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MILLER: I would say opinion was pretty even, I would say the split was 50/50 on
Stevenson-Eisenhower. You remember the Whitaker Chambers - Alger Hiss controversy.
Liberal values were questioned in this time of international uncertainty brought about by
the Cold War.
Q: He had been at Williams for a short time.
MILLER: So that was a dividing line. Did you believe Whitaker Chambers’ testimony or
not? Was it Hiss or Chambers? Who told the truth? Or was it somewhere in between.
This was also the time of the Oppenheimer-Strauss loyalty case.
Q: Alger Hiss.
MILLER: Of course it was also Acheson versus Nixon. All of those were very interesting
personalities, so there was a lot of debate about basic ideology. People tended to go down
in two categories according to their family backgrounds. It was a very close call because,
of course, Eisenhower could have easily been a Democrat and he was a very popular
wartime leader, and a decent, moderate man in most respects. Certainly the eastern
Republicans who supported that war were at least as liberal as the Democrats.
Q: A different era.
MILLER: Yes, well, they’re gone, for the most part.
Q: You were at Oxford from when to when?
MILLER: Fifty-three to ’56.
Q: Oxford versus Williams. Could you compare and contrast?
MILLER: Well, yes, I can compare and contrast. I went to Oxford as an undergraduate,
again, which was the custom, but it was an entirely different system. I would say that, at
least for me, Williams, in many respects, was a preparation for Oxford, as far as intensive
study goes. Williams gave a wonderful broad survey of Western learning as we
understood it in the ‘50s, but with very few exceptions, no depth in any particular subject.
I had deeply studied some authors, but otherwise I surveyed all of English literature,
American, European and world history, philosophy, science. It was the Red Book, core
curriculum survey of knowledge. At Oxford you studied, very narrowly, one subject to
the point approaching complete learning. That’s the approach. It’s assumed that when you
come to Oxford that you already have the background for everything else. You are
coming to Oxford to use scholarship in its received form assembled over the centuries of
learning, building your own study with that base of received knowledge. The teaching of
the Dons, their behavior, student expectations and behavior, even the examination
system, is part of the way of life predicated on an entirely different history, social life, and
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