The Meaning of 'Activism'

(The following is excerpted from an address by Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, which was given at a conference on "Students and Politics" at San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 27-31, 1967. Harvard was one of the sponsors of the conference. --editor's note.) Clark Kerr

ASPECTRE is haunting America--the spectre of students. For the first time in the history of the United States, university students have become a source of interest for all the nation; a source of concern for much of the nation; and a source of fear for some of the nation. This is a phenomenon unique to the decade of the 1960's.

The immensity of the change is spectacularly highlighted by the contrast with the decade of the 1950's. The complaint then was about the silent or apathetic generation, the generation of pre-organization men. The only prior decade which had given warning of the shape of things to come was the 1930's. But then students were adjuncts to the efforts of trade unionists, or of socialists and communists of the old Left, or of isolationists, America Firsters or pacifists. They were auxiliaries. They did not stand in their own right as a potential force in history.

In the 1960's, a segment of university students developed their own style, their own content, their own leadership in an effort to exert an impact on the whole society. Instead of "student chapters" of off-campus movements, the center of activity was on the campus itself. This is new.

It is new, but is it also significant for the unfolding history of the United States? Does it portend a new era with a new class struggling successfully for power; a new and potent force trying to re-arrange events closer to its heart's desire?

Youth reflects its society, but often in an exaggerated fashion. It magnifies and to some extent distorts the current characteristics of its society. It may, also, at times be more sensitive to new developments, and thus the new developments may first be seen dramatically through the actions of youth. This power to magnify and this power to respond quickly makes the study of youth an especially rewarding one, for through youth some aspects of the nature of a society can be understood more fully and more quickly; but one must be wary of the distortions also. To lose contact with the mind of youth, however, is to lose contact with a particularly revealing aspect of reality. As goes youth, so may go the nation--only more slowly and less completely.

In the United States in the 1930's, when the nation was concerned with depression and the threat of fascism and of war, so also was youth--only more so. When the nation went to war, so did youth--only more so. When the nation returned to "normalcy" and concentrated on personal material welfare, so did youth--only more so. When "extremism" of the Right and of the Left became more prevalent in the 1960's, so did it also with youth--only more so. Each time the movement of youth was in a direction in which the nation, or some influential part of it, was going. Youth was America writ large--written large and often in a hasty scrawl. To understand youth, it is necessary to understand the nation. To understand the nation, it is helpful to understand youth.

Not Revolutionary

Youth can be troublesome to the status quo when a nation is in a "time of troubles." A nation is in trouble in a period of change, and particularly violent change. The only time that youth is revolutionary is in a revolutionary situation and period. Youth may be inherently restless but it is not inherently revolutionary. It has a revolutionary inclination only when revolution looms.

In the United States, in the past few years, students have participated in central concerns of national life, such as the Civil Rights movement and the debate over American involvement in the war in Vietnam, more dramatically than ever before in American history.

It is this recent development of American students at the center, rather than on the periphery, of social issues that has aroused the interest, the concern and the fear. There is a feeling in the air that a new force may have entered into social history; that youth may play a more effective political role for good or for ill than ever before.

Why Greater Political Participation?

In the United States, some of the factors which have currently led to heightened student participation in political life are these:

1. Mass higher education: Fifty percent of college age students now enter college. It was more nearly five percent a half century ago. Students are now drawn from many, even all, segments of the population, not just the middle class and the aristocracy.

2. Concentration in the mass university: The large college and the large university have become a standard habitat for many of these students. The environment is often quite impersonal. There is little sense of a united community of scholars and students and administrators. The impact of greater size has been increased by the recent neglect of the undergraduate in favor of graduate students, research, and external service.

3. The permissive environment: The family has become more permissive and so has the church. The college no longer stands so much in loco parentis. The law gives wider latitude for freedom of action. All in all, there is a greater degree of autonomy, a lesser scope for authority. The student stands more on his own and relies more on his peer group.

