Professors and Politics
What ever happened to academic conventions where the loudest sound was the rustle of learned papers? Nowadays, scholars stage annual shouting matches at which young professors of the New Left cry for "relevance" while those over 30 feel like 60. The radicals insist that the whole academic world must fight for social change. Old-guard teachers scent heresy--and more important, a disastrous politicization of scholarship.
The radical challenge surfaced dramatically last year at the Modern Language Association meeting in Manhattan (TIME, Jan. 10, 1969). Amid scuffles, the radicals rammed through a resolution condemning the Viet Nam War and even succeeded in electing one of their own as the M.L.A.'s second vice president: Louis Kampf, professor of literature at M.I.T. and a founder of the radical New University Conference and close colleague of Antiwar Critic Noam Chomsky. Last week, during the traditional year-end round of academic conventions, radicals pressed the attack in several disciplines. Items:
> At the M.L.A. convention in Denver, Professor Kampf was elevated to first vice president, which puts him in line next year to succeed the association's new president, Shakespearean Scholar Maynard Mack, chairman of the Yale English department. The delegates gave up trying to pass resolutions after stormy debate over a number of proposals, most of them offered by dissidents. Among other things, they wanted the association to demand that colleges hire women teachers in the same proportion that they are represented in the U.S. population (51%) and provide free day-care centers for their children; also included was a repeat of last year's demand for the immediate withdrawal from Viet Nam of all U.S. and other foreign troops. The membership will vote on the resolutions later by mail.
> At the meeting of the American Philosophical Association's eastern division in Manhattan, Harvard Professor Hilary Putnam presented a resolution calling for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam and condemning American foreign policy as an instrument for economic exploitation. He was hissed. Said Professor Aron Gurwitsch of the New School for Social Research, a refugee from Nazi Germany: "The problem before us is whether a professional and scholarly association does not become unfaithful to its destiny, to its logic, by taking a stand on political questions. It would mean the beginning of complete politicization of our organization and of all spheres of life, and this is the hallmark of totalitarianism." After two hours of shouting, the philosophers passed a compromise resolution that omitted the Marxist critique of U.S. policy, but went along with the radical demand for an immediate pullout of U.S. forces in Viet Nam.
> At the convention of the American Historical Association in Washington, Staughton Lynd, the ex-Yale professor who visited North Viet Nam in 1965 and now works for the "Chicago Resistance," made a bid for the association's presidency. Though Lynd lost to Yale Professor Robert Palmer, 1,040 to 396, the size of his vote was a surprise. Calling themselves the "Caucus of Radical Historians," Lynd's followers submitted a violently worded resolution calling on the A.H.A. to take an official stand against the war, against the harassment of Black Panthers, and against repression of political dissent. Accusing the "Nixon-Mitchell Administration" of pursuing "murderous policies," the radical resolution concluded: "We therefore must abandon 'business as usual,' give up our conventional roles in 'intellectual pacification,' repudiate the court historians who have perverted history for the benefit of those in power, and expose to critical analysis and public attack the disastrous direction in which our Government is taking us." Although a majority of the A.H.A.'s members are opposed to the war and in favor of its speedy conclusion, the radical resolution was offensive to many of them, and it was defeated, 822 to 493.
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