is also true they have had much to teach us. Their mode of instruction has been passoniate and in part irresponsible, but it has not been such as to justify a shrinking back in horror. Much of what the students did was clearly necessary, if we were to be made to really listen. Moreover for the immediate future, the student actions have helped to create a significant reservoir of support within the faculty for a new look at what we are about.
In the early days of the crisis President Kerr denied that there was a “freedom of speech issue” at Berkeley. This point of view is adopted by Professor Glazer. Ob serving the heady activity around him, he concludes that “free speech prevailed on the Berkeley campus.” This approach shows a peculiar in-sensitivity to the fact that issues of free speech in a democracy often arise out of marginal cases. We do not decide whether an issue has been raised by pointing to all the free speech that abounds. The hard case and the forlorn sect may give us trouble beyond their due, but they also summon us to reaffirm our fundamental commitments.
The basic policy was phrased as follows in a handbook for student organizations published by the Dean of Students: “University facilities may not be used to support or advocate off-campus political or social action.” Action included supporting or opposing particular candidates or propositions in local, state, or national elections. One may decide that such activities are improper for a university campus, but it is strange indeed to be told that they do not represent restrictions on political speech. The whole point was: should partisan advocacy—surely a form of speech—directed to influencing specific decisions in the community be allowed on campus? Whatever the merits, that is a free speech issue.
The ban on speech directed to action was sustained by a combination of wishful fantasy and timid opportunism—both arising out of a sincere responsiveness to the needs of the university as perceived by the administration. The fantasy consisted in an attempt to distinguish “discussion” and “advocacy.” President Kerr hoped to fulfill his own ideals, and satisfy long-standing demands for a more open campus, by enunciating an “open forum” policy. This policy provided enlarged opportunities for the hearing of all viewpoints, but the line was to be drawn against direct involvement in politics. However defensible on abstract grounds, this distinction runs so contrary to the normal continuities of political expression, and is so little supported in the political experience of the larger community, that it had little chance of surviving a determined assault. And indeed it did crumble, almost at the first challenge.
Professor Glazer has recounted the successive retreats of the administration on the issue of advocacy during the two weeks following the first student protest. It is interesting that the “realist” defense of the original policy, as necessary to the protection of the university from conservative criticism, was given small weight by the administration when the need to abandon untenable distinctions became apparent. This suggests that the basic policy never had any good reason for being, even as a defensive tactic, and was a needless affront to the sensibilities of the students.
Although the general ban on advocacy was swiftly eroded, a sticky problem remained. On November 20, the Regents officially accepted the idea that political activity, including recruitment and fund-raising, could be conducted on campus. However, they included the proviso that such activity must be “for lawful off-campus action, not for unlawful off-campus action.” Thus free speech was still at issue, for the university apparently reserved the right to regulate speech or organization that in its judgment was directed to illegal off-campus action. Under ordinary circumstances, this might not have been a fighting issue. But civil rights-conscious students saw a direct threat to the possibility of organizing on the campus “direct action” in the community. At the same time, the energy and commitment that had already won large gains against the policy of September were still available for the achievement of unabridged freedom of speech.
That is how things stood in late November. On the 22nd, a brief sit-in was staged in Sproul Hall. On the 30th, it was announced that four leaders of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) faced charges for actions connected with the demonstration of early October. There followed the massive sit-in of December 2-3, the removal and arrest of some 800 demonstrators, the student strike, the fiasco in the Greek Theater on December 7, and the critical meeting of the Academic Senate on December 8.
By the overwhelming vote of 824-115, the Senate adopted a resolution whose chief provisions were:
(1) The time, place, and manner of conducting political activity on the campus shall be subject to reasonable regulation to prevent interference with the normal functions of the University.
(2) The content of speech or advocacy should not be restricted by the University. Off-campus student political activities shall not be subject to University regulation. On-campus advocacy or organization of such activities shall be subject only to such limitations as may be imposed under [the regulation of time, place, and manner].
Professor Glazer's interpretation of this resolution is very odd. He speaks of “the student demand that the university allow them facilities for full political action and give up its right to discipline them for what it considers improper use of these facilities,” and he asks, should the university constitution “include a grant of immunity to any and all forms of action that go by the name of politics?” We are now, he laments, “in the ridiculously inconsistent posture” that “students can be penalized for infractions of rules involving the consumption of liquor and the like . . . but it is asserted that any political action whatever should be permitted without any step being taken by the university against any person or organization as a result.”
