Volume 22 - Issue 3

Publisher David K ing Editor-in-Chief Ruth Conniff Managing Editors David Greenberg Motoko Rich Business Marwger J erry Hwang Designer Stephen Hooper Production Manager Lisa Silverman Photography Editor John Kim

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Associate Editor Stefanie Syman Associate Photography Editor J ennifer Pitts Associate Designer Ethan Cohen Circulation Marwger Chris Warfield Subscription Marwger Adrienne Lo

Staff Andrea Assarat Janet C hung Eric Fisher Matt Fleischer• Jhlie Hantman

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Working on rooftops . . . Playing in the basement . . . Art in the street

Features

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War Rages at Local Paper The feisty New Haven Independent burst onto the scene in 1986, giving a voice to the city's neighborhoods. But this year a clash between idealistic editors and a frustrated business department sent one writer to the hospital and the rest of the staff out on the pavement. By Roy Tsao.

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New Haven's D rinking Problem Yale students and local residmts rarely stop to think about the water they dn"nk. But what they t:Wn't know could hurl them. Bacteria, chemicals and tiny bits of lead in the city's water threaten everyone's health. By Milma Novy and Stejanie Syman.

22

Speaking with Woodward

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Fifoen years ago, History Professor C. Vann Woodward wrote Yale's policy on free expression. Now, at 81, he remains outspoken about free speech, race relations and the role of the historian. By Jack Wills.

Book Review

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Silber's Solution John Silber, Boston University's stridnu presidmt, has long battled liberal students and professors. In a controversial new book, he sets out to cure not only the problems of higher education, but also the moral decline of America. By David Greenberg.

The New JoumaVDecembcr I, 1989 3

Letters To the Editor, It appears that Theroux has failed to make an important distinction: the is/ought or descriptive/normative distinction. Such a distinction must be taken into consideration when assessing Dr. Poussaint's emphasis on isolating the factor of "anger" in ~eference to the Central Park "rape" ISSUe.

By isolating as essential the question "Why these [black] kids were angry," it is clear that Dr. Poussaint is working with the Freudian presupposition that what we observe as an overt behavioral pattern (in this case "rape" or "mugging") may very well result from some hidden (unconscious) variable.

Now, by appealing to this type of descriptive theoretical explanation, Dr. Poussaint is not trying to vindicate the perpetrators of their pernicious and moraily inept act.

That is, it is important to separate the descriptive explanatory function of "anger" as used by Dr. Poussaint from a normative judgment. It is by blurring such a distinction that Prof.

Theroux draws the erroneous implication that Dr. Poussaint is attempting to covertly exempt the perpetrators from blame.

Now concerning Theroux's usage of a certain term. As a scholar of Letters, he should have been more tactful, to say the least, in his selection of the word "monkeys" to describe the black men who "raped" the jogger. Yes, we as Afro-Americans are throwing a "shit-fit," to use Theroux's turn of phrase, for "monkey" suggests subrational and sub-human themes.

Theroux, of all people, should have known that during the 1600s (among Englishmen, Elizabethan travelers and literati) Africans were equated with monkeys to sustain the inner-logic "justifying" the view that they were uncivilized, irrational and lascivious people. Hence, to use the word within the context of describing the black men who "raped" the jogger tends to invoke (even if Theroux did not intend the word to do so) the false and racist image that Africans and AfrC?-Ameri4 The New Journal/December I , 1989

cans are by nature monkey-like creatures, bestial and wanton. Given the stigmatic historical association of the word with Africans in the past, it is difficult to excuse Theroux's lack of awareness concerning the social, psycho-linguist_ic import that the word has for Afro-Americans today.

Perhaps more of Theroux's surfacegrammar needs to be closely psychoanalyzed.

George D. Yancy GRD '92

an institution as well as through those individuals associated with that institution. Given the position of Blacks in America today vis-a-vis Whites, it would be a contradiction in terms to say that Blacks can be racist.

Remarks such as those he made in his letter on Yale stationery to Dr. Poussaint concerning the Central Park rape incident, in which he refers to the Black and Brown suspects involved in the case as being subhuman "monkeys," are not only bigoted but are raised to the level of racism by bearing what appears to be the imprimatur of an institution such as Yale University. Parenthetically, one wonders whether he would refer to the White attackers of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, · Brooklyn as being "monkeys." · It is certain that the Central Park rape incident was a tragedy and that such acts of violence should not be condoned or excused. It is equally certain that reactions such as Professor Theroux's which bear the mark of racism, whether intentional or otherwise, should not be condoned or excused either.

Mark G. Barksdale Yale Law '91

To the Editor, The piece I found most interesting in your last issue was the one about Professor Theroux and his peculiar letter.

To the Editor, I read with a resigned sense of dismay Somehow, I had missed this brouhaha. your article "Poison Pen: A Yale It raises so many important and comEnglish Professor Writes up a Storm of plicated issues- about racism, sexism, Controversy" (TNJ, October 20, 1989) semantics, and free-speech rights. My for it reveals the common own sense is that Theroux wrote a very misunderstanding which exists dumb letter- but not nearly as dumb concerning the word "racism." as the people demanding that he be When Professor Theroux makes the fired for writing it. Since when does statement "[i]t's very interesting how sheer stupidity (or, for that matter, racism always seems to be against malice) disqualify one from teaching at whites," it indicates that he does not a great American university? I suspect, realize racism is an institutionalized in fact, that these are often preresystem of oppression or subjugation quisites for the work. used to maintain the power of one racial group over another racial group, Erwin Knoll which can be propagated through the Editor words, actions or, indeed, inactions of Tlu Progressive Magazine

N ewsJournal

Model Building

The black and silver plaque marking Cesar Pelli & Associates' Chapel Street office hides in the shadows of the doorway. Upstairs, ajumble of rooms, annexed one by one as the architectural firm has expanded, spreads throughout three floors . Models of different sizes and colors overflow the table~ and shelves. Removable skyscraper caps cluster around one miniature building, like toy hats.

This year, CP&A won the American Institute of Architects' award for ten years of nationally distinguished work.

The firm's designs include the World Financial Center- in New York's Battery Park City as well as Canary Wharf in London, one,.;.of the largest real estate developin'ehts ever. CP&A is also working on several small projects nearby, landscaping the Jonathan Edwards College courtyard and installing lampposts around the Yale campus.

In the early 1960s, Pelli worked as project designer on Morse and Stiles colleges with architect Eero Saarinen.

After living in Los Angeles for 12 years, he returned to Yale in 1977 to become dean of the School of Architecture. At the same time he founded his own firm with partners Diana Balmori and Fred Clarke. Instead of moving back to a large city like Los Angeles or New York, the partners decided to stay in New Haven when Pelli fmished his term as dean. The firm has been growing ever since.

