Why I Agree with Everything that You Say and with Nothing that You Say ...
But I'm thinking of a moment just prior to that when Will Herberg, my favorite teacher at Drew, my rabbi, got into the front seat of my car for me to take him into Jersey City, where he was also teaching at St. Peter's College. Herberg was an awesome intellect. I write about him often here and always with great affection and admiration. Growing up in a secular Jewish family, he had become a leading intellectual influence in the Lovestonite faction of American Communists. They were named for their political mentor, Jay Lovestone. Like many radicals of his generation, however, Herberg grew increasingly disillusioned with Marxism. In mid-life, he turned to study historic Judaism and became a professing conservative Jew. He was the author of two books that helped shape the public life of the mind in mid-20th century America, Judaism and Modern Man and Protestant, Catholic, Jew. By the time I knew him, Will had grown increasingly conservative and was publishing in William Buckley's lively new periodical, National Review.
So, as I say, one day Herberg gets in the car for our regular trip into Jersey City and our conversation turned to the civil rights movement, then churning in my beloved Southland. I was fresh from the movement and full of its hope that"We Shall Overcome." Har-rumphf, grumbled Herberg, lawless, ignorant troublemakers. (I paraphrase, but that was the substance of his reply.) As always, he soon had me on the defensive, because Will gave no quarter in intellectual combat. Casting about for some respectable defense, I cited the fact, after all, that Martin Luther King had a doctorate in philosophical theology from Boston University. Herberg replied that he had friends on the theological faculty at Boston and that he'd inquire into King's academic credentials. I doubt that he ever did. Even if he had, King's mentors at Boston would have given glowing accounts of the brilliant record of their most famous student.
I recall that moment when my rabbi sat beside me on the way to Jersey City and questioned Martin Luther King's academic accomplishments for several reasons. I think about it often because subsequently, as Associate Editor of the King Papers, I directed much of the research that exposed a remarkable record of plagiarism in King's academic work, including his dissertation. Undoubtedly, if it had been exposed in King's own lifetime, his earned doctorate at Boston would have had to be revoked. But, I think about that moment on the way to Jersey City also because shortly after Will Herberg's own death, we learned that he had fabricated every one of the three academic degrees that he claimed to have earned. He claimed to have a B.A. from C.C.N.Y., when he'd actually been expelled from the place for getting into a fight with the instructor of a required ROTC course. The M.A. and Ph.D. that he claimed to have earned from Columbia were simply wholly fabricated. He'd never been admitted there. Beyond that, apparently in order to postpone the day of his retirement, Herberg had regularly pushed forward the date of his birth in reports to Who's Who. I've often thought, what if I'd known all of that in that moment. What if I'd said to my beloved teacher:"Yes, King is an academic fraud; and so are you."
Of course, I didn't know those things then and they continue to puzzle me now. When the subject of someone like Ward Churchill or intellectual diversity on our campuses come up, they puzzle me in ways that cause me to say: I agree with everything you say; and I agree with nothing that you say. The man who I sometimes regard as the greatest moral authority in the twentieth century, my revered Martin Luther King was, undoubtedly in some ways, an academic fraud. And the man who I revere as the greatest teacher I've ever known, Will Herberg, my rabbi, was, both a conservative and, undoubtedly in some ways, an academic fraud. But every one of us at Drew conceded that Herberg knew more than any one of us and more than most half-dozens of us put together. Struggling in the midst of the McCarthy era against a personal history of Marxist-apologias, with no academic entitlements, and knowing that an academic community was his true home, Herberg affected entitlements that were expected of such people. In some ways, I love and admire him all the more for having successfully exploited the vacuity of our credentialing processes. A university that could not find a place in it for a conservative so learned and so devoted to teaching as Will Herberg is unworthy of the name.
So, yes, you're damned straight. Our universities must be places where conservatives are welcomed on their faculties. And, no, academic fraud is not definitive. Martin Luther King's academic plagiarism undoubtedly shades his moral leadership. And, yet, how many of us who are altogether innocent of plagiarism have ever risked our pristine hides to give moral leadership about anything? And, no, academic fraud is not definitive. Herberg was the greatest teacher I've ever known – an encyclopedic mind, with a tough, combative style. If Ward Churchill had any of his intellectual heft, he'd be worth defending.