4. The culture of the students: By now there are enough students associated together in large enough groups and for long enough periods of time and with enough freedom so that an independent student culture can develop with its own dress, style of behaviour, code of ethics. It can have a particularly strong hold on a large campus which provides little contact with faculty, administration and parents. Such a student culture reinforces itself and gives a sense of protection against external threats. It may attract to itself the related culture of the non-student and draw in some faculty adherents. It is like an island culture--an island often in the sun, partly dependent only, partly rebellious toward, the usually benevolent imperial power that supports it.

5. The explosive issues: The 1960's have seen some explosive issues torment the United States--particularly the Civil Rights issue internally and the Vietnam war externally. Internal justive and external peace are both inherently compelling issues for idealistic youth. Coming together they have abetted each other. Beyond these two issues lie others of great concern--control of the bomb, adjustment to the computer, accommodation to the mass corporation and government agency, and much else.

6. The new tactics: The sit-in, the teach-in, the mass meeting or the march covered by the press and TV have given some students new weapons, in addition to the older petition and picket line and strike, to call attention of the public at large to their views. They can gain potency through the headlines and TV screens. They can communicate with each other quickly across the nation about their concerns. They can travel readily. They can have a loose network of friendships and contacts. As a consequence, they can concentrate their talents and their attention at selected pressure points quite readily. A form of guerrilla warfare has been possible with few student casualties but much impact--a strange war where the casualties often lie elsewhere and the impact may owe more to the exaggeration of the enemies than to the aid of the allies. The new style of flamboyant dress and flamboyant speech fits the headlines and the TV screens as no milder performances would do.

THE TONE of a campus, even of the national student body, can be set by a minority. In the 1920's it was set by the collegiate group--the athletes, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, on social life, on occasional pranks.

It is remarkable how so few can set the tone for so many. The central fact is that most students remain the same from generation to generation. They remain quite recognizable. But in each generation a few thrust themselves forward, or are thrust forward by the situation--in the stadium, in the classroom, before the microphone--and come to stand as changing symbols for the largely unchanging multitude. They are those who ride with the spirit of the times, those who are under the circumstances the most vocal and aggressive and, also, those who are seized upon by the public as "typical." The coon-skin coat and the flapper were as rare on the campuses in the 1920's as the beard and black stockings in the 1960's, and yet each of these visions came to stand as symbols for a whole generation.

The Peace Corps Types

This dominant political activist tone ignores two other partially related and relatively new segments of student life: the Bohemians who are even fewer in number and the Peace Corps types who are the most neglected group of all but, in my judgment, potentially the most significant in the long run. The members of the first, the Bohemians, have been rather frequent but also rather unreliable followers of the political activists, and the Peace Corps or "service-types" occasional followers.

Some student tones cause more trouble for more people than others. The collegiate tone occasionally troubled the Dean of Students; the vocational and academic tone of the 40's and College and the Dean of the Graduate School; the political activist tone of the 60's, the President and the Regents. From scandals to grades and revolt, the tone of each generation has affected the temper and the tenure of a different layer of campus administration. There are those who look back with longing to the days when it was the Dean of Students or the football coach that got the sack.

The life of an institution and the public reaction to it are greatly affected by the tone of its dominant student minority. The nature of this minority is quite volatile--now one thing, now another. At the moment, the nature is political.

Confrontation Politics

THE STUDENT political movement of the 1960's is, in the totality of its means and ends, unique in American history. No single element of its approach is entirely new but the combination of these elements is new. To speak of a "movement" at all is to over-state the situation, for the very nature of the activity makes it dispersed and diverse. There are changing localities of action, vehicles for expression, tactics to pursue; and no developed ideology. It is a movement that can be seen and has been seen by many different people in many different ways.

