Across the country, students are occupying university campuses and decrying their own schools. Chaos has unfolded at numerous universities. As authorities attempt to control the protest, criticism has mounted over perceived excessive force. The upcoming Democratic Party Convention in Chicago promises to be marked by radical demonstrations. The year was 1968.
In 2024, we are witnessing a similar wave of mass occupation-style protests on college campuses, including Princeton, where an encampment calling itself the “Popular University for Gaza” currently occupies McCosh Courtyard. Unsurprisingly, these activists frequently invoke past campus protests – not just those of the 1960s, but also later movements for ethnic studies and divestment from South Africa. Earlier this week, for example, Larry Hamm ‘78, a leader in the movement to divest from South Africa, addressed Princeton’s encampment. The animating hope of this wave of youth activism is “We’ve done it before; we can do it again.” Who can blame them? The successes of the 1960s and beyond created the precedent for this type of protest to succeed. But just because a movement has succeeded before does not make that initial precedent true or right.
What happened to American campuses in the 1960s was the same as what happened to German universities in the 1930s – they abandoned their commitment to the pursuit of truth. While the social goals of the two eras were different, the fundamental shift in the conception of the university was the same. Education towards truth and teaching what is valuable and beautiful seemed hopelessly anachronistic and repressive. All that was left was the passion of the masses and the Will to Power. In Heidegger’s infamous 1933 Rectoral Address at Freiburg University, he praised the student-led imposition of Nazi Law on the university:
Out of the resoluteness of the student body…comes a will to the essence of the university. This will is a true will in that the student body, through the new Student Law, places itself under the law of its own essence and in this way for the first time determines that essence. To give the law to oneself is the highest freedom. The much-celebrated “academic freedom” is being banished from the university; for this freedom was not genuine, since it was only negative. It meant primarily freedom from concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth the bond and service of the German student will unfold from this truth.
For Heidegger, conserving the age-old conception of the mission of university as the pursuit of truth did not matter. The “essence of the university” was a matter of the popular will, to shape and decide as they saw fit. “Do we, or do we not, will the essence of the university?” he asked. “It is up to us whether, and to what extent, we concern ourselves with self-examination and self-assertion not just casually, but penetrating to their very foundations, or whether – with the best of intentions – we only change old arrangements and add new ones.” The power of the will rests with the student body. Concluding his speech, Heidegger remarked, “The young and the youngest strength of the people, which already reaches beyond us, has by now decided the matter.” The decision was already made by the popular will of the students, and they chose fascism.
A little over thirty years later, the same shift occurred in the United States. University administrators caved to student demands – consider the 1969 takeover of Cornell. As a result, the Marcusian radicals of the 60s gradually became the elite class, filling professorships at the same elite institutions they once protested. Yet their ideology remained. The pursuit of truth was out, the Will to Power was in.
Across higher education today, students learn critical theory, decolonization, antiracism, and postcolonial theory. The world through this lens is a black-and-white dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed. The all-powerful “System” is to be endlessly critiqued, overthrown, and re-constituted by the resolute will of those on the “right side of history.”
In November 2022, Eleanor Clemans-Cope ‘26 published an article in the Prince, This year, Princeton must admit more activists, calling on the university to build an activist community of students, explicitly admitting students based on their social engagement rather than their academic or artistic talents. The following spring, she published an op-ed calling for the then-incoming class of 2027 to engage in activism at and against the university. This week, in response to the occupation of McCosh Courtyard, the Prince published a project on student activism, featuring a range of student voices advocating increased activism among the student body.
Many peer institutions already follow this advice. Elite schools across the country admit students for their social activism, seeing it as a great boon to the student community. In 2017, a self-described “unapologetic progressive activist first and foremost” from Princeton, NJ, was admitted to Stanford after writing “#BlackLivesMatter” 100 times for an application essay. And yet, the rationale that student activism benefits the student community can only rest upon one underlying assumption: that the essence of the university is not truth-seeking, but something decided and constituted by the will of the student body – orienting the institution towards whatever social change it so decides.
Why should universities be surprised at the mass protests of 2024? Why should they be surprised when student leaders call for the mass murder of Zionists? Why should they be surprised when students occupy campuses and wave Hezbollah flags to “decolonize” the university? American higher education has taught students to hate the “oppressor,” to advocate for decolonization, to be unrepentant in their long march, and to see Jews as less than human. You reap what you sow, and American universities are now reaping the effects of the Heideggerian turn of the 1960s. The perpetual problem for the left is that the popular will of the masses is uncontainable. A movement, once started, is unstoppable. Yesterday’s revolutionaries are tomorrow’s conservatives; the Montagnards will always replace the Girondins in everlasting continuous revolution.
It is a time for choosing, and Princeton must lead the way. What is the mission of the university and the place of students in it? Shall we attempt to preserve the truth-seeking mission of higher education, in which students have the privilege and responsibility to seek truth and knowledge? Or shall we continue another generational cycle of chaining the university to the will of students who would constitute the university towards revolution instead of truth? The choice is ours.
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