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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
2010-08-17
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Charles A. Murray
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Charles Murray is a Political Scientist, author, and columnist. Born in Newton, Iowa, Murray received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1965. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. He has written with Richard Herrnstein book, The Bell Curve (1994), which looked at IQ as a determinant of socioeconomic status. In 2018, Murray announced his retirement as the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6531,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Charles Murray is a Political Scientist, author, and columnist. Born in Newton, Iowa, Murray received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1965. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. With Richard Herrnstein, he cowrote the book <em>The Bell Curve</em> (1994), which looked at IQ as a determinant of socioeconomic status. In 2018, Murray announced his retirement as the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Anti-war protests; Thailand; Streaking epidemic; Dwight Eisenhower; Activism; Watergate; Religion; Vietnam War"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Anti-war protests; Thailand; Streaking epidemic; Dwight Eisenhower; Activism; Watergate; Religion; Vietnam War</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
71:55
Subject LCSH
Political scientists—United States; Authors; Journalists; Murray, Charles A.--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Charles Murray
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Murray, Charles A. ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Political scientists—United States; Authors; Journalists; Murray, Charles A.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Charles Murray is a Political Scientist, author, and columnist. Born in Newton, Iowa, Murray received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1965. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. With Richard Herrnstein he cowrote the book The Bell Curve (1994), which looked at IQ as a determinant of socioeconomic status. In 2018, Murray announced his retirement as the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305},"12":0}">Dr. Charles Murray is a Political Scientist, author, and columnist. Born in Newton, Iowa, Murray received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1965. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT. With Richard Herrnstein he cowrote the book <em>The Bell Curve</em> (1994), which looked at IQ as a determinant of socioeconomic status. In 2018, Murray announced his retirement as the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.</span>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.89
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
71:55
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
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Date of Interview
2010-08-18
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Hal Phoenix Muscat
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
79:59
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Activism; American G.I.; WWII; Vietnam War; Vietnam Memorial; Vietnam Veterans Against the War; United States Department of Veterans Affairs."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Activism; American G.I.; WWII; Vietnam War; Vietnam Memorial; Vietnam Veterans Against the War; United States Department of Veterans Affairs.</span>
Subject LCSH
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Muscat, Phoenix--Interviews
Biographical Text
<p>Hal Phoenix Muscat is a Vietnam War veteran who became a GI activist when he began opposing the U.S. war against Vietnam, in 1968, while stationed in Germany. Upon his return to Fox Dix, N.J in April 1969, he became involved with <em>SHAKEDOWN</em> (an anti-war publication for GIs on base and off base at coffeehouse locations). He had two court-martials for distributing unauthorized literature and served six months in army brigs after the second conviction. He was discharged from Fort Knox, KY, where he worked on <em>FTA</em>, the newspaper on base. In 1988, he participated with other Vietnam vets going to Nicaragua. He is one of the four G.I. activists profiled in the film No Sir. Prior to this film, he was the co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area "Vietnam Speakers Alliance" and is a key leader of the San Francisco chapter of Veterans For Peace. He is currently involved in Burning Man as a participant and activist. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.</p>
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Hal Phoenix Muscat
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Muscat, Hal Phoenix ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Muscat, Phoenix--Interviews
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.90
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
79:59
Description
An account of the resource
Hal Phoenix Muscat is a Vietnam War veteran who became a GI activist when he began opposing the U.S. war against Vietnam, in 1968, while stationed in Germany. Upon his return to Fox Dix, N.J in April 1969, he became involved with <em>SHAKEDOWN</em> (an anti-war publication for GIs on base and off base at coffeehouse locations). He had two court-martials for distributing unauthorized literature and served six months in army brigs after the second conviction. He was discharged from Fort Knox, KY, where he worked on <em>FTA</em>, the newspaper on base. In 1988, he participated with other Vietnam vets going to Nicaragua. He is one of the four G.I. activists profiled in the film No Sir. Prior to this film, he was the co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area "Vietnam Speakers Alliance" and is a key leader of the San Francisco chapter of Veterans For Peace. He is currently involved in Burning Man as a participant and activist. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-19
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Tom Wells
Language
English
Biographical Text
Dr. Tom Wells is an editor, historian, and author. Dr. Wells wrote several books and contributed articles to multiple books on the Vietnam War and the 1960s. He has also received dozens of fellowships and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other institutions. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
216:23
Keywords
Activism; Women Strike for Peace; Nineteen sixties; Anti-War Movement; SDS; Weathermen; Baby boom generation; Counterculture; Radicals; New left.
Subject LCSH
Editors; Historians; Authors; United States—History—1961-1969;Wells, Tom--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Tom Wells
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 19 August 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:04):
Very good. Yeah. My questions are going to be specific questions. Some of them not directly linked to your book, but a lot of them are. I just, first off, I want to say your book is excellent.
TW (00:00:16):
Oh, well, thank you.
SM (00:00:16):
Yeah, because I lived it. I was a college student from (19)66 to (19)70, as an undergrad and I went off to Ohio State in 1970. So, I was on SUNY Binghamton campus and then Ohio State, and then I went right off to Ohio University that had purged a lot of the students out of their campus after Kent State. So, a lot of the stuff that you talk about just brings back all these memories. And we will get to the interview here in a second, but I am going to ask a question later on about Father Hesburgh and what he said about university presidents, which was really tremendous. But first question I have for you, you are a little bit younger, and I know you state this at the beginning of your book but tell me a little bit about yourself. How you became a history professor, kind of what the influences on your life, that drove you to become a history professor and your interest in the (19)60s.
TW (00:01:14):
Well, I am not actually a history professor. I am...
SM (00:01:16):
Sociology.
TW (00:01:17):
Independent. Yeah. I taught sociology individual courses for a while in the early (19)90s, the Bay Area at University of San Francisco, San Jose State in Mills College. But I was raised in Oregon and was not very political or scared, but I was part of the counterculture during particularly the early steps that belong, smoked a lot of pot, done a lot of drugs. And let us edit that to say, "took some drugs." But I was not very political. And I got to University of Oregon in, I was an undergraduate in 1970. 1974 was when I started because I took a year off after high school and I graduated high school. So, (19)74, and I took a class called Crisis in a Capitalist World, from Sir Marcus Gray. That and a bunch of other courses as a sociology major at University of Oregon, had a big impact on me and radicalized me politically. And I have been on the left since then. This was the (19)70s. And University of Oregon had a very political sociology department and a radical sociology department. So, the courses I took there had a big impact on my political views. And like I said, I have been pretty much on the left since then. Have not moved right. Well, let us take a step back. I mean, for a while I considered myself a sexist.
SM (00:02:46):
You consider yourself a what?
TW (00:02:49):
I considered myself a Marxist for a while. And this was the (19)70s, right?
SM (00:02:53):
Yes.
TW (00:02:53):
And mid-(19)70s and Red Lennon, et cetera. So, in that sense I would certainly, I would no longer consider myself a Marxist, but I am still on the left. So, in that sense, I have not the right word. And then when I was at Berkeley, so I went to Columbia two years as a graduate student and then I went to Berkeley after that, transferred. And when I went to Berkeley, I started getting interested in the anti-Vietnam war movement because I basically missed it, I did not participate. Like I said, I was not paying a lot of attention to it. I see some of the images on TV, but my parents, at least my father was Republican. Remember I mentioned in the book, I remember thinking George Govern was the one who was buying at 72, which is bizarre, because up to retrospect of everything I know about George Govern. He is a very decent man. And Richard Nixon is not, was not, but that is the perception I had. But then I got in at Berkeley, I got interested in the Vietnam War movement and I went to this conference at USC, in roughly (19)83 on the Vietnam board. It was a big conference and they had a lot of people, a lot of journalists, [inaudible], anti-war activist. And it was about some people from the government, I think. And it really had a huge impact to me, in getting me interested in Vietnam because I was just remember coming away from that thinking, "God, how did they get away with it?" Because I was just overwhelmed by the horror in the front and the fact that they did it. And so that really keeps...
SM (00:04:26):
In your opinion, when you look at the generation born between 1946 and (19)64, better known as the boomer generation, and I prefaced this by saying that I realize after my interview process, that both born between maybe (19)39 and (19)45 had the spirit of the (19)60s because many of them were the leaders. So, even though they were not listed within the boomers but what do you feel are some of the misperceptions that have been leveled at this generation by the media and the critics?
TW (00:04:56):
I do not know. Some of the perceptions that they are very self-historic and self-indulgent, have all sold out. I think one of the stereotypes, it is kind of partly a looking at Bill Queen, the hysterical helping son of baby boomers, and that sincerity he put forward there. This is the general idea that everybody became totally a naval gazer and then essentially sold out and sent started devalue. I know I think a lot of people did move to the right is my understanding. I do not know the date on the [inaudible] well all, but a lot of people have moved to the right. I think general consensus...
SM (00:05:39):
Kind of as a shoot off of that question is what are some of the facts that are often left out when criticism is sent toward the generation? Little known facts or deeds with respect to how important young people were in the anti-war movement. I have had people that I have interviewed that say very important without, and then I have had some people saying of minimal importance. Of course.
TW (00:06:01):
Well, student protest was central to the whole thing. I mean, what was happening on the Campus Central? They were a big part of the sense of a country coming apart at the seams, that a lot of people in the government, public. In some sense, they were a driving force. I mean there were just a lot of young people, activists, a lot of creative ideas and a lot of very artistic. I learned a lot about get some forest. A lot of younger people. I mean, some of the veteran leaders in the anti-war were older. People like Dave [inaudible].
SM (00:06:37):
You are cutting off a little bit there.
TW (00:06:41):
Oh, they were older. But on the other hand, there were an awful lot of young people, very active and very determined. Some of them maybe went a little too far in terms of their tactics and their movement toward believing, that we needed to make a revolution to change things or where in fact we were headed towards the revolution. But nonetheless, a lot of people were very active, young people were very active and very important to the anti-war movement. I mean, I admire tremendously, a lot of people who were the younger people who were engaged by the way, but admired them for what they did, it is not easy. So, all right. Hard to follow.
SM (00:07:19):
In the same breath. I also ask what are some of the exaggerations on the part of the activists that are listed, as important to them?
TW (00:07:29):
I think there was too much, some of them... And I think to us, I think the number of people who were carrying NLS flagged by the number of people who were explicitly supporting [inaudible], but they were counterproductive in that sense. They turned off a lot of merits. I think that is exaggerated.
SM (00:07:54):
Right.
TW (00:07:54):
But I also think that a lot of this was maybe somewhat crazy, that people did. Some of them were ultra-left. It also played a role and it contributed to this fence in the government, which is a very real stance and worried them across quite a bit. The society was falling apart at the seam and things could get even worse. I mean that this thing could get, that the amount of turmoil could grow and really partake in. They did not like it when there were all these, what they saw as mobs surrounding the Pentagon, or just large mobs marching in the street. They were concerned and they were very concerned that the turmoils, will just get worse. And they did not like the sense that they were in dubious commands, that they knew that some Americans were getting tired of all the turmoil. The war was rising in the streets, and that was feeding into declining public support for the war. So, even some of the ultra-left stuff that people did that is certainly questionable and even somewhat crazy, it did feed into this general sense of society with some sense breaking apart at the seam. Officials did not like that at all.
SM (00:09:02):
Who were more important in the anti-war movement? We know the big names, the political leaders, the activists, the students who came to the forefront. Many of the Freedom Summer people became leaders later on in the late (19)60s, in many different movements and groups. But the well-known activists and leaders of the time, or the everyday activists who were no names in the movement. I bring this up because Benjamin Barber, Dr. Benjamin Barber has written about citizenry, what makes a strong nation. And his belief is that the stronger the citizenry and the less of a need for a leader, the better the nation is. But we do need strong leaders, but we also need strong citizens. Would you say that the anti-war movement or the war within, is really what Dr. Barber is saying, it is citizens who are really standing up? And Dr. King used to talk about this too, about the importance of we, and it is not just me. We all have the capability within us to be the change for the better in our society. And he talked about it all the time and in the civil rights movement to the, we know that the movement was made up of so many no names, that it would not have been a success without them. So, what I am really getting at here is how important were the people that were not known, as opposed to the people that were on the front pages? With respect to the importance in the anti-war movement?
TW (00:10:32):
Well, certainly the people who known were more numerous than people who were known. So, in that sense they were very important. But there was a lot of grassroots, anti-war activity that took place, by just everyday people that may in some book has not been covered as much as a more dramatic event. And I tried to convey that in my book. Things like the Quakers. A lot of the Quakers were doing a grassroots anti-activity very early on, before the war began in earnest. And they were lobbying Congress, they were just talking to their neighbors. They were doing very fun for local organizing and a group, I am thinking about when I say the Quakers, the French City on National Service Committee, and then also groups like Women's Strike for Peace, which they had a lot of meetings with their neighbors and I just sat and talked to people and maybe smaller events in their communities. But there was an awful lot of that and an awful lot of ordinary citizens got involved through those sorts of activities. And some of the people got involved with those sorts of local activities, were not particularly inclined to go to Washington for large national demonstrations. But there was a lot of that. And I think in some sense, in some accounts that sort of local grassroots activity by everyday people, have not been covered as much as it might be.
SM (00:12:01):
You have seen, you have taught college students over the last 20 some years. And I first asked this question back when I interviewed Senator McCartney in (19)96 because the Generation Xers were the group that made up the campus. Now it is millennials.
TW (00:12:17):
Yes.
SM (00:12:19):
But you have seen young people over the past 20 years who have either no feelings toward this period, or knowledge, or even interest in a time when boomers were young. In fact, in the early (19)90s there seemed to be two camps of college students. And I noticed this when we did programs at the university where I worked, between boomers and generation Xers. There seemed to be two camps. One camp was, "I am tired of hearing about this, you guys from the (19)60s, all you talk about is nostalgia and what it was like back then. It has no relevance to today." And generation Xers were pretty strong on that. And yet there were others who said, "Gee, I wish I lived then. I wish there were causes today like there were causes back then." So, there were kind of two camps. Am I right on there from your experiences too? These were...
TW (00:13:08):
What I found in my experience is, going through the (19)80s through to (19)90s is, a lot of the people that do not know much about the (19)60s, if they get interested and they start reading about it, a lot of them are very interested and very kind of taken aback by it and almost want to replicate it. I have seen people, I remember there was a guy, I was involved in an anti-intervention in US intervention in Central America Group at Berkeley, when I was a graduate student. And I remember there was another graduate student who was reading the book, [inaudible].
SM (00:13:40):
Oh yeah, I have got a first edition.
TW (00:13:42):
Yeah, a very good book. And I remember he got really psyched up. I mean, he was ready to... It seemed to me that he was getting more militant as he was reading that book. But I feel that, yeah, there are students that I have talked to that, the ones that are curious about it and they start reading about it, they really find it quite interesting. And it is something to talk about.
SM (00:14:08):
Did you feel, and this is a strong feeling, that there was animosity between the Boomer generation and generation X?
TW (00:14:18):
I have never noticed that. I have not seen that. And unless it is just talking about generational conflict than their children, but I have not noticed that just more generally. I think in the way it is innocent, you are talking about. No, I have not noticed it. It is not to say it did not take place. I have not.
SM (00:14:41):
Right. I know that one of the things when President Nixon came into office, he said that he had a plan to end the war in six in (19)68, yet he kept saying, "We need PE." And then in the very end when the Paris Peace accords were taking place, he used these words that really infuriated Vietnam vets and many who had fought against the war for years, "Peace with honor."
TW (00:15:04):
Yeah.
SM (00:15:04):
The exact, and I say here, the exact words used after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. I prefaced this question with the fact that, his overall plan failed because his actions doubled the names on the wall in Washington, if you really look at it.
TW (00:15:23):
Yeah. I think his plan was to get out as slowly as possible and with his, as he put it, with his teeth going out last. He was still trying to win, but he was very constricted by opposition of the Vietnam War. I mean, he knew he could only take the desolation so far and he could not do everything he wanted to do militarily. And he was also concerned by whether he actually, some of the stuff had actually worked, if affectively Vietnam see enough. But he was going to go out slowly and he was going to [inaudible], but he could not do it. I mean, he got undercut. He was really undermined at the end. He was undercut all the time, I think. I mean, he was certainly inhibited, constricted by the anti-movement all the time. But at the end I think he was really undercut by his declining and authority in Congress as a result of the Watergate. They were going to give him as much as they were to give him if his credibility and his authority had to define his local war.
SM (00:16:18):
You talk about credibility with President Johnson winning in 1964, that, and as he said very early on, you bring it up in the book, "We are not going to send our boys to fight a war that Asian boys can fight." And obviously that was a big lie. And many people thought that he had betrayed the people that worked for his campaign and many of them were young people. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because that period, (19)64, (19)65 that you bring up in the book, it is like really the beginning of all these, the anti-war movement and with that is very strong.
TW (00:16:54):
Well, I think a lot of people felt betrayed by him after he escalated the war. And I mean he certainly was not being honest. And at a certain point he decided under the advice of the advisors that he had to escalate, basically because South Vietnam was going to hell. And he faced a real possibility of the South Vietnamese government crumbling and South Vietnamese army crumbling. So, he had to go in there. He was forced to go in there if he wanted to prevent South Vietnam from falling. So, he did. And I think a lot of people that supported him, felt afraid by that, felt betrayed by that. And I think a lot of people were probably fed into people's weariness of Huber Humphrey later in 19...
SM (00:17:38):
Right.
TW (00:17:39):
... days. I think Humphrey had a hard time. And I think he had a hard time distinguishing his sufficiency, John. And I think Nelson did not want him to go too far out. John basically had up on a leash of his fence. But I think that people's feelings, failed by John probably fed in to some extent what Humphrey to do. And I think, so on the other hand, I mean Paul Warnke, who was in the Pentagon at the time, he said that Humphrey was not going to appoint Clifford. I forgot the positions. He said Humphrey was going to appoint him and Clark Clifford and I think more account, I am not sure, but definitely him and Clark Clifford, who were double figures. Later on, he said Humphrey's going to appoint him and Clifford to these high-level positions and they would have gotten out of Vietnam with him. Well, short ordered. Whether that is true or not, I am not sure. But if that is true, then we could have moved quite a bit.
SM (00:18:33):
You all speculate what? Because she cannot do this because you have to live history. You cannot just guess what might have been. But when President Kennedy was assassinated, depending on, I have read so much in preparation for the book that we have people that believe, well, because he was a cold warrior, he would have proceeded just like Lyndon Johnson in the end. And others who say, I think Sorenson, thinks that he would not have escalated. So, any thoughts on whether, how important...
TW (00:19:05):
I am not-not a Kennedy fan. I have never liked any of the Kennedy's. I mean Kennedy, like you said, was a cold warrior. So, I have never been particularly optimistic about Kennedy, what Kennedy would have done. He would not have fascinated there. My sense that he was the best swayed, well more like John, but I do not. But just generally, I am not a fan. I mean, he was a cold warrior.
SM (00:19:28):
When you look at all the personalities on both sides in America's battle over Vietnam, is there one or two on each side that truly defines the best they had to offer, opposition wise?
TW (00:19:41):
Well, there were a lot of them. The anti-war woman who, I mean talk people. I thought, what if you asked me, do I have any heroes? It is one of my heroes. Anybody who was active in the anti-war, particularly people who are very persistent in...
SM (00:19:59):
Well, and also, please speak up because somehow it cuts off here.
TW (00:20:01):
Oh, okay.
SM (00:20:01):
Yep.
TW (00:20:04):
I have tremendous admiration for anybody who was active in that movement, and particularly people who really stuck it out and just really dedicated, who were activists. And there were some people, but the problem is, I am probably going to mention some of the leaders who were more visible and maybe got a little more publicity, but some of the leaders were extremely dedicated people. Like I mentioned, Norma Becker earlier from the Fifth Avenue East Grade committee, who played such an important role in New York and also in some of the national mobilization committees. And people like Dave Ballinger, who was very important and very dedicated. And he was someone who had a connection to a lot of the more militant youth. And he was able to maintain, to bring some of the more radical youth into some of the actions that they were involved in organizing. And somebody like Sydney Peck, who was a very-very impressive guy. He was a professor, I think the case, Western Reserve University of Cleveland at the time. He was a sociology professor, and he was one of the main people in the National Mobilization Committee and extremely, extremely impressive guy. But there is so many people like that. I mean, David Hark, who was a Quaker activist and doing a lot of congressional lobbying, but also a lot of kind of Quaker style civil disobedience, a lot of that he was, and he is still active. And then on the government side, I do not know, I mentioned Paul Warnky, who was, I believe he was the assistant secretary of Defense for ISA, I believe. He played an important role in turning Clark Clifford against the war. And Clark Clifford played an important role in convincing Johnson that he had to do something in 1968. That he could not continue on the way they were going, and he certainly could not give, I think, attorney general, earl Wheeler was the chairman of the JF at the time, and he was asking for 200,000 more troops and Clifford and Johnson said, "That is politically impossible." And Johnson, eventually he did a partial farming hold and basically stabilized the ground war and decided that he was not going to run through re-election. So, warranty played a big role in turning Clifford, I think convincing Clifford, but just the war was not politically sustainable. So, somebody like Paul Warren fire a lot. And I know Paul Warnke was active later, I believe in the nuclear. And he is a nice guy. I mean, he is a genuinely nice guy too. He is somebody that stands out.
SM (00:22:40):
What is really interesting, if people like McGeorge Bundy that you talk about in the 1965 section of your book, when he came back from Plaku and his observations, if he had gone into the president and really pushed those observations on him, that would have been a lot. And also, the thoughts of Maxwell Taylor, who were their ambassador at that time. To me, if Taylor and Bundy, and I would like your thoughts on this, is that they had been more forceful and McNamara later on, that this thing just is not going to work. Do you think they had the ability to persuade that president?
TW (00:23:16):
Yeah, I do. If they were all taken up that campaign and really press at him. I think your question is a very good question because a lot, well, let us say several of the key players, they certainly noticed very early on this thing with him. And at best it was going to be a very long bloody affair. Very early on, I am talking, McNamara was one of the people I am thinking of, if they were to just went to Johnson and said, "Listen, it is pretty clear that the Vietnamese have enormous staying power and we can continue to escalate it, but this is going to be a long time before we have really a chance to turn this thing around. We may never be able to turn it around." If you had somebody like Rick George, very articulate, very intelligent guy, credentials, McNamara goes in there, McNamara is becoming very emotional about the war by this time. Very emotional. He goes down there and pleads his case to Johnson, some of these other folks. Yeah, I mean that is a very good point. Do not know why they did not do it.
SM (00:24:17):
See.
TW (00:24:18):
I do not know, but I think your question is an excellent question.
SM (00:24:21):
Well, you know what, I will add on to that question because if the anti-war movement knew in this very beginning stage, the feelings that those two men have, and you bring up very well that one of the issues is that they tried to hide a lot of things from the media and the public in general, that if that was known by the Ton Haydens of the world, or the Dave Dellinger's of the world and reach college campuses that were starting to protest, maybe that could have been a major, major influence to put pressure on the president to stop this.
TW (00:24:52):
Well, it could have also been a major influence on the public.
SM (00:24:55):
Right.
TW (00:24:56):
That is incredible ammunition that you could use to convince the public, that this thing is worth right. Saying, "Look, here is what these guys in private are saying about this."
SM (00:25:08):
Yeah, it is...
TW (00:25:08):
There is a terrible situation we are in here and the prognosis is horrible. That is what these guys are saying in public. So, I think that could have a tremendous influence on everything.
SM (00:25:20):
And we talk about as Schlesinger did, about the best and the brightest, and well, they may have been the brightest, but I do not think they were the best, that they did not do these kinds of things. On a scale of one to 10, and this is just, where would you place these groups in terms of helping and not hurting the anti-war protests? Or you could say whether they helped or hurt students for democratic society, before the weather?
TW (00:25:45):
Hey, very important, very important. I mean, like I said, students generally, were an engine for the anti-war movement and all this activity on college campuses. I mean, I think the younger people had a big influence on their parents and on the public in general. I mean, they were one of the things that led people to start to question the war. And a lot of students were in fact very articulate, very smart, and they learned a lot about Vietnam. And I think the fact that so many young people were protesting the war and were at least questioning the war, had a significant influence on other people generally. And again, they helped create this sense that politically the war was not, I mean, the country was going to hell in it.
SM (00:26:30):
Right.
TW (00:26:30):
Going to hell.
SM (00:26:32):
And also, the participatory democracy. I would like your definition of what participatory democracy is, because also, correct me if I am wrong, the Southern SNCC was based on participatory democracy. So, in reality, some of those people that were involved in going south, brought those ideas even back to SDS. Is that correct?
TW (00:26:54):
Yeah-yeah, that is true. Because there were a number of people in SDS, including in the leadership within South, the Civil rights department before.
SM (00:27:01):
Right.
TW (00:27:02):
So, you are right. That had a big impact. And I think what they were doing in SDS, I guess I would just call participatory democracy, democratic decision making at the grassroots level. Where everybody input at the [inaudible].
SM (00:27:18):
The next group was the weatherman.
TW (00:27:21):
Well, even the weatherman, they did some crazy things. They were fairly nutty. I mean, they lost it, but on the other hand, they were tremendously affected by the war. I think they were extremely angered by what Nixon was doing and looked like John had done before. They were very frustrated that Nixon was still escalating the war at various points. They were very frustrated before that. During the Johnson administration, when the war steadily escalated, they were very angered and frustrated by the bombing of innocent people in Vietnam. Just tremendously torn emotionally about that. They just, again, tremendously frustrated that they did not seem to be having that great an impact in the government because the work continued to escalate. John's administration and Nixon administration first times escalated the conflict, and he was not withdrawing troop nearly as fast they wanted. So, they felt they had to up the ante. And a lot of the stuff they did was absolutely nutty. But on the other hand, the Nixon administration did not like this stuff at all. They did not like the militant protest any more than they liked the large demonstrations in Washington because they created the sense that the country was, that they were in doubtful command, that the country was falling apart. And again, they knew this was affecting other people. They were concerned about how much this would grow. They were concerned about terrorism generally but concerned that the White House could be the next target. They were concerned for their personal safety, and they were concerned for their personal safety during some of these demonstrations in Washington. We had large crowds outside the White House. So, they did not like the militants. They did not like the militants a bit. I mean, I think they liked it when people looked little. I think they thought it was better for them, when some of the protestors looked unsavory and maybe some of the long hairs. I think it was better for them, if you had long hairs, tanning some crazy things, and if you had more mainstream looking people out there, but on the other hand, they did not like it. They did not like it, they did not like these mobs, and they did not like the nortons and they were concerned it was going to get worse and they were concerned it was, for the government and for themselves.
