The Topic is College

   In the middle of  March 1946 the LST 919 arrived in Shanghai after a trip to ports where no mail was delivered to us. But now “It finally happened – mail galore!” When we were settled, I sat down to answer all that mail with the longest letter I wrote while in the Navy. One chunk of it is in German, answering a letter from my mother in that language. The section here reproduced responds to my brother, Hans Martin. (He had always been called Hans until he changed it to H. Martin when, after coming to New York, classmates called him “Hans and feet.”  Martin was then 17 years old and a student, as I had been, at Brooklyn Technical High School. Of course he wrote in English.

March 18, 1946

. . . . Now there are still Hans’s (or better Martin’s) letters.  

   The first one’s from Jan 12^th. We’ll start out with the college business. You seem pretty determined on Chicago U. It’s definitely, judging from the limited information I have, a good place. My objection – as mentioned before – is mainly its distance from N.Y. Don’t scorn the small college – look for them! Look for one with a good Chem course, and you will do well. The small college with high standards and small classes is the most advantageous by far. Individual attention is worth a lot. Don’t put all your irons on one fire – Garrett* is altogether right in telling you to apply for two more small New England colleges. Don’t neglect it.

   As far as I am concerned: Go ahead with Columbia – ie send for 2 blanks. Send one (by airmail only, otherwise I’ll never get it) and keep the other at home. The same system is to be used for all other colleges in question. just say that I’m in China, mail service is punk and you wish to keep one at home in case of loss in the mail. I’m also interested in both Harvard (especially so) and Yale. In my case the same holds true – a small college one I possibly haven’t even heard of – with a good reputation is also very interesting. Ask Garrett,* Miss Mayefsky* and Mr. Sayer*– he knows about the subjects I intend to study and go right ahead to send for applications as you see fit. I will write both Sayer and Mayefsky soon, they are high on my priority list. You don’t have to wait to act – mail takes too long – send for material and blanks – it can’t do any harm.

______________________________

*Garrett and Sayer are Brooklyn Tech people whom I do not remember. Miss (Pearl) Mayefsky was an English teacher of mine who befriended me and became something of a mentor. I met with her a number of times even after I returned from the Navy. Moreover, I was not the only one who benefited from her ministrations; see http://www.bthsalumni.org/page.aspx?pid=911.

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   Those who perused my letters from the Navy will have noted that the subject of college comes up with some frequency. There are actually three themes: [1] “I want to get to college” rather than stay in the Navy any longer than I have to; [2] discussions about my considering and applying to colleges; and [3] issues pertaining to my brother Martin’s plans for college. Brief samples of the latter two themes are contained in the excerpt above. I want now to give you a glimpse of what actually happened after all that college talk.

   Martin first. After a brief stay at Queens College in New York, he did get to the University of Chicago. But he did not major in Chemistry as he had intended. A Chicago professor told him that it was practically impossible for a Jew to get a job in Chemistry. [Younger readers of these comments may not be aware how much anti-Semitism there still was during the 1940’s and 50’s in the US. DuPont, to cite just one example, was famous for never hiring a Jew.] Martin followed this advice and shifted his major to economics where he could also make use of his mathematical bent.

   After an uneventful stint in the army, he enrolled in the PhD program at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University), writing a dissertation that won a prestigious national prize. After graduation, he taught economics at a number of business schools before accepting a named professorship at that of Vanderbilt University.

   As for me, I was discharged in July 1946, too late to get into college in the fall. I wanted to go out of town to get out from under my parents, with Kenyon—which I had never visited, a favorite. However, I took advantage of the fact that Columbia College was going to accept 200 veterans to start midyear, in February 1947. This was a big deal, because the several year-long required course had then to be taught “in reverse.” For me it meant not having to wait until the following fall. I applied, took a required test, and was admitted. I worked very hard, taking very full programs and took courses during two summer sessions, so that I could graduate in June 1950, 3 ½ years altogether.

   After a year’s travel in Europe on a traveling fellowship my best friend Carl Hovde and I had received, I returned to New York in the summer of 1947 and applied for a job at the Voice of America. When it turned out that the job disappeared, not having been funded, Professor James Gutmann, then the chairman of the philosophy department, who knew me from a couple of his courses I had taken, said to me, “Rudy, rather than shelving books in the library, sign up for graduate study in philosophy.” So, a couple of days before the start of classes I filled out a sheet of paper that was then handed to the graduate admissions officer through his window, since inside the building there were long lines everywhere, he signed it, admitting me to graduate school, followed by Professor Gutmann telling me that I would get a small graduate fellowship.

   After a year of taking classes, I was recommended to become a fellow at Mortimer Adler’s Institute for Philosophical Research. Prestigious but not educationally significant. However, by now married, it was great to live in San Francisco for two years (1953-55) and to hang out with my co-Institute fellows, a good bunch.

   On my return to Columbia I was appointed part-time instructor in philosophy, a forerunner of the teaching assistantship which did not yet exist at Columbia. That gave me a start in teaching. My dissertation writing was much helped by a year-long fellowship (1957-58) from the Social Science Research Council, so that early in 1959 I received my doctorate with a dissertation on Georg Simmel. It was published in 1962 by the Wesleyan University Press, minus a hundred footnotes that the editor rightly thought were not needed at all.

   Now you have a glimpse at what became of all those college discussions in my 1946 letters from the Navy.