Crimson Cerebrations
O'Rourke, P. J.
I always envied the fellows who went to Harvard. Wouldn't it be swell to be on the Crimson gravy train? I'd probably be a government big shot by now, undermining U.S. foreign poUcy, or a CEO...
...The audience clapped at odd moments and it was a while before I figured out they were applauding anything that could be construed as a warning against atomic energy and bombs and stuff...
...There was a modern dance performance that night called "Gym Transit's— part of Radcliffe College's contribution to the 350th festivities...
...I couldn't take it at all and went to the nearest bar...
...The laser projections looked like Brownie Scouts at play with flashlights and colored cellophane...
...The activists physically repelled them...
...Therefore I will never have to listen to dozens of puff buckets jaw for hours about how my alma mater is the first cause, mother lode, and prime P.J...
...One sign said, "Remember John Reed," the pro-Lenin U.S...
...And Harvard had to go shopping for someone else...
...There was a good deal of shouting and even some pushing and wrassling between alimmi and protesters...
...Professor Fisher was cute and glib and quotable, saying things like, "Asking who's winning a negotiation is like asking who's wiiming a marriage," and, "When it comes to arms negotiations, we can be equally insecure for less money...
...He talked about the advantages free nations have over Communist societies in the "Information Revolution...
...Finally they got around to George Shultz...
...And Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork sausage industry...
...That night I went to Boston and got hammered and missed the only interesting thing that happened during the anniversary...
...Electric Poetry" turned out to be one of those two-bit Radio Shack things where you can program messages to crawl along rows of little light bulbs...
...It flashed such verses as, "Be your best/Pass this test/Divest/ Your funds from South Africa...
...The Yale Russian Chorus, however, was performing or maybe that was the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra or perhaps the Oxford Nose Harp Ensemble...
...in vanity, for his original genius...
...They were earthy and reaUstic...
...I picked "The International Negotiation Process: Can We Improve It...
...You may remember the press flap...
...While we sat in Harvard Yard nearly a dozen Secret Service agents roamed the aisles staring intently at us...
...I felt I should go to at least one symposium, too...
...They did not shirk their responsibiUties...
...I thought that in Massachusetts they weren't too certain about the supposed benefits of royalty," he said, and noted that he hadn't "addressed such a large gathering since I spoke to 40,000 Gujerato buffalo farmers in India in 1980 . . ." The rest of the speech was a sweet Uttle well-pronounced thing about development of character being more important in education than mastery of technology...
...Poor Homer, you see, probably couldn't even get into Yale...
...Ambassador to the Soviet Union, pointed out that Russians are very Russian...
...The first panelist, Arthur Hartman, U.S...
...You can't pin the rap on us...
...Richardson is one of those fixtures on the political scene that nobody knows quite what to do with...
...I listened but I couldn't be sure...
...On Friday morning Secretary of State George Shultz addressed the second convocation...
...I only actually saw one exhibit, a massive display on "A New Approach to the Treatment of Advanced Periodontal Disease," complete with color photographs that I had to walk by to get to the free press lunch...
...the one-man riddle and rhyme show, 'Electric Poetry,' " and other sophisticated delights...
...None of us served as models for characters in that sleazy Love Story book...
...a better future is likely to take shape if, and perhaps only if America is there to help shape it," said Shultz—no response Shultz made an attack on the neoisolationism that has formed the basis for liberal foreign policy since the early seventies...
...in fear, that death might take his irreplaceable gift of words...
...He condemned "the illusion that we can promote justice by aloof self-righteousness, that we can promote peace by merely wishing for it...
...I admire phrases like this with a whole bunch of concepts which, if you have a Harvard education, you can just jumble together any old way...
...Then Shultz went into the debate about congressional cuts in the foreign affairs budget, but this seemed too deep for the audience and they quit booing or clapping and started riffling through the program notes trying to figure out where lunch was...
...You can take it for a symbol if you like...
...Some conservative listeners bestirred themselves at the mention of the Libyan airstrike...
