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Dissent and Disruption: A University Under Siege

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Doctor Richard Siggelkow, a former high level college administrator, has written a retrospective account of the great polarization on our college campuses of three decades ago. He had as his perspective a large urban university which becomes a microcosm for the tumultuous sixties and early seventies. It was an era when our venerable institutions were attacked and democracy was subjected to a new, more literal interpretation. As Doctor Siggelkow reminds us, this was a time when there was a noble effort to educate the masses. More children than ever were attending university. These young people were coming of age seeking knowledge and justice against a backdrop of an unpopular war which was calling upon them to participate and sacrifice all. Minorities were screaming for equality and popular leaders were being assassinated. It was the time of General Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, search and destroy, body counts, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda , the Black Panthers. the Weathermen, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Doctor Siggelkow, as Dean of Students, was often the man in the middle. He tells of the political acrobatics required of the University of Buffalo's administrators to maintain the balance between accommodating the rights of a seemingly unreasonable and always verbal and often violent minority of dissidents and providing an tranquil atmosphere for the majority who were there to be educated. They had to allow for the demonstrators while maintaining an open campus that tolerated the recruiting activities of the like of Dow Chemical and the CIA. This is not only an important book on the dissent in our universities during those turbulent years, but also a tale of the coming of age of the"spoiled brat "or baby boom generation. It's a story of their conflict with the "best generation." We have recently witnessed the maturing of this former group who are now setting policy in all our institutions including the White House. They seem to have traded their infantile egalitarianism for self serving rationalization. A generation who buried their self righteous ideals are now bent on convincing themselves and the world that they can bomb as well as their parents and with smarter bombs. Dissent and Disruption proves that democracy is neither easy nor orderly. It will be of interest to all who experienced this era or wish to understand it. Doctor Siggelkow has produced an important, well written, readable account of this meaningful period in our history.