Academic Elite Goes to Washington, and to War, The

Academe, Jan/Feb 2005 by Lewis, Lionel S

Harriman's and Lovett's fathers were close business associates, and they themselves became business partners. Nitze and Forrestal also had close business ties. Forrestal became president of the investment bank Dillon's father put together. The son later became its chair. Bruce not only helped manage the interests of his father-in-law, Andrew Mellon, but was engaged in business dealings with Harriman, serving for a time, along with Lovett, as one of the nine outside directors of the Harriman-controlled Union Pacific Railroad and as a member of the oversight board of the Harriman-controlled Aviation Corp. These are not the only instances in which Harriman, Lovett, Bruce, and McCloy served on the same corporate boards.

Some among the sixteen were also neighbors, including Forrestal and Lovett, whose wives were friends and whose children were playmates. And some spent considerable leisure time together, as did Forrestal and McCloy, longtime tennis partners.

The conclusion seems obvious: although students who attend elite institutions need not fear indoctrination by liberal faculty, they can look forward to opportunities to maintain or to form equal-status relationships with those with wealth and power in America.

Notes

1. Other defense secretaries who received degrees from elite institutions are Neil McElroy (1957-59), BA, Harvard University; Thomas Gates (1959-61), BA, University of Pennsylvania; Robert McNamara (1961-68), MA, Harvard; Eliot Richardson (1973), BA and LLB, Harvard; James Schlesinger (1973-75), BA and PhD, Harvard; Harold Brown (1977-81), BA and PhD, Columbia University; Casper Weinberger (1981-87), AB and LLB, Harvard; Frank Carlucci (1987-89), BA, Princeton University; Leslie Aspin (1993-94), BA, Yale University, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and William Perry (1994-97), BS, Stanford University.

2. Robert Cutler (1953-55) earned an AB and an LLB from Harvard; Dillon Anderson (1955-56) and Gordon Gray (1958-61) received LLBs from Yale; McGeorge Bundy (1961-66) earned a BA from Yale; Walt Rostow (1966-69) had a PhD from Yale; Henry Kissinger (1969-75) earned a BA and a PhD from Harvard; Zbigniew Brzezinski (1977-81) received a PhD from Harvard; John Poindexter (1985-86) earned a PhD from the California Institute of Technology; Frank Carlucci (1986-87) received a BA from Princeton; Brent Scrowcroft (1989-93) earned a PhD from Columbia; and Samuel Berger (1997-2001) received a BA from Cornell and an LLB from Harvard.

Lionel Lewis is emeritus professor of sociology and adjunct professor of higher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo.