The Counterrevolutionary Campus: Herbert Marcuse and the Suppression of Student Protest Movements

Abstract

With the recent surge of college protests against various forms of economic, political, social, and racial injustice, there have been persistent and pernicious reactions from other students, administrators and public figures that function to undermine the emancipatory impulses animating these demonstrations. The reactions are often justified under the banners of tolerance, chastising students to listen instead of protest. This article, focusing on Marcuse’s concepts of repressive toleration and counterrevolution, evaluates the reactionary responses to these events, as well as the critical potential of this fledgling student sensibility, a burgeoning refusal represented by protest events at American universities. We maintain that many of the calls for tolerance are actually demands for silence and belong to a wider counterrevolutionary phase of late capitalism observed by Marcuse. Bedrock liberties are dialectically inverted whereby speech and toleration are repressively deployed against demands for justice. This article concludes by arguing that it is crucial to the success of this resurgent sensibility for justice—and progress toward a radical socialist movement that coincides with the emancipatory vision of Herbert Marcuse—that the counterrevolutionary character of the responses are demystified.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Clement Fatovic, Garrett Pierman, Rudy Leal-McCormack, and Sebastian Iturriaga for their insightful comments on this article. A special debt is owed to Maylin Hernandez for not only catching our very silly errors but also for the early encouragement to write this piece in the first place. We also thank the anonymous reviewers at New Political Science for their extremely constructive suggestions.

Notes

¹ Ross Douthat, “North Korea and the Speech Police,” The New York Times, December 20, 2014, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-north-korea-and-the-speech-police.html.

² David Webb. “Rutgers University Intolerance Symptom of Societal Dismay,” Breitbart News Network, May 7, 2014, available online at: http://www.breitbart.com/blog/2014/05/07/rutgersuniversityintolerancesymptomofsocietaldismay/.

³ Timothy Egan, “The Commencement Bigots,” The New York Times, May 15, 2014, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/egan-the-commencement-bigots.html?_r=0.

⁴ Nicholas Kristoff, “Mizzou, Yale and Free Speech,” The New York Times, November 11, 2015.

⁵ Maxwell Tani, “Obama Chides Rutgers Students for Pressuring Condoleezza Rice to Back out of Commencement Speech,” Business Insider, May 15, 2016, available online at: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-rutgers-condolezza-rice-commencement-speech-2016-5.

⁶ These reactions are represented by the counter-memes #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter, respectively. Erin Logan, “Mike Huckabee Unwittingly Proves That Proponents of All Lives Matter Are Racist,” Huffington Post, October 15, 2015, available online at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-logan/mike-huckabee-unwittingly_b_8298502.html (accessed April 3, 2016); Yamiche Alcindor, “‘Blue Lives Matter’ Billboards Pop Up across USA, Stir Controversy,” USA Today, October 10, 2015, available online at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/10/10/blue-lives-matter-billboards-spark-controversy/73728520/. See also: available online at: http://bluelivesmatternyc.org/.

⁷ Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, and Herbert Marcuse (eds), A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 83.

⁸ Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 86.

⁹ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 82.

¹⁰ Fred Bauer, “The Left and ‘Discriminating Tolerance,’” The National Review, June 22, 2015, available online at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420094/left-and-discriminating-tolerance-fred-bauer.

¹¹ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 100.

¹² Lichtman appears to imply that “Repressive Tolerance” represented a lurch toward authoritarianism in Marcuse’s thought. However, Marcuse’s insistence on the application of “extralegal means,” on defensive violence, and his persistent condemnation of the capitalist state strongly suggest otherwise. Richard Lichtman, “Repressive Tolerance,” in Robert Pippin, Andrew Feenberg, and Charles P. Webel (eds), Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1988), p. 190.

¹³ Robin Phillips, “The Illusionist: How Herbert Marcuse Convinced a Generation that Censorship is Tolerance and Other Politically Correct Tricks,” Salvo 20 (2012), available online at: http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo20/herbert-marcuse-censorship-is-tolerance.php.

¹⁴ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 81.

¹⁵ Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, in A. J. P. Taylor (ed), The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 82.

¹⁶ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 116. Here, Marcuse (Ibid., 117) leaves open the possibility that these extralegal means may well include defensive violence on the basis of a natural right of resistance.

¹⁷ This is despite the fact that Trump voluntarily canceled the event and has displayed violent rhetoric toward peaceful protesters in the recent past in addition to calling on his supporters to respond with physical violence, which they have obliged on a number of occasions.

¹⁸ Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Chicago, IL: Haymarket, 2016), pp. 166–167.

¹⁹ A list of student demands from various American universities can be found at thedemands.org. They broadly include calls for greater diversity among students and faculty, additional resources devoted to protecting students and faculty of color from racial violence, additional resources for academic fields focused on minority cultures, and official statements of apology for previous instances of racism (such as buildings named after slave owners, segregationists, or racially insensitive mascots).

