Announcer: From the nation's capital, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
presents "Public Policy Forums," a series of programs featuring the nation's top authorities
presenting their differing views on the vital issues which confront us. Today's topic, "Professors,
Politicians, and Public Policy." Peter Hackes: Most American presidents going far
back into the last century have sought advice and council from the nation's colleges and
universities. Many presidents have appointment prominent professors to high government positions.
Many members of the academic community have served in either the house or the senate.
In more recent days, presidents have called on advisory groups of college and university
experts to lend their expertise in trying to solve the nation's problems. College professors
frequently testify before congressional committees the pros or cons of proposed legislation.
Over the years, what has been the impact of universities on public policy and what exactly
is the proper role academia should play in government, if any? In short, what is or what
should be the relationship between campus and government? In recent years universities
have become, in many cases, the center of adversary culture. What is the importance
of academia as an attitude-generating body? How do ideological undercurrents at universities
affect our society?
Welcome to another "Public Policy Forum," presented by AEI, the American Enterprise
Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, research and education organization. Our experts will
be discussing the topic, Professors, Politicians, and Public Policy. Appearing on our panel
are:
S. I. Hayakawa, Republican Senator from California. Senator Hayakawa is familiar with both academia
and politics, having taught at four colleges, and most recently having served as president
of San Francisco State University. Senator Hayakawa is known worldwide for his writings
on linguistics and semantics.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democratic Senator from New York. Senator Moynihan is also at
home in both worlds having been a Harvard professor for many years and having served
in a cabinet or subcabinet position with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. He has
been a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to India.
Robert Bork is Chancellor Kent professor of law and legal history at Yale University and
a recent resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was solicitor general
of the United States from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Bork is the author of a detailed study of
the political activities of colleges and universities.
Irving Kristol is a senior fellow of the America Enterprise Instate and Henry R. Luz professor
of urban values at New York University. He is co-editor with Nathan Glazer of "The Public
Interest" magazine. Long prominent in the world of ideas, he has been an editor of "Encounter"
and "Commentary" magazines and is a member of the board of contributors of "The Wall
Street Journal."
Moderating the discussion is John Charles Daly, former news correspondent and analyst
at both CBS and ABC. He is former director of the Voice of America. Now, here is Mr.
Daly.
Mr. Daly: This "Public Policy Forum," part of a series presented by the American Enterprise
Institute is concerned with the basic relationship between academia and government. The discussion
alliteratively entitled "Professors, Politicians, and Public Policy." Our panel is a splendid
mix, professors all with two now serving as United States senators, another former solicitor
general of the United States, and the fourth, an editor who has described himself as, "A
journalist, at best a man of letters." We established a broad base for the dialog. Gentleman,
will you in turn address briefly the question, "How deeply has academia affected government
policy?" First, Senator Moynihan.
Sen. Moynihan: Sam and I agreed ahead of time...he's decided that we say "academia."
Mr. Daly: I knew I was going to have that problem.
Sen. Moynihan: And you can remember that by thinking of academia nuts. A brief proposition,
it may not be that we're the best people to ask. I think of that occasion when Oscar Wilde
was taken to view Niagara Falls. He stared a moment and turned and said, "You know, it
would be more impressive if it flowed the other way." And I think maybe the audience
would be a better judge. Academia has influenced policy in the whole experience of government
in the West, from the times of the church fathers to...Adam Smith was a professor. I
think what we've seen in our time is the way academia has affected the personnel of politics.
I was a member of the cabinet of President Ford, a solid, sensible, serious man. The
only time I ever doubted him, I think, was I was sitting at...we had a cabinet meeting
one morning and I looked around and what did I see in that rather small table of 14 chairs,
but 6 professors. The secretary of state was a professor, the secretary of defense was
a professor, the attorney general was a professor, the secretary of labor was a professor, the
secretary of agriculture was a professor, and the U.S. permanent representative at the
United Nations. This is new, and I think it affects the way people think about politics
and it's the big change from the long hegemony of lawyers in American political life.
Mr. Daly: All right Professor Kristol.
Prof. Kristol: Back in the 19th century in the frontier towns of the West, a professor
used to be defined as the man who played the piano in the bordello. And if
you watch old Western movies in the late, late show you'll still see a cowboy coming
into the bar and telling the player to play something and address him as "Professor."
This seem to suggest that at that time Americans did not have a particularly high opinion of
professors when it came to doing serious things, though they obviously had skills, say at the
piano, that the average American did not have.
I think that has changed radically in the past century or century-and-a-half. Today,
professors are, together with their satellite group, the media, the only sector of our society
which claims the right to define the public interest. Every other sector in the society
is now defined as a special interest. Professors are the ones who know what the public interest
is and have gained credibility in terms of their power to define it.
Mr. Daly: Senator Hayakawa?
Sen. Hayakawa: It often seems to me, to take the matter outside of our own country, that
one of the problems of communism is that it's a dictatorship of intellectuals, and mostly
professors, that is insofar as a nation is governed by ruling ideology whether Marxism
or any other ism, it is essentially a dictatorship of people who have read the sacred books,
know the answers to all problems of public interest, and therefore, are able to define
what is good for everybody far better than, let us say, the hardware man, the blacksmith,
the accountant, or the realtor. Professors really know their way around in the world
of ideas and the world of moral values.
