Interview with Dr. Arthur Chickering

Chickering, Arthur W., 1927- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. Arthur W. Chickering is an author, scholar, and researcher. His research is in the field of student affairs and he is known for his contribution to student development theories. He previously taught at George Mason University and Goddard College. Chickering earned awards such as the Outstanding Service Award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the Distinguished Service Award from the Council for Independent Colleges. He received his B.A. in Modern Comparative Literature from Wesleyan University, M.A. degree in English Education from Harvard University, M.F.A degree in Creative Writing from Goddard College and Ph.D. in School Psychology from Columbia University.

2010-03-09

In copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

91:09

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Arthur Chickering
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 9 March 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
Arthur Chickering, March 9th, 2010. Phone interview for the book on Boomers. In looking at your biography, I kind of broke it down into three parts at the very beginning. You started your college career at Goddard College as a psychology teacher from 1959 to 1965. Could you describe the students of that era? As the (19)50s came to an end, JFK became president, then of course he was assassinated, and LBJ expanded the war in Vietnam, what were the college students like from (19)59 to (19)65?

AC (00:00:50):
Well, I cannot really describe college students in general, you have to go to other people or other literature for that. Goddard was very small, when I went there in (19)59, there were 180 students.

SM (00:01:07):
Okay.

AC (00:01:08):
And it was a very unique institution based on progressive education principals, on Dewey and Kilpatrick, with whom then President Tim Piston had studied. And it had a work program, during January and February, students went away for a work term. They pursued independent studies. They had to apply for admission to the senior division after their first two years. There was a strong emphasis on independent studies. And so, my basic point is that because of its unique characteristics and because of its small size, it did grow over the years to about 1,000 students, but it attracted a very special kind of student, mainly from the Boston, Washington, DC corridor, the Northeast. So those two, and if you look at the way Goddard is described in education identity or in other of my publication, you will see that students are at the extreme left end, if you will, of the sort of political attitudinal continuum. And those were the students I knew best. When I did that project on student development in small colleges, which involved thirteen small colleges across the country from (19)65 to (19)69, then I encountered a wider range of students. But again, all those colleges had enrollment of fewer than 1,000 students, and they themselves were self-selected. We had evangelical and conservative protestant institution like Bryant College and Messiah College and Westmont College at that end of the continuum. And then there was Goddard and Shimer at the other end of that long continuum. And in the middle, there were the Western New England College, Oberlin, which is Quaker based, that is putting it moderate. So those are the students I grew up with if you will.

SM (00:04:07):
When you worked with that small number of students from (19)59 to (19)65, and then from (19)65 to (19)69 you worked around development in small colleges, and then you were also a visiting scholar at the American Council on Education, (19)65 to (19)70, did you notice any changes in those students in terms of their political attitudes, from (19)59 to (19)70, because of all the things that were happening in the world?

AC (00:04:44):
Well, again, I do not think I could make any generalizations. The impact on students of those diverse colleges was fairly substantial, and that is what education identity is anchored in. But that population of institutions certainly was not representative of the bulk of students in state colleges and universities across the country, which then were practically free. And of course, the community college movement hit the streets during the (19)60s, and that brought a whole new sector into higher education. And those students did not really bear any resemblance really to the undergraduates I was studying in these very small residential, highly self-selected. I mean they were not selective in the sense that they were meritocratic, but they were sharply defined image self-selectivity operated in a very powerful way. But again, the little colleges had a major impact on students. And I wrote about that. But in terms of knowing about the kinds of general changes that they are asked about across large research universities or publicly support institutions.

SM (00:06:46):
Well, the last question in this area is those other timeframes from (19)70 to (19)77 when you were the founding Vice President for Academic Affairs, and you were very poor in the founding of Empire College from that, in that period from (19)70 to (19)77, and then you were a distinguished professor at Memphis State University from (19)77 to (19)86. So, you saw not only students who were boomers, but you saw the beginning of the generation Xers coming in there at that time too. Is there anything you saw within the students during that timeframe that was different from the earlier timeframe?

AC (00:07:30):
Well, of course, during those years, I was heavily involved with adult learning. Two major things happened from (19)70 to (19)87. One of the most important, of course, was the [inaudible] of higher education with the Pell Grant and student loans and open admission. And so, the diversity among students, traditional college age students increased dramatically. And also, of course, there were sharp increases in the numbers of adult learners. And that is what led to the creation of the Council for Adults and Experiential Learning. The Empire State was created to respond to those adult learners. When I was at Memphis State running the Center for Higher Education, I had to see federally funded grants to help institute [inaudible] of institution respond to the educational needs of adult learners. So, during that time period, I was heavily involved with that particular sub sector, if you will, or subpopulation of college and university students, and not with traditional college age undergraduate. I went to George Mason in my role there as university professor. There I was much more directly involved with traditional college age graduates. But in those particular intervening years from (19)70 or (19)71 to (19)87, (19)88, I was heavily involved with adult learning.

SM (00:09:44):
Wow. What is interesting is when I look at some of these people like you and the other great student development theorists, how did you become who you are? What led you into higher education? I know you went on and got a psychology degree, but your background, who were your role models and your mentors? Who were the people that inspired you when you were young to go the direction that you went?

AC (00:10:14):
I have just finished an essay called Learning [inaudible] twenty pages long, which details I kind of educational [inaudible], if you will. And I can email you a copy of that if you want.

SM (00:10:35):
Okay.

