His First Taste of Activism

When Richard Hyland '69 was asked by leaders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to chair a discussion of 450 protesters in University Hall, he simply took off his shoes, stood on a table and began calling on people.

"I tried to get a set of question and focus the people on various issues," Hyland says. "It reminds me of being a law professor.

Twenty five years later, Hyland is now a professor of law at Rutgers University. He attributes his interest in law and politics to his Harvard experiences and particularly to the protests of 1969.

"We tried to figure out a little bit about how the world works, how political change happens, if it ever does," he says. "I don't think it's a coincidence that I'm a law professor and that I'm a law professor and that Michael [Kazin '70, then the chair of SDS] is a history professor."

An active member of SDS and a representative on the Student-Faculty Advisory Council, Hyland participated in his share of campus politics and protests.

He says Kazin asked him to chair the meeting because he stayed clear of the partisan squabbles that threatened to break SDS into ideological factions.

During his self-described "15 minutes of fame," Hyland remembers drafting rules for the occupation, organizing the protesters' demands and developing plans for food and sanitation.

He also vividly recalls when he was beaten at the end of the protest by several police officers in the raid.

"They beat every other part of me," he says.

Hyland says the protesters of 1969 shared an extraordinary experience that left a unique mark on his generation.

"We were given a challenge that few other generations get," he says.

Celebrating the protests' 15th anniversary in 1984, Hyland wrote, "Almost no one, of course, spends his life in political society. No one except, perhaps, the President of the United States, the Justices of the Supreme Court and one generation attending college at the end of the 1960s."

The protesters' experiences encouraged many of them to go on to graduate school and participate actively in American society.

Although Hyland thinks the protests may have hastened the war's end, he says the true success of the activists can be measured in what his generation has produced for society.

"I don't think the protests should be judged by whether or not it was successful in getting ROTC of campus, ending the war in Vietnam or whether the regime in Vietnam was good or bad.

"What was in our power was the changing of ourselves. If we were successful at that, then what we produce...is what we should be judged on."