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It’s time to re-read James Simon Kunen’s The Strawberry Statement, a 19-year-old Columbia undergraduate’s “wry and clever” firsthand account of his fellow Ivy League revolutionaries and the 1968 campus uprising that became a defining symbol of student radicalization.
The book offers a unique personal perspective on the motivations, sentiments and dynamics behind the student sit-ins, demonstrations and building occupations.
Kunen’s narrative reveals that the protests were fueled by a mix of ideological motivations and deeper psychological discontents. Yes, the students were upset about specific campus issues, especially the university’s involvement in military research and its plan to build a gymnasium in Morningside Park, which was regarded as a racially insensitive encroachment into the nearby Black community. Certainly, the Vietnam War, the military draft, and the civil rights struggles galvanized the student body. But the protests were also part of a broader generational revolt against the complacency of the buttoned-down adult world and their parents’ unreflective acceptance of the existing social order.
Kunen captures the chaotic, often exhilarating atmosphere of the protests. The rage against the university machine. The pleasure of ‘stickin’ it to the man’ and exposing the vapidity and befuddlement of senior university administrators.
He provides a vivid description of the sit-ins and building occupations, and the creation of strike committees. His narrative details the spontaneous yet organized nature of the student protests, which, while loosely structured, were capable of mobilizing large numbers of students through grassroots organizing.
Throughout the book, Kunen intersperses personal reflections that provide insight into the mindset of the young protesters. His account reflects a mixture of idealism and confusion, a desire for a more just world, and a struggle to articulate and achieve coherent goals.
When the book appeared, it seemed to symbolize a significant shift in American society, when young people were increasingly willing to question authority and take control of their futures. This seemed to be a tipping point in American cultural history, when youth culture began to assert its power and influence, shaping not only the future of universities but also the trajectory of American politics and society.
Nearly five decades after its publication, The Strawberry Statement reads quite differently than it did when it was first published. Some of what the book heralded—the cultural and generational shift that Kunen described, the rejection of traditional values, the challenge to institutional authority and the embrace of more liberal social norms—did indeed take place and continues to influence American society. The movements of the 1960s and early 1970s catalyzed significant changes in various sectors including civil rights, women’s rights, environmental awareness and more. This period reshaped public attitudes and led to important legislative changes that have had enduring effects on societal structure and individual rights.
Yet the fate of the youthful idealism of the protesters is mixed. Some activists continued to engage with various movements, carrying forward their commitment to social change into new arenas such as environmental advocacy, gender equality, and more recent social justice movements. Yet as the protesters aged, many integrated into the very institutions they once criticized. Some used their positions in academia, government and business to enact the types of reforms they had once demanded from the outside. In doing so, they helped to gradually shift institutional policies and public norms from within. But many other activists became disillusioned with the slow pace of change or the co-optation of their movements by mainstream politics. A few turned to violence. Most others simply gravitated toward societal norms.
The Strawberry Statement remains a poignant reminder of the power and passion of youth activism and its potential to shape society. The cultural and generational shifts it describes have indeed taken root, though the evolution of youthful idealism reflects both gains and ongoing challenges in the quest for a more just and equitable society. But these shifts were accompanied by four decades of conservative political and economic ascendancy.
Although the current campus protests have prompted inflammatory language and exaggerated claims, they have also compelled faculty, administrators, journalists and policymakers to seriously reevaluate and reflect about the academic mission, the role of faculty and administrators, and the proper balance between academic freedom, free speech and anti-discrimination.
Let’s look at some of the most provocative recent writing on these topics.
STANLEY FISH
Here’s Professor Fish’s advice to campus leadership:
“Intervening in a political crisis is not within our job description; it’s not something we are either equipped to do or assigned to do. Our job is to introduce students to the materials and histories of various academic disciplines and to provide those same students with the analytical skills that will enable them to proceed on their own after a course is over.’ That’s it, nothing else.”
