Interview with Dr. Alan Brinkley

Brinkley, Alan ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. Alan Brinkley (June 2, 1949 - June 17, 2019) was an author, scholar and professor of American History at Columbia University. He specialized in the history of twentieth-century America. Dr. Brinkley has been part of the Columbia University faculty for 27 years where he also served as the University Provost and chair of the Department of History. He previously taught American History at the University of Cambridge and Oxford University. Dr. Brinkley received his Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

1997-08-13

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

68:21

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Alan Brinkley
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 13 August 1997
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:05):
... now to make sure it is coming out okay. The boomer generation is of course individuals who have been born between the years 1946 and 1964. That is the categorization. I would like your comments, Dr. Brinkley, on your thoughts on individuals who try to categorize an entire generation of 70 plus million people for a lot of the ills of American society today in 1997, 1998. I would like just your overall thoughts on what you think the impact of the boomer generation is on America than this year in 1997.

AB (00:00:47):
Well, I think the only way to answer that question is to try to think about what is distinctive about the boomer generation. And that is made more difficult of course, by this very expansive chronological definition, 1946 to 1964, that is almost 20 years. Which means in theory that two members of the same generation could be parent and child. So, I prefer to think of the boomer generation as the people who were born in the first 10 years or so after World War II. Even though the definition that you are using is a a longer one. I think there are two things that are distinctive about that generation. The first is its size, and that is an obvious distinction. This is the biggest generation in American history. And as it moves through the various stages of life, its experiences will almost inevitably be the dominant experiences in terms of the way the economy performs, and the way the culture behaves. When the boomer generation was young, youth culture was at the center of American culture. As the boomer generation got older, the culture began to focus on its experiences as it moved into later periods of life. So, it has an unusual position of cultural and economic power in our society, simply because of its size. And that makes it more influential, relatively more influential than other generations have been through most of our history. The second thing that I think makes the boomer generation distinctive, is the character of American society when its members, which include me and probably you, were growing up. I think this is a generation that grew up in a time of uniquely high expectations, both for America's future, and for the future of individuals in America. And this is actually true not just of the United States, it is true of most of the Western industrial world. People who grew up in the (19)50s and (19)60s during periods of very rapid economic growth and very high expectations, absorbed a set of expectations for themselves and for the world that in retrospect may seem unrealistic. They came to assume that society was moving in the direction of a much higher level of success of social justice than had been the case in the past. They came to assume that there would be much higher levels of personal freedom and opportunity than there had been in the past. They came to assume, we came to assume, that our lives were likely to be characterized by an unusual level of self-fulfillment and self-realization because the opportunities would be boundless. And of course, those expectations turned out not to be true, or could they ever have been true. And so, a generation of people came of age in the (19)60s with enormously high expectations, suddenly to confront the reality of a world that was not as malleable as they had thought. It was not as easy of changes they had thought. It was not as prosperous as they thought. It was not as just as they thought. And so, the disillusionment I think, of young people who had grown up with one set of expectations, encountering a set of experiences that in effect shattered those expectations, accounts for a great deal of what happened in the (19)60s I think, among young people. Obviously, there were particular events in the (19)60s that hastened this process of disillusion with the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement particularly powerful among them. But I think there is something about... I mean the fact that the youth rebellion of the (19)60s occurred all over the world more or less simultaneously, not just in the United States, suggests I think there is something larger than the particular events that were happening in America. That there is something characteristic of this generation of young people who in the industrialized world, that made for a particularly difficult experience of adjustment to the realities of adult life.

SM (00:05:14):
Excellent. I am going to follow up on that, but I want to make sure this is working properly. As a follow up to that question, when you look at today's generation, the young people that are in college today, and I guess you do not have to categorize them all as being college. But they are the sons and daughters of the boomers. We see that the children of boomers do not vote. We see that the children of boomers are not really politically... well, have an interest in politics or political matters. There is a tremendous interest in volunteerism. Studies in the chronical higher educational state that as many as 85 percent of the incoming freshmen over the past years in all colleges, have been involved in some sort of volunteerism before their college years. But that generation that you speak of, that 10 years from '46 to (19)56, they came into that era of desiring, of having interest in political issues, social issues, civil rights, ending the war in Vietnam. A lot of the movements developed at that time, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, even the Hispanic world, the Native American movement, they all kind of were around that timeframe. What happened? If you talk about those young people that were in that first wave of movers, having those kinds of attitudes, and you already reflected on some of it, that some the reality set in as they got older. But how could they... And they do not vote either. I am trying to get to the fact is, boomers do not vote, and their kids do not vote. And yet they were so involved in these things. Just your overall thoughts on what happened as this group is just reaching 50 now.

