George Katsiaficas: Prototype of radicalization
George Katsiaficas: Prototype of radicalization
by Jim Smith
Radicalization is an interesting process. It may be born out of many sub-processes: the frustration of working for McCarthy and losing convention; the emotional impact of a friend being killed in Vietnam; or of witnessing police brutality to demonstrators; or it may devolve from pure intellectual research and discovery about the way national policies are made.
For each person, radicalization may take different combination of these and other routes. And it takes some further than others.
In this article an attempt is made to get a glimpse into how these processes coalesced in case of one student radical at MIT– George Katsiaficas. I interviewed Kats Monday night get his own impressions about his rapid radization between the time he was appointed to Pounds Panel last April 25 and last Friday when he marched on the Corporation with Mike Albert.
I asked Kats what had happened; what landmarks he could cite in his political turn-about. He said that he had not really described the process before and somewhat appreciated the exercise.
Basically, said Katsiaficas, there are two factors — the intellectual and the emotional. The intellectual factor is an indirect one: readabout the War, talking, listening, evaluating one’s politics. The emotional factor is more direct: seeing people dying in the War, seeing friends beaten at Harvard.
My ‘radicalization’ – I hate that word – was indirect, he continued. Over the summer I did a lot of thinking, asking What’s this all about?’ I also wrote. a lot — letters to friends and letters to myself. ~ I asked what specific event might have started things off, recalling that in my case it was a particular teach-in three years ago. Kats began to recall some scenes from the previous spring. Yes, I remember just after the bust at Harvard I went to a meeting in Kresge Little Theatre where SDS members were describing what had happened. After that meeting I came out thinking little more about them than before, but as I was crossing Harvard Bridge with a good friend, John Gerth, John said to me, ‘You know, I think they have something. I think they might be right.’ Like, wow: That completely threw me, and I began to think more about what they had said.
Weeks later, Kats had a lengthy talk with Mike Albert. He had listened to some of Albert’s criticisms of fraternities during the March UAP race, and since Kats was (and is) chairman of the Interfraternity Conference, he was interested in talking some more.
It turned out that Mike and Kats were very much in agreement about most aspects of fraternity life: that pledges should be put on more Of an equal basis with brothers, that pledge training should essentially be abolished and so forth. Their agreement was made clearer at this informal discussion in May, and Kats said he began to ask himself, How is it that he and I can reach the same conclusion on this matter from different assumptions and beliefs? In the end, it simply turned out that by reverse projection Kats reached those same assumptions and beliefs about socialism, the war, and political processes.
At this point (late May, just before the initial Pound Panel report), Kats was at the point politically where he didn’t believe war research was intrinsically bad, but felt that it should not be done at the university. To this extent he agreed with John Kabat’s minority report to the Pound report but signed the majority report on the grounds that a strong majority report would advance the liberal cause the best.
The Pounds Panel work — five weeks of intensive hearings and debate — provieded a lengthy intellectual exercise, penetrated always by the arguments of Kabat. Before that, said Kats, I knew what SACC was saying, but then I had an overdose of it — and it made sense. When the Panel went into seclusion at Endicott House to write the first report, Kats happened to room with Kabat, which added to the SACC input.
Kats went into the summer, then, with the bulk of the intellectual factor he had referred to. At this point he began to describe an emotional transformation which occurred while working and living outside New York City. Kats is one of the elite students chosen for the Undergraduate Systems Program in the School of Management — Dean Pounds’ department. He secured a top summer job with the Bird’s Eye Division of General Foods, serving both as student and consultant in the Information Systems Office. Including overtime, he took home about $200 per week.
Working at Bird’s Eye, Kats described the emotional effect which came from seeing workers buck for promotions. I thought of the system which induced this kind of inhumane climbing and scratching. I thought a lot about the fact that I have always been on the winning side of this process and that perhaps it was wrong.
As the summer progressed, he continued, I began to question the whole system of capitalism. But it became an emotional thing as much as intellectual. You see, during the summer I was really off campus and isolated from leftist rhetoric. I was dealing with people – with a boss who was paranoid and a group of employees, some of whom earn more money than others for no particular reason except that they scratched harder.
Kats didn’t spend the entire summer in White Plains. In August, he flew to the West Coast and then to Hawaii where I lay on the beach and thought about how I could be there while people were starving and dying. My whole outlook began to change. Previous ideas about school, work, starting my own company — the regular route — began to be thrown out. I began to be concerned about the meaning of my life in a broader context.
September 2 Kats flew from L. A. to Boston on a night flight and walked into the first fall meeting of the Pounds Panel at 9:00. There he made a short, extemporaneous statement which visibly shook many members of the panel. Unless rapid change occurs in the near future, he said, the operation of the university is certain to be interrupted. This was some change from the George Katsiaficas who signed an IFC resolution April 9 calling for the right of Walt Rostow to speak without disruption. (The next day Rostow was heckled into silence by a half dozen radicals.) Likewise, it was different from the Kats who signed a personal statement April 11 saying that both deliberate confrontation and authoritarian response, as they occurred at Harvard, are poor substitutes for responsibility. We like to believe that MIT has been free of violence because of the responsible conduct of all members of the MIT community. . . We have faith that such thorough, conscientious efforts will also be applied to other current issues.
At the time he addressed the Pounds Panel, said Kats, I felt that I was still a maverick, that there was no real ideological similarity with student radicals. Once again, it was only later that I concluded that I too was now a radical.
When Albert came to the Sig Ep house during work week (early September) to canvass the brotherhood (of which Kats is a member) he told Albert We’ll have to work together, but his fraternal obligations kept him from doing so until after rush week. Kats did, however, invite Mike to address the House President’s meeting before Rush Week, and gave a somewhat political speech at the pre-Rush Week convocation of the freshman class, telling the freshmen in effect that radicalism was not incompatible with the fraternities, and in fact that some radicals lived in fraternities — himself for one.
It was amazing, he said. Each night of rush week, I was having political raps with the freshmen — something entirely different from ever before. The compatibility of fraternal life with radicalism is a story in itself. The thesis is simple. Fraternities are a form of communal living, and a turned-on fraternity is not only plausible but now a major goal of the RL-SDS canvassing efforts. Today Kats works full-time in the same SDS cell with Albert and has already personally canvassed the bulk of the fraternities with promising success.
Ed. Note: Albert and Katsiaficas are now members of Rosa Luxembourg SDS at MIT and live in one of its collectives. Johnson in this case is Howard J., Pres. of MIT.
Thursday an underground student paper at MIT
George Katsiaficas is currently professor of humanities and social sciences at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts.
George Katsiaficas Website, ErosEffect
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