²⁰ Elsewhere, official responses to student protests have varied. Officials at Duke recently announced an end to negotiations with students occupying administrative buildings. Ohio State administrators, citing feelings of fear among employees, threatened to forcibly remove and arrest students occupying buildings there. John Eligon, “At University of Missouri, Black Students See a Campus Riven by Race,” The New York Times, November 11, 2015, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/university-of-missouri-protests.html?_r=0. Tom Ciccota, “Duke Administrators on Students Protestors: ‘We’re Done with Student Demands,’” Breitbart News, April 7, 2016, available online at: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/04/07/duke-administrators-were-done-with-demands-in-response-to-student-protesters/). Conor Friedersdorf, “Ohio State Turns the Concept of ‘Safe Space’ Against Student Protesters,” The Atlantic, April 14, 2016, available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/ohio-state-turns-the-concept-of-safe-space-against-student-protesters/478221/.

²¹ Paula Chavez, “Donald Trump Calls The University of Missouri Protesters ‘Disgusting’ and ‘Disgraceful’,” ABC News, November 12, 2015, available online at: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-calls-the-University-of-Missouri-protesters-disgusting-disgraceful/story?id=35159099.

²² Lee Stranahan, “FAIL for The University of Missouri Student Protests: Black Student Applications Down by 19%,” Breitbart, January 6, 2016, available online at: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/06/fail-the-University-of-Missouri-student-protests-black-student-applications-19/.

²³ Josh Feldman, “Obama to The University of Missouri Students: Protest But Don’t Shout Down Speech You Disagree With,” Mediaite (video from article sourced from ABC News), November 15, 2015, available online at: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-to-the-University-of-Missouri-students-protest-but-dont-shout-down-speech-you-disagree-with/.

²⁴ Thomas Dowling, “One Month Later, What's Next for University of Missouri Protesters?” USA Today, November 27, 2015, available online at: http://college.usatoday.com/2015/11/27/whats-next-university-of-missouri/.

²⁵ Nora Caplan-Bricker, “If You’re Really Concerned About Free Speech on Campus, This Missouri Bill Should Alarm You,” Slate, December 15, 2015, available online at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/12/15/missouri_legislators_want_to_revoke_student_athletes_scholarships_if_they.html.

²⁶ Nora Caplan-Bricker, “The Yale Student Protests Are the Campus PC Wars at Their Best,” Slate, November 10, 2015, available online at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/10/yale_student_protests_why_they_are_the_campus_pc_wars_at_their_best.html.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Though there a few similar examples, one specific case involved a professor accosting a journalist attempting to cover the protests. Austin Huguelet and David Victor, “‘I Need Some Muscle’: Missouri Activists Block Journalists,” The New York Times, November 9, 2015, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/university-missouri-protesters-block-journalists-press-freedom.html?_r=0.

²⁹ Nick Gass, “Ben Carson Slams “Infantile” College Protests,” Politico, November 12, 2015, available online at: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-college-protests-215782.

³⁰ “Tolerance is first and foremost for the sake of the heretics—the historical road toward humanitas appears as heresy: target of persecution by the powers that be.” Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 91.

³¹ Daniel Victor, “‘White Student Union’ Groups Set Off Concerns at Campuses,” The New York Times, November 24, 2015, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/us/white-student-union-groups-set-off-concerns-at-campuses.html; Krystie Yandoli and StudentNation, “The Danger of White Student Unions,” The Nation, September 11, 2013, available online at: http://www.thenation.com/article/danger-white-student-unions/.

³² Live CNN broadcast of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon (guests included Van Jones and Bob Beckel among several other more conservative commentators, as well as representatives from the Rubio campaign and Donald Trump himself). March 11, 2016.

³³ Marc Randazza, “Defend Donald Trump's Right to Free Speech,” CNN, March 14, 2016, available online at: http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/12/opinions/defend-trump-free-speech-opinion-randazza/index.html.

³⁴ Live CNN broadcast of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, March 11, 2016.

³⁵ Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 12.

³⁶ Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 15.

³⁷ Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press 1972), p. 9.

³⁸ Ibid., 1.

³⁹ Ibid., 1–2.

⁴⁰ Herbert Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press 1972), pp. 114–115.

⁴¹ Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 1.

⁴² Ibid., 7.

⁴³ Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, p. 25.

⁴⁴ Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 149.

⁴⁵ Thomas Sowell, “A Resurgence of Intolerance,” Townhall, December 1, 2015, available online at: http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/12/01/a-resurgence-of-intolerance-n2086969.