Now compare these statements with the faculty position that the “time, place, and manner of conducting political activity shall be subject to reasonable regulation to prevent interference with the normal functions of the University.” In fact, of course, we did not grant immunity to all forms of action; nor did we forsake all discipline for improper use of university facilities. We proclaimed freedom of speech—not without rules, but with only such rules as are truly necessary to preserve the normal tenor of university life. This would exclude rules imposed arbitrarily, or to quiet outside criticism, or to serve administrative convenience.
No one is against regulating “time, place, and manner,” although the word “manner” may produce some future controversy. The heart of the faculty resolution is the provision that the university should not regulate the content of public expression on campus. If a member or guest of the university community wants to advocate the seizure of private property by Negro tenants in Harlem or Oakland, or the forcible and illegal expulsion of Negroes from Mississippi, the university is to grit its teeth and restrain its punitive hand.
It is easy to list political abominations, easy to understand the desire to restrain them. But the regulation of what people say has its own problems, not least of which is the difficulty of finding a formula that will reach the contemplated evil and no other. The Constitution contains no general language defining the limits of free speech. There are such limits, but they are contained in a judicial gloss and in laws limiting activities like conspiracy, incitement to crime, defamation, and obscenity. The tangled byways of constitutional interpretation in this field are notorious, and our faculty decided that there was no need for the university, in its governance of student affairs, to go down that troubled road.
For the university's purposes, at least in this phase of American history, it is enough to regulate time, place, and manner. If in what they say students go beyond the pale of legal speech, then resort may be had to civil authorities who must act within the evolving frame-work of constitutional law. In any case, if many students are affected by offensive ideas communicated on campus, it is our job to intensify their education. Restrictive rules will avail us little and cost us much.
Professor Glazer is understandably concerned lest a free society and a free university be unable to move against a terrorist or totalitarian movement. But the impotence of democracy, where that has been displayed, has had little to do with a Hitler's freedom to publish or to harangue a crowd. Political palsy, not constitutional freedom, toleration of abominable acts, not of abominable speech, have contributed most to the political cankers of our time.
It is instructive that the formulas offered by President Kerr (no advocacy of illegal off-campus action) or by Feuer and Glazer (no advocacy “directed to immediate acts of force or violence”) have little precision as defenses against grave evils. On the contrary, they cast a wide net and would catch first of all proponents of civil rights resorting to “direct action” tactics and convicted of minor infractions. This is an instance of the classic dilemma faced by every would-be legislator against speech.
The complexities and dangers of regulating speech are compelling, but they are not the whole foundation of the faculty's policy. Even more important is the contribution we seek to make to an atmosphere of freedom. The university is not the whole polity. We have our own nature and commitments, and these include a special concern that students feel free. There may be something to the argument that participation in political action is a valuable adjunct to the curriculum. I do not give it great weight. Some-what more persuasive is the view that free speech on campus permits and encourages students to hear all points of view. But to me the decisive point is that students should have a sense of belonging to a community that is completely open to the free play of persuasion and argument.
At this writing, there is apparently very close agreement between the faculty resolution and the position adopted by the Regents on December 18 that “the policies of the Regents do not contemplate that advocacy or content of speech shall be restricted beyond the purview of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.” This still leaves some ambiguity, especially as to who shall interpret what lies beyond that purview, but most people here are confident that the basic issue is settled. The students seem content with the protections of the First Amendment.
Reference to the United States Constitution can be misleading, however. Some have argued that the university should not abridge freedom of political expression because it is a state agency and therefore subject to constitutional constraints on government. The preferable view, in my opinion, is that the university may well draw upon the experience and wisdom of the larger community in matters of speech, but its policy should be its own. It follows that the university should be free to change that policy if fresh thought and new circumstances require it, A university may wish to allow considerably greater freedom of expression, so far as its own rules are concerned, than may be protected under a current constitutional doctrine.
