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Thoughts on War

Your cover story (May/June) entitled “Lessons of War” was most enjoyable. Your come-on, “Can Professors Stop Wars?” reminds me of an earlier effort by a Stanford professor to do just that.

Henry Lanz was a philosopher and head of the Slavic languages department. In 1936, he submitted an essay to a Swedish international competition asking for answers to the questions, “Can an objective moral standard be set up in the present age? If so, on what can it be based?” The contest was driven by the expectation that Germany was about to begin a war in Europe, and the hope that a moral position could be found that would help stop that war.

The essay, entitled “The Problem of Ethical Objectivity,” was submitted anonymously; it was judged the prizewinner and subsequently turned into a book, In Quest of Morals (Stanford University Press, 1941).

Alexander (Sasha) Lanz, ’61
Richardson, Texas

If professors stopping wars involves the dismantling of our national defenses, where will you find a better example than at Stanford?

The early ’70s, at the height of the Vietnam War, revealed an incredible lack of leadership, both administrative and academic, at Stanford. Two professors took aim at Stanford’s ROTC program. One professed that Stanford should not be teaching “militarism” but rather “discussion” as the solution to international problems. A member of the academic senate, she apparently was unaware of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s historic trip to Munich in 1938 to “discuss” peace in our time with the Nazis, whose panzers were poised to descend on Paris.

Meanwhile another professor was condemning the ROTC program for the lack of PhDs on its staff. As a parent of an ROTC student, which would you rather have teaching your child how to stay alive on the battlefield: a veteran officer with battlefield experience, as I had at Stanford, or an academic PhD who may or may not have ever heard a shot fired in anger?

Instead of counseling angry students as to who was the real architect of the Vietnam War, these professors aided and abetted the students in the deliberate trashing of a once-excellent rotc program, an important component of our national defense forces.

This is not to demean ivory tower cerebration on campus. We shall always need it for the big picture. This is simply an example of the performance of two professors on a college campus during wartime.

John J. Lodato, ’41, MA ’59
WWII Major, U.S. 3rd Infantry Division
San Andreas, California

Your special report notably omits any contribution from a professional military perspective. Is there a message here? We would not be surprised to learn that there are a number of well-credentialed professors serving at the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy, the Coast Guard Academy and West Point who would most likely have something of merit to contribute toward a “balanced” report.

Draper Gregory, MS ’75
Chico, California

Parents, Let Go

I hope “Students on the Edge” was an eye-opener to parents (Farm Report, May/June). Although the article focused mostly on students, I’d like to address the parenting style that has led to this debacle. We have been told that great parenting means being super-involved with our children and being in constant communication with them. As soon as we feel they are ready to have a bit of independence, we give them cell phones so that they can call us the minute they need us. There are many benefits to this parenting style, including the close family relationships we have developed. We also know each of their homework assignments (and assist with a few of them), the drills they did at soccer practice (because we either coached their team or stayed and watched), and what they ate for snacks at school. The downside to our “helicopter” parenting, though, is that it makes it difficult for our children to develop their independence, problem-solving and decision-making skills.

Recently, the New York mother who allowed her 9-year-old to ride the subway was dubbed the “World’s Worst Mom.” I vote that the title go instead to the parents who “insist on choosing their child’s area of study and then show up to negotiate his or her salary after graduation.” Those poor kids probably can’t ride a subway alone at 20.

As the director of a children’s residential summer camp, where campers ages 7 to 14 attend for two weeks without their cell phones (gasp!), I spend a lot of my time educating parents about the value of giving their children opportunities for independence at an early age. During the adolescent years, parents need to slowly “let out the leash,” and give kids more responsibilities and more freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes and not be saved by a hovering parent. Perhaps by allowing our kids the chance to learn from early mistakes we won’t need to “call the dean’s office at 10 a.m.” to ask them to wake our sleeping college student. I hope this article shocks some sense into well-meaning parents who are failing at a key job of parenting—providing the launch pad for our children but not joining them on lift-off.

Audrey Kremer Monke, ’88
Clovis, California

Brooksley Born Correction

Kudos for your fine article on Brooksley Born, whose early calls for regulation in the nation’s credit markets went largely unheeded (“Prophet and Loss,” March/April 2009). Her long record of achievement and dedication to her cause will stand as an inspiration for alumni of all law schools and for all of us who strive for fairness and truth.

While I applaud the writer’s careful investigative work into the various discussions between Born and Alan Greenspan, I must correct an error of fact which claims Ms. Born to be the “first woman to edit a major law review,” when she achieved that honor at Stanford in 1964.

That distinction goes to Mary Honor Donlon, who, 45 years earlier, was editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Quarterly in 1919. Donlon (later Mary Donlon Alger) was a strong advocate for equal rights in education, a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, and the first female judge on the United States Customs Court, where she served from 1955 to 1977.

Stewart J. Schwab
The Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law
Ithaca, New York

A Rebuttal to Lyman

An edited version of the following letter appeared in print.

