05/24/2012
To all those that will be attending (or are thinking about attending) our 45th RPI Class of 1967 Reunion:
Langdon Winner is the speaker at our Class dinner. Here is his topic and bio:
Confessions of an Outside Agitator: Technology, Politics and Education from the 1960s to the Present
As he began his successful quest for governor of California in the
middle 1960s, a move that eventually propelled him to two terms as U.S. President, Ronald Reagan railed against students at U.C. Berkeley who had disrupted campus during the Free Speech Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and anti-Vietnam War protests. Reagan insisted that while most students were “good kids,” a few “outside agitators” were stirring things up and destroying the university.
As members of the RPI class of 1967 were adjusting their slide rules in Troy, our speaker for the reunion dinner, Langdon Winner, was enjoying college – its courses, football games, political upheavals, and tear gas – out on the West Coast. The “outside” place from which this “agitator” came was the sleepy mission town of San Luis Obispo where his father taught at California Polytechnic College. When Langdon arrived in Berkeley he was a Barry Goldwater conservative. Continuing his studies in
political science, while writing for Rolling Stone Magazine, Langdon eventually earned his PhD at U.C. and began a career of research and teaching in the field of science and technology studies.
“The slogan back then was ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll,’” he recalls, “but when they handed me the menu I thought it said, 'Pick any two of three,' so I skipped the drugs.” Today he is Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rensselaer.
Professor Winner’s talk will ponder the crises and challenges we faced during the 1960s as compared to the ones our students confront today.
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Langdon Winner
Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities & Social Science
Dept. of Science and Technology Studies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
518-276-6413
Blog: technopolis.blogspot.com
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