Volume 18 - Issue 2

ewourna October 11, 1985

e -Rev. Allan Boesak, Cape Town, Aug. 16, 1985

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20 years of great performances!

Young Perfectionists... proved that even ensembles with very young musicians can on occasion perform especially well.

Die Presse, Vienna ... more than one professional European orchestra could envy them and should have every interest in imitating their ensemble, the seriousness of their work, their understanding of the music and their ardor in rendering these works in the best way possible.

Le Provencal (France)

The Yale Symphony Orchestra

... the artistic growth of the Yale Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Leif Bjaland has provided special and unexpected satisfaction... an exciting, energetic performance.

New Haven Register

Lei£ Bjaland Music Director 1985-86 Concert Season

• October 19 Overture to "Benvenuto Cellini" Berlioz Concerto no.2 in g minor Prokofiev Nina Evruhov, violin soloist Symphony no.4 in f minor Tchaikowsky •December 7 Four Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes" IJrittoiJ. Concerto no.3 in E-flat Daniel Grabois, horn soloist Introduction and Allegro for St ring Orchestra Elg::r Pines of Rome Resphigi • Feb ruary 1 Overture to "Oberon" von Weber Der Schwanendreher Hindemith Margi Kugelman, viola !>Oloist Symphony No.1 in e minor Sibelius • March 1 Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themt'~ of Carl Maria von Weber Hindemith Berceuse Elegiaque Busoni Five Songs for Low Voice and Orchestra Schreker Symphony No.6 Shostakovich (This program will be repeated on. Monday, March 3 at Carnegie H all)

All Yale Symphony concerts, with the exception of the Benefit Concert, are free and open to the public, and are performed in Woolsey H all beginning at 8:00pm . For more information, and Benefit Concert tickets, call 436-0413 .

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••• •• •April 19 Benefit Concert A Survivor from Warsaw Schoenberg Symphony No.9 Beethoven with the Yale Glee Club Doris Yarick-Cross, soprano Knrby Siena-Myrick, mezzo soprano jt:roid Siena, tenor Richard Cross, baritone

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Cover design by Beth Callaghan Cover photo by Selwyn Tail

Between the VInes

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Windows on the World ~ MTV, cable TV: at Yak, it's hard to find anyom who likes all of them.

At last, one self-professed TV addicts C(Jme forward to confess. By Joe Levy.

Features

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Bridging the Gap? After 14 weeks, Local 34's divisive strike mduJ with a new contract, salary increases, and job secunty. Now, nim months later, tensions remain between the Union and the Universiry and among the C&Ts themselves.

By M elissa Turner and jay Carney.

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Revolutionary Gospel At a theowgy conference this past summer, South A.friam minster and antiapartheid leader Allan Boesak discussed the upheaval in his country. Several weeks laJer, Boesak was arrested and now rtmllins uru:ler house arrest.

By Pam Thompson.

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Far From Home Sprawling .from Paym Whit119 Qym to &imu Park, the Elm Havm Housing Project has deteriorated.from a ona-midd/e-c/ass n~ighhorhood into the poorest section of the nation's sevmlh poorest ciry. As politicians try to find solutions to its decay, tmants struggle with living there and dream offinally ktwing.

By joyce Banerjee.

Books

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The Philosphy Repressed In Freud for Historians, Yak Professor Peter Gay explains why Fmui has more to say to historians than they may want to hear. By Anm Applebaum.

Letters

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NewsJoumal

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The New JournaVOctober II, 1985 3

Publisher Tony Reese Editor-in-Chief Joyce Banerjee Business Manager Lauren Rabin Executive Editor Rich Blow Managing Editor Anne Applebaum Designer Beth 9a11aghan • • Production Manager Margie Smith Photography Editor Mark Fedors• Associate Business~Managers Rob Lindeman Barrie Seidenberg Circuuuion Manager Mike Sonnenblick Staff

Carter Brooks Jay Carney• Katie Hazelwood• • David Hoffman Maria Hong• Pearl Hu Paul Kihn•

Tamar Lehrich Patnck Santana Hank Mansbach Lori Sherman • Pam Thompson Melissa Turner Dan Waterman Peter Zusi

• tl«ud ~ 11, 1985 • •tf«W ~ 25, 1985

Membn-s and Directors: Edward B. Bennett III • Henry C. Chauncey, Jr. • Peter B. Cooper • Andy Court • Brooks Kelley • MicheUe Press • Fred Strebeight • ·Thomas Strong telecttd &pttmbn- 13, 1985

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4 The New JoumaUOctober II, 1985

Frimds: Anson M . Beard, Jr.t • Edward B. Bennett, Jr. • Blaire Bennett • Gerald Bruck • Jonathan M . Clark • Louise F. Coopert • James W. Coopert • Peter B. Coopert • Jerry and Rae Court • David Freeman • Geoffry Fried • Sherwin Goldman • John Hersey • Brooks Kelley • Roger Kirwood • Andrew J. Kuzneski, Jr. • Lewis E. Lehrman • E . Nobles Lowe • Peter Neill • Fairfax C. R.lndallt • Nicholas X. Rizopoulos • Arleen and ,~rthur Sager • Dick and Debbie Searst • Richard Shields • Thomas Strong • Elizabeth Tate • Alex and Betsy Torello • Allen and Sarah Wardwell • Peter Yeager • Daniel Yergin fhas given a second time

In Appreciation In late August TJu Nru1Journal received a grant from the Garden Homes Corporation. We would like to thank this Stamford, Connecticut firm for their generous support.

(Volume 18. Number 2) n. NftiJj-..1 is published six timet durins tM school yur by The New jO<Jmal at Yale, Inc., Poot O tr...., Bo~ 3432 Yale Station, New H aven , CT 06~20.

Copyris:ht 1985 by The N•w Joumal at Yale, Inc. All riJh" l rc-~n~. Rtprodue1ion either in whole or in pan without wrincn ~rmip;o,n or the- publisher and ediu)f··in-chieJ is prohibited.

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Ele\·en thoul&nd copin o( e"ach istue are distributed fr« co me-mMn of tk Yak1Jnivenity communicy . .,., Nnr J..,,.,..J is cypnec by dw Charlton Prns of N~ Ha\·en, CT. and print<d by Ran R•mind<r, Inc. ofRodty Hill. CT. Bool<k«ping and a«ounting ..rvic-a p.-ovid<d by Colman Boot· k..pins o( N•w Ha~n. CT. Billing ,.rvic-a by Simpli(ocd Businns Se-rvkn o( Hamckn. CT.

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Only minutes away!

Dear Editor: I want to share some observations regarding the recent controversy over the temporary shutdown of WYBC. Although I haven't been involved in current decision-making at the station, I've known WYBC long enough to _ understand much of what is happen• mg.

It is ridiculous to suggest, as some have suggested., that Yale University wants to contro1 WYBC. Yale's decision to -close .the station was made in ·conjunction with WYBC's Board of Governors and was soley an effort to get the station back on its feet. During my year in office I worked closely with Dean Lloyd Suttle, and there is no doubt in my mind that he has no desire to control WYBC's programming or managerial decisions. AU that Yale expects of WYBC is that it be financially sound and that it obey the Undergraduate Regulations. That is not too much to ask of any undergraduate organization.

WYBC was closed not because of any new problems at the station but because chronic problems had continued for much too long. For at least the past 10 years WYBC's equipment has been deteriorating, the station has had trouble financially, and there has existed a rift between Yale and community members to a greater or lesser degree. The situation required some sort of drastic action if any improvement was to be made.

Some members feel that the station should remain the same, but the fact is it must change. WYBC literally cannot go on without major reorganization or it will find itself bankrupt in a couple of years. It certainly is a shame that WYBC had to close down temporarily, but it would have been more of a t had it remained on the air'¥aves unchanged.

David H. Baron '86 General Manager, 1983-84

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T1te New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comment ori Yale and New Haven issues.

Write to Joyce Banerjee, Editorials, 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature.

T1te New Journal reserves the right to edit all letten for publication. · The New Journal/October 11, 1985 5 •

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NewsJournal Out of this World

the modern capitalist experiment, summertime is the agar in which the spores of con sumerism bloom."

In another story entitled "Ten Vacation Spots You'll Hate," Claude Solnik suggested Nicaragua, Newark, and the North Pole. He also described Three Mile Island as "a wonderful place to ruin your vacation. Wake up early in the morning and look for mutant life forms."

"A lot of what we do is sort of nostalgic about our childhood," Johnson said. "I have a real love for fifties-type stuff. A lot of it was S9 gaudy that I have a certain affection for it." It was this sentiment that prompted the newspaper's title. "It's like Superman, which always made me smile," Johnson continued. With its exotic graphics, comic book covers, and unabashedly corny tone, The Pland certainly does strike o ne as a return to the glorified past. According to Johnson , however, the theme of the O ctober issue is, ironically, "The Future." What does the future hold for The Planet? Answered Johnson,"We might just do something pretty silly."

For his masterwork In a Goldfish Bowl, artist Lindbergh van Gogh bought a Volkswagen Beetle , removed the roof, and filled the interior with water. The bold young artist then pushed the vehicle in front of a local newspaper office.

After painting himself yellow, he sat inside, breathing through scuba equipment.

"What was I saying?" Van Gogh said. "We live in a fish bowl, and the newspapers look at us."

Van Gogh is a creation of writer Leith Johnson of The Punut, a new monthly arts and entertainment publication based in Hamden . Like van Gogh, The Planet seeks to produce artwork that is innovative and exciting, if somewhat bizarre. Unlike the newspapers van Gogh portrays, The Planet does not follow the people in a goldfish bowl. Therefore, the publication's motto is "No news is good news."· The Planet was founded last November by a group of graphic - Cullum Clark designers and artists who had recently graduated from the University of Connecticut. "We got good jobs, and we liked what we were doing, but we Johnson cooks up exotic ideas for The wanted to do something a little bit Planet crazy," said Gunnar Johnson, the 'iii newspaper's editor and publisher.

When he produced his first issue this l past June, Johnson hoped The Planet would become "a vehicle for all the starving artists in New Haven." ~ Because it received little reaction from ! potential writers and artists, however, the publication evolved over its next I &! three issues into an entertainment newspaper featuring the writing and artwork of its 10-member staff. Each issue centers on a theme, such as July's "Vacation" or September's "Back to School." J ohnson now distributes 2,500 free copies of each issue throughout the New Haven area.