...Here was America's power elite, all wet with no idea what they were doing...
...the very dumb ("Taking Charge of Your Life"), and the hopelessly oxymoronic ("The Role and Social Value of the Large Law Firm...
...The Program notes described it as "celebrating the art of sport and dance...
...figuring this was as likely a place as any for eggheads to go wrong...
...But I was still full of high, if slightly green-eyed, expectations when I arrived at Harvard on Wednesday, September 3rd...
...This drowned out the Call to Order and a long-winded prayer by the Chaplain of the Day (a Mick, this time), and part of an address by the mayor of Cambridge—so disrespect for freedom of speech has its rewards...
...The Convocation opened with prayers by Chaplain of the Day Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, director of the campus B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation...
...Speaker...
...But Harvard didn't want to give the President an honorary degree...
...They were practical men and women...
...And he railed briefly against the congressional tendency to legislate the negotiating process instead of letting the executive branch screw things up on its own...
...She quoted the Odyssey where Homer had the minstrel Phemius, begging Odysseus to spare his life, say, "I am self-taught...
...And I'd have lots of high-brow Ivy League friends...
...I whiled away the time in the half-empty press section defending myself from a horde of yellow jackets that had descended on Harvard Yard and by deciding which member of the Radcliffe Choral Society I would take with me to a desert island if I had to take one of them, and fortunately I do not...
...By the time Prince Chuck got to the podium the show was running almost an hour behind schedule...
...But in its ability to disappoint, as in all other fields, Harvard excels...
...About every five minutes one would bob to his feet and yell...
...Outside, the protesters were back but this time double-teamed by cops...
...Being a veteran of the pressing issues and real riots of the 1960s, I had paid them no mind...
...A question-and-answer period followed...
...According to the Program notes, there was to be "a 600-foot illuminated , rainbow, laser projections . . . appearances by the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra . . . The Yale Russian Chorus, the clown Mme...
...the Soviets get peeved when reminded that they're not really a superpower but a sort of overgrown Bulgaria...
...Shultz proposed that freedom is a revolutionary force, and there were mixed noises when he mentioned resistance groups in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, and Nicaragua...
...So the President, God bless him, told Harvard to piss up a rope...
...We could have drinks at the Harvard Club and show off our Ivy League ability to get loud on one gin fizz...
...Harvard," Professor Vermeule said, " . . . is not self-taught, and is rightly proud of that...
...Shultz spoke cogently against government central planning—no response...
...According to the Harvard Crimson, "Hugh Calkins '45 . . . led a small contingent of alimini who tried to make their way through the blockade in front of one door...
...Every now and then I'd catch some fragment of a speech...
...Shultz asked the unresponsive audience...
...I guess they felt Reagan was a nice man and, no doubt, important in his way, but not quite Harvard material...
...The illuminated rainbow looked Uke a McDonald's trademark...
...Batting clean-up was Roger Fisher, another Harvard Law School prof and author of the best-selling Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreements Without Giving In...
...Us yokels who majored in beer and getting the skirts off TH-Delts bear no responsibiUty for Thoreau's hippie jive or John Kenneth Galbraith's nitwit economics or Henry Kissinger's brownnosing the Shah of Iran...
...I was just in time for something the Official Program called "Harvard's Floating Birthday Party," though it took place on a patch of muddy grass between Memorial Drive and the Charles River and didn't float at all...
...The third panelist was Howard Raiffa, a professor at the Harvard Business School and an expert on decision analysis and negotiation...
...The suspense of this momentous occasion has been kiUing me," said the Prince...
...he began by saying he remembered Harvard Yard very well—at fourteen he cut the lawns here...
...Professor Vermeule took a dim view of this...
...Professor Sohn said one of these doesn't work very well with the Soviets and the other two don't work at all...
...The symposia ranged from over-reach ("The Universe: The Beginning, Now and Henceforth") to under-reach ("FUms as an Art Form") and included the dumb ("Feminist Criticism and the Study of Literature: What Difference Does Difference Make...
