HumanitiesMassA Publication of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities Fall 2004

2004 COMMONWEALTH HUMANITIES LECTURE

Are We Still a Commonwealth? Markets, Morals, and Civic LifeEarlier this year, the Massachusetts Foundation for theHumanities, in partnership with the MassachusettsInstitute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) inau-gurated the Commonwealth Humanities Lecture, anannual lecture with a $5,000 award honoring aMassachusetts humanities scholar or writer for his orher contributions to our understanding of public lifeand civic affairs in the Commonwealth. The award isunderwritten by a generous gift from The AtlanticMonthly magazine.

The 2004 CommonwealthHumanities Lecturer wasMichael J. Sandel, Ann T.and Robert M. Bass Professorof Government at HarvardUniversity. He was selectedfrom a stellar group of nomi-nees representing virtuallyevery humanities discipline.The lecture was held at theNational Heritage Museum inLexington on June 10, 2004.

A member of the HarvardUniversity faculty since 1980,Professor Sandel teaches courseson contemporary politicalphilosophy, the history ofpolitical thought, globaliza-tion and its discontents, ethicsin biotechnology and markets, morals and laws. Over11,000 students have taken his undergraduate courseentitled “Justice,” making it one of the most popularcourses in the history of Harvard. In 1999, he wasnamed a Harvard College professor in recognition of hiscontributions to undergraduate teaching.

Professor Sandel’s publications include Democracy’sDiscontent: America in Search of a PublicPhilosophy, which was the subject of his interview inthe fall, 1996 issue of Mass Humanities. He also haswritten Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,Liberalism and its Critics, and articles in scholarlyjournals, law reviews, and general publications such asThe Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, andThe New Republic. In 2002 he was named to thePresident’s Council on Bioethics, a national bodycharged with advising the President of the United Stateson bioethical issues raised by advances in biomedicalscience and technology.

I am deeply honored to be selected as the firstCommonwealth Humanities Lecturer. I would liketo express my gratitude to the boards of MassInc andthe Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Iwant also to thank Ian Bowles of MassINC and

David Tebaldi of the Massachusetts Foundation forthe Humanities for that warm and generous intro-duction. These organizations are dedicated to thehealth of civic life in Massachusetts and beyond, andto the enduring questions of value and meaning thatthe humanities explore. So it is a special thrill to beinvited to join you here tonight. I have chosen as mytopic a theme that I hope will connect the missionsrepresented by these two great organizations. Myquestion is, “Are we still a commonwealth?” Inanswering this question, I would like to explore the

expanding role of marketsin contemporary public life.And I would like to suggestthat the tendency towardsthe commodification andcommercialization of life putsthe commonwealth ideal inquestion.

Let me first say a wordabout what a common-wealth is. To speak ofMassachusetts as a com-monwealth is to invoke aresonant ideal with a longtradition. It is to invoke away of thinking about poli-tics that says a politicalcommunity is not only anassociation for the sake of

enabling people to pursue their private interests.According to the commonwealth ideal, politics isn’tjust about aggregating people’s preferences andinterests. Politics is not economics by other means.Even to speak of the state as the “public sector” is todepart from the commonwealth ideal. To speak ofthe public sector implies that public life is a sector ofsome more fundamental activity, namely economics.

But the commonwealth ideal insists that public lifehas a higher, more dignified purpose than aggregat-ing and satisfying people’s individual preferences andinterests. What is that purpose? It is pursuing thecommon good. A commonwealth is a place that cul-tivates citizens who care for the public good and whoare good at deliberating about common purposesand ends. How then could the expansion of marketsand economic ways of thinking possibly threaten thecommonwealth ideal? That is the question I wouldlike to address.

Let me now turn to the expansion of markets, to thecommodification of everything. After the cold war,market economies stood triumphant. More than

Inside:The Political Dr. Seuss

page 3

Interview with DavidHalberstam

page 4

30th AnniversarySymposium & Benefit

Dinnerpage 12

30HumanitiesMASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION FOR THE

Celebrating Three Decades of Bringing Ideas to Life

TRAVEL TO PORTUGALWITH THE MASSACHUSETTSFOUNDATION FOR THEHUMANITIES

Cosponsored by the Center forPortuguese Studies and Culture atUMass/Dartmouth

Saudades de Portugal March 11-18, 2005

Join our 2005 Traveling HumanitiesSeminar and immerse yourself in the richhistory and fascinating culture of whatonce was the most powerful and adven-turesome nation on earth. Visit Lisbon,Sintra, Évora. Explore prehistoric sights,Roman ruins, Moorish castles, fairytalepalaces, Gothic cathedrals, extraordinarymonuments from the Age of Discovery,whitewashed villages, and UNESCOWorld Heritage Sites. All for $2,744 pp/do.

Come next March, we’ll be ready for aweek of balmy Mediterranean weather!For more information, visit www.mfh.organd click on the Traveling HumanitiesSeminar button, or call David Tebaldi at(413)584-8440.

Above: Sintra Palcio-Penx

Below: Lisbon streetcar

Humanities Lecture continued on page 8.

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Main Office66 Bridge Street

Northampton, MA 01060(413) 584-8440 Fax (413) 584-8454

www.mfh.org

Metro Boston Office125 Walnut Street

Watertown, MA 02472(617) 923-1678 Fax (617) 923-8426

STAFFMain Office, Northampton

David TebaldiExecutive Directortebaldi@mfh.org

Maria HealeyAdministrative Assistant

mhealey@mfh.org

Kristin O’ConnellAssistant Director

koconnell@mfh.org

Anne RogersSystems Managerarogers@mfh.org

John SierackiDirector of Development

jsieracki@mfh.org

Hayley WoodHumanities Programs Director

hwood@mfh.org

Metro Boston Office

Ellen K. RothmanAssociate Director

ekrothman@mfh.org

Zachary HowardAdministrative/Program Assistant

zhoward@mfh.org

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

PresidentJohn M. Dacey

Winchester

Vice-PresidentCullen Murphy

The Atlantic Monthly

TreasurerSusan Winston Leff

Brookline

ClerkDavid J. Harris

Medford

Chet AtkinsConcord

Ricardo BarretoUrbanArts Institute

John BurgessBoston

Edward ByersCarlisle

Alix CantaveRoslindale

Rhonda Cobham-SanderAmherst College

Claudette CrouseTopf Center for Dance Education

Dianne Fuller DohertyLongmeadow

Charles FarkasCambridge

Judy GreenBoston

Janette GreenwoodClark University

Orlando IsazaHolyoke Community College

Yu-Lan LinBoston Public Schools

Ingrid MacGillisPittsfield

Suzanne MaasWhitinsville

Donald MelvilleMassachusetts Cultural Council

Nancy NetzerBoston College

Martin NewhouseWinchester

Frank SousaUniversity of Massachusetts/Dartmouth

THE HUMANITIES…

Are what we do when we reflect upon our lives,when we ask fundamental questions of value,

purpose and meaning. The MassachusettsFoundation for the Humanities promotes the use

of history, literature, philosophy and the otherhumanities disciplines to deepen our understand-ing of the issues of the day, strengthen our senseof common purpose, and enrich individual andcommunity life. We take the humanities out of

the classroom and into the community.

The Massachusetts Foundation for theHumanities, a private, nonprofit, educational

organization, receives funding from the NationalEndowment of the Humanities; the

Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency; and private sources.

30HumanitiesMASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION FOR THE

Celebrating Three Decades of Bringing Ideas to LifeBringing Mass Moments to LifeIn late August, the Massachusetts Foundation for theHumanities received word that it has been awarded $73,710 infunding from “We The People,” the National Endowment forthe Humanities’ American history initiative.

In celebration of our 30th anniversary, we are using the WTPmoney to produce a radio and Internet “almanac” onMassachusetts history. Beginning on January 1, 2005,AM andFM stations around the Commonwealthwill begin broadcasting a one-minute“Massachusetts moment” at least once aday every day of the year. Each of the 365spots tells the story of a person, place, orevent from the state’s history.

Listeners who want to know more areinvited to go to the website that we aredeveloping with the help of webmasterMark Roessler. In addition to streamingaudio and the script, there will be abackground essay, a primary source, animage, and links for every story. A time-line and map will provide historical andgeographic context. The site will besearchable by date, topic, region, andtime period.

The hunt for Mass Moments hasengaged—in some cases, obsessed—the Foundation’s staff for the past year.We’ve found them everywhere: in thesports section of the Boston Globe(“Pittsfield celebrates link to game’s ori-gin,” July 22, 2004), in places we’ve vis-ited (Walden Pond), in books we’ve read (A Perfect Storm)and in movies we’ve seen (Good Will Hunting). Some of thebest stories have come from humanities projects we’ve fund-ed—“Lifting the Veil: Remembering the Burning of theUrsuline Convent,” “The Trial of Anthony Burns,” “TheMoby Dick Marathon”—and films such as Murder atHarvard and Tupperware!

We asked local historical societies around the state to help.That effort brought us Lowell’s Bucky Lew, the first African

American to play on an integrated basketball team;Amesbury’s George McNeill, “the father of the eight-hourday”; and Newton’s Charles Redding, an African-Americansailor who was serving on the USS Kearsarge when it sankthe CSS Alabama in June 1864.