Stories in The Planet range from the light and humorous to the profoundly strange. In the "Vacation" issue, writer William Below offered "Dr. Bill's Vacation The<>ry" as advice to the typical American traveler. "Surely," he wrote, "if the United States is the petri dish of

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6 The New Journai/Octobu II. 1985

From Rock to Ivy After watching the 1969 premiere of the movie Woodstock, New York City's die-hard rock-and-roll fans, barricaded by police, shouted after the coterie of stars who had attended. Swept through the crowds along with Jimi Hendrix and Joe Cocker, Dennis Greene, appearing in the movie as a member of Sha-Na-Na, went completely unno· ticed. "I got on the subway to Colum· bia," he recalled, "and went to my Astronomy class." A pre-law undergraduate and member of the Kings· men (the Columbia a capella singing group later renamed Sha-Na-Na), Greene soon found himself recording hit albums, making frequent television appearances, and performing around the world. Sha-Na-Na's appearance in the movie had made the collegiate Kingsmen, including Greene, interna· tional rock-and-roll stars. Now, 15 years of "Teen Angel" a nd a Harvard graduate degree later, Greene has returned again to the Ivy League, this time to pursue a law degree at Yale and to teach the Berkeley college seminar" A Social History of the Entertainment In· dustry."

For Greene, Law '89, the multiple influences of a performance career, a master's program in education at Har· vard, and his present legal studies have enabled him to retain a sense of balance and have dissuaded him from "being swept away by 'the scene'" of show business. Indeed, Greene, an ar· ticulate, energetic scholar, has had to struggle against the vagaries of a career in the performing arts. For instance, when he first agreed to be in the television show Sha-Na-Na, Greene received scripts in which his character, whose lines were supposed to provide comic relief, was too limited and self· deprecatory in natu re, a role that he likened to Sunshine Sammy in The East Side Kids. .

"I opted out of doing any dialogue which was racially offensive or stereotypical in nature: Greene eX' plained. "There's no such thing as one kind of Afro-American." After express· ing his views to the producers who created the second season of the show,

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8 schools of Belugas. The increasing Greene was eventually able to portray a "much Inore balanced, fair, and healthy character." Unfortunately, Greene finds that the entertainment industry still portrays many black characters as discouragingly litnited.

Greene has discovered that many producers of movies and theater, lured by potential financial rewards, frequently choose to project "negative· images of Third World peoples." Greene has even producers create roles for which black actors simply cannot audition.

A legal · educanon, Greene explained, will empower him with the skills necessary to defend his rights as a performer. "I never want to have to shriek and stick my head under a pillow when somebody says 'sl,le me.'"

With an intimate knowledge of the law, Greene feels he will be able to pursue his media career without submitting to the discriminatory policies of the entertainment industry.

The realities of embarking on a in the performing arts constitute the main theme of Greene's seminar at Yale. He hopes to examine with his students the ethical choices artists are sometimes forced to make when a producer's racial, political, · or sexual beliefs are dissonant with those of the artist. He intends to discuss the confusion a performer may experience when tempted by the chance of money or prestige to accept work in a psychologically damaging situation.

Greene aspires to · instill in his students an uncompromising sense of artistic and ethical integrity, a firm base from which they can begin to explore their professional lives.

After law school, Greene hopes to become a movie producer eventually and to continue distinguishing himself as an artist who will not allow profitinducements to threaten his ~ntal beliefs. He concluded thoughtfully, "I want to stay in touch with the social and political values I've. had my whole adult life." _ - Todd Shuster •

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Lisa in the Sound: no schools, just squid

Whale's Tale Welcomed by a string of expletives from Yale medical student David Cromwell and by the frantic screams of his_ sailing pat:tner, a 13-foot-long Beluga whale em!::rged late last July in the Long Island Sound, just ofi the . coast of New Haven. Barely missing the starboard side of their Laser sailboat and soaking the two with her spray, the pearly white whale followed them for the next 500 yards as they tried to escape. Cromwell quickly realized, however, that trying to outmaneuver the whale was unwise and, as the whale b ecame rnor.e playful , unnecessary.

N ow , two m onths later, the whale still swims along the Connecticut coastline appear in g anywhere between Darien and N ew H aven on a given day. The creature, n amed Lisa for the Long Isla nd Sound America organization, is as harmless a s the small fish on which she has fed in the New Haven harbor for the past seven months. Photographs of Lisa swimming alongside small children prove her gentleness. But her unique situation , living without other whales and surrounded by humans, could threaten her survival. ]}ecause whales usually travel in schools, observers at the Long Island Sound Task Force worried at first that Lisa was sick or injured. But apparently Lisa has returned, if only by herself, to a familiar region. The Sound , which includes New Haven harbo r , had been home to large

temperature and pollution content of the water, however, drove them away to fresher waters, particularly the St. Lawrence Strait. As their new homes became over-populated, many whales were forced to leave. According to marine biologists, the high squid content of the Sound probably attracted Lisa to this area over others.

Lisa's continued solitude and emotion~] state, though, remain a mystery.

"We can't really say if she's lonely, but she's normal," said marine biologist David Merritt from Connecticut's Mystic Seaport. "And since she's acting normally, chances are she's happy." .

Only boats and the people in them threaten Lisa. "People might be unaware of her existence and harm her out of fright, or some real macho sailor could try to harpoon her to ·show his friends," Merritt explained. While concerned about Lisa, Merritt is quick to deny that abrasions seen on Lisa's skin were caused by the old entertainment, now illegal, of hooking large fish to tnotorboat lines and dragging them for miles. Abrasions like Lisa's mark all Belugas' soft skin from contact with the ocean's rough surfaces. Merritt continued that, contrary · to current rumor, Mystic Seaport has no intention of taking Lisa in since she is too old to accept a life of relative confinement.

Left alone, Lisa should remain - . in. good health. Each day in the Sound further enables her to survive there.

"It's like an abandoned dog who }:ta~ t_o get 'street smart' to live," Merritt said.

Because of Lisa's ready adaption, and because she has not been plagued with any of the possible dangers, t1'!e &_o_u nd once again houses majestic wildlifeeven if only a lone whale.

-Lisa Melnick \

Speaking in Tongues •

"Welcome-Bienvenidos" reads the sign in the foyer of New Haven's Hill Central School K-5. Like many schools in the United Stat~s. Hill Central , with its large Spanish-speaking population, greatly needs a comprehensive biThe

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ew Journal/O ctober 11 , 1985 7

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8 -The New JournaVOctober II , 1985

lingual education program. Yet the, future of bilingual education may be threatened by the Reagan Administra· tion's new policies.

Speaking on September 26 about bilingual education, Education Secretary William Bennett declared that the programs ha.ve failed to bring pupils into the English-speaking mainstream. The New York Times quoted him as saying, "After $1.7' billion of federal funds we have no evidence that children we sought to , help- that the children who deserve our help-have benefiteCl .". His opin· ion is supported by the negative results of many studies conducted on bilingual education in recent years. These showed that English isn't being taught quickly enough and that valuable time' is being lost in regular classroom in· · struction.

Despite past findings, however, new research by Yale psycholinguist Dr. Kenji Hakuta refutes Bennett'sclaims.

According to Hakuta, children in bi· lingual programs not only keep up with their English-speaking peers, bu may in fact excel them in some areas.

"Children who have developed strong skills in their native languag~ will transfer these abilities to English,: Hakuta said, disputing the "lost-time argument. Children taught in a bi· lingual setting also develop a greate~ understanding of the mechanics an~ structure of language. Furthermore, Hakuta has found that a bilingual child displays superior cognitive abilities in reading skills and non-verbal logic.

His findings also undermine th~ main tenets of an approach to bilingu~ education known as the "immersion technique , in which non-English speaking students are immediately placed in an all-English classroom . Io the past, advocates of immersion have argued that it is the most successful and least expensive of bilingual tech· niques. But. the most common approach has been the "transitional" program, in which students keep up with the reading, math, and other subject! in their native tongues, while learning enough English to enter the regul~ classroom . The transitional program 1! successful enough that students whO enter the program in kindergarten usually will be transferred to the

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Yale Quick regular classroom within two years.

Yet many evaluations of the tran · 'i!jonal method are conducted in the fourth grade, on those children who never left the program and are still learning in two languages. Critics point to the remaining fourth graders aa a sign of bilingual education's failure, when, in fact , they are m ost likely to be slow learners in any language.

Hakuta suggests an alternative to both these programs and is working for ita implemen tation in New Haven schools like Hill Central. In what is called the "two-way" program, the clauroom consists of half nativespeakers and h alf E n glish-speakers. All children begin learning in Spanish and are later introduced to English. T he -~panish-speaker .benefits from a bihngual progr am, and the English speaking child is exposed to a second language.

Yet because of Washington's new position , such federally-funded pilot Programs m ay have trouble procuring funds. Bennett has called for the d~~gulation of bilingual education, gavang local school districts the autonomy to determine how the pro~~ are run. Many a d vocates of bahn g u a l education feel that Washington is trying to saddle the states and cities with a responsibility that locals themselves do not want.

This year, the government funded only two cities for the two-way progt'aln, and New 'Haven was fourth on the .list. Perhaps New Haven will ~ve the necessary funds to initiate e program next year. But Hakuta is doubtful. "If New Haven doesn't receive fund s from the feds , I believe we will take a grass roots approach and 801Dehow fund it on a local level.

Hawever, without the federal government's support for new and innovative f i'Ograms such as the two-way one, a of locaJ au th orities will shy away rom them . I believe that Washington's ~are just a smokescreen for terml~g minority programs, which are . t orna in the side of conservative po1atica."

-Ann Hess

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The New J ournal/October 11, 1985 9

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Between the Vines/ Joe Levy

Windows on the World

The electronics department at Macy's has 73 TV sets. I counted them while shopping for towels across the aisle in the bath shop. Glancing up from a pile of blue Martex washcloths, I was suddenly confronted by a presidential news conference and 73 smiling Ronald Reagans making short statements about apartheid. I watched it for a little while; I like to watch things on TV. But no love for television, however great or small, could have prepared me for a spectacle this confounding and bizarre. There on the third floor of Macy's, next door to the bedding and shower curtains, just steps away from the cookware and coffee pots, the miracle of living color had swept me away to a land of livebroadcast special reports . Imagine a world with 73 Ronald Reagans. I was living in it.

