COLUMBIA
381
function - the muckraking function - then the country is
In
for a
hard time and we're all in very deep difficulty.
Charles Parsons
INTERVIEWER:
Are you satisfied that all the parties to the Columbia
dispute have acted in good faith throughout?
PARSONS:
No. It's not so easy to say in a conflict as bitter as this one
has sometimes been what acting in good faith is, but my impression of
the fundamental strategy of the radical student leaders is that in a
sense they're operating from outside the community; and therefore
it's hard to say what good faith can mean to them, because they very
often seem more interested in exposing the University than in reform–
ing it. Although I have observed them really only from a distance,
my general impression of the Strike Committee leadership has been
that they have not been very much interested in a negotiated settle–
ment, and that they've engaged in a certain amount of manipulation
of their followers in order to hold them to a position of intransigence.
At any rate, this I think has been the majority tendency of the Strike
Coordinating Committee, though for a while after the initial bust
when the Committee was made up on the basis of one representative
per seventy students there was a moderate caucus which did exercise
a moderating influence, at least on tactical decisions. But as you know
many of the members of the moderate oaucus later left the Strike
Committee and went on to form the Students for a Restructured Uni–
versity.
I don't think that the tendency I've been describing holds true for
the black students of Hamilton Hall, who, although they have been
very distrustful and intransigent in some of their positions, have acted
much more with the idea of getting certain very concrete concessions
from the University and also, I think, with much more prudence.
But I've talked so much about the student leaders on this good
faith question; I ought to talk about the other parties. The Adminis–
tration has certainly engaged in a lot of maneuvering-I'm inclined to
say obfuscation-in relation to a number of issues, in particular the
issue of what they could or could not do because of various legal
constraints. On the question of dropping criminal trespass charges,
the Administration has not, I think, been candid with either the fac–
ulty or the students. As a result, it was only when it was too late that
it became reasonably clear that the most immediate obstacle to the
dropping of the
t~espass
charges was the Trustees, and there's no evi–
dence that the high Administration has done anything serious to pres-
Charles Parsons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. He
participated in the activities of the original Ad Hoc Faculty Group and
was one of a group of faculty members who in early May formed the
Independent Faculty Group, of which he is still an active member.
