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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
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Audio interviews
Title
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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
2010-12-13
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Roberta Price
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
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Interview Format
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Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Roberta Price, born in New York City, is an author, photographer, educator, and intellectual property attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After college, Price lived seven years in the Huerfano (\"Orphan\") Valley and published a memoir of her experiences entitled, Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture. She left the commune to pursue a law degree. Price has a Bachelor's degree from Vassar College and a law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15107,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,4342338],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Roberta Price, born in New York City, is an author, photographer, educator, and intellectual property attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After college, Price lived seven years in the Huerfano ("Orphan") Valley and published a memoir of her experiences entitled <em>Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture</em>. She left the commune to pursue a law degree. Price has a Bachelor's degree from Vassar College and a law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. </span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Western America; Huerfano Valley; March on the Pentagon; Photography; Commune; Vietnam War; Hippies; Baby boom generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Western America; Huerfano Valley; March on the Pentagon; Photography; Commune; Vietnam War; Hippies; Baby boom generation.</span>
Duration
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86:51
Subject LCSH
Authors, American; Photographers; Intellectual property lawyers; Price, Roberta--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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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 Roberta Price
Contributor
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Price, Roberta ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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audio/wav
Subject
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Authors, American; Photographers; Intellectual property lawyers; Price, Roberta--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Roberta Price, born in New York City, is an author, photographer, educator, and intellectual property attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After college, Price lived seven years in the Huerfano ("Orphan") Valley and published a memoir of her experiences entitled <em>Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture</em>. She left the commune to pursue a law degree. Price has a Bachelor's degree from Vassar College and a law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-12-13
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.205
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
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86:51
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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
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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
2010-03-18
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
William L. O'Neill
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree form the University of Michagan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author, and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. O'Neill is the recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who in America. </span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"AFDC; Welfare; Baby boom generation; Eugene McCarthy; communism; Red Scare; Women's Liberation Movement; Hippies."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">AFDC; Welfare; Baby boom generation; Eugene McCarthy; communism; Red Scare; Women's Liberation Movement; Hippies.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
199:22
Subject LCSH
Historians; Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Rutgers University; United States—History—20th century; O'Neill, William L.--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
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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: William O’Neill
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 18 March 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two. Here we go. Again, speak up. I remember I said that a couple of times and, oh, all right, here we go. What was America like from 1946 to (19)60 in the following areas, just your perceptions? I know when you wrote American High, you talked about that you looked at it more from a functional perspective as opposed to an idealistic perspective than a lot of the boomers may have thought. Because they were fairly critical, but when you think of the 19 from this (19)46 to 1960, I have got five categories here that I like. Just your thoughts on what was it like to be an African American during that timeframe? A female. What was family life like? Religion? Because I know people went to church a lot. My grandfather was a minister. The leaders that you thought were the most inspirational during that timeframe, there is a lot here, but these particular groups, because this is when boomers were born and right up to the time they went to junior high school.
WO (00:01:27):
Well, of course, I do not know much about what it was like to be an African American. Segregation was of course, universal in the north too, as well as the south. In the south, it was a matter of law, and they had savage punishments if you violated it, they were still lynching people. In the north was intensely segregated too, but in a non-violent way. It was not a matter of law, it was a matter of custom. Realtors would not sell or rent to Black people except in Black neighborhoods. Of course, their income compared to whites was extremely low. Their opportunities were very limited compared to what they later became. The big compensation, I think, for them, was that their family life was so much better than it is now. The divorce rate was slow, the illegitimate rate was low. This was an era of two parent Black families who generally stayed together for life and raised their children and under very difficult circumstances, but what has happened since that is the opportunities for blacks who have improved and enormously, but the Black family has disintegrated. Over 70 percent of Black children are born out of wedlock now. Most Black children do not have fathers. Well, they have them, but they do not know where they are kind of thing. I never know what if I were Black, how I would look at that because ...
SM (00:03:02):
Do you blame-
WO (00:03:04):
... Have been great, but the losses have been big too.
SM (00:03:06):
Do you blame Lyndon Johnson for part of that? Because a lot of people criticize him for the welfare state, and even though the Great Society was, is praised over what he did in Vietnam, a lot of people are critical that really hurt the African American family, because that is the 1960s, '63 after Kennedy died, right, till (19)68.
WO (00:03:34):
Well, what enabled Black women to raise all these illegitimate children was welfare or aid to families with dependent children. That was the actual title aid to families with dependent children. That was eliminated under Bill Clinton in I think 1965 or 1995 or (19)96, so that program does not exist anymore. Women, again, in most states, three to five years of that kind of support, and then it is over. If welfare had been the cause of the Black families' disintegration, then it should be recreated by now, but of course it has not been. It clearly could not have been the principal factor.
SM (00:04:21):
Mm-hmm. How about women? What was it like? You have written about it to be a female in (19)46 to (19)60 in the (19)50s and late (19)40s.
WO (00:04:32):
Well, it was a tradeoff. Women were discriminated against but of course, until Betty Friedan came along with the Feminine Mystique, there was not a strong perception of that among anybody, including, I mean, I knew lots of women. I married one and they did not feel oppressed or discriminated against, although in fact they were not necessarily oppressed, but they were certainly discriminated against. It was difficult for, for example, when I was a student at the University of Michigan, and we all took this for granted in the 1950s, the ratio of men to women was two to one. That was not because the women had inferior qualifications. It was because the admission system was rigged so that a woman had to have superior qualifications to the average male who was admitted in order to get in. Of course, when it came to graduate school, medical school, law school, the discrimination's far worse there. When I- something I have never forgotten, when I entered graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley in 1957, they had an orientation meeting and there were maybe, I do not know, 100 students who had just been admitted. One of the senior faculty, a full professor addressed us and he said, this is a literal quote. He said, "If you are married or female, get out of this program. We only have room for serious scholars." If you were married or a woman, by definition, you could not be a serious scholar. There were women who got PhDs then and they had a terrifically difficult time finding jobs. Now, the plus side is, in those days, men earned, including working class men, but particularly working-class men and middle-class men, they earned enough money to support a family by themselves. A male's wages or salary were sufficient for him to support a wife and three children, I guess was the average at the time. The divorce rate was quite low compared to what it is now, about half what it is today. The tradeoff was yes, women were discriminated against, but more than we were all conscious of. In retrospect, you can see this much more clearly. I did not see it at all at the time and not [inaudible] and then when I started thinking about these things, I am sure it was an eye opener for lots of people, but the plus side was that although women were discriminated against, for the most part, for most of them, they were able to marry, have children, be supported by their husband and stay married to their husband. It was a lifelong deal, and many of them did not think it was that bad a deal.
SM (00:07:48):
Some of the feminists, and I have interviewed a couple of them, one in particular actually is Dr. Lash, she mentioned that she fell, women were never asked how they felt in the 1950s. In reality, if you were to talk to them as they got older, they stayed together for the kids, but they really did not want to get divorced. Secondly, and then unhappy marriages and whatever that effect that had on the children, but they also, if she felt that if you asked a lot of the women of that period, they would say, "Yes, I was totally unfulfilled," because a lot of them had secretarial training and so forth, and they met their husband. They married young, had kids, but they were not able to use their skills until later on. Some others had exceptions of the rule. There were women that were working, but overall, they were housewives. Your thoughts of that kind of, that is-
WO (00:08:49):
That anecdotal evidence is really hard to deal with. Most of the women I know my age, more or less my age, have been happy with their lives. My wife, for example, this is just an anecdote, does not mean anything necessarily, but when we got married, I was still in graduate school and she got a job teaching at a public school in Berkeley, and she taught there for three years. She hated every minute of it. It was there, she was the new girl in school, and so she got the worst classes. She threw up every morning before she went to school for about six months, I think. She never got to like it. I mean, it was always rough. The minute I got my PhD at a full-time job, she quit and was thrilled to quit. She then spent several years because I was always at universities, taking courses in areas of interest in her and developing. She is in fact an artist. She was never able to make a living at it, but art is her biggest interest. She was able to take art classes and produce work, and then she was very highly motivated to have children. After a couple of years of taking courses, she then had two children. Are you a father?
SM (00:10:19):
No, I am lucky. I have been married to my job my whole life.
WO (00:10:22):
Okay.
SM (00:10:23):
My career. Thousands of students.
WO (00:10:24):
Well, it changes your life and it is not always an unmixed blessing, but she had never regretted that she was very highly motivated. She really wanted to be a mother. I have never asked her if she felt that she had a fulfilling life, but it seemed to me that she has had the tradeoffs that she had to make were ones that she made consciously and was not forced into. In fact, I did not want to have children. I was married to my work in those days, a young man and just getting started and had no money. Well, I had a salary, but it just barely covered our requirements. When she had wanted to have a ... And she just [inaudible]. She was very highly motivated. She was determined to have children. I went along with it. It is not like men do not make sacrifices too or did not. It is still true. We all do whatever the balance of power or whatever it is, men have to make compromises and sacrifices too. I went along with it. Our first child was so horrible. She grew up to be a very fine woman, but as an infant, she was just awful. Even she was defiant and a runaway by the age of two.
SM (00:11:56):
Oh my God.
WO (00:11:56):
It just made our lives so difficult. And then my wife said, "Well, it is time to have another child," and I said, "Are you insane? We could barely cope with the one we have." Well, we did it. We went and had Kate.
SM (00:12:10):
Right. You talked a little bit about the family life of the boomer family life. I am trying to make sure that when I talk about boomers, people had mentioned that they thought boomers were white men or white women, but I want to make sure boomers are everybody that lived from all ethnic backgrounds, gender orientation, you name it. Just your thoughts on what it was like to grow up as a kid in the 1950s, because I have not had too many people that I have interviewed that really have concentrated on that period. They like to talk about the (19)60s and the (19)70s, but they do not like to talk about the (19)50s. I need more information because I felt religion was very important in the (19)50s. My grandfather was a minister at the Peekskill Church in New York for, he died in (19)56, I was a little boy, but we went to church, and I know that his church was packed. My dad would come back in the late (19)50s when [inaudible] took his place and it was packed. Something happened in the (19)60s, attendance went down, but just the concept of what it was like to be a family life was like and religion in the 1950s.
WO (00:13:22):
Well, Chris, again, you have to remember that America was overwhelmingly white in that period. The Hispanic minority, practically non-existent. Immigration from Asia and Africa and South America was just impossible. The only immigrants who got in were whites from Europe. The country was about 89 percent white, something like that. Within that context, a lot of class and regional and income differences. What is striking about the family life in that period, first of all, is this is the era of the baby boom. Birth rates had been falling for as long as there had been censuses, and particularly since 1860 when the census really got professional and good. Every generation had fewer children than the one before it. The parents of the baby boomers were, of course, children of depression and war. They have been through a lot and made many sacrifices. With the case of the war generation, they have been separated for long periods of time and they were determined to make up for lost time. Veterans served in military on the average of three years at the time. They all regarded this as three lost years. I mean, not that they rejected the call to service. There were very few conscientious objectors in World War II. They accepted their duty. It was their responsibility to defend the country, but nonetheless, they hated the military, almost all of them, and regarded this is three lost years when they could have finished school and gotten married and had children. When they got out, they decided to do everything at once. It just baffled older people, social critics and the like. Here is a generation they know sooner get out of the army then they get married, have children go to college, all at the same time. You are supposed to do those in sequence, decent intervals between them and so on. It led to this very false school of social criticism about the lonely crowd and the corporation ...
SM (00:15:37):
David Riesman.
WO (00:15:38):
... And all that. I am about 10 years older than the war generation, so I did not participate in their experience. Initially, when all this social criticism came about, again, the lonely crowd, the conformity and mindlessness and tacky houses in the suburbs and all that stuff, and without giving much thought to it, I went along with it. In later years, when I went back to study this, this period from many different demographic standpoints looked better and better, that the birth rate was high, higher than it had been in several generations, and higher than it would ever be again, at least up until this point. The marriage rate was higher too. The divorce rate was lowered. Family incomes grew steadily. The houses in the suburbs were, what is the alternative to a nice house in a suburb like Levittown? Well, a tenement, some crappy apartment in New York that you are paying. For most veterans who bought houses in Levittown, their housing costs fell. They were paying more in rent for overcrowded, under ventilated apartments in New York than for a nice two-bedroom expandable cape, with grass and a driveway and this kind thing. They were family-oriented to a degree unprecedented in American history before that time. The wives too, of course, were similarly motivated because they had had the same deprivation. They had been separated from their boyfriends, their husbands, their future husbands, whatever, and had worked in difficult conditions in war plants and things like that. They felt they had lost three years of their life too. As I look back on them now, I mean, I think they were a wonderful generation and we call them today, they never used that phrase at the time, and you talk about all the complaints that were made about the generation, now, we call them the greatest generation. They were great at peace time too.
SM (00:18:05):
Yeah. It is interesting because I want to get into the leaders here, but you say in your book in American High that when Eisenhower came to power, the country was infused with confidence. It is created expectations, and there was unity. Isn't that what happened when Kennedy came in too, that many of the critics of the (19)50s looked at Kennedy and said, "Whew, what a breath of fresh air, new ideas, somebody who's young," some fairly critical of the (19)50s overall, and as it says here, very complacent, as you said in your book, complacent, unremarkable, marked by intolerance, conformed to materialism. Of course, African Americans were treated poorly. You talked about lynching. Dr. King became nationally known. There were some really bad things happening, but it was kind of hidden. We knew about the Cold War, we knew about the threat of the nuclear bomb, but what was happening in America within our own borders was kind of hidden from boomer children, so to speak. That is why I think a lot of people are critical of the (19)50s because not only were these things happening, but we allowed them to happen and we did not make any effort to change. You talk about the fact also, in your book that after World War II, it was a kind of reconstruction period. It was everybody had been deprived. I know my mom, I know the stories my mom told me about they did not have any butter. I mean, there was no rubber. I mean, they could not drive very far in cars. There was all kinds of restrictions, but the social critics do not look at that. They look at the bad things and the status quo and the lack of being individual thought and your thoughts again.
WO (00:20:08):
The period looks ... Now, of course, the (19)50s did suffer from racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every previous era in American history had suffered from these things too. The (19)50s is not unique in that way. What makes the (19)50s unique is the progress that was made. This was the beginning of the period of the fight against racism. Now, that with around supportive education and then Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in the (19)60s, it would lead to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, so race ... The greatest scandal of American life, which had been a scandal before there was a United States of America, that is the (19)50s is the era when the fight against it really takes off. The worst thing in American life is being seriously addressed for the first time. Well, since the Civil War, I mean, that was many, many hundreds of thousands of union men died to destroy slavery, but then that was it, and discrimination and lynching and all these other things just went unaddressed until really the 1950s. In that area, you get the start really important social progress. In other areas, I have become, I think more I have come to admire Eisenhower more than I did. For one thing, I was as a lifelong Democrat, I voted for Adlai Stevenson, but I have come to appreciate Eisenhower, despite his style, which in public, he was this homuncular, grandfather-like figure. Spoke in long, boring sentences and never seemed to say anything. Of course, we now know that was an act, that he really was not like that at all, but that was the public persona that he represented, which could hardly have been more tedious or bland. While he was putting out this facade of mediocrity, he was ending the Korean War, cutting back the military, drastically paying down the national debt, starting the interstate highway system. I know lots of people think this country pays too much attention to cars, that we are too car-centered and we should have more railroads and stuff. I think that is true also, but the interstate highway system was a tremendous stimulus to the American economy, not only in the jobs that were created in building it, but in the time that was cut from transporting goods from place to place. It was the greatest public works project in the history of the world. One of the big reasons why the American economy grew so rapidly during the (19)50s and (19)60s when it was of course, still rebuilding, built the St. Lawrence Seaway ...
SM (00:23:04):
Yeah, the [inaudible].
WO (00:23:06):
... He kept income tax up. The Republicans, even in the 1950s were gung-ho on tax cuts. He refused to do it, because his feeling was, and he said this publicly, that a strong economy is more important than a strong military because you can always build up a military, but if your economy is shot, you are screwed. Well, he did not put it in that way, of course, but that was his argument, and he said that repeatedly. He refused to cut taxes in order, to pay for the interstate highway system to pay down the national debt, to pay for the St. Lawrence Seaway. This is also a period, he was the first to provide federal funding to schools, public schools, and higher education. The country, during this period, the college population expanded between 1955 and 1960 by about 150 percent. Never been anything like it in the history of this country. Thanks to the fact that the economy is blooming, and the states are doing well, and the federal government is supplying some kind of money, this huge increase in enrollment was met by building new colleges and universities and expanding the old ones and hiring full-time faculty members with PhDs. That is almost all the hiring was done during this period. Now, when I look at us today, of course, this is parochial of me Because I have spent my life in higher education, but higher education has been decaying for such a long time now. So much of the teaching is done by exploited graduate students. The full-time, tenured PhD faculty keep shrinking everywhere, not just at Rutgers. That is happening everywhere. The university's trying to make up the difference by admitting unqualified students and charging a lot of money in tuition. In the 1950s and (19)60s, tuition was essentially free. I mean, there was a tuition, but it would be like $100 a semester or something of that sort. Today at state universities like Rutgers, it is $12,000 a year. That the whole concept that public higher education should be free is just gone. Nobody seems to care. Increasingly what you could get the education [inaudible]. That was not how we did it in the (19)50s and (19)60s or even before that.
SM (00:25:28):
I know Eisenhower, even you criticize him for not being very good in the area of civil rights, although he ...
WO (00:25:35):
He was very blunt.
SM (00:25:36):
... Yeah, although we know what happened at Little Rock, but what is interesting is oftentimes pressure has to be put on leaders to get things done. Harry Truman, of course, integrated the military in the late forties, and I can remember the story of A. Philip Randolph threatening a march on Washington and ...
WO (00:25:55):
During the war.
SM (00:25:56):
... Yeah, during the war, and Truman did not want that. He eventually integrated the army, which meant that I think (19)57 was when King was there for, I think, at the Lincoln Memorial.
WO (00:26:14):
Truman integrated the army in theory in 1948, but it took quite a long time to ... The services really dragged their feet that when they ended formal segregation, oh, in five to 10 years, something like that. Even into the (19)60s, although segregation had officially been ended, you barely saw a black officer. Black soldiers were mostly in construction battalions and riflemen. In fact, in the (19)60s, one of the problems of the Vietnam War is that in (19)65, (19)66 when the fighting really became intensive, Black casualties in relation to the number of blacks in the military were extremely high. Well, the reason was that they were all in the combat arms. Everybody who scored high on Army qualification tests, who would normally be white, got into intelligence and signals and things like that, and Blacks all got to be gunners and rifleman.
SM (00:27:26):
Yeah, McCarthy was an important figure. I can remember as a very young boy sitting on the floor in my home in Courtland before I went to school and seeing this man on television yelling to answer questions. I remember Roy Cohen, I remember that young lawyer to his left, but I remember he was scary to me as a little boy within that black and white TV. I was [inaudible] and even as a four-year-old that this is a guy that even a four-year-old was afraid of. David Kaiser's written in his book, 1968, that he sees Kennedy and McCarthy linked all over the place when you talk about the boom generation. He links three things that really affected the Vietnam War, and he thinks McCarthy, Kennedy and an attitude of appeasement, kind of like what happened in Munich that happened. When he talks about McCarthy, he is talking about all the links with the Kennedy’s, and they were friends and McCarthy-
WO (00:28:33):
Joan Kennedy in particular ...
SM (00:28:35):
McCarthy was challenged them-
WO (00:28:37):
... [inaudible] supporter of McCarthy.
SM (00:28:41):
Right. Well, and of course you talk about in your book about the Hollywood ten. To me that was a precursor of the enemy's list that Nixon did and the COINTELPRO program. I know that M. Stanton Evans has written a book recently kind of saying some good things about Senator McCarthy, but yet-
WO (00:29:06):
Gee, what good is this?
SM (00:29:08):
Yeah. It is actually a revisionist look at the man. You have to get the book. M. Stanton Evans, he is a conservative, but your thoughts on McCarthy and how important he was during that timeframe in terms of shaping about fearing about speaking up. David Kaiser also talks about the fact that many white men in that period looked up to African Americans like Dr. King because they were not threatened by McCarthy. They spoke up against injustice, Dr. King in (19)57, Montgomery Bus Boycott, and they did not worry about him, but many white men who may have spoken up did not because of what was going on in America, soft on communism type of a mentality.
WO (00:30:00):
I am missing your question.
SM (00:30:01):
The question is, McCarthy, how important was he?
WO (00:30:05):
Well, of course he was about five years, he was tremendously important, but he was important primarily as a weapon used by the Republicans to get back in power into the meeting. Well, he had a sort of primitive shrewdness about him, but the man was completely incompetent, and so was his staff except for Roy Cole. Roy Cole was smart, but otherwise, he had a terrible staff. He would go around saying, "There are 185 communists in the State Department," and he would wave papers that presumably prove this. The next time he would ask, "Well, there is 65 communists in the State Department," and he would be president. Finally, he got down to Owen Lattimore, who was not even in the State Department. He was an East Asian scholar who had been serving as a consultant to McCarthy. Well, so where is the fire there? There was not. It was a damp squid. Owen Lattimore was a fellow traveler, but he was not in the State Department and had no influence on public policy and did not matter at all in terms of the life of the country. McCarthy's success was owning to the fact that the Republicans supported him strongly, including even Robert Taft, who was widely admired for his integrity, but did not hesitate to urge McCarthy to get down in the gutter and throw mud at everyone else and did some mud throwing in of itself. The proof of that is that when Eisenhower became president in 1953, McCarthy's days were numbered because he did not realize that he was just a tool, was a means by which the Republicans were going to get back into power. Now that they were in power, there could not be a 21st year of treason and all these other ridiculous charges that he made, and he did not get it. Part of it, I think, was because he was so alcoholic. When you look at the films that have been made of him, the documentaries like Point of Order, which is surely the best known one, you can see that he is visibly drunk when he is speaking. He slurs his words, and he gets things wrong. Here is this drunken fool who becomes a national figure and a real threat to civil liberties, solely as a mechanism by which the Republicans came back into power. Once they are back into power in 1954, they cut him off [inaudible].
SM (00:32:40):
Do you think Nixon learned from McCarthy? He was not like McCarthy, but he saw-
WO (00:32:48):
No, he was so much smarter than McCarthy.
SM (00:32:48):
But he saw that he could threaten people with his enemies list and the COINTELPRO Program.
WO (00:32:54):
Yes, he did not hesitate to use McCarthy methods, but he was so much smarter than McCarthy and so much really more careful about who he went after and how he phrased it. He would usually leave himself an out some sort, so he could red bait and get away with it, but McCarthy was just so crude, and as I say, incompetent. He destroyed himself.
SM (00:33:23):
When you look at your three books that I brought with me today, could you describe what it means to what American High means, what coming apart means and what a bubble in time means?
WO (00:33:40):
Mm-hmm. Well, I have a general theory about modern American history, which these books fit into. I have been trying to think of a way to possibly write another book that would integrate this thing, but it seems to be the arc that the United States has followed, is in the 1930s ... As follow is in the 1930s, of course, it was the Great Depression and a good deal of national despair, which fortunately Franklin Roosevelt came along. And after that, people did not despair so much, but there was a long period of hardships experienced by a large part of the public. And then there was this awful era of appeasement. On the part of France and Britain, which the United States fully supported. Roosevelt was always sending encouraging messages, keep up the good work of surrendering handler, not with so many words, of course. And then when France fell, and Britain was all alone, the last beacon of democracy in a continent that had been completely taken over by the Nazis, the American people, as unfortunately polls pretty reliable by this time. But also, the American still did not want to get into the war. They wanted to wait until New Jersey was invaded and that would be the right point at which to start defending ourselves. And Roosevelt kept trying to explain it would be better to start defending ourselves using Great Britain while it was still independent as a phase. So that was kind of the nature of American life in the 20th century, I think. But once forced into the war, against the will, of course, the American people made a fabulous effort. And in saving much of the free world, they also rejuvenated the United States. And the self-confidence and the economy blossomed. And in the post-war period, we got this long run of success with the economy. The economy. Average incomes between 1947 and 1973 doubled. That is in real terms, that is adjusted for inflation. That is real terms. Since 1973, family incomes have only gone up by about 10 percent. And that is mostly because everybody is working more. Husbands are moonlighting, wives who never would have worked previously are now working part-time when men who worked part-time previously are now working full-time. We put in more hours. American families put in more hours of work than anybody else in the developed world. And that, plus borrowing, is the only reason why family standards of living have improved, or did improve up until what, 2000. But before that, in the year that ended in 1973, the American standard of living doubled because incomes doubled. Real incomes doubled. And as I said before, it is a period of tremendous reconstruction. In 1945, there is a huge housing shortage. In 1950, the housing shortage is over. And then you get the highway and all the other things, the huge expansion of education. It was gigantic on all levels because the baby boomers are here, this huge generation, bigger than the country had ever seen before. Which we did not have an infrastructure to support at the time they started coming. The infrastructure was created, the schools, the churches, which also boomed during this period. So, it is America. The racism, the worst feature of American life, is seriously attacked for the first time since the Civil War in the 1950s. So, this is a period of enormous national self-confidence, which is fully justified by the results. Then as you get into the 1960s, of course the picture becomes somewhat more ambiguous. The growth continues. It goes right on; the economic growth goes right on into the 1970s. Well, as you know, I am not a big admirer of President Kennedy, and he was a cold warrior from the beginning. He was determined to escalate the arms race. He campaigned on nonexistent missile gap between the United States and the Soviets. There was a missile gap, but it was in our favor by a big margin. The first generation of Soviet ICBMs had failed. And Eisenhower, Nixon could not say that because the information was derived from these illegal sky flights over the Soviet Union. And so, Nixon could not say, well, in fact, we were way ahead of the Soviets in ICBMs because owing to our secret and illegal overflights...
SM (00:38:50):
Gary Powers.
WO (00:38:52):
But I am not a big sympathizer with Nixon, but there is a certain irony in his hands being tied in this way. And then when Kennedy became president and Secretary McNamara finally gets the figures and he announces, well, there is no missile gap actually, we are way ahead. And Kennedy made him take that back and insisted on greatly increasing expenditure on missiles despite the fact that we already had this huge lead. The Soviets, of course, then had no choice but to reply in kind. And so, we ended up with something like 40, 000 thermal nuclear warheads on each side, enough to destroy the world many times over. And that all starts with Kennedy. It could have been avoided, it seems to me, with better leadership. He was extremely capable of certain ways, but he was such a hawk where the Cold War was concerned. He never thought about the long-term consequences of what he did. And then we get Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, which is the biggest outburst of progressive social legislation since the New Deal and has never been matched since. Remotely. Nobody remotely has come close to the Great Society. And then he also gives us the Vietnam War. And that enables the war, is unwinnable and unpopular. And it gives us Richard Nixon as a president. And it also is the beginning of the inflation that become so marked in the 1970s, because since the war was so unpopular, Johnson did not want to pay for it. Or that was he wanted to borrow rather than the tax to pay for it. The country was rich at the time; you could afford it to raise taxes. If people were saying in polls, which they did up until 1968, that they favored the war, well want them to pay for it. But Johnson was afraid to push it because the polls showed there was a majority of Americans supported it. But he believed, I think correctly, that the support was rather thin and would not stand up. And if serious sacrifices were required, that support would wither away. So he avoided the tax increases that might have forced all the, I am not an economist, but all the economic histories that I have seen see the beginning of inflation in his trying to fight the war around borrowing money, at a time when we could afford to actually tax. But he was right about the support being thin because once the huge casualties started to come in and the Tet Offensive proved that all these optimistic projections are wrong, support really eroded very rapidly. And so, Nixon was able to come in and that is the end, actually, it was not the end of reform. Nixon was surprisingly open-minded. Currently there's a lot of discussion about the fact that Ted Kennedy, before his death said the worst thing, he ever did was to refuse Nixon's offer of universal health insurance in 1970. Nixon offered a more generous plan than Obama's trying to get now. And in his memoir, Kennedy says, that is the great mistake of his life. Because he thought he could get a better one.
SM (00:42:23):
Yeah, I read that memoir, I thought it was pretty good. Pretty good memoir.
WO (00:42:32):
So then, the economy is kind of shaky because the war's expenses are vaulting high, and the tax increases are not paying for it. In the end, Johnson did put through some tax increases, but they were not enough. So, when Nixon becomes president, inflation is starting to creep up. It is not a monster yet, but it is starting to creep up. And although Nixon, as I say, turned out to be surprisingly open-minded on a lot of social issues, he signed on to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and expanded funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities and a variety of other things. Not because he was a great hearted liberal or anything, because he was a smart politician dealing with a Democratic Congress. But the one thing that nobody was willing to do was to address the inflation issue. And then in 1973, you get the first oil shock. The young people are at war and the Arab oil boycott, which did not actually deprive the country of all that much oil, but it created hysteria and energy prices started to shoot through the roof. And Nixon did not deal with that, and Ford did not deal with it, and Carter did not deal with it either, although he wanted to, I think. And he did give speeches about energy conservation, all of that. But the inflation just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
SM (00:44:13):
Let me change this.
WO (00:44:13):
So, by the time Paul Volker, who bless his heart Has reemerged-
SM (00:44:29):
Oh yeah, he is always behind the presidents here.
WO (00:44:32):
Paul Volker, whom Carter had appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve, finally decided to end the inflation because Congress would not do it. There are a number of tools for dealing with inflation, but what they basically involve is some combination of cutting government expenditures and raising taxes. But you got there is too much money, you have got to break the money supply down. And neither Carter nor Congressman would take any of these steps because they are unpopular. Nobody wants their taxes to go up and nobody wants their government services to be decline. And so that left only Paul Volker and he broke the back of inflation, as you I am sure remember, by jacking up interest rates. Labor at its prime was at 21 percent at one point, precipitating, of course, a recession, a big one. But with the Congress and the President having failed to act responsibly, he did not have any choice of the matter. In fact, Carter campaigned against him in 1980. His own appointee. Blamed him for the hard times that were coming. Well, my theory is, and it is not just mine, a lot of economists think this too, the economy never recovered from this experience. The rate of economic growth not only declined somewhat afterwards, but the whole way in which income was distributed changed as well. So that while there has been economic growth since 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, the increase in growth has been funneled almost entirely to rich people. That was not true earlier. In the 1950s and (19)60s, if the economy grew by 3 percent the workers would get a 3 percent raise and the president of the corporation would get a 3 percent raise. And of course, he was making a lot more money than the workers. So, his 3 percent would be a lot more than theirs. But still, the ratio between what the CEO got and the workers got would be 50 to one, something of that sort. Since that time, and Ronald Reagan had a lot to do with this, but he was also the expression of a kind of national impulse in a way was to cut taxes. And people really wanted to have their taxes put out because of course, owing to the inflation of the 1970s, most people's income had fallen. If you were on a salary, as I was, we got raises, but they were never equal to the rate of inflation. And so, the real worth of my salary fell by a third, something like that, during this period. So, one of the easiest ways to deal with that from politicians’ point of view was to cut taxes, which Reagan did. But of course, he cut them particularly for the rich. Then he got the lion share of the taxes. But that began the era in which people came to see that the solution in every problem was tax cuts. And he restored some of them. It was a curious kind of dance. By the end of his presidency about half the tax reduction had been restored. But that still left tax cuts as the mantra on the table that the Republicans rallied both ceaselessly and as a solution for every problem. And with incomes failing to rise as they had done before, older Americans were had gotten used to having their real income go up 5 percent every year or two. And now suddenly it is not going up at all. Or by tiny infinitesimal amounts.
SM (00:48:34):
And pensions are not going up either.
WO (00:48:36):
And pensions are not going up. And if you get a tax cut, well that puts a few dollars in your pocket and it is only a few dollars, but it is better than nothing. And so, we got into the cycle, which we are still pursuing today. President Clinton was never really strong enough to be able to deal with this. He helped around the edges. He did increase taxes a bit on rich people. Did not restore the things to what they had been, but he did increase them a little. And we had the short period of budget surpluses. But that was due to the stalemate between the Republican Congress and the Democratic president. Clinton wanted to spend more, Congress wanted to cut taxes more, and they canceled each other out. So, of course, as soon as George Bush got into office, the Republicans fell on that tax surplus like the old son, the proverbial fold and what had been surpluses became huge deficits. So, anyway, so this is the arc of modern American history. We start from a low point in the 1930s in World War II. The country really redeems its failings and its slowness in recognizing the danger. Well, it never did recognize the danger. The danger was forced upon us. And at that point you could not deny reality anymore. But nonetheless, tremendous effort on the part of the whole population something. Everybody contributed to it one way or another. Victory over the forces of fascism and Japanese imperialism. And then this long, wonderful surge of growth, which benefited everybody, not just rich people. It benefited everybody. And this huge expansion of our infrastructure, and housing, and education, and just everything got better. Since 1973, most things have been getting worse. And the infrastructure is deteriorating. The free college concept, it is just gone. College is expensive now. Even public colleges are expensive. So, it seems to be that in most areas, the Civil Rights movement really matured. That progress did not stop. And of course, women relative to men are in a much stronger position than they used to be. The horrible immigration laws that kept everyone except white people from immigrating to the country, they are gone too. And I think as a nation, we are much better off now that we get immigrants from all over the world, and it is really a national asset. So, there are some pluses. But on the whole, it seems to me that in so many important areas of life, standard of living, quality of education, the state of the infrastructure. Country has been going downhill since the (19)70s. And I am hoping Obama can, I think expanding healthcare will help. That will certainly improve the standard of living, not just, I think of the people who are going to be added, the 30 million or so uninsured. But if the bill will go through with something like their present form, it's going to help everybody by slowing the growth of costs in health insurance, by preventing insurance companies from canceling people because they're too sick. And from denying coverage to people because they are already sick, that is going to help a very large part of the population. And one of the things that keeps this country from achieving its potential, I think, is that healthcare costs have been escalating at a rate towards sucking up everything else. And in the past 10 years, the cost of health insurance has doubled to the point where healthcare now takes up 1/6th of the gross domestic product. If this continues in 10 years, it will take up 1/3rd of the gross domestic product. We will be doing nothing but supporting healthcare. All this has just got to change. And if it does change, then I think there is some hope for the future. But I do not think the last 30 years has gone at all well.
SM (00:53:00):
Phyllis Schlafly, who I interviewed along with David Horowitz, say that the troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running the universities and teaching within the universities. Is that going overboard?
WO (00:53:15):
Not a lot. Not a lot. One of the peculiar features of universities is, whereas the left failed everywhere in American life, except universities. They had, the last was pretty successful in universities. And a lot of the faculty and many administrators are either former leftist who finally got a chance to put their abstract ideas into abstract practice, because it does not affect anything outside the university. It is inside our little world. Yeah, I would say that. And also, another curious thing is that the new left outside of the university has no heirs, but in the university, new left professors trained graduate students and imbued them with their views. Undergraduates are really hard to brainwash on. Conservative used to say, well, students are being brainwashed. It is very hard to brainwash students. I do not know why that is, but it is very difficult. And my efforts at this have been very largely failure. But graduate students, whom you work with much more closely and over a long period of time, are more susceptible to influence. And to fashion. Academic disciplines have fashions, it is just like everything else. And the undergrads do not recognize them because they cannot tell what is new from what is old. But graduate students like to be on the cutting edge, as they say, and latest fashions. And so, the only place in the country where the left has any real influence is in universities.
SM (00:55:02):
Yeah. Harry Eders, even in his books of Black students that he wrote around 1970, (19)71, where he defined the difference between revolutionaries, militants, activists, and anomic activists, talked about the fact that militants were the graduate students who were the leaders of the anti-war movement on college campuses. And many of them were the pre-Boomers that were born between (19)41 and say (19)46. Some of them. And because people like Tom Hayden and that particular group. What are your thoughts on the various academic studies programs that are an offshoot of the (19)60s and early (19)70s? Particularly talking about, I know you bring up in your new book, but about the women's studies programs, Asian studies, gay and lesbian studies, Native American studies, popular out west. Chicano studies on the West Coast, Black studies, and now even environmental studies. So, you have got all these different studies. Your thoughts on these are all the movements, the people of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, these were all movements that looked to the Civil Rights movement as their role model and their teacher. Just your thoughts on all these various studies programs in university campuses.
WO (00:56:26):
Up to a point, I do not have any objection. In fact, I wrote the first critical history of the old feminist movement ever to be done by a professional historian. And I did that because I felt that women's history, which we did not even call women's history then, the book came out in 1969 and women's studies and women's history were not really defined at that point. They were a few years later. So, I was writing women's history in a sense without even knowing that I was writing women's history. But it was clear that women were clearly being underserved by historians, because here was this rich history and all these fascinating people involved in it who never got into the textbooks except a brief obligatory mention on note 27 or something. And so, I was really pleased to see student women's liberation of course, that movement really galvanized women in graduate schools. And young women, faculty members who could transition pretty easily from... One of the first women to teach women's history at Rutgers, for example, was a French historian. She got her PhD in French history. But having all that scholarly training, it was easy for her to switch from, I do not know what her dissertation, some conventional 18th century French stuff. She was able to transition very easily to women's history. And others did that as well. One of the ironies of the situation for me is that I regarded myself as a founding father of women's history, but all the men got frozen out. There were in, the 1960s, there were 10 or 12 historians who were writing on women's subjects, about half men and half women. Almost all the women went on to become presidents of the OAHA and the American Historical Association in the organization of American historians, things like that. The men all got forced out. Oh, I got insulted in meetings and it just, I never got invited to anything. So, we were all ostracized in that way and it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit on the end, until we're playing by things to write about. Anyway, a long way around by saying that in the case of women's history, I really did welcome it and I think it is a real field and I am glad to see it. I think some of the others too, some of these seem so small or have so little in the way of historical material to work with that I really wonder about them. But some of the Hispanic studies, Haitian studies, things like these are perfectly legitimate fields. They were taught in the past, not on a scale or the orientation that they are now. But what I think is wrong with the current education is that all this has been done at the expense of the basics. We get students, I get students, whose reading and writing skills are so primitive, they can barely write, they cannot write a grammatical paragraph, many of them. Their knowledge of almost anything is nonexistent. They do not know anything about the past. They do not know anything about the rest of the world. So, it seems to me that yes, it's good to have academic life open up in this way and to place emphasis on previously neglected areas, but at the same time it would still be good if students had the basic skills they did 30 years ago. 30 years ago, students were so much better qualified than they are now. They all could read and write. They had high levels, they had some knowledge of history, and they had good work ethics. Almost all of them. I did not know it was a golden age, but it was a golden age of teaching. I did not have to discipline them, or force them to come to class, or bludgeon them into reading the assigned books. They just did all these things. That was accepted.
SM (01:01:00):
Do you think there is any link between, again, I can remember back at Binghamton University students to get out of the draft went in teaching, but they had no interest in being teachers. They did it to get out of the draft and they planned to quit as soon as the war was over. Of course, we are talking 1970 now. And so, they would be influencing students in the mid (19)70s and then beyond, in high school. Do you see any link there between the poor-quality education, that these people were not committed to teaching?
WO (01:01:36):
I do not know enough about the secondary school system in this country. The one I went through was completely different than what exists today. All I know is that, again, 30 years ago, the students I got were just much better prepared for college work than they are now. Lot of them are just not prepared. And what the universities have done is dumbed down the courses. In order to meet their lowered abilities, we have lowered expectations at great inflation. And you can get away with a lot if you give students As and Bs, even if you are not teaching anything. And even if they are not learning anything.
SM (01:02:18):
That is so different, when I was at Binghamton, because Dr. Donnelley hardly gave one A in each of his classes, he taught Russian history. You really had to earn it. One A, and we are talking great students here. And I took three courses from him, and I got an A once, and I got a B once, and I got a C once. I was furious that I got a C. But in that day, you knew you were in a great professor, you knew he made you study. You had to work hard for everything, and you did not go off and, as I have seen today, students go into their advisors and say, I am a straight A student and this is wrong that you are giving me that thing. So, I think you, you are onto something here. One of the things you bring up in your new book too, because I have been perusing through, I got to read it full force like the other two. But I picked and choose some of the things that I read. About when George Bush was president in particular, George Bush Senior. I want to ask you; do you believe in political correctness? What did the universities learn in the (19)60s with respect to student activism? Our universities, as Clark Kerr said, beholden to the corporations, businesses, and applied research. And even Ohio State University now, if you look on their website, their biggest thing is they talk about their research. It is a research university. The question I am really asking here is, I interviewed Arthur Chicory, the great educator, about a week ago, and he's written a 20-page piece and it is going to come out in a major magazine, basically very upset with the universities today. He says the corporations are again running the universities. And then that, and he was referring back to the (19)60s and the Clark Kerrs and the uses of the multiversity kind of an idea. Are you seeing again that universities are beholden to the corporations?
WO (01:04:27):
Well, yeah, but I think in a different way. When Clark Kerr wrote his book, he saw the university service role in a very broad way. He was not just helping corporations make money, it was just strengthening society as a whole and provide it with this sealed, well-trained, well-educated people that are needed in various walks of life. But it did include corporations as among those who would benefit and took the perhaps naive view that benefiting corporations, which employ some millions of people, would benefit a large part of the population as well. Today it is a much more crass kind of arrangement in which universities support health, science, and engineering departments. I do not think humanities get any money from corporations. They support them to encourage the kind of research that will benefit their own company and complement their own research efforts. And often I think it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. So yes. And the reason for that is because universities are in big financial trouble. Have been increasing for quite a long time, but over the past 10 years, it has gotten awful. And so, the departments like the humanities department said they cannot do that. I do not know who would sell out to corporations. They do not walk for bias. So, we never have the opportunity to discover the extent of our... But when the state keeps cutting your funding all the time, and it's not just New Jersey, of course, it is every state has this. Universities like Michigan, California gets less than 10 percent of their operating budget from their states. They are almost entirely self-supporting. And you cannot do it on tuition, and you cannot do it on federal grants. You have got to have more money. And corporations, if it serves their purposes, will supply it. So, I do not see if there is any choice in this area. Yeah, corporations' influence is considerably greater than it used to be. I do not think it is because anybody likes it, but it is because universities are increasingly desperate.
SM (01:06:39):
Yeah, you have probably hit it right on the button here because the university I just came from, everything is linked to some sort of raising some sort of scholarship or fundraising. We had a basketball coach that refused to go out and do fundraising. He was a great basketball coach. He said, I am not here to be a fundraiser. I am here to be a coach. And he quit. And he was a historic basketball coach. He just said, I am not here for that. And they give a lot of scholarships out. And now it is almost like every program you do has got to be linked to, has a value to raising some sort of funds. George Bush, you really bring this out in a bubble in time. I think this particular section of your book needs to be read by everyone. In fact, I am emailing several people that I have interviewed to get your book and to read this section on George Bush. This is the section where the serious text on freedom of speech, President Bush's speech at Michigan, where he talks about the spirit, the speech, and the enterprise. And Marine Dow responded by saying that political correctness is a broad range of generally liberal attitudes, especially in support of the rights of women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, or conservatives and traditionalists. Look at people who espouse these views to the exclusion of others' rights... These views to the exclusion of others' rights and free speech. Conservatives and traditionalists were the ones that are basically making these attacks. I find it interesting because the free speech movement in 1964, and I remember Sam Brown who was in the Carter administration. When he first got involved in activism, he was talking about that he could not bring a communist in to speak. So, what is the difference between what happened in Berkeley in 1964, where they were not allowed to hand out literature and thus it became a free speech issue, and Sam Brown's experience, I forget what college went to where they could not bring in communists to speak? And what is happening here about political correctness? Just your thoughts. Free speech, basically.
WO (01:08:56):
There is a big difference between political correctness and McCarthyism. McCarthyism was presented by most of the faculty. It was to the degree that university professors did not lose their trials. Three at Rutgers. You never stopped hearing about that here. Three professors in the 1950s lost their jobs for taking the Fifth Amendment before some investigating. But the great hope of the American faculty even developed from the conservative professors who were opposed to McCarthyism, were opposed to loyalty tests on the part of the faculty. Political correctness, on the other hand, has a very broad base of support among the faculty. Lots of it, which is why you could get those things through. Why you could get speech codes and these absurd regulations about what could be said and not said, and what kind of posters you could put up and this kind of thing. Political correctness is... McCarthyism was external. It was forced on colleges and universities. Political correctness is internal. It is the faculty that has come to believe that. There is a real irony in the reversal here obviously because in the (19)50s, faculty were always demanding free speech as an essential, universal freedom of course, particularly freedom among academics. How can you teach if you are not free to say what you believe is true? Now, you get faculty members who say, "No, you cannot say what you believe is true if it is going to offend women, Blacks, gays, transgenders, you name it."
SM (01:10:43):
You say that is a real negative on the boomers? The boomers have laid this on society, and because they are the teachers and the administrators, that is a very negative thing. I want to ask you about you, your personal background. Because I know you went to Berkeley. I believe you got your undergraduate degree, was it at Michigan?
WO (01:11:09):
Michigan, yeah.
SM (01:11:10):
Michigan. Tell me a little bit about yourself. In other words, when you were young in high school growing up, who were the people that you looked up to? Whether it be family members, people in your local community, people that you read about in history books, or people you saw on television or heard on the radio. Who were the people that really inspired you when you were young, and what did they have that you liked about them?
WO (01:11:38):
Well, I grew up in a small town in western Michigan, about 5,000 people. It was then this, well still is, it is the economy seat. It was basically a rural agricultural area, so it served farmers. A little bit of manufacturing. Tiny Paris Institute today at a quite large state college, but then just little tiny private institution. There was no real intellectual stimulation there. My family are Irish Catholic Democrats in a Protestant Republican town. 90 percent of the people were Protestant Republicans, so we were very much an isolated minority. I was bookish even as a child. That is not unusual among academic people. So, apart from Franklin Roosevelt, who was second only, or possibly even superior to the pope as a revered figure. He was superior, actually. The Pope [inaudible]. And Winston Churchill. My father, for some reason, although as I say as an Irish Catholic family, my father just adored Winston Churchill and did not chair the... Many Irishmen were still sore about British oppression and things like that, but my family then, even though they were poorly educated and had been in this country a long time, the founding O'Neill came over during the famine in the 1830s. By the time I was born, my family only been here for 100 years. So, the anti-British sentiment had faded over that time. Anyway, so it became a host of the big inspirational figures in my family. And there were some people I had, some teachers that I liked and thought were good.
SM (01:13:52):
Who were they?
WO (01:13:52):
I had an English teacher in high school, who was awfully good at... In many ways, I appreciated her more after I left than when I was there because she was one of those who made you learn and diagram sentences, and do stuff that seemed beneath you. Because you do that in grammar school and you should not have to do it in high school again. But she was absolutely right. She made us do it in our senior year and she said, "You are going to go to college now. The work is going to be a lot harder," which in those days it was. "It is going to be a lot harder than what you have here, so you really need to brush up on your basics." We were therefore learning the parts of speech and diagram sentences. We all felt this was kind of demeaning because here we were seniors and all that. But of course, it was the best thing she could have done for us. I really did appreciate it when I got to school. I did not have any idols, people that I looked up to. I read a great deal of history of biographies. And of course, being a young boy, I was not reading about Aristotle. I was reading about Napoleon, Caesar and figures like that. It was very much a part of the great man period history. It really appealed to me.
SM (01:15:10):
Your college years as an undergraduate and graduate student, were there any speakers that you saw when you were a graduate student, programs you went to in the out of classroom experience that influenced you?
WO (01:15:21):
Yes. Nobody in my family on either side had ever graduated from college or even really gone to college. My mother had what was called business school, but it was typing and that kind of stuff. So, there was nobody in my family with any experience at all in this. But being Catholics, of course, they adored Notre Dame and thought it was just the greatest university in the world. Since I had knew nothing and had no idea what I wanted to do, so I agreed to go to Notre Dame and I spent my first year there. It was really unpleasant. It was a boys' school at the time and I never had a date the whole year, and neither did anybody I knew. There was a small girls' college, St. Mary's, adjoining the campus, but you had to be an athlete in order to date a girl at St. Mary's, so that was really out. Otherwise, the campus was so stark. They did not have any of the things campuses listen to today. There was no student center, no athletic facilities except for athletes. They turned off the power in the dorms at 10 o'clock so you would not be studying.
SM (01:16:42):
Oh my God.
WO (01:16:44):
And then a priest would come around with flashlights to see if you were masturbating or studying. Either one would be [inaudible]. And you did, you had to check in for mass three days a week. You did not have to actually go to mass, but you had to get fully dressed to go down to the chapel and sign in, at which point you might as well go in. So, I told my parents that I just was not going to go back. They were paying my way and I said, "If you do not want pay my way, I will join the Army or something. I will find some way, but I am not going back." That was bad. So, I transferred to the University of Michigan, and I was short some credits because I had taken courses in theology or religion at Notre Dame. Did not transfer. So, I went to summer school and took Western Civ. I cannot remember the name of the professor. He was a senior faculty member at Michigan in those days. The senior faculty taught the introductory courses. That guy was a wizard. For one thing, the education of Notre Dame was very poor, but I did not know that because I did not have anything to measure it by. I would gone to a mediocre high school with a couple of good teachers, but no real [inaudible]. I took this Western Civ course, it was like the heavens had opened. A world I never dreamed of, even though I would read a lot of history and biography on my own. Focusing on military history and having no context, really. I was kind of an autodidact in that way. Then suddenly, here is this guy who is going over the whole sweep of western civilization to about 1000. I think that was the first half of the course, up to the year 1000 in a sweep of civilizations and incredible concepts.
SM (01:18:42):
Mesopotamia.
WO (01:18:45):
It transformed my life. It was just such a revelation. I never knew that anything like this existed. So, of course, I then majored in history. And he was not the only one. Almost every instructor that I had there, I can only think of one I did not like. Almost every instructor I had taught at such a high level. You really had to work your ass off of course because they were... Unlike today, where I assume my students knew nothing, they assumed we knew a lot. What they were providing us was material in addition to the vast body of knowledge we hope you possess.
SM (01:19:27):
I think Phil Donahue was at Notre Dame around the time that you were there.
WO (01:19:32):
I think he was, yeah. [inaudible].
SM (01:19:33):
And I know Regis Philbin was the group before Phil Donahue, because he is another graduate of Notre Dame. He talks about that a little bit.
WO (01:19:40):
I can assure you, although I know Regis Philbin still loves Notre Dame, but he probably loves it for the football comradery. The university just sucked. It was terrible. I was going to say, going to mission was like ascending in heaven. So, bad. Wow. Eventually, of course, my father wanted me to go to law school. He had this belief that he would have been more successful in business if he had been a lawyer. I think he was quite mistaken. He did not have any of the qualities it takes to be successful in business, and he was one of these people who could not work for anybody else because he had such a bad temper. But he was such poor manager, he could not work for himself successfully. He was doing all right. He did [inaudible] away through school because he was doing all right then. But he eventually went pro. He had this false idea that a lawyer would have been more successful, and having no notion. But of course, once I entered into academic heaven here, I was getting these magnificent courses. Well, then I wanted to be a historian, too. And I would already been accepted in law school because I was programmed to do that. But in my senior year, Michigan offered an honors program. We offer much like the one that we offer here. It was very common. The payoff in that senior honors course was to write a very long research paper, 9800 pages, which I did. Then, I realized that if I could do that, I could probably write a dissertation, which meant that I could be any historian and I would never have to leave this life. I could dwell in the realm of ideas and narrative in a great box.
SM (01:21:32):
I think it is great that a teacher inspired you, though. That is the same thing with me. Probably that teacher had faith in you, too, did not he?
WO (01:21:42):
It was a real big course.
SM (01:21:44):
Yeah, but there had to be someone along the line that said, hey, you are not only a good student, but I have an interest in you in terms of your future. So, that was important sometimes, the faculty-
WO (01:21:55):
I do not think I really talked to a faculty member about that until I took this senior honors course. When there were two faculty members to like 18 students. Michigan, even then, was a very large university and most of the courses I took were very larger courses. It was not until that point that I actually talked to faculty members about this. Yes, I was encouraged. They told me, yeah, you could do it.
SM (01:22:17):
I have just some general questions and then we will finish up here. This might go a little bit over. One of the criticisms of the boomer generation is, and actually I do not think it's a criticism, but where they say that 15 percent were activists. That could be conservative or liberal. People that were activists for various causes in the (19)60s and (19)70s.
WO (01:22:38):
[inaudible].
SM (01:22:39):
Some people say five to 15.
WO (01:22:40):
Or these activists as being difficult, very loosely.
SM (01:22:40):
People involved in-
WO (01:22:44):
I knew some student activists in the history department. The graduate students in history of this class had a very high percentage of activism. It was remarkable. But among the undergraduates, they might show up for a rally or a riot once in a while, but I would not call them activists.
SM (01:23:01):
Well, the question I am trying to get at here is that the people that criticize the boomer generation oftentimes say that only 15 percent were ever involved, whether it be five or 15.
WO (01:23:16):
That is fine, that is fine.
SM (01:23:18):
But my question is, can you agree that the larger portion, which is 85 to 95, was subconsciously still affected by this period? Because if you believe in student development theory, because that is what I am. I am a student of Arthur Chickering, Alexander Aston, Eric Erickson, Rogers. When you talk about you cannot pinpoint the effect that some experience is going to have on a student right away. It could be five, 10 years down the road. So, maybe there were fewer at that time, but then others stood up and spoke up, and later on in life, late 20s, 30s. Do you believe that this whole generation of 78 million was subconsciously affected by what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s, and it is really affected their lives in some way?
WO (01:24:10):
Yes, I do. Yes, I do believe that. Well, the increase in divorce shot up. The divorce rate doubled in the years after the 1960s, is a reflection of the self-indulgence and self-absorption of the activists, the doing your own thing. Taking drugs and free love, live for the moment and suspect authority and do not trust anyone over 30. And of course, eventually became over 30 themselves. But the whole emphasis on the boomer generation, not everybody, I do not want to stigmatize them all, but the boomer generation to a degree unprecedented previously is self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and materialistic. Not anti-social exactly, but has a lessened sense of social obligation and responsibility. I think it all comes out of the (19)60s. Not the create a socialist revolution, which actually almost nobody believed. The SDFs and a few others were doing that, but the real message of that was personal freedom and self-indulgence. That really sold.
SM (01:25:31):
Yeah, it is interesting you say that because C. Wright Mills, who wrote white collar and we all read about him when I was in sociology class, Dr. Lehman, who actually was fired from Bingham for leading a protest in downtown. She was only there a year. But C. Wright Mills said that the goal of the university education is not to need the university. The individualism and think on their own, the concept of in loco parentis kind of ended during this timeframe. That the universities were not supposed to be parents and were not activists doing this in the (19)60s and (19)70s. So, the question I am asking here is that there is the individual right there. Some of the things that students are reading and being educated about, some of the writers we have looked up to, says that the individual is important. Carl Davidson has written a great book on the multiversity in a series on the 60s, and he brings this up about the importance of the individual. Because if the individual is not there, then you do not have freedom. And if you do not have freedom, you do not have power. And students wanted power. Or at least to be looked upon for their thoughts. Is what I am saying really true, what C. Wright Mills said? When you talk about that this is one of the goals of the boomers was to really be an individual as opposed to be a part of a collaborative group?
WO (01:27:07):
Well, I do not know how. They were just as conformist as young people always are. Young people are pretty much by definition, is-
SM (01:27:14):
Let me change...
(01:27:14):
Okay.
WO (01:27:24):
My impression of students in the (19)60s, and of course I was, which is derived largely from Wisconsin where I was a faculty member. It was not my self-esteem anymore. But my impression was that the students in the (19)60s were just as anxious and concerned about their identity and wanting to be a part of the group, and to conform to group norms and all that. Very few students want to be fearless individuals and completely unlike everybody else. They want to be popular and well- liked, and succeed in the areas that students think are important. But what developed among students was a feeling that this generation of students was too well-educated and sophisticated to be treated like previous generation of students, who had had all these regulations governing personal conduct. The girls had to live in, and boys had to live in segregated dormitories and there had to be hours. Well, they did not have lights out except at Notre Dame. At Michigan, for example, the girls had to be in their dorms at 10 o'clock at night on a school night. They could stay up until 12 on weekends. Well, with the beginnings of the sexual revolution and all that, students rebelled against these restrictions, against in loco parentis. But it was sort of collectively. It was not fearless assertions of individualism. It was they believed as a class that they deserved rights that their predecessors had been denied. The universities of course fell all over themselves in branding them, because you're also now getting the protests over civil rights and segregation in the south, and the war in Vietnam. Universities could not do anything about the treatment of Blacks in the south or the war in Vietnam, but they could integrate the dormitories and eliminate the in loco parentis restrictions. That was easy to do. They also did other things, too. The students in Wisconsin and other universities, students went beyond that to an end to the language requirement. Students had always hated the language requirement, but they have never been sufficiently impressive as a pressure group to be able to get university administrations to listen to them. Again, in the (19)50s, students had tried to organize a protest and said do away with the foreign language requirement. They probably would have been expelled, right? No, the university took a very hard line. The dean of women at Michigan was an ex-WAG colonel and the girls were terrified of her. So, the universities really started caving in. In loco parentis, sure that had to go. In the age of sexual revolution and self-expression and doing your own thing, you could not hold the line on that stuff and what was even the point? But when they gave away the language requirement, some of these other things, boy, that is when I think the downhill slide began through universities. Because now you are in the business of pleasing the customers, and that had never been the attitude before. Michigan took the view you were damn lucky to be here, and most of you will not graduate anyway. Michigan was one of those schools where it was terribly difficult to get in, but the senior graduating class was about one-third the size of the freshman class. And they bragged about it. They did not succeed, this is bootcamp. It is not bootcamp, but this is a task. It is going to be very difficult. Most of you are not going to make it. And they would see that right off.
SM (01:31:20):
Yeah, you probably looked to your left, looked to your right.
WO (01:31:22):
Yeah. Yep.
SM (01:31:22):
Yeah, they did that at Binghamton, and just everybody stayed.
WO (01:31:24):
Yeah, they did that at the university. Rutgers operated somewhat differently. Their admission standards were more stringent so that you did not have to fail. In fact, in my early years here, I hardly failed anyone. But they were actually students very well-prepared, hardworking. Even the kids got Cs, those were good, solid Cs. They made an effort to get there. Now, you get a C in many courses just for signing up.
SM (01:31:51):
I thought boomers many times, especially those that were activists, said I want to be around people who think like me, who have the same interests that I do. In other words, I want to be around people who are against the war in Vietnam. I want to be around people who went down south for civil rights issues. I want to be around any of these movements. People who think like I do. Well, isn't the goal of a university is to bring people together who do not agree? I have been thinking about this because that seems if you are just an individual and you are not part of a group where you listen to opposing points of view, that is not a university either. It is a lot of things that come up here, the contradictions of this whole era seem to really make you think. What do you feel led to the AIDS crisis? I have had many people, because when we talk about the (19)80s, and we think of Ronald Reagan. Of course, he said, "We are back," because he's going to bring the military back. During the (19)60s, all the society had gone downhill. But the AIDS crisis is something that he did not really deal with. He could not even say gay and lesbian, as a person. I have had scholars who were gay and lesbian scholars that I have interviewed said that they almost come to tears when they talk about Ronald Reagan. And then, of course, the AIDS crisis is one of the biggest crises of the time. For gay lesbian boomers, it wiped out maybe one out of every two men, who were living within the inner cities. A lot of them were scholars, a lot of them were great writers. The loss of talent.
WO (01:33:37):
I had a friend I remember in the history department, who died of AIDS. I liked him very well. He was gay, but he was... I do not want to make a pun here. He was just a great company. I loved him very much. But he was in the first generation who died. He was extremely promiscuous. They did not take any precautions.
SM (01:34:04):
You think that part of what the (19)70s was about, because a lot of people when they talk about the sexual revolution, they really talk the (19)70s, not the (19)60s. We still had-
WO (01:34:15):
I think it was more pronouncements.
SM (01:34:16):
Yeah, but that kind of led to the AIDS crisis, and then it is what happened after it was found out that people were dying from this, where Ronald Reagan is really dislike by many people, even bringing them to tears.
WO (01:34:33):
I do not know enough about it.
SM (01:34:37):
Right. Of all the presidents from 1946 to 2010, which is the time the boomers have lived, we have made a reference just about all of them in our conversation here. Is there anyone that you think had the greatest impact on the boomer generation, from Truman to Obama?
WO (01:35:03):
No. Not being a boomer, it is hard for me to say. I guess it would be John Kennedy, but not the actual John Kennedy. The myth of Kennedy was. Even today when people are polled and say, who was the greatest president? Well, they normally cannot think beyond the presidents they knew of their lifetime, the ones that they saw on TV or whatever. But Kennedy still comes up a great deal, and on the part of people who cannot possibly have remembered him. My gosh, he was elected 50 years ago. So, you go any younger than that, oh, you would have to be 60 at least to have any faintest personal recollection of his presidency. So, it is the myth of the candidate. The falsehoods, essentially. They have had a great effect.
SM (01:36:01):
What do you think if you were to, you are writing a book and you are writing two chapters, and chapter one is you are writing on one specific quality, that this was the best of the boomer generation and I am going to write about this and break it down? And what's the worst about the... What were the single worst and the single best, and how would you illuminate within the chapter?
WO (01:36:30):
Well, again, up until Bill Clinton, there were no boomer presidents. He was the first one. So, there have only been two.
SM (01:36:41):
Two. Yeah.
WO (01:36:41):
And I was too young. So, there is not a lot of choice there.
SM (01:36:49):
Right. In terms of maybe influencing their lives, some people will say that Lyndon Johnson, what a great person in the area of social issues, the domestic policy. But he was a dismal failure in Vietnam and some did not like his personality, and others did. You still get back to those two that are the boomers? Yeah.
WO (01:37:18):
And as different as Clinton and Bush were, they did share the negative stereotypes that people associate with the boomer generation. They were self-indulgent. Clinton of course, in gross and obvious ways, but Bush was, too. You had this dissipated youth that went on and on. Which typical boomers, not that they are always dissipated, but they hang on to their youth. They are more afraid of maturity and more reluctant to enter into it. I think those are real fair characterizations. Then once he became president, God, he vacationed more than any other president. More than Reagan, more than Eisenhower. Nobody spent as much time vacationing as Bush did, and as little time governing, and as much time working out. That is another boomer thing, working out. Previous presidents did not. Well, Theodore Roosevelt did. It is hard to think of previous president who were focused on exercise.
SM (01:38:22):
Harry did. Harry Truman, he liked to walk.
WO (01:38:24):
He took his walks. Yes, yes.
SM (01:38:26):
Yes, and I think that kept him alive a lot longer than most people because of all the tensions he went through.
WO (01:38:32):
It is a very good health habit.
SM (01:38:35):
Just a couple more things here. I know we talked a little bit about this, but I am not going to talk about very much of these things. You say that in some of your writings here, that the new left or the activist group within the boomer generation, really it was a short period in the end because they burned out. The draft ended, which was the main cause that united them.
WO (01:39:09):
Yes, I think by the end of the draft, collapsed.
SM (01:39:11):
The violence of groups getting frustrated that they had to go, whether it be the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers or Weathermen, all three of them, they went to violence. Even the environmental groups today are dealing with this particular issue, which is really hurting their cause. That they get frustrated and they go the violent way. Is that the reason why? When people talk about the (19)60s, they talk about all these groups and all these people and Woodstock and the counterculture and the activism and protests on college campuses. You got the split between the white students and the Black students in the late (19)70s because one was protesting against the Vietnam War, the other was against working the area of civil rights.
WO (01:40:10):
I may say that I am happy that the left has collapsed, and I am sorry that it still lingers on in the university. Although, I have to say it never did me any harm, I do not think. I just did not like it. Was that they never developed an adult pace and they were overly dependent on the draft. Once the draft had Nixon, Nixon believed that he could get rid of the draft, that would be end of the student movement because he thought it was basically self-centered. And to a large extent, I think he was right. Take the draft away. The war in Vietnam is an on-campus issue as long as you have a draft. When the draft is gone, the issue is gone, too.
SM (01:40:56):
Do you see a link right now between what is happening on college campuses in California and across the country, that students are seeing the issue of their pocketbook and they are not going to take it anymore? Just like people said, I am not going to take the draft anymore? Because it is their self-interest. The middle class may not be able to go on to college because tuition is going up 17 percent. I know in Pennsylvania, they are talking about raising it $1500.
WO (01:41:25):
Students at Rutgers paid 12,000 a year in tuition and fees, but that is absolutely outrageous. It should be essentially free. It used to be essentially free. We're talking about 20, 25 years ago.
SM (01:41:40):
Do you think this issue could be something that unites the students around the country? And again-
WO (01:41:44):
Well, it is certainly something they all have in common.
SM (01:41:46):
Graduate students are taking a lead at Berkeley on this. And actually, I never thought I would-
WO (01:41:52):
Of course, they do not pay tuition in the world.
SM (01:41:53):
Yeah, but what is interesting is that these students are saying for the first time, I do not care if my career is threatened by this. It is wrong and I am out here and I am going to speak my mind. They are threatened by this. It is wrong, and I am out here, and I am going to speak my mind. That is what has been critical of the students of the (19)80s and the (19)90s and even the (19)10s. Is they fear, oftentimes, that by speaking up, they will lose a job, their career could be hurt. A lot of students in the (19)60s never thought that. Just your thoughts on-
WO (01:42:22):
No, they did not.
SM (01:42:24):
Just your thoughts on that, that this could be something that universities are very concerned about.
WO (01:42:30):
Well, they ought to be. Now, I completely understand why universities are doing this. When your state aid collapses, what are you supposed to... You have only got a few options here. And raising tuition, and many more students, which Rutgers does too, crank up the tuition and admit more students, and shrink the faculty.
SM (01:42:49):
Mm-hmm.
WO (01:42:50):
So, your student-generated income goes larger. There is a fewer faculty members you have to spread around, but Jesus, there is got to be a limit to that, and it seems to be a backlash too.
SM (01:43:02):
Yeah. And of course, faculty oftentimes say administrators need to be cut back, because after all-
WO (01:43:08):
They have actually expanded a lot. I mean, the percentage of employees who are administrators has gone up a lot over the last 20 years, and at a time when faculties generally shrunk.
SM (01:43:23):
My last little section here deals back again with political correctness. I want to get your thoughts on the quotes that you put in your book, which I am going to encourage my friends to read, because I think it is great. You have the quote from Barbara Ehrenreich, who I would met twice, that, "Political correctness is the enforcement arm of multiculturalism or feminism." Then you have got Leon Botstein, who I have brought to campus, who really challenged our secondary ed teachers. Oh, they are not were prepared for this. Because he is an advocate that he does not believe we need a senior year in high school. He thinks the senior year is a waste. But the quote here is, "In practice, the call for diversity now prevented any real exchange of opinions on campus." And then Dr. Asante, who responds, "Racists are hiding behind the First Amendment." This is an interesting thing on college campuses. First of all, I am surprised Dr. Botstein had said that, because he's very liberal, but this is oftentimes what people are afraid to say, and what they believe, for fear that they're going to be hurt, that their careers could be threatened. A faculty member may believe this, but I cannot do it because my department chairs, it could have an effect on me. And then students... Just your thoughts on Ehrenreich, Botstein, and Asante's commentary on the dialogue of today, and whether all that took place from the Free Speech Movement of (19)64, and all that happened in the (19)60s, through the mid (19)70s, about freedom of speech on college campuses. Different points of view. Everybody's equal. The concept that all voices count. And then you have these discussions here, where people are afraid to speak their mind again. This happened throughout the (19)90s, and obviously today, and you have seen it on a college campus throughout your career.
WO (01:45:27):
Yeah. I love that by Barbara Ehrenreich. I think, of course, it is actually true. The academic leftist, of course, have backed off considerably. The early (19)90s was the flood tide of these speech codes, and prosecutions of faculty members for making somebody feel uncomfortable. That was a serious charge, "So-and-so feels uncomfortable in your class." I guess your job as a teacher is to raise the comfort zone of everyone. I never thought that was my job. So, they had backed off, because the publicity was so terrible, and justly so. I mean, you claim on the one hand academic freedom, and then you are denying it to your colleagues over silly stuff. You're like that poor man of New Hampshire, with the Jell-O and the vibrator.
SM (01:46:17):
Mm-hmm.
WO (01:46:17):
And those things clearly well-meaning, and not attempting to be salacious. So, they have backed off from the deal. You do not see that stuff in the public area as much as you used to. Otherwise, where did you want to go from here?
SM (01:46:37):
Who is more correct? Is Ehrenreich correct? Is Botstein correct? I find Botstein is commentary something that should be put into a book. I know that [inaudible] wrote a liberal education. We all read that. I have seen him debate a couple times, he is very good at what he does. He debates the other person, that other person is very good too. It is a pretty civil debate. But to hear this from Leon Botstein, this young, I think of him from the (19)60s, because I think he was the youngest college president ever at Bard College, and he was a liberal, and I think he was 27 years old. And for him to say this, to me, sends a clear message that we need to be doing a better job within the university environment, and that tolerance, and beyond tolerance. We went through those phases of tolerance and beyond tolerance. Are we back to tolerance again?
WO (01:47:39):
It is hard to say. One of the annoying things is the, which I do talk about some of the book, is the tremendous overemphasis on identity, on sexual identity, particularly racial and sub-racial identities. Ruckers, for example, the current president is terrifically proud of the fact that the student body contains more racial minorities than it does whites. Well, this is a white majority state still, which means the whites are being discriminated against in order to achieve higher numbers of people in other racial groups. And such as the climate of opinion and politically correct universities is this is seen as a good thing; discriminate against whites, and usually Asians too. He never says that.
SM (01:48:34):
Well, my alma mater, they have gone through a terrible situation with the basketball team, which you have probably have heard. They won the division last year, because Dr. DeFleur, the chancellor, wanted to bring in strong athletic programs, and linkage with our strong academics there. She is a great president, I am not going to question her, but she has been under their heat because they had to fire the coach. They actually paid him, and because of the fact that they brought in mostly African American basketball players from New York City and elsewhere, and they were unbelievably players. And that put a lot of pressure on the other state universities, that they not only have to bring in quality athletes in linkage with the academics, but they found out now, through the last year, that there was agreements made between the admissions office. The admissions' person never would have admitted these people, but was pressured to do so. The coach was in direct linkage with this, who they hired. This is some coach in Georgetown.