If only it had been Wheel of Fortune splashed across those 73 screens, then I could have comforted myself with some Baudelairean mutterings about the perception of beauty in sleaze and grotesquerie. No go. There was no game show host, no smiling Pat Sajack or his lovely assistant Vana White to help me out of this one. This was me and the medium in a no-holds-barred, steel-cage grudge match in the middle of Macy's, and boy was I scared.

From the bath shop I could just barely make out the President's words, but his image was clear, warm, and echoed across the TV screens. This mass dosage of mass culture produced a panic in me that I hadn't known since last November. Back then I was sure, popular opinion be damned, that the entire election had been decided by those TV ads that packaged America as a sunny place where folks smile, barbecue chicken, and raise flags. "It's morning in America. Ron is it: the most refreshing face around. Have a I 0 The New Journal/October II. 1985

President and a smile." Now, 10 months later, I was in Macy's watching 73 Ronald Reagans and thinking how much the commander-in-chief of the ship of state reminded me of the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. Maybe it was those rosy cheeks, all 146 of them, that made me expect the President to pull out a sailor's cap and playfully whack P . W. Both a over the head.

"Come on little buddy, cut it out!"

Smiles, laughs, and the frame freezes on a grinning state department while the theme music comes up and the credits roll. The apartheid problem ends in time for the 12:30 p .m. commercial break .

My friends at Yale are disapproving of my TV habit . My tales of uncovering television treasures , both trashy and true, are greeted by uncomfortable pauses. "Gee . . . you sure watch a lot of TV ." People just don't seem to understand that it's a thin line between love and hate. "Do you really love TV?" my roommate Ben asked incredulously, his eyes searching mine for some glint of hipper-than-themasses irony. "There's no way I can condone that," he said, shaking his head. Neither can I really. Those uncomfortable pauses and incredulous stares from my friends make me feel as though I'm an intellectual suspect.

They cow me into masking my enjoyment of television behind theories

and analysis. Through mystical incantations known only to the academic elite, I turn the boob tube into a window through which I glimpse the mood, likes, and trends of some America of which I'm not really a part.

The problem with this sort of analysis is it denies that TV reveals something about me and why I want my MTV, or MTM, or Miami Vice, or whatever.

It's not just intellectual snobbery that makes me uncomfortable with my own TV habit. I've seen television stripped of any enjoyable entertainment value and reduced to the beguiling, hypnotic monster so many believe it to be. And I've seen all this multiplied 73 times over on the third floor of Macy's. Yow. But it doesn't take a genius to realize that TV can be God-awful sometimes.

Geniuses realize that TV is really a capi talist tool or some selfpel petuating brain cancer spawned from the murky depths of the junk culture itself. They never seem to acknowledge that people watch television because it fills a need in their lives. It is an honest human need that in some way relates to the desire to tell and hear stories, a need that has followed man from The Odyssey to Dynasty. In high school English we accepted the seductive but unrealistic visions of happy lands, where the course of true love is always ultimately a success, by practicing a "suspension of disbelief." But now we critique the seductive but unrealistic visions of television with the phrase "mass cuJture as mass deception." If there's any injustice here it's not in thinking that Shakespeare's plays are a better art form than situation comedies, but it's in assuming that most of America doesn't know that already.

"If you can't drink until you're 21," a friend of mine once said, "then I think

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The New JournaUOctober 11 , 1985 II

Bridging the Gap?

Melissa Turner and Jay Carney Not since last fall had students seen workers gathered on High Street. Yet on September 11, 1985 , 40 people, m ostly women , mostly Sterling Library workers, all Local 34 members and sympathizers came together for a lun chtime rally on the walkway in front of Sterling. Black ribbons and Union buttons displayed o n breast pockets distinguished the ralliers from passers-by and curious bystanders.

Quickly, light con versations dissipated as enthusiastic but often hostile cheering began. R eaching into brown paper bags for sandwich es, protestors listened while several of their coworkers spoke about personal grievances with library management.

12 The New Journaii<Xtobt-r II, 198!:1

For such a small crowd,the atmosphere was unusually volatile .

P auses from the speaker often brought wild clapping and shouts from the periphery about "the library regime."

"They don't treat us like humans!" someone yelled. "We have to protect the precious few freedoms we still h ave." Half an hour later lunch was over, and the workers began filing back into the library.

A year ago union rallies were a familiar sight at Yale. After Local 34's emotionally charged and divisive 14-week strike, the U n ion and the University apparen tly bridged their differences last January by signing a new contract. But now, nine months

later, "harrassment" and "unfair treat· ment" are accusations that the Univer· sity's clerical and technical (C&T) workers aim at management and, oc· casionally , at each other. As workers and management try to build an eiTec· tive relationship based on the new con· tract, many find that the whole ex· perience of the strike has failed to in· crease mutual understanding and respect. Instead, resentment from the strike persists, infecting each side's in· terpretation of the contract. Conse· quently the familiar scenarios of Union protest and administrative reticence have surfaced once more.

Both the Union and the University seem pleased with the contract, which

"We don't agree with their attitude- 'Hey, we can't be touched . . because we're in the Union.'"

provides salary increa.s es, job security, and new benefits for all C&Ts. But Union acuvtsts allege that Yale managers are not treating workers with a respect commensurate to the gaina. They charge that management now disciplines them for minor infractiolll aa part of a broader effort to rid Yale of the Union. To challenge this attempt, Local 34 has initiated a grievance-filing campaign. The Union encourages workers to contest unwarranted disciplinary measures by ~nting cases before their super~n. If a case is denied at this stage, It can be presented before a representative at Human Resources (Personnel), and if denied there, the Union BOel to the Director of Human Retources. There are no expenses for ~ first three steps. But if the case faila again and the Union feels that its contention is strong, it can bring the matter before the American Arbitral~ Board, a body comprised of unbiQed labor lawyers. The party that Io.ea the arbitration case must pay all Qpenaes. :me Union's grievance-filing cam~111 has taken hold in Sterling &..IOrary, where C&Ts have fiJed 20 P'ievances since the strike's end, 14 of which were settled at the second step and aix at the third. "There's a lot of ~ufacturing of cases against active IliOn supporters in the library right ~··laid janet Gergen, an energetic 6-yea,- veteran of the Sterling workf~. •Either the library administra~ ~ crazy, or the Yale administra!JOD 11 using the library as a pilot pro~-' in absolutely classical union--mg.• Working in the Microtext~pe!" room, the bespectacled, ....YU-haired woman takes on addi-

tional responsibilities for the Union whenever she can find a spare moment. Serving on the Local 34 executive board and as a union steward in the ijbrary, she has represented both herself and other workers during grievance procedures .

Gergen, who has received several oral and written disciplinary notices from her supervisor, is oangry. Her boss recently reprimanded her for speaking with a co-worker about union business after lunch. "Had I gone up there to ask him for his recipe for Brunswick stew and stayed for 20 minutes, no one would have cared.

Just the fact tbat 'it was union business gets me a disciplinary letter m my file ."

The letter, Gergen believes, is the first step in finding cause to fire her. She describes post-strike Sterling as closely resembling a 14th-century feudal manor. Tales abound of supervisors following employees to the bathroom during working hours and eavesdropping on their conversations, hoping to catch them discussing Union matters on the job. Gergen feels that management is constantly watching her. She cannot even make short phone calls to other i.lnio'n members to set lunch dates without fearing that "higher-ups" will discover the transgression and discipline her.

"What I see is union leaders trying to turn their university jobs into full-time union activities," said Peter Vallone, vice-president of human resources.

"Consequently, we have to remind these employees that they still work for Yale." Casually leaning back in his executive swivel armchair, Vallone continued to speak acros s the length of a conference table. "We ha' ~ employees active in the Union who do have problems because they think they can go wherever they want, when they want.

We don't agree with their attitude'Hey, we can't be touched because w,.!re in the Union . · Vallone 01rected personnel for the Illinois government before joining the Yale administrative staff four months ago. With a considerable amount of negotiating experience behind him but never a strike, Vallone was attracted

by Yale's dubious distinction of having weathered five strikes in 15 years. He

felt that he could offer Yale a new perspective on labor relations. Now, however, Vallone questions the perception that tensions between Local 34 and the Yale administration are increasing again . In an article from the September 11 , 1985 issue of The N~ Havm Register, Vallone went so far as to report that there is "extremely high m orale" at Sterling Library .

Vallone's reasons for optimistic public statements elude most Union act1v1sts. Many are suspicious of management's stringent emphasis on rules and regulations, a move that has effectively deprived some library C&Ts of past autonomy. For instance, there is the currently disputed issue of flextime . In Sterling, which employs more C&Ts than any other building on campus, the methods of administration before the strike wer<: very irregular.

Sterling was, and still is to some extent, a kingdom with fiefdoms in every nook and cranny. Flextime, a program initiated in the seventies, permitted employees to work overtime when their services were most in demand without extra pay. Instead of the extra pay, workers were allowed to accumulate hours for future time off during slow months. Under the new contract, the University is legally bound to pay time-and-a-half to any employee who works beyond 37.5 hours in a week, regardless of the worker's wish to forego extra pay in lieu of future time off.

The University, however, is reluctant to pay overtime. Therefore, workers who stay late must seek the approval from their supervisor. Gergen, who was recently reprimanded for staying at work 15 minutes past her shift, believes that these new rules have appeared because the library management, threatened by the UnioJ?'S strength, is clinging desperately to its power. "All of these new rules and . regulations have nothing to do with getting the work done, but everything to do with teaching us our places and keeping us in line." she said. "I don't have to be shown who's boss in here.

But I don't want to be treated as anything less than a responsible human being."

Not far from Gergen's post in the The New JoumaVOctob<:r II , 1985 13

;Microtext room, at the opposite end of the same dark hallway, is the office of the opposition, Deputy University Librarian Jack Siggins. His wife and Director of Library P ersonnel, Maur:een Sullivan, sits with Siggins in his well-lit and spacious office overlooking the courtyard. The mood in the room is calm, rational and even understanding. Although Unionists might describe the pair as tyrants, they keep such characteristics well hidden.

