Volume 20 Number 2
October 16, 1987
Yale's Math Avenger Inside the Board of Aldermen
Publisher Carter Brooks Editor-in-Chief James Bennet Business Manager Debra Rosier Managing Editors Susan Orenstein Jennifer Sachs Designer John Stella Production Manager Mary Chen Photography Editor Pearl H u
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Associate Business Manager Grace White Associate Editors Martha Brant Daniel Waterman Peter Zusi Associate Photography Editor Ann Light National Sales Manager Laura Smith Circulation Manager Pamela Weber
MO These days it 's more import ant than ever to plan your financial future the best w ay you know how. We're a famil y of financial companies that can help you m ake the most of your money. If you'd like to know more about how MONY can work for you , or how you can work for MONY, contact :
Staff Cynthia Cameros• Norman Dong J ennifer Fleissner Mitchell Hammond• 'tkatd Stpttm/Jtr, /987
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Members and Dirtclars: Edward B. Benneu III • Henry Chauncey, Jr. • Peter B. Cooper • Andy Court • Brooks Kelley • Michelle Press • Fred Strebeigh • Thomas. Strong Frimds: Anson M. Beard, Jr.t • Edward B. Bennell, Jr. • Edward B. Bennell III • Blaire Bennett • Gerald Bruck • Jonathan M. Clark • Louise F. Cooperl • Jerry and Rae Court • David Freeman • Geoffry Fried • Sherwin Goldman • John H ersey • Brooks Kelley • Roger Kirwood • Andrew J. Kuzneski, Jr. • Lewis E. Lehrman • E. Nobles Lowe • Peter it Neill • Julie Peters • Fairfax C. Randallt • Nicholas X. Rizopoulos • Arlee n and Arthur Sager • Dick and Debbie Searst • Richard Shields • Thomas Strong • Elizabeth Tate • Alex and Betsy Torello • Allen and Sarah Wardwell • Peter Yeager • Daniel Yergin lhas given a second time
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(Volume Number 2) N~w J•W"'f4i is published six timet during the school year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., Post Office Box 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Copyright 1987 by The New Journal at Yale, lne. All rights ~Krved . Reproduction either in whole or in part without wriucn permission of the publisher and editor·in-c.hie( is prohibited . This magazine is published by Vale Colle~ students, and Vale University is noc responsible for its contenrs. Eleven thousand copies of eat"h iuue arc: distributed free to members of the Yale University community. Tlu Nav}tltn7Ull is typaet by the Charlton Pft:ss of New Haven , CT, and printed by Rare Reminder. Inc. of Rocky Hill, CT.
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2 The New JournaUOctober 16, 1987
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Cover illustration by jaeyong So
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NewsJournal
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Musical memories ... afondjarewell . .. basquaise takes a basting.
Between the VInes
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Mac in the USSR
Features
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What happens when Wheel of Fortune," a Dodge 4x4, an Apple computer, and a Yale senior meet in Moscow? By Erin Kelly.
Into the Fray! In his¡ latest campaign to clean up academia, Serge Lang has turned the prestigious National Academy of Scierzces into a public battlefield. Once again, the controversial Yale mathematicio.n has won enemies and irifluenced people. By Cynthie. Cameros.
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Governing Lessons As election day nears, joel Ratner (BK '86), Ward l's departing alderperson, talks openly about his experience in ci~ government. He gives an idea of what this year's winner can expect: a board schooled less in theory than in practical politics. By Susan Orenstein.
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Raised Stakes Bracing for a major rehabilitation project, New Raven's Hill neighborhood struggles to hold its ground. By Martha Brant.
Afterthought
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Injudicious Planning Eric Schnapper, an NAACP lawyer involved in the fight against confirming judge Robert Bark to the Supreme Court, reflects on his opponents' strategy.
The New Journal/ O ctober 16, 1987 3
NewsJournal
j Sound lnvestmen¡t
Last Call
It certainly differs from the standard donation by an Old Blue benefactor. Instead of in a check barely large enough to fit the zeroes, this gift, from a San Francisco usher, comes in disks-lots of them. Bob Kellman, an enthusiastic musical theater fan, recently donated one of the most extensive individual collections of musical theater LPs to the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings (HSR). Since 1962, Kellman has collected what he calls "probably anything that's been recorded that is in any way connected with a musical." He has has already helped some people in accumulated some 1500 records, many research. Last semester a college of which are autographed, and almost semi~ar entitled "Stephen Sondheim as many stories. Performers like Ethel and the American Musical Theater Merman and Liza Minnelli have con- Tradition". used a tape with musicals fided private memories to Kellman, he taken from Kellman's contribution. says. In fact, Minnelli has commis- When Warren could not locate one ¡ sioned copies of rare recordings from album, he called Kellman, who provided it from his private collection. him. From his association with per- Eventually he or his estate will "s end off formers, Kellman learned of Yale's the rest of his music, Kellman says, recordings archive. "I decided to including the rest of the records, some donate my collection back in 1981," he books, and a number of cassette and says. "I was involved in the theater by reel-to-reel tapes. being a stage doorman at the Golden While organizing his works, KellGate Theater, and I happened to know man includes memories or tales he Gwen Verdon from my interest in knows about particular musicals, theater and seeing shows. I spoke to stories which music lovers and even the her and said I happened to have one of performers themselves might not the most complete collections of musi- know. For example, South Pacific fans cal theater recordings on the West can learn from Kellman that the show's Coast, and she gave me a list of about a star, Mary Martin, appeared on stage half a dozen places that might be in- at Yale in 1938. Honoring the wishes terested. I wrote to all of them and the of a few of the greats, he says, he has response I got from Yale was what kept some secrets to himself. persuaded me to give it to them." Finding HSR takes a little detective Kellman visited HSR and met with work. Tucked away past the payroll the curator, Richard Warren (BK '59), department on the second floor of that year. He originally intended to Sterling, the archive does not exactly wait until after his death to send the bustle with activity. But inside, collection but changed his mind aft~r thousands of records crowd the bookthe AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco shelves: 78's mixed in with 33's, Bach full force. "I'm a gay man, and I have within range of "The Wizard of Oz." lost a lot of friends to AIDS," he And, somewhere within the musical explains. "I'm under the suspicion that jumble, a record autographed by I might get it, so I decided to ship the Gwen Verdon, bearing the inscription collection off while I was still alive." He "For Yale." started to send batches of his records last year. According to Warren, the donation - Skye Wilson
Yalies do not initiate all of New Haven's traditions. Located behind Timothy Dwight College, a pub called Malone's has been dedicated for over a half-century to Irish-style celebration for Yale students and city residents alike. But recent news that the building which houses the pub will be demolished leaves its patrons wondering if the crumbling structure will carry the traditions of Malone's with it. For the handful of students, mostly from Silliman and TD, who frequent Malone's, the pub's closing will mean the end of a tradition. "It was like an initiation into TD when the seniors would take us there on Sunday nights," recalled Christina Ayala (TD '89). For many, the pub has'provided a welcome alternative to the jukebox blasting, socially fast-paced pizza joints around campus. At Malone's, customers don't treat beer as simply a means to an end; they consider drinking an art in itself. Last year, John Sylvain (TD '87) sat drinking a scotch and beer when a newcomer challenged him to "tang." Taking a sip, he responded, "No,. I'm going to drink this slowly so I can enjoy it as it goes down." Poor lighting, a musty atmosphere, and a complete dissociation with ~ anything "Yale" characterize the inside of Malone's. Instead of "Hotel California," the jukebox offers an eclectic mix of less overplayed Motown, Irish folk songs, and rock. Distractions range from the futuristic Trivia-Quiz to the ancient dartboard. The walls are decorated not with drawings of"Yale in 1875" or "The First Yale-Harvard Crew Race," but with drawings of Ireland, relics from Saint Patrick's Days gone by, and black-and-white photographs taken by a regular, Russ Southand. "Most of those were taken at the old location around the corner," Southand said. When asked what occasion prompted one photo in which the people seemed especially festive, both .i owner and photographer laughed. "That was the wake we threw mourning the last day before the old Malone's closed in '72." James Edward Malone opened that
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first Malone's in 1933 on 255 Church Street. His son Ed later took over the business, but in 1972 the owner of the building razed the entire structure into a parking lot. Today, at its present location around the corner from the old site, Malone's faces the same problem. Deteriorated structure and electrical/heating problems have resulted in 95 percent of its tenants moving out. Last year, Kevin Berlin (TD '87) rented a room in the building for an art studio. "It's too bad Malone's has· to close, but that building," he said, "that building should have been demolish'e d years ago." In late October or early November, the building will come down. Ed Malone has placed a banner ·~over the bar reading "If you ever want a building condemned, just open a Malone's in the basement." Of all the traditions of Malone's, not one stands out more prominently than its role as the "finish line" of the annual Saint Patrick's Day parade. To the murmured assent of all the regulars, bartender Bob Benson proclaimed, ~Saint Paddy's Day without Malone's JUst ain't Saint Paddy's Day." And this year? "Well . . . old traditions are hard to kill, even if they tear down the building on us," the owner said. "We'll think of something." Ed Malone has no intention of giving up the trade, and plans to open another Malone's elsewhere in New Haven. •Chimed in Benson, "We'll carry on the Malone's tradition if we have to take it out on the sidewalk." ~
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-Jamie Workman
Fowl Play Laurie Kincade (ES '88) remembered it as if it happened yesterday. "It was quarter to seven, and I had just barely made it to dinner. Then I realized it was Chicken Basquaise Night. But there was none! Just some kind of chicken with herbs. I said, 'Is this chicken basquaise?' and the dining hall people looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language." A foreign language, indeed. The New Journal of September 4, 1987 reported in English that "On Sept. 15, the Yale dining halls will offer chicken basquaise to 5000 people." Apparently, the students in Ezra Stiles were not among them. Students there were served herb chicken falsely labeled chicken basquaise. Amid charges of scandal, corruption, and cover-up in the highest echelons of the food administration, the question resounded through the cement-and-steel Stiles dining hall- What did Ed Homa, manager of Stiles-Morse, know about the chicken substitution, and when did he know it? Homa claims not to have known much. The omission was "just an oversight. The basquaise was a last-minute substitution on the menu," he said . "We used to have a clerical person who would have caught it, but she's gone
now." Homa added that he "apologized publicly" for the mix-up. In what may have been a desperate attempt to salvage Homa's career, Bruce Harris, the new assistant manager of Stiles-Morse, took the fall for the scandal. "The buck stops here on this one," he said. "We just missed it on the menu." Harris tried also to explain why a sign on the herb chicken called it basquaise. "We probably got the sign from the nutrition office, who duly gave it to the right person, who duly put it up." Informed Stilesians were not duped. "I knew that the basquaise stuff was supposed to have tomatoes and peppers," Reyna Marder (ES '88) said. But Talia Bloch (ES '88) voiced anger at the substitution. "We were all deceived," she said. The dining hall administration seems to have weathered the scandal. Harris reported no complaints about the basquaise incident, and Homa, after returning from the "month's vacation in Florida" he took after the story broke, promised that the chicken would appear in its correct incarnation on a later menu. However, serious questions remain.- How did the alteration of menus take place? Was criminal tampering with Yale documents involved?- What happened to the "nine six-gallon cans of peeled tomatoes" that, according to New Journal reporter James Bennet (TD '88), awaited crushing in the Stiles-Morse kitchen?- Does anyone really want to see chicken basquaise back on the meriu? Although executive chef Tom DeDinas said that he had "gotten a lot of good comments" from dining hall managers in other colleges about the entree, some diners felt the chicken lacked excitement. Bennet refused to comment, and Sasha Grutman (BK '89), author of the recipe, did not return this reporter's phone calls. The two were reportedly seen dining together at Popeye's restaurant the evening of the fifteenth.
