Washington Report: Protestor Kissinger

...Yet all is not necessarily lost: it is quite possible that some sort of reasonably acceptable formula may emerge for producing a study that would gain wide (if far from universal) acceptance, and thus result in the possibility of a genuine strategy for change...

...But it was not designed to produce a blueprint, or any kind of dogmatic solution, thought out in the abstract from the top downwards and then imposed universally...

...Academic freedom has to do with the three areas of scholarly activity: research, publication and teaching...

...The impressing of rich people impressed by celebs is no small service to the modern university...

...If the foreign servant aspirants at Georgetown find themselves being bugged, that is merely valuable career training for a future in a State Department shaped by Kissinger...

...The only hope on the horizon lies in the transformation that sometimes takes place when a strident oppositionist finds himself the leader of the government...

...On the contrary, it was an attempt to encourage the free expression of ideas and views by everyone interested, in the hope that some good and fruitful suggestions might turn up...

...One of them does...

...This was a "kite-flying" exercise: that is to say, a preliminary stating of tentative suggestions and conclusions, inviting widespread comment from all and sundry...

...A cushion...

...What was proposed was that Kissinger's ancient benefactors and sponsors, the Rockefellers, should endow a new, special chair at Columbia to be occupied by the great Nixonian whenever he happened to be on the upper West Side and feeling like sitting down...

...Worse: got canned by Ford...

...This is the idea that the Church of the future will consist, not of territorial "parishes," which exist (in theory) to include, and cater for the needs and activities of, everyone in their boundaries...

...True, one particular crisis, of a foreseeable kind, may have sparked it off, namely the decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious orders...

...Were protests against his pulling up that chair and sitting in it infringements of his freedom of speech or of the academic freedom of top university management to seek a sock-o fundraising attraction...

...Begin obviously shook them, with Arab countries and the PLO alike calling the election results a serious setback to efforts for a Middle East settlement...

...WASHINGTON REPORT PROFESSOR KISSINGER Was Henry Kissinger entitled to an endowed chair in History at Columbia University...

...The Rocks actually have their own university, in a much classier part of town than Columbia's and unencumbered by all those raucous students and politically alert faculty...

...He does have his penchant for listening to other people's conversations...

...After a false start as the avenging angel against Rivera's murals in Rock Center, Rocky came back strong as the biggest eater of ethnic foods in the history of New York State, was a real Pop hero, fella, seemed an eventual shoo-in for the top spot and then, somehow, blew it all, got outclassed by the loathsome Nixon, ended up as the toady of Nixon's toady, Ford...

...Then too the need to fashion a coalition broad enough to support a government may force him to temper his views to some extent...

...This would have cost the university nothing----or at least nothing that the accountants commonly in charge of academic enterprise could find for the debit side...

...but of what it call~, somewhat mysteriously, "basic Christian communities," and within these, "small groups" dedicated to working, as Christians, 24 lune 1977:390...

...The title is University Professor of Diplomacy, the affiliation is to the university's School of Foreign Service, a kind of trade school...

...If it is obvious why Kissinger needed to be washed in the blood of a legitimate university, it is less so why the Rockefellers approached the font With him...

...This is a pamphlet of about 50 pages, based on the original ideas but revised in the hght of the many criticisms and suggestions made in the intervening period...

...It was also no small service the university was repay24 lune 1977:388 ing its benefactors and their dependent in setting up the chair for Henry, even though it was a service without cost in cost accounting...

...The university got, first of all, the endowment of the chair itself, which presumably, once the Mad Bomber was called to other business in this world or the next, would have reverted to Columbia free and clear, with the Rockefellers no longer entitled to name the occupant, the university able to appoint a genuine scholar to a previously non-existent benefice...

...The creation of the working-party, then, was an exercise in "participation...

...The first recommendation of basic importance is for a critical study of the myriad organizations in the Church in the light of present-day needs...

...What strategy do we need to adopt now to create such a church...

...Indeed, in view of the existing show biz engagements of the showman, it's hard to see how anyone could have imagined he could have fit in any academic work of any kind at all...

...The danger is that Mr...

...As for the PLO, their position is simply that former Irgun leader "Begin is a terrorist and should face trial as a war criminal...

...In any case, later in the Report, the working-party does say something about present-dhy lieCds which would presumably be the basis for such a strategy...

