Political critic Tom Hayden gives lecture at UR http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/news/ci_13614336
By MATT GUILHEM, Staff Writer Posted: 10/22/2009 REDLANDS - The man considered "the single greatest figure of the 1960s student movement," Tom Hayden, gave a lecture Wednesday night at the University of Redlands as part of the university's ASUR Convocation and Lecture series. Hayden served 18 years in the California legislature, has written 13 books, interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, and was arrested in 1968 as part of the "Chicago Seven." With a resume of activism and political critique spanning 40 years, Hayden described himself at Tuesday's event as "an accidental activist." The lecture he delivered Tuesday night focused on social justice, peace, and the strategies employed by the United States in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A main point of Hayden's lecture was the cost of a strategy known as "the long war." "`The long war' is a doctrine at the Pentagon which outlines a 50-year war over an `arc of crisis,' " Hayden said. "The current long war began with 9/11 and the Iraq War; it's a sequence of small wars in the context of a larger, ongoing conflict." Hayden said the first "long war" in what he considers a cycle was the Cold War; it acted as the larger background for conflicts in Korea and the Vietnam War. After outlining the doctrine, Hayden discussed the human toll and the ideological and financial cost of what sustaining a 50-year conflict would be. "Money is printable but not elastic," Hayden said. "Cost is like a curtain over you and you don't know who the man behind the curtain is." Hayden concluded by critiquing the current state of affairs by touching on the relationship between domestic and foreign policy and the ever-rising cost of higher education. "If there is to be a resumption of protests like in the '50s or '60s, I think it's going to be for the ever-increasing price of college tuition," Hayden said. Following the lecture, Hayden took questions from the audience, ranging from how one can balance activism between various causes to how the abolishment of the draft could have played a role in empowering the current war machine. "We bring a number of outspoken speakers to campus - it helps to broaden the dialogue on campus and in the classrooms," UR associate dean of campus diversity Leela MadhavaRau wrote in an e-mail. "There is no need for all members of an audience to agree with everything that a speaker says," MadhavaRau wrote. "Indeed, it is often best for dialogue for there to be levels of disagreements. It is through such conversations that university students learn to discuss and debate issues of global importance." . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