In 1987, CP&A landed a series of large commissions, including Canary Wharf, and their design staff expanded from about 35 to nearly 100. Pelli looked to the nearby pool of students to find talented part-time labor. Twelve Yale graduates have become Pelli associates. Half a dozen graduate students and two undergraduates- Brian O'Looney (SM '90) and Robert Kim OE '90)-work at CP&A,

Associates work side-by-side w ith students late into the night at Cesar Pelli's Chapel Street Office. alongside architects from as far away examine the miniature caps built by as California and Japan. members of a skyscraper design team.

Students say that the atmosphere in He crouched down to p lace himself at the CP&A office reminds them of the eye-level with the entrance of the classroom studios in Yale's Art and model building, while one team Architecture building, where both Pelli member tried the caps on the model and Balmori teach. The firm keeps one by one. After choosing a proposal, hours similar to students' work Pelli sent the team members back to schedules. "It's common for 20 or 25 work out a finished design. "The architects to be working at 9 or 9:30 system is loose yet well-run," said p.m.," said O'Looney. Several stu- O'Looney. "It offers us a chance to dents , including Tony Markese learn through participation." Learning (ARCH '88) and Bill Vinyard (ARCH modelmaking techniques also helps '88), who had their drafting tables side · students in their classes at Yale. by side at Yale, have graduated to Because Pelli relies on models instead work together at Pelli's firm. "They of drawings, his assistants learn pracwere on a roll at school which just tical skills in addition to learning many hasn't stopped," said Erika Belsey aspects of design development. Belsey said that after an architect taught her (ARCH '90).

This same sense of community to bevel an edge on a model she showshows in the firm's collaborative ed the technique to her friends at approach to design. Unlike some big school. firms such as Skidmore, Owings & CP&A will probably stay in New Merrill, Pelli's office does not divide Haven and continue to train Yale arwork among bureaucratic depart- chitecture students for years to come. ments. Instead, Pelli shares his ideas Despite its success, CP&A's public with design teams, which make models relations director Charles Rosenbloom and meet with him to discuss projects OE '87) said that the firm will not grow every week. If they want, individual much more. "Because Cesar likes to team members, whether undergradu- maintain an involvement in everyates or associates, can also offer their thing," he said, "the firm is about as big as it can be." own designs.

Last month, Pelli had a meeting to -Laura London The New Journai/Decem~r I, 1989 5

Play Room

Brandon sat behind a Mickey Mouse pop-up toy, gleefully selling Chinese, Italian and American food. His main customer, Seth Kugel (BR '92), returned to the store again and again, occasionally bringing his "wife"Brandon's sister. Each time, Seth doled out more play money from a stash in his pocket.

The shopping spree took p lace in the basement of the New Haven Family Shelter on Sylvan Avenue, where a play group for homeless children .m eets three times a week. On Mondays, mothers and a caseworker spend time with the kids, and on Friday and Saturday afternoons Yale volunteers join the group. Together, the adults and children play imaginary games like "food shop," draw pictures, and make pinatas and holiday treats.

Although the play group began two years ago, the shelter has not yet funded the program, and it remains largely unstructured. If the group can get more money, the volunteers plan to organize field trips to the Peabody Musuem and an ice-skating rink.

The play group is one of many services provided by Christian Community Action through the New Haven Family Shelter. At the shelter, CCA supports homeless families for 60 to 90 days and tries to find them permanent housing. Children outnumber adults at the shelter by three to one. Although CCA has always directed them into the school system, the shelter provided no activities to fill up the childrens' free time until the play group started. When Sofie Turner, a case worker, began working in the shelter, she noticed that the kids made little social contact with each other. "They'd meet up and say hi, and start fighting or running in the halls," she said. Turner decided to open up the activities room in the basement for the kids.

She soon had mothers bringing their children to the basement room twice a 6 The New Journal/December 1, 1989

week for the first sessions of the play group. Turner hoped to encourage responsible parenting in addition to entertaining the kids. Problems arose early on. One mother bragged constantly about her son, but when he could not stay within the lines in his coloring books, she slapped him.

Turner tried to reduce conflict by matching mothers with other women's children during the play group. She established some ground rules: Both children and parents must avoid physical abuse, name-calling, and disrespectful terms. Turner also discouraged violent play, prohibiting toy guns and war games.

Practical problems inhibited the ·success of the program at first. When the mothers began bringing in their preschoolers, the group grew too large.

"It's impossible to do a quality group with 15 to 25 kids, especially with kids as diverse as these," Turner said. "On good days, there were enough mothers so that we could split up into general age groups, but it takes a special kind of mother to do that."

Early in September, Carlisle Levine (T D '91) gave Turner a call. Levine wanted to work with the kids in the shelter, and Turner saw a chance tp get her play group off the ground. Levine had worked with homeless adults before, but found it frustrating. "There was such a barrier that it was hard to feel I was making a difference," she said. Last summer she took a job as a waterfront counselor in a camp for homeless children. "They have love and care to give beyond any conception measurable," Levine said of the campers. She returned to New Haven determined to continue working with them. Turner, glad to take advantage of Levine's enthusiasm, invited her to come to the shelter.

The play group overwhelmed Levine when she began visiting the Sylvan Avenue building alone. Turner suggested she put up some posters around Yale to find other students who m ight help at the shelter. Soon Levine assembled a group of 19 volunteers.

They started to attend the play sessions, now called "Kids' Group," in

October. Yet Levine found that in her new group she could not offer the volunteers concrete assignments. "In groups that have been around a wh ile you come in and they can say, 'OK, here are the kids you'll be working with.' I couldn't do that because we were still figuring ou t what to do."

Occasionally, more volunteers than children come to the group. Since attendance is irregular, volunteers do not know how many kids to expect, and they o ften must improvise activities. Levine and Turner hope that attendance will stabilize when the program b ecomes a routine in the shelter. Meanwhile, Turner is pleased.

"I chip away. I know it's a big stone, and I only have a small hatchet. But I know I'm still making a difference," she said. The student volun teers say they are having a good time. Where else can a Yalie go to buy imaginary food with Monopoly money?

-Liz Hopkins

Stree t Art

James Anderson (BR '9 1) was working in the Broadway Soup K itchen one night when a homeless man approached him and asked h im to take care of a piece of sculpture. T he man who made the piece said he had no place to put it, but did not want to leave it hanging in the soup kitchen.

He had made the sculpture out of materials that he salvaged from the street, binding th em together with colored wires and mounting them to a black metal grid. Tangled amidst unidentifiable objects on the grid were a tire from a toy truck, a pine cone, and a pink toothbrush. It looked like a huge microchip gone awry. Anderson accepted the gift. Since then, he has been trying to get it displayed in the Kosher Kitchen or the Daily Gaffe.

A 34-year-old native of India, Milind Paranjape has been creating art

while living in New Haven for the past two years without a home. Most nights he sleeps in the Columbus House Shelter on York Street, where he is forced to leave each morning by 7 a.m.

During the day he spends his time walking around, gathering ideas and materials for new pieces. He has no set schedule. If the weather is nice Milind can spend the day drawing. If it rains he has to look for shelter for himself and his art. "In retrospect I don't know if I would have chosen to be an artist," he said, although now his work takes up all his time. "It has become an existence and a reality for me."

