I am in the part of Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician
that is about the Alger Hiss case, in which Congressman Richard Nixon
played a significant role. (For background on that case, see my post here.)
As I said in my first post about Morris' book, one reason that I wanted
to read it was to get an alternative perspective about the Hiss case,
since much of what I have read thus far for my Year (or More) of Nixon
seems to presume that Hiss actually did engage in espionage for the
Soviet Union. I read in an Amazon review of Morris' book, however, that
Morris is rather skeptical of ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers' claim
that such was the case. In terms of blogging, I will probably save my
post (or posts) about Morris' discussion of the Hiss case for the
future, after I have gotten a better idea of where Morris is going in
his narration and arguments.
In this post, however, I'd like to
use as my starting-point something that Morris says on page 376. The
topic is Richard Nixon's alienation from academia, which, according to
Morris, occurred after the House Committee on Un-American Activities'
treatment of scientist Edward Condon. (For background on this, see my
post here.)
Nixon tried to distance himself from that through a letter to Douglas
Maggs, a critic and one of Nixon's old law professors, and the Maggs
letter went to others within academia as well. But Nixon was
unsuccessful in creating a bridge between himself and academia. Morris
states:
"In particular, the affair left a first legacy of distrust
and suspicion in academic and scientific circles that would thicken
into near-professional anathema, despite his solicitous gestures like
the long letter to Maggs. It would be a political liability for Richard
Nixon for years to come and soon a touchstone for his own wounded
resentment and alienation vis-[a]-vis an intellectual world that might
have been a much greater ally and resource for him."
Nixon's
alienation from academia has come up more than once in My Year (or More)
of Nixon. Nixon, on some level, was drawn to academia. In my post here,
I talk about Nixon's fantasy about being an academic at Oxford----of
reading, teaching, and writing. But I read somewhere (it may have been
in David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow) that there were academics
who were rather amused by Nixon's fantasy. They must not have thought
that Nixon's thoughts were good enough for him to be within their
ranks! I read in another place that, while Nixon liked to read, his
shelves were stocked mostly with older books and classics, rather than
the newer, up-to-date books that academics were discussing. And Stephen
Ambrose, in his discussion of the books about foreign policy that Nixon
wrote, makes the point that Nixon's books were not particularly
accepted within academia. Ambrose himself is rather critical of Nixon's
books, saying that they were more like speeches and were inconsistent.
I
myself have a love-hate relationship with academia. There are times
when I believe that certain academics are snobbish, that they talk an
issue to death without going anywhere, and that they engage in sophistry
that really doesn't mean anything. I've often wondered if they find my
thoughts, my writing, or the books that I read to be good enough. On
the other hand, there are times when I am sensitized to the necessity
for academia. I was one time watching snippets of a debate between
Christians and atheists, in which Kirk Cameron and Roy Comfort were
representing the Christian side. Kirk Cameron was trying to ridicule
evolution, and he held up a picture of a "crockaduck," a fictional
intermediary between a crocodile and a duck. One of the atheists looked
embarrassed to be on the same stage with Kirk Cameron, but the atheist
side didn't impress me either, for one of the atheists was arguing for
Christ-mythicism and was apparently unaware of when Josephus wrote his
books. That's when it occurred to me: You either value the people who
have seriously studied issues and who know what they're talking about,
or you have the "crockaduck."