DISMAY ABOUT DIVERSITY
I enjoyed “Exit Interview” (July/August) but was dismayed to see that more than 80 percent of the Class of 2008 endorse the Obama- Clinton-Edwards-Kucinich point of view on government's role in our lives.
Where is the diversity of ideas on campus? I wonder what these students have been hearing in their classes for four years that helped lead them all to the same political conclusions. I know that Stanford works hard to attract an ethnically diverse student body and faculty.
Perhaps it's time to focus on building a community rich in diversity of ideas, opinions and thinking.
Karen Tenney, '75
Suquamish, Washington
I thought Stanford prided itself on diversity. The survey shows that 52.9 percent find Barack Obama the best presidential candidate while 23.5 percent prefer Hillary Clinton. Sounds more like the school has a predominantly “diverse” liberal student body.
Richard G. Cummings, '70, MA '70
Oakhurst, California
OLYMPIC OMISSIONS
Great to read “Cardinal Contenders” (July/August). Would've been even greater to include Christine Thorburn, MD '99, who was named to the U.S. Olympic team in cycling, to contest both the road race and the individual time trial. With the powerhouse teams Stanford Cycling has produced over the years (2007 national champions), the great riders (Christine also competed in Athens in 2004), and with Christine living and practicing medicine locally, you missed one of the more interesting and significant Olympic stories. Christine began competitive cycling as a Stanford medical student, and at age 38 is likely one of the older Olympians. Hey, come to think of it, how about an article on Stanford Cycling?
Ted Zayner, '78
Woodside, California
Editor's note: See "Meet the Candidates" for a revised list of Cardinal Olympians.
WHAT WE DIDN'T KNOW
I read with interest your July/August article on social networking (“It's Who You Know (or Don't”)), but quickly noted a glaring omission from the ranks of Stanford alumni who are playing a role in creating world-class social networking sites. Akash Garg, '00, MS '00, is co-founder and CTO of hi5 Networks, Inc., the third-largest social networking site in the world and the No. 1 site in some two dozen countries. Akash and his team have focused on developing their platform in multiple languages, which has led to their strong growth internationally, with about 80 percent of their user base coming from outside the United States.
Arun Prakash, MS '01
Austin, Texas
NINJA NEWS
We enjoyed catching up with the Ginger Ninjas (“Spinning Tunes,” Planet Cardinal, July/August). As the organizer of the Knickerbikers, a bicycle club in San Diego, Ken had heard that a group of cycling musicians was looking for gigs and lodging on their journey from the Bay Area to Chiapas late last year. Our club offered to pass the hat in exchange for some holiday entertainment at the club's annual Christmas party held in our home. The musicians seemed to have a good time, and we enjoyed meeting them and listening to their pedal-powered music. We had not heard from them since and wondered if they made it safely to Chiapas. Thanks for the article.
Ken King, '60, MBA '63
Sheryl Smith King, '63
La Jolla, California
DIEBENKORN CLARIFICATIONS
The genesis of the public exhibition of the Diebenkorn works was here in Santa Barbara at Westmont College's Reynolds Gallery (“Offshore Diebenkorn,” Showcase, July/August). I suggested to Tony Askew, then director of the gallery, that there was a storehouse of Diebenkorn works owned by the Santa Cruz Island Foundation [which acquired the works from the estate of Carey Stanton]. As a result of the fine efforts of Askew and his assistant at the time, Helen Tye Talkin, these works were exhibited first at Westmont and then at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
Phil Wilcox, '52, JD '54
Santa Barbara, California
COMMENCEMENT CHOICES
Does not a commencement speaker have two choices (Farm Report, July/August)? One is to tell the students what they have been hearing and are eager to have repeated, and to encourage them in ways they are comfortable with; in other words, a pep talk. The other is to tell them what they either have not been told or do not want to hear and have avoided heeding; in other words, what they need to hear.