Each of Milind's works of art requires tremendous effort. Since he cannot afford to purchase materials, he composes his pieces- from objects he finds, such as a discarded television set, a magazine ad, and a toothbrush.

He also draws piqures from scenes in his imagination. Milind has no place to store his art, so if he does not sell it immediately he m\1st ask someone to hold it for him, or give it away. Before creating a sculpture he hides the materials he has selected in secret pockets around the city. Milind said he has gathered enough elements now to make a new sculpture. He refers to this collection as "the fall harvest."

Milind seldom shaves and wears layers of dusty, baggy clothing. "AU I have is what you see," he said. He held up his arms to display his wardrobe, and pointed to his sketchbook, a gift from a Yale student, overloaded with wrinkled papers and breaking at the seams. Despite his disheveled appearance, Milind chooses his words carefully from a large, varied vocabulary.

He speaks five languages and holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master's degree in physics from the City College of New York.

After receiving his degree in physics twelve years ago, Milind decided to stay in the U.S. to look for a highpaying job. Soon, he said, he was making more than $40,000 a year as a COmputer operator. Two years ago he came home from work to find a lock-

smith changing the locks on his door.

"Then the moving men came and just began to take it all away," he said.

Milind had a visa which allowed him only to study. He had been working in America as an illegal allien. To make matters worse, Milind also refused to pay his taxes, citing ethical and "logical" reasons for not doing so.

"Income taxes give incentive to the parasite," he said. Rather than return to India, where he could likely find work given his level of education, Milind said he prefers to remain in America in the hope that he will soon obtain U.S. citizenship. "Unfortunately," he said, "the work has been moving at a snail's pace."

Although he has had no formal artistic training, Milind has been fascinated with art since he was young.

He said he has visited the Louvre and the Vatican, and has explored the great museums of Amsterdam, Florence, New York and New Haven.

At one time, Milind said, he viewed artwork like a tourist. Now that he is "deliberately and consciously" an artist, he said he sees far more in each piece of art and is improving with each

new work. "This is like my going to art school," he said.

Drawing from two major sources of inspiration, science and ancient Greek art, Milind creates drawings that combine the two influences in surreal landscapes. One of Milind's drawings features a distorted ancient Greek statue against an outer-space background. Milind said he titled it ~Ganymede" after a satellite of jupiter.

In another of his works Milind has scratched scientific formulas into thick layers of color. Embedded among other images is a diagram of a plutonium-powered rocket engine he designed.

Milind would like to have a show of his work. But, he said, he cannot transform many of his ideas into drawings and sculpture because he has no home or money. His ideal show would take place outdoors, with room for huge sculptures. So far he has sold two pieces, each for $60. For now, the, sculpture he gave to Anderson is sitting in a storage room at the Kosher Kitchen.

-Arthur BradjMd The New Journal/December 1, 1989 7

8 The New J o urnal/ December 1, 1989

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The I ndependent staff takes its last stand o n the front steps befor e walking off the job.

The New Journal/December 1, 1989 9

~ober 19, 1989

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The Octob~;- 19 issue of the New Haven Independent was, by all accounts, a pitiful sheaf of newsprint. Peculiarly large photographs floated among awkward patches of white space. No hint of the city's most watched election in decades appeared in the political weekly. A letter to the editor published two weeks later lamented, "It's alarming and depressing how rapidly the paper has gone downhill . . . It is really pathetic." A clever reader might have detected the irony behind the lead photograph, which showed striking office workers walking off their jobs.

The entire eight-member editorial staff of the Independent had quit that week.

The shoddy October 19 edition and the accompanying mass exodus were not the worst of the debacle that week.

Shortly after the editorial staff dispersed from posing for a farewell

photo on the front steps, paramedics rushed into the office to carry the paper's associate editor, Margaret Spillane, to the hospital. Police arrived to arrest the marketing director, Bernard Zelitch, who Spillane claimed had attacked her. Accounts of the fight vary among the staff. "The next thing I saw was Margaret flying out of the office with a tremendous crash," said _ Bruce Shapiro, the former executive editor. "It brought people up from downstairs. She was flat on her back, very dazed." Zelitch said he never hit Spillane. All sides agreed that the argument started when the two began bickering over who had the right to open a piece of office mail. Clearly, the ' work environment had deteriorated. It was no secret that the writers and • editors quit because they were angry with Zelitch and his wife Caroline

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Cole, the newspaper's publisher. By the end of the week Zelitch and ·Cole had also resigned.

The Independent disintegrated as quickly. and dramatically as it burst onto New Haven's political scene.

Three young journalists and a community activist founded the weekly newspaper in 1986, as an ambitious experiment in progressive journalism.

The New Haven Register, the city's only daily, was then a family-owned monopoly that catered to a suburban audience and editorialized with rightwing fervor. The New Haven Advocate offered a kind of "alternative" journalism, especially for arts and entertainment coverage, but it aimed mostly at the region's hip baby-boomer population. Neither paper focused on the city's socially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods. The Iruiependent would.

The paper's fU"St executive editor, Paul Bass OE '82), met his future wife and associate editor Carole Smith (SY '83) when both worked as student writers for the Yale Daily News.

Together with a community organizer named Cynthia Savo and her husband Bruce Shapiro of the Advocate, they launched their idealistic scheme for a gritty, community-based weekly.

About half of New Haven's households, roughly 24,000, eventually made the mailing list.

With Savo as their publisher, the foursome ran their little office on Chapel Street with the same progressive spirit that bubbled over in the pages of the new weekly. The founders 10 The New Journal/December 1, 1989

decided all matters by consensus, and ' African-American and Latino commutogether became known in the office nities to bring out stories neglected by simply as "P.C.B.C.," after their first the other newspapers. initials. The. whole staff, from "We · never condescended to our receptionist to executive editor, readers," Bass said. Not everyone participated in meetings and received agreed. Superintendent of Schools equally meager salaries of $21 '000 a John Dow, Jr. sued the paper for libel year. "Everyone, not just the writers, after it lambasted him in one of its believed in the paper's mission," typically unambiguous editorials. In Shapiro recalled. "The only place I've what the Connecticut Law Review seen that kind of passion is in political deemed a "landmark" decision for campaigns." freedom of the press, a Superior Court judge defended the Independents right to characterize Dow as "an ignorant, spineless politician" who should "go back to elementary school and take a civics class." Joel Schiavone, the developer responsible for the chic row of shops on Chapel Street, wrote a letter threatening an advertising boycott from all of his "entities" after the paper criticized his Shubert Theater project. The Independent called his bluff, publishing the letter the next week on the letters-to-the-editor page.

