Perhaps these Harvard alumni are mainly concerned about the school's PR image. After all, "cream of the crop" students are supposed to display some humanitarian and compassionate spirit. It is what is expected. Let them join the family sweatshop business after they've graduated. But in the meantime, Harvard is obviously doing a poor job of promoting upper-class hypocrisy.

You want activists? Simple. Bring back the draft. Guaranteed.

I have little to add to the merits debated here, but I did want to remark on the irony of the Harvard alums choosing that Bismark quote to support their position. They should have perhaps considered that it continues "...and whoever is still a socialist at 30 has no brain."

Perhaps not the best quote to support the position.

:-)

During the national protest against the Iraq war and No-War with Iran protests in September/October (can't remember exactly) this year, I happened to see "Granny D", (Dorothy Duncan)an ordinary woman with no money who ran for U.S. Representative or Senate office out of New Hampshire in 2004 at the age of 94. (She did not win, and the Democratic Party would not support her. Nonetheless, she garnered an impressive 38% of the vote). She is now 97 and was at the rally/protest that day in Boston. She rightly pointed out that there seemed to be no students from Harvard at that rally in Boston Commons where approximately 10 thousand marched. As well, the mainstream media gave no real coverage either before or after this national event. My feeling, nothing will change without a revolution. But that doesn't mean we should stop protesting -- all is truly lost if people stop fighting against an increasingly fascist U.S. government.

Protests really dont do much these days anyway. More people have protested this war than probably any war in history. It still happened. We need new strategies. I'm sick of these lame protests where the people you're protesting against get to tell you when and how you can protest against them. That does nothing. The protests themselves must be radicalized.

My sense from my two sons, in their 20s, is that they believe the only thing that will work to change this country is violence. However, they were raised to believe that violence is never the answer and so have opted out. They see the tactics of my generation has having worked, yes; but they believe that the powers-that-be have learned how to marginalize such tactics. As I watch the Bush-Cheney administration continue merrily on its way, despite the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Americans and despite increasing public outcry, I certainly understand their sense of powerlessness because I share it. I haven't been to any demonstration since just as the war started. It pains me to say that, but it's true.

Recently, in Boston, 18 Veterans for Peace were arrested for standing silently - with gags in their mouths - while protesting the silencing of anti-war voices during the Veterans Day Parade. It may well be that massive civil disobedience is required, as the only alternative to violence; but it will provoke violence from the system. I am struggling with my own commitment - am I ready?

That does it for me.... The USA is a bona fide totalitarian police state. Without the students protesting; there is no hope. One false move and you are an enemy of the state. I'm glad I got out.

But Harvard is what caused this mess. It's ethical bankruptcy in it's business school, gave rise to countless fiends like Micheal Milken and other white-collar criminals. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the first college in our formerly great country, which became an institute for the elite, would cater to candidates who aspire solely to join the corporate profiteers of wall street, instead of defend their republic from domestic threats at a time when their country needs them most.

Meanwhile, back at the gated community, their parents fiddle and dance as Rome burns.....

Well, Harvard students can just forget about their lust for the exalted position of Captain of Industry; by the time they get there we will be engulfed in world war for resources, not to mention mass migration to find a cool and dry place to stand.

That is, unless of course, the Greenland Ice Cap can defy the laws of physics and thermodynamics that these useless undergraduates should be studying about. I was a pilot who crossed Greenland many times. I helped burned this atmosphere to a cinder. If they knew what I know, they would be out in the streets protesting the continued use of fossil fuels RIGHT NOW.

The Fortune 500 caused this environmental crisis (many of it's CEO's are Harvard and Yale grads,) by lying to it's citizens about the dangers of unchecked predatory capitalism and consumerism and further damning us all by daring to politically hijack the U.S. Government for profit.

The Titanic is going down, and we're all sitting around on the main deck listening to classical music.....

Don't bother saving me a seat on the lifeboat, I'm going down with the ship.

For what it's worth, I attended an antiwar rally in Harvard Square of a couple of hundred people the day we started the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and also watched Harvard students call national attention to the living wage issue with the 2001 building takeover. I also know a lot of Harvard students to be active politically, albeit usually through establishment means (i.e. the Democratic Party, the presidential elections). When Bush won in 2004, a lot of students were in shock or even grief (a lot of faculty too).

