Maggie's Farm

Michelle Malkin's piece on Howard Zinn's magnum opus propaganda, "A People's History of the United States", now an all-star, Hollywood lefty feature length film, brought back memories of Howard and many of my fellow students from my undergrad days at B.U. in the overly romanticized '60's. Howard Zinn arrived on the B. U. campus at about the time I matriculated in 1965. He quickly became a much lionized superstar of the emerging SDS-led student left, a movement which rapidly gained momentum and dominated the B. U. campus for the remainder of my undergraduate years, and far beyond.

Howard's government courses became a campus training ground for radicals as well as others enjoying a "gut" course to boost the old GPA while being serenaded by Howard's seductive talk of imminent revolution. Campus life really came to a boil in 1966-7 following the legendary B. U. News editorial advocating LBJ's impeachment for war crimes. Among other things, it precipitated the first SDS- led takeover of administration buildings on Bay State Rd., followed by endless vigils for draft resisters taking sanctuary in March Chapel, and teach-ins at Hayden Hall, usually with Howard playing the role of student advisor-hero.

By the end of his second or third year at B.U., Howard had become a charismatic, highly romanticized figure at B U, and thereby was able to convert many students to his cause by the time I graduated in 1969. But this was just the warm up to the fun as the plot thickened in 1971 when John Silber, a Philosophy Prof and Provost at the University of Texas, was named President of B.U. Silber was an old style, conservative Texas Democrat whose view of student minds and maturity was even less flattering than Kingsfield's "skulls full of mush".

And Silber loved to do battle with his intellectual inferiors, which he considered to be just about all faculty and students, and anyone else with the temerity to challenge him. When it came to radicals like Howard & Co, they were to be eliminated if possible, but of course Howard had become a sacred (and tenured) cow on campus so it was just not politically possible to show him the door. And so it remained for the next, oh, 25 years, while Silber continued to build B.U.'s reputation as a national university along with it's rather paltry endowment, all the while clashing with B.U.'s left dominated faculty.

Silber took a short sabbatical to run for MA governor and was narrowly defeated by Republican Bill Weld in 1990. His defeat is often traced to his trademark, unedited candor when he told a group of seniors: "Shakespeare was right when he said 'Ripeness is all.' When you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go," Silber came back but was eventually deposed as President in a coup d'etat in 1996, serving out several more years as Chancellor.

But Howard lived on, more revered, it seemed, by each successive generation of B.U. liberal arts undergrads and grad students. He outlasted Silber and therefore had his revenge, as it were, and is still enjoying it. As David Horowitz has pointed out about so many other campuses, the left dominated B.U. students and faculty without any significant countervailing influence from the center, or right of center. If a strong-willed President such as John Silber could not roll back the tide, it shows how formidable it was, and remains to this day.