California: The Other War on Campus

At a time when students in academic institutions of all sorts were engaged in the civil rights struggle and the antiwar movement, the other war on campus was the debate about the moral use of knowledge. In this chapter the setting is the Claremont Colleges, a unique consortium of seven independent institutions in California. When the author moved to Claremont to serve as chaplain, the idealism and activism sweeping the country in the 1960s had not yet visibly touched the Claremont campuses, renowned for their academic rigor. Within a few years, the campuses became hotbeds of protests and moral outrage, with the campus chaplain playing a major leadership role in raising serious questions about the civic responsibilities of a university. The decade that began with the celebration of the triumphs of the modern “multiversity” came to an end with students protesting the ends that universities chose to serve.