Now, in this country we have not gone as far, by any means, as the Communist nations in
elevating the ideologue, the ideologist, theoretician, to a lofty place in society. But when Pat
described President Ford's cabinet I thought we were getting their pretty fast.
Mr. Daly: Professor Bork?
Prof. Bork: Well, I guess I think it's arguable, indeed I will argue, that professors are probably
the single most influential class in terms of public policy in the United States, and
that's not only because they man administrations. I know that Pat Moynihan has manned the last
half dozen administrations in this country. But it's because they're verbalists. They
are skilled in ideas and they're quite articulate. And that happens to be a very intimidating
and very influential style in this society. And I think it's demonstrable, maybe we'll
get into it later, that our foreign policy would be quite different were it not for the
influence of the professoriate. The outcome, I suppose, of Vietnam War probably heavily
influenced by the attitude of the campuses. And domestic policy, I think we have been
moving in directions that the professoriate has wanted us to move for a long time, most
scholarly work and speaking pushes in that direction.
Mr. Daly: All right, Misters Ladd and Lipset, authors of "The Divided Academy," quote President
John Adams as saying in 1798, "I really begin to think, or rather to suspect, that learned
academies not under the immediate inspection and control of government have disorganized
the world and are incompatible with social order." Well, now that we are 200 years old
as a nation, does our history show that to be true?
Sen. Moyhihan: If I can say there's a transition in what John Adams was saying because he was
speaking of the universities of clerics. And the role of the cleric, from the Middle Ages
and the Christian and Hebraic tradition, was an academic intellectual one, and Sam, that's
a problem for you. In what way was the 17th century different from the 20th century in
terms of the influence of people whose main interest was ideology and whose normal focus
locus was in the university, Cambridge University in the 17th century?
Sen. Hayakawa: Well, it seems to me that we have often had government by soldiers as a
ruling class. And certainly, we had a very, very different quality of government in those
times. And then, of course, landowners have governed in other times of world history.
And sometimes there were combinations of landowners and soldiers and farmers. What Professor Bork
says about the culture being predominantly verbal and one in which the verbalist has
perhaps more than his due share of influence as opposed to the, say, seafarer, or the aviator,
or the engineer, or the physician, people who do things with something other than words,
in addition to words. I'm not sure that it is an entirely good thing for a culture. As
a semanticist, which is me as I have spent pretty much my professional career in the
study of words and their influence on human affairs, I really have come to distrust those
whose lives are exclusively preoccupied with them.
Prof. Kristol: I think the big difference between the academy today and what we might
call the clerisy of yesterday is the convergence that has taken place over the last century
between the world of thought and the world of action. The clerisy of yesterday, the professor
of a hundred years ago, was assumed to be a scholar and a teacher who lived pretty much
in an ivory tower. And, in fact, he was supposed to live in an ivory tower. It was assumed
that he had great knowledge of certain things but that this knowledge was not necessarily
a good guide to practical action. So that no one turned to them, or rarely were they
turned to for guidance on matters of public policy. They were moralists, they were philosophers,
they were influential in general terms, as Adam Smith was, but it really wasn't until
quite late in the 19th century that they begin to be taken seriously as "experts."
Now, in our day, of course, professors are taken very seriously as having matters of
tactical import on public policy. Every professor of the United States is convinced that his
opinions ought to be sought out on matters of public policy, that they are relevant to
matters of public policy. If you tell a professor these days he lives in an ivory tower then
he becomes very indignant and will explain to you that he doesn't live in an ivory tower
at all. If you suggest to him that he ought to live in an ivory tower, he thinks you're
mad. They have come out of the ivory tower. And what we have now in this country are some
600,000 professors, some of whom are genuinely interested in teaching and scholarship, a
considerable number of whom who happened to be teachers and scholars or happened to hold
university positions, but their major interest is in worldly affairs and they want to help
run the world.
Prof. Bork: You know, if you are gonna discuss the question of how has the academic world
changed and why does this influence changed, I supposes the single largest factor would
be simply the explosion in size of the academic world. There was a time when the professor
was, and the university was small enough so that it didn't feel itself to be a class with
special interest of its own and influence of its own. Now, the number of professors
and the number of students, the size of universities has increased so much that we have a critical
mass, which feels itself to be a distinct group with distinct interest of its own, attitudes
of its own, which it now offers to society and indeed presses upon the society with a
suggestion that the society which does not accept their ideas is morally deficient.
Sen. Moynihan: I think Bob Bork has said something important about presumption of academics and
professors, that they know something other people ought to accept, and it's a kind of
a play on word, professor-profession. There is a very different...there's a problem in
democracy when a large number of persons who would define themselves as professionals are
in positions of leadership, because we have not paid much attention to the profession
and their development. There is a move to professionalize everything, I mean undertakers
want to be a profession and things like that. But the real professions are able to look
somebody in the eye and say, "You think you know but you don't know, I know." And that's
what it says here on the wall, "I know, you don't know." That's not a relationship of
a democratic politician to a democratic citizen. It's different, isn't it?
