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July/August 2006 Historically Speaking And Other Essays (Knopf, 1965), 43-44. ' Kenneth S. Lynn, "Elitism on the Left," The Reporter, July 4, 1963, 37. ' I daresay that Hofstadter and the contemporary paleoconservative movement have little in common, but they do both agree that the term "pseudo-conservative" may fairly be applied to certain groups on the Right. Three years ago the late Sam Francis described neoconservatives as "political poseurs" and "pseudo-conservative illiterates ." Sam Francis, "Francis on Frum: Good Riddance to National Review," VDARE.com, March 27, 2003. 5 Columbia University Bulletin of Information, 53rd Series , No. 10, (1953-54), Columbia College Archives. ' Richard Hofstadter, "Goldwater & His Party: The True Believer and the Radical Right,' 3. Encounter (October 1964), T David Brooks, "The Prosecutor's Diagnosis, No Cancer Found," New York Times, October 30, 2005; Max Boot, "Attacking the 'Israel Lobby,'" Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2006. How the Kennedy School of Politics Was Born Bruce Kuklick In the late 1940s a number of younger academics sought to make their careers in a way not wholly oriented to traditional university departments. These students wanted to be regarded as prudent, hands-on specialists in foreign affairs—knowledgeable about the grim causes of World War II and experts in the battle against the Soviet Union. They frequently described themselves as "Realists." Institutes for the study of policy often appeared as the best venues to undertake their work. At a number of universities new centers for such study sprang up, replacing older and pokier bodies of minor importance that had haphazardly analyzed international events from the 1930s on. The new and revived entities were attempting to duplicate the success of the early air force think tank, RAND. But the association with the military was thought to compromise the independence of RAND, although many of the people who consulted for it had positions at schools of higher learning. In the late 1940s and early 1950s scholars at Chicago, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Princeton, and Yale jockeyed to build organizations that would put RAND conceptualizations to work in a collegiate environment. In the 1950s and early 1960s the Harvard department of government was out of step with developments at these leading universities. Its name suggested commitment to something slightly different from "political science." While Harvard's prestige insured that its scholars were well represented in policy-making circles, two older scholars, William Y. Elliott and Carl J. Friedrich, who had credentials as political theorists , still dominated the department. While more freestanding scholarly entities on the campus offered younger faculty more fashionable niches, officials regularly thought of closing the most significant of these, the Harvard School of Public Administration—the Lucius Littauer Center. The sleepy center had existed since 1935 but was a stepchild in Cambridge, an administrative unit that faculty in the departments of economics and government jointly ran. While the connection to Harvard had made Littauer more than respectable, training in public administration lacked the excellence associated with Harvard's schools of law and medicine. As one evaluating committee put it, the master's degree that the center awarded had "never been entirely satisfactory" and the students "not fully up to the standards of the Arts and Sciences departments." It contributed little to the field of security studies that scholars in places like Princeton and Hopkins had established some fifteen years before. The situation changed at the end of 1963 when the family of John F. Kennedy initiated plans for the presidential library that would house material from the administration of the recently assassinated leader, immediately elevated to a mythic existence. Historian and Kennedy presidential assistant Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and JFK's National Security Advisor and former Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy promoted plans that were physically and intellectually grand—a library and an accompanying "Institute in Memory of President Kennedy" or "Kennedy Center for the Politics of Democracy" or (finally) "Institute of Politics." At one point in the complicated negotiations it was suggested that Kennedy's alma mater, Harvard University, would erect a Kennedy School of Government that would replace Littauer and attach this school to a presidential library. Harvard would not just upgrade its training of graduate students and redesign a graduate program...

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