AC (00:10:37):
But the short answer is that I majored in modern comparative literature at Wesleyan University and graduated in 1950. And I was headed for a doctoral degree in comparative literature, but I had to earn a living, so I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education for their Master of Art Teaching English program. When I was teaching high school students during teaching, I got interested in the way they were processing problems with peers and with authority and with their parents and so forth. As we discussed Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, which were two novels that were part of the high school curriculum at the time. And that led me... I found I was more interested in working with a student around those issues than in literary criticism. So, I discovered that there was such a thing in school psychology. So, I went to Columbia and got a PhD degree in school psych, and I worked as a school psychologist for three years. And then I was recruited to create a new teacher education department at Monmouth College in Long Branch, New Jersey. I have had a pretty [inaudible] experience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I got fired for-for a variety of reasons, some of which are detailed in this essay that I can email you if you want. But that is what introduced me, that was my first year in higher education. And then I heard about this really interesting little college in Vermont Goddard College and my wife and I, and they had been living in the New York metropolitan area for 10 years or so. We had both grown up in Massachusetts, outside of Boston, and we loved skiing and hiking in Vermont. So, we moved to Goddard. At Goddard I really got introduced to the world of higher education. I was hired to work halftime as Gordon coordinator of evaluation of a fourth foundation supported six-year program in college curriculum organization. And so, I started gathering all that data, a lot of shared and education community. And that is how I migrated over into the world of higher education. Most of what I have built a career on in higher education I learned at Goddess from (19)59 to (19)65 and then with the project of student development in small colleges. The sort of educational principles in terms of learner, student centered learning and contract learning, independent studies, experiential learning, individualized education and the like were really all part of what Goddard was doing back in the early (19)60s when I was evaluating the program. So, I suppose my number one model and mentor was Tim Pitkin, then President of Godard College, but also Forests Davis is academic Vice President, George Becher, another senior faculty member. Those are the people... And I went there in (19)59, so I would have been 32 when I went there. So, I was just very young, naive, professional coming into the world of higher education and they had an enduring impact on my [inaudible] functioning.

SM (00:15:11):
Very good. How about your parents? How important were your parents when you first went off to college?

AC (00:15:20):
Well, my folks were divorced when I was nine. My mother was critical. She always wanted me to go to college. The expectation that I would go to college was built into my upbringing. Because I was getting into a lot of trouble in high school and she had to work during the depression and we were poor, she managed to get me a scholarship to Mount Hermann School in northern Massachusetts for my junior and senior year. And I was not a good student. I graduated 103rd in the class of 107. Nobody who knew me then, or none of my teachers certainly would have ever predicted that I would become a distinguished [inaudible] of all things. And when I graduated from Mount Hermann in 44, I was going to be drafted, and instead I enrolled it in Army Specialized Training Reserve program and was sent with 30 other kids from the University of New Hampshire. And I got kicked out of the University of New Hampshire that fall. Went back to live on to my mother, who was then working in Connecticut and went over to Wesleyan University and met with the admissions officer because I knew I would turn 18 in April, that April, after which I knew I would be drafted. So, I managed to... Well, when I met with him, I said, "Here's my situation." I did not tell him I had been kicked out of the University of New Hampshire, but I told him that I wanted to go to college for a semester before I went in the Army. And he said, "Well, send me your transcript and your test scores from Mount Herman and we will see." And at that time, of course, all the eligible men were in the army. But I said, "Well, you do not want to see that Mr. [inaudible]. If you see that you will never let me in here." And he said, "Well, we never let anybody in here without paying that information." I said, "Okay." So, I had it sent to him, he called me up at about 10 days and asked me to come in. And he said, "You're right. We have never let anyone into Wesleyan University with a record like yours." But he said, "I noticed your aptitude scores are very high, even though your grades are terrible, and your achievement test scores are lousy. How do you explain that?" And I said, "Well, I have never studied, I have never been interested in academic stuff. I like sports and parties and cards and so on." And I said, "I am ready to study. I know I need to establish a record before I go in the Army." I said, "I am going to be a commuting student and pay my full semester's tuition upfront. You set any grade point average you want me to meet, according to whatever test schedules you want, and if I do not meet it, you can keep my money and alcohol." So, he said, "Well, let me think about that." So, I left, and in four or five days, he called me up and asked me to come in and he said, "Okay, you got a deal. You give us your tuition; you need to have a B average on your midterm exam or you're out of here." And I said, "Okay." So, I went back and studied and ended up with a B plus average and finished this semester. Went off and spent a couple years in the Army. And of course, while I got back there was highly select institution there. They're only admitting valedictorians and [inaudible], but I went back and got into Wesleyan. And one of the critical things that happened when I went back into Wesleyan, I was back into playing cards and partying and into athletics when I was on probation the first two semesters. And then it came time to decide on a major. And I had enjoyed reading literature, particularly contemporary literature, but at that time, at Wesleyan, you can major in English or Spanish or French, but they all had this historical trajectory starting at the beginning and working their way up. So, I went in and talked with the dean and said, "Isn't there any way I can slice this stuff horizontally? I really enjoy reading contemporary literature and thinking about the relationship between the social context so forth and the literature." And he said, "Well, there is such a thing as comparative literature. We do not have that major here. But if you go talk with Brent Mann was head of French department and Juan Rural who head of Spanish, and Navi Brown, Norman O'Brien, who then was head of the classics department and Fred Miller, head of humanities, and if they all put together a series of courses and if they will write an evaluation for your comprehensive exam," which they did not have then, "You can have that kind of major." So, I walked out of his office at 10:30 and by five o'clock I had talked with all four of those people. And they were very enthusiastic really about doing that. Wesleyan was small. It only had 750 people and because of my gambling and so forth, I was fairly well known on campus. And this is the first sign of any intellectual interest they have seen out of me.

SM (00:22:44):
What were the students like that you were going to college within the late forties and fifties? What were they like?

