Interview with Dr. David Kaiser

Kaiser, David ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. David Kaiser is a professor of Physics and the History of Science at MIT. He received his Bachelor's degree in Physics at Dartmouth College and Ph.D.s in Physics and the History of Science at Harvard University. His historical research focuses on the development of physics in the United States during the Cold War. Additionally, his research in physics studies the early-universe cosmology, working at the interface of particle physics and gravitation.

2010-02-09

In copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

106:26

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: David Kaiser
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 9 February 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:03):
David Kaiser. February 9th, 2010. Plug it in-

DK (00:00:10):
By the way-

SM (00:00:11):
I am going to start out with some of the general questions, and then we will get into some of the specifics here. First off, I want to say, I think your book, American Tragedy is great.

DK (00:00:23):
Thanks.

SM (00:00:24):
Yeah. The way you talk about the Eisenhower administration, it is very, very good. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin, and what was the watershed moment when it began, and what was the watershed moment when it ended, in your opinion?

DK (00:00:44):
Well, I have come to think of this in the terms that were defined by my dear late friend, Bill Strauss and Neil Howe. Rather than talk about the (19)60s, they used the term awakening, which they see as a recurring phenomenon in American history. I would say that the awakening began in 1964 or 1965, and that it continued for approximately 20 years. Although by the end of that time, it was not primarily visible in politics, and there had been a swing to the right in politics. But with respect to social changes and whatnot in American life, it was certainly continuing into the early 1980s. It is interesting, and it was important of things to come really, that it is fair to say that the first baby boomer, even using the relatively narrow demographic definition, who held a major policy position, was I think David Stockman as Budget Director under Reagan.

SM (00:02:01):
Oh, yes.

DK (00:02:01):
That was an interesting portent as it turned out, of the political influence that adult boomers were actually going to have.

SM (00:02:12):
Could you explain that a little bit more? Because I remember David Stockman, I think he was... If I remember right, he resigned or was-

DK (00:02:20):
No.

SM (00:02:21):
Forced out?

DK (00:02:22):
Kicked out the first term.

SM (00:02:23):
Yeah.

DK (00:02:23):
He got into trouble for making some intemperate statement, but I think he finished out the first term. Then, again, in a typical boomer move, he wrote a very frank memoir explaining that he never believed most of the things he was saying, and that what the administration had been trying to do could not possibly work. Loyalty is not one of the big virtues of our generation.

SM (00:02:48):
Right.

DK (00:02:49):
Then he got onto Wall Street, and I believe he has been in some legal trouble, although I do not remember exactly how that came out, since then. But what I mean to say is, that perhaps because we are so self-centered in politics, we turned out to have a much more conservative impact than one would have cast way back in the (19)60s.

SM (00:03:15):
You make reference there to a quality that you think was part of the boomer generation. I know it is very difficult to generalize for 70 plus million people. I have heard that from many of my interviewees and a lot of them based their experiences on the people that they knew, grew up with, have worked with, have become friends with and so forth, so then they are able to talk about boomers. Is there some general positive qualities or negative qualities that you think are really linked to this group?

DK (00:03:48):
Oh, I definitely think so. And remember, again, thanks to Strauss and Howe, I have been thinking about these questions very intensively and discussing them with well-informed people for about 15 years now. I think that the positive contribution came from taking individual feelings seriously, from taking the idea of individualism seriously, and of addressing a lot of personal emotional issues that previous generations, particularly the GI's, our parents, for the most part, at least among the older boomers, had swept under the rug. I think that probably made boomers much better parents than their parents had been, for the most part. On the other hand, I think a major characteristic is a rather terrifying faith in our own opinion, which again, the older generation played into by making the catastrophic mistake in Vietnam, and a belief that whatever we want must be best, not only for us, but for everyone else, and that there really cannot be any serious objections to establishing whatever we regard as good, and right, and just. Now, you see the thing that Strauss and Howe really taught me, for which I am grateful, is to see these qualities on both sides of the political fence. In the same way that some of my contemporaries at Harvard thought it would be great to transform Harvard University, if not to bring it to a halt in 1969, and to eliminate ROTC, and form Black Studies Department, and do all sorts of things right away, no matter what the cost, the same kind of certainty informed our contemporary George W. Bush when it became obvious to him that overthrowing Saddam Hussein and setting up democracy in Iraq was just a thing to do, and that would put the whole world on a great new track.

SM (00:06:29):
That is interesting you say that about Bush, because when the two boomer presidents, a couple of people have commented, and they do not go into any great detail, but they say, "Look at our two new boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush. There you have all the qualities of the boomers." And then I got to say, "What do you mean by that?"

DK (00:06:46):
Well, I do not entirely agree about Clinton. And in fact, Clinton did not have a typical boomer childhood at all. He had a very difficult childhood. Clinton, while he certainly is narcissistic and he could be irresponsible in his personal life, he actually was a natural politician and a conciliator who did not try to insist on putting through his own views. I think Hillary is much more of a traditional boomer, in that respect. I would make a little bit of an exception for him in that regard, and that is probably what made him a much more successful president, actually.

SM (00:07:35):
Yeah. See, one of the things that many of the boomers felt when they were young, is they were the most unique generation in American history up to that point.

DK (00:07:42):
Absolutely.

SM (00:07:44):
I can remember being on college campuses, feeling that we can be the change agents for the betterment of society, that we have the power within us to end racism, and sexism, and bring peace to the world, and a utopian mentality.

DK (00:08:01):
Oh yeah. Wait, how old are you exactly?

SM (00:08:03):
Oh, I am the same age as you are.

DK (00:08:03):
Oh, fine. Okay. Yeah.

SM (00:08:04):
I graduated from Binghamton University in 1970.

DK (00:08:07):
SUNY Binghamton?

SM (00:08:08):
Yes.

DK (00:08:10):
Did you know Camille Paglia?

SM (00:08:11):
Yes. Oh, I knew of her. Yes. I saw her in classes, but I did not know her personally. Of course, I tried to approach her once with no luck, when I tried to take students to meet her. She was there, and I think she was a graduation speaker in 1969, a year before I graduated.

DK (00:08:34):
I think she graduated in (19)68, actually.

SM (00:08:37):
Was it (19)68?

DK (00:08:38):
The three of us are all the same age, but I think you were a year late, apparently, and she was a year early.

SM (00:08:43):
Yeah.

DK (00:08:44):
Yeah, I think that is right.

SM (00:08:45):
Yeah, and I stayed an extra semester too because I double majored-

DK (00:08:49):
I see. Anyway, okay. Do you, by any chance, remember a guy named Barney [inaudible]?

SM (00:08:53):
No, I do not.

DK (00:08:54):
All right. He was there too, and he went into the Navy, and he taught with me here in the (19)90s for a while.

SM (00:09:00):
I know the president was one of the good presidents when I was here, Dr. Bruce Dearing.

DK (00:09:05):
Yeah. Okay.

SM (00:09:06):
He went onto Upstate Medical Center, but I guess he retired because the students got to him after a while.

DK (00:09:11):
Sure. All right, well, let us get back to our-

SM (00:09:14):
Yeah, but anyways, the uniqueness, could you comment on that feeling? Because even if you talked to some boomers who were 62 and 63, some of them still feel that way.