In mid-January 2009, upon receiving the January/February issue of STANFORD in the mail, I was both shocked and hurt to read Richard W. Lyman’s unfair, inaccurate and nasty attack on me (“At the Hands of the Radicals”). That attack, the magazine’s featured cover story, was part of Lyman’s longer memoir excerpt/case study, drawn from his then-forthcoming book on Stanford’s troubled late-1960s and early-1970s history.

Both in Lyman’s magazine version and in his book (only the paraphrasing differs), he charged that I had publicly, at a noontime rally in White Plaza on April 24, 1970, “thoughtfully” given directions to his house, and he strongly insinuated that such noontime words led to an attack on his house that night by assailants with a paint-filled Coke bottle and two rocks, who tried (he asserted) with the rocks to “maim, if not kill,” the Lyman-family occupants.

Not only are Lyman’s charges and insinuations about me nasty and incorrect, but they seemed very strange. In fact, he had never said any of this to me in the 38-plus years between April 24, 1970, and mid-January 2009, even though we probably had at least 40 and possibly more than 60 conversations in those many years. In view of all that, I felt that Lyman had for some peculiar reason chosen unfairly to blindside me in public with his harsh charges and related hostile insinuations—and without the decency of giving me any prior opportunity to defend myself in private conversation with him.

But in view of his out-of-the-blue attack, it’s difficult not to get personal and wonder about the psyche of Richard Lyman (born in 1923), now in his mid-80s, who could apparently harbor such ugly grievances for some years, decide never to talk to me about them, nor to seek to communicate them through a third party, and then to burst (without any warning to me) into print with them. That meant his publishing those contentions in STANFORD , with its reported circulation of about 185,000, and in his book. That’s a large audience for his attack on my reputation.

All that necessarily puts me on the defensive of having to play catch-up in defending myself, and presumably without my gaining a featured cover story in the magazine to broadcast my substantial response and my heavily researched critique of Lyman’s charges and insinuations.

My seeking in 2009 to persuasively rebut and refute Lyman’s now-published charges and insinuations about events of April 24, 1970, after the passage of nearly 40 years, is obviously a difficult matter for me. How, even if I still possessed my admittedly skimpy 1970 records (including a sketchy calendar of my activities, including public talks), which I casually discarded many years ago, could I firmly prove in 2009 to third parties that Lyman was wrong about these 1970 events? Probably most people, if so publicly assailed by Lyman, would have similar difficulties in mounting a full defense in 2009, with firm contravening evidence, about such charges involving events back in 1970.

This is a situation in which the attacker, as Stanford’s former provost and president and also the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, would be deemed by most STANFORD readers as having the obvious advantages of greater authority and prestige. Many readers would easily assume, without probing consideration, that Lyman, if making such public charges, could not possibly be wrong, especially because he is generally trusted and because he was so specific—about the date (April 24, 1970), the place (White Plaza), the time (noontime) and the content of my alleged public words (directions to his house), and the troubling assault (a thrown red-paint-filled Coke bottle and two rocks) on his house on the 24th.

In the initial judgment of most trusting readers, there would be the rather likely conclusion: that Lyman must be correct, that he has very firm evidence, that he couldn’t possibly err in making such harsh (and perhaps legally questionable) charges, that he did the essential research on this set of April 1970 events, and that he wouldn’t be careless about the crucial facts in launching his public attack on a longtime fellow historian and Stanford colleague (me).

Starting in winter 2009, after reading Lyman’s public attack, I did rather quickly move to refute and rebut him by gaining some evidence and by querying easily available people whose Stanford experience dates back to April 1970. That meant talking to 10 Stanford-connected people (mostly retired faculty, and two of their spouses) from the spring 1970 period. None of them could recall any such public words at White Plaza by me in spring 1970 involving my giving directions to Lyman’s house. Unfortunately, even a total of 10 such recollections, after nearly four decades, is certainly less than adequately persuasive on such a factual matter involving Lyman’s very specific charges.

In early May of this year, I queried five more faculty (mostly retired), two spouses of former faculty, and a dozen former student activists (both men and women) from the April 1970 period. Same results: None recalled my giving such directions at a White Plaza rally. So, in total, I checked with nearly 30 people from April 1970, and there was no evidential support for Lyman’s published contentions.

But the burden should not be on me to disprove Lyman, but rather for him to prove his contentions with very solid, even unimpeachable, evidence. His article provided absolutely no evidence—only his assertions and his linked insinuations. The version in his book had no endnote on this and, like his article, no evidence. Thus, his published presentation seems markedly inadequate, when judged by the essential criterion—evidence.

I decided, in part, to deal directly with him on these distressing matters involving his charges. That meant asking him privately for his evidence, because the issues between us did seem crucially to involve his evidence. He replied, privately, about his “evidence” (my quotation marks).

