From: kowan@ai.mit.edu (Rich Cowan)
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 19:34:59 EDT
Subject: UCP interview: Break the Isolation on Campus

[Excerpted from _Guide to Uncovering the Right on Campus_, edited by
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Copyright 1994 University Conversion Project.

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"Break the Isolation on Campus"
Overcoming the 1980s legacy of right-wing student
repression

Interview With Doug C. by Jeremy Smith

[Doug C. edits DC SCAR News, a publication of the D.C.
Student Coalition against Apartheid and Racism, and helps
organize D.C. SCAR's campus chapter network.  During the
mid'80s, he was a founder of the Student Central American
Network of New England and the national student organizer for
the Committee in Solidarity of the People of El Salvador
(CISPES).
        Jeremy Smith co-chairs the Freedom Coalition at the
University of Florida, and is an editor of Prairie Fire
Progressive Student News-Journal.  He also serves on the
board of directors of the Civic Media Center in Gainesville,
Florida, a cooperative institution created to promote
alternative media.]

Jeremy:  During the 1980s, how did the right establish
itself on campus?

Doug:  One of Reagan's agendas was to crush the radical left
in this country.  One of his first actions when he took
office was Executive Order #12333, a decree granting the FBI
and CIA powers to spy and actively repress social organizing
in this country.  He legalized much of what had been
criticized in the COINTELPRO [FBI counterintelligence]
program in the 1960s and 1970s.  There was an emphasis on
destroying what was left of the radical underground in this
country, and also a mass projection of the conservative
Reagan revolution onto campuses.  That began when he took
office with attempts to tour administration officials on
college campuses, such as Al Haig, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and
Henry Kissinger.  All of them were chased off almost every
campus they went to because of the unpopularity of the Reagan
program.  So they switched strategies.
        The year following the invasion of Grenada, they decided to
have a mass projection of pro-interventionism on campuses, to
crystallize the idea that campuses are conservative now.
They designed a very slick campaign of having pro-
intervention rallies, flying in students who were supposedly
rescued from the university that they were attending in
Grenada to campuses around the US. holding pro-intervention
rallies, and then having all of them converge on the White
House for a press conference with Reagan just before the
election.  A few days before the Grenada solidarity rallies
were to occur, the plans were leaked.  After the U.S. Student
Association, the Democratic Socialists of America, and CISPES
received those plans, there were about 50 pro-intervention
rallies and about 95 anti-intervention rallies.  At each
campus where there was a pro-intervention rally, they were
outnumbered by about 10 to 1 by anti-intervention forces, and
literally run off several campuses.  That pretty much busted
their whole idea.  So they again adapted their strategies.
        First they beefed up the private intelligence gathering
networks such as the College Republicans, Students for a
Better America, and Young Americans for Freedom, whose agenda
was to disrupt and defund the left on campus, as well as to
build a conservative cadre on campuses.  They began funding
conservative papers and had a massive media campaign starting
in '85 and '86 about how conservative and apathetic students
were.  That was in direct retaliation to the massive activism
on campuses around South Africa.  The divestment campaigns in
1985 involved literally thousands of students.  Over 3000
students were arrested in 1985.

Jeremy:  What kinds of repression and harassment did
you see at that time?

Doug:  It's interesting to note that in 1985, the National
Association for College and University Attorneys organized a
conference entitled "Universities and South Africa:
Divestment and Campus Disruption," and it was attended by
several hundred attorneys as well as by representatives from
major U. S.. corporations, the State Department and the South
African embassy.  The focus was on how to disrupt and
discourage campus protest around South Africa.  Out of that
starting in the spring of '86, and especially in the fall of
'86 and '87, there was a major restructuring of the penal
codes regarding protesters on campuses around the country.
Part of the restructuring included providing for disciplinary
and academic punishments along with strictly legal
punishments.  Also, they began using video recorders and
stepped up surveillance and general harassment.
        The college right wing embraced that whole concept and
began using some very sophisticated means of disruption.  For
example, their numbers might be much smaller than the numbers
of divestment protesters or anti-CIA protesters, but each one
of them might have a huge sign, so in the media it would look
like there were equal numbers.  Once at the University of
Massachusetts, the Radical Student Union initiated a takeover
of the administration building regarding Reagan's policies,
and at the same time as that was going on the College
Republicans took over the office of the Radical Student
Union.

