Readers run through it

I enjoyed the piece on Norman Maclean, PhD’40, and his A River Runs Through It in the Summer/24 issue of the Magazine (“Searching for a Story”).

My guess is I am one of the few readers of Maclean’s famous book whose father also was a Presbyterian minister and fine fly fisherman, likewise not necessarily in that order. And I shared with the author the University of Chicago in the ’60s, graduating with a BA in history in 1968.

I joined my folks in the summer of 1980 for some fly fishing on Montana’s Madison River; my father had recently retired from his position as professor of religion at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. His successor, also a fly fisherman, was along with his wife. They gave me Maclean’s book and took me out on the river. Like the author’s father, they tied their own flies, checking out the hatch of the day and tying up some likenesses, not bothering to head for the river until late afternoon. Both could put their fly on a dime at 100 feet, while my casts resembled a sloppy heave of coiled rope. The fish laughed at me, but eventually I settled into a pretty good four-count cast, got lucky, and caught a few. And I enjoyed my evening’s reading of A River Runs Through It.

Wait, there’s more! The story on the Accelerator Building (“Atom Smashers”) brought back memories of my time working in the bubble chamber measurement group housed in the mid-’60s in that building. That’s an interesting story. Then on page 64 there was something about the Olympics that mentioned Coach Ted Haydon, LAB’29, PhB’33, AM’54 (“Fans of the Flame,” Alumni News Snapshots). I ran cross-country and track for Coach Haydon my first year and made the varsity squad. He took me aside one day to comment on my stride, which was one-third up and two-thirds forward. He said, “If you will let me adjust your stride a bit, I think I can get you into the Olympics!” I lacked the necessary desire and had too many books to read; that was the end of my distance running career. But he was a great coach.

Lenny Anderson, AB’68 
Portland, Oregon

Your lovely introduction and book excerpt on Norman Maclean brought back a warm memory of spotting A River Runs Through It on a display table in the University bookstore in 1976. I read the opening paragraph, was completely “hooked,” and stood there reading page after page, unable to put it down. Ultimately, of course, I did buy it, and in the decades that followed it has been the book I gifted others time and again. What a treasure!

Kathryn Gallien, AM’76
Saratoga Springs, New York

Thank you for the charming article on Norman Maclean, including his long dedication to teaching in the College. In the accompanying excerpt from Rebecca McCarthy’s (AB’77) biography of Maclean, she touches on his experience during a famous innovation at UChicago.

After Richard McKeon became dean of the Humanities Division, Maclean’s organization of courses on general studies in the humanities was one of a network of programs, all part of the effort by McKeon, Ronald Crane, and others to achieve a pluralism of interdisciplinary studies in the humanities. To characterize this as an attempt to apply “Aristotelian methods of logic and analysis to texts”—as was indeed stated by others—missed the richness, complexity, and, yes, difficulty of the pluralistic path they actually did initiate for purposes of broadening creativity, not in service to any one dogma. This intention McKeon and others close to the program have amply demonstrated.

The program’s fate, what McKeon later recognized as “the splintering and atrophy that overtook the interdisciplinary programs in the humanities,” he attributed to the “tendency to succumb to a unity achieved by subordinating the variety of disciplines to a single well-established or prestigious architectonic discipline.” Those interested in this famous effort and its wider creative possibilities can consult Selected Writings of Richard McKeon, Volume Two: Culture, Education, and the Arts. It would be interesting to learn more of Maclean’s thoughts on this part of his experience.

David Mason, AB’77
Cary, North Carolina

As an English major in the College between 1966 and 1970, I never took a class with Norman Maclean; I was a fan of David Bevington, who also taught Shakespeare, as well as Renaissance drama. However, during my fourth year, I served on a student-faculty committee that was reconsidering the curriculum for English majors. I don’t remember exactly what was discussed, though I do know that my personal mission on the committee was to see more female authors included.

My most vivid memory, however, involves Professor Maclean, who was one of the English faculty members on the committee. That year I lived in an apartment at 5605 South Drexel Avenue (since demolished), and I rode my bike to and from campus. The committee meetings would end in the late afternoon, and Professor Maclean was concerned that I get home safely, so he would ask me to wait while he got his car, and then he would follow me home to be sure that I arrived without incident. While he had a reputation as being somewhat intimidating as a professor, as a human being he was lovely and kind.

