Alumni Reflect on Lives Shaped By '60s Politics

While the anti-war movement that began in the early 1960s has fizzled, many activists among the alumni here this week say its influence has shaped the rest of their lives. They say most of their classmates who helped found the nuclear disarmament campaign at Harvard more than a quarter-century ago are still working for social change.

Adam Hochschild '63, a co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, began his activist career in Harvard's Tocsin organization, which pushed for an atmospheric test ban treaty and organized the first national march on Washington against nuclear weapons. Hochschild later worked for civil rights in 1964, campaigned for McGovern in 1972 and demonstrated against the Vietnam War.

"In a way, Tocsin owed its existence to the Kennedy years," Hochschild says. "His being there unleashed a lot of stuff like this. He appeared to promise a lot. His Harvard connections fed the illusion that as Harvard students we had some specific influence in Washington."

Radical activism was far from the norm among students in the early 1960s. "I was not a red-hot, but my social conscience did develop while at Harvard," says Daniel del Solar '63.

"I did act as a signatory for a Socialist Club that needed three names on a petition in order to become a club," del Solar says. "I signed in the name of free speech. I never even went to any meetings. But today I still can't get security clearance as a result."

Del Solar now runs a radio station in California which he describes as "a forum for maintaining free speech." He also studies the effectiveness of migrant education programs and has worked as a reporter in Central America.

Mary Felstiner '63 says her political activism, and particularly her interest in women's rights, developed after graduation. "I left Radcliffe and realized a few years later that I had been duped," she says of her college experience. "Nothing would drive me to political action faster than that feeling."

And Marcy Benstock '63, a professional organizer credited with stopping New York City's Westway development, says she grew interested in politics only after graduation. "When I was at Radcliffe I was apolitical," she says. "I was an English major."

Only when she moved to New York and "came face to face with urban problems" did she become active. "I started to read the newspaper for the first time in my life," she says.

These veterans say they have not abandoned their ideals.

"Thinking back over the whole thing, I can't think of anybody who was active in this group that went over to the other side," says Hochschild.

Felstiner says she chose to teach at San Francisco State University because she believed she could best further the study of women's issues there.

"It is important to be at a university that doesn't resemble Harvard in any way because I feel the problems in this country with mass education are connected to the class problems," Felstiner says.

Benstock says that when she moved to New York, "the problem that bothered me most was soot on my windowsill--air pollution."

"Eventually, I applied for a grant to look into what kind of job the Environmental Agency was doing. They said, `This problem has been studied enough. We want someone to do something about it,'" Benstock says.

Six weeks later, she was writing a proposal for action to solve the problem. The 1971 proposal was called the Upper West Side Air Pollution Campaign, and later developed into the Clean Air Campaign.

"By 1973 the city came under new requirements to reduce pollution in order to meet minimum standards for clean air," says Benstock.

She says her efforts to reduce pollution led naturally to the battle against the Westway Project, which she describes as "spending billions of dollars to build a highway and real estate in a precious area of the Hudson."

"There was a battle for 12 years. It was a tremendous citizen's victory. It was the only real major victory that ordinary New Yorkers have ever had," Benstock says.

The past and present activists say their lives have been shaped spiritually as well as pragmatically by those years.

"It's an experience I look back on, despite the student naivete that we were the center of the universe, and think we really were onto something," says Hochschild.

Felstiner says the 1960s left her with, "a fundamental assumption that you should never stand still. Struggle is perpetual--you'll never be able to stop, feeling as though you've come to an end. Everything you accomplish opens up the responsibility to continue."

"My experience at Radcliffe," she continues, "and knowing and caring about women there gave me a base for believing that women should turn to each other for help."

"It was not the '60s themselves [that affected me]," says Benstock. "It wasn't the model of activists, but the absence of materialistic values, power and money. If I had been concerned primarily with making money, there wouldn't have been time to notice or think about the things I did. I couldn't have done the work I did."

By contrast, Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Sociology Roderick Harrison '70 says his somewhat later generation of activists did not all pursue their ideals after graduation. "I get a sense today of very different groups who went different ways," he says, charging that many quickly abandoned their commitments to social change, pursuing careers in law and business.

Harrison was active in both the Black Students' Association (BSA) and the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and was among the radicals who occupied University Hall in 1969.

"I began working with the Urban League in Boston in their demand that Blacks be hired on construction sites at a proportionate rate to whites," he says. "We were a liaison between the Black construction workers and the companies. A lot of students involved were unwilling to risk suspension for the cause when it got to that point."

"That disillusioned me. I became wary of student movements where people are too young to make serious commitments. We made promises to people that we didn't keep. I never wanted to be involved with that type of thing again," he says.

"A lot of people who were going to die for the revolution went on to law school. I tend not to meet the people who were active and then went on to Wall Street, [but] I know they're out there and I know a lot of them voted for Reagan," he says.

"By the time I left here, I was disillusioned with the movement," says Harrision. "Now I'm involved in more indirect ways. The times have changed and social change is not likely to be brought about in those ways. That period represented a window in American history. It's not too easy to generate the same kind of mass involvement today. As one grows and moves into a profession, one is in a position to address these issues in more official ways. Certain of us have chosen to work within institutional frameworks."

"There's a certain amount of social consciousness that categorizes that period," he says. "It was a period of Black identity formation. I think it is difficult not to feel some kind of obligation to social change. I would probably not be too proud of some of the things I sported as truth then," he says.

"Today I'm involved with minority recruitment issues. It's not just enough to take advantage of an opportunity. You have to give something back," says Harrison.