In the case of the war, it'd be great if there were many thousands of students in the street every week, but the fact is it's very hard to get those kinds of numbers when people's self-interest is not directly threatened, as it would be if there was a draft. It's also a little unclear who the target of such protests would be. The Harvard administration and faculty I bet would overwhelmingly side with student protestors on the war issue. And I don't see a lot of evidence that the Bush administration or the GOP generally would be very alarmed by large protests on liberal East Coast campuses. Now, if there were large protests at big public universities or in places where protest isn't expected, and they were sustained over time, that might get some attention. Unfortunately I don't see it happening due to the nature of the war issue itself--anti-war people are divided as to what the practical demand should be, some favoring unconditional withdrawal, others a timetable or some more nuanced approach. Now if Iran were to happen, it might be different in terms of potential for large-scale protest. But most students I talk to now, while they dislike the war, don't believe that there is a clear solution out there that they should be advocating in the streets for, and I don't see such a clear-cut solution capable of persuading a lot of people on the horizon either.

I teach now at a liberal arts college in the South where there isn't one-tenth as much political energy as there is at Harvard. My dream is that one day the students here will wake up and shock the world by getting angry about something. So compared to most places, Harvard is a hotbed of political engagement.

That said, I found the letter by these alumni charming and well-intentioned.

Agents of change from our youth? apathy is rampant within our society. But perhaps to Compare Harvard's enrolled student's attitudes towards civic duty, role as an 'change agent' and perception of 'self' as future leaders -then Compare to the Military Schools like West Point, etc -- might shed light on the issue.

B

People live in fear of losing any job with health care. If the jobs they have do not include health care they are hanging on by their fingernails. The majority have no union protection and can be fired on any whim by anyone above them in the organization. If you are fired it is difficult to get another GOOD job.

People are also subjected to random drug tests - where my uncle worked anyone who questioned the boss had to go pee at the hospital. The hospital staff joked about the foolish repetitive drug tests that were always negative. Some of the jobs tested make sense to have drug tests, but checkouts in stores are tested just to intimidate them. Think of the power over others when you can force them to pee on command for no good reason!

These and similar reasons as well as the predatory educational, mortgage, and credit card debt are used to crush the spirit of the people.

Another consideration with student protests is that many of the tactics that were effective in the '60s and '70s have not proven effective in recent times.

Every non-violent group I know of has had the problem of one or two large, muscular males attaching themselves to the group and being rabidly uncontrollable. It is impossible for a group of non-violent students to contain larger, stronger people bent on violence. Generally, groups posted photos of these uncontrollable types on the internet. Most of them were identified as police officers. Just your friendly, local, off-duty police officers joining a protest group. I doubt they shared the same motives as the others in the group.

In the run-up to the current military action, friends at a non-violent protest watched a charter bus pull up to the protest and offload several dozen large, muscular men, who immediately started fights with the police. Everyone was arrested. Most were charged with assaulting a police officer. No one saw those men in jail, or afterwards. Mobile phones and cameras were confiscated, so no photos.

How do you organize a protest when such behavior is guaranteed? How can you possibly convince anyone that your intentions are peaceful when violence ensues?

The non-violent methods from the '60s and '70s worked, in part because the police did not have an effective means of countering it, and in part because media coverage made the police look brutal and the students and protesters appear innocent. The police have learned. They are much better at dealing with protests and protesters than ever before. For the most part, modern mainstream media encourages the image of noble police officers being unfairly assaulted by over-privelaged young people with no concept of decency.

To jjpeter:
Most of my friends in the military chose it because it was the only viable path to a college education. Student loans, aid, and assistance rarely cover the full costs. If parents cannot fund the remainder with parent loans, choices are severely limited. The military is disproportionately staffed from the lower end of the economic spectrum. If these good people had better options, believe me, they would have taken them.

I want to respond to ezeflyer's "the oligarchy bought Harvard" and jungleboy's contention that Harvard students are "out of the fight to be pro-environment" and follow up on my earlier post. It is too simplistic here in the 21st century to just dismiss Harvard and its students. Sure, it tends to serve the ruling class, especially its Law School and Business School. But its Graduate School of Education has long had important feminist intellectuals, such as Carol Gilligan, and taught many good teachers. Some Harvard scientists have made substantial contributions to humanity, as have people in the School of Public Health and other schools.

21st century America and capitalism are complicated. We need to think beyond 19th century analyses and work with a wide range of people in order to do important things such as stop war and deal with chaotic climate change. We could benefit from welcoming all committed to such actions, from whatever backgrounds, in my opinion.