AC (00:22:51):
Well, they were mainly, of course, it was a whole influx of veterans from (19)45, (19)46, (19)47. And so-

AC (00:23:03):
... (19)46, (19)47, and so at Wesleyan at that time, it probably was about 50 percent veterans and 50 percent typical graduate from high school. So, the veterans really had a significant influence on the college environment and college cultures during those... In fact, I joined Sigma Nu fraternity, which was started in the South and did not admit Black students. One of the things we did after we tried to change that policy with the national and they would not change. And so, we took Sigma Nu out, we got a loan from the local bank and borrowed enough money to buy the fraternity house and took Sigma Nu out of the national organization, so we were able to admit Black students.

SM (00:24:05):
Wow.

AC (00:24:07):
But the influx of veterans during those years, I mean, that was just a bubble. After the war got over and after all of us guys on the GI Bill and so forth went through the system, and everything tried to reverse its fist.

SM (00:24:25):
Were there many students of color on the campus at that time?

AC (00:24:29):
Not a lot. There were some and they were terrific.

SM (00:24:33):
You wrote The Education Identity, which is a classic book on student development of theory, and it's been a major guide for college administrators working with students for a long time. And particularly this came about at the time, in (19)69, when Boomers were in their heyday, because Boomers really started going to college in (19)64, (19)65. So, we are talking about that, particularly the early Boomers, which were the most activist and most involved. Were from (19)64 to about (19)74. How did you come up with the idea, and what was the inspiration to write this great book?

AC (00:25:18):
Well, I have read everything that was written really about, partly because of my background in school psychology. I read a lot of stuff about adolescent development, and there was not much literature about young adult development. There was not much literature on college’s impact on student learning and development. But I had a file of data from Goddard and from the project, and I had read, as I say, about everything that was to read. My main concern was to have an impact on the quality of undergraduate education. I was not really interested in complex theory development, so I wanted to write something that would be useful, and it would have an impact on practice. I knew from my psychological background that about the largest number of items anybody can remember and work with is five or six or seven. I was determined to try to organize my findings and my orientation toward student development and student learning in a parsimonious way that would fit into that number. As I looked at the literature and so forth, seven vectors as I called them, grew out of that combination of looking at the changes that occurred as the function of the data and the major conceptual framework that [inaudible] and Ted Newcomb and other leaders in that whole arena, for articulate. I was just lucky I happened to right at a level of abstraction that made those ideas pretty broadly accessible and applicable. But I worked hard to try to do that. And underneath each of those seven dimensions, seven vectors, there was possible to create three or four major subheadings and so forth, the kind of Christmas tree on which you could hang a variety of key ornaments.

SM (00:28:24):
Did you expect it to have the impact that it had, particularly on graduate school education, and why has it been able to withstand the test of time, not only for the Boomer generation, but for Generation X that followed, the Millennials that are in college now, and obviously for Generation Y, which are the really youngsters that will be coming up in 15 years. Your book is now going to be heading toward its fourth generation.

AC (00:28:54):
It is surprising. Well, I did not expect, in fact, I was very surprised when I got that American Council on Education book award that came out of the blue, because I thought that I was off the scale or off the street in terms of where a higher education was, A, and B, I had no idea that there was such a thing as a student personnel services profession or that there were graduate programs for students. I have been in these little, small colleges. I had never been in any institution that had the kind of array of student services and professionals that larger colleges and universities had. So, when they got picked up by those professionals, I was very surprised. I was frequently embarrassed when folks in Indiana or Michigan or Ohio or other graduate programs could come out and ask me to speak about the implications of my work for their graduate programs, because I did not know anything about those graduate programs.

SM (00:30:16):
You were big at Ohio State and I know that, did Phil Tripp?

AC (00:30:22):
No.

SM (00:30:23):
Yeah, he was Dr. Phil Tripp. He was the head of the program at Ohio State when I was there, along with my advisor, Dr. Roosevelt Johnson. They were unbelievable educators. One of the things that is interesting at that-

AC (00:30:38):
I am a little surprised.

SM (00:30:39):
Pardon?

AC (00:30:40):
I say all of that was a total surprise. And I think when Linda Reisser and I did the (19)95 or (19)96 revision, we were amazed at how all those basic conceptual frameworks still stood up when you looked at research on college impact on student learning and development that had occurred from the mid (19)60s to the early (19)90s that had been preferred that elaborated those. Of course, the gender differences and differences, the function of race and so forth, had emerged dramatically since the (19)60s.

SM (00:31:38):
I know on our master's exams at Ohio State in the summer of (19)72, the ones we prepared, we had to read 60 books in preparation along with never missing a class. Oh my goodness, you never knew where the questions were coming from, but one of them was on your book. And I remember writing a long essay, in that four-hour exam, writing at least one hour on your book. So it was a very important part of our education. Another thing that was happening during this time in the (19)60s and the early (19)70s was encounter, you probably heard about that. It was-

AC (00:32:15):
Oh yes.

SM (00:32:16):
What were your thoughts on encounter? Because I was in encounter classes at Ohio State and a lot of the purpose of encounter was we looked at the seven vectors and the ultimate being integrity at the very end and there was supporting each other. So, there was a combining of the encounter book and then combining of education identity. What was your thought about the whole concept of encounter during that time with college students?

AC (00:32:46):
Well, I think the whole encounter group movement with the National Training Lab, I have to go get another phone, so I am switching phones here because the battery is running down. Bear with me a sec. Can you hear me?

SM (00:33:01):
Yes, I can.

AC (00:33:01):
Still?

SM (00:33:01):
Yep, I can still hear you.