If Stanford wished the former, it received high value from Oprah Winfrey. She provided exactly the nonsensical pablum that her coterie of happiness nostrum purveyors have no difficulty in selling, even to Stanford students, as a solution to the psychopathology du jour. How dare she compare the motivations and satisfaction she espouses with those of the Stanfords? The Stanfords' instincts came from the same location defined by Winfrey, somewhere behind the umbilicus, but to assert that what sustained Mrs. Stanford through all the vicissitudes of her life in any way resembles the constant quest for self-expression, happiness and fulfillment Winfrey advocates is to shine a light on the very emptiness of her words. Is it believable that Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and countless others were just seeking contentment and bliss and passing these on as wisdom for the ages?
This generation, despite its enormous fund of knowledge, needs to be reminded that the Ptolemaic view of self is not just outmoded but is likely the cause for the decline of civilizations. What students need to be told is that a concern for posterity, without which there can be no citizenship, should be their guiding principle in every thought and deed, personal and social.
A comparison of Winfrey's chat and Professor David Kennedy's far more profound exhortation at Palo Alto High School just a few days earlier is right on point. Apart from the gravity of Kennedy's thoughts, Oprah [used the words] I, my, I'd, me, myself 223 times in comparison to Professor Kennedy's 15 [times using] I and my. Winfrey's blather was cute, diversionary, intimate, and while very, very precious will not be long remembered or utilized.
Happiness, love, satisfaction, fulfillment and contentment are concepts so ephemeral and likely unachievable as well as difficult to define that it is at least deceptive and at most cynical to hold them out as one's guiding principles. Rather we should encourage our youth to heed Anthony Trollope's admonition in the Palliser novels to “seek a remedy for sorrow and not a source of joy.” Not cynical, just useful.
Myron Gananian, '51, MD '59
Menlo Park, California
GARDEN MEMORIES
Thank you for the wonderful discussion on Kingscote garden (“In Praise of the Garden,” Farm Report, July/August). I lived in Kingscote Gardens [apartments] during some of my undergraduate and graduate years at Stanford. I have many memories of conversations with retired distinguished alumni, faculty and staff. The outdoor parties we had were multigenerational and full of joy. I also cherish the memories of waking up on mornings surrounded by Kingscote Gardens' huge and ageless trees, as well as of time spent reading in the garden. Smiles.
Theresa-Marie Rhyne, '76, MS '77, Engr. '79, MS '81
Durham, North Carolina
PATHETIC PRIORITIES
How reassuring and delightful to read about Josh Flosi's dedication to teaching, in spite of all the obstacles we put in his way (“Why I Love to Teach,” End Note, July/August). In our increasingly self-centered, shortsighted and materialistic society, many whine about the declining state of education yet remain steadfastly unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. We hardly can expect many of the best and brightest, like Josh, to enter or stay with teaching, when we pay them like the worst and dumbest, and rip away programs and facilities that are essential to top-flight education.
In my retirement, I substitute-teach part time, and thus have the privilege to see firsthand some of the dedicated teachers like Josh who bring joy to their jobs and inspiration to their students. But, bluntly, even in the excellent schools right here in Stanford's backyard, there are too few of the best who are willing—or able—to stick with the profession for a nonliving wage and the status of day laborers.
As many Americans wallow in the excess of their money and their toys, and while our country slowly but clearly declines, we hand to my two children and four grandchildren, and to all future generations, a worse future than we have enjoyed and squandered. That is a pathetic and inexcusable commentary on our priorities and our character.
Steve Johnson, MBA '67
Portola Valley, California
REMEMBERING RATHBUN
It was interesting to read about Justice O'Connor's reflections on Harry Rathbun (“When Sandra Met Harry,” 1,000 Words, July/August). My senior year, Professor Rathbun offered a colloquium on the life of Jesus seen solely through the words ascribed to him in the Bible. That colloquium revolutionized my view of Jesus and freed me from the doctrinaire interpretations of organized religions. I knew little of the larger parts of Professor Rathbun's career, but that short seminar contributed immensely to my life and subsequent sense of spirituality. I remain grateful to him and his memory.
