Interview with Dr. Mitch Pearlstein

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Dr. Mitch Pearlstein
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Eden Lowinger
Date of interview: 7 August 2019
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(Start of Interview)

00:02
SM: First off Mitch, I want to thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate it very much and–

00:07
MP: Happy to.

00:07
SM: Yep, the first question I try to ask most of the people I have interviewed is to tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, your early family life, your early years before you even attended Harpur College. And some of the impact of that early life on your life.

00:25
MP: Well, that will take the first hour, that is not bad. I grew up in Queens. It was born the actually in Brooklyn, the old Bedbell Hospital, which is I have been told the Brookhaven Medical Center and has been that for a long, long time, but do not hold me to any of that. I am 71. Spent the seven years, in Sunnyside in Queens, Long Island City. I am the first of three kids. My brother Robert is twenty months my junior and my sister Andy, who I say is Andrea and she says Andrea, she is nine years my junior. So we were in Sunnyside, as I say, for seven years at PS 150 which is where David Horowitz went to school go I think seven years before I was there. We moved to Far Rockaway in, also in Queens right on the beach, when I was I suspect seven and started off at PS 215. Over time that led to junior high school 180 and then Far Rockaway High School. My father was in sales and for a period, was in management- if you are familiar with the Modells Shoppers World?

01:32
SM: Oh, yeah.

02:05
MP: He was with them for a long, long time. He actually was with a firm called the [inaudible] “D" as in "dog", A, "V" as in "victor," E, G A sporting goods and they were purchased by Modells or [inaudible] in the late (19)50s or so. So he had essentially his entire career there. My mother did not work outside of the home until all the kids left home. And my father was not pleased about his wife working outside of the home, quite traditional in that sense. At the risk of sounding unkind and all it was not an educated family from which I came, at least in terms of school credentials and all. My father was a high school graduate, my mother was a high school dropout her parents never learned how to read. I was one of the first people in the family, certainly on my mother's side to go to college. I was a wonderful student up and through sixth grade. I tell people I did poorly in high school and junior high school because I had worked so hard and sixth grade I had burned out. Not too many people believe this. I was lazy as the short answer. We want to get what therapeutic, I was troubled in some fashion. I just did not do my work. And this was early in the baby boomer time, going off to college, meaning there were more kids to school than they were in necessarily seats. And I had a hard time getting in any place. I graduated high school barely I suspect, in (19)66- my test scores were pretty good- when I say just barely [inaudible] and see what I suspect. I got out of high school well enough but I had done lousy and the City University system to its great credit and through my everlasting gratitude put together very-very quickly for the class graduating in (19)66, City University College centers they were called attached to I think five of the community colleges, and these were places where kids who could not even get into a community college at the time and the SUNY system. And that saved me, I do not know, I do not remember exactly what I would have done, it would, if that had not happened I would've gone to school someplace, but probably would have cost me or my family. So I attended for one year. And these were one year programs, The City University College Center at New York City Community College, which is a mouthful, was in a warehouse in downtown Brooklyn. And this is when I came to realize that beer is a far better motivator than self-esteem or anything of the sort. At least that was my interpretation afterwards. I figured that this was my last chance. If I continued to screw up, I would not have a career. So I worked very hard, and did quite well. And after one semester, I had a 3.8 if I recall.

02:05
SM: Yep. Oh, that is great.

06:00
MP: And applied, I said I was going to apply to the four university centers in the SUNY system. And the way it worked, I think Stony Brook's application came in first, but they did not want to stay on Long Island. Binghamton came in second. So I applied to Binghamton. One of them, Albany or Buffalo never came in and I just did not bother with the other because I knew with the 3.8 I was pretty good for Binghamton to offer. And that is the way it worked. So that was a turning point. I did well academically and over the next several years, sometimes I did exceed extremely well, academically and another times not. It always had to do with my working hard or not working hard or being involved in the antiwar movement, frankly.

06:56
SM: Right.

06:57
MP: Or having my heart broken by some female. And that is a rough description-

07:06
SM: Well, that fits right into the-

07:07
MP: [inaudible] my life until I got to Binghamton, you know.

07:11
SM: Yeah that, my next question was, how and why did you choose Harpur? You just explained it beautifully. And but the some of the questions I wanted to ask about your Harpur years here is, what activities were you involved in at the school, including some of the groups you joined? And how would you describe your four years at Binghamton between (19)67 and (19)70, ah (19)66, I guess (19)67 and (19)70, your three years.

07:17
MP: Thank you. Yeah, it was three years. I came in as a sophomore. I played baseball, I was a pitcher on the baseball team. I had grown up playing baseball. As a kid. I was pretty decent. Played in high school, but I was not so decent then, they were better players that I was at the time. Got to Harpur and got on to the baseball team. I was a pitcher and I actually started opening day and my junior year.

08:13
SM: Wow.

08:14
MP: Yeah, guess who I do not recall necessarily. I did beat Stony Brook in a complete seven inning game, was part of a doubleheader and that was as a junior.

08:24
SM: Wow.

08:24
MP: But overall, I had a losing record in the lousy ERA. But I have remained close friends with my old coach. For example, John Affleck. AFFLECK. Who, looking back, he was not much older than the ballplayers at the time. He is in Florida now, has been there for a while though, he summers in Ontario. I have not seen him since I was in Binghamton last which was, I think for my 40th class reunion, so that would have been nine years ago, but we stay in touch a couple of times a year with emails back and forth and some of the old ballplayers are people who myself stay in touch with. If someone is sick, and someone sends out an email about how folks are doing or something, perhaps happier, we will have a couple of emails going between and among us. That will happen about twice a year.

09:30
SM: Do you [inaudible]- Do you remember coach Schum?

09:35
MP: Oh, of course him. Very well. I remember all of the coaches for the most part, I suspect quite well, in part, in large part because I was a student there. And then I worked there, we will get to that. And then I was a reporter for the Sun-Bulletin and I did sports for a while so I knew these folks reasonably well, yeah.

09:58
SM: Yeah, coach Schum was, did all the gym classes. And I remember going to my first gym class there. And he did not read the names off. He read the social security numbers off. [laughs] Yeah. And he said, "Alright, you should know your social security number by now." And, of course I knew I did not. And-and so he is reading all the social security numbers and he comes to mine, and then he just says it again. And I, "McKiernan!" I never forgot my social security number after that. What, Mitch, you were involved, talk about some of the, your out of classroom experiences that were during your years at Binghamton, whether it be involved in any protests or activist activities, going to meet speakers that came to campus during that very tumultuous time, any programs and inspired you, just things that happened during those three years before you graduated in (19)70?

10:12
MP: Did he really? Well, let us, uh, technically, I graduated in (19)71. I was seven credits short. But I got the bureaucracy a couple of years later to change my class to what I viewed as my real class, (19)70. So, when I get a mailing, it will say Pearlstein (19)70, which probably illegal where that is concerned, in the interest of full disclosure. We will get into, let us let us delay for a moment the political stuff and the anti-war stuff. We will talk about a couple of other things. I have spoken about on a number of occasions out here about how the Guarneri String Quartet, you remember Guarneri?

11:58
SM: Oh, yeah, they were excellent. Yes.

12:00
MP: More than excellent. Guarneri, they had formed, I think, only about two years earlier (19)65. And they were in residence at Binghamton starting in about (19)67. And I do not read music, I had no real musical background at the time, other than being in the chorus in seventh grade and carousel, at junior high school 180, then being kicked out of Oklahoma, like, in eighth grade because I finally realized I could not sing. So I had no real musical background. But I would attend their rehearsals, they would do rehearsals in the dorms, in the lounges of the dorms. And when they were in Champlain where I was like, I would sit in. And to me, it was just fascinating to hear not just the great music, but they would play about four bars, and then they would stop and talk about it or argue about it. And they would hear things that I simply would not hear. And that has been a metaphor in some respects. I am a passionate listener of Minnesota Public Radio, classical Minnesota Public Radio, I listen all the time, I have not listened to anything else for a while. Probably could use a little variety. I have been on a radio show that they, oh excuse me, a feature that they do Minnesotans and their music. And they had me on about half dozen years ago, I talked about what kind of music moves me and talking about classical music. And I would tell the Guarneri story. That sticks with me that really does. What sticks with me also is life in the dorm in Champlain. When I was back nine years ago for the 40th, number of us from Champlain were interviewed and I made the point that something along the lines, when you live in a dorm you got to do what is right. Otherwise people will think you are a jerk. It is your family. And people think you are a jerk. That is not going to be good for you. So you work hard. I worked hard. Not that it was all that hard to do what was right. I am not expressing this real well. I was not going to do anything terribly wrong, but it was a matter of being just a good classmate, a good citizen. And that was my family and that sticks with me, we will leave various affairs of the heart out of this conversation. I was a political science major, and at times, I was really quite good. And other times I was not so good as a student, I was sporadic as that. I did not join a whole bunch of things. And this might be the segue to talking about various political and anti-war activities. Going back to growing up again, I grew up in a very let us just say, left-leaning environment. First of all, it was Queens, it was New York City, it was the (19)60s. My father had grown up, if not as a socialist, very much to the left, as was the whole family as was the entire environment. Jewish environment, lower middle class environment. He was a member of workman circle. Folks are familiar with that fraternal organization, which is interesting, very much on the left, but very much anti-communist. We can get into it, perhaps remind me, that I am all for conservatives who have been anti-communists, but most conservatives have never met one. Whereas people on the web certainly have not. It has been their responsibility in many instances, to purge bad communist influences from different kinds of organizations. We can talk about Max Kampelman, if you would like, you would have to remind me to do that. But at any rate, I was not perpetually part of that political ethos. And in (19)65, when I was 17, and William F. Buckley Jr., Bill Buckley, ran for mayor of New York, I worked on his campaign. Not in a senior position, I assure you, I handed out literature in Rockaway. And this was, let us just say any number of family members were taken aback by this. And they were hoping that it was a phase but it was not a phase. There was something about Buckley that I responded to quite well, there was something about politics of him, responsible right side of the aisle that I responded to quite well. And, in keeping with that, I supported US policy in Vietnam when I was in high school and through my freshman year at-at the City University College Center in New York City Community College. And I was still supportive of US policy when I got to Binghamton in the fall of (19)67. Needless to say, the environment was quite different. Not that anybody was thinking over the head change. It was not until, if I recall correctly around December of (19)67, that I began to think differently, Harrison Salisbury, the journalist from Minnesota actually, came to town to give a lecture. And he made it clear to me at the time that for the United States to win, it would have to do some things that would simply be unacceptable, such as "Bomb the dikes," as I recall him saying. And in time, during that period, I came out against US policy. A key point to keep in mind here is that while many of the people in the anti-war movement, particularly those who were clearly on the left, wanted, wanted the US to lose, and who thought that American involvement in Southeast Asia was a sign of US evil. I, on the other hand, did not view it as a good thing if the United States was to lose, and that it was not, American involvement of Vietnam was not sign of anything sinister about the United States. But it had been a mistake, it was a well-intentioned albeit mistake, to get involved in the way that we did. And sometime as we approached, got into my senior year, as you may recall, that was when I suspect you may have talked to other people about this, that a coalition was pulled together. Under, if I recall correctly, the heading was a student mobilization committee. And by the way, I have on my wall poster that we did. That said, something about- I can get exact language if I get up and walk four feet, about, talking about the war, talking about it together at the courthouse at noon, on October 15 (19)69 which corresponded with the big first student mobilization day in DC. And I was asked to be, or wound up, as a member of that coalition, we were talking about good friends like Ivan Charter, with whom I am still very much in touch with. I interviewed him for the last book. And we have spoken to friends with Kathy and we plan on being at Binghamton for our 50th come next year. Elliot Maisie was part of that as well. If you remember, if you have ever heard the name, Peter Gellert, GELLERT, Peter was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, a real-life Marxist. Who still is, by the way is living in Mexico has been there for a long time. He was part of the coalition. And I became in some ways the spokesman for this group, Ivan was the chair of great leadership skills. Elliot made the great organizational skills. I was the spokesman because I could get along reasonably well with all elements in this coalition. And I spoke reasonably well, interested in the media. So I was the one on October 15 (19)69, to represent SMC on the podium, in front of City Hall during that during that demonstration. Julian Bond, by the way, was in town and he also spoke and-