During the Sterling demonstration on June 12 , Sullivan received a handdelivered letter of protest as w.orkers marched through the libra.r y with union cards held high above their heads. But Sullivan had expected tensions to arise during the re-entry period after the striking workers returned to the library last December.

"I anticipated worse problems than we have had," she said. "Most people returned with the mind to re-establish working relationships. They came back to do their jobs."

Both administrators claim that by adhering to the rules and regulations outlined in the new contract, they have been able to encourage good relations between workers and management.

"We're trying to implement a contract, and it's causing us to examine our approach, which needs to be fair and consistent throughout the library," Sullivan said. "It's true, we are centralizing."

Ironically, as the case of flextime demonstrates, the new contract's specificity has led some union members to the conclusion that the management, out of vindiction, is tightening its grip on the library staff. Neither Sullivan nor Siggins believes in the validity of the Union's accusations of harrassment. Many of the conflicts, according to Sullivan, stem from personal matters. She feels that blaming them on library supervisors or on Yale administrators "is just finding a convenient scapegoat." Siggins supported her statement, "There are just some people who don't accept the contract for what it is. Their view is. '\'\'hat I have is mine and what you have, we'll .share." But things will change," he added wi•h a chuckle. "It just takes time."

Yale hired Siggins and many other 1-4 The N~w Journal/October II. 1985

"There are just some p~ople who d9n't accept the contract for what it is. Their view is, what I have is mine and what you have, we'll share."

sity has been difficult and, in some cases, unsuccessful. Similarly, the C&Ts who crossed picket lines because they believed in their own causes, may be finding it hard to forget the daily barrage of insults and threats yelled at them by their co-workers.

Susan Kilheffer, a C&T who decided not to join the Union when she was hired two years ago, described her department in Sterling bibliography as being particularly successful in reestablishing comfortable and effective 1 • working relations. "We avoid discussion of some issues that do divide us. library administrators as the C&Ts The strike became an emotional issue were forming Local 34. Union leaders and created hard feelings that have suggest that the University employed never been resolved," she said. "To the new managers with hopes of dissome, it is an issue of morals. Moral banding their fledgling organization. judgements are made and consequentBefore Siggins arrived at Yale in 1981, ly there are tensions." Speaking only in he had managed a unionized work- the third person, Kilheffer was careful force for 10 years. At a similar post in not to mention her own views on the the University of Maryland library strike or the contract. She remembers system, he had observed the effects of too vividly the frightening conseanother strike. "There it took quences of allowing a journalist from a about five years for things to finally local newspaper to print her opinions settle down," he said. "What we're on the strike last fall. She received hate hearing from C&Ts now are the voices mail, phone calls late at night, and of a very small vocal group. If you take threats to her family. Although Kilhefturmoil and anger and put them on a fer readily acknowledges that these were often actions of extremists as chart"- his hand swept downward"you could see that the number of peo- opposed to Union policy, she refuses to ple who are angry is diminishing." Sig- risk the sa~e fate twice.

Many non-union C&Ts share Kilgins even went so far as to conjecture that the Union, now that the strike is heffer's fear. Linda Stevens, who has over. has lost its raison d'etre and needs to worked at Sterling and another library generate enthusiasm by creating issues on campus for 12 years, also chose not to attract more people, and, therefore, to join the Union. She agreed to exmore funds. "If a union's income is press her views if her real name were dependent on membership fees, how not revealed. In contrast to Kilheffer's • can it generate more? Either by in- view, the C&T workforce, in Stevens's creasing its membership or by increas- eyes, is irrevocably divided. "There's a ing its dues." lot of animosity. If people called you It is so tempting, so easy to con- names on the street, are you supposed clude, like Siggins, that the kinks in the to forget that? I don't. That's just not relationship between the Union and the way I work." Union members, she the University will work themselves said, eagerly speak to non-members out over time. But the conflicts are not only to get them to join. "But why limited to two parties; the existence of should I sit· down with a perfect a quiet yet extremely opinionated stranger at lunch or put up with phone group of non-union C&Ts complicates calls at 9:45 p.m. to talk union ~ith the issues and increases tensions within someone who didn't deem me worth the rank-and-file itself. For the Union speaking to a year ago? They called me members who forfeited their salaries to terrible names, and now they come at stand in picket lines for what they me with open arms. I don't like it."

While Stevens does not question the believed were just causes, the effort to understand and forgive those who Union's right to exist, she does quescontinued to work for the Univer- tion its right to impose itself on people

•

~ "If

people called you i" names on the street, are you supposed to forget that?"

2

.

'

...

~ the conflict for the non-striking 0 workers. "The University's ·continued negligence only adds insult to injury."

All three- union members, nonmembers, and management _d o agree on one matter: that life would be much simpler if the University could bargain with a workforce that was either entirely unionized, or not at all. A~ it stands, Vic:e President of Human Reso rces the bargaining unit, Local 34, is Peter Vallone: believing in "the extreme- employed as an agency shop, as oply high morale" at Sterling Library. posed to an open or closed shop. This · means that the Union is bound by federal law to represent all C&Ts at · who had already opted not to join. One Yale, whether or not they actually . day a union steward from her departbelong to the organization. As a result, .ment approached the manager to ask if C&Ts who went on strike feel used by he could hold a lunch meeting with those who, although they crossed picketlines, still benefit from the hardseveral other stewards in one of the available rooms. The supervisor won contract.

However, at Union headquarters agreed and suggested the staff room.

Stevens and several other nonon 88 Prospect Street, officials speak of members objected, asking that the forgiveness and unity. "While it isn't ·supervisor tell the stewards to meet in easy to bury the hatchet when it's been an adjacent room. The stewards rein your back for so long, it would be fused, stating that their meeting was good to have them in the Union. Good for us and good for them," said open and anyone could listen to it. To Stevens, however, that was just the Michael Boyle '79, one . of the point. She and her co-workers did not six paid union officials. On the second floor, next to the headquarters of Local want to hear the Union's business over 35, Boyle shares office space with at lunch. According to her, the manager least three other union official~ who are would not push the issue any further. constantly walking in and out or con"Managers are too reluctant to stand up for the rights of their non- union ducting u-nion business by phone. If the intensity in this office is any indicaworkers for fear of being burned by tion, there has been little slo~down of grievances," she explained. "The union activity since the strike's end . management goes by the rules so much Boyle's desk, like all of those around that it fails to reach out to us." him, is piled high with pamphlets and Indeed, those who must adpapers which he shuffles through ministrate both union and non-union periodically to search for documents. workers become entangled in the conAfter graduating from Pierson ·Colflicts between the two groups and in lege, Boyle worked in the Yale Univerthe end are scorned by both. Managers walk a very thin line. Union activists sity printing service where he voted against Local 34 to serve as the C&T charge that managetnent singles them bargaining unit in 198~.

But with out for discipline while courting the the onset of the strike, he changed his non-members . And such accusations mind and delved into union activity, are countered by many non-Unionists , eventually working on the negotiating like Stevens, who . assert that supercommittee during the strike. visors bend so far over backward to Today, Boyle hopes to recruit more avoid conflict with union workers that they neglect those employees who kept members to the Union and to inform all workers of their contractual rights. the University running during the strike, for whose work the tnanagers He says the Union will try to place at received credit. "We feel we deserve at least one steward in every department least a pat on the back or sotnething. on campus. Consequently, if an uninFree coffee and doughnuts doesn't formed employee's rights are violated, he or she will have quick access to amount to much ," she said , referring union aid. "We want people to know to a gathering held in Sterling during •

•

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The New JournaVOctober 11, 1985 15

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we aren't just in the office on Prospect Street, but in their labs as well ." But Boyle does not acknowledge the strong convictions some people have against unions. He believes that non-union members are "fairly sympathetic, but have a laissez-faire view or are afraid of their bosses; it may be that this is their first job back in the workforce after having a child or that the ir husbands are against unions."

Because Local 34 does represent all C&Ts, costs to print up contracts for non-members and to represent nonmembers in grievance cases must be financed. The contract stipulates that all non-union workers hired before April 4, 1984 pay dues into the Contract Administration Fund, and those hired thereafter pay directly to the Union. The fund is to be administered by one union official, one university official and a third selected by the first two. While required to relinquish portions of their monthly salary , nonunion members have no vo ice in determining where their money goes.

Many of them are irate that their participation was never solicited, even as ex officio members on a board . Concurrently, union officials like Gergen can't believe that non-members care so little about their money that they wouldn't consider joining the Union in order to control what happens to it.

But Boyle has faith the Union will break through to the non-members once they discover that the University will "treat them in the same dehumanizing way as they treat the rest of us."

From the union member's point of view, this potential for harassment,

.nore than financial issues, is the most compelling reason for current nonunion members and new employees to join. Involved with Local 34 from its inception, Sammy Carr, a C&T at the M edical School currently working in the Office for Women in Medicine, believes that the risk of harassment on the j ob is too high not to have union support. "When people were first talking about a union, the situation with my boss was very good," she said. "But I had seen so many bad things around m e that I had to support the idea of a union . You just can't tell when things might go b~d."

Lowering her voice, Carr began her own story. She explained that relations with her boss, a doctor, remained good until the strike began. O nce she was out on the picket line, however, all changed. "I would call him, and he would say how concerned he was," Carr explained, "But not once would that man come out simply to have a cup of coffee and talk." When Carr r e turned to work, she claims that her boss and the business manager tried "to make life hell." One day her boss presented three serious accusations against her in front of the business manager, the assistant manager , a coworker, and a paid union representative. Of the. three accusations, the most extreme a-nd, Perhaps the most absurd, was that Carr had been responsible for, in her words, "killing nine babies."

Well , Carr did not kill any babies.

Nine women, however, were placed on a list as having positive results from pregnancy tests when, actually, their results had been negative. The mistake

occurred when Carr was reading results over the phone to an employee at the Women's Center, and the word •negative" was never heard. Only three of the nine women were actually given incorrect results before the error was cau ght, yet Carr's boss con sidered the m a tter serious e nough to warrant discipline a nd possible dismissal. Carr filed a grievance challenging these accusations bu t said that the matter was d ropped when she began pressuring her boss to present his case in a m eeting with a union steward. Since then Carr has transferred departme nts, happy now with her new job and workin g environment.

