Columbia activists like myself who do not stick within the bounds of establishment politics are often accused of being nostalgic for 1968. Rather than basing our tactics on a realistic analysis of the political situation we face, we attempt to return to what we have mythologized as a golden era, when heroes walked the Earth and people cared—or so the argument goes.

In my experience, this is absolutely backwards. Current student activists are among the few who typically look at the events of 1968 at Columbia from a pragmatic perspective, attempting to draw concrete lessons: which tactics achieved their goals, and which failed or were counter-productive? Which factors that produced an explosion in 1968 are present in 2008, and which are absent?

This kind of analysis does have the virtues of clear consequences and falsifiability. However, the approaches of many people fall instead into a number of intellectual traps. Far too much commentary on 1968 ranges from interesting but largely irrelevant cultural analysis to meaningless intellectual wankery. As the 40-year anniversary of the most famous events at Columbia approaches in the context of debates over Columbia’s expansion and another never-ending war, and as everybody and her usually-apolitical mother feels obligated to have something to say, we can expect an increase in the quantity of commentary without any improvement in quality.

Expect much vacuous musing about some missing generational zeitgeist, a feeling in the air which is supposed to account for the willingness of students in 1968 to put their bodies on the line for their beliefs. Discussion of this quasi-mystical feeling will substitute for discussion of any material difference in students’ circumstances or the world political situation.

Expect futile searches for the true inheritors of the “legacy of ’68”—perhaps current radicals, however presently isolated, or maybe the Obama movement, however ultimately unambitious. The metaphysical question of the “passing of the torch,” with its assumption of the existence of some spiritual core in 1968, will push aside analysis of the value and prospects of the project to which Columbia rebels, and millions of others, dedicated themselves in 1968.

Expect much talk that is purportedly about that project, yet which describes protesters’ goals only in the vaguest terms: “to transform society”, or “to change the world”, rather than to make a university governed by direct democracy, the model and organizing base for a whole government, economy, and society governed in that fashion.

By means of this dodge, protesters can be praised or attacked without grappling with the problems that occupied their minds and animated their actions. Is imperialist violence for the sake of geopolitical advantage an inevitable product of the extension of capitalist competition to an international scale? Which forces in U.S. society have real power to make the everyday decisions that most affect people’s lives, or to overthrow the existing system? Is any alternative economic and political structure viable? Do not expect questions like these to be addressed.

Rather, expect the 1968 protesters to be frequently portrayed as without rational strategy or agency, as representatives of a historical moment or driftwood on a tide of emotion and cultural enthusiasms.

Hardly better, expect them to be portrayed as human individuals with personal life stories only so that these stories can be psychoanalyzed to explain their turn to radicalism. Strategic calculations and lengthy, hard-fought debates over tactics and goals will be absent from this picture.

Expect a great deal of disingenuous hand-wringing over the protesters’ tactics—as “alienating”, “self-destructive”, or causing well-meaning activists to “become what they opposed”. This will come from people whose fundamental disagreement is not really with the methods used by student rebels but with their very project of remaking society in a revolutionary fashion. Rather than being honestly judged by how well they accomplished what they set out to achieve, students’ tactics at Columbia will become, on their own, placeholders for a whole movement. Both tactics and movement will be the targets of fallacious criticism on this basis. The Columbia events will face denunciations premised on the removal of any context, and the radicalization of the larger anti-war and civil rights movement will face sorrowful head-shaking premised on the reduction of the process to a few dramatic moments.

I hope that I am wrong, and that there is real meaning to the approaching public discourse on 1968. I hope that the participants are given the respect that they deserve and no more: as people doing the best they knew how to stop a war, end racism, and eliminate oppressive institutions, with real but very partial success. I hope that their direct action tactics, movement-building strategy, and revolutionary goals are debated in ways that tell us something about their present-day viability, not just the buried guilt or rage of the debaters.

We are, after all, living in a deeply flawed and unequal society, facing an economic crisis, and under a government waging a murderous war that—according to Opinion Research Business, an independent polling agency in London—has killed a million Iraqis and, just recently, its 4000th U.S. soldier. The need to learn from the past and apply the lessons to political action is urgent. But, though 1968 veterans, current student activists, and others are putting on a series of events April 24-27, many of which promise to make a real contribution to this development, I fear that too much of the rest of the coming discussion will contribute very little to anything.

David Judd is a senior in the school of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in computer science.The Point, However runs alternate Mondays.