SM (00:29:23):
How about the Black Panthers and the Young Bloods? I put the Young Bloods in there, the Puerto Rican group. Because they kind of looked up for the Black Panthers and kind of did about the same thing. Were they violent?
TW (00:29:34):
Well, I mean, I think the Panthers whole thing was in the self-defense and they were going to arm themselves and that they were going to respond at the fact. I think they were certainly part of this current stuff, that we were moving towards a revolution, and they were going to play a role in it. But certainly, my knowledge of the Panthers is not great. But I think they also have a lot of social service programs that they were involved in, local levels in their communities that were valuable activities. But some of their rhetoric I think, was a little nut though.
SM (00:30:13):
How about the American Indian movement, which was a (19)69 to (19)73 whirlwind?
TW (00:30:20):
Yeah, well that was certainly part of this old current of National Liberation Movement, ethnic protests and just a lot of people. I mean, a lot of people were learning about the history of this country and the history of their racial oppression in this country. And a lot of people involved in the anti-war movement through the process of being radicalized, or through the process of participating in the Civil Rights movement, felt they should also involve supporting Black people and Native American [inaudible]. So, I think there is part of this whole political way thing, as invited support nationally.
SM (00:31:01):
How about the Vietnam veterans against the war?
SM (00:31:02):
How about the Vietnam veterans against the war?
TW (00:31:04):
Well, I think they had a credibility that maybe some other people did not, because they had actually fought the war. And they had more than one fairly dramatic protest where they were trying to basically bring the war home in a dramatic way, but not in an ultra-left way, where they were doing very specific guerilla theater. They had a very dramatic protest in, I think it was April or May 1971, where they had a series of activities in Washington at the same time there were other protests going on. But they had a very dramatic event where they returned their metals, their war medals to the government. And I think that was a very emotional experience for a lot of vets who return their war medals. And I think that they had a credibility with some people that maybe the other people in the anti-war movement did not. And I know that it was very gratifying to some anti-war activists that finally vets were really coming out, were in full force, because there was a lot of effort in the anti-war movement to organize active-duty service persons.
SM (00:32:14):
Yeah, they were not treated very well on college campuses upon their return.
TW (00:32:21):
Veterans?
SM (00:32:22):
Yeah, veterans. And Ron Kovic comes to mind as a very vocal member of that particular group. I think Bobby Muller was in that group as well.
TW (00:32:31):
Yeah, he was.
SM (00:32:33):
But boy, Kovic was a national person regarding the efforts of VVAW. How about the Young Americans for Freedom? A group that has not really talked about that much. A conservative group that was against the war, but their influence as conservative activists.
TW (00:32:52):
Oh, I did not know the Young Americans for Freedom were against the war. I thought they supported the war and I thought that... I must be wrong. But I thought that that is one of the conservative youth groups that the Nixon administration was supporting and fostering their activity. I know the Nixon administration was working with the College Republicans and the Young Republicans and other conservative youth groups in Detroit as part of its effort to basically surface pro-war sentiment, try to politically isolate the anti-war movement. And I thought Young Americans for Freedom was one of the sort of groups that supported it.
SM (00:33:35):
Think that Tom Hawkins was one of the leaders of that group.
TW (00:33:38):
Yeah, I remember the name.
SM (00:33:40):
And I interviewed him. He has got another book coming out. He wrote a book about the Vietnam War. But that is Buckley's group, and they started basically at his home, I think. But when I interviewed Lee Edwards, Lee Edwards said that people who write about the anti-war movement always exclude the YAF, because they were against the Vietnam War.
TW (00:34:06):
I did not know that. And there was an organization, Tom Huston, who was a Nixon aide, an ultra-conservative Nixon aide, and was pushing for the more oppressive stuff the Nixon administration talked about. I thought, "Who was that?" I thought Young Americans... I may be getting mixed up with another group.
SM (00:34:22):
Well, I think there is a book coming out on them. So actually, it is, Ron Robinson is writing a book on the Young Americans for Freedom.
TW (00:34:29):
Oh, are you are sure that they opposed the Vietnam War?
SM (00:34:34):
According to Lee Edwards. The other ones did not. Tom Hawkins, he was just in the group. But Lee Edwards is the historian in Washington, and I believe he is at the American Enterprise Institute, and I believe he is the one that says when they talk about the Vietnam War, they always exclude the YAF. And then he said, I have it on the interview, that they did not support that war.
TW (00:34:58):
I did not know that.
SM (00:35:00):
So, the other two groups are the National Organization for Women and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Those two groups.
TW (00:35:07):
Yeah, I probably would not be your best source on either of those. I know something about them. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was not [inaudible] involved in that?
SM (00:35:20):
Yes.
TW (00:35:22):
Yes. And I think James Bevel was involved in that. And I think there were other leaders from that organization that were active in the anti-war movement. And of course, it was such a big thing when Martin Luther King came out against the war in 1967. That was a big step for the anti-war movement.
SM (00:35:39):
You bring up in your book a really good quote that I had never heard before. It was about H. R. Haldeman's thoughts on protestors. And if you could explain a little bit more about it, here is the quote, in your book, "H. R. Haldeman thought of protestors as people who want to get excited about something and they really do not give a darn what it is they are excited about." But then you bring up, or someone else brings up, I have got a quote here, that "Haldeman failed to grasp the essence of a working democracy. That a good many people do indeed want to get excited about something because they have the audacity to think that the government is theirs."
TW (00:36:18):
Yeah, I think that might have been Todd Gitlin's quote from the introduction.
SM (00:36:20):
Yes.
TW (00:36:23):
See, the Nixon administration, like the Johnson administration was very concerned about the anti-war movement and very concerned about student protests. And they were putting their heads together, so to speak, and trying to figure out what was going on and what were the sources of all this protest. And they came up with various theories. And they really misread the roots of protests. I mean, they had various theories, like Haldeman, they just want to get excited about something and they do not care what it is. Or Waskow had a theory that a lot of the protestors came out for what he called the soft subjects. And then these people in the hard subject of sciences, they did not have the same trouble fitting in, but a lot of people in the soft subjects were having hard time fitting into society, were challenged by it. So, they felt challenged by the complexity of society. And because they could not handle it, they were rebelled. And a lot of people felt that this whole movement was being supported, funded, and in some cases even orchestrated by communists, so to speak. And they felt that Moscow was behind a lot of student protests. But they had a lot of theories about protests, Kissinger had theories that permissive child-rearing practices were partly responsible for the protests. That they were self-indulged and that they had been raised by overly permissive parents.
SM (00:37:56):
Dr. Spock.
TW (00:37:58):
Yeah. And so, they had a lot of different theories about it, and partly because they spent an awful lot of time discussing this and sending memos back and forth about what people in the Nixon administration called the youth problem. And they came up with these theories. And a lot of people thought it was strictly draft protests, that basically kids were protesting because they're afraid of dying in Vietnam. They did not want to go to Vietnam. So, they had a lot of theories. But the fact is that the motive force of the anti-war movement was potentially oral opposition to what the government was doing in Vietnam. And because the government felt that what they were doing was right, that is not an explanation that is going to resonate to them. It is not the kind of explanation they're going to embrace over some of these others.
SM (00:38:46):
The one word that always comes out when I see these things and throughout your book, and all the other books I have read about the anti-war movement, is somehow on the side of the politicians or the government or whatever, is they just cannot believe that people were genuine. I use that word. I mean, that is really them. They really believe the war is unjust. And so, is this part of the problem here that they always thought that there must be another motive, that these people were not truly genuine when they were protesting the war?
TW (00:39:23):
I think they were maybe too eager to look for sinister and unsavory and unattractive impulses. And I think you are right. The fact that they were so convinced it was a just cause. And Nixon felt, "I am getting out of here, I am getting out of Vietnam. Do not they understand that? What is wrong with these people? Do they take too many drugs?" I think there was a real generation gap there between people in the government and the people outside, the young people. And I think Nixon had his aides feed him articles on student protests and even on deadly arms used on student protest. He wanted to read about this stuff, and he did not understand it. But I think he was frustrated by the fact that there was this big gap, that so many young people did not like him. I think he was very frustrated by that. And that was probably one of the reasons he went out that one time in the early morning hours before one of the protests in Washington, he cannot sleep at night. He goes out there to the Lincoln Memorial where the protesters gather, and he tries to relate to these young kids. And I got this one picture in the book...
SM (00:40:43):
Yeah, I saw, and he looked...
TW (00:40:44):
See them looking at him like, "Who is this asshole?"
SM (00:40:49):
His facial expression is pretty bad too.
TW (00:40:51):
Yeah, he looks... But I think he was frustrated by that, at least according to some of his aides, that he was not able to connect with young people. But at a certain point he concluded. But it is amazing how much attention they did pay to what they called the youth problem. And how much effort they put into trying to understand the roots of it and why students were protesting, what was behind all the following.
SM (00:41:19):
I have always thought, and I would like your thoughts too, that here we had a president in Johnson that had two daughters who were boomers. Or one might have been a little older than a boomer. And then we had Nixon who had two daughters and a son-in-law who were boomers. Did they ever talk to any of those five about their thoughts on the war, and it is like they are in the shadows?
TW (00:41:47):
It is funny. That is true. Because I do not remember hearing anything, really. I remember hearing about Nixon's daughter and certainly associating them with not protesting, not being countercultural in any way at all. It has been projected from the photos of them. And then Johnson, I do not remember anything about his kids, but there were a lot of government officials, in both administrations, Johnson's and Nixon's, who had kids who opposed the war and went out for protests. A lot of them did. That was a problem. I mean, to have their kids questioning the war. And Robert McNamara's son was strongly opposed to the war.
SM (00:42:29):
Yeah, I am trying to interview him. I just sent him an email.
TW (00:42:33):
Oh, well you should because he is good. It is amazing to me in retrospect that Craig McNamara, he was in prep school, I think he was 15, say in (19)65. And so, he was not that old. So, I think his father could probably, might have, to some extent written him off. Because he was too young to know better, so to speak. But I think it was also very painful for Robert McNamara that his son, his only son, was so strongly disapproving it what his father was doing in Vietnam. And I remember later, Craig McNamara... You really should talk to him, at this point.
SM (00:43:17):
I sent him an email to him and to Michael Fervor. I have not heard from him.
TW (00:43:20):
Oh, well he is good too. And they are both nice guys. So, he will probably... I do not know what, they are both nice guys and I hope you can talk to both of them. But Craig McNamara, Robert McNamara is going crazy there because the thing is it is not working out. And he had no idea that the Vietnamese were going to beat his plan, and all this bombing did not seem be doing anything. And he is getting criticized left and right for all the people who are getting killed as a result of his policy. He has got various liberal friends have turned against the war and are disapproving. And his own son. And not only his own son, but he had one or more daughters who were opposed to the war too. So, talk about a sense of speech. But there were a lot of other government officials, I mean a lot of them, who had kids opposed to the war and would come out and protest, that were active in protest. I remember Paul Nitze was a senior Pentagon administration official, pretty conservative.
SM (00:44:19):
Correct.
TW (00:44:20):
Real cold warrior. A quintessential cold warrior. Right. Paul Nitze. And he told me he was the mastermind for the planning of the defense of the Pentagon during the big protest at the Pentagon October of 1967. He had three or three of his kids out there, Nitze's up in the Pentagon. He has got three of his kids out there in that crowd protesting. But there were a lot of kids. I remember I was really struck by a guy named, just briefly, Marshall Green. He was a senior State Department official guy during the Nixon administration. And he was very emotional talking about his kids, his son, being opposed to the war. And after the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, his son, Green's, comes back from something. He comes back from Oregon, Green's son just condemns him and condemns his government's policy, administration's policy. He says, "I do not want to see you again." He just took off, and to think that he was literally driven to the brink of suicide. You really were. So, he was really emotionally wrought up over what the war was doing to his side of the camp.
SM (00:45:29):
Yeah. He is involved in the environment in California too, I think. Craig, he has got a really nice farm. Walnuts and vegetables and educating people about quality food. And I am not trying to link up with him. Maybe some people just do not want to talk about it anymore, but...
TW (00:45:51):
I just remember when I contacted him, he is the kind of person that is worth pursuing and he is a decent guy. And I remember he did not respond the first time. I sent him a letter and he did not respond. And I called him, and then once I got him on the phone, he was fine. And then I went out and interviewed him. But he was one of the people I had to call. If memory serves right, and I did not know about your experiences, but my experience with interviewing people for books, with a huge number of people. You got to call them, they do not respond to letters, and you get them on the phone.
SM (00:46:20):
Yeah-yeah. I have got some that respond. I do all mine in emails, but some respond. But they all say, "Well, geez, I just happened to see your email. I only look at it once every six months." Oh, my goodness. And then you cannot get ahold of them again after they have read it the one time, they say yes. I have got something here. Really what you have been talking about here is that Nixon and Johnson both misunderstood the antagonist, really.
TW (00:46:46):
Right.
SM (00:46:47):
But I remember that from the book. And they attributed the anti-war people to sinister external forces like the Communist Party, I think.
TW (00:47:00):
Yeah.
SM (00:47:01):
And character flaws. I remember that you said too.
TW (00:47:04):
Well, I remember Johnson one time said, he referred to some FBI reports that a lot of protestors had previously spent time in mental institutions or something like that. Yeah, how seriously can you take something like that. But they had some pretty wild ideas, but they were just very reluctant, I think, to acknowledge the primary motivation behind it.
SM (00:47:27):
Well...
TW (00:47:27):
The protest was simply moral opposition.
SM (00:47:30):
I want to ask a question to you because I think, again, you bring it up in the 1965 chapter. But the importance of the (19)50s played in shaping a lot of the boomer kids, or I would say young adults, particularly a quote here, and I want to put this on the record, if it is okay? And whenever I do this, I make sure you are going to see the transcript, as everybody will, that I interviewed, but you are talking, and his name is Doug Dowry, a Cornell University professor?
TW (00:48:02):
Yeah, he was great.
SM (00:48:03):
Yeah. And I want to read this, just for the quote, "Like other radical organizers who had gone through the political deep freeze of McCarthyism, he was basking in the warmer political climate." And I am just reading this for the record, if it is okay." All of a sudden it seemed to me that what I always thought would be impossible, namely a large-scale movement against a war that your country was in, began obviously to take hold. It seemed to me that was absolutely amazing. I was teaching at Berkeley during the Korean War. Jesus Christ, you could not get anybody to say anything against the Korean War. Everybody was scared shitless to identify themselves as being against the war because it meant quite obviously that you must be a ranking member of the Communist Party. In fact, I was accused of exactly that. So, to me, 10, 12 years later and the anti-Vietnam thing, all of a sudden it just seemed obvious that something was happening that was absolutely brand new. And I began to feel very different about the possibilities of the politics of the mid (19)60s. I really can remember that it was though spring had arrived after a very, very long fucking winter."
TW (00:49:10):
Yeah. I think that would certainly be true of a lot of the older activists, that had gone through the (19)50s. But I think it was very inspiring, invigorating to suddenly be part of something so big. And I think Doug there was partly talking about the spring of 1965, where protests and the teaching movement just spread, mushroomed, spread from campus to campus. And basically, the whole of campuses across the country were just alive with debate on Vietnam. And I think then the first national demonstration against the war, of course, at the same time, and SDS organized it. So, I think it was very invigorating and very just overwhelming for a lot of people. That when they saw the anti-war would take off like that, that so many people suddenly getting active. I think a lot of people saw a lot of potential at that point. Very exciting.
SM (00:50:07):
He also said, "So all of a sudden you get all these young guys, and a lot of it was fraudulent and a lot of it was in fact self-defeating. Nevertheless, their exuberance got sucked into everybody's spirit. It was a time of real anger, but also real hope." And I would like your thoughts on this, because I think even today, and people that have been outspoken against the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, particularly when they make references to the Vietnam era, are really criticized. And this is something that again, he says about when he was a professor, "By the time when the mid-(19)60s came along, I had been at Cornell for a dozen years or more and had been very, very unpopular there because I was sort of outspoken. I used to give a lecture on why socialism was necessary in the United States every year, and everybody thought it was kind of loony. All of a sudden at Cornell in the mid-(19)60s, I was no longer a strange person. I was either someone who was being involved with a lot of other people moving in that direction, or I was a hated person." Do you feel that people that have been speaking up, because you have not only written about the (19)60s, but you are a professor in a university. And you have taught that today, people that were speaking up during the Bush years against the Iraq war early on, felt like that?
TW (00:51:28):
See, there were some tremendously large demonstrations that began. The first Iraq war, and we could go back to the Gulf War in (19)91. There were huge demonstrations. And a number of these, very large demonstrations, that I think people tend to forget that. And I am sure that was just tremendously satisfying, invigorating, and exciting for a lot of people involved in that. I think part of it was that in Iraq, first off, it did not drag on. It was over quickly. The first call for it was basically bomb the shit out them, then go in there and mop up. And Americans of course did not die in anything close to the numbers they died in Vietnam. So, I think it is different situations than Vietnam. And I think the second Iraq war, which is still going on, but also has not involved American deaths on anywhere near scale.
SM (00:52:35):
4,000 plus.
TW (00:52:39):
Not the scale of what took place in Vietnam. And I think it is as much there is no draft, right?
SM (00:52:47):
Um-hmm.
TW (00:52:48):
No draft. So, I think it is a much more difficult situation to sustain that kind of movement. Plus, you are talking about all these factors that fed into the student protests during the 1960s. But you're probably much more well versed than I am at this point. But all these different factors that could say, I mean, wait a second. Just like the fact we had a baby boomer generation and all these people in institutions of higher education. And all these people in a place where they can learn stuff which would lead them to protest. So, you did not have that demographic later on, too.
SM (00:53:21):
It seems to me, one of the questions that I asked Jack Wheeler III, who wrote Touched with Fire, he is one of the veterans that was written about in the Long Gray Line book, the class of (19)66 at West Point. Let us see, I just lost my train of thought here. It was a question. Oh, Steve, what were you thinking? I will get back to it. I lost my train of thought. I do not usually do that. I got off my questions here and I am got an order here and I do not know....
TW (00:53:55):
It has come to me recently; it is kind of like...
SM (00:53:57):
Yeah, I have my questions here, but I was thinking of Jack Wheeler and...
TW (00:54:01):
Is something about it wrong?
SM (00:54:05):
No, oh, it was about the generation gap. And the fact is that there is a book called, it was a book that came out around 1980, and they had a symposium in which Phil Caputo, Jack Wheeler, James Fallows, Susan Jacoby, they were all involved in this panel. And they talked about the generation gap. And I would like your thoughts on this. The generation gap was not as strong as people said between the parents, the World War II people, and their kids. And they brought up, I think it was Senator Webb, he was not a Senator then, Jim Webb, who said that the real generation gap was within the generation, it was between those who served in the war and those who did not.
TW (00:54:59):
There is both, I would think it would have been very depressing for a lot of parents when their kids are suddenly growing their hair long and are criticizing their government's policies and experimenting with drugs. And then there is some music that their parents are not into, I think that would be, I am sure it was very perplexing for a lot of parents. And somewhat frightening for some parents. And probably contributed to a lot of distance between parents and their children at that time. But I am sure there were also plenty of relationships between parents and their kids. But they just had close relationships. But they were able to talk through a lot of this stuff. And a lot of the parents, I mean, I say a lot, but certainly some of the parents were influenced by their kids and maybe participated to some extent themselves in various alternative lifestyles. So certainly, some of those, one of the themes among younger militant youth was questioning your parents, maybe rejecting your parents, and rejecting the whole establishment. So, there were a lot of divisions and a lot of distance, a lot of perplexity.
SM (00:56:19):
What are your thoughts though, of the generation gap, as Jim Webb said. That the (19)60s’ generation is often defined by what John Kennedy used to talk about, "Ask, not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." So thus, there is an expectation amongst many who served in Vietnam that one of your duties is to serve. When you are called to war, you serve. And then there is also the Peace Corps and Vista and alternative service. If you did not believe, if you are a conscientious objector, you still did alternative service. And he said he believes that when you talk about the (19)60s' generation, you are really talking about a generation that really did not believe in service. And history books will say, well, it was a very service-oriented generation because of the Peace Corps and all the things Kennedy was talking about. Your thoughts on that?
TW (00:57:12):
Well, I do not think the government ever had a problem in getting enough young people to serve in Vietnam. So, there is certainly plenty of people who were willing to serve. But I think if you think that what we are doing in Vietnam is a moral abomination, the idea of serving your country...
SM (00:57:28):
Hold on one second, I have got 30 more minutes here. I am going to turn my tape, there you go. All right, go right ahead.
TW (00:57:48):
Well, like I said, the government never had a problem getting enough young people to serve in the military during Vietnam. The protests never prevented them from having enough folks. But on the other hand, if you think that what we are doing in Vietnam is a simple mass murder, and is a moral abomination, then the idea of serving your country in the military is ludicrous. So, the idea that the younger generation during the (19)60s, there were none who were willing to serve their country. It was flat out wrong because there were plenty of young people, there were a lot of them, who supported that war. And a lot of people who entered the military service. So, there were quite a large number who believed in military service, [inaudible] the troops. And of course, you have people who joined the Peace Corps, who maybe you were talking about a different type of young person who's probably [inaudible].
SM (00:58:51):
One thing that I did not realize, there was a great anecdote, when you talked about Robert Lowell, the poet, who actually Senator McCarthy always looked up to. I think Senator McCarthy always wanted to be a poet. And when I interviewed him, he kept talking about Robert Lowell a lot. But you bring up the fact, in this little section, a very small section though, about artists against the war. You talk about Robert Lowell boycotting the White House Festival of the Arts. And how Johnson called them "Those sons of bitches who were boycotting and who had turned the culture of celebration into a platform on Vietnam." And then you had the Dwight McDonald situation, I forget who was really upset with him, somebody in the cabinet. But in the end, there was an FBI clearance after this for anybody who got involved or came to the White House. Just your thoughts, and the fact that artists are oftentimes attacked. That is writers, entertainers, are often, sometimes, are attacked for doing protests against war. Sean Penn comes to mind. And people are very critical of them saying, "Just go back to what you are doing. You have no right to make commentary here."
TW (01:00:17):
Yeah, I have never agreed with that at all. I do not see why just because they are an actor or an actress or a well-known artist, why that should prohibit them from speaking out on political issues. I disagree with that completely. And I think one of the things that the Johnson administration people were concerned about with somebody like Robert Lowell, they were well aware that when prominent people like that came out against the war, that those prominent people could easily influence other people. And I think that made them very nervous. So, they did not like that at all.
SM (01:00:54):
Of course, the most obvious one is Jane Fonda. Your thoughts on her?
TW (01:01:03):
I admire the fact that she played a role in opposing the Vietnam War. Now all I know is when she went to North Vietnam, the media really focused on, I believe she probably made a foolish judgment to pose next to a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery. But a lot of people went to the North, not a lot, but there were a number of people in the anti-war movement, particularly leaders who traveled to North Vietnam during that war to see what was going on, to get a firsthand sense of the war in North Vietnam. And I do not criticize her for going to North Vietnam. She had a right to go there. I think any American had a right to go there to try to get a better sense of what was going on there. I do not think she should be criticized for that. And she was also active in... I admire what she did. And she was also active later on in, I believe, when she was with Tom Hayden... I believe when she was with Tom Hayden in a group called the Indochina Peace Campaign that was involved in a lot of congressional laws towards the end of the war to get Congress to cut off US funds for the war, US supports for Thieu in South Vietnam and Lon Nol in Cambodia, and to pressure South Vietnam to release their political prisoners. I believe she was involved in that with Hayden and then everybody else in the Indochina Peace Campaign and other groups that were doing that the later part of the war. So, I admire her. I admire her.
SM (01:02:34):
Yeah, the musicians, they were all, well, not all of them, many of them were, in their songs, talking about the war and about civil rights and women's rights.
TW (01:02:46):
That is all part of the insight. That is all part of the movement.
SM (01:02:56):
Yeah. Part of the counterculture. The importance of teach-ins is... Teach-ins were very big when I was in college, but I did not realize that the very first teach-in was at Michigan.
TW (01:03:02):
Yeah.
SM (01:03:03):
And Carl Oglesby, you bring up his name, and he has written some pretty good books. And then they had the big one at Berkeley with Jerry Rubin and one other person when they were grad students there. Could you talk to how important teach-ins were? Because many people were really involved in them and historically the teach-ins' link to Earth Day is also very important.
TW (01:03:29):
Well, I think what they did, I mean once... You first had that teach-in in Michigan, and you had the big one at Berkeley, and there were teach-ins at campuses all over the country. And I think what they did is they got a lot of people interested, focused on Vietnam and the Vietnam War. They educated a lot of people to the history of US involvement in Vietnam, how we got involved and what we were doing there. And I think they mobilized a lot of younger people, and faculty members, professors against the war. And I think they were just a tremendous impetus to the growth of the anti-war... The debate about Vietnam just spread like wildfire during that period. And I think they were, well, they were a great source of concern inside the Johnson administration. Because Johnson wanted a quieter war. He did not want all these people out there talking about the war and protesting them on campuses. And they knew very well that this was a bad situation. And suddenly the campuses, all these students were talking about the war, and turning against the war as a result of participating in teach-ins and other people. So, they were very concerned about it. And initially, they sent some government officials out there to the campuses to participate in the teach-ins to have debates. But the government officials did not do so well at the teach-ins. They did not convince so many students of what the government was doing in Vietnam. So, they eventually withdrew them. They stopped sending people out to campuses because they realized [inaudible]. And there were some cases where high-level officials like [inaudible] participated in teach-ins, but they said a whole bunch of [inaudible]. They were not willing to go out there and get [inaudible]
SM (01:05:29):
Yeah. And I interviewed Senator Nelson many years ago, and if you read on the background on the preparations for Earth Day, he sat down with the... He and other organizers, I think Dennis Hayes, they made sure that it was okay to go ahead with Earth Day. They did not want to spend the anti-war movement. And they actually consulted with them in preparation for Earth Day. And they were very impressed with teach-ins.
