"I dare not trust the willing middlemen of life, the men who like arranging other men and their affairs, who find manipulation satisfying to their souls. These men if they can have their way will make of life a smooth, well-lubricated meaninglessness." -Alexander Meiklejohn, class of 1893, on college administrators
"It gives you a sense of place, a sense of perspective. And it saves you from hero-worship. The people I consider heroes are the ones who never get into the history books." -The late professor William McLoughlin, in 1983, on the study of history
Historians, a professor of mine commented last year, love nothing more than to tear down a hero. And sure enough, thinking back, my history professors at Brown seemed to relish knocking down conventional narratives every chance they got.
Thus I was taught in Civil War history that Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator" himself, proposed in 1862 a compromise whereby the South could keep its slaves until the late date of January 1, 1900. In an excellent course on the (highly contested) history of Zionism, David Ben-Gurion did not exactly come off as a hero in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes. And we now know that even the early benefactors of our great northern University were deeply implicated in slavery and the slave trade.
The past as presented in Brown history classes was always more complicated - and usually gloomier - than official pieties would have had it. But four years of absorbing critiques, however convincing they are, gets tiresome. Unrelenting negativism in history is unsatisfying. That's why I'm pleased to submit for your consideration the two men quoted above, my favorite Brown alum and favorite faculty member, respectively. Heroes, happily, need not always be torn down.
I first encountered William McLoughlin's name on a wooden plank nailed to a tree in a small park on Waterman Street. Further research revealed that the old tree, next to the American Civilization department at 82 Waterman St., was a storied sycamore maple. So why was a plank nailed to the maple's trunk, and what about the odd little birdhouse sitting on a low-lying branch?
These curiosities are relics of a fight over the future of the tree in the early 1980s. An effort led by environmental studies professors was underway to convert the Lucian Sharpe Carriage House at 135 Angell St., adjacent to the tree, into an innovative Urban Environmental Laboratory. A key element of the project was solar panels on the south side of the roof, but there was one problem: the sycamore maple, the UEL designers feared, would block light from reaching the panels in the winter months and therefore needed to be felled.
But McLoughlin, a popular history professor whose office was next door in the AmCiv building, objected. The AmCiv department stood "to lose the tree and its shade during the summer, as well as a verdant oasis under which they hold classes and their Commencement ceremony," according to a Brown Alumni Magazine article at the time. So McLoughlin mounted a protest, circulating a petition against the UEL's plan. Save-the-tree buttons were distributed. An unusual debate ensued, pitting professional environmentalists against an amateur tree-hugger.
When the UEL's architects presented technical data showing why the tree had to go, McLoughlin responded with a crucial anti-corporate observation: "It's a question of values, not who has the best statistics," he said. "If you talk in terms of quantifiable utilitarian concerns, you miss the heart of the controversy."
McLoughlin was a dedicated citizen and had served as chairman of the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union. An experienced protester, he would go downtown on Friday afternoons to demonstrate against U.S. military involvement in El Salvador. McLoughlin's first act of civil disobedience had been at the State House in the 1960s in support of a fair housing law. So it's not surprising that he didn't back down in the fight over the tree. In the end, the sycamore maple was saved for future generations and, to this day, the UEL functions perfectly well. The plank and birdhouse were added later in McLoughlin's honor.
This weekend may be your last chance to enjoy the McLoughlin maple. If current plans are carried out, the grounds of the small park will soon make up the midsection of a 30,000 square foot "Creative Arts Center." With a $30 million price tag, the four-story building will be a "multidisciplinary space for the arts" complete with galleries and, yes, a café. No protester, to my knowledge, has emerged to save the park or the tree (or, for that matter, the handsome Second Empire-style Victorian next door). The new building will be bulky, expensive and no doubt efficient - likely a must-stop on future admissions tours. We can be sure McLoughlin would have despised it.
The name of Alexander Meiklejohn, class of 1893, is well known around Brown, not merely nailed to a tree. There is a Meiklejohn advising program, an annual Meiklejohn lecture and a Meiklejohn house. But my first real encounter with the First Amendment scholar came while reading a collection by the late, great journalist I.F. Stone.
Stone had a touching piece on Meiklejohn's death in 1964. He wrote: "Few men have combined such deep conviction with such courtesy towards opposing points of view, such foreboding about man's fate with so sweet a serenity and so ever-fresh a joy. He was a philosopher in the ancient sense; his concerns were the good life and the good society."
My interest was piqued. I read up on Meiklejohn and discovered the brilliant life of a teacher and free-speech absolutist. An occasional contributor to The Herald as an undergraduate, Meiklejohn later took a post in Brown's philosophy department and learned the ropes of administration as a dean.
In 1912 Meiklejohn became president of Amherst College and made anything but a "meaninglessness" of his time at the small college. He angered the school's establishment by urging amateur, not professional, coaching of collegiate sports (though he personally excelled at squash and cricket). He established courses, taught by both faculty and students, for workers at local mills. He made it known he wouldn't mind having a Bolshevik on the faculty, providing that the man could teach. And before America entered World War I, Meiklejohn opposed "preparedness training" on campus.
This was a time when college presidents were not mere glorified fundraisers, parachuting onto campus a few times a year to stand before a podium and emit platitudes. Meiklejohn spoke with a distinct moral and political voice.
His time at Amherst is fascinating, but Meiklejohn's inspirational work - work now regaining its former urgency - was on the Constitution. An early critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Meiklejohn fiercely defended all forms of speech short of overt incitement of violence.
Meiklejohn testified before Congress in 1955 on the meaning of the First Amendment: "To be afraid of any idea is to be unfit for self-government," he said. "Any such suppression of ideas about the common good, the First Amendment condemns with its absolute disapproval."
Looking back, Meiklejohn and McLoughlin, two principled nonconformists, seem remarkably like kindred spirits. They deserve to be remembered. Here's to raising up the heroes of Brown's history.