We’ve discovered that interesting things have a way of hap-pening on the same day of the year—for example, February

20. In 1815, the Boston-built USSConstitution, the oldest commissionedwarship in the Navy, captured twoBritish men-of-war in an encounter offMadeira. On February 20, 1834, femalemill workers in Lowell “turned out” toprotest a wage cut in one of the firstdemonstrations of women’s willingnessto strike. And on February 20, 1874,Worcester tax collectors put up for pub-lic auction the home of reformers AbbyKelley and Stephen Foster because thecouple had refused to pay taxes toprotest the fact that women sufferedfrom “taxation without representation.”Other days seem woefully under-popu-lated by noteworthy events. So far, theonly story for June 25 comes from 1630,when Governor John Winthrop intro-duced the fork to American dining.

Heard occasionally or every day, discov-ered by web surfers or regular e-mailsubscribers, Mass Moments will fire thehistorical imagination of listeners andremind them of what we at the

Foundation deeply believe and what most young childrenalready know: that history is not boring when told as storiesabout real people and places.

For a list of stations carrying the series, go to www.mfh.org.

Note: If you know of a good story from the history of your cityor town, please send a brief description, including one or morespecific dates, to EKRothman@mfh.org.

J A N U A R Y 8 T H

On this day in 1851, North Adams cele-

brated the start of work on a tunnel

through the great wall of rock that

loomed above the town and sealed off

the northwest corner of Massachusetts.

By the early nineteenth century, the

Hoosac Mountain Range was an obsta-

cle to the state’s economic growth.

Products from the west moved down

the Hudson River to New York, rather

than eastward across Massachusetts. A

canal was considered but never built; a

rail line over the mountain proved slow

and dangerous. In the end, North

Adams decided on a railroad tunnel

through the mountain. It took more

than 20 years, 21 million dollars, and

the lives of l96 men before the first

train passed through what was then the

second longest tunnel in the world.

Above: Profile of Hoosac Mt. showing

tunnel, 1877.

Right: East portal of Hoosac tunnel,

Florida, MA, c. 1910.

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Over four years after receiving his first MFH grant for The Political Dr. Seuss, film-maker Ron Lamothe has completed the 90-minute documentary. It will be broadcaston PBS’s Independent Lens on October 26. The film interweaves narration, expertcommentary, archival footage, and a treasure trove of stills, including Dr. Seuss’sfamous illustrations and photographs from his youth. The film tells the story ofTheodor Seuss Geisel’s life, focusing especially on politics and how Geisel used hisart and humor to express his views on topics ranging from World War II fascism tothe arms race.

Historian Richard Minear of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst served asthe film’s chief humanities scholar. Minear is the author of Dr. Seuss Goes To War:The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1999), the first book toput Dr. Seuss and his works in a political context.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born to a well-off second-generation German family inSpringfield, Massachusetts in 1904. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1925,he went on to Oxford University expecting to earn an advanced degree in Englishliterature. However, after a year as a graduate student, during which he met his futurewife, fellow American Helen Marion Palmer, Geisel toured Europe for several monthsand then returned home in 1927.

Determined to start a career as a cartoonist, Geisel submitted work to New York edi-tors. He sold his first cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post; it appeared on July 16,1927and was signed “Seuss.” On the strength of this success, Geisel moved to New York.His breakthrough job was offered to him by Judge Magazine, a social humor weekly,where he was writer and artist for $75 a week. It was while working for Judge that headded “Dr.” to his signature to stand for the doctorate he didn’t receive at Oxford. Hestarted to earn a handsome living when he secured a lucrative advertising contractwith Standard Oil of New Jersey, the company that made Flit bug spray.

Geisel had illustrated five books, most of them for children, before he began creatingpolitical cartoons for the new, leftist tabloid newspaper, PM, in 1941. His view wasstraightforward: America needed to join World War II to defeat European fascism.The Roosevelt administration was eager to intervene, but F.D.R had made a cam-paign promise that American soldiers would not be sent to fight foreign wars, and thenotion of the U.S. joining the conflict was far from popular at the time. Hitler wasprominently lampooned in most of Geisel’s PM cartoons. The second most featuredpublic feature was Charles Lindbergh, whom Geisel relentlessly portrayed as a Nazisympathizer and isolationist (another recurring Geisel character was the ostrich).

After the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Geisels moved to California, where Geisel hadan Army commission with Frank Capra’s Signal Corps unit: a Hollywood studio formaking war propaganda films known as “Fort Fox.” In uniform, he produced weeklytraining pieces, animated shorts, and lengthier documentary films.

After working in major studios as a screenwriter for seven years, Geisel decided towork exclusively on children’s books. He and Helen bought a home in La Jolla in1948 and lived there full time. It was here that the Dr. Seuss known to so many hithis stride. His political didacticism and allegorical bent were not gone, rather theywere more fully developed, and themes he had explored as a political cartoonist andwartime filmmaker made their way into his best-loved classics.

Anti-isolationism is espoused in Horton Hears a Who (an allegory about the need forthe U.S. to help Japan after the war), racial equality in The Sneetches, anti-authoritari-anism in Yertle the Turtle, anti-materialism in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and envi-ronmentalism in The Lorax. Horton and Yertle had predecessors in the PM cartoons.The arms race is criticized in The Butter Battle Book, which continues to inspire very

good classroom discussions, as viewers of The Political Dr. Seuss will note during a mem-orable scene at Amherst’s Wildwood Elementary School in which the fourth-gradeclass discusses the Cold War, conflict resolution, and the nature of allegory.

The Butter Battle Book was Geisel’s most controversial work, criticized widely for beingtoo frightening for children and for not using the typical happy ending format.Responding to an interviewer who asked if he had second thoughts about tackling thenuclear threat in a children’s book, Geisel responded, “I thought it might be too much,but evidently it isn’t . . . . Given a certain amount of vocabulary, I think kids can com-prehend anything. As far as the ending goes, I think kids can argue about it.”

In 1957, Geisel established the Random House Beginner Books series with the pub-lication of The Cat in the Hat, which was written from a list of 225 easy-to-readwords. In spite of this daunting limitation, the book (and later the series) was a hugesuccess with children, parents, and educators. Even The Cat in the Hat is subversiveand about flouting authority, although order is restored in the end.

Geisel saw himself following in the tradition of nonsense and fantasy writers such asEdward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and P.L. Travers. At a 1949 writers’ conference at theUniversity of Utah, he laid out his philosophy of children’s literature: “This is thecrux,” he lectured. “A man with two heads is not a story. It is a situation to be builtupon logically.” Seuss often spoke about the books he read as a child, which fosteredin him a love of words and rhyming verse—titles such as The Hole Book by PeterNewell and the Goops books by Gelett Burgess, as well as The Bad Child’s Book ofBeasts and Cautionary Tales for Children, both written by Hillaire Belloc.

He attributed his success as an illustrator and its positive effect on children to hislack of art training. He once said: “I find most kids draw as I do—awkwardly . . . . Achild’s idea of art is a pen-and-ink drawing filled in with flat color . . . . That’s justthe way kids see things.”

The Political Dr. Seuss BY HAYLEY WOOD

Above: Dr. Seuss cartoon from PM

Magazine (1942). Courtesy of Mandeville

Special Collections, University of

California, San Diego/ITVS

Left: The Sneetches. Courtesy of Dr.

Seuss Enterprises/Random House/ITVS

Right: Ron Lamothe

(Producer/Writer/

Director/Editor for

THE POLITICAL

DR. SEUSS).

Courtesy of Richard

Finkle/ITVS

MASSACHUSETTS EXHIBITS CELEBRATING DR. SEUSS

Dr. Seuss National Memorial at the Quadrangle, Springfieldwww.catinthehat.org/memorial.htmSculptor Lark Grey Dimond-Cates, who is also Geisel’s stepdaughter, createdthe bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss and his most beloved characters for theSpringfield Library & Museums Association, located in the heart ofSpringfield. The setting was developed by the landscape architectural firm ofStephen Stimson Associates of Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Seuss on the Loose in SpringfieldConnecticut Valley Historical Museum at the Quadrangle, Springfield.A permanent exhibition that tells the story of Theodor Geisel’s childhood inSpringfield with family photographs and genealogical information about theSeuss-Geisel family history. The exhibit features comparisons of Dr. Seuss’sfanciful illustrations with actual places in Springfield that he would haveknown. Included are photographs and memorabilia from Kalmbach & GeiselBrewery, the family business founded by Ted’s grandfather.

Seuss ScapeConnecticut Valley Historical Museum at the Quadrangle, Springfield.A small play area for young children with bright, colorful walls illustrated withscenes and creatures from Dr. Seuss’s books. Activities include a push-buttonlistening station where children can hear the Cat in the Hat talking, Dr.Seuss books, child-size furniture, and a display of Dr. Seuss toys inspired byhis books.