AC (00:33:08):
I thought that whole encounter group movement with National Training Lab was extremely helpful. It had a lot of extremists associated with it, but it did call attention to the internal life of people and led people to think about themselves in serious ways. Both my wife and I went to encounter group weekends, and I read a lot of that literature. And by and large, it seemed to me to be a very positive thing.

SM (00:33:58):
As a graduate student, it was intimidating at time. It was tough to be called, "You sound like a racist," in an encounter class because we had many African American students in our program. And so, it was a great learning experience in the end, but at times it was tough and you needed support. So, a lot of the things you were talking about, about development and theory and everything, a lot of the stuff in the encounter, it was what you were trying to say in your book.

AC (00:34:26):
Well, it raises that whole movement, raised all those existential issues. I mean, I think another way to think about your earlier question as to why those seven vectors seem to have stood up across generations is that they are really the basic existential areas for human development purposes. I mean, when now we have Goldman's work on emotional intelligence, all the issues of autonomy and interdependence, we have huge literature now on purpose and meaning. Integrity has been an issue in relationships. I mean, those issues do not go away just because there are sort of larger cultural forces that tend to have an impact on particular generation. I think the collision between all the new communication information, social interaction technology and these different vectors is going to be fascinating to observe.

SM (00:35:55):
I know what-

AC (00:35:58):
... and I am not close enough to it or young enough to really get involved with it in detail, but I have grandkids in their 20s and late teens, and they are in professional communication with each other and their high school friends. I went to South Africa with one of my grandsons, to Cape Town, and while we were there every night around 10 o'clock, he would get on, he was a computer guru, had his laptop with him. He would get on his laptop and be interacting with his girlfriend and with his high school friends back here in Vermont. At first, I was put off by that and I thought, well, why cannot you let go of that for a little while? But then as I started about eavesdropping on what he was doing, I realized that he was processing our experiences in the township and with the young people he was meeting with all the race and social and economic dynamics there in Cape Town in South Africa we were encountering. But anyway, the whole interaction and the ways in which current young people and future young people are going to work through those basic human development issues in the context of these new technology and media, I think, are going to be fascinating to try to understand.

SM (00:37:54):
That is excellent. One of the most important qualities that we try to instill in students is by the time they graduate, that all students have a sense of self-esteem, of comfortableness with who they are as human beings, and obviously, that is one of the goals of integrity in your seventh vector. I will never forget at Ohio State, I really felt comfortable after my years there because I really got what the seventh vector was all about. It is almost like a person standing up in front of an audience, and I said this to students, through my 30 years in higher ed, that these people who come and speak about certain issues really have integrity, whether you like their views or not, because they stand for something, they are willing to be in front of people, to give a... So thus, they have integrity because they are willing to be confronted as well. But the critics of the (19)60s generation, the Boomers, oftentimes attack the Boomers as being one, oh, this self-esteem business is a bunch of baloney. Why do we have to constantly build these people up? It is a criticism that is often been leveled that the era that they do not like, because many critics, political critics in particular, had looked at the (19)60s and the early (19)70s through mid (19)70s as a time when the divorce rate was at an all-time high, the lack of respect for authority, the victim culture started to come about, drugs, sexual revolution, a sense of irresponsibility. "I want it now" type of an attitude without thinking that you have to pay for these things down the road. The question I am asking is what do you think of those people that criticize basically this whole concept of self-esteem and this generation of Boomers that grew up during the (19)60s and (19)70s and putting the blame on them for the issues, the problems, we had today?

AC (00:40:06):
Well, one reflexive reaction I have is that people who have to support their own self-esteem by knocking others are not in very good shape. I think that that variable has been demonstrated to be critical for career success, for personal mental health. We have the whole positive psychology movement now. The [inaudible] and others have been so instrumental in putting on our screen. We have fortunately migrated away from the mental illness deficit model of thinking about people, and so I think it is highly unfortunate. Now, I think it is important to recognize that narcissism is not very healthy. This is one of the dynamics that occur during that sensitivity training era that you refer to that, if your only focus is on yourself and what is important to you and what makes you feel good and so on, that is pretty unhealthy. But self-esteem linked to purpose and identification, I mean with something larger than yourself, those two things need to go together. An exclusive focus on self can be pretty dysfunctional both for the person and for society, and that is why all the issues of purpose and meaning are important. But you do not have to engage with serious issues of purpose if you feel you are incompetent and inadequate, cannot function with other people, nobody ever pays attention to what you think or what you do, or you are irrelevant to things. You cannot have any impact on anything. So, when those attitudes and feelings are dominant, then there is no way you can invest yourself heavily in something larger than those preoccupations and your own immediate self-interest.

SM (00:43:18):
That is beautiful. Oh, I can see why you are so great at writing because you are able to put your words and have so much meaning there. You obviously raised... You have grandkids, so you had kids. Did you have a generation gap with your children over issues?

AC (00:43:48):
I do not think so. We are very lucky. We have a son and four daughters. They are all in their 50s now. They all love each other, they all support each other. They all love us and support us. And as we get into our 80s, they do so in increasing the specific ways. I mean the most difficult dynamic for me particularly, not so much for my wife, was with our oldest child, our son Allen. We have a son and three daughters. So, his movement through adolescence and into young adulthood was complicated in a variety of ways. Partly, I think because he took very seriously the attitudes and values and social concerns that Jo and I actively tried to address and live in terms of. He felt he had to go further and do more. So, he lived a life of intentional poverty for a while, and was draft resistor or not a draft resistor, but tax resistance.

SM (00:45:31):
Hold that point. I want to just turn my tape. Go right ahead.

