Let a Thousand Harvards Bloom
Kelley, John
Notes on the Academy Let a Thousand Harvards Bloom John K e l l e y G LOOM STALKS the street~ of America's ..... provincial Harvards. Educationists still practice their lightly vailed...
...perhaps thinking, argument, and debate carried on with the same respect and understanding demon strated by Mr...
...In addition Jefferson argued that education might make men happy: "I have sworn upon the Altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of men...
...Although a convinced republican who greatly admired the historical writings of the Real Whig Paul Rapin, Jefferson insisted that the University be open to the "wrongheaded" historical interpretations of a David Hume...
...This growing egalitarianism in undergraduate education is no immediate threat to the nation's well-being...
...BF & D is certainly lucid and internally consistent...
...In something of a modified Gresham's Law, mass higher education will tend to devalue all higher education...
...In the post World War II period, however, the University took to itself what Professor Robert Nisbet calls "faustian ambitions...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...Uneasily, Vance Hartke, Senator Dear Senator Vance: I must be slipping up...
...72 Alternative) is also to be commended for its wit, forthrightness, and logic...
...Jefferson never intended that college training should be offered to all, regardless of talent...
...Ernest van den Haag calls "America's Pelagian Heresy" -- the beliof in the ameliorative powers of education...
...The Elixir promised utopia but promoted internal bleeding...
...I have a fellow in mind who not only is enormously capable of turning a short story into a novel, but he also is under criminal indictment in New York and hence about to become an authentic American patriot in the eyes of the nattering nabobs - - as they say...
...Augustine, declared that all men might be saved without the aid of divine grace...
...Cordially, Richard...
...In short, education would liberate man's mind...
...As for my pay, just get me the same accommodations Senator Hartke has on those I.T.T...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Dear Mr...
...David Brud...
...M. Nixon, President Dear Mr...
...Unfortunately, the university's "Magic Ameliorative Elixier" mostly contained a vile spirit which wouldn't have felt out of place next to Jackass Brandy, Soda Pop Moon, Panther Whiskey and Yack Yack Bourbon...
...I know that you ar e, shall we say, in deep with the literati of the political world, and I was hoping that you could provide some suggestions regarding an author for such a biography...
...The April OSU Alumni Monthly was devoted to this single question: "Are Americans losing faith in their Colleges...
...Nevertheless if you are looking for something to do in the immediate future may I suggest that you run for the presidency of the United States...
...Ring Hosannas for urbanology that the collective womb might bring forth a new polity...
...Best regaros, Brent Nelson Athens, Ohio To the Editor: I appreciated Marshall Jay's notes on Mr...
...2) upward mobility and 3) increased income...
...He is currently studying law at Harvard...
...Today's universities are under attack for their political and social wrongheadedness~ broken promises and growing irrelevance to the needs of society...
...Tyrrell's legal advisor .in Florida...
...Interestingly, a radical scholar, Robert Wolff, has called attention to the value of the university providing system maintenance for the radical faculty: "Who but a university these days would hire Herbert Marcuse, Eugene Genovese or Barrington Moore, Jr...
...An unstated bargain between the Academy'ancl the public traditionally provided that the state would furnish scholarly sanctuary for deviant as well as traditional views in exchange for the Academy's servicing the~ system maintenance functions of the society...
...Most liberal arts, education or business graduates don't slice you up on an operating table, issue writs of certiorari or construct thermonuclear devices...
...Thank you, Richard Walker Belpre, Ohio To The Editor: It was refreshing to read a review of B.F...
...Perchance they might...
...noy, a frequent contributor to 1"he Alternative, is professor in the Boston area and Jerry Gerde/s Mr...
...Why could the university not be, at one and the same time philosopher-king, philosopher-Croesus, philosopher -statesman, philosopher -humanitari~m, even philosopher-revolutionary...
...The people wouldn't desert them in their eleventh hour...
...What presidency are you talking about...
...Due t o . . . lack oJ space we were unable to include biographical material on last month's contributors...
...In sum he has snatched the vast sympathies of all right-thinking Americans...
...George Nathan The Alternative May 1972 21...
...George Charles Roche HI is serving his first year as President of Hillsdale College and John P. East is a professor o f political science at East Carolina University...
...The people giveth and the people taketh away...