...there have been several of these and somebody has to take the blame for them...
...He was followed by Tip O'Neill, who seems determined to break Sarah Bernhardt's record for farewell appearances...
...At another entrance . . .*an alumnus successfully climbed through several rows of arm-linked protesters who attempted to push him down the steps...
...I'd have that wonderful accent as if I'd put the Fix-A-Dent on the wrong side of my partial plate...
...There, but for low high school grades, middling SAT scores, horrible disciplinary record, and parents with less than $100 in the bank, go I. How sad...
...They didn't go anywhere...
...He spoke in pride," she said, "that only god was his tutor...
...How can a system that keeps photocopiers and mimeograph machines under strict control exploit the benefits of the VCR and the personal computer...
...Richardson brought the discussion around to sea law at every opportunity...
...I'll bet "Gym Transit" could also be described as "dancing the celebration of art and sport" or "sporting the dance of celebrating art" or "making an art of sport dance celebration...
...mover of all deep thought in the USA...
...The Ivy League has never been famously hospitable to Jews...
...Our best and brightest stick to running insurance agencies and don't go around cozening the nation into Vietnam wars...
...Cambridge police officers reportedly said they were ready to arrest the protesters and only had "to be given the word...
...The rest of Tip's speech was, of course, blathersgate, and was followed by a bland student oration and a bad poem by Seamus Heaney, Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory...
...I remember the adenoidal-voiced Professor of Classical Greek, Emily D.T...
...It was hard to pass this up, but after six drinks I managed...
...and left...
...Vermeule, dumping on Homer...
...There were two other convocations, 83 academic symposia, 43 exhibitions, and 16 performing arts events plus heaps and piles of private lunches, cocktail parties, dinners, and receptions...
...It's exquisite torture for the uninitiated...
...A weedy group of 60 or 80 anti-apartheid protesters had been popping up here and there all through the ceremonies, squeaking "Divest Now," and waving placards saying, "There's blood on your portfolio...
...It's not often that I have any fellow-feeling for the Buddha of Bureaucracy, but I must hand it to Mr...
...In South Africa, the structure of apartheid is under siege as never before," he said...
...Harvard wanted the President to give a 350th birthday speech just as Franklin Roosevelt had at the 300th and Grover Cleveland at the 250th...
...Maybe he thought this was the 350th Anniversary of Michigan State...
...He was wrong...
...Fortunately all my character-building education has prepared me for this...
...Charles seemed as confused as I was about what he was doing there...
...Nose...
...Others booed...
...It wasn't my school that laid the educational groundwork for FDR's demagoguery or JFK's Bay of Pigs slough-off or even Tfeddy Roosevelt's fool decision to split the Republican party and let that buttinski Wilson get elected...
...I was unable to determine the whereabouts, during these events, of Professor Fisher and his Negotiating Agreements Without Giving In...
...I had temporarily dozed off...
...The president of Harvard, Derek C. Bok, canceled the dinner instead...
...For doorstops...
...The eggheads didn't go wrong...
...I just came back from Harvard's monster gala 350th Anniversary Celebration, and thank you, God, for making me bom dumb...
...The temptation to rattle on at length was resisted by no one...
...The Choral Society looked like the Harvard football team with mops on their heads...
...The second panelist was former Attorney General Elliot Richardson...
...Governor Dukakis spoke next and did some Kennedy quoting...
...I went to a state college in Ohio...
...One symposium was called "Beyond Deterrence: Avoiding Nuclear War" and billed itself as "An examination of the use of nuclear weapons...
...I'm not saying the puff buckets are wrong...
...He also pointed out that Communism is totalitarian and we can't count on Pravda investigative reporters to catch the Soviets cheating on arms ;«agreements...
...It was raining but this did not deter the spectators who arrived by the hundreds to stand lax-jawed in bovine clusters, occasionally fingering their alumni badges...
...O'Rourke is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator as well as to Rolling Stone, Vanity Fait and other publications...