WO (01:49:36):
I did read that.
SM (01:49:37):
And it has become such a serious issue. Dr. DeFleur is retiring, but I think she's retiring because I think there is a lot of pressure going on there. And there is a plan that has to go into places so this will not happen again, and sends all the wrong messages. And alumni are furious. Alumni are furious, and they want the administration all gone. And Dr. DeFleur has committed 19 years of her life to making that a great institution. But unfortunately, in this one instance, it is marring her, and it goes right back to this thing here. This is an issue that universities have to face. In conclusion, the violence that took place within the time that boomers were young and growing up, I mean obviously there has been violence. The holocaust happened for the World War II generation. Violence has always been part of what it is like to be a human being. I am very lucky that in July I am going to have two hours of the Robert Jay Lifton, and I am going to Boston, and we are going to talk about the psychology of the Vietnam veteran, but I have asked him to talk about the psychology of the anti-war protestor. And from his perspective, in terms of with veterans, it is post-traumatic stress disorder. But I want to get a better grasp of people that were on the other side, and he has agreed to do so. But the violence, it had to have shaped boomers, because they grew up with being in maybe 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, with respect to the assassination of John Kennedy. (19)68 saw a United States senator and candidate murdered along with the greatest civil rights leader of all time. The unbelievable violence that took place, not only in Chicago, but the riots that took all... You know. The deaths in many major cities throughout the '60s. Then, obviously, you had the violence and the killings at Kent State University and Jackson State. And actually, I did not know this, but if you study it, there was a student killed at Berkeley, in 1969, at the People's Park incident. And we do not ever talk about him, and he has lost in history, and he should be discussed because he had nothing to do with the protest. He was just standing at the top of a building, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you think this did to the psyche? Forget the fact that they are the new left. They were part of the violence too. What happened in Chicago, with the Black Panthers that were killed, and the COINTELPRO, and all the bad things that happened. But the violence, I am talking about the violence. What did this do to the psyche of this 78 million, as they moved into the (19)80s, and (19)90s, and beyond? Any thoughts?
WO (01:52:40):
Well, it certainly upset me. The (19)60s were terrible. The (19)60s were terrible in that way. This is a violent country, since World War II, at any rate. Compared to most other developed countries, we have had far more violence than almost any of the Britain has. Its soccer hooligans, I guess. That is a highly specialized subgroup. But this is just normally a violent country. We have got a big homicide rate. We had lynchings, well, if you could count the murders of civil rights workers, right into the 1960s, were far more heavily armed than anybody in the first world. And getting more so by the day. So, we have a certain amount of background violence, that just, we hardly notice it all. It's there all the time. But the race riots, and the violent demonstrations of the (19)60s, went beyond anything that we have seen in peace time. As you consider a little bit the Vietnam War, it's hard to know what peacetime is. We always seem to be engaged, and we are shooting somewhere.
SM (01:54:07):
I-
WO (01:54:09):
I do not know. I really do not know. And certainly, was extremely upsetting to me. How could it not have been upsetting to him?
SM (01:54:19):
See, I know that there was a book that came out around mid (19)70s, by Oba Demery. I do not know, I think that is how you pronounce his name. It's called Violence in America. And of course, this is talking about what happened in the (19)60s, but it goes way back to the wild, wild west, and how we have been killing, God knows... Native American's wounded knee. So, it is part of what we are as a country, and as a race. As he said, we have been always been a violent nation. And with Howard Zinn passing away recently, whether he like his politics or not, he made a commentary when his last speech. They had it on YouTube. And in that speech, it was pretty powerful. He said, "I was a World War II pilot, and I came back, and I thought when the war ended we had ended war as we knew it. We were not going to have war anymore, because we just defeated the Japanese and the Germans." And he said, "You know, since I came back, and used the GI Bill to get my PhD, he says, we have had nothing but war. War, after war, after war." And as you bring up, the only time we had the break in here was the Clinton period for four years, but even he got involved and skirmishes, Blackhawk down, and those kinds of things.
WO (01:55:40):
It required other statements of other decades. There was really nothing.
SM (01:55:45):
Yeah. So anyways, I am done. Are there any questions that you thought I was going to ask that I did not? Any final thoughts on the boomer generation, that you would like to mention?
WO (01:56:04):
Well, I personally like many of them. But it is true that I am somewhat against them as a group. I am somewhat prejudiced. And what I think one of the paradoxes, that I have never been able to resolve, is that the war generation, which is now officially the Greatest Generation, produces the boomers, who are the most in self-indulgent generation. And maybe they were over-shielded by their parents.
SM (01:56:34):
But you see, the boomers also attacked the consumption, the materialism, yet you are right-
WO (01:56:40):
Very few. Oh, very few.
SM (01:56:42):
Well, they did not, and that is what the multi diversity, the students in the universities attacked them. That was the generation gap. That was a lot of the issues that were happening within that definition.
WO (01:56:54):
That was just this tiny group of leftists, who were not all representative, the students as the whole. Even in the (19)60s, students consumed as much as they could, and they were more affluent. The parents were more affluent than previous generations had been, so they consumed more. And of course, now it is unbelievable. It seems like every other student has a car. And of course, they have all got cell phones, and laptops, and every electronic device known to man.
SM (01:57:28):
I know that the 40th anniversary of Kent State is coming up in about six weeks. I am going. Been there three of the last four years. And Mark Rudd's going to be there, former SDS. They are having an SDS reunion there, because Kent State had one of the strongest SDS chapters in the country. And well, Allen [inaudible] and the group, they were some of the ones that were actually killed. Allison Krause and Jeff Miller were SDSers. The other two were innocent. But they got Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn is coming back from, she was the Weathermen, but she was SDS. So, they are having a [inaudible]. They were having a revival of the SDS group. I was not SDS. But then they're going to have a lot of speakers. And of course, the representative from Jackson State is always there too, because two were killed.
WO (01:58:19):
I read lot ago that Mark Rudd had in effect apologized for the Columbia takeover.
SM (01:58:25):
I interviewed him for my book. And he wrote his, it is a very good book. It is called Underground. And he admits that they were... I mean, it was totally wrong, going into violence, and he says it is the greatest mistake he ever made. They were involved in a group of people that were, even if you did not like them, they were committed. They were generally committed to ending the war, and they had no violence in their aspects. It was all protest, non-violent protests. You could be arrested, you can take over, and you can disrupt. But I have interviewed a couple Columbia University students, who were there at the time, and when they went the violent direction, that ended SDS.
WO (01:59:06):
But others like, Bernardine Dohrn, specifically, are unrepentant, who claim everything they did was already justified. How were they going to get along to you out here?
SM (01:59:16):
Well, I wanted to interview her too. I did not want to interview her husband. But she did not respond. She is at the University of Chicago Law. She did professor there. She did not respond. Mark did. I really enjoyed my conversation with him. You really understand. He opens it all up. He tells the whole story. And if you know the whole history at the very end, Mark Rudd and Vernon Dorn did not like each other. And there was some friction within the... And then Mark went off in his own direction. He is now a grandfather. And the day I interviewed him, he was at the beach in California with his grandson. And he is proud of what he did within the SDS, but he is not proud at all about the violence. He is just-
WO (02:00:04):
So what profession did he go into?
SM (02:00:07):
Well, he is a teacher now. He has been teaching in a community college for quite a few years. He is really a mathematician. He is very strong in math. He has always been good in math. Of course, he was hidden. He was underground for a long time. And what is interesting... I got this still on. But what is interesting is that they all lived out in the Sausalito area in California. When they were hidden, it was the boats.
WO (02:00:29):
What a great place to hide out.
SM (02:00:32):
Yeah. And actually, my sister is going out to visit friends, who has a boat right there in Sausalito. And no one knew them, because there were a lot of hippies, and that whole group there. And so no, that is why they were stay underground for so long. But then he finally let himself- Loud if you can. Are you ready?
WO (02:00:59):
Yes.
SM (02:01:00):
Okay. When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And why did it begin, and what was the watershed moment?
WO (02:01:16):
Well, I would say the (19)60s began in 1964. That was the year of the free movement at Berkeley.
SM (02:01:25):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:01:26):
It was the year of the Civil Rights Act. Well, first Birmingham, then the Civil Rights Act. So, it was really, and of course [inaudible]. But there were a series of big events, and really things...
SM (02:01:44):
Mm-hmm. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what comes to your mind? Was there a specific event, or a series of events, that continued to shape the boomers, not only in when they were young, but also in their adult years?
WO (02:02:00):
The (19)60s really did not last very long. I mean, it could take (19)64 as the starting point, which for purposes of my book I had, you have to do these things by decades. So, I started in my book in 1960, but in fact, the events that things lost started in 1964. And by 1971, they were essentially over. So, a very lot happened in a very short period too.
SM (02:02:35):
But when you look at the term rebellious incident, well that is an adjective that is often used to define boomers when they were young. And we're talking about a generation of probably 70 to 75 million. Some people have written that a lot of them were rebellious because we had the draft at that time, and maybe they would not have been as rebellious otherwise. What is your response to that?
WO (02:03:00):
Oh, I certainly agree. The political activity had everything to do with the draft. And once Richard Nixon essentially eliminated the risk, even before... Nixon believed that- I hate to agree with Nixon. Nixon believed this was true. And so, he reshaped the draft to eliminate the risk to almost everybody. And the first thing he did was, you were only liable at the age of 19. So, if you were over 19, you did not have to worry about it. And if you were 19, there was a lottery that told you, to win, how high your risk of being drafted was. And he was reducing the brute strength in Vietnam very rapidly. Very few people were at risk. And so again, by 1971 chances of being drafted were negligible.
SM (02:04:02):
But when you look at all the different types of movements that came about in that era, which not only included the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement was ongoing. And then you had the development of all the other movements; the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Native American movement, Chicano movement, Earth Day, the environmental movement. There was a spirit happening out there, that they were tired of the status quo, that many of these young people were tired of that status quo. And of course, the question that ultimately asked is there truth to that? And secondly, have they carried these ideas into their adulthood?
WO (02:04:43):
Well, of course the environmental movement, it is still moving.
SM (02:04:49):
Dr. Neil, could you speak a little louder too?
WO (02:04:53):
I guess. I do not think I can turn up the volume here.
SM (02:04:57):
Okay, that is all right.
WO (02:05:00):
Well, the environmental movement became permanent, and it was not just a matter of young people. The [inaudible] came out at the beginning of the decade, and there were a number of others as well, so it was never... A new leftist was a young people's wisdom. Environmentalism was not, feminism was not either. That started relatively early, with Betty Friedan.
SM (02:05:28):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:05:30):
And that is become, essentially, it is not the picturesque phase of feminist, the women's liberation movement, and that sort of thing. That died out in the (19)70s, but the more permanent of termination, to secure equal rights, never did die out. What are the others? We do not hear much about Chicano rights. A right for [inaudible]-
SM (02:06:00):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:06:01):
Who is very much alive. But again, with the kickoff with the riots, at the bar in New York City, name that I cannot remember, that was relatively young people, but it became institutionalized.
SM (02:06:20):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:06:20):
And you noticed, when you see today, for gay married and the like, it is remarkable. Many of them are middle-aged people.
SM (02:06:31):
Is there, when you look at that whole era of boomers, that are defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, some people have had a hard time looking at generations that are confined to years. And I have had that in my interviews. But is there one specific event that you feel had the greatest impact, an event, a happening, that affected this generation?
WO (02:07:02):
No, I do agree that it is a very specific generation. I mean, I do not even think it is a matter of opinion, really. The demographic had a population explosion in the (19)50s, and by 1964 or so, that explosion was over in the first [inaudible]. So, I mean, I do not see how you can deny the boomers are an actual generation has seen, still, the largest single movement in American history. But I do not see it as defined by a single event. For example, the things that are most common in my book, and in most books about the (19)60s, we are talking about the sort of tip of the iceberg. But the movement, like the work we have discussed, and famous individuals, when you are talking about 75 million people, a very small fraction of that total was involved in the things that we talk about.
SM (02:08:06):
Right.
WO (02:08:06):
The real change, the thing that distinguished the boomers, I think, from previous generations at any rate, more than anything else, the self-indulgence, and the pleasure consumed. [inaudible] rate goes way up.
SM (02:08:22):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:08:22):
Drug use goes way up. The rebellion is not so much a form of political one as it is throwing off traditional American values. And that-
SM (02:08:33):
Yeah, that goes right into my next question. Please list some positive characteristics of this generation, and some negative ones.
WO (02:08:53):
I mean, at the time, in the (19)60s, and when I was writing my book, I had been impressed by the Civil Rights Movement, which was fabulous. And for a time, by the new left, but those movements burned out so quickly. I mean, civil rights reaches its peak, probably in 1965, with the voting right back, and the events [inaudible]. And then, by the end of the decade, we have got Black Power, which absolutely destroyed the integrated Civil Rights Movement. And you still have civil rights advocate today, but it is a kind of lobby, not a movement.
SM (02:09:38):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:09:40):
So, the movement period did not last very long. And most of the things, the boomers, the public once again, to politicize the ones you read about at the time, most of them did not last very long. They burned out pretty quickly. And it is hard for me to think of the long-term positive attributes. And I think quite a lot of negative ones, again, in terms of self-indulgence, and the drugs, and the enormous increase in divorce rates, and the like. My favorite-
SM (02:10:24):
You bring up what George Will and Newt Gingrich have said, "Oh, for a long time, whenever they get a chance to take a shot at the (19)60s generation, or the Boomers, is that all the reasons for the breakdown of American society falls into that particular group." And George Will has actually written on it in his books. And when Newt Gingrich came to power in 1994, there were often times when he would say it, even though he was a boomer. And the divisions in our society, the breakdown of American society, the drugs, the families, the lack of trust in positions of leadership... Are George Will and Newt Gingrich right?
WO (02:11:07):
Well, they are half right. I mean, I do agree with them, with what Trooper said-
SM (02:11:12):
What is that?
WO (02:11:14):
But what they never said, that the other half of what's been damaging to America in the last 40 years or so, has been the rise of right-wing extremists, and the Evangelical Christians, and the politicalization of schools, the effort to prevent abortion, and to stop speaking of evolution in the schools, and the denial of gay rights. I mean, the right-wing has a great deal of influence, and they never mentioned that the problem with this country isn't the notion of mere self-indulges.
SM (02:11:46):
Right.
WO (02:11:47):
It is the calculated exploitation of people's fears, right when you are [inaudible].
SM (02:11:53):
One of the interesting points, too, on the criticisms of the boomer generation, is they will always point out that only 15 percent of 70 to 75 million were involved in any sort of activism. And they use it as a negative, but that is still a pretty large number, isn't it? When you consider 70 million people.
WO (02:12:13):
I mean, the movement, can you think of that kind of participation?
SM (02:12:20):
That is a lot. Could you comment on how important the boomer youth were, in college students in particular, in ending the war in to Vietnam?
WO (02:12:36):
I think they were most influential in since of their parents. A lot of people in Congress, and in important... I am reading right now the new biography of Paul Nitze.
SM (02:12:52):
Oh, yes.
WO (02:12:54):
And-
SM (02:12:54):
Yes, I have it.
WO (02:12:56):
Nitze's children were part of the movement. They were opposed to the Vietnam War. So, there he was in the Pentagon, [inaudible]. He was trying to defend it. No, I think they had a lot of influence to their parents, and I think that was more important than marching on the Pentagon, or think. Huh.
SM (02:13:18):
One of the things, and this is getting into modern day universities, is I have had a sense for several years, and you as a professor, probably unlike your comments on this, that people in positions of leadership and universities today, i.e. administrators, are afraid of the term activism, for the main reason is that it brings back all the memories of what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s. And to them, it means the disruption of classes, the break... there is a real worry that volunteerism is popular, but activism is not, they do not like the term, am I right in assuming this?
WO (02:13:59):
That is my impression. One positive thing I wanted, I omitted, but I think the boomers began, and that was the tradition of local activists. Not great sweeping, let us say the end of the world or whatever, but the fact that ordinary people in neighborhoods started mobilizing the developed freeway from going through the middle town, or waste plant being built in their neighborhood, or whatever. I mean, on this local level, which is an ideological. It is really based on trying to preserve their immediate environment. There is a tremendous amount of this grant activism that is not political, but that the date from, and certainly was inspired by the exit of the (19)60s, that is become a permanent piece of American legacy.
SM (02:14:50):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:14:54):
But then, what you were saying about administrators, the access of the (19)60s began the process undermining the university. I am absolutely convinced for that. It started with [inaudible] credits.
SM (02:15:06):
Yes.
WO (02:15:07):
And I thought that was typically reasonable. I mean, by the 1960's in the effort, they usually did it through the female student. The dormitory in Michigan, where I was an undergrad student, women had to be in their dorms by 10 o'clock on weeknights, and 12 o'clock on weekends. And theory believes that boys were very little opportunities for mischief. I mean, that was such an outmoded thing. So, I thought the getting rid of the local [inaudible] was perfectly fine. Then we started educating against requirements like foreign language, with very considerable success. Most universities came in on that one. And so, we have not had required foreign language, but in a great many universities for a very long time. And then they went after other aspects of the curriculum... memory. Then they went after other aspects of the curriculum that they did not like? Like science requirements-
SM (02:16:05):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:16:06):
... and that sort of thing. And, it is very true Rutgers is where been I have spent most of my career and I know it is good, do not [inaudible] prestige as well, but there was a cutting of the curriculum and newspapers were putting in the word "Vietnam" or "abolish racism". They would get rid of the foreign language requirements, and things like that. And the curriculum, it never recovered from that.
SM (02:16:32):
Well, what's interesting is that the people that run the universities today are the Boomers that were on campus and they witnessed what was happening at that particular period. And I do not know if the people that are running universities are those that were more conservative as opposed to the more liberal students that were doing the anti-war movement and other movements.
WO (02:16:53):
Basically, I think it was the more liberal students because the administrators that I am familiar with fell all over themselves to introduce Black studies, race studies, and Ebonics studies. And I do not mean that these things should not be introduced, but they were done for political reasons not for academic reasons at a time when there was so few experts. I was in Wisconsin, I thought it was dumb when the Black studies program was introduced because some students were marching into classes and disrupting them and taking the microphone away from a person. And it would usually be like 50 white students and one black, and they were demanding a Black studies program along with honestly cobbled ones together, which included a nurse, a geographer. I mean, there were not any experts at the time. It was just placating the students. It was always, administrators [inaudible]. And it makes it relatively easy to blackmail them.
SM (02:17:54):
Well, what was interesting as you well know then, and of course I was a student at that time, is that you give into my demands and we will just demand more demands.
WO (02:18:04):
Right.
SM (02:18:05):
That happened an awful lot. A lot of the Boomers, at least when I was... I went to Binghamton University and I know there was sense there, as well as when I went to grad school in Ohio State, that we are the most unique generation in American history.
WO (02:18:20):
Oh, absolutely, [inaudible].
SM (02:18:21):
Yeah, and I know a lot of people still believe that, that are in their early (19)60s, now. Your thoughts on that kind of an attitude?
WO (02:18:31):
Oh, they were very full of themselves. I have an anecdote, today, [inaudible] word. They will probably block that out, but it was really illuminating to me. One of the things... again, I thought it was constant from (19)66 to (19)71 and those were absolutely the worst years of student activism. And one of the things those graduate students demanded, the graduate students at the University of Wisconsin lead the whole campus-wide to left. And they demanded that the [inaudible] department meetings be open to all students who wanted to come. And so, the department caved in on that. There was a lot of caving going on at the time. And so, the radical graduate students started coming and the result was that regular faculty would not say anything. So, the meetings became meaningless because nobody would have an opinion that might inflame the graduate students or whoever. Oh, after about six months of this, everything had to be done by committees and behind closed doors not at the actual meetings. The department finally decided to rescind that rule and during the (19)60s everything controversial was all an elaborate parliamentary of protocols. [inaudible] school's order was dragged out at every occasion. So, before we got the vote to ban these sorts of departmental meetings, there were a series of preliminary votes and it finally got to the penultimate vote, which was if you voted "yes" on this it meant that you were going to vote yes with students because they were with the radical students sitting right next to me in school, but I put my hand up that I was going to vote. One of these students, he turned to me and he said, " O'Neil, you prick, we will get you for this."
SM (02:20:34):
Oh, my gosh.
WO (02:20:34):
I actually laughed because it was such an inflated opinion on their influence. I knew they were not going to get me.
SM (02:20:43):
My gosh. Yeah, this brings up a question of you personally. When you were a professor in the (19)60s and (19)70s, how did these students differ from other students from other generations? Say the Generation Xers, and the current Millennials. How did these students different? Were they more inquisitive? Were they more well-read? Did they have a better knowledge of history? Just your thoughts.
WO (02:21:14):
The actual (19)60s students and I was [inaudible] over the decade, essentially. On the one hand they were still extremely well-prepared for college work, the deterioration of the general educational system had not set in yet. So, they were extremely well-prepared. They were capable of doing high level academic work and because they had been so politicized by the war and race movement and things like that, that they asked... this is all apart from the demonstration movement... any regular classroom work, you had to be prepared and I always tried to anticipate before I gave a lecture, but, it might be interrupted as imperialistic. And if a student accused me of that, how would I respond to it? And it would not be just a matter of name-calling, they do not, for instance, they will say, "well, how can you defend the policy that entailed using the Philippines, whatever the issue." So, they were smart and well-prepared and well-read in subjects they were interested. It was the most exciting teaching I have ever had. I had not really signed up for exciting teaching but it turned out to be a more of a challenge than I had anticipated. All though, in later years I came to miss some of the manners of them and the one thing they all agreed on was it was important and you needed to get it right. Starting in the (19)70s, things started to go downhill and by the (19)80s it was very marked. Oh, they were poorly prepared, they were not interested... great inflation-
SM (02:22:55):
Yep.
WO (02:22:56):
... a lot of students just were for teaching. So, teaching today is not remotely as much fun as it used to be.
SM (02:23:07):
Wow. I know when we had Tom Hadden on our campus and he met with, several years back, some of our students, student government leaders, they talked about the power that they had to be able to deal with budgets and everything. And Tom shook his head and he said, "I am talking about, do you have real empowerment, not power?" And they did not even understand the term empowerment. And I think that is another term that is referred back to that period of the '60s because of their desire to be involved in all committees and know how the money is being spent. Today's students do not seem to even care how the money is being spent.
WO (02:23:43):
No, they do not.
SM (02:23:46):
So, do you think that the students of that era, the Boomers, really understood empowerment, whereas today students cannot even define the word?
WO (02:23:58):
Well, we were all winging it, including them. It was not like they had a master plan. They tended to be moved by events. And then the faculty and the administration would respond to their reaction to the events, or they would raise up the bans periodically, usually [inaudible] watering down the curriculum or something of that sort. So, it was all very ad hoc. No, I do not know if they [inaudible].
SM (02:24:36):
Could you describe a little bit about the generation gap? The differences that the Boomers had with their parents and... because today, college students and millennials seem to be closer to their parents then at any other time. Their parents are so involved in everything and there does not seem to be any generation gap. And the 2nd part of this question is, why did the generation Xers that followed the Boomers dislike Boomers so much? We actually have programs in this at the university in the early (19)90s and a lot of them just looked at Boomers and said, "you are too tight, we're sick of hearing about your youth, we are sick of hearing about the time that you were young." And they just had problems with it all together. Just your thoughts.
WO (02:25:30):
Well, the Boomers' parents, remember, were the war generation. Both of their parents born through at least part of the depression, and pretty much all of the war. They had endured hardship and [inaudible]. During World War 2, all eligible men went into the services and most men served for years. That was the average, the armed service, most of them received as a rule. So, their generation had gone through hardship and the women had worked in defense plants or they were single mothers and children were raised even by themselves. And then after the war, they became... they were even criticized for this, but they became really eager to make up for lost time and so they got married and everyone had children, all at the same time in a sequence. And they did this by working hard, by self-discipline, by practicing all these traditional virtues. And apparently, they spoiled their children in the process, because they had had it hard, they wanted their children to have it easier and the result was the overconfident, over privileged, self-indulgent Boomers.
SM (02:27:00):
The generations that followed, I want to clarify that, I think I said it wrong. They disliked them or liked them for two reasons: number one, those that disliked them were tired of hearing about the nostalgia of that particular era; and those that liked them were those that wished they had the same issues and causes that would unite their generation that they had. Your thoughts on just this complexity of responses to following generations toward this group.
WO (02:27:32):
I think that was true of college students. I do not know how it was in the general population because they are grad students, majority of people in any generation are not college graduates. And they are preoccupied with making enough money to live on and paying the mortgage and getting the kids through school and maybe they do not have time for that. I think it's strictly a phenomenon of some of the college... but it is true, I noticed that.
SM (02:28:08):
Okay, I want to read this and get your response to this: "do you feel that the boomer generation, or Boomers, are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? And this could be linked to division between black and white. Between those who supported authority and those criticized it. Between those who supported the troops and those who were against it. And also, the Vietnam memorial has tried to play a part in the healing within the veterans’ generation and I do not know if it is done much to the general population. Do you feel the boomer generation will go to it is grave like the civil war generation, not truly healed? Am I wrong in thinking this way or has 35 to 40 years made the following statement true: time heals all wounds?" Is there truth to this statement?
WO (02:29:11):
[inaudible]. Look, as an academic I have a limited perspective. I deal with students and faculty, who are not necessarily representative of any generation in particular. But, my sense of the Boomers is that they are not wracked with post-traumatic stress disorders, anything of that... [inaudible] season in the (19)60s. They seemed to me to have remained so.
SM (02:29:48):
Hmm. How about the healing, do you think that is an issue? And I want to follow this up with something, I took students to see Senator Edmond Muskie before he died several years back and we asked that very same question to him, in a room with 14 students, and I had this actually videotaped. And he did not respond right away because we were trying to get at what happened in 1968 and the tremendous divisions of the Democratic Convention and the lack of healing. And his response said, "we have not healed since the civil war." And then he went on to talk for 10 minutes on the Ken Burns series that he had just witnessed while he was in the hospital and so, his answer to, we had any healing since the (19)60s, he said, "we have not had any healing since the civil war." Just your thoughts on that.
WO (02:30:44):
Well, I think that is true of the south. I think it is striking. The south has been forced to improve course through the voting rights act and the enforcement of it, and these things. But it is utterly remarkable to me how the south has [inaudible] very worst attributes. I saw the other day, just for example, in the last election only 15 percent of white males in Louisiana, compared to a number of other states, voted for Obama. These people they still have slavery because-
SM (02:31:21):
Oh my gosh.
WO (02:31:23):
So, I think where the south is concerned then that is certainly true. But the rest of the nation, though more in the North and [inaudible].
SM (02:31:33):
So, you think the divisions are still here and that is just part of our history and we have no shot at healing, like many in the civil war when they went to their graves they still had not healed?
WO (02:31:50):
Maybe in another hundred years the South will fully [inaudible]. But I really feel this is outside of the national framework, pretty much for the rest of the country.
SM (02:32:02):
How about the Vietnam memorial? Obviously, you have been there and when I first moved back from California in 1983, the first thing I had to do was get down to the Vietnam memorial, and I go down there quite a few times every year. What kind of a job has that done with respect to trying to heal the nation, even beyond the veterans?
WO (02:32:27):
Well, at the very core of the memorial park, it means to heal. But then I still read about members of congress who are still blaming the democrats for losing the Vietnam War and the Boomers for being responsible for that wound that we just cannot let go. And there are the Vietnam veterans themselves who are still tormented by their experiences which should not be surprising because it was full of World War Two veterans. 50 years after the fact. I know World War Two veterans 50 years after the fact who still has nightmares, that kind of thing. The war is quite different-
SM (02:33:18):
Right. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation once the best history books are written? Obviously, you have already written best history books, but a lot of people think the best history books are often written 25 to 50 years after a specific era or time. What do you think will be the overall analysis?
WO (02:33:45):
And when I wrote my book, I was trying to represent what I felt was... what I thought was maybe some kind of ultimate verdict. You cannot make an ultimate verdict. The book came out in 1971-
SM (02:34:00):
Right.
WO (02:34:00):
... so, giving the ultimate verdict. But, yeah, it is often true. Some of the best civil war writing history has been done in the last 20 years.
SM (02:34:12):
Do you think there will be more criticism or more praise? Or is it just impossible to say?
WO (02:34:27):
People even in the (19)60s, there was a cycle of opinion among educated and successful professional Americans, in which the first sentencing was mired, the Boomers because of their participation in the civil rights movement and the movement in particular. By the end of the decade, many of those same people who turned against because of the rise of violence and seeing the Black Power and the weather movement, those sorts of things. Well, the reputation of the Boomers in the (19)60s rose like a rocket and fell just [inaudible]. Have not changed my mind, yet.
SM (02:35:24):
Do you think the Boomers as parents and now as grandparents have really taught their kids about activism or have shared it or have been quiet or? Sometimes I make an analogy, I have talked to so many people, that it is like people come back from war and they do not like to talk about it-
WO (02:35:47):
Yep.
SM (02:35:48):
... and the question is: do Boomer parents and grandparents talk about it to their kids? Do they share? Do they just go on and live their lives? I do not know if you can answer that but.
WO (02:36:01):
Now, seeing it in academia twice, I know a lot of former new-leftists, they are just rampant, still. And my impression is that all though they still cherish their youth philosophies, and indeed, we all hear stories about and still have the same values to the extent that they are compatible with professional success. But in the abstract. So, it is again, getting tenure and getting promoted and-
SM (02:36:37):
Right.
WO (02:36:37):
... pulling your [inaudible]. But in the abstract, they are still in favor of [inaudible], usually [inaudible] and all that.
SM (02:36:53):
Quick-
WO (02:36:53):
There is so many impressions of their children but it's only getting passed on.
SM (02:36:54):
Yeah, but what is interesting is that people will look at Boomer leadership and they look to Clinton and Bush.
WO (02:37:01):
Yeah.
SM (02:37:02):
Because they actually are the Boomers and some will say they both have characteristics within them that really define them as Boomers, both of them. And actually, President Obama is a Boomer, too, he is a very late-stage Boomer at 48, now. But-
WO (02:37:22):
I really do not-
SM (02:37:23):
Yeah, he is a late-stage Boomer himself so he still has that little-
WO (02:37:26):
Oh, wait, does he?
SM (02:37:28):
He has a little bit of an influence.
WO (02:37:35):
Well, I do not see an influence. [inaudible], I feel like. I do see it in Bush. What is it about Bush?
SM (02:37:40):
Well, I do not know, people were all commenting based on qualities, "doing it my way or the highway" kind of an attitude or something like that.
WO (02:37:52):
I still see him as an old-fashioned reactionary.
SM (02:37:57):
Do you think this Peter Max slogan from one of his posters really defines the Boomers? Here is a quote: "you do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we come together it will be beautiful." Now that was a very important statement on Peter Max posters in 1972 when I at Ohio State because I had it hanging in my room. And I wish I kept it because that poster's probably worth money now. Does that really define them?
WO (02:38:26):
No, I do not agree with that at all.
SM (02:38:28):
Okay.
WO (02:38:28):
Many leftists that I knew, and at Wisconsin I knew a lot, because the graduate students were radicalized. No, they were completely intolerant. They did not have room for anybody else's opinion. You were either radical or a fascist, in [inaudible].
SM (02:38:47):
Could you talk a little about the music of the era and how important it was in the lives of Boomers. Secondly, who were the artists you feel shaped the generation more than others? And maybe some of the songs.
WO (02:39:01):
That buffoon [inaudible] to me, I grew up in the big band era, my eras were the one by [inaudible] Frank Sinatra. That was my youth. When rock and all that came along as part of a culling.
SM (02:39:22):
Do you feel that part of the activism that was part of this generation, music played in important part?
WO (02:39:41):
I do not know, it was kind of like their sacramental music. others incited fervor. There was a boom but... yeah, to the degree that you were inspiring sort of religious type emotion and the sacramental music would enhance that.
SM (02:39:53):
I am going to seize a couple more questions here and then I have a section where I just mention some names. You have already mentioned, what does the- I am going to repeat myself- what does the wall... just say a few sentences here, what does the wall mean to you?
WO (02:40:10):
The Berlin wall?
SM (02:40:10):
Yeah, no, the-the Vietnam memorial.
WO (02:40:13):
Oh, well, it just think it is beautiful and moving.
SM (02:40:20):
What does Ken State and Jackson State mean to you?
WO (02:40:22):
Oh, well, those were bloodbaths. 196-[inaudible]
SM (02:40:37):
That was 1970.
WO (02:40:39):
Right.
SM (02:40:40):
Where were you when 1970 when you heard about that?
WO (02:40:44):
I was a visiting professor at New York from Pennsylvania and the semester had just ended. It ended several [inaudible] early. And so, the students who were at campus by the time that happened, there were not any real reactions.
SM (02:40:57):
Wow.
WO (02:40:58):
So, unlike at other universities where they had to [inaudible].
SM (02:41:02):
Yep. What does Watergate mean to you?
WO (02:41:09):
Oh, the greatest [inaudible] reveled in Watergate. And I never thought the public really knew about all the scandalous parts within the institution and all of the fall-out all over the nation. No, I thought it was Nixon [inaudible] for weeks, then he got [inaudible]. He was just delightful. I wish I known now longer what I realized then, he would get acquitted at some point.
SM (02:41:41):
Do you think that had an effect on the Boomer generation?
WO (02:41:49):
No. That is in 1975, it is pretty well-formed at that point. (19)74, (19)70.
SM (02:42:02):
Okay, what does Woodstock mean to you?
WO (02:42:05):
Oh, it did not mean anything to me, I thought, as I said-
SM (02:42:09):
At least to the generation?
WO (02:42:13):
Well, I guess those at Woodstock had a great time, I know, I had some younger friends who went there but I do not see it as a great seminal world-changing event.
SM (02:42:26):
How about the term "counter-culture"?
WO (02:42:30):
Oh, that was a definite [inaudible] piece that took place in propaganda in the (19)60s. A lot of it has become cliched, 30 years later it is pretty difficult recap the origin. But at the time, I thought it was dangerous and quite remarkable.
SM (02:42:57):
I am going to change my tape here, hold on a second. Okay, and if you just speak at just a little bit louder, I know we cannot put the volume up, but. Okay, another one: the hippies and the yippies? Just your thoughts on them.
WO (02:43:21):
Well, the hippies started out at least as being pretty charming. I remember the first time I saw one [inaudible] was in Washington, D.C. I was working at the Library of Congress. And I was walking, got off the bus, and I was crossing DuPont Circle, and a guy with long hair came up and gave me a flower. That was, I think, the first hippie I ever saw. It must have been about (19)63 or (196)4, something like that. So, they were charming at first, but as you know they descended into gross and vanity. And there have been many similar children of hippies who were really kind of abused, mostly from neglect more than. But, [inaudible]. I got a big bang out of the yippies. I thought a lot of the stuff they did, the throwing dollars in the New York Stock Exchange and big demonstration... democratic demonstration, [inaudible] it was really about, this is Eddie Hoffman and some of the others, were really kind of geniuses when it came to turning the establishment on its head and creating a no-win situation but Chicago was [inaudible]. If the authorities had allowed the yippies to go ahead with their demonstration it would have been embarrassing to the democratic party and-
SM (02:45:03):
Right.
WO (02:45:04):
... in the city of Chicago, to no end. But, in attempting to suppress them, they embarrassed themselves even more, so. But like all these things, the yippies ran out of steam. Eddie Hoffman [inaudible] in the later years [inaudible] caricature of themselves.
SM (02:45:21):
How about the Students for Democratic Society and certainly the Vietnam Veterans Against the War?
WO (02:45:28):
Well, SDC is a big different [inaudible] to me. I taught at University of Colorado before I went, and I was asked to be a student for faculty advice... and they had to have a faculty advisor in order to have a [inaudible]. So, I was the faculty advisor to SDS for a couple of years and this was still the era of non-violent activism. They were very much inspired by Martin Luther and so they would have non-violent demonstrations. But I liked them a lot, they were wonderful people. Well, I got to Wisconsin and the tide was already changing and the SDS, I dealt with there had abandoned non-violence and they were having street fights with the police.
SM (02:46:20):
It is the weathermen, yeah.
WO (02:46:23):
These were not actually weathermen, they were just regular SDC [inaudible].
SM (02:46:25):
Right.
WO (02:46:27):
But they were having [inaudible] war from the history department windows pitched down on between the SDC and [inaudible] police. The police teargassed them... and the police would throw the tear gas back at them and then they would have [inaudible]. So, that was a healthy disillusioning.
SM (02:46:51):
How about Vietnam Veterans Against the War?
WO (02:46:52):
Well, the ones that I knew I admired very much and I think some their [inaudible] is really, well, in a better position he really represented some of the fears of the war. They were very thoughtful and well-informed. Very just kind of people.
SM (02:47:15):
How about the Young Americans for Freedom?
WO (02:47:23):
Oh, over-privileged Nazis.
SM (02:47:23):
How about the Black Panthers and Black Power?
WO (02:47:26):
Oh, I thought they were a terrible movement. Again, they destroyed the old civil rights movement, the non-violent civil rights movement which had accomplished everything we got in the civil rights act and the voting rights act and everything of value. And then these nincompoops came along and that old "power comes from the barrel of a gun" and other bullish cliches. And they ruined the civil rights movement, it was just appalling. The Black Panthers, I did not know this at the time, but there has been a lot of work done on them, were more of a criminal organization than anything else.
SM (02:48:00):
Because Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver. Remember, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Hutton, they were all part of that group.
WO (02:48:12):
Oh, it was founded by ex-convicts. That should have been a clue.
SM (02:48:18):
Yeah, Huey Newton had that poster that was on a lot of campuses. Also, the term that Nixon used, "the enemies list", when you hear that what did that... how did you respond?
WO (02:48:32):
I thought it was hysterical because it included the president from Harvard and other universities. [inaudible], some football stars. It was virtually a mark of honor to be on the list. We used to go around lying about it, saying that they were on the enemies list.
SM (02:48:55):
Mỹ Lai?
WO (02:48:56):
Oh, that was horrible, that was terrible. And kind of summed up sort of "everyone's about the Vietnam war, actually."
SM (02:49:07):
1968. The year.
WO (02:49:09):
Oh, well, that was the year that was... a lot books, I think, focus on that one year.
SM (02:49:14):
Yes. Wow.
WO (02:49:17):
Well, I thought the war was going to start... well, I saw fighting outside of my door.
SM (02:49:24):
Do you buy what some people said, that we were close to a second civil war?
WO (02:49:29):
No. That is the kind of overreaction you get when you are in the middle of things.
SM (02:49:29):
Okay.
WO (02:49:43):
I knew in the abstract that we would get [inaudible]. At the time I was writing my book but I did not still see myself sort of [inaudible].
SM (02:49:44):
Right, and tech?
WO (02:49:44):
Well, that was what changed the world of war, that was the point... and it probably... over the world. And at this point, the public opinion polls supported [inaudible] up until then. And Ian [inaudible], and those other liars, they write [inaudible], blah, blah, blah. And they were all really [inaudible]. And it convinced Richard Nixon, I am sure of it, convinced Richard Nixon that could not facilitate policy [inaudible] to get reelected.
SM (02:50:34):
This is another question I would like to read. This deals with the issue of trust. And that is, the boomers experienced many leaders who lied to them and were dishonest in many ways. The result is that many, if not most, did not trust any leaders, no matter their role in society, whether they be a president, a congressman, a senator, corporate leader or religious leader, or leader in any role. What effect did this have on their trust both then and now? If boomers distrust do their children distrust? Psychologists often say that if you cannot trust someone then life has little meaning. Your thought on the issue of trust within the boomer generation.
WO (02:51:16):
Oh, I think they got over it. I mean, the public. One of the slogans at the time was do not trust anyone over 30.
SM (02:51:24):
Yep.
WO (02:51:31):
Well, they all [inaudible] over 30. The ones that I know retain a certain residual distrust of the federal government. But that does not [inaudible] seems to be [inaudible] the other institution is equally evolved.
SM (02:51:56):
All right. Why did the Vietnam War end?
WO (02:52:00):
Because Richard Nixon recognized that it was an absolute no-win situation politically, and that he had to wrap it up, one way or another. And of course, the way he chose was not [inaudible] by any means. And I do not know how else he could have done it.
SM (02:52:18):
When did the (19)60s end?
WO (02:52:21):
Well, I am thinking (19)71, thereabouts.
SM (02:52:29):
Is there a specific event that you knew, and when you saw it, it is over?
WO (02:52:36):
Well, the election of Richard Nixon. And then within, I do not know, six or eight months of taking office, he started pulling troops out of Vietnam. Very, very, soon and very rapid. The draw down was crazy. It was [inaudible] over bombing raids, but that was deliberate on his part, because he wanted the right wing [inaudible] that he was [inaudible] along, but in fact, he [inaudible] rapid rate that by the end of 1971 the offensive action [inaudible] Vietnam. The draft was over basically by then. And that was end of the (19)60s.
SM (02:53:21):
Mm-hmm. Please describe how important race, economics, and culture is in understanding the boomer generation and era they lived.
WO (02:53:33):
Well, race alone for [inaudible] was the first great cause. There were chapters, particularly on campus, the creation of [inaudible] and students and my own coordinating studies in 1960. That sit-in movement spawned a support group, I guess, in major universities all over the country. It was the first movement that the boomers [inaudible]. And in most cases, it was lifelong. I mean, even after white people got kicked out of the [inaudible] the Congress of Racial Equality and organizations like that, it did not change their views. Oh, I think that was terrific.
SM (02:54:26):
And I know Kennedy was very... President Kennedy and actually Teddy Kennedy, in his new book talks it about it too, about Michael Harrington talking about poverty and economics, and certainly that played a part too. It is not just about race, it's about how much money people make and poverty and so forth. That is certainly a part of this generation.
WO (02:54:50):
[inaudible] very interested in the problems of poor white people.
SM (02:54:54):
Right. Right. Couple more, then I am going to ask you some individual names, and then we will be done. What were the most important books that you felt were written at the time that may have influenced boomers when they were young? Authors. Books.
WO (02:55:19):
Boy, that is hard to say. I mean, I know the books that influenced me.
SM (02:55:21):
What books influenced you?
WO (02:55:27):
Well, Michael Harrington's book was a tremendous eye-opener.
SM (02:55:32):
Mm-hmm.
WO (02:55:32):
And Rachel Carson's book too. Of course, those were books that had tremendous impact. My views on Vietnam were shaped by Bernard Fall, who was [inaudible]. Did you read any of his?
SM (02:55:52):
What is his last name?
WO (02:55:52):
Bernard Fall.
SM (02:55:53):
Oh yeah, Bernie Fall. Yes.
WO (02:55:57):
One of my few successful prophecies was when I knew the Vietnam War was going to turn out badly, because I would read Fall. And the United States was making [inaudible]. So [inaudible].
SM (02:56:12):
Yep. How about your personal story? How did you personally decide to become a history teacher?
WO (02:56:25):
Well, I was in a program when my father, who was not at college. In fact, he only went [inaudible]. And so, he ended up in the oil business, as a wildcatter of all things. And he felt that he was politically handicapped by not being a lawyer. He was always [inaudible] other people. [inaudible] career and I took it for granted too. I was the first person in my family to go to college, so [inaudible] knew anything about it. And I majored in [inaudible]. And in my senior year, I wrote... A lot of people think of it as a serious [inaudible]. You write a senior’s honors thesis to do with [inaudible] very long. And I realized... I think it was probably 100 pages. And I realized suddenly, just like a revelation, you're [inaudible]. Then I realized if I could do [inaudible] that way I could probably write a good thesis.
SM (02:57:28):
Wow.
WO (02:57:37):
Granted I could [inaudible] and I would not have to go to law school. By that time, I had moved... I had roomed with some law students, so I knew what a grind and how horrible it was, and [inaudible] and soul destroying. Then suddenly I realized I can make my living doing what I most like.
SM (02:57:51):
Discouraged?
WO (02:57:52):
It was [inaudible].
SM (02:57:53):
You went to Berkeley too, did not you?
WO (02:57:56):
Graduate.
SM (02:57:57):
Were you there during the free speech movement, or...
WO (02:58:00):
I left a year before.
SM (02:58:01):
Okay.
WO (02:58:01):
Knew some of the students that were involved in it, because free speech movement just did not come out of nowhere.
SM (02:58:06):
I know.
WO (02:58:06):
And [inaudible] in Berkeley in [inaudible] between 1968 [inaudible]. And of course, in 1960 there had been the big demonstration against [inaudible] in San Francisco, and a lot of Berkeley students participated in that. Oh, I knew some of the students at the sit-in. [inaudible] But I left in [inaudible].
SM (02:58:37):
When you wrote your book, American High and Coming Apart, and obviously you have written other books, and now your new one, what kind of feedback did you get from people when you wrote those books? Obviously, it is a sense of accomplishment to have written the first two that I mentioned, what I consider great books.
WO (02:58:57):
But you would be surprised, apart from reviews, but you would be surprised at the little mail books like that get. I once wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Solzhenitsyn, and this was in, I do not know, (19)78, something like that. And it made it because the Harvard Review was critical narrative. [inaudible] I did not know why me. I mean, I know nothing really about Russia. Anyway, I did write an op-ed piece on him. I got more mail from that single op-ed piece than I have from all my books put together.
SM (02:59:39):
Unbelievable. Wow.
WO (02:59:42):
I mean, if I get 10 letters in response to a book, that is huge.
SM (02:59:49):
That American High book is a classic book.
WO (02:59:53):
Now, over the years, I have gotten [inaudible] letters. But I mean, I still get them.
SM (03:00:00):
Mm-hmm.
WO (03:00:00):
That is because [inaudible].
SM (03:00:03):
In all of your experiences as a professor in the classroom with boomer students, are there one or two specific experiences you will never forget, that stand out?
WO (03:00:19):
Well, of course, the one I just told you about, the graduate students, that certainly-
SM (03:00:20):
Right.
WO (03:00:20):
... stuck in my mind [inaudible] this absurdity. No, in class, I think [inaudible]. In class I had a lot of really thought-provoking periods [inaudible], but not since.
SM (03:00:51):
Mm-hmm. Before I ask the first questions on individual persons, are there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask?
WO (03:01:04):
No, I think I had a lot [inaudible].
SM (03:01:04):
All right. This is the last part of the interview, and this is for just your immediate thoughts. You do not have to go into any depth, but just your thoughts on some of these individuals from the period, and terms of the era. Tom Hayden.
WO (03:01:24):
Oh, I admired him at the beginning, the Port Huron Statement and [inaudible] sort of thing, but by the time he became... By the end of the period, I felt sorry for him more than anything else. Living in this restrictive fear.
SM (03:01:38):
Jane Fonda.
WO (03:01:45):
I never hated... I do not hate her. I never hated her, or... I felt sorry for her too, I suppose. She did not have anybody to tell her who to... Well, and she's apologized.
SM (03:01:58):
Right. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
WO (03:02:07):
I admired them both in their early yippie phases. I thought they were funny and smart, and manipulated the establishment too. Abbie became kind of pathetic in later life. And Jerry Rubin was never able to find his bearings afterwards.
SM (03:02:28):
How about the participants in the Chicago Eight trial? The Eight.
WO (03:02:33):
Oh, yes. That was [inaudible]. I did not really have any opinion, other than they joined [inaudible].
SM (03:02:42):
I am interviewing Rennie Davis in 10 days.
WO (03:02:46):
Oh, he was one of the ones. Oh.
SM (03:02:48):
Yeah, he has become a very successful entrepreneur. I think he is a millionaire.
WO (03:02:53):
Really?
SM (03:02:53):
Yes. If you go onto the web, you will see he is involved in the environment and he's still an activist doing unbelievable things. He does not talk about the (19)60s anymore. That is the past. But he is going to be... He has got his own life now, totally different.
WO (03:03:12):
Remarkable.
SM (03:03:14):
John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
WO (03:03:18):
I never liked John Kennedy [inaudible]. He was basically a very conservative Democrat. I liked Adlai Stevenson. I did not care for him. I did not like Robert Kennedy either until 1968, when he really seemed to have... At which time he really seemed to have gone through a change and become [inaudible] about being ruthless. But he really seemed to have become less ruthless and more deeply concerned with the social problems, so I came to admire him [inaudible] being assassinated.
SM (03:03:57):
How about Teddy Kennedy, since he just passed, and has got a big book out right now?
WO (03:04:02):
Yes. Well, I think like almost everyone, I thought Chappaquiddick was so despicable. For years bear the thought of it, but still he outlived it, and he paid his dues and became a great senator. And by the time he died I admired him a lot.
SM (03:04:21):
Lyndon Johnson.
WO (03:04:23):
Oh, he was so disappointing. I thought Johnson in (19)64 was just great, and the campaign was great. And he stood for peace and justice and civil rights and everything desirable, and then he sacrificed everything to the war in Vietnam. I was just crushed.
SM (03:04:45):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
WO (03:04:46):
Well, Spiro Agnew was definitely successful. I do not know if he is still alive or not.
SM (03:04:53):
No, he passed away.
WO (03:04:54):
I never changed my opinion about him. Richard, I spent a large part of my adult life hating Richard Nixon. I hated him from about the time of the [inaudible] case on, I would say. And I got to vote against him repeatedly, because I voted against him in (19)56 and then in 1960, and then in (19)62 I was in California, so I got to vote for him again, against him again. And then in (19)68 and then in (19)72. So, I had a long record there. And there was nobody I hated more in public life. But years later, like, oh, starting in the end of the Vietnam War, I began to develop a grudging respect, because he did get us out of the war in the face of great [inaudible]. I have mixed feelings about him. He was an evil man who did open up China. Who ended the war in Vietnam. Who expanded the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts, and signed off on clean air and clean water legislation. [inaudible] I am ambivalent toward Nixon.
SM (03:06:08):
How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern?
WO (03:06:12):
Oh, I loved Eugene McCarthy. I worked for his campaign. [inaudible] But he was disappointing too because he frittered away the reputation that he had built up in 1968. He did not run again for quite some time. And then when he did start putting himself up as a presidential candidate it was under hopeless circumstances. He just threw his following away. It was one of the really... [inaudible] I never understood. McGovern. I liked McGovern, but I thought even at the time that he was going to ruin the Democratic Party.
SM (03:06:57):
The buses.
WO (03:06:59):
He was the captain of every little...
SM (03:07:03):
Sargent Shriver.
WO (03:07:06):
Oh, there is somebody, you know, solid life of service. Have to admire him.
SM (03:07:11):
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
WO (03:07:15):
Well, Martin Luther King is the greatest of all my political heroes. He changed the country. I did not know anything about Malcolm X until after... I used to see him occasionally on television when he was still a Muslim or a Black Panther.
SM (03:07:34):
Uh-huh.
WO (03:07:35):
And I thought he was kind of dangerous, because he was so smart and so clever, and pursued a Black racist agenda. It was only after his death I learned that he was a... through the autobiography, that I learned he was actually a more complicated person.
SM (03:07:55):
Right. Yeah-yeah, yeah. He said all white people were not devils.
WO (03:07:57):
Mm-hmm.
SM (03:08:00):
Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
WO (03:08:05):
Well, I know people who hated Ronald Reagan, and I never could because I grew up on his movies. My feeling now, while he was president of the States I always voted against him and I was really unhappy with his presidency in many ways. Since his death, there have been some books that came out that have explained in great detail what was never explained at the time which was how he and Gorbachev negotiated an end to the Cold War. And so now, while I still think his domestic program could hardly have been worse, I have come to respect his role in ending the Cold War, which it turns out was really an important one.
SM (03:08:54):
Gerald Ford.
WO (03:08:55):
Oh, he is just nobody. Through pure accident got to the presidency.
SM (03:09:03):
How about Dwight Eisenhower and Hubert Humphrey?
WO (03:09:09):
Well, Eisenhower, I have been a lifelong Democrat so [inaudible] heart is not in these the way... And one of my great political heroes, probably second only to Martin Luther King, was Adlai Stevenson. I thought Eisenhower was a peaceful president. And I thought that until I started writing Coming Apart and then I had to write a chapter on Eisenhower. 1960 was Eisenhower's last year. And then I had to start Googling up his record. He ended the Korean War. He did not start any others. He held the line on the [inaudible] anyone could. He nearly balanced the budget. He balanced the budget three times and he came pretty close the fourth time. [inaudible] Started the Interstate Highway System. He was actually a pretty good president, something I did not understand while he was president.
SM (03:10:00):
How about Hubert Humphrey?
WO (03:10:06):
Oh, Hubert Humphrey. Oh, I always liked him. He was such a great liberal. But he really sullied his name by becoming a cheerleader for the Vietnam War.
SM (03:10:16):
Yeah, I agree. How about Edmund Muskie, his running mate in (19)68?
WO (03:10:21):
Well, I admired him, and I am sorry he did not win. I think he was... In all the dirty tricks that people did, I think the one that was most [inaudible] the only ones that were really effective were the ones that [inaudible] Muskie.
SM (03:10:37):
Right. How about the women leaders like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug?
WO (03:10:42):
Oh, I like them all.
SM (03:10:48):
What kind of an influence have they had on boomers?
WO (03:10:54):
You know, it is hard for me to tell, not being [inaudible].
SM (03:11:03):
Right. How about U-2?
WO (03:11:07):
Oh, the band?
SM (03:11:09):
No, not the band, the Gary Powers.
WO (03:11:11):
Oh, oh, oh, the U-2 incident.
SM (03:11:15):
That seems to be the first time when boomers saw a person who lied to them, which was Eisenhower.
WO (03:11:21):
Yes. That was probably the worst thing Eisenhower did. In a sense, the big summit with Khrushchev in Paris was coming up and he allowed U-2 over-flights to be made right up until the wire. If he canceled them like two months before the meeting... And of course, he knew the Soviets knew all about them, they just were not saying anything because it was so embarrassing. Yep, it was a major blunder. [inaudible]
SM (03:11:55):
Robert McNamara.
WO (03:11:58):
Oh, did I ever [inaudible] him. I mean, bringing all that brilliance to bear in order to stop a war. And I [inaudible] for waiting 25 years to [inaudible].
SM (03:12:12):
Right. He just passed away. How about Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Berrigan Brothers?
WO (03:12:19):
Oh, I liked Spock. I mean, [inaudible] influenced on [inaudible] book. As an antiwar protestor I thought he was pretty dignified and effective.
SM (03:12:33):
Mm-hmm.
WO (03:12:44):
Because the Berrigan Brothers could be rather [inaudible] appreciate that they alienate more people than they persuade beyond a certain point.
SM (03:12:52):
Jackie Robinson.
WO (03:12:55):
I am not a sports fan.
SM (03:13:00):
Okay.
WO (03:13:00):
Of any kind.
SM (03:13:00):
All right.
WO (03:13:00):
[inaudible]
SM (03:13:01):
The original seven astronauts.
WO (03:13:03):
I thought the manned space program was a [inaudible] in the beginning. And I think it has been proven [inaudible] it is incredibly [inaudible]. All the successes have been in the unmanned [inaudible].
SM (03:13:24):
Just a couple more here. I think I may have already mentioned Huey Newton.
WO (03:13:31):
Oh, I thought he was a scoundrel. Yeah.
SM (03:13:33):
Yeah.
WO (03:13:33):
[inaudible]
SM (03:13:35):
Walter Cronkite?
WO (03:13:40):
I appreciated him.
SM (03:13:43):
Daniel Ellsberg?
WO (03:13:45):
Oh, I thought what he did with the Pentagon Papers was just great and took a lot of courage. [inaudible] go to jail.
SM (03:13:53):
And some of the simple things that influenced boomers when they were really young, Walt Disney and Howdy Doody.
WO (03:14:01):
Oh, I miss Howdy Doody. Yeah. Yeah, I did grow up on Walt Disney.
SM (03:14:09):
Yeah, Walt Disney, I am learning more about him after he died. Whoa. Things that I did not even realize.
WO (03:14:18):
He was pretty conservative.
SM (03:14:20):
Yes, he was. But his movies really had an influence. And John Dean.
WO (03:14:28):
Oh, I was [inaudible] very impressed with his performance at the time. Like everybody, I was glued to the TV during the hearings. And since then, as more and more revelations have come up, I have been staggered by the accuracy of his memory. Most people, including me... memory's kind of a fragile thing. And he had practically total recall that has been proven out for the most part.
SM (03:15:02):
He has written some pretty good books recently.
WO (03:15:06):
I bought his book Blind Ambition. [inaudible]
SM (03:15:09):
Oh yeah, that was very, very good. I think that is about it. Trying to think if there is any other names here. I cannot think of any. Finally, I just want to thank you for taking the time here. I wish I could take your picture. I take pictures of everybody. Somehow, I got to get a picture of you. But I will figure it out.
WO (03:15:31):
[inaudible] have pictures on my dust jackets.
SM (03:15:35):
Yeah, maybe if you could send me a picture on the computer or something like that. But all the pictures I have taken are ones like... You are the first person I would not have taken their picture. I have even interviewed people then I actually went to their place and just passing through took their picture. So, we might have plenty of time to do that. And I guess my last question is this, again, I want to get back, because you are probably a great professor. I have read all about you for years. You are not only a great writer but you are a professor with unbelievable academic backgrounds. When you think of all your years in the classroom, and again, I am going back to the boomer generation here, were there specific events where the students themselves walked into the class and said to you, "Today, can we discuss what is happening in the world as opposed to your lesson?" Because that happened a lot when I was a college student. Did you ever have that?
WO (03:16:34):
No. No. The way it worked... I came to Rutgers in 1971, and Rutgers is in a much more [inaudible] campus [inaudible] by a whole lot, and so the students I had were not political at all. Now, what would happen to me is that I would be talking about some historical event in the past and then the students would compare that to what had just happened. And then we would end up, through that door, talking about current events. I do not remember specific occasions [inaudible] when they would lead with it.
SM (03:17:21):
Okay. Very good. I am looking through my list at names here, see if I missed anybody. I think I did not mention... Did I mention the communal movement? That is the one thing I... Your thought on communes?
WO (03:17:35):
Oh, they always baffled me.
SM (03:17:39):
There is only three in existence today, as my understanding.
WO (03:17:46):
Really? Out of over 100.
SM (03:17:46):
Yep. And the thing, they were young people in the (19)60s, and they still live in these three communes, and they are now in their (19)60s. I do not know how they did it, but... They're in different parts of the country. Again, finally, are there any questions that I did not ask that you would... Any final thoughts on the boomers?
WO (03:18:07):
No. No.
SM (03:18:07):
All right. Well, that is it. Want to thank you very much for the interview. I will certainly send a transcript once we get the transcripts done, for you to give the final okay.
WO (03:18:17):
Okay. [inaudible] Edit out the ums and ahs.
SM (03:18:24):
Yeah. And again, I got a lot of transcripts to do here. I am doing this myself. I am transcribing it all myself, so it takes a little while. But got great interviews. And it has been an honor to talk to you. Just hope you continue to keep writing. I cannot wait to read your new book.
WO (03:18:43):
Well, I hope you like it.
SM (03:18:46):
Yeah. Have you gotten any reviews? What is the feedback?
WO (03:18:49):
The pub date was 10 days ago, and so I have not gotten any reviews yet.
SM (03:18:56):
Right. And you are still teaching part time though?
WO (03:18:59):
Yes, I teach one course a semester.
SM (03:19:01):
Yeah, please do, because you are good at what you do. And thanks again for writing Coming Apart and American High. They are unbelievable books.
WO (03:19:09):
Well, thank you very much.
SM (03:19:12):
Well, you have a great day. And it was an honor to talk to you.
WO (03:19:15):
Same thing to you.
SM (03:19:16):
Bye now.
WO (03:19:16):
Bye.
(End of Interview)
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3 microcassettes
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Interview with Dr. William O'Neill
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O'Neill, William L. ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Historians; Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Rutgers University; United States—History—20th century; O'Neill, William L.--Interviews
Description
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Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author, and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-03-18
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204c
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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199:22
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4552d7a8c3c76d2c6751bd0ee359ebad
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/effdd043fd89ed3a18dffa1ca41bbf3d.mp3
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Audio interviews
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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>
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</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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Date of Interview
2010-11
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Gary Y. Okihiro, 1945-
Language
English
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Binghamton University Libraries
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Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Gary Okihiro is an Asian American scholar and an author of twelve books. Okihiro was a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He is the originator of \"social formation theory\" and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association. Dr. Okihiro currently is a visiting professor of American studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of the Ryukyus."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Dr. Gary Okihiro is an Asian American scholar and an author of twelve books. Okihiro was a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He is the originator of "social formation theory" and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association. Dr. Okihiro currently is a visiting professor of American studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of the Ryukyus.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Pearl Harbour; Japanese Prison Camps; Asian-Americans; Baby boom generation; War draft; Vietnam War; Lack of trust; Civil Rights Movement; Nineteen seventies."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":769,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0}">Pearl Harbor; Japanese Prison Camps; Asian-Americans; Baby boom generation; War draft; Vietnam War; Lack of trust; Civil Rights Movement; Nineteen seventies<br /></span>
Duration
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92:11
Subject LCSH
Asian American authors; Scholars--American; College teachers; Okihiro, Gary Y., 1945--Interviews
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Gary Okihiro
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Jessica Obie
Date of interview: November 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
00:12
SM: My first question is a question I am asking really everyone in that— how did you become who you are? I mean, in terms of your background, your growing up years. And when you discuss this, were there—who were your kind of early role models or events that really inspired you to go on your life's path?
00:35
GO: Right. So you are speaking about my life's work basically, right? The person, but my life's work. And on reflection, I think it must have been having grown up on a sugar plantation in Hawaii and the education provided by that context of growing up, you know, among working class people. I can, you know, expand more on that. The second would be, going to Africa and living there for three years and doing research work in Africa. [inaudible] I think both events have been pivotal in my education. So let me go back to the plantations in Hawaii. Hawaiian plantations are divided largely by race and ethnicity, in terms of the workforce. Up at the top were white people. In the middle were not quite white, but they were white, there were Portuguese. And then at the bottom were workers mainly beginning with Hawaiians and Chinese and Japanese and Filipinos and Puerto Ricans. And so those were the divisions within the hierarchy and then also they were kept separate. So we lived in separate camps. So we lived basically in the Japanese camp. So that kind of education along with the exemplar of my father and grandfather working as we will call "yard boys" for the various bosses on the plantation, again, sort of impressed on me the privileges of race. So, I think that's really a very important kind of education. The second, going to Africa to do research, and also serving in the Peace Corps for three years in Botswana affected me deeply in terms of the very different environmental studying. Not only is Botswana in the southern hemisphere, so it changes the orientation of the whole sky, but also the kinds of perceptions of time and space, which transformed my ideas about time and space. And then also the kind of learning that I undertook at the university. And the kind of unlearning I had to undertake while doing research among African people.
03:24
SM: When you got your PhD at UCLA, where did you do your undergraduate work?
03:28
GO: At a small college called Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, which is in northern California.
03:37
SM: Is this also when you talk about the concept of race and power, you learned that through that experience in Hawaii, too, race as a direct link to power. And when you joined the Peace Corps— which I did not know!— was John Kennedy's speech, was that influential on you in 1960, at the inaugural or you know—
03:58
GO: Of course, yeah, for most of us— come on. By the way, you know, I am born before your generation.
04:03
SM: Well, that is fine.
04:04
GO: In (19)46.
04:06
SM: Well, one third of the people I have interviewed, were born before (19)46.
04:10
GO: All right. Not far off 1945. But yeah, of course, that was inspirational. It inspired, you know, members of my generation to service but really, service in the Peace Corps was an alternative for me for military service in Vietnam. So I applied as a conscientious objector to my draft board, which was in Hawaii. And extraordinary for a Hawaii draft board, which is very pro-military, they allowed me to use the Peace Corps in lieu of military service.
04:50
SM: My second question here was, I think you have already answered most of it, but what was it like growing up in the late (19)40s and (19)50s? But I am actually really making a commentary, too, about: what was it really like in America to be an Asian American during that period right after World War II, until about the time President Kennedy came on board, and how were Asian immigrants treated during this period as well. And I preface this by— I have kind of broken it down. So the first group I would ask you to talk about are Japanese Americans that had to go through that terrible experience of the internment camps and just your thoughts on that.
05:33
GO: Well, yeah, I mean, the post-World War II experience varied by ethnic group among Asian Americans. So for example, during World War II, Chinese and Filipino Americans were allies, to the United States. And thus they benefited, however, despite the— during the war in terms of job opportunities, educational opportunities, and so forth. Whereas, as you know, Japanese Americans were not so treated. But I also represent Japanese Americans who were in Hawaii, which oftentimes is seen as exceptional to what happened on the West Coast to Japanese Americans. But I doubt that very much because I think what happened, as demonstrated in my book Cane Fires, is that the military saw the Japanese in Hawaii as a bigger threat than those on the West Coast, because they constituted over 40 percent of the population and because the Hawaiian economy was so dependent upon their labor. So they investigated Japanese Americans much more, well, earlier and more assiduously in Hawaii than along the West Coast. So I think Hawaii actually posed as the kind of exemplar leader in terms of the treatment of Japanese Americans once Pearl Harbor occurred. What happened in Hawaii briefly was that: the leaders of the community were quickly rounded up, while the smoke was still rising from the wreckage in Pearl Harbor, and put into prison camps. And the idea was that: devoid of leaders, Japanese Americans could not rise up in rebellion or in support of the enemy. I did not know but my father's brother, my uncle, was investigated by the Naval Intelligence and was recommended for internment among those groups because he was a "kibei" or educated in Japan, just like my father was educated in Japan. But my father's saving grace was that he was in the US military. He served in the segregated one hundredth infantry from Hawaii, and that saved his brother from internment. But anyway, the reason I am describing this is because Hawaii is not an exception to the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In the post-war experience, it was very similar. Even though my parents were not put into internment camps, they well knew that several thousand Japanese Americans in Hawaii were put into internment camps. And during the war, my grandparents and my parents burned and buried any trace of connections with Japan, like flags, letters, records, and so forth. So they were very concerned about being put away. And so the war— I mean, the years after the war, people like my parents tried to instill on my generation, the third generation, that Americanism was above all important to demonstrate one's loyalty. And that being quiet and so forth was the way by which to gain admittance into wider society, which is typical, also, of Japanese Americans on the continent.
09:20
SM: I remember, there is that historic picture of factory workers in the (19)50s on the West Coast that showed a picture of Chinese Americans saying, 'We're Chinese, not Japanese.' And actually there is three or four of them I saw. So Chinese Americans were treated a little better, were not they, in the (19)50s?
09:42
GO: Yeah.
09:43
SM: Even though they had not been treated that— as well in the (19)30s, or (19)40s, or whatever.
09:48
GO: Sure. Well, in (19)43, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and Chinese could become naturalized citizens and Japanese could not until 1952.
10:00
SM: What did the— in terms of the Korean War, because here we are in a war against Germany and Japan and the war ends and then we— What happened to Korean Americans during this time frame, particularly in the early (19)50s?
10:17
GO: Actually, that is a really good question because most of the Korean Americans came from or have relatives in the north. But, you know, I know no study of Korean Americans during the 1950s. Which is really very [inaudible] camps. You know, there is stuff on Chinese Americans because of the cold war in China, but I do not know of any on Korean Americans.
10:47
SM: When we are talking about other Asian Americans, we are talking about Vietnamese, people from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and the Pacific Islanders— are not we really talking about— they become much more well known in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. But weren’t there people from those nations in America, even in the (19)50s, and (19)40s?
11:11
GO: Oh, even in the 1700s, we had South Asians, or Asian Indians, on the East Coast, and in US South, serving in slavery. You know, so we have that. And then Hawaiians were in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1800s, and we have several Hawaiians serving on US vessels in the War of 1812.
11:40
SM: The history of Chinese Americans, to go back to, you know, the building of the railroads and so forth. But in the American history books you do not hear— you hear about the Chinese Americans and maybe the Japanese Americans, but you do not hear about the other ethnic groups as much.
11:56
GO: Right, you know, we were in Louisiana in the 1760s, before the US revolution. [laughs]
12:06
SM: Yeah and a lot of people think that the Vietnamese came here when the boat people came. [laughs]
12:11
GO: Right.
12:11
SM: And the people that escaped, you know, Vietnam in 1975 when the war ended; the people that were lucky to escape and the boat people.
12:22
GO: Well, the first wave were intellectuals, Vietnamese intellectuals, who were brought to the United States to counteract any communism and so forth. That was during the (19)50s.
12:35
SM: Can you discuss again— because you have written a couple books. And I have my little notepad here that you wrote, Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II, and also the book on Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. What were the— what was the main thesis of these books? And— basically, that is my question.
13:09
GO: Well, the main idea— well, okay, there is actually two different projects. The first one was a collaborative project with— project with a professional photographer who took pictures of the remains of the camp, not you know, during World War II. And so my comments that accompany the photographs were designed to just present the reader with a brief history of the events, largely through the voices of the internees themselves, Japanese Americans. The second, done with Linda Gordon, Linda was at the time and she already published a biography of Dorothea Lange and she was interested in Lange's photos of World War II's internment. And that is why the title is Impounded because Lange's photographs were impounded by the army and not [inaudible] down because they were considered to be possibly damaging to US interest during the war, unlike Ansel Adams whose photographs were distributed in the museums in New York here and also widely circulated. So that is what Impounded is about, about the contrast between Dorothea Lange's treatment and Ansel Adams and then the different depictions.
14:42
SM: Well, you think the— a lot of the images of Franklin Roosevelt were certainly destroyed when people read about the internment camps. Since this book will be read as oral history and many of them may not have read your book, or know very little about the internment camp experience, could you discuss the internment camp experience of the— I have got a few notes here. In terms of when the order was given by FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt]; the location of the camps; how many Americans were involved, that is Japanese Americans; where and when; and particularly about the job discrimination that probably took place not only during the war, but right through, you know, 1960; the effect it may have had on immigration of Japanese once the war ended; and the overall psyche, Americans of Japanese descent who were raised in a nation that had a constitution, and their rights were infringed upon. So it is a lot here but to me, my thoughts of FDR have never been the same since I read about this many, many years ago.
15:59
GO: [laughs] Well, ultimately the President was responsible for it but I do not think that he was the only one responsible.
