[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Transcript of "Class of 1970"
Detlev Suderow: Happy 50th plus. I'm Detlev Suderow, welcome all of you tonight. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, all depends where you are living, what time zone. I'm delighted to see all of you. We are almost 30 now we expect a few more. Before we begin the program, and enjoy Steve's.
Detlev Suderow: I'm sorry. Oh, I think all of you are muted. But someone just speak up. Before we begin the program, let me just share a few logistical notes. This meeting is being recorded, so some of our classmates who could not attend tonight can listen to it online through the university. Please mute yourself, which most of you already have when you're not speaking. The purpose of this evening will be to recreate a program we had planned to put on at our physical reunion. That was to spend some time talking about the 60s and the role the 60s played. We had planned with Steve to be one of our core presenters and his book was going to come out at that point. As it turned out, it got published a little later. But if you haven't read his book, you are missing out on a phenomenally. I was lucky enough to get an early copy of it, not for Steve but I've got it on my own. I was just engrossed. I just was totally engrossed by it, and so I urge all of you, if you haven't read it, if you haven't gotten it, please do. We are basically going to do about an hour and I'll be finished in a second in three parts. We're going to start out with Steve focusing on the question which we asked him to talk about. The questions we have indicated is, Brandeis in the 60s, what was so special or different about the 60s? Those of you who participated in the Alumni Association kickoff event with Steve. He made a comment which I picked up on that the 60s were a time of great transition at Brandeis. It was at pre 60s and post 60s. You probably also all have read that the 60s was viewed by many complementaries and talking heads as the roots of the current social division in our country, so Steve can speak to that. Then we will get more into a curated Q&A. Some of you sent questions early on, we will get to those. We're flexible on time. We'd figure 20 minutes each. Then the last part will been an open Q&A, and Ashley Freccia from the alumni office was our partner and our guiding light will lead that. I don't think I have to tell you much about Steve that you don't know already. He is here today. Professor Emeritus in American Studies. He's an extraordinary guy. He and I became very friendly because we go to the same synagogue, and we found a common interest in Brandeis in the 50s, and he wrote a lengthy paper which I hope some of you have read called, Steve helped me out. Vie my Brandeis.
Stephen Whitfield: Brandeis at the beginning.
Detlev Suderow: Brandeis at the beginning. Because of all of the expatriate, German Jews that were teaching at Brandeis at that time. You can read up his bio. He's a terrific guy, and those of you who are lucky enough to have him as a professor, I did not. But I had this one of his best friends Larry Fuchs as one of my professors. I'm now going to turn the program over to Steve, and again, thank you for participating and attending. I'm glad to see all of you. Steve, it's all yours. Steve you're on.
Stephen Whitfield: Okay, good. Anyway, I welcome everybody. Detlev I thank you for that very generous and enthusiastic introduction. There is no way in fact that any of the people I'm looking at in the gallery could have been in any classes of mine because I started graduate school in the last years that you were undergraduates. That is, I started in American history in 69, but I knew a number of you and it's thrilling and delightful to see a number of very familiar people from that era. That is from the very end of the 1960s. What I thought I would talk about first a little bit is the character of the book that Detlev very gallantly invited you to buy and to read, and then to discuss a little bit the issue that Detlev just raised about the peculiar character of the four undergraduate years that you had at Brandeis is a way of thinking historically about what was distinctive about your own experience at a very distinctive university. I got the idea to write this book early in the 21st century, working with an undergraduate in American Studies, named Rachel Libo, who worked with me on a one-on-one course on articles and books in which Brandeis featured. It was only in the course of that independent study that I realized that