Broadcast premiere Tuesday, October 26 at 10 p.m. on PBS (90 minutes):www.pbs.org/independentlens/politicaldrseuss/index.html

Interview with filmmaker Ronald Lamothe:www.mfh.org/lamotheinterview

4

Refreshing Our Historical Memory:AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID HALBERSTAM

DAVID HALBERSTAM, journalist, historian, andbiographer, is one of this country’s most distinguishedsocial and political commentators. He is the author of16 books, 14 of them bestsellers. His reporting on theearly years of the Vietnam War won him the enmity ofthe Johnson administration and the Pulitzer Prize(1964) at the age of 30. His epic work on that war,The Best and the Brightest, first published in 1972,is now in its 20th edition (from the Modern Library,with an introduction by Senator John McCain – ofwhich Halberstam is particularly proud, having beencriticized for a lack of patriotism earlier in his career).Halberstam has also written on the role of the mediain the shaping of American politics (The Powers ThatBe); the American economy’s relationship with theautomobile industry (The Reckoning); and the CivilRights Movement (Freedom Riders), as well as sportsand other non-political topics. His 2002 study ofUnited States foreign policy from the end of the ColdWar to the beginning of the War on Terror, War in aTime of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals,was a runner-up for the Pulitzer. In 2003 he editedDefining A Nation: America and the Sources of itsStrength, a collection of essays by leading historiansand writers seeking to understand the American expe-rience in all of its complexity.

Halberstam will be the keynote speaker at theFoundation’s 30th Anniversary symposium and benefitdinner, “U.S. Presidents in Perspective: The ShiftingFortunes of Presidential Reputations,” on November 20,2004 at Boston College. He was interviewed for MassHumanities by MFH Executive Director David Tebaldiat his home on Nantucket Island.

David Tebaldi: Let’s talk about some of the lessonsof Vietnam and whether they apply to the war inIraq. In reading your 1973 masterwork about theearly years of the Vietnam War, The Best and theBrightest, I was struck by the persistence of a numberof themes that you explore in the analysis and com-mentary surrounding the present conflict.

David Halberstam: I think Vietnam and Iraq aredifferent and yet there are a lot of parallels. There’senough there to make you very uncomfortable if theway you see these things is shaped by our experiencein Vietnam, as it is for me and so many of the seniormilitary people . . . .

I remember during Vietnam there was a generationof correspondents, some of the older ones, who werevery tough on us younger correspondents becausethey had been in Korea or World War II and thosewars had worked and there was a legitimacy to whatwe did then. And some of them were very quick toput down the younger reporters who were saying,“This doesn’t work.” I had vowed never to be one ofthose who says, “Guys, you just don’t know . . . I wasin Vietnam and I know things you don’t know.” Youknow, pulling seniority and perhaps living in thepast. So I was somewhat reluctant to talk too muchabout Iraq. But gradually, as we got nearer to it, Ibegan to speak out.

There were four or five points I was trying to makebefore the invasion. One was that we were going topunch our fist into the largest hornet’s nest in theworld and end up doing the recruiting for Al Qaeda.I said that I thought that we would do the race toBaghdad very well—that the sheer military partwould go well because our military is just very good,marvelous people, and our technology is awesome.But then the battle would change; we would beinvolved in urban guerilla warfare, and things wouldturn against us.

I said that I thought the movie that they were allwatching in the White House and the Pentagon wasPatton, and the movie they should have been watchingwas The Battle of Algiers [the 1966 quasi-documen-tary film about the Algerian struggle for independencefrom France in the late 1950s].

There is a moment in a war—as there was inVietnam and as there will be in this war—whereyour military superiority is undermined or neutral-ized by your political limitations. And I thought thebiggest miscalculation of all was a great underesti-mation of the colonial factor, just as there had beenin Vietnam. In Vietnam the U.S. absolutely hadrefused to factor in the effect of the FrenchIndochina War. And I felt the specter of colonialismwould be a problem again in a more complicatedway with Islam.

The greatest miscalculation was not about theweapons of mass destruction, but the idea that wewould be greeted as liberators. When the Bush peoplekept talking about that, alluding to what happenedin France and Germany after World War II, well,anybody who had been in Vietnam would have beenwary of it. There was just no way we were going tobe greeted as liberators in this part of the world. TheIraqis might want to get rid of Saddam Hussein, butthey would not want us to do it for them. I was say-ing these things before they happened and not justex post facto.

DT: I heard they were watching The Battle of Algiersin the White House. What do you think we canlearn from it?

DH: Well, they finally did. About a month later theysent out a memo saying people should watch it. Butwhether it will have the same impact on someonewho has never worked in the postcolonial world,never went to Vietnam, and has a fervent belief, post-Cold War, in American triumphalism, is anotherquestion.

It’s scary. And you can just see it happening again.Islam is aflame at this moment, and modern tech-nology, especially television within the Arab world,is fanning the flame. The wise policy for the UnitedStates in the Middle East is to try very hard not tobe a lighting rod for all the unhappiness that per-vades the region. The Islamic Middle East is a placeseething under modern conditions because it haslost its grandeur in the world. And we should not bea lightning rod for that resentment.

And another thing of historical importance in thiswar is that for the first time in history, Westerntroops fighting on Arab territory would be coveredlive and in color by Arab networks. That was boundto have a profound impact.

DT: Reading your discussion of the war in Bosnia inWar in a Time of Peace, I was struck by how the Serbs’memory of events that occurred in Kosovo four cen-turies ago was still fresh in their minds. They seemto have a different, a deeper historical consciousnessthan we do. I wonder if the same isn’t true of peoplein the Middle East.

DH: I’m not an expert on the Middle East. I’m awareof the limits of my legitimacy as a critic, but becauseof Vietnam, I have a sort of “sixth sense” of what we’reworking against. They have a different sense of time.When Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times vis-ited Hanoi in 1966, Pham Van Dong, the NorthVietnamese Prime Minister asked him, “How long doyou Americans want to stay? One year, two years,three years, five years, ten years, twenty years, fiftyyears? We will be glad to accommodate you.”

5

One of the important things to understand about theVietnam War is that the other side, the NorthVietnamese and Vietcong, always controlled the rate ofthe war. If they needed to regroup, they could slow itdown and go to kind of a one-cell, very small war. Ifthey wanted to make an impact on American television in an election year, they could come with enormous forces as they did with the Tet offensive. I think thesame is true in the kind of urban guerilla war we findourselves fighting in Iraq.

DT: Another interesting parallel is the so-calleddomino theory. The argument in Vietnam was if we letVietnam fall to the communists, then all of SoutheastAsia would become communist. Early on in the Iraqwar, defenders of U.S. policy were telling us that if we geta functioning democracy going in Iraq, then democracywill spread to the other nations in the region.

DH: I would be very dubious of such claims. If therewere dominos in Vietnam, they were all different sizesand shapes and colors. For example, Thailand was verydifferent from Vietnam because it had had no colonialexperience.

Our almost unique historical ignorance of Vietnamhad heartbreaking consequences. Every soldier in theMilitary Assistance Command in Vietnam wore apatch. It was red and gold, and it showed a sword—our sword—piercing the Great Wall of China. Wewere going to save Vietnam from the Chinese com-munists. But we never took into account thatVietnamese nationalism is historically, profoundlyanti-Chinese. Ho Chi Minh once said, “Better to eatthe French dung for 100 years than the Chinese dungfor 1,000.” This patch, which so many young menwore so bravely in a country they should never havebeen in, is tangible evidence of how profoundly thearchitects of the war misunderstood Southeast Asia.

Someone who knows the Middle East better than Icould give you a good briefing on why each of thesecountries is different, why they don’t like each other, whytheir histories and politics are different, and why we aremore likely to trigger region-wide animosity than gainregion-wide benefits by doing what we’re doing.

DT: Another persistent theme is the intelligence “fail-ures” that characterize both the Vietnam War and theIraq War.

DH: Inevitably, intelligence gets tailored to the desiresof the people who want to pull the levers. One of themany cruel lies that Robert McNamara [Secretary of

Defense under Kennedy and Johnson] tells in his bookis that he and the other senior architects of theVietnam War could never get the information theywanted. That’s a blood libel for all those thousands ofyoung men and women who served in the military, theState Department, the intelligence agencies—implyingthat they were too incompetent or dishonest to reportaccurately. And it comes from one of the principal vil-lains on that particular score—the man who was theprimary slayer of the honest messenger.

We corrupted intelligence in Vietnam, and we haveclearly corrupted larger intelligence in Iraq. I wouldnot be so hard on the failure to find weapons of massdestruction. I would be harder on the claim that theyhad proof, when they clearly didn’t.

But the most egregious failure of intelligence was thebelief that we would be greeted as liberators, with flow-ers thrown in our path. This is the greatest failure ofthe intelligence people, and it is shocking if people donot push on this harder than they are.

DT: So what do you think the United States shoulddo now?

DH: That’s a really hard question. In Vietnam all wehad to do was go home as the French had done. TheVietnamese didn’t want to follow us, they just wantedtheir own country back. This is much more explosive.These guys want to follow us home. This war is goingto be a rallying point for all kinds of forces against us.

DT: I wonder what would happen if we did just gohome. What would become of Iraq? Would the situa-tion really be any worse than it is now? So much of theinsurgency seems to be fueled by our presence there.

DH: I think that it would be chaotic. The mullahswould come to power. Iraq would become theocratic.Because of the power of the Iranians on the border,in the long run the pro-Iranian factions would prob-ably rise. None of this is particularly favorable to us.

DT: One of the themes in both The Best and theBrightest and War in a Time of Peace is the extent towhich foreign policy is driven by domestic politics.

