A. MICHAEL WASHBURN '62
(Graduate Students and Members of the Faculty, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University)
Lardner's Reply
AT NO point in my article did I state, no less "allege," that the Woodrow Wilson School turns its students into "establishment thinkers." Clearly this is not the case, since, as I did state, there are very few radicals or non-establishment thinkers in the school to begin with.
Perhaps the 15 authors of the above letter are correct in questioning the use of the word "establishment." I did not mean to imply that Woodrow Wilson students are precise replicas of President Johnson, or that they are conservative in any but the broadest sense of the word. What I did mean was that they tend to identify with the administration, or more generally with the government, and to tackle issues with due consideration for all the constraints operating on officials actually faced by those issues. Given the school's purpose, there is nothing necessarily wrong with this; nor did I say there was.
If there is one suggestion in this letter that mystifies me more than the rest, it is that--as a Harvard student and a writer for the CRIMSON--I cannot use the word "establishment" without stepping on my own foot. In the broadest sense (not the sense in which I used the word), there is more truth in this than I care to admit. So I stand convicted of self-deception. What possible bearing this has on the article in question is beyond me.
With few exceptions, the article made no allegations one way or the other about the Woodrow Wilson School. It was composed almost entirely, and deliberately, of quotes from Woodrow Wilson students and faculty members. These quotes were specifically identified as such; yet the above letter chooses to ignore the attributions and to attach all the statements to the author. Points One and Four of the letter, then, deal with assertions I never made.
As for the statements refuted in points Two and Five, they are not really refuted at all. The word "bureaucrat," which I used only once in the article, need not mean "clerk"; a bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy. Just the same, the article was laced with phrases ("public service," "policy-makers," "public affairs") conveying a much more elevated impression of government work. Point Five smacks of paranoia. I did not criticize the Woodrow Wilson School for discouraging applicants with no bent toward public service. I merely stated a fact--one which the letter confirms.
Point Three, in which I am accused of saying that Woodrow Wilson students "spend their time wheeling and dealing in 'mock political extravaganzas,'" is deceptive. If by "their time" is meant any substantial percentage of their time, then I cannot see such a contention in the article. I did, on the other hand, make clear that much of a student's time is occupied with regular courses.
In point Four, the letter asks an absurdly rhetorical question which, as far as I can see, has nothing whatever to do with any point made in the article. The "too much academia" and "just more college" complaints were voiced to me by students at the Wilson School, and were so attributed. As for the mention of one long reading list, I cannot see how this could be interpreted as an argument on my part for anything.
I am more surprised by criticisms the letter does not make than by those it does. My article gave a somewhat unbalanced picture of the Woodrow Wilson School, because it failed to treat the many aspects of the school which are universally admired. Its emphasis was very heavily on theoretical questions surrounding the methods and very existence of such schools. This emphasis was, of course, deliberate; read in the context of the pieces printed along with it, that should have been obvious.
It would be perfectly understandable for Woodrow Wilson School students and faculty members to react against criticisms directed at the basic premises of their school. What I cannot understand is the notion that merely to write about such criticisms is somehow to endorse them. For the record, I am far from convinced by the arguments against the Woodrow Wilson School; I only wish it would spend more of its time improving the government and less trying to make newspaper articles resemble its own public relations literature