ollector. students take classes in large lecture format and the third and not importantly, you might not think about off the top of your head, there is an impersonal lottery registration for getting into courses in the first place and i was surprised to hear in the interviews i conducted how much this was talked about. what i figured out was students often aren't getting into classes they do want and end up in classes they don't and this depersonalized system presumably has alienating the effects on all students at western. for students on the right to be primed by national conservative organizations to regard professors with mistrust it increases their level of suspicion about faculty and lowers barriers for confrontation. you don't know professors it is easy to caricature them as evil

socialists. finally we find the institutionals culture or organizations honda. played a major role in how students understand themselves even in the political realm. if you look at u.s. news and world report you see recreation being emphasized and we argue in our book the provocative style of conservatism fits well with students understanding other campuses and the fun place to be where college students are supposed to have fun. we don't want to play it safe while we are here. there is a sense among western conservatives that college is the time to plan big. they make conservative points better in their campus. with organizational and cultural reasons we argue provocations fit well as a style for conservatives even when a share this same ideological tenets of their peers at eastern.

what is the story at eastern? why is important for conservative students to present their ideas in a self-proclaimed civilized way who appear respectful tapirs and professors. to answer this question i will refer to one more quote by telling the. eastern college republican said a lot of the republicans, whereas a lot of republican message on other campuses is structured around these big attention getting things because you have 60,000 students on campus who are more interested in the fraternity party, the way you get to students is much different because people are willing to go to a discussion seminar with an eminent academic. you don't have to be out protesting in order to get people's attention. one can see clearly that eastern students are aware of what other college students are doing on their campuses and what the student is saying is he and his

classmates are free not to pursue such populist ends. the student i am quoting was at the very moment of our interview a special assistant to one of george w. bush's chief political strategists taking the semester off to work with a strategist who is no stranger to confrontation. you will have to take my word on that because i can't say his name in this presentation. while the student was working for this strategist and leaned into more confrontational style for national politics, when he was on campus he argued that publication wouldn't work. and one overarching rationale eclipsed all others as we asked students about this and what they said was we engage in discussion and respect of the exchange because this is

eastern. we are part of a special elite community made of world-class faculty and highly talented classmates now they are important later and we have the luxury and privilege of being responsible people in this context. also interesting is eastern interviewees, obligation, they are compelled to engage in a probe read interaction, compelled to not put on a vested that would make people on campus uncomfortable and you can think of the blood spatters on the pro-life plasters i mentioned earlier which were immediately jettisoned. discomfort isn't good, being at ease is good. students, discussion of the ease that schools teach their students to embody, most students do not come to campus already perfectly educated in

refinement. they learn to be civil once they get to campus with one another in their conservatism. they are taking on something like collective eminence by students at eastern. i should add that students at eastern have a fixed eye on their future careers. unlike students at western, eastern students are convinced for the types of futures they will be having apply to clerkships heading come to mackenzie or goldman sachs, heading up and affirmative action bake sale won't logo on their resumes and very aware of this in college. clearly there is an institutional assets manufacturing and eastern of being in a special academic community that shapes conservatives's files but we see this cultural ethos being bolstered an organizational features at campus as well. the housing system at eastern keep students on campus all four years and well known clusters

with one another for many years. the campus overall is much smaller than at western. people know each other at least minimally by face and feel more accountable to one another and students communally at dining halls for years, students described this in an eastern complete bubble, self-contained social scene which we argue modulates conservative students's willingness to go rogue, it would be fun. i think a lot about class size, registration procedures that are more tailored to the individual student and other academic features like students's more personal relationships with faculty, but you get the picture that organizationally, eastern looks different than western. that is a consequence of all these cultural meanings and organizational arrangements eastern conservative students even while they say they suffer

from our generalization still feel they are part of the university manufactured community. such a sense of community rules out for most conservative activist provocative style. despite a style that has been vigorously promoted in gop politics and used on other campuses so let me wrap up. i want to emphasize students at western and eastern were more similar in their styles at the time they entered college than at the time we interviewed them two, three, four or more years in. many before entering college severn conservative blogs, have certainly read some, attended protests and debated politics with their families and so on. it is important to note, eastern students more likely in aggregate to have upper-middle-class backgrounds which might translate to a taste