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-jennifer Sachs The New Joumai/October 16, 1987 5
Between the Vines/Erin Kelly
Mac in the USSR Pat Sajak and Vanna White flashed across the screen as the Russians watched in confused admiration. Vanna looked radiant- she wore sequins and a million-dollar smile. The Soviets did not.路 Pat spun the wheel and beckoned with his outstretched arm. Lips pursed over brown-edged teeth, his Russian audience followed the gesture, staring hard at the screen. The Soviets spoke to one another in confused tones as disparate clips from the program splashed at their faces. I stood among them, wanting to groan and explain that this technicolor image was not the essence of my native culture. But I kept silent, because they wanted to watch. I had not come to Russia to watch Wheel of Fortune. I arrived in Moscow last summer intending to step completely out of my own culture and into another for two short months. Impossible. Within every circle of Soviet society that my life touched, people were fascinated by the United States. My first night in Moscow, a new Soviet acquaintance leaned coolly against a marble pillar of the metro station and inquired, "So, how's Michael Jackson doing?" I discovered that, despite Soviet government propaganda portraying the U.S. as a decadent and exploitative society, many Russians see America as highly seductive, and its citizens as privileged golden people. Besieged with both idyllic and horrific images of my own society, I became curious when American acquaintances tOld me about a Moscow exhibit on American culture and technology, sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency. I wanted to see my own government's representation of life in the United States. My acquaintances said that the line for "America" was four hours long, but that Americans could slip in the back door by showing a passport to the guard. Guiltily, I and two friends did just that. Expecting a Disneyland spectacle of apple-pie propaganda, I stepped inside the exhibit suspicious, but curious. A huge photograph of Ronald Reagan's smiling face greeted me at the 6 The New Journal/October 16, 1987
door. A blur of television screens filled the wall beside him, illustrating, as the sign said in Russian, "The Democratic Process." MTV-style, technicolor images of the '84 presidential election flashed on and off. Reagan, Mondale, Ferraro, Bush, Hart, McGovern, and
to manipulate it frustrated me as I watched. I stifled an impulse to grab the mouse and say, "Look, people! Macwrite, Save, Quit." I moved away from the Macintosh with the uncomfortable feeling that I was part of a wealthy estate which had 0; let the peasants in for a day to gape. I E => walked through the crowd anony~ mously, vacillating between the im:.: ~ pulse to announce proudly that this was all mine and the overriding urge to ~ ; keep silent out of embarrassment over l E my conspicious wealth. I was thrilled 4i (!) to feel myself back in my culture, and I 4i wanted to explain it to the Soviets as E ~ they had presented theirs to me, apthe rest, handshaking, conceding, win- proaching each person to convey my ning. Each political image moved own understanding of the marvels they me- admiration for one candidate, observed. At the same time I wondered contempt for another. As the responses about my gover~'ment's motivations ripped through me in a wave of heady for displaying such prosperity. The culture shock, I realized that I . had. Soviets appeared duly awed, but they found a window back into my own admired the American accomplishsociety. Within this exhibit I stood on ments as objects beyond their grasp. I my own turf, a sensation I had not ex- overheard one Soviet tell his friend, perienced since leaving the States. I "Well, they have and we don't have." watched the screens critically, but with . I wandered over to where Pat and a warm familiarity that came from Vanna were beckoning from a wall of responding to things American. televisions. Thirty-second images of The Russians, after glancing quickly other American programs, past ,and at this display, filed past me in pursuit present, flashed by in this flickering of the really good stuff. It was all there: montage. I fixed on the screens, in- " televisions, microwaves, washing dulging in a moment of nostalgia for machines, computers, stereos- the television reruns. The Cosby Show applace resembled a discount appliance peared in路 one corner, vanished, then store. Soviets shook their heads and reappeared on another screen. The Sosighed as they read the explanation viets stared hard at Cosby himcards describing each product in Rus- self- Russians see few black people, sian. A Dodge 4-wheel drive vehicle and the Soviet government talks a was parked in the middle of the ex- great deal about racism in the States. hibit, and the Soviets crowded around An exuberant contestant was spinit, jostling for a look inside. A young ning the Wheel of Fortune when a man ran his finger solemnly along the Soviet standing beside me made a polished surface. In my eyes, the large remark about television technology blue vehicle seemed to acquire new to which I responded in my imperfect prestige. Russian. Noticing the accent, he asked 路 In another corner, a crowd had where I was from. His eyebrows shot gathered around a Macintosh com- up when I answered. Americans in puter, the same type I use at school. Moscow are still pretty rare, and he While I regarded its all-too-familiar 'grabbed his friend, telling him that he .I face with mixed emotions, the Rus- had found one. The exhibit featured sian.s touched the , Mac hesitantly, Americans employed to answer visipokmg at the keyboard. Nothing was tors' questions, but these men wanted happening. One man reached ten- an unofficial source. They 路seemed to tatively for the mouse, and his inability have a mental list of burning questions
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about the United States, and they flung them at me rapidly. I began to answer in stumbling Russian, and within minutes, a crowd had gathered around to listen. The questions started coming faster as I struggled to comprehend and answer. My American friends, Laslo and Michele, came up to help field the barrage of courteous but persistent questions. "Do you believe in God?" This from my first interlocutor. Explaining the '> idea of human spirit and a transcendent deity in Russian is no picnic, but the six or more people who had gathered to listen seemed to understand my words. Though I wondered for a minute if they thought I was crazy, their attention and respect reassured me that I was making sense. I finished with the God question and they threw me another- How much is a color television in America? A bit of a switch, I thought, but they waited for my answer with equal gravity. I said I had never shopped for a television, .but I estimated a starting cost of $300. I converted the price into rubles, a figure representing about three months' salary for the average Soviet. A polite middle-aged man followed up: How would you get the television ~ home from the store? I thought the man had to be joking and looked at my audience, but it waited eagerly for my answer. Somewhat embarrassed, I said I'd probably use my car. That sent a charge through the crowd; few Soviets have cars, and as my audience looked at me with wonder I shuffied uneasily.
Pursuing the strangely popular topic of the television purchase, the same man asked me how I would get the TV into my apartment. I replied sheepishly that my family owned its own home, which caused a bigger stir in my audience than the mention of the car. Moscow apartments rarely exceed three rooms. I told him my mother or father would probably help me carry the TV into the house. My audience nodded with interest. I puzzled over its fascination with this mundane topic, but then I thought of the seemingly inane questions I had asked Muscovites about trivial aspects of their daily lives. The middle-aged man wanted to confirm rumors he'd heard that America had both stores and television stations which operated 24 hours a day. I said it was true. He then wanted to know who paid for so much television. I asked the group if it understood the concept of advertising, and everyone looked confused. Explaining that if I wanted to produce a television show, I would need someone to sponsor it, I said that I might engage the financial support of a company like CocaCola (a name the Soviets recognized) , and let it use five minutes for advertisements. What kind of advertisement would this be? they asked. Well, I replied, you just get people to run around and sing, and I sang them the "It's the real thing" jingle. They laughed and said they understood. After an hour of this my friends and I were exhausted. We started to leave, pausing to arrange a future meeting
with Larissa and Marina, two students from an economics institute who had quizzed Michele about American music. During this exchange, a 'young man interrupted and asked us to sign his souvenir program of "America." Embarrassed, we demurred, but he insisted. I signed one and looked up to find that, Soviet-style, a line had formed behind him. No one wanted to miss out. Feeling ridiculous, my friends and I wrote "vcevo dobrovo" (all the best) and signed our names in English. We shook hands and walked out of the building into the bright sunlight. For several days following our adventure, Michele and I worried that the Soviets had felt cowed by the demonstration of American prosperity. As we rode the metro to the dorm of the economics institute, we wondered if our new acquaintances would treat us with awkward deference. Instead the two women turned our perceptions upside down. They took Michele and me to a cafe/disco where we ate ham and cheese pizza and drank cognac through straws, in celebration of Larissa's last exam. When we left, Larissa showed the effects of her brandy as she linked arms with us and marched boldly down the sidewalk, recalling phrases from English class and pronouncing them with the stilted British accent she learned in school. Caught up in Larissa's frivolity, Michele glanced up at one of the ul?iquitous Soviet banners and pronounced in solemn Russian, "We Are Building Communism!" Larissa started and asked eagerly, "You are?" Michele laughed and tried tactfully to explain that she'd simply repeated the words of the banner, but Larissa did not listen. With glowing excitement, she recalled the bounty she had witnessed at the exhibit. "Your production has reached an optimum level," she said happily. "You are at the ideal stage for revolution."