His reported “evidence” was, in my judgment, remarkably both flimsy and self-serving. Here it is: that he and his wife now remember that on April 24, 1970, someone had told them about my public White Plaza words, but that the Lymans, after so many years, could not remember (he told me) who their source had been on April 24, 1970. Richard Lyman added, however, in his private reply to me this winter, that he did vividly remember the attack on his house that very night of April 24, 1970, and his feeling then that the attack was my fault.

His uncritically relying upon such memory after nearly 40 years, and especially for people in about their ninth decade, as in the case of the two aged Lymans, seems surprisingly perilous, if not actually reckless in both personal and legal ways. And his relying upon such memory, when he and his wife, by his own report, cannot even remember who gave him/them the (alleged) information on April 24, 1970, seems even riskier and, indeed, even more remarkably irresponsible. And his tying that basically unsourced “memory” to what he defines as an intentionally maiming or killing nighttime attack on April 24, 1970, seems even more reckless—especially because his home address was public knowledge. His street address on campus was not something secret, or even hard to find.

After receiving his reply that he had no firm source, I might have quit my systematic effort to further rebut him. After all, he had admitted, in effect, that he had no evidence other than, simply, “memory.” But I feared that many people, if being told that Lyman was relying solely on memory, might still choose to trust Lyman’s memory, and I thought that perhaps I could do more in my effort to undercut his published claims—really, an attack on me.

I decided to seek to gain substantial leverage on the set of problems involving Lyman’s contentions and insinuations by doing what a trained historian often does—significant library research on the period and on the key events at issue. In doing such research, by checking more than eight pro-Lyman Stanford archival collections (in Special Collections in Green Library), the Stanford News Service press releases that are available in various places on campus, and at least seven Bay Area newspapers (including, among others, the Stanford Daily, the Palo Alto Times, the Campus Report, the Stanford Observer, the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle), I could find no mention that I had even spoken at any such White Plaza rally on the 24th. And it seemed very likely, moreover, that there was no noontime White Plaza rally that day. Thus, the easily available published record, buttressed by the archival materials left by pro-Lyman Stanford people of the time, seemed to support my claim that Lyman was incorrect, and significantly to undercut Lyman’s contention.

But, in my research, I discovered far more of great relevance by checking through the newspapers of late April and early May 1970: The attacks that Lyman firmly claimed, by memory, as occurring on his house on the 24th had not actually occurred then. They had occurred five or six days later! (See Palo Alto Times, May 2, 1970, Campus Report, May 6, 1970; and Stanford Daily, May 1, 1970.)

So Lyman’s memory on that key subject was wrong, decidedly so—and provably so—as at least three 1970 newspaper reports can establish.

Those April 1970 physical attacks on Lyman’s house had apparently occurred, according to then-President Kenneth Pitzer as reported in the Stanford News Service’s newspaper (the Campus Report, May 6, 1970), along with similar attacks the very same night on retired Provost Fred Terman’s campus home, on April 30, 1970. It is impossible to believe that Pitzer on May 1, in openly addressing the Stanford faculty including then-Provost Lyman, greatly erred on this subject of dating these then-very-recent attacks.

Because Lyman probably did not know when the U.S. invasion of Cambodia first occurred (U.S. time), and thus apparently misdated it in his book as May 1970, he failed to recognize that the attacks on his house, as well as on ex-provost Fred Terman’s house, had occurred in the very last day or two of April 1970 after President Nixon’s policy in Cambodia heated up. Undoubtedly, those attacks on the two houses were triggered mostly by Nixon’s policy.

Lyman’s easily provable errors and omissions undercut—by my research work and related conclusion—all of his major claims and insinuations involving (Friday) April 24, 1970, and me. Probably much of his treatment of any related events of that week and the next half-week in late April 1970 should be treated suspiciously by readers. Lyman’s memory, to repeat, on key matters was provably poor. His research, if any research was actually conducted on that April 1970 period, was greatly flawed.

In dealing with April 1970 events, Lyman in his STANFORD excerpt, as in his book, managed also to misquote his own words from April 27 on KZSU (I listened to the recording) and he even erred by nearly a week in dating an attack on the Center for Advanced Study (I checked some newspapers on this). In addition, on page 45 in the magazine, Lyman also plagiarized at least 45 words from the Peninsula Observer. Those various errors, aside from his serious errors on me, mean that in a segment of about 65 lines, he managed to misquote himself, badly misdate a key event, and substantially plagiarize about nine lines. That is, frankly, deeply troubling, and warrants, I believe, a clear public apology to STANFORD readers and, in the case of the plagiarism, to the original authors.

Based on my checking about a fifth of Lyman’s book, I can assert, with incontrovertible documentary proof, more than 30 errors in his recent volume. That includes at least five more cases of plagiarism, a few surprising mistakes on ex-President Pitzer’s pre-Stanford background, confusion on at least five people’s names, and quite a few marred, massaged or mangled quotations. Collectively, all that, especially with the book’s repeated plagiarism (presumably unintentional by Lyman) is stunning and dismaying.

