There was a political scientist named Leon Solomon. He was here for just a few years, and I took a couple of courses with him. Leon lived over at the Trinity Arms with his wife and two young children. I babysat for them on occasion. He got three or four of us together in a non-credit independent study, and we read classic works in sociology by C. Wright Mills, Max Weber, David Riesman. There was no sociology at Trinity at the time. His wife, Elaine, now deceased, would make wonderful meatloaf, and we’d have a drink, then spend a couple of hours in their living room discussing the book. That was another very influential experience from my days here. Perhaps most important, however, was Ted Sloan, who joined the History Department my senior year and was mainly responsible for my decision to go to graduate school in U.S. history instead of staying in journalism.
There were also some students who had an enormous influence on me intellectually, academically, politically—George Will preeminent among them. He was the great liberal Democrat on the campus in those days, and I styled myself a National Review Republican. He won me away from that, and then he went and turned his coat while I remained a good Democrat!
We formed, partly under George’s leadership, a little talking circle. At least five nights a week, long before most of us were 21, we went to a tavern Across the Rocks and had a pitcher of beer and talked about existentialism, politics, John Kennedy, philosophy, religion, you name it. I am fortunate to have learned a lot from George and also from Jack Chatfield (currently associate professor of history) and Frank Kirkpatrick (currently Ellsworth Morton Tracy Lecturer and Professor of Religion), both classmates.
Are there lessons that you bring from your study of history to your work as an administrator?
Most historians quickly discover how hard it is to understand historical actors’ motivations and the complex causes of historical events. That makes for a kind of humility and healthy skepticism about what can be known for certain. Being skeptical and being humble about what you can know for certain are probably good traits in academic administrators, too. It doesn’t do to be too cocksure that you’re right and that your colleagues are willfully refusing to see the truth that is so clear to you.
A lot of the history I’ve read and taught has been political history, particularly United States political history. For much, though not all, of our history as a nation, compromise has been characteristic of our politics. I myself tend to be an instinctive centrist, looking for common ground on which antagonistic views and antagonistic individuals can come together. I hasten to add that not everything should be compromised, and I like to think I can stand fast in those instances.
How have students changed during the years you have been at Trinity?
The most obvious change is that half or more are now women. I think the decision to become a coeducational college was the most important, most gratifying, most valuable event in the modern history of Trinity.
Anyone who cares about the institution also takes great pride that the student body has become much more ethnically and religiously and racially diverse. The tradition when I was a student was that there were typically two African-Americans in every class—at most two. And there were a few students from sub-Saharan Africa, a number of whom were pointed toward Trinity by Anglican or Episcopal missionaries in their home countries, and some of whom were not only good students but excellent soccer players.
There were also perhaps a half-dozen students from South Korea, but this was pretty much a white-bread place. That had begun to change by the time I returned to the College in 1968, and now not only African Americans but other groups, such as Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, make up an important part of the student body.
My sense is that most Trinity students are talented, that they want to do well, and that they have an earnestness about them that a teacher can appeal to and sometimes use to raise their academic aspirations all the more. The number of intellectually aggressive students is relatively small. But it has always been that way, and my guess is that the intellectually aggressive students in any student body, whether it’s here or Harvard or Old Siwash, always are in the minority. Students go to college for a lot of reasons. Some go because they aspire to be intellectuals. The number aspiring to be that is rarely, if ever, very large, but we have our share of them.