there's far and more here much below the surface about what made Brandeis so unusual. What stimulated Brandeis, all students in faculty to write about what might have been really singular about the university. Then for the last roughly eight years, I worked on the particular issue of the politics of Brandeis. Not so much, it's undergraduate atmosphere, not so much the ethos that might have existed on campus. But instead, what is it about Brandeis faculty and then Brandeis alumni that drove them often so conspicuously into politics?. Whether as writers, whether as thinkers, whether as activists. Then as a further consideration to account for the particular stance that Brandeis faculty and Brandeis alumni generally took within nations civic life. Of course that was overwhelmingly in the direction of the left. Whether that is defined as liberalism, whether it is called progressivism, whether at the various shapes of radicalism. There are really two features that the book seeks to elucidate and to invoke. One is that Brandeis was unusual, particularly in the first, let's say, quarter of a century, maybe in the general era around the time that you yourselves were undergraduates, 66-70. That is, there was a period in which Brandeis was unusual. The 1950s, of course, was often seen to be highly apolitical, an era of political passivity that was not the case at Brandeis, and a number of Brandeis faculty, excuse me, a Brandeis alumni, I'm thinking of Michael Walzer of the class of 1956, Marty Perez of the class of 1959, independently claimed that at Brandeis, the 60s began in the 1950s. That again was something that was unusual, I think, about institutions of higher learning. The case that the book seeks to establish is that Brandeis is not only peculiar because of its combination of Jewish sponsorship and non-sectarianism, which many people would say would be the most obvious feature of Brandeis didn't made it what it was, but that the faculty that Brandeis attracted, the students who went on to various careers in American civic life, in American political life, all geared themselves in a particular direction towards thinking about politics, writing about politics, engaging in politics. That moved in a direction which was very much to the left in its various forms and various guises. There are a number of caveats that of course have to be stated at the outset, perhaps as a way of deflecting some questions that you'll wish to pose at the end and some perhaps complaints about what I'm trying to argue. Number 1, of course, I would assume that most people who attended Brandeis in certainly even in the era in which you were there from 66-70, I would assume that the political intensity varied considerably. Undoubtedly all students were apolitical. As alumni, they may have been all apolitical. I did try in the initial conception of the book to have a chapter also on conservatives. There were a number of conservatives on the Brandeis faculty. There were a number of people in Brandeis student body who became, or were then conservative and Republican. But oddly enough, and maybe I can be criticized on this point, I never found enough such people to constitute a critical mass large enough to form a chapter of its own. So the book in being called 'Learning on the Left' is a book that in fact excludes conservatives, and focuses not on the apolitical and not on people who were Republicans, but people who indeed offered a certain coloration to the university and to its history, that I think made it, again, really, somewhat unusual. Just to give a few examples of what made it so unusual, since Detlev mentioned his own particular interests in the refugees who fled the Third Reich in the 1930s, and were able to get jobs at Brandeis in the 1950s and 1950s. Herbert Marcuse, of course, being the most obvious such person. Marcuse was the only Brandeis faculty member ever to be denounced by name, by a pope. That is Pope Paul IV that condemned Herbert Marcuse by name. There's been no other Brandeis faculty members since then who achieved a pontifical condemnation. It would include people like Pauli Murray who came to Brandeis at the end of the 1960s. Some of you may have studied with her. Her iconic status in feminism and in opposition to racial injustice has made her something of an iconic figure now well after her passing. Her church, the Episcopalian Church, designated Pauli Murray as a saint. Again, I believe she is the only member of the Brandeis faculty ever to be so designated. There are all sorts of unusual characters who taught