Although Carr admits that her case is unusual, she adamantly defends the need for a stro ng union as a protector of all Yale '. C&Ts. Recent demonstratio ns, rallies, and a large membership m eeting in BatteU Chapel are part of a campaign to increase Local 34's visibility and viability. But if the U nion is to function as the legitimate voice for the C&T workforce, it must first w in the confidence and enthusiasm of the large body of nonmembers before successfully challenging the University on issues like harassm ent and respect. Yet with or without total support, Local 34 nevertheless will continue to dispute the University concerning grievance_s, both personaJ and general. T he contract has done little to convince the Union of any good intentions on the U n iversity's part. The administration, however, believes the contract will eventually cure all, making subsequent Union demands and complaints invalid. The contract, of course, could not have been expected to erase memory nor defuse the inherent conflicts between labor and management.

T he disagreements between Local 34 and Yale, and among the C&Ts themselves, neither began nor ended last winte r. Perhaps the three-monthlong strike was just the prelude.

•

Melissa Turner and Jay Gamey, juniors in Timothy Dwight, are on the staff of TNJ .

Additional research provided by Erica Moon, • sophomore in Branford.

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Revolutionary Gospel Pam Thompson August 27, 1985, 1:30 p.m., Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Allan Boesak, president of the World Council of Reformed Churches and a founder of the United Democratic Front (UDF) was "detained" today by the South African police under the Internal Security Act. This act allows anyone to be detained by order of any senior police officer and held indefinitely without warrant and bail. At a church meeting earlier this morning, Boesak received notice of student and police clashes at the University of Western Cape, where he is chaplain.

He decided to go to the university to try to calm the students. On his way, Boesak was stopped by police at a roadblock. Three minutes later, two plainclothes policemen took Allan Boesak away.

Just a week before this arrest, Boesak had issued a statement in response to allegations by Louis le Grange, the minister of Law and Order, that he was using his clerical robe as "battle dres~": "The minister 18 The New J ournaVOctober II, 1985

must not impose his violent , militaristic thinking upon me . I have marched in the face of his armed police, not with guns . . . but with my Bible-my faith in Jesus Christ and my people's determination to be free. I will do so again. . . . My resistance to apartheid is based upon my calling and faith as a Christian . No powers on earth, including the awesome powers at the minister's disposal, will stop me from doing my duty."

In the Cape province of South Africa, Allan Boesak was born a "coloured," a person of mixed race. He grew up in a very poor family, his mother caring for him and his six brothers and sisters after the death of their father. When he decided to become a min.ister, he was given his theological education by the "coloured" part of the Dutch Reformed Church. After receiving his doctorate in theology in The Netherlands, he came back to South Africa amidst the unrest of the late seventies. He became a world-respected theologian; as Presi-

dent of the World Council of Reformed Churches, he represents 17 million Christians world wide. Even Yale recognized Boesak's achievements by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1984.

Despite his degrees and his positions , Boesak's theology is one that challenges, rather than affirms the existing power structures of the world.

His radical theology of liberation sees no separation between religion and the political , revolutionary struggle for justice in the world. For that reason, Boesak helped found the UDF, an anti-apartheid, non-racial umbrella organization composed of various church groups, labor unions and student organizations. His life, he says, "is in the hands of God," to be used for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

For me, that newspaper article announcing Boesak's arrest violated the safe boundaries of newsprint, the boundaries with ourselves on one side, the people in the news on the other.

"How long, how long, does it take for people to begin to understand?"

This time, the story wasn't about a stranger. A month before his arrest , I had met Boesak at a theology conference in Stony Point, a small town in upstate New York. Although the newspapers later called him the "fiery anti-apartheid leader," the small, trim man with wire-rimmed glasses who appeared at the conference wearing a conservative gray pin-striped suit could not have been less threatening.

The man who a South African newspaper had referred to as the "most dangerous man in South Africa" sat waiting to speak, looking down at his hands, a little startled and embarrassed when someone introduced him as a man who has "taken a role in history ."

He spoke with a soft, lilting voice that becomes high-pitched when moved or trying to move others.

"And when I come to the United States, and I say, yes- I believe in non-violence, they give me standing ovations, but what in God's name does it help us?" Boesak asked. "I am a little upset today, because I have heard, just before I started to speak, that once again . . . two people have been killed , and one of them a 12-year-old boy .

How long, how long does it take for J>eople to begin to understand?" .

H e looked around the room , at everyone who'd been watching him so

intently, breathing with the cadence of his words. He waited, letting the uncomfortable silence hang in the air for a moment. Then he continued, looking at each of us. "I just get so angry at people who are so glib about violence and non-violence; I get so angry at people who are self-righteous about that issue ; I get so angry at people who have the instruments of non-violent pressure that could end the violence at their disposal and they refuse to use them."

Accustomed to the rights to speak freely and protest peaceably, Americans forget , Boesak said, â&#x20AC;˘hat "the conditions required for a pc ..u..eful resistance in South Africa arc simply not there . . . Simply not there as they have been in the United States for the civil rights problems with Martin Luther King."

The prospects for successful nonviolent resistance seem slim , said Boesak, if one examines the last decades of history in South Africa.

That history includes such incidents as Sharpeville, when in 1960, 69 people were killed for demonstrating peacefully against the pass-Jaws; Soweto, in J 976 , when hundreds of school children were killed for protesting the unequal educational system. "In J 976, the government so openly, so ruthlessly, showed its intention that nothing, but literally nothing would stand in its way of executing the policies to which it had dedicated itself," Boesak said, the corners of his mouth tightening, squeezing out the word "nothing."

"Nothing would stand in its way to

maintain apartheid and therefore maintain the oppression and the overprivileged economic, social and political position of white South Africa.

And so we came to understand that even the lives of children were not sacred in this regard."

Later, on August 27, the day before Boesak's planned march to the Pollsmoor Prison where African National Congress leader Nelson J\.1andela has been held for more than 21J years, I excitedly turned on the radio and TV several times to hear about the planning of the march. By that evening, Boesak had been arrested; the next day South African police broke up what remained of the march with whips, tear gas, attack dogs and rubber bullets. My comfortable anticipation followed by the reality of violence reminded me of Boesak's words about American "standing ovations" and the difference in our countries. It's easy for us to cheer for nonviolent resistance with an ocean's distance to dilute the blood.

Although he has now been released after nearly a month of solitary confinement, Allan Boesak is still not free.

Today he can no longer speak at theology conferences in little towns in the United States-or anywhere else.

He has turned in his passport, cannot address more than 10 people at a time, cannot speak to journalists, must report to the police every morning, must stay in his home at night. He faces up to 25 years imprisonment on each of three counts of "political subversion"- for advocating The.- New .Journal/October I I , 1985 19

divestiture to Western nations, calling for school and economic boycotts, and . praying for the downfall of the South African government, just as he did at the conference in upstate New Yo rk .

While in New York , he had said that he was lucky, that his position awarded him some protection , that he really had many more rights than most black or coloured South Africans. Now , that no longer matters. As he put it , "the South African government can do whatever it wants to me," as it has to so many before.

Boesak has not only had to confront the oppressive nature of his nation's government, but also the racism of his own Dutch Reformed Church . That church historically has been a defender of apartheid; in fact, Boesak says that the roots of apartheid "lay in the bosom of the Dutch Reformed Church."

What happens to people who are black- or "coloured"- in South Africa who decide to devote their lives to a church they have discovered to be racist? Jim Ellis, a friend who knew Boesak when he was first studying theology , told this story. He remembered that during Boesak's theological training, the two of them , along with some other friends from the

.

•1 refuse to take responsibility for the death of our people during the· unrest, the unrest in our country caused by apartheid. by oppression and exploitation. Apartheid is a violent system that can only be maintained by violence. causing ever more violence and destruction.

It it not I who have devised this evil ,system; nor do I maintain it. It is not I who have broken up families, or relocated people by the millions, or allow. little children to die of hunger. It is not I who have sent in the army and the police to make war on de(enseless people. It is not I who have given indemnity to police who cold-bloodedly murder our children. No, the responsibility for the pre.ent tragic situation must be taken by the South African government.•

20 The New J ournal/O ctober II , 19 85

university, often spent Sunday afternoons at a nearby women's teacher training college . When Boesak was ordained as a mtmster, he began preaching in that same small town near Cape Town . An old lady in that town used to feed the friends Sunday meals.

One Sunday , she said to him: "You know, you preached a beautiful sermon today , but I just got a letter saying that I am a disqualified person in my own home. My own home that I have lived in all my life with my husband, who's now dead and where I'veraised all my children, and now I've got to leave. I've got to start all over again. How can I do that? Where am I going to go?" And she asked him, "Doesn't the Lord who you preached about so beautifully have anything to say about this kind of condition?"

"I think that question that day, more than anything else, sent Allan on the course that he has followed ever since proclaiming that this vicious system in South Africa is . . . a heresy," concluded Ellis, now a professor at ~he University of Western Cape .

For his religion to have any relevance in the world, Boesak decided the answer to the old woman's question must be, "Yes, the Lord does have something to say about this situation."

"We discovered," Boesak said, widening his eyes in warning, pushing the words out of his tightened mouth, "that there is no way that we could stay out of the struggle, out of the active struggle for liberation."

"The Bible is written by people who live, by definition , on the underside of history ," Boesak said , explaining liberation theology. "That's why people who have too much don't understand too well what it says." He paused, looking down for a moment. As he began to talk again, he almost whispered.

"We were too afraid, too influenced by a Western privileged understanding of the Bible to understand the message of the gospel. But when liberation theology came . . . " Boesak's voice became higher and higher. "We began to see how exciting a book the Bible really is, and how much dynamite it is under any op-

pressive structure in the world. Desmond Tutu is fond of saying that the South African government goes around banning every book that it thinks is too radical for us to read- Karl Marx and whoever else those people might be," Boesak said, waving them aside with a hand in the air. "He says that what they never understood was that the dangerous book for black people to read in South Africa is the Bible; that's the book they $hould have banned. And they never did."

Boesak explained that the Bible is revolutionary because to call Jesus Christ "'Lord of Lords" is to deny the authority of any unjust government.

