VARTAN GALA TALK
Delighted to be here on the occasion of Sherman Teichman’s retirement – although I hardly imagine he will ever retire as a teacher, and to acknowledge the 30th Anniversary of his remarkable Institute.
I loved reading, and for me the library became my helicopter, escaping from everything that was surrounding me.
My mother died when I was six-and-a-half years old, during the second world war, my father was a soldier who fled before advancing Soviet troops, and my grandmother a peasant illiterate woman, took care of my sister and me, and even though she did not know how to read and write, she knew that education was important.
All my life has been impacted by my teachers. All it requires is one teacher. When I was age twelve I read Pestalozzi's biography, found that Pestalozzi took care of all the kids who were discarded, and he made men out of them.
When he died, they were all gathered round his grave to mourn his passing because they were all emancipated through learning. So learning for me became most important, not just entertainment.
I travelled around Europe with the Conte de Monte Cristo, with Jean Valjean, Les Misérables, I even imagined that I should have an enemy so I can take revenge of that enemy, the same way as Count Monte Cristo did––
Teichman: I could have lent you some––
Gregorian: [laughing] I lived a vicarious life. So, when I say teachers, because I always have been able -- I hope I don't offend you, students don't fail, teachers fail. You have to be able to do something out of a human being entrusted to you, to reach and pull all the strings––emotional, intellectual, social, anthropological––in order to make him or her see themselves in a universal norm, as somebody unique for the first time in the history of humanity. Somebody has created somebody like you, and no one like you is going to come back again in the entire history of the universe. So in your unique moment in history, I've always told my students, you have to decide whether you like to be a dot, a letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, chapter, whole book, or blank, and it is miserable if you choose to be blank, because so much has gone through evolution to result in you, and you owe it to your parents, your society, to become someone, or knowingly reject, but never be indifferent. That's the philosophy I learned from childhood on.
And second, I was telling Sherman, those of you who have not read Gabriel García Márquez's book Love in the Time of Cholera, I read it, I was really moved, but one line impressed me, and that line was this, "People are not born once and for all when their mother gives birth to them, but throughout their lives they reinvent themselves. They have constant rebirths," and my life has been one of those.
When I grew up in elementary school, in Russian school, learning Russian and all the Soviet wartime hymns, the Soviets were superseded by Iranian government forces who came to Tabriz. We had to go to a new school to validate what we had learned, and then I was fortunate enough due to happenstance to meet a French Vice Consul, a Gaullist, who said, "you are smart cookie, and you better go to see Paris [French pronunciation], don't stay in Tabriz." I did not know what he meant, I did not know what Paris [French pronunciation] meant, I did know what Paris [English pronunciation], but not Paris [French pronunciation]. He was a French speaker, a French Gaullist diplomat.
He said, "you have to go to Paris [English pronunciation], little Paris: Beirut, Lebanon."
I said, "I have no money."
He said, "you don't need money. I'll write a note and we'll take care of it."
This taught me one lesson: weak powers, weak individuals, always attract powerful ones. Powerful may not mean what they say, but the weak have no choice but to believe it.
So I am with three letters––there's a long story, I won't give it––I went to Beirut, Lebanon. One was to director of the security forces in Lebanon, because this guy was there during the French Gaullist period. Second one was ((Hôtel Luxe)). Third one was Collège Arménien, the French Armenian lycée. I did not know French. I did not know Arabic. I did not know English. I knew Armenian, Turkish, Persian, and some Russian. None of them were, except Armenian, useful. So I arrived in Beirut, I appeared before, the Leipzig educated, writer, Levon Shant, with a monocle, very cold for an Armenian.
He said, "you have money?"
I said, "no."
"You know French?"
I said, "no."
Uh, "what are you doing here?"
"I was sent here."
And then he then told me, "you don't know French, you have to go back."
But I could not go back, because my stepmother––by then, my father had, uh, remarried––said, "you will never make it, you'll come back." If she had not said that I would have gone back, but I was very proud of that not going back.
So, a paraplegic poet, who was (inaudible, 6:03) French newspaper in Beirut, and an urban planner, they said, "we'll teach you French for free." In one year I learned enough French to enter lycée, and then my teacher, French teacher, had said, "you will not make it," and she should not have said that, because I bought Larousse du Vingtième Siècle, and basically I'm learning French––in anything that teacher said, I found a fault. I said, "in Racine's play a different word was used. In Corneille it was different." I drove her nuts, she drove me nuts, but I learned French. And I finished mention bien, and then the Collège Arménien had one fellowship, and my director, who was the last prime minister of Armenia, independent Armenia, wanted me to go to California to get education and come back to be a teacher, a high school teacher.
