Volume 14 - Issue 6

Volume 14 Number 6

ewournal

April 19, 1982

The fuss

over Frilm ,.

by Gabriella Stem

I

CCL's subterranean subculture lntervi.e w: Wolfgang Leonhard

We Know Yale.

Does Yale Know Us? The sixth and last In this series of employment messages Over the past several months, we have introduced you to our firm and described the various employee benefit ronsulting services we provide for our clients. We've wanted you to rome to know us because of the regard we have for Yale and its graduates.

promote understanding and trust between the rompany and its workforce.

Having what it takes to be a good ronsultant requires more than textbook solutions. It demands intellectual creativity and strong analytical skills, along with the ability to work we!l with others.

Our post-modem office building in Fort Lee, New Jersey was designed by a Yale architect. Our corporate graphic identity is the work of a Yale designer. So it's only natural for us to think of Yale for other areas of our business too.

Kwasha Lipton is an exciting and challenging place to work. We have a lot of bright, highly motivated people working closely together in a stimulating environment. For those who succeed, the rewards are substantial.

Since we started in business as ronsuiting actuaries in 1944, men and women with a special combination of talents have joined us to help solve problems for, and provide advice to, many of the nation's largest employers. Our ronsultants help these employers design and implement rompensation and benefit programs that

We provide services in eight different areas of employee benefits. If you would like to explore the possibility of employment at Kwasha Upton, write to Dominick Cardace, Partner, Kwasha Upton, 2100 North Central Road, P.O. Box 1400, Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024.

Publisher Ed Bennett Editor-in-Chief Andy Court Designer Matt Gaynor Business Manager J e ff Foster Production Manager Hilary Callahan Photography Editor Rollin Riggs A ssociaJe Business Manager Barbara Burrell• A ssociate Editors Geoff Hayward• , Paul Hofheinz, Jim Lowe, Lelia Wardwell• A ssociate Production Manager Alex Savich

SJa.ff Serena Collison , Jane Hinson , Walter Jacob, Tim Misner , Geoff Pope, W . Hampto n Sides • , Sloan Walker, Will Winkelstein• •eluted March 24, 1 982

Frimds Anson Beard Edward B. Bennett, Jr. Nancy B. Cooper Peter B. Cooper Geoff Fried Sherwin Goldman Brooks Kelley Lewis E. Lehrman Nicholas X . RizopouJas Richard and Deborah Sears Richard Shield Thomas Strong Alex Torello Allen and Sarah Wardwell Daniel Yergin cover photo by Rollin Riggs

The N~ journal is a monthly magazine of news and comment. Ten thousand copies of each issue are distributed free to all members of the Yale University community. Copyright C 1982 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. , 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT. 06520.

Office hours weekdays 1-3pm, 105 Becton Center.

-4.

April 18, 1882

TheNewJournal In thla laaue

4

Letters

6

Comment: AASA and the Island of Conclusions

by Anita Tien The noise behind the Walkman

by W. Hampton Sides

•

10

The fertility service

by Martha Neil

16

An interview with Wolfgang Leonhard

by Jose Roberto Martinez

22

Jobs vs. Academics at the Law School

by Steve Epstein

24

Cross Campus Library: ''the great beige continuum''

by Holly Lyman

30

Cover story: The fuss over Frum

by Gabriella Stern

34

Sports: Crew's time of absurd contracts

by Morris Panner

38

Research: Why babies fail to thrive

by Tom Feigelson

42

Architecture: Venturi's firehouse

by Robert Orr

45

Books: Reinterpretation by remembrance

by Kathleen Cleaver

3 The New Journal I April 19, 1982

••

TheNewJournal

About this Issue Looking bac k over our six cover stories, we think they represent in p a rt wha t we'r e trying to do. We've tried to cover issues and people at Yale tha t affect the way we live and think.

We started with David Chapell's piece on Yale research and the D efense D epartment. Then Andy Court pro fil ed N ew Haven policeman Rick Randall. An interview with former Black P anther and Yale College j u n io r Kathleen Cleaver followed , and in January, Hampton S ides a na lysed the rhetorical stalemate b e tween President Giamatti a n d the M o ral M ajority. In February, o ur fifth issue highlighted P aul H o fh e inz's analysis of the agreement between Yale's blue collar union and the a dministration.

Our cover story this issue follows in this path. David Frum , conservative columnist for the Yale Daily News, is perha ps the most controversial underg rad ua te a t Yale this year. We decid ed to cover Frum not because we n ecessarily a g ree with his views, but because we are intere sted in someone who cla ims to be representing "the 20 per cent (of Yalies) who voted for Reagan." Frum says he's challenging slo ppy, unquestioning liberal outlooks he re. Som e of his critics, however, claim his thinking is just as sloppy as those he condemns.

4

This issue , o ur sixth , is our last for the year. W e'll be back next year with six more, but we'd like to take th is opportunity to thank some of our people who are graduating.

Two folks chiefly responsible for the way TNJ looks are our designer Matt Gaynor and our photography editor Rollin Riggs, both of whom have had work published recently in the New

Letters-- - - -

York Times. Neither is exactly sure of his post-graduation plans, but R iggs is working on a student's guide to spring break in Florida, which will be published by Arbor House in December. Gaynor suggested the possibility of "getting trashed- for about three years."

Four fine writers and regular contributors are also graduating this year. Walter Jacob, who wrote on teaching evaluations, tenure, and career advisory, has the ability to identify important stories and then locate the most interesting angle to pursue. Holly Lyman demonstrates in this issue's story on Cross Campus Library what she showed in an earlier proftle on George Schoolfield: the wonderful and rare ability to listen. Matt Hamel's incredible eye for detail came through in his piece on the floormen of Toad's, and his profile of Charles Black. Finally, Martha Neil took a creative and unusual approach to her article this issue on "The Fertility Service" at Yale-New Haven hospital.

On the business side, Jeff Foster and Geoff Pope have both been with the magazine since the beginning. As Business Manager, Foster has been actively involved in formulating our advertising strategy and monitoring our finances. Pope has been one of our veteran advertising reps.

We'd also like to mention one freshman who has begun brilliantly, Hilary Callahan. Hilary became our production manager last issue. She and her production staff put the magazine together without a hitch, and we hope they will continue the good work in the future.

Look for us in September.

The political Union To the Editor: Jim Lowe is quite correct in claiming that the Political Union has an identity crisis, that it has an image of being elitist, and that the organization is on the decline. (TNJ, February 27, 1982) His reasons for drawing those conclusions are, bowever, incorrect. He claims that there have been weak programs, and that Yalies are politically apathetic and pre-professional. The problems of the Political Union run far deeper than any care to admit.

Despite what the Political Union's Speaker Chris Bieda says, the program has not been feeble . During the fall term of 1981 , 2 Cabinet officers, Betty Friedan, Edward Koch, Doug Fraser, Lyn Nofziger and Barry Commoner all spoke before the PU. The Union has continued its tradition of providing a strong speaker program.

While political apathy has perhaps increased on campus, the PU boasted its largest memberships during the mid-1970s, after the Vietnam War and after Watergate. Apathy alone cannot explain the PU's decline .

The concept of a "mass membership" PU is clearly not anachronistic (except, perhaps, for members of the Party of the Right.) We see, however, two problems which explain the Union's current situation . The first is the constant infighting among Political Union members seeking to attain office. The current election process inevitably leads to the proliferation of Machiavellian shenanigans. No sooner is one election over than the next one begins.

Officers are interested in promoting the Union only insofar as it pr~motes their own political career. They use

the Political Union for their own ends; political game playing is more important than political integrity.

Political game-playing is the staple of the Party of the Right, and it is the POR which we see as a second obstacle to PU resurgence. Robert's Ruks of Order, ideally, is to be used to facilitate the running of PU meetings.

The POR, however, is determined to use Robert's to disrupt meetings. Bieda and Rubin are sadly misguided if they believe that such parliamentary perversions alienate "only a few people;" they alienate many. Besides, • why should the PU continue to enforce rules that alienate anybody?

One example of this parliamentary perversion is the "coat and tie" rule that the POR rammed through at a sparsely attended debate last year.

That rule requires that members wear a coat and tie in order to speak at a Union meeting. The Union suspends the rule each term, though it remains on the books. A second perversion is the floor fight of last year, at which the POR attempted to manipulate the election rules to overwhelmingly favor its own members.

Though the amendments were defeated, they are another example of how the POR uses the PU as its own personal tool.

Finally, the image of the POR as a cadre of socially maladjusted children mars the Union's image as a whole.

Each fall, hundreds of freshman are turned off by the POR's incestuous arrogance. The result is that the PU is considered to be the playground of the POR- in an important sense, it is. Through game playing and the appeasement of certain Union of• ficers , the POR continues to have all too much influence on the affairs of the Union.

Clearly, major reform is necessary ·in order to return the PU to its

former glory. Equally clear, however is that the Party of the Right stands as an obstacle to any such reform.

Charles Thompson Spring 1981 President Neal Wolin Fall 1981 President

The Long Wharf and the Yale Rep To the Editor: Antonio Mercado's comparison of the Long Wharf Theatre and the Yale Repertory (TNJ, February 27, 1982) struck me as clever but inaccurate. Rather than indulge in towngown stereotyping, one might more profitably distinguish between one theater and gadgetry. Such a distinction could lead to some discomfort and so- Mr. Mercado's disdain of comfort notwithstanding- the best policy may be to eschew comparison and simply to thank the Long Wharf for giving New Haven some excellent theater.

Faye J . Crosby Assistant Professor

Antl--mltlam?

To the Editor: I was recently given a few issues of the New Journal, and was horrified to see the Walter Jacob cartoon used to illustrate Steve Epstein's fine article (•How Law School Limits One's View, January 30th.)

Let's recap. We have a personal statement about Yale Law School written by a law student named Eps-

tein. And we have an accompanying cartoon picturing a man with a gigantic nose walking in a building which looks quite a bit like Yale Law School. Could the man with the huge nose possibly be Epstein?

Well, it's hardly an original idea.

There is a long history of ugly, bigoted cartoons of Jews with big noses, just as there is a long history of anti-Semitism at Yale. As someone who spent many years there-both as an undergraduate and an instructor- I am well acquainted with the often subtle and occasionally blatant anti-Jewish feeling at Yale. The cartoon is just one more reminder.

Whether or not Mr. Jacob was conscious of what he was doing- whether or not he is Jewish himself- whether or not staff members of the New journal examined and approved the cartoon-it is an insulting and offensive image that should not have appeared.

-Bob Lamm

R~ply: w~ shar~ your conum ovu lh~ many subtl~ forms thaJ anti-sunitism taks.

In this cas~, how~u, w~ kli~v~ you ar~ reading somtthing into th~ cartoon which was not intmd~d on any level by eithu th~ magazin~ or th~ artist. Waltu jacob says, "All my characlus have big noses because I hav~ a big nos~. It maks no diffumce who I'm drawing. They all hav~ big noses

tom~. "

5 The New Journal I April 19, 1982

Fill All

OFUS Unlt;ed way

The New Journal thanlcs: Sue Alcott Joy Bochner Andy Brimmer Edward L Burnes Associates C. C. Clernmt Nau Copple Robnt Fermann Steve Gavin Lisa Hintz Angelo Ippolito Miriam Ln:mthol Wait Little Greg Myre Wes Poling Frank Prot[ David Ttitelman John Wilknson Christzanna Willimns

Co"ÂŤtion:

'I'M photograph on pagt 8 oftht last issue was takm by Bill Kummel - Yale Daily News

6

Comment----

AASAand the Island of conclusions Anita Tien

Freshman year. The first week.

"There's an organization meeting for AASA this afternoon," my floating counselor urged, "You should go."

So I did. About 60 Asians crowded into Trumbull's common room. We sat in a circle, fighting intrusive elbows and oppressive heat, and began introductions. I was first: "My name is Anita, and I'm from Syracuse, and I'm in JE." The next person was more talkative, adding that she hoped AASA would strengthen her Asian identity.

The next student picked up on this theme and got things really rolling when he came up with, "All m y life, people h ave called me 'Chink ,' and I want to find out why." At this point, many heads nodded sympathetically.

The leader of the meeting enthused, "That's why we're here! We want to help you understand yourselves. We want to promote cultural understanding and self-awareness; we want to bring about Asian unity."

AASA's leaders may want to accomplish these goals, but the truth is that they haven't managed to do so.

AASA's newsletter, East- West Cu"mts, is sent out as a regular source of information on the efforts of the organization but many Asian-Americans I know do not even read the publication.

Indeed, the social distance between AASA's leaders and AASA's less visible members is so great that communication between the two is extremely limited. AASA's leaders really have no way of knowing what Asians outside their circle think about AASA or minority issues.

And this is where the more active members of AASA make their mistake: there is a tendency to assume that one can define the extent of one's ethnicity by his involvement in minority organizations such as AASA. It would seem that some in AASA have succumbed to this tendency. In his editorial in East- West Cu"mts, Brian

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Kanno accuses Asians outside of AASA of "ignoring the fact that they are Asian s." He writes, "I think everyone should feel that they are .

Asian-American and be proud of it."

Participation in AASA has become an index of one's cultural awareness; those who are not active members risk accu sations of having subordinated their Asian heritage to the pressures of a wh ite world. The term "Banana" is bandied about: non-active members of AASA are only "yellow" on the outside; inside, they are "white."

But a decision not to participate in AASA should not imply indifference or ignorance or shame. It isn't fair for K anno to use such a decision as a meter of ethnicity; more important, it isn't accurate. Kanno declares he is "fed up with Asian-Americans checking the box 'Asian' on their Yale application and thereafter ignoring the fact that they are Asians." How can he know that they are ignoring this fact?

W hat makes him so certain? I would suggest that he can~ be certain; simply looking at the rolls of active members of AASA is not a valid way to locate those who have a strong Asian identity. Many of us who choose not to participate in AASA have an equally strong awareness of our heritage; we speak the languages of our parents and grandparents, we eat their food, we know their history.

Many of Yale's Asian-Americans have become alienated from AASA .

Consider the reaction of one of my Chinese friends when she received the latest AASA newsletter: "I hardly ever read that thing. They make such absurd statements that I can't take them seriously." Other friends have voiced similar sentiments; they don't believe in AASA , its membership, its language. And isn't this the supreme irony? A n organization like AASA is, in its own words, supposed to promote

cultural uniry. I nstead, it acts as a divisive, destructive force amon g Asians at Yale; lines have been dra wn between active and non-active members of AASA. Judgments by superficial considersations, such as active membersh ip in AASA, is a dangerous thing: it is precisely this reliance on externals which leads to fear and hatred and racism. Anyone who would make a determination by using such a flimsy standard is jumping to conclusions.

