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97 “Bodies upon the Gears” The New Left and the New Feminism ON M AY 12, 1964, Syracuse University’s Daily Orange announced that a demonstration would take a place that day during the university’s annual review of its Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets, “involving an “informal group of students who have in common the belief that there are alternatives to compulsory conscription, and that military training is not compatible with the pursuit of knowledge in a free society.” As the review began, protestors waved signs saying “Don’t Teach War at College,” “Will Your Children Be Active or Radioactive?” and “The Study of War Is Not a Liberal Art.” Campus security had told the protesters to remain on the north side of the quad, off the reviewing field, during the ceremonies. The Daily Orange reported that despite such warnings, picketers had entered the center of the quad and followed the withdrawing troops past the reviewing stand where the chancellor was standing. James Overgaard, an employee of the library and a former Syracuse student, was marching at the rear of the line. As he passed university chancellor William P. Tolley, the chancellor rushed down from the reviewing stand and yelled at Overgaard to get off the grass; one report had Tolley shouting, “Get off the field, you bums.” After Overgaard refused to budge, Tolley struck him with his cane. Overgaard was treated at a local hospital for a bruise but did not press charges. In fact, he was quoted as saying that “I would like to make it clear that I harbor no Portions of this chapter were taken from John Robert Greene with Karrie A. Baron, Syracuse University: The Tolley Years, 1942–1969, 37-38, 201–2, 221–22. © 1996. Reprinted with permission of Syracuse Univ. Press. 98 A M E R I C A I N T H E S I X T I E S personal animosity towards the chancellor. There were strong feelings on both sides—only the methods were different.” It is important to understand that what would become the student movement of the 1960s was, in very large part, a movement not just against the forces of the far right, but also against a liberalism that was first espoused in the 1930s and sharpened in the succeeding decades into a philosophy that was as repellant to the students as was conservatism. The challenge of the Great Depression was originally faced by Republican conservatives, led by president Herbert Hoover, who argued quite vociferously that the government should not intervene in the public sector to help business and should not give public monies to individual unemployed citizens to help them weather tough times. This philosophy of “American individualism” argued that direct government intervention—“welfare”—would help citizens in the short run, but would actually hurt them in the long run by destroying their self-esteem. Franklin Roosevelt rejected individualism as a philosophy and, in so doing, remade American liberalism. To Roosevelt, the government existed to promote the complete social welfare of the citizenry. Thus, Roosevelt expanded both the size and scope of the federal government, as his New Deal created jobs, spent money on relief, and, eventually, prepared the United States for a war against fascism. All told, the greatest legacy of the New Deal was this expansion of government—one that was impossible to reverse. In the postwar period, these New Deal liberals, who remained in power and influence during the Truman administration, added to the requirements of liberalism their avowed anticommunism. This began with Harry S. Truman himself, who held a nonintellectual, knee-jerk reaction disgust for the Soviets. (When writing a senator, Truman was blunt about his feelings: “I want you to understand very distinctly that you cannot trust them”). George Kennan, a former ambassador to the Soviet Union and influential Truman intimate, seconded this distrust when he wrote to the secretary of state in 1949: “Whoever , peering in from the comfortable distance of the bourgeois-liberal world, views Stalin as just another successful political leader . . . has failed to grasp the cataclysmic horror of modern totalitarianism.” The Truman administration translated this distrust into actions and policies while it attempted to remake the health care system, reform education, and take small steps toward civil rights, at the same time inflaming the cold war. Truman’s financial support of the French in Indochina, discussed in more detail in the next chapter, [18.218.48.62] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 13:29 GMT...

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