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how right so many of them are, even if they're wrong about the way
in which they express their rightness. God knows, it's not a very
enviable world in which they live, and I suppose we didn't make it
very enviable for them.
So I don't think we can simply say, "Well, it's all Dr. Spock's
doing." By psychologizing at all we take away the politically expres–
sive meaning of what they've done, and if we take that kind of
analysis and think that it exempts us from paying attention to them
even as symptoms of something, then we'll be losing a great deal of
the value of what's been going on. I am not excessively optimistic that
this kind of activity is terribly helpful to a university. I do think,
though, that it might be possible not to agree with the students or to
accept what they have to say but at least to pay attention to the fact
that they find this kind of activity necessary.
Eric Bentley
INTERVIEWER:
Professor Bentley, what in your estimation is the nature
of the conflict at Columbia? Do you regard it as essentially a conflict
between students and Administration?
BENTLEY:
I don't know where the conflict begins. I think it's all that
it's been said to be: it's a conflict of generations for one thing. It's
not
essentially
between students and Administration but of course it
can easily come to a head as that.
It
can also be seen-and I would
want to stress this aspect-as a political conflict, meaning not just
that there's politics in it but that from a person's politics you can
predict precisely his attitude to everything at Columbia. (I include
myself in that generalization.) It's a struggle between left and right.
It's a division between those who on the whole want the present sys–
tem accepted (no doubt with certain reforms - this was always true of
conservatives) and those who reject it totally and in that sense are
radical and/or revolutionary.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think that it would have been possible to avoid
the kind of confrontation that's taken place, or do you think that the
personalities involved precluded that possibility?
BENTLEY:
That's a deep, philosophical question, really, involving wheth–
er what is determined is really determined and is totally determined.
At the philosophical level I don't know how to answer it. On a more
superficial level I tend to think the confrontation could have been
avoided had the avoidance begun some years ago, but that, as of
1968, it had become unavoidable. I do think that the personalities of
Kirk and Truman played a part, and that means I think that other
Eric Bentley, Brander Matthews ProfeSSor of Dramatic Literature at
Colwnbia, participated in the deliberations of the original Ad Hoc Faculty
Group under Alan Westin: After that group ceased to function, he was asso–
ciated with the more radical Ad Hoc Faculty-Student Group which continued
to meet in McMillin Theatre.
