Were Brutalist Buildings on College Campuses Really Designed to Thwart Student Riots?

Chances are good that if you went to college in the United States after, say, 1975, your campus featured at least one imposing, bunker-like concrete building in the architectural style known as “Brutalism.” Colorfully translated from Le Corbusier’s purely descriptive term béton brut (or “raw concrete”), Brutalist architecture—as it was developed and practiced during the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s by architects like Alison and Peter Smithson in the U.K. and Paul Rudolph in America—favored heavy, solid shapes cast in intricately textured reinforced concrete , sharp angles, and a general sense of what architecture historians describe as “heroism” or “monumentalism.” Along with the contrastingly sleek vocabulary of glass and steel articulated by Mies Van Der Rohe, Brutalism is what probably comes to mind when people are presented with the term “High Modernism” in the context of architecture.

During its heyday, Brutalism was both big and big, especially at universities eager to demonstrate their modernity bona fides. The 1960s and early 1970s saw venerable institutions across the country building these hulking structures to house performing arts centers, libraries, or other departments; in some cases, entire campuses were conceived in the style. Yet the Brutalism boom started to crumble even as it approached critical mass—very quickly, students, faculty, and community members came to a widely shared (and rare) consensus that the new buildings were, in a word, ugly. That judgment is a matter of taste, of course, but Brutalism’s reputation has never quite recovered from the insult.

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Academics Join Opposition to Petraeus Professorship, Violent Arrest of Students

Hundreds of professors at the City University of New York and elsewhere are admirably calling for charges to be dropped against six students arrested Tuesday during a protest against former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus. The academics are also calling for Petraeus to resign from his teaching post at CUNY.

A video of an arrest shows a man detained by the NYPD being punched in the back by what appears to be a plainclothes officer:

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Students Occupy University President’s Office To Protest Naming Stadium After Private Prison Company

Last week, the administration of Florida Atlantic University raised eyebrows when officials announced that they had sold the naming rights to the school’s new football stadium to the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison company.

And students aren’t taking the deal lying down. On Monday afternoon, dozens of activists staged a sit-in inside university President Mary Jo Saunders’ office demanding FAU revoke their agreement with GEO Group. After two hours, Saunders agreed to schedule a public meeting with the university community, according to the Palm Beach Post:

After some negotiations, Saunders emerged from her office for a brief meeting with the protesters, who have accused the GEO Group of human rights violations at its facilities, some of which are in Florida.

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The Shock Doctrine Goes to College

This March in Davis, California, eleven students and one faculty member were issued letters from the assistant district attorney of Yolo County charging us with twenty-one misdemeanors each: twenty counts of sitting (“obstructing movement”) and one of conspiracy to sit (“conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor”). The Banker’s Dozen are alleged to have caused the permanent closure of the campus US Bank branch: earthly representative of the university’s celestial bargain with for-profit enterprise, and of the credit-fueled education bubble that weds students to crushing debt burdens. The university, for the moment still led by Linda “Pepper Spray” Katehi, had forwarded the charges; six of the dozen were also recipients of the administration’s tender mercies last November, when the chancellor earned her nickname.

Some see in this a war of maneuver between university and bank, currently bruiting high-stakes countersuits against each other. Or a bid for leverage against the civil suit, filed by students pepper-sprayed in November, in which the university stands to lose big. Others express disbelief that the peaceful political protest alleged at the bank should be prosecuted in the criminal courts, on the county residents' dime. And still others wonder at the suggestion that a dozen members of the scruffy, do-nothing liberal elite put to flight an office of the fifth-largest commercial bank in the nation.

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Quebec Spring: Students Back on the Streets in Ongoing Struggle Against Tuition Hikes

Breakdown in talks over tuition fee increases leads to continuing fury on the streets

Montreal erupted last night as talks between students and the government over university tuition hikes broke down, leading to a continuation of the students' 10-week strike. Protesters hit the streets once again, and they were met with riot police resulting in 85 arrests.

The breakdown happened when one of the student groups, CLASSE, which represents half the students on strike, was excluded from the talks.

CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois slammed the move, saying, "The government is using the old strategy of divide and conquer." And added, "The minister is trying to weaken the student movement."

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The Port Huron Statement: Still Radical at 50

Members of Students for a Democratic Society raise their fists at the 1963 SDS National Council Meeting in Bloomington, Ind. (Photo by C. Clark Kissinger)

 A half-century after the Students for a Democratic Society adopted their seminal manifesto, 14 activists–including three people who helped shape the statement–assess its legacy.

For five days in June 1962, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gathered at a UAW camp near Port Huron, Mich., for the group’s first national convention. The result was The Port Huron Statement: a 25,700-word manifesto that articulated the fundamental problems of American society and laid out a radical vision for a better future. It marked a seminal moment in the development of the New Left.

Today, the Occupy movement has lit a match not unlike the one struck at Port Huron. To mark the 50th anniversary of Port Huron–and what we hope is the dawn of an enduring youth movement–In These Times asked 14 activists, ranging in age from 21 to 72, including three people who attended the Port Huron convention, to reflect on what that statement offers us today. Their responses follow, preceded by the portion of the statement they found significant. –The Editors

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fyi - Bill Ayers is the final comment in this story.  Tom