Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual

4. Graduate School, 1962–1967

4 Graduate School, 1962–1967 My choice of the University of Wisconsin for graduate work was designed, in part, to provide me with a different sort of life than I had experienced in New York City. And it did. The university maintained a big, sprawling campus right in the middle of Madison. Although it was a fairly liberal, sophisticated city, as well as the state capital, for me it exemplified small town life with curious customs. Striding across an intersection one day when there were no cars in sight in either direction, I received a warning ticket from a local policeman, who pointed out that I had crossed against the light. (I was accustomed to the ways of the New York City police, who apparently had more dangerous things to worry about.) As sales of beer were restricted by law to people twenty-one and older, younger persons (including almost all undergraduates) drank a nearbeer with a low alcoholic content. Bucky Badger, the university’s mascot, was ubiquitous, with Bucky Burgers and related delights on sale everywhere. “Brat” (bratwurst) was also popular, although margarine was nonexistent—effectively banned by a state law (put into place by the powerful dairy farmers) that decreed that margarine had to be dyed a disgusting color. Many Wisconsin students—and especially the undergraduates—displayed a lack of intellectual sophistication that I had not encountered at Columbia. The reason, I think, was that Columbia College was extremely selective in its admissions process, whereas Wisconsin simply accepted all students who graduated from state high schools and then flunked out large numbers of them during their freshman year. School football games drew enormous crowds, which were stirred up by cheerleading, band-marching extravaganzas. In the off-campus private home where I rented a single room, I socialized with three undergraduates who also roomed there, and was struck by what I saw as their small-town, provincial mind-sets. In the case of two of them, I had difficulty getting them 70 Graduate School, 1962–1967 to understand what a labor union was. Another student, about thirty years old, was a mild-mannered, innocent fellow exceptionally proud of the fact that he grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy’s home town. When I made a critical comment about McCarthy, he had no idea what I was talking about. After a month or so, when he realized that I was Jewish, he was astonished, never having met a Jew before. In fact, it presented him with a real dilemma, for although he sought to encourage my belief in God, he recognized, as he glumly told me, that if I did turn to religion, it probably would be to Judaism. Portions of the student body, however, were considerably more sophisticated , especially those from out of state. Among Wisconsin’s undergraduates, students from big cities like New York and Chicago tended to be better educated , more liberal in politics, and more likely to harbor unconventional ideas. And the graduate students were as sharp and politically conscious as any in the country. Certainly, this was true of the students enrolled in Merle Curti’s graduate seminar in U.S. intellectual history. Meeting every week during the 1962–63 academic year, the Curtisians (as we called ourselves) developed friendships with one another and some degree of group cohesion. For the most part, I found them a bright, intriguing lot and hung out with a number of them. Although my friendships with them never went very deep, this reflected my brief tenure at Wisconsin rather than any sense of alienation on my part. Our discussions inside and outside of class were often interesting and lively. At the center of the Curtisians was our teacher. In a number of ways, Curti, then sixty-five years old and nearing retirement, proved a surprise to me. Although an eminent American historian—a past president of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians—he did not seem to exercise much authority in our seminar sessions. This seemed to fit his personality, for he appeared rather ethereal. In addition, having read one of his early books, The Social Ideas of American Educators, which had a decidedly left-wing flavor, I expected him to be politically engagé. But he did not seem to be. In one seminar session, when I reported on Richard Hofstadter’s new book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, I criticized it for its elitist, antidemocratic thesis. Yet Curti seemed to overlook the book...