At one point our Chinese visitor mentioned that he was a descendant of the ancient, now extinct community of Chinese Jews of Kaifeng. I asked him what, if anything, he knew of Judaism. He replied in four words, “One God. No pork.”
One of my most distinguished colleagues at Princeton was the social historian Lawrence Stone. One day when the staff of the faculty lounge and dining room were on strike the professors were compelled, unless they were willing to go into town to a restaurant, to bring their own lunches. On that day Mrs. Stone brought a chicken for her husband’s lunch and the two sat in the faculty lounge to share it. Someone passed by, saw them together, and exclaimed, “Two Stones with one bird.”
The Institute for Advanced Study
I first visited the Institute for Advanced Study sometime before I even thought of moving to the United States. On one occasion, while I was still in London, the director of the Institute called and asked if I would be willing to make a short, special, trip to Princeton to help him in a certain matter. He was proposing to elect a scholar in a field previously unrepresented. There was some resistance to this proposal, and he asked if I would come to Princeton to attend a meeting, make a case in favor of this scholar, and then return. I agreed and therefore made a hurried transatlantic round-trip for just two days, to plead the case for this appointment. The gentleman was duly appointed. He did not, of course, know of the circumstances.
In 1974, when I returned to Princeton with a joint full-time appointment shared between the university and the Institute for Advanced Study, I had a chance to gain a better understanding of its curious structure. It consisted of two major groups, on one side mathematicians and physicists, on the other side historians, later expanded to include social scientists. Each scholar was provided with an office including ample space for a library, with an assistant if one were required and a generous stipend. The Institute also had its own apartments for scholars within easy reach of the office and with very favorable terms. The arrangement normally continued after retirement, but not always. Fortunately my home in Princeton was a university house, not an Institute house, and therefore I was not in danger of eviction on retirement.
I’m told that my appointment, half-time university and half-time Institute, was the first and last of its kind. Thanks to the dual appointment I had the time and the setting in which to be quite productive. For my part, I found it an excellent arrangement—the Institute gave me leisure, space and privacy, all three of them, especially the latter, in ample measure. The obverse of the value of privacy was that there was not the cross-fertilization among disciplines that was envisaged when the Institute was created. But this I managed to find at the university.
A footnote to this is that on my retirement in 1986, the university very kindly allowed me to retain an office on the campus and something even more rare and precious, a parking permit. I would have preferred at the same time to keep an office at the Institute since it was there that I had stored my entire library and where I did most of my work, but one member of the faculty was insistent that my appointment to the Institute had terminated and I must therefore vacate the office which I had been using. This caused considerable inconvenience. For one thing I had to cancel a lecture tour in France which had been arranged sometime earlier. For another, it meant building an addition to my house in which to store my fifteen-thousand-volume library and papers which I had to transfer from the Institute library where I had hitherto had my own section. The person in question was the one for whom I had made that special trip, though I never told him, so he could be invited to join the Institute.
Politics
My connection to political Washington goes back to when I was still living in England and had not even thought about migrating to the United States. It began during one of my lecture tours in America when I spoke to a small invited audience in Washington about the situation in the Middle East and the policies of the outside powers. In the audience was a young man who at that time was an assistant to Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle. Hearing my lecture, he felt it would be a good thing if the Senator could meet me and hear my views directly. He arranged a meeting and in due course Senator Jackson and I met and chatted, the first of many conversations and the start of a close personal relationship which continued until his untimely death in 1983 at age seventy-one.
He was a truly great man and I feel it was a privilege to have known him personally. He was one of the few politicians of whom you could really use the word statesman, a man of total and unswerving integrity, a patriot and a gentleman. Among my many meetings with him my most vivid recollection is of an incident which occurred during the primaries for the presidential election of 1976. Scoop was running for the Democratic nomination and had already carried Massachusetts and New York triumphantly. When we met and talked in New York he had just reached the painful conclusion that, despite these successes, he would have to withdraw from the race for the simple reason that he had run out of funds. For a man of Scoop’s meticulous integrity, funding was always a problem since he was not willing even to consider the kind of deals on which political campaigning was and is so often based. The next contest was in Pennsylvania for which he had already made media buys. He transferred them to his chief rival, Jimmy Carter, whose campaign was amply funded. Imagine how different the course of history would have been if Scoop Jackson had been the Democratic candidate and had been elected President!
An example of Scoop’s scrupulousness in financial matters which impressed me occurred when it was decided that senators should be required to notify the Senate of fees received for lectures. At this point Scoop revealed that over the years he had deposited all honoraria into a fund which he had established to help needy students. Two things are notable about this; first, he felt long before the Senate reached any such conclusion that receiving fees for lectures was exploiting his status as a senator, and therefore, improper. He made no personal use of these funds. The second even more remarkable point, is that he did not disclose this fact until required to do so by Senate regulations.
