Academic Order and the Humane Scale

Rioting students at Coimbatore, in Madras, recently burned alive two police inspectors—by way of protest against the Indian Government’s adoption of Hindi as the official language. At least American college students have not yet proceeded to quite such striking gestures. But clearly many of them are malcontent.

The “Free Speech” enthusiasts at the Berkeley campus of the University of California are some what absurd, since a higher degree of free speech has long prevailed there than at nearly any other American state university. Freedom of speech, actually, is not their real cause. The grievance which the Berkeley demonstrators more deeply feel is the inhumane scale of the mass campus. They denounce “The Machine”—which, like Luddites, they would break.

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Russell Kirk

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Rioting students at Coimbatore, in Madras, recently burned alive two police inspectors—by way of protest against the Indian Government’s adoption of Hindi as the official language. At least American college students have not yet proceeded to quite such striking gestures. But clearly many of them are malcontent.

The “Free Speech” enthusiasts at the Berkeley campus of the University of California are some what absurd, since a higher degree of free speech has long prevailed there than at nearly any other American state university. Freedom of speech, actually, is not their real cause. The grievance which the Berkeley demonstrators more deeply feel is the inhumane scale of the mass campus. They denounce “The Machine”—which, like Luddites, they would break.