DK (00:09:25):
Well, again, Strauss and Howe see a repeating cycle. What that means is, that there have been generations like boomers, but we did not know them or at best, we met a few of them when they were very, very old, as I did. The characteristic of these generations, which they call profit generations, that they are born in the wake of great national crises. There was a similar generation born after the foundation of the Constitution. And actually, that was a very long generation that went from sometime in the 1790s till about 1820. Those were the men and women who gave us the Civil War. There was a similar generation, which Strauss and Howe called the missionaries, born from the early 1860s until I would say about 1884. They also had a very strong sense of moral purpose, very intense sense of themselves. I am actually studying them now, in connection with a book about American entry into the Second World War.

SM (00:10:35):
Oh.

DK (00:10:36):
I have to give them credit for a lot more self-discipline and realism than boomers have shown, which is an interesting issue. Those are the parallel generation, but boomers are very different from any of the other living generations, yes. And furthermore, not only do they pride themselves on being different from other generations, but they pride themselves, and here I would certainly have to include myself, on being individually unique and on being different from each other.

SM (00:11:18):
Yeah. One of the things about the boomers that I have been... Everything seems to be placed in context. In other words, did the event shape the boomers or did the boomers shape the events? Because when you talk about the baby boom, you are talking about the largest... I think there are more millennials now, though. Boomers can no longer say... There are more millennials now than there were ever were boomers.

DK (00:11:45):
That is probably true. Well, again, I think it is a mix. I am convinced now, and again, this is thanks to Strauss and Howe, that there would have been a rebellion against the values of our childhood, no matter what. On the other hand, there is no question in my mind that the Vietnam War made that rebellion much more intent and had tremendous long-term consequences in a lot of ways because it convinced so many boomers, including ones who became very important in one way or another, that we could safely disregard everything our parents had ever said, and toss aside so many aspects of the world they had created without any caution, or regret, or anything.

SM (00:12:54):
How important were the Beats in this kind of an attitude? This was a group from the silent generation, the Ginsburg's, the Kerouac, the Anne Waldman Serengeti, that particular group of writers that seem to have they were small in number, but their influence seemed to be large in many ways in the (19)50s because they were the epitome of not showing a whole lot of respect for the status quo and-

DK (00:13:24):
Yeah. Well, again my wife-

SM (00:13:26):
They were pre-boomers.

DK (00:13:27):
Well, yeah. Well, they were skeptics, certainly. I do not know if I would call them pre-boomers or not. My wife would have a lot to say about that. She is actually a year older than we are, and she was aware of them from a very early age. They certainly were providing an alternative voice. Also, there was Morton Sahl, the comedian.

SM (00:13:55):
Oh, yes.

DK (00:13:56):
There were the early folk singers. That was a kind of wedge in the door. For instance, I can remember in high school, my friends and I getting a little kick out of the song that I think was actually written by Pete Seeger, Little Boxes on the hillside, and things like that. They did provide an alternative view, but I do not think their influence was extremely widespread.

SM (00:14:33):
When you look at the boomer generation, I have had to clarify to many of the people I have interviewed, they said, "Are you talking about the 70 million, Steve, or are you talking about the 15 percent who were the activists?" Because they said, "I can talk about the activist. They can talk about all those people involved in all those movements, anti-war."

DK (00:14:56):
I do not think, okay, well, first of all, there is this definitional issue. The demographic definition I know includes people born from what, (19)46 through (19)64?

SM (00:15:11):
Yes.

DK (00:15:12):
Okay. The Strauss and Howe definition is different. They started around (19)43, which I think is the shaky boundary and run it through 1960. In terms of experience, I think that is a better definition. Essentially what that means, and this is what I say, they never said it this way, boomers are people who do not remember FDR, but who do remember Kennedy. That is the way I would define it. No, the comments I am making certainly do not refer simply to the activists.

SM (00:15:55):
Okay.

DK (00:15:57):
Although the activists demonstrated a lot of key generational characteristics. Now, what you will find and remember, I have a very different kind of student body, and I teach a generations course, and my students who are no longer boomers, most of them are Gen X now, but they write autobiographical papers and I hear about their parents. You can find people born even as late as we were, who either did not go to college or who somehow got on track in life very early so that they were already launched when the awakening began around 1965. Many of them are different, but that would be... Those people could not be significantly younger than we are. I think that everybody, by the (19)70s, certainly, again, there are regional differences too, but by the (19)70s, everybody was growing up in a very different world than the world people had grown up in the early (19)60s.

SM (00:17:09):
You keep saying the awakening around (19)65. Are you making reference... The Vietnam War, of course, it was around (19)65 that started to get bigger and bigger, and then by (19)67, we know what was happening there.

DK (00:17:22):
The Vietnam War gave the awakening a political trust. I am talking about different music, I am talking about different ways to dress, different ways to wear your hair, different sexual morays, drug use, which arrived at Harvard, interestingly enough, in a big way in the fall of 1966, brought in by the incoming freshman class, many of whom had done drugs in their last year in high school, particularly [inaudible].

SM (00:18:01):
That is my class.

DK (00:18:04):
Yes, right. And things like that. All that was getting going. There is a wonderful piece. I do not think I referred to it in American tragedy, although I found it doing American Tragedy. It is a piece from the New York Times that appeared sometime in the first six months of 1965, and it is called Narcotics the Growing Problem Among Affluent Youth. It is quite an extraordinary read, in retrospect, and one of the more prophetic pieces that Deborah appeared.

SM (00:18:39):
I know there is brand new book out right now on Timothy Leary and the drug culture up at Harvard.

DK (00:18:45):
Oh, okay.

SM (00:18:46):
Yeah, and that just came out.

DK (00:18:47):
Right.

SM (00:18:48):
One of the things I want to talk about here is Newt Gingrich, when he came into power, who is a boomer, by the way-

DK (00:18:59):
Yes, he certainly is.

SM (00:19:00):
When he came into power in 1994, I read some of his commentaries about attacking that generation of the (19)60s generation and that era. George Will oftentimes has, when he gets an opportunity, either in his books or his articles, will take shots at the (19)60s generation.

DK (00:19:22):
Yeah.

SM (00:19:22):
I think he is a pre-boomer, I do not think-

DK (00:19:24):
Oh, he is a silent. Yes, he definitely is.

SM (00:19:27):
Yeah. They are just examples. And then Pat Buchanan in a recent video on the Weatherman, really blasts the (19)60s generation, regarding 1968, and when he was working with President Nixon. Basically, all three of them claiming that all the problems we have in American society today can go right back to that period of time-

DK (00:19:51):
Well, actually that is a fantasy, which actually I used to share, from a different political perspective. Without Vietnam say, we might have stayed in the early (19)60s indefinitely. I now think that is a fantasy. But what I want to stress, is that Gingrich is being a complete hypocrite, in my opinion, just the way George W. Bush was, when he would criticize the (19)60s and say, "The problem is that for too long we have been saying if it feels good, do it." Well, I blogged a good deal about this, and I can tell you where to find it. It was one of the first things I did back in 2004. George Bush's whole presidency is a testimony to, if it feels good, do it. I want to get rid of Saddam, so I will do it. Do not tell me this is too hard. Do not tell me we do not have any allies. I want to cut taxes, so I am going to do it. Do not tell me about the deficit. He is as much a part of that as anybody. You see this now again, in the total irresponsibility of the Republican leadership in Congress, which is composed entirely of boomers, I think now. Whereas interestingly enough, the Democratic leadership is still composed mainly in silent, which is part of the reason they are such a pushovers compared to the Republicans.