TW (01:05:52):
Oh, for this 1970s?
SM (01:05:53):
That was 1970. The SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, those early activities from (19)60 to (19)64. Then you got Freedom Summer in (19)64. And then you had the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in (19)64 and (19)65. Could you say how important they were as events, in terms of shaping the leadership of the anti-war movement?
TW (01:06:22):
Well, I think that a lot of people got part of their political education from the civil rights movement, and learning about grassroots organizing and talking to people, going out and talking to people. And I think that was also just the general part of people's political education, in terms of learning about American society and the injustices in American society and probably radicalizing a number of people too. So, more than a few of the early anti-war leaders had been active in the civil rights movement beforehand, and in the Bay, Area were active in the free speech movement. So, you had a lot of leaders, even leaders early on involved in the anti-war movement. I think they learned a lot from their prior experiences. I think it helped the anti-war movement quite a bit, to have those sorts of people with those sorts of experiences getting involved.
SM (01:07:23):
Would you say those experiences, particularly of SNCC and Freedom Summer, where they went after voter registration after they were trying to have equal housing and all the other things, would you say that this is the epitome of what Dr. Barber was saying about the stronger the citizenry, the lesser need for a strong leader? Because here we had citizens who not only were not known to the public, but they just felt it was their duty to go south to help those who were in need of help at their own risks, and they were not after a lot of publicity.
TW (01:08:04):
No, I could not put it any better than you just put it. In the Barber quote I think that is exactly what he is talking about.
SM (01:08:13):
How did the new Left differ from the old Left? And what separated them and what united them?
TW (01:08:20):
Partly, it was cultural. The new Left was countercultural, much more likely to... The new Left was more likely to be countercultural, far more likely to be countercultural than the old Left. They were more likely to be militant tactically. The old communist party and the Socialist Workers Party, probably the two most prominent old Left groups were fairly conservative tactically in the anti-war movement. They were not into militant civil obedience, anything approaching "mobile tactics". But people in the new Left were much more open to that sort of thing, and much more, in terms of lifestyle, were inclined to be countercultural in all the various facets of countercultural lifestyle, participate in those. The new Left was much straighter, probably the organizations, much more intellectual, self-disciplined organizations. I do not know if they were talking about practicing democratic centralism, but probably, I guess. But in both of those two groups, they'd come up with a line, the Social Workers Party or the CP, which, by the way, hated each other, they would develop a line, they'd have a political line in the group, and members of those groups were expected to promote that line in the anti-war movement. New Left was more decentralized, much looser, younger, generally, and again, more countercultural.
SM (01:10:04):
We made reference to this earlier on because William Buckley, I guess, was the founder of the Young Americans for Freedom. They met at his house. How important were conservative student groups in the (19)60s and (19)70s? Because we do not hear a whole lot about them.
TW (01:10:21):
They were not nearly as important as the anti-war [inaudible]. When they turned out at protests, say as a counter protest or a pro-war protest, generally, which both governments, Johnson and Nixon administrations were involved in organizing and fostering at various points. They were much smaller. Their numbers were much smaller. Their active visible presences were much less significant than the public presence of the anti-war students. There were an awful lot of young people who supported the war, but in terms of the activists, the active conservative young people were, they were insignificant compared to the protests.
SM (01:11:13):
One thing that is not discussed very much is the friction between what we call the intellectual students and the fraternities and sororities on campus. There was a lot of tension. And so, many times when there was an anti-war protest or students would block recruiters from coming on campus, the ones that were on the other side were mostly fraternity and sororities and sometimes athletes. How serious was that division on college campuses, say in the mid (19)60s to late (19)60s, between fraternities and what I call the more... And do not forget, I advised a fraternity, and there is a lot of smart intellectuals in fraternities and sororities, but there was a perception that was written at that time, it was called the non-conformist intellectual as opposed to the conformist fraternity and sorority brothers and sisters and athletes. How serious was that?
TW (01:12:16):
Well, my guess is you know more about that than I do at this point. And I would think there was a lot of shouting matches, but I do not know at what point the anti-war organizers and activists generally just decided to write those people off, to talk to other people. I am sure in 1965, the [inaudible] movement was taking off, they were trying to reach everybody they could. I am talking about the anti-war activists and organizers. They were trying to reach their fellow students generally. And there has been a huge amount of, a lot of debate and a lot of arguments, a lot of animosity, and probably a certain amount of fights between the two sides. But I would imagine at certain points, and again, I am sure more about this than I do by this point, that they said, the anti-war people said, "We are going to talk to other people. We are not going to waste [inaudible]."
SM (01:13:15):
Well, the anti-war people had a tremendous influence on a lot of presidents and administrations in terms of banning recruiters on campus. That was somewhat successful. And now you read that it is so popular to have recruiters on campus. It is a difference of night and day.
TW (01:13:34):
Yeah, that is my understanding too. I think, actually my son, he is just starting high school, but I think we had to sign something to say we did not want... Yeah, I agree that there's much more access, but I think they can call people and I think they [inaudible].
SM (01:14:00):
The part here on statement, I made reference to it earlier, is about participatory democracy. And they inferred someplace within the document that they feared that this generation would be the last generation on earth. Would you say that was more of a fatalistic approach to take regarding democracy and liberty in the future, or were they just expressing the fears of many of the youth of that era based on what they learned in the (19)50s and early (19)60s because of the society they grew up in, which was with the bomb, the threat of nuclear war, the fear of speaking up a la McCarthyism, the hidden realities of race and poverty in America that were exposed in Freedom Summer and the SCLC experiences? Just your thoughts on that.
TW (01:14:50):
Well, I think there were a number of people who were involved in the (19)60s who had been active against the bomb, like you said earlier, which would have fed into some of that. And I think a lot of people were very, during the Vietnam War, a lot of activists were very concerned that this wound really get out of hand. They did not know how far the government would take this. And they were pretty cynical about the people in the government. So, they were concerned that this could lead the World War III. And there was a certain amount of apocalyptic thinking, I think, which took place. It was a heady time. A lot of stuff was going on, and not only in the United States, but in other countries. And there was a certain amount of apocalyptic thinking, and so there were certainly people who were concerned that this could really bad [inaudible] nuclear conflict.
SM (01:15:53):
One of the things I try to... I have not asked too many people, but I wanted to ask you in more detail is what was the impact of the war within or on the university campuses in the (19)60s and (19)70s? Bear with me, I am going to throw these all out, and then you can answer as you want to. The questions are this: how did universities change due to dissent? Number two, were the changes permanent? Number three, students challenged the multi diversity and the knowledge factory mentality, were they successful? And have universities today forgotten the lessons learned via what I consider amnesia about what happened back in the (19)60s and (19)70s? And I think we learned a lot because of the experience of Tiananmen Square in 1989, that when school started in the fall of (19)89, no one was hardly talking about that event.
TW (01:16:52):
Well, I think in terms of the universities changing, that probably affected the course offerings quite a bit. More critical courses on American society and various aspects of American society. And I think there were more much student-led courses, student [inaudible]. I think a lot of university, like you mentioned Ted Hesburgh earlier, there were a lot of university presidents who got pretty nervous and concerned that there is building occupations and other form of student developments were just going to get worse and they were going to lose control of their place. And I do not know how that played out in terms of policy for its students, but my guess is it led to certain [inaudible], they were really going to lose the control of the place.
SM (01:17:47):
Yeah. I think when the Free Speech Movement, when Mario Savio spoke, he talked about, the issue was ideas. The university is about ideas, not about the corporate mentality in our society. And I interviewed Arthur Chickering, one of the educators who wrote the book Education and Identity in the (19)70s that I studied in graduate school. And he is a conservative, but he said at the very end, I said, "Is there any criticism you have of today's universities?" And he says, "Yes, the corporations have taken control again." And that is what the students fought against in the (19)60s, is the corporate mentality, the knowledge of... Knowledge is important, I am not talking about that. But when they talk about the knowledge factory, the assembly line, everybody come out the same, no questioning, just accept everything. I am starting to see, and I do not know if you see it, some trends that, as if the (19)60s never happened.
TW (01:18:57):
Well, you probably know, but my guess is there were a lot fewer people decided who were business majors at that time and a lot more people [inaudible] liberal arts. So, I am guessing it had a big effect in the curriculum at universities. But I do not know that.
SM (01:19:17):
Could you talk a little bit about, I brought up Father Hesburgh, and to me, it's one of the best six to eight pages in your book, when you talk about what happened, his revelations that he did not think (19)64 was... He thought it was an isolated incident at Berkeley, and that the Columbia Rebellion really turned his head. And then he said he looked at the pad and in the pad over 100 presidents had been fired for one reason or another.
TW (01:19:54):
He was the president of Notre Dame, and he had, earlier in the war, had been a war supporter. And he was very upset by student protests on his campus, and how far they were taking things. And he was not just upset, he was unsettled by it. And he noticed that a lot of his fellow university presidents were basically fighting with that. They were being forced out. They were either being forced out because of whatever they did to respond to student protests, or they were resigning. And he felt he was one of the few of his colleagues who was still there. But he just said that the anti-war youth really had a big influence on him in terms of leading him to question the war a lot more. And my understanding is he initially took a fairly hard line toward student protests. And he spent a lot of time talking to the students. He was out there with the kids. And they had a big impact on his attitude towards the Vietnam War. I believe he said something to the effect of, the young people really turned the tide on this one. They influenced from [inaudible]. He was very upfront about the fact that the youth had a big impact on his views on Vietnam and played a big impact on the clinic and the war. He is one of many influential people who were affected by younger protestors, by the end, and leading them to question the war more. There are a lot of other people. John Oakes at the New York Times was the editor of the editorial pages of the New York Times. He was very forthcoming [inaudible] that the protests had a big impact on him and on the New York Times editorials before and getting him to question the war more. And the clinics were also concerned again about what protests was doing for American society and causing society to fall apart. So, Hesburgh was one among many influential people who were affected to some degree by anti-war protests.
SM (01:22:15):
Do you think those students, and again, I was on [inaudible] campus, I saw this, they would have demands, and then if those demands were met, they would come up with more demands, knowing that none of these demands could totally be okayed by them. It was a strategy they were using just because they were frustrated with anybody in any role of leadership anywhere. There did not seem to be any trust in any person of responsibility back then. And whether you were a president, or even the vice president of student affairs, or the mayor of the city, or the congressperson, or senator, or even your rabbi, or your minister, or priest. Anybody in a position of responsibility was looked down upon for a variety of reasons. Do you think that is why the attacks on this generation at times, I use this word genuine, many of the them continue to be genuine, like Tom Hayden was genuine, but those that win into these tactics really hurt the image of the movement overall, and thus people nowadays, when they look back, they can criticize the entire group based on the antics of a few.
TW (01:23:28):
Yeah, I think that is true, that some of the more, we say the more way-out youthful protestors, it hurt the overall protesters public image. That is undeniable. But on the other hand, again, I do not know that the people in the government made a lot of distinctions between these different forms of protests. I think to them it was really just part of one ball of wax. And all of that stuff fed into the government's perceptions that the Vietnam War was not sustainable, and this could even get worse. All of that stuff played a part turning around [inaudible]. But on the other hand, yeah, they... But some of the stuff, people might have been turned off by some of the more outlandish public displays of some of these protesters, but again, with the public too, it's all part of that phenomenon out there, which is causing a lot of people to start to think about Vietnam, whereas they would not have otherwise.
SM (01:24:31):
Right. Do you believe Black Power was a good thing?
TW (01:24:35):
Yeah, I do. Because why should Black people have more control over their lives?
SM (01:24:46):
What are some of the myths of the Vietnam War, the myths that are out there about, as you call the war within, and the myths of the war from without or outside the war?
TW (01:25:03):
I do not know. As we were talking about earlier, I think a lot of people are not aware of just how early on senior people in the Johnson administration realized that they were up against it, and that the war was maybe unwinnable, just how early they were coming to that conclusion. I think a lot of people are unaware of that. Other myths about the Vietnam War, that it was a good cause.
SM (01:25:45):
That is a myth. How about Ron Reagan says it was a noble cause. Is that a myth?
TW (01:25:48):
Yeah. I do not think we had any business being there in the first... No, I think that was not a noble cause. I think we just did not have any business... I am just generally of the view that we should stay out of other country's affairs.
SM (01:26:03):
Right. Can you go a couple more minutes here?
TW (01:26:08):
Yeah. I am going to meet a friend for a beer at 4:00. That is okay. I can call. I will get off the phone. I can call.
SM (01:26:15):
Yeah. I think about 30 more minutes. Is that okay?
TW (01:26:19):
Geez. God. Steven, can... Let us see, I have got about... I would probably have to leave here no later than a quarter till.
SM (01:26:33):
Oh, that is only 12 minutes from now. Okay. I bring up-
TW (01:26:34):
I am sorry. I just already set it up.
SM (01:26:35):
That is okay. We all know about things like the enemy's list of President Nixon and the COINTELPRO and McCarthyism, the rise from leaders, the infiltration within organizations that were against the war, where they tried to destroy character and careers. Speaking up, why is it that in a country that claims that we are a democracy and we go to war and die for liberty, which is all the freedoms that we know, but people who speak up, people who we do not become a yes man, people who challenge the system, people who see wrongs and try to right them, people who believe everyone is equal, and people who have the belief that we are all somebody, why is it that these people oftentimes are hurt the most?
TW (01:27:37):
Because the government does not like the spin against their policies, particularly when that dissent seems to threaten the policies, and because the government is often hypocritical. Government officials are often very hypocritical when they talk about, we are fighting, or we are fighting for freedom. It is so much empty sloganeering. It does not really mean that, unfortunately. So, it is not surprising that they will try to undercut their [inaudible]
SM (01:28:18):
Yeah. As I hear, what do these realities say about America, that Boomer youth experience, is this typical of the American way? Big Brother is watching us, especially if we are dissenters?
TW (01:28:35):
Well, I think it might have been of a larger scale during the Vietnam period than it has been fair in terms of the amount of government attempts to undermine the protest movement in all the different ways. They would send in undercover agents or try to stimulate infighting among the protestors through various means, [inaudible] pen letters or whatnot, and tapping telephones, and even breaking into some protest groups' offices. I think it was on a larger scale then, because of scales of dissent was a lot larger and quite a bit seemed to be at stake at that time, because, again, they were not sure how far this was going to go. Some people in the government were pretty concerned that this was going to grow to such an extent, you are talking about the threat of something really major, like insurrection or something. So, I think the stakes were higher at that time, and again, the scale of dissent with a lot greater. And I think that people are more aware of that now too, those [inaudible]. People learn how far the government will go to try to undermine the dissent during that period. So, people are more aware of it now.
SM (01:29:54):
Do you think we as a nation now, now this is two main questions I had for everybody since Senator McCarthy in (19)96, that we are a nation that has a problem with healing, particularly the Boomer generation? I took a group of students to Washington (19)95 and we met Senator Muskie, and the students came up with a question, because he had been the vice-presidential candidate in 1968, and they saw the videos of other disruptions, they knew about the assassinations and the so forth. So, this was their question. Due to the divisions that took place in the Boomer generation when they were young, divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against it, those who supported the troops and those who were against them, that this may generation is going to go to its grave like the Civil war generation did, not truly healing.
TW (01:30:48):
I do not think that is true. I think a lot of people who were involved... I can just speak for myself. I am much less inclined to, I do not want to contest somebody's political views that I disagree with now than I was back in the (19)70s, (19)80s. I am much more accepting of other people's political views and just basically of the feeling that this friendship is not worth getting [inaudible]. Whereas in the (19)70s, I would not have said that at all. I would have wanted to argue it out almost all the time. And I think a lot of other Baby Boomers would probably have the same sentiment, that they are much more accepting and honor other people's political views. And again, a lot of those people, of course, they are more [inaudible] anyway. But I have changed a lot in that regard, and I am quite sure that is true of a lot of other [inaudible]
SM (01:31:50):
Well, Senator Muskie, they thought he was going to talk about 1968, he did not even mention it. He said, we have not healed since the Civil War and the issue of race, and that is what he-
TW (01:32:00):
Oh, race, that is a whole different animal.
SM (01:32:03):
Yeah, that is what he talked about. Honestly, you are well-read, and you read a lot of books that came out in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, what were the books that you liked the most, the books that were written about the period of the (19)60s and (19)70s?
TW (01:32:19):
Well, I loved because Patrick Sale's book on SDS. That was really inspiring. I am looking at my bookshelf here. I like this collection of Greetings on the Weatherman, was interesting. There was another earlier book, early SDS, Democracy is in the Streets by James Miller, which you have probably read. I read a lot of various stuff on student protests, some of which is good and some of it is not. I am trying to get down to look at... I basically read everything I could get my hands on, on student protests. I cannot see half of my bookshelf.
SM (01:33:03):
Did you-
TW (01:33:03):
And that is where... I am afraid I cannot see how [inaudible 01:33:03] my books though.
SM (01:33:03):
Did you think that The Greening of America by Charles Reich and The Making of a Counterculture by Roszak were good books?
TW (01:33:11):
I did not read the first one. And the second one, I remember I read. I am hesitant to even say anything, but I did not really like Roszak's book. I do not remember.
SM (01:33:19):
Erik Erickson wrote some pretty good books too, and so did Kenneth Keniston.
TW (01:33:23):
Yeah, I have got several of Keniston's books. Those are some of the ones I read. But I have basically got four bookshelves full books.
SM (01:33:26):
Yeah. Strawberry Statement by James Kunen and-
TW (01:33:34):
[inaudible].
SM (01:33:34):
...The Student as Nigger by Jerry Ferber. Or Farber I think.
TW (01:33:38):
Yeah.
SM (01:33:40):
And Harry Edwards' Black Students was a great one. There is a lot of good ones. Do you like the term, Boomer?
TW (01:33:50):
It does... It is never bothered me. It is the biggest generation in history. American [inaudible]. Boomer and it was a boom. Boom and burst, right?
SM (01:34:01):
Yep.
TW (01:34:01):
Is that what we are talking about?
SM (01:34:05):
Yeah. Some people have had a problem. That do not like the term. And they do not like any terms that define a generation.
TW (01:34:11):
Oh. Well, that does not bother me.
SM (01:34:17):
Do you... I am looking here before my last question here. How important were the Beats in the... For the (19)60s?
TW (01:34:27):
You had some. I think they were... Were they not a precursor to the later counterculture?
SM (01:34:34):
I think so. Yes.
TW (01:34:35):
Yeah. And you had... They were a literary group, right? A literary countercultural group and a bunch of pretty smart guys. So, they were certainly a precursor for later counterculture. I am not sure how much they influenced the later counterculture.
SM (01:34:54):
When I took sociology class in the '60s. Well, I took it in (19)67 from Dr. Lee. I still remember we had to read See Right Now, The Organization Man-
TW (01:35:03):
Right.
SM (01:35:04):
...and some of those books. The Lonely Crowd by David Reisman. They really talked about the (19)50s and... Or post World War America leading up to 1960. And you learned a lot about the era and why the (19)60s may have come about. The last thing is...
TW (01:35:24):
I am sorry. Go ahead.
SM (01:35:24):
Yeah, go ahead. You are sociologists. Are those important books to you?
TW (01:35:33):
Mills was read by a lot of the student activists at the time. And Marcuse. Herbert Marcuse. Go ahead.
SM (01:35:38):
Yeah, this is... Since you only got a couple minutes here. Just what do these mean to you? These are real fast responses. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?
TW (01:35:50):
Recognition of all the people who lost their lives in an immoral and senseless war.
SM (01:35:57):
What does Watergate mean to you?
TW (01:36:03):
The lunacy of the underside of the Nixon administration.
SM (01:36:06):
What does Woodstock mean to you?
TW (01:36:12):
Counterculture.
SM (01:36:12):
Yeah. And what does counterculture mean to you?
TW (01:36:14):
Long hair, music, and a more liberated lifestyle.
SM (01:36:18):
What do the hippies and the yippies mean to you?
TW (01:36:22):
Well, the hippies are somewhat different because the hippies generally I think were more politically active. And they were politically active in a creative way. In some ways it maybe was not always that productive, but I associated a good sense of humor with the Yip. Yeah. Funny.
SM (01:36:38):
How about 1968? The year?
TW (01:36:42):
Well, a lot of stuff seemed to be coming to a head at that time for a lot of people back.
SM (01:36:47):
The free speech movement. Berkeley (19)64, (19)65.
TW (01:36:51):
Well, I think a lot of people at Berkeley found their voice.
SM (01:36:56):
Kent State and Jackson State in 1970.
TW (01:37:05):
Pouring fuel on the fire.
SM (01:37:06):
[inaudible].
TW (01:37:12):
No. Illuminating. Horribly illuminating.
SM (01:37:15):
Tet.
TW (01:37:19):
Turn around.
SM (01:37:21):
Earth Day.
TW (01:37:21):
That was a whole different scene.
SM (01:37:26):
The Black Panthers.
TW (01:37:26):
Militant.
SM (01:37:31):
Yeah. And of course, one thing I have had someone... Several people have said, "You cannot use the term straight Black Panthers. You got to talk about the personalities." And of course, they are referring to Huey Newton, Bobby Seal, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. They are... He said they are all unique personalities.
TW (01:37:54):
Well, I think you might find some people, probably including myself even, are hesitant to criticize the Black Panthers. Which was true at the time because you were concerned about other people perceiving you as racist. I think there was a lot of that going on at that time. A lot of it. Some of it still.
SM (01:38:10):
Stonewall.
TW (01:38:12):
Gay liberation.
SM (01:38:13):
American Indian movement.
TW (01:38:18):
Russell Means and what is the guy? Banks?
SM (01:38:20):
Yes.
TW (01:38:21):
Yeah.
SM (01:38:22):
The National Organization for Women, which is Betty Freidan and-
TW (01:38:25):
Gloria Steinem.
SM (01:38:25):
...Gloria Steinem.
TW (01:38:25):
Yeah.
SM (01:38:34):
And why do you feel... I will end with this. Why do you feel of all... Of the people in the... These are the people that I think when you think of the (19)60s and the (19)70s were the most disliked by the anti-war people or anybody on the left or anybody in the end. These are the ones that really set fires going. Left or right. And these were the names. Jane Fonda, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Spiro Agnew, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and William Westmoreland. There is something about them that really stirs people when you mention their names.
TW (01:39:14):
Well, I went... When you say both on the left and the right, I do not know if the main premise says everybody on the left. But I would just pick out the most visible architects and prosecutors of the war. Most inclined stuff to elicit that kind of reaction.
SM (01:39:36):
Are there... My last question. Are there any character? I know one of the things that they said. Only 15 percent of the Boomer generation was involved in any kind of activism.
TW (01:39:46):
Oh. Huh.
SM (01:39:46):
Some people felt that is even high. It is really more 5 percent.
TW (01:39:51):
Oh, really? Yeah, I do not know.
SM (01:39:52):
Yeah. See...
TW (01:39:52):
I am curious.
SM (01:39:54):
Huh?
TW (01:39:55):
I would be curious. Because I know it was always a minority and there were plenty of conservative students out there. But again, it was both. Conservative students. Because they act just the same.
SM (01:40:09):
Well, sometimes people used that to lessen the impact of a generation. That it was a minority. But it was a large minority, if you consider there was 74 million people.
TW (01:40:23):
Activists were always a minority.
SM (01:40:23):
Right.
TW (01:40:23):
In fact, I just... Briefly, I will tell you before I leave. When I got a bunch of these government officials to talk to me for that book, I spent a lot of time trying to phrase out my letters to them. And I decided I had better describe the anti-war movement as a vocal anti-war minority.
SM (01:40:35):
Say that again?
TW (01:40:38):
I decided after talking to several people that I better describe the anti-war movement as the vocal, anti-war minority. To try to get the government officials from Johnson and Nixon administration to talk to me. Particularly because I was a graduate student at first.
SM (01:40:52):
Right.
TW (01:40:52):
I was trying to come up with a way that would make them less likely to perceive me as a just Berkeley guy.
SM (01:40:59):
Wow. Yeah. And when you were trying to get people to be interviewed, were you getting one Yes and one No. Was it 50-50?
TW (01:41:09):
No, I was astounded in that. You mean the government people?
SM (01:41:12):
Oh, no. All the people you tried to reach for the book.
TW (01:41:16):
No, it was a definite majority. A substantial majority. I was... Yeah, it was a small minority that would not talk but it was... It was one of the most exciting times in my life. Getting responses from the Johnson and the Nixon people. That was exciting. I remember one day I got a positive response from Richard Helms, Dean Russ and somebody else like [inaudible]. Same day. That was exciting.
SM (01:41:41):
How would you even reach those people?
TW (01:41:42):
Oh, I tracked them down through Who's Who in America mostly. Now it is a lot easier with the internet, but it was mostly Who's Who in America. And then the anti-war activists, I called them all by phone. I just screwed up my courage, and I would get on a roll and call a bunch of people at once.
SM (01:41:57):
Well, so you were calling them. And so sometimes they did not respond to letters, but they responded to calls.
TW (01:42:04):
Well, I am talking... Actually, I am thinking more about my other two books in terms of not getting a letter. Not responding to a letter then having to call them. Because I was sending letters to almost everybody later. But yeah, I just found a huge number. In terms of what you are going through now, I think you are probably going to have to call a bunch of people and even keep pestering them. Not in a... In a nice way. But there were people I had to leave messages a bunch of times before I would find them. But I just did not give up. It is kind of the way I am.
