Old man Kagan was pretty disliked at Stutts when I was there. He was Dean then. I attended the public announcement of his resignation in '92, which was a weird scene. Anybody else here remember that?

There was something about the student revolt of the 60s that scared the shit out of a lot of erstwhile liberals. Being sympathetic to the Free Speech Movement, and living in Berkeley at the time, I do not understand their fear, probably never will.

But they were scared. Irving Kristol in his autobiography of neo-conservatism says the student revolt was a prime consideration in shifting his sentiments from liberalism to conservatism.

I hope somebody better versed than me does a study on it. Did they really think Mario Savio, H. Rap Brown, and the SDS were going to bring the System down?

"But they were scared" is right. The reasons seemed ridiculous to some of their colleagues, but not to all. Once students seized buildings and forcefully removed deans et al, they envisioned book burnings next. Any show of force on a campus was, to some faculty, not tolerable. Once a few students shouted "burn, baby burn" and threatened the whole university system, they revived images of the 1930s in Germany. The context and comparison were not right, but quite a few profs (esp. the refugee intellectuals) saw the shouting, marching kids as the new barbarians.
Should students have directed their anger and "threats" at the university? That is an issue still debated by Sixties veterans. At one Ivy U. profs formed an all-night security guard around the library's card catalogue! Even today, emotions run high when individual profs' roles 40 years ago are recalled.

quite a few profs (esp. the refugee intellectuals) saw the shouting, marching kids as the new barbarians.

It would be one thing for someone who'd just arrived in America to think this at the time. It's quite another for Donald Kagan (who's lived in the U.S. essentially his entire life) to make the comparison 35 years later.

I agree. Even historians make some comparisons odious.

I think we ought to change the Hitler thing to "Everybody wants to be Hitler."
So, I say: "Let Hitler be Hitler."
Or,maybe: "Only Hitler is the real thing."
(Don't tell Cheney I said so.)

Historically, the only time there had ever been violent political protests on even the tiniest scale was in 30's Germany, so it was perfectly natural for people to see the 60's as the prelude to a new totalitarianism.

Honestly, people, do I have to explain everything to you? Such is the burden of carrying such a vast weight of historical knowledge.

What donescobar says is correct, but it was a silly conclusion to jump to then and even dumber to think that way now.

All the world's a stage, and all the people are either Hitler, Chamberlain, or Churchill in our "One Historical Analogy" culture. (On ocassion, there are Stalins, as in "Churchill even had to ally with Stalin to defeat Hitler.")

The left has had much less success with its production of "all the world is Vietnam." Ironically, this means there are actually more big-stage revivals of Vietnam than there are of WWII.

Growing up in an atmosphere of great intellectual rigor is overrated.

There was something about the student revolt of the 60s that scared the shit out of a lot of erstwhile liberals. Being sympathetic to the Free Speech Movement, and living in Berkeley at the time, I do not understand their fear, probably never will.

But they were scared. Irving Kristol in his autobiography of neo-conservatism says the student revolt was a prime consideration in shifting his sentiments from liberalism to conservatism.

I hope somebody better versed than me does a study on it. Did they really think Mario Savio, H. Rap Brown, and the SDS were going to bring the System down?

There was the creeping menace of communism to contend with.

Plus the white women had to be protected, because changes to the status quo would have encouraged Mandingo to whip it out. You saying that Kristol would have won that contest?

Jesus, how many thin skinned conservatives are there who had a bad experience with a protester/activist 20-30 years ago and that set them on an intractable path? Get over it!