The newspaper unearthed conflicts The grassroots activism that would of interest in New Haven's Housing inspire John Daniels' populist bid for and Urban Development projects way mayor began finding a voice in the back in 1987. Two years later, when pages of the Independent. "The office the HUD scandal became national was like a community center," Savo news, the New York Times credited the said, referring to the constant bustle of Independent for breaking the story. In visitors from all around town. "A lot of another muckraking coup, the paper neighborhood activists became aware exposed an outbreak of liver poisoning of what was going on in other neigh- at the Fair Haven Heights chemical borhoods, and realized they were plant of U retek Inc. Federal officials at facing the same problems." Savo and the Occupation~ Safety and Health the paper's two full-time reporters, Administration read the story, and eventually slapped the company with a Khalid Lum and Elizabeth Coonrod, used their ties in New Haven's Italian, record fme.

"As time went on, Cole became more and more like Lady Macbeth."

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The staff in 1986, including P aul Bass (back row, third from left), Bruce Shapiro (second row, third), Carole Bass (second row, end) and Cynth ia Savo (front row, third).

Besides shaking things up in the city, the Independent walked away with more prizes in its three years from the state Society of Professional Journalists than any other Connecticut weekly. It won top honors in the news, sports, feature, column, and editorial-writing categories. The Independents political reporting made it required reading even for the senior editors at the Register, according to Charles Kochakian, the editorial page editor there.

The Independent had less success with its finances. The paper missed its 14-month deadline to break even, and at the end of two years it had lost around $700 ,000. "It's not that these people didn't have business skills, it's just they had no motivation to make money," said Betsy Henley-Cohn, the majority owner. She said the familylike staff was too preoccupied with its communal project to care about financial realities, and cultivated an "abusive relationship" with its

investors. Offending business leaders like Schiavone didn't help. The editors might laugh off the idea of an advertising boycott, but Henley-Cohn, who ultimately lost close to a million dollars in the venture, saw it as a genuine threat. "This is the real world, not playland," she said. "And it wasn't their money."

The staff resisted Henley-Cohn's attempts to impose a traditional corporate structure on the paper.

When she tried to exert more control, the editors fought bitterly with her and the other owners. Savo quit after Henley-Cohn and the board of directors tried to limit her duties as publisher. "They didn't trust our judgment, and at the same time they were unwilling to learn how newspapers work," Paul Bass said, noting that none of the owners had previous experience in the trade. He and his co-workers said "that once the tight advertising market improved, the paper would turn a profit, as long as it

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stayed true to its m1ss1on. The remaining founders kept insisting that all they needed was more time.

When the editors asked for another $350,000 this year , H enley-Cohn decided she'd had enough. In June, she found a new h usband-and-wife newspaper team to take over as publisher and marketing director.

Caroline Cole an d Bernard Zelitch shared her bottom-line management philosophy. "The commune just wasn't working," Cole said. "There was no monitoring, responsibility, or accoun tability." The new publisher set out to install a corporate hierarchy. She abolished the egalitarian pay system, nearly doublin~ her own salary in the process, and prepared to rid the company of the inefficiency she saw in ·everything from production schedules to office design. The Basses quit on July 7, the day after the new team started work. "Caroline Cole told me she hated my paper," said Paul Bass.

"She said she wanted to take me off politics to cover high school track meets."

Of the newspaper's founders, only Bruce Sh apiro remained for the absurd last act of the lndependmt drama. The events leading up to the October walkout became a caricature of the struggle between journalistic idealism and corporate efficiency. "As time went on, Cole became more and more like Lady Macbeth," Shapiro said, "more and more concerned with moving furniture and punching time clocks. It was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." The new publisher carried out her plans with "an abrupt, verbally abusive, and authoritarian personal style," he said.

"It went from being the best work environment I've ever been in to the worst."

Cole objects to the idea that she should have asked the staffs permission before rearranging furniture to create a more efficient, less communal office space. "There were just as many people, probably more, wh o felt more comfortable in a traditional hierarchical structure," she said.

Furthermore, Cole said Shapiro and

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his staff were carrying out a personal vendetta against her by slacking off and missing deadlines. "Certain peop le were putting in a lot of effort to sabotage the paper," she said. "The staff held a mass meeting to think of ways to send us back to Massachusetts."

As the discord in th e office got worse, so did the quality of the paper.

Reporters at the RegisttT stopped clfecking their own stories o n Thursdays against the latest edition of the Independent. "They're n ot out in the neighborhoods an ymQre," said Paul Bass from his new office at the Advocate.

One change came as a surprise even to Shapiro. "I picked up a copy of the paper one week when it came back from the printer,~ he said. "I opened it up, and there was this puzzle." Cole and Zelitch had ordered a series of weekly puzzles from a national syndicate. "This sum is the largest dollar amount a contestant can win in a standard game of Jeopardy!" one of them teased. Shapiro was incensed. "In the first place, it was a dumb puzzle.

But more important, it was syndicated, which went entirely against our mission."

Cole said she ordered the puzzle as a last resort, because Shapiro and the editorial staff were not generating enough copy to fill the 24 pages mandated by the Postal Service. "It was a promotional item- one that happened to be wildly successful," she said. In any case, the paper's communitarian ideal had fallen by the wayside. The Independent had joined the city's other papers in relying on syndicated material and neglecting local news. "The paper has deteriorated into a collection of safe, bland descriptions," one reader wrote in. It looked more and more like the Register, only thinner- anq was losing more money than ever before.

Shapiro made one last attempt to regain control of the paper. H e typed

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up a plan and gave it to Henley-Cohn, calling for a total reorganization, wh ich inclu ded getting rid of Cole and Zelitch. H enley-Cohn rejected it. "I d idn't want Bruce in charge," she said.

In mid-October the frustrated editorial staff resigned. After the fracas between Zelitch and Spillane, th e majority own er order ed the Independent office locks changed, allowing only Cole and the p roduction staff in side to slap together the infamous October 19 issue. By the end of the week HenleyCohn accepted resignations from Cole an d Zelitch · as well, "to make a completely fresh start."

~

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"I don't want to run a cutesy, nicey n ewspaper, becau se readers aren't stupid."

Despite its inglorious demise, the brand of community j ournalism originated at the Independent has leaked into the other local papers. Since Paul Bass signed on as a staff reporter, the Advocate has begun to fill out its pages with more investigative stories, most of which Bass writes himself. (In on e recent issue, a column by Bass on labor relations in the New Haven schools ran twice, under two different headlines.)

Still, with its large regional audience and upscale tone, the paper makes no pretense of being a smalltown community weekly like the original Inde/Hndent . Its recent "Au tumn T imes" issue gave about three pages to local news and nearly nine to "Living a Lie," a ton gue-in-ch eek look at New En gland fall traditions that could have run in New York's Spy magazine.

The Registers urban coverage has also changed since the Independent ap peared. The daily recently looked closely at issues of poverty , drugs and racism in its two series titled "New Haven's Ten Worst Problems" and "A City Divided." And it surprised everyone with its endorsement of John Daniels for mayor. Thomas Geyer, the Registers CEO and former editor, praised the !ndependmfs savvy. "The Independent provided a clear perspective on thin gs we didn't always report on," he said, "with a strong point of view that was always thought-provoking." Nonetheless, the Register looks more like USA Today than the old Independent, and typically leans on light features sent over the Associated Press w ires. So far, no New Haven newspaper has filled the gap in local reporting left by the Independent.