"Jesus Christ was calJed Lord, and he was executed as a rebel by the Roman government," Boesak said. "So because of this, political engagement is something that you do, not in spite of your discipleship of Jesus Christ, but as an integral part of it. You have no choice."

In South Africa, being black or coloured means that you live on what Boesak called, in explaining liberation theology, "the underside of history."

Because of this, the conclusions of liberation theology and the black consciousness movement are intimately connected. Before he came to his radical understanding of the gospel, Boesak had been caught in what he called "the schizophrenia of inbetweeness ."

"When you are born a coloured in South Africa," Boesak remembered, "you live with a perpetual mixed feeling toward God. Because you would every now and then say to God, why in the world didn't you go a little bit further and make me white? You came so close; wouldn't it have been much easier for all of us concerned? But then, of course, you look at other people, and you say oh, well thank God, He didn't make me black." He spoke quickly , running his words together, a lifetime of conflicting emotion in one breath . "Really , you never knew where you belonged, or where you wanted to belong, or whether you would be welcomed by this group or by the other

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group. They make you understand through the laws that everywhere you don't really belong anywhere."

"Black consciousness," Boesak said, "changed all of that. All of that. That nonsense of not knowing where do I belong and what is my identity we threw out the window. First of all, we looked at ourselves, and said, black people, we have got to make up our own minds about what this situation is.

W e can no longer depend on the analysis of white people, however good and well-intentioned they may be. We have got to understand our own suffering in our own way. " "The second thing we came to understand was that black consciousness meant that we don't have to make excuses anymore because we were there . . . we weren't going to say, well, I'm sorry that God didn't m ake me white-Forget that! I am a person , I am a human being, and nobody in this world is ever going to tell me any different from now on. In a country where racism is legitimized, is institutionalized . . . is the very basis of the law, the very fabric of our society and our economic and social life . .. it was an incredible awareness for black people to no longer make excuses to white people, and most importantly, to ourselves, that we were black."

"Now," Boesak said of black consciousness, "that's very threatening to white people. Very threatening to white people when they're not so sure of their own position anyway, when they know they've had everything in life except peace of mind and the future."

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religion that includes liberation theology and black consciousness; in fact, he joked that people tell him "they hardly ever see the difference any m ore" between his sermons and political speeches. In religious terms, Boesak decries the South African government's policy of a partheid as heresy and blasph emy. In the words of revolutionary politics, he calls for the overthrow of the South African government. Combining both, he prays for the government's downfall: apartheid, he preaches, must be irrevocably eradicated. When h e says that, h e stretches the "r's" out, sounding fiercely certain about his con clusion .

Although religion and politics are almost synonymou s for Boesak , he would rath er "be a pastor in a small church somewhere" than a political leader. Like Desmond Tutu, he feels forced to be a leader in the opposition movement, because all th e original political leaders have been -like Nelson Mandela- imprisoned, banned, or killed.

According to Boesak, these repressive conditions demand more than cosmetic reform. He feels particularly strongly that the South African government, large corporations in South Africa, and America's policy of constructive en gagement have do ne nothing to end apartheid. The belief that apartheid should be reformed, rather than abolished, is the basis for the Reagan administration's policy of constru ctive engagement, or what is now called "active constructive e ngagement." But Boesak believes that apartheid must be ended, not just modified, so he refers to the views of people like Thatcher and Reagan as "the soft¡ legitimization of apartheid."

"In the last four or five years, the beginning o f the eighties until now, the South African government began to change the face of apartheid; there were too many pressures from too many places in the world. Their allies in the world, notably people like Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher, and others kept saying tg the South African goverJ;'ment, 'You know we would really like to go on supporting you , but it is very embarrassing.' I can almost hear Mrs. Thatcher ... " Boesak rais22 The New journaVOc1ober II, 1985

Boesak receiving an honorary degree from Yale in 1984 Considering what action to take if Yale falls to divest

ed the pitch of his voice higher, mimicking Thatcher. 'You know, Mr. Botha, it is extremely embarrassing to be caught on the side of naked racism in South Africa.' Get rid of naked racism, but hold onto the power. Be nice to people; if you want to stab someone, dojt nicely." _ Hoesak sees ~outh Africa's new con stitution of 1983 as a perfect example of th e fai lure of international pressure to truly push the South African government to abolish apartheid. The constitution contains some reforms. but Boesak says that it is still racist. "It entrenches apartheid. All of the basic

laws have remained the same. I t entrenches white minority rule. It is based on the contin uation of policies like the homeland policy, which means that the denationalization of black people would continue, which means that forced removals ¡would continue. It doesn't make any fundamental change in our society's structures."

Boesak therefore urges nations and companies in the West to divest from holdings in South Africa. "But askin g for divestment isn't all one should do," Boesak cautioned. "There is also the question of alterna"tive investment; also the question of further support for

TheNewJournal our struggle in South Africa." He hopes also that people in the United States will use the opportunity for protest that does exist in this country to pressure · the Reagan administration not to give diplomatic and political support to South Africa.

Boesak said also that he would now think much more carefully about accepting an honorary degree from Yale, in view of the fact that the University has. not divested. "I had hoped that by accepting the degree, that Yale was actually tying itself to the cause that we stand for . . . and they are not doing that. We have to consider what kind of action we should take if Yale should continue to support apartheid through their continued investments, going against the express wishes of so large a majority of black people in South Africa."

"The fiery anti-apartheid leader," they called him. But, talking about the deaths of his friends and the oppression of his people, he was restrained. Once he shook his fist in the air, then brought it down softly to the lectern .

That absence of sound was jarring. I expected, from his words, from the sad, angry look in his eyes, that he would pound the table in front of him .

I thought it misleading to call him "fiery." It is not he and others like him who are setting fire to South Africa, but the structures ;:wd ~he people who maintain apartheid .

He was arrested as he was driving to a university to try to calm , not provoke, a student protest. But suddenly, he was the antagonist, he and all other blacks there marching and protesting. The real "fire" doesn't come from those who are oppressed, but the oppressors.

"If you have too much, you don't understand too well . . . " His words echo. I see, again and again, that clenched fist that didn't pound , that taut mouth as he spoke very softly, disturbingly, prophetically. "Every day people are dying. I deep down cannot believe that violence will solve the problems, but I don't know what will happen ... " fbm

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Arlene Seabrook with her children Shantain, Roger, and Mark .

Living wi!h a .'!lew_ of prosperity and green yards on Mansfield Street

Far From Home Joyce Banerjee Hurricane Gloria left New Haven with uprooted trees and little electricity.

Every light hooked to the Yale generator functioned, but much of the city sat in darkness, nothing but darkness up Dixwell Avenue, blocks up into Dixwell Plaza and parts of Elm Haven .

From her seventh-floor apartment in an Elm Haven high-rise, Arlene Seabrook could hear shooting out at the Plaza, a minor entrepreneurial fiasco of small, always empty stores set off from Dixwell Avenue by a bare parking lot. Although her four rooms were lit, she knew that out at the Plaza, with the streetlights out and the stores closed, it must be totally black. Perfect for looters to run through and ransack the clothing store and the fish market.

Her three children were in bed, her 24 The New J oumai/October II , 1985

mother next door, and after waking early this morning to the violent rain, she could finally sit down, alone. The looting was audible, but Arlene was more concerned with the damage the storm had done to her own apartment.

The wind had jumbled and tossed the few things on the small balcony outside her living room windows. It had broken one window pane, and who knew when the Housing Authority would come and fix it?

Because the Authority operates all the subsidized housing in the New Haven a rea, it probably had other priontles in Elm Haven, perhaps clearing out the garbage on the grate in front of the building or fixing an elevator in a neighboring high-rise. In a strange way, it would be futile for the

Authority to fix Arlene's window in October when she, like the other tenants of 180 Canal Street, is expected to leave her apartment in December. B y 1988, the six high-rises of the Elm Haven projects should be empty, if the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides necessary funding, and the 1200 high-rise inhabitants will be relocated to two- and three-story low-rises all over the city, living with a few other families. The graffiti-layered walls, inoperable elevators, and Arlene Seabrook's balcony will be hammered into rubble, while the city brings in paint, tools, and blueprints to modernize Elm Haven's low-rises. In several years, the tract from Dixwell Avenue to Canal Street, Yale to Science Park

"But Dixwell was no longer a priority for the city; most felt it was a burden. Elm Haven had no political clout - the people weren't taxpayers." will be transformed into a mixedincome neighborhood, with houses and apartments, a variety of residents, ample parking, and safety.

Ironically, most of Elm Haven was built in 1940 as an escape from the city's slums, housing for those displaced by the construction of the Oak Street connector. But in 45 years, everything has moved perversely backward. The brainchild of New Haven and HUD reminds anyone walking down Henry Street of the crumbling of the city's neighborhoods and of the staggering number of impoverished citizens in this town. The 1980 census provided the hard numbers that drove home the effects of years of deterioration: 25.2 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, making New Haven the seventh poorest city in the nation. And Elm Haven is the poorest section of one of America's poorest cities. Now, the Housing Authority has returned to HUD, asking $40 to $50 million to fund the renovation of the neighborhood.

Yet more than age and weather contributed to the fraying of Elm Haven ; mere wear-and-tear doesn't necessitate demolition. But jobs and revenues have drained .away from the city into the suburbs and the Sun Belt, education has declined, and indifference may have set in downtown. Many who left Elm Haven left it entirely, forgetting their old apartments and neighbors. Others, like Arlene Seabrook, are still waiting to leave a place they have never called home.

"When I was little, me and some friends would ride our bikes past here,

and I used to say 'I never want to live there," Arlene said. Perhaps she rode her bike down Henry Street, three blocks in from Dixwell, and saw the apartment building that she would move into years later. The road in front of her high-rise, Canal Street, seems more like a long driveway, insignificant in comparison to the nowrejuvenated Olin Chemical complex across from it, low tan buildings surrounded by a high link fence and barbed wire, one corner of Science Park. From Arlene's living room windows, she can see one long, white building of the U.S. Repeating Arms factory, a company that had employed many first generation Elm Haven tenants right after World War II. Sitting in the living room the day after the storm, Arlene still kept the shades drawn, leaving the room cool and dim. A thick, dark rust rug, beige H erculon sofas melt into the shadows, but the frames on her walls and the portraits of herself and her children are brightly colored- orange sunset backdrops, blue vests, crisp white babyclothes. Arlene's two sons, Mark, 10, and Roger, five, abandoned watching Popeye in the living room and played in an adjacent bedroom. She sat on the coffee table, and across from her on the sofa sat her two-year-old daughter Shantain, reaching out and offering her mother a sock. With her full face and broad smile , Arlene doesn't look very different from a picture on the wall taken of her in high school.

