58 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/600a1e85c69a527c1c0afe6b6c3e812f.mp3 86f7bca1c9b7fb3660e28cf5af15bd6a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. 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Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Celeste, Daniel Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Neil, Dan Date of Interview 1978-04-11 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:12 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55880">Interview with Daniel Celeste</a> Subject LCSH Celeste, Daniel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Restaurateurs -- Interviews; Prohibition; National Guard; Community Lounge; Security Mutual Building Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Daniel Celeste Interviewed by: Dan O’Neil Date of interview: 11 April 1978 Dan O’Neil: OK, Danny, if you will tell me about your life and working experiences in the community, starting from where you were born. Daniel Celeste: Where I born, I born in Faeto, it’s in the town of Faeto, Province of Foggio–that’s the province of the, like the state, like you say, the— O’Neil: In Italy. Celeste: Yeah, in Italy, and then we—Dad came here because he was here before, and ah, he brought me and my brother with him. We emigrate then from Faeto to Naples, and from Naples we come right into United States. O’Neil: What year was that, Danny? Celeste: 19—1908. O’Neil: 1908. Celeste: 1908, and we came to Binghamton. We had some relatives here—some cousins and relations, so Dad went, ah, laboring around whatever, he got a job and I went to school for a couple of months that, that year, and then I went, we went on, ah, on, ah, construction work, and took me along with him and I was waterboy there. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: And ah, in Fabius—Fabius, NY, that’s where we—first job, ah, I really worked, and ah, we lived in a shanty, was in the camp, you know what I mean, about a couple hundred people that were in there—Christ, camping outside—and Dad didn’t want to stay in the shanty. We built a little setup there under the tree and, ah, we slept outside. (Laughter.) Well, then as I’d grow older I would come back, and, and he used to take me down to Pennsylvania and he used to work in the mine in the wintertime, had some cousins there, and ah, I used to go to school—I’d go to school for a couple of months of the winter, and ah, in the spring we’d come do the same thing, go construction work, and I was waterboy. Finally I got a job as in a transfer, trucking, freight, things like that. I stayed home with—we lived on Henry Street, we came on Henry Street and, ah, I then went to work in the freighthouse, and trucking, that’s about, oh, about two years I work in the freighthouse. O’Neil: What freighthouse, Danny? Celeste: The Lackawanna. O’Neil: The Lackawanna. Celeste: Yeah, Lackawanna Transfer, they used to call it. Transfer, Lackawanna Transfer, and ah, from there I went to the, I went to Dunn McCarthy. I got a job in Dunn McCarthy and worked there for a little while, 1914, 1915. I went away for a little time—I went to Chicago—I spent six months there, stayed with a friend of mine. I couldn’t get a job then, then hard times, them days. Came back home, I got a job in a shoe factory afterwards, ah. O’Neil: E.J. [Endicott Johnson]? Celeste: No, not E.J. O’Neil: Dunn McCarthy. Celeste: Dunn McCarthy. I worked there for about a year, then I went to E.J.’s, got a job in E.J.’s. Then 19—late 1915, I joined the Battery C, National Guard. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: The following year we got called in the service and went to the Mexican border in 19—1916, and ah, after we come back from the border, we were home for about three or four months, then the War was declared. O’Neil: This was the First World War. Celeste: First World War. Then we went on active service in ’17, May ’17. ‘18 we come home, we got home in March, March 12 from overseas duty. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: After I come home from service, I started the restaurant in, ah, I think it was in June—I opened up that restaurant Henry Street and I spent the rest of my life in the restaurant business. O’Neil: Now this, what year was it you started up in, ah—? Celeste: 1919. O’Neil: 1919, OK. Celeste: 1919. Then of course we didn’t have no license them days, you know—just the restaurant, but we did bootlegging at first—(laughter)—sold a little wine, a little whiskey. O’Neil: Did you make your own wine, Danny? Celeste: Yeah—oh God, yeah. O’Neil: Was it the “Dago red” wine? Celeste: “Dago red,” what they called “Dago red.” One year I made 100, 107 barrels of wine. O’Neil: Is that right? Where did you get the grapes for all that? Celeste: California. O’Neil: California. Celeste: A fella used to, John Morelli, used to bring it in from California, and he was a cousin of mine so I made all this wine, and a short time later, got it made—I put a little here, a little there. They raid me—they took about thirty barrels away from me but I got a lot more left. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: So I followed up that business and stayed right in the business—when the License came back, why, ah, I got the restaurant and liquor license and beer license and got in the right business and was there until 1919-1960 when the State bought Henry Street out, you know, to put that overhead. O’Neil: Yeah, right, Brandywine. Celeste: Bought part of Henry Street and they had to take me down. O’Neil: Right, right. Celeste: Goddamn thing, my, my poor wife got sick over it. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Then she, ah, we were doing good business. O’Neil: Oh, you did a fine business down there. Celeste: Did a good business down there, and I had the whole family—my daughter was married and living upstairs and we live on the second floor—had all the accommodations we want and we lived fine and, ah, no complaint. Came here on Court Street—we bought the place and remodeled. O’Neil: What was it called then, Danny? The place on Court Street? Celeste: What was it called? O’Neil: Yeah, was there a restaurant there before? Celeste: It was a grocery store. O’Neil: Oh, a grocery store. Celeste: It was Buck’s Grocery. O’Neil: Oh, Buck’s—-yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Celeste: And then, ah, so we torn down everything inside and built it up new and everything. I put in over $100,000 in the goddamn place. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: Why, I wanted to buy my son-in-law a liquor store, but he liked the restaurant business. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: That’s bad today, like the restaurant business. That’s all right—the hell, one thing is as good as the other. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: He liked the work and poor Bill had to get sick. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Of course when Bill give up and I stayed a little while myself—I couldn’t take care of it, know what I mean, then. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Got in trouble with my eyes and started putting me down a little bit. After my wife died in ’68, I hang around the place a little bit with other boys, you know that I—-it wasn’t just right, I didn’t feel just right. O’Neil: Right. Celeste: So when I sold the place—the first time I sold it— O’Neil: What year was that? Celeste: ’60—1960, sold the restaurant on Court Street. O’Neil: ’60—1960. Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: OK. Celeste: And, ah, 1960, and then I stood around town—didn’t do too much. I used to hang around the restaurant, help Jim—-I can’t think of his last name now. Was Jim—oh God almighty, Jim, Jim— O’Neil: No matter. Celeste: Just ah, well, he spent, Jim spent about three years in there then and left his son in there, and his son run the business himself and then, ah, somebody else took it over then there. O’Neil: Was that LaMonica? Celeste: Jim—no, not LaMonica. He’s from Endicott. Jim, ah, Capullo, Jim Capullo. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: And he’s in there for about three or four years, and boy did and then they run the place down—then they sold it. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: And, ah, get started again, and that’s the end of it for me. That’s when these other guys come in, laid around and operated a Greek restaurant. O’Neil: The Retsina now. Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: Now when did you—now from the time that you were—your place was torn down on Henry Street, didn’t you go to the Community Lounge? Celeste: Yeah, yeah. O’Neil: What year, what year did you go there? Celeste: Oh, I had still run on Henry Street at the time. O’Neil: Oh, you still had the place on Henry Street. Celeste: Yeah, yeah, I went in there with Bill Viglione. Remember Bill? O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And, ah— O’Neil: What year was that, Danny? Celeste: ’47. O’Neil: ’47. Celeste: I just spent a couple of years there—I didn’t stay there. I went back to Henry Street there, came back to Henry Street and stayed there until after we sold—changed over then, you know. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: ’47 or ’48, ’49, I forgot who, then somebody else went in there—well, they operated, anyway. O’Neil: Now, who was the prior owner of the Community—he had an Irish name—what was his name? You took it over from him—he died, do you remember his name? Celeste: Just can’t think of his name now. His brother used to run the place on Water Street. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: Remember those places—one on Chenango Street, used to run—took Yannuzzi’s place? O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: Oh God, I forget. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Quite a nice fellow. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Yeah, we took it from this fella—I can’t think of his name now. O’Neil: Why did you, why did you leave the Community, ah, Danny? Celeste: I, ah, I didn’t like too much confusement with, with other confusement. O’Neil: Yeah. When you were working there, did Liberace, was he—did he come? Celeste: Oh yes, yes, Liberace played there. Sure, sure, the Community. O’Neil: In what year was that, did you recall? Celeste: Well, I say Liberace played there in ’47, ’48. O’Neil: ’48—about a year or so after you took over. Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: Any other, ah, ah, big names play there in the Community that you can recall? Celeste: I can’t just, ah, geez—you remember more than I do. (Laughter.) No, I don’t, to tell you the truth—we always had a band there. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And, ah, of course, Liberace was quite an entertainer there. O’Neil: Yeah—do you remember what he was paid a week at that time? Celeste: Oh, couldn’t have, about $100, not more than $150 a week. O’Neil: Is that right? Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: He’s a multimillionaire today. Celeste: Right, yes—well, we passed it. O’Neil: Now, what were some of the main restaurants in town, Danny, during your era? What would you say were the main restaurants in town? We had quite a few of them. Celeste: Garvey’s. O’Neil: That was up on the north side. Celeste: No, Garvey’s was on Chenango Street. O’Neil: On Chenango Street, but on the north side, though, wasn’t it? Celeste: Yeah, towards the—no, not on the north side—right on the, near the bank. O’Neil: Oh, was he? Celeste: Yeah, Garvey’s and Hodge. O’Neil: Steve Hodge. Celeste: Steve Hodge—on State Street was a nice restaurant. O’Neil: Pitch’s. Celeste: Pitch’s. O’Neil: Pitch’s Oyster House. Celeste: Well, Pitch’s was on State Street, I think. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Pitch’s on State Street, yeah, I think they got State Street. O’Neil: And then they had a restaurant in the Bennett Hotel. Celeste: Oh yeah, the Bennett Hotel, they had a restaurant. O’Neil: Yeah—San Souci Grill. (Laughter.) Celeste: You tell me, you remember all those things—I should remember, but anymore. O’Neil: How old are you, Danny? Celeste: I’ll be 80 in July. O’Neil: 80 in July, OK, and how old were you when you emigrated from Italy? Celeste: I was 10 years old. O’Neil: 10 years old, uh huh, so your education is—what would you say was the highest grade that you went to? Celeste: In the third grade in Italy. O’Neil: Third grade in Italy, and over here you went to school. Celeste: I went to school about four or five months over the time. O’Neil: All the time? Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: Is that right? Celeste: And I went to night school later in the years, you know. I took up a little night school. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: That’s nights I went to school. O’Neil: Uh huh—now, when you started on Henry Street, ah, did you buy a building to start your restaurant? Celeste: We lease it first, but I put the business, we bought the building, in 1919 we bought the building. O’Neil: But you leased it at first. Celeste: Yeah, we leased it first—we rented from, hooo, geez—a good Irish name, too, Irish family, very nice, ah, the boy’s still walking around—Danny—I can’t think of his last name now. O’Neil: But you leased it when you came back out of service after World War I? Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: After World War I, so about 1918. Celeste: 1919. O’Neil: And started in business for yourself? And you leased the building, is that right? Celeste: Oh, we used to live there. O’Neil: Oh, you used to live there. Celeste: We moved in there in 1911. O’Neil: Oh, but was it a brick building then or did you remodel it? Celeste: We remodeled the front. O’Neil: Oh, I see. Celeste: I put the—I remodeled the front. O’Neil: Umhm. Celeste: It was around 1930, ’31 that I remodeled the front. O’Neil: I see. Celeste: Just before, before the beer came back. O’Neil: Yeah, but from the time you opened up until the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, why, you made your own wine, is that right? Celeste: Yeah, oh yeah, made—Christ, made all kinds of wine. (Laughter.) O’Neil: Probably made more money on the wine than you did on the spaghetti, huh? Celeste: Oh God, yes—-well was 25¢ a bottle. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: 25¢ a bottle, $1.00 a gallon. O’Neil: Uh huh. Well, they raided you when—raided you one year and took thirty barrels? Celeste: They raided me the year they took thirty barrels away from me. O’Neil: Left you better than seventy barrels left, huh? Celeste: That Slocum son of a bitch—they still call him a son of a bitch. O’Neil: Slocum? Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: What was he, ah— Celeste: He was, ah, squad, ah, him and, ah, a Polish fella they got—he’s still, ah, retired now. I see him once in a while. O’Neil: Yeah—it don’t matter. Celeste: Yeah, ah, Barvinchak. O’Neil: Barvinchack. Celeste: Yeah, they come in and said they just wanted to see the place, you know, just, ah— O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: And, ah, they had a party upstairs—well, this was upstairs, well, you know, before had some upstairs and downstairs—ah, they come upstairs, they wanted to see what was in there, and Christ, I had a supply of beer for the night, you know, stuff, wine and things like that—said, “We’ll have to take it, you can’t drink.” They took it all with them, broke it later—I don’t know if they broke it. O’Neil: Did you make beer too? Celeste: Oh yeah, oh yeah, Christ, beer. Boy, my wife used to make beer and she made a damn good beer. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: One lady came up to me—show her how to make beer. My God, and she improved every time she made beer. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: She made a damn good brew. Very, a lot of people used to come up for that brew. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And, ah, up to 1929-30, we had our own beer, our own wine, you know how it is. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: But we got the [inaudible] back of beer, when the regular beer came back, then I took everything out—give it away, most of the stuff was left. Whatever was left I give my, “Why here, here’s a case of beer.” I didn’t want to be implicated in, ah, you know, mean, find fault for coming back and say, “He’s still bootlegging,” and things like that. O’Neil: Yeah, yeah. Celeste: So I started to live a very clean life from that time on—nice business. O’Neil: I know you had a real good business. Celeste: Had a nice business. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Had a good chef—couple of chefs, used to put on a good feed. O’Neil: Yeah, yeah. Celeste: And I helped in the kitchen lots of the time. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: Used to get in the kitchen, and then after my daughter got married and my son-in-law took over, I just hanged around the place—I didn’t have much to do. O’Neil: Yeah, Yeah. Celeste: That’s how I happened to go in the Community that time. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: But I was glad to get back home again. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: I had a place on Henry Street right next to the morning Sun—you know there used to be a morning Sun and used to be on the corner of State.  O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And just that building next door, there, and ah, on the second floor we had the, we had a restaurant there, had a— O’Neil: What year was this? Celeste: In 1928 or ’29. O’Neil: So you had two of them going at the same time, and ah, how long were you in that business, or how long had you retained that? Celeste: Oh, was in there—this friend of mine, John, he was quite a card player—he liked to gamble and he used to go out. Well, we broke up—we didn’t. You know, lot’s of times you came in and bought a drink and I took the money, I ring the money, “No sale.” O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: And, and put the money in there, ’cause I didn’t want those people to think marked “Liquor” on the register, and John said, ah, “Why don’t you ring the—?” I say, “John,” I say, “lots of time the inspectors come in—the food inspectors, and they like to check.” I didn’t want to show what we sell because we wasn’t supposed to have any beer. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: But anyway, we broke up—we couldn’t get along no more—I couldn’t trust him no more, he didn’t trust me, and I, I had to quit. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: When a person don’t trust me, I don’t like to be involved, to think that I was gypping him and other things. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: Finally applied for—used to work up up at the tax office in the city—it’ll come to me sometime when I don’t want to— O’Neil: Hennessy. Celeste: Not Hennessy, no. O’Neil: Sheehan. Celeste: Ah— O’Neil: What awards have you had in—had any awards at all, Danny? Militarily or in the restaurant business or anything like that? Celeste: No, no. O’Neil: Any clubs you belong to? Celeste: Oh, I belong to the Eagles, belong to the Elks for quite, ah—joined, belonged to the Eagles, the Moose them days—I used to join them and get acquainted with the people. O’Neil: Right. Celeste: Used to go down to the Veterans’ Clubs, you know, VFW and Legion. O’Neil: Uh huh—were you pretty active in the Legion affairs? Celeste: I was very active, yeah. O’Neil: Uh huh, did you hold any offices in the Legion? Celeste: No no, was a Sergeant in the Drum Corps and that’s all when it first started, and then, ah, I done a lot of work that I should have done that I used to go to the Legion a lot. O’Neil: Yeah, yeah. Celeste: Help the Legion out that way. O’Neil: Is there anything else of interest, Danny, you would like to tell me? Can you think of anything else? Celeste: God, I think I’ve told you everything you wanted to know. O’Neil: Uh huh. Celeste: You can ask me, I mean, if I can— O’Neil: Yeah. Yeah, ah, when you went into service, of course you had already been in the service—you joined up so you weren’t, you didn’t have to go through any Draft Board or anything in World War I? Celeste: No, no. O’Neil: Yeah, yeah. Celeste: No—was in Battery C. O’Neil: Yeah—in Battery C. Celeste: I joined them in 1915, just before 1916. Then the War broke out and they organized it—they called the guards out—they shipped us down to the Mexican border there in (McClellan trucks) and we were down there for five or six months and, ah— O’Neil: Now the Retsina building—you still own it, don’t you now, Danny? Celeste: Yeah, I still own it. O’Neil: So you just lease it to the— Celeste: Lease it. O’Neil: And it’s a Greek restaurant, I guess, now. Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And I got that parking lot over on the corner of Pine and Carroll Street. O’Neil: Oh, do you lease that out to Dietzsch, Dietzsch Pontiac and Cadillac? Celeste: Yeah. O’Neil: That’s good, that’s good. Celeste: Yeah, I want to sell it. I got a little mortgage still going on, but I want to sell the restaurant—get rid of it. O’Neil: Yeah—Giant made you any offer or anything else, or are they interested at all? Celeste: Well, I don’t think those boys there got any money. I don’t know who’s backing them up, but, ah— O’Neil: Well, they’ve got a lot of money. (Laughter.) Celeste: Think so. I hope so, I hope so. O’Neil: ’Course, there’s quite a bit of property between you—well, not an awful lot—not an awful lot. Celeste: I think someday that, that corner will be torn down for a little hotel. You know, that’s a fine sport for a little hotel right in center part of the city. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And I wish somebody would start it and promote, I mean, I’m not in the real estate business, but I mean, I can see a hotel on that corner better than I can see where the hell, down out of the way where transient is, not, you know, I mean, like on Water Street, where the ah—what’s the hotel there on—the big hotel they got? O’Neil: You mean the Treadway? Celeste: Yeah, the Treadway. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: That’s out the way and you can’t even see it. Here’s one in the center of the city where traffic, transient business all, all the way around. O’Neil: Yeah. Celeste: And I think that it’d make a swell spot for a hotel. O’Neil: OK, and what church do you belong to, Danny? Still belong to— Celeste: St. Mary’s Church. O’Neil: St. Mary’s—still go there. Yeah, OK, well if there isn’t anything else that you can think of, Danny, why— Celeste: Just ask me. O’Neil: Well, we’ll terminate it on this note. Celeste: Anything, anything that you like to. O’Neil: Well, I think we’ve covered everything that I, we want to—I mean, I can think to ask you. you’ve been in the restaurant business all your life and been very successful at it. You retired in what year? Celeste: ’60, ’69—1970. O’Neil: 1970, OK, well would you like me to play it back for you, Danny? Celeste: (Laughter.) Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Daniel Celeste Subject The topic of the resource Celeste, Daniel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Restaurateurs -- Interviews; Prohibition; National Guard; Community Lounge; Security Mutual Building Description An account of the resource Dan Celeste talks about his emigration from Italy at age ten, his various jobs before joining the National Guard, and opening a restaurant in post-WWI Binghamton. He discusses raids and difficulty with business during the depression and prohibition age, then his acquisition of the Community Lounge in the Security Mutual Building. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 11 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-04-11 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Celeste, Daniel ; O'Neil, Dan Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 33:12 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7680884a8e861eef29b4779de056b6ba.mp3 f0f70bfcfc5408c099510787254749bd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kurdish Oral History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Aynur de Rouen, Ph.D. Description An account of the resource In 2011, Binghamton University Libraries received the donation of the Vera Beaudin Saeedpour Kurdish Library and Museum Collection. The acquisition opened a dialog with the local Kurdish community in Binghamton, N.Y., which led to the creation of the Kurdish Oral History Project. These interviews provide deeper insight into the history of the Kurdish culture through personal accounts, narratives, testimonies, and memories of their early lives in their adoptive country and back in Kurdistan. This growing collection holds interviews in English and/or Kurdish with informants of all ages and a variety of backgrounds from various parts of Kurdistan. The interviewees share remarkable stories of their migration, their persecution in Kurdistan, the resilience of their Kurdish identity in assimilating into the host culture, and the ties they maintain with their homeland in diaspora.<a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/sustain"></a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Relation A related resource <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/oral-histories/index.html#sustainablecommunities">Sustainable Communities Oral History Collection</a> <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/76">Vera Beaudin Saeedpour Kurdish Library & Museum Collection Finding Aid</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 21 February 2013 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Erdem Ilter Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dasko Shirwani Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 40:24 minutes Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Interview Format Video or Audio audio Biographical Text Dasko was born in Iraq and is a member of the Barzani Tribe. He never had a stable childhood because he had to constantly move and run away from Saddam Hussein’s war against the Kurds. Dasko lives in the United States and holds a Civil Engineering degree from Tennessee State University. Keywords Kurdistan; Kurdish; Peshmarga; Iraq; Turkey; Iran; United States; Saddam Hussein; Barzani; PKK; Gulf Wars; Anfal; Everyday life; conflict; Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Kurdish Oral History Project Interview with: Dasko Shirwani Interviewed by: Erdem Ilter Transcriber: Marwan Tawfiq Date of interview: 21 February 2013 Interview Setting: Binghamton University -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:07 EI: Start with your name and surname. 0:10 DS: Well, my name is, my name is Dasko Shirwani. I am originally Kurd from uh Iraq, and came to the United States in ̶ 0:20 EI: You were born in Iraq, right? 0:22 DS: I was born in Iraq, never got an Iraqi citizen ship, [laughter] but it is okay. 0:27 EI: When were you born? 0:28 DS: In 1956. 0:31 EI: 1956 my dad has the same age. 0:33 DS: Really? 1956 0:34 EI: Yeah, and you are Kurd? 0:35 DS: Right I am a Kurd and uh– 0:36 EI: Sunni Kurd, right? 0:37 DS: Yes, Sunni Kurd. Majority of the Kurds from Iraq they are Sunni, and the majority they are Shafi’y– 0:48 EI: Yeah. 0:48 DS: The majority of the Kurds are Shafi’y, we have some Shiite in Iraq most of them are in Kirkuk area, southern Kirkuk like Khanaqeen, Mandali and those areas. Those two districts. 1:10 EI: Right. So, tell me about your family, your father, your childhood like where you born, how was, do you remember anything. 1:24 DS: I do remember [laughter] well the first thing I remember, we never lived in our village for our area because we always uh– 1:33 EI: You said what, Duhok or? 1:34 DS: No, north of Erbil– 1:35 EI: Erbil, okay. 1:36 DS: North of Erbil, uh district of Barzan. 1:47 EI: Okay. 1:47 DS: Since forties, or thirties after Barazni’s revolution my parent and my grandpa they were with Barzani at that time– 1:52 EI: What was the time? 1:54 DS: Forties and thirties, the first revolution of Barzani was in 1931. 1:57 EI: 1931? 1:58 DS: Right. 1:59 EI: Barzani’s dad right, Muhammed Barzani? 2:04 DS: No, well the first one it was 1918 an the second one was 1931 his older brother after British came and the Barzani’s first revolution started– 2:19 EI: 1931. 2:19 DS: Right, and since then our family never lived our area, we always moved from one place to another place. 2:26 EI: So, you were part of the Barzani’s tribe? 2:30 DS: Tribe yeah. 2:31 EI: His extended family, right? 2:33 DS: No, not his extended family, just tribe, because Barzani is not a tribe really. It is an ideology. 2:39 EI: Oh, I do not know that. 2:41 DS: Yes, Barzani is you know people think Barzani is a tribe, Barzani is not a tribe. 2:45 EI: As I know they are like a big family. 2:48 DS: No, it is not Ashira really Barzani, the family is lately big but it used to be just– and the thing about Barzani– 2:57 EI: He is now National Kurdish leader– 2:59 DS: But still before that it was. 3:01 EI: He has this character but– 3:02 DS: But Barzani was never a tribe and a lot of people make a mistake– Barzani is not a tribe, and Barzan is nine tribe they all belong to Barzan ideology which is equal right for everybody, everybody on their land and there is no landlord, and in Barzan we do not have a landlord. 3:25 EI: Okay. 3:25 DS: After British was trying to make it like all the land give it to Barzani, they did in some other places in Iraq. So Barzani family he said no, I do not believe in the land should belong to people whoever and they made some rules which is acting even in the United States still have not got to that kinds of rule, one. It was you own your own land, it was no landlord, second; woman, about the woman, the girl choose the husband, not the boy choose the woman, so you have to be loved before the marriage, you cannot force your daughter in the Barzan area to marry to anybody. 4:06 EI: Oh okay. 4:06 DS: First the girl has to prove it say I want this person, and then they, there is kind of election. The Mukhtar, and this is how do it, they choose the person to run the villages and then brought all the tribes and pick up like I say nine different tribes they pick up each village some brave man to join if in case in the area attacked that was used to be to defend the area. 4:38 EI: So, like when you were born during 1960s and your childhood is in 1960s– 4:44 DS: Well, it was a nightmare, what we the first– 4:49 EI: How was the village life or the city life? 4:53 DS: Well the city life, it was no city life. The village life because the first thing I remember the airplane came, I never saw a civilian airplane until 1976, (19)77 actually when I came to the United States. That is the time I saw, every time I saw, and if you looked the Kurd, it has to come from Iraq and from Turkey but as soon as they see plane they always look– 5:25 EI: Yeah, I mean I remember my childhood. 5:27 DS: Because you look at it, when they going to become start bombing them, [laughter] and we did every morning like three in the morning we move up from the village because we know the plane is going to come bomb the village. 5:40 EI: So, like there was always threat like that? 5:43 DS: Always. From sixties, since I come to the United States in 1977. So, sometimes they made a peace agreement for few years from 1970 to 1974, that was the only time– 6:00 EI: Okay, you said peace agreement like was there institutional power in Kurdish region. 6:08 DS: Right, they made the peace agreement and there was supposed to be autonomy, semi autonomy but even though there was no airplane but I mean the military, it was good some time and sometime it depend which area you go. 6:24 EI: Okay. 6:24 DS: Like at then I went to Erbil a couple of times but sometime the police stopped you for no reason. say give me your ID, they look for an excuse to put you in jail. 6:45 EI: So, did you to school there? Or in Erbil. 6:51 DS: No, I went to, we had elementary school in our village, and I went to General Barzani’s children school– 7:01 EI: Was there school like that? 7:02 DS: Yes, it was, Barzani was very curious about the school. 7:07 EI: Okay. 7:07 DS: So, if most time some young people leave the school they say we going to join revolution. He says no, go back study your study because when we get our independence we need engineer, we need historian, we need doctors, if you do not study we have to get it from other place, so he pushed people and even some time one person had to teach three different, four different classes. 7:33 EI: How was the Education there? 7:35 DS: Actually, the revolution time was better right now. 7:38 EI: Yeah. Was it in Kurdish or Arabic? 7:40 DS: It was in Kurdish. 7:42 EI: Even that time? 7:43 DS: Even then it was in Kurdish. We had, our teacher did had to come translate everything ̶ 7:47 EI: How many school were like that? 7:49 DS: All over, all of them in the revolution we study one Arabic course but because I never like it, why we had to study Arabic, they come kill the United States why we study this. You know I did a mistake I wish studied Arabic language but I did not because I hated it. 8:05 EI: It was the opposition. 8:07 DS: It was the opposition and you know you are a kid, every day you had to wake up and the airplanes coming bombing you, and you know. That is why we hated them, the Arabic language. 8:19 EI: So how about the family? Like your father he was part of the revolution? 8:21 DS: He was part of the revolution, he was Peshmerga. 8:24 EI: Yeah, so how the life for him? Do you remember? 8:28 DS: The life was– actually he was never home most time, [mumbles] he was never home most time. 8:41 EI: yeah, actually just want to– 8:42 DS: He was never home that much. He go from one place to another place and I was the oldest of the family so I had to– 8:51 EI: So how many? 8:52 DS: It was eleven. 8:54 EI: How many of them? 8:57 DS: Four boys and seven sisters. 9:01 EI: Okay, typical Kurdish family. 9:02 DS: Typical. So, I was the oldest in the family and some time when my dad because he usually dad is not home so I had to take care of everything so my job was harder especially if you are a boy. 9:14 EI: Yeah, I can imagine. 9:17 DS: In our house usually because in those days you know revolution you do not have a hotel you do not have a place, so our house basically like was a head-quarter for the Peshmerga. They came, sleep, we feed them, my mom make sure they have clean clothes before they leave. 9:35 EI: So, you were completely part of the struggle– 9:38 DS: Completely. 9:39 EI: Like interview with some other Kurds they later participated the revolution, or I mean they were just ordinary villagers, but you were in the political– 9:56 DS: I was not in politic my dad was in politics and we were always with it, we were involved 24 hour/365 days. 10:05 EI: You were conscious for the– 10:06 DS: Oh yeah. They asked you sometime a few years ago we with the Turkish embassy we argue about everything but they did not like me at all, when they cannot stand me, they even said if you come to Turkey we will put you in jail but you know what that is fine but that is not true. Even I joined the Kurdistan Student Union in 1971– 10:45 EI: Where was it? 10:46 DS: It was in the revolution, it was part of K.D.P. [Kurdish Democratic Party] the youth group, 10:51 EI: Yeah, K.D.P. is Barzani’s Party? 10:54 DS: Right. 10:55 EI: And there was another one as I remember, the Talabani’s, what was it? 11:00 DS: P.U.K. [Patriotic Movement of Kurdistan]. 11:03 EI: P.U.K., Okay. What was the main difference between them? 11:05 DS: Actually, if you look at it nothing. 11:08 EI: Like ideological? 11:09 DS: There is no ideology, ideology yeah, they believe in the leftist, they are supposed to be the Mao Zedong, not Lenin it is Mao Zedong-Lenin party which Chinese revolution. They are Maoist, but it was more Iran and British had a hand to split KDP at that time in 64. It was Iran and British was behind it. 11:39 EI: Okay, okay. 11:40 DS: Divide and conquer. 11:43 EI: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, we will talk about regional politics, their role and how you think about it. So, you went to elementary school and high school in Kurdistan. 11:54 DS: Middle school and high school in Kurdistan. 11:57 EI: How was the all students were Kurdish? 11:59 DS: All Kurdish, and some of them. Actually, the people who taught us one of them was secretary general of KDP, he taught Arabic and religion the other one Dr. Mahmoud Othman now he was a politburo member, he taught the chemistry and biology because we did not have a teacher that time, So the political bureau was involved with teaching at the same time– 12:27 EI: So, you got chemical or math all science classes and then Kurdish classes? 12:32 DS: We did not have a lab, but we had the class. 12:34 EI: Yeah, okay. History or? 12:36 DS: History yeah. 12:37 EI: So, what was the main topics in history? 12:41 DS: Most of them was about the Kurdish– 12:43 EI: You were part of the history. 12:45 DS: Most time it was the Kurdish history, and because we had Iraqi history both but basically, they ignored those, they made own booklet– 12:57 EI: But still school had relations with Iraq? 13:01 DS: No. 13:01 EI: No? 13:02 DS: No. It was a hard thing to get a book, science book, history we did not care about it but the science book if somebody bring a book from Erbil city to Kurdistan, I mean that person get caught with the book would get arrested, they were taken to revolution. So, in the most time the whole class had one book and we had to copy and still my hand because I was copying the book all the time. We had to copy all the book. 13:44 EI: The physical conditions were not so good. 13:48 DS: Well the physical condition was good because we were doing exercise– 13:54 EI: No, I mean like the building– 13:55 DS: No, you had to make a building sure first you could the stove off in daytime, well nobody was in the village daytime. But you could not even turn the village [stove maybe] daytime and the plane find out where are the people located because the smoke means people there. So, they bombed it. So, you could not have a light in the night time, you had to cover all the window make sure nothing go out, so that is how they did. 14:30 EI: So, regime power was in Erbil or they were just controlled you from the air? 14:35 DS: Baghdad, yeah, the air the military, the Iraqi military was close to our area too. So, it was Peshmerga. 14:44 EI: But not in the city was there in the city or? 14:47 DS: No, city it was just pressure on the people. 14:51 EI: So, Peshmerga, did they have any legal right or did have they any legal– How can I say? 15:00 DS: With the Iraqi government no. 15:03 EI: No, they were just according to Iraqi court they were illegal– 15:08 DS: Oh yeah. They call them every name you can call. 15:12 EI: Okay like terrorists– 15:16 DS: Terrorists, you know killer, whatever name they find– 15:21 EI: So, have you been to college or University? 15:22 DS: In the United States, yes. 15:23 EI: In the United States, yeah. I want to learn that process, yesterday you told you just had one paper you even did not have citizenship, so how come you did not have citizenship they did not give you or you did not get it. 15:37 DS: No, the Iraqi was, I did not have it. 15:41 EI: Okay. 15:41 DS: So, when I came to the United States– 15:46 EI: So, was it common? 15:47 DS: Oh, for Kurds yeah, for most of them was common. If you are Arab, it was not a big deal you would get the paper, but for the Kurds they were trying to hide the Kurdish population so they did not give them citizenship. 15:54 EI: What was the reason behind that? So, they did not want as I understand integrate, if they really do not want to integrate to other to Baghdad– 16:04 DS: So, I came to the United States with the immigration called lisa pass, one piece of paper your picture is on it and that is it. And when I came– 16:14 EI: What was the year? 16:16 DS: 1977 and before the United States one group was here, fifteen hundred people to the United States before (19)76 was only eleven Kurds in the United States. As far as we know. There were not many. Then we came, we become like a three thousand Kurd in the United States. And it was a big difference and that is why sometime– 16:39 EI: So, what possible reason that you come, just come for tradition. 16:43 DS: Actually, when general Barzani was here after he came to the United States for because he was sick, he asked the United States to take some Kurdish refugee to the United States, and he was thinking to bring the younger people study in here and lobby about the Kurdish cause. 17:05 EI: He had that global view. 17:07 DS: Yeah, global view and I never forget I was trying to study history because I loved history and Masood Barzani, right now he is the president, I said ask your dad, because I call him, I said what thing I should study, and ask him really, I said what do you think I should study, I wanted to study history. He asked me what are you going to study I said history, he said why are you going to study history I said I love history, I said what do you think, he said let me ask my dad what does he think, so he asked general Barzani, he said no, I mean it is his choice whatever he want to study, but study engineering because Kurdistan will be independent and we need engineers to rebuild the country. So, all of the United States, most of the United States actually, I cannot 100 percent but over 98 percent that time studied engineering. 17:59 EI: Not political sciences or social sciences? 18:02 DS: No. 18:02 EI: But it is so common in Middle East I think, because I know from my university in Turkey like most of the students are coming from the Arab countries they are mostly engineers, so I do not know maybe they cannot participate in politics that is why they do not study– 18:20 DS: I think if you study politics I mean engineering could be a better Politian, I always tell the politics science, because you study math and you have to solve a problem, create a problem and solve a problem. Politics science or international or whatever in different major, you are a good writer but you are not a good problem solver. 18:44 EI: Okay. So, you think it is helpful for politics as well? 18:49 DS: It is very healthy to study engineering especially in math. 18:52 EI: So, where did you study? Which part? 18:53 DS: I studied in Tennessee in Nashville, a university called Tennessee State University. 19:00 EI: What was engineering? 19:02 DS: Civil engineering. 19:02 EI: Civil engineering? 19:05 DS: Right. 19:05 EI: How was the conditions there? How did affect your point of view, your perspective? 19:10 DS: Actually, when I came it was great, you know it was totally different, Shah was changed, everything is different, I mean I came from. Well so I lived in Tehran so it was not from Tehran that time was much ahead compare to Tennessee, but coming from the Kurd, coming being part of the revolution and then come to the United States was a big difference. It was a good thing we were not many, but we were united. We were very united we looked our cause first before our interest. The interest of Kurdish nation was always the first and personal interest was always the last. So, make sure we study, we would say while if we do not hang out with each other, we going to forget our language, we try to make sure we speak Kurdish all the time– 20:04 EI: With other Kurdish community? 20:06 DS: Yeah Kurdish community and we always gather in one-person house, it was our house usually or somebody else’s house usually is packed. And it was usually if I am home or not the door was open, people go there and come, it was still countable. 20:24 EI: It is common. 20:25 DS: Yeah, it was common and then we decided, we had this professor that he was advisor for us, he said no you should go study, he helped us to do the paperwork for university, how to apply for and actually it did help a lot, he did help a lot to, how to get the paper because we had no idea how to it, but he did help us. And we went to college, it was a struggle because– 20:52 EI: Did you have any organization there? Like– 20:56 DS: Yeah, we did, we had students we had, and did other thing we created a soccer team, so all the Kurds we always supported in that way we always in the weekend we got together because it was more not just as activity because everybody came to support the soccer team and that is how we raised the money for the soccer team for Adisaf. You make a t-shirt whatever, you sell for 10, 15 dollar, you make some money that go for the community. 21:31 EI: Yeah, Okay. And you graduated there and then went back to Kurdistan? 21:34 DS: I went to after 1988 I graduated I went to Kurdistan for two years– 21:39 EI: 1988? 21:40 DS: Right and I went to Kurdistan for two years, I was there and then I came back to the United States– 21:46 EI: Bad time I think 1988. 21:48 DS: It was the worst time which is the reason I came back. It was right the time of Anfal– 21:53 EI: So, how do you remember and think about Anfal? 21:55 DS: Well, in Anfal I was the only one I could say, no I was not there is another person here, we went to, for Halabja when the chemical, Saddam used the chemical, I went, a friend of mine called me, he has been killed anyway in the civil war between KDP and PUK, but he said let’s do something, he called me I was in Nashville and he was in Washington. So, we went to hunger strike, we came to New York city and we went to hunger strike against Saddam Hussein for chemical weapon. 22:27 EI: You had a hunger strike? 22:29 DS: Yeah for fourteen days. It was a tough time but you know what I never felt that I was a hungry person because I believed in the cause, people would say are you not hungry because I was a good eater, I said no because it was a cause you believed in, so I was, then in Anfal right before Anfal I was waiting to get the visa go to, because that time it was hard to go it was not like just get– so a friend of mine the same person said let’s do a hunger strike against for Anfal, we did it for twenty-four days– 23:08 EI: Where were you at that time? In Erbil. 23:11 DS: No, I was in Washington D.C. 23:13 EI: Washington D.C. Okay. 23:15 DS: And we had a threat from Iraqi embassy, they called a church who were holding the hunger, they told the church if you guys do not kick these Kurdish people we are going to blew up the church, Iraqi embassy called them but it was, and the preacher said. 23:31 EI: You had hunger strike at church? 23:33 DS: Right. And some employee of the church were scared but the preacher said we are doing a good cause, we believe in it and I am going to support the cause, so it was just, but its changed, even in the United States used you used to say I am a Kurd, nobody knew it– But now you say Kurd, they say Oh, where? City? They know it is a big difference. 24:02 EI: Yeah, exactly. 24:03 DS: But I graduated engineering but always use it for politics and some people say listen; if this corner is equal to this one it means this is equal to this one– 24:18 EI: Yeah, there are good politician engineers in Turkey as well, maybe you know Necmettin Erbakan? 24:23 DS: Yeah, did he pass away? 24:27 EI: Yeah. 24:28 DS: When, two. 24:31 EI: Like now our present like his student actually. They were, like he was engineer as well. In 1990 so actually– 24:46 DS: Then I moved, I went to Kurdistan, then in 1991 I moved back to the United States and went to Nashville. Then I said wow Nashville I cannot do that much. 25:05 EI: You went to Kurdistan after Anfal? 25:08 DS: Right, and then I came back to Nashville. Then I said Nashville, I cannot do that much for Kurdish cause I have to move to Washington. This is how I moved to D.C. And I was involved with the KDP political party and then– 25:15 EI: Do KDP has an institution in Washington at that time? 25:19 DS: It always did. A lot of other people trying to create the voice of America but KDP was the one behind it especially general Barzani behind to open the Kurdish service, Voice of America, yes at least you could do something for Kurds open, indeed it took a long time to press on it. Now everybody saying we did it, but we know how it happened. 25:50 EI: Yeah, actually 1990s it is not legal but in practice the Kurdish were more autonomous right in 1990 towards, until– 25:53 DS: Like it is more like independent actually– 25:55 EI: Yeah, it is but until 2000 and then second Gulf War, so what do you think about it? 26:06 DS: I think it was a greatest thing the United States did for Iraqis and especially for the Kurds. They made some mistakes, the state department. 26:18 EI: So, what was, what did Saddam had in his mind at that time like in general toward Kurds or towards? 26:20 DS: Saddam thought the Kurd– 26:27 EI: Because as I remember watching from TV like he always had the gun with his arms or we had a big family and luxury this is why I remember he had really good supporters in the street but was a dictator for me like watch in TV and I think he did not have the nationalist, he was nationalist but not for the whole Iraq– 26:57 DS: No, he was just for his village and just for himself– 27:00 EI: Yes, his nationalism was so local not towards all the citizens of Iraq. 27:09 DS: No, he was even, he was very local even the class, he had very had very low class too. He only– 27:12 EI: As you said he did not aim to mix the Kurds and Arabs– 27:19 DS: No, it was all about Saddam Hussein. Everything was about Saddam Hussein. His hero was Stalin, so imagine somebody’s hero be Stalin. And that is the person– 27:33 EI: Who Stalin like for his all citizens it was different, maybe he would not make discrimination against other nations or something, I do not know but 27:49 DS: But Saddam had it– Saddam had the power and if you can say I do not like Saddam Hussein you will be killed. That was a rule you cannot say anything about the president. 28:02 EI: And he was powerful in the region as well I think. Because his army– 28:07 DS: You know what he spent– Not just army was ridiculous but he spent so much money, and the money he gave to Arab countries in like in different places, if he had spent half of that money in Iraq he could rebuild all the country. But he did not, he just gave it to Palestinian, to Christians in Lebanon, Egypt everywhere, and he just. It was he thought he could be– 28:42 EI: Arab Leader or something? 28:44 DS: Yeah, that was his dream to be Arab leader one day. 28:50 EI: As Baath leader like Anwar– 28:52 DS: That was his thing really. It was not by action it was the reaction 28:59 EI: So, what has changed after 2003? I ask some people like you are an ordinary citizen not as a Peshmerga not as the Kurd, just ordinary citizen, what do you think, what has changed for you? 29:15 DS: For as a Kurd? 29:16 EI: Yeah, as a citizen actually. 29:18 DS: Well it is changed because now I used to had to fly for example, if I am a Kurd living in the United States, before 2003 I had to fly to, and the worse thing is to go to Syria, it was a nightmare. Going throughout, One, and I would never go back through that way in Syria to Kurdistan, and going to Turkey it was ridiculous too, from Istanbul they check you out all the way to Fishxaboor, and everywhere was a checkpoint. Military put a tank in a street somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, they say “Okay, come down, bring all yourself, and dump him in the floor in the ground”– 30:04 EI: In Turkey? 30:05 DS: In Turkey, and for no reason just to say they have power. And then I look one guy it was had two stars, I said you know what, you make me back to Kurdistan and support PKK [The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK; Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê‎], I said the way you treat me every time I come to Turkey, you make people like that. He said you think that. I said I promise you if I go back to Kurdistan, I am going to donate some money to PKK, just because of you. He said I am going to put you in a jail I said you could put me in a jail but you cannot pull the whole nation in a jail. You put yourself in a jail, treat people right, and now it is totally different, there is freedom, Kurdistan is changed so much I mean we had one of the biggest airport in the middle east right now. Erdogan personally came to open the airport– 31:05 EI: Like creating investment, 31:09 DS: Lots of Turkish investment, majority they are Turkish– 31:13 EI: And there are little luxury and there is a middle class actually emerging there. So, you want to, I am really conscious about that like worried about that in other Arab countries there are luxuries as well because of petrol or oil when you come to the investment like the companies like there is always consumption not, they do not produce so– 31:42 DS: Be honest with you, I will be honest with you, the Kurd from Turkey, the Kurd from Iran very hard working, the Kurd from Iraq very lazy working. Because I think it is, they think the government has to, I cannot 100 percent but like 98 percent of the Kurds live in Iraq they have some kind of salary. 32:07 EI: Yeah, from government? 32:08 DS: From the government. 74 to 75 percent of our budget goes to salaries. And we have the laziest people and mostly you know the worker right now they come not from Iraq, or they come from the southern Iraq whatever, but everybody else– 32:32 EI: Yeah, the workers. 32:33 DS: The worker. 32:34 EI: I Saudi Arabia it is the same– 32:37 DS: They act like Gulf [countries], and that is dangerous. 32:38 EI: Yeah, that is why– 32:40 DS: You know if you look at, was the empire Islamic empire, what is Mamluk? 32:47 EI: Yeah. 32:47 DS: And that is how they got empire because they brought so money worker and they got together said that we ran the country, so they, we going to be king, so to me the Kurds act, I think we should watch what Turkey is doing, what Iranian is doing not what the Arabs, because Arabs are lazy people. 33:08 EI: Actually, I do not think that it is cultural– 33:09 DS: It is culture– 33:10 EI: Is it? 33:11 DS: Yeah. 33:12 EI: You think that, okay. For the Turkey there is no oil, and for Iran there is some but– 33:17 DS: No, I think Iran has more than Saudi Arabia– 33:23 EI: Really? 33:23 DS: Oh yeah. 33:24 EI: But still they are not lazy. 33:26 DS: No, Iranian very worker and very nationalist, but the Kurd from Iraq no, Kurd from Turkey they most come to the United States in 1990 after we did, but after a little while they start business and they become successful. And the Kurds from Iraq they talk politics, they do nothing and they always whining. The young generation is different, I could say it was affected by two things, because there were Peshmerga the most time, those who were Peshmerga, so they never worked from fighting, that is it. And then they were either Jash [you know what Jash means]? 34:00 EI: I know, can you explain it more for people? 34:04 DS: Jash were those people who work for the government– 34:10 EI: Iraqi government? 34:12 DS: Turkish government, Iraqi government because all they have a Jash, and they call them in the United States mercenary and they get salary, and Saddam said okay if you do not go join the Peshmerga, here is your salary just stay home, and they never did anything. So that two together really had effect; and some people not from the United States but from Europe and they live on Social and they try to make the same system like in Kurdistan. So, and it is not easy to teach these people to work and even I do not know how but the Kurds sends some scholarship to Kurdish students to the United States, they get full paid, everything is paid from college and I do not know– 35:02 EI: Yes, there is good investments to students I think– 35:05 DS: Right it is, and the thing they do even– 35:08 EI: It is government policy– 35:10 DS: Yeah, and even they pay for the family if they have a family, bring the family and they give them money and they still say there is no enough money, we cannot like, you are here to study you are not here to save money. You are here student. But they always whine and they, I am not saying all of them but they are a lot lazy one. But the Kurd from Turkey and Iran they are very good. And Syria, there are not many of them in the United States– 35:42 EI: Do you think any solution for that? 35:46 DS: Yes, but it would be tough and I recommended to some government but they said if you do that it is going to be uprising, because of you cut off the salary from, let’s say you got to work, what you going to do? 36:00 EI: Maybe it is not time for that now– 36:02 DS: It is not time because some people I mean especially right now Iran have to do that kind of stuff because Iran, because of Syria situation, so Iran would do now they spend so much money in Kurdistan just do stuff, because they call Barzani ally of Turkey, United States and Israel all of that. 36:27 EI: As I understand like now the Kurdistan region has problem with Iran because they have problem with Maliki, they have problem with Syria they are supporters are Iran for you right now. 36:39 DS: And it is Iran because Maliki cannot do nothing without Iran and the main problem right now, see with Iran we always had a problem, as a KDP we always had it but it was right now it is the worse because we support Kurd in Syria, because we are supporting these people and freedom of the Kurd and what they do, they say know, you cannot do that, so this is the problem and what they do they spend money propaganda in Iraq and they are using Maliki to do these kind of stuff and they do a lot of different thing but it is not going to, we are not going to give up on Kurd, I mean when Barzani went to Turkey, Ankara asked him said say are PKK terrorists? Said no it Turkish government sit down with them at a peace talk and if PKK refuse it down with them it is a different situation but if Turkey refuse talk with them how we can– 37:58 EI: What is your treatment, the regional government treatment toward other Kurds in the other parts? 38:04 DS: I would say actually it is great, I mean– 38:06 EI: What do you think about them in Syria, in Turkey, in Iran? 38:10 DS: We believe in as the KRG we believe that their situations have to be solved but we try if they ask for our help to get them between Turkish government and the Kurd we try to help them out and Syria same way, Syria was different, Iran we supported them 100 percent same way and if they came to our, and we have some scholarship in the university just for Kurds from Turkey, Iran and Syria, there are seats reserved for them and you know majority business in Kurdistan especially from Turkey they are Kurds, the big business– 38:48 EI: Yeah, is it not oil companies but small companies most of them are from Diyarbakır? 38:57 DS: All of them is from– 39:00 EI: So, is there political integration between Kurds in Turkey and Iraq? 39:08 DS: Yeah and it is more open if you close the border it is going to be hard to this way, it is more, Kurds being close and if you close the border because if you close the border with Turkey you have no communication with other Kurds but now we have a communication with the other Kurds. I know some families from Istanbul or Wan, she is a singer you probably know her, Fatee– 39:56 EI: The singer? 39:57 DS: Yeah. 39:57 EI: Yeah, I know her– She has a program in TERT 6 TV. 40:00 DS: Right. She is a good friend, and she is from Wan and he husband has a company in Erbil, construction small company– 40:14 EI: Yeah, so there is political integration, 40:23 DS: Yeah. 40:24 EI: Okay. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dasko Shirwani Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/76252f56ad490efa814725f7b1c4f049.mp3 160abfba508ff039465b4a63d9c85147 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4b8924b08448b36c019a891ce6cd457f.jpg 559e1873e4ea0767790c3f3a02bfcb16 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 Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2018-01-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David and Janet Muir Year of Graduation 1967 Biographical Text David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University. Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life." Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Vietnam War; Harpur College – Alumni living in Marcellus, New York; Harpur College – Alumni in Higher Education - Spouses of Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Former Harpur students in higher education; Harpur College – Former Harpur students living in Marcellus, NY 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>. