Mere Rhetoric

Audio: Modern_Dogma_and_the_Rhetoric_of_Assent.mp3 In 1969 in Chicago, Illinois, a group calling themselves The Committee of 5000 Plus Against Disciplinary Procedures issued demands. They demanded that the issue of discipline would be seen in context that expulsions would be rescinded, that cases against protesting students be dropped. At the end of the list of the demands, they demanded that the failure of the Committee of the council, which is to say, the council of the University of Chicago, to respond satisfactorily to these demands by Tuesday noon March fourth will in and of itself constitute grounds for further militant action. The University had a series of different ways to try to respond to this. There were a lot of faculty discussions about what to