"Confrontation politics" is the essence of the new student movement--confrontation with the power structure on main street, or the campus, in Washington. This is the particular form that political action has taken. Civil Rights tactics are the great source of inspiration. The tactic is to pick an issue and confront the power structure with it as dramatically as possible. There are a series of acts and events, with a certain style to them and moving in the same general direction.

There are two elements inter-twined in this new political activism. The first is composed of the issue-by-issue protestors; the second by adheresent to one or another of the organized groups on the Left. It is the first element which is unique and has set the decade of the 1960's aside as different from the past.

The Meaning of the "New Left"

The phrase, the "New Left," has been used to describe this whole development but this term implies a greater connection with the "old Left" than actually exists and an ideology that is "left" and thus in some sense socialist. While there are socialistic elements there is rather more emphasis on distrust of big government, preference for local action, nostalgia for a "Golden Age" that never existed, and emphasis on the individual and his personal choice. The Right of Goldwater is in evidence as well as the Left of Marx, but what is most in evidence is a vision of the good life under American democracy.

The Left -- composed of assorted socialists, Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Castroites and others, both old and new--has worked along with and given some leadership to confrontation politics, but this latter development has had many participants who are not "left" in any traditional sense of the word and its essential theme is not that of the ideological Left. The recent evolution of the Left is a separate phenomenon of its own; and so is confrontation politics. That the Left evolved into new forms at the same time as "confrontation politics" arose has resulted in a confusion between the two. Confrontation politics deserves to be looked at in its own right. It has happened mostly on campus; the Left has evolved mostly off-campus. Between the two developments, political activism has risen to greater heights on campus than in any earlier decade. But it is confrontation politics that has set the stage and given the volume of numbers to the protest. The Left has been associated with it but the totality of the approach has not been essentially Left, with its emphasis on ideology, organization, and activity throughout society. Nor has the Left supplied large numbers of participants. The Left has joined the "popular front" rather than created it. The issue-by-issue protestors have been the new and largely dominant element.

Elements of "Confrontation Politics"

The elements of confrontation politics which have attracted my attention as being of particular importance are these:

1. A concern for power: There is an obsession with power. The refrain again and again is the acquisition of power. It seems to be assumed that, with power, evil can be eradicated; that, without it, nothing can be done. Participants want power versus the faculty, the college administration, industry, the unions and government. There is a determination to combine the new morality of the students with the old power now held by other people.

The role of persuasion in getting results from those who have power is considered quite small. There is little realization of the extent to which power is actually fractionalized, subject to checks and balances, and often held in gentle hands.

The recurrent theme is how students, who really have no formal power, can obtain and exercise power. "Student power" can bring pressure on a university certainly, on a society possibly. It requires no reliance on a reluctant faculty, a quiescent labor movement, a non-existent peasant class. It also requires no fixed ideology. Ideologies divide as well as unite. They divided students in the 1930's. But, after McCarthy in the United States and polycentrism in the Communist world, the line between the moderates and the liberals versus the radicals is no longer so sharply drawn or drawn at all. "Student power" allows a united front. The old ideological barriers are largely gone.

2. The university as a base for power. The campus is the chosen focal point for activity. It is the place to arouse interest, recruit members, raise money, organize action, and from which to launch attacks on chosen targets. The trade union, the political party, and established voluntary organizations are no longer viewed as generally useful vehicles. Politics, in particular, takes too long and involves compromise.

3. Distaste for the "establishment." There is almost total rejection of the organizations that administer the status quo. The status quo is viewed as dominated by the "military-industrial complex." The university is seen as a handmaiden to this complex, doing research for it and training its servants. Much of the intellectual establishment is viewed as bought and paid for.

Consensus politics practiced in the clubs and back rooms away from public scrutiny and attack is abhorred. So are the liberals who know what is right but do too little about it over too long a period. They are considered the worst hypocrites of all. Student activists tend to see the establishment in its totality as monolithic and discount any cracks that may appear in its granite face. All authority, except their own, is suspect. Exercise of authority by the university is seen not as a legitimate protection of the university but as a line of defense for the society that controls it.