Lyman, even though now retired, should not be exempt from firm, public criticism—and even significant public rebuke—on plagiarism. Indeed, he certainly warrants harsh criticism for such plagiarism, whether it was unintentional (as is highly likely), or not. His motivation cannot be proved by me—and any explanation, even if plausible, by him could be self-serving and less than correct. But the clear published evidence—more than 215 words involving six cases—cannot be wished away, or effectively denied. He, and others, must confront those painful facts.

For those who would like to check Lyman’s book text against the relevant sources on the documentable evidence, start with the following four cases of plagiarism. Thus, see: (1) Lyman, pp. 36-7, and Stanford Daily, May 20, 1966: (2) Lyman, p. 41, and David Harris, Dreams Die Hard, p. 84; (3) Lyman, p. 147, and Peninsula Observer, issue dated as through May 19, 1969; and (4) Lyman, p. 149, and Peninsula Observer, issue dated as through May 19, 1969. The coup de grace occurs on Lyman, p. 154, where about a quarter of Lyman’s entire page of text, in two different paragraphs, is not his, but actually plagiarized (presumably unintentionally) from the radical newspaper, the Peninsula Observer, the issue dated through May 29, 1969.

In view of the deep hostility between Lyman and the Peninsula Observer four decades ago, and probably still lingering dislike between him and some of the Observer’s former staff, it’s fascinating that at least four of the documentable cases of his plagiarism involve his use, without the necessary quotation marks, of that politically radical newspaper’s prose. Probably Lyman owes that paper’s editors, and the plagiarized authors, a public apology and a clear explanation of how and why so much was plagiarized from that paper.

Lyman may also owe his book’s readers and other readers such an apology, and that would definitely include STANFORD readers, because page 45 (middle column) of his magazine article includes one of those cases of plagiarism from the Peninsula Observer—more than 50 words.

Lyman’s book has so many documentable errors, and some are of such a distressing character, that I privately advised him in late April 2009 to check everything in his book this spring, move promptly to have the [Stanford University] Press (his publisher) issue the necessary, lengthy “erratum” list, and probably this spring withdraw this very flawed book from sale. After thorough revision, it might be reissued, but with his candid acknowledgment of what went awry in the winter 2009 edition and why that edition had to be withdrawn.

His rather lame private answer to me in early May 2009 seems to be: He will not do the full checking work; but if I provide the evidence of his errors, he implies that he will assess that evidence and (he implies) consider issuing whatever corrections in his judgment seem warranted. That, frankly, is not good enough—and I have no reason to trust his judgment, based on his book and article.

He must do a thorough independent job of checking, and put together his public report on what he got wrong. I’m willing then to help supplement his findings with my own work, if he has truly done the appropriate checking. But he must be responsible, act responsibly, and take responsibility by doing serious work to correct his errors.

His recent volume, as judged by my discoveries, is deeply and broadly defective in its craftsmanship, even aside from his mistreatment of me and his annoying factual errors on Pitzer.

My publicly expressed assessment of Lyman’s provably defective work is sustainable regardless of whether one likes or dislikes Lyman himself, and likes or dislikes his book’s politics, and feels sorry for him or not, and even wishes that he had not publicly stumbled so badly. His book, in my judgment, constitutes a clear violation of reasonable standards in academic scholarship, and presumably of standards in memoirs published by a major university press—in this case Stanford University Press.

Why Lyman’s book manuscript was not properly fact-, source-, and quote-checked prior to publication is somewhat puzzling, especially because the book’s stated sourcing (as even a glance at its fragmentary endnotes reveals) is rather spastic, at best. Very probably, the careful checking of any 25 to 30 pages of his manuscript text and his related endnotes would have uncovered various serious problems—raising a warning “red flag” and presumably leading to complete checking of his entire manuscript.

STANFORD —apparently, naively—trusted Lyman’s work by uncritically publishing his memoir excerpt/case study, and reportedly did no prior fact checking even on Lyman’s version of April 24, 1970, events. That seems unpardonable—and possibly even reckless.

In my judgment, STANFORD , like Lyman, violated the reasonable standards of both caution and prudence when dealing with a controversial matter by their apparently not doing the necessary prepublication checking. They have made themselves very vulnerable—in multiple and surprising ways.

Any defense by STANFORD that it has a policy of not checking articles and excerpts if they are not for-hire writings seems unwise—or worse. To justify an unwise policy, by citing it as a policy, is not an adequate defense. And certain volatile subjects, especially if presented by the author (as with Lyman) with some venom, and thus clearly engaging the author in bitterly fighting old battles (as in Lyman’s article), should have propelled the magazine to be very careful about facts and sources—scrupulously so.

All this prompts me to consider giving a public seminar at Stanford in the early autumn on issues of evidence and craftsmanship. That would deal heavily with Lyman’s recent work, and possibly broaden to a general discussion of how to write history and how not to write history, and how the media treat history, including memoirs. These are important issues that, rather surprisingly, seem often to be minimized, if not slipped over, in the modern university, including at Stanford.

