Peter Brooks
PANTHERS AT YALE
HERMENEUTICS
The problem throughout the weeks was centrally one of
meaning. That sounds academic and even somewhat frivolous, yet the
question couldn't be avoided at any point: did what was happening
have any
signification?
There was always stored somewhere in the
mind the possibility that
all
might be a gratuitous and slightly hys–
terical psychodrama created out of the students' fears, the blacks'
manipulations of those fears, the liberals' lack of analytical power and
general flabbiness. You had to keep stopping to ask yourself if you
\
weren't simply caught up
in
a rhetorical flourish, self-indulgent and
destructive. Creating meaning was difficult, and there are many
who decided that it didn't exist: Alexander Bickel
in
T he New Re–
public,
for instance, and Robert Brustein in the
Times
magazine, both
have implied that the crisis was unreal, hysterical, a non-sense that
could have been willed away by steely analytical intellects. This ex-
plains in part why the concrete preparations for May Day were a
relief from anxiety. And
it
also suggests why so many faculty mem-
bers who were confused and in retreat during the whole Panther
affair greeted Cambodia with a sense of relief in their outrage: here
was the real thing again, the clear issue, the stance more easily taken.
Before that, the stances were hard to take and hard to explain. On
the strike, for example: Why are you striking? To free the New Haven
Nine? No, though a few believe that, clearly it
is
an absurdity, and
a strike would be counterproductive even if you are so naive as to
think the trial could be halted. To demonstrate concern for the rights
of the defendants? Yes, in part, but here again a strike
is
ill-adapted
to the ends. Or: Why are you striking against the university to dem-
