It was a small, short-lived event — no violence, no obscene chants, nothing like what we’ve seen on campuses and in city streets for the last month. But it was a dispiriting reminder of the climate we are in now.
Last weekend on the UC Santa Barbara campus, a series of events took place to celebrate the life and work of Walter Capps, a legendary professor of religious studies. For years, the unprepossessing Capps had become a towering figure not just at UCSB, but across the country. His course on the Vietnam War, fusing academic inquiry with the powerful recollections of veterans and protesters alike, had been nationally recognized — in large part because of Capps’s magnanimity, his insistence that “democracy starts with conversations,” his determination to bridge intense disagreements. In 1996, he was elected to Congress; eight months later, he was dead of a heart attack at 63.
The weekend was an effort to highlight how Capps’s efforts were being carried on, on campuses and in communities, by those who had been touched by his example. The conference closed with a panel featuring his daughter Laura — a county supervisor — his widow; Lois, who served nine terms in Congress; his son, Todd, who now heads the Capps Foundation; and former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, who’d won the Medal of Honor for his valor in Vietnam.