22:51
SM: Wow.

22:51
MP: -what I recall, it was the women in the crowd being far-far more interested in what he had to say than what I had to say. So, I was quite involved in antiwar activities, though, my interpretation of things, my sense of the country was often quite different from those of many of the people at school.

23:26
SM: Yeah, I, what is amazing about those years of Binghamton, I can remember being in the Union many times and, and the theatre group would, Guerrilla Theater would come in. Do you remember that happening all the time? Where the–

23:40
MP: Vaguely [crosstalk]

23:41
SM: Yeah, I think they come out of nowhere. And I have done some studies on Guerilla Theater during the (19)60s, and it was so very creative, very anti-war. Then there was another event that you might remember that really, I came to school one morning, and the entire quad in front of the administration building had signs on it. And it was like, they were all anti-war signs. And a group-

24:07
MP: Yeah, I vaguely recall that as well, that might have been the year prior, but I could be wrong.

24:13
SM: Yeah. Well, I do not think the administration liked the fact that it was done. But-

24:17
MP: I suspect not, no.

24:17
SM: [laughs] No, but it was almost there was no space on that quad there were so many signs put up and it was it was very well done. You walk through it. And then I can remember also when Governor Rockefeller came to campus to open the garden there near the theater department, that that open area there and I remember students protesting on Vestal Parkway and trying to block him coming in because they he kind of represented the establishment and so forth. And then of course the-the Harpur did not have any, they did not allow ROTC on campus and whenever the military recruiters came, the students protested in the administration building. So, there is, there is a lot.

25:00
MP: Yeah, I protested. I was opposed to those protests. I remember when Rockefeller was on campus, and I was very much opposed to the protests against him. As I say, I was not [inaudible] at that point this was prior to (19)69. I was, my goodness, by the student radical standards of the day, I was some kind of right winger, I would imagine. But I was opposed to various protests of various kinds. I was, frankly, I was more of a moderate, I was more of an establishmentarian. As I said before, the key was that I did not view American involvement in Vietnam or anyplace else as a sign that we were a rotten nation, did not see it that way at all.

25:55
SM: If you were describ- if you were to put a label, and I know, I do not like labels many times but if you were to put a label on yourself, you told me about your high school years and your first year at Cooney. What about when you were Harper would you con- be considered a conservative, a liberal or you do not want to be the either-either one?

26:14
MP: Well working backwards, I am the founder of a conservative free market think tank in Minnesota. We have been up and running for 29 years. I worked in the Reagan administration at the end of the US Department of Education in the first couple of years. The first Bush administration, well a year each I suspect, this was back in (19)87 through (19)90. So in real ways, I am a conservative now. I arrived at Binghamton, as I was saying, liking Bill Buckley. I modeled, by the way, a senator of the American Experiment the think tank, after Bill Buckley in many ways, civil and academic. And we would have people on this show. And they would be quite decent to each other. But the conversation was vivid. That is how I to make American Experiment. In many ways, this is exactly how we have been for going on three decades. I would have viewed myself by (19)69, (19)70. I was, you know it is a good question. Left, right. Did not does not feel right. At this moment, thinking back that way. Not that that sentence makes any sense. Maybe the best way. A moderate of the times or a moderate- among antiwar activists, I was more moderate than many. How is that?

27:52
SM: Mitch, that is a good description. I think it is excellent. The- would you consider the campus itself, now consider the student body during that time that you were at Binghamton, and you can include not only the time that you were a student there, but I know you also worked for the president. That that came into power after Dr. Deering. Would you consider the campus an activist campus?

28:38
MP: Following back up for a second, I did not work in the administration until (19)72. And that was when [inaudible] Bill McGrath became president. It was not right after Deering. I think Stew Gordon was right after Deering. So there was this interlude, and I was well out of school by the time Peter arrived in (19)72. Was it an activist campus? Sure. in spirit, we were blowing up things, as was the case some other places and that was good. That was very good. But it certainly was. Call it a counterculture ish kind of activism, in many ways when I got there. And when did you get there, by the way?

29:39
SM: Well I got there in (19)67.

29:41
MP: Yeah, that is exactly when I got there. If I recall correctly, the enrollment was a grand total of 2700.

29:46
SM: Yes, it is yes.

29:49
MP: And in terms of some demographics, and I have written about this, I cannot recall more than a half a dozen, conceivably a dozen African American students on campus at the time, things there and elsewhere in American education, higher education changed dramatically starting a year later after Dr. King was assassinated. So this was an exceedingly white place, an exceedingly downstate place, an exceedingly Jewish place. Other places has hippies, we had sickies as you may recall, I was not a sickie by any stretch for heaven's sakes, I was a baseball player. And I remember writing a letter through what was still the colonial news about how the sickies were making an absolute mess of the Student Center. They were slobs, they were leaving stuff all over the place and it was a political statement, I suspect, to be slobs. I was not that. I might not have been the tidiest person that my wife now can tell you that that is indeed the case. But I was certainly not have that lefty counterculture artistic spirit. I was a social science major. We played baseball. But I got along well, as I have always gotten along well with just about everybody.

31:31
SM: I think one of the things, you look at the culture, I look a lot at the music that was brought to the campus during that timeframe that we were there. And when you think of the names of Richie Havens, The Turtles.

31:47
MP: Yeah.

31:48
SM: Yeah, you have got The Chambers Brothers. You got Judy Collins, you have got Ella Fitzgerald. Remember she sang in concert there along-

31:57
MP: I was at that one, I remember that one.

31:59
SM: Yeah, that was unbelievable. Duke Ellington came, Oscar Peterson, Paul Butterfield Blues was loved by the Harpur students, they loved him. And-and of course, we had Mountain there and-and Arlo Guthrie and Lovin' Spoonful, the music, and of course, how can you forget the concert with Iron Butterfly, the concert that they thought they had two sets booked and they only had one and the Harpur students were on stage breaking the guy's drumsticks because they wanted to have two sets. But the music was really kind of counterculture when you think about it.

32:39
MP: And yeah, I will buy that. So, you are talking to someone who had a crush on Lainie Kazan from (19)63 to (19)70. So musically, I was not necessarily in that spirit. I was a [inaudible] well want to be forever known in the archives as being an old fart. Yeah, sure. Why not.

33:13
SM: [laughs] Okay, I got that down there now, Nick. And that has to be quoted at the 50th anniversary, the old fart. [laughs] I think you have already answered this one too, did you know at BU that you wanted, what you wanted to become in life? Well, you know, you are talking about your experiences of you know, difficulty with school in the beginning, and then becoming a very good student. And again, doing excellent on tests coming to a very academic school and Harpur, and being a political science major. I know you have gone on to create a- an unbelievable organization, something you should be very proud of. I mean, historic. But did you did you know what you were going to become? How are you evolving during that time as a person as you were approaching that graduation day in (19)70?

34:06
MP: Good question. Part of the context is where any number of our classmates simply assume they wanted to be doctors or lawyers. I did not grow up in that kind of environment. I had high school friends and junior high school friends who did grow up in that environment and did become lawyers and doctors and rich people. But that simply was not my environment with lower middle class. I did want to be a lawyer I think for about a day and a half while I was at Harpur but I overcame, it must have been a drug reaction or something or other. What I recall, I recall wanting to be a political speech writer. I could write well, I was interested in politics. And there was something about being a speech writer that intrigued me. That or I assumed that I would wind up in a decent job in middle management someplace. So my aspirations in that instance, were not all that high. And were constricted by the fact that I just did not know much about more elevated professions earlier on. Also, it is interesting, I think back. I probably felt more pressure every semester, that Binghamton, not because it was Binghamton, but because taking college seriously taking, well, in this instance, taking my undergraduate life seriously, it was hard. And I had to force myself to do my work sometimes, because I was not consistently disciplined. And at some level, I do not want to overstate this, but at some level, I wanted to drop acid about every semester. I never got close to doing that. But that was the sense that I had and when I talked about sometimes being a good student, sometimes not. There were a couple of classes where I was the only "A" there in that particular class. [inaudible] I think, Richard Dec Legion, and another. On other occasions, I just screwed up terribly. And as things turned out, I did wind up as a speechwriter. I wound up later on as a speech writer for Peter McGraw. When we got out here to Minnesota, I was a speech writer out here for three years. And several years later, I was the speech writer for about two years for the governor, for a guy by the name of Al Quie, QUIE, that was (19)81, (19)82. So that worked out, and I did do my stints in Washington at the Department of Education. I was an editorial writer and a columnist for The St. Paul paper. That was (19)83 to (19)87. So that was in keeping with a spirit of what I was thinking earlier, I had never viewed myself thinking back while I was in school as a potential journalist. I thought I wrote well enough, frankly, I knew I wrote well enough. But I never thought I could write fast enough to be a journalist. And yeah, here is a, here is a chapter that is interesting. You remember, David Bernstein, who was the editor and co-owner of the Sun-Bulletin who ran for Congress in (19)70.

