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cases where there are mItlgating circumstances. To my knowledge
they have moved in a few cases of so-called mitigating circumstances
("mitigating circumstances," as far as I can see, amount to errors of
various kinds.) But the University has not committed itself to any
principle of general leniency.
I might say I deplore this. I think the University should have
moved, should still move, to drop the charges of criminal trespass:
first, because its own moral position is too weak for it to allow itself
to be in the position of moral accuser; and second, for the prag–
matic reason of re-creating the bonds of the University.
INTERVIEWER:
In view of the fact that suspension in many cases renders
a student immediately subject to the draft, how do you regard the
Administration's recent decision to suspend for a year or longer many
students arrested during the reoccupation of Hamilton Hall?
WALLERSTEIN:
Well, basically I'm very unhappy about it, and I would
not have done that had I been the University Administration. As a
move taken by itself, I suppose you can find all sorts of justification
for it. Taken in the larger context of the crisis at the University,
however, and in view of the fact that the University has not yet
moved definitively to answer the demands of substantive justice,
I think that it was morally imprudent for the Administration to have
moved so strongly.
But I do not think that the students were justified in reoccupying
Hamilton Hall on May 21-22. I think it was both a strategic and a
tactical error on their part. It has lost them a good deal. I do think
that a case can be made for the fact that there was perhaps a cer–
tain amount of provocation involved, but political tactics - wise
political tactics - involve knowing when to resist provocation.
INTERVIEWER:
Many faculty members seem to support the so-called
substantive demands made by the demonstrators: for example, sever–
ance of all institutional ties with IDA, termination of the gym cons–
truction, etc. What do think faculty members who take such a posi–
tion should do at this point? Do you think that it would be sufficient
- that is, effective - for them to announce their support of these
demands through petitions, etc.? Or do you think some further action
may be required on their part?
WALLERSTEIN:
I think they should work by every means at their com–
mand to realize these objectives. Petitions are only one such method.
I'm a great believer that the object in politics is to win your de–
mands; so if I set myself a whole series of demands, I look around
for the methods by which I can maximize the likelihood that I'll
win them.
On the IDA issue I think it won't be hard to win many of these
demands. That's why I thought they were so unimportant, frankly:
the University could meet all the demands that SDS could ever dream
of on all the issues relating to Vietnam and that wouldn't change
the situation in Vietnam one bit. As for the issues involving the
relationship with the community, I think there's going to be a long,
hard process of political education and political struggle that will
go on at Columbia for the next five to ten years. I was involved in it
before the crisis as chairman of the Faculty Civil Rights Group and