In his view, any contributions that campuses make to solving urgent societal problems is indirect. Their responsibility is “limited to instruction and the advancement of knowledge in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and computer sciences.” To ensure that the academic enterprise flourishes—that classes are taught and research is conducted—“administrators have a positive duty to remove any impediments to that flourishing, including tent encampments, sit-ins, obstacles to exits and entries, building occupations, forcing the cancellation of classes and a host of other things now occurring.”
As for the right to assembly and the right to free speech, Professor Fish argues that political protest is not part of higher education’s core mission, and when political speech interferes with “the main business of the enterprise—instructing students and advancing the state of knowledge—it must be curbed and even silenced.”
As he writes pointedly, colleges must resist “the seductive and self-inflationary imperative of saving the world.” He adds:
“[C]olleges and universities are not in the free speech business or the democracy business. They are in the education business; and while institutions of higher education may decide to allow a certain amount of political speech on their campuses, they are not required to do so. They are, however, required to silence that same speech once it enters the stage of interference and disruption.”
As much as some may wish that campuses would devote themselves exclusively to the intellectual life, Professor Fish’s position is not widely shared. That ship has sailed.
SERGE SCHMEMANN and AMNA KHALID and JEFFREY AARON SNYDER
Two recent articles—one by a New York Times’ opinion writer entitled “Student Protest Is an Essential Part of Education” and another by two Carleton College professors, “Student Activism Is Integral to the Mission of Academe”—argue that far from being a distraction or diversion, protest is itself educational.
It’s certainly the case that through participation in protest, thoughtful, self-aware and reflective activists can learn a great deal about leadership, group dynamics, injustice, negotiations and the workings of power. But I suspect that it will be years before the current protesters will learn, like Mark Rudd eventually did, about the intricacies of protest: the allure of self-righteous moralism, the costs of nonstrategic agitation and disruption, the difference between reasoned argument and extreme rhetoric, simplistic slogans, and performative radicalism, and the dangers posed by “the madness of crowds,” as well as the hard work needed to forge coalitions that extend beyond the campus.
I certainly understand Schmemann’s nostalgia for days that, at least in memory, strike him as more idealistic and principled. But I do find his blindness to the political consequences of the student protests odd, and his failure to share lessons drawn from his earlier experience as a Columbia graduate student misguided.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
Friedersdorf, an Atlantic staff writer, calls on college faculty and administrators to focus on one of the thorniest issues raised by the current protests: the conflict between anti-discrimination law, which guarantees all students the right to a safe and supportive environment free from discrimination, intimidation, taunting, harassment and bullying, and the free speech and free assembly rights of protesters.
On one side, we have those who accuse some presidents of engaging in viewpoint discrimination against Palestinian-aligned students, and, on the other, accusations of failing to provide Jewish students with full access to the educational experience, free from antisemitic harassment. As Friedersdorf points out, the legal standards and universities’ obligations are murky, so that “students on both sides of the issue plausibly feel discriminated against by their universities.”
NATE SILVER
In a blog posting entitled “Go to a state school,” the widely read statistician maintains that “The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem—and they deserve it.” As he recently tweeted:
“The premium you’re paying for an elite private college vs. the better public schools is for social clout and not the quality of the education. And that’s worth a lot less now that people have figured out that elite higher education is cringe.”
Certainly, by attending an elite private, those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds have “won a golden ticket to join the elite. But for others, the economic advantage isn’t quantifiable, except in fields that are extremely status conscious, like law, consulting, and finance.
His conclusion: “state colleges and institutions are much better institutions for society—one of the things that truly make America great—and often offer a more well-rounded experience and a comparable education at a lower price.”
HAMILTON NOLAN
Nolan, a labor journalist who writes regularly for In These Times and The Guardian, begins a recent blog posting with one of the most amusing lines that I have read recently:
“The nicest thing that can be said about college as an institution is that it gives the kids able to afford it an appropriately sheltered place to live out their prime criminal years in an environment where they will not be as harshly prosecuted for their various youthful hijinks as they would be if they were not in college.”