38:15
SM: Yes.

38:17
MP: I was on his staff. I got paid $50 a week, somehow I could live on that. And I was an advanced person, I guess, I guess, the best way of describing what I did, and he lost as to be expected, as a Democrat. And I wound up right after that, working for him, pulling together a collection of his editorials. And he wrote one virtually every day, from the middle of (19)61, when he bought the paper and this is now at the end of (19)70. And his wife, Adele, was very much interested in doing a collection of his pieces. He was a brilliant writer, as clear as clean as you could possibly imagine. Got a job as working for him. And I read every single editorial he wrote during that period, and I would pull out excerpts. And the idea was to make a book out of them. And it would have been a fine book, but he lost interest. But this was a number of recessions ago and every time I finished a degree it seemed that it was a recession. And I needed a job. And he offered me a job as a reporter at the Sun-Bulletin. And I turned down because I as I say, I did not think I could write fast enough. He offered is again, I turned them down again. And by the third time I said yes, needed a job and I remember to the extent that I could remember anything for the first three weeks, hardly ever picking up my hand from my desk. I was concentrating so hard on what I was doing. But I was a reporter there, and did that for 13 months until getting to the heart of our conversation. I guess in some respect, though, this is now the (19)70s. I resigned one morning at 1:30 in the morning, after doing my police rounds, I was a police reporter at that point. And this was a night Nixon announced the mining of Haiphong and the bombing of Hanoi.

40:34
SM: Right.

40:35
MP: And I said that it, and I did civil disobedience by 7:30 in the morning, in front of the old, I guess was the old courthouse or the federal courthouse. In, in in Binghamton. So that was the end of that portion of my journalistic career. I wound up again, as an editorial writer at The Pioneer Press newspaper in St. Paul, state from (19)83 to (19)87. It was after doing that for four years, I went off to Washington. I did not give you a clear sequencing of that period. If you want, I can do that.

41:20
SM: I know, you also got your PhD at the University of Minnesota, correct?

41:25
MP: Yeah, I am going to forget that.

41:26
SM: Oh, okay. [laughs]

41:29
MP: The idea, the idea was for me when I came out here with-with Peter, in (19)74. And I can, now that is a good story, frankly, if you want to get into that though it is not the (19)60s. The idea was for me to work for him part time, and go to graduate school, part time. And once I got out here, I knew that was not going to work, there was too much work to do for Peter, and I needed more money than being paid half time. So I essentially put off graduate school for three years, I think, four courses during that interim. And then it was time to go back full time to graduate school. So I, I left Peter's employ in (19)77. And I was a full time graduate student from (19)77 to (19)80. And I wound up doing frankly, about the fastest PhD, I know. I worked very, very hard. I was terrifically disciplined and the fact that I had just gotten divorced, and I had a lot of time on my hands. And I finished off in (19)80 and I was I was good as a, as a graduate student, wrote a, if I do say so, an exceedingly good dissertation on Jewish attitudes towards affirmative action admissions in higher education.

42:54
SM: Wow.

42:55
MP: And I finished off and found out that the academic world and other worlds could care less that I had just done that.

43:05
SM: Well, that is–

43:06
MP: What I–

43:07
SM: Wow.

43:07
MP: -that is working for Al Quie-took a while. But I wound up working as a speech writer. And my first thought was, I had been a speech writer. And I went to graduate school to get a doctorate. So, I would not necessarily have to be a speech writer, I could write for myself. But then I realized I needed a job again, and too being a speechwriter for a governor who I respected a great deal was, as they say, not chopped liver. And that turned out to be a great experience.

43:40
SM: Before we go on to the-the organization that you created, the major organization, I want to ask some just some general questions about the (19)60s, the (19)60s and the early (19)70s. What has been the overall impact of your generation, the boomer generation on America? And, you know, if it is positive, why and if it is negative why?

44:06
MP: I like macro questions, whether or not I am prepared to answer I do not know. The clichéd answer, which is not to say it is incorrect, is that the (19)60s were a time of expanding social justice. Women, certainly. racial minorities, certainly. Maybe the early Inklings when it comes to gay rights, the environment, certainly all that is, is well known and much of it is to be admired and be thankful for, no question. At the same time you I often view the (19)60s as when the United States got real close to having a nervous breakdown. And that was not good. Not necessarily as logical and as rational sometimes, as we needed to be. Too emotional. What do they, I forget who wrote it. Could have been a conservative rabbi. This goes back some time I am guessing in the (19)80s when he paid his respects as I do, to religious conservatives, mostly Christian, who saved the country from going nuts in Thailand. And that-that sense of order, which is not to say, an excessive or undemocratic, unfree sense of order, but I believe an ordered liberty, let us put it that way. I like that term. I liked the concept. And we needed people on the right to say, "Hey, let us slow down, let us think this one through, let us not get completely crazy. Let us not assume for a moment that the Vietcong were really the good guys and they were a bunch of agrarian reformers." Rooting for the communists to win is never a good idea. So, I look back on the (19)60s, I am proud of what I did, for the most part. I wish we had done something different in the antiwar movement. Without question, we thought too poorly of the country. Without question we treated soldiers dreadfully. Without question, we assumed the other side were a bunch of good guys often, and to our activisting. So, it very much of a of a mixed bag. You know, I think that the one time, I am not real proud of how I viewed matters back then, was the night of Kent State.

47:39
SM: Oh yeah.

47:39
MP: Which was what, something like May 4th of (19)70, something like that?

47:43
SM: Yeah, yes.

47:44
MP: And we had a big meeting at I guess it was in the, could have been women's gym, what was then the gym-gym, I guess? And remember the name Tommy Tuchman?

48:00
SM: Oh, yes.

48:02
MP: Tommy was a friend. He was up there speaking. And he was he was being a tad extreme and crowd was going nuts in support of what he was saying, and this was not good. And I find myself caught up in that. I had been really, really angered by Kent State and that was one time I was going over the line. And being a radical in spirit, and say I am not a radical person by any stretch and have not been. I think some of the excessive identity politics of this era now and going back decades, certainly grew out of the (19)60s. I think we have spent far too much time in this country, though I understand why focusing on questions of race and ethnicity. Not good. And that certainly grew out of the out of the (19)60s. I used the term back then. It came to me in about, might have been around (19)72. But do not hold me to that, naive cynicism. And there was a lot of naive cynicism at the time. In many ways. I saw that and still see that as a paramount sense at the time. It is one thing to be cynical, if you have to use the expression, been around the block several times, you have some age to and you are cynical. I think [inaudible] cynical is overstating matters, you should not be, but it is understandable. But when you are 19 years old, and you do not know very much, and you are cynical, that does not fit. It does not fit the decency of this nation. It is not good for your mental health. It is not in keeping with reality. And to the, again, the extent that I have problems with the (19)60s into the (19)70s, it is precisely that. And when we talk about the (19)60s, as you well know, it is not just the (19)60s, it is well into the (19)70s.

50:47
SM: Yes.

50:48
MP: And so much of the craziness. And the rest that we associate with the (19)60s, stretch into the (19)70s, and often got started in the (19)70s.

51:06
SM: And, Mitch, I want your thoughts on this too, when I interviewed Lee Edwards, and of course, he is a great historian himself. And he teaches a course on the (19)60s at the at a Catholic school in Washington right now. And one thing that stuck out in that interview more than anything else was when historians or sociologists or people who write about the (19)60s or experienced the (19)60s, it is always about the liberal activists. You do not hear–

51:34
MP: Right.

51:34
SM: -about the conservative activist, and we are talking about when you talk about the antiwar movement, the Young Americans for Freedom are never discussed. Yet they were conservative, but they were against the war, too.

51:49
MP: You are absolutely right. And I think I mentioned this to you in one of our previous conversations. And I am happy you have brought that up. Yeah, it shows a certain myopia on my part, that I am just thinking of the left, but without question. [inaudible] were the roots of Goldwater, they were the roots of Reagan, as it turned out a dozen years later, if you were starting off in (19)68. Absolutely, absolutely true. A couple of books. I think I have mentioned Rick Perlstein to you.

52:28
SM: Yes-yes. Yes. I think I have all his books.

52:31
MP: Yeah, who is not a relative. He spells his name wrong. That is the reason why. But I thought his book on Goldwater was terrific. And I was not the only person on the right, who viewed it as terrifically fair, as it was, and he is a person of the left. So that is, and one needs to take all that into account. In many ways. That spirit, that movement has had more to do with shaping the nation, or at least as much over the subsequent decades as stuff on the left. And David from his book about the (19)70s. I forget what it was called. But he writes about how so much of what we associate with the (19)60s is really the (19)70s that has shaped so much. Oh, absolutely [inaudible] you.

53:29
SM: So, there is this obser- Mitch, there is another observation. If you remember Colonel Harry Summers, who passed away in I think around (20)00, he wrote the almanac on the Vietnam War, and, and we were going to have at West Chester University to talk at our traveling Vietnam memorial. But he-

53:48
MP: Were ya?

53:49
SM: -he became so sick, he could not come. But he said he, well his speech was going to center on the fact that when you when professors are teaching, the (19)60s in on university campuses today, he says what they always forget to conclude in the teaching, is the military point of view. I am not, he said, "I am not saying it is right, but you have got to include that if you are going to be, you know, teach the teaching the reality of what it was like back then. It is not just the antiwar movement. It is also the, you know, the military point of view, and again you can like it or dislike it. But there is truth to that."

54:31
MP: Of course, that is true. And I am sitting here thinking about how I have focused on one side of the equation or not the other over the last 40 minutes or so. But at Binghamton and that is what we are talking about, principally.

54:49
SM: Right.

54:50
MP: Things on the right side of the aisle simply were not part of the equation.

54:53
SM: I agree.

