SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

In the midst of all the hot air and suspect politics which have been the 'worst excesses'

of the 1968 French revolution so far there is one idea, or impulse, which is surely worth a cheer. This is the urge to challenge the pervasive tyranny of the alliance formed by science, technology and industry. Naturally the fire- brands of the Sorbonne never had the slightest chance of bringing these frightening forces under control and making them into docile servants instead of demanding masters; but at least they (or some of them) appear to have been roused by the desirability of doing so. And the same rejection of conventional opinions about the worth of unlimited technological expansion (and thus about the 'need' to sub- ordinate everything to an industrial machine growing ever bigger) lurks somewhere among the noisy confusion of our own student-activist politics. It almost seems that, just as the great attack upon Christian belief came from the universities in the nineteenth century, so the spread of doubt about the twentieth century religion of salvation through technology has begun from there, too.

Of course, the unrest across Europe can be attributed to human aggressive urges seeking expression in a continent which has had nearly a quarter of a century of peace of a sort; what is interesting, though, is the choice of opponent. Since parents nowadays tend to be permissive and encouraging to their young, there is not much satisfaction in rebelling against fathers as such; a strong state, whether embodied in the supremely paternal figure of de Gaulle or merely in a group of dominant politicians, is a more promising adversary; and what the jargon calls 'the consumer society,' which has a natural tendency to diminish all its members to the nursery level, is even better. There is something appealing in this engagement by the young of the most formidable opponent within sight. What is sad is the accompanying entanglement with the sickness of violence and contempt for the fragile institutions of freedom which ought to be their allies.

The knowledge industry

The forces which make for a monolithic society of course bear upon universities themselves at least as much as on other institutions and on individual citizens; what has happened in the United States in recent years is plain enough.

Dr Clark Kerr, who was presiding over the University of California when student agitation first startled America, has just published an analysis of the phenomenon of 'student ferment,' as he terms it, which inter alia says much about the transformation of the American university system which the needs of govern- ment and industry have brought about. First, there is the headlong expansion, meaning that in one decade institutions of higher education have had to duplicate the growth of the three centuries since Harvard was founded. Then, as Kerr puts it, 'what the railroads did for the second half of the nineteenth century and the automobile for the first half of this century may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry: that is, to serve as the focal point for national growth.' Hence the alliance between university and industry: 'the

two worlds are merging physically and psycholo- gically.' The combination of industry's needs and industry's money hastens the merger, and the government (again with money) constantly increases its influence upon the academic insti- tution, so that 'a university's control over its own destiny has been substantially reduced.' Add to this the manner in which growth has resulted in the 'impersonalisation' of university life for the student, the decline in the quality of teaching, the increasing mechanisation of in- struction—and there would appear to be the making of a fine Orwellian stew. But Dr Kerr sees the general trend as inevitable and is con- cerned merely to encourage watchfulness about its effects.

It's fair to add that his analysis is published in the first issue of Dialogue, a new quarterly sponsored by the United States Information Agency; it's a candid document for an official journal. And how much better this sort of honest government journalism is than those surreptitious CIA subsidies formerly given to papers like Encounter which subsequently pro- duced so many red faces.

Precedent

Last week I noted the possible temporary elevation of M Gaston Monnerville, should President de Gaulle resign; and I doubted whether there had ever been a coloured man as head of state of a European country. A scholarly reader now directs my attention to Septimius Severus, an African, whose familiar speech was Punic, who became Roman Emperor in AD 193. (He died in York in 211, having spent some time in Britain, during which he repaired Hadrian's wall.) I'm grateful for this advice, not least because it made me get out Gibbon for the first time in years, and that is always a pleasant thing to do. Gibbon, inci- dentally, has pages about Severus, and much information about his character, his reign, and even his gout; but makes no reference to his colour. Alas, it's hard to believe any modern historian could be so loftily disdainful of that particular detail.

Resignation

Partly because of the distinctive political hues of some of its leading figures, the economics faculty at Cambridge tends to attract unusual interest. The news that the eminent Professor James Edward Meade is to resign his chair at the end of this year will cause a ripple or tso; he has been Professor of Political Economy since 1957, and explains that he is giving up his professorship to take up the more modest appointment of a research fellowship. This Is not a step frequently taken at Cambridge, where the teaching demands made upon professors can be light.

News

I'm told of a school teacher who set her class the task of describing some great historical event in the terms of a newspaper report. One seven- year-old pupil began his account of the Resur- rection with the masterly headline: 'oswo's

GORN