Well, my English teacher replied, and this application went to two universities, Berkeley and Stanford. Both of them accepted––Stanford sent airmail, uh, Berkeley sent surface mail, and I went to Stanford. I had no idea about Stanford, private, public, none of this, but I arrived and there was the SAT––I will tell you, I had never taken a multiple choice exam in my whole life. So when they said, "two plus two, what is it?" I said, "is this Poincaré?" because both Soviet and French tests are always testing to see what you don't know, unlike American ones, they like to know what you know. So, the result was for me, I did poorly, but thank god because God intervened. There was an earthquake that day, so they attributed this to mental distress. So when Stanford [chuckling] -- my minister of higher education of Iran came to Stanford, they looked and said, "my god you have the lousiest SAT!" till they found out about the earthquake.
Anyway, I finished in two years with honors, and one of the smartest things I did was both history and also humanities honors program, which had five different fields––literature, religion, art history, philosophy, and classics, so forth––and I did the same thing for graduate, five different fields in addition to history. So I have a joint degree in in history and the humanities honors program from Stanford. And one thing happens, I had a great professor advise me, "don't take easy subjects for dissertation, take big ones."
I had written a thesis on Toynbee and Islam, and then that led me to a difficult country, Afghanistan, because I could not write about Iran in case of criticism of anything and so forth. I would make the Armenian community look bad. So I took Afghanistan, got––what do I say?... big money from the Ford Foundation, 11,500 dollars in 1960, and I went to Afghanistan for two years, it was renewed, and then I wanted a job. I never applied for any job in my life, my professors did for me. They were like angels protecting me. One of them said, "aren't you an expert on Irish history?"
"No, I'm not."
"Take three months, study Irish because we are going to the American Historical Association they are looking for an Irish historian over there [chuckling]."
I said, "No, I'm not that versatile." But they took care of me in a sense. And I got two offers: Stanford, 2,700 dollars, to teach western civ, and San Francisco State, 5,200 dollars––I mention this because public universities were better paid at the time than private universities. Things have changed now.
The professor said, "you cannot do prestige: you have married, you have a child, uh, you have to go San Francisco State." Five courses a week, plus teaching extension division Mondays, then Wednesday nights at the Presidio air -- military base, and Thursdays at Hamilton airforce base, and then two consecutive summer sessions. That was San Francisco State.
But the result, for those who read my book or heard, I was chosen to be one of ten best professors in the nation, at the time, through teachers, and I was voted upon by all the radicals, conservatives… all the student body had chosen me without my knowing, and that changed my life. Because of that, I was offered a position at Texas. They said, "you are going to get sabbatical.” I did not even know how to spell sabbatical at the time. And then they doubled the Texas salary.
John Silber, whom you are familiar with here, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences who wanted to hire every Ford Foundation professor who was a good teacher to Boston University.
So he hired Roger Shattuck, and he thought I would go to Boston, but instead I went to the University of Pennsylvania, where I was shareholder and member of a search committee to find a dean, a new dean for the future arts and sciences faculty, and lo behold they appoint me arts and sciences faculty. In one year, five different schools together––college for women, the college, graduate school of arts and sciences, college of general studies. And now looking back, I think they chose me in order to fail rather than succeed, because it was impossible. Had I known I would not have taken the position, there was so much.
But it was this transition that led me to be chosen twenty-third provost of the University of Pennsylvania. And then there's a saga there––Berkeley offered me the position of chancellor. I could not leave the University of Pennsylvania because the president had announced he was retiring, the provost was pushed out, and then the Dean of Engineering had gone to Lehigh, the Dean of Medicine to Harvard, so the faculty signed a petition that said, "you must not leave." And that's where––what you call?––your ego - becomes so big that without you, things will fall apart. I'd forgotten the dictum of Rosovsky, at Harvard: on his desk he had a nice sign, which said, 'cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people.'
But faculty made me feel guilty.
So I turned Berkeley down, stayed there without any arrangement that I'll be president of Penn, but with one condition only: that they have to give me advanced notice to withdraw my name if I am not speculated upon, otherwise I'll resign. But they did not, and they did not take somebody like me who had come from the same background.
I am provost with a good salary, a good reputation, I will resign. I have always done what I said I will do, so without securing any job and so forth, I stepped down, within five-ten minutes of that. There was a riot, there were demonstrations, lawsuits by students, occupational college takeover, all kinds of things. Then, they asked me to speak, which I did. I said, "even if you offer, I have no interest for the job."
So I left Penn. Pretty soon I was asked to go to the University of Miami––the same day. And my wife said, "You are not going to the University of Miami."