SM (01:42:32):
Yeah. Well, I was getting just about everybody in the beginning. And now that I am almost completed, I have all these names. I do not know. They know who I have interviewed, and I am not getting as much of a response to some of these.
TW (01:42:46):
Oh, really?
SM (01:42:47):
Yeah, because I...
TW (01:42:48):
I think email is bad. I think email generally is probably not the best because some people get... There are people out there, maybe you are one of them, they get a huge amount of email.
SM (01:42:56):
Right.
TW (01:42:57):
And I think it just gets scary. And they are dealing with so much that I think it is much easier... I think you are going to have to call and maybe write letters and then it's... I know it is time consuming, but it is... I give up sometimes just because I do not feel like screwing my courage up to get on the phone. Keep the contact to somebody through a letter or email first. But third point, it is like, "Okay. If I really want to talk to this person, I got to try."
SM (01:43:17):
I am surprised how many people have never seen the email.
TW (01:43:21):
Oh, really?
SM (01:43:22):
Yeah, they get the email, but...
TW (01:43:24):
Well, that is...
SM (01:43:25):
Yeah. Some people do not even read their emails very often.
TW (01:43:29):
Yeah.
SM (01:43:29):
So, there is a lot of that. So probably the phone call is important.
TW (01:43:34):
Yeah, I think it is. I think there is probably... You will probably have to do more of that.
SM (01:43:35):
Yeah. All right.
TW (01:43:35):
I better go.
SM (01:43:42):
Yeah. The last. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of the Boomer generation, when the best sociology and history books are written 50 years from now?
TW (01:43:49):
The (19)60s.
SM (01:43:56):
The (19)60s will be the legacy?
TW (01:44:00):
Well, I see... Like I said, I am not really a student of the Baby Boom generation. When I think about the Baby Boom generation, I think about the (19)60s. About that-
SM (01:44:09):
You are part of it, though.
TW (01:44:11):
...and the universities.
SM (01:44:11):
Yeah. You are part of it though. Because you were born in what? (19)55?
TW (01:44:17):
Yeah, but I do... I was in the middle of the... Essentially the middle of that demographic.
SM (01:44:19):
Right.
TW (01:44:20):
On the other hand, I really was not part of the (19)60s protest. When I graduated from high school... I am 73.
SM (01:44:27):
Right.
TW (01:44:28):
So, I was not part of it.
SM (01:44:29):
So, any other things you want to say or basically that is it?
TW (01:44:33):
No, I actually better go. In fact, I got to call my friend and tell him.
SM (01:44:36):
Okay.
TW (01:44:38):
Hey, thanks very much Stephen. I enjoyed it.
SM (01:44:39):
Yeah, somehow, I got to get two pictures of you.
TW (01:44:42):
Okay. Two?
SM (01:44:44):
Two pictures. You can mail them to me. That is the best thing.
TW (01:44:46):
Can I take one on my computer?
SM (01:44:48):
Yep, you can do that as well.
TW (01:44:50):
Okay.
SM (01:44:51):
Thanks. Have a good day.
TW (01:44:51):
Yeah. Nice talking to you.
SM (01:44:53):
Same here. Bye.
(End of Interview)
Description
2 Microcassettes
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Tom Wells
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wells, Tom ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Editors; Historians; Authors; United States—History—1961-1969;Wells, Tom--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Tom Wells is an editor, historian, and author. Dr. Wells wrote several books and contributed articles to multiple books on the Vietnam War and the 1960s. He has also received dozens of fellowships and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other institutions. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.121a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.121b
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
216:23
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5b81b4ca47d15dd45a771fdd0a65f680.jpg
9f14e7674f9263d409d46136bbf4ce67
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/332bec315a07f791fce10cbc3143cda0.mp3
4fa17c6941eaf614bfe44deb28c21ecf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
2010-08-19/20
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mark D. Naison, 1946- ; Steven Hager
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Steve Hager is writer, journalist, filmmaker, and counterculture activist. Hager was the first reporter to document the hip hop movement of the South Bronx . Later, he became an editor of High Times and founded the Cannabis Cup. Hager is the leading figure in the hemp legalization movement of the '90s. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Theater (Playwriting), and a Master's degree in Journalism, both from the University of Illinois."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Mark Naison, a native of Brooklyn, is a Professor of African and African-American Studies and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University. Dr. Naison, a former political activist, was a member of Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. He is a founder of the Bronx Youth Employment Project, "Save a Generation." He earned his Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, and Ph.D. in American History at Columbia University.<br /><br />Steve Hager is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and counterculture activist. Hager was the first reporter to document the hip hop movement of the South Bronx. Later, he became an editor of <em>High Times</em> and founded the Cannabis Cup. Hager is a leading figure in the hemp legalization movement of the '90s. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Theater (Playwriting) and a Master's degree in Journalism, both from the University of Illinois.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Blue collar workers; Union; Socialists; Anti-communists; Black Panther Party; Optimism; Racism; Depression; Civil Rights Movement; Black women; Midnight black radio; Upward bound Columbia; Hostility; Black Power; Violence; Drugs culture; Prison-industrial complex; Vietnam; Baby boom generation; Unequal nation; Wealth gap."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">Blue collar workers; Union; Socialists; Anti-communists; Black Panther Party; Optimism; Racism; Depression; Civil Rights Movement; Black women; Midnight black radio; Upward bound Columbia; Hostility; Black Power; Violence; Drugs culture; Prison-industrial complex; Vietnam; Baby boom generation; Unequal nation; Wealth gap.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
220:18
Subject LCSH
College teachers; African Americans—Study and teaching; Fordham University; Naison, Mark D., 1946--Interviews; Authors; Journalists; Motion picture producers and directors; Marijuana—Law and legislation; Hager, Steven--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Mark Naison and Steven Hager
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Naison, Mark D., 1946- ; Hager, Steven ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
College teachers; African Americans—Study and teaching; Fordham University; Naison, Mark D., 1946--Interviews; Authors; Journalists; Motion picture producers and directors; Marijuana—Law and legislation; Hager, Steven--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Mark Naison, a native of Brooklyn, is a Professor of African and African-American Studies and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University. Dr. Naison, a former political activist, was a member of Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. He is a founder of the Bronx Youth Employment Project, "Save a Generation." He earned his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and PhD in American History at Columbia University.<br /><br /><span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Mark Naison, a native of Brooklyn, is a Professor of African and African-American Studies and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University. Dr. Naison, a former political activist, was a member of Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. He is a founder of the Bronx Youth Employment Project, \"Save a Generation.\" He earned his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and PhD in American History at Columbia University. Steve Hager is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and counterculture activist. Hager was the first reporter to document the hip hop movement of the South Bronx. Later, he became an editor of High Times and founded the Cannabis Cup. Hager is the leading figure in the hemp legalization movement of the '90s. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Theater (Playwriting), and a Master's degree in Journalism, both from the University of Illinois."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">Steve Hager is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and counterculture activist. Hager was the first reporter to document the hip hop movement of the South Bronx. Later, he became an editor of <em>High Times</em> and founded the Cannabis Cup. Hager is a leading figure in the hemp legalization movement of the '90s. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Theater (Playwriting) and a Master's degree in Journalism, both from the University of Illinois.</span>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-19/20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.91a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.91b
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
220:18
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7483b77fe6836c46fd2e204e7364a7a2.jpg
78742cada5b6d7d40c4a836cba4152ae
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/df8ff4e6d1612c19e2ebb8924a0234ae.mp3
fb908500154eb5fd42b293df6c8b245b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
2010-08-21
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Walter Naegle
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Walter Naegle is the partner of the late civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin and is executive director of the Bayard Rustin Fund. Naegle has a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Fordham University. Decades before gay marriage was an option, Rustin adopted Naegle to formalize their relationship."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7043,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Walter Naegle is the partner of the late civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin and is executive director of the Bayard Rustin Fund. Naegle has a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Fordham University. Decades before gay marriage was an option, Rustin adopted Naegle to formalize their relationship.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
124:59
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Non-violence; Civil rights movement; Folk music; Joan Baez; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Conscientious objector; Christianity; VISTA; Trust."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588}}">Non-violence; Civil rights movement; Folk music; Joan Baez; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Conscientious objector; Christianity; VISTA; Trust.</span>
Subject LCSH
Rustin, Bayard, 1912-1987;Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Naegle, Walter--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Walter Naegle
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Naegle, Walter ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Rustin, Bayard, 1912-1987;Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Naegle, Walter--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Walter Naegle is the partner of the late civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin and is executive director of the Bayard Rustin Fund. Naegle has a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Fordham University. Decades before gay marriage was an option, Rustin adopted Naegle to formalize their relationship.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.92
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
124:59
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7e2bbb66895cfed9b18c9779f5589c99.jpg
478af761d19d0de05e7a18eb1f77e2e7
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2c0c0c6bd7763cb3a56561c19e9f3bf2.mp3
31bc8a61633b8734bcb313bf4a1a87ba
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
2010-08-22
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Rosalind P. Petchesky
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
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Duration
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93:26
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588}}">Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics.</span>
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Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews
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Interview with Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky
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audio/wav
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Petchesky, Rosalind P. ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews
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Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-08-22
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.93
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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93:26
-
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Format
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Shawn Wong, 1949-
Date of Interview
2010-08-23
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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MicroCassette
Material Type
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Interview Format
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Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Shawn Wong is a Chinese American author and scholar. He received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley and his Master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Wong was a Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program, Chair of the Department of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13309,"3":{"1":1},"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Shawn Wong is a Chinese American author and scholar. He received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley and his Master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Wong was a Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program, Chair of the Department of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Communism in China; Baby boom generation, Asian-Americans; Civil Rights Movement; Internment camps; Gender roles; Vietnam War; McCarthyism."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Communism in China; Baby boom generation, Asian-Americans; Civil Rights Movement; Internment camps; Gender roles; Vietnam War; McCarthyism.</span>
Duration
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228:32
Subject LCSH
Chinese American authors; Scholars; College teachers; Wong, Shawn, 1949--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Shawn Wong
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 August 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two, three. Very good. I got a series of questions here and, of course, a lot of it may be spontaneous too, in response to your replies. I thought before we even start, I just want to say that I think it is very important in this project, when I am looking at the Boomer Generation, that I include everyone, and I have been trying to make this effort. And I also realize that sometimes when you talk about the Boomer Generation, born between (19)46 and (19)64, that ... I am looking at Boomers now more in terms of spirit because some of the people that were born say in (19)38 to (19)45 have told me, in no uncertain terms, that they feel like they're part of the generation, and then some even born afterwards too. So, it is kind of a spiritual thing as well as years-wise. First question. Still there?
SW (00:01:03):
Yeah.
SM (00:01:03):
Could you tell me a ... I have read your background. I know about it, but this is going to be in the book. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself? I know you grew up in Oakland. Your growing up years, what it was like being an Asian American male in Oakland, in the Bay Area, and basically information like who are your role models, people that you looked up to?
SW (00:01:28):
Sure. Actually, I was born in Oakland, but I grew up in Berkeley. We were living at Berkeley at the time, and my parents were students at UC Berkeley at the time. And other than the most obvious, parents being your role models. Both of my parents came from China, so they were part of that generation that came over after World War II, and intended to go back to China. But the communists took over China in 1949, and they elected to stay in the US, and the US allowed them to stay. So, I was born in (19)49, and I think I was lucky in that I was born in the Bay Area, and grew up in the Bay Area, because there were sort of Asian American role models around. I remember my mother always telling me that I was Chinese American but, as a kid, you do not really understand that. She said that my dad and her, they were Chinese, but I was Chinese American. And of course, I did not understand what that meant until years later. But one story that I always tell is that when I was about eight years old, UC Berkeley had a great football team. And I think in 1958, it was the last team to go to the Rose Bowl. But on the football team, they had a Japanese American football player, and his name was Pete Domoto. And I had never seen an Asian American doing something like that. Most Asian Americans were, Asian people, were engineers and doctors, not really any faces in pop culture or sports. And as a kid, I used to go to the Cal football games and, at the end of the game, a lot of kids would run down on the field, and try to get autographs or ... I remember football players often gave away parts of their uniforms, like their chin straps and stuff like that. And I remember running down there, and trying to get a close up look at Pete Domoto to see if he really did look Asian, and to get his autograph. And I never got his autograph, but I remember he was a real role model to me.
SM (00:04:39):
What became of him?
SW (00:04:41):
I will tell you in a second. One of the funny things is that [inaudible 00:04:46] kids, just like other kids at the time, I wanted to be Willie Mays, and things like that, but there were no Asian role models except for Pete, because he was on this famous award-winning football team. He became kind of a target of mine. And when I played football with my friends, my buddies, I would always pretend I was Pete Domoto. He did not play a glamorous position, he was left guard, but that is what I wanted to be. A left guard. And so when I first started ... I used to tell this story a lot, and when I moved up here to Seattle, I remember somebody asking me the same question about role models. And I told this story. And one day I was sitting here in my office at the UW and I get a call, and I answer the phone, and the person says, "This is a voice from your past."
SM (00:05:57):
Oh, my gosh.
SW (00:05:58):
I go, "Who is this jokester?" [inaudible] And you never know who is at the other end. And he said, "This is Pete Domoto." And I was stunned. I felt like I was eight years old. I said, "Pete Domoto? Number 60? Left guard at the Cal Bears?" I knew ... I remembered his number. And he goes, "Yeah."
SM (00:06:28):
Oh, my gosh.
SW (00:06:29):
[inaudible] talking about me. And I said, "Yes, I have." I said, "Wow, I cannot believe you're calling me." And I said, "Where are you calling from?" And he goes, "Well, it just so happens, I am the head of pediatric dentistry here at the University of Washington."
SM (00:06:50):
Oh, my gosh.
SW (00:06:53):
And he says to me, "Would you like to have lunch?" And I go, " Yeah."
SM (00:07:01):
You can get his autograph.
SW (00:07:03):
Yeah. I even said on the phone, "Can I have your autograph?" I reverted to my eight-year-old self.
SM (00:07:12):
My, what a story.
SW (00:07:14):
So, we went and had the lunch, and I remember calling a friend of mine as soon as I hung up, who was an executive at Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, and he was my age and grew up in Berkeley, and he was also Chinese. And I called him and I said, "Andrew, guess what? Guess who just called me?" And I said, "Pete Domoto." And he goes, "No way." And my friend Andrew said, "I still have his autograph."
SM (00:07:45):
Oh, my gosh.
SW (00:07:47):
So Pete had a, I think, a big effect on Baby Boomer Asian kids growing up in the Bay Area. And this was way before having a role model like Bruce Lee or other Asian Americans who have sort of made it into pop culture. The only Asian images in the movies were these very, very stereotypical images played by actors who were not even Asian, like Charlie Chan. Or we were always the villain or the enemy in World War II movies, or ... there were not really any positive images, or we were Hop Sing on Bonanza. Servant, laundry man, soldier, enemy soldiers, things like that. So, it was important to have somebody like Pete Domoto around.
SM (00:08:53):
Yeah, that is an unbelievable story.
SW (00:08:56):
Yeah. We became friends. I got his autograph. I even brought a ... at his retirement party, he asked me to come and speak at his retirement party. I brought a football. A UC Berkeley football, and I asked for his autograph again.
SM (00:09:15):
Wow. You're talking about growing up in the late forties and (19)50s, a lot of the Boomer kids, and whether ... I read the history books. Now we are talking general histories now, we are not talking Dr. Takaki and some of the others that have really concentrated on the Asian American community. I was a big Iris Chang fan too, and that was a big loss killing herself. But the thing is, what was it like ... when you watch those television shows, a lot of people look at 1950s TV, and certainly if you're an African American, you rarely see a person of color except for Amos and Andy. And then Nat King Cole had a six-week run in the middle (19)50s. And other than that, you wait to the early (19)60s for I Spy and-
SW (00:10:10):
Right. All you had were, if you look at other role models, [inaudible], Tonto.
SM (00:10:19):
Now, you obviously were very conscious of not seeing very many role models. Was that pretty prevalent amongst kids your age for that period?
SW (00:10:32):
Yeah, I think so. We looked at our peers, and lots of our peers had role models. Baseball players, football players. Or we found role models and other people that were involved in pop culture. Musicians, artists, things like that. And I think we were looking specifically for Asian American, not Asians from Asia. Obviously, people would say, "Well, be proud that you are Chinese. Chinese invented gunpowder and paper," et cetera, et cetera. I'd never even been to that country.
SM (00:11:26):
When I first started this process, I remember one person said to me, "You are talking about the Boomer Generation. When I see that term, I think of white men. I do not even think of people of color." And they were not even thinking of women. They were thinking ... but I said, "No, the effort is to try to reach all particular groups, because the Boomer Generation was a boom for everybody." And in your own words, can you describe, as best you can, the Asian American experience in the United States in the following timeframes? I know this is just general, which in ... I know I am going to get more specific later on, but what was America like for Asian Americans during the following periods? And the first one is 1946 to 1960.
SW (00:12:20):
Well, that was a time when, certainly, I was in school, and schools were dominated by pretty much monocultural education, as you know. Columbus discovered America, George Washington never told a lie, et cetera, et cetera.
SM (00:12:41):
He cut down a cherry tree.
SW (00:12:44):
And someone like me never saw an image in any of the books that had any kind of resemblance to reality. Obviously, multicultural education was a long ways off. And I had the good fortune of going to schools that were, for the most part in the Bay Area, and they were very sort of racially mixed, especially in Berkeley. But I do remember, in the second grade, my father took a job as a civilian engineer for the Navy. And my first grade, I was lived on Guam. And second grade, we moved to Taiwan. And that is my first experience being in an Asian country, other than visiting Hong Kong or relatives or stuff like that. But we lived in Taiwan, and the first day of school, the US Navy bus came by to pick my mother and I up, and she went with me. And I remember the story my mother tells me, told me the story, I do not quite remember it, but I remember parts of it, the US Navy bus came by, this gray typical Navy bus, picked us up in front of our house, and we both got on the bus. And as soon as I got on the bus, all the kids on the bus started chanting, "No Chinese allowed on this bus," because it was basically a white ... all for white American kids. And I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, it's okay. She's my mom."
SM (00:14:43):
Wow.
SW (00:14:44):
I think they were referring to me. And I sat down in the chair, and this is the part I do remember. A little girl named Pam came up to my mother and said, "Can I sit next to your son?" She said, "Sure." And she sat next to me and held my hand, and we rode together on the bus every day after that.
SM (00:15:13):
And what was your age?
SW (00:15:15):
Second grade. I was like seven or eight. I think I was seven, at the time. And so, it was really interesting to be an American in a Chinese country, and to have been brought up American, and I did not really speak Chinese. I sort of understood it. My parents spoke Mandarin. But growing up, at that time, that was sort of ... since my father worked for the Navy, we traveled around a lot. And by the third grade, he had come home to Berkeley. My father passed away of lung cancer when I was seven.
SM (00:16:07):
Sorry.
SW (00:16:11):
So we grew up there, and then my mother remarried a few years later. We moved to LA with my stepfather, which was a real awakening, I think. In the sixth grade, I went to inner city school in LA. And sort of been coddled in this nice Berkeley school, suddenly I find myself in the inner city with African Americans and Latinos. And they were hardcore kids, but certainly not as hardcore as they are now. But it was a real wake-up call. The whole school was Asian, and Latino, and Black, and different kinds of Asians. It was really shocking to me, and I thought I would not even survive that last year of [inaudible] elementary school.
SM (00:17:12):
And what year was that?
SW (00:17:14):
That was 1960.
SM (00:17:19):
(19)60.
SW (00:17:20):
And from there we moved to the suburbs, and the school became basically entirely white.
SM (00:17:30):
When you look at that period right after the war right to the time that President Kennedy was elected. Obviously, Japanese Americans had been interred in World War II concentration camps, really, out in the West. And of course, when the war ended, there was this attitude in America against the Japanese. I can remember growing up as a kid in the (19)50s up near Syracuse, and Ithaca, and Cortland, New York, World War II people saying Japs. They always used that term, because they had really ... they had hurt our boys, as they said. They had really done terrible things to our boys. So, the basic question I am asking you, and I know that the Chinese Americans, at that particular time, were working in all kinds of plants. So, they were more favored at that time, were not they, than Japanese? And then the restriction between those groups. So, there's not only cultural issues, but there's groups issues between Asian Americans.
SW (00:18:42):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, in many ways, the history of Chinese in America is that they, in the 18 hundreds, they were the pariah race of America, all these exclusion laws to keep them out of the country. And then, when World War II broke out, they were praised for, basically, not being Japanese, and then received acceptance until, of course, the communists took over China, and then Korean War came, and suddenly China became a threat. So the Chinese went back to being suspect race in many ways. And then, in the early (19)60s, when the civil rights began, Asians were then praised again for not being black, and the depiction of the model minority sort of started. There was a Newsweek article, I think, or US News and World Report article about 1962, I believe it was the first article to reference this model minority thing. And the article was called Out Whiting the Whites, and creating ... and essentially, congratulating Asians in America for their achievement. But the underlying message was you are not Black, and you are not [inaudible] all this ruckus. So, it has been an interesting history of what you might call ... oh, I do not know. In one book I wrote, I called it The Great Suffering and Acceptance Sweepstakes. You go through these periods of acceptance and rejection.
SM (00:20:59):
When you think of the (19)50s, you do not even ... again, I am just using this as a white person who's done a lot of reading and scholars, you hear about the Japanese and the Chinese, but you do not hear about many of the other groups. And occasionally, you might hear a little bit about the Vietnamese even before then, but other than when you're talking Asian Americans, you really ... people are probably only thinking Japanese and Chinese, are not they, really, in the (19)50s?
SW (00:21:27):
Much until after World War II, and then more Filipinos started to come. And after World War II, you had a lot of war brides. And then, of course, after 1961, immigration laws were ... LBJ signed into law reforms on immigration [inaudible]-
SM (00:22:01):
But what do you think the-
SW (00:22:03):
Remove some of the quotas. But essentially there were severe restrictions on Chinese until 1943, and World War II basically removed all of those immigration restrictions against the Chinese. It had to, because now China was an ally.
SM (00:22:28):
The question I always bring up here, particularly for those Asian Americans that were born in the United States, either during World War II or after, I consider them kind of together. I am learning that they need to be together, because that had similar experiences, and spiritually they went through a lot of things together.
SW (00:22:51):
And also judged by the same stereotype. It did not matter if, say, you were Chinese or Japanese. [inaudible] media stereotype [inaudible].
SM (00:23:01):
What do you think the impact on Boomers that were born in that period, who were Japanese and Chinese, the ... were they having the same ... they were having the biases and prejudices within the American society, but were they ... African Americans were still fighting for equality in the South. We had young, even white and Jewish Americans going South, and Catholic priests, to help the African Americans in the early (19)60s. And then, of course, we had the free speech movement. And just so much happening in the (19)50s that really was the forerunner to the (19)60s, and I just want to know the influence that this had on Asian American Boomers.
SW (00:23:54):
Well, I think among the Boomers we identified with the ... we came of age during the civil rights movement. So we stopped being Orientals and became Asian. And the term Asian American was coined. It became a political term just like Afro-American during [inaudible 00:24:19] particularly. So the beginnings of the free speech movement, particularly if you lived in Berkeley, you were affected by that movement. And then I went to UC Berkeley during the ... all the period during a demonstration. And Boomers grew up during the, not only civil rights, but also Vietnam War. And particularly for Asian Americans in which US was fighting a war against an Asian country. Again, when we were children, we were now also depicted as enemy. And so that stereotype of the ... it did not matter whether the enemy was Japanese or Vietnamese or communist Chinese, it all got blended together in terms of popular media. And you're sitting there as a member of the Asian American Boomer Generation, and watching the war unfold on TV, and those images of Asians as the enemy.
SM (00:25:39):
Do you have the number of Asian Americans who fought in the Korean War, and in the Vietnam War?
SW (00:25:46):
Yeah. There was a number of Asian Americans in World War II, and the Korean War. World War II, of course, the Japanese Americans, they got the highest profile for 442nd regiment. But in the Vietnam War, there were a lot of ... I do not know the number, but there were a lot of Asian American veterans. In the early (19)70s, some friends of mine, we had a little radio show on KPFA in Berkeley, in which we interviewed returning Asian American Vietnam men, and the difficult adjustment they had in the military as well as afterwards, in which they were subjected to a daily barrage of racial stereotyping, and the enemy being referred to by all the derogatory Asian names.
SM (00:27:06):
Wow.
SW (00:27:06):
And I remember one veteran telling me when he got to Vietnam, his sergeant told him, "Ever take off your uniform, grow a beard, and do not ever go swimming, because we cannot tell you apart from the enemy." So, there you are living in that kind of state, and listening to the kind of racial epithets every day.
SM (00:27:44):
So basically, the Asian American military experience in Vietnam may be similar to what African Americans were going through, because the nation was really split apart at that time. And African American vets, particularly between (19)67 and (19)71, when they say the military really went downhill, they got involved in drugs and long hair and rock music. Were Asian Americans in the same boat, except they ... they had similar feelings?
SW (00:28:22):
Well, I think so. As you know, the draft was on then. So, the draft, obviously, targeted people who did not have a deferment at the time. No student deferment, no ... so many of the soldiers came from a particular class of America. And then, of course, later in the war, they removed all deferments, so you could not even get a student deferment. As we know, it was not only an unpopular war, but those who did serve, they, I think, got it from both sides. They got it not only from within, the racism that was present within, the culture of the armed forces then, but also on the outside from those of us who did not believe in the war. I think nobody blamed the soldier, but certainly felt alienated.
SM (00:29:35):
When you look at, going the next period, you have talked already a little bit about the (19)60s. But that being an Asian American during that 1961 to 1970 period, I might even say (19)61 to (19)73, because a lot of people say the (19)60s really ended ... went until (19)73, (19)74, and the Vietnam War ended in (19)75. So maybe from (19)61 to (19)75, what was it like to be Asian American in America at that particular time? And I also, and I am going to preface this by saying, were Asian Americans also involved in the anti-war movement?