SM (00:21:26):
You just made a comment there. It is almost as if George Bush sounds like Woodrow Wilson, if you go back to-

DK (00:21:34):
No. That would be a long discussion and a complicated one. I think that is been unfair to Woodrow Wilson. It is true that they were similar. They were more similar from a personality point of view. Wilson was very intolerant of dissent, and felt it was everybody's duty to agree with him. He was a genuinely very subtle thinker, in a way that Bush certainly never would be.

SM (00:22:08):
Yeah. I know he had problems with the leadership of the Republican party when... He did not consult with anybody. He was a hero in Europe and then he did not consult with anybody back in the Congress.

DK (00:22:21):
No. And he refused to come.

SM (00:22:23):
Yeah. That leads me right into this question here, it is- often times we cannot generalize about an entire generation, but can you see the results this time passes on the influence that one generation can have in America?

DK (00:22:36):
Oh, yeah.

SM (00:22:36):
Does the 70 plus million deserve praise or condemnation for any of the major flaws we see in our society today? Have the boomer leaders of Congress, the office of the president, the governors, the state assemblies, and local governments been good or bad overall? Because they have been running things. Generation X's are now in there too. How would you grade them as a whole?

DK (00:23:00):
I think that they are in politics. They do not even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the GI's, as our parents' generation. I think that the silent generation was pretty good in politics, never did get anybody into the White House. They have now pretty much been chucked aside. I think the boomers have had a terrible influence in the economy, although there the silent generation shares the blame, but I would give a lot of it to the boomers, and we are going to be living with that for a long time now. Again, the GI's having lived through the Depression, understood that you needed restraints on the financial community, on industry, and various regulation to avert another catastrophe. Naturally, we assumed that none of that applied to us. A lot of those regulations have been either repealed or simply disregarded, and here we find ourselves once again in a situation parallel to the (19)30s. The other area, and this is my personal view, but it has been acquired at great cost, may I say, I think in academia boomers have been a complete disaster and have done damage that I do not see how it will ever be repaired.

SM (00:24:44):
Can you talk about that?

DK (00:24:47):
Sure.

SM (00:24:47):
A lot of the professors... I have worked at quite a few universities and I have heard for years about the attacks on today's faculty members, particularly in the humanities and social scientists as political correctness and all the attacks by the conservatives toward the universities today, that the people that run the universities, and they were making reference to administrators too, administrators and faculty are basically examples of the (19)60s generation all over again.

DK (00:25:19):
Well, I think there is some truth to that, but I think again, the biggest single problem... Well, there are two problems, which you see in particular in my own discipline of history. The first is a rejection of the idea of objective truth, and an endorsement of the idea that reality is different for everyone, and that they are entitled to express their own reality, which makes evidence much less important than running history. And secondly, the idea that it is the job of the historian to study the oppressed and the people who have not had any voice in the past, to the almost complete exclusion of studying people in power. The prevalence of that idea, is the reason that I, who has written not only American Tragedy, but five other books, three of which are on the same scale as American Tragedy, more or less, has to teach at the Naval War College because there is literally no room in any history department in the country anymore for somebody like me. This is still happening. We just hired a young guy from a very distinguished university, just finished his PhD, who has written the thesis on the... Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published-

DK (00:27:03):
Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published. He has written a thesis on a major diplomatic issue in the Cold War, and I heard from a third party that that cost him a chance at a job at a university because the bulk of the people in the department said, "This work is simply too traditional". Yes. So that has been very serious. In economics, the boom generation of economists, with very few exceptions, have swallowed the idea of the rational market, and that which has gotten us into the mess that we are in today. In political science, most of the quote, "cutting edge work", is now based on what is called rational choice theory, which does not really describe human beings at all. And in literature, postmodernism has had a terrible effect. And again, if you could get her to talk to you, Camille [inaudible] would be the best person to talk to about that, but I know she has become almost impossible to approach. And I have tried to approach her several times with no luck, and I have given up.

SM (00:28:22):
I approached her once.

DK (00:28:23):
But again, that is somebody else who is probably the outstanding literature scholar of our generation and who works in an art school.

SM (00:28:33):
It is interesting because the person I just interviewed this past weekend, Dr. Franklin?

DK (00:28:38):
Yes.

SM (00:28:39):
Said that because in an article that he wrote criticizing something that somebody had written, he had a hard time finding a job. And he had written three books, very well-established books.

DK (00:28:54):
Well, that is possible, although the job market has been so tight for the whole of my career.

SM (00:29:00):
Well, that was back-

DK (00:29:01):
There could be so many reasons why people have had trouble finding a job.

SM (00:29:04):
Well, that was 20 years ago though.

DK (00:29:06):
Okay. But I mean, the other thing that... You see, another problem, which we did not invent, to be fair, in modern academia's specialization, and that also leaves no room at all for somebody like me who has never written the same book twice or written on the same subject twice. And I know that cost me many opportunities.

SM (00:29:31):
One of the events that took place in the (19)60s, historic event, was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 and (19)65.

DK (00:29:40):
Sure.

SM (00:29:42):
And Ronald Reagan came into power based on two things. Number one, that he was going to stop those students who were protesting on college campuses that took their lead from the free speech movement, and secondly, he was going to end the welfare state. I suppose those are two of the big issues. And so he took those issues on as, and of course they support him in California and he won election. But I want to, the question I am basically asking here, is there a fear of activism on university campuses today? Did the universities learn anything from the Boomer protests on their campuses in the (19)60s and (19)70s? I asked that question. And second part of the question is, we did a couple panels at our university when I first got there in the late (19)80s, early (19)90s, where I had boomers in Generation Xers on stage, and they did not like each other. It was very obvious they did not. And it was the current students who were Generation Xers, and some of the faculty who were boomers, and some people from off campus who were boomers. And I can remember the split. There was either two responses between the Generation Xer and the boomers. One, "I am sick and tired of hearing about your nostalgia and the way it was. Shut up. I am tired of it. I do not care about it". And the other one was, "I wish I lived when you lived because you had issues and we do not have them today". So then, there was nothing in between. But, so I am really asking about activism here. Art in today's universities are run by boomers and [inaudible].

DK (00:31:29):
Well, no. Well, if you go back to Berkeley, and I assume you are familiar with that documentary, Berkeley in the (19)60s.

SM (00:31:36):
Yes, I am.

DK (00:31:37):
Good. Yes. Basically, and I remember this very well, even though I started college year after that, those kids were reacting to the idea that the whole purpose of the educational system, which was run by GI's then, was to turn them out as copies of their parents. So they were dressing like their parents, they were acting like their parents, and so on. Now, Vietnam, again, gave the protests a completely different character and a political character. And nothing like that has happened since. Now, as soon as you get to Gen X, you are dealing with kids, many of whom are short on cash, are borrowing money to go through school, and who are focused on their future. And that was one of the great things about being a relatively young boomer, is that you just assumed that was not going to be a problem. Now today, and I have not followed it that closely, but as you know, there are significant protests going on in the UC campuses again, you have a very different story because you have got millennials who have been told all their lives, here is what you have to do, do it, and you will be rewarded. And they have responded to that very enthusiastically. And I got, you see, I did get a glimpse of this firsthand because I was a visiting professor at Williams College three years ago. That was just for one year though. And now suddenly, they are in a situation where it is not clear the rewards are going to be there, and that could have significant repercussions. But you see, our protests were based on moral criticism, and we had the luxury of focusing on moral criticism because of the extremely secure environment in which we had grown up. And that is the paradox, as I say, of every prophet generation, from the transcendentals after the Constitution, through the missionaries, and right up to us.