at Brandeis. One of my discoveries that I'd never heard of him when I began was Jean van Heijenoort who taught philosophy, especially in mathematical logic at Brandeis. In his earlier years, he was very active in the Trotsky's movement. He was a secretary to Leon Trotsky. Had an affair while working in Mexico with Frida Kahlo, who became the most important female artist I believe in history. Brandeis attracted all sorts of interesting people, and many of them went on to very, very interesting careers of their own. But the challenge that Detlev raised that with which we can perhaps start our discussion, the challenge is: What was intriguing about the years 1966-1970? Everybody in the gallery, everybody who may wish to participate in the program today will have his or her own opinions about that. But it seems to me that you were living at near the very end, in your undergraduate years, living at the very end of the magnification, intensification of political life, stemming both from when it happened at the beginning of the decade with the challenge to racial inequality that occurred in the South, with the Civil Rights Movement. There's happens to be a chapter in my book about the Brandeis students who went South for the cause of voting rights and brought more broadly speaking, of racial justice. That movement of course both in its achievements and perhaps above all, in its frustrations and its limitations, was to move much of American campus life to the left, as those frustrations became both apparent, and as the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, increasingly seen as a war that had no rational coherence, no rational justification. A war that's destructiveness seem to know no bounds. The shadow of the Vietnam War, I need not tell everybody listening in on this program, that particular shadow clearly was something that haunted students from 1966-1970. Yet by the end of that decade, one might say that the period of a great politicization and perhaps radicalism, that period was already beginning to recede. The election of Richard Nixon was of course one important marker of that. The end of the military conscription was to drain much of the energy from the anti-war movement, so that one could say that the years in which you were undergraduates, and I opened to all source of correction on this point, those years marked a transition from a period in which political life was very important, on and off campus, to a period in which it seems to me the distinctiveness of Brandeis was itself already beginning to recede. Because the topic of my book is really about politics at Brandeis, it makes no larger argument about academic excellence. It makes no broader argument about the kind of institution Brandeis is, in its promotion of liberal arts, but it does make the case that sometime a bit after you all graduated, it does make the argument that clearly what was most peculiar about Brandeis beginning in 1948, that already was beginning in some ways to vanish, and a different character or a different coloration was beginning to occur. So you occupied a transition moment haunted clearly by the Vietnam War, haunted by the various energies that were being diffused from the civil rights movement. You were in the era in which clearly feminism was beginning to emerge. In that sense, already an extraordinary change was about to take place in the very character, the very context of American public life. So that's the case that the book tries to make. That's the particular focus that the book tries to establish with regard to the class of 1970. Detlev, I guess it's now over to you for a moment.
Detlev Suderow: What I failed to mention at the very beginning is, as we now transition into the cumulated Q&A, with the question that we're sending earlier, if you have a question that you would like Steve to address, just enter into that chat feature at the bottom of your screen. Either enter your question or indicate to actually that you would like to raise a question, or just raise your hand or something. Because as I said, the last, and we won't get to everyone I suspect, but so do take advantage of the chat section and then we will have an open discussion later on. Ashley, do you want to go and read all of the questions that were sent in the announcement?
Ashley Freccia: Sure. Yes, I can go ahead and do that. The first question is. How have changing attitude about systematic racism and affirmative action affected Brandeis and the American Jews?
Stephen Whitfield: Well.
Detlev Suderow: It's at Brandeis question.
