The New Front

Social Scientist David Riesman of the University of Chicago is no man to deny that there are enough irresponsible attacks upon U.S. colleges and universities to raise the hackles on any intellectual's neck. But in their loud protests, do the intellectuals always help their own cause? In a lecture at Mills College, Riesman answered no. In Riesman's opinion, intellectuals "tend to overestimate the monolithic power of reaction."

Can You Top This? All too often, says Riesman, "intellectuals take delight in telling each other atrocity stories about America. [But] the naming of evils, intended as a magical warding-off, can have the opposite effect. It is easy to imagine a group of academic people or civil servants sitting about in the hot summer of 1953 and swapping stories about who got fired from the Voice of America because he subscribed to the Nation, and how So-and-So was not rehired at Benton College because his wife' had once joined the League of Women Shoppers--each capping the other's whopper of the reactionary menace. What is the consequence? A stiffening of spines? A clearing of the mind and will for action? I doubt it ... Intellectuals who . . . choose to regard themselves as being victimized, contribute to the very pressures they deplore. These pressures are not nearly so strong as alleged : thinking them strong helps to make them so .

"The reaction of many intellectuals to Stevenson's defeat may be taken as an illustration of my point about their real strength, despite their professed weakness ... In their despair, they neglected the impressive fact that their man . . . had garnered 26 million votes against one of the most appealing candidates ever put up, and in spite of all the inherited handicaps of the Democrats. When, since Wilson first won in a three-way race, have intellectuals had it so good? . . ."

The Big Scramble. "From the Hiss case we may perhaps date the beginning not only of the excessive power and renown of many Johnny-come-lately antiCommunists, but on the other side, what might be thought of as a new united front in some liberal colleges and universities, admission to which is gained by denouncing 'witch hunts' and refusing to cooperate with them ... In some colleges, professors who testify before the Velde or Jenner committees with dignity and restraint (often educating committee members in the process, as Hiss so notably failed to do) are slandered as appeasers. To the extent that Communists, by such tactics, can get non-Communists to claim the Fifth Amendment, they too can pass off their men as martyrs to principle.

"This is the general confusion that let Odysseus out of the giant's cave, and in the scramble, the real ethical problem-- to what extent one should tell the committee, not about oneself, but about others--is obscured. The very term 'witch hunt' is obscurantist . . ."

The Captive Audience. "Another curious kind of situation arises when the question of the books one uses in teaching comes under the scrutiny of an investigating committee. One of the general education courses in the College at Chicago was criticized by the Broyles committee of the Illinois legislature because it assigned the Communist Manifesto and other writings by Marx and Engels. Before that, some of us had felt these works to be inappropriate.for the particular course . . . but ever since the investigation, the Manifesto has been frozen into the course. To replace it now would be regarded as a symbol of knuckling under . . . and we and our students have become to that extent a captive audience.

"While perhaps a majority of students in this course find Marx dull ... a minority feels called upon to speak up for or about Marx ... I hesitate to put students into a position where they must make such a choice . . . but would prefer to have them select their Armageddons at their own time and place."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.