Ilene Kantrov, AB’70
Lexington, Massachusetts

Of note

In the picture with Norman Maclean’s daughter on page 45 of the Summer/24 issue (“Searching for a Story”), just in case you are curious, the person on the other side of Robert Redford is B. Kenneth West, MBA’60. At that point, he would have likely been retired from Harris Bank, where he had been CEO.

Ernst Heldring, MBA’80
Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

Aims of education

The University of Chicago has always been admirable in its defense of free speech and debate, as in so many other respects. Yet at times that defense seems to be presented as a form of institutional self-congratulation and a tactic for refuting dissenters from orthodox views. A good example is the quotation from Nadya Mason, dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (“What Is the Future of Higher Education?” Summer/24): “At the University of Chicago we want our students to go out and be leaders and be able to engage in conversations about things that matter to people. If someone says, ‘Vaccines are not important’ or ‘I don’t believe in climate change,’ I want our students to be able to answer with reason, with scientific proof, with evidence. That’s what will make them leaders in the way that we want them to be, and it starts here.”

Arguing with straw men is typical of a political campaign, not the sort of “conversations” the University should want to encourage. For example, what about answering the more impressive skeptic who says, “Vaccines are great, but their rapid proliferation over the past two decades has led to dangers that official health authorities too often minimize,” or “Climate is always changing, but the proportion of present-day change attributable to human actions remains uncertain, and likely outcomes have often been exaggerated since it became a partisan issue in the 1990s”? Learning to engage with genuinely arguable assertions like those would be a far worthier goal for a Chicago education.

Christopher Clausen, AM’65
Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I enjoyed your piece “What Is the Future of Higher Education?” on the Alumni Weekend forum of UChicago deans moderated by Arne Duncan, LAB’82. But I felt sympathy for the panel. It seemed they were flailing for answers.

John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In the same way, perhaps, a university is made for a society that rests on common philosophical assumptions; Western assumptions, in the case of UChicago. Today such universities may be wholly inadequate to the education of a people who disdain the assumptions and first principles upon which these universities were created. The intellectual skeletal structure is gone.

Ironically, it was at Chicago in the 1970s that I, coming in with secularist blinders on, discovered the heritage of classical and Judeo-Christian thought that built the Western world. The blinders came off. I found a worldview which to me made sense of reality. It still does. A fulfilling family and vocation have been part of the fruit of that awakening. I believe that worldview not only supplies subjective fulfillment; I believe it “works” because it is objectively true. It is connected to what is real: God, rationality, facts, human experience, creativity, moral boundaries, and more.

Alas, that old philosophically confident, Western-civilization-grounded University of Chicago seems to be no more. It succumbed first to rigid secularism and now is bending to tribal wokeism. There is still good at UChicago. But I fear those virtues are but the fading afterglow of a worldview the University now neglects.

Perhaps a free market of educational choices will lead back to the ideals that once animated the University of Chicago. That may be the best hope for higher education’s future.

Christopher Corbett, AB’78
Flower Mound, Texas

Yoe-man’s service

Mary Ruth Yoe is the best of us UChicagoans (“The Heart of It All,” Editor’s Notes, Summer/24). My mom was a newspaper editor, and my wife is an English professor and was a lit mag editor. I was a law review editor. So I appreciate excellence in that role. MRY is tops in the field. I got to know her on a personal level when I was on the Alumni Board. She is a delightful person, as well as a grammatical stickler.

Jeff Rasley, AB’75
Indianapolis

Comment and criticism

I don’t share your view on the past 30–40 years of the Magazine and its editors (“The Heart of It All,” Editor’s Notes, Summer/24). I seldom find anything interesting: it is mostly just plain elitist and promoting social engineering. Little to nothing about getting back to real American values. It has become a testament to how our universities, in general, have lost any value for the real world. I’m sorry to say I now have to explain that my degree was earned at a time when there was still some value left in obtaining it.

Vegard Vevstad, MBA’77
Crete, Illinois

Studying in style

It took me an entire four or five quarters to get to Harper Library (“Uplifted,” Alumni News Snapshots, Summer/24). For my first year, I studied in my dorm room in Woodward Court at 58th and Woodlawn; then I was made aware of the social center on campus, aka Regenstein. But when I walked into this almost luxurious space, with cushions, platforms, pillows, was I really in a library?