SW (00:30:15):
Yeah, they definite ... well, I have a little bit of acute view having grown up in Berkeley, so I cannot really speak for all Asian Americans across the country. But certainly Asian Americans were very much politically involved, particularly, from where I stood. And it was not only the civil rights movement going on, but the anti-war movement, but also the rise of the demonstration to establish ethnic studies in universities, and Asian American studies. And everybody was sort of involved in the act of renaming themselves and re-identifying themselves, picking on political labels like Asian American. Negroes stop being Negroes. It became Afro-American. Asians stopped being Oriental, became Asian. Things like that. So, I think, as I recall, it seemed like the entire population was united in all of these efforts to end the war, to make, since we were all in college at that time, to make our universities be relevant to our experience, to recognize us, and to sort of react against that kind of monocultural education that we grew up in. Education ... I did not find out about Japanese internment camps until I was a senior in high school, which little paragraph in the history book. I went to Berkeley High School, and there is this little paragraph, and I remember sitting there going, "What are these?" And what's interesting is even my Japanese friends are saying, "Well, what are these things?" And we were up in arms. Finally, we had a cause.
SM (00:32:31):
Yeah. It is like-
SW (00:32:32):
It rooted itself in history. And I remember my Japanese American friends would go home and say to their parents, "Wow, there are these internment camps." And the parent said, "Yeah, we were in them." And then the kids would say, "Well, why did not you tell me about them?" "You never asked." And it was something that Japanese America was ashamed about and tried to erase.
SW (00:33:03):
About and tried to erase and tried to keep in the background. But the boomer generation that arrived in college now wanted to make some noise. Now wanted to rectify history. Later in the (19)80s, it was that boomer generation that started the redress movement to get redress for town.
SM (00:33:26):
That was the (19)80s to (19)90s period of the Reagan and Bush.
SW (00:33:29):
Yeah. So Reagan finally signed into law redress and Japanese Americans who were in camp got paid redress. Then it was the boomers who finally arrived in positions of influence as civil rights attorneys, et cetera, et cetera. Who brought that cause forward. All of that stuff that was happening in the early (19)60s was our education outside of academia to build a social and political consciousness that would move forward with us into our professional careers.
SM (00:34:17):
Obviously, you were at Berkeley and Berkeley has always been a progressive way ahead, a forerunner of things to come. A lot of people criticize it now that it is not doing that. Except I believe it still is because we see the students protesting their tuition increases. Some graduate students have actually left out of silent protest over those increases. But when you look at the period from the (19)90s, let us say from when Bill Clinton became president through George Bush and then President Obama, that 20-year period, what have the (19)90s and the first 10 years of the 21st century meant? For not only boomer Asian Americans, but Asian Americans as a whole?
SW (00:35:08):
Yeah. Well the face of Asian America changed completely post mid-(19)70s. When I was going to college, even at UC Berkeley, Asian Americans made up 6 percent of the student population in Berkeley. And it was mostly Chinese and Japanese American middle class. And now on any big metropolitan flagship public university, you might have anywhere from 12 to 15 different kinds of Asian ethnic groups on campus. I think the face of Asian America changed drastically with that new immigration. That new first generation gave birth to an Asian American generation that grew up in America and entered college. During that period, the first Vietnamese who came over and after the fall of Saigon, those kids are the ones who just starting college during the period you are talking about. So, what you had was an interesting mix of maybe fifth, sixth, even seventh generation Chinese Americans and the fourth generation Japanese Americans mixed in with brand new immigrants and second generation, southeast Asian generation. And in American Chinatowns for example, the face of an American Chinatown changed drastically. Chinese Americans at the time would go into Chinatown and not recognize any food anymore. Cause new immigrants took the place that traditional American Chinese American Chinatown, the town.
SM (00:37:41):
I know Vietnamese food is unbelievable.
SW (00:37:44):
Cuisine chain. Part of that typical Chinese American fair the Chinese Americans could not even recognize. I remember during that time in maybe the late (19)70s being asked at a restaurant one time, "What kind of noodles do you want?" What do you mean what kind of noodles? And then they rattled off a list of the different kinds of noodles.
SM (00:38:15):
Wow.
SW (00:38:16):
Oh wow. I do not even know what they are. Shanghai noodles and this kind of noodles. And so whereas other ethnic communities tended to stay the same. I remember a great article in San Francisco magazine in which an Italian American in North Beach was lamenting that his buddies, his neighbors, his Chinese neighbors that he's lived with his whole life have moved away. And he's saying, my new neighbors do not even speak English. That was a great comment because he's lamenting that the other Chinese moved away. Replaced by these new immigrants.
SM (00:39:08):
Well, when you look at higher education, and of course the evolution here of going in the 1950s, when you see the numbers of students in the (19)50s and going into the (19)60s and (19)70s, and you see this major progress with the state universities, not only in California but in New York Community college, state university systems. They're evolving at the same time that the increase in population of Asian Americans is happening. And then to me, and this just as a white person who has spent 33 years in higher education, that Asian Americans, their future is so directly linked to higher ed. And they were with it, so to speak, in terms of making for progress and for growth and development and developing careers. They saw the value of education.
SW (00:40:06):
Yeah. Right. I think that a case in which the previous generation who grew up after World War II or even before World War II, our parents' generation, they lived during a time in which there was second class citizenship. You could have been trained to be an engineer, but you could not get a job as an engineer even if you went to college. And my father was an exception that they actually got a job as an engineer. But it was difficult for our parents' generation to, even if they went to college, being able to find work because of there were not any equal opportunity things or [inaudible] laws, stuff like that. This is the time. I remember my mother going on a rant one day about when she was laid off from her job. This was after she had married my stepfather. And she and my stepfather both worked in the aerospace industry. She was a draftsman, an engineer. And she got laid off from the job and she came home and she said her supervisor told her she was laid off because one, my stepfather still worked for the company and two between her and the other guy, the other draftsman had to support his family.
SM (00:42:02):
Oh my gosh.
SW (00:42:04):
Of course, this is also at a time in which women were paid less than men. And I remember my mother just going on this rant because she was a single mother after my father died and she had to work to support us. And just at a time when all of my friends' mothers were home and they were housewives. None of my mother's friends worked. And those are the last vestiges of 1950s America.
SM (00:42:52):
So, people think, again, they always think of these white fathers and mothers where the mother's at home, but this is really America.
SW (00:42:59):
I remember it was my first lesson in gender issues. I remember thinking to myself, that is unfair. I was there when my mother had the struggle.
SM (00:43:16):
Go ahead.
SW (00:43:17):
So I think a lot of that, the boomer generation took forward because we were that first generation who got to go to college and go into the field that we majored in and graduated. Finally, that opportunity was open. I think our parents wanted us to go to college. But also, I think it was different for my parents because they were both college educated and when they came to America, they were already read and speak English. But for families that had to make a big cultural adjustment, they saw that as the opportunity for children to improve.
SM (00:44:25):
I had just some developments that happened in the United States in the world after World War II and wondering how they affected the Asian Americans here on the home front and also the immigration of those who came here during this time. I will just lift these and then you can comment on any of them if you want to. We all think about Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution in the late forties. And of course college students were carrying his little red booklet around college campuses. I know a couple students that actually read it too. So, it was not like it was just for show for some, but what Mao really stood for. Secondly, we know that Nixon went to China and despite what a lot of people dislike about him, a lot of people think that was a very important thing to happen. Thirdly, Iris Chang who passed away, she gave a speech about a couple of months before she died, and she talked about in the (19)90s about the spying about Asian Americans being accused of being spy. So, now Chinese Americans, again, were being looked upon in a negative way. And the fourth item, and you can comment on any of them, de facto may have had on the population as a whole, Tienanmen Square to me, was one of the most important events in my lifetime as a person who devoted my life to higher ed. And to see what happened to those students at Tienanmen Square was like the students at Kent State University. There is no excuse for it. And I just want to know what those events, how those four things affected the Asian American community.
SW (00:46:24):
I think those of us who were born in America and were Chinese American, I think we had a very complicated relationship with those world events. The first being Nixon's visit to China. You have to remember it is a country that our parents may have come from, but we had never been to, and suddenly the world's attention is on. And there was a great CBS documentary that was done just before Nixon went to China and it was called Misunderstanding China. And it was a look at narrated by Charles Kuralt, who had hair then. He introduced the documentary by showing all of these stereotypical movie images. So, this is what we know about China. Then they move into reality, the kind of China that you might be exposed when Nixon goes there in the media. So, I think for many of us, we have been combating media stereotypes of being Chinese in America for such a long time. Now we are on the cusp with Nixon's trip to China and afterwards of reality. And even China of itself is being revealed in a way that has never been seen before. I remember a bunch of things. Insane or really interesting things like the Chinese food is not like the Chinese food we have at home, my God. But there were a bunch of things that happened during that period. I think Chinese Americans fought hard not to be defined by it because it was on everybody's tongue. It was now acceptable to go to China. Nixon opened to China basically, and now Americans could go there to get visas to visit China. And then years later when everybody started to go to China, I remember people would tell me about their visits to China and they would talk to me as if I knew what they were talking about. They would say, oh, you know, Forbidden City. And I would just nod my head. I felt reluctant to tell them, in the (19)90s, but I had not been there. They just assumed I have been there, somehow, I have been there. My first visit to China was not until 1998, and that was to, we were not counting Hong Kong, but that was to Shanghai for three days. I arrived there and I figured it out, but something like 50 years to the day when my parents left China. And so we had this odd relationship, that China not really recognizing Chinese Americans for decades. Because I think China felt that you were in that generation that left China, but you overseas Chinese were basically clumped together. And in China we did not really have an identity in a way. Only recently has China shown real academic interest in Chinese America, Chinese American history.
SM (00:51:02):
The Tienanmen Square situation though in 1989, I would like your thoughts on it because obviously it was a major event in the world. But I can remember coming back to my university in late August, September. No one wanted to talk about it. And what amazed me is we had quite a few students from China, the international student organization, that did not even want to talk about it. And I think maybe they were here on visas and they were fearful of it and I could not understand. So what I ended up having to do was I went to Temple University and got three graduate students who were not afraid to speak up. They were strong activists and I brought them to the university and even still then the Chinese students did not come out to see them for fear that if they were in the audience, they would be watched. We were a small school. What is it about Tienanmen Square? To me it was about democracy.
SW (00:52:06):
Yeah. I think for the foreign students, it was something that they were, I think rightly afraid of to comment on. Get them expelled from the US they thought, or they might have repercussions back home, or their family. But I think for Chinese Americans, boomers particularly, it was something we recognized. It was that kind of public defiance that we grew up with at the (19)60s and (19)70s and it resembled the free speech movement. It had all the earmarks except for the tanks and all the earmarks of the things that we had gone through. But even with the tanks, I mean certainly we got tear gas from helicopters and things like that. And then as you mentioned, Kent State.
SM (00:53:14):
Yes.
SW (00:53:16):
On one event, it captured all of the events of the (19)60s and early (19)70s when our campuses were on fire and on strike and being shut down. Civil disobedience was something Boomers recognized [inaudible] plot. And if you look now you look at China. You think, oh, I do not think this is what Mao had in mind.
SM (00:53:55):
Well, it is interesting though that my nephew went to China about four years ago. And when he got on the plane, they were all counseling. They said one thing you do not talk about when you get over to China, it is Tienanmen Square. And you're going to go Tienanmen Square but if you start talking about the 1989, they will put you on a plane back to America.
SW (00:54:16):
Yeah.
SM (00:54:17):
And I say, you got to be kidding me. No. Then they will not allow any protests even to this day on Tienanmen Square. And-
SW (00:54:25):
You can talk about it now.
SM (00:54:28):
You can talk about it?
SW (00:54:30):
Yeah. I mean, a few years ago I was there on a trip during that exact period you are talking about. When the book Gentleman Papers came out. I was on a trip for the State Department visiting southern China, some universities there, and you really could not talk about it then, but now you can. I was just on a trip there a couple of years ago and as a guest of what the equivalent to like the USIA in China. And they said to us right off the bat, there's a group of writers, you can ask us anything, we will talk about anything. We talked about Tienanmen Square, we talked about banned books. These are officials.
SM (00:55:33):
Based on your experience...
SW (00:55:35):
They were intent on changing. I have never been in a country which the entire country was intent on changing its image. And this was just before the Olympics. We knew we were on the very manufactured kind of visit, but still, they kept reassuring us to talk about anything. We will talk about it. The idea was it's a new China, entirely capitalistic now, and it was. They were trying to change their identity prior to the Olympics.
SM (00:56:26):
One quick question though regarding it. Put your thinking camp on regarding what was happening here in the United States in the fall of 1989. At the university you were teaching at, I do not know if you were at the University of Washington, but was it also quiet there? No one talked about it? Or is it just our college?
SW (00:56:46):
Well, people noted it, I do not know. I do not recall what the Chinese student reaction was. But I think publicly Asian students as a group supported what was going on. And I think it may be different on the West coast.
SM (00:57:13):
My thought was here we have college administrators running universities who were boomers and they immediately saw Tienanmen Square and they thought uh-oh, activism. And so they were very happy that colleges were quiet in the fall. We brought Lee Lu to campus and he believed that one day they would come back and take over the leadership of China. I will get back to the question here in a minute. There was a faculty member on our campus who was probably in her late forties, and I mentioned about Lee Lu and about Tienanmen Square and some sort of a conversation. She went into a rage saying those students were the worst. I lived in China then, and those students were terrible. They tore our country apart. She did not care that they were killed. It was just amazing the reaction of a person who was probably pro-government, an anti-student. Looking at some of these other things here. When you look at the 1950s again, Asian Americans had issues in America during the time that, well, all boomers were younger. These are some of the issues and can just, this is kind of the mentality that was happening in say from the 1950s through the 1980s. We had McCarthyism where there was a fear that people were communists.
SW (00:58:49):
Hang on one second.
SM (00:58:50):
Yep.
SW (00:59:11):
Sorry Steve.
SM (00:59:11):
That is okay. Did McCarthyism and that attitude not only of HUAC, but of McCarthyism in the late forties, and then of course the (19)50s affect Asian Americans? Because in reality, anybody who supposedly had been a member of the Communist Party, they were looking. They were looking for communists everywhere. And that must have made Asian Americans feel tense.
SW (00:59:39):
Oh yeah. Lots of things in Chinatowns, for example, ended during that McCarthy period, Chinatown had a healthy group of labor unions, for example, and all of those disappeared during the McCarthy era. The labor unions whatever manufacturing was going on, or the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance and other places, Chinatown, all of those labor unions disappeared because labor unions were looked upon as a socialist construct. And so Chinese went into a period in which the last thing you want to do is be perceived as a communist or any red or pink, and to disassociate yourself with communist China. You had public demonstrations embracing the nationalist Chinese flag in the streets of American Chinatowns during festivals and embracing a country, almost none of the Chinese of Chinatown ever been to. And disassociating themselves from post 1949 China. Not to mention that China, the China that these immigrants had left is no longer in existence.
SM (01:01:18):
Let me turn my tape here. Hold on a second.
SW (01:01:25):
I might take something that was on my iPod.
SM (01:01:31):
Oh yeah. Well I am old school, but they still sell these.
SW (01:01:42):
Or what was it? I picked something on iMovie.
SM (01:01:42):
Well, when you go interview people, you got to have a recorder. You can continue on McCarthyism.
SW (01:01:49):
Right. So again, even in the (19)70s there was a red scare. And Hoover was investigating American Chinatowns for secret communists. He posted these hand bills around Chinatown in Chinese. One second, I will read part of it to you.
SM (01:02:23):
I also know that Lyndon Johnson feared that communists were behind the anti-war movement. The dissonance.
SW (01:02:29):
Hoover posted these leaflets around Chinatown and (19)71 and (19)72. I will just read you the beginning and the end. "Now that you have settled in America, you are not only entitled to enjoy the various blessings of America's free political system, but in addition, we will be able to shoulder the responsibilities of protecting these free traditions." Blah, blah, blah. "Communists frequently engage in secret activities within America's borders and plot to destroy the free traditions of China. While our bureau is on constant alert, it pays close attention to these matters. From now you too may join our defense against communism."
SM (01:03:17):
Oh my gosh.
SW (01:03:22):
"This, while in America you'd become aware of communists or [inaudible] spy who are engaged in intelligence or destructive and subversive activities, you are urgently requested to telephone the local branch of the FBI."
SM (01:03:37):
Wow.
SW (01:03:39):
But down at the bottom they talk about, all you have to do is report. You do not have to carry out your own investigation. And then it says, "You must realize that investigation is a specialized and sophisticated profession, and if ordinary people attempted, they not only risk their own safety, but also risk startling the snake from his hiding place."
SM (01:04:02):
Wow.
SW (01:04:02):
Signed J. Edgar Hoover.
SM (01:04:02):
You got that framed?
SW (01:04:02):
These are posted in Chinese.
SM (01:04:02):
Oh my gosh.
SW (01:04:14):
Around Chinatown.
SM (01:04:16):
That is a collector's item.
SW (01:04:18):
So these leaflets obviously placed the entire population at risk. Of course, now, because it was signed by J. Edgar Hoover, he was a little off his rocker.
SM (01:04:34):
We found out he also wore dresses. I do not know if that is true.
SW (01:04:36):
So yeah, he had a name too for himself, I forgot what it was.
SM (01:04:52):
When you look at some of the other things here. I guess mainly I just want to know that the Asian American boomers and families were well aware that these things were impacting their lives as well. Obviously the Korean War. How were Korean Americans treated in the 1950s during this particular war? We have talked about the Chinese and Japanese, but how were Koreans treated?
SW (01:05:12):
I do not really know too much, but there was not a huge population of Korean Americans around the time, not like there is now. So, their immigration is [inaudible] numbers is basically post 1961, (19)63, when they started to arrive in the larger numbers.
SM (01:05:39):
Were Asian American students or youth boomers involved in the counterculture in the 1960s? I bring these things up. Woodstock and the Summer of Love and 1968, which tore the nation apart and the assassinations obviously, and then even going back to where... And even going back to where Asian Americans aware of Freedom Summer in (19)64 and what young people were doing in the South in early (19)60s, risking their lives.
SW (01:06:12):
They're all certainly part of that. But I think all the boomers, no matter where you were from, got involved in pop culture of (19)60s and (19)70s. I graduated from high school (19)67, the summer of love, lived in the Haight-Ashbury while I was going school and that kind of thing. And I saw around me a lot of Asian Americans who embraced that culture and everything about it, our hair long, but we went to college.
SM (01:07:09):
Yep, and you were influenced like all of them.
SW (01:07:12):
We were doing it. We were not exactly dropping out, but-
SM (01:07:17):
In other words, you were basically inhaling and not-
SW (01:07:22):
No-no.
SM (01:07:23):
You were inhaling but you were not taking, right?
SW (01:07:26):
Right. We were not actually holding it. Going, in those days, you went to other public place and just sort of stood around, you could not help but inhale.
SM (01:07:37):
I know, that is why Bill Clinton saying he never inhales really is amazing.
SW (01:07:41):
If it is a rock concert, you do not have to touch one, but you are inhaling constantly.
SM (01:07:50):
To me, 1975 is a major year. Vietnam means a lot to me. If you can tell, my whole life I have been involved in civil rights, and I have actually worked with a lot of Asian American students. I have advised Asian American students for over 20 years, and so I got to know a lot of them. They were always in my office talking. But one of the areas, I was very close to Vietnamese students, and I still, most of my Facebook is with Vietnamese students, have gone on different careers and so forth. 1975, when the helicopter went off the top of the embassy, we all know the people that did escape and were on the ships and everything, they got back to America or different parts of the world, and of course that was the beginning of the boat people. And then we know what happened in Cambodia with a Khmer Rouge. We have had [inaudible] on the campus, and the exodus of people from Cambodia. I have known students from Laos and Thailand and even India and Pakistan. What is it about 1975 and that helicopter that really not only impacts boomers who were really in the anti-war movement and veterans who were in the war itself, but also to possibly Asian Americans themselves as a symbol of the new flood of immigrants into the United States?
SW (01:09:30):
I am thinking one thing from Asian American point of view, watching the fall of Saigon, in some ways there is a sense of relief. Now the war's over. We're not the enemy in the media every night. And so that image is, people I think felt finally will go away. It may take some time, but it will go away, or at least until the next war against an Asian county. And I think there were two significant events. Prior to the helicopter lifting off from the American embassy, the other one I remember when I was in college was LBJ saying he was not going to run again. And that was, I remember standing there with a bunch of other people, wow. We might see an end. And we thought, I think that too was a significant moment. And I think other people, or Asian Americans, other things happened following that. During the Iranian hostage crisis and stuff like that, when there was talk of any kind of internment, Iranian American, Japanese American boomers spoke. History repeats itself. And I think what happened was, among boomers particularly, is that in the early (19)60s through civil rights and on, not only did Asian Americans sort of reinvent themselves in a political way by renaming themselves, but also, they, I think established a political coalition among all Asian Americans. Whether you were Middle Eastern or Asian from Asia, the idea of things that we learned from history have to be brought up in a way that is politically supportive. I remember Japanese Americans speaking up on behalf of Iranian Americans at the time.
SM (01:12:48):
Well, the boat people is kind of a sad story because as many as 2 million people I think tried to escape and many died. But one of the, I used to mention this to the students, your mom and dad never would have met if they had not met in a camp. And they never thought of it that way, because a lot of the Vietnamese students that I have known, their parents met in camps.
SW (01:13:12):
Yeah, the very first ones who came over in (19)75 were ethnically Chinese. So that was interesting to see that, particularly from our point of view as Asian Americans. When the Vietnamese came over, they were Cantonese speaking Vietnamese. We realize, oh, these folks are Chinese.
SM (01:13:43):
It is interesting, there are a lot of naysayers and doubters and critics. There is still a lot of bigots in this country as you well know. And it's interesting that in the Vietnamese population that came over here in 1975, I have heard this from others, not from students, but from people that I think are a little biased, they say, "Well, if the Vietnamese can come over here in 1975 and be a smashing success in life with good jobs and everything, and they have had to work, some of them worked in the cities and sold things on the streets and they worked their way up, why cannot African Americans do the same? They have been here 200 years." Have you heard this before?
SW (01:14:29):
Oh yeah.
SM (01:14:31):
They always talk about the Vietnamese. It's the Vietnamese comparing them to the African Americans.
SW (01:14:36):
Yeah, I mean it is a popular racist assumption.
SM (01:14:41):
Yep-yep.
SW (01:14:41):
Minority group off against another.
SM (01:14:47):
Yeah, I think that exists today.
SW (01:14:54):
Yeah, oh absolutely.
SM (01:14:57):
Yeah.
SW (01:14:57):
And you cannot fall into that trap.
SM (01:14:58):
Yep. Agree. I am going to go back to Berkeley here. I am all over the place, but you were on the Berkeley campus as a student from (19)67 to (19)71?
SW (01:15:04):
I was actually at San Francisco State for two years, (19)67 to (19)69, during the Hayakawa years.
SM (01:15:14):
Yeah, those were all over the news.
SW (01:15:18):
And I got disgusted with Hayakawa, so I left and went back to UC Berkeley, and I graduated from there in (19)71. And then I went back to San Francisco State for graduate school in creative writing and ended up having SI Hayakawa's name on my diploma.
SM (01:15:37):
Oh my gosh. Well he went out and become a senator.
SW (01:15:40):
Yeah.
SM (01:15:42):
What is interesting about him is-
SW (01:15:42):
Ronald Reagan's name on my diploma.
SM (01:15:47):
Wow. That is a historic document.
SW (01:15:50):
Ronald Reagan.
SM (01:15:52):
Two people that really, really put their careers on the line against students really. People's Park happened in (19)69 when you were there, I believe, at Berkeley, and that was a pretty rough experience. And then of course, Hayakawa had his experience with the African American students at San Francisco State. Just, obviously, again I am asking, maybe repeating myself and the experience that you have, but in your peers and your Asian American students at that time, they were experiencing both of these. How were they taking this in, the People's Park and the SI Hayakawa confrontations?
SW (01:16:36):
Yeah, I mean Hayakawa was, just infuriated Asian Americans because of his, not only his conservative stance, but he also took a very sort of conservative view on the internment camps too.
SM (01:17:07):
Oh wow.
SW (01:17:08):
He was Canadian. He would not even speak out against the internment camps. I forgot what he said, but I remember he said about-
SM (01:17:14):
So where was he during the internment camps?
SW (01:17:14):
Well, he was Canadian, so I do not know where he was, but he certainly did not experience it. But the Japanese Canadian experience is much worse than the Japanese American. Japanese Canadians were sent to abandoned mining towns. Now they were not allowed back to the West Coast until (19)49 or something.
SM (01:17:28):
Right.
SW (01:17:42):
But yeah, Hayakawa was just, every Asian American just wanted to disown him.
SM (01:17:45):
What is amazing is he was a very highly visible person then.
SW (01:17:48):
Yeah, and was just, as I recall it, just infuriating because his stance was basically anti-student.
SM (01:18:00):
Wow.
SW (01:18:00):
I think we went through six presidents that year until the governor finally was able to, because none of the governors wanted to bring police on campus. None of the presidents wanted to bring police on campus at San Francisco State, and so they were fired. And finally, Hayakawa was hired and immediately brought the police on campus, which of course caused the riot.
SM (01:18:30):
You wrote the book, American Knees. Now I have got to admit, I have not read it, but I will within the next month because every person I interview, I must read their books. Now, I read someplace in one of the things on the web that said that it was a cultural, that you wrote American Knees as a cultural response to Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. Is that true?
SW (01:18:59):
Oh, I do not think that is quite accurate. I remember somebody saying that, but now I do not know.
SM (01:19:10):
How do they differ? How do those two books differ?