Paul Bass and Henley-Cohn agreed that the responsibility for their paper's failures belongs to everyon e . "I accept my share of the blame," H enley-Cohn said. I should have made it run on its revenues a long time ago." The timing was wrong, the market was tight. "I was not a strong CEO, I didn't make the tough decisions," Bass conceded.

But the two disagree about whether a newspaper built on the idealistic model of the P.C .B.C. collective could ever survive in New Haven, even in the best financial climate.

Another local journalist, Carol Leonetti Dannhauser, took over as editor of the Independent on November 15. Although it will run with a more traditional business structure, an d far tighter budgets, Leonetti said the spirit of the original founders will return to the pages of the new Independent. "I don't want to run a cutesy, nicey newspaper, because readers aren't stupid," she said. "I'm certainly not going to keep my mouth shut."

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New Haven's Drinking Problem Contaminants in the Water Supply Milena Navy and Stefanie Syman

Every drop of water we drink starts at the Lake Gaillard Reservoir, northeast of New Haven.

s liding your tray along the serving line tanks. The result was something that rails in the dining hall, you jostle for a tasted like swimming pool water. In pl.ilce at the beverage machines. You August 1988, bacteria levels almost pause for a moment in front of the soft violated federal standards again and, drinks and Hi-C, and then shove your according to Allen Hess, chief engi· glass under the water spout. Untainted neer at the Authority, a resident by caffeine, chemical coloring or coliform population still lurks in the artificial sweetners, clear water gushes system. There is no way to prevent out: Before it spurts through the another outbreak, he said. "It could faucets at Yale, each drop has happen again at any time." journeyed five days from a reservoir Since chlorine dissipates as water northeast of New Haven, through a flows to kitchen sinks across Connetwork of underground pipes. A necticut, the Authority must add treatment plant at the Lake Galliard higher concentrations to keep the Reservoir strains out dead leaves, water bacteria-free until it reaches its bacteria, and other plant and animal farthest destination. But even this matter. But while it looks pure, by the precaution, it turns out, poses a health time it reaches your glass, New Haven's risk. "You can't water your plants with drinking water has picked up tiny bits of it," said Borenstein. "It's not good for metal and other contaminants. the fish. How long do you want to Yale students and New Haven drink swimming pool water?" Many residents often complain that their experts in charge of water quality insist water tastes bad. Chlorine added to kill that chlorine does not threaten public bacteria gives the water a chemical health. Neither the EPA nor the Water flavor, and copper piping accounts for Authority sets maximum chlorine the water's metallic tang. Yet our taste levels. "Chlorine poses no health risk, buds can't detect the most dangerous though it might not taste too good," elements in the water we drink. "Water said Peter Karalekas, chief of drinking is a real scandal that hasn't been . water for the EPA in New England. discussed," said Matt Borenstein, the Tom Jackson, a spoke_sman for the New Haven Green Party's mayoral Water Authority, agrees: "It's never a candidate and a longtime city activist. health problem, it's just a matter of "At least we should know what the risks taste." are." Drinking water may contain any But in 1987, a major study by the of nearly 1000 pollutants identified by National Cancer Institute found that the Environmental Protection Agency. the risk of developing bladder cancer The local Water Authority, a public increased with the amount of corporation that channels water to chlorinated water consumed. The innearly 400,000 southern Connecticut cidence of bladder cancer, the fifth residents, notifies consumers through most common cancer in the U.S., has their monthly bills when pollution increased by 50 percent in the last 40 years. Yet the Water Authority's conlevels get too high.

Many New Haveners remember the sumer brochures do not mention the crisis of 1984, when an outbreak of carcinogenic effects of chlorine.

Private customers like Yale can do fecal coliform bacteria hit the city's water supply. In an effort to kill the nothing about the chlorine that the bacteria, the Water Authority poured Water Authority dumps into our almost three times the normal level of water, but the University could do chlorine into the Lake Gaillard storage more to get rid of lead- the most The New JournaVDecember I , 1989 17

dangerous contaminant we drink.

While the Authority oversees every drop that travels from Lake Gaillard Reservoir to New Haven's water mains, once water leaves a shut-off box at the curb the Authority's job is over.

A lot can happen between the street and the kitchen tap. In many areas, including Yale, lead leaches in.t o drinking water through indoor plumbing. Although the EPA banned all lead materials in public water systems in 1986, most old buildings still contain antiquated lead pipes.

Lead contamination deadens the central nervous system and causes kidney breakdown, loss of motor coordination, fetal disorders, and miscarriages. According to data collected by the EPA, 42 million Americans and 240,000 children have suffered reduced intellectual capacity because of lead in drinking water. The EPA has found that even levels below the current maximum contaminant level (MCL) for lead of 50 parts per billion (ppb) are enough to cause serious health defects. In Connecticut, public officials worry that lead damages unknown numbers of local residents.

"Children are playing in and drinking water that may be contaminated with lead," said Frederick Adams, state health services commissioner. This year, the Connecticut Health Commission designated June as Lead Poisoning Prevention Awareness Month. The Water Authority sent out a brochure entitled Get the Leod Out to 100,000 customers in its service area, warning them, among other tips, not to cook with hot water because higher temper· atures speed up leaching. The Authority also tries to prevent leaching by lacing its tanks with sodium hydroxide, a chemical which mellows water to a basic pH level, so it does not corrode pipes. Still, the Water Authority concedes that lead levels in New Haven's drinking water may be dangerously high.

"Everyone in New Haven who can afford it buys bottled water,,. said Borenstein. As part of his mayoral 18 The New Joumai/December 1, 1989

Water treated at the Lake Gaillard plant is not absolutely pure by the time it reaches your mouth. platform this fall, Borenstein proposed raising water rates, taxing Yale to fund improvements in the quality of the water system, and launching a public education campaign. Dale Abbott, a New Haven plumber for the last 25 years, also said the government is not doing enough. Abbott, who sells a water purification system recently installed in the Boston Public Schools, sent a letter to all the New Haven papers last month, chastising the Water Authority for neglecting to educate the public about the dangers of lead. "It's as good as selling drugs to kids," he said.

This year the New Haven Advocate tested 20 local buildings for leaded drinking water. One fourth of their samples showed lead levels above the EPA's proposed maximum limit of ten ppb.

Spring Glen School in Harnden came up with a startling 70ppb by the Advocates

measurements. Since the test results were published, schoolchildren in Hamden and New Haven have joined the Water Authority's effort to make their water safe to drink. Under the Authority's Water Ranger program, each school appoints student Rangers to run drinking fountains for several minutes every morning, washing out any lead that seeped in overnight. The Water Authority began the program last spring by inviting principals at each of the 182 public and private schools in its area . to participate.

According to Rosemary Macionus, education director for the Water Authority, 76 of the 182 schools in the Authority's service area have joined so far. More than half of New Haven's 55 schools have decided to appoint student Rangers.

