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So last night, in the final question of the final debate, the presidential candidates finally got around to discussing education. A full debate transcript is available here, and I’ve cut-and-pasted the higher education portions of their answers behind the cut.
I’m going to be giving a keynote address at the fall conference of the Minnesota State College Student Association this weekend, and one of the things I’ll be talking about is the effect of voting rights on the history of American student activism.
Until the passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971, the voting age in the US was 21, which means that throughout the huge waves of campus activism of the 1930s and 1960s, the vast majority of American college students were denied the vote on the basis of their age.
The effect of this disfranchisement on the course of student activism has received little attention in most histories of American student protest, and the effect of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment on the course of later activism still less. It’s a topic I devote a bit of attention to in my dissertation, and one I’m looking forward to discussing with the folks in Minneapolis.
If Bill Ayers’ name is brought up in tonight’s presidential debate, don’t be too surprised if someone mentions another radical opponent of the war in Vietnam, David Ifshin.
Ifshin, a campus protest leader who was elected student government president at Syracuse University in 1969-70 and the president of the National Student Association in 1970-71, visited North Vietnam in December of 1970 to promote a “People’s Peace Treaty” calling for an end to the war.
While he was there, he recorded a speech attacking the war, saying that the US was not fighting “for democracy or to defend the right of the people, but … to murder the people of Vietnam in order to make South Vietnam into one large US military base.” That speech was later broadcast as propaganda directed at American troops, including POW John McCain.
So why would anyone mention Ifshin tonight? Well, it’s a long and strange story, but the short version is that Ifshin came to regret giving that speech, and eventually became active in Democratic party politics. He and McCain met in the mid-1980s — at an AIPAC conference, of all places — and became friends. Ifshin died of cancer in 1996, and McCain delivered a eulogy at his funeral, saying that Ifshin had “always felt passionate about his country,” and “always tried to do justice to others.”
David Ifshin and John McCain forged a friendship that was grounded in a belief in redemption and forgiveness. John McCain may very well draw a distinction between Ifshin and Ayers tonight, and if he doesn’t, it’s just possible that Barack Obama will draw a parallel between the two.
Via Bitch PhD and Inside Higher Ed comes word of new directives on political speech sent out by the ethics office of the University of Illinois system to all university employees.
According to the directives, university employees are not permitted to engage in the following activities “while working, when on University property, while using University resources … or when acting as a representative of the University”:
- Preparing for or participating in any rally or event related to a specific political candidate, party, or referendum – this includes preparation and circulation of campaign materials, petitions, or literature
- Soliciting contributions or votes on behalf of a particular political party or candidate
- Assisting at the polls on behalf of any political party, candidate, or organization
- Surveying or conducting an opinion poll related to anticipating an election outcome, or participating in a recount challenge related to an electionoutcome
- Running for political office
The message goes on to say that wearing pins or t-shirts that support specific candidates or parties, “distributing, producing, or posting flyers or other campaign literature on campus,” conducting voter registration work that is identified with a particular candidate, displaying partisan bumper sticker’s on one’s car, and attending on-campus political rallies, even on one’s own time, are all prohibited activities.
Discussion of these regulations has so far focused on their effect on faculty free speech, but they are explicitly identified as applying to all university employees, including professional and non-professional staff. On their face, the rules would appear to apply to student employees of the university as well — did the university really mean to suggest that if you work as an RA or in a dining hall or staffing the check-out desk in the library a few hours a week, you’re not allowed to wear an Obama pin to class or attend a rally for a local candidate?
We’ll be following this story.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has outed Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s chief speechwriter as a former “radical student activist.”
According to the Daily Mail‘s report, speechwriter Kirsty McNeill, 28, was the president of the Oxford Student Union during her undergraduate days, “devoting herself to leading sit-ins and mass protests” against Tony Blair, Mr. Brown’s immediate predecessor as head of the Labor party.
She was, the paper said, a protest organizer for the “Campaign For Free Education – an alliance of hard-Left causes that united in opposition to tuition fees” at Britain’s universities.
studentactivism.net 
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