I said, "is it not nice? Somebody, within ten minutes, said, 'come be our president.'"
"Why are you going to Miami?"
"I like to feel good. For once somebody wants me, you know?"
So I went to the University of Miami. They offered me the sky, so forth, but I could not take it. And then NYU interviewed me, and would have offered me the job if the Congressman from the 6th district of New York... Brademas, if he had said no, I would have been there.
And that brings me to this gentleman here, Sherman.
During my interview they asked me, "what can you do for NYU?"
I said, "I'll make your law school the biggest, best law school in ten years. No, in five years, with a hundred thousand dollars." I made everybody angry.
"Are you making fun of us?"
"No," I said. There's––what's the name?––a Maytag repair man in the Hague called the International Court Justices, nobody calls them, they simply wait there. I said, "why don't you bring them as ((Hammarskjöld)) lecturers every year? Pretty soon all of them would come, and you have the Institute of International Law at NYU, it's simple."
Then, "what can you do with arts and sciences?"
I was in that kind of mood. I said, "for fifteen hundred dollars I'll make the best arts and sciences department."
So the Dean of Faculty gets upset, "what? Are you making fun of us?"
"No," I said. United Nations has––and I had the list––Fifteen hundred poets, writers, scientists, bored out of their minds going from one speech to another. I said, "make them your private university. Make them adjunct professors of Peruvian literature, of Argentinean history. You don't need offices because they already have offices. They have secretaries, no overhead." I did not tell them, if you added that many, US News World Report would reduce your ranking because they'll add fifteen hundred more faculty and divide the endowment and say, "this place no... " Anyway, "how about housing?"
"Required, everyone has to live within one square mile of NYU, therefore they have to deduct their rent from their taxes because it's part of the requirement..." Anyway, I had a great time!
Then, my last thing I will tell you, I was asked to be President of the University of Michigan, which I would have taken because I'd like to stay with the public universities for a change rather than private after having taught at Texas and having led a faculty rebellion against the regents of the University of Texas. I would have liked to, but one regent of the University of Michigan said, "if you come I'm going to fight you, because your attention will be on"––guess what?––"Flint, Dearborn, rather than Ann Arbor. And I'm not a racist," he said, "I'm a member of NAACP, I pay the annual fee."
I said, "I do pay too, so we have one thing in common at least." So, I turn it down, all hell broke loose, the governor called all kinds of people, he doesn't represent us, you know.
And I took Brown's position, became President of Brown, and I had a great time. And all during my entire career as administrator, I have taught undergraduates, corrected, always, my own exams. I've taught some twenty thousand students. I've corrected all their blue books. No multiple choice exams [chuckling]. And I've kept only one blue book, an intellectual of Europe I taught, the person, during a three hour exam, wrote something, two pages, and left. And I thought, 'my god! Where have I failed... how come I've failed him?' I read, and I wrote a two page commentary on why even those two pages were wrong. And I got it back, it said, "take it easy, Professor Gregorian. I didn't study," he said. "It's not your fault, I did not study." So even in a great rapport, correcting exams says one bad thing about them: you read at the time, you correct, years pass, then you argue with somebody, "I read somewhere, you caught that wrong answer that you corrected, because so many of them you corrected."
So I love teaching, I love my students. Every year I had nine undergraduates as advisees of mine. Till today I write letters of recommendation. They've grown up, and so forth. So I've been very fortunate, from Tabriz, Iran all the way to the Carnegie Corporation, doing what I like most, namely education. Forgive me, it took ten minutes rather than five minutes, describing my entire career.
Teichman: I'd like you to take another twenty minutes describing this. Vartan!
[applause]
It should be obvious by now why we're comfortable both here. I too ran across John Silber, Boston University’s controversial President. He asked me to be the head of Simon's Rock Early College.
We crossed swords when in 1979 there was an attempt by the faculty to unionize, and I marched. I was teaching at BU at that point.
I also later marched in support of the secretaries who were on strike for better salaries and working conditions, and he said, "what are you doing here? Why are you on this picket line?"
I said, "well, I am supporting the secretaries who supported the faculty.”
And he said, "well, in days past there was no such thing as University secretaries."
And I said, "in days past there was no such thing as Boards of Trustees." [chuckling].
I would like to start with a question for you: I'm very concerned about what I would term the deterioration of discourse on campuses. Perhaps ten years ago things were already getting seriously polarized, and we tried to do something about that. One of my students, a Synaptic Scholar, an Institute program that Carnegie supports, Padden Murphy, who I believe is somewhere in the room, became the founding editor of a magazine we started, called Discourse––its subtitle was An Effort At Rational Discourse. Given what you're witnessing on college campuses at this moment, about what you think is the tenor of the times, and what do you think of how administrations are responding?