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Erin Kelly is a senior in Davenport. The New Journal/October 16, 1987 7
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Into the Fray! Cynthia Cameros Just mention his name. "A one-man academic hit squad," sneers Fareed Zakaria (BK '85) in The New Republic. Last December, the magazine Science appointed him "sheriff of scholarship." While Yale anthropologist Leopold Pospisil admires him, a Yale political scientist calls him "a jerk." Sterling Professor of Economics James Tobin, a Nobel Prize winner, says that "the last thing" he wants to do is to get into an argument with him. The chairman of the mathematics department declares him to be one of the most dedicated teachers at Yale. His students describe him as everything from "well-organized" to "confrontational" to "awful." Behind a cluttered desk, the conflicting images of Serge Lang- mathematician, professor, and member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)- fuse in the form of a small, wiry, nervously energetic man. Proud of making enemies, Lang thrives on confrontation; he seems as eager to raise hackles as he does to raise issues. In the latest of his series of academic 8 The New Journal/October 16, 1987
disputes, Lang is waging a campaign to prevent the election of a prominent Harvard political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington OE '46), to the NAS. When asked about his motivations, Lang erupts. "I don't want to live in a society which indoctrinates the young! ... I don't indoctrinate the young; I teach them. I follow the rhetoric of the president of the University. It is they who don't! . . . It isn't for me to answer why I live by the rhetoric of freshman addresses. It is for them to answer why they do not!" Born in Paris in 1927, Lang immigrated with his parents to California 13 years later. At 18, Lang earned his B.S. in physics at the California Institute of Technology. After a year and a half in the United States Army. he returned to academia to study philosophy at Princeton, switching to mathematics a year later. In 1951 he received his Ph.D. in mathematics. Rapidly ascending the academic ladder, Lang in 1955 became a professor at Columbia, where he stayed until 1970. Hopping from Columbia to
Princeton to Harvard, Lang landed at Yale in 1972 as a full professor, and has remained here since then. As a professor, Lang, who teaches both introductory and advanced "classes, has drawn mixed reviews. According to his students, he is a demanding teacher who fires questions at them during class. Some students find his confrontational style stimulating. "Fifty minutes of math is not an easy way to spend one's time, but Lang kept it interesting by keeping the students involved," says Harry Robinson (DC '89), who took one of Lang's calculus courses during first semester of his freshman year. Robinson recalls that Lang's typical response to a question was: "You tell me the answer." Lang makes the questioner work through each step of the problem to ensure that they will understand. But other students criticize Lang for his impatience and for not thoroughly presenting the material. "You had to be a math whiz to understand him, as opposed to someone trying to learn math," says Colin Goldman (BK '90).
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Students say that the textbook for Mathematics 120, written by Lang, duplicated the material in the lectures. As a result, Goldman says, there was "nothing to fall back on." Many students feel that the text presented too few drills and examples. This year the mathematics department replaced Lang's text for three levels of introductory calculus classes. According to Ronald Coifm an, the depar tment's chairman, "We usually rotate books every few years." Despite his intense teaching schedule, Lang has not devoted his career wholly to academics. In 1966 he discovered his second "passion, " 1~ politics. During a year's sabbatical at University of California, Berkeley, he wrote three or four advertisements for Democrat Robe rt Scheer's congressional campaign. Though Scheer, an early opponent of the Vietnam War, lost with 45 percent of the vote, Lang continued his political involvement when he returned to Columbia University that fall. In his book Rats in a Box (1970), which describes American society's reaction to the war, Lang writes that he mediated between the administration and the students over campus anti-war activity. Academia prevailed m the end, however. In 1970, Lang felt that his political involvement had become too , consuming. "It would have killed me as a mathematician, so I put an abrupt stop to it," Lang says firmly. "But now Pm in pretty good control. Although it certainly detracts from the time I could give to researching mathematics, it
does not kill it. And I still write and research papers." In the classronm, at tilpes Lang combines his politics and his teaching, distributing material related to his causes. Goldman complained that "I didn't understand his math, a nd I didn't like him wasting time talking about letters to the NAS a nd the Harvard man he was trying to kick out." A stark corner office on the first floor of Leet Oliver Memorial Hall has served as Lang's headqua rters in his battle against "the Harvard man," Samuel Huntington. There are no posters on the walls, no photographs on the desk. Five metal file cabinets and two book cases contain the evidence of Lang's furious career, which has yielded 32 mathematics books and 72 articles. From behind his metal desk covered with exam papers, a telephone, and a typewriter, Lang fires off his denunciatio ns. Speaking quickly with a distinct accent, he declares, "What I have shown is the extent to which what Huntington peddles is, in fact, political and represents political opinions. His book (Political Order in Changing Societies) is a tissue of political opinions passed off as science." Huntington's work, Lang argues, is not sufficiently scientific to qualify him for membership in the NAS. Founded in 1863, the NAS is a prestigious organization with 1,523 m e mbers that advises the federal government on scientific matters through its National Research Council. Election to the N AS is considered among the highest of American scien-
tific awards. In 1986 Huntington's election seemed secure, several N:\S members say. Huntington had impressive credentials. The director of H arvard's Center for International R elations, at that time he was president of the American P o litical Science Association and had advised the State Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council. C hallenges in the Academy are rare, according to NAS member Jared Diamond, in an August 1987 essay in Discover m agazine. Diamond writes that there have been only two in the eight years since his election to the Academy. Fo r his part, Lang, a member of the NAS for only one year, seemed an improbable challenger. His field, pure mathematics, is remote from the social sciences in which Huntington works. Nevertheless, Lang attacked. In March 1986, Lang received the first NAS ballot since his election to the Academy. H e recognized Huntington's name from an article written by mathematician Neal Koblitz. I n the article, K oblitz, who had supported Lang in a previous academic dispute, d ismissed Huntington's use of mathematics in his textbook as "mystification , intimidation Lang spent "three or four hours" reading sections of Political Order in Changing Societies, focusing on the sections cited by Koblitz. H e then wrote Bryce Crawford, secretary of the NAS, The New Journal/October 16, 1987 9
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opposing, but not formally challenging, Huntington's election. In the letter, Lang requested only that copies of Koblitz's article be distributed to all NAS members "so that they can get a better idea of the kind of thing Huntington does before they vote for or against him." In fact, Lang says that he had decided against challenging Huntington's nomination formally until he received a letter from julian Wolpert, chairman of the N AS section which includes social and political scientists. In his letter, Wolpert calls Koblitz's article "scurrilous journalism" and criticizes Lang for trusting the article over the recommendations of NAS members from the social sciences. He advises Lang that the Academy's challenge "was intended to be used responsibly." In his office, Lang explains, "So I had this brief experience with Bryce Crawford . He sent copies to Wolpert. And I sent to Wolpert my letter saying I'm giving up. Wolpert simultaneously doesn't know that and writes me this letter which is both stupid and insulting. And then, of course, I reacted. Okay, if they want to fight, I'll get in too." From the ensuing war, Lang emerged victorious. Huntington twice failed to gain enough votes for election to the Academy, in 1986 and 1987. A candidate challenged at an annual meeting is removed from consideration unless two-thirds of the members present vote to support the scientist. Huntington's nomination failed to secure the necessary number of votes at both 10 The New Journal/Octoberl6, 1987
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In order to "demolish the opposition" and to prohibit another nomination, Lang sent out his largest mailing ever during the second week of September. He shipped the 43-page packet to over 1800 people. The effort cost him approximately $5,000. In the cover letter Lang made an appeal for contribumeetings. Though other NAS tions, which has so far brought in over members formally challenged Hun- $1,800. The centerpiece of the mailing tington both times, Lang's campaign is an 11 -page article with 1 7 footnotes, against the political scientist appears to "On a Recent Non-election to the Na- " have been critical in blocking his elec- tional Academy of Sciences," in which tion. In the three mailings he sent to Lang restates his criticisms. Lang is NAS members, academicians, and the trying to confront Huntington and his media before the two elections, Lang supporters on their professional stompdenounced Huntington for "profes- ing grounds, the American Political sional incompetence and defective Science Association, by submitting the scholarship." Lang's criticisms have article for publication in the APSA's some support in the Academy, judg:ng journal, PS. The 'article, which Lang by the approximately 35 favorable let- sent to the magazine on Aug. 17, has ters he received from NAS members . . not been published. Lang's campaign has captured Several members have claimed that Huntington's advocacy of the Yietnam headlines in The New York Times, The War also contributed to his rejection Boston Globe, Time, and Science. The arfrom the Academy, though Lang says ticles attribute the NAS conflict to tenthat he attacked only Huntington's sions between hard and soft scientists scholarship. and support the idea that Huntington's Between classes and causes, Lang puts in twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