16:11
SM: Right; I know there are many.
16:12
GO: There are a whole series of people that got involved. And my basic thesis is that it begins in Hawaii, with the military stirring over Japanese Americans in Hawaii and I briefly touched on that, because of the demography and their importance to the army. And that much of the planning on the West Coast was haphazard, by comparison. I mean, Hawaii was very well organized, in terms of what they were going to do once a war with Japan was happening. And the executive order that Roosevelt signed had to be implemented and that was stumbled along, in my opinion, and not really fully formulated until summer of 1942. So, by contrast, Hawaii was much more planned. But let me address a question about like the internment and its impact on Japanese Americans. And I think that oftentimes people miss the point about the internment and see the internment as a loss of land and the financial, you know, catastrophe that greeted them and so forth. But I see it more as sort of kind of extinguishing of the human spirit or the attempt to extinguish a people's will. And the reason I am saying that is that it seems to me that the— it was not so much the loss of property that bothered Japanese Americans. It was the loss of their humanity, their dignity as people. Because they were treated as subhuman, treated like cattle: rounded up, given tags with numbers instead of names, put into cattle trucks to be assembled in horse stalls, or race tracks and fairgrounds, then to be dumped in horse stalls that still reeked of manure. And then from there taken to these camps that were unfinished, with open sewers, and so forth, and these were photographs taken by Dorothea Lange. That sort of defeats the kind of treatment that the government had in mind for Japanese Americans and that is that they were the enemy and as the enemy they were subhuman. That sort of deprivation then— of one's past and also a sense of a future because most Japanese Americans did not even know how long they would be put there, in fact, many of them thought they were going to be executed— denies their sort of basic humanity. Now, I do not think that all Japanese Americans agreed to that. And they asserted their humanity in many ways. But it seems to me that that was the essence of the camp. So the lesson learned coming out of that was that we need to prove our loyalty to the government. And to do that, we need to just simply be quiet, not raise a ruckus and actually be "un-American" in that sense, not be you know, a democratic citizen, but just go with the flow, work hard, and eventually we would be accepted.
19:58
SM: You raise a point there that during the Vietnam War, well many of the Vietnamese were looked upon as subhuman too.
20:06
GO: Sure.
20:07
SM: And—not all. I think sometimes the warriors were taught that in training camp, but many of them, you know, just went with the flow; they did not really believe it. The overall description of Asian American Boomer experience during the following periods and I— a question that I bet— let me preface this again. I have asked this question to several people, as a person who grew up after the war myself, and growing up as an elementary school student in the 1950s. And I am always fascinated, no matter what ethnic background you were, including Asian American, in the 1950s is what that experience was like and I put three qualities and you—you have already raised one—three qualities that many Boomer children had— of all races!— during the 1950s, maybe even through 1963. And that is a sense of being very quiet,
21:10
GO: Mmhmm.
21:12
SM: A sense of fear,
21:14
GO: Mmhmm.
21:15
SM: And a sense of being naive.
21:18
GO: Naive?
21:19
SM: Naive. Someone told me, 'well, all young children are naive until they have life experiences' but when you watch television in the (19)50s, it is almost as if— there were some good documentaries of Mike Wallace and Edward R. Murrow and Dave Garroway; there were some good ones— but most kids were watching: Howdy Doody, the Mouseketeers, westerns were Indians were always bad. And you did not see very many people of color; you only saw Charlie Chan movies. You saw the slapstick of Amos and Andy in the early (19)50s. And so it was a very isolated— to me very naive, trying to protect kids from the reality of what life was about. Would you say those are three qualities that even the Asian American Boomer kids went through?
22:13
GO: I would think so. And it seems that, you know, the fear that you refer to— the fear had different aspects to it. Clearly, there was the fear of the Cold War and atomic warfare. You know, and the kind of drills that we had in school about hiding under your desk if there was an air raid, building bomb shelters in your backyard. So there was that kind of overall American fear. But there were also other fears specific to particular groups, I think. Like I said, the Japanese Americans had, I think, a particular fear because of the lessons learned during World War II, which, you know, other groups did not necessarily have.
22:59
SM: Yeah, of course, there is also the McCarthyism of the early (19)50s. And, where, you know, you speak up and—"have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" So the fear of speaking up or any past affiliation, and— that is why Korean Americans fascinate me at times because—
23:16
GO: Right, and Chinese Americans.
23:18
SM: Yes. When you look at the— I look at the way the Boomer parents were— the overall description of maybe Asian American Boomer parents were like our parents— were like my parents, they were born between 1920 and 1945 most of them, and then the kids of course, were different ages during this timeframe— were Asian American Boomers' experience similar or different, than Boomers who were white, black, brown, and red?
23:50
GO: Well I think they had different kinds of families depending on which group, because they most—that is Asian migration was a male migration and women came later. And so like, the parents would be quite different in that way and generational. There could be a twenty year difference between the husband and the wife, purely for Chinese Americans. But in any case, you know, different kinds of families and like, women might have been more recent immigrants brought over by men. And then of course, you had a lot of "war brides"— so-called "war brides"— after World War II.
24:35
SM: One of the things that, I think, Boomer parents, you know, they instilled in a lot of their young kids, and particularly white kids, and maybe even African American kids, that people who served in World War II that had had to fight in the Pacific, they knew about the Bataan Death March and some of the really bad things and I can remember hearing— I do not, I never heard my dad say this, but I can remember hearing my mom say, you know, that they really did a number on the— on our boys. Our boys. But she forgave. She gave forgiveness. But I grew up in a community where there are a lot of World War II vets and they could never forget what the Japanese did to our American boys. And so they never changed their terminology they just kept calling them Japs. And to me that was— it is like using the ‘N’ word.
25:32
GO: Yeah. [laughs]
25:33
SM: But I can understand where the World War II— but I am wondering if you have done any studying of the effect that Boomer parents, that went through that war, had on other Americans in their attitudes toward Asian Americans.
25:52
GO: No, I have not done any study like that. Others have, but not me.
25:57
SM: A couple of things here, too. When you look at the Brown vs Board of Education decision in 1954, then you had the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Acts of (19)64 and (19)65, and the Open Housing Act of (19)68— all were centered on equality. And, I know that it was— those poor people who have been denied. Many people see the civil rights leaders with LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson] in 1964 or (19)65. Or they see Thurgood Marshall in 1954, winning that major decision, and they think that these were all about black people. But they were important for Asian Americans and all people of color. Could you explain and give examples of how these major decisions really helped all people of color in the United States?
26:51
GO: Well, not just people of color, you know. I mean, white folk too. I mean, the Civil Rights Movement transformed the nation as a whole. And the transformation is a fundamental one. I mean, because the African American experience since 1619 was one largely of exclusion from membership within the community, whether pre-Revolutionary War or post-federal government. So, you know, their full inclusion as citizens was a major sort of transformation of the American government and people. And that affected all people. Because I am convinced that, you know, the Constitution is only a guarantee when all people are included within its guarantees. And any erosion of Constitutional guarantees of rights and privileges devolve to all Americans. So like, by victimizing or clipping the civil liberties, for example, of Muslim Americans affects the rights of all Americans. So anyway, I think that the civil rights movement was momentous for all those reasons, the full inclusion of African Americans, which meant a transformation of the American nation and people.
27:45
SM: Well, the media may be part of the problem here in terms of perceptions. Because when you look at all the major signings, except for Senator Inouye, who has been around for a long time, and I think, Patsy Mink too is another person of—
28:41
GO: Well, she is dead now.
28:42
SM: Yes, she has passed away, but she was a person of renown. And those are two Asian Americans that most people knew about. But, we do not see Asian Americans in any of the pictures of the civil rights marches. You know, Dr. King, you see Ralph Bunche, you see Catholic priests, you see Rabbi Heschel, you see, you know, but you do not see Asian Americans. Do you feel that part of this is they were there but they were— could not be there because of some of the things you have already said, that there was a fear of speaking up or being seen?
GO: 29:15
I think people of my generation, I mean, were the only ones— meaning young Asian Americans— were involved in the civil rights movement, not the older ones, mainly. And the Asian Americans were largely in support backgrounds. I mean, they were never leaders. So you know, they were part of these struggles, but never really led them. In fact even when leading, for example, say the Chicano or Mexican American, you know, farm labor movement was begun by Asian Americans or Filipino Americans that Cesar Chavez joined on with his— and then they formed the United Farm Workers Union as the United Front. Cesar Chavez was the leader and people like its Manong, Larry Itliong who was the leader of the Filipino group. Never— they were vice presidents, they were supportive. So Asian Americans were in very few leadership positions, but they were you know, among those who supported those guys.
30:38
SM: Is not it true, if I remember— I do not have the case in front of me but— the Brown versus Board of Education, an Asian American was involved in this.
30:47
GO: Of course, the JACL: Japanese American Citizens League, joined in the suit, yeah. But earlier, you know, the NAACP and the JCL joined a suit against Mexican children in California, which is a kind of prelude to Brown v Board of Education, called the Lemon Grove, challenged segregation in schools. And of course, Brown fighted, as a kind of precedent, the US Supreme Court decision involving a Chinese American child who sued against segregation in Mississippi. So, yeah, Asian Americans were involved in Brown v. Board.
31:36
SM: See, this is where the history books need to be much clearer in terms of explaining this, because when you think about Thurgood Marshall— and I can remember Dr. King talking when asked about "what do you think of the Brown decision?" He commented that, 'well, I praise that decision, but it was a more of a gradualist approach,' and his approach of non-violent protest is: we want it now; we're not going to be a gradualist in our approach. So that was interesting. You may have already covered this, but explain how life was similar for Asian American youth in the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, and (19)80s. And I preface this by saying, explain how life may have been different for people whose heritages may have been different in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, including Japanese Americans, Chinese, India, Pakistan, Vietnam—
32:29
GO: Well, I think I briefly brought up the Cold War, 1950s, and the kind of particular sort of sensitivities brought to, say Chinese Americans during that time and Korean Americans. Whereas Japanese Americans were model citizens during the (19)50s because of Japan, sort of, being tutored back into the nation of civilized groups by the US, under US occupation. But in any event, so like that is sort of a kind of similarity but a difference. I think the civil rights movement also was momentous, influential. But I think Asian Americans were more caught up in the anti-war movement, because of the particularities of another war in Asia. I know I was, you know, caught up in both the civil rights and the anti-war movement, but felt a greater kinship with the anti-war movement because of this, you know, making war in Asia again.
33:37
SM: You had mentioned earlier that many scholars came over in the 1950s from different countries. So some of them went back become the leaders of their countries and then of course they became our enemies. But I find that interesting that the education took place here. Many of them, went to Harvard and they went back and you know, became leaders and then became our enemy.
34:03
GO: Right even in Japan, before World War II, many of their governmental leaders were educated in the US.
34:12
SM: During World War II, Vietnam and Korea— do you know how many Asian Americans were— fought on our side?
34:20
GO: No, I do not.
34:22
SM: Because I know there were quite a few in Vietnam. And there's many of them— many on the wall. And of course, Senator Inouye was a World War II vet.
34:31
GO: Right.
34:32
SM: And— but I am just curious. That experience there is—
34:36
GO: Oh, you can get the numbers very easily.
34:39
SM: Mmhmm.
34:40
GO: Yeah. But again, you know, each of those wars and the service meant something different because of their "Asian-ness," because being Japanese. You know? In Vietnam I know many Asian American soldiers were afraid that they were going to be killed by friendly fire. You know? Because they look like the gooks.
35:05
SM: Securing a quality education and going to college seems to be a very important goal for all Asian American groups. When did large numbers begin to— let me get my thing here— begin on college campuses? And where did that— I, again, I add this because I know many— I think even when you visit our campus, the two words that our students hate the most are "model minority". They really do. And—do not bring that up; and I do not want to ever hear that, those two words. But where did the slogan model minority come from? And why in this— why is this a sensitive issue in the Asian American community, particularly in reference to one's educational background?
35:53
GO: Right. Well, I have forgotten the precise date. I thought it was 1961; a sociologist wrote a piece in The New York Times Magazine on Chinese and Japanese Americans. And he used the term model minority. It was Peterson, was his name. And at the time, also, you know, was black urban uprisings, riots, and so forth, just on the heels of Watts. And he— Peterson— used the Asian example to African Americans, how they needed to sort of get things right. You know, to go to school and so forth, before they can burn down things. But in any case, Asians then were used as an example to discipline unruly African Americans. And so that pits Asians against African Americans and of course— well, not of course— but that leads or could lead to conflict between those two groups. And that is really quite unpleasant, I think for Asian Americans and African Americans. But the model minority idea was a false one in that— you look at the various statistics to demonstrate Asian American superiority, specifically Chinese and Japanese at the time, in terms of overall income, educational attainment, and social mobility. And the statistics themselves are skewed. Because if you look at a family income at the time, Asian Americans or Chinese and Japanese Americans might have been about white. But if you took it per capita, Asian Americans fell far behind white. And so what that meant was per household, Asian Americans had more workers than white households. The other thing is that, that sort of achievement does not fully measure acceptance or assimilation within US society. Anyway, there are a whole number of arguments against the model minority stereotype. And thus, there is a great deal of objection to it.
38:26
SM: I think part of that model minority also came from the fact that is: the (19)60s evolved particularly after John Kennedy's assassination. And as the Vietnam War was becoming a part of everybody's everyday experience on TV, that those who were protesting the war or irritating a lot of people in America early on who supported the war, and they did not see Asian Americans there so maybe they call them model minority. And the perception that many people have of Asian youth in (19)46, in America, is that they are a model minority that never speaks up and supportive of the status quo, they work very hard and secure quality education that leads to a good job, they are quiet, they never rock the boat, they are major— they major in business, math science, they become doctors, MBAs. Is this stereotyping to the max?
39:22
GO: And a recent phenomenon, also, a recent stereotype. Because previous Asian American stereotypes were hugely negative. If you can think of this as positive. Right?
39:40
SM: Yes.
39:40
GO: Japanese Americans during World War II, for example. Chinese and Koreans during the Korean War, Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, and so forth. So these images are quite recent.
39:54
SM: Part of this too is, and again it may be the media and the perceptions of picture taking units. I do not know why they picked certain pictures for every single protest, but whether it be at Berkeley or Columbia or Harvard or whatever. But the question that you have to ask is if you're really into pictures, and were Asian American protesting, the students— were they protesting with other students on college campuses in the (19)60s, were Asian Americans protesting the draft, were they linked to the anti-war, civil rights and women's, gay and lesbian, environmental movements.
40:34
GO: They were. They might not have been included within the pictures.
40:38
SM: Right.
40:39
GO: I mean, you— well, appreciate that American society is largely a binary— racial binary of black and white, and thus the features would be black and white. Thinking for example of the LA Riots— in 1993 was it? I have forgotten the date.
41:00
SM: With Rodney King?
41:02
GO: Yeah.
41:02
SM: Yeah, that was (19)93.
41:04
GO: And, you know, one would think that's an African American riot. But there are more Latinos involved in it than African Americans.
41:15
SM: Why cannot we all get along? Rodney King, and then I think he got in trouble after that too for something.
41:22
GO: Yeah, I have forgotten what. He was arrested.
41:26
SM: I think he was abusive to his girlfriend— wife or— I do not know what the story was.
41:29
GO: Well I think so yeah.
41:33
SM: One of the— this is a very sensitive one for someone who cares about Vietnam and, the Warrens as a whole in— it is the boat people in 19'—in the early (19)70s, and particularly in 1975 when the helicopter went off the top of the embassy and many escaped, and got on the boats and came back to the United States or different parts of Europe. But thousands upon thousands did not have that luxury and got in those boats and many drowned at sea and many went to camps. And a lot of the students that I know or knew at West Chester University, their parents met at these camps. It's a very sensitive issue. And they asked— they asked this question, "Where was the United States when the war ended and they knew that all these people were going out on boats? Why were not they there to help us because we did not want to live in that government under a communist rule." And so I do not know if anybody's written or you have thought about this at all, but where was the United States when the boat people issue became such a major news item and so many died at sea?
42:53
GO: Yeah. Well, the United States was nowhere to be seen, that is for sure. And I do not— in fact, we know the reason for that. But there are several books about this.
43:09
SM: I know that one of the criticisms and it is actually— a lot of people admire the boat people that came to United States because they became very successful in a very short period of time, many of them even in Philadelphia. They started on the streets of Philly selling sunglasses or small businesses, and they ended up sending their kids off to Harvard and Yale. And so the conservative community in the United States, you have heard this, is very critical of the African American community for— if boat people can become a success story since 1975, why cannot you?
43:54
GO: Right.
43:54
SM: Have you heard that too?
43:56
GO: Of course, yeah.
44:00
SM: You have mentioned here that— can you give some specific examples of Asian Americans who may be in— may have been involved in these anti-war and women's movements? Civil rights movements?
44:14
GO: Oh, there are many of them, but the most visible or prominent one who has a couple of biographies written about, her name is Yuri Kochiyama.
44:25
SM: How do you spell that?
44:28
GO: K-O-C-H-I-Y-A-M-A, Kochiyama, and Yuri is her first name Y-U-R-I. And the reason is because well, she is not only a huge activist— she was— but she also was the one who cradled Malcolm X's head as he laid dying in the ballroom here in New York. She is still alive. And she's involved in a lot of, sort of, anti-war, peace, the women's, and third world movements, campaigns.
45:09
SM: She may be a good one to try to contact. If she is still—
45:13
GO: If you can get her, yeah. She has a biography written by Diane Regino.
45:20
SM: Did that biography come out recently?
45:23
GO: Maybe about three-four years ago.
45:28
SM: Vietnam was obviously a watershed event for just about everybody in the Boomer generation, as two veterans told me they went off to war only because they wanted to be involved in the watershed event of their lives. And I, you know, other people obviously thought differently on that. But within—within your family, when you became a conscientious objector, did you have generation gap issues with your parents over the war or any other issues? Because the generation gap seemed to be across the board regardless of ethnic background between generations.
46:11
GO: Yeah, you know, that is a very interesting question because my father was a World War II vet, but I think like most Japanese Americans who fought during World War II, they were not fighting for American freedom. They were fighting for themselves, their families, and their people, as it were. But my father never expressed to me his— not that I recall, yeah, no— he is never expressed to me disagreement with my stand on the war. Meaning, Vietnam.
46:50
SM: Did, did any of your friends have that issue with their parents?
46:57
GO: Not that I know; I had high school peers who went to Vietnam. And— but I do not know of people who were like me, meaning, you know, claiming deal.
47:14
SM: Jim Webb—the current senator, but back in 1980, in a book that— he was in a symposium with five other Vietnam vets basically said that he, when they were talking about the generation gap, he said: the real generation gap in the boomer generation is not between parents. Well, he said it is between parents and their kids, but it's also between those who went to war and those who did not, within the generation.
47:44
GO: I think that is really true.
47:48
SM: And— he went so far as to say that I know that the, the boomer generation is called the service generation because many went in the Peace Corps, many went to VISTA, and many did not meet the call to action and go to war and took John Kennedy's slogan to heart. But when you were called to war, he said, you go. And so he said the real generation gap is between those who served in Vietnam and those who did not.
48:21
GO: Well, you know, and then even among those who served and did not there were generational differences, before, for example, the draft. You know, people who were privileged could escape the war. I mean, I used, for example, graduate study as an escape from the war until that expired.
48:42
SM: I think that was in the early (19)70s—
48:49
GO: But some had privileges to escape the war. And then those were eroded, and then one could not after all.
48:59
SM: When you look at the figures of three million who died in Vietnam, three million Vietnamese died. And of course, 58,200 plus Americans and God knows how many were wounded and lives destroyed and the land was destroyed and all kinds of things. Where do the Asian Americans— where does the Asian American community overall stand on this war? And where do they stand both then and now?
49:26
GO: Well, again, hugely it depends on which group you're talking about. Let us see now, because you know, there was— there were those who fought against communism; that resonated with them. So there might have been Chinese Americans in that, you know, boat. And of course Vietnamese. But then, I think by and large— I am not sure though—because I do not know of any study, actually, of like all Asian groups during Vietnam, but I think most were supportive in terms of it be some demonstrating their loyalty to the US government. That way is service.
50:17
SM: You see much—this big, powerful nation trying to take on a small rural nation and did not have any sensitivity in that particular area?
50:27
GO: Well, there were among my generation, I certainly felt that.
50:32
SM: When we talk about the (19)60s and (19)70s, we talk about the countercultural hippies, communes, drugs, rock and roll, long hair, colorful clothes, sexual freedoms, challenging authority and the status quo fighting to overcome injustice at home and abroad. And I know I am trying to— here I am trying to— I am just trying to get an Asian perspective— Asian American perspective here: how many Asian Americans were in the US in 1946?
51:06
GO: I do not know. I am not into numbers. You can find out so easily.
51:12
SM: Yep. All right. And I was wondering what the difference was in 1980. So— and following this up is was there a generation gap in the Asian American families in the (19)60s and (19)70s? Overall?
51:32
GO: Again, you know, like I said, you know, like, Asian American families are not, sort of, like the usual, you know, white American family, in terms of the ages of people: parents and children. So it is a little skewed or messed up in that way, or more complicated. But I think many in my generation were involved in all those things that you mentioned in terms of drugs, rock and roll, you know acid and so forth, peace movement, free speech movement, the war and so forth. That was very typical of my generation. Some who studied it, saw these as spoiled children, you know, people who had privileges and who were just sort of what they might call "mau-mauing." They— but in any case, yeah— but that was not always the case. I mean, people like me came from working-class backgrounds, we had no privileges— or we had not the privileges that middle class kids had.
52:43
SM: Do you, do you remember the very first time that you went to a protest? The first time that you had the courage to go to one?
52:52
GO: It was around ethnic studies at UCLA [The University of California, Los Angeles].
52:56
SM: Wow. Did, did you fear doing that when you went there for the first time?
GO: 53:02
Well of course there was that kind of fear of being, you know, arrested. But one has to do what one has to do. Let me— you know, something very interesting happened to me personally about Vietnam that I did not serve in the war. But, you know, the imprint of the war was such that when I went to Vietnam, ten-fifteen years ago, for the first time, upon landing, just the air, the feel, the sights, and the sounds were really familiar to me like I—I had been there before. And the reason was because it was so seared in my consciousness, these newsreels and so forth of Vietnam that, you know, it seemed all very familiar to me. Especially driving from the airport, seeing peasants in the rice paddies, were all very familiar. But then, for me, also there was an added thing in which my colleagues in Vietnam were really kind to me, not only as an American— which was startling to me—but also as a Japanese. Because of course, Japan wrecked a lot of havoc and misery on Vietnam during the war. They were so generous and kind to me, those colleagues. But also this familiarity, which again, to me speaks the kind of influence that the war had on people of my generation.
54:35
SM: Wow. Like, when I talk to a Vietnam vet— when they get off the plane, after they've been in air conditioning all the way over the ocean, and the doors open and they walk out into the unbelievable humidity and heat. And they said, 'I got to deal with this for the next year and two months? Oh, my goodness.' As, as a teacher, can you see some major differences between the students in the (19)60s and early (19)70s that—that you taught as a graduate student or as a professor, and the students after 1975 and beyond? If so, how were they different in the following areas? And I just throw these out and you can just comment with how are they different in respect to: their intellectual curiosity, their knowledge of history, their willingness to interact and challenge the professor, their writing skills, and in whether grades were the primary reward from learning or ideas were the primary reward for learning and, and then activism outside of the classroom. So those kind of— if you have seen those qualities.
55:51
GO: Well, I think this is a kind of caricature, but I think most people would testify to this. That I think that— the students before Reagan, were much more interested in ideas and also thinking against the grain, unafraid to speak up, and to mention, you know, disagree. The world of ideas, it seemed to me, mattered more than getting a job and getting this degree which I think was the kind of post-Reagan period. And then I think more recently, there is this return to ideas and service and so forth. Ironically, amidst the job shortage and so forth, these students today, I think, are far more interested in all kinds of ideas and also thinking of different kinds of possibilities for service for the narrow employment [inaudible] ̶
57:01
SM: Do you think— one particular area is— do you find that students really want to know history? They care about history?
57:10
GO: Oh, I think Americans probably do not care about history much. [laughs] No they do; they know. But I think yeah, I think the students are very present-oriented still. Could be a kind of age, you know, I mean, like, in your late teens and early (19)20s, I think the immediacy is much more real than the past.
57:40
SM: Just from your— I am going to change my side of the tape here, because we are two thirds of the way through here. Hold on a second, let me change my tape. How are your students this year? [tape cuts off]
57:51
GO: [tape fades in] I am excited by that. They also are thinking of, you know, international travel and living abroad and service. Which an earlier generation would not have thought of.
58:11
SM: Your college experience itself by you got— your PhD at UCLA.
58:18
GO: Yeah.
58:19
SM: And just your thoughts on— not even breaking it down into the Asian American community, just your thoughts on the generation itself that is often defined by the word anti-establishment but also known for its size, which was seventy-four million. And by the way, the students of today's college now have passed the boomer generation in numbers. The millennials are now the largest generation in American history. So boomers can no longer say that they were the largest generation.
58:53
GO: [laughs] Good.
58:53
SM: [laughs] Just your overall thought on the generations.
59:00
GO: Of my generation?
59:00
SM: Yes.
59:02
GO: Well, I think that the— it was both that my generation could be characterized by both the activities that we undertook, but also in terms of what happened all around us in terms of the world around us. And I think both of those influence, fundamentally, our lives.
59:25
SM: When did the (19)60s begin and end in your opinion?
59:29
GO: When did the (19)60s begin and end? [laughs]
59:31
SM: And end.
59:34
GO: Actually, I have not really thought about that. I do not know what it would be.
59:42
SM: Is there a watershed moment or a moment you think had the greatest impact on the generation whether a good moment or a bad moment?
59:51
GO: Well, I think clearly the war in Southeast Asia was the largest sort of thing. But you will see also regional differences. I am sure.
1:00:04
SM: Where were you when John Kennedy was assassinated? Do you remember the exact moment where you were?
1:00:11
GO: Yeah, I was a first year student at Pacific Union College.
1:00:16
SM: How'd you find out about it?
1:00:18
GO: TV. Mmhmm. People were riveted.
1:00:22
SM: Were you like a lot of the people that kind of watched TV the entire four days?
1:00:27
GO: Yeah. Mmhmm. Of course. It was a spectacle.
1:00:32
SM: What was your overall first thought when you saw that? That this has actually happened in the United States.
1:00:37
GO: Shocking, shocking to see a president assassinated. I was shocked.
1:00:44
SM: Did you witness Lee Harvey Oswald killed live on TV too?
1:00:48
GO: No, not live, but after.
1:00:52
SM: I know it is very hard. You, you have linked up with many and you have known many people in the boomer generation. Are there any overall characteristics, just— good or bad, that you put on the generation as a whole? What their strengths or weaknesses may have been?
1:01:09
GO: Well, I think an optimism, which might have been characterized as naive. But an optimism also born out of youth, I think, that is the optimism of not dying. And that also translates into doing everything that one can do. So I think that kind of optimism was good, but it was also oftentimes misdirected. Naive. Their greatest weakness probably is the kind of trendiness of following what was happening all around us. It was easy to become a hippie for example.
1:01:58
SM: When you heard terms or quotes, like—three things kind of stand out in my mind, signifying different groups of people. You had Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" which was comparable to possibly using guns or violence, if other ways could not be met, including nonviolent protest. You had Bobby Kennedy's famous words that he copied from an author from the 1900s, "Some men see things as they are and ask why; I see things that never were and ask why not," which symbolizes a more activist mentality, fighting for getting rid of all the injustices. And kind of a hippie mentality, which is—was on a lot of the Peter Max posters of the era in the early (19)70s, "So you do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." Kind of a—hippie mentality. And there are other things like "We Shall Overcome" and "Tune In, Turn On, Dropout" with Timothy Leary and "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." And Kennedy also saying that we will fight any war to protect liberty and that kind of thing. Were there any sayings that really turned you on? That really—I mentioned some that I thought were important. That really defined a lot of different segments of the boomer generation, but there— are there others?
1:03:31
GO: Well, I do not know if you mentioned "We Shall Overcome."
1:03:33
SM: Yeah, I had mentioned that.
1:03:34
GO: Yeah, well, for me that— for me, anyway, "We Shall Overcome."
1:03:39
SM: That is the— I agree. That was Dr. King, the civil rights. In 1989 Tiananmen Square happened, and it happened in the summertime. And I was shocked when I came back to school in the fall and nobody was heard talking about it. And it was this— and certainly Asian American students were not talking about it. And if you brought it up, I thought, we ended up doing a program on it. And we had to go to Temple University to find graduate students and then Asian American students did not want to be seen even around them. What did— what was that experience like? What were your thoughts about Tiananmen Square in (19)89? And why were American universities so indifferent about that particular issue?
1:04:28
GO: Well, I do not really know. But I can hazard a guess. I was at Cornell actually, and there were a lot of Chinese students who organized teach-ins and rallies, and so forth at Cornell. I think there is a kind of mixed emotion here because of not wanting or wanting to be associated with Communist China and then also wanting or not wanting the kind of pro-democracy movement within Communist China, depending on one's political orientation; that is the kind of jacked relationship I think.
1:05:14
SM: Well I know a lot of the students were afraid if they were over here on a visa that they would be sit— would be denied. And they did not— they felt that they could not even be seen in an event, let alone speak up. And I thought it was interesting that American students overall knew nothing about Kent State and things like that had happened here. And that is the whole concept of history. No now is a past history at all. And— but Tiananmen Square to me is, is a monumental historic event that should have gotten more play, more discussion, and its meaning to me still has a lot of meaning to me because it is about university students standing up and speaking up for rights and issues. It is freedom.
1:06:00
GO: Right.
1:06:01
SM: And we had a lot of the speakers on our campus. So we— we thought that the goal was that they eventually would come back to China and be the leaders in China. I am not sure if that is going to happen. So, what were the most important books that influenced you in your life as you were in college or high school, college or even since— books that you think are important for young people to read, not only about the Asian American experience, but about the American experience, or—
1:06:36
GO: Well, you see, let us see, books that I read in Hawaii, believe it or not, were from New England, and many of those I identified with about the leaders of America. Betsy Ross, George Washington, and so forth. I read huge amounts of biographies of American leaders while growing up in Hawaii, but I think that was also a kind of disidentification with Asian Americans or Asians, thinking that my ancestors were pilgrims growing up. But in any case, during my college years, and at that point I'd say the anti-war movement was more important for me, a book by Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, was like, my— our Bible. And as a kind of third world liberation orientation, which we could identify with Vietnamese people and I am not sure. So, you know, and then also the liberation movement so-called in Latin America with Che and his notoriety, but in any case, Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth was I would say the most important.
1:07:56
SM: Did you find it interesting that so many people were carrying Mao's Red Book?
1:08:02
GO: Me too, you know, but I was again quite. [laughter]. It is a stupid book really. [laughs]
1:08:10
SM: Yeah, yeah Mao's Red Book. And then of course Che Guevara was the revolutionary and then Daniel Bell wrote the book The End of Ideology. Remember that book?
1:08:19
GO: Yes, yes, yes.
1:08:20
SM: Basically he said, Marxism is dead, and that was the whole and you will not be seeing too many more protests or talk about Marxism anymore ̶ But one of the— one of the issues that is the issue of trust. I can remember being a first year psychology student at Binghamton University, my undergraduate school. Professor talking about trust and kind of how important it was because if you do not have this quality, you may not be a success in life, because you have to trust somebody and some other people. But it seemed like the boomer generation was— has a quality that they do not trust leaders and they did not trust leaders no matter who they were or university president, senator—anybody in positions of responsibility. Is that good or bad?
1:09:08
GO: [laughs] I mean, well, wait a minute on trust, being it depends how you define that. I think one has to be skeptical or keep a critical mindset, and that is absolutely important for any democracy to function. I mean, one has to be of independent thinking, and also scrutinize dogma, or theory. So I think that is important, that kind of skepticism. But if your professor was talking about trust, insofar as people had to maintain their integrity, and that one has to trust in people— I mean, I have that. And I think that that is the kind of thing my parents— and I think that is important in Japanese and East Asian culture especially, that one has to maintain one's name, as it were, without sort of bringing any kind of shame or disgrace, oneself and one's family or one's group. So I instill that on my children also, I mean that, if I cannot trust you, you know, that's the end of our relationship.
1:10:29
SM: Certainly, the other area here is the issue of healing. The person I grew to know and like is Kim Phúc, the girl in the picture from the Vietnam War.
1:10:39
GO: Oh yeah.
1:10:39
SM: He brought her to our campus and she's all about forgiveness. That is what she talks about and she has got a smile that if you put her on every poster in the world, I think we would have peace everywhere. But the question I want to ask is: I took a group of students to Washington in 1995 to meet Senator Muskie. And the students that went with me had only seen videotapes of the 1968 convention where America was torn apart: the police beating up students, and of course, they knew about the whole year with Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy being killed, and all the other burnings of these cities and so forth. And the possibilities even were heard that someone said, oh, we're going to go into another civil war, the nation was so torn apart. But they wanted to find out what his thoughts were to this question, and that is: Due to the divisions that were so intense in the 1960s and (19)70s, between blacks and whites, and certainly, obviously for people of other colors and whites, between males and females, between gays and straights, between those who supported the war or against the war or those who supported the troops or against the troops— Do you feel that the boomer generation, this generation that grew up after World War II, is going to go to their graves like the Civil War generation: not truly healing; that they will carry a lot of the baggage with them, and that has psychologically affected them. Just your thoughts whether healing is an issue in this nation.
1:12:15
GO: Well, it is certainly an issue in the nation; I think that it also depends a great deal on the individual. I think also it is a matter of age, you know; as I grow older, I feel much more tolerant of things. Not certainly of injustices, but I guess, ideological tolerance, you know, for ideological differences and so forth. But in any case, yeah, healing is absolutely a necessary thing.
1:12:52
SM: Do you think you— Have you been to the Vietnam Memorial?
1:12:56
GO: Yeah. Several times.
1:12:59
SM: What— that first time you went there, what impact did that have on you?
1:13:04
GO: Well, it is moving, of course. I am into names because I think it is important to have names to remember people as individuals rather than number. So that affected me a lot. But I also felt a little uneasy, I think around the kind of patriotism that might easily misjudge me as the enemy. So, mixed feelings.
1:13:34
SM: Because when you go to that wall for the first time, that reflection sometimes brings back memories of everything—
1:13:39
GO: That is true.
1:13:40
SM:—you were involved with during the time the war was on.
1:13:44
GO: Yeah, and also the consciousness of the designer of the wall being an Asian American.
1:13:50
SM: That is right. Yep. And actually two of the three major pieces there are done by women.
1:13:58
GO: Yeah, which is remarkable.
1:14:00
SM: Well, yeah Glenna Goodacre and Maya Lin. Of course Maya Lin's gone on— does so many other things, unbelievable, from Yale University. Well, Senator Muskie's response was, he did not even respond to 1968. And they were kind of disappointed, I think, because they wanted him to go into, you know, all the stuff. Because these are students that were not alive then. And basically what he said is we have not healed since the Civil War over the issue of race. And he went on to talk about it. And then he said— just think about the fact that in the Civil War, we fought against each other. And 430,000 men died in that war, and almost an entire generation in the South was lost. And these were brothers killing brothers.
1:14:47
GO: Right.
1:14:48
SM: So, that is what he was talking about. And I think what I was getting at also is whether the— and you brought it up— the healing between those who served and those who did not, and those are the ones that have maybe in the sense of sensitive feelings, particularly if they take their families to the wall, and their kids or grandkids say to you, dad or grandpa, what did you do in the war?
1:15:14
GO: Right.
1:15:15
SM: And so, anyway, healing is certainly critical. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of the—You are a great writer; you have written ten books, and you are a great writer. And I love your Columbia Guide to Asian American Studies. I have that book; I wish I'd had it signed when you were here, but what— when the— fifty years from now, or actually when the last boomer has passed on, how do you think historians and sociologists and writers will— what will they say about this generation that grew up after World War II that went through the (19)60s and the (19)70s— what do you think they will say?
1:16:03
GO: Well, it is hard to say, by the way, because I think historians write largely from the present and so whatever is pressing or the ideas that the president will influence their perception of— so whatever they say about our generation is going to be tempered by whatever contemporary situation they were involved in. I know that's a kind of cop out I suppose, but I firmly believe that. What I would like them to say is that— not that this was the greatest generation; I think that's a really bad way to put the World War II generation. But that I think this generation was the one that tried, and tried different means, oftentimes dead ends and errors and so forth. But nonetheless, they tried, they were doers.
1:17:00
SM: Yes, I can remember and you probably remember this too, when you were young in college as an undergrad, that we are the most unique generation in American history. Because the reason is that we are going to make the world different. We are going to end the war, bring peace, end racism, sexism, homophobia; we have the environment, we are going to do it all. And then people look at America today and they say, boy, you guys have failed. But really, there's been a lot of accomplishment. But do you think this generation failed?
1:17:38
GO: No! No. Trying is not failure. Trying is doing, and doing has effect. So, yeah, the effects are with us, and they will continue. Every generation has done that.
1:17:57
SM: I think also, if you have ever been to the Gettysburg battlefield they have the statue there— this man who was the last living person who actually fought in the Civil War. He died in 1924 and they have a statue for him right there.
1:18:12
GO: I do not remember that.
1:18:13
SM: Yeah, it is as you are driving around right past Pickett's Charge.
1:18:18
GO: Yeah.
1:18:19
SM: Okay keep driving down where the old building used to be, where they had the— we went inside and saw the Civil War in the round. Which, the building is closed— well, it is right there— he was— and it got me thinking when I put this question together, because I go to give this report times a year and I was just there last weekend and it's the fact is that they used to meet there every year between North and South and they talked about all their divisions, but they never came to any true healing and then they all finally passed on. So it is a—
1:18:55
GO: Wow.
1:18:56
SM: I have finished my questions, I have this thing where I get into personalities and I ask your responses to them, but it is a little long, so maybe, I do not know if you, I will just mention a few of them because I—
1:19:09
GO: I do not trust those personality scales do not give it to me. [laughs]
1:19:13
SM: I just want to know, some of the events. What did you think of Kent State and Jackson State?
1:19:21
GO: Actually, I— it was like news items for me, but also a kind of identification with students. And a kind of "hora" at the kind of repression of, you know, protest. I am sure that our protests oftentimes went too far and really tested the wills of the older people, but then, you know, to kill people is something else again.
1:19:50
SM: And then Watergate.
1:19:54
GO: Well, now you see this suspicion of leaders and so forth. One is hardly surprised, then, from that point of view. I was not surprised.
1:20:04
SM: Same thing with U-2 when President Eisenhower lied to us. And that is the first— that is the first lie that I ever remember as a child, was one— I remember him being on TV and I always liked him; he looked like a grandfather to me— but he, you know. Well, he was— he was a decent man— I am not saying he was not, but you know, he did lie to the American public. And, and I guess the other one would be the pentagon papers, what you thought of the pentagon papers and Daniel Ellsberg?
1:20:35
GO: Wonderful. [laughs] Yeah.
1:20:40
SM: And then Woodward and Bernstein was— your thoughts? That was investigative journalism that was really beginning to take its hold at that time. And, I do not— I think we're going backwards, are not we?
1:20:53
GO: Oh, absolutely. Oh, both 9-1-1, oh, freedom of the press. None, none. And then with the takeover of the press by this foreigner from Australia, on Fox News, so called, the kind of parody is, is actually disgusting because it works against democracy to have propaganda.
1:21:20
SM: Who took over Fox?
1:21:22
GO: That guy from Australia. What is his name?
1:21:27
SM: I do not know.
1:21:28
GO: He took over, he took over the Wall Street Journal.
1:21:32
SM: My gosh, I do not know. I know that uh—
1:21:34
GO: My god, I do not remember names. That is why I am so old.
1:21:37
SM: I know that the Washington Times is Sun Myung Moon; is he—
1:21:43
GO: I do not know. No. And yeah, that is the Washington Post.
1:21:46
SM: Yeah, that is the Washington Times. Yeah.
1:21:48
GO: Yeah, Times. Yeah. Washington Times. [laughs]
1:21:52
SM: Yeah, then I will just mention a few here because we have got seven minutes left. The Woodstock and Summer of Love; just your thoughts on those.
1:22:04
GO: I love them. I could identify.
1:22:09
SM: All right; how about the hippies and the yippies?
1:22:13
GO: Hippies, yes. Yippies, enh...
1:22:17
SM: They were more political.
1:22:19
GO: Yeah.
1:22:21
SM: How about the Columbia protests of (19)69.
1:22:23
GO: Well actually I did not even know anything about it. The Columbia protests.
1:22:29
SM: Free speech—
1:22:30
GO: Kind of weird.
1:22:31
SM: Free Speech Movement—
1:22:32
GO: —And I was not even in the country. That's why.
1:22:35
SM: No; you were in Peace Corps then. What did you learn from the Peace Corps? Again, you mentioned right there.
1:22:42
GO: What did I learn? I tried to stay away from the Peace Corps as much as possible. It was another government bureaucracy that stood in the way of real people. You see that's my generational take. [laughs] It had become a bureaucracy by 1968, when I joined. And that— I tried to stay away as much as possible. But the Peace Corps enabled me to remain in Africa, and to have this deeply moving sort of transformation of my life, through the Temple teachings of African people. It was a remarkable, life changing experience. I can tell you some— I mean, I was decent out— say about sixty miles outside of the nation's capital, and into southern Africa, flew Senator Hiram Fong from Hawaii, a Republican senator from Hawaii, and he, upon hearing that I was in the Peace Corps, another Hawaii person, made the trip all the way out to the desert and it is this dusty road and so forth, to see me and I was not about to see him. So I went off into the desert and did not see him and the Peace Corps director was so pissed off with me. Activist. [laughs] Insubordination. But again, that was very typical of my generation.
1:24:06
SM: Oh yeah! You do your thing. I will do mine, if there's a chance we should come together [laughs] it will be beautiful.
1:24:14
GO: You know, as opposed to Senator Hiram Fong. He was using me as a PR.
1:24:19
SM: Yeah, that is exactly what he was doing.
1:24:21
GO: I was not about to.
1:24:23
SM: What did you think of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden?
1:24:27
GO: [laughs] Well, I admired, Jane Fonda for her stand on Vietnam. But look what happened to her subsequently—also Tom Hayden for Chicago and so forth. And actually he's still very principled I think to today. But Jane Fonda has lost her way.
1:24:50
SM: And, of course, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. They were the yippies.
1:24:55
GO: Yeah.
1:24:56
SM: Any thoughts on them? Or—
1:24:58
GO: No.
1:24:59
SM: How about the Black Panthers that, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Elaine Brown?
1:25:09
GO: The— a Japanese American was a member of the Black Panthers in Oakland, and he just died this past year. And people do not know that Asians were part of Black Panthers. They frightened me. But I thought that their revolutionary span was really courageous and influential, moving politics.
1:25:32
SM: Black power— did you, what did you think when Black Power came in?
1:25:36
GO: Yeah, again, at first, it was frightening. Mainly, I guess, because my information came from the crowd. But quickly, I thought Black Power is really important. So Asian Americans mimicked them and yellow power and brown power and red power and so forth. But it was not to the degree of like, if you were interpreting "by any means necessary" to mean armed rebellion or insurrection.
1:26:03
SM: All right. Yeah. Stokely Carmichael challenged Dr. King as Malcolm X challenged Bayard Rustin. Basically telling them 'your time has passed. It is a new way now.' You know, nonviolent protest is not working.
1:26:03
GO: Right.
1:26:05
SM: And then, of course, the 1968 Olympics, you had Tommy Smith. And, and we had Tommy on our campus and he says, I am not a Black Panther. He never was.
1:26:33
GO: Right, right.
1:26:34
SM: It was about rights and injustice. I guess the other— last couple things is just your thoughts on people like Benjamin Spock and Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern?
1:26:48
GO: Well, oddly, you know, I was really not like Clean Gene or a fan at the beginning. I think in retrospect, I was wrong. I just thought it was a kind of bandwagon that he was trying to capitalize on. But I respect the man immensely now, but at the time I was very skeptical. Spock of course was really important, I think, in terms of human liberation. I do not know about his child psychology, but in any case, his advocacy of progressive causes and so forth were really important. And who was the other one?
1:27:30
SM: McGovern.
1:27:31
GO: Oh wait, did not I— oh, McGovern, of course was also important in terms of like, sort of like, McCarthy for many of— well, for me.
1:27:46
SM: Of course Robbie Kennedy is another one in that period that—
1:27:49
GO: Yeah, you know that he actually hit me more because, you know, I was right there. Actually, I was not in the ballroom, but just a block away.
1:27:57
SM: Oh, wow, when that happened.
1:27:59
GO: And also his identification with the migrant farmworkers, which was really important for me and so well, seeing him lying on the floor there dying was really traumatic. Worse than Kennedy— JFK.
1:28:12
SM: When you look at the presidents during that whole time frame from World War II— the end of World War II until today, you are dealing with Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the first. And then you have got Bill Clinton, George Bush the second, Obama. Now, two of them were boomers— actually, the third one— there is a third one was only two when the boomers— but of those presidents, which ones do you— did you like and ones did you not like that may have had the greatest influence on this generation.
1:28:55
GO: Well, I think LBJ, both in terms of hating him and also liking him and admiring what he did.
1:29:04
SM: Even though he was the guy responsible for the Vietnam War?
1:29:07
GO: Of course! Yes, yes. But think about his social idioms and transformation of the nation, domestically.
1:29:15
SM: Did you have issues with McNamara or with Kissinger?
1:29:20
GO: Of course! Yeah. But LBJ is, you know, was really important for civil rights.
1:29:31
SM: And of course, I know your best— your favorite person was Spiro, right? [laughs]
1:29:36
GO: Agnew.
1:29:37
SM: Spiro Agnew boy he loved to attack the,— boy he loved to attack the universities, did not he?
1:29:42
GO: Really?
1:29:43
SM:' Hobnobs and' he was—
1:29:47
GO: He was a really stupid man, really.
1:29:49
SM: Yeah, he was as crooked as crooked can be. And I guess the last—the last one is just the, the women leaders: the Betty Friedans, the Gloria Steinems, the Bella Abzugs. How important were they at that particular time?
1:30:05
GO: Well, I loved them all. And I thought it was— it is I mean, they were exceedingly important. I do not think that feminism is unnecessary today. I think it is so important for these leaders of this new wave of feminism were really important. I think many of their things were wrong, but still, you know, it was important at the time.
1:30:34
SM: But when we talk about the American Indian Movement, which was basically (19)67 to (19)71—or (19)73 excuse me, and then you had the Stonewall which was the gay and lesbian in (19)69. And then you had Earth Day in (19)70. Those are three other areas that are directly linked to a lot of the events of the (19)60s and (19)70s and in Americans—
1:30:58
GO: Hugely influential.
1:31:00
SM: Yep. Are there any final thoughts on—anything I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask?
1:31:07
GO: Not really. What was remarkable was 1968, which you did not—
1:31:14
SM: Well, yeah, that was one of the things that I—
1:31:17
GO: Colombia and so forth. American Indian Movement was formed in 1968. There was the protest against the America— you know, Miss America Pageant in 1968, Richard Nixon in 1968. And—Anyway, there is a lot of things in 1968, which was a pivotal year.
1:31:38
SM: Did you ever think as a young person or actually as a heading-toward-a-PhD that we were close to another civil war?
1:31:47
GO: Not at all. No.
1:31:50
SM: Because that was out there.
1:31:52
GO: Yeah. But no, I never.
1:31:54
SM: People were burning cities down and a lot of things. All right, well, I— if you do not have anything else, I guess that is it.
1:32:04
GO: Okay, and so you are going to email me about you coming by for pictures?
1:32:07
SM: Yep, yes ̶
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. Gary Okihiro
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Okihiro, Gary Y., 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Asian American authors; Scholars--American; College teachers; Okihiro, Gary Y., 1945--Interviews
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Gary Okihiro is an Asian American scholar and an author of twelve books. Okihiro was a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He is the originator of \"social formation theory\" and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association. Dr. Okihiro currently is a visiting professor of American studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of the Ryukyus."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Dr. Gary Okihiro is an Asian American scholar and an author of twelve books. Okihiro was a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He is the originator of "social formation theory" and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association. Dr. Okihiro currently is a visiting professor of American studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of the Ryukyus.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-11
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In copyright
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.203a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.203b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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92:11
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f3c98b757796ce138c8b5a38e4e4e6bf.mp3
093a99df6ee3bfd947acb3ae9fcccf45
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Oral Histories
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Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni
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In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history.
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Irene Gashurov
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2017-2018
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<a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a>
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2018-11-09
Interviewer
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Irene Gashurov
Interviewee
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Jackie and John Visser
Interview Format
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Audio
Year of Graduation
Jackie 1969
John 1973
Biographical Text
Jackie is a lecturer in Education at Binghamton University; John was more of a stay-at-home father.
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Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Jackie and John Visser
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 8 November 2018
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:01
Okay, we are on now.
JV: 00:02
Okay. My name is Jackie Visser.
IG: 00:05
Yes.
JV: 00:05
I am I am working here at the Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership as a lecturer, and we are sitting in my office on November 8, 2018.
JoV: 00:15
I am John Visser, retired, in the same office. [crosstalk] [laughter]
IG: 00:25
Okay. So, you know, maybe we can answer certain questions sort of in tandem, you know, if anybody wants to
JV: 00:33
Jump in.
IG: 00:34
Jump in or digress, you know, it is up to you. It is a conversation that we are having with the two of you. So where did you grow up, Jackie?
JV: 00:45
I grew up on Long Island. I was West Islip. Is the name of the town. Lived there, went to school there. All my kindergarten through 12th grade classes were there, and then I came to Harpur College.
JoV: 01:02
I went to Goshen, New York High School, lived there for a long time, and came to Binghamton in it was July, the summer session of July, 1965 there were about four or 500 students, and that is when Harpur had the trimester situation. And each-each semester lasted for four months. And the summer session went July, August, September and October.
JV: 01:34
Parts of October.
IG: 01:36
So, Jackie, tell me a little bit about your upbringing. Did your parents go to college? What were their expectations for you? Was education valued in your family?
JV: 01:50
Education was certainly valued, but neither of my parents went to college. I mean, I was, we were part of that baby boom generation moved out to a development on Long Island. My father had been in the army. He was a factory worker. My mom ended up driving a school bus. But there was absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind that I was supposed to go to college. And that was just part of what my family was like, it was a, you know, I had two brothers who neither, one of whom went to college. But for some reason I am the one. I was the oldest and, and I know my-my father was one who just insisted that, you know, you get as much schooling as you possibly can so.
IG: 02:36
And why do you think that that was? Why do you think that you were, you know, selected in your family to go on to higher education? Your brothers were not well.
JV: 02:50
I think it might have been. I was the oldest, and I was and I was doing really well in school. So, I think they saw that possibility, whereas my next youngest brother was not getting all the A's, and he, you know, I think they were probably more opportunities for boys who did not have a college education at the time, as opposed to opportunities for women who did not have a college, college education. So, I do not know. I never really discussed it with them, why they, why they wanted that for me, but that that, maybe that was it.
IG: 03:31
Why did you decide to go to Harpur and not another school?
JV: 03:37
Well, cost was obviously a factor. Back in the (19)60s, there was this opportunity called the Regent Scholarship, which was paid for your entire tuition. And so state schools was obviously the goal, you know, was where I was going to go. Stony Brook was fairly close, but that would have meant, and I felt like I wanted to get away from from-from home, right? And guidance counselors really pushed me here. There was, there were three or four of us from my high school who ended up coming here.
IG: 04:15
What did, what was the reputation of Harpur College back then?
JV: 04:20
It was, it was, it was-
IG: 04:21
What did they say about it? Your guidance counselors?
JV: 04:24
-highly selective, hard to get into. They encouraged me to apply for the summer semester, the summer trimester.
IG: 04:33
I see.
JV: 04:34
Because supposedly the trimester, the summer session was-was easier to get into than the than the fall semester trimester. So, I do not know. I do not know if I would have gotten into the fall semester or not. You know, I was a good student. I had pretty good SATs, I guess, but I do not know. I was too naive to understand all that at the time.
IG: 04:55
Did you have an idea of what you wanted to what studies you wanted to pursue?
JV: 04:59
Absolutely not never. [laughs] Oh, did not I? We had the luxury those days of being in a liberal arts college.
IG: 05:12
I remember.
JV: 05:14
Started out as a math major, that list about two semesters, tried economics for a while. That did not last too long. Ended up graduating as a sociology major. Ended up getting enough Bs in those courses to graduate.
IG: 05:34
So, we will return to that. We will return to your academics and other things. How about you, John?
JoV: 05:43
My family, I was the first in my family to go to college. My parents, my dad was born in the Netherlands, my mother was born in Poland, and they were absolutely adamant that I needed to go to school and to college and to get ahead. And I mean, they were very insisted, both my brother and I went to school. And it was there was no question my neither my dad, went through like eighth grade. My mother completed like through the third or fourth grade, and she had lived in Poland and in war she was she had been relocated to Germany as a forced laborer. And my dad had been relocated to Germany as a forced laborer from the Netherlands, and that was where they meant. So, it was very insistent that we go to school. And again, like Jackie said about the reason I went to Harpur, means it was all the guidance counselors touted it as a very selective place. Liberal Arts, the most difficult one of the universities in the state of New York, the public ones to get into. And I like Jackie, I wanted to get away from home, and this sounded like the place to be. And one, one of my reasons for coming during the summer trimester was to play soccer. I was a soccer player, and you-you could all by the time the fall semester trimester started, it would be the season be over. So, if you want to play soccer, you had to come during the middle of the summer. But there being so few students. We were very-very slim pickings. You know, people who had any experience at all mean 400 total students. That means 200 male students. How many soccer players are there? Not a whole lot.
IG: 07:31
Not a whole lot.
JV: 07:32
Camps- Camp Harpur is what we called it. You know, it was-
IG: 07:35
In the summertime?
JV: 07:36
Oh, yeah, it was very it was as empty a campus as it is now. Well, remember, it was a much smaller campus, you know.
JoV: 07:43
But there was a lot of construction going on.
IG: 07:45
It was here. It was here.
JV: 07:47
Yeah, already.
JoV: 07:48
It was already here. But and it was the beginning of a big boom. I mean, there was construction everywhere. And I think for the next 10 years we had perpetual construction going on-on all the sites.
IG: 08:01
Could I ask, just out of my own curiosity, why did your immigrant parents come to Goshen rather than New York City or some other, you know, immigrant magnet?
JoV: 08:15
Well, I mean, it turns out my dad had relatives [crosstalk] pre immigrated. They had already here. So, I see, you know, he needed a place where, you know, he could have some touch with, you know, somebody, and I think, couple of his brothers and one of his sisters already here. But one of his one of his sisters immigrated to Australia, and out of a family of seven, there was only one that remained in the Netherlands after everybody wanted, you know, did all the relocating.
IG: 08:47
Very interesting.
JV: 08:50
If you want to do research [crosstalk]
IG: 08:52
Yeah. Extremely interesting. That is extremely interesting. So, you know, so, what are some of the early impressions of the college? when you first arrived, you said that it was undergoing, you know, construction, virtual, you know, perpetual construction. There were very few students. What were, who were the students in your classes? You know, how were they all from New York City, some from upstate, you know, describe what the milieu was like.
JoV: 09:27
Well, preponderance of people were from New York City, but there were definitely people from the Buffalo area, the Syracuse area, a few local people, not, not a whole lot. But, you know, I think the admissions people at the university at Harpur College made it a point to bring in people from all over the state. I do not think we had very many people from out of state, but a few foreign students.
IG: 09:53
From where?
JoV: 09:55
One of the people I knew came from Iran, another one from Africa somewhere. And they were on, I do not know how they had gotten in, but, you know, we-we had made friends with them, and because I knew they want a soccer team, because they were the best, most experienced soccer players. But I mean, I think you are right. I mean, half the people would you say, dear come from- ame from New York City, Long Island area, at least.
JV: 10:22
That was, that was I lived on in the dormitory, and that is where, I mean, that is how I got basically introduced to New York, you know, visiting them on breaks and spending time with them, because I met them, you know, I was farther out on Long Island. We did not go into the city a lot, so, but most of our friends were, were definitely Queens and Manhattan in the Bronx and folks. And then there were some people from Long Island. As I said, there at least two-two came with me. Two classmates of mine from my high school came here. But we did know a lot of folks from-from the Buffalo area and upstate New York.
IG: 11:03
Were there any, you know, I imagine that the differences were slight, the cultural differences between upstate students and New York City students. Did you notice any of these? But you were, you came from such a multi-multi home. So, you must have felt very different.
JoV: 11:23
The student body was mostly middle class. Most of the students that I met were, if not first time, you know, generation college students, then you know, maybe it had brothers or sisters, but they were very much middle class. And, you know, we got along in that because we were- all had the same experiences. I did not find anybody who you know. My father was a doctor. My father has been- my father was a lawyer. My grandfather has been a lawyer. I did not experience that at all. This is all. We were all here together for first time. See what it was like.
JV: 11:55
Yeah, that is pretty much. I cultural differences, not really.
IG: 12:00
Not really.
JV: 12:00
I mean, I think we the biggest cultural learning that took place for me was learning about more Jewish traditions and cultures. I mean, I remember making matzah brei in the dorm and, you know, just understanding Jewish traditions and cultures and foods and things like that. But other than that, I do not remember.
JoV: 12:25
The other thing was the different dialects of New York. Yeah, people from Buffalo speak differently than people from Long Island, than the people from Brooklyn, than the people from Albany, New York, and the people who were, you know, in the Binghamton area. And that was my always sensitivity to, "Wow, I know where you are from. You are from Rochester, perhaps closer to Buffalo, but definitely in that neck of the woods." And-
IG: 12:48
So, you have, you have a very good ear.
JoV: 12:51
I tend to listen very carefully, and, you know, try to pinpoint where people's accents come from.
JV: 12:59
And he tried to beat the Long Island accent out of me. [laughter]
JoV: 13:07
30, 40 years. But Jackie's Long Island accent has now disappeared and is now she is a local.
IG: 13:15
So, what are some ticks of Binghamton locals’ speech ticks?
JV: 13:23
I know that you ask, it is kind of hard to think there is [crosstalk]
IG: 13:31
I mean, it is not, it is not necessary for the interview, but if you can think of it, I am just taking this because I do not have it watch. So
JV: 13:40
I cannot think of anything.
IG: 13:42
You cannot think of anything. I think that there is sort of, you know, a little to a voice, but I cannot, you know, I will identify it when I hear it, but I am [crosstalk]
JoV: 13:52
More nasally twang. There is a there are some colloquialisms that are definitely Binghamtonian and but, you know the one-
JV: 14:03
It is a double negative that use.
JoV: 14:05
So do not I.
JV: 14:06
Yeah, so do not I, you know, you know, "I really like brownies." "Well, so do not I, "you know,
JV: 14:13
Oh-oh, that is very interesting.
JoV: 14:15
It just struck us as, you know [crosstalk]
IG: 14:19
That is so interesting.
JV: 14:21
The bars would serve tomato pie, Hot Pie. You know, they would advertise instead of pizza, it was called Hot Pie. Let us go to Mike's and get a hot pie.
JoV: 14:30
Culinary city chicken, which is, I do not think it is, I do not know why it is called city, and I do not think it is chicken.
JV: 14:37
Pork in it, I think. [crosstalk] like meat on a stick. [laughs] I do not know how else to describe it, but just, but how much, how much of some of those things were just regional, and how much was growing up? Because you got to remember, you know, when you are we are finally 18, and now you are on your own, and you are navigating things on your own. So, is it really? Is it really that much different from where I grew up, or is it just the stage of life now, where I am learning about the world? So, I always, you know-
JV: 15:00
Yeah, it is what you-
JV: 15:07
Yeah.
IG: 15:08
You know what you are paying attention to.
JV: 15:11
Exactly.
IG: 15:12
So, what was, what were the academics like? Were you- are there any professors that stand out, any courses that stand out in your mind that kind of determined you to take a certain route in your career?
JoV: 15:32
I would like to answer that.
IG: 15:34
Yes.
JoV: 15:34
Is- the fact that we are in a liberal art we I took an art course from a professor Wilson who designed JFK memorial in Downtown Binghamton, and the fact that he was instructing freshmen was always amazing to me. Here is an established artist and taking liberal arts courses from various people and who had real academic standing. And I did not, you know it was the anthropology courses, the-the economic courses, but it just the, just the broadness. I mean, I guess you know, being-being, having become, becoming well rounded in various fields, that was the most interesting thing to me. Sometimes I had to redirect myself. "Oh, you got to take these courses." And it was just I was never that interested in, you know, I was always more interested in finding more courses, different courses to take. And that was really quite intriguing.
JV: 16:30
I have to admit, I was not a student. That was not
JoV: 16:32
You were a student.
JV: 16:34
I was. I managed to get through. I did get a degree, but classes and courses, that was not what interested me on campus. I would that was not who I was. [laughs] so-
IG: 16:46
Who were you on campus?
JV: 16:48
I was a member of lots of campus activities, you know, I- there was a poster, the-the-the I was a member of the student council board, the student center board. It says, presented by the student center board, yeah, and so we, they would bring, and I was on, it was on dorm governance, and just various organizations on campus that that was something that really-
IG: 17:17
So, what were so, what-what did these organizations, what did the Mitchell trio?
JV: 17:24
It was the folk trio--there was a concert, yeah. So, they had the-
IG: 17:27
John Denver, the John Denver.
JV: 17:29
Yes.
IG: 17:29
Oh, wow.
JoV: 17:30
Yeah.
JoV: 17:30
Oh, you Chad Mitchell trio. Before-before became John Denver, he was part of a trio.
IG: 17:35
Oh, I have no I had no idea.
JV: 17:39
And after the concert, you know, he and his guitar went over to somebody's house in Johnson City, and he serenaded us all again, you know,
IG: 17:46
How wonderful.
JV: 17:48
We talked about. We brought Simon and Garfunkel to campus and paid them, like, less than $2,000 for the concert down in the gym, the first gym.
JoV: 18:00
Obviously, before they got really really-really expensive.
JV: 18:03
That is, that is wonderful. So-so that was your activity. It was finding those groups-
JV: 18:09
Finding those groups and being involved with the people, you know, the other students who were part of that, you know, that was what really interested me, as opposed to, I got through my classes. But I that was where-
IG: 18:22
So, what-what, you know, were students talking about? What did they care about during this time?
JoV: 18:29
Let me, let me answer [crosstalk] a little bit. This was in the days 1965 all young men who were not in college were going to be drafted. And I can tell you, I mean, that was the number one topic, the war in Vietnam was going full tilt, and if you got kicked out of school, did not come to school, you were going to get drafted and you were going to go to Vietnam. And I can tell you that all the male students, that was their overriding concern. They may have had. They might have had career goals. They might have been pursuing a degree in something they really want. But this stood above all. I mean, this was always on your mind. So-
IG: 19:07
Do you feel that it was a, an anxiety that everyone shared, all men shared?
JV: 19:13
Gap year.
JoV: 19:13
Gap year out of it. I mean, that was out of the question. You know, you want a gap year, you got to be drafted. So, it was definitely on everyone's mind, overriding every single day. You know, we get through and-and the war news. I mean, it just got worsened from 1965 to (19)66 to (19)67 to (19)68 I mean, the war just grew more and more intense. And, you know, the body count was really quite horrific. I graduated from Goshen High with there were 125 students. And there were, there were two people, I know who died. One of them lived on my street. And these were guys, young men, who did not go to college. They, you know, graduate high school, and within six months, they were in Vietnam, and within a year, they were dead. So, I, I felt that it was really, really tough going.
JoV: 19:13
Oh, definitely. I mean, a lot of students, I among them, what do they call that? When you, when you, when you when you graduate from high school and you have a you take a year off,
IG: 20:19
So, it, you know, it colored the mood. It colored the sort of the like the-
JV: 20:23
Well, and then, and then, you know, we were, I am thinking the world. We were not as actively involved in protests, but that is what was starting to happen on campus. You know, that, that you were, you became very much aware of that there were, there were people around the country who were actively against the war, that were actively protesting against the war. I remember we- I think we finally did march from the campus to downtown-
JoV: 20:47
1968.
JV: 20:47
-1968 involved in a protest. But we were not, we did not occupy the administration building, because that is in my mind, that is not who I was protesting against. But I It was not. It was in 1970 was Kent State, was not it? So it was, we were still in the area, and you know that they, they closed the camp- they just sent in May of or rather, it was in April. So, there was still several more weeks now. Think about all that happens on a campus in April and May. In April, every single, just about every single university in this country since, said, "Go home. Just go home now."
JoV: 21:33
And I remember-
JV: 21:34
Go home.
JoV: 21:35
And students met with the profs, and the prof said, “What kind of grade you want? Because, you know, we are shutting down. We are not doing any more final exams. We are not having any more classes. We are concluding this semester after Kent State, because we do not want the whole thing to blow up.” I mean, I mean, that was the kind of tension that Amnesty- 1965 the war was in a very low-level state. But it just grew and grew and grew and, you know, I- it was just an incredible build up and-and we knew some people who, I knew some people who either had had left school or flunked out, and then, you know, we had heard, oh, they were, you know, they were in the army, or a few of them went to Canada, you know there, and I have never seen some of those people again.
IG: 22:26
So, but the campus did have some protests?
JoV: 22:31
Oh yeah.
IG: 22:32
But-but did you go on marches on Washington, or?
JV: 22:39
No, it was just here. Yeah-yeah. I am sure there were students who there were busses and things to Washington. We just did not do that.
JoV: 22:46
I mean, I would not call Bingham- Harpur College an activist.
JV: 22:49
Yeah, we were not Columbia.
JoV: 22:51
I mean, there were, there were people who were active, but not, not like Berkeley or Columbia.
IG: 22:57
Yeah, um, so, you know, so when did you meet? When did you when did you meet? When were you together?
JV: 23:13
John's roommate, he lived off campus, and my roommate were dating, and several of us would John-John had a car that was, and we would go out. And remember, the drinking age was 18 at the time, and so we would go out and have beers and hot pies and speedies and whatever.
IG: 23:32
And this is when, what-
JV: 23:33
-in the neighborhood bars, 19-
JoV: 23:34
1967, 1968.
JV: 23:35
(19)68 so we were just part of a group of people who palled around and then eventually started dating.
IG: 23:44
Right. So, you knew each other since then?
JV: 23:48
Yeah, but mainly his-his roommate and my roommate were dating, and so I got to know him that way.
IG: 23:56
So, you know, I am thinking about the war, and you said that Harpur was not an activist school, per se, and yet, there was a lot of activity on campus that was sort of, you know, politicized. People were politicized here. So, were you part of any kind of, I do not know, paper or radio?
JV: 24:19
No, I just was not, I was not that. I was more. I mean, even now, you know, we are good citizens and vote and stuff, but I have not been too much on Washington with my pink hat or anything, you know. I mean, I am support liberal ideas and contribute money and things like that, but not I am just done an activist kind of person.
IG: 24:42
What were, what was the significance of, you know, the folk musicians, like the Mitchell Trio?
JV: 24:49
They were fun. I mean, I remember what- who was that it became the kosher kitchen. But remember, there was a little coffee house, one of that little way the Fleishman Center is now, and the student, you. Union. And, you know, there people would bring guitars and play folk music, and then the Bill Barker or Bob Barker, what is his name?
IG: 25:08
You know, was not it a change in sort of, you know, youth culture, because from-from all of the you know, folk musicians, they were, you know, Peter, Paul and Mary, for example, yeah, when I know Dylan, they all had, you know, a message of social change-
JV: 25:25
Right.
IG: 25:25
-political change-
JV: 25:26
Right-right, yeah, definitely.
IG: 25:27
Were you kind of alive to that, to that aspect of them?
JV: 25:32
Yeah.
JoV: 25:34
I mean, Bob Dylan, you know, was played in dorms from 1965 I mean, just repeatedly, everyone, almost everyone, was involved with Dylan. I mean, it was really the first off campus event I went to in New York, was to see a Dylan concert. I mean, I had seen a bunch on, you know, other concerts on campus, but where I really went out of my way to see Bob Dylan. And-
IG: 26:01
Where did you see him? Do you remember?
JoV: 26:05
I saw him--I think it was Carnegie Hall.
IG: 26:07
Oh.
JoV: 26:07
And it was one of his first electric concerts, and he sort of, he did some acoustic guitar the first half, and then he brought on his electric organ and-and he got booed [crosstalk] yes. And, you know, because they were, there were some purists in the audience. And then, you know, I think he eventually won them over, or at least the majority of the audience was won over. But Dylan, to me, is, I mean, I have, you know, as a friend of mine says, "John, have you, you know, bought all his vinyls?" I said, "I try," so very, you know, I think that whole theme of anti-war from him. I mean, I know there were others, other musicians, but I not, not, not as much as him.
JV: 26:36
Yeah, no. And I mean, the whole counterculture kind of attitude, you know, do not trust anyone under over 30. And you know, knowing that, that you have some, you ae going to have some responsibility for moving you know that, that I definitely felt that I was, was part of me, but-but I just was not, you know, I was not a, an activist kind of person. [crosstalk]
IG: 27:26
Your-your future life to be sort of along the same path as your family, as your mother and father. Did you think that you would get married and then, you know, have children and retire, or did you, did you envision a different future for yourself?
JoV: 27:49
I could just speak for myself that I did not my-my concern was- what was going to happen after the four years when my deferment is up. I really was incapable of thinking much beyond that. Is there life after, after schools? Do not know. You know, am I going to live in the United States or not? Do not know. Am I going to be alive? I do not know it was, it was that overwhelming. I, if I may, I will tell you one story, when, when did the draft started to not to end, but they had a lottery. I do not know if you remember that. And every, every young man in the country was now, because there was so such a differential in various areas. I mean, some people were drafted, some people were not. So, they have a lottery, so everybody was going to get a number. And then every so we were listening to the Harpur radio station. Jackie and I were driving in the car, and they were reading the numbers
JV: 28:43
Based on your birthday.