AC (00:45:41):
And he was very interested in teaching, learning, and educational issues. But because of my status in the world of our education, but he was going up and going to college, trying to find his way into higher education. He spent six months at Empire-

AC (00:46:03):
... Empire education. He spent six months at Empire State, but it was just created yet. Then he went to University of Wisconsin at Green Bay when it was trying to be [inaudible] U, and finally ended up at the Evergreen State College. His whole relationship with the world of education and higher education was complicated by my status. As often occurs, I guess we had issues around money and stuff like that. So, we had a... I do not know, pick your number, maybe five, eight, 10-year period between his graduation from high school and getting through Evergreen and so forth that were very difficult for him, and challenging for Joe and me to know how to deal with it. Fortunately, we somehow ended of loving each other and supportive of each other. We own a house in Olympia, Washington where he stayed since he graduated from Evergreen, and I have a wonderful relationship. The girls are very supportive of him and us, and they have always had a good relationship with my wife, Joe, and me, and wonderful relationships with each other.

SM (00:47:37):
Good.

AC (00:47:37):
So, we are very lucky to have such a wonderful nuclear family, if you will.

SM (00:47:47):
Because I know that generation gap did tear a lot of families apart. The Boomer generation, my generation, of course, I looked at heroes and I never thought of my parents, although I do now as I have gotten older as my real heroes. But a lot of the heroes of the Boomers were leaders, political leaders, whether it be Dr. King or Bobby Kennedy or someone else, John Kennedy. They looked up to heroes. Whereas I have noticed today, Millennials very rarely if ever say any political leader of any kind, it could be a teacher, it could be a parent, it could be an uncle, it could be a minister. But very rarely any public figures, and I have even noticed in Generation X, the generation that followed Boomers, that there were very few political leaders or national leaders. The Boomers seemed to have them. What made Boomers so different than these others with respect to the people they looked up to?

AC (00:48:48):
Oh, well, I think the generation that followed the Boomers had a lot of anti-models. Nixon, I mean, whether you look at politics and all the scandals and self-interest and so forth, politics, whether you look at corporate sector and all the greed, and [inaudible] there, whether you look at the international domain and all the of religious and inter- tribal and inter-ethnic conflict, it was very hard to see people functioning in very admirable ways that you would want to identify with. I think that is why you had the whole shift of political and social activism to a much more local level. They were meeting people in their communities and in their states and so forth who they could know and who had a lot of integrity and who were putting their money where their mouth was and walking their talk, and all that, those bumper sticker ideas. So, the context, particularly I think with the Reaganism, is with the whole conservative movement that started with Reagan, had shifted the focus away from social concerns, about the environment, about race, about peace, away from those organizing issues that dominated the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Away from that, the self-interest and capitalism run amongst it. It was a very uninspiring and disillusioning social context to be growing up in.

SM (00:51:21):
What is interesting is that one of the characteristics of Boomers is that they do not trust because they saw a lot of leaders lie to them, whether it be Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, be it Watergate with Richard Nixon, even there was questions about President Kennedy and whether he had some links to the Diem overthrow in Vietnam, if you were pretty adept at keeping track of things, even President Eisenhower in (19)59 lied about the U-2 incident and of course, McNamara and the numbers. So, a lot of the Boomers just did not trust anybody in position of responsibility, whether it be a President of the United States, a Congressman, a Senator, a minister, a rabbi, a priest, a corporate leader, anyone. And president of a university and administrators. But in the end, they looked at the leaders as their heroes, but then they did not trust them. Do you think that is one of the qualities of the Boomer generation, that they are not a very trusting generation in your experiences with them?

AC (00:52:33):
Well, I had a lot of experiences with them, but I think as you kick off that litany, they had good reasons to not trust people. I think one of the things that made Obama an appealing was that, and particularly young people felt here was a guy who walked the talk, who could be trusted, and whose background was untarnished, and who we could put some faith in. Unfortunately, the political dynamics now are such that he is thought in politics as usual, and I think maintaining that hope and trust that he ignited is very difficult.

SM (00:53:40):
When you look at the Boomer generation, again, it is those people born between (19)46 and (19)64, and I know that many of the people born between (19)40, (19)41, and (19)46 are a little sensitive because a lot of them are linked to the Boomers, in many ways. In fact, many of the leaders of the anti-war movement were the age of graduate students. So, they were really in the (19)41, (19)42, (19)43 years. So, there is a link there, but when you look at some of these events, I would like your response to them, because these are the events that the Boomers were involved in when they were young in the (19)60s and through the mid (19)70s. Just your thoughts on the students who were going South for voter registration, the Freedom Summer, and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in (19)64 and (19)65, and obviously the anti-war movement and the students involved in civil rights and the protests, and then you had the groups like Students for Democratic Society and the Young Americans for Freedom, and the Black Power students. These were all part of those (19)60s, and of course, the students that were involved, that persuaded President Kennedy at the University of Michigan to consider the Peace Corps. Then I am going to list some more later on, but your thoughts on those experiences of students and how important they were, and just your thoughts.

AC (00:55:12):
Well, I think one of the major points to recognize is that if you look across the population of college and university students during those years, only five to 15 percent of the students, even at the most activist campuses like Berkeley, Michigan, Kent State, so forth, only five to 15 percent of the students were really active and involved. When you look at the research on their background, by and large, their parents were activists during the Depression, during the (19)40s and so forth. But for me, the important point about that is that it demonstrates how a small, active, committed, energetic group of people can define the conversation and present the issue, can enable the creation of things like the Peace Corps. As Margaret Mead said, never underestimate the ability of one person or a small group of persons to change the world. But I think it is important to keep that in mind, and it is important to keep that in mind now as we confront the horrendous global problems that are rushing toward us in terms of global warming and peak oil, and all those issues. Unfortunately, I think what happened with the disillusion that sat in that you had referred to is that we forgot that taking on a small number of people who were willing to take on those issues could really have an impact. Obviously, those set of subcultures created context where people with similar concerns could put their time and energy and emotion and get invested in, and that is what higher education ought to be about in relation to our general culture. It ought to be about helping persons with in fact, on this self-esteem, purpose issue, helping persons connect their own particular attitudes and values, conservative or liberal, but with particular social issues that they can invest themselves in, at the same time they're raising a family and earning a living and so on.