SM (00:34:06):
Well, that free speech movement all started actually by chance, because of the fact that they told a group of young students that they could not hand out literature in...

DK (00:34:17):
Right.

SM (00:34:18):
[inaudible] Plaza. And even the students that did not like that group that was handing out literature, when they saw that their fellow students are being attacked, they came together.

DK (00:34:28):
That is right.

SM (00:34:29):
And it was, " You cannot tell us what to do". And of course, Clark Kerr made that mistake, and then he gets fired by President Reagan, or not President Reagan, governor Reagan.

DK (00:34:38):
Governor Reagan. Right.

SM (00:34:39):
Because he was not tough enough on the students. I have a question here, looking at the presidents that were during the lives of Boomers, and that includes Harry Truman too, even though they cannot hardly remember him. But I remember him as a little boy.

DK (00:34:58):
I remember the (19)62 election.

SM (00:35:00):
Yes.

DK (00:35:01):
I do not have any specific memories of Truman as president. I am sure I knew he was president.

SM (00:35:06):
I just knew as was a little boy, he did not like McCarthy. Which of the presidents do you feel had the greatest impact on the generation? And when I look at it, I am talking about Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama. Because they have been all the presidents of during the time that-

DK (00:35:29):
Well, that is a big question.

SM (00:35:30):
That is a big question. I know Kennedy had an influence.

DK (00:35:33):
I would say Kennedy had the biggest emotional impact, even now. I think Johnson clearly had a huge impact because of the decision to fight in Vietnam.

SM (00:35:47):
Right.

DK (00:35:49):
Now, you were touching on something important when you talked about Reagan, mainly that the awakening in the anti-Vietnam War protest was a major factor in destroying the existing Democratic majority and leading to Republican domination of the White House for a long time. Okay, I think Reagan did have a very big impact, coming along when he did, in making conservatism and consumerism respectable among boomers, just as they were in their thirties and having kids and things like that. And that was very important. And, you know, based on the data I saw, boomers split pretty evenly, even in the last election. Just as they split evenly in 1972, even. So they have never been, as a group, a strikingly liberal group. It was Gen Xers and millennials who put Obama in the White House. Now, Clinton, I do not know, I guess I will leave it there with Kennedy, and Johnson, and Reagan, as having the probably biggest impact. Obama is very interesting because this is the end of Boomer tenure in the White House. I mean, he clearly is not a boomer, and if you do not believe it, ask him because he will tell you.

SM (00:37:43):
Yep.

DK (00:37:44):
And he is not acting like one.

SM (00:37:46):
Yeah. And he is being criticized for [inaudible].

DK (00:37:48):
If it will ever get back in the White House is not at all clear.

SM (00:37:51):
There is three things here. First off, on President Obama, he is being attacked because people think that he is bringing back the (19)60s. And then with Reagan and Bush, the thing that really strikes a lot of boomers about Reagan is that, when his bold statement, when he became President, "We are back". We are back. And he was referring not only to the military coming back to the way it used to be, but certainly the country. And then George Bush Sr. made a very important statement that really, if you were cognizant of it at the time it happened, "The Vietnam syndrome is over", and that, to me, whoa, that is a pretty strong statement. So to me, all those really kind of had strong impact on boomers as their agent.

DK (00:38:37):
Well, maybe so. Maybe so. I would have to think about that. I do not think of Bush as a, I think he was actually, Bush Sr. was a very underrated president. And in foreign affairs, actually, he was a very fine president, but I did not feel he was terribly influential. He did, of course, put the first boomer on the Supreme Court, namely Clarence Thomas. Another interesting example of a, well, that is a fascinating point. It partly has to do with the Republicans being better strategists about the Supreme Court. Well, except for [inaudible]. Now, all the boomers on the court are Republican and they are acting like it.

SM (00:39:33):
Yeah. Well, explain that. Explain that the boomer Supreme Court justices are acting like boomers. Get some specific-

DK (00:39:41):
If they do not like a law, they throw it out. If they do not like a precedent, they throw it out.

SM (00:39:47):
Who are the boomers, again, on the court?

DK (00:39:51):
The boomers on the court are Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Sotomayor. No, I cannot say that about her yet. I mean, she has not done anything like that yet. She has not been around very long. And then you have got, Stevens is a GI, and so that would leave us with four silence. It would be Kennedy, Scalia, Breyer, and Ginsburg. That is right. That is right.

SM (00:40:24):
When you place a label on the generation, and the boomers had had a lot of labels, but which of these do you think truly defines the group? The Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the (19)60s generation, the civil rights generation, the [inaudible]-

DK (00:40:41):
Certainly not the civil rights generation.

SM (00:40:44):
All right.

DK (00:40:44):
That is a complete fantasy.

SM (00:40:47):
Yeah, because that was more in the (19)50s, I believe.

DK (00:40:49):
That was in the (19)50s, in the early (19)60s. And in fact, boomers and especially African American boomers, to be blunt about it, destroyed the civil rights movement.

SM (00:40:59):
Are you talking about black power and Black Panthers?

DK (00:41:03):
Yes.

SM (00:41:04):
Could you go into that a little bit? Because that was one of my upcoming questions.

DK (00:41:07):
I am talking about not only that, but I am talking about the whole shift from a well-organized mass movement that was a very effective pressure group, into much smaller organizations focused on identity politics and turning their back on the system and things like that. But I would say, when you talk about Vietnam generation or Woodstock generation, you are talking about older boomers like us. So I do not know. I guess my generation would probably be the best one if I had to just think of one. But again, I think there is, well, yeah, the tendency is to focus on people about our age who actually lived through such fantastic changes as young adults. I mean, if you or I just think about what college was like the day we entered and the day we left, I mean, those were staggering changes.

SM (00:42:19):
Oh, yes.

DK (00:42:21):
But that was just the leading edge of the generation, of course.

SM (00:42:27):
You mentioned identity politics, the many movements that came out of the Civil Rights movement. Well, of course the anti-war movement took place, but you had the gay and lesbian movement, the women's movement.

DK (00:42:37):
Yes. Now, those could be-

SM (00:42:40):
Native American, environmental movement, all those movements.

DK (00:42:43):
Well, the feminist movement, although started by silence, it was certainly boomers who really picked that up and ran with it. And the gay rights movement was very much a boomer movement, although I guess a lot of the boomer gay rights leaders were decimated by aid. Actually, I have a younger brother who is gay, and he was written a good deal by gay issues. He has been in the gay journalist organization, and he was very fortunate health wise, and he has written a lot about that. But those definitely were boomer movements. And again, that is where I think we do have some things to be proud of, in terms of opening up personal options for people.

SM (00:43:43):
How would you mention the Chicano movement and certainly the Native American movement with AIM and the environmental movement that worked closely with the anti-war movement?

DK (00:43:56):
Well, I would have to look at exactly what they accomplished in the same way you would have to look at it for civil rights. Again, the basic pieces of environmental legislation were passed by bipartisan GI majorities, like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

SM (00:44:24):
I am going to change this. Okay, go right ahead.

DK (00:44:33):
Now again, as boomers have gotten into power, the environment has not been doing very well, so I would not be able to take very much credit there. Now, again, the identity politics issue among Native Americans, Chicanos, and so on, is something that I am very ambivalent about, because I think that, and this is where I am still true to my childhood and the values I learned in my childhood before the awakening, when you focus on things like that, you are making it harder to form the kinds of coalitions that will get actual national action on anything. And that is why you see, at the individual level, I think boomers are pretty good at the... But anything requiring organization, leadership, coalitions, they are pretty hopeless.

