“What ails our alma mater,” you ask. What ails our alma mater began in April 1968 with the student occupation of five buildings on campus. The occupation lasted a week and terminated all classes. The administration acted weakly and belatedly. In poker terms, the high execs and deans were dealt a decent hand but played it disastrously. The longer the occupation went on, the more attention it got, the more sympathy went to the occupants, and the more people bought the dubious idea that Columbia University was
a stand-in, a metonym, for the federal government — and was complicit in prosecuting the war in Vietnam. By the time the police were called in, the rebels were considered heroes, even martyrs, and both the police and the university as an institution were looked upon as villains.
In spring 1968 I was a nineteen-year-old sophomore in the college, The week was bewildering, the events fascinating to observe. At the time, my sympathies were with the rebels. I knew and was friendly with some of them. By the logic of the times, every campus demonstration was implicitly also a referendum on the war in Vietnam.
By the time I was thirty I came to see April 1968 as a colossal failure — a terrible error.
Among the alarming results of the university’s inability to exercise its authority were
- The elimination of certain course requirements,
- The effort to revise individual courses to enforce consistency with the goals of social justice as defined by a leftist ideological group,
- Grade inflation
- The idealization of “student protest” as a virtue, with April 1968 in mind.
The idea that the university exists to pursue social justice is pernicious. The university exists to encourage and facilitate the pursuit of knowledge–to offer a place and a time for students to acquire the education that will make them better citizens, happier human beings, and mature adults. It used to be widely agreed that an understanding of the fundamental texts of Western civilization is fundamental to a college education; that it is
a good idea to have an acquaintance with a foreign language and that all educated individuals may be expected to have an understanding of and respect for the political and economic systems of the nation.
Why do I say the pursuit of “social justice” is pernicious? Because in any discussion it introduces politics, and politics overwhelms all else in any area that it enters (aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.) Disagreements are likely to surface in any discussion of the idea of the university. But the clashes are more terrible, and far more difficult to overcome, when political party lines are involved.
To cater to the students is to treat the student as a consumer. This yields all moral authority to an economic imperative.
What should be done?
As a first step toward regaining the moral authority it has yielded to teenagers, I would urge the university to appoint as president an experienced administrator rather than a professor (who may know a lot about his or her subject but nothing about governing) or someone else who may not be equal to the task of dealing with an emergency.
To change the conception of a student from “consumer” to “scholar” would require an audit of the university’s expenses and an assessment of the university’s financial resources, including its endowment. But a good first step would be to expel students in violation of campus rules of behavior. It would also be a good idea to adopt an honor code — and to boast of it as a virtue. To boast as a virtue, also, the university’s particular commitment to the great books” idea that Columbia introduced in 1919 in advance of the University of Chicago.
Being very old-fashioned in these matters, I believe that faculty would be wise to dress like adults, and to accentuate rather than obscure the distinction between mentor and pupil. I have never spoken about April 1968. Why? Perhaps I felt a certain loyalty to friends who took part in the rebellion of April 1968 or who have identified themselves retroactively with the demonstrators.