SM (00:58:48):
During the (19)60s, obviously more minority students were on college campuses than ever before. That is so important. More women were admitted into medical schools and to law schools, and some all-male schools became co-ed. So those were important developments. But you saw in the late (19)60s something that upset a lot of people that cared about coming together as a nation. That was the Black Power Movement, which was in some respects, the Black Panthers, that historic scene of Stokely Carmichael challenging Dr. King in (19)67 and telling him that his time had passed. Then in (19)65 or (19)64, the debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin where he said the very same thing, the non-violent protests, its time has passed. So, what you saw at Kent State University and the protests in 1970 was an all-white protest against the Vietnam War with African American students and students of color concentrating on the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power. Did that upset you at all when you were in college, that you saw the Dr. Kings, you saw affirmative action coming in strong into the universities, and then all of a sudden you had the Black Power, which started a separatist movement again of dividing people? Just your thoughts on that.

AC (01:00:15):
Well, whenever you have a hugely important social issue that has a direct impact on individuals, specifically those who are subject to the injustice and unfairness and prejudices, it is very hard to address that type of thing without having both significant diversity within the movements that are addressing it and extremes. So that is part of I think the way group processes and social dynamics work. I mean, that is what we are experiencing now with the Muslims.

SM (01:01:16):
Yes. I have a question later on that, yes.

AC (01:01:19):
And the extremists tend to drive, for better or worse, the extremist minority tends to drive the conversation, tends to drive the political responses. It is very hard for moderates, if you will, to know how to function within those concepts. we see the polarization within our own Congress, our Senate and Representatives now are between the Democrats as Republicans, are being driven wider and wider apart. So, you have really good moderates like Senator Bayh and others who say, "Well, I guess this is not the way I want to work now." I do not know how to combat that fundamental social dynamic other than increasing education, if you will, increasing everybody's awareness and sensitivity to these dynamics and increasing their capacity to think in more complex ways about the issues. Unfortunately, that is where higher education is failing us, I think.

SM (01:03:04):
Yeah, and I mean, you had right on target because we did a conference on Islam just before I left. It was packed, yet we had criticism from the Jewish community for even doing it. Would you say the Muslim students are the African American students of the (19)50s? Which would you compare them to what was going on with African American students in the (19)50s?

AC (01:03:29):
Oh, first I should say, I do not know. I do not know the data and I do not know from personal experience. Having said that, I think the issue of racism was much more broadly based and widespread and affected many, many more people in the United States than the religious prejudices that are operative now, with regard to Muslims. I think a lot of the dynamics are similar, the magnitude of the problem and the numbers of people affected, they were dramatically different. On a global scale, I think it is a much more serious issue obviously with... We did not have Black suicide bombers. We did not have to worry about African Americans or other Blacks from the Caribbean getting the nuclear bombs to blow the rest of us away. So, the issues of scale and potential danger are hugely different.

SM (01:05:01):
What are your thoughts on of course, in the early (19)70s, the Black Studies programs were under a lot of criticism when they were developed, and I was directly involved in those, actually did an independent study on it when I was at Ohio State. But with the development of the Women's Studies, Native American Studies, Black Studies, Environmental Studies, Asian Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Chicano Studies, is that good for a university? Because the critics like David Horowitz and Charles Murray and others, and Phyllis Schlafly say that this is nothing but the troublemakers of the (19)60s now controlling universities of today. They have been doing so since the (19)90s, according to these individuals, that we have a politically correct campus. That just is not obvious. Again, just your thoughts and the development of all these studies programs and the criticisms of political correctness on university campuses, particularly with our professors.

AC (01:06:04):
I think those criticisms are very far-fetched. In the first place, it would be much better from my point of view if the criticism was more accurate. That is to say if issues having to do with racism, with gender equality, with hot button topics like abortion or so on were dealt with throughout the curriculum, but that does not happen. So, in the absence of that, I think it is extremely important and useful to have centers, institutes, whatever for the organization form they take to keep these issues alive, and where students and faculty and others learn about them, but with which they can identify and where they can get involved. If you look at [inaudible], I mean both criticisms have ignore the fact that higher education is dominated now by a market mentality that emphasizes professional and occupational preparation. That has in many colleges and universities driven a whole series of policies and practices with regard to consumers, students and parents and so forth, that are a direct reflection of the worst of our capitalistic practices.

SM (01:08:11):
That is amazing that you are saying that. I had this down as my last question. This is not my last question because we have got quite a few more, but I got to read this because you hit a button here that was going to be my last question to you. This was, do you believe today's universities are so driven by money, for example, just about everything is linked to fundraising, including out of classroom activities like lectures, forums, debates, conferences, cultural events, that quality out-of-classroom experiences are being denied, eliminated, or allowed with a price tag to the detriment of quality educational experience for students? And i.e., I say, top administration wants to dictate what can or cannot happen, only if it means it can be linked to a fundraising effort during tough economic times.

SM (01:09:03):
The fundraising effort during tough economic times, did you feel that is happening?

