John Silber was also a good friend of the Kennedys, especially Ted--something we should remember in the light of all the dirty politics that went on in university departments in the Seventies, especially at the end. He may have the reputation of a madman now, but I think he was regarded by his peers in academia as a glorified saint while he was alive. His exaltation reflected the purge mentality that existed after the Sixties--the vindictive rage of superficially "liberal" academics against those who, as they claimed, had (horrors) politicized the University.
It's the same ill-concealed rage that informs the Harper's Cancel Culture nonsense. As I think our libertarian friend Greenwald put it, this is the outrage of the reputationally secure against the very idea that anybody could criticize them seriously at all, let alone do so angrily or to any purpose. The bland complaints conceal a seething rage to do actual harm to somebody. Things got a lot worse when, I think by '75 or so, the anti-sixties purge mentality linked up with the continuing insanely inflated recruitment of serious graduate students and the resulting crash of the academic job market. I haven't seen a lot written on this--my impression is that it's something of an untold story, though I'm not sure exactly whose story it is or what the main story should be. But the ghost of Silber and what he represented brooded over more than SDS and the Progressive Labor Party. There was a one-two punch that led directly to the Eighties and to now, somehow, if one could only tease the narrative out starting with the Nixon Recession and the disillusionment that followed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#2267): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/2267 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77325238/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
