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PARTISAN REVIEW
student body. But after two or three days he began not to like
what he was seeing-he saw some of the acts of violence or ugly
disrespect that the students were indulging in and was very dis–
gusted by them . Of all people he might have called, he called me
and said he couldn't stand any more ; he was leaving for the coun–
try, and I should phone him if anything happened that I thought
required his return. I did call him very soon, in a day or two , for a
sudden meeting of the faculty, and after he came back he indeed
supported the uprising. There would have been a lot of pressure
in his marriage for him to support it. But tell me , Dwight , in the
period that you were up there , did you hear speeches against the
Vietnam War?
DM:
I suppose so . I don't know .
DT:
I think I was on the campus every day and I never heard an
anti-Vietnam word. That's another of the fallacies about the up–
rising, that it was a protest against the war. After all , similar uni–
versity uprisings were taking place in Mexico City, in Japan , in
Berlin. I think the university hasn't recovered from it and may
never recover from it. Well, I think I've asked you everything I
meant to. Perhaps there's something you want to say?
DM:
Well, I want to make one confession- in a way, it's a con–
fession . Two things that shocked me very much . One of them is
the way that the whole student movement, not just the SDS, but
the whole anti-Vietnam War radical student movement dis–
appeared overnight, the minute they stopped conscripting college
students and had a volunteer army. At Buffalo they had prac–
tically burned down a building, bombs and everything, but by the
time I taught there, they were all off on some goddamn religious
kick and there was no interest in politics at all.
DT:
That's the difference in being a Marxist: a Marxist view of
society at least produces a certain sense of responsibility because
your judgments relate to a set of fixed premises. You don't just
put your politics on and off like a hat. The students didn't have
any responsibility to a position they'd held because they hadn't
held a position; they'd held an attitude.
DM:
Yes, exactly. That's what I liked about them, their primitive
instinct. Anyway, that's one thing. The second thing is even more
disturbing, and that is the large number of refugees from South
Vietnam. When you think of the chances they take in those boats,
it certainly shows that the regime is very unpopular.
DT:
But look, Dwight, with your knowledge of communism, how
