progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
Thus we look at those individuals who contributed as public intellectuals to the
development of the neo-progressive movement. In many ways they were promulgators of
the ideas, the principle laid down by Wallace, and developed and fine tuned during the
FDR reign by trial and error.
6.1 RICHARD HOFSTADTER
Hofstadter made his career at Columbia University. This was the home of Beard and
Dewey, and in the 1960s a focal point for East Coast anti-war and anti-government
protests and action groups. In the 1930s it was a cauldron of Communism, with what
some have said a majority of the students and faculty being members of or adherents to
the Communist party. Columbia was the upper class version of City College. As City was
the experimental Petri dish for first generation college educated immigrants, Columbia
prided itself on its almost Ivy league status. Unlike Harvard, Columbia viewed itself as
integral to New York, whereas Harvard was in the yard behind the wall in Cambridge,
separate from Boston. Columbia prided and still prides itself on its left leaning tendencies
and in many ways that pride exceeds the pride it may have on its academic performance.
6.1.1 Columbia in Perspective
To place Columbia in some perspective let me recount a brief tale. In 1960, as I was
preparing to seek out a college, one of the institutions I applied to was Columbia
University. In the process, I had applied to their Advanced Science Program which was
directed towards High School Seniors. I was trying to evaluate if it was worth the effort
since to attend this program at Columbia since I lived on Staten Island and this would
take all my Saturdays. In addition, the Program was focused on students committed to
attending Columbia. Thus I wrote the Dean to seek advice.
The Dean's response was not positive for reasons not related to any fundamental
academic issue but to a "cultural" issue. For years I thought this response to my letter
may have been an artifact of that time, then end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s. I
thought that was, that is, until the last few months.
The issue was that in 1960 Columbia University was dominated by anti-Catholic
intellectuals, and as a graduate of a Catholic secondary school I was considered damaged
goods. I had not had the "right" training. In fact I was considered brainwashed. I thought
that we had lived through the 50s, the Rosenbergs and McCarthy, Stevenson and Nixon,
so this prejudice was just a lingering artifact of the past. Martin Luther King had not yet
raised his voice so prejudice was something we had all learned to deal with, generally by
avoidance. It would take almost fifty years to understand that this mindset was not in its
sunset but was morphing itself into a sustainable and more pervasive movement.
The Columbia mentality, at the time, was dominated, in many ways, by the views of a
principal spokesperson, Richard Hofstadter, the Historian. Hofstadter viewed himself and
his associates as consummate intellectuals, and as such they had an almost divine insight
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