The Sacred Fetish of Academic Freedom

The Transition #2

Read Part One here

The Sixties were a time of rebellion - to some. In the US, Germany, Britain and France, members of a younger generation sought to challenge the authority of the establishment and offer a different vision of the world. They were counter-cultural, and unpopular, even among most of their own cohort.

The campaign for racial equality went against centuries of ingrained prejudice and almost timeless assumptions about black inferiority. The fight for gay rights was even more revolutionary; sex between men had been illegal in England since the time of Henry VIII but Church prohibitions against it were far older, going to the very roots of early Christian teaching.

On the issue of female emancipation, most American society was unsympathetic to feminism. Before the late 1960s the percentage of women enjoying professional careers was small, and liberation came up against widespread opposition from both men and women: only a tiny number of American females supported what are now mainstream feminist positions. Christopher Caldwell observed that ‘In October 1971, it asked women how often they felt that “being a woman has prevented me from doing some of the things I had hoped to do in life.” Only 7 percent said “frequently”; 12 percent said “occasionally”; 79 percent said “hardly ever.”’ Between 63 and 65 per cent had never even heard of Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer or Kate Millett.

Well into the 1960s, even most young Americans were morally aligned with the old order. In a 1967 poll, 63 per cent agreed that there should be no sex before marriage, the same as the population at large. The vast majority of young people in 1969 had never smoked marijuana, and three-quarters supported the war in Vietnam. Over half of young Americans had voted for Richard Nixon or the pro-segregation George Wallace, and that number was actually higher for those who had attended college. If you remember the Sixties, then you were part of a relatively small minority.