Jerry Gabay, '66
Mosier, Oregon
WESTERN WOES
While Stanford the University and I did not get along well, I would like to say that STANFORD the magazine does present a positive view and some interesting articles.
David Kennedy's essay about the western United States in the May/June issue only briefly mentioned water (“Can the West Lead Us to a Better Place?”). Water has been a major constraint on settlements west of the Mississippi. My theory is that without an engineering miracle on the desalination front, by 2100 the Los Angeles area will be well below 1 million in population. Phoenix is doomed and Denver is on the endangered list.
Bruce Miller, MS '77
Urbana, Illinois
“How the West Has Won”? You have to be kidding. I was born in the metropolitan East, grew up in the arid West and now live in the “Rust Belt” (more accurately, “Water Belt”).
Missing from your sunny cover story pictures are two necessities vital to human life: water and vegetation. Recently PBS celebrated Las Vegas, sin city of entertainment excess. This glittering “All-American” community boasts an exploding population in the midst of a Cadillac desert.
In the June 30 issue, The Nation highlighted the gross inequalities of our second Gilded Age. (The first Gilded Age, of course, featured the Southern Pacific Railroad and Governor Stanford.) America is unsustainably building upon a so-called market economy. Really what we have is more like a Ponzi scheme teetering on hedge funds, SUVs, and dozens of golf courses deep in the Mojave and Chihuahua deserts.
David Kennedy notes some warning signs—including the need for “strategies to deal with global warming,” “mountain snowpacks that are no more,” “lakes Powell and Mead at historic lows” and “the West's thirst . . . dropping the water table in the region's great fossil-water aquifers.”
Please read an important Western magazine, Yes! The spring 2008 issue is devoted to stopping global warming (climate change). Do the West and America need to change in a different way? You bet. And fast.
Lois Deimel Whealey, '51
Athens, Ohio
At 84, I am still discovering new ore deposits in Nevada. My “two bits” are that Nevada cannot be developed by dictatorial bureaucratic intrusion, but only by withdrawal—as in “get lost!” A clustered overpopulation of “homeless” via foreclosures would have to be replaced by rural-oriented real lovers of nature and hard workers with the backup of their servants in the legislature and other public offices—a tall order.
William U. Inman, '49
Dayton, Nevada
A 'PURE JAZZ SOUL'
Impressive article on jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell by Constance Casey (“Making Music That Catches the Wind,” Showcase, May/June).
I first met Tom when I was an undergraduate and playing jazz piano with groups at local coffee houses, El Camino Real bars and Stanford fraternity parties. At the time Tom was still at Los Altos High School, but I hired him for my gigs because he was the most pure jazz soul in the area. Although a little rough around the edges, he played with lyricism and intensity, and made me feel more like I was on the bandstand at Birdland than surrounded by dancers at some country club. Although he was shy and tended to speak in a monotone, he had a sparkle in his eye and a sharp sense of humor. His schizophrenia had not yet surfaced. His primary health issue was a recurring collapsed lung that would temporarily sideline him.
Playing bebop was our passion, and along with the inherent musical rewards it also offered us a way of protesting against the '50s culture and Stanford conservatism. Jazz was not in the curriculum, and, in fact, we were not allowed to play jazz in music department practice rooms. We could get away with it at gigs, but usually not until the partiers had several drinks in them.
By the time Tom entered Stanford in the early '60s, the new student union building had just opened, offering student groups the opportunity to play jazz in a properly sanctioned campus institution. At the old Pavilion, Stanford's basketball team, led by Tom Dose, competed for the league title while the red-vest band played big band jazz at halftime. Tom Harrell was the featured soloist for the Stan Kenton and Count Basie arrangements.
Tom remains both one of my fondest Stanford memories and one of my strongest jazz inspirations. Those of us who played with him embrace the experience as one of the best of our Stanford years. For a good update, Google some of Tom's YouTube spots.
Dick Fregulia, '62
Mill Valley, California
Tom Harrell and I sat together at the back of the room, distractible freshmen in honors English taught by Ronald Rebholz, then a new PhD and a teacher of inspirational passion. The year was 1963. Early in the semester, sometime after the poets of devotion, Tom and I were drawing cartoons and whispering about technique when Professor Rebholz, exasperated or worse, broke off his lecture and ordered us to stop.
