AMERICA
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students (or adults) into action against them. Thus while many admit
sympathy for the aims of SDS, few join it. Why? In part because most
undergraduates share the national value structure--its faith in the bene–
volence of time and the Deity, its assumption that all problems carry their
own solutions, its tendency to equate normality with "moderation." And
these values prevent undergraduates no less than the rest of the nation
from crediting the need for immediate, large-scale readjustments.
Then, too, their very knowledge can, paradoxically, inhibit any
im–
pulse to engage in protest. For not only do they know the details of social
malfunction, they also know the futility of all past movements in this
country for correcting it. Believing that the past does-must-repeat it–
self, they discount in advance any current or future hope for the success
of radical protest. One can recognize that this assumption is convenient
-it allows the undergraduate to pursue his private goals on the grounds
that public ones are unattainable--yet also recognize that the assumption
has considerable validity. The fact does remain, however much one
regrets it, that the history of radical protest in this country is the history
of impotence. True, the slaves were freed-but Southern intransigence
seems to have played a far greater role in producing that result than did
thirty years of abolitionist agitation. True, the New Deal eventually
took over some of the reforms long advocated by Socialists-but with the
double result of bolstering capitalism and destroying the Socialist move–
ment itself.
Why then do
any
undergraduates become involved in organizations
like SDS? Surely those who do participate are no less knowledgeable
about American history or contemporary politics than those who do not.
Yet somehow in their case tasting the apple produces neither skepticism
nor paralysis. Why it does not is difficult to say. For one thing, those who
join SDS do not accept the national hierarchy of values, do not, that is,
place order above justice, compromise above principle, property rights
above human rights. But another factor, less tangible, may be more sig–
nificant in explaining their activism. Let me approach it indirectly, by
way of an anecdote.
A few weeks ago I asked Jack Newfield, political columnist for
The
Village Voice
and author of
A Prophetic Minority,
to talk to my under–
graduate seminar at Princeton about the New Left. The meeting was
prolonged and intense. Afterward, I asked Newfield what his reactions
were to the undergraduates. I found his answer illuminating. He had
been, he said, greatly impressed with their knowledge, intelligence and
seriousness. They had listened to his indictment of American life with
close attention, most had acknowledged its force, had seemed to agree
that "something must be done"-and even that SDS seemed a promis-
