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STEPHEN DONADIO
for one to see fairly early that there could be no such thing as faculty
unity, let alone faculty action.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think that it was ever really possible for the
faculty to mediate
in
this dispute?
BENTLEY:
At the time, I was a person who wanted them to mediate;
therefore, at the time, my answer to your question must have been
yes. And yet, now,
after
the experience, I think mediation must have
been doomed from the start, and was therefore not a sound idea. I
think one should have accepted the situation as a political one and
openly joined in the political struggle from the start - in exactly the
way that SDS recommended, yes. But I was originally with Westin
and his Ad Hoc Group in thinking that we could mediate. This is.
what made collaboration possible between somebody like me and
somebody like Daniel Bell: I found myself approving of many pro–
posals he made. They were not doctrinaire: they were procedural.
However, later I began to feel that there was a difference in ideology
between us which came out precisely in his belief in pure procedure,
in pure non-ideology, his idea that we should deal in patterns of
negotiation, value-free. I began to realize that these patterns were
themselves antagonistic to values I held and therefore from my view–
point were not value-free at all. But if "the end of ideology" was a
factor in the Columbia crisis - and it was - this was even more
through Alan Westin than through Bell himself.
If
one man told
Westin that two and two were four, and another man told him two
and two were eight, Westin would hold it proven that two and two
are six, and that the other two other views are equally wrong and
equally ideological and together set up "polarization," which is the
dirtiest word in his vocabulary. The anti-ideological approach was
intended to cool the boiling antagonists Kirk and Rudd, only we
didn't know in advance exactly what positions either one would take.
INTERVIEWER:
But wasn't it clear from the beginning - or at least from
very early in the crisis - that the demonstrators wanted amnesty, and
that the Administration would never grant that?
BENTLEY:
Well, Rudd and SDS were for amnesty for striking students,
that was kind of a constant. Nevertheless it seemed possible at some
moments that the Administration would grant the substance of am–
nesty
if
the word were dropped, and that SDS would agree to this.
This was what Westin wanted, but it didn't happen because Kirk
called the cops. He told the public he didn't do this until all possi–
bilities of negotiation had been exhausted. But neither Westin nor I nor
any informed man of good will can believe him. On the contrary,
Kirk had been itching to call the cops from the very start. According
to some accounts, he'd even
called
them the week before, but Mayor
Lindsay had him countermand the order.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think that SDS ever would have accepted a settle–
ment of the dispute through mediation?
BENTLEY:
I'd say that SDS were not adamant, as to mediation, though
they
were
in a box through having only made minimum demands.
(They should have made ten demands and backed down from four.
Instead they made the naive mistake of only asking for the six things
they had to have.) As far as SDS is concerned, a little mediation
