“In the fall of my freshman year, the fall of ’67, the Vietnam War was really kicking into high gear. I guess in high school I’d been a conservative and I don’t know when I particularly began to change, but I remember one very influential piece was in that building Van Rensselaer, that old fraternity building they ended up tearing down. And he had a non-credit seminar like every Tuesday night to talk about the Vietnam War, and the people were hanging from the rafters. And it was interesting because he gave assigned reading. It was a non-credit seminar. And I sort of went in expecting some kind of polemic against the war, and of course a lot of the students felt that way, but he conducted the whole thing as his style by asking questions and trying to discern differences in the group and get people to start talking to each other about their assumptions and why they felt the way they did and then bringing them back to the text. I think we were reading the Accord between the French and the Vietnamese in the ‘50s. It was him sort of working the room trying, just quietly asking questions of these different people in a pretty charged environment, and get them talking to one another. He’d remember what someone in the room said and a half hour later in the conversation he’d come back to that person and draw him in to this comment that had just been made, he’d just turn to them and say “Mr. –, how does that square with…?” I mean, it was packed. If you wanted to be invisible in there it was easy. People pushed forward and tried to assert themselves. It was just a very different thing than class. I think after that I started taking courses from him. By that spring I was campaigning for [anti-war presidential candidate Eugene] McCarthy along with practically everyone else on campus. But that fall was certainly a big change in my life and my whole perspective on politics.
Chapter 4: ROLE ON CAMPUS
- 2. The Gadfly Who Asked, “If You Don’t Go, Who Will?”
- 3. But Respect For the Rules
- 4. Distance, Yes, But . . . “I Really Did”
- 15. A Very Off-Broadway Play
- 5. Classroom That Sold Hot-Cross Buns
- 16. Uncle Bob
- 6. Eats for the Barefoot Guests
- 7. The Guru Issue Won’t Fade
- 8. Alas, It’s No Way To Pick Up Girls
- 9. “What To Do?” As More Than Words
- 10. Black Students Take The Administration Building, Then a Meeting At His House
- 11. A Colleague in the Arena
- 12. Faculty Relations
- 13. Tidbits for Inquiring Minds
- 14. War, Riots, and Other Teachable Moments
- 1. Prankster and Trail Guide, “Follow the Elephant”