Nick Davenport ’10 is a self-declared radical leftist. He has devoted his senior year to exploring the history of the University’s radical past, recently finishing his thesis on the activist climate on campus during the 1930s. He sat down with The Argus, revealing insight into the University’s activist past and his own activist leanings.
Argus: What was your thesis about?
Nick Davenport: I am a history major, and my thesis was about student radicals at Wesleyan in the 1930s. A lot of people don’t know this, but there was a nationwide student movement in the 1930s. There was a general radicalization in society because of the depression, and students were very much a part of that despite being mostly very privileged. It was really the first student movement ever, and it was the first kind of student activism at Wesleyan in the modern sense of the word, and that’s why I was interested in it.
A: What was the goal of your thesis?
ND: The primary goal that I had was to uncover what happened here, because, as I said, most people don’t have any idea that there was a student movement in the 1930s. You say “student activism” and people think of the ’60s.
A: Why do you think the 1930s student movement has been forgotten about?
ND: That’s a good question. Part of the reason is that during World War II and McCarthyism there was a major attack on radicalism and radical people. There were a lot of people who were forced to not be active, so the connection with the past was severed during that conservative period in a way that didn’t happen to the same degree with the activism of the 1960s and the 1970s.
A: What was the movement’s main fight?
ND: The main issue that kept the student movement going was anti-war activism. They protested against militarism and tried to prevent the upcoming war. Everyone knew World War II was coming, and they thought it would be a useless catastrophe just like World War I. They protested that if war were to be declared, they would refuse to fight because they didn’t want to go and get themselves slaughtered in the trenches for the sake of American and European imperialism.
A: Was the 1930s movement violent?
ND: Not at all. There were student strikes, but nothing like the more confrontational stuff we saw in the 1970s like building occupations and bombings. That’s not to say it wasn’t passionate, though. There was an enormous amount of passion.
A: What was the administration’s involvement in the protests?
ND: President McConaughy, who was the president of the school at the time, was a leader of the state Republican Party. Imagine that today! He was a conservative isolationist, so he supported the movement. Although he didn’t support the critique of isolationism, he supported the student activism.
A: Who was involved in the protests?
ND: Mostly fraternity men. Eighty percent of the campus was involved in fraternities. The same fraternities existed, and Eclectic, and Alpha Delt, but there were also seven others that are no longer with us. DKE at the time was the most expensive frat to live in.
A: Is that still true today?
ND: I don’t know, but back then DKE was one of the most active fraternities on campus. In a lot of places it’s sort of a recurring phenomenon that the richest kids on campus are the most vocal, which is not what you would expect.
A: What do you think of DKE’s effort to reinvigorate their image this year? Are they living up to their radical roots?
ND: That might be taking it a little far. I feel like DKE has become somewhat isolated from campus. But I’m glad that they’re trying to integrate more with the rest of campus. That’s a good thing.
A: Are you a radical?
ND: You can probably tell that I am a radical myself, and I am really sympathetic to the 1930s radicals.
A: More sympathetic than towards other radicals?
ND: I wouldn’t say that. I would say that there are specific lessons from the 1930s radicals that students can learn from.
A: What kinds of lessons?
ND: Here’s the problem: I say that there are lessons of history but it’s difficult to take the “lessons of history” and distill them into little sentences that you can toss off.
A: Can you try?
ND: I wanted to write an afterwards to my thesis entitled, “For Activists: What does this mean for activists” because one source of frustration in writing my thesis was that I adhered to the conventions of history as a discipline in writing, and I would have written it very differently if I had been writing for an audience of fellow activists.
A: How would you have done it differently?
ND: [The format of historical writing] is detached, and talking about “this is why this happened” supposedly without taking a side. Pretending not to take a side. I wanted to write something that would say what we can learn from this, “we” being activists.
A: Are your parents activists?
ND: No, they’re both doctors. They vote Democratic, they contributed to Obama’s campaign, but they’re certainly not radicals.
A: Where do you think you got it from then?
ND: A combination of two things. One, environmentalism. I became an environmentalist at a very young age when I read “50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth.” I was an obsessive-compulsive child and I really liked the idea of being efficient. It was useless in retrospect, but it made me aware. Then, in middle school I was very alienated, as are many people, but I developed a rebellious mindset. At that point radical politics started to appeal to me.
A: What would you consider your main campaign as a radical?
ND: I don’t feel all that focused at the moment, I’m involved with various groups. ADAPT and the Hermes, primarily. There’s not really activism going on at a large scale at this point. There are student groups doing things but there’s not really action that involves the majority of students. I think that’s another reason why it’s nice to study this history: because it helps you remember that there have been times when this campus was much more radical. I know it’s cliché, but it’s inspirational.
A: Do you think the campus could use large-scale activism on the level of the 1930s?
ND: Of course!
A: Do you think there is the potential for that kind of activism at Wesleyan now?
ND: The 1930s movement was a product of its circumstances. It was the first time that college students engaged with political questions, on a large, nationwide scale, and it was very much a reaction against the ingrained conservatism of campus culture at this time.
A: What was the hardest part in writing a thesis?
ND: The research. Primary source research in history is incredibly tedious. Only about 1 percent is actually relevant, but you have to read through the other 99 percent sure to make sure its not. I literally read every Argus from the decade. Well, skimmed them. As well as all of the campus literary magazines and the yearbooks.
A: What was your favorite campus publication to go through?
ND: The Argus was hilarious from the 1930s. It’s so funny. It’s about 1/3 advertisements, including invariably a page of a four page Argus devoted to a huge cigarette ad. Always for the classier cigarette companies: Lucky’s or Chesterfields. One slogan I noticed was, “Chesterfield’s. It’s a Corking Good Cigarette!”