AC (01:09:08):
Oh, of course. It is happening dramatically, and I am going to have to stop in a bit here. I think what has happened is that, I did the speech at Florida State. I [inaudible] also email you if you want. That addresses a bunch of these problems. And higher education for years was seen as the public good, and that is why we had all state support, why you could go to the California system or New York system, virtually at very little cost. Now it has seen as a private benefit. State support now is, last numbers I saw for public institutions, is in the order of 20 or 25 to 30 or 35 percent. And as state support has dropped, states have authorized tuition increases to cover the cost. We are moving back into a meritocratic, aristocratic orientation for higher education. And that major shift in the last 10 or 20 years is what has driven this whole mentality that you're talking about. So higher education is not something that is seen as a politically important and socially important institution as a public good. And so consequently, our focus is more and more for professional vocational preparation and dollars drive the system.

SM (01:11:06):
We have got 15 more minutes if that is okay. Still there?

AC (01:11:13):
What? Say again.

SM (01:11:13):
We have 15 more minutes. Is that okay? Because that is an hour and a half.

AC (01:11:17):
Okay.

SM (01:11:18):
Okay, great. I am glad I got that question in. Kent State University in 1970 and Jackson State was certainly a monumental nightmare for the Boomer generation. Where were you when you heard about it and what do you think the impact of that day, May 4th and two weeks later when two African American students were killed, what impact did that have on not only the generation but on higher education?

AC (01:11:56):
I just have to say I do not know. I remember when Kennedy was shot, but I do not remember where I was when I got that news. Just thinking off the top of my head, I do not know that those two horrendous events had a major distinctive impact because they were part of the whole continuum of dramatic events and activities that were going on with all the sit-ins and demonstrations. They were an unfortunate, tragic extension of that whole process. So, in and of themselves, they amplified that, but I do not think had any particular distinctive impact.

SM (01:13:00):
Well, in your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end?

AC (01:13:07):
When did the (19)60s begin and end?

SM (01:13:09):
Yes.

AC (01:13:19):
Well, I think it began, the early (19)60s for me and my family and the Goddard community were dominated by Cold War issues and the atomic bomb issue. And when Gorbachev came to power and that whole dynamic, if you will, started to get cooled out, I think that allowed us to turn our attention to other issues like the environment, race and other major social issues. So, for me, I think the dropping away of the Cold War was a major variable in freeing us up to address other issues, economically, politically, socially.

SM (01:14:39):
And when do you feel it ended?

AC (01:14:42):
With Reagan's election.

SM (01:14:45):
Good. That is a good point. I personally felt that when streaking started on the college campuses in (19)73, I knew it was over. If you remember, that happened in the fall of (19)73.

AC (01:15:00):
Well, you have all these wonderful details.

SM (01:15:05):
Yeah, this is your interview, but-

AC (01:15:07):
It is going to be an interesting book.

SM (01:15:10):
Yeah. The AIDS crisis was obviously a very important thing in the (19)80s and on college campuses, the AIDS quilt. There was a lot of sensitivity toward that particular issue and gay and lesbian students obviously came to the forefront at that particular time. Just your thoughts on the impact that the AIDS crisis had on the higher education community.

AC (01:15:38):
Well, it is certainly pulled out the whole sexual freedom that burst onto the scene in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, with the drugs, drink and sex.

SM (01:16:02):
Right.

AC (01:16:12):
But it is also in a more healthy way, helped us be more aware of and thoughtful about the whole issue of homosexuality, particularly among men. And I think that was a good thing.

SM (01:16:32):
Where did the universities fail in the (19)60s and the (19)70s? Are you aware, as obviously as a college administrator has experienced and a professor who has experienced so much, there has been little talk about the loss of a lot of the great professionals in student affairs who just burned out. And I have even read stories of some people became sick, some who died even because they could no longer take the students of the (19)60s and early (19)70s because many of the students had this philosophy, well, if you give into these issues and I will just make another 10. And so there was no, oftentimes criticism of the Boomers is that they were never satisfied even when administrations tried to satisfy them. Just your thoughts of, and certainly Kent State was an example of presidential failure, the President being away, and some of the other examples. Just your perceptions of the universities in the (19)60s. And when I say (19)60s, I mean right up to about (19)73, where did they fail and where did they succeed?

AC (01:17:49):
Well, I really cannot respond to that question. I was drowning, from (19)71 to (19)77, I was working 70 or 80 hours a week creating Empire State College. As I said earlier, I was focused on adult learners. And I knew about the University Without Walls movement because it started at [inaudible]. Empire State was associated with that, but I was really not tuned into the rest of the world of higher education.

SM (01:18:37):
Okay. One of the main questions I have asked beyond the question of trust is the question of healing. And everybody has given me a lot of different responses. I took a group of students to Washington, DC when I was working at the University at Westchester. And the students came up with this question because they had seen a film on 1968, and they wanted to ask Senator Muskie this question because they thought that they had gotten the perception that we were close to a second civil war in 1968 with all the divisions. And basically, I am going to read it here, if I can find it. Let us see if I can find, probably not going to be able appointed here. I think the basic thrust was, oh, here it is. Do you feel bloomers are still having a problem with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, the divisions between black and white, the divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? Do you feel the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wounds. And so, they asked Senator Muskie that question because of 1968 and his response, he did not even respond in the way we thought. He said we had not healed since the Civil War and went on to give a lecture on why we had not healed since the Civil War. But your thoughts on whether you think the Boomer generation has issues. Well, I know they do not wear it on their sleeve as some people said, but do you think there are some of the divisions and think people care enough that they really have not healed since those times?

