Interview with Dr. Robert Cohen

Cohen, Robert, 1955 May 21- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. Robert Cohen is a professor at New York University, where he teaches History, Social Studies, Education, and Human Development. He received his B.A. at SUNY Buffalo and his PhD. at the University of California at Berkeley. Cohen also writes books, most of which focus on either history or people as a whole.

2010-11-19

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

199:21

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Robert Cohen
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 19 November 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two, testing. Record this.

RC (00:00:08):
Sure.

SM (00:00:09):
Yeah.

RC (00:00:11):
The president, this is the University of South Carolina. I can get the name of the person who spoke, I do not recall it offhand, but it was an administrator, who was explaining this freshman, or I think he called it First-Year Experience. And what happened was, after Kent State, I think it was, the student union building at University of South Carolina was taken over by the student protestors. And the president of the University of South Carolina was pretty upset about this. Like you said, why? How could students be so elevated from the university that they would take over a building? So how can we make them feel better about the university and better orient them? And those conversations led to this creating of this project, Freshman Experience. And it led to what emerged as a whole center at the University of South Carolina that launched this whole First-year Experience thing out of, became a big national, international thing. And now it has gone beyond that. I think there is a Sophomore Experience and there is a Senior Experience. There is a whole... And there's a ton of publications and all that. Anyway, this administrator, whose name I can, if you remind me, I can dig up, spoke at the conference. So he might be somebody, you want to interview. Shows that this had a sort of impact on educational reform. And it came at a place that you would not normally associate with a lot of student protests, which was the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

SM (00:01:41):
Well, and actually one of my questions later in the interview, deals with the impact that the student protest movement really had on college campus overall, because there is a lot of questions based on, now we are into our third generation since. And first question I want to ask you, I asked this to all of the people I have interviewed is, how did you become who you are? I know that you went to Berkeley, you graduated from Berkeley, you read it up also that you were involved in the 20th anniversary of The Free Speech Movement. But who are you? How did you become a history professor? What was your interest? How did you link up with The Free Speech Movement? Those kinds of things, and who were your role models?

RC (00:02:27):
Well, I became interested in student protests because I was involved in student protests. I was a high school student at the end of the Vietnam era. So I participated in the moratorium against the Vietnam War. And even as a high school freshman, I was involved in that. And this is in New York City?

SM (00:02:54):
That was (19)69.

RC (00:02:54):
Yeah. That is right. And the students, it was in public high school, James Madison in Brooklyn. But there was so much overcrowding back then, that we were not in the main building. We were in an annex building about half mile away. And so myself and some other students helped organize a walkout, a moratorium day, where we were going to walk out of the building and go over to the main building and join the demonstration there against the war, which is what we did. So I got involved and I got involved in the anti-war movement, in part because my brother and my older sister were involved in it. But also because my next door neighbor had been in the Marines. And I used to correspond with him. And he came back disillusioned with the war. And that got me very curious about what was going on with the war. So I think initially, I was interested in it because of the war in Vietnam. I also was very much interested in the civil rights movement. There was a African American student at Madison, who was the first black student to run for president, was Cornell with Knight. And my brother was involved in sort of this campaign, one of the people helping to manage this campaign. And administration was very hostile to it. And I think there was an interest in the civil rights movement itself. And I think, I guess I have always admired people like Bob Moses and they're always [inaudible]. So I think it was through those things that I first got interested. And just as an undergraduate, I was an undergraduate at SUNY Buffalo, and there was a lot of activism there too, centered around the anecdote of-

SM (00:04:37):
Oh, yeah. Governor Rockefeller, yeah.

RC (00:04:43):
Yeah. And so I think the student movement of the (19)60s always interesting movement because in part, I came out of that. So I am always interested in the student protest, youth activism in the (19)60s that came in through that experience about trying to stop the war in Vietnam and trying to fight against racial discrimination.

SM (00:05:00):
So you were at SUNY Buffalo, and then you went on to grad school?

RC (00:05:03):
Yes at Berkeley.

SM (00:05:03):
PhD At Berkeley.

RC (00:05:05):
Yeah.

SM (00:05:05):
Did you go to Berkeley based on the fact that The Free Speech movement was there? Or you thought it was a great history department?

RC (00:05:11):
No. I think it entered in my mind, that I might do something about The Free Speech Movement as a study, but it was really mostly because the history department was really such a great department back then, was not so much because of Berkeley's... And the stuff that happened with my connection with The Free Speech movement, was not part of my graduate program, was more like what I was doing because I was a graduate student activist. I was one of the people helped to found the TA union.

SM (00:05:41):
Teaching Assistant union?

RC (00:05:42):
Yeah, at Berkeley. That was in the (19)80s, it was called AGSE, Association of Grad Student Employees. And then, let us see, that is me back then. And we were trying to organize on that. And then I was also involved in the anti-apartheid.

SM (00:06:02):
Oh, yes.

RC (00:06:04):
I was the editorial page editor of the Daily Californian in the (19)60s. So when I left editor, they blew up some of the-

SM (00:06:14):
Wow.

RC (00:06:16):
...some of the editorials

SM (00:06:17):
Oh my gosh. Very good.

RC (00:06:18):
So yeah, this is back in the (19)80s. So anyway, that is the stuff that I was doing.

SM (00:06:22):
Yeah, the anti-apartheid, that was (19)87, I believe, was not it, the heyday of that?

RC (00:06:25):
Well, actually, a little earlier. It was actually (19)84, (19)85. Actually, the spring of (19)85 is when I first took off because it was a connection between 2010 anniversary of The Free Speech Movement, which-

SM (00:06:39):
(19)84.

RC (00:06:39):
... (19)84. And this was the poster from that. This is all the-

SM (00:06:44):
Oh my gosh. Wow, what a great poster.

RC (00:06:49):
It was organized by a guy named Michael Rossman, who was one of the leaders of The Free Speech Movement.

SM (00:06:53):
Unbelievable. That is-

RC (00:06:55):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that is how I got involved with all this. I think, again, it is a kind of extension of my own background, but also just an interest in social change.

SM (00:07:05):
And now you are teaching and making sure that future generations understand their history and-

RC (00:07:10):
Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah.

SM (00:07:11):
...which is real important.

RC (00:07:12):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I teach teachers too, so that is the other thing. This is part of the education school, and I teach in the history department. In fact, I am doing a course on the (19)60s now with Marilyn Young, who does-

SM (00:07:28):
Yeah, I interviewed her. Yes. Yes.

RC (00:07:30):
She does the history of the Vietnam War. Yeah. And I think also, I would say that, the attempt to try to get the people to remember what happened in the (19)60s and just to understand history of social protest more generally. So yeah, I have been involved in this, there was a project, actually, we were working on trying to organize the fifth anniversary, some events around the Port Huron statements, fifth anniversary-anniversary in (19)62. So Tom Hayden was here, and we're going to organize some events around that too. But yeah, that is really what I am just interested in. Teaching students history of, well, I guess not just the, I would say, I have also written a book on the thirties, on student protesting in the thirties, so it is not just the (19)60s, because this is, there is a-a continuum here, protests that is always going on in the United States.

SM (00:08:25):
One thing is a takeoff because it was my second question is, when you were there in (19)84 and you were a graduate student and you was involved in the planning of the 20th anniversary, what was the difference between (19)64 and (19)84, in terms of the optimism or the feelings of the leaders in (19)64? Because I know Mario Savio was still alive, and Jackie Goldberg and obviously Bettina and others. Where were they in (19)84, in terms of their feelings toward the university that they feel like they had accomplished a lot on at that particular time? What made that such a special event?

RC (00:09:10):
Yeah. Well actually, I will answer in a second, but just reminded me, have you seen the film, Letter to the Next Generation about Ohio State students?

SM (00:09:16):
No, I have not seen that. I went to grad school at Ohio State, that is where it was.

RC (00:09:20):
Oh, then you would have to see this film that is by Jim Klein, called Letter to the Next Generation. It is a film where, he has 1980s students looking back on students from the 1960s. And actually not 1960, but really cannot say, 1970. So you should probably interview him if he's still around because he did a whole movie about this.

SM (00:09:40):
Well, that was anti-war at Ohio State in (19)72, (19)73. And then...

RC (00:09:43):
Yeah. Well, because what he is doing, is he is looking at what happened to that generation in the (19)80s?

SM (00:09:48):
What is his full name?

RC (00:09:50):
I think it is James Klein. Just Google the book.

SM (00:09:54):
Klein?

RC (00:09:54):
Yeah.

SM (00:09:54):
Okay.

RC (00:09:55):
If you just Google the movie, it is called Letter to the Next Generation. Okay.

SM (00:09:57):
And I thought I was up on things.

RC (00:10:01):
No, it is a really interesting film. I always use it when I teach about the (19)60s because they ask, like what you are saying, about how the generations are different. Now, you were asking about what their attitude was? What the-

SM (00:10:12):
Yeah, and what did you learn? Obviously, you knew about it, but what did you learn in (19)84 that you did not know about what happened in (19)64, particularly by having that opportunity to meet Mario firsthand and the others firsthand?

