// editor's note //
Fall 2005
1968, Meet 2005
When Michael Oren, Middle East historian (and member of The Current advisory board) spoke on campus a few weeks ago, he reminisced about the good ol' days. Standing on the fifth floor of Lerner, looking out on Hamilton and Low, he asked rhetorically, "When is this campus going to look like it did in 1968? When are people going to get fired up enough that they get out en masse on College Walk?"
From the nostalgia with which he spoke, we assumed Oren had smoked cigars in the barricaded President's office. But Oren wasn't even here for the heyday of activism at CU. He is CC '77; and while he boasts that he smoked cigars with his Lit Hum professor, he wasn't here for the take-over of Hamilton and Low. And yet '68 is the legacy he claims.
Like Oren, for those of us present day Columbians invested in politics or activism, from the radical left to the reactionary right, 1968 is the year. Today some see themselves as the torchbearers of the SDS legacy, organizing speak-outs against the war and Columbia's expansion into Manhattanville. The recent inaugural issue of Columbia's new progressive magazine AdHoc, draws on the memory. The founders proclaim, "Although the building takeovers seem like a distant memory, we are still a student body unafraid of questioning the Columbia Administration and its policies, our country and its politics." On the other end of the spectrum, conservative students, covering campus with flyers for the upcoming John Ashcroft event, seem thrilled that '68 is fading farther and farther away.
Up in the Ivory Tower (or Fayerweather), American historians and veterans of the New Left still debate the legacy of the 1968 riots. Was it about race and the gym in Harlem? Was it about Columbia's research for the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)? Was it about the war in Vietnam? Or was it just a bunch of elite Ivy leaguers who wanted to express their angst at The Man? One thing was certain: people were invested in the Movement because it was about them. Before the riots, they felt like voiceless clients in the corporate academy, part of an institution that was an ever-shrinking "white island," scared of being shipped off to war. In an interview with Partisan Review in the summer after the riots, Lionel Trilling commented, "For young people now, being political serves much the same purpose as being literary has long done—it expresses and validates the personality." That was then.
Now, despite the socialist paradise prophesied on ISO poster boards, Columbians are not on the brink of starting a revolution. To the generation of '68, it seems baffling that we're not. If the Left and the Right are as passionate as they claim, the argument goes, why aren't they literally duking it out at the feet of Alma Mater over the Patriot Act, gay rights, and the war in Iraq, like the long-hairs and the suits did in '68?
Some critics blame it on the death of mass radicalism. In the summer after the student riots, sociologist Nathan Glazer wrote an essay in Commentary, doubting the sustainability of the New Left's radicalism. He writes in the conclusion of "The New Left and Its Limits," "I view radicalism as a great reservoir of energy which moves the establishment to pay attention to the most serious and urgent problems, and tells it when it has failed...what it can no longer be, is the great sword of vengeance and correction which goes to the source of the distress and cuts it out. There is no longer a single course and no longer a single sword." Looking around at the flyers in Butler, it seems that Glazer is on to something. The are so many groups combating specific societal or global ills—Global Justice, Students for Economic and Environmental Justice, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, Everyone Allied Against Homophobia—that there are too many to count, let alone keep the acronyms straight. And for the most part, they urge fixing the system from within, not overthrowing it.
This trend isn't limited to Columbia. Recently, sociologists and cultural critics have attributed this political-cultural shift to generational difference. Some have written us off as apathetic. Calling us the digital generation, others have argued the source of the difference lies primarily in technology; we are too consumed with instant messaging to engage with the world. In their book Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation, Neil Howe and William Strauss argue that the important difference isn't about AIM or Blackberries, but about our outlook. They predict that we will affect genuine change by rebelling "against the culture by cleaning it up, rebel against political cynicism by touting trust, rebel against individualism by stressing teamwork, rebel against adult pessimism by going positive, and rebel against societal ennui by actually getting a few things done." Howe and Strauss read our seeming lack of revolution as our genuine rebellion. This rebellion from within is interpreted by many, especially by hounding journalists covering higher education, as "the Conservative backlash." In 2003, The New York Times coined the term "hipublicans," claiming conservatism is the new black. (Or something).
Any attempt to smack a label on the still evolving phenomenon of our generation, and more specifically, our crop of Columbians, is premature. Why things are the way they are, we're not entirely sure. But there's no question that on the most basic level there's some truth to these sociological observations. Things are different than they were in '68, both in the world and at Columbia. And while the riots were a major moment in the life of this university, it's time to move on; it's stunting to continue bathing in nostalgia.
Recognition of this difference caused us to create this journal, a forum where students can present their ideas on the most important contemporary issues. Today we may not all belong to the same Movement, but we do find ourselves drawn to particular ideas and politics, generating and being pulled by various currents. For each of us, our identities influence the issues we find especially pressing and the views we adopt.
If you look at the masthead, it says we're a journal concerned with Jewish affairs. This is not ghettoization—it's honesty. Undoubtedly, this will shape our editorial choices somewhat, but it will not dictate them. For us, our Jewish identity inspires the high value we assign to the power of ideas and meaningful debate. (It's not for nothing people say two Jews have three opinions.)
