Graham Spanier, President of Penn State, Misguided on Millennial Activism

A commentary in this week's issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education by Graham Spanier, President of Penn State University, left me saddened. Once more, someone of the 1960s tries to reconcile their brand of activism in today's political world, and the attempt crashes and burns.

Spanier's first mistake can be found in this passage:

Did something happen to me when I hit 30? Did I change when I went over to the Dark Side of university administration? Or do I have good reason to be disappointed with the state of activism today?

Don't get me wrong. The last thing I need as a university president is to contend with more protests. Yet I've always felt there was something healthy about activism that is well informed, constructive, and aimed in the right direction.

[...]

As one who vividly recalls antiwar marches, the Kent State shootings, protests against apartheid, and the demand for civil rights, I marvel on the one hand at the silence of today's young people on major issues and on the other hand at the inadequate understanding of the issues that some students choose for protest.

Emphasis mine. Spanier here falls into the trap into which most former Boomer activists fall: he fails to understand that activism and protests are not one and the same. Boomers were loud, aggressive, and more emotional in their activism. So yes, activism was protests, sit-ins, and other bolder, obstructive ways of working against the system. Trusting authority was irrelevant to most Boomer activists -- they knew what they wanted, and they weren't going to stop until they got it. Most Boomers are congratulated and treated as heroes for forcing confrontation of contentious issues, and perhaps they should be. Young people forced progress on a variety of cultural issues, yielding the Civil Rights movement, the Sexual Revolution, the Anti-War Movement -- all because of the loud tactics of this generation.

Spanier's unwillingness to understand that activism as a whole does not require protests in order to be genuine is probably linked to an inability to understand that today's political and sociological environments require a strategic approach, not a tactical approach. Howe and Strauss, clear back in 2000, explained in Millennials Rising that the most productive and efficient time in the workplace and society would be right about now, when Millennial order-takers are coming of age, and Boomer order-givers are at the apex of their power. It's quite apparent that some ironic twist comes into play -- Boomers like Thomas Friedman, Sally Kohn, and now Spanier try to argue that today's young people should be more like them when they know full well they're the order-givers. To ask Millennials to fight against things like the war the Boomers got us in in the first place just isn't asking for a productive and forward-moving society. Environments change, and as Howe and Strauss so often point out, the dispositions of generational cohorts change too.

So while turbulent activism was the name of the game in 1968 when Spanier was 20, collaborative activism is in style today, as Spanier celebrates his 60th birthday. While several examples have been supplied on this blog, one example is Penn State's own "Rally at the Rotunda," a student-led initiative to support increased state appropriations to higher education by gathering for a ceremony at the statehouse, and then lobbying individual legislators to appropriate more money to Penn State University and the state system of higher education. Spanier's presence and heavy involvement make me suspect that he doesn't believe this to be a form of activism, or else he would have cited it in his commentary. But it is a form of activism, at least according to the Penn State student in charge of organizing at least one of these annual rallies:

CCSG Vice President George Khoury, one of the principal organizers of the Rally at the Rotunda, said his organization and others are trying to promote student activism everywhere.

"I feel that activism is everywhere, in different aspects," Khoury said. "At the moment, we're having a diversity summit for all 20 [Commonwealth Campus] locations. It's wonderful -- we have a record turnout."

This year, Livingston said CCSG sought to gain more faculty support for the rally by passing a resolution explaining the purpose of the demonstration to university staff, urging faculty to encourage student attendance and to overlook any absences for the day.

Pay attention to the middle paragraph -- Khoury equates a "summit" with activism -- yes, the times have changed.

You see, Millennials have to be collaborative, pragmatic, and conversational activists in order to make any progress, and this is, in part, due to the Baby Boomers' ideological inflexibility. If Millennials were to get into tactical wars with Boomers, the temperamental sensitivities of the elder generation would preclude them from agreeing to relinquish any decision-making power at all, because of hurt feelings. We've seen it all our lives on the national political stage, so we know it's true. Millennials, instead, have to be strategic in how they go about handling conflicts. Khoury himself speaks to this: "'The best thing is to always speak your mind, but always do it in a professional manner,' he said. 'Don't speak just to speak. If you cry wolf, people won't listen to you anymore.'

When it comes down to it, contemporary campus activists aren't misguided, as the title of the commentary suggests. The former Boomer activists, however, are.