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Subject LCSH Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut 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 Alumni Interviews Interview with: David and Janet Muir Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 12 January 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:01 Okay, so David, please tell me your name, your full name, your birth date, our relationship and where we are. DM: 00:13 My name is David Muir. I was born in 1945 April-April 13--the day after Roosevelt died. IG: 00:29 The day? Excuse me. DM: 00:30 Day after FDR died. IG: 00:32 Yes-yes. DM: 00:33 Died April 12. So I know, I know exactly what the headlines were in every paper in the country on the day of my birth. [laughs] And we are in my home, which is in Marcellus, New York, Dunbar Woods Road. IG: 00:52 Okay, very good. Do you mind speaking up just a little bit? Okay, all right, so tell me a little bit about your family background. What did your parents do? Where did you live? DM: 01:13 I grew up in Western New York. My father was all his life unskilled labor. Worked in various jobs throughout his life. My mother was a homemaker when I was first born. She went back to school to Buffalo State Teachers College, got a teaching degree and taught second grade after that. And so I was not the first one to go to college, but my middle brother, I am one of three boys. My middle brother, Richard, also went to college. He went to Buffalo State and got a degree in Art Education. My youngest brother Tim, decided not to attend college after thinking he was going to go to Harpur College as well, but he- IG: 02:20 Thinking what? DM: 02:21 He was going to go to Harpur College. IG: 02:23 I see. DM: 02:23 But did not. IG: 02:24 But you-you did. DM: 02:25 I-I did, and so-so uh, and I went in, you know, graduated high school in (19)63 and entered Harpur College in that fall on the trimester. IG: 02:39 What were the expectations of you and your family in terms of education? Did they encourage you to go to college? Speaker 1 02:52 Yeah, it was understood my brother, my youngest brother, not going to college was the exception. It was understood all the way through that, that we were going to college. My- I went to high school and that had homogeneous grouping they had actually pioneered at Kenmore. Kenmore system had pioneered homogeneous grouping so that we had blue circle groups, which were the students who were thought to be most advanced, were given more advanced instruction, and I was part of blue circle group from the time I was in junior high right up through senior high. So my expedition so I was surrounded by students, all of whom had the expectation that we were all going to college. And it varied, you know, what their backgrounds were, whether their parents had gone to school. But I did grow up in, you know, in Kenmore, in the school system I was in, and in the particular classes I had, that was everybody's expectation as we were going to college. IG: 04:15 And so why did you decide on Harpur College? Was this your first choice? Or how many other colleges did you apply to? Speaker 1 04:25 I ended up only applying to Harpur. Dean Porter came to Kenmore at Ken-Kenmore West, it was and they had divided into two different high schools. So he came to Kenmore West, where I was going to school, and it was a college night, and I talked to him, and he was tremendously enthusiastic about Harpur College. He was a tremendous sales salesperson for the, for this school. And I had some-some literature about it, and checked on it, and I just decided from that time on, that would have been November of (19)62 November of my senior year, that that is where I was going to go. And uh- IG: 05:17 What-what do you remember? What reputation did Harpur College have at the time? Speaker 1 05:25 It was, I think, just building a reputation. But what-what it did have was a very low student faculty ratio. It had a very high percentage of PhDs on the faculty already, and number of those PhDs were very young. So it- if you read about it, it was impressive. But the joke when we were there is, you know, you would say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harpur," "Harvard?" "No-no. Harpur," but the joke was, yeah, but in 20 years, somebody's going to say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harvard." "Harpur?" "No-no, Harvard." [laughs] IG: 06:03 So what reputation did Harpur College have at the time? DM: 06:08 Just building? I think it had a good reputation. It was the first liberal arts college in-in the state of New York, and I think because there was lots of money going into this. And the Rockefeller years, as I say it-it did not have a reputation that outside of probably New York State, many people would have recognized it, but-but as I say it was, it was building a reputation. IG: 06:40 It was building a reputation. And what did you, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to study? DM: 06:49 Well, yes and no, I-I was sure that I was going to study philosophy, but I did not have a really clear idea what that meant, but that is what I ended up doing. I majored in philosophy and then went on from there to dig it, came up here to Syracuse, and got a master's and PhD in philosophy. So. IG: 07:13 From Syracuse in philosophy. DM: 07:15 Yeah, so-so what I had thought I was going to do turned out to be what I did do. So I guess, guess in a sense, and guess in a sense, I had, I had a clear idea of what I thought I wanted to do, and then I had to sort of discover that it really was what I wanted to do. IG: 07:33 And so when you first arrived on campus, I mean, what- how did it strike you? Was it-it-it [crosstalk] a huge difference from the environment that you were used to? DM: 07:49 Well, the major difference was coming from upstate New York, the percentage of downstairs who were there. That was a huge difference. First time I visited, it was a sea of mud, and you walked on planks because they were just finishing the dorm, set of dorms that we saw. So it-it was not extremely impressive in that way, when I got to campus and-and the- those dormitories had been completed, it was, I guess it was an atmosphere somewhat similar to what I was used to in high school, because, because of the homogeneous grouping, I was used to being surrounded by other students who were highly motivated. And there was a whole college of them. Our incoming graduating average of the class I came in with was somewhere around 63 or excuse me, 93 in (19)63 but it was somewhere around 90-93 was the incoming average. You had a number of people, the people who did not like being at college were people who were very bright. Wanted to go to Ivy League schools. Some of them had gotten in but could not afford them because they did not get financial aid, and they were unhappy because they thought that if they were there, their lives would be perfect. And then there were a whole lot of us who were perfectly happy. IG: 09:24 Did you find any differences between yourself and the students from downstate? Did you think that there were any cultural differences or...? DM: 09:38 Not-not. No, yeah. IG: 09:41 I mean downstream, New York City, and Long Island. DM: 09:43 Well, one of the, one of the things was that a number of them were from the, cannot remember, what is PS program, something which meant they graduated age 16. So there were a number of-of not-not the ones from Long Island, but a number of the people from the city were young, but these were people who became friends right away, as far as--well, still, we were just together at New Year's time with friends from Harpur who have been friends ever since. Of those friends, let us see two from Long Island and the rest from the city. Well, no and one from upstate, one other actually from Syracuse, but met him in Binghamton. IG: 10:46 So how so you have this tight knit circle of friends that you have kept throughout- DM: 10:51 Oh yeah-yeah. IG: 10:52 -your life actually. DM: 10:54 Oh yeah, yes, from, yeah, there-there-there were only, let us see eight of us got together this time because one person who comes regularly had knee surgery, lives down in New Jersey. His wife is not a Harpur grad, and Janet is not a Harpur grad, but, but, but we met. She was, she was a freshman, the same time I was so we entered together. [Janet speaks in the background] IG: 11:27 What was that meeting like? Speaker 1 11:30 Well, I think we met first because we met her roommate, who was at the- IG: 11:37 Reception, yeah. DM: 11:38 The reception, Bev Gross, but Bev Gross came bursting back into their-their dorm room and said, I met somebody else from Buffalo, as if, is it that was the rarest thing in the world? Not only was there one person, but she had met two others [laughter] at the cafeteria. Uh, but we met, I think the-the first thing was Patty's Wake, which was the introductory party that started off the-the semester back then. IG: 12:17 Oh, tell me about that. Because this is a rich this-this is, you know, something that I really do not know. Speaker 2 12:24 Oh, Patty's Wake we got, we got on busses, busses and went in. Oh, I am trying to remember the name of the bar. It was- JM: 12:31 Sharkies. DM: 12:32 No-no. Was not Sharkies. No. Sharkies was a, was a good place. This was a, this was a dive, but it was on the bus route, and so he and so all the freshmen would go Pat- the-the story of Paddy was that Patty died because he studied too hard and-and never had any fun, and finally he just wore away. So this was so in celebration of Patty's Wake. This was the back then the annual first, first thing that freshmen went off campus to do was go off and-and drink. What was it? 25 cent drafts or something like that? IG: 13:10 And did it? Did it happen around St Patrick's Day or...? DM: 13:15 No-no, this was, this was in the first this was in the first week of being here. IG: 13:15 Oh semester, I see. DM: 13:17 Very beginning of the semester, probably orientation week. I do not know it was, it was, yeah, this was the first thing and all, yeah. So freshmen went off [inaudible] so we met there. And-and then we have, we have been together for ever since. JM: 13:37 We actually met in Whitney dorm. DM: 13:38 Okay, did we meet? JM: 13:39 [inaudible] came in and said- DM: 13:40 Oh my god, did she, did she introduce- JM: 13:42 the dining hall [inaudible] DM: 13:44 Okay she introduced, yeah, because I had thought we had, because-because that was the first and Patty's Wake was very first week. Yeah. So anyway, that was so you drank a lot of cheap beer. And everybody you know, all the freshmen over drank, and the 16-year-old managed to get in somehow, and even though they were illegal. But it was 18. Was the drinking age back then, JM: 14:07 it was a dry campus. DM: 14:09 Yeah-yeah. It was. It was a dry campus because the student government kept being told that it was a state rule that you could not have a pub on campus. You could not have alcohol on campus, and then, oh, somewhere second or third year that I was there, some young, some of the-the student government leaders, went to Albany and found out there was not any such rule, and that began the process of bringing the pub onto campus. We mean, there is no rule we cannot do this. IG: 14:49 Janet is on the conversation, which is a wonderful thing. Janet, would you mind introducing yourself so we would- please tell us. your name, your birth date, and you know what your affiliation with Binghamton is, well with Harpur College. JM: 15:09 [inaudible] Janet, actually James Muir. James is my maiden name. I was born March 30, 1946, I went to Harpur, not as my first choice, again for financial reasons, I was not admitted in the fall semester, I- but I was put on a waiting list, and I could go in the summer ahead, if I wanted to, but I did not have, you know, the highest average from high school. I went to a very small school, smaller graduating class than David did. So I was a bit overwhelmed, I would say, by, you know, the whole size and atmosphere at Harpur. But what was fun was we were in the Co-Ed dorm, and at that time, they had the curfews, and so, you know, it was unusual to be able to meet, you know, David and the others, and we had friends in the dorm that would do things as a group, and that was really fun. That was really a nice thing to do, but at that time, they were switching to the trimester, and the course load was very heavy, so I found it overwhelming, which is why I did not stay past the first year. IG: 16:44 Past the first year. JM: 16:44 Yeah-yeah. IG: 16:45 Okay. And where are you from? JM: 16:49 We are from Easter, Elmo, New York, Western New York. David is from the north of the city, and I am from the south, IG: 16:56 I see, I see. JM: 16:57 So we had to go to Binghamton to meet. IG: 17:02 So where did you continue your education? JM: 17:04 Well, when I went back home, worked at Fisher Price toy company, and David and I were married when I was 19 and he was 20. He was still at Harpur just finishing. DM: 17:19 And I still had a year to still had two semesters to go. Speaker 3 17:22 Right. So we lived in Johnson City was it, Floral Avenue? We had an apartment there. I worked at Endicott Johnson while he went to school. DM: 17:35 And then we came up here. I continued graduate school. She worked at Upstate Medical and then decided she wanted to go back to school. IG: 17:45 So what-what did you do? JM: 17:47 I went down at a community college. I graduated from there, and then I transferred into Syracuse University, and I have a master's in English literature, undergrad degree in English literature and journalism. Speaker 3 18:01 Oh, so you remember [crosstalk] JM: 18:04 It took me about 10 years to get back. IG: 18:06 I mean, you were supporting a husband, right? JM: 18:08 Yeah. And when he graduated, I said, “Okay, it is my turn now.” Speaker 4 18:14 And so-so what did you, what did you do in your working life? You were uh- JM: 18:19 I worked in the offices Medicare at Upstate Medical. I worked in business offices at both Fisher Price and Endicott-Johnson. Actually, I started at Fisher Price on the assembly line and-and I said to myself, I do not want to be a lifer putting these together. So I took a test for computer. What do I want to say skills which I did not have? I mean, nobody did at that time, but they brought me into the office, and I worked in their office after that. So that started me in office. IG: 19:00 I see, I see. Well, so as-as married students, you had a completely different perspective on- DM: 19:11 Yeah, we- IG: 19:11 -the college. DM: 19:13 Yeah. Well, let us see. We arrived in fall of (19)63 November, because that was the second trimester. Excuse me, and I went home to Buffalo the first summer. And then when I came back, I stayed right straight through until I had finished. So I actually I am commencement class of (19)67 but I finished my degree at the end of October (19)66 so I was back for my-my commencement in (19)67 but so for the last two trimesters. Janet and I lived on Floral Avenue off campus, but we still had, you know, our friends came over to our house. [laughs] IG: 20:17 So it was, it was a kind of a seamless transition for you to, you know, move from dormitory life to your own apartment. Speaker 1 20:29 Yeah-yeah. It was not, I do not remember any anything in terms of-of any kind of special adjustment. The only thing that was really tough was I had the ideal senior schedule. No class started before noon, but I had to drop Janet off. I- we had to be up before six o'clock because Janet started work at Endicott Johnson. I think it was something like 7:30 and I had to drive her to Endicott-Johnson, drop her off, drive over to campus, get there about eight o'clock and not have any classes until noon. JM: 21:05 It is time to study. DM: 21:07 And-and because most of my friends were either seniors or juniors, they were still asleep at eight. And so I would go down into the common room at Whitney and-and study or-or nap. IG: 21:25 I am curious, how did you conduct your courtship leading to a marriage at a college with curfews, especially for women? DM: 21:36 Yes, well, on-on her-her birthday that that spring, one of our friends came back with a car for second semester, only car among all of us, Alan Gurwitz and my mother had had walking pneumonia when I was in high school, and with three boys, we had to take over doing her chores for a summer. And my chore at that time was ironing, and so I had learned to iron, and back then you did not have wrinkle free shirts. And so I offered to iron five shirts for Alan if he would lend me the car for Janet's birthday. He told me afterwards, if I would told him one shirt, he would have given me the car. Five shirts, he was in heaven. So I ironed five shirts for him, and got the car and we went off had dinner, and then went to see Lawrence of Arabia, which is too long a film. IG: 22:51 Yes. DM: 22:51 Because this was a weekend, and her curfew was not 10:30 which it was during the week, but noon, excuse me, noon. Yeah, midnight, midnight. And so, yeah, noon, [laughter] midnight, and we got, we got to-to the intermission in Lawrence of Arabia, looked at the at the time and thought, there was no way in the world we were going to have a 15- or 20-minute intermission. Watch the whole second half and get back to make curfew. So I do not think Janet ever saw the second half of Lawrence of Arabia for another 15 years, nor did I, but no we- courting, I think is fairly easy on a college campus. If you have a close relationship, you see every you see each other every day. JM: 23:45 Yeah. DM: 23:45 So for that first year, and by the end of the first year, we were pretty much committed to each other. Then we lived in Western New York, so when I went home for that-that summer, Janet was on the south side, I was on the north side, but I was back and forth. You know, all the time I worked at a wholesale florist, which is where my father was working. At that time, he was a salesman for a wholesale florist, and I got a job there, and they would throw out flowers that were beginning to turn a little bit on wholesale level, which meant that they were still really good, because they had not even gone to retail yet. And so all that summer Janet had roses, probably- DM: 24:34 -because they would throw out sprigs. The guy who handled the orchids, as soon as there was one spot on one of the orchids, and they come in sprigs, you know, as soon as you saw one brown spot, they would go out. And we were not supposed to pick them up, but I was not going to let these gorgeous orchids lie in the garbage. So I would pick them up and [inaudible], so she would get sprigs of orchids for that in that summer. JM: 24:35 And orchids. That convinced me. I married this guy. [laughs] IG: 24:40 That is lovely. JM: 24:44 Yeah. DM: 25:02 So-so, and then I went back to school. JM: 25:05 But also because in Whitney, we played ping pong all the time. We socialized all the time, because it was a co-ed dorm. Speaker 1 25:13 Yeah-yeah. The atmosphere, the atmosphere in Whitney, was very different. And of course, this was a different era. You know the- this was a radical notion of having one wing male and one wing female. I mean that, and that was as far as it went. At 10:30 you had the common areas were separated. The men had the upstairs, the women had the downstairs. All of all the vending machines were downstairs. So people would call down if they would hear one of the women downstairs call down, throw down money, and they would get, they would get things from the vending machines and throw them back up. But- and the other interesting thing is that when the 10:30 curfew occurred, a bunch of us, one-one night, sat down, and one of me said, "Okay," right, you know, "Why-why do the women, why do the women have a curfew," right? And you know, what would we think if we had a curfew. So-so remember, this was the (19)60s, when things were being challenged. And of course, by the time we were done- JM: 26:24 [inaudible] early (19)60s. DM: 26:25 This is early (19)60s. This is (19)63. JM: 26:28 (19)63-(19)64. DM: 26:28 And so this is when things are just beginning to be challenged. But-but tremendous change. By the time the- a number of our good friends left. They were in Co-Ed suites, in-in-in, what the-the? JM: 26:50 Hinman [inaudible] DM: 26:52 Yeah, the Hinman, the com- the complex is over there. JM: 26:56 Yeah. DM: 26:56 I mean, when we were there, they none of the, none of this was well- Speaker 1 26:59 And, you know, because of the separate wings, we would have open houses, and you would be able to visit the others' rooms. IG: 27:03 Right. JM: 27:03 Leaving the door open, leaving, what, three- DM: 27:12 Three feet on the floor and a door open. IG: 27:14 So I am, I am interested, how did do you remember challenging any of these rules, or questioning these notions about segregating the sexes. Um, I mean- DM: 27:26 Not there were not any, there were not any major- IG: 27:28 Your-your close friends. DM: 27:30 We talked about it. I do not think there were any. We did not get involved in any actual protests of it that I recall JM: 27:38 How about the boards? They would, they call them, the student- DM: 27:44 Judicial Board? JM: 27:45 Judicial Board to deal with- DM: 27:48 Yeah, people who buy violated curfew, yeah. We were the only dorm that had males on the on that-that panel, because, in every, in every yeah- JM: 28:01 [inaudible] feeling that this was not fair. DM: 28:03 Yeah, you try to be. Yeah. because I served on it for-for a semester. We had friends who served on it. IG: 28:11 So if you had so the judicial board that you served on, how would the complaints or escalate. Who would hear them? What impact would that have? DM: 28:25 Yeah. Mostly it was, yeah. Mostly it was violation of curfew, and you just had to decide. And there were penalties, you know, you had to decide, and whether there was a legitimate excuse, right? JM: 28:36 [inaudible] campus, you would be restricted. DM: 28:39 Yeah, and the- so it was, you know, that I think at that point we thought that it was ridiculous, but at that point we were not ready to-to start protesting. I think that came about just sort of naturally, as I say, by the time we were finishing up, the campus situation had changed tremendously from-from what it was, but it did. It did create for us a unique atmosphere unlike any of the other dorms. Because we did, it was just a group of friends and somebody say, you know, tired of studying, you would walk down to one of the common room, say, "Anybody interested in going see a ball game?" If there happened to be a ball game that, right? You know, basketball game, we go down and-and together, and it would just be whoever was there. And when we got a little bit older, and people, more people, had cars the place, we would go, Oh, I almost had the name of the of the dive, but I cannot remember, we go to Sharkies. Fact, that is where we did not go to the dinner that was sponsored at the reunion. The group of us who were there went to Sharkies because that was, that was the place we-we would go to speedies. Third speaker 29:55 I have a question related to that. So were there any women like in your dorm that rebelled against this idea and took an initiative? DM: 30:10 Not that I recall, I think that, I think there were some complaints about it, but at this point, this was pretty much what the practices were everywhere, you know, was not, it was not, it was not as, yeah, it was not as, yeah, it was not as if it this was something unique to Harpur, you know, I kind of understand. So I do not remember any-any kind of organized protest. I just remember that, you know, people beginning to question it, and- JM: 30:42 It was more restrictive than what I had at home. DM: 30:45 Yeah-yeah. That was something else saying, [crosstalk] yeah-yeah-yeah. A lot, a lot of- for some of the 16-year-old out of the city, it was different, I think. IG: 30:57 How so? DM: 30:58 Well, because they were 16 years old, although, I mean, I have a lot of city friends, and city friends are sophisticated in some ways, and parochial in others. IG: 31:08 How so? DM: 31:10 Well, because they-they are exposed to-to culture in the city of a rich kind. I mean, New York is one of the greatest cities in the world. So you are exposed to-to a richness of culture that you just do not have in certainly any other city in New York State, and in few cities in the world that you can match that. So they have that. But by the same token, a lot of them just know New York City. [crosstalk] So, yeah, so it is you know. So it is you know that there was an expansion of their world to be in upstate New York. JM: 31:51 We took some friends to Western New York, to our good friends farm, dairy farm, and they were like, "Cows. Wow!" Me, "This is where milk comes from." IG: 32:08 I am curious about the youth movement that was kind of growing in momentum in around that time, (19)63-(19)64. Did it have any influence on you? You know, rock and roll was beginning, um or...? DM: 32:30 Well, the-the actually- IG: 32:33 Sexual freedoms, drugs, that was all in the air, that was kind of filtering through- JM: 32:38 And Vietnam. IG: 32:40 -and Vietnam, which I will [inaudible]. Absolutely. Speaker 1 32:45 The theme of our orientation, which was chosen by the upperclassmen who ran the program, was all the orientation was completely run by students, as I recall it, but their theme was, do not think that at your age, you have to now know what you are going to do for the rest of your life. Take your time. It you know who says you have to be done in four years, you can take as much time as you want, take a take a semester off, take a year off. Do right! If you are not sure, find out what you want to do. And three years later, you could not do that without finding yourself in Vietnam. So it was a tremendous- that was, that was one of the biggest changes, was that, all right, I mean, the-the war in (19)63 was-was not anything yet that had had really was affecting people. Yeah, I had a good colleague who graduated from West Point and was over there as an advisor in the early days of Vietnam. But I-when we went on the campus, that was not an issue. It became an issue. As I said, it became an issue of, I was reclassified one a three times, but never went. IG: 34:09 I am sorry. DM: 34:10 I was reclassified one A, which, right, which meant immediately draft eligible three times, but I was never drafted. I was as I finished up at Harpur in the fall of (19)66 and I was immediately reclassified one a I challenged that I was going to challenge it as an objector because I did not agree. I did not think we should be in Vietnam. Changed that to arguing that I was class of (19)66 not class of (19)67 because even though it was my commencement class, and if you were (19)66 on and you were accepted to grad school, you continued to get a student deferment, and my draft board accepted that argument. And so I was defied that gave me my deferment until I finished grad, graduate, grad school. And then I forget how it came that it was the three times but-but by the time I finally was draft eligible, they had had the lottery system, and they never got to my number. They were nowhere near getting to my number. IG: 35:27 I am sorry- DM: 35:28 They never got anywhere near my number. They- the war was winding down. Then I finished my graduate work in (19)71, right? And so I never had to. I-I had to face it in the sense that I went through a I went through a physical in Buffalo. I got called for a physical. Went through a whole physical. JM: 35:50 And a lot of soul searching. DM: 35:52 Oh yeah, because I did not, because I did not, I had pretty much decided I would not, I would not serve in the war, because I did not think that it was a war that we should have been in. And so- Speaker 4 36:05 Was that, was that a common feeling among your friends? DM: 36:09 Yes. IG: 36:11 On campus? DM: 36:12 Among the friends that we were just with or get together with regularly, two of them were-were graduates of-of (19)66 and-and they got their-their deferments and managed not to go. One of them got his medical degree and served in the Public Health Service out in Arizona with the Native Americans. But of-of those group, one way or another, none of us ever ended up going to Vietnam. Another one was a conscientious objector, but racist and atheist, and his draft board rejected it because he did not have a religious affiliation. He refused. He refused induction. Was a fugitive from justice for two and a half years, without them ever pursuing him. He- his first wife, and he decided on a divorce because she, although she agreed with him, she did not want to, you know, continue that it was an amicable divorce. But they were, you know, they were also a Harpur couple. He continued on his own. He ended up in, I think it was in Philadelphia, at a Quaker protest, sit down protest, and when they checked his record and found out, all of a sudden, they put cuffs on him. Off he went. He had to go to but when his case came up, the judge looked at it and said, "This is the most arbitrary decision I have ever seen by a draft board," because he had, he had documentation of his conscientious objective status, and they just rejected it because he had no religious affiliation. So after all of that right, he was, he was free, and the case was dismissed. But all of us, all of us, that was, I think, the-the largest issue, and I, none of us favored the war, and all of us, through good fortune, were able to avoid service. IG: 38:32 And yet you grew, you probably experienced a very pervasive sense of anxiety, and that that really had an impact on your personal lives. DM: 38:45 Yeah, that, yeah. Once I once I was given the, once my draft board accepted my status, as long as I was in graduate school, my anxiety, well, I actually was not, I think I got reclassified as I when I completed my master's, but they immediately reversed that on the basis that I was continuing the PhD program, that there was no, there was no break in my- in my graduate school. IG: 39:16 Right. DM: 39:16 So I had to, I had the master's degree, but it was, it was continuous graduate school, and so that was, I think, the second time. But that did not, that did not upset me, because at that point, I think I pretty much knew that it would be automatic, that I could write, that I could get it. So the most tension we had was when I was first reclassified, and we were- IG: 39:40 At Harpur College? DM: 39:41 We had just finished Harpur College. Actually, we were up here in Syracuse, because I, and I cannot remember was-was the reclassification come when- JM: 39:58 I think it must have been up here in Syracuse. DM: 40:03 Yes, it had. Yeah. JM: 40:03 Because we were here in (19)67. DM: 40:03 Yeah, but, yeah, but-but as soon as I, as soon as I graduated in (19)66 so it may have been, it may have been, it may have been November. It may have been November, December. I think it was November of December. And we were still down in Binghamton, yeah, was right after out of Harpur, we were still living in Floral Avenue that-that-that was the, that was the greatest tension for those two months. IG: 40:22 So did you feel any support from your professors? Did they shelter you somehow? Did they encourage you to stay in school and pursue your graduate degrees to avoid the draft? Did you feel that kind of involvement from faculty or...? DM: 40:41 When okay at Harpur, it, I do not remember it being an issue within my classes at Harpur. It was an issue when I was in graduate school here and in talking to person who was the chair of the department, he sort of, he did not really agree with me, but he did not say outright that. He did not. He did it in a sort of backhanded way. But so in that one instance, JM: 40:42 But that was in Syracuse. DM: 41:14 Yeah, but at Harpur, I do not, I do not remember being involved again. I was off campus, you know, from the time we were married. And I do not remember any- anything. On campus itself, except that the general atmosphere, pretty much of almost everyone I knew, was that the war was a mistake. So-so that I think that pretty much predominated. I do not know that we knew people who-who really were in favor of the of the war. Certainly none of our close friends were. IG: 42:12 And do you suspect the-the faculty? Speaker 1 42:16 My suspicion would- was that the faculty was, for the most part, not pro war either. IG: 42:22 What do you remember about- were there any influential professors that you remember from Harpur College and that they took a personal interest in you and your career? DM: 42:35 Yeah, the very first philosophy course I took, still not really understanding fully what philosophy was-was-was from, and by the name of C. Wade Savage, yes, because he went by Wade. And by the- my first philosophy paper, I got a D minus, minus. He did not fail me, but I ended up getting an A in the course. And he wrote a really nice note at the end, saying, you know, because I had let him know that, you know, that this was, you know, this is something that I really thought I wanted to pursue, and I had other people were writing philosophy papers- were coming and talking to me and writing their papers. And I-I started out very poorly, but he wrote me an encouraging note. And then I, there were two others that I took most of my courses from somebody else who did not use his first name. Thomas was his first name, but he went by Patterson, T. Patterson Brown, and who was and very young, Brown was published when he was an Amherst- at Amherst as an undergraduate, and I think got his PhD from the University of London at age 24-25 and was hired. And then Emilio Roma, who also was very young. So these were all people who were only six, seven, maybe eight years older than I was, who were there and I got encouragement. In fact, Roma had what I thought was the ideal life. He lived with his wife in a farm house across the border in Pennsylvania, because I did my senior thesis with him and-and I was finishing up over the summer semester, and he was not teaching the summer semester, so I-I drove to his house to go over, go over it with him. And he had two absolutely beautiful children living in this rural setting, you know, as a professor of philosophy, and I thought, what a wonderful world, and he died young. I cannot remember now how many years ago, but I remember seeing a notice that- IG: 45:08 Do you think he might have been a role model for you, that- Speaker 1 45:14 I certainly-certainly the he had. What for me was, an ideal life, you know, as because, as a philosopher, if you do not teach, they do not hire many industrial philosophers. [laughter] So-so-so yeah, so, so he had, yeah, and I got encouragement from him. I got encouragement from Brown. I took a couple of courses with Brown where there were only junior level. There were only four or five of us in the class, so it was a lot of one-on-one discussion. He was the one who had me go to Syracuse. Brown encouraged me to go on to Syracuse because I was, I was interested at that time in philosophy of religion, but at that time, philosophy of religion was sort of dying out. And he said, "Yeah, well, you got Austin at-at Michigan," but he said, "I would not really go there." He said, "Better go someplace that has a really solid foundation in history of philosophy. You are better off building on that and then you can specialize later." And he said, "Syracuse has a, has a good program." So I was accepted into three different programs, but because I was finishing in the beginning of November, nobody had money, right. Everybody said, “No, you can apply, but you are not going to be able to get financial assistance until the following fall.” And so one of the three places I was skeptic to was San Diego, University of California in San Diego, North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Syracuse, all accepted me. All said, you know, you can apply for financial aid, but we are not going to have any available. So- JM: 47:18 Neither one of us came from wealthy families [crosstalk] DM: 47:21 So we were not going to go all the way out. We were not going to relocate that far without any guarantee. So we came up here to Syracuse, and I was on finance. I had NEA fellowship, and I had a I got a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship, so I finished without having to pay a cent in-in tuition, except for the first semester that I had to go in and back then that was affordable. IG: 47:50 Well, I have this question, actually two questions. But first of all, what was the emphasis of the philosophy department at Harpur College of the time? Did it have a focus on the philosophy of religion, or what kind of philosophy were you studying? DM: 48:12 I was, I was taking a smattering of courses. I do not know that I thought of them as having any emphasis, mainly because, remember, there was no, there were no grad programs. And if you have program in philosophy, it was geared for graduate programs. They were building one. In fact, the joke used to be retired studying, let us, let us go over the Esplanade and look for the graduate student. I do not remember how many. I remember only one ever being identified. So, you know, they were just building grad programs. So Harpur was pretty much a, you know, the range of courses, and I think, if you were majoring in philosophy, they expected you to take a range, and you might find something that you were mostly interested. I did- ended up in esthetics with Roma. Brown taught philosophy or religion, and as I said, he sort of discouraged me from pursuing that. But again, saying that, rather than pursue anything immediately, you know, pursue-pursue, general background history of philosophy, because that gives you a foundation to go any-any direction you want. IG: 49:30 You had a very important experience in your first philosophy class from you know, you were- you did poorly on your first test, and then you completed it with flying colors. What do you think what changed you and what did you learn from that first course? Do you recall it at all? DM: 49:55 Well, it was, it was, I think that it was simply a matter of-of focusing differently, on-on the issue. I cannot even remember exactly what I had done wrong in the in the first one, that was such a disaster. But again, just, I think, I think being in class, engaging in the classroom discussions. I think getting encouragement through the give and take within the classroom is what probably brought me to, you know, to doing better. IG: 50:36 You said, you said, when you first came to Harpur you had no understanding of what philosophy was, but you wanted to study it. What did you learn in that first class about philosophy? Why did it open- DM: 50:52 Well, I think that it involved [crosstalk] it involved critical thinking about important human questions. That is, that is because I spent my-my career teaching and teaching on a community college level. So I was teaching freshmen and sophomores, and so what I did for my whole career as a teacher of philosophy was to focus on how to develop critical thinking skills and apply those to the questions that human beings find, find most important. So I think that became my-my emphasis from the time I you know, from-from Harpur College on and right-right through my professional career. JM: 50:53 Excuse me, but your classes, what was the class size? And you are talking about the give and take of discussion- DM: 50:53 Yeah. JM: 50:53 -and that depends. I mean, I remember the student ratio was very good, right? And so your classes were very small. DM: 51:29 Yeah. I think the biggest class I probably had in philosophy was probably no more than about 25 students, and a lot of them were-were smaller, as I said, I took several classes with-with-with Patterson Brown, that there were, you know, six, seven of us in in the class. And, of course, there you get, you know, it was, it was very-very immediate, give and take. JM: 52:18 When you get the lecture hall experience- DM: 52:19 Yeah, vastly, [crosstalk] different yeah. JM: 52:20 -different than philosophy, DM: 52:25 But- Speaker 4 52:27 Small classes. And did you have an occasion to discuss the ideas that you learned in class with your classmates and- DM: 52:37 Some it was interesting. None of, none of the close friends of mine were philosophy majors. They majors in lots of different things, chem major, bio majors. They went on- JM: 52:49 Psychology majors- DM: 52:50 -psychology majors- JM: 52:51 -math majors. DM: 52:52 Yeah. So no, what most of my discussions were when people found they had to take a philosophy class. Friends of mine who were not into philosophy would come and talk to me about-about that, and I would- I was able to help. I think some of them JM: 53:12 And your roommates saying "David, you are not [inaudible].” DM: 53:15 Oh yes, I remember there was a running joke roommates or various friends would come into the room and when I would be lying back on the on my bed, say, "Do not you ever study?" And I say, "Yeah, I am." But- IG: 53:35 So did- DM: 53:36 Actually, that is true, because before you write a philosophy paper, a lot of it is simply the you know, the working out through your head, what you know, what-what-what you are going to do with it, but, but that was a running joke. IG: 53:50 So do you credit your professors at Harpur College in really giving you the foundation for your future career? DM: 54:01 Oh, yeah-yeah. I-I thought I had a wonderful education. I think all of the good friends that we have all considered that they had really solid-solid foundation from-from Harpur College. I think almost all of us are proud to be graduates of Harpur College. By the way, one of, one of the people who was there when I was there, was there when we came back for the trimester thing, Anthony Preus, I do not know if he is still there or not. Professor Preus, Professor Preus, he was in. He ancient-ancient philosophy was his-his area, JM: 54:25 Which is one of the areas that you I went into. DM: 54:49 Later on, yeah, but as I say there, I touched on various things. The only thing that I specialized at all in was I wrote my uh, senior thesis in esthetics. But for the rest of the time, it was just touching on lots of, lots of different periods of the history of philosophy in the different areas. You know, I took a logic course, I took an ethics course, and Third speaker 55:12 So you were into classical thinking, classical- DM: 55:20 Well, I have Third speaker 55:21 Plato? DM: 55:23 Yeah, when I ended up doing my-my-my doctorate in-in Plato, on Plato, on Plato's esthetics, actually, so, so. JM: 55:35 But you used the Socratic method in your teaching. DM: 55:37 Yeah [laughter] IG: 55:41 Did you discuss what you were learning with your wife since you were living off campus? Did you how do you remember him during this period? Speaker 1 55:54 I do not know. It is hard to say I remember one of the things, not while he was at Harpur, but when he was working on his dissertation, going to the beach while I was in at work. DM: 56:06 That was my master's thesis. [laughter] I had a, I had a summer in which I was all of my courses were paid for because I was on a fellowship, and it covered the credits for my master's thesis. And so I was registered as a full-time student for all those credits, but my task was simply to write my master's thesis, and I would drop her off at work, and I would drive to Green Lake State Park, [laughter] spread my blanket on the beach and get out my books. [laughs] And if, if a friend of ours had not come back and needed to be driven around looking for a job, I would have actually completed it at the beach. I was had almost written the last part. JM: 56:57 I also typed his papers. And then when it came to his PhD, I said, "No [inaudible], I am not going to type your PhD." IG: 57:05 So you know, were there any women in your philosophy classes? DM: 57:15 Yes, one I remember by name Laurie Billing, because the person who was most influential in my undergraduate was Patterson Brown. And Patterson Brown was married. At the time, he divorced his wife and he married Laurie Billing. [laughter] So yeah, and Laurie and I used to sit around and talk about because we- she took a number of courses from Brown as well as I did. So we knew each other from a number of different courses. So she and I would, you know, would talk over the material in the courses on a regular basis. IG: 57:57 At that point, there were really no rules about professors dating their students. Speaker 1 58:05 I think there probably were rules, but since he divorced and married her, I do not know that there was- IG: 58:09 Yeah. DM: 58:10 -I do not, I do not know. I do not know if that created problems. He had, he had real problems after I left. He ended up leaving without finishing a semester. And friends of ours found him in their suite, asleep on a on a couch one-one night. So what happened with-with him? I do not know. I never got a full-full account. I think it probably was a case of a whole lot of success and pressure from too young an age, because I think he completed his PhD at London by age 24. IG: 58:53 You completed your PhD by age- DM: 58:55 26. JM: 58:56 -26. DM: 58:56 But the 20-24 is-is, you know, because he had, he had expect- JM: 58:59 He probably had a lot of pressure. DM: 59:00 Well, he had expectations because he published as an undergraduate. IG: 59:08 Right. DM: 59:09 No, so-so anyway, that that I do not know what, what happened to him after that, and I asked once, and somebody else did not know either. IG: 59:23 Were there any international students in your philosophy classes? Do you remember any students of color? DM: 59:32 Not there. IG: 59:33 International from anywhere? DM: 59:37 Yes. Well, yeah, there was from Africa. I never got to be a close friend of his. Our other friends did. Who knew him very well. He went back. He was part of political and I am even blanking on his name. But you know, friends, yeah, you probably have because you. You have interviewed Jeff and Jan Strauss, and they were, they were close friends of his, but again, because I think he became a close friend of theirs at the time that we were off campus. And so I knew him, but very- I did not know him well as they did, and-and- Speaker 1 1:00:21 That was the difference, I think, between when we were there and our daughter went to Harpur, and graduated from Harpur, well, from Binghamton, and she went there for the diversity and, and I think that it built up, you know, over the years- DM: 1:00:40 Yeah. JM: 1:00:40 -but I do not recall it being, I mean, to us, diversity was all these Jewish friends DM: 1:00:47 for her, for her. What was really interesting, though, is- JM: 1:00:50 I came from a rural area that there was one Jewish family, no blacks. It was very, you know monoculture. DM: 1:00:57 Yeah, but my high school was interesting because even though we- I was, you know, in upstate, you know, North of Buffalo High School and was huge, my graduating class was over 600. I went, I went to eight graduation parties as a senior, seven of them were in homes of Jewish friends. So and, you know, I was raised as a Catholic so-so going down to-to Harpur, where there was a very high percentage of Jewish students, to me, was not unusual at all, but for a lot of upstate rural New Yorkers, you know, the that-that was a difference, but-but well, and you know, and just you know, there is, there is, there are differences between upstate and downstate, but never-never, never, any that that we found troubling or bothersome, as I say, you know, these are, these are these are friends we have had ever since. And, yeah, and, and I do not ever remember any clashes of that, of that sort. Again, it was, it was the beginning of open mindedness. IG: 1:02:19 How about your family? How they, how do they look upon you, the philosopher, their son, the philosopher? Speaker 1 1:02:27 Well, my father never quite got it right. I had to constantly correct my father on it. My mother, my mother idolized PhDs, so the fact that I got one was-was something that was tremendously important to my, to my mother, so that you know that-that, I guess, was, was, of yes, as I said, of tremendous importance that my parents were in the as I went off to school, my parents were in the process of getting divorced, and that is another real good friend of ours, also from Harpur days, who lives in Larchmont. She is right across the tracks from Larchmont, but she and I formed a close bond because both of us had family tensions that we were really happy to be at Harpur because we were away from those family tensions. DM: 1:03:34 Well, that is part of the reason we got married so young, was David did not want to go home, and I did not want to be home. IG: 1:03:41 So you know, during your time at Harpur College, during your years, what changes did you see the campus go through the physical campus? DM: 1:04:00 Yeah, well, they started the building. Let us see they built the- JM: 1:04:03 The camps in the woods. DM: 1:04:06 -the administration tower went up. They actually, they were just building the-the ones down the hill, when we first started, when-when we were first there, there was only one dining hall. It was Newing when they when they started the second one, most students called it brand Newing. The-the dorm complex opened, I think, the second year, which was the one by Lake Lieberman and-and my story of Lake Lieberman is different from everybody else's story about Lake Lieberman, so I do not know what the real story is, but my story about Lake Lieberman got his name because a bunch of student government people over the summer wanted to name the lake they went randomly through a list of students. Finger landed on Elliot Lieberman. He was not attending that trimester, so they called him up and paid his bus fare to come in, up, dedicated the lake to him, and then threw him in. And Lake Lieberman was just that. I do not even know if it is filled in, it is just a pond anyway, that is that is the story I heard of how Lake Lieberman got his name, named for Elliot Lieberman, and he was special invitation. He was a student. He just was not attending that-that semester. But you know that by the time I was the commencement, we had friends who were in, you know, in the-the new dorm, complexes that were being built when we first started there. You know, it had the shape of the brain, and there was nothing to the- let us see, that would have been the south off the top of the brain. That was just all woods. In fact, I used to hike through that. That was, it was I started that as a, as a habit when I was in high school. I just go out for long walks as a way of relieving tension. And I would just wander off over that hill and through-through the woods, sometimes even at night, just, you know what, if it were clear enough that you could see where you are going. So, so that is all champion. You know, what was all wilderness now is all, is all developed. And then, yeah, and then, then we, you know, we had the-the Esplanade, which was the site every year of the stepping on the coat ceremony, which you probably, if you have interviewed other people- IG: 1:06:46 Yes-yes. DM: 1:06:47 -which was- it would be, you know, there would be one, one person who was formally discarding the coat. And then they would, and it would, I it was either April 1 or the first week of April. But anyway, you take off the coat, and then they would recite one that [citing in old English], throw it down and stamp on it. And that was the-the official start of spring was-was the stepping on the coach ceremony? IG: 1:07:25 You went through enormous changes during your undergraduate career, personally and intellectually. And how did you- at the end of this period? How did you begin- did you have any How did your perception of where you came from, of yourself change during this period? DM: 1:07:49 Oh, I do not know that. I do not know that I would say that there was, I do not, I do not think that I went through anything during that time that I would call a major change. I think it was just a sort of steady progression of who I was from the time I was in high school, right through my undergraduate, I formed friendships. I had formed strong friendships in high school. I still were getting together with a couple in a couple of weeks, he and I have been friends since seventh grade, and so, you know, I do not know that there was any major change, except, of course. JM: 1:08:45 No, I was thinking, you came in join Newman Club. DM: 1:08:50 That, okay, the major-major change was probably my religious beliefs. The first thing I did was join Newman Club. I was up here in Syracuse the first week that I was on campus at Harpur, because I came up with somebody they wanted, they needed somebody to represent Harpur College's Newman Club at a at a statewide Newman Club mentioned, and I came up here for that, IG: 1:09:18 And the Newman Club was after Cardinal- Speaker 1 1:09:21 No, yeah, that yeah, that is, yeah, that is the, that is the campus-campus Catholic youth student organization. And so I, that was the first thing I joined. By the end of the-the first semester, I told the head, the- then president- JM: 1:09:42 John Phillips. DM: 1:09:43 John Phillips that I was dropping out of Newman Club because I was no longer a Catholic, and he knew that I was going with Janet, and he told me that it would never last, which is why we are still like. Other, yeah, which is why we are still together. It is just despite John, [laughter] I was not let him be right, but, but that and I went from that, I mean, you know, we have talked personally, I went from that to-to having no religious faith at all. I- religious skeptic. Even though I taught philosophy of religion for 20 some years, I would never let them know where I sit. I wanted them one day to be sure that I was a firm theist, and be sure the next day I was an atheist, and the day after that, because I wanted them to think for themselves, and I wanted just to introduce them to the give them the tools by which they could do some serious critical thinking about it, but that my own serious critical thinking just led me to doubts. And doubts are not things that you choose. Doubts come just as you, as you entertain them and-and once they-they become that way. I mean, if you doubt a person, a person's integrity, you cannot choose. IG: 1:11:13 No-no. Well, how did these doubts arise at you know, from-from this early period in your intellectual life? DM: 1:11:24 I think it had, I mean, I think that I chose philosophy simply because what little I knew about it was that it was asking, you know, asking questions. And so the doubts-doubts come, which is why so many strict fundamentalists do not want questions raised. JM: 1:11:49 And your grandparents, your grandparents growing up? Speaker 1 1:11:53 Well, yeah, I grew up in a very interesting environment, because my-my grandparents were people who were Protestant and thought of all Catholic as papists, but my father had been raised as a Catholic, and so my mother converted and promised that the children would be raised as Catholics. And but when I was with my mother's parents, and that was really close to them, I was born when my father was in Tinian in the war, and so I was born into their home. And so she taught Sunday school, and I would be as a little toe head. I would be, I would go along with her to Sunday school. So I, you know, [crosstalk] I was exposed since then JM: 1:12:40 -in the sense of, you know, why would my grandparents go to hell? Speaker 1 1:12:45 Not-not then, not, then I raised. My questions actually were raised when I first had lots of Jewish friends in high school and-and it seemed to me absolutely absurd that they, you know, the- my good friend Bob and I, who were Catholics, were saved. Our friend Dave, who was Protestant, had a smidgen of a chance, because he might come, he might come around. And our good Jewish friend Dick was, you know, he did not have a snowball's chance in hell [laughter] of ever making it, and all of this just seemed ridiculous to me. IG: 1:13:23 Right. DM: 1:13:23 And so my question, my questioning came about, religion came from-from early on, and then when I went but-but I was still, I was still a firm believer when I went [crosstalk] JM: 1:13:33 -into philosophy. DM: 1:13:34 Yes, yeah-yeah. Those are the, those are, yeah, those are the basic questions. And people still ask those questions. I mean, philosophy, what the earliest philosophers are asking those questions? Plato was the first one to develop a theory that there is an immortal soul. I mean, that is comes out of Greek philosophy. Does not come out of Judeo-Christian tradition. It is integrated into it much later. So-so those, yeah, those, those were what led me. So I think it was, it was just that experience, the continuing of the experience I had. I have been tremendously fortunate in the friendships that I have had throughout my life, people I would trust implicitly with, you know, with anything important to me and to have had so many from high school through college to now, has just been-been wonderful. IG: 1:14:32 Did you keep in touch with any of your professors? DM: 1:14:38 No, as I say once I came up here, Brown, shortly thereafter, was-was gone. I think Savage had taken a job somewhere else already, and Roma was the only one who was still there that I had connection with, and I did not, I did not keep up connection with-with-with him. So no, the other person actually was interesting. I was just thinking the other day. Another person who had influence on me was Edmund Wilson [Edward Wilson], who was a black sculptor. Because I found I could take my fine arts requirement by taking a studio art course. And I had always loved to draw, but had never really pursued it, and I took just an introductory drawing course from Edmund Wilson, and Wilson taught me how to look at things and how to conceptualize. And I took, yeah, I took a second course from somebody else who was a shy man. I cannot even remember his name. He was shy. The second course was all art majors, and he would talk to them. And I just felt kind of lost, so I just did whatever projects were necessary to get through it. But Wilson, I- we just fiddle around with drawing for ages. And then when I was coaching, I had a student who wanted to know if she could find a figure drawing class, and asked me if at the college there was one, and I called over it was, and they said, well, one of our adjuncts runs a program over at the Westcott center. So I knew she would not, she did not have transportation get over there. So I-I have been interested in getting back into drawing. And so I took her over there, and I have been doing that ever since. But it- you know, so the drawing has been, is now a part of my life, has been a part of my life. But Wilson-Wilson had a had a real influence, because I thought he was going to teach me how to draw, and he did not. He just taught me how to look and how to conceptualize. And- IG: 1:17:14 Far more important. DM: 1:17:15 It was the key was, and it was something that stayed with me right until I finally had an opportunity to do something on a regular basis, and-and I have been doing that for what, 25 years, I have been going to open figure drawing and-and just enjoying that. So-so yeah, Wilson was- he did a series of I went into his-his studio once or twice. Later, I guess I cannot remember what the occasion was, because I was not taking courses from him, but he did a series called minority man, you know, and as a black sculptor, they were all in wood, and they were very expressive. They were emotional. They-they were figures in emotional trauma just done in-in, you know, in what I, you know, getting tree things, and then just carving them. But they were very powerful. And I saw one of his works in one art history thing that I saw after that, but- IG: 1:18:29 That must have been highly unusual to have a Black art teacher. DM: 1:18:38 Yes, yeah. Speaker 1 1:18:40 Pretty much all one school. Third speaker 1:18:46 How diverse the faculty was at that time? Speaker 1 1:18:48 I do not remember it being an overly diverse faculty, but Wilson-Wilson had a tremendous impact on me because-because he not only was an artist, but he knew how to teach art, you know, and that is, that is, you know, JM: 1:19:01 That is a gift that. DM: 1:19:03 Yeah, that is a gift as well, yeah, and-and he and your grade was on the basis of how he thought where you went, from where you started to where you finished. So there was a young man in there who could not draw to save his life. He would work hard at it, right. [laughs] But Wilson did not fail him, because he worked hard at it, and he was encouraged to do that. The other thing about the difference, going back to how things were different back then, the art studio was open 24 hours a day. The only thing you did not have access to was painting stuff or clay materials, because those you had to pay for. But all the drawing materials, which included, you know, chalks, pastels, uh, charcoal, you know, and drawing paper was there. And I remember one of the projects- IG: 1:20:07 And the doors were open, DM: 1:20:08 -and the doors were open. One of the projects was, I just was not getting it. And so I went over there at, I think, 10:30 at night, and sat down. It was a, it was a pen, and pen and ink still life that I was supposed to do, just a series of bottles, and I had done them, and I, you know, he would go by, and I would look up expectantly, and he would shake-shake his head, no. I mean, he would just say no, right? Actually, we never say no. He just, you know, and I knew that I was not getting it and but I could go over there at night and just work on this on my own. So I went over there, and the bottles are all there, right. And I am looking, I am drawing, no, that is not right. I am doing that, and it is just outlines, right. That is not and all of a sudden, I drew an- oh, right. And I stopped looking at the bottles, because I draw them so many times, I knew all their shapes, and I drew five in a row that I knew he was going to say yes to. Because, again, it is a matter of looking right. JM: 1:21:10 Yeah. DM: 1:21:12 But-but that was the thing. It was those materials were just available at the- at dinner. Only time I have ever put on weight in my life was the first spring semester I was there because I ate two dinners every night. [laughter] My roommate and I had a, had routines going. We played off each other at the table, and group would we go over there early, and a group would sit down with us, and then they would all leave, and we would go back and get a second meal, and another group would join us and go through a second meal. But you could do that. We had lobster tails and steak once a month for birthday-birthday right. IG: 1:21:57 At the cafeteria? DM: 1:21:58 At the cafeteria, lobster tail and steak once a month for- we for special events, they would have a roast beef where they would cut off, you know, you want it from the rare part, right. Unlimited- go back for milk, anything you wanted that first couple of years was unlimited. I had a friend going to Hamilton, who ate nowhere near as well as I did for all the money his parents were paying to send him to Hamilton. JM: 1:22:29 I remember, you know, a bunch of us from Whitney would go over, you know, and he and his roommate, also from Kenmore, at that time, would be doing these routines back and forth. And they were so funny, you know, and everybody was spraying their juice, laughing, things like that. And I remember that. I do not remember the food, except for Blintz. Oh, I could not understand why a Blintz was a dinner. DM: 1:22:55 Yes, they would, they would serve Blintzes as dinner Speaker 1 1:22:57 And bagels and locks, no, that is just no food. DM: 1:23:04 But-but also, when they opened up brand Newing, they had the sandwich lady. And I was- no, I just, I might have gone there once, but the people who regularly went there the sand- is sandwich lady would make up any kind of sandwich you wanted. And you have seen dagwoods, well, people would walk out with sandwiches this high, yeah, okay, that, right? And then that, then, then some of that, right. Another slices, then some of that. [laughs] IG: 1:23:32 Did you take food into your dorm? DM: 1:23:35 I think they were eating those just at the cafeteria that was just said, Just be lunch time ago, and sit at a table, and because it would be tough to carry it, they did not bag it for you. It was not, was not a fast-food place. IG: 1:23:45 The cafeteria was opened certain hours, right? Speaker 1 1:23:48 Yeah-yeah. The cafeteria was, yeah. Cafeterias just-just open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. IG: 1:23:53 What was your relationship with the library? Did you spend a lot of time in the library, or was it open all hours? Speaker 1 1:23:58 I do not remember if it was open all hours. I remember being in the, I remember more in graduate school, because I-I had to, you know, I had a carrel that I had used there, but I remember some very clever graffiti in the Harpur College Library men's room, [laughter] but yeah, the- I do not remember spending that much time in the library, because most of what I was doing was reading primary sources, and those were the books you bought each year. So, you know, if I was not reading commentaries on Leibniz, I was reading Leibniz, I was not reading commentaries on Plato. I was reading Plato. So-so again, was not that grad school level? IG: 1:24:59 Did not the library have these books, these primary materials? DM: 1:25:03 It did as far as I can recall, I never remember anybody complaining that there was something that they could not get. But I did not have call to-to use it that much. JM: 1:25:15 Did you bought them all, right? DM: 1:25:17 Yeah. And back then, books were, books were reasonable. I mean, you know the book-book industry- IG: 1:25:24 How do you how do you think that your classmates from Harpur would remember you? Speaker 1 1:25:29 The only ones who remember me are the ones who still know me. [laughs] IG: 1:25:35 How did they talk about you from this period? How do you think that they would remember you? DM: 1:25:40 Oh, I do not know. I think we all laugh and joke. We were just this last get together, New Year's from an earlier get together when Mark Weinstein was not able to make it, somebody had picked up a badge with his picture from back then on it. And I think the running joke was, well, at least he improved with age. But it was, I do not know. I think that we all pretty much had. I think we are the same people now that we were then, even though Mark Wolraich has had a tremendously important career as a pediatrician, he has, he has written a number of books on dealing with children with special needs. He coordinates a program in right now, out of the University of Oklahoma, that works through the state to coordinate all the services in the state for students with special needs that he organized and put together, but we still rib him the same way we did across the campus, one family across the campus and but it is that it said we establish, yeah, we established an easy kind of relationship of people who are serious when we need to be serious and able to laugh. And I think we, you know, our individual personalities are just developments of what they-they were then. So it is not as so much of thinking how people would remember me, so much as thinking about how glad I am that all those so many of those good relationships I had, them are still a part of my life. Now. IG: 1:27:48 What lessons did you learn from this important period in your life? DM: 1:27:54 I do not know. I think, I think we have kind of- IG: 1:27:56 Covered a lot. DM: 1:27:57 Covered that, yeah-yeah, in general- IG: 1:27:59 But just- DM: 1:28:01 Yeah, no, I think that, as I have said, there was the-the beliefs and-and beliefs I have had about what is most important in life are things that simply developed through the associations there that I was fortunate enough to have good friends. You know, continuation of these, of these good friendships. And so I think that, I think that the- we were open minded to a diverse world. I think that meeting other people who were like that has just established a sort of-of a way of life in which you are critical about things that you think are wrong, but you are open to-to a diverse world of people who-who managed to get to those same places in life by a lot of different routes. And I think that-that started a little bit in in high school, really expanded in college. JM: 1:29:35 I remember, you know, sitting around talking to people about some serious things. DM: 1:29:42 Yeah-yeah. JM: 1:29:42 And, you know, and I think that is came out of that era, um- DM: 1:29:50 Yeah-yeah, no-no topics, no topics seem to be out of bounds. And the discussions that we would have were-were very serious. Whether they are about religion or about politics or about social conditions, or- IG: 1:30:06 Were they ever about the social conditions of women, women's rights? DM: 1:30:10 I think those developed as we went. I think that every woman I still know who is someone I knew back then I would describe as a feminist and-and I had, I had a student, Janet, and I shared a student, you know, went from my class in philosophy to her class in English, came in one day and said, "Dr Muir just yelled at us for not being feminist." And I had not really yelled at him for not being feminist. What I just simply asked him, "How many of you would-would be [inaudible]", this is in the (19)90s. "How many of you would-would say you were feminists?" And very few would raise their hands and I say, Well, you know. And then I would start to explain what feminism, you know, what the early feminism movement meant, and what people would try say and-and talk about, you expect that you can go out for any sport in high school? Of course, you can back then you could not, right? There were not any right. And just try to let them, let them know. I said, yeah, what I said, somehow people who are against feminism have made it a nasty word for young women. I do not understand that. I said, "How can it be a nasty word? Are you against equal pay for equal work? Are you against equal opportunity for in in every profession? Are you?" So-so that was yelling at them, asking, ask him, asking him a series of questions. "Dr. Muir was yelling." But anyway, she was one of the ones I got to, I think it was not yeah, but yeah, it was something that built. It built, I think, you know, it started to build in those years, and it just, you know, it just can continue to build from-from then on. JM: 1:31:59 In short of time, was, I was at Harpur when I decided, you know, to start going back to school and taking classes. I took music appreciation because at Harpur, I had been in a music appreciation class, and it introduced me to opera. I loved Aida, Leontyne Price, and all this music that, you know, I never was exposed to in my family. They were doing Lawrence Welk and stuff like that. But that was what I went back to. And the first literature classes I took was literature by and about women, you know, in the feminist mold and-and I got to teach, and I think it was the last semester I taught her. Last year I taught at OCC. I got to teach a course in literature by and about women. But those things, I came from a family of five girls, and my parents were out of the depression area- era, and they both were interested in going to college, but could not, because they both had to work. And my mother graduated from high school at the age of 16, and, you know, was very much interested in going on to school, and my father wanted to be an architect, so they were determined that all of their daughters would go to college, so there was not a question in my family about trying to go to college. My older sister went to a business school and then dropped out. She was not terribly interested. I went to college and dropped out after a year, which was, I think, a big disappointment to them, but then my next sister, my next sister, my next sister, all three of them went to college, went into nursing, occupational therapy and-and all of that. So growing up in a family of girls, I did not really recognize the lack of opportunity, although when I think back now, there were not any sports for us. And I might have been interested in sports. I now play tennis. I have been playing tennis for 40 years and-and enjoying it, and but there were not those things. So, you know, the feminism, they- was a big thing for me, and I think it started in those years, but I did not capitalize on it until- I did not capitalize, [crosstalk] I went back to college in the (19)70s. IG: 1:34:30 And-and your husband supported you? JM: 1:34:32 Absolutely. And you know, through grad school, there were a lot of couples that Syracuse that broke up because the wives were working and the husbands were in grad school, and they just went different ways. But when David finished his degree, his PhD, that is when I was pregnant with our daughter, and I-I wanted to go back to school. And he said all. Take care of the baby. IG: 1:35:03 How progressive of you. Speaker 1 1:35:05 Well, I still cook all our meals. After [crosstalk] Yeah-yeah-yeah. Because we were, we were married for seven years before he had a child, and then, and then, just as she decided she wanted to go back to-to school, all of a sudden, we found she was pregnant, and-and, but then, yeah, I said, I can I have a flexible- I can manage my schedule, and we can do this and-and-and we did, and made sure that she was able to go back to school. IG: 1:35:38 Well, what concluding remarks do you have? What message would you like to convey to future generations, or this generation listening to your interview? DM: 1:35:57 It is tough, because we came through a golden era that I do not know is going to be repeatable, because with what was happening in the (19)50s, the Cold War, and then Soviets launching Sputnik, and all of a Sudden, huge amounts of money being poured into education, and you combine that with the post war economy, where-where you just had the fastest growing middle class that I think there is ever been, and all of those things coming together for us at just that time, New York State converting their-their colleges into from State Teachers colleges into liberal arts colleges, forming university centers. I mean, Harpur was the first one, but Stony Brook had already begun by the time, you know what, By the second year in or sooner than that, Stony Brook was beginning, and then Albany, and then they purchased [inaudible]. So all of these things are happening at once. We are and I do not see those factors coming together again. We had not to have taken advantage of that would have been a real shame. Everything was there for us. Everything was there for us. But I guess the message would be, look to try to recreate those opportunities wherever you can. It is you- you are not likely to have the same set of circumstances, but we do not want to restrict. We want to-to open up. And I see too many things that are tending toward restricting, again, limiting again. Too many people who are afraid of diversity, afraid of various other things. This was as great a period, I think, as you could live through, and whatever anybody can do to recreate those open conditions, I think that is what they should be trying to do. IG: 1:38:17 Thank you very much. Would you like to add your concluding remarks to this interview? JM: 1:38:27 We have had a really charmed life and-and the fact that our daughter has picked up on a lot of the values that you know, we experience with our friends. We are very proud of her, and that when she wanted to go to college, she looked at Geneseo and she looked at Binghamton. She did not want to go too far, and luckily for us, she did not want to spend a lot of money. [laughter] But when she looked at Geneseo, she said “It is a lot of the same people.” She went to Marcellus High School, which is very small and rural. She said “It is a lot of the same people,” you know, a monoculture of middle class white upstate. And she said, I want to go to Binghamton because of the diversity and-and it was hard for her to go into that big school from here, but she was in Hinman, she was in a suite with, you know, that gave her a smaller cohort of-of students to be with, and she made wonderful friendships, and she had a wonderful experience at Binghamton. So even though it is bigger, she still had a core experience there that was very positive for her. So you know, it is still a great place to go. Yeah, I would say, even though my experience was not a positive one there, I have seen that it was- DM: 1:40:12 There was one thing that I did not that I did not say that-that to me, characterized the- an attitude that is no longer there, because Binghamton went division one sports and-and my understanding was that the President wanted to do it, and the faculty was against it, and as I was against it, in fact, I talked to people who were calling on fundraising drives, and I saying, oh, the most thing I am most disappointed in it was going Division One, because division one and what happened? It was a scandal. Why? Because you cannot build a division one program. Why would you go to a demanding school like Harpur instead of Cornell, right, which is still right, still, it is Ivy League. It still has the name. Why go there right when neither one is going to be able to offer you scholarship, and Cornell has been added a law a lot longer, and they know how to they know how to work the system. And I did not think they could write and what did they have? They had a scandal when we were there. It was Division three. I ran Division Three track until I got married [laughter] and-and it was fun, right. We, we played games on the on the small- it was a van we would go in, right? The coach would drive us in a van. Coach Lyons would drive us in a van, and the basketball team, right. JM: 1:41:41 Harass them. [inaudible] DM: 1:41:43 Yeah, that was, that was, that was that was the cheer we would go down there, "Harass them, harangue them, make them really relinquish the ball." I mean, that was, you know, that was the kind of fun sort of thing that you did. And it was, but it was very different. And because it you-you did not go there for athletics. The athletics were there because they were part of a traditional education. And the people in the in the phys ed department were wonderful instructors. Were great down there when we when we started the- but it was an academic institution, thoroughly and division one schools are not, first of all, academic institutions. If you are a division one, of course, they are never going to go football, thank goodness. But I have a loyalty to SU [Syracuse University] big on Division One, everything, but I really liked Harpur as a division three school. I wish it could have stayed a division three school. I think. I wish they were still chanting, [Harass them, harangue there. Make them. Make them relinquish the ball] at basketball games. IG: 1:42:53 Because that would have kept the emphasis on academics. DM: 1:42:56 Yes, yeah, because then-then- JM: 1:42:58 And sports are for enjoyment. DM: 1:43:00 Sports, yeah, they are, they are, yeah, they are for enjoyment. And you do that, right. You run track because you want to run track. You go out, you know you are out for the basketball team because you want to play basketball. But-but that, to me, was-was what Harpur College was, and I wish it was, was now what Binghamton University is, but it is not. It is not. And that that, to me, is a shame. I think that that is something lost that will never be regained. And I think it is a real shame that, but it is a totally different campus. I mean, you got a school, and you got all these different schools that it was, but still-still, I would love to have seen them have the courage to be a university center and a division and do division three sports. That would have been great, that it would have taken courage, but it would have put them on the map. And I think the best, best way. JM: 1:44:04 I do not know if they have sports for women down there. I really do not have a clue about that, but they did not when we were there. DM: 1:44:09 But they-they-they, they must not. Third speaker: 1:44:11 They have tennis. DM: 1:44:11 Do they have a women's basketball program? Third speaker 1:44:13 Yeah? They do. They have lacrosse- DM: 1:44:20 Yeah-yeah, all the same things, yeah, I will say yeah. But that is- JM: 1:44:28 Now. Third speaker 1:44:28 [crosstalk] tracks obviously. DM: 1:44:30 Yeah-yeah, but-but that-that-that to me, was something that I would have liked to have seen them keep, and it would have been a uniqueness that I think would have-have been a good. So, yep. IG: 1:44:47 Thank you so much. Thank you for a very interesting- DM: 1:44:50 Thank-thank you for having the interest in doing it. JM: 1:44:55 What-what is this going to be used for? (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David and Janet Muir Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Muir, David ; Muir, Janet ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University. Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life." Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-01-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context David and Janet Muir.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-01-12 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 105:00 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/60e1630bc1016f93106ae50ffaccbd1b.jpg 669b9785a8e8ad007d873a3847fffe26 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/71d4d39e9e7bed1ff17940719af0e9f9.mp3 0a7cfabc5cf066ef420eb8d1cef2e922 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Boldt Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of The Philadelphia Inquirer and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980s and 1990s. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of The Inquirer's team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant, and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a Bachelor's degree in History from Dartmouth College."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of The Philadelphia Inquirer and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980s and 1990s. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of the Inquirer's team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a Bachelor's degree in History from Dartmouth College. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby Baby boom generation; Women's Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-War Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Tom Hayden; Linden Johnson; Bobby Kennedy; Vietnam War memorial; Bill Clinton"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":2,"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Women's Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-War Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Tom Hayden; Lyndon Johnson; Bobby Kennedy; Vietnam War memorial; Bill Clinton Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 121:15 Subject LCSH Editors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant (Pa.); Iran—History—Revolution, 1979; Boldt, David--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: David Boldt Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: ND -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:03 SM: The Boomer generations and the (19)60s and early (19)70s is being attacked as one of the reasons for the breakdown of American society. Could you respond to this criticism and comment on the period and its impact on present-day America? 00:31 DB: Oh, boy. Yeah, I could probably write a book about that. Well, you know, I think that-that it is fair to say that almost every institution in our society was kind of torn apart during the (19)60s and (19)70s. Many of them for no good reason, and often rather thoughtlessly and without giving things a lot of attention. You know, you can go through a whole series of things from the breakdown of the institution of marriage to the drop off in the sense of obligations to the community. It undoubtedly became a generation that was—was very much into what we now call 'expressive individualism.' And that basically forgot, because, for the most part, it had it so easy, and had it so easy in a very profound way. That they just did not have a sense of why certain things were done the way they were done. And principle among those is the fact that you cannot have a democratic society unless people are as aware of their responsibilities of that society as they are of their rights. And we basically lost that sense of responsibility. 'If it felt good, do it' was the maximum of the generation. They were brought up by a generation that had been through the Depression and World War II that had really been through hard times. And you know, to some extent, I think the parents of the boomer generation and my parents, I am—I was born in 1941, so I sort of saw them kind of coming up behind me. The parents, of that generation just went to incredible lengths to protect their children against the very kind of experience that had enabled them to succeed. Whether that was getting a good education, you know, establishing a successful relationship with other people, whether it was in the family, or in any of our institutions or universities, with our political community. Keep this [inaudible] 3:36 SM: What has been the overall impact of the Boomers on America? Positive or negative? 3:41 DB: Well, we just had the, I mean, it was all summed up by Tom Wolfe and the "me" decades. We had an entire huge generation dominating, or certainly its elites, as they emerged in journalism, in the media, in politics, in the entertainment industry, that was just totally self-indulgent. Or remarkably self-indulgent, not totally. The question is what was the effect? The effect was to completely lose the sense that rights carry with them responsibilities. You know, when Thomas Jefferson wrote The American Ideal that all men are created with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He was writing that in a frame of mind where he believed that if people pursued happiness, they would regard the chance to be a fully involved citizen, a parent, an effective member of the community at work and in the civic realm as maximum happiness. And for this generation, it became too often, the pursuit of happiness reverted down to the lower nature of man and became a seeking of pleasure through music, artificial substances— basically drugs, sexual experiences, and we just lost that whole enlightenment mindset which is so basic to the to the American faith and to the success of the nation. And the whole— I think the whole experiment became imperiled, because the wretched excesses of the baby boomers. Yeah, I believe that in social history, as in physics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so, you had— not only did this create this tremendous culture of self-indulgent pleasure, but it created its opposite as well— the reaction to it. You know, I have often thought that the antics of the left as much created Watergate as did Richard Nixon himself. It became an atmosphere in which excess was— in which it turned out that Barry Goldwater's supposedly rejected idea that moderation is a— can be a, in certain circumstances a vice, and excess can be a virtue. I mean, he ultimately triumphed! It turned out to be what was believed and it ended up— I mean, many other commentators have written about this. And I guess the most evocative is Tom Wolfe in the "me" decade, which I still think is the most, it stood the test of time and is the clearest, most effective analysis of that time. 07:40 SM: Let us double check to make sure everything is working here. Okay, but you have to admit also that there are probably— let me get out my questions here, so I get a spontaneous feel and the written questions. [laughs] Cannot you say that there were some good things, though, with respect to the boomers, in terms of the fact that this generation ended a war, responsible for ending a war. In my comment— in my interview with Senator McCarthy, I asked him specifically that particular question that if there is not any other generation in American history that had such an impact on American foreign policy. And he said there were other perils in American history but not to the extreme of the boomers and what they did. So, they ended the war, many young people got involved in the Civil Rights Movement, many young people get involved in the environmental movement, for the Earth Day. So, with, do you think the media portrayed them in such a way that it is not doing justice to some of the good things they did? 08:50 DB: Well, that is just flat wrong. First of all, the baby boom generation did not end the Vietnam War. Like it or not, Richard Nixon ended the Vietnam War. And he ended it after defeating the Peace Party candidate George Govern— McGovern—by, I think, one of if not the biggest, one of the biggest landslides in American political history. I mean, it is amazing to look back and see that from 1970 onward, something like 70 percent of the American people were against our involvement in the war, yet somehow rather the antiwar movement, and I think this is unprecedented in our history, the antiwar movement was never able to get it together sufficiently to turn that around. I mean, what they should have done, instead of marching in Washington, which really turned out to be sort of a waste of time and, you know, everybody felt good about it, they really did not do anything. But they needed to do was go out and defeat congressmen who were voting for the war or supporting the war effort. And elect those that were, and they had to get out and elect a presidential candidate in 1972, or 1968, who would have ended the war. The Civil Rights revolution had nothing to do with the baby boomers, except that they-they were in on sort of the victory celebration of it. And that that gave them this feeling that they were both Vietnam, the fact that the Vietnam War was looked upon as a great moral victory of the people who were opposing an unjust war. And we will always wonder just why it was that all those people fled from the communists as they moved into the country, whether they really were all this capitalist dupes have always wondered why it is that the United States is now being welcomed back into Vietnam, in such an open, in such an open armed way as to whether we will always wonder if our perspective on that was-was totally correct. Either when we were for the war or when we turned against it-it was a very difficult situation very nuanced. But turning to civil rights, I mean, the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, when the baby boomers were still in the middle of a, we were just starting college, I guess, or the for the first of them had just gotten to be, just gotten to college, I guess. There were no baby boomers involved in Mississippi summer, which was when you had to really suck it up and go down there and do something that was really dangerous. They were there for sort of the celebrations afterwards. There were no baby boomers on the podium at the Civil Rights March 1963, very few I suspect in the crowd. Baby, the civil rights revolution was won by, as nearly as I can tell, there were no baby boomers on the freedom rider buses. There were no baby boomers marching in Selma. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement had a belief, were religious leaders, were the kind of leaders that the baby boomers would later reject, laugh at ridicule. And so, I have never marked leaders of the Civil Rights revolution lest we forget, we are people like Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy. They are the people I know of who were inside the University of Mississippi, where people like Ed Goffman, who was my predecessor is the editor of the editorial page, he was down there for the Department of Justice. Right? He is a World War II veteran. The basic legislation that brought about the Civil Rights revolution in 1964, brought about the culmination of the Civil Rights revolution, was done with without any conspicuous assistance from the baby boom generation, but they always thought that they had something to do with it, because they were there. What was the third thing that you were getting credit for? 13:38 SM: Well, the environmental movement Earth Day, 1970. 13:46 DB: Well, I do not know. I do not know enough about the history of the environmental movement, to say, you know, to what extent it was, it was successful, it was always had its greatest successes. So, when it was removed from the spirit of environmental Nazism, which characterize sort of the baby boomer-boomer approach, marching in front of nuclear power plants, it was nothing. And when you had people like the Environmental Defense Fund, who were able to negotiate things that actually bring about formulas in legislation that drastically reduced the amount of pollution that was being put into the air, and to clean up rivers, and maybe there are a few baby boomers involved in there. But yeah, I mean, it is the environmental movement gets so difficult to analyze. Did you see the cover story in New York Times Magazine four weeks ago? That said basically, recycling is the most fun wasteful activity that humans engage in. That I will not attempt to recapture the entire thing, but it is- it makes us feel good. And we tell all our kids about all things that have been accomplished by recycling. And it actually turns out that it is not any particular benefit to us that we are not running out of place to put our trash that it is probably environmentally more sound certainly, and I mean, I was just thinking about this the other day, it was big fight that we had to we had to have a trash to steam plan. And I think everybody with a college degree, I think every member of the baby boomer generation in Philadelphia, certainly the college educated part of the baby boomer generation, but Philadelphia absolutely had to have a trashed steam plant to take care of its trash, and it was just kind of the low rent blue collar people of South Philadelphia, a couple of kind of aging crypto Marxists like David Cohen on the city council, who said, no this is not a good idea. Now we have to look back on that whole situation and say, those people were right. We did not need to trash the steam plan, the trash to steam plan would have actually added to pollution as opposed to what we are doing with our trash now. So, I look on the environmental movement as-as being a mixed movement. And, and I guess I should say that I do not really know a lot about who the people were. I have met the guy who was who started the first Earth Day. 16:42 SM: It was Senator Nelson. 16:44 DB: Well, no this was actually a guy named, who got Senator Nelson to do it and he went around, he was doing the 25th anniversary. 16;52 SM: Right. 16:52 DB: So you got sort of petered out, you know, the Earth Day for a few years now. Then they had a big splash on its 20th or 25th anniversary, whatever, whatever it was. And not much. And then in between, you know, the work was done. There are all kinds of ironies to the history of that situation. I will just mention one other one. John Ehrlichman, Nixon's, whatever he was, counsel, was one of the first environmental lawyer, the EPA was created during the Nixon administration. The fact that I will bet if you went around and asked 1000 people today, you could not get more than a handful to tell you that. It was because environmental ism was something that clearly had to be done at that time in terms of providing people with clean air and clean water. And we did it. 17:46 SM: We can agree that women's movement they were that was not late (19)60s, early (19)70s phenomena, as well as the same lines as the Civil Rights Movement. The terms that Laurie scholastic was not. Betty Friedan was not a boomer. 18:04 DB: Guess neither was who wrote. And neither was the woman who wrote the other. Oh, is Betty for Friedan is the feminine mystique. And then there is yet another that you have not mentioned. Yeah, the leaders that were not baby boomers. And the response to it among Baby Boomers has been equivocal, I mean, the feminist movement itself? Well, I, I do not know I have not studied the history of the women's movement that much. I never thought of it particularly as being connected with the boomers. 18:50 SM: This is kind of a long one here. Can today’s generation of youth, which is a slacker Generation X learn from the boomers. What can the boomers teach today's college students? This question is based on the fact that many of today's students often look at the (19)60s and early (19)70s as a period of activism, drugs and single-minded issues. Though many of the same issues remain there are new ones. And the lessons of the past are either not taught in schools or never discussed between the parents of the boomers and today's generation. Please keep your thoughts on the issues and Boomers lives and how they can have impact on students’ eyes today. 19:29 DB: Well, I guess what we are dealing with is the aftermath, trying to pick up the wreckage after the baby-baby boomers have gone through. And I guess in particular, destroyed our educational system came up with this idea that we no longer needed to have standards that would go to pass fail and that would be fine for college courses. We had all these grand experiments that were equally grand failures, open claims restrooms, social promotions. The new math could go on for some time. And we were now sitting around, we were trying to kind of put things back together again. And this is a federal Road A, I cannot remember his name. He is a Nobel Prize winner. He wrote a book called physics for poets. And he works with the Chicago Public Schools, one place where they-they seem to be making some progress, getting things back together again. He said somewhere back there in the (19)60s and (19)70s, we just lost it. I do not know what it was. I do not know what it was the new math, the open classroom. The fact that he says we cannot underestimate the fact that women suddenly discovered that the only career open to them was not they had other careers open to them besides teaching, and that had an effect on education was not compensated for it, I am very I am very much worried. I, you know, I would hope that generation X would represent kind of a reaction against the baby boom generation, that there would be a it would be sort of a return a new appreciation of political institutions, or social institutions. And there is not. The kids, the baby boomers not only did a bad job themselves, but they left the legacy behind of having been bad parents as well and raised a generation that does not know much or care much. And I do not know what we are going to do about that. I am not pessimistic. Because I do not think our I do not think young Americans, you know, fortunately us and for them. Still going? Yeah-yeah, I do not think young Americans are that much worse off than young Germans or young Japanese. I mean, it is sort of it is funny the way you know, kind of a spirit of the age passes around the entire world. But as luck would have it, slacker-slacker ism, is not confined to the United States. And our slackers will be up against the Germans and the Japanese slacker. And they may just come out of it. Alright. But at some time or other, I would like to see some sign that we understand again, the importance of our obligations, and our responsibilities to our community, to our families, to our government. Just like to see that. Rabbi, sometimes I feel I see signs that I do not think they can look to the boomers for that. And we have this oddity I mean, the person who seems to have the- we have the Republicans running somebody, the last tethering of the Second World War, I am sure he will run for president. And he is being run because he represents a- because it is felt- he represents a kind of moral values that he cannot find anywhere else. Or, you know, my own generation was kind of failure in terms of I mean, whatever you would call us that was kind of the last generation the niche between those people who went off to World War Two, and those who were born after World War Two. We did not for some reason, produce an effective, effective leadership. I do not know why that is. You look at the people who came close. And it is a little disappointing. I certainly do not think Gary Hart would have been a good president. And I cannot rattle off the ones that were candidates and might have even come close. But it is an interesting phenomenon that we have gone directly to a baby boom president from a world war two generation president has skipping over the generation in between. So, I am not sure it is fairly clear that generation X is not looking to us for leadership either. World War Two generation is now in its (19)70s. I think we are going through a period in which we are really going to have to reinvent America to use a cliche which it will have to be the kind of discovered anew why we did different things. And I hope it is, but I do not think they can look back. I thought, the basically Generation X from what I Read, look back at the (19)60s and they were sick and tired of hearing their parents say have great things had been good. The music had been wonderful it was to be so easily on the winning side and so many complicated. I would not say single minded, but perhaps simple minded issues that have in retrospect turned out to be a lot more complicated than we thought. I did not know what I mean, in Bill Clinton and his best, I think he has an understanding of what went wrong. And yet he is-he is also the embodiment of it. What went wrong? That is a tricky question. I do not know. I almost think that generally, the Generation X and whatever the generation is, is going to come after have to both look to the look to the past and look to the future. 25:59 SM: Some of the people- 26:00 DB: I mean the deep past, somehow or rather than have to rediscover history, there is no sign that they are. 26:08 SM: You have got to see some of the baby boomers today. Oh, no, it is still working. Yeah, read more. We have boomers like Bill Clinton, Al Gore got John Kessing, which was highly respected in the Republican Party, that you have got the Christian coalition of person like Ralph Reed. Now here, you see you have got extreme conservatives, and you have got liberals and again, moderates in the middle, you got people like Bill Clinton, and they tend to understand where he stands on an issue. There are boomers. So this is getting off the track. Here are the questions I am asking but what does that say about boomers when you see the differences even within that group? And there some may be lean towards your thoughts on what the boomer generation should be? 27:00 DB: Oh, perhaps they are. I mean, perhaps to be some, although, like, never turn around that that motif of just rampant hell for leather, damn the torpedoes. Individualism that mark the era? I mean, I guess Newt Gingrich, as close, as close as you come to sort of an antidote? I think some of them understand that. I mean, I was really, I think, actually, that was one of the things I gave you was, I thought that Al Gore's speech at the 1992 pension when he talked about how when we look into looking into his son's eyes after the accident, and saying that he then realized that we were on Earth for some larger purpose than ourselves, or however he put it. That was, I thought that was a very significant sign of maturity, of a real realization that we are part of what wolf in the me decade, calls the chromosomal flow, the flow of history of humanity through history, that we are an extension of our parents, and that our children are an extension of our lives. And it all goes on. We have an obligation to those children and their-their children, even. And so, I mean, you have people who are, you know, trying to point out the wretched excessive, somebody said, read just the other day, that Bill Clinton was the perfect expression of America at this time. Somebody who, you know, has great mind and tremendous ability, but total-total inability to control his own appetites or to dissect his own appetites, and a tremendous ambivalence. Although I sort of like his I am not one of those people who criticizes him for being wishy washy. I think a certain amount of deviousness is necessary in politics, and when used for good is not to be criticized. Franklin Roosevelt was so devious that his most trusted aides said they would come out of a meeting with him and not really sure where he stood on a particular issue. It is often a mark of greatness and a leader, and I have been a supporter of Clinton's, an avid supporter from very early on. And have this this this hope that he that because he is so much of his generation, his accesses are literally Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Even although he did not enhance Yeah. But that, you know, maybe he, because of what he understands. And I mean, is not an odd sort of way, but profoundly religious person. Which is not so odd. I mean, I think religion is one of the ways that you cope with the weaknesses of humanity. And to that extent, is somewhat different from many other boomers. But was the threat of where the question was? Maybe you better get me back on track. 30:33 SM: I am going to go on to a question here, where you could just get some adjectives to describe. If you describe the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, please describe the qualities you most admire, and the qualities you least admire. first, if there is any qualities you admire. Well, okay, they are good. I think we should be pretty close to her. So, yeah. 30:54 DB: I think one thing you can say about baby boomers and whether or not they were in on the civil rights revolution, they are not racist. They are certainly not the extent they were [audio cuts] before. There you go. You know, one of the things. The other thing that happened during the baby boom, is that somehow America got separated into its cultural elites. And the great unwashed masses. And if you actually look at the voting record of baby boomers, it has been far more conservative than you think. Baby Boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. But the-the kind of opinion leaders and people who were kind of representing the generation kind of got disconnected this very complicated concept. I mean, entire books have been written about it, then Daniel Yankelovich, over to his book. Title, I have forgotten, I am getting to that age where you forget these things. Christopher Lasch wrote something that is literally like the disconnected. 32:07 SM: Elite, something of the elite. Yeah. 32:11 DB: In which he talked about this. So that happened. So it is true. I mean, you are talking about the baby boomers, you are talking about that kind of cutting edge. The baby boom, the one that was most in the media, but I will take care of all these. And so I say that. Baby boomers, whatever you make whatever else you may think about them, this is actually quoting somebody else's observation. They are not racist. And they, what else can you say that was good about them. Which me there was such a disappointment. I saw you know, as I went into my 20s, I thought, you know, gee, I am going to be part of the best educated, most healthy ablest generation in the history of the world has ever seen. So sort of, saw these, these ranks of people coming behind me that you know, in the time I grew up. I know, I am rambling. I will try to try to make a point here. My point and I do have one is that I really saw it as being the American century we hear we were intact as a nation, and you are kind of towering over war torn Europe and defeated Japanese and ravaged Chinese. And I thought that, you know, it was just going to be one of the-the golden arrows of a world history, and then kind of look back, and everything had come apart. So in terms of specific adjectives, there was hard to think of positive adjectives you want to say idealism. But it was an idealism that was so easily won so untested. In an idealism in which you had this peculiar turn about which cowardice could be seen as valor, the dodging the draft could be seen as a brave thing to do the long tradition in American history. People who disobey that, who opposed their country's position, but realize that their duty to the community required them to go along with it, you know, famous essays written by I am sorry, I cannot rattle off the names. But there is a famous poet who went off into the Mexican War American war even though he deeply opposed Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe, sir In some war, he opposed and wrote very eloquently about, you know, I think this is wrong, but this is what my country is decided to do. 35:08 SM: But then you, William Fulbright wrote the book, The arrogance of power, that the-the true Democrats and the true will leaders were coached and refused to go. 35:19 DB: Well, that is right. So the saying became a very confused time. You are asking me to boil it down to a few adjectives, positive added adjectives would be I think you have to give them credit for being energetic, innovative. Lot of new things certainly brought up made the transition into they began the transition into the information age. Some questions whether they were making the turn or not. On the other hand, the-the advocates on the other side, I did not give you a very good answer. I mean, I suppose by thought longer, I could think of some more positive advocates. But the negative adjectives would be the ones I have used before self-indulgent, uncaring. Heedless. All of it caught so neatly in that song and hair. how can people be so cruel, especially people who care about people? There was a great tendency among the baby-baby boomers to love mankind but to be very unpleasant to be around. To love mankind, but not necessarily get along very well with people. And I think that song from here, really focused on that and really caught it. If you look at the lyrics, I think, tells you something. 36:54 SM: You hit a point though that an adjective if you were to even ask some of the generation X and the slackers characteristic that in the theory, they cared about minorities they cared about. They did not trust leaders. And that the whole concept of trust is another issue that is coming up later. Another question, but they were scared. They cared about the environment, they cared about minorities, they cared about what was happening, poverty in the inner cities they cared about. I know that some of the characteristics of the (19)60s liberals, for women behind the scenes, they were basically xeroxing off. We have heard all those stories; they really were not equal. But still, it was an era where a lot of people start caring about things feed instead of just going to work every day. That is what that that is interesting. Could you comment on that? Because I think caring you say they were not a caring group yet. So many things they got involved in that they did care that- 37:59 DB: I think it was summed up in that idea, they cared about humankind, but they did not care much about people. Going back to the civil rights, I mean, you can pick up on each one of the strands that you are pointing to. As I said, the important advances in civil rights were made by a previous generation. And they just kind of basked in the afterglow, of those accomplishments, the I mean, they created the welfare system, which turned out to be, I guess, one of the most pernicious social mechanisms in the history of the world. And now we are trying to figure out I mean, now we have had Bill Clinton come along, and say that we have got to change welfare as we know it, and everybody knows it. But we ended up spending a lot of money thinking, thinking really, that spending money on something would help. And if you go back and you look at what they actually did, there was a tremendous decline. During the ascendancy of the baby boomers, in participation in PTA meetings, in voting, I mean, if they cared, why did not they vote? In it, it is so many indices of so many indices of actual civic involvement and some extent, you cannot separate the baby boom generation and the effects that it had from the fact that it was also the TV generation. I wonder, I think we are just beginning to understand what that might mean. If someday it will be better known as the TV generation, then as the baby boom generation, because there is no question that watching television drained a lot of time that people might have otherwise spent being. Being ten mothers. What captures me is the epitome you caring about the environment, that we went from a time when my father would be president of the PTA. At the Roosevelt Elementary school would change the environment by getting a traffic light install the place where the kids had to walk across to get the school, to where the equivalent today would be someone who cares about the and that that required work, you know, going to meetings every month, getting-getting, putting up with a lot of crap going through dealing with a bureaucracy downtown. And whereas the caring about the environment seems to me to be consistent mainly, once a year, writing out checks for the Sierra Club and putting the calendar up on your wall. I do not see those signs; I think that the entire baby boom generation has been up until very recently. I know there is controversy about this, and I am following it closely. They are really trying to understand it. But certainly initially, there was a tremendous decline and involvement in civic organizations in kind of almost everything, but churches that cinco gone along almost the same level, kind of under the surface with nobody noticing. But, you know, all kinds of civic organizations, choral societies, you know, all the decline and all summarized in the essay Bowling Alone, which is a rebut by Robert Putnam at Harvard, where we stopped bowling leagues and went out and started Bowling alone. I mean, I think that is connected with the baby boom, phenomenon. There is also I noticed an essay disputing that in this weeks’ Time Magazine, that is complex. It is not, there is no simple answer, you know, as we were saying before, but the- this image of a caring is to care about them by to care about the urban poor. By having basically government programs that did not work and being tremendously reluctant to recognize only now is being recognized that we have not made a dent in poverty. And it is true. I mean, Ronald Reagan was right, we had a war on poverty and poverty won. The number of people living below the poverty line is I think, today the same as it was in 1960. Or maybe more. I mean, the poverty line is artificial blind. But, you know, I think that tells us something, we did not solve the problem. In fact, during the baby boom, ascendancy, you had the whole creation of the underclass, the whole division of the country, and the haves and have nots has accelerated, not decelerating. I do not see any signs of any great humanitarianism. 43:27 SM: Have you changed your opinion on the use of the (19)60s over the last 25 years, say when you were very 1978, what you thought about them, and maybe what you thought about in 1980, and then now in 1996- 43:41 DB inconsistent. I mean, I wrote, When the war ended in 1975, pretty much the same thing I told you about how it was not the antiwar movement that ended the war. In fact, the antiwar movement was remarkably ineffective, in terms of translating popular sentiment. Because, you know, just you had the-the radical part of the antiwar movement that could never kind of connect with the rest of the people who were upset about the war as well. It never became an effective movement. So, I mean, I can go back and if we went into the archives of the inquire, I think we can find they-they said exactly that 1974 Because anything, I have changed on that it has become an appreciation of you had really great music. The cynic might say they produce some really great elevator music. But there really has not been anything like that since. And This contributions in popular culture have been-have been pretty good. 44:57 SM: A lot of the music of that era was There are so many messages in the music. You know, there were a lot of messages written by Bill and he really sat down and listened to philharmonic orchestra some of those musicians of that era and really listened to the words and really, almost like goose bumps to you want to get out there move, be it be a changing, you know, for the betterment of society at times? 45:26 DB: Well, you know, I guess. I mean, that is-that is what I say is one thing, you ended up with an appreciation for the popular music and I heard somebody the other day, make the case that maybe we are living through a golden age now that people live in gold, the trenches never know it at the time. But we are questioning everything and kind of coming up with new forms, to-to respond to the basic requirements of human society that we are going to, we are going into the dawn of the information age, and that maybe people will look back on this kind of a great day. And my own, that was an intriguing possibility. But I would think that if we are in a golden age, we have had better art and its that thinking that maybe when the actual cultural history of this era of the last quarter 30 years of the, to get back into the (19)60s, the (19)60s, you know, really starting to 65 or so. And then and go well into the (19)70s Maybe the Beach Boys good vibrations will be what people go to hear 100 years from now or, or some kind of Jim Morrison in the door, come on baby light my fire, the long version will be seen as a as a crowning cultural achievement. And, yeah, we knew we had crummy literature and nobody could really write very well, but-but Star Wars will be remembered. The Star Wars trilogy will be remembered as the great epic of our, our time. 47:19 SM: I mean, notice how a lot of the (19)60 songs are now in oh, advertisements, including the chambers brothers time, time, which is a very big song back in the late (19)60s, time. 47:30 DB: What is amazing, and every hit movie, for a while there had to be built around some-some song, the soundtrack of lives that Stephen King movie about the kids, its all rock and roll songs. And Tom Cruise and fighter pilot movie is all built around that the righteous brothers, you have lost that loving feeling. And for while I think every single movie that came out was built around some (19)60s rock and roll song. And yeah. Look at that still going after all these years, the Beatles may not be our first not adding anything. But I am sure that so many more records since they broke up than they did. While they were all together. 48:22 SM: I am going to go double check to make sure that is still going overall. Yeah. Where would you describe the boomers as the most unique generation in American history? 48:32 DB: No, gosh, no, I certainly they were the most-most unique. I mean, there was nothing else like them. What do you mean by unique? 48:46 SM: They were so different from any other generation that they stand above the crowd, so to speak, and you look at all the generations since our founding fathers look through all the generations. There are people out there that say no, there was never a time like the (19)60s and (19)70s. Except that happened. 49:05 DB: I was going to say in terms of extraordinary generations, certainly the generation that lived through the Civil War must be up there. And the most amazing generation of Americans were the founding fathers, but he is just still fucking amazing. Now they know whether they that different from the generations that came before them are not unique. It was they were unique, in that sense. be something I would have to give more thought to. I do not know. They were a mutant generation. I am just going back to that idea of kind of forgetting the fact that being an American and having rights and responsibilities I do not think any other generation has done that. There was much in the (19)60s. It was like the 1920s, kind of in terms of indulgence, and the baby boomers coming of age rabbit gets rich in the (19)80s was rather than maybe women, really the decade of greed, very similar to the 1920s, I do not think I have a feeling for a history that would enable me to really compare them. In that way, we forget how extraordinary times we have all lived through, I mean, being on the frontier must have been this next generation, that is going to take us into the information age, I think they have a and the generation that took us through the progressive era at the end of the last century, which we really had to remake ourselves from agricultural to an industrial nation, from a nation of the little local economies into a national economy, just like now we have to go from national international, during our Roosevelt's generation, Theodore Roosevelt himself such an extraordinary individual, that it is hard to say, We have had times of wretched excess too. 51:35 SM: it is often quoted that only 15 percent of the Boomers were truly activists for the link civil rights, Vietnam or protest during lesbian youth movement, the environmental movement, and overall, being active in issues of the day was just another way to lessen the impact this group has had on Americans. 51:51 DB: Oh, I was thinking I mean, that was what I was referring to before the boomers are identified by that 15 percent. They are voting statistics are actually sort of surprising. But you know that those are the people who were activists who were I mean, they put their stamp on the generation, I think they are entitled to the credit for that. I mean, I think-I think that the- those 15 percent I think that is probably true of any generation, there is like 15 percent of them are activists. As I say, the unique thing about the unique thing, one of the unique things, something possibly you need to be careful that word. Was this splitting apart. And to elites, which function kind of independent. They thought they represented the rest of the nation, but they did not. The awful truth was the people who are going around yelling power to the people did not realize that the people already had power. And then the people were getting increasingly annoyed at the people who are going around yelling power to the people, you follow me. I mean, that was why they voted for Richard Nixon, including a lot of baby boomers. I wonder about the statistics which show but yeah, there were people who put there was an activist group that put a stamp on that generation, I think they are entitled to at least that letter. Whether I like what they did or not. I think any generation. 53:33 SM: Do you? Do you feel that the boomers are a generation that is still having problems with the healing? Veterans Memorial did a great job with veterans and in some respect for families and veterans? But do you feel that healing is really taking place in large numbers? And I am trying to getting at here is, you know, we see a lot of unsettled dialogue today in our society, shouting instead of listening, very little dialogue. And I am wondering if there is a direct correlation of that back to that era. It is-it is- 54:03 DB: But there is but I think it is television. Television is what destroyed dialogue. If you do not talk to television, you are spending six hours in front of the television, much- 54:16 SM: Do You think the computer age is going to continue that with your computer all day, you are not going to talk to anyone either. 54:22 DB: Well, I do not know. I mean, I know if you sit at your computer all day, you actually do pretty much nothing but talk to other people. I mean, that is what I do on my computer twice a day, pick up my email, send off messages. I mean, I have the sort of dream that because of email and computers, people will learn how to write again. That may be fanciful, or you know, even-even silly when especially when you look at some of the obscene crap. That is on the internet. But I, you know, funny things like that happen. I do not think though that chat rooms are really a substitute for human contact. If you want to want to know what, you did not really ask me what I expect, what was the question again? I do not want to wonder that far. 55:21 SM: Do you think here is, do you feel that boomers are a generation that is still having a prominent feeling? 55:26 DB: Oh, yeah. No, I think there is confused as ever. But I hope that there. I hope that we are starting to see in the current moment, you know, we are finally getting to the point where people are able to talk candidly about what the things are, that did not work and went wrong. I think that is Clinton's great contribution to American history is to somehow I mean, he really did get the political dialogue back to the real problems of real Americans and off of the symbolic stuff, which is the essence of the baby boom, slash television generation. The symbolism, soundbites. motional, ism sensationalism living for sensations. So, yeah, we are definitely still having a problem. I hope we are starting to do better. 56:31 SM: What are your thoughts about former left leaders who have been writing books recently about their involvement in the movement? Horowitz Rosen Collier wrote a book called the disrupter generation where they work to the extreme left, and now they are-they are analyzing themselves and saying, admitting to their wrongs and then basically condemning anybody else that was ever involved on the left. And we are seeing more and more books coming out that way. Those the left becoming basically conservatives. 57:07 DB: Right, I you know, I cited the destructive generation, we had that first conversation, I thought that was just a very, you know, that book just has a lot of truth telling in it. The class of (19)64 was another good book. I mean, I think you are right. Coming out and becoming conservatives, you are reminded about some famous person once said that anybody who, anyone under 30, who is a, who is not a liberal, does not have a heart, anyone over 30, who is not a conservative does not have a brain. And, and, you know, doubtedly, seeing that effect take place. And it is kind of I mean, I am a great believer in the pendulum theory of history, and that, you know, things had to swing back. But the question, you know, that I asked at the top of one of those columns that you put there is- is- there ever been a society that is really kind of swung so far into self-destructive behavior that has come so far? unfastened from its from its moral underpinnings and come back? I think that is the question. We are looking to find out the answer to that. What was your question? Again, I- 58:31 SM: Think the left leaders and the left leaders. 58:33 DB: Well, I think they did-did a lot of important truth telling and it had to be done. It was a dirty job, but they did it. I mean, I subscribed to Colliers. Horowitz and Colliers public publications. You know, I think sometimes they get a little bit. Neither, I mean, you have to allow them. I mean, quite often, they will go get a little spin a little bit out of control. But I think they have been very important. And- 59:06 SM: I know that you have already basically answered this question. I have to ask him directly. Again, it was boomers used to say they were going to change the world. In we were often quoted as being the that would change the world in a positive way. Was this true? Were they different? And in what way? Yeah, I have. 59:22 DB: The world has stayed pretty much the same. And what they had to discover is that there are reasons why the world is the way that there are reasons why families exist. And if you are going to stop having families, you better damn well, that some better system for working it out before you do it, and I think now they are coming back to that realization that if you are going to have successful politics, people have to participate. You have to have a dialogue. You have to talk things through they stopped doing I thought, well, we do not need to do that. We thought we already know what to do. I do not have to think about. 1:00:07 SM: How do you deal with this whole issue, though another characteristics oftentimes placed on boards that they are very- [oh, yeah] Dr. King did not he have the same philosophy. Because if you look at the civil rights movement, not to criticize Thurgood Marshall. But that was a more gradualist approach to the courts, as opposed to Dr. King's nonviolence, which was, I am tired of all the roadblocks we wanted. I want this now, we are not going to have any more of these roadblocks placed in our, in our face, to end racism, the society and to integrate society. And so do not you think the boomers had a lot of that same type of philosophy that they saw these roadblocks fully by the Bureaucracy. And, and thus, they became very impatient and basically took the line of advocate that civil disobedience, we are going to go to the streets. So, we are going to-we are not going to have these roadblocks anymore. We want to have- 1:01:02 DB: Like, I mean, what is the start of the question again? Let me try to respond to it because brought another thought to my mind. 1:01:11 SM: This whole issue that the boomers are an impatient group that they really want it now. And they use Dr. King is an example of that through his civil nonviolence, because except the Thurgood Marshall approach through the courts, he said he would not get into the streets. 1:01:29 SM: Well, you can hardly call the actions of Martin Luther King, precipitous or sudden or impatient. He was redressing wrongs that dated back 100 years if you want to count it that way. 300 years. And at that point, people, African Americans, black Americans, and I suppose Negroes or colored people. As Dr. King would have said had waited. 1:02:16 SM: This is a question dealing with just specific names and your individual response to these your gut level feelings about them as well. And maybe your also your perception of how we think boomers today, look at these people. They can be just short responses. Tom Hayden. 1:02:35 DB: Tom Hayden, replaced by Ted Turner. 1:02:45 SM: [laughs] Very Good. Any other comments? 1:02:47 DB: Oh, yeah, I guess one of the numbers of what, an example of one of the people who was who seemed to have a lot of promise that did not never, never really came off. And I could not tell you where he is today. 1:03:02 SM: The state legislator in Sacramento. I am surprised he is still an author. He is going to be at the Chicago convention as a delegate. And that is interesting, because in (19)68- 1:03:12 DB: He was outside. 1:03:13 SM: Lyndon Johnson. 1:03:16 DB: Oh, gosh. I should tell you what I think of Lyndon Johnson in 100 words or less Johnson is a tremendously complicated man and the Carroll biographies come close to perhaps they do not give him some of the credit he deserves. But he was me, he will always be hurt by the fact that people will be repelled by what a by his lack of ethics, lack of personal ethics. You basically had somebody with an amoral mentality. I have a friend named Ron Kessler wrote, it happened in the White House Science bestseller as reading lately, he is always say that the nation was really badly hurt by the fact that you had somebody who was basically a criminal, this President of the United States, and he has all this stuff about this incredible amount of White House stuffies, though, that you wanted to crisp short answer. You know, Lyndon Johnson, very complex, tremendous achievements in terms of the passage of the Civil Rights legislation. But basically, not anyone that is going to be looked back on as a great president. His personal failings were too profound. I will try to be short. 1:04:55 SM: Bobby Kennedy. 1:04:58 DB: Bobby Kennedy, you have a piece that I wrote there. I was in the hotel the night that he was shot that was one of the most was something I will never, I mean, it is just so profound, I almost cannot sum it up. Bobby Kennedy was the last political leader that might have held us together prevented the polarization. The most amazing thing I remember about him is later on doing a political story somewhere in East Texas around Lufkin. was actually a story out of Congressman. Corrupt Congressman. But in the course of the reporting there, I discovered that that a major portion of the Bobby Kennedy organization in that part of Texas had conned George Wallace. There was something about the continuation of the Kennedy Mystique, his own ability to communicate a vision of what America ought to be doing, that I think was real was powerful and that it could have held us together instead of that. That incredible period of polarization and splitting apart that we went through. 1:06:24 SM: Eugene McCarthy. 1:06:27 DB: Eugene McCarthy was thoroughly ordinary person who has kind of thrust into a role far bigger than he was capable of playing. 1:06:44 SM: George McGovern. 1:06:47 DB: I would say almost exactly the same thing about him. This man who just did not have a there was no center to it he. I have a lot of thoughts about that, because I used to actually teach a course based on the 1972 campaign put the McGovern's strategy in that was just get to be the farthest out on the left as possible. He did not really know what he was for. He has this famous $1,000 giveaway, he did not he never knew. He never really knew what he was for. He never had thought through. He was basically a weak and incompetent leader. And once campaign got to be a contest of competence versus incompetence he was done for. 1:07:50 SM: When people look at the liberals of today, they will say that man that comes to mind most George McGovern, because he stood by his liberal beliefs. 1:07:58 DB: I cannot remember a single thing that he believed in. Here is a candidate who managed to get himself, he projected so poorly, in terms of what he believed that he managed to get himself defined by his opposition as the candidate of the three a’s: abortion, acid and amnesty. Theodore White talks about that, and it is making me the president in 1972. And because he did not, you know, the whole the whole story of $1,000 giveaway you is because he just sat there and listened to these economists who just winged it and he said, he just kind of took some of the stuff they said seriously, and because he himself just had not thought things through. I mean, that was one thing that was different about Clinton was different about Carter that they either in Carter's case worked very hard to try to get to the bottom of things or just had a superior understanding of the way the world works than George McGovern did. 1:09:21 SM: Hughey Newton. 1:09: 24 DB: I think history has shown what kind of person Huey Newton was revealed. 1:09:31 SM: So did you also put in that category the bobby Seales and the Eldritch Cleavers? The Panthers too? 1:09:41 DB: Yeah, I think the but we have now seen I mean, you shall know them by their fruits. I think if you look at what became of all of them the truth has emerged. 1:09:59 SM: Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman. 1:10:02 DB: They were opportunistic, imposters. People you know the there are people who actually change events and they are people who were kind of thrown up like froth off the top of Wave. And Hoffman and Reuben were in the latter category. 1:10:25 SM: Timothy Leary. 1:10:28 DB: Timothy Leary was an interesting guy who kind of typifies what went wrong. The fact that somebody of his stature and ability would actually say that what young people should do is what Amis favorite tune their turn, turn on drop out? I mean, that along with if it feels good, do it? Where are the statements that characterize the era? I mean, I think he can be seen as a major, major influence on what basically became a malignant movement. 1:11:15 SM: How about Daniel Ellsberg. 1:11:18 DB: Daniel Ellsberg just, again, somebody who happened to be in a certain place at a certain time and was not particularly important before or since. 1:11:32 SM: Ralph Nader. 1:11:36 DB: Well, I mean, I think everybody has to have a certain amount of respect for Ralph Nader. And some extent is [inaudible] in his belief in the powers of litigation, have worn, have gotten to be a little bit annoying over time. I do not believe he will be effective this year as the Green Party candidate. If I have to say one thing about him is kind of an archetypal example of somebody who loved humankind, but you would not really want to be around personally for very long. 1:12:23 SM: How about Dr. Benjamin Spock? 1:12:26 DB: Well, Dr. Spock finally admitted that he did it wrong. He will be much paid attention to as a wonderful final book, and perhaps he is still alive. Yes. But he wrote a book, say basically taking it all back. I looked through the book jacket, and I did not actually get it to read it. [audio cuts] Great, you have to give him credit for that. But he also is, he also has a lot of a lot to be the answer for and he has answered. I mean, I think I would, I would take his own judgement of himself. At this point. 1:13:15 SM: Hubert Humphrey. 1:13:16 DB: Hubert Humphrey. Alright. It is one of the most well-meaning and misguided figures in American history. Misguided and star-crossed. 1:13:31 SM: John Kennedy. 1:13:33 DB: Oh, gosh. Difficult to cope with what we have to prove what we know about John Kennedy today. And yeah, there is aspects of his personal behavior affects [audio cuts] his personal behavior. We are surely reprehensible. Were absolutely reprehensible. Yet there is no question but in terms of style grace under pressure, eloquence. He has set a standard that American presidents will, presidential candidates will be measured against for the rest of my life. 1:14:25 SM: Martin Luther King Jr. 1:14:27 DB: Well, true hero. But whose contribution almost cannot be underestimated? Whose brain still sets the standard for what America should aspire to? It is amazing to think that the highlight of the opening ceremonies to me would be the clip of the King's Speech. The opening ceremonies at the Atlanta Olympics. And here that was 1964, (19)74, (19)84, (19)94. More than 30 years later to think that his words and his vision still carry such strength, meaning is amazing. 1:15:29 SM: Berrigan Brothers. 1:15:30 DB: Minor character Hello, [audio cuts] Gavin the Olympics bring him to mind. He was the only figure that could bring together the white antiwar movement and the civil rights movement. He was the unique figure is way beyond his athletic accomplishments. And I mean, not surprising or unworthy. That he would be at one point, at least the most recognized person in the world. 1:16:13 SM: He still is. 1:16:17 DB: And I think it was it was that fact that he really did seem to stand for so much during that time. And it is amazing. Just an amazing figure. 1:16:37 SM: George Wallace. 1:16:47 DB: [chuckles] George Wallace was a fascinating figure far more articulate and, in his criticism, of big government. That whole area is so complicated, I mean, to think of him as the man stood in the University of Alabama door to block the entrance of black students and yet he started off as a kind of liberal politician and then was beaten, said he would never be up Niggered again. I remember him as just being and under an underappreciated articulator of some basic American call them populist, but maybe even more profound than the label with indicate ideas. You want short sharply, right. I can still remember him speaking at Dartmouth College in 1964. He made this tour of campuses, they just went to Harvard went to Dartmouth he went to in the Northeast, and people just being stunned at his articulate [inaudible] and humor. Still remember things that he said? We down here in Alabama, do not believe that everything that comes from Washington is heaven sent. This line about the bureaucrats that could not park their bicycle straight, and that he did not believe that all juvenile criminals had gotten that way because their daddy did not take them to see the Orioles play. And he-he was an incredibly powerful speaker. When he came back again about four years later, it triggered a riot. They rocked his car and but people did not know what to expect when they went there in (19)64 were amazed that this guy they expected to be a room and a bumpkin could speak with such authority and he was he was drawing on much more than racism and should be remembered for that. 1:19:11 SM: Jane Fonda. 1:19:12 DB: Changed, the thing I always say, I got to get shorter because you know, the thing I remember most about Jane Fonda was her first husband who directed her in Barbarella explaining how their marriage had come apart, saying I simply did not want to be married to the American Joan of Arc. That is the only thing I can remember that might add to what others would say. 1:19:46 SM: Robert McNamara. 1:19:47 DB: Robert McNamara when I was a cog in a wheel I did not read this book. It is good a very good book. I remember him as somebody who set out to be the best secretary of defense he could be. Right remember about him was his idea that the army could be the thing the army did best was education. And it could become a vehicle for bringing kids out of the terrible schools in the inner cities, giving them an education and an opportunity. And then how ironic it was, that the army he created would become, although it would do that, it would become the institution in our society that was most effectively, racially integrated, would be remembered as being the institution that just so unfairly sent so many young black Americans to their deaths in Vietnam. There is such an irony involved there it is so complex. I mean, it is so terrible all of the he made mistakes, a terrible mistake. And yet, there is that other irony that we would not know about them. If he had not had the sense of his own role and history to make sure that they were recorded in the study. Who would come back and answer for them in book late in life? kind of remarkable. 1:21:39 SM: Gerald Ford. 1:21:40 DB: Gerald Ford was a thoroughly decent, honest guy. But not, did not have the makings of greatness. 1:21:52 SM: Richard Nixon. 1:21:55 DB: [chuckles] short, sharp answer. Yeah, Richard Nixon was Richard Nixon was it was really an enigma who I do not pretend to have any special insight into. Watergate was awful. And, you know, I mean, another thing that contributed to the moral smugness of the baby boomers. You know, as I suggested before, that the wretched excesses of Watergate we are in their way, and sort of equal and opposite reaction to the wretched excesses of the left. I do not have anything to add to all the other things that have been said about what an enigmatic guy was. 1:22:44 SM: How about Spiro Agnew? 1:22:46 DB: Spiro Agnew is a small, corrupt, dirty little politician, by accident of fate, ended up briefly in the spotlight and has since slumped back to the level of which is appropriate, which so far as I know is total oblivion. 1:23:08 SM: How about Barry Goldwater? 1:23:10 DB: Barry Goldwater was a man who stood the test of time. Even people who did not like him always thought that he was a decent, intelligent man. There is that irony that I talked about before, that the nation would seem to so completely renounce his philosophy of excess being a virtue and moderation being a sin. Yet ultimately, that came to be the hallmark of the generation that so many things that you remember about him? If he was a good, honest, interesting guy, the reporters that covered them used of respect him. I do not think any of them voted for him. And- 1:24:07 SM: How about John Dean and John Mitchell? 1:24:10 DB: Oh, other people who are just-just in the spotlight of history, more or less by accident. Do not think Tom Mitchell was a villain. Nor was John Dean a hero. 1:24:31 SM: Sam Ervin. 1:24:32 DB: Sam Ervin was the person who was given his role and accomplished it certainly gave us faith in the he gave us back some faith in the American political system press more than he should have. He was not that great person. But I think the Watergate hearings did establish the idea that we were capable to a remarkable degree, if not entirely, examining ourselves looking at our shortcomings. 1:25:09 SM: And Gloria Steinem. 1:25:11 DB: Gloria Steinem, I have trouble remembering anything that Gloria Steinem did as such- 1:25:21 SM: [audio cuts) money was a big factor. 1:25:24 DB: I guess I knew that it seems to have gotten so involved and you know, sort of the-the self-fulfillment movement I think her name will always be remembered and, and that many people will have the problem I am having right now that says, we will have a great difficulty remembering just exactly what for. 1:25:58 SM: And musicians of the year of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, those- 1:26:03 DB: They will live forever No. They were the one unmitigated triumph of the (19)60s generation. 1:26:17 SM: Do you feel this is just a personal question? Do you feel that you have made an impact on American society? now, since being asked that has been asked to all the participants, including some Vietnam veteran, they know in Philadelphia and Senator McCarthy and Senator McGovern. And as a follow up, do you feel you would have made a positive impact in your life on the boomers and this current generation on generation? 1:26:43 DB: [audio cuts] Hello [audio cuts]. If I have, it has been very modest. [audio cuts] Your records more than Oh, that would be the only way I would have any effect. 1:27:00 SM: On the generation gap in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, and the generation gap and two cents on today. 1:27:05 DB: [audio cuts] was there. I do not think I have any really profound insights to offer on that, and not that I have on any of the other things. I did not feel there was a gap between myself and my parents. They are not a baby boomer do not feel I feel I am pretty close to my own son is 25, which makes him a generation Xer. But we have never talked about how he feels about baby boomers. So, I do not I just do not do not have a good sense of that all I know, all I know, is really derivative, what I have read from other people, I do not have a firsthand grasp of that. 1:28:06 SM: What is the lasting legacy of the boomer generation? 1:28:11 DB: I hope that the lasting legacy of the boomer generation will be a realization that all of the things they trampled on and tore down. By forcing us to learn the process all over again. That they will renew it sort of the way every once in a while forest has to be burned. 1:28:47 SM: Again, and this Might be repetitive, but what role at many does activism in the boomer generation penetrating the lives of- 1:28:52 DB: None that I can detect And of course, I had that question about you know, to what extent the activism was apparent and what he said was real. 1:29:11 SM: If it is possible to heal within a generation now this week, this is a little different than the previous to heal. Do You think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences and spiritual assistance healing process should we cater and is it feasible? 