...In a very real sense, then, we owe the debt to ourselves...
...Where else are anarchists, socialists, and followers of other unpopular persuasions accorded titles, honors, and the absolute security of academic tenure...
...For the answer to his question about the Republican Party, I suggest he start with this quotation from p. 42 of The Budget b Brbf...
...When revolution compels major sacrifices the ranks thin...
...These matters can be quickly dispatched by the obvious generalization that their hope of fulfillment will decline in direct proportion to the increase in college enrollment...
...upward mobility and increased income...
...The salvation _9 "We are now suffering - - u.nless ~ of course you happen to be a student - - from what Harvard sociologist David "Reisman calls "grade inflation...
...It seems that though the scores earned by high.school seniors on college entrance exams have dropped from an average 471 in 1966 to 454 last year, overall college grades have shifted from C average to B. Ds and F.s have virtually disappeared...
...Granted that the universities can't deliver to mass man, on their "spiritual and intellectual enlightenment" promise, what about the other two pt;0n~[sed salvations...
...This second loss e~ists because the percentage of white collar jobs in business and industry which directly require specific college training is rather small...
...Plunkitt: Now that I have pulled out of the race for the presidency what should I do...
...Based on a survey of 58,000 four year college teachers, the report found that seventy-five per cent of the social scientists considered their politics to be "left" or "liberal...
...Plnnkitt has agreed to advise American statesmen in this time of troubles...
...Skinner in some other manner than as a savior or tormentor...
...Dimly seen at first, the truth of American higher education now has manifested itself to the folks in Gnawhone, Indiana...
...Harry Hopkins, thou should'st be living at this hour...
...Be this as it may, no one can deny that ar.ademe now lives in a goldfish bowl...
...The Federal debt is largely an internal debt, owed by the Nation primarily to its own citizens...
...Partly as a result of their special plead'rags America now has mass higher education which generally wouldn't compare favorably with English public schools: at the State University of New York, Old Westbury Campus courses are offered in "the 20 The Alternative May 1972 The Bootblack Stand Dr...
...What race...
...The trend has progressed such that I can assert without significant fear of contradiction that any high school graduate, no matter how limited his background or abilities, can find some accredited college which for four years will take his money...
...The universities, buoyed up by the Elixir, have gone whoring after a social conscience, violating customary university public relations...
...For America's egalitarians, this selective higher education smacks of racism or elitism --bad beginnings for a parti_9 cipatory democracy...
...They have been hamboozled bf expert manipulators of what Dr...
...Educationists still practice their lightly vailed bloviation but to little purpose, for the feel the cold long shadows of a gray January day...
...It has appeared nonpolitical because of the axiomatic acceptance by the public of this relationship...
...It will be a magnificent coup for you to have this man write your biography just as he is about to become the darling of The New York Review of Books...
...This public disillusionment finds its source in America's Pelagian Heresy...
...and Dr...
...Mm't perceptive students and alumni can recall at least a dozen professors who preached and practiced the liberal line...
...The answer was largely yes...
...jets...
...The more that higher education becomes mass education, the more all three salvation promises will be illusionary...
...They aren't, however, and the ivied walls keep cracking from coast to coast...
...Wolff's optimistic view of the security of tenure may soon require revision...
...The universities haven't yet experienced their most crushing blow - - the combination of overproduction of college instructors and the decline in enrollments due to falling birth rates after 1961...
...Witness the shocked reaction to Kent State...
...His last literary achievement got him indictments from federal and local grand juries on charges ranging from mail fraud to perjury and forgery...
...Peter P. Witonski and Douglas W. "Cooper are also jrom Harvard - - Witonski teaches in the Government Department and Cooper is a graduate student in physics.Dan Joy is an aide to Congressman Derwinski (R-Ill...
...And you can get him for a price...
...John Kelley teaches history at Ohio University at Portsmouth...
...Fortunately, Jefferson was a Liberator...
...The percentage for faculty in the natural sciences was forty-eight per cent, while Business School instructors reported on thirth-three per cent...
...Crying out for fiscal succor they receive a budget cut...
...A New Demand Response System...
...Corbin's review will provide some more acceptable reply to Prof...
...Address all corresPondence to The Bootblack Stand, The Establishment, R.R...
