"American colleges and Universities today face the gravest crisis in their history," he wrote in 1970. The crisis was not unrest in and of itself. "Intellectual unrest is not a problem but a virtue, and no university can have too much of it if it is engaged in genuine educational tasks."
"The problem and threat is not academic unrest but academic disruption and violence which flow from substituting for the academic goals of learning, the political goals of action." The crisis will "lead first to the political polarization of the campus, then to the political alienation of the campus from the democratic community. If unchecked it will result in academic genocide – the destruction of academic freedom."
It seems remarkable that professor Hook was speaking of a time decades ago, but with words that could be reprinted today without alteration. "The political process is open to students and faculty on the same footing as all other qualified citizens to express their point of view. It shows profound contempt on their part for democratic due process to use or to threaten or even to condone violence, when they have failed to persuade or convince the electorate." He could very well have been writing about students' reaction to the 2016 election.
He wrote of how the "most militant of the student factions are small minorities. They make no bones about their hostility to democracy, their scorn for rational process. Their heroes are the leaders of the most ruthless dictatorships - Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara. They openly declare that 'our major social and foreign problems of our society' can never be solved to their satisfaction, for their goal is the destruction of our society."
Philosophical Leader Of Democratic Socialism Hated Antifa's Tactics
"The problem and threat is not academic unrest but academic disruption and violence which flow from substituting for the academic goals of learning, the political goals of action." The crisis will "lead first to the political polarization of the campus, then to the political alienation of the campus from the democratic community. If unchecked it will result in academic genocide – the destruction of academic freedom."
It seems remarkable that professor Hook was speaking of a time decades ago, but with words that could be reprinted today without alteration. "The political process is open to students and faculty on the same footing as all other qualified citizens to express their point of view. It shows profound contempt on their part for democratic due process to use or to threaten or even to condone violence, when they have failed to persuade or convince the electorate." He could very well have been writing about students' reaction to the 2016 election.
He wrote of how the "most militant of the student factions are small minorities. They make no bones about their hostility to democracy, their scorn for rational process. Their heroes are the leaders of the most ruthless dictatorships - Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara. They openly declare that 'our major social and foreign problems of our society' can never be solved to their satisfaction, for their goal is the destruction of our society."
Philosophical Leader Of Democratic Socialism Hated Antifa's Tactics
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