RC (00:10:27):
Well, I think the main thing was just seeing the, first of all, I think one thing was impressive about them was, that they had maintained their interest in democratic change. They were still very idealistic. They did not advertise it like, we made history and you cannot. They wanted to empower people. They thought it was important to let the next generation know what had gone on and their generation. I think that Mario was very involved in the movement against US intervention in Central America. He was very concerned about that. Bettina had been very much concerned about that as well, but also very involved in founding women's studies and gay lesbian rights, woman's issues. Jackie Goldberg had been on the city council and the state legislature in California. These people all had ongoing concerns with social protests. And also the idea was, this is a lot more sort of deeper than taking over a building or something. It was not just bang, bang, bang, boom, boom, boom. It was really a lifelong commitment to trying to make America a more just society. And sort of understanding that I think was important for people. But also, I think it was that, in terms of the students in my generation, it was also seeing that, you had the possibility of making change. That this was not something that was unique to the (19)60s or it was not some brilliant genius that created this, but rather conditions were conducive to it and people felt like that they could make a difference. So I think, what happened at Berkeley, was we had this enormous rally and a series of events about the Free Speech commemoration in October of (19)84. And then I think it sort of startled people that, they could get so many students out because, at that time, the press had been acting as if those students are really all a bunch of yuppies and no one's going to be active anymore. And none of that was really true. But there was a lot of hype about it. And I think this showed that, hey, there is a big progressive community here. There is a big left liberal subculture, we can do things. And I think that fed into this activism against Reagan's imperialist policy of Central America and also this dealing that we could do more on the issue of anti-apartheid. And that was really something that the movement was really getting launched in DC and then Columbia University. Berkeley was not first, but then when to hit Berkeley, it was really big. And in part, I think because in the fall there had been this discussion about activism through these collaboration events.

SM (00:13:12):
What I like about your book and you talk about Mario, but you make, and your introduction and throughout the book, it is very important for people to read it, I think. I think Your introduction is great because there is two things. The media has a way of building up myths. And one of the myths is that when SDS split, with the weatherman and then the concept of the Black Panthers, some people said they were violent and some people said they were not. The media had a way of taking on the weathermen, as if this was the way the anti-war movement students were. They were all this way, this is the way. And so you make sure that, in your talks with Mario, that that is not true, that the majority of the students were not violent at the very end. And why has the media, in your opinion, tried to portray this generation the way it has? Just sensationalize things.

RC (00:14:06):
Well, I think a few things. One with the Panthers, I, there definitely was violent, there were wrenches that were very violent. And in New Haven, they tortured and killed somebody. The Bay Area, there was somebody killed. So I think there is, and the weather just a few blocks from here, blew up a building. So it is not that they are not sensationalizing that did happen. But it is a question of, how representative of the thousands and millions of people who are involved in this movement. It is like, yeah, if you have a demonstration and a hundred thousand people march not violently, and then a hundred people throw rocks, who is going to make the headline? So I think that there is an issue about... News is almost by definition what is new and different. And if you have had five years of people doing these large marches against the war, that is not considered news anymore. What is news is, when people carry a flag or blow up a building, that is what is considered news. And that is the story. I was involved in high school anti-war movement in New York City, and it never would have occurred to us to do anything violent. We did not think about that. It was not even a temptation because we just thought anything like that would did not make any sense. And most people would not think that made sense. So I think there is that. I think there is a way in which some of the stuff that happened, this agenda dynamic to it, seems like very masculine and Hollywood to do things that are violent. Or even the style of the panthers, black leather and black berets and there is something slick about it. In fact, there is this book by Thomas... You know this book, Sweet Land of Liberty by Thomas Sugrue about the-

SM (00:15:55):
I have that, yes. I have not read it, I have it though.

RC (00:15:58):
Well, what is interesting, by the way of example, he does not dwell much on the Black Panthers because he does not think they had much real impact in changing society. Whereas, if you look at the welfare rights movement, which did benefit lots of people, in other words, they got a lot of people out of poverty and they got government assistance of people who really needed it, but it was not big and flashy. Nobody was wearing berets or anything, leather and berets and taking guns out. And it would be just like that. If you try to depict that in a visual, you would have a bunch of people sitting in a bunch of rooms organizing meetings, which looks like, well, that looks boring, but actually it is helping poor people more than the Panthers did. So he highlights, I think there is statistics like that. And by the way, that movement was headed mostly by women. I think it was tied in with the Great Society's community action. Committees that, like you said, at a place like Philadelphia, 70 percent of the people who were involved in the leadership of that were black women. Now, most people who say in the (19)60s, if you asked them about this welfare rights movement, would you draw a blank? If you ask them about the Black Panthers, they would know that right away. But the question is no, which is more representative? Which is having more of an impact? And I think it is the welfare rights group. But I also think that, what is sensational, what is going to make headlines is what is unusual. It is not to say the violence had no role. You think about the big ghetto rebellions, there was not in fact, there was a kind of outburst of anger and violence that awakened America to some pretty terrible social conditions people were facing. But I do not think that is really... If you looked at Berkeley, for example, Berkeley in (19)64, The Free Speech movement was almost entirely non-violent and it was not even about Vietnam. An issue, if you ask students, they would not even know what it is about because, despite the name, they would think I must have something to do with Vietnam or something because it's the (19)60s, or the draft or whatever. But nothing to do with any of that, just about free speech that grew out of activism that is connected to the civil rights movement. Which was, at that point, pretty relentlessly non-violent. So I think, yeah, there is a way which the (19)60s gets dealt with, through one of the most sort of technicolor, exciting image. Not just violence, but also sex, drugs and rock and roll and thinking about the summer of love and all that counterculture. But if you look at the picture of the students marching to the Regents meeting of The Free Speech Movement, Mario is wearing a tie and coat and the woman are wearing skirts looking... The fact at that point, they were being baited as beat... Like the attack on the students' movement at Berkeley at that time was hip... The word hippie was not even used yet. It was still, people do not think about beatniks. So, it was like beatnik baiting. In other words, oh, there must all be in sandals and have long hair and beards and all that. And this is 1964, the beetles had just come to America, there was not really a counterculture as there would be later in the (19)60s. So, what I am saying is there are distinctive eras within the (19)60s, not just one era. And there's a way in which the easiest way to deal with something is like these stereotypes. And so I think that, there is a lot of obfuscation and a lot of misunderstanding in the (19)60s, because the way that is remembered is through these very dramatic late (19)60s images, both the violent ones that you were alluding to and countercultural ones that, again, it is not that it is based on nothing because there were groups like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, but tiny. And the NAACP, had a thousand times more members than the Black Panthers. So why are we paying so much more attention to the Black Panthers than the NAACP? Or the same thing you could say about, with The Free Speech Movement is non-violent, so why is it very few people know it is history? It is in part because that is not the images that people have.

SM (00:20:09):
You bring up two other important points too. And I think when, in the book on Mario Savio and the others about longevity, when you talk about Mario, you are talking about a lifelong activist. He might have had the problems of the depression, some of the other things, but deep down inside his central core was rights. Even as you bring up all the time, the rights was a very important part of what the (19)60s was all about. And there were many people. And the media, again, oftentimes tried to portray that the (19)60s generation or the boomer generation, not just the activist, but overall, they went on to become yuppies. I heard that in Philadelphia, when I was living there, there is a whole section and a lot of them were making money on Wall Street. They were in their early thirties and so forth. So there was that business about longevity. And the other important point you bring up, which is really important. We know Reagan came to power because of the backlash, when he became governor and the whole thing. But this perception, the media again, that Reagan, the Reich came to dominance, so to speak. And what happened in The Free Speech Movement in the protests in the (19)60s, basically, I would not say it was defeated, but the backlash put America back on the right track, so to speak. And you bring up a very important point in the book that, yeah, there may have been a backlash, but it did not have an effect on the rights movement and all the movements. Could you kind of talk about those other two things that the media oftentimes tried to portray?

RC (00:21:49):
Well, I think that the shift to the right has been very powerful and it is very difficult to deal with, in other words, to overcome it is just that it does not mean the other people disappear. We tend to deal in very simple decade thing. The (19)60s was this, the (19)80s was this. People that have not died, they are still there, or there is a core of people who are still active. So it is very simplistic to think that they do not... The other thing is that there has always been a trend in American history, with officers such as [inaudible] talks about the cycles of American history going between liberalism and reform and privatism and conservatism. So that is nothing new. And the thing is that, the attempt of the right to bring back the (19)50s, or you want put it that way, which has always been the project. Look, you can say, the problem with the analysis, is that the assumption is that the way things are, is the way that they always will be. In other words, thinking when people were making those arguments about Reaganism or Bushsism, whatever you want to say, it was when they were in the White House dominating things. And they have had a lot of political success, so it's easy to think that that is really what matters. But remember that Obama, the election to be president would never ever happen if it was not for the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of the (19)60s. In other words, so you could just easily argue that, well, the right was just a blip on the screen and it is really the left that is making a difference because we have a president who is African American, which never would have been impossible before the (19)60s or without the (19)60s. But I think, the way I see it, it is an ongoing struggle. In other words, that the right tries to impose its own agenda politically and culturally in America. And there is a lot of resistance to it because a lot of things have changed because of what happened during the (19)60s. Women are not willing to be subordinated the way that they were in the (19)50s. There is a resistance when they try to get rid of, say, Roe versus Wade. Or if you think about the attempts to, every time the US intervenes abroad, there is much more resistance now than there would have been before Vietnam. So whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan or Grenada or Nicaragua, there is pushback in a way that there was not before. So the dynamic, in other words, there is always a right left conflict in the United States. The question is, who is winning and how that is going? And I think that what the (19)60s did was, it gave it a lot more, the left, a lot more resources and ideas about how to push back. So I think, that from my perspective, I think that the backlash events against the (19)60s is very powerful and very worrisome. But on other hand, look, why is it the rights always worried about Murphy Brown or whatever is going on in Hollywood? And this feeling like that there was a cultural revolution in the (19)60s that they lost, even if they take local power, that is why they are so furious, is that they feel like, well we took Congress back, or we took the White House during the Reagan and Bush years. Why is this culture still so progressive? Still so-

SM (00:25:09):
Good point.