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early support o(the Vietnam War contributed to hts rejection. "Blood Lust in Academia," a searing article in The New Republic by Fareed Zakaria, reports that Lang, by "focusing on a particular scholar who has few pretensions to hard science- no game theory, no expected utility models, no rational choice analysis- without explaining how his limits are not those inherent in social science . . . has turned what > could have been an interesting debate about natural and social sciences into a crude, unsubstantiated witch-hunt with strong political overtones." Although Lang admits that Zakaria's article made him appear "silly," he said, "I couldn't have hoped for anything more." T h e article falls apart, Lang says, because it supports Huntington with flawP.d evidence. Zakaria quotes H untington defending the part of his textbook which Lang criticized in his mailings. In the textbook, Huntington refers to a survey that categorizes South African society as "satisfied." H untington asserts that, "When this study ... was done in the early 1960s, there had been no major riots, strikes, or d isturbances" in South Africa. Lang ~ points out that, in fact, a number of riots and incidents of repression, including the Sharpeville Massacre, took place during this period. In his office, Lang sighs and waves his hands. "What I see over and over again is the same pattern. Of course, Zakaria and the editors of The New Republic would not have printed this imbecility if the P~ttern of their thinking wasn't dtrected along [these lines]. It didn't occur to them to go to the library to check it out." Though Lang has written a 20-page response to Zakaria's article, he has not mailed it to the magazine. He worries that the New Republic editors might alter the piece to distort his , points and thereby avoid acknowledgtng their errors Zakaria's article presents another weapon which Lang has stored in the ~senal he maintains against Hunttngton: the "Huntington File." Since Lang recommenced his political ac-
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tivities in 1977, he has recorded his epistolary battles to clean up academia and the media in his "files." A stapled volume that includes photocopied correspondence, documents, and newsclips, a file can span hundreds of pages. So far, Lang has assembled nine of them. Lang describes the process of making a file as a "cat and mouse game." He leans forward over his desk, his eyes staring ahead. "I know the process JF I'm engaged in. I go into the model I make in my mind about what goes on, in pitting my wits against theirs." Lang shifts in his seat, but his eyes do not waver. "I try to create a stage where they will not have their usual defenses. Where they will make false statements I will bring them ' out. I try to make them express themselves in ways where they will be checked out, and I can compare the realities which they create as they go along." At the beginning of each file, the correspondence takes place principally between Lang and a few opponents. As more people write to Lang, the case begins to expand. Leaning back his chair, Lang illustrates by moving his finger in an ever-widening spiral. The "carbon copy" lists at the bottom of Lang's letters can swell to hundreds of ,.. names. Lang tucks letters of support into his files to fend off charges that he has no backers. In the Huntington File, he has included copies of some of the approximately 35 supportive letters from NAS members. Five Academy members also sent him critical letters, which he has not included in the file. The older, bound files sit in his cabinets and book cases, until someone requests a copy or Lang chooses to give one away, as he has done in some of his classes. The Huntington File remains unbound; Lang is still accumulating material. The File, a 700-page book that Lang published in 1981, describes the 1977-79 war pitting him against two sociologists: Seymour Martin Lipset and Everett Carll Ladd, Jr._Referring to the sociologists as "parasites on the academic community," Lang attac;ked
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12 The New Journal/October 16, 1987
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them for a survey whose questions he considered prejudiced and unanswerable. In a statement included in The File, Lipset and Ladd responded that "Prof. Lang charges us with a failure to resolve each and every ambiguity. It may be that Prof. Lang, untrained in the social sciences, is simply misinformed about the nature of social research. " In both the Ladd-Lipset and Huntington cases, Lang, a hard scientist, criticized the standards of soft scientists. When he first looked into Huntington's work, Lang predicted that the fight would resemble his earlier one against the two sociologists. With the same flurry of vitriolic correspondence
"I don't want to live in a society which indoctrinates the young!" with which he brought Ladd and before the public eye, he turned the secretive National Academy of Sciences into a public battlefield. Lang's evidence consists only of a tiny portion of Huntington's work-a few pages each from two books and two articles. H e says that by insisting that he read more of Huntington's work, his critics are simply trying to protect themselves. When asked how he could justify an attack based on such limited evidence, Lang reacts angrily, striking the desk with his hand. "The question is not the page count. The question is the significance of what I pick!" Lang argues that he needed to find only a few important flaws to justify his attack. " He claims he found them. In Huntington's widely-used textbook, Political Order in Changing Societies, Lang singles out a page on which Huntington employs mathematical formulae to exPress social circumstances. The ar.ticle
•'.~- Lipset
he submitted to PS quotes Koblitz's attack on Huntington's book. Koblitz argues that the equations, such as "Social mobilization/economic development social frustration," result in a false "ImpreSSIOn Of preCISIOn and profundity." And he objects to Huntington's correlating terms like "frustration" and "instability" and coming up with a precise number: ".50." Huntington protests in The New Republic that he does not intend his equations to be mathematically rigorous. "They are meant to be a shorthand method to sum up a complicated argument that I do detail," he says. Several political scientists say that Huntingt on rarely uses mathematics. Lang also criticizes the 1966 survey which Huntington uses in his textbook to characterize South Africa as a "satisfied society." Conducted by I vo K. and Rosalind L. Feierabend, the survey won an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science when it was published. Lang says the six "satisfac~ tion" indices, including radios and telephones, on which the Feierabends based their assessment "failed spectacularly to take into account what is important to 20 million blacks." To invalidate the survey's conclusion, Lang has prepared a collage of 61 New York Times articles which report strikes and riots in South Africa between 1951 and 1960, when the Feierabends were conducting their survey. When asked about Lang's attack on Huntington's work, Yale professors in fields related to the dispute give varied responses. None entirely discount Lang's objections, and none give an unqualified endorsement of Huntington's work. According to George Mostow, a mathematics professor and a member of the NAS, "The attack on Huntington could be seen by impartial observers as being too narrowly based. . . . However, as the evaluation of Huntington's papers progressed, it was not just mistakes of exposition but mistakes of substance. He ignored information (reely available in the pages
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of The New York Times." Though some political scientists feel that Huntington's work is flawed, they all seem to regard Lang's attack as an indictment of their field itself. Professor David Mayhew says that Huntington is "one of the finest political scientists, widely thought to be such . . . . Lang is making a category mistake by supposing that scholarship in political science is as innocent of what he would think is opinion, as what is in m athematics . . . . By Lang's standards, political science as a whole is not scientific enough to warrant inclusion in the NAS." The NAS itself fails to resolve the question of standards. The Academy solicits nominations by asking members to submit names of scientists "worthy of being proposed for nomination . . . . "A spokesperson for the NAS said that the candidates should be "outstanding" and "have achieved scientific recognition in their field." Apparently, the members must exercise their own discretion to define "outstanding" and "scientific." The Huntington conflict spilled over onto the Yale campus last spring. As a student in H. Bradford Westerfield's class, "Introduction to International Relations," Joshua Katz (BR '89) found that he was required to read Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies. While taking Lang's introductory calculus class in the fall, Katz had received a copy of Koblitz's article criticizing the book. "I took home the material, read it, believed what (saw, and decided that it was something I really believed in," he says. After completing Lang's course, Katz asked Lang how he could get involved. "He said to write a letter to Scimct magazine." Without having read the textbook, Katz did just that. It was Lang's idea, says Katz, to distribute copies of the letter, still unpublished, in Westerfield's class. "I was about to dump the copies of the letter on a table and leave them there, but said, "Wait a minute, I better ask Westerfield's opinion," Katz recalls. When K atz asked Westerfield, "He
Professor H . Bradford Westerfield believes in Samuel Huntington. requested that I not do that. He said that my letter would ' take too much T A preparation and would take time away from the substance of the book." Westerfield later wrote to Katz and met with him. Westerfield refuses to discuss either communication. Westerfield explains that he did not prevent but rather "discouraged" Katz from passing out his letter. "I didn't consider the concerns in that letter central to the particular concerns of my course. I didn't want to distract students from these particular concerns by raising other concerns that might be important in their own r ight but weren't central to my course." Without mentioning his relationship to Katz, Lang describes the incident in the article he submitted to PS. He also quotes from a letter that Westerfield sent him which the political scientist calls "a handwritten, private letter." Lang writes that Westerfield's letter "merely asserted that Huntington was President of the American Political Science Association. That fact plus his life-long familiarity with [Huntington] and his works was enough for him!" When asked about the contents of the letter, Westerfield declines to comment. "It was a private letter to him," he says. "I had no expectation that he would publicize it . . . . I don't intend to carry on an argument with Serge Lang in public. Nor do I want to carry on any argument with Serge Lang." Westerfield, who studied with Hun-
WAVE tington first at Yale and then in a graduate program at Harvard, argues that having served as president of the American Political Science Association makes H untington "by definition" an outstanding political scientist. Westerfield charges, "Lang is trying to tell me how to teach my course. Academic freedom says I can teach my course as I want to teach my course and assign the books I want to assign, and I don't have to answer to anybody ~about that . . . anybody except my own students." According to Lang, professors like Westerfield cause our educational system to turn out uncritical minds.
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"Lang is trying to tell me how to teach m y course. Academic freedom says I can teach my course as I. want to . . ." "Students are untrained to tell the difference between opinion and fact. On the contrary, they are trained to accept . everything as a fact, including that ~South Africa is a satisfied society," he says. "And when the readers are skeptical enough, like J oshua Katz, they are shut up by Westerfield ." For Lang, Katz's experience w ith Westerfield reflects the issues raised by the Huntington conflict. Both Westerfield and the NAS cite authority and ~tress "collegiality" rather than answermg legitimate criticism. By attacking Huntington, Lang hopes to shake up the academic community so that it becomes more critical towards its own. •It comes to the point that neither the professors nor the students can tell the difference between a fact, a perception of a fact, an opinion, and what is .,.neither. I would like people trained so they can tell the difference."