Senator Jackson was sufficiently impressed by my views to invite me several times to testify before Senate committees. The proceedings of the meetings, my statements and the question and answer sessions, were published in the Senate proceedings. My connection with the Senate continued after his death in 1983 and I was invited to give testimony on several occasions and to meet with groups of senators for private discussions.
In the late 1970s Scoop was very concerned about the possible loss of the presidency to the Republicans and felt that the Democrats must make a special effort to retain or recover it. He decided that although Senator Edward Kennedy was not a strong candidate he was all there was and we should do what we could to educate and prepare him. With Kennedy’s permission Scoop set up an evening meeting at the Kennedy residence to which he came with several specialist advisers, I among them. This was to be an informal dinner, completely off-the-record, to discuss questions of foreign policy. We sat around the table with Senator Kennedy presiding and carried on a lively conversation, in which, for the most part, our host was silent. A few days later I was startled to receive questions from the press about some remarks I was alleged to have made concerning Iran in general, and the role of the Shah in particular. I made inquiries and found that the remarks in question had been made by Senator Kennedy during a visit to the West Coast. When challenged, he said he had been told this by me. This was doubly improper—first, quoting a conversation from a private, off-the-record meeting, and second, far worse, misquoting it to the point of absurdity. I called Scoop immediately and he shared my outrage. He got in touch with Kennedy’s office and the best he was able to get was a rather lame, ambiguous retraction. Fortunately, no one else seems to have taken any notice of it.
Oddly enough, the only other occasion when Senator Kennedy’s path and mine crossed was in Iran, at a dinner. Sometime in the early 1970s at a time when I was in Tehran, Senator Kennedy suddenly arrived, unannoun
ced and unexpected. The Shah was angry. He felt that a visit by a U.S. senator, particularly one with the dynastic name of Kennedy, was a state occasion and that he should therefore have been notified in advance so that appropriate arrangements could be made. Despite his annoyance, however, the Shah felt that he had to go ahead and do something to honor so distinguished a visitor. He dealt with this problem by finding a subtle Iranian way of honoring and rebuking Senator Kennedy at the same time. The Palace gave a formal dinner at which the Senator was the guest of honor. However, the Shah himself did not participate in this dinner, but instead left the task of presiding to his teenage granddaughter. From an Iranian point of view, this conveyed a clear message. The Senator however was delighted and I have no doubt that he enjoyed his dinner with the teenage girl much more than he would have enjoyed it with His Imperial Majesty.
I was invited to this dinner, and the Palace staff very kindly provided a car and driver to take me there and back. These two drives, in a Palace car with a Palace driver, were a nerve-racking experience. For such an august conveyance the rules of the road simply did not exist; the driver was free to go whichever way seemed convenient for him—on the wrong side of the road, through traffic lights, across intersections, and without any regard for speed limits. They were alarming journeys but were safely accomplished. The Senator obviously enjoyed his evening, and was, I am told, quite unaware of the fact that he was being subtly rebuked. On the contrary, he took it as a compliment.
The Shah of Iran
In October 1971, I was delighted to receive an invitation from the Iranian Embassy in London to attend the Shah’s elaborate and luxurious ceremony celebrating the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus, the largest the world had yet seen. I vividly remember the climax. The Shah arrived at Persepolis by helicopter, stood on a raised platform in front of his assembled guests, a global Who’s Who, and facing the tomb of Cyrus the Great concluded his remarks by saying, “Oh mighty Cyrus, you may sleep in peace, for we are awake!”
A year before the 1979 Revolution, I saw the Shah again at his palace, where he had a very large study with his desk at the far end. I think that was a trick he picked up from Mussolini, making a visitor walk down a long room in order to get to the royal desk. When I came in, the first thing he said was, “Why do they keep attacking me?” I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. So I said very politely, “Who, Your Majesty?” And he ticked them off, “The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Times, The Manchester Guardian, and Le Monde. The five weird sisters dancing around the doom of the West. Don’t you all realize that I’m the best friend you have in this part of the world? Why all the criticism?”
I said, my sense of mischief welling up, “Well, Your Majesty, you must remember that Western foreign policy is conducted on Marxist principles.” He was very startled at that. Then I said, “I don’t mean Karl, I mean Groucho. You have seen the Marx Brothers films?” He said, “Yes, of course,” and I continued, “Do you remember a moment when Groucho says I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member? A principle of Western foreign policies is that we do not worry about the friendship of any government that would seek our friendship. It’s only our enemies in whom we are interested.” He said he understood perfectly.
The day before this interview with the Shah I was having lunch with some Iranian friends when my host said that he understood that His Majesty’s granddaughter was an undergraduate at Princeton and asked how she was doing. I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea; she has never taken any of my courses. As far as I know she’s never come near our department, and I don’t know what happens to all the students at Princeton.” My host commented that he knew I had an audience with His Majesty the next morning and that since I was from Princeton it was very likely that His Majesty would ask how his granddaughter was doing. “If you answer him as you have just answered me, it will not be good.” I countered, “There is no other way I can answer him. I don’t know how she is doing, I’ve never seen her.” So he waved his hand to his telephone and said that thanks to the wisdom and foresight of His Majesty, we now have direct dialing to the United States. “Why don’t you call Princeton and find out?”