RC (00:25:12):
... defying conservatism because there were political transformations that came out in the (19)60s, but then there is backlash and there is also postal transformation in the (19)60s, and they had not been able to reverse all of that. So you turn on TV set now you are going to see, well, black folks on TV, you are going to see women on TV and roles that they would not have played in the (19)50s or early (19)60s. So there is a lot of things I think that the (19)60s changed in an enduring way that I do not think are ever going to go back. But I also think, yeah, there has been.... You know there is another book, Framing the (19)60s, where we talked about the way that the right has used the (19)60s over the years, have you seen that?

SM (00:25:51):
I probably have that. I try to keep up. I have not read them all.

RC (00:25:54):
Yeah, that is this one. He talks about the way that Reagan and Bush, all these guys-

SM (00:26:00):
Framing the...

RC (00:26:02):
Framing the (19)60s. ... using the (19)60s as a kind of whooping boy to try and basically say that we need to be rescued from the way that America was corrupted and ruined by this decade of disorder and chaos and violence. So in a way, it has given them something to run against. But on the other hand, I think, it strengthened the left in lots of ways that. In other words, what is the simplification is to think that, well, because we won the last election, there has been some great mandate and this huge change that, like Ingrid calling Clinton the Countercultural McGovern. And we were going to get rid of all the things the (19)60s wrecked about America. And basically overreaching and ended up getting kicked out of power because there was a lot of support, not from a government, but just for a different type of society where women have rights, where black have rights, where we're concerned about the general welfare and not just about private profits. So I think that this whole push to the right, has been in part, fueled by this reaction against the changes in the (19)60s. But a lot of people disagree with them and they do not win every election. How do you explain Clinton two terms, then Obama's? And I do not mean to make it just about Democrats and Republicans because it goes deeper than that. Clinton said that if you look back on the (19)60s as a disaster, you are probably a Republican. You look back-

SM (00:27:34):
[inaudible]

RC (00:27:36):
...probably. I think there is something to that, but I think it goes beyond party politics. I think it is more about how are we organizing our values and our lives? And that I think on issues of foreign policy, that runs especially deep. The idea that the United States should not just go around pushing other countries around. And if they do that, then, especially in an aggressive way, there's going to be resistance here. And there has been.

SM (00:27:58):
It is like Bobby Muller when he came back from... I know Bobby quite well, he came to my retirement party and he said that one of the things he learned about being in Vietnam was, that when he came back, he knew America was not always right. And that was hard for him because when he went into the Marines, he thought America was always right.

RC (00:28:17):
Well, yeah. Yeah, I think that is true. I think that a lot of people were awakened to the idea that United States, on some level, is not that different from other great powers. And that acts in a self-interested way and sometimes this regards to the rights of other nations. And so the whole question of, when I talk to my teachers, I ask them, how are you going to teach about America's role in the world? Are you going to act as if the United States is just a benign force at all times? Or is the United States an imperialist power? That is a question that I think needs to be asked. Or if you think about Osama bin Laden, the United States during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, act like they were freedom fighters. A decade later, then they were terrorists. Is sort of like, well, there is lots of examples. Think about Iran helping to overthrow Mossadeq. And then you end up with the Shah imposing the Shah, and then you get the rise of the Islamic Republic and Khomeinism. In a way, a lot of these things are connected to stuff we did, or thinking about overthrowing Allende. And the idea that, after that you have Pinochet. A lot of times, by messing with other countries internal history, the way that we do, we get outcomes that are worse than what they started out with. So I think that, that is one of the things that came out of (19)60s is saying, well, look, we are not going to always assume that just because it is US foreign policy, it does not make sense. We are going to ask you, what are you doing? Are you respecting what this other country is about? And is the outcome worse than it was when you inherited it?

SM (00:30:04):
President Obama is damned if he does or damned if he does not. It is interesting, depending on who you read, supposedly he does not like to identify with the (19)60s. But people, his opponents, criticize him as being the epitome of the (19)60s, in fact, way to the left.

RC (00:30:26):
So there is always this ridiculous political dynamic in the United States, that anything that is even moderately left to center is seen as being... You see these books that are published that depict him as a socialist. Really on the cover.

SM (00:30:35):
I hear that, there are people who might, Facebook, some of my conservative students-

RC (00:30:39):
Or Gingrich, it is completely nutty. I think that, he is so moderate that, I think in a way he sees himself as a post-partisan president and wants to go beyond the (19)60s. So I think that, in a way, maybe one of his mistakes is not understanding, that this whole politics of backlash, that the right in this country's organized and a way they cannot even be civil about it. They have somebody saying, well, my goal... Even in a place and time, like the (19)60s, there is some degree of bipartisanship. You respect the office of the presidency. Here, just this week, they wanted to meet with them to talk about the budget, they are too busy. What I am saying to you is that, in a way, I see the way that he is treated, by the right, as kind of an extension of this unfriendliness towards black rights, towards civil rights. There is an element of that there. I do not mean it is just about race, but I think there is a part of that there. But I also think he is very moderate. I think of him as being... My perspective on him is that, he's been too much thinking that he can move beyond those... He wants to, it is admirable to get United States out of this mode of this left, right dynamic, but there is really no way to, because that is the way, the Republican Party is organized. They're organized basically, to wage class warfare on the poor and that is basically it. And also, I think to have this sort of imperial presence, and it is hard to disengage from that. But you cannot disengage from that if you do not understand or you are not going to articulate. Well, look, we need to have something that is like that, a new, new deal. We are entering into a period of liberal reform or progressive reform and be able to change the discourse. Right now, it is amazing to me, going around the (19)60s, I think there is a whole way in which... It is like Hoover's, it is basically that you are saying that you want to go back to small government, essentially the magic of the free market and deregulation. And that is what caused the crash in the first place. I have a tea party seat at my class, I talked to him about this small department. How do you explain, you think about the last depression we are in, what pulled us out was World War II, the greatest deficit spending in American history. So that was suggest that, the small government solutions that you are talking about is not the way to get out of it. In fact, when Roosevelt used a small government approach in (19)37, it caused a recession. He had a kind of [inaudible], he scaled back on these programs and he got this huge upsurge in unemployment. So I do not know, I guess what I think about this whole thing is that, it is kind of over the top, these attacks on him. On the other hand, I think that he is part of the (19)60s legacy and is resented for that reason. And even though he does not want to identify that way, and I think that is admirable in a certain sense, that you want to not have this partisan, you want to get out of this partisan, but you cannot because the people on the right, see him as an extension of... I think what you see with the right is, any kind of government dimension that is seen as... They do not make the sense between liberalism and socialism.

RC (00:34:03):
Any kind of government dimension is seen as... They do not make-make sense between liberalism and socialism. And so, they are nutty in that way. There is a big difference between someone who is liberal and someone who is a socialist and that is lost on them. So, I think that in my film, there is a lot of this discussion about Obama... Reflects some of these same issues except that he wants to hold himself above or away from this and it's not really working.

SM (00:34:29):
When you look at the boomer generation, do you look at the entire... Actually, there is 74 million people in that generation. People have written about the (19)60s, a very small percentage were activists. Depending on who you talk to, I said 15 percent and I have been corrected many times by historians. Thomas Power says, "Steve, 5 percent." But what I am asking here in this question is, if you look at the entire 74 million and, in your book, you concentrate on Mario and some of the new left, what are your thoughts on the whole generation as a whole?

RC (00:35:10):
Well, first of all, I do not think generations make history. I think people who are active make history. The American Revolution was John Adams. That estimate was a third of people who are opposed, a third were supportive, and a third were neutral. So, to speak about 1770s generation is not particularly meaningful because the Loyalists lost. The apathetic did not make much difference. The people who made the difference were those who were-

SM (00:35:35):
The few.

RC (00:35:38):
...involved in the Patriot cause, so I think that is always true. History has always made by minorities. In other words, what kind of history would you write if you highlighted the fact that the majority of people were not involved. It would be history of inactivity, indifference. So I do not really think that is... To me, I know that argument. The same thing is true, Melvin Dubofsky made that argument about the (19)30s. He wrote an essay called The Not So Turbulent years. And there is a trilogy, or no, a two-volume work by Irving Bernstein called The Turbulent Years about the (19)30s. It's about the labor upheaval and all that. And he wrote an article saying, well, that is really got it backwards. Actually, I do not know if he still, but he used to teach at Binghamton, Melvin Dubofsky, great labor historian.

SM (00:36:30):
That is right.

RC (00:36:32):
Anyway, so he made the argument that what we really need to figure out is not why a minority in the labor movement was active and striking, we have to figure out why majority did not strike. And I do not think that is wrong. I think, yeah, we need to know both. So my feeling is, the boomer generation is probably more affected by the cultural changes of the (19)60s. More feminists, more egalitarian, less racist than... In other words, they were there. But like this book I am doing on the South, probably the majority of Southern students, no, definitely majority, were not involved in the student protests. And actually were kind of either indifferent or hostile to it, but still their campuses were changed by it. At the end of the... There is a book about, I mean we are doing a book, there is also a book that came out very recently, I think it is called Sitting in and Standing Up. It is by Jeff Turner at University of Georgia Press, about southern student protests in the (19)60s. And what he found, and what we found in his essays that we are looking at is that the college campuses of the (19)60s started out in the South pretty conservative places. If you were at a place like the University of Alabama, Georgia, there would be no Black students at all, very traditional gender roles, not much academic freedom. By the end of the (19)60s, of course with desegregation that had changed, but also because of the student movement, the anti-war movement had an impact even in the Deep South. So what I am saying to you is those campuses... Today, if you go to a place like the University of Georgia or the University of Alabama, I am sure there would be a woman's studies program, a Black studies program. There would be people who write about American foreign policy in a critical vein. As I am saying is that these institutions were transformed and became more progressive, even if majority people, majority students politically are just sort of mainstream. So I think people were changed by the culture and political atmosphere, even if they were not activists. I do not really... I just do not think that a good way to make history is just by counting numbers, just by counting how people are participating and how many are not-

SM (00:38:51):
I think some people that have actually kind of emphasized this for people that are trying to lessen the impact these people had by just concentrating on the numbers.

