Posted on 12/25/2007 1:52:44 PM PST by SJackson
This week, 13 members of the Harvard class of 1967 sent a letter to President Drew Faust regarding a perceived lack of activism opposing the Iraq war on the Harvard campus. In the letter, the alumni asked Ms. Faust to create a task force in order to unearth the root cause of “widespread apathy and political indifference of the student body at Harvard.” The letter cited, among other reasons, Harvard has the largest financial endowment in the country and therefore should have no monetary excuse for pandering to the prevailing “political mood in the USA” by not encouraging opposition to the war through institutional measures — such as placing greater importance on political activism during the admissions process and creating an activism task force.
Oh, the irony.
With this letter, these well-intentioned children of the “love generation” have promulgated an ironic solution to institutional political injustice — they have demanded institutionalized dissent.
Indeed, 40 years ago campuses across the country were simmering with outrage and violent reaction that often resulted in vehement protest. The American university was the beacon of protest and political engagement by which the country expressed and gauged its indignation over a futile and drawn-out Vietnam War.
The case was no different on our own campus, where violent and nonviolent protests garnered Madison the activist reputation it still clings to today. As a matter of fact, this university’s political engagement resulted in one of the most serious terrorist attacks in the country at the time, when in 1970 four UW students inadvertently killed a fellow graduate student by bombing Sterling Hall. This very paper was founded in the late ‘60s on the premise of providing an alternative voice to balance the extreme sentiments of the anit-Vietnam protesters of the era.
But now? Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Is Iraq not our generation’s Vietnam as the Harvard alumni and so many others have said?
From John Mellencamp to the aforementioned Harvard alumni to our own dean of students, this generation’s lack of protest and seeming complacency in regard to the Iraq war has continually been interpreted as apathy by previous generations. Many of us, myself included, would beg to differ.
In response to the Harvard alumni letter, the university’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, published an editorial saying while they “appreciate the members of the Class of 1967’s offer of informed advice concerning the nature of protest, we respectfully decline. We are doing just fine on our own.”
The editorial piece appropriately pointed out the absence of a draft in this era necessarily makes political debate and involvement a different enterprise. The motivations that drove college protesters of the 1960s into the streets are certainly not the same as those that drive today’s students; engaging in dialogue and arranging peaceful protests seem to suit our generation’s palate much better.
Additionally, leaps in the media industry have not only allowed for better transmission of public information about the war, but have provided a forum for debate and opining that was lacking in the 1960s. This very opinion page, for example, is evidence of just one outlet students take advantage of in a way that might be less visible, but might also be more pragmatic and effective.
To be sure, though, this generation’s student involvement is not limited to opinion pages and blog posts. The University of Wisconsin Campus Antiwar Network, for example, recently proposed a plan to bring displaced Iraqi students to this university in an effort to raise awareness about the dire circumstances some students face in Iraq and to help the cause of those who have been most negatively affected by our military involvement. To label this sort of student activism as apathetic or in some way inferior to the protests of the 1960s is, as the Crimson editorial said, simply unreasonable.
While the Vietnam War and the Iraq war certainly share the qualities of being unwinnable and utterly disastrous — those of generations past must understand it is the nature of the war and not the nature of the activists living in the war that has elicited such a seemingly tranquil resistance.
What hasn’t changed from Vietnam to Iraq, however, is that human beings, this generation or any other, are overridingly self-centered. Without a draft, there is no draft to oppose. Without an immediate risk to the individual, this war seems distant and removed. And while you, or a frustrated group of Harvard alumni, may think this generation’s output is nothing more than a result of apathy, we know it as the same self-centered aspect of human nature that once drove students to the streets.
The difference is that the public realizes the 60’s hippies were traitors. Treason, selling out your country, is a hard thing to promote.
Jeez, history has proven the class of ‘67 was wrong about Vietnam, and over three million people were slaughtered thanks to their stupidity.
