Professors about to start their final semester customarily do not create new course offerings. But before heading off for his well-earned retirement, Prof. Donald Gross still had something he wanted to say – and something new he wanted to teach.
A veteran of the cultural and political battles of the Sixties, Gross had noticed a fascination among today’s students with the protests that rocked the era of his youth, but he’d also been struck by how little they knew about that tumultuous time.
“For the last few years I’ve been surprised by the lack of understanding among students about the social movements of the Sixties and how those developed,” Gross says. “For example, they heard the stories of the Arab Spring, but when asked whether those sorts of things could happen here, they were sure that no, they couldn’t. ‘What the heck do you think happened in the Sixties,’ I would ask them.”
To address this newfound student curiosity about protest politics, Prof. Gross developed a one-time advanced seminar course for Fall 2015 that he titled: “Politics, Music, and Upheaval in the Age of Aquarius and Beyond.” Seminar participants explored the Sixties politically and culturally through multimedia sources and intensive seminar discussions, a rich learning experience so engaging to students that “attendance remains better than in most of my classes.”
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“When ... the police pulled out their guns I think I set the Olympic record for the 50-yard dash!”
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Emphasizing musical expression was “a lot of fun,” Gross admits, especially because a surprising number of students reported some familiarity with, and even enthusiasm for, rock bands from the period. But it had a purpose. Gross wanted students to understand the political significance of popular youth music as a source of change.
“Music was a reflection of the movements, but also a way to expand them,” Gross says. “The music would connect across audiences. Early rock and roll, for example, bridged the racial gap – you’d have people of different races coming together over enjoyment of music with no mixing elsewhere.”
Gross explains that while song lyrics might be a limited form of political expression, compared to political philosophy or even news analysis, they also have a repetitive quality that could sink into the popular consciousness when broadcast over a radio many times. The popular music played in Vietnam to lift the spirits of the troops, for example, ultimately backfired by encouraging young soldiers toward rebelliousness and even civil disobedience.
So that they would understand the use of popular music as a political medium, Gross had students select a musical artist from the Sixties and write a paper tracing the connections between social and political movement goals and the messages found in song lyrics. Gross was especially pleased with the cleverness shown by one student, who analyzed the music of Country & Western star Merle Haggard to show how it articulated the backlash against Sixties protest movements.
“The students have been creative, critical,” Gross tells us. “It was a lot of work, but I am glad I did it.”
Students need to understand the critical events of the Sixties, but Prof. Gross’ goal was not simply to romanticize the era – as popular movies often do – but to give a complete picture of the positive and negative sides.
“Students think it is ancient history, but it really isn’t. They don’t realize how many of the issues of the Sixties we’re still facing,” Gross says. “We’re still living with this, including some of the negative aspects of the Sixties: drug abuse, STD’s, gender conflict.”
“One advantage I have is that I can tell them personal stories.” Gross knew people in the Sixties who consumed a lot of drugs but went on to long and prosperous lives, but he also knew people who died. Experimenting with hard drugs, “you never really know if you’re the one who later becomes a CEO or the one who becomes a corpse.”
Gross resisted the temptation to embellish his own role as a student protestor to make it sound more glorious than it really was. His first demonstration was a relatively tame affair at Colorado State University seeking to get beer served at the campus pub. He recalls being in Chicago during the famous protests that challenged the Democratic National Convention of 1968, but only watched from a distance.
“I wasn’t going to get the stuffing knocked out of me,” Gross admits.
Although he managed to be both clubbed and sprayed with tear gas years later in Chicago, those misfortunes befell him only because he tried to attend a free concert by Sly & the Family Stone and got caught up in the rioting after frontman Sly Stone failed to appear. He learned important protest lessons that day: “Don’t ever be near the front, don’t get pushed up against the police barricade … and make sure you have ice cubes around for the tear gas.”
When students started throwing rocks and pavement, and the police pulled out their guns, Gross says, “I think I set the Olympic record for the 50-yard dash!”
Gross rejects the perception that current student protests sweeping the nation are somehow a revival of what he and his peers sought to accomplish.
"The left today is in some ways very different. People forget that the student movement wasn’t about telling people what to do, but was about basic liberties.” Universities at the time acted in loco parentis – in the place of the parents, enforcing curfews and separating the sexes – whereas “we just wanted to be left alone to make our own decisions.”
“It was just the opposite of student demands now. They’re saying ‘We demand you protect us; we want a safe space.’ We were fighting against a whole system, not against that one individual who might say something and offend you,” Gross says. With their support for limiting free expression and giving more social power to bureaucracies, “the traditionally oppressed are in danger of becoming the oppressor.”
Gross admits that he might have shocked students who entered the course with a sanitized view of the Sixties, especially any who were expecting an unqualified celebration of the past or cheerleading for the student activism seen today. Flashing the mischievous grin familiar to those who have known and loved Prof. Gross during his long service at the University of Kentucky, he said of his seminar: “I guess the whole course should have come with a trigger warning.”