AB (00:06:58):
Well, first the question of why people do not vote. I mean, first of all, the decline in voting spans all generations. And young people have always voted in much smaller numbers than their elders. I would assume that at least some of the children of the boomers who are not voting today will vote when they are in their 30s or their 40s, when they are more settled and have families. But 18- to 25-year-olds have always been the lowest voting group in the population, 18- to 21-year-olds have of course have been voters only for a generation. So, I do not think the decline in voting is anything distinctive to the post baby boomer generation. I think that it is simply a broad disillusion of the politics that affects all of society and has reduced voting in all generations. But as for the absence in this generation of the kind of political activism that characterized the (19)60s, I think this generation had a very different experience in its youth. I mean, these are people who grew up in the (19)70s and the (19)80s, in the (19)90s, when political possibilities seemed very constricted. When a whole series of presidents either failed or had very ambiguous legacies, which there were no real political heroes for most people. And it is not surprising, I think, that this generation would not have the same faith in the ability of conventional politics to make a difference in their lives, or to make any major changes in the way we live as a society. That is very different, I think, from the generation that came of age in the (19)60s which saw endless possibilities in politics. And it is the efforts of the (19)60s to make the political system do a series of things that it failed to do well, that is in part responsible for the much lower expectations of the political system today.

SM (00:09:12):
Would you just list several adjectives to describe the boomers, positive adjectives, or negative adjectives, what would those adjectives be?

AB (00:09:24):
Well, I hate to generalize in this way about a generation which of course is proposed to people of enormously different experiences, and backgrounds and assumptions. But if there is anything distinctive generally about my generation as opposed to say my parents' generation, or my children's generation, I think it is probably the sense of... how to put it. I think the (19)60s for a lot of people in my generation was an extraordinarily disillusioning experience. Particularly disillusioning as I have said, because our generation grew up with such high expectations. And I think that the legacy of the (19)60s for this generation, for my generation, is a somewhat greater difficulty of feeling wholly a part of the institutions, and the values, and the cultural morays that characterize the traditions of mainstream American life. I think there is a slight sense of detachment, and of ironic detachment perhaps from these institutions. Even though we live within them and work within them and on the surface have more or less the same relationship to them that our parents did. I do not think there is the same passionate conviction that these institutions really work well that our parents had.

SM (00:11:17):
It is interesting you used that term, passionate. How about a book? When I was home from visiting my parents up in New York, Cornell University, a used bookstore about a couple miles from the camp, it is called the Phoenix. And they had a book called Ferment on Campus, and it was written in 1964. And it was analyzing the silent generation, and the people going into the early (19)60s, and this on rush of new young people with political idealism and activism. And they had a little section in there on passion, and actually a real big section on that. That was a quality that was really parcel of the boomers, but it is not so much... It is kind of looked upon sometimes negatively amongst Generation X and how they look at it, so with the comment. One of the things that I am trying to get at here is the impact that maybe that first wave of the boomers had on some of the major issues at the time. Certainly, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Just, you cannot define a whole generation again. But when you look at the Vietnam War, how important were the college students on the college campus at that time of ending that war, number one. And number two, how important were the boomers with respects to the civil rights movement? Because some people will basically analyze the movement and say by 1964 and Freedom Summer, many of the civil rights things, successes that had already happened as the boomers are just turning 18, and they got involved in freedom Summer down south some of them. What is your thoughts on those two areas?

AB (00:12:58):
Well, of course there was a Black baby boom generation too. And they are not quite the generation that was in the vanguard of the civil rights movement in the early (19)60s. People who were in college were born before or during the World War II. But certainly, by the mid and late (19)60s a lot of the African American activists in civil rights and other racial issues were baby boomers. And I think were responding to some of the same forces that white baby boomers we are responding to. As for Vietnam, there is a lot of controversy over the degree to which student demonstrations affected policy in Vietnam, and there is no very good empirical way of answering that question. I do think that the disruption of our culture and the life of our institutions, the attention that student demonstrations drew to the war, the anger, and the polarization that student demonstrations created, helped make the continuation of that war seem politically and socially intolerable to leaders who might otherwise have been inclined to keep it going longer. Now, there were many other things of course that made the continuation of the war seem intolerable too, including an enormous defection in support for the war among older people who were disillusioned with the war. Not because they thought it was immoral, but because they were frustrated that we were not winning it, and it was dragging along so long, and casualties were so high. So, it is very hard to separate the influence of different forces that all worked together to make the political cost of the war seem too high to justify continuing it. But I do think that the student generation, the student demonstrations, played a significant role. Maybe not a decisive role, but a significant role in that process. To get back to the civil rights movement, as far as white baby boomers and the civil rights movement go, I do not think white baby boomers played much of a role in the civil rights movement. People of my generation, by the time we were old enough to be involved in the civil rights movement, the movement was largely over with the form that it had taken in the early (19)60s. It was not any longer as much an interracial movement. There were not as many opportunities for white people to play a role in it. I think there was, for people of my generation, having grown up with the images of the early (19)60s in the civil rights demonstrations in the South, a higher level of awareness and sympathy for at least parts of the Civil Rights movement than earlier generations might have had at a similar age. But as far as actually affecting the movement in a direct way, I think not in an enormous way.

SM (00:16:13):
Have you changed your thoughts at all over the last 20 years when you were a young boomer in college, and then as you got into maybe five or six years out of college, started a family? And then 15 years, 20 years, 25, 30, you have been pretty consistent in your thoughts on boomers or have you changed your thoughts?