RC (00:39:02):
Yeah, and I would say that that is a way... You can never really do political history that way because politics is not made by... For example, when we think about 1961, are we concerned with the majority of people in Massachusetts who are not involved in democratic politics or are we trying to figure out what John Kennedy was about? He is one person, right? Well, he is one person who made a big difference because he became President of the United States. So there is a way in which if you really take the logic of that argument, then you are only going to do a certain type of social history and you are not going to look at political history. So it is not just about the (19)60s. As I said, you can the same argument about the Revolution. You can make the same argument about Secession. ow many people were actively involved in the secessionist movement? It was a minority, but it had this enormous impact on the South and on the country. So I do not think that the boomer... When people talk about the boomer generation as a whole, I would not expect any generation the majority would do anything. You are talking about just millions and millions of people. But the fact is that that generation gave birth to the largest mass movement of college student protestors in the history of this country and that is very significant. The first generation that really, a large percentage said no to racism and said no to imperialism, that is significant. That does not mean that a majority of people of that generation, if you look at the polls, majority of people were in the 18 to 21 age group supported the Vietnam War till very-very late.

SM (00:40:38):
That is right, (19)66.

RC (00:40:38):
So even beyond, there is that book by Wattenberg and all those, The New Majority that shows that. So it is definitely the case that we are not talking about a majority of that generation doing anything.

SM (00:40:52):
Do you like the term boomer?

RC (00:40:55):
Well, I think that is just reflects the baby boom. I do not have a particular problem about it. To me it is not the generation itself, that idea, it is just the basic demographics. It does not tell you all that much. I do not know.

SM (00:41:10):
Yeah, well one of the things [inaudible] we learned when I was in grad school at Ohio State when reading Harry Edward's book Black Students and some of Kenneth Keniston's books and so forth, is that the (19)60s generation was divided into so many different areas. And Harry talked about the differences between militants, anomic activists, activists, radicals and so forth. That was the first time I really learned the difference between them. And what he was basically saying is that the leaders of the (19)60s movements were oftentimes those born between 1938, (19)39 and (19)45. Because you look at Tom Hayden, you look at Mario Savio, they were in that (19)40 to (19)45 period and they were part of a spirit. But it is a spirit that-

RC (00:42:04):
Yeah, I think that is true probably for the earlier (19)60s. I think that with the... Remember that both Mario and Hayden were part of the founding fathers and mothers of the New Left. But if you look at the late (19)60s generation, they would fall into that later range. But I do not think, for me it is like saying when I was growing up in that period, I did not feel myself particularly identified as being a boomer. That term does not really have much all that much meaning for me, I think it is a question of the way I see in college campuses. Essentially, you have different subcultures that are either consciously or unconsciously competing to set the tone of their generation. So you have a more academic, more traditional, maybe more political, they're all different types of subcultures that are competing. And in the (19)60s what happened was a sort of more activist subculture really began to dominate. And that is to me what is significant. Not the demographics that it was the largest generation of young people. I think what happened probably could have happened no matter how many young people there were, I guess you could say because there were many more kids in college that had made it possible for this group to have a larger impact. But it is not necessarily so, if you look at the (19)30s, my first book was about student protests during the Great Depression. There was no boomer generation there, but they were the first generation to have mass student protests, the sort of depression generation. I guess what I am saying is to me that is not really the central fact of the era. I guess I would say that probably the fact that it was mostly more affluent era helped to make it so, but when people, you talk about the boomer, they are talking about boomers are talking about the size of the generation. There were so many young people because of the baby boom. And I think that is kind of, to me it is not really the central issue or the central factor that made this all possible. It is sort of the background demographic. And I think the way that it's talked about is, it is often a put down, the boomer generation are these... Because there is so many, they think the whole world is their generation and their self-indulgent and self-centered and all this stuff and I think a lot of that is kind of overstated. I do not think I hardly ever use that, even though I have written a lot about the (19)60s, it is not a term that I have used. I wrote also about student... The southern stuff I have written about is about the opposite end of it. It's about southern students resisting integration at one point. I did not get to finish it, but I was doing a book and I published some articles about the University of Georgia desegregation crisis in (19)61. And I was going to do a comparison of the desegregation crisis in the University of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. And those students, they said that they were activists initially, they were active on the other side. They were active in resisting change. My article on the Georgia group was called Two Four Six Eight We Do Not Want to Integrate. It is about these white students who essentially rioted outside the dormitory of Charlayne Hunter, later on Charlayne Hunter-Gault, first Black student at the University of Georgia. And they were part of the same boomer generation that Charlene was, or earlier incarnation of what I was. But how is that meaningful? In other words, what does that explain to you? Also, the Young Americans for Freedom-

SM (00:45:43):
Yes, the brand-new book out on that too, by the way.

RC (00:45:45):
Yeah. Which book were you-

SM (00:45:51):
It is a brand-new book by a guy named Pre, Primo? It is really in depth, real thick book.

RC (00:45:57):
I have this book about, there is several different things, but there's also this Rebecca Klatch's book, A Generation Divided about-

SM (00:46:04):
Oh, I have that.

RC (00:46:05):
...about the New Left and the New Right, looking at the... You see some parallels, but I am just saying if it is a generational thing that makes people progressive, then how do you explain this stuff on the right that is going on?

SM (00:46:15):
I will email you the-

RC (00:46:16):
Sure.

SM (00:46:16):
It is a brand-new book, just came out.

RC (00:46:18):
No, I had not seen that yet. So what I am saying to you, is to me, it is such a massive group and such a huge category. It does not explain too much. That is why I thought-

SM (00:46:28):
In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what do you think was the watershed ruling?

RC (00:46:34):
When did the (19)60s begin? Well, there is a lot of people have different perspectives on that. People talk about the long (19)60s. I think that from my perspective, in terms of setting the tone of the decade, really the February of 1960 with the sit-ins in North Carolina, that is at Greensboro, that is really helped to set the tone for what happened politically in the (19)60s. And as far as when it ended, I think that that is more difficult. You could say that it ended with the Vietnam War. There's a lot of dispute about to what extent the social protests of the (19)60s actually ended because a time when after SDS had imploded and the anti-war movement kind of came to a screeching halt because the war ended, you had the beginnings of the feminist movement, you have the upsurge of gay and lesbian liberation, the birth of the environmental movement. So I think it is kind of a complicated question. I think that I tend to think of the United States as a culture that does not have these neat little beginnings and endings. The (19)60s ends as a political... The anti-war movement ended. But in a sense it was reincarnated again every time a new US intervention happened, it's like what's her name talks about this, she rejects the whole idea of the frontier. I am forgetting her name. Patricia Limerick. This is a book about the legacy of conquest. She is the founding mother of the New Western history. And she talked about how people... When does the frontier, when does it close? And she said, "Well, it opens every time there is a dispute about Indian land." Or in other words, her view is that the period ends when you have people looking back on it with... When they make up these sort of Disneyland type of tourist attractions about it. And you could say, well there is a Woodstock museum or something. But it comes back as soon as there is a dispute about land rights and there are. In other words it is like it all starts to come back again. But I think in terms of the larger dynamic, could say that there's a lot of different points we could say. Well, the right, really absurd. Was it the reelection of Nixon in (19)68? Could you say that Chicago and the reelection of Nixon in (19)68 ended the (19)60s? Well, I guess the reason why it is a difficult question is because the (19)60s changed so much and there were so many different areas. You think about legal history, political history, social history, cultural history. There is a lot of different manifestations of the change that the (19)60s made. And you take this Tinker decision about students having the rights in school. There have been a lot of decisions because the Supreme Court moved to the right, whether it is Bethel versus Frazier or any of the other decisions, the bang hits for Jesus one more recently. There is a lot of shifting away from those rights because the (19)60s ended with those decisions or the fact that they still have not thrown Tinker out. Is that so that there's still continuity? So I think you could say the same thing in terms of politics. Does the (19)60s end when Reagan got elected president, then is that really because he was a nemesis of them? Well then how do you explain Obama? But I guess the way I think of in terms of there being mass movements in the streets, that did end with the end of the Vietnam War. And so I think that Doug [inaudible] has an article about this whole question about did the (19)60s ever end? And if you have this concept of the long (19)60s, it could seem like, no, it never ends. But definitely there is a change in the way the politics are organized. There is not like massive... There are not mass movements and mass protests in the streets and on college campuses. And that really ended in the early (19)70s. So I would say probably that is how I would say-

SM (00:51:15):
The person that you co-teach the course with, Marilyn Young. Has she stated to you when the (19)60s began? Because I asked that question to her.

RC (00:51:22):
No, we have not gotten to that yet. I do not think I have [inaudible] what would she have said?

SM (00:51:25):
She said it started with the Beats.

RC (00:51:27):
Oh, the Beats. Yeah, we actually, we started talking about the Beats. But I mean, that is culturally right?

SM (00:51:31):
Yes.

RC (00:51:31):
So I think that I would agree that the roots of... There is a lot of different roots in the (19)50s that make the (19)60s possible. But I think politically I would say, again, that question when you talk about the (19)60s, you could also say, well, in terms of the court cases, you say the (19)60s began with Brown, right? In (19)54.

SM (00:51:53):
(19)54.

