The Left Laments

There is an op-ed in today's Washington Post that tends to confirm the belief held by many people that the left of today is studiously living in the 1960s. John McMillian, who is a lecturer at Harvard and is quite obviously enamored of the 1960s ideals of radical activism (or at least of an idealized version of that activism) bemoans the lack of enthusiasm among today's college students.

Recently I finished teaching a freshman seminar at Harvard called "From Reform to Revolution: Youth Culture in the 1960s." When I built the syllabus, I asked students to ponder a single, overarching question: "How did the youth rebellion of the 1960s happen?" That is, what caused millions of young people to pierce the bland and platitudinous din that characterized the early Cold War years? Why did so many youths — many of them affluent and college-educated — suddenly decide that American society needed to be radically overhauled?

But as the semester progressed, my students frequently turned the question around: Why is there no rising protest movement among young people today? At the very least, they asked, shouldn't we be seeing more antiwar activity? According to a CNN poll this month, 67 percent of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and more than half would like to see all U.S. troops home by year's end. Given that it was not until August 1968 that a majority of Americans began calling the Vietnam War a "mistake," this is a remarkable statistic. By 1968, of course, antiwar teach-ins, sit-ins and marches were commonplace on many campuses; demonstrators had violently clashed with soldiers on the steps of the Pentagon; and the Democratic National Convention had descended into chaos over the war.

McMillian goes on from there, but you get the picture. Now the fact of the matter is that this bemoaning that everyone doesn't see things his way appears to be a recurring theme. He has a number of articles in a number of places describing various disappointments he has experienced. For example there's this one.

One might think that history graduate students, who operate in a liberal profession, who are heirs to a rich legacy of social activism, and who often contend with difficult questions about the relationship between selfhood and historical consciousness, might be well suited for political action. And in fact, we have seen a recent push in this direction, as pockets of grad students at Columbia and elsewhere have begun agitating for graduate student unions. But generally speaking, social activism does not seem to be a prevailing trend at Columbia or at many other graduate departments. To the contrary, it appears that the bulk of history students today regard their scholarship with something approaching political indifference. Although I suspect most grad students vote, have good ideas, and stay well-informed, I know only a few who intend to enter the professional arena in a consciously political way, or who charge their research and writing with an explicitly political agenda.

To wit: In the five years that I lived in Morningside Heights, I can think of only two examples of formal cooperation among leftist history students……

Now McMillian keeps on trying and keeps on moaning about his failures. What seems to escape him is that there may well be a need to reexamine his belief structures instead. It could be that the message is not effective because the message is wrong. But heck, he's turning moaning into a little sideline revenue stream for himself. To the barricades, but not until I sell this piece!