AB (00:16:34):
Well, I mean, I have an unusual relationship to this generation because I am an historian, and I teach about this period, and I will write to some degree about this period although it is not my principle field of interest. So, I have more reason than most people do to think about these issues on a regular basis. And yes, of course I have changed my views in ways that I cannot... I cannot even tell you what they are. I mean, I think I would hope that nobody goes through life with the entirely unchanging views that we did something wrong. If people did not reassess the past of their own, and their country's past periodically. I think if I had to characterize the changes in my own thinking, I think I am more aware than I was in the (19)60s of how difficult it is to achieve social change quickly and successful. I think I have somewhat more respect for institutions, and somewhat more of a belief in the value of institutional stability in society than I once did. I do not by any means repudiate the politics in the (19)60s, or the ideas that I embraced in the (19)60s. In a large sense there is still many things that I believe in the (19)60s that I still believe today is unfashionable as those things now are. But I think I have a somewhat more sober view of what is possible and what is likely. And I think I have a somewhat less iconoclastic view than I once did about institutions and traditions. And I do not believe now, I do not think I ever fully believed that all institutions and all traditions were obstacles to freedom. But I certainly do not believe that now to whatever degree I once did.

SM (00:18:51):
One of the terms that was often used when I was in college, I went this school, I am very proud of going there. A lot of who I am was because of my years there, and it was a hotbed of political activism. Those last years in fact, our president. Dr. Deering who resigned about a year and a half after I graduated, because he was physically destroyed but all the... He just could not handle any more. And he went off on a sabbatical and he came back and worked at Upstate Medical Center, and he retired there. Because he just could not... There were a lot of administrators that really almost did not survive that period. But one of the terms that I can always remember, and I have read it in history books and on it was an attitude. I do not know if it was an arrogance, but it was an attitude that we are the most unique generation in American history. We were the boomers of that period, knowing that activism was part and parcel of the people from the (19)30s too. There were students that were activists on campus in the (19)30s. But when you hear that statement, if you had heard that when you were a college student, one the most unique generations because of all the changes that happened, the issues that young people were involved in, just your overall thoughts on that terminology?

AB (00:20:07):
Well, I mean in some ways it is ridiculous, and in other ways it is a truism. Every generation is unique. No generation is like a previous generation.

SM (00:20:16):
Okay if I get a drink of water-

AB (00:20:19):
Of course. As I have said, I think the (19)60s generation was somewhat more distinctive than other generations have been. But to say that it is the most distinctive in American history is ridiculous. I mean, there is the civil war generation, the World War II generation is a very distinctive generation in a completely different way, the depression generation. Almost every period in American history has events that shape a generation's perspective on the world, and make each generation distinctive in a different way. What makes the boomer generation more distinctive than other generations I think, is primarily its size, that is truly unique. It is the biggest generation in American history, both in absolute numbers and in relation to the generations that proceeded and followed it. So that is the first thing. Whether its experiences are more distinctive than the experiences of other generations, I am not sure. They certainly are distinctive. But I do not know that they are any more distinctive or even as distinctive as the civil war generation or the World War I generation or any number of others.

SM (00:21:36):
I think when we talk about uniqueness, certainly each generation is unique. But there is still the feeling that the boomers are going to be the change agents, the betterment of society. Whether they accomplished that goal, I do not know, did it end the war, end the draft, to assist in the civil rights movement, and then all the other movements. And we are going to make America a more just society. People are treated equally. And I think that is what I am... And I do not know if any other generation, even though they were unique, felt that way.

AB (00:22:08):
Well, I think they did, certainly the World War II generation, the millions of GIs who came home from World War II, they talked in exactly the same terms. This war was not fought for nothing. We are going to make this world a better place, a different place. We are going to change our country and make it better. They had the same sense of being agents of change that our generation did. Their vision of change was not the same as ours, but they certainly had a passion about their role in history. And that generation has played an incredible role in history, and just as a symbol of it, the fact that every president from Kennedy through Bush was a member of the World War II generation. I mean, there is a whole generation that was basically skipped over as we kept electing these World War II veterans as president. We skipped 20 years or so down to Clinton in (19)92 when the Dole is the candidate again this year. I mean, this generation has had an extraordinary dominance of American life, which is now fading of course, because they are now at an age where they are passing between [inaudible]. I do not think you could say that the (19)60s generation was any more fired with a sense of its own importance than that generation was.