Mr. Daly: Well, now, Professor Kristol, I think you defined an intellectual as a man
who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.
Does that fit in with what...?
Prof. Kristol: Well...
Sen. Moynihan: Now, wait just a second. [inaudible 00:17:12] And the competence of professions
is very real, but in any event the important thing is the society has accepted that the
idea of their competency. Society accepts the idea that only a dentist can tell a dentist,
and you should be a dentist...
Prof. Bork: Pat, I think you're missing something, though, which is that a professional with
a degree on the wall, which says he is qualified to talk to you about law, because he is a
professor, will talk to you about everything else but law and expects you to listen to
him anyway. And we've got linguists who know all about the war in Vietnam and we know we
get...the one I was referring to isn't here this evening.
Sen. Moynihan: No, he's not.
Prof. Bork: And we got economists who know all about moral values and they're listened
to because they're professors even though it's not their...
Sen. Moynihan: Bob, we used to have...the primal profession in our society was the clerisy,
the church. It gave way to the lawyer, and the lawyer spoke on a wide range of subjects.
Prof. Bork: That is surely justified.
Prof. Kristol: No, no. I think you've touched on an important point, Pat. The lawyer was
not given credibility as an expert in these matters because he had studied law books,
but because it was assumed that the practice of law had brought him a great deal of worldly
wisdom. He knew a great deal about the affairs of men, and above all, he knew how to adjudicate
quarrels, which is what the essence of politics is after all.
Prof. Bork: More than that. There was a time when the knowledge professions that have proliferated
recently did not exist and the only profession of verbalists were the lawyers.
Prof. Kristol: But, you know, we're touching here on something terribly important, which
is the...I want to return to it...the convergence of the realms of thought and the realms of
action. In the United States today, any professor of international relations, let us say, well,
that's not fair, most professors of international relations genuinely believe that they know
how to run American foreign policy. And most professors of economics believe that they
know how to run the economy and would very much like to have the chance to do it, to
show that they can do it. The university of yesteryear did not have such people for the
most part. For the most part, it had people who thought they were educating. Now, they
might want to educate public opinion in certain ways, but they did not have the feeling that
somehow they were peculiarly suited to run things.
Prof. Kristol: There is a terribly important point here, namely that when you're in the
hands of professionals who, in fact, don't know what to do but nevertheless have the
professional...the only professional authority to do it. I think it was George Bernard Shaw
who said that prior to...that the history...it was only after 1905 that doctors started to
do more good to their patients than harm. In other words, it is possible though...
Sen. Moynihan: No, no.
Prof. Kristol: Wasn't it George Bernard Shaw?
Sen. Moynihan: No, that's not Shaw. That's [inaudible 00:20:32]. That is a very careful
research about...and it's a dispute in medicine. At what point in time did the random patient
meeting the random doctor with the random disease turn out to be better off than otherwise?
And some say 1910, others say 1921. They learned a lot from their mistakes, though. They did.
But what Shaw said in "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion," in "Maxims
for Revolutionists," he said, "Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach." And that's your
problem, you don't like it. You think...you agree with Shaw.
Prof. Kristol: No. Nevertheless, doctors were a profession prior to 1905, and the fact that
they may have done you more harm than good, on a randomized basis, did not stop them from
being doctors with a certain claim to expertise. Now, if you're talking about economists, I
have a dreadful feeling that we may be at 1903 or 1893. That is, they are the only experts
we have but I'm not at all sure that they are doing more good than harm. They have a
lot of theories and they are sure their theories are worthwhile and important, and I'm not
so sure the world has improved all that much since we began governed by people's economic
theories rather than by men of experience using some common sense.
Sen. Moynihan: Come on, Irving, that's not so. Would you like to work at the average
hourly wages in the garment industry of 1903? No. Now, all right, there are two things here.
Prof. Kristol: Does that have to do with economic theory or no?
Sen. Moynihan: We are talking about the advance of knowledge, which has shaped our whole lives
and the fundamental phenomenon is technology and the great mistrust about technology has
come out of academia and some measure of managing has also come with it. And let's be, I think,
clear that there are nuts among the professoriate, but much the greater number are people who
have, just because they are a profession, or in fact, have the security of tenure, as
it were to say...as a matter of fact, we don't know anything about that. And you know the
people, Bob and Sam, I mean most of your best colleagues when you ask them really difficult
questions say, "I don't know."
And who began stating that the things in economics were not known? Herb Stein, when was chairman
of the council. He's an impeccable academic. He said, "You don't know." A couple of years
later, Arthur Burns, you know, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, went before the
committees of Congress and put it in a nice sort of indirect way. He said, "Things aren't
working the way they used to work," which is to say...
Prof. Kristol: The question is whether they used to work the way they used to work, but
never mind. No, look, I mean I understand, Pat. We're not talking about our friends.