...Educational hucksters have used these gems and thousands more like them to separate the customer from his money...
...concluded "that there is a rather neat progression from the most leftof-center to the most conT, eiarative running from the social sciences, to the humanities, law and the fine arts, through the physical and biological sciences, education and medicine, onto business, engineering, nursing and maintenarlce...
...In state after state the people and their legislatures are up in arms, scaling the ivory towers to squint inside...
...Unfortunately, the moralism of the Academy, as the past six or seven years abundantly illustrate, clearly is not the moralism of the public...
...Pelagius, antagonist of St...
...Educate the public and save the Republic...
...A noble idea indeed, provided that the Liberator (continued on page 20) 4 The Alternative May 1972 would he fine if colleges and universities were unilaterally autonomous...
...I think it's time to tell that story...
...As the liberals keep telling us, we still have lots of unfinished business, lots of poverty and injustice...
...From where came this strange obsession with bombarding the great unwashed with things beyond their ken...
...Waves of campus chaos have washed this ultimatum onto the academic beach: "Heal thyself or else...
...blessed be the people...
...The historical roots stretch back in time as far as ThOmas Jefferson, author of the Virginia Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, creator of the University of Virginia and architect of the Ordinance of 1784...
...Surely this should come as a surprise to no one...
...Needless to say, the activist students are highly concentrated in the humanities and social sciences which, of course, contain the most radical college faculty...
...This ideal is at best approachable, but not reachable...
...GWP Craft of Sewing," "Candle Making," "Guitar Country Blues," "Afro Dances" and "Verbal and Non-Verbal Conversation" while at Ohio University freshman English classes (traditionally identified across the country as flunk~)ut courses) eighty per cent of the students are given A's or B's...
...In the past business has demanded college trained men and women, not bec~e of ~-~ special expertise they possessed, but rather because the baccalaureate degree supposedly identified a relatively intelligent and persistent individual...
...Published in August, it focuses on the unique position of minority groups in the Congolese electoral process...
...Today the university "certifies" a number far larger than that number which reason and evidence tells us can be "relatively intelligent and persistent...
...Oshgosh, Wisconsin and Moscow, Idaho...
...Ab, but that's another story...
...Let a thousand Harvards bloom so that gladiolas might rise in the ghetto of your choice...
...Skinner's Beyeml Fraudem and Dignity which represented,Praf...
...Of course I would not suggest that you run seriously, but you could sort of serve as the Democrats' equivalent to the Republicans' Pat Paulson...
...In recent years the gap between the ideal and the real has noticeably widened with an understandable response of disgust from the public...
...Jefferson's admirable educational goal, liberation of the mind, could be successfully applied only when there was a commitment to inform not indoctrinate...
...BLOOMING HARVARDS (continued from page 4) informed rather than indoctrinated...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize.winning political analyst, has just completed a penetrating study of the last Congolese election...
...Columnist Malcolm Mugericlge sees danger in the fact that most effective communicators (on campus and in the mass media) have "an anarchic, denth-wishing temperament, with its built-in passi.oa to he on the losing side...
...This will bring a reduction in the status of those possessing a college degree and not coincidentally will reduce the monetary advantage of I~ssessing a diploma...
...In the final analysis most college radicals are weekend warriors...
...Of course another reason for the failure of this first promised salvation resides in the growing democratization of higher education...
...Fred Corbin treats the work as the result of scientific thinking, perhaps erroneous, but certainly not evil...
...Roger Rosenblat's article (also in the Feb...
...Peace and/or prosperity, James McGuinness Chicago, Illinois To the Editor: Permit me to commend you for publishing Tom Milstein's article...
...The Degradation of the Academic Do~ma, Basic Books) To do so, however, was to enter "'areas ot society where partisan strivings are endemic, where Mammon rules, and where passionate moralism is of the essence...
...To some extent all three of these promises are unattainable...
...Walt Seifert...
...Ir0~ically, the radical professor's rather successful efforts at politicizing the university has been his undoing...
...John D. King practices medicine in Rockford, Illinois...
...Pointificating on the state of the polity, their Jeremiahs only bring scattered yawns...
...His argument on behalf of labor union organization seems irrefutable...
...Overt anti-system politicizing breaks that agreement prompting withdrawal of subsidies...