SM (00:23:40):
That is a real good observation. You are the 41st person I interviewed, and the first person who has really brought that up, and I think that is important. My dad challenged me in a home world because he fought four years in the war, and he is real proud of it. He used the GI Bill, he came back with the whole works. So that silent generation in between the World War II veterans, they never really did have a president. They probably do not regret it too. One of the things that I am trying to get at in this project, and I would like to your thoughts now on the whole issue of healing within America. In the (19)60s there was tremendous divisions, so I do not have to go into detail about them. But I have tried to go to the Vietnam Memorial the last six years, both on a Memorial Day and Veterans Day, to try to get a feel in the ambience. Whether the healing process has really taken place, not only amongst the Vietnam veterans and their families, but amongst those who were for and against the war, and just people who were maybe not the 15 percent who were actively involved in protest or activism of that period. I would like to know your thoughts. Because this is really geared to what Senator Muskie said in our meeting, when I asked him about the fact that we healed. And he had a kind of melodramatic pause, and he almost had tears in his eyes, and he had not been well. And he came back and said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." And he said, "Let us not talk about '68 in the convention, but let us talk about the civil war." Because he had just gotten out of the hospital and seen the Ken Burns series, and the generations of people who were probably killed in the civil war, and how it really affected America. So, your thoughts on, in 1987, as a historian who teaches young people and has taught young people who writes history books, where are we with respect to healing from the divisions of the (19)60s?

AB (00:25:40):
Well, it depends on what divisions you are talking about. I think the division over the war, which was so polarizing in the (19)60s, is no longer an important fact in American life. People still disagree about whether the Vietnam war was a just war or not. They still disagree about... Excuse me. Give me just a second to get some water.

SM (00:26:12):
Yeah.

AB (00:26:17):
As I was saying, I think the divisions over the war, although they have not disappeared, are no longer an active and divisive force in American life. I think as veterans get older and become absorbed into the life of being adults and family group members, their scars on the whole healed to a large degree, not entirely, not everyone certainly. But there are other divisions of the (19)60s that I think have not healed. And I think in a way Senator Muskie was right. Because there are divisions that preceded the (19)60s and long survived the (19)90s, the racial divisions that the (19)60s brought into a much harsher light than they had seen since the civil war. There have been great changes in the push between races in the United States. And I view great progress in some ways. But that problem is still at the center of our existence as a nation and it has been for 300 years. So, there has been no fundamental healing, I think, of the racial divisions of American life. I think that there are periods in which those divisions are particularly searing and difficult, and periods in which they are somewhat less corrosive. But I do not think there is very much variation. And so, I think that those divisions remain. And then there are divisions that the (19)60s did not create, but helped illuminate perhaps for the first time, that are also still very difficult for us to deal with. The division between men and women, between feminists and gay feminists, between supporters of abortion, the opponents of abortion, the divisions between gay men and lesbians and straight society. All of those are things that were not new to the (19)60s, but the (19)60s made an active part of our culture and our politics, and we were very far from having resolved any of those issues. Even though on all of them there has been significant change, and with time significant progress. I think the divisions in American life are more numerous today, and no less acute today than they were in the (19)60s. The way in which those divisions make themselves felt are not quite as destabilizing as they were in the (19)60s, but they are still here. I think there was a period before the (19)60s when these divisions were sort of artificially obscured by politics, and by popular culture, and by other things. The (19)60s brought them to light and they are still in the light.

SM (00:29:57):
[inaudible] already at... As a follow-up to that observation when you talk about the divisions, one of them is the dialogue that we had between each other. Again, it all depends on the metaphor of an individual's life. What Newt Gingrich's metaphor in life, how he was raised in Georgia may differ with how Bill Clinton was raised in Arkansas, and their perceptions. Some will say that, because the divisions were so strong, because protests were so obvious at that time in so many areas, and pointing of fingers, the reason why we have problems in society today is because of your group, or because of you, not me. And it is almost like the concept of dialogue. What has happened with the dialogue in America today. What I am getting at is this. Do you feel that in the dialogue, the discussions that we have within each other, whether it be between races, whether it be between different lifestyles, that we are living in uncivil times, the dialogue... And then some people will point right back to the (19)60s when for example, college students would go in and would not listen. I know this happened at my school, and I reflected on it all the time with my friends from SUNY Binghamton. When I was then older I would expect more. They would not listen to administration, but they would satisfy a demand but then always had a different demand. There was a really a hostility, an unsettled presence dialogue beyond just the concern of an issue and a cause. And I am wondering if you see any linkages between that time and today and the dialogue we have in each other?

AB (00:31:36):
Well, I think both the (19)60s and our own time are less civil in the sense that, I think you mean the word, than the (19)50s were, or the (19)40s. I civility is an overrated quality, and there is certainly a value disability, but there is also a value to challenging orthodoxy, and there is a value of conflict, when conflict is needed and civility has often been something that has been used to circumvent or short circuit challenges to authority and institutions. I think the kind of civility in the (19)60s, which you mentioned, was particularly dramatic. And not I think, one of the happy features of (19)60s. The intolerance that students and many others felt not only permitted but almost obliged to show those people that they-they disagreed, the contempt for authority. It is one thing to question authorities, another to reject the authority [inaudible]. I think the late (19)60s, at least in universities, was a particularly uncivil time in which there was a kind of driven orthodoxy among students that both intimidated students who disagreed with it from expressing their views, and encouraged students to try to intimidate faculty, administrators and others. That was a relatively brief period at the height of the passions over the war. But it was a period of quite substantial incivility and intellectual discourse, just as the early (19)50s in the era of McCarthy was a period of great chilling effect of discourse. I think in our time there is certainly a lot of heated language and sharp conflict in our culture and universities and elsewhere. But I do not think of this as an unusually uncivil time. First of all, there are lots of examples that are trotted out all the time of political correctness becoming the source of a really shocking intolerance. And some of those examples are quite right, and they have really not been shocking as an intolerance and discrimination in the name of political correctness. So, they were not nearly as many as there have been in the name of other forces, is what it seems to be. But I think on the whole, character of intellectual discourse today, the character of academic discourse today, and even to some degree the character of general public discourse today is more tolerant of more things than it has ever been before. And that makes for a lot of sort of chafing and a lot of uneasiness. It is not an easy popular culture to live in. It can be very jarring. But at least it is a culture that does more than our culture ever did before, to give voice to all the different cultures that make up the nation. So, I think whatever parts we paid in civility we have gained in democracy.

