Oxford Confronts Student Rebellion

LAST SPRING the University of Oxford published, mainly for internal circulation, the Report of the Committee on Relations with Junior Members.* The investigatory prose of university committees is not in short supply or great demand, but the Oxford committee’s report is distinguished both by the lucid thought of its eminent chairman, H. L. A. Hart, professor of jurisprudence, and by its unimpassioned examination of the issues which underly university problems everywhere.

The committee of six “senior” (i.e., faculty) members was appointed with a mandate “to consider.. . what arrangements and channels are desirable for consultation between the University and Junior [i.e., student] Members on faculty and other university matters affecting them. . . Hart immediately set about widening these “terms of reference,” so that almost all relationships within the university might come under his committee’s scrutiny.

Fifty-five meetings were...