Most revolutions have members of the elite--such as Argentine Che Guevara, Cuban Fidel Castro, and Sub-Commandante Marcos of the Zapatistas in Mexico--who participate in them. We need defectors--such as Daniel Ellsberg--from the rulers to help with the change that we need.

One used to be able to get a good education at Harvard, and probably still can. The issue is what one does with it and what interests they serve. I will not be shamed for the decade I spent at Harvard in the l970s. I've used that time well in a variety of struggles over 40 years.

As with the authors of the original letter, I am concerned with this generation of students. I experience them as passive, as I said in my earlier email, not just at Harvard, but at Sonoma State University, where I teach. I do not look to the administration to do much about this. It is mainly up to the students themselves, with support from the community.
Shepherd Bliss, Sebastopol, CA.

I will almost certainly lose my job if I speak out against the government publicly. I will definitely lose my job if I am arrested. I have a staggering amount of education debt. These loans cannot be refinanced. The law restricts borrowers to consolidation only once. The rate I got on consolidation is fair and reasonable, but the only way to renegotiate terms is by opening new loans, i.e., additional higher education financed by student loans. Education debt cannot be renegotiated or forgiven for any reason, not even job loss or bankruptcy due to medical expenses. In retrospect, I should have skipped college and kept working the minimum wage job. I would have more freedom, but I wouldn't have health insurance. I know of only one or two people under the age of thirty with health insurance. I know a great many people under age 30 who work 35 hour per week "part-time" jobs with no benefits. They manage to pay their school loans by continuing to live as college students, sharing decrepit housing with half a dozen friends. They have watched their friends be arrested for speaking out. Many look at their monthly income vs. monthly expenses, and decide that they would rather eat than speak out.

It's not apathy. It's survival.

So, there is more risk now to speak out? Does this not mean that it is incumbent on all to speak out? If our civil liberties have been eroded to the point that people are unwilling to voice an objection for fear of the consequences, then we are losing (have lost?) the battle for our protections under the Bill of Rights. Are we in the world of Orwell's nightmare of 1984? Is the totalitarian state depicted in "V for Vendetta" our current reality? Or is it simply easier to take the passive position that nothing we as individuals do will make a difference, and click the remote to watch the flavor-of-the-day (not)reality show?

Let's not call it apathy when today's students face far greater penalties than those that protested decades ago.

It is normal for a student who is speaking at any assembly not sanctioned by the college or university to be arrested for disturbing the peace. All it takes to get a resisting arrest charge added to that is asking the arresting officer, "what?"

It is standard for the college or university to immediately suspend the student when he or she is charged.

It is standard for the student to immediately lose any aid or grant money.

This happens at the time of arrest, not at the time of conviction.

It is common for both actions to remain in force even if all charges are completey erased.

I, personally, know students who lost a semester, lost all student aid forever, and had to reapply to the college or university they were attending, then petition a committe to be reinstated. Those with a resisting arrest charge were advised by their lawyers to never speak in public again and to stop driving. An officer approaching at a simple traffic stop, seeing that resisting arrest will approach with gun drawn, assuming the resistance took the form of an armed struggle.

In an era when many more jobs require a degree than ever before, the prospect of losing any hope of getting a degree seriously limits willingness to speak out. I am constantly amazed that people over 30 have so little awareness of how much the world has changed since they were that age.

For the record, I am a college graduate, class of 2000. There weren't many protests during my college days. I don't join any active protests now because it would cost me my job. I graduated with nearly $68K in school loans. When I am out of debt and can afford to be without a paycheck for the average time to find a new job -- six to eighteen months -- I will have more freedom to follow my conscience.

Penny is right, students get arrested for the least bit of protest and students are shouldering huge debts, a lawyer is expensive if you have to defend in court about an arrest.

However, I think that students should ORGANIZE together to defend themselves against these stupid arrests- that is if they know their rights- often they do not.

Also, I was just getting at the issue of voting- certainly a student will not get in trouble for voting! They are not even bothering to do that!!! In the next election- we could have another warmongerer in office- the republicans were falling all over each other (except for Ron Paul) to say how much they would bomb Iran etc. Ron Paul will not get elected because the Republicans are not leaving their little tribal instincts and so we need students to pile up with OBAMA!!!!!

They have to at least vote including in the primaries coming up February in most states.