I kept returning to Harper because I could get work done. At Regenstein friends typically wanted to “take a break” … seemingly every 15 minutes.

For truly serious study, though, we’d get lost at the Law Library across the Midway, next to Burton Judson Courts.

Adam Stoler, AB’78 (Class of 1977)
Bronx, New York

Teacher tributes

I can nominate two excellent teachers who influenced me (“Best in Class,” Editor’s Notes, Spring/24).

James E. Miller Jr., AM’47, PhD’49, taught American literature, but much more than that. He had a way of drawing us into the language of writers including Melville, Faulkner, and Eliot, who are not always easily accessible to a reader. Sometimes when I read those works, I can hear traces of his soft drawl working through each writer’s rhythm. Outside of class, he was always available to help with literature and the problems of undergraduate life.

Robert Ferguson also taught American literature and became a mentor to me. I was not sure whether to pursue graduate studies in English or go to law school. Robert had had both experiences and helped show me what my career paths might look like. Over time, he was able to teach both literature and law. I thought he had one of the best jobs you could have, and later told him that many of my current colleagues were envious. In class he brought all of his skills to the room and found a way to get everyone talking—and debating in a respectful way. It’s a skill that is lacking these days.

Robert Wanerman, AB’79
Potomac, Maryland

ROTC responses

Although Chicago is not a land-grant university and, therefore, has no legal obligation to establish an ROTC program, it should be commended for its support of local universities and the Air Force ROTC program (Letters, Spring/24).

It would be a shame for UChicago students to not have the opportunity to contribute their special talents to our country and its military.

In hindsight, the Vietnam experience gave us serious lessons learned, and it damaged many young Americans. But today the world has shown us we cannot exist without a strong military. Let its leadership be an ethical and educated one.

Scott Knight, MBA’85
Gainesville, Florida

I emphatically agree with Daniel Levine’s (SB’63, SM’64) letter to the editor opposing ROTC on campus. Indeed, there is even more to oppose about ROTC than he expresses. The ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964 specifies that no ROTC unit may be “maintained at an institution unless the senior commissioned officer of the armed force concerned who is assigned to the program at that institution is given the academic rank of professor … and the institution adopts, as a part of its curriculum, a four-year course of military instruction … which the Secretary of the military department concerned prescribes and conducts.” Thus the University of Chicago would be required to appoint faculty and adopt a specific curriculum according to the wishes of an outside institution. The University of Chicago does not, so far as I know, allow other outside donors to pick faculty and curricula, and I hope it never does so, but this could be a very bad precedent.

The matter became of even graver concern in 1996, when “as part of the FY1996 NDAA (P.L. 104-106, §541), Congress passed legislation that denied certain federal funding to any higher education institution that prohibited or prevented the operation of ROTC units, recruiting activity, or student participation in ROTC on its campus” (quoted from the Congressional Research Service’s newsletter In Focus, updated January 19, 2024). The current University of Chicago administration seems to have put UChicago in a position where it would lose substantial funding if it ever has the good sense to drop out of ROTC—a very serious unforced error.

Robert Michaelson, SB’66, AM’73
Evanston, Illinois

Gerald McSwiggan, director for public affairs, responds: “The first ROTC unit on the University of Chicago campus began in 1917 before it was transferred to Michigan State University in 1936. ROTC was not excluded from UChicago as at some other universities, but a lack of interest kept the program from returning to campus. Instead, UChicago provided support for students participating in ROTC, and cadets commuted to the University of Illinois Chicago or Illinois Institute of Technology for training. In 2016 ROTC became a student organization at UChicago and cadets started to train again on campus.

“The University continues to use its long-standing faculty-guided processes for all academic appointments. ROTC training is not in the form of courses listed with the registrar and does not provide credit toward UChicago degree requirements or graduation.”

Corrections

In the extended online letters for our Spring/24 edition, we misidentified the Fifth Ward alderman during the 1960s. Leon Despres, PhB’27, JD’29, served in that position from 1955 to 1975. We regret the error.

The University of Chicago Magazine welcomes letters about its contents or about the life of the University. Letters for publication must be signed and may be edited for space, clarity, civility, and style. To provide a range of views and voices, we ask letter writers to limit themselves to 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. Or email: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.