SM (00:45:42):
One of the things that you remember during the anti-war movement, there seemed to be signs for all the groups together. The anti-war movement in its heyday seemed to bring all groups together. And then as you go later on into the (19)70s, (19)80s, (19)90s, you see more of a separation of...

DK (00:46:01):
Well, sure. But there was plenty of splintering in the anti-war movement, too.

SM (00:46:04):
Right. Especially around when the weatherman came in and... Yes. And of course, then the Vietnam veterans against the war took over the anti-war movement around (19)71.

DK (00:46:17):
That is right. You see, one thing you should understand about me, which I certainly think comes out in American tragedy too, is that, you see, my father had been in and out of, he had been in government through my whole childhood in various ways. I had met many leading Democratic office soldiers. I was too involved in that world to give up on the system completely, even after I turned against the Vietnam War. And that is why, unlike most of my contemporaries, I have not changed that much since I was in college. Now, that is also why I am extremely depressed at what I see happening around me now because I do not see those values I grew up with coming back. At least not yet. And I am beginning to wonder if I will ever see that. But that is another story.

SM (00:47:17):
Of course, the big issue now is, what will boomers do in old age? Because supposedly they are going to change even old age, how people retire. Dennis Hopper has that advertisement on TV about, of course, he is a perfect example of a-

DK (00:47:33):
Well, he is a silent.

SM (00:47:34):
Yeah. He is a silent, but still they use him for the advertisement. So the next 20 years still have to be written with respect to how they are-

DK (00:47:44):
What is interesting, and this makes me very sad. I mean, my wife and I talk about going back to the Boston areas to retire, and we are sure as hell not going to the Sunbelt or anything like that.

SM (00:47:57):
Right.

DK (00:47:59):
Well, actually, I think we talked into going to Austin, Texas, but that is a special case. But when you go to The Brattle Theater in Cambridge now, which was one of the great sites of my youth and where my cultural experience was broadened, most of the audience is going to have gray hair. So that, I think there is a good chance boomers will remain more focused on cultural things in retirement. I am kind of curious as to whether there will be any kind of, how shall I put this, self-denial movement having to do with the medical profession? And actually, it would be a great thing if boomers could set an example by accepting the idea that they will die and that it is not worth half a million dollars to prolong their life through four miserable months and things like that. But obviously that will be a very individual manner and we will just have to wait and see.

SM (00:49:16):
Yeah. Here is a question. So obviously we know that the TV was a big influence on boomers in the (19)50s because the World War II was obviously the radio and the fireside chats and everything, and then TV came about. Of course, today we have the technology and Facebook and the millennials and Generation X have been formed with a whole, and that is kind of split the generations too, just the technology issue. But the question I ask, and this is, I always think of my 1950s and I have had, I have interviewed people and of course an African-Americans experience in the (19)50s was different than a white person, and a female was different than a male, and certainly the gay and lesbians experience and all the other things here. But generally, when we are talking about TV, I am going to read this here. This was the first generation and they saw the news on TV, they saw sitcoms and black and white in the (19)50s. How important was TV in shaping the boomer lives with typical shows of when they were very young with Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, Hopalong Cassidy, TV westerns, which we always saw, the Native American was the bad guy, the variety shows, the game shows, the live coverage of historic events, even early on, we saw the McCartney hearings and the Mickey Mouse Club, the median shaping lives both consciously and subconsciously. Of course, you did not see many people of color on TV in those days. Was there something happening that, what did the media do? Besides being the first TV generation, we saw the Vietnam War on TV in the (19)60s, but what is it about the media that truly shaped this generation?

DK (00:51:03):
Well, that is a very complicated question. I think that when you look at the TV from the (19)50s, now, I am struck by the sterility of it. I am struck by the use of laugh tracks often as a background of things that were really very funny. And I think it was all giving you a lot of messages about what you were supposed to feel. And that was part of what we eventually rebelled against. So that is one thing I would say. On the other hand, well, there is so many issues here. The news is very good. The news was much better than it was now. The (19)60s is probably the greatest age of TV news, I would say. And it was straightforward, it was no nonsense, and they had a real commitment to giving you the fact, and they would take some time for a complicated story in a way that they never would now. Now, I do think the single most important medium for changing the generation though, much more important than television, was music. And second most important, I would say, was movies. And again, the boomers were the audience for the cultural explosion in film in the late (19)60s. By the (19)70s, a few boomers were even making the new movies. And again, that was a great achievement and a really positive transformation of American life. Again, it is very sad that now that boomers run the studios, they do not sponsor making movies like that. I mean, for instance, if you say, I teach a course called Generations of Film, and it is all Gen Xers now, and the pivotal movie that I use to explain what the awakening was about, not the only one, but the pivotal one is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and...

SM (00:53:52):
Jack Nicholson.

DK (00:53:53):
Yes. And not only is it a great movie, but I believe it was the top grossing movie in 1975. And although my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it-

DK (00:54:03):
...my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it. They unanimously agreed that it would not be a hit today. It is only because it moves too slowly. That is kind of sad too. There was one thing I did want to say. You mentioned the Mickey Mouse Club. There is something I will never forget the Mickey Mouse Club, and it was the end of the introduction, the announcer would read every day, which is very prophetic. It was dedicated to you, the leaders of the 21st century. All I can say is little did they know. It seems to me that the key thing about that was there were only three networks. There was very little difference between the networks. It was an aspect of the uniform, mass-produced culture that we grew up in and eventually rebelled again. I am putting down today's movies justifiably, but actually today's television, if you know where to look, there are a lot of tremendous things on today's belt, particularly on the cable channel and things that you certainly could never have dreamed of way back then.

SM (00:55:40):
Is there one specific event when you were young that had the greatest influence on you?

DK (00:55:50):
What kind of influence?

SM (00:55:53):
It impacted your life. A lot of people say the Kennedy assassination affected...

DK (00:55:57):
Well, certainly that. That is why-

SM (00:55:57):
That innocence.

DK (00:55:59):
That was my next book after American Tragedy and it was about that.

SM (00:56:02):
Yes.

DK (00:56:04):
That was the most traumatic event of my life, and it probably still is the most traumatic event of my life. Although, I did not really realize that at the time. The depth of that only emerged later. But no, the most influential event for me was definitely the Vietnam War.

SM (00:56:21):
Right. Almost everybody remembers where they were when they heard about President Kennedy was shot.

DK (00:56:27):
I remember exactly.

SM (00:56:28):
What is your personal experience of remembering that moment?

DK (00:56:33):
I was in boarding school in Connecticut, and we had been let out of lunch at 1:45, and I had to go see a dean or something in his office. I was in his office and some kid ran in and said, "Hey, they said the president has been shot." But, the way he said it, he clearly did not really believe it, and I did not either. Then I started to walk back to the dorm, and then I began to realize this was serious. I remember, I think I started to run, and when I got into the dorm, the radio was on and everybody knew this was really serious. Then I went down the hall to where the teacher on the floor lived and went into his place and he had TV on. I saw Cronkite read the announcement. When Cronkite read the announcement, I was still in a denial phase and I was sitting there saying, "No, please. Let us stop this tape now." I was not using that language, but that was the way I was feeling. This is all happening too fast. My most vivid memory about all that is I spoke to my parents that day. They were in Washington at that point, and they were very shaken. My father particularly, it was probably the most shaken I ever heard him. The next weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, and I went home. They had a huge party on Saturday night of that weekend with all their administration friends. I could not find anybody at that whole party who wanted to talk about Kennedy. All they wanted to talk about was Johnson and how well he was doing and what was going to be happening in the future. I was very shocked by that. It took me a long time to realize what was going on there. My real personal awakening was in 1968 as a result of Ted Johnson's withdrawal and my own complete reevaluation of a lot of my thinking about American foreign policy.