I mean they are the good academics, right? They don't go around saying they know things
when, in fact, they know they don't know. In fact, some of us are making a profession
out of explaining how much we and others don't know. That's known as critical sociology.
Mr. Daly: I'm not sure we've gotten down to the specific. Would you try to draw your picture?
Prof. Bork: No, I was thinking that we're leading up in a way through this discussion
of the economist, a majority of the good ones say they don't know and, of course, how many
good ones there are at that point because relevant. But I think we may be leasing up
to the question of whether the professoriate has characteristic viewpoints, whether there
is a general outlook of intellectuals and...I'm not gonna try that word, academicians as a
class.
Mr. Daly: I wish I hadn't.
Prof. Bork: Which leads public policy in particular directions, and that's wider than economics
and it's wider than law. And I supposed the book by Ladd and Lipset, to which Mr. Daly
referred, shows what we all know from common observation that, in fact, the professors
at particularly the most prestigious universities tend rather strongly to be left liberal and
to have preferences for more government regulation in economics as in social matters. And I think
foreign policy matters tend to be less aggressive or less likely to defend aggressive American
actions overseas. And that may be more important than the assumption of verbalists to have
expertise they may not have, the fact that the pressure, the outlook, the verbalization
is primarily in one direction.
Mr. Daly: The one conclusion, I think, in the "Divided Academy" was in a sense against
that particular train of thought. They, I think, made a conclusion that discipline,
a specific field of intellectual activity, differentiates faculty political orientation
to such a high degree as to make questionable the wisdom of references. They noticed the
difference between social studies and engineering, for instance.
Sen. Moynihan: I mean there's a hierarchy...well, you can scale people. I mean if you want a
real conservative, find a geologist. If you want a next most real conservative, find an
agronomist. If you're looking for the other end, find a sociologist. And we know that
about each other. We're good at...
Prof. Bork: No. We know that but the interesting thing is that...
Sen. Hayakawa: Well, it seems to me that this deals with the fundamental distinction among
human beings that I love to play with. There are the people whose lives, the whole meaning
of their lives revolves around the handling of symbols, words. They are the intellectuals,
they are the preachers, they're the lawyers, they're the media people, they're the people
who speculate in grain futures without ever harvesting a bushel of grain, but they are
verbalists. Then there are the people who, I shall say, these are the symbol handlers.
Now, there's the other people who are, I should say, the thing handlers. They can be engineers,
because whatever words or diagrams they produce ultimately has to validate itself in a bridge
that stands up, in a building that sustains its own weight, and so on. So I would say
that both class has used words and symbols. There's one class whose words are ultimately
validated in a nonverbal event as in the case of a farmer or an agronomist or an engineer
or geologist. And then there are those like philosophers, sociologists, English majors
like me, and lawyers like you whose words do not come under the discipline
of that load in the truck that shifts without you knowing it. Now, so your truck turns over
it. Your words are not subject to the discipline of the great steamship that wanders off course
because the fact is you didn't talk about in your lecture on navigation.
Now, this is the great division, and if there's something wrong with our culture and our whole
general direction is not just academia, it's the whole class of symbol manipulators who
rule the world. Now, William Rusher was sort of groping for this when he said that the
world is divided into producers and non-producers. And, of course, as a verbalist himself, he
had to classify himself as non-producer. But he classified among the non-producers, the
intellectuals, and media people. And if there is any amelioration of the condition under
which so many of us suffer from the barrage of windbags all over the place and I refer
to ourselves as well as the media people. The people who handle symbols, it seems to
me, will all require this discipline in rooting our ultimate experience in the nonverbal world.
And so this is why I've always felt that all of us in the verbal professions ought to take
up something nonverbal...
Sen. Moynihan: Sam, how can you say that? The only things that matter are symbols. Everybody
knows that.
Sen. Hayakawa: I know, I know.
Sen. Moynihan: What does the bible say, "In the beginning was the word?"
Mr. Daly: Professor Kristol, you have the floor.
Prof. Kristol: I want to elaborate on what Sam Hayakawa was saying because I think he
has put his finger on it exactly. If you would ask what is that one thing that professors
and intellectuals...and by the way, it's interesting that we seem to be using the two terms interchangeably.
As Bob Nisbet once pointed out, 75 years ago if you wanted to criticize a professor, you
called him an intellectual. And if you wanted to criticize an intellectual, you call him
academic. They were two different worlds. The intellectuals were not in universities,
they were out in Greenwich Village or somewhere out there, ones supposed to be in universities.
But there has been a merger in that academicians have taken over the attitude of intellectuals,
and of course, intellectuals are now located on campuses.
But the one thing I think that is true are both professors and intellectuals of the world
today is that they are rationalists. They believe that...put it this way, that if you
know the right theory, you can back the right cake. And that practical experience in baking
cakes is not all that important. They think if you have the right theory of politics,
practical wisdom about the governance of men and woman is not so important. This is what
Michael Oakeshott calls the rationalist's fallacy, that if you know the theory of it
you also know the practice of it. But the world of fact, the world of reality is a very
recalcitrant world, recalcitrant to theory, and you know, it reminds of the famous story
of the Israeli young man who tried to volunteer for the Navy and he was interviewed and they
asked him, "Can you swim?" And he said, "No, but I know but I know the theory of it." There
is a difference, and many of the important things in this world cannot be learned systematically.