Gregorian: Well, let me just begin with this: when I was at San Francisco State, nobody would serve as faculty advisor to the Progressive Labor Party, which was Maoist. So the president assigned me. Guess why? I was an assistant professor without any standing and so forth. And I did it, because I got to know SDS and the Progressive Labor Party, so much so that when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet forces, the Peking Review was late, so they came and asked me what they should do. I said, "denounce the Soviet Union." And they did. Two weeks later, the Peking Review came, saying "denounce the Soviet Union!" They thought I knew more than I was claiming.
I always read what my students were opposing, always. Their literature. My successor in my classroom was Hayakawa, who was a great semanticist. He always complained that I did not clean the blackboard. But he called me when I was at UCLA, and he asked me, "What does SDS stand for?" He had no idea! He just knew it was law and order. I always have read all student literature, and always met with them, always respected them. as a matter of fact, because I want to know what motivates them, what their thinking is. So Maoists would come to the classroom and look at the exam, "you must be kidding. There's Vietnam, and you're asking about Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of social contract, what is going on? I'm not going to take the exam." And if you flunked it was retaliation, bourgeois retaliation. But they underestimated me because I knew I had revolutionary exams and ordinary exams. The revolutionary exam asks: cite five major works of Chairman Mao and compare––no, I was not joking, I was serious!––theory of state of Lenin with that of Mao Zedong and so forth. "Can we use the red book?"
"No! Mao is a very intellectual figure. If you quote him, you might as well have read him. You can be revolutionary, but you have to be an educated revolutionary." That was my line.
And recently somebody called me from the Fordham Law School Review. They said, "is it true that the leader of the student uprising––not uprising, opposition––at Brown was an advisee of yours?"
I said, "yes, as a student."
"And is it true that you recommended him to Harvard Law School?"
"Yes."
"Is it true that you recommended him to Justice Breyer, your classmate? She became a clerk in court?"
"Yes." What's the opposition? I treat her as my student. I don't treat her as somebody immovable, unreachable, and so forth.
I'm saying this because I've always had good relations, and I've always have a face-saving device. [To Teichman] I guess I must've told you this.
When I arrived at Brown there were high expectations of me by librarians who went on strike the day I arrived. First day, I arrive, librarians strike. And they wanted double their wages. I don't even know the university's president's office the first day. I don't know the finances of the university. So each time I passed, I put five dollars in the strikers' fund, and that drove everybody nuts. The faculty said, "what are you doing, they have broken the law. Are you rewarding them?"
"No, I'm helping librarians" I said.
The second was, six hundred people signed a petition to me to remove the military because they were on campus to recruit, and Brown has, thanks to me among other, a rule against non-discrimination, so you're violating your rule. And it was serious enough that I addressed the whole campus, everyone, which most Presidents don't do, because they have no respect for secretaries, plant workers and others, but for me everybody was part of the community.
So I wrote this letter after thinking. I found that I had authorized nine Cuban Communist poets, this is a long time ago, to come to Brown campus. Radical students had invited them, and I wanted to be sure they can come. And I found that Cuba had anti-gay provisions in their constitution. And I said, "my god, let me check the Soviet Union." They too. Muslim countries, they too. So then I said, "I have a dilemma. What you are saying on this, unless these countries change their official position, we cannot have any relations with them. Is that what you're saying? If so I cannot do it. Besides, the military can boycott it, they can picket it, and you don't have to go." And that was my answer. I did not claim victory, I did not humiliate them, because they all understood that and paid attention.
Every faculty issue, student issue, is of concern to the university. Unfortunately, faculty abandon the administration. Faculty says students vs administration, as if they have nothing to do with the university. And my position has been that I am representing the faculty and the faculty has to be present. And the faculty says, "can we pass a vote of confidence?"
I said, "no. If I did not have your confidence I wouldn't be here." Period. So, I'm just saying this because my style has been different than other presidents'.
And even the last one––I was away for a funeral, four hundred and seventy five occupied the administration building. They want financial aid now to everybody. Brown is the poorest of the ivy league universities, even though we've done a lot. Now, in my name, Gregorian, we used needs-blind admission, the trustees are against it, so "we're occupying the building forcing trustees to respect Gregorian's wishes." So the first thing I said, "don't call police. Period. Call faculty to come, and campus police." Students always wanted to be arrested, and they were always given amnesty, which is true. But in my case they made this big mistake: they quoted Gandhi, they quoted Martin Luther King, Karl Marx and so forth. So they want to be arrested, they took pictures of victory, our campus police and the faculty members led them to the bus, and the judge was upset because Rhode Island is the only state in the union that has no occupational school building.