SM (00:59:24):
What were the most important books that you read when you were young and what were your peers reading? What were young people reading when you were a college student?

DK (00:59:40):
I would say the most important book for me, in the context of what we are talking about, and many others was Catch 22. I remember that I finished it on the night before my 21st birthday. That was in June of 1968. That was a great moment to be reading it. I had tried to read it earlier in the decade and I could not get into it because the idea of turning World War II into a joke just turned me off, as it turned off a lot of the older generation at that time. By 1968, I was ready for it.

SM (01:00:30):
You have actually written a book on Vietnam, An American Tragedy. The venue that I am dealing with here is an oral history and oral interviews. In your opinion, why did the Vietnam War end when it did? What was the main reason that it ended? Secondly, how important were the college student protests on the college campuses at ending the war?

DK (01:01:12):
How important were the college student protests at ending the war? Until Nixon, not at all. We now know that Nixon, in November of (19)69 decided not to massively escalate, in significant part because of the protests. He denied that at the time but we now know that that is true. Obviously, the reaction to Kent State meant that he was going to have to continue deescalating for political reason. Now, the protests did have another impact, I think, which in the long run was going to be far more significant, which was the end to the draft. Which is certainly not a bad thing. In fact, to some extent, and this is something that we have touched on already, you could also make a case that the protest prolonged the war because Nixon remarked to Haldeman, and I think to Henry Kissinger too, but certainly to Haldeman frequently, that the student protests were a godsend [inaudible] because older people hated the students so much. Again, Johnson decided not to escalate again and to withdraw in the winter of (19)68. I do not think that was mainly because of protests. I think it was because Clark Clifford had been convinced that it was useless, and because of very severe international economic strain that they had to pay attention to. Why it ended was that, I think Henry Kissinger, actually, there is some credit for trapping Nixon into that. The real reason was that they had this other huge agenda with the Russians and the Chinese, and Kissinger simply did not want to drag just to drag on for a few more years. As we now know, knew very well that this is likely to leave the collapses South Vietnam, but he did not care.

SM (01:04:39):
Could you talk a little bit about the atmosphere in America at the time of the Vietnam War? Particularly in the period between (19)67 and (19)71, (19)72 when deferments were happening all over the country and it basically became a poor man's war. People that did not have the power or the influence and the tensions between those 3 million boomers that served in Vietnam and the rest of the boomers who did not?

DK (01:05:21):
They lived in different worlds because for the most part, the ones who served were the ones who had not gone to college and vice versa. I do not think there was a lot of hostility between those two groups. I went into the Army Reserve in September of 1970, and I did basic training in (19)71. And my company was divided about 50 50 between draftees and enlistees on the one hand and National Guard and Reserves like myself on the other. That was so late that even the draftees were not living in terror of what was going to happen to them. They knew that their chance of dying in combat by that time was very low. That undoubtedly tanked things somewhat, but I did not feel there was a lot of hostility or much hostility at all based on that. I think it is very interesting that there was so much protest among college students who basically were protected from. One accusation that I think is false is the idea that they were just protesting because they were scared. I do not think that is true.

SM (01:07:08):
There is always these books out called Spinning Image. You have probably heard of that book where the troops had come back and they were spat upon when they-

DK (01:07:16):
My understanding is-

SM (01:07:17):
That really happened.

DK (01:07:18):
That that is largely amiss and that there are very few documented cases of that happening. I remember, I mean, I was not very lucky. I did my basic training in Fort Leonard Wood in the wilds of Missouri, but I got to go to St. Louis a couple times and I did not wear my uniform when I went. Some people did. I certainly did not hear about anybody getting a negative reaction to wearing their uniform. Of course, in that part of the country I do not suppose you would have. I do not remember ever hearing anything like that from anybody I met.

SM (01:08:07):
I go down to the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day in Veterans Day every year. You see some of the tensions of the commentary against those who were against the war, whether they be Jane Fonda or even when Bill Clinton-

DK (01:08:21):
Jane Fonda was-

SM (01:08:23):
Even when Bill Clinton came to the wall.

DK (01:08:24):
It is true that you can still get a rise out of almost anybody.

SM (01:08:26):
They booed Clinton when he came to the wall too. Quite a few veterans booed him in the background when he spoke there in (19)93.

DK (01:08:35):
Who?

SM (01:08:36):
Bill Clinton. Then when the Vietnam Veterans of America formed the anti-war group, there was tension between that group and other Vietnam veterans, which goes right into the Kerry situation in the 2004 elections. These tensions are still there.

DK (01:08:56):
That is true. I think that the Jim Webb type of veteran is a very vocal minority and I do not think is all that representative. The whole time I was in the Army, I did not meet one troop who was a developed believer in that war. And that is a fact.

SM (01:09:30):
Yeah. Even A Rumor of War by Phil Caputo, in his book talks about 1965, how they were starting to go against the war even then by some of the things that were happening. That is the troops thinking that. I have a very important question here that we actually asked Senator Muskie when a group of students that I took to Washington about maybe eight years ago, before he died. We asked him this question, do you feel that the boomers are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? The divisions between black and white, between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wound. Is there truth in this statement?

DK (01:10:34):
No.

SM (01:10:34):
Your thought on whether [inaudible] healing.

DK (01:10:38):
There will never be a consensus among boomers about the war, about religion, about almost anything. That is the nature of the generation and what is likely to happen. We are in the third great crisis of our national life now. After the Civil War and the Depression of World War II, it is the profit generations that bring about those crises. As soon as the crisis is over, they are stuck into the attic. At some point that will happen again and no one will care what we think anymore. At that point you will see bipartisanship in the Congress and things like that, again. As long as we are around, those qualities will be towards applying.

SM (01:11:41):
I guess I am really-

DK (01:11:43):
I would not necessarily put it in terms of wounds and healing. The point is that we wear our heart on our sleeve and we are so obsessed with being right. Most of us will die that way.

SM (01:11:58):
So, just as there is 70 million different people in the boomer generation, 70 million people have different responses to the issue of healing.

DK (01:12:08):
Exactly.

SM (01:12:11):
What do you think the wall has done? Jan Scruggs wrote the book, To Heal a Nation. It is supposed to be a non-political entity to heal the veterans, those who served and the families of those who lost loved ones. He goes further and says we want to heal the nation on this. What do you think the wall has done to not only heal veterans but the nation? Just your thoughts.

DK (01:12:38):
That is a difficult question for me to answer. I am very pro wall. I am very moved by it. I think its significance may increase in a way. This depends on what is going to happen in the next 20 years. I constantly have to remind my own students, for instance, most of whom now were born when the war was over, that the entire casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or certainly the killed, the wounded it might be a little different, do not add up to half of 1968. When you look at that wall, it is brought home to you that even though that was thought of as a relatively small war, it was being fought on a scale which would be unimaginable today. That is progress to me, very important progress, which I hope not to see reversed in my lifestyle. There was an aroused minority that resented the wall. One advantage I have, although I have been writing about the US now for 20 plus years, I started out as a European historian, and my teaching here is still involved in the history of a lot of other nations. All great nations have made terrible mistakes and suffered terrible catastrophes as a result. Some of them much worse than what we suffered in Vietnam. Thus, it is not difficult for me to regard this as the kind of mistake that sadly any great nation is going to make once in a while. The wall, to me, can be viewed that way. People have complained that it makes it look like it was a traffic accident. To me, that is fine because I do feel it is a kind of a manmade catastrophe, though quite unnecessary [inaudible], but this is part of life.

