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Freedom's Web: Student Activism in an Age of Cultural Diversity
Robert A. Rhoads
Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 244 pages, $38.00 (hardcover)
"The X-generation student is so self-absorbed I fear their idea of freedom," a colleague recently mused. If this student stereotype is common among administrators and faculty, it is no wonder those charting the rise of student activism in the 1990s are fearful that America is fragmenting into self-centered interest groups. Robert Rhoads in Freedom's Web: Student Activism in an Age of Cultural Diversity suggests such fear of students and their recent rise of activism is an oversimplification and misrepresents its intent. Rhoads's investigation places modern student activism within the historical and social context of the multicultural movement. The author's analysis, using student and media accounts, highlights what higher education can learn from this recent student phenomenon on US campuses.
The Tradition of Student Activism in the United States
Student activism as defined by Rhoads is the visible public protests organized by students to call attention to a particular concern or set of concerns. His in-depth analysis of the phenomenon begins with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He then traces activism through the 1970s peace movement and divestment in South Africa during the 1980s. Finally, he concludes with the "identity politics" movement of the 1990s. By "identity politics," Rhoads means equity issues associated with gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability. Critics, threatened by identity politics, fear such actions of the seemingly self-absorbed X-- generation might "balkanize America" (Gitlin, 1995). Rhoads disputes this interpretation. Instead he sees the African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, gays, and women who lead the majority of the nineties protests as a "plurality of voices seeking educational equity and social justice" (p. 23).
Negative interpretations, he argues, are often the media's use of selective criteria and its shorthand attempts to cover stories. In the sixties, activism was a major news source often associated with events that shocked and horrified the nation. Today we have another story. In recent years the most persistent student actions have been from gay and lesbian activists. Rhoads asks why the media does not place a high priority on this coverage or examine the meaning behind such actions. Rhoads's analysis suggests that...