Yale has yet to introduce anything like a team of college Water Rangers.

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engineer at the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health , no such steps are necessary here. Yale's water complies with current EPA lead standards, he said. "Th ere is no reason to believe that there are high levels of lead in Yale's water," said Mood. He has tested Yale water for more than ten years and analyzed samples taken randomly from Yale buildings including the Divinity School, the Medical School and the Yale Bowl. "Lead in water in• this area, as far as rm concerned, is a for responding slowly to the potential non-problem," said Mood. Although health threat. "Where there are all-tile lead solder can dissolve into water that walls, Yale won't rip walls out to sits in Yale's pipes, Mood maintains replace pipes," lie said . Most dormithat this ·is no cause for worry. "You tory bathrooms have tile walls. "Yale is need water standing for 12 to 15 hours," a nightmare under our nose," said he said. "At Yale there is a constant Abbott. flow. Only the first flush in the The New Journal took water samples morning may contain lead." According from seven locations at Yale-Dwight to a Water Authority brochure, how- Hall, the Film Studies building, ever, water that stands in pipes with William L. Harkness Hall, the Law lead solder for more than six hours School, Sterling Memorial Library, poses a threat.

Connecticut Hall, and Street As Yale has expanded over the Hall- and sent them to two labs for decades, additions and mod.ifications testing. The Institute of Analytical and have created a w ildly complex Environmental Chemistry at the plumbing system. According to Robert University of New Haven found 19ppb Proto, a plumber who has worked at' of lead in a sample from a Law School Yale for 15 years, the University used drinking fountain- almost twice the lead piping . until the mid-1960s. proposed EPA limit- and undetect· While Yale ha8 replaced almost all lead able levels of lead in the other samples. piping with copper and galvanized According to tests by the Water steel since then, as recently as last year Authority, Dwight Hall, the Film the physical plant removed lead pipes Studies building, and WLH had from the university provost's house. undetectable levels of lead. Copper "There could be lead in different levels in the samples tested by the isolated areas, but by no means is it Water Authority do not pose a health widespread," said Proto. Most dorms risk, but they do account for the and Yale buildings receive water metallic taste of Yale water. Dr. through copper pipes that existed years George L. Wheeler, who ran some of before the 1986 EPA ban, however, the tests, also found what he called and lead solder in these pipes can "unidentifiable crud" in the Law contaminate the water. "All solder School sample. "It may be dead prior to the EPA ban contains lead," bacteria killed by the chlorine that Proto said. Only residents in the most precipitates out onto the walls of the pipes," said Wheeler. recently renovated b uild ingsAnyone can fmd crud in the New Calhoun College and Lawrance and Welch H alls-drink their water from Haven water for the price of a $10 test lead-free piping. Abbott criticizes Yale from the Water Authority. But even

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"We have made no ·response because we thought the tests were not representative of our water," said Paul Weisman, Center Church business manager and maintenance person.

"The sample was (~en from a faucet that had not been used for 24 hours."

Recently, however, the EPA proposed changing its standards, to apply before tap water has been flushed, and reducing maximum contaminant levels for lead from 50ppb to lOppb. The new standards should clear up inconsistencies in testing. "Before now, the EPA has never specified how the sample was to be taken," said the EPA's Karalekas. New testing guidelines, along with the lower MCL, could lead to cleaner, safer drinking water. But it will be two years before the EPA proposals go into effect.

Meanwhile, citizens like Borenstein and Abbott continue to press for more action. They want the state to account for the potential hazards in the water, and they are trying to get citizens to pressure the government and private institutions like Yale.

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Speaking with Woodward J ack Wills Quiet and contemplative, C. Vann Woodward speaks in a soft Southern drawl, carefully weighing his words before offering them. Though he retired from the Yale history faculty in 1977, he still keeps a sparse and slightly dusty office in the Hall of Graduate Studies. In conversation, he leans forward attentively. He is selfassured, gently humorous, and, at 81 , still watching the changing world around him.

Despite his unassuming manner, Woodward is a towering figure in American historical scholarship. His achievements continue to influence his fellow historians and the Yale community. "He was and still is the most distinguished United States historian," said Professor Emeritus of 22 The New journaVDecember l , 1989

History Edmund Morgan, an expert on colonial America. A scholar of the American South, Woodward won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Mary Chesnut's Civil War. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Woodward's Strange Career of jim Crow, a history of segregation in America, as the Bible of the civil rights movement.

Woodward still spends his time these days writing, a pursuit he has enjoyed all his life. Recently, he published a new book of collected essays and speeches, The Future of the Past, and an article on segregation for the 75th anniversary issue of The New Republic.

Although he is at his desk every day, Woodward hesitates to call his actiVIties work. "Work is a curious definition," he said. "I do what I want

to do. If that's work, I do a lot of it."

As a young man, Woodward wanted to be a writer, not a historian. He took one history class at Emory, and found it "boring." Upon graduating in 1930, he taught English for a year until the depression forced him out of the job. "I decided this might be the time to see if I could write," he said. He began a biography of Tom Watson, one of the first white politicians to appeal directly for black votes. When he ran out of money, Woodward entered graduate school at the University of North Carolina on a full scholarship, and completed the book in 1937 as his doctoral thesis.· Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel was published a year later, inaugurating Woodward's distinguished career.

His scholarly reputation notwithstanding, most Yale students today associate Woodward's name with the University's free-expression policies. The Woodward Committee established the first guidelines on free speech at Yale in 1974. Issues such as the Vietnam War and racial injustice dominated the campus when his committee convened, Woodward said.

--rbere was very ljttle dissent from the prevailing point of view on these iasues," he said, ~dding that he, too, opposed the war. Jn 1972, boisterous crowds prevented General William Westmoreland and Secretary of State William Rogers from addressing the Yale Political Union. Two years later, under pressure from campus groups, the Union rescinded an invitation to William Shockley, a Nobel Prizewinning physicist who believed that blacks were genetically inferior to whites. A group named Young Americans for Freedom then invited Shockley to debate William Rusher of Tlae National Review, but a shouting crowd of protesters prevented the debate.

Woodward said he saw the Shockley incident as "an outrageous violation of free speech." He and the other professors who witnessed it went directly to President Kingman Brewster's bouse afterward to recount what they had seen. A few days later, Brewster established the Woodward Committee.

The committee concluded that free ipeech is essential to the University's function and that Yale has an obligation to protect expression of views no matter how unpopular or distasteful "The report ran contrary to the dominant opinion on the rights of free speech," Woodward said.

The customary defmition meant making advances toward women. Now they call it harassment if people say things they don't like.

offended by certain kinds of speech.

They call it harassment, but they don't want to hear people say things they don't like to hear." Woodward represented Wayne Dick (DC '88) in an appeal before the Executive Committee, after Dick had been suspended for putting up posters satirizing Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days at Yale. Reversing its earlier decision, the Executive Committee ln the fall of 1988, Yale President held that Dick had a right to put up his Benno Schmidt decided the time had posters, even though gay and lesbian come to review the Woodward report. students said they felt harassed.