Stephen Whitfield: That's pretty powerful. Let me try to answer that with maybe a little bit of a deflection in a way that I think the book itself addresses. That is a wonderful question because there is a larger theme to the book that goes from 1948 very much into our own time and that is the very definition of liberalism. Because as everybody participating in this Zoom program well knows, Brandeis was founded, Brandeis was conceived as a refuge against prejudice including discrimination that affected qualified Jews who sought to attend the most competitive liberal arts and private universities and colleges in the United States. Brandeis was founded with a certain ideal that whatever had happened at other institutions particularly the Ivy League, that Brandeis would be a place where people would be judged based upon their individual qualifications, independently of their race, independently of their ethnicity, independently of their gender. Therefore only on the basis of personal promise, personal achievement would they be admitted to the new university that was founded in 1948. This was part of a larger commitment to an ideal of liberalism that believed that if only the barriers of discrimination and bigotry could be transcended, could be crushed, could we have indeed a thoroughly decent democratic egalitarian society. That was an ideal that survived into basically 1968, 1969 when you were all students at Brandeis. Then with the Ford Hall takeover in January of 1969, a different kind of ethos was invoked. That is one's race, one's ethnicity, one's gender matters. It's not simply a question of personal attributes, it's not simply a matter of individual merit. According to that newer ethos, we need to take into account the various conditions under which people live according to their collective attributes and that has been the challenge that Brandeis along with other institutions of higher learning have been seeking to address ever since. That is how do you establish a more democratic, a more decent, a more just society without taking into account those qualities that are not merely matters of individual accident, but also taking to account the various collective attributes to which people are attached. Ever since, let's call it January 69 as a convenient date in which the earlier standard was basically overthrown for the sake of admitting African-American students on the basis of their race as a way of ensuring that there would be greater diversity, that there would be greater heterogeneity for the sake of education as well as for the sake of opportunity. Ever since that moment when you were all at Brandeis, the new definition has basically in various ways triumphed and the older ideal of liberalism has, it seems to me largely fallen into eclipse and that is a challenge to get back actually to the question that you posed. It's a particular challenge it seems to me to American Jews who are widely seen, most American Jews are white and yet many, many American Jews do not think of themselves as only white and therefore as in their own perhaps unusual or peculiar or anomalous way, may also think of themselves as a minority. As a minority even though largely white, that poses particular challenges to the issues of affirmative action that is framed in the question.
Detlev Suderow: Thank you Steve. Ashley, why don't we just take one more question from the pre-selected questions and then we'll open it up just to an open Q&A so that we have enough time for people to ask questions? Thanks.
Ashley Freccia: The next question is, how can we advocate for high school and college education on basic facts, empathy and form civic engagement and democracy?
Stephen Whitfield: I'm going to have to duck that question. I'm sorry, it's not something that I thought about, prepared to answer, I do not feel qualified to answer. My training at Brandeis and elsewhere was in history, I don't feel qualified to really respond to that, I'm afraid.
Ashley Freccia: We have one more that I could go on to.
Detlev Suderow: Yes, Ashley.
Ashley Freccia: What could have been done after the assassination of Robert Kennedy to prevent the radicalization of left-wing movement?
Stephen Whitfield: I'm sorry, what was supposed to happen after assassination of Kennedy?
Ashley Freccia: Yeah, to prevent the radicalization of left-wing movement.
Stephen Whitfield: 1968 was in all sorts of ways a shockingly horrific year of course. The assassinations of Martin Luther King earlier, Kennedy later, the Soviet invasion of hockey in August, the police riot that occurred during the Democratic National Convention. All of that, it seems to me had two effects. I'm not sure I'm really responding to the question properly. Certainly one question was increasing radicalization with the sense that the American political system was not being sufficiently responsive to the frustration and the desperation of many Americans with a war that didn't seem to end and might have even become escalated further with assassinations taking the lives of two of the key figures that personified the 1960s in all sorts of ways. But the other effect of that, of the radicalization was of course backlash. That is the sense that the Republicans would become the beneficiaries of what seemed to be a serious fragmentation of the civic order and the ways in which the membranes of civilizations seem to be getting dangerously thin. 1968 is both a period, as the question suggests. Both a period of a sharper movement to the left also into various forms of violence. At the same time, a backlash on the part of many Americans who elected Richard Nixon in November, admittedly by a very thin margin, but elected him in during a campaign which he ran on behalf of law and order and with the number of moves both escalating the war and at the same time, ending the draft put American politics into a very different sphere. Even as the civil rights movement that was so crucial a decade earlier itself seemed to sputter in various forms of very diffuse fragmentation. So 68, certainly with the assassination of Robert Kennedy was an extraordinary moment in both the desperation of American politics and through the Republican victory November also a way of stabilizing it.