for more civil discourse style. interviewees at both schools came from families of varying cultural capital patterns so we are arguing against the position that we are seeing campus stiles reflecting free college habits and arguing for the idea campuses create pathways to particular types of conservatism. this is important in a couple ways. for one the project helps us understand more about the lives of these students, how they think about themselves and conduct their activities and also the variety of styles and dispositions among conservative students which we wouldn't know with more generalized media accounts or critiques emanating from conservatives organizations. second, the project helps us understand more about how college campuses act as

incubators for certain political styles and not others. clearly you have gotten that point. political styles are not reflection of individual choices but are developed through shared culture in interaction with others in local settings as well as in dialogue with broader cultural politics. we learn from this research that political mobilization is closely connected to the long term professional project that students envision themselves having they see themselves in ten years and although i wasn't able to talk about this at length in today's discussion these professional project are highly contingent on a particular campus particularly in thinking about with a drawl in national regional politics. politics, carriers, universities, stiles, discoursees have to be studied part and parcel with one another

in an organizational context. finally the project gives insight into conservative politics at large were provocative style has gone a lot of play and leverage in today's republican party apparatus. that sounds like such an understatement. audiology, not style has long been a research focus of people studying conservatism. in the last couple years in the wake of the tea party more commentators cleared the internet but by the time kate and i were conducting work, there was more attention to content than form but form should be overlooked. polarizing politics have been ignoring style and we would argue it is as serious a mistake to one of the key studyings for political styles are fostered on college campuses so i will end and thank you for your

attention. [applause] >> i think you stay. is that right? we will have questions from the audience, please. >> thank you very much. on campus you attended may be three federalist society presentations in law school kind of an odd combination, they are the minority but it is kind of elitist even though it is public service and stems out from the general crowd. i am not sure what the common venue is, how to arrange the venue but not always come more often than other groups in the law school organized presentations and there are quite a few, eight or ten during the week. they always feature as a debate

and the invitee is not always a superconservative, just someone who might offer conservative meal and purposely have stand in liberal response. it is kind of crosses the boundary. people are very often on their best behavior and discourage this summit is a mixture of all that. i want to point that out and ask the second and last question. on which talking about undergraduates? it is a research university and so graduates are not doing either or what is going on with them? >> thank you. to your point about federalist societies first, i would say what the federalist society is a engaging in is as far as we

describe in the book there's a lot of interest in engaging the others in debate and fantastic conversations about one's position, but there's not an ad hominem quality to woods of the federalist society is one of those intellectual organizations i name their leon, which has done a lot of work mobilizing conservative jurists and law students so that fits extremely well as the civilized discourse style. there is a very elite university and law school so it makes sense it would get there. second question about graduate students, we had in our mix, undergrads we focused on undergraduates, so much of the

undergraduate critique at the point i was pointing data, i was there later. i really wanted to focus on precisely the group the conservative critics that i frequently talked about. didn't get a whole lot of information about students. several in law school at the time but i wouldn't be able to speak to patterns among graduate students at the university. >> it was more important to draw some conclusions about whether

it's a style of the conservative factions on campus extended past campus and graduation. to conservatives that come out of populist western universities do they act differently after graduation in the political arena. >> i have not done that research, not tracing who legislators are, various others in public office where they come from, that would be a great project. one thing i know about the futures is what they say about the jobs they want to get later. job aspirations were a really important component to how students were thinking about politics on campus. if you were thinking of that you would go into regional politics which is what a lot of western

students said they were going to go into. this kind of mudslinging and populous style would be quite useful to them whereas at eastern, but i found out most of these students were going in to finance and consulting, and other students, liberal, moderate or otherwise and this kind of civilized discourse of style would be quite useful, others working with people who have different perspectives so while i don't have data on what these guys are like, when they get into the up larger society i can think about what they might be like based on what they were talking about in terms of futures. >> i was wondering about the long-term implications of these