SW (01:19:14):
Well, I mean, Amy Tan's book is a very, very commercial sort of venture. And I mean, for what it is, I have to hand it to her, the chief kind of commercial success that book put on me, but I do not personally agree with her stance in the book which is basically, to put it in a very short form, you read her book or you see the movie version and you come away with one conclusion, which is, Chinese culture sucks. And I have aunts who are the same generation as her main characters and they never talk about their culture like that. If anything, they go the opposite way. They're just boring me to death about how great Chinese culture is. And to represent Chinese culture as misogynistic or more misogynistic than any other culture is, I think, wrong. But my book is certainly not a response to her book. I do make a mention, I allude to her book late in my novel, and that is the only illusion to Joy Luck Club. And that is probably the only dig, and it is really about the readers of Joy Luck Club rather than the book itself.
SM (01:21:00):
Yeah. I read an interview that, you have seen it too on the web, which is the one where you and filmmaker Eric Byler were together?
SW (01:21:09):
Yeah, Byler, yeah.
SM (01:21:09):
And you were talking about the model minority. And I think it gets, in the conversations that I have had with some of the female students who were Asian American, many have gone on to become doctors and nurses and accountants and everything, they really got upset when they hear that term model minority. It really, and it is even today, it is something that just, and they kind of laugh it off and all this other stuff, that we are so much smarter. I know a couple students that had some hard time in math, so you cannot stereotype. But can I read something here, because I want your response to it?
SW (01:21:56):
Yes.
SM (01:22:00):
Because it is from the interview, and I might, it says here, "So now we have Raymond Ding in the novel, a lady's man, almost a womanizer. And so those people who have this agenda, they claim that finally we can say that Asian men are virile, sexual, charismatic, charming. We can finally show that we can dress up in clothes, and we can appropriate their version of masculinity." And then down below here is, "We can be just like you. Is not that what the model minority myth is all about? Where the mainstream culture says, 'Hey, there is a place right here next to us.' It is almost as high, your chair will be almost as high, and that is the best you can do. And all you have to do is follow these little rules: be a model student, be a model minority, be a model prisoner, follow the rules, and you will be next to us." I think that is beautiful because of the fact that is kind of like joining a fraternity and it is-
SW (01:23:01):
It is about conformity.
SM (01:23:04):
Yeah, and I just think at the bottom here it says, "And yet there are performances in American Knees that are very, very Asian, very Asian American, that do not suddenly throw off our own culture in order to burrow into another." And I think that is be who you are and do not be a copy of what other people want you to be.
SW (01:23:26):
Right. Right. Well, actually, Raymond Ding, the main character is very flawed individual and he sort of comes to terms with that during the book, as well as the film. The film's obviously very different from the book. I am thinking only-
SM (01:23:56):
Would you say that Asian American boomer men and women have had to deal with these perceptions, not only today, of the last 20 years, but-
SW (01:24:05):
In a different way. So we work hard to reject not only the most obvious media stereotypes, but also the negative stereotypes, but also those sort of so-called positive stereotypes, being the model minority and college educated, quiet, hardworking. Another statistic out there that says Asian households have highest income, does not take into effect there might be more working members in the household, that kind of thing. That model minority myth is out there, simply as we noted earlier, its main purpose is to pit one minority group off against another. And you cannot accept that label when you realize that it becomes a stereotype. And the goal of any racial stereotype, the ultimate goal of any racial stereotype is to have that racial minority eventually believe in the stereotype. So, if the stereotype is you work hard, but you keep quiet and you do not upset dominant society, and you do not try to be aggressive and things like that, if you believe in that stereotype, then you're doing the work of the oppressor for them.
SM (01:26:05):
Very-very well said.
SW (01:26:07):
Same thing like the gender issues. A woman's place is in the kitchen, not the boardroom. So the ultimate goal of that stereotype is for the woman to believe that, "Oh, I could never be a CEO. My role is in the kitchen." So, believe that, and you are made to believe that stereotype, then dominant society or male dominated society does not have to expend any effort or attention to keeping that engine going.
SM (01:26:41):
I think Phoebe, you know Phoebe Yang?
SW (01:26:44):
Yeah.
SM (01:26:44):
Well, Phoebe was on our campus right after she got married and before she wrote her first really big book, actually it was her second book, and she mentioned she had been a lawyer and was involved with [inaudible] Magazine. Now she's gone on to do unbelievable things, very success in everything she does. But she said she went to China and she was at a conference in China and she was in a boardroom. And they were all sitting around this table in, I think it was in China, and one of the men looked at her and said, "Can you go get me a cup of coffee?" Because he did not, she was the only female in the room. She was a lawyer too. And she said that was so prevalent in China. The attitude that men have over there toward women is go get me a cup of coffee. Well, she did not get them a cup of coffee, but that was a very revealing experience that she told our students. And here she was a lawyer at that time and all the other things, but it was perception people have of women, maybe not only here but around the world.
SW (01:27:52):
Well, certainly, I think so. But to represent, I think it's wrong to represent China as being more misogynistic than any other culture. Look at Italian culture.
SM (01:27:52):
Oh, that is true.
SW (01:27:52):
Or there is somehow, another popular stereotype is to show that China is more misogynistic.
SM (01:27:52):
Did the Asian American community, after World War II, concentrate on dealing with xenophobia and pure racism, excuse me, and pure racism, but once after years they were accepted as Americans or some people label a model minority? I think what I am getting here, because this makes us feel, I guess what I am saying here is could you describe xenophobia in America? Is it as American as apple pie?
SW (01:29:02):
Yeah, I think it is sort of like, as you know, the progress or the latest immigrant to arrive in America always occupies the bottom rung of the ladder. As you recall, so Chinese of course, were once the pariah race of America, but so were the Irish, right, or the Italians or whoever the latest immigrant is. Not only does the racial hatred follow them, but also, and look at the vicious stereotypes of Irish and Italians during the early 20th century. The attention spent on the kind of xenophobic energy is an American tradition certainly, but it has not always been about people of color. And the only difference is, to quote Richard Rodriguez, is that during this history in America, Western Europeans had stopped being who they were, could choose to stop being German or choose to stop being Irish. You could change your name, but people of color did not have that luxury of deciding to stop being whatever culturally ethnic roots they come from. And as you know, even in the 2008 election, America has a very, very difficult time talking about race, and still does. I find it, everybody finds it difficult to talk about race, and we still do not get it right.
SM (01:31:12):
Yeah, there is a professor at, I think he is at New York, is it, no, he is at Columbia. He's an Asian American professor. He has written a couple books and he said-
SW (01:31:21):
Yeah, Gary Okihiro.
SM (01:31:24):
No, I am interviewing him. No, not Gary. One other professor is Lee, Dr. Lee or Lou? Anyways, he has written a couple books about the fact that America's forgetting the issue of racism, and he was really talking about the Bush administration putting it on the back burner. So he's written some really good books. What laws were passed since World War II that have had the greatest impact on Asian Americans?
SW (01:31:54):
I think just, well, just prior to World War, or during World War II, 1943, they ended, Chinese Exclusion Act ended in (19)43. So that had the biggest effect on Chinese American, Chinese. And then the Immigration Act of, some people say (19)61 to (19)63, was revised a few times, but between (19)61 and (19)63, I think the Immigration Act was finally rewritten so that issues of race were removed from immigration laws. It is all about nationality rather than race. And the quotas moved up for the people for every country. In (19)43, when immigration was relaxed or Exclusion Act ended for Chinese, the quota was just, I forgot what it was, 109 per year. So effectively, it was still on, or 105 I think per year, and then there were lots of exclusions to that. So, after World War II, Congress had to pass the War Brides Act, and then after that they had passed the GI Finances Act. And then in (19)53, what is it, the Cable Act. I am a little fogged here, copies for quite a while, but '53 race was removed as a bar to immigration. So, I think all of those things.
SM (01:34:08):
And Brown was very important too, Brown versus Board of Education?
SW (01:34:13):
Oh yeah, Brown versus Board of Education.
SM (01:34:15):
And the (19)64, (19)65 civil rights bills?
SW (01:34:18):
Obviously, the Civil Rights Act, ending second classes citizenship for at least the outward, obvious second class citizenship. And also after World War II, for Asian Americans, World War II actually gave them the opportunity to leave their ethnic community. Hawaiian Americans could leave the plantation and join the army. Asian Americans who were in the Army got the GI Bill, et cetera, et cetera. So the same thing that was happening for women in the workplace was happening now for, I think, minorities. All people of color found opportunity during and after World War II.
SM (01:35:24):
Who are the best writers, the books that you really liked, that had an impression upon you when you were younger in the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, (19)80s say, that personally had an influence on you? And then if there is any Asian American writers who think that people need to read this if they really want to understand the Asian American community, not only in the past, but now.
SW (01:35:56):
Well, it is interesting. I mean, when I was at Berkeley, I think I was 20, I decided I wanted to be a writer. And I remember thinking to myself at the very moment that I decided that, I also realized I was the only Asian American writer I knew in the world. I could not name one, and no teacher, no high school teacher had even mentioned the name of one, or no college professor ever mentioned the name of an Asian American writer or assigned a book by an Asian American writer. And I remember going to my American literature professor and asking him, "I am interested in Asian American literature. Can you suggest a book?"
SM (01:36:50):
And what year was this?
SW (01:36:50):
This was in 1970.
SM (01:36:50):
Unbelievable.
SW (01:36:55):
And I decided, well, I got to do this on my own because I cannot be, somebody must have published something before me. I went and started researching the field and I ran into a couple of other young people who were my age or a little bit older, Frank Chin, and Jeffrey Chan and Lawson Inada, and the four of us started looking for Asian American literature for all sort of young writers, pretty much unpublished. And we found them; we found these books. They were out of print. They were in used bookstores, but basically outside of academia. We found these books and we ended up publishing the first Asian American literature anthology in 1974, and it basically started the study of Asian American literature. You read any sort of literary lit crit work on Asian American literature, they always mention our anthology. And at the beginning, they also take exception to our point of view, which is healthy.
SM (01:38:16):
And that is really when Asian studies was starting right then too, correct?
SW (01:38:20):
And so I always say I became a professor by accident because I just wanted to be a writer. And I thought, well, I will end up being a waiter for the rest of my life, or taxi cab driver, like most artists. And when I came out of school, I went to undergraduate school, I went to graduate school in creative writing back in San Francisco State, and while I was in graduate school, ethnic studies departments were just starting. And there was a job at Mills College and- There was a job at Mills College and we had a brand-new ethnic studies department, so I applied for the job. I had no graduate degree yet, no teaching experience whatsoever, and no publications. They asked me, they interviewed me and said, what can you teach? I said, I can teach a class in Asian American literature and only one other person, my colleague Jeff Chan, was teaching a class at the state on the subject in the entire country. They said, you are hired.
SM (01:39:06):
Wow, that is good.
SW (01:39:06):
And I was sitting there thinking, wow, do I really want this job? I was working as a gardener at the time. I think I was making more money, and then I noticed that Mills College was an all-female college and I was 22.
SM (01:39:06):
Oh.
SW (01:39:06):
I said, I think I will start my academic career. But it's funny, I tell people I started my academic career teaching a subject I had to teach myself, that I did not learn that at university.
SM (01:40:17):
That is a story in itself.
SW (01:40:18):
Then we published the first anthology of Asian American literature. It was Published by Howard University Press, and African American publishers were the first ones to recognize Asian American literature. They published our anthology, published my first novel, Homebase, they published my second anthology. So Asian American publishers, I mean African American publishers, were quick to understand where Asian American literature stood. After our anthology came out, Aiiieeeee, it was reviewed everywhere. It was astounding, the reception. We did not think anything like that would happen. It was reviewed in Rolling Stone, New York Times, and Dr. Robert Polls wrote an essay about it in the New Yorker. There I was in my early twenties, and all I was trying to do was legitimize the field of literature I wanted to go into.
SM (01:41:49):
That is-
SW (01:41:49):
I am trying to educate the readers to something called Asian American literature.
SM (01:41:49):
That could be a movie.
SW (01:41:49):
Which I would eventually belong to, tried to belong to.
SM (01:41:50):
It is interesting because as an Asian American you were not able to find anybody who knew anything about Asian American writers or Asian writers per se. When I think of my first contact with learning anything about Asia or any of the countries in that part of the world, I think of Pearl Buck. I think of Graham Green and Tom Dooley. I do not know if you know all three of them.
SW (01:42:15):
Yep.
SM (01:42:15):
Because Tom Dooley was over in Vietnam in the (19)50s, and he was on Jack Paar's show, and, of course, Pearl Buck's right from Bucks County here, and she wrote some things. Now only until Dr. Takaki, we had him on our campus, bless his soul. His books are unbelievable. But you really have a telling true story here.
SW (01:42:43):
In the early (19)70s there were no books available. If you started teaching Asian American studies, there were absolutely no books, zero, available. When I taught Asian American literature, all the books had to be Xeroxed for the students. It is interesting you brought up Pearl Buck because after Nixon opened China, Pearl Buck applied for a visa to go back to China to visit the China of her youth, and the Chinese government refused her visa. In a public statement, the reason that they refused her visa was for the years and years of her distortion of the Chinese people.
SM (01:43:19):
Oh, wow.
SW (01:43:35):
It is interesting that they came out with that statement.
SM (01:43:36):
Wow. I know we are heading a little over. I got two more questions.
SW (01:43:40):
Sure.
SM (01:43:43):
One of the questions is I have asked everyone is the question of healing. I took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 as part of our Leadership On the Road programs. We worked for the former senator, Gaylord Nelson, from Wisconsin, and we met nine former US Senators, and that day we met with Senator Muskie. So, the students and I came up with this question, and the question was based on, they thought, 1968 with that terrible convention and the cops and the young people, and of course the year was bad with two assassinations, and Tet, and the president, and the whole story. The question is this, due to the divisions that took place during the 1960s, the divisions between black and white, and I got, yellow was not in the question here, but divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops and were against the troops. Do you feel that the boomer generation of 70 plus million will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the terrible divisions that divided the nation during the time that they were young, and it's subconsciously affected them the rest of their lives? The students knew that only between five and 15 percent of the boomers were really involved in any sort of activism. So, they knew this when they were putting their question together. But there was a belief that if you lived at that time, even if you were not an activist, you were subconsciously affected by everything. So, what is your answer to that question? Do you think we as a nation or that this generation, now your part of it, is going to go to your grave or its grave, and where do you think Asian Americans are on this because all the divisions that they have had in their lives, particularly the boomer generation, as they are heading to social security now.
SW (01:45:50):
That is for sure.
SM (01:45:51):
It is unbelievable.
SW (01:45:52):
I think, well, I tend to be an optimist. I would say that those times, (19)68, et cetera, made us who we are. You cannot sort of say, well, I wish we had not done this, or wish we had not started UC Berkeley on fire. I think that is defined who we were, and it became part of our identity, whether or not you were actually active or not. It drew everybody in, particularly in light of the fact that everybody, because of the draft, for example, you had to have, you were actually out on the street demonstrating because of the draft, and as a young man you were part of it. You were made part of it. When you sat on the floor listening to the radio for your birthday to come up for the draft lottery-
SM (01:47:06):
Oh, yeah.
SW (01:47:07):
[inaudible] deferment. You sat there, and I remember the relief when my birthday came up 324.
SM (01:47:12):
You are lucky. I was 72.
SW (01:47:24):
And my other roommate was 348, but our third roommate was something like 36.
SM (01:47:31):
Oh, boy.
SW (01:47:37):
So, I think part of our generation is that partly you feel that tremendous relief that in one sense you had, and at the same time a guilt, in that you were suddenly you are this outspoken, vocal, committed generation, and then in one minute you were relieved from making that decision of whether you would go into the Army or go to Canada. And at the same time, you're looking at your roommate and he has to report for action physical.
SM (01:48:20):
Wow.
SW (01:48:20):
So everybody knew somebody who was at the wrong end of the ladder or had to go into the Army or died in the war. So, you struggle with the sort of dichotomy of having escaped, being escaped, having to even make a decision and being a part of your peers’ lives who had to endure the next step.
SM (01:48:53):
Right.
SW (01:48:53):
I think our generation was always, sort of had to deal with that kind of dichotomy. At the same time, I remember Tom Brokaw saying something key is that when we look at the world from our point of view of the (19)60s and (19)70s, and we look at the world as it is now, we bring our experience forward. Nobody's asking us our opinion. And he says, at the same time when we were in the (19)60s, did we ask anybody in the 1920s for their advice?
SM (01:48:53):
Yeah.
SW (01:48:53):
But we did not.
SM (01:48:53):
Yeah, that is true.
SW (01:48:53):
So, it is interesting that feel. I think we feel, or at least at times we feel, the generation that struggled to be as relevant as possible is now sort of becoming irrelevant.
SM (01:50:12):
Well, what Senator Muskie said is that he did not even respond to the (19)60s. People thought he would respond to the convention because he was the democratic vice-presidential running mate, and he said, "Well, we have not healed since the Civil War because of the issue of race," then he went on to talk about it. About the issue of race and the loss of lives during that war. So, thought that was interesting. Do you think the Vietnam Memorial, have you been to the Vietnam Memorial?
SW (01:50:40):
Oh, many times.
SM (01:50:42):
Yeah. What was your experience when you saw for the first time, do you think... Jan Scruggs wrote a book called, To Heal a Nation, and I have been to the Vietnam Memorial because to me it is the number one event of the entire boomer generation, Vietnam, and I feel I have to be there. So, I have been there since 1994 for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day experiencing it and trying to get a better grasp of it. And I have seen many Vietnamese there that are in the audience and walking around and thanking the American troops and so forth, and then I see many that are kind of distant and whatever, and the Hmong, I think it is the Hmong, they have been there too, as well. But what was your initial thought the first time you saw, when you walked to that granite wall? And the second part of the question, has it done anything to heal the nation from the war?
SW (01:51:36):
I think, you know, there were two things that struck me. Not only, it is basically everybody up there is my generation and the immensity of seeing 58,000 names inscribed on the wall. It's one thing. But at the very same time, I am also cognizant of who designed it.
SM (01:51:36):
Oh, yeah.
SW (01:51:36):
They hounded her as a young 20-year old architectural student being called all these derogatory racist things. And in the end, what I feel is what everybody feels, at the end she was right.
SM (01:51:36):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:51:36):
Maya Lin was right. And people often ask me the standard interview question, what person would you most like to meet? And I always say, Maya Lin. I would like to meet her just to say what everybody says, I think. I just want to meet somebody who had that vision, who had that vision so young, and that she knew this was the right thing to do. I want to meet people who knew at whatever age that they knew the right thing to do. So, you feel, one, this intense loss, but you also feel that somebody did the right thing and that she's Chinese America.
SM (01:53:30):
Well, you reach a good point because when we are talking about women's issues too, it is interesting that two of the three statues were designed by, the wall was designed by Maya Lin, but the Women's Memorial was designed by Glenna Goodacre, and then the third design of the three-man statue, I forget his name, but that says a lot about women, too. That in a man's war...
SW (01:53:55):
Right.
SM (01:53:58):
And it was also a woman's war, and we cannot forget that. We continually forget this in history how important women were on the side of the Vietnamese. And so, women were very, and of course the nurses and the donut ladies and all the people involved on our side, so we have a tendency to make this a man's war, but it is a human war.
SW (01:54:20):
Right. As you know, the history of the controversy before the wall was built.
SM (01:54:28):
Right.
SW (01:54:28):
Maya Lin just had to endure all kinds of really vicious racism then.
SM (01:54:38):
Well, there are still people that do not like it. I interviewed a professor up in Boston who is a Vietnam vet, and he still does not like it, but there are a lot of different opinions. But I think it is unbelievable. It is the most widely attracted wall in Washington, I mean for tourists.
SW (01:54:58):
Yeah. I used to work for the, sit on a lot of national endowment for the arts panels in the early (19)90s. Every time I would go to DC, I would go visit the wall.
SM (01:55:11):
My last question then I am done, and it is real fast. And I only got about two, I think two minutes left on my tape here, two or three minutes. I am just going to list these names and neatly when I, as a white person now, as a person, and I am sure a lot of boomers if they were asked to list all besides entertainers now that have come about the last couple years or politicians, these people really stand out to me that had tremendous influences not only in the world, but in terms of... Still there?
SW (01:55:46):
Yeah.
SM (01:55:46):
And still in terms of our attitudes, Mao Zedong, Kim Yao Jung, President Thieu, Vice President Ky, Di Em, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Dalai Lama. I just brought them up. I do not know if they have any significance, to you or...
SW (01:55:46):
Well, they are certainly part of all that. All those names are part of the history of the boomer generation. I think there are probably some Asian American names in there you could probably add.
SM (01:55:46):
Well, Senator Inoyue is another one that is...
SW (01:55:46):
Yeah, Daniel Inoyue and other politicians like Gary Locke, the governor of State of Washington. So, others who actually, well, Daniel, I know he is not, but you know boomer generation Asian Americans who went on to become really figural on the ground stage in any case, or at least in our eyes.
SM (01:57:18):
Yeah. And finally, what do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation when the best books are written 50 years from now?
SW (01:57:26):
I think I do not want to know. I think the desire to live a life that is relevant and respond to the things that go on around us. The injustice, simply just to be cognizant and relevant to your society, no matter when you are living, even if you are on the cusp of facing social security.
SM (01:57:56):
Right.
SW (01:57:56):
I was speaking up.
SM (01:58:00):
Yep. I agree. Well, that is it. Do you have any questions that you thought I was going to ask that I did not?
SW (01:58:06):
No, I encourage you to watch Bill Moyers, that documentary.
SM (01:58:11):
I have got to. I saw part of it on YouTube, but I have not been able to see the whole document.
(End of Interview)
Description
2 Microcassettes
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Interview with Shawn Wong
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Wong, Shawn, 1949- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Chinese American authors; Scholars; College teachers; Wong, Shawn, 1949--Interviews
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Shawn Wong is a Chinese American author and scholar. He received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley and his Master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Wong was a Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program, Chair of the Department of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington.
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-08-23
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.210a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.210b
Date Modified
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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228:32
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/33a9c216b82c21e02c3e3c4aff1e1bf9.jpg
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dd8bdf27e8600331b3d0d308f9e407f8.mp3
6b8b78a2858911c85e96707f3471961e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-09
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Gary Kulik
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Gary Kulik is a decorated veteran of the War in Vietnam. Along with being an author, he also served as a deputy director of the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and was the department head and assistant director of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and the editor of American Quarterly."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,4884200],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Gary Kulik is a decorated veteran of the War in Vietnam. Along with being an author, he also served as a deputy director of the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and was the department head and assistant director of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and the editor of <em>American Quarterly</em>.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Environmental Movement; Communism; Robert F. Kennedy; Black Panthers; Civil Rights Movement; Nineteen sixties."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Baby boom generation; Environmental Movement; Communism; Robert F. Kennedy; Black Panthers; Civil Rights Movement; Nineteen sixties.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
115:57
Subject LCSH
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Authors, American--20th century; Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum; National Museum of American History (U.S.); Editors; Kulik, Gary--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
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Interview with Gary Kulik
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Kulik, Gary ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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audio/wav
Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Authors, American--20th century; Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum; National Museum of American History (U.S.); Editors; Kulik, Gary--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Gary Kulik is a decorated veteran of the War in Vietnam. Along with being an author, he also served as a deputy director of the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and was the department head and assistant director of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and the editor of <em>American Quarterly</em>.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-09
Rights
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.201
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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115:57
-
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b23acbbcd1928fd974fd03904286aecc.jpg
935992e3805a8b9cbabc62b6d0785cda
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5a545cf806c07167fa222b644703b538.mp3
0b36c0c7745429296c80212ed4cfcff0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-09-10
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Susan Jacoby, 1945-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including The Age of American Unreason. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792},"12":0}">Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
173:52
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792},"12":0}">Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman.</span>
Subject LCSH
Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Susan Jacoby
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 10 September 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two.
SJ (00:00:03):
Do you want test and see if you are getting it?
SM (00:00:12):
Oh, I know it will not. Testing. [inaudible] this one has already started.
SJ (00:00:14):
No problem.
SM (00:00:16):
I am going to read these to make sure that I get these right too. I am all over the place here. And the first question I was going to ask is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paperback on Vietnam.
SJ (00:00:32):
Back in the Dark Ages.
SM (00:00:37):
That was back in the Dark Ages. This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book, in the Wounded Generation on women in the war. How are boomer generation women wounded psychologically, personally, from that war? And how important were they in the anti-war movement?
SJ (00:01:05):
I will tell you honestly. I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the boomer generation. The contact that women of the boomer generation had with the anti-war movement, although there were lots of women obviously involved, just as there were lots of men, but the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who is actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class that did most of the fighting, which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people, they were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated boomer women. So I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men. And that was true not just for boomer women, but for all women.
SM (00:02:26):
Right. Let me just... Here we go.
SJ (00:02:32):
Let me see if I can get this guy again.
SM (00:02:33):
Okay. Very good.
SJ (00:02:33):
That is done. My cell phone is back in my purse. That is it.
SM (00:02:40):
Okay.
SJ (00:02:43):
Okay.
SM (00:02:46):
I have read a little bit about your background from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are? In terms of, who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in (19)63, but who are the people that influenced you the most in your early years?
SJ (00:03:07):
Do you mean by my early years, do you mean when I was a-
SM (00:03:09):
High school.
SJ (00:03:09):
Kiddo?
SM (00:03:10):
Yeah. Let us say high school, college.
SJ (00:03:17):
That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State, my college career was somewhat different from other members of the boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not at an age where I could most benefit from education. And unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could, men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university, I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State, I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout. And there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think this is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation born nine months before it actually started. So when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as "the (19)60s." When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys' off-campus apartment. That is what the real... In other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the honors college. I took Russian. I majored in journalism and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspaper men in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hannah, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about McCarthy. Did not like him. He was a liberal Republican, they were still liberal, and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist to the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman. And I did. And they were my mentors. One of them was named George Huff, who is still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers. And so I went to work as a campus stringer for the Detroit Free Press.
SM (00:07:18):
Oh, okay.