And as Norton Juster once pointed out in The Phantom Tollbooth, escaping from the Island of Conclusions is a long and difficult endeavor. It would be best to resist the impulse to jump in the ftrst place.

•

Anita Tien, ajunior inJE, will be trtwelling to Taiwan this summer to begin research on a family history.

The opinions expressed in this section are those of the individual writers. The New Journal welcomes letters to the editor, and comment on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT. 06520. All letters for publication must be signed and addressed.

UpcoMiNG ACTS.

APRIL 9-10 NRBQ 13 ··Kinl.. Camsco & the Crowns 14 The Uentures 15 Nifhthawks 16 The Good Rats 17 Arizona Maid 18-19 Jeff Lorber Fusion 20 EYes 21 Maria Muldaur 22 Uncle Chick 23 Beau Bolero 24 Beaver Brown 25 Blue Astronauts 26 TommY Tutone 27 Arizona Maid 28 Commander CodY 29 Duke Robillard 30 APPle May 9 BillY Cobham 10 Blushinl Brides 11 Dave Edmunds 16 Pousette Dart

JOG VORK STRUT • NfW HAU£N c:o.c.n Ulle: 777-74J I

7

The ·New Journal/ April 19, 1982

The noise behind theWalkman W. Hampton Sides •. . . as the appreciation of modnn physics requires more and more prior education, so the appreciation of modem art and music requires a more educated- some would say a mort thoroughly conditioned- aesthetic taste . . . Unless the artist and the recipient haue had the same experience the communication is always less than faithful. • Harvey Broolcs 1964 The Government of Science

8

The walkmen are all over campus today. I saw them walking around at the gym and in the library, across from Yale Station and down on York Street.

They were walking briskly through the Art Gallery , toward the Law School, out of Commons, and onto the Green.

I would like to know, who are these walkmen? Where are they headed?

And why do they walk all the time? Do they like to walk, or is it something they are required to do?

Of course I wouldn't bother asking a walkman these questions, because I know that a walkman generally doesn't like to talk to people. It's not that he is a shy or scary person; he just isn't big on conversation, that's all . He'd really rather keep his ideas to himself, and he'd appreciate it if others would kindly do the same. Besides, he's got a lot of ground to cover today, a lot of walking to do to meet the prescriptions of his well-worn appointment book. No time to talk. He likes his privacy, you know, and he absolutely abhors the sound of the human voice , particularly his own .

In fact, he can't abide live noises at all , like the sound of turning pages, or a sneeze, or a cough, or a panhandler's pitch down by the Co-op. rve never met anyone so selfassured as a walkman. He knows what he wants to hear and see and do with such an unshakable confidence that he must forbid the extraneous world from interfering with his well-laid plans.

Life must be so smug and restful in

that nomadic altered state of his. And, if a walkman ever talked, I wonder if anyone could understand him. Unless one listens to the same tapes, it must be a powerful drain on the system to try to make sense out of someone who has been walking around so long listening to a program so different from anyone else's .

The walkman is no conformist, but an individualist, at heart. Each one has his own specialty, his own discipline, his own language- and his own destination.

The other day I saw a Yale student reading his physics textbook in a basement-level weenie booth in the Cross Campus Library. His walkman turned on, his body buried within its floures c ent closet two floors underground, he punched his pocket calculator and nodded quietly as his taped program rushed through his headphones.

I stood for a while staring at him through the narrow slat of glass in the sliding door. It struck me how strange it all was- the price a person wiJJ pay for seclusion, the lengths he will go to avoid having to talk with someone else, the determination that will drive him to tune out his environment and turn on his private learning machine. This person, presumably, paid Yale thousands of dollars for a dose of the "liberal arts," and here he was locked away every night in a formica box taking in the subtleties of quantum theory -alone in his own , aural insular wo rld.

I wanted to ask him what he was listening to on the tape recorder, but I suppose that would be an invasion of the man's privacy , so of course I didn't.

By now I have learned of the sacred and inviolate nature of a fellow's privacy, and I would never dream of disturbing anything of such impor-

tance and worth. Besides, I had my own studying to do.

The emergence of the Sony walkman in the library and elsewhere suggests that, more and more, education is becoming a private affair. No longer do people come to the university to hear and argue othc;r people's ideas, to theorize and speculate with the person who speaks from the stump or writes in the paper. Instead, they close their ears from the commotion and retreat into their special compartments.

The world is too complex for them.

There are too many errant strands of too many different ideas parading noisily around, too many tangents which disrupt and confuse. Modern thought is too busy, too abstract, too monumental. The weight of this complexity threatens them and drives them to train to be the expert, the specialist, the professional. All the incomprehensible noise makes them insecure; they feel they must be masters of something.

Their discomfort prods them to learn with good faith and sound patience all the ideas, the theories, and the parlance of a program; they practice the symbols and study them and discuss them with the few others who have chosen the same program. No one else understands these symbols, nor can they understand the symbols of the others in the next booth .

It is happening all around us. Today the economist with his new theories, and the computer science technician with his newly-developed language, and the psychology major with his new aproach , and the musicologist with his 12-tone composition, all speak in different tongues and operate within different worlds. As each one rises along the scale of subtlety and expertise, he must find it increasingly difficult to communicate the ideas of his chosen field to those not in it, particularly as

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INCIDENT ELECTRON -

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more and more advances are made in each discipline. And, conversely, he must find it equally difficult to ap· preciate the ideas of the other specialists Such is the sacrifice for experti"C in a world that so demands and values experts.

I visualize a time in the future when all waJkmen at Y aJe and other universities will climb into their booths each day and tune into their separate pro· grams, each one in a speciaJized language, training themselves for their specialized place among the speciaJists who will run the country. The best and the brightest wilJ flock to these schools to learn their trade, here where the banner o f technologicaJ progress and civilization flies so proudly. For those unacquainted with the vast body of terms and theories that form the foundation of each discipline on each pro· gram, the waJkman tape will play only

noise: nonsensicaJ, atonaJ, inaccessible noise. But for the trained ear, the same tape will play powerful and prestigious noise, guaranteed to make a profit.

And for the sake of Progress, the thinkers and scientists and technocrats wilJ walk around not listening to each other.

•

W. Hampwn Sides, a sophomore in Ezra Stiles, wrote the cover piece on the Moral Majority for the jantUJry issue of TN].

9 The New Journal I April 19 , 1982

I.

The fertility service Martha Neil

10

February brought a brief taste of celebrity status to Dr. Alan DeCherney, Director of Reproductive Endocrinology at Yale-New Haven Hospital. In the space of a week, an article he'd written on French research findings that fertility in women apparentJy decreases sharply after age 30-not, as previously thought, age 35 -was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, discussed on the front page of The New York Times, and got him an interview with Jane Pauley on the Today show.

"I wasn't nervous one bit," Dr. DeCherney said.

Infertility has become a hot media topic in recent months, following the birth of the first American test tube baby in January. Public attention has been focused, in particular, on the two relatively new and controversial methods by which human conception can be medically accomplished: artificial insemination and in vitro ("test tube") fertilization.

For artificial insemination, sperm provided by either the woman's husband or an anonymous donor is simply inserted by the doctor. Artifical insemination has been done at Yale-New Haven for more than 10 years, most commonly for married couples where the husband does not make enough sperm to impregnate his wife, or is the carrier of a genetic disease.

"Cystic fiorosi s is a good example," Dr. DeCherney said. "It's a recessive trait, so both the mother and the father have to have it to produce a baby with the disease. A couple has a baby with cystic fibrosis: therefore you know they both have that trait. So there's a 25 per cent chance that their next child will also have cystic fibrosis . Now, they can take a chance- or they can use a donor who has no history of cystic fibrosis in

his family , and be sure the baby won't have it."

In vitro fertilization is performed when the woman's Fallopian tubes are blocked because of damage or disease, preventing normal movement of an egg from an ovary to her uterus. She is given a fertility drug to induce a multiple ovulation, and the eggs are surgically removed and fertilized in the lab with sperm provided by her husband. All embryos that develop are then surgically implanted in her uterus.

This is news to the media, but it is part of Dr. DeCherney's daily routine.

Leaning back in his chair behind his desk, a bow tie at his collar and cigar in h and, he explained: "We've recovered eggs, and fertilized eggs, and put them in uteruses here- but no pregnancies yet. We started doing it over the summer, and then we stopped. Why did we stop? I wanted to evaluate what we were doing, and also we'd lost our operating room. They're building a new hospital wing, so I was temporarily out of facilities. I've just got my old room back: they were doing Caesarian sections in it.

"Artificial insemination by donor is difficult because it's a very confidential thing," he said earlier. "I have to get the donor myself, make the appointments myself- it's time-consuming.

I'm meticulous about confidentiality. I always write the same note on every chart and tell every patient the same thing- it's my only protection .

"See, I don't want my records subpoenaed, .. he said. "Because, let's say 10 years from now the husband wants to get divorced. He doesn't want to pay child support. Now I'm pulled into court: ' Is he the father of this child?'

And I would say, 'Well, I don't really know. All I know is that on the ninth of December we discussed donor insem-

"We're just putting an egg and a sperm together that hopefully would have gotten together anyway."

ination.' You might say, 'That's ridiculous- you're really setting yourself up by keeping poor records.'

But the alternative is to leave my records complete and jeopardize the donor's anonymity. Then the kid can say, 'Oh, now I want the donor to pay.'

A lot of doctors have patients sign consent forms, and then destroy the consent forms when the women conceive.

Well, that's silly. But if you signed a consent form, that's evidence of what happened-so I don't have donor insemination patients sign.

"Now there is one fault in not recording the names of the donors," he went on. "If the baby's born with a genetic disease, I could never go back and tell the donor that he's a carrier.

But that's rare, and problems with loss of anonymity are not rare. So donors understand that, and they accept that."

Dr. DeCherney selects donors to match the husband's physical characteristics: height, build, eye and hair color. The men are screened for genetic disease by history. Those who are Jewish have a Tay-Sachs test, and those who are Black have a sickle-cell test. ("They're the two things we can test for with facility.") Donors are paid $25 per contribution, and come from the ranks of residents, house staff, and medical students at Yale-New Haven.

This is because of convenience, Dr. DeCherney emphasized: "It's done early in the morning, so women can go to work, and these people are here then.

We don't have a frozen spenn bankit's expensive to maintain, and the pregnancy rates are not as high.

"We do use the sperm bank in New York City for special purposes," he explained. "A man who is going to have a vasectomy, or a man who is going to be treated for cancer of the testicle will put his spenn in a bank first. Or, if someone came to me and said they wanted an Annenian" donor with blond hair

Dr. Al4n DeChtmty examines a glucose experiment. and green fingernails, I would call up and ask, 'Do you have somebody?"

Although the use of donor eggs and sperm for in uitro fertilization- theoretically possible- could raise similar issues to those of artificial insemination by donor, Dr. DeCherney insisted it won't be done in the foreseeable future at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He also emphasized that Yale-New Haven does not discard embryos in the lab. (Because considered tantamount to abortion, this has been a major reason for objections to the practice of in uitro fertilization.) Asked what he would do in the individual case of a defective embryo, Dr. DeCherney answered that it's never happened. *I don't know how I would handle that," he said. "I guess I would leave it up to the parents. I would say, 'This does not look like a perfect embryowe would prefer not to implant it- but¡ we will do what you want."'

Does he have any qualms about performing in vitro fertilizations? "~o. not at all," Dr- DeCherney said. "Because we do it as a service, we

don't do it as a research tool. We're not doing any research in that field . So I'm not worried- it's just a service, it's something I can offer my patients that other doctors offer.

"We're just putting an egg and a sperm together that hopefully would have gotten together anyway. This is the husband's sperm and the wife's egg, so ethically there is really very little concern over this exact procedure.

What the ethicists are concerned about is that this is the first step into a long line of genetic engineering- maybe like they did in Braue New World-adding testosterone to make overly aggressive people, for instance. It's not feasible right now; but if people began to experiment with it, it would take ofT. Nobody's done it so far, because it's not ethical. But it's not an unreasonable concern."

Clearly, one of Dr. DeCherney's main concerns is that services not be unreasonably withheld from patients.

"I don't want to impose my ethical values on other people," he said. "All I do is give information, and let people make their own decisions.

The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

11

II.

Rolin Riggs 'The New JourNI

Angela Holder advises doctors on the legal aspects of in vitro fertilization.

12

"' did make a conscious decision to do d o nor insemination in single women- that's not standard medical practice. And I do very, very few abortions: o nly if it's my own patient, and she has a valid reason- which is usually medical. Now abortions are not a problem, because there are plenty of doctors who do them. But if I were to decide not to do donor insemination o r not to do in vitro fertilization, I'd be closing the door to people. Being at Yale University, for some people we're the court of last resort."

And, clearly, Dr. DeCherney feels these services are worthwhile. "If I was infertile, and the choices were donor insemination and adoption, I personally would pick donor insemination," he stated. "Even if there wasn't a long wait for an adopted child. To me, it's a better solution than a doption because the woman goes through pregnancy. Nobody knows about it at home. My own feelings are that I wouldn't tell the child , o r my neighbors, or my mother.

And in my experience by the time the baby's born, most of the husbands have kind of forgotten it's a donor child.

They go through the pregnancy; and it's not uncommon for these people to come back to my office with the baby, and everyone says, 'Oh, he looks just like his father.' It's happened so many times."

To Angela Holder, Counsel for Medical-Legal Affairs at Yale Medical School and Yale-New Haven Hospital, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization are subjects on which her personal and professional opinions conflict.

"I have serious personal questions about bringing a child into the world to be raised by one parent," she said in a South Carolina accent. "I mean, I'm divorced and I've got a kid- he was a toddler when his father and I were divorced- but I didn't intnad that he be brought up by a single parent. And it's really quite difficult- not just financially. It's a hard row to hoe.

"That has nothing to do with what we do here," she continued. "My job here is whether or not something is legal. Now, when I am asked my legal opinion, I give it- but I don't hesitate to say also that personally I think it's a bad idea. I have talked to Alan DeChemey about doing a.i.d . for single women, and he disagrees with me. And I wouldn't say you slwuldn't do it. It's like my opinion on abortion. I've spent 25 years in one place after another giving out advice about abortion rights, and I seriously doubt tJlat I would ever have one myself. But I'm beside myself when anyone tries to make decisions about someone else's body. I mean, my personal opinion is irrelevant."