SM (00:35:34):
Interesting. Because in the best history books, you have probably heard this 100 times over the years. When the best history books are written, of course 25, 50 years after an incident happens, what will the historians be saying about the boomers. Now, you know, boomers are only 50 now, and so we are talking to still get 15 productive years at least, 15 to 20, and hopefully boomers are going to learn a lot longer and retire later, so they will be confirming the society for longer periods of time. But if you could put your history cap on now, and you could have tremendous revelations right now about your feelings, it might be...

AB (00:36:16):
I will [inaudible].

SM (00:36:16):
What will the history books say about this generation?

AB (00:36:17):
Well, I cannot predict what historians will say 20 years from now. All I can do is tell you what historians say now. History moves in unpredictable ways, and I do not know what the evaluation will be of the (19)60s from respect from 20 years, or what I will think 20 years from now about the (19)60s. I do not know what other younger historians will think 20 years from now. I think that if I had to predict, I would predict that the (19)60s will be remembered as they already are, as an unusually pivotal decade in the very life, the life of the 60s I mean, basically mid (19)60s to the early (19)70s. I think the (19)60s generation, if there is such a thing, will be remembered as I have already said to you, as a sort of distinctive generation that had a particular relationship to society. What historians will make of all this. Whether they will think the impact of the (19)60s was on the whole a good thing or a bad thing. Whether they will believe that really dramatic changes came on in the (19)60s or just modest changes, I cannot tell you. I tend to think that the (19)60s will be seen as a time that produced quite dramatic changes in the character of American life, whether it would be seen as a really important turning point in our history. But I cannot tell you how the balance sheet will read in terms of whether those changes are thought to be good things or bad things.

SM (00:38:08):
If there is one specific event that happened in your youth that had an influence on your life, what is that one?

AB (00:38:19):
Well, I suppose the event that I remember most vividly, the public event that I remember most vividly as opposed to personal events is as, for many other people, the assassination of John Kennedy. I am not sure I would say that that is an event that changed my view of the world in profound ways. But it is certainly an event that left an extraordinary imprint on my sense of the world. I think what had a bigger effect on me was not so much an event as a moment, and that was probably 1968 and the extraordinarily turbulent events in even more extraordinary concentration of jarring events that occurred within a relatively short period. The Tet offensive, the end of the Johnson presidency, the King assassination, the urban arrest, the Kennedy assassination, Chicago. I think 1968 was a year that made everyone who was old enough to be aware of it and young enough to be still unformed in his order of thinking. We consider a lot of assumptions about what we thought about our lives, our world, our country. I think that would be the event, a year could be an event, an event that I would point to as being most influential in my view.

SM (00:40:02):
There is a brand-new book out from 1968 in memory. I think it is Jules Lichtman.

AB (00:40:07):
Oh, well there is so many books on 1968 now-

SM (00:40:09):
Yeah, it is really good.

AB (00:40:10):
It is so good? Oh.

SM (00:40:13):
It is a good one too. There's one written, I think by [inaudible] Kaiser, what is it called? Kaiser, that came out a couple of years back. And it is my understanding that David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon Eisenhower are supposed to be working on a book from the Nixon presidency from '68 to the time he resigned. So, I am not sure when that is going to out. So, the issue of trust is an issue that faces many boomers today, and it is certainly a quality in America today that is lacking. And it is getting back to this trust in leaders, trust in other people. Psychologists just will say... Because I remember if a psychology course is when you think of it. Psychologists will say that if you cannot trust others, you have got to trust some people to be actually a success in life. Yet so many of the boomers did not trust the elected leaders of that period because of the things... We all know the story about Lyndon Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, where some people say it was just a way of getting into the war. It was not, I would say, an honest way of getting into the war. It certainly was not what Robert McNamara did as Secretary of Defense with President Nixon and Watergate, and a lot of those things of that era. But this period of trust is a quality that many boomers do not have. How prevalent do you feel this quality of lack of trust is within this generation that is now reaching 50, and it is passing onto its children, who I work with day in and day out in the university. And I have sense there is a lot of distrust amongst young people, authority people, and distrust of authority too today.

