How Quickly We Forget

Image by Mote Oo Education from Pixabay

People of my age will remember the spring of 1970. But apparently, nobody else does.

That May I remember hundreds of thousands of people, largely young college students, marching shoulder to shoulder in an uninterrupted column the width of the four lanes of Massachusetts Avenue in front of MIT, where I was an undergraduate. Another day, I vividly remember running as riot police rushed down the same avenue releasing attack dogs and a barrage of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. I made it to the roof of a building, and I remember the loudspeaker command to vacate the roof or be forcefully removed and arrested.

The spring of 1970 was when students and non-students, young and old, finally decided that the indiscriminate bombing of Cambodia and the killing of four students at Kent State was enough. The most powerful nation in the world, the bastion of freedom, was killing civilians, women, children, and men, indiscriminately, for the second time in the modern era. The first being the use of nuclear weapons. What we saw in the mirror was not innocent.

I should say that I was no revolutionary, I was not even an activist. I certainly was a sympathizer but opted to be passive, allowing myself to be carried by the current but doing nothing to strengthen it and steer it. I can give many good reasons to justify that passive role, but that decision will remain one of my few regrets in life.

I am not making that mistake again. Gaza is Israel’s Cambodia. The indiscriminate killing going on in Gaza is shameful and will hurt the State of Israel and more importantly hurts its wonderful people that are still reeling from a brutal, savage, inexcusable attack by Hamas. A sign of leadership by countries, politicians and people is to discern when exercising the right to self-defense crosses to the realm of blinding rage and revenge.

I did not think we could be more divided as a nation but the situation in Gaza cuts us in yet another dimension. Young people, college students, are again stirring. Honest academic and political leaders are struggling to walk and define the fine line between appropriate and inappropriate protest, debate, and discourse. Others, from all sides, are trying to cynically use the situation to gain political advantage. It is a difficult line to walk.

In a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Michigan’s New Protest Policy is a Scandal”, Professor Silke-Maria Weineck of the University of Michigan does a beautiful job of elucidating the issues facing university administrators and, in her opinion, their potential policy missteps. She writes “The pressure to take action, or the pressure to be seen taking action, is rapidly emerging as the single most toxic force in higher education…” I fully agree. She states the obvious: “significant distractions [read disruptions] are the point of protest. “

This is a time where being a “has been” university administrator is a blessing; I do not envy the position of my colleagues. But from the vantage point of the outsider, let me repeat the advice of two leaders. In a recent opinion in “Not Alone” Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, issues the warning to administrators and students alike that we need “brave spaces as much as safe spaces”. And remember the words of one of my heroes, the late John Lewis, one that never played a passive role, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble”. Those words should apply to protestors and policy makers alike. And please remember the spring of 1970, we do not want to go there.