Whatever your view of the events and issues surrounding the historic takeover of Willard Straight Hall 30 years ago, one thing today is certain: Donald Alexander Downs' book Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University (Cornell University Press, 1999) is one of the best-selling titles at the Campus Store this year.
"We've sold almost 200 copies so far," said Emily Gray, book department manager, last week. "[And] there's a lot of interest from students."
About 20 copies were sold at Monday night's University Faculty Forum, "Cornell 1969: Key Issues Then and Now" (see related story), and Cornell University Press says the book has had orders from other university bookstores as well as from major chains and is off to a good start.
Alumnus Downs '71 was an undergraduate at Cornell during a tumultuous period that epitomized and catalyzed many of the social, political, intellectual and human rights issues that were wracking the nation and its campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today Downs is a professor of political science, law, journalism and mass communications at the University of Wisconsin.
Released this year, prior to the 30th anniversary of the event on Parents Weekend in April 1969, Downs' book has helped contribute to an ongoing dialogue among administrators, faculty and students about where Cornell is today in relation to those watershed events and, more importantly, where it is going.
How much Downs' book has stirred the Cornell community can be seen through such efforts as Monday's Faculty Forum, in which Downs participated.
Filled with facts from the period and thoroughly researched, Downs' book is not just a scholarly effort at social history, it is, in fact, an argument, presenting an opinion, and one that is not shared by all readers.
Downs' basic argument is that academic freedom was subverted by a defiant, potentially violent group of students with a specific political and social agenda. While churning out one illuminating fact after another, Downs inexorably leads to his thesis that the crises of April 1969 at Cornell marked the failure of liberalism in the face of force.
"The litmus test of liberal principles is the tolerance of dissent, which the movements of 1969 did not foster," Downs said last week.
Not everyone sees it that way. Which may be one reason why sales are brisk.
Editors at the Cornell University Press anticipated a good run of the book, printing several thousand copies and releasing it in February.
"The press's expectations for the book are high," said Peter Agree, Cornell Press editor, "because we have confidence that individuals who care about the evolution of race relations, the preservation of academic freedom, the efficacy of affirmative action policies and the social role of the American research university will find much to ponder and reflect upon in Cornell '69."
Cornell President Emeritus Dale Corson, who was provost during the takeover and was named president when then-President James Perkins resigned that summer, concurs, although he has been critical of Downs' harsh portrayal of Perkins.
"Downs does an extraordinary job of documenting, in exhaustive detail, the biggest crisis in Cornell history. Every participant in the crisis, no matter what his/her position, will learn things he/she never knew before by reading this book," Corson says on the book's jacket. "Every student of the campus crises of the '60s and '70s will see here, in stark perspective, how the issues played out at Cornell."
Professor James Turner, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell, finds fault with Downs' thesis, if not his journalism.
"I don't think he's effectively made the case that some problems in contemporary higher education really have their roots in the 1969 events at Cornell," Turner said. "And I think he underappreciates the vision of President James Perkins and the difficulty of what he was trying to do, without precedent. The marvel of the thing is that no one got hurt, there was no significant damage to property. We ought to celebrate the adroitness and sophistication of a leadership that was able to pilot the ship of the university through those very turbulent waters and not break up on the rocks."
Downs said he has gotten feedback from academics who have read the book who "thought I was too judgmental about the administration ... (but) they have all liked my defense of liberal principles of law and education."
J. Robert Cooke, Cornell dean of the faculty, sees Cornell '69 as an opportunity to stimulate rational discourse among faculty to "make this a better place to live and work."
Cooke, along with President Hunter Rawlings, were co-sponsors of the May 3 forum. A series of pilot discussions scheduled by the Faculty Senate's Campus Climate Committee and titled "Dialogues on Difference" also is under way.
Cooke has reiterated the hope that the Cornell community not "dwell upon the details of 30 years ago" and instead use Downs' book as a point of departure, "to focus on the important changes in diversity that have occurred at Cornell and discuss key issues that remain unresolved."
Which, Downs asserts, is one of the points of his book.
"I think the book is indeed a good point of departure -- that was the whole point," Downs said recently. "I dealt with some powerful and uncomfortable issues which needed to be engaged in the spirit of open discourse. This would be good for Cornell, any university and the country at large. I think we are at a point where taking liberal principles seriously is making a comeback. This would be good for everybody."
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