On the occasion of Professor Rebholz's retirement, I wrote him to apologize and describe Tom's marvelous career as a jazz musician and composer, partly to say that cartooning did not beguile Tom into squandering his talent for music. Professor Rebholz replied graciously, but I'm still ashamed of my classroom delinquency.
Tom played at the Des Moines Art Center three years ago. It was an evening of mixed feelings. Tom's playing was beautiful, his appearance distressing. When not playing, he stood back, dropped his head and closed his eyes, seeming to be almost in pain. I found solace in Tom's declaration in your article that he regards his schizophrenia as merely part of his life and manageable. On his website he says that he plays for the moments when “beauty comes.” If you'd like to hear what that means, I recommend Leon Parker's disk Belief [Harrell is a guest artist].
Mark Kane, '67
Des Moines, Iowa
THE IMPORTANCE OF A'S
I read with interest Brian Inouye's humorous piece about the grade obsession of Stanford premedical students (“Dimension-Deficit Disorder,” May/June). When I was a premed (one of the few in my fraternity), I probably shared some of Inouye's expressed frustration. But 24 years of medical practice has changed my thinking.
While social activities and well-rounded world perspectives are important for all students, the practice of excellent medicine requires the same special qualities that allow certain students to focus on very specific goals for a prolonged period of time. In other words, the personal characteristics required to consistently get high grades are the same abilities needed in good medical practice: the tenacity to doggedly pursue an accurate diagnosis, the dedication to jump out of bed and hustle into the night to treat a critically ill patient, and the passion to stay current by seeking continuous education.
Medical schools provide applications and personal interviews to judge communication skills and other personal “dimensions.” But the prerequisite for having an application considered and an interview granted is the ability to consistently obtain A grades—for good reason. Getting A grades is hard work, and not every student is suited to do it. But I firmly believe that not every student who wants to be a physician should be a physician. When it comes to the treatment of patients, a “B” effort just isn't good enough.
When my life is on the line, I want the guy making the critical decision to be the former premedical student who gave up the party to study for the biology midterm. I'm pretty sure that Inouye would want that guy, too.
Michael J. McKenna, MD '79
Las Vegas, Nevada
PUSHING FOR CREATIVITY
President John Hennessy made some important comments about how education should work to improve the human condition (“The DNA of Innovation,” President's Column, May/June). People, including students, should be free to ask “off the wall” questions in an environment that allows risk-taking and innovative thinking, not just learning facts.
Even though in the 1960s Silicon Valley was just in its infancy, there was little of this creative approach in my education at Stanford as an undergraduate in electrical engineering, a master's student in anthropology and a PhD student in international development education. I had to push very hard to be a creative student at Stanford during that time. This was the “New Age” period, but very little in such innovations occurred at the Farm. My research was not the usual (done in Africa and Mexico) and the results were counter to traditional thinking (for example, it showed that African children's intellectual development was far above that of Westerners in Piagetian cognitive thinking). Fortunately, I had one person on my PhD committee who was somewhat supportive of my work. My persistence paid off, but the traditional system was not very supportive. I hope the president's views will work this time.
Richard L. Kimball, '61, MA '70, PhD '71
Franklin, North Carolina
The following letters did not appear in the print edition of Stanford.
'OUR LEGS REMEMBER'
I read “Paths of Glory” (First Impressions, July/August), and it made me think—for a long time. I was a runner too, but there are no record books with my name in them and no pictures of me winning races and medals, because I usually didn't. My high school times were reasonably good [and] I came in second, third, etc. But I did the work; I ran the races. I do have an idea what Dave Wottle felt like—burning muscles, cannot get enough air, brain that is functioning at survival levels, legs that feel like wooden stumps at that point in the race. There is really no way to adequately portray all those feelings of pain, exhaustion, joy or disappointment; it is very personal. And I suspect Dave would agree. I tried damn hard, and usually felt inadequate because there was almost always some guy who was a little faster. Victories like Wottle's are truly great achievements, and great stories, but they are one in a million, literally. However, that's not the point here.
