PARTISAN REVIEW
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absorption in a father who can be rejected only in gestures of self–
annihilation.
Because of his profound involvement with the young, however,
Feuer can strike us as cantankerously avuncular compared to the
really cool cats of reaction who have their say in
Confrontation: The
Student Rebellion and the Universities
(edited by Daniel Bell and
Irving Kristol) and in
St,udents in Revolt
(edited by Seymour Mar–
tin Lipset and Philip G. Altbach). I hadn't read sociologists' prose
for a long time. I remembered being bored by it in college, but, now
that we are all a little more adept at reading hidden messages in
language, my reintroduction to
this
very special tribe was somewhat
frightening. Listen to Talcott Parsons, who has just worked up to
the conclusion that the academic system
is
"not primarily an 'engine'
of change" in society, nor is it "a bulwark of the status quo":
Such considerations indicate that both the values and the concrete
interests of the academic system give it a primary stake in main–
taining a balance of differentiation within and integration in what
is, in the broadest sense, a liberal, legally ordered, and pluralistic
society. In this general sense, it is structurally congruent with the
main outlines of such a society; the two are for the most part
mutually supportive, though not without very considerable strain
and conflict. One such conflict centers around the questions of
which involvement of "outside" interest within the academic com–
munity should be considered legitimate. There seems to be a con–
siderable range of permissible variation in these respects. Thus
some institutions may prefer not to have ROTC programs; an issue
that seems to be parallel to that of contracts for classified research.
Whether or not recruiters for outside agencies, such as the armed
services of
[?]
industrial firms, should be allowed to use campus
facilities seems to be a similar question. General policies about such
questions seem legitimately to be somewhat negotiable, with the pre–
sumption that students as well as administrations and faculties should
have a voice in the decisions-though not usually the one deciding
voice.
What have you learned from this paragraph? What
is
its mes–
sage?
Does
it convey information, outline an argument, verbalize a
burst of passion? Clearly, it does none of these things; rather, it is