AB (00:41:54):
Well, I mean this is one of the most commented upon phenomena of our time. We decline in trust in almost every kind of institution in American life. Starting with government, but extending throughout the spectrum, including lawyers, doctors, clergy and academics, understanding group [inaudible]. What has caused it? I think in part it has been the failure of government and of many other institutions to deliver on the promises that they made in times. But I think it is also been more importantly, a displacement onto institutions of an anger and disillusionment that many people feel about what has happened to the economy. Obviously, the economy has been quite good for many people, but for most people, at least until quite recently and probably still, the economy has been something that has made their lives much more anxious, much less secure, and in some ways much less affluent than they had expected it to be. And I think there is a great sense of disappointment among many Americans about the way their lives have turned out, their economic lives have turned out. And I think a lot of the loyalty towards, and trust in institutions that was so characteristic of the (19)50s and (19)60s was a result of the extraordinary successes that so many Americans were enjoying as their lives got better and better and better. And in the 20 some years since the early (19)70s, that has not been experienced in those people. And so, the same institutions, the accumulated trust and loyalty on the basis of successes in the (19)50s and (19)60s have forfeited it, because of basic structural changes in our economy works that are not necessarily a fault of these institutions, but they are blamed for it any less.

SM (00:44:37):
Exacerbation, because when I interviewed Congressman Gunderson two weeks ago in Washington, former Congressman Gunderson, he said that he felt that when boomers age then reach the age of 65 and go into retirement, one third will be well off, one third will be in very bad dire straits financially and saved or whatever. And then one third will make it okay, but they are not going to be able to really enjoy themselves in a retirement, it will be just like a struggle day in and day out. And it is interesting, because we Congressman Ken [inaudible] on our campus, it was a year and a half ago talking about a book Common Sense. And in his lecture, he said one of the biggest negatives of the boomers is they have not saved, and they were going to pay a heavy price... I have two more questions for you. I will just ask you some names just to reflect upon. Then we will be done with the interview. These are names of the period. But, one of the concepts of the (19)60s, and again boomers had it in the first wave of boomers you were talking about, was this sense of empowerment. We teach students day in and day out when they come to school to feel empowered, idea of the students in leadership positions, but that their voice counts. And we are always dealing with issues of self-esteem. I hope a few people feel comfortable with who they are and what they are all about, and then they will speak their thoughts earlier. But I like your thoughts on the sense of empowerment amongst today's young people that you teach. Whether it be a peer [inaudible] or the history of reflection of young people today, whether they feel empowered because they are the sons and daughters of boomers. And whether you feel that boomers as they have gotten into adulthood and now hit rushing 50, feel a sense of empowerment that their voice counts. Maybe they do not vote, but where they work, involved in the local PTA, get involved in the local government or whatever. Just your overall thoughts on the concept of empowerment amongst boomers and their kids.

AB (00:46:40):
Well, my experience of the college generation of power era is skewed by the fact that I have never taught anything but elite Ivy League institutions. So, the young people that I encountered are on the whole quite privileged people. And I am not sure that any generalization I can think about them would be meaningful for the public as a whole. But I will say that comparing the students that I encountered today from my own generation, comparable students in the higher pool institutions, I think there is a much lower degree of engagement with politics, conventional mainstream politics. My generation had a higher degree of career and economic anxiety, and a much more pragmatic view of education than this case when I was in college. But I have to say also that I find among students today, a much larger level of commitment to, I guess what I would call, community-oriented activities that most people I knew in my generation ever had. You mentioned volunteerism, and there has been a tremendous increase in volunteerism. High schools all over the country have incorporated volunteerism now as opposed... They are part of the curriculum. It is becoming almost unusual for people in any reasonably good high school not to have some experience with volunteering activities. And I think that is a kind of social commitment that we undervalue when we talk about this generation. And in many ways, it puts our generation to shame. We may have been deeply involved in movements to end the war and demonstrations on behalf of this or that. But not many of us have worked in homeless shelters, or worked in AIDS clinics or different kinds of things that so many students today are doing without any recognition, without trumpeting it in any way. So, I do not consider this generation an uncommitted generation. I think their commitments are different from ours. They might take a different form from what once ours did. They are perhaps less hopeful than we were or where we were at.

SM (00:50:00):
I am going to list a couple of names here of individuals that anybody who they were alive in the (19)60s will remember these names. Maybe not to give a dissertation on each one, but just to simply give a few comments and your thoughts on their overall impact then, and their significance in the history of the times. First two would be Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

AB (00:50:26):
Well, I would have to talk about them separately, because I think their years together are less important in both their lives than the years before they were together. Tom Hayden was probably the most single, most influential person who has left a somewhat more pragmatic figure in the left than others, but was very committed to radical. And in the years since then, he is tried, and I am not sure how well has succeeded, to find a way to fuse his radical commitments to mainstream politics, which is what a lot of formalists have tried to do with varied degrees of success. Jane Fonda, I think was a young, fiery, famous privileged woman with a lot of unearned political power, who felt very strongly about the war and did not have very good judgment with how to express it, as in consequences with 30 years.