DH: I think that the great weakness in most Americanreporting is the failure to make that case. This ideathat politics stops at the water’s edge is a great illusion.When Johnson dealt with Vietnam what he was deal-ing with was a fear of what had happened toDemocrats in Congress when China fell to theCommunists. He would say things like, “TheDemocrats lost China; when they lost China, they lostthe Congress. I’m not going to be the President of theUnited States who loses Vietnam, and loses the Congressand loses my Great Society.”

The politics that drove the Vietnam War were rootedin the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Everybodyknew that Chiang had gotten all the help in theworld. He didn’t fall because he wasn’t given enough;he fell because he wasn’t up to the job. But it becamea very convenient weapon for the Republicans, whohad been out of power for a long time – they had lostfive presidential elections in a row – to use against theDemocrats. A lot of stuff flowed from that, including,finally, Vietnam. Johnson really was afraid of beingaccused of being soft on communism. And that was apowerful motivator.

And you can see that in the recent Iraq debate. I thinka lot of senators who may have had doubts were fearfulof being accused of being weak at a time, post 9/11,when Americans were very anxious.

DT: I know you are currently working on a book aboutthe Korean War. Was Korea a positive experience, pos-sibly a misleading lesson for Vietnam?

DH: Well, it was a more positive lesson than Vietnam.It was a traditional border crossing. It was not a guerillawar, and we were able to use our power and technologymuch differently than we did in Vietnam. HadMacArthur not made the great miscalculation,telling Truman the Chinese would not come in and ifthey do come in it will be the greatest slaughter in his-tory, the outcome would have been much different.MacArthur was wrong. The Chinese did come in, andthey inflicted some terrible defeats on us. If we haddone Korea without that vainglory, and used our supe-rior air power and artillery and technology, we wouldhave gotten more than a tie.

As it was, it was a reasonably good outcome. Theycrossed the border, they thought they could drive us offthe Korean Peninsula. We were ill prepared at first; wehad a rather weak army at the time, but we came up tospeed very quickly and did rather well. There were noborder crossings after that. In fact, I think the nextborder crossing was Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.

DT: How did you get interested in the Korean War asa subject?

DH: I think Vietnam did it. If you were in Vietnam andyou got a sense of the misjudgment, Korea interestedyou. And especially the moment when the Chinesecame in there—the tragic miscalculation of MacArthur,his vainglory. I think that’s what has always been in theback of my mind—the sense that your country canmake such bad judgments with such profound conse-quences, that people whom you admire and believe in,or are supposed to admire and believe in, can makemajor miscalculations.

DT: In closing, can you talk a little bit about the topicyou will be addressing at our 30th Anniversary eventon November 20th—the shifting fortunes of presiden-tial reputations over time?

DH: What’s interesting is how much they change. Asthey leave the White House, presidents are often viewed

Is Iraq “Another Vietnam?”

Halberstam Interview continued on page 6.

Above: David Halberstam (second from left) in the Central

Highlands of Vietnam (Dak Pek) during the fall of 1962. From left,

Mert Perry, Newsweek magazine; Halberstam, New York Times corre-

spondent; U.S. Army Special Forces Capt. George Gaspard; Lt. Peter

Skamser, and Sgt. Charles Walsh.

6

in the short range, and their personal qualities—theirwarmth, charisma, affinity with the American peo-ple—tend to dominate. Later their reputations will godown or up.

Roosevelt left with a kind of Herculean, Rushmoreanreputation, and I think it has stayed up there. He broughtthe country through both the Depression and World WarII. Truman obviously left at a low point in his reputationbut has gained in stature almost constantly since.

Reagan’s reputation is going to be very interesting towatch. He was enormously likeable, obviously. A lot of people felt that the country was stronger because he waspresident. That’s not necessarily true. But I think therewere a lot of people who had a jarred sensibility becauseof Vietnam and confused failure there with weakness as anation. I never really got Reagan. Part of the reason was Inever thought we were weak because of Vietnam or weakbecause of the Iranian hostage thing. I thought Vietnamwas an aberration, a miscalculation of applying forcewhere it wasn’t applicable. I always thought the commu-nists in Moscow were weaker, that their system didn’twork and ours did, and that therefore we were stronger. Ididn’t have that sense of the vulnerability of America. ButReagan made a lot of people feel more confident, betterabout their country, and that’s important.What’s going tobe interesting is what historians have to say about him 30years from now when there’s almost nobody around whowas affected by the sunniness of his smile.

I expect historians will have a very hard time withReagan because his charm and the mood he created inthe country will seem less important. Against thatthey’ll mark the fact that he systematically under-mined the government of the United States in the eyesof ordinary people. That’s a very troubling thing. There

are things there that he’s going to be judged on oncethe impressions of his charm are gone.

Will they look at Jimmy Carter 30 years from now andthink that, in spite of the hostage crisis, what he did onthe Panama Canal, the Camp David accords, and theattempt to change the nation’s energy policies, make him a better president than he is generally thought tohave been?

The great 64 billion dollar question will be the com-plexity of Richard Nixon. We’ll have revisionism, andrevision of revisionism, and revision of revision of revi-sionism. He certainly had talents, but there was alsothat unhappy psychic quality of his that was so dam-aging and so alienating. If he were judged just on hispolicies, he would be a pretty admirable president. Butthe anger just under the surface in him, which, in time,jarred the nerves of so many Americans, is going to bea very hard thing to figure in.

With Lyndon Johnson, they’ll go back and forth. Inthe wake of the Vietnam War, when he left office,Johnson’s reputation was unacceptably low for some-one who was such a large figure. When they take hismeasure in 50 years, it will be much more mixedbecause of the civil rights act and the war on poverty.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be perceived, I think, as a major American achievement. And anachievement for Johnson, who knew that even as hewas doing it, he was doing irrevocable damage to hisown party. The night he signed the legislation, heturned to Bill Moyers [a speechwriter in the JohnsonWhite House at the time] and said, “I’ve just turnedthe South over to the Republicans for your lifetime andmine.” But he knew he had no choice.

It’s hard to measure Kennedy because his presidency wasso brief, a thousand days. But, his modernity, theattempt to see the world the way it was, the fatalism, the shrewdness, the good historical sense. All these thingsmatter. You’d be glad to see him in there today maybe—a good, skilled, pragmatic, professional politician.

I’ll tell you one thing about Clinton. He could take anyissue and make it accessible to ordinary people. He’s the quickest guy we’ve ever had in reading any politicalsituation. And about the time he might have gotten the full benefit of his second term, he did his stupid Lewinsky thing. He shot his own toes off. So there’salways going to be that sense of what might have beenwith Clinton.

But Nixon is going to be the great debate. I can just seeit: It’ll be the year 2030 and some bright young historianfresh out of Harvard or Yale or Princeton, who was noteven born when Richard Nixon was president, is going todo a brilliant book on how much more benign Nixonwas than any of us ever understood. The debate betweenthe programmatic Nixon and the real Nixon is going tobe a hell of a debate. It’ll be a great thing for historians.

That’s why I think you’ve chosen such an interestingtopic for the symposium on the November 20th. I’m real-ly eager to hear what such a remarkable group of presi-dential biographers, historians, and commentators has tosay. And a number of these folks are old friends of mine.

See U.S. PRESIDENTS IN PERSPECTIVEon back page.

Halberstam Interview continued from page 5.

Recent Grants GREATER BOSTON AREA

$1,680 to the Royall House Association in Medford forcreation and development of a website promoting anhistoric Georgian home.

$4,000 to the Discover Roxbury/Bridges Programto support a series of five “moving lectures” – trolleytours of Roxbury’s historical and cultural sites.

Byron in Eliot Graveyard

State Representative Byron Rushing leading a tour at the Eliot

burial site in Roxbury. Photo: Marcia Butman

$3,500 to the National Heritage Museum in Lexingtonfor a reading and discussion program and film seriesin conjunction with an exhibition of artifacts fromthe American West.

SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS

$5,000 to the Center for Independent Documentaryin Sharon to fund completion of a trailer for an hour-long documentary entitled Plastic: Credit Cards andthe Culture of Debt by director Tim Wright.

Cool Shoppin’ Barbie. Courtesy: Tim Wright

$4,980 to the Center for Independent Documentary inSharon to cover costs of producing a teaching guideto the film Monkey Dance, a story of three Cambodian-Americans coming of age in Massachusetts.

NORTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS

$3,400 to the City of Salem Park and RecreationDepartment to support four free public programs inthe Witch House Family Program Series, presentinginterpretations of the Salem witch trials and thesocial history that gave rise to them.

$3,600 to the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trustfor a community history project focusing on theConcord River in Lowell.

CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS

$5,000 to the Worcester Women’s History Project tosupport production and promotion of performances ofYours for Humanity – Abby, an original, one-womanplay about Worcester abolitionist and women’s rightsadvocate Abby Kelley Foster.

WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS

$3,480 to Montague Community Cable Incorporatedto create an archive of interviews with Montague resi-dents and produce an oral history video presentationto be shown in conjunction with the town’s 250thanniversary.

Right: Three

Cambodian-

American teenagers

come of age in Julie

Mallozzi’s documen-

tary, Monkey Dance.