Sam Poulten: Actually, that was my question. If I can be heard and the part that wasn't asked was and thank you for that answer was wonderful that we have done to prevent what you've just described. I think some of our actions lead to not only the election of Richard Nixon, but also to the derailing of many of the movements as we swung so far to the left and as you pointed out, Chicago certainly sealed our fate. I'm just wondering, in your view, what could we all have done differently to prevent that? Was there something that could've been done so that we can learn from that mistake.
Stephen Whitfield: Sam, I made a mistake and deflecting an earlier question by claiming that I was an historian and asking me to come up with a different version of history. But it's inevitable that one thinks about that. It's interesting. First of all, Nixon almost lost the 68 election. Everything we're talking about now is dependent upon a narrow victory, at least in the popular vote. Very narrow victory and the belief that if the Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey had come out earlier, not so much against the war, but in favor of negotiations with the North Vietnamese. If, if Vice President Humphrey had done that earlier, there's certainly much speculation, but he would in fact have won the election and your question then would be more marginal than I think it obviously is. It was a bit of an accident along those lines that a narrow victory brought so much really in its wake. But I certainly would not deny the thrust of the value of your question. Which is clearly that particularly violence on the part of the left and there were bombings and extraordinary acts of vandalism and destruction that occurred in 1968 and a couple of years later certainly drove all voters away from the Democratic Party and in favor of, of what could look like. I mean, to put a simple word on it could look like repression and even Walter Lippmann then still probably the most admired of political columnists, believe that given what had happened with the, the violence on the left, that there was inevitably going to be repression. Lippmann even argued that if you're going to talk about repression, Republicans are better at it than Democrats. It's complicated and of course I'm in no way impugning the majority of those on the left, certainly in the anti-war movement who opposed violence were not violent themselves. I was part of that myself but the edges in the extremes clearly were so conspicuous that it's hard to see that much else could have been done except some forms of self-discipline within the left, which were simply not feasible.
Detlev Suderow: Thank you, Steve. We've what he started to transition to the open Q&A and since we have no questions posted on the chat, think we were just leak lipid based simple and people who would like to ask a question, just simply raise your hand as an interesting factoid. Steve and I were when we got together months ago to plan for somebody's events. They were only ever ten women on the FBI Most Wanted list in history. Three of them were Brandeis student, one was o classmate and two of them were, this was sixties people, so talking about violent. But we can, we're not going to go down a lot. If you would like to ask a question, please try to focus it on the sixties and Brandeis and not on world peace or world hunger, which is a valuable topic, but maybe not. We don't have enough time tonight to solve it. Please raise your hand so we can engage in further discussion with Steve based on the book. I mean, if you again, I'm unabashedly sell this book to everyone associated with blenders because it has two elements which we really got to me. They emotionally, number one, I had five of the professors mentioned in the book as a student. I knew about, about 75 percent of the people mentioned in this book and the other twenty-five percent I know very little about. But what I didn't know where some of the back stories of their lives and of their teaching. It's a great book to go to because you don't have to start at page one. Look up the people you're interested in, read their bios. Some of them are shorter page, page and a half thermal lengthy four or five pages is all great. Have a cup of coffee, read read that one more so do that. Are there any question Would anyone who would love to?
Ashley Freccia: We do have a couple of people.
Detlev Suderow: Go ahead.
Ashley Freccia: Nicolette, if you would like to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Detlev Suderow: No unmuting?
Ashley Freccia: Yeah, she's has unmuted now.
Nicolette Strandskov: I was a little disappointed that nobody else scrum the justice staff attended tonight. I think I always felt that by being on the school newspaper, I was more of an observer than our prior to somebody in things that were going on. But my experience and feelings about things like the Ford Hall takeover and also the I don't know if anyone remembers, but there was an event sanctuary of either desert or or draft resistor. That was in the late 69 and that was in ailment Hall which was where the justice offices were.
Detlev Suderow: Do you have a question, Nicolette, or you just wanted to share your thoughts?