JoV: 28:44
So, if they read this is number one, April 27 that means that you were going to be the first one called. And if you get a high number, you were probably not going to be called. So, we were trying to listen for my birthday. It was 365,366 you know; dates they have to go through. So, we finally get the campus and we, you know, what number did you get? What I mean, that was the, you know, that was it. And after that, I mean, I got a relatively high number, and I that was the first time. I do not know when that happened. It was early 1970 late 1969 I finally could think of, oh, yeah, now, you know-
JV: 29:15
But you had already got, you had gone for a physical just before that.
JoV: 29:18
Oh yeah. I mean, I mean-
JV: 29:18
John, John extended, you know I mean the draft, a full-time student was four classes. But what I mean, most students were taking 16 credits, four classes, but you could still be considered full time if you were taking three for the and if you were full time, you were going to get this exemption. So, John, sort of like, spread things out. You took a long time. I graduated in December of (19)69 but you did not graduate. Well, you that Kent State erupted, you know.,
JoV: 29:51
But three courses, I mean, was no reason for me to take four courses. We might. Am I going to finish earlier? And so finally, you know, I had, I. And run out the string. And then the Selective Service in Goshen and said, you know, your time is up. You have used your four years since you matriculated at Harpur. And so, they sent me for a physical in Syracuse. And then this lottery, I said, “But the lottery, you are still going for a physical, okay?”
JV: 30:18
But it was like, within days the lottery came about, and he did never get drafted.
IG: 30:23
People do not appreciate what a sense of tension, of anxiety-
JV: 30:30
Control. It was a controlled {crosstalk]
IG: 30:32
Control over a huge, you know, swath of young people, psychologically. What that meant for them later on, you know, or during that time.
JoV: 30:45
I took a bus from the Binghamton Federal Building to Syracuse and had a physical, and then got into some disagreement with some of the military people, not just, you know, and they wanted me to stay overnight, to do something else. And I said "No," and they said, "You are not getting back on the bus." I said, "That is all right." So, I called Jackie, and she had to drive up to Syracuse and pick me up. And I was, I was outraged. I mean, I was, I was fuming. I was just-
JV: 31:13
I am afraid now that the police are going to come and guard him away because arrest him. Are we going to Canada now?
JoV: 31:21
That was the, you know, I do, but luckily, you know, the everything was held in abeyance until this lottery. And then, I mean, that was the beginning of a new, new page. Okay, now, what am I going to do?
IG: 31:35
So, what did you do?
JoV: 31:35
Well, Jackie had started teaching in in Johnson City. So, I said, "Well, I might as well try that too." And, you know, I really had no plans. I had no idea, you know, we live here and, well, at least for the time being. You know, this is easy. I cannot I cannot fathom moving and starting, oh, you know, just, let us settle down and for at least a couple of years. And a couple of years turned into next 40 years.
JV: 32:01
Your career. Yeah, yeah. I had sworn all along I was never going to teach, but I went to the New York State Employment Agency looking for a job after I graduated, and they sent me to a Catholic school who needed a fourth-grade teacher, and they hired me. And that is, you know, I am now teaching in the department of teaching, learning, educational leadership. So, you know, who knew I-I had no idea.
IG: 32:27
Fell into that career both you.
JV: 32:29
never in the, you know, in 1965 Did I imagine I myself being a teacher.
IG: 32:35
So, so tell me a little bit about your career trajectories, you know. So, you-you kind of fell into the teaching profession, and what happened, you know? Give us an overview.
JV: 32:48
I taught in the Catholic schools. I just thought I figured out I like teaching and I wanted to continue. So, I worked to get my teaching credentials from New York State and found a job. I was hired by the Union Endicott school district as a reading teacher because I had taken a number of reading courses as I was working toward my credential, and taught reading there for 12 years. And then I became I-I had, in New York State, you need a master's degree. So, I had managed to get a master's degree in reading at the University of Scranton, and talked to my principal at the time, and I said, "Okay, so now what?" And he said, he says "We should think about administration." So, I continued taking courses, became the principal of the of an elementary school, and then director of elementary education and then Assistant Superintendent when I retired, and I am a lecturer here. I am not on a tenure track that I was an adjunct and of the five faculty members one year, two of them left to take other positions, and they really were kind of desperate. They said, well, here, you know, become a full-time person, and that was 13 years ago. So, I have been doing that. I have been here ever since. So, what do you do here? I teach courses in the literacy program. We prepare young men and women to be teachers, to get their credential, and then when another faculty member left who was in charge of the Educational Administration program. They asked me to be that program coordinator. So now I am working in the program. I am coordinating the program that prepares men and women to be principals and supervisors and that sort of thing in schools. They picked me because I-I had one of those jobs, so they figured, I must know what I am doing.
IG: 34:43
That is very interesting. Do you, do you have, do you offer a doctoral program in the Education Department?
JV: 34:49
Yeah, we do, but in curriculum and instruction, it was not a leadership program, but it was just, it was, it was a, it was an EDD.
IG: 34:58
So, you do not offer an EDD? In leadership? No, we do not know.
JV: 35:02
Although our- the courses that we offer are 600 are 600 level courses in can be the ED leadership courses can be used as electives and the doctor courses, but it is not any, any DD in leadership.
IG: 35:18
I see, I see. I am just curious.
JV: 35:21
Okay.
IG: 35:24
So, you know this is, what about your family life? Did you have-
JV: 35:32
One son.
IG: 35:32
Yeah, you have one son.
JV: 35:34
Yep, Andy, yep. He is 38 now. [laughs]
IG: 35:42
And is he- is he in the vicinity?
JV: 35:45
He is, he is living in Athens Georgia currently, because he is married to a woman who is in a doctoral program there. So, she has, she will be, they will be leaving in May for her internship, and we do not know where they are going to be.
JV: 36:04
[laughs] I am not even sure he is coming home for Thanksgiving.
IG: 36:04
That is, that is the way of grown children, and you do not know where they are going inaudible]
IG: 36:04
You might have to go there.
JV: 36:10
No, we were not going there, but he might. He said, "Yeah-yeah, we are coming, but we have-"
IG: 36:20
So, I am curious also, what you know the women's movement happened in the early (19)70s. It was you were off campus by then. But did you feel signs that you know, attitudes toward women and expectations of women were shifting or not?
JV: 36:51
Of course, they were, yeah. They were definitely shifting. I mean, even my sights were, you know, were higher, you know, that, that I could do it, but, but were there still obstacles, you know? Yeah, not everything was apparent that we could do. I still remember one of the administrators in the school district calling us all girls, you know. And I finally had enough courage to request politely that please stop calling us girls. “You know, we are not girls.” He meant it; you know. I mean, he was very polite, caring man. He just needed to be informed that we were not finding it grating, right to be to refer to as girls. But, yeah, I mean, I we women- we very concerned about women getting to becoming, getting into elected office and supporting women who were in elected office. Look, looking up to those people. I mean, I still remember Geraldine Ferraro being nominated as about for a vice president, you know, all those things were eye opening and but yet,
IG: 38:08
Did you, did you have a supportive husband?
JV: 38:12
Absolutely.
IG: 38:12
Yes, supportive of your wife's career.
JoV: 38:16
I when Jackie got her master's in Scranton. Scranton is an hour's drive, I mean, and going through the winter, it was, it was difficult. And I, you know, she went with somebody. And finally, she says, “You know, there is got to be better way, quicker way” and she says, “You know, Scranton is a Catholic University. If I go there in the summer, I can live with the nuns and spend four days a week there. Get all my work done. Come on weekend.” I said, “God bless you. Go.” And it turned out to be a real boon for both of us. I mean, it saved her a lot of driving time, and she had very little work, because she says nuns are not that [crosstalk]
JV: 38:53
There was nothing else to do. [crosstalk] late, later, late evening, because people were teaching, or working or something. So, I would have, like all day to do my coursework, and then I would come home after my last class on Thursday and not have to be back until my class on Monday. And I did not, except for the toward the end, when the papers were due, when you had to type them on your old electric type writer, remember.
IG: 39:19
Yes.
JoV: 39:20
You had an electric one?
IG: 39:22
Yeah, I remember [crosstalk]
JV: 39:24
With carbon paper and erasable paper. Remember when they finally invented erasable paper. I do not know if you remember that.
IG: 39:32
I do not remember the erasable-
JV: 39:34
White out.
IG: 39:35
White out. Certainly, white out. erasable paper?
JV: 39:38
They had it. They had a when they when they invented erasable bond, you know, then you could actually get rid of the type without making crosstalk]
IG: 39:47
That is right. Now, I do remember I see it. It was, it was a very long time ago.
JV: 39:51
Yeah, if you had an expensive IBM, then it had that white out, or actually-
IG: 39:55
Right-right-right. So-so you were a supportive husband. Jackie was telling me a little bit about giving her giving me an outline of her career trajectory. Could you tell us what your career was like?
JV: 40:17
John was a very supportive husband. He basically raised our son. He was, yeah, he was the- he was done lots and lots of different kinds of things, but I was the career person. I was the one who did that. And he was, he was the, he was the one I we have a colleague who was lamenting the fact that she had a class and could not go to her son's open house. And I said I never saw my son off to school on the first day, you know, that big event where you take pictures and stuff never happened. Because I was always meeting 400 other kids somewhere. Yeah. So, when you talk about changing roles of women, and we were, we were, we were one of the first families where, you know, I was the main career person, and John was the person who was raising, put, keeping the family together and raising the family, you know, taking all care of all the right stuff that needed to be care of.
IG: 41:16
So, you know, now it is nor normative.
JV: 41:19
Yeah.
IG: 41:19
But then, did you experience any criticism? Or, you know, nothing from-
JV: 41:26
Not really.
IG: 41:27
No nothing. Did you what did you feel, John?
JoV: 41:30
I mean, I would meet when-when my son was smaller, I, you know, would take him grocery shopping. And I would always meet other little children who were there with their mothers, and lot of them were teachers whom I knew, and they kind of look at my son was like, well, you know, Dad, it is okay, yeah. So it was, it was different. I mean, not like, you know, today, obviously, but there was some pressure. But as I said, I always worried about more about my son than about myself and he, you know, kids just seem to, you know, no problem. So.
IG: 42:07
So how did you keep yourself, you know, you took care of your family, of your son, your wife, you know what-how did you did you pursue your intellectual interests that you developed in college. How did you do that?
JV: 42:27
John is the most voracious reader you have ever met in your whole entire life. We subscribe to at least three newspapers.
JoV: 42:36
That would be real, physical newspapers, the kind you throw into the fireplace and they-they ignite.
JV: 42:39
Put in the bottom of the bird case.
IG: 42:42
So, what do you read? What-what papers do you read?
JoV: 42:46
We said, The Wall Street Journal comes every day, the times comes on Sunday, and the local paper comes on Sunday. So, you know, our newspaper carrier has she-she deserves a lot of rewards, because on Sundays, you know, the local paper, at the times, there is a, you know, sometimes the five or six pounds with papers come, so.
IG: 43:07
It is nice. It is nice to read the-the physical paper. I mean, I read everything online these days.
JoV: 43:15
I you know, I mean, I know Jackie reads a lot of it online. I still have some difficulty. I mean, I when you get a paper subscription, you can read it online. And a lot of times I will start, I just cannot.
IG: 43:26
Yeah, it is more pleasurable.
JoV: 43:28
Yeah. And so, I mean, the New York Times is a habit from college doing crossword together. And, I mean, it is 40 years of, you know, got to have that-
JV: 43:42
50,50.
JoV: 43:42
I am sorry, 50 years. Got to have that New York Times fix.
IG: 43:45
Yeah. Do you feel that you know the-the answer is obvious to me, but do you feel that you know Harpur College played a key role in kind of opening you up intellectually-
JoV: 44:01
For me yes, definitely. I mean, I, you know, you take the high school courses. You do well, but it is like the broadening, the things that you find out and, you know, there is another whole world out there. I remember Jackie and I took a theater course, which was really, you know, incredible, you know, it is like, wow, this is what it is all about. I took astronomy and geology. I mean, a lot of the Harpur students were biology students and chemistry students. And I said, “Well, I really want to take these other ones” and just, you know, it is like, wow, there is, there are a lot of different things. So today I hear my son, who went to RPI, I mean, almost all his courses were in computer science. And I am thinking a lot of people are linear. You know, be a liberal arts student. There is, there is really nothing wrong with it that makes a human being.
IG: 44:52
I think I-I agree. I agree. And I also think that the theater department here is really top Notch. Did you stay in touch with the campus? Did you continue going, you know, did you go to concerts, to theater productions here together?
JV: 45:11
We kick ourselves that we do not go to more, yeah, but we definitely stay, you know, involved. We have never left. It has, it has been part of our lives. We live, you know, five miles and way in Endicott, and it has just always been, you know, we have been here forever.
JoV: 45:28
We have been part of the Alumni Association since we graduated down now, if Jackie spoke, she was, she spent maybe a year and a half as the director of-
JV: 45:36
Yeah, actually worked. I was, I was president of the Alumni Association.
IG: 45:40
Oh, wow.
JV: 45:41
And then while I was president, the gentleman who was employed by us as the director, got into some kind of-he left. And so, I took over. I took a leave of absence from my teaching and took over as the-the interim director, while they were doing a search.
IG: 46:05
When was that?
JV: 46:06
Andy was just born, so it was (19)80-
JoV: 46:09
(19)82 or (19)83.
JV: 46:10
No, was not he still nursing, I think? Yep, 80- was it (19)81, (19)82?
IG: 46:15
Yeah, but interesting.
JoV: 46:17
For a year?
JV: 46:19
Nine months. It was from January to September. I went back to teaching in September. So, um.
JoV: 46:26
So, our connection to the university has been-
IG: 46:29
It is very deep. Did you- do you think that your-your grounding in liberal arts informed sort of you know your son's well, your son chose computer science. I do not know what he does, but-but do you think that that it was part of his upbringing that you encouraged him to read-
JV: 46:51
He had a dual degree in in social sciences, you know, he-
JoV: 46:55
Psychology.
JV: 46:56
-psychology, he, you know he. I think he likes to think of himself as a renaissance man. Yeah, you know he-
JoV: 47:02
But unfortunately, he has never had a job outside [crosstalk]
JV: 47:06
Yeah, he earns his money one way. But yeah, he is an avid reader. He, which pleases me no end as a reading teacher. I remember. I mean, one of the things that just, I just loved, was he has a very-very close friend. And even in as they left high school and during college, his they would give birthday gifts or Christmas gifts to one another. And they were books, you know, they were not CDs and games. They were books. They would share books. And I am thinking, oh my, we did something, right? You know, like-
JoV: 47:40
The connection to Harpur. I just should add my son's middle name is Harpur.
IG: 47:45
Oh, my goodness.
JoV: 47:46
So, we-we had a tough time agreeing on a first name, and finally we decided, both of us, and it was no objection at all. You know, Andrew Harpur Visser.
IG: 47:46
Oh, wow.
IG: 47:53
That is, that is, that is a huge endorsement of your experience. You know, I do not know there is a better word for it. You know, your love-
JoV: 47:53
So.
JoV: 48:11
Exactly.
IG: 48:13
-for this, for this experience. I am just wondering. You know, this is kind of off of tangent a little bit. But what is illiteracy- you know, what is the illiteracy rate here in Broome County? And do you teach children, young people or adults or everyone?
JV: 48:38
I do not teach the children. I teach the teachers.
IG: 48:41
You teach the teachers, right.
JV: 48:43
What is the illiteracy rate? It is, it is, well, if you think, if you think about the big test that has to be taken in New York State, and you have to pass it, probably, probably about 30 percent of the students are not passing the test.
IG: 48:59
Wow.
JV: 49:00
Yeah, depending on which grade level or, you know, which test you are in, what you are looking for, but that is the test, you know, there is you could not do well on a test, but still, but still be able to function real well. So right now, what is your definition of illiteracy? You know, it is, it is kind of hard to tell I wish one of the things that we all worry about as teachers is not necessarily students’ inability to read. It is students’ reluctance to read. You know, the motivation social being on social media all the time and not finding joy and rewards of books. You know, as a librarian, you probably worry about as well.
IG: 49:46
Yeah, and we have programs, we have literacy both for, I think it is, it is, it is not literacy for reading, but it is literacy in research. In understanding sources in, you know, separating fake news from real news. In technology literacy, so different kinds of literacy that librarians increasingly teach, you know, and that we have, but I will tell you about those programs later. So, you know, I am thinking, you know, we are kind of wrapping up, and I would like to ask you, what are some of the important lessons that you learned from this time in your life at Harpur College?
JoV: 50:40
Really, very difficult to-
JV: 50:44
We grew up. I do not know if it is a lesson, but we just, you know, I remember my 20th birthday thinking, “Oh, my God, I am an adult now. I am 20. It is, it is different. You know, what am I going to do? Where am I going? What is going on with my life?” But by the time we muddled through, you know, graduation and those first years, okay, I can do this. I can, I can. I am capable. I can. I think, I think one of the things I told you I was not a great student, but I was involved in lots of organizations that taught me an awful lot, you know, that-
IG: 51:26
Gave you confidence.
IG: 51:27
It is a special ability, getting people to do what needs to be done, and having them enjoy what they are doing.
JV: 51:27
Right.
JV: 51:27
Gave me confidence, you know, some leadership ability, organizational things, the things you know, my maybe, maybe not my teaching career, but my administrative career. And I was a school administrator for more years than I was a teacher actually. I traced back to-to being on the student center board and figuring out that, you know, we need a contract for the, you know, for the Mitchell Trio guys. And not only do you just sign the contract, but then somebody has to pick them up at the airport, and what are you going to do, you know, all that kind of marshaling people. I was not the leader of it, but understanding, getting to see people do those things, you know, then I could become president of the Alumni Association.
JoV: 51:50
I mean, for me, I think it was in a chaotic time that the university held was stability. It kept things. Was something for me to lean on whenever things got really out of kilter, and this was, this is where I knew I could go back to and-and, you know, retain some sanity or in a crazy world. And, you know, it was, it was not necessarily teaching me something. I mean, we have talked about this previously, but, you know, the moment that, like, we could not think beyond I could not think beyond it. And so, you know, that forced me to concentrate on the university as a place where, you know, it was stable. It was a place where I could always rely on and, you know, whatever, whatever came, whatever was to happen in the future.
IG: 53:12
It was, it was your escape. It was your sort of, you know, zone. No?
JoV: 53:20
It was away from the world [crosstalk]
IG: 53:25
The pressures of the David.
JoV: 53:29
I mean, we were, when we were here, we were fully involved from dawn till dusk. We were there was classes, athletics, playing cards, meeting with friends. I mean, this university was our life really was and, and I remember the first after the first summer I when I decided to work in the Binghamton area during a break, my parents said, "Well, you are sure you are going to be able to handle it up there, you know, because you, you know you are not going to be home,” Yeah. This is, this is, you know, I felt feel bad.
IG: 54:05
It became home.
JoV: 54:06
Yeah, exactly.
JV: 54:07
It became home for both of us, yeah, where we where I grew up, you know, is, you know, it-it was not home very, very quickly. You know, I did not want to go back to Long Island, you know, not that, not that anything bad happened there, but this was where, this is, this was where I grew up. Yeah, I know I became independent and-and we ended up staying in this area. You know, more from inertia than you know certain circumstance than any you know your major decision that said, “You know, we are going to live in in the Binghamton area.”
IG: 54:47
You are drawn to it.
JV: 54:49
Yeah. And now, I mean, we, I could not think of any place else I would want to leave. We, as we get older, and our son is moving someplace away, you know, we are always thinking, oh, well, you know, might we really relocate. But nothing is calling us nobody is- we are not sitting here saying, oh, gee, you know we need to go to North Carolina, or we need to go to Florida, or we need to move to Arizona or something like that. We just do not think that. And so, the university is just part of that circle. It is a big, important part of the circle in which we live.
IG: 55:18
That is very nice. And, you know, one last question I like to ask. What you know, what advice do you have for a student listening to this interview about, you know, planning their lives and-and about the college experience, and sort of, you know, looking to the future and what, what kind of, you know, what are some important qualities for them to own or develop in their future lives, or answer it any way that you like, that you feel, that you have found.
JV: 56:13
I do not know if I this Well, I am now in a position where I am working with students who want to become teachers and administer and school administrators, and it has a real career path to for them, I really feel bad for them that they do not have the opportunity to have the same kind of liberal arts opportunities that we had, but I worry about the issue of student debt. You know, I really, really am concerned. I mean, when people I we had this tiny little they have to take multiple tests and become teachers certified as teacher, and we had these vouchers so that they would not have to pay for these for these tests. And so, we asked students to say, “Why do you deserve this test?” And I just remember one young woman talked about her, you know, $50,000 worth of student debt, and when she when she graduates, she is going to get a job as a teacher, earning $40,000 and, you know, like, what does that mean? We had the luxury. I had a little bit of student debt when I when I graduated, but, but we had the luxury of having our, you know, free tuition, and all you had to do is pay for room and board. And we found an old bill one day, and it was like $400 you know, a semester like- so-so while I want them all to be able to have that, I do not know what I want to be. I am just going to take all the courses I possibly can and learn about the world and life and whatever can you really do you really want to take on all that debt as an art history major and start working in Applebee's, you know, like that is what I worry about right now. So, do I have advice? I do not know what I do.
JoV: 58:10
But then, you know, people go on the other track, and they say they are so directed, they are so mercenary. I am going to take these courses. It is going to become this pays the most, and this will pay for my entire education. And I sometimes feel they have lost the thrust of why they come here in the first place, if your if your curriculum only includes, you know, those three or four categories that you need, or you think you need for your job, because it is going to look great. Well, that is wonderful for your job, but you know, as a human being, you may fall short, but you know, if you want that human experience education, that is a big bill to pay, and obviously you have to balance the two, and I would not want to be in a position to make those decisions. It is just too catastrophic, like Jackie said, you come out of here with, you know, way too much debt that will burn you and taint your whole life thereafter. So, I am not sure what I would advise I would give them, but to think, you know deep and long about where do you want to go, and it is a hard decision to make, but people today have the luxury of time. They do not. They have a gap year. They have two gap years, you know, start at the local community college. The transfer in is, you know, be a little more mature. I mean, we, we did not have that opportunity. I did not have that opportunity, you know, I was 18. You are going to college, end of story, you know. Well, maybe I was not quite ready, I think, well, maybe I was not and I should have taken some time.
JV: 59:47
Yeah, fine, I guess and part of my profession says that we are all lifelong learners, so just realize that college is not the end that you should be. You know, you should continue to whatever your career choice is, understand that you are not done.
IG: 1:00:06
That is that is very good advice. I agree wholeheartedly. Any concluding remarks,
JV: 1:00:13
No, I would be interesting to read some of the other comments.
JoV: 1:00:16
I think you have gotten all you can out of these two old bodies. [laughter]
IG: 1:00:21
Thank you. It is very interesting and very enjoyable. Thank you.
JV: 1:00:26
You are welcome.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Jackie and John Visser
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Visser, Jackie ; Visser, John ; Gashurov, Irene
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Jackie is a lecturer in Education at Binghamton University; John was more of a stay-at-home father.
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2018-11-09
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Jackie and John Visser.mp3
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2018-11-28
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Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni
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60:28 minutes
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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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Date of Interview
9/30/10
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Craig McNamara
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
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Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam War; College protests; Anti-war; Environmentalism; Criticism of war; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties; Activism."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":769,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0}">Vietnam War; College protests; Anti-war; Environmentalism; Criticism of war; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties; Activism.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
3:01:44
Subject LCSH
United States. Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense;
McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009--Interviews
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Craig McNamara is the President and owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified farming operation producing organic walnuts and olive oil. McNamara serves as founder and president of the Center For Land Based Learning,an innovative program, which assists high school students in building greater human and social capital in their communities. He currently is the President of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture. McNamara has a Bachelor's degree in plant and Soil Science from the University of California, Davis."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15171,"3":{"1":1},"4":{"1":2,"2":11791078},"9":0,"11":4,"12":0,"14":{"1":2,"2":5526612},"15":"arial, sans-serif","16":10}">Craig McNamara is the son of Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson administrations. He is the President and owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified farming operation producing organic walnuts and olive oil. He also serves as founder and president of the Center For Land-Based Learning, an innovative program, which assists high school students in building greater human and social capital in their communities. McNamara currently is the President of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture. He has a Bachelor's degree in Plant and Soil Science from the University of California, Davis.</span>
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Craig McNamara
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 30 September 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
CM (00:00:03):
Testing one two.
SM (00:00:06):
Tape recorders. And of course, a lot of this is going to be about you, but it is also a lot on your dad too. You okay now?
CM (00:00:15):
I am ready to go.
SM (00:00:16):
How did you become who you are with respect to talking about your growing up years before you went off to college? What was it like going to high school and those early influences? And of course, you can talk about your dad and mom at this time too.
CM (00:00:34):
Are we focusing a little bit at the end of middle school and on the high school or high school?
SM (00:00:40):
Basically high school.
CM (00:00:44):
My high school was a continuation of Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC, which for me was a remarkable experience because I came from Ann Arbor, Michigan as a 10-year-old and went through the elementary school at Sidwell Friends. I came into the school system with a reading problem, with significant dyslexia problems that at that age, at that time was not really well known. It was a large kind of umbrella that covered many different parts of that learning disorder. So it was a lot of work for me. Getting to high school was a dynamic challenge. Sidwell Friends really did a remarkable job in assisting me and creating an environment that was very supportive. In ninth grade with all the excitement of sport and education and co-education, I was really in tune, and a good friend of mine had left Sidwell Friends at the end of eighth grade. And I said, "Well, where did you go, Frank?" He said, "Well, I went to this place called St. Paul's School." And what I did not realize was that he was prepared for this by his father and probably grandfather and it was the family tradition. He said, "You got to try this. You got to try this." I said, "Well, what is this?" He said, "Well, it is a prep school." I said, "I am really happy here at Sidwell Friends. Got all my friends and sports. He said, "No-no, you got to try it." So, I left Sidwell at the end of ninth grade and went to St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire for the remaining years of high school. It was a definite road not taken for me ever before. It was a very divergent road in my upbringing. My mom and dad had always raised us with a real foundation, I think, of social justice, of appreciation for, I am going to say the common good, the common man, for society. I did not know what I was getting into in this interesting environment that St. Paul's School provided. It was an incredibly challenging academic environment, especially for me. And it was an environment that, to be quite honest myself, I was under-prepared for and overwhelmed by. So what one normally does is learn how to compensate. My compensation was through my communication with people and my endeavors on the athletic field. So those were the areas that I really excelled in and had a very, very difficult time struggling academically there.
SM (00:04:00):
What years were you there?
CM (00:04:02):
Now that is a good question. I think that I began that school in 1965.
SM (00:04:06):
Okay.
CM (00:04:06):
And I move with the years. I was born in (19)50, so in (19)65 I would have been 15 and I graduated from St. Paul's in 1969.
SM (00:04:25):
What was it like growing up as your home base? Because your dad was working for President Kennedy and while your father was Secretary of Defense from (19)61 to (19)67 before he headed off to the World Bank, what was it like? In all these roles that he played, did you feel there was any pressure that your dad was a very... They called him one of the best and the brightest as David Halberstam had written in his book. Did you ever feel that when you had that visible a person as your dad who was very accomplished, that you could not meet his standards and you were trying to, or did you just want to get away to find your own identity?
CM (00:05:18):
You have covered a broad brush of ideas with the suggestions there, so let us look at them one by one. Pressures that a son feels from his father or a child feels from their parents, there cannot be anything more traditional than that. And so yes, of course I really have felt that throughout my life and it is a wonderful realization at certain times in your life when you realize you can appreciate what your parents have done, appreciate the leadership that they have provided in this case to their country, to their families, to their children. But yes, I felt a tremendous struggle that at times I was age-appropriately unaware of. But let me just go back to the first feelings of moving to Washington, DC. You have got to understand, I was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but my whole connection was with nature from riding bikes to making dammed creeks to building tree houses to being out all day long with my mom whistling the special family whistle to let me know that dinner was ready. My life in the (19)50s and early (19)60s was one of edible connection with this dynamic force which ultimately has changed my life, which is nature and food system. So, coming me to Washington, DC was, I was an excited kid. I was 10 years old and slammed a little bit with this learning issue, but I took that instead and my mom worked night and day literally with me. I can remember both of us kind of weeping together over my inability to do homework, but we just kind of did it. But then there was the other side of Washington, which was the new frontier, the Camelot, the excitement of this incredible young president, family, and cabinet. They were called to serve. The cabinet members and their families were called to serve. I have fond memories of things that today are magical. They truly are magic moments that reflect back to your book, that I knew they were special, but I did not know how special they were. Joining President Kennedy at Camp David. Remembering being in the living room study of what seemed like a log cabin. It was a very understated building that the president at that time lived in at Camp David, and seeing him at ease in his rocking chair. Seeing him with his family. I remember attending in the White House, the first showing of PT 109.
SM (00:08:32):
Oh my gosh, Cliff Robertson.
CM (00:08:36):
Sitting on the floor and the president was on I think a chaise or some sort of, me being together with all of the Robert Kennedy family and president's family. It was an easy, wonderful relationship. And taking off from the White House Rose Garden or wherever the helicopters take off from as an 11 or 12-year-old, it was so impressionable, but it was part of life's fabric. I am trying to describe this incredible feeling. I am putting my two hands together because on one hand it was reality and another hand it was far removed from anything that I will ever live again.
SM (00:09:39):
What is interesting, and I can remember reading your dad's book in retrospect, in the sections where he talks about the family, which he did quite often throughout the book, and he mentioned the University of Michigan that you talked about and he wanted to live in a university environment and not in some rich suburb.
CM (00:09:57):
Yeah.
SM (00:09:57):
I thought that was, he really had his head on his shoulders and obviously it was probably very impressionable and important for him with respect to his family. And that is where you got your love for nature.
CM (00:10:08):
It really did. And it's teased out throughout our lives in the sense that in one respect, my dad must have been the first commuter, because Ann Arbor from Dearborn where he worked, I do not know in that day and age how many minutes it was, maybe 45 or 50 or an hour. And so he made that decision to have the intellectual capacity of living in a university town and back to my image here of nature, of living in an area that was not hyper economically oriented. And he would drive home the new models, whether it was the T-Bird or eventually the Edsel or whatever.
SM (00:10:57):
He drove an Edsel home, huh?
CM (00:11:00):
Whatever the new models was and would test drive them. And the other thing that my dad and mom always emphasized was a time for us as a family to be together, and typically being that he truly was a workaholic, it would be on a vacation in the Sierra Mountains because mom and dad grew up in the Bay Area of California and the Sierras were so important to them and to their generation. We would, as a family... Actually part of the family. Dad would be working in Michigan. Mom and my two sisters and I would head out in the summertime in the old station wagon and drive to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada up with their college friends and families, and we would launch a two-week trip, initially pack trip with mules in into the Sierras. These were the most wonderful experiences of my life.
SM (00:12:10):
Wow.
CM (00:12:11):
Campfires and was skating off a snowbank into a crystal clear lake and catching fish. My mom was a tremendous fisherwoman and taught me how to fish and [inaudible] fish.
SM (00:12:32):
She was quite accomplished too.
CM (00:12:34):
She was a remarkable fisherwoman.
SM (00:12:37):
Reading about her and her background. And she passed away in (19)81, I believe?
CM (00:12:42):
She did. She had mesothelioma cancer around the pleura her lungs. It was told to us that she would have an 11-month life and she lived 11 months. But she was one of the greatest sources of inspiration, I think, to my father. She was the greatest source of love and inspiration for me and our family. Just an absolutely down to earth, remarkable human being.
SM (00:13:15):
She was involved with an organization called Reading is Fundamental. I think your sister has been somewhat linked to that too.
CM (00:13:21):
Yeah.
SM (00:13:22):
But it is a nonprofit children's literacy organization. Was that based on the fact of your experiences with her as a young child?
CM (00:13:30):
I think it was three. Certainly it was the experience that she and I shared of how difficult it is for some children. Secondly, coming to the nation's capital and realizing that the literacy rate was so poor and that that was wrong. And thirdly, as my dad felt the story when meeting with President Kennedy said, "Okay," when he brought the cabinet wives together, "Your husbands are going to be under a tremendous amount of pressure and work and I want you to do something meaningful for yourselves and for society." So, it was kind of those three or four things. And I am so proud of my mom. She started this program, Reading is Fundamental, out of a mobile unit, bookmobile that would go around to schools and have school children come on board and pick out a free book, start a library in families where there were no books at home, and that has grown into a global network. It is remarkable.
SM (00:14:37):
Is your sister linked to that in some way?
C
M (00:14:40):
My older sister Margie is on the board of RIF.
SM (00:14:43):
Okay, very good.
CM (00:14:44):
Yeah.
SM (00:14:45):
And I guess President Carter awarded her the Medal of Freedom too.
CM (00:14:48):
He did, which was an outstanding recognition of my mom's dedication to society.
SM (00:15:04):
Getting back to that time when your dad was Secretary of Defense, what memories do you have, wherever you were location-wise, about the people that David Halberstam often describes in his book, The Best and the Brightest? Your dad was part of this group. What are your memories when, and I have got about seven or eight things here that were pretty big during your dad's reign as Secretary of Defense. The inaugural speech of John Kennedy. Where were you and how did that speech influence you in any way?
CM (00:15:40):
Oh, I am so glad that you have brought that up and reminded me of that. That whole experience began for me when dad came home from work one day and said, "Well, what would you think of moving to Washington, DC?" Now, I was 10 years old and I said, "Well Dad, do not worry about that because we are not going to do that. I have got my friends here, we have got the tree house, we have got all of what we so enjoy." And he said, "Well, I have been asked by the president comment to be a part of his cabinet." And the rest of that story is history. Obviously, he went out and I did not. But I do remember my mom and dad had gone to Washington in preparation for the inaugural and my older sisters and I were to fly out to be part of the day that you are mentioning here. It was an icy winter ice storm as I recall, and I was the one in charge of the alarm clock to wake up my sisters. Now remember, they are teenagers and I am 10 years old and I was worried that if I were to wake them up, they're going to get really angry with me for waking them up. So I think we were a little late getting to the airport. Got to Washington, picked up by a limo. Now, this is something I had never even dreamed of, seen one, or certainly had never ridden in. This was very exciting, and I recall being in the audience, looking up at the President, looking up at the cabinet behind him on the Capitol steps, watching Robert Cross and just...
SM (00:17:26):
Wow.
CM (00:17:27):
... being in the palm of something, of God's hands in a very, very special way.
SM (00:17:35):
Wow.
CM (00:17:35):
And then the day, I do not remember how it totally unfolded, but I do remember in the reviewing stand in front of the White House, whatever that was in 1960. I am sure it was very different then than it is today. And I think by that time it was a chilly day, very chilly but the sun shone as I recall. And I remember the cabinet coming past in their cars that were convertibles, I think, open top, and I remember my mom and dad in their car and dad had a... Remind me the name of the hat, the stovepipe hat?
SM (00:18:18):
Oh, Abraham Lincoln stovepipe?
CM (00:18:19):
Abraham Lincoln. And I recall shouting out to my dad, "Dad, you look really great out there." And then they went on. I am looking at my office wall right now because I am looking at a picture of them at one of the inaugural balls that they attended.
SM (00:18:41):
Wow.
CM (00:18:42):
And my dad in a tux and my mom and a ball gown with her gloves and everything. Quite a remarkable...
SM (00:18:53):
Yeah, I think President Kennedy, there is pictures of him wearing that kind of a hat too.
CM (00:18:56):
Oh absolutely.
SM (00:18:57):
Yeah. And of course that was a very cold day. You remember the president was speaking, you see the breath when he was speaking. But it was a great speech. I remember it was a cold day.
CM (00:19:11):
Can you hold one second?
SM (00:19:12):
Yes.
CM (00:19:24):
[speaking Spanish] I work for Harvest, so I get lots of men coming by looking for work.
SM (00:19:35):
A couple of the other events, and you will remember maybe dad talking about it at the table or conversing. The Bay Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, because those are two very big events.
CM (00:19:47):
They are indeed. My memories of those, this wrapped into a much larger part of my life. And that is that, as you can imagine from my earlier comments, dad kept his work very separate from my life. And actually, throughout our lives, because we are talking kind of early right now, 12, 13, 14, but as I became a late teenager and all the way through my life, it was something that dad just chose not to share, not to talk about, not to engage me in. I think it was painful. I think he was trying to be protective. Was it right or wrong on his part? I do not think I can apply that sort of a rationale. Did it ultimately help me? No, it did not. But to get back to specifically your question about the Cuban Missile Crisis, I do recall that much more fervently than The Bay of Pigs. Dad would come home from work, say eight o'clock for dinner. He always sat on the same part of the couch. He would always have his hand on the coffee table to the left where the lamp was. He would typically be reading the paper. And in his hand on the coffee table was this beautiful walnut plaque. And there is some imagery here because I am a walnut grower today. This is a walnut plaque that probably measured four inches by four inches, and on top of the plaque was the most beautiful silver calendar, just a little piece of silver with the month of October, 1962, with the critical dates of the Cuban missile crisis embedded deeper in the silver calendar. And I remember my dad just kind of, his hand would be on that and it was as if it was braille, if the digits of his finger were rereading, re-recognizing the potential devastation of our world, had the United States launched their weapon.
SM (00:22:28):
Wow.
CM (00:22:28):
I have that memory emblazoned in my mind. That stayed with us forever.
SM (00:22:40):
Now that was a scary moment as we all watched President Kennedy on TV that night. And of course we all remember Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. "I am going to wait for your reply until hell freezes over." I will never forget it. I am only a little older than you. A few more here. The Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, obviously in 1964. A lot has been written about that. Your thoughts on that, as well as the protests on college campuses that went throughout the time that he was Secretary of Defense. And of course the big one, there were two at the Pentagon and then the one in 1967 where they levitated, supposedly, the Pentagon. And in the 1965 one, which I am going to come back to later, where the man burned himself to death, just anything really linking to Vietnam.
CM (00:23:42):
Well, let me remind us that I was 14. 1964 [inaudible] maybe 14-year-olds today are a little more worldly and they are global understanding than I was. So those memories are more in retrospect. My reflections on those as I awaken to... My personal awakening occurred closer to 1966, (19)67 I was going to say. There again, I was in Concord, New Hampshire at St. Paul's School and one of my dear friends who was going to be the president of the school had created a teach-in about Vietnam. Now think of this. This is high school, so he was 17. This is Rick King. And he had invited professors, I believe, from the Boston area and maybe from Dartmouth to speak. And I said, "Well, now, wait a minute, Rick." At that point I still said, "There must be a reason that we are in Vietnam." And I remember standing in a phone booth. We do not have phone booths anymore, but I was standing in a phone booth from school and talking with dad. "Dad, there's going to be a teach-in. Is there any material that you can send me to justify the war in Vietnam?" And it just occurred while I am speaking with on the phone why it was that no materials arrived. I think at that point I realized there was no justification for us to be there. It did not dawn on me then, but the materials never arrived. The teach-in occurred, and that was a rite of passage for me. And I remember later on being 19, being in social events in Washington, DC in backyards with friends with houses in Georgetown and the decision-makers. I will put them in one category, decision-makers. My father and other decision-makers saying, "Well, you know, you just have not read enough about this issue. You do not really know what you're talking about." And yet we knew very intuitively and from our small world exposure that the Vietnam War was not [inaudible]
SM (00:26:27):
Yeah, I interviewed Dr. Henry Graff, the former professor at Columbia University, on Monday and he did the Tuesday cabinet book, the Tuesday cabinet meetings where your dad and top people on foreign policy would meet with President Johnson every Tuesday.
CM (00:26:46):
Yes.
SM (00:26:46):
And he had chances to talk to your dad four times, and he talked to him just before he was leaving in (19)67 as well. Johnson gave him full access to the cabinet, and what is interesting is when I talked to him about the gatherings of these people is that it was known early on that McGeorge Bundy, even in his book says he was against the war from the get-go way back in (19)64. And I know that Bill Moyers was against the war himself and he was only there for three years working with President Johnson. And then your dad had misgivings about the war for a long time. And I asked Dr. Graff, here you have Secretary of Defense McNamara. McGeorge Bundy was the special assistant, I forget his full title. And you had his press secretary, Bill Moyers, against the war, yet President Johnson kept going on. And Dr. Graff said, "Well, you have to understand, these men kept their differences behind closed doors and they showed that they were loyal. And that is the kind of people that President Johnson wanted around him."
CM (00:28:01):
Well, that is such an important point that you have brought up, loyalty, because it is something that my dad always referred to. I would ask him on those rare occasions that, particularly after the fact when he was at the World Bank and finally came out with his book, Retrospect. "Dad, why could not you have addressed it? Why could not you have spared yourself and our nation so much anguish, sorrow, and grief?" And he said several things. One is that he was an appointed cabinet minister, that he was not elected. Felt that it was his duty and his loyalty to serve the president in the best capacity that he could. And then I think that there is an evolution in people's thought processes and lives that allow them to come to grace and come to some sort of understanding, and thank God he did. I mean, I do not know many other people in his situation who have publicly and privately said, "I made a mistake and I would like us, I would like myself to learn from this mistake and maybe history can use these lessons that Earl Morris so accurately developed in Fog of War." Which by the way, I think every high school...
SM (00:29:34):
Well, I agree. I have a copy of it. I think it is a classic and I agree with what you say about your dad. Because one of the issues, I was in higher education for almost 30-some years, and very few people are willing to ever admit they make a mistake. And it is a sign of a true leader when they do because they become vulnerable.
CM (00:29:56):
Exactly.
SM (00:29:56):
And then they start questioning, which happened to your dad. " Why did not you do this before you left in 1967?" Here's another criticism of your dad. "Why was it that when you left," and I remember the scene, you actually can see it on YouTube where the president is... The going away ceremony, he was very emotional and he did not really say that because he did not agree with the president. I know he did not. And then some people said, "Well, he went off to Aspen to ski and he was responsible for the deaths of so many people on the wall." So, there is so many perceptions, but you are kind of like you are damned if you do or damned if you do not.
CM (00:30:40):
Well, I think what you say is accurate, and about his welling up and being very emotional and actually very interesting, because from that point on, he probably would never admit this but I think he suffered significantly from a- But I think he suffered significantly from a post-traumatic stress syndrome that, believe it or not, I think I suffered from, too, in the sense that the events of Vietnam were so distraught, disturbing to our nation. And personally, you mentioned the emulation, the person igniting themselves in front of the Pentagon. Those events are so dark, so traumatic. I do not think one ever recovers from them.
SM (00:31:34):
Right.
CM (00:31:38):
And you cannot control them. You cannot control when those emotions... That is a significant damage to one's psyche character. And you cannot suppress that. As good as certain people are, and my father was one of the best at compartmentalizing parts of his life, that went deep into all parts of his life. I do not think for the rest of his life, he could actually do both.
SM (00:32:06):
One of the things that upset so many of the boomer generation, because TV was very important, black and white television and the news, is when your dad gave those weekly reports on the numbers killed. And many believed he was lying, because those reports included dead animals and all the other things just to please the president. But what is interesting, when he wrote, in retrospect... I have two anecdotes. My very first interview, because I started this project way back in (19)96, as it said in my letter there, and I met with Senator McCarthy. And one of the questions during my meeting when Senator Eugene McCarthy was, what do you think of the new book out by Robert McNamara? I have to listen to it again to get the exact quote, but he is a little too late.
CM (00:33:00):
Yeah.
SM (00:33:01):
A little too late, and he was very upset, and he said, "Let us go on the next question". So that was his response. And then, I have pictures at the Vietnam Memorial, because I have been going to the Vietnam Memorial since 1994 for Veterans and Memorial Day to pay my respects. And in about the year that, in retrospect, came out, I will never forget it. There were two copies of... in fact, I can look it up and send it to you on the computer. There were two copies of your dad's book that had bullet holes through it.
CM (00:33:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
SM (00:33:35):
And very bad words underneath the book. So, the feelings were still there. And then, when I go to the wall many times, I do not hear it as much now, but there's three names that always come up that were the bad people. And it if it is the veterans talking, it is Jane Fonda. Who they cannot stand, for obvious reasons, and then, they mentioned your dad and Henry Kissinger. Those three. But then, if it is the anti-war people, it is not Jane Fonda, it is your dad, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.
CM (00:34:13):
Right.
SM (00:34:14):
And they throw a little bit of Agnew in there, but they do not say a whole lot about LBJ because of his great society. So, those are just some anecdotes I wanted to share. Why did you drop out of Stanford?
CM (00:34:27):
Oh, largely because of my disenfranchisement with this remarkable country that I do love tremendously. That was 1971, the winter. And I just realized that having... I mean, I personally lived very close to the man who was Secretary of Defense during the lead up of Vietnam War, that getting back to these wounds, whether you want to call it post-traumatic stress syndrome or whatever, that I needed to rediscover my country. That I needed to reinvest in my country. I needed to reinvest in myself. And the only way I could do that was somehow get a new vision of the beauty, of the strength of our people, of our country. And the way I did that was to begin a journey to South America. And I began that with a few friends. And we traveled through Central America, learning Spanish along the way. And eventually, arriving in Colombia where my two friends decided today that their journey, travel journey was over and mine was not. And I continued on that point all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. Been another year and a half on the road. And the more formidable part of that journey for me was working on [inaudible] farm. Worked with [inaudible] Indians. I worked with Chilean dairy farmers. I worked with egg growers, produce people. I have worked on fishing boats, and I was immersed in something that it completely resonated for me. It was food production. For me, it brought together two worlds that I thought were very divergent at that time. One was the political world that I had somewhat grown-up in. The other was the early world that my parents had shown me, which is that of the garden of [inaudible]. My fondest childhood memories are being with my dad and mom in the garden, with him picking a fresh tomato and putting a little salt on it, taking a big bite, the juice rolling down his cheek. My mom is picking asparagus, cutting roses to bring in to our kitchen table. So those two worlds, the early ones and the mid-ones, the land and the politics to me were married in food production. And I realized after two and a half years on the road, I had no education. I had worked a little bit, but I had no education, and that I wanted to formalize that, and went to UC Davis to study plant and soil types. Knowing in the beginning, that I wanted to come out and eventually farm.
SM (00:38:07):
Wow. What a story.
CM (00:38:09):
Well, it really [inaudible]
SM (00:38:12):
Were your parents worried about you being so far away?
CM (00:38:15):
They must have been absolutely worried, I mean, for many, many reasons. And just let me remind you, I arrived in Santiago, Chile in the early days of September 1971. And that was the anniversary of Salvador Allende being the first elected socialist president in Chile.
SM (00:38:39):
Wow.
CM (00:38:40):
And Dad, being the head of the World Bank at that time, certainly knew of the difficulties that were occurring in Chile, and probably could, in his own mind, forecast what future may... how the future may unfold. I know my mom was very worried about my well-being. Of course, there was no communication. There was... Just in terms of getting mail, with my parents sending a letter to the embassy. That was the only way I could get mail. I think I called them infrequently, maybe every six months, like that. But it is so interesting now to have children who are texting and messaging and emailing and phoning, and the degree of communication today is at different level.
SM (00:39:43):
You know, one of the big things that was in the news around the mid-(19)60s was the fact that Governor Rockefeller's son was, I think, down in Brazil and disappeared.
CM (00:39:56):
He did. I recall that.
SM (00:39:56):
Yeah, that was really big in the news. Of course, he was down there to help people. He was...
CM (00:39:59):
Well, I do not know if you saw the movie, Missing, about the coup in Chile. It is a very powerful movie. And to be quite honest, my story could have been similar to that story.
SM (00:40:18):
Wow. I am going to get back to your work with the farm in a couple of minutes here, but correct me if I am ever repeating anything, because I got a series of questions here. I have an order. I do a lot of thinking before I do my interviews.
CM (00:40:35):
I know you do. I can tell, but I am grateful and appreciate it.
SM (00:40:35):
Yeah. And everyone is different, and some are some general questions...
CM (00:40:40):
Make it fun and interesting and insightful for you and for the person you're interviewing, and potentially, for the people reading the book.
SM (00:40:47):
Yeah. And I want to reach students, and high school students, college students with this, as well as the general public. Because I want people to understand where people come from, and to show a little respect for people who they may agree or disagree with. I do not have a whole lot of tolerance for intolerance at times. I understand that you were against the war, but your dad ran. Did you have any major discussions with him at different times about the war, and your differences? And did he listen? Was there a major generation gap between you and your parents? And how about your two sisters and the parents?
CM (00:41:29):
Well, as I mentioned before, Dad, in certain ways, was a master at compartmentalizing. I think he felt in his own vision as a parent of six kids that he needed, in some way, to protect his son and his children, and he did that by not engaging in conversations.
SM (00:41:51):
Okay.
CM (00:41:52):
About Vietnam. The only time I would glean information on that front would be if I had a friend who was well versed in the topic, and that friend was trying to engage Dad in conversation, that was when I could open the window to some of his thoughts on that. And that continued throughout his life. I think, here is the bottom line, between a father and a son, we never lost love for one another. We never lost respect for one another. And I give my mom tremendous credit for being the conduit of love and communication, because that is a natural way to [inaudible] in so many families. And so many of my peers lost their relationship to their father at that time, and never healed. I have friends coming up to me and say even to my dad's dying day, we never were able to reach that point. What a sad misstep. What was the other part of your question?
SM (00:43:01):
Yeah. Was there any difference between how your dad dealt with you and your two sisters?
CM (00:43:06):
I do not think so.
SM (00:43:07):
Okay.
CM (00:43:08):
My sisters are nine and six years older than I am. Really was quite... They were well off to college and gone as I was growing up. But I know that they did not engage either on that topic. Now, let me get to the issue of did my relationship as son of my father affect his decision making? It would be very egotistical for me to say yes, and yet, I do believe that my choice of life and the direction that I have taken in life very much affected him in fact. I think the fact that my sisters and I had friends who were very involved leading the anti-war movement was insightful and [inaudible] on him. He just did not let it be known. That was the problem.
SM (00:44:07):
We talked about the qualities of admitting... Making mistake and the regrets and so forth. But was there ever a feeling on the part of you or your sisters, or maybe even your mom that, if you have a problem with President Johnson over a policy, just resign?
CM (00:44:30):
Well, I think most our reflections on that afterthought there again, just because the age that I was during the event, I would say absolutely. My father was a man of tremendous integrity. And so I think you or I of this generation would say, well, if you feel differently, then you owe it to yourself, number one to your family, and to the nation, to demonstrate agreement by resigning. And I just cannot put myself in his [inaudible] and choose and know what he felt about them. It goes back to this loyalty, which I think his generation must have at a different parameter and definition than I might.
SM (00:45:27):
Just in your own words, could you please, if someone were to come up to you like a high school student and you walk in and someone were to come up to you and say, who was Robert McNamara? And you would describe your father or the leader, or how would you describe him to someone or particularly a young person? And also how would you describe your mom? Because I think your mom is very important here. She is very important in history and they are a team, in my opinion. I look at this, I see a twosome that became one. That is what marriage is supposed to be about. And just so in, how would you define both of them?
CM (00:46:11):
Well, individually first, right?
SM (00:46:13):
Yes.
CM (00:46:16):
I would respond to the question coming from a high school student or another person about who my father was... Is a very, very bright man. And who truly loved humankind. A man who wanted the best for a globe is deeply divided. The seven years that my father spent as Secretary of Defense determined the rest of his life. Yes, he lived from 1980 to the year 2009, lived another 29 years. Well, actually, the time that he left defense in (19)78, that (19)78, (19)88, (19)98, another 40 years to his life. And during those 40 years, his true ambition for the betterment of mankind and society came forward, advanced. He was able to advance that in such a significant way. And very, very few people in the United States understand that respect. And I think that that is a tragedy, a law. He was defined by Vietnam, and yet his defining moment came during the next forty years.
SM (00:48:23):
I think what you just said is very important, Craig. I will let you continue here in a second. Because as a person who believes in student development and believes in human development, and we tell students in college, or hopefully they learn this, that you are constantly evolving as a human being, and it does not stop until the day you die.
CM (00:48:43):
Exactly. And in the case of a leader, it is our society's nature to pigeonhole them to a time of their lives, of greatness, or of tremendous loss. And he was defined. He has been defined by the latter.
SM (00:49:11):
How about your mom?
CM (00:49:16):
My mom, my dad had said, was one of God's loveliest creature. She had a sparkle in her eye. She had very, very beautiful blue eyes, which... I inherited many things from my mom. My eyes, my name Craig was her maiden name. And I am so honored have my name Craig, be in more of the Latin tradition where the mother also shares her name with the offspring. I am so happy to have the name Craig. And I am so moved and touched by her spirit and her connection to Mother Nature. She gifted that to me. It is something that you were very generous commenting on in your letter and our phone call. That is something that I have explored my whole life. And in terms of the educational program, we currently offer to students across California, it is the foundation. It is my foundation, and it is what I do, my own family. It is what I do for students in California and [inaudible].
SM (00:50:39):
And you lead me right into the question is someone to ask. Who is Robert Craig McNamara?
CM (00:50:51):
Robert Craig McNamara is a reflection of both my parents. And a person who has been moved and affected by the history that I have lived true. So although I did not serve in Vietnam, I certainly have been very affected by it. It is a part of me every day. And my goals have been to really help make this world a better place for the individuals at this point in time.
SM (00:51:54):
Did you feel that when you were in that one year at Stanford and maybe your junior and senior in high school, that any of your fellow students get on you for being the son of the person who was running the Vietnam War?
CM (00:52:07):
Absolutely. It was always on my mind. It was always something that I had to demonstrate. Who I was myself. It was a life-altering pressure on me that I had to find out [inaudible] who I was and be that honest person to myself. And yes, I actually felt that in a certain way, that it was remarkable that people allowed me to be who I was and did not spit on, did not take offense, or become violent, because I know how frustrated I have been over our decision to go to war in Iraq. Our decision go to war today. I know the dark side of feelings against our leaders. So I can imagine how people have felt about me. That I was embodiment of my father, but I am not.
SM (00:53:37):
Right.
CM (00:53:39):
And I want to move this forward for one second. Dad, was asked to come to Berkeley...
SM (00:53:46):
And Craig, could you speak up just a little bit too?
CM (00:53:48):
Yep. Dad was asked to come to UC Berkeley, and I thought it was before the [inaudible] War, but you may help me out here. Maybe more in retrospect. And he came to Zellerbach Hall, which the largest hall in Berkeley. And he said he had never been back to Berkeley, his alma mater, in many, many years. He certainly could not come back during the four years because he would have been protested against. And I think because of his World Bank experience and other experiences, he just had not been back to campus. This was a beloved place for him too. Memories of meeting my mom and being a student at Berkeley. So, he was asked to come to Berkeley to speak on a retrospect for the [inaudible] War, and it was packed. The auditorium was absolutely packed with an audience outside. And I was very fearful for his life. And this was recently, this was within the last 10 years. And I felt very on edge in terms of reading the room, reading the audience, and if there was going to be any violent movement towards him. Which is pretty remarkable for me to feel that at this point in my life or in our life. And to be quite honest, his presence and his participation and his, at that point, transparency and honesty, I think really was received by the audience and was warmly received. They may have totally just not liked, but they appreciated the moment.
SM (00:55:46):
Yeah. Well I know Bobby Muller and Bobby Muller was on several panels with your dad over the last 10 years, I believe. And here's a man who came back from Vietnam, very disenchanted. And Bobby was one of the people that said when he came back, he realized that Vietnam or excuse me, that America is not always the good guy. Yet he could be on the stage with your dad. And I know he respected your dad. So that says a lot when Bobby can say really nice things about some of the things that happened to him during that time period.
CM (00:56:22):
This is Bobby Muller?
SM (00:56:23):
Yeah, Bobby Muller.
CM (00:56:24):
And did he serve in Vietnam?
SM (00:56:26):
Yeah. He was the founder of Vietnam Veterans of America. And I believe if you go into YouTube you will see your dad being interviewed by that professor. It is a show that they had and it's a tremendous interview. It is an hour and 10 minutes.
CM (00:56:47):
That is a great one. Do you remember the year of that?
SM (00:56:50):
It had to be the time that he went probably for this speech, because he talked about in retrospect, he was not there-
CM (00:56:56):
It was retrospect.
SM (00:56:59):
Yeah. It was not for [inaudible] War. I would like your comments here. I am up to this point where after Norman Morrison, a Quaker father of three, burned himself only 40 feet from your dad's window at the Pentagon on November 2nd of (19)65. Your dad states in the book, and this is very important. I knew Marge, is it Marge?
CM (00:57:19):
Margie.
SM (00:57:20):
Margie. "I knew Margie and our three children shared many of Morrison's feelings about the war, as did the wives and children of several of my cabinet colleagues. And I believed, I understood, and shared some of his thoughts." I cannot read my writing here. "This was much more Marge and I and the children should have talked about. Yet at moments like this, I often turned inward. Instead, it was a grave weakness. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as dissent and criticism of the war continued to grow."
CM (00:58:10):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
SM (00:58:14):
And that was in the mid-(19)90s when he wrote in retrospect. Or early (19)90s.
CM (00:58:23):
So the touching and reflection there is that he held that inside for all those years. If he could have brought that forward in a memoir earlier, I think it would have provided some healing for our nation. Not a mea culpa that is gone, but it would have... When you let something fester for 25 years, it is just insurmountable. I am proud of him for coming to that point in his life. And I wished for all of us, for me, for our nation, for the Vietnamese, for the men and women of the United States that died and served. For everybody who was touched globally by Vietnam, I wish my father had been able.
SM (00:59:23):
Right. Hold on one second. When you were at UC Davis back in (19)76, obviously you had not been in college since (19)69, did you notice a big difference in the types of students that were there as opposed to the ones at Stanford in (19)69?
CM (00:59:49):
Yes, I did. One of my thoughts... I am trying to remember this one thought that I think I felt that Davis was... I better not say that. I thought that it was very diverse ethnically, but I am a little [inaudible]. Let us not... When I came back, I was very directed at age 24. I knew going in what I wanted to achieve, what degree, and what my career goals were. So that was very well-defined for me. I must admit, my experience at Stanford was a very dynamic fighting one, but incredibly challenging because of the student activities against the war. So that permeated everything I did. I also, in the one thing I very much enjoyed about campus was just looking at a whole educational opportunity. So I immediately looked into theater, literature, just enjoyed in developing myself in things that, in academia and extracurriculars that were very dynamic for me. So that was very different. And [inaudible], I studied two years straight.
SM (01:01:40):
But students were probably since (19)76, they changed a lot too. They were not as activists.
CM (01:01:41):
And I think that is quite true. One of the things that was starting then, that was very formidable for me is that the food movement was just in its infancy when I went to Davis. So many of us who were on the edge and... Who were kind of on the edge and helped create a new vision for our food society. Were they're studying the beginnings of sustainable agriculture. We did not even have that word. And what I remind myself and others, particularly sometimes I have the opportunity to get guest lecture at Berkeley, UC Davis and other places. I remind our colleagues, our students, that these changes that we are enjoying today started 25 and 30 years ago. And so, the fact that we now have CSA Phoenix [inaudible], so now that we have farmer's markets and abundance, that we have incredible writers like Michael Fallon and visionaries like Alice Waters. It's taken us a quarter of a century to get to where we are today. And we mustn't forget that because going to take us another period upon to advance to the next phase.
SM (01:03:06):
How important was Earth Day to you? Because you left in (19)69 and then you were down in, well, in one of the South American countries. But were you aware of what was going on up here in 1970, on April 22? And well, how important was that to you personally?
CM (01:03:25):
When Vietnam was ending or what?
SM (01:03:26):
No, this was Earth.
CM (01:03:28):
Earth Day? I am sorry.
SM (01:03:29):
Yeah, because Gaylord Nelson was the Senator who was pushing, you worked with Dennis Haynes, but it was Gaylord, Senator Nelson that was really the leader on this.
CM (01:03:39):
Right. So, the first Earth Day was April of (19)70...
SM (01:03:41):
1970, April 22.
CM (01:03:44):
Yeah, 1970. So, I was still here in this country. But very formidable. I think where I lost some of the chronology is when I was actually out of the country. Quite a, tens of thousands of miles away and many worlds apart. So, from (19)71 to (197)3, I was more immersed in South American politics society than I was in US or global.
SM (01:04:18):
Right. And I know that Pia Nelson, which is Gaylord's daughter. Is very big in the environmental movement in Wisconsin. I do not know if you have ever met her?
CM (01:04:28):
I have not, but I know of her name.
SM (01:04:31):
Yeah, she is. I interviewed her and of course I just had the celebration. And then Robert Kennedy Jr. I think has been very involved too.
CM (01:04:38):
Very involved. My experience in Washington in those early years, was a very close friendship with the Robert Kennedy family, and a lot of time spent together in Hickory Hill with the Kennedys. With Bobby and Ethel and Kathleen and Joe. Bobby at that point was just a few years younger than I was. But he is such an incredible national spokesman and leader. I so appreciate his vision and follow.
SM (01:05:13):
Yeah, he has left a legacy with his kids. They are all doing great things. Now I am into the section that, I know you are going to enjoy, and that is talking about Sierra Orchards and some of the work you have done since (19)76. Could you talk a little bit about your dreams when you purchased the land that you now oversee? Because from what I have read, is you did a trip around the country first. See if you can find the best spot.
CM (01:05:40):
That I said.
SM (01:05:40):
And then you came back to your home area, basically, or near your home area.
CM (01:05:45):
My adopted home. But I had been here, I find myself that I arrived in [inaudible] without anything. I think I had a backpack, no bicycle, no car, no living space. And set a foot to knock on doors to find, in a college town, to find a place to live. Obviously, I did and bought a used bike. And that is how I made my rounds. I became, while I was studying, I became a beekeeper. And so I would carry wood from the lumber yard out to the house and make beehives and carry on there. So the question is my vision, once I started Sierra Orchard?
SM (01:06:31):
Yes.
CM (01:06:34):
Knowing as I did, from this journey to Latin America. Working on veggie farms, getting a little bit of an education. When I realized, that the inclusion of that was that I needed several things. Ultimately a farm, and more importantly, to learn how to farm. And so when I finished up, I had a little Datsun pickup truck and a soil auger. That is the device where you drill down into the soil to see how mother nature has created this incredible living environment. The beginning of everything. I drove across the United States in a zig pattern, stopping off at farms Colorado, [inaudible], Arkansas and back east. I realized that the best environment for me would be right where I had come from. Very soiled, by the water, the markets, the population, future. And I did that. But then there was that other ingredient that I needed, which was the experience. I thank God, I met the most incredible mentor of my life Chun Laing, Chinese farmer. And he took me under his wing in a large commercial operation, and I worked with Chun and for Chun for three years. And started a produce stand, did direct marketing, grew [inaudible] melons, shipped them back east. Suffered all the ups and downs of a young farmer. And decided at the conclusion of that, that truck farming, which is vegetables, [inaudible], et cetera. Was not for me. I needed a crop that had lesser perishability, that I would have more control over in the marketplace. One harvest and walnut fit all of that criteria. So in 1980, together with the help of my father, we bought what is today, Sierra Orchards. The name comes from the fact that I stand on the edge of the field and look to the east, see those beautiful mountains, Sierra mountains. That mom and dad and sisters and my friends used to hike in when I was six years old, eight years old. So, I also realized early, in that process, that I am just a steward of this plant. That it too shall, as it has turned over in second generations, but I too will pass it on. So, my goal was to be as sustainable at food as I could be. I started off as a conventional grower, which means I used the grow seed of petrochemical based materials to insecticide or herbicide. And about 10 years into our farming operation, transitioned to organic. But I always remind myself and others, who might listen. That I do believe in organics, but I believe it is a smaller piece of a much larger, complex fabric. And that fabric, I will call sustainable agriculture. That is the direction, our nation needs to go in and our world. Agricultural food production needs to go in.
SM (01:10:02):
In a sense, you have taken some of the qualities that your dad had, the quality of service to one's nation, and he did it as a politician in Washington and in other capacities. And you have done it in the environment by serving, by creating healthy foods. And one thing I noticed in reading about your background, these things stand out. Producing healthy foods, sustaining the environment or respect for the environment we live in. And then of course teaching the next generation these same qualities.
CM (01:10:37):
Well, thank you for saying that. I really appreciate that. And that is, I would say, the substance of my life. And there was a motto that many of us have grown up with, and that is 'those who have been given, much as expected.'
SM (01:10:54):
Yes.
CM (01:10:55):
I would change that motto a little bit, because I think that may have fit (19)40s and (19)50s, maybe early (19)60s. I think today what we need to recognize is, we all need to bring each other up and bring the best out of our brothers [inaudible] today. That is my goal, because I have been given a lot, therefore, I have to give a lot. Yeah, I think that is one side. I get a lot, I get a huge amount from the work that I have engaged in. With students and professionals in the state of California. It's just a tremendous conduit of moving forward together. That is my goal. Not that I have anything particularly unique or special to impart, other than by bringing us together to do the best job environmentally for our state, for our country.
SM (01:12:01):
Well, your mom and dad, your mom would definitely be very proud of you. And your dad obviously saw this, and that is the Farms program. If I am a college administrator and I had experienced just taking students to different places. If I was working at UC Davis, I would be coming to your place every year.
CM (01:12:20):
Oh, thank you.
SM (01:12:20):
Yeah, no, because you are exactly what we are talking about here. And could you talk about how, I think your wife has involved in this too, the Farms program. Explain how you had this hands-on experience for high school students and kind of the impact that this has had on many of them, as they have gone on with their lives.
CM (01:12:37):
Absolutely. Well, now thank you for mentioning that Farms was our flagship program that Julie and I started way back when, in nineteen ninety four-ish, I believe, or earlier. We would bring students out to the farm and feed them. My wife is an entomologist, that is insects. So she did a great job in engaging students with integrated best management. And the wonders of how, as a food producer, we can be in balance with nature. And there really truly is a long tradition, hundreds of years old, maybe thousands old. Of how we can get our natural environment in sync. So, that has just been one of the greatest enjoyable parts of our lives, together as the man and wife. And parents raising children.
SM (01:13:41):
And you are also, you like being called a farmer.
CM (01:13:45):
I love it. When it comes time to fill out that tax form, farmer. Because to me, it resonates back to that point that I made earlier, farming is political. Food security is the most important single issue facing every man, wife, and child in this globe. And it pains me tremendously to know that as a globe, we are suffering every day from malnutrition and in a globe where we have the ability to provide. And I am going to jump forward to another mentor and a person who I think has been a guiding light. And that is Michael Paulin. And Michael has said many remarkable things, but one very simple one is he says, "Vote with your fork." And what he means by that is, if you are in charge of making policy decisions. Buy what you choose to buy and what you choose to eat. Now that gets really complicated because you could say, "Oh, well, some people might say that organic foods or healthier food is more expensive." I do not think so. My wife and I cook fresh foods every night. And yes, we buy organic, but we also spend the time doing the food preparation. It does not matter whether it is an organic carrot or a sustainably grown carrot. Taking that time to eat healthy fresh food. I believe, apparently, that all of us can do that.
SM (01:15:31):
Yeah, you just got to have the willpower.
CM (01:15:35):
I think it is wherewithal and the willpower. Yeah.
SM (01:15:38):
Yeah. You also received a very prestigious award, and I will not read what they said on the award, but you won the Leopold Conservation Award. And of course, Also Leopold and I took students to meet Taylor Nelson for the first time in Washington, and at the very end of our session. One of the students asked, "Well, who did you look up to? And who do you suggest we ought to read?" And he said, "Aldo Leopold."
CM (01:16:05):
Ah, that is good.
SM (01:16:07):
And of course he went on to talk about overpopulation, which was something that he thought the world has forgotten in his plea to help the environment. But that must have been quite an honor? You got that in 2007.
CM (01:16:20):
It was a tremendous honor, and I want to just share that honor with all of our family and farm workers and staff at the Center for Land-Based Food Learning. Who helped create that environment to win that award. There's no one award goes to one person. It just has taken so many people engaged in that. And I have a funny little recent vignette. Our youngest member of our family, Emily, has just started up college and she was very excited. She has taken a course in environmental study. So, I got this text message, not a phone call, but a text message that you will not believe. We were reading this work by an incredible nationalist. I know you have never heard of him. His name is Aldo Leopold. So I texted her back and said, "Oh my God, you were right." You have discovered something absolutely remarkable. Now, you may not have known or remembered, but I did receive the Aldo Leopold Award. So, the beauty is you bring these people into the world and then they discover. So, she is in this wonderful discovery phase of her life that there is nothing sweeter than that. Nothing better.
SM (01:17:45):
Is that the one at Brown?
CM (01:17:46):
She is at Brown, yeah.
SM (01:17:47):
Well, that is a great school. I got some general questions here. Now, these are just some questions I have asked a lot of the people that I have interviewed. The Boomer generation is often, and that we see it today, is often attacked as the generation that curated all the problems in our society today. I know in 1994, when Newt Gingrich came into power, he made commentaries about the period of the (19)60s, the (19)60s generation. And we certainly see a lot on Fox today. [inaudible 01:18:20] Governor Huckabee oftentimes says it. I know when John McCain was running for President, he made some comments about Hillary. Even though they were close friends, she was from the (19)60s, kind of in a negative way. But the question is this, the generation, many people are on the right or conservatives. Are saying that the generation are just responsible for the drug culture, the sexual freedoms, the breakup of the family, the divorce rate, the lessening of the influence of religion and God in their lives. Of course, they talk about rock and roll music along here, disrespect for authority, support for the welfare state, anything they can in that period, that created an ambience that has continued and gone on to be negative. But what are your thoughts when you hear that?
CM (01:19:15):
Well, let me just delve into what you have just said. So, are you saying that those people who are critical are not part of the Baby Boomer generation?
SM (01:19:29):
Oh, no. Some of them are.
CM (01:19:30):
That is my point.
SM (01:19:33):
Some of them are, and of course some are more recent [inaudible] cultures of the world.
CM (01:19:37):
Okay. But there is a huge section that we are all together in that.
SM (01:19:43):
Yes.