Photo: Andrew Page

7

Humanities CalendarOTHER EVENTSOUR 30TH ANNIVERSARY

For 30 years, the Massachusetts Foundation forthe Humanities has enriched our civic cultureand strengthened our democracy by bringing thelessons of history, the insights of literature, andthe moral clarity of philosophy out of the class-room and into the community. We create oppor-tunities for the people of Massachusetts to read,write, and reflect; to form meaningful attach-ments to the places they inhabit; to explore thepast; and to engage in stimulating conversationsabout the future.

To celebrate our 30th Anniversary year, theFoundation has planned an array of programsopen to the public to highlight the richness anddiversity of critically-acclaimed humanities workin each region of the Commonwealth.

Western Massachusetts

“Tupperware!” Screenings Followed by discussions with filmmaker LaurieKahn-Leavitt. Tupperware!, a critically acclaimedAmerican Experience documentary, tells theremarkable story of Earl Silas Tupper, an ambi-tious but reclusive small-town inventor, andBrownie Wise, the self-taught saleswoman whobuilt him an empire out of bowls that burped.

When: Tuesday, September 28, 7-9pmWhere: Sullivan Lounge, Massachusetts

College of Liberal Arts,North Adams

When: Wednesday, September 29, 6-8pmWhere: Triplex Theater, Great BarringtonPhone: (413) 528-8885Website: www.thetupperwarefilm.com

Founding Farms An exhibition of photographs by Stan Shererfeaturing five of the oldest family-run farms inMassachusetts, with text profiles by Michael E.C.Gery taken from interviews with the farm familymembers. The exhibit will travel in November tothe Worcester Warner Reed Community Housein Cummington. Conversations with photogra-pher Stan Sherer and receptions are beingplanned. Additional venues for the exhibitinclude the Andover Historical Society, andHolyoke Heritage State Park.

When: Opening Friday, October 1Where: Simon’s Rock College,

Great Barrington

Greater Boston

U.S. Presidents in Perspective: The ShiftingFortunes of Presidential ReputationsAn afternoon of conversation with JoyceAppleby, Douglas Brinkley, Kathleen Dalton,John Dean, Susan Dunn, David Halberstam,Douglas Wilson, and other prominent presiden-tial biographers discussing changes in presiden-tial reputations over time. The symposium will befollowed by a benefit dinner for ticket holdersfeaturing David Halberstam and our panelists.

When: Saturday, November 20,12:30-5:30pm

Where: Robsham Theater, Boston College

Southeastern Massachusetts

Project 2050A youth performance named for the year when itis projected that people of color will become themajority in the United States, directed by theNew WORLD Theater at the University ofMassachusetts Amherst.

When: Week of October 11Where: New Bedford High School

Northeastern Massachusetts

“Monkey Dance” ScreeningFollowed by discussion with the filmmaker, JulieMalozzi. The film follows three Cambodian-American teenagers as they come of age inLowell and confront choices that reflect theoften-conflicting claims represented by ancestraltraditions, personal aspirations, and the values ofAmerican consumer culture.

When: Saturday, November 6, 2004,3:30pm

Where: North Shore Community College,Lynn

Western Massachusetts

Distinct Cultures: Native American andEuropean Relations in Colonial WesternMassachusettsIn the colonial era, the western MassachusettsBay Colony was home to Native Americans andEnglish settlers. Throughout the 17th century,Native and European nations alike crafted politi-cal, military, and trade alliances to advance theirown interests. Dr. Kevin Sweeney, AmherstCollege, will examine how these alliances guidedand defined relationships among these powers.The seminar will include a tour of the ground-breaking exhibit Remembering 1704: Context andCommemoration of the Deefield Raid as well as theopportunity to view two related exhibits at thePocumtuck Valley Memorial Association,Introducing a Native American Perspective andCovering Up History: Rethinking Memorials.

When: Wednesday, October 13, 2004,12pm to 4pm

Where: The Flynt Center of Early New England Life, Historic Deerfield,Deerfield, MA

Cost: BSHL members: $25.Non-members $35.

Abolition in 19th-Century MassachusettsDr. Bruce Laurie, Professor of History at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst, will explorehow antislavery sentiment evolved in ruralMassachusetts in the decades immediately pre-ceding the Civil War. Participants will explorewho became involved in the movement and why they did so.

When: Wednesday, October 20, 2004,12pm to 4pm

Where: Historic Northampton,Northampton, MA

Cost: BSHL members: $25.Non-members $35.

Industrialization and De-Industrialization inthe Connecticut River ValleyDr. Elizabeth Sharpe, independent scholar, willexplore how industrialization, and later de-indus-trialization, affected the development of townsand cities in the Connecticut River Valley.

When: Monday, November 1, 2004,12pm to 4pm

Where: Wistariahurst Museum,Holyoke, MA

Cost: BSHL members: $25.Non-members $35.

A Place Called Paradise: The Making ofNorthampton, MassachusettsA lecture series exploring 350 years ofNorthampton in conjunction with exhibits ofart, textiles, and artifacts.

Where: Wright Hall Auditorium,Smith College, Northampton

LECTURE TOPICS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

Alma Mater: Smith College and ChangingConceptions of Educated Women, presented byHelen Lefkowitz Horowitz.

When: Sunday, October 3, 2pm

The View Through the Eye of the Needle:Gender, Artisanry and Craft Tradition in EarlyNew England, presented by Marla Miller.

When: Sunday, November 14, 2pm

The Scarlet Professor: The Newton ArvinScandal, presented by Barry Werth.

When: Sunday, December 5, 2pm

Understanding the Modern Middle EastReading and discussion program developed byMFH to give the general reader an opportunityto learn more about the present-day MiddleEast. Through lectures devoted to a wide arrayof topics, some of the region’s most engagingacademics will present a lucid, in-depth look atthis culturally rich and often misrepresentedpart of the world.

Where: Clapp Memorial Library,Belchertown

When: Monday, October 18, 7-9pmPhone: (413) 323-0417

Where: Berkshire Athenaeum, PittsfieldWhen: Tuesday, October 5, 7-8:45pmPhone: (413) 499-9484(Continued next column)

(Understanding the Modern Middle East Con’t.)

Where: Wheeler Memorial Library, OrangeWhen: Wednesday, October 27, 7-9pm

Wednesday, November 17, 7-9pmWednesday, December 15, 7-9pm

Phone: (978) 544-2495

Greater Boston

“The Political Dr. Seuss” PremiereThis fascinating documentary illuminates the lifeand work of the most influential children’s writerof our time, the enigmatic Theodor Geisel, a.k.aDr. Seuss. Geisel held strong political views onsubjects as far-reaching as environmentalism andisolationism. Filmmaker Ron Lamothe traces theevolution of Geisel’s art and political philosophy,and shows how Seuss combined his delightful,otherworldly creations with moral parables,teaching children not only to be better readers,but better people as well. In-depth interviewswith his widow Audrey, his biographers, and hislongtime publisher and editor at RandomHouse—not to mention Geisel’s own wordsthrough voice-over—bring the man to life.

When: Thursday, October 14, 6:30pmWhere: Massachusetts Museum of Fine

Arts, BostonCost: MFA members, seniors, and

students $8; general admission $9

Discover RoxburyA series of narrated trolley tours of historicRoxbury with stops at key landmarks.

Where: All tours pick up at Back Bay Station (9am) and Ruggles Station(9:10am), or meet at the start of the tour at the Dillaway-Thomas House, 183 Roxbury Street at 9:30am.

Cost: $30 fee includes lunch.Pre-registration required.

Phone: (781) 861-8893 or (617) 541-3900 x222

Website: www.discoverroxbury.org or www.actroxbury.org.

Roxbury in Colonial TimesA colonial history of Roxbury guided by StateRepresentative and historian Byron Rushing.Stops will include the First Church of Roxbury,Highland Park, and the Shirley-Eustis House.Includes lunch at Merengue.

When: Saturday, October 30, 9:30am

An In-Depth View of the Museum of theNational Center of Afro-American ArtistsE. Barry Gaither, director of the museum andinternationally renowned expert on the art ofthe African Diaspora will provide a tour of theNCAAA. The museum holds the finest in con-temporary and historical expressive black artsfrom the global community. Includes lunch atKeith’s Place.

When: Saturday, February 12, 2005,9:30am

Industrial and Immigrant RoxburyState Representative Byron Rushing illustratesRoxbury’s 19th century progression from a homeof new immigrant groups to a center of bustlingindustry and commerce. Stops include theMission Church, Hibernian Hall, and brewerieson the Stony Brook River. Includes lunch atUnited House of Prayer for All People.

When: Saturday, April 2, 2005, 9:30am

“Tupperware!” ScreeningsFollowed by discussions with filmmaker LaurieKahn-Leavitt. Tupperware!, a critically acclaimedAmerican Experience documentary, tells theremarkable story of Earl Silas Tupper, an ambi-tious but reclusive small-town inventor, andBrownie Wise, the self-taught saleswoman whobuilt him an empire out of bowls that burped.

When: Monday, October 4, 12:30pmWhere: Brandeis University’s Women’s

Studies Research Center, WalthamWebsite: www.thetupperwarefilm.com

At Home with the PastA daylong series of lectures on interpreting his-toric house museums for the 21st century.