Ideology is Suspect

4. Orientation to specific issues: Ideology is suspect. Also, given the variety of points of view among participants, it would be completely divisive. There is no more chewing on the beard of Karl Marx, although there is a certain blindness toward the leftwing authoritarianism of Cuba and China, even though authority in other and less harsh forms is violently opposed. If there could be said to be any inherent central ideology, it would be syndicalism with its emphasis on means. And syndicalism was never much of an ideology.

The choice, rather, is for individual issues, one or a few at a time. Issues with a high moral content are preferred--like those involving equality, freedom and peace. Intellect, like ideology, is suspect. Morality, instead, is substituted. Facts, history, analysis, theory are often considered more impediments than aids.

5. Participatory democracy. There is a distaste for all bureaucracies, including their own. The ideal is the Town Meeting, or the Quaker committee meeting. Maximum opportunity should be given for a sense of participation, even if it is only by a vote at a mass meeting. Nothing is really legitimate until it has been ratified by the action group.

6. Tactics for the short-run. The methods of action are all aimed at quick results or quick impact, such as the sit-in, the picket line, strike, march, vigil, teach-in or other forms of mass demonstration. The preparation of big programs, the conduct of prolonged negotiations, the organization of an extensive educational program, the establishment of an organization to exert constant pressure, are all avoided. The tactics can be described as "instantism." There is a chiliastic aspect--a dramatic action to be followed expectantly by dramatic reulsts. Here again there is a parallel to syndicalism and the I.W.W.--the use of force to correct a current grievance, perhaps someday a general strike, but no permanent collective bargaining and no contracts which only bind you when you want to fight, as the "wobblies" said. There is little perspective of time. The emphasis is on the event and not the process. And thus there is little consideration of all of the long-term consequences. Strategy and tactics are combined in a program of action now.

Style

7. The importance of style: The new reformation starts by nailing bold theses to the Cathedral door--with flash bulbs and cameras ready to record the scene. Demands are made suddenly, dramatically, publicly. Instead of working within organizations and through channels and by consultation, the appeal is directly to the mass public. Thus it is necessary to get the attention of the press and TV. Violation of rules and the law is one quick way of doing this. It is a lever that can be pulled to get instant attention. Advertising techniques come to the campus in the service of prophecy not profit. The student activist is the PR expert. The simplistic slogan and banner headline replace the carefully reasoned argument. The style is daring, flamboyant and egotistical. It is a revolt that draws more on Madison Avenue than on convictions about the nature of the historical process.

The style requires leaders in accord with it. It needs the charismatic speaker, the popular folk singer, the crusading star. Protest is also entertainment. A revolt is a "happening," important in its own right and repleat with emotion, even hysteria. Events should be escalated quickly-- piling grievance on grievance and "atrocity" on "atrocity," encouraging the authorities and the police to create martyrs, seeking emotional commitment. The enemy must be personalized and vilified. It is, among other things, a great existential experience.

The goal is quick results--no compromise. It is better to lose with a brave manifesto never achieved than to secure quiet success buried in ambiguities. There is little endurance. And, if there is defeat, escape into private experiences and fantasies always lies ahead.

Style is a central feature of the new political activism. The style affects content--which must be immediate and simple. The style may even become the performance itself.

8. Allies and allied enemies: The new activists can look, within the campus, for support from the few Bohemians and often from the Peace Corps and academic styles as well, and outside the campus, from the Old and New Left, the New Theologists, and the remaining minorities. The essential theme, however, is one of students by themselves largely isolated from external groups. They ask for little help, as the slogan "don't trust anyone over 30" implies.

"Student power," however, does get manipulated by many people for many reasons. The Left embraces the idea, lends its advice and some leadership, and builds up every application of it into evidence that the revolution might really yet come. The New Right takes it as a target to energize its support. TV and the press find it colorful and vivid material. As a result, it gains attention far beyond its actual significance.