In 1966, when Arlene was eight, she and her mother, Mary Seabrook, came north to Connecticut from their family home in South Carolina, part of a second wave of residents for oncemiddle-class neighborhoods like the Hill, Fair Haven, and Elm Haven after many of the post-World War II generation had educated their children, retired , and moved elsewhere. Arlene's own three children are growing up in New Haven knowing little of their mother's ties down South. The South is home. Buford, South Carolina, right next to Parris Island. Most of her family still lives there, in brick houses or trailer homes, situated on their own land. Some tried

life in Connecticut, but all except Arlene and her mother have left the state. In fact, when Mary and Arlenefirst moved to Connecticut, they lived with Mary's sister in Stamford. Mary believed she could find well-paying jobs he re, but ended up taking laundry and domestic work. After nine months at her sister's, Mary came to New Haven with her daughter.

The house they lived in with six other families on the Hill, at 724 Congress Avenue , has since been condemned, but while Arlene grew up there, she was surrounded by one large family knit from the seven. She had places to play outside, a yard. Still, her mother could not find decent work in New Haven, and so went back South in 197 4. She lived there for eight months, and she would have remained had she not been diagnosed as having hypertension. She returned to Connecticut for treatment, and because of the medical care, decided to stay. Because her doctors pressured the Housing Authority, Mary received a subsidized apartment in Elm Haven that same year. "My mother wanted me to come with her, but I cried when she told me we were moving to the projects," Arlene said, as she picked up her children's hairbrush from the coffee table. "None of my friends lived here.

Today, you live with people for 12 years, and they just aren't friendly.

They're not together. Everybody is against everybody."

After years on the same floor, in the same rooms, Arlene calls Elm Haven "the projects" with a scorn and restlessness compounded by her view of Mansfield Street and its tidy homes and lawns. But in the forties and fifties, Elm Haven differed little from the middle-class neighborhoods at its borders. John Daniels, whose parents moved there after the War, remembers blocks without the high-rises later built in 1955, tenants who were proud of their apartments, and a city that maintained its public housing. Because most families had two paychecks coming in from the same few companies, everyone was in the same economic class. Back then it was a neighborhood.

Later, Daniels went to school, left Elm Haven, and eventually was elected in The New Joumai/Oclober II , 1985 25

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play in a hallway of Arl~n~'â&#x20AC;˘ building

Growing up without playgrounds, regular heating, and safety

1979 to represent the district that includes Elm Haven in the Connecticut State Senate.

Daniels believes the changes in Elm Haven came as population swelled and jobs disappeared in the late sixties and early seventies. Like Mary Seabrook, many rural, unskilled blacks from the South migrated north searching for a better life. But the heavy industry that once thrived in New Haven and hired the unskilled had either left the city or simply died. "There were no jobs, so many of them were on public assistance," Daniels explained. "They lived in public housing, but there were cuts in the city's services and, simulaneously, high taxes. But Dixwell 26

Th~

New J ournal/October I I, 1985

was no 'longer a priority for the city; most felt it was a burden. Elm Haven had no political clout- the people weren't taxpayers."

The frustration of the unemployed, storms, bitter winters, and time constantly added new scars to Elm Haven .

When Arlene moved in 11 years ago, however, Elm Haven still had mailboxes in every building, laundry rooms, and doors that locked. Now, washers and dryers are four blocks away at a Dixwell Avenue laundromat , and all the mailboxes are in one building, open only from nine a.m. to four p .m. The dirt and disrepair which Arlene passed by everyday, and the complaints of individuals about living

conditions received little attention.

Then, .in December 1981 , many tenants m the high-rises had problems with their heating and hot water; either they had none at all or far too much. It had happened every winter, but this time, a group of tenants took their complaint to New Haven Legal Assistance, not the Housing Authority. With the help of Legal Assistance, the residents formed the Elm Haven Tenants Association and filed a class action suit against the Authority, 'demanding immediate repairs to their buildings. The Court ruled in favor of the tenants, and the Authority then petitioned HUD for two million dollars to install new boilers.

By this time, both tenants and the Authority realized that much of Elm Haven had become uninhabitable, even unsalvageable. Therefore, the Authority worked closely with the tenants' group for two years, and in December 1983, released the Elm Haven Design Charette, a report which sought to ch'ange dramatically the living situation of the tenants.

Whatever improvements had been made over the years were only temporary, merely delaying the rampant deterioration. As a long-term solution to the problems of Elm Haven, the Charette report proposed that HUD fund the destruction of the high-rises, the renovation of the low-rises and the construction of more low-rise apartments in the neighborhood.

The money from HUD will go not only to the redevelopment of Elm Haven, but to the building of low-rises around the city. For years bureaucrats and social scientists relied on largescale projects to house the poor. But acre upon acre of run-down buildings only convinced tenants that they lived in a ghetto. And what does it matter to break a window or write on the walls if you live in a ghetto? Realizing the anger and hopelessness that they had piled into 10 stories, the Authority advocated in the Charette report the scattered site housing approach, by which one to four families live together in low-rises in middle-class neighborhoods. Although the new maneuver will not eradicate poverty, it will, the Authority claims, improve the lives of

New H aven's poor. "Tearing down the high-rises will have a great impact on the families of Elm Haven ," said Linda Evans, executive director of the New Haven Housing Authority. "They will have hope for the future; they will begin planning things again. They will look for jobs, buy furniture. Their children will be going to better schools.

Right now, no one knows opportunity."

Expected to move soon, Mary Seabrook received a list o f five possible new homes, none of which, unfortunately, appealed to her. Arlene worries that may happen to her as well.

M ostly, she wants a place where her children can play outside and feel safe, a s she had felt w hile living on the Hill and earlier, in South Carolina. " Here, they stay in that room," Arlene said, pointing with the hairbrush at the bedroom behind her. "I won't let them go out around here."

"What if something happe ned to them out there? I live too hig h up.

What can I do? By the time I get there, they'll be messed up, or dead, or gone."

Arle ne shook her h ead sternly.

"They're not old enough to go out.

They don't go out unless I do."

"One time, I sent M a rk to the grocery store on the corner," Arlene recalled. "He was robbed by two little boys. They took his ice c ream a nd his money. H e's a quiet kid, other kids like to pick on him. If I'd ever caugh t up with those kids ... " She half-jokingly made a tight fi st and shook it.

If Mark and Roger don't return home from school by 2:40 p .m. every day, Arlene goes and looks for them.

From early morning until they go to sleep at 9 p.m., the children are Arlene's sole concern, perhaps because both her sons are sickly, R oger with asthma and Mark with kidney problems. Altho ugh Mark is the oldest of her children, Arlene worries more about him than the others. When he was five days old, Mary felt his stomach an.d discovered it was very hard . Arlene took him to the hospital and found that he needed one of his kidneys removed. For three and a half years, she shuttled her son to and from the hospital every few weeks.

If she were sure daycare o r babysitters would adequately care for her

"How do they expect the poorest of the poor to survive? They think that by putting new windows there (Elm Haven), they're making things better." children , Arlene would more actively look for a job. But she becomes very uneasy at the thought of leaving her ch ildren with other people, imagining herself at work looking at her watch every few minutes, hoping to leave and check up on her kids. She waits instead for Shantain to grow old enou g h for school so she can look for work once more. "If I had money now, I'd let them do things," she said . "But I don't have money. If my child wants to play an instrument, he can't. If it isn't free, we can't do it.

"Through all this, I feel good. Some people are millionaires, but they don't have kids. I have nothing, but I have my kids. And I tell them, 'There's always going to be momma when there isn't daddy.' My momma did fine.

None of her kids are alcoholics or drug addicts. I want to tell he r , 'Praise yourself, lady. You did good with your kids."'

Arle ne gave birth to Mark when she was 17, a junior at Lee High School.

Her pregnancy forced he r to ask herself what she should do, until her mother simply told her to have the ba by. She left Lee for a year and went to the Polly T . McCabe Center, a school for pregnant teenagers.

Although Arlene and Mark lived at home, M ark's father gave them fin a ncial support for a short while. Finally, Mark's father demanded Arlene spend all her time just with him , and after many fi ghts , they broke up . Five years later, when she was pregnant with Roger b y a different man , Arlene considered having an abortion. " But I realized that the baby didn't ask to come here. So why kill it?" she said. "I took care of my first child, and I would take care of this one, I thought.''

Although her sons were unplanned, Arlene wanted to have Shantain, whose father she had been dating for five years and who wanted to m arry her. But when he became zealously .religious, she broke the engagem ent.

To much of the white, middle class, Arle ne is just another "welfare mother," having kids so she won't have to work. She is so acutely aware of the labels attached to her, and how they would disappear if she were a white woman. "I hear on Phil Donahue that people don't like us state peo ple because we're this or that. But how can

Looking out from broken windows: repairs were temporary, barely delaying the rampant deterioration

The New Journal/October II , 1985 27

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you get a job without a start?" Arlene asked, striking her thigh with the hairbrush. "'Why do you keep having kids if you're on the state?' Who, who are you to question my life? If the state won't give me money, fine. I'll go home and live off the fields like my parents did."

She hears the questions and insinuati,qns from not only strangers and the media, but from social workers every six months, when Arlene has her welfare status reassessed. "Who are you living with? Is he giving you any money?" Each month, she receives from the state about $542 to pay for food, clothing, rent, telephone, and any other expenses that may arise.

"Five hundred ¡and forty dollars is nothing for four people. You're lucky if you have anything left at the end of the month," Arlene said. "If you don't budget, look at everything, you go hungry. It's $115 dollars for food stamps," she said, fingering the arithmetic on her wrist, "and $180 for rent, and all out of the same little bit of money. A lot of times, you just go without. I'm not knocking the state, I guess; no one else takes care of me."