CM (01:19:44):
Just a minute. This is us. If you are criticizing, you are criticizing something that you were part of. And so help bring us together. If we are polarized and we are so polarized in this nation. What is it that is going to take us to come together? I continue to believe that diversity is our greatest gift. That by having diversity of ethnic backgrounds and diversity of belief, that is our greatest gift. If it severs us, then we have not achieved, then we have not been successful. So, let us move forward and maybe move to the side of the agenda. Some of the things that have polarized us in the past, and let us just put them in a parking lot. Take some time out, take gun control, maybe even some very, very significant issues that you and I and others feel so fervently about. Write to light, maybe let us just take that issue and put it to the side and look at other issues like food security, malnutrition, war across the world. And try to solve some of these incredibly complex issues. That potentially will tear this world apart, not just the United States.
SM (01:21:13):
It's as if that, and this is, I have seen it all throughout-throughout my years in the university, too. That John Kerry ran for President in 19-, excuse me, 2004. Okay. It is the (19)60s all over again. The divisions over the Vietnam War, those that said he lied about his war record and all the other things.
CM (01:21:32):
That to me is a tragedy. We are so mired in that, and maybe that is the origin of your question. But if it is the origin, and if there is some truth to that, stand up, take us... Let us say we are all participating. We are all contributed to that. So, I had a position to counter someone else back in 1968. For crying out loud, it is time to move on. Why is that such, why is that dividing us today? Maybe that is the answer to your question.
SM (01:22:07):
Yeah. And it is also, you cannot even use the word Vietnam or quagmire because if you use those two words, they immediately think of Vietnam. And of course, we all went through when Reagan became President. And we are back and we're going to bring back the (19)50s kind of mentality again. And then you had Ron, President Bush the first saying that the Vietnam syndrome is over. And well, what is the syndrome? It is like, cannot get over it. And even as President Obama, he tries to separate himself from the (19)60s, yet his opponents say he is the epitome of the (19)60s. It has returned. So it keeps going. And I think you have raised some good points.
CM (01:22:51):
Part of it is, why are people so mean-spirited right now? Why is it? I mean, certainly throughout history, we have had leaders, politicians, religious leaders, et cetera. Who have been mean spirited. But why is it to the degree that it is today? And I do not have that answer, but I look for it.
SM (01:23:23):
Yeah. I think we got to look for the better, betterness. The better of all of us or better souls, so to speak. When did the (19)60s begin? In your opinion. And when did it end?
CM (01:23:38):
When did it begin in my life? Or when did...
SM (01:23:41):
In your opinion, when, just your thoughts. When do you think the (19)60s began and when do you think it ended?
CM (01:23:49):
I mean, do you want a feeling? Do you want a date?
SM (01:23:54):
It could be anything. People have responded in so many different ways from specific events to...
CM (01:24:00):
I got to say, it is funny you mentioned this. I first remember hearing the Rolling Stones, I cannot get no satisfaction. I think the (19)60s started me when I heard that song.
SM (01:24:13):
Okay. That was a great song.
CM (01:24:15):
A great song. I do not know what year that hit, but I was probably...
SM (01:24:20):
(19)67.
CM (01:24:20):
(19)67?
SM (01:24:27):
Yeah. It was (19)66, (19)67, because my mom used to watch As The World Turns. And they were playing that song in the background on As The World Turns. Then I remember saying, "Oh my God, now the Rolling Stones have gone mainstream."
CM (01:24:45):
Well, now that, so maybe that is not. Maybe the (19)60s started a lot earlier than the that.
SM (01:25:04):
Just your opinion.
CM (01:25:04):
Yeah. And when did the (19)60s end? I would say the (19)60s ended with the death of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
SM (01:25:16):
In (19)68? Yeah.
CM (01:25:19):
I am going to tell you, when the (19)60s began, it is interesting. I just reflected on it. I have these downers, but I think the (19)60s began when President Kennedy was killed.
SM (01:25:24):
(19)63.
CM (01:25:42):
I think that is when the (19)60s began. And I think, and they ended when Martin Luther and Bobby... And I hate to bookend that by those deaths. I am not a dark person.
SM (01:25:49):
Would that be the watershed moment?
CM (01:25:51):
[inaudible].
SM (01:25:52):
Would that be your watershed moment, too?
CM (01:25:59):
To be quite honest. I think what we are talking about, my biggest watershed moment was when my dad resigned to take care of himself.
SM (01:26:08):
Okay.
CM (01:26:09):
I actually, physically remember a crowd moving out of my mind, out of my body. Remember a dark, moving from...
SM (01:26:27):
Were you in the room when he did make an announcement or were you, saw it on TV?
CM (01:26:35):
I am pretty sure I was out of, not in.
SM (01:26:45):
And in 1963 with the assassination, where were you when you first heard it?
CM (01:26:51):
I knew exactly where I was. I was, we were at a friend’s school and, was it? It was a Friday? Was not it?
SM (01:27:00):
Yes, it was. November 22, was a Friday.
CM (01:27:02):
Yeah. We were going to have our first [inaudible 01:27:07]. Does that sound like something out of the (19)60s?
SM (01:27:07):
Yeah.
CM (01:27:12):
[inaudible]. I was very, very excited. I was always on the dance committee or on the civic. I was very excited about this event. And I think the principal may have called me to the office, prior to announcing it over the PA system. And I just was seven, six. We all were, and that began, I remember my mom picking me up and taking me home. And we had this wonderful golden retriever, who was my dog. And we just lied in bed. And then, that night we loaded into the Galaxy car and drove out to the NIH. Where the, because my dad received Kennedy, and the body well... The autopsy was going on, I was in the car waiting outside, that night.
SM (01:28:14):
Oh my gosh. That is when the plane came back from Dallas with president or Vice President Johnson and now President Johnson.
CM (01:28:23):
That is right.
SM (01:28:25):
That was must have been trying, and most people watched it on TV. But you were probably at the events, were not you?
CM (01:28:30):
I was right there, at the hospital. As I said, in the darkness, in the car. My mom was there at my dad's side.
SM (01:28:40):
Wow. And did you go to the Rotunda?
CM (01:28:44):
I did, yes. And then of course, to the grave site.
SM (01:28:45):
Were you with the people that walked from downtown to the Arlington?
CM (01:29:02):
I do not think I was involved in that.
SM (01:29:05):
As a young boy. I am getting into this because it is a very, you are the only person I really interviewed that had the experience of being this close to this particular event. When you were at the site at Arlington, it was on TV, everybody saw it. But what went through your mind? How old were you? You were only...
CM (01:29:26):
13.
SM (01:29:28):
What is going through the mind of a 13 year old that his dad's boss? Because you are probably thinking that your dad's boss, has just been murdered, in Dallas. What is going through your mind?
CM (01:29:46):
I think quite honestly, I probably may have been seen it more through his reflections than my own. Because we had, in my lifetime, I had never experienced that. I had never experienced a violent death. I had never experienced the present in that fashion, and it was absolutely unfathomable. So, to see the sadness overcome my mom and dad. And particularly my dad, because he was in the limelight. He was so involved, picking out grave sites. And I mean, with the family, he was very close to those. To the Jack's family and the President's, and to Robert Kennedy's family. So, I think it was just the towns' grief, that had no bottom to it.
SM (01:30:48):
If you were to look at the generation, the Boomers. Do you like the term Boomer?
CM (01:31:02):
Interestingly enough, I am a person who has many opinions and I am happy to share them. I am not sure I have an opinion about it.
SM (01:31:10):
That is okay.
CM (01:31:11):
I am not sure I have an opinion about whether it is just something that I have grown up with. I just, I must admit I accept it.
SM (01:31:17):
I had one person who I interviewed, he said, "If you mentioned Boomer one more time, the interview's over."
CM (01:31:26):
He was clearly, worked up about it.
SM (01:31:27):
Yeah, because he was a little older than the Boomers.
CM (01:31:30):
It is one way or the other. I mean, maybe because... And this would totally be an inaccuracy, but the thought of as elitist, it cannot be. Because that gets back to my point of we are the Boomers. How many of us are there?
SM (01:31:48):
There is 74 million.
CM (01:31:50):
Okay. So if you're a Boomer, take responsibility for yourself. Take responsibility for our society, and take responsibility for the good and the bad and decisions that we have made.
SM (01:32:06):
You are right. And I had one person that mentioned to me that he thought Boomers were white men or maybe white women, and that the people of color were not included. I said, "Oh, no, boomers are everybody who was born in that period and were American." I do not even...
CM (01:32:19):
That is my point.
SM (01:32:20):
I have been dealing, been interviewing three Asian American scholars. Because you do not hear much about Asian Americans during this period. So, when you look at this generation, are there some qualities or characteristics that you like and dislike? I know you cannot generalize about a whole generation because there's 74 million.
CM (01:32:39):
I think we are very thoughtful. I think that we are [inaudible]. I think that by and large, we want the best for our society and for our global society. I think we have very strong values, and somehow, we have allowed. Now we have allowed a divisive to come in for our world and we have got to take that back. And we probably are, I say every day that it's the next generation will be this. And they certainly will. But you know what? It's our responsibility to heal. To heal our society, to kill what is wrong with our world things and just rely on ourselves.
SM (01:33:41):
Many within the generation felt that they were the most unique generation American history when they were young because they were going to end war-
CM (01:33:48):
I think we are-
SM (01:33:50):
... racism, sexism. Your thoughts on those people that may have thought that they were unique.
CM (01:33:56):
Well, I am not going to pass judgment on people who thought they were unique. I would just caution us to look at before and after generations. I think our parents' generation, credibly had the wherewithal to survive tremendous difficulties because they were all very aware of. And I think this generation of young people is remarkably all their talents and some of their downsides. As a parent, I think some of us have raised a bit of an entitled generation that is not going to serve us and I do not think will serve them well. They will come to grips with it.
SM (01:34:47):
Yeah. We talked earlier about the generation gap between parents and children and we have discussed that. But in a book called The Wounded Generation, that came out in 1980, in a panel discussion, a symposium with five major Vietnam veterans and one of them being Bobby Mueller and Phil Caputo, who wrote the Rumor of War-
CM (01:35:10):
I know Phil well.
SM (01:35:11):
... yeah, and then the Senator of Virginia now, Jim Webb and a couple others. They talked about a lot of different issues and one of them was about the generation gap in service. And I think it was Senator Webb, but he was not senator then, of course, and he made a comment that he felt that the generation gap really was between those who went to war and those who did not. He said yeah, there was the gap between parents and children, but-
CM (01:35:46):
He was good.
SM (01:35:46):
... he said there were those who went to war and there were those who did not and so, within the generation, there was a generation gap. And he felt very strongly about that. And he went so far as to say, we look at the (19)60s generation with President Kennedy and the Peace Corps and Vista and all these service ideas, but he says, it really is not the service generation because they would have all gone to war if they were the service generation, when their nation called. Give your thoughts on that.
CM (01:36:19):
Well, I must agree with him in terms of this sub-gap, and I think that is well defined by those who serve in war and those who did not, and if they served in conscientious objector roles, or left the country, or served in other capacities. Yeah, I am not sure I have a lot more to add.
SM (01:36:53):
The two qualities here that had really mentioned to every single person starting with Senator McCarthy in 1996, was the equality within this generation that they just did not trust, because in most cases they had witnessed so many leaders lying to them. People that were observant and in the know that President Eisenhower lied to the American public when he said that the U2 was not a spy plane and it was.
CM (01:37:28):
Yeah.
SM (01:37:29):
The Gulf of Tonkin with President Johnson, history has shown that that was not really a truthful beginning of a war. And we had people like Senator Morris and others challenging the president right from the get-go. We had Watergate with Richard Nixon. We had so many leaders that students, at this time, just did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility, whether they were a religious leader, a corporate leader, a university leader, a political leader. Do you feel that that quality, that is often labeled within this generation, is a plus or a negative?
CM (01:38:08):
Well, let us talk about why it is that way first. Then let us apply a plus or negative. One of the reasons it is that way is because of the technology of the time in the media. We had never, correct me if I am wrong, experienced a way of communicating with each other that would get that word out. And of course, today you look at our ability through all of our social networking is hugely more engaged in that way. But were not we one of the first generations, and was not Vietnam one of the first occasions where we had information, right, wrong or indifferent, that we as a generation could determine whether it was truthful or not? And so that gave us the substrate or that gave us the foundation or the infrastructure to then make a judgment and I think that is what you are moving towards. We may have been in a unique position. I am not saying that our generation of boomers is any more unique than other generations, but we had a unique opportunity to view things. And yes, I think we did challenge. And I think that we did develop a significant amount of mistrust. Was that a plus or a minus? I harken back to this, "It does not really matter, the fact is we are living with it." So, I am a much more engaged person in terms of... I want to attempt to understand history so that I change our future course, but I want us to engage and make a difference today. So, I am less prone to say it was a plus or a minus, and I would rather say, "Come on. Let us get going. Let us get going in community gardens. Let us get going in getting people out of prison. Let us get going in improving society rather than being divisive."
SM (01:40:23):
Excellent response. The other one was in the issue of healing. I took a group of students that are your daughter's age, back in 1995, to Washington DC, to meet Senator Edmond Musky. We spent two hours with him and our Leadership On The Road programs. And the students came up with the questions, because they had seen videos of 1968 and all the divisions in America at that time and they knew that he was the vice-presidential running lead. And I interviewed Fred Harris and I did not know that it was between him, Fred Harris, and Edmond Musky and it was decided, right there in Chicago. But the point I am trying to get at here is that they saw the divisions, and so they came up with a question. They wanted Senator Musky to respond. And this was the question, "Due to the tremendous divisions that took part in America in the 1960s, the 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 or against the troops, do you feel that all these extreme divisions, including the burnings of the cities..." They went on and on and on about all the negative stuff, the assassinations of President Kennedy and then the two that were killed in 1968. "Do you feel that the boomer generation, like the Civil War generation will go to its grave not healing? They will be bitter?" And we are not talking about everybody now, but those that were involved in all these movements and the divisions and the battles that were fought, that the boomer generation has an issue with healing?
CM (01:42:16):
No, I do not feel that we will go to our grave divided. I mean there is so many layers. You have asked very good questions. All your questions are good, but the final one, because it has to do with our sense of the future, if we cannot depend on it, but you're talking about internally, as a boomer generation.
SM (01:42:47):
Some people thought I should have paraphrased this by those who went to Vietnam, the three plus million who served and those who were in the anti-war movement. Some people say, if you really ask that question that way, then that might be a different answer, but-
CM (01:43:02):
I hope I am not naive on answering the question. I do not believe that that we will remain divide upon. I hope that is the case. I feel a tremendous sense of grief and loss over how our men were received when they came back from Vietnam. I think that is a stain on our national wellbeing and I have worked in my own personal life to understand that and to heal as best I can, and so-
SM (01:43:52):
Do you think your dad healed?
CM (01:43:57):
No, I do not think he healed. No, I think he was alone.
SM (01:44:00):
If he was an individual, it might be a person by person response to that question.
CM (01:44:05):
No, I do not think that he ever recovered from that. As hard as he worked to improve the lives of men and women and children around the world, he visited every country and every leader. And he went to many school sites and agricultural sites, attempting to bring prosperity to folks. I do not-
SM (01:44:40):
You have been to the wall in Washington?
CM (01:44:42):
I have.
SM (01:44:43):
I would like your response when you first saw it, thinking of all the things that may have come to your mind. And Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal A Nation, and honestly, the wall was built to heal the families that lost loved ones in the war and to heal the Vietnam veterans and their families who went through so much. And it was to be a non-political entity. That was their goal and so forth. But he also said in the book that he hoped that it would heal the nation too, even beyond the veterans, and be kind of a first step. First off, what's your first reaction when you saw the wall for the first time and your thoughts on whether it has played any part in healing the nation that Jan was talking?
CM (01:45:38):
Well, I must say, very honestly, that a few years ago, I could not have had this conversation with you, because of what I mentioned to you. Just whether one calls it post-traumatic stress, whether one calls it the deep wound scars of Vietnam, I too have been scarred by them, and I say that humbly, because I did not fight in it. But I do think that in our lives that we are scarred by events because of the various roles and actions that we have taken or not taken or have been taken by someone close to us. So, I have experienced a cathartic experience with a very important group in my life, that included a Vietnam vet that I very much respect. And for me that was, I am not sure healing is the right word necessarily, but catharsis is, so it was an evolution. It was a time when I could reveal and dig very deep into those ones that I have played. Therefore, it has helped me heal, because literally I would weep in this conversation had I not had that experience. So back to your question about the wall. My first experience at the wall was prior to this catharsis, and it was the total breaking down for me of experience. And I happened to be there I think, at twilight or in the evening, so it was very alone, very humbling. But I do. Moving towards what Jan Scruggs was saying, as a healing experience for our nation, I hope it is. I hope the true anger and our own personal experiences, we can move forward.
SM (01:47:55):
Do you know when your dad went there for the first time?
CM (01:47:58):
No, I do not. There is all sorts of stories relating to that and his first visit. I do not know if you have read Paul Hendrickson's work?
SM (01:48:12):
Yes, I did. I interviewed him for my book.
CM (01:48:14):
Oh, you did?
SM (01:48:15):
Yeah.
CM (01:48:20):
I have had an interesting experience with Paul, when he started his book, Dad called all of his friends and acquaintances to, " Please cooperate to the degree that you would like with this author. I give my go ahead." And I think as Paul's documents and manuscript matured, Dad realized it was something that he no longer wanted to cooperate with. And Paul had been out to our home here in California and stayed with my wife and I, as he was doing his investigative work. And of any author, I think the amount of research that he did on the family and the root of Dad down there, were vast and it is a fascinating piece. And Paul blends fact and fiction and creates a story, so one has to interpret that. But I moved away from my relationship with Paul, at that time, when I realized the direction he was taking the book. And I actually wrote Paul said that I did not give permission to interviews in it. And that caused, as you can imagine, a real rift in our relationship, which we have subsequently healed.
SM (01:49:51):
Yeah, I think I interviewed him six years ago. I think something like that, so he is a pen.
CM (01:49:58):
Yeah. We are back in communication. I have always respected Paul. I always appreciated his writing. I think he is a great writer.
SM (01:50:10):
Yeah, he wrote a book on the South too.
CM (01:50:11):
Yeah.
SM (01:50:13):
Speaking of books, what books did you read when you were growing up, that had really an influence on you? And what did your dad and mom read?
CM (01:50:21):
Oh, my God. My dad's bookstand next to his bed was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was just unbelievable. Off the top of [inaudible], my mom and dad had a huge appreciation for art and for music, so I grew up with a lot of art books, of the well-known world artists, and a lot of both concertos and orchestras and jazz music. So those are some of the early ones that I remember.
SM (01:51:16):
Yeah. And we all know that President Kennedy was really influenced by Michael Harrington's book, The Other America.
CM (01:51:23):
Right.
SM (01:51:24):
And of course, I assumed when I read that, I immediately had to read it and I did. It might be I have got a first edition of that book now.
CM (01:51:31):
I apologize [inaudible].
SM (01:51:33):
Yeah. And I had all your dad's books by the way.
CM (01:51:35):
Oh, congratulations.
SM (01:51:37):
And I have read all of them. I am a bibliophile. It has been many years since I read some of the earlier ones. I think we have gone over a little bit here. Can we have ten more minutes and then that will be it.
CM (01:51:53):
Let us stop at 10 [inaudible].
SM (01:51:54):
Yeah, because-
CM (01:51:55):
You have done a fantastic job. And I really feel honored to speak with you and to know the background that you have put into all of this.
SM (01:52:02):
Well, this is a first time effort for me. And I feel funny being saying I am an author because I have been a college administrator my whole life. But I love history and I am a bibliophile. I have about 10,000 books.
CM (01:52:15):
Good for you. I hope you got them well [inaudible].
SM (01:52:17):
Well, what I am planning on doing is creating a... I have talked to the Cazenovia College, which is a small school outside Casnovia, New York, where my parents met. And my parents went to school there in (19)39 to (19)41, before my dad went off to war. And I went to Sydney Binghamton as an undergrad and then I went to Ohio State to grad school, but I want to create a center for the city of the boomer generation there. And I am willing to give them all my books as long as they create a center, hire a professor to run it, and they will get all my tapes and they will get all my memorabilia. They will get everything, as long as they stamp my parents' name and all. I have the same feeling toward my parents that you do toward yours, because I owe everything to them and way beyond the fact that I would not be here without them. But they helped form me and shape me so-
CM (01:53:19):
Well, that is wonderful. That is very generous of you.
SM (01:53:20):
Well, I am hoping it is up to the university now to follow through and so we will see what happens. I got only really two more questions and one of them though, there is sections to it. These are quotes that have had effect on a lot of boomers in the generation. And I would just like your immediate responses to these quotes that were well known, particularly in the (19)60s and seventies. By Any Means Necessary by Malcolm X.
CM (01:53:56):
I understood it.
SM (01:53:59):
Do you think it symbolized taken, creating violence in your own hand? A lot of people-
CM (01:54:10):
Yeah. Here's how it resonated with me and how I acted upon it. As a 17-year-old, I left high school the winter of my [inaudible] year and worked in Harlem, at the Street Academy program that run by the Urban League. And I worked at Charles Evans Hughes High School on the lower West Side. I understood that quote. I understood what young blacks were going through and I tried to work within the system to bring change.
SM (01:54:43):
Okay. Two very important ones from that inaugural speech by President Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." And the second one that I think is equally important, because many people believe it was the precursor to everything that is followed, particularly in Vietnam, " We will bear any burden and pay any price for the guarantee of liberty and freedom." So, I am going to the full length of the quotes, but those are two very important quotes from JFK.
CM (01:55:12):
Yeah, they very much were. And the first one I remember fondly, because although I was not a Quaker, I was going to a Quaker school with two of my friends, so we would have Friday meetings as students, which was an assembly of quiet. And I remember standing up in one of the meetings and saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you do for your country." It was very profound. That was something that everybody knew. It was familiar. But it was moving and I thought I would share it, quiet meaning firm. And the other one is I think something that we lived by and it is a guiding light for us.
SM (01:56:03):
That is like a cold war. We're in the Cold War.
CM (01:56:08):
Yes.
SM (01:56:08):
Yeah. This is a quote from The Women's Movement and they use it as their central quote, "All politics is person."
CM (01:56:19):
I would agree very quickly, because to me what that means is that we all need to be engaged in politics. And politics as I have found in my own life, can be politics of the soil, of the land, politics of food, politics of health, politics of obesity, politics of social justice. I totally can.
SM (01:56:45):
How about, "I have a dream." Of course, we all know that was Dr. King.
CM (01:56:46):
I think that is both for societal as well as the individual folk.
SM (01:57:11):
And this is a paraphrasing of something that Muhammad Ali said, "I had no reason to go off to a war in Vietnam, and kill yellow people, when there is little care for black people on the home front."
CM (01:57:26):
Because of my personal experiences that I have related to, I understand.
SM (01:57:32):
Do you agree with that?
CM (01:57:34):
I do not agree with it. I understand-
SM (01:57:37):
Oh, okay.
CM (01:57:37):
... where it is coming from.
SM (01:57:40):
Yeah. "Tune in, turn on, drop out." Timothy Leary.
CM (01:57:45):
Certainly, part of my generation did not agree with it. Interestingly enough, I was back in Washington about two weeks ago and there in the National Art Gallery, I saw that theory in black and white photographic exhibit by Allen Kingsbury [inaudible].
SM (01:58:17):
And this is a quote that Bobby Kennedy used in his Indianapolis speech, which was a quote from another person from the 19th century, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not?"
CM (01:58:38):
I think I have faith and I think both my friendship with [inaudible] parents have been [inaudible].
SM (01:58:48):
I mean, I am losing you. I cannot hear you.
CM (01:58:49):
I think from my friendship [inaudible]
SM (01:58:57):
Pressed it. Okay, and taping on two tape recorders. And of course, a lot of this is going to be about you, but it is also a lot on your dad too. You okay now?
CM (01:59:06):
I am ready to go.
SM (01:59:08):
How did you become who you are, with respect to talking about your growing up years before you went off to college? What was it like going to high school and those early influences? And of course, you can talk about your dad and mom at this time too.
CM (01:59:25):
So, are we focusing a little bit at the end of middle school and on to high school, or [inaudible] high school?
SM (01:59:34):
Basically high school.
CM (01:59:35):
My high school was a continuation of football friends who were in Washington DC, which for me was a remarkable experience, because I came from Ann Arbor, Michigan as a 10 year old and went to the elementary school with my friends. And I came into the school system with a reading problem, a significant dyslexia problem that, at that age, at that time, was not really well known. It was a large umbrella that covered many different parts of that learning disorder. So it was a lot of work for me. Getting to high school was a dynamic challenge. Sidwell Friends really did a remarkable job in assisting me and creating an environment that was very supportive. So, in ninth grade with all the excitement of sports and a solid education, I was really in tune. And a good friend of mine had left Sidwell Friends at the end of eighth grade. And I said, "Well, where did you go, Frank?" And he said, "Well, I went to this place called St. Paul's School." And what I did not realize was that he was prepared for this by his father and probably grandfather and it was a family tradition. And he said, "You got to try this. You got to try this." I said, "Well, what is this?" He said, "Well, it's the prep school. “I said, "I am really happy here at Sidwell Friends. I have got all my friends and sports." He said, "No. No. You got to try it." So, I left Sidwell at the end of ninth grade and went to St. Paul in [inaudible] for the remaining years of High School. It was a definite road not taken for me ever before. It was a very divergent road in my upbringing. My mom and dad had always raised us with a real foundation, I think, of social justice, of appreciation for, I am going to say the common good, the common man, for society. And I did not know what I was getting into in this interesting environment that St. Paul School provided. It was an incredibly challenging academic environment, especially for me. And it was the environment that, to be quite honest, myself, I was under prepared for and overwhelmed by. So what one normally does is learn how to compensate. My compensation was through my communication with people and my endeavors in on the athletics field. So those were the areas that I really excelled in and had a very, very difficult time struggling at Camp Cedar.
SM (02:02:43):
What years were you there?
CM (02:02:46):
That is a good question. I think that I began that school in 1965.
SM (02:02:49):
Okay.
CM (02:02:54):
And I moved with the years. I was born in (19)50, so in (19)65, I would have been 15, and I graduated from St. Paul's, 1969.
SM (02:03:08):
Yeah. What was it like growing up as your home base? Because your dad was working for President Kennedy and while your father was Secretary of Defense from (19)61 to (19)67, before he headed off to the World Bank, what was it like? In all of these roles that he played, did you feel there was any pressure that your dad was a very... They called him one the best and the brightest, as David Halberstan had written in his book. Did you ever feel that when you had that visible a person like your dad, who was very accomplished that you could not meet his standards and you were trying to? Or did you just want to get away to find your own identity?
CM (02:03:58):
You have covered a broad brush of ideas with the- A broad brush of ideas with the suggestions there. So let us look at them one by one. Pressures that a son feels from his father or a child feels from their parents. There cannot be anything more traditional than that. And so, yes, of course I really did have felt that throughout my life. And it's a wonderful realization at certain times in your life when you realize you can appreciate what your parents have done, appreciate leadership that they have provided in this case to their country, to their families, to their children. But yes, I felt a tremendous struggle that at times I was age appropriately unaware of. But let me just go back to the first feelings of moving to Washington DC. You have got to understand, I was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but my whole connection was with nature from riding bikes to making dams, creeks, to building tree houses that have been out all day long with my mom whistling the special family whistle to let me know that dinner was ready. My life in the fifties and early (19)60s, one of edible connection with this dynamic course, which ultimately has changed my life, which is nature in food system. So coming to Washington DC was, I was an excited kid. I was 10 years old and slammed a little bit with this learning issue, but I took that instead. And my mom worked night and day literally with me. I can remember both of us kind of weeping together over my inability to do homework, but it just kind of did it. But then there was the other side of Washington, which was the new frontier, the Camelot, the excitement of this credible young president, family and cabinet. And they were called to serve the cabinet members and their families were called to serve. So, I remember, I have fond memories of things that today are magical. They truly are magic moments that reflect back to your book that I knew they were special, but I did not know how special they were. Joining President Kennedy at Camp David, remembering being in the living room study of what seemed like a log cabin. It was a very understated building that the president at that time lived in at Camp David and seeing him at ease in his rocking chair, and Emily, I remember attending in the White House, the first showing of PT-109.
SM (02:07:07):
Oh my gosh. Cliff Robertson.
CM (02:07:10):
Sitting on the floor and the president was on, I think a shade or some sort of seating. And together with all of the Robert Kennedy family and present family, it was an easy, wonderful relationship. And taking off from the White House, Rose Garden or wherever the helicopters take off from as a 11 or 12 year old, it was so questionable. But it just seemed, it was part of life's fabric. I am trying to describe this incredible feeling. I am putting my two hands together because on one hand it was reality and another hand it was far removed from anything that I will ever live again.
SM (02:08:11):
What's interesting, and I can remember reading your dad's book In Retrospect, in the sections where he talks about the family, which he did quite often throughout the book. And he mentioned that the University of Michigan that you talked about and he wanted to live in a university environment and not in some rich suburb. Well, and I thought that was, he really had his head on his shoulders and obviously it was probably very impressionable and important for him with respect to his family. And that is where you got your love for nature.
CM (02:08:39):
It really did. And it teased out throughout our lives in the sense that in one respect, my dad must have been the first commuter because Ann Arbor from Dearborn where he worked, I do not know in that day and age how many minutes it was maybe 45 or 50 or an hour. And so he made that decision to have the intellectual capacity of living in a university town and back to my image here of nature, of living in an area that was not economically oriented. And he would drive home the new models, whether it was the T-bird or eventually the Edel or whatever.
SM (02:09:29):
He drove an Edel home.
CM (02:09:29):
Yeah. Whatever the new model was and would test drive them. And the other thing that my dad and mom always emphasized was a time for us as a family to be together and typically being that he truly was a workaholic, it would be on a vacation in the Sierra Mountain because mom and dad grew up in the Bay area of California and the Sierras were so important to them and to their generation. We would as a family, actually part of the family. Dad would be working in Michigan, mom and my two sisters and I would head out in the summertime in the old station wagon and drive to the eastern slope of the Deer, Nevada. Up with their college friends and families. And we would launch a two week trip, initially packed trip with mules into the Sierras. These were the most wonderful experiences of my life. Campfires and was sating off of snowbank into crystal clear lakes and catching fish. My mom was a tremendous fisher woman and taught me how to fish and wild fish...
SM (02:10:58):
She was quite accomplished too.
CM (02:11:00):
She was a remarkable...
SM (02:11:03):
Reading about her and her background. And she passed away in (19)81, I believe.
CM (02:11:07):
She did. She had mesothelioma cancer around the throat. It was told to us that she would have an 11-month life and she lived 11 months. But she was one of the greatest sources of inspiration, I think for my father. She was the greatest source of love and inspiration for me and our family. Just an absolutely down to earth, remarkable human being.
SM (02:11:39):
She was involved with a group organization called Reading Is Fundamental. I think your sister has been somewhat linked to that too, but it's a nonprofit children's literacy organization. Was that based on the fact of your experiences with her as a young child?
CM (02:11:54):
I think it was three. Certainly, it was the experience that she and I shared of how difficult it is for some children. Secondly, coming to the nation's capital and realizing that the literacy rate was so poor and that was wrong. And thirdly, as my dad felt the story when meeting with President Kennedy said, okay, when he brought the cabinet wives together, your husbands are going to be under tremendous amount of pressure and work, and I want you to do something meaningful for yourself, for society. So it was kind of those three or four things. And I am so proud of my mom. She started this program. Reading Is Fundamental out of a mobile unit, book mobiles. They would go around to schools and have school children come on board and pick out a free book, start a library in families where there were no books. And that has grown into a global network, it is remarkable.
SM (02:12:59):
Is your sister linked to that in some way?
CM (02:13:01):
My older sister, Margie, is on the board of RIF.
SM (02:13:04):
Okay, very good. Yeah. And I guess President Carter awarded her the Medal of Freedom too.
CM (02:13:11):
Which was an outstanding recognition of my mom's dedication to our [inaudible] side.
SM (02:13:24):
Getting back to that time when your dad was Secretary of Defense, what memories do you have wherever you were location wise about the people that David Halberstam often describes in his book, The Best and The Brightest? Your dad was part of this group, and what are your memories when, and I have got about seven or eight things here that were very important during or pretty big during your dad's reign and at Secretary of Defense. The inaugural speech of John Kennedy, where were you and how did that speech influence you in any way?
CM (02:14:00):
Oh, I am so glad that you have brought that up and reminded me of that. That whole experience began for me when dad's came home from work one day and said, well, what would you think of moving to Washington DC? Now you're talking now, I was 10 years old. And I said, well Dad, do not worry about that because we're not going to do that. I have got my friends here, we have got the tree house, we have got all of what we so enjoyed here. And he said, well, I have been asked by the president prominent to be a part of his cabinet. And the rest of that story is history. Obviously, he went out and I did not. But I do remember my mom and dad had gone to Washington in preparation for the inaugural and my older sisters and I were to fly out to be part of the day that you were mentioning here. And it was an icy winter ice storm as I recall. And I was the one in charge of the alarm clock to wake up. My sisters, now remember, they're teenagers and I am 10 years old. And I was worried that if I were to wake them up, they were going to get really angry with me for waking them up. So I think we were a little late getting to the airport, got to Washington, picked up by a limo. Now this is something I had never even dreamed of being in one or certainly had never ridden. This was very exciting. And I recall being in the audience, looking up at the cabinet behind him on the Capitol, just watching Robert Frost and just being in the palm of something of God's hands in a very, very special way. And then the day, I do not remember how it totally unfolded, but I do remember in the reviewing stand in front of the White House, whatever that was, in 1960 and after it was very different than what they do today. And I think by that time it was a chilly day, very chilly but sunshine as I recall. And I remember the cabinet coming past in their cars that were convertibles, I think open-top. And I remember my mom and dad in their car and dad had what? Remind me the name of the hat. The Stove Pipe Cap?
SM (02:16:31):
Oh, Abraham Lincoln's Hose Cap.
CM (02:16:33):
Abraham Lincoln. And I recall saying, shouting out to my dad, dad, you look really great out there. And then they went on, I am looking at my office wall right now because I am looking at a picture of them at one of the inaugural balls that they attended. And my dad in a tux and my mom in a ball gown with their gloves and everything. Quite a remark.
SM (02:17:05):
Yeah, I think President Kennedy, there is pictures of him wearing that kind of a hat too.
CM (02:17:09):
Oh, absolutely.
SM (02:17:09):
Yeah. And of course that was a very cold day. You remember the president was speaking, you see the breath when he was speaking? It was, but it was a great speech. I remember it was a cold day.
CM (02:17:22):
Can you hold one second?
SM (02:17:39):
Yes.
CM (02:17:39):
[inaudible] So I get lots of men coming by looking for work.
SM (02:17:46):
A couple of the other events, and you will remember what maybe your dad talking about it at the table or conversing, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis because those are two very big events.
CM (02:17:57):
They are indeed. My memories of those... This wrapped into a much larger part of my life. And that is that, as you can imagine from my earlier comments, dad kept his work very separate from my life and actually throughout our life, whether because we're talking kind of early teen right now, 12, 13, 14. But as I became a late teenager and all the way through my life, it was something that dad just chose not to share, not to talk about, not to engage in. I think it was painful. I think he was trying to be protective. Was it right or wrong on his part? I do not think I can apply that sort of rationale. Did it ultimately help me? No, it did not. But to get back to specifically your question about the missile crisis, I do recall that much more fervently than Bay of Pig. Dad would come home from work say eight o'clock. And he always sat on the same part of the couch. He would always have his hand on the coffee table to the left where the lamp was. He would typically be reading the paper. And in his hand, on the coffee table was this beautiful walnut plaque. And there is some imagery here because I am a walnut grower, this walnut plaque that probably measured four inches by four inches and on top of the plaque was the most beautiful silver gallon, just a little piece of silver with the month of October, 1962, with the critical dates of the Cuban Missile Crisis embedded deeper in the silver gallon. And I remember my dad just kind of, his hand would be on that. And it was as if it was braille, as if the digit of his finger were rereading, recognizing the potential devastation of our world, had the United States launched their weapon.
SM (02:20:32):
Wow.
CM (02:20:32):
I have that memory emblazoned in my mind. That stayed with us forever.
SM (02:20:44):
Now that was a scary moment as we all watched President Kennedy on TV that night. And of course we all remember Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. I am going to wait for your reply until hell freezes over. I will never forget it. I am only a little older than you, so of course. So a few more here. The Gulf of Tonkin on Vietnam, obviously in 1964, a lot has been written about that. Your thoughts on that as well as the protests on college campuses that went throughout the time that he was Secretary of Defense and of course the big one. There were two at the Pentagon and then the one in 1967 where they levitated supposedly the Pentagon. And in the 1965 one, which I am going to come back to later, where the man burned himself to death, just anything really linking to Vietnam.
CM (02:21:43):
Well, let me remind us that I was 14, 1964. Maybe 14 year olds today are a little more worldly in their global understanding than I was. So those memories are more In Retrospect, my reflections on those [inaudible] as I awaken to Vietnam. My personal awaken occurred closer to 1966, (19)67, I am going to say. There again, I was had in [inaudible]. One of my dear friends who was going to be the president of the school, had created a teaching about Vietnam. Now think of this is high school. So he was 17, this is Rick King. And he had invited professors, I believe from the Boston area and maybe Dartmouth speaking. I said, well now wait a minute, Rick. At that point I still said, there must be a reason that we were in Vietnam. And I remember standing in a phone booth, we do not have phone booths anymore, but I was standing in a phone booth from school and talking with dad, dad going to be a teacher, is there any material that you can send me to justify the war in Vietnam? And it just occurred while I am speaking with you on the phone, why it was that no materials arrived. I think at that point I realized there was no justification for us to be there. It did not dawn on me then, but the materials never arrived, the teaching occurred. And that was a rite of passage. And I remember later on I am 19, being in social events in Washington DC in the backyard of a friends' house in Georgetown and the decision makers, I will put them in one category, decision makers, my father and other decision makers saying, well, you just have not read enough about this issue, but you do not really know what you are talking about. And yet we knew very intuitively and from our small world exposure that Vietnam War would not go forth.
SM (02:24:20):
Yeah. I interviewed Dr. Henry Graff, the former professor at Columbia University on Monday, and he did the Tuesday cabinet book about Tuesday cabinet meetings where your dad and top people on foreign policy would meet with President Johnson every Tuesday.
CM (02:24:40):
Yes.
SM (02:24:40):
And he had chances to talk to your dad four times. And he talked to him just before he was leaving in (19)67 as well. Johnson gave him full access to the cabinet. And he was, what is interesting is when I talked to him about the gatherings of these people, it was known early on the McGeorge Bundy, even in his book says he was against the war from the get-go way back in (19)64. And I know that Bill Moyers was against the war himself, and he was only there for three years working with the President Johnson. And then your dad had misgivings about the war for a long time. And I asked Dr. Graff, here you have Secretary Defense, McNamara. McGeorge Bundy was the special assistant, I forget his full title. And you had his press secretary, Bill Moyers against the war. President Johnson kept going on. And Dr. Graff, you have to understand, these men kept their differences behind closed doors and they showed that they were loyal. And that is what the kind of people that President Johnson wanted around him.
CM (02:25:52):
Well, that is such an important point that you brought up loyalty because something to my dad always referred to. And I would ask him on those rare occasions that particularly after the fact when he was at the World Bank and finally came out with his book, In Retrospect said, why could not you have addressed it? Why could not you have spared yourself and our nation so much anguish, sorrow and grief? And said several things. One is that he was an appointed cabinet senator that he did, he was not elected. Felt that it was his duty and his loyalty to serve the President in the best capacity that he could. And then I think that there is an evolution in people's, like these thought processes and lives that allow them to come to grace, come to some sort of understanding. And thank God he did. I mean, I do not know many other people in his situation who have publicly and privately said, I made a mistake and I would like us, I would like myself to learn from this mistake. And maybe history can use these, that is so [inaudible], so accurately developed in fog of war, which by the way, I think every high school [inaudible].
SM (02:27:22):
Well, I agree. I have a copy of it. I think it's a classic. And I agree with what you say about your dad because one of the issues, I was in higher education for almost 30 some years, and very few people are willing to ever admit they make a mistake. And it is a sign of a true leader when they do because they become vulnerable. And then they start questioning, what happened to your dad? Why did not you do this before you left in 1967? Here is another criticism of your dad. Why was it that when you left, and I remember the scene, it is actually can see it on YouTube where the President is the going away there when he was very emotional. And he did not really say that because he did not agree with the President. I know he did not. And then some people said, well, he went off to Aspen to ski and he was responsible for the desk of so many people on the wall. So, there is so many perceptions, but you are kind of like, you are damned if you do, or damned if you do not kind of a...
CM (02:28:25):
Well, I think what you say is accurate and about his welling up and being very emotional and actually very interesting because from that point on, he probably would never admit that. But I think he suffered significantly from a posttraumatic stress syndrome that, believe it or not, I think I suffered from too in the sense that the event of Vietnam were so distraught, disturbing to our nation personally. You mentioned the [inaudible] person igniting themselves in front of the Pentagon. Those events are so dark, so traumatic, I do not think one ever recovers from them. And you cannot control them. You cannot control when those emotions. That is a significant damage to one [inaudible] character. And you cannot suppress that. As good as certain people are and my father was one of the best at compartmentalizing parts of his life, that went deep into all parts of his life. I do not think for the rest of his life, he could actually control them.
SM (02:29:48):
One of the things that upset so many of the Boomer generation that because TV was very important, black and white television and the news is when your dad gave those weekly reports on the numbers killed. And many believed he was lying because those reports concluded dead animals and all the other things just to please the President. But what is interesting when he wrote, In Retrospect, I have two anecdotes. My very first interview, because I started this project way back in (19)96, as it said in my letter there, and I met with Senator McCarthy. And one of the questions during my meeting when Senator Eugene McCarthy was, what do you think of the new book out by Robert McNamara? And I have to listen to it again to get the exact quote, but he is a little too late. A little too late. And he was very upset. And he said, let us go on the next question. So that was his response. And then I have pictures at the Vietnam Memorial because I have been going to the Vietnam Memorial since 1994 for veterans and Memorial Day to pay my respects. And in about the year that In Retrospect came out, I will never forget it, there were two copies of... In fact, I can look it up and send it to you on the computer. There were two copies of your dad's book that had bullet holes through it. And very bad words underneath the book. So the feelings were still there. And then when I go to the wall many times, I do not get there as much now, but there is three names that always come up that were the bad people. And yeah, it depends, if it is the veterans talking, it is Jane Fonda who they cannot stand for obvious reasons. And then they mentioned your dad and Henry Kissinger. Yeah, those three. But then if it is the anti-war people, it is not Jane Fonda, it is your dad, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. And they throw a little bit of Agnew in there, but they do not say a whole lot about LBJ because of his great to society. So, those are just some anecdotes I wanted to share. Why did you drop out of Stanford?
CM (02:32:04):
Oh, largely because of my disenfranchisement with this remarkable country that I do love tremendously. And that was 1971 of the winter. And I just realized that having, I personally lived very close to the man who was Secretary of Defense during the lead up of Vietnam said, getting back to these wounds, whether you want to call it post-traumatic stress syndrome or whatever, that I needed to rediscover my country, that I needed to reinvest in my country. I needed to reinvest in myself. And the only way I could do that was somehow get a new vision of the beauty of the springs, of our people, of our country. And the way I did that was to begin a journey to South America. And I began that with a few friends. And we traveled through Central America learning Spanish along the way, and eventually arriving in Columbia where my two friends decided to say that their travel journey was over and mine was not. And I continued on that point all the way down to [inaudible], spending another year and a half on the road in the more formidable part of that journey for me was working on as a farmhand. I worked with some modern Indians, I worked with Julian dairy farmers, I worked with hay growers, produce people. I worked on fishing boats. And I was immersed in something that, it completely resonated for me. It was food production. And for me, it brought together two worlds that I thought were very divergent at that time. One was the political world that I had somewhat grown up in. The other was the early world that my parents had shown me, which was that of the garden of... My fondest childhood memories of being with my dad, mom in the garden with him picking a fresh tomato and putting a little salt on it, taking a big bite, the juice, rolling down his cheeks. My mom picking asparagus, cutting roses... Picking asparagus, cutting roses to bring into our kitchen table. Those two worlds, the early ones and the mid ones, the land and the politics, to me were married in food production. I realized, after two and a half years on the road, I had no education. I had worked a little bit, but I had no education. I wanted to formalize that, and went to UC Davis, to study plant and soil sciences, knowing in the beginning that I wanted to come out and eventually farm.
SM (02:35:35):
Wow. What a story. Were your parents worried about you being so far away?
CM (02:35:43):
They must have been absolutely worried, for many, many reasons. Just let me remind you, I arrived in Santiago, Chile in the early days of September, 1971, and that was the anniversary of Salvador Allende being the first elected socialist president in Chile.
SM (02:36:06):
Wow.
CM (02:36:09):
Dad, being the head of the World Bank at that time, certainly knew of the difficulties that were occurring in Chile, and probably could, in his own mind, forecast how the future may unfold. I know my mom was very worried about my wellbeing, and of course, there was no communication. Just in terms of getting mail, my parents would send a letter to an embassy, that was the only way I could get mail. I think I called them infrequently, maybe every six months, something like that. It's so interesting now to have children who are texting, and messaging, and emailing, and phoning, and the tree of communications today, and the different level of communication.
SM (02:37:08):
One of the big things that was in the news around the mid-(19)60s was the fact that Governor Rockefeller's son was` down in Brazil, and disappeared.
CM (02:37:21):
He did, I recall that.
SM (02:37:21):
That was really big in the news. Of course, he was down there to help people.
CM (02:37:24):
I do not know if you have seen the movie "Missing," about the coup in Chile. It is a very powerful movie, and to be quite honest, my story could have been similar to that story.
SM (02:37:42):
Wow. I am going to get back to your work with the farm in a couple of minutes here, but correct me if I am ever repeating anything, because I have got a series of questions here I have in order. I do a lot of thinking before I do my interviews.
CM (02:37:54):
I know you do. I saw you put in a great deal of research.
SM (02:37:58):
Everyone is different, and some are some general questions.
CM (02:38:02):
It makes it fun and interesting and insightful for you and for the person you are interviewing, and potentially for the people reading the book.
SM (02:38:09):
I want to reach students and high school students, college students with this as well as the general public, because I want people to understand where people come from, and to show a little respect for people who they may agree or disagree with. I do not have a whole lot of tolerance for intolerance at times. I understand that you were against the war that your dad ran. Did you have any major discussions with him at different times about the war, and your differences, and did he listen? Was there a major generation gap between you and your parents, and how about your two sisters and the parents?
CM (02:38:49):
Well, as I mentioned before, Dad in certain ways was a master at compartmentalizing. I think he felt, in his own vision as a parent of the (19)60s, that he needed in some way to protect his son and his children, and he did that by not engaging in conversation-
SM (02:39:10):
Okay.
CM (02:39:11):
About Vietnam. The only time I would glean information on that front would be if I had a friend who was well versed in the topic, and that friend was trying to engage Dad in conversation. That was when I could open the window to some of his thoughts on that, and that continued throughout his life. Here is the bottom line between a father and a son: we never lost love for one another. We never lost respect for one another. I give my mom tremendous credit for being the conduit of love and communication, because that is a natural way to [inaudible]. So many families, and .so many of my peers lost their relationship to their father at that time, and never healed. I have friends coming up to me and saying, to my dad's dying day we never were able to pick up that phone. What a sad misstep and what was the other part of it?
SM (02:40:17):
Yeah. Was there any difference between how your dad dealt with you and your two sisters?
CM (02:40:22):
I do not think so. My sisters are nine and six years older than I am. It really was quite, they were well off to college and beyond as I was growing up. But I know that they did not engage either on that topic. Now let me get to the issue of did my relationship as son of my father affect him, his decision making? It would be very egotistical of me to say yes. And yet I do believe that my choice of life and the direction that I have taken in life very much affected him, in fact. I think the fact that my sisters and I had friends who were very involved in leading the anti-war movement was insightful and impacted on him. He just did not let it be known.
SM (02:41:21):
We talked about the qualities of admitting, making a mistake and the regrets and so forth, but was there ever a feeling on the part of you or your sisters or maybe even your mom that if you have a problem with president Johnson over a policy just resign?
CM (02:41:43):
Well, I think most of my reflections on that are afterthought there again, just the age that I was during then. I would say absolutely my father is a man of tremendous integrity. And so I think you or I of this generation would say, well, if you feel differently, then you owe it to yourself, number one to your family and your nation. You demonstrate disagreement by resigning. And I just cannot put myself in his shoes and know what he felt about that. He goes back to this loyalty, which I think his generation must have had a different parameter and definition than I might.
SM (02:42:38):
Just in your own words, could you please, if someone were to come up to you like a high school student and you walk in and someone were to come up to you and say, "Who was Robert McNamara?" And you would describe your father or the leader, or how would you describe him to someone or particularly a young person? And also how would you describe your mom? Because I think your mom is very important here. She's very important in history and they are a team, in my opinion. I look at this, I see a twosome that became one. That is what marriage is supposed to be about. And just so in, how would you define both of them?
CM (02:43:20):
Well, individually first, right?
SM (02:43:22):
Yes.
CM (02:43:24):
I would respond to the question coming from a high school student or another person about who my father was as a very bright man and who truly loved humankind. A man who, well, one, he wanted the best or of both is deeply divided. The seven years that my father spent as Secretary of Defense determined the rest of his life. He lived, 1980 to the year 2009, lived another 29 years. Well, actually the time that he left Defense, (19)78, so that is (19)78, (19)88, (19)98, another 40 years to his life. And during those 40 years, his true ambition for the betterment of mankind and society came forward, advanced. He was able to advance that in such a significant way. And very, very few people in the United States understand that perspective. And I think that that is a tragedy, a loss. He was defined by Vietnam, and yet his defining moment during the next 40 years.
SM (02:45:26):
I think what you just said is very important. Craig, I will let you continue here in a second. Because as a person who believes in student development and believes in human development, and we tell students in college or that hopefully they learn this, that you are constantly evolving as a human being and it does not stop until the day you die.
CM (02:45:46):
Exactly. And in the case of a leader, it's our society's nature to pigeonhole them to a time of their lives, of greatness or of tremendous loss. And he has been defined by the latter.
SM (02:46:13):
How about your mom?
CM (02:46:18):
My mom, as my dad had said, was one of God's loveliest creatures. She had a sparkle in her eye. She had very, very beautiful blue eyes, which I inherited many things from my mom. My eyes, my name Craig was her maiden name. And I am so honored have my name Craig be in more of the Latin tradition where the mother also shares her name with the offspring. I am so happy to have the name Craig. And I am so moved and touched by her spirit and her connection to Mother Nature. She gifted that to me. It is something that you were very generous commenting on in your letter, our phone call, that is something that I have explored my whole life. And in terms of the educational programs we currently offer to do across California, it is the foundation. It is my foundation. It is what I do, my own family. It is what I do for students in California as the farm.
SM (02:47:38):
And you lead me right into the question, if someone to ask, who is Robert Craig McNamara?
CM (02:47:49):
Robert Craig McNamara is a reflection of both of his parents, both my parents and a person who has been moved and affected by the history that I have lived true. So although I did not serve in Vietnam, I certainly have been very affected by that. It is a part of me every day and my goals have been to really help making this world a better place for the individuals.
SM (02:48:50):
Did you feel that when you were in that one year at Stanford and maybe your junior and senior in high school, that any of your fellow students got on you for being the son of the person who was running the Vietnam War?
CM (02:49:02):
Absolutely. It was always on my mind. It was always in something that I had to demonstrate who I was, myself. It was a life altering pressure on me that I had to find out who I really was and be that honest person myself. And yes, I actually felt that in a certain way, that it was remarkable that people allowed me to be who I was and I did not get spit on, it did not take a [inaudible], or become violent. Because I know how frustrated I have been over our decision to go to war in Iraq, decision go to war today. I know the dark side of feelings against our leaders. So, I can imagine it how people must have felt about me that I was embodiment of my father, but I am not.
SM (02:50:28):
Right.
CM (02:50:30):
And I want to move this forward for one second. Dad was asked to come to UC Berkeley-
SM (02:50:38):
And Craig, could you speak up just a little bit, too?
CM (02:50:39):
Yeah. Dad was asked to come to UC Berkeley and I thought it before the Fog of War, but you may help me out here, may be before, in retrospect. And he came to Zellerbach Hall, which the largest hall in Berkeley. And he said he had never been back to Berkeley, it is his Alma mater, in many, many years. He certainly could not come back during the war years because he would have been protested against. And I think because of his World Bank experience and other experiences, he just had not been back. This was a beloved place for him. Because memories of meeting my mom and being a student at Berkeley. So, he was asked to come to Berkeley to speak on a retrospect for the Fog of War and it was packed. The auditorium was absolutely back to the audience outside. And I was very fearful for his life. And this was recently, this was within the last 10 years. And I felt very on edge in terms of reading the room, reading the audience, and if there was going to be any violent movement towards him, which is pretty remarkable for me to feel that at this point in my life or in our lives. And to be quite honest, his presence and his participation and his, at that point, transparency and honesty, I think really was received by the audience and was warmly responded-they may have totally just not liked him, but they appreciated the moment.
SM (02:52:33):
Yeah. Well I know Bobby Mueller and Bobby Mueller was on several panels with your dad over the last 10 years I believe. And here is a man who came back from Vietnam, very disenchanted. And Bobby was one of the people that said when he came back, he realized that Vietnam, or excuse me, that America is not always the good guy. Yet he could be on the stage with your dad and I know he respected your dad. So that says a lot when Bobby can say really nice things about some of the things that happened to him during that time.
CM (02:53:07):
This is Bobby Mueller?
SM (02:53:08):
Yeah, Bobby Mueller.
CM (02:53:09):
And did he serve in Vietnam?
SM (02:53:11):
Yeah, he was the founder of Vietnam Veterans of America.
CM (02:53:16):
Yeah.
SM (02:53:19):
And I believe if you go into YouTube you will see your dad being interviewed by that professor. It is a show that they had and it is a tremendous interview. It is an hour and 10 minutes.
CM (02:53:31):
That is a great one. Do you remember the year of that?
SM (02:53:34):
It had to be the time that he went probably for this speech because he talked about it in retrospect, he was not there.
CM (02:53:40):
It was retrospect. Yeah.
SM (02:53:42):
Yeah. It was not for Fog of War. I would like your comments here. I am up to this point where after Norman Morrison, a Quaker father of three, burned himself only 40 feet from your dad's window at the Pentagon on November 2nd of (19)65. Your dad states in the book, this is very important. " I knew Marge" is it Marge?
CM (02:54:02):
Margie
SM (02:54:04):
"I knew Margie and our three children shared many of Morrison's feelings about the war, as did the wives and children of several of my cabinet colleagues. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts." The war, I cannot read my writing here, it was much more, "this was much more Marge and I and the children should have talked about. Yet at moments like this, I often turned inward instead. It was a grave weakness. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as dissent and criticism of the war continued to grow."
CM (02:54:51):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
SM (02:54:54):
And that was in the mid (19)90s when he wrote in retrospect, or early (19)90s.
CM (02:55:04):
So the touching reflection there is that he held that inside of him for all those years. If he could have brought that forward in a memoir earlier, I think it would have provided some healing for us, for our nation. Not a mea culpa that is gone. When you let something fester for 25 years, it is just insurmountable. I am proud of him for coming to that point in his life. And I wished for all of us, for me, for our nation, for the Vietnamese, for the men and women of the United States died and served. For everybody who was touched globally by Vietnam. I wish my father had been able.
SM (02:55:57):
Right. Hold on one second. My door here.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Craig McNamara
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Audio interviews
Title
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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
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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
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Gary Kulik
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
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Interview Format
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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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Interview with Gary Kulik
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Kulik, Gary ; McKiernan, Stephen
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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>.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-09
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.201
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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115:57
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/039de8f3e59dcacd77baa66cb0853216.mp3
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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
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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
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
2007-12-21
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
David Horowitz
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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3 microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
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156:01
Biographical Text
David Horowitz grew up a "red diaper baby" in a communist community in Sunnyside, Queens. He is a far-right writer, founder, and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), editor of <em>FrontPage Magazine</em>, director of Discover the Networks, and founder of the organization Students for Academic Freedom. Horowitz wrote many books and he worked as a columnist for <em>Salon</em>. He also was an outspoken adherent of the New Left, which he later rejected and became a proponent of Neoconservatism. Horowitz received his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University and his Master's degree from UC Berkeley.
Keywords
Baby boom generation; Environmental Movement; Communism; Robert F. Kennedy; Black Panthers; Civil Rights Movement; Nineteen sixties.
Subject LCSH
Authors, American--20th century; Radicals—United States; Horowitz, David--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: David Horowitz
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 October 1997
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:00):
...of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
DH (00:00:20):
The (19)60sand early (19)70was a political orgy, destruction, just of recklessness. I do not know. I do not think that way, one thing comes to my mind. Go ahead.
SM (00:00:59):
Yep. Could you speak up a little bit louder too, David?
DH (00:01:01):
Sure.
SM (00:01:01):
Okay.
DH (00:01:01):
I did not like that question. Go ahead.
SM (00:01:04):
Okay. When you look at the boomer generation, the boomer generation is defined as those individuals born between 1946 and 1964. Of course, we know that the boomer generation has a lot of different people from all political persuasions, different-
DH (00:01:21):
Yeah. The (19)60swas a complex phenomenon. I mean, there were parts of it that were fairly benign or just injurious to self. Some parts of it were creative and some parts of it were destructive.
SM (00:01:41):
When you look at the boomer generation, what are the positive qualities and the negative qualities of the generation?
DH (00:01:54):
Well, I am inclined not to see very many positive qualities anymore. As I say, it was a complex phenomenon. The music was great. It was interesting. I do not know if it is great. But it was [inaudible]. What is the scope of this? I mean, I do not really want to answer questions about the whole (19)60s, and people think about moonshot and they think... That is not my focus.
SM (00:02:31):
Well, basically I am looking at the boomer generation and the qualities that some of them have and the events that shape their lives. I have a whole series of questions, but-
DH (00:02:42):
[inaudible] generation. Are we talking about 45 million people?
SM (00:02:44):
We are talking about (19)70 million.
DH (00:02:46):
Well, I do not make comments about (19)70 million people. I do not think that way. I think people who make comments on (19)70 million people are talking through their ass.
SM (00:03:03):
Well, how about talking about the activist portion? Because that is what really what I am getting at here. The 15-
DH (00:03:12):
Yeah. The political (19)60swas a very destructive event. I have written so much about this. It started off fairly creative. We were anti-Stalinist, although we were basically socialist and communist, but we were critical. We wanted to see a hundred flowers bloom. We were innovative. We were against orthodoxy. By the end of the decade, the political activists became Stalinists themselves. They repeated everything that their parents, all the things they had objected to in their parents. They supported the worst forces, historical forces, and they showed that there is no such thing as a New Left. There is only the left. The left is a religious formation, pseudo-religious, which is in search of an earthly redemption, an impossible dream.
SM (00:04:45):
When...
DH (00:04:49):
I am really not happy with the interview. I think I will not finish it. Either I am not in a good mood today or I do not know, but...
SM (00:04:56):
Well, I have specific questions directly to you.
DH (00:05:00):
Well, then ask me the specific questions and strike everything that I have said. I am not happy with any of it. I have written about this decade ad infinitum, and I do not want what I have written undermined by stuff I say off the top of my head in a phone interview. So just-
SM (00:05:20):
Can I ask you about some specific-
DH (00:05:21):
[inaudible] to strike that I will answer specific [inaudible]
SM (00:05:24):
Yeah. Well, how did you become who you are? Because when I think of David Horowitz, I see a tremendous scholar, a person who's written a lot of books, a lot of different subject areas, a person who was the editor of Ramparts Magazine at one time, and then due to some of the experiences in your life, you changed and became kind of a different person, more conservative. How did you really become... I know you have written this in the book, too, but a lot of this oral history is about how people evolve and change over time. I have interviewed 100 people, and a lot of them have changed their lives over specific events. But how did you become who you are today and what were the major factors in your life that made you change during the time when boomers were fairly young?
DH (00:06:17):
Well, I was not a boomer.
SM (00:06:19):
I know that.
DH (00:06:24):
What strikes me about the political generation is how many of them have not changed at all and how influential they are, like Bill Ayers, who I despised him when he was active in the (19)60sand he was a radical. He was so shallow and so destructive, and here he is a close confidant of the President of the United States. I have written about how I changed. Black Panthers, who were held up by the New York Times and by all radicals as the vanguard of the revolution, were a bunch of murderers. And they murdered a friend of mine. The left rallied around the murderers to defend them. It told me everything I needed to know about the left because that was exactly what my parents and their friends and their generation, all of whom were probably somewhat decent people. My parents were certainly decent people. But they defended murderers. And that is what leftists do because their goal is so noble. If you are going to redeem the world, if you are saving the world, or now the phrase is saving the planet, you are capable of any crime, any monstrosity because the purpose you have is so noble that it will justify anything. That is the main thing that I learned. Then when this person, when Betty Van Patter was murdered by the Panthers, the Vietnamese communists, thanks to the so-called anti-war movement... There had never been a real anti-war movement in America. The anti-American movement was victorious in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese proceeded to slaughter two-and-a-half million people in Cambodia and Vietnam, more than that probably, but at least that, without any protests from the protesters, which showed me that they never really cared about the Vietnamese or the Cambodian. What they cared about was their hatred for America.
SM (00:08:53):
Those students have protested on college campuses in the (19)60s, do you think they were a major influence in ending the war?
DH (00:09:01):
Of course, they forced the end of the war. It is not do I think. There is no question. The country was being torn apart.
SM (00:09:12):
What do today's universities learn from the students of the boomer generation? Are universities prepared to handle new student protests? I know there is protests at Berkeley now over the increase in tuition.
DH (00:09:23):
No, the first of all, no. They are supine before... very destructive forces on the campus. First of all, a large, well, I estimate 10 percent of the professorial, but that is a much larger percentage of liberal arts faculties are radicals just as destructive as the people we are talking about. They encourage it and they incite it. The administrations are afraid to do anything. I think that is going to change. I think it is in the process of changing. But basically, university administrations let the left get away with murder.
SM (00:10:12):
But do not you think, David, do not-
DH (00:10:12):
They are doing just what they did. They are giving support to the Muslim brotherhood groups, the Muslim Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, all these leftist group are in league with the Jihadists, and the administrations coddle them and protect them.
SM (00:10:34):
But are not a lot of the people that are running universities today, I am not talking about faculty now, I am talking about the administrators, the presidents, the vice presidents of student affairs, are not a lot of them boomers who grew up and-
DH (00:10:46):
[inaudible]
SM (00:10:46):
...saw what happened on university campuses and basically are afraid of activism?
DH (00:10:51):
No. They support activism. On the contrary. It is quite reversed. I am about to sue the Vice President of Student Affairs at the University of Southern California precisely for siding with the racist and slanderers, because they happen to be Palestinians and leftists. That is not all administrators. There is some decent ones I have encountered.
SM (00:11:22):
When-
DH (00:11:22):
But more often than not, they are totally sympathetic to the radical.
SM (00:11:29):
A lot of the people of the boomer generations thought they were the most unique generation in American history. Your comments about that kind of an attitude?
DH (00:11:39):
Well, I just said, yes, that was their self-flattering, but they ended up being communists all the same and supporting the worst, the absolute worst forces out there. This child molester that runs Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, he was a big hero at the left. Of course, that was a little later. That was the (19)80s. But they supported Mao, supported the Vietnamese murderers, the communist murderers, and the Cambodian Pol Pot. I mean, the New Left supported Pol Pot. They were not unique at all. That was their self-flattery and one of their many delusions.
SM (00:12:33):
I think in recent years. I can remember when Newt Gingrich came to power in 1994, there were some interviews given, and he talked about the (19)60sand the (19)70s, and he basically made comments that a lot of the problems in American society at that time were due to the breakdown of the American family. He blamed the breakdown of the American family, the drug culture, and all the problems in our society were shooting it back to that era. Lack of respect for authority, the victim mentality. Do you believe that?
DH (00:13:14):
The (19)60s, if you look at it in perspective, it mainstreamed Marxist, communists, the Marxist and communist war against democratic society. That is [inaudible]. It. mainstreamed the Marxist and communist war against democratic society.
SM (00:13:38):
Yeah. Just-
DH (00:13:40):
The return of antisemitism can be traced to the Black radicalism of the (19)60s.
SM (00:13:49):
What-
DH (00:13:49):
Black radicals re-legitimized, Jew hatred in America. It is horrible to say, but that is what it did.
SM (00:14:02):
One of the characteristics of that era, in that generation of course, is the many movements that evolved and were ongoing during that period, and, of course, continue through today.
DH (00:14:13):
Wait-wait-wait. The (19)60sradicals who then went into the university now have made communism, Marxism... Really, I have written about this in Unholy Alliance.
SM (00:14:31):
Right. I have that, yep.
DH (00:14:31):
Similarities. They made it part of the school curriculum, both at the college and the K-12 level. They have destroyed a great institution. The university, the modern research university, of course, it is still a great university, great institution in terms of the sciences and the professional school. But as far as the liberal arts colleges are concerned, the tenured radicals have returned those institutions to their 19th and 18th-century roots as doctrinal institutions, as religious institutions that instill a doctrine. This happens to be the doctrine of... You know, [inaudible]. We do not have a term for it because they control the institutions that-
SM (00:15:36):
If you could-
DH (00:15:37):
...legitimize the terminology, but basically, they instituted a curriculum which is indistinguishable from what the communist party was running in the (19)30s in this country.
SM (00:15:49):
Well, one of the things that I have known, because I have worked in higher education after 30 years-
DH (00:15:54):
That is in regard not to, of course, the Soviet Union because that communism has failed, that they all condemn it now. But in terms of the analysis of American society, we get this Marxism with some racial and gender prejudice thrown in.
SM (00:16:16):
Well, I know you have written about this in terms of whether universities today are about education or indoctrination. How about the universities of the-
DH (00:16:29):
[inaudible] colleges. Not the whole university [inaudible]
SM (00:16:32):
Yeah. How about the universities of the (19)60sand (19)70s? Were they indoctrinating, too?
DH (00:16:38):
No.
SM (00:16:41):
And the colleges in the (19)50s?
DH (00:16:43):
No. Not in the sense... Indoctrination is when you present one side of an issue that is controversial or you are teaching...
SM (00:16:56):
One of the-
DH (00:17:00):
...an opinion as though it were a scientific fact. That did not really take place in the (19)50s. When I went to college, the height of the McCarthy period, we read Marx and we read the critics of Marx. Now you just read Marx and his disciples.
SM (00:17:24):
What was it about that 1950s that somehow subconsciously shaped so many of the boomers? Because I guess, kids are being raised in that era. Parents are giving them everything that they have really wanted because they had gone through the Depression and World War II. And so when boomers, the early stage boomers in the (19)50s, there seemed to be a lot of contentment, a lot of happiness, and all of a sudden after President Kennedy becomes president-
DH (00:17:54):
Radicalism is not about material deprivation. It is about unhappiness with existence itself.
SM (00:18:10):
What...
DH (00:18:11):
It is a desire that life be meaningful and that it have a particular meaning, which is that the life we experience is a preparation for a true life where there will be social justice and happiness for everyone.
SM (00:18:47):
What are your... just quick comments on, do not have to go in depth on any of these, but just your comments and thoughts on the women's movement?
DH (00:18:56):
There was no women's movement in the (19)60s. It was a movement of the (19)70s.
SM (00:19:03):
Yeah. Well, [inaudible]
DH (00:19:10):
I think it was, in practical terms, it was pushing on an open door. The liberation of women is attributable mainly, or if you want to call it that [inaudible] it is sort of hyperbolic, but if you want to call it that, is attributable to the development of modern antibiotic and modern methods of birth control, particularly the pill, but any contraceptives which allowed women... Because yes, there is always going to be resistance to anything somewhat new, but there was no serious resistance to women gaining equality in the workplace, going to work, and so forth and so on. That is ridiculous. Anybody who has witnessed or remembers or has seen, say, Adam's Rib, the movies of the (19)40s and (19)50s, will see the enormously important roles that women played way before the women's movement itself had started. The women's movement today is just another anti-American, anti-capitalist... The movement, that is what it is. Women's studies programs, what they teach is hatred of America, American capitalism, calling it racist and sexist. It is not about women. If it were about women, if feminists cared about women, they would be out in the streets marching against the oppression of women in Islam against the clitorectomies that are forced on little girls, against the medieval status of women in the Muslim world. But they do not do that because their main agenda is to attack the United States and [inaudible] Islamic fascists are attacking the United States. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, that made the feminists feel an empathy with them, with the worst women abusers in human history.
SM (00:21:53):
How about-
DH (00:21:53):
That tells you how much their commitment to women.
SM (00:21:55):
How about the Native American movement and the Chicano movement?
DH (00:22:00):
Look, these were all radical movements that had nothing to do with the welfare of Indians or Chicanos, who were also motivated by their antagonism to what used to be called in the (19)50s the American way of life.
SM (00:22:23):
Where would you place the environmental movement?
DH (00:22:28):
What? The environmental movement is the new communism you are talking about under the guise of saving the planet. I wrote an article called From Red to Green about this.
SM (00:22:37):
You have children-
DH (00:22:50):
Environmental movement. It is saving the planet. Everything is justified. It is a radicalistic dream. So, all the radicals have gone into it because what they really want to do... The core of radicalism is a desire to redeem the world. It is inherently totalitarian. Environmentalism is the perfect excuse to be totalitarian. We already have a totalitarian bill, a cap and trade bill proposed by the Obama administration, which will allow them to basically control your life. If they can erase your carbon footprint without any proof that it has deleterious effect on the actual world environment. But if they can do that, they can regulate every aspect of your life.
SM (00:24:02):
Of course then you talk about the ongoing Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement.
DH (00:24:07):
Say what?
SM (00:24:09):
The Civil Rights Movement, we all know the change that it took-
DH (00:24:14):
I supported the Civil Rights Movement and I still support it. But the Civil Rights Movement is no longer the Civil Rights Movement. It turned into a... The kind way to describe it as a racial grievance movement. It is a racist movement. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the two titular little leaders of this movement, are racist. Institutional racism in America is the racism of racial preferences, which is what the Civil Rights Movement supports and has supported for the last 30 or 40 years.