AC (01:20:36):
Well, I am no social historian, but certainly if you look at what is going on politically, we have become, and if you listen to seasoned legislators like [inaudible] and others, the whole culture of Congress in the Senate and the House has changed so that it has become more divisive, more acrimonious, less civil, less collaborative, and our whole culture has become divided. And I think the media, particularly the blogs and social technology media, which give a loud voice to a very small number of people. And so, you have extreme points of view that yes, a level of visibility and attention that unwarranted both by the substance of the basis for their comments and also by their numbers, helped drive these extremes seriously.

SM (01:22:15):
If you were to give a term to the Boomer Generation, a lot of people say they are the Vietnam generation. Some say they are the Woodstock Generation or the protest generation or the movement generation. What if you were to give them a title, what would it be?

AC (01:22:45):
Transition, I guess.

SM (01:22:47):
Transition generation? Do you think that the universities today did not learn from the student activists of the (19)60s and they are afraid of a return of activism? The kind of activism we are seeing in California right now with students protesting against the tuition increases, and there is a fledgling movement against the war in Afghanistan and other issues. But are they afraid of a return?

AC (01:23:17):
Well, I do not know about afraid of a return, but universities are typically afraid of vigorous activism. Anything that challenges authority or threatens the status quo is scary. And when it gets mobilized, and again, now if it gets mobilized by extremists, it make sense to be concerned.

SM (01:23:46):
Right. When the best history books are written, sociology books on the legacy of the Boomer Generation, that is those born between (19)46 and (19)64, what do you think the history books, books on higher ed, sociology books will say about this Boomer Generation?

AC (01:24:06):
They brought a whole range of ideals that went unrealized.

SM (01:24:20):
Good point. Now, I had this one little segment here, but we may go over. You have to finish right at 1:30?

AC (01:24:26):
Well, I need to stop in five or 10 minutes, yeah.

SM (01:24:31):
Okay. What we will do is real fast here is I am just going to give some names. Some of them were the heroes of the generation, and just your thoughts on these individuals that were all well-known during the timeframe. Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

AC (01:24:52):
Oh, they were good models.

SM (01:24:55):
John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

AC (01:24:58):
They were fabulous example, each. Kennedy was flawed by his womanizing some, John. Jack, was. Bobby, in a way was cleaner, but also very aggressive, unbalanced, wonderful.

SM (01:25:24):
How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern?

AC (01:25:28):
They were my heroes.

SM (01:25:30):
You liked them both?

AC (01:25:31):
Yes.

SM (01:25:32):
How about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X?

AC (01:25:37):
Well, certainly Martin Luther King is everybody's hero. Malcolm X played a major important role, I think, in strengthening Black pride and Black activists.

SM (01:25:53):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew?

AC (01:25:58):
Nixon got what he deserved, and Agnew should have been more severely chastised.

SM (01:26:10):
LBJ and Hubert Humphrey?

AC (01:26:13):
Oh, well, they were both wonderful populists and excellent contributors to the public good.

SM (01:26:23):
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin?

AC (01:26:27):
I do not know enough. I recognize the names, but I do not know enough of what actually impact they might have had to make a comment.

SM (01:26:37):
Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, the women leaders?

AC (01:26:43):
Well, Friedan and Steinem certainly put the whole gender issues on the public screen, and Bella Abzug was a wonderful feminist political leader.

SM (01:26:58):
Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford?

AC (01:27:03):
Well, they were establishment politicians that did not have... Well, I was going to say, have any enduring legacy. Of course, we have Eisenhower to thank for our national highway system, which has become a very unfortunate kind of phenomenon in the degree to which it has totally undercut investment in public transportation.

SM (01:27:35):
Robert Reagan and Jimmy Carter?

AC (01:27:36):
Well, as I have said, I think Reagan's conservatism caused major problems. Jimmy Carter, unfortunately, was not a very effective president, but has been a wonderful post-president the person.

SM (01:27:59):
How about George Bush senior and Bill Clinton?

AC (01:28:05):
Well, Bush senior was thought of a modest, mediocre President. Clinton was one of our most effective politicians who unfortunately was incapacitated by his sexuality.

SM (01:28:29):
1968?

AC (01:28:32):
1968?

SM (01:28:34):
The year.

AC (01:28:39):
I do not know. I do not have anything I identify with [inaudible].

SM (01:28:42):
Was the year of the assassinations and the conventions.

AC (01:28:45):
Ph, okay. So sorry.

SM (01:28:48):
The Black Panthers, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, and Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, that group?

AC (01:29:00):
Well, those extreme activist for the Black Power, Black is Beautiful orientation were probably necessary and helpful.

SM (01:29:19):
Dr. Benjamin Spock and Daniel and Philip Berrigan.

AC (01:29:24):
Two very different people. We raised our kids on Spock and I admired Berrigan for his activism.

SM (01:29:33):
How about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers?

AC (01:29:36):
Wonderful, wonderful example of conscientious activism.

SM (01:29:46):
Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali.

AC (01:29:50):
Well, two wonderful Black athletes who broke a lot of ground, especially Jackie Robinson.

SM (01:29:57):
How about the original seven astronauts?

AC (01:30:02):
Well, I think on balance, going to the moon was a good thing, although I do not place a high value on our investments in space exploration.

SM (01:30:15):
Robert McNamara?

AC (01:30:19):
Well, bringing a General Motors mentality to the Defense Department I do not think was very helpful.

SM (01:30:31):
Watergate?

AC (01:30:34):
Well, it was a wonderful demonstration. In its aftermath, one way it represented the extreme of political self-interest in Woodward and Bernstein revelations, turned out to be a wonderful example of how investigative reporting and democratic processes [inaudible].

(End of Interview)

2010-03-09

Stephen McKiernan

Arthur W. Chickering, 1927-

91:09

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Authors; Scholars; Chickering, Arthur W., 1927--Interviews

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