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Having stated my view of the faculty position on the main issue, I should like to turn to Professor Glazer's assessment of the role of the faculty in this controversy. Referring to the meeting of December 8, he writes: “I think there was a good deal of hysteria mixed in with the action of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate that day.” Earlier he says: “Because of their desperate desire to settle things, because of their experience of one administration failure after another, I believe most of the faculty was by now ready to accept any agreement that might lead to peace.” These assessments color Professor Glazer's entire treatment of the faculty's role. I think the facts show that he taxes his colleagues unduly, and wrongfully casts doubt upon the integrity of their decision.
Until the crisis broke in late September, the faculty played no large part in the determination of policy regarding speech and political activity. Over the years a number of faculty members were actively interested in liberalized rules and, in cooperation with student leaders and President Kerr, helped to bring them about. Still others protested when, for example, a restrictive distinction was made between “on campus” and “off campus” student organizations. But passivity was more common, and the faculty dangerously allowed the President to elaborate, without dissent, his own perspectives on freedom and the university. These perspectives were very strongly influenced by his experience with trade unions. In Kerr's view, the university is an organization like other large-scale organization in our society. Individual freedom and institutional well-being are best served if there are limited commitments on both sides. He lacked a vital theory of the university community and of the conditions under which its greatest potentialities might be realized. Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about the role of the faculty in recent years is that it failed to enter into a dialogue with the President concerning basic educational philosophy.
The disorders of early October were profoundly disturbing to many faculty members. There was considerable feeling that the administration was behaving very badly, but there was also widespread uneasiness about the students' conduct. Nevertheless, there was a quick response on the main issue, coupled with a determination to avoid open condemnation of either the administration or the students. On October 13 the Academic Senate passed by a large majority a motion favoring “maximum freedom for student political activity,” and calling upon its Committee on Academic Freedom to formulate an appropriate policy. It was already clear where many of the faculty stood.
While various committees studied the matter, the agitation continued during October and November. There was of course an enormous amount of discussion within the faculty, including active work on petitions and resolutions. By late November, the impasse seemed so great that sentiment for determined faculty action grew rapidly, and various groups began to look to the meeting scheduled for December 8 as a time of decision. Immediately following the police action of December 3, an unofficial meeting of eight hundred faculty, chaired by Professor Nathan Glazer, passed a series of resolutions foreshadowing the actions of December 8. On December 6, an informal meeting of about two-hundred faculty members discussed, amended, and then unanimously approved a series of resolutions that had been prepared by a group of faculty liberals. These resolutions were substantially the same as those adopted on December 8. In the meantime, the Committee on Academic Freedom decided to present its own version of the same policy.
On December 7 classes were canceled in the morning and department meetings were scheduled for the purpose of discussing a compromise agreement reached among the department chairmen, President Kerr, and some of the Regents. This was to be presented to an 11:00 A.M. convocation of the entire university community in the Greek Theater. At the same time, the resolutions of “the 200” were being widely circulated and discussed. There was much resentment of the compromise agreement, which did not speak to the basic policy issue, and even more antagonism toward the idea of a full-dress convocation called to announce and celebrate a non-existent consensus and settlement. The show was a historic failure, and all eyes turned to the Senate meeting scheduled for the following day.
Thus the meeting of December 8 was preceded by an unusual amount of discussion and preparation. To be sure, the atmosphere was tense and there was a crisis to be met. However, the whole pattern of faculty actions since October was consistent with the outcome. Almost everyone disliked the administration's polity, and most were now determined to say so.
If the fatuity policy had been adopted by a slim majority, Professor Glazer might have had a point. Surely not everyone was equally convinced, and there must have been some who responded mainly to the desire for an end to the affair. On the other hand, there were members who agreed with the majority's policy but voted against the resolution, or abstained, because they felt under pressure. But almost the entire faculty voted, and the majority was over 7 to 1! Moreover, there has been no sign of weakening. Two days later, at a comparably large meeting, a resolution was introduced which, while reaffirming the action of December 8, could have been interpreted as a concession to the administration. Some well-known members of the “200” group supported the motion. Nevertheless it was tabled—in the context a clear indication of the majority's determination to stand fast by what it had done. The Emergency Executive Committee, though billed as “moderate,” has taken the December 8 policy as its charter. In sum, the Senate's decision was deliberate and firm. Nor is there any real reason to doubt that most members voted their convictions.