Entitled “College Is an Education in Bullshit,” the post argues that a college education is filled with valuable political lessons:
- About how to take a public good, make the ability to afford a middle-class standard of living dependent upon it, and run it “like a business.”
- About how colleges serve as a sorting mechanism with a luxury tier for their most privileged customers who are groomed for jobs in politics, finance, and consulting.
- About how even the most richly resourced institutions rely heavily on adjunct faculty and graduate students.
- About how universities are anything but politically neutral, but, when understood correctly, reveal liberal society’s instruments of control, coercion and power.
- About how college-aged students are treated like Ursula Le Guin’s “Children of Omelas”—as scapegoats for a host of societal ills, including laziness, indolence and narcissism, and how their protests provoke a kind of hysteria.
As Nolan puts it, with words that are overwrought but nonetheless contain a kernel of truth: “We send kids to college to learn, but not to understand; to become independent, but not independent minded; to become responsible, as long as that sense of responsibility does not extend to everyone else in the world.”
GEORGE PACKER
A staff writer at The New Yorker for 15 years before joining The Atlantic, Packer argues that “Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university.” The liberal university sought, first and foremost, a disinterested pursuit of truth. But that mission required “a special kind of community whose legitimacy depends on mutual recognition in a spirit of reason, openness, and tolerance.”
Over the past five decades, the ideal of the liberal university, with its emphasis on inquiry, complexity, ambiguity, independent thinking and open debate, gradually faded. Rather than treating undergraduates as psychologically robust, resilient and filled with agency, universities increasingly came to perceive them as fragile. In the eyes of a growing number of faculty members, “Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence.”
The result was an uneasy, unstable amalgamation that combined:
- The neoliberal university, an institution that seeks to maximize revenues, that is obsessed with branding, rankings and marketing, and that prioritizes fields deemed profitable, with:
- An institution dedicated to social justice that includes a diverse and inclusive campus, courses and programs designed to educate students about structural inequalities, historical injustices and human rights, gender and sexuality studies, racial and ethnic studies, and environmental justice; research with a social purpose; and community outreach, advocacy and policy influence.
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Let me conclude this piece with a modest suggestion. Today’s campus protests should serve as a teaching opportunity. Faculty and students might gather together to discuss not only the history of campus protests or the history of the Middle East and U.S. involvement in the region, but questions about the purpose of a college education, academic freedom, free speech, anti-discrimination and other crucial issues involving a campus’s mission.
One question that these discussions might explore is why some protests succeed and others backfire. For example, we know that while attempts to suppress peaceful demonstrations tend to build support for protesters, any acts that smack of violence or disruption tend to “move news agendas, frames, elite discourse and public concern toward ‘social control.’” We also know that coalitions that cut across domains can also drive shifts in elite and public opinion.
Another question that campuses might examine is whether the mission of higher education should prioritize academic instruction, professional training, personal development or civic engagement. These conversations might help clarify and potentially expand the institution’s commitment to producing not only skilled professionals but also well-rounded and socially conscious individuals.
Then, too, campuses might debate whether academic freedom should always protect the dissemination of all ideas, regardless of their potential to offend or harm, or if there should be limits in place to protect students from discriminatory or harmful academic content. This campus conversation might also highlight issues of discrimination and inequality on campus, whether based on race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, religion or politics.
The very act of discussing these issues in the wake of protests can help strengthen the campus community. Facilitating open dialogues where all members feel heard and valued can promote a more inclusive academic environment. This process itself models the democratic principles of open discourse and conflict resolution, essential skills for students as future citizens.
Campus protests can serve not just as a challenge to institutional norms but also as a unique opportunity for collective learning and institutional growth. By using these moments to engage in critical discussions about the role of higher education, academic freedom, free speech and social responsibility, colleges can both address immediate concerns and lay the groundwork for a more thoughtful, inclusive and mission-driven educational environment.
Let’s harness campus protests as springboards for dialog and reflection. We need to reassess and reinvigorate higher education’s core mission, and the campus protests can serve as a spark for the crucial conversations that our colleges need.