54:55
MP: And to the extent there was any sense of the right and left, right in those times were fundamentally different from the left, right now. You would think about, remember Joe Pyne, the?

55:13
SM: Yes, his TV show, yes.

55:16
MP: Yeah. I suspect if anybody thought about what was on the right, and it was crazy people like Joe Pyne. And so there, there was not a sense for the most part of articulate, educated, sensible, enlightened notions of the right or people on the right at the time on-on campus. I just do not recall that.

55:42
SM: I remember the Joe Pyne interview with Paul Krassner. [laughs] It was hilarious. Paul was, Paul, you know Paul just passed away recently, and one of the original yippies but and but it was classic to see the two of them together on TV. A real fast response to this, I think we may have already covered it, if you were to describe the students or overall youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, please describe in your own words, the qualities you most admire or dislike.

56:18
MP: Alright, let us start on the negative side. And let us use the term I just used, naive cynicism. To what extent that that was true, or how many young people it covered, I cannot say. But let us use when Rockefeller came to campus. That really did not have anything to do with the war. I think I was a sophomore at the time I had just arrived. And the idea of protesting a governor, Republican though he might be because that is what students should do. Complaining about this or that, that to me was not responsible. It was not mature, you know, jumping ahead. 10 years ago, 11 years ago during the recession, SUNY students, I think throughout the system, not just Binghamton at the time, were protesting that tuition would go up by something like $300 to $400 a semester because of the cutback because the nation was in the worst recession, worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. And I wrote a column up here. I think it ran in the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis paper, about this refusal to acknowledge the importance of personal sacrifice, that the nation was going through this atrocious period. And students were complaining big time, they were whining about having to pay a couple of hundred bucks more of a semester, which I just viewed as unrealistic. I view that as selfish, or viewed it as immature. And I had just seen or a number of years, I guess a number of years earlier a number of years earlier. Remember the movie Radio Days? Yes. Woody Allen's Radio Days, which was set in Rockaway, by the way, and Rockaway Beach about seven miles from where I grew up. And in order for that family to make do they had an aunt living in that small house and they had, may have had a grandparent or two. And that is what people did during the (19)30s, they-they make necessary sacrifices to make it work. And now we are in, the year was we are approaching (20)10. And we were in this terrible situation in this country. And students. We are refusing to pay an extra couple of hundred bucks which is not going to be easy. But a couple of pairs of sneakers would do it frankly. And so that is the connection. When I was talking about Rockefeller a moment ago, a refusal to recognize some reality and the refusal to do what is right. And in some ways, for all the decent things young people did at the time, that is also what I recall. I thought protesting Rockefeller, because he was not building something on campus quickly enough or something along those lines. That simply was not my style.

1:00:31
SM: Well, I remember the papers. And I think he was quoted as saying that he did not know what the why they were protesting because of the fact that he put together the transportation roads, all through the thruway. He was responsible for the Thruway and they were protesting me and I put the Thruway together saying, hey, I know that came up in the conversation.

1:00:53
MP: Yeah, that part I do not remember. What I, tell me if you have ever heard this, that one of the reasons some of the campuses are laid out the way they are. I was told Albany's campus is this, so that it looked good from the air. And so if Rocky was flying over, he could tell somebody that he built that fine looking campus below. I have no idea if that is true.

1:01:17
SM: I do not either.

1:01:19
MP: Makes a good story.

1:01:20
SM: Yeah. That is a just another general question. How important were the student protests in ending the war? And [crosstalk]. And the second part, would you consider this time I think you have already talked about it, you already made a commentary about the nervousness that was going on in our society during the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Would you consider this time the closest we ever got to another civil war after the Civil War?

1:01:49
MP: No, is the short answer on that one, never reached back stage, I am talking more of a social, cultural nervous breakdown, as opposed to a political one where there would be coups and people shooting each other, I never viewed it that way. It is more subtle than that. I am fundamentally a culturalist, so that is what I am referring to, that portion of, of life.

1:02:18
SM: Have you-?

1:02:19
MP: The protests certainly led to, had something to do with the fact of the rest of society getting frustrated. And opposed to the war. I think most grownups viewed things as differently. They were not going to beat up on soldiers. And they did not think this was another sign that the United States being the worst place in the universe but had reached the state, "This is not working. We are killing people we are getting killed with spending an enormous amount of money, and this is not going away." So, I am sure students had a lot to do with precipitating that question.

1:03:02
SM: Have you changed your opinions of the boomers? You are one of them.

1:03:07
MP: The boomers?

1:03:08
SM: I over time, your-your opinions of your generation, say when you were in Harpur at, Harpur and graduate school, and maybe the first 15 years of your career, and compare it to now, have you changed- You know, then we are talking 74 million and I would have to correct that of the 74 million only about 7 percent were ever involved in activism. But that is–

1:03:32
MP: I never romant- I never romanticized, at least I do not think I did, that generation that for no other reason, there are too many people in it [laughs] to find too many distinctive themes. I have problems when people now characterize the Generation X or the millennials or. There is something to be said in each instance, there are some themes, but and now that you think back also about how there were these conservative stirrings during that period that were growing in strength. Here is another aspect of the [inaudible]. And I think a fair amount of religion- my wife is ordained, she is an Episcopal Deacon, we are an interesting family. And I am in church every week, I support my wife. And the dissertation I wrote 39 years ago had a religious theme; much of what I write has cultural themes, social things, religious themes. Thinking back, I have a hard time remembering anybody specifically, who went to church every Sunday. In part because hung out with so many Jews. There was a kosher kitchen, or at least I think that got started, might have gained some strength after I graduated. But I really did not have anything to do be frank about it with observant Jews who ate at the kosher kitchen. Meanwhile, there were 10s of millions of young people and others in the (19)60s into the (19)70s, who were traditionally religiously animated, and religiously animated in new ways. And that sense. At least I never had that sense of that was salient at all. At Harpur, which speaks to the fact, one might argue if one was being a tad harsh, that we were in Ireland. We were not in like the rest of the nation where that was the [inaudible] where religion was concerned, religious observance was concerned. I think about, I think about that a fair amount. And I think about if you want to update matters, and at the risk of my being simply wrong or unfair, bigoted in a fashion, when people talk about spending Sunday mornings reading the New York Times, well, with all due respect to people who read the New York Times, the people I now hang out with mostly go to church on-on Sunday mornings, and historically, lots and lots of American Blacks and lots of Americans have done that and still do that, though the number's decreasing. But that was never the sense in the (19)60s. So you want to view that as an indictment of the time. Sure, I will buy that.

1:06:59
SM: Yeah, I can, I can re-, I went to church every day when I was a little kid, and then through sixth grade, and then all of a sudden went to high school. I did not go to, we did not, something happened in the (19)60s. The (19)50s, everybody was at church or synagogue, it seemed like.

1:07:15
MP: Right-right.

1:07:15
SM: One of the things too, and before we go any further here is the relationship between Harpur College and the City of Binghamton and the Binghamton community. My main reaction particularly around that (19)69 to (19)70 period, when the buses were going back and forth into the city taking students back and so forth or hitchhiking, I did a lot of hitchhiking. There was a dislike-there seemed to be a tremendous dislike of for the, for many of the residents of Binghamton, toward the Harpur students. I can remember Dr. Kadish, my history professor once in a class, just a general comment, he said, he said if you go down if you go into the community, make sure you do not wear your Harpur jacket.

1:08:00
MP: Yeah.

1:08:00
SM: And-and then also, if you remember Mitch, around the (19)69, they were telling girls which, excuse me, telling women and, if you are going to hitchhike, go as a twosome. And so there was a fear that there you know, might get beat up in Binghamton or whatever, because most of Binghamton was pro war, obviously, in the Binghamton community, a lot of their sons and sons are going off to war. And here we had the students protesting on campus against the war. Did you have a sense that you do, were you, outside of writing for the paper, which is important, but did you sense as a student that Binghamton did not like Harpur? That that is the community not the political-

1:08:49
MP: Yeah. No, I would not use dislike as-as the verb though, there were some without question. Distance, I would view it as a matter of distance, we were significantly culturally different in some ways. And first of all, downstate, upstate, Jewish, non-Jewish. And one does not have to use such differences or tensions and hateful terms and they are what they are. One of my favorite examples of this, I was already working for Peter McGraw. Remember Jerry Komisar?

1:09:32
SM: Who? Jerry?

1:09:35
MP: I will spell the name, [inaudible], KOMISAR. He was an economist, a labor economist if you remember, and he was an assistant to the president and he was an assistant to Peter McGraw. He was the academic assistant to him. And Jerry later became the president of the University of Alaska System, but we were sitting with each other in a town gown meeting was one night, someplace on campus. And at the time, as you may recall, locals thought they had a harder time getting their kids into school there than kids from Queens did, when the exact opposite is true. Kids from Susquehanna country needed weaker academic credentials to get into school there. And some guy stands up and he is making the point that, the incorrect point, and referred to a lot of Binghamton Harpur students- and we called them still Harpur at the time- he called them downstate overachievers. And I looked at Jerry and Jerry looked at me and we just began laughing. What a wonderful euphemism for downstate [inaudible]. Downstate overachievers, that was, that was just terrific.

1:11:00
SM: That is exactly what we want in school. [laughs]

1:11:03
MP: My-my, my sense is now from afar, and I have heard it, that ever since Binghamton went division one in athletics, town gown relations are a whole bunch of better because the locals could invest in big time college sports now- reasonably big-time college sports. And that has helped in the fact that it is a major university and not just a small liberal arts college. Yeah, all that all that is true.

1:11:36
SM: I think you already-already know your answer to this, because you have already made a mention of the negativity that some of these students or young people had back in the (19)60s. But there was this feeling. And I remember talking to my friends especially when I was in grad school at Ohio State, would you describe the boomer generation as the most unique generation in our history? And that was the communication when I was in graduate school, in the early (19)70s, that we were different, that we were going to be the change agents for the betterment of a society, this generation saw something wrong and tried to right it. And then that was really the connection to all the movements, whether it be the civil rights, the anti-war, the environmental LGBTA, Chicano, women's, Native American all of them was speaking up, making a difference, and that is what made this generation and his group so different. Your thoughts?

1:12:35
MP: A bit much. [laughter]

1:12:36
SM: Okay.

