ANOTHER INTERVIEW
Kristol, Irving
Educ. SI 9-2 Irving Kristol Professor Irving Kristol is executive vice president and senior editor for Basic Books, Inc. H e is coeditor and co-founder of the quarterly journal of urban...
...The university is not an institution set up for majority rule...
...many of the faculties have behaved in an utterly disgraceful way over the past ten or fifteen years...
...But this has been the basic impulse behind the intellectuals as a class ever since the 1830's...
...Just as today many people who call themselves college students wouldn't have been college students fifteen or twenty years ago...
...Tyrrell: W h y is education pointlessly meandering like this...
...In the last issues of your favorite family magazine Professor Kristol lectured on American politics in general...
...The Public Interest...
...KRISTOL: Of course it's true...
...I a m in favor of the government having a very generous program of student loans, so that students can pay their own education...
...Professor Kristol has published a great many articles in such periodicals as the N e w York Times, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs and the Yale Review...
...They have copped out of teaching, they have even copped out of administration...
...You certainly cannot count on the faculties...
...A serious student of literature should be required to study literature in quite a different way from a young m a n or a young lady who studies literature simply because it seems to be the easiest thing to study while spending four years in college...
...But this is a passive majority...
...Would you prefer us to send you this book free...
...Let m e make it very clear what I mean, what m y position is...
...But what students can do is see that faculties and administrators live by the philosophies of education that they profess...
...The why cannot be given a simple answer...
...Ifyou accept the monthly Selection, no need to do anything...
...Aside from the fact that a great many people who now have the grand title of professor, really wouldn't have been professors fifteen or twenty years ago...
...I think this is absolutely crucial...
...They're no more aware, no less aware, than any other generation...
...It is a passive majority for all sorts of reasons, one of the reasons being that the structure of the university encourages activist minorities rather than the majorities...
...I think there are many reasons...
...I don't think the student can define the faculty's responsibilities...
...KRISTOL: Say this again...
...Your onty obligation as a member Is to accept 3 books from among some 50 to be offered by the Club over the next 15 months, after which you may resign at any time...
...And they're not entirely wrong...
...So the students do have something to contribute, but what they have to contribute is to try to push the faculty into taking their responsibilities more seriously...
...A great many of them have simply copped out of all educational responsibilities...
...K R I S T O L : No, I wouldn't put it that way...
...Tyrrell: Of all the minatory crises facing - . . KRISTOL: What crises...
...K R I S T O L : What I mean is that the professional schools of the universities, so far as I can see, do a good job, and most of the kids seem to agree that they do a good job...
...Well, it's obviously true that self-doubt usually doesn't do any polity any good...
...KRISTOL: Most things I don't know...
...I think this has been one of the problems on the American scene...
...They voted in favor of having Dow on campus at Berkeley, they voted in favor of it at Columbia, there has not to my knowledge been a single case where the majority has voted against it...
...But I really don't know...
...K R I S T O L : No, I don't think even Staughton Lynd can reform the university...
...Whaddya mean ifs ceased ta educate...
...Tyrrell: Can Staughton Lynd reform the university...
...I think we have got to remove the financing of higher education, to the extent that it is feasible, from the general tax revenues and make each student pay for his education...
...the Conservative Book Club...
...R L I N G T O N HOUSE-PUBLISHERS 81 CENTRE AVENUE, NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK 10801 Gentlemen: Please send post-paid The CoraeroatiQe Mainstream by Frank D S«nd The ConS. Meyer...
...If so, why...
...The fact of the matter is they do...
...For m e the tragedy on the campus is that some of the brightest students, in English literature say, w h o really should be studying Chaucer and Shakespeare — because, if you're serious about literature this is what the study of literature entails — these kids are now taking courses in which they discuss the last three novels of Norman Mailer...
...I'm not saying that students don't have anything to contribute to helping the universities get out of their present crisis...
...D jWiuaSa^ v. 'Q^ JkSmadiC tamm A Selection of the Conservative Bool< Ciub Get this book free...
...It never thought of the students ruling in any way and therefore never took provisions for such a situation...
...W e have yet to devise different kinds of curricula for students with different kinds of interests...
...I a m in favor of students paying for their own education...
...Tyrrell: In a recent article you wrote that students cannot reform the universities and they are capable of little more than trouble, or something like that...
...The problems of the university are far more basic than that...
...Buckley answered self-doubt to that...
...I agree to buy 3 Club Selections In the next 15 months at 2 0 % to 7 5 % discounts plus shipping...
...This is a society which needs engineers, needs doctors, needs lawyers, needs accountants, and these people are trained in universities...
...He has served as editor of The Reporter and the N e w York cultural correspondent of the London Observer...
...Tyrrell: Are the universities falling apart...
...I don't think the student can define the administrator's responsibilities...
...SI 9-2 Irving Kristol Professor Irving Kristol is executive vice president and senior editor for Basic Books, Inc...
...Tyrrell: Of all the minatory crises facing America, what do you consider the gravest...
...And I have no objection to those kinds of students being given such courses...
...Tyrrell: Is there anything that you don't know...
...But what happens in our university is that no differentiations are made between kinds of students, no effort is made to uphold standards...
...I think one of the reasons is that you do have a great many students who, while they should be given a higher education, should not be given what we used to call a university education...
...I think what will probably happen is that ten years from now we will see that the biggest crisis we faced today was one we didn't know existed...
...They'll take their studies more seriously 8 and they'll even take the problems of the university more seriously...
...I think one of the problems of the American university is that, precisely that as the student body became more heterogeneous, the American imiversity became more homogeneous...