Legally, the problems posed by artifical insemination and in vitro fertilization are by no means identical, Mrs. Holder emphasized.

In vitro fertilization is a far more complex procedure medically; but because the two parents involved are married to each other, it presents essentially only one legal issue. If the manipulation of the embryo in the jar were to damage it in a way that

"My husband felt that If It couldn't be our own child, then It shouldn't be one of ours."

couldn't be detected during the pregnancy by amniocentesis (laboratory analysis of a sample of amniotic fluid from the uterus, extracted by a hypodermic needle, usually in the 16th week), then, when a child was born with a severe defect, the doctor might be liable.

"Not to the parents, who presumably have signed consent forms," Mrs. Holder said. "But to the child-the child can sue, because nobody consulted him. He might say that his parents had no authority to subject him to that kind of a risk.

"But this is all very speculative," she added. "It's never happened. I mean, if I thought in vitro fertilization was a big risk, we wouldn't be doing it. When it was proposed, I had grave reservations on exactly this point- and I made it my business to talk to doctors both here and elsewhere that I thought knew something on the subject. They satisfied my concern. My concern is theoretical, and the medical judgments are that it won't occur."

Artifical insemination is medically a much simpler procedure than in vitro fertilization. Legally, however, it is much more complex- when a sperm donor is used.

"It's as safe as gening pregnant in the usual fashion," Mrs. Holder stated.

"The only thing that can happen is that it doesn't work. That's why there are no malpractice suits. I have never heard of any kind of malpractice suit involving a.i.d. Ever. Anywhere."

But someday, Mrs. Holder said, someone with a genetic-related disease is going to donate sperm to one of the commercial donor banks in big cities like New York.

"You come in otT the Bowery to donate, and they ask you if you've got diabetes. If you say 'Yes' you don't get paid money. So you say 'No.' It's exactly what happens in commercial blood

banks- every now and then somebody gets hepatitis because they didn't check very carefully about the donors. The kid is born with a genetic disease that could have been prevented, and somebody's going to sue the doctor that got the semen for malpractice. Why it hasn't happened already I don't know, because I'm sure the situation has arisen."

There is one area m which a.i.d.-related lawsuits are being brought: "When the couple gets divorced ten years later, the issue of child support comes up," Mrs. Holder explained.

"And he says, 'I'm not going to support it, because it's not mine.' Now, courts basically make him do it; but what's happened is that states have passed statutes requiring husbands to consent in writing. I labored over our consent forms- and that's not to protect us from a malpractice suit. That's to protect this kid, if his daddy decides to take a walk ten years on."

II I. Maureen Pendergast wants children.

"It's an obsession," she said. "I have a hard time looking at babies- I just want to grab the kid and run. I really do. I'd take one that fell from the sky at midnight- I'm really not fussy. If my husband and I are walking somewhere and I see somebody go by who's pregnant, I'll say, 'Oh, doesn't she look nice.

What a nice outfit. I wonder how pregnant she is?' I'm like that."

Mrs. Pendergast (a pseudonym) is in her early 30s. She is a special education teacher at a New Haven area public school. For the past two and a half years she and her husband have organized their lives around basal temperature charts and twice-monthly artificial inseminations at Dr. DeChemey's office. One time, she stole away from their home on

Christmas morning and down to YaleNew Haven Hospital and back without being detected by their guests.

"I couldn't believe DeCherney would go into his office on Christmas," Mrs. Pendergast said. "He's just outstanding -his expertise, his personality, his manner. I'm grateful I live in the New Haven area."

At present, the Pendergasts are still trying with artificial insemination, and Mrs. Pendergast is on Dr. DeCherney's waiting list for in vitro fertilization. She also hopes to adopt. The one thing Mrs. Pendergast is not going to try, although it would be perhaps her best chance of having children, is artificial insemination by donor.

"My husband felt that if it couldn't be our own child, then it shouldn't be one of ours," she explained. "He wasn't quite sure how he'd feel about a child that was mine, in that sense, and not his. I have to respect that- I think it's tougher on a man to have an infertility problem. It's not the sort of thing you announce at a cocktail party. Women will talk about it amongst themselvesno sweat- but I don't think men can ever quite open a conversation about how they're having infertility problems.

"Under Catholic Church law-and I know this because somebody had the gall to tell me-l could divorce my husband, get an annulment because he is technically incapable of giving me kids without all this extraordinary medical intervention. And I find that .. . '"I mean, it's something you think about. I could marry somebody else, and I could have children, because I'm capable of having children. It makes for great fantasy stuff- you know, down moments- but I wouldn't do it.

Yet the same Church that would never give me an argument about dumping the man I have professed to love with The r-.:ew Journal I April 19, 1982

13

"But I'm beside myself when anyone tries to make decl¡ slons about someone else's body."

..

A maJure ovarian follicle with human egg. all my heart for nine years would have the gall to look me askance for doing some 'unnatural' thing in order to have a child."

Mrs. Pendergast definitely wants to raise her child as a Catholic, although she doesn't consider herself very religious.

"I wouldn't really feel bad in a religious sense, ethical sense, if DeCherney fertilized an egg from my body and decided it wasn't viable and chose not to implant it," she said. "At that point, you're eliminating something that's more potential than actual.

I wouldn't feel I'd participated in a crime. so¡ I don't hold with that argument against in vitro fertilization."

Asked about amniocentesis, Mrs. Pendergast answered, "That's something I just block out. I don't know if I'd even want to have the test. I don't know what my husband's feelings would be-that something we haven't discussed. But I just couldn't abort a baby- that's something I would fight for. I would defend that one to the hilt.

"As a special ed teacher, at least I'd have some background," she went on.

"I wouldn't look to adopt an exceptional kid; but if I had one of my own I'd think, 'Maybe there's a purpose to my receiving this child.'"

Mr. Pendergast's infertility is a complication of his diabetes. Although his

sperm count is normal, a retrograde ejaculation problem tends to weaken them. Both artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, by reducing the distance the sperm must travel, can increase the Pendergasts' chances for conception.

Since, as a diabetic, Mr. Pendergast may eventually have health deterioration (such as cardiovascular and kidney problems, common complications of diabetes), it is possible that the Pendergasts will be denied an adoptive child. Since diabetes is thought to be hereditary, it is possible that a child conceived by the Pendergasts through artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization might develop diabetes in childhood, or as an adult. And, since the Pendergasts were informed of this risk by Dr. DeCherney, the decision to go ahead with artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization is medically and legally considered theirs to make.

"In some sense, I think we're playing wtth the natural laws of selection," Mrs. Pendergast said. "There are no two ways about it. But, on the other hand, it's almost like asking my husband, 'If you had a choice between being a diabetic and not being here, which would you choose?' As diseases go, diabetes is no picnic: there are many serious complications. But I have hopes for the future- for my husband,

SeniorsDon't blow it!

for a diabetic child that I'd have. I guess if I were to have six natural kids, I'd be pushing my luck. But who's to say?

"Maybe there's an element of selfishness, too: that I want a child badly enough to take a chance that the child might be diabetic. I'd have a tough time living with that question, Was I too selfish?'

"I wonder what DeChemey thinks about that," she said. "I mean , in some instances he's playing with the laws of natural selection. In our case, there's a disease that could be passed along.

Now, it's not like a 90 per cent chance -I don't think anybody really knows what the probability is- but, still, he's a medical doctor, and he's possibly bringing a person who's unhealthy into the world. We didn't really ask a whole bunch of questions. I wonder what he does think?"

•

MartluJ Neil, a senior in Branford, wrote on the Talce Back the Night march in the October iss~ of TNJ.

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Offer extends only to people living in Continental United States.

15 The Ne~ JournaJ I April 19, 1982

An interview with

Aollon Rogi)Sf The New Journal

Wolfgang Leonhard

Jose Martinez 16

Wolfgang Leonhard teaches the largest class in the history of Yale. This year, the registrar had to reprogram the University's compwer to accommodate the 771 students enrolled in History of the Soviet Union. Leonhard's other classes, including the History of the International Communist Movement and several graduate seminars on Euro-Communism and Soviet Foreign Policy, are also well-attended.

But Leonhard is also in demand owside of Yale. Through a special arrangement with the University, he spends seven months a year in West Germany where he is a well-known commentator on the Soviet Union. He offers advice to firms and .trade unions, and often appears on television and in 'major West German newspapers and magazines. He also advises the West German Foreign Ministry and the political parties represented in the Bundestag on internal developments in the Soviet Union. His best-selling autobiography, Child of the Revolution, has been made into a movie which is often shown in West German high schools and universities.

The child of two prominent left-wing intellectuals, Leonhard was born in Vienna in 1921. He lived in Germany with his mother until 1933. When the Nazis took power, they fled to Sweden and later to the Soviet Union where he continued his education.

Leonhard am¡ved in Russia on the eve of the Great Purge. One day, his mother jailed to meet him for an appointment. A note arrived in the mail days later, telling him that she had been imprisoned. With the outbreak of the second World War in 1940, his father was put in a concentration camp in France.

Leonhard workedfor a Moscow radio station during the war, making broadcasts in German to strengthen the anti-Nazi forces.

He also attended the Commintern school for foreign Communists where he learned many special skills. Later, he would use this training to escape East Germany.

When the Germans capitulated in 1945, Leonhard was one of the first representatives of the Communist Party to set foot in Berlin.

At age 24, he and several others known as the "Ulbricht Group• (after their le4der Walter Ulbricht) were given the task of setting up a government in Berlin. Once this task was accomplished, Leonhard became a kcturer at the High Party School "Karl Marx."'

When the Yugosk:wwn Communists brok with Moscow in 1!148, Leonhard had already begun to have doubts about the Soviet system. I n 1949, he kft East Germany. But he didn't go to the west. Instead, he went to Yugoskww, which was taking its own path to communism. The <kfection of a high party ojfidal received much attention.

After migrating to West Germany, Leonhard became a graduate student at Oxford, where he wrote and researched The Kremlin since Stalin . In 1964, he gcwe his first kcture at Yale. Since 1966, he has been teaching at Yale each spring, and doing research, writing boolcs, and speaking in West Germany during the rest ofthe year. His books have been translated into nine languages.

The New Journal: H ow did your own education contrast with that of the students you now teach at Yale?

Wolfgang Leonhard: Quite substantially. I first studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in the English department in 1940-41 , i.e., under Stalin. The study plan was given to us up to the last minute. In all our main subjects including English literature, American literature, English history, U.S. history, and of course language, everything was strictly along the party line; for all important English and American authors there was one standard evaluation sentence given to us which we had to learn by heart. Beginning from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales up to Jack London.

TNJ: What evaluation did The Canterbury Tales get?

WL: Chaucer was very much praised .

ever. In September, 1935, I continued m y school education in the Soviet Union in a school in Moscow. It didn't take me long to realize that there was pressure there, too, maybe a different kind but obviously and clearly in existence.

H e was as much a "realist" as you One year later the Great Purge could be in his time, and "realism" is began, the period where seven million as a whole seen as positive. people were arrested in two years; most of m y school mates had an arTNJ: What was it like to have to flee rested mother o r arrested father or you r native Germany at age 12 when m aybe even both parents were arHitler came to power and then to see rested. My mother was arrested at the your mother arrested by the Stalin end of September, 1936, and I had to secret police and your father being live now not only completely alone placed in a concentration camp in without a family but also in a situation France? where I realized , being at that time 14 WL: I grew up in a time when a fate and 15 years of age, any wrong senlike mine was not an exception but sad- tence could mean a deprivation of my ly enough rather widespread. Both my freedom and/or my life. parents were left-wing inteUectuals and The tremendous self-discipline not the brown shirts of the Nazi storm o nly in deeds but also in words and betroopers were for me already a horrible havior became a second n ature in m y sign when I was 10 years of age. When life and was bound to stay for the next 10, 12 years as long as I was in ComHitler came to power in 1933, m y mother took me out of school. I didn't munist-ruled countries of the Stalin go to a Nazi school a single day in m y era. life. Five months later she arranged for me to leave Germany and go to TNJ: H ow did these experiences influSweden. My father was in the mean- ence your thinking? time in emigration in France. My WL: How deep this impact goes is for mother worked still clandestinely the person in question very difficult to against Nazis until early 1935 then answer. The only thing that you can came to Stockholm where we met. answer you rself is that the person who From there in June 1935 we came to went through such dictatorial years w ith personal sacrifices knows and the Soviet Union.

To what degree all of this has influ- cherishes freedom of thought, of readenced me I can't judge myself very ing, of discussion, much more than much except of course that I became people who grew up in a society where very much politically interested. Poli- all these things are taken for granted. tics was not something far away and remote but a direct part of my life, an TNJ: H ow did you and your comrades explanation for the threats I had to react to events like the Great Purge?

Don't you tell stories about them in fear. \\ben my mother and I went to the your class?

Soviet Union I was at the beginning WL : The people I mentioned (in m y full of hopes. full of happiness that the class) were during the Great Purge and terror of the Nazis were then over for- the famous show trials which I witnessThe New Journal I April 19, 1982

17

Politics was not something far away and remote but a direct part of my life.

ed in the Soviet Union. With my friends we discussed these trials, and while we were then by no means oppositionalists of any kind, we didn't believe in thP. trials. We didn't believe that Bukharin (a top Party official purged by Stalin) wanted to assassinate Lenin or was an agent of foreign countries. So the discussions were not if you believe in it or not-we didn't-but why it was "necessary" to have it.

TN.J: How did you react to that?

WL: We tried to give better explanations of why the Purges were necessary. All of us knew that these people were revolutionaries who were not guilty but we tried to reconcile this with our belief systems and say why was it necessary to make it. Our understanding was, well, it's a difficult political problem, and you have to put it in those categories to make it understandable.

T NJ : Was the fact that your mother was in one of the concentration ca.'Tlps of the Gulag for 10 years one t)f the reasons why you started to doubt Communism?

WL : I don 't think that the arrest of my . mother during the Great Purge led me immediately to doubt Stalin's Communism. At that time I was already so much indoctrinated that I refused to take individual cases as this was called in our belief system of that time a "starting point to general conclusions." But on the whole, I think that the mass arrests, the mass purges of the middle 30s were the starting point of rethinking certain aspects of Soviet developments.