SM (01:15:11):
The other area that I want to look into is the issue of trust. The boomers obviously experienced many leaders who lied to them and were dishonest in many ways. The result is that many, if not most did not trust their leaders. No matter what their role in society, they could be a President of the United States or of a university, a congressman, a senator, a corporate leader, a religious leader, anybody in a position of responsibilities. There did not seem to be any trust toward any of them. The question I am asking, is this a very distrustful generation or is that just a natural thing? I was a political science history major and I learned early on that lack of trust is something that is okay in a democracy because it challenges other points of view. Do you feel that this is a generation that did not trust, and if they did not trust, are they pass this on to their children and thus their children's children? Just your thoughts on that. I bring this up because I can remember in a Psych 101 class once in college, the professor saying, we are going to talk about trust today. In that class he said, "If you cannot trust someone, you will not be a success in life personally. You have got to be able to trust somebody." I have always remembered him saying that, and then seeing the generation that I was around in that classroom not really trusting anybody. Just wondering if that is really part of this generation.

DK (01:16:57):
I think it is part of the generation. While, I think it is a healthy impulse to distrust your government to a certain extent, I think that as with so many other things, we pushed it much too far so that it has prevented many boomers from looking at leaders of all kinds, realistically, at all. They are too quick to write them off based on one transgression. As a historian, it is my job to make meaningful comparison, not to compare everything to some hopeless ideal. So, that is a problem. On the other hand, that most definitely is not what boomers passed on to their kids. The millennials are very trusting of authority, almost shockingly so. Although, they do resent it very much if authority changes the rules in the middle of the game. That is the one thing that will really freak them out. They just want you to tell them what needs to be done so they can do it. I was shocked. Again, I did the same generations in film course at Williams and had them write autobiographical papers and you would have to waterboard these kids to get them say anything nasty about their parents. That is not true about GenX, at all.

SM (01:18:49):
Right.

DK (01:18:50):
And obviously it was not true about boomers.

SM (01:18:53):
It is interesting. Boomers had that big generation gap of their parents and there was a friction between boomers and Generation Xers. I found in my work in college that millennials get along pretty well with boomers. This is an important point to make. I have read some of the how, and I have read the latest book on millennials. I have read that.

DK (01:19:16):
I only read a little of that.

SM (01:19:18):
One of the things is that millennials do want to leave a legacy. But, it is when they want to leave it, that is the issue. They want leave a legacy once they are 40 and beyond. They want to get their job done, raise a family, and they just want to enjoy themselves in the twenties and thirties. Then in the forties, they want to give something back to society. Whereas, the boomers always had this feeling that they wanted to make a difference in the world. Maybe that is where they have a uniqueness, a link, both generations want to make a difference in the world. One wanted to do it when they were young and maybe have failed as they have gotten older. The others do not want to do it when they are young and they want to do it when they are older.

DK (01:20:15):
Boomers change their own world. I think their record of actually making a positive difference in the world at large is not very strong. I keep going back to that. It is interesting. I have a son who is a kind of an older millennial. He is already the principal of the charter school in Brooklyn. He works 16 hours a day and he has been under tremendous pressure, but he wants this to be the best middle school in New York. He may in fact be successful with that.

SM (01:20:52):
Wow. That is good.

DK (01:20:58):
He got into an interesting argument at Christmas with my wife, who is not... Christmas with my wife, who is not his mother, she is my second wife, and what she was trying to claim that the work he was doing was somehow inspired by Boomers. And, he said very politely, "If Boomers have had any influence on the positive changes in American education, I have not noticed it."

SM (01:21:22):
Wow.

DK (01:21:25):
And, he said, he came out of Teach for America. And, he said that for everybody who has been in Teach for America, the focus is totally on what works, what does not. What has actually shown results, what has not. And that is all. So, they probably will leave much more of a legacy. But, again, if you look at the transcendentals, I mean the legacy of the Civil War was that the union was preserved, but that was about it. And, they did not have the follow- up power to turn that into a real positive outcome, I think. In either the North or the South. And, the missionaries on the other hand, I mean, they left an enormous legacy. That is another the story.

SM (01:22:16):
You keep saying that the Boomers are not leaving much.

DK (01:22:23):
Not at an institutional level.

SM (01:22:28):
Well, where are they?

DK (01:22:29):
Personal level, maybe they are.

SM (01:22:33):
It is like individuals doing good things for others, but not as a community? In the hope-

DK (01:22:37):
No. And, also opening up emotional lives, opening up opportunities for minorities. I mean, the gay rights movement is a very revolutionary development and obviously a good one. The whole way that the therapeutic profession, the mental health profession has changed and become very important thanks to silencing Boomers. That is a huge step forward. Whereas remember in the (19)50s, to the extent that there was psychiatry, it was based on a very narrow Freudianism that assumed that your problems were in some sense of your fault. And, it certainly was not a result of something somebody had actually done to you or something like that. And, we have gone beyond that, and that is very important. So when you see, in the movies I use about Boomers, when I want to show a positive image, it is something like Goodwill Hunting and the Robin Williams character there who's a therapist. Or possibly An Officer and a Gentleman in which Foley, the drill instructor, is clearly a Boomer although Louis Gossett, the actor is [inaudible]. And, when I want to show a negative image, it is something like Wall Street and Gordon Gekko. And, we are where we are today because of many Gordon Gekkos.

SM (01:24:15):
Do you share Taxi Driver?

DK (01:24:18):
No.

SM (01:24:18):
That is the Vietnam vet who goes nuts.

DK (01:24:22):
Well, that is an interesting movie. Although I do not think, well, we could have a long conversation. I do not think that movie has a lot of broader significance the same way. Actually, I also have a particular theory about that movie.

SM (01:24:40):
There is the other movie-

DK (01:24:40):
Then there is the climax is a [inaudible]-

SM (01:24:43):
Yeah. There is the other movie too, that Jane Fonda was in. I forget it. It is Vietnam.

DK (01:24:48):
Coming Home.

SM (01:24:50):
Yeah. Coming Home.

DK (01:24:50):
Still have not seen that.

SM (01:24:51):
Yeah.

DK (01:24:53):
[inaudible] enough. I do not know why. I think [inaudible 01:24:52] movies about Vietnam are fabulous.

SM (01:24:56):
One of the things, I interviewed Richie Havens, I want to talk a little bit here about the music. We all know how good the music was, the influence it has had on the generation with all its social messages and all the types of music. Folk, rock, and obviously Motown. But, Richie said something pretty interesting. He said, "People make sometimes fun of Woodstock. One of the things I want to correct about Woodstock is that half the people of the 450,000, that there were not Boomers, they were older people who brought their families and they were World War II generations. So, it is not all about young people if they really study what Woodstock truly was." But, he said what it was is that it finally, "They cannot hide us anymore." And, it is in his book. "They cannot hide us anymore." And, he was referring to the Boomer children, the Boomer kids. He felt that the way the music and the media had tried to hide the Boomers and Woodstock really brought it out that the Boomers-

DK (01:26:07):
I was not there, but I have to dispute his facts as to the composition of the crowd.