I believe there will be two distinctly different kinds of viewers watching the Olympics this August, and I suspect this has always been true. Each group will enjoy the excitement and memorable experiences. But thousands and thousands of viewers will watch in a different way. They are the competitors, and former competitors, most of whom won no medals (or very few) and who, by the way, should give themselves a little break and finally admit that they actually were pretty good—medals or not.
As the races are run and the finish lines approach, we are likely to tense up a bit more than the average viewer. Leg muscles will involuntarily move a little, breathing will shorten and heart rates will quicken. We understand, in that very personal way, a little something more of what those competitors on the TV screen are experiencing. We remember; our legs remember.
Sam Bradt, '60
Hartland, Wisconsin
DIEBENKORN PUZZLES
I was delighted to see news of the upcoming Richard Diebenkorn exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center, and puzzled to see him identified as in the Class of 1944 (“Offshore Diebenkorn,” July/August). It caught my eye, having just read a detailed bio statement about him at a wonderful display of his Southwestern work at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. He was serving in the military in 1944, having left Stanford in 1942 after only two years, and therefore could not have worn a mortarboard with the class of 1944. He did his World War II service, including some studies at Berkeley and in San Francisco. He was reported to have received a degree from Stanford only in 1949, even though it's not clear he actually returned to the campus.
Keep up the good coverage.
Richard E. Bissell, '68
McLean, Virginia
Editor's note: We identify alumni according to their social class year, not their graduation year, unless they request otherwise.
FINAL WORDS ON HOOVER
I agree with Dean Shupe (MS '61) that the Hoover Institution needs to get off the Farm and get a job and digs of its own, instead of being an odd Stanford hanger-on (“More Thoughts on Freedom,” Letters, July/August).
My Stanford experiences began in '61, and apart from the oddity of seeing a major university have its tallest building named for a failed president, the Institution squirreled inside was even then the butt of jokes. (Many of us can recall how the tower itself was referred to.) We don't know what Lou Henry Hoover was actually thinking, but we know President Hoover was clueless about the Great Depression, as his fellow Americans lost jobs, homes and so on—wow, sound familiar? It was a common dark joke then that if one cut a fresh rose and handed it to Hoover, it would instantly wither in his hand.
What the Hoover Institution has done for humanity is more a mystery today than ever—named for a failed presidency, now recruiting members from administrators of our current failed presidency. Whether Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice are competent isn't an issue. They certainly had the opportunity to do the right thing, yet, unlike Colin Powell, kept going along with the fictions concocted in the Rove/Bush/Cheney White House, despite clear admonitions from our CIA about cooked “intelligence.” How many Americans have paid for their sins? They should be inducted to Hoover?
Hoover, unfortunately, is like typical advertising conservatives, who really don't conserve much besides their own positions and property. A true Christian conservative would follow Jesus' admonition to his followers, to “consider the least of your brothers” (and sisters). Folks like Warren Buffett and Paul Newman meet that criterion. Other religions define “conservative” similarly.
No, Hoover's members are generally quite “liberal”—liberal with interpretations and other people's time, money and lives. So, it's long been time to nudge the Hoover Institution into the real world, deleting Stanford coattails from their P.R. pieces. Maybe they actually have worthy ideas that will help them survive as adults out of the nest. Then again, what reasons have they given us to care?
A. Cannara, Engr. '66, MS '74, PhD '76
Menlo Park, California
I found the debate over the appointment of Rumsfeld of great interest. As to the comments by Robert Griffin, '63, MS '64, defending the use of waterboarding, I found myself having a historical flashback. When captured American soldiers of my generation serving in South Korea were subjected to waterboarding by the Communist Chinese, President Eisenhower and the international community unanimously called it “torture.” The only difference now is we are doing it. Does that make the definition different?