18

T NJ : How did Hitler's aggression against the Soviet Union and the Soviet war against the Nazis affect your own viewpoints? â&#x20AC;˘ WL: During the war years I was most

likely more pro-Soviet than ever before in my whole life. The terrible danger of Nazi conquest was so great that everything else seemed not to matter any more. Besides the just struggle against Nazism the war years for me was combined with a great hope of an increasing collaboration of the Soviet Union with Britain, the United States and the other allied powers, and like many Soviet citizens at that time, I had the hope that gradually the victory over Na.zism, the victory of democracy all over the world would also imply a gradual liberalization in the Soviet Union.

T NJ : When you were 24 you came to Berlin with the "Ulbricht Group."

Can you tell us what was it to have almost absolute power in a part of Europe where there was complete destruction, and in which the power of the Red Army was evidently absolute?

WL: There were 10 of us, I was the youngest. We were not told the details of what we were going to do. The only thing we were told was that we were going on a special mission returning as the first German Communists to Berlin.

We arrived in Berlin on the 2nd of May 1945, the same day when the last German troops capitulated in the city.

From May to September 1945 was most clearly the most dramatic, interesting and exciting period of my life.

We were to build up and set into motion new local and city self-governments, install mayors, directors of factories, of enterprises, gradually rebuild the Communist Party of East Germany.

I was at that time still so much influenced by ideology that I thought we could do everything and decide on everything. I had no psychological scruples whatsoever. Today, looking back, I almost sweat remembering the kind of decisions I so easily took in

...

,

Aolton Atggs rThe New Journal

Wolfgang Leonhard Berlin-dozens each day. It was a happy time because I really believed that everything the Soviets did was on the long run good for a new Democratic Germany.

TNJ: Did you feel any pressure from Stalin or Ulbricht?

WL: At that time, due to our knowledge that Berlin would be an interallied city run by the Soviets, Americans, British, French, our directives were not yet so _harsh as later.

The task was to set up both the city government of Berlin and the district in such a way that the Western Allies, which would most likely come in June, 1945, would have nothing to complain about, and would immediately legalize the authorities we set up.

TNJ: Those were the orders you received?

WL: Yes. There was once a strange situation when Ulbricht once said all our district authorities must look democratic, but we have to have all important positions in our hands.

Communists usually had the second man of a city or of a district which was responsible for personnel and the chiefof-police. So, numerically the Communists were in a minority , but they had the most important positions in their hands.

TNJ: Did you ever meet Joseph Stalin?

WL: I never met Stalin, but I saw him from afar at the demonstrations on the first of May and on the 7th of November (anniversary of the October 1917 revolution) in which we all participated.

Of high-ranking Soviet leaders, I had only the opportunity of meeting two. One, in summer 1945 when I was the private secretary of Ulbricht, I met twice for longer conversations Marshal Zhukov (a Wartime hero). And the second leader I met was in September, 1947. At the second congress of the Socialist Unity Party in East Berlin the official representative of the Soviet Communist Party was Mikhail Suslov, who already at that time played a great role.

TNJ: What was your impression of Suslov?

WL: I had the same impressions of most other people. He was a person of ice-cold, absolute clarity in his diction and his speech very ideological, very cold. He almost never smiled or laughed. He was a top ideologist at that time.

TNJ: Are all Soviet leaders like that?

WL: He is a typical chief ideologist of the Soviet Communist system. both under Stalm and after Stalin, and in meetin!l him you feel his role.

TNJ: Your escape from Stalinism was made in 1949 to Yugoslavia. Was the position takl¡.1 by Yugoslavia against Stalin of such importance to you that it merited a life-threatening escape?

WL: Yes, the stand taken by the Yugoslav Communist:. under the leadership of Tito in 1948 a~ainst Stalin was exact!}: the decisive event that changed my life.

Already a few weeks after the Yugoslav break with I\.1oscow, I received Yugoslav materials which were clan-

destinely spread in East Germany like in all countries of the Soviet bloc which I read like an eye opener, and of course, had to hide because not even we as party officials were allowed to have any page written and published

by Yugoslav Communists.

From summer 1948 to March 1949 I really had to live a doubie life officially being still a lecturer at the High Party School "Karl Marx" and in reality h<:ing an active oppositional of the Titoist line. When my sympathies for the Yugoslav Communists through an indiscretion became known , I had to escape on March 12, 1949 and it was as you mentioned an escape of lifedanger, until 13 days later I reached Belgrade. I thought at that time that I had made the right step and have never regretted my escape from East Germany to Yugoslavia ever since.

TNJ: Many persons have wondered why didn't you go straight into the Western zones of Germany? I mean what was there in Yugoslavia which was so important that it merited your escape to Yugoslavia instead of going to the West?

WL: This is of course the major theme of my autobiographical story, "Child ofthe Revolution." In 1948-49 I still considered myself to be a critical Communist implying I believed in the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

I was also very critical about the imple¡ mentation of these teachings by Stalin in the Soviet Union and Ulbricht in East Germany, and I was longing for a country where I hoped the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin on the socialist society would be correctly implemented without the horrors of Stalinism and the Ulbricht system in East Germany. Therefore, Yugoslavia for me was a revolutionary country, a :.ocialist country led b)' a Communi'lt Party separating itself from Stalin and

The New Journal I April 19, 1982

19

Most of my schoolmates had an arrested mother or an arrested father or both.

openly attacking Stalinism was exactly the fulfillment of the ideals I had at that time.

TNJ: Your first years in the West must have been if not difficult, a rather novel experience.

WL: Yes, it was a very novel experience and 1'11 never forget the November day of 1950 when I arrived in West Germany seeing for the first time modern traffic, well-stocked houses, and completely complacent primarily non-political people. Every day in the Western world was for me almost an incredible adventure because many things taken for granted by people growing up in the West were for me completely an incredible novelty. For instance, a few days after arriving in the West I was going with a good friend in the car when suddenly in the city was general traffic control. The car where I was, was stopped by a policeman. I was shivering and pale expecting of course that the policeman would

now immediately ask me for all the documents I have and interrogate me about all my political activities in my life and about my political views. I still remember the incredible shock when I found out that this policeman was only asking stupid questions about if the lights were in order, if the tires were o k and asked to check the wipers. I was waiting for the real thing-the political questions. But they never came. The policeman went away and just left the car driving onwards. I had never seen a policeman not interested in political questions but only in simple idiotic traffic and motorcar problems. Similar adventures now came almost every week and they led to a gradual change about some of my preconceived views on Western democracies.

TNJ: As someone who teaches at Yale, do you think it's possible for people who are sheltered from history to still be politically aware?

WL: It is possible, bUl it takes, of

Wolfgang Leonhard ltctures to the largest class at Yale.

course, intellectual work to put yourself in a system which is very different from your own. It is a difficult thing because most people are always judging everything from their own experience. For me, one of the most important characteristics of intellectual thinking is the capability of thinking yourself into a completely different culture, a completely different economic and political system and with intellectual activity trying to understand it . I think the majority of Yale students are capable of doing so.

For me, for instance in the 60s, I had the opportunity of being six times in Africa and six times in Asia, and many things I didn't understand before I began to rethink.

TNJ: Where do you stand politically today in the European context?

WL: I am not a member of any political party in Europe. Despite my personal involvement in the Communist movement in my youth and many experiences including tragic experiences in my own life and the life of my family under Stalin, I am trying very seriously in all my work and analysis never to act emotionally and always extremely rationally. I hope it's not necessary therefore to state that I am neither a Communist any more nor am I a hard line anti-Communist. In fact , I am equally far away from both of these extremes.

TNJ: Have you ever wanted to settle down and teach on a full-time basis either at Yale or in Germany?

WL: No. I am perfectly happy with the arrangement made with Yale as a Professor (Adjunct). I am a European who very much likes to be in the United States and spend half of the year in an American academic environment but I have never tried to become an American or to pretend to be an American.

'20

TNJ: Some students fear you present a

J

negative view of the Soviet Union which most students accept unquestionably. What do you think about this?

WL : I don't think that the views that I give in the lecture course are too negative. After having lived fourteen years in Communist-ruled countries (and ten of those fourteen years in the Soviet Union under Stalin) it was and is my aim both in my writings as well as in my lecture courses to be as objective as it is humanly possible. If there is one aim in my li fe in the University , it is not to repeat my own experiences but give the possibility of pluralism of a choice of interpretations.

TNJ: For many of the students in your class this may be the only time they will ever study the Soviet Union. How will you hope to influence their perceptions?

WL : I hope to overcome any kind of one-sidedness-primitive anti-Communism as well as any illusions about the nature of the dictatorial system in th e Soviet Union. My hope would be th at students after taking the lecture course will have a deeper understanding of different periods in Soviet history, and understand the differences between the rulers and the ruled, the leaders and the population, the Russians and the non-Russian nationalities, the ruling strata which live a privileged life and the workers. To sum up, they will have a more differentiated view of Soviet society. And most of all , never confuse the regime with the population.

•

Josi Ro!Hrto Marlma,

new this fallPower and Politics TilE PURPOSES OF AMERICAN POWER An Essay on National Security Robert W. Tucker, The Johns Hopkins Umuersuy We have reached a maJor tummg pomt m Amencan fore1gn policy; a penod of withdrawal and of pass1v1ty has come to an end. Tucker portrays the v1sible decline of Amencan power and position as havmg led to a greater dissausfacuon over policy than we have expenenced m a decade. Notes, b1bllography.

CONTENTS: 1. A Cnucal juncture. 2. Amenca m Declme: The 1970s. 3. The Significance of the Present Debate. 4. The Arms Balance and the Pers1an Gulf.

5. The Two Contamments: An Argumen t Retraced.

ZOO pp. September 1981 $12.00 {Cloth) ISBN 0-03-059974-1 $5.95 (Student E<iluon) ISBN 0-03-059976-8 A LEHRMAN INSTITUTE BOOK

C RITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT W. TUCKER'S PREVIOUS BOOKS The Radical Left and Amer ican Foreign Policy MTucker, as tough-manded a ratl\ma!J,t a:. th~::~ Cllmt:. we1ghs the con,-enuonal and radical v1ewpomts agam:.t each uther m l-nll1ant and relentle:.sly ubJecm·e style ... An extremely 1mpmtant bo_~,k" The New Isolationism MA cogent challenge. rad1c.JI yet '>(ll'-er. tl) the recent and current l>rthudux~ ut American fore1gn ~,!Jcy:' Swn~ Huffrrwnn

a second year

Political Scitnce Graduate studmt, took the History of the Soviet Union whtn he was an undtrgradiUlh at Yale m 1973.

The Inequality of Nations MPrufessor Tucker's luc1d, furcetul. unorthodox and 1m~'rtant argument shl)uld continue the debates engendered ~Y h" earher essa\·s on thJS sul-)ect. Tt) r~· w induce greater equaht)' mto mtemauonal relauons. the author lllSISts, w11ll'-e qu1xotic and counterproductive:' Fure1gn Affairs PaAlc.E& PUR.ISHE.&S 521 Fifth Avenue

New York. New York 10175

21 The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

Jobs vs.

Academics at the Law School

Jeff Strong/1M ~w .JoooW

Law School Dean W ellington

"Most of my semester was devoted to job interviews," said George Frankel, a second-year law student at Yale, "and it was far too much ."

For second and third-year Yale law students, the fall search for summer and full-time jobs with law firms can take up as much time as classes; often it is of greater interest. It's a long, tiring process, stretching from September to December, with weeks of interviewing out of town .

Next year, the law school faculty will try to limit the interview season to two weeks of the fall . But few students are enthusiastic about the idea.

a..w finn Joba 22

Last year 600 law firms applied to send lawyers on-campus to recruit the 350

second and third-year Yale law students, but the law school had space for only 400 over the four months of interviewing. The jobs pay well, up to $900 per week in New York and Los Angeles. And the firms pay students' travel, meal, and hotel expenses for second interviews, called "call-backs" or "fly-outs."

"Everyone gets a job," said law school Dean Harry Wellington. "' mean , everyone gets a job. That's just the way it is."

The long interviewing season was an annoyance to most law students. Yale law students averaged twenty oncampus interviews each last fall, according to Associate Dean James Zirkle.

And many students interviewed for jobs in more than one city, taking as much as two weeks ofT from school to travel to call-back interviews.

But the psychological strain of the interview season grated harsher on law students' lives. Waiting to hear whether firms would grant second interviews, and then waiting for a job offer, could be painfully tense times, especially for the student who received multiple rejection letters before ever getting a positive response. And at school , students were constantly reminded of their job search by the stream of peers in conservative business garb.

"When anyone sits down in the dining hall in a three-piece suit, the focus immediately tums toward interviewing, and it's hard to avoid the conversation ," said Frankel. " It's most oppressive in the bathroom, where you see the kids changing. It's so much a show," said third-year student Laura P otter.

Still, most students saw the interview season as the best solution.

Students have a lot at stake, both money and careers, and the extended interview season provided some security. "' wasn't dissatisfied with it," said second-year student Bennett Spiegel.

"It's the kind of thing where you kept on going until you got something." â&#x20AC;˘I found it long and straining and I also found it worked p~tty well: said second-year student Eugene Illovsky. â&#x20AC;˘I don't see ~hy people presuppose that

''The faculty did what they did despite pretty stron~ stu· dent opinion against lt. '

because the interview season put a strain on students, that it's something that they shouldn't have to go through.

Students can presumably decide whether they want to go through it or not."

The feculty ectlon In December, by a two to one vote, the law school faculty took that decision out of students' hands. Next year's fall semester will begin one and a half weeks earlier than in previous years. In late September, students will submit a list of firms with which they want to interview. During one week in October, classes will not meet, and law firms will be assigned rooms at the Holiday Inn for interviewing. And the Thanksgiving vacation, formerly only two days, will be a full week to be designated the official call-back period.

The faculty had been discussing for several years the possibility of altering the interview season. What finally motivated them, according to Dean Wellington, "was the concern that students were engaged over an extended period of time in the interview process, and that this led to a lack of engagement in the classroom experience and the educational process during the fall term."

"The students had it very much on their minds," Wellington added. "Any day they had an interview, that was all that they were involved in."

Some students agreed. "It was very annoying that students were so obsessed with getting jobs last semester, an_d it really detracted from the academtc atmosphere of the law school." said Frankel.

