Remembering Antiwar Activist Todd Gitlin / 'Maus' Author Art Spiegelman

Fresh Air

NPR

Arts, Society & Culture, Books, Tv & Film

4.3 • 36.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We remember activist, scholar and social critic Todd Gitlin, who died Feb. 5 at the age of 79. He was president of SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society and helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War. He continued his commitment to social change as a teacher and writer.

John Powers reviews a reissue of a groundbreaking crime novel about a gay detective.

Also, we'll listen back to our 1987 interview with Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitizer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, about the Holocaust, is one of the books recently being banned.

Finally, Justin Chang reviews the thriller Kimi directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm David Beancouli, professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey sitting in for Terry Gross.
0:08.1	Today, we remember activist scholar and writer Todd Gittlin, who was part of the tumultuous student protest movement of the 1960s,
0:15.7	and who continued his commitment to social change through teaching and writing. He died Saturday at the age of 79.
0:23.8	Todd Gittlin was elected president of SDS, the students for a Democratic society,
0:28.5	in 1963, when he was only 20 years old. He helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War.
0:37.5	He ran through tear gas to escape police billy clubs during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago,
0:43.5	and in People's Park in Berkeley in 1969. His 1987 book, The 60s, Years of Hope, Days of Rage,
0:52.5	was part memoir, part history, and as sometimes critical examination of those activist years.
0:59.5	He was particularly critical of the violent protest tactics of the weather underground.
1:05.5	During his decades-long career as an academic at UC Berkeley, NYU, and Columbia, he was prolific,
1:12.5	publishing many well-respected books. He wrote about journalism and social movements,
1:17.5	identity politics, and a very influential book about the cultural and political context of primetime television.
1:25.5	Last year, he organized a politically diverse group of writers and activists to oppose efforts by the Republican Party and Donald Trump
1:32.5	to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.
1:37.5	Terry interviewed Todd Gittlin in 1987 when he published his book The 60s.
1:42.5	He told her that there were clichés about the 1960s he wanted to dispel.
1:48.5	One is that everything that happened was wonderful, another is that everything that happened was catastrophic and ruined America.
1:55.5	A third is that everyone was larger than life and strode through in an incendiary way, burning everything down.
2:05.5	I call it the Big Bang Theory of History, the notion that everything happened at once.
2:10.5	Hey, it's John Lennon and Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson and the Warren Vietnam and Martin Luther King
2:19.5	brought to you by Ed Sullivan or something like that. The 60s took ten years to happen.
2:25.5	Is there a memory that crystallizes for you some of the commitment and excitement that you felt in the 1960s?
	...

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