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I agree with professor Glazer that the issues at Berkeley have gone beyond free speech. Many have been troubled by the tactics of “direct action” applied in a university setting. Certainly the students resorted to pressure and intimidation. They relied on the model of the labor or civil rights dispute rather than on that of intellectual controversy or even normal political action. The excitement produced some excesses, both of invective and of conduct. All this is sobering, worthy of attention, in need of remedy.
Yet I feel that Professor Glazer's disapproval of the student tactics—especially after they had won what ha thought was enough—has obscured his vision and blunted his sensibility. He has not adequately perceived the moral character of the students themselves—their claim to our respect, support, forgiveness, and sympathy. Professor Glazer tellingly documents the administration's rigid and inept handling of the dispute. But he does not grasp the significance of the fact that arbitrary administrative action lay at the base of the controversy, and was fuel to its flames at every stage. These matters bear closely on the charge that somehow “law and order” went down the drain at Berkeley.
The obligation to obey the law is among the more subtle and variable of human commitments. In assessing that obligation, we take account of the nature of the setting, the character of the rules and of their enforcement, and the legitimate interests of the offender. Unquestioning obedience to lawful orders has more apparent point in a military organization than in business, and in both it weakens as we ascend the echelons or move from line to staff. While we cannot do without it altogether, a very strong emphasis on administrative authority is out of place in higher education. Here, if anywhere, the spirit of consultation should prevail. So, too, arbitrary rule-making or administration saps its own authority and provides the offender with a defense. And if the offense carries forward a legitimate purpose, such as freedom of expression, or self-defense, it has some chance of vindication.
This approach was clearly manifest in a report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Student Conduct established to hear the cases of eight suspended students. The chairman of the committee was Professor Ira M. Heyman of the Law School. The Heyman committee made many discriminations and took account of much beyond the simple fact of rule-breaking. Two points are especially pertinent. First, the committee gave due weight to the context—namely, that a controversy over rules was raging and that the Chancellor had made it clear “that the President and the Regents had rejected in final form the request of the ASUC [the Associated Students of the University of California] for changes in the rules. . . . The door was thus seemingly closed to any negotiation on these central points.” Second, the committee took account of what the students were up to, viewing it “as a symbolic act of protest and not as an act of private delinquency.”
Legality is a two-way street. He who insists on obedience to rules should be ready to justify the rules themselves. At Berkeley the administration adopted a posture of intransigence and as much as said that it would yield only to pressure. There was little concept of true consultation with students on matters affecting their interests. In this setting, a loss of confidence and respect was inevitable. To many of the students, it seemed to justify direct action.
There has been much talk of “riots” at Berkeley. In fact there were no riots at all. One very serious incident—the surrounding and immobilization of a police car for thirty-two hours—could have come to that and should not be minimized. But most of the action consisted of orderly mass rallies, not less orderly sit-ins, and a brief student strike. A great many rules and some state laws were broken in the process. That is certainly regrettable, but we lose our bearings if we respond to such activities as if they were political or even academic outrages. A more appropriate response, learned long ago in other contexts, is to get at the root of the trouble.
A final word about the students and their leadership. The Free Speech Movement has been led by student radicals. In that sense, it is certainly unrepresentative of the student body as a whole. But the struggle these young radicals mounted struck a deeply responsive chord. Most of the students approved the goals of the FSM. At least a substantial minority, especially in the social sciences and humanities, approved of the demonstrative tactics as well. One survey, conducted by a class in social research methods under the direction of Professor Robert H. Somers, showed that in November, 34 per cent of all students supported the direct-action tactics of the FSM. This amounts to perhaps nine-thousand student sympathizers, not counting the larger group who also supported the goals of the movement and whose sympathies could presumably be activated if the administration behaved especially badly. This was borne out by the size of some of the rallies.
On the other hand, student support was clearly tied to the issues at hand. It was not mindless or mechanical, and many had reservations about the more extreme actions, such as the use of a police car as a podium or indulgence in unrestrained invective. The FSM sympathizers did not respond to any appeal. They responded above all to concrete deprivations, like the withdrawal of earlier dc facto rights and, especially, the indefensible re-institution of charges against the FSM leaders on November 30. (Professor Glazer speaks of this as a “blunder,” but the students more rightly perceived it as a sickness of soul.) On more abstract issues, the FSM could get large crowds for rallies but not for illegal action.
