Will our campuses see activism similar to the Sixties? Or is the current student unrest simply a passing fancy?

2015 and the early months of this year have seen the decline and fall of several presidents and provosts as a consequence of student protests against alleged administrative insensitivity to issues of race.  Nowhere is this percolating protest movement more interesting than at New Jersey's Princeton University.  Just a few miles north of where I work, Princeton has been a hotbed of the protest movement.  Some students there have agitated for the removal of Woodrow Wilson's name from the Ivy's prestigious school of diplomacy, contending (correctly, I think) that Wilson was a racist.  According to today's Chronicle of Higher Education a counter-protest movement has now arisen.

Pitted against the Black Justice League, which wants Wilson's name expunged, is the Princeton Open Campus Coalition.  They favor a fear-free atmosphere in which all faculty, staff and students can speak their minds without worry of being branded "racists."

Right-wing media are lauding the group's efforts.  And the conservative National Association of Scholars has named the group among the top-ten influencers on college campuses.

Wilson, once Princeton's president --- before becoming New Jersey's governor and then the President of the United States --- once told the school's alumni his goal was ""to transform thoughtless boys performing tasks into thinking men".   It seems to me that he might have approved of this confrontation between the Black Justice League and the Princeton Open Campus Coalition for its potential to do just that.  (Or maybe not.)

The larger question, I think, is whether we are seeing a long-term shift in student interest, away from the emphasis on jobs and affluence that has reportedly motivated most college students since the Reagan Era, back to the more idealistic times immediately preceding the Eighties.  Student enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders is another indicator of a certain depth to this new phenomenon.

However, if and when the presidential election turns out to be Clinton v. ?, and summer intervenes to quiet our campuses, will the flames burn out?

I will be watching with great interest in my hometown of Philadelphia, where the Democrats will convene their convention in July.  Will we see our younger generation in the streets around the Pennsylvania Convention Center, rallying for the Democratic Socialist who hopes to start a revolution?

Well, we don't have very long to wait.  We should get a hint next month, when Pennsylvania's vote in their primaries.  Let's stay tuned...