They can only be learned by practical experience, by having a sense, as a cook has a sense,
of just how much to put in, how much not to put in.
Sen. Hayakawa: Exactly, exactly.
Prof. Kristol: Government is a practical art, not a theoretical art, and one of the problems
we suffer from at the moment is the infusion into government of political science, political
theory, and the...
Sen. Hayakawa: Sociology.
Prof. Kristol: ...sociology, and the extrusion of practical wisdom.
Sen. Hayakawa: That's right.
Sen. Moynihan: Government is altogether a theoretical art. It deals fundamentally with
symbols and it's the only thing people really care about. It's the only thing they'll die
for. It's the thing they most live for. And that troubles you, and I don't blame you for
being troubled but it is the truth, Irving.
Prof. Kristol: Yeah. But when they come...
Sen. Hayakawa: It's very beautiful what you say, Pat, you know, that you have a theory
of housing for the poor, and we have lots and lots of wonderful theoreticians who have
lots of theories about housing for the poor and that's why we still have a housing problem
for the poor.
Mr. Daly: Professor Kristol.
Prof. Kristol: Well, no, I agree with you, Pat, that, no, the symbols of authority are
in some ultimate sense of ultimate importance, but the symbols of authority are not the same
thing as governance. That is acceptance of the symbols of authority permits you to govern,
but then once you have that permission you have the job to do.
Sen. Moynihan: That's right.
Prof. Kristol: And I do think that one of the things that has happened in all of our...it's
not just the United States, it's happened in Western Europe, it's happened in Africa,
it's happened in Asia, is the infusion into the world of practice of various theories
and the depreciation of practical wisdom, of traditional wisdom. You know, it's no longer
good enough to say, "The reason we should do it this way is we have always done it this
way and it seems to work." That's no longer acceptable as a reason for doing something,
and yet it probably is the best reason for doing something in the world.
Prof. Bork: No, but I think Pat's point may be that unfortunately reality can only be
perceived often through theory and symbols, and you have to try to perceive that reality,
as in economics. And somebody, the practical cook, may produce disasters. And the question
is who's the best theorist? Now, the difficulty is, in the symbol world and in the verbalist
world, there is no external discipline. The senator points to that the building doesn't
fall down or if it does fall down you can explain that it's due to some other factor
or that it's due to the fact that you didn't take my theory far enough. But there's no
escape from using theorists and verbalists in these matters I should say.
Prof. Kristol: Now, theorists and verbalists do have a function. I don't mean to ridicule
them. They have a very important role to play in shaping our general way of looking at the
world. But that's different from actually intervening and shaping public policy on particular
issues or in particular spheres. Obviously, if you're an educator you educate people to
view the world in a certain way and professors and intellectuals have that function. Whether
they execute it well or not is another matter, but that no one can take away that particular
function from them. They teach our children and they teach our children how to look at
the world, and that's their job, and I think they should be doing it better than they are
doing. On the other hand, that is not the same thing as the governance of men or the
governance of affairs.
Prof. Bork: We're talking about a class of people which we seem to agree is quite important
and which we seem to agree has problems because it's not subject to external discipline as
it should be. But I wonder if it isn't true, or maybe it isn't, that it forms a class of
people who have distinctive public policy biases, and therefore, tend to mover our public
policy in a particular direction.
Sen. Hayakawa: I believe this does tend to move public policy in certain directions.
It moves people in the direction of often...and being enchanted, over enchanted with, let's
say, a body of theory so that they go in the direction of what Karl Popper calls utopianism.
So you draw a mental picture of a beautiful, beautiful world that you'd like to move reality
to. And it seems to me that insofar as we have utopian elements in our social planning
and social planning itself involves a certain kind of utopianism, even a limited one. Insofar
as we do this, we try to impose a map on the territory and try to make the territory conform
to the map rather than the other way about. Gosh, I'm talking like a general semanticist.
Sen. Moynihan: Well, now, look, I'll tell you what you're talking like. You're talking
like a professor with one of a range of views professors have about how to run government
properly, which is, "Don't do too much." Who do you cite, Sam? You cite Karl Popper. I
studied with him in the London School of Economics. You know, the English have a verb, which is
conjugated, "I am Oxford. You are Cambridge. He is the London School of Economics." I
studied with Popper but may I cite that, you know, in the end the important things really
are big questions where you're gonna end up asking professors about them.
Prof. Kristol: I think Sam Hayakawa has uttered a keyword, utopianism, because one of the
phenomenon...I would not say that it's inevitable but it certainly has been a historical product
of the explosion Bob Bork referred to of the modern academy...has been a strong element
of utopianism in our society. And we had a wonderful instance of this when the president
of the United States said on television that life is unfair. Now, I don't know any taxi
driver in the United States who would disagree with him. Nevertheless, an awful lot of college
graduates got very upset because he said that life is unfair because they have it figured
out that life is not supposed to be unfair, and by God, if given the chance they'll see
to it that it's not unfair.