The Left, which has given up onS-

ASPECTRE is haunting America--the spectre of students. For the first time in the history of the United States, university students have become a source of interest for all the nation; a source of concern for much of the nation; and a source of fear for some of the nation. This is a phenomenon unique to the decade of the 1960's.

The immensity of the change is spectacularly highlighted by the contrast with the decade of the 1950's. The complaint then was about the silent or apathetic generation, the generation of pre-organization men. The only prior decade which had given warning of the shape of things to come was the 1930's. But then students were adjuncts to the efforts of trade unionists, or of socialists and communists of the old Left, or of isolationists, America Firsters or pacifists. They were auxiliaries. They did not stand in their own right as a potential force in history.

In the 1960's, a segment of university students developed their own style, their own content, their own leadership in an effort to exert an impact on the whole society. Instead of "student chapters" of off-campus movements, the center of activity was on the campus itself. This is new.

It is new, but is it also significant for the unfolding history of the United States? Does it portend a new era with a new class struggling successfully for power; a new and potent force trying to re-arrange events closer to its heart's desire?

Youth reflects its society, but often in an exaggerated fashion. It magnifies and to some extent distorts the current characteristics of its society. It may, also, at times be more sensitive to new developments, and thus the new developments may first be seen dramatically through the actions of youth. This power to magnify and this power to respond quickly makes the study of youth an especially rewarding one, for through youth some aspects of the nature of a society can be understood more fully and more quickly; but one must be wary of the distortions also. To lose contact with the mind of youth, however, is to lose contact with a particularly revealing aspect of reality. As goes youth, so may go the nation--only more slowly and less completely.

In the United States in the 1930's, when the nation was concerned with depression and the threat of fascism and of war, so also was youth--only more so. When the nation went to war, so did youth--only more so. When the nation returned to "normalcy" and concentrated on personal material welfare, so did youth--only more so. When "extremism" of the Right and of the Left became more prevalent in the 1960's, so did it also with youth--only more so. Each time the movement of youth was in a direction in which the nation, or some influential part of it, was going. Youth was America writ large--written large and often in a hasty scrawl. To understand youth, it is necessary to understand the nation. To understand the nation, it is helpful to understand youth.

Not Revolutionary

Youth can be troublesome to the status quo when a nation is in a "time of troubles." A nation is in trouble in a period of change, and particularly violent change. The only time that youth is revolutionary is in a revolutionary situation and period. Youth may be inherently restless but it is not inherently revolutionary. It has a revolutionary inclination only when revolution looms.

In the United States, in the past few years, students have participated in central concerns of national life, such as the Civil Rights movement and the debate over American involvement in the war in Vietnam, more dramatically than ever before in American history.

It is this recent development of American students at the center, rather than on the periphery, of social issues that has aroused the interest, the concern and the fear. There is a feeling in the air that a new force may have entered into social history; that youth may play a more effective political role for good or for ill than ever before.

Why Greater Political Participation?

In the United States, some of the factors which have currently led to heightened student participation in political life are these:

1. Mass higher education: Fifty percent of college age students now enter college. It was more nearly five percent a half century ago. Students are now drawn from many, even all, segments of the population, not just the middle class and the aristocracy.

2. Concentration in the mass university: The large college and the large university have become a standard habitat for many of these students. The environment is often quite impersonal. There is little sense of a united community of scholars and students and administrators. The impact of greater size has been increased by the recent neglect of the undergraduate in favor of graduate students, research, and external service.

3. The permissive environment: The family has become more permissive and so has the church. The college no longer stands so much in loco parentis. The law gives wider latitude for freedom of action. All in all, there is a greater degree of autonomy, a lesser scope for authority. The student stands more on his own and relies more on his peer group.