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For my own part, I was offended by the posturing and scorn of a few of the FSM leaders, but I was deeply impressed by the earnestness, dedication, and basic moral enlightenment of most of the student supporters I encountered. These are among our very best students. They are not thugs or scoundrels, neither are they caught up in any impenetrable ideology. They are acting out what they have learned, without the patience and restraint of maturity. The students had a just cause and they yearned for affirmation of it. If there was an excess of zeal, it did not forfeit their claim to our sense of fellowship. In a community of scholars, that is something we should reject, not in fearful recoil from the first signs of stirring and change, but only at a last extremity. Happily, there is no prospect of that at Berkeley.
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Nathan Glazer: There is no disagreement between Professor Selznick and myself as to what happened at Berkeley; there is little disagreement even over the interpretation of many of the facts. We both ascribe the origins of the dispute and its continuance and revival to the ineptitude of the administration (though I would not go so far as to characterize this ineptitude as “a sickness of soul”—these men, after all, are our colleagues and it is hard to see that they suffer from such radical defects). We both agree that the FSM was led by students whose political views were not representative of the student body but who, on the basis of the issues created by the administration, were able to mobilize large numbers of students, in particular those moved by the civil rights revolution. We do, however, disagree on three central points: the extent to which this was a fight over free speech; the wisdom of the faculty action; and the moral quality of the students' acts.
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When the representatives of the university administration in the Committee on Student Political Activity agreed early in November to the opening of the campus to the planning and preparation of political action as well as speech, then to my mind the free speech issue, to the extent that it had existed, disappeared. This committee was composed of student, faculty, and administration representatives. It decided that all the actions originally banned by the administration (collection of funds, organizing, advocacy of action) would now be permitted on campus. These were the original issues, and they were settled. The new issue that now arose—whether advocacy and organization of illegal action was also legitimate—was referred to a subcommittee of this committee, consisting of a representative of the statewide university administraton, a law-school professor (one of the faculty group), and a lawyer representing the FSM. The subcommittee agreed on language which satisfied the administration and which, in the judgment of the faculty representative and the students' lawyer, fully protected student civil and political rights. FSM adherents on the full committee, however, rejected the compromise. Professor Selznick accepts the view of the FSM leaders that the university's insistence that the campus must not be used for the launching of illegal action involved a restriction of free speech: “The university apparently reserved the right to regulate speech or organization that in its judgment was directed to illegal off-campus action.” I did not interpret the Regents' position in this way; nor did the faculty members of the Committee on Student Political Action so interpret it; nor did Chancellor Strong's new regulations for student political activity, issued to implement the Regents' position, give support to such an interpretation.
There was never a hint of prior censorship; nor was there any suggestion that the administration would ever move against any kind of speech. The issue was specifically illegal action and the launching of action from the campus by groups using its facilities. The problems arising from this issue (e.g., who decides what is illegal?) could have been ironed out in the Committee on Student Political Action, which was designed for the precise purpose of dealing with such details. I attended one of their meetings, and it was clear to me that discussion in any real sense was made almost impossible by the legalistic quibbling that the FSM students reveled in. They acted as if they were preparing themselves for service on the UN Security Council or the Korean Truce Commission, when they might have acted as members of an academic community trying to work out reasonable rules.
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But what speaks most forcefully against Professor Selznick's restrictive interpretation of the Regents' position is that this position still holds, and that nothing has fundamentally changed in the administration's stand of the first week of November as ratified by the Regents on November 20, two weeks before the sit-ins and arrests of December 2 and 3. The Berkeley campus will have to abide by these rules; and as far as I can see, both the faculty and the students are now ready to live with the condition that the campus is not to be used for the launching of illegal political action. If free speech exists on the campus (and I think everyone agrees that it does), then it is clear that this position does not restrict free speech.