So usually they do this and the president gives amnesty, so I said I can't. I respect them as revolutionaries too much to give them respect. You show me one instance when Mahatma Gandhi said to the British, "I did it but now give me amnesty." Or Martin Luther King, or Karl Marx, or Trotsky. It's not a game. You don't cite these names, don't cite Mandela, you know? Study them. So I said I can't do it. I wrote a letter to the judge to be very nice to them. Twenty-seven Lear jets came. From Chicago, seven lawyers came, they were going to have four hundred and seventy six charges against me, and "we're going to ruin your reputation." Well, at the end, they said, "what are you proposing?"
I said, "I don't propose anything." All these lawyers had no standing in Rhode Island, they had flown in. Judge says, "you have no standing." So, to cut long story short, they proposed probation. And the parents said, "why are you doing this?"
"I respect your children, don't you understand? I am for them. If I were a student, I would have done the same thing, but I would not have cited Mahatma Gandhi and all of these people because it implies that you adopt their techniques but not their consequences."
So, then they said, "what are you going to do about the last forty, who are graduating in three-four weeks?"
"Community service."
"Are you kidding? Community service as punishment?"
I said, "noble work, community service."
"What can they do?"
"They should clean the campus with the workers, clean the campus for commencement." And then, they had harassed secretaries of the president's building, and I asked each one of them to write a letter of apology to secretaries. Four hundred and seventy five letters of apology, each one, not collective, and they had to.
And then, time passes, when I'm leaving they come and say, "sorry we gave you trouble."
"Please, I'm not upset with you. I was proud, what you did. Don't misunderstand. But think of the consequences also, because demonstration is fine, but when you occupy something it's not fun, you're putting everybody in a position."
But our faculty was very helpful. In many universities faculty stays behind, watching as an observer. Look at what they're doing to administrators. It's the university that suffers. Until recently, since 1991, no Brown building had been occupied, not the administration.
Last one, there were anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-gay signs one morning. The moment I heard there are signs I said, "let's go to the dormitory."
My vice president said, "what are you doing? It's just ordinary.
I said, "no, it's not ordinary. I go there." So I go there and four hundred people are gathered. They want to go to the president's office to demonstrate there. So I said, "follow me."
They said, "you're highjacking our demonstration."
"I'm not highjacking your demonstration. I'm your... you want to talk to me, I want to talk... " And then I said, "there are many outlets for racism in this country. Brown is not going to be one of them. I can guarantee. The moment I catch anybody I'm going to expel immediately." Then ACLU writes to me, "who do you think you are?"
I said, "have you missed the point of hyperbole? I have to say this because I mean it, but then lawyers can question it, but that's a different thing."
So, I'm saying all of this because I've always dealt with, faculty and others, closely. I've not been an aloof administrator, delegating things, because I care, because the university, in my book, is the faculty. Faculty is the bone marrow of the university, and without great faculty, and a great student body, there is no university. My function as an administrator and your function is to facilitate the learning process, and I believe, speaking of discourse, one of the lines I like very much is Sheridan's Critic, 1799, there's a line there that says, "the number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is precious few."
And always I've said to students, "I'd like you to undergo the fatigue of judging by yourself for yourself, in order to test everything." Because when I came to the states, '56, I was astonished about the John Birch Society, Senator McCarthy, and I bought a book, five cents I remember, Elmer Davis, radio broadcaster, the title of the book was But We Were Born Free.
And that's the important thing many Americans don't realize. For those of us who were subjects come here to become citizens, it's a remarkable thing, that you can challenge the entire system with proper lawyers, etcetera, etcetera.
I had no idea of this, but one thing that impressed me, the first joke, political joke, 1946, it took me six months, I was so dumb trying to understand what its meaning was: an American soldier tells a Soviet soldier, "America is so free, I can go in front of the White House and say, 'Truman, I hate your guts.'" And the Soviet soldier said, "big deal. I can go stand in front of the Kremlin and say, 'I hate Truman's guts.'" It's so simple, I never understood that. And then when I came to the states I understood the importance of the first amendment, the greatest contribution of my hero, Thomas Jefferson, even though they made fun of him in Hamilton's play as a playboy. Greatest contribution, First Amendment, Bill of Rights, where you can get up and criticize everybody, do anything you want as a citizen of the country, and in many instances, even as a foreign student. Because that's a test. You have to speak up. Disruption is something different, you're denying the right of others to speak.