SJ (00:07:19):
Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on.
SM (00:07:45):
Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational? And by that I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the clothes, the violence, the protests. And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism.
SJ (00:08:13):
I mentioned this in the age of American Unreason.
SM (00:08:17):
Right. Right.
SJ (00:08:18):
And it was not that they went after just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It was that the media mostly, it is absolutely true, was then and is now, the media was liberal. Reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion. And in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then.
SM (00:09:27):
Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, a historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the Young Americans for Freedom, for example.
SJ (00:09:43):
That is right.
SM (00:09:44):
And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that?
SJ (00:09:52):
As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class... First of all, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review and that was that. But there was not any... Now, there is a whole right wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that, is the fact that the (19)60s were the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people.
SM (00:10:49):
Well, it is interesting cause you bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ. [inaudible].
SJ (00:10:54):
They were just getting started then.
SM (00:10:56):
Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students. But it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s but they had a different point of view.
SJ (00:11:08):
Well, sure.
SM (00:11:08):
Yeah. And so a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s.
SJ (00:11:14):
But they were in the (19)60s is when the Campus Crusade for Christ really, it actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture. You can be cool. You can be hip like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember, also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on and were disillusioned with it, were looking for something else.
SM (00:12:02):
Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the Ungrateful Generation. Define those.
SJ (00:12:10):
Well...
SM (00:12:10):
Because the people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book.
SJ (00:12:14):
Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the Greatest Generation.
SM (00:12:21):
And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead.
SJ (00:12:23):
They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful Generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful Generation. These were people who, my mother who is still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family, first member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from World War II as young adults, first of all... In the case of my father it was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful Generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when, although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill, enjoyed a standard of living which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. That was not even a question then. And the thing is-is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression when they were coming of age during World War II, they expected their children to be thrilled with the middle-class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And why I called us the Ungrateful Generation then, again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, "We do not want your ticky tacky houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war."
SM (00:14:54):
It is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week at the follow-up interview that I had [inaudible] for... I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin. And they hate the term boomer generation. Both of them.
SJ (00:15:08):
Well, they are not boomers.
SM (00:15:09):
Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40, I think.
SJ (00:15:13):
They are not boomers.
SM (00:15:14):
Todd's younger than Tom. But Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he does not like even Tom Brokaw's book The Boom, because he says boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violence. And boom, that is way the Tom [inaudible]. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the boomer generation was insignificant. It was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom.
SJ (00:15:51):
Well, I think if you will pardon my saying so, he is being a bit of naturalistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s, and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that, his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And as for the boomer generation being a short moment in time, well, he does not know much about demography then. Now, there really are two boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history. It was the exact midpoint of the baby boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But there are really two halves of the boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older boomers who came of age in the late 1960s. The younger boomers came of age in a much more conservative era. And in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older boomers. Barack Obama is a younger boomer.
SM (00:17:23):
Right. 52 years old, I believe.
SJ (00:17:26):
He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the baby boom generation, but he is a boomer. And here is the one thing that the older boomers and the younger boomers have in common. And again, Hayden and Gitlin are not boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born, really, between the middle of the depression and the end of the Second World War. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the boomer generation. But what the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black baby boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common, it did not cost them a fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger boomers were through college. The younger boomers, Blacks and Hispanics benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger boomers... Again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy, you were not expected to be married till you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away and it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the timeout he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself."
SM (00:20:19):
Yeah.
SJ (00:20:21):
Yeah. These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22, that was a way of living that was pioneered by the older bloomers. When Tom Hayden says this was just a moment in time, he was utterly wrong.
SM (00:20:38):
He was referring to that term boom and he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book. Yeah. So-
SJ (00:20:43):
This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place.
SM (00:20:47):
Right-right.
SJ (00:20:48):
And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know that the term baby boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s.
SM (00:20:58):
I know when I interviewed Richie Havens, Richie said, "I was born in 41, but I am really a boomer."
SJ (00:21:03):
Yeah.
SM (00:21:04):
Because of his spirit. And that is-
SJ (00:21:06):
Well, what happened with the boomers of Tom Hayden's age, and the pre-boomers is the things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage... You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation to which both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong.
SM (00:21:34):
Yeah. And so did Richie.
SJ (00:21:35):
Yeah. And Richie too.
SM (00:21:36):
Yeah. One of the things that I was curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you, men, who-
SJ (00:21:54):
Not role models. They gave me great advice.
SM (00:21:55):
They gave you great advice.
SJ (00:21:57):
They were not role models at all.
SM (00:22:01):
But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s?
SJ (00:22:05):
Well, I applied for a job at two places. The Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great.
SM (00:22:17):
Right.
SJ (00:22:20):
The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section. This is 1964. Although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble at the New York Times then than at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding. It had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s.
SM (00:23:09):
I have a couple, you have a quote in your book, this book. "In this increasing illiterate America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really want to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart, but they do not know their history.
SJ (00:23:42):
Blaming it on the (19)60s. Well...
SM (00:23:48):
Is there a link between this quote in the (19)60s.
SJ (00:23:55):
Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969.
SM (00:24:05):
I read it. Yeah.
SJ (00:24:07):
I can remember. I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger boomers belong more to the next generation because there was not any internet. There were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls from the 1930s which show how little history Americans knew in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, nobody could have imagined the internet then. Nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look. The transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing like now, it was nothing like an iPod, it was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. I think it was the beginning of a change which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think.
SM (00:26:12):
We can move to...
SJ (00:26:13):
Well, there are not any tables.
SM (00:26:14):
[inaudible].
SJ (00:26:18):
Because this guy is talking awfully loudly. All right, well let us... They will not stay there.
SM (00:26:26):
Yeah. You were in the middle of [inaudible].
SJ (00:26:34):
No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do. And it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed in general by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all, their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s, it was bad that was entirely the fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, the people who wanted to teach the way they always had. The dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way. And I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. What they did was they shunted it off, instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies departments. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shunted it off into women's studies departments. This pleased everybody on campuses. And I was an education reporter for the Washington Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them. And it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of Balkanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s. And it was not the fault of the students. It was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups but they did not act like it.
SM (00:28:58):
Yeah. You mentioned in the book too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses, and then when the (19)60s, mid-(19)60s in particular to maybe around the mid-(19)70s, tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were happening.
SJ (00:29:18):
That is not what I said.
SM (00:29:19):
No?
SJ (00:29:20):
I did not say anything about tenure at all. But in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment than at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African American studies... And there are campuses with African American studies departments. Harvard is one of them, [inaudible] where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened.
SM (00:30:19):
You do a great job also in the book of the criticisms of the neocons toward anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism at that particular time. Bring up Irving Crystal and Norman, is it Podhoretz?
SJ (00:30:35):
Podhoretz. Well, they are ancient.
SM (00:30:39):
Yeah. And commentary. But they were the old left, and their attitudes toward the (19)60s. How do you react to the current neocons? When New Gingrich came into power in 1994, when the Republicans came in, he made some strong commentaries.
SJ (00:30:55):
Remember, the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s.
SM (00:30:58):
Yeah.
SJ (00:30:59):
He was part of that other (19)60s.
SM (00:31:00):
Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then you had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on. And then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having a problems in our society today was looking back at the drug culture.
SJ (00:31:27):
Well, by the way, those people in Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of America knows about ancient Greek or Latin. They do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers and that was it. And that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do.
SM (00:31:58):
One of the things, it is a generation gap. It was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had that front cover with that young man and he had his glasses on. In one side of the glass was his father pointing at him and he was pointing back at his dad. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Wetton made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980 that the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation Gap was those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not.
SJ (00:32:38):
Well, that was not a generation gap. That is a culture gap.
SM (00:32:41):
But he called it a... And actually, he went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service, that they took the words of Kennedy and they used it whether to go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation because they did not serve. A lot of them refused to serve.
SJ (00:33:05):
Jim Webb, by the way, is not a baby boomer, I believe.
SM (00:33:09):
I do not know. I think he is about 44.
SJ (00:33:12):
Yeah. He is very young. But I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children of the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam, to say that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness, that is not just wrong. It is true that they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead? And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be. A communist country far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan, are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. I do. But I think as somebody who remembers the Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is all Jim Webb has. He has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the Military Academy about the Vietnam War. And I like Jim Webb.
SM (00:34:31):
Well, he served in Vietnam.
SJ (00:34:37):
He served in Vietnam?
SM (00:34:37):
Yes, he did.
SJ (00:34:37):
Oh. So he is not [inaudible] then.
SM (00:34:37):
No, he served in Vietnam.
SJ (00:34:37):
He did?
SM (00:34:39):
Yes.
SJ (00:34:40):
Are you sure?
SM (00:34:40):
Yes. And of course his son is serving in Iraq-
SJ (00:34:43):
Right.
SM (00:34:44):
Has done two tours.
SJ (00:34:45):
Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. You could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis. And I do not buy that... These members of the service generation too, they served the Nazis. And by that, I assure you I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, that I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that to have an all-volunteer army, which of course was the direct result of the fact that so many people did not want to serve and used education and privilege to get out of the draft, I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think the direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq War. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal.
SM (00:36:42):
When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed-
SJ (00:36:49):
Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people.
SM (00:36:52):
Yeah. We saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at... Oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today. You should just be an entertainer. That is not your role.
SJ (00:37:13):
That is ridiculous.
SM (00:37:14):
When you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be-
SJ (00:37:22):
Of course.
SM (00:37:23):
...The gung ho for the troops. Then you had the Donald Sutherlands, the Jane Fonda, the [inaudible]
SJ (00:37:30):
There is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity any way that they want. And by the way, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the boomers... I have a new book coming out in February.
SM (00:37:53):
You do?
SJ (00:37:54):
It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong that this was just a moment in time. Oldest boomers turned 65 next year in 2011, the oldest boomers turned 65. By 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them boomers. Now, there is a... And this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger boomers have in common: a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the boomers hard now, and this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the New Old Age that there was in about boomers being completely different from their parents, in that there is a mindset that says, if only we live right, if only we work hard enough, this phrase defying old age comes up all the time. It is a boomer mindset, a mindset in which... And it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right, your old age is not going to be at 90. I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago called "90 is the New 50". Jane was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. As far as a lot of boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evident. Facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the boomer generation has always tried to do. The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed if they only it, childbirth would not hurt.
SM (00:40:37):
Well, I know that boomers do not want to have senior citizen centers.
SJ (00:40:41):
Hell no.
SM (00:40:44):
They want to get rid of that word senior citizen.
SJ (00:40:48):
Look, I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word boomers hate. Hello, I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle aged. They are not middle-aged. By 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old.
SM (00:41:11):
It is interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say that will extend your lifespan.
SJ (00:41:22):
No they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says... It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan, is completely unknown. I know the AARP which is now run by boomers, of course, the AARP for which I have written for many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this: it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who had things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is that if you take Viagra, it will be just like it was 20, 30 years ago.
SM (00:42:40):
Well, you hit on some...
SJ (00:42:41):
But this is related to the boomer generation.
SM (00:42:43):
Oh, yes.
SJ (00:42:45):
...Because the boomers are getting old.
SM (00:42:48):
And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is another thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world, we were going to end the war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism, homophobia, clean up the environment. There was this attitude that... Not a hundred percent of the people, but the activists had that they were going to make a difference in this world.
SJ (00:43:14):
And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights Movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with their brain in their head knows it. But the fact is the progress that was made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women, is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today.
SM (00:44:06):
You talked a lot about –
SJ (00:44:06):
Wait until he gets done with this.
SM (00:44:16):
Busy park. How we doing time-wise?
SJ (00:44:18):
We have been at it for about-
SM (00:44:20):
45 minutes?
SJ (00:44:21):
Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe.
SM (00:44:26):
I forget what I was going to ask. Oh, I will come back to it. When you look at the period that boomers had been alive, which is 1946... Oh, I know the question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton and when you look at George Bush number two, you can tell they are boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are boomers. What do you think they are seeing when they say that?
SJ (00:44:57):
I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that, if you look at them, you can tell that they are boomers. But I can tell that they are boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics which is a little less buttoned up, maybe that is what they mean, but I do not know what they mean by if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says.
SM (00:45:43):
I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality that some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky.
SJ (00:46:00):
Well, yeah. As we know, politicians who are not boomers never have extramarital sex. This is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like, that they imagine to be true about the boomer generation to it being the boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical boomer mindset? Exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it.
SM (00:46:38):
What did that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running boomers would have seen that. Then you had the-
SJ (00:46:58):
It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who was a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing.
SM (00:47:46):
I think across the board, whether it is accurate-
SJ (00:47:51):
I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from.
SM (00:47:56):
Well, three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early life of boomers as a whole is fear, and fear being that you talk about the bomb and growing up with the Cold War and obviously the communist, looking for communists everywhere. Naive, naivety, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet.
SJ (00:48:27):
Quiet?
SM (00:48:30):
Being quiet. I think that history thought boomers really never started speaking, I mean, being outspoken until the (19)60s.
SJ (00:48:41):
Well, first of all, boomers in the (19)50s were little kids.
SM (00:48:41):
They were in the junior high school, though, in the early (19)60s.
SJ (00:48:46):
We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids, but I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the silent generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s, with the boomers. I think on the contrary, child-rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people are wrong for good as well as for bad, to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child-rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child-rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today, I think that boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere and said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children, but I do not think... The (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected, in some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think, in fact, the boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and entitlement than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family life growing up in the 1950s. If you grew up in a ghetto, or if you were a poor white or black person growing up in the South... Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine, but what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young [inaudible]. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he had have been no one. He had have been white trash, because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college.
SM (00:51:09):
Right. You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations.
SJ (00:51:15):
They were not on the radar at all, but the life of the poor and the middle class and the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... That is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was there... A lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes, it was also working-class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s and the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s and their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family. But a lot of Americans do.
SM (00:52:05):
This afternoon, I will be speaking to Marvin [inaudible]. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s.
SJ (00:52:12):
How old is he?
SM (00:52:13):
Oh, he has got same age as [inaudible]. He has got to be probably mid-(19)60s.
SJ (00:52:18):
He is the same age as I am.
SM (00:52:20):
Yeah, and he does not live in America anywhere. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here.
SJ (00:52:25):
Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly, and the mid (19)60s is a period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting interview.
SM (00:52:42):
He and another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time and how they took on the black power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor union. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what was the watershed moment?
SJ (00:53:00):
Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963, and not just with the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Man Men is not wrong about this. In some ways, they were more like the 1950s than they were the later prior to the (19)60s, but in some ways they were not. And one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On The Beach, which was a big hit. Movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. You have 1964, you have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Fail Safe. The Fail Safe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we do not want to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s. Not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War. You have a lot of things. I consider the women's movement, which is really early (19)70s, really it is a (19)60s phenomenon. Although the women's women really does not begin to... Boy, they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the women's movement was gaining. [inaudible] and women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s.
SM (00:55:32):
Give us a watershed moment. Was there a watershed moment? [inaudible] to pick a moment that stands out.
SJ (00:55:49):
As to when the (19)60s ended?
SM (00:55:49):
No, just the whole period of the (19)60s.
SJ (00:55:49):
Well, to me, the watershed moment was... Of course there is document original about this, it is 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon, and the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Dixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values, this becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968.
SM (00:56:33):
Do you remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed. Do you remember the... Most people do. Where were you when you heard?
SJ (00:56:40):
I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan, but what I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed and when Martin Luther King was killed. And when Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home at my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt Airport changing flames for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying. And that is when I learned and I said to myself, this is the end of my hope. It was not, of course, but it felt like it.
SM (00:57:36):
As a person has written a lot of great books and analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy again, what does it say about America? Is it that if you speak up too much, they are going to do you in, or what does it say?
SJ (00:58:11):
What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about a lot this week, what it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture, which I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s. Only worse because-
SM (00:59:06):
Hold that thought. I am want to turn my tapes over here.
SJ (00:59:17):
Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approach this anniversary of the terrorist attacks, it feels to me, although it is not the same cast of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen. That there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance than existed in 1968 because I do believe people know us. I do believe that the 24-hour news cycle, the web and so on have made us stupider, not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right. I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad. And that it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. When some crackpot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida gets a call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Quran, it makes me feel like almost anything could happen.
SM (01:00:58):
And also recently with-
SJ (01:01:01):
I hope that this is a feeling and not a fact.
SM (01:01:04):
Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire.
SJ (01:01:11):
Pat Tillman.
SM (01:01:12):
Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back in the United States and be an anti-war protestor. He and his brother had, some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy that everybody know about-
SJ (01:01:44):
Well, what I would say about this, that this idea is around, is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the Army covered its ass, as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But the fact that this rumor, that these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe... Not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there.
SM (01:02:22):
I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power as somebody wanted to knock him off.
SJ (01:02:30):
Well, I am still worried about that.
SM (01:02:32):
Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle?
SJ (01:02:39):
Which battle are you talking about?
SM (01:02:40):
Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious-
SJ (01:02:46):
The left won the culture war, the political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan.
SM (01:03:10):
Yes, I know.
SJ (01:03:13):
So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war, it did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left.
SM (01:03:27):
Nixon always used the term silent majority, and the silent majority, there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well.
SJ (01:03:35):
That is right, that is right.
SM (01:03:37):
And one of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation or the boomers or the activists, they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said 15? It is more like five.
SJ (01:03:58):
Yeah, I would agree with them. But that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent to the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book, and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, that many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. And it also affected me very much after [inaudible] some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics, because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there that was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I had never read before, and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laugh. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan, that Sean Wilentz, who is another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist, to me, is ridiculous. And I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to The Stones and Bob Dylan... I know who genius poets were. They were [inaudible] and [inaudible]. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet. And it is an example of a low educational standards of a lot of my generation, that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, he was perfectly good.
SM (01:06:23):
What did you think of Rod McKuen?
SJ (01:06:25):
Rod McKuen was the worst.
SM (01:06:28):
How about the beat writers?
SJ (01:06:31):
The beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsburg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. In a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s, you have a cultural... That is why I say the left and in general stupid won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline in a lot of things that I value. I am not sure if I had not spent... Ages 24 to 26, I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to The Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little pot in Moscow.
SM (01:07:24):
What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movements?
SJ (01:07:40):
I do not think the Civil Rights Movement failed in any way, except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years, or as we see now, to paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this Earth. I do not think the Civil Rights Movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success. They failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. When we got through the Civil rights movement, you heard about anybody being lynched lately? No. I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not the movement's fault. The entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement, in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military, was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other, that we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about, let us say the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban. As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with- See, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live. The parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. But so I would say the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure, both in the short term in the war went on for years until 1975, and in the long term, in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women, the women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. Whether, I think it probably was, I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrenched structural problems that the civil rights movement and the women's movement made a good start on that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now.
SM (01:11:39):
You do not have to go into any sense of detail, but then you have got the Native American movement, which many people felt was only a four-year movement. With aim starting in Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee, although the Native American movement had been going on for a long time. And then of course you had the Chicano movement and farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they were all-
SJ (01:12:06):
Well, the gay and lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. I mean the enormous chance that has taken place that started at Stonewall, but it really does not begin to, all you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people and as the difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down. Our parents have far more negative attitudes about gay than the Boomers did. These things take a long time. I do not think that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays, and I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the deists of the 18th century have thought were going to be gone by the next generation that has not. The influence of fundamentalist religion, and I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion, the kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings In Sacred Books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims. The fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out in living in their little Hasidic sheddles in Brooklyn, are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally, they are a real threat in American society. The biggest threat are the Christians, simply because the fun there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. Read Free Thinkers if you want to, but it is something that is, we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality.
SM (01:14:22):
You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s, but you did talk about how during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the other, but then you see the comparison. Mario Savio in 1964 said that-
SJ (01:14:53):
I still have a Savio for state senate.
SM (01:14:56):
Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the battle in the university should the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything.
SJ (01:15:10):
Exactly.
SM (01:15:11):
And we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now.
SJ (01:15:15):
Well back. We are at a worst place. Yeah, it is in relation to that than we ever were then. Yeah. Well, we did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did.
SM (01:15:29):
Well, Clark Kurt talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that makes them better prepared to work with the student activist in particular today?
SJ (01:15:41):
First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see, and what they learned, what the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students that were among the activists as among everybody else. There were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Yes, Todd Gitlin too. There were student active-. There were two activists. He got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. They actually, I do not know who told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right.
SM (01:16:43):
Several people, several people.
SJ (01:16:44):
But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen, and so they got the worst of all possible worlds when instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunned it off into ghetto studies. By ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies. Ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interested few to know.
SM (01:17:32):
After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik, and the science, and math, and the importance of those things. But then when he died and then the university, something happened within the university. Clark Clerk talks about it, the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality.
SJ (01:17:50):
The emphasis on science did not change at all. That was right. That is when the money was always there for science, but what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. I think that, by the way, I think they are right, people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that. And Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that as far, I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses. Telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever-
SM (01:19:05):
Well it is a well-known fact-
SJ (01:19:06):
And computers have made it so much worse.
SM (01:19:09):
It was a well-known fact as I experienced it myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they would demand other things that they could not demand. So nothing would ever please them.
SJ (01:19:26):
Of course.
SM (01:19:26):
Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the example of the (19)60s-
SJ (01:19:34):
The spokesmen.
SM (01:19:37):
Spokesmen of the (19)60s, has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other? It is my way or the highway kind of mentality.
SJ (01:19:51):
Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. Again, I do mean in a way I agree that the power of the quote activists was exaggerated. Look, I mean, I know a lot of these people were thought to be flame throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. Some of them did not. But I think what, what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I think that people, I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When if you think who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same time. Put them in the same frame for a second, and if you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see that. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They did not build careers out of it.
SM (01:21:15):
I have a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes.
SJ (01:21:19):
Okay, I got to stop for you because I am losing my voice.
SM (01:21:24):
You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected both political and intellectual life and has now produced a culture in which disproportionate influence is exercised by the loud and relentless voices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another."
SJ (01:21:41):
More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that is that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think it is a difficult, I think then this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it, that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasoned with it all.
SM (01:22:43):
Would you also say, and I think you have said this in your book, that in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, when someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting?
SJ (01:22:55):
Absolutely.
SM (01:22:55):
And challenging, whereas today it is all like-minded people.
SJ (01:23:02):
Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people.
SM (01:23:05):
I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. This obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism."
SJ (01:23:29):
Yes, I agree with agree with that writer.
SM (01:23:31):
Yeah. I got a lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
SJ (01:23:45):
That is right. Why do not they just replace In God We Trust on the coins with ignorant and proud of it? I do not think in this book, I do not think that you should neglect religion. I think that-
SM (01:23:56):
I am not going to.
SJ (01:23:58):
Now, I think there were, there is a lot, remember the big-time cover story in 1968, God is Dead. Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s, and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and in liberal intellectuals were aware of at all.
SM (01:24:18):
The Terry Falwells of the world-
SJ (01:24:21):
Unfortunately, not only is God not Dead, I would not care if he were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead.
SM (01:24:33):
Last question and I know it is hard. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones are getting towards 50. When we are long gone, when Boomers are long gone. What do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they lived? What do they say about them?
SJ (01:24:59):
Well, a lot of it, like a lot of history, will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Crystal's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think. But I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain. That getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us say to get a picture of people who were born in 1920. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together since the advent of computers. There is very little record, except for a video record, of the inner lives of people of our generation. The kind of inner lives, you can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists, too, in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore. Because people stopped writing me back around 1975 and that is when I stopped writing that back. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication.
SM (01:26:55):
You are right on that.
SJ (01:26:55):
It is gone. I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult.
SM (01:27:07):
We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy, and this is back in the (19)90s, and he said, now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office. And he said, I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen these? These are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter? No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? This is in the (19)90s. So love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, just you look at these and see how beautiful they are. I am going to end with this.
SJ (01:27:44):
I have just about had it.
SM (01:27:47):
Yep. Barney Frank said, it is in his book. He wrote a book-
SJ (01:27:50):
I love Barney Frank.
SM (01:27:51):
In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said, The Democratic Party to survive, must separate itself from George McGovern, the McGovernites, the people, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements. If it is to survive this Barney Frank, speaking frankly.
SJ (01:28:10):
What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern. That is why that would be my question to him.
SM (01:28:15):
Book in the (19)90s, Speaking Frankly though, he said, and he was saying, and he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72.
SJ (01:28:36):
And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic Party ought to disassociated self from people like Barney Frank. He is really, I will tell you, he has really got a nerve. I love him.
SM (01:28:51):
That was (19)92 though, so anyways. Testing. One, two.
(01:29:07):
I certainly will.
SJ (01:29:08):
College guys. Do you want test and see if you are getting a test?
SM (01:29:16):
I do not know about testing. I know this one is, this is my prize one. This one is. Double check.
SJ (01:29:22):
Testing one, two. But I am not going to be talking that loud. I could talk a lot louder out here than I can in the cubicle in the library. No, that is okay.
SM (01:29:35):
We are fine. I will be coming and this one has already started.
SJ (01:29:46):
No-no clapping.
SM (01:29:49):
I am going to read these to make sure that they, I get these right. So I am all over the place here, and the first question I am going to ask you is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paper back on Vietnam.
SJ (01:30:05):
Black In The Dark Age.
SM (01:30:07):
This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book on the, in the Wounded generation on women in the war. How are Boomer generation women wounded about psychologically, personally from that war, and how important were they in the anti-war movement?
SJ (01:30:37):
I will tell you honestly, I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the Boomer generation. The contact that women of the Boomer generation had with the anti-war movement. Although there were lots of women obviously involved just as there were lots of men. But the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who was actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class but did most of the fighting. Which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people. They were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated Boomer women. So that I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men, and that was true not just for Boomer women, but for all women.
SM (01:32:02):
Let me just, I will check this one here to make sure.
SJ (01:32:03):
Let me see if I can get this guy.
SM (01:32:03):
Oh, okay.