1:12:40
MP: Yeah, there is that moment of truth in all of that without question. But at the same time, boomers did not have a monopoly on the truth. It did not have a monopoly on responsibility. Of the whatever. What did you say? 73 million?

1:13:02
SM: 74. We are now the second- millennials are larger now.

1:13:06
MP: Yeah. I assure you, they were more people of that generation who were not of the spirit of Harpur students at the time, than were. And yeah so as I said before, I-I resist overgeneralization especially if they get overly romanticized, about any generation. But there are things that certainly happened and that younger folks should be old people were young at the time should be proud of. [crosstalk] I keep on coming back to my goodness, in terms of responsibility, a sense of sacrifice. How in the world could you compare boomers in that sense, to people who lived through a depression and then World War One, World War Two for heaven's sakes, my goodness.

1:14:04
SM: They saved the world. They did save the world.

1:14:09
MP: Without question.

1:14:12
SM: I would like, a couple of the interviews that I did, I would like your thoughts on Todd Gitlin. You may know Todd, was the second founder of SDS, he was after Tom Hayden was the leader. He has gone on to be a big scholar, has written books on the (19)60s and everything and I had a great interview with Todd at-at NYU quite a few years ago, and he said, he does not like this, putting generations into years. Like boomers (19)46 to (19)64, Generation X (19)64 to (19)80 all this kind of stuff. He and secondly, I am at my next point is when I interviewed Richie Havens, who actually performed for the first time on a college campus at Binghamton, and we need to promote this more because Richie told me that during the interview, you I was at that concert and then I asked him, "Do you remember the Bing-?" "That is my first time I went to a college campus!" Well, then we need to let the Binghamton University know this more. But Richie said something very important. He said, I may not be a boomer, but I am one because we are talking about the spirit of the era, forget the years, it is the spirit. And if you look at people born, say between (19)37 and (19)45, who were the leaders of the antiwar movement? Some of the top musicians, they were born in that era, the Rennie Davis' just the yippies. They were, they were, they were all born before (19)46. So, when you go through the interview process on looking at the (19)60s and certainly trying to confine the people that were involved in all these important or maybe not so important activities, you have got to think of what Richie is saying because he says, I am a proud boomer and I was born in (19)41. Sure. It is about spirit.

1:16:07
MP: That is true in terms of the early leadership of the antiwar movement, if we are talking about and let us say, for the sake of argument, (19)65, that would have meant that the oldest boomers were 19. And let us just say a bunch of 19-year olds were not going to start a national movement. Sure, why not.

1:16:35
SM: Do you feel the (19)60s and early (19)70s generation are having problems with healing and I bring this up because Jan, Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Generation, which is his book when the wall was built in (19)82 in Washington. And it was the first time that veterans felt that they were welcomed home from that war. And he talks about the healing but I have already interviewed Jan too, and Jan says the healing is it was meant for the Vietnam veterans and their families and for the Vietnam veterans themselves, and hopefully this would transfer to into the nation itself. But I asked this question to some of the early interviewees, like Gaylord Nelson. And so everybody's response was kind of different. Healing is trying to get over something, and I do not think we have gotten over this war at all. I- just your thoughts on the healing process?

1:17:34
MP: Well, you framed the question in some respects, in real respects focusing on the military, and how people who served have felt. And as someone who was not in the military, I cannot identify- I would like to- cannot identify real well with that sense of abandonment, let us say, intellectually, I can [inaudible] I suspect I cannot. But my first thought when you started asking the question was that whatever the-the result of Vietnam in terms of divisions in the country's build, let us see if I can express this, have less to do with different sides still fighting over the wisdom or the justice of the war. Rather, it has more to do with a general sense, I come back to the sense of cynicism in this country. And when talking about that, it is impossible for me to separate it from Watergate. So to the extent that there is this ethos has been for decades now, of this respect for politicians, and cynicism about the ability of government to get things right, it has to do with a loss of trust that grew out of both Vietnam, certainly but then Watergate and the combination of the two has been in many ways toxic. And there are straight lines from that to the nastiness of politics now for the last number of decades, the "us" and the "them" and [crosstalk]

1:20:35
SM: Yep-yep.

1:20:35
MP: But I am trying to make the point that I think that this is something different from different sides of the war in the United States still trying to fight it out. No, Vietnam is too far away now for that to be the case. But there has been a spirit of a lack of unity, and trust going back all that time, that is that. I do not know if I am making sense.

1:21:04
SM: Yep, very good observations, certainly. I even wrote a note here we-we as a nation, are still divided here in (20)19. So, it seems like today, it is us against them, it is us against them. It is never-never "We the People," which is what we are supposed to be about. And the-the ability to listen to each other to be not shouted down toward each other. I mean, there was a period even when I was at Ohio State University in grad school, that we were creating dialogue between the races between white people and Black people. And, and then there was, then then then there was a period when there was too much dialogue, and no action was happening. We need results, and-and now I am worried that we are back to an era where the dialogue is gone. And so it is just so many things, what is the lasting legacy of the (19)60s generation and the boomer generation in your view?

1:22:14
MP: Let the pause signify that I am thinking.

1:22:16
SM: Yep, that is okay.

1:22:18
MP: The lasting legacy of the boomer generation. As we have been talking, on the plus side, great advances, when it comes to questions of race, despite what we were just saying a moment ago, what you were saying a moment ago about distance, same thing where women are concerned, same thing where the environment is concerned, though, on each instance and more I can always point out excesses of various movements. And that is one of the jobs of a conservative it seems to me to point out where something is, somebody, some theme is getting carried away. There is a sense of the arrogance, of some thinking about the generation that, we were the greatest generation when in fact, the previous generation if you want to play that game was the greatest generation.

1:23:39
SM: What–

1:23:40
MP: To the extent, well to the sense that I am saying that some things have been overdone, that can leave the interpretation that one wanted to have to go the cliché route again, the (19)50s persists. And that is not what I am saying. So, once you recognize certain great failings of the (19)50s, the (19)50s were not all that bad. [laughs]

1:24:13
SM: I mean, I when I think of the (19)50s, I think I am just a kid you were you were both and you-you and I were a kid, and I kind of go back to those days, there seemed to be a lot of security, had your parents at home, I mean, and everything but then we all know what was happening to African Americans during that time, there was lynchings going on and things were being hid from us. So, it was not good for all Americans, just some Americans. How-?

1:24:39
MP: How about this? It is a-I have always said it is a big country, and you can find anything you want to find. How is that?

1:24:46
SM: Yep, very good. What role has activism played in the lives of boomers as they have aged? In particular, I am referring to that 7 percent that were involved in activism, and conservatives and liberals. Back in that era of the (19)60s and (19)70s, and have they carried, have they passed this on to their kids, who are their children and grandchildren?

1:25:12
MP: It is a brilliant answer, some have some have not. How do you define activists? Are we talking about people on campuses who led the way, who organized events, who ran the mimeograph machines and all, or are we talking about people who just showed up? It is October, let us have a demonstration. It is November, let us have a demonstration. Ooh, now it is the winter, it is too cold for a demonstration. Now it is April, let us have a demonstration. How's that for a cynical view?

1:25:48
SM: Yeah. Well, I yeah, that is a good point, because I am really referring to the doers and the ones that make things happen. So and, you know, and there were few and far between. However, when you look at 74 million and 7 percent it is still a large number.

1:26:03
MP: Well, here is my guess. And it is a guess, I will start with me. I have not been on a picket line since then, I have no interest in being on a picket line. I am not a picketing line kind of guy. But my entire career, virtually my entire career has had to do with the political issues, social issues, advocacy of one kind or another. So to that extent, I remain what I was, though in a different form. And I would imagine that it is true for lots and lots and lots of people, there are not necessarily so many barricades. But they are the ones putting together groups to make this better or that better or getting involved politically. It is not getting a bug, it is when your personality and your character are such that you must be involved with the great issues and the semi great issues of the day, chances are, we will continue one way or another, for a longer period of time. There will be interludes when you are raising families, I suspect, when you do not have enough time. But you get involved in various ways, in issues. And in this country there are many, many ways of getting involved.

1:27:40
SM: The, when I interviewed Bobby Muller, the founder of Vietnam Veterans of America, and he also was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on the landmine issues. He said when answering a question about the impact of what was the basic characteristics of the boomer generation, he said, the one thing that I can definitively say is true- and you have already brought it up- is there was a lack of trust in that generation. And there were reasons why: Watergate, the Gulf of Tonkin, which was a basically a lie that LBJ, he got us into the Vietnam War, and if you were young enough to remember this, as a sixth grader, which you both you and I were at this time, Eisenhower lying to the nation about the U2 incident. And he lied to the nation. And, and I never thought of that. And then of course, when Jerry Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, everybody was suspicious and did not trust Gerald Ford, in that even though he had not done anything wrong. But this lack of trust is certainly a characteristic that comes through over and over again. And it is not just lack of trust in our political leaders, but lack of trust in leaders of any kind, whether it be a minister, a rabbi, a corporate leader, a university president, anybody in a position of responsibility has seemed to be targets of many of those activists back then.

1:29:09
MP: Yeah, let me, I am sorry go on.

1:29:11
SM: No, go ahead.

1:29:17
MP: For all that I have said about a lack of trust, I personally am in fact the most trusting person I know. I do not attribute lousy motives to people unless I have a reason to do so. At the heart and soul center, the American Experiment is my commitment not to question motives if at all possible. I will question policies, I will question ideas, I will question what people say, but I will not question their basic decency or I will not question their motives. If I think back to Francis Gary Powers I suspect not too many of your- well if you are talking to older, yeah, they may remember Francis Gary Powers. So, if Eisenhower, and I never viewed what Eisenhower did as-as cynical, I viewed it as what presidents do when it comes to spying for [laughter], when it comes to espionage, when it came to the Gulf of Tonkin I assumed that LBJ was playing it straight at the time, it was only later on that I realized probably was not. Al Quie, who was the governor I worked for, whose biography I later wrote, he was in Congress at the time, and he really did not like LBJ. And he became very close to being the only member of the House to vote against it, because he thought Johnson was lying. Simply could not get himself to be the only member of the House to do that. And he, [laughs] I think, still regrets that. With Jerry Ford, I was not cynical about that at all. I argued. I thought that that was in the best interest of the nation, not good to have a former president of the United States in prison. If we are talking about healing, let us get on with it. Are you still there?

1:31:30
SM: Yep. I am here.