RC (00:51:54):
So I think it depends on what is it you are focusing on? Is it culture? Is it electoral politics? Is it politics in the street? Is it judicial politics? You would have different answers depending on which of those you are focusing. It is sort of like saying, "When did the Great Depression end?" People say, "Well it did not end until World War II." And I said, "Well macro economically that is true. But if you look at the immediate crisis like the farm crisis or the banking crisis, no, those ended much earlier." So I think that depends on which you were talking about. But I think that if you asked me as a political story, then I would say that it began with the idea of mass protesting, possible as a civil disobedience as a source of social change. It began with the sit-ins in began in Greensboro and it ended a little bit after the war ended. It actually began to cool right after Kent State, in terms of mass protest in the streets. That is what I would say. But in terms of the cultural dynamic and the spinoff of other movements it's a very gendered answer. If we think, well the anti-war movement is what made the (19)60s, then what about the feminist movement which really hit a stride in the (19)70s? The same thing, gay liberation and lesbian liberation, those are things that really took off in the (19)70s. The same thing as the environmental movement and then the upsurge of the anti-nuclear movement. So I think it is maybe a little too sweeping to say it ends here and begins there. But I think something did change in the (19)70s in the sense that they're being mass in the street’s kind of protests.

SM (00:53:38):
Since people are going to be reading these oral history interviews, I know what the Free Speech Movement is and so do you, but my question here is if you could just briefly describe what the Free Speech Movement was, what it was not, why did it happen? Who were the student leaders and why was this event so important for colleges in (19)64 and beyond?

RC (00:54:03):
Well, the Free Speech Movement was basically what its name said. It was a contest over freedom of speech initially, where the administration... It started as a kind of board dispute where the university ends and the street, the city begin. And that is a kind of interesting dispute to begin with because in a way, what that was about on the corner of the south corner of the campus is saying that you can have the right to do political advocacy if you are off campus. And they thought that the strip of land on Bancroft and Telegraph avenues was off campus. But then it turned out, they found out that some of the little political tables they used to do organizing were actually on university property, that that strip the land that they thought was owned by the city was actually partially owned by the university and part of it was owned by the university. So then it was violating this university regulation about political neutrality. But if you just think about that, what that means is there's more freedom off campus then there is on campus. The First Amendment will protect your free speech rights off campus but on campus, you cannot do political advocacy. And just think about what that says. I mean, the university is supposed to be a place where you have academic freedom and the free expression of ideas is treasured. And instead, we're saying that, "Well, if this becomes part of the campus, it is got the kiss of death on it." It is sort of like, "No, you cannot do protest here. You cannot do advocacy here." So that is a reflection of the lack of political freedom on campuses, especially Berkeley on campus, that is ever since the Red Scare of our (19)30s. There is a mini Red Scare in the Bay Area after the general strike, where in (19)34 the university put these regulations out about political neutrality that you cannot do advocacy on campus. And that is very oppressive. Basically, it was done to protect the university from being red baited by the university, by the right wing and the state legislature. But how can you have freedom in a university if you cannot have free speech? And how can you have free speech if you cannot advocate? They thought, "Well, you could talk about anything but you cannot advocate something." Well, that is a ridiculous distinction. It is a distinction without difference, there is no way that... Mario said, "You would have to be like a Solomon to be able to make that kind of a distinction." And it was not tenable. And when they got pushed back with, then it would collapse. But the point is that these rules were restrictive and it was reinforced by the loyalty oath and McCarthyism. And even though this is 1964 and the president of the campus, Clark Kerr is a liberal, he is still towing the line with these very restrictive regulations. And so, what really brought this to a head was students were very much affected by the Civil Rights Movement and by the civil rights protests against Barry Goldwater because they had the Democratic... The Republican Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. So students wanted to participate in these things. And then the university tried to clamp down when they found out, the Oakland Tribune reporter came and found out that this is not city property, it is campus property. So therefore the university, "Oh, we have to then stop this organizing." And the students said, "No, we know. Why should we be restricted in our ability to speak and our ability to protest." And the university was not flexible. And the university students began first very politely trying. That is another thing that is important. They did not immediately say, "Okay, let us take over a building." That is not the way people operated back then. They said, "Let us try to petition, this is unreasonable. Let us get the university to reconsider these policies." But the university would not reconsider. It was basically saying that we do not think that the university should be playing this role. And so they would not compromise. I mean, not compromise, there was really no way to compromise in the sense that you either are going to have free speech on campus or you're not. The university wanted to make these compromises, as well. "We will let you have these tables but you cannot advocate political action." And then they changed the position and said, "Well, you can advocate political action, but it cannot be illegal." Well if you are advocating action against racism and that leads to a sit-in, that is illegal. So you are restricting their speech, their ability to make the university a place where students are involved in trying to serve society can organize against racism. And the students felt that was wrong. And that in turn, led to social, to protests, to sit-ins. And that in turn, I think had several effects. One was that it showed students that even though you by yourself are not powerful as a student using civil disobedience as a great equalizer, you can as a student have power if you are organized together. So that is one piece of this. The other thing that I think that the protests led to was students, after they said, "Well, the university is restricting us and this is not right." Then they began to say, "Well, wait a second, why is the university doing this?" In other words, what happened was it began as a movement was about free speech, but it evolved into something else beyond that. Because what I am saying is what happened is once the free speech issue is surfaced, then it led students to wonder, "Well, why is the university doing this? What's wrong with the university itself that it restricts freedom of speech?" And they came to this conclusion that the university was too close to what they call the military industrial complex. And so, was willing to sacrifice freedom of its own students and faculty in order to ingratiate itself with the powers that be. And so in other words, it led to this whole critique of the corporate university, which today is very much in vogue amongst some scholars who would look at the way that the university's become so much... If you look at David Kirp's book Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line, there's tons of books this criticize the university for being essentially, almost like a business. Or Sheila Slaughter's book Academic Capitalism. There is all this critique of the university as losing its sense of mission. So I think that the point is that it started off as movement just to... Mario came back from Mississippi and no intention at all of launching a mass movement at Berkeley. They were not interested in protesting about the university. They were just intending to keep on doing their activism in the Bay Area. There was all this activism in the Bay Area against discrimination in the local stores, in hotels on Auto Row. They thought they would continue to do that. It was just because the university basically was trying to stop them from doing that by denying them their free speech rights, that they began to focus their attention from off campus to on campus. And then once they started to focus it on campus, they began to be critical of the university because why is the university repressing free speech? And what came out of this movement were several things. One is that it showed that the students could be effective.

SM (01:01:15):
Hold on a second. Mine is to prepare people to be administrators in higher ed.

RC (01:01:25):
Oh, that is interesting.

SM (01:01:26):
Well, go ahead.

RC (01:01:30):
What I was going to say is that then what happened was... What was significant of the Free Speech Movement was that it won. Most student protests lose, historically. They won. And they won in part because the students had a core issue that a lot of people agreed on, that people should have the right to speak freely. They won because they were mostly non-violent. And so even though it seemed the majority of people in California were opposed to the movement because all they focused on was how disruptive it was. They thought there were riots, there were not riots, there were protests. The students at Sproul Hall did not rush the building. They marched in slowly. It is almost like a formal ceremony. When Joan Baez singing We Shall Overcome and you are walking into a building, that is not like some hijacking going on. That is like a very public act of deliberate and moderate civil disobedience. Non-violent. So what the Free Speech Movement showed was that when students have a large grievance and organized in a non-violent way against it, and also when they start to try to appeal to the faculty, because the Free Speech Movement was not just a student movement. That is another mistake people make. Campuses are not just students and administrators. Very important are the faculty. And what was really going on during the Free Speech Movement and my colleague Reggie Zelnik's article was about this, it was the administration and the students were competing with each other to win over the faculty. And in the end, the students won over the faculty because the administration was so blundering and repressive and worst of all was at the Greek theater when they took Mario off the stage by his tie. And they tried to gag him, basically gagging him. The administration kind of discredited itself. And the students, the faculty eventually on December 8th with their resolutions sided with the Free Speech Movement. And Kerr looked back on this when I interviewed him, the president of the university, looked back on the revolt as a faculty revolt as much as a student revolt. And he was right about that. The faculty, it took a long time because the faculty had loyalty to the university and to the administration. Faculty did not take over any buildings. They are not going to sit in, they generally have more loyalty to the institution and to the administration. But in the end they sided with the students. So I think what it showed is that if you really organize people and educate them on a big issue, and you use civil disobedience non-violently and as a last recourse... In other words, there is another sort of stereotype of the (19)60s that student protest is all about you go take over a building. That is not the way things worked in the Free Speech Movement. That was the last thing they were trying to do. They thought they could win without that. Civil disobedience caused people to get arrested, suspended, it is very painful. It is not the first thing that you do. It is really the last thing that you do. And they only used it when they absolutely felt like they needed to. And so, December 2nd to 3rd, Mario gave his famous speech and all that. They did take over the administration building, but that was because they felt like nothing else had worked. And the faculty eventually sided with them I think because despite the fact that for its time it was very militant, they were non-violent. They had a really important grievance and they spent the whole semester explaining it to people. It is not like these big dramatic moments that you should really focus on when you think about these moments, it is the long, difficult and even tiresome and boring, not boring, I would not say boring, the long and tiresome process of educating people about the issue that you are working on.

SM (01:05:27):
Like Tom Hayden does constantly.

RC (01:05:29):
Yeah.

SM (01:05:30):
With his Facebook page.

RC (01:05:31):
Yeah, so what I am saying is that what the Free Speech Movement showed is that students can have an influence in shaping history and as long as they organize intelligently, non-violently and in a sustained way and remember that they have to appeal to people outside of their own group, which is what the students did because they brought the faculty along with them.