But many other students voiced opposition to the job fair. The elected student representatives to the faculty presented a survey which showed that 148 of 169 students polled preferred the old interview season. The faculty, however, noted that the survey polled only one-third of the students and had been accompanied by a memorandum criticizing the job fair.

"I think the bulk of the student body was indifferent, • stated Dean Wellington. But in the eyes of student representative Mary Gay Sprague, "The faculty did what they did despite

pretty strong student opinion against it."

At the very least, noticeably few students spoke out in favor of the job fair. So even if the student body was indifferent, the decision was made by the faculty for the students.

"The faculty here have a particular vision about the Yale Law School being a place that is extremely academic," said one second-year student. "They consider job interviewing to be dirty work that should be limited to as curtailed a period as possible. It's an interesting bit of paternalism."

Student opinion What continues to bother some students is that the new system won't affect the two aspects of interviewing which most interfere with academic life: anxiety of interviewing and time spent interviewing.

Even with the job fair, students will still be thinking about jobs from September to December. "Getting a job is going to be just as much on everyone's mind," said second-year student Randy Styers, "and it's going to be as much a subject of conversation and worry."

And it doesn't appear that students will spend any less time in the job search. Most class time missed in the fall is for call-backs. But the Thanksgiving call-back period includes only three business days, and, agreed Dean Wellington, "There's no way of policing call-backs."

In addition, the job fair may actually increase interviewing. "You may have students interviewing with more firms at the job fair than they interviewed with last fall," suggested Dean Zirkle.

"That would be partly a reflection of hedging bets, partly a reflection of anxiety the first time through a job fair."

"I don't think it's going to substantially change the interference that recruitment has, • admitted Dean Wellington, "but it's a step in the right direction."

But many students feel that the job fair will be counter-productive. For example, noted second-year student Tom Distler, "It shortens the summer, which takes away money and also restricts splitting the summer between

firms, • which many law students now do. Wellington, however, said that since the faculty had been considering a fall break anyway, the job fair could be viewed as "a reallocation of vacation time."

Another problem concerns students far more than it does faculty: the possibility that the job fair will make it harder for some students to get jobs.

One student representative reported that some professors did not believe that any Yale student would have trouble getting a job. And one professor expressed doubt that a ten-week summer job could be very important.

But the most qualified students have always gotten many job offers, while other students interview a lot and get only one or two. The job fair may worsen this imbalance. Because all interviewing takes place before any student gets call-backs, said student representative Randy Michelson, "people who would ordinarily drop out of the system early on when they get their offers will interview more than they need to." And if students don't get call-backs after their interviews, they will face the arduous task of finding a job on their own.

"No one will be hurt if we can help it," promised Dean Wellington. "We'll make arrangements if individual students have problems."

"Older students and students who have weaker academic credentials," said Spiegel, "are the ones who will pay the price."

The job fair will be held next year, despite student criticism. The law school administration is sincerely devoting its efforts to planning and arrangements which it hopes will alleviate academic interference without disturbing success in the job market.

But student pessimism was summed up by second-year student Nancy Thompson, who said, "Pd like to think that perhaps it will condense all the agony into one really unpleasant week, but realistically I think people will go outside the job fair format."

•

Steven Epsuin is in his s«ond y«~.r al Yale Law &lwol.

23 The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

Cross campus library : the great Holly Lyman beige continuum

24

They dug a big hole in the middle of Yale. They painted it white and put down beige carpets. They put in books, they put in desks, and they named it Cross Campus Library.

Everybody makes fun of it. They say it looks like a bomb shelter or an airline terminal and it smells of smoke or spiritual decay or unwashed weenies.

As one student library worker said, "CCL don't get no respect."

Nonetheless, that hole in Cross Campus has come a long way since it was dug in 1968. Today it's more than a well-used library- it's the most heterogenous gathering place at Yale.

On the average weekday night, except in February, CCL holds every group you can put a label on-jocks and lesbians, freshman and graduate students, a crowd of beautiful people and a silent majority of weenies.

For the regulars in CCL, whether they're socialites, weenies or workers, the library provides a subterranean subculture with its own rules and folklore. Socialites tell stories about mooning, taking drugs, and holding court in CCL. Workers tell stories about crazy people they have helped (the man who wanted to make a basketball large r than the New Haven Coliseum, or the one who thought Communists were attacking his brain).

Robert, a full-time worker and supervisor, fondly recalled a rumour that those who built CCL had forgotten to connect the sewage pipes. "It was a good rumour. I know I did my best to spread it . . . You get your own folklore here." Even the weenies contribute to CCL's graffiti.

Most of the regulars in CCL follow unwritten rules. The front section of the library is a social center. As you walk to the back of the library and downstairs, the atmosphere becomes more decorous; the area around the single study carrels is nearly silent. At

times, however, the library just isn't big enough to accomodate the variety of people who use it.

"I've almost had fights in CCL," a senior said, "for being out of control and people being angry." On one occasion two years ago, he said, "a guy said to me , 'would you shut up.' He was much bigger than me, but I was hanging out with jocks." After a few epithets were exchanged, one of the jocks pulled a switchblade "It was a joke," the senior explained. "It wasn't a serious threat . . . more bragging to us that he had one. Still, pulling a switchblade in a tense situation . . . " Quieter confrontations have occurred this year when a group of men have arranged their chairs so they could stare at and talk about a group of lesbians. Y alesbian Maia Ettinger '83 said she has never responded actively to this treatment. "They're not the people we can talk to. Why should we waste our energy? We've got work to do."

The library's official functions and rules make it a magnet for a variety of people. "For a place like Yale, which has always been book-oriented, it wouldn't make sense to segregate" libraries by user, said Head Librarian Howard Keith. Instead, Yale has segregated books according to how frequently they are used. CCL's 150,000 volumes comprise Yale's intensive-use collection, with yearly circulation approaching 250,000. And because it holds most of the library system's closed and overnight reserve materials, CCL is an unavoidable workplace for many students who normally shun libraries. Moreover, for serious students who smoke,- CCL is a haven -the only general library where they can satisfy their habit.

"I like the library," Senior Fred Kaufman said. "People don't realize how much you can do there. They just sit The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

25

They say It looks like a bomb shelter or an airline terminal and It smells of smoke or spiritual decay or unwashed weenles.

Jeff Strong/The New Journal

around and study. They don't realize there's no end to the hubbub you can cause without getting into any trouble."

For many of the fun-lovers at the front of the library, CCL is a big beige playground- a place to table-hop, gossip, and flirt. Even for the students who go to CCL to study, the library affords welcome companionship- so welcome, in fact, that many have a hard time working in it.

"I come here to socialize. When I really have to work, I go to the stacks or the Law School. Half the time I'm here I spend wandering around talking to people I know," Junior George Schwab said. "I work in a weenie hole

26

so I don't have to listen to people like me make noise. When I'm not working, I make noise."

CCL is the friendliest library at Yale. Its simple design and open spaces allow you to spot your friends there easily. People who use the library for socializing describe it as the only general meeting place on campus.

"CCL is the student pub we don't have . . . It fulfills a real function," Senior Liz Berger said. She added that "Yale puts a lot of emphasis on camaraderie within the college.

There's no place to see people who aren't in your college.

Berger said she enjoys the mixlUre of people in CCL and the occasional strange scenes it produces. She recalled giving a fashion show there for her new leather pants. She paraded through the

front smoking section, where gay students tend to sit, and exclaimed "man, what I need is a sugar daddy to keep me in leather pants." A student turr~ed around and told her, "man, you are in the wrong section of CCL for that."

Is there a "right section" in CCL? No such luck. "It's a good place to talk to people you already know, but if you try to pick someone up, it doesn't work," a junior said. A senior woman said that CCL's innocent reputation, paradoxically, encouraged her to seek her former boyfriend there shortly after they met. "I'd want to see him. I used to walk around discretely, look in the cubicles. 'Oh, I was just in the neighborhood,'" she'd say. '"Do you have a pencil? Can I borrow a dime?

Let's go the Machine City."' She emphasized that CCL is "really safe." The library provides not only hundreds of chaperones but also a wholesome exuse for running into a friend. A junior said that this is the reason he goes to CCL to see the women he's "madly in love with." "If I stopped by her room, she'd know I'd come to see her. But if I find her in CCL, I could just be there to study."

Most of the students in CCL actually are there to do their work. People line up outside the library before it opens on Sundays. The single study carrels are all taken early in the evenings and during exams, it's sometimes impossible to find a seat anywhere in the library.

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CCL's inflexible deadlines and stiff fines (50 cents per quarter hour at closed reserve) anger many students.

Serious confrontations between workers and students are most likely to occur when students can't check out the books they need. On a few rare occasions, students have thrown books at the library workers.

Although they don't enjoy this sort of abuse, the workers tend to be sympathetic to students' frustration . "Explosions usually occur around exams," said Robert, who's had books thrown at him. "You're not really in control at that time. You've got finals , and here's this person who won't give the book to you." He added that people who lose their tempers at the library often return to apologize, which he appreciates.

"The situation has grown worse each year as the job market tightened up," Robert said "When I came here [seven years ago) this was a relaxed place."

Supervisor Linda Mcintyre attributed many confrontations to users' ignorance. "A lot of time, it's someone who's new to this library and doesn't know that fines are strict." She added that she seldom waives a fme.

There are exceptions though. Before the new computers made deadlines inflexible, a conscientious appearance could help you avoid a fme . Student worker John Findar recalled "a very gaunt Divinity Student in a long cloak.

His face was ashen, his eyes were sunken, deep dark wells. He was very soft-spoken. He walked up to the desk and said, 'I'd like to pay my fine .' I said 'that'll be 25c,' and he said, 'I don't usually get fines, but my cat was sick and I couldn't leave her.' He was about to pay, but for my own sportsmanship, I decided to pursue the matter. I said, 'why didn't you get a friend to take care of her?' He said, 'oh, no, that would be quite impossible. You see, I have no

friends.' I said, 'oh well, in that case, no fine.'"

Confrontations are nothing new for CCL. The library was a subject of dispute long before it was built. The architectural firm of Edward L. Barnes originally suggested that the underground library be lit by raised skylights covering much of Cross Campus.

After President Kingman Brewster and other Corportation members objected to this plan, the architects decided that CCL should instead be lit by two strips of ground-level skylights, with little trees planted between them and an overhead canopy of leaves.

When this plan was unveiled in The New Journal in April 1968, it immediately provoked protest. A Yale Daily News editorial thundered that "it would scarcely be no less of a desecration to construct a hamburger stand in the middle of the New Haven Green that to trade in the turf on the Cross Campus for footage of granite and glass." A Committee to Save the Cross Campus sent thousands of letters to alumni asking them to protest the plans, and its petitions quickly garnered 4000 signatures.

Nevertheless, on the morning of April 23 a bulldozer crawled onto the Cross Campus to tear up two trees. It was stopped by hundreds of students who surrounded the trees until Presidential Assistant Henry Chauncey arrived and sent the work crews home, promising no excavation without notification . In keeping with the spirit of the times, the protest had its own song and the Committee to Save the Cross Campus held a symbolic planting to "show our concem and commitment to preserving the grassy area. â&#x20AC;˘ History of Art Professor Vincent Scully gave aesthetic authority to the protesters' outrage. Although he was studying Mexican art in New Mexico

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The New J o urnal I April 19, 1982

27

CCL Is the friendliest library at Yale.

28

at the time of the confrontation, he sent a letter to Yale Daily News denouncing the skylight plans as technological and formalistic. He warned that "here the technological solution is innocent and unconcious enough, but pushed to its ultimate, for example, it was the only process which could have unleased the Air Force upon Vietnam." Plans were made for Scully to fly back to Yale and deliver a lecture about the proposed library. Before his return, however, the firm dropped its plans for a skylight system, and the protest, its mission accomplished, dissolved.

The library underwent a change in its proposed function while it was being designed. Originally, it was intended to be an Area Studies Library.

At the request of librarians, plans for the interior were modified to make the stacks accessible and the library as a whole unintimidating. The building that resulted was carefully broken up into different kinds of study spaces.

The front of the library contains comfortable, if unattractive, cushioned chairs. As you move to the back and downstairs, these give way to open tables, then to enclosed desks. The double study carrels at the sides of the library offer still greater privacy, and the single carrels at the back of the lower floor are insulated and completely self-contained.

Many students were unimpressed, Upon completion in 1971 , the library was met with editorials moans. "You feel that somewhere along the line the architects must have failed to grasp the essential distinction between a warehouse and a library," wrote a former Yale Daily News chairman.

Another opinion hailed CCL as "one of the deadest spaces on the campus, the great beige continuum."

Today, however, most students who use CCL praise its design and coloring. "The reason I started studying

here was because it was so dark and dull," Sophomore Val Pierce said.

"The most colorful thing was the cover of your book." Graduate student Andy Cappel likes the beige because "it's so hideous it forces you to socialize or study or sleep."

CCL is used so much, in fact, that it is deteriorating more rapidly than it is

being repaired. The carpets are ripped and waterstained; in places they have been worn through to the floor. The paint is peeling, and the cushions of chairs are torn. "It needs a little more attention," Keith said. CCL's librarians, however, have h ad little success persuading Yale to pour more money into library maintenance.

Hans-Peter a.emann/ The New Journal

â&#x20AC;˘

ROSEY'S Tailors & Cleaners

82 WALL ST. opposite Silliman FREE BOX COLD STORAGE "Let's do the weenie again!" .At the stroke

of midnight in an

academic race Works the all-time weenie at a furious

pace &u penal madly scribbling as he tries to gtt it down But nows the time for lulving and CCL is closing down You know, it must shut down.

Its 11:45, we are closing soon.

Its ch«kout deodline, we will grant no

boon.

Go to your dormitory, you can study on 'til dawn But now its time for leaving an.d CCL is closing, You know, it must shut down.

Ifyou have closed reserve books, you know tluJJ you art there.

Rttum those books an.d pamphlets, we have none to sptut. if not, we have to fine you. T1uu would not befon.

But nows the time for leaving, CCL is closing.

Everyone go home.

-Matt Gold's venion of •Locomotive Breath• (all rigbts reserved)

The now-defunct tradition of singing CCL announcements began in the spring of 1977, when student worker Matt Gold ('79) grew bored of the standard closing message . "It seemed better to sing it," he recalled. "''d take a regular song and write new lyrics, weaving in 'it's 11 :45,' 'we dose at 12:00,' 'checkout is closed,' and 'return your closed reserve materials.' The problem was those four didn't rhyme very well." H is repenoire expanded to include such ballads as "She's Got a Paper to Write." Other workers joined in the fun, and some evenings featured a CCL sing-along.

