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definition of what a young person is in relation to the institutions
he is involved with. It is often remarked that maturation in our society
comes much earlier than it used to even a few years ago, not in–
tellectual maturation but cultural maturation. This circumstance is
of crucial importance. Our colleges and universities were designed for
students who were in certain respects considerably less developed than
students now are, and one way of coming to an understanding of the
students' dissatisfaction with the university is to perceive that they are
pressing for the recognition of their maturity, for the right to par–
ticipate in decisions about their lives in a way that is consonant with
their sense of their development.
In my many interviews with students, and even when I was baf–
fled by or unsympathetic with their particular demands, this was what
unfailingly reached me.
Perhaps as an element of this new early maturation, there has
developed among young people an appetite for gratuitous political
activity. In speaking of their political activity as gratuitous, I don't
mean to say that it has no relation to actuality, but quite apart from
all actual and practical ends in view, there is, I think, the desire to be
politically involved, in some extreme and exciting way. My sense of
the gratuitousness of the kind of political activity that attracts the
students arises from comparison with the kind of political acivity I
observed and was in some degree involved with back in the thirties,
in
which specific aims and fully formulated views of society were of
the essence. No doubt there was a certain element of gratuitousness
even
in
that Marxist politics: quite apart from the particular ends in
view, we wanted the gratifications of
being political.
But now, it
seems to me, the gratuitous element is considerably greater than it
was in the thirties. For young people now, being political serves
much the same purpose as being literary has long done-it expresses
and validates the personality. In saying this, I don't mean to question
the authenticity of their emotions and motives, but I do mean to sug–
gest that many-not all--of the issues they raised were adventitious
or symbolic.
INTERVIEWER:
This is a rather difficult question. What do you take to
be the traditional role of the university in society? And
in
conjunction
with that I'd like to ask: do you think that the validity of that role
has been seriously challenged by the events at Columbia during the
past few weeks?
TRILLING:
It is indeed a difficult question. I'd like to come at it first
in a pragmatic, social way. No university ever says so, but one tradi–
tional role of the university has been to serve as an instrument of
social mobility. This was quite clear in medieval times when the uni–
versities were clerical and a man of low degree might rise in the
Church, and it began to be clear again in the nineteenth century.
Burckhardt noted the ever-increasing popular demand for education
and explained it as a demand for improved status. This is now under–
stood everywhere, and in the United States it is perfectly explicit.
There can be no doubt that the status-bestowing function of the uni–
versity, now quite overt, the part it plays in the creation of elites,
has led to its being regarded with suspicion by many students.