SM (00:51:37):
You still think part of the Vietnam veterans... See those badges, you are going to watch them. But then there is some with a wall [inaudible]. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.

AB (00:51:52):
Well, in a way I find them hilarious figures. Because they both had very well developed yet somewhat bizarre sensitive humor. And also, because they were such, in a way, they were almost the clowns of the new left. And they made political farce a part of the political process in a way. I do not have great admiration for them, I think they were very intelligent. I do not think they had much political sense. But when I think of them, I think of them as dark figures from our past. I think of them as sort of Atlantis figures in both senses of the word.

SM (00:52:53):
Berrigan brothers, they just did a segment on Philip Berrigan on Sunday morning.

AB (00:52:56):
Well, I admired the Berrigans at the time. And I am somewhat uneasy with the kind of passionate extremism they ultimately embraced. But I think that they had commitments that were based on a real moral sense of what was right. And although I do not admire everything they did, I admire their commitment.

SM (00:53:40):
What about Benjamin Spock?

AB (00:53:41):
Well, I am not sure that I admire Benjamin Spock's ideas about child rearing.

SM (00:53:49):
He sees the challenges softly.

AB (00:53:49):
Nor does he still subscribe to the ones that he was famous for in the (19)50s, But, you know, I think he was a decent man. He tried to use the power and the wealth that he had gained to do some good. I am not sure that he had much impact, but I admired him for his efforts.

SM (00:54:14):
How about... There is so many people here. The black power advocates, the Bobby Seales, Huey Newtons, Eldridge Cleavers. They were kind of very impacting. Sophie Carmichael, Taggart.

AB (00:54:26):
Well, I am not a great sympathizer with the idea of racial separatism, and so I am not very sympathetic to the ideas that they espoused. But on the other hand, I certainly can understand how black people, male strip of the (19)60s, would come to those conclusions. I think they helped create an unhappy tradition of Black politics that I think has done African Americans more than good over time. But I do not think I would attribute it to them personally. I think they would prove it was inevitable that these ideas would start to emerge, parts of the African American world, several reflections if it had not been with somebody else.

SM (00:55:41):
What about Malcolm X?

AB (00:55:41):
Malcolm X is really an enormous figure I think in African American history, and American history. I do not subscribe to the idea that he started out as a man filled with hate, and then came to a greater understanding and became more moderate and benign as he grew older. I think from the time he became engaged in politics, he was a deeply committed radical, who over time redefined his radicalism to embrace class issues somewhat more than they had at first, and racial issues somewhat less than they had at first. But I do not think he became any less radical.

SM (00:56:24):
Timothy Leary.

AB (00:56:25):
You know, this issue I suppose I am somewhat in accord with the right, which is that, I think the romanticization of drug use in the (19)60s was one of the most damaging legacies that our generation left for our children. And I think the romanticization was probably ignorance to a large degree. I do not think most of us... I was never aptly crossing them. But most of our generation used and celebrated drugs, understood the damage that they would do, both to them and to the society, but they probably should have. And Leary, it seems to me as he became a celebrated figure, he was someone who just was [inaudible] of this issue.

SM (00:58:14):
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

AB (00:58:14):
It has been said a million times. I think I probably admire him more than any other figure of the (19)60s. You are all aware of set of limitations that critics have attributed to him. He was a truly great man.

SM (00:58:18):
Do you admire the fact of the stand that he took against the Vietnam War, and all the criticism he took at that time by even his fellow civil rights leaders.

AB (00:58:24):
Well, I think it was probably a tactical error. But I think it was a morally defensible position. So, I guess I do admire him.

SM (00:58:42):
Let me just change this. I have just got a couple more names. Some of the presence of this period, you have already made reference to John Kennedy, but just your thoughts on John Kennedy itself.

AB (00:58:50):
Well, I think Kennedy is in many ways more important in death than he was in life. And he was, as a president, an interesting president with some accomplishments, but not great accomplishments. He has not had many great accomplishments. He may have had more if he had lived. But I think he became, almost despite himself, a symbol of a kind of energy, and activism, and vigor, and idealism that has had and continues to have an enormous impact on American culture and on American aspirations for people in my generation, the next generation. He is an extraordinary phenomenon, and much more extraordinary a phenomenon in death than he ever was in life.

SM (00:59:41):
I shook his hand when I was a kid at Hyde Park, and I was there the day that Eleanor Roosevelt was trying to get the... It was a Sunday, and the parents were going back on a trip, and we just lucked out. We did not know what all commotion was. And he was there in the FDR Library talking to her about... I guess, at that time I did not know why he was there. I just know he was a candidate. And he came out and I shook his hand as he was getting into the car and left the library. He came out the back entrance. I was a young kid, so I will never forget that. The tan, the thin striped suit and the smile and everything. Robert Kennedy.

AB (01:00:18):
Robert Kennedy, I had a real passion and devotion to, which I also had to his brother. My admiration for his brother has faded in the 30 some years since. My admiration for Bobby has not faded as much. I think he, coming out of a family situation that in many ways was sort of traumatic and destabilizing for all of those kids, found a power in himself in his last year's that was just extraordinary.