SM (00:24:57):
What are your thoughts on the Beats? They were very important in the (19)50s because they showed young people that you can really-
DH (00:25:07):
My thoughts about what?
SM (00:25:08):
The Beat generation, because several people that I have interviewed said they were very important in influencing many of the boomers in their protests, in their challenge of the status quo, people like Allen Ginsberg and-
DH (00:25:23):
Yeah, look. The formative influence, the influence was Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin, of course, there was a little bit of a criticism of Stalin for a while. No longer. Lenin. This was the influence on the (19)60s. At the end of the (19)50s, the Beats were a kind of model because they basically was a flipping of the bird to America. That is what it was. Oh, and Ginsburg turned out to be a loon. So, anyway.
SM (00:26:25):
Some of these names right here are people that I have talked to who, again, David, I have talked to them all a hundred people. It is very important to have your point of view here because you are about the 21st person on the conservatives. I just met last week with several individuals. I interviewed many individuals from the Heritage Foundation, Ed Volner and Lee Edwards. I have interviewed several people from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. So, I am making sure that I am fair in all this. I know your voice is very important, but these are some of the names that people have given me that they read when they were in the (19)60sand the (19)70s.
DH (00:27:11):
Well, anybody who you interview who is still a leftist is not going to tell you the truth because leftists, again, I cannot repeat this too often, in their minds, they are redeeming the world, and that is so important, that they will hide what they think and what they feel, particularly through an interview where they do not know. But in any of the interviews that they claim they are for peace. That was their concern. Social justice. Baloney. That was not their concern. If they were concerned about peace, for example... Let me give you a more recent example. The war in Iraq. There was not a single peace demonstration at the Iraqi Embassy to protest Saddam Hussein's violation of the UN resolutions and the Truce Agreement. There was not a demonstration there because it was not a peace movement. And neither was the anti-Vietnam movement. It was against American power. Anybody who says different is just not telling you the truth. So, if they say that... Of course the Beats were an influence, big deal. What kind of influence? They wrote poetry. I mean, well, Ginsburg, they wrote poetry about their disillusion with America. But why was this generation and the people who liked them, why did they like the Beats? Why did they look to the Beats? And I was one of them. They looked to the Beats because Stalinism, which is what they had, had been discredited. Communism had been discredited by Stalin for a season, as it were. Because now you have a lot of people who openly say they are Stalinists. But in those days, it was in very bad odor, and it had tainted Marxism as well. After all, they killed 40 million people. So, what people will say is, "The Beats influenced us." Why were they interested in the Beats? Were they poetry aficionados, or did the Beats write poetry, is a better question? No. It is because they were radicals who were looking to legitimize their radicalism. They were radical because they were Marxist and they were part of this perennial leftist delusion, illusion, unhappiness with the human condition as such, inability to cope with life as it is, inability to recognize that the source of social problems is human beings, not social institutions. What you are going to be told is they are always going to put the best face on it. They are not going to say, "Well, we really wanted to see communism succeed, but it became discredited by some mistakes that Allen and his cohort made." They are not going to tell you that.
SM (00:31:03):
Well, some of the... Let me just read these. There is just a few names. Herbert Marcuse, Bertrand Russell, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolf, Ken Kesey, Ginsberg, James Baldwin.
DH (00:31:15):
Yeah. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Gramsci. Yes, of course. Marcuse was a Stalinist. So, fine.
SM (00:31:31):
I have got a few more here with Theodore Rosak, Charles Reich, Eldridge Cleaver, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, and William Buckley.
DH (00:31:39):
Yeah.
SM (00:31:40):
Those are some of the writers that-
DH (00:31:43):
William Buckley was not radical.
SM (00:31:49):
Yeah. He wrote God and Man in Yale, which is a great book. One of the things that... I took a group of students... I just retired from Westchester University, David. That was in my email, and that is why I...
SM (00:32:03):
...University, David. That was in my email, and that is why I am working full-time on this. I eventually plan to go back. I have seen you six times speak. I saw, of course, you came to our campus twice. And then I saw you in two unique different environments. I saw you at Villanova and then I saw you at the University of Delaware. What a difference. They treated you with respect at Villanova, and they treated you terrible at the other place. Do you remember that?
DH (00:32:33):
Yeah. You probably did not know this, but I think I was actually wearing a catheter. That is the one where I just had to stop, because I could not get the tongue. My tongue would not move. I was so tired. I had been going 17 hours or something. I do not remember, but I had just had my prostate operation.
SM (00:32:58):
How you doing? You okay?
DH (00:32:58):
Covered? Yeah, I am okay.
SM (00:33:06):
I tell you, I said in the book or in my email to you that I have all your books. And the one book, of course, I love Radical Son, but the one book that I really love is the one you talked about your illness.
DH (00:33:21):
I think that is sort of my best book. I have written another one in that vein about my daughter called The Cracking of the Heart that came out.
SM (00:33:29):
When is that coming out?
DH (00:33:30):
It is out.
SM (00:33:31):
Oh, I got to go get it. Because you see, at that time when you were ill, my dad was dying of cancer. And so my dad died right after I bought the book, and I read it [inaudible]. It is just a tremendous book. I wonder, I took a group of students to Washington DC to meet Edmond Musky before he passed away. It was part of our leadership on the road programs, and we asked him this question and the students actually wrote this question up. And we thought he was going to talk about the 1968 convention, but he did not mention anything about it. And this is the question we asked him: Do you feel that the boomers generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white divisions, between those who support authority and those who criticize it, between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Will the boomer generation go to its grave, like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this after 40 years? Or is the statement, "time heals all wounds," a truth?
DH (00:34:42):
The war is still on.
SM (00:34:42):
Pardon?
DH (00:34:46):
Of course it will not heal. The war is still on.
SM (00:34:54):
Could you talk a little bit about that?
DH (00:34:54):
Well, if you understand, we are talking about the political movement of the sixties was a movement to reintroduce communist values, communist Marxist values, Leninist values and analyses into the American mainstream, and they succeeded. And so there is an ongoing war over this. Now, of course, some people will ween when I say Marxist. And I will say, "Well, Marx did not talk about sexual orientation bias." Marx believed that a lot of the oppression of capitalism took place only at the workplace. He did not, although Engels wrote about the oppression of women, Marx really did not. But we are not Marxists. Well, sure, if you understand Marxism as a view that capitalism is a system comparable feudalism, slavery, and all previous systems of domination, and that needs to be overthrown so a classless [inaudible] and now genderless society can be introduced. And of course all these radicals are Marxists. And what the sixties and seventies did was to reintroduce this heinous, poisonous ideology into the heart of American culture so that you can have a terrorist. One of the most shallow human beings ever encountered, Billères, a counselor, the president who probably ghost-wrote his autobiography. You can have a communist, an avowed communist like Van Jones, given a White House position. You see this country is in the throes of a major political cultural crisis in which the sixties and seventies generation of communist radical, that played a huge role because they not only legitimize these poisonous ideologies, but they have now made them part of the school curriculum, both at the university level and at the K-12 level. So this is a civil war that is going to go on for generations.
SM (00:37:52):
See, Edmund Musky said did not even comment about any of that. He commented the fact that we have not healed since the Civil War. And he went on to talk about the Ken Burns series that he had been watching and actually had tears in his eye just like we had seen on television.
DH (00:38:10):
Musky was a sappy liberal. Ken Burns is a leftist. Which series? The Civil War?
SM (00:38:19):
Mm-hmm.
DH (00:38:20):
It is not over in the sense that there has been a revenge here in which the Civil Rights movement itself now is the force of racism in our society, as I have already said.
SM (00:38:36):
But where would you put the gay lesbian movement too?
DH (00:38:39):
Well, I think that the movement you are talking about, these political movements are all controlled by the anti-American left. I think that the acceptance of gays is a good thing. And I think that making gays a privileged group, like Black are a privileged group, is a bad thing. I do not believe in these. I believe in the 14th amendment and one standard for all. So all racial preferences are the poison of racism reintroduced by the left into American life, in that sense, if you want a civil war [inaudible].
SM (00:39:34):
In your opinion, what was the watershed moment when the sixties began and when it ended?
DH (00:39:41):
Well, I wrote about this in an article in a book called Deconstructing the Left. I think the real sixties, the sixties decade that I am describing began in 1963 with the assassination of Kennedy and the assassination of [inaudible].
SM (00:40:08):
And when did the sixties end?
DH (00:40:22):
It really ended around (19)70, (19)71. It was over. I wrote about that too.
SM (00:40:31):
Say that again.
DH (00:40:35):
I think it was over by 1970.
SM (00:40:40):
If we were in a room with five-
DH (00:40:43):
Okay, I am sorry. It ended when Nixon ended the draft, I think. Whatever.
SM (00:40:50):
Right.
DH (00:40:53):
What happened was the anti-war so-called movement was driven by radicals like myself who were basically hostile to America, because they were Marxists in the way I have described Marxists. But its ranks were tremendously swelled. People joined it because they wanted to get out of the draft. They did not want to risk their alliance for their country. When the draft was over the sixties were over.
SM (00:41:29):
Is there one specific event that you think had the greatest impact on this generation of (19)70 million?
DH (00:41:39):
Well, I think it was probably the assassination of Kennedy and the Kennedy administration was bumbling of the war in Vietnam.
SM (00:41:48):
One of the qualities that I have asked, a question I have asked, is the issue of trust, because so many of the boomers, when they were young, saw all these leaders that lied to them, so to speak. Whether it be Eisenhower and the U-2, Johnson with the Gulf of Tonkin, of course Nixon and Watergate.
DH (00:42:06):
Oh, I just think that is an excuse. It is an excuse. Well, I do not want to excuse Johnson for lying. He lied because Democrats, even by then I guess, just did not have the stomach to-to fight a war for freedom. So he had to lie and pretend that our boats were attacked.
SM (00:42:42):
You do not think that the issue of trust is-
DH (00:42:45):
[inaudible] bring up the U-2 incident. Those are unreconstructed radicals whose deep sympathies are with communism, and that is why they did not like the U-2 incident. Geez, what was wrong about protecting... What do you mean lie? Anybody who says that is somebody who does not understand that we were fighting a totalitarian monster in communism. Anybody who told you that falls into that category.
SM (00:43:20):
Well, I have only put it into a question for them, and the people have responded.
DH (00:43:26):
You are the one who came up with it?
SM (00:43:28):
No. I have read about it in history books.
DH (00:43:31):
I know, but that is the excuse mode. I told you. People who aim at the destruction of a system that people are pretty happy with, which is ours, will make up stories. They are not going to tell you that they are just opposed to the system, because nobody wants to be isolated as a fringe kook. So they lie. They tell you it is about deception or it is about peace, or it is about justice. They are just lying. They find reasons to be communist.
SM (00:44:16):
So you do not see this is an issue within the boomers then?
DH (00:44:18):
Hold on second.
SM (00:44:25):
No. I would like to ask you, I have been asking this to everyone. Photography plays a very important role in defining a time. What were the pictures that you most remember of that period of the sixties and seventies that really defines the times? Looks like you got some dogs.
DH (00:45:04):
Oh, sorry about that.
SM (00:45:06):
I got dogs on an interview. That is great.
DH (00:45:10):
Fine protection, huh? Anyway. I am not saying that people cannot be distressed about this or that thing, but that is not what makes them radical.
SM (00:45:23):
What were the, in your opinion, pictures that-
DH (00:45:28):
America. If Black people in America were oppressed, they would be leaving. Not only are they not leaving, but they are coming here, and they are risking their lives to get here, the Haitians. There is no oppression in America. People do not revolt over they did not like that the government lied to protect one of the flyers. That is the excuse that so-called liberals make for their appeasement and desire to capitulate for our enemies.
SM (00:46:06):
I do not know if you got the question on the pictures. When you think of that period, what are the pictures that come to mind to you?
DH (00:46:12):
Which period?
SM (00:46:12):
The sixties and the seventies when boomers were young. The pictures that could define the era, the ones you saw in the magazines.
DH (00:46:25):
I do not know, because as everything I have said here reveals my view that as a whole the era is misrepresented.
SM (00:46:50):
Well, the three pictures that I mentioned to some of the other people-
DH (00:46:52):
Well, for me... You want an actual photograph?
SM (00:47:02):
Yeah, actual photographs.
DH (00:47:06):
Well, nobody took a picture of Bernardine Dohrn giving the fork salute to honor Charlie Manson. That would be certainly one, I would think.
SM (00:47:21):
The three that I mentioned was the girls standing over the body or kneeling over the body of Jeff Miller at Kent State.
DH (00:47:27):
Yeah, that is an example of the perverse. That is a picture which is taken to symbolize the bad authorities who killed an innocent student. In fact, it was Billy Ayer's friends who provoked those National Guardsmen. They were being attacked. The real picture would be the National Guards being attacked with rocks who panicked. You are talking about a media that was sympathetic to the protest.
SM (00:48:20):
And there is the one with Kim Phúc, being the girl burned walking down the-
DH (00:48:24):
And there is another one. Right. Like I said, the decade is completely misrepresented.
SM (00:48:30):
And then the Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics.
DH (00:48:33):
I think that is a disgusting spectacle.
SM (00:48:34):
I have three slogans here that I think defined the period. I would like your comments on this. First one obviously the slogan is Malcolm X's. I am going to mention all three before you comment. "By any means necessary."
DH (00:48:57):
Malcolm X was a racist who should not be honored. He was an interesting racist, but still he was a racist. He was at war with America. He hated America.
SM (00:49:14):
The second one was the slogan that Bobby Kennedy mentioned or quoted. I think it was a Henry David Thoreau statement, which is, "Some men see things as they are ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not."
DH (00:49:25):
But Bobby Kennedy, come on, he is an overrated punk.
SM (00:49:35):
And then Peter Max, the painter, had a lot of slogans on his paintings. And one of them was, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful."
DH (00:49:49):
That was the benign sixties. I have no quarrel with it.
SM (00:49:52):
I am going to mention some names. This is very important, because I wanted to do this when you were at our campus. I remember you mentioned when I had let you off at the airport there, that you wanted to answer this part, but we did not have time. Just quick reactions to some of these personalities of the period plus some of the terms of the era. I will start out with Jane Fonda.
DH (00:50:17):
An airhead who betrayed her country and her countrymen and worse, because she did not do it in the abstract. She betrayed heroic men in a Vietnamese prison. And may she rot in Hell.
SM (00:50:32):
Tom Hayden.
DH (00:50:32):
Not really, not different. A pathetic individual, Tom Hayden, who betrayed his country.
SM (00:50:32):
And then Rennie Davis was the-
DH (00:50:32):
And who has learned nothing. I did not know Rennie Davis.
SM (00:50:32):
Okay.
DH (00:50:32):
I do not know much about him. I would not think much of him, but I do not know him.
SM (00:50:32):
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
DH (00:50:32):
Oh, Jerry, I cannot have ill will towards Jerry Rubin. They were clowns, basically.
SM (00:50:32):
Timothy Leary.
DH (00:50:32):
An irresponsible and destructive narcissist.
SM (00:50:32):
How about Benjamin Spock?
DH (00:51:33):
I do not really know much about Spock. He had a pernicious influence on almost child-rearing on politics, but I do not really know much about him.
SM (00:51:42):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
DH (00:51:51):
Well, Agnew discredited conservatism by being a crook, and Nixon was a liberal.
SM (00:52:01):
Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.
DH (00:52:10):
Well, I think McCarthy was a dilatant who played with people's lives. I think his dropping out after leading everybody up the primrose path was reprehensible. I debated him. I did not debate him; I was a speaker at an event, I guess. He spoke before me at an event at Stony Brook, which showed that he was also a fool. He just doped up all of the nonsense.
SM (00:53:07):
George McGovern?
DH (00:53:07):
I would not characterize him any differently.
SM (00:53:07):
You had already commented on Bobby Kennedy. What are your thoughts on John Kennedy?
DH (00:53:13):
Oh, I think John Kennedy was an interesting figure. I am sorry that he was president, because he was reckless and it had consequences. Personally [inaudible], but his politics were identical to those of Ronald Reagan, which shows you how far the country had fled towards the left in these matters.
SM (00:54:00):
LBJ and Huber Huntley.
DH (00:54:00):
I do not have any thoughts about them.
SM (00:54:00):
Robert McNamara.
DH (00:54:14):
McNamara was an arrogant... He was so arrogant. He was semi-comatose when he came to the important things. He was responsible for the death of the Edsel and for a lot of the debacle in Vietnam. And then he spent his later years apologizing for the good things that he did instead of the bad ones.
SM (00:54:48):
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
DH (00:54:53):
I knew Daniel Ellsberg very well. He was another festively narcissistic individual who betrayed his country.
SM (00:55:04):
George Wallace.
DH (00:55:07):
Well, Wallace was a racist and a demagogue who became the unfortunate victim of a would-be assassin. I interviewed him when I did the Kennedy book, and it was amazing. He was just sucking up to the Kennedys. I did not understand it. I do not think very much of him.
SM (00:55:49):
What about Barry Goldwater?
DH (00:55:51):
Well, when Barry Goldwater was Barry Goldwater, I was a leftist, so I hated him. When he ceased to be Barry Goldwater and became a liberal, I did not think much of him.
SM (00:56:00):
How about John Dean?
DH (00:56:00):
A worm.
SM (00:56:12):
I will just list all these individuals. Gloria Steinem.
DH (00:56:14):
The futility of this. I do not do these things well. I am unhappy with these.
SM (00:56:21):
No, you have given some great responses. No, seriously, David, because some people have given one-word responses and then that is it. They have one-word response, and then some will go over somebody, and then they will be one person that, "Oh, I got to talk about this person." I am almost done here with these names anyways. But I put this group in. Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan. Shirley Chisholm. That group.
DH (00:56:53):
Well, Bella Abzug was just a communist. And Gloria Steinem is another airhead. Who was?
SM (00:57:05):
Betty Friedan.
DH (00:57:08):
Well, I have written a lot about Betty Friedan. She was a fraud. She was a communist and a fraud.
SM (00:57:13):
The other was Shirley Chisholm.
DH (00:57:16):
I do not have anything.
SM (00:57:18):
And then I know you are going to make some comments about these individuals. I want to list all seven of them before you say anything. And that is Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale. I am missing one here. The one that died in Chicago.
DH (00:57:39):
Hampton.
SM (00:57:41):
Yeah. They are kind of different. They are all Black Panthers. Oh, H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. A lot of them are different.
DH (00:57:51):
So Hampton and Newton were basically street thugs who had some kind of appeal with that. That is not to say that street thugs do not have their own kinds of charisma. Angela Davis is a not very bright communist hack. Who else? Oh, Kathleen Cleaver. Oh God, another over-privileged, very angry, very dishonest.
SM (00:58:33):
There is Eldridge Cleaver.
DH (00:58:36):
Eldridge is probably the most interesting one, but he is the rapist.
SM (00:58:44):
Then of course Huey Newton.
DH (00:58:45):
That is another comment on the sixties [inaudible]. Made a rapist into a national figure.
SM (00:58:51):
I think Ramparts published his book.
DH (00:58:55):
Bob Shea wrote the introduction. Famous.
SM (00:58:58):
Yes. Daniel and Phillip Berrigan.
DH (00:59:01):
I do not know. They were out of my orbit. There is not much variety in them, because they are all party-lining America haters.
SM (00:59:19):
William Buckley.
DH (00:59:24):
Well, I have written a lot about Buckley too. I think that Buckley was a heroic individual. He did not need the grief that was given to him for what he did. Very bright man.
SM (00:59:43):
These last few here, you do not have to go in any depth, just some reaction. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?
DH (00:59:56):
I have never been there. That is very sad. The Vietnamese and our troops were abandoned and the left had a tremendous amount to do with that for their everlasting.
SM (01:00:14):
What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?
DH (01:00:20):
Oh, excuses of the left for their heinous role in the murder of two and a half million Indochinese peasants.
SM (01:00:33):
What does Watergate mean to you?
DH (01:00:41):
Stupidity. Typical Republican stupidity and then a failure of nerve. Nixon should never have resigned.
SM (01:00:54):
Woodstock. The summer of Love.
DH (01:01:04):
Well, Woodstock was a big mud fest. I do not know. I have watched the film. Way overrated. People's longing for meaning. When you see the wood Woodstock film, everybody yearning to be that it was some kind of big, meaningful event. And it was just a lot of people rolling in the mud.
SM (01:01:29):
Summer of Love in that same category.
DH (01:01:32):
I was not around for the Summer of Love. I am sorry I missed. Again, I think that, it is one of those things that starts out benign and then has not so benign consequences.
SM (01:01:47):
The year 1968.
DH (01:01:49):
The love part, but the drug part.
SM (01:01:54):
1968.
DH (01:02:03):
Well, but 1968, a lot of bad things. Tet Offensive, that was misrepresented by Walter Cronkite and other ill-wishers towards America. Two terrible assassinations. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
SM (01:02:23):
What do you think of Dr. King?
DH (01:02:28):
I am an admirer of Dr. King.
SM (01:02:29):
What did you think of his Vietnam speech?
DH (01:02:37):
It was terrible. It was written by Newhouse. It was the worst thing that he did in his entire life.
SM (01:02:41):
Why is that?
DH (01:02:45):
Because he joined. He gave a rhetorical cover to the communist left.
SM (01:02:54):
The hippies and the Yippies.
DH (01:02:57):
The whiches and the Yippies?
SM (01:03:00):
The whiches and the Yippies?
DH (01:03:03):
I do not know. Again, I do not like these one-word things.
SM (01:03:12):
The last two are Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen.
DH (01:03:27):
The Weatherman were terrorists. The Students for a Democratic Society were trying to overthrow the best system that human beings have ever defined.
SM (01:03:27):
Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
DH (01:03:30):
Traitors.
SM (01:03:40):
I got a few more questions here, and then we will be done. Boomers are often called... You have written a lot of this yourself, and I have read a lot of books on this generation. A lot of people that I have interviewed, David, have said, "Well, when you start talking about the boomers, that really you are only talking about the first 10 years of the boomers. The second 10 years of the boomers, you cannot throw into this group." Ten years of the boomers you cannot throw into this group. So there is a lot of negativity towards putting generations... labeling people in generations.
DH (01:04:10):
I think it is very important.
SM (01:04:16):
You do?
DH (01:04:17):
Yeah, because the Boomers were the really destructive ones. I mean we set the stage. I do not want to exculpate my generation, but when they took over, they were the force behind The Weathermen and 1969. Those were all Boomers. Well they were not all Boomers, but they were the main... they were Boomers. I Boomers knew nothing, they knew nothing and they did not care to learn.
SM (01:04:58):
The Boomers are often defined along these terms. Boomers are often defined as the most educated generation in American history. How do you respond to that?
DH (01:05:09):
Well, I mean they went to school, you know?
SM (01:05:10):
Yeah.
DH (01:05:10):
I do not put that much stock in the Boomer education.
SM (01:05:20):
Boomers are called the Vietnam Generation. Is that a good label?
DH (01:05:30):
Yeah, I mean if you mean by that people who did not want to serve their country in the cause of freedom, sure.
SM (01:05:37):
Others say Boomers are called the Wounded Generation.
DH (01:05:41):
Oh that is self-serving horse crap.
SM (01:05:47):
That has a lot to do with the Vietnam War I believe. Boomers are often defined as the Counter Culture Generation.
DH (01:05:54):
That is right.
SM (01:05:56):
And then the Woodstock generation.
DH (01:05:58):
Definitely.
SM (01:05:58):
One of the things that is really fantastic about you and makes you unique is that when you are on college campuses I think you say a lot of things that students have never heard before, and there were some speakers in the (19)60sthat I remember this, but as you go onto college campuses today, do you ever think back over your entire life and think when the Golden Era was in higher education, when all the views were desired, listened to, accepted as part of American democracy? Can you think of any period David? You are highly educated, you have been teaching... you have taught in the classroom, you have been on university campuses for forty-plus years, was there a golden era when even you felt good?
DH (01:06:47):
A golden era what?
SM (01:06:47):
A golden era when you could go on a college campus and you knew that the people were listening and they were not being, I do not want to say indoctrinated, but-
DH (01:06:53):
All right this jerk is at my door again.
SM (01:06:58):
Okay I will hold here.
DH (01:06:58):
April [inaudible].
SM (01:06:58):
That is okay.
DH (01:06:59):
Okay so the golden age, what are you asking me?
SM (01:07:24):
I am just asking, because you are obviously pretty upset with the way universities are run today and a lot of them are supposedly because of faculty and administrators that were reared and grew up as Boomers, but was there a period of time when you went to college, was there a few years where it was a golden era where you felt real good about college environments?
DH (01:07:49):
I loved my college education.
SM (01:07:54):
Yeah. Because you went to college in the early ... was it (19)60s?
DH (01:07:58):
No, (19)55 to (19)59.
SM (01:08:01):
Could you describe what it was like? Because that is still part of Boomers' lives, and they were in elementary school, what it was like to be on a college campus then?
DH (01:08:10):
Well of course there was a problem, because it was the McCarthy era, so that was fairly apolitical, although communists came to campus, John came to campus, of course it was when he was disillusioned with [inaudible] Norman Thomas [inaudible]. So the public square at the university was a little constricted, but the university community was hostile to McCarthy. The influences of McCarthyism which are now pervasive in the university because they come from the Left and the faculty Left were absent from the university. The university classroom was a very free place. Yeah and the college... you know you learn a scholarly disposition, which was skeptical, which was civilized, and reflect.
SM (01:09:30):
And-
DH (01:09:31):
There were no ideologs teaching then. I never encountered any. Whereas today there are whole fields that are totally dominated by ideologs.
SM (01:09:48):
And you did your undergrad at Columbia and then you went to Berkeley for your master’s degree, and then the Free Speech movement took place. Now that is interesting. What are your thoughts on that Free Speech movement? That was (19)64 [inaudible]-
DH (01:10:05):
I was not around. I do not think much of it. It was not a free speech movement ... even that, I mean it is perfect because... and it was led by... one of the leaders was Bettina Aptheker, who was a card-carrying communist, but it was not a free speech movement because America has a First Amendment, it was a state institution, so of course there was free speech at Berkeley. It was about the right to recruit students to political movements on campus, that is what it was about. It was the right to intrude the political world into the university, and they basically [inaudible] you know, it is weird to present problems of the modern university, and-
SM (01:11:06):
Wow that is interesting because you know Mario Savio is highly revered for-
DH (01:11:14):
Of course he is, because the university is a left-wing institution.
SM (01:11:18):
I am going to be interviewing Bettina... Dr. Aptheker in January.
DH (01:11:24):
Yeah.
SM (01:11:25):
She is on sabbatical. She is actually going to be teaching at Columbia.
DH (01:11:29):
No doubt.
SM (01:11:30):
Yeah, she is going to be there. I have got about three more questions then we are done. When you look at the presidents of the time that Boomers were alive, from Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush One, Clinton, Bush Two, and now Obama, and actually Obama is a Boomer, he was two years old, the tail-end of the Boomers, but when you look at those presidents, do you give any of them As, Bs, Cs? How do you rate these presidents and how do you think these presidents influenced this generation?
DH (01:12:11):
Who was the presidents?
SM (01:12:12):
It is all of them from Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. I guess Obama's just recent, but you know, these are the presidents that-
DH (01:12:32):
I do not rate presidents. I just do not do that. Can I ask you... I would like you to send me the transcript.
SM (01:12:38):
Oh yeah, you will get the transcript.
DH (01:12:39):
Yeah because I... you know, I... all right. But I do not... my wife has always asked me to rate things, I cannot. I do not-
SM (01:12:54):
That is all right.
DH (01:12:54):
Not what I do.
SM (01:12:56):
The best history books are written on the Boomers' generation, what do you think... which is usually 50 years after a generation has passed, what do you think they will be writing about this generation? What do you think they will say? And the people that will be writing will be the people that are not Boomers.
DH (01:13:10):
I have no idea and I do not really care. You know I have written what I... you know I disagree with that, I think that basically everything is already known, all the important things. If you visit controversies like what were the origins of the Civil War, you will find that at the time, you know, all the positions were already taken. So I have written what I know about the [inaudible] I hope people will read it but I am not confident they will, given the dominance of the Left in our universities. The ideological Left that does not really want to hear a different point of view.
SM (01:14:10):
Do you think Boomers have-
DH (01:14:15):
I personally do not think that any one individual or any one spectrum of individuals writing about a period like this would have a monopoly of proof, and therefore it is very important that you... if you are trying to evaluate the (19)60sfor example, that you [inaudible] a spectrum on views.
SM (01:14:44):
Do you think Boomers have been good parents?
DH (01:14:58):
I am not confident that that will be happening in American universities. [inaudible].
SM (01:14:58):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think overall Boomers have been good parents and grandparents in raising their kids?
DH (01:15:01):
I have no idea.
SM (01:15:02):
No?
DH (01:15:05):
Do people actually answer that question?
SM (01:15:07):
Pardon?
DH (01:15:09):
Have you had people actually answer that question?
SM (01:15:12):
Yes. But they always do it on a personal basis. So they all say, "I cannot generalize an entire generation but I can tell you about a lot of my friends who are Boomers," and you know they go to the personal, they do not put a general statement, they just give a personal, and-
DH (01:15:31):
Okay let me ask you another question. Do you find people who are still Leftists taking the view that Boomers raised their kids horribly?
SM (01:15:46):
No.
DH (01:15:47):
No.
SM (01:15:48):
I have not had anybody-
DH (01:15:50):
So they conform, in other words their estimates of how Boomers bring up their children reflects their politics, correct?
SM (01:16:02):
Yeah, you know it is interesting, some have not gone into any details, some kind of pass over the question. Some do not have any kids. But you know, I have got over 100 interviews, I lot of them are Vietnam vets, and so I have gotten a lot of different responses from them, because of course a lot of them were treated pretty poorly when they came back and so they kind of answer these questions a lot differently than some of the scholars and writers and so forth. So I guess the final question I want to ask is something that Jan Scruggs, the founder of the Vietnam Memorial in (19)82 when it opened, he wrote a book called To Heal a Nation, and of course he was referring to, I think overall, the healing within the Vietnam veteran community and their families and so forth, but he did make a reference that he felt the wall was kind of the first step in healing the nation from the war. We are not talking about all the other things, just the war issue. Do you think... you know and I think he probably still believes it to-
DH (01:17:16):
[inaudible].
SM (01:17:18):
Has it helped heal the nation?
DH (01:17:25):
Well I think, you know, that is a mouthful what you just said. It did not heal the nation. So what I would say is that I think it did a great service in bringing the Vietnam veterans into the bosom of the nation, and that was a great service, but it did nothing to heal the nation, because the nation cannot be healed... it was not, you know, mistaken views of the war or different views of the war, it was a radical movement that fundamentally hates America and the system that it represents, and is at war with it, and so that war is going to go on, and you cannot make a monument to end that war.
SM (01:18:30):
You know I never said this in any of my other interviews, but I can remember when I was living in San Francisco in the early (19)80s and they had a minster on, he was on every week, he was kind of like a [Coughing] type minster, and he was on every week and I will never forget... my ears went up when he said this, "America will be a better place when the last Boomer dies." I was shocked when I heard it. And he was referring to the entire generation. So I think that is a little too strong, would not you say?
DH (01:19:01):
I do not know about that.
SM (01:19:03):
I felt that... and that was a minister that was really preaching. David are there any other-
DH (01:19:10):
I think... let me put it this way. I understand where he is coming from, as the sheer frustration of it, but the fact of the matter is that Boomers have children, and worse than that, they are indoctrinating other people's children through their corruption of the university system. And that is going to have an impact for generations.
SM (01:19:38):
Do you have any other final thoughts? Or was there a question that I did not ask that you thought might be appropriate to ask?
DH (01:19:46):
No, that is fine. But I am a little concerned about some of my answers.
SM (01:19:53):
Well first off it takes a while for me to get these transcribed David, and I had a partial interview with you, remember in the car when I was driving you to the airport?
DH (01:20:02):
No. Yeah, I have no memory of anything.
SM (01:20:02):
Yeah. So I also had sent-
DH (01:20:10):
It is just my state of being. You know I-
SM (01:20:10):
You what?
DH (01:20:16):
And you know, this Bettina Aptheker, a horse's ass.
SM (01:20:22):
Well I have actually interviewed David Harris and-
DH (01:20:25):
Another horse's ass.
SM (01:20:26):
And [inaudible] Davis.
DH (01:20:29):
Yeah.
SM (01:20:30):
And some of the top feminist leaders too, but I am trying to get all sides because I am... the-
DH (01:20:41):
I mean it is good.
SM (01:20:41):
The book is about... and I think you would be happy, even though you do not like some of the people, I like everybody.
DH (01:20:46):
It is fine, I like the idea. You know it is a kind of... I do not do well in these kind of... I do not think this way, you know with the [inaudible] answers and the-
SM (01:21:01):
Well I am a big fan of yours, you know I am-
DH (01:21:01):
I appreciate that, it is the only reason I have stayed on the phone.
SM (01:21:06):
Well no I am a fan of yours, because I just think you are the type of speaker that we need on university campuses, that is why it works with the Young Americas Foundation, I interviewed Mr. Robinson this summer as well, and it does not matter what my politics are, what matters is that I want young people-
DH (01:21:23):
I have to go with an armed guard to campuses.
SM (01:21:26):
Well that should not happen in America.
DH (01:21:40):
I agree.
SM (01:21:40):
That should not happen David.
DH (01:21:41):
Okay.
SM (01:21:41):
[inaudible].
DH (01:21:41):
All right.
SM (01:21:42):
There has been a lot of commentary in the news in the last couple of years that the reason why we have so many problems in American society is because of the Boomer generation, because they are responsible for the breakup of the American family and the lack of respect for authority and people in positions of power and responsibility, the increase in drugs, what are your thoughts on that commentary leveled against the Boomer generation?
DH (01:22:08):
Well you know I would not pin it on a generation as though it is an age thing, there is plenty of Boomers who support traditional family values, who are opposed to drugs, and voted for Ronald Reagan. It is the Left- wing Boomers, it is the... it is really the (19)60s, and the Boomers were just one wave of the (19)60s. I was born in 1939, so I am not a Boomer, but it was my generation of the Left that created the political framework of the radicalism of the (19)60s. And then there were evidently quite a few people who... from my generation as well who started the drug movement and you know, there was a kind of fusing of the, what you might call the cultural rebels, which had something to do with drugs and something to do... I do not know, with electric rock, and of course you know since I came out of a Marxist background I do not have too great of a feel for that. But by about 19, I guess, (19)67, when they had the Be In in Golden Gate Park and people were lighting up joints, there was that kind of rebellion against authority, and then we on the political Left integrated it with our anti-American revolt against the Vietnam War and you know, sundry other oppressions that we imagined were taking place. And you know Tom Hayden and others would say that... who were not especially... you know, they were not drug enthusiasts, I guess everybody did drugs, they felt it was very useful to have middle-class kids lighting up joints, breaking the law, because that made them into rebels. In order to make a revolution, particularly in a democracy where you can vote, you have to break the law, and it was important to make people cross the line through draft resistance and through drug use, so that they disrespected authority. And of course it was the Left that invented the word, "Pigs," for policemen and began the assault on civil authority that helped the crime wave that followed, and it was... you know and the drug epidemic that followed was a direct consequence of... you know Hayden, in his Berkeley liberation statement, had the absurd clause of... or part of the Berkeley liberation statement was we will protect people's right to use hard drugs, even though they may be harmful for that. It was lunacy... lunatic decade, but the general assault on the family from the feminists and the use of drugs and the assault on police, you know it did definitely fuel the fires of all these social... the social holocaust that followed.
SM (01:25:49):
I just want to double-check here to make sure that is working properly. Testing.
DH (01:25:49):
I will do it.
SM (01:25:50):
Okay. It looks like it is.
DH (01:26:14):
[inaudible] Yeah.
SM (01:26:14):
What I normally do is... see if this is working right. [inaudible] Batteries or the ... I do not see the red light on here. I am trying to see if I see a red light on here. Testing one, two. Okay. I will be able to do it.
DH (01:26:21):
Okay.
SM (01:26:29):
Okay next question is could you give some of the, what you consider some of the positive characteristics and then some of the negative characteristics of the Boomers? Just brief descriptions. Your thoughts-
DH (01:26:40):
Okay but I want to... I mean just make that distinction between the first wave of the (19)60s, which was people of my generation pre-war or wartime, and then the Boomers who... the Boomers really fueled the phenomenon like the Weathermen, you know, they were really revolutionary, and they were more reckless, and they really carried it through in the (19)70s. I think my generation got a little tired. Positive, I think first of all, my periodization of the (19)60sis that it began in 1963, in the fall after the... with the assassination of Kennedy. I consider the movement of Martin Luther King to be a movement really of the (19)50s, something that started in the late (19)50s and in a way ended with the enactment of the Civil Rights Acts, because what followed that was a movement... the Civil Rights Movement that was taken over by Stokely Carmichael, the radicals. The guiding spirits became Malcolm X, not Martin Luther King. So you know I consider the Civil Rights Acts, you know, the tremendous triumphs of the (19)60s, but they really were pre-Boomer, let us put it that way. And your idea of Boomer is good there, because it was not the Boomers. The Boomers are the Black Power enthusiasts. But what the (19)60sdid that I think was very important was to widen the public space. It was the inclusion of Black America into the popular culture, is the most striking result of that, but there was a general tolerance for square pegs that did not fit into round holes. I think that we greatly expanded our public space in the (19)60sand that is something that was truly beneficial, and I have not only no quarrel with that, but I feel good about having played a small part in it. I liked the music, not the clothes but the music was kind of neat. And you know I... one has to separate it. In my view, the entry of women into the workplace and into public life was really effortless, I mean I think it had more to do with the development of the pill, than anything else, because until women could really control their reproductive cycle, there was no possibility for them to pursue, or there was, let us say, restricted possibility for them to pursue careers. I do not think there was tremendous resistance to women moving into the workplace and I do not think that Betty Friedan had much of a positive impact, or the Women's Movement, I think it was mainly negative. Except other areas, I think maybe sports, I do not know that women would have proceeded as directly into sports. You know maybe it accelerated it at some points, but it created so much bitterness and so much sexual confusion that... you know, unbalance, I do not think it was too positive. I am speaking of the organized Feminist Movement.
SM (01:30:28):
What are your thoughts on today's generation of young people and also the parents who are the Boomers, who have raised them? Have they shared their experiences of what it was like in the (19)60sand the (19)70with their children? I bring this question up because when you see the voting patterns of today's young people, and you compare them with some of the Boomers who actually were fighting for the right to vote, the voting patterns are pretty comparable with young people voting under 50 percent, and probably a lot of Boomers doing the very same thing. What impact have Boomers had on their kids' lives, from your perspective?
DH (01:31:05):
Well I am... you are talking about vote apathy. I have never been concerned about vote apathy, I mean I think that people do not vote either because... you know mainly because they are too busy to pay attention to what is going on in politics and I guess they are fairly satisfied with the way things are and the way things are going. I mean I have never seen it... I prefer people who are not interested, that they do not vote. But I think that the present generations are more conservative, certainly, than the Boomers were. I think that the... you know, people have seen the (19)60sdid not work. They tried to... the Boomers tried to create an alternative to the family, it failed miserably. They promoted drugs, we have a drug epidemic. You know you cannot tune in, turn on, and drop out now. If you drop out you never come back, it is too competitive. You know it was a unique period where the middle-class young people had the luxury of partying throughout their 20s and growing in politics and then coming back and getting careers, and of course what have they done? The people who said they were going to burn down the university in the (19)60s, and you know, revolution and on the barricades, they went on and they became PhDs. You know, they were the bureaucrats that run the contemporary university and have made it a more restrictive environment, ironically, than it was in the (19)50s. You know there is more university oversight and intervention in undergraduate's lives these days than there ever was in the 1950s, and so they were not exactly a revolutionary inspiration. I mean they were the thought police, if you like, they were the ones who enacted the speech codes and this very restrictive idea of political correctness. You know and Americans have a kind of... they have an innate rebellious spirit which is more anarchical than communist, and their parents are more communist than anarchist, and I think that creates a certain tension. Also the Boomers showed that although they changed the American life a lot and, in my view, a lot for the worst, they showed that you can bring about the millennium, and so their children are much more practical and looking much more to careers and things like that.
SM (01:34:06):
One of the slogans of the (19)60swhen Boomers were young, I know because I remember it from college, it said, "We are the most unique generation in American history," just your thoughts on that mentality when people were young and whether you think Boomers have carried that to adulthood, and your thoughts on that kind of an attitude when they were young?
DH (01:34:26):
Well I think everybody who is young thinks they are unique and that they know better than older people. You know there is a truth in that. I do not... you know America has not seen such an upheaval since... a domestic upheaval since the Civil War, so it is a watershed decade, the (19)60s, and in that they may be right. I think that (19)60speople are sort of gloomy. You know I think they have to feel that they failed, because their expectations were so unrealistic to begin with, so they could never succeed. That was built in. And I think they were an unhappy lot in that sense.
SM (01:35:22):
[inaudible].
DH (01:35:23):
An unhappy lot in that sense.
SM (01:35:27):
How important were the Boomers with the respect to the Civil Rights Movement, knowing that Freedom Summer really took place in (19)64, and if you look at the age group of the Boomers, they were born between (19)46 and (19)64.
DH (01:35:39):
Right, I do not think the Boomers were important at all. It was more my generation. While they were in high school or something at the time, so they did not play a role. The Civil Rights Movement as I say was really a movement of the (19)50s, it was a much... it was a very traditionalist movement a lot of religious values, you know, non-violence.
DH (01:36:01):
Values, nonviolence, the idea of integrating into American life. I mean, the Boomers rejected American life. It is quite a different phenomenon and agenda.
SM (01:36:18):
How important, again, getting to another major issue that has shaped the lives of not only your generation, but the Boomers themselves, the Vietnam War. In your opinion, what was the main reason that the Vietnam War ended, and how important were the students on college campuses in ending that war?
DH (01:36:36):
Well, I think they were... it is not that they ended the war, it Is that they caused the United States to lose the war. And I mean, you can have an end. The Korean War ended. In the Korean War, the communists were prevented from conquering the South. But the Vietnam War of the United States was forced by the American protestors to retreat from the field of battle and surrender it to the enemy. And the consequence, of course, was that two and a half million people were slaughtered in the communist peace. I think they were absolutely critical. Without the protestors, the United States would have won that war.
SM (01:37:29):
One of the terms that we often try to talk with young people about today, college students, is searching for empowerment in the sense that their voice counts, that they can actually change the world to make it better.
DH (01:37:40):
This is what you... what?
SM (01:37:42):
The concept of empowerment.
DH (01:37:44):
I hate the word.
SM (01:37:45):
Well, young people at that time felt empowered. Not all, but a lot of young people.
DH (01:37:51):
Arrogance of youth, yes. They felt they could run the world and run it better than anybody else but the President.
SM (01:37:59):
But have they carried any of that empowerment into their adulthoods? Because we see that many Boomers have gone on to become very successful in life and have gone into the materialism that they so often attacked.
DH (01:38:10):
And they got sober. Look, the schemes that the Boomers had were Marxoid schemes, were a crackpot, and they were bound to fail because they were not based on any accurate assessment or appropriate assessment of what human beings are capable of or how societies need to be ordered. They have this fantasy. Woodstock was the big fantasy that you do not need police, that there does not have to be any institutions of order. This is a [inaudible] myth. And of course, they have to sober up and get into the workforce and come to terms with reality and produce. What do they do now? They produce ice cream.
SM (01:39:08):
Ben and Jerry's?
DH (01:39:09):
Ben and Jerry's, yeah. And even Ben and Jerry's. I mean, the guy, he had to get a CEO in that was a corporate CEO. And so Ben and Jerry's is now a complete corporate... Those guys just gave up a lot of personal fortune for nothing.
SM (01:39:28):
Can you comment on a term that was well known from the (19)60s, the generation gap? Compare that generation gap of what may be a generation gap today between boomers and their kids.
DH (01:39:40):
Oh, well, I do not know. Look, the generation gap of the sixties was created by drugs and by the war, the draftable... the anti-draft movement. I do not know. I mean, I do not pretend to be an expert on the boomers and their children. And I suspect that the boomers have come to terms. They are much more conservative in their lives than they were when they were 20. So that I would say it is not as great.
SM (01:40:29):
I want to get into the issue of healing. Do you think-
DH (01:40:29):
And now, do not forget, the boomers' parents had lived through the Depression and were bound to be nervous about the downside. So the boomers have, as they say, come to terms with being in the workforce and doing the bourgeois thing. And their children certainly understand that they have been born into a very competitive environment. And if they slip by the wayside or they do not focus on their careers, they will be left behind. So as I say, there is a much narrower gap.
SM (01:41:09):
Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation, where differences of opinions of positions taken were so extreme? I say this because we took group of students several years back [inaudible] that had not been well and he asked them that question and he said, "We have not really healed since the Civil War," when we were talking about what happened during the sixties. Your thoughts on the healing process within the generation as the next generation gets older?
DH (01:41:38):
Well, look, I mean, I disagree with Musky. We have healed since the Civil War. Even there is this big controversy about the flags at Ole Miss, But the kids who are waving the flags and not waving them because they support slavery or even because they are racists. I mean, it is a pride in the school and the symbols. So I do not understand what it could mean we have not healed in that sense since the Civil War. The race issue, and I am thinking now like North South, if you are thinking of black, white, the race issue has been heated up by liberals and leftists, by multiculturalism, by emphasizing ethnicity, by a constant drum beat about how racist America is And by affirmative action, which is put black intellectuals in contexts often where they are non-competitive. But I am worried about the noise here.
SM (01:42:53):
Yeah, the noise is happening. We got a window open back here and that is why we are getting that sound.
DH (01:42:54):
Which is a prescription for resentment, racial resentments. The (19)60s, the problem is not what happened in the sixties, and it is certainly not, for example, over the Vietnam War. I mean, Ronald Reagan did a lot to heal the wounds by not attacking the left when he was president. The left has got away with murder. The people who call themselves progressive supported the communists right to the end of the Cold War, or at the very least said there was no difference between America and the Soviet Union. And nobody went after them when the Cold War was over, and they dominate our liberal arts faculties today, the people who supported communism. So that is not the problem, healing from issues that were fought out in the sixties or in the past. The problem is the carrying of those agendas into the present. The problem is the difference between people who think that we should have government, have racial preferences, who think that the government should make people equal and redistribute income and people who do not. And there the gap is as wide as it has ever been.
SM (01:44:14):
[inaudible] tape here if we are doing okay. Yeah. I cannot tell. You cannot even tell if there is light on, here, but it is working, so.
DH (01:44:21):
Okay.
SM (01:44:28):
How important has the Vietnam Memorial been, as [inaudible] when he wrote that book, To Heal A Nation, the wall was built to basically be a non-political entity to pay tribute to those who served. But if you read the book, you see the goal was not only to heal the veterans, but to heal the divisions in America and just in terms of remembrance. How important was that wall and how important, in your opinion, has the wall been in healing America as a nation, especially those who may have been on opposing sides of the war?
DH (01:44:59):
Well, like I say, I do not think that the war is divisive anymore. I think that the memorial, everybody supports the memorial. I do not know anybody... And I mean when I say everybody, not every individual, but all sides of the political spectrum have embraced the wall. I think everybody feels that Vietnam was a failure one way or another, the war. And you rarely... it is not a big issue anymore. It is too long gone.
SM (01:45:38):
The issue of trust is something we see today. A lack of trust in elected leaders, no matter what party they belong to, that this lack of trust not only is directed toward political leaders, but it is directed oftentimes towards religious leaders, presidents of universities, anybody that... CEOs, people in positions of responsibility. Your thoughts on the impact of that (19)60s era and the concept of trust?
DH (01:46:06):
I think the sixties was an era where the left set out to sow distrust and was helped by things like the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission report. And I think it is endemic in American life. I would not really blame the (19)60s. Conspiracy theories are as old as the republic. The idea that Washington is the enemy is as old as the republic. I think it is normal.
SM (01:47:00):
[inaudible] we will just check this again to make sure. We are almost here, by the way. We are not far. Yeah, it is almost over. I am just going to, again, [inaudible] flip before and I will switch over and just mention a few names of people and just instant quick response and your thoughts on them. George McGovern.
DH (01:47:07):
George McGovern, a fellow traveling, dimwitted political has-been.
SM (01:47:23):
Bobby Kennedy.
DH (01:47:23):
Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy was a... oh God. He was an aggressive, mean, arrogant, younger brother who felt was stricken by personal guilt when his brother was killed because he felt responsible and jumped on kind of the bandwagon of leftist causes as a way of assuaging his guilt, his personal guilt.
SM (01:48:03):
Eugene McCarthy.
DH (01:48:07):
A at dilettante, a political dilettante, Gene McCarthy.
SM (01:48:14):
The Berrigan Brothers.
DH (01:48:16):
Communists. Destructive, arrogant, religious, communists.
SM (01:48:22):
The Black Panther leaders of that era. Huey Newton, Bobby Seal.
DH (01:48:26):
Murderous thugs.
SM (01:48:26):
Eldridge Cleaver and that group.
DH (01:48:31):
Thugs. These were political gangsters.
SM (01:48:34):
Benjamin Spock.
DH (01:48:39):
A mushy-headed fellow traveler.
SM (01:48:44):
Timothy Leary.
DH (01:48:47):
An irresponsible, destructive destroyer of children.
SM (01:48:56):
John Kennedy.
DH (01:48:59):
John Kennedy, an interesting and admirable personality who ran an administration to which we could trace an awful lot of the troubles that followed.
SM (01:49:20):
Lyndon Johnson.
DH (01:49:23):
Jesus, a smarmy political operator.
SM (01:49:37):
Robert McNamara.
DH (01:49:40):
Oh, an evil robotic... an evil robotic... well, evil and robotic.
SM (01:50:02):
Richard Nixon.
DH (01:50:03):
Nixon? Oh God. A...
SM (01:50:05):
[inaudible] I think we are still... is it still going? It is.
DH (01:50:06):
Oh God. A treacherous leader with a huge ego problem who did a lot of damage to American life.
SM (01:50:36):
Malcolm X.
DH (01:50:40):
Malcolm X, a brilliant racist and a lot of psychological insights, very useful, but has had a very pernicious influence in his afterlife.
SM (01:50:56):
Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
DH (01:50:57):
Clowns.
SM (01:51:01):
Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
DH (01:51:04):
Well, they are very different. I mean, Jane Fonda is a pathetic slave to her men, shallow beyond conception, an imitation communist when she was involved with Tom Hayden and a proper corporate wife when she is married.
SM (01:51:38):
What airline are you flying?
DH (01:51:40):
Oh, well, God, airways, US Airways.
SM (01:51:41):
US Airways.
DH (01:51:41):
And Hayden is a Machiavelli-
SM (01:51:42):
There is Transatlantic [inaudible]. Is this it? US Airways [inaudible]?
DH (01:51:49):
Yeah, that is it. Not, Transatlantic. Oh my God, maybe that is it.
SM (01:51:53):
[inaudible]. Last one, Hubert Humphrey.
DH (01:51:59):
Well, Hayden was a Machiavellian political operator. Humphrey, I have very little recollection. All I remember him saying is, "I am pleased as punch."
SM (01:52:09):
[inaudible].
DH (01:52:10):
Yeah, that is it. Yep. One of the last of the old-fashioned anti-communist liberals. We did not have those last ones. Stu Wagner, a crook.
SM (01:52:26):
Did that flip or no?
DH (01:52:29):
Yeah, I do not know. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin clowns. Hubert Humphrey, the last of the old-fashioned anti-communist liberals.
SM (01:52:37):
And last but not least, I guess two people, Dwight Eisenhower and Muhammad Ali. That is it. I got-
DH (01:52:43):
Two American heroes.
SM (01:52:45):
Great. All right.
DH (01:52:56):
[inaudible] going to have to prove that [inaudible] national security, and therefore it is going to have to reveal a lot more about this agency and then it is going to want to probably. And therefore there is a very good chance that you will not be prosecuted. And that was enough for us and we did it. And I mean, this is only one of many, many acts in the (19)60s, which were done, which violated America's national security laws, which could be called treason and probably literally were, and nobody has talked about it. I talk about meeting with the KGB or they sought me out. I rejected their advances, but they met with a lot of people. I do not know who did or who did not. And why do I think this is significant now? I think it is significant because it is not only a matter of the historical record, but for the country itself. It is important to exonerate the people who were concerned about national security and who defended this country in the (19)60sand the (19)70against its enemies. And the FBI is one of them. My experience with the Panthers showed me that the FBI, of course, COINTELPRO was ended in 1970. The FBI was inept in dealing with the Panthers. How could they kill so many people and not be prosecuted? And as I say, I am not the only writer who has discovered this. If the FBI was doing what we had said it was. And of course everybody now views the police as brutal and repressive. I point out in the book how the head of the Oakland Police Force called Huey Newton to warn him that the pimps of the East Bay had a contract on his life. And this is something that his lawyer even said. They did have a contract on his life. And Huey's response was he wanted a permit to carry a concealed weapon. But it shows... the head of the Oakland police that we have been calling the police fascist, racist and so forth. And here they are warning Newton, knowing full well that the reason the pimps had the contract on Newton was because he was shaking them down. I mean, he was extortion, shakedowns, a lot of criminal operations. And this affected my whole view of the social political struggle, if you will. I had a different appreciation of the police force, the difficulties they operate under, how hard it is for them to apprehend criminals that are protected by left-wing lawyers and the liberal press.
SM (01:55:43):
In addition to the politics of the book, you talk a lot about your personal life. Why did you do that?
DH (01:55:46):
Well, I had noticed even as when I was a radical, how left-wing memoirs often avoid the personal entirely. You can read, Irving How's memoirs, for example, and it is really a history of his political thoughts. And I understood because I had thought so much about this. I mean, these events happened in 1974, (197)5. So I have been thinking for 20 years about the impact of being a leftist on myself, of having that worldview. And I was determined to write a very personal story as well, to show what it means to be in the, what is called now, the progressive left. I believe it is a kind of religion. It is as powerful as a religion and that it has that impact. And that is my little family.
SM (01:56:50):
How about the top picture here, who is that?
DH (01:56:54):
That is Lisa, who is the mother of my children, and that is our wedding picture.
SM (01:56:59):
What year?
DH (01:57:00):
That is 1959. And I often wonder if my root, the reason that I have become who I am ... I am I guess the most prominent critic, if you like, of the left... is not because I had a nuclear family in the sixties. That has a very powerful impact on you when you are responsible for children, for leading them into a productive life. You have quite a different attitude towards some of the things we encourage in the (19)60s, like drugs, like basic kind of contempt for family structures [inaudible]-
SM (01:57:44):
Are all these your children?
DH (01:57:46):
Those are my children. They are now in their thirties. Except that I have one that is still in her late twenties.
SM (01:57:54):
How long were you married to Lisa?
DH (01:57:56):
20 years.
SM (01:57:57):
What year did you get divorced?
DH (01:57:59):
We got divorced in probably, I do not know technically, but in 1978, the Fall of 1978 is when I left the family, which is the hardest, was extremely painful and is a painful memory. And it was a direct consequence of the disintegration, I would say, of my being after the death of Betty Van Patter. The analogy I would draw is of somebody who was born to the priesthood or their rabbinate and had become a priest or a rabbi, and that had found that his church had murdered an innocent mother of three children and that the whole congregation would support the church against him. And my whole life had been lived. And that that is one of the reasons. I guess it was also working backwards, seeing the disintegration, feeling the disintegration of my person and personality. I understood how important being a radical was to the constitution of my identity. I felt I had followed all the rules. I was the good student. I was never tardy when I was in elementary school. I got As. I was responsible.
SM (01:59:25):
Where did you go to school?
DH (01:59:27):
I went to Columbia as my college.
SM (01:59:29):
But you went to... your grade school was-
SM (01:59:32):
Bryant. I went to music and art in New York City and then transferred to William Cullen Bryant. It was just a neighborhood school. Whitey Ford was probably its most illustrious graduate.
SM (01:59:45):
A famous pitcher.
SM (01:59:46):
Yes, a famous pitcher for the Yankees. I wanted to break rules. I felt I had denied myself. I had sacrificed, I had done all the right things and it had made me complicit, in a way, in a murder. I never suspected that the Panthers were that kind of... at least Huey, the people I dealt with were a vicious criminals. I did not-
SM (02:00:14):
You did not think they were.
SM (02:00:17):
I did not. And a lot of my contemporary critics, people who were in the left say, "Oh, everybody knew the Panthers were criminals." And David got involved with them. But the reality is that Murray Kempton was writing, as a left-wing journalist, wrote a review of Huey Newton's autobiography on the front page of the Sunday Times book review, comparing him to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther in 1973. And Gary Wills wrote a similar review about the Panthers in that year. And Eric Erickson, who I guess he has kind of forgotten now, but he was the leading psychologist in the country in that period. And he held a joint seminar at Yale with Huey Newton in 1973. And just two years, well, three years before you remember, Yale University was shut down by demonstrations on behalf of the Panthers that Hillary Clinton was part of. So the Panthers were pretty well thought of.
SM (02:01:25):
You had an affair with Abby Rockefeller.
SM (02:01:28):
Yeah.
SM (02:01:28):
Who was she and how did that figure into your divorce?
SM (02:01:33):
Well, the divorce, it was part of my disorder at that time. This happened actually simultaneous with these events. And Abby was a radical. She was younger than I was, and she still had a kind of purity of faith. And although I no longer... I had many doubts, I had lots of doubts because of what happened in the Vietnam War. I guess I felt invigorated by being connected to her. It was mainly platonic, although it was not wholly platonic and it created a crisis in my marriage. But Lisa and I had been married a very long time, and we had these children, and I think a marriage would have survived something like that if that was not just an indication of much greater problems to come. And that was that I could not keep my commitments and I could not keep myself in order. I was so depressed. I felt like a dead person, and I needed to discover how to get myself out of this pit. And I could not get that out of my marriage and out of... so-
SM (02:03:02):
Where is your first wife now?
SM (02:03:05):
She is in California. I am very... as the book tells the story, you will know that I am very close to my family and I consider that one of the great blessings of my life. She is a very good woman, and we have this bond from having raised these children and the children are the joy of my life.
SM (02:03:30):
Who is this one right here?
SM (02:03:33):
That is my third wife.
SM (02:03:37):
There is no picture in here of your second wife?
SM (02:03:39):
No, I actually do not have a picture of her. It was a very... the book tells a part of the story in this book is the difficulty of putting together a life in midlife. I think a lot of people out there will identify with this. It is very hard. When you are young and romantically in love and you sort of are getting into the same boat at the same time in your life and setting out into this great unknown and then you have children... I mean, there is a lot to be said for the whole traditional way of doing things. I am a conservative now, but I have become one the hard way. And so there are a lot of bonds that strengthen the marriage, the family union, the... of course men and women, despite what some feminists think, are very different, and it is part of the excitement of any kind of heterosexual connection, but it is also fraught with difficulties, and-
SM (02:04:42):
Who was the second wife?
SM (02:04:44):
She was a California woman who had been married to a Count. I knew her as the Countess Crespi, although she was not exactly a valley girl, but she came from sort of the Los Angeles region and was a film producer at the time. But it was a very brief... Oliver Stone was at my wedding. That was part of the intoxication of being in Hollywood. See, I was somebody who had lived a very Spartan life for the revolution because I felt that was the good life. As I say, it was like being a priest or something. And when all of that collapsed and when I saw that my church was a church involved in huge crimes and unable to deal with those crimes itself, I mean still covering them up to this day. It is 20 years later and the left still covering this stuff up will not deal with it.
SM (02:05:50):
How long was that second marriage?
SM (02:05:51):
That was very brief. That was less than a year. And it just was an episode. The third one was more significant. And what it does is... this woman had a drug problem that I was not aware of how serious it was.
SM (02:06:10):
Name was Shea?
SM (02:06:11):
Shea, and I was on a... it shows how deep in my character is the rescuer. I think that people on the left are rescuers. I tell another story about a childhood friend named Ellen Sparer, who was also a missionary to poor people and to blacks and she was brutally murdered, I believe as a direct consequence of her unguarded attitude.
SM (02:06:40):
Where did she live?
SM (02:06:41):
She lived in Inglewood, New Jersey, which is an integrated area. She was a high school teacher and was sodomized and strangled by a 15-year-old whom she had helped.
SM (02:06:51):
At what time, year? What year?
SM (02:06:54):
Right after Betty's murder.
SM (02:06:55):
(19)74?
SM (02:06:56):
I had a double... two huge traumas. And anyway, I told this story of that last marriage in the book because I had actually started the autobiography when this woman disappeared. I mean, I came back one weekend and the house had been half-emptied and-
SM (02:07:24):
Shea?
SM (02:07:24):
Yeah, Shea, she was gone.
SM (02:07:25):
What year was this?
SM (02:07:26):
That was 1993.
SM (02:07:28):
No, so not too long ago.
SM (02:07:30):
It was right when I wrote the article about Elaine Brown. And in looking at myself, I have to see that I am the kind of person who a conservative person would look and say, look at this woman's past and make certain judgements about it. And as a radical, I always wanted to leap over boundaries. I mean, Huey Newton, I mean had a knife wound in his side. He had been to jail. Why would not you avoid somebody like that? Because we were making a new world. I mean, that is what it is to-
DH (02:08:03):
Because we were making a new world. I mean, that is what it is to be a progressive. You do not accept the world as it is. You want to make a new and much better world. You want people to be different. And as I said, I invoked the feminists before, but they want to end five thousand years of history between the sexes has been recorded. We know how males and females behave and think about each other. And they want to transform these relationships into something we have never seen before. And my book is a book about how dangerous that can be. And I had to tell my personal story to show what a huge price I have paid.
SM (02:08:45):
Is that hard to talk about now?
DH (02:08:47):
Well, some of these things I am even talking about them, this is fairly intimate. It is difficult.
SM (02:08:55):
I have always wondered, if people write this and then they come talk about it, it seems like watching them, it is harder to talk about it than it is to write it.
DH (02:09:03):
It was hard to write, let me tell you. It was hard to write. But of course a writer, it is a lonely profession. I mean, you are really communicating with a page and then the page goes out there. I know it is almost, that is a story about somebody else. I am already onto a new phase of my life, which is much happier. I am engaged to a woman with a very good heart. And I discovered that that is very important. It is very important to have... This woman is a very... I mean, she has a child and I have tried to learn this process through my life, to look at people and see them as they are and to realize they are not going to change very much. So if I see somebody who is loving towards their child and takes care of them and protects them, then I can know that if they love me, that it will be transferred to me. If I see somebody like Shay who is rootless, who has no connection, who had no friends, I should have been much more. I should have been warned that this is going to be dangerous.
SM (02:10:12):
Where is she now?
DH (02:10:13):
I have no idea. She disappeared.
SM (02:10:16):
Let us talk about these two people and these two pictures.
DH (02:10:20):
That on the left is my father, right near the end of his life. And on the right is myself and my mother who had some strokes. And that was near the end of her life, and I had brought her to California and took care of her out there. And below that, of course, is Ronald Reagan. And I took great pleasure in receiving an award from Reagan because Reagan, to me, symbolized all those decent Americans who stood on the Ramparts during the Cold War and defended this country against communism while I and all my fellow new leftists supported communist dictators. Whether it was in Russia or in Cuba or in Vietnam, and worked very hard to undermine the institutions of this country. And I see people like Reagan still scorned by the literary crowd a lot, who will probably watch shows like Book notes and getting no credit for what they did. And when I saw Reagan, he smiled at me and he said, "I had second thoughts before you," reminding me of how he had started out also somewhat on the left.
SM (02:11:41):
Who, by the way, would want to tangle with you today, who did not leave the left that you knew back then? Who would love to take you on and say you are nothing but a...
DH (02:11:50):
Well, they do it, but they will not do it in person. When Peter and I surfaced-
SM (02:11:57):
Peter Collier?
DH (02:11:58):
Peter Collier.
SM (02:12:00):
There is a picture in here I will show this.
DH (02:12:01):
Of Peter-
SM (02:12:01):
And his wife.
DH (02:12:02):
...and his wife Mary. When Peter Collier and I first surfaced and brought to light these stories, particularly about the Panthers, we were really savagely attacked by the Washington Post and The New Republic. Although as you know, The New Republic has at least two personalities. But the left personality attacked us, accused us of everything that we had revealed, that we were the only ones who had done it. And so, there are a lot of them, but they will not appear. I mean, I have a writer now, I have a column on Salon Magazine on the internet, Salon1999.com where I have a column opposite James Carville. And they invited Todd Gitlin, who is a very well-known professor, and he wrote a book about the (19)60sto debate me and on the internet. And Todd refused to do it. And to me, I would never confuse Todd with a Stalinist, but it reminds me of when Stalin used to airbrush Trotsky's picture out of the photographs. The left does not like to engage in dialogue or debate. I spoke at the University of Pennsylvania two nights ago, and they had a large undergraduate course in the (19)60s taught by three professors. All of them were kind of a new leftist tenured radicals, [inaudible] Kimble in Harlem. And none of them would come. They were all invited to come and debate me. None of them would. They did not invite me into their class. I am a kind of living historical specimen. You would think a professor who was teaching instead of indoctrinating their students, but actually trying to teach them, would leap at the chance to have me come to the class and just discuss my life. So, there is a wall out there that the left does not like to engage this book or me.
SM (02:14:09):
Make a connection. Did I read in your book that Marty Peretz started Ramparts?
DH (02:14:13):
Marty was an early funder of Ramparts and I think that Ramparts-
SM (02:14:18):
Current owner of New Republic.
DH (02:14:20):
Yes. And Marty Peretz, although we will disagree on some things, like Al Gore, is a good friend. He is a good man, Marty.
SM (02:14:30):
And Marty Peretz is a big fan of Al Gore's.
DH (02:14:33):
Yes. Well, I accept people and their contradictions. I welcome any people from my past, even if they are still on the left. After all, we are all getting older. This book is about mortality. I think being on the left is about mortality. It is an attempt to stay young forever, to be always present at the creation, the year zero of the revolution. But I think that any of us who have lived long enough, tend to get pretty tolerant of each other.
SM (02:15:12):
Go back to your dad and mom. They grew up where?
DH (02:15:16):
My father was born in Russia, but he came here when he was young, one. And my mother was born here. They met in the (19)30s. My dad went to the Soviet Union in the early (19)30s and I found-
SM (02:15:34):
Is this him in the picture?
DH (02:15:34):
That is my dad and I tried to understand myself through my dad.
SM (02:15:39):
And this is you?
DH (02:15:42):
And that is me. And this is a biography. I mean even people who might disagree with the political conclusions, that is not really the center of the book. This is about... It is about my odyssey and it is about fathers and sons. I mean, I think, we all, as John F. Kennedy said, we all have fathers. I think people can identify with that. The New Age people talk about having have past lives and in a sense our parents are our past lives and all of our ancestors are, because they are deeply... somewhere in the genetic code is a core of personality. I discovered this through my children. I have four children, same. Lisa and I brought them all up and they almost came out with different personalities. I mean, it was not like a child is a mere reflection of the parent. There is something in the DNA that creates that personality. And that of course is a very conservative idea. [inaudible].
SM (02:16:55):
What were the politics of your father?
DH (02:16:57):
My father was... Both my parents were members of the Communist Party, and that means that they were part of a vast international conspiracy. And that was orchestrated from Moscow. As we now know because of the opening of the Soviet archives and coding of Venona transcripts. There is a lot of vindication for the sort of anti-communist right in this book. And that is the way our lives were lived. They were middle class school teachers. They never broke laws, but they belonged to these secret cells. They had secret names. My mother told me hers, Anne Powers, from when they would move into their illegal modes to overthrow the government.
SM (02:17:42):
Because they were loyal to the Soviet Union?
DH (02:17:45):
Well, because they believed as we all did, that there was a new world possible in which there would be no war, no racism, no poverty, no, we called it male chauvinism then, no war. Oh, I said no war. Basically all social problems would be solved. And that this new world had already begun. It existed in the Soviet Union and that is why they could support a mass murderer like Stalin. Just the way the left would not believe 20 years ago that Huey Newton was a murderer. So we did not believe that Joseph Stalin was a murderer.
SM (02:18:28):
When your father went to Russia, what year was it?
DH (02:18:30):
(19)32.
SM (02:18:31):
And what did he see there?
DH (02:18:32):
Well, he saw a lot of poverty and I think he understood that there was some... I do not know if he realized there was a famine going on because that was fairly concealed, but he blamed that on the capitalist powers. He did not realize that it was the Marxist government. The Marxism is a crackpot economics as we now know because... But not everybody realized that. As late as the (19)80s, Harvard professors like John Kenneth Galbraith, very distinguished economist, Paul Samuelson were saying Russian's economy was catching up to the United States when in fact it was like a third world country. So that Marxist delusion has been very powerful in our century. And my father thought that this was the first time that the people owned their government. I mean kept writing in this book about how the people are the real owners. In capitalism, of course, he was just a peon. He was just a... And he also wrote... The thing that struck me the most was that he felt... My father was a very depressed individual and a very unhappy one. And he felt at home in Russia and he felt that there was true comradeship. He kept talking about going to events and feeling that everybody is one, it is a community. I think a lot of the left is about that, and it is a religious desire to be part of the flock.
SM (02:20:01):
Where did he go to school?
DH (02:20:03):
He went to Townsend Harris, which was a kind of special school where they taught Latin and where he had a very hard time. And then he went to City College, which was the kind of fountain of a lot of the New York intellectuals. But my father was not able to go on to an academic career. He had to support his parents. He went into teaching.
SM (02:20:27):
There have been a lot of people that have come through over the last year or two with books to talk about beginning at City College, becoming communist or socialist, transferring over to being neo-conservatives. Doing what you did, go to Columbia, have some of the same experiences. Why did you pick Columbia? What impact did that have on you?
DH (02:20:47):
I have no idea actually why I picked Columbia except it was an Ivy League school in New York. My father felt betrayed. I will never forget when I, as a freshman walking on the campus with him and being awed by the great names on the library, Socrates, Dante. And my father was distressed and I did not understand that distress till later. But he thought that I had kind of left the fold by going to the rich man school. I mean, I was a scholarship student. And when I was in my mid (19)30s, he asked me if it was Columbia that had kind of stolen my soul. But I was thrilled by learning. I mean, I loved my college.