Putting matters bluntly, let me say: Carefully checking and assessing evidence and sourcing in doing and evaluating history scholarship is essential. Interpretation based on nonfacts and the wrong evidence can be somewhat like building a house on quicksand. Lyman has publicly, but presumably unintentionally, helped to prove that point. STANFORD has, unfortunately and unwisely, helped him in his ill-constructed venture, which is now publicly available for judgment and for a discussion of accountability in publishing.

Barton J. Bernstein
Professor of History
Palo Alto, California

Editor’s note:

Professor Bernstein’s contention that the magazine did not fact-check the excerpt from President Lyman’s book is correct. This is conventional practice among publishers of memoirs, which typically hold the author responsible for any inaccuracies. In this case, in which an excerpt from a memoir is reprinted, the same principles apply.

The following letters did not appear in the print edition of STANFORD.

Other War Experts

I found very compelling the teaser “Can Professors Stop Wars?”(Lessons of War, May/June). The content to which it referred, however, was disappointing. I was certain that Phil Zimbardo would be one of the professors in question and shocked that neither he nor any other psychology faculty was mentioned. Wars are started and fought by human beings with human motives, whether conscious or unconscious, and psychologists study these motives. Phil Zimbardo certainly was a significant influence in my years at Stanford, has challenged the making of war and the motives of those who do so, and deserves some of the credit for my recent attempt to address war in terms of psychological processes (www.johnrhead.com/writings/peace_art_rev_2.pdf).

John Rhead, PhD ’71
Columbia, Maryland

It is worth remarking that Joel McCormick’s article asked “resident” experts to opine on foreign policy, and then promptly went on to quote James Fearon, political science chair, as saying that “American foreign policymaking is extremely concentrated at the top” and to quote Priya Satia’s concern for “groupthink” in the foreign policy community.

How about non-resident experts? Satia said that agents in the field competed for slots in the British Empire’s groupthink, but she might also have noted that London generally considered field staff in Palestine as being nearly disloyal in their attitudes regarding British policy on indigenous political development versus Israeli immigration.

It’s not just the quality of articles in STANFORD that we should worry about. “All politics is local,” and it often seems that U.S. foreign policy is also local, in the sense that jockeying for position in Washington is the force field in which policies, including very specific implementation measures, rise or fall.

On the other hand, it is possible to envision a more decentralized approach to policy making and implementation (and to journalism), which would make fuller use of information and direct observation, overcoming the limitations noted by Fearon: that top policy makers “have no time for anything” and that their staff rely on “journal articles, or even working papers.”

Joe Ryan, ’71
Cairo, Egypt

I think that STANFORD should send the professors who “know” how to stop wars to meet with al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah to talk about stopping wars. The professors might learn something useful about stopping wars to share with us, if they come back.

Warren Mosby, MS ’65
Scottsdale, Arizona

Stegner at Camp

Many thanks for the comments about Wallace Stegner (“Nourishing the Arts in All Forms,” President’s Column, May/June). You observe that he had a profound influence on Stanford.

My late wife and I spent a week at Stanford Sierra Camp on the incredibly beautiful Fallen Leaf Lake every year for many years as our four sons grew up. Wallace had a place at Fallen Leaf and was very generous in sharing his great wisdom and literary insights during the weekly programs at the camp; when he was “on stage” we never missed him. He also had a profound influence on those who attended his lectures and informal talks at Stanford Camp.

I try to avoid using the word amazing, but Wallace deserves that adjective. Few individuals have used their talents and brilliance to inspire so many people, young and old. Thank you, Wallace.

Charles Page, ’56, JD ’58
Carmel, California

Remembering Jordan

I had the honor of being on the freshman track team in 1957, Payton Jordan’s first year as coach (Farewells, May/June). Of course we did not know we were in the presence of a “legend-to-be,” but he sure was encouraging to all. He could easily have authored The Power of Positive Thinking. He took a personal interest in all events, including my oddity, the pole vault. Two or three times in the past 40 years he would go to his archives, extract an old ’50s track photo and send it to me. What a guy!

The annual Stanford Track event now named in his honor is a great legacy.

John Stahler, ’60
Mountain View, California

No Neat Answers

For those interested in current events, politics and history it is a source of comfort to be able to explain things in their simplest terms. It makes for easy writing and satisfying reading. This usually means distilling the myriad influences that determine an event to a single bullet (Archduke Ferdinand), a single document (Treaty of Versailles), a single person, (Hitler or Stalin), a single meeting (Yalta or Greenspan/Born), and on and on. Saleh Daher’s letter (“Profile in Courage,” May/June) listing some of the countless influences that led to the current economic calamity comes closest to describing the murkiness of this mess and our ceaseless, fruitless search for a nice, clean answer. For a wonderful expostulation of the hunger for and inability to find one or two explanations for the current situation, it is worth reading Epilogue II in War and Peace, in which Leo Tolstoy ponders the imponderability of human events. His conclusion, as I read it, is that the action of every soldier on the battlefield at Borodino had a consequence on the final outcome, and was not solely the responsibility of Napoleon and Kutuzov. There is the challenge: how to analyze the effect of the action of the many hundreds of thousands on that battlefield.