But then, I was hoping you would ask this question because I'm going to leave this with you. This is a gallop poll, a survey of college students and US adults, seventy eight percent of students believe more in first amendment than the general public. So I don't generalize about students, because the gathering, the right of gathering, and gathering becoming a meaningful outlet, for you is different than opposing the First Amendment. So thank god we have the First Amendment. Thank god we have people who care passionately. But faculty equally have to care in order to have true discourse with students and others, rather than walk away, or be rejected, because students are here to learn, and students are here to challenge you. Students are here to show the system's deficiencies. It's nothing to say that we have taken democracy for granted and we're not exercising our responsibilities as teachers and others. University is a place to challenge, to inquire, to respect, to undergo the fatigue of a person learning for themselves.
One more point. I had exams having conservatives defend Marxists, because if you know the logic of your opponents, you're better equipped to deal with issues, rather than saying, "I'm not going to talk." And that's another thing: knowing does not mean you have to accept it. Not knowing weakens you. Is this enough response?
[applause]
Teichman: So a number of years ago, the EPIIC theme was crime, corruption and accountability. We were, and still are, part of Outward Bound. I take my students out to create a team. At this particular weekend they gave us bamboo, and barrels, and twine, and what have you, and the objective was to build a raft that we would then have to take out into the ocean off of Maine's coastline and sail it out around a buoy and get back. We divided the class into crime, corruption, and accountability. You already know the outcome. Crime and corruption made it back, accountability sank. So my sense of this is, what you're talking about really is that we're at accountability, which is, we all need to share, and I think that's been a core passion of the Institute all these years.
Will you take a few questions from the audience?
Gregorian: Absolutely.
I'm Debbie Linnick, I was in Sherman's second class, and I've been a true fan of Sherman and Heather ever since.
Teichman: That's 1987?
Lennick: Yes. You don't miss a year, hat's off. I think that Sherman's first question touched upon the underbelly, in my mind, of how technology and the internet––the negative side of it and our ability to be distanced from one another in our communications, but on the positive side of it there's an opportunity for universities to offer free education much beyond their borders and the outer physical campus. I wonder if you would touch upon this?
Gregorian: Yes. Well Senator Moynihan, who was a shoe-shine boy, who would come to New York Public Library––check in his shoe box, and then go into the library––said once, "people are entitled to opinions, but not facts." Now there is a word, you can go check, mumpsimus, that's the error of the ear, mumpsimus or sumpsimus, look how different. These two monks argue, one says, "the right word is sumpsimus," the other, "I prefer my mumpsimus to your sumpsimus." And that's where we are. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but I prefer to be wrong.
What has happened, there is expansion of information, sea waves, ocean waves of information are coming, we are inundated. But we still have not answered T.S. Eliot's injunction, 'Where is knowledge in information? And where is wisdom in knowledge?'
We have fragmented, we have come in many ways to an age of specialists, specializing in specialities, serving the needs of a specialized society. We don't have any more generalists who would provide answers. So everybody's looking through their little outlets, from a certain point of view. They don't want to be challenged. And fragmentation is one of the worst things that happens in university. University was supposed to be a place where unity of knowledge prevails, but no longer. So the important thing is, social media has to be challenged also, ignoring it is to our detriment. We have to engage everybody, to show, "alright, what do you have to say? On what basis?"
Second, they think if you have footnotes it's scholarly. John Birch Society, the book that I bought, has lots of footnotes, one of them was, 'Eisenhower is a conscientious agent of world communism.' I was astonished. Eisenhower, head of... yeah, because, Mrs. Roosevelt had chosen him in Texas in order to betray the United States in Berlin by giving Berlin to the Soviets. That was Eisenhower's decision. All footnoted, to New York Times and so on. Footnotes don't mean a thing unless you also challenge the sources. Now it appears that I have my knowledge set, you have yours, there is no common ground, and you build on each other's thing. That's why it's important to have the kind of conversation for you to be able to defend others.
Now, Bill Buckley was a good social friend of mine, we did not agree on many things. One evening, he was talking about everything, and I said, "Bill, do you believe in original sin?"
"Of course," he said, "I'm a Catholic, good Catholic."
"You can't be right all the time, can you?" He never recovered from it. I'm just saying, you have to work on people and say, "do you know everything?" That's the way I said it. John Silber, you mentioned, I was asked to join the BU board by David Riesman, because I'm the only one, he said, who can talk to John Silber as a trustee, I was a trustee. And I did. I said, "John? Yeah, fine. Can we––you're right. Can we talk now?"
Teichman: [laughing] wish I had that line.