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1
To reach your chair in the meeting room, you walk past the long, wooden benches in the back, past the small camera crew and the clusters of aldermen, a few of whom you recognize. Holding thick packets, and talking informally, they come from Wooster Square, from Newhallville, from Westville, from the Hill. Somehow, things seem d ifferent than they did before the election. As soon as the officers of the board get settled, the meeting will come to order. They are seated up front, facing the representatives. Most of the aldermen are older than you, and many have been connected to New Haven politics longer than you've been alive. You learned this from months of studying the city, writing fliers and table tents, speaking at teas, and knocking on doors to explain yourself. You no longer have to convince anyone you can do the job. You just have to do it. Your name is Katie Kenney, Andrew Michaelson, or Lisa Valentovish, and you represent a ward of the city composed almost entirely of Yale ~ students. H istorically, your position on the board has been unique. Not just your youth but your constituency sets you apart. Your voters make few demands on you for jobs or municipal services. For this reason, you enjoy a
certain freedom from the city's political credible tendency to simplify. The "machine," especially if-like most past more I've learned about New Haven, Ward 1 aldermen- you have little in- the more I realize that's a mistake and terest in running again. This freedom not really an effective way to frame will enable you to act independen tly on those questions that you will ask and be issues without worrying about th e asked," he says. needs of your ward. But you will risk Understan ding the constraints of remaining an outsider, as you are now, cramped agendas and two-week gaps new to political office and fairly new to between meetings, th e other board New Haven. Your fellow aldermen ex- members had a sharper sense of how to pect xou to serve only one term and to get things done. Ratner thought in approach your job as you did your headings- "d owntown development," campaign, fixed on big issues and "public education," "the poor"-and was disappointed to find many of ideas. Those ideas preoccupied J oel government's concerns scattered and Ratner (BK '86) when he first joined trifling, ran ging from the choice of a the board in the summer of 1985. police station's furnace to the wording Originally appointed by Mayor Biagio of a "pooper scooper" law. But he now DiLieto to replace a Yale graduate who appreciates th e place of these issues in had left for law school, Ratner retained m unicipal government. Looking back, his seat in an election three mon ths he rolls his eyes as he recalls the later. In the course of his term, he has abstract approach he brought to the gained the kind of practical experien ce board. This year, the three candidates that the candidates hoping to replace have supplied table tents and letters on him anticipate. Now 23 years old, most of the big issues facing New Ratner has grappled with the Board's Haven. At their first public meeting factions, his own naivete, and most im- together, the discussion of education portant, the problems of New H aven. became so theoretical as to draw the He takes his job personally and talks question, "Should Yale be forced to about it that way. In conversation, h is hire a cer tain number of workers from only fault is that he strays from the New H aven?" One of the candidates topic. But his virtue is that. he ~dmits began to respond when a voice from his faults. "I came expectmg 1ssu es, the back called out, "I would warn you written in bold letters. There's this in - that that's illegal." Everyone turned The New Journai/Octolx:r 16, 1987 17
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around . The voice belonged to Ratner. The candidates themselves are aware of the abstract nature of the campaign, and Valentovish (TC '89) feels especially frustrated by it. As the Republican candidate, she says her table tents seek to engage people with facts instead of statements like "here's a social problem, vote for me, because I will change it." She complains that the campaign so far has centered on which candidate is the most socially conscious. Reading one of Kenney's fliers , i she says critically , "She's been active. Yeah, that's nice. But getting people to register to vote doesn't equal working o n the downtown council observing the dynamics between private and public sectors." That may not be true. According to Kenney (BK '88), 'registering people to vote involved dealing with a city bureaucracy whose mission "was to do as little work as possible . . . . I decid-
"He started out as 'fm brighter. rm here to save the world.' He started out rather naive."
i
ed to decisively cut through the red tape and do it right and be cheerful the whole time." She also points out that any campaign must emphasize issues in order to educate people. Like Valentovish, she claims that she can handle the city's practical side, too. But even separating the practical from the abstract indicates how differently someone from Yale views New Haven politics. Ward 1 consists of eight residential colleges, Old Campus, and the Law School, as well as a few residential streets-so few, in fact, that, after graduating, Ratner worried about meeting the requirement to live " in the ward. With virtually no pressure from constituents, Yale's representative has time to sit back and think about the city. The next election is not at stake. A childhood neighborhood is
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hot at stake. "Many members have culminated a life of political activity by coming on the board," says Martin Dunleavy, the board's majority leader. "But it's almost always a stepping stone for the Yale alderperson. They'll leave and then go do 'real politics' someplace else." Ratner and oth.ers involved in Ward 1 politics recognize this problem. They try to avoid innocent statements about f .,1. going "home" for the holidays or, as happened with one former alderperson, driving a car with out-of-state license plates. But they still have a bad reputation for running through New Haven politics. In May 1985, an editorial in The New Haven Register sharply criticized Ward 1 aldermen. "No question the young people are likely to bring a great deal of energy, along with their inexperience and immaturity, to their service as aldermen," the article read. "But is youthful exuberance sufficient for adequate representation, when some of them are called away to post-graduate studies or career-opening jobs before their o'ne and only two-year term is finishea? . . . . We have our doubts." A local radio show aired a rebuttal to _.. the Register editorial, emphasizing the ,of •.Y ood g attendance records and contributions of Ward 1 aldermen. But the criticism has since come up again. Ratner promised in his campaign to complete his full term, and he says he has a deeper commitment to New Haven than many people realize. That commitment grew when he graduated from Yale. Working in the city gave him a better sense of the New Haven, as opposed to the Yale, community. One year into his term, he got a job with the Connecticut Food Bank, a private nonprofit group which distributes irregular but usable food products, such as missized cans of ~oup, to nonprofit organizations that serve the hungry. As part of his job, Ratner recently helped set up two new soup kitchens in New Haven. He laughs as he talks about his role. Picture this, his skeptical look says, picture this man running around comparison shopping for pots and pans.
Unlike Kenney, both Valentovish and Michaelson claim that they have no political goals beyond the New Haven board. He trails off in the next breath, his face becoming serious. Now, the object of comparison is himself. "I was a better alderperson when I was not a student," he says. Among this year's candidates, only Kenney will graduate next year; both Valentovish and Michaelson (CC '90) have further terms at Yale. Not surprisingly, as students they are led to view their prospective experience on the board as just that: experience. Running on the Green Party ticket, Michaelson says that "as a student it's a fabulous education to get involved with people who do community activism. I've had the chance to talk to people from AIDS groups, from neighborhood groups . . . . I think Yale students don't recognize how much New Haven influences their lives." Michaelson does not call New Haven "home" but says he feels a deep commitment to the city because he lives here now. Valentovish, on the other hand, says she would feel comfortable calling New Haven home even after she graduates, partly because it reminds her of her neighborhood in Pittsburgh. But regardless of the candidates' interest in the city, none of them has family in New Haven and none of them has lived here for more than four years. For these reasons alone, they will find themselves at a political disadvantage when they first arrive on the board. Twenty-eight of the 30 seats on the New Haven Board of Aldermen are occupied by Democrats. The other two belong to Republicans, who have acquired a more liberal reputation than that of their party. A commonly held view of New Haven politics maintains
that the board often works as a support system for the DiLieto administration; it has been described as "a rubberstamp board" or the product of"the Democratic machine." Joe Carbone, executive assistant to the mayor, considers the term "machine" insulting to the electorate of the city, but few politicians deny the machine's existence. Ratner describes the system as "quid pro quo," saying that a number of representatives have family members on the city's payroll. But while ¡ he recognizes that the machine exists, Ratner grows angry over the idea of a monolithic Democratic Party. "As long as I'm on the board," he says, "the Democratic Party is not monolithic. It makes me mad, because it says I'm an automaton. And that is offensive to me after I've spent two years thinking about these issues." As the Democratic candidate, Kenney has wprked most closely with the party in New Haven, and she also resents the party's stereotype. She thinks that Democrats have two distinct advantages over Republicans or Green Party members in the Ward -1 seat. First, they have the freedom to vote against the administration when the need arises. And second, they have the "fundamental alliance" belonging to Democrats on the board. Her opponents, Kenney says, "talk about being able to be critics from outside. But they really will be outside and left out. I don't think any Yale student can march in and start telling the board what to do from outside." In terms of her political approach, Kenney follows much the same line of reasoning as Ratner, who has evolved into something of an independent thinker on the board. At the beginning of his term, other aldermen waited to The New J ournalfO c•ober 16, 1987 19
Right now, Ratner considers Kenney heavily favored to win this year's Ward 1 race.