1:31:32
MP: I am hearing some-or somebody is trying to call me, but we will forget about that. [crosstalk] So, I-I, I start from a position of trust and I do think it has served me and it has served, centered the American Experiment very well. I am not talking about innocence, I am not talking about naïveté. I am talking about human decency, trusting people to the extent that one can and one can do it, and should do it to a significant degree.

1:32:13
SM: Before we [inaudible], my next question is the question before I want to talk about your organization. In the (19)60s, what and (19)70s, what was the event that you felt had the greatest impact on your life? Something that happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s.

1:32:41
MP: Kent State was one of them. That was the only time really that I thought I was thinking too negatively about my country. For a period I could see that night how mobs came to be and how they could do terribly destructive things. That was the spirit of that evening, and that, I am not just that evening. Sidebar, it may sound trivial in talking about mobs. Do you remember there was a demonstration on the Esplanade about, the decision had come down from high that doors had to be kept six inches open or something and guys could not be entertaining women in their dorm rooms or something along those lines. And there was this demonstration, and some of the speakers were getting really agitated, and the crowd was getting really agitated. I am thinking to myself, this is a mob psychology, has to do with having-having to put a sock on your doorknob or something. That was that was that was the psychology in a lower tense way of the mob. Well, I mentioned what, what got me thinking differently about the war, beyond the fact that the social and political pressures as well as the facts were surrounding me while I was at Binghamton when I arrived at Binghamton in the fall of (19)67 was that Harrison Salisbury speech. I go back to that speech, it was a Binghamton event that had a significant influence, and so let us go with that.

1:34:46
SM: I want to talk about your center.

1:34:48
MP: Okay.

1:34:49
SM: Yeah. When did you first come up with the idea that you wanted to create this, and go through the process of how you created it 10 time- you know, and just into what is the basic principles? What were your goals? So you can share it with the world, because that is what this tape is doing is sharing it with the world.

1:35:16
MP: Always happy to do that. [inaudible]. I am very proud of it. By the time I got to DC, in (19)87, fall of (19)87, to work at the US Department of Education, I had had a background in education, journalism, and government. I had been the director of public information at a ridiculously young age at Binghamton. I served in that capacity either officially or unofficially from (19)72 to (19)74. I got to the University of Minnesota, I was Pete McGraw's speechwriter, I was speechwriting for the President of the big 10 University for three years. I had a doctorate in educational administration, which really was education, administration, and policy with a focus on higher education. I had been a reporter prior to that in Binghamton so I knew something about journalism. I went off to be after the doctorate, a speech writer for a governor, Al Quie, for upwards of two years, later wrote his biography. And after Quie, I served as an editorial writer and as an occasional columnist for significant paper in a significant city in St. Paul, Minnesota. So I had that background. But I had always wanted to do a Washington stint. One of my restorations at the Pioneer Press was that here I had a doctor in education, somebody else was writing about education. Not that I did not have challenging things to write about. I was writing about national politics, and the Middle East. I think I would have Latin America as well and the Soviet Union, not a bad portion of the world to write about. But I always wanted to a Washington stint. And I had that chance in the fall of (19)87. There were other things that [inaudible] in press that were frustrating me and after four years, I realized it was time to move on. And I had a very good friend still have a very good friend and a guy by the name of Chester E. Finn, Jr, known as Checker Finn, FINN, Finn. Who, at the time, I describe accurately as the most important American education analyst and scholar from the right side of the aisle. And he had been at Vanderbilt. he had been at Harvard, he was Pat Moynihan's alter ego in some ways. He, first of all, he had baby-sat some of Moynihan's kids, what was when Moynihan taught at Harvard, Checker was a undergraduate or graduate student there, he worked for Moynihan when he was ambassador to India, and that is where Checker met his wife, Renu, who is Indian. He worked for him in the Nixon White House, I think that was prior or maybe afterwards, and he worked for him when Moynihan was going through his neoconservative period and said other members of Moynihan's staff, by the way at the time were Elliot Perle, who later wound up as Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan- not Elliott Perle, Richard Perle. Elliott Abrams and wound up as Assistant Secretary of State, and Checker wound up as an Assistant Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration.

1:39:05
SM: Wow.

1:39:05
MP: Russert was the press secretary it was Les Lenkowsky was also a consultant. It was it was some remarkable staff. Anyway, I met Checker when I was in graduate school. And when I wanted to leave the party and press I gave him a call. And I asked, "Do you have anything?" And he said, "Funny, I do." And Director of Public Information for something, Director of Outreach actually, for the research arm of the US Department of Education at the time, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. And clandestinely, I went out there and I interviewed and got the job and went out to Washington, putting aside for a moment the extraordinary ambivalence I had about whether or not to take it and my first thought was no. But I went out there. And very quickly I realized that I really did not want to be out there. The bureaucracy was something I really disliked, and the job I had been promised did not turn out that way because typical Washington, someone else already out there working for Bennett, Secretary Bill Bennett. She thought she was the spokesperson for the research arm of the US Department of Education. So, I wound up doing other things, and I just did not enjoy it. So pretty quickly after getting to Washington, perhaps no more than six weeks or so, I started thinking about coming back home and Minnesota was very much home at that point. I had been out here for seven years, I guess. No, let me take that back. No-no, no, my goodness, I had already been on your 13 years. And I had learned something about think tanks, especially when I was at the party on press, when the Heritage Foundation would send me things and on occasion they would visit trying to make a point about something or other, and I found their work to be really quite good. So, they had the reputation at many quarters at that time, as being extreme- they were not. So I did background on those three areas: education, journalism, and government. I said, "Well, I am equipped to start a think tank," and I wanted to start a conservative free market think tank. When I was at the Pioneer Press, I was essentially the only regularly paid conservative opinion writer at either the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis paper- I was the only one. Which says something about the media out here at the time. It is not a bunch of different now. And I knew that a conservative think tank out here would work even though people thought I was crazy. I am saying I want to go back home, start a conservative think tanks and they would say things along the lines, "You want to start a what, where?" They could not imagine a conservative think tank in Minnesota, but no state is the stereotype that it is made out to be, and we are talking about a state that in (19)78, which was nine years prior, had elected all in one line two Republican United States senators and the Republican governor. Al Quie as governor, Dave Durenberger and Rudy Boschwitz as senators, and there were two Senate races that night having to do with Mondale going off to being vice president. And started thinking this through, started talking to people. And I started getting really serious about it. after a couple of months. One of the things I enjoyed about being out in Washington was that I occasionally would have lunch or breakfast with Senator Dave Durenberger in the Senate dining room, that was fun. I enjoyed that. And I had been talking about this idea for a while and he said, "Well you got to stop talking about it, and actually write something" [inaudible] good point. As a writer, I should have known that. So I put together a prospectus, and learned for the first time how expensive printing is, by the way. And from May of (19)88 until we opened 22 months later in March of (19)90, I made 17 trips home, Washington to Minnesota-

1:44:03
SM: Wow.

1:44:04
MP: -to raise money to put together a board of directors and the like, largely on my own dime. Whatever money I had, I spent for the most part and we were finally ready to open up, we had enough money which is not to say very much in March of (19)90 and we opened up great. I had become friends with or acquaintances with people such as Charles Murray, Linda Chavez, Bob Woodson, Checker Finn of course. Larry Mead from NYU, Sally Kilgore, who had done her doctorate under James Coleman and with whom I was working at the US Department of Education [inaudible]. And in one of our meetings back here was our first board meeting, official board meeting. And also, it was still the only board meeting where everybody showed up. And it was on the evening of Reagan's farewell address interestingly, so we took a break from our meeting that evening to watch the address. And one of my colleagues, one of my very close colleagues and one of the founders, and I started working with my close friends in doing this, I certainly was not doing it all by myself, so I was the lead actor. Peter Bell said to me, "You know, we are beginning" and he told the group this, "We are beginning to smell like a house that has been on the market for too long." We may have said this later on, probably said it a bit later on, I may be getting my dates wrong. People knew that we were doing this, getting ready to do this, journalists knew that, then there was some stories. But I just could not raise enough money to actually get it going. I can talk about how we found the money if you would like. And so we decided to do a conference, which wound up in April of (19)90, we were going to do it even if I was not back full time in Minnesota yet. I hired a local event planner, in essence. And I was putting much of this together from Washington. And we decided to have this conference call, and this was my friend Peter Belle's idea. I came up I think, with the exact title, "The New War on Poverty, Advancing Forward this Time," the argument being that we have had this war on poverty in (19)65. Going forward, it did not work real well and there was a sense of the time [inaudible] start trying to do a new one, let us get it right this second time. So, I invited these stars to come out and speak and they all agreed and I said I could not pay ya- I [inaudible] pick up expenses. And they all agreed, and then they all came. I learned later that they may have agreed because they never thought I would be able to pull it off, we would be able to pull it off. But we did. And we opened up great. We had three other people, it was an ideologically and otherwise mixed crowd, mostly ideologically mixed. And Checker Finn did the keynote and Bill Raspberry, the great columnist and friend-

1:47:42
SM: Oh, yeah.

1:47:42
MP: -wrote a column about it. And we were off and, off and running.

1:47:49
SM: What are the what are the basic principles of the organization?

1:47:58
MP: My arguments at the start will have remained my themes, I just been cleaning out some files and moving things around. And I came across columns I wrote for the Pioneer Press back in (19)87. And as the root of my views was that the overwhelming social disaster of our time, was the extraordinary number of kids growing up without their fathers at home. Social, well I, it was family breakdown at the time. The term of [inaudible], family fragmentation, and I had written consistently about that including two books: From Family Collapse to America's Decline in (20)11, and Broken Bonds: What Family Fragmentation Means for America's future in (20)14. And I also talked a lot about them and still do, about how we have to take greater advantage of our religious traditions and institutions to help people in need, and that if we do not do that, it is as if we are trying to do, to make things better with a very muscular arm tied behind our back. And of course, we had to do this in ways that are respectful of the First Amendment, and respectful of I do not use the word diversity, I do not like that, it is a cliché. So I talk about, we have to do that in a way, in ways that are respectful of American variety. And as someone who is Jewish, frankly, I am in some instances in better position to make the argument because people cannot accuse me of being an overly energetic Christian. And I have to be careful using terms like that, I mean them in facetious ways, but sometimes people take it seriously. And is there a wall separating church and state? Of course, I would argue and still do but it is, it was never intended to be as tall and as thick, as it has often been interpreted to be. And what is the main way by my lights to take greater advantage of our religious institutions and traditions? School choice, real life school choice, giving particularly poor parents an opportunity to send their kids to the school of their choice, be it public or private, and private, secular or religious. So those are the [inaudible] of the main themes. Generally, when people think of conservative free market think tanks, they focus more on the economic side of things. And we certainly have done work in that area and more over time. But those were the themes that certainly animated me and animate me still.