The library administration stopped

the music, however, in the middle of the fall of '77, after Gold and fellowworkers broadcast a seven and a halfminute version of "Stairway to Heaven." "We got carried away," Gold said. "They told us . . . it didn't fit in with their idea of how a library should run."

CCL, however, has never been a normal library. Workers there still make occasional weird announcements. They fondly recall students' wilder Halloween costumes and Secret Society initiations. Several enjoy the story about the streakers this year (almost no one noticed them) or the Leap Year's Day when students released a garbage bag of frogs and everyone had to stop working to catch frogs. (The joke went bad the next day when people began to find dead frogs .)

You can do almost anything you like in CCL, including drugs. A senior who considers the library a fine place to socialize recalled tripping there. "I remember going into CCL and looking up 'hallucinate.' Then I went running around and throwing books around, pushing them off shelves." He added, "It's not the average place to trip."

It's not the average library, either, or the average social center. It's more than a gathering place and less than a melting pot. What is CCL? As Senior Fred Kaufman said, "CCL is relief in the face of books."

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The New Journal / April 19, 1982

Everyone hates David Frum, or so it seems, judging from the screaming headlines on the op-ed page of the Yale Daily News: "Frum: Distortions, Misrepresentations and Lies;" "Frum 'laden with lies';" "Frum's Awful Spectre." His name has become a term of disparagement among liberals on campus, synonymous with elitist conservatism. "Now you're talking like David Frum," more than one student has been overheard saying to another in

''I

like caus1ng fuss.''

Gabriella Stern

30

â&#x20AC;˘

Frum's attire approximates preppie.

During our interview he wore a brown-and-grey, tweed sports jacket over a pink sweater, beige slacks and penny loafers. Thick, neatly-clipped, curly dark-brown hair frames broad, fleshly cheeks and an immense forehead. A pair of tortoise-shell granny glasses sit on a long, wide nose that slopes into a pair of flared nostrils. As he talks, his shapeless lips are shifted somewhat to one side, and he holds his

the course of a political discussion.

"I like causing fuss,~ says Frum, whose weekly column , "Juvenilia," (which means "youthful works" in Latin) has provoked dozens of letters and opinion pieces from students and professors, particularly feminists and pacifists, upset by his radically rightwing views. Nevertheless, Frum claims to speak for a large number of closet conservative undergraduates at Yale, "the 20 per cent who voted for Reagan," he says, his thick, pink lips spreading into a wide, gap-toothed smile. "I think you'd be astonished at the number of people who do not share the liberal concerns at Yale. Eighty per cent of all college graduates are Republicans. Most Yale students will be conservatives after college."

After college, Frum, T.D., '82, might have a job writing speeches for Vice-President George Bush, although no final arrangements have been confiiTTled. If it falls through, he'll work for the Conservative Party of Canada as a researcher or policy assistant, after which he'll either go into punditry or business. If he chooses business, he plans to "make some money and buy ftrst editions."

â&#x20AC;˘

hands close in front of his face, wriggling his fingers, and flexing one hand or the other with a quick wrist movement.

Frum loves to talk, and he talks about his notoriety on campus in the enthusiastic manner of a gourmet discussing food. He uses many compounds, nouns and adjectives, and tends to be much less concise in person than in his column.

"Writing columns has been enormously educational for me. At first, my ideas were such a hodge-podge, a contradictory and complicated mess of notions. I had to learn to be consistent within a column and between columns." So far, he's been quite consistent. Since January 1981, when he began the column, he has come out against nuclear disarmament, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the annual Yale Hunger Action Program fast, a Peace Conference held here in February and last fall's "Take Back the Night" march organized by local feminist groups.

"My column is a kind of public service. rm preventing the Daily from becoming a Maoist rag. rm preserving some balance. You have to force the

~

Rollin Riggs/The New Journal

David Frum in his room. majority opinion to be a little more careful than it is, when it is the expression of uniform opinion. There ought to be somebody around to say, 'you just aren't intellectually honest."' Frum sees Yale as an essentially "nonpolitical" campus, where "people are liberal when they are political at all. A very small minority are left-wing liberals. Most of the people share the values of the rest of the country." For example, he feels students generally "support some measures of resistance against the Soviet Union. But no one at Yale in any open way is going to say anything against nuclear disarmament."

Uphampered by any such inhibition!, Frum opposed a Peace Conference sponsored by the University Chaplain's Office in February. In the piece, he addressed participants in the conference who believe "the United States and the Soviet Union equally threaten world peace" and that "additions to the American nuclear arsenal make nuclea~ war more likely." By demanding that the American ~overn­ ment disar'r.l, these people are mcreas-

ing the likelihood of a Soviet military buildup and ultimately a "Soviet first strike," Frum wrote. At first, readers felt perversely satisfed when left-wing columnist Rob Glaser accused Frum of "distortions, misrepresentations, and lies." But after Glaser continued battering away at Frum, justifying his use of the word "lie" instead of justifying the essence of his accusations against Frum, those same readers began sending letters to the editor in Frum's defense.

• •

•

Frum favors U.S. support to the Duarte regime in El Salvador to prevent the revolutionaries from instituting ''Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism'' in the Cemral American nation. Recently Frum wrote, "What good will it do for the people of El Salvador or for American strategic interests to realize after we have lost in El Salvador how important it was, and how right it was, to win? America lost in Vietnam because its intellectuals could not bring themselves to believe the truth.

America is in danger of losing in El

Salv.ador for the same reasons,'' (YDN, March 23, 1982).

Another of Frum's pet peeves is "the divestment people," students and professors who don't want Yale to invest in companies that do business with the apartheid-practicing South African government. Frum has attacked their "mind-boggling hypocrisy" in a couple of pieces: "They're against Yale investing in South Africa, but don't seem to mind that Yale invests in all kinds of nasty authoritarian countries such as Burundi, Tanzania, the U.S.S.R." On several occasions, he also has criticized feminists for engaging in what he considers a similar kind of sloppy thinking. Last September, Frum condemned a march "To Take Back the Night" in which women from Yale and New Haven protested their inability to walk alone after dark without fear of rape. Frum's point: Crime, such as rape, is not an issue of concern only to women, but to all. His conclusion: The march would be "utterly useless' because it failed to address the broader problem of crime in the community. In response to the colThe New Journal I April 19, 1982

31

32

umn, several students asserted in letters to the Yale Daily News that Frum had "callously" ignored the possibility that rape is a "sexually motivated" crime against women, and that he overlooked the effect a large number of women gathering in protest might have on local crime prevention.

Frum's stand on feminism stems from his conviction that the family is "the most important institution in society." He believes "the American feminist movement and the family are not compatible. While feminism became enormously powerful in the 1960s, the family took a beating," he says. If the E.R.A. passed, he says, it "would remove any ability of society to pass protectionist laws for the family."

Frum studied feminism last year in a Women's Studies course "Feminism and Philosophy." "I did it because I wanted to get the coherent argument behind the philosophy. Of course we did not. Feminism is a hodge-podge and medley of contradictory ideas. It is euentially a politically radical movement." Here is where Frum truly plays devil's advocate. Frum opposes the E .R.A ., as well as organized feminist groups, but devilishly has neglected to tell his readers that he strongly supports equal opportunity for women; he also supports abortion rights. "I am less sexist than 98 per cent of the men I know. They believe in the E.R.A. and also helieve their girlfriend should sacrifice her career for them."

Frum enjoys discussing the Women's Studies Couse, in which he was one of the four men enrolled. "The professor was Carol Donovan. I calJed her Professor Donovan. Everyone else called her Carol. I loathe calJing professors by their f1r1t names because it's pretending you're in an egalitarian relationship when you're not. It shows a lack of respect and good manners."

Frum'â&#x20AC;˘ manners are beyond

Rolin

R~ IThe

New JooXNI

Frum and News Editorial Editor jacob Levitch discuss Frum 's latest editorial. reproach. At Yale, he hangs around a handful of intellectuals in Ezra Stiles College, with whom he might be found discussing Proust (whose entire oeuvre he's read "in English in the old translation, half in the new English translation, and half in French.") He also finds time to organize and engage in debates as the President of the Yale Debate Association. His debating skills are evident in his characteristic glibness and poise. "In the fall of 1980, I was one-half of a team (the other half was Steve Weiner '81) that beat Harvard, at Harvard, for the ftrSt time since 1950. The topic was 'Resolved: Liberalism Will Rise Again.' We argued the negative.''

Born and raised in Toronto, Frum grew up in an "extraordinarily happy," "superficially liberal" family. His mother is a successful television interviewer- the Barbara Walters of Can ada- and his father is a businessman with a world-famous collection of African art. In high school, Frum was School Captain, a Toronto equivalent of president of the student government. He also was a hippy radical. In his high school yearbook portrait his hair was long and his eyes wild. He now refuses to discuss his preYale days at much length, but former high school classmates say he belonged to an artistic set and had a fascination with drugs. He sobered up at Yale. "I wore a tie every day sophomore year."

A combination of forces shaped his political views at Yale. "Directed Studies, which I was in freshman year, is a program that says these ancient, musty books are of enormous value.

Also, whatever political statements people made auU)ma.Jicaliy freshman year were liberal. If you were bothered

by rote statements, it drove you to the right. And Yale itself is imbued with tradition. You can loathe it or revel in it. Finally, there are a few conservative intellectuals at Yale. Eugene Rostow was my junior-year advisor. I met with him once a week for an hour last year.

It was an exhilarating experience.''

Frum may be one of the only Yale undergraduates to be published in the New Yorker. The magazine, which often prints bloopers from other publications, in February quoted a garbled paragraph from one of Frum's columns, and concluded with the editor's note, "See us after class, Mr. Frum."

Frum was not amused. "I was humiliated beyond description. It was read out loud in an introductory macro-economics class. I calJed home and told my father and mother about this thing. They laughed for about ten minutes."

Frum will earn a combined B.A. and M.A. in history this May. His 100-page senior essay concerns the last six months of the Vietnamese Republic and whether it fell due to corruption or lack of U.S. support. "'tis true that in the last year and a half, they didn't have enough bullets and bandages. It's the fault of the U.S. Congress. You could have had a free Vietnam for another 1.45 billion dollars." For the essay, Frum has conducted interviews with American public policy makers, several generals,_ historians and political scientists along the East Coast.

Frum may be the News' most controversial columnist in years. One reader, Michael Froomkin, '82, charged in a letter that Frum has committed so many factual errors that the News editors should stop publishing his column. "At present, Mr. Frum writes

1

J

like a sawed -off shotgun. He can do far better, and should be forced to, or asked to find another market for his work,'' wrote Froomkin. News Editorial Editor Jacob Levich, '83, defended Frum. "Michael Froomkin has a number of interpretive and ideological disagreements with David Frum. That is his privilege. He has, however, failed to point out a single factual error in Mr. Frum 's columns."

In another letter to the News, Sophomore Pam Harris called Frum "a master at the respectable art of subjective interpretation." In criticizing Democratic Senatorial candidate Toby Moffett of Connecticut, "Frum wrongly blames the Democrats for the U.S.'s economic problems, and overlooks the Democrats' contributton to the civil rights movement," Harris claimed. "Mr. Frum has treated the reader to a history of the period from 1964 to 1980 that is so limited in scope that it goes beyond subjective interpretation and approaches reckless disregard of historical reality,'' Harris wrote. "Mr. Frum relies on two devices to rewrite American historythe misrepresentation of some facts, and the painfully obvious exclusion of others."

Frum denies the accusations, claiming his assailants fail to find inaccuracies and simply disagree with him.

He also concocts some of his own charges, primarily against arch-rival Rob Glaser, who writes a liberal weekly column "What's Left" and also coedits the editorial page. Frum recently accused Glaser of using the editorial page for ideological and personal vendettas. "What concerns me even more than Glaser's bad taste.'. ' wrote Frum. â&#x20AC;˘ 'is that he is converting this page into his personal soap-box. Glaser edits this page every other day. If he has e .. er printed a letter or column whose contents were riot agreeable to him, I am

unaware of it." (Glaser, of course, denies this.)

Frum fears that stud ents and p rofessors who read the Yale Daily News th ink he d islikes th e U n iversity. After all, he has taken an ad hominem approach in several pieces, criticizin g the "dangerously radical" views of University Chaplain J ohn Vannorsdall more than once, and condemn ing A . Bartlett Giamatti for being h ypocritical in last September's Freshman Address attacking the Moral Major ity. Says Frum "A lot of people think I'm a J eremiah railing away at everything at Yale. T h at's unfortunate. Despite the rid iculous things like th e Peace Conference, this University is of tremendous value.

People here basically have their heads screwed on right, and will p robably become Republicans."

â&#x20AC;˘

Gabriella Stnn, a senior in Saybrook, is former News Editor of the Yale Daily News. She writes for the Associated Press.

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33 The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

Sports----A time of absurd contrasts Morris Panner

34

March 8 When our plane landed at Tampa Airport, Andrew Hoskins wanted to make sure the crew's arrival did not go unnoticed. Dressed as an Arabian sheik, Andrew led us off the plane, kneeled down and kissed the ground.

Although not everyone makes it as obvious as Andrew, all of us on the lightweight crew realize that the spring training trip to Florida means more than getting in shape . It is the pivotal point in our training, and a time of the most absurd contrasts: constant intersquad competition and unparalleled camaraderie, the most painful part of the training and yet the most eagerly awaited, a time when you want to cry, but all the same you somehow manage a smile as you limp down to the dock.

Florida is the time when we become a team.

While most of the squads are staying in the Holiday Inn, only about half the lightweights are there. The rest of us, including the freshman squad , are staying in the University of Tampa visiting team dorm, a cross between a dilapidated army barracks and a county jail. About thirty of us live in one large room with a vast array of small insects and no air conditioning.

For all its disadvantages, the dorm encourages team unity. Teamwork is the difference between success and failure in crew. In a shell, everything must happen with perfect coordination so that the oars enter and leave the water together. The boat moves fastest not when you are pulling on the oar, but when the boat glides along after the stroke. A blade left in the water for even a fraction of a second too long drags down the whole shell. This is one reason why a crew is not remembered for individual members. At the end of this season, we will be remembered, fondly or otherwise , as the crew of 1982.