Mr. Daly: Professor Bork, you raised this issue, as Professor Kristol has just noted,
the spread of education. Now, I think a basic question lies therein, turning the coin around,
has the spread of education, particularly university education, decreased or increased
the acceptance of our society's institutions?
Prof. Bork: I think it's arguable and, in fact, I think it's true that it probably has
decreased the authority, the moral authority of the institutions of the society. The intellectual
class generally tends to be highly critical of traditional institutions and tends to,
as somebody said, actively unfit the students for their future environment. In fact, some
of them think that is their function to make them dissatisfied with their future environment
as somebody else, as Trilling said, "It's not only an adversary intention, it's also
a subversive intention." And I think you can observe a flattening of the American institutional
landscape, in part because of the attitudes inculcated in the university and carried on
to the university's allies, which are the media and the clergy to some extent. And in
that sense I think the influence has been quite harmful to traditional institutions
and values.
Sen. Moynihan: May I ask that Lionel Trilling wrote his essay on the adversary culture in
1947?
Prof. Bork: About then, yeah.
Sen. Moynihan: All right. Now, are we in a cycle or are we in a fixed condition, a stasis?
I mean if you think of the academic who has had the most political influence in our age
in this century surely was Woodrow Wilson. Professor Wilson became president, and surely,
in the most extraordinary way, he confirmed the basic American ideas of the time. He was
scarcely hostile to what was established. His intention was not subversive, much less
adversary. Need we continue in the phase from the 1903s on? Academe was very much supportive
of institutions until the Great Depression and the movement of ethnic groups outside
into them. May they not now cycle into a celebratory or at least, you used the word, "establishment?"
What is the brightest think-tank in Washington? The American Enterprise Institute. Radical,
it is not. Subversive, certainly, no.
Prof. Kristol: Yeah. But I think this has to be said as an addendum to Bob Bork's point,
which is essentially correct that it is one of the functions of education and of intellectuals
to alienate students from their society. I mean that's what education means. You gain
or are supposed to gain a certain detachment from your society, but it is supposed to be
an intellectual detachment.
Sen. Moynihan: Now, Irving, that's not so. Schumpeter laid it down, right? What did Schumpeter
say of capitalism? "That which you most admire," and he said, "What is the whole process of
capitalism? It is a process of creative destruction. And it destroys the usefulness of last year's
automobile, as well as last year's idea." This particular role of the academia, which
I think some of you tend to dissociate from the larger culture and see it in adversary
mold, I think Schumpeter would say, "Never was there more capitalist institution on the
anti-establishmentarian, anti-establishment university." It is the essence of the capitalist
mode. If you don't like that, try feudalism, try socialism, but don't try enterprise. Don't
try enterprise because enterprise keeps saying otherwise.
Prof. Bork: No, but...I'm sorry, go ahead. That's a good point.
Sen. Hayakawa: I just want to catch Pat on this, but Woodrow Wilson had many, many other
characteristics of the intellectual. And the worst one of all that he had was exactly this
utopianism we're talking about. And he drove the world towards an unrealizable dream and
was terribly, terribly disillusioned when he found it was unrealizable and it is sort
of a characteristic tragic story of a...
Sen. Moynihan: Of professors or of Presbyterians, which?
Sen. Hayakawa: Well, yes, all right. No, perhaps both.
Mr. Daly: Professor Bork?
Prof. Bork: Irving said, and I guess some others have said, that it is the characteristic
function of the professor or the intellectual, which is a wider class, to question the status
quo and to produce alienation, intellectual alienation in students. If that were true,
if that were the only explanation of the attitudes we see in professors then I would expect to
see, for example, the universities severely questioning the welfare state, severely questioning
the regulatory state, and undercutting what is today's status quo. I don't think that's
that case.
Prof. Kristol: They don't do that, no.
Prof. Bork: They are not opposed to the status quo, they are opposed to particular institutions.
Prof. Kristol: Now, I was saying there is some propriety in saying that a good education
has an alienating consequence of a kind. I want to defend the notion that education should
liberate the young person to understand the limitations of this society as compared with
previous societies and so you can go home and read the Greek authors and understand
that they were greater than any playwright we have had in our century. But that was intellectual
liberation, a private liberation for your private consumption. It was not assumed in
Harvard in the 1880s that this liberation would then send you out into society to overturn
it. On the contrary, the assumption was...
Sen. Moynihan: Irving, that was what they did in that decade. At Harvard in the 1880s,
all they thought was going out and Christianize America at last. There was a great revival.
Prof. Kristol: I don't think that was changing society.
Sen. Moynihan: Now, I want to speak up for academia because I'll never get back and I
long for it. I miss it. They do preserve. They preserve Aeschylus and they preserve
Plato, and they preserve Trilling. And they go, "Tell me one damn thing General Motors
has ever preserved?" I mean every year there's a new world begun, and everything past is
over, it has to be changed, got rid of.