...It is a terrible thing to have to say, hut it seems clear that the chances of war in the Middle East are much greater now than they were just a few short weeks ago...

...What now can be the attitude of the United States toward the hawkish new Israeli administration...

...Clearly, Columbia was called for...

...But Kissinger had de-legitimated himself as an academician by becoming a prime Nixonian...

...But why, after the hospitals, after the schools, after the grants, after all this and so much more, why do the Rocks need to be made legitimate...

...In a period of economic and indeed general recession, it is good to see somebody suggesting building new things, and not just hanging on to what has not yet been destroyed...

...Willy nilly, Mr...

...This was in itself a fairly remarkable event...

...Since the Likud resolutely bars any negotiations over the West Bank or the Gaza strip or indeed any consideration of a Palestinian homeland, this response is hardly surprising...

...What it is hoped will now happen is that the results of this whole exercise, including reactions and comments on the latest, and final series of recommendations, will be collated and presented to a large conference in early 1978, which will have the power to take decisions and initiate some of the action requested by the working-party...

...Said Jordan's King Hussein: "Likud's position on borders is very menacing...

...The question here never was that of disagreement with Kissinger's views on foreign policy, or domestic policy, for that matter: if universities started disqualifying officials on the grounds of being soft on Nixon, they'd soon run out of trustees...

...Probably because Rock U. really is legit, in some ways the closest approach we have to the university as a community of scholars in pursuit of truth and the advancement of learning...

...Some thought it too tame and unadventuroas...

...Begin may have to strike a more moderate note once he bears the responsibility of the Prime Minister's office...

...They don't...

...But the real crisis was: why this "shortage...

...Meanwhile, friends of Israel, both those inside and outside of Congress, can use their good offices: they should urge on the new Israeli regime a policy of moderation and flexibility in an effort to head off a potential disaster...

...If so, what sort of church do we need to cope with the world as we are likely to find it in (say) 2000 A.D...

...that fed Kissinger so long and was extended to Columbia on his behalf, would stint the paragon's needs for mini-mikes, wiring and wireless, the tape machine in the basement and a squad of ex-FBI agents on station...

...others said it was a sell-out to "the evil tendencies of the modern world...

...If Kissinger's record of duplicity and destruction as Secretary of State has disqualified him as an historian--the underlying assumption of the Columbia protests--that same record has made him preeminently qualified to teach that particular trade...

...The first interesting thing about the report is its deliberately provocative title: "A Time for Building...

...Of course, in the absence of any consensus about what these needs are, it might seem (to a more logical mentality than that of the English, even the Roman Catholic English) that this suggestion is merely a recipe for fruitless bickering: and the Report certainly does not say how it thinks such a critical study should, or could, be made, or by whom...

...It was as if, say, David Garrick had been hired by Bottom the Weaver for a bit part in these theatricals they were putting on for the Duke and after a rehearsal or two told, sorry, pal, you're just not in this league, whyncha go back an' warm up a bit in "Springtime for Henry...

...Equally significant was the Arab reaction...

...The question has been rather whether K. has completely disqualified himself as a member of the community of scholars by his conduct in office...

...For one thing, Kissinger is not being classed by his new employer as an historian...

...Was the answer not to be sought in changes in outlook on the part of the younger, post-war, post-Vatican II, post-Christian generation...

...Springtime for Henry...

...Were members of Columbia's history department being paranoid or properly prudent if they feared that once Henry got in, they'd all be bugged--and at home as well as in the office...

...Others again, just thought it, like the curate's egg, to be good in parts...

...The working party produced a report, in 1974, called "The Church 2000...

...FRANK GETLEIIq 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM BRITAIN A PHSTORH STBHTEGY In 1971 a "working party" was set up by the Catholic bishops in England and Wales and by the National Conference of Priests, to "study the question of a pastoral strategy for the Church" in this country...

...The working party has now just published its final report...

...Since most Americans have never heard of Rockefeller University--no football, baseball, basketball, or students--if the Chair were announced, most Americans, taught to be cynics by the Old Man, among others, would automatically conclude that the university itself had been created solely as one more lagniappe for Henry: the whole legitimation of the Rocks would be in danger...

...Of course, it could be cynically said that all the report asks for is the ecclesiastical equivalent of Mr...

...They are expensive, but can we believe that the hand...

...True, there's not much searching analysis of fundamental causes here: yet perhaps that is a strength of a sort, in that the report is patient of genuine analysis, without pretending to being more than a superficial survey of the territory...