Myron Gananian, ’51, MD ’59
Menlo Park, California

Economic Tunnel Vision

Thank you for the fascinating article about Brooksley Born (“Prophet and Loss,” March/April). It adds helpful information and insight on the background to the present economic contraction, and is a reassuring reminder that some very able people bring their intelligence and goodwill to the difficult work of trying to keep our economy, and our country, on a successful path. Sometimes they make headway; sometimes they get blocked. We all owe them a great deal for trying so valiantly.

Intelligence alone is not enough. The trio that blocked the road in this case—Greenspan, Rubin and Summers—clearly have a certain kind of intelligence. But they used it to promote and defend the self-destructive financial system that has cost us all so dearly. Their policies helped cause greater losses than all the Ponzi schemes put together that flourished in a context lacking any adequate regulatory supervision.

I would suggest that the problem was a kind of tunnel vision that many people share. They saw one part of the picture vividly but failed to see that it was only one part. What they could see, with reason, is that the economic system can be seriously damaged by excessive and/or misdirected government interventions. What they failed to see is that it can be at least equally seriously damaged by unchecked drives to make money by any means that ingenious private interests can devise. They seem to have had an instinctive dislike of any proposals to protect the public, and the economic system itself, from the damage that can be caused by ruthless self-interest.

We had a reasonably well-functioning balance between open markets and regulatory safeguards in the first decades after WWII, but then the crusade for deregulation began to open the way to new destructive practices. By “destructive” I mean ways of making profits that undermine public welfare. It should not be difficult to identify many of them now, or to limit them by new regulatory methods. But we won’t get very far with that effort unless the people chosen to run government agencies realize fully that we need them to counteract the natural drive of private firms to invent new ways to tilt the system in their favor. People who can actively put the public interest first, like Brooksley Born, may be relatively rare, but her story is a reminder that they exist. With support from a governmental administration that cares about the public interest, they could make all the difference in the world.

John Sheahan, ’48
Williamstown, Massachusetts
The writer is professor of economics, emeritus, at Williams College.

The article, like most narratives of recent economic history, ignores the other types of government regulation: the subsidizing of irresponsible behavior, and not letting anyone fail. If “Greenspan was an ardent proponent of unfettered markets,” then why, in 1998, did he bail out the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management? When government subsidizes irresponsibility, the case against free markets falls apart. Had Mr. Greenspan let them fail, investors would have fled the now-toxic investments like bats out of hell.

There were also a multitude of federal programs which all but required banks to hold a portion of bad loans, guaranteed, of course, by government (read: taxpayer). Those programs are universally ignored by the common banker-as-bad-guy narrative of the crisis. If people committed fraud, they should go to jail, but in many cases the only crime of demonized bankers was responding rationally to a market warped by government in favor of irresponsibility and risk.

If the failure lies in the free market, why was it Greenspan’s (now Bernanke’s) job to set interest rates through the super-secretive Federal Reserve? You might expect free-market proponents to advocate market regulation of interest rates based on savings and risk.

The only regulation we need is the prosecution of people who commit fraud. The only regulation we get is politically expedient absurdities that warp the free market in favor of irresponsibility and the bailing out of well-connected Wall Street tycoons at taxpayer expense, and I am appalled to see the common refrain calling for more of the same.

Politicians and bureaucrats, well educated though they might be, are incapable of regulating the innovation and creative energy of commerce. The best (only) sure regulation of the financial sector is exposing people to the consequences of their irresponsibility.

Roman Skaskiw, ’00
Iowa City, Iowa

It was refreshing, in a way, to read your piece about Brooksley Born, who, as one of those few in a position of influence, identified the excessiveness, the abuse and the greed that was driving the economic system in a decidedly wrong direction.

Where I take issue with the article is the inclination to point fingers and blame “the People Who Stopped Her.” Rather, I ask: where was Stanford; where were the Stanford economics faculty; where were the Stanford Business School faculty; where were the critics and watchdogs in the broader academic community while this mushrooming of abuse and preoccupation with excess were leading us, inevitably, to the mess we are in today? It is convenient, self-righteous and largely irrelevant for the author to quote a law school professor when he says, “History already has shown that Greenspan was wrong about virtually everything and Brooksley was right.”