Anti-apartheid shanties, controversial Some people today define harassposters, and charges of harassment at ment too broadly, Woodward said.

Yale led Schmidt to appoint a new "The customary definition meant committee, chaired by Physics making advances towards women.

Professor Robert Adair. After a year of Now, you can call it harassment if you deliberation, the Adair Committee annoy people. It means saying essentially upheld the Woodward anything that seems offensive." report. It recommended no major However, the professor said he changes in Yale's policies and refused supports vocal minority groups on to outline strict procedures for campus. "They have a perfect right to determining what students could . express their opinions, but they don't express verbally, graphically or have the right to keep others from symbolically. expressing theirs."

"I was delighted to see that the Adair Raised in the segregated South, Report supported the findings of my Woodward saw fmthand the effects of committee, and that it addressed racism, and he has been concerned problems that are never really settled," with the issue ever since. "I didn't have Woodward said. "You just have to to imagine segregation. Pd seen it." He keep on settling them because they still recalls his experience as a boy in take new forms every time. People the town of Marlton, Arkansas near don't like offensive opinions, and one the Arkansas River. One night, he solution is to forbid them. That doesn't witnessed a mob assembling to lynch a comport with my notions of free black man. «J saw them get in the mood to take a human life," he said. speech."

Woodward points out that the fight Partly because of the influence of over free speech has changed since his Tlu Stra11ge Career of Jim Crow, committee met. •Back then, it was the Woodward is considered one of the majority that was offended by a public country's foremost authorities on speech-the overwhelming majority," segregation. The book, which sold he said. "Currently, I think it is nearly 700,000 copies, drew conminorities who are up in arms, and are siderable attention when it was The New Journal/December 1, 1989 23

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published, not long after the Supreme relations and freedom of speech, he Court desegregated public schools. As insists that historians should not follow [ the situation of blacks changed during political or personal agendas in their and after the civil rights movement, work. Today, he said, "historians tend Woodward revised the book twice, in to be known for what good cause 1965 and 1974. Professor Robin 1 , they're advancing. That offends me. It Winks uses Jim Crow in his seminar on distorts and abuses the true purpose of history writing to demonstrate that the history." historian's job does not end when a "The historian's role," Woodward book reaches the shelves. In later said, "is to describe and to analyze and editions, Winks said, readers can see to set forth conclusions dispassionWoodward rethinking his ideas. ately, and not to serve political or Although h e hasn't touched jim Crow ideological ends." He concedes that it is in 15 years, Woodward continues to "impossible and unnatural" to eliexplore segregation. Despite gains in minate all subjectivity when writing civil rights achieved during the 1950s history. "The historian should make it and 1960s, the problem has not died, plain when he is intruding opinion he said. "We solved one part of it, and upon evidence," h e said. found that another part is worse." In his article for The New Republic, "The Crisis of Caste," Woodward argues that the growth of an inner-city underclass in the last 20 years repre.sents a new kind of segregation, which he terms "hypersegregation."

"Improvement at the upper end of the economic scale has been accompanied by decline at the lower end, where the great majority of the black population is located," he wrote. "This is race relations without any relations between races- almost total segreWoodward believes that good prose gation." While white resistance to is integral to good history, and admires change has contributed to hypersegre- historians like Edward Gibbon and gation, Woodward said, other factors Francis Parkman for their writing as have contributed as well. "The so- much as for their historical analysis. called underclass has been trapped, Few historians today pay attention to and, ironically, it has been deprived of the craft of writing, he believes; the its natural leaders- people of ability, result is poorer history. "While training and education- because the historians are normally judged by what very victory of the civil rights they write, they don't realize sufmovement emancipated them from ficently that what they write is segregation, and they got out," he said. powerfully affected by how they write While Woodward offers candid it," he said. "In my definition, good opinions about issues such as race writing is clarity and precision, and is

"I didn't have to imagine segregation. fd seen it."

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t attractive. I don't see why history can't be attractive."

But history as an academic discipline seems to be losing its attractiveness for college students.

From 1971 to 1986 the number of history degrees awarded in the United States d ecreased from about 46,000 to 16,000.

This trend bothers Woodward. In the 1960s, he said, students began to feel disconnected from the past. H e thinks students have turned to other fields, including political science, sociology and psychology, because they believe these disciplines are better suited to "solving problems now." Woodward looks askance at those fields. History shows that troubling questions frequently persist, and that solutions can lead to new problems. The historian may not be able to solve those problems, Woodward said, but history does Provide perspective. "The historian's role is to keep the present in touch with the past."

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Book Review/David Greenberg

Silber's Solution

Straight Shooting: What's Wrong with America and How to Fix It, by John Silber, Harper & Row Publishers (New York: 1989) 122. 50, 336 pages.

From the man who brought us faculty union-busting and the resurrection of parietal rules comes a new treatise that traces our nation's problems to the failures of our educational system.

Modestly titled Straight Shooting: What~ Wrong with Amenea and How to Fix It , this work by Boston University President J ohn Silber offers a polemical prescription for curing the country's ills.

Following the trail of Allan Bloom, William Bennett and other conser26 The New JoumaVDecember I , 1989

vative gurus of higher education, Silber, who studied at the Yale Divinity School and earned his Ph.D . in philosophy here, is treading a wellbeaten path. Silber, however, has a broader agenda than his predecessors.

He tackles not only America's intellectual and moral decline, but also the problems of Central American policy, the U.S. legal system, and pass/fail grading. Silber quotes freely from Shakespeare and Shaw, Kant and Kierkegaard; he points a finger at television and sexual promiscuity; and he recommends new programs to find better teachers and to lower rates of teenage pregnancy. The book's shotgun attack on a huge range of

problems comes as no surprise to those familiar with Silber's controversial reign at Boston University.

Last year Silber forbade B. U. students from hosting overnight guests of the opposite sex, explaining to outraged undergraduates, "Mr. and Mrs. America are sick and tired of institutionalized degeneracy." Indeed, since he became president of B.U. in 1970, the pugnacious administrator has battled liberal students and professors. Twice his faculty has voted to dismiss him. In 1976 several hundred professors and ten of the university's 15 deans signed a petition to have him fired. In 1979, professors went on strike, complaining that while

"Mr. and Mrs. America are sick and tired of institutionalized degeneracy." their salaries had grown by only two percent a year under Silber, his own had soared to $288,000 , the highest of any university president. . In one chapter of Straight Shooting Silber rails against what he calls "The Litigious Society" and deplores the nation's growing tendency to solve Problems through the legal system.

Perhaps this is because he has so often found himself in court . In 1985 a B.U. Stud ent, with the American Civil Liberties Union by his side, successfully sued Silber's administration for the right to hang a banner that read "Divest!" from his dormitory window.

