COLUMBIA: SEVEN INTERVIEWS
Stephen Donadio
Immanuel Wallerstein
INTERVIEWER:
What do you regard as the most important issue in the
Columbia conflict? That is, what issue do you think best defines the
kind of conflict it is?
WALLERSTEIN:
I think there have been three fundamental issues that
have been of varying degrees of concern to different participants. One
issue has to do with the nature of our society in general: in parti–
cular, its foreign policy and defense commitments around the world–
in Vietnam, especially - and the University's implication, connection
with, those policies and commitments. This is the IDA issue.
The second issue has to do with the relationship of the University
to an ongoing social problem of our society: racism, the upsurge of
the black community and the way in which the university - as an
institution - impinges upon this problem quite directly. This is the
gymnasium issue.
The third issue has been how the University is governed internally
and to what extent norms of democracy are meaningful within a
nonstate institution.
Now various people have placed different emphases on these
issues. I myself think the second and third are far more important
than the first. Not that I don't think the Vietnam issue is a very
fundamental issue. It's just that I think that to make the university
the prime object of one's political activity relating to Vietnam is a
clear displacement of concern which is politically largely irrelevant.
Columbia University, however, is a major institution in the City
of New York. It
is
expanding physically. It
does
impinge upon the
problems of the black community. That is a direct issue and the
gym
symbolized that, and I think probably that I would place it in my
own concerns as issue Number One. And I would say issue Number
Two, which was not really a very active issue before this crisis, has
been how the University is run, and obviously a lot of future concern
is going to focus on this issue.
INTERVIEWER:
In view of the personalities and issues involved in the
Columbia dispute, and in light of all that has taken place during the
past few weeks, do you now feel that mediation by the faculty was
ever a real possibility?
Immanuel Wallerstein, Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbla
University, was a member of the steering committee of the original Ad Hoc
Faculty Group, and served as that group's representative to the black students
in Hamilton Hall. He later served as the first Executive Secretary of the
Executive Committee of the Faculty.