4. The culture of the students: By now there are enough students associated together in large enough groups and for long enough periods of time and with enough freedom so that an independent student culture can develop with its own dress, style of behaviour, code of ethics. It can have a particularly strong hold on a large campus which provides little contact with faculty, administration and parents. Such a student culture reinforces itself and gives a sense of protection against external threats. It may attract to itself the related culture of the non-student and draw in some faculty adherents. It is like an island culture--an island often in the sun, partly dependent only, partly rebellious toward, the usually benevolent imperial power that supports it.

5. The explosive issues: The 1960's have seen some explosive issues torment the United States--particularly the Civil Rights issue internally and the Vietnam war externally. Internal justive and external peace are both inherently compelling issues for idealistic youth. Coming together they have abetted each other. Beyond these two issues lie others of great concern--control of the bomb, adjustment to the computer, accommodation to the mass corporation and government agency, and much else.

6. The new tactics: The sit-in, the teach-in, the mass meeting or the march covered by the press and TV have given some students new weapons, in addition to the older petition and picket line and strike, to call attention of the public at large to their views. They can gain potency through the headlines and TV screens. They can communicate with each other quickly across the nation about their concerns. They can travel readily. They can have a loose network of friendships and contacts. As a consequence, they can concentrate their talents and their attention at selected pressure points quite readily. A form of guerrilla warfare has been possible with few student casualties but much impact--a strange war where the casualties often lie elsewhere and the impact may owe more to the exaggeration of the enemies than to the aid of the allies. The new style of flamboyant dress and flamboyant speech fits the headlines and the TV screens as no milder performances would do.

THE TONE of a campus, even of the national student body, can be set by a minority. In the 1920's it was set by the collegiate group--the athletes, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, the fraternity men, the Big Men on Campus. These students concentrated on activities, on social life, on occasional pranks.

It is remarkable how so few can set the tone for so many. The central fact is that most students remain the same from generation to generation. They remain quite recognizable. But in each generation a few thrust themselves forward, or are thrust forward by the situation--in the stadium, in the classroom, before the microphone--and come to stand as changing symbols for the largely unchanging multitude. They are those who ride with the spirit of the times, those who are under the circumstances the most vocal and aggressive and, also, those who are seized upon by the public as "typical." The coon-skin coat and the flapper were as rare on the campuses in the 1920's as the beard and black stockings in the 1960's, and yet each of these visions came to stand as symbols for a whole generation.

The Peace Corps Types

This dominant political activist tone ignores two other partially related and relatively new segments of student life: the Bohemians who are even fewer in number and the Peace Corps types who are the most neglected group of all but, in my judgment, potentially the most significant in the long run. The members of the first, the Bohemians, have been rather frequent but also rather unreliable followers of the political activists, and the Peace Corps or "service-types" occasional followers.

Some student tones cause more trouble for more people than others. The collegiate tone occasionally troubled the Dean of Students; the vocational and academic tone of the 40's and College and the Dean of the Graduate School; the political activist tone of the 60's, the President and the Regents. From scandals to grades and revolt, the tone of each generation has affected the temper and the tenure of a different layer of campus administration. There are those who look back with longing to the days when it was the Dean of Students or the football coach that got the sack.

The life of an institution and the public reaction to it are greatly affected by the tone of its dominant student minority. The nature of this minority is quite volatile--now one thing, now another. At the moment, the nature is political.

Confrontation Politics

THE STUDENT political movement of the 1960's is, in the totality of its means and ends, unique in American history. No single element of its approach is entirely new but the combination of these elements is new. To speak of a "movement" at all is to over-state the situation, for the very nature of the activity makes it dispersed and diverse. There are changing localities of action, vehicles for expression, tactics to pursue; and no developed ideology. It is a movement that can be seen and has been seen by many different people in many different ways.

"Confrontation politics" is the essence of the new student movement--confrontation with the power structure on main street, or the campus, in Washington. This is the particular form that political action has taken. Civil Rights tactics are the great source of inspiration. The tactic is to pick an issue and confront the power structure with it as dramatically as possible. There are a series of acts and events, with a certain style to them and moving in the same general direction.

