Campus Disturbances Analysed

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31982, 8 May 1969, Page 13

Campus Disturbances Analysed

(By HAROLD COURLANDBR) WASHINGTON. Observers of the campus disturbances that are affecting American colleges and universities are usually quick to judge whether student activists have reasonable or outrageous demands; whether the tactics employed are democratic or fascist in character; whether some faculty members may be using the student disorders to express their own dissatisfactions with the educational establishment; and whether college administrators are acting wisely and compassionately in their responses- or merely serving the interests of established authority.

Each event, as it comes, brings its own critics. But there is widespread recognition that the forces behind campus activism are anything but local in nature. The most conspicuous of campus activists in recent times have been the small, nihilistic, somewhat Marxistoriented group known as the Students for a Democratic Society, and the militant Negro student groups. But conspicuous though their roles may be, they probably are no more than peripheral to the general student malaise that has come to the surface on the campuses. Americans are trying hard to understand why, as educational and eco- . nomic opportunities expand, college youth are becoming more and more critical of the education they are offered and of the larger society generally. Revolt Of Youth One explanation that has gained wide attention is that the campus disorders are an institutionalised “oedipal rebellion.” That is. a revolt of youth against their fathers 1 and the older generation, marked by disrespect for authority and a blind impulse i toward destruction of rulers, fathers and even of self if that is what is required. Another theory is that student revolts are a reaction against what is called “historical irrelevance.” This explanation is sociological rather than psychological. It ; holds that we are moving • into a new age that will be dominated by technology, and : that students attached to ; humanistic or romantic ' values feel that they will have

short, that they will be obsolete. According to Kenneth Keniston, a Yale faculty member writing in the “New York Times,” neither of these theories adequately explains the current student protests in the United States and elsewhere.

Professor Keniston believes another explanation is more to the point In the industrialised society, he says, the segment of the population we

know as “youth” now extends to people in their early thirties. The opportunities that in recent times have been extended to youth, he says, have provided unprecedented opportunities for intellectual, emotional and moral development, and in the student revolts we are seeing one result of this fact Creating Critic* The long period of educational opportunity has tended to free more and more young people from swallowing unexamined the assumptions of the past to free them from the superstitions of their childhood, to free them from irrational bondage to authority. What we are seeing on the campuses, Professor Keniston believes, is “not a reflection of how bad higher education is, but rather of its extraordinary accomplishments.” What the United States and other advanced nations have done is to create their own critics on a mass scale, an educated segment that is able to criticise society from a protected position. If it is a new type revolution coming out of new technological conditions, it is nevertheless mixed with an older revolution that continues to seek better things for all. It can be even more complex if one considers those other possible forces, “oedipal rebellion” and revolt against “historical irrelevance.” Professor Keniston sees the phenomenon primarily as a growing search for humanistic goals that win be qualitative rather than quantitive in character.—U.S.LS.