It so happened that the adviser to foreign students was the wife of a good friend of mine, so I not only knew to whom to speak; I even knew the telephone number. This was Janina Issawi, the wife of the great economic historian Charles Issawi. I dialed the number and Janina answered the telephone. We chatted for a moment. She was having breakfast, I had finished lunch. I said casually, “By the way, I am calling from Tehran.” When she had recovered from her shock, she asked if I were calling for some particular reason. I said, “Yes.”
I wanted to be very careful, because I thought it likely that telephone calls were monitored, so I said, “I’m seeing someone rather important tomorrow who has a close relative at our place.” And bless her Polish heart, she understood immediately. If I had been talking to a normal American, they would have said, “Who do you mean? What are you talking about?” They don’t have the conspiratorial approach to things she had by birthright, but she understood. “Well, how is she doing?” I asked. She replied, “Oh, hopeless. We decided to throw her out.” “What?” I sputtered. Apparently, this girl never got up until midday so any courses in the morning she missed automatically. For the rest of the day she regarded her courses as something to be fitted into her program of social engagements. She had been warned several times but it didn’t have the slightest effect. So they had decided to throw her out.
I said, “Couldn’t you get her an extension, just one more semester, until I get back to Princeton?” She said, “This is a decision that has already been made. It’s very difficult to change.” I pleaded with her to try. She asked me to call her back in an hour, which I did. She explained that she had taken it up with her department and spoken with the chairman who referred her to the dean who referred her to the president. Everyone said he didn’t want to countermand somebody else’s decision, but Janina said she was working on it and to give her another half hour and call again. I did. With exaltation in her voice she told me it was okay. The girl would get one more semester but if she didn’t pull her socks up, she would be out. I was greatly relieved and expressed my thanks. The next day I saw His Majesty. I was with him the whole morning, almost three hours. He never once asked about his granddaughter, possibly because he didn’t care, more probably because he’d already had a transcript of this conversation and knew what it was about.
The sequel, which is a nice one, is that she was given a really severe warning and was told that if she didn’t mend her ways she would be out. She turned herself around, stayed on, took her degree, and did well. So the story has a happy ending. The following year was the Revolution. If she had been thrown out she would have been sent back to Iran and would have been in real trouble. As it is, she was at Princeton, which was bad enough because suddenly she lost her escort, and her status; she was the devil’s granddaughter because the Shah was very unpopular in liberal and enlightened circles. Everybody was in favor of the Revolution, not realizing that Iran’s new rulers were much worse than anything that the Shah could ever have thought of. She showed great courage and dignity and really stood up to it extremely well.
The other consequence was that her father sent me a large tin of caviar.
A Near Defection
In 1972, when my son Michael was graduating from high school I received a letter from some old friends in Jerusalem saying that their son had just gone into the army to do his military service and they “had a vacancy in their home.” As the long vacation was just beginning, would Michael like to stay with them for a month as their houseguest? Michael agreed, and off he went. Toward the end of that month I received a letter from him saying he would like to stay longer, but as he did not feel he could ask his hosts to extend their hospitality, he was going to spend a little while on a kibbutz. He explained that the sho
rtest period for which the kibbutz would accept a temporary member was three months, and he had agreed to that condition. There then was a series of postponements of his return to England until it began to look as though he were going to stay permanently in Kibbutz Kfar Blum. In the kibbutz he met a summer volunteer from Cleveland, Jessica, whom he married. It was she who persuaded him that it would be a good idea to go to the United States and, more specifically, to university. He agreed, and chose Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. His reason for choosing Rutgers was very simple. He had learned that since he was the son of a New Jersey resident and taxpayer (myself) the university’s fees were minimal. With a kibbutz mentality, he did not want me to be burdened by tuition fees. Michael and Jessica both graduated from Rutgers; Michael emerged as a Phi Beta Kappa and went on to do graduate work in politics at Princeton. While they were at Princeton, they presented me with my first grandson, Zachary.
In accordance with Jewish custom, the newborn boy had to be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. It was therefore necessary to find a mohel, a ritual circumciser. There wasn’t one in Princeton but I found one in New Brunswick who agreed to come and perform the ceremony. As is usual on such occasions we had a little party to which Michael and Jessica invited their friends and I invited mine. One of my friends, Harry Wolf, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study, was a very busy man. At one point he went up to the mohel and said, “Excuse me, but how long is this going to take?” The mohel looked at him and asked, “Sir! Are you asking me to cut it short?”
Notes on a Century: Reflections of A Middle East Historian Page 19