1:29:25 DB: Well, say that again. 1:29:31 SM: Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences and positions take within- 1:29:37 DB: A generation of time or to heal within the baby boomers? 1:29:41 SM: The Vietnam veterans coming back the divisions between those with protests or heads many of our trans remember that scene in New York City. Where not all they were not all when they were younger hardhats on the front of where it was in New York. The divisions are still obviously there. Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation we are different systems decision to assist in the healing process should be cured as a peaceful? I want to follow this up for example, during my many trips to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington I have been and I have really had a cute year to what I have been hearing a lot of pictures for example, the most portrait that I have man standing at the wall with a jacket on with-with an artificial arm and an artificial leg. And a denim jacket with a big Sanjana Jane Fonda bitch. And, and then hearing in the front row with the last Memorial were for Vietnam veterans did not want to listen to Peter net, because he was the one of the reporters that said bad things about Vietnam veterans, one of the early reporters. So they were there, but they had no respect for him. Even though he-he accepted the invitation Jana scrubs to be there. And certainly, that the dislike of Bill Clinton, which is so ever present amongst all the veterans that I have talked to, I do not care if they are liberal or conservative, everyone I have interviewed so far, and even just to my observations at the wall, is that they just do not like. 1:31:06 DB: Alright, I wonder if it was actually reflected in? So, it is an eroding statistic. The? Well, I think that I think it is, it might be possible to bring about healing within a generation. In fact, you would expect that it would be taking place, it is kind of surprising that there has been so little of it. And I think that reflects the fact that not the divisions were so why certainly the divisions were as nothing compared to the divisions in the Civil War generation, or even the-the American Revolution generation were supposedly created. John Adams, you had a third of the people who were for independence, the third were for staying with England and the third who did not much care. The what has been lost are the mechanisms for healing or reconciliation, we do not have the mechanisms for civic dialogue. We do not have civil societies, everyone is now seen. And so, we do not have any place that we can go and talk about this. We do not have the civic institutions. They do not have that sense of participation in, in civic and cultural and political organizations that might allow the kind of dialogue and healing to take place. It is all taking place in the mass media, and I suppose it has had some success. But I am not optimistic. I think these people will still be fighting over it and over shuffleboard in their retirement house. But it is- 1:32:51 SM: What is interesting is that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was built to heal amongst the Vietnam veterans and their families and a chance for injury. Yet you still see the political attitudes at the wall at these ceremonies. And it is amazing. I was I was really under pressure in the Vietnam veterans a large number were truly starting to heal. And then I, but then I see [audio cuts] 1:33:24 DB: Yep. 1:33:25 SM: Your comments are interesting. 1:33:28 SM: I just wanted to mention, too, that when we went to see Senator, students to Washington, we met him about two and a half years ago, he had something comparable departments and gym shaking, but his mind was still sharp. And we had two hours with him. And did most of students had never met him, most of them and had not even heard him until they had an opportunity to meet him and read his Vita. But the one question that I asked, which brought tears to his eyes, was the question about the inability of the talking about the (19)68 Convention. The trend is divisions in America at that time, and, and the inability of a lot of boomers like myself to have to who still had this trust toward people of authority based on those times. And I thought he was just going to respond about the (19)60s and then he did a melodramatic pause. Then tears are brought to his eyes, the students are all looking at each other. I was looking at the students. And then finally he opened up and he said, I was in the hospital at that time. Looking at the Civil War, I was very sick for a while looking at the Ken Burns Civil War videos to the Secretary of State and when he was in the hospital, and he said, we have a meal since the Civil War. And so, he said for us to start talking about the (19)60s that we really had to divide America into two eras before and after the Civil War. And that was very revealing, because the Senate's clear message to the students in that room. That Civil War generation went to their graves without healing with all the Problems of reconstruction here, according to Disney, and that are is the boomer generation of Vietnam veterans on the protests of the war, the 15 percent, who are activist, some are playing the games, some who did not stay 85 percent of this were supposedly, they were not in the file, but maybe have it in their subconscious, but they take their kids to the wall. So the kids say Dad what did you do in the war. And they did not go or whatever, that there was a tremendous market. And they have made the boomer will go to their grave with [inaudible]- 1:35:33 DB: Oh, well, I think that is absolutely true. I think the Vietnam I mean, the War Memorial, just tremendously moving and effective. Memorial. I do not think anybody goes there without feeling the sense of loss and sacrifice, and courage and bravery that was involved and played there added those figures of the people, the guy was 1000 yards, there, and so on. But I think the only hope is that the context will change. We actually check to see whether-whether Vietnam vets really vote in a block against Clinton. 1:36:21 SM: I do not know, I do know one thing in my I get to know her a little bit. Not well, phone conversations that we took students to watch. And he wrote the book, the prize winning book. Fortunately, if you have not read that book, the best written books ever written. He was hired by George Mason University to teach writing, he knew how to write was a skill that very few people had, at my understanding. He was writing essays that are carried were designed to kill themselves. He was halfway through it. But the one the one thing is that Vietnam veteran supported Bill Clinton, up until the fall of (19)93, in the spring of (19)94, and he killed himself may have a war but-but then in this in February of (19)94, something happened between love of Vietnam veterans and build one another. They say flip flopped on certain issues. And he was very bitter, and then the obituary and some of the people talked about, he wanted to become the first ambassador of Vietnam, what was the goal is to become a personal masterpiece. He was very daring to go to Vietnam to visit with some of the veterans over there to try to help them and in certain ways, so but something happened, I do not know. And I probably not investigated further. I think there is there was some sort of a break between the Vietnam Veterans and Bill Clinton in that period in 1994, the spring and I do not think it is healed because I went to the Vietnam Memorial. Veterans Day ceremony this past November and tap CEOs and corporations are really bad mouthing bills in public. And we are bad mouthing the government and some of the things. So, there are some very serious divisions now between Bill Clinton and the Vietnam Veterans and I but I do not understand why. I do not understand what is going on behind the scenes. 1:38:19 DB: Yeah, I wonder if a lot of people it is fair to Vietnam just have no connection with that. They are certainly not part of did not join veterans’ organizations are not. I, I only know one Vietnam veteran. And he was a public relations guy for-for infantry. Even I believe that there are only two Vietnam veterans that work for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I think the one thing that is really wrong in that movie is that courage under fire. Is this idea that there is some old combat veteran working for The Washington Post. I do not think there is any. I bet he checked. If you could change something you wanted to go into, Rob, that there is no combat veteran from Vietnam working for The Washington Post banquet, there might only be a handful of people who have served anywhere at all. And that was one of the things that has-that has happened. We really volunteer army and so on. The Army has become a sort of a foreign experience used to be one of the rites of passage. And that ended in the boomer era. We have not I mean, we lost the all of the things that define maturity. From the time when you had to start wearing a tie to the office or working in a farm of some kind. 1:40:01 SM: Do you think that we will ever have trust for elected leaders again after the debacle of Vietnam and Watergate and Uber's. Distrust, what effect is this having on the current generation of youth? 1:40:13 DB: That is a tough question. I mean, I think we have trust for some leaders and do not have trust for others. I think I like to think that the political process, at least at the presidential level is reconnecting. And we saw it in 1992, we will see more of it 1996. Although 1996 may end up just being a putting out election. I am not good at predicting the future, by the way. I have had a few lucky guesses, but I do not know what is going to happen next. But yeah, we have to get back to trusting our leader. If we do not, we are sunk. So, it is really asking the question whether the American experiment democracy will continue or not. And I have to believe that will. But that is part a leap of faith. 1:41:15 SM: Is still running. Yep. Yeah, please, I apologize. Some of these questions are repetitive, but I direct. How did they use it (19)60s and early (19)70s changed your life and the attitude towards that future generations? Did they have any effect on your life? 1:41:42 DB: Yeah, there is a great tendency for them, for me, for them to make me cynical. So many examples of good intentions gone awry. Which is a theme of Kurt Vonnegut's books ended up being big [audio cuts] 1:42:04 SM: Are there examples of events or activities, major cynical, or just the whole game? 1:42:12 DB: Yeah. Let us see. Let me see if I can at least pick out one. Hello, I think the one area that I have concentrated would concentrate on and I mean, I think it takes place with across the spectrum. I gave some examples earlier. And everything from trying to deal with urban poverty dealing with urban problems. But most profoundly we see it in education, where you have had all of these well-meaning quotes unquote, reforms that have had the net effect of diluting and making our education less effective. At a time when we needed more than ever. How many people who thought they were doing something good, and then having a disastrous effect? Open classrooms, the new math, social promotions, the dumbing down of the curriculum, the IT erosion of standards, grade inflation, all things done by people with proof that the road to hell probably is paved with good intentions. And you have to go back and undo it. Or the point of it that anecdote, I started on way, way back about the guy who wrote the book Physics for poets and is involved in the in the Chicago Public Schools is that we can very quickly destroy an institution, it takes a long time to build it back. I guess the people feeling that they were doing the right thing by achieving self-fulfillment in their own lives and wrecking the lives of their children. end up just shaking your head. Santa's amazement. 1:44:13 SM: Great history books are written on the growing up years from the boomers saying 25 to 50 years and I am ensuring those people do not major in undergrad program, the higher ed in graduate school. We were always taught best issued books were probably issued 50 years after events take place from best books on World War Two right now are being written today. As opposed to some books written by James McGregor burns, really? When the history books are written on the growing up years for the overseeing 2550 years from now what will be the overall evaluation of the boomers? Because of the booming right now are, Well, I do not get into this category of making (19)46 to (19)64 because sometimes those people born between (19)46 and (19)56 in the late (19)50s and early (19)60s. We got a couple of people in West Chester that I just have a hard time relate to. They are still categorized as boomers, but they had no sense of what transpired back then. 1:45:09 DB: Not only that they resent the older boomers. I think your divisions probably are better. What will History Think? 1:45:22 SM: Yeah especially some of them are just coming into power now. So- 1:45:25 DB: I am sad to say that I am not good at progress. prognosticating history, I do not think there is any way I would just stick with I have gotten really fond of this analogy with the baby boomers were like a fire that had to burn through and clean things happen. So the new growth could occur. 1:45:55 SM: [audio cuts] And last question, is this. The youth of that period of belief, they could have impact on society and government policy in the (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s. Vietnam policy, the draft civil rights legislation, nonviolent protests, multiple months, in other words, a sense of empowering, why is society resisting this today? And why in your words, are the sons and daughters of boomers feel less confident about their ability to have an impact on society? And in some respects, less desire to seemingly less opportunity? Am I wrong in assuming this question? 1:46:30 DB: I think the problem is they turned out to be wrong. So many of them are going back with things like education what are the policies we look at? They thought they could solve poverty in the city, and they could not be now undoing the things that they tried to do to try something else. And we are going to do it with a great deal of trepidation and not going to do it, that same sense of we can change the world. And we will probably do it better. You looked at all the things that they tried to do look at things that, for example, that the baby boomer era created, whether as baby boomers did it or not, they have to reflect a lot longer, maybe even look some stuff up. But questioning whether affirmative action was the way to eradicate racism. Because we have discovered that in many cases, and it is hard to weigh the case in which it does good in the cases in which it does bad. It is exacerbated by the fact that the welfare system that we tried to create did not free people from a downward spiral. Or it did not pre bring people back up, and instead seems to launch them into a multi-generational downward spiral into which situation seems increasingly dire, which we now feel when you come right down to it, but we have too many people in America now that cannot do anything that anybody would pay them the minimum wage for, and that the system is creating more of them. What was question again? I got a little lost. 1:48:26 SM: What was the impact of the Boomers have had and they felt they could change? 1:48:37 DB: They felt they could change the world. And they were wrong. And so, people are kind of stepping out onto the charred ground, it has been left very cautiously and carefully and tried to rebuild something there that will pay more attention to the laws of unintended consequence. And things like- 1:48:59 SM: Do you feel that there is a direct correlation. I went back to the question earlier that the reason why Generation X youth or young adults cannot get involved is because of the examples that have been set by their parents. Whether it be over the kitchen table, or just by observation. 1:49:23 DB: I once again have to take myself out of that, because I did not see that. I do not know. I mean, I go to see a movie like Reality Bites are clueless or whatever. And I do not understand. I do not know what happened. I do not know why those people are the way they are. I do not know if it is a reaction to their parents. I tend to think it is because our whole society lost the ability to transmit its values. And I hope we are getting it back. But this whole the whole lack of knowledge and interest on the part of this generation is-is really appalling. And people are always trying to figure out ways to make excuses for it. I expected to be some kind of, you know, the fireman talks about a back blast when they go into a fire and the fire has gone in a certain direction for a long time. And it gets to be a, an area behind the vacuum, and then suddenly things blast pack into it. I expect we are going to see something like that. And it is going to happen, particularly in regard. I think we already see it happening in regard to spiritual values, kind of so many of these questions you bring up, you could spend an entire chapter on the boomer generation holds up as the great example of what it what was accomplished. It holds up the civil rights revolution as a great example of what can be accomplished, and yet rejects the central religious core of that movement. At least its activists. It is the least as I say, somehow, rather America just continues to be the most religious country in the world. This kind of goes on like some something underwater, a big iceberg underwater. So, you cannot say we have lost that. 1:51:33 SM: I do believe this church attendance was down from like, when-when I was getting the link with the church every Sunday and Sunday school was over. But as I got older, myself, I did not go to church anymore. And a lot of my peers get caught up into that, too. And I am kind of wondering, it was not like the (19)50s. It is fascinating. 1:51:56 DB” I mean, this sort of was my impression, but I am told that if you would look at Gallup Poll asked people what percentage 40 percent went to church, or synagogue last night went to religious services in the previous week, and it is just tasting exactly the same. Just like there is another America out there as we connect with it. Just kind of goes on. 1:52:24 SM: Person in my position to work with student’s day in and day out. And I work with a lot of faculty to work. Frustrated that today's college students love it, they have faith in them, it is not they do not have faith, have you always had faith in young people, you always give them the benefit of the doubt. And but that does not mean that they cannot be constructively criticize the time. And that is that they do not have a sense of history. They, they do not do much reading, they do not really want to understand the past. They only want to deal with the present and really care about the future. But the sense of history and a lot of a boomer faculty, they do not get frustrated with some of their students on some occasion and they go back to when they were asked. And because of those times, we questioned faculty members in the classroom. It was highly interactive, faculty were in the residence halls at that time, there was a linkage between the faculty and then now faculty members do not seem to be linked to students at all. It is I do not know I am trying to get at here and it is somewhat frustrating his friends, absolutely baffling try to see we are trying to see the image of today's students as we were in some respects and that is to challenge a lot of these young people in my opinion do not challenge the system. 1:53:44 DB: But I can tell you that is my impression as well. Correct me even to my-my-my son, his friends. I gave his girlfriend 20 bucks she would she said you know we are reading all these plays and they are just such crap. So why do not you say anything that you say challenge professors. You know, I think this stuff is just by eliminating all the ambiguity and it has come so close to some sort of quasi pornography. Brit modern British theatre, modern British drama. And this is why you might want to get an A and I am already I have a 3.78 grade average and I am getting turned down for interviews because they want people put their grade average I will give you 20 bucks if you stand up and just say one thing because I want to see if anybody else stands up and says the same thing. I want to see what Professor react and nobody joined here, except the one or two students she already knew felt that way. And professor’s kind of matter of fact in class but then when she went into took discuss her paper with women, he reduced her to tears and I think it was educational to do that. 1:55:05 SM: David Are there any other final comments you would like to say? 1:55:14 DB: No, I want to thank you very much for participating in private. No, I think I have had a chance to say pretty much everyone thought that I did not get in, you know, there was a feeling that to some extent, the assassinations, just cauterize everybody's nerve endings, that people did not feel things is profoundly anymore. That you after you have been through the death of John Kennedy, the assassination of Robert did the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, you-you got to be afraid to hope. And that was another thing that went on was that had a big effect? Hard, hard cremation. 1:56:00 SM: Could you? Just everyone out there? Were you waiting in the room for Bobby Kennedy to go through the pantry there? Because there was no more he made the announcement he told to another group. What does duh. Yes, that is exactly right. There were two ballrooms or four people in each spoke, I think the people who were I do not know how they separate. I think the people the first group were kind of more insiders, although my wife was a precinct cabinet for the time. And we were in the lower ballroom or, and he was going to the pantry to come down there. And it did not come and I just wandered out into the hall. And there were people in the rooms down the hall or watching the whole proceedings on television and went into one and there was a woman just keeled over. She had fallen over in a chair and sobbing uncontrollably. And there was great disturbance and discombobulation in the room. I thought it was over this woman who, you know, is having some perhaps some kind of epileptic fit or diabetic shock. But it was all because they just heard that shot over the television. We did not know it in the big room because televisions were off because he was going to come and speak. But the ambassador just after that, I mean, in that piece I gave you my wife said, you know, part of me died with him. And you guys never she was never able to do enthusiastically support anybody. 1:57:49 SM I have [audio cuts] Many times and I have gone to that spot. 1:57:52 DB: And neither was I- 1:57:55 SM: White crosses there in Arlington. 1:57:57 DB: Well, yeah, it makes me sad though, because the kids that come there, they do not seem to have the same appreciation. I interviewed the guard there. Something like fussy has working to the post from (19)69 to (19)72. Watching. Yeah. So over I have been there for and I remember him today, the kids now they just do not. They do not have they do not understand. And he started to cry. [inaudible] (19)63. So it was not the tenth. 1:58:29 SM: If he gets enough in here to regarding the heroes, that maybe they had heroes, they looked up to sometimes Europe may not be the right word. Think they looked up to John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and some of the other civil rights leaders to like a young man in Java who was other politicians too, that were run. Today, again, it is just a sense that I have there are no people that go for their parents, sometimes I it is interesting. I have had some interviews with students. We interviewed students for positions on our campus within our nations, and specifically asked them who their heroes are. And I thought [inaudible] majority are my sister, me and my upbringing. And my parents divorced. My-my parents, my mom and dad, they may not be both, but it may be one of them. So I find that interesting. And again, this is only about 30 or 40 students. Commentaries, but you never hear oh my heroes Martin Luther King, my hero was John Kennedy, my hero or any of the current leaders. It is just amazing. 1:59:45 DB: Yeah, as an as an editor, I tried to bring back the idea of Return of the hero. I remember back they still have the Lone Ranger on the cover. And inside the head stories that people were getting ready to go to look at heroes, again, Movie Star Wars to come out and set those turning points. But it really has not. I saw US News and World Report tried to do the same article five, five years ago or so. And turned out that heroes, they turned out to be entertainment figures, people who portrayed somebody else. And somebody talking about that was saying so amazing that when they have when they were having hearings in Washington on foreign problems that one of the people had bring in a sissy space because he was in whatever movie that was about the trouble on the farm the fact that we do not have heroes. It is really, really important. 2:00:49 SM: Joe McGuiness wrote a book about [inaudible] Did you read that book? 2:00:53 DB: Yeah. 2:00:55 SM: Talking about Teddy Kennedy segment and we are trying to get through to them for a long time. Bear with me here. [audio cuts] (End of Interview) 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>. Description 2 Microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Boldt Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boldt, David ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Editors; Journalists; Awards—United States; Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant (Pa.); Iran—History—Revolution, 1979; Boldt, David--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Boldt was editor of the editorial page of The Philadelphia Inquirer and a political columnist for the same paper during the 1980's and 1990's. Boldt won the Pulitzer Prize as a member of the Inquirer's team that covered a nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island electrical power plant, and received a citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Boldt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in interpreting contemporary affairs as an adjunct professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned a bachelor's degree in History from Darthmouth College. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.23a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.23b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 121:15 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/daa8c68bbdc1c681f15b3b32f9525e65.jpg c668073a72532bf0096fba82a4108371 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/bc46c808f4d4ae88c8742d71f455ce00.mp3 20ef242e57f66c37cbb20321c698c11c 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-01-14 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David R. Hawk Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 3 microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Hawk is a former Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, UN human rights official in charge of the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and author. Hawk has been a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights, and taught at Hunter College, CUNY. Currently he teaches in the International Relations Department at the University of South Florida (Tampa). Hawk is a graduate of Cornell University and Union Theological Seminary, and he also did postgraduate work in International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Magdalen College, Oxford."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15107,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,3355443],"15":"Arial","16":10}">David Hawk is a former Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, UN human rights official in charge of the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and author. Hawk has been a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights and taught at Hunter College, CUNY. Currently, he teaches in the International Relations Department at the University of South Florida (Tampa). Hawk is a graduate of Cornell University and Union Theological Seminary, and he also did postgraduate work in International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Magdalen College, Oxford. Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"The nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Vietnam War; music styles; Bob Dylan; Civil Rights Movement; yippies; Woodstock; Counterculture; James Farmer; Vietnam War; Women's Liberation Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">The nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Vietnam War; music styles; Bob Dylan; Civil Rights Movement; yippies; Woodstock; Counterculture; James Farmer; Vietnam War; Women's Liberation Movement. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 164:52 Subject LCSH Amnesty International; Authors, American--20th century; College teachers; Hawk, David R.--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 Hawk Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 14 January 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:02): Testing, one, two, testing. Testing, one, two. DH (00:00:10): That is one of those digitalized? SM (00:00:12): Yes. DH (00:00:12): Or is that a digitalized? SM (00:00:15): Oh, no. DH (00:00:15): Oh, no-no. It is got a little micro. SM (00:00:17): Yeah, but I have a digitalized one, but I am trying to figure it out. Maybe the closer I get there. DH (00:00:21): Okay. SM (00:00:22): First question I want to ask is, when you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? And please speak loud because it is catching. I have to check on this every so often too if it is working. DH (00:00:37): Yeah, the good old days. SM (00:00:40): Fine with the good old days? DH (00:00:46): The (19)60s and early (19)70s, well, I was in college and graduate school, and that was great fun, both. And that is the time when I met the young woman who is still my wife. And that was a time of successful political activism, the name of the civil rights movement, which worked. And the occasion of the... I dropped out of graduate school in (19)67. Took five years off to try to stop the war in Vietnam, which we did not succeed in doing. But I probably had more political influence during those years than any time since. So, even though we did not succeed to stop the war, we did at various points have a big impact on the course of events. SM (00:02:29): What was it about your background before you even went to Cornell University? Because I know you went to Cornell and I am from the [inaudible] area, so it is a small world. I went to Binghamton and grew up in there. I have quite a few relatives who went to Cornell. What was it in your upbringing, even before you got to Cornell University, that made you somewhat who you are? Were you an activist prior to going to college in your high school years? Were there issues that really upset you when you were younger? Things in the late (19)50s, early (19)60s? DH (00:03:02): Yeah. I was seized at, must have been junior high school by the... When I became aware of racial segregation and discrimination, that was offensive, which probably had most to do with my religious upbringing as a low church evangelical. And the fact that the civil rights movement in those years was led by ministers and the grievances articulated in the terms of the Old and New Testament. And we believe that segregation and discrimination were social evils that should be eliminated. SM (00:04:21): In the school you went to, the high school, were you the only one that felt that way? Did you feel alone, or were there other students that were thinking that as well? Seeing what was happening? Probably on black and white television. DH (00:04:34): Yeah. The years of Little Rock. SM (00:04:38): Right. DH (00:04:42): Of the attempts to integrate schools. Well, if you come from places like Allentown, Pennsylvania, or Lancaster or York, you go into the town squares, the monuments are, to the Civil War, dead. I mean, and they were [inaudible] Republicans. And it was not just preserving the union, part of that legacy you grew up with was ending slavery. No, so there were not many African Americans in my junior high or high school, but there were some, and the idea that they could not go to school with everybody else was offensive. But there was not much to... Where were we? Oh. Oh, right, so I remember the first occasion was... Well, so I followed that. I was interested in that. In those, I would have been a Eisenhower, Nixon-type Republican. That is what my folks were. Although the New Frontier Kennedy's administration caught the enthusiasm of a lot of young people. The idea of younger generation getting the country moving again, seeing the that as opposed to Eisenhower and the Dulleses. So I followed developments in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King was already the nationally known figure. And then, I remember the freedom rights and the sit-ins. And sit-ins was sort of outrageous that African Americans could not eat at those lunch counter in their local Woolworths. Every town had a Woolworths. And when I used to go to the YMCA in Allentown, it was right around the corner from the Woolworths in downtown. I would have lunch at Woolworths, go back to the Y. When I was, it must have been a sophomore year, I guess. Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah, I guess. Yes, sure it would have been sophomore year at Cornell when there was a nationwide picketing of Woolworth in support of the students in the South who were sitting in at the lunch counters. And I participated in that picket of Woolworth in downtown Wichita. SM (00:08:31): Wow, very good. DH (00:08:33): That was my... SM (00:08:35): I know Wichita. Where was that? Was that still there? Who is there now? DH (00:08:38): Oh, I have no idea. It would have been on that main street. SM (00:08:41): Yeah. DH (00:08:42): Or whatever, that State Street or what? SM (00:08:43): Yeah. DH (00:08:44): Whatever it is called. But anyway, so I remember that. SM (00:08:55): Your years at Cornell, what were the years that you were at Cornell? DH (00:09:00): It would have been (19)60 or (19)61 to (19)65. SM (00:09:08): Obviously, the Vietnam War was not even really picking up until about after (19)65. Was there any kind of small protests against the war? DH (00:09:15): Yeah. SM (00:09:16): I know that Phil Caputo's book talks about in The Rumor of War, that is when the first large numbers of troops were going over, around that (19)65 period. DH (00:09:25): Well, sure. I then worked in the summer of my junior year. I participated in Mississippi Freedom Summer, so I was in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in August of (19)64 when the Gulf of Tonkin happened. And we were afraid that if the US got into a war, Johnson would be distracted and he would not implement the civil rights measures that were in the process of... The Voting Rights Act was (19)65, but the Mississippi's Freedom Summer was building up to that. We were afraid that if there was a war, it would distract attention from civil rights and anti-poverty efforts. Does that mean that World War II replaced the new deal? The Korean War overtook Truman's fair deal? I was at Cornell. I was studying industrial labor relations, so I was studying economics and history and sociology, so I was studying this stuff. SM (00:11:07): Did you have any fear when you went South? Did you go by yourself and met a group down there? Did you go with a group of other students and did you have a fear that something could happen to you... DH (00:11:21): Yeah. SM (00:11:21): ...when you went down there? What was that feeling like? And then, the experience itself and how it can change you somewhat? DH (00:11:27): Well, sure. I was in... I mean, this was part of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee Freedom Summer. And there was an orientation program. People went down in two waves. I was in the second wave, but they just assigned me to that. They just told me to go. The orientation program was maybe at Oberland or some college in Ohio or something, I recall vaguely. And it was the people who were in the first orientation included Schwerner and Goodman, and they were killed along with Chaney while we were at the orientation program they had. They had gone down a week, maybe two weeks before. So, security was a big concern. Although, my parents worried about it more than I did. Yeah, the 20-year-old, what did we... But it was clear that the organization was going to have a lot of security concerns. You did not go out at night. You went out and you never went out alone. So, there were whole sets of security regulations. SM (00:13:10): Was Scott Lynn one of the instructors? DH (00:13:12): Oh, sure. SM (00:13:13): Yeah. [Inaudible] person. DH (00:13:16): Oh, yeah. I have not seen him in decades. Decades. SM (00:13:22): Well, he was up there. DH (00:13:24): Yeah, he was up there. He was a generation, he was 20 years older than we were. You were very careful. We went to the Black churches on Sunday morning, but we were not allowed to go to the African American bars and nightclubs on Saturday night. And we did not integrate. We were doing voter registration. That was the goal. We would canvas Black neighborhoods and try to talk to people about registering. And then, there was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic [inaudible] Challenge. SM (00:14:25): Danny [inaudible]? DH (00:14:26): Mm-hmm. SM (00:14:27): Yes. DH (00:14:28): So, that was the project. And we did not try to desegregate things. We did not pair up with Blacks and try to go to white only places because of the security issues, and because the aim was voter registration. It was aimed at demonstrating. The aim was to demonstrate that these people were not being allowed to vote in order to get the Voting Rights Act, which followed the next year, so that is what we stuck to. I was there during the Gulf of Tonkin, and that is when I first heard of or paid any attention to Vietnam. And then, it was in my senior year. Then you had the escalation started right after it was on [inaudible]. And you had the first round of the teachings were actually in the spring of (19)65, my senior year. And so, there were two professors at Cornell, John Lewis and... He was a China scholar. Oh, the Indonesia scholar. SM (00:16:10): McCann? DH (00:16:10): George McCann. They published one of the first major history of the Vietnam War called the US in Vietnam. The teaching was supposed to be a debate between Hans Morgenthau and McGeorge Bundy. And it was going to be televised, or not televised, broadcast in some way in a dozen campuses. But LBJ forbade Bundy from debating Morgenthau, which would have been a fabulous debate. So then, a dozen, two dozen, however many universities, particularly ones that had strong Southeast Asian departments. So you would have Berkeley, University of Michigan, Yale, Cornell. Anyway, so there were two professors who gave the teaching. Lasted all night long, and these guys alternated it. And I was just astonished at how anyone knew so much about Vietnam. What they were doing was reading the chapters of the book that they were currently writing. SM (00:17:54): Oh, they were looking down and up. DH (00:17:57): They took turns. But it was like a six-hour lecture... SM (00:18:03): My God. DH (00:18:04): ...where these two professors alternated back and forth on how the US was setting off entirely the wrong course, that it was not going to work. If it was not halted and reversed, it was going to be a disaster. Anyway, that then became the serious scholarly book on the Vietnam War for the next several years. SM (00:18:39): What year that book come out? I have a big collection [inaudible], (19)64 or (19)65. DH (00:18:46): Probably came out in (19)66. It would have been in the spring of... I cannot remember. Was it... Yeah, yeah, it was (19)65. SM (00:18:58): Sure. DH (00:19:02): Spring of (19)65. SM (00:19:03): Do you remember the cover? DH (00:19:05): It was green and white. SM (00:19:07): Yeah. DH (00:19:08): Paperback. SM (00:19:09): Oh, it was a paperback. I know there was a green book with a yellow Vietnam on it. It was [inaudible] kind of stuff. Way back. DH (00:19:16): [Inaudible], I do not know. But if you look, if you check it out, McKahin and Lewis, the US in Vietnam. And then, 10 years later, 20 years later, McKahin did a second edition of it. John Lewis left Cornell, went to Stanford and he was... I am still in touch with him. SM (00:19:46): Good. DH (00:19:46): Because he has done a lot of work on China and on North... Well, he is the China scholar, on North Korea. But he is retired from Stanford now. But in any event... SM (00:19:58): That is become a pretty conservative institution there with the Hoover Institution. DH (00:20:01): Well, it is separate. The undergraduate parts, there are parts of it that are liberal. SM (00:20:19): When you look at the boomer generation, now, again, people have responded differently to the question. Some people do not even like this concept of generations. Todd [inaudible] said, "Quit talking about it." People that were young during the era. But he said, for example, that when you look at the Boomers between (19)46 and (19)64, which are the years that are defined as boomers, experiences that the people in the front wave of the boomers are totally different than the last 10 years. And so, those people formed the group, say (19)46 and (19)54-(19)56, they really experienced the protests on college campuses. You cannot really say that some of the students did not that were in the latter group. So, he kept saying that, and I would be interviewing him. He was saying, "Oh, correct me again, just do not say boomer generation." But I have had a couple people that have been very sensitive to this, but I am just saying what other people have defined the group as. They define the World War II generation the silent generation, and what they call the cuspers, which is the second group compared to the first group. I have just learned that in my studies. Cuspers are those born between the (19)56 and (19)64. And then, you have got, of course, the Generation Xers, and then you got the millennials that are in college right now. But the basic question I am really asking, when you look at that generation of 70 to 78 million, and the numbers differ, what are the characteristics that you admired about that group and those that you least admired? DH (00:22:01): I never thought about it. I do not object to the categories, but I am actually a little older. I was born in (19)43. SM (00:22:14): Well, a lot of the people, though, that ran were the leaders of the movement... DH (00:22:20): Yeah, we were. SM (00:22:21): ...in that... DH (00:22:22): Yes. SM (00:22:22): That is why it was really ridiculous. DH (00:22:24): We were in graduate school. SM (00:22:26): Yeah. DH (00:22:26): I mean, I do not much like that question. I would not think about it in that way. I think about the times. And obviously, the music, it was fabulous. SM (00:22:49): Talk about the music because that is a question later on, but how important was the music in the anti-war movement and all the movements? DH (00:22:56): Oh, enormously important. SM (00:22:58): [Inaudible]. DH (00:23:04): The freedom songs, I mean, during the civil rights movement were driven by... Again, because that movement is before the lawyers took over, it was still led by ministers and organized out of churches. And you sang all the hymns. And I came from a low church evangelical Protestant background. They were the same hymns that we sung. The Black churches sang with a little more fervor and better harmony, but same songs. We Shall Overcome, Amazing Grace, then that was when the folk music. SM (00:23:54): Oh, yeah. DH (00:23:57): So, you had folk music, which is what you listen to on the campuses, you had the gospel music, the church hymns that fed directly into is what you sang at the civil rights struggle. But you also had the first fabulous wave of rock and roll. Well, the first wave, I suppose would have been in the mid-(19)50s. But rhythm and blues and rock and roll either came out of Mississippi or came out of Tennessee. Or it was either Memphis or Alabama was. Pardon? SM (00:24:54): [Inaudible]. DH (00:24:58): But he was covering stuff he picked up from the rhythm and blue singers, so that, you know, you had the oldies but goodies rock and roll, and the beginning of soul music, where sort of rhythm and blues went mainstream. The music was fabulous. And you had folk music. And then, Dylan merged folk music. But you had Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. And they were the songsters, the musicians of the civil rights movement. And then, at (19)65... Whoa, was it (19)65? Dylan put folk music to rock and roll, Newport. That must have been Newport (19)65, I guess, or (19)64. But it was Highway 61 Revisited, whenever that was. So, the music was just fabulous. And then, you went (19)66, it was like the... That (19)66-(19)67 was not only the height of Motown, but also stacks and holes. SM (00:26:46): Oh, yeah. DH (00:26:47): The heavier rhythm and blue stuff, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, the more Southern stuff. So, you have the just fabulous music. And then, it went psychedelic. SM (00:27:07): Saturday Night Fever. DH (00:27:09): No, that was later. That was disco. SM (00:27:11): We were talking about... DH (00:27:13): The Stones and the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. So, I mean, that was the music of the anti-war group. SM (00:27:23): Yeah. DH (00:27:24): The Jefferson Airplane, all that stuff. And the civil rights movement merged into the hippies. In New York, in California, there was a heavy Stanford contingent in Mississippi, so it was a heavy Yale and Cornell contingent. But you had... What was his name? One of the Yippies. SM (00:28:05): Abbie Hoffman? DH (00:28:06): Abbie Hoffman. SM (00:28:06): And Jerry Rubin. DH (00:28:08): Abbie Hoffman was in Mississippi with Snick. And he left Snick when the Black Power movement sort of thing. And he set up shop in the East Village, but others went out to San Francisco. So you had the East Village. SM (00:28:39): [Inaudible] Berkeley there. DH (00:28:42): Yeah, so that fed into the counterculture. SM (00:28:51): Do you remember your years, the concerts that you went to, the ones at Cornell? The speakers? In that year when you were at Cornell, who were the most important speakers that came to your college at that time to talk about issues? And secondly, who were the musicians? Because when I went to Binghamton, I was there from... The last four years when I graduated [inaudible] and I still remember all the [inaudible] and how important they were. What were the concerts and speakers that you saw when you were a student? DH (00:29:28): Peter, Paul and Mary my freshman year. Peter, he was a Cornell graduate. They came through there. Who was the great? Bo Diddley. SM (00:29:43): Oh, wow. DH (00:29:49): And the Isley Brothers. SM (00:29:57): Oh, [inaudible]. DH (00:29:57): They were hardcore rock and rollers. And for a while, Jimi Hendrix was their guitar man. But they would come every year. Speakers, though, there were a lot of them. Hans Morgenthau did come through, Paul Tillich gave a lecture series there. I am not sure I understood what was saying, but sounded existentialist theology. It sounded very interesting. SM (00:30:41): Did you ever meet Daniel Barica? Because he was the Catholic priest there. DH (00:30:44): Oh, he actually came after I graduated. SM (00:30:49): Okay. DH (00:30:49): I was very active in the... Well, the Cornell United Religious Works, the CURW, was sort of the head and the various chaplains of which Barica became a Catholic chaplain there. But that was probably as close to the headquarters for the civil rights activities and anti-war activities as there was on campus. Certainly more than the economics department. I do not know what else you would say was, but that is where a lot of student... That is where you did a lot of that kind of activity. SM (00:31:42): But later on in Cornell when the Americans took over the union with the Black Power period, that was (19)61, a lot of history there. DH (00:31:53): Yeah. I do not think Cornell ever recovered. SM (00:32:00): The guy who was one of the leaders of that ended up becoming a very big CEO and actually is on a board of trustees now. Some big thing. One of the questions I have asked everybody is back in (19)94 when New Gingrich came to power, a period that the Republicans came in. I have read a couple of his speeches, he made a lot of comments about the (19)60s and (19)70s about we went backward during that era. And he really criticized the generation, the young people from that era. And then, George Will has also done the same thing. A lot of his writings, whenever he gets a chance to take a shot at the [inaudible], at the (19)60s and (19)70s, the activists. And basically what they are saying is that all the problems we have in American society today, and certainly not the terrorism thing, that has come about since. But all the problems we have in our society today, that you can go right back to that era. The lack of respect for authority, the sexual revolution. DH (00:32:59): Yeah, well... SM (00:32:59): The breakdown of divorce rate. SM (00:33:02): ...the breakdown of the divorce rate. All the people combating the victimization, everybody is a victim. So your thoughts on those kinds of comments, it is not just them, but there are others who really say that America really went backwards instead of forwards. DH (00:33:20): Well, I mean, that is the culture war. They were only partially... They could not be against the civil rights that they granted. The Gingrichs and the Wills granted that we were right about that. I do not recall what Will would have said about the war in Vietnam, but that was a Democrat's war, so I do not know, I do not recall what he was saying. But what they were mostly railing against was the counterculture. It was the hippies. That was what offended the Newt Gingrichs, and particularly the George Wills. It was the long hair, pot smoking, cultural aspect of the (19)60s and early (19)70s that they were attributing all matters of evil things to. SM (00:34:48): I know that Barney Frank wrote a book many years ago called Speaking Frankly, and in that book, he said around, he would not talk about those two guys, but as a Democrat, he was even making comments about the fact that the Democratic Party better get their act together because they fell apart in (19)72 when McGovern was running for president because it was the anti-war group. It was the anti-war group. And the Democratic Party became identified as that anti-war group. And that is when Nixon came into power and, of course, Board filed, of course, another history there, but then Reagan. So there was a lot of backlash that party had to get away from the anti-war people, those kind of things. And he wrote about that in a book. He actually agrees, not that he agrees with it, but he says another thing there about the burden. Everything seemed to change around that time and the recommendations that we need to change our course, the Democratic Party. DH (00:35:50): Yeah. Well, he was and remained a liberal Democrat. He was always, he was strongly against the war in Vietnam and strongly against interventional strong policy. But sure, in large part over race, but also, over the counterculture. The Democratic Party lost the Catholic vote, the working class, the Italian and Irish Catholic stalwart voting blocks for the New Deal. Sometimes they went with Wallace or they went with Nixon and Agnew over his attacks against the student elitists and the liberal media run by the Ivy League graduates. And there was apart from the solid South, that is when you had the party realignment. I mean, the liberal Republicans became Democrats, and the conservative Democrats became Republican as the South, which Johnson said was going to happen, is that he signed the Civil Rights Act. He said that, "South is going to be Republican, and I am the one who made it sell." But he did. But you had the loss of the Irish and Italian Catholics in the cities and the suburbs went with Nixon-Agnew, and then they certainly went for Reagan. SM (00:38:11): In your viewpoint, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? DH (00:38:40): I do not know. I do not know when it started in, I would have to think about that one. For me, it started in 1960. That is when I went off to college. I would say it ended in (19)72 with Nixon's reelection. So I think that is sort of when it ended. SM (00:39:16): Right. DH (00:39:16): That is when I would end it. SM (00:39:22): Do you think the Beats from... They were a small group, but they were also pretty influential, the Ginsbergs, the Kerouacs, and all that group, Waldman. They were kind of rebels in the (19)50s, I think. Of course, Ginsberg goes through, though, everything, Ferlinghetti and all of that group. They had influence on all on the (19)60s generation, the Vietnam generation. DH (00:39:50): Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, sure. They fed directly into the counterculture. Well, they were all closeted homosexuals basically. Somewhere along the line, they came out of the closet, but they were involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and certainly, in the counterculture. Oh, okay. Let us see... Started with maybe the free speech movement in Berkeley. SM (00:40:32): And that was (19)64, (19)65. DH (00:40:34): Oh, was that that late? SM (00:40:35): Yeah, that was (19)64- DH (00:40:37): Then it started before that. No, really? SM (00:40:41): Yeah, that was (19)64, (19)65. And then Ginsberg wrote Howell. Of course, that was a very big thing in the (19)50s was freedom of speech and [inaudible]. DH (00:40:51): Yeah, that is why I thought the free speech movement was earlier. SM (00:40:56): Yeah, that was (19)64, (19)65. DH (00:40:57): Really? SM (00:40:57): At Berkeley. DH (00:41:01): Oh, okay. SM (00:41:03): Port Huron Statement was earlier. That was- DH (00:41:06): Yeah, that was good. When was that? SM (00:41:07): That was around (19)63ish when Tom wrote that. DH (00:41:07): Okay. SM (00:41:16): And I thought, what is interesting, I always make a comment, and this is not about me, but personally, in what I have written as far as the book is that 1973 to me was the end of the (19)60s. And that is because people were streaking at college campuses. And I knew something, that the seriousness of a lot of the things back then because I am working at Ohio University and my very first job in student affairs, and my buddy's from Ohio State, he called me up, said, "You got to get back here on the weekend." I said, "Why?" "They are going to be streaking all over the place. You love beautiful women." And I said, "Well, let us go." So I drove back from OU, and lo and behold, behind the law library that the women were coming out and doing the Rockettes, and the guys would then come out. It was unbelievable. I said, "What the hell's going on here?" The protests are over [inaudible]. DH (00:42:06): Oh, okay. Yeah. SM (00:42:12): Well, that is just an experience. One of the things I want to ask you, too, the boomers oftentimes, and again, I know you did not like the category, but the students that were in college in those times, in the (19)60s to maybe mid (19)70s, felt they were the most unique generation of American history. [inaudible] uniqueness. And there was a feeling that we are going solve all the problems in the world, racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace in the world, a utopian kind of a mentality. Your thoughts on that kind of attitude that many of them had? Because I know I saw students talk about it, and a lot of them that are now in their early (19)60s, some of them still feel that. They have not lost that feeling, even though a lot of them really had gone out and made a lot of money and did not really get involved in causes. Just your thoughts on that. DH (00:43:13): On exactly what? SM (00:43:19): Oh, well, there was a uniqueness that they were the most unique. DH (00:43:28): Well, that is really, put that boldly is a little, off-puttingly arrogant. But you had different ways of it. You had the New Frontier getting the country moving again, and the idealism that was rekindled in various ways by the Kennedys, and the Peace Corps, that you did have that sort of optimism about getting the country moving again. And you also, you had the attitude so well expressed in Blowing in the Wind and some of the Dylan songs, get out of the way if you cannot make it. What was that song? SM (00:44:35): Blowing in the Wind or... DH (00:44:43): No, The Times They Are A-Changing. That is the one, The Times They Are A-Changing. You certainly had in the civil rights movement the sense that we were going to knock down the walls, and we did, but there was a consciousness that we were going to storm the citadels of segregation and knocked them down. I do not think you had quite that sense in Vietnam, because we had one short-lasting triumph. Well, we had two short-lasting triumphs. First triumph was the success of the Dump Johnson movement in the McCarthy campaign, both of which I was involved with. That is where I met Nixon and Sam Brown. But yeah, so we had such a good showing in New Hampshire that Bob Kennedy joined and LBJ dropped out. And then that soured real quickly and we ended up getting Richard Nixon. And four years later, I worked in the McGovern campaign. We succeeded [inaudible]. We succeeded in taking over the Democratic Party and then proceeded to lose every state except Massachusetts, I think, so that was short. And we were not succeeding. I mean, we were having big protests, and a lot of doors were open to us in Washington during the moratorium, but we were not... And we succeeded, it was actually Nixon. It was Nixon and Kissinger's plan to do what they finally did in the Christmas Bombing of (19)71, I guess. Was the Christmas Bombing (19)71 or (19)72? Must have been (19)71. SM (00:47:38): I know, in (19)70, is when they went in to Cambodia, though. DH (00:47:42): Yeah. Oh, no, maybe it was even later. Maybe it was his sec... Oh, it is all a little fuzzy now. But the massive bombing of Hanoi, it was later to force them to sign the... They were going to do that. They were going to do what became the Christmas Bombing. There is a name for it as a military operation, the Christmas Bombing is what we call it. It was not Operation Rolling Thunder. That was over Cambodia. SM (00:48:22): Yeah, that was early. That was earlier, yeah. DH (00:48:24): Whatever the name of it was, they were planning to do it in the winter of (19)69-(19)70. There was so much of an outpouring of peace sentiment that basically we organized in October and November of 1969 that they could not do it. They were afraid they would have the outcry that occurred in the spring at Kent State following the Cambodian invasion. So we forced them to postpone the carpet bombing of Hanoi for a couple of years. But you never had the sense that you were going to storm the citadels in the way we were storming them successfully in the civil rights movement. But in the civil rights movement, you had within SNCC a utopian faction called the... Well, sometimes they are called the crazy people faction and the better term was the beloved community. These were the interracial brotherhood of man folks, some of which peeled off into the hippies and yippies, but very pacifist, vegetarian, utopian. There were people involved in that who thought that they were creating the beloved community. SM (00:50:25): Is that Bob Moses? Was he in that? DH (00:50:26): Yeah, he was. Yes. SM (00:50:27): And John Lewis? DH (00:50:29): No, Lewis would have been in the realpolitik. Black Power really was sort of Black nationalist, the Stokely Carmichaels and Rap Brown. SM (00:50:50): Right, Eldridge Cleaver- DH (00:50:52): But you had Bayard Rustin from protest to politics. These people were going from protest to revolution or protest to Cultural Revolution and identity politics. But you had another stream represented by John Lewis and Julian Bond who said, "Hey, we got to vote. Let us run people from mayors and police chiefs, and I am going to run for Congress." So that was the protest to politics faction after the famous essay from Bayard Rustin. He said, "Oh, you got the vote. It is not utopia, but you will have Black policemen. You want Black sheriffs, Black policemen, Black city councilmen, you have the votes, go to it." SM (00:52:07): Yeah. When you think of some of the two most very important experiences, you already talked about Bayard Rustin, because he is from West Chester. DH (00:52:16): Yes. SM (00:52:18): And we did a national tribute on him during my time there. One of the great memories of that was the picture of him on stage with Malcolm X, because they debated each other. Actually, you can get that date, you can go right on the computer and get that and you can listen to it. So you got the debate between Malcolm and [inaudible 00:52:38] Malcolm says, "Your time has passed." And then there is that historic picture that I had not heard the transcript except to hear Stokely speak by himself. But those that witnessed that scene where Dr. King, his arms are folded as he is speaking to him, he was telling him, "Your time has passed." And so what you are talking, what you are seeing is you are seeing two men in their late 30s being told by people in their early 20s or middle 20s that their time was passed. Could you comment? Because you have already made reference to the fact that when SNCC went off into Black Power, it kind of disintegrated it. And the same thing happened with SDS when the Weathermen and the violent portion, people did not want to have anything to do with it anymore, including most people in SDS. DH (00:53:31): No. Yeah. SM (00:53:31): And so just what was happening there? What was this? How did they let this happen within their organizations? How did SDS and SNCC allow these more radical fringes to take over? Was it because of frustration and they were not feeling they were accomplishing anything? DH (00:53:54): That would have been part of it. I mean, I am sure there are a dozen books on this. SM (00:54:00): No, there are. DH (00:54:02): I would have to go back to, I mean, there are three or four histories of SDS, I am sure, or histories of the New Left that would detail its disintegration. But when would I date it from? SM (00:54:31): Well, when did you know, I got to get out of SDS? DH (00:54:37): No-no. SM (00:54:37): You were involved with David and Sam Brown organizing the moratorium. Obviously, you still had beliefs in (19)69, but the history says that the Vietnam Veterans Against- DH (00:54:47): No, they were already nuts by then. SM (00:54:50): Yes. DH (00:54:53): Well, you had different tendencies and debates within the anti-war. You had your old Left, you had your Trotskyites and your old fellow travelers from front groups originally set up by the CP 50s. And then you had your beloved community people and people like the Ginsbergs and the Ferlinghettis who were sort of in that cultural thing. And you had essentially the bulk of ADA, Americans for Democratic Action, which was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. SM (00:56:01): Hubert Humphrey was in that. DH (00:56:03): Yeah, Hubert. That it split. But that had been organized by Reinhold Niebuhr, and Arthur Schlesinger, and John Kenneth Galbraith. And there was a hawk wing of that, but it was a small minority. Most went away. These were like Adlai Stevenson Democrats, Gene McCarthy. They were not Henry Wallace Democrats, but they were... Well, liberal Democrats. So you had the liberal Democrats turned against the war from the outset. They were opposed to the escalation of the war. And some of them were populists, like Frank Church, and the senator from Montana, he was Majority Leader. SM (00:57:20): Yeah, Mansfield. DH (00:57:20): Mansfield. SM (00:57:21): Mike Mansfield. DH (00:57:25): And some of the Democrats from California. But so were some of the Republicans from New York, Jacob Javits, they were not really. They were sort of liberals. So you had the utopians and you had the old Left. But out of frustration, I have not thought about this in a long time, why did this section of SDS go off the deep end? SM (00:58:21): I know Mark Rudd has written about it in his new book because he was part of that group. DH (00:58:26): Yeah, he sure was. I should read it. He is apologetic, I guess. SM (00:58:35): Yeah. Well, I did not know how much he was disliked by Bernardine Dohrn and some of those others. I mean, there is real dislike there. DH (00:58:45): Yeah. Oh, did he go underground? SM (00:58:51): Yes, he did. DH (00:58:52): Yes. Well, he was not exactly popular. I mean, he apparently had an abrasive personality, but that guy in Chicago who reemerged in the Clinton- SM (00:59:11): Obama. DH (00:59:13): Obama campaign. What was his name? SM (00:59:15): Oh, well, that is Bernardine- DH (00:59:15): Dohrn's husband. SM (00:59:18): Yeah. Oh, come on. It is Harris, I thought was his last name. DH (00:59:24): No-no, that is David Harris. [inaudible]. SM (00:59:26): Yeah, I interviewed David over the phone. Yeah, so it will come to me. DH (00:59:36): But you started, I do not know where people got the idea that they could make a revolution. Well, yes, I do know. It started with the fact that the liberals were being seen as sellouts, the Carl Oglesby faction about Vietnam being a war of corporate liberals, that the liberals, you had people saying that it is the liberals who are the problem. Corporate liberalism was defined as the enemy. And then they got the weird idea that you could make a revolution. And people got into anti-capitalism, but not in the Ralph Nader sense, but in the Marxist sense of wanting to make socialist revolution and the goofball idea of Che Guevara about two, three, many Vietnams. Remember this slogan? SM (01:00:58): Two, three, many Vietnams? DH (01:01:00): Yeah, that is what- SM (01:01:00): No, I do not. DH (01:01:02): Oh, ah, yeah-yeah. So his thing, he thought that what you needed was two, three, or more Vietnam struggles where America would get bogged down and defeated in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. So one of his slogans that was picked up by the New Left crazies was, "Two, three, many Vietnams." Because they thought that would lead to the collapse of American imperialism. And he said, "No, wait a minute. We do not want more Vietnams. We want to stop the one that is." So they were going off in a different direction. SM (01:01:55): This is the complexity of the time then is trying to understand the times and all of its complexity. If I had 500 people in a room that were boomers, people that were born after (19)46, could be people that were in (19)43, (19)44, too, and in 19... Well, right now, they said, "What was the one event that had the greatest impact on your life?" What do you think a group of boomers would say, and what was the one event that had the greatest impact on your life? DH (01:02:41): Oh, I suppose it would have been the experience in Mississippi, Freedom Summer for my life, discovering a... I mean, I had not seen rural Southern poverty. I mean, I did not have the idea growing up in middle class Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bethlehem collapsed several years later, so there was a lot of... decades later. But growing up in Allentown, that was a prosperous little market town in between the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers, the Bethlehem steel workers, and the anthracite coal miners. Well, Allentown is sort of situated in the middle and they had textiles. The (19)50s, that is when people got the postwar American dream. So I had no idea that there was poverty, like I saw in Mississippi. I saw racial, social hatred. People hated other people. Why there was this hatred, why there was this poverty, why was there this hatred? What was that? I suppose that was- SM (01:04:47): It shaped your life, even beyond the anti-war and the- DH (01:04:52): Yeah. Well- SM (01:04:53): Was it because of your work with... Could you talk a little bit about how that experience may have helped shape you in terms of your professional life beyond school with Amnesty International, with the things that you have written about, I think Cambodia and- DH (01:05:06): North Korea. SM (01:05:08): ...North Korea, with some of the terrible things that people do to other people, it seems like there is a link there. DH (01:05:13): Of course. I mean, it was called at the time, the civil rights movement. Okay, but what it was about was civil and political rights. King was never successful in turning the corner and tackling economic rights. I mean, he tried, the Poor People's Campaign, the stuff he tried in Chicago, but tackling urban poverty, and it never succeeded. But it was called the civil rights movement. 