SM (02:21:32):
How much of the radical son in you came from college, how much of it came from your parents?
DH (02:21:37):
Well, none of it. College, because I remember I belonged to the NAACP at Columbia, and we had a hard time getting signatures on a petition for a federal anti-lynch law. There was no radical activity in the (19)50s at campus. I wrote papers as a Marxist and I will say that it was freer in the McCarthy (19)50s for people on the wrong side of the kind of ideological tracks than it is today for conservatives. Conservatives in today's academy are graded politically, and they are persecuted for their political ideas. Whereas I was not at Columbia as a Marist. I am grateful to my professors for not doing that. And some of the outrage I still have... I am somewhat mellowing as I get older, but as for those students in today's colleges that are not getting the education they should be.
SM (02:22:39):
There are all kinds of connections in this book that I wanted to ask you about. By the way, there is a lot of books that have been written by people who used to be on the left to have gone to the right. How many do you know that have been on the right that have gone to the left in the last 20 years?
DH (02:22:51):
Well, there are two that I am aware of. One is Gary Wills, who was not treated the way Peter Collier and I were. One does not identify Gary Wills with being an ex-right-winger who did 180 degree turn or being a renegade. And all these terms are ritually used about Peter and me when we are treated in the press. And the other, well, I would say Gary Wills is the one. Michael Lind has also written a book, but Michael Lind was never, by his own account, in his own book, a conservative. He says he is a lifelong Lyndon Johnson democrat.
SM (02:23:35):
Name that pops up in the middle of your book on page 274, if I can find it, is Michael Lerner. Is that the same Michael Lerner of Tikkun?
DH (02:23:42):
That is the Michael Lerner of Tikkun and the...
SM (02:23:45):
I will just read it here. It says, "Michael Lerner, who came to recruit me into a vanguard, he was calling the New American movement, summed up their reactions with characteristic crudeness. Even to raise such questions, he said to me, is counterrevolutionary."
DH (02:23:59):
Right. I was trying to ask at that point. It took me many years. I did not switch sides in the way Michael Lind did or even Gary Wills. I never was an active leftist after the death of Betty Van Patter, the murder of Betty Van Patter in January (19)75. I wrote an article in The Nation in... It was not until the second Reagan election and the support for the Sandinista Marxists in Nicaragua that made Peter and me sort of come out and be political again. And when Michael Lerner said of me that my ideas, my questions were counterrevolutionary, this was part of my process. This was about 1977, and I was asking whether socialism was viable, because I say it is comparable to a religious faith. Berdyaev, the Russian philosopher compared it to idolatry in a book he wrote in 1905. Because you believe that you can create, in effect, a heaven on earth. Only you can do it without a divine intervention. And therefore what you are worshiping as saviors is the vanguard. Now that is the problem with radicals. You worship the vanguard and you give them enormous power. And of course they commit enormous crimes because the objective is so normal, which is the redeemed world. And around that period I was very influenced by the Polish philosopher, he had been a Marxist, Leszek Kolakowski, in questions that he asked, which I discussed this in the book. And I wanted to know, I did not think socialism was workable at that point. And I wanted somebody to convince me that it was, and Lerner's response was to ask those questions is counter-revolutionary. And there is a whole series of incidents I described that taught me that the left is unable to think itself and to really deal with these questions. It is a matter of faith.
SM (02:26:17):
You say that you have something in common with Whitaker Chambers and we just did his biography on this program.
DH (02:26:22):
Yes.
SM (02:26:23):
What in common do you have with Whittaker Chambers?
DH (02:26:26):
Well, Whittaker Chambers was somebody who... He had been a communist and then he was recruited into the Communist underground and did a lot of illegal things and basically spied and then went public with the fact that Alger Hiss was a spy. That was the big thing that he did. And first his attitudes was dismissed, and then he was crucified. And to this day, I mean, I am so glad you did the program on the Chamber's biography. Because I have interviewed many college students who have never heard of Whittaker Chambers, although they have heard of Alger Hiss. That is the work of the left. That is that airbrushing out of the picture. Peter Collier and I were bestselling authors when we became conservatives.
SM (02:27:18):
Having sold what?
DH (02:27:19):
We wrote biographies of the Rockefellers and the Kennedys that were not only bestsellers, they were front page New York Times reviews. The minute that we revealed that we had voted for Ronald Reagan, our literary careers, and at that level were over. We knew we were not going to get any awards because the Pulitzers... And we had been nominated for National Book Award, a heavily political. We did not expect that we did not get a front-page review in the New York Times ever again. I will say that since this... I do not want to suggest that there is a conspiracy, it is just an attitude. And there are always individuals who are very principled and whom I respect. And Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, the daily reviewer for The Times did give our Ford book and he said it was our best work. The Sunday was not the same. We found ourselves excluded from the principal magazines of the culture. Harper is the Atlantic, the New York Review and the magazines, the New York Times magazine, the Washington Post Magazine. This became terrain that we could not walk on again.
SM (02:28:39):
What is the worst thing you think you did against this country?
DH (02:28:47):
Well, I have no idea what the consequences of that one act that we did, I described earlier, were. I think the worst thing is in sowing cynicism about this country. I think what the left does, they are like termites that eat at the social foundations. And a book I wrote as a leftist, Free World Colossus had a bad influence on the National Security Council chief, the point man for Nicaragua was Robert Pastor says he was influenced by my book not to intervene in behalf of the Democrats in 1979. Nicaragua could have been saved a lot of grief if we had intervened and protected the Democrats against the Sadinistas. But the general indictment of America, my book, the Free World Colossus, was the first book that indicted, that did the litany of the CIA in Guatemala, and Iran, in Vietnam and Cuba and so forth, as though that is American foreign policy. Or even as though that is always a bad thing. But the left has gone much further. It is demonized now, not only in America, but white males, European culture. It has created a whole new racist attitude, an anti-white racist attitude that is terribly divisive and is destructive to minorities and to black people in particular. And I was part of... I was being a new left intellectual, we had a pretty wide influence in the new left. I was responsible for that. And that is one of the reasons that Peter Collier and I, instead of going on and sort of just making money or something like that, I mean, we could have written literary books. Only our biographies were not very political, have decided to get back in the fray and pay some of our social debt. I said, we have a serious debt to society. That is the way we feel.
SM (02:30:48):
You say that AIDS created your move from left to right? Yes. The AIDS epidemic and the attempts to combat it have been pretty much controlled by the liberal left. It is one of the most politically correct parts of the culture. Peter Collier and I did an early story on AIDS, 1983. There were I think only 300 cases in San Francisco at the time. And we did it... We were inspired to do it because they were attacking Ronald Reagan as the source of the AIDS epidemic. And we knew there was something wrong with that. And I contacted Randy Shilts, I tell this old story in Radical Son. I contacted Randy Shilts, who wrote And the Band Played On and was the San Francisco Chronicle's gay correspondent covering the gay community. And Randy gave us a remarkable story, it was before HIV was isolated. And the fact was that the gay community leadership, the leadership, who were highly political people and tended to be new leftists, were denying that AIDS was sexually transmitted even though the doctors knew it was, had made the literature in any health clinics not mention anything like this. And were of course, opposed to closing the bath houses, which were the kind of Petri dishes where this culture was spreading. And I went and we did an investigative report and interviewed a lot of gays, gay leaders who were terrified to state what was going on, that there was all this misinformation. It was like the McCarthy period. It was the same atmosphere, and gave us the story. And we printed the story in California magazine, and the magazine was instantly picketed. But I understood that there was a political correctness which had seeped into the battle against AIDS, which then went on to effect. There was no testing, no contact tracing. The bathhouses were not closed. And I firmly believe that the tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided. And they are now 200,000 dead. And you could extrapolate it right then by just doubling the number every six months, which was... So I knew in 1983 that there would be two, three hundred thousand dead. Now if this politicization of the epidemic continued. And to this day, the media has not ever done an investigative report just on the issue of testing. And the big argument is people would be outed with... It is like we are going to throw gays in concentration camps, which is... it is paranoid. The reality is that when Liberace died, I mean there was this national outpouring. I mean there is tremendous feeling in the... Of course there were bigots everywhere. I mean, there has always been bigots, but the nation as a whole is not going to do that. When I interviewed Don Francis, who was the hero of And the Band Played On, he said... An epidemiologist at the Centers for the Disease Control. I asked him about the confidentiality issue and he said, "Look," he said, "we have been studying gay diseases since before Stonewall, and I do not know of a single case of breach of confidentiality." And then you have the hypocrisy of gay groups that have outed people. Like they outed Pete Williams when he was... And that is a good example. They outed Pete Williams when he was a spokesman for the Pentagon. And Pete Williams being a Republican and being in the Bush administration. And there were no consequences for Pete Williams. I mean, the fact that he was gay, republicans are not intolerant. He went on, now he is at ABC, but he was not fired or anything. And so there is a lot of... The left feeds off paranoia. It tells black people that there are government conspiracies against them, that now Tom Hayden, who is a figure in this book, is running for mayor of Los Angeles and was in a parade, a march in which he said, "The CIA is planning crack in the ghetto." I mean, that is just an incitement to race warfare, which is what the left is really about these days.
DH (02:35:15):
By the way, we are about out of a time, where is this picture? Where were this taken?
SM (02:35:18):
This was taken in the studio. I look like somebody in the witness protection program. But the publisher thought, and it probably was a good idea that that would intrigue people. And it does. It indicates, I mean, I am looking at it now, to me, although I would have liked a genial smiling picture on the front, because there is a tendency to demonize me. It shows a troubled, thoughtful... That is the look, troubled and thoughtful. And that is the book.
DH (02:35:49):
David Horowitz, our guest, Radical Son, the book. A Generational Odyssey. Thank you very much.
SM (02:35:54):
Thank you, Brian.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with David Horowitz
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Horowitz, David ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Authors, American--20th century; Radicals—United States; Horowitz, David--Interviews
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David Horowitz grew up a "red diaper baby" in a communist community in Sunnyside, Queens. He is a far-right writer, founder, and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), editor of <em>FrontPage Magazine</em>, director of Discover the Networks, and founder of the organization Students for Academic Freedom. Horowitz wrote many books and he worked as a columnist for <em>Salon</em>. He also was an outspoken adherent of the New Left, which he later rejected and became a proponent of Neoconservatism. Horowitz received his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University and his Master's degree from UC Berkeley.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2007-12-21
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200c
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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156:01
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fd4af6a03cc2f675ba22f6b027f5adf5.mp3
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Audio interviews
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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
2003-07-30
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jim Hilty
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}">Dr. James Hilty is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. His early career centered on four years in the U.S. Marines (1958-1963) and several years as a history teacher in the Columbus, Ohio school district. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. Dr. Hilty is author of <em>Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector</em>, <em>John F. Kennedy: An Idealist Without Illusion</em>, and <em>Temple University: 125 Years of Service to Philadelphia, the Nation, and the World</em><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}">. </span></span><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}">He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.</span></span></span></span><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}"><br /></span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Pentagon Papers; Richard Nixon; Jane Fonda; Vietnam War; War draft; pacifists; Anti-War Movement; Marijuana."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Pentagon Papers; Richard Nixon; Jane Fonda; Vietnam War; War draft; pacifists; Anti-War Movement; Marijuana.</span>
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Temple University; Historians—United States; Hilty, Jim--Interviews
Duration
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124:13
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Title
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interview with Dr. Jim Hilty
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Hilty, Jim ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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College teachers; Temple University; Historians—United States; Hilty, Jim--Interviews
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<span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}">Dr. James Hilty is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. His early career centered on four years in the U.S. Marines (1958-1963) and several years as a history teacher in the Columbus, Ohio school district. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. Dr. Hilty is author of <em>Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector</em>, <em>John F. Kennedy: An Idealist Without Illusion</em>, and <em>Temple University: 125 Years of Service to Philadelphia, the Nation, and the World</em>. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.</span><span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13059,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri."}"><br /></span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2003-07-30
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.199a: McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.199b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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124:13
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/accae0f06a17ce0d13ab38bd3e21134c.mp3
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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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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Denis Hayes
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
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2 Microcassettes
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Interview Format
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Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Denis Hayes is an environmental advocate, proponent of solar power, attorney, educator, and founder of the Earth Day Network, which works with over 180 nations in order to build environmental democracy. He was head of the Solar Energy Research Institute and president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington. Hayes also received many awards including the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Hayes received his Bachelor's degree in History from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor degree at Stanford Law School."}" 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}">Denis Hayes is an environmental advocate, a proponent of solar power, attorney, educator, and founder of the Earth Day Network, which works with over 180 nations in order to build environmental democracy. He was head of the Solar Energy Research Institute and president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington. Hayes also received many awards including the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Hayes received his Bachelor's degree in History from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor degree at Stanford Law School.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Civil Rights Movement; Eisenhower; Vietnam War; Drug experimentation; Baby boom generation; Civil disobedience; Nonviolent protests; Support for the Environmental Movement; Chemical/biological warfare; Vietnam War; Earth Day."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Civil Rights Movement; Eisenhower; Vietnam War; Drug experimentation; Baby boom generation; Civil disobedience; Nonviolent protests; Support for the Environmental Movement; Chemical/biological warfare; Vietnam War; Earth Day.</span>
Duration
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88:57
Subject LCSH
Environmentalism; Lawyers; Earth Day Network; Solar Energy Research Institute; Bullitt Foundation; Hayes, Denis--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.
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Denis Hayes
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not Dated
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:00):
As I mentioned in my note that I have been working on this for a long time. I started it way back. In fact, Senator Nelson was one of my first interviews and I interviewed him when I was working at the university and we did this on the road leadership program and he had come to our campus twice to talk about Earth Day and one night we went over to the Holiday Inn and we were having a couple drinks and everything and I told him that I had been having difficulty getting a hold of William Fulbright, that I wanted to take our students down to DC to meet him. And he had just had a stroke, but he was getting recuperated and he was a close friend of the Senators. And he said, "Geez, I will get them for you." I said, "Really? Because I have been trying to secure him." And what happened is as a result of that, we ended up seeing nine senators. And I got pretty close to the Senator. He would always come into the Wilderness Society office. They would always meet in the back room there. I took maybe close to 200 different students there. In fact, that memory has stayed with so many of the students. I have a student now just became director of admissions at Southern Illinois University and Dr. Brandon Logan. And he was there with three of them, and when Senator McCarthy passed away and when Senator Musky passed away wherever he was, he sent me a note saying it was one of the greatest memories of my life. So I thank the Senator for that. Are you ready for the first question? And again, thank you again. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
DH (00:01:51):
Time of upheaval in basic American institutions.
SM (00:01:57):
Could you go a little more detail?
DH (00:01:59):
Sure. Stuff was going on in every dimension of American life in terms of political realignment. That is when Nixon launched the southern strategy initially attempted from (19)64 by Barry Goldwater, brought to fruition in (19)68, especially (19)72 by Nixon, to basically take what had been the solid Democratic South, put it into the Republican Party. Then in the course of doing that, putting the so-called Rockefeller Republicans, the Lindseys and Scrantons and Romneys into play. And you can make at least normally the argument that, at least in terms of the Senate, we were just discussing it now that group's pretty much down to one or two, maybe the two women senators from Maine. Fundamental realignment from Republican Party that in the Eisenhower years was actually better on civil rights and had the first Black senator at Brook out of Maine into one that took over the racist elements of the South and turned many of the worst from by-standpoint, progressive political figures from the South and to Republicans. It was a time when the generation that had been raised with much of the American value system close to their hearts began and cherished what was the end of the colonial empire and the independence of the great many of the states that had been subjected to European expansion. Found itself involved in a war in Southeast Asia, which many of us came to believe we were on the wrong side of. It was a war of independence and liberation by people that had been fighting off China for a long time, got off French for a long time and now we were fighting off the America. And so it led to this gigantic disillusionment carried over from the (19)50s was the overall nuclear weapons. It was amplified in the (19)60s with concerns about new weapon systems for space-based and or multiple independently targeted entry that significantly increased the destructive potential of any one missile, letting it target perhaps as many as 16 different places from one missile. And the response to that, the form of an anti-ballistic missile system called MX. Stuff was just escalating in ways that struck us as insane, was a sense of identity. Politics came into play for the first time where people began to view themselves in terms of social groups, a Christian coalition, racial identities, very strong and grew out of the civil rights movement. Began to become part of forming political bases, Black voting. And the same thing with Mexican American saying to a much lesser extent, a little with parts of the Asian communities. And then I am guessing for purposes of this conversation, this brand-new social course, first onto the scene on the form of concern for the quality of life, for sustainability, public health, protection of basic natural resources, a concern for endangered species, intactness of ecosystems, all of which had existed as issues for people who were worried the [inaudible] about pesticide, heard about air pollution. We formed the Wilderness Society of the National Wildlife Federation and the National Ottoman Society, Sierra Club decades earlier to work on nature, humans that now found themselves bound together in a movement that was concerned with human health, with energy policy, pollution, livable cities, lead paint, and lead in automobile costs. Somehow finding itself aligned with people who are worried about duck flyways but all coming to understand it or operating from a similar set of values. And they help far more powerful and it is frankly a set of groups that they had before. So the speculation of all those interests into an environmental movement.
SM (00:07:12):
How do you respond to those individuals who, over the past, well maybe 15, 20 years, continue to take shots at the boomer generation or the (19)60s and (19)70s as the reason why we have all these problems in America today? They are making reference of course to the breakup of the American family, the sexual revolution, the morays, the drug culture. Many of them will even go into the concept of the victim culture. Everybody is a victim and all these issues that they look upon as negative, they shoot right back to the (19)60s and (19)70s when boomers are young. George Willie is one of those individuals who at times will write articles and he will take his shots every so often at that generation. But I have heard other politicians do the same. What's your thoughts on that?
DH (00:08:10):
Well, George Will is of course a member of that generation and hence he knows because he was growing up at that time. That it was enormously diverse as all generations are. Certainly, the press has always tended to focus his detention upon things that were unusual, colorful. And so if you get a small sub moving out to the woods to try to live sustainably, it may involve a couple of thousand people in the nation, but it suddenly gets all of these write-ups and it makes it seem like the whole generation is doing it. Clearly, there was a fair amount of drug experimentation that went on, but there had been drug experimentation that was going on before it became more visible. What is the word I am looking for here? It became more common place in terms of people's expectations in the wake of Woodstock. But there was serious marijuana use and heroin use facing back to the earliest of the century. Be back. With regard to the breakup of family, I think something has gone on there and some of it was probably good. It was an end to a certain kind of hypocrisy and some of it was probably bad. There seems many instances now to be, in my view, to give up on relationships without putting as much effort into it. I had a friend just the other day, when he was growing up, he asked his grandfather, he'd been married to his grandmother 47 years, a few months after that he was deaf. Excuse me, sorry, one second. And he asked his grandfather, what was the secret? His grandfather said, "Well, it was a different era." And there is something to that. Some stuff did change and much of it was good. It brought us the environmental revolution. I mean, it brought us some formidable ways, the creativity that led to information.
SM (00:10:54):
When we talk about the boomer generation, we are talking depending on statistics you read, between 70 and 74, 75 million people. And of course, we are talking about different ethnic groups and gender and everything. But when you look at this generation, what would you consider to be some of their strengths and some of their weaknesses in your opinion?
DH (00:11:19):
That was the point of before I distracted myself, I was talking about George Woo as one of those students. I mean, on any given campus you always had Greeks and factions and they tended to bound themselves a little bit around disciplines, the school of engineering and the business club or conservative with exceptions there too. The credit school must be more progressive along with arts and science. And then you have all of these overlays of different genders and racial groups. When you talk about any of those issues that you brought up before, boy that just delays in different ways and what Will is now pointing at it got the most attention when they were happening. Go back and reformulate that question?
SM (00:12:14):
Basically, in your opinion, what are some listing of some characteristics that you find very positive about the boomer generation as a whole and at the same time after the positives, some of the negative characteristics as you see it?
DH (00:12:32):
Well, of course a fair number of characteristics are in the same characteristic [inaudible] Janus faced there. It seems to me not having been around in my parents' generation, but it seems to me much less reference to authority. It perhaps came in part out of learning that we had been lied to about the Tom King, that we lied about various aspects of American intervention in the politics of other countries. Lied to about any number of things. So I am not sure the politicians were ever held on an enormous, but people, the best of them give up many opportunities including solid life, their families and privacy and what have you, to try to survey a broader publication mostly held in this repute. So on the good side, somebody because he or she managed to achieve authority was not taken at face value anymore. But on the bad side of that temporary... It tends to be presumption, that skepticism.
SM (00:14:02):
You speak up just a little bit too please?
DH (00:14:04):
Oh, okay.
SM (00:14:04):
Yep, sure. Yep.
DH (00:14:08):
Among the good characteristics, I think, I will probably get in some trouble for saying this, but it may have been the most educated generation in American history. Really took a lot of science, a lot of technology, studied extremely hard, and I think came into it with a sounder background than the World War II generation and a better background than people who are passing to today's school for all kinds of reasons. I do not know why the American educational enterprise has deteriorated, as the last few decades. I think it is a true tragedy and out of that came... And again, it is two faces often in different people. On the one hand, ordinary technologies [inaudible] to the New York Bangalore, nanosecond, and at the same time the degree of skepticism of that technological salvation, the concept that our parents would have clinged to now and those parents have survived, cling to now that the answer to climate change will be the magic bullet. That somebody will invent something to take care of them. And that is not much believed by the boomers who think answer there is going to be producing emissions, turning to it. Maybe there are technologies, energy resources, investments in conservation, but there's not the nuclear fusion to something that is going to come in over the horizon and buy cheap power that lets us continue precisely [inaudible]... I think there is a degree of identity with myriad organizations that are outside the traditional ways that Americans organize themselves. It is to say we still obviously have Republicans and Democrats, so a huge number of independence. The former community based social organization, alliances, Kiwanis, are of really strongly declining importance among baby boomers. And we tend to be... Excuse me.
SM (00:16:54):
Bless you.
DH (00:16:58):
Excuse me. That is okay. We tend to be involved in organizations that do not necessarily involve our neighbors. So if you look at the memberships of the Natural Resources Defense Council, there are no chapters in the United States. There is an identity with an organization that has a few offices in various regions that have paid staff in it, but it asks relatively little of their dollars, their affiliation, and occasionally to write a letter to Congress. There are certainly no weekly meetings or Mondays or those sorts of... Have largely generationally disappeared at length, bowling alone. I think there is really something to that in terms of the new forms of affiliation and that is becoming even more true as people's more and more online. And now often somebody will have a stronger relationship with a computer friend who shares a set of arcane interests, who has located 3000 miles away and who he or she has never met and I may not know the name of the person who lives next door to them. And that is unique in human experience. But on the other side of that, it may help the very first time to begin to build a sense of world community to the one politically accept prejudice that endures is a person born one inch on this side of a line, arbitrarily drawn on a map, inherently worth far more than a person who was born one inch on the other side of that. And with problems like climate change, protecting the world's oceans, protecting the world's endangered species, dealing with population growth and immigration, they all have to be dealt, particularly as immigration comes forced immigration as a consequence, climate change. They all have to be dealt at global basis and we have to somehow begin to develop this global consciousness. I do not think there would have been a way to do that prior to worldwide web. Still not confident we will do it, but there is at least an attempt, some of that indicating work.
SM (00:19:29):
Yeah. When you look at the (19)60s, what do you believe was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and when was the watershed moment when it ended?
DH (00:19:41):
I suppose the beginning was the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. You had a subsequent president of Lyndon Johnson who was a master politician and a despicable human being, but a guy who as a political figure was truly extraordinary, as the Voting Rights Act, as the Civil Rights Act, took that thing to Kennedy, gets all of the praise for putting a man on the moon and actually made it happen. Built Houston Flight Control in Huntsville and the whole NASA enterprise. Created a series of programs as part of the great society that were potentially really revolutionary and hitter over some awfully conservative voices in Congress and was so saddled with the war in Vietnam. The primary way that he has thought of today is still, "Hey, LBJ, how many could kill today?" That any case, the alienation that came out of the aftermath, the assassination sense of hope and invigoration and generational shift that so many people challenged by it wanted to go into the space race and wanted to go into the peace for and wanted to get out and do things, suddenly turned into this thing that was set pretty bleak, during escapism into Woodstock, huge number of civil rights rallies, anti-war rallies, iron metals, women's rallies. At all. I think, some large measure after the reelection of Nixon in 1972 that was sent, the hopes of that generation had [inaudible].
SM (00:22:09):
Do you think this generation was the most unique generation in American history, the boomers? Because it is a quality that some boomers stuff they possessed when they were young, that they were going to change the world, that they were going to make the world better for the human race. They were going to end, obviously racism and all the isms, bring peace to the world. Your thoughts on this feeling that many of them had that they were unique and secondly, part of this question as they have aged, because the early part of the boomers now are 62. They can now get social security and early retirement if they want to. Have you been disappointed? I know you obviously are an activist who has stayed the course and you know many in the environmental movement who have, but when you look at that generation, how many stayed the course? So it is a two-part question. And please speak up.
DH (00:23:13):
Sorry.
SM (00:23:14):
Okay.
DH (00:23:15):
Just a second. Why do not I just do this, this way. Again, enormous, complex, multifaceted, very diverse. But among those who were at the cutting edge of change, there was certainly a sense of uniqueness and even probably a bit of metaphor rebellion there. We thought we were inheriting the world, but in the wake of World War II, enormous opportunities have been [inaudible] coming into a world in which worlds still commonplace racism, extremely progress in which feature of additional progress, public health, plummeted environment deteriorate. I think there was essentially no doubt in the minds of my friends and I at least, but we would be passing on to our children a world that was far better than the one that became inherited. At least we were committed to doing that. There were Black moments, but God, there is no chance at all. And then you get one of these sweeping victories, you drive a sitting president out of office, [inaudible] Hampshire, you pass a clean air act over the brightened opposition of automobile in petroleum and coal and steel industry. You win it essentially 99 to 1, that there was a sense that, yeah, we really can make a difference here. And I think that there's still time worth the scales to tip a bit further in terms of those changes. Clearly, we now have made fundamental changes in all kinds of laws that affect how women are treated, how minorities are treated, patients are treated, how the environment is concerned. The wave of laws that were passed between 1970 and 1974 have caused multiple trillions of dollars to be spent differently than they would have been spent, but more concerned with clean air and clean water and toxic cases and the conservation of species. And by any cost benefit analysis, it is a hugely beneficial shift of priority. It got that money spent. So I do not want to underplay the degree to which there has been some success, but where I think the real shift may yet come is the brochure, some now sign up for social security. A great many are now CEOs of companies. They're the heads of everything from labor organizations, major hospitals, elected officials to what have you and many will deep at it until their (19)70s, partly as a result of having a whole lot of trades because the retirement program get vaporized. But in part also, because they really are doing stuff that they enjoy and are reasonably good at that. And that is where I have actually had, this is anecdotal, but some disappointment. People that I thought very highly of, their younger days have come to be the CEOs of very major companies and have made choices driven by the demands of Wall Street, driven by their board of directors, driven by all sorts of things. But nonetheless, were involved with the people who were most prominently identified with some really terrible choices. So to the extent that we thought it was a generational thing that encompassed everybody, I do not know that anybody ever thought that, but if they did, it was naive, diverse. But certainly there are people who have done magnificent things and the world is a better place for that. I guess what I would say in just a nutshell that where we succeeded and failed, where we succeeded most on things that directly affected the individual families and individual communities and their health somewhat less at the state level and somewhat less still at the national level. But still even at the national level, fundamental changes in direction and regulation and laws where we were completely unsuccessful was in international relations where the only significant global victories that I think of during that era is some strengthening of international campaigns on human rights. So it is still astonishingly weak and maybe the Montreal protocol on ozone depletion. But the other big global issues, war and peace issues, the rich and war issues, climate change issues, all of those are in worse shape today than they were up 21.
SM (00:29:11):
Obviously, Earth Day was so important. When you look at these, again 70 plus million boomers, what do you think was the one issue that defined their generation? Was it Vietnam?
DH (00:29:30):
No, I do not think I can answer that. It certainly was defining for a large number of people who either went for and came back changed or went to Canada, did not think they had not have done to avoid going. And I hope that in the most part that was because they did not want to kill for an unjust war, rather they could not die. Whatever it was, they were altered by it. But there were other people who were completely consumed by... I mean, for women, I do not think that the war was as defined as it was for the people. The men who would have been directly engaged and often we were caught up and defined by feminism. But are in some cases defined by changing standards for motherhood in various racial groups, fighting for social justice and literally for their lives in various parts of it. And for some of us, it was clearly a shift that came from a recognition of a different role for mankind within the environmental movement. There was this very powerful strength that says that you have in the era of fossil fuels from the steam engine, largely defined success by subduing nature. And that has not worked out so well and accomplished prosperity. But you can lead lives of comfort, dignity, and contribution by adapting ourselves intelligently to the principles of college cities and ministries that are compatible with and ecosystems you will continue function, do not undermine nature services, of course, our needs.
SM (00:31:41):
One of the characteristics of the generation is obviously it was a movement generation because there were so many movements. The Civil Rights Movement was already going strong as boomers are reaching the age of 18, and many went to the freedom summer when they were very young. But when you look at the other movements, including the environmental movement, the Chicano, the gay and lesbian, the women's movement, the Native American movement, and the anti-war movement. Your thoughts on their links to the Earth Day and all the other environmental movements, because there seem to be a sense... And I like your thoughts on this, you had just made some comments about the international community today and how important the sense of community should be that we all need to work together as one. There was a sense of community amongst many of the boomers. That is why they worked well together. And at many protests you would see many of the movements together. When you look at the environmental movement and you see all these other movements, was there a close working relationship between the movement you were involved in and all these others?
DH (00:32:56):
At the working level where the folks really are representing large numbers of people who share their guilt and respect them and think of them as leaders? There was a high degree of pragmatic interaction. To take just the Earth Day example, as you go across the country, you will find in various rallies, all of the major leading anti-war figures were giving talk, sometimes focused exclusively upon the raping and [inaudible] of the Vietnamese environment, [inaudible] and the night palm, what have you. But one way or the other, tying their issue into it. And then similarly with civil rights leaders who would talk about the environmental, the ghettos about blood paint and rats, toxic materials as environmental issues about the dominant one at that point, freeways cutting through inner city areas, decimating what had been intact neighborhoods. And so there was that level at the extremes of each movement. I mean, they are in the extremes of the environmental movement, and I hate to characterize groups by this, but there are extremes within it that have a racist element to it, have a nationalistic, almost dramatic element to it. In the extremes of the civil rights movement, there were certainly those that were mixing up the search for Black power with the condemnation of things that were not Black and beautiful. And that basically took an organization like the SNC, the Students nonviolent Court, which had been students in mixed race and a whole lot of people, and basically kicked the white folks out. This was all about building from within Black nationalism and in the anti-war movement, I do not know that it is particularly a radical worldview, but there were folks who I think almost had psychological problems. They thought that using a brick through the window of a random florist shop somehow contribute to the movement. Basically they alienated their fellow anti-war and everybody else's, some of the prisons. But at the level that I think you are asking it, there was a broad sense that there was a new agenda that was coming. It was a generational agenda. It was in some large measure, progressive. It had a desire to have a higher degree of equality among all people and opposed to things that treated some as second class. And I think all of that was extremely widely shared. I should say that that led to condemnations from the people because you have an environmental rally, but signs are on simple rights. Signs are about war and all of the stuff. And so they would say, well... And they say the same thing about all of the others. You would go to an anti-war movement and there would be feminist's signs there and they would contend that this is all just [inaudible]. People do not really care about the environment, care about the war, care about whatever the issue is. It is all just a front to pull, a broad base liberal agenda. And it is not entirely false. I mean, most of us cared about all of those issues at a primary identification, which had been all the different events.
SM (00:36:42):
I am sure that, and I think hopefully activists today, whether they be environmental activists or any of other movements we have talked about, should realize that violence gets no one anywhere and it creates a bad image for the effort that you are trying to work on. I mentioned this because you have already brought up the Black power issue, the challenge with the Black power and the Black Panthers within the Civil Rights Movement, even in the Native American movement, the aim oftentimes got involved in violence. And then of course, in the last 10 years I have read about environmental activists who were violent. I cannot remember the name of the one group. I think it is out in the far west. They are willing to confront people and with violence if they have to, it is that Malcolm X by any means necessary attitude. Have you seen any of that within the environmental movement that by any means necessary, not only in 1970, but as you have progressed through the Earth Day celebrations in 2000 and just your thoughts on that?
DH (00:37:59):
Well, once again, it is part of this vast diversity and what gets attention and what does not. When you have the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the NAACP and Urban League and others trying to build a broad-based movement across the races to end the Jim Crow laws that had oppressed people basically from the Civil War, the immediate aftermath. They had enormous support, but the support was very broad, but people did not do very much. And certainly some did. The freedom writers went to the South, Freedom Summer was important opiate brief because of them, but almost immediately to Black power fall. But a theory of change is you build a critical mass, you reach out to as many as possible and you try to move them to a state where they become a powerful force. That was the whole theory behind Earth Day. We wanted to get everybody engaged and pull together something where for a window in time, which we thought was going to be much longer but did last for four or five years, we were effectively unstoppable. But an opposite view would say that in almost any instance, it is a very small number of people who care passionately about an issue that drive change. And most of the time, the vast majority of people cannot focus upon that many issues and maybe they will watch the evening news. But in the evening news, a three-paragraph story is a pretty long story and it is going to be dominated by whatever has pictures and colorfulness. And so although the Black Panthers were never one 10th of 1 percent of what the NAACP was in terms of membership and had essentially no white engagement at all, got an enormous amount of headlines because they were prepared to carry [inaudible] in the streets of Oakland or Chicago. And because they were confrontational and sometimes confrontational to enormously racist entities. And so they dominated the press for a period. Whereas the early stages of the movement up through Martin Luther King, even Joseph Lowery, it was led by mostly southern religious leaders who preached a Gandhi esque code of passive civil disobedience and nonviolence. It shifted over into something that was more akin to urban thugs, but they got the coverage. It became the prototype how you move. A similar thing would happen in pretty much everything, right up until... I mean, when people think about Seattle, most of them think about Boeing and Microsoft and Weyerhaeuser and Nordstrom and Starbucks, Costco and RealNetworks. I mean, for a little tiny city, we have produced a whole number of things that are fundamentally changed.
SM (00:41:22):
Yes.
DH (00:41:24):
But for some set of people, particularly those that are involved in globalization trade, there is a pretty dominant image of the battle for Seattle. When the World Trade Organization got here and were formed by the group of anarchists on the streets, that was a couple hundred people and most of them were not from Seattle, most of them were from Eugene, Oregon Group that was down there. But they triggered stuff that caused police to react in a way because of the people to become engaged. It is all of the tricks that were done throughout the (19)60s and it worked. And a couple hundred people there had had an impact that has endured in people's consciousness. There's now at least two movies out about Seattle. There have been thousands of peaceful protests about the way the World Trade Organization has excluded from its consideration a true concern for the environmental attributes of products, the amount of energy that is embedded in products, the degree to which children are employed, the degree to which unions are forced out and on and on. The amount of pollution that is generated in the course of making a product that is then exported. The pollution remains behind. I mean, they get a little bit of attention for a few moments, maybe they educate some people, but nobody remembers any of the violent confrontations that endure. And it is true about what happened under apartheid. It is true about most social insurrections that take place around the world. And as a consequence, there is this genuine tension between two alternative ways of bringing change. My hope was-
SM (00:43:19):
Mr. Hayes, let me turn my tape here. Hold on one second.
(00:43:26):
All right, go right ahead.
DH (00:43:31):
Well, there was this great pivotal point in human history but over a brief period of time. Historically, we had Gutenberg who ironically developed this stuff for the proselytization of the Bible and bringing it for God to the common man. But it led pretty directly into the distribution of information rather broadly and the age of reason and the enlightenment where scientific dispersion method logic were applied to all kinds of politics and economics. Well, it looked like we had made each gigantic leap in terms of human consciousness. We now find ourselves in an era where people, huge portions of American society just pay little attention to people who devoted their entire lives to studying issues and are extremely highly regarded by their peers. They dismissed [inaudible] using intellectuals in a term of disdain and an endorsement of political figures, the ultimate caricature of which is Sarah Palin, who seems to have no agenda other than really, really wanting to be famous and powerful. And somehow the (19)60s and the boomer generation I think played into some of that. I do not have a very clear idea of what I mean by all of that, but I think in that period where the legitimacy of authority was increased in question because the authority had been accused. We came, and I had part of this as well too, do not have much confidence in professors, some of whom had obtained tenure 40 years earlier and had fallen way behind their disciplines. But out of all of that, for some people came almost a disdain for knowledge sense that what you know and what you can calculate reasonably predict in air boundaries is not as important as a deep emotional commitment to a particular outcome. And that is reflects itself a bit from the issue that actually triggered this fast out point of words for me, is to say the emotional types tend to say. And I do not give a damn if 80 percent of the people, I will create a situation in which society has to respond to me. And often violence is a part of that. And it is not so much a Black and white thing as it is a gradation. When people went in and sat in at lunch counters and said, "You do not want to sit next to me, you go sit someplace else." But I have got a right to sit here under the public accommodation clause. They were often met with violence and they knew that they would. And in the early days, they took it and accepted in a Gandhish way on the latter dates, touch me, man, I am going to take your head off it. And among the people in the Southern best writing campaigns you have, many of them were men and women who had affection for one another. And some guy is there and may be prepared to let the police beat him. But when the police start to beat and turn the fire hoses on her, and then suddenly a whole different center of protective genes comes into play and passing civil disobedience does not look so much honorable as it looks cowardly. And suddenly you find yourself giving birth to somebody who's going to strike back at those that were striking them.
SM (00:47:59):
What you have mentioned is maybe this quality came about from the boomer generation.
DH (00:48:07):
Well, it came up, it was there on the side of the oppressors. Bo Connors was not a boomer, but he prompted a response.
SM (00:48:18):
If we had a-
DH (00:48:18):
I think directly to the Black Panthers.
SM (00:48:21):
How important were the college students on college campuses and ending the Vietnam War? I have had different responses to this. Some say they were very important, some say not important at all.
DH (00:48:33):
Oh, I hate to utter these words, but I am confident that they are correct that the war was ended because we had a draft and part of it was a draft that reached into college campuses a bit. But mostly as long as you were in college, you were exempt. So everybody knew that it was coming as soon as they got out, unless they got into medical school or something. So there was an overhanging threat and rather than higher, but we now politely call it professional army, but some in sense can call it a mercenary army. People who are looking for a way to get an education, to get some discipline often to escape an unfortunate family environment. They go there and they go and fight our wars for us. If you were a member of Congress, you would like to be able to kick your kids out of the armed forces. There was a degree of randomness as to who was going to be called and that caused everybody in the country to think hard about that war and about its real consequences in a way that, for example, the war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan have not. They were on the news, but they were one of all of these period issues that were out there. During Vietnam, it was the war that could very well take your son or your nephew, daughter. And so although the students were the principal focal point for the demonstrations when you had the Vietnam moratorium, the march on the Pentagon fueled by people who were then my age, but what really ended the war was all of our parents and the political force that they represented that read large across the society. And then you finally got to the point for me, I think the turning point, if you were to define it, which may say more about my upbringing than anything else, but it was the day that Paul Harvey came on the radio that ultimately was convinced that this was a war that America should not be in. And that is like rush limbo coming out against a war in Afghanistan.
SM (00:50:50):
Is it Paul Harvey or Walter Cronkite?
DH (00:50:53):
No, I am talking about Paul Harvey.
SM (00:50:54):
Oh wow, Paul Harvey. Okay.
DH (00:50:57):
Yeah. No, Walter Cronkite coming back clearly is the one that got all of the attention.
SM (00:51:03):
Well, that is interesting.
DH (00:51:05):
But Paul Harvey just cut the undersides up to people that the military listened to every single time.
SM (00:51:12):
Oh wow. Yeah. I will never forget listening to that with my mom sometimes. Paul Harvey and Dave, he had that unique quality about him.
DH (00:51:22):
My dad came home from work every single noon, every day of his life for the type that I grew up with and to listen to Paul Harvey.
SM (00:51:30):
Well, he had a unique voice and yeah, that was a great show too. Before I get into some environmental questions as I really want to concentrate on and your background, I have two quick final questions here on general things about the boomers, and I want to read one of them. We took a group of students to see Senator Edmund Muskie about a year and a half before he passed away. And he had been in the hospital. He obviously was not feeling well, but he did it because Senator Nelson asked him and he was great. We had about two hours with him, and we asked this question that the students came up with because they thought he was going to respond, talk about the (19)68 convention, and he did not. And this is the question we ask, do you feel boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, divisions between Black and white, divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? What role has the Vietnam Memorial played in healing the division says Jan Scruggs says in his book To Heal a Nation? Most importantly, do you feel that the bloomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? And are we wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds a truth? So just your thoughts and I will tell you what Senator Nelson said because it was great.
DH (00:53:03):
Muskie?
SM (00:53:05):
Yeah. Well, Senator Nelson also responded to this question, but Senator Muskie said... We thought he was going to respond by saying, "Boy, we were close to a second civil war in 1968." He did not say anything about (19)68. He said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." And then he went on for about 15 minutes to talk about the Ken Burns series and the Civil War that he had been looking at and how he lost over 400,000 men and almost an entire generation died because of that particular war and what a waste it was. And he said, "Just go to Gettysburg anytime and see the flags. And you will notice on the southern side, the flags are always there, but on the northern side you do not see any." So just your thoughts on whether we as a boomer generation have a problem with healing from all these divisions or is this not even an issue?
DH (00:53:59):
And of course, as you are in Mississippi, Alabama, there was not a civil war that was the war of Northern Aggression.
SM (00:54:07):
Right. Yes, you are right.
DH (00:54:11):
Well, in some great extent, and this runs some of our earlier questions together as well, we are trying to do with Earth Day that a couple of years after the convention. When the nation clearly had been ripped apart, and one consequence of that was Richard Nixon as president, was to bring those people with progressive views together. As long as you could buy into the agenda, there was a role for you. I mean, on our steering committee we had George Wiley of the National Welfare Rights Organization, and we had Dan Lufkin. It is worth a couple $100 million dollars when a couple $100 million meant something as the founder of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. And Stanley [inaudible] Wiley is this person who somebody should look at someday. I am not big on the national welfare rights organization, though he did so many things from that.
SM (00:55:19):
What is his name? His name is George Wiley.
DH (00:55:23):
He died in a boating accident in the early (19)70s, but he was an emerging civil rights leader. He was a powerfully built African American man with PhD in chemistry and a deep and abiding concern for poor people. He was one of the true intellectuals who could have emerged and played, I think a really powerful role. Unfortunately, he was moved off-stage early. But going back to the broader point, we were trying to bring people together and to the extent that an event could, I think we did just by aggressively going after any entity, any group that appeared to have potential interest in this saying, come and get engaged, going after women's magazines. And in fact, probably the most powerful constituent was married women with one or two children and single wager or households with college educations who just jumped on this movement with the passion. And we got to them through women's magazines, a huge number of which wrote articles about us and the environment. Many gave their telephone number and the street address to contact us back about that Vietnam era. Went after Boy Scouts, went after the National Science Teachers Association, went after a variety of companies that seemed to be doing something quasi green, huge amount of support from organized labor. The largest contributor by far was the United Auto Workers. Other unions with single largest block of support for us and consciously we were trying to build something that was inclusive and in which the middle class would feel comfortable because they had been so much excluded from so many of those other movements by the way that the movements had in the end clustered themselves. We thought that that was the largest block of Americans. It was the ones with the money and the education and the power and the votes, and we wanted to have something that drew them into this sort of concerns. And I think for a while that all worked, but the polarization that is out there today is really very much a right left polarization. And I do not think it has much to do with at least the early concerns, the (19)60s and (19)70s concerns of the boomer generation. It is just this visceral lack of ability of political leaders to build an encompassing vision around what they are trying to achieve. That consists of something other than condemning the other side, not a positive competition of, you said dumping as much crap as you can on the other's vision. Now there are thoughtful things that can be said about various kinds of market mechanisms called for by people on the right. And there are some really useful roles that are played by regulation and by public expenditures that are called broke by people on the left, but there is no ability to treat one another with respect. Political level, and as a consequence, we are just paralyzed. I was on a radio interview a couple days ago and somebody asked me, in all seriousness, if we are unable to get a relatively weak climate bill through the US Senate because of the threat of the filibuster and we just cannot muster 60 votes yet, how could we come up with a treaty that meet the demands of developing countries and the ambitious goals of our European and Japanese allies and get 60 votes for that? That was blown away when I had to remind him of basic civics, you need to get 67 votes to pass treaty. There was a time when we could enter into treaties, but the law of the seas has been out there for what, 35, 40 years now, get the votes to pass it. I do not know how you ever pass a climate treaty, and I do not know how you saved the world without getting us to buy into some sort of an international agreement, but part of that is that no one will pay that attention. You got the climate deniers, you got these crazy people that honestly believe that there's a conspiracy in them. Thousands of scientists and hundreds of research institutions around the world over [inaudible] people's eyes. It is hard to believe that they believe that, but they sure say enormous emphasis. And on our side, there is a tendency to say, well, we have got a complete agreement among all relevant scientists and people who publish peer reviewed articles about all the details of climate change. Because if you get into difficulties and the nuances from the other side will pick you apart. In fact, everybody agrees that the world's... Community agrees the world is warming up, but we will have horrible consequences for all kinds of things at different points. There are just some like tilting point, humans are contributing to it. But within all of that, there is a lot of stuff that is judgment. There is a lot of stuff where you have got conflicting figures depending on whether you are using tree rings or whether you are using ice course or using something else to try to measure what happened a hundred million years ago. I do not know it's just this level of tension that makes it impossible to find a common ground. And we have a country that designed it. Basically the age of reason was all about forcing people to find a common ground like creating these speeds for majorities and super majorities.
SM (01:01:14):
So in short, really the healing issue is not really the main thing here in terms of the divisions within the (19)60s, these divisions are part of the human condition more than just defining it within a generation?
DH (01:01:30):
Well, they are a consequence of shifts in the way that that public opinion is shaped. There was a time when people read learned essays and you found the Bill of Rights being debated and people eager to read the next set of learned comment that came out in the newspapers. But people would sit up in the hot sun for eight, 10 hours and listen to the Lincoln Douglas debates where we have a nation that was really designed by a group of intellect. And there's a tendency on the right to treat the founding fathers as people go out and have a beer with. But I do not think that is a very accurate view of Jefferson in Monroe and Madison. Paul, certainly not Washington.
SM (01:02:32):
Do you see a link here, because you had mentioned people do not trust each other and lack of respect that the issue of trust or lack of trust is another quality that might be within the boomer generation because of so many leaders that lied to them, whether it be Johnson with a Gulf of Tonkin, certainly Watergate with Richard Nixon, but a lot of other leaders and even back in Eisenhower in the U2 when he lied about that. But the lower generation did not seem to trust anybody that was in the position of responsibility or leadership, whether it be a senator, congressman, the university president, corporate leader, even ministers, priests, rabbis, anybody in leadership, they did not trust anybody and whether they pass it on to their kids and grandkids, is that a good thing to not trust? And then is that a quality of the boomer generation?
DH (01:03:24):
Well, I think it is a quality. In some limits, I think it is a good quality. I think the degree of skepticism emerged because skepticism was warranted. He did not trust people because they lied to us. But what is tragic has been the lies. But that said, and at that point then, because you do not trust anybody and do not trust evidence and will not pay attention to anything that anybody says, I tend to give some deference to a report of the National Academy of Sciences. And so if you have agreement among say, 15 to 20 different National Academies of Sciences from around the world, plus you throw in a bunch of professional societies and they all get to the same basic point, I tend to assign that a very high degree of credibility and a huge number of people do not give a damn, one way or the other.
SM (01:04:25):
That is bad.
DH (01:04:27):
And it is related to where I was starting to go, which is that there was a time when at least my view of the past was that leaders were prepared to pay and the public was prepared to pay attention to evidence and then to thoughtful skilled art. And today, there is much more attention paid to images, to commercials that are designed to influence you one way or the other, to the 32nd sound bite, to the emotional gushing of a radio host in an almost evidence free manner. And part of this has to do with advances in human knowledge and how they are corrupt purposes. I mean, the fascinating thing that was on the air the other night, again, it goes back to the old statement, "A dying child is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." There is something about that. When they were doing fundraising for one of these Save the Children and they had a brother and a sister from some African country, and when they would show ad the sister in it, they would get a very good response of contributions. When they showed an ad with the brother in it, they would get a very good set of responses. When they showed the brother and sister together in the ad, the contributions went down like two thirds. And if they showed 40 kids who were all in this terrible thing or a refugee camp or something that made it a bigger issue, everything just fell off entirely because people tend to think there is something I can do to save this person. There is nothing I can do to save the world. You take those kinds of basic emotional responses and instead of fashioning arguments about what we do to save the world, you play to those basic emotional instincts and it all become a science now. It is tragic.
SM (01:06:29):
How did you become who you are? In other words, what was the magic moment in your life that turned your light bulb on in your head and said, "I am going to devote the rest of my life to this cause or that cause or I am changing the direction of my life." It's a two part question here. Who were your mentors and your role models that inspired you? Not only when you were young, but it could be Senator Nelson too? Boy, he is inspired me just from working with him in a university. And what was that magic moment when you became an activist?
DH (01:07:10):
Well, for me it actually was pretty much a precise defining moment. I grew up in a very small town of lumbering and really did not think that there were things that I could do that would be of much impact. And as I read about form work, tragic things including the threat of nuclear weapons, fermentation with chemical and biological warfare down at the south, even the beginnings of the war in Vietnam, I basically went into a world-class belt and really could not see a path forward for myself. And I took off and went to tracking around the world for three years trying to see what was going on in various of society. By then [inaudible] the of the new plant of the fires of Algeria, I would read [inaudible] and wanted to find out what truly going on in. So I took the train across Russia. I had checked all over Africa, all over the Middle East, all over the southwest Asia. Spent a lot of time in Japan. When I was a junior in high school, long before all of this, I was invited by the National Science Foundation to go to an ecology seminar and did it. Anybody who was 15 years old, mostly chased girls, had a problem, the sun. But we also were studying the ways that dragon flies operated inside a pond community. And our academic portion was based on Eugene Odom's text, principles of Ecology. And I studied that for my final exams and did okay. And a lot of the material was really pretty [inaudible] to me. And then I went back and was a senior in the [inaudible]. Well, I was out hitchhiking around the world in Libya. I had an experience one night alongside the road where the road goes from Luderitz, right, intersects the road, goes down to Cape Town. When I went up over a hill at the close of the day, rolled up my seating bag and somehow stuff just came together for me. It was a little bit like conditions in which Old Testament profits had visions. I mean I had been out very alone for a long time by then. I have been basically by myself for a couple of years. It'd been a really hot day. It was a desert cold night. I did not have any decent food, had not any for a time. Somehow what popped into my mind was that ecology seminar and some of the basic principles that I recalled, and at the heart of it all being that life on Earth was driven by energy transactions. And that much of what Darwinian evolution is about is how to make everything just as efficient as possible for individual species and for the way that ecosystems functioned. And it was all dependent upon flows of energy from the sun captured through photosynthesis, released through oxidative possible relations, stored in various ways. And making those systems function as efficiently as possible, ultimately built what we have as most of the modern world except for human beings. Because we had found ways to tap into fossil resources that were unlimited supply. And we had emerged into something that was very different that a 100 years earlier, if you had shown somebody a photograph of an office in Atlanta, Georgia, an office in Phoenix, an office in Anchorage, we could tell you instantly where they were. And now we were in something where they all looked identical and they had this cheap energy being poured into them. And the insight that I had that night that turned me around, sent me back to the United States, got me into law school and tried to affect change was this recognition that this was likely to be a brief episode and that a great many of the problems that we were facing were from our efforts to ignore and even fight against the basic principles of ecology instead of... As Ian Marc wrote about it, and I learned later with Design with Nature and that if we could really do things differently, much learning with what we would now call biomimicry to build what we would now call on principles of urban ecology and industrial ecology. All of this being a vocabulary that did not exist, but which I am intuiting that night, but we could overcome a great deal and reproducing a world in which we cherished diversity on and on those sorts of things and use at least as metaphors within ecologic principles. I got up the phone, I did not sleep at all that night. I thought that this was just this blinding inside I intended to return home and among other things, right in environmental, [inaudible] that it is plain phone in terms, which I have actually tried to do a couple of times and success. But got up the following morning having gone, rolled out the Cleveland bag, was a guy that could not even much think of any reason to go on living and got up the following morning with a pretty clear direction for what I was going to do with my life.
SM (01:13:05):
Wow. Yeah. Your whole link to Earth Day and your meeting Senator Nelson, and then being the organizer, when you look at that experience of 1970, and can you talk a little bit about the teach-ins, which is a certainly important quality of anybody. It was a boomer that lived, they had to experience or be a part of some teach-in. How important were the teach-ins? Because I know that was part of your responsibility, and what was that feeling like of, again, just that you're young, you are being given responsibility at a very early age to organize this very important birthday event that you care so deeply about in working with people who felt like you are the same way. What was just your feelings of that 1970 and working with Senator Nelson and all the young people on Earth Day?
DH (01:14:04):
Well, it was an extraordinary opportunity to make a leap in a direction that I was slowly trying to plot my way to work. I mean, I flew down to Washington because I had not heard anything about an environmental teacher at Harvard, or I was at that time or at all until it appeared in an article that Claman Hill wrote in the New York Times based on a talk that Gaylord given down in early house. And since I had not heard of it, I figured nobody was organizing it since they did not mention anybody except Gaylord, just with all of the arrogance of you down to Washington too, even Senator. And my hope was to get the charter to go back and organize Harvard. And what was a five- or 10-minute courtesy conversation was changed by the fact that that New York Times article had been written and mail was beginning to pour into Senator Nelson's office from mostly schools across the country. At that point, from people who had read the article or had read an article about the article and wanted to know how they could become engaged. So we talked in for an hour, hour and a half, and I left with the commission to go up and organize Boston, which was way beyond what I thought of doing when I went down to Washington. Then it turned out that Gaylord had asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to be his co-chair, so that be the Democratic Senator and Republican congressman and McCloskey turned out to be the congressman that represented Stanford, right. And [inaudible] president of the student body and deeply involved in a lot of political stuff. I did not know McCloskey, but when Gaylord asked him about this kid from Stanford, McCloskey, I heard of me and called from the Friends of Banford and took their temperature and basically got back saying, "He seems like he is a pretty soft guy." So I then got a call a week later saying, "Would you consider dropping out of school and coming down and organizing the United States?" That was not a career trajectory that I had. Figured it was just a really powerful new opportunity and really did not even think about it for more than that conversation. I accepted on the spot. It just seemed like in alignment of what I wanted to do. Called a few friends, got some people from Harvard who were my classmates to come down and join me, wish on it. And shockingly, by midway through the next month, it became clear. We began calling around to every university in the country and as a college and university thing. There just was not much interest on the part of the people that we knew how to bolt us together, people with their roots and these various other movements for us. And there were some college chapters in the National Wildlife Federation, what have you. And then there were some colleges where those schools of forestry, or there were no schools of the environment, but something that had to do with natural resources would want to do something. But it was viewed as an educational venture. And it's basically not much more than a seminar with maybe a couple of displays out the court garden. I suddenly had this horrible sense. But I would set myself up for a belly flop and we did this survey of all those letters that had come in and found that... Now, in addition to the letters from the K to 12 schools, we immediately set up a K-12 school coordinator, a guy named Bryce Hamilton did a fabulous job pulling all that together. The bulk of the remaining letters were from these women that I mentioned earlier. Basically between the ages of 25 and 35, college educated, one or two children had not much been involved in anything before that was political, but had a fair amount of talent that they were in homes where the husband was breadwinner and they were around home with their kids, but now their kids were sufficiently out of their hair, that they had time to do some other stuff in this environment that really appealed to them. But also in part because of the impact that would have on their children. And the unknown story of what became was the engagement of these women. I mean, if you did a survey around through some of them are young, hit your boomer criteria of people who went on to become members of city councils, members of state legislatures, members of public service commissions, members of the United States Congress, and asked those that came of age during that period, how many of you had birthday as your first political experience, that the percentages would be staggering. And I virtually never give a talk someplace where there is a female public official when she does not come up to me and say, the first thing she ever do was my first birthday. So there was this huge unexplored thing. Our staff was all kids, and our press coverage was all this, was this youthquake, but in fact, it was this woman's thing that was going on, this slightly older women that fit basic big urban organization. So at that point, while the teachings continued, they basically shifted mostly to K to 12 and then the educational excursions in a few colleges, including a pretty good one at the University of Michigan. But we ran a big ad in the New York Times and dropped the teaching stuff from everything, including our letterhead, and embraced this new name of Earth Day and took it into public demonstrations and things that you could do in various kinds of service organizations and cities would put together, transformed into something that was much more based upon the kinds of things you would see in the civil rights era and the anti-war era in their later digs. I mean, what triggered Gaylord is in the earliest stages of both of those things, there were not college teachings that dealt with racism on campus or dealt with whether the war was a good idea or a bad idea. And then it was firstly debated, 1963, (19)64, (19)65, but by the time he got to 1970, Chen was viewed as a little bit passé on college campuses, and we needed to have a different vocabulary that we could use. That is where our birthday came from. And I want to say on Wheeler's behalf, he was just incredibly flexible about all of this stuff. He wanted to have a bunch, he gave a high degree of deference to us that were trying to actually get out there and organize things. And he embraced the new name with gusto and shifted his own remarks. Although he still did a lot of things on college campuses, he began addressing a lot of community groups. And then the final thing that made it all come together, that is an overstatement, but a final thing that was a huge benefit to us related to Nixon's southern strategy. And the fact that suddenly the future of the Republic Party and the nature of American politics was going in void. And there was a very attractive young mayor of New York, John Lindsay, who decided to inhabit that void. And he was pretty ambitious, and he really liked the environmental issue, and he just jumped into it with us. He assigned principal staff on his staff in New York to work with our organizers in New York City. They put up police protection for free. They gave us the insurance for free. They gave us porta potties around Central Park for free. It closed down 5th Avenue. So the 5th Avenue, you close it down, you got to crowd there instantly. And we had this event in New York City that had more than a million people involved in it. And it was not a teaching, it was a rally. Like most of the things around the country, there was nobody there saying, "No, pollution is a good thing." And a Larry Summers, got to send all your toxic waste to poor countries because the value of human life, poor countries was less than the value of human. It was not that debate at all. It was stop the goddamn pollution now. And that took place in the city where NBC, CBS, and ABC were located, where Time and Newsweek and the New York Times, the United Press, the Associated Press, I mean, it was at that point, New York to a greater extent than any place in the world is today, was the information communications capital. If something did not happen in New York, it is very difficult to convince people that it was happening every place else in the country. But if you have got Central Park and Fifth Avenue filled with prominent political people and celebrities of various kinds and this huge diverse thing there, then suddenly you have the images and you have got the reality that you can peg all of the other stuff that is taking place. Thousands of cities and neighborhoods, villages across the country all became part of this one story. And Lindsey really thought that this was something that he would be able to use to help drive a wedge into a new kind of political future. And he also acutely aware that Ed Muskie intended to use it on the Democratic side. When I was practicing law in San Francisco, my paralegal for a period of some years, a guy named Tom Helic, who was the son of John Helic. John Helic got out of the slammer, came down and had dinner and drinks with us, and we were reminiscing about the [inaudible]. He told me a story that serves my interest, but it also serves his interest. So probably a suspect.
SM (01:24:51):
Hold on one second.
DH (01:24:57):
This is going to be probably entirely myopic, but my sense is, if I wanted to look back at the 18th century at the time, people would be caring about the seven years’ war and all sorts of stuff that I cannot even make an intelligent comment about. And today we think of it as it is when the American Revolution took place, began to have the Industrial Revolution curve without anybody thinking of it as great. My sense historically is that the two things that I think will be remembered toward is that it is the era when the Information Revolution was launched, which I think is one of those true transformational technical revolutions. Federally changes everything from commerce to privacy but not fundamentally shaking the world. And the other will be that it is a time when human beings began to recognize that their aggregate activities had acquired the impact of a geophysical force. We can change the climate, poison the entire ocean, and eliminate species. We can do the sorts of things that you typically attribute to earthquakes and volcanoes and asteroids hitting the earth. And that we hopefully, as a result of the work of this generation began to behave more responsibly with regard to all of those things.
SM (01:26:39):
The thing I am not going to have time to do is ask list names and terms from the period for your response, but I want to end with this very last question. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? And again, I am going back to that question that Jan Scruggs who wrote that great book, To Heal A Nation, it has done a great job of healing the veterans, but has it done any job of healing the nation in any way? But when you see the wall, what does it mean to you and how do you respond to Jan Scruggs's book title, To Heal a Nation?
DH (01:27:31):
Well, Myolynn is a good personal friend. We have served on a board together for several years. I think she has done a lot of things that are powerful, but as you could claim of me with birthday, I think she and I both peaked early, but we both aspired things a bit later. I mean, I think it is just most fabulous thing she has done. And I think it did a wonderful job of allowing a multiple sensory acknowledgement, banking and healing of the whole set of people, many of whom went to Vietnam against their builds and did things that were, in many cases, heroic and saved their lives. That was really important. In terms of healing around right, left tensions, Black, white tensions, environmental versus traveled growth tensions. I am not sure that it aspired to do any of that. I have never really thought of it in terms that are broad before. I do not mean that at all to demean of it, but I think it does what it is set out to do, magnificently.
SM (01:28:52):
Oh, very good.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Denis Hayes
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Hayes, Denis ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Environmentalism; Lawyers; Earth Day Network; Solar Energy Research Institute; Bullitt Foundation; Hayes, Denis--Interviews
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Denis Hayes is an environmental advocate, a proponent of solar power, attorney, educator, and founder of the Earth Day Network, which works with over 180 nations in order to build environmental democracy. He was head of the Solar Energy Research Institute and president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington. Hayes also received many awards including the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Hayes received his Bachelor's degree in History from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor degree at Stanford Law School.
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.198a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.198b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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88:57
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Format
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Audio interviews
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>
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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
2003-11-14
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Tom Hayden
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Thomas Hayden (1939-2016) was a social and political activist, author and politician who was best known for his major role as an anti-war, civil rights, and radical intellectual activist. He was author of the manifesto Port Huron Statement and stood trial in the Chicago Seven case. Hayden won seats on both the California Assembly and the California Senate. He was also the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Los Angeles County. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan."}" 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}">Thomas Hayden (1939-2016) was a social and political activist, author and politician who was best known for his major role as an anti-war, civil rights, and radical intellectual activist. He was the author of the manifesto Port Huron Statement and stood trial in the Chicago Seven case. Hayden won seats on both the California Assembly and the California Senate. He was also the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Los Angeles County. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Nineteen sixties; marijuana; Anti-war Movement; Anti-draft; lack of trust; Vietnam (& vietnam syndrome); Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":769,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0}">The nineteen sixties; marijuana; Anti-war Movement; Anti-draft; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Rorschach; Vietnam War; Draft resistance; Eugene McCarthy; Lyndon Johnson; Division; "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee"; Dee Brown; The Wall; Port Huron Statement; SNCC; Bob Moses; Jerry Adams; Kent State; Orangeburg; Integration; People’s Park; SDS; Jim Webb; Young Americans for Freedom; Jack Kerouac; Goldwater Movement; Fred Hampton; Mark Clark; Kent State; Jackson State; 1967 Newark riots; Max Cleland; Martin Luther King ; Max Faber ; COINTELPRO; Daniel Barrigan; Philip Barrigan; Direct Action Movement; Beat Generation.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
157:57
Subject LCSH
Political activists--United States; Civil rights workers; Legislators—United States; Radicals--United States; Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements; Hayden, Tom--Interviews
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Tom Hayden
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers
Date of interview: 14 November 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
0:02
TH: Hold it.
0:06
SM: By it is already there.
0:08
TH: But I need to play.
0:11
SM: It is recording right now.
0:12
TH: Are you sure? Yeah. All right, fine.
0:15
SM: When you think of the (19)60s, a lot of these questions are basic and general, when you think of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
0:33
TH: Well, I guess I think of the (19)60s as the cradle of my identity.
0:45
SM: Could you explain a little further on that?
0:47
TH: Well, you can think of it in different ways. I always get asked about the (19)60s so it is kind of a reference point and as a subject of reflection or study. I could probably give a course on the (19)60s in my sleep and there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered and inconclusive about the (19)60s. But if I think about it, in terms of my experience, I think everybody's identity is formed when they are young. And I was, I was formed by the (19)60s I was. I grew up in the suburban apathy of Royal Oak, Michigan and was simply traveling along in this suffocating, apathetic state and then the (19)60s began in an instant and it was, it was like an electrical charge that just went right through me and a lot of other people of my generation. So, the whole experience of the decade was the experience of my twenties. And the cradle of my identity. I do not know how else to explain it.
1:47
SM: The boomer generation has been criticized by a lot of pundits in the last ten, fifteen, twenty years, as being the reason why looking at the boomer generation, and some of the things they did is the reason why our society has gone downhill in many ways. And when I say in many ways, the disrespect for authority, the drug culture, those kinds of things, what are your comments on individuals who criticize that generation as the reason why we have problems today in our society?
3:13
TH: First of all, I do not like the term 'boomer generation', it is derogatory. It makes the generation seem silly. And it has. It has no other political content. When you think of the (19)60s, yes there was; there were a variety of events that happened, you know, the journey to the moon, the election of Nixon, that happened in the (19)60s, but the core experience of the (19)60s makes people think of the assassination of Dr. King and the two Kennedy's and the Civil Rights marches, and the Vietnam War and the counterculture, that is the core. And when you say boomer, you do not really capture Martin Luther King. As far as things having gone downhill, you know, I do not know of any particular evidence of things having gone downhill in the 1960s. I mean, to the extent there was any economic problem it was the expenditures for Vietnam outpacing tax revenues, and the country going off the gold standard for the first time in history, but would that have nothing to do with the protests that had to do with the folly of the war. I think things went downhill for the country in one obvious sense, and that was the assassinations of so many of our natural, popular, elected leaders and who can say where the blame lies for that? As for drugs, I do not really understand the charge. It has to come from people who think drugs are the bane of all evil. For me, you know, I was a virtual alcoholic, my father was an alcoholic. My problem and America's problem is very much around the legalization, celebration, and promotion of alcohol, which is a drug that is associated with violence, it is associated with car crashes. It is a proven association. I do not happen to have had much experience with drugs in the 1960s. But certainly, my experience with marijuana and my observation is that marijuana is not associated with violence. It is not associated with anything antisocial unless you are a Puritan, and you believe you should work 24/7. I do not think people having used marijuana adversely impacted the country and I have always thought marijuana should be legal if alcohol is, or we need to review all of our addictive industries. The other drugs I think you want to take them one at a time and put them subject to some kind of Public Health Commission and find a way to move away from policies that criminalize to policies that legalize and control and by that I do not mean, like we do alcohol. Alcohol in some states, I do not know about Pennsylvania, but you still have alcohol outlets that are state regulated. To me, after you classify drugs based on scientific findings and epidemiological findings, you should legalize, regulate, tax, utilize the tax revenues to promote treatment, you should prohibit advertising and you should prohibit any campaign contributions whatsoever. And it is my feeling based on the research I have done on prohibition of alcohol in the (19)20s and (19)30s that the violence associated with drugs, which is a real problem, would go down drastically if an alternative policy was followed. So, the tradeoff I would make would be to legalize and regulate in exchange for the reduction of violence that I think would happen.
8:40
SM: When you look at the, I will not use the term boomer again-
8:44
TH: You can use it, I just-
8:44
SM: But when you look at the use of the boomers or the youth of the (19)60s, what were their strengths, and what were their weaknesses?
9:02
TH: It is sort of, it is hard to sort it out for everybody because you had a great variety. But I think that the strength that I would recall is the capacity to idealize the capacity to dream which is essential to regenerate a society. And the weaknesses, I think were the considerable lack of a strong legacy to stand on. The feeling that we had not received much of a heritage from our parents or our society, and that it was necessary to almost begin all over again or carry the load of all these movements and causes when we were younger than we should have been.
10:32
SM: How important were the students in the antiwar movement in terms of ending the war? I preface the statement, because a lot of people state that the war really ended or people started going really against the war when body bags came for the people who lived in the Midwest, you read this in history books. And in some sense that denigrates some of the things that students are doing on university campuses around the country, the protests. I just want your thoughts on how important were student protests in ending the Vietnam War.
11:10
TH: That needs to be studied further. That is really sort of a Rorschach question, in that the answers depend largely on what you felt, but I do not think it has been studied. The idea that people only started to care when the body bags came home has some truth to it but it is obviously you know, oversimplified. I think for instance, when students started resisting the draft, that certainly made the implementation of the war more problematic. When students started to rock campuses, that reverberated among administrators and trustees who were usually in the local or regional power structures of the political parties and the business class. And that anti-draft sentiment and anti-war sentiment constituted I think a real problem for carrying out the war among people in the establishment who valued the support of the younger generation. I think students also were pivotal in dumping Lyndon Johnson in the sense that they were the dominant troops in the Eugene McCarthy campaign in New Hampshire. So, in all those ways, students played a role as students, I think, but I do not know if I would be able to compare the weight of different factors in how it ended.
13:28
SM: When you think of the (19)60s is there a clear-cut movement that stands out above in other words, or is it a combination?
13:36
TH: I think the (19)60s are remembered as a period of upheaval and questioning and nonconformity, and revolt and then it breaks down according to where you were or what you prefer. A lot of the times, people that disparage the (19)60s leave the civil rights movement out, you notice it becomes the psychedelic experience because you know, that and that was part of it. But the Beatles, but the (19)60s was different movements and yet at the same time, the whole was greater than its parts.
14:24
SM: One of the things that comes out a lot of Boomers feel is this whole issue of trust. We all know that historic events of that period of the Gulf of Tonkin, which as history has shown was really something that shouldn't have caused the beginning of a war number one, and then lies that we are often told to the American public, by political leaders. I want to ask you, to my basic question is, do you feel that the (19)60s have really affected our nation with respect to trust? Trust in leaders?