SM (01:05:55):
It is interesting that Clark Kerr wrote that book, The Uses of the University, which was required reading in our graduate program at Ohio State. And that is the outline of the corporate world that we are talking about here. When I interviewed Bettina she said she really did not like Clark Kerr, but then in later years there was some situation where they were brought together for some reason.

RC (01:06:17):
Yeah, he wanted to get some feedback on his memoir, I think.

SM (01:06:21):
Yeah. And she said, "I really like the man." He was not as bad as he portrayed and of course he was fired by Reagan.

RC (01:06:28):
Well, I think the thing is that Kerr was basically in a lot of ways an admirable person. He had worked with Paul Taylor and Dorothy Lang, a very progressive background. And if you look at his master plan for California higher education, it was about providing accessible, cheap, higher education to the entire, no, universal higher education.

SM (01:06:54):
Wish it was still that way.

RC (01:06:55):
Yeah, I know. So in a way, he was caught between the right and the left. I do not think he was a bad person. He just made some pretty big mistakes in handling the protests. But look at his overall career, he was about... And even the stuff he was talking about, I think he was slightly misinterpreted by the Free Speech Movement. He was not uncritical of corporatization at the university. If you read that book carefully. He does have a kind of celebrating tone, but he does have some sort of... In fact, he is sarcastic at point. He suggests that there is some language in there that Hal Draper took him to task for. But he is sort of saying that, you could prostitute yourself and go too far in the quest for profits, a university could. So he was not uncritical. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to say that once the Free Speech Movement had shown that civil disobedience and students could be this effective force for change, I think that paved the way for what happened with the anti-war movement. That in fact, the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest talked.

RC (01:08:03):
... that in fact, the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest talked about the free speech movement as the Berkeley invention, which is mass protest, civil disobedience. In other words, it showed that, and just in the semester before you have got all this mass protest on the antiwar issue, that students could be a force for social change. And if they used these tactics.

SM (01:08:24):
And of course those tactics were the tactics that Dr. King used, and he would-

RC (01:08:27):
Right, the civil rights movement.

SM (01:08:28):
Yeah.

RC (01:08:28):
They were bringing, I mean, really the free speech movement brought the tactics of the civil rights movement, the early civil rights movement and the black student movement onto college campuses.

SM (01:08:36):
And the teachings and-

RC (01:08:37):
Yeah. Yeah. If you think about, for example, the sit-in movement, that was a predominantly Black movement in (19)60, (19)61. So, really the people who first, the students who first used civil disobedience on college, no, the first college students to use mass civil disobedience were black students mostly, but they were not using them on campus. They were using them at lunch counters. Was using them as a tool to get rid of Jim Crow off campus. What the free speech movement did was take those tactics that had been so successful off campus, and used them on campus.

SM (01:09:05):
It is interesting, when I interviewed the late Gaylord Nelson, the senator from Wisconsin, talking about Earth Day, he had a meeting with I think David, well, some of the organizers of the moratorium, and did not want to step on their toes, so there was a partnership there from the get-go. And the importance of the teaching was very important at the very beginning of Earth Day. And Gaylord Nelson wanted to make sure, and he worked with them. Yeah, I know Michael Rossmann, boy, I wish I had met him. In his blog, and I had been reading a lot of stuff before I came here today, he made a comment that really upset him towards the end of his life saying that, "The media has always portrayed Berkeley as this liberal school from the West," And he disagreed with that. He said, "It was not a liberal school. The students were what made this happen. It was not a liberal school. Why do you think we were fighting for these issues?" Your thoughts on Michael? He was really critical of the perception that the media portrays about Berkeley then and now.

RC (01:10:08):
Well, I think it is complicated. I think there was a... It depends on what you are talking about with Berkeley. There was a core of civil liberties-oriented faculty at Berkeley, who had resisted the loyalty oath from the McCarthy era, and they were the same core people. Some of those were in the same core of people who were resisting the administration, repression during the free speech movement. Now, it is complicated because Strong, the Chancellor, and Kerr, as the president, were also in the loyalty oath. So, those were on the protest of liberty side. So, it is complicated. I do not really think I totally agree with him on the idea that the faculty, the administration, that I think there were... I would say that Berkeley was a progressive place. I mean, look, it was the first, and Rossmann was a part of it even before the free speech movement, back in the late (19)50s, SLATE had been formed. So, there was a kind of progressive tradition at Berkeley.

SM (01:11:08):
It was (19)58, I believe.

RC (01:11:09):
Yeah, that went on. And before that it was called TASC, Towards a New Student Community or something. And I think that was made possible in part by the fact that, first of all, Berkeley was aspiring to be a national institution, which meant that it got really top talent in terms of academics. We had some very progressive faculty who were emerging there, some people like Michael Rogan in Political Science, Ken Stamp and Leon Litwack in History, Charles Muscatine in the English department [inaudible] the loyalty oath, and then became a great educational reformer. So, I think that there was a liberal and left subculture there, both on the student body and the faculty. And because of the quality of the place, there was a cosmopolitanism about it, and it was a tradition of the Bay Area that went back all the way back to General Strike, about there being, and there were progressive institutions like KPFA. And so, there is a sort of a left subculture out there. But there is also, I think what he meant was that if you look at the elections, like the student government elections, it was very rare that the left got anywhere. There was a big frat and sorority culture. It was in some ways like a typical Midwestern or Southern campus with a large traditional collegiate culture. And right on the eve of the free speech movement, in fact, I think it was Art Goldberg had told Bettina, "Oh, they just got defeated again in the student government elections." This is sort of like the left did. [inaudible] like, "Oh, well, now this campus is so conservative. We will never get anywhere." And that was going into this myth of this Berkeley being this ultra-radical place, where it was easy to organize. I think that is what Michael meant. In the early (19)60s that was not the case. There was a large, very conventional culture to the place that this insurgency was sort of beginning to challenge. But it was the idea that the average Berkeley student was radical. This is just not true. In fact, I did this article on the chapter in my book on the free speech movement about the rank and file. It's called This is Their Fight, and had the [inaudible].

SM (01:13:16):
It is the paperback [inaudible]. Yeah.

RC (01:13:18):
Yeah, that is right. That looked at the statements that the students made to the judge just before they were sentenced for their arrests for the sitting-in the Sproul Hall. And most of the students were not radicals. They were very reluctant to sit in. They did not want to break the law. They did not want to violate university regulations. They were just pretty moderate. But they felt they had no choice because they wanted to preserve free speech. So, if you look at the number of people who had a radical analysis, saying, "Well, universities are schools of corporations, and we need to resist imperialism and racism," who had this radical critique. It a very small minority. And in fact, if you think about there never would have been a mass movement at Berkeley if it could not reach beyond the small radical core. It had to be able to speak to mainstream students and to moderates and to liberals. And that is really what the free speech movement was able to do. So, I think that is what he meant. In other words, the idea that the Berkeley is this other, and it is like something out of Mars or something and all these aliens, that is how he got this movement. No. You got this movement because he was able to mobilize what was in many ways not a very unconventional campus to really, in fact, if you look at Larry Levine, his essay and the free speech book. He was a faculty member. He had just come from City College in New York when he came to Berkeley in the early (19)60s. And the first thing, the first demonstration he came into contact was not a politics, it was a panty raid. And he was saying, "Oh my God, what am I getting into?" What is this culture like? So, I think what Rossmann was right about was there was a dominant student culture that was setting the tone that was not politically radical or even particularly liberal, but that the movement kind of challenged that and sort of toppled that.

SM (01:15:06):
What is amazing is that some of the things that were happening in Berkeley were also happening in Harpur and SUNY Binghamton, because Dr. Dearing, within a year after I graduated in (19)70, retired and went up to Upstate Medical Center because his health had gone down. He died actually three years later, but they fired Professor Liebman in the Sociology Department for leading a protest in downtown Binghamton. And when they had the anniversary of the class of 1970, which was my class, this past year, a lot of them were not going back because what's happened is they're building it all up is this, the (19)60s and tie-dyes. And to me, not taking the seriousness of a lot of the issues that were facing the campus at that time. And my high school, when I was in high school, a graduate of SUNY Binghamton was fired from my high school. And that is the reason why I think I really wanted to go to Harpur College, because if somebody is fired for... Because they thought he was a communist. And this is the mid-(19)60s. So, it is a lot of connections between Binghamton and Berkeley in terms of the kinds of students and-

RC (01:16:21):
Oh, sure.

SM (01:16:22):
... And the kinds of issues. And the president who was respected, Bruce Dearing, I do not know if you have ever heard of him. He was respected, but they kicked their OTC off. And when all the residence halls became, when the fraternities became so big, it really disturbed me because the college in the woods right now in SUNI Binghamton is basically all frat guys. And I lived there, and we would not have a frat guy around. They had to go to Cornell to be in fraternities. We banned them. They were banned at Binghamton. They had had to go to Cornell. And so, it is a lot of stuff kind of linked. We were a much smaller school, but we were kind of in, our heart was here.

RC (01:17:03):
Oh, sure.

SM (01:17:03):
No question about it. Mario Savio, to me, I mean, you have done an unbelievable book, and I really believe more Americans and young people need to know about this man. I state here, and I just want to put it in here for the record, and that is that who was he? Where did he come from? And just briefly, how did he rise to the top? And what I really like about him was that his motives were totally pure in so many ways, because he was... We were raised in at Ohio State University in the theme of student development, overcoming obstacles in one's life. And to know that he was a stutterer, and to be able to stand up in front of all those people and say what he did. And then also what I like about many of the leaders of the free speech movement you're bringing out so well, it's not about me. It is about us.

RC (01:18:09):
Yeah.

