U.S. ‘Universities Of Dissent’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31027, 5 April 1966, Page 20

U.S. ‘Universities Of Dissent’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) NEW YORK. At least seven “universities of dissent,” or “draft-dodging schools” as their opponents call them, are preparing study programmes for the new winter terms.

The new universities, unrecognised by academic bodies and frowned on by local officialdom, are implacable enemies of the “businessmen's factories,” which they claim that conventional American universities have become.

Dr. Allen Krebs, 31-year-old director of the Free University of New York, which flourishes in an old building on the fringes of Greenwich village, is helping to spearhead the movement. Dr. Krebs said: “It is our aim to provide a place where answers can be given and ideas exchanged which are forbidden elsewhere. The aim of the established American universities is simply to serve the military and business bureaucracies.” Dr. Krebs, who has travelled extensively in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, was placed on “terminal leave of absence” when he returned to the university where he had lectured after visiting Cuba without permission in 1964.

An admitted Marxist, Dr. Krebs and 39 colleagues from other New York area universities, decided to form their own “counter university” to balance the influence of the established colleges. From this idea, the “free university” was established and soon 300 students of both sexes enrolled for ten-week evening courses.

Although most of the students also attended more conventional universities during the day, anyone who thought he would "profit intellectually” from any of the courses would be accepted for enrolment, Dr. Krebs said.

His courses include “Marxism and American Decadence,” “Hallucinogenic Drugs: their Uses and Social Implications” and “The Search for Authentic Sexual Experience.” For those who might be tempted to pursue the latter course with motives other than to “profit intellectually” the lecture synopsis explains: “This search will consist of exploring the idea of a universal sexual drive; of examining religion, anthrop-

ology and psychology for more meaningful answers to man as a sexual being.” The university’s programme claims: “The Free University of New York has been forged in response to the intellectual bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the American educational establishment.”

The American university, it says, has been emasculated. Its intellectual vigour, exuberance and excitement has been destroyed and what remains is a dispassionate and studied dullness.

In Los Angeles, Dr. Joseph Byrd, a teaching assistant at the University of California, is the director of a new school which opened in a down-at-heel office in a shabby part hf the city and which has recruited 100 students.

He claims in the prospectus that “students have been systematically dehumanised, and deemed incompetent to regulate their own lives, sexually, politically and academically.” Elsewhere, the students for democratic society have established a new school in San Francisco and others are expected to open soon. At present, there are also “dissenting universities” in Chicago, Austin, Texas, Gainesville, Florida and Palo Alto, California.