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passing of W. Glenn Campbell last week at age 77 was not widely
noted, save for the obituary pages of California newspapers and
the hearty community of conservative scholars. Still, it marked
the end of a gilded age, and hopefully the cessation of a conspiracy
of silence that denies a dark truth about one of America's most
prestigious universities.
From 1960 until
1989, Campbell served as director of the Hoover Institution of War,
Revolution and Peace, located on the campus of Stanford University,
and founded by Herbert Hoover himself, a member of Stanford's first
graduating class.
At the time
of his selection, Campbell was a Harvard Ph.D and 34-year-old research
director at the American Enterprise Institute, and he immediately
set about leading the Institution's human, financial and archival
resources to become the best-endowed think tank in the world, with
an unequaled research staff and several Nobel laureates.
Importantly,
the 31st president also cautioned Campbell to be wary of "sneak
attacks" from Stanford's notorious Left wing. This proved to
be a prescient warning.
According to
Paul Craig Roberts, a Hoover Fellow during the 1970s, tenured professors
regularly referred to Hoover scholars as "war criminals."
It was also common to see the windows of the stunning Lou Henry
Hoover building broken out and boarded up, and its doors even chained
on the inside to protect Hoover personnel from assault by Stanford
students.
But Stanford's
hatred of Hoover is not widely known, as Hoover fellows seemed to
value their roguish campus reputation. When former hippies-turned-academics
hurled foul invectives their way, and the thuggish punks they instructed
vandalized Hoover property, they at least figured they were on to
something.
Indeed they
were. In the tumultuous times of Campbell's tenure, the institution
became a leading resource chronicling freedom's global struggle
against Communism, and making what was then not a widely popular
case for America's prime role as the world's bulwark for democracy.
Ronald Reagan
called it "the brightest star in the constellation of think
tanks," and his presidential administration was stocked with
numerous Hoover personnel who played an influential role in both
its policy success and intellectual underpinning.
This included
Campbell himself, who also later served as a member of the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Foundation, as well as chairman of its first
board of trustees.
This last service
proved too much for Stanford's radical left to endure, and in 1989,
with Reagan safely out of office, they moved on Campbell. First,
the school scornfully rejected the opportunity to house the Reagan
Presidential Library. Next, it forced him to retire at age 65, attempted
to take control of Hoover's endowment and tried to subject its hiring
and research to the approval of Stanford faculty committees.
But Campbell
was equal to the task. He understood that in exchange for a Purge
At Palo Alto, Stanford would pay a steep price. He was thereby able
to negotiate Hoover's ironclad control of its endowment and budget
and a reaffirmation of its independence from the university.
This colorful
history leaves unanswered, however, if Stanford's Forty Years War
with Hoover is merely the extension of a political argument by other
means.
Of course,
the university is home to outstanding students and extraordinary
teachers. But Stanford is hampered by its denigrating attitude —
still fighting new and old culture wars, all the while sneering
at the rest of us.
This year brought
news of a Stanford course entitled "The Language of Hip-Hop
Culture" where students interact with local hip-hop performers
J.T., The Bigga Figga, and Tha Comissiona. The Associated Press
reports a sample discussion topic: What does Killarmy mean when
he raps, "Lyrical poems cock back with sharp tacks laced with
Ajax."
But don't conclude
that Stanford is anti-tradition. There's the annual commencement
exercise known by the cultured alliteration of "The Wacky Walk."
This is where the Stanford graduating class runs around the commencement
area (as described by Stanford Report, the university's official
magazine) "goofing off as part of the nonconformist answer
to the more mainstream (and, some would say, boring) commencement
processional."
Missed Stanford's
2001 commencement? Stanford Report describes the scene: "While
there were plenty of caps and gowns, these generally were festooned
with accoutrements like fairy wings, boas and balloons. One group
of students had attached white dots to their black gowns, giving
them the appearance of dominoes. At one point, they lined up and
fell down — like dominoes. Some other students held aloft an
inflatable pool. Still others played wiffleball."
What can we
conclude from Stanford's chuckling approval of infantile behavior
— and sanction of a class where students can interact with
Tha Commissiona — when it just couldn't find room for Ronald
Reagan's presidential library? Simple: Stanford is no longer among
the very elite American undergraduate universities.
Every slum
needs a property that's too proud to slide down with the neighborhood.
Thus does Stanford need its Hoover, rising above a school once great,
but now characterized by a sense that it is an emerging academic
ghetto — and proud of it.
In the end,
Glenn Campbell won both the battle and the war; building up the
Hoover Institution into a preeminent voice for freedom, and beating
back all of Stanford's attempts to tear it down.
Let everyone
who has benefited in some way from Campbell's work pause to remember
the legacy of one of conservatism's most gallant champions, and
the passing of one of its most loyal friends.
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