To the Editor:
I have been a lonely one-man truth squad on a tiny point of academic history for many years. The focus of my endeavors has been the student rally and march at Stanford in January, 1987 about the Western Culture requirement, as it was then called. There is a brief paragraph on it in the section of The Chronicle’s 50-year retrospective issue, on Page 7 (“Timeline: 50 Years of Higher Education,” The Chronicle, November 6).
The quote reads: “The Rev. Jesse Jackson leads some 500 Stanford U. students on a march chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go!”… Whoever wrote this — derived from copious news reports over the years — was not there, of course. I was there, but I was not chanting. Neither, actually, was Jesse Jackson, though the wording suggests that he was. Clearly the 500 students were chanting this phrase. Was Jesse Jackson, in leading the march, also chanting? The logic of the grammar literally reads that he did, though perhaps one can imagine that he was just leading the march, while the students behind him were doing the chant.
What actually happened was more interesting, and too subtle for a two-sentence notice like this. Jackson was in the Bay Area and made a detour to come to Stanford. When he heard the students chant, he objected to it. He said, “No, we don’t want to get rid of Western Culture. We want to expand it and bring in new voices.” That was somewhat controversial then but would not be at all today.
The story was accurately reported by Bob Beyers, a friend of mine, director of the Stanford News Service. While he was alive, he vigorously tried to fight the false version, as have I.
It’s a small point of memory now. It’s just that we so easily fall into what we imagine someone could have said that we don’t do the homework to find out what they actually said.
Jon Reider
San Francisco