Richard J. Wylie, '55, JD '58
San Jose, California
Donald Rumsfeld is, to my way of thinking, a “distinguished fellow” in so many ways. He was the chief advocate for a war that time has shown has no justification; he miscalculated the cost of the war, estimating it at $60 billion to $100 billion when current estimates put it around $2.7 trillion; and his commander in chief, presumably on his advice, declared victory just months following incursion. Anyone that wrong on a matter of such importance and consequence is a good candidate for study—by the sociology, psychology and political science departments, not the Hoover Institution, which by its decision to embrace Rumsfeld displays a shared intellectual dishonesty.
Mark Hyde, '71
Wailea, Hawaii
In your May/June issue you published a number of very similar letters objecting to Donald Rumsfeld's appointment at the Hoover Institution (“On Freedom”). These letters were undistinguished, but Rumsfeld is not. It would be hard to find an American public servant of this generation whose knowledge of the federal government is as deep, or whose service is more varied. The existing public attitude toward Rumsfeld derives mostly from his stubbornness in believing that our armed forces should be spare and capable of rapid movement. This made for brilliant invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but, in the case of Iraq, inadequate forces to cope with an unusual insurrection conducted largely by suicide bombers and the use of improvised explosive devices. Was he stubborn in pursuing his original plan? Yes, although we do not know the full story of what influences he had to cope with. Yet, an otherwise brilliant man may make a stubborn mistake without being labeled corrupt, or having it said that the appointment “associates Stanford with values rejected by civilized people everywhere.”
I think Stanford needs to get over what seems to me a rather childish—not to say vainglorious—revulsion to the presence on campus of the Hoover Institution. Scholarship alone does not make a teacher of romance languages or chemistry or any other academic pursuit a wise judge of the societal value of a great research institute or the activities of men or women who are or have been, in Theodore Roosevelt's phrase, “in the arena.” A recent exhibition of moral vanity at a major university was the activity of some 44 liberal arts professors who lent their names and prestige to the prosecution of rape charges, by a corrupt district attorney, against three students who in a subsequent investigation by the attorney general of North Carolina were declared completely innocent of all charges.
Your magazine has also lent publicity to a professor who objects to the possibility of Condoleezza Rice's return to Stanford. The professor says he cannot think of her without imagining her hands stained by the blood of 4,000 dead American soldiers. How, one wonders, does he feel about Harry Truman's hands, stained by the blood of more than 50,000 soldiers, or those of Lyndon Johnson, stained by the blood of more than 60,000. Doubtless this professor, when it comes to moral obloquy, finds Abraham Lincoln the most culpable of all, since he proceeded with a “war of choice” which resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 Union and Confederate dead who could have been saved if only Lincoln had been willing to see the Union, under the Constitution as it was, preserved, and slavery along with it.
I think one letter demeaning Rumsfeld or Rice would have been quite enough, and any letter at all repeating old calumnies about the Hoover Institution [was] too many. Get over it.
Richard W. Jencks, '46, JD '48
Mill Valley, California
Editor's note: Herewith we close this topic for publication.
Berlin Days
The article on Stanford Overseas Studies (“A Whole New World,” March/April) renewed many good memories. I was not part of that program, but I was active in the Institute of International Relations and had the opportunity to get to know four students and their faculty adviser [visiting Stanford] from the Free University of Berlin. This led me to apply for a Rotary Fellowship to study in Berlin in 1953-54. There I lived with one of the Berlin/Stanford students and her mother, and I joined with the five who had been to Stanford to form the Stanford Committee. We had monthly meetings sometimes with slide shows and hosted visitors from Stanford including Peter Bing, '55. That year a number of Stanford graduates were studying in Paris, Munich and Berlin. We visited one another, learning much about each area.
It was a year that changed my life. Just last month a friend of 55 years from Berlin visited me, and I had the opportunity to show her around Arizona. We visit each other about once every five years either in Europe or in the United States. Also last year, I transcribed the weekly letters that I sent home to my family onto my computer and relived that wonderful year. I can easily understand how the Stanford Overseas program has changed lives and continues to do so.