There are two elements inter-twined in this new political activism. The first is composed of the issue-by-issue protestors; the second by adheresent to one or another of the organized groups on the Left. It is the first element which is unique and has set the decade of the 1960's aside as different from the past.

The Meaning of the "New Left"

The phrase, the "New Left," has been used to describe this whole development but this term implies a greater connection with the "old Left" than actually exists and an ideology that is "left" and thus in some sense socialist. While there are socialistic elements there is rather more emphasis on distrust of big government, preference for local action, nostalgia for a "Golden Age" that never existed, and emphasis on the individual and his personal choice. The Right of Goldwater is in evidence as well as the Left of Marx, but what is most in evidence is a vision of the good life under American democracy.

The Left -- composed of assorted socialists, Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Castroites and others, both old and new--has worked along with and given some leadership to confrontation politics, but this latter development has had many participants who are not "left" in any traditional sense of the word and its essential theme is not that of the ideological Left. The recent evolution of the Left is a separate phenomenon of its own; and so is confrontation politics. That the Left evolved into new forms at the same time as "confrontation politics" arose has resulted in a confusion between the two. Confrontation politics deserves to be looked at in its own right. It has happened mostly on campus; the Left has evolved mostly off-campus. Between the two developments, political activism has risen to greater heights on campus than in any earlier decade. But it is confrontation politics that has set the stage and given the volume of numbers to the protest. The Left has been associated with it but the totality of the approach has not been essentially Left, with its emphasis on ideology, organization, and activity throughout society. Nor has the Left supplied large numbers of participants. The Left has joined the "popular front" rather than created it. The issue-by-issue protestors have been the new and largely dominant element.

Elements of "Confrontation Politics"

The elements of confrontation politics which have attracted my attention as being of particular importance are these:

1. A concern for power: There is an obsession with power. The refrain again and again is the acquisition of power. It seems to be assumed that, with power, evil can be eradicated; that, without it, nothing can be done. Participants want power versus the faculty, the college administration, industry, the unions and government. There is a determination to combine the new morality of the students with the old power now held by other people.

The role of persuasion in getting results from those who have power is considered quite small. There is little realization of the extent to which power is actually fractionalized, subject to checks and balances, and often held in gentle hands.

The recurrent theme is how students, who really have no formal power, can obtain and exercise power. "Student power" can bring pressure on a university certainly, on a society possibly. It requires no reliance on a reluctant faculty, a quiescent labor movement, a non-existent peasant class. It also requires no fixed ideology. Ideologies divide as well as unite. They divided students in the 1930's. But, after McCarthy in the United States and polycentrism in the Communist world, the line between the moderates and the liberals versus the radicals is no longer so sharply drawn or drawn at all. "Student power" allows a united front. The old ideological barriers are largely gone.

2. The university as a base for power. The campus is the chosen focal point for activity. It is the place to arouse interest, recruit members, raise money, organize action, and from which to launch attacks on chosen targets. The trade union, the political party, and established voluntary organizations are no longer viewed as generally useful vehicles. Politics, in particular, takes too long and involves compromise.

3. Distaste for the "establishment." There is almost total rejection of the organizations that administer the status quo. The status quo is viewed as dominated by the "military-industrial complex." The university is seen as a handmaiden to this complex, doing research for it and training its servants. Much of the intellectual establishment is viewed as bought and paid for.

Consensus politics practiced in the clubs and back rooms away from public scrutiny and attack is abhorred. So are the liberals who know what is right but do too little about it over too long a period. They are considered the worst hypocrites of all. Student activists tend to see the establishment in its totality as monolithic and discount any cracks that may appear in its granite face. All authority, except their own, is suspect. Exercise of authority by the university is seen not as a legitimate protection of the university but as a line of defense for the society that controls it.