Historically, the academic community has had a role of keeping those in the economic and political sector from getting consumed by either their successes or their failures. The academic community is an integral part of the unique American system of checks and balances. We look to the academic community to take something of the high road, to set the intellectual frameworks, and to offer substantive criticisms. I suggest that it has abdicated this role in our modern era, at least with regard to these critical elements of power, valuation and compensation. It is especially disheartening to recognize that the academic leadership at places like Stanford failed us. I do not recall seeing one article in Stanford or the Business School publication that brought into question or provided a more transparent view of the abuse that was occurring. I do not recall seeing any publications by Stanford professors, as leaders of the broader academic community, about this abusive and shady side of the prosperity. Were they just on the sidelines? Could it be that they were participating in lucrative ways in the abuse and excess?

In the ’60s and ’70s, I know that the Business School professors were strong advocates, formulators really, of schemes to tie compensation to growth and shareholder value. There were loads of consultant dollars that flowed to prestigious faculty, working hand-in-hand with Wall Street friends and in executive offices to create the “credible and legitimate” compensation systems that are at the root of the excesses under which we are now suffering. They formed consulting firms that provided a level of personal income and security that diminished the importance of their academic positions and roles. In these ways, did they join the perpetrators? Did they lose sight of their role for setting boundaries and raising questions—to reassert themselves only after the horses left the barn?

You should be looking at your own mentality, processes and procedures. Simply blaming others with the advantage of hindsight for their greed or their stupidity serves little purpose. Nor does it serve the role that society expects of you.

Barry F. Thomas, MBA ’68
Sackets Harbor, New York

“Prophet and Loss” is an excellent description of one scenario in the chronic war of the elite mercantilists of Wall Street and the Eastern establishment against the middle class. Greenspan feigned ideology as his means of conveying the mercantilist message: no impediment to fraud in financial markets. Brooksley Born ably provided legitimate arguments on the merits, but to no avail, because financial mercantilists overwhelmingly dominate Congress and institutions of government and media. Academics fall under the same mega-billionaires’ sway, teaching theories that market efficiency eliminates any possibility of conspiracy or fraud against investors.

The middle class has been impoverished by colossal market fraud during the past two years, and it is ongoing with government assistance. We must mobilize those like Born, who believe in the work ethic of reward for merit of performance, to bring law, order and justice to America.

Wayne Jett
San Marino, California

As a public finance credit analyst at Charles Schwab in 1994, I submitted a credit report describing the risk of Orange County’s interest rate derivative. My Schwab manager discounted an article criticizing treasurer Robert Citron’s investment risks; she attributed the opposing candidate’s criticism to politics. In addition to due diligence with assistant treasurer Matt Raabe, I had just completed a derivatives seminar at Swiss Bank Corporation. SBC, my former employer, had closed most of the San Francisco agency to focus on derivatives business. After Orange County declared bankruptcy, Citron professed ignorance about the derivative risk and blamed Merrill Lynch. The early lessons of Orange County included lack of liquidity, not only credit problems. Also, the bankruptcy illustrated the willingness of financial officers to undertake indeterminate risk.

Stella Yang, MA ’88
San Francisco, California

I agree with your list of reasons contributing to our present economic malaise (“She Saw It Coming,” First Impressions, March/April). However, you omitted the reason I believe was the biggest factor in expanding the eventual financial crisis: the ratings agencies S & P and Moody’s failed to recognize the difference in risk between securities that were backed by mortgage loans where borrowers made small down payments (0 to 5 percent), stated their income incorrectly (lied?) with no proof or had below average credit histories, and securities backed by mortgage loans where borrowers made 20 percent down payments.

The ratings agencies incorrectly surmised all of these types of securities should carry AAA ratings. I’ve been making and collecting home loans for 31 years, and it doesn’t take too long before you find out that the more borrowers place in a down payment the harder they try to ensure the lender gets paid. Small down payments tend to encourage homeowners to give up too easily on their financial problems. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but securities where 99.75 percent of the loans succeed are vastly better than securities where 90 percent of the loans succeed. Yes, the default rate on the riskier loans was lower at first, but experienced lenders and bond raters will tell you the risk was still there.

If the riskier bonds had been correctly rated with any kind of a B (or worse) rating, those securities would have been much harder to sell, wouldn’t have sold, or the yields would have been much higher. Whichever the case, there wouldn’t have been financing for all of the projects that contributed to our economic collapse, and the securities wouldn’t have been sold all over the world and tarnished our image and Wall Street’s image as a financing center.

George W. Howard
Hastings, Nebraska
The writer is vice president of Five Points Bank of Hastings.

Saving Humanities

I applaud J. Martins Evans’s recent courageous tackling of the issue facing humanities in modern universities (“What Good Are the Humanities?” Farm Report, March/April).

I agree entirely not only with the importance of humanities but also with Evans’s analysis on why they seem to be falling by the wayside. Unfortunately, it also appears to me that worshiping the almighty mammon is a favorite pastime of many university administrators. Humanities do not generate the dollars that science and medicine do and hence seem to be severely and consistently underappreciated at many universities.

We should all strive to fix this important issue and not allow our cultural heritage to be sacrificed on the altar of penny-pinching by shortsighted administrators who are overly focused on the short-term financial bottom line. Universities, as the name implies, were created to represent the entire universe of human knowledge and not just those portions that are profitable today. Hence universities should actively encourage the study of and modern research into humanities.