...Correspondingly there is xnore than a little gnashing of teeth within the university's not so ivied halls...
...Faithfully, Gordon S. Jones Alexandria, Va...
...Why should this surprise anyone...
...It is a bitter pill for the radical to swallow but the fact is that they benefit more than any other segment of the university from the fiction of institutional neutrality...
...If here be any remaining doubts, the findings of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education should remove them...
...It might not be ethical for me to pay you for your advice, but I would not be surprised that, were you to tender me a suggestion, you might receive, say, a year's supply of Sheraton Hotel bath towels - - the real fluffy kind...
...Unless the graduate and professional schools are overwhelmed by the marching hordes the system maintenance function will continue...
...Being great, why not wealthy, powerful, its communicants citizens of the world...
...Such articles redeem The Alternative from what would be an existence as an often funny but usually only slightly interesting journal full of empty contentiousness and reflex conservatism . . . . At least you are there...
...Somebody, somehow, must have done something rather right in this land...
...President: You have come to the right man...
...Being noble, why could not the university be great...
...It is the most clearheaded argument for socialism that I have read...
...In short the university served the society as a certifying agency...
...Withdrawal of subsidization prompts conformist behavior and a discretionary withdrawal from Revolutionary Theater...
...Such a commitment presupposes that the university is a collective of disinterested scholars pursuing their separate paths to truth...
...It is titled Escape...
...Nixon's Budget (March...
...Skinner than the usual inanities used to "refute" him...
...For Jefferson education should alert the people to tyranny -- a function which Jefferson's lifelong friend-adversary John Adams also supported...
...If academe is to regain credibility, its longsilent majority of faculty and students must get into the act and end domination by the small, dedicated minorities who work to win...
...Reporting only the Carnegie Study Sey.mour M. Lipset and Everett C. Ladd, Jr...
...In other words cancel this subscription as of today...
...Let the university once declare that it is a political actor and its faculty will be investigated...
...National Review March 31, 1972 home economics, and finally to agricultore, the most conservative...
...That bete noir will arrive around 1978...
...Plunkitt: I am the President of the United States of America and as such it is my responsibility to all Americans, male and female, to get myself re-elected in 1972...
...McGeorge Bunch/, liberal president of the Ford Foundation, recently predicted that society will not forever support parasitic appendages that seem dedicated to destroy it...
...Americans have come to believe that all men might he saved by serving a four year term at the public university of their choice...
...Consequently the decline in prestige and demand for the college graduate is upon us...
...Few can name even one conservative...
...I was not aware that you were running for anything this year...
...Columbus, Oh io To the Editor: Send no mere of your trashy magazines to Richard Walker, 707 Elm Street, Belpre, Ohio 45714...
...The growing public awareness of these realities, combined with public annoyance at collegiate mischief has now resulted in a more critical public attitude toward .the university...
...Now what I really need, it seems to me, is one of those moving election year biographies that instill devotion amongst my supporters, befuddlement amongst my opponents and, amongst the voters, an itch to pull my lever --in other words, I need a potboiler...
...As America nears its 200th birthday it stands alone in human history, with more freedom, Food, clothes and shelter than the average family has ever known...
...Oh say it isn't so...
...John Moscow, who wrote the cover gtory on the world's prettiest mayor, is a graduate of the University oJ Chicago...
...The old intellectual discipline of perspective should compel us lo emphasize this truth...
...Can it be that men and the state have rejected them...
...Of course the University has always been politicized in its role of system Grade Inflation promised was threefold: 1) spiritual and intellectual enlightenment...
...Kevka S. Oison is a student at the University of California at San Diego...
...Then, perhaps, we shall be spored the spectacle of "-student leaders" elected by less than five per cent...
...The answer, it seems to me, is for the academy to start presenting both sides of the American dream...
...it can be purchased in all bookstores...
...Precisely this has taken place on American campuses starting in 1970...
...But the big news about this nation is that we have less poverty and injustice than any other ever known...
...As stated above an unstated agreement existed between the university and the state: support for system maintenance in exchange for toleration, indeed subsidization, of i~tellectual nonconformity...
...Edward A..Haeker is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University...
...Now, through this column, the distinguished Dr...
Vol. 5 • May 1972 • No. 8
