Word: assertion
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pervasive. It has already drawn into its influence some who started as New Leftists and have gradually become Marxists. In addition, Marxism's most interesting area of opportunity lies among highly educated people in advanced countries, notably the U.S. The slogans of their rebellion against various social evils assert that they wish to change society. But underneath the surface, what is being resisted is often change itself, change that has no obvious meaning and no clearly understood direction. As the U.S. enters the "postindustrial age," the bitter questions about the future, the nostalgia for the past-all the 19th...
...injustices which pervade our society or state policies. Some were unhappy about acts or statements of members of the University administration or governing boards, or impatient with what they regard as the slowness or bias of procedures for the redress of grievance. Some felt a deep urge to assert their solidarity with those who had taken a grave and perilous step and to establish a community in the midst of what many students deem a cold and impersonal University. Such motives were, on the whole, honorable and sometimes noble. However, the act itself--joining the forcible occupation of University Hall...
Even if one believes that the ends justified the means, those who today assert that the seizure produced worth-while results might realize that the costs themselves were too high. These results, insofar as they are due to force, derive at least as much from the shock of the bust as from that of the seizure. In the wake of these shocks, what put the place together again and made it move forward was a generalized and passionate display of the good uses of reason: colloquia, meetings, discussion, negotiations, most of which proved constructive and orderly. Surely the price paid...
This statement goes on to assert, in terms which could not be more disingenuous, the responsiveness of Harvard administration and faculty to student demands: "There can be no doubt of their desire to understand the pressures of war, social unrest, poverty, racial discrimination, and the rise of impersonal political institutions on Harvard students-as indeed on students everywhere...
...threat of violence, both of which would presumably remain subject to severe sanctions. It is obviously impossible to predict that such an accommodation would work, or even that there would be a serious effort to find one and make it work. All that it is possible to assert with some confidence is that without tacit concessions and explorations by both sides, Harvard and other universities will indeed cease to be places where one can learn or teach anything beyond whatever simple techniques the prevailing political orthodoxy requires. Barrington Moore, Jr. Lecturer on Sociology