Juergen Reichardt, PhD ’89
Camperdown, Australia
The writer is chair of molecular biology (medicine) at the University of Sydney.

Misleading Picture

While I greatly admire the work Matt McCambridge has done developing rugged, high-performance wheelchairs for developing countries, the photo of him and others standing with a young man in one of his wheelchairs amidst a beach of large cobblestones is extremely misleading (“Independence on Wheels,” Class Notes, March/April). No manual wheelchair of that design could possibly navigate over such extreme, irregular terrain.

I know this from firsthand experience watching my disabled brother attempting to use his electric wheelchair to travel paths with cobbles one-tenth that size. It just can’t be done with those narrow tires. Your wheelchair will get stuck between the cobbles, and you could flip it, leading to serious injury.

I’m sure these chairs do quite well on reasonably flat, perhaps graded, dirt roads, and their success on such terrain alone should be praised for the significant milestone that it is for the disabled in third world countries. [However], let’s not give false impressions to the nondisabled about the accomplishments of such clever and needed innovations, nor give false hope to the disabled on the potential uses of such products as they struggle each and every day to move from point A to point B.

Donald Bentley, MS ’82
La Puente, California

Protesters Disturb

Having been there and observed firsthand what actually went on during the “troubles” of 1969-1970, it was disturbing to read the student protesters’ self-serving responses (“Remembering Troubled Times,” Letters, March/April) to the excerpt from President Lyman’s book printed in the January/February issue (“At the Hands of the Radicals”). The same tortured logic and self-justifications that we heard so much of back then still seems to drive them 40 years later. Tim Haight’s attempt to connect their movement with the civil rights movement is especially offensive, as their actions were far from the thoughtful, disciplined and morally compelling civil disobedience of Thoreau, Gandhi or Martin Luther King. The destructive, violent and provocative actions of the “protesters” brought to campus an atmosphere of intolerance, intellectual nihilism, and violence that had much more in common with Nazi Brown Shirts or the bully squads of Hugo Chavez. We even had our own Kristallnacht when every window in the Engineering Research Lab building, where my lab and office were, was broken by one of their mobs. Open discourse was essentially shut down, government officials were harried from campus, and, at times, roving gangs of thugs would harass and attack anyone who looked like they might disagree with them. Under cover of a tolerant and indecisive university community they became increasingly brazen and destructive. President Lyman was ultimately forced to bring in outside police to restore order and safety.

As an engineering student I worked in the area that was the focus of much of their attention. Other than taking part in a building “fire watch” (where graduate students took shifts during the night to watch for vandalism, with instructions, if anything happened, to pull the fire alarm as we ran out the back door), I did not participate in any of the groups or organized activities aimed at opposing the mobs or trying to prevent serious damage to our labs and buildings. Despite my efforts to keep out of the way, I was assaulted one morning for pretty much being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some weeks later, I spotted and confronted my assailant on campus, asking him what motivated him to attack from behind someone he didn’t know and knew nothing about. He was hopelessly unable to give a coherent response, other than to parrot the same kinds of self-serving clichés that were printed in the last issue of STANFORD .

As an engineer I can look back over the past 40 years with some satisfaction at the contributions that engineers have made to improve the human condition through solving real problems, from broader access to information to inexpensive farming equipment for the world’s poorest. I have also noted that countries run by bullies and thugs have not done as well.

David Sears, MS ’68, PhD ’75
Los Gatos, California

It is really sad that the culture wars and the Vietnam conflict are still being fought in the pages of STANFORD , particularly now in the “Age of Obama,” where we would hope at last for a moving-on from those tattered and worn issues. I suppose such a desire is naive in the “Age of Limbaugh” that seems to exist in a parallel universe where venom spews forth from some Stanford graduates, in spite of the large majority of Americans who appear to have a greater concern for current issues, like the economic turn-down, the greed of bankers and unregulated hedge-fund operators, the use of torture, the collapsing health care system, the death and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq.

O. Howard Winn, MA ’52
Poughkeepsie, New York
The writer is a professor emeritus at State University of New York.

Lyman’s Memoir

In April of 1969, as a proud member of the April 3rd Movement, I sat in the Applied Electronics Laboratory, because engineers in that building were plotting effective—read “deadly” or “murderous”—bombing patterns over North Vietnam. Some 2 million North Vietnamese civilians died in the war (Agence France Presse), so I dearly hope we helped to slow down or delay their killing. Was sitting in the AEL an act of “unreason and the tyranny of coercion” as Richard Lyman writes? Should we have waited for “ordinary politics” to stop a criminal war? I don’t think so. Or was Lyman himself complicit in enabling a war that unnecessarily and uselessly cost the lives of some 5 million people?

Roger Boesche, ’70, MA ’72, PhD ’76
Los Angeles, California
The writer is a professor of politics at Occidental College.

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