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3. “A constant struggle with ideas”: Intellectual Community in the Sixties
- University of Wisconsin Press
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73 3 “A con stant strug gle with ideas” In tel lec tual Com mu nity in the Six ties As the 1960s dawned, Mad i son was one of a small num ber of places in the coun try where stu dents were strug gling to ward a new left. Though its shape and fu ture di rec tion re mained in choate, young rad i cals were dis il lu sioned with the status quo, skep ti cal of Amer ica’s ag gres sive Cold War pol i cies, and doubt ful about liberals’ com mit ment to civil lib er ties and civil rights. Di rect ac tion would come to dom i nate six ties pol i tics, with young peo ple em pha siz ing the need to put their bod ies on the line in order to dem on strate their com mit ment, but in the emerg ing New Left of the early six ties, ideas pro vided the move ment with a cru cial under pin ning. The New Left is rarely rec og nized for its in tel lec tual depth and has often been con demned (or, from an other per spec tive, cel e brated) for its sup posed anti-intellectualism, yet Mad i son high lights the im por tance of in tel lec tual ex change. Young rad i cals in the late 1950s and early 1960s were grop ing for an under stand ing of the fail ures of the left, a frame work for com pre hend ing the prob lems of Cold War Amer ica, and a di rec tion for ward. Many of their ideas ran coun ter to Amer ica’s Cold War or tho doxy, but the forces of McCarthy ism could not stamp out de bate and dis cus sion of un or tho dox ideas just as they could not close the door on rad i cal stu dent or gan iza tions.1 In Mad i son, the in tel lec tual com mu nity that emerged in the late 1950s in cluded stu dent or gan iza tions like the So cial ist Club and the Stu dent Peace Cen ter, but an other key ele ment was Wisconsin’s gen er ally ex cel lent and some times ir rev er ent fa culty. Uni ver sity pro fes sors have played only a small role in 74 E “A constant struggle with ideas” his to ries of the six ties, but even as pro fes sors often faced more pres sure from McCarthy ism than did their stu dents, with most of them veer ing to ward the mid dle of the ideo log i cal and schol arly spec trum, there was al ways a small group of pro fes sors who be lied these trends. In Mad i son, these fa culty mem bers were spread through out the uni ver sity, with an im por tant con cen tra tion in the his tory de part ment, and they created a rig or ous ac a demic en vi ron ment where ideas, even rad i cal ideas, were taken se ri ously. Few of them were rad i cals them selves, but they ex posed stu dents to po lit i cal the ory and in tel lec tual his tory and chal lenged them to re fine their ideas. A few set an im por tant ex am ple with their own po lit i cal ac ti vism, while dip lo matic his to rian William Ap ple man Williams stands out most prom i nently for pro vid ing a model of rad i cal schol ar ship that would take deep root in Mad i son and would spread through out the na tion. The clear est ex pres sion of in tel lec tual de vel op ment in Mad i son was the pub li ca tion of Stud ies on the Left, a schol arly jour nal es tab lished by a group of Wis con sin grad u ate stu dents in 1959. Stud ies con nected the many parts of the university’s in tel lec tual com mu nity, in clud ing Wis con sin and out-of-state stu dents, Jews and non-Jews, and stu dents and fa culty. UW so ci ol o gist Hans Gerth con...