SM (01:18:11):
And he did not care about a political career. He cared about an issue that was so, see, that is what I want. That is what to me was the (19)60s was about. Just your thoughts on Mario and-

RC (01:18:21):
Oh, yeah. Well, I think that Mario basically came at it from a moral position. He came up, he was the oldest boy in a Catholic home, and he was going to be, he had a religious sensibility. He was going to be a priest. And eventually, he did not go that direction. But I think in a certain sense you could see that same moral sensibility as expressed here. He had a very strong sense of right and wrong. And he felt that, particularly with the civil rights movement, he saw what happened at Birmingham where people were being attacked, kids were being, black kids were being attacked by police dogs and fire hoses, that this was really wrong. He felt both shamed and inspired by those protests, ashamed that America would do this and inspired to try to do something to help. And so, I think he had a very strong impetus towards to help those who were being oppressed. Even before the civil rights movement, he had been not before the civil harassment, before he became involved in the summer, he went to Mexico and did poverty work to help poor peasants in Mexico. I think that he felt that one had to take a stand to stop something that would have, to stop evil. And that is what he was really doing. He felt in a way the civil rights movement was, even though he was not religious anymore, he felt that it was, that racism was sinful. And that the attempt to rid of it, to get rid of it was almost like God showing His hand in the world. Even though he was not religious, he still talked about it way, kind of a post-Catholic way of speaking. He had not lost that kind of way of thinking about things. He was pretty broken with his church. And I think that when you think about Savio, that is really what he was about. It was saying that we had to take a moral stance to stop evil and to make democracy possible. And then he went down. So, he became active in the Bay Area civil rights movement, got arrested. When he was in jail, that was about the Sheraton-Palace to try to stop the discrimination in the hotel. And while he was in jail for that, he found out about this Mississippi Freedom Summer and decided, "Well, I am knew tried to go down there." And he did. And he went down there and saw, there, look, in the Bay Area, if you got arrested, it could be inconvenient. Hold on a second.

SM (01:20:41):
Yep.

RC (01:20:43):
Sitting in against racism, you can get arrested or possibly hit over the head or something. You could get hurt. But mostly it is about you could get arrested. In Mississippi, you're risking your life. When he was on his way down to Mississippi, in Oxford, Mississippi getting trained by SNCC and the cultural organizers, they found out that the three civil rights workers were missing, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. And so, it was really clear from, Bob Moses said, "Do not kid yourself. They are not coming back. And nobody will think any less of you if you just decide, 'Look, I do not want to put my life on the line.'" And the amazing thing is, nobody left. They all went, because they felt like this is really the most important thing happening in America, if not in the world. We are going to stop this pattern of racist violence and decent and disenfranchisement. This is going to stop now, and we are going to help make it happen in collaboration with the black community. It is not that we, mostly white college students are going to save the day. We are going to show solidarity. And down there, this was a movement that was led by black people, by heroic student organizers of African American descent and former students like Bob Moses, and being supported by people within the African American community of Mississippi. And when he was there, he saw, I mean, this is a whole other level of activism because you are risking your life, but you are only there for the summer. Those African Americans who are down there, they are risking their life and their property and their whole futures in a way that is not just the summer. In other words, you go to sign up to vote, and you could lose your land or you could lose your life, and you could have this pattern of harassment that goes on for years, right? And so, what Mario began to see was this is a really a deep and heavy-duty thing. And they were talking about which side are you on? Are you trying to really make America a more democratic place, and what are you willing to do about it? And so, when it came back to Berkeley, and he had the memories of that, he felt when these administrations are trying to cut down the free speech area that made it possible for Berkeley to be a recruiting ground for this kind of activism, the idea is, "Well, look, we were not just kidding down there. That was not some summer lark. This is serious. People down there are risking their lives for their freedom, and you are going to tell me that you are going to stop me from doing this?" And so, essentially what it was about was the solidarity that you're going to take a stance. And also, there is no pretense. There's no jargon. It is very plainspoken. He called it a Jimmy Stewart kind of approach to oratory. We are not talking about the bourgeoisie or the proletariat or high theory. We are talking about just right or wrong, and this is wrong, and we have got to do something about it. And that was not just something that applied to Berkeley and to the free speech issue, but became a lifelong thing for him. That is, when you see people, he came, why did he, he really did not want to be a politician. He was not a politician. He was a brilliant philosophy and science student. He was meant to be a professor or an award-winning scientist. And he wanted to be able to focus on that. But it kept happening that things kept happening in society that he could not put his head in the sand. So, when Reagan is funding this terrorist war in Nicaragua, or the United States is supporting a government in El Salvador that has death squads, or the Apartheid, the United States is subsidizing Apartheid or the anti-immigrants, anti-affirmative action stuff was happening in California in the 1990s. He felt, "I have got to take a stand against this." Or even in his home university at Sonoma State, when he was, really the struggle that he died in the midst of, it was, if we raise these fees, like what is going on now, then the working-class kids are not going to be able to come here, and education should be accessible. So, I think with Mario, what it was really about was a feeling that, "I need to stand up for what's right." And I think that did have an effect on him as a person that I think that it helped him in some way. That was not why he did it, but it did help him work his way through. He had a very hard childhood. He'd been abused as a child. And I think that affected his speech. He had a very bad stammer. And in a way, the liberation of the students, people talk about the (19)60s, being able to find your voice. In a way that was what it was for him. He found his voice by trying to give voice to others by trying to help others be free of their oppression. He became, here you had somebody who could not speak as a child. And now he was a great orator. And to me, that is really symbolic of what the (19)60s at its best was about, was about standing up to help others, and in the process of trying to change and help free others, you are self-freeing yourself, because racism was not just about black people being hurt by it. It also hurt us as a society. It hurt whites as well. It hurt all the generations that were coming up, being raised on intolerance and hatred. So, I think that for Mario, and it also had to do with, it was just this idea that when things were, when something was oppressive and unjust, you have a responsibility to try to do something about it. Even if you are busy doing something else, even if you would rather be doing something else, even if it does not, if it is not good for your career and certainly not good for your health. And in a sense, he died. He lived because of it. In a way, he died because of it too. He died. He had been involved in all these anti-affirmative, in his defense of affirmative action, in challenging those valid initiatives against affirmative action and against immigrant rights. And so, he kind of exhausted himself in that and the [inaudible] battle, and he had a weak heart and he died in the midst of the struggle. His wife thinks that he was so compassionate and so concerned and so activist that you could say that he worked himself to death. Now, that may or may not be the case, but the point is think about how that compares to the stereotype about people from the (19)60s who sell out, who [inaudible] out their politics. It is the exact opposite of that.

SM (01:27:11):
Yep, [inaudible]

RC (01:27:12):
Yeah, he never cashed in on any of this. It was really about, "Look, we do not need some great leader to do this. We can do this ourselves." And that was another thing. That is one of the reason why he stepped out of leadership. He did not feel like, you should not need a celebrity leader. You should be able to organize movements where, if you are a good organizer, you will organize your way out of a job because people should be able to organize themselves.

SM (01:27:35):
That is the Benjamin Barber mentality. Benjamin Barber has written the books on citizenship and the nation that requires a strong president. Well, we want a strong president. But when you have stronger citizens, that is the greater democracy.

RC (01:27:50):
Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is the idea of participatory democracy, which Mario kind of embodied.

SM (01:27:55):
Here, I know we are getting out close to the end of our time here, and I have got, we are not going to finish the questions, but is there a connection between the free speech movement and the following events? And I will just list these events. Kent State, 1970, Columbia in (19)68, Harvard Square, the March on Washington in (19)63, the moratorium of (19)69, Earth Day in 1970, Chicago Convention in (19)68.

RC (01:28:22):
Well, I think that-

SM (01:28:23):
Any connections there between the free speech movement?

RC (01:28:26):
Well, I think that just the later events in terms of protest, the idea that you can make a difference by going out in the streets and protesting, I think those are all, but they're all very different events. So, I would say that I would not attribute everything to the free speech movement. I think that there is a kind of way in which there is this ethos of being able to make change through social protests that is connected in all these things. And the later student events you are talking about the idea that the generation, that young people can make a difference, that if you think about those later events you are pointing to. I think there definitely is a connection there. But I would not want to attribute every, in other words, I think if you think about it, the civil rights movement helped to make the free speech movement possible. The free speech movement helped to make the anti-war movement possible. The anti-war movement helped to make the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, environmental movements possible. So, I think there is a connection there between this sort of ethos of social criticism, social protest that the free speech movement helped to promote. But I would not say it was by itself. I think there was these cycles or this pattern of activism that when you get people in motion and they have an impact, then that in turn, on one issue, that in turn can affect them on other issues.

SM (01:29:44):
I will try to make these brief here, but one of the things about-

RC (01:29:48):
We can also finish on the phone too. I mean, in other words, we do not have to. In other words, we can always pick it up again. There is not really, you do not have to feel like you have to get it in. I mean, I am available. We can always-

SM (01:29:58):
Well, this is fascinating. Your students are very lucky to have you because I am a firm believer that students need to know their history, and they do not know enough of it. I have had too many students tell me that the Vietnam War was before World War II, and I have heard stories still that in high school, teachers, at least particularly those that were going to high school in the 1990s, that they do not... Their classes stop in the (19)60s. They do not go beyond. They stopped the history. It is like me when I was in school, it was John Kennedy stops at the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty or something like that. But the thing, this is a question that, because you talk about Allan Blum and the closing of the American mind. You have got the David Horwitz’s writing all these books because he went from a liberal to a conservative. And political correctness is something that was so prevalent on college campus in the (19)80s and (19)90s, and some say it is still there today. What are your thoughts on those issues? Particularly, I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly and Phyllis Schlafly and David Horowitz both believe that the student protestors of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and they are also teaching the students of today. They run all the studies courses, women's studies, the black studies, the gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, Asian American studies, Native American studies, Latino studies. They are all the liberals, the left from the (19)60s, and they are only giving one side. So, that is the Schlafly’s and the Horowitz’s. And then you have got Barney Frank, who is a Democrat. He wrote a book called Speaking Frankly, which I think is a very good book, way before all this issue of the environment. And he talks in there about the fact that after the (19)72 election where people supported McGovern, that the Democratic Party will never survive if it cannot stay away from the anti-war people. It has got to make the separation. The Democratic Party has to go a different direction. It cannot be the Teddy Kennedy types. It has got to be a totally different direction. So, here is a Democrat, powerful, even then, a gay Democrat saying that, "We must separate ourselves from the anti-war and the activists of the (19)60s within the Democratic Party." You have got Schlafly and Horowitz saying that today's universe, you have got political correctness saying that as a result of what happened, maybe starting with the free speech movement and the protests and so forth.