BHo

It's not just Harvard; it's the whole country. Nobody wants to take a stand or get outraged. We are all too busy watching TV, Xmas shopping; going to parties, etc. It's called denial.
Keith Campbell
Denver

"...went on a hunger strike last spring to show support for better working conditions and pay for campus security guards."

Fundraisers will follow to provide ill-equipped
guards with tasers.

The oligarchy bought Harvard too.

"Is anyone really in favor of terrorists or a return to power of Saddam Hussein? The dynamics are different."
I don't believe the dynamics are different. We are aggressors now, as we were then. The only difference is the propaganda machinery. I for one, am for people not being treated like terrorists, don't tap my phone, don't destroy my constitution, leave my rights intact, I am angry about this. I am for trying to understand why people would blow themselves up, rather than live in this world. I moved away from the US after High School, when I figured out that going to college in the US would mean trying to follow party rules about keg stands etc. I partied too much in Europe anyway, but I am extremely knowledgeable and multi-cultured now and fortunately, I missed all of the mind numbing propaganda you were all forced to swallow (sound effects on the news, for example, is a killer). I am for questioning who put the dictator Saddam into power, I remember someone saying, "He's one of the good old boys" or something like that. A two party system is not a democratic system. A system that turns a president into a king is not a democratic system. Where is our god d--- prime minister? Checks and balances are bouncing and falling off of the high wire. Its high time for mass protest and dissolution of the corrupt American government. The people who were accepted into Harvard are just as brainwashed and ignorant as the rest of the American populace, else they would have been dragged kicking and screaming while trying to safeguard their freedoms, protection of privacy and rights which now lay in a pile of ashes. The problem in the States is the enforcement of dictatorial oversight and norm-building which is so prevalent in American High Schools. It turns them into sheep who have too much regard for corrupt authority when they get to college. And if they haven't learn conformity by the time they reach college, they get tasered.
I think its high time to break the Union into fifty new countries and abolish the corrupt central government.

No draft = no outrage

This war is being fought those who don't see college as a viable future for them. So since the progressive thinkers aren't being given a gun and orders to go on patrol, with all the attendent exposure to the moronic military command structure, the movement against this war is not there.

When things affect you directly, you get off your ass and do something about it. Otherwise, its me and my iPod, cell, Face Book site, car, and I have to study for finals next week, and I haven't even started -

Yes - in the 60s the protests started from the students themselves (and may the gods bless the SDS) with "teach-ins" - then graduating to "sit-ins" and finally large protests. I remember it well - and it took time. But the college administrators were by no means in favor of all this - they actively opposed it and so did many of the faculty. So don't expect them to start any protests now. They are probably terrified that someone somewhere WILL start one.

As someone who spent a decade at Harvard, during the l970s, in various capacities, and currrently teaches at Sonoma State Univ. in Northern California, I want to echo the sentiments in this letter. I directed a program at Harvard-Radcliffe called Education for Action (E4A), based partly on Peace Corps ideas and on ideas by Brazilian philosopher of education Paulo Freire, author of the book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Friere writes about "cultural action," which is deeper than merely political or social action. Back then there were many US and international activists at Harvard, and our program served them, as well as others.

This is my first semester teaching at SSU and I am stunned by how apathetic most students are, especially given the urgency of our reality with the Iraq War. Though I think there are things that a good administration can do, I think that the problems are far deeper than this. My generation of students (the sixties) helped end a war. Most of this generation is merely watching. The distractions of TV and our high-tech culture seem to have pacified students. They are too privileged. This is a reason why we are facing "The End of America," as Naomi Wolfe describes in her book of this title, and as Naomi Klein describes in "The Shock Doctrine."

There is, however, a core of students at SSU and elsewhere, such as the Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo, where I recently taught, who are willing to protest and act on their democratic citizenship. We just need more of them. Blessings to them, and may we elders and others encourage and support them.

I attended the inauguration of President Faust as part of my 45th Reunion and can comment:
1. The new Harvard administration is clearly dedicated to actively promoting cultural diversity and mutual intellectual respect between the genders. That, after all, was an issue that helped propel the first woman president of Harvard into the job. The baby-boom activist generation is now voting on the Harvard faculty, and the faculty wanted someone like Faust.
2. Activism on campuses is now more focused on smaller targets, like making sure the college tee shirts are not made in sweatshops. One difference in the 1960s was that students had support from inspirational dissidents like Pete Seeger (who sang at Harvard in our senior year), some of whom had sympathy for socialist and communist experiments. Harvard had a "Fair Play for Cuba" group in 1962. Is anyone really in favor of terrorists or a return to power of Saddam Hussein? The dynamics are different.

