To the Editors of the CRIMSON:
Your recent coverage of disorder at Columbia must rank as a milestone in objective coverage of an explosive issue. It seems to me that the syndicated coverage from Morningside Heights systematically and covertly presented an Establishment view or one which was benevolently indulgent of the insurgents. The result distorts or obliterates the real issues. What is involved, clearly, is neither haphazard hysteria nor pre-summer larks. Your reporting gives to the entire affair an ideology, a history, and what is more important, a subtle analytic respectability.
There is, however, another context for this incident which it would be foolish to let pass unheralded. From Warsaw, Paris, Rome, and New York, there is evidence of a general malaise and disgust with the tautologies of higher education, especially in the so-called humanities and social sciences. It is feared that in these areas the university has become a subsidized barrier separating the idealism of youth from the affluence of middle-class, middle-aged, virtue. Without striking too shrill a note, it might be accurate to say that there is an awareness and dissatisfaction with the methods of indoctrination which the speculative and historical sciences have imposed on college students. The university is no longer the ivory citadel of disinterest for which it has so long been rebuked. Would that it might again become so. Benito Rakower Institute for Services to Education
Read more in News
Spreading Out The FellowshipsRecommended Articles
-
Do Not Follow Lead of Professional Papers in Election CoverageI was sickened during this year's U.S. presidential race at the campaign coverage in papers I normally respect, mostly the
-
Reader RepresentativeThe recent snafu in the coverage of the men's wrestling team's performance at Nationals brought into sharp focus one of
-
Dukakis Calls for MandatesDespite mounting opposition, President Clinton should stick to his campaign pledge of universal health care coverage, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael
-
Peterson Gets the PressThe soap opera saga that is the Scott Peterson case has finally reached its last leg. The snarky, nefarious California
-
Hope and Change, DeliveredMake no mistake about it: Change has come to America. When President Obama signed the health-care bill into law, our country came one step closer to a more perfect union—one step closer to the ideals of equal opportunity and social justice.
-
Health Plans To Adhere to HHSHarvard University Health Services may have to make adjustments to its insurance offerings based on a decision last week that college health insurance plans must adhere to regulations contained in the Affordable Care Act.