Reassessing the Sixties Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy

by Macedo, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780393971422
• ISBN10: 0393971422
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-03-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Basic conflicts came to the fore in that decade and continue to define our politics: more egalitarian race and gender relations; a new openness with respect to sexuality; greater concern for the environment; higher rates of divorce, drug abuse, and crime; and a greater willingness to challenge authorities of all sorts.For some, American finally took seriously its founding commitments to freedom and equality in the 1960s. For others, the cultural changes wrought by that decade are destroying the moral infrastructure on which a healthy liberal democracy depends. All agree that America was irrevocably changed as a result of this tumultuous period.This collections brings together original essays by America's leading political thinkers on such topics as gender roles, sexuality, the family, education, and race. They take stock of the deep changes brought about by the 1960s and assess the impact of these changes on the health of America. The juxtaposition of these commentaries spanning the ideological spectrum makes for highly provocative and engaging reading.

Table of Contents

Foreword	3	(6)
George F. Will
Introduction to Reassessing the Sixties	9	(12)
Stephen Macedo
Part One. Gender Roles, Sexuality, and the Family
The Legacy of the Late Sixties	21	(25)
Harvey C. Mansfield
Feminism: Where the Spirit of the Sixties Lives On	46	(36)
Jeremy Rabkin
Women in the Sixties	82	(20)
Martha C. Nussbaum
Whatever Happened to Children's Rights?	102	(27)
Martha Minow
Part Two. The Universities and Education
The Destructive Sixties and Postmodern Conservatism	129	(28)
Sheldon Wolin
The Assault on the Universities: Then and Now	157	(27)
Walter Berns
Two Cheers for Professionalism: The 1960s, the University, and Me	184	(23)
Alan Wolfe
Part Three. Race
The Half-Life of Integration	207	(21)
Anita LaFrance Allen
Reflections on Black Power	228	(25)
Randall Kennedy
What the Civil Rights Movement Was and Wasn't (with Notes on Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X)	253	(30)
Cass R. Sunstein
Afterword	283
Todd Gitlin