⁴⁶ Annie Karni, “Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg Slams Intolerance by Liberals on College Campuses during Fiery Harvard Graduation Address,” New York Daily News, May 29, 2014, available online at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bloomberg-slams-intolerant-behavior-liberals-colleges-fiery-harvard-speech-article-1.1810781.

⁴⁷ Karni, “Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg Slams Intolerance by Liberals on College Campuses During Fiery Harvard Graduation Address,” Available online at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bloomberg-slams-intolerant-behavior-liberals-colleges-fiery-harvard-speech-article-1.1810781.

⁴⁸ Kyle Wingfield, “Closed Campus: The Academic Left’s Intolerance,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 13, 2014, available online at: http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/kylewingfield/2014/may/13/closedcampusacademicleftsintolerance/.

⁴⁹ Catherine Rampbell, “Liberal Intolerance Is on the Rise on America’s College Campuses,” The Washington Post, February 11, 2016, available online at: http://tdn.com/news/opinion/rampell-liberal-intolerance-on-the-rise-at-colleges/article_5421d396-96b2-5c04-8da3-1e6ccf13b018.html.

⁵⁰ Kevin Eagan and Ellen Bara Stolzenberg, Abigail K. Bates, Melissa C. Aragon, Maria Ramirez Suchard, and Cecila Rios-Aguilar. “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2015,” Higher Education Research Institute, (Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, 2015), p. 47.

⁵¹ Jonathan Chait, “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” New York Magazine, January 27, 2015, available online at: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html.

⁵² Conor Friedersdorf, “The New Intolerance of Student Activism,” The Atlantic, November 9, 2015, available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/.

⁵³ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 120.

⁵⁴ Mark Mondalek, “Who’s Afraid of BDS?” Jacobin, April 1, 2016, available online at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/israel-palestine-boycott-divestment-sanction-sheldon-adelson/.

⁵⁵ Abraham Foxman, “An Open Letter on Academic Freedom and University Responsibility,” Anti-Defamation League. Available online at: http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/press-center/NYT-Ad.pdf (accessed July 3, 2016).

⁵⁶ Charles Krauthammer, “Poison of Anti-Semitism Continues to Proliferate,” Houston Chronicle, January 2, 2014, available online at: http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook//opinion/outlook/article/Krauthammer-Poison-of-anti-Semitism-continues-to-5128807.php.

⁵⁷ We assume they meant “anti-Jewish” considering Arab Palestinians are also a Semitic people. This letter was published in response to calls by Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and his representative on the Democratic Party’s platform committee Cornel West for treating Israeli and Palestinian people and demands equally. Available online at: http://d1u7i8c4jvis7 m.cloudfront.net/Bakari-Sellers-Letter-to-DNC-on-Israel-Platform-Statement.pdf.

⁵⁸ Lawrence H. Summers, “Academic Freedom and Anti-Semitism,” larrysummers.com January 29, 2015, available online at: http://larrysummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/AcademicFreedomAndAntiSemitism_FINAL1-2.pdf.

⁵⁹ Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 36.

⁶⁰ Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, p. 83.

⁶¹ Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” p. 116.

⁶² Ibid., 88–97, 106.

⁶³ Ibid., 109, 119–123.

⁶⁴ Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, (Chicago, IL: Haymarket, 2016), p. 140.

⁶⁵ A call for trigger warnings and a critique of microaggressions have often been present in these student protest movements. Trigger warnings refer to prefatory cautions given to an audience concerning the possibility that certain content to be discussed may be traumatic for certain people depending on their experiences (for example, an academic discussion about rape might be traumatic to rape survivors or more relevant here, discussions of racial injustice being traumatic to those who have been its victims). Microaggressions refer to often subtle expressions of exclusion or inferiority deployed by those with unacknowledged privilege at people who belong to historically-oppressed social classes. See Susan R. Robbins, “From the Editor—Sticks and Stones: Trigger Warnings, Microaggressions, and Political Correctness,” Journal of Social Work Education 52:1 (2016), pp. 1–5.

⁶⁶ #BlackLivesMatter Organization, “Guiding Principles,” Available online at: http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles/ (accessed April 3, 2016).

⁶⁷ Mychal Denzel Smith, “A Q&A With Alicia Garza, Co-Founder of #BlackLivesMatter,” The Nation. March 24, 2015, available online at: http://www.thenation.com/article/qa-alicia-garza-co-founder-blacklivesmatter/.

⁶⁸ Black Liberation Collective, “Our Principles,” Available online at: http://www.blackliberationcollective.org/our-beliefs/ (accessed April 3, 2016).

⁶⁹ These parties need not be based on existing organizations or strategies, but groups like Socialist Alternative, Democratic Socialists of America, Solidarity, and even the left-moving US Green Party offer a potentially fruitful beginning.

⁷⁰ Marcuse, Essay on Liberation, pp. 20–25.