Leading articles in both the current issue of APSR (Winter 1969–70) and of PS (Fall 1969) attack an identical quotation from my chapter in “The Public and the Polity” in Contemporary Political Science. In reply to Professor Sheldon Wolin's article in APSR, I wrote a short reply for he clearly misinterpreted the quotation in an otherwise serious article. Professor Surkin's piece, “Sense and Non-sense in Politics” in PS frustrates all my attempts at a short reply, for the issue is not the text of a particular quotation that has become a minor cause célebre, but rather the central thesis of his article that is in error. His is an error that has become sufficiently widely diffused these days that it needs a serious reply.

The issue is the role of value judgments in political science. The common error is the assertion that modern political science has been non-normative and value-free, or at least has aimed at being so. The statement is usually made in criticism of so-called behavioral political science and in favor of a supposed post-behavioral revolution, which is alleged to be seeking a new concern for relevance. Professor Surkin's article is a particular variant on that theme. He states that his purpose is to show that a particular social science methodology, namely, “claimed objectivity and value neutrality” leads to a “non-objective role for social science knowledge in the service of the dominant institutions in American society”. Here is an important set of allegations.

Life is paradoxical. The more responsive the public has been in providing and expanding educational opportunities the more the universities seem to be threatened by hostile forces and instability. The faster the educator and the education-oriented politician run after their constituencies, the more their constituencies seem to feel alienated. So clear has been this relationship between the expansion and the instability that one is tempted to say that the effort was the cause.

This is a distinct possibility. Our remarkable ability to provide physical plant, teachers and quality courses for higher education is admired and emulated the world over. Compared to Europe, the quality is high even as measured by access to professors, despite the complaints one hears. The crunch does not come, therefore, from insufficient response or poor quality. The crunch comes from the change in substantive outputs of the university. That is to say, higher education in America has been undergoing a revolution in the character of its activities.

This revolution in substance or output cannot be attributed to the demands for more education. Demands on the scale of thousands and millions are simply not that specific. Changes in the nature and function of the university were made by donors, legislators, and college administrators. But the primary influence has been that of educational philosophers and educational policy-makers located in the college presidencies and the upper regions of the large bureaucratized philanthropies. Surprisingly enough, business executives have not been that specifically influential.

The issue of student participation in departmental affairs may first come to the attention of the faculty on the day a front-page story appears in the student newspaper:

“Eighty-five concerned political science majors and minors held a meeting Wednesday to decide whether or not they wanted to have a voice in the affairs of the political science department.

There was not much debate but there was a lot of discussion in trying to decide the answers to such questions as: Do we want merely a voice on the different faculty committees? Do we want a vote on the different committees? Do we feel we should participate on all committees, including the hiring, firing and tenure committee?

It was nearly unanimously decided that the bargaining committee should strive for no less than one-half the vote on ALL committees, including the hiring, firing and tenure committee.”

Or the opening shot in the battle for “participatory democracy” may be fired by way of a mimeographed hand-out:

“The emergence of an undergraduate organization in the political science department is indicative of student recognition of and concern for problems in both the content of courses and in the processes whereby decisions in this department are made …. We do not feel that accepting advisory roles on existing committees is a satisfactory method for implementing such change. We must be the spokesmen for our own interests, and that means being our own representatives.

In recent issues of PS, American political and social scientists have been accused – by their colleagues – of subservience to the established order. Of equal concern to the profession should be the paradoxical plight of their Brazilian colleagues who, while pursuing much the same goals and utilizing many of the same techniques of inquiry, find themselves accused – by their government – of subversion, and very actively persecuted for this charge.

The following is a description of the situation of Brazilian social scientists since December 1968. Official censorship, self-imposed prudence and the understandable propensity for foreign journalists to concentrate on the more spectacular and horrifying aspects of Brazil's current regime, e.g. torture, assassination by “political police” or vigilante group, arbitrary arrest and loss of political rights by prominent politicians, make it difficult to obtain reliable documentation. Much of the information I gathered personally during a three week stay in Rio de Janeiro, Sāo Paulo and Pôrto Alegre in May of 1969. This has been updated with the help of Brazilian scholars resident in the United States. For obvious reasons I cannot recognize their efforts personally. I would, however, like to thank Mr. William Wipfler of National Council of the Churches of Christ and Professor Ralph Della Cava of Queens University who are preparing a comprehensive dossier on civil rights violations for proximate publication. Peter Bell, formerly with the Ford Foundation in Rio, has been particularly helpful with information and criticism.