As the 2024-2025 Grinnell College academic year begins, it is interesting to speculate about the issues likely to galvanize campus discussion and activism. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the U.S. presidential election have dominated the national news in past months. Will these issues be the ones that activate Grinnell students, or will other issues dominate campus discussion – and if so, which ones?
There are some parallels between the major issues central to the national debate today and those motivating students when I joined the faculty in August 1972. Then, the war in Vietnam and the election choice between President Richard Nixon and Senator George McGovern energized the campus, with many students working in support of McGovern’s election and to end the war. Involvement in foreign wars and presidential elections, perceived as critical to the nation’s future, have been central in both periods.
I think the Grinnell student values are very similar today as in 1972, along with the commitment to work to make the world a better place. However, the international, national and domestic contexts are very different. Internationally the Cold War has ended, as has the subsequent period of confidence, with the escalation of conflict between the U.S., Russia and China. The political debate has been polarized in both periods, although party alignments are tighter today. I think the disagreement about the future role of the U.S. in international affairs is greater today than it was in 1972.
Perhaps the greatest contextual difference on campus is that American troops were fighting and dying in Vietnam in 1972, with students fearing the draft would send them off to a disastrous war. Today, there are no American combat troops involved in either the Ukraine or Gaza wars, and the draft has been abolished.
There are other changes that have made mobilizing student debate and activism both easier and more difficult. In 1972, we had far fewer international students than we have today. We all received our news primarily from the CBS, NBC and ABC television networks, which were all pretty much on the same page, and The New York Times and Wall Street Journal appeared in the mail a day or two later. FOX and CNN did not yet exist; we had no internet – in fact, we had no computer system on campus, only a computer card reader hooked into the University of Iowa. This was still the era of the typewriter and Corrasable Bond paper.
Today, we have real-time access to a vast variety of diverse news sources that diverge greatly in how they frame international and domestic issues. There were obstacles in 1972 to mobilizing students in that we had no social media, no cell phones and no phones in individual student rooms – only hall phones, that sometimes went unanswered. There were certainly campus groups spreading information, but through direct personal contact, likely either in the dining halls – Quad and Cowles at the time – or the Forum Grill, and in flyers posted around campus. If I wanted to reach students out of class, I had to put a message in their P.O. box in Carnegie basement.
We can see that some of the changes that have occurred between 1972 and 2024 have made it easier to activate students, while other changes make it more difficult. I will be very interested in what issues readers think will dominate campus debate this semester. Will they be international issues, national issues or campus issues? Will the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the 2024 presidential election between Harris and Trump gain anything similar to the campus involvement we saw in 1972, energized by the Nixon-McGovern race and the Vietnam War?