Now they want the same fate for the Iraqis.
Those hippies are just a one note band. Too bad it’s always the wrong note.
And the President should write back saying "Political Indoctrination is not any part of our job."
Was good till this. He should have stopped one paragraph shorter and the article would have been acceptable.
Here’s the letter from the aging Harvard Hippie Class of 1967:
An Open Letter to President Drew Faust
Published On 12/4/2007 12:17:17 PM
NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED
Crimson Staff Writer
A Call for Creation of a Task Force to Investigate the Causes and Propose Possible Cures for Political Apathy and Careerism at Harvard College During these Deeply Troubling Times for the Nation
Dear Professor Faust:
As members of the Class of 1967, which recently marked its 40th anniversary, we have in the past months had special reason to refresh and re-examine our ties to Harvard and to take a hard look at the College today. Though there is much to praise and admire, there are also developments that prompt concern.
You have brought a breath of fresh air to the University, and, at the start of your tenure, we are hopeful you might give a sympathetic hearing to our concern.
Acknowledging that our own coming of age was shaped by the Viet Nam War and the frenetic, at times violent political activism that it engendered, we are perhaps more sensitive than later classes to the need for the College to be a center of debate over the moral issues of the time and a home for views contrary to those of established forces, particularly those of governments. To cite the opening line of Bismarck’s famous quip, “whoever is not a Socialist at age 20 has no heart.”
It has been our collective understanding that Harvard, as one of the founders of the Liberal Arts curriculum in American education, is among the first to defend a 4 year ‘time out’ for self-examination and broad intellectual growth versus the careerist, vocational orientation that can be typical of some lesser institutions across the country.
As contributors to Harvard’s many fund-raising appeals over the years, we have taken pride in the University’s standing as the best endowed institution of higher learning in the world, with a reported net worth of $36 billion dollars. We would expect that this wealth frees the University, and certainly the College at its core, from the need to pander to the prevailing political moods in the USA and enables it to fulfill its calling as one of the more active participants of the global pluralistic society.
Against this background of assumptions, we are concerned by what we see to be the widespread apathy and political indifference of the student body at Harvard College today. If these were ordinary times, years of peace and prosperity, this would be sad, but forgivable. Given that the US is engaged in an occupation abroad that has inflicted countless thousands of civilian casualties while at the same time trampling on US citizens’ own constitutional rights in the name of the “war on terror”, and that the Administration appears to be planning a further strike in Iran, the apparently docile political behavior of the undergraduate student body suggests that one of two things is seriously amiss:
* either Harvard College’s recruitment criteria and procedures have gone seriously wrong; or
* undergraduate life at the College today is not giving due encouragement to civic courage and political engagement.
We earnestly appeal to you to create a Task Force to investigate this and to recommend possible remedies. We would hope that in addition to faculty and present day students you would invite onto such a Task Force representatives of the alumni representation from earlier, less laid back days.
Respectfully submitted,
Signed
Arlene Ash
Robert Clark
Gilbert Doctorow
James Flinsch
Tony Jackson
Jeremy Kagan
Daniel Levine
Nancy Murray
John Pesando
Kenneth Roemer
Steven Varga-Golovcsenko
Nicholas Whitlam
Stephen Young
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521098
Here’s the Crimson editorial:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521166
And another Crimson article:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521097
Just go away! Better yet, just die, arent you getting old anyway?
Well...Aren’t they just *precious*...
...in their sixties, and *still* so “precious”.
We didn’t need them then, and we certainly don’t give a damn about them now!
My sentiments, too. Where do these kind of dolts come from? The so-called “anti-war” protesters of the 1960s at Harvard and such were no more than self-centered cowards who were more than willing to take from America but not willing to give. No one wants to go overseas to be KIA, obviously, but on the other hand, there are things worth dying for, and the ideals of America represent such. These Harvard twits are emblematic of too many Baby Boomers who failed to learn the lessons of their fathers.
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