Nicolette Strandskov: I should look at my question. I just wanted to say that I've felt differently about how how the stuff about the Ford Hall takeover and I agree that I was reading quickly this afternoon because I had a previous book thing and then I had to sit down and quick read the chapters four from Professor Whitfield smoke. The impression I got was that you felt that the average student really didn't care very much about the Ford Hall take over and that wasn't my feeling.
Stephen Whitfield: Well, I was struck Nicolette when I did research on the, on the episode that one would have expected a a fuller support from the students who were not in Fort Hall and this was a bit of a surprise to me given the leftist reputation of Brandeis of that era. I wouldn't say that it was a matter of indifference as simply as lack of political support. The SDS chapter on the Brandeis campus was very, very small, smaller than I expected, although the numbers are not clear. The fact that the student council did not vote in support of the forehead hold takeover was very striking, and I would say more broadly, the biggest surprise and you might even say a revisionist view of that takeover, given the fact that the president at the time Morris Abram, had an extremely abbreviated presidency. In fact, was enormously skillful and politically adroit in both, keeping the whole issue from turning toward violence, and at the same time basically largely winning the argument on its merits in terms of what the students who had taken over Ford Hall had demanded. So the revisionist character of the chapter, which as I say was based on my own reading and I granted there can be obviously different interpretations was simply that the students evacuated Ford Hall without either the police coming in nor actually winning most of their demands. There was the establishment, of course, of a separate department of African and African-American studies. The demand that black students determine its character and its personnel was something that they did not win and in that sense, I wouldn't say that the chapter seeks to argue that students didn't care, but that simply, they didn't support the nature of those demands, nor did the overwhelming numbers of faculty, and as I mentioned not even Student Council did.
Detlev Suderow: In support of Steve's impression for forty-fifth reunion. You may remember getting a question there asking you how politically engaged you were during your time at Brandeis, and I wasn't at the forty-fifth, but I saw the results later on and it was very much in light of supporting Steve. It was basically three thirds. My English hasn't improved. One third were very politically engaged. One third were marginally engaged, and one third were not engaged at all. So two-thirds of our class self reported, indicated that they were, at best marginally involved, and only one third said they were actively involved and that I would have to say, I agree with anecdotally. My own experience, my own time I anecdotally would say, the fact that all of Brandeis was rising up and protest was always a huge exaggeration. That's my impression of that. Ashley, you have another question. Go ahead.
Ashley Freccia: I do, yes. So Jane Bright, if you want go ahead and unmute and ask your question or say your comment.
Jane Bright: Thank you. Steve, I'd offer a different explanation to what was going on because I was actually working in the switchboard in Ford Hall when this happened, and to this day, I am stunned by how little I ever learned about the black experience in this country. So wasn't apathy for me, it was ignorance. I can remember thinking that when they demanded African-American Studies I thought what do they need that for we have History here. I don't get it, and I think to this day we are still seeing people shocked by the black experience. So I would frame it differently than you're framing it. Thanks.
Stephen Whitfield: No, I appreciate that Jane and I didn't mean to suggest anything to the contrary. The story of our time is the story really of white Americans by and large having to play catch up on those experiences.
Detlev Suderow: Yeah. Peter, go ahead.
Peter Skagestad: Yeah. About a Ford hall takeover, I think a number of us, including myself, rather less concerned about the demands of the African American students. I've also seen a good tactic of takeover building which many of us found it extremely objectionable irrespective of the issues. I stayed on at Brandeis as a graduate student and in 1971, 72 actually, was a residence counselor in one of the dorms and I experienced that key area as a generational change. I remembered students who graduated from high school in 1971 they came in as freshmen that year and had short hair, ever clean shaven, ever largely uninterested in politics and certainly didn't care very much about the Vietnam War at all. That seemed to me that watershed year.
Detlev Suderow: Peter, you're fading sometime.
Peter Skagestad: I just wondered, but-
Detlev Suderow: Ironically enough, Steve, what you did with one of the virtual events with a class of 71, who are having their fifth reunion this year or planning for it, whatever shape it takes. So Steve, What was your impression when you spoke to the 71 classroom in light of Peter's comment?