March 7 The first practice reminded us of just how important teamwork is. As the sun rose, the eight-man shells pushed off from the dock and began the row up the Hillsborough River.

The practice was frustrating. From his coaching launch, Dave (Vogel, lightweight crew coach) yelled at us, as

each oar entered the water at a different time, and the shells rocked from side to side. As long as the shells are unstable, it is very difficult to put full power on the strokes.

After practice we straggled back to our rooms and slept until the afternoon practice at 3:30. We have begun the pattern of dawn practice, sleep, afternoon practice, sleep . Today we all slept between ten and twelve hours.

Already it seems as if Dave has deliberately created a taskmaster image for himself. A rumor has started that Dave maintains such a severe attitude so that the team will be angry at him rather than at each other during the stress of Florida. Whether the rumor is true or not, he is clearly under pressure, not a physical one, but the emotional one of treading the poorly defined boundaries between friendship and favoritism, objectivity and coldness.

March 9 Today, Dave began the first in a series of individual competitions, otherwise known as seat racing. We row in fourmao shells, racing each other for threeminute intervals or "pieces." After each piece , Dave yells "pull 'em together,'' the coxswains bring the boats side by side and two of us switch places.

The person whose boat wins the next piece after the switch wins his seat race, and proves that he can move a boat faster than his teammate.

Seat racing is the ultimate cruelty.

All winter long we have cheered each other through practice, but now we rise and switch places in silence, having no one to turn to for encouragement.

But cruel or not , Dave yelled the command and the shells began to race.

My boat, stroked by Ivor Benjamin, won the first piece. For the second, Dave switched Ivor with the stroke of the other shell , Andy Tomback. Andy won the next piece , but not by as much as Ivor had won the first one. And so the morning went on, Dave making switches and recording the results.

After practice, we all went to breakfast together and discussed what we thought the boats for the afternoon would be. The speculation never ends; it dominates our conversation and pushes tempers to the limit. We spend

Everyone's hands look like ground-up hamburger.

the first part of the morning staring at each oth er cross the water , and the second staring at each oth er across a table. Sometimes th ings seem very claustrophobic.

the same position without pain In the end, o nly complete exhaustion saves you from the torment of aching muscles, anesthetizing you in a deep sleep which n ever lasts long e nough.

March 11: Despite all the seat racing we have been doing, none of us really knows what the results mean. The only indi-

March 13: By now practices are nor only physically exhausting but mentally exhausting as well. No one could testify to this bet-

the team van. U nfortunately, this rook place while Dave was driving u s home from dinner.

March 15: Dave held a m eeting before morning practice. Word had gotten out that he planned to punish the team for our conduct at the restaurant with an especially tough workout. Dave promptly denied that he ever punishes

l

Rc*> Riggs The -

Joo.nW

Formerly the luxun"ous Tampa &y Hotel, the mam building of the University of Tampa, where Yale's crew teams practice over spn¡ng break, dominates the scenery along the Hillsborough R iver. cation Dave gives us is in the lineup boards, which indicate the boatings for the n ext workout . T h e names are lined up in vertical rows , paralleling the seats in a shell. Moving toward a seat in the stern is a good sign, moving toward the bow indicates trouble .

We are beginning to really feel the effects of the hard practices .

Everyone's hands graphically reflect the work. Our calluses from winter training have torn awa>, and h ands swell, crack and bleed . Legs weaken so that standing becomes painful. The workouts even make lying do~n an ordeal; sore muscles can't be ke pt in

ter than the seniors on the team who are trying, with liule success, to work on their senior essays.

We'll h ave a free day tomorrow, our only real day of spring break. To celebrate, tonight we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant made the mistake of having an "all you can eat" salad bar, and inexpensive beer served in liter steins. As the owner now knows, the term " light'"'"eights" has no apparent relationship to how much '"'"e eat o r to the style in which we celebr ate. A record consumption of beer, five steins, led one enthusiast to knock out a window from

with practices; workouts are only to improve. But , as usual, the rumor was at least partially true : the workout was a killer.

Workouts have been steadily getting harder. Everyone's hands look like ground-up hamburger. Before every practice most of us tape our hands to cover the blisters. But by now the tape only digs into and aggravates the torn skin .

March 16: The dorm I S slowly becoming unbearable. Last night someone moved his mattress mto the locker room across the alley. It was air conditio ned , and it The N ew Journal/ April 19, 1982

35

Florida is the time when we become a team.

certainly didn't smell any worse than the dorm.

March 17: To ease some of the tension, the team members in the senior class, led by Captain Steve Gavin, organized one of the traditional spring training events, skit night. Nter a team barbecue by the Holiday Inn pool, each class performed a skit filled with bawdy humor making fun of the other classes, the coach, and rowing itself. The juniors'

the fifth and sixth three-minute piece after he has just lost a seat race. Crew has a tradition for everything, and the answer to this question is no exception.

At the end of the evening, after all the skits were finished, the seniors stood before the team and sang "Bright College Years.''

When you see the guys who have always been around sing about the "friendships form ed at Yale," something hits home which puts the pain and the pressure of seat racing into

A boaJ goes through its early-morning paces on Tampa's Hillsborou.tth Rivrr.

36

skit took full advantage of the phallic perspective. \\'inning seat races shape of a crew shell, and left the team doesn't mean much if your boat loses in the spring, and teamwork means in hysterics.

The skits are a team catharsis. a more than winning races. primal scream in the midst of the For a moment everyone was quiet, fighting for the seats. In o;ome sports getting angry gives you a compt:titi'l.路e but Florida allows little time for sentiedge. but crew requires a discipline mental thoughts. The mood broken, which allows for no wild moves or e"路eryone 路walked away laughing and joking. As we went to check the lineup grudges.

But as much as it vents frustrations, board, there was another pause in the skit night also anS\\ers the question laughter. Even though you don't want why-a question e"路en the most dedi- to. you stare at the lineups horizontally cated oarsman asks himself between rather than vertically, wondering

YOUR IDEA FOR A COMMUNITY SERVICE PROJECT COULD BECOME A PAID SUMMER JOB THROUGH •..

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whose name w ill be opposite yours in the morning.

March 19: During these last d ays of Florida, everyone is beginning to want to come back to the Housatonic River in Derby and test ourselves against the other crews in the East. As Dave constantly reminds us, we will have to get a great d eal faster if we want to win the Eastern Sprints in May. · Even after all the seat racing, we still don ' t know what boats we are in.

When we return to D e rby, the scar racing and practices will continu e. Six races in eight weeks are ahead. As hard as it is , Flo rida is really only the beginning o f the workload, n ot the end.

But the team has already p assed a test of sorts. The boats move with a certain assurance, a steadiness and power which foretell of great things.

After two weeks in Florida, we have started to understand why seat racing is so valu able even if the results aren't always clear: somehow all the competition has taught us to trust each other for more than a three-minute piece .

Students are invited to consider projects whi ch address the needs of the city or which f urthe r interaction between Yale and the New Haven community.

Phone 436-1480, or stop by Dwigh t Hall , Room 4, on the Old Campus.

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'EXT SHO\< APRIL Uo-22

37 The New Journal/ April 19, 1982

Architecture--Venturi's firehouse: masterpiece or functional nightmare?

38

If you go west out Broadway to where the streets branch off in three directions, take the middle of these, Gaffe Street, and walk on for a couple of blocks, you will come to a famous and perplexing building. There on your right will be the Dixwell Fire Station designed by the Philadelphia-based architect, Robert Venturi. Designed in 1970, the building has drawn praise from many architects and critics.

Cesar Pelli, a prominent architect and Dean of Yale's School of Architecture, says that it's a "very successful building." Vincent Scully, Yale's highly respected architectural historian, says, "I think it's marvelous!"

But to the people who live around it and work in it, this acclaimed "masterpiece" is simply another building, or worse, a functional nightmare. Neighbor Leslie Stanley says she "never really thought about it, other than it's neat and basically clean." The firemen think about it, but not in fond terms. They complain that the hard tile wall surfaces bounce sound so you can't hear anything over the P.A. system. The officers' quarters are at the opposite end of the building from the control room, adding unnecessary delay during an alarm. And the lights in the truck bay are the mercury vapor type which take fifteen minutes to turn on, leaving the fLre trucks long gone before they are lit. Fireman Bob Dawes sums it up by saying, "I'd rather work in an ugly building that's functional than a beautiful building you get lost in every time the alarm comes in."

These reactions are all the more surprising when you discover that the stated intentions of the architect were to design a totally functional building, rather than to shackle the users to some kind of"architectural ego trip." In fact, the building was part of a tremendous controversy at tbe time. Venturi sought to tear down everything about Modern Architecture which was irreverent and insensitive to ordinary people. In his book Learning from Las Vtgas, he completc;ly shocked Modern architects by giving serious attention to the American ¡strip. It was there, among the neon and biHboards and far from the centers of "high art,"¡ that Venturi felt the "desires and values of ordiilary people" found meaning. All

that Modern architects would hold as "ugly and ordinary" summed up for Venturi the essence of"straightforward building in line with the needs of the client." Modern architects were infuriated.

So the Dixwell Fire Station, which wholeheartedly embraces the spirit of this controversy, is supposed to be "ugly and ordinary." It's supposed to fit perfectly into it's context, and it's supposed to reflect "straightforwardly" the needs of the users within. New York Timts architecture cnuc Paul Goldberger said recently that the building is "practical, down to earth, and reason2ble." By Venturi's own account, "The building is simple in form -there are no wings or chances in roof height (like Modern architects would have done)-and big in scale. There are letters on the facade to identify it in the traditional manner of civic buildings, but when they reach the corner, the wall they are on disengages and cantilevers to make a brick signboard (like the billboards on the American strip)." But the building's rhetoric is not true to life. The building does not satisfy the firemen, and it doesn't fit so snugly into its context either. Although the neighbors report indifference to the building's presence, in apparent agreement with Venturi's rhetoric, there is something unsettling about the way it is set back from the street at a strange angle. It's nothing like the firehouse it replaced which has now been turned into Fitzwilly's Restaurant on Elm Street. That building sits politely in a neat row with all its neighbors, and is truly contextual. By comparison, Venturi's building seems a lot more concerned with drawing attention to itself, sitting there at an angle with all that space around it. Even the color of its bricks seems a bit shocking compared with the more subdued colors of the surrounding buildings. And what does a "brick signboard" have to do with the neighborhood consisting mostly of housing projects? Where's the strip?

Just about everything the rhetoric claims seems wrong.

So what's so great about the Dixwell Fire Station? Why should someone like Vincent Scully think it's "marvelous?"

The answer, it seems, is hidden

Venturi would say, "Less Is a

bore!"

somewhere outside the rhetoric which accompanied the design. Perhaps the rhetoric, as is often the case, conceals more than it illuminates.

In an early and important publication, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), Venturi does not advocate dullness and ordinariness, but symbolism and formal complexity. Symbolism, Venturi writes, means that architects should adorn their buildings with symbolic cues which clarify their functional intentions. For example, Venturi would use a symbolic arch to indicate an entrance. This philosophy contradicted the established practice of Modern architects, whose complete devotion to abstract sculptural forms worked to disguise functional inten, tions. Ask anyone who has tried to find the entrance to the Art and Architecture Building on York Street and you will sympathize with Venturi's outrage.

Venturi's notion offormal complexity is also at odds with the premise of Modern Architecture. Modern architects, Venturi says, start with a simplistic design concept and then try to shoehorn the diverse needs of the building into it. When Paul Rudolph designed the Art and Architecture

building, he started with a sculptural idea and then fit the various studios and galleries into that concept. Venturi, on the other hand, starts by considering the requirements of the building, allowing them to be visually expressed in a flexible end product. He says this invigorates the building and remedies the modern malaise of boring simplicity. The modern credo: "Less is more." About modern buildings like the Beinecke Rare Book Library, Venturi would say, "Less is a bore!"

Seen from this light, it becomes apparent that when Venturi states the intentions of the firehouse, he means that the building symbolizes those intentions.

The layout of the building and the use of materials represent abstractly, rather than literally, the rhetoric surrounding the design. The bricks, for example, are just metaphors for "ordinary building," because really ordinary buildings' bricks would have been different, as the Fitzwilly's example shows.

The reason for keeping it abstract and symbolic is that the building can straddle two worlds- the one offensive to Modern architects whose abstract language it speaks and who Venturi

wishes to attack, the other acceptable to ordinary people with whose common vernacular it associates. Says Charles Moore, an architect often compared to Venturi in importance, "If he can manage to infuriate the intellectuals while he's not giving offense to the people around, he's doing exactly what he means tc, what he probably ought to."

But also, the abstraction establishes a uniqueness. The firehouse isn't quite like anything else, and that difference fends off the threat of anonymity, which is any artist's number one enemy. Venturi doesn't want his building to be confused with common architecture any more than he wants it to be confused with modern architecture. After all, it isn't the worker housing next door to which Venturi truly aspires, but to great architecture of history.

The real success of the DixweU Fire Station lies in Venturi's handling of formal complexity. He responds brilliantly to the functional and visual pressures acting on the site by the cityscape around it, and the fire company housed in it. The firehouse had to have a large room with big bay doors

Vmtun¡ 's firehouse

39 The New Journal I April 19, 1982

" I'd rather work In an ugly building that's functional than a beautiful building you get lost In every time the alarm comes ln." on the ground floor, and smaller rooms for bunks and lockers above. The site for the building is a location which Venturi considers "at the edge of downtown, and the city's buildings jut up above the low buildings in the foreground. Also, the firehouse is located at the spot Goffe Street doglegs; the street comes directly toward the building and then turns to

toward town on Goffe Street. From this position the billboard facade takes o n new characteristics. In its flat stretched horizontal state it now acts like a base, providing a clean line above which the tall buildings beyond r ise prominently. The weight of the buildings pushes down on the fire station giving it strength. The energy of that compression acts with the bold let-

The fenestration further supports this reading since the second story locker room windows with their square design , appear to spring from the large square bay doors on the first floor. Of similar shape but smaller in size, the windows move up and to the right out over the traffic taking with them the disengaged wall as if pulled ofT by the turbulence of speeding cars down in

Tom SrrongrThe New Joumal

40

head more toward the city.

Rather than slavishly accomodate to these pressures in an act of passive contextual ism, Ventu ri wil f u ll y manipulates apd carefully explo its the ¡pressures to his own advantage. It's a sort of architectural jujitsu.