RC (01:32:34):
Well, let me tell you-

SM (01:32:34):
Gone the other direction.

RC (01:32:35):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I mean, I would say this, that I think it is very simplistic to say the university is all one thing or another, just like I was saying before with the boomer generation. It is a very large, complex thing. I mean, on the one hand, what about, I mean, if you look at the University of California, it is a great example. I mean, BP had this huge center for corporate, as what's his name was saying, David Kirk was saying in this book on Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line that Mario, by talking about the corporatization of the university was being prophetic. A campus where with the dean of the business school is called the Bank of America Dean. So, the idea, what I am saying to you is that you could make, they focus on a few liberal studies. What about, who has the computer science departments? Who has the business schools? Who is heading the law schools? I mean, the idea that the university was headed by a bunch of radicals, then how could you explain the incredible corporatization of the university? That is such a simplification. The university does all these things that are pillars of the computer revolution, of corporate capitalism. To make it like the university's all one thing, that it's been taken over by radicals, is you are lopping off two-thirds of the university, and the ones, parts of the university that have most of the money. You know what I mean? Why would the universities that, if they are on the left, why would they even have business schools? Where does that come from? So, I think that it is such an oversimplification to judge. You are judging the entire universities by a few disciplines or departments that would lean to the left because of the nature of those departments or disciplines. I think that is really simplistic. I mean, I do not really think of the universities as, I mean, look, if you look, there is a whole literature about the universities, including this one. We had a TA strike that crushed the union. The universities are not being run by radicals. I mean, that is absurd. There is an influence in terms of ideas of people on the left and liberals, sure. That is the case. The majority of academics are liberals, but in terms of, it is such an overstatement to act as if the university is somehow part of the revolutionary left when the university, how do you explain all the stuff about corporatization? And look at the critique by Sheila Slaughter who look at the university as corporate capitalism embodied. I mean, there is a struggle. The university is a contradictory place. Some of the people who were student radicals have gone into academia, but there's lots more people who were never, like you are saying, the majority of people in the boomer generation were not radicals. So, the idea that they have taken over the university is really absurd.

SM (01:35:22):
Yeah. And my proposition and just your thoughts on this maybe, I have got two more questions, and we will end here, is that today's universities are afraid of the term activism, activists. Volunteerism is, 95 percent of the students are involved in volunteering. A lot of it's required, but a lot of them are doing it. And that is very good. Some people say that is activism. Well, I do believe that is short-term activism. I am talking about the mentality of the Mario Savio’s, the Tom Hayden’s, the Bettina Aptheker’s, which is, "It is my life. It is part of who I am. It is part of my very being. It is 24-7. It is not two days a week at two hours." And I think you are right on that. I think a lot of the people that run today universities are boomers who were not activists, who had the experience of being on campuses and seeing what activism does to a campus, knowing that we are in tough times. And if there's any protests, maybe students will not come to the college.

RC (01:36:17):
Well, if you look at the disengagement with the students, like Dick Flacks has got the study about California freshman.

SM (01:36:21):
I am interviewing him. Yeah.

RC (01:36:23):
Yeah. I mean, if the universities are about making students radical activists, they are doing a pretty poor job. Right? I mean, because you can run academic programs that just are about academics and do not have an activist ethos. So, I think that, if what David Horowitz and Phyllis Schlafly were saying, "Look, for God's sake, we have two wars going on," right? Two, not one, two. Where is the mass protest? Obviously, if the left had taken over college campuses and was there to build mass movements, they are not doing a very good job. Right? So, I think it is a very simplistic view. I mean-

SM (01:36:56):
Do you think they are afraid of that? Do you think that the universities, people may be the board of trustees or the type of administrators are afraid of activism because it brings back memories of the (19)60s? It could happen again.

RC (01:37:09):
No. I think it has been so long since they had a mass protest. I do not think that is something that is on their minds. I think that if it came, if it emerged, they probably would feel that way. But right now, I mean, there is also, remember there is a new generation here. There is a 21st century generation of students that is very influenced by computers that may not be, you may be thinking about this too much in a 20th century vein. In other words, that there is a whole new way of looking at things, and activism has been reduced to pushing a button on a computer, which does not necessarily really change things, but people might think that it does.

SM (01:37:44):
Brought a picture up.

RC (01:37:46):
That is right. So what I am saying, saying is- it is not necessarily the case that if there is activism, that it would take the form of the (19)60s, or anybody's worried about that, in a way. So, I am just saying I think that the idea that the university are breeding grounds of activism is, it may be in some ways a more interesting place if that was the case. But it is not true. On the other hand, there are books that show that, let me qualify that, there is this new book that came out by Mark Warren, Fire in the Heart. He looks at lots of people who are involved in [inaudible] activists today, and says that people who are activists, some of them did come through those programs that Phyllis Schlafly and those guys are complaining about. And I think, in other words, but that is only a minority. In other words, you can learn to oppose racism and become activists on the college campuses. You can. But that is only a small group that is.

SM (01:38:40):
Wow, this is interesting. I thought I was up on books.

RC (01:38:45):
Yeah. Well, yeah.

SM (01:38:46):
You are really up on them. My last question here, and I asked a little of this-

RC (01:38:48):
Let me just tell my student I will be right with her.

SM (01:38:49):
Yep.

RC (01:39:00):
So I do not lose her.

SM (01:39:01):
Okay.

RC (01:39:01):
Hey, how you doing? I will be out in about a minute, okay? [inaudible] Okay, sure.

SM (01:39:04):
Okay. What did the university learn from the student protest, particularly the free speech movement? What did the university learn from the free speech movement itself? And how has the university changed for the better? And what areas does the university structure still exemplify what the free speech movement was fighting all about in (19)64, (19)65? In other words, is Mario was here today in this room, and I was asking him this question, your response may be different from his, but would he be positive or negative? Or where would he be?

RC (01:39:33):
Well, actually, he did think that there had been some progress made because he was talking, in the last chapter of the book, he talks about Sonoma State, that the university was not all white anymore. And so in fact, he felt the university was retreating from being free in terms of money at just the wrong time. Just as the university was getting to be desegregated, and there were people of color coming, that all of a sudden it was thousands of dollars. And some people would say, "Well, is that an accident?" Back in the (19)60s when most students are white, it was pretty much free in most places, many places in the public universities. Now that it is probably gotten desegregated to some degree, now it is expensive. It is an interesting argument. So, I think in that sense, he would feel like he felt like there had been progress made in terms of accessibility to higher education. And also, I mean, definitely in terms of free speech, the university, now most universities allow students student rights, and even spread to the high schools through the Tinker decision. So, I think that had changed. I think in terms of the, but the basic issues about what the critique of higher education in terms of how much do we care about teaching? How much do we care about that function of the university serving the poor, that still has not, that is still there. In other words, that university is still about getting big money and trying to service corporate America and the defense establishment. Its top priority is not how can we wage a war on poverty? That is not what is at the top of the agenda for universities. It is like my university, where are they rushing to build a campus? Not in some starving Third World country, but in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. So, I think the idea is that the basic issue about what is the service mission of the university? Who is the university serving? That that has not really changed as much as people like Mario would like it. He thought the university should be a center of the attempt to make America more democratic and more egalitarian. And that would mean giving students of color and working class students more access to higher education. That would mean building an ethos among students that would think, "Okay, how can we change society?" And also if you are going into academics, how can you think-

RC (01:42:03):
And also if you are going into academics, how can you think critically about society? In other words like generating new ideas to make the society a more just, not just about demonstrating, but okay, what are we learning about our social problems through our studies that we can then act on later on?

SM (01:42:16):
I think course of this, that the whole issue of fundraising in higher education today is a major issue. We talk about links to corporations, but at the school that I just left, and I know this is the case at several other schools, they had cut back on student life activities and in some places, they are very observant of the fact that if a particular speaker or form or program could affect in any way, the dollar flows from donors, they are a little hesitant to support it. And so by they have ways of controlling it in subtle ways by cutting off the amount of funds. So they cannot bring in controversial speakers. And I think that is a big concern about free speech issues. It's done very subtly as we see racism still exists in our society in a very subtle way.

RC (01:43:07):
Oh, I agree that the universities do not want to... That dynamic is still there. What I meant about free speech was if students want to organize on an issue, people would know you cannot come down the same way that they did in (19)64. You cannot say that. So...

SM (01:43:19):
I have a few more questions, but maybe-

RC (01:43:21):
You can do it on the phone.

SM (01:43:22):
... 30 minutes. 30 minutes [inaudible].

RC (01:43:22):
Sure. Sure.

SM (01:43:22):
But I really appreciate it.

(End of Interview)

2010-11-19

Stephen McKiernan

Robert Cohen, 1955 May 21-

199:21

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

College teachers; New York University; Cohen, Robert, 1955 May 21--Interviews

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