see how he would interact with dif- ministration. Martin Dunleavy, alderferent forces: pro -DiLieto, person from Ward 27, says that as a Republican, independent Democrat. member of the Democratic Socialists of "He started out as 'I'm brighter. I'm America, he has a left-of-center here to save the world.' He started out philosophy but an old-player style. In rather naive," says Chuck Allen, the blunter language of other representative from Newhallville. One aldermen, that means he ends up, of the board's most independent more of~en than not, voting for legislavoices, Allen entered city politics ten tion supported by the mayor, tho~gh h_e years ago at about the same age Ratner may disgree with it. From Dunleavy'S' is now. point of view, Ratner failed on the Having worked with a number of board in one sense because he never Ward 1 aldermen, Allen has recognized a became an inside player but chose indefinite evolution during most of their stead to remain an independent, a terms. "It's a unique situation. In very "loner" on the board . But that "loner" status enabled few other cities can you walk in and be on the board after a year or two in Ratner to win the support of different town. For that reason, not because factions. The board as a whole supyou're younger or a student, you ported him, as it demonstrated by necessarily go through a period of ad- picking him to run for the single alderjustment and growth. Without being manic position on the City's Board of condescending, I'd describe all Yale Finance. "Being trusted by all elements aldermen as going through a period of of the board like that was no mean acdevelopment. All of them start out complishment for a Yale student who's with a kind of textbook attitude about only been on the board a couple of their job, a rmed with the constitution years. He had all the black votes, all of and charter on the one hand and on the the minority poor votes," Allen says. other hand having to respond to an e n - Among the boards set up by the mayor trenched machinery and a very needy to run the city, the Board of Finance urban poor population." has the most power. As the aldermen's Observers say that after some time representative for the last eight or ten on the board, Ward 1 aldermen realize years, Louisa DeLauro of Wooster that 29 other people must enter Square has, by all accounts, given uninto their plans to change the city. wavering support to the mayor. RunThey gain political savvy, and their . ning Ratner against her was a signficant transformation does not go unnoticed. political move for the Board of According to Allen, Ratner became a Aldermen because it represented an inbridge between "the yuppie profes- dependent undercurrent on the board. sionals of the board and the black comThe decision to run was also an immunity members of the board." His in- portant personal move for Ratner, who dependence, however, did not always says he would have thought differently impress those aldermen loyal to the ad- about abandoning a second term if he 20 The New JournaVOctober 16, 1987
had won that election. He did not win, but he did suffer through a tie vote and some hard blows from the city's machine. Thinking back on those weeks, he looks away as if trying to remember a particular moment which unlocks the feeling of the race. Once he finds it, he looks straight ahead again and nods. H e describes the feeling in one word. "Hellish," he says. "It was a real old-fashioned political brawl. There was fierce politicking going on .... In hindsight there were a couple t) ...! of things I did that were really naive. It's all behind the scenes.'' One event involved a supporter on the board who ended up abstaining from the vote because, as Allen describes it, his wife was a cousin of DeLaura's and was harassed about , fhe election. Ratner mentions another incident, in which a supporter on the board was told that if he didn't vote for Del.auro, one of his constituents would not get a job at the fire department, But despite these bad moments, Ratner still considers the Board of Finance election one of two major highlights of his term. The other, unquestionably, was his plan for tlie city to convert the National Hotel into 35 to 50 low-income housing units. While this original idea did not pass on the ~ , board, the city did agree to find comparable housing units scattered throughout downtown New Haven. What's more, Carbone says that the city now anticipates Ratner's objections to certain projects before they reach the board. And the DiLieto administration has created HOME, an organization designed to administer the current housing plan and any others in the future. "It's only a small part of the solution, the big solution," Ratner says, smiling slightly. "But big solutions almost never happen." So he puts his faith in the smaller ones and uses his compromising ability to promote them. Ratner has a good rapport with the administration, despite the fact that he has presented them with opposition, and also ¡enjoys a reputation for thinking on his. own. John Einhorn, Republican- representative from Westville, has a dimmer ,#
view of most other Ward 1 aldermen. He says that the seat "theoretically should afford a lot of independence. Unfortunately, what's always happened is the representatives felt they should do what the Democratic Party thought they should do." A ten-year veteran of the board, Einhorn views Ratner as one of the most independent and effective aldermen in the history of Ward 1. But in the future, he would like to see the ,. • Green Party have a stronger voice on the board, one they could use against the Democrats. He feels that the Democrats have such a tight hold on city government that they are not accountable for their failures. "The city really rivals traditional Chicago images. Tammany Hall had nothing on some of the things that happen in New H aven;" he says. As a recent example of the city's mismanagement, he points to the scandal over the parking authority; for the past six to 11 years, the authority has reportedly neglected to collect its revenues from city merchants. . Whether or not the Green Party \:vill find an elected voice in New Haven politics remains unknown, but it certainly made no advances in last :.d rj month's primary. Candidates favored by DiLieto's political action committee "Democrats for the Future" defeated four of the city's incumbent-and most independent- aldermen. Chuck Allen was one of them. He ran in the primary on both the Democratic and ;:;reen Party tickets as a member of the newly formed Progressive Alliance, but he never expected to lose. Now he faces the choice of either running as a Green in No_vember or leaving the board. "We just couldn't match the organizational skill and fundraising of the machine," Allen says. "We" inCluded a number of Bill Jones supporters and Green Party members who decided last July to con1 solidate their forces and try to add independent aldermen to the board. All but one of their candidates were defeated; Toni Harp benefited in the Second Ward from support among Morse and Stiles students. The sweep
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seemed to disturb everyone but the DiLieto administration. According to Allen, the primary had an impact in two ways. Not o nly d id the city lose in· dependent voices on the board, it lost independent wards, where voters d id not rely on alder men backed by DiL ieto to meet their needs. R atner also felt "totally disheartened after the prirrtary," especially since he sees certain mechanisms in the board which make things worse. The ad· ,.. m inistration, he says, consistently brings major projects and decisions to the board at the last minute, pressuring rep resentatives into hurrying through thick packets of material. Even the most independent aldermen, interested in 9uestioning the administration , can work their way through only so much paperwork in the course of a few days. Yet R atner does not want to see the Green Party gain a substantial base on the board, nor does he think it can , even if M ichaelson w ins the election. R atner sees the Green P arty as a group of "pernicious demagogues" who are often misinformed a nd unrealistic about New Haven. He does not think Michaelson has enough experie nce to single-handedly represent the G reens on the board. But so far, Michaelson ' 11 appears well-informed about t he party's platform on New H aven issues, and few would question his loyalty to the G reens' vision : at one debate, he consistently spoke of his political goals in terms of "we." Michaelson seriously questions the independence of most Democrats on the board. "In many ways, Joel was number 30 on a board of 30 alders. It took a year fo r him to be able to vote against the administration. You have to remember he was picked by the mayor. H e had his debts to pay, I think. Plus, the person who follows Joel is not going to be carrying forth the platform of J oel R atne r ." " Michaelson believes he can win the election in Ward 1 precisely because of the independent nature of its constituency. "Yale students don't have any city patronage," he says. "People .are not embarrassed to vote
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against Democrats. I think the only way to win is to bring issues to the polls actively ." According to Ratner, issues raised in the campaign do confront the board, at times in direct ways. Once , for example , the Yale Psychiatric Institute hoped to expand by acquiring city land - thereby taking it off the city's taxroll. The board had to decide how Yale would compensate the city, taking ~into account both the precedent its decision would establish and the city's longrange goals. In the· end , Yale agreed, among other things, to include a taxable, first-floor commercial space, and to offer a training program for people from the H ill area to prepare them for work at YPI and similar institutions. When such crucial issues come up, Ratner says, they require the type of thoughtful preparation provided by the campaign. At least, that's one of the things they require. Ratner's choice not to seek reelection th is year was personal- and anguishing. Not someone "who cah just move to a city and start there," he had considered making New Haven his permanent home but thought that ..jle was too young for that decision. If he ran again, he felt it would be "so difficult to ever make a break, more difficult with every act I committed on the Board of Aldermen." So, somewhat ironically, he leaves New Haven this January because, for him, it was becoming too much of a home. And even more ironically, he plans to go to Thailand, to work for a development organization in a place where he has no connections, where he will in fact start over again. "I'm no less persuaded now that getting involved at every level is not just beneficial but critical," he says, revealing the same motivations that he had two years ago. "When things go wrong, really it makes me all the more inspired to go and change them. Maybe that's my own naivete."
•
Susan Ormstein, a senior in Trumbull, is rntuuJging editor of TNJ.
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._•••••••••••••••••••••• L••••••••••••••••••••••J The New Journal/ October 16, 1987 23
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gray P~lii_ne-....lia~--lllliiiii-A>• to be heard over n oase of the jackhammer. Nearb y, a jogge r swerves into the street to avo id a sawhorse in the middle o f t he sidewalk . 1. 0 The sounds of workers sbouting..ordwaisl~J.s to each other and a steady pounding of hammers fill the air. From the arts center under construction on W hitney Avenue to the renovation on Chapel Street, the noises and sights are the same. Scaffolding seems to cover New Haven. Sometimes it envelops dilapidated Victorian houses and sometimes new condomin iums, presenting a tightrope on which tradition and development grapple for balance. Perhaps nowhere is this tension better exemplified than in the Hill neighborhood, which extends from the Yale-New Haven Medical Center out toward West Haven. In the $360 million Downtown South-H ill North project, New Haven administrators aim to revitalize 30 acres over 10 24 The New Journai/OciOber 16, 1987
Roy Boykin reflect• on the c:losins of his alma mater.