SM (01:01:09):
George McGovern.

AB (01:01:10):
Well, George McGovern I think was a smart, interesting man. A lot of the stature of many of the other major political figures of that age. I think he did not... The political imagination of the more successful figures of his time had spread this time.

SM (01:01:44):
Eugene McCarthy.

AB (01:01:48):
Eugene McCarthy is someone who never quite fit in a political world, who could not quite fit in it at the level that he maintained as a presidential candidate. I think he was a decent senator, a little more cerebral than most. And I think he was an effective voice in 1968, legitimizing opposition of the war. After 1968 I think he became kind of an embittered man who spent the rest of his public life angry about what he thought had been done to him, that he had been cheated somehow.

SM (01:02:34):
Richard Nixon.

AB (01:02:37):
Oh.

SM (01:02:39):
You can write a book on that.

AB (01:02:49):
I can write hundreds of books as people have. He is a brilliant man, great politician, very important figure in our history, very important president. And I think his great flaw... The flaws were kind of resentment and bitterness towards the part of the world that he believed had rejected him, but never left him even that he is a pinnacle of success. And also, I think a basic... I do not think he had very many core convictions. I think there was a moral compass in his political view. And he was such a realist, such a devotee rail politic, that he lost sight of any role center that might have reigned again as he was busy doing or tolerating things that finally destroyed him.

SM (01:03:55):
Was not that one of the criticisms of John Kennedy, that he was more of a pragmatist, and if it was not for his brother who really had a conscience and developed a conscience?

AB (01:04:04):
No, I do not know. That is something that could be said about a lot of politicians. I do not think there is anything wrong with being a pragmatist. But I think there has to be something at the core of it. This is one of the [inaudible] of Clinton too, is that there is nothing at the core. I do not know that I believe that. But I do believe that in Nixon.

SM (01:04:26):
George Wallace. I am trying to get all these boomer names.

AB (01:04:33):
Well, I think Wallace helped launch a new kind of politics that eventually became, at least for a time, a dominant politics in this country. But Wallace was too crude and too racist and too reckless to profit from it at the end.

SM (01:04:53):
Spiro Agnew.

AB (01:04:55):
Oh, slippery crook.

SM (01:05:03):
[inaudible]. Muhammad Ali.

AB (01:05:05):
Oh, I am a great fan of Muhammad Ali. And I think he was treated very badly by his country, or at least by his government. But a man of great courage, great spirit.

SM (01:05:30):
Herbert McNamara.

AB (01:05:34):
I do not think he is a bad man. He is a very smart man. But his intelligence is a throwaway that made him inappropriate for the kind roles that he played in the public wise.

SM (01:05:49):
Barry Goldwater.

AB (01:05:52):
Well, Barry Goldwater is the last voice of a bolder conservatism unconnected to the cultural politics that was dominating. He was a conservative, sort of rock-hard convictions about communism, the cold war, government, individual freedom. And there was a kind of icy certainty about him that made him somewhat unpalatable to the electorate in a way that Reagan, who shared many of those beliefs, but also managed to identify himself with a lot of fuzzy cultural issues, was not.

SM (01:06:43):
Three more and we are done.

AB (01:06:45):
Okay. Actually, I think we have to be done with maybe one more, because is 3:00 now.

SM (01:06:49):
Okay. Just your overall impression of the musicians of the year and the impact that the music of that era had on boomers. It will be Bob Dylan, just a general analysis of all the music from that period.

AB (01:07:03):
I do not know that I can do that with the time that I have. Clearly both rock music and folk music were both the defining cultural products of those generations. I am sorry.

SM (01:07:17):
That is okay. I will like to just take three pictures of you.

AB (01:07:20):
Okay.

SM (01:07:22):
Thank you very much for taking this time.

AB (01:07:25):
Oh, it was my pleasure. Very interesting project.

SM (01:07:28):
Do you know Dr. [inaudible] at-

AB (01:07:30):
Yes, he is a good friend of mine. Have you talked to him? Or...

SM (01:07:33):
Yes. He came to our campus and spoke about his latest book.

AB (01:07:36):
About the Parchment book.

SM (01:07:38):
Yes.

AB (01:07:38):
Yeah.

SM (01:07:41):
Gave in to the development project too. Because he came to our campus last year in the middle of [inaudible] to begin, the conspiracy, so the mental degree, so that is [inaudible]. Just one more, just one more.

AB (01:07:55):
Make it quick.

SM (01:07:58):
Yeah. We have a light... Do you mind if I just put the wide angle on here?

AB (01:08:00):
I do not have time really. I am sorry.

SM (01:08:05):
Okay.

AB (01:08:06):
I am sorry to rush you out.

SM (01:08:07):
That is okay. Thank you for being able to have an hour with you, I really want to thank you. And...

(End of Interview)

1997-08-13

Stephen McKiernan

Alan Brinkley

68:21

English

Binghamton University libraries

ausio/mp4

Sound

2 Microcassettes

Audio

Authors; Scholars; College Teachers; Columbia University; Brinkley, Alan--Interviews

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