Joan Steindorf Forest, '52, MA '55
Cornville, Arizona
TOBACCO ROAD
Ginny McCormick's article, “Ties That Bind” (March/April), reviewed two situations intimately involving me from 1960 to 1963. I took Professor Paul Baran's course called Comparative Economic Systems. He was tenured at Stanford and under severe attack from alumni for his Marxist socialist views, which he espoused unabashedly in his heavy Polish accent. He also presented capitalism and discussed oligarchies and many interesting approaches to economies. I fancied myself a well-versed Buckley/Goldwater conservative and, handwritten in blue books, argued my economic philosophy pretty well for an immature 20-year-old. Professor Baran, or one of his two TAs, rewarded me with one of my few A's at Stanford. The course was not only fascinating; it taught me that listening to an opponent with full consideration best prepares me to build a defense for my opinion.
The tobacco industry was active on campus in my day. Spring quarter 1960, having found that a small outfielder hitting .206 on the freshman baseball team didn't impress varsity coach Dutch Fehring, I learned to drink beer and smoke cigarettes, like many of the other guys at ATO. Entering fall quarter, I took the job as R.J. Reynolds's campus rep, which involved giving away four-packs of Camels, Winstons and Salems and checking vending machines. Great job!
After our summer and autumn romance, Lindy and I married on my 21st birthday, in Riverside, Calif. Arriving at Encina Hall three days later, I found that RJR had fired me. I never knew why, but 40 years later it dawned on me that the reason they had hired me (without ever telling me) was to get girls smoking—Salems or Winstons, of course, not the manly Camels I smoked (and which killed my uncle in 1946 and Dad in 1969). A married guy might not spend as much time at women's Row houses and dorms as I had in my sophomore and junior years.
Sincere thanks for your many provocative articles.
Ted Brown, '63
Eugene, Oregon
REBUTTAL
I am no doubt late in responding to the two online responses (“On the Attack,” January/February 2008) to my earlier letter, but I just discovered them.
Martin Abramson should be aware that the Communist witch hunts entailed far more than government subcommittees “moving from state to state ruining careers and wrecking lives.” Much of the damage was accomplished through numerous non-governmental pressure groups, not unlike the publishers of Red Channels, the publication that formed th backbone of the blacklist in the radio, television, and film industries. He should also be aware that in the past 10 years several bills have been introduced in Congress calling for the denial of government funding to any institute of higher education that allowed criticism of Israel on campus. That such bills have gone nowhere is cause for relief; that they were introduced at all, and with numerous sponsors, should be alarming no matter where one stands on the issue.
R. Roth's comment that “No other people have comparable rights to live [in Israel]” but Jews speaks for itself. Before and since the founding of the ancient kingdom of Israel, many other peoples have inhabited and still inhabit the land that is now the modern state of Israel. The notion that somehow their right to live there in full equality with others, a right guaranteed by numerous laws and treaties subscribed to by Israel and the United States, should be denied because they did not enjoy in their name the blessings of an independent nation-state is an example of the fallacious reasoning driven by the ethnic nationalism called Zionism. He also appears not to have read much of the writings by the early Zionists, such as Jabotinksy, one of the founders of Israel and the spiritual father of the Likud, who argue that indeed Jews should live apart. In fact, the notion that all Jews should reside in Israel is integral to Zionism and has been since the founding of the movement. That most have chosen not to remains as one source of tension between the diaspora and those in Israel, as discussed numerous times in the Israeli press.
Finally, both these gentlemen willfully promote the misconception that I attacked the loyalty of Americans who support Israel, and somehow that I believe no one should be allowed to support Israel. That I said or implied no such thing bothers them not. What does bother them is my demand that the rest of us be allowed to comment upon and criticize Israel and Zionism with the same freedom with which they defend it, without being viciously attacked as anti-Semites and Jew-haters. That they fear and jealously guard against an open discussion of the issues is clear; that there will be no just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without open and free debate here in the United States is equally so.
Griffin Fariello, '73
San Francisco, California
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