SM (01:26:13):
Right.

DK (01:26:13):
I mean, I am sure there were good many silent there, but I certainly do not think there were very many World War II generation people there. And, in fact, one of the funniest things in the movie is that there is some dialogue among towns folk who are very divided, if you remember.

SM (01:26:31):
Oh yeah.

DK (01:26:32):
About the whole thing.

SM (01:26:32):
Yep. Yep.

DK (01:26:33):
And that is a great scene, actually. But, I suppose that is true, yes. That it did put the generation on the map. But again, the reaction from the older generation was not positive there.

SM (01:26:56):
But who were your role models when you were growing up? You personally?

DK (01:27:04):
Oh, what a difficult question. That is a terribly difficult question. I suppose some of the professors I had in one way or another. I had a very strange relationship with my own parents, in that we had very intense family life and they never understood that I was really a completely different person. I was pretty close to a couple of uncles. I had one in particular who was very much of the GI. I was also very... Let us see. There were a number of silent generation women who I became quite close to, who I think sort of picked it out very early on that the Boomers were more interesting than the GI men they were around. And, a lot of what I learned about movies, literature, and whatnot, was from people like that. One in particular actually, who is still alive, but there were a number of them. But, then I was more influenced by contemporary.

SM (01:29:00):
One of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period, is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames in the early (19)60s. You got Watts and then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, and some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s.

DK (01:29:57):
All right.

SM (01:30:01):
And, then I had something that Malcolm one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that?

DK (01:30:11):
Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge still, had shared values. Shared belief in institutions, and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much so I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But revolution, civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now.

SM (01:31:13):
Yeah.

DK (01:31:14):
So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration.

SM (01:31:23):
So, you make a very important point like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week.

DK (01:31:28):
Yeah.

SM (01:31:29):
I had a two-part interview with him. And, he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s.

DK (01:31:43):
Definitely.

SM (01:31:44):
Because-

DK (01:31:44):
Definitely the case.

SM (01:31:45):
I got you.

DK (01:31:46):
And, you see now we have got the total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then except maybe briefly during Watergate.

SM (01:31:57):
Why do you think so many people are actually trying to criticize President Obama? They may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before.

DK (01:32:07):
Well, that is ridiculous.

SM (01:32:08):
Yeah.

DK (01:32:08):
I mean, that is conservative propaganda. And, he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible].

SM (01:32:20):
And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to-

DK (01:32:36):
They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things.

SM (01:33:25):
Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition?

DK (01:33:30):
I already have.

SM (01:33:31):
Okay.

DK (01:33:31):
I mean, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies.

SM (01:34:18):
Very good. All right.

DK (01:34:20):
No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and in general, Mike.

SM (01:34:29):
Yep.

DK (01:34:30):
But in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life and that is what she would be interested in bugging you about.

SM (01:34:52):
Well, I could have done that too.

DK (01:34:54):
Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona.

SM (01:35:00):
Oh, yeah. That is-

DK (01:35:00):
She built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should.

SM (01:35:06):
Yep, definitely. Because, each interview has been different.

DK (01:35:10):
All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number.

SM (01:35:13):
Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay.

DK (01:35:15):
Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6.

SM (01:44:12):
4-2-3 3-9-0-6?

DK (01:44:14):
That is right.

SM (01:44:16):
Does she have an email or do you?

DK (01:44:18):
Yes. Let me make sure I got that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure it is right. Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1.

SM (01:44:41):
P-A?

DK (01:44:42):
No-no-no. T as in Tom. T-A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram for Patti you see, @gmail.com.

SM (01:44:55):
Say that one more time.

DK (01:44:57):
T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I, T as in Tom, one the numeral.

SM (01:45:05):
Okay.

DK (01:45:06):
@gmail.com.

SM (01:45:08):
Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or?

DK (01:45:11):
No-no-no, that is fine. But, we did [inaudible].

SM (01:45:13):
Yep. Okay. Very good. Because you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too. And-

DK (01:45:21):
I did a little bit. Yes.

SM (01:45:23):
Yep.

DK (01:45:24):
You see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith, who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me.

SM (01:45:43):
Yes.

DK (01:45:44):
And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but practically none of them left. And, again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too.

SM (01:46:21):
Well, one of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames. And, the early (19)60s you got Watts. And, then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to a baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, we were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, in some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s, and then something.

DK (01:46:22):
All right.

SM (01:46:22):
And, then I had something that Malcolm, one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that?

DK (01:46:23):
Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge, still had shared values. Shared belief in institutions and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much. So, I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But, revolution civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now.

SM (01:46:23):
Yeah.

DK (01:46:23):
So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration.

SM (01:46:23):
So, you make a very important point, like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week.

DK (01:46:23):
Yeah.

SM (01:46:23):
I had a two-part interview with him. And he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s.

DK (01:46:23):
Definitely. Definitely the case.

SM (01:46:23):
I got you.

DK (01:46:23):
And, you see at now we have got this total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then, except maybe briefly during Watergate.

SM (01:46:23):
Why do you think so many people are actually just trying to criticize President Obama? And, they may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before.

DK (01:46:23):
Well, that is ridiculous.

SM (01:46:23):
Yeah.

DK (01:46:23):
I mean, that is conservative propaganda, and he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible].

SM (01:46:23):
And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to-

DK (01:46:23):
They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things.

SM (01:46:23):
Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition?

DK (01:46:23):
I already have.

SM (01:46:23):
Okay.

DK (01:46:23):
I mean, the idea, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore, standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies.

SM (01:46:23):
Very good. All right.

DK (01:46:23):
No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and just like, but in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life. And, that is what she would be interested in bugging you with.

SM (01:46:23):
Well, I could have done that too, actually.

DK (01:46:23):
Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona.

SM (01:46:23):
Oh yeah.

DK (01:46:23):
And, built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should [inaudible].

SM (01:46:23):
Yep. Definitely, because each interview has been different.

DK (01:46:23):
All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number.

SM (01:46:23):
Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay.

DK (01:46:23):
Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6.

SM (01:46:23):
4-2-3 3-9-0-6?

DK (01:46:23):
That is right.

SM (01:46:23):
Does she have an email or do you?

DK (01:46:23):
Yes. Let me make sure I get that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure if I... Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1.

SM (01:46:23):
P-A?

DK (01:46:23):
No, no, no. T as in Tom. A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram of Patti, you see. @gmail.com.

SM (01:46:23):
Say that one more time.

DK (01:46:23):
T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I-T as in Tom, one the numeral.

SM (01:46:23):
Okay.

DK (01:46:23):
@gmail.com.

SM (01:46:23):
Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or?

DK (01:46:23):
No-no-no, that is fine. What we did was fine.

SM (01:46:23):
Yep. Because, okay, very good. Because, you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too.

DK (01:46:23):
I did a little bit. Yes.

SM (01:46:23):
Yep.

DK (01:46:23):
I was, you see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me.

SM (01:46:23):
Yes.

DK (01:46:23):
And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but they practically none of them left. And again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too.

SM (01:46:23):
Well.
(End of Interview)

2010-02-09

Stephen McKiernan

Dr. David Kaiser

Dr. David Kaiser is a historian and educator. He also served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. Dr. Kaiser was a Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College from 1990 until 2012 and has taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University. He is the author of several books and articles. Dr. Kaiser received his Bachelor’s degree and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University.

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College teachers; Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kaiser, David--Interviews

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