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years, in an area known more for its poverty than for its retail possibilities. Although not a single hole has yet been dug, the project already faces problems balancing economic stimulus and community preservation. The Hill project will focus on the rehabilitation of Richard C. Lee High School, formerly the city's only vocational secondary school. In the first "phase of development, a $70 million plan for the 10-acre area surrounding the high school will include the construction of a 250-room first-class hotel as well as the conversion of Lee High into a conference center with retail and office space. The high school gym will become a health club. And at the ceoof the project, a two-and-a-half acre park will sit atop a parking .....r:;,.,,.. for about 1000 cars. choice to convert, rather than to demolish, Lee High reflects a lesson taught by its namesake, former New Haven mayor Richard Lee. Between 1953 and 1969, Lee spearheaded wh~t politicians today call a pioneer in urban renewal, encourgrowth through projects such as Chapel Square Mall and Wooster Lee tore down and then many areas, displacing large aumt>ers of people and destroying the of their neighborhoods. Construction of the Oak Street Connector, which links New Haven to Interstate 91, displaced 881 families. Mayor Biagio DiLieto has taken a different approach, declaring a moratorium on demolition and emphasizing rehabilitation . In addition to a change m philosophy, limited finances have steered city development. Once treated as a model city and showered wit,h Practically unlimited subsidies to test the effects of government funding in Urban renewal, New Haven must now ,.compete for federal grants. The most 'tommon of these, the Urban Demand ~d Action Grant (UDAG), gives cities money to loan to individual developers. Once the developers pay ~k the money, the city can reinvest it 111 other municipal programs. New
Haven's past reputation as a focal point of Education officials say they had for urban revitalization seems to have been planning for years to close Lee served it well; the Department of and relocate its students at Hillhouse Housing and Urban Development and Wilbur Cross high schools. De(HUD) has awarded the city nine clining enrollment and high mainUDAGs since 1980. New Haven has tenance costs, they say, prompted the also turned to private developers, move. The timing of the board's deciamong them Yale University. Last sion has upset some community May the University announced that it members. Ron Boykin, a 1981 Lee planned to invest $50 million in New graduate, feels that the city has made Haven over the next five to ten years. room for development at the expense Although David Swensen, Yale's direc- of the neighborhood. Standing outside tor of investments, would not speculate the modern school building, he on how all of the $50 million will be watches a teenager riding a motorbike spent, the University has committed on the lawn. "Why did they close the part of the money to the Downtown school if they're not using it? First they told us it was going to be a technical South-Hill North development. New Haven officials are anxious to school, now they say it's going to be a start the project, but their overzealous hotel for the train station. I don't know attempts have created some tension in what's going to happen." Hill Alderman Tomas Reyes tries to the Hill. In February of 1986, DiLieto named the Schnip Development Cor- bridge this information gap. He acts as poration of Norwich as preferred intermediary between the city addeveloper for the overall project. Con- ministration and the community, and troversy arose when the city accepted seems as comfortable in his BMW, company president John Schnip's equipped with a DiLieto bumper $10.2 million bid on the school without sticker, as he does drinking a beer at a opening up bidding to the public. local pizza place. He looks up from Recalling a precedent set in 1982, a o,·er his Heineken and waves at somefederal judge ruled that New Haven one walking by. "The neighborhood is must open bidding. Schnip had ap- saying, 'You're not going to forget us.'" plied for a $10 million UDAG to help Reyes coined the project term "Downfinance the phase of the project in- town South-Hill North" in an attempt volving Lee High, but this ruling has to focus attention on the Hill neighstalled the UDAG application until borhood. "It was almost a joke. But January. By then, a New Haven ar- after we realized that it stuck, it was chitect, Wendell Harp, intends to sub- more than a joke. It was a message. mit a competing plan and to make a We consider this our land, our neighbid. City officials say they expect borhood, so we're going to put ourSchnip to obtain the bid and even the selves into the process," Reyes said. UDAG. Meanwhile, the Hill waits- The Hill Development Corporation but not quietly. (HDC), formed by the merger of two Lee High closed in June of 1986, other community development comjust four months after Schnip's pro- mittees in 1980, consulted with Schnip posal was accepted. New Haven Board and Yale-New Haven Medical Center The New JournaVOctober 16, 1987 25
in developing a master plan for the Hill area. The Schnip Corporation also held an open forum for community members to raise questions about the development. Like many Hill residents, AI Boyer fears the project may drive him from his home. "I'm worried that they're going to force out the people living here now, and bring in people with a lot of money." The Hill project will displace few residents, since most of the land is vacant. But development will increase real estate values and rents, exacerbating already severe problems of homelessness and low-income housing. "People are sleeping three families to an apartment," Reyes said. "Any empty apartment has a line of fifteen peop e waiting for it." The HDC confirms that the Hill suffers from a housing shortage, with a vacancy rate of one-half of one percent in comparison with the average of five percent. Such high demand spurs higher rents, which must often be paid for out of a family's food money. According to a 1986 survey by the Connecticut Association for Human Services, one quarter of the families in the Hill with children are chronically hungry. Reverend Karl Hilgert, executive director of a local support network, blames past development policy for contributing to the Hill's current economic woes. "It hasn't been in the interest of poor people. Bricks and mortar, while they're good, are not really the emphases that need to oe made." He worries that Schnip will concentrate on the hotel and conference center, especially since a source of funding for the residential phase of construction has not been found. "I'd like to see low-income housing done at least simultaneously with the first phases," he said. Reyes feels that the negative effects of the development are inevitable . "I want to bite the bullet. I want to look people in the face and say, 'Folks, there is going to be gentrification here. Yuppies are going to move in.' There are going to be poor people who are not going to able to afford to live in the
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26 The New Journal/October 16, 1987
Hill. So we have to develop programs today for that eventuality." Reyes and the HDC have convinced Schnip to provide more than the 20 percent of low-to moderate-income housing required by HUD. Originally they asked for 40 percent of all housing in the $360 million project, and Schnip eventually agreed to 30 percent. After the UDAG portion of the project gets underway, the Schnip Corporation will build approximately 300 rental units partly for lower income tenants, 48 condominiums, and two condominium buildings with about 145 mixedprice units all together. Washington Center Associates •
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(WCA), a New Haven-based group made up of minority business people, will work with Schnip on much of the lower income housing. WCA has also been made preferred developer of a small part of the Hill project. There, they plan to build a retail and commercial complex, including an Hispanicowned bank to serve the needs of a racially diverse community composed of 40 percent black, 30 percent Hispanic, and 30 percent white residents. Hilgert is skeptical about WCA's involvement. "Washington Center is good for the community. But it's also a bargaining chip-in other words, 'If you get this, you can wait for
some of the other things,'" he said. But Reyes thinks development has to involve compromise, especially in a city where homelessness and hunger can be found in virtually every neighborhood. "We feel, in the Hill, that we have more than our share of subsidized housing. We have the three emergency shelters for the homeless. We've got three major section eight projects, which charge lower rent. And •1 we have a significant amount of rental ' rehabilitation housing. So we've done our share in building and planning for poor people." Instead of concentrating solely on low-income housing to the exclusion of more upscale development, Reyes would like to see the new development create job opportunities. The current unemployment rate in the neighborhood, according to the HDC, is about 15 percent, or three percent above the average for the city. The Downtown South-Hill North development should provide about 650 permanent jobs and 250 temporary jobs in such fields as construction and security. And Schnip has agreed to consider HDC referrals first when hiring people for these jobs. But many of the other businesses that development will attract won't need the Hill's many• poorly skilled workers. A second phase of the Hill development will include mainly office towers, most medicalrelated. These offices promise a more affiuent, white-collar atmosphere in the Hill of the future. Reyes looks at his watch and quickly swallows the last of his beer. He taps his finger emphatically on the table. "We're going to have to do a balancing act in continuing to stimulate and invite massive developments that will produce jobs and quality amenities for the neighborhood- and at the same time, in being compassionate and sensitive to the coming displacement that I think is already happening. We're going to have to become magicians in-¥ the Hill."
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Martha Brant, a junior in Timothy DU!ight, is associau editor of TNJ.