Still, Arlene feels the state seldom helps people who try to find a job and get off welfare. If she finds part-time work that pays her only S 150 a week, she would have that deducted from her check, no matter how many children she has, no matter that on $150 a week, Arlene would make only $7500 annually, far below the poverty line of about S 10,000. With additional checks, her rent, which is based on percentage of income, goes up, too.

The only way Arlene can leave Elm Haven, and subsidized housing entirely, is not by waiting for the grand redevelopment but by getting a job.

And despite the commonly held vision of impoverished New Haven, Arlene believes that she can find a job in this city. With only a high school degree, however, and years away from the summers when she worked on government-subsidized programs, Arlene hears from employers only demands for college and trade school degrees.

Natural fiber clothing

Having applied for jobs all over New Haven, she also understands the subtle racism at work when hiring. "In Macy's, do you ever see a black girl at the cosmetic counter? Hell, no! It has a lot of black employees, but they're back in the stockroom, packing and taking clothes in."

Much of the city has placed its hopes for an employment boom on Science Park, Arlene's next door neighbor, which has already hired one-fifth of its nearly 500 employees from the Dixwell-Newhallville area. Yet Arlene knows little about the venture, who they have hired and what exactly they do. She, like many in Elm Haven, suspects that Science Park doesn't like sitting next to the projects. Outside of Elm Haven, others have different fears about the benefits Science Park will bring to the poor of this town. Unlike Arlene, it is not so much that the complex won't hire but will never be successful enough to employ large numbers of New Haveners.

Yet Peter Gray, executive director of the Dixwell Neighborhood Corporation, has to believe in Science Park, "the only game in town." Like Senator Daniels, Gray grew up in a middleclass Elm Haven, and has worked for the last 15 years in the Corporation, trying to find jobs and a better way of life for his old neighbors and their children. Gray feels that for the thousands of disenfranchised New Haveners to leave poverty behind, the city, Yale, and Science Park must not only work together but show genuine commitment. Yet Gray asserts that the poor of New Haven were never a priority at City Hall. "For years, the city has been remiss. It has hired, on connections, political hacks rather than those who have a concern for public housing," Gray said emphatically.

"How do they expect the poorest of the poor to survive? They think that by putting new windows there (Elm Haven), they're making things better."

Gray points to Lake Place, a street right behind Payne Whitney Gym, as the result of true cooperation between Yale, the city, and the Corporation.

Once a hangout for junkies, Lake Place is now a mixed-income neighborhood, housing New Haveners and

Yale students alike. But projects like Lake Place are too rare for Gray. He contends the city is instead fixated with downtown development, relying on the "trickle down theory" to explain how the Palace and the Mall benefit all of New Haven. "The downtown development is crazy," Gray said. "It's like a head without the other parts. The projects in the outlying areas are the arms and legs of the city. For every project in downtown, I'd like Schiavone or whomever to do a project in the neighborhoods. A large percentage of the workers hired for both downtown and neighborhood projects should be from the poorer sections of town."

But the bulk of the responsibility for renovating the neighborhoods lies with New Haven's blacks, Gray asserts. Too many of the first, middle-class Elm Haven generation have left the neighborhood; only a few in the Dixwell area <;ire lifelong residents.

Although he does not list ways ~lack can help black, he maintains middleclass blacks have joined with whites against the demands of poorer blacks.

"Many of the people who lived in the projects come back , forgetting it's no longer new. And they say, 'Those new people are terrible. They've torn everything up.' But people have been living there for 45 years!" Gray said.

"You can't blame the guy on the bottom for what's happening. Hundreds of people left the housing. Rather than call the others names, they should reach back and help them get out."

Arlene has probably never spoken with Gray nor heard about the need to return for those who can't leave. Right now, she cares only about her escape from the projects. She is trying to save money to go to South Carolina next summer, perhaps to stay there. At 27 , she is still young, and comments on the fact that her sisters' lives didn't come together until they were in their thirties. "Down south, thae are smaJJ houses. Give me a yard, a little fence," she draws a square in the air. "If I ever get a break, some money, yes, I am going home."

•

joyce BanerJee, a senior in Timothy Dwight, is editor-in-chief of TNJ .

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Books/Anne A~~lebaum

The Philosophy Repressed Freud for Historians Peter Gay 1985 Oxford University Press 252 pp., $17.95 When a historian concludes his analysis of an event in Woodrow Wilson's life with the words, "the vagaries of his mind are unfathomable ," is he exerctsmg commendable historical caution or giving up too soon? Should he go on to explore the links between the incident and Wilson's childhood, his feelings towards his parents, his Oedipal complex?

In his new book, Freud for Historimu, Sterling Professor of History Peter Gay argues that the use of Freudian theory can make fathomable the vagaries of Wilson's mind, as well as elucidate the passions and motivations of other historical actors, even entire historical eras. But Gay makes his case cautiously, advising his readers that psychoanalysis "is not a miracle drug or a magic password; it is an informed style of inquiry, supplying answers no one thought were available before or- even more important- suggesting questions no one had thought to ask."

Although Freudian theory long ago ftltered into the fields of literary criticism, anthropology, and sociology, historians have been slow to put it to any broad or systematic use.

"Psychohistory," the term used to describe historiography that employs psychoanalytic concepts, has always evoked derogatory connotations: vague theories about national Oedipal comple~es or the reduction of revolutions to the simple fact of somebody's repressed aggression. Yet from its earliest pages, Freud for Historian s establishes itself as a sophisticated, undogmatic defense of the need for Freudian theory in historical studies.

Gay acknowledges that some of the 30 The New JournaVOctober II , 1985

"The professional historian has always been a psychologistan amateur psychologist." charges against psychohistory are valid. Past efforts to "psychoanalyze the dead" have either produced confusing descriptions of "cures" for neurotic historical figures or relied too heavily upon the absolute letter of Freudian theory. Most infuriatingly, many psychohistorians have dismissed their critics by claiming that the resistance to Freudian analysis merely proves its concepts more conclusively: critics of psychohistory are providing evidence of their own repression and resistance to cure. Gay wastes no time defending the often flawed past historical uses of psychoanalysis. Instead he bases his argument upon one simple premise: if historians are going to discuss human emotions and passions, they must proceed from a rigorous methodology and a clearly defined set of assumptions.

Gay begins his case for psychohistory by pointing out that "the professional historian has always been a psychologist- an amateur psychologist. Whether he knows it or not, he operates with a theory of human nature; he attributes motives, studies passion, analyzes irrationality, and constructs his work on the tacit conviction that human beings display certain stable and discernible traits."

In other words, the search for explanations has always forced historians to rely upon a set of assumptions about the feelings and passions of human beings , whether or not they are aware of doing so. One historian may attribute a naval victory to "morale," another may explain the exploration of the N ew World

as the product of "dissatisfaction" with the Old. In particular, Gay notes that many historians are given to using "selfinte rest" as the all-encompassing motive for economic and political actions, even when such actions are dressed up in the language of patriotism or philanthropy. Yet what are self~interest, _greed or lack of sympathy but psychological states produced by interaction with social and cultural norms? Gay's point is that selfinterest and the rhetoric that conceals self-interest do not occur at random , but are the products of specific historical conditions. Historians who describe an event as the simple product of self-interest may have settled for a facile explanation. For Gay, the use of psychoanalytic concepts provides a more systematic way to discuss motivation, going beyond common sense platitudes about human nature .

Ironically, Gay is arguing that psychoanalysis, a methodology often described as reductionist, oversimplified, and even irrelevant, is actually more thorough than traditional historiography.

Gay continues his defense of sophisticated psychohistory by explaining how Freudian theory explains both humanity's similarities and its cultural differences. We may all have the same sexual drive and the same aggressions, but they manifest themselves differently in different historical and cultural circumstances. Psychohistorians unreceptive to this possibility for variation and difference have missed out on the profundity of Freud and the profundity of history. Gay also points out the utility of Freud's emphasis upon irrationality in human behavior. Too often , historians looking for rational explanations o( human actions forget to consider the irrational. Remembering that human beings rarely act upon clearly perceived reasons can help historians explain toe mysterious and

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illogical actions of otherwise logical people.

Gay's description of the human mind as depicted by Freud and his explanation of why psychoanalysis can and should be used by historians are both very convincing. The only major stumbling block to Gay's argument are his implications that we need to accept as correct the body of Freud's work.

Gay's defense of the need for psychohistory is convincing, but his defense of Freud and the superiority of Freudian theory is not. Although {.;ay devotes an entire chapter justifying his preference of standard Freudianism to other forms of psychoanalysis, he doesn't offer a convincing argument why the map of the human mind drawn by a 19th century Viennese doctor is the last word in the discussion.

Gay acknowledges that psychoanalysis is "fallible, incompletely tested, difficult to apply", but he does not suggest, at least in this book, that there could have been anything substantially wrong with Freud's thought. Gay may not condone historians who quote Freud as an authority, but he does call Freud's stature in the history of the modern mind "virtually unique," a strong claim . to make for one man.

Granted, Gay's book is a defense of Freud- not the best arena for criticism- but to propose the use of Freudian theory as anything but a beginning research hypothesis exposes Gay to the same charges of reductionism and lack of perspective that Freud's disciples have. been defending themselves against for the last 80 years, the same charges that

Gay's book attempts to put to rest. A model must be found if we are going to talk about the human psyche, but that model must remain open to criticism if its use is to be at all progressive.

As Gay recognizes, the issue at hand is no less than the nature of history itself: whether we simply write history over and over again from a new standpoint of the era, or whether the study of history actually gets better and better, and can be more or less truthfuL And in short, Gay seems to propose that the stable, unchanging theory of human nature offered by psychoanalytic theory provides a virtually certain way out of historical subjectivism, implying that Freudian theory goes beyond the individual biases- and neuroses- o f particular historians.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Gay's original project. If historians are going to discuss human motivations and passions, a search for standards and methods of description can only be beneficial. Even the common language that the terminology of psychoanalysis provides can only make suc h discussion between historians easier.

H owever , when the historian begins to talk about dependability and certainty, when the assumptions of the Freudian model or any model are left unchallenged, the use of psychoanalysis closes oiT rather than opens up the exploration of the human mind.

•

Anne Applebaum, a senior in Pierson, is managmg editor •of TNJ.

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