1<4
MARTIN DUBERMAN
1.
Does it matter who is in the White House? Or is there something
in our system which would force any President to act as Johnson is acting?
2. How serious is the problem of inflation? The problem of poverty?
3. What is the meaning of the split between the Administration and
the American intellectuals?
4. Is white America committed to granting equality to the American
Negro?
5. Where do you think our foreign policies are likely to lead us?
6. What, in general, do you think is likely to happen in America?
7. Do you think any promise is to be found in the activities of young
people today?
Martin Duberman
I'll address myself to your last question. Specifically, I'll deal
with the college population, because as a university teacher that's what
I know best and because such promise as commentators find these days
tends to center on the renewed social consciousness represented by campus
groups like SDS.
The promise, I think, is limited-not because only a fraction of
students is involved with groups like SDS but because only a fraction is
likely to be. The large majority of undergraduates is career-oriented, con–
cerned with making a place inside the system rather than with correcting
its abuses. Most students see their four years in college as an opportunity
-a joyless duty-to begin the trek toward expertise, toward achieving the
status and security of a specialist.
This does not mean that they are unaware of our society's ills. On
the contrary, they are often knowledgeable about our problems: about
urban decay, the civil rights stalemate, the maldistribution of income, the
defects in our educational policy, the military-industrial complex, the
banality of our culture. Nor is it accurate to say that they are indifferent
to these problems. Some undergraduates are notably troubled; others
worry from time to time about this or that issue; almost none are merely
cynical or content to repeat comfortable cliches about the poor being
always with us.
But awareness of social ills is not enough to move the majority of
