Bleak Futures: Is Despair Also Driving University Protests?

UCLA students protest the Israel-Hamas conflict, on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles on April 25, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Commentary

For a moment, put aside the politics of the university student protests. Look back to your own youth.

At least in America, rebellion is common. Kids have a lot of pent up energy. Those who go to college are smarter and have more energy than their peers. There always have been “town vs. gown” struggles. In 1355 the St. Scholastica’s Day Riot struck Oxford University. Oxford History records show it involved “the death of 62 Oxford scholars.”

Switching to America, in the 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-Vietnam War protests commonly turned into riots, as we have been reminded lately. When President Richard Nixon ended the military draft and pulled all troops out of Vietnam in 1973, the riots ended.

In 2024, the main objection of the protesters is to U.S. and university policies backing Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. But let’s look deeper.

The 1960s produced an economic boom that lasted until 1974. When the protesters graduated, they easily found jobs. Housing was cheap. Inflation was starting, but you could manage the higher prices with higher wages.

When I was at the University of Michigan and Hillsdale College in the 1970s, despite the Jimmy Carter “malaise” era, things still looked bright for anyone at a college or university. I recounted my own experience in “Hillsdale Is the Model: To Deal With Protests, Privatize Colleges and Universities College.”

College debt was low or nonexistent. Blue-collar jobs were declining with industry. But a college education in most fields would bring a paycheck shortly after graduation.

Then the 1980s brought President Ronald Reagan’s cuts in taxes and regulations, declining inflation, and an economic boom now even conceded by most liberals today.

Throughout that era, the Western cultural heritage remained strong, although it was fading. In 1987, Stanford University canceled its Western Civilization requirements after Rev. Jesse Jackson joined protesting Stanford students in chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” Today, as John Fonte wrote in February for the Hudson Institute, “Jackson and the student radicals have accomplished their goal. The study of Western civilization in any comprehensive and serious sense is indeed ‘gone’ in most of American higher education. The once requisite undergraduate Western Civilization class has been sidelined with elective (and sometimes required) courses in ethnic, gender, queer, multicultural, and post-colonial studies. The foundations of American constitutional democracy are not required study for our young citizens.”

An effective nihilism reigns. And the students at Stanford and other elite schools the past 37 years have seized control of the universities, public schools, government, and even many churches.

Now look at what kids face:

• $1.7 trillion student loan debt;
• $783,666 average price of a home in California, according to Zillow;
• $974,105 the average price for a home in Los Angeles, where USC and UCLA are located;
• 20 percent-plus inflation since 2021, when President Joe Biden came into office;
• 5.3 percent California unemployment in March, probably rising in coming months;
• $6,084 yearly tuition at Cal State for in-state students, compared to $0 in 1968;
• $14,436 yearly tuition for in-state students at the University of California, compared to $0 in 1968;
• $35 trillion federal debt;
• $73 billion California deficit for fiscal year 2024-25, which begins on July 1.

In addition to not suffering such problems, here are some other 1960s conditions that were much better:

• The traditional family still largely was intact, although fraying;
• Dad could support his wife and several children on one salary;
• Divorce still was fairly uncommon, although increasing;
• The manufacturing industry still was the world’s largest by far, supplying good, middle-class jobs;
• Manufacturing especially was strong Southern California, with its thriving aerospace industry;
• Silicon Valley was growing fast;
• California’s public schools were the envy of the nation. Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs received good math and science educations;
• California’s population soared from 16 million in 1960 to 20 million in 1980s, a 25 percent jump.

Certainly there were problems. The civil rights movement brought major riots to many cities including Watts in Los Angeles in 1965, Detroit in 1967, and throughout the country in 1968 after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The Vietnam War was a noble cause to prevent the communist conquest of South Vietnam. But it was badly mismanaged from the start. That gave the left wing on campuses an excuse to launch their anti-American protests, including riots and burning the American flag. Most of the kids were just joining the general atmosphere of anarchy. But when they wiped the tear gas from their eyes, they were not punished, and were even celebrated.

The worst radicals of the day actually rose into prominence in society. Bill Ayers, a terrorist and former leader of the “communist revolutionary group” Weather Underground—which bombed government buildings to protest U.S. policies—later became an influential radical education theorist, professor, and adviser to future President Barack Obama.

Kathy Boudin, a founding member of Weather Underground, was convicted of felony murder and spent 23 years in prison for her role in a 1981 robbery. After being paroled, she became a professor at Columbia University. Is there any surprise Columbia again is a center of revolutionary protests? She died in 2022.

Her son is Chesa Boudin. He was the radical, soft-on-crime district attorney in San Francisco until voters recalled him in 2022 as the city suffered a crime wave. He was too leftist even for that left-wing city.

Finally, the technology of today is much different from 1968. The internet, launched in 1969, has provided incredible resources to everyone. It also has produced such plagues as kids staring at their smartphones all day instead of running around and playing, TikTok and other social media corrupting young minds, and pornography available even to elementary school children.

Cell phones also make it much easier to organize the campus protests, then provide immediate videos of what’s happening.

Like all generations, kids these days somehow will survive and take their place in society. But it’s too bad the adults aren’t giving them a more solid foundation on which to go forward.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.