The Regents' ruling strictly interpreted can be used to penalize students and student groups who organize actions which are declared illegal by the courts. But a general declaration of principle by the university does not require it to act in an area as uncertain, as rapidly changing, as ambiguous as present-day civil rights demonstrations. Everything will depend on the temper of the administration, on the development of public opinion, the direction of legal decisions, the evolving character of the civil rights movement. But whatever happens, it is inconceivable to me—as it is, I am sure, to Professor Selznick—that a general university ruling against the use of its facilities for the launching of illegal political action can be withdrawn.
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Now as to the role of the faculty: Professor Selznick suggests that we still have something to teach our students about the relation of means to ends. I agree. I also believe that the resolution of December 8—presented at the time it was, and so overwhelmingly adopted—made the task of such teaching infinitely more difficult. The previous day we had seen the collapse of an effort to reach a compromise. This collapse, we must realize, was engineered in large measure by the leaders of the FSM, through the use of the kind of disruptive tactics that extremists everywhere have made familiar to us, most recently in the unsuccessful campaign of Patrick Gordon Walker. (One of the most brilliant analyses of such tactics—whose purpose is to deny any dignity to an opponent and to prevent him from conducting a meeting with the agenda and speakers he sees fit—is, of course, to be found in Professor Selznick's The Organizational Weapon.) In this case the opponent was the President of the University and the department chairmen who had worked out the compromise. On December 7 and 8 the university was on strike. One group of graduate history students taking an examination was interrupted by an FSM activist who called upon them to go out on strike. One striking teaching assistant was prepared to put up a sign on the door of another teaching assistant who was conducting a class; the sign read, “This class is taught by scab labor.” Such was the atmosphere when the Academic Senate met on December 8.
Here was a moment that required teaching as to the relations of means to ends. But it was impossible at this time to get the Academic Senate to adopt any position which could be interpreted as critical of FSM actions. What the student leaders learned from the Academic Senate meeting of December 8 was that extreme tactics could be used without censure from the faculty. (Many individual faculty members—including, of course, those in the great majority that adopted the resolution of December 8—did, in smaller meetings with students, criticize their actions.)
The size of the faculty vote for the resolution of December 8 was, I believe, unnaturally swelled by a number of special factors, including the confusion of many faculty members who had been told that the main resolution was supported by the President and the administration, and that it was in fact a peace settlement reached to end the strike. Nothing was done to dispel this confusion. The faculty knew that if the resolution were turned down, the strike would continue. Our teaching assistants had been protected against reprisal for two days; could they be protected if the strike went on, and would eight-hundred graduate students dismissed from teaching and research positions be added to eight-hundred arrested students? I do not doubt that the resolution would have passed in any case; the vote, however, would have been much less one-sided in the absence of this confusion and pressure.
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The most difficult question is how one assesses the moral quality of the students' actions. The students are committed to the expansion of freedom; many of their leaders and members have risked the dangers of fighting for justice in Mississippi. I admire and respect the students who have committed themselves to the civil rights struggle, and who have transformed the temper of our universities. Unquestionably the knowledge that many of the students in the FSM were also involved in the larger fight for justice and equality for Negroes made many faculty members hesitant in judging their actions, in a different place and for a different cause.
But no movement in this world is immune from the threat of distortion and corruption, even a movement working for the good and the just. Power may corrupt, even when it is power mobilized for a good cause, and committed to the philosophy of non-violence. These are possibilities; and at times they have come close to realization on the Berkeley campus.
A new period has opened at Berkeley, one of wide communication among administration, faculty, and students, one of great concern with the nature of the university and the process of education within it.
A great wave of energy has been released here, particularly among the students, by the crisis of the past few months, and it has been wonderful to see what prodigies of work—in organization, in research, in writing—have been evoked from them by the struggle. Certainly many professors have been given quite a start to discover that stores of energy are locked in our students and untouched by the normal educational routine. This is a moment that should be seized, for there are only a few chances in the history of an institution when large changes become possible. It is also clear that the new Chancellor welcomes proposals for change. This can be a valuable and fruitful time for us. But this time of potential change can be perverted and aborted if the student leaders do not recognize how such a wide-ranging discussion concerning the character and future of the university should be conducted. Certainly the tactics of force and disruption can play no part in it. I know the faculty shares this view; I hope the radical student leaders do too. But it is just this point that has not been settled in the recent crisis.
Berkeley
Professor Nathan Glazer's account of the student protest at Berkeley, published last month, is distressing to many who have been…
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