A friend of mine was a history grad student at Columbia at the time, and she talked to the sitters in. She said they were mostly careerists with no political agenda beyond their own advancement. Still, I'd say that broadening the curriculum and diversifying the faculty are worthy goals in themselves - do you disagree?
Me:
I give you an example of the principle-where achieving an "academic victory" was demonstrably a higher priority than a real victory-an you change the subject to whether the academic victory was "a good thing." My answer (to the non-sequitur), maybe a good thing but in any case small potatoes, and it does not dispute my larger point.
You didn't ask for more examples, but the subject of Yale came up and I thought I'd add one from here to complement Wotjek's stories from JHU. As most people know, the grad student union here has been attempting to organize here for some years in the face of tremendous hostility from the administration. Much of the hostility has been channeled through department heads and faculty members some of whom have gone so far as to threaten to withhold letters of recommendation from students who engage in organizing for GESO. Included in this latter group are several of the university's better known "leftists." Similarly, a faculty support committee for GESO was formed last year to attempt to push the university to take a neutral stand toward the union. If you want, I will be happy to attach an email list of its members. You will discover a large fraction of self described progressive Yale faculty members, even some who describe themselves as "Marxists," to be absent from this list.
These are the same faculty members who are invested in investigating the minutiae of Marxism and regard their having achieved appointments or tenure at Yale, correctly in fact, as a major academic victory.
If you want to read a nice account of all this, have a look at Robert Johnston's article on the subject in the Chronice of Higher Ed. a while back.
Incidentally, none of this should be taken as an indication of despair, rather I find it encouraging that class lines are finally matching up with class politics. In other words, the cops are showing their true colors. This is a good thing.
John