...The New York Times reported with a straight face that "Washington Ties Led Kissinger to Pick Georgetown," but the appointment is more suitable than the Columbia one in several ways...

...It is a very interesting and thought-provoking document...

...Ever since the Old Man made it big by stealing the pennies off dead men's eyes, the children and the children's children, yea, unto the present generation, have been legitimating away at a good clip in public service, benefactors of all kinds and giving borrowers a friend at Chase Manhattan...

...To the Likud, the captured areas are rightfully in Israel's domain because they are part of the biblical Jewish homeland...

...Kissinger's remote past provided at least some vague justification for the chair and the rest...

...On this we can only wait and hope...

...Admittedly, the group, was almost (not entirely) clerical in composition: but at any rate it was given the task of doing some freewheeling reflection, with no holds barred, on the state of the Church in Britain and what should be done about it for the long-term future...

...Rocky...

...Besides the future benefaction of the chair and its endowment, the university would have the immediate advantage of Henry as an attraction to big givers...

...Begin and Likud will maintain this rigid stance, insisting that the conquered territories are part of Israel, perhaps even formally annexing them and denying full civil and political rights to the Arab inhabitants...

...If he would think not, neither would he lecture, at least Kissinger would probably have been available for the occasional private meeting or intimate party for heavy donors just on the edge of signing the final codicil...

...Well, it's all ended happily at Georgetown, where Kissinger will have his coveted academic rank at a university of at least some national standing...

...Arab leaders like to pretend that there is no difference between Israeli leaders, that the distinction between hawk and dove in Israel is meaningless, but the victory of Mr...

...When we get further into the Repert, we find more important things being said, and some quite radical suggestions being seriously put forward...

...Such a course would make impossible any solution to the Palestinian problem, which is precisely what Arab leaders see as the core of the Middle East problem...

...Commonweal: 389 Finally, of course, if Henry Kissinger actually does lecture, as it is announced that he will, in those surroundings those performances will revive an ancient, useful and now almost forgotten meaning of the word "Jesuitical...

...The Roekefellers are keeping their money, although Georgetown will be crazy not to put on the touch for some calculable fraction of the Columbia offer: O.K., it's not Columbia, but it's not Whittier College, either: if not a chair, how about a stool...

...On the record, properly prudent...

...As soon as you phrase the question that waymin accordance, that is, with the situation as it actually existed--you begin to get a new light and in that light to see that the whole affair had nothing at all to do with the academic freedom of anyone...

...Not likely...

...Before he became the nation's leading bomber and bugger, he had been a scholar...

...Predictably, reactions were mixed...

...The history faculty's fears were justified...

...But there is no real need to see it this way, even though the introductory section, which describes the world in which we live (the "General Ethos of Society"), reads much like a set of Sundaynewspaper clichrs...

...What was proposed was never that Kissinger should occupy an existing scholarly post at Columbia and in it conduct either historical research or the supervision of the research of apprentice historians...

...He also has a penchant for bombing people, but whereas effective bombing programs are hard to come by for a private citizen, even a celebrity as celebrated as Kissinger, bugging systems of exquisite sophistication are readily, universally, available in New York...

...Callaghan's big drive for productivity through better use and investment of resources: a sort of updating of the capitalist Church...

...What is the Israeli vision of the shape and size of Israel...

...Why couldn't they have simply set up the Henry Kissinger Chair in Universal Wisdom over at Rock U., with a view of the East River and handy to Sutton Place soirres...

...Besides that, of course, there is about as much hope of Kissinger actually telling the truth about the field in which he is most expert as there is of Kissinger's own prodigy--fleas have fleas--Al Haig telling the inside story of how he rose from battalion commander to Captain-General of the Free World with no military experience at all between those two ranks...

...It wasn't, after all, like making Walter Annenberg codirector of the Metropolitan Museum of Art---or ambassador to Britain, for that matter---on the basis of his success as a second-generation race-track tout...

...What the institution was doing was providing the re-legitimation of Henry Kissinger and hence of his sponsors, the Big Rocks...

...The difficulties here for United States foreign policy are obvious, and the stakes are high...

...If Begin persists in saying the West Bank is Israeliliberated territory and not to be evacuated, we wonder what he considers as the complete map of Israel...

...None of the three was remotely involved in the proposals or prospects for Henry Kissinger at Columbia...

...Of course...