(The following is excerpted from an address by Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, which was given at a conference on "Students and Politics" at San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 27-31, 1967. Harvard was one of the sponsors of the conference. --editor's note.) Clark Kerr

ASPECTRE is haunting America--the spectre of students. For the first time in the history of the United States, university students have become a source of interest for all the nation; a source of concern for much of the nation; and a source of fear for some of the nation. This is a phenomenon unique to the decade of the 1960's.

The immensity of the change is spectacularly highlighted by the contrast with the decade of the 1950's. The complaint then was about the silent or apathetic generation, the generation of pre-organization men. The only prior decade which had given warning of the shape of things to come was the 1930's. But then students were adjuncts to the efforts of trade unionists, or of socialists and communists of the old Left, or of isolationists, America Firsters or pacifists. They were auxiliaries. They did not stand in their own right as a potential force in history.

In the 1960's, a segment of university students developed their own style, their own content, their own leadership in an effort to exert an impact on the whole society. Instead of "student chapters" of off-campus movements, the center of activity was on the campus itself. This is new.

It is new, but is it also significant for the unfolding history of the United States? Does it portend a new era with a new class struggling successfully for power; a new and potent force trying to re-arrange events closer to its heart's desire?

Youth reflects its society, but often in an exaggerated fashion. It magnifies and to some extent distorts the current characteristics of its society. It may, also, at times be more sensitive to new developments, and thus the new developments may first be seen dramatically through the actions of youth. This power to magnify and this power to respond quickly makes the study of youth an especially rewarding one, for through youth some aspects of the nature of a society can be understood more fully and more quickly; but one must be wary of the distortions also. To lose contact with the mind of youth, however, is to lose contact with a particularly revealing aspect of reality. As goes youth, so may go the nation--only more slowly and less completely.

In the United States in the 1930's, when the nation was concerned with depression and the threat of fascism and of war, so also was youth--only more so. When the nation went to war, so did youth--only more so. When the nation returned to "normalcy" and concentrated on personal material welfare, so did youth--only more so. When "extremism" of the Right and of the Left became more prevalent in the 1960's, so did it also with youth--only more so. Each time the movement of youth was in a direction in which the nation, or some influential part of it, was going. Youth was America writ large--written large and often in a hasty scrawl. To understand youth, it is necessary to understand the nation. To understand the nation, it is helpful to understand youth.

Not Revolutionary

Youth can be troublesome to the status quo when a nation is in a "time of troubles." A nation is in trouble in a period of change, and particularly violent change. The only time that youth is revolutionary is in a revolutionary situation and period. Youth may be inherently restless but it is not inherently revolutionary. It has a revolutionary inclination only when revolution looms.

In the United States, in the past few years, students have participated in central concerns of national life, such as the Civil Rights movement and the debate over American involvement in the war in Vietnam, more dramatically than ever before in American history.

It is this recent development of American students at the center, rather than on the periphery, of social issues that has aroused the interest, the concern and the fear. There is a feeling in the air that a new force may have entered into social history; that youth may play a more effective political role for good or for ill than ever before.

Why Greater Political Participation?

In the United States, some of the factors which have currently led to heightened student participation in political life are these:

1. Mass higher education: Fifty percent of college age students now enter college. It was more nearly five percent a half century ago. Students are now drawn from many, even all, segments of the population, not just the middle class and the aristocracy.

2. Concentration in the mass university: The large college and the large university have become a standard habitat for many of these students. The environment is often quite impersonal. There is little sense of a united community of scholars and students and administrators. The impact of greater size has been increased by the recent neglect of the undergraduate in favor of graduate students, research, and external service.

3. The permissive environment: The family has become more permissive and so has the church. The college no longer stands so much in loco parentis. The law gives wider latitude for freedom of action. All in all, there is a greater degree of autonomy, a lesser scope for authority. The student stands more on his own and relies more on his peer group.