Jeremy:  I've got to give it to them, that's
brilliant.  I want to focus for a minute on the
specifics of the funding apparatus for the right-wing
papers and organizations on campus.

Doug:  The emphasis that the Reagan and Bush administrations
put on campus organizing was massive.  Certainly, there were
legal aspects like at the conference I just described, but
the budget given to, for example, the College Republicans,
was at $120,000 in 1980.  In 1985, that was increased to
$750,000.  They were sponsoring trainings of thousands of
conservative activists to go hack to their campuses and
disrupt the left.  In 1985, the Institute for Educational
Affairs (now the Madison Center) invested $400,000 to support
60 alternative campus papers covering most of the nation's
leading schools.  While some of them were projecting a more
or less legitimate conservative viewpoint, most of them were
rabidly right-wing, and dedicated to trashing CISPES and
peace and justice organizations.
        Many in the rabid campus right of the mid-eighties went on
to serve the Reagan and Bush administrations, the CIA,
Accuracy in Academia (AIA), et cetera.  Rob Jennings was a
Young Republican at UMass, and he's working at the AIA now,
and making lots of money.  There's a lot of support for youth
on the right, while on the left, you have generational
splits, and a very strong lack of recognition of the
possibilities and the role that students play.  You take any
national demonstration and it's very clear - invariably
students are a third to two thirds of the people present and
yet they're totally unrecognized.  If they're organized and
preparing for that, such as in '85 at a South African/Central
American demonstration, we were able to get a student
speaker, who was literally the last person to speak.  We were
able to organize ourselves into a student contingent so we
could march together, but way back in the march, and that
happens all the time.  Whereas on the right, there is a very
conscious grooming of younger activists:  financially,
politically, personally.

Jeremy:  On the left, I think it goes both ways.  I
think there's also a lot of antagonism on the part of
younger activists toward older people who know more,
and an indifference to radical history in the United
States.  One thing we've tried to do in Gainesville to
correct that is to have older activists consciously
mentor the student leadership, and as a result there's
a lot of cooperation and respect between the older
activists and young people.

Doug:  That's essential, because a people without any history
are doomed to repeat it.  I think that the situation on
campus, where the turnover of students is so high, has
exacerbated this dislocation, along with the whole concept
of, "You go to school, you're an activist, and then you
graduate and get a life."  That's being countered also in
places like Tuskegee right now, where some activists in the
mid-eighties started an alumni association which asked alumni
not to leave the south, and to actively support and mentor
activists.  It is also a more fundamental criticism of the
left in this country, that it is chronically ahistorical, and
that there is very little comparison beyond the rhetoric.
You don't go into a coffee shop anywhere and find people
debating the tactics, strategies, strengths, weaknesses of,
for example, the anti-nuclear movement or the Black Panthers.
When the Nicaragua solidarity movement in this country
collapsed, no one wanted to talk about it.  There's very
little discussion of what happened in the '80s at all in
terms of progressive events, let alone any acknowledgment
that there was any campus activism, period.  You can't find
that kind of stuff, and that's why it's essential for people
who have been involved and continue to be involved now to
really go out of their way and make sure that the history is
preserved.

Jeremy:  Well, we're lucky. We have older activists
here, veterans from the struggles of the 60s and 70s,
who talk an awful lot about that, they drill it into
our little brains, that we need to learn about what
they did, the mistakes they made, and that we really
need to take steps to preserve that history as much as
possible and to communicate amongst ourselves, and
make sure to keep records, so that we and the people
who come after us can learn.  It seems to me that this
knowledge is the best weapon to use against government
repression and right-wing harassment.

Doug:  I would travel around the country going to campuses
and I would hear the same set of stories all over the place,
and yet people were totally isolated and felt like their
school was conservative and that the right-wingers were
either very strong and organized or were a marginal set of
loonies that just unfortunately disrupted their work
sometimes.  But if there was a network in place that was
looking specifically at those kind of incidents, then they
would have known that what they were dealing with was pretty
much uniform.  This knowledge would have enabled them to
organize more effectively against the disruptions, while
looking at new trends emerging.  The way you uncover
campaigns by the right-wing or by the government,
particularly the government, is to have people share their
stories and their experiences.  That's the only way.  You're
certainly not going to get them through Freedom of
Information or by calling up the FBI or the CIA or the campus
administration and saying, "Hey, how are you trying to
undermine us?"  The only way is to create networks to make
people aware that these things are going on.