Ideology is Suspect

4. Orientation to specific issues: Ideology is suspect. Also, given the variety of points of view among participants, it would be completely divisive. There is no more chewing on the beard of Karl Marx, although there is a certain blindness toward the leftwing authoritarianism of Cuba and China, even though authority in other and less harsh forms is violently opposed. If there could be said to be any inherent central ideology, it would be syndicalism with its emphasis on means. And syndicalism was never much of an ideology.

The choice, rather, is for individual issues, one or a few at a time. Issues with a high moral content are preferred--like those involving equality, freedom and peace. Intellect, like ideology, is suspect. Morality, instead, is substituted. Facts, history, analysis, theory are often considered more impediments than aids.

5. Participatory democracy. There is a distaste for all bureaucracies, including their own. The ideal is the Town Meeting, or the Quaker committee meeting. Maximum opportunity should be given for a sense of participation, even if it is only by a vote at a mass meeting. Nothing is really legitimate until it has been ratified by the action group.

6. Tactics for the short-run. The methods of action are all aimed at quick results or quick impact, such as the sit-in, the picket line, strike, march, vigil, teach-in or other forms of mass demonstration. The preparation of big programs, the conduct of prolonged negotiations, the organization of an extensive educational program, the establishment of an organization to exert constant pressure, are all avoided. The tactics can be described as "instantism." There is a chiliastic aspect--a dramatic action to be followed expectantly by dramatic reulsts. Here again there is a parallel to syndicalism and the I.W.W.--the use of force to correct a current grievance, perhaps someday a general strike, but no permanent collective bargaining and no contracts which only bind you when you want to fight, as the "wobblies" said. There is little perspective of time. The emphasis is on the event and not the process. And thus there is little consideration of all of the long-term consequences. Strategy and tactics are combined in a program of action now.

Style

7. The importance of style: The new reformation starts by nailing bold theses to the Cathedral door--with flash bulbs and cameras ready to record the scene. Demands are made suddenly, dramatically, publicly. Instead of working within organizations and through channels and by consultation, the appeal is directly to the mass public. Thus it is necessary to get the attention of the press and TV. Violation of rules and the law is one quick way of doing this. It is a lever that can be pulled to get instant attention. Advertising techniques come to the campus in the service of prophecy not profit. The student activist is the PR expert. The simplistic slogan and banner headline replace the carefully reasoned argument. The style is daring, flamboyant and egotistical. It is a revolt that draws more on Madison Avenue than on convictions about the nature of the historical process.

The style requires leaders in accord with it. It needs the charismatic speaker, the popular folk singer, the crusading star. Protest is also entertainment. A revolt is a "happening," important in its own right and repleat with emotion, even hysteria. Events should be escalated quickly-- piling grievance on grievance and "atrocity" on "atrocity," encouraging the authorities and the police to create martyrs, seeking emotional commitment. The enemy must be personalized and vilified. It is, among other things, a great existential experience.

The goal is quick results--no compromise. It is better to lose with a brave manifesto never achieved than to secure quiet success buried in ambiguities. There is little endurance. And, if there is defeat, escape into private experiences and fantasies always lies ahead.

Style is a central feature of the new political activism. The style affects content--which must be immediate and simple. The style may even become the performance itself.

8. Allies and allied enemies: The new activists can look, within the campus, for support from the few Bohemians and often from the Peace Corps and academic styles as well, and outside the campus, from the Old and New Left, the New Theologists, and the remaining minorities. The essential theme, however, is one of students by themselves largely isolated from external groups. They ask for little help, as the slogan "don't trust anyone over 30" implies.

"Student power," however, does get manipulated by many people for many reasons. The Left embraces the idea, lends its advice and some leadership, and builds up every application of it into evidence that the revolution might really yet come. The New Right takes it as a target to energize its support. TV and the press find it colorful and vivid material. As a result, it gains attention far beyond its actual significance.

The Left, which has given up onS-