When: Friday, October 1, 8:15am-6pmWhere: Boston Athenæum, with a

reception at the Nichols House Museum

Cost: $75, $35 for students, add $20 for optional lunch at Club of Odd Volumes

Phone: (617) 227-6993Website: www.nicholshousemuseum.orgE-mail: nhm@earthlink.net

First Annual Conference on AfricanAmerican Art: Bridging the GapsCentered on the theme of “Bridging the Gaps,”the conference will explore the generational,methodological, and ideological gaps that existwithin the field of African American art. It willalso examine the gaps that arise from differingdefinitions of African American art and art ofthe African Diaspora. The conference willinclude panels and moderated discussions and isorganized by the W.E.B. DuBois Institute forAfrican and African American Research atHarvard University.

When: Friday, November 5 through Sunday, November 7

Where: Harvard University, CambridgeContact: Karen Dalton:

kcdalton@fas.harvard.edu or (617) 496-2872 or (617) 495-1875

Southeastern Massachusetts

Understanding the Modern Middle EastReading and discussion program developed byMFH to give the general reader an opportunityto learn more about the present-day Middle East.Through lectures devoted to a wide array of top-ics, some of the region’s most engaging academicswill present a lucid, in-depth look at this cultural-ly rich and often misrepresented part of the world.

Where: Brewster Ladies LibraryWhen: Thursday, October 7, 7:30-9:30pm

Thursday, October 21, 7:30-9:30pmPhone: (508) 896-3913

Where: Walpole Public LibraryWhen: Tuesday, October 26, 7-9pm

Tuesday, November 9, 7-9pmTuesday, November 16, 7-9pmTuesday, December 7, 7-9pm

Phone: (508) 660-7334

Where: Mansfield Public LibraryWhen: Tuesday, October 26, 7-9pm

Tuesday, November 9, 7-9pmTuesday, November 30, 7-9pmTuesday, December 14, 7-9pm

Phone: (508) 261-7380

Northeastern Massachusetts

Nathaniel Hawthorne LecturesThe latest lecture in the MFH-funded series,“Hawthorne’s Friends in Salem: The Non-Literary Companions He Chose,” will be pre-sented by Thomas Woodson, Professor Emeritus,Ohio State University and principal editor offourteen volumes of the Centenary Edition of theWorks of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

When: Thursday, October 7, 7pmWhere: The House of the Seven Gables,

54 Turner Street, SalemPhone: (978) 744-0991Website: www.7gables.org

Understanding the Modern Middle EastReading and discussion program developed byMFH to give the general reader an opportunity tolearn more about the present-day Middle East.Through lectures devoted to a wide array of topics,some of the region’s most engaging academics willpresent a lucid, in-depth look at this culturally richand often misrepresented part of the world.

Where: Amesbury Public LibraryWhen: Tuesday, October 5, 7-9pm

Tuesday, October 19, 7-9pmPhone: (978) 388-8148

8

this, a certain market triumphalism began turningmarket economies into market societies. By a marketsociety, I mean a society in which all good things can,in principle, be bought and sold for money, a placewhere everything is a commodity. The problem is thatmarkets are not morally neutral instruments of pro-duction and exchange. Some of the good things in lifeare diminished or degraded if bought and sold formoney. In some cases, this is obvious. Consider friend-ship. Suppose you want more friends than you have.You wouldn’t think of going out and buying one. Whynot? It wouldn’t work. A hired friend would not be thesame as a real one (though he might be a helpful ther-apist). Somehow the money that seeks to buy thefriendship corrupts it, or at least turns it into some-thing else.

Consider a less obvious case—books. Books are eco-nomic goods, in a way. You can’t go into a bookstoreand just walk out with the book. You have to pay for it.So a book is a commodity in a certain sense, but notcompletely. The character of books in this respect hasbeen changing over the last fifteen or twenty years.

I used to be naïve. When I went into a bookstore, Iassumed that the books in the window or on the tablein front of the store were there because the owner orthe manager of the bookstore thought they were ofspecial interest or importance. I’vesince learned that in many book-stores, that’s no longer the case. Inmost chain bookstores, such asBarnes and Noble, the placement ofthe books in the windows or on thefront table is paid for by the publish-ers. Of course, paying for favorableshelf space has long been common insupermarkets. When you go to thegrocery store and you find Coke orPepsi at the front of the store, or acertain kind of potato chip or pretzel,you don’t think it’s there because thestore thinks it is the best brand. Youknow that the company paid for thespecial display. But now books areincreasingly sold like pretzels and pota-to chips and soda. They are more fullya commodity than before.

The same creeping commercialism isworking its way into many domains ofpublic life. A controversy arose a few weeks ago whenMajor League Baseball announced that it had made adeal to advertise the new Spider-Man movie byimprinting all of the bases in major league stadiumswith the Spider-Man logo. Many baseball fans wereoutraged. It’s not that a baseball field is a commercial-free zone. Billboards have long adorned ballparks, andeven Fenway Park has those big Coke bottles beyondthe green monster. But somehow people didn’t like theidea of Spider-Man on the bases. Major LeagueBaseball withdrew the plan. Underlying the oppositionwas the intuition, perhaps, that ads on the bases wouldbe a kind of transgression—a tacky intrusion on a fix-ture of the game that should remain pure and untaint-ed by commercialism.

Just recently The Boston Globe had an article aboutMassPort offering corporations naming opportunitiesat Logan Airport, including, for example, sinks in thebathrooms, the luggage carousels, maybe even the con-trol tower. Naming rights at the airport may be lessobjectionable than at Fenway Park. But the questionsget harder when we come to a proposal in theMassachusetts legislature last year to sell naming rightsand corporate sponsorships to the state parks, forestsand recreation areas. The president of theEnvironmental League of Massachusetts asked, “Whystop at parks? We have a lot of rivers that have old,unremunerative names. Take the Charles,” he said.

“It’s named for a British monarch who paid hardlyanything and got 300 years of free PR.” A BostonGlobe editorial worried that, if the proposal wereadopted, Thoreau’s Walden Pond might become “Wal-Mart Pond.”

Selling naming rights to state parks and forests is moretroubling than placing ads on the luggage carousels atLogan Airport. The reason is that public parks andforests cut closer to the commonwealth ideal. They notonly constitute a shared public space that we inhabitand enjoy; they also work on us as citizens, and accustomus to think of ourselves as trustees for future genera-tions. State parks and forests are important not only assites for recreation but as physical, natural embodi-ments of the civic landscape.

The attempt to sell naming rights to state parks andforests is but one example of a trend toward what ispolitely called “municipal marketing,” a growing indus-try. In recent years, companies have sprung up thatspecialize in selling corporate naming rights for citiesand municipalities. Huntington Beach, California,recently sold Coca-Cola exclusive rights to the softdrink sales on its property for the next 10 years—for $6million in cash. San Diego has made Pepsi its officialsoft drink in exchange for $6.7 million for 12 years. Lastyear, the mayor of New York City hired the city’s first

chief marketing officer, with the mandate to sell nam-ing rights to parts of the city. One of his first deals wasa $166 million contract with Snapple to be the officialdrink of New York City, including the exclusive right tosell its juice and water in the vending machines in thecity’s public schools.

Municipal marketing goes well beyond soft drinkendorsements. Cities that need new police cruisers cannow acquire them, complete with sirens, computers,and flashing lights on the top— for one dollar each.The catch? These are not the traditional black andwhite police cars. They are vinyl-wrapped cars,enveloped in commercial advertising. You have proba-bly seen buses and trolleys shrink-wrapped in this way.Instead of an ad on the side of the bus, the entire vehi-cle is swathed in an ad for a movie, or a bank. But howshould we feel about a police cruiser brought to you byDunkin Donuts or the local hardware store? At leasttwelve police departments across the country havesigned up for the deal.

It is worth noticing that the reach of markets into thecivic sphere is more than a matter of commercializingpublic spaces. The commercializing trend is occurringat the same time as a privatizing trend. Even as policedepartments around the country are consideringwhether to turn their police cruisers into rolling bill-boards, the provision of police protection itself is shifting

from public to private auspices. About two decadesago, the census found that the number of people work-ing as police officers in the United States was exceededby the number of people working as private securityofficers. Americans now spend $40 billion a year onpublic police and $90 billion a year on private security—in shopping malls, airports, residential communities,retail stores, and the like. So even as we debate thecommercialization of police cars, police protection as apublic good is giving way to privatized security.

Here is another case of ad-draped cars that poses achallenge to the civic realm: In Minneapolis a coupleof years ago, elementary school teachers were offered away of earning some extra money during their summervacation. General Mills was rolling out a new type ofbreakfast cereal called Reese’s Puffs, a cereal with thetaste of Reese’s chocolate and peanut butter candy. Toadvertise the new cereal, the company hired elemen-tary school teachers to have their cars wrapped in thebright orange logo of the Reese’s Puffs cereal box. Theidea was that the teachers would drive around townand park in the school parking lot when schoolresumed in September. The teachers, dubbed “free-lance brand managers,” were paid $250 a month.When the marketing scheme provoked a public outcry,General Mills withdrew it.