Venturi set the building back from the street at an angle so that it directly confronts your vision when you drive

ters on the facade, which read from left to right, visually pushing the building toward Goffe Street as it passes by.

The disengaged wall at the right takes that m ovem ent and inflects it up over the traffic, suggesting a great portal into the city- not one standing directly over the street, but one next to it like ancient Babylonian gateways with the lions to either side.

the roadway.

Venturi's approach gives the building greater power than one would have expected from a building of such small size and limited scope. By skillfully addressing aspects inherent in the context, Venturi achieves results far richer than had he ignored it all and acted hermetically like the Modem architectS with which he contrasts

himself. Says Vincent Scully, "Contextually, I think it's terrific. I mean the context there-the towers of Yale and the ridge line to the west of the city . . . and the opening of the space! Its velocity is terrific!" Indeed, the building absorbs a lot from its surroundings, and offers back even more in return.

•

Robert Orr, (Yale Architecture '63) is a New Haven architect. He has wn.tten for Architectural Design Magazine, and for AlA Journal, and his designs have appeared in House Beautiful and House

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The i':ew J o urnal I Apr il 19 , 1982

Research---Why babies fall to thrive Tom Feigelson

Moth" and child int"act on video.

42

A seven month-old girl was admitted recently to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

She weighed eleven pounds. Though her mother reported that she was a "voracious eater," she appeared to be starving. To the frustration of parents and doctors, the full series of pediatric tests revealed no physical illness which might explain her failure to grow.

Dr. Joe Woolston, the Yale child psychiatrist who examined the baby, had reason to suspect an nnotio1141 source for the failed growth. When the baby responded to her first week in the calm environment of the hospital by gaining a few ounces, Woolston thought his suspicions were confirmed: time away from home, under the care of the nursing staff, had apparently helped the baby to gain a full halfpound.

Dr. Woolston and his team of researchers at the Yale Child Study Center are studying a puzzling syn-

drome of growth failure in infancy called "Nonorganic Failure to Thrive" (NFTT). The syndrome is the most frequent cause of infant weight delay in the United States. More common than malnutrition,it is found in one to five percent of all infants admitted to U.S. hospitals. NFTT children are six to 16 months old, have stopped gainins weight, and may have stopped growing in length and head size: they often appear scrawny and pale, may vomit excessively, show extreme lethargy, and many times display a wide-eyed stare researchers call "radar gaze."

Early researchers believed that NFTT babies failed to grow as a result of parental neglect or emotional abuse.

Later findings, however, suggest the babies may be inherently difficult.

They may cry too much, or may be difficult to feed and cuddle, thus contributing to the stressful relationship between mother and baby.

NEW HAVEN

!

Woolston is studying the complex interaction of biological, social and psychological factors in the syndrome.

What particular family situations produce these children, and can they be anticipated? Does the genetic predisposition of the baby matter, or can any baby be driven to arrested growth? Can NFTr be recognized bifore it produces the dangerous symptom of growth failure?

"They're all good questions," Woolston laughs. "But they're a little p remature." The first task, he exp lains, is to improve diagnosis. "We want to be able to distingush it from organic illnesses on positive grounds."

P resently NFTr is diagnosed "by exclusion," when no other disorder can be found.

The problem of better diagnosis has been a central concern of NFTr research for years. What is special about Woolston's research is its comp rehensive "team" approach. Coordinating a group of 16 specialists, including physicians, psychologists, a social worker, a nutritionist and video technicians, Woolston leads a total interactivist attack on a thoroughly interactive problem.

Though the research is still in an exploratory stage, the early results are intriguing. By videotaping the mothers playing with their babies, Woolston has started to expand the theory of a previous researcher who believed that NFTr infants prefer playing at a distance instead of the intimate cuddling preferred by most babies. When picked up and cuddled, some NFTT infants will arch their backs and hold stiffiy away from the mother, rather than rest easily on her shoulder.

Woolston thinks this difficulty with intimacy may reinforce the child's failure to thrive by making feeding time uncomfortable and thus preventing normal food absorption. Woolston has also begun to find that the infants will avoid intimate contact more strenuously with their own mothers than with hosptial nurses. What is the mother doing to earn this rejection? What emotional message is she transmitting?

The family evaluation has begun to show that many of the mothers were raised in non-supportive, nonnurturing environments, and they still

o ften feel isolated and depressed. A majority of them have an extremely low opinion of their failing child.

Often, the child was an accident, or unwelcome at birth ; it's turning out 'difficult' seems to have brought out the worst in the mother's anxieties. Some mothers think their child is ill or retarded, and feel disappointment and pity for it. Others think their child is "bad" and feel intense hostility toward it.

The mothers a re referred to YaleNew H aven Hospital by pediatricians throughout Connecticut. When their infants are diagnosed for NFTr, they "react strongly," said Sylvia Laivetes, social worker on the Woolston team.

"Some feel guilty and frightened at their inability to help their baby, and frequently they're glad for the hospital's help." Other mothers, Laivetes explains, including a surprising number who deny that their babies have any problem at all, feel anger or resentment and will vehemently object to the diagnosis of NF'IT because it seems to imply that they are at fault for the illness.

Woolston sympathizes with the mothers' predicament, but he denies emphatically that there is anything malicious in the hospital's diagnosis: "It is not our thesis that the mothers are bad people," he says. "That notion is antithetical to everything we do, both diagnostically and therapeuticaJly." Some mothers of NF'IT babies have neglected their children, and many simply do not know how to care for them. Treatment for NFTT therefore involves not only hospitalizing the infant for close observation , feeding and care, but teaching the mother how to provide that care. "Often the child has very special needs," Laivetes says. â&#x20AC;˘society tells you it's easy to bring up a baby. You feed it, you sleep it, and it'll grow. Sometimes it just doesn't happen that naturally."

Even for mothers who believe their babies will benefit from the treatment, consenting to the hospital protocol is often difficult. Woolston comments, "The hospital is a double-edged sword for them. If the treatment doesn't work then it's just another frustration, and a waste of their time. On the other hand, if the treatment W<JTics, if the child starts

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doing well in this strange environment and with these strange nurses where he would not do well at home, they feel terribly guilty. They take it as proof that they are bad mothers."

It may be, however, that mothering is only part- and not the most impor· tant part-of the problem . Woolston has observed from others' research that the infants show a lowered level of the hormone 'cortisol'- a condition also found in adults with severe depression.

Woolston suggests that NFIT babies may be suffering from a form of"infan· tile depression." The depression may be in part geneticilly;based, and may affect growth directly, or by exacer· bating the baby's relationship with his mother.

But until doctors better understand the causes of the syndrome, effective treatment will remain difficult, Woolston says. Many babies now treated in the hospital must return for recurrences of growth failure and other developmental problems. "At the mo· ment, prognosis is pretty poor. But that is really not so surprising. Right now it's a little bit like medicine was in the 18th century. Diagnosis is so slow and sometimes confusing."

Follow-up after hospitilization is im· portant to both research and treat· ment. "It is essential that the mother and baby get encouragement and rein· forcement if they've begun to thrive," · Laivetes said. "And if they haven't, we do need to keep an eye on them." The babies and their mothers are put under the close supervision of a local pediatrician, and asked to return to the hospital for periodic check-ups.

The active follow-up of the Woolston team is just another example of the thoroughness of their approach.

Woolston sees it as "a prototype of how research in child psychiatry will need to be" in the future . "I think this will be a model of how all the different levels, ranging from the molecular to the psychosocial, interact in this stage of human development."

•

For information contact:S00-492-8361 or 301-986-1444

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20014

Tom Feigelson, a junior in Pierson, worlcs as a VUiai-Con.sullant at tJu Child Study CmJtr.

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Books _ _ _ ___ Reinterpretation

by remembrance Kathleen Cleaver

Saral't MendetSon/ The New Journal

J ohn Blassingame Long Memory: The Black Experience in America

by Mary Frances Berry & John W. ~lassingame

1982 Oxford University Press 486 pp.

John Blassingame, Chairman of Afro American Studies Program and Professor of Southern History, never believed that the traditional historical narrative, with its dry rendition of facts had much relation to reality. Instead, he feels that the best way to conv ey the meaning of Afro American History is to exa ... ; â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘ e the dominant experiences from slavery up to the present. In Long M emory, the new survey of black histo ry, he and Mary Frances Berry, Pro fessor o f History and Law at Howard University, have selected "those themes and subjects most revealing of the complexities of the black experience" for 'an integrated presentation across time instead of a comprehensive chronology of black history. This approach has led the authors to include topics usually absent from historical texts, and to draw conclusions which have a different emphasis from those of traditional scholarship.

Memory and the transmission of experience from generation to generation have played a powerful role in the survival of blacks in America, the authors say. They contend that every generation has built upon the lessons the

preceding ones learned about Africa, oppression, protest, sexual exploita tion, education, racial solidarity, the family and the church. Long M emory is composed of richly detailed essays th a t elaborate these fundamen tal them es.

The authors consider Africa and the slave experience "cent r al to an understanding of the American past."

They compare West African an d American slavery and show tha t the adjustments Africans made to slavery in the New World stem fro m th eir West African cultural origins. Bla ssingame and Berry view the Americas as "an outpost of West African culture between the sixteenth a n d midnineteenth century ." What h as shaped Afro Americans into a distinctive p eople is their African memo ry, whose imprint upon speech , dress, literature, medicine, cooking, music and religion has prevented American culture from becoming a pallid imitation of Europe.

Afro American history is seen as a mirror of the history of the other citizens of the United States, reflecting the social, economic and political structure in which they have been enmeshed.

Long Memory shows how certain features of plantation slavery were shaped by the Africans' reactions. For example, ~lassingame interpre ts the extensive evidence of the slaves' brutal punishments a s the conseq uence of their persistent fo rms of resistance.

Such harsh coercion, he points out, would have been unnecessa ry for the loyal, docile work fo rce of grinning Sambos conventional histo ry has portrayed. There is a qualitative difference, Blassingame emphasizes, between choosing survival over suicide and having a docile attitude- a difference traditional scholarship has neglected to disce rn.

Blassingame and Berry d o not accept the conventional v iew that slavery has caused extreme d isintegration in black social life . They find that an amazing degree of social cohesion and stability remained through the e ndu ring interaction between the ch u rch and the family. This lasted both durin g and after slavery, despite the formid able legal, cultural and economic obsta cles.

They examine the factors which con tributed to family disintegration and to family stability in different epochs and The New J ournal / April 19, 1982

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Black oppresslbn has nur·

tured an Ideal medium for the propagation of a de· formed historiography en· twined with myth and prejudice. ·

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settings. Long Memory credits the family and the church with providing a shelter from racism, segregation and exploitation, and laying down a foundation for communal strength, personal identity and individual triumph. The writers found evidence that many blacks led creative, rewarding lives filled with joys and hopes as well as pain and despair. They trace the growth of the independent black church, always a multipurpose and socially active body, and show how in the nineteenth century, it planted the seeds of the 1960s civil rights movement. The ministers, who became both political and religious leaders of their race, established the tradition that men such as Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther K ing fulfilled in our day.

Few surveys of black history devote as much attention as Long Memory to the participation of blacks in the military. An excellent essay, filled with rarely published detail, examines the paradoxical role of the black soldier from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam. White racist discrimination emerges during every war, despite the blacks' bravery and willingness to die, and the widespread ambivalence blacks exhibited toward fighting America's battles. The crushing irony of the black soldier who fulfills his duty as a citizen on the battlefield only to be denied its fruits as a civilian is a recurrent theme. The authors go on to analyze the distinctive motives behind the black soldier's desire to fight. They also document rampant interracial conflict in American armies, and give special attention to the extraordinary proportions this reached during the Vietnam War. Another dominant theme of black history Long Memory analyzes is the powerful nexus between the puritanical sexual mythology promoted by whites and the aggressively violent oppression of blacks. This link lies at the root of some of the most barbaric treatments of blacks in America, such as the savage mutilations white Southerners have committed on the burned bodies of lynched black men. Anecdotes, articles, police and court records illustrate the sexual taboo used to perpetuate the social and economic subjugation of blacks. Blassingame

and Berry confront and expose the hypocritical reality cloaked behind white supremacist mythology: the flipside of the vicious prohibition of sexual contact between black men and white women was the rampant sexual exploitation of black women by white men, and the active prevention of the examination of this reality. In 1887, for example, a Montgomery, Alabama newspaper editor commented on the increase of interracial sexual activity and wrote, "There is a secret to this thing, and we suspect it is in the growing appreciation of white J uliettes for colored Romeos." He was promptly run out of town. By exploring the bizarre consequences of rigidly imposed racial classifications and prohibitions against interracial marriage, Blassingame and Berry illuminate the evolution of many current black-white controversies.

Since the living contours of Afro American life are largely inaccessible by the conventional approach, Blassingame and Berry turned to a source neglected by most historians: the creative artist. Long Memory is fllled with generous quotations from songs, poems, novels and plays which convey the existential quality of the era. The reproduction of numerous cartoons about black life adds a humorous touch to the lively narrative.

"The Economics of Hope and Despair" stands out as the most grim chapter in Long Memory . The precarious economic status of blacks is persistent-tOO years after Emancipation 43 per cent of black families were still living in poverty. The essay explains the development of the caste system that keeps blacks fluctuating between "depression and great depression." The authors conclude that "it seems highly unlikely that the majority of blacks could advance in the United States by continuing to play the economic game as long as whites are playing with loaded dice."

Black oppression has nurtured an ideal medium for the propagation of a deformed historiography entwined with myth and prejudice. The • painstaking research and evaluation these authors have conducted over the past ten years has enabled them to interpret the past differently. For exam-

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pie, Blassingame and Berry find resisting oppression and asserting racial pride a natural attempt to maintain dignity instead of pathologically deviant behavior.

Reading Long Memory gave me the impression that the raucous insistence upon black self-definition raised during the upheavals of the 1960s prompted, to some extent, their reassessment of the evidence and their search for better evidence. For Long Memory gives to that insistence a refined, scholarly, and coherent expression. The thematic presentation enables the reader to understand cultural and social cohesion blacks have maintained despite tremendously hostile conditions. It is a lively, engaging, and enlightening book which effectively restores balance to the portrayal of the Afro American past. It provides a comprehensive look at some of the ignored frames left on the cutting room floor of America's history and offers valuable insights into the sources of black strength and survival in white America.

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Kathleen Cluwer, a j unior in Calhoun, was interviewed in the December issue of The New Journal .

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The New Journal / April 19, 1982

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