Against Apathy, Always

Today, reminiscence of the 1960s conjures images of a more ardent and idealistic era, during which students set down their pens and took up arms against the Vietnam War, the draft that accompanied it, and a host of other injustices. All of this simmering outrage boiled over at Harvard in 1969, when undergraduates seized University Hall in protest of the College’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program. For some, accompanying nostalgia for that era is a tangible disappointment in today’s students who, it may seem, have no interest in enduring truncheons and tear gas in the service of an ideal.

It was with precisely this mentality that 13 members of that volatile Harvard Class of 1967 wrote to University President Drew G. Faust last week, citing a climate of indifference at the College and requesting the establishment of a task force to combat a climate of “political apathy and careerism.” While we current undergraduates—who here stand accused of callous ambition—respect the letter’s aims, we disagree with its proposed solution and doubt whether there is a problem at all.

Active administrative intervention as an effective means of cultivating “civic courage” and “views contrary to those of established forces” seems not merely impractical, but almost absurd. The activism of the 1960s was resolute in its antagonism toward institutions and administrators; faculty meetings and procedural resolutions hardly seem the crucible for this specific brand of advocacy. Yet those that were the targets of student activism are now supposed to study and stoke it. This is not only ironic but impractical—a University’s job is to educate and cultivate students, not force them along a particular path with that education. If administrators really want to serve students and engage them politically, they would do best to focus on improving Harvard’s lagging academics and the student experience instead of trying to get students to protest.

Furthermore, the letter writers’ claim that political activism is gone from Harvard at all remains open to debate. While it may have been decades since riot squads passed under Boylston Gate, this fact connotes the transformation—not degradation—of undergraduates’ public spirit. The looming threat of the draft played an invaluable role as a catalyst for activism in the Vietnam era; the absence of conscription today makes political activism an entirely different enterprise. Moreover, the omnipresence of news and technology has lessened the necessity for the kind of public demonstration the people behind this letter seem to value.

Perhaps this shift in the nature of activism speaks to the progress of pragmatism and compromise. Instead of mass militancy and invective, our generation appears inclined to dialogue and public service. While picketing may have waned in popularity as a tool of dissent, service groups within the Institute of Politics and the Philips Brooks House Association thrive today as they never have before.

Harvard students today engage in policy discussions on endemic social problems, operate a homeless shelter, and dedicate entire years to service abroad in the poorest parts of the world—all without the encouragement of their deans and professors or the lure of a desk at Goldman Sachs. To call this an inferior mode of social participation to the occupation of a building seems blinkered and unreasonable. The actions of current students are just different responses to a very different world.

While we appreciate the members of the Class of 1967’s offer of informed advice concerning the nature of protest, we respectfully decline. We are doing just fine on our own.