THE WASHINGTON POST, THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1978
A rich crop of 10tn anniversary ob-ÛÏ servations sets this year apart from most others. For 1968 was a seedbed of I' historyÛÓa time when minorities staked '*v claims in a way that fixed the pattern ÛÏ of events for the decade to come.</br></br>" Looking back we can not only con-v"gratulate ourselves on the relative qui-<x etening of national life, we can also comprehend how there came into be-Û ing the most discomforting feature o ^ .the present time: majority greed.</br></br>Û¢ The first of the big events of 1968 wa. i the self-assertion of the young. Student revolt reached the fringes of the Ivy League at Columbia, and a childrenÛªs crusade, organized around Eugene " McCarthy, upset a sitting president be-Û¢ _ cause of his prosecution of the war in Vietnam.</br></br>; The tragic assassinations later in the ÐÊ year of two cherished leadersÛÓMartin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert KennedyÛÓgave added scope to the de-' inands of the racial minorities. Then there was the Chicago convention, and the joining of youth, the racial minori- Û¢ During the next few years all, the minority movements made.an enduring mark on American life, then peaked and lost momentum. The young people forced a change in the governance and curriculum of the major universities. As the core of the demonstration against the Cambodian incursion of 1970, they in effect obliged President Nixon to go for a negotiated end to the Vietnam War.</br></br>But once the war was over, ÛÏthe movementÛ dissipated itself in environmentalism and.a variety of other causes. Students lost interest in politics, and after the recessions of 1970 and 1974 began once again to concentrate onÛª good grades and entry to the lucrative posts in business and the professions.