Kabaservice, Geoffrey (M.) 1966-

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KABASERVICE, Geoffrey (M.) 1966-

PERSONAL: Male. Born June 21, 1966, in New Haven CT. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1988, Ph.D., 1999; Jesus College, Cambridge, M.A. (philosophy), 1988.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Offıce— Advisory Board Company, 2445 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20037; fax: 202-266-5700.

CAREER: Yale University, New Haven, CT, lecturer; Advisory Board Company, Washington, DC, manager.

WRITINGS:

(With William S. Beinecke) Through Mem'ry's Haze: A Personal Memoir, Prospect Hill Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment, Holt (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice's book The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment examines the importance of education in modern American politics—not just having an education, but having the right kind of education from the right kind of school. Specifically, Kabaservice's book examines the impact that Kingman Brewster, president of Yale from 1964 to 1977, had on a whole generation of American leaders. Elliot Richardson, who served in four different cabinet positions during Richard Nixon's administration, was a Brewster associate and shared many of the Yale president's goals. Cyrus Vance, another of Brewster's friends, was Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, worked for multilateral solutions to conflict in the late 1970s, and was largely responsible for the SALT II agreements to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. Younger Americans influenced by Brewster's ideology include former president Bill Clinton and Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, both of whom received their law degrees from Yale in 1973; Senator Joseph Lieberman, who received his undergraduate degree in 1964 and went on to get his law degree from Yale in 1967; and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who earned his degree in 1971. Also among the prestigious Yale grads are John Kerry (class of 1966) and George W. Bush (class of 1968), who competed for the presidency in the 2004 election. "By 2008," stated Warren Goldstein in the Chicago Tribune Books, "the Oval Office will have been occupied by a graduate of Yale University for at least twenty consecutive years."

Each of these leading political figures, in one way or another, were formed or affected by Brewster's policies at Yale. Unlike other college campuses—such as the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, and Cornell—which were plagued by student unrest and violence during the 1960s, Yale remained peaceful under Brewster's term. "As a matter of policy and by personal example," Goldstein stated, "Brewster kept his entire administration open and closely connected to the student body." The president opened the university—which had been, up until the early 1960s, a bastion of wealthy white male privilege—to a broader spectrum of both people and ideas. He "accepted and even embraced," commented Alan Brinkley in the New Republic, "a series of fundamental changes in the character of Yale that the new, more democratic ethos of the 1960s and 1970s all but required: coeducation, active recruitment of minorities, widening the base from which students at Yale were drawn, diversifying the curriculum and responding to new areas of knowledge that were emerging out of the turbulence of his time." "Is it any wonder," Goldstein asked, "that during Brewster's tenure, an inordinate number of Yalies saw the possibilities in public service within—as opposed to outside—the system?"

Curiously enough, Kabaservice points out, Brewster himself had been a member of the privileged classes who had attended Yale up to that point. A direct descendent of Elder William Brewster, a pilgrim who arrived in America on the Mayflower, Brewster was born into a privileged northeastern elite for whom admission to Yale was just one of many social perks to be accepted without question. Brewster, who had been raised in Boston, "was alone among his classmates in choosing to go to Yale rather than to Harvard (in an era when young men at elite schools largely chose the universities that they would attend, rather than the other way around," Brinkley explained. At the same time, however, members of Brewster's social class, were bred for a career of self-sacrificing public service. Brewster designed the new Yale to create a "new elite" that could govern the United States well into the future—a group that would share the old northeastern elite's values of sacrifice and dedication to public service. "What Brewster was seeking," remarked Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Jim Sleeper, "was a leadership whose authority rested in a small 'r' republican civic virtue that is seldom evident now and even less understood."

Men like Brewster saw themselves as patrician guardians of an American liberal tradition that stretched back over a hundred years. "These men," an Atlantic Monthly critic commented, "believed it their duty and their right to guide and rule what Kabaservice calls 'the multitude.'" When they made mistakes, however, their arrogance could lead to disaster. McGeorge Bundy, for instance, Kabaservice points out, was one of Brewster's closest associates and served as national security advisor under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Bundy argued for greater American commitment during the Vietnam War—a policy that cost the lives of thousands of U.S. servicemen and created a public uproar. "One finds oneself," the Atlantic Monthly contributor concluded, "agreeing with the young and intemperate (and improbably populist) William F. Buckley Jr., who called this bunch 'haughty totalitarians who refuse to permit the American people to supervise their own destiny.'"

Critics in general celebrated Kabaservice's work. A Publishers Weekly writer, referring to Kerry, Bush, Clinton, and Dean, stated that "Kabaservice's history offers valuable insights" into a pedagogy that helped to shape "their political character." Vanessa Bush, writing in Booklist, called the work an "absorbing look at the liberal establishment." "Few books," stated Library Journal contributor Karl Helicher, "so convincingly portray the spirit and ferment of the times." A Kirkus Reviews critic called the book "a capable evocation" of an American landscape, and a "fine cultural history, especially welcome in a time when the L-word is a pejorative."