Over the last two decades, commercialadvertising has become a prominentpresence in the classroom. Students inschool districts across the country canlearn about nutrition from curricularmaterials helpfully supplied byHershey’s Chocolate or McDonald’s;Procter & Gamble offers an environ-mental curriculum that teaches thatdisposable diapers are actually good forthe earth. And Campbell’s soup com-pany has provided schools with freescience kits that show students how toprove that Campbell’s Prego spaghettisauce is thicker than Ragu.Increasingly, public school districts des-perate for funds find themselves facedwith a devil’s bargain. Channel One, afor-profit television network, is themost infamous example. The networkoffers cash-strapped schools free tele-vision sets, video equipment, and asatellite link in exchange for an agree-

ment to show students its news program every day,including the two minutes of commercials. Because itplays to a captive audience, Channel One is able tocharge advertisers premium rates. The commercializa-tion of the classroom highlights the tension betweenunbounded markets and civic ideals. The purpose ofpublic education is not to provide basic training for aconsumer society, but to cultivate citizens capable ofthinking critically about the consumer society theyinhabit. Infusing the classroom with consumerism is atodds with this civic purpose.

Another example of market values crowding out publicpurposes can be seen in the outsourcing of war. Onestriking feature of the American military presence in Iraqis the heavy reliance on soldiers for hire, or “privatecontractors,” as we call them these days. These privatecontractors are not just building roads and repairing theelectrical grid. The people providing military protectionfor Paul Bremer, the American head of the coalitionauthority, are not from the United States army. They’refrom a private company hired by the Pentagon. At leastone of the U.S. interrogators charged with prisoner abuseis a private contractor. In fact, if you add up the numberof security personnel in Iraq, the second largest contin-gent, after the 135,000 U.S. military personnel, biggerthan any other country’s contribution, consists of privatesecurity contractors. Some say our “coalition of the will-ing” is better described as a “coalition of the billing.”

Humanities Lecture continued from page 1.

From police protection to public schools to militaryservice, the fundamental institutions of public life areincreasingly marketized, commercialized, or privatized.Even the ultimate civic act of voting is now subject, insome respects at least, to market forces. During the2000 presidential election, a web site called“VoteAuction.com” offered people an opportunity tobuy and sell their votes through the internet. The web-site contained a statement explaining that it sought tocombine the American principles of democracy andcapitalism by bringing the big money of campaignsdirectly to the voting public. Rather than waste moneyon television ads and bumper stickers, those who caredintensely about the election could pay people directlyfor their votes. The website packaged the votes state bystate. All who wanted to sell their votes from a particularstate were combined, and their votes were subject tocollective bidding. The website displayed a state-by-state grid showing the number of votes being offered ineach state, the number of electoral votes, and the currentprice per vote. Not surprisingly, closely competitivestates with large electoral votes commanded a higherprice per vote. When I checked the website in Octoberof 2000, the price per vote in Michigan was $22.73,compared to only $6.08 per vote in Massachusetts.

Some states’ attorneys general tried to shut down thewebsite, citing state laws against buying and sellingvotes. But VoteAuction.com does raise an interestingquestion: What is the difference, really, between anoutright market in votes and a very widespread andwidely accepted feature of our political debates andcampaigns, namely candidates pandering to the eco-nomic self interest of their constituents? Suppose, forexample, that a candidate says, “Elect me, and I willgive you a $500 tax cut.” Or, to be strictly nonpartisan,consider a candidate who says, “Elect me, and I willgive you a better prescription drug benefit than myopponent will.” Votes can be bought, after all, withbenefits as well as with money.

What, morally, is the difference between buying votesoutright and appealing to constituents on the basis oftheir economic self-interest? If you think about it, bothoffer a financial reward in exchange for a vote. If it’sdisreputable for me to sell my vote to a party boss for$500, the old-fashioned kind of corruption, why is itreputable for me to cast my vote for the sake of a $500 tax cut? It’s $500 either way. It’s true, we prohibit theone and celebrate the other. But why? It might beargued that the tax cut or benefit comes from public funds, whereas the bribe comes from private funds. But this makes the tax cut worse. If voters have to be paidoff, better that it be done with private money thanwith taxpayer dollars. So that can’t be the difference. Itmight be argued that the campaign promise might notbe kept and so won’t exert as strong an influence as an outright bribe. But this suggests, perversely, that the

moral superiority of the campaign promise rests on the fact that the politician who makes it might not keephis word. So that can’t be it. Some might reply that thecampaign promise is public and available to everyonebut the bribe is secret and offered only to certain peo-ple. But many campaign promises, either to cut taxesor to dispense benefits, are also targeted at particulargroups or at least have highly differential effects. In anycase, if bribes are wrong because they’re offered tosome people and not to others, why not universalizethem? Why not let votes be bought and sold openly, ason VoteAuction.com, enabling everyone to buy andsell at the going rate?

The reason these attempted distinctions do not suc-ceed is that they share the assumption, familiar in ourpolitics, that the purpose of democracy is to aggregatepeople’s interests and preferences and to translate theminto policy. If that theory of democracy is right, thenthere is no reason in principle not to allow a free mar-ket in votes. Such a market would allow people toweigh their preferences, decide how much they caredabout the outcome, estimate the likelihood that theirvote would make the difference, and decide whetherthey would rather sell their vote than cast it. Ademocracy such as this would carry to completion themarketizing logic unfolding in our time. But it wouldnot be a commonwealth, because it would give up onthe project of cultivating citizens who care about thecommon good.

It is often assumed these days that democracy andmarkets are one and the same principle, that eachreinforces the other. I have tried in this lecture to sug-gest that this is not necessarily so, that civic ideals andmarket practices can sometimes be in tension. Today,in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking,we are all too tempted to think of democracy in eco-nomic terms alone. That is why it is worth askingwhether we are a commonwealth still. To put thatquestion at the center of our public debate, we need toremind ourselves of the civic goods that markets donot honor and money cannot buy.

9

Commonwealth Humanities Lecturer Michael

Sandel was presented with a pewter Revere

Bowl inscribed with the following statement

from the Preamble to the Constitution of the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1780: The

Body-Politic is formed by a voluntary association

of individuals: It is a social compact, by which

the whole people convenants with each Citizen,

and each Citizen with the whole people, that all

shall be governed by certain Laws for the

Common Good. (From left, Ellen Dunlap,

MFH President; Professor Sandel; Ian Bowles,

MassINC Executive Director; and Corby

Kummer, Senior Editor for The Atlantic

Monthly who presented Professor Sandel with

a check for $5,000.)

A N N O U N C E M E N T

Nominations are now being accepted for the2005 Commonwealth Humanities Lecture,which will be delivered on Thursday evening,March 31 at the National Heritage Museum inLexington.

Nominees should be individuals whose work isgrounded in the humanities and whose scholar-ship or writing has advanced our understandingof contemporary issues or civic life inMassachusetts. Nominees must live or work inthe Commonwealth. The winner will be expect-ed to give an original and substantive addressthat engages scholars as well as the general pub-lic. The lectureship carries a $5,000 award.

Nominations may be submitted via e-mail(chl@mfh.org), by fax (413-584-8454), or byregular mail (MassHumanities, 66 Bridge Street,Northampton, MA 01060). Please tell us thename and address of the individual you arenominating and provide a statement (one pageor less) explaining why he or she should be hon-ored with this award.

The deadline for nominations is Friday,December 3, 2004.

30HumanitiesMASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION FOR THE

Celebrating Three Decades of Bringing Ideas to Life

10

“Understanding the Modern Middle East”

The Foundation’s newest scholar-led reading and dis-cussion program, Understanding the Modern MiddleEast, began in three libraries this September, and willbe offered in eleven more libraries over the next sever-al months.

Designed as a sequel to the Foundation’s extremelypopular Understanding Islam, the new series combinesreadings from a single text with lectures and discus-sions, and is funded in part by a grant fromMacNeil/Lehrer Productions’ “By the People” project.

The text for the program is Between Memory andDesire: The Middle East in a Troubled Time by R.Stephen Humphreys, Professor of History and IslamicStudies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Over twenty scholars from area colleges and universi-ties are participating. Their lecture topics are describedin a catalogue, which is available from the Foundationoffice in Northampton.

Participating libraries include Amesbury PublicLibrary, the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, theClapp Memorial Library in Belchertown, MansfieldPublic Library, the Wheeler Memorial Library inOrange, Walpole Public Library, Brewster LadiesLibrary, Peabody Institute Library of Danvers,Westfield Athenaeum, Fall River Public Library,Upton Public Library, the Thomas Crane PublicLibrary in Quincy, Leominster Public Library, andWellesley Public Library.

The program is free and open to the public.Participants purchase their own copies of the book.Contact the library nearest you for more informationor to register.

Kudos for “TUPPERWARE!” (the movie)

Early this summer, Newton filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt’s MFH-funded documentary TUPPER-WARE! was awarded the prize for this year’s best his-tory/biography television film at the BanffInternational Television Festival. The award is compara-ble to a Canadian EMMY, except that the competitionis international. A month later, Laurie was nominatedfor a prime-time EMMY for outstanding direction fornonfiction programming. The award ceremony will takeplace in Los Angeles on the evening of September

12th. TUPPERWARE! has been making the roundsat film festivals as well. It was shown at the Denver ArtsCenter in May, at the Barcelona InternationalWomen’s Film Festival in June, at the Miami FastRewind Film Festival in July, and at the Woods HoleFilm Festival in early August, where it won the audi-ence prize for the best feature documentary in the fes-tival. Congratulations to Laurie Kahn-Leavitt and toAmerican Experience/ WGBH on the critical success ofTUPPERWARE!