...They train people for their specific careers...
...Aren't they the most aware generation ever to . . . K R I S T O L : I don't know what that means...
...But to the extent that it is possible (it's not going to be possible in all respects, but it should be possible to a fairly large extent) higher education should be financed by student loans...
...KRISTOL: All intellectuals in the Western world are left-oriented because the whole modem intellectual class was left in its origins...
...KRISTOL: Well, they obviously are falling apart...
...Most of the students who major in economics feel that they're really learning something, they're really being trained in something...
...Make the students the ruling class of the university and given the basic facts of university life, that 2 5 % or more (if you take the drop-out rates it's probably closer to 5 0 % vanish each year), this is not a class capable of governing anything...
...H e is coeditor and co-founder of the quarterly journal of urban and social problems...
...For one reason, the universities have absorbed hundreds of thousands of new students into a structure which simply assumed that these new students were no different from the old...
...tli Clu t th e appropriat b.e kno I monthl f yo w ou y n e Tyrrell: Why are American intellectuals so leftoriented...
...Continued on Page 16) FUTURE FOR YOU IN EMETIC JOURNALISM...
...There is such a course in a college right here next to N e w York City...
...K R I S T O L : Largely, yes...
...N o w if a student is poor, he certainly should be helped along with scholarships...
...I think I would say the question of the blacks and the assimilation of American blacks into the mainstream of American life...
...The modem intelligensia arose out of a protest against bourgeois society, which it found demeaning and unattractive...
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...Tyrrell: You have said the university has ceased to educate and now merely trains...
...Shouldn't the new Administration # | ^ ^ he guided by the ideas - and ^^* ^ ideals - in this major statement of the conservative position...
...You can get a free copy by joining Arlington House's affiliated company, the Conservative Book Club...
...KRISTOL: It has an indispensable role, that is unless you're going to return to some sort of primitive agrarian society...
...H e is a former managing editor of Commentary and co-editor and co-founder of Encounter, published in London...
...They can't reform the universities because they'll never have the power to do so and mainly because they don't stay there long enough...
...And what we do require, and what I have argued in writing for, is a new method of financing higher education...
...Now, such a course might make senses for a young student who really isn't up to studying Shakespeare or Chaucer, who doesn't have the time or the inclination...
...Kristol (Continued from Page 8) Tyrrell: Is it possible that the universities in their solicitude to the demands of activists calling for student control have neglected the vast majority who are only interested in a decent education...
...W h y is this...
...The fact of the matter is that every campus of this country without exception, including Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell — in every one, wherever there has been a referendum on the Dow issue — whether the representatives of Dow and other agencies, including the military, should recruit on campus — the majority has always voted yes...
...Everyone knows what an educated engineer is or an educated economist or an educated lawyer, but when a person majors in English literature these days, it's very hard to know, once he gets a degree, what this degree represents...
...But then minorities rule the world, not passive majorities...
...Whereas in fact these new students probably need different kinds of structures...
...M y payment of $8 u enclosed...
...However, when you come into the "softer" social sciences — like sociology and political science — most especially when you get into the humanities, really no one quite knows what it is they are supposed to be studying and what it is they are supposed to know when they have finished studying...
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...Tyrrell: Of all the menacing crises . . . KRISTOL: Oh...
...In Indiana, we discovered through a Chancellor election, that of 30,000 students and faculty only some 1500 cared about control of the university...
...But a great many people can pay for their own education out of their future earnings, and I a m persuaded that if higher education is financed to a much greater extent than today by student loans, students will take their university more seriously...
...I a m also in favor, in special cases, where you have students from particularly poor families, of some form of direct financial assistance...
...Tyrrell: Mr...
...That's an absolutely nonsensical phrase...
...Tyrrell: Does the university have a viable role as presently constructed in American society...
...He is co-editor of Confrontation: The Student Rebellion in America, published this spring...
...In 1968 Professor Kristol was named co-chairman, with Daniel P. Moynihan, of the Conference on the Future of N e w York City, and he is a member of President Nixon's Task Force on Voluntary Urban Action...
...Membership entitles you to a free subscription to the monthly Club Bulletin, plus the opportunity to buy any Club book at 2 0 % to 7 5 % off retail price plus shipping...
...And even where you have an old-fashioned, rather academic discipline insofar as it's a profession with rigorous standards of training, it seems to work well...
...No, they're not the most aware generation...
...Is it because, as Nathan says, "it merely inculcates and never educates, lacks the lively atmosphere that might exist if conservatives and libertarians held forth with establishment liberals, liberals and radicals...
...In other words I don't think you can expect students to come up with viable philosophies of education...
...Except for the scholarships for those students w h o are truly in need and who need special help...
...You can't run and control an institution with a tum-over of 2 5 % a year in your ruling class...
...Tyrrell: A m I correct in saying you feel that state appropriations should go to the student rather than to the corporate university structure...
...For instance it's m y impression that departments of economics in most major universities are doing a good job...
...THE ALTERNATIVE NEEDS WRITERS, PROOFREADERS AND FASCIST PIGS...
...They don't want it, it serves no purpose for them...
...FREE and enroll me In 16 prefe Selection bo you thxer i hand account rn thi coupo ,ys yo for plan .nu I an merel f,m yo pleas alway d mal u don' yl le e today chec s provided tt th wan ke...
...KRISTOL: Self-doubt...
...And this is what happens in state universities, and not only in state universities in this country today...
...Here he remarks on e,ducation and stuff...
...The student is the prime beneficiary of his education, and there is no reason why taxpayers should pay for the education of upper middle class students...
Vol. 3 • August 1969 • No. 1