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The New J ou rnal/October 16, 1987 27
Afterthought/Eric Schnapper
••
Injudicious Planning On July 1, 1987 , the Reagan Administration faced what most observers thought was an interesting but hardly difficult task- to persuade the Senate to confirm Judge Robert Bork as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. The right wing views that had won Judge Bork the nomination, to be sure, had little public support. But the Administration evidently perceived no need to deal directly with the substance of Bork's ideas. For over six years President Reagan had succeeded beyond all reason in persuading Congress to approve measures which legislators believed made little sense. The White House began the Bork confirmation process confident that it could rely once more on the arsenal of tactics that had so often succeeded in the past. But 1987 was not 1981; the President's personal popularity was on the wane, and the Democrats had regained 28 The New j ournal/October 16, 1987
control of the Senate. Lobbying practices that had once sufficed largely because of the President's political dominance now had to stand on their own. After six years those practices had become so familiar and seemingly effective that the Administration was unable to perceive their inherent weaknesses; as the weeks went by, White House lobbyists shifted with increasing haste from one tactic to another, never understanding why none were working and never coming to grips with the substantive problems posed by Judge Bork's record. Towards the end some conservatives would criticize the White House for not lobbying harder on Judge Bork's behalf. But the nomination failed, not because the White House did too little, but because the White House did precisely the sorts of things it had done in the past, learning too late that those approaches were ineffective and at the
time counterproductive. The marketing of Judge Bork; opened with the boldest of White House arguments, that the Senate had no business even considering Judge Bork's "philosophy," i.e., that the Senate was required to ignore what Bork had said he would do if he were on the Supreme Court. This was a natural argument for an Administration whose expansive views of executive authority rivaled the territorial ambitions of Czarist Russia. Just as the White House had long sought to circumscribe the role of Congress in foreign policy, so too the White House was attracted to a doctrine that would have eviscerated the advise and consent function of the Senate. Most of July was consumed arguing;" unsuccessfully that the Senate could not consider the ideology of a judicial nominee. But the White House position quickly ran into a series of fatal
and entirely toreseeable problems. The White House itself had selected Judge Bork and other judicial nominees largely on the basis of ideology; Attorney General Edwin Meese's assertion to the contrary was greeted with the derisive laughter that it richly ~J; Afeserved. If the executive branch could consider ideology , a prohibition against Senate consideration of ideology was necessarily an attack on the Senate's institutional role. It made little political sense to ignore the actual consequences of confirming a nominee to the nation's highest court. If Judge Bork turned the Court in a direction which proved unpopular, no senator could explain their support for Bork by saying that they had merely been acceding to the President's wishes. Finally, both the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Strom Thurmond, and Judge: Bork himself had said in the past that the Senate should consider the philosophical views of a judicial nominee. Anyone familiar with the dynamics of the Judiciary Committee ..Vould have known that neither the nominee nor the ranking Republican member would have dared to advance the White House's position. The importance of this initial approach was not that it became the central issue to the controversy, but that the Administration wasted at least four critical weeks on an extravagant argument which less audacious advisors would have seen from the outset could never succeed. On July 27 the Administration circulated on Capitol Hill a lengthy memorandum offering two new approaches. The memorandum argued fli'St that in evaluating Judge Bork's Jhilosophy the Senate should consider l)nly his record since 1982 as an appeUatejudge-not the speeches and articles he had written prior to that year. On this view the Senate could theoretically consider Judge Bork's Philosophy, but would have to ignore
most of the evidence about what Judge Bork's five-year record as an appell;:,e Bork actually believed. . The Ad- judge was reasonably moderate. On ministration argued that the speeches one level this was an attempt to and articles in question were at least redefine the issue , from whether Judge six years old, and had been merely the Bork had once advocated rescinding speculative theorizing of Judge Bork many fundamental civil liberties to when he was an academic. whether he had actually attempted to In substance, however, this was do so during his years on the bench. simply a more facile version of the Substantively, the argument simply earlier objection to any Senate con- did not wash, for a court of a ppeals sideration of judicial philosophy. No judge lacks the legal authority to do one doubted that the White House had what Judge Bork had re peatedly urged chosen Judge Bork for an appellate the Supreme Court itself to do. judgeship in 1982 precisely because of In an attempt to bridge that logical those disputed speeches and articles, gap, the Administration resorted to the and certainly had relied on those sort of tactics usually reserved for docmaterials again in 1987 in selecting toring budget proposals. None of Judge Bork's 100 or more majority opinions had ever been reversed by the Supreme Court, the Administration argued, failing to mention that none of those opinions had ever been reviewed by the Supreme Court at all. Over the course of the summer and fall, two other arguments surfaced intermittently. The Administration trotted out the grand old Republican warhorse: law and order. A pro-Bork group sponsored by the White House announced that the central issue posed by the nomination was that Bork Bork for the Supreme Court. To sug- would be tough on c rime. Law engest that the Senate had to ignore the forcement associations and officials very evidence that the executive were called upon to endorse Judge branch had relied on was to propose a Bork. This was a traditional but fairly severe narrowing of the constitutional vacuous attempt to divert attention role of the Senate. Politically, the argu- from the real issues. Bork had written ment made no sense-it was incon- almost nothing critical of the Supreme ceivable that a senator who voted for Court's opinions on criminal justice the nomination could placate a pro- issues and had never been seriously opchoice constituent by explaining that posed on that basis. Neither the public Judge Bork's denunciation of Rot v. nor the press ever took this argument Wade had occurred in 1981, when Bork seriously. was in private life, rather than in 1982, An effort was made to sell Bork as when he was on the bench. The argu- Ronald Reagan himself had been sold ment was also flawed by inadequate to the American people in 1980 and research- most of the things Bork had 1984, as a charming, amiable fellow said and written prior to 1982 he had who was too nice to really believe all repeated in speeches and articles after those terrible things he was charged he became a judge. with having said. Judge Bork dutifully The second approach of the July 27 gave a series of interviews, regaling the memorandum was to assert that judge press with stories of his personal
Forced to take a position on Bork's substantive views, the Reagan Administration took two.
The New Journai/Ocrober 16, 1987 29
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history, demonstrating his wit and intelligence, and systematically refusing to discuss the legal views that were at the center of the controversy. The Adm inistration, confident that the p ublic would accept a pleasing personality regardless of ideology, predicted that Judge Bork's testimony would garner the same enthusiastic public support as had the testimony of Colonel Oliver North. Whether personal charm could have done the trick we will never know. When h is testimony finally began, Judge Bork more closely resembled Oliver Cromwell than Oliver North. The marketing plan for August fared no· better than that of J uly. Opponents of th e nomination insistently objected to Judge Bork's substantive views, and no one but Bork's own partisans accepted the Administration's attempts to divert attention from that issue. Another month had been dissipated with this second effort 'to avoid the subject. Worse yet, the Senate Judiciary Committee had forced Judge Bork to turn over to the Senate the texts of scores of speeches in which h e had set forth new objections to landmark Supreme Court decisions in great, often scathingly worded detail. T he Administration returned once more to the drawing boards, and on September 11, four days before th e hearing, produced a 213-page report on "The Real Robert H. Bork." The Administration was sharply divided, however, as to the ideological iden tity of"the real Bork." The Department of Justice wanted to defend Bork as an extreme conservative, committed to rolling back many of the Supreme Cou rt decisions of the last 30 years. The White H ouse, lacking the courage of Judge Bork's convictions, thought it better to characterize the nominee as a moderate like Justice Powell. D rafts men from both factions apparen tly contributed to the September 11 mem orandum. Some portions of the document asserted that Judge Bo rk
was a strong supporter of civil rights and had great respect for precedent; other sectio ns insisted that J udge Bork was correct in den ouncing major
The Administration resorted to the sort of tactics usually reserved for doctoring budget proposals:·
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Supreme Court .precedents such as the decision in Katzenbach v. Morgan, which u pheld certain provisions of the Voting R ights Act. H aving fi n ally been forced on the eve of th e committee hearing to tak e a position on J udge Bork's sub stantive views, the R eagan Administration took two. Judge Bork's counterproductive testimony clearly reflected th e Ad- A. ministration tactics which preceded it. In some instances Jud ge Bork hewed to the White House lin e, recanting his previous positions; on other occasions Bork took the D epartment of Justice approach, adamantly d efending his denunciation of Supreme Cour t civil rights .decisions with a chilling indifference to the spir it of the constitution and to the practical consequences of his arguments. At times J udge Bork vacil· lated between the contending Ad· ministration tactics. Neither approach was characterized by the careful thought an d research th at would have been possible if the nominee and Adm inistration had come to grips in July,_ rather than in September, with the need to d eal with th e substance of J u dge Bork's past record . _ The fai lu r e of Jud ge Bo r k's testimony prompted a new roun.d of
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The argument simply did not wash. diversionary arguments. The White House, conservative senators, and witnesses including former Chief Justice Warren Burger insisted that " Judge Bork's record had been dis· torted. The charges of distortion, however, were rarely accompanied by any explanations of which allegation regarding Judge Bork's record was inaccurate. The President appeared at a California meeting to once again assert that Bork would be a law-and-order justice, but to little avail. As the situation deteriorated, Mr. Reagan, who had run for president on a platform that expressly called for an ideological test for nominees, asserted that rejection of Judge Bork on account of his ideology would be a grave threat to the independence of the .federal courts. That argument, from a man who haa made a career out of denouncing the Supreme Court, was greeted with a justified degree of incredulity. In retrospect, Robert Bork may never have been confirmable, his judicial views too far to the right to survive any serious public scrutiny. But the Administration's own efforts to sell Bork to the Senate and to the Ameri can people turned a probable defeat into a certain debacle. Over six years in office the President and his advisors had grown too accustomed to selling legislative proposals with blue smoke and mirrors, and too arrogant to treat the Congress and the public as a legitimate part of the democratic process .
Yale Quick Copy Center 1.49 York 8 to 5 Monday-Friday 432-2894
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..,. Eric Schnappn- (Law '68) is a lawyn- with the kgal defmse fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Ptt1pie in New York. H e was one of the organizn-s of national opposition to Judge Robert Bork's confirmation. The New Journal/October 16, 1987 31
The Yale Symphony Orchestra
Alasdair Neale Music Director
1987-88 Concert Season O ctober 17
N ovem ber 8 (Sunday)
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Symphony No. 2 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 20 Mozart Joyce Shen, pianist Don Juan Strauss
"When the orchestra players stamped their feet for Neale . . . the appreciation seemed understandable." -Los Angeles TiTMs, July 22, 1986
B attell C h apel Overture to the Magic Flute Mozart Symphony No. 35 Mozart Metamorphosen Strauss
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Dece m ber 6 (Sunday)
Roman Carnival Overture Bn-lioz Schelomo Bloch Eric Gaenslen, cel.list Symphony No. 4 Brahms
February 13
BENEFIT CONCER T- Elisabeth SOderstrom. Guest Art i ~t William Tell Overture Rossini Four Lnst ')on~s Stmwr Elisalx·rh S<.iderstrom. Soprano Symphony No. 2 Rach17Ulnino.ff
M arch 5
Fidelio Overture Bedlzovm Viola Concerto Walton Michael Amory, violist Violin Concerto No. 1 Prolcofin• Andrea Schultz, violinist R omeo and Juliet Suite No. 2 Prokofi,v
A pril 23
The Fifth Season Robm Kyr - WORLD PREMIERE Clarinet Concerto Mozart Rebecca Rischin, clarinetist Firebird Suite Stravinsky
All Yale Symphony concerts with the exception of the Benefit Concert, are free and open to the pubhc and begin at 8:00 p .m. All the. concerts with the exception of the one in No,·ember arc in W oolsey H all. For more information, and Benefit Concert T ickets, call 432-4140.
". . . mort' than one professional European orchestra could envy them and should h;we every interest in imitating their ensemble, the seriou'lness of their work, their unde~tanding of the music and their ardor in rendering these works in the best way possible. • - v Prormcal (France)