Gregorian: It's important to know, for us to question, we have to always be able to question. If we don't respond to somebody... That's why I don't give up with that. I say, "tell me, teach me. What are your sources?" I look at my syllabi, I'm surprised that I had Hayek there, I had Milton Friedman. At the time, I did not know that you're not supposed to be conservative at radicals, conservative at liberals, all of them together, in order not to allow somebody to generalize without knowing different sources. And that's one of the things, unfortunately, I think is not happening now. People try to bring them to their domain.
There are questions of inequality. There are questions of racism. There are questions of sexism. They should openly discussed, from all sources and so forth, rather than one-dimensionally. And we have also to agree once in a while we were wrong. You know, such a nice thing, "I was wrong, sorry. I read the original thing. I was wrong." Such a liberating thing. Especially in college, you're learning, it's a place to learn. Later you can disown your college days, about your record. Many people now don't run for office because they wrote a paper in high school or college which was wrong. They said, "you know, you got only a D." Nothing anymore is sacred, private. As a result, people always want to talk only about things they know a little bit about, and if you question, they think you're giving them a hard time.
So, there is no conversation. You go anywhere, in New York, and there are no conversations. You can talk about sports: "Oh, did you know the Yankees won?"
"Yeah, how about it? Wonderful team." You can talk about the weather: "Oh, how about this lousy weather."
"Oh yeah, what such lousy weather."
"Did you know such and such had a mistress?"
"Oh, well..."
So, if you say, "let's discuss structural racism..."
"What are you talking about? Trying to ruin the party?"
"Let us discuss inequality."
"What are you trying to do?"
So, it's taboo. Now, thank god everybody talks about Trump, alright, as an excuse. (47:15) But, this point of information being as important as the rest. So I do the following: [to audience member], let me have your iPhone. [showing iPhone] Ladies and gentlemen, entire Greek literature here, entire Marxist literature is here, entire liberation theology is here. Isn't that wonderful? You still have to read it. Otherwise, you're in the storage business. So I have much storage, I parked all of it. It doesn't impress me. If you're a storage business, there are many storage businesses. What credit can you have, if you know where it's stored? Knowing a little bit, or having read one book, is very dangerous, people always refer to that book. Evangelicals do that, others do that. Catechism––when you ask a question, which I did, they said, "you should talk to my father."
"Your father is not here." Because I said, "are you sure Christ was against violence?"
"Yes!"
"But what do you call it when he expelled everybody from the temple when they engaged in business and so forth?"
"Well, you should ask my father."
Alright.
Teichman: [choosing from the audience] David?
Hi, David Puth. I actually was in Sherman's first class, which goes back even a little bit further, eleven years earlier, so the fall of 1978.
Teichman: I was here for one semester, '78.
Puth: So I'm patient zero. Thank you very much for sharing those thoughts. Could you talk a little bit more about the collision of first amendment rights and hate speech, and how––I mean, having the world open its eyes, and open its mind, and read more, and talk more is a wonderful thing, but we're in a society where people, as you correctly highlighted, are not taking the time––so how do you reconcile hate speech on one hand that seems to be proliferating, and I think it's proliferated for as long as our country has been around, with the first amendment rights?
Gregorian: Well, hate speech started in World War I. The reason there is academic tenure is because trustees of institutions thought you were in the hate business. Darwinism was hate speech in World War I. To oppose World War I was hate speech. That's why tenure emerged. Before that, the only time tenure was given, to protect faculty from all kinds of opinions and so forth, was under Bismarck. Bismarck made the professoriate into the tenured social bureaucracy of Prussia in order to keep continuity. There have been hate speeches all the time, some of them valid, some of them, the only outlet they have is a university––because there is no outlet for some of them, hate speech or opposing views and so forth––and some are exaggerated, sometimes all the ills that the Irish... I don't know how many of you saw Lincoln in New York in the 1860s, there's an exhibition in New York––there were violent things about the Irish, the Irish were worse than negroes, they said, Irish were lousy, Irish were agents of the pope, and so forth. All the time in our history, we have hate speech.
But people have not been mesmerized and stuck there. They've gone beyond that. Otherwise, if I resuscitated what––Armenians were prohibited to live in certain districts of Fresno, because they were from the Middle East, until one rich guy brought pigs to the best part of Fresno, and said, "well, you remove anti-Armenian clauses, I'll remove the pigs." So we have had these hate speeches, it's not some new thing.