SJ (01:32:04):
Well, my cell phone is blocking my purse. That is it. Okay.
SM (01:32:13):
Well, I have read a little bit about your background, from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are in terms of who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in 63, but who were the people that influenced you the most in your early years?
SJ (01:32:33):
Do you mean by my early years? Do you mean when I was a kiddo?
SM (01:32:37):
Yeah, I would say high school, college.
SJ (01:32:43):
That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State my college career was somewhat different from other members of the Boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not in an age where I could most benefit from education, and unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could. Men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college, which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State. I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout, and there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think it is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation, born nine months before it actually started, so when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as quote the (19)60s. When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys off-campus apartment. That is what the real, in other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the Boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime, which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism, and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say I went to, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the Honors College. I took Russian and I majored in journalism, and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspapermen in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hanna, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about, not about McCarthy, did not like him. He was a liberal Republican. They were still liberal and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist in the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman, and I did and were, my mentors, one of them was named George Huff, one of them who was still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers, and so I went to work as a camper stringer for the Detroit Free Press. Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state, and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on.
SM (01:37:01):
Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational and by that, I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the crows, the violence, the sex, protests? And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism?
SJ (01:37:27):
Well, I mentioned that this In the Age of American Unreason. And it is not that they went after what was, just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It is that the media mostly is absolutely true was then and is now. The media was liberal reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting, shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion, and in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the Neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too, and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then.
SM (01:38:39):
Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, the historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the young Americans for Freedom, for example.
SJ (01:38:54):
That is right.
SM (01:38:55):
And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that?
SJ (01:39:02):
As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class. There was first of all, there was no, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review, and that was that, but there was not any, now there is a whole right-wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that is the fact that the (19)60s, where are the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people.
SM (01:39:57):
Well, it is interesting because you brought bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ.
SJ (01:40:00):
They were just getting started then.
SM (01:40:04):
Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students, but it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s, but they had a different point of view.
SJ (01:40:15):
Well, sure.
SM (01:40:16):
Yeah. So a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s.
SJ (01:40:21):
But they were in the (19)60s as when the Campus Crusade for Christ. It actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture, you know, you can be cool. You can be hip, like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on, and were disillusioned with it. We were looking for something else.
SM (01:41:07):
Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the ungrateful generation. Define those. Because a couple of people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book.
SJ (01:41:19):
Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the greatest generation.
SM (01:41:26):
And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead.
SJ (01:41:28):
They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful generation. These were people who, my mother is a very still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family. First member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from the World War II as young adults. First of all, it was not the case of my father who was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill enjoyed a standard of living, which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. There was not even a question then. And the thing is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression, when they were coming of age during World War II. They expected their children to be thrilled with the middle class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And I call that the Ungrateful generation, then. Again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, we do not want your sticky, crappy houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war.
SM (01:43:54):
Well, it is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week as a follow-up interview I had. I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin, and they hate the term Boomer generation, both of them.
SJ (01:44:05):
No, they are not Boomers.
SM (01:44:07):
Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40.
SJ (01:44:10):
Yeah. They are not boomers.
SM (01:44:11):
Todd is younger than Tom, but Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he did not like even Tom Brokaw's book Boom. Because he says, boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violent and boom, basically Tom. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the Boomer generation was insignificant, it was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom.
SJ (01:44:46):
Well, I think if you, pardon of my saying, so he is, he is being a bit of anachronistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having, all of these children. Did not have any. As all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the Boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And it is for the Boomer generation being a short moment in time. Well, he does not know much about demography then. Now there really are two Boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history, is the exact midpoint of the Baby Boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But they are really two halves of the Boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older Boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger Boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older Boomers who came of age the late 1960s. The younger Boomers came of age in a much more conservative era, and in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older Boomers. Barack Obama is a younger Boomer.
SM (01:46:15):
He is two years older, yeah.
SJ (01:46:16):
He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the Baby Boom generation, but he is a Boomer. And here is the one thing that the older Boomers and the younger Boomers have in common, and again, Hayman and Gitlin are not Boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born really between the middle of the depression and the end of the second world war. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the Boomer generation. But what the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected, and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the Boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black Baby Boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common, it did not cost them enough fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger Boomers were through college. The younger Boomers, Blacks and Hispanics, benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older Boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger Boomers, again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older Boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy you were not expected to be married until you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the Boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away. And it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the time out he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the Boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself." These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22. That was a way of living that was pioneered by the older Boomers when Tom Hayden says, "This was just a moment in time." He is utterly wrong.
SM (01:49:20):
He was referring to that term Boom. And he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book.
SJ (01:49:26):
This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place. And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by Boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know the term Baby Boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s.
SM (01:49:39):
I know that I interviewed Richie Havens. Richie said I was born in 41, but I am really a Boomer because of the spirit.
SJ (01:49:47):
Well, what happened was the Boomers of Tom Hayden's day and the pre Boomers is that things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage. You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the Boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation, who was both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong.
SM (01:50:14):
And thought of Richie.
SJ (01:50:14):
Yeah, and Richie too.
SM (01:50:15):
Yeah. One of the things that I am curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you. Men who treated-
SJ (01:50:32):
Not role models, they gave me great advice.
SM (01:50:34):
They gave great advice.
SJ (01:50:35):
We were not role models at all.
SM (01:50:36):
But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s?
SJ (01:50:42):
Well, I applied for a job at two places, the Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great. The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section, this is 1964, although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter, who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble with the New York Times then. But at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding, it had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s.
SM (01:51:45):
I have a couple... You have a quote in your book, this book, "This increasing alliterate of America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really going to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because with a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart. They do not know their history.
SJ (01:52:14):
Blaming it on the (19)60s.
SM (01:52:25):
[inaudible] Between this quote and the (19)60s.
SJ (01:52:26):
Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I mean, I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969. I mean, can remember I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older Boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger Boomers belong more to the next generation. Because there was not any internet, there were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which, if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls for the 1930s, which show how little history Americans do in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, I mean, nobody could have imagined the internet then, nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look, the transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing right now is nothing like an iPod. It was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. But I think it was the beginning of a change, which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think.
SM (01:54:36):
We can move to...
SJ (01:54:37):
No, there are not any tables. Because this guy is talking awful loudly. All right, well, they will not stay there.
SM (01:54:47):
You were in the middle of [inaudible].
SJ (01:55:01):
No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do, and it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed, in general, by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all. Their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s that was bad and was entirely a fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, people who wanted to teach the way they always had, the dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way, and I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. But what they did was they shut it off. Instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum, which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies department. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shut it off into women's studies department. Now this pleased everybody on campuses and I was an education reporter for the Washing Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them, and it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of vulcanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s, and it was not the fault of the students was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups that did not act like it.
SM (01:57:12):
You mentioned in the book, too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses and then in the (19)60s, mid (19)60s in particular. So maybe around the mid (19)70s tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were-
SJ (01:57:29):
That is not what I said. I did not say anything about tenure at all, but in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment then at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African-American studies. And there are campuses with African- American studies departments, Harvard is one of them, where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that meant the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened.
SM (01:58:26):
You do a great job [inaudible] of the criticisms of the neocons towards anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism of that particular time. You bring up Irving Crystal and Todd Hortz.
SJ (01:58:47):
Todd Hortz. Well, they are ancient.
SM (01:58:48):
And commentary, but they were the kind of old left and their attitude toward the (19)60s. How do you react to, because the current neocons, when Newt Gingrich came the power in 1994 when the Republican came in, he made some strong commentaries.
SJ (01:59:01):
Remember the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s. He was part of that other (19)60s.
SM (01:59:02):
Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then he had... You had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on, and then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having the problems in our society today, just looking back.
SJ (01:59:33):
Well, by the way, those people on Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of American knows about ancient Greek or Latin. I mean, they do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers, and that was it, and that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do.
SM (02:00:01):
One of the things, the generation gap, it was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had the front cover with that young man, and he had his glasses on and one side of the glasses his father was pointing at him and he was pointing back at his job. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Webb made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980s. But the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation gap is those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not.
SJ (02:00:49):
So that was not a generation gap, that is a culture gap.
SM (02:00:49):
He called it... And actually went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service. They took the words of Kennedy and they used it, whether it be go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation, so they incur. A lot of them refused to serve.
SJ (02:01:04):
Jim Webb, by the way, is not a Baby Boomer, I believe.
SM (02:01:07):
I do not know. I think he is about 44.
SJ (02:01:11):
Well, he is very young, but I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children in the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam and to say that that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness. That is not just wrong. It is true. But they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead. And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be a communist country, far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. But I think as somebody who remembers of Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is what all Jim Webb has, he has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the military academy about the Vietnam War. I like Jim Webb.
SM (02:02:25):
Oh, he served in Vietnam.
SJ (02:02:31):
He served in Vietnam?
SM (02:02:32):
Yes, he did.
SJ (02:02:32):
So he is not in his 40s then.
SM (02:02:32):
Well, he served in Vietnam.
SJ (02:02:32):
He did?
SM (02:02:32):
Yes.
SJ (02:02:32):
Are you sure?
SM (02:02:35):
Yes. And of course, his son is serving in Iraq on two tours.
SJ (02:02:40):
Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. I mean, you could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis, and by that, I assure you, I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, but I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that you have an all-volunteer army, which of course was a direct result of the fact, but so many people did not want to serve and use education and privilege to get out of the draft. I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think there is direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq war. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal.
SM (02:04:30):
When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed a lot-
SJ (02:04:39):
Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people.
SM (02:04:40):
You saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at, oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today, you are just being entertainers.
SJ (02:04:59):
That is ridiculous.
SM (02:05:00):
And when you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be gung-ho for the troops. But you had the Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda who were against.
SJ (02:05:16):
Here is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity anyway that they want. And by the way, I would like, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about Boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the Boomers... I have a new book coming out in February. It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong, that this was just a moment in time. Oldest Boomers turned 65 next year in 2011. The oldest Boomers turned 65, by 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them Boomers. Now, and this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger Boomers have in common, a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the Boomers hard now and there is now, this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the new old age, but there was in the about Boomers being completely different from their parents in that there is a mindset that says, "If only we live right, if only we worked hard enough, the phrase defying old age comes up all the time." It is a Boomer mindset, a mindset in which, and it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right-
SM (02:07:06):
[inaudible] exercise.
SJ (02:07:08):
...your old age is not going to be... At 90, I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago, called is 90 the new (19)50s. Gene was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the Boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. But as far as a lot of Boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evidence, facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the Boomer generation has always tried to do.
SM (02:08:00):
Yes, exactly.
SJ (02:08:00):
The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging Boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed that if they only wanted it, childbirth would not hurt.
SM (02:08:14):
Well, I know that Boomers they do not want to have senior citizen centers.
SJ (02:08:20):
No-no.
SM (02:08:21):
They want to get rid of that word senior citizens.
SJ (02:08:25):
I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word Boomers hate. Hello. I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle-aged. They are not middle-aged. By the 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old.
SM (02:08:48):
It is an interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say, that will extend your lifespan.
SJ (02:08:58):
No, they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says it. It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan is completely unknown. I know, I know. The AARP, which is now run by Boomers, of course, right? The AARP for which I written many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this, it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who have things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is if you take Viagra, it would be just like it was 20, 30 years ago.
SM (02:10:12):
You hit some-
SJ (02:10:14):
But this is related to the Boomer generation because the Boomers are getting old.
SM (02:10:19):
Yeah. And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is one thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world. We were going to end war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism and homophobia, clean up the environment. There was the supposed attitude of not 100 percent of the people, but the activists had, but they were going to make a difference in the world.
SJ (02:10:46):
And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with a brain in their head knows it. But fact is the progress that is made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today.
SM (02:11:33):
You talked a lot about- How we doing time wise?
SJ (02:11:47):
Well, we have been at it for about-
SM (02:11:47):
45 minutes?
SJ (02:11:48):
Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe.
SM (02:11:52):
Yeah [inaudible] I will come back to it. When you look at the period that Boomers have been alive, which is 1946... Oh, another question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton, and when you look at George's Bush number two, you can tell they are Boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are Boomers. What do you think they are saying when they say that?
SJ (02:12:24):
I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like Boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that. If you look at them, you can tell what they are Boomers. But I can tell if they are Boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be Boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics, which is a little less buttoned up. Maybe that is what they mean. I do not know what they mean by, if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are Boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says.
SM (02:13:06):
I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality, but some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky.
SJ (02:13:20):
Well, yeah, as we know, politicians who are not Boomers never have extramarital sex. But this is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like that they imagine to be true about the Boomer generation to have been the Boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical Boomer mindset? I mean, exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it.
SM (02:13:58):
Look at that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young Boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running Boomers would have seen that-
SJ (02:14:18):
It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed to protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who is a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I think I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing.
SM (02:15:03):
I think that across the board, whether it is that-
SJ (02:15:06):
I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from.
SM (02:15:12):
The three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early light Boomers as a whole is-
SJ (02:15:21):
Fear?
SM (02:15:22):
And fear being what you talk about the bomb and growing up with a cold war, and obviously that the Communist, looking for Communists everywhere. Naive. Naive, hey, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet.
SJ (02:15:40):
Quiet?
SM (02:15:40):
Being quiet. I do not think Boomers [inaudible] thought Boomers really never started to do things. I mean, being outspoken, until the (19)60s.
SJ (02:15:48):
Not, well, first of all, Boomers in the (19)50s were little kids.
SM (02:15:48):
They were in junior high school, though.
SJ (02:15:59):
We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids. But this I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the Silent Generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s with the Boomers. I think on the contrary, child rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people around for good as well as for bad to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although Boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today. I think that Boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere then. And said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children. But I do not think the (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And I mean, you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest Boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected. In some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think in fact, the Boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and intelligence than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family. Life growing up in the 1950s, if you grew up in a ghetto or if you were a poor white or Black person growing up in the south, Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine. But what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young boy. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he would have been no one. He would have been white trash because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college.
SM (02:18:15):
You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations.
SJ (02:18:21):
They were not on the radar at all. But the life of the poor and the middle class in the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... I mean, that is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was that a lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes. It was also working class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s, the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s. And their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue-collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family, but a lot of Americans did not.
SM (02:19:07):
This afternoon I will be speaking to Marvin Serff. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s.
SJ (02:19:07):
How old is he?
SM (02:19:07):
Oh, he is like same age as Alan Wolf. He has got to be probably mid (19)60s.
SJ (02:19:07):
Yeah, he is the same age as Alan then.
SM (02:19:22):
Yeah. But I think he does not live in America anymore. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here.
SJ (02:19:28):
Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly and the mid (19)60s are the period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting-
SM (02:19:48):
Another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time, and how they took on the Black Power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor room. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what was the watershed moment?
SJ (02:19:57):
Actually, I think the (19)60s really began- Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963 and not just for the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Mad Men is not wrong about this, in some ways they were more like the 1950s than they were the later part of the (19)60s. But in some ways, they were not. But one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On the Beach, which was a big hit movie, movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. But, yeah, you have 1964. You have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Failsafe. The Failsafe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we all ought to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s, not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War, and we have a lot of things... I consider the Women's Movement, which is really early (19)70s really a (19)60s phenomenon. I think of it as... although the Women's Movement really does not begin to... they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the Women's Movement was gaining. The high-water mark of women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s.
SM (02:22:15):
What was the watershed moment? Was there a watershed moment? One particular moment that stands out?
SJ (02:22:15):
It was to when the (19)60s ended?
SM (02:22:15):
No, just the whole period of the (19)60s.
SJ (02:22:15):
Well, to me the watershed moment was of course, I mean you got the original about this, it was 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon. And the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Nixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values. This becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968.
SM (02:23:20):
You remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed? Do you remember?
SJ (02:23:20):
I sure do.
SM (02:23:27):
Most people do. Where were you when you heard?
SJ (02:23:32):
I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan. What I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed, and when Martin Luther King was killed. When Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home in my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post, because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the Post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt airport changing planes for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying, and that is when I learned, and I said to myself, "This is the end of my hope." It was not, of course, but it felt like it.
SM (02:24:33):
As a person who has written a lot of great books and have analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King and Kennedy again, what does that say about America? That, if you speak up too much, you are going to be in or what does it say?
SJ (02:24:53):
What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about it a lot this week. What it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture. I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s only worse because-
SM (02:25:46):
Hold that thought. I want to turn my tape here. Yeah, you are bringing up some very interesting-
SJ (02:26:01):
So one thing my throat is getting sore.
SM (02:26:03):
Yep. Okay.
SJ (02:26:07):
Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approached this anniversary of the terrorist attack, it feels to me, although it is not the same class of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen, that there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance that existed in 1968 because I do believe people know-know us. I do believe that the 24 hour news cycle, the web and so on, have made us stupider not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right, I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad, but it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time. Right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. And some crack pot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida get the call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Koran. It makes me feel like almost anything could happen.
SM (02:27:44):
And also recently with the fact-
SJ (02:27:48):
I hope this is a feeling and not a fact.
SM (02:27:50):
Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire.
SJ (02:27:57):
Pat Tillman.
SM (02:27:57):
Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back to the United States and be an anti-war protestor that he and his brother and some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy [inaudible] else about.
SJ (02:28:28):
Well, what I would say about this is that this idea is around is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the army covered its ass as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe, not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there.
SM (02:29:05):
I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power and somebody wanted to knock him off.
SJ (02:29:13):
Well, I am still worried about that.
SM (02:29:16):
Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle?
SJ (02:29:21):
Which battle are you talking about?
SM (02:29:22):
Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious-
SJ (02:29:31):
The left won the culture war. The political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan.
SM (02:29:50):
Yep, I know.
SJ (02:29:52):
So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war. It did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left.
SM (02:30:05):
Well, Nixon always used the term silent majority and there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well.
SJ (02:30:14):
That is right.
SM (02:30:16):
One of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation were the boomers, or the activists is they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said, "15? It was more like five."
SJ (02:30:33):
I would agree with them, but that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent of the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, but many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. It also affected me very much apropos of some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there. There was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I never read before and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laughed. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan that Sean Wilentz, who was another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist to me is ridiculous and I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to the Stones and Bob Dylan, I know who genius poets were. They were Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky and Boris Pasternak. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet, and it is an example of low educational standards of a lot of my generation that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, what he was perfectly good.
SM (02:32:49):
What do you think of Rod McKuen?
SJ (02:32:51):
Well, Rod McKuen was the worst.
SM (02:32:54):
How about the beat writers?
SJ (02:32:55):
But Rod McKuen? Well, the beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsberg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. You have a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s. That is why I say the left in general was stupid, won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline and a lot of things that I valued. Ages 24 to 26 I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to the Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little Pat and Oscar.
SM (02:33:47):
What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movement?
SJ (02:34:01):
I do not think the civil rights movement failed in any way except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years or as we see now. To paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this earth, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success, but they failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. We got through the civil rights movement. You heard about anybody being lynched lately? No, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not movement's fault; the entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other. But we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban.
SM (02:36:12):
Yes.
SJ (02:36:12):
As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live, with parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. So I would say that the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure both in the short term, in that the war went on for years until 1975, and the long term in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrench structural problems that the civil rights movement and women's movement made a good start on, that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now.
SM (02:37:47):
You do not have to go into any extensive detail, but then you have got the Native American movement which many people thought was only a four-year movement with AIM starting at Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee. The Native American movement had been going on for a long time. Then of course you had the Chicano movement, the farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they are all-
SJ (02:38:08):
Well, the gay lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. The enormous change that has taken place that started at Stonewall. All you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people, and it is a difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down does. Our parents have problem negative attitudes about gay than the boomers did. These things are take a long time. I do not think that that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays. I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the ideas of 18th century, have thought, "We are going to be gone by the next generation." That has the influence of fundamentalist religion. I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion. The kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings in sacred books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims, the fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out living in their little Hasidic shtetls in Brooklyn are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally. They are a real threat in American society, the biggest threat of the Christians simply because there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. I read free thinkers if you want to, but we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality.
SM (02:40:19):
You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s then, but you did talk about how that during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the others-
SJ (02:40:42):
Well, you know they-
SM (02:40:42):
Do you see the comparison? Mario Savio in 1964 said that the-
SJ (02:40:47):
I still have a Savio for state senate bumper sticker!
SM (02:40:52):
Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything, and we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now.
SJ (02:41:07):
We are back. We are at a worst place in relation to that than we ever were then. We did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did.
SM (02:41:23):
Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that make them better prepared to work with the student activists?
SJ (02:41:31):
They are not-
SM (02:41:33):
In particular, today.
SJ (02:41:37):
First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see. What the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students. There were among the activists, as among everybody else, there were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Todd Gitlin too. There were student activist-
SM (02:42:02):
Tom Hayden was smart, too.
SJ (02:42:03):
There were two activists. Well, he got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was, they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. I do not know who it was that told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right.
SM (02:42:30):
Several people.
SJ (02:42:31):
But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen. So they got the worst of our possible worlds. When instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunted it off into ghetto studies, and by ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies, ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interest in you to know.
SM (02:43:16):
After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik and the science and math and the importance of those things. But then when he died, something happened within the universities. Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality.
SJ (02:43:38):
The emphasis on science did not change at all. That is when the money was always there for science. But what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. By the way, I think people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses, telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever-
SM (02:44:43):
It is a well-known fact-
SJ (02:44:44):
And computers have made it so much worse.
SM (02:44:46):
It is a well-known fact as I have experienced them myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they demand other things they could not demand, so nothing would ever please them. Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the sample of the spokesman of the (19)60s?
SJ (02:45:07):
[Inaudible]
SM (02:45:07):
Has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other, my way or the highway kind of mentality?
SJ (02:45:24):
Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. I do, in a way, I agree that the power of the quote activist was exaggerated. Look, I know a lot of these people who are thought to be flame-throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. But I think what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When you think about who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same frame for a second. If you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see it. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They even built careers out of it.
SM (02:46:45):
I had a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes.
SJ (02:46:47):
Okay. I have got a spot for you because I am losing you.
SM (02:46:51):
You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected those political and intellectualized and is now produced a culture in which disproportionate influences exercised by the loud and relentless choices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another."
SJ (02:47:07):
More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasonable to [inaudible].
SM (02:48:05):
Would you also say, and I think you said this in your book that, in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, that someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting-
SJ (02:48:16):
Absolutely.
SM (02:48:16):
And challenging us today. It is all like-minded people.
SJ (02:48:21):
Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people.
SM (02:48:26):
I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. The obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism."
SJ (02:48:47):
Yes, I agree with agree with that writer!
SM (02:48:52):
I got lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
SJ (02:49:03):
That is right. Why do not they just replace "In God we trust" on the coins with "Ignorant and proud of it." I do not think, in this book, that you should neglect religion. Remember the big Time cover story in 1968, "God is dead". Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and liberal intellectuals were aware of at all.
SM (02:49:35):
The Jerry Falwells of the world.
SJ (02:49:36):
Unfortunately, not only is God not dead, I would not care if He were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead.
SM (02:49:43):
This is the last question. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones ever getting towards 50. When boomers are long gone, what do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they live? What do they say about them?
SJ (02:50:11):
Well, a lot of history will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Kristol's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think, but I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain that getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us to get a picture of people who were born in 1920 are. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together. Since the advent of computers, there is very little record except for a video record of the inner lives of people of our generation. You can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists too in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore because people stopped writing me back around 1975, and that is when I stopped writing. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication.
SM (02:51:57):
Wow, you are right on that.
SJ (02:51:59):
I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult.
SM (02:52:09):
We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy. This was back in the (19)90s, and he said, "Now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office". And he says, "I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen, these are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter?" No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? She was in the (19)90s, so it is love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, "Just you look at these and see how beautiful they are." I am going to end with this.
SJ (02:52:46):
I am just about had it.
SM (02:52:47):
Yep. Barney Frank said at the very end, he wrote a book-
SJ (02:52:50):
I love Barney Frank.
SM (02:52:51):
In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said the Democratic party to survive must separate itself from George McGovern, like McGovernites, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements if it is to survive. Mr. Barney Frank is speaking frankly.
SJ (02:53:08):
What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern? That would be my question to him.
SM (02:53:13):
In his book in the (19)90s, speaking frankly though, he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal, basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72.
SJ (02:53:31):
And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic party ought a disassociated itself from people like Barney Frank. I am sorry, he has really got a nerve. I love him.
SM (02:53:46):
Well that was (19)92 though, so anyway. Okay. Well, thank you.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Susan Jacoby
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Jacoby, Susan, 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--Interviews
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Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-09-10
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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173:52
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Title
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-09-10
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Marvin Surkin
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Marvin Surkin is a scholar, author, and specialist in comparative urban politics and social change. He worked at the center of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Dr. Surkin is the author of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7043,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Marvin Surkin is a scholar, author, and specialist in comparative urban politics and social change. He worked at the center of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Dr. Surkin is the author of <em>Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution</em>. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University.</span>
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BInghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; TV in the Nineteen fifties; Segregation; \nCivil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Summer of Love."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,11791078],"12":0}">Baby boom generation; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; TV in the Nineteen fifties; Segregation; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial; Kent State; Jackson State; Watergate; Summer of Love; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Republicans; Vietnam War; Detroit Riots; Dr. Martin Luther King; Black Power movement; Detroit in 1960s; Black Manifesto<br /></span>
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106:59
Subject LCSH
Scholars; Authors; Social change; Metropolitan government; Surkin, Marvin--Interviews
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Dr. Marvin Surkin
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Surkin, Marvin ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
Subject
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Scholars; Authors; Social change; Metropolitan government; Surkin, Marvin--Interviews
Description
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Dr. Marvin Surkin is a scholar, author, and specialist in comparative urban politics and social change. He worked at the center of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Dr. Surkin is the author of <em>Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution</em>. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-09-10
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.115
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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106:59