"Ellen Schrecker shows how universities shaped the 1960s, and how the 1960s shaped them. Teach-ins and walkouts-in institutions large and small, across both the country and the political spectrum-were only the first actions that came to redefine universities as hotbeds of unrest for some and handmaidens of oppression for others. The tensions among speech, education, and institutional funding came into focus as never before-and the reverberations remain palpable today"--
Radical researchers need to use archives, but can often encounter problems with obtaining access to them. Currently, most of those problems are the result of cut-backs in the financing of non-profit instiutions and public higher education.
In the 1970s, I hung out with some molecular biologists at Harvard. Like the rest of our group of graduate students and young faculty members, they worked hard, worried about tenure and promotion, and partied a lot. But they were also busy setting up private companies. Little did we know that they were riding the crest of the corporate tsunami that has overwhelmed or, as Jennifer Washburn argues, deformed the nation's campuses. By infusing academic research with bottom-line concerns, these entrepreneurial ventures have, she claims, helped to transform American universities into commercial rather than educational institutions. Of course, American universities have always catered to outside interests. Public service was, after all, one of the principal justifications for establishing the country's state university system. Farmers, businesses, and state and local agencies all profited from academic research, but higher education's main client, at least since the Second World War, has been the federal government, the Defense Department in particular. As a result, national security considerations have often determined the kind of work that would get done on campus. Although Washington remains a major player, it now operates within an academic climate that has become increasingly permeated by corporate values.
