Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University [Hardcover]

Donald Alexander Downs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

In April 1969, one of America's premier universities was celebrating parents' weekend--and the student union was an armed camp, occupied by over eighty defiant members of the campus's Afro-American Society. Marching out Sunday night, the protesters brandished rifles, their maxim: "If we die, you are going to die." Cornell '69 is an electrifying account of that weekend which probes the origins of the drama and describes how it was played out not only at Cornell but on campuses across the nation during the heyday of American liberalism. Donald Alexander Downs tells the story of how Cornell University became the battleground for the clashing forces of racial justice, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law. Eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews depict the explosive events of the day and bring the key participants into sharp focus: the Afro-American Society, outraged at a cross-burning incident on campus and demanding amnesty for its members implicated in other protests; University President James A. Perkins, long committed to addressing the legacies of racism, seeing his policies backfire and his career collapse; the faculty, indignant at the university's surrender, rejecting the administration's concessions, then reversing itself as the crisis wore on. The weekend's traumatic turn of events is shown by Downs to be a harbinger of the debates raging today over the meaning of the university in American society. He explores the fundamental questions it posed, questions Americans on and off campus are still struggling to answer: What is the relationship between racial justice and intellectual freedom? What are the limits in teaching identity politics? And what is the proper meaning of the university in a democratic polity?

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The scenes recalled here of armed black students leaving a Cornell University building in 1969 speak loudly of the rule of law, radicalism, racism, power politics, intellectual honesty, and the relations between academia and society. For Downs (political science, Univ. of Wisconsin), the author of several books, including Nazis in Skokie (LJ 3/1/85), the context for the Cornell uprising was shaped by the history of liberalism in 20th-century American higher education as well as campus events and university policies. A Cornell undergraduate that infamous spring, Downs narrates the issues argued by the Afro-American Society, other student organizations, and factions among administrators and faculty. He clearly details the complex, rapidly unfolding events, which embodied contested notions of progressive education, academic freedom, racial justice, and identity politics and which made the Cornell uprising more significant than most American student revolts of the 1960s. Readable, at times fast-paced, and based solidly on interviews and primary sources, this is highly recommended for academic libraries.ACharles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Thirty years have passed, it is true, but the whole ugly episode is worth recounting because it presaged so much of what was to come on campus: race-conscious admissions, identity politics, the regime of political correctness, the radicalization of the curriculum, the "tradition" of student protest. -- The Wall Street Journal, Daniel J. Silver

Product Details

• Hardcover: 359 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801436532
• ISBN-13: 978-0801436536
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,065,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history on the birth of political correctness., June 1, 1999

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University (Hardcover)

The dust cover picture of armed students leaving Cornell's Straight Hall in April 1969 tells a story close to my heart in time and geography. Downs' wonderful study of student power shows the inevitable problems that emerged when well-intentioned university liberals surrendered their fundamental academic principles in the name of compassion. Downs illustrates the unintended consequences of affirmative action, from students who did not want so much to learn from the institution...they wanted to radically change the institution.

The students understood politics, public relations and the power of the "big lie". While they may not have been competent to lead Cornell through needed change, Downs makes it clear that neither was the Cornell administration ready or able to manage change.

Once the violent takeover began, what little control President Perkins had was lost. The subsequent finger-pointing and resignations were unavoidable. Yet questions remain: Was it institutional racism fostered by a priest or political correctness that set off the furor? Who burned the cross in front of the African-American residence hall? Did the administration have a hand in the fraternity "counterattack" on Straight? Was this a spontaneous act out of frustration by African-American students or an SDS plot to radically reform Cornell? After it was over, did Cornell learn any lessons?

I could not put it down. A must read for baby boomers, especially those intent on understanding events that formed the ideology of those in the White House today.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I was there, September 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University (Hardcover)

I was a junior at Cornell in April, 1969, and only after having read this book did I really understand what events happened that weekend. I'm not sure I understand even now what the significance of those events has been, but this book has put my own history in perspective for me, along with Cornell's.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cornell and the Spring of 1969 revisited, June 6, 2001

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University (Hardcover)

Cornell campus events in April 1969 ran beyond the power of university administrators to manage them. The world witnessed the decline of docile, gentle student behavior, managed by old white men in tweed coats. Students found new, forceful ways to express themselves, and opened an era of campus struggles.

Downs demonstrates that students know enough to know they don't want to learn some of the things that there teachers are teaching, yet they are also young and naive enough to stumble about agressively and sometimes irrationally for a solution. And the senior professors, save a few stalwarts, had no capacity to deal with this new breed of students.

Based on Cornell's desire to "do good", to promote social justice, to provide meaningful educational opportunities, and to add diversity (before there was such a common, abused term on American campuses), the Trustees approved a plan to enroll disenfranchised students from urban areas at their bucolic campus. Cornell was Ivy League, yes, but more rural than sophisticated, more agricultural than urbane. Cornell was to provide a strange environment for a noble experiment. Did it work? After the takeover of the administration building by armed students, most Americans never looked at university education the same way again.

Meticulous archival research of previously unsurfaced or unpublished records brings life and details to a college's uncomfortable history.