Prof. Bork: You want General Motors to preserve the car model of 1910? What is it you're...
Sen. Moynihan: I thought 1925 was a good year. I hope so.
Prof. Bork: Your argument might lead to the conclusion that General Motors has moved on
from 1925, but the academic role hasn't.
Sen. Moynihan: Optimalism [SP] is destructive.
Prof. Bork: They're still producing that old, bad model up there in Cambridge.
Sen. Moynihan: I went to the City College and Irving Kristol did too and we don't have
to apologize for that. But I'm telling you, you are in the vortex of the destruction of
values, to it, whatever you had last year, you must be dissatisfied with and get nothing
new.
Prof. Kristol: I think that's a very valid point. I mean capitalism is destructive of
values. And it is no accident that the kind of criticism that professors, for instance,
make of their society and the kind of recommendations they make for public policy never end up with
a suggestion that a policy be instituted which results in less power or prestige or authority
for professors. I mentioned at the beginning the question of the public interest. The way...and
here I'm sure the two senators know more about it than I do. The way our conflict of interest
laws are now being defined, it becomes almost impossible for a businessman to take a job
in government, almost impossible for a trade unionist to take a job in government. The
one group who can take jobs in government are professors. They can take a job in government.
They come right back to the university. There are no conflict of interest. Now, is it an
accident that this is the way the conflict of interest laws are being promulgated?
Sen. Moynihan: May I offer an illustration? I wonder if Sam would agree with me. We just
went through a draconian institution of restraints on how much money any senator could earn outside
from consulting, from lawyering, from doctoring, and so forth. One exception, what was the
exception, Sam?
Sen. Hayakawa: Books, yeah, it's books.
Sen. Moynihan: Yes.
Sen. Hayakawa: Book royalties.
Sen. Moynihan: Book royalties are accepted.
Prof. Kristol: You know, Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago once tried to institute
that at the university. He said, "We are an academic community, therefore, there should
be no conflict of interest. All royalties earned from your textbooks or from your outside
lectures or your outside consultantships will go to the university and we'll pay professors
much better than they had been hitherto, but all professors will be paid alike regardless
of how popular their textbooks are. And the faculty of the University of Chicago was not
about to have that.
Prof. Bork: Well, they had a good point, you know, that you do get more scholarship if
you allow some return from it, unfortunately.
Prof. Kristol: The capitalist [inaudible 00:48:09].
Prof. Bork: Yes, it's capitalist [inaudible 00:48:10].
Sen. Hayakawa: Well, I don't understand what you mean when you say, "Capitalism destroys
values." Could you elaborate on that, anyone? You talked about destroying old automobiles
but like what values are destroyed particularly?
Sen. Moynihan: This is Schumpeter's analysis, that the capitalist spirit appears in the
world, and it appears characteristically in, well, not least in universities, as a rejection
of the established and presumably immutable systems of the Middle Ages, and says no. Change,
question, argue, and it proceeds to de-legitimate the authority of church and Lord and such
things like that and creates its own...by a process of de-legitimating, it created itself.
But, says Schumpeter, "It can't stop there. It will then go on to de-legitimate itself.
And that the vanguard of this will always be the intellectuals." And says he, "The capitalists
will support them, provide for them, pay for them, nurture them," because...
Prof. Kristol: Because they think of the Ford Foundation.
Sen. Moynihan: ...he sees in them the essence of his own being and it's sort of sad that
he knows he's doing it to himself, but he will go on until it's all over. And when it's
all over, they'll be quiet again, and God have mercy on them.
Sen. Hayakawa: Well, thank you, Pat, you've made me awfully glad I've never read Schumpeter.
Prof. Bork: No, but I think...one thing that you said about that and that is I think you're
quite right and Schumpeter is quite right, the capitalist spirit does, being intentionally
rational, tending to quantify things, tending to doubt things, it does destroy traditional
values. The difficulty is, I think, that people don't do awfully well without some transcendental
values to believe in. And the one they tend to turn to now is the secularization of the
spiritual values, which turns out to mean the equality of man, it turns out to mean
socialism and social reform, which is probably what will undo the desire for those transcendental
values coming out in that way is probably what will undo capitalism.
Mr. Daly: I think it's time to open the question and answer session. May I have the first question
please?
Peter: Peter McPherson. I'm a tax lawyer here in town. My question is particularly timely
because Professor Bork has several times raised the question of bias in the academic community.
And since I gather everyone agrees that they are very important community it seems to me
that the panel might want to spend some time trying to figure out why that bias is there
and if the current bias is a long-term one.
Prof. Kristol: I don't like the term bias. It's the wrong word. What we're talking about
here is an intellectual tradition going back well over two centuries, perhaps three centuries,
an attitude toward the world, which is the attitude today, which used to be the attitudes
not of the professor so much but of the intellectual class. It is an attitude, which is rationalistic,
which is in favor of planning as against individual freedom, let us say, in favor of centralized
government as distinct from decentralized government. It is utopian, I think, in the
sense that Sam Hayakawa used that word because they believe that a better world can be made
out of the present world and that they know how to do it because that's their specialty.