20 years later, if it were happening now, it would be called the human rights movement. And it was called the woman's movement. The gays took over- [inaudible] though the gaze took over, took the language. By the (19)70s, when that got up and going, the word human rights had entered the vocabulary. But human rights is civil right, political rights, economic rights, and social rights. Civil, political, economic, social, and cultural. The five sets of rights and that is what we would call it nowadays. The human rights movement was called the civil rights movement then. But that is what I have been doing ever since. And the Vietnam experience, working in international affairs has sort of internationalized it, so it was not just a purely domestic issue anymore. It was internationalized and it was not just Vietnam and the Tiger Cages or the treatment of POW's, our POW's or theirs. But it was the traction gained by the apartheid movement, that was international human rights. So essentially the Vietnam War gave it an international focus, but it is essentially the same kind of work that I was doing domestically in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Georgia. SM (01:08:17): Basically what you was doing is what Dr. King wanted to do when he was expanding, because he talked about economics beyond race. DH (01:08:26): Sure. SM (01:08:28): And then he went north when they told him not to go north. A Cicero incident. We all know what happened there. And then of course, his speech on Vietnam, which people told him he should not do. Even people in the civil rights community. DH (01:08:42): Yeah, sure. SM (01:08:43): It was Rabbi Heschel who promoted and pushed it and said, "You need to do this." DH (01:08:48): Yeah. My old professor. SM (01:08:50): Well, he is an unbelievable person. There is a biography on him you ought to read. It is unbelievable. He has not talked about enough. People do not know him and he is very important. DH (01:09:02): I certainly remember him fondly. I took three classes with him. I went to Union to study with Lionel Neber. Neber had a stroke my first year, so I never got to study with Neber. But I ended up studying with Heschel. SM (01:09:18): You were lucky. My goodness. DH (01:09:18): Yeah. SM (01:09:18): You were close to Dr. King. DH (01:09:18): Pardon? SM (01:09:22): You were real close. DH (01:09:22): Oh yes, yes. I got to [inaudible]. I met King in those years. I went to his, before King gave his speech at Riverside Church. He had several meetings at Union Seminary, which is right across the street. SM (01:09:47): Really? DH (01:09:47): Yeah, because that is where Heschel was then. Heschel was still at the Jewish Theological, but he actually took a leave for two years and taught Old Testament at Union. And I was one of his students. And I taught Old Testament theology. But King, the president of the seminary was a guy by the name of John Bennett, who was Lionel Neber's main disciple. He taught Christian ethics also and wrote on ethics and international affairs, but became the president of the seminary. And he was challenging the students at Union to do more about Vietnam. SM (01:10:40): That is a great professor. DH (01:10:43): He was the president of the seminary, probably the only professor, the only president of a university that was exhorting students to do more about Vietnam. But King had several meetings and he was trying to figure out if he should come, if he should oppose Johnson as strongly as he did. If he should really break with LBJ. SM (01:11:11): Were you in those meetings? DH (01:11:13): I was. Well, I was in a couple of them. Some of them took place in Dr. Bennett's apartment at Union and others took place in his lawyer's office. He had a left wing lawyer. I forget the guy's name. SM (01:11:34): Oh, not Alan Mosley? DH (01:11:36): No-no, not Alan. SM (01:11:37): He was a professor at, I do not know. I do not remember the lawyer's name. DH (01:11:42): Oh. But Alan was very... SM (01:11:43): Cussler. DH (01:11:44): Pardon? No-no-no-no. It was not Cussler. It was... SM (01:11:54): Cussler worked [inaudible]. Yeah. Cussler was involved in defending people who got busted in the civil rights community. Yeah, that is what he did. Could you describe, because the only person I have ever talked to whose ever been in a meeting with Dr. King was James Farmer. In our campus and he shared so much with me at dinner and then I went with him for an hour and a half. And then of course we talked about it. But what was that like? I have some other basic questions here, but what a meeting like being with Dr. King in the room? DH (01:12:29): Well, he had these meetings to listen to what people had to say. He actually talked very little. I mean, he had these meetings to hear what people had to say. So he was very modest and soft-spoken. But you were obviously sitting in a living room with a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was thinking about something that was a world shaking impact and importance. So the meetings were not particularly dramatic. They were really him thinking, a little bit of thinking out loud. SM (01:13:36): Were you in a meeting where he actually said, "I had made the decision that I am going to go," or "Yeah, I am going to make the speech at church," or because if he had been wavering because what I read about Rabbi Heschel, you should not waiver. You ought to do it. And because people within the civil rights community, African American ministers were really upset with him. DH (01:14:00): Oh, sure. Well, they did not like him in the civil rights part either. Yeah. And then they, certainly, the Roy Wilkins and the Bayer trust in factions. SM (01:14:16): [inaudible] young was in that group. DH (01:14:18): Certainly opposed going against LBJ on foreign policies since what he had done so much for civil rights and was trying to do the war on poverty and going to, so it was really extraordinary, and I expect that Rabbi Heschel, who really was his spiritual mentor, he was Dr. King's rabbi. SM (01:14:52): I think Rabbi needs to be uplifted and not hidden. There is just so much history of this year that is hidden that our young people need to know about. DH (01:15:04): Yeah. Well, they do not study history anymore. But at any rate, okay, what are some of your questions? SM (01:15:10): Yeah, okay. Answering the one question there about what do you think the a group would say, the number one of event would be to shape their life? Yours was going down south. What would be the... DH (01:15:25): I have no idea. You would have to ask other people. SM (01:15:30): I have asked a lot of other people. Some people think John Kennedy's assassination, there is a lot of individual... DH (01:15:36): Oh wow. SM (01:15:37): It is more individual. I want to read something here. There is two basic issues that I am trying to get at in this interview process. One has to do with the issue of healing. And the other is the issue of trust. Oh, I am going to read this because we took a group of students to see Senator Edmund Muskie about a year and a half before he passed away. I got to know Gaylor Nelson and we had these unenrolled leadership trips, eight to 14 students [inaudible] meetings. And the students planned a question to ask him because they thought he was going to respond based on what happened at the 1968 convention. But, he totally gave a totally different response. This was the question the students came up with. Do you feel that the boomer generation or the young people that period are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart and their youth, divisions between black and white, divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize, divisions between those who supported the troops and those who did not, including those that went to war and those who did not? What has the wall played in healing these divisions? And is it, or was that just primarily healing for veterans? Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this after it was then last 30 years, now it is 40 years. Taking this after so many years, or has the statement, time heals all wounds, stay true? Now there is a lot there, but what we are trying to get at is it is like the people going to the Vietnam memorials and rethinking, or maybe I should not have been in the war. Maybe I should not have done what I did when I was young. Kids ask their father what they did in the war. Those kind of things, the healing. And I would go to Gettysburg a lot and you know, you even lived near Gettysburg when you were young. And one of the things you find at Gettysburg is the fact that on the southern side, so many things are left. People come up from the south, leave decals that they have not really forgotten. DH (01:17:45): No-no. SM (01:17:45): And you do not see anything on the northern side. Nothing. And I have noticed that for years because I go there four or five times just to get a feel of the terrible... You know, war is, it is just terrible. But Senator Muskie, basically his response was this, and then I will hear your response. His response was, he did not respond. Typical of what you saw on the news, he started to have tears in his eyes and he did not speak for a minute. And then he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." Instead of talking about the (19)60s, he went out, I am talking for the next 10 minutes, 15, about the Civil War. Because he had just seen the Ken Burns series when he was in the hospital. The fact that we had lost almost an entire generation, 440,000 died, men died and all that other stuff. So that is what he talked about. But do you think we have a problem with healing in this nation? Is that this group of 70 million is, you know, you cannot do individually, but I have talked to enough people, there is something going on there. Is that an issue? DH (01:18:55): I do not think any more than any other people, and perhaps less. I bet that, well, I do not bet. I know there is more unhealing between Vietnamese who supported the North and Vietnamese who supported the South, there is still rank hostility there. That would be more comparable to our civil war, I suppose. I do not have this, and I bet Chilean people have not healed between those who were pro-Pinochet and those who were opposed Pinochet, the people who supported Allende and those who supported Pinochet probably are more hostile to each other than people who supported McGovern versus people who supported Nixon. Our disputes were, for the most part, not life and death struggles. Those other struggles were life and death. And people on both sides lost their lives. SM (01:20:40): Wow. DH (01:20:41): So I... SM (01:20:48): I preface this by saying, Jan Scruggs wrote that book, the founder of the Vietnam Memorial, 'To Heal a Nation', which was his book, very well received. And of course the goal of the Vietnam Memorial was to create a non-political entity [inaudible] to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and to help their families and to heal, and the veterans themselves. I know there is still not a lot of healing within the vets, but... DH (01:21:12): Oh, I think it succeeded enormously. I do not know of anybody who has not moved, whether they were draft resistors or whether they were Vietnam vets. Everybody I know of whose ever seen it is enormously moved by the wall. It was just a genius of an idea. SM (01:21:39): Oh yeah. Well, it is still... DH (01:21:42): Compared to the idiotic [inaudible], the memorial to the Korean War vets is just awful. And the new one to the World War II vets is just awful also. It is that gargantuan circle with the columns in Washington. That is really ugly. Any rate, so I do not think, but I am sure there is some bitterness, but I think a lot of people have gotten over it. SM (01:22:23): So the walls painted, it does not have a decent job [inaudible] that is even beyond the vets. DH (01:22:30): I think so, yes. I mean because it is so successful as a memorial that the vets feel that their friends who lost their lives are recognized and memorialized. So, you have small, small traces of the POW mentality. But that is faded as it is now ceased to become tenable. That there are still people being held. And also by the fact that the Vietnamese and the Americans get along so well. SM (01:23:26): Well, 85 percent of the people I believe that live in Vietnam now, were not even alive when the... DH (01:23:33): And they love Americans. SM (01:23:34): Right. It is beautiful. DH (01:23:36): And veterans go back there and are received, they got up and they are received with open arms. SM (01:23:43): There is a respect between the warriors ever since then. DH (01:23:48): Yeah. Or the young people who enlist their parents and grandparents, not them. SM (01:23:57): The other issue is the label of trust. Boomers, people saw so many leaders lie to them in their view. And actually as they have gotten older, it is like lies continue amongst other presidents. And I guess we are looking at leadership here, whether it be Watergate with Nixon, whether it be President Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin. Even recent things written about President Kennedy and what he did or did not know about the overthrow of Diem. You know a little bit about Eisenhower lying about U2. A lot of people did not trust Ford when Nixon was leaving. And of course, Reagan and Iran-Contra. It goes on and on. So there is a lack of trust. And I am wondering if this goes back to something when I was in college where a professor said, "If you cannot trust people that you may not be a success in life. You have to trust others. Being able to trust others is important for a human being." As a generation if they are advertised or labeled as a non-trusting generation, is that good or bad? Or am I wrong in this interpretation? DH (01:25:07): I have no idea. I do not know. I mean, it seems so routine that governments lie. They just do. But yeah, I have no idea. SM (01:25:36): A political science professor would say, because they teach politics, is that the art of politics is really about not trusting your government because you do not trust your government, that is healthy. That is what a political scientist would say. DH (01:25:50): Okay. SM (01:26:00): I do not know if there is any reaction to that or not, but do you, and again, maybe you cannot answer this, but I have asked a lot of people the question is, have boomers been good parents, have they raised good kids and grandkids now? Now I cannot talk about grandkids in terms of doing some of the things they did where they were young in terms of activism. Where has activism gone? There is a lot of good things being done and there is always examples of it everywhere and Amnesty International. There is a lot of great groups out there that do great things. But did they really passed their experiences on, have you passed your experiences on to younger people? Because sometimes that is very important as they evolve [inaudible] into adults. DH (01:26:48): I do not know. SM (01:26:58): I think what I am really getting at here is, are you pleased... Forget about the boomers. These young people that were young in the (19)60s and the (19)70s who have now gone on, who are now reaching social security age this year for the first time. Have they really lived up to their beliefs, their idealism? And again, we are only talking even about 15 percent of 70 million. That is still a lot of people. Are you disappointed? DH (01:27:29): Never even thought about it. It is not a question that would have occurred to me. And I do not know how you generalize about that. I am just drawing a blank on that one. SM (01:27:50): Yeah. What were we just talking about? Had not thought... DH (01:27:57): I do not know about trust. SM (01:27:59): Yeah. But it is about the responses that many people have had is that I am very disappointed in these young people as opposed to the young people from then. So... DH (01:28:13): Well, I mean, I meet a lot of young people. The young people I meet, are the committed ones. The activist ones. Those are who I meet and they are great. SM (01:28:27): Well, a couple more questions here. And that is looking at the movements of that period because movements are really part of what the older generation was all about. There were so many movements that about, you already talked about being in the civil rights as a young person, civil rights movement and the anti-war movement itself. But the other movements that evolved around this period, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano, the Native American, the environmental movement, all these movements kind of looked to the civil rights movement as kind of a teacher. DH (01:28:57): Yeah, sure. SM (01:28:59): And it seemed like they were together. There was a lot of togetherness. When you did that 1969 moratorium, I would assume that you had probably individuals from all those groups there. Earth Day had not happened yet, but... DH (01:29:15): The what? SM (01:29:15): Earth Day had not happened until 1970, but... DH (01:29:18): No, we knew the Earth Day people very well. And we agreed with them. And they agreed with us. I mean, they were all opposed to the war. They came to our demonstrations. We had not thought about the issues they were raising, but when they raised them, we agreed with them. But yes, so Earth Day was that spring. SM (01:29:57): Right. DH (01:30:00): So they were interested in us because we had run big demonstrations and that is what they were doing. So we knew them and liked them. SM (01:30:10): All these other groups that I mentioned. You were linked to them though in some way, were not you? Explain more of that moratorium. How much work went into that, explain when the idea came up and you know that, how long it took you and you had a big crowd, but that kind of was the last hurrah. DH (01:30:29): No-no-no. It was probably nothing bigger than the October (19)69 moratorium because that was decentralized. But I would not be surprised if some of the Earth Day things. But certainly you then had bigger demonstrations in Washington for various things over the years. The idea for the moratorium... Oh, excuse me. SM (01:31:07): I hope I am not tiring you. DH (01:31:13): Pain from... Oh, I think I need to make some coffee. After the McCarthy campaign, I was working for the National Student Association as their anti-Vietnam and anti-draft coordinator in Washington. And there, Sam Brown was at the Kennedy School at Harvard. There was a peace group, an old line peace group in Boston called Mass PAC, Massachusetts Peace Action Council or something. And the guy that ran it was his named Jerry Grossman. He was a businessman. I think he made envelopes. But Mass PAC had the idea of an expanding student strike of you would start off at the campuses for one day, then the next month you would try to expand it for two days and then the third month expand it for three days and you try to make it larger, bigger, and longer each month. We changed, and it seemed like a good idea. I have been at the National Student Association, you work with student governments and college newspaper editors as opposed to your local peace committees. So there is always a student body president, there is always a student council, there is always college newspaper's. So it sort of institutionalized. And by that time, almost all people who got to be student body presidents or editor of their college newspaper were anti-war. And with the editors, you had a base to get your opinions out because they ran the student newspaper, they wrote the editorials and with the student... We took the idea. No, so we had this network of student body presidents, college newspaper editors and changed the idea. Instead of calling it a strike, we called it a moratorium because there had been that spring, the spring of (19)69, I forget what campuses erupted then. Maybe Cornell, Columbia. SM (01:34:02): Oh yes, Cornell for sure. DH (01:34:05): Harvard. You know you... SM (01:34:07): Harvard Yard. Yep. DH (01:34:10): So this was not designed to, this was not a protest against the college administration. This was against, it was designed to show Nixon and Kissinger that if they wanted to close out the war in Vietnam, there would be a lot of public support for doing that. So we did not like the term, students strike because of what had gone on the campuses that preceding spring. The word strike would sound as if it is directed against the college administration. And it was not. But at any rate, it seemed like this was mixed. The four of us who did it who were the national coordinators all met in the moratorium, I mean in the McCarthy campaign. SM (01:35:20): Okay. DH (01:35:20): So we were like the liberal wing of the anti-war movement who were not opposed to electoral politics or working with capitalist politicians. So we had got a bunch of these student body presidents and editors together in my office in Washington. And Sam came down from Boston and pitched this idea, which he had gotten from Jerry Grossman. And they sort of liked it. So we set up an office and over the summer with two or three people, called college administrations to find out the name and home phone number of the student body presidents. SM (01:36:28): And they gave it out. DH (01:36:29): And in those years they gave it out. SM (01:36:33): They do not do that now. DH (01:36:33): They do not do that now. And then we tracked these people down on their, wherever they were for the summer and say, "We have this thing that we wanted to see if you are interested in. Send me some information." And because we wanted to start in the middle of October, so you would have to start organizing it as soon as kids come back in September. So there was only three, four weeks to organize it once you return to school. But originally the press was interested in us and the reporters that were assigned to cover what we were doing were the reporters for Time, and Newsweek, and US News & World Report who covered the campus, who covered education. They wanted to know what was going to happen on the colleges tonight. And so we went public about what we were doing. And so the Press Corps in Washington, we knew a lot of them. We knew the journalists who covered the McCarthy, the political journalists who covered the McCarthy campaign. Ayi-yi-yi. SM (01:38:07): I think you answered that pretty good. Okay. Quick question here and with respect to why the Vietnam War ended, just your thoughts on why it ended, if there is one major reason, and number two, how important were the college students in ending the war in Vietnam? DH (01:38:47): Well, they were probably the major, they were the face of the opposition to the war in Vietnam. It was the faculty...It was the faculty and students, and a lot more students. They were more important than the faculty. The war ended. We were able to build up enough pressure on the administration that they had to withdraw the troops in dribs and drabs. If they did not keep bringing the troops out, the pressure would have built up again. And by that time, pressure would be coming from Congress as well. It was clear enough that Congress wanted the war to be brought to a close. The clearest indication of which was the growing congressional support for resolutions that cut the funding. SM (01:40:20): Yeah. DH (01:40:22): That is real clear. And it was... SM (01:40:29): I believe Senator Nelson was involved in that, too. DH (01:40:35): Oh, sure. SM (01:40:35): Yeah. DH (01:40:35): Yeah. So it was a Republican, Goodell? SM (01:40:42): Yes. Yeah. DH (01:40:43): From New York. SM (01:40:44): Yes-yes. A big, big person for this. DH (01:40:46): Hatfield, McGovern. There were two. SM (01:40:47): Yep. DH (01:40:48): There was a softer one and a harder one. I forget which is which. But Hatfield and McGovern. Were they... That must have been the harder one. SM (01:41:01): Right. DH (01:41:06): I do not recall them exactly. They had nixed it, I remember. SM (01:41:10): I know that senator, the one from Alaska, too. DH (01:41:13): Oh, it is Stevens. Ted Stevens, yeah. SM (01:41:15): Hruska? I forget the... He was against it, too. DH (01:41:21): Oh. Oh, it was not- SM (01:41:22): Yeah, Stevens. DH (01:41:22): He is the terrible guy. SM (01:41:23): Yeah. DH (01:41:40): Oh... SM (01:41:40): It was H-R-U-S-K-A. I know. It was Senator Hruska. And Senator Harris was also involved in that as well. DH (01:41:40): Kissinger and Nixon thought that they were going to be able to rely on US air power. They were only withdrawing the troops. The US bombing in support of the South Vietnamese troops was supposed to continue. But then Congress did cut off the funds, and they could not continue the bombing. And without air support, neither the North Vietnamese nor the South Vietnamese abided by the terms of the Paris Agreement. That was a face-saving mechanism to get us out. But neither the North nor the South followed it. So it was clear that they were going to fight each other once we left. Kissinger and Nixon thought they would be able to use US air power to tip the balance, but they could not, so the two armies fought it out. And from the very first battle, the South Vietnamese Army collapsed. Precipitously, they lost the first two battles. After that, they did not fight anymore. They all just fled, and it ended in a rout. SM (01:43:01): In 1975, when Phil Caputo was there in Vietnam as a reporter, not as a Marine, he talks about the fear of being shot by the South Vietnamese military for "They are abandoning us." Those kinds of things. Real fast here. Books. What were the books that people were reading? Do you remember what you were reading when you were in college, and in the (19)60s? What were the Students for a Democratic Society students reading? What were the anti-war students reading? Were there any books that stood out, the authors? You mentioned Che already, Che Guevara, what he had to say. DH (01:43:46): No, but he was- SM (01:43:47): Yeah. Yeah, [inaudible]. DH (01:43:48): He was a nut case. SM (01:43:49): Yeah. DH (01:43:51): Oh, I do not know. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society. SM (01:44:02): Big book. DH (01:44:03): That was a... Oh. Oh, the... SM (01:44:12): Going to the back stretches of your mind here. We are bringing stuff out. DH (01:44:25): Erich Fromm, the psychologist. SM (01:44:28): The psychologist. Right. DH (01:44:37): He wrote books. Ah, Samuelson, Economics 101. Everybody read Samuelson. I am trying to think. I mean, I do not know. You could read the same... SM (01:45:05): Were books like The Greening of America, does that... Did you read that? DH (01:45:09): Yeah, but that was later. That was not college. That was much later. Yes, I remember reading it. I thought it was a very odd book to come from a law professor. But we were part of it. It was sort of fun. It was a book about us. SM (01:45:33): And there was Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture. There was Harry Edwards' Black Students. There were a lot of really good ones. Most of them were in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, those books. DH (01:45:44): Yeah. When I was at Union, I did read everything [inaudible] wrote. I mean, I read all of his books. SM (01:46:03): Did you read King? DH (01:46:05): Oh, you mean his- SM (01:46:05): He wrote six books. DH (01:46:11): I am sure I did, but they were mostly sermons. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Or Manchild in the Promised Land. Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land. SM (01:46:31): Oh, yeah. DH (01:46:32): And the Autobiography of Malcolm X. SM (01:46:34): Alex Haley wrote it. DH (01:46:36): Yeah. C. Wright Mills. SM (01:46:43): White Collar? DH (01:46:44): Yeah. SM (01:46:45): Tom Hayden wrote a book on that. DH (01:46:46): Pardon? SM (01:46:47): Tom Hayden wrote a book on C. Wright Mills. DH (01:46:53): His... SM (01:46:54): Recently. DH (01:46:55): Oh. SM (01:46:55): He is a prolific writer. I mean, he is putting a book out every year now. Couple of the- DH (01:47:03): Oh. Oh, I am trying to think. Guy who just died. He used to write for the Village Voice. No-no. SM (01:47:17): I know who you are talking about. Not William Sapphire. It is... He just passed away, but... Kempton? DH (01:47:25): No, not Mary Kempton. No-no. SM (01:47:28): Well, couple of the... There were slogans. Slogans were very important part. You already mentioned Che Guevara's slogan, and "We Shall Overcome," which is the Civil Rights Movement. There were three that I have been mentioning in the last part of my interviews. The last 50 people I have interviewed. Not the first 50 because it has been going on a long time. Three that may define the entire era. One of them is Malcolm X, too. "By any means necessary." That is number one. The second one is Bobby Kennedy, which was a Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and ask why, I see things that never were and ask why not." That is kind of the activism, the anti-war. DH (01:48:14): Mm-hmm. SM (01:48:14): And then you have got the counterculture, which is really the Peter Mack posters with the artists who put unbelievable quotes. And I had it on my door as one of the biggest selling posters in 1970, (19)71, at Ohio State. The words were, you do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." And that is kind of the counterculture, hippie-dippy kind of.... DH (01:48:36): Yeah. That is the new one. Never heard of that one. That one passed me by. SM (01:48:41): Well, I regret not having the poster. The poster is worth about $500. Those things you bought in the store that were in the round, they only made so many of them. Do you think those really define... If you were to say the quotes, when I mentioned those three, someone said, "You have got to say, 'We shall overcome.'" Do you think that really combines the era? "By any means necessary" is symbolic of SDS and Black Power? DH (01:49:11): Oh, I do not know. I mean, no, that is just, well, I do not know. My response to it is that that is empty rhetoric. There is no substance to that. What does it mean? I mean, this was just rhetorical militancy. That is like the other slogan associated with Malcolm X. "He was ready. Are you?" No, I was... The only one of those that... To me, "any means necessary" is empty rhetoric. What does it mean when the other people have all the guns? SM (01:50:03): Right. DH (01:50:05): And sometimes you have the vote, sometimes you do not. What is "any means necessary"? What is that? It is meaningless. And I never heard of the last one you mentioned. So, by a process of elimination, the Thoreau quote is probably the best example of the nerve and spirit that Bobby Kennedy struck during his last year of his political life. And that which rekindled the idealism that John Kennedy had, the new frontier had sparked five, six years earlier. Bobby Kennedy revived that, and that quote is probably the core or the essence of what he was aspiring to when he ran for president. SM (01:51:44): Yeah. Because, boy, that speech he gave in Indianapolis was just- DH (01:51:47): Whew. SM (01:51:47): ...Off the cuff, and it was just unbelievable. There was something that Senator McCarthy, when I interviewed him in (19)96, the only thing where he basically said, "I will not comment, read it in my book" was when I mentioned Bobby Kennedy. So there was still- DH (01:52:04): Oh, yeah. SM (01:52:05): Yeah, he... Being a person, as you and David and others who worked for McCarthy, were you upset when he just simply disappeared? I mean, he decided not to run? That is still a mystery, why he just kind of gave up. DH (01:52:22): No-no. No. I mean, I actually stayed close with him for all of... I saw him a couple weeks before he died. SM (01:52:36): Oh, you did? DH (01:52:36): Yes. SM (01:52:37): I went to... Were you at the church when they had the memorial? DH (01:52:41): Yes. SM (01:52:41): I was there. I sat over to the left. DH (01:52:43): Oh. SM (01:52:43): You could see me on C-SPAN. All the dignitaries were in the center. I sat over to the left. He was just a nice person. We got along because we were both Irish, and I had met him four times. And I gave him a sweatshirt at Westchester University when we went down once. And I said something to him, "I think probably most of the people give these sweatshirts to secretaries." He says, "well, I am not going to give it to a secretary. I want to keep it and wear it because it was green." And I get this letter at home. I sent him a letter thanking him for meeting our students. And I got this nice, nice note from him that he sent to me. And then he had two pictures. He was standing in front of his home, wearing the Westchester sweatshirt. And he said basically, "See, I told you I was going to wear it." Yeah, I liked him. I liked him because we hit it off, and I love the fact that he always would quote the poet, Lowell. So he was good. DH (01:53:50): Yeah. How many years was he the senator? 12, 18? SM (01:53:52): I think it was 18. He went out along with... Boy, the 1980 coup with all of... Senator Nelson. DH (01:54:01): Yeah. There was a- SM (01:54:02): Senator McCarthy, Birch Bayh, I mean, it was unbelievable. They all went out at the same time. DH (01:54:07): Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. 18 years at the same job. I have never had the same job. He had been a congressman too. Yeah. So there was nothing that he was going to do as a senator that he had not done. He had no aspiration to be head of... Speaker... Not Speaker of the House. Yeah, no. Yeah. Whatever that was. SM (01:54:42): Majority leader. DH (01:54:44): Yeah. He did not want to. He was much too much of a poet to do back room deals, which is what the majority leader has to do. And nothing he was going to do as a senator would match what he did in (19)68. So- SM (01:54:59): Right. DH (01:55:10): He was really a poet. He was an intellectual. He was much more- SM (01:55:12): He had a PhD, did not he, in history? And he was a professor and he was chair of his department. DH (01:55:17): Yeah. Yeah. He was a serious Irish intellectual. Literature, I think. Or what? Politics. SM (01:55:28): Yeah, I am not sure either. But I know McGovern has a PhD too. DH (01:55:32): Yeah, he does. SM (01:55:33): Very smart people. DH (01:55:35): So at any rate, I was not surprised. And then he wrote poetry. We stayed in touch. My wife is much more interested in poetry. So they would talk a lot because they could talk about the poets. And she was in English Lit major. SM (01:55:59): They said when he passed, he was in a senior home someplace or... DH (01:56:01): Yeah. Yeah. We went to see him there. And he was basically in and out of consciousness. Or in and out of recognition. He recognized Sam Brown. Sam and I and our wives went to see him. And he recognized Sam and he recognized me. And you would have snatches of conversation for a couple of sentences, but... So of course, we were really glad that we got to see him because he died several weeks later. So I was glad to see him before he- SM (01:56:40): Nice to see Bill Clinton there. Bill Clinton was there and spoke too. That was nice. I am at the last part of the interview. Thanks for going over, too. I have gone over by time here. DH (01:56:51): Oh, yeah. SM (01:56:51): Yep. But I want to just end by just, if you can just give me quick responses. These are just names of... Whoops. These are just names of people or terms or events. And just, I know it is hard to put in a few words, but just your overall quick reaction to these. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? DH (01:57:13): Oh, the fitting and appropriate way to honor those who died, even though the war was lost and should not have been fought. SM (01:57:41): What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? DH (01:58:00): The tail end and the height of the protest against the war, and the increasing repression that was stimulated by the Mitchells and Agnews in their response to our protests. SM (01:58:20): Watergate. DH (01:58:25): Latent dishonesty of the administration. And its willingness to violate the law, knowingly, purposefully. SM (01:58:37): Woodstock and the Summer of Love. DH (01:58:41): Well, Woodstock was just the rock and roll and the counterculture, and the awareness of the size of the countercultural constituency. Summer of Love, because that was (19)67. That was... No, it is not San Francisco. SM (01:59:07): Yeah, it was San Francisco. DH (01:59:09): Oh. No, that was the beginning of- SM (01:59:10): Haight-Ashbury. Golden Gate Park, all that. DH (01:59:14): That was the golden era of the flower children, before bad drugs turned it nasty. SM (01:59:30): How about just the words hippies and yippies? They are different. DH (01:59:36): Yeah, sure they are different. Oh, I liked the hippies. I admired the political theater of the yippies and the idea of going to the Stock Exchange, throwing dollar bills from the balcony. I mean, you got to admire someone who came up with that idea. But for the most part, they were crazies. And we wanted them to do their thing somewhere different from where we were doing our thing. Because they were not as counterproductive as the pro-Vietcong left. I mean, those people, with their Vietcong flags, were setting us back. Because that is what drove the union people, the working people, nuts. That was really unpatriotic. Because we wanted the hippies not to do their thing at our demonstrations. So if they did their thing on their own, like bills from the Stock Exchange, fine. That is great political theater. But do not do it at our demonstrations. SM (02:01:06): How about the year 1968? DH (02:01:09): Great year. SM (02:01:14): That is- DH (02:01:18): Great Year. We drove LBJ from office. SM (02:01:22): We lost some important people, in Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. That was sad. DH (02:01:30): Oh, yeah. It surely was. But when I think of (19)68, I think of... And obviously, the Chicago convention was awful. SM (02:01:45): Right. DH (02:01:47): But I think of... (19)68 to me is New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries. SM (02:01:49): Were you at the (19)68 convention? DH (02:01:49): I was, yes. And I was in New Hampshire and Wisconsin too. SM (02:01:58): Oh, my god. DH (02:01:58): Yeah, so... SM (02:02:01): How about Vietnam Veterans Against the War? DH (02:02:07): Fabulous. Fabulous. It was invaluable. SM (02:02:15): They kind of took over the movement after the SDS kind of faltered. DH (02:02:20): Well, SDS was involved in the first... They sponsored the first anti-war demonstration in Washington in 1965. They then dropped out of the anti-war movement and went into community organizing. And Hayden went over to Newark and did that project there. And they did not reenter the anti-war thing until [inaudible] and The Weathermen, by which time they were totally destructive. They were involved in the anti-war movement at its founding, but then they did not pursue it. They actually dropped out. They were into global revolution and anti-imperialist throw. SM (02:03:15): But the Black Panthers, which is really there is seven or eight of them, because you have got to think of H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael. But you think of Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Norman... Angela Davis. They are all Black Panthers in their own way. They all had a... And Elaine Brown and Dave Hilliard. There is a lot of them. Just your thoughts on the Black Panthers as a whole. DH (02:03:42): Well, most of them were praised nut cases. The one I remember the best is Fred Hampton. SM (02:03:56): Yeah, he was killed. DH (02:03:57): Yeah. I went to his funeral in Chicago. The police went after them in ways that violated their civil liberties, to put it mildly. And the police targeted and killed them. Those were police executions. Totally unjustified. But you know, you sort of admired the bravado of the early Panthers, but [inaudible]. And I am not sure that, what is her name... Angela Davis was never a Panther. She was really an orthodox Marxist-Leninist, Communist Party member. But a lot of the Panthers were sort of crazy. They were going off. They were off the deep end. And some of them were heavily involved in criminality. They were actually criminals who picked up on human rights, civil rights rhetoric. But they were flaky. And I guess Eldridge Cleaver wrote well or something. SM (02:05:21): Wrote for Ramparts. DH (02:05:22): Oh. SM (02:05:24): Yeah. DH (02:05:24): But after Ramparts had its... Its best [inaudible] were behind it. SM (02:05:29): Yeah. And Kathleen Cleavers went on to be a lawyer at Emory. So she is writing her biography right now. DH (02:05:36): Oh. SM (02:05:36): And she is a pretty nice person. Of course, she is kind of different than the rest of them. So anyways- DH (02:05:45): Well, you know, they burned themselves out. SM (02:05:49): Right. Jane Fonda. These are just names now. Just real quick thoughts on names. DH (02:06:03): Good actress, gorgeous lady. Made great fitness videos. Got in over her head on the... And lost her head on Vietnam. Said some dumb stuff. SM (02:06:40): Tom Hayden. DH (02:06:40): Very good writer. Went off the deep end, in my opinion, very early on. SM (02:06:51): About Rennie Davis? DH (02:06:53): A sweet guy. Rennie was a friend. We enjoyed each other's company a lot. But he burned himself out too. I do not know what he ended up doing. SM (02:07:13): Yeah, I interviewed him. He is doing the spirituality things right now. DH (02:07:17): Is that right? SM (02:07:18): Yeah. DH (02:07:18): Oh. SM (02:07:19): And of course he went on to be very successful in technology and things. DH (02:07:24): He is a very-very bright guy, but really sweet. Very nice guy. SM (02:07:29): Timothy Leary. DH (02:07:43): Oh. Someone else who also went off the deep end. Took too much LSD, I suppose. It may have happened to him anyway, but certainly, certainly he lost it. SM (02:07:55): Phillip and Daniel Berrigan. DH (02:08:05): Made a terrific contribution. I wish there were thousands more. There. Along with Pope John, the Berrigans are my favorite Catholics. SM (02:08:20): I think, yeah, we had them both on our campus. And actually, we brought Philip in, his last speech. His last speech was given in Philip's Library five weeks before he died. I went to his funeral. DH (02:08:32): Oh, my. SM (02:08:32): Yeah, so... DH (02:08:34): Yeah. Well, they were great. Yeah, the McCarthys were a little bit like that. A stream of Irish Catholicism that... They were the redeeming strain. They were really good. There was the Jesuit-trained intellectuality. SM (02:08:55): He was an expert. I was going to ask too. Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, just quick thoughts on both of them. DH (02:09:07): Well. Oh, well, McCarthy was terrific. Bobby made up for, in the last year or two of his life... Because previously, I do not know what he did that amounted to much good other than I suppose helping his brother get elected president. But he was a spoiled rich kid. SM (02:09:53): How about, talking about- DH (02:09:53): But his last two years redeemed. SM (02:09:57): He was very important in the missile crisis. Very important. If you read Thirteen... Well, I think one of the classic books of all time is Thirteen- DH (02:10:08): Oh, yeah. SM (02:10:08): And there is no question that he did help his brother. And thank the Lord, because they were the only two that were not going to go bombing down in Cuba. John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. DH (02:10:29): Well, I was... The New Frontier sparked something in my life, but I was actually never much of a fan of Kennedy's presidency. At the time, I was critical that he was not doing enough on civil rights, actually. Who was the other one? Oh, Nixon. SM (02:11:13): Nixon. Nixon. DH (02:11:14): Oh, what a very complex, very complex guy. And it is too bad about Vietnam and Watergate because he did two things in foreign policy that were terrific. One of which was the reconciliation with China, and detente with the Soviet Union. And those were brilliant. And he was- DH (02:12:01): ...and he was such an odd liberal in his domestic policy. He did wage and price controls. He started the Environmental Protection Agency and was interested in a guaranteed annual income. Do you remember that? SM (02:12:26): Mm-hmm. DH (02:12:28): He was toying around with that idea. So he was willing to do what was then considered radical welfare reform, of the sort that welfare rights organization and only leftists were arguing for. SM (02:12:46): What is interesting is Dennis Hayes, who I interviewed, he mentioned that Nixon really did not give a darn about the environment. What he ended up doing is he created what you just mentioned, because he thought it was going to bring votes to him, so... DH (02:13:00): Well... SM (02:13:01): He was a pragmatist, a pragmatic fellow. DH (02:13:04): Yeah. But he... SM (02:13:05): I think of Spiro Agnew, another one from the period. DH (02:13:09): Oh, just a wretched crook. SM (02:13:17): George McGovern. DH (02:13:20): Very nice man. SM (02:13:22): Benjamin Spock. DH (02:13:27): He was a good guy. He played an important role. I just saw McGovern, by the way, about three weeks ago, like four weeks, a month ago. SM (02:13:36): Was he at the National Press Club, were you there? DH (02:13:38): No-no. He came up here for the memorial service for Mary Travis, of Peter, Paul and Mary. SM (02:13:45): Really. DH (02:13:46): Yeah, he spoke at it. SM (02:13:49): Oh my gosh. Where was that? DH (02:13:52): The Riverside Church. SM (02:13:53): Oh, geez. DH (02:13:55): Any rate, yeah, so I had not seen him in a decade or so. God, I hope I am in half that shape when I am his age. SM (02:14:08): Yeah, he is pretty sharp. He spoke at the National Press Club, talking about his new book on Lincoln. He did a great job. The women, we have not talked a lot about the women, but your thoughts on Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan and that particular group, because the women's movement evolved out of the anti-war and civil rights, and there has been a lot of things written about the sexism that took place in the anti-war movement and civil rights movement- DH (02:14:39): Yes. SM (02:14:39): ...the women's movement [inaudible] because of it. DH (02:14:42): Yes. SM (02:14:45): I know I am going overboard here, but you are a great interview and you have a lot of experience. Could you talk a little bit about, because Dr. King would be very sensitive about this today, if he was alive to see it, it was happening. In fact, I had talked to Edythe Bagley, who is the sister of Coretta Scott King, and even she brought it up. I have talked about Martin, but those kind of things. So talk about that particular thing about sexism and also about how important these women leaders were in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. DH (02:15:17): Well, the leaders of the Civil Rights movement were men who took advantage of their position with women. I mean, it was really women staffers in SNCC who were the ones who rebelled against the treatment of women by the Black civil rights leaders. And most of the people in the anti-war movement initially were men also, of the four coordinators of the moratorium, one out of four was a woman, Marge Sklenkar. SM (02:16:15): Is she still alive? DH (02:16:18): No-no. She died a long time ago. But the women were important in that movement. Bella, of course, who was wonderful. She was a good friend. She was a terrific lady. SM (02:16:41): She always wore a hat, that is why I am wearing one. DH (02:16:46): She was terrific. She is a real character. SM (02:16:48): By the way, I can tell you why I am wearing the hat. Ohio State won the Rose Bowl. DH (02:16:54): Indeed. SM (02:16:58): I am an Ohio State graduate, and I had a bet that they were going to lose. DH (02:16:58): Oh. SM (02:17:01): Because they had lost every big- DH (02:17:02): Yes, they had. SM (02:17:03): …for a couple years. And so, I have a bet with Dr. Adell from Westchester University. The bet, since I am no longer at the school, he said, "You have to wear a hat to everything when you leave your house for the next month." So that is why I am wearing it, and I am following through because if he had lost, he was going to have to grow a beard. DH (02:17:31): Okay. SM (02:17:32): I am not going to grow a beard, I had a beard. So that is why I am wearing the hat. DH (02:17:36): Well, you know, other people who were... I mean, Joan Baez was real important in the anti-war movement, as was a woman by the name of Cora Weiss. She was really a mainstay of the mobilization committee. So you know, what Gloria Steinem and... I never met her, or Betty Friedan. I actually did not read Feminine Mystique, so... SM (02:18:17): She had a follow-up, too. DH (02:18:20): Yeah. So I am not familiar with their work, but of course they were pivotal figures in the women's movement. SM (02:18:30): Founded Ms magazine. DH (02:18:31): Mm-hmm. SM (02:18:32): Pretty good. DH (02:18:33): Yeah. So... SM (02:18:37): Lyndon Johnson ... there is three of them here. Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Barry Goldwater, all key figures. DH (02:18:50): Johnson was such a tragedy. What a complicated guy. Really. And he did the Civil Rights Act, and he did the War on poverty. And then the Kennedy liberals, the Harvard intellectuals, the best and the brightest talked him into going down the wrong path, which undid the good that he did, domestically. Unfortunately. McNamara, I have very little use for the McNamaras or Bundys of this world. They all were smart enough to have known better. And McNamara... SM (02:20:00): Okay. DH (02:20:06): I do not know when they realized they had made grievous errors and set the nation on just a horrendously wrong course, but they did. And I have read some of the books on the Bundys, but I do not remember. But McNamara clearly was saying different things in public about the war being winnable than he believed, for a couple of years. SM (02:20:45): In fact, when I had my interview with McCarthy, Senator McCarthy, at the time that been out for a while. In Retrospect came out in 1995, and he had read it. And it was not one of my questions, I had [inaudible]. "Bunch of lies." He got real upset. Well, and now that I am thinking about it, the only time he got upset was Kennedy. But he got upset. "Bunch of lies." Tragedy. DH (02:21:13): I did not read it, so... SM (02:21:16): ...say that. DH (02:21:16): But I had no use for it. SM (02:21:19): What about Goldwater? Three years in Conservative building? DH (02:21:29): Well, at least he was against the draft. He was. I mean, he was in favor of an all-volunteer army. He was against conscription. Of course, he also was against the Civil Rights Act. He had more redeeming qualities as a politician than did Ronald Reagan. SM (02:22:02): And yeah, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were the next two. I am going to preface when we talk about Reagan, Carter and George HW Bush, it was George HW Bush who said the Vietnam syndrome was over, when he became president in 1989. And it was Ronald Reagan who boldly stated that we were back, basically. The army back in shape, America back in shape, it was kind of like what had happened previously was real-real negative. And then Jimmy Carter, because he was amnesty for the people that had gone to Canada, and of course, he got criticized for that, too. And particularly among Vietnam vets, who [inaudible] heels. Just your thoughts on those three presidents. Personal. Just short thoughts on them. DH (02:22:53): Carter? I mean, obviously I was an enormous fan of Carter's, primarily because of his human rights policy. Which I was executive director of Amnesty in those days, when he became president. And his espousal of human rights was an enormous lift and boost to those of us who were working in organizations. Unfortunately, he did not apply his own principles when it came to Iran, let Kissinger talk him into being nice to the Shah. And we paid dearly for our relationship with the Shah, of course that went back 30 years before Carter came into office. SM (02:23:54): Right. DH (02:23:55): But the US paid a heavy price for our closeness with the Shah. And Carter paid the political price for having listened to Kissinger and given the Shah asylum here. SM (02:24:23): Reagan and President Bush, first President Bush. And the way they talked about... to me, it sounded like a slap against the previous generation, so... DH (02:24:35): I would not care about that. I do not like Reagan because of his Central America policies. I think he made some unnecessary wars. We should not have gotten in bed with the people in El Salvador, and the Sandinistas were not a threat to the United States. And he slightly redeemed himself by... he finally did come around and work on detent with Gorbachev. Somehow Schultz turned out to be a good Secretary of State, who prevailed over that dreadful guy in defense. SM (02:25:39): Not Regan. Regan did not get along with him. DH (02:25:45): Oh... SM (02:25:45): Schlesinger? DH (02:25:45): No-no. SM (02:25:45): No-no-no. James Schlesinger. DH (02:25:49): That was Ford. SM (02:25:51): Melvin Laird? DH (02:25:52): No-no. SM (02:25:52): Yeah, he was- DH (02:25:53): That was Nixon. SM (02:25:54): Yeah. Oh. DH (02:25:57): A guy with a real skinny face. SM (02:26:01): God, I do not know. DH (02:26:03): But any rate, but she will... pardon? SM (02:26:06): Cyrus Vance? DH (02:26:06): No-no-no. Vance is Carter. SM (02:26:07): I am getting them all mixed up here. Yeah. DH (02:26:11): Whoever... the first Bush was not that bad, actually. I mean, I knew Dukakis, and obviously we liked Dukakis. And the Bushes run nasty ... he ran a nasty, nasty campaign. But in fact, once in office, he closed off. He ended the wars in Central America. He just closed it off. So I was glad he closed off the wars there. And he withdrew nuclear weapons, not only from South Korea, but we used to have a lot of nuclear weapons on a lot of bases around the world, and a lot of aircraft carriers. He pulled them back. There were many fewer nuclear missiles on US submarines and aircraft carriers, and stationed in our bases abroad, so that was good. And I agree with his ... I mean, he did some dumb stuff like going after Noriega, but actually, I agreed. I supported the first War on Iraq. I thought that the US national interests and the regional balance of power would be adversely affected should Saddam Hussein be enabled to have kept Kuwait. I think that would have adversely affected the balance of power in the Mideast. And I supported the war to expel Saddam from Kuwait. Unlike some of the friends from the anti-war movement, who opposed the first Iraq war, I supported the first Iraq war. SM (02:28:50): The Uber generation has had two Presidents, George Bush, second George Bush and Bill Clinton. Do not the comment very much detail on them. But the comment I want you to react to is what some people have told me. "They are just typical boomers." DH (02:29:08): I have never thought of- SM (02:29:09): That is what they have in common. They are typical boomers. DH (02:29:14): Is not George Bush... SM (02:29:15): George Bush is... DH (02:29:15): Is not he too late for a boomer? SM (02:29:16): No-no-no. He is the same age. He was born in (19)46, I think. DH (02:29:29): Oh, okay. Oh no, so he is. SM (02:29:30): Yeah. I think Bill Clinton and him are the same age. DH (02:29:31): Oh. SM (02:29:34): I think what they are referring to was some of the qualities, when I mentioned this, some of the qualities that some people have given me of what boomers are, they are positives and negatives, and they will use the negatives for those two. I wonder your thoughts on that? DH (02:29:54): Well, I have yet to find what... well, if there is a redeeming quality to George W. Bush, I have not discovered it. Clinton was the political genius of our generation. He really is a political genius. There is nobody in our generation that had better political instincts, but he squandered it. SM (02:30:26): Right. DH (02:30:26): He totally squandered it. So the only thing you can say about his presidency is that he did not get convicted for impeachment. SM (02:30:51): He survived. DH (02:30:52): But... SM (02:30:54): I am down to my final two. One is a very general question, and the other one is that, are there pictures, when you think of the period when you were young, are there pictures that were in the news that you say, "That is that picture." You know how a picture says 1000 words? These are the pictures that really define the time when I was young. When I talk about young, I am talking about teenager, twenties and thirties, before you turned 40. DH (02:31:26): Sure. SM (02:31:28): What were the pictures that were either in the newspapers, or the magazines that really upset you or that stood out amongst all the pictures during the Vietnam War, and... DH (02:31:38): Well- SM (02:31:38): ...the (19)60s and (19)70s. DH (02:31:40): The Vietnam War would have been that naked girl running down the street. SM (02:31:43): Kim Phuc. Yeah. DH (02:31:49): In Vietnam and the... the Viet Cong guy getting assassinated, shot in the head at Tet. SM (02:31:53): Yeah. DH (02:32:02): The civil rights movement, people getting hosed. Was it Selma? Birmingham. SM (02:32:10): Birmingham. DH (02:32:11): No. Was it... where did people get hosed? SM (02:32:13): Well, near the bridge. They were heading to the bridge, and- DH (02:32:16): Well, that was- SM (02:32:19): That was downtown. No, it was not Birmingham. DH (02:32:22): Either Selma or Birmingham. SM (02:32:24): It had to be Selma, because Birmingham was... King was there, and that was the... DH (02:32:30): But the people getting hosed, getting blown off their feet by hoses, fire hoses. The force of the water. That would have been... that one. SM (02:32:41): There are three pictures from that period who made the top 100 pictures of the 20th century. One of them was Kim Phuc running down ... the other two were Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the (19)68 Olympics. DH (02:32:58): Oh yeah-yeah. SM (02:32:59): Remember that? And they were not Black power. And Tommy Smith has really been upset about it. He was not a Black power person, did not like the Black Panthers at all. It was about discrimination against Black people in America. You have written about this, but we had them on our campus. And the third one was Mary Vecchio over the dead body of Jeff Miller at Kent State. DH (02:33:20): Oh yeah. Yeah. SM (02:33:21): Those were... DH (02:33:21): Yes. Iconic. SM (02:33:24): ...monumental pictures. The other one, and the last question I am going to ask is that if you can go back to those (19)50s, not for the experience that you had down south, but say the experiences when you were in elementary school, and junior high school. The (19)50s, the black and white TV, the television shows that we all watch in that era. Everything seemed so calm and peaceful, even though we had the threat of nuclear war. The Cold War was going on. If you were young enough... I was four years old, but I was a four-year-old, I saw these hearings on television. That man scared me. Senator McCarthy. McCarthy hearings, blaming these people for doing things. Oh boy, he scared me. So I remember McCarthy hearings, I remember... but still, most of the people in the (19)50s that I knew, it was a great time. Your parents gave you everything you wanted. You had Christmases and Easters and everything. And the television shows were Howdy Doody, and Ed Sullivan Show and all the cowboy and Indians. And I was not sensible about what Indians should be, Native Americans. And they were portray bad. And all the sitcoms and all the other things seem to be so calm and peaceful, yet it was that generation who went into the (19)60s and really rebelled. We all know about the generation gap. So in your (19)50s, was that your (19)50s, before you went down South? DH (02:35:07): Oh sure. Oh yeah. Wonderful childhood. It just revolved around family, church and sports. SM (02:35:17): Did your parents ever- DH (02:35:18): -and rock and roll. SM (02:35:19): Did your parents ever bring up anything that was going on? Because I love my parents, but I do not ever remember ever talking about what was going on in the South. DH (02:35:31): Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, they would have been like Eisenhower Republicans, but they were politically... well, I would not say they were politically engaged. I mean, they were not active in politics, but they followed it. Huntley Brinkton. And that is when they first started televising the national conventions. So they would have been unsympathetic to the discrimination, and to the mistreatment of... SM (02:36:27): The Black religious people? DH (02:36:30): ...who were... so, they did not have the kind of identification with it that I had, but they thought it was wrong. I mean, they thought discrimination was wrong. SM (02:36:48): I wanted to ask you last, what do you think the lasting legacy will be of the young people, of the boomers, once the best history books are written? And normally the best history books are written 50 years after a period. Sometimes after the generation has passed on, too. DH (02:37:14): Well, I am not sure of much of anything. I mean, I think it sort of... there was a population bulge, and we gave ourselves, and other people gave us a sort of identity, which was... and then within the last five years or so, our parents' generation, the World War II generation, was proclaimed to be the greatest generation. Is that? SM (02:38:06): Mm-hmm. Yep. DH (02:38:09): But other than this bulge, this demographic bulge, I am not sure if 50 years from now... if there is any lasting legacy, it is probably rock and roll. Music. SM (02:38:30): What do you hope your lasting legacy will be? What do you hope it is, when people remember you? DH (02:38:36): Let me think about that. SM (02:38:41): That is okay. You got a lot. If you were before an audience of college students today, and during the question and answer period, somebody stood up and said, "What was it like to be young in the 1960s," as a general question, and why cannot we feel that way today? How would you respond to that? DH (02:39:16): Well, the first thing I would say is it is like being at the center of the universe. You felt that kind of fight ...in one sense connected the world, from Footer Hill, was enormously intense. And I think if they do not feel that way, I think part of their reason is that they did not narrow in their own interest. And you have to go out and get that feeling of vitality. You have to [inaudible], and if you do not invest in anything then you do not have a thing. SM (02:40:15): That is a good point. DH (02:40:17): So start caring about something and acting on it. And at the very least, vitalize your life. SM (02:40:29): I was not as activist as you were, and some of the other people, but being in college at that time and being young, I do not think I have ever lost it. I remember Roy Campanella, the baseball player, he said, "If you ever lose the kid in you, it is over." And certainly when I say the kid, the youth in you, because this seemed to be a feeling that anything was possible, that your voice counted. "I can make a difference in the world." There was all these feelings among a lot of the young people of that period. And we are not only talking about white people, as one of my interviewees said, we are talking about African Americans as well, people of all colors. Because I have interviewed one about Latino boomers, and working with Cesar Chavez. And there was a feeling amongst even Native American youth. I mean, there was a feeling that they could make a difference, that things were really changing. And today's young people, again, either when we had a program on the Generation Xers, they were either sick and tired of hearing boomers talk about when they were young, or they wished that it was like that when they were young. Just your comments- DH (02:41:43): .. know that anything was possible, but that anything was missed. SM (02:41:47): Yeah. Yeah. So I do not sense that amongst today's young people, although they are concentrating so much and getting a job and getting their degree, and getting on with life, and times are very difficult economically. But it is- DH (02:42:06): ...far before the economy collapsed from modern university and become job trained. In the attitude of most students, and most administrators, and a lot of the faculty. SM (02:42:18): Do you feel, and final question, do you feel that the Beat generation had anything to do with influencing the Boomer generation? Alan Ginsburg, and Kerouac, and Burrows and the writings of that period? Because they basically challenged authority. DH (02:42:36): They certainly had enormous impact for me. I mean, part of that, the Bay Area, always go to City Lights Bookstore there. And I remember [inaudible] (19)60s, and of course, [inaudible] Dan and Mary Frank. Kind take off from that starting point. SM (02:43:12): Is there any question that you thought I should have asked, or did not ask that you would like to make a comment on? DH (02:43:21): No, I do not have any questions. I just have answers. SM (02:43:26): Well, David, what an honor to talk to you. I will keep you updated on my project. Do you have a color picture of yourself too? DH (02:43:32): I have a black and white. SM (02:43:37): That will be fine. Because I take pictures of everybody and I am using my photographs at the top of each little section for the oral history project, so I would need a picture of you. DH (02:43:49): I have got the book jacket picture, but I can send it. SM (02:43:54): Okay, very good. And... DH (02:43:56): Send me an email reminding me. SM (02:43:58): Yep, will do. Boy, I would love to interview your former wife. DH (02:44:02): Good luck. She is on the road right now. SM (02:44:04): Yeah. Well, I do not know, but David, thank you very much. And you are still living in the Bay Area, you are lucky. DH (02:44:11): Yeah, well, I live in Marin County. SM (02:44:13): All right. Right across the bridge. DH (02:44:15): Yep. SM (02:44:16): Very-very lucky. Well, you have a great day. DH (02:44:20): Okay. SM (02:44:20): And carry on and continue to be who you are. DH (02:44:23): Well, thank you. Good luck with your project. SM (02:44:25): Thanks, bye now. DH (02:44:25): Okay. SM (02:44:30): What you just heard was the ending of the tape for David Harris, given on the 7th of November, 2009. Excuse me, 6th of November, 2009. Thank you. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Hawk Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hawk, David R. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Amnesty International; Authors, American--20th century; College teachers; Hawk, David R.--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Hawk is a former Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, UN human rights official in charge of the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and author. Hawk has been a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights and taught at Hunter College, CUNY. Currently, he teaches in the International Relations Department at the University of South Florida (Tampa). Hawk is a graduate of Cornell University and Union Theological Seminary, and he also did postgraduate work in International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Magdalen College, Oxford. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-01-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.196a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.196b ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.196c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 164:52 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/bc701038e5e30f3b1646c7d13758c842.jpg 01379bb6cc941ba02ed8bfbfaebbc5c5 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/039de8f3e59dcacd77baa66cb0853216.mp3 a09021167ff33b14c62b60d4096fe854 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 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 The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 3 microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 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 FrontPage Magazine, 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 Salon. 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) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Horowitz Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Horowitz, David ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors, American--20th century; Radicals—United States; Horowitz, David--Interviews Description An account of the resource 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 FrontPage Magazine, 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 Salon. 