Every phase, people let it out. Its how you treat it, how seriously you treat it. Israel is the best place for hate speech. You know why? They all disagree with each other, they call each other names, but they don't exclude each other from society. When I was president of the New York Public Library, the only place where you could see a Trotskyite, Maoist, Orthodox Jew, and Reform Jew was at the Jewish division. They all sat in order not to face each other. And I read Jewish books, a Jewish weekly every week, and thought, "why are these things said in Israel that you could not say in this country?" But they feel its their own community. You can have an outburst and later you can apologize, withdraw, and change your opinion. We have to treat this as routine rather than as extraordinary, frankly. That's the way I have treated it, as normal. You're so angry, you let it out, but that does not mean you have to dehumanize others because you are dehumanized. You have to bring out the humanity in each person.
One of the things I always worry about, how conscience is missing, how humanism is missing now. And that's coming to your question, I'm very worried about a technical generation, technicians, without any of the liberal values, such as religious values, philosophical values, atheist values and others, that allow us to serve as each other's keepers.
[applause]
[choosing from the audience] Yes?
Singh: Hi, my name is Kahran Singh, I was in EPIIC 2009-10, South Asia. I graduated 2011. I'm asking... to bring that point directly to today, when you look at the anti-Muslim record in this country, how do you feel about that? Does that concern you, or do you feel like it is still within what you see as a pattern and within what we've seen before?
Gregorian: Yeah, each time, it's different. They're never the same. The worst thing we can do is walk away. That's the saddest thing that could happen, if somebody is trying to engage you and you walk away, especially in university, because they have no outlet.
Second is, use of religion. Nobody has mentioned religion. Religion was created to show––and I'm just coming to that––what unites us, supposedly. I've attended maybe fifty interfaith meetings. Jews, Christians, Buddhists––including the Dalai Lama––Muslims, and others. What worries me, they meet as an ecumenical group––same thing as university, we are an ecumenical society––and I sum it up the following way: the Catholic bishop tells the Methodist bishop, "brother, we both serve the Lord, you in your way, and I in His." So in a sense, that's a dialogue, supposedly, but it's not dialogue, it's trying to score points. Now people have stopped using [the term] Abrahamic faiths, though I have always used Abrahamic faiths, many philosophers have used Abrahamic faiths, with three religions of Abraham at the center: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. But nobody wants to recognize that because that means you lose the exclusivity in a sense. So, use of religion is now the scariest thing for me, in all countries, because in the name of purity it dehumanizes others. Namely, and this is what many people have said in the past, including Bishop Pike, categorization is sin.
So long as you categorize any group, any individual, you begin to dehumanize them eventually. Take Nazis and Jews. They were not killing Jews, they were solving a problem. The problem is, we want a perfect square, there are certain branches that don't fit, so I'm eliminating this. "Some of my best friends, my doctor is Jewish, my shoe-shine man is Jewish, my gardener is Jewish," or you could even say, "my gardener is Muslim," so forth––they don't think in terms of individuals, because then they have no guilt, you are solving a historical problem, whether it's in Czechoslovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and so forth.
Another one, religion joined with nationalism definitely is destroying the kinds of relationships that exist. For example, Stolypin in 1911 was Russia's Prime Minister, he said, "the best way to kill revolutions is to use nationalism." And he did. He sent people to... fomented anti-Semitism, that Jews are using Christian blood, pogroms, so forth. It's easy, because you are thinking of eternity, you are going to earn eternity, you're going to have God. And who is there to deny that to you?
So that's the second thing. Now it's different. In the past, the Renaissance and the Reformation, all of you know, start with religious warfare. But you had theologians. Catholic power, as well as Protestants, used theologians to score points. Now religious leaders are very smart, in all countries. They make politicians speak on their behalf, and stay behind-the-scene. So here in the middle of all of this Muslim situation we don't have any Muslim theologians attacking each other, whereas during the Reformation we had Luther, Erasmus, Calvin. Luther as a matter of fact was accused by Erasmus of being the Anti-Christ because he had married a nun who was supposedly pregnant at the time.
You don't have this kind of... Among Shias you have hierarchy, but with Sunnis unfortunately you don't have hierarchy, so somebody will say, theologically, "you cannot do that, it's a sin for you to do that," and you don't [listen], because all of them have been undermined in the past by secular power. The forces have changed because the best option for the masses now is religion, interpreted by you, not by anybody else. Because you don't even want to talk about past theological writings. ISIS says, "forget about that." In Timbuktu, they were going to destroy all the Muslim manuscripts. Thank god for this one librarian, who saved thousands of manuscripts. They're not interested in interpretation, because they say the book in itself tells it. Literal interpretation of the Q'ran, where you have one thousand years of interpretations. If you block them out, then you can do anything. And that's one of the things that are dominating.