So the word bias bothers me. Now, if you're simply saying that the academic community
has a way of looking at the world, which predisposes them to what we call liberalism, neoliberalism,
whatever term you wish, the answer is yes, of course. There's no doubt about that.
Sen. Moynihan: I would give you the thought...I would like to see what Sam thinks about it
that the changing meaning of the word "liberal." Well, academics have always been liberals.
A century ago, a liberal meant impractical government policy, almost the opposite of
what it means today. A century ago, liberal academics were saying, "Reduce the influence
of government." A century later they're saying, "Increase the influence of government." The
same intellectuals are doing it all the time, and holding on to that word. But I think also,
sir...I would make this one question to the gentleman, attorney, this one point that you
mustn't overlook the diversity in academic opinion. And we know, we have a sociology
of knowledge, it is kind of stable. And we know that a physicist tends to be radical
in his politics and an engineer will tend to be conservative. And that reflects something
very fundamental to the kinds of work they do, and it's interesting about government
and politics itself, why are your politics the way they are presented?
Sen. Hayakawa: The engineers don't tell the government how the world should be run, whereas
intellectuals do. And engineers don't classify themselves as intellectuals but as practical
men. There's a real difference in psychology there.
Sen. Moynihan: All right, we agree on that.
Sen. Hayakawa: And so the ultimate ends of society are determined by whom, you know,
maybe the philosophy department or the English department, social science department, but
there are the other kinds of professors who do arrogate themselves the privilege of asking
the question, "What is the world for? What is society for?" To what end should we direct
the society as a whole?" And this is where we get into this utopianism. For once class
to say, "We are the people who have the ultimate answers," that's the typical, let's say, liberal
arts, social science arrogance and I've been fighting that as a professor for a long, long
time. And that is our great, great weakness as professors of philosophy. Now, why is it,
for example, that in the average English department in a large university you have 59 Democrats,
1 Republican, and 40 Maoists?
Mr. Daly: Well, Professor Bork?
Prof. Bork: Yeah. Senator Hayakawa raised the point that I wanted to. Senator Moynihan
is talking about the diversity in the academic world. That diversity does not exist in the
departments that have to do with policy in the most prestigious universities. And, in
fact, I have had the conversation that followed from your point, Senator Hayakawa, when I
once said that I was dubious about a Maoist and the answer I was given was, "But we have
to have a Maoist to balance the Stalinist we already have."
There is, in the policy sciences and in the professions, in the law schools, for example,
you do find 40 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Now, that's a rough proxy for something else,
I understand, but still it reflects something. In recruitment, it is heavily skewed. Now,
I think that has implications both for domestic policy in the sense that the academic world
in the policy sciences and in the law schools is heavily in favor of increasing governmental
intervention in the society and its processes, usually in favor of greater equality and redistribution
of wealth, which I think has long run implications that are not too favorable for the preservation
of capitalism and for the preservation of free society.
We haven't mentioned the other aspect, which is the influence of intellectuals or the academic
world upon foreign affairs and foreign policy. And I would throw out...remind you that George
Orwell wrote about this subject. He said, "Towards the end of World War II when it was
quite plain that the Nazis were going to lose and that England was going to win, the intellectual
classes remained more defeated in England than any other class and talked about negotiation
peace or finding some resolution with Germany, rather than carrying the war to a continuation."
Orwell suggested, and much or our experience may suggest, that academics and intellectuals,
as a class at least, have less staying power in world contests unless perhaps faith in
the fact that this kind of a society is ultimately a better kind of society than those nations
we are in a contest with. If that is true then that has long-run serious implications.
Sen. Moynihan: But Orwell also said, did he not, that this was because they have more
imagination?
Prof. Bork: Well, whether or not it's because they have more imagination...
Sen. Moynihan: Which is what they're good at, that's their trade, having imagination.
They can imagine defeat where people with less imagination couldn't, thank God.
Prof. Bork: No. Not if you're saying that they could imagine the pains one would have
to go through to arrive at victory and, therefore, were less willing to put up with it.
Sen. Moynihan: Both. Yeah.
Prof. Bork: But what I was trying to say is that if that is their characteristic for whatever
reason and if they are a terribly influential class, then that has implications for our
ability to conduct, over a period of decades, a rivalry, and a contest with the Soviet Union.
Mr. Daly: All right. I think this concludes another "Public Policy Forum" presented by
the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. On behalf of AEI, our heartfelt
thanks to the distinguished panelists and experts in the audience for their participation.
Peter: This "Public Policy Forum on Campus Influences on Our Political System" has brought
you the views of four leading experts in the field. It was presented by AIE, the American
Enterprise Institute. It is the aim of AEI to clarify the issues of the day by presenting
many viewpoints in the hope that by so doing those who wish to learn about the decision-making
process will benefit from such a free exchange of informed and enlightened opinion. I'm Peter
Hackes in Washington.
The "Public Policy Forum" series is created and supplied to this station as a public service
by the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. For a transcript of this program, send
$2 to The American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th Street Northwest Washington, D.C. 20036.
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