Protest Charlatans

By Benjamin Patch | Wednesday, October 22, 1997

The sixties were the glory years for up-and-coming left wing ideologues. They went to a few protests, dabbled in drugs, rattled off some scripted slogans, bought a few Joan Baez albums, and carried themselves with an impenetrable air of moral purpose. Most were fairly harmless, had a good time with it, and promptly moved back into the real world sometime before 1975.

Unfortunately, a select few never quite snapped out of it and scurried off to the only place that would still take them — academia.

It's not surprising, then, that in 1997 these burned-out hippies are selling out their students for a third-rate cause. A recent strike by 800 Columbia University service workers, garnering support from the Columbia faculty, has snowballed into a huge debacle. Students are crammed into pubs and pizzerias for class and their midterms have been indefinitely postponed, all because their professors refuse to cross the picket line.

The whole conflict exposes the deepest flaw in American universities today — professors are no longer teachers, but activists. Students are but political pawns ripe for indoctrination or explotation. The collective voice of the Columbia faculty won't topple resistance to the strike. Until students suffer enough to start seriously complaining, the administration will do nothing. The faculty are not standing in front of column of tanks or risking imprisonment. They're letting students do all their work instead.

Unfortunately, the goal of the entire protest isn't particularly noble either. The civil rights movement was driven by the thirst for justice. The Vietnam War protests, to some extent, were a quest to end the suffering and killing of a generation.

The Columbia strike is about money, and the 'victims' are not noble soldiers or dedicated innovators. They are bureaucrats, technocrats, and paper pushers.

It all seems rather sad to me. Every time the storm of protest is unleashed, it dies a bit too: The strike at Columbia is more than a lazy afternoon shower. It's the /stale dream of a lost generation.

Protest Charlatans

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