"Realism and the Intellectual in Time of Crisis"
Excerpt from Lynd, Helen M., from “Realism and the Intellectual in Time of Crisis,” The American Scholar 21, no. 1 (Winter, 1951–1952) (permission Staughton Lynd)1
Excerpted by Aimee-Marie Dorsten
Many college and university presidents have similarly endorsed the belief that education and research at this time should become instruments of public policy as defined by military, business, or political interests. President Allen of the University of Washington in his report on the tenure cases at his university made it clear that the scholarly ‘pursuit of truth’ must be such as not to offend the ‘tough, hard-headed world of affairs.’ Trends, published by the National Association of Manufacturers, has commented favorably on the advocacy by university presidents of the use of the school system for indoctrination. Mrs. Mildred McAfee Horton, former President of Wellesley, appears to view with equanimity a uniform national policy which would cause important areas of independent choice and social forces which influence choice to disappear. In urging the drafting of women, she said: “…Military services…have a right to as wide a basis of selection as possible.” (Italics mine.) Her article “Why Not Draft Women?” was captioned: “All the social forces which make women hesitate to volunteer for military duty would vanish if women were drafted.”
If such statements were isolated or exceptional, they could be disregarded; coming as they do, as part of a trend in which loyalty oaths and political screening of teachers are accepted, and in some cases actually initiated, by university presidents, there can be little doubt that they represent a tendency to give over education to political direction—a tendency new in American life. There can be little doubt, also, that in many cases American intellectuals take this position not because they like the effects of military training on the young people they are trying to educate, or because they like the idea of a garrison state, but because they see no effective alternative to such “realism.” We must be realistic, they believe, because in the present world situation attention to what ought to be done rather than what is done will, in Machiavelli’s words, bring ruin rather than preservation.
Yet if utopianism is self-defeating, so also is the current practice of the realism of Edmund. The thoroughgoing utopian cuts himself off from any means of working effectively toward his ends; the thoroughgoing contemporary realist cuts himself off from any end beyond self-preservation, and, it is beginning to appear, loses even that; this contemporary realism destroys that which it would preserve.
But the choice does not lie between these two extremes, for such realism is a peculiar, limited version of realism. The difficulty with the realism of Edmund or Machiavelli is not that it rejects the easy optimism of a utopian dream world, not that it focuses on what the time is, but that it unnecessarily constricts that focus. It does not take what is in its full dimensions, which include what can be. Realism that excludes the as yet unrealized possibilities of the future inherent in the present, realism that excludes the longer, enduring purposes of men, is less than full realism. Full realism includes men’s dreams. Dreams need not be illusions. If utopianism which ignores what is brings ruin, it is also true that realism denies dreams of what may be will not bring preservation. Where there are no dreams, the people perish.
All realism must be selective. No person and no society can grasp the whole reality of any historical situation. But contemporary realism narrows its focus too exclusively to certain aspects of reality and ignores others. It biases selection in favor of an interpretation of reality based upon fear and hate, upon the limitation of possibilities, emphasizing what cannot be done. And this narrowed focus, this scarcity theory—applied to human nature, to understanding of other peoples and our own, to diplomatic options—constantly intensifies itself. In situation after situation, American policy begins by limiting attention to what is, or is regarded as, an immediate danger, concentrating on the most obviously coercive next steps to meet that danger and allowing no wider perspectives or more dynamic possibilities to intrude. Each successive step involves a more constricted focus, more distortion of perspective, and makes the following step seem inevitable, allowing still less choice.
The loss of clear aims and of effective means of working toward any aims resulting from a too limited realism appears in foreign policy, in domestic policy, and in the role of the intellectual as he supports these policies. In each area the tendency is to allow someone else to define the situation and then to adapt to that definition. In foreign policy we wait to see what Russia will do and then try to outmaneuver her. At home, members of both parties increasingly, as was pointed out in a recent letter to the Herald Tribune, allow Senator McCarthy to make the rules, then accuse his opponents of having broken them, and the accused, instead of questioning the rules, merely deny having broken them. When intellectual leaders resign their traditional position of independent thought to support unquestioningly national policy, it is this acceptance of issues as defined by others that they are supporting.
In foreign policy our stated purpose is to preserve democratic freedoms. It has come to be accepted that the way to do this is to concentrate on, and oppose, the Soviet Union as the sole threat to freedom. This single focus has led us to adopt any methods, including some of those of the very state which the whole policy is designed to oppose. It has also led us to select allies in what we call the “free world,” not on the basis of their practice of democracy and freedom, but on the basis of their hatred of and willingness to fight Russia…
[…]
For a time it seemed the absurdity of many of the current attacks on freedom of thought would make them self-defeating. When Senator McCarthy’s campaign began, the term most widely used to describe his activities was “antics.” This has proved, tragically, too trivial a description of the climate of opinion of which he is both symptom and cause. When such men as Owen Lattimore, Philip Jessup, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Kingsley Martin, whose lives and works are a matter of open record, can be charged in America with following “a Communist line,” we can no longer rely on the ludicrous nature of the charges to protect freedom.
The Government, in allowing its loyalty program to be oriented in terms of Senator McCarthy’s definition of issues, has contributed to the suppression of free inquiry and thus deprived itself of the responsible intelligence on which democratic government must rely. The result is anti-intellectualism that leads the government to rely on the rigid, the fearful, and the irresponsible instead of on the best intelligence of its citizens.
This article, in somewhat different form, was given as a lecture on March 15, 1951, at the annual Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Vassar College. ↩