15:08
TH: Oh, absolutely.
15:11
SM: At every level.
15:07
TH: Oh, absolutely, you have to put it in the context of what came before. Whether it was entirely true or not, people had a lot of satisfaction with Eisenhower, Truman and Roosevelt in terms of, you know, confidence in leaders and feeling that they were getting the whole story. And that is obviously not true. It is obviously a historical exaggeration. But it was the experience of people like my father who believed that the government would tell the truth with respect to issues where young Americans were going to be put in harm’s way. And what came between me and my father and so many people and their families was the inability of the elders to embrace the idea that the government was lying. It took a while. I mean, by the end of the decade, there was a consensus that the government lies but the turning points throughout the (19)60s usually had to do with parents refusing to believe that their children was right, children were right, and the government was lying and was wrong.
15:23
SM: Do you think that the children of the (19)60s or the boomers passes this on to their children so that they also do not trust? Or have they seen again? Have they come to their own conclusions based on the leaders of today?
17:04
TH: I think that a majority of Americans would not be surprised to find that in any given situation, the government was lying. And not simply the president, but it is government practice to lie or to distort. That is a big change in skepticism. Whether it is greater among children of (19)60s people, I do not know.
17:34
SM: In the area of healing. We all know that the Vietnam Memorial that was built in 1982 was supposed to be a non-political entity. Still going, is not it?
17:46
TH: Yeah. You are alright.
17:47
SM: And it is done a great deal with respect to healing vets. But I would like to ask you the general question again, on the healing of America. Have we healed as a nation since the (19)60s based on the unbelievable divisions that took place in that particular time? Have we healed?
18:10
TH: No, but I think we have healed, we have healed more than perhaps other countries might. It is, it is impressive, given the past divisions, it is made somewhat easier I think, because of the common recognition that Vietnam was at a minimum a mistake and at maximum, a huge lie that manipulated the whole generation, whether one fought in Vietnam or resisted Vietnam, we have the common experience of having been manipulated by the government and deceived. I do not know if it is a part of American pragmatism that leads people to shrug off what happened yesterday and move forward. You know, Bill Clinton had that campaign song, "Yesterday is Gone" and this is a useful part of American pragmatism. It also has a superficial quality to it. And so, I cannot say healing on a deep level has occurred for the nation, where it might have occurred for countless individuals or families. Because in a superficial sense, people try to forget about it. Get on with it as if you can get on with the missing leg or a father who insisted that his son go to Vietnam, where his son was killed can somehow get on with it, you know, by forgetting. So, there is a, there is an awful lot of pain and division beneath the surface of this healing in medical terms, the wound, I wish I had the phraseology, but the wound is still there, and the treatment may have been superficial. But you know, I think you see what I mean. And the failure, the failure to the extent that the failure to deeply heal exists. It means that the Vietnam syndrome perpetuates itself over and over again, and that syndrome began before Vietnam. I might add if we, if we had a deeper memory of our own history, we might not have gone into Vietnam. Vietnam was the Philippines all over again, it was Spain all over again. It was the American Indians all over again, if you think I am exaggerating, the other day as we speak now, this is November, about ten days ago, a US helicopter was shot down in Iraq. And sixteen people at this point have been determined to have been killed and others wounded. And then there was a service on the battlefield for the dead Americans and what I noticed about the service was that the American troops had bugles and they'd put on the hats and other battle garb of their predecessors in the Air Cavalry who had fought against the Indians. They had on Indian Wars outfits and if you notice the helicopter that went down, it was named a Chinook. An Indian name. You have Blackhawk helicopters; you have Apache helicopters. We have internalized the Indian Wars and trying to like to take away the strong medicine of the Indian and conferred on ourselves by naming our helicopters, you know, after the Indians and we do not even think about it. But sometimes it is the things that you do not think about that are the most serious and, and it is this. But we have never really engaged ourselves deeply in what happened in the formation of this country against the Indians. Because apparently, that would be too much for people to handle. But it also means we have a superficial sense of our own history. We have a superficial sense of why other people in the world hate us. And we pass that along from generation to generation and we repeat what we have not learned to avoid, and I think we were doing it in Iraq. We say well, Iraq, vast country of tribes, you know, and the image invoked there is that there is a lot of little gangster clans.
24:14
SM: Right.
24:16
TH: There may be some truth to that, but North America was a vast continent of tribes. And it is just assumed that tribes are backward and thuggish and bad and most of all, you know, have to get out of history's way because of Manifest Destiny. They are anachronistic groups. So, we have been fighting tribes from the very inception of the country, and if you think about that, it gives you a sensitivity to, a different sensitivity I think which was gained in the (19)60s, that people had a newfound admiration for the American Indian. They read the most profoundly altering book I read was "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown.
25:13
SM: Dee Brown.
25:14
TH: Exactly around 1968, (19)69, maybe (19)70 and what was moving about it was not just the way it was written of course, but it was the first book I had ever read on the subject, and I was already twenty-eight years old. And I think it was because there were not any books on the subject. He made it popular and there was a niche for Indian books. Now, if you go to any college bookstore, at least you will find the one hundred books on Indians and you have the Alcatraz uprising, where the Indians took back Alcatraz Island. That was part of the (19)60s. That was a profound experience. You have the formation of the American Indian Movement. In other words, the Indians reclaimed their existence, not only from the outer society but from the amnesia in which it had been buried. That to me is the heart of the (19)60s, is the recovery of all this real history.
26:18
SM: In your book "Reunion" there, submit your review with Bobby Muller. And, yes, Bobby Muller. Could you explain that first time that you went to the Wall, yourself and just your feelings.
26:34
TH: I was very, I was very moved by the wall. I approached it with some trepidation, I had to have armed guards. So, I took Bobby Muller, a wounded Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair and we decided to venture down there, at least that is what I recall. You might have been with me the first or second time, but I always went with Vietnam vet in case some argument erupted. But it is a great story I have seen the documentary on it, and I think it is so unbelievable that a Vietnamese woman would have been the design architect. Not that, not only that she was Vietnamese, but that she was a woman. I forget her name, Maya Lin.
27:24
SM: Maya Lin.
27:24
TH: But that, it is there is a God, the God placed this person on earth for this purpose. It is almost too uncanny to quite believe. And I really do not know her story. I have seen her, and I have been fascinated watching her in interviews, but she mostly talks as an architect and not as an Asian. Anyway, the whole idea of it being a scar on the ground was a genuine, artistic, original artistic inspiration. So different from monuments that are phallic or monuments that are grandiose above the ground that makes the witness seems small, kind of in the shadow of the great man who is memorialized in the statue. That it is a scar, that it is a black scar that is like it is like a wound that does not heal. Like if you have a cut, and it is still infected, it turns black. I do not know if they thought of all these things, or it is my projection, but just the entry into a scar. That is also a grave. Like it is like a grave, it is a hole in the ground. And it is like a grave in that it looks like a gravestone. All of those things are, I think they make it the most inspired monument in the country. It is so, it is an amazing, wonderful place.
29:30
SM: When history books are written about the (19)60s, the boomer generation, and usually the best history books are written 50 years after World War II books are out now. What do you think the lasting legacy would be?
29:48
TH: I do not know because I do not trust the history books. I have been trained that they may be wonderful books. But they were written by people who were not there. And then who bring their own agenda to the table. And I have not seen any books on the (19)60s that go beyond the fragments of the truth. So, I fear for what historians will say. Yeah, and I strongly believe that, that people who were there need to fight for their version of the truth, need to keep their diaries, need to do interviews, need to contribute. This should be a participatory history project. The you know, like in the (19)30s, the government sent out unemployed artists and writers in the WPA, that Works Progress Administration, and they interviewed Southern sharecroppers whose voices never would have been heard. And until recently, there were enterprising historians who developed what they call oral histories of slaves, former slaves, who are all now dead. And a lot of the history is pursued a little too late. So, with what was left of my life, I am trying to encourage what I call a participatory history. The not simply the writing and video documentaries, but the archiving of everyone's experience, because we have the technology to do that. But the will and the funding are not necessarily there for it.
31:55
SM: When you look at your life, your personal life, to me, I am biased and nothing's wrong. It is one of the most admirable lives in America, because it is a life fighting for others, but as yourself look at your life, all those major events, protests, speaking up, you are involved with the Port Huron Statement. Do you feel fulfilled? When you go to the Wall, do you feel that maybe I should have done a little bit more? Or could have done more? Just your thoughts.
32:35
TH: Well, I am a restless person, and I am sure I am besieged by all kinds of demons. What if I had done this, should I have done that. But you only get one life to live, you know, and it is not over. For all I know. There will be another (19)60s before I am done. So, I feel lucky to have been a part of something great. A lot of people have gone through many decades without, you know, much happening. And a lot has happened in the time that I have been blessed to be alive. So, in that sense, I think I am fulfilled, but the frustrations I have and the longings I have are still very raw. And I am not fulfilled. Yeah, no, not International. I am not fulfilled living under this American Empire, and never will be. It is going.
34:17
SM: Oh, it is?
34:17
TH: Yeah.
34:18
SM: As far as personalities, who are the people that you worked with, and that you admired the most during that period of the (19)60s and (19)70s people you looked up to or that were your inspirations?
34:35
TH: Well, Bob Moses in SNCC, had an overwhelming influence not only on myself and, but on many others. For his, his moral commitment and his technique, and I mean technique like a manipulator, I mean, his approach to relationships, to organizing, and he always stands out, even though it is not, it is not appropriate to single out people as being themselves you know, superior to others they may be just luckier than others. So, among movement activists, I would say, Moses, among international figures would say, my friend Jerry Adams in Ireland, who has gone through the whole thing, you know, the youth rebellions of the (19)60s, the armed struggle against the British presence in Northern Ireland's the transformation to the peace process and to political struggle and survived it all. I mean, it is he is just an extraordinary person to have managed this whole life when you think of what it was like in 1968, and what- it is like now? I do not know.
36:26
SM: My last question is, when you look at the youth of that era, I will say the boomer generation again, is there one event that you think had the greatest impact on their lives?
36:48
TH: I would say, without a survey, we do not know there should be a survey, I keep coming back to the need for our generation to speak for itself. I would, I would think that if you are black, you would say civil rights in some sense. Beyond that, you would say Vietnam. And some myself in particular, would say the assassinations were the pivotal events in the (19)60s.
37:24
SM: Where does Kent State fall in this?
37:28
TH: The assassinations as a category that would include Kent State would include Orangeburg would include People's Park would include individuals. But the constant interruption of the natural flow of history by these, these deaths, particularly the deaths of leaders. It made the (19)60s turn out the way it did. And a friend of mine, Jack Newfield put it very well he said, "Now you know, instead of being has been, we were all might have been. We became might have been"
38:51
SM: Testing 123 testing. Okay, here is my first question. And I have written them all out here. Your life has been one continuous adventure where activism is the adjective that I feel best describes your life. Number one, do you agree with this assessment? And number two, do you remember your very first time were created to speak up where courage was expressed by yourself when you were young?
39:22
TH: Well, I have been around so long my life is like an archeological dig. So, activism is one level, but I probably became most engaged as a reader and student and now late in life, that is what I do. Mainly I research, reflect, write, teach, talk. I would not say activism is entirely in the background at all, but it is not. It is not what I do. It is not what I do with my time now. As for the second question, it is hard to answer. But I will put it this way. I think, number one, when you are young, you have a certain adrenaline that gets you through dangerous situations. Just like the soldier in a war. You may also, you know, not have much of an emphasis on death, because it seems so far away when you are twenty. And also, a big factor for me was that I would never use the word courageous about myself. Maybe risk taking, because I saw people who were doing things that scared me to death, you know, that black people, black students in the south standing up to sheriffs, and that sort of thing.
41:25
SM: Could you briefly describe your upbringing? I know it is in your book Reunion and in depth but the people that are going to be reading lists are going to be reading 200 different oral histories, and they will have not read Reunion, they will be encouraged to.
41:38
TH: What is the question?
41:40
SM: Briefly, describe your upbringing. And how did you end up in Michigan? Where dd you live? Were you in any way linked to the students who talked to John Kennedy about the Peace Corps?
41:52
TH: Well, only child grew up in Royal Oak summers in Wisconsin. Father and Mother both from Wisconsin, lower middle class, first in my family to go to university, University of Michigan. My parents got divorced, which was relatively unusual in those days when I was about 10 or 11 years old. And that was quite hard on me. My father worked at Chrysler and my mother was a film librarian in Royal Oak. I did well in high school, I was sports editor and editor of the paper and got into the University of Michigan thinking I would maybe play some tennis and read a lot of books. And I got lured into the Michigan daily, which really kind of focused my life and gave me a mission and a purpose that you know, I had not had until getting to the university, and I have stayed with that. Also, you know, it was an accident of the times I do not know what I would have been like, if I was ten years older. But in 1957, when I graduated high school, Jack Kerouac was publishing On the Road, and the Beat Generation had already arisen in San Francisco. The Little Rock school integration crisis, with Eisenhower sending the troops there, all happened my senior year in high school, it must have influenced me, the climate around me, although I did not have much sense of it at the moment. But then when, you know, the students started demonstrating in the south when I was a senior at university, and I went down to see what they were willing to do about their lives and their futures. I was very moved by that. I think probably the election of Kennedy in (19)60 was also important for all of us and if you will be legitimizing in the idea that young people can take action that makes a difference.
44:27
SM: For one thing, your parents in this, over your entire career as an activist, what did your parents think of you? As you became not only one of the leaders of SDS, but as you grew older and were involved in so many things. How did your mom and dad respond to it?
44:47
TH: My parents were not happy about it all and I was not alone in this family tension. My father was a Marine who was based in San Diego, he did not go into the world wars, Second World War, he was a Republican. He came from the generation that believes that the government does no wrong and tells no lies. And he was completely unable at first to understand or respect anything that I was doing. Like I think he believed that you know that it was about him and that he was he considered himself a failure, because he had not raised a son who went higher up the pecking order. He came to change his mind but was really not till about 1970 and we enjoyed a fairly close relationship until he died in 82. And my mom was one of those Irish Catholic women who thinks the neighbors are always fine. And who knows, maybe they are but I mean she was made extremely paranoid and ashamed by the attention I was getting. And the labels that were thrown at me. The difference between them is that my father basically abandoned me for a period of about sixteen years, and he had another family and did not tell the daughter he raised that she even had a brother.
46:54
SM: Wow.
46:55
TH: My mom stuck with me, but you know, she was always acting, you know, profoundly disturbed. And she could not understand she could not follow what was going on, she kept calling Indochina, Indonesia.
47:18
SM: Wow. Yeah. What a generation gap.
47:22
TH: Typical suburban life. [Laughs]
47:24
SM: The generation gap, obviously, was your experience was the experience of so many, even in my family. But I want to get back to this business about the generation gap when the current senator of Virginia, Jim Webb, back in 1980, I believe in a symposium with Bobby Muller and Phil Caputo, was asked the question about the generation gap. He said, the generation gap to him was more within the generation as opposed to between generations. And his commentary was saying that we all get caught up in this idea that the young people in the (19)60s, you know, listen to John Kennedy "ask not what your country can do for us, but you can do for your country", yet he felt that service was serving your country, and when, when you were called to go to war, so that he would never label the (19)60s generation or the boomer generation, as a generation geared towards service. And he was very critical. And he says the divisions of a generation gap to him was between those who served and those who did not. Your thoughts on that?
48:40
TH: Well, you know, he is a, he is a rather bombastic fellow, Jim Webb erupts a lot. And he is a good writer, he is a good Irish historian, a good military historian. And I have no doubt that he was traumatized by his service in the military and is still dealing with it. And I was also traumatized without having been in the military because it is traumatic to oppose your country's war. It is traumatic to refuse to be drafted into a war that you do not believe in. Traumatic to be beaten up and to be put in jail. It is traumatic to lose your parents' support, and so on, but we could go on and on listing our comparative traumas. The fact is that the whole generation including those who went to Vietnam, and those to opposed it were deceived, and suffered a common deception by lying politicians in the Oval Office, Republican and Democrat, and spineless politicians who let it go on far too long until millions of people died, including 58,000 Americans. Now, on this specific point, you know, I think it is true that the historical recognition of the (19)60s will always be about a period of progressive social change, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement, the youth culture, and so on. And what is left out of that story is the counter movement on the right. And that would be the Young Americans for Freedom. And those who followed the National Review and, you know, became the core of the Republican Party during the Goldwater movement. And I have always felt that they nurse a grudge about the (19)60s, because they really did not get recognition. And that has left them with a resentment and a hostility, which still plays out, you know, you can still hear them complaining about Clinton or permissiveness or, you know, one thing or another. That goes back to the lack of recognition, I think there was a movement and a counter movement. I am not sure that it was those who went to Vietnam versus those who did not. You know, I am not sure that anybody holds that view except Jim Webb and a few others, they are entitled to it, it was certainly a divide within our age cohort our generation. But the divide was really between SDS and Young Americans for Freedom, I think. Because if you, if you put it in Webb's terms, he continues the, the omission, because if you put his way, his framework, there is no room for Vietnam veterans against the war. There is no room for a black resistance inside the military. There is no room for those who went to serve but wound up in Briggs. There is no room for those who even shot at their officers. So, there were certainly differences within the military, within those who went to serve, that reflected the differences I am talking about in the larger society.
53:12
SM: I know that these were comments he made in (19)80 - (19)81 one at a symposium. And maybe he has changed his feelings. But another person was Colonel Summers, Harry Summers, who passed away several years back, I think it was about 10 years ago. And he came to our campus, and he said, you know, what is amazing about how the (19)60s in Vietnam is taught is the military is never presented by history teachers. And so, he said, he made an effort before he passed away, to make sure that the military perspective of the Vietnam War was taught. So that might be similar to what Jim Webb might have been saying. Any comments on Colonel Summers?
53:56
TH: So, it is another take on the same problem of perception from where you stand. I mean, obviously, for a long time, they had the megaphone at the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, the Armed Services Committee, in both houses, the editors of all the newspapers who supported the war in Vietnam, their voice was heard. Then, when things went badly, and we lost the war, a whole new movement started. People like Lewis Sorely come to mind and others who are in denial and who say we did not lose the war. It was somehow lost politically at home. And so, the war is still being played out as a kind of psychodrama. And an historical debate.
55:03
SM: Yeah, of course, you mentioned very-
55:04
TH: That is true also of the American Civil War, which many in the south refused to call the Civil War. I mean, I did not realize that until I spent some time living in the south with these, these arguments go on, especially among those who have a difficult time coping with the fact that, you know, that they did not win so they, they continue to go on and on about the causes as if they have just been misunderstood for fifty years. I would like to believe we can get beyond that. But I do not actually think we will, given the fact that it is 150 years since the Civil War, and is still debated annually in elections, including the most recent one.
56:01
SM: Yeah, well, I interviewed Jeff Wheeler III and of course, he is one of the, he graduated from West Point, he was one of the men that talked about long grey lines in the book. And he mentioned it was a great interview, and he talked about Ronald Reagan's speech at the Vietnam Memorial in 1984. And it was a great speech, because that was where he mentioned, the noble cause that you bring up in your book, that it was a noble cause. But I found it very interesting, and he did not reiterate any further. But President Reagan could have come in 1982 when the wall opened, but he said he was advised not to, because for political reasons, but was okay in 1984. So, I thought that that is interesting.
56:48
TH: It was okay. To call the war a noble cause. I mean, he never specified what exactly he meant. To die in battle is a tragedy in the first place, a human tragedy. And a lot of people, you know, define tragedy as itself noble. There is a noble quality to it. But I think Reagan meant that to perpetuate the idea that the Vietnam War in itself was right. It was the right thing to do, it was the right policy. And so, he was re-raising the divide. As for 1982, I do not remember the detail, but it does seem to me that many, many Republicans, including some veterans’ groups, and perhaps Reagan was among them, did not like the memorial. Because the Vietnam Memorial reflects exactly this theme of tragedy. It does not reflect a theme of victory. It does not say that it was ignoble, not at all. That does not, it does not use terminology like noble, because is that? I think the designer, who herself is Vietnamese was grappling with the magnitude of the human loss. Millions of people in a cause that was never clear and never, never winnable to begin with.
58:55
SM: You were in the south in the early (19)60s, very early (19)60s. And you worked with SNCC and SNCC had this participatory democracy in everything that they did. And of course, your work is very admirable down there. I am not going to ask you the first one because I think you have already responded about the courage to go south so young, and the dangers but I want to know if your Irish heritage and understanding the history of the Irish, even as a young person and how they were treated in America and how they were treated even between England and Ireland had anything to do with your sensitivity towards bad treatment toward African Americans and women and people who were minorities and people who are economically deprived. Did your heritage early on have anything to do with some of your future actions?
59:56
TH: I pondered that, and I have written a whole book about it.
59:59
SM: Yeah, I read that book too.
1:00:00
TH: Do not look to the short answer is maybe on an unconscious level, but at the time and we are talking about the narrow window of 1960 to (19)63. I was oblivious to any Irish heritage even when the subject came up. So, I was a finished product of the assimilation process. That was (19)60 was the year that John Kennedy went to the Baptists and told them that he could be president without bowing to the Pope and narrowly squeaked through. And it was a very important watershed in the history of the American Irish. But I viewed the Kennedy election as young versus old. I did not I did not relate to the Irish dimension so sealed off was I from the past. Now, over the course of the (19)60s it became clear to me by the end of the decade, when I was reevaluating my identity, who I was it appeared to me that one way to view the (19)60s was as, as an Irish Civil War. Because, you know, on my side would be priests, like the Berrigans. On the military side would be priests like father, Cardinal Spellman, Father Coglin, whose church I was raised in, Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy on my side. And the most of the most of the FBI agents who tells me were on the other side, most of the cops in Chicago were Irish, and so on, it became much more apparent to me, but this is because assimilation was breaking down and wearing off and I was more open to the question of where I came from, and where did these instincts of mine you know, first emerge in my past. I am named Thomas Emmet Hayden and I did not know who Thomas Emmet was. And my mom and dad, they did not know who Thomas Emmet was, they just thought it was a good name. And somebody else in my family had been named Thomas Emmet Hayden the first, second, third and much most of your readers and listeners have no idea who Thomas Emmet was but he was a survivor of the brutal suppression of the Irish national uprising. In 1798. His brother was beheaded. Thomas Emmet came to New York is an Irish refugee. It was only possible because of Thomas Jefferson policies and Thomas Emmet then became the leader of the Irish American immigrant community in New York City. Knowing that story, of course, obviously makes you more empathetic towards today's Catholic immigrants from Central America, Mexico-
1:01:21
SM: Right.
1:01:56
TH: And immigrants in general and blacks who were forced migrants through slavery and forced immigration inside the United States, but that all came to me later. The (19)60s made me Irish.
1:03:58
SM: Now it is interesting. That was also the time when Bernadette Devlin, we all saw her on the news.
1:04:03
TH: I knew a little about her, I did not meet her on her visit here, I met her later in Northern Ireland, but not, not here in the States.
1:04:14
SM: Right, yeah. And then, of course, Thomas Merton was a very close friend.
1:04:21
TH: Yes, and I did not know Thomas Merton. I read his book from a theological standpoint.
1:04:33
SM: In your in your in your feelings. Now I know we are going to get a question. Do you do not like the term the boomer generation? That is my next question after this one.
1:04:41
TH: I never heard anyone call themselves a boomer ever.
1:04:46
SM: Let us go right to that question and then I will come to the other question, do you like to term Boomer and I think you gave a great description in your book that I had never thought of. Of course, boomers are those born between (19)46 and (19)64 and in fact, do you like even the other terms, the Greatest Generation, Generation X, Millennials, do you like these kinds of-
1:05:10
TH: I do not line any of those terms, but I have come to realize that labeling is somehow a cognitive requirement.
1:05:20
SM: Right.
1:05:21
TH: But the problem with boomers, first of all, you have to ask yourself, what does the labeling and if nobody in my generation ever walked around saying I am a boomer, you have to wonder what the purpose of the labeling cannot be authentic. It has to be externally imposed. And it has two connotations that are not helpful. One, boom connotes violence.
1:05:53
SM: Yes.
1:05:54
TH: And two, Boomer connotes democratic statistics, so we were reduced to whether you were born in a particular year. And both are very objectionable.
1:06:10
SM: Well, I have heard that you know, I interviewed Richie Havens and in fact I was just sending a letter to Father Hesburgh. I am thinking I am going to have an interview with Father Hesburgh sometime in the next month, and Richie said something that I thought was unbelievable in his interview with me and Richie said that, you know, I am born in 1941. But I am a boomer and Todd Gatlin said to me, he actually said this to me, if you mentioned the word Boomer one more time in this interview, I am going to end the interview. It is because of the fact-
1:06:43
TH: Temperamental.
1:06:44
SM: Yeah, they do not like it, they and many do not like it, every single political entity does not like it and for a lot of reasons because it is about spirit. And Richie said, I do not mind being identified with the boomers based on a certain timeframe. But I am more boomer than anybody, because I believe in the spirit of the (19)60s, and that is who I am.
1:07:11
TH: So?
1:07:12
SM: So that is what Richie feels. So, you just do not like that term.
1:07:18
TH: I never heard it used. It is a label.
1:07:25
SM: Higher education is responsible for this because they have to have labels on everything.
1:07:31
TH: No, I do not think so. Now, it is the human desire to stereotype and especially stereotypes that carry a coded hidden meaning they are not overt stereotype, like calling an Irish person a "spick." But a boomer is inherently derogatory, and dismissive. It is not neutral. It is an external label applied to people. Always applied by people who were not there.
1:08:13
SM: What would be a better term? If we were to? The people born prior to World War II, during the war, and say, ten to fifteen years after who really experienced the (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s. Was there a term that you can?
1:08:30
TH: I do not know why we need terms, but that seems to be the correct term would be the, the (19)60s social movement generation, (19)60s social movements, (19)60s protest generation, any of those labels would be more fair, if you say the (19)60s generation then you have a problem with the right because they were excluded.
1:08:58
SM: Right? Yes.
1:08:59
TH: So, I do not say that (19)60s generation, very much at all anymore. But the (19)60s movement is what we called ourselves. Actually, that is not even true. We call ourselves The Movement. Because nobody was going around. nobody in their right mind was going around saying: hey, we are the (19)60s generation never heard anybody say that. That was later.
1:09:26
SM: When you talk about-
1:09:28
TH: I am in SDS or I am in SNCC or I am in a commune or you know, I if you go back and you read the papers of Jack Kerouac he cannot stand the label Beat Generation. He wrote beat as part of you know, his writing or beatific or beat down he used the word but it was New York Times or Time magazine that labeled them the Beat Generation after their words became famous or well known.
1:10:14
SM: You bring up in one of several sections of your new book. And you have also talked about in some of your own books, too, but the critics of the (19)60s are that group of people. But David, I have some names here of people that well, you mentioned David Horowitz, of course Newt Gingrich in (19)94, his commentaries. Currently, Mike Huckabee, on this TV show George Will, throughout the years on his articles, and in his books, Harvey Mansfield, who I well know, Glenn Beck, who seems to try to be trying to become a cultural phenomenon right now. And even John McCain, during the campaign, made some commentary toward Hillary Clinton about her links to the (19)60s. What was it? I have a two-part question. What was it that made the young people and older people who inspired the young like Dave Dellinger, you know, Dalton Lin, people like that, that made them so special that the (19)50s and (19)60s and then at the same time why are people who did so much movement-wise, so reviled today by their opponents on the right?
1:11:39
TH: Two or three reasons, one, radicals and reformers won the battles of the (19)60s and so the first reason for continued resentment, even hatred, is the grievance of having lost. I am talking about the people who lived rather well, in the comforts of the white segregationist south talking about the generals in Vietnam. I am talking about the people that went to work for industry and found themselves staring at 20 million people during Earth Day. Those men who had to feel the, you know, the reversal of the relationship with the women individually and collectively as women gained power, women gained voice. It is easy to see what the argument is. Because when it is when all is said and done and when movements come and go and when society has been changed, I would say for the better, the people on the other side, never stop trying to take it all back through counter movements. And, you know, that, that gave a lot of the energy to the anti-Obama movement certainly animates McCain, who was in Vietnam, Palin who was not even there, but you know, you started to see in Palin it is quite interesting, she is now trying to co-opt the label of feminist because she is feisty. And she blames the feminist movement for having twisted and distorted the label.
1:14:05
SM: Right.
1:14:06
TH: That is what she said, literally. Beck you know, I do not believe in a million years that Beck was unaware that he was trying to appropriate the symbol of the civil rights movement by standing at the Lincoln Memorial, and carrying on what I think is a thinly disguised resentment of Martin Luther King. I could go on but
1:14:38
SM: Do you also believe-
1:14:41
TH: It'll never end. Remember, in the 1960s somebody said, "a new movement is beginning" and I said, I think so too, why do you think so he says, the last Civil War vet just died.
1:14:54
SM: Hmm. Oh my gosh.
1:15:00
TH: Until we are all dead of natural causes, I think.
SM: Yeah Tom, I think-
TH: Even Obama, he was not there, he is only forty-nine years old. He spent the whole campaign talking about the (19)60s, going to the Selma bridge to prove a civil rights credentials, reminding people he was only five years old. You know, when there was when there were relevant bombings, and getting accused of palling around was all these (19)60s people that are that are like twenty-five years older than him, even his minister, his minister is only understandable as a figure out of black liberation theology. Well, the black liberation theology school is an angry school of prophecy and coming out of the (19)60s in the black community, they built big church congregations. There's nothing unusual for Obama and many other people, far less political to be members of that church in Chicago, but the, the right could not get over it is thinking that, you know, he was the same as his minister, when he was a generation, after and he finally had to break away from his own church and from his own minister, in order to declare his independence.
1:16:29
SM: I think-
1:16:31
TH: It would be like if Kennedy in 1960, quit the Catholic Church and became a Baptist, in order to prove to the Baptists that he was legitimate. I am laughing about it, but it was very painful for people, horribly painful. And I have no doubt that this will go on until we are all dead.
1:16:49
SM: I think if there is one other quality here, too, and your thoughts on this, then jealousy. I have always been taught by my parents and from others that sometimes people who admire what others have done, who dislike people who have done things, oftentimes think, jeez, I wish I could have done that, or I had the freedom to do that because I did not have the freedom to do that, or the initiative or drive, you know that I am going to attack them. You think that there is a jealousy conflict here within the other side, too, you already talked about the Young Americans for Freedom.
1:17:22
TH: I do not think it can be psychoanalyzed that way, but certainly, there is a grievance, as I have said, it is a loser grievance number one, and I know even in saying that I will antagonize people further but let us be frank about it. It has all the characteristics of know, the grievance of the losing side and, and a resentment that becomes fuel and motivation to fight back. To recover ground after you know you have lost. Some in the south never ended the Civil War, some say it still is not over, they do not even call it the Civil War. So that is a little different than what you are describing, I think. I do not think they want to be like us at all, I think that they think they are better than us and they are, they have, you know, a lot of capacity to blame everybody starting with the media for they are not being understood. And it is strange, because even when they have the White House and majority in the Supreme Court, they still have the mentality of Young Americans for Freedom fifty years ago, who felt that they were they were the real Americans, and they were being bypassed by the emergence of the student movement, and kind of written out of the history of the (19)60s and I am not exaggerating, I mean, these people go back that far. Karl Rove was a president of Young Republicans, I believe, in (19)68 - (19)70, somewhere in that era, and was ranting about SDS and myself, even in those days and was they are very involved with Young Americans for Freedom, which became the Goldwater movement, which became the modern republican party so their grievance goes back it is nothing seems to soothes it and I expect it to go on until you know, we all are pulled into our graves.
1:17:26
SM: Here is a couple of quotes.
1:19:57
TH: By the way, I do not spend much time on this subject.
1:20:01
SM: I know you are involved in a lot of other things; you have got your book.
1:20:05
TH: I live my life, but it is the nature of this interview its locking me into a discussion of the (19)60s and it is not new terrain for me. But I just want to remind you, I do not spend much of my time write about the past, I am interested in how the (19)60s influences the perceptions of people in the present.
1:20:35
SM: There is two quotes-
1:20:36
TH: Its long lasting the (19)60s, continues to be.
1:20:42
SM: Two quotes here, I want to put it in the record from your book, The Long (19)60s and that is, there is so many of them, but "The paradox is that what is won in real history can be lost in later telling." And the second one is, "It is no accident that the fight over memory began with the challenge to the dominant curriculum in the schools and colleges in the (19)60s and continued as a so-called culture wars up to the present more than forty years later." And being a college administrator for my whole life; you are right on there.
1:21:17
TH: Yeah, I know I think that is true. Yep.
1:21:20
SM: And I think one thing you talk about here, you already mentioned about the counter movement. And you so we do not talk about that again. But you talk also about the complacency of former radicals and reformers now in their twilight period. Have you been disappointed in some of the other activists who, as they have aged, have just gone on to make money? Is that what you are saying?
1:21:44
TH: I think I overgeneralized there. I do not mean complacency in the sense of, you know, consciously changing their beliefs or selling out or something like that. I mean, there is an inevitability to complacency as you become older, and you have families and, and other obligations and your, your, your time becomes your time for new ideas or new ventures becomes limited. For example, no one in their right mind would want their kid to go to a bad school. Most people I am talking about now had kids, for example. And you see, in this generation, just as saw in the past, and we will see in the future, that people can if they can afford it, to put their kid into a private school, because they think and they may be right that with spending money, they can get little educational advantage for their kid, and I have not met any parents that would not do everything for that purpose. So that, you know, they find themselves as you know, in effect, making a choice to abandon public schools, as far as their own children are concerned. And in order to offset that bill, if they are liberals, they will support taxes for schools, for other people. It is similar with public hospitals, if they can help it, they are not going to give it to the public hospital. It is similar with in any other ways, our society is already stratified or segregated. We find ourselves you know, caught up in the system that once we would have, you know, try to avoid at any cost see what I mean?
1:24:20
SM: The convention in Chicago in 1968 is very historic and a lot of my questions are geared toward when young, the boomer generation or the I do not like the term either, so when they were young, but the Chicago convention in 1968, what did those days in Chicago say about America, in your view? And secondly, the trial itself. What did the trial say about the American justice system?
1:24:49
TH: Here is another example of perception versus historical realities, the right will have a grievance forever and somehow, this motley group of revolutionaries were put on trial, and one and became famous as a result. You know, we are, we are the ones that got away and I am not kidding these people, and I have met with them have civil relationships and they think to this day that we are guilty, and they have a deep grudge about our, our having gotten off the charges and they will not stop. And on the other hand, filmmakers like Spielberg and countless others, who were teenagers then, still tell the story they want to tell the story. They think it is the perfect showcase drama of our generation and I have seen four or five versions on stage and on television and film, and each of them is different in its own way and I suspect that the transcripts of the Chicago trial will be played theatrically again and again, decade after decade. Why? God knows. Maybe it was an understandable morality play with all the forces of freedom versus law and order dramatized and individuals, kind of a historian or journalists or screenwriter’s dream. Others will say, no, it is genuinely captured. The time and I do not go farther than that, I will just say that it is going to be, the trial is going to be replayed over and over for decades. And what it was actually about is hard to discern from the drama.
1:27:14
SM: Could you comment on what this is something that not too many people talk about. I have not gotten a whole lot of feedback on this question from some of the people I have interviewed, I do not ask everybody this question. But please comment on what activists in the movement in all the movements of that period, had to go through as a price for their beliefs. We hear the horror stories and COINTELPRO, the infiltration within groups where spies came in. Do you have any anecdotes or stories of efforts to destroy life simply for speaking up? You probably had many, but-
1:27:55
TH: The truth is we do not know enough. We do not know what happened in a lot of incidents that occurred overseas in Vietnam. We do not know what happened with those young people that were killed in Mexico City at about the same time as the Chicago demonstration in (19)68. In many cities, and in many countries, records have been declassified, disclosed. And some of them even in this country, are still kept secret. So, it is a big subject, and I am not quite sure. From what point of view, you think the question should be answered.
1:28:46
SM: But I am interested in the effort to destroy the lives after, you know, they can infiltrate a group like SDS but the ongoing desire to destroy lives and future careers, just because you spoke up.
1:29:06
TH: I do not know if anybody goes around, consciously wanting to destroy somebody's life. There is all kinds of filters and defenses, you know that you might think, instead that we brought it on ourselves if you behave differently, it would not be necessary to apply the screws as tightly and so on. So, I think that there are many distinctions to be made here and we do not have infinite time to make them but one of the most important is between targeted individuals or groups like the, the shooting of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party Chicago chapter, December 1969. There are a number of cases like that where somebody was shot and killed or wounded or, or put away for no understandable reason and so on, then there is you know, the kind of collateral damage, which is usually excused as you know, shit happens, you know, it is accidental sorry. But it really never is. I am thinking of Kent State in Jackson State. There it is hard; it is hard to deny that the shooting by the guards’ troopers was not deliberate. And they had live ammunition. But you see who is killed and wounded. These were individuals chosen by faith. They were, they were random. Nearly all of them, for example, were shot in the back. Some of them were going to meet their boyfriend and were killed are, if you look at the people, person who was killed in People's Park in Berkeley accused of I do not know being a rioter. But in actuality he is sitting on a rooftop, and he got hit with live ammunition and fell off the roof and the guy sitting next to him, who I know, was blinded. And they were just sitting there or in Newark, twenty-six people were killed. And I did a case-by-case study of how they died and shot for the way they looked or shot because they were carrying a six back of beer out of a store. Shot because they are looking out a window. Shot because you are crossing the street just most of the people who were shot and killed by police in the urban disorders or riots or rebellions, whatever you may want to call them. It had to be in the hundreds and hundreds of people were shot at random. And so that is another category.
1:33:21
SM: Right. Right.
1:33:24
TH: And then the final category that I would include for your examination is well, I have two more. One is people who were singled out to have their, you know, careers destroyed. For no good human reason. What is his name? The disabled Ron Covid? No, you are going to include him no, the fellow in Georgia who was in the United States Senate.
1:34:11
SM: Max Cleland.
1:34:11
TH: Max. Good man. Came back from a war with limbs missing and taken out, not by Vietcong bullets but by Republican hate mail arguing that he was not a patriot. That is what I mean by-
1:34:44
SM: Right.
1:34:45
TH: Conscious attempts to destroy somebody's reputation. And then I think the final thing is in any conflict, like the (19)60s There are casualties, where it is very difficult to define a line of causality. You know, I am just talking about all the people whose lives were lessened or wasted or diminished. Because burnout, or because of incarceration, or because of mental illness that they would not have suffered, if it were not for traumas, they went through people who endure serious sacrifices and losses, who will never be compensated or recognized, but they were all part of the, you know, the great collision that occurred. Certainly, like this all the time, you know, because I am, you know, an open public figure, and people like me do not like me, they email me all the time I run into somebody every day with a story. So, I think I get, I do not get all of it, nobody can, but I get a lot of it.
1:36:32
SM: I do not think a book has ever been written about the number of college presidents who lost their jobs because of the student protests and actually the number of college presidents and administrators who actually died of heart attack and all other kinds of things, during this.
1:36:45
TH: Oh yeah, I would love to know, know the numbers at least.
1:36:49
SM: How did you survive financially in the (19)60s and (19)70s?
1:36:53
TH: I do not know! Let us just say the standard of living was very cheap. And the lesson learned was the best way to prevent social protest, or containment is to through unemployment and inflation of college fees and housing and rents and the rest of it. I mean, University of Michigan was one hundred bucks as semesters I recall.
1:37:26
SM: You know, I am a Buckeye.
1:37:27
TH: It was probably one hundred bucks at Ohio State. Rent was, I do not know, one hundred bucks a month if you had six or eight roommates. Food was cheap and plentiful, at least as I recall. So, this first question that comes to a lot of people's minds, either because they themselves, you know, we are seeking affluence as a primary goal in life. Or they look through the filter of today's world and they just cannot imagine where the money came from. No, it came from all over the place from parents from odd jobs from part time jobs, but basically there was enough money to pay for everything if you believed in living with dignity.
1:38:43
SM: Hold on one second. Tom. One of the things that by the way, I did meet you and Jane Fonda at Kent State. I think when you came to West Chester, I was there when you came there at the fourth remembrance.
1:39:04
TH: It was (19)74 but I would be, I could be wrong.
1:39:06
SM: Yeah, it was (19)74. Julian Bond was there, and Dean Kahler obviously, that is when he was a lot younger.
1:39:12
TH: I have seen Dean since.
1:39:11
SM: And Holly Near performed.
1:39:13
TH: Yeah, I see her.
1:39:17
SM: Yeah, but it was great. We were in that room with you and Jane, you went into a you were there, and you went into a room and that was a time, and you were there for about an hour, hour and a half just talking with us. And it was fantastic. The room was packed. You had been married to some very powerful females. Some very powerful female activists in Casey Hayden and Jane Fonda. What made them special in your eyes and how will history treat them legacy wise?
1:39:54
TH: You know, they are almost opposites because Casey who I am in reasonably close touch with is living in Arizona. And she is like an invisible heroine of the (19)60s protest generation. People read her writings, they tell stories about her, they ask about her. You know, in her own right, she claimed to have, you know, started the women's liberation movement, not that anybody actually does any of these things. But her writings with Mary King, circulating around the South electric effect going around the country when women were forming small consciousness, raising groups, and so on. So, she is kind of adored. And at the same time, invisible in most histories, not all. Whereas Jane is visible, if she scratches her ear, you know. She gets credit and blame for things that she had nothing to do with. She is one of the most well-known people in the world and cannot live a private life, does not live a private life. So, it is not that we can choose these things, but you know, start to measure how, I mean, evaluate how either of them would be remembered or evaluate or where they would fit into things depends on who tells the story. And I think a lot of (19)60s people are telling their own stories now in this kind of alternative narrative that has developed, triggered by our old friend Howard Zinn's writings, but everybody's writing their memoirs and blogging, and I was at a SNCC reunion this year was fiftieth reunion.
1:42:29
SM: Yeah, I wanted to go to that.
1:42:31
TH: There were a thousand people there and they were fit and healthy and ready to go.
1:42:36
SM: Wow.
1:42:37
TH: Interesting.
1:42:38
SM: Yeah, Julian was a master of ceremonies, was not he? Or something like that?
1:42:41
TH: For one of them, uh huh.
SM: 1:42:45
What is interesting about is I saw Phil Donahue interview Jane Fonda well, you have probably seen this too, when she came back from Europe. And she was on the Donahue show, you can see it on YouTube, and I think it is the best thing that people that do not like Jane should watch this. Because I think you understand her more because she really felt that she was away from what was happening in the world. And she came back to the United States. And I think what is great about it is, it was the time that the women's movement was becoming strong. And that she did not want to always be looked upon as some pretty woman she wanted to be. She had a mind too. And I wish more people would understand that about her. My gosh.
1:43:34
TH: Well, the intersection of the personal and historical you know, the moment that you come of age is extremely important. I will give you one story and then we can move on but in the early to mid (19)60s, when she was the budding actress, daughter of Henry Fonda living in Los Angeles. The Civil Rights Movement was breaking out in the south Netcat offices around the country that were mainly fundraising, and Jane was inspired by the early movement, and she went down to the SNCC office knocked the door nobody was there, of course, and she left a letter in an envelope under the door, volunteering to join that cause. She never heard back. So, you can imagine what might have happened if somebody had opened the letter and seeing the name and made a phone call and set up an appointment. Organizers beware! Do not lose emails! Keep all the cards that you collect. One of the things I have learned over fifty years is how hard it is, for sociological reasons, organizational sociological reasons for people to actually join groups, because the tendency once a group is viable, and it is humming along, for it to be content with its size and its dynamic, and it becomes a little fluffy on the inside and newcomers are not. It is not so easy for newcomers to break the circle. Hold on a second. Yeah. Hello. Okay. Yeah.
1:46:11
SM: Okay. I actually am going to be interviewing Casey. And then sometime in the next hopefully month-
1:46:20
TH: Good for you.
1:46:21
SM: And, of course, I had tried to get hold of Jane a long time ago, but I know he is not doing interviews on this. But I know that Jerry Lemke just written a book on her I do not know if you have seen it.
1:46:32
TH: I have.
1:46:32
SM: Yeah. And actually, she was up at Harvard. And she called Jerry to talk to him about some of the commentaries in the book. And I interviewed Jerry up at Harvard, about a month ago.
1:46:46
TH: I encouraged her to talk to him. It is pretty good, I think it is a little sensationalistic, and she does not need it. But the evidence he compiled about the mythology of splitting, I thought was one of the more important historical discoveries or confirmations, about the (19)60s that I have ever seen. Because that had everybody completely brainwashed. And I still run into it, but the value of doing very hard, hard core systemic research. I can do without the psycho analytic construction of her as a feminist movie star, but I liked the research, and I liked the data.
1:47:45
SM: No, I think I read her book. And I think more people need to understand her more in the area of why she became who she became. And she is not just an entertainer and I hope more people try to understand her better as time goes on.
1:48:06
TH: Well, she has the means to communicate. There is no question about that.
1:48:09
SM: Right? Around the time of Kent State, African American students and white students were splitting this is around 1970 one concentrating on racism and black power and the other white students on the Vietnam War. What are your thoughts on the split? Did it hurt the civil rights movement or especially, or just, you know, the antiwar movement because you know, Kent State was really a barometer normal expected that to happen there? But at Ohio State and other universities, there was a big strong split going on between those two groups.
1:48:48
TH: It began in the mid (19)60s, after the perceived failure of the Mississippi Freedom Summer. And this was, as the years go by, I have to look on it more as a sociologist and historian, like since it happened, and it happened everywhere. It happened locally. There is a sense in which it was inevitable. Maybe inevitable in the Shakespearean way but inevitable. There is no going back or undoing it or reversing it. A lot of people think this was a mistake, that was a mistake, but what has done is done and you know, I think what to generalize. White America's power structure was not ready, or willing to mobilize for desegregation and equal opportunity rapidly enough. And to make matters worse, they invaded Vietnam and escalated a war that they promised they would not enter into in the 1964 election, but by (19)65, they were in so to me, those things kind of guaranteed that, that black and white would be driven down different paths, because there was a reinforcement of the stratification, you know, whites were just generally always going to be better off. And in, you know, without any particular qualification to lead movement of black people, which, which it was in the early (19)60s, there could be co-equal leadership of a struggle that became apparent to all. And I know, there been a long history of white people trying to lead other people's causes.
1:51:28
SM: Right.
1:51:29
TH: God bless them. But, but at a certain point, it just became completely unworkable. I headed up a project in Newark, that was mainly white community organizers in a black community. We did not know what we were getting into, we thought that there were there was there were the prospects for an interracial organizing project in Newark, but the white, black disparity and antagonism was so great, that was impossible. But we did very well from (19)64, (19)65, (19)66. But you know, you can just feel it coming, that by the time Black Power emerged. It did not, it just made less and less sense for us to be heading up an organization composed of black people in the ghetto. I am not saying it was immoral. Just since society was heading into deeper and deeper division, as the Kerner Report pointed out. We were like relics of the early optimism of the (19)60s, at a time when that optimism, you know, had a declining basis.
1:52:59
SM: It is interesting when I read James Mitchner's book Kent State and I know the students that can state that we are like Allen and others, they, they do not like they hate the book. But there is one, there is one area that is truthful in the book and that is that what I talked about here that he made a commentary about African American students were not supposed to be seen on the quad or anyplace and there was one student that was out there in the summer, and one of the other African American students took him away. And I thought it is ironic. You look at the pictures, you do not see African American students yet the president of student government at Kent State at that time was African American.
1:53:41
TH: Oh no there was a very active Black Student Union or BSA, BSU.
1:53:46
SM: Right.
1:53:47
TH: Very active, sort of marginalized in history. But if you look at the footage of the documentary that is out about can state it completes the story is quite fast. And the same with Colombia. There is a very strong Black Student Union, if you look at the Columbia footage, you suddenly get a rebalancing of the image of the reality of what was going on.
1:54:17
SM: James said.
1:54:18
TH: I see that as a reflection of what they call institutional racism that is, in every way we live in a stratified world and it also includes our own brains wiring our consciousness, and it takes a very dedicated and trained person to be mindful of this at all times. For example, very few people I know practice affirmative action in life. In other words, I do not go to any, you know, party in the west side of LA and it is always all white people. You go to a dinner; it is all white people. I have been to dinners, birthday parties, for people who have been through all these movements, all white people. But you could say I am not having a party unless it is, it is mixed. And you know, make a list of friends, if you do not have enough friends of all backgrounds, you should learn to make those friends. It is not so difficult. As what I was saying earlier about how you get caught up in the silos of stratification, and it becomes extremely difficult to, to integrate any room on the natural. It has to be a commitment. It has to be willed, and that is, that is not common.
1:55:59
SM: James Thal I interviewed him, the writer.
1:56:02
TH: Who?
1:56:03
SM: James Thal.
1:56:05
TH: Yup, Yeah, yeah.
1:56:06
SM: He gave me a great interview. And he mentioned that when he was at Harvard, that he evaded the draft, like many of the students that were at Harvard, yet he at the very, within a year's time, or within a short period of time, wrote a piece where he criticized himself. Yeah. And he criticizes fellow students, because he said, if you really were against the draft, you should protest against the draft, he did not just should not evade the draft. So, he was very critical of those who evaded the draft. Your thoughts on that?
1:56:44
TH: Well, I think Jim is a good man, and an old friend. And I think he is a bit obsessed with this point. Because you know, in any situation only a few will stand up to the powers that be where, you know, the risk is that you go to jail and also have your reputation damaged and done. And you know, there is different degrees of evasion. You can, you can evade because he did not want to spend time in jail, you can evade and still belong to the antiwar movement. You can evade and help create an underground railroad for more evaders. You can live your life consciously knowing that as evasion grows, it is definitely an obstruction to the continuation of the war. I mean, there were 50,000 people went to Canada, a lot of them to British Columbia where my wife is from and, you know, I see them all the time. Naomi Klein's dad. Does Jim think that Naomi's Naomi Klein's dad, you know, is morally weak because he refused to go to Vietnam and refuse to go to jail? That is just rhetoric. But I mean, when I say these people, I say to myself, who is you know, who is the judge? That it is, it is, it is not a bad thing, that many people feel a certain moral ambiguity about having gotten out of the draft, out of the army, by whatever means getting a deferment, which meant, inevitably, that somebody with fewer connections would serve and possibly die or be wounded. Oh, that is a, that is something that a lot of people should carry on their conscience. But not so heavily as not so heavily as he seems to your conscience. That means for the rest of your life, you try to do little things to you know, to make a difference to prevent future wars, for example.
1:59:55
SM: Yeah, I think he has moved on from it. Because I was, he was also in that symposium that I mentioned that add one that had so many things. And he was really against those who did not protest he feel if you are really going to evade then you get up there and protest too. People admire you for your lifetime of activism, and your writing and all the other things you have done. And of course, we have your critics too. But who do you admire for their longevity and staying the course like you? I mean, who were the writers? I know, you have Howard Zinn is someone we all love.
2:00:35
TH: Howard, I knew back in 1960, I mean, he and Roz had actually made a commitment that I never would have imagined least as far as I can imagine, now, to go on a venture of reverse integration. In other words, they were white couple that joined the community at a historically black college in Atlanta during a time of segregation. So that is an indicator of a person who is very strong willed, and very, very confident that he can make a life by going against the wind, Scott Lind met him at the same time, same, same thing. But I think we have enough heroes. And I am, I am sort of antihero, but it is, it is just, I think it is the wrong way to look at things. Everybody has some little heroism in themselves and that should be cultivated. Everybody has a little nonconformity that should be cultivated, to be appreciated, should be congratulated. And to see since the test since the (19)60s, I think, because of the assassinations and because of the wreckage of many movement organizations, we do not we do not see people hero-worshipping as a method of building a social movement anymore. Sure, during the Obama campaign, there was a resurgence of it and electoral politics lends itself to a worshipful attitude towards an individual. But for the most part, you know, the movements that are happening today. They are not leaderless; they are not anarchistic. They are not unorganized, but they seem to have learned from the past, that building the social movement is the essential thing. And that leadership may be tactically necessary. For instance, somebody has to speak at a press conference, but I think people are wary of it, and they prefer leadership that is accountable. And that is rotational. And some of this is because of the defense mechanisms that grow when you see so many people get killed or go astray. and everything in between some of it is just a learning experience that becomes greater with the development of the online technology that you know; the, the idea of a participatory democratic method becomes more attainable. And leadership can quickly evolve into celebrity culture you write with little result of it. Now, Glenn Beck would not agree with that. But you know, I do not think Glenn Beck has far to go. He will run into the contradictions on the right. Whatever happened to Jerry Falwell bless his soul, but I mean, he was an early Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, I mean, there are these Sarah Palin now is flying high, but I would not want to be her, and her family facing the, the stuff that they have already had to take and the more her celebrity increases, the more she will be attacked. And it'll become more and more about her. And you raise where is the movement? I might ask,
2:05:14
SM: Tom-
2:05:14
TH: A lot of little Palin-ites palling around with Palin, it does not do it for me.
2:05:24
SM: Yeah. Dr. King used to always say when he gave his sermons that it is about we are not me or I, and I think you would be very sensitive today about Martin Luther King Day. He certainly earned it. But-
2:05:36
TH: I am not sure I am not sure that he could, I am not sure that there could be a Martin Luther King today.
2:05:41
SM: You are probably right. But he always talked about the fact that he looked out in his congregation, he was said you can all be will not do the things that I am doing me. It is the young unheralded people that who lived and died, who were involved in that movement, people will never know.
2:05:57
TH: Well, he was quite eloquent about that. But still, the organization that he headed, was built around the promotion of his identity and fame and power. And others resented it and maybe because they had egos too. And it is after his assassination it foundered and splintered, and you know, many other leaders from Andy Young to Jesse Jackson, you know, came out of it and built their own organizations but, you know, it is not. I do not know if it is a model that we want to adhere to.
2:06:47
SM: I know was Vietnam speech in (19)67, drew criticism from within the ranks of the church, but he was going global. He was not just local, as they say.
2:06:59
TH: Well, no, that was a great speech. And we all appreciate it. But God, I mean, it was. It was very strange that the media and the power structure paid so much attention to so much emphasis on that speech, and how important it was, and how negative it was. And some said it was positive. But the reason he gave the speech is because he was responding to the disproportionate number of voiceless African Americans who were being drafted, dying on the front lines in Vietnam. You have to give the speech because of the constituency. It is like what Gandhi said, “They are going my people, I have to, I have to lead them.”
2:08:03
SM: What?
2:08:04
TH: So, I do not know that it is a model.
2:08:07
SM: Very good. What did it mean to you to work within the system as a California State politician? Since early on, you were perceived as a person who attacked the system, or the system did not work, as an activist? Was this move more about growing and evolving as a person? Or did you see that being outside of the system takes more effort, with fewer, positive results?
2:08:37
TH: No, none of that the (19)60s had ended and we had succeeded beyond what some of us expected. And so, a number of us who were old friends sat down to try to figure out our future by now we were all in our early (19)30s. And I remember, some people said they wanted to go into the labor movement, and they wanted to organize working women, office workers, clerical workers, immigrants, etc. Other people were kind of interested in the consumer and environmental movements that Ralph Nader, speaking of other celebrities, got sparked and they wanted to build what was known as citizen action organizations. Others wanted to go into solidarity work with movements in Central America who were opposing United States intervention. And there was a fourth category, which was electoral politics, and very few people who were deeply involved in the social movement, the way I was, chose that path because it was so antithetical to the way we believe that social change should take place. However, there was a perception that we had sort of banged on the door and broken the system open. And it would be somewhat folly to not try to go through the door. Knowing full well, that would, it would lead us into temptation into opportunism, and so on. And that might actually be a dead end for movement building. But the alternative would be to, to reject the space that we had created. Right? So, for some of us, was an experimental venture. And that is why I ran for a big office, the US Senate as opposed to city council, because we wanted to build a movement, there was a base in California, we wanted to mobilize thousands and thousands of people and win or lose and frankly, you know, we knew that the chance of winning was, was, was highly doubtful, we would build chapters around the state networks around the state and out of it would come and ongoing movement that had used the political process, to bring in a whole new generation of activists, not leaving movements behind, but bringing a movement presence into politics. And I think we were very, very successful for five or ten years. But, you know, the limits began to be reached, because you had the Reagan counter revolution against the (19)60s. And, you know, a trough not much going on in the period (19)79, (19)89, (19)99 and those were the years I spent eighteen years in California Legislature. Sixteen of those years under Republican governors. And I am not saying that the two years under a democratic governor were any better. But I found that, you know, I do not think people out there in America know this. It is not a small thing to California Legislature later, it is full time year-round. I had a staff budget of six or seven hundred thousand dollars, I had offices in Santa Monica and in Sacramento, I chaired committees that were very important to the welfare of the state, the Labor Committee, the environmental committee, the Higher Education Committee. And there was an opportunity to bring protest and outsider consciousness into the inside. And I recommended but I do not think I was very unusual because I had this twenty-year background of really hardcore radical activism and you know, I had a following, I had plenty of enemies too, but sometimes your enemies help contribute to the cause by, by bringing more of a spotlight on what you are actually proposing. So, it is not for everybody. And I can understand how few people you know, John Lewis, comes to mind a few people went into electoral politics because it is so unnatural to come from a social movement background.
2:14:06
SM: Bobby Rush is another one. Bobby Rush.
2:14:10
TH: Bobby Rush? Yes. The numbers are so small that if you can draw your own conclusion, it is pretty obvious.
2:14:17
SM: You know, when I used to read about you and your work in Sacramento, the first thing that I remember reading was that you were respected across the aisle. And that does not happen a whole lot to a lot of people. So, my next question is really about higher education. Listen to this for a minute and then when done your response, I would like your thoughts on today's universities and what they learned from the students of the (19)60s and (19)70s. My perception, this is me, is that universities today frown on the term activism because it brings back memories of one real student power to student demands that cannot be met three, participation in a major decision-making process of where funds go and what funds are accepted in the university in other words, money's not going to our war effort. Number four, the disruption of classes and number five, the constant fear by leaders, by leaders of being let go. I mentioned earlier about so many presidents who were fired. That is what I am going to interview Father Hesburgh about due to protests and the teach-ins on the tough issues of the day. And finally, the strong faculty-student alliances, the challenge administrations at the time, including the no ROTCs on campus. What I am basically saying is that the activism at that time seemed to be 24/7 on the parts of many of the students. Yet today. volunteerism is very important and a term that is accepted, but activism is not. And because it is not 24 to 7 is a great quality, but it is required by many of the departments, many of the schools, and many of the student organizations that people belong to. And today's youth does not seem to have that activist mentality, and the challenging attitudes that the students of the (19)60s and (19)70s had. And finally, my commentary here is that colleges are run by boomers today, who experienced the (19)60s and then some of the Generation X people that followed the boomers who were the up-and-coming leaders of universities oftentimes did not get along with boomers. So, what I am saying is and I'd like your thoughts, is that the universities today are really afraid of even using the term activism.
2:16:58
TH: I hear you.
2:16:59
SM: Volunteerism is okay.
2:17:02
TH: You are reading from your remarks.
2:17:04
SM: Yeah, well, yeah, but what is interesting is that when you came to the University as part of our series, we had Daniel Barrigan we had Philip Barrigan. We had you, Tori Osborn we had to end the series because they said that that is not really what our students want. It is not what our campuses have. So-
2:17:25
TH: There is a lot there to unpack. Some I agree with, some I do not. I do not even know what the question is.
2:17:33
SM: The question is, are universities afraid of activism? Did they learn anything from the (19)60s and (19)70s?
2:17:43
TH: You know, I think I think SDS was prophetic in the sense that, you know, many prophets do not even realize that they are being prophetic. They are almost channeling. And the prophecy of the Port Huron Statement was that, unlike other progressive eras, the university itself would be a pivot for the transformation of American society that is in coalition with other forces. And the mistake that was made, which often happens with prophecy, is that you know, we did not think of the university as a permanent institution, similar to all other institutions in the sense that Max Faber described. We were confusing our ranks, student hood and faculty, with the university as an institution. But what was prophetic was the carrying out the idea that 1960 was the dawn of a youth movement that would face increasingly an economy that was high tech and based on information that is based on the stuff of intellectualism. I remember a fellow in 1964 showed me my first computer, and it was in a room that was the size of not a warehouse but a very large room. It was this gigantic IBM machine that spit on all these cards, the very cards that students at Berkeley objected to being compared to, and he said, Tom someday, you know, pointing to his wristwatch, they are going to be computers this size. And I did not take it seriously because I was unable to my mind could not wrap around this thought. But it was people like that that created the web. And so, the students were the forerunners of the, the C.E.R.F not surf or CERFing surfs in the information economy, you know, whether you were working class, middle class, upper you. That was the discovery. The Port Huron Statement was kind of like discovering gold in California, it was an accident and then people said Eureka! You know, this is a sudden insight. And that is always stayed with me. So that is still the case. Now I think where we were not wrong, but you know, utopian in the belief that we could transform the university, to make it an institution that would be an institution of resistance against the matrix of other institutions in our society, military industrial complex, corporate finance and law, etc. That we could not do. But we swiftly understood that because by the late (19)60s, there was, there was a huge rush of materials about how universities like Columbia, viewed from their board of trustees, were actually part of the system that we were opposed to, and would never reform without some combination of serious confrontation on the outside and inside, which is what happened, you know, parallel to the eighteen-year-old vote. Suddenly students could read Noam Chomsky without getting kicked out of school. Suddenly, African Americans, Latinos, women, found themselves recognized in the curriculum. Suddenly, there was a whole new field of environmental studies that simply did not exist, except as biology until Earth Day came along. And those reforms were very real, and they were won through painful confrontation. And they opened the door of the university, to a flood of a more diverse student body who the same time came to believe that social change was easier than it had been for Abbie Hoffman, or Bobby Seale. That it could be done from within. Some say that generation was co-opted. I think it is the same as my running for elected office. If you bang on the door, and the door gets knocked down, or opened up, or you are invited in, you know, it would be bizarre to say no thanks, we did not intend to do that anyway. So, the left may not understand this, although I think to some extent, they do but certainly the right does and there has been a torrential countercurrent of abuse and attack on eggheads, intellectuals, universities. You know, it is almost, you know, a strike against you if you are running for office and you have been to one of these places. They still have not defeated the universities threat as they, as they perceive it. And I do not think that they will. I think that what you will have is a standoff with the university divided between the you know, the fundraising apparatus, the representative of finance capital, like Larry Summers at Harvard, the representatives of the Pentagon who need the information technology. And on the other hand, you know, departments that are filled with women and people of color who never were employed before. I do not think it is over. I think it is at a stalemate.
2:25:27
SM: It is interesting, because when I interviewed Arthur Chickering, the great educator who wrote Education Identity. At the very end, I asked him one final question, because he is into Student Development Theory. And the question was whether-
2:25:41
TH: He is a college guy.
2:25:42
SM: Does he have any criticism of the university today? And he says, yes, the corporations have taken over again. And I thought that was a very prophetic comment because when you think of Mario Savio, you bring his name on many times in your books and, you know, his challenge, and his words were the universities about ideas, the university students come to a university because it is a place where ideas and flow, not only in the classroom, but outside the classroom. And yet we are not just some corporate cogs. And yet, you hear Arthur Chickering say that, you know, he is disappointed today that the universities are the bottom line is what is important. He may be even over ideas.
2:26:27
TH: So, I think it goes in waves and particles, I think anybody is wrong who thinks that the battle is ever over and if you look at my book, my model would predict this temporary outcome.
2:26:41
SM: Right.
2:26:44
TH: What you know, the university is not safe from dissent, it cannot be preserved from protest. It is true that administrators, by the very nature of being administrators of an institution, inherit an institutional memory of protests, and so they invent ways to prepare for it, to contain it to channel that, as you said into service, but not protest. And students are always turning over so there is always a new group of, you know, eighteen-year-old on the incoming who have to have to learn what they can by doing by improvising. But you know I speak everywhere at universities, and I think I have a much more complicated view of students then, you know, than the stereotype I think, any campus you go to, you can find a percentage who are in the forerunners of social change a lot about sweatshops, you can find an extraordinary base of environmentalism and so on.
2:28:02
SM: We are down to our final three questions, actually, there is four here so I may have to choose a tape here in a minute. What do the following quotes from the (19)60s and (19)70s mean to you just in a few words, you do not have to get into much detail.
2:28:15
TH: Yeah, no, you are not going to get much of a response on this but go ahead.
2:28:18
SM: As an activist, when you hear of the "I Have a Dream" of Martin Luther King, what does that, what does that mean to you?
2:28:30
TH: Well, that is almost the holy incantation because I was there.
2:28:37
SM: You witnessed it?
2:28:39
TH: I was standing there. Yeah.
2:28:40
SM: Oh, wow.
2:28:41
TH: Yeah. So, I put it in another category. I actually, you know, was there, I was standing under a tree.
2:28:52
SM: John Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you as what you can do for your country."
2:28:58
TH: I watched that on television and I immediately; it sent me into a scramble to try to deconstruct it. It did not know if that was good for us or not that. I did not know what he was saying.
2:29:14
SM: How about the National Organization for Women and when they started, they were prophetic in their statement "The personal is political."
2:29:25
TH: Yeah, I found that very challenging.
2:29:33
SM: Malcolm X, "By any means necessary."
2:29:41
TH: Another challenge.
2:29:45
SM: Timothy Leary's, "Tune in, turn on and drop out."
2:29:51
TH: My response to that?
2:29:52
SM: Yes.
2:29:52
TH: Uh oh.
2:29:56
SM: Very good. Martin Luther King also had another one, "Judge not by the color of one's skin, but by the content of one's character."
2:30:15
TH: I thought it was, at the time, a little utopian. I understood where he was coming from. And I think it anticipated and foreshadowed the appeal of Obama, who then was five we have to remind ourselves.
2:30:38
SM: Right. Bobby Muller is pretty well known for, well other people said this too, but he was very much in the forefront when he came back from Vietnam and went through the experience. "I realized for the first time that the US is not always a good guy."
2:30:58
TH: Yeah, well, that was the experience of a whole generation.
2:31:02
SM: And then Kim Phuc, the girl in the picture from the Vietnam War, I actually know her. I am actually going to interview her in a couple of weeks. We had her on campus. And just a simple thing. "I forgive."
2:31:22
TH: Powerful.
2:31:23
SM: Yeah. One of the questions here I have about the Port Huron Statement. How long did it take to write it? I know you co-wrote it with another person because I believe his name, Richard Flax.
2:31:43
TH: This is the last question.
2:31:47
SM: Oh, okay. What was anyway? Basically, how long did it take? Do you remember the experience of starting it? And
2:31:59
TH: Yeah, I can give you a very specific answer. In steps. I was, I was in jail on my birthday in 1961, in Albany, Georgia and I knew that I was going to a meeting of SDS in the north quite soon and I sent a letter from jail saying that we had to, we had to formally organize this group SDS with a vision that was based on the Direct-Action Movement among students in the south. So, then I went to Ann Arbor, very soon after, long meeting fifty-sixty people and they said, we are going to have this founding conference and you know, Sharon Jeffrey's going to try to get her mom to get us a UAW Center to have the meeting in. It is going to be. When is it going to be? It is going to be in June when school's out, and what are we going to do there? We are going to formally adopt organizational rules and we have to have this vision statement. So, I was delegated to write the vision statement. There were very few parameters or details. I went to, I forget the exact details, but it was in the south and then I went to New York, and I holed myself up in an apartment in New York City with books and it seemed like months, it must have been weeks but I you know I pounded out this long statement that was ten times longer than what anybody had in mind. I think it was sixty or sixty-five pages single spaced and mimeographed it. I do not know if you know, if you remember mimeographs. And off it went in manila envelopes and boxes to people that were coming to the conference, and they just got it in time for the conference. And the first reaction is, you know, throw it out this, we cannot deal with this. And it was kind of a force of will, on my part, insisted that people deal with it. I was sorry that it was so late and so long. But there was a lot at stake here and we could not just go home with it was nothing and somewhere along the way Dick Flax who was a graduate student friend of mine in Ann Arbor, got into the writing, he'll have to tell you when I do not I do not remember, but we broke into small groups that dealt with each section like the economy and foreign policy and civil rights, and everybody in a small group would read the draft, and then they would discuss whether they agreed with it in substance, if they did, that was fine, if they did not, that had to be debated and voted on and then they discussed smaller changes, technical changes, stylistic changes. And then each of these groups, which were, you know, functioned as committees, having met 2,3 or 4 days, I do not remember’ would come back to the body as a whole, report their recommendations, and people would vote yes or not to accept it. And it actually got done! And it had this participatory element to it, like people were involved in birthing their own creation, not only of the structure of the organization but the actual founding document, and then I was delegated at the end, to go back with all of the suggestions, recommendations, and rewrite the whole thing in one clean writing. And then to get around the question of, how would it ever be fully approved, since we were all going home, we agreed, this interesting formulation, that it was to be seen as a living document, a provisional document open to changes in the future. And it was issued as kind of a statement to our generation of activists, which is quite different from the usual political platform or Manifesto, you know, that goes through formal adoption and so on. Off we went, in the summer of (19)62, we stopped in June of (19)62. We had no idea what you know what the reception would be and the thought that we would be discussing it 50 years later was beyond our-
2:37:14
SM: I have two original copies.
2:37:16
TH: Yeah, I got a couple also, and it has been reprinted a couple of times, if you want to copy, I can resend it to you. You could spend a whole semester or weekend talking about this, and you never quite understand where this came from and how it came about. It is one of those mysteries of social change.
2:37:45
SM: Well, I think it is a great document. And I just have one more question if it is okay.
2:37:54
TH: No.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Tom Hayden
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Hayden, Tom ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Political activists--United States; Civil rights workers; Legislators—United States; Radicals--United States; Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements; Hayden, Tom--Interviews
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Thomas Hayden (1939-2016) was a social and political activist, author and politician who was best known for his major role as an anti-war, civil rights, and radical intellectual activist. He was the author of the manifesto Port Huron Statement and stood trial in the Chicago Seven case. Hayden won seats on both the California Assembly and the California Senate. He was also the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Los Angeles County. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2003-11-14
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.197a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.197b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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157:57