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2 Becoming an Instant Icon It is now central to sociology’s disciplinary folklore that Alvin Gouldner physically assaulted Laud in 1968. Gouldner sought revenge after finding an unflattering caricature of him on the Washington University sociology department bulletin board. He imagined that Laud had penned it because it was accompanied by Latin phrases, and he knew that Laud had been trained as a priest (Yancy 2001a). The format for these posters was taken from the Ramparts magazine series “Sorel’s Bestiary,” which featured some prominent figure depicted in nonhuman form such as a wild animal, fish, or bird, together with a pseudo-Latin name. For example , the cover of the July 1966 issue featured President Lyndon Johnson as a bird with the name “Hawkus Caucus Americanus.” Actually Laud had placed other unflattering likenesses of Gouldner on the walls of the building, for example, a “Wanted” poster featuring a suspect with red hair and very large ears (Henslin 2001b). After several pictures of this nature had appeared overnight in the sociology building Gouldner went to Laud’s office on the third floor of McMillan Hall, where the department’s graduate student offices were housed. Gouldner approached Laud while extending his hand. Laud reported that he imagined that Gouldner wanted to shake hands and make up. Instead, Gouldner hit him in the face, knocking him down and then kicking him (Henslin 2001b). Typed notes in Laud’s files indicated that Gouldner said: “If you ever mention my name in public again, I’ll kill you.” Henslin recalled that soon afterward he “saw Laud leaving McMillan Hall, crying. I could see footprints on his pants. I took him to the campus infirmary.” A copy of one of these posters was found in Laud’s private files (see Appendix C). The copy of the poster has a handwritten note indicating that it had been obtained from the files of Professor Lee 19 Rainwater, who was Laud’s adviser, leaving some doubt about Laud’s authorship. Yet Gouldner understandably assumed that Laud had been the author since Laud was a leading student activist. A February 1968 photograph (Student Life 1968a) of Laud in the student newspaper shows him leading a group of protestors in front of the campus placement office, where a representative of Dow Chemical was scheduled to hold job interviews. Some representatives of the Sociology Graduate Student Union had this view of the posters (Washington University 1968a): “These notices have been seriously disruptive to our common academic endeavors.” In an undated memo ten graduate students argued that, “the recent incident between a member of the faculty and a student should remain a private matter between the parties involved. It should in no way be made a public issue. And, it certainly should not be made a police issue. The incident was, in our opinion, nowhere near so serious as some persons wish to make it.” One member of the Washington University sociology faculty argued that “there were many [other] interpretations— from it being a largely fictive event to little more than pushing and shoving.” Contrary to the pleadings of these graduate students this confrontation did become a public issue and, within a month, caused a blip on the national radar screen. On June 10 a New York Times (1968, 25) article covered the conflict with the headline “Sociology Professor Accused of Beating Student.” Four senior members of the faculty were so outraged by this confrontation that they wrote to the chancellor of the university asking that Gouldner be suspended from the university faculty and barred from campus (Washington University 1968c). This letter noted that during the prior year Gouldner had “engaged in insulting attacks, both on and off the campus, against his colleagues in the University. His behavior reached a point where it prevented the members of the Department from carrying out their duties of teaching and research.” In 1967 Gouldner was given a choice: he could disassociate himself from all participation in the department and, in return, would be given the post of Max Weber Research Professor of Social Theory. He accepted this plan. In 1968, after Gouldner had assaulted Laud, the letter asking that Gouldner be suspended from the faculty and barred from campus noted that Laud would soon receive his Ph.D. and “shortly thereafter will join our faculty” (Washington University 1968c). While Laud never joined the faculty, he did receive a Ph.D. from Washington University in 1968, and his dissertation...

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