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-12-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.200c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 156:01 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4c1d5cc5d92084df980803ebff652780.jpg 2021b16fb5f19d50a5652641d521ad7b https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a89bfb76433dc4421cefb44fec636591.mp3 5dcc4d932bfa66d4feb66eed88f7479a 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-10-07 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Hume Kennerly Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Photography; Vietnam War; War photography; Rolling Stones; Supremes; Miles Davis; Ollie F. Atkins; Time Magazine; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Vietnam Memorial; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Joe Frazier; San Francisco State; Protest; Rock n' Roll; Healing."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Photography; Vietnam War; War photography; Rolling Stones; Supremes; Miles Davis; Ollie F. Atkins; Time Magazine; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Vietnam Memorial; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Joe Frazier; San Francisco State; Protest; Rock n' Roll; Healing. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 237:33 Subject LCSH Photographers; Photojournalists; Kennerly, David Hume, 1947--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: David Hume Kennerly Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 7 October 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. Step two. I know some people I have interviewed have been on the cell phone and then their cell phone starts to go and then they go on the landline. So anyway. DK (00:00:15): This works. I hear you fine. SM (00:00:19): Okay. First question I always ask and I really want to ask you is the beginning, how you really became a photographer as a young man or a young kid. Your early years, the influence of your parents and your teachers, your high school years, where your love for photography first began. DK (00:00:41): Well, I am a native of Roseburg, Oregon, which is a really small town. It was called the timber capital of the nation, right in the middle of the forest in Douglas County. And I grew up in a place that I really wanted to get out of. I do not know, I had that feeling from way back when, I do not know exactly when it started. But my dad was a traveling salesman and so I would go around with him every now and then, particularly up to Portland, nothing exotic. But I got to look at the big city after my little town of 10,000 people in the whole area or something like that, I realized that there was a big world out there. And I had taken an early interest in photography, and when I worked on the student newspaper called The Orange 'R, my first photo published was in 1963, and I think I was a sophomore in high school then. And that really made an impact on me, seeing the work I had done. It was not a very good picture, but as I recall, it was a baseball player coming across home place. And on the scale of good photos, it was about a one on a one-to-ten scale. But what it did was it really got me excited about photography, and I learned how to shoot and process. I learned with a Speed Graphic camera. Actually, it was probably a Crown Graphic 4x5, and you only had a holder, it was two frames. And so, I can see why the old-style photographers were so good at getting the moment because they had to get it, you could not just turn the motor drive on and take a lot of pictures. So I learned the business the old-fashioned way, which was one shot at a time and you better get it right. And I started getting better at it. Then we moved from Roseburg up to West Linn, which is a suburb of Portland, in midway my junior year. And a lot of people would have really been terrified, angry, resentful about having their parents uproot them at that point, but I was deliriously happy about leaving this little town. And I convinced the people who were running the newspaper at West Linn High School that I should be on the staff and all that. And I pretty well sold myself as a much better photographer than I was. SM (00:03:52): [Inaudible]. DK (00:03:54): But at that point, because I was close to Portland, I had a lot more access to bigger stories and things were happening. And to shorthand it all, my senior year in high school, I was working on two local newspapers, small papers, one on Lake Oswego and the other in Oregon City. And my big score was I had a picture of a fire in Lake Oswego that was on the front page of the Oregon Journal, which was the big afternoon paper in Portland, and that really did it. I was fiercely determined to become a professional photographer probably from the time I was a junior in high school. And certainly by the time I was a senior, I was actually getting paid to take pictures for a local paper. It was not much. And when I graduated, I had a full scholarship to Portland State College, now University, and it was a working scholarship to take pictures for the paper. And that did not last too long. I had my eyes set on right down the street, literally two blocks, on the Oregonian and Journal. After I graduated from high school, I worked in a flower mill to get enough money to buy good cameras, and that had two effects. One, to help me buy the cameras. And the second was I knew I was not cut out for common labor, so I have great respect for those who do it, but it was not for me. And that fall, I started college but I was already trying to get into the Oregon Journal. And so later that year I was, I would have to think about this precisely... I was hired by the journal. I was a part-timer when I was 18 years old and while I was still going to school. I left school. I went to school for about a half hour and if it was dog years, because I had got a staff job on the Oregon's Journal, which was a huge thing. And I think the youngest photographer was probably 50 years old. So I worked and at that point, my career took off. I mean, there was no question about it. And I took a leave in (19)67, to go six months in the active duty as a National Guard. So I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training, then Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis after that, and then came back. And when I returned, I got a job on the Oregonian, which remains to this day as a very good newspaper. And then I was offered a job by UPI to work in Los Angeles in November in (19)67. I remember this because I had pulled up stakes and moved down to LA for UPI. And at that point, I was 20 years old and was really, I think probably ahead of almost anybody else my age in terms of working in the newspaper business. But all this is leading up to why I went to Vietnam. I mean, I was in UPI through (19)68 in Los Angeles. I was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was shot. And then I was offered a chance to move back to New York early (19)69, and I covered the World Series with the Mets that year and a lot of local news. I mean, working in New York is just the best place on earth for a news photographer. It's just [inaudible] and it was very exciting to me. And plus, it is the big leagues of photography. You had all these local newspaper guys [inaudible]. And it was still getting toward the last of the good old days of photography, certainly being digital by a long shot. And I mean the big innovation of photography was really going from the 4x5 to the 45 millimeter. That was as important a revolution I think, as going from film to digital. I mean, the digital's probably had a much bigger impact overall. But when you think about it, that small little image, which was poo pooed by the old guys. But when you look back at the Erich Salomon's back into the (19)30s, was shooting with that and it gave them much more versatility and discretion in their photography. So, I had already migrated to 35 millimeter as a senior in high school. And so, I went to New York and then I was offered a position at UPI in Washington DC, which was really the prime bureau for the wire service because of the White House, [inaudible]. The center of the power of the Earth was really Washington DC, and it was a very big deal. And I just saw it the other day, a certificate. I had my first ride on Air Force One when I was 23 years old as a member of the White House travel pool. SM (00:10:42): David, I want you to stop right there because I am going to go into some questions on that period in a couple minutes, but I want to go back to a second question. You are a- DK (00:10:56): Let me back up just a touch too. SM (00:10:57): Uh-huh. DK (00:10:58): Part of my job at UPI, because it was 1967, (19)68, there were a lot of anti-war protests going on. And even earlier than that, up in Portland, I was covering that side of things. Not as much as I probably would have liked, just because State College particularly was a high college. That had a lot to do with the anti-war movement. And the student body was very divided in terms of conservative, liberal. But I was right, because it started from the middle of that, so I was seeing a lot of the big protests. And then particularly when I got to Washington DC and that is where you can ask me questions, but I moved there and early (19)70, I believe. That sounds about right, or maybe in late (19)69. It was probably late (19)69, I do not remember precisely. And obviously Richard Nixon had just become president and it was a whole new ball game from the LBJ time, and of course the anti-war protests were building and building. And that was the home front of connection to Vietnam, certainly at that point. SM (00:12:33): You are a frontline Boomer. And when I say that, you were born in (19)47, and the frontline Boomers are really those born between (19)46 and (19)56. Because the Boomer generation's defined as the- DK (00:12:45): It's even more. I would say (19)46 to early (19)50, even (19)51, (19)52, because we were the ones looking down the barrels of this Vietnam War. Having graduated (19)65, which is a key date, (19)64. So, the Clinton, Bush, Gore guys were all born in (19)46, and they all dodged the draft essentially. No, Al Gore did. Strike that comment. SM (00:13:20): Yeah, he went to Vietnam. DK (00:13:21): Bush went in the National Guard and was a pilot, Clinton dodged the draft, and Gore went over to Vietnam, even though just for not a long time, but I always respected him for doing it. His dad definitely could have gotten out of that. And he was not a fighter, but he was like, "So what?" He went over, and I do not think he was there very long. But that group, me and the two years afterwards, I mean the crucible was the ones that graduated (19)64, (19)65, (19)66, (19)67, pretty much those four. Maybe even (19)68, although it was starting to draw back a little bit. But it was a five-year sweet spot, for getting your ass at Vietnam as a soldier. And part of my rationale in going into the National Guard was, I have always had a difficulty with authority and people telling me what to do. And so, I think I got into the National Guard, I was not opposed to war or anything like that. I was not even afraid of going to Vietnam per se, I just did not want to go as an army guy. And as a result of my being in the newspaper business, I had met Tom McCall, who was the Governor of Oregon at the Lime. Very colorful, interesting character. And just as luck would have it, I was over at covering something that he was doing visiting the Portland National Guard headquarters. And I had known McCall just by, he was really friendly with the press. And so I asked him to introduce me to the general who's in charge. And then later I went back over to Steve and said, "I am really interested in going into the National Guard, could I get my name on the list?" And so I had no family input at all. I mean, I looked at the Dan Flails and the other people who manage some family connections they get... And also, I do not even think it was a big waiting list there. It probably could have just happened [inaudible]. But I did, in my own way, I probably pulled strings for myself. And so, I got into the National Guard, went off and did my thing for the six months and then post for two weeks [inaudible]. The bigger problem I had then was getting out of the Army in order to go to the war, and that happened when I was in Washington DC. Do you have some questions? I will tell you what my motivation was. Do you have another question? SM (00:16:32): Yeah. Did you identify yourself as a member of the Boomer generation, and do you like that term? DK (00:16:39): I do not really care about the term one way or the other. No, I do not think any of us did. It's funny, one of my late close friends was Jeff MacNelly, the Cartoonist. And when I did a book, well I have done a few, but one of them was called Photo Op. And Jeff did the introduction to the book, Photo Op and he called it The Adventures of Baby Boomer: a Self-Centered Generation Comes of Age and Usually has the Name for it. To answer your question, no, I never thought of it enough. What was important to me, there were two things that I obviously I knew, I was 1-A in the draft and then I went to school. I think I got a student permit, but I did not want to stay in school. So being 1-A, and then I could be drafted. But my sole focus really was to become a news photographer, and that is what I was doing. And so really getting drafted to me, would have had a serious impact on that and I would not have been guaranteed to get a, although I probably would have become very prominent outside of the Army or whatever. In one way or another, I would have ended up in Vietnam no doubt, which did not bother me. But there was no guarantee I would get what I wanted. And so that is why I went the route of getting in the National Guard. Now the National Guard, it is almost a certain, with all those units being called up though, there is no hedge against going off to several tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever. But back then it was, if you got in the National Guard or the Reserves, the chances are you were not going to go to Vietnam. So I did that. I was always calculated. Everything I have done in my career has been really about the career. Obviously, I was not afraid to go to Vietnam. So when I moved to Washington, what was happening at that point, and I can even go back and give you a single image that changed my life. Well, there is one other thing that happened in (19)66 when I was on the Oregon Journal, Robert Kennedy came to town campaigning for the local Democratic Congressional candidate. In fact, I think Edith Green was a member of Congress then, and one of the few women that had been in Congress. And I met Bill Eppridge and Steve Shapiro, two really great photographers. Bill was a LIFE photographer. And I was subjected to one of the great politicians of all time was Robert Kennedy, and it had not been that long ago that his brother had been killed. I think was in Roseburg then, I must have been. But I so vividly recall that, and I had never seen John F. Kennedy. I never saw him. So there was Robert Kennedy, and I had a really good spot. [inaudible] the LIFE guy showed me where to go, and it was very nice. But it is an image I will never forget. But that whole entourage, all the people and the two photographers and some national guys were with him. And this little makeshift motorcade went out to the airport. And back in those days, just go out onto the ramp, onto the field. So Kennedy went on. But what really struck me was these two photographers got on the plane and the door closed, then the plane backs out. It was like the final scene in Casablanca, where I am standing alone and the plane goes off into the far. And I wanted to be on that plane. I had such a visceral reaction to that. And here I was, I have never really been a small-town guy mentally. I mean, I think I am in terms of how I look at things, but I always wanted a bigger picture. And I think because of that moment, it really then made me to follow the path of covering politics. Of course, politics, was very closely aligned with war because the people, politicians sitting in a room somewhere [inaudible]. That is just how it goes. And that is a fascinating thing to know and to see, and very few people have seen it. When was the decision made to go to war here or to end the war there. But then the year before that, and I am skipping around here but now I am just thinking about, there was a story, a photo essay by Larry Burrows at LIFE magazine, and it was called Yankee Papa 13. And it was the story of a young sergeant Marine. It was really a day in the life, following this guy around. And the first images of them were sitting on the helicopter with his machine gun, and he has a huge smile on his face and all that. And what happened during the course of that day was that they went into rescue another chopper that is been shot down, so one of the crew people was killed. And the cover picture was this guy, the sergeant who a dead Marine laying in the foreground. It is just a very dramatic photo. But the most compelling image from that whole photographs, that still remains one of the great photo essays of war, was a very happy sergeant at the beginning. The last frame in the story was him in a little warehouse or something, crying with his head down, and was just all alone. It was just one image, even more than the cover image, this is considered a great photograph by me and others, but I think the more poignant on it was the one that got me. And between Robert Kennedy and Larry Burrows pictures, those two roads intersected for me. SM (00:24:07): And you were labeled, and I think I read that people call you a political photographer too. And you are proud of that fact, are not you? DK (00:24:15): Well, I do not mind that. I mean, the one term I just do not like really is journalist because it feels like changing janitors to sanitation engineers. It is the same thing to me. I am a photographer, I am a wired guy essentially. I mean, it really means you are the utility outfielder. You can cover anything, anytime, anywhere, whatever. Does not make any difference. "This is a food picture? Okay, I can do that." SM (00:24:47): I interviewed another photographer, a video maker a couple days ago who said she considered her camera a weapon because the pictures taken are an eyewitness account of what really happened on a particular day at a particular time for history's sake. No government can hide the truth. And as she said, "Pictures verify the truth so that nobody can say it did not happen." Do you consider your camera a weapon? DK (00:25:19): No, I do not think so. I mean, there is a great documentary which you must see called An Unlikely Weapon. Which is about Eddie Adams, the guy who took the picture of the General Loan shooting a DC in the head. SM (00:25:42): Oh, yes. DK (00:25:44): That documentary is an essential viewing for you, and it's called An Unlikely Weapon. I mean, maybe Eddie would have agreed to that. I do not look at it that way. I am not an activist. She's more of an activist, obviously. I am old-fashioned news guy, brought up in the business to be an objective observer as much as that is possible by people who really believed in that stuff. Nowadays, the lines have been so horribly blurred by comments like that, this weapon thing. I mean, I get it. And I have always thought that the power of photography is shedding the light and the corners that you would not otherwise see, and I am all for it. I mean, that is what journalism is really, or it should be. But it's not an activist weapon for me. I have never been that, I do not know, [inaudible]. SM (00:26:47): Yeah. Well, this person was an activist too. DK (00:26:52): Right. And that is fine. Everybody does it for their own reason. I mean, Jim Nachtwey is an activist, but he is a great photographer and he would be the first to admit that his camera could influence social change. And there have been a lot of great photographers, and that was their mission. Eugene Richard. Unabashedly so, I am just not like that. That is all. I mean, I am criticized for being who I am because I do not take a more political view of things. But I had it drummed into me. In fact, when I am asked if I am a Democrat or Republican, I say I am a photographer. SM (00:27:34): Very good. I love that response. DK (00:27:39): But that is very fouled out. I mean, I am no different now than I was before. And I worked in a Republican administration, but I honestly, I would have that same relationship with a Democrat who became president. I would have worked for him. It did not matter. In fact, let us fast you forward. By the way, the President Ford one. I had been working for him for three or four months. We're alone in the Oval Office talking about how he had been a good Republican all of his career and all he wanted was to be Speaker of the House. And there he was in the Oval Office and he looked at me and said, "I have never asked you. Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" Then he said, "Do not answer that." He did not give a shit. But that was our relationship. It was a human relationship, not a political relationship. And I think one of the problems now is that everything is so political. And even if you declare anything. If you say, "I am for Jerry Brown," or, "Meg Whitman," just say here in California now, it's like, "How can you do that? You're such a dumb shit." Whatever point of view you had, it just would not make any difference. And so I do think pictures speak for themselves, and this idea of the camera as a weapon, I think is contradictory to be honest with you, from my point of view anyway. But that is someone else's point of view. That is what they said, that is fine. We all do our own thing and I am all for it. So back to my path to Vietnam because I can remember, and there's another movie analogy here which is equally old-fashioned. But because I was the Baby-Boomer generation without even thinking of it that way, all I knew was that kids that I had gone to high school with and graduated, now were going to Vietnam and getting killed. And I also saw the photographs, and arching back to Larry Burrows, 1965 was early on in the war, but already these striking images are being made by great photographers. From Robert Capa, who was the first photographer killed in Vietnam 1954, released in that conflict, I guess where you would put a pin in that somehow. But I am seeing Eddie Adams' photographs of General Loan shooting the guy. I am seeing John Olson's pictures of the fighting [inaudible]. Catherine Leroy's photographs, and Sawada's picture of UPI, won a Pulitzer of the woman with her family coming across the river. And Toshio Sakai's picture won a Pulitzer for UPI. [inaudible 00:30:52] won the Pulitzer. Malcolm Browne for Burning Monk. And all these fabulous, probably a bad word, but these fantastic, yes, amazing photographs are being taken off to his war. And I am on the sidelines and the people fighting the war were my age. And basically, the photographers, I think for the most part were a little bit older. Although John Olson and I are the same age. He was with Stars and Stripes at the time. But all of a sudden, I started feeling like, and you will understand this analogy, although no one else does. I gave a lecture at USC the other day, they had no idea what I was talking about. But I was like, "I felt like Mr. Roberts on the supply ship watching the destroyers sail into battle." SM (00:31:48): I know that feeling. DK (00:31:49): "On the supply ship in the backwater and wanted, as a naval officer, to be on a destroyer, to be in the action, to be on the front line of what was happening." And so, I had this rather profound moment where I felt like I am going to miss the biggest story of my life and it is my generation's story. And if I do not go, I will never forgive myself. And I know that is how I felt about it. It was not to go out there for the glory of being a combat photographer. So, I started lobbying the guys in New York. And here I was, I already was doing a job that most people would go to a war in order to try to get something like this, to cover the White House, which I found boring. And it was also restricting [inaudible]. And I quite frankly hated it. And so, I just felt that I had to go to Vietnam, and so I convinced UPI to send me. And now this was late (19)70, and then I was going to be then going over early (19)71. And things were drawing down, the American involvement was being cut back, but there was still a lot of action. So they decided to send me over there. I was being such a pain in the ass about it that it was better for them to send me over than to listen to all my bullshit all the time. And so, the last assignment I had covered before I left for Vietnam was the Ali, Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden in March 8th, 1971. And what is ironic about that fight is that the next day was my birthday, March 9th, and I had the front page of New York... DK (00:34:03): I had the front page of New York Times, New York Daily News, practically every paper in the country. I was the only photographer that got the photo of Ali in mid-air, getting knocked down on the 15th round. SM (00:34:11): Wow. DK (00:34:12): What's funny is that picture is also part of my Pulitzer Prize portfolio, which was for photography. It was not just Vietnam, it was the whole year of 1971. It was coverage from that year. The centerpiece was Vietnam, but I also covered the India-Pakistan war, and I was in Cambodia. Then that fight too, which would be my outgoing thing. What happened before I got over there was that my photo hero, whom I had never met, along with Kent Potter of UPI, whom I was going to be replacing in Vietnam, and Henri Huet of AP and Japanese photographer, Shimamoto, I think his name was, of Newsweek, were on a helicopter that was shot down over Laos in the Lam Son 719 strike invasion, and were all killed. I got to be honest with you, that scared the shit out of me. SM (00:35:16): Yeah. DK (00:35:18): That all of a sudden, even though I did not know Burrows, I was going to replace Kent Potter, Larry Burrows was really my motivation or his photos were the foundation of my interest and respect for war photography. All of a sudden, all these guys are dead. Henri Huet was one of the great survivors, AP guy, French Vietnamese guy. All of a sudden, I did not have second thoughts, but it really scared me. I was like, wow. It increased my resolve to do it. It was not like I was not going to do it, but it really made it... It was not just a pedestrian thing at that point. It was really now a serious matter. Pedestrian is not the right word. It was something that I had not thought about that much. Yes, you can get killed. I knew that conceptually, but when I really saw it happen, then that was a different deal. I ended up in Vietnam and probably got there the end of March, 1971, stayed for a little over two years. SM (00:36:40): Yeah, you were right in the combat zone. I have seen your pictures. I have the book, I think it is Shooter. [inaudible]. DK (00:36:48): Shooter was the first one. Yeah, Shooter, and then there was a photo op for those cartoons of McNally are in there. SM (00:36:56): Right. You took some unbelievable shots. I am asking, do you remember the exact moment? You probably do. You took a lot of pictures, but the single soldier on the hill, which was an unbelievable shot. You took another shot of, it was kind of a jungle, and you could see through the jungle, the guy walking through there. DK (00:37:17): That was a different place. Actually, those pictures, they are a good combination because one of them just shows the lush area in which we were operating sometimes, or just a blown away hillside. The guy walking over the hillside was the photograph singled out from my portfolio, showing the loneliness, desolation of war. That was a good picture. I remember the day I shot it because it was so dangerous up there. That is the contradictory part of it, is you do not really see that many good combat action pictures because everybody's down. It is really aftermath or either the prequel or the sequel. It is never the main act usually. SM (00:38:18): You were right out there with them, and they accepted you. In that particular war, photographers could go right with the guys. I know Joe Galloway got on a helicopter for the Ia Drang valley when he was a reporter. You ate the same food, you had the same risks. Did you ever feel that you had, like Joe did, that you had to pick up a gun to save your life? Ever have that experience? DK (00:38:44): Yeah, I did. I did. It was really just ... As a kid in Oregon, I grew up shooting, hunting, everything from pheasants to quail, occasionally deer, which I never liked doing that much, but I was a good shot. In fact, I had an expert ... When I was in the army, I was an expert rifleman because I knew how to shoot. It was no big deal to me, just a different kind of a gun or weapon, I should say. Get your ass kicked the saying gun. Anyway, I have never been pacifist in that regard at all. I liked the hunt. I used to, I do not now. Nothing against it. One night I was at a place that was going to be overrun by a Vietcong attack, and somebody shoved a gun into my hand, and I was shooting back because it was nighttime. During the day, I would not have done it because I could have been taking pictures. But at night, if we were overrun, I was going to die. Self-preservation takes the priority over any other item really. SM (00:40:06): What were some of your other favorite shots in Vietnam? DK (00:40:10): That was unusual. Before, apparently, there were some photographers who would carry guns with them. I never did that. I thought that was a mistake. SM (00:40:19): Were there other favorite shots that you took in Vietnam that stick out? DK (00:40:24): Another one ... The only reason I know what photos are in the Pulitzer portfolios ... I was in Vietnam when they announced that award, and I had not even known I had been nominated for it. You can imagine the shock. There was definitely no anxiety because if I had not won, I never would have known I had been entered. They entered the editors at UPI, Larry DeSantis and Bob Schnitzlein were the two guys that did it. When I heard about it, then I was being asked all these questions about the pictures. I had no idea. I did not know. It was only about three years ago, I went up to Columbia where they had the Pulitzer archives and everything, and they had the box there with my entry in it. I went into the box, and I looked at it. Half the pictures. I did not even realize were in the portfolio. I mean you could just as easily say the photo of Ali won the Pulitzer prize, but the one they picked out, the picture of the guy going over the hillside was the one. That got published widely because of that. The citation said the pictures show the loneliness, the desperation of war. There were all these other pictures in there. One of them was a combat action picture of these two soldiers evacuating, carrying a wounded comrade off the battlefield. Another picture I always liked was near Khe Sanh, although Khe Sanh was [inaudible] as we knew it, but it was still a dicey area up there. The soldier bent over a machine gun with a cross dangling from his neck, and that was a good visual. It was symbolic too. The guy, the lone soldier, it was another lone soldier really. Much has been written about combat is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer terror. That is not the quote, and that is it. You sit around, and you're anxious and tired and nervous about what might happen, and sometimes it does. To me, many times the anticipation of what might happen was worse than what really did. Not always, but sometimes. The cover picture of Shooter was during a very serious firefight and Dirck Halstead took that picture. He's another guy you should talk to by the way. SM (00:43:44): Yeah, I saw that. Do you think he would respond to talk to me? DK (00:43:47): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hehas been teaching down at UT. He would be a great guy for you to talk to because he was there when the Marines landed in [inaudible]. Eddie Adams was there too. So Dirck can give you ... He was there when the war ended. Perfect guy. He is very articulate about it too. A good storyteller and has a really interesting point of view about it. He is an old-fashioned photographer like me, former wire guy. He and I worked together at UPI. He is the godfather of my eldest son and really was my mentor. I will give you his contact info. I am sure he will be happy to talk to you. I would do it ... Dirck's probably 10 years older than me, but he has got a ... You have guy who was there when the Marines landed and was there when they lifted off from the embassy. SM (00:44:46): In 1975, yeah. DK (00:44:53): All that and everything in between. Dirck shot that picture of me, and that was one of those occasions where we almost did not get out there alive. Galloway, Joe's an old friend and his Ia Drang experiences, I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than that. Everybody had their own war. It is like if you talk to a hundred people, you get a hundred different stories and points of view. If you walked down the street in a village, and you took a right turn instead of a left turn, you went into a different story than if you had gone the other way. It is like everybody's story was personal. When people write about the big picture ... There are some writers who have done good works that were not there because they ... It is like being a political cartoonist. You do not have to be there to put it into perspective necessarily, but the people who were there, like Bernard Fall, still to this day, one of the best books on Vietnam, Hell is a Very Small Place, and guys like ... It goes on and on, Halverson and other people. SM (00:46:16): Neil Sheehan. DK (00:46:19): Sheehan is another former UPI guy. The book he wrote, A Bright Shining Lie, that is one of the good [inaudible]. SM (00:46:31): Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, too, was another great one. DK (00:46:34): What is that? SM (00:46:35): Stanley Karnow's Vietnam. DK (00:46:42): There are just tons of good ones. To me, the best ones are by the people who were there, of course because it is like being a good photographer somewhere, where you can translate what you see, and a good writer can do it with words. Rarely do the two come together. I see writing as ... It is so difficult, but I wrote Shooter. Everything I have ever done, I have written myself. It's the good news and the bad news probably. SM (00:47:16): What was- DK (00:47:18): Observations are really ... The marriage of those two is really great. Or you will take a good photo like Phillip Jones Griffith, who did Vietnam Inc I think it was, but writing ruined a really good bunch of pictures to me because it was so biased. It detracted from the photos. Sometimes you just should let the pictures tell the story and stand out of the way. SM (00:47:52): Good point. DK (00:47:52): By interjecting opinions, Philip, who was a really good photographer, did that. You should look at that book and see what I mean. SM (00:48:05): One question I have here is, and last one really on Vietnam, was what was Vietnam like when you were there? Did you see the divisions that were taking place in America between black and white, the issue of the drug culture, soldiers questioning their leaders and their strategy, believing that the war was a mistake while they were fighting it? What did you see and hear on the bases and in combat? Was what was happening in America happening there? Were the troops also aware of the student protests and even the Vietnam veterans against the war became a very big topic. DK (00:48:44): Yeah, but when you boiled it down, those kind of ... Number one, I got there ... This is kind of a funny story, but Eddie Adams, who was a prime competitor of mine because he was AP, I was UPI, before I left for Vietnam, he told me that I was too late, all the good pictures had been taken. One of my highest possessions is that after I won the Pulitzer Prize, that Eddie sent me a cable that said, "I guess I was wrong. Congratulations." SM (00:49:35): Well, that is an anecdote. DK (00:49:35): For him to do that was a very begrudging act too. I will say it. I did not see it so much. I was on fire base for now, but again, they were drawing down Americans there at that point. It was not the (19)69, (19)70, that was really (19)67, (19)68, (19)69, were probably the three biggest years, and then they started pulling them back in. The Americans were becoming more in an advisory role, not so much frontline combat, a little bit. I mainly covered the Vietnamese side, so I do not recall really ... You would see guys wearing peace symbols and all that to some degree. The black soldiers in my estimation got along fine with their white... SM (00:50:45): What is really amazing, you have this on your website, and it is the quote from James Earl Jones, and said that, "David Hume Kennerly is like Forrest Gump, except he was really there." You seem to be everywhere. You start out in those early years, taking pictures of musical entertainers like the Rolling Stones and The Supremes and Miles Davis, unbelievable stuff. Those are icons of the Boomer Generation. DK (00:51:20): I know, but you know what, I never ... this is kind of bizarre actually. I once had a ... By the way, I think James was just being funny. It was a funny quote that ... I appreciate it obviously, but I think I would be more of a [inaudible] thing surely. This little remote voice, the guy in the background, that it is always critical events that I have a camera with me. It could have gone a lot of different ways for me because I worked nights at the Oregon Journal. I guess if I were ... The Rolling Stones' first trip to America, The Supremes, they got all the big acts at the Portland Coliseum. Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis. Some of the pictures I did in (19)66 were just these ... Not that they were the greatest shots, but they were good pictures, but nothing better. I could very well have taken that Rolling Stone magazine route, that if I really had an interest in rock and roll and music and that whole lifestyle and everything, I could have gone down a different road just like the left or the right in Vietnam. Just depends on the fate would have it. I was so concentrated on me, more important things, it was not sports photography. I was pretty good at that too. It was not rock and roll or certainly not entertainers or movie stars. Did not interest me. The conversations I had with politicians were always much more interesting than movie stars. When I look through my photos and my experiences with photographing like a film celebrity of some kind, or a Robert Kennedy or a Bill Clinton or whomever, that the best stories I have almost always had something to do with substantive matters, not with the illusory Ones.0 when I photographed celebrities, it turns out to be an empty box of memories usually, outside of a few good pictures of them, because I just do not recall anything that interesting about them. That is not to be critical, but itis why I never did the showbiz route or the rock and roll route. It would have been more fun than getting shot at in Vietnam or slogging through a rice paddy or being dehydrated in India-Pakistan war, almost getting killed. Anything. Would have been more fun than that, but that is what I wanted to do. SM (00:54:15): A couple things, you covered the POWs when the last POWs were coming home from the war. I think that was (19)73. You went to Hanoi I believe. DK (00:54:28): That right, and that was the last... SM (00:54:29): That is a major, major happening, and then that picture that you took in Cambodia, the little girl. We knew what was happening with the Khmer Rouge. I think it is really ... When you state underneath your picture you do not know if she even survived the onslaught of the Khmer Rouge. That is an unbelievable picture. DK (00:54:54): That one also won a World Press contest. That won portrait division of World Press in (19)76. It was taken in (19)75, right before Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, with the dog tag and all that. I have no idea what happened, but I will tell you that picture in the haunting image category, that probably ... I think about that picture probably more than anything else I have done. SM (00:55:29): It is her eyes. It is her face. DK (00:55:35): It is really about the wars. It is not about the soldiers, the politicians, but really when these things happen, it is the kids and the innocents who suffer the most and have no idea what's going on or why all this is happening. It really is a brutal existence. I think that is why that picture has some resonance. SM (00:56:02): Did you fly to Hanoi? How did you get the Hanoi to cover and take pictures of the POWs? DK (00:56:09): Well, they had let in actually ... That was two weeks after John McCain and that early group of POWs had been released. There was a prisoner of war facility called the Plantation. It was not the Hanoi Hilton, which had been downtown, an old French jail. That last group were some B-52 crew that had been shot down like six months earlier. They basically had been well treated compared to McCain and those other guys because the war was kind of grinding to a halt. They let a few select people in, and I flew in on a chartered Air WOW plane from Dien Bien into Hanoi. It was Walter Cronkite and his crew and a couple of other photographers, and they took us over and let us take pictures of these guys behind bars. Then they later bused them out to the military airport in Hanoi and released them. I got that, and yeah, it is a shocking situation to see these fellow Americans in their rice pajamas behind bars. I felt kind of self-conscious about taking pictures of them, but that was my job. SM (00:57:45): David, let me switch my tape here. I got to turn it over here. Hold on a second. Okay, let me see here. Hold on a second. All right. When I look at that quote from James Earl Jones, I kind of wrote down... Okay, I saw the movie Forrest Gump, and I saw Forest Gump in Vietnam and saw him with Richard Nixon, so I put down some of these, what I consider some of the major things that you did and the events you were at to take pictures. I know you have already talked about Bobby Kennedy, but the first one I wrote down here was when you took those pictures of Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel and all the atmosphere, the happiness. I saw it on TV. You were taking those pictures, but you did not go back into that area where he was shot, I guess, or did you? DK (00:58:47): Well, no. What happened was ... It is funny. It was sort of like the Ali-Frazier fight. The reason there are not any other pictures of him doing that V sign, he just raised his hand up and put it down. It was so fast, which I did not even realize until many years later when I saw the film. There was another photographer there from UPI, and we flipped a coin to see who would be up on the podium, and then follow him because he was going to another event. It was an overflow ballroom [inaudible] there. I lost the flip, so my friend Ron Bennett went back with him. That is normally how you cover stuff, somebody's on the riser, somebody's closer in, or I would have been back there with him, and I have no idea what would have happened if I would have gotten the pictures. I have no idea. The one thing I knew was I always had a flash. Again, going back to that be prepared news shooter thing. Anyway, he went back. Then when I heard what had happened, just all of a sudden everything changed, and someone said a shooting had happened and all the rumors. I went out in the back, and the ambulance was there, and I got a picture of Ethel in the back of the ambulance because the instinct is just go right toward the action, whatever it is. Try to get it. It really was a horrible night. It was actually someone that I had ... I had been upstairs with him. I have a picture of me and Bobby Kennedy that was taken less than an hour before he was shot. Upstairs, I was invited up because I knew Bill Etheridge was there. That goes back two years. He was there with him. They had that incredibly haunting photo they took in there of the ... That was a TV light and just that guy, the waiter bending over him. SM (01:01:04): Yes-yes. DK (01:01:07): I think it was so personal, really, that somebody I would met and talked to had now been shot. That was the [inaudible]. SM (01:01:15): Did you hear the bullets? DK (01:01:17): No. No. SM (01:01:18): Okay. DK (01:01:18): I did not. Big crowd there, a lot of people there. SM (01:01:24): Yeah. The second one that I brought up was, you mentioned it, was the coverage of the New York Mets and everybody, from last to first. Being an Atlanta Braves fan and them knocking off my Atlanta Braves in the, I think it was the best of five series at Shea Stadium. Covering that event, here it is in the 19(19)60s with all the problems, and here you have got this team who was atrocious, and then all of a sudden, the next year they become world champs. What a story. DK (01:01:59): The amazing Mets. SM (01:02:02): Did you get to know all the players? DK (01:02:04): I covered them all year. As part of a UPI photographer, sports was always one of the main things you had to shoot. Yeah, I had the first base dugout position during the World Series and- SM (01:02:19): Oh my gosh. DK (01:02:20): I was only 23 years old. I was sitting there next to Sports Illustrated guys. It was not like now, where you have 10 jillion photographers. Then it was like AP, UPI, New York Times, the Daily News, Sports Illustrated at that point. There were not that many. There Was third base dugout, first base dugout, these positions right next, so there were designated spots, but those were the best. You could not have a better place to see the ballgame, but all I am worried about is the pictures of it. To me, it's like, okay, it is the World Series. That ramps up the intensity of the moment, but I have always responded well to that. The pressure never got in the way of a good picture. SM (01:03:19): When I saw that you had taken pictures, I was just doing flashbacks of (19)69 because the Cubs were doing so well, and then they overtook the Cubs, and then they beat the Braves, and they beat the Orioles in the World, Series. When you have like Gil Hodges, and then you had Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, Mays, Charles, Kranepool, Jones, Agee, Swoboda, Weis, Grote, and JC Martin, Gentry. I will never forget Wayne Garrett. He was on the team, and he hit a home run off Pat Jarvis in the Braves Series. DK (01:03:53): I have a baseball signed by all those guys you just mentioned. SM (01:03:57): Wow. DK (01:03:58): At the time, including Gil Hodges and Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Yogi Berra was their coach. They had Donn Clendenon. SM (01:04:11): Oh, first base, yes. DK (01:04:15): Right. I had a lot of really good pictures, and one of the best was after the whole thing was over with. I have a picture of Tom Seaver, and I think it was Gary Gentry. They came out after everybody left, and the field had been torn up. There were just these pieces of sod everywhere. People were just crazy. He's still got his uniform on, his shirt out, and he's like standing on the pitcher's mound, looking down. I was the only person that was out there. That picture stands out in my mind, the aftermath of it all, in a real unusual situation, which has been emblematic of my kind of photography. I have always been attracted to sort of the Pulitzer thing, loneliness, desolation. My book, Photo du Jour, you see a lot of that in there, picture a day in the year 2000. That is all part of it. SM (01:05:20): Yeah. Then you covered the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and then of course, the selection of Gerald Ford to be the VP. Your experience of taking that picture with Time Magazine, and you began your close relationship with President Ford. Could you talk about covering Agnew's and then of course that whole period of Nixon leaving? DK (01:05:45): When I came back from Vietnam, Watergate was the big story. I came back in, not sure exactly when, but I think it was like June, July, somewhere. I made a detour. I left Vietnam, although I kept going back. I lived for a while in Hong Kong, a while in Bangkok and then Paris and then back to the States and really, right into the full-frontal hurricane that was Watergate. Agnew was part of that story, although he was not really related to Watergate per se, but it was all part of the trouble that was brewing. Time Magazine assigned me to go follow him around, which was not easy because he hated the press for one thing. Those nattering nabobs of negativism. SM (01:06:51): Yes. DK (01:06:51): You know who wrote that? SM (01:06:53): Pat Buchanan? DK (01:06:53): Yep. SM (01:06:54): Yeah, I figured. Yep. DK (01:06:57): Actually, Agnew, it was impressive he could even say that. That is not [inaudible]. Anyway, I cannot say it. Then he resigned, and my classic photo of him was really the day after he resigned, in the back of the limo. It was up in Maryland. It was actually a funeral, might have been for his mother or something. That picture ran in Time. I cannot remember how much after that, not too long after, Nixon designated Ford. As I recall, it was like a Friday afternoon. I went up to take his picture up at the House. He was minority leader of the House and very friendly. Let me come in, said you're wasting your time. I took this picture with window light. That night, Nixon announced him- And then that night Nixon announced Tim, and then my picture was the cover of the magazine, the new number two, at which point Time assigned me full-time to cover Ford, which really the glory days of magazine journalism because nowadays Time Magazine does not even cover overseas presidential trips. The budgeting has gotten so bad. There are a lot of pictures not being taken as we speak every minute, every hour, because of budgetary problems in the business. Newsweek is going under us. US News is really more about lists of big colleges or hospitals. Time still remains number one, but there's no way... And somebody commented on this recently, that looking back through all my photographs, everything from Vietnam to the Middle East to Jonestown to whatever it is, that there is no way that a publication would send people off to cover stories like that anymore. As an individual [inaudible], there is no way. They cannot afford it and they do not even think about it, and honestly, I think everybody is settling for a lot less now in terms of photographic quality. And it's being replaced by somebody with a flip camera or a camera phone, snap, and that is good enough. And that is really part of the deterioration of... It does not mean there are less good photographers out there, it is just they are not traveling into the center of big stories the way they used to. SM (01:09:56): You became so close to President Ford and his family because he picked you as his personal photographer. And I love the terms that you gave them before you took that position, is that he would report directly to him, which was I think very important in that relationship. When you look at the time that he became president, the boomer generation, it is maybe the most historic time in their lives because of Watergate and the pressure that President Ford had to be under after Nixon left. And when you look at all of these things, not only the resignation, but then he pardoned him and he had to go before Congress. He separated the United States from Vietnam on April 30th of (19)75. And then of course he lost to Jimmy Carter, and then there was the whole Ford Carter debate. I remember living in San Francisco at the time when he had that blunder about Eastern Europe, and then a lot of people made fun of him because he golfed and he would hit a golf ball into the yard. There is a lot of things during that timeframe, but what was it like being every day around this president with these such historic events happening right around you? DK (01:11:16): Well, going back to my initial conversation, I lecture all the time about... My latest, one of the lectures I gave, I did it over at the Aspen Institute, and this year was the presidential [inaudible] from Lincolnville [inaudible]. But I was only the third civilian chief White House photographer, and the first was Yoichi Okamoto with Lyndon Johnson who had great access that was really the standard by all of us who followed him. Well, maybe not all, but most of us had looked to Ollie or rather Yoichi as the gold standard in presidential photography. He was the godfather of White House photography for me. And then he was followed by Ollie Atkins, who had frankly no access and a really difficult period. It was like, "Okay Ollie, that is enough. A couple pictures and then you are out." And I knew this because I covered the Nixon White House at 27 years old, and as someone who would just come back from Vietnam and [inaudible] there, et cetera, et cetera. The White House photographer job did not mean that much to me to get it, just to sit around and have somebody tell me when I can go in and out of the Oval Office. The night that Ford became president sitting over in his house with Alexandria, just the two of us after he had a few family friends come by and he had asked me, invited me over and asked me to stay after everybody left. And we had this conversation in his living room, and he said, "Well, you were going to be White House photographer. How do you see that job?" And knowing what frustrations Ollie had, I said very directly to him that I would do it on two conditions. And that one is that I worked directly for him, meaning not for the press secretary or the chief of staff, that I report directly to him, and that I have total access to everything going on, whether it's national security, any kind of... Anything. I said, otherwise I was not interested just because why would I want to do that? I love working for Time Magazine, traveling around the world and taking pictures of interesting things. But he was looking at me while I said that and puffing on his pipe, and he said, "You do not want Air Force One on the weekends?' So that was it and the deal was done, really. And that was the atmosphere in which I worked for two and a half years, and I had access to everything, whether it was top secret meetings about the Soviet Union or whatever, and including... Which was a full circle for me, was being in the room when he pulled the plug on American involvement in Vietnam. And that was in the Roosevelt Room under a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt. It's one of the most important things that I took there, and you can imagine how highly classified that was because of the security of getting out the people that wanted to get out. And it was a very decisive moment, and just having been over there, I was there only a month earlier. In March I went with General Fred Weyand, who was looking to see if there's any way they could stem the tide of the advancing North Vietnamese. And so, I had been in Cambodia and Vietnam on a presidential mission really, and that was a hard one. I had a lot of friends over there, and after the fact I sponsored more than 20 Vietnamese, getting them out of camps after they had escaped from Vietnam and all of that. So, I had always been emotionally attached to Vietnam, but having said that, I have not been... I do not think, anyway, living in the Vietnam past, and I know a lot of people who have. It was both soldiers certainly, and a lot of news people who were there, photographer who were there, and just cannot seem to shake it loose. I mean, I literally moved on. When I was out of Vietnam, that was that. Not that I did not think about it. I did think about it, but to this day, I do not look at it as the greatest story I ever covered. It was certainly one of the most important. But I have been very fortunate that I have not lived in the Vietnam past. I know a lot of people who still do, and I feel bad for them. SM (01:16:55): Yeah. You were there, again, those three things he took over at the time of the resignation, the pardon, having to go before Congress, his commentaries there, and of course the separation from Vietnam, those were all just major happenings. Do you think history has been fair to President Ford in terms of when they talk about the boomer presidents, we talk about Eisenhower in the (19)50s, and we talk about John Kennedy and then we talk about LBJ and Nixon? And then some people will say, well, then we had the lightweight Gerald Ford, then we go to Carter who was a disaster, and then we get to the powerful Ronald Reagan and then Bill Clinton in the 90s and George... So just your thoughts on whether history has treated him fairly? DK (01:17:45): I think so. I think it is treating him more fairly every day that goes by. And I think where the turnaround came was ironically with he had Kennedy giving him that profile [inaudible] for the pardoning of Richard Nixon, and Kennedy basically admitting that he was wrong in his criticism of Ford at the time, that it really did to help killed the nation, that it put Watergate behind us, but people were so mad that it cost Ford the election. I mean, he really was sacrificed on that altar of bad feelings against Nixon. And people's thought there was a deal or whatever. I mean, nobody... And everybody wanted to get rid of him, and what we ended up with was Jimmy Carter. And Carter almost lost. I mean, the more Carter was out there talking, the less people liked him, and if that election a week later, Ford probably would have beat him. And the Poland thing, you can look at anything that threw off that momentum, which Poland did. And if Ford has just said, "The spirit of the Polish people are not dominated by the Soviet Union," slam dunk, home run as opposed to "They're not dominated by the Soviet Union." That was a mistake and one that he begrudgingly admitted later, believe me. It was getting bloody, man. Most people were trying to get him to go out and clarify that. Trust me, I was one of them. But anyway- SM (01:19:31): You were also the person who took two historic pictures of five presidents at two different times. The first picture was Nixon, Carter, Bush, Reagan, and Ford, and the second was Bush one and two, Clinton, Obama and Carter. That is historic in my opinion. DK (01:19:48): No, actually that was the last one, which was early January of last year, (20)09. It was the fifth time that five presidents been together, but only the second time where they posed for a picture because the Reagan library was the first time, and then there was the Nixon funeral, and then there was the 9/11 memorial at the National Cathedral, and then there was Reagan's funeral. Might have been, actually... No, that is right. It would have been Reagan's funeral, and then president-elect Obama with the other four and that was that. It is kind of interesting there is only been two baby boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush, and now Obama is the first president of my lifetime that has been younger than me. SM (01:20:58): And actually, he is actually the last two years of what is defined as boomers, (19)46 to (19)60. Was not he born in (19)62? DK (01:21:07): I cannot remember. SM (01:21:08): So he was two years old. DK (01:21:11): Yeah, I definitely would not put him in that category, I suppose. SM (01:21:18): It must have been quite an honor for you to be picked as the photographer for these occasions. DK (01:21:24): Well, no, I was not picked. There were a lot of other photographers there. I just happened to get... By design, I got an angle where I took a chance at the Reagan library where I got off to the side and there was a little... I should admit to some premeditation there, because one of the Advanced people before called me up from Bush.... No, actually somebody doing the Reagan event and wanted me to come out, because I lived in LA here at that time, to give them some advice on what would be a good picture. And so, I had a hand in setting that up. And because I knew what they were going to do, either were going to walk out together and then stand in this one spot, and photographer were like locusts. They all gather around one place usually. And so I assumed that the head on pictures is what everybody's going to go for, but I knew the best shot would be off to the side, that Mount Rushmore type configuration. And it would not have been as good a picture if Reagan then looked over to where I was, and that is why that picture was so good. And if you see the other pictures from head on, they looked like cardboard cutouts. It's all flat lighting and I never would have taken that picture. And then the last time, because it was the Bush White House and I was not working for any news organization, but I had to get in there. So, I called Dick Cheney up, whom I am still on friendly terms with, and I told him that, I said, "Do you still have any influence over there at the White House? I got to get in and take that picture." I said, " The press office will not return my calls. I am getting no help from them." And about two minutes later, the press secretary called me up and said, "Oh yeah, sure, we would love to have you come in for that." SM (01:23:41): Wow. DK (01:23:43): But there were other photographers there, but it was not a big group, but there were others. They had like three waves of photographers. But I knew when I came in the door, that was the shot right then and there, bang-bang. It was very quick, but I had a good angle there. SM (01:23:59): You knew that... I think you had over 50 front covers on magazines, and 35 I think in that time period length of some of the (19)60s and (19)70s stuff. What are the front covers that stand out for you? What year and what was the picture? DK (01:24:19): Well, I think obviously the Ford cover was my first Time magazine cover. And then it was the... I am trying to think. Well, the other huge one was the December 4th (19)78 cover of Time Magazine, Jonestown. SM (01:24:47): Oh yes. DK (01:24:48): That was huge. And then there was Ansel Adams on the cover of Time, the only cover... September (19)79, Ansel was called the master eye, and it was him on the cover of Time. To this date, the only photographer that is ever been on the cover of Time. In October '86, Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik, and it was no deal, and we transmitted that picture on a Sunday night. Early technology victory over the opposition. And I nailed the picture of Reagan kind of looking disappointed and Gorbachev, and the headline was "No Deal". Those are four covers that have all been significant, and the President Ford cover was another portrait. And the President Ford cover and Jonestown are two of the biggest selling covers in Times history, I think to this day actually, and really important events. I mean, there have been others. I have had other covers, but... SM (01:26:06): What was the most important event that you covered? You said Vietnam was not the one. What was the most important event? DK (01:26:12): It is hard to say that really, I know I said it, but I would say Sadat going to Israel was right up there. Jonestown was right up there. Reagan Gorbachev Geneva Summit was right up there. In terms of events that have profoundly impacted the world, obviously Vietnam, Reagan, Gorbachev, Jonestown would not be in the major historical importance, but in terms of drama and horror, Jonestown... I mean Vietnam affected so many people, 50,000 plus Americans being killed there during the war, hard to overlook that one. And it scared a generation of people in one way or another, at least impacted them. And I missed out [inaudible]. SM (01:27:16): I lived in the Bay Area when Jonestown happened. DK (01:27:19): Oh yeah, well that was- SM (01:27:21): Because so much was happening at that time, not only Harvey Milk being murdered in Moscone, but Jonestown. So you flew there, took the... I have that magazine. You flew there and took all those pictures. So, when you first got to that site, it must have been... You had been to Vietnam and seen death. DK (01:27:46): Well, but we did not know, and that was not even the point really. I was doing another story. I was down... The story of Shooter is a good story. [inaudible] recollect because it happened so soon [inaudible]. I think it was one of the last stories, and that is a good story. That tells you what happened. But until when we first circled over Jonestown in that plane, we just heard rumors that, oh, there were a lot of kids there, that we thought maybe they were still holding out against the Guyanese army, and we just did not know. And when we circled over there in the plane, I saw those people. I thought, well, look at all these people down there. And so, they must, it is not as bad as we thought. And as we got closer, realized that all the people were dead. And that was shocking. I mean, I cannot even begin to tell you what that was like. That is probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to deal with psychologically is to see that. And I think that was... Because at least in a war, you got some sense of why people are doing it. And in this case, there was no reality spread there. There was nothing that a sane person could understand why that would have happened. And to this day, I am perplexed as anybody, why they did that? SM (01:29:29): And you were right down on the ground there eventually? DK (01:29:33): Yeah, then we got on the ground. I was one of those few people ever to be there, fortunately for everybody else who was not. SM (01:29:40): Did you have to wear masks? Because the stench must have been really intense. DK (01:29:43): It was bad. Yeah. It was like two, three days later. SM (01:29:46): Wow. DK (01:29:47): Not good. SM (01:29:49): Why did we lose the Vietnam War, in your opinion? DK (01:29:54): Well, I do not know. The historians are still fighting about that war. I think we, well ultimately, if you take it all the way back to Eisenhower era that we backed the wrong horse. I think that is what happened. I am really curious what would have happened if you looked at Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist and not a communist, if you looked at him in a different way, could there have been a decision that would have sided with Ho Chi Minh? I do not know. I mean, the resolve was there in the north, and in the south, there was so much corruption. I mean, you read all the stories. SM (01:30:48): Yes. DK (01:30:49): I am probably the last person you should ask that question of just because I have no idea. You look at the place today, it is still a communist country, but they are big time into capitalism. So, I am just wonder what was lost other than obviously all those lives. But if I were a family who lost somebody in Vietnam, I would be pretty pissed off, quite frankly. SM (01:31:21): Did you ever have a chance to talk to President Ford about his position on the Warren Commission? About the single bullet theory? And of course, he and all- DK (01:31:33): He was emphatic that he agreed with the rest of the commission, that there were no... That it was not a conspiracy. SM (01:31:39): When you saw the wall- DK (01:31:42): To this day, by the way, I have seen nothing that would prove differently. And I know it is one of ongoing fascinations that some people have, the obsession with that whole thing. It is almost like you can... It kind of goes to the category of the United States was a co-conspirator in the 9/11 Twin Towers attack. SM (01:32:17): Yeah, there is some that think that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, they were all connected in some way, conspiracy. DK (01:32:29): It is just I cannot... It is so hard to... It is like Jones telling to me. I do not understand that kind of thinking. So, I do not know. SM (01:32:35): When you saw the wall, the Vietnam Memorial for the first time, what was your reaction and thinking in 1982 when all the veterans came back and since? You're the person who won the Pulitzer Prize for pictures on the war in Vietnam and experienced combat firsthand. And then of course, the decision that President Ford, to depart in 1975 after 58,290 died and 3 million Vietnamese died. What was your thought when you first saw that wall? DK (01:33:07): I cried. It was the single most powerful thing I have ever seen in my life as a monument. To see those names, many of whom I knew. They were guys I went to high school with were or had met. And I thought it was... I was overcome with emotional when I saw it. And I went down there on my own to see it. I did not know what to expect. And I know it was really criticized by a lot of veterans groups and people, but I think it's emerged as probably the single most powerful vision of what that war was, because it boils down to all those people were killed. And guess what? That does not even... The names of the people who were severely injured are not on there, so you could add another 100,000- SM (01:34:14): Oh yes. DK (01:34:15): ... Names, not to mention all of the Vietnamese. SM (01:34:20): Have you ever read Lewis Puller's book, Fortunate Son? DK (01:34:27): I have not. And I have got it. And I have got so much. I mean, read all the time. I read so much. That is one, believe it or not, that was on my list. That is a good one. SM (01:34:48): Well, I knew him. And that is another story. This is your interview, not mine. But I only knew him through making an effort to contact him. He was the inspiration to write my book. DK (01:34:59): Oh wow. SM (01:34:59): He supported me to do it when I talked to him before he killed himself. DK (01:35:03): But Galway knows him or knew him. SM (01:35:03): Oh yeah, and Joe's great. Of course, Joe's now in Texas, I think so. DK (01:35:10): Yeah. Yeah. I have not talked- SM (01:35:13): And when I interviewed him for my book was many years back. His wife had just passed away, and then he ended up marrying one of the daughters of guys who died at the [inaudible] Valley. So that is an unbelievable story. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what do you think was the watershed moment? DK (01:35:35): That is a good question. They definitely ended in the (19)70s. And I would say they probably ended after... Definitely after Nixon resigned, because he represented the... I mean, he was elected in (19)68, took office in (19)69. The (19)60s as we remember them did not even really start till (19)65. SM (01:36:10): You are right. DK (01:36:11): And everybody talks about the [inaudible], because then all the images that you see flashed up are Rolling Stones, Beetles, hippies, et cetera. And I think you could safely say the (19)60s ended with the end fall of Saigon. That would be probably the most dramatic moment I could think of. SM (01:36:36): Is there a watershed moment? DK (01:36:44): That moment would be the fall Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Yeah. I mean, I think that is the end of the (19)60s right there. SM (01:36:51): Where were you when John Kennedy died? Do you remember the exact moment when you heard? DK (01:36:55): Yeah, I was in social studies class in Roseburg High School, and when they came in to the class, I remember what was more interesting to me was what I found out many years later that there were people celebrating his death here in this country. That was shocking to me. SM (01:37:26): Oh, yes. DK (01:37:26): Unbelievable. Because all we can think about at the time, all the kids, they were all fine. And I mean, he was the president. He was like this character that because of modern communication, we would actually gotten to know this guy through TV. And he was a young person who... And my parents were Republican, but everybody was so upset. I mean, the part of Oregon I come from, it is a very conservative part of the state, and I remember in [inaudible] billboards, so that was... However, nobody was celebrating. We were all the kids. We were in shock. SM (01:38:18): When you were not San Francisco State, SI [inaudible], we back in the East saw that on tele... We knew what was going on there. And of course, a lot of the protests were in Berkeley. DK (01:38:31): But Berkeley I did not really do, but the SF State I did. I was actually based in Los Angeles. They flew me up there to cover that. SM (01:38:38): That was pretty intense. An, were not you threatened at that? Or were you beat up or? DK (01:38:43): Oh yeah, the cops hit me, the students threw rocks at me, and it was kind of an equal opportunity bashing. SM (01:38:52): Geez. What was your thought when all this was happening about higher ed, our young people, and America? DK (01:39:05): Nothing surprised me at that point. To me, it was a good story. It was dangerous though, but there were a lot of good pictures out of that. Hey, you know what? It's just what I have done. That is just another story along the way. And one of the things I was going to mention to you was I had gone to pitch a book of my photos to, I think it was Abraham, and all the editors could talk about was, did I have pictures of the social changes and fashion? And I said, no. They said, why? I said, "Guys, I do not give a flying fuck about any of that stuff. I do not care about [inaudible]. I do not care about fashion. I do not really care about sports that much in terms of photography. What I cared about is what you were looking at. These are my pictures, and I cannot go back into the vault and pull out a bunch of stuff that you think I should be doing as opposed to what I did." I was really offended by them, to be honest with you. SM (01:40:23): Well, you know what is interesting- DK (01:40:24): What do you see here? I said, "This is the story of one person's journey through the events of his generation". I said, "I cannot go back and do it over again. And if I did go back and do it over again, I do not think I would do it any differently." I mean, I would have taken some better pictures and not missed as many as I did, but the direction would have been the same. SM (01:40:50): The irony of your pictures of the Ali Frazier fight before you went off to Vietnam is interesting because, I am just reflecting, he was kicked out of boxing because of his stand on the Vietnam War and stripped of his title for a while. And then he came back and we all remember what he had said, that he's not going to go off and kill yellow boys when black boys in America are not being taken care of. DK (01:41:17): Yeah, that fight, I mean, that was one of the great fights of all time. SM (01:41:21): How important do you think- DK (01:41:25): [inaudible] Frazier, you will never, ever duplicate something like that. Well, the whole boxing industry is screwed anyway anymore. But those were, again, that was sort of representative of... That was still the (19)60s, even though it was 1971. That was an event with its roots going back into... See, basically, because we divide everything into... We like neat little items. 50th anniversary of this, 20th anniversary of that, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s. It does not mean jack shit. (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s, it does not mean jack shit. I mean, when I did my book, [inaudible] in 2000... Hang on, I was showing this to somebody the other day and I said something here, if I can find it. Hold on. Every month I wrote something about... Where is it? Well, I cannot find it. the end of the last day of 2000, I did a picture of... Actually, one of the pictures, you should get that book. I think you would find it pretty interesting, I was at the convention in Philadelphia, among other things. SM (01:43:03): The name of the book? DK (01:43:05): Photo du Jour. SM (01:43:07): Okay, I will find that. We have a really good bookstore. DK (01:43:16): Hold on a sec, I just want to see if I can find this one thing. Well, maybe I do not have it here. Dave Barry Howard Fryman wrote a piece. SM (01:43:35): You can email me. DK (01:43:39): The main thing right now, I guess, the point was that the last picture that I did, And this was a project I did with a Mamiya 7 camera, which is like a light on steroids. It is a medium format or a range finder camera. the last photo was of a volcano in Hawaii. Normally day-to-day, I did not even know where I would be one day to the next, but in this case, by that point, at the end of the year, the family and I were going to be in Hawaii on a vacation and the volcano was still active. That was the last day of December 31st, 2000, the last day of going into 2001. The symbolism of that volcano was, it did not make any difference that it was the last day of the year or the first day of the year, or the last day of the millennium. The fact of the matter, everything, it just goes over into the next day. It does not mean anything. It is like these are just all, they are days. They are false markers. I think that was point. SM (01:45:12): How important do you feel students were in ending the war through their protests? You saw it at San Francisco State, but they were all over the country, particularly between (19)67- DK (01:45:21): Hang on one second. Here is what I said. The first day of the new millennium was basically another day. The Earth continued to spin on its axis. There was no cataclysmic thunder clap wiping out our way of life as we knew it. That would wait until September 11th, 2001. That was the point. Oops. Can you hold on one second? SM (01:45:56): Yep. DK (01:45:57): Hold on. SM (01:45:58): Yep. DK (01:46:08): The point is, when you are talking, that was a good question. When did the (19)60s end? If you just sent out all of the, if you took all that stuff out, it really, it was a state of mind really more than anything. I think that is a really good question. I have talked to people about that. Well, what does it mean the (19)60s? It's almost like the (19)70s, somebody, they do not talk about the (19)70s per se. So much shit happened during the (19)70s. More than in the (19)60s almost. SM (01:46:40): What is interesting is a lot of people have said the (19)60s were from that (19)65 till about (19)73 because you cannot separate (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 and (19)70. You cannot. DK (01:46:52): Right. SM (01:46:52): A lot of people look at disco as a change when things start changing. DK (01:46:58): Yeah-yeah, yeah. SM (01:46:59): When you look at the generation that you grew up in, the boomer generation, this would be based, the generation 74 million total. What would be the people that you knew, can you give any strengths or weaknesses to this generation if you were to comment on them? DK (01:47:20): Ask me that one more time, I am sorry. SM (01:47:22): When you look at the boomer generation itself of 74 million, not all were activists and probably only about 10 percent were, and the rest were not. But when you look at this generation, which is all inclusive, it is male, female, black, brown, yellow, gay, straight, you name it. It is all of them. Were there any strengths or weaknesses that you could list? DK (01:47:54): Well, God, there is so many. In many ways, Clinton kind of epitomized all that. I mean, he was a person who, and in a way, this is not a fair thing to say, but because we all were brought up differently too, I mean, he had a hard way to go brought up. Here's the guy that overcame a background. I do not really like Clinton, by the way. I understand his strengths and his weaknesses. In many ways he represents many of the strengths and weaknesses of the generation. A lot of promiscuous people who were, if it feels good, do it. I understand that. I think those of us, products of the World War II generation or the greatest generation as to Tom Brokaw said, makes you feel a little bit strange. They went through all that. They collectively, and we were brought up in the (19)50s where prosperity was the cornerstone of the country and on the sacrifice of our parents. My parents and those people that age really have a different way of looking at stuff. Those who went through the depression. We do not know about any of that until now, but I do not think it's the same thing. It is for certain people, but not in this overshadowing way. I am rambling here because I do not have a good answer for you. It is everything from television, the advent of TV really accompanied the rise of the baby boomers. Jeff, it was very funny. In fact, you got to get the photo out if you do not have it. If you want to use Jeff's cartoons in it, I will give you the permission to do so because what it did, and a lot of what you are writing about is the baby generation. I told you what he said, the self-centered generation comes of age, but it is all, the first frame is the (19)50s and it is the golden age of television. There is a little kid sitting on a floor and the TV with the rabbit ears is up on a wood chest of drawers. Then it's the (19)60s, the next panel, the Golden Age, the rock and roll. You have got the same, the kid is not growing up now, but he is holding a guitar, watching a bigger TV set. In the (19)70s, golden age of drugs and the kid who is still a baby has got a cigarette in his mouth watching a TV in a cabinet. Then the (19)80s, the golden age of money. The kid's got a big cigar, this huge TV, the nineties, the golden age of healthcare. The kid's got to hook up to a blood pressure machines, still watching the TV. Then the two thousand, the golden age of arthritis. The kids pushing the button on the TV with a cane. Then the 2010, the golden age of death. That was his representation of the baby boom generation. I think there is something to that because we were not only growing up in a different world, we're actually watching ourselves do it on TV. Everything that happens is on TV anymore. The car chase, the plane crash, people on the hill, live C Span. Never before has a group of people been able to track their own progress in a mirror really like now. That was not the way it was before. The evolution of how you got your news from Life magazine to NBC, when they talk about life being killed by speed, that is probably true. It had its time. That is all. I was one of the last drivers hired by them, and it was a great tragedy for us but like so many other things I have moved on from there. SM (01:52:52): You say you moved on. That that leads me into, I only got three more questions then we're done. This question is regarding the issue of healing. We took students to Washington DC in 1995 to meet Senator Edmond Musky. The students came up with a question because they were not alive in the (19)60s and (19)70s, their parents were obviously, but they had seen a video of the year 1968. They put together a question dealing with all the divisions that were happening in America at that time. The question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomer generation or in the (19)60s generation, 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, those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, is going to go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not healing? Not healing because of the tremendous division's, animosity and sometimes outright hatred one had for the opposing point of view, or someone with a different perspective or whatever? Senator Musky, and they were thinking of the 1968 convention and all the turmoil there, the assassinations in 68, and they were thinking of Watts in 64. They were thinking of all the things about the (19)60s. What's your answer? Then I will tell you what Senator Musky said. DK (01:54:27): Well, of course we got a little, yeah, that is a different thing. I do not know. The healing. It seems a lot of that bad will is really carrying over to the here and the now. It almost does not seem to be getting better. I do not know about healing. I do not see how you- SM (01:54:51): Hold on one second. David, can you hold on one second? DK (01:54:54): Yeah. SM (01:54:54): My tape just ended. Okay. Alrighty. Go right ahead. DK (01:55:01): When you talk about a generation healing, I do not personally feel damaged, so I do not know how other people, it is such an individual situation that I could not tell you, but the world, it does. Things seem more divided now. I mean, that is a fact. Everybody talks about it. You have got Fox News on one hand is supposed to represent the conservative point of view and MSNBC on the other side, and people really polarize on certain subjects. That goes back to what I said earlier. I am not a Democrat or Republican, I am a photographer. SM (01:55:48): Right. DK (01:55:51): I have seen both sides. (End of Interview) Description 3 microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Hume Kennerly Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kennerly, David Hume, 1947- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Photographers; Photojournalists; Kennerly, David Hume, 1947--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize winnig photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-07-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 237:33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/04301dbfe527dad1f6de9e98c6d231f8.jpg 4c56fd75b4adb5be65874a91c821c1cc https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/cb4e9e9bf6e952e494982d4d937df9a5.mp3 068d680ba8683d1c6819fe1104219a17 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-11-19 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Lance Goines, 1945-2023 Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Lance Goines is an artist, calligrapher, typographer, printing entrepreneur, and author. Goines was a Classics major at the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he participated in the Free Speech Movement, which ultimately led to his expulsion. He returned to UC Berkeley for a period but left once more to become an apprentice as a printer in Berkeley. Goines founded the Saint Hieronymus Press in Berkeley and has worked there ever since. He won an American Book Award in 1983 for A Constructed Roman Alphabet."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4995,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">David Lance Goines is an artist, calligrapher, typographer, printing entrepreneur, and author. Goines was a Classics major at the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he participated in the Free Speech Movement, which ultimately led to his expulsion. He returned to UC Berkeley for a period but left once more to become an apprentice as a printer in Berkeley. Goines founded the Saint Hieronymus Press in Berkeley and has worked there ever since. He won an American Book Award in 1983 for A Constructed Roman Alphabet. David Lance Goines died in Berkeley, California, on February 19, 2023, at the age of 77. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Birth control; Liberal arts; Abortion; Civil rights movement; Newt Gingrich; Environmental movement; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; WWI; Welfare; Vietnam memorial&quot;}\" data-sheets-userformat=\"{&quot;2&quot;:4993,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}\">Birth control; Liberal arts; Abortion; Civil rights movement; Newt Gingrich; Environmental movement; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; WWI; Welfare; Vietnam memorial."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588}}">Birth control; Liberal arts; Abortion; Civil rights movement; Newt Gingrich; Environmental movement; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; WWI; Welfare; Vietnam Memorial Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 82:41 Subject LCSH Artists; Calligraphers; Typographers; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Goines, David Lance, 1945--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: David Lance Goines Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 19 November 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:09): Testing one, two. David Lance Goines. Okay. The first question I want to ask, and then speak loud into your machine, into your phone. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? DG (00:00:34): Well, there were so many things going on, that one of the biggest changes was development of birth control pills, which truly profoundly altered the way young people engaged in their sexual explorations. That is both an indicator of, creator of what was going on in 1960, a remarkable change in sexual relations. There were a lot of other things. Baby boomers of course were feeling their oats, and the explosion of changes in society due to their powerful influence. The change in music became very much focused on the young generation and the change in sexual morality, the adoption of what had thereto for been peripheral or non-existent drugs. The whole change in art, which once again was pretty much young folks art and fashion. Basically, I would say the tremendous shift in social power from the older generation to the baby boomers. SM (00:02:16): Is there one specific event? I think I know what it is, but let us say before the free speech movement, was there one specific event in your life that made you who you are before you even stepped foot on that Berkeley campus? DG (00:02:29): Well, it would not have been before I set foot on the Berkeley campus, but Berkeley campus was the big changing event. I mean, I was headed toward a life of probably academic accomplishment. I was headed toward probably a professorship eventually, and that seems like a reasonable place for me to have been headed perhaps, and perhaps an attorney. I did not really know. I had previously been studied for the Luther Print Ministry, and that did not work out. I was pretty much at loose ends as far as a career was concerned and was pursuing my interest in classical literature, Greek and Latin language literature, which I was not doing terribly well, and was going to be shifting more towards liberal arts probably in that sophomore year. But I had become involved, through my roommates, with a number of campus organizations, which were relatively innocuous and also had become involved once again through with the civil rights movement, which I had not previously had much attention paid. Basically, becoming involved with the organization slate caused my expulsion at the beginning of sophomore year, and that of course completely changed my path. Had I not been expelled that day, I would have gone a very, very different path. SM (00:04:39): Well, you have already answered the question, how did the free speech movement change your life, but what did this movement say about the boomer generation itself? Did what happened at Berkeley change how the universities treat students and the impact that this has still today on university campuses? The reason why I bring this up, David, because it was very obvious that people like you and Mario and others were understood what if student empowerment was all about. Still there? Hello? Hello? Speaker 3 (00:05:19): If you would like to make a call then- SM (00:05:20): Oops. What happened at Berkeley? How did this change how universities treat students today? Did you see that this impact has been ongoing, or have universities gone back to the way they were? Still there? Speaker 3 (00:05:37): If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try- DG (00:05:37): If not, we might have to do this by email. SM (00:05:50): Or else I can maybe do it on myself. What did the movement say about the boomer generation, and I speak about the free speech movement, and did what happened at the Berkeley campus back in (19)64 and (19)65 really change how universities looked at students, not only then, but now? DG (00:06:13): One change that was very noticeable with the University of California campuses thereafter were built without any central meeting places. Santa Cruz University, for example, has no center. There is no place for students to get together and hold protests. It has separate campuses that are widely distributed, and in fact many, many students do not see students from other departments. The fear of student unrest has haunted the university, and of course right now with the dramatic raise you can see the university is experiencing another episode of unrest. Whether or not they deal with this appropriately or whether they can deal with it appropriately remains seen. I do not think it is going to be the same kind of protests by any means, but the sector of student unrest certainly haunts universities all over the United States and in other countries as well. SM (00:07:28): Do you feel, David, part of this is because the people that are now running the universities were boomers and that they may have been non-activist boomers, but they experienced it as students or whatever, and they knew what happened. That is ironic that a lot of them are either boomers or the generation that [inaudible] DG (00:07:52): One of the administrators talking today to the newspaper about the student unrest at the University of California said, "In my student days, I would have done the same." His student days were probably my student days, although he seems a little younger. The University of California and other campuses really are having terrible financial problems, and they are dealing with them the way most other large government organizations are, which is by not cutting their gigantic staff, but by raising prices for their services. This is making university students very, very unhappy. However, university students are not going to not get an education simply because it is expensive. Things are going to change. They are going to be really unhappy. They are going to make the administration aware that they are really unhappy, but I do not think they are actually going to accomplish anything. We were dealing with idealistic issues. We were not talking about paying more money for something. We had a very, very strong assessment side as whole. Our lives were changed a great deal, and the whole course of American history was changed a great deal, but I do not think there is any real comparison between what we were doing then and what kids are doing now. SM (00:09:37): When you look at the boomer generation though, would not you say that one of their qualities, characteristics is this business of challenging authority, a concept of activism? DG (00:09:53): We did so, because we could. We were very powerful, and there were more of us, we had more economic clout, we had a growing political clout. I mean, remember most of us at that time were under 21 and we could not vote. The voting age has since gone down, and the power of this block that was emerging into its voting potential was truly sobering to the elected, the representatives. They knew that in only a very short period of time, we were going to be the ones doing the voting, and we already showed how powerful we were. Just as with the women's movement when the women got the vote in 1919, this tremendously changed the attitude of politicians because they knew that all of a sudden there was a huge voting block that was not there before. They had not had to pay any attention to it at all. The same the happened with our huge voting block that moved pretty much as the unit into the polls. It did not turn out the way we had in mind, of course, because things never do, but we continually developed our economic, social and political power, which is now fully in our hands at this point. People do not give up power once they have gotten it, and we are not going to give up power either. The new generation is going to have to figure out how to get power away from us, probably by waiting around until we die, which will work extremely well. SM (00:11:41): What do you think are, list some characteristics that you think define the boomer generation. Again, it is between 70 and 74 million people and we are dealing with a lot of different people here, but if there were characteristics, what would be their strengths and their weaknesses? DG (00:11:58): Well, the strengths are that we actually possess a great deal of real power. Weaknesses is that we have basically, now that we are in power, we are quite complacent. We really genuinely changed American society when we think of birth control bill, think of abortion, think of civil rights movement, think of the anti-Vietnam protest, and so on and so forth. The change in morality, the change in the way society behaves and views itself is entirely due to our pressure. But once we got what we wanted, we relaxed. We are also, to some extent, preventing the younger generation from the asserting its power and control because we have it and we do not particularly want to give it up. As I said, they are going to have to be patient, wait till we start dying in much, much larger numbers. SM (00:12:58): What do you feel has been the impact that boomers have had on their children and their grandchildren? We are dealing with college students today that are so-called millennials, and they do not really have any problem with their parents, but only about 15-20 percent now of the parents are boomers. They are generation Xers now who are having their kids in college. DG (00:13:17): We are the grandparents at this point. Well, we still basically own everything. I mean, we physically own everything and we are responsible. I mean people like me, I bought my house in 1980. My monthly mortgage payment is about half a bunch people pay for an apartment. I bought my shop, the building I am in, in 1980. I got my business started in 1965. I am basically firmly entrenched. I am not having the economic problems that a lot of other people are having. Young people now, I mean when I went to college, my semester fees were $75. I worked my way through school. I had a halftime job as a page in the library, a dollar and a quarter an hour, and I was-was not rich, but I was not having a problem. It is not possible to work your way through college now. It is not possible. Nobody, even at the public university level, can work their way through school. It is not possible. The private universities do not even think about it. What happens is that when I also, when graduated or potentially graduated, I was more or less guaranteed a job simply possessing a college degree, guaranteed a good job. Now possessing a college degree is a guarantee of getting a job as a waiter or a waitress. SM (00:14:58): Yeah, you are right. DG (00:14:58): You are not equipped to go out into the job market unless you have gone into some art sciences like my nephew who is mechanical engineer or my niece who's a nurse. If you have gone into hard sciences or hard social services, yes you will get a job, but if you have got a degree in medieval French literature, that and 10 cents will get you a cup of coffee. It is worthless. You enter the job market with the degree that basically does not give you anything and that this makes people very, very unhappy. They are deeply in debt and they have got something that is not negotiable currency, whereas when I went in and not only was I not in debt, I was guaranteed good employment. I mean, this makes you very sad and very-very thick apart. SM (00:15:58): Right. DG (00:16:01): I think that the current generation is bitterly disappointed. I mean, basically we say in jest that my generation used up all the fun, but we not only did we use up all the fun, we used up all the money. Things are bad now, and they are going to get worse. I am the leading edge of social security, and millions and millions of my fellow Americans are going to demand that social security. Well, there is no money for it. You do not get a good job when you graduate from college, you are deeply in debt if you graduate from college, and you are not guaranteed basically anything that we took for granted. We just took for granted all these wonderful things. For my dollar and a quarter an hour job, for one hour's labor. I could buy five or six gallons of gasoline, I could buy 25 candy bars, I could get a pack of cigarettes of beer and a decent meal for my one hour's work. Now how many packs of cigarettes can you get at minimum wage now, one? How many gallons of gasoline can you get for your, let us say $8 an hour, two or three? How many candy bars can you buy, between six and eight? Okay, that is a huge, huge difference. Wages have not kept up the cost of living. For a while, it looked like anybody who wanted to get a house, but that turns out not to work out too well. You cannot get a house now. I mean, you have to be able to, people right now are coming up 40 percent down payments, and that is what allows them to get a loan from a bank. No more of this signature stuff. The economic situation is bad, but my generation, the first generation in history of America, of human race, never to go hungry. We never wanted for food. That had never happened before. My parents were both very badly malnourished during the Depression. My mother went temporarily blind from a vitamin B deficiency. Her parents lived through miserable economic time. They had a very hard time. We did not know what want was. My whole generation, beginning in 1945 when I was born, everything was swell. We were the only intact economic power in the world. We fed ourselves and everybody else. We bought our own cars, we bought our own product. Nobody else could compete with us either financially or economically or in terms of production, and that is over. That has changed. SM (00:19:27): Where does the blame? Is there a blame game here? The boomer generation, and you know this being in Berkeley and elsewhere, that they are the many of the boomers felt that they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change the world. They were going to end racism, sexism, and war. They were going to create a whole new world of love and peace and harmony. DG (00:19:52): Good does not it? SM (00:19:53): What went wrong? DG (00:19:55): Well, nothing went wrong. You cannot change everything just because you want to. Also, think there is the law of unintended consequences that crops up. If you want the Peace Corps and you want to help all the starving people in Africa, you have to realize that what you are creating is a dependent population that you are going to have to keep on feeding because they do not have the ability to feed themselves. When you run out of money and you decide you cannot keep feeding everyone in Africa, what is going to happen to those people? Well, they are going to get really mad. You mean well, you really do mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good intention. We have created all sorts of whirlwinds. That tornadoes out there without really meaning to, we did not mean harm, we did not end war. Just wanting to end war is not going to make it end. It does not take two people to fight, it only takes one, and you cannot spread your message of peace, love, and good vibes to those who are not interested. He comes up and starts pounding on you with his fist. Well, either fight back or not, but that has nothing to do with what he has done. My message of peace and love will not really work. It is not one [inaudible] We had tremendous economic and manufacturing power, and because of that we did not develop anything that we perhaps should have. For example, small cars. We did not need small cars. We had huge roads, we had plenty of gas with really cheap. We did not have to pay any attention to the small car market, so in the 1970s, there was a small car market that had been created by foreign manufacturers and there was absolutely nothing that American manufacturers had so the market began to shift toward foreigners. Had we developed small cars in the 1950s and 1960s, would have been a very different story, but we did not because we did not have to. Now, I look down the street and I see oh zero American cars. That would be not one single American car. I am seeing all foreign cars. They are German, they are Japanese. Nope. They are German car. Because of Toyota, right. Where are the American cars? Well, they are going out of business. Why are they going out of business? Because they did not respond to a market that they did not know was there. It is noticeable, it is not bad. They did not have to change, so they did not. SM (00:22:58): How do you respond to the critics of the boomer generation? You see them all the time. George Will, whenever he gets a chance, oftentimes writes articles blaming the problems of our society today on that generation that grew up in the (19)60s and (19)70s. I believe he is part of it, but he has written a lot about the failure of that time. Newt Gingrich, when he came into power in (19)94, talked about it and he still does occasionally, that all the problems, the drug culture, the lack of the sexual revolution, all the concept of everybody is a victim, all these things, the welfare state, everything. Breakup of the American family, divorce rate, all goes back to those times when boomers were young and whether in the (19)60s and early (19)70s and the way they lived their lives so the problems were all during that time. The Democratic Party even broke apart because of that. DG (00:23:59): Let us suppose for the sake of discussion that they are absolutely right. So what? What are they going to do? Get back to the way back machine and go back to the 1945 and me not being conceived? How are they going to change anything by their pointing and complaining? Does not make the slightest difference. I do not pay any attention to it. They are remarks are meaningless. Are you going to go back and un-invent birth control pills? Are you going to go back and change any of the developments that have happened? Are you going to not let us go to the moon? How are you going to do all that? Well, you are not going to do it. It is a waste of my breath to even respond to their criticism, and therefore will not respond to their criticism. SM (00:24:46): How about the movements? Because one of the things we all know historically, not only what happened at the free speech movement, but the civil rights movement was already strong, and the anti-war movement became very big at the time boomers were young, but it also spawned other movements like the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Chicano, Native American, the environmental movement. It goes on and on. Could you talk about those movements and how important they were in defining the generation? DG (00:25:15): They were happening anyway. One thing that is important to remember is that the mill does not make the water run, my great-grandmother often said. An example is the Clairol hair coloring product. They did not create women's demand for hair coloring. They recognized that there was a product that would do it and they capitalized on it. The women's movement has been in continuous operation since about 1795, and we did not create it. We merely responded to what was already going on. Do they want to go back and not give women the vote and have all that fun again? I do not think so. The changes in society have far more to do with technological changes and sheer mass. When I was born, there were 135 million people in the United States. How many are there now? Triple that? Did we cause this terrible thing to happen? No, we did not. Right? The welfare system that we inherited was a product of the late 1940s and early 1950s. We had nothing, whatever to do that. I was seven years old. The welfare system and the terrible things that have come in consequence of that would be perhaps you can blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Be my guest. But just because there is a problem does not mean there is a solution, and if there is a solution, the famous quote, "To every question is a simple, easy to understand, wrong answer." The environmental situation in which we are was certainly not started by us. That was begun by Rachel Carlson in 1963. Well, I would have been how old? 20? No, 18. Sorry, I did not start it. The birth control pill, that was started by Margaret- SM (00:27:29): Sanger. DG (00:27:31): Margaret Sanger and Katherine McCormick. That was 1958. I was eight. No, wait. How old was I? 13. I did not do it. Sorry, wrong guy. These people have complaints about the things that have happened in our society, they should complain to the preceding generation, if anything. SM (00:27:56): One must say though, the anti-war movement was something very strong to the boomers, and particularly your thoughts on how important the boomers were on college campuses and ending that Vietnam War? DG (00:28:08): I do not think we were terribly important in ending the war. We were very important to making it quite clear that we were not happy about being drafted. There were wars that had been going on for quite a while before that people demonstrated great unhappiness with, but the wars went on nonetheless. The mistake of the powers that be was in drafting college students. College students did not want to go. Do not draft the ones who can fight back, draft the ones who cannot fight back. I do not know what result, I mean that war was a mistake. It was pretty obvious that we had gotten off on the wrong foot. But unfortunately, once you start something, just because you realize you have made a mistake does not mean you can end it. If I look out there and I see, oh my God, there is a huge forest fire. Let me blow out the match that I just started it with, what does that do? That does nothing. Right? Just because there is a big forest fire and you started it with your match, does not mean that blowing out the match have any effect. I know what caused it, but there is nothing I can do about it. I mean, if you had asked me to go talk to Ho Chi Minh, maybe things would be different, but I was not old enough. SM (00:29:43): When did the? DG (00:29:43): [inaudible] was 1954. I was what? Eight, seven. SM (00:29:47): Right. Yeah. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? DG (00:29:55): 1960s began in 1960 and they ended in 1970. I mean, what do you mean? SM (00:30:00): Was there a watershed moment that you knew that this- DG (00:30:03): [inaudible] event? No, there were many, many things. There were many, many things that contributed to it, and the 1960s is just a convenient calendar moment. Delete the calendar. It had no effect. There were so many things going on. A lot of it had to do with the economic power of those who became recognized as the boomers. A lot of it had to do with the immense technological and social power of the United States. After World War II, a lot of us had to do with amazing technological changes that were quite unthought of in the 1940s. Take computers for example. They just all came together with the confluence of things. You can start at any level you want. You can start talking about the combine harvester and chemical fertilizer, you can talk about changes in metallurgy. Where do you want to start? Everything came together, and it was largely because of our extremely large number and our tremendous self. We had a huge amount of power, and we used the power because when you have power, you use it. But what you do [inaudible] First, we asked permission nicely and then when that turned out not to work too well, we did what we goddamn well pleased, and no one could stop us. SM (00:31:52): People that say that, well, (19)60s really began when John Kennedy was killed and it really ended either Kent State or when the helicopter flew off the building in Saigon in (19)75. DG (00:32:08): They are free to say that if they wish. SM (00:32:19): Right. DG (00:32:19): But there are no beginnings, there are no endings. SM (00:32:21): I am just speculating here. If I had 500 people off from all over the country in an auditorium and we took a vote on the event that shaped their line lives the most, what do you think the number one event would be? DG (00:32:34): Depends who these people are. You are just thinking them at random? SM (00:32:39): Yeah-yeah. Just boomers. Anybody born to- DG (00:32:42): Oh, someone born after 1945 and before 1960? SM (00:32:44): (19)64. DG (00:32:46): (19)64, whatever it is. I do not know. There would be probably many-many answers. There were huge, amazing technological things that happened. Man landing on the moon is pretty darn dramatic. The relaxation of social [inaudible] as far as literature, movie, books, and the like. The computer, probably I would have to say technologically the computer. This is having as much effect on society as the invention of printing by movable type and 1456, and the change is happening every bit as fast. Socially, the sheer numbers of people who came into existence after World War II in the United States, they are simple numbers. They are simple numbers and their immense economic power. Young people always want to have sex, and drugs, and rock and roll. I mean, that is what they all want. But we could actually get away with it, so many of it. They had so much power. Basically, the grownups could not stop us. They tried. Now we are the grown-ups. SM (00:34:16): When the (19)60s happened and a lot of the challenge of two authority took place on college campuses, I would go back to the (19)50s when things seemed to be so calm and most of the boomers were in elementary school. They had great Christmases and Thanksgivings. They were always with their parents. Parents were providing them with... DG (00:34:36): Unlike Ronald Reagan. SM (00:34:37): A lot. Of course, we watched black and white television, and of course we were had the thread of the nuclear bomb all the time, but the kids I was around never really thought that much about the nuclear bomb. DG (00:34:50): You are actually buying Ronald Reagan's stick and chain world. SM (00:34:54): No, I am not buying it. DG (00:34:55): [inaudible] SM (00:34:57): But the question is, what was it? Was there something about the (19)50s that helped shape young people? Even if they were only reaching junior high school when 1960 arrived, but was there something about the (19)50s that somehow helped shape them, whether it be television or? DG (00:35:16): Never went hungry. Never wanted for food. It had never happened before. This is extremely important. We never went hungry. We did not know what privation was. We expected whatever we wanted, and we got it. The 1950s were, remember, right after World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression. People were poor. They were poor for a long time. One whole generation. My father, for example. Now my grandfather born in World War I, then there was the Great Depression, then there was World War II, and then there is the (19)50s where it can buy a new refrigerator for the very first time. You can buy a car. You do not have to drive that 1932 Ford anymore. You could buy whatever you wanted. It was wonderful. There was everything. Buy anything you wanted to, whereas for the preceding, oh what, 70 years, had not been able to buy anything, right? During the war, could you buy a new dress? No, you could not. Did you get all the butter you wanted? No, you could not. Get a new refrigerator? No. Did you get a new car? No, they were not making cars or refrigerators. In the 1950s, all of a sudden, not only could you get a new refrigerator, but you get a new refrigerator that actually worked. You could get a new car that was actually pretty good. My grandfather, neither my father nor my grandfather had that new car ever in their lives. My father's first car was in 1934 Dodge, and it was a piece of junk but it was all there was. You were not risking your life in some war. You were not starving because you did not have any money. You were not basically living in a barter economy where you were trading eggs for say, gasoline. It was a wonderful world and that the world I was born into, and I did not know any different. I had never been in a world with privation. SM (00:37:42): But you admit though, that there was privation in the (19)50s because when you watched black and white TV and you watched the Mickey Mouse Club and you saw all those Hobby Duty and all the television shows, you never saw people of color. DG (00:37:55): Well, there might have been privation, but compared to what had been going on before, believe me, it was nothing. I mean, you can say, yeah, people were poor, people were unhappy. Well, people are always poor and they are always unhappy, but compared to the 1930s, compared to the war years, compared to World War I, get real. Come on. Do not try to get the private. A person on welfare now has a better standard of living than a middle class family of 1900. A middle class American family of 1900 would have nothing like the expectations set up Negro on welfare in Oakland gets. Nothing. No comparison. Clean water, good streets, automobile, television, telephone, electrical power, adequate, safe food. Come on. There is no comparison. SM (00:38:54): Do you feel that? This is a question I just want to ask, and we asked the same question to Senator Musky a year before he passed away, when I took students down to Washington, DC and he had an interesting response that we did not expect. But here is the question. I want to read this to you. It says, "Do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth. The division between black and white, divisions between those who supported authority and those who were against it, between those who supported the troops and those who did not? We know that the Vietnam Memorial in Washington has healed many of the veterans and their families, but what has it really done to heal the nation as James Scruggs says in the title of his book?" Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this about 40 years later? Where it is a statement time heals all wounds, the truth. I say this because when we asked Senator Musky this, we were thought he was going to talk about 1968 and all those divisions at the Chicago Convention, and his response is we have not healed since the Civil War. He was in the hospital, and he said he had saw the Ken Burn series and it really touched him with 400,000 people that died and almost a generation wiped out and the population was obviously a lot smaller than it is today, but just your thoughts on this is there an issue of healing? DG (00:40:29): Okay, the first place, you have asked a question that contains its own answer, and consequence I cannot answer it. You say, what are we doing about the rift that was created? That means I have to say there was a riff. I do not believe it. I cannot answer your question. It is what we call a false question. This is not the kind of thing you cannot get away with in a court of law, leading the witness, right? You might say, was there a division? If there was a division, is it healing in the first place? I say there is always people who want A and people who do not want A and people who want B and do not want B. This is constantly going on. I do not think you are going to find people. You will have no trouble, for example, finding people who are unhappy about women being given the to vote in 1919. You will have no trouble finding people who are unhappy about that. You will have no trouble finding people unhappy about everything. It is the way it is. People are unhappy, or they have nothing better to do. They will be unhappy about something. Right? Was there a division? Of course there was a division. Is it healing? Who cares? So what? It is over with. Cannot go back and change it, right? If I could go back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration and talk to him about some of the problems that were created by his wonderful Social Security Administration and by the marvelous welfare system [inaudible] in place and say, "It is not going to work. It is going to do terrible things. You cannot build a pyramid scheme. If you take people and make them dependent upon you for their lives, it is not going to work. It is going to create terrible problems in society." If I were to say do not do it, do not force people to give you part of their money and then guarantee that you were going to support them for as long as they worked in a [inaudible] I am accustomed. My father's contribution to social security was critically small. I mean he earned $10,000 a year, big bucks, but how much did he put into social security and then how much did he take out? He lived a good long life after he retired, maybe 25 years, and all that time he is getting money and a lot of money too. There was nothing like the $300 a year that he put in. I mean, you actually think he is going to live on $300 a year? No, he cannot live on $300 a year. Where is that money coming from? Well, from the next generation. Okay, now where is your pyramid scheme? Your pyramids team will always fail, and that is what social security is, a pyramids scheme, and it is failing. I cannot do anything about it. I cannot go back and change it. There is nothing I can do. If you ask me, were there division? Of course there were division. What can I do about it? Nothing. This is not like voluntarily turning off the water. Honey, would you please turn off the water? Sure, I will go turn it off right now. This is not like that. This is the past. Cannot change it. You cannot even recognize what happened. One of the fallacies of sociology is that it actually thinks it knows what is going on. They actually think they know what is going on. Do you know any economists who are not ashamed of their trade right now? Did they predict this big meltdown? No, they did not. It seems blindingly obvious in retrospect. SM (00:44:30): Do you think the wall has done, and you have probably been to the wall, have not you? DG (00:44:34): The Vietnam Memorial? SM (00:44:34): Yeah. DG (00:44:34): Yeah. Beautiful. SM (00:44:38): Do you think that is done? Jan Scruggs book is all about, he thought this was the first step toward healing the nation beyond even the veterans. I go there every year for Memorial Day and Veterans Day. DG (00:44:51): I suppose these people have to write books to make a living. I think that is nonsense. SM (00:44:56): Okay. DG (00:44:57): You actually think building a sculpture is going to undo 58,000 deaths. Ask the wives and mothers sometimes, ask the girlfriends, I have a neighbor who had just died, whose son was killed in World War II, who pined all her life long for a lover who was killed in World War I. Ask the wives and mothers of all those people who were killed how do they feel about it? Are they going to heal? No, they are not going to heal. There is no healing. These people are dead. You cannot heal that. Get over it, kind of. Still there? SM (00:45:45): Yep. I am here. Let me change the tape. I got to turn my tape over. This leads into my next question, which is a question on the issue of trust whether the boomer just generation is not a trusting generation. I say this- DG (00:46:01): Well, why should we be? We were lied to constantly. SM (00:46:05): Yep. That is why I brought up because of the Watergate, the Tonkin Golf Resolution, we even saw Eisenhower lie about U-2, and there seemed to be no respect for anyone in position of authority. DG (00:46:17): Well, a politician's job is to lie. That is their job. That is what we pay them for. We pay them to do two things that we do not want. One is make damn laws all the time, whether we need them or not. I mean, that is what we ask them to do. We say, "Okay, we are going to elect you to make a bunch of laws," and that is what they do. They take us at our word, they make a bunch of laws. They do not know what they are doing. They mess things up. The second thing is that in order to get reelected, because half the population is really mad at them all the time, they have to lie all the time. It is a habit. They do not even mean it. There is no malice. They just lie. It is what they do. Do I trust politicians? No, I do not. Do I have any alternative? No, I do not. I cannot live in anarchic society. I cannot live somewhere else. I live here. I live now. I live in the 21st century. I cannot live some other [inaudible] or some other place. This is what I have got. They are liars, so I do not trust them. So what? SM (00:47:23): Do you believe what political scientists often say is that to the lack of trust in your government is actually a healthy thing, because by just- DG (00:47:33): [inaudible] very best of health in that case. SM (00:47:35): Yeah, I want to be, you are a great artist. I have been looking at some of your work, and we think of you in the free speech movement, but boy, you are one heck of an artist. I am going to eventually buy some of your works and everything, but how do the arts define the boomer generation from other generations before and after? I think I mentioned in my note, we all think of the arts at that time, we think of Andy Warhol and Peter Max's posters and all those other things during that time. But what were the messages of the artwork that took place when the boomers were young that have been ongoing since that time, and is it is the art from that period and the people that grew up in that period a reflection of the times which were rebellious and non-conformist? Just your thoughts on the art itself. DG (00:48:31): Well, I think art is basically something that each generation reevaluates and create for itself. Let us take an example of Vermeer. Vermeer was, during his lifetime, largely unrecognized. I do not believe he sold any paintings. He was utterly obscure until the late 19th century when one of one particular critic rediscovered him, and through a series of amusing circumstances, he became more and more prominent. Now, whereas in 1875, you could have bought girl with a pearl earring for six guilders, which no matter how you cut it is not very much money. I do not believe you could buy that painting for any sum, whatever. I mean, let us suppose if I said I will give you $100 billion for that painting, you probably would turn me down. Okay, what happened? Well, a new generation came along and reevaluated the art that had been rejected by an older generation. The same thing exactly happened to been Van Gogh. He sold, I believe, one painting during his life, but maybe none. That which was reviled by an earlier generation is treasured by a new one because everything changes. Van Gogh is not any different of course. Van Gogh paintings are absolutely utterly the same paintings that he painted, but our attitudes toward him is entirely different. Our attitudes toward our own art, there are artists who were unbelievably famous and wealthy in their day whom you have never heard of. I assure you, you have never heard of them. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, have you ever heard of him? SM (00:50:16): No. DG (00:50:17): Okay. He was the most famous artist in the world in the late 19th century. He made more money than anybody ever, ever made, and you have never heard of him. All right. There you have it. Right? We do not like his art. We think it is silly. It is coming back. Be patient. But art is our own. We like it because it is ours. We do not like it because it is good. We do not like it because it addresses human issues that are eternal. We like it because it belongs to us. It is ours, of course we like it. We like our own stuff. The old Yiddish saying, "A fart has no nose." Of course, we like our own stuff. It is ours. Check back in 100 years to see what people think of entirely white paintings with long, long explanations attached to them. Check back and see what people think of crucifixes encased in plastic bags filled with urine. Check back. Let me know what happens. I doubt it is going to make it. SM (00:51:28): Why was Warhol and Peter Max so popular with young people, boomers? DG (00:51:33): Because they spoke to their generation. They are ours. You like your own stuff. Right? I personally never cared for them, but then again, I am in the minority evidently. I do not like Van Gogh either, so hey, I am a minority. I beg your pardon? SM (00:52:00): No, go right ahead. Continue. DG (00:52:00): You know like your own stuff. Our generation likes things that our generation does. The next generation is probably going to throw a lot of it away, but then they will create their own stuff that they like. I do not know what posterity is going to think of me, and frankly, I do not care. I will be dead. Do not make much money when you are dead. I do not care. I am a working artist right now. I do art for a living. I am really happy to do that. I am very grateful that I can make a living doing what I [inaudible] and I get paid for it. My brother, who is a jazz musician gets paid to play music. Boy is he happy, right? He does not say, "What is posterity going to think of me?" He says, "How can I pay the rent?" That is what I say too. I am glad people are paying me to do what I love to do, and I am glad I am recognized and that people like my artwork, and my brothers really glad that people pay him to play music and he is really glad that they like it. But neither one of us gives a hoot in hell about what the next generation thinks, [inaudible] SM (00:53:05): How about, you are talking about art. Let us talk about music. The music is really something that defines the boomers, and not only in terms of folk music, rock music, and certainly the Motown sound, but how important was that with respect to delivering the messages that many of the youth had and the impact they had on the generation? DG (00:53:26): Just like any other generation, it is theirs. That music is ours. In 1920, our music was jazz. We created it. It is ours, it belongs to us, and it really helps the grownups do not like it. That makes us very, very happy. Grownups do not like anything that their kids too. Grownups do not want their kids to become independent. Grownups want their kids to be kids, and kids want to be grownups. I like my own music. I like my generation of music because it is mine, and I do not like that new rap music. Does that sound vaguely familiar? SM (00:54:05): Yes. DG (00:54:08): I do not like that new rap music. Why do not I like it? It is just noise. It is jungle music. Cannot understand the lyrics. It is all about sex and violence. Oh, that is me quoting my dad when he first heard rock and roll. I am quoting my dad, and you know what his dad said in the 1920s when he was looking at jazz? It is jungle music. It is just noise. Cannot understand the lyrics, all about sex. It is same stuff, right? Nothing ever changes. We like our music, but it is ours. That is why we like it. SM (00:54:46): Do not forget, Elvis came about in the (19)50s. DG (00:54:49): We love Elvis. He is ours. SM (00:54:52): Yeah. DG (00:54:53): Belongs to what? He was banned by the grownups. Remember Ed Sullivan? SM (00:55:01): Yes. DG (00:55:05): Cutting him off at the hips. SM (00:55:05): Yep. DG (00:55:05): Ooh, boy did that make my parents mad. SM (00:55:05): I think the Doors when they were on Ed Sullivan, Jim Morrison could not say a couple words from his music either. DG (00:55:12): We are in charge now. Right? My father is dead. He does not get to say what kind of music I listen to anymore. SM (00:55:20): David, what were the books? What were the books that you read and some of your peers read in the (19)60s that you think had an influence on the early boomers? DG (00:55:35): Well, honestly, I would say that it was not the books that we read. It was the books that we could not read. What we cared about was being prevented from reading, for example, Ulysses or Tropic of Cancer, or Lolita. These books are neither better nor worse than the other books, but we were not allowed to read them. The Supreme Court would not let us, and we changed that about as fast as we could. The important things are what is of our generation. The important things were what we were not allowed to read. When in 1952, when the comic books suddenly disappeared, that made me really mad. I was only seven, but my favorite comic books were the horror comics and the war comics, which was cauldron, and all of a sudden they all disappeared. Well, I believe me, I never forgot that. It was not so much what we did read. It was what we were not allowed to read. That is what I think made the big difference is that we forced the whole system to allow us to read anything we wanted to read. Then we either read or did not read. It is the thought that you do not have to go out and buy Lolita, and you do not have to read it if you do not want to, but there is nothing that prevents you from doing so, whereas that was absolutely not the case in the 1950s. SM (00:57:06): How influential were the beat writers in terms, because in the (19)50s, lack of respect for authority or rebellious and they were even ahead of their time. DG (00:57:18): For one thing, remember there were not terribly many of them. Another thing is an awful lot of their work could not be sent through the mail. Howl, for example, how would you get a copy of Powell? Could not mail it. They could not buy it on the news stand. It was not in the library. How influential were these words? They were influential because they were banned. Take away the ban, the stuff is pretty boring. I mean, Alan Ginsberg, come on, talks about nothing but his dick. Really boring, but prohibit it, and suddenly become fantastically interesting. When I read Howl, it was behind closed doors, my teacher could have been fired for allowing us to read it, in fact recommended it. That made it really cool. If you just said, "Okay, we are going to assign, you have to read Howl." Come on, this is terrible stuff, but told me I cannot read it, oh, very different story. SM (00:58:23): I have got three quotes here from three big personalities from that period, and which of these do you think better defines the era? Obviously the Malcolm X, "By any means necessary." We saw that all the time. Peter Max, he used to always have this quote on many of his posters. "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." The third one obviously is the Bobby Kennedy quote, which is actually I think a Henry David Thoreau quote, and that is, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not?" That was very popular amongst the boomers and you still hear that quote today, but those are very popular quotes and statements and on posters back then. Is there one over the other or do they all kind of define the era? DG (00:59:17): They are all contentious content. The case of Malcolm X is probably, that would ring the truest, but believe me, I would rather lose the ability to understand the English language than agree with Peter Max. Politicians say what politicians say. Who pays any attention to them? I do not think I could agree very much with any of them. By any means necessary, what do you mean? You do not mean that. You cannot possibly mean that. That is a mad man talking. Besides, you always get things you do not want. You think you are doing A, in fact, you are really doing A subprime, which is extremely different. You think you are in control of your actions, but you are not. You are created by your time, you are created by circumstances. We are far, far more influenced by technology. We are far more influenced by changes in society that we do not even are really conscious of. There is some swell sounding quotes you can put out there. I like Robin Williams myself. "If you remember, you were not there." One of my favorites. SM (01:00:49): Yeah. Another one you hear a lot and with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is that everybody claims they were there. They were not. DG (01:00:55): Yeah. There is also the number of people in Candlestick Park during the 1989 earthquake is quite surprising. SM (01:01:05): Wow. DG (01:01:07): Several million. I did not realize it was that big. There was a big football game in 1982, the great Cal-Stanford football game. SM (01:01:18): No, I was out there then, and that is when the musicians of the band came on the field. DG (01:01:22): You know how many people watched that happen? Well, I know for a fact 6,000 people sitting in that stadium, so the hundreds of thousands of people that I have talked to, it is just not possible somehow. I listened to it on the radio. I suppose that counts. SM (01:01:42): Actually, my sister was out there in (19)89. She worked at an insurance company, then she could see Candlestick Park when she was coming out, and she felt like she was having a dizzy spell and got down on the grass and all of her friends were going to the car. DG (01:01:55): Along with everybody else in the Bay Area. SM (01:01:56): Yeah. DG (01:01:58): Well I mean, the thing is that social events are far more powerful. There is things that we are not really conscious of, things that we do not really think about. People, if they are really good, will say things that reflect the time well. They will have a Henry David Thoreau or a William Shakespeare or an Ezra Hound who is capable of expressing the time, and if they are really good, they will express times that come after them. Shakespeare is holding up pretty darn well. But the whole business of, do any of those three statements mean anything to me in terms of the (19)60s? No. They are just talk. I prefer Robin Williams. Makes a lot more sense, besides it is funny. SM (01:02:55): Yeah. I would like you just to go in back to those days on that Berkeley campus. I am curious as I know that Mario Savio has passed away, but what has become as some of the other leaders of the movement? I know that Bettina is a professor at- DG (01:03:15): Well, most of them were academically oriented and continued in their academic direction. There were a few people who fell by the wayside. There were a few people like me, and a very few people like me, lives were dramatically, utterly, totally changed. Most people just afterwards got up and went right back to doing what they were doing. There were very few people, such as myself, who did not. I did not go back to school. I did not pursue my academic career. I became a printer and a graphic designer, and that would never have happened in one million years had I not been expelled. The vast majority of people who participated in free speech groups were academically oriented and continued to be academically oriented, went right on to do what they meant to do. Very, very few exceptions to that. SM (01:04:15): What is interesting is that Clark Kerr's name, he wrote a book that I had to read in graduate school, which is called the Uses of the university. DG (01:04:23): I have read it. SM (01:04:25): He talked all about the multi-versity, and students were challenging the corporate mentality. It has not changed at all today. DG (01:04:32): He wrote that before the free speech movement. SM (01:04:36): Yeah. I thought it was right on what he was saying, but the fifth- DG (01:04:41): Oh, he was treating university like a big factory. He basically said the product is knowledge and the students are what we turn out, and we have to run it like a factory. That is neither true or it is not. Does not make any difference. The university now is basically trying to run itself like a big, complicated, fancy, high-quality factory. That may or may not work. We will see. I do not know. University of California has very much formed by opinions of Clark Kerr. He had a very strong effect on administration. His career, and as did most of the bureaucrat's career by the free speech movement and the succeeding events, the anti-war movement, which they were powerless to prevent, and they were basically blamed for it. But the university is doing this fine thing and bigger than it ever was, and may become private. It may become corporate. It will keep on [inaudible] students talk. SM (01:05:59): Yeah. Ronald Regan obviously had a big role because- DG (01:06:02): Very, very big. Extremely big, and we basically him to be elected. Blame someone for that. You can blame the boomer generation for Ronald [inaudible] if you want to and be quite correct in doing so. SM (01:06:15): David, it has been an hour, and I know the last 20 minutes is basically responding to names of personalities in terms of period. You want to do that another time? DG (01:06:28): Let me take a quick look at my phone here and see how much power I have got left in it. Hang on. SM (01:06:31): Okay. DG (01:06:31): It says it is about 60 percent. Let us go through that pretty quickly. SM (01:06:40): Okay. I guess these can be just quick responses. They do not have to be any in depth, just gut level reactions when you hear these terms or personality. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? DG (01:06:57): Nothing. Whatever. SM (01:06:58): Okay. Maya Lin, a very fortunate artist, quite beautiful. I like it, but I was not involved in the Vietnam [inaudible] or conflict. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? DG (01:07:11): I know they were events in which people were killed and injured and that they had quite a catalyzing effect, but that is about it. SM (01:07:20): What does Watergate mean to you? DG (01:07:23): Corrupt politicians getting caught as usual. SM (01:07:27): Woodstock? DG (01:07:30): Was not there. SM (01:07:34): 1968, the entire year. DG (01:07:38): The moon. Also, pretty exciting things going on in France as I remember. SM (01:07:44): Okay. Of course, that was the year of the- DG (01:07:46): The country. SM (01:07:46): That was the year of the assassinations too. DG (01:07:50): Yeah, but that is always going on. SM (01:07:53): Counterculture. DG (01:07:56): Nice words, not very meaningful. SM (01:08:00): How about hippies and yippies? DG (01:08:03): Two disgusting people. The truly, they are people, basically the extremely irresponsible end of the 1960s. The drugs are the drug crowds. SM (01:08:21): Communes. DG (01:08:24): Never had anything to do with them really. Social experiments that did not work too well. SM (01:08:29): Students for Democratic Society. DG (01:08:33): Bunch of thinks. I have no love for them at all. SM (01:08:37): Then the Weathermen, were there? DG (01:08:40): Crazy, loony, not safe. SM (01:08:44): How about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War who took over the anti-war movement when SDS was gone? DG (01:08:51): I do not know much about it. SM (01:08:54): Okay. Then Tet. DG (01:08:54): I am sorry, Tet? SM (01:08:58): Tet. DG (01:08:58): T-E-T? SM (01:09:00): Yes. DG (01:09:01): You mean the Tet Offensive? SM (01:09:02): Yes. DG (01:09:03): Well, was it very important to them in the Vietnam conquest. SM (01:09:11): How about, I am going to give some names now. Jane Fonda. DG (01:09:15): She was really good in Barbarella. I liked that costume a lot. SM (01:09:23): Yeah. Tom Hayden. DG (01:09:27): No opinion either way. Some sort of politician if I remember. SM (01:09:31): Annie Hoffman. DG (01:09:34): The nut case. SM (01:09:35): Jerry Rubin. DG (01:09:37): Loudmouth nut case. SM (01:09:39): Both of them? Okay. How about Timothy Leary? DG (01:09:46): Very interesting guy. I think he got a little unhinged from taking too much LSD, but he was sure, right. One of those people, you got to say, "Wow, that guy is really smart. Too bad he took so much LSD." SM (01:10:01): Dr. Benjamin Spock. DG (01:10:04): Loved Dr. Spock. I actually met him once. He basically empowered a whole generation to think for themselves as opposed to having doctors tell him what to think. SM (01:10:17): Phillip and Daniel Berrigan. DG (01:10:20): Lawyer, was not he? SM (01:10:21): They were the Catholic priests. DG (01:10:24): Oh, that is right. Had nothing to do with Vietnam conflict. Very courageous probably. SM (01:10:30): Okay. Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. DG (01:10:35): Well, Nixon was a good president and a bad man. Spiro Agnew was a fool, a joke, a disaster, and got what was coming to him. SM (01:10:47): Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. DG (01:10:51): Martin Luther King Jr. certainly tried hard and meant well. Very good orator. Malcolm X, he did not like white people very much. Pretty open about it. It does not seem to bother white people very much that he did not like them, so he seemed to get along perfectly fine. SM (01:11:09): Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. DG (01:11:14): I am so glad they did not get elected. SM (01:11:18): All right. LBJ and Robert McNamara. DG (01:11:22): Well, LBJ was the most competent second in command, was unfortunately thrust in position first in command, at which he did not do a very good job. He really tried hard and he meant well. Robert McNamara, I do not have any opinion about it. SM (01:11:40): How about the Black Panthers, which includes Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, that group. DG (01:11:49): Dangerous opportunists. SM (01:11:52): Okay. Daniel Ellsberg. DG (01:11:56): New York Times reporter. What was he? SM (01:11:59): He was the Pentagon Papers. DG (01:12:01): That is right. Courageous, I suppose. SM (01:12:05): How about Ronald Reagan and Hubert Humphrey? DG (01:12:10): Well, Hubert Horatio Humphrey was, Humphrey was kind of a silly guy. Ronald Reagan was very-very popular, very much loved, basically catapulted into power as a reaction against all the things that were going on in 1960s. I cannot comment on his presidential policies. I do know that under his administration, like many that had gone before him, which quite nearly obliterated human race but I do not think that is particularly his fault. I will [inaudible] judgment. Check back in 50 years. I will let you know. SM (01:12:45): George Wallace. DG (01:12:48): Governor of Mississippi? SM (01:12:50): Mm-hmm. DG (01:12:56): The man who tried to make history stop just because he did not like it. SM (01:13:02): Barry Goldwater. DG (01:13:04): Would have been an awfully good president. I would like to run history back again and try him. Be really different. SM (01:13:13): The Equal Rights Amendment that in the end failed. DG (01:13:16): The ERA? SM (01:13:19): Yes. DG (01:13:19): Well, it just shows up [inaudible] politician. SM (01:13:26): How about the Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, some of the, Shirley Chisholm, the female leaders of the Women's movement. DG (01:13:35): The female spokesperson. SM (01:13:37): Yes. DG (01:13:38): There is a big difference between the leader and spokes. SM (01:13:41): I think Betty Friedan was a leader. DG (01:13:43): Well, maybe. But I would say they basically articulated what a lot of people could not articulate themselves as well, and they spoke for a whole huge generation of women who had basically been getting a pretty raw deal, and for the most part still are. SM (01:14:01): What do you think of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter? DG (01:14:09): Jimmy Carter was a great, or I should say is a great fool. I do not know. Gerald Ford, I would have no particular opinion about him. SM (01:14:16): Of course, you have already talked about Ronald Reagan. How about George Bush Sr. who said the Vietnam syndrome is over, and Ronald Reagan, of course, he said that we were back from where we were before the boomers. DG (01:14:32): You have to remember my opinion on politicians are not high. SM (01:14:35): Yeah. Right. The final two of individuals here are Bill Clinton and George Bush, the last president. When I have asked people do who they are really define who the boomers are, I get amazing responses. That they really are symbols of the boomer generation. I do not know what your thoughts are on Bill Clinton and George Bush, but. DG (01:15:05): Well, my opinion of politicians is not enhanced by George Bush. The Clinton Administration basically continued policies and created policies that have come home to roost now. Seemed like a really good idea to do all the things that went on during his administration, but now everything's totally fallen apart. I am not going to blame them for it. Politicians are necessary. They are necessary for society, and ours is our democracy has worked pretty darn well, thank you. I am not going to complain too much, I guess, but I do not like politicians and I do not like what they do. I think it is a waste of time and money, but I can think of a whole lot worse systems, so I am not really complaining. Our current president is trying hard and doing the best he can. It turns into a horrible mess the way it always does, but I like the democratic process. I do not think we get any worse leaders than anybody else. SM (01:16:17): How about John Dean? DG (01:16:19): Who? SM (01:16:19): John Dean. DG (01:16:19): [inaudible] SM (01:16:23): Pardon? DG (01:16:24): You are going to ask me about politicians, I am going to tell you I do not like them. SM (01:16:26): Oh, okay. DG (01:16:28): Leave the politicians off your list. SM (01:16:30): Very good, very good. When the best books are written, which is probably after we are gone, the best books are often written on any subject are 50 years after an event. What do you think the history books will say about the boomer generation once? DG (01:16:47): Having Written one, very long one myself, I can tell you what they think. They think it was swell. I had a great time myself. Have some other person who did not write a book or some other person [inaudible] different book. SM (01:17:03): Yeah, your book I thought was great. I read it a long time ago. And of course when we brought you to Westchester, it was great because you sat in front of student government, if you remember. DG (01:17:11): I do, and quite clearly. SM (01:17:14): That was a historic night. You do not realize. That was the very first night that Dr. Oliaro was there. He was the new vice president who had just come in from- DG (01:17:23): I remember meeting him. SM (01:17:24): Yeah-yeah. Now he is up at Fresno State. DG (01:17:28): Oh really? SM (01:17:28): Yeah, he is pretty big up there. He is the Vice President of Student Affairs at Fresno State. He was very impressed with you because he- DG (01:17:37): Really? SM (01:17:37): Yeah. Because he sat in the back. He did not expect it in a student government meeting, and of course I only had one other person ever came in there. But what was the overall reaction of your book and the students that you spoke to? DG (01:17:54): The book has not sold terribly well, but it is sold steadily. I suppose I should not complain. It is very long. One of the things about my book is that everyone else who writes a book has to refer to my book because my book has got everything in it. The manner in which I wrote is direct quotes from historical characters that were there at the time. You are pretty much going to have to accept that. There is very little about the facts that you could disagree with. My interpretation for the facts, of course are my own, but it is very hard to argue with an eyewitness account. You might not like what the person says, you might say the person had a myopic view because they were after all right in the middle of it, but you cannot say that it did not happen the way they said. At least the way they said is what they believed. You perhaps have read the book by Bernal Díaz called The Conquest of New Spain, where he has a foot soldier under Cortes. He writes the book about being a foot soldier under Cortes and taking over him Mesoamerica. You have to say, "Well, he was a soldier." I mean, his father was not even literate, but he was there. He was there with Cortes. SM (01:19:17): Right. DG (01:19:17): Fought, and cannot say, "Well, your interpretation of it is flawed and your attitude towards the Native Americans is certainly unpleasant. You were not a very nice man. You did hard things," but on the other hand, you have to say, "Well, you were there. You are telling me what you believe happened, I really got to pay attention to that." that is what my book did. You might like it, you might not, but you have to accept that I was there. SM (01:19:51): Yes. Yeah. I remember reading and I was underlining things. I ruined my books sometimes. I underlined them. I have actually bought another one so it is not underlined, but I have to underline so that I can actually go back to your book. And even though it has been over 10 years since I read it, I can read those lines and I can come back and remember some of the things around it, and that is who I underline. I have done that for years. What do you think the lasting legacy of that free speech movement will be? DG (01:20:21): Oh, I do not know. SM (01:20:23): Particularly in higher education, which I think really loves to forget their past. DG (01:20:28): Well, I think that it is permanently changed the city of Berkeley. I think it has had a tremendous change on the university's population. Basically, people go to Berkeley on purpose. They know it is going to be an exciting place, and they do not go here on purpose too. The people that do not want to go to the University of California are the ones that go to [inaudible] They are the ones that are afraid of the University of California. The ones that go here know that it is going to be a really interesting place with a lot of interesting things going on. SM (01:21:10): Good. DG (01:21:10): Now, it has been quite a while, [inaudible] so on and so forth. But I would say people come here on purpose. They do not come here by accident. They do not come here because it is safe. They come here because it is going to be exciting, so it is a different kind of school. SM (01:21:31): Now. That is the kind of school that I like. Well, I guess that is it, David. This has been great. Now the one thing I do not have is a picture of you and I am coming out in the- DG (01:21:40): Okay. Yeah. Hey, could you send me a transcript of it? SM (01:21:44): Yes. I am doing this to everybody. I have got so many transcripts to be done, but once the transcript is there, we can edit and so forth. But I am going to need to get a picture of you. I remember Chrissy Keeler, I think her name is. She is from San Francisco. I am interviewing her next week. I may be out in the spring with my camera to drive around, take pictures of people that I have interviewed so I may pop over to your place, but otherwise I will need a picture eventually. Not right now, of you. DG (01:22:17): I can mail you one. SM (01:22:19): But I think I will be out in San Francisco in April, I think, and I might just drive over and say hi to you and take your picture. DG (01:22:25): All right. SM (01:22:26): You have a great day. Keep doing that great artwork. DG (01:22:29): I am working on it. SM (01:22:31): Yep. DG (01:22:31): Right. Thanks. Have a great day. Bye. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Lance Goines Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Goines, David Lance, 1945- 2023 ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Artists; Calligraphers; Typographers; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Goines, David Lance, 1945--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Lance Goines is an artist, calligrapher, typographer, printing entrepreneur, and author. Goines was a Classics major at the University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, he participated in the Free Speech Movement, which ultimately led to his expulsion. He returned to UC Berkeley for a period but left once more to become an apprentice as a printer in Berkeley. Goines founded the Saint Hieronymus Press in Berkeley and has worked there ever since. He won an American Book Award in 1983 for A Constructed Roman Alphabet. David Lance Goines died in Berkeley, California, on February 19, 2023, at the age of 77. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.104 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 82:41 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/88a913ccb718a80a9ede840c08f9945a.jpg acf346343ddf1e357bf5da242b1e4870 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/341fa181950f479bd5d375a71c6c7b05.mp3 1e2549c1df3266813f6db1325e757378 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. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-08-15 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David B. Mixner Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir Stranger Among Friends, as well as Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage and At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6531,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir Stranger Among Friends, as well as Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage and At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Civil rights movement; Vietnam War; John Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Cold War; Cuban Missile Crisis; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Women's Movement; Gay Liberation Movement; Jackson State; Kent State; LGBT."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Civil rights movement; Vietnam War; John Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Cold War; Cuban Missile Crisis; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Women's Movement; Gay Liberation Movement; Jackson State; Kent State; LGBT. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 80:57 Subject LCSH Civil rights workers; AIDS activists; Mixner, David B.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Mixner Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mixner, David B. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights workers; AIDS activists; Mixner, David B.--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir Stranger Among Friends, as well as Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage and At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.88 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80:57 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dbf2e865feea9a53e4533e1e76b8a2df.mp3 9b58b180ce188e9a2cef716c2e27b5f4 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/13e555b69140227a5096bc283597fe90.jpg 8cd344de010f4e24192673eb7e9424b9 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 Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2018-02-23 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David S. Hammer Year of Graduation 1968 Biographical Text David has worked as a trial lawyer for more than 30 years and was engaged in civil and criminal litigation. He served in the U.S. Justice Department in the Antitrust Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney in Miami and in Manhattan. For the last two decades he has worked in private practice in New York. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni living in New York City 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>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni living in New York City 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 Alumni Interviews Interview with: David S. Hammer Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 23 February 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:00 Doing. DH: 00:01 My name is David Hammer like a sledgehammer, and I am 70, and we are going to be engaged in an interview about Binghamton in the (19)60s, as I understand it, Harpur as I knew it then. We are at my law offices at 505 5th Avenue in the law firm Lankler, Siffert and Wohl. IG: 00:17 And where are we? IG: 00:29 Okay, so um, just let us start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? DH: 00:36 I grew up between, I mean, half the time in Manhattan, half the time in the Bronx. IG: 00:41 Oh-oh. DH: 00:43 I was born in Manhattan. We moved to the Bronx. We moved back to Manhattan, we moved back to the Bronx. IG: 00:49 What did your parents do? DH: 00:51 They were both court reporters. They both were- my father--I forget it took it as a, as-as an achievement of distinction, was one of the earliest users of the stenotype, and my mother, was a little bit younger, learned the stenotype, and they both worked in the New York court system. So, my father was assigned to the Bronx Supreme Court and the Manhattan Supreme Court. We moved back and forth. IG: 01:20 And tell me a little bit about your parents where you know, did they grow up in the United States? DH: 01:28 Right. My parents both were born in the United States. My mother was born on the Lower East Side. My father was born in what is in Harlem, actually near Burt Lancaster and both of them were born before the First World War. Their parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. IG: 01:56 Um, so their parents came. I am just curious, because I- DH: 02:02 Pretty much between all four grandparents came in the 15 years between 1885 and 1900. IG: 02:11 I see, I see, okay. Um, all right, so did your parents went to college? DH: 02:19 My father went to college. My mother did not. IG: 02:23 But there was an expectation that you would go on. DH: 02:26 Yes. IG: 02:26 You- that you would go to college. Did you have any siblings? DH: 02:30 I have a sister. She also went to college. IG: 02:32 Okay, so education, I assume, was valued in your family. DH: 02:37 Yes, and then, I mean, all of my friends in the- I mean, I went to Stuyvesant, and I think we had like, a 95 percent college rate, so it was just assumed that I would go to college. IG: 02:53 So, what were your reasons for going to Harpur? DH: 02:57 To be candid, I did not get into Yale, um, and Harpur was a good, a good school, from my father's point of view. It was also the attraction of being an inexpensive school in those days. I forget what it cost, but it was nothing. And if you had-- the state gave out Regent Scholarships and stuff, and it really was, maybe it was $2,500 a year or something like that. IG: 03:24 And did you get a Regent Scholarship? DH: 03:27 I did, and there were various other forms of financial aid, and you could get a job as a messenger and some something, so that it was really no burden, either the students or the students’ parents. IG: 03:39 Had you ever gone upstate before coming to Binghamton? DH: 03:43 I had never gone to Binghamton before, but yeah, no, we would be in upstate. I mean, we had been, we have been to Niagara Falls and places like that. Binghamton—I-I think I had heard of Binghamton because Rod Serling, whose TV show I think I watched. I think Rod Serling that lived in Binghamton for a while. IG: 04:01 Yeah, I know that, and I do not know that he graduated, but he did live there. that is true, I remember that. So, what did- what was your reputation of Harpur College back then? DH: 04:16 I do not know what his general reputation was, but the reputation--I had a very good friend whose brother went to Harpur and who spoke very well of it, and it was thought of as being a better school than city. I mean, if you were going to go to a school that was not expensive, it was thought of as being a better place to go than city, and it had a good reputation. I mean, it was very small back then. I started in the summer, and there were, like 1200 I think there were 1200 students in the summer of (19)64. IG: 04:51 Summer of (19)64. DH: 04:51 Right. You know, those members of my family who were very big on credentials kind of denigrated the school. School, because it was not Princeton. IG: 05:01 Right. DH: 05:02 But then I did not get into Princeton, so, you know, I mean, it was, it was a good school, and I was happy to go there. IG: 05:08 Yeah. So, did you visit the school before coming there in the summer? DH: 05:12 No, I did not, I did not. IG: 05:12 This was- DH: 05:14 Yeah. IG: 05:14 You know, you saw for the first time as you- DH: 05:17 Right. IG: 05:18 -entered the program. So, what were your first impressions? I mean, it was pretty rural. DH: 05:24 Well, my first impression was a little bit distressed by the sort of dreary brick buildings, which reminded me of the projects in New York. They seemed to be the sort of New York State institutional style of building, but the area around it, the school was beautiful. And in those days, Binghamton was not an unsophisticated place. I mean, it had IBM, it had Ansco, it had quite a few industries with highly educated, you know, engineers and stuff, places that I think have now closed down and moved away. So, I mean, it was mixed. I was a little lonely for being away from home. On the other hand, a little excited about being away from home. And I really was taken with how beautifully the surrounding countryside was that was before I realized that it rained 90 percent of the time. IG: 06:26 Because you came there in the most beautiful season- DH: 06:29 Exactly. IG: 06:29 -in Binghamton. And so, the school had changed to a trimester system- DH: 06:35 Right. IG: 06:36 -by the time that you arrived. DH: 06:37 Right. And in the summer, I mean, that I started, nobody took school particularly seriously, and it was like being in a kind of quasi summer camp with an academic patina to it. I mean, maybe like going to music camp for kids to do that. It was a great--I had a wonderful time that first summer, and then in September or October, whenever the second trimester began, then school began to get more serious. IG: 07:05 Did you have an idea of what you wanted to study, what you wanted to get from Harpur College? DH: 07:12 I cannot say that I did. I mean, being a lawyer was always- because both of my parents were connected with the court system. Being a lawyer was always sort of in the background, but I wrote for the school paper, and I went to Columbia, the school of journalism, and for a while I thought of being a journalist, so I was not really set on any particular profession. And um- IG: 07:36 Did you go to the school of journalism right after graduating? DH: 07:39 I did. I did, and I found that I had no particular talent for sciences. So, I mean, I flunked chemistry, I remember, and so, yeah, I just took literature and history courses and made some friends among the faculty. IG: 07:55 Tell me what- we will stay on this topic a little bit. So, tell me a little bit about the school newspaper, because none of my interviewees have spoken about that yet. DH: 08:09 Well, the school newspaper was actually a fairly good paper, which came out, as I recall, twice a week. It was then called the Colonial News because, for reasons that I do not recall--Binghamton, the school were the colonials. That was its nickname. It later became the Pipe Dream. If that is still the name, IG: 08:28 Yes, there is still the Pipe Dream. DH: 08:31 And, you know, it was not a lot of news on the campus those days, so that most of the stuff was, you know, articles, kids got everybody wanted to be a reviewer of the drama. Tony Kornheiser was the editor of the sports section. I was the feature news editor. And it was interesting. I mean, you got to write a lot. And in fact, since there was not a lot of other stuff to read on campus, I mean, if you wrote for the newspaper, good portion of the school read it. IG: 09:10 So, what kind of things did you write about? IG: 09:11 At Stuyvesant? DH: 09:11 I started off reviewing plays I had been in my senior year play it in high school. So, I thought for a while- DH: 09:13 At Stuyvesant. I thought for a while maybe I would be involved in drama at Harpur, and I was not a good actor, but I started reviewing plays. And then I- when I became Features Editor, I wrote about everything. I mean, I wrote about- we did reviews of the various departments, something that was really- we were not qualified to and we just tried to fill space. I mean, it is not easy to fill two pages of feature stuff in a school of that size twice a week. IG: 09:54 No, I can appreciate that. I worked as a reporter. IG: 09:59 Um, so, um- DH: 09:59 Oh. DH: 10:03 The thing about the school in those days was it was small enough so that if you really wanted to, you could participate in almost anything, something that would be a lot harder in a large school. I mean, you could be in plays, even if you were not particularly talented. You could write for the paper. There was a literary magazine you could write for that. IG: 10:21 I did not know. I did not know that there was a literary magazine. DH: 10:24 Well, Milt Kessler [Milton Kessler], who was the poet, the school poet. Then, as I recall, was the faculty advisor. And no, so it was a good experience. I mean, you could really get a taste of a lot of different things, activities. IG: 10:34 And the- there was a good theater program, because there is still a very good theater program. DH: 10:48 Well, it was not good in the sense of turning out professional DH: 10:54 productions, but it was good in the sense of being ambitious, of being of having a kind of educational rather than theatrical aim, I mean it, it selected plays of the past- Shakespeare was never put on, which I think was a mistake, but plays by lesser playwrights that well, there was an Ibsen [Henrik Ibsen] play, Rosmersholm- Rosmersholm that was put on was a bit of a disaster. There were plays by Brecht. I mean, there were serious plays that one would not see in New York that the department put on. And there were usually large productions in which everybody who wanted to participate could participate, and then that was supplemented by a one act program in which theater majors directed a play, so that it was like off Broadway, more of on guard stuff was put on, in addition to the stuff chosen by the department itself. IG: 12:00 Do you remember any of the pieces that- DH: 12:02 There was a- I remember, and I- what is his name, Synge, S, Y, N, G, E, an Irish playwright--there was, I forget the name of the play that was put on. I was, I was in that, and cannot remember many others, but, you know, in some ways they were more fun because the directors were students, little bit older than yourself. IG: 12:28 Right. DH: 12:28 And they spent a lot of time and a lot of passion in-in doing it. Oh, yeah, no, there was also a play the End Game we put on. I had a part in that. So, yeah, I mean, my goodness. I mean, I really do not have acting talent, but I managed to- IG: 12:47 It is so wonderful to have that experience. DH: 12:50 Yeah. I mean, I had an opportunity to participate in stuff that I would never have had if I had been on a major campus. IG: 12:52 Right-right. Do you think that any of the plays that were staged were, in some kind of weigh a commentary on the times, because this- DH: 13:04 I do not know, pony, it is hard to- IG: 13:06 No. DH: 13:07 It is hard. I mean, it is hard to see an immediate connection. They did not, I mean, I am not really sure they did put on- I mean, they did put on, you know, Arturo, we and I, and I and I suppose I think that was actually a student production, and I think that the person who put it on probably had some connection in his mind between that and Lyndon Johnson, but it was not an immediate connection. IG: 13:36 Right. Yeah, okay, and about your newspaper, so did you what-what were some of the, I mean, the Vietnam for force was on everyone's mind. DH: 13:46 And there was a, there was a Marxist professor, not, it was not a professor. It was a Marxist scholar. Isaac Deutscher was a very famous scholar. And- IG: 13:56 I know the name. DH: 13:57 Yeah, was a wonderful man--had been unable to get a permanent position in England, because it now turns out, he was blacklisted by Isaiah Berlin. And he came to- IG: 14:11 He was blacklisted by Isaiah I cannot believe it. DH: 14:14 Yeah, well, it has come out that Isaiah Berlin had some animus towards him, and there was job opening, I think, at University of Sheffield. [IG speaks in the background ,inaudible] Yeah. Well, he was a wonderful man. He was one of the most charming, sophisticated men I have ever met. IG: 14:14 You met him? DH: 14:16 Oh, I spent a lot of time with him. Yeah. IG: 14:28 How did you spend a lot of time- DH: 14:39 Well, he was, he was, he was, he was on the campus full time as a visiting scholar. In fact, he was hoping to get an appointment on the faculty- IG: 14:49 Right. DH: 14:50 -which did not happen. In any event, he died a year or two thereafter, but, um, you know, we had read the Prophet Unarmed [The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929]. We have read one of in a history class. We had read one of the three, one of the trilogy that he had written about Trotsky, and he was very well known. IG: 15:09 Right. DH: 15:10 And I met him at, I do not know, various faculty dinners that I was invited to, and I organized a debate between Deutscher and several of the professors at Harpur. IG: 15:25 Where was this? DH: 15:26 This was at Harpur. IG: 15:28 This was at Harpur! DH: 15:29 We had. It was on the radio. Yeah. IG: 15:31 That is tremendous. DH: 15:32 Yeah. He was, he was so [inaudible]. I had very primitive notions about what a Marxist scholar would believe that I thought he would believe in, you know, the inevitability of Marxism and-and that he would believe that art should be used only for the purposes of revolutionary change. And this guy was so sophisticated that I began to blush- IG: 15:57 Right. DH: 15:57 -as I would raise my objections to him. I mean, it was, he was a remarkable man. And, you know, Rebecca Grajower, I do not know if her name ever came out. There was a lady professor of political science who fell in love with Deutsche and posted a lot of different things in which students can meet with him. And I went over to he had a very modest little apartment in one of the dorms that he was given there. IG: 16:29 That blows me away. [crosstalk] I have never respected that people of that stature would be at Harpur College. DH: 16:35 Well, he was, of course, an unusual situation, because he had been unable to get jobs- IG: 16:40 Right-right. DH: 16:40 -in England, and I guess, probably in those days, a job at a state school New York probably would pay fairly well. A guy named Blair Ewing made it impossible for him to get the job at Harpur, he wrote this denunciation of Deutscher as a Marxist, that kind of turned the tide. Yeah, it is funny. It is unfortunate. Mel Shefftz [Melvin Shefftz, History Department] you never came into touch with, did you? IG: 17:08 No. DH: 17:09 He was a professor at Harpur, uh, died in 2011 who was very much touched by Deutscher--really thought highly of them. And, you know, if you were interested in Deutscher tenure at Harpur, could have told you a lot about him. I just thought he was really he had a first-rate mind. I mean, it is clearly a level above most of the professors we had. We had able professors, but Deutscher was on a level above them. IG: 17:37 I mean, yeah, this is, I even I heard of him, you know, without any Binghamton before Binghamton and I certainly have read Isaiah Berlin's essays on Russian culture, Russian literature, the Hedgehog on the Fox. And I read his I read the biography of him by- DH: 17:59 by Michael Ignatieff [crosstalk] IG: 17:59 [inaudible] Ignatieff and he is now a politician in Canada. DH: 17:59 Well, I think that biography actually talks about-about the episode with Berlin and Deutscher. DH: 18:12 So anyway, that was one of the- IG: 18:15 Tell me. Told me about these meetings with Professor Deutscher outside of the classroom. You said that there were faculty dinners that uh- DH: 18:27 I do not know if they were formal faculty dinners. There were a group of- there were an awful lot of old-line Marxists on the Harpur faculty, but a very different type than I gather exists today. These were people who were scholars, who were, you know, they-they were, they were, they were not people necessarily, who came out of any movement, but they were people who were persuaded that the Marxist analysis was correct. And all of a sudden, one of the leading Marxist intellectuals appears on campus, and in that little world, he was a rock star. So, there were a constant set of dinners and lunches and-and lectures. I mean, he gave a like a seven- or eight-part series of lecture on Marx's theory that were packed, and we had a couple of East European emigres who gave them very spirited objections. And it was intellectually very exciting. I mean, you got a sense of what a genuine first-rate mind was like. IG: 19:39 Well, because they were, you know, they were- their agenda, their intellectual, you know, their philosophy was really informed by lived experience. DH: 19:51 Yeah. IG: 19:51 You know, they lived through the wars, they lived through Marxism. You know, they lived so it was, it was- DH: 19:58 But he was also a man of very deep European culture. IG: 20:01 Yeah. DH: 20:02 Um, and yeah. So. IG: 20:05 So, how was it? How was it to mix with these towering intellects? DH: 20:11 Well, he was very different than-than the normal professor [inaudible] that-that Harpur. I mean, to meet Deutscher would was to be inspired. I mean, even today, at the age of 70, if I had to think of the half dozen most impressive and admirable people that I have met, I mean, I would, I would list him as one. IG: 20:35 Yeah. DH: 20:37 He was- he had a kind of charm, which was overwhelming and which was really hard to describe, because he was not a physically impressive guy. He was this little guy, about five foot three, but was- it comes out a little bit actually, in his books which have this kind of ornate quality to them. No, I love Deutscher, and a lot of other people love Deutscher, and we were all- it would have been great if he could have gotten a permanent position at Binghamton. My relationship with other faculty members was, again, I think, probably a little bit different than it would have been if I had gone to Columbia- DH: 21:19 -in the sense of, you know, these people did not commute from great different distances they lived on or near campus. So, you were able to form some close relations. And I formed a couple that continued until I was in my mid (19)60s, and they were, of course, 20 years older. I do not know if that is what goes on now. IG: 21:21 Right. IG: 21:46 That- you know, it certainly goes on you know, from my experience at the graduate level, professors and their graduate students sometimes, you know, form lifelong relationships, especially if they are proteges of these professors. But at the undergraduate level, it is different, so really unusual. DH: 22:09 It was not a great- there was not a large graduate school presence when I was in an undergrad. So anyway, what can I tell you. IG: 22:21 That is, that is really, I mean, just out of my own curiosity, how did Isaiah Berlin, I mean, he had this atrophied arm, right? DH: 22:29 I do not [inaudible] He had a limp, I thought, but he had some sort of lameness, yeah. IG: 22:33 He had polio. DH: 22:34 How did he, um blacklist- IG: 22:37 No, how did he strike you as an individual? DH: 22:39 Isaiah Berlin, I never met. IG: 22:40 Oh, you never met him. He was not- DH: 22:42 No, I am talking about Isaac Deutscher. IG: 22:43 I understand. But I thought that Isaiah Berlin came to one- DH: 22:47 No-no-no. IG: 22:48 Okay. DH: 22:49 Isaiah Berlin's connection Isaac Deutscher was simply, as I understand it. He had blacklisted him in England. IG: 22:55 I am sorry, right? I am sorry. I thought that he was, at one point, you know, friends and would come to this. I am sorry. Okay, so you said that you know you formed relationships with faculty that lasted over a lifetime. DH: 23:12 Yeah. IG: 23:13 So, who you know? DH: 23:15 Well, all right, so I do not these are names. I do not know if they are going to be familiar. One was Mel Shefftz, who was a professor of European history. Another was a guy named John Hagopian, who was this brilliant but very difficult English professor who, whenever I would meet him after school, was involved in some new affair that had just broke his heart. It DH: 23:44 was overly dramatic about it. Another one was a very odd and ultimately- IG: 23:49 And he would confide in you. DH: 23:50 Yeah, he would, I mean, I think he would confide it in everyone. He is- I want to throw myself. I remember he once said, “I want to throw myself off the Library Tower.” It was- IG: 24:01 Was he that much older than you? Or probably- DH: 24:04 [inaudible] he had been a World War two veteran. I remember him telling stories about World War Two. He was in love with a woman named Betty Aswat Aswad, who may have wound up on the faculty. I am not sure. Yeah, I do not know. There was T. Patterson Brown, who later spent several years in jail for pedophilia. Has his name come up in any of these? IG: 24:31 No. DH: 24:32 He was a charismatic philosophy professor who had been in graduate school at Oxford and was a genuinely brilliant man, but really not a good guy. He actually turned me on to marijuana the first time. He decided that he was a proselytizer for it. He thought that all kinds of- he believed, with Timothy Leary, that it was a gateway to great, new forms of perception. And then he went off and became a cult leader and. Uh, Bruce Leon Goldstein, I remember interviewed me because he was keeping a file on Brown. He wanted to get rid of him. He was the department chair of philosophy. IG: 25:12 That is, yeah, incredible. DH: 25:12 And Brown later went to jail for four or five years when I was an Assistant US Attorney, Brown saw me on TV and wanted me to somehow intervene in his case. I forget what it was exactly that he wanted, but I did a little research, and it turned out the charges were true. So, yeah, Brown was- IG: 25:13 Really colorful. DH: 25:42 Yeah, colorful group of colorful group of people. And I do not remember other--you know, the faculty at Binghamton, those youth was interesting. A lot of them were really very intelligent people, but they were often unproductive. There was always a reason why they were Binghamton rather than at some larger school, and it usually was the fact that smart as they were, they had not written very much, yeah, or they had gotten involved in some field that nobody else was interested in. I remember Robin Oggins, who, I guess, was there until recently, I am not sure- IG: 26:19 And who was she or he? DH: 26:21 Was he. He did his dissertation on falconry, and there was not really a big market for that. IG: 26:29 Yeah, and yet, you know, places like Columbia had many of these people with very niche interests, and they so but that is really interesting. You are the first person to talk about these people. So, you know you meant you talked about how these faculty members made an impression on you, but did the just the closeness of being around these intellects, these academics did that, but did that give you, you know- DH: 27:14 I cannot say that, you know- IG: 27:16 -confidence did that, you know. DH: 27:18 I mean, well, the fact that they treated me as a kind of equal. Even though younger person, and gave me confidence. I had far more confidence that I should have had in those days in any event. IG: 27:30 Why do you say that? DH: 27:31 Well, I mean, because I was like the typical jerk, you know, spouting off in class about stuff that I know nothing about, giving my theory of the universe. IG: 27:41 Well, like what, you know [inaudible] DH: 27:42 I remember we were talking about Brecht and alienation, and it triggered this thing that I started talking about alienation in general, which of course, was not what Brecht meant by alienation at all. And it was only later, when I actually read the assignment that I should have read beforehand, that I realized beforehand, that I realized what a fool I had made of myself. So, I mean, I do not know. And then when I went to law school, University of Chicago, then I met some really serious intellectuals, in a way that my professors at Binghamton were not. I mean, they may have been as intelligent, but they were not as ambitious. They were not as consumed by, you know, the field that they were teaching. IG: 28:29 Right-right. But in some way, it is kind of a softer introduction to this world. DH: 28:36 I am not unhappy about going to [inaudible] I am in Binghamton. I had a lot of fun. IG: 28:39 And, you know, so-so was there any, were you involved in any kind of student activism? DH: 28:48 No, you know, it is funny that you should- the activism at Harpur in those days was almost all about the war. There was almost, I do not remember any civil rights activism. There was a group that I belonged to that we had a Saturday morning program for inner city the extent that there were inner city kids in those days at-at, in Binghamton. And, you know, everyone in his heart supported it, but the real demonstrations and the rallies and the trips to Washington were about the war. There were not many black students in Binghamton in those years. I mean, I only remember a handful, and a couple of those were foreign students. Yeah, and the woman's movement did not really become big until after I left. I mean, maybe in 1968 when I graduated, it was beginning to percolate up upward. But it was, it was the war that 90 percent I mean, the free I remember in (19)64 when I first started, when the free speech movement in Berkeley started, there was a rally that was in sympathy to the free speech movement. And there was some, I mean, I remember there were restrictions on women in the dorms how late they could stay out. And that caused, yeah, and I remember Bruce Dearing, the president, trying to come up with some justification for this, obviously not believing in it himself and but there was, it was, there was the stuff that concerns campuses today was not present on-on Binghamton campus in those days on the Harford campus. It was the war that consumed everyone. And I met my first- I mean, I-I met in my first year, I met two guys lived in my dorm who were returning GIs, who had been in Vietnam. IG: 28:53 Did they talk about the war? DH: 30:03 They did mostly the difference because I was 16 when I started this difference between a 16-year-old and [crosstalk] IG: 31:18 It is huge. DH: 31:19 Yeah, especially at 20. Well, I was just about to turn 17, so I- but and a 20-year-old, or a 21-year-old who had been to Vietnam was really just a different category entirely. So, I was just mostly impressed by these guys. They seemed, you know, really grown-up people. And I remember gradually how the Vietnam thing began to progress and how students began to get angrier and angrier. In the very beginning, all of the petitions and all the speeches were how this is inconsistent with American tradition. And as time went on, it was, you know, American imperialism and stuff like that. And then I came, when I went into the army myself, and when I got out of the army, I came back to Binghamton for a year. And I mean, at that point the- IG: 32:12 Tell us about that. I mean, you went to the army. DH: 32:15 I was drafted. I went to this Columbia School of Journalism. I was drafted into the army. I spent two years in Germany. I got out. I had not any particular plans. I had an idea of going to law school, but there was a period of a year before I could get into law school, and I decided, well, I will go back for masters at Binghamton. And I went back and they would and this was three or four years after I graduated, and the school had been transformed, there was a much bigger graduate presence. IG: 32:45 So what year was this? DH: 32:47 This was (19)70 the (19)71 to (19)72 and the there was some violence. There was a larger black presence. There were some demonstrations the basketball team boycotted, asking that the coach be removed. It was just a different place. I mean, it was a different campus, and the Vietnam War had really become the focus of a tremendous amount of student activities. I remember Senator Goodell [Charles E. Goodell] --was that his name spoke on the campus. He had said, you have to get out, and we ought to get out in 90 days. And he was picketed by the Spartacus League, because why should they wait 90 days? [laughter] That is really what they said. Yeah, but it was just a very big change in that short period of time. And then, and of course, then the women's movement had begun to really take hold in the minds of a lot of women. So. IG: 33:54 So, tell us about your career. I am not speaking in the royal way. I say us, because people will be listening to us. So, what, tell us about your career, you went to Columbia Journalism School, then you went to the army. Did you have any was there any idea of making a career in journalism at some point? DH: 34:22 There was, but after a year in journalism school, I felt this is not for me. IG: 34:24 Why not? DH: 34:32 I just felt what I wanted to do was feature writing, and what basically exploded was the new journalism as a form, I mean, the Mailer books, the Armies of the Night- IG: 34:47 Right-right. DH: 34:48 Miami, and the Siege of Chicago. And that was something that I really would like to have done, but I just felt it was emotionally overwhelming to do that sort of thing. And. Also required a tremendous amount of talent- IG: 35:04 And time. DH: 35:05 -and time, and I- you know, unless, like Mailer, you were willing to take cocaine, marijuana and drink yourself after death, it was not something that I thought you could do. So, I went into the Army. I was a law clerk in the army, and the idea began to coalesce between that and the fact that I always was around the courts when I was a kid--of being a lawyer, I went out, I spent a year, I got a Master's at Binghamton in history, and then I went to law school. And after law school, I went to work for a big Wall Street firm for a couple of years, and then went to the Justice Department, where I was a federal prosecutor for 70 years, 70 years, excuse me, for seven years. Yeah, seven years would be a long time as a prosecutor. And I was, I started off in the antitrust division, and then I was assigned to Mariel, Florida. There was a big boat lift from Cuba then, and there were a lot of prosecutions, and then I came up to New York, and ever since I left the government, I have been doing defense work. I, for time, I tried a lot of murder cases. Now, at the age of 70, I spend a lot of time writing letters saying, I am shocked by what your client has done to my client, in which trigger a letter back saying, no, no, you have it backwards. It was what my client has done to their client. So, my practice is not quite as interesting as it once was, but- IG: 36:34 Maybe it is time to- DH: 36:36 Segue into something else. IG: 36:37 Yeah. Well, I mean, continue this, but you know, think, think of the new journalism feature pieces that you are planning to write. DH: 36:44 What I would like to do is, I mean, if I had $10 billion, I would divide it in half, give half of it to prison reform and half of it to saving the great apes. But not having $10 billion. IG: 37:01 You write letters. DH: 37:02 I write letters so. IG: 37:05 How do you think your classmates or your you know; professors would remember you from that time? I mean, you describe yourself a little bit- DH: 37:18 Well, you know, I think most of the except for the few classmates that I remain friends with, if any of them remembered me at all, it would be because I gave speeches at the stepping on the coat ceremony. Is that still going on? IG: 37:30 I think so. DH: 37:31 Yeah, so I do not really. I mean, I would hope that they would remember me as someone who gave amusing speeches, the people who I was close with probably remember me as someone who was smart and crazy somehow out of control, I think. IG: 37:52 How out of control? DH: 37:53 Oh, I mean, not anything that today would be considered a very big deal. But I did not go to classes. I smoked a lot of after deep [inaudible], a lot of marijuana. I mean- IG: 38:09 You still got A's. DH: 38:11 No, I got A's in some subjects, history, I did not do well in chemistry, which you actually had to learn something. I mean, and, and, I do not know. I mean, it is funny. I, there the there was only one person who went on to be a star in my year, and that is Camille Paglia. And I barely knew Camille at all. IG: 38:35 Was she in any of your classes? DH: 38:37 No. I mean, I guess we knew each other vaguely because I wrote for the paper and because Camille was the valedictorian of the class. I do not know that anybody else in our year went on to any particular degree of celebrity. I do not know when I do meet people after 30 years that I have not been in contact with the most common remark is, you know, you said to me, X, 30 years ago, but I forgive you. So, I gather that I was a pretty rude kid back then. DH: 39:14 Yeah. I mean, I hope it was something more that, you know, you illuminated Shakespeare for me, but that is not what I get. What do you see a common thread in the people that you have interviewed Is there a quality of Harpur student that is different than just the ordinary person who grew up in the (19)60s? IG: 39:14 Yeah. IG: 39:34 I think that, well, the commonalities are that they, many of them think that they received the kind of, you know, education that you would expect of a small, elite college. DH: 39:56 Yeah. IG: 39:57 So especially the early graduates thought that, you know, they had just an academically superior experience. Um, as far as their and also, you know, as a demographic, many of the many of you are from the New York City area or from Long Island. I mean, that still remains true. But people have done such interesting things. Some-some, you know, some have had just good careers. But, you know, there are a number of people who I-I spoke with somebody just a few weeks ago who was this ethics professor at Columbia Medical Center, and he has written books on AIDS and-and collaborated with the president of AmfAR, Mathilde Krim, I think, for you know, but he so he became quite prominent. I am going to be meeting with somebody who is, you know, one of the head researchers at the NIH, and I forget what area of neuroscience, but, you know, I just, I am going to be seeing for another person is the head of her own nonprofit, you know, so-so there is, you know, there is a range. DH: 41:32 Right. It is funny, you should mention demographics, because the sort of unstated, adventures of my early years at Harpur was meeting people from outside the New York City area, and I never really done that before. And I had a friend, Willie Malchek, who was a bingy, as we called them, who said the same was true in reverse, that they were a little bit afraid. They were told that all these kids from downstate coming up who are very smart and ambitious and but in fact, the differences between downstate and upstate were sufficiently small that it really did not hinder friendships. I mean, it is funny that that should have been an issue. I mean, considering the cultural clashes that I suppose exist now, yeah, no, I met people from Herkimer. I had not even known that that was a locale. IG: 42:31 I know exactly where that is Herkimer. DH: 42:33 Where is it? Is that in- IG: 42:35 By Utica, it is by Utica. So, you know. But do you think that these cultural differences were overcome in time, or your maybe not cultural differences, but your relationships were- DH: 42:50 Yeah, I do not think that they were sufficiently large to be impediments. I met believing Christians for the first time in my life, and that was interesting to me, and it kind of maybe prepared me for the army, where I actually met people who thought that unless I converted, I was going to go to hell, and were not nasty about it, but sort of anguished about it. I mean, so that was one big, one big difference in that. But I mean, as I say, there were no oh, oh. And for me, coming from an all-boys school, it took me a year or two to get my head around the fact that there were girls in class, which had not, I mean, there was only one or two women teachers at Stuyvesant, and there were no girls in the school. So, it was- IG: 43:35 That is right, it was a boy school. DH: 43:36 It was a boy’s school in those days, yeah. So that was something that was a bit of, I mean, it was, it was just interesting. I could not believe it. I was happy about it. But at the same time, it just is not this against some rule. And I do not, I have there were some women on the faculty. I took many more than in law school. We only had one woman in my law school, professor. IG: 44:10 What I am thinking because you have, you have answered many of the questions that I was going to ask. So, you know what-what do you what are the most important lessons that you learned from this period in your life? How did it open? DH: 44:34 Yeah, I think that is important lessons. I do not know. I think of them in lessons I found because I have a tendency to withdraw and isolate myself. IG: 44:44 Right. DH: 44:45 I think that the lesson is that, in fact, the opposite approach of engaging in stuff, even if you are not super talented and not going to be preeminent, is a much shorter. Way to satisfaction, fulfillment than withdrawing. You know, it is funny that is so long ago, I think of it almost like Ivanhoe. I mean, it seems it is 50 years ago. I mean, it-it has a kind of shine for me those years. I mean, not only because of my youth at the time, but because it was just so much simpler. The country was so much simpler, and, um, it was fun. I mean, we played football on the lawn, and there were tennis courts, and it was a good time to be alive and to go to school. IG: 45:40 Right. What preoccupied you during those years? Do you remember? DH: 45:46 Oh, I think the things that preoccupied, I mean, I felt that was short. I mean I remember; I mean global warming; I suppose a certain dignity being wishing that you were three inches taller does not. Um, same things that preoccupy, no, I had a tremendous crush on a girl who I now in retrospect, see was kind of bewildered and puzzled as to how to gently reject me. And Nancy Halper, who, who I have not spoken to in 50 years. I did not. I, in fact, the people that I was friendly with did not date until maybe our senior year. IG: 46:34 I think that is because of the- DH: 46:36 I think why I do not have any idea why that is, I think- IG: 46:40 Maybe it was not. I do not either. DH: 46:45 I do not think that that is, that is not, I do not think that that was typical of the entire population. It was, I suppose that I select, perhaps I selected friends- IG: 46:55 Right. DH: 46:55 -who had these qualities. I mean, I do not really know, but for some reason, the guys that I were I was friendly with, were kind of backward and in-in dating. And they certainly they were certainly not as free and as natural around women as it seems to me kids are today, nor were they as free and natural around people of different ethnicities as kids often seem to be today. I mean, there was a provincial quality. I suppose although we thought of ourselves as New York sophisticates, there was a provincial quality that we had. And then, I mean, I had various neuroses, as a lot of kids do. And I suppose my friends tended to be people who could accommodate that. Perhaps had some neurotics of their own. But in any event, we were a very backward group in terms of socially. We would just sort of go, walk around- IG: 47:53 Kind of socializing, because apparently you were quiet, you know, you were quite adept you were socializing with these intellectual professors. DH: 48:06 Right-right, okay, but it was a more of a cerebral kind of thing. IG: 48:09 Right-right. DH: 48:10 Yeah. And there was a big dorm life in those days. I do not remember. My recollection is that when, at least when we started, the dorms were single sex. And then they it was a big deal when they opened coed dorms. IG: 48:24 Right. DH: 48:25 So, there was a big dorm life in the evenings. IG: 48:29 Right. DH: 48:30 Usually, you know, amounting to jumping over chairs and stuff. IG: 48:34 Yeah, and so-so you said you smoked pot a lot, and- DH: 48:40 Only after I was turned on by Brown. IG: 48:44 So where did you smoke? In your dorm room or in-in- DH: 48:47 No, I, you know, I mean, I may be mixing up times here, when I was in the army, I certainly took a lot of- IG: 48:55 Yeah. DH: 48:55 -it was basically hash then. IG: 48:57 Yeah. DH: 48:58 In Harpur, I did not really smoke that much, but Brown turned me on. There was certain amount of it that went on in the in the in the dorms, not by any standard, a tremendous amount. But I did not drink, and there were not a lot of wild drinking parties. We did not have fraternities. We had some weird thing called social clubs. I do not know if they still have them that were just this very pale imitation of fraternities. IG: 49:29 Yeah. So, did you belong to any of the social clubs? DH: 49:33 No, and I remember a bunch of us mocking one guy who joined a group called the Odeon’s and they gave him some bizarre tasks. He had to get signatures written backwards, or I forget what it was, but no one ever took that particularly seriously. The big thing was living off campus that was considered the really- IG: 49:59 Being semi-independent DH: 50:01 Yeah, there was a sense of emancipation when we did that. Finally, you were not on for the first time in your life, you were really not being monitored closely by anybody. So, I did not. DH: 50:01 What kind of music did you listen to? DH: 50:10 You know, I was late on that. I seem to have been late in everything. I remember in 1967 learning about the band, but I was late on Dylan, who I now love, but I remember somebody finally got highway 61 and listening to it and not being able to make head or tails of it. And it was only, frankly, it was a girl that I was dating many years later who really made me realize what a genius Dylan was. And I mean, I like the blues. I like the Butterfield blues band. I do not know if you know any of these names, but I was, yeah, I was not involved in any particularly avant garde stuff we had- I remember the people who came up were fairly eclectic bunch, Lovin' Spoonful played at Harpur, Buffy Sainte-Marie and I do not remember anybody else who had a name coming up when I was there. IG: 51:17 Did you organize trips to New York City as a group? DH: 51:20 No, did I organize? I am incapable of organizing anything. Yeah. I mean, we would go to New York City- IG: 51:27 Yeah. DH: 51:27 And once went to Washington for March against the war. But that was that there was a big political thing, whether or not the student union funds could be used for political purpose. Some of the conservative students were unhappy with that. Anyway. IG: 51:50 You did not, you did not go to any of the clubs, for example, in New York City to listen to music. DH: 51:57 No, I remember when I was at Stuyvesant. I remembered the-the I was in Stuyvesant (19)61 through (19)64 and Stuyvesant was on the Lower East Side, and the sort of Dave Van Ronk folk music scene began to sort of get and I was aware of the fact that that was developing, and I was aware of the fact that there was this guy named Dylan who was on the scene. But no, I was not deeply involved in any of that, nor was I particularly nuts about the Beatles I was in. I guess, my own little world in those days. It was only later that I really began. And I never really went to clubs. I mean all that much, but I mean I later I would go to concerts. So, I went to a couple of Dylan concerts and stuff. Yeah. I mean, was music a big thing for most of the other people that you have interviewed? IG: 52:43 Some-some, just some. DH: 52:50 Did you see the Vietnam series and on PBS? IG: 52:55 I actually, I am afraid to say that I did not. I am completely aware of it. DH: 52:59 Okay, but one of the most stirring things about that series was the music that they played, which was very well chosen. And really, you realize really, first of all how much very intelligent good music was written in those days, but also music's odd power to just evoke the whole atmosphere of a period 40 years ago. If you did you meet your mother, by the way, she lives nearby. IG: 53:26 My mother? DH: 53:27 Yeah. IG: 53:27 I am staying over at my mother's house. DH: 53:31 No-no, you emailed me. You saying this will give me an opportunity to- IG: 53:35 Yes-yes, I am staying yeah-yeah. I mean she-she had she had guests. She has guests coming to her house frequently, so she could not do that to him. That is why I came now. So-so any lessons, and not any lessons, any advice that you want to impart to students, future students, listening to these tapes about you know, what they what they need to bring to their undergraduate to their college experience? DH: 54:22 Well, I guess the advice it is always giving to students, which is that you are at a unique time in your life when you have resources available to you that will not be available to you elsewhere. There will be other advantages that you will have later in life that you do not have now, and you may have greater confidences, but you will never again have the opportunity to be in theater productions, to perhaps do film work, to write for newspapers, to do a range of activities that are professionalized in the rest of life, and which you just become an onlooker. So, one piece of advice I have is make use of it, and also by making use of it, you will often discover interests that you did not know you had, talents that you did not suspect that you had. You know the idea of going off and in a solitary way knowing yourself is implausible to me, because you often only know yourself by engaging in an activity and then finding that in fact, it is an activity that you love. So, all my advice would simply be, make use of the resources that are available to you. Do not despair if you are unhappy for a period of time or do not fit in, because that is often just part of the experience of being young, and enjoy Binghamton. IG: 55:55 Happy, a happy, happiest memory of Binghamton. DH: 56:00 Happy. Happiest memory of Binghamton. This is embarrassing to say. I cannot tell you what the happiest memory. IG: 56:05 Okay. DH: 56:09 But I remember throwing got into my head. There were two things that I remember that I cannot tell you. One is I was a big fan of Mickey Mantle is a name that probably is not familiar to many people anymore, but he was going to hit his eight and I made this boast in public, I will go anywhere on earth to see his 500th home-home run. And it turns out that he hit his 499th just before there was a Yankee Road trip to Kansas City, and the baseball team of Harpur gave me the number seven uniform, and their collection was taken up, and I went to Kansas City to see Mickey hit his 500th home run. So that is one happy memory, even though, but he turned out not to hit it there, but hit it in Yankee Stadium, three blocks from where I lived. And a second happy memory is the giant seafood gala that my roommates and I threw in our senior year. And I do not know why, but it was just an ecstatically enjoyable experience getting the lobster from the seafood mark, rather brutally throwing it in the boiling water and just having friends over. And I will tell you now the happiest moment, but it is embarrassing. It was when I thought this woman, Nancy Hopper, loved me, something that I was later disabused of. But for the moment, I was very happy. All right. Well, I hope that no one hears that late. I hope that the [crosstalk] IG: 57:47 I thank you so much. It was- DH: 57:51 Very nice. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David S. Hammer Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni living in New York City Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hammer, David S. ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource David has worked as a trial lawyer for more than 30 years and was engaged in civil and criminal litigation. He served in the U.S. Justice Department in the Antitrust Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney in Miami and in Manhattan. For the last two decades he has worked in private practice in New York. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-02-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context David Hammer.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-02-23 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 57:52 minutes