Stephen Whitfield: Consistently to that, there was a little bit of blow back in terms of the fact that we weren't political, we weren't deeply, deeply engaged along those lines. I mean, that's what's so interesting about programs like this, and that is the sheer variety of both reactions, impressions and what we think our experiences were. The book I hasten to insist is about one particular strand of the Brandeis experience. Which is to say those who were involved in politics and particularly politics, broadly speaking, on the left. But it makes no larger claim from that, and the paradox of the book that I've written is that of course, the only thing that the characters in the book have in common is that they were at one time either students or faculty on campus. But even though Detlev you said that you knew so many of them, they didn't necessarily know one another. So it's not a collective experience, it's an historical experience that changes over time.
Detlev Suderow: Yeah. Oh, I agree with that.
Ashley Freccia: Next we have Rabbi Jeff Foust.
Rabbi Jeff Foust: Just another angle on activism, that in the comments you might have Steve, I actually found that the activists were a minority, always. Yet at the same time, very dedicated to nonviolence, Susan sacks and capture power to really an exception and didn't fit in. I was part of an activist group with Forty Fellman, and we really shared personal experiences. Remember, captain came in with a couple of outsiders. We thought they were FBI informers to stir things up because it didn't fit the pattern at all. Anyway, just to share that kind of perspective that exploring much non-violent. We were friends with the police. Ford Hall was militant, but nobody was bombing or attacking people, and we were very close to the campus police. We always had a close friendly relationship, so it was a little different. It was more of intellectual and focused on policy.
Stephen Whitfield: Yes. It's a very fair point. I would like to add that and I'm wondering if you would agree with me that the insurance that it would be non-violent and even with strong pacifist overtones, may have stemmed from the influence of the Hillel Chaplin, R Axelrad.
Rabbi Jeff Foust: Absolutely.
Stephen Whitfield: By 1965, he wore a pin of the broken rifles of the war Resistors League. Somebody was certainly committed ethically, religiously to nonviolence. His own views were certainly very, very much on the left. But I'm wondering if you would think that he exerted that kind of influence undoubtedly along with Gordon Fellman in sociology and ensuring that no outside police ever came to the campus to engage in the bus that occurred in Harvard, Columbia, and other places. In that sense, Brandeis was very fortunate.
Rabbi Jeff Foust: Now Axelrad was a major, major influence on that, and also he was active in the AWL, Mailman Hall activity also, and our response interestingly, the walled town kids actually put dynamite outside Mailman hall they were almost going to blow us up. But it was discovered. But our response was to get more active with the Waltham group. Do more organizing with Waltham. Which made a major difference. Waltham Brandeis relations are much better today, I was a Rabii that walked there for many years too, now I'm at Bentley. But huge difference and it was our response which could have been very different. We didn't trash businesses. We went out and organized with the people of Waltham.
Stephen Whitfield: Thank you for telling. I wish I'd known that to put it in the book.
Detlev Suderow: Thank you. Ashley.
Ashley Freccia: Yes, Sue would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question. Oh you're muted too.
Susan Drucker: Unmute. You were at Brandeis after we graduated in 1970. My fiancé, now husband was studying for his PhD at Berkeley in California. So I got to see some of what went on there. I moved there in 1970 and there were still riots and there were still marches and they were still blue meaning, and it was an intense place. I wondered what your personal feeling was at Brandeis at that time, starting when I wasn't there anymore,1970?