In 1914, the founding editors of The New Republic wrote that starting a magazine "is frankly an experiment. It is an attempt to find a national audience for a journal of interpretation and opinion". Likewise, this journal, on a much more modest scale, is an experiment. Can we create a publication that will help mold a legacy for our Columbia generation?
We think so.
From the nostalgia with which he spoke, we assumed Oren had smoked cigars in the barricaded President's office. But Oren wasn't even here for the heyday of activism at CU. He is CC '77; and while he boasts that he smoked cigars with his Lit Hum professor, he wasn't here for the take-over of Hamilton and Low. And yet '68 is the legacy he claims.
Like Oren, for those of us present day Columbians invested in politics or activism, from the radical left to the reactionary right, 1968 is the year. Today some see themselves as the torchbearers of the SDS legacy, organizing speak-outs against the war and Columbia's expansion into Manhattanville. The recent inaugural issue of Columbia's new progressive magazine AdHoc, draws on the memory. The founders proclaim, "Although the building takeovers seem like a distant memory, we are still a student body unafraid of questioning the Columbia Administration and its policies, our country and its politics." On the other end of the spectrum, conservative students, covering campus with flyers for the upcoming John Ashcroft event, seem thrilled that '68 is fading farther and farther away.
Up in the Ivory Tower (or Fayerweather), American historians and veterans of the New Left still debate the legacy of the 1968 riots. Was it about race and the gym in Harlem? Was it about Columbia's research for the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)? Was it about the war in Vietnam? Or was it just a bunch of elite Ivy leaguers who wanted to express their angst at The Man? One thing was certain: people were invested in the Movement because it was about them. Before the riots, they felt like voiceless clients in the corporate academy, part of an institution that was an ever-shrinking "white island," scared of being shipped off to war. In an interview with Partisan Review in the summer after the riots, Lionel Trilling commented, "For young people now, being political serves much the same purpose as being literary has long done—it expresses and validates the personality." That was then.
Now, despite the socialist paradise prophesied on ISO poster boards, Columbians are not on the brink of starting a revolution. To the generation of '68, it seems baffling that we're not. If the Left and the Right are as passionate as they claim, the argument goes, why aren't they literally duking it out at the feet of Alma Mater over the Patriot Act, gay rights, and the war in Iraq, like the long-hairs and the suits did in '68?
Some critics blame it on the death of mass radicalism. In the summer after the student riots, sociologist Nathan Glazer wrote an essay in Commentary, doubting the sustainability of the New Left's radicalism. He writes in the conclusion of "The New Left and Its Limits," "I view radicalism as a great reservoir of energy which moves the establishment to pay attention to the most serious and urgent problems, and tells it when it has failed...what it can no longer be, is the great sword of vengeance and correction which goes to the source of the distress and cuts it out. There is no longer a single course and no longer a single sword." Looking around at the flyers in Butler, it seems that Glazer is on to something. The are so many groups combating specific societal or global ills—Global Justice, Students for Economic and Environmental Justice, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, Everyone Allied Against Homophobia—that there are too many to count, let alone keep the acronyms straight. And for the most part, they urge fixing the system from within, not overthrowing it.
This trend isn't limited to Columbia. Recently, sociologists and cultural critics have attributed this political-cultural shift to generational difference. Some have written us off as apathetic. Calling us the digital generation, others have argued the source of the difference lies primarily in technology; we are too consumed with instant messaging to engage with the world. In their book Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation, Neil Howe and William Strauss argue that the important difference isn't about AIM or Blackberries, but about our outlook. They predict that we will affect genuine change by rebelling "against the culture by cleaning it up, rebel against political cynicism by touting trust, rebel against individualism by stressing teamwork, rebel against adult pessimism by going positive, and rebel against societal ennui by actually getting a few things done." Howe and Strauss read our seeming lack of revolution as our genuine rebellion. This rebellion from within is interpreted by many, especially by hounding journalists covering higher education, as "the Conservative backlash." In 2003, The New York Times coined the term "hipublicans," claiming conservatism is the new black. (Or something).
Any attempt to smack a label on the still evolving phenomenon of our generation, and more specifically, our crop of Columbians, is premature. Why things are the way they are, we're not entirely sure. But there's no question that on the most basic level there's some truth to these sociological observations. Things are different than they were in '68, both in the world and at Columbia. And while the riots were a major moment in the life of this university, it's time to move on; it's stunting to continue bathing in nostalgia.
Recognition of this difference caused us to create this journal, a forum where students can present their ideas on the most important contemporary issues. Today we may not all belong to the same Movement, but we do find ourselves drawn to particular ideas and politics, generating and being pulled by various currents. For each of us, our identities influence the issues we find especially pressing and the views we adopt.
If you look at the masthead, it says we're a journal concerned with Jewish affairs. This is not ghettoization—it's honesty. Undoubtedly, this will shape our editorial choices somewhat, but it will not dictate them. For us, our Jewish identity inspires the high value we assign to the power of ideas and meaningful debate. (It's not for nothing people say two Jews have three opinions.)
In 1914, the founding editors of The New Republic wrote that starting a magazine "is frankly an experiment. It is an attempt to find a national audience for a journal of interpretation and opinion". Likewise, this journal, on a much more modest scale, is an experiment. Can we create a publication that will help mold a legacy for our Columbia generation?
We think so.