...They carried signs protesting not only apartheid but also aid to Israel, involvement in El Salvador, and aggression against Nicaragua and Cuba...
...Those who built a college at the edge of a boundless forest were not fearful, timid people," said Shultz at the end of his speech...
...I searched in vain for the clown Mme...
...reporter (and Harvard grad) buried in the Kremlin wall...
...Or so I thought...
...The next morning was the great Foundation Day Convocation which President Reagan wasn't addressing...
...Shultz argued persuasively that "America's weakness makes the world a more dangerous place"^—no response...
...Maybe George was mixed up...
...Nose...
...As he physically struggled against the activists, the alumnus called them 'assholes' . . . " Mercifully for the protesters, this wasn't Georgia Tfech...
...He said a number of things, or I assume he did...
...Let us honor that tradition...
...There was no response to that, either...
...I'm cured now...
...Not by you," screamed someone in the crowd, and there was scattered applause...
...Inside, a few protesters had scattered themselves through the audience...
...The list of exhibits looked worse yet, for instance, "Artifacts of Education" at the Gutman Library, which I assume was old pen nibs and gum under seats...
...A UPI reporter told me he'd counted fourteen different law enforcement agencies so far...
...foreign poUcy, or a CEO running some industry into the ground...
...They yammered for two hours about U.S.-Soviet treaty bargaining, saying nothing about negotiation I couldn't have learned from a Kansas City divorce lawyer...
...Among his many insights (each illustrated with a law-of-the-sea example): the Soviets act in their own self-interest...
...Ron would have dozed off during "Gym TVansit" even quicker than me...
...Just as the convocation got underway, a low-flying plane began to circle the Yard dragging a banner with the message, "US/HARVARD OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA SANCTIONS DIVEST NOW...
...This magnificent institution stands for a great tradition of intellectual openness, free inquiry, and pursuit of truth," Shultz said while protesters in the audience tried to drown him out...
...He damned economic protectionism and got some handclaps until he said, "Another form of escapism is selfrighteous moralism," and the booing began again...
...Harvard is the home of American ideas...
...It must have made a big impression...
...I'm sure they were looking for a person who embodied democratic spirit, intellectual excellence, and the American ethos, which is why they picked Prince Charles...
...Another was titled "Homer at Harvard," so maybe they're claiming the old hexameter basher as one of their own, after all...
...I asked myself the question, "What am I doing here...
...But it ain't the likes of me...
...and, "If we are to succeed in negotiating we must understand their position . . . and we'd better understand our position, too...
...And he went on to point out that when he was first startmg m politics and Harvard was celebrating its 300th Anniversary, only 3 percent of high school graduates got a chance at college, leaving it unsaid how it's no thanks to Harvard that more do today...
...The 350th Anniversary celebration went on for four days and included a mind-numbing and buttwearying number of events...
...Fisher could probably get a job in the real world if he tried...
...Today the validity of the idea of democracy is the most important political reality of our time," said Shultz and received some yells of dissent...
...But on Thursday night the do-gooders nerved themselves and blocked the entrances to the 3S0th Anniversary Dinner, a $20,000 black tie fete for several hundred of the University's most influential alumni...
...Once again they're right...
...The moderator, Professor of Law Emeritus Louis Sohn, had an accent so thick I could understand almost nothing he said...
...There followed eleven speakers and three anthems sung mostly in foreign languages...
...The gist of that almost nothing was that there are three kinds of negotiation: one-on-one, mediation by a third party, and submission of dispute to an international tribunal...
...God planted all the paths of poetry in my mind...
...Then police and Secret Service agents would come and stand in front of him and glower until he sat down...
...A job negotiating the International Law of the Sea treaty was fobbed off on him a few years back...
...This was almost as long and involved as the Prince Jug Ears get-together, and the security arrangements verged on the maniacal...
...Rabbi Gold graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago, sounded like Shecky Greene, and running him first out of the gate seemed a kind of cruel joke...
Vol. 19 • November 1986 • No. 11
