University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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• seemed more spacious. It seemed to offer oppurtunities for middle-class young people to commit themselves to social causcs, at least i n part because they knew they could take up professional ca- reers when they chose to do so. That range of oppurtunity narrowed, I think. quite dramatically in the 1970s with its economic recession, and it was soon clear among students that no good jobs await- ed them when they left Ann Arbor. The view, then, became much more inward and rather narrow. People asked ' What must I do here? ' and the answer was ' Qualify for a career that will above all. offer me security. ' Teaching in that kind of atmosphere, at least for me, was less pleasurable. Teaching became more a matter of ca- reer preparation and career advance- ment, at least if you offered w hat was asked of you as a teacher. I worried about that, and I still worry about that. Economic security and personal satis- faction are hardly synonomous. And I ' m afraid for those graduates who will have the salaries and the houses and the auto- mobiles, but may only, at the age of 30 or 35, grasp that the distinction between the two is a necessary one for themselves. The Diag is a center for students representing all walAs of life Economic and career tensions have eased a bit in recent years. but I continue to believe that there arc, perhaps. too many students who continue to ask themselves ' What am I going to do? ' and too rarely ask the questions. I think, cen- tral to the undergraduate experience. such questions as ' Who am I? ' and ' What is the nature of the society in which I find myself? ' Does that make any sense? I): Perfect sense. (Linderman laughs heartily.) Were students working harder in the ' 60s? Were they more intensely involved with the material of the course? L: No, I think students today arc, in s ome strict academic sense, working harder than students did in the 1960s. But there was in those years. a much better sense of the whole. They worked less rigorously, but they worked more energetically, to integrate a variety of subjects into full sense of themselves and of their society. I think that ' s the distinc- tion. The tendency these days is for an application of the books, sometimes I worry, not so so much as end in itself, but as a means to graduate school entry or to professional career admission. D: Are we more like the students of the 1950s? L: Well, I was one of those students of PROLOGUE • IS

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drive to establish a student-affiliated bookstore, and so on. And the atmo- sphere was one in which, for example, that stretch limousine filled with soror- ity pledges that I saw on compus several weeks ago would have been wildly out of place. Some of the agitation entered into the classroom, so student challenged you as they do not today. They compelled you to defend what you said. They required you to explain yourself at points that you simply wanted passed on. It was some- times tense, but it was often very exhiler- ating. What I especially liked was that that process seemed to minimize note- taking in the classroom, seemed to mini- mize the importance of examinations and grades. And what was learned seemed to have a greater personal sig- nificance. I recall that in those years. I attached to several courses that I taught optional film programs and I invited people to come out on Wednesday even- ings, with the result that I often had more people attending the films than were enrolled in the course. Well, I realized that values in country had shifted when several years later, stu- dents began to ask if the materials in the films would appear on the examinations. And when I said, ' No, of course not, ' they would say. ' Well, I ' m sorry. I ' m too busy for an optional evening film pro- gram ' The movement of social concern is surely cyclical. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has re- cently said that it arrives in thirty-year cycles, that we can recall Theodore Roo- sevelt and his reform movement of the early 1900s, Franklin Roosevelt in the early 1930s, and John Kennedy in the early 1960s, and 1 suppose Arthur Schle- singer would have us look for a return of social concern, then, in the early 1990s. But I ' ve never thought that change that I ' ve experienced here was due to the sim- ple replacement of the Vietnam genera- tion by the ' Mc ' generation, by a more selfish group of people. So I ' ve been wary of those who say how much better it was in the late 60s and early 1970s. There was a considerable anger and some discourtesy and some insensitivity and among a few of them, there was an impetus to violence, these things togeth- er with that social commitment and that excitement that I enjoyed so much. It ' s often forgotten that the economic frame- work of life was quite different then. It

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the 1950s, and the atmosphere then was by a long path, and I first encountered that change reflected in students? Arc perhaps a bit different than either of the memorial as a sliver of marble at they succumbing to the Rambo ideal? those about which we ' ve been speaking. ankle-height, with one or two names L: Well, in the last ten years the whole It was a naive and (laughs) wonderfully chiseled in it. And at the outset, the society has moved dramarically to the comforting sense of certainty—how names seemed to be quite insignificant, right, so there ' s no reason that students shall I say?—it was a confidence in the but as I walked on. the marble rose and would not reflect that shift in attitudes. I perfection, or at least the perfectability, the names of the dead multiplied. And think, however, that students remain of social institutions, a confidence in by the time I reached the center of the very thoughtful in matters of war. It is government, a dedication to a future memorial, the names stretched above true that their views, for example, of the within the corporate world. We didn ' t me, and their number and their force military are much more favorable than much worry (laugh again) in the 1950s. became overwhelming. I had no notion students ' views of 20 years ago. But I D: Students ' attitudes about war have that that statuary would create that kind hardly think them entirely converted by definitely changed from 1969. of effect. One really feels, in that place. what the president says regarding the L: Yes, they have changed, and signify- the weight of the dead. desirability or the efficacy of warfare candy. We are today in a period of rcvi- and I think them, well, quite teary of the sionism of the sort that I think appears I thought of our revision of the meaning Rambo imagery. after most American wars. It ' s true that of Vietnam because there were veterans D: Do you think it will take another eco- no revisionism, either historical or popu- at the memorial. They were not there to nomic revival to bring activism back to lar, much dented common views of the tell others of the anguish of the combat campus? Second World War as ' the good war ' , experiene. They were not there to ex- L: Well, the atmosphere has shifted but I think that ' s an exception. press reservations about participation in again, in the other direction, rather mod- the war. They were there exclusively to estly and slowly, but the shift is under Clearly, dominant thought regarding mobilize people in support of the MIAs way. The willingness of a number of sill- the war in Vietnam is today changing. and the POWs and that required new dents to protest against South African The president ' s role has been very im- denunciations of the evil of the enemy, apartheid, the willingness of a least a few portant. His insistence that Vietnam was the cruelty of the Vietnamese. I regret students to question the University ' s a war of honor, that it should be remem• that. policy as regards Pentagon research con- bered with pride, has been quite influen- tracts, these are small signs that the at- tial. Military analysts now suggest that The problem of Vietnam was not the na- mosphere is beginning to yield. And I the war was won militarily and lost, if at ture of the adversary, nor of internation- think, perhaps most important, students all, only politically. General Westmore- al Communism. We ought to look first, it are no longer quite as fearful of their land continues to speak widely on that seems to me, to our own values and to our professional futures as they were just theme. own perceptions of other peoples and to four or five years ago. and that provides the possiblility of a dynamic within our a latitude within which they begin to I ' ve been thinking about this matter be- own society that would propel! us into think it possible to think of things be- cause I was in Washington for two days such conflicts. yond narrow careerism. ■ last week, and I visited the Vietnam me- D: You ' ve talked of society ' s changing mortal for the first time. I approached it ideas of the Vietnam war. Do you see 16 • MICHIGAN ENSIAN