Stephen Whitfield: Yeah, it's a very good point and I probably have to make it clear that, although I was arguing for the distinctiveness of Brandeis, politically and in terms of its broader ethos, I probably should have been a little bit more careful and claimed that it was singular and unusual among institutions of higher learning that were privately sponsored. Because your experience at Berkeley was probably mirrored at Madison and at Ann arbor and to a certain extent in places like City College, City University in New York. But Brandeis was like them, except of course, under private sponsorship and always with concern about the resources that philanthropists would be able to provide. But I did come in '69, as a graduate student, there are people here, I won't name them, whom I knew from that era and exceptionally fond of them. But I can't really claim that, I had any particular knowledge of undergraduate life itself. What I know about Berkeley, I know there's a wonderful documentary that I rewatched about a week ago called Berkeley in the '60s, which is very, very striking. Berkeley was in fact far more an institution in Turmoil, I think than Brandeis ever was. Again, it's striking that when Berkeley became politicized, the male students there were wearing coats and ties and indeed had short hair. Feminism had not yet emerged in the early and mid '60s. So it's really amazing that I would say that, I would like to be able to claim that between 66-70, that you lived through, you experienced a considerable transformation in the very texture of what life on campus might have been.
Detlev Suderow: Okay. Thank You. Marty has been raising his hand several times, so I don't want him to be too frustrated. So Marty, why don't you go ahead and ask your question?
Marty Greengrass: Okay. Just a couple of comments. I was very friendly with Kathy Power and actually saw her in prison and afterwards. But she pointed out that, she had gone to a protest in Boston and it was really a police riot and that was one of the factors that radicalized her. The other thing she mentioned and I wondered if you found out and some of you majored in sociology. I don't know who this person is? Is that there was someone who was teaching in sociology, that actually had them destroy signs on freeways. As part of their class. They would go out and do violent. Not so much violent.
Detlev Suderow: Activist.
Marty Greengrass: Not even that, I would call vandalism.
Detlev Suderow: Yeah. .
Marty Greengrass: Was very bitter about the fact that he got off scot-free and that Brandeis then I just want to make those two comments and then I wanted to ask a question. It seemed to me after the robbery, that had a huge impact on the campus. It felt me, it wasn't as leftist afterwards and is that feeling justified or not? Thank you.
Stephen Whitfield: Yeah. Thank you, Marty. Let's put this way. The department of sociology was, the ground zero for radicalism. It was itself a very contentious issue. That is the extent to which faculty members should deeply involve themselves in the political activities of students. That constitutes, again, intensification of radical life, in which the wetted previous would be seen as certain barriers, were clearly broken. I think the Department of Sociology without naming names, was clearly one that was really pushing those barriers very, very strikingly. You're probably right that the shock of the holdup in Brighton in the murder of Walter Schroeder. That guard, undoubtedly had an impact. It's very difficult to measure it, but you're undoubtedly right that it must have made a considerable difference. Realizing now the lethal consequences of anti-war activity pushing in a certain direction. Undoubtedly, other factors were at stake as well. I mentioned even more broadly that, American campus life and was already beginning to shift, either more toward the right or the center, already beginning to shift away from politics. These were part of a broader national trends, that I think made the '70s very, very different from the '60s and certainly the late '60s. But you rightly point out that something very, very peculiar to Brandeis, probably reinforced those trends.
Detlev Suderow: Thank you. We've come to the end of our plants session. Unless there is a burning question, which would solve all of our poems. The last election may help quite a bit and nevertheless. I'm going to end our time together, by thanking you again for having joined us for the evening. By being continuously in debt to Steve.
Stephen Whitfield: Thank you.
Detlev Suderow: For joining us on his long time and sharing your thoughts with us. I really do urge you, to take my word for it. Hide me a nasty email. You see my add-ins, if I'm lying to you. It's a great book, it's fascinating. If you have any emotions or feelings. So only your time at Brandeis. You really orderly read it, even if only the chapters on the people you know. Nevertheless, thank you. We will be in touch with all of you as to what we're going to do this year, who knows? Right now all of us, given our time in life and time to survive this, not winter that's coming up. So stay safe. Happy Thanksgiving.
Stephen Whitfield: Happy thanksgiving.
Detlev Suderow: God bless you all. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.