If that’s all your saying then, sure — if one is calling for a completely democratic process then you shouldn’t presume that you get to determine the outcome of that process (though of course you can continue to lobby for a particular outcome). As far as I can tell, though, the TBNYU folks aren’t calling for democracy or even something formally resembling it, simply for increased representation (a single elected student representative, even with voting rights, couldn’t determine anything on their own). I agree that it is unwieldy to yoke demands for amity with Gaza institutions and students, to demands about tuition and financial aid, to demands for formal student representation to the board of trustees, etc. It’s also understandable given the necessity of coalition politics and the absence of systems of formal representation. It’s not philosophically inconsistent to say, “We want to have a formal voice in decision making” and also say “We want you to make these decisions.”

My guess is that part of your discomfort with TBNYU’s approach comes down to the frame of “demands,” and the nature of the authority they claim to make such demands. I sympathize with this while at the same time not being entirely sure how else they’re supposed to do it. There are good reasons why transient undergrad students should not get to determine long-term policy at their institution, but minimal student representation and increased transparency from a quasi-public institution seem like very little to ask. I suspect that NYU will not grant the student representative under the “give em an inch” principle, but doing so would at least give the administration a reasonable answer to the “what are we supposed to do” question. And of course, as you suggest, the elected student rep would then have the opportunity to turn around and vote against amity with Gaza or contract negotiations with TAs.

Why shouldn’t I have a dog in the fight? Don’t you? Surely you have the talent and temperament to converse civilly with those who have bet on the opposite dog. Or to put it differently: if you don’t, who does?

Believe what you will – though I can assure you, without even Googling, that the word ‘activist’ is not found in the collected works of George Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

I appreciate the anguish of those who, trained in the carefully manicured version of history that the official information services force-feed the intelligent but unwary youth who spend $200K on an education, suddenly discover that all of actual history (before 1922) is free and a click away.

That said, Google’s indexing of these old books is truly wonderful. It’s almost as if they have applied their PageRank algorithm to historical citations, though that would be a technical challenge of insane proportions. And in fact, I did find Halifax’s Character in exactly that way – I was googling “trimmer” to find a period description of this now-lost term of political abuse. (Sadly, we have long since forgotten that a statesman could be anything other than a trimmer.)

But although I am by no means an expert on 17th-century English politics, the essay is so famous that even I had heard of it – I forget where. I am pretty sure it is his most famous work. And, unlike Barack Obama, Halifax was a writer of real talent.

Still, it would be a pity if the mere fact that I brought it up were to keep you from an essay which is (a) one of the classics of political writing in English, and (b) I have every confidence will speak directly to you. Try it.

And while I’m recommending books, let me put in a vote for Beveridge’s tragically unfinished Lincoln biography, which I’m currently reading for the second time. It is one of the only two Lincoln biographies I know which is neither hagiography nor demonology – the other being Edgar Lee Masters’ Lincoln the Man. Sadly, both of these just missed the 1922 cutoff, and so are available only in your local library. But they, too, will not disappoint.

I do need to find out more about L’Estrange, who is also mentioned (as Google will tell you) in Defoe’s Shortest-Way with the Dissenters. You’d probably enjoy reading that, as well, although you are unlikely to find yourself agreeing with it as do I. It turns out that people have had dogs in this particular fight for quite some time.

I mean, really. What would Saul Alinsky think of this list? “Rules for Moderates?” Has history ever recorded such a thing as a moderate, reasonable radical, whose first priority is to be fair and intellectually honest? In individual cases, surely – but as a herd? Isn’t this a case of attempting to produce salt-free salt?

Professor Burke’s goal, to put it bluntly, is to design an activism which is not evil. Surely he has known many activists, among them of course himself, who are decent, fair and reasonable people. But I fear he is mistaking a passive ingredient for the active one.

Activism succeeds because activists – in service, of course, to the greater good – are willing to do evil deeds. Activism attracts new recruits because activism succeeds. Activism without evil, therefore, is dead and ceases to exist, or at best will be replaced by a hilarious, institutionalized, bureaucratic parody of itself. (Everyone should watch that NYU clip. It’s funny as hell. Don’t taze me, bro! I got rights!)

And surely the good Professor has read Halifax’s Character of a Trimmer – perhaps the earliest statement in the English language of the great principle of moderation. The modern observer notes, however, that Halifax’s vital center isn’t exactly the same vital center as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr’s. It’s not exactly to the left of it, either. Halifax was a great man and a great writer – but I think I know what Roger L’Estrange would make of the matter.

Let’s say you decide that the problem is that you need a partially or all-elected board of trustees, that it’s wrong that a non-representative body serve as the final arbiter of decisions. Then it’s equally wrong to be sure in advance that an elected body will back whatever the position is that you came into the fight with. When the specific issue remains first and foremost in your thoughts, it’s too tempting to arrange a procedural reform so as to guarantee you a substantive victory. Not to mention that shifting to process is often just a b.s. move, an attempt to keep the flame burning when people disagree with you in a sustained way.

There is probably no way to give student activists advice without sounding condescending, but that’s no reason not to do it. While I was an undergrad at Macalester College in the early 1990s, there was a faculty fight over the future of the January term. Students were generally in favor of keeping it and editorials in the student paper began to angrily criticize those faculty who were identified with ending it. One of the identified faculty advocates for keeping the J-term took the time to write a letter to the paper pointing out that there were elements of the debate that students might be unaware of, and defending their colleagues and ability of professors to argue in good faith without becoming The Enemy. The tone of the letter was perceived by many students to be chiding and snippy, but its point was respected and the general tenor of student debate changed afterward.

There are also different kind of advice that faculty can give. Tactical advice might be useful in a few situations, though in general I would agree that students should be allowed to make their own mistakes and that a college campus is one of the safest places to learn by doing. The more useful but more difficult piece of advice would be of the “Here, from my perspective, is what you may not know or understand about this particular situation” variety. This is usually impossible to give because of privacy concerns and conflicting professional responsibilities. It’s also why most campus activism, particularly around issues most immediate to students, like hiring and tenure decisions, are doomed from the start.

Which brings me to the part where I strongly disagree with your #6: Questions of process pretty much always arise in the course of responding to specific issues. Asking student groups to go back and start over separately on the process front is both unreasonable and asking them to jettison any momentum that they’ve built up. More than this, students are in the unfortunate position of being encouraged to think of themselves as citizens of a particular community, while remaining politically rightless. This is a tension that never resolves well (even for youth, who are generally willing to tolerate more of this than most citizens). Student governments generally have no formal power. How many institutions have even non-voting student representation in their board of governors/trustees meetings? In such a situation it is entirely predictable that mundane issues of institutional policy will escalate into student occupations, because they don’t have any formal access to institutional authority.

But, on the other hand, most good teaching involves some conflation of those roles: you’re always speaking simultaneously as a person who has lived life, acquired expertise *and* as citizen of the institution.

1) There’s the question of what role we’re playing. Depending on exactly what the students are protesting, we are interacting with them in this context either as fellow-citizens, or as fellow-members of the campus community. It may not be a good idea to get that mixed up with our role as teachers.

2) Some of us would have to keep in mind what we’re really qualified and able to teach. You, from what you’ve said on this blog, have substantial personal experience with activism at the undergraduate level, and really would know what you were talking about.

I, on the other hand, wouldn’t – what little experience I’ve had was in very different contexts, some of it in another country. My first response to a student who asked me about how to be an effective activist would be that they would probably be better off asking someone else. N.B. students, like many other members of the general public, are quite capable of attributing vast general knowledge on any subject under the sun to anyone called a “professor”, without realizing just how specialized we are, so there is a danger here.