A great deal of focus, along with spirited discussion, is being directed on the protests that have upset life as usual upon college campuses these days. It strikes me that I must get in touch with my old friend (and former colleague) who serves as the right-hand person to the current University of Wisconsin’s (UW) Chancellor. She might help me get the inside story playing out on at least one campus. As of yet, I haven’t bothered her since she is swamped by daily crises.

You might recall the UW campus being a hotbed of radicalism back in the 60s. I missed most of that excitement since I was in India from 1967 to 1969. However, I was heavily involved in the early anti-war and civil rights protests at Clark University as well as those occurring in Milwaukee and Madison upon my return. Back then, I examined the issues that prompted my generalized anger rigorously. I cannot make the same claim about what has prompted today’s discontent, at least not to the extent I did in my youth when I first experienced my rebellious spirit. Still, I probably should assume the experience has not changed that much.

A lack of intimate knowledge, however, does not stop me from spouting off on the current controversies. Unsupported opinion is an inexpensive commodity of which I enjoy a ready and never ending supply. Let me start, though, with a general observation. I’m generally heartened by the tempest on at least some of our campuses. I had thought that recent generations of students had degenerated into little more than passive sheep who had been seduced into a collective coma by social media along with an debilitating angst about their financial futures. Remember that I spent many years  in front of college classrooms, though, in truth, I was more of a full-time policy wonk than a teacher. Most of my students struck me as uninvolved and self oriented, at least compared to the memories of my own cohort. They appeared to be more focused on how they would fare in their adult life than in how society was doing.

It was different in my day, or at least what I recall from my rebellious days in the 1960s. My cohort spent hours fiercely debating the issues of the day … war, poverty and inequality, civil rights, what constituted a just society, and other such matters. To be honest, things back then had little to do with the ‘happy days’ ambiance portrayed on sitcoms from that era. We had legal apartheid in much of America, women were treated as second-class citizens, and civil strife and violence were everyday occurrences. In the 1960s and early 70s, it has been reported that there were several bombings daily, though most were inconsequential. A few, however, were very big indeed … the Sterling Hall bombing on the UW campus being one of the more disasterous events. The wife of the researcher killed during that bombing later worked at my UW research entity. She always served as a reminder of those days when rage surpassed reason.

Despite all the anger (and some ridiculousness) during the 70s, we were optimistic. Unlike the deeper pessimism and a more global angst I sense today, we believed we were on the cusp of a new world …  at least until we sobered up or the euphoria of our weed wore off (the latter anesthetic I seldom used).

As I have oft mentioned, we believed that our generation would create a new world of hope and opportunity. More importantly, we presumed that a more society would exist when we took the levers of policy. Little did we realize that the entrenched forces of the right were regrouping, would articulate a comprehensive strategy for recapturing political control in the early 1970s (the famous memo by future Justice Lewis Powell), and would soon begin the long march toward controlling our major institutions (or trying to at least). Most importantly, they focused on reshaping the default lines in our political discourse.

I have often wondered whether there was there something special about my cohort that was born just before the baby boomer generation came along. (I was born in 1944). We poked our heads out of the womb to see a world riven with war, violence, authoritarian rule, and separated by all kinds of irrational tribal divisions. We grew up in an environment dominated by a fundamental contest between competing ideologies where a final apocalypse seemed imminent. The infamous doomsday clock always seemed poised to strike midnight. I recall diving under our grade school desks to practice avoiding being incinerated when the Russkies dropped the big one on our sorry asses. We (I, at least) matured in a rather sanitized, vanilla world of commonly accepted cultural norms. We clung ferociously to our world views which seemed threatened by unseen evil ones bent on destroying us. Worse, both sides had the means to obliterate the other. I never expected to make it to my 20s. Finally, we graduated high school (1962) just as the age innocence collapsed into an era of questioning.

A world divided into good and evil has an artificial aspect to it. While I never doubted that the Leninist-Stalinist form of Communism was seriously flawed (a sick joke, really), it did develop as a crude attempt to deal with the hyper-inequality and oppression within the Czarist system it tried to replace. That is, it was born of good intentions.

America, on the other hand, was a land that practiced outrageous forms of hypocrisy as it touted itself as a beacon of democracy. Not only did we (at the time) permit legal apartheid to continue but overthrew elected governments we didn’t like and vilified those who did not follow the party script (remember the outrages of the McCarthy era). We sometimes out Sovieted the Soviets in the pursuit of defeating the Soviets. It was sometimes hard to identify the good guys from the bad.

The Gaza situation is similarly ambiguous. Hamas clearly carried out outrageous acts of terrorism last October. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more kidnapped. That seemed like unwarranted terrorism until one realizes that Israel had 5,200 Palestians incarcerated in their prison system (Hamas was seeking a prisoner exchange). The Israelis also had ghettoized the Arab population in a tiny strip of land with few opportunities and less hope. This was a situation destined to see escalating rage and suspicion on both sides. In such an environment, rising irrationality and escalating violence is the only certainty. I am reminded of Ghandi’s famous aphorism … an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Yet, I find it hard to witness the Israeli government (not all Jews) implicitly endorsing a form of genocide, an ungorgivable tactic practiced on them throughout history.

In my early years, I never ceased in my dislike for authoritarian regimes. However, the more I learned (no one indoctrinated me as far as I know), the more I questioned the political and cultural precepts in which I was raised. My greatest epiphany was that the world was not black and white. That is, there were few easy answers. Ambiguity was everywhere, and ambivalence would prove a fundamental aspect of the human condition.

Yet, we (I) still had to choose with respect to the defining international issue of the day (racial civil rights was an easier issue). In the end, the more I studied and debated, the more I rejected my country’s position. The ‘domino’ argument was a thin reed on which to justify a war halfway around the world in Southeast Asia that ultimately would lead to millions being killed (that war directly led, for example, to Cambodia’s killing fields. Can anyone argue with a straight face that the fall of Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh’s decades long fight for independence would result in the Commies showing up on America’s west coast. Wow!

No great issue is simple, however. There are intricate moral and practical complications that must be sorted through. But, in the end, the decisions we make come back to our moral center. Thus, knowing our individual core world view is desperately important. And sorting through the labyrinth of conflicting facts and claims is a necessary step toward determining where we stand. It is never easy but always necessary.

I cannot know if the students protesting today have gone through an exhaustive analysis to arrive at their positions. I cannot determine if they are prepared to be disappointed, as they likely will be. However, I am glad they are out there. It suggests that they care … and that they care about creating a better world. They cannot succeed in their fullest ambitions but the effort is likely as important as the results.

The book cover at the beginning is a fictional work exploring my own struggle as a young man. It does contain, or was inspired, by my own experiences during the 1960s. I tried to capture the struggle we faced, the choices and pressures we experienced. Of only one thing am I certain of today. I became a better person for confronting the moral questions of my day. I’m happy to see some young people doing the same today (or trying at least).