1:51:16
SM: Mitch, how many people work at the organization now?

1:51:21
MP: Now, it is a whole lot bigger than what it was, I think there may be something like 14 people on the payroll.

1:51:28
SM: And to do these, do you have lecture circuits to where you have speakers going out to college campuses and things?

1:51:35
MP: No, we do not have that. And you should know my role. I have not been president for going on four years.

1:51:40
SM: Right.

1:51:41
MP: My title is Senior Fellow and Founder, Founder and Senior Fellow. I am part time and have been part time for, this is the first year I have been part time, but I have worked at home for the last going on four years. So, I am out of the loop pretty much. I still write, I have written books during this period. I am going to do another significant project over the next half year or so dealing with personal responsibility and education. Conservatives like talking about personal responsibility, individual responsibility. Well, what does it really mean now in education, if on the one hand I am talking about how family fragmentation is making it hard for lots of kids to do well, and people on the left for the most part of the talking about how racism is supposedly making it impossible for kids, many kids to do well, where does personal responsibility fit in to all of this stuff. I will be conducting a major symposium, written symposium on this over the next half year.

1:53:00
SM: Have you ever thought of coming back to Binghamton and trying to do something? I am just, I am just bringing it up. Because you are, you are distinguished–

1:53:09
MP: I was recently [crosstalk] Someone would have to pay me, someone would have to pay me to be real blunt about it. I am not independently wealthy. If I were to do something, someone would have to underwrite this effort. I have to tell you, when I was out there, it was after Broken Bonds, I guess. Broken Bonds came out in (20)14. And I finagled a speaking engagement in (20)14 or (20)15 talking about the book to some local town gown group that exists, I forget its name. And someone from the Alumni Association that graciously invited me out, was first to go out there. And they put together a schedule for me and I met with some education professors, did not have education professors back when I was there. And I, it was a nostalgic place for me, it is an important, very important place in my life. And the idea of going back and doing something there is really quite appealing. Not necessarily to live, my wife prefers it out here if we are going to move anyplace, it would be someplace like Colorado. But the idea of being involved in some way on a regular basis of Binghamton, yeah that is quite appealing if you can work something out. But financially, I am at a point where I-I would need to be paid, I would need to be paid.

1:54:45
SM: Well, I wish I was back in the university where I work because we, I did five, six or seven conferences at Westchester and I wrote grants and that subject matter you are talking about would make an excellent conference. I am going to, I am we are getting toward the end here, but I want to ask a few more questions–

1:55:02
MP: Sure.

1:55:03
SM: -about your time at Binghamton. Could you just in your own words, what was the relationship between students, faculty and administration during the time you were here?

1:55:13
MP: Good question. Friends, reasonably close friends with-with various faculty and administrators, lots of students, particularly those of us in antiwar activities, though I [inaudible] not only those of us doing that were close to Peter Vukasin, for example, that was the spirit of the place, the Dean of Harpur College.

1:55:49
SM: Right-right.

1:55:52
MP: I might- have you interviewed Camille Paglia yet?

1:55:56
SM: No, I tried a many, many years back. She works at the school [crosstalk] in Philadelphia, the art school.

1:56:05
MP: Right.

1:56:05
SM: And she just did not even respond. But she has, she graduated (19)69 I think, did not she? I think.

1:56:11
MP: Yeah, I think so. I did not know her there. Those of us in my athletic and social science and the other realms were not involved in things in the humanities for the most part. But I remembered when you talk about, relationships with faculty, she was very close to, you mentioned Jerry Komisar before, right?

1:56:34
SM: Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was great professor.

1:56:39
MP: Or was it- he was a historian, was she very close to, who was the poet, who was the poet?

1:56:49
SM: I [crosstalk] know the sociologist was Dr. Price.

1:56:55
MP: No, she was not that [inaudible] she was talking about it. Frankly, I was just reading one of her books again the other day. It will come to me. I will send you an email if I find it.

1:57:07
SM: Yeah, she was she was here in (19)69. Then Bill T. Jones came in here, the great dancer, in (19)71. So and I-

1:57:16
MP: Remember, yeah.

1:57:18
SM:Do you remember Michelle Pecora?

1:57:19
MP: The name, that is all I remember.

1:57:23
SM: Yeah-yeah. Well, she was she [crosstalk] was a dance major, who ended up working at a conservative think tank.

1:57:29
MP: Oh, really?

1:57:30
SM: Yes.

1:57:30
MP: Where?

1:57:31
SM: I think it is the Heritage Foundation. I you know, I tried to look her up. She went to Ohio, she is a year older than me, she went to Ohio State when I was there. I do not ever remember her here. And she was a dance major there. And I remember she was living in Jones tower. And she asked me if I could get graduate students to go to her, you know, dance recital, which I we were in the front row, got a whole mess of them. And she said at that time, she had met someone that she was engaged to be married and all the other stuff, and I lost touch with her totally. Then I looked her up just going into the web. And I believe she ended up getting a CPA or something like that, and then she was also working I think it was either the mer- I think it was the Heritage Foundation. I do not think she is there now.

1:58:17
MP: How do you spell, how do you spell, how do you spell her last name?

1:58:19
SM: PECORA. You know, she was married, so she changed her last name. But it was Michelle Pecora and I all I know is when I looked her up, she was working at the part time, I think at one of the two [crosstalk] is it was either the Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute. It was one of the two, I do not know which one–

1:58:40
MP: Take a look, I will take a look. You remember Percival Borde? He was right after the (19)70's, it was when I was working at (19)72, (19)72, (19)74. He was from the islands, he was a professional dancer. He was a major player. He was on the faculty for a while. But indicative of the time and this is real naïveté, it is not cynical naïveté. I knew Arnie Zane a bit. And I knew I knew of them, frankly and Bill Jones, first Arnie, and I was someplace. Could have been in the theater for heaven's sakes, backstage for whatever reason, and Arnie was sitting on Bill's lap. And in terms of things gay, I knew hardly anything at all. And I was just struck. I do not know exactly what I was thinking. I guess I knew they were gay. But I had never seen a guy sitting on another guy's lap that way. And you talked about fundamental changes-

1:58:43
SM: No. Oh yeah.

1:59:57
MP: -over the decades, that would be it. And then you jump ahead to now. And for decades and decades for the life of the planet for the most part, same sex marriage was not an issue, it was the last [inaudible] to be accepted.

2:00:20
SM: Right. Well, I, Bill T., Bill T. Jones spoke at the Philadelphia library when his book came out and that and I had never met him before. And he signed two of them. My grandniece is really interested in ballet. So, I gave her one of the books, but he gave a great presentation and he is very proud to be a Binghamton alumnus, let me tell you that.

2:00:40
MP: Good.

2:00:40
SM: And I want to just, want to mention, do you remember when Dr. Liebman was fired?

2:00:47
MP: Dr. who?

2:00:48
SM: Liebman. LIE-

2:00:50
MP: No.

2:00:51
SM: He was a sociology professor who spoke down in front of City Hall in an antiwar protest, and he was fired.

2:01:00
MP: The name is vaguely familiar. He was actually fired for that or [crosstalk]?

2:01:05
SM: I think I think he was, he did something because he, when I was here in (19)67, in the fall, he was my sociology professor and then [crosstalk]

2:01:15
MP: Somebody else had to be going on, I assure you. Otherwise the rest of the faculty would have arisen and said you cannot do that.

2:01:25
SM: Yeah.

2:01:25
MP: Academic freedom and all.

2:01:27
SM: Well, something. Yeah, something happened, and he was gone, and one thing, did you go to your graduation in (19)70.

2:01:34
MP: I did not officially graduate in (19)70, remember I found out I was seven credits short. So, I guess I was there and I was the I was, I forget what the term was an usher or something, someone walking down the aisle with a baton.

2:01:48
SM: Yeah, you [crosstalk] remember all the we all we all met, I graduated on that- I had a broken arm. And, like in my picture was in the paper the following day, I told my parents not to bring anything, any cameras to embarrass me. And, and yet, my picture was in the Binghamton Sun the following day, he was getting my degree from Dr. Deering. But do you, that day was historic, because the Grateful Dead had been on campus on May 2nd in performance, and then of course–

2:02:20
MP: Well, I was not in that loop. I simply did not live in that loop.

2:02:24
SM: Right. I guess I am almost done here. I have one that is kind of a convoluted question, but I am going to say finally, how will–

2:02:36
MP: I will give you a convoluted answer.

2:02:38
[laughs] Finally, how important was the era of the (19)60s and early (19)70s in your life, not just because you experienced it and lived it, but because it is shaped who you once were, still are or changed you in ways you never thought possible when you were young?

2:02:58
MP: It was pivotal. For no other reason, then we were talking about when I was in my late teens and early 20s. And I talk about, I probably still, though probably not as much as I used to, I talk about the Harpur/ Binghamton frequently, and part of that has to do, of course, with the fact that I worked there afterwards. I was the director of public information so my job was to think kind thoughts of the place. That was not hard. It is a, it is a good question. I think my wife is in the next room, she may be hearing this so. Exceedingly-exceedingly personal stuff here. Yeah, I started off talking about how I was this swab of this student earlier in high school, junior high school, did not come from an environment that had books in the house. There was, my parents did have a little bookcase. It was in a closet, it did not have many books. I think they used it principally, to hide [inaudible] from me. So, Binghamton was a lot of really, really smart kids, was a different kind of environment. So the high school I went to had some exceptionally smart people. I was not one of them. And when I got to Binghamton, I had worked hard enough that I was closer to being on the cusp of some of the really smart kids, as I said there were a couple of classes where I was the only "A". Richard Dec Legion class, I think and that Hackman class. Yeah, I was living in a dormitory. I was for all three years in the summer between my junior and sophomore years- junior and senior year, I lived in, I call it a semi communal because nobody was sleeping with each other as far as I know. But there were a number of us living in an old farmhouse at the top of the hill in Vestal on Jones road. And my housemates, the friends I had, were, they were, they were cool. They were smart. They were different from the people I would hang out. They were not baseball players. I do not know. Did you know the name, did you know Krista Patton?

