Submitted to a Candid World

This morning, a forty-eight hour “sit in” orchestrated by “Take Back NYU!” (around a fairly schizophrenic agenda) ended in suspensions and the loss of campus housing (“rustication,” for you Rice alums) for the organization’s ringleaders. This despite generous offers of clemency from the NYU administration, who throughout the “occupation” treated TBNYU with greater respect than they were almost certainly due.

The response among the NYU community has been fairly and resoundingly negative, as students and administrators across the political spectrum criticize TBNYU for resorting to methods that bordered on incitement to riot, and left one NYU security officer in the hospital. In fact, apart from the excellent reporting by NYU Local’s Charlie Eisenhood – truly a triumph of modern journalism – it’s hard to find anything to praise in this private little war. Not only did TBNYU allow the situation to escalate far beyond any measure of proportionality, but they hypocritically abandoned their own guiding principle (“openness”) by zealously keeping any journalists out of their private discussions.

In making sense of such wanton and wasteful violence, I suggest we try to look for some silver lining by reading TBNYU’s abortive “occupation” as a cautionary example of what NOT to do in political movements. Among America’s youth, there’s a justifiable sense of optimism now, that concerned and active citizens can do anything – even elevate a liberal black man to the U.S. presidency, despite the nation’s lingering racism and staunchly conservative elements. But just because we can doesn’t always mean we should.

There are certainly causes in the world worth fighting for, and good ways to fight for them. But TBNYU, in its frantic lashing about for a raison d’etre, didn’t seem to hit on a good cause, and certainly didn’t approach it with anything resembling tact. Nothing is accomplished by violence, and save for those few circumstances when it matters most (like the civil rights movement), little is accomplished by large-scale, grandiose protests. In a way, we as a nation are still paying for right-wing backlash solicited by what became a liberal overreach of the late 1960s-’70s. Liberalism is just becoming relevant again: it’d be a shame to blow it so early by going right back to where we left off in the ’70s.

Then again, maybe I’m getting old. “I once believed in causes too, had my pointless points of view…”

1) I prefer the Angry Young Man song that Tommy Shaw wrote for Styx.
2) “Nothing is accomplished by violence” isn’t just a platitude, it’s a platitude that’s wrong both factually and (in my opinion) morally. Violence is a tool that properly applied can solve problems with the utmost of efficacy. To quote D.A. Clarke: “When the winners exterminate the losers, historical conflicts are permanently solved. …A dead rapist will not commit any more rapes; he’s been solved.” Not to mention, as she pointed out quite rightly, non-violence only works on a political level when it’s as an alternative to a very real threat of violence. King was only able to accomplish anything because negotiating with his crowd was the only way whites could keep blacks from listening to X and Newton en masse. Gandhi wouldn’t have accomplished anything if he’d faced a more violent occupying power – I think Turtledove’s right that if Britain had been defeated by Germany, Gandhi’s peaceful methods would have resulted in lots of dead Indians and no independence. Violence worked wonders for the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, it did wonders for the world in the 1770s and 1780s, and for the world again in the 1940s. Violence isn’t the best solution – or even necessarily a solution – to every problem, but it is a viable solution to many problems. Sometimes it even is the best solution – because the only thing that can prevent or put an end to unjust violence… is just violence.

Comment by Steve February 20, 2009 @ 6:16 pm

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I’ll agree with you to a point: there’s no way to deal with some things but with violence. The 20th century proved that very well. But in American student protests, violence is not ever an answer.

Comment by Ames February 20, 2009 @ 8:43 pm

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Oh, I agree with you, violence is wholly inappropriate as a part of plausible American student protests. I just think that’s a matter of failing to meet the proportionality, just cause, or probability of success criteria out of just war theory, not of violence being per se invalid – which is what I (perhaps unfairly) interpreted the original post to be saying.

Comment by Steve February 20, 2009 @ 10:19 pm

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[...] at Submitted to a Candid World has a couple of very good articles about the situation with TBNYU, with this nice summary of the ridiculousness: American South, [...]

Pingback by Wilf’s Blog » Take Back NYU February 21, 2009 @ 8:50 pm

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