T wo year s later, the univer sity lost a sex discrimination suit, and had to

reinstate an English p rofessor whom it sibility, American higher education had den ied tenure. The ad ministration subverts its essential purpose." finally enjoyed a victory last year, In his chapter on the h igh costs of when a court of appeals ruled that the tuition, Silber shows h is faith that B. U. faculty could not legally form a schools can fix America. "Education , union. understood in its broadest sense, is the Although Silber often seems hostile enduring bridge to social improveto the interests of his. university, in ment," he writes. "T he social programs Straight Shooting he appears sincerely we have tried have failed because we committed to education. Unlike most have ignored this essential insight."

Reagan-era conservatives, he criticizes Crime , drugs, A IDS, unemploycutbacks in student financial aid. ment- all these bligh ts of modern Overwhelming d ebt forces graduates society grow out of a failed education al to default on their loans, Silber writes, .system, Silber says. Silber attack s the an d even lead s to moral decay. "They elementary and secondary school become morally no less than finan- system for offering bilingual education cially bankrupt. By encouraging loan that discou r ages students from programs that foster this irrespon- learning English, for p resenting sex as The New Journal/December I , 1989 27

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a matter of personal p reference, devoid of m oral implications, and for cultivating mediocre teachers who, unable to command respec~, invite d isdain for intellectual authority.

Silber advocates teaching ethics at an early age, asser ting that sch ools should "su pport the principles and values we learn from sound families , from religion, and from the best examples in the society around us."

Silber h imself made th e jump from studying theology at Yale Divinity School to studying Kantian ethics in the philosophy depar tment, but in Straight Shooting he ultimately convinces n either h imself nor th e reader that schools can take the place of churches and families in teach ing values.

"R e ligious principles and values are . . . helpful," he writes, "though it is not the province of society or government to p rovide them." Silber is still wrestling with the p lace of religious teachings in public education.

Another p oint Silber h as not worked out is free speech in the university. At fU"st he aligns h imself with Milton,

Mill and defenders of the right to dissent. "Th e stron gest sup port for all freedoms," h e write s, "is the historical fact that for mankin d open controversy between different p o ints of view is far better than the u n con tested p resentation of only one." H e invokes Socrates, J esus C h rist, Galileo and Billy Mitchell as victims of society's intolerance. Universities, Silber says, have a special obligation to protect dissenters and encourage the exchange of opinions. "The moral safeguard of individual self-expression is academic freedom and the courage of free individuals," he writes.

S ilber goes on, h owever, to n arrow his definition of academic freedom to include "the obligation to speak and act . . . with reasonable taste, accuracy and fairness." Silber says that a professor who gives all h is stud ents A's should be fired for violating the principles of honesty on which a university rests. In addition , departments should not grant ten u re as readily as they do. Now, S ilber says, "tenure functions as sinecure ,"

You could be writing this . . . or designing . . . or taking photos or selling ads.

Join The New Journal. encouraging faculty to abuse their academic freedom and to neglect the university's search for truth.

Silber also attacks professors who he says spread misinformation. But it turns out that he wants to proscribe more than just the· historian who claims the Holocaust never happened.

In a chapter called "Poisoning the Wells of Academe;" he attacks leftist linguist Noam Chomsky for saying: "Three times in a g~neration, America has laid waste ' ii. helpless Asian country." Silber counters that Japan was certainly not helpless in World War II, and that the whole U.N. rushed to defend South Korea in 1950.

Silber does not let the matter rest as a difference of interpretation, however.

He reviles Chomsky as an outright liar, a "well-poisoner," and a pernicious influence on the academy.

Like any crusader, Silber sees his own opinions as fact.

Silber's campaign for academic freedom admits many other contradictions. He prefers controversy to monolithic truth, but has nothing but IICOrn for campus activists. He calls free expression the first principle of a university, but traces the decline of higher education in America to the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in 1964. He condemns the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse for advocating tolerance of leftwing views but not of rightwing views, yet he himself does just the reverse. Finally, be argues for a distinction between freedom to express an opinion and freedom to distort the truth; but he has no patience for those who wish to keep teachers of racial eugenics out of the

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TN~~ Thanks L.J Virginia Blaisdell Arthur Bradford Mary Casandra Chen Frank David Meg Donigan Liz Hopkins Laura London Laura's Car Milena Novy Kathy Reich Heidi Schulman Tom Strong Strong Cohen Graphic Design Pam Sturner Alex and Mary Torello Roy Tsao Jack Wills

30 The New J ournaVDecember I, 1989

classroom. If William Shockley deserves a pulpit, so does Noam Chomsky.

In addition to berating Chomsky, Silber brings up his longstanding dispute with Howard Zinn, a liberal historian at B. U. whose salary Silber has frozen. Silber cl;lastises Zinn for arguing with his interpretation of Martin Luther King's views. Zinn says that King went to jail not out of respect for the law, but to win popular support. Silber responds in Straight Shooting b'y c.alling the historian a well-poisoner for "shamelessly distorting and degrading King's ethical position."

By using his book to score points in these personal arguments, Silber detracts from his persuasiveness.

He calls pass/fail grading an attempt by the m iddle class to save itself from downward mobility.

A large part of Straight Shooting considers popular political questions such as abortion, poverty and foreign policy. On these matters Silber is not so much unpersuasive as simply out of his milieu; the chapters read like intelligent but amateur position papers. Although Silber denies that he aspires to hold public office, one cannot help suspecting that the last hundred pages of Straight Shooting constitute an effort to stake out political ground.

On Central America, Silber extrapolates from the Cuban Missile Crisis to what he calls the "Kennedy Doctrine," a policy which would rid the Western Hemisphere of Communism in places such as Nicaragua. Here Silber fails to differentiate between the threat of the Ortega government and

that of Soviet missiles 9o mile~ from our shores; he m isconstrues hist'ory in the service of a political view, the same crime of which he accused Chomsky.

On abortion, Silber challenges the argument that a woman should not have to go through pregnancy and childbirth because of the toll it will take on her. "If a woman can justify the termination of a pregnancy following voluntary coition, the same line of reasoning can be used by healthy and able-bodied men to justify abandoning wife and children and refusing to pay child support," he writes. "In either case, personal convenience and comfort replace moral responsibility." In other words, Silber equates a man's responsibility to support a child financially with a woman's obligation to bear the. child.

In sum, Silber's proposals are a mixed lot. Some sound like good ideas, such as looking beyond schools of education to certify public-school teachers. Others seem bizarre, such as reviewing all federal regulations every ten years for renewal. Still others are downright wrongheaded, such as with· hold ing welfare checks from first-time teenage mothers so as to discourage promiscuity.

Ultimately, Silber weakens his own cause by lapsing into generalizations and diatribes. Campus activists he calls wouid-be tyrants. Pass/fail grading he calls an attempt by the middle class to save itself from downward mobility.

He condemns the feminist text Our Bodies> Ourselves as "rubbish." In moments like these Silber speaks with a spiteful, imperious tone, as though dismissing those who do not agree with him will solve America's problems. His readers should remember, as Silber himself would warn them, to be warY of those who claim to have all the answers.

•

David Greenberg !S a managing ediwr ~1 TNJ.

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