2:06:08
SM: Krista Patton, nope.

2:06:11
MP: PATTON. Krista was a great friend. She was one of the people living in the house. Krista died about three years ago now, Alzheimer's, very sad. She was a, she was a class act. She was beautiful, she was exceedingly talented. She spoke beautifully, I do not think she ever stuttered or stammered over a single syllable in her entire life. She-she was indicative of Binghamton in this way. She was all those things. Frankly, more beautiful than 99 percent of the women in this world. But she was counter culture in the sense that when she got out of school, she did not do anything for a while that was close to matching her talent, she had been an English major, was a great English major, and got out of school. And she worked in a bookstore doing nothing terribly interesting. She drove a truck–

2:07:25
SM: My God.

2:07:25
MP: -for a while at delivery truck, I believe. And then after a number of years, we stayed in touch. After a number of years, she decided she wanted to be a physician. But by this stage, she had been out of school for a while. And she was an English major, not a lot of science courses. So, she was told, "Well, you got to go back and take science courses," which he did for the next several years. And aced them all of course, this was at Clark, I believe she was living in Worchester Massachusetts.

2:07:58
SM: Wow.

2:07:59
MP: Got into medical school there. And by that stage I was concerned she would not get in because she was too old. But she got in, graduated, became a fine physician. And, and I in some ways I mentioned this because she followed her own drummer in a classical Binghamton way, if I want to romanticize the place. And after a while she said, "I do not want to be a doctor anymore." She did not like the bureaucracy. So she stopped doing that and became a landscaper.

2:08:35
SM: Oh my God.

2:08:36
MP: And she became sick, and then then she died. And she was involved. She never married but she was involved on and off, mostly on over that entire period from Binghamton on with a guy by the name of Ricky Barton. Ricky is African American, [inaudible]. So that was that was an own, marching to your own drummer kind of thing.

2:08:57
SM: And you know, and marching to your own drummer, you remember the artist Peter Max. Well Peter Max is the really- Yeah. The artist of the (19)60s and (19)70s.

2:09:06
MP: Yeah-yeah, yeah.

2:09:06
SM: And he had so many things which were, go to the beat of your own drummer, or take-

2:09:12
MP: Right.

2:09:12
SM: -or take the road less traveled. It is very obvious, Mitch that some of the relationships and friendships you have developed here at this campus have been have touched you in so many ways and I think of all the things that have, that this interview, which I love hearing about your organization, the changes you have gone through from your early years to today. And but also hearing about the friendships you bring these names up. I do not know them, but it is obvious, you know, as a college student, friendships developed here. And-and we always think of and I always think of I do not ever think of Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton, I think a Harpur College. And the fact is, I know it was SUNY Binghamton when we were students here. It was Harpur College, Binghamton, SUNY Binghamton. But I am so proud of being a part of Harpur College, the arts and sciences school on this campus. And–

2:10:10
MP: Yeah, I so, go on I am sorry.

2:10:12
SM: Yeah, no, I still identify more as a Harpur Arts and Sciences than I do Binghamton University. [laughs]

2:10:18
MP: Yeah, there has been a large part of me doing that, at least up until about 10 years ago, and I still, I frequently sleep in a Harpur shirt. The reason I focus on Binghamton now, as I do, because I work there, because it is all these years later and when I talk about where I went to school, people not going to out here know about Harpur. They generally do not know about Binghamton, either, but chances are they will know it more readily than Harper, and we just won a Nobel Prize, for example, for a professor at Binghamton not Harpur, you get the idea.

2:10:59
SM: Yep. Yeah, right, well, I always end with by saying, Is there a question that you thought I might ask you that I did not?

2:11:12
MP: As we were talking, I was wondering if you were going to ask about my draft status and whether or not- well, I made it clear I had to serve. But how did I not serve?

2:11:22
SM: Yeah, well, that would be a good question to ask. I know, I was, what did he call it? I cannot remember. I remember I was number 74 on the draft list.

2:11:33
MP: While I was number 31.

2:11:35
SM: Oh my god.

2:11:37
MP: The night someone picked out a ping pong ball, and decided I was number 31, I had had already for about two years, maybe a bad knee, which later were terribly arthritic, and later had replaced and I had both knees replaced and a hip replaced and two spine operations, you get the idea. So a lot of arthritis. So I called the home that night, called collect. And the operator says to my mother who picked up the phone, "Will you accept a call from Mitch?" and she said, "Yeah, we will accept a call from number 31."

2:12:24
SM: [laughs] Oh, God.

2:12:25
MP: I call, I called home to tell him to make another appointment for me with my orthopedist at the time and I look back on this I am not much to say exceedingly proud of all of that. I-I was opposed to going to Vietnam I would like to think for principled reasons, but also be [inaudible] want to go to Vietnam. I was not against military service. I was not against the draft but if I had a chance not to get drafted and not go to Vietnam, I was going to take it. And I became 4F because of my knee wanting the physical on May 26 (19)70 in Syracuse, I look back on that time talking about pivotal moments and pivotal events and things going on.

2:13:20
SM: Were you on that- were you on that bus to Syracuse with Binghamton students?

2:13:24
MP: Yes. You were there?

2:13:25
SM: I was on that, yes, I was on that bus.

2:13:28
MP: [inaudible]

2:13:29
SM: I cannot believe it!

2:13:30
MP: What happened?

2:13:31
SM: I am for- I had asthma.

2:13:34
MP: Well, I developed that later on. I did not have that at the time.

2:13:37
SM: But I was not doing any of that thinking, oh, I am going to go to Canada and all that other stuff I just, I just legitimately had asthma. So and that got me out. But I remember going on the bus and then they asked when we got there, I think they said, "Get in the line if you do not have an excuse and get in the line if you do have an excuse." And there is only a few that [laughs]. There was only a few that got in the line that [laughs] that did not have an excuse. So that–

2:14:04
MP: So, I look back on that time I am not- I will be real blunt- I am not real proud of it. And it is one of the reasons why now, especially since I have made arguments over time as a journalist and think tank about supporting George W. Bush in Iraq, which that might have been a mistake going back down. But I am quite aware of all this I am, so my license plate. We have license plates out here, you pay an extra 30 bucks a year, whatever it is and it has an eagle on it and the extra money goes to military families. So.

2:14:43
SM: That is very good Mitch, I devoted a lot of my life to working with Vietnam vets, Vietnam vets. So, and if you if you look at the people that I have interviewed [inaudible] this, if you look at the people I have interviewed, I have interviewed all the top Vietnam vets basically, except a few of them- McCain, I never got a chance to interview him or John Kerry. But I have gotten to know a lot of them. And I go down to the Vietnam Memorial every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and I have done so since (19)92. So very important to me to pay respects for those who gave their all and they served. They serve this nation with distinction. I know there is some bad ones, but most of them I think we are good. Mitch, are there any other things you want to say?

2:15:27
MP: A final point, I made it before, but it is worth making it again. Of all the things that the anti-war generation, or make it more clearly the antiwar activist did that I think we should regret is this the way we treated the American soldiers.

2:15:47
SM: I agree. I agree. And it has gotten some–

2:15:51
MP: I would like to think, I would like to think I did not do that. And I really did not–

2:15:55
SM: Well I–

2:15:55
MP: -and there were so many people who did.

2:15:56
SM: Yeah, yeah, in 19- this is a true story, in (19)82 you can see the videos of when the mall opened and how they all came there, the first time that they were actually welcome home really felt. And then you had this period of time after this when some people faked that they were Vietnam veterans. And that is, that is a crime in my opinion. Several books have been written on it. But yeah, I do not, most of the people I know that were antiwar, including some of the major activists they never, it was all about the leaders who sent them to the to the war, not the soldiers themselves. They just wanted to prevent them from getting killed. [inaudible] again, this, this particular interview will be going into the archives, but it will be sent to you first for approval.

2:16:42
MP: Okay.

2:16:43
SM: It has to be some from David Schuster here at the center.

2:16:46
MP: We are talking about just the audio. We are not transcribing this, are we?

2:16:49
SM: No, we are talking the audio.

2:16:51
MP: Okay, yeah. I am sure I will have no problem approving anything and everything. But yeah, I look forward to listening to it.

2:16:58
SM: And also, one other thing, we will need a picture of you that has been approved and okayed. And we need to know the photographer because we have to get credits for them. And I will add one other thing. I have never read any of your books. And quite a few, I have given my whole book collection and except just maybe two or three hundred that I have not given yet. And a lot of them are the people that I interviewed who has signed their books. So, I would love to have your books available here to be near your interview and your picture and biography.

2:17:31
MP: You just sent me an email about what you need and we will work at it.

2:17:33
SM: Great. Mitch, what an honor. And I and I.

2:17:36
MP: My pleasure.

2:17:37
SM: And one other thing I will always remember when I came back from Ohio State University one summer, the summer after I left, I think it was the summer of (19)71. And I walked on the campus. It was a beautiful sunny day and you were sitting in a chair. I do not know if you remember this. You were sitting in a chair outside the of the union in the front facing the administration building. And I said to you, "Mitch, what are you doing here?" [laughs] Because I thought you graduated (19)70 And that is when you told me you were staying around and working with the President that you were working there. You are still doing something. (19)72 to (19)70- son of a gun! Alright, good. Yep. Mitch, you have a great day. Thank you.

2:18:16
MP: I do have one final-final point. I am very, very proud of myself that I have not said one bad thing about Ohio State.

2:18:22
SM: [laughs] That is okay, Mitch. Thank you.

2:18:27
MP: Bye-bye.

2:18:28
SM: Bye.

(End of Interview)

8/7/2019

Stephen McKiernan

Dr. Mitch Pearlstein

Dr. Mitch Pearlstein is an editorial writer, columnist and founder and former President at the Center of the American Experiment. Prior to that, he served in the U.S. Department of Education, during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. He received his Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Binghamton University, and he has a Ph.D. in Education Administration from the University of Minnesota.

02:18:32

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Baby Boomer generation; Binghamton University Guarneri String Quartet; American policy; 1960s; Young Americans for Freedom; Anti-War Movement; Vietnam War