I have never understood why they tried to start the revolution by taking over the universities. It should have been self-evident that the net result of success would be to close the universities but leave the nation unaffected—at least, for quite a long time. Nor do I find it easy to believe that the rebels, as intelligent as most of them were, seriously expected that they could keep the universities alive as corporate bodies, once they had control of them, if they made the fundamental alterations in organization and role that they proposed to.
Muriel Beadle (b. 1915), U.S. author and community organizer. Where Has All the Ivy Gone? Ch. 26 (1972).
Beadle was the wife of George Beadle, who served as President of the University of Chicago, 1960-1968, during part of the time that the university was besieged by a series of student anti-Vietnam War protests and social reform demands.