John R. Searle, The Campus War, 1971.

Preface

This book deals mostly with student unrest in the United States. I have also borrowed from my experiences in England and France, because student unrest in those countries has a close family resemblance to that in the United States, though the English version is, so far, less virulent than the American. I have not discussed university problems in Communist or underdeveloped countries, because they seem to present different phenomena from those of the advanced industrial democracies. Furthermore, I have been mostly concerned with analyzing the revolts of white middle-class students. Black militancy is not especially a campus phenomenon but rather an urban phenomenon that spilled over into the campuses.

An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in The New York Times Magazine, December 29, 1968, entitled "A Foolproof Scenario for Student Revolts." This was widely reprinted here and abroad in both periodicals and anthologies. The three-stage model has since been adopted by several commentators. Portions of Chapter 5 were originally submitted to the President's Commission on Student Unrest (the Scranton Commission) at their request for an analysis of the causes of student unrest.

Several people read portions of the manuscript and gave me extremely helpful suggestions and advice. I am especially grateful to David Apter, Earl Cheit, Robert Cole, Roger Heyns, David Riesman, Allison Ryan, and William Searle. I also wish to thank Ruth Anderson for typing the manuscript. Most of all I wish to thank my wife for her help. It is more than usually necessary to say that the responsibility for the shortcomings of this work is entirely mine.