These distinguished Harvard alumni, if they were ever 1960s radicals, are forgetting something very important: activism is a grass-roots phenomenon. Any activism which is promoted by the elites and bosses is not to be trusted. I was a 60s radical at the far less glorious University of Oklahoma, and we all understood that. Writing to the president of Harvard and saying "make student activism happen" strikes me as ludicrous. Activists emeritus from the 60s should be trying to communicate with the students on American campuses and being supportive toward activist tendencies.

Excuse me for my lack of information, but, isn't Harvard a school to go to if you want to a job in some corporation or institution? Doesn't that take them right out of the fight to be pro environment as well as anything possibly destabilizing to the current political foray due to their brown-nosiness?

While in high school, students are lured into registering to vote without the slightest bit of understanding what the parties stand for and what the choices are and high school civics is often toght by persons with little understanding of civil rights and the constitution.

Then they go to college and students are registered in their home town with different candidates than their roommates and it makes it hard to form a political meaningful group.

Then they need an absentee ballot to vote while at college and and they are uninformed that they can walk into any post office and change their registration to be at the campus.

Then the colleges get support and money to exclusively register voters and do not allow townies like me to do registering- thought fought me but I won.

I went to my local college and set up a table in front of the evening dinner hall and in 2 days I registered 135 students and less than 10 of them picked the Republicans.

Ignorant student councelors told me I had to be "fair and balanced" the law does not require me to set up a bland table not supporting any candidate. I can set up a table with a particular candidate and the onus to represent the other candidates falls on the other student group- the Republicans.

These other students never materialized.

Students have huge schedules and assignments in college to just plain deaden them to THINK!! They are also afraid of not getting the right career.

Yes, we need to breathe in courage into these youngsters...

I am a retired college health nurse,

Honestly I was more worried about getting good grades and getting laid during my college days than about meaningful political action. I regret to this day that I more or less wasted the 4.5 years of my undergraduate life not more involved in radical politics. I would have loved to have formed a SDS (students for a democratic society) ala Chomsky and crew at MIT in the 60s group at my school and engaged in protest and direct action of various sorts...to say the least it would have been a ton more fun than just sitting around drinking beers with friends on the weekends..oh well, live and learn..there is still graduate school ;)

Wasn't Harvard University deeply involved in the looting of the former Soviet Union under Yeltsin? I attended a relatively small, state-supported university (in a southern state) on the GI Bill and while we had no campus protests back in the late 1970s we certainly had some very progressive and thoughtful tenured professors in the history, philosophy and English departments. And while our University president may have been a retired Baptist minister and a county-wide prohibition in place against the sale of alcohol, at least they weren't actively stripping an entire region of the world of its wealth and colluding with foreign gangsters.

Many of us who resisted the draft in the 60's did so not because we were directly threatened (it was easy to keep a student deferment by staying in college and maintaining a C average). We had the political awareness and the human empathy to realize that the poor guys who couldn't afford to go to college were being drafted instead of us. By mailing in our draft cards and refusing induction into the military, we directly confronted the inequality of the draft. Since the government did not want to prosecute us for failure to carry a draft card, the draft boards cancelled our deferments and ordered us for induction. This was demonstrated to be an unconstitutional extra-judiciary punitive action in a case that reached the supreme court. This had the effect of scaring the sh_t out of the Feds and had much to do with the subsequent ending of the draft.

Harvard does have one, if not the best Divinity Schools in the country. Many people of peace and an understanding of World Religions, not singular.
Yes, but at my age 52, do you think I risk less than a college student when I peacefully protest?
Someone offered up earlier that the lest these kids could do is organize, call it a club. Get some ACLU lawyer from Boston to speak, keep them informed of their rights, THE BILL OF RIGHTS and the Constitution. What can a school, university, college do about that?
I was 15 when the SDS had meetings in my area, I was there, I protested, I was so much more aware of the horrors of war than so-called adults are now. Pathetic...
I did join the military, though, mid 70's, as a woman there was virtually 0 chance I would ever see action I needed money for college.
Recruiters strategically place their offices in impoverished areas, lower middle-class and now they have the 'INCENTIVES', come from Nada that is a gazillion dollars. I hate recruiters, they should be made to wear the masque of death.

This is a joke, right? Harvard is and always has been a school for scoundrels and morons. I mean, who else is going to run the country?