Foundation welcomes three new board members

At its June 12 board meeting in Lexington, three newmembers were elected to the Foundation’s board ofdirectors. They are Alix Cantave of Roslindale,Claudette Crouse of Carlisle, and Susan WinstonLeff of Brookline.

Alix Cantave is the EconomicDevelopment Program Officer at theLocal Initiatives Support Corporation(LISC) in Boston. He earned his BAin Environmental Design from SUNYBuffalo and his MS in City andRegional Planning from the Pratt

Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently workingtowards a Ph.D. in Public Policy at UMass/Boston. Alixis the founder and former director of the HaitianStudies Association, where he has organized severaleducational outreach programs funded by the MFH.He is the recipient of the American PlanningAssociation Award and currently serves as BoardPresident of the SEED/Haiti CommunityDevelopment Loan Fund.

Claudette Crouse is President andCEO of the Topf Center for DanceEducation, a nonprofit dance educa-tion and outreach organization inBoston. Originally from Philadelphia,Claudette earned her BA in psy-chology from the University of

Massachusetts and an M.Ed. in consulting psychologyfrom Harvard University. Her professional life hasfocused on making the workplace more accessible forwomen. During 15 years at Digital EquipmentCorporation, Claudette designed and conducted thecompany’s first Equal Opportunity audit. Her researchon women in the workplace led her to design a work-shop, “Breaking the Code: Corporate Savvy,” whichidentifies skills and competencies necessary to reachthe highest management levels. Claudette has servedon the boards of many Boston-area oganizations,including the Big Sister Association of GreaterBoston, the CambridgeYWCA, and the BostonChildren’s Museum.

Susan Winston Leff is Senior VicePresident at KeyBank Real EstateCapital in Boston. She received a BAfrom the University of Chicago, anMFA from Princeton University, andan MBA from Boston University.Susan is the Boston District Council

membership chair for the Urban Land Institute andserves on the executive committee of the NationalAssociation of Office and Industrial Properties. She isthe immediate past chair of the board of the Children’sMuseum, the 2003 recipient of the Robert S. SwainDistinguished Service Award of the Real EstateFinance Association, and the co-founder of NewEngland Women in Real Estate, a nonprofit group forthe advancement of women in the commercial realestate industry.

The Foundation is governed by a volunteer board of25 directors who reflect the social and geographicdiversity of Massachusetts. Approximately half the

board represents the general public (business, theprofessions, cultural affairs, and community life) andhalf are humanities professionals (college faculty,museum and library professionals, K-12 teachers,independent scholars, and writers). Six directors areappointed by the governor. Members serve three-year, once-renewable terms.

The Foundation welcomes nominations from the pub-lic for its board of directors. Candidates must live orwork in Massachusetts and believe in the importanceof the humanities and their relevance to contemporarylife. For a “job description” for MFH board members,contact the Northampton office at (413) 584-8440.

New Board Chair and Officers

At the September 17 board meeting inNorth Dartmouth, John Dacey waselected to succeed Ellen Dunlap asPresident of the MFH board of direc-tors. John has been a member of theFoundation board since 1999. He hasserved on the Executive Committee

and chaired the Institutional Development and theStrategic Planning Committees.

John was most recently Chairman of Spry Technologyin Lowell. He founded Waterfield Technology Group,headquartered in Lexington, in 1989, serving asChairman and CEO until the company was sold in1999. Previously he was a founder and partner in anumber of Boston area high-technology firms, includ-ing Systems Engineering Inc., Dacey and Associates,and Data Plus Inc. He studied computer technology atArlington Technical Institute and philosophy atNortheastern University.

John resides in Winchester with his wife, Marie Dacey,an exercise psychologist. John and Marie are outdoorenthusiasts and avid cyclers and skiers. They have twocollege-age children, Mike and Lisa. John has beenactive in his community and serves on a number ofboards in both the business and not-for-profit sectors.

The other officers elected are Cullen Murphy ofMedfield, Vice President; Susan Winston Leff ofBrookline, Treasurer; and David J. Harris of Medford,Secretary.

New Watertown Staff

Zachary Howard joined theFoundation staff in June as theAdministrative and ProgramAssistant in the Watertown office.After earning a BA in English fromIthaca College in 2001, Zack spenttwo years as an AmeriCorps volun-

teer in Denver, Des Moines, St. Paul, and Baltimore.Zack has keen interests in writing, the outdoors, spicyfood, and another Red Sox World Series. He replacesJesse Ruskin, who left his position with theFoundation to pursue a graduate degree in ethnomu-sicology at UCLA.

Outgoing Board Members

Each year at this time the Foundation must say good-bye to retiring board members. The regularity andinevitability of the task does not make it any easier.This year two especially valuable members are rotatingoff the board.

Ellen Dunlap, President of the American AntiquarianSociety in Worcester, was elected to the Foundationboard in 1996. During her eight-year tenure, Ellen

FOUNDATION NEWS

11

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Mail this form to:

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or fax to (413) 584-8454

GRANT CATEGORIESCurrent guidelines and application forms for MFHgrants are available by returning the form above,telephoning either of the Foundation’s offices, ordownloading materials from our website. You must bea nonprofit organization, or have a nonprofit fiscalsponsor, to be eligible for funding.

Northampton (413) 584-8440 Metro Boston (617) 923-1678

Project GrantsThe maximum award in Fiscal Year 2005 (November2004-October 2005) will be $5,000, with the excep-tion of media pre-production grants, which may notexceed $10,000. Proposals are due at the MetroBoston office on the first business day of May, August,November and February. A draft proposal must besubmitted at least 15 days before the final deadline.Applicants must consult with Kristin O’Connell inthe Northampton office before submitting a draft.Notification is within 90 days of the deadline.

Reading and Discussion ProgramsGrants are awarded for up to $1,000. A catalogue ofprogram themes and a directory of experienced discus-sion leaders are available from hwood@mfh.org or bycalling (413) 584-8440.

Scholar in Residence & Research Inventory GrantsThese collaborative programs, designed to improve thepresentation of history in historical organizations, areadministered by the Bay State Historical League. May15th is the deadline for RIG applications. Applicantsmust contact the League at (781) 899-3920 orbshl@masshistory.org before submitting a proposal.Guidelines are available at www.masshistory.org.

served with distinction on virtually every committee.In 2002, she was elected President of the board, there-by extending her term an additional two years. Deeplyknowledgeable about the public humanities, local andnational cultural policies, and nonprofit management,Ellen has been a strong and effective agent of change.Her open-minded and pragmatic approach to issueshas helped the Foundation meet many important challenges and transform itself into a more responsiveand sustainable cultural organization. We will missEllen’s leadership, her wisdom, and her sense of humor.

Annette Miller, the Newton and Berkshires-basedactress, acclaimed for her recent portrayals of GoldaMeir (in Golda’s Balcony) and Diana Vreeland (in FullGallop), has stepped down after six years of service onthe MFH board. Annette served on the DevelopmentCommittee, the Program and Evaluation Committee,

and the Membership and Nominating Committee. Inthanking Annette for her service, MFH PresidentEllen Dunlap noted “the passionate engagementAnnette brought to her two terms, her critical analysis,and her overall contributions in raising theFoundation’s visibility.” Perhaps most significant, how-ever, was Annette’s ability to understand and explainthe connection between the humanities and the arts.Board meetings just won’t be the same withoutAnnette’s dramatic timing and sense of style.

The Foundation also said good-bye recently to KelleyMcLendon, who joined the board in 2002. The formerDirector of the Charitable Trust Services atFleetBoston and Treasurer of the Foundation, Kelleyhas left the country to accept a position with theNational Australia Bank in Sydney, Australia. We wishKelley success in her new venture “down under.”

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30HumanitiesMASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION FOR THE

Celebrating Three Decades of Bringing Ideas to Life

In celebration of our 30th anniversary year, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities invites you to a free public symposium featuring

our nation’s leading biographers, historians, and observers of the presidency.

The symposium will be followed by a reception and a benefit dinner featuring the

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian and political commentator

U.S. PRESIDENTS IN PERSPECTIVEThe Shifting Fortunes of Presidential Reputationshosted by Boston CollegeNovember 20, 2004Chestnut Hill, MA

Saturday, November 20th, 2004 Symposium 12:30–4:30 pm ~ free & open to the public Robsham Theater

Panel 1: The president and the press.Douglas Brinkley, Kathleen Dalton, Ronald Walters. Ellen Hume, moderator.

Panel 2: Moral character and the presidency. Susan Dunn, Tom Wicker, Douglas Wilson. David Gergen, moderator.

Panel 3: The president and his enemies. Joyce Appleby, *Michael Beschloss, John Dean. E.J. Dionne, moderator.

Reception hosted by Boston College and book signings immediately following.

David Halberstam

Author of 16 books including, most recently, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals andDefining A Nation: America and the Sources of its Strength

Individual tickets to the dinner are available at $250 and $500. Please note seating is limited.

Proceeds of this benefit will be used to serve the citizens of the Commonwealth through programsdescribed at www.mfh.org. For more information, please visit our web site.

Joyce Appleby Douglas Brinkley Douglas Wilson Susan Dunn Ronald Walters David Gergen Kathleen Dalton E.J. Dionne John Dean Tom Wicker Ellen Hume Michael Beschloss

*not yet confirmed