different styles for the conservative movement. i also wondered if you were able, hard to interview anybody but if you were able to see what the impact of the context where on liberal groups on the same campus, did you see similar forms on most campuses? >> that is a really important question. it could be all well and good about talking about conservatives respond to their campus but is it just the organizational or cultural features have everybody on campus? i didn't collect data from conservatives, what they said about very liberal peers. my conjecture on this is on both campuses these styles with the exception of the highbrow provocation style at least in which is this literary art style, we would see much the same style for liberal students

as well because these organizational features and a cultural ethos is so strong at these two schools. however liberal students don't -- students might not think about the purpose of their styles as much so at western public the students really thought about what it meant to be confrontational and do this because i am in the minority. i have to do this of people recognize i am here to do this so that not everybody thinks that only liberals go here. and liberal students have the same sense of their place on campus. equally at eastern i would say that students there, liberal students don't play against conservative students, also feel

more comfortable on campus and that they are also schools in this collective eminence that we talk about. >> i wish i had access that it would be really useful. i'm interested in your thoughts about sort of dovetails with what you are talking about the victimization that is portrayed being a numeric minority on campuses if in fact in america minority is as accurate, and how does this happen that people perhaps are affiliated with the most powerful institutions becoming victimized on campuses interested in your thoughts. >> i will ask about your dissertation after i answer this

question. in terms of what are the numbers of students on campus just to get those facts out we used survey data from the higher education research institute to look at patterns across time in combination with our own interviews and field work and we found that over time the percentage of those liberals and conservatives of around 20% and that is where we end up today. this is very interesting. on campuses like eastern a leaked the number of conservatives is again at 20% but relative to liberals their way out numbered. 50% of students in elite private universities like this one consider themselves liberal and a smaller number consider

themselves moderates. whereas university like public, moderates and liberals are reversed, the same number of liberals, the same number of conservatives and the vast majority, not the vast majority but 50% of students on campus are moderate so all of this there is the argument that our and the 9 nordic minority, public -- confrontational the prevent themselves, are about equal liberal and so i think victimization, talked with a few conservative critics who are concerned about this victimization stance but that is what so much national conservative discourse is made up of and you can see that is a immobilizing technique. you need to us. come to our conferences, read

our stuff. to the projects that are fun to do, get in people's faces, use activist mentality. it is a more inviting kind of staff. the eastern elite students turn their backs a little on the victimization because they didn't think it was very becoming for people like them on campus. they would rather think of themselves as also being highly honored, respected and so forth. >> do people who are fiscal conservatives and liberal social liberals, do they identify as moderates, conservatives, what? how does that kind of breakdown?

>> i don't know when the national sample, they can't disaggregate those two or disentangle what people actually mean in their issues but we talked with students who also were on the more libertarian sides of social issues. and they pretty neatly fit into these categories. there wasn't a big difference in adopting stiles on campus that their peers have adopted. does that answer the question? >> there isn't a data. >> in the national survey it is a crude measurement. how do you see yourself. very liberal, liberal, middle of

the road. they haven't -- students and nationals about the former distinctions. i saw a hand up here. >> i find it interesting you point out that these conservative students who are on minority on campuses you describe engage in self victimization when that is something conservatives constantly accused people of engaging in. i thought that was interesting. >> may i say something about that? it is indeed ironic. it is also true that -- may be that is not -- this is why some of the conservatives reflective conservatives are thinking

about, we engage in this discourse of other people's victimization, yet we make so much hay out of the victimization and the national organizations are using that rhetoric stating that this has been wronged the whole time. people in the minority are conservatives. >> white males really got a raw deal in america. >> on campus i didn't use this quote. but there is a quote from the people who put on earlier affirmative-action, western has 80% white on campus. there aren't a whole lot of minority students on this campus or underrepresented. and he said you come to campus

and if you are black you can join the african american club and other people live there for you but if you are a christian, white, conservative male you are on your own. that is the feeling on campus. this adoption of this discourse is quite profound and he believes it. this to my understanding as i was talking with him, this was not let me solve the interviewer on this particular political argument. i feel like this on my campus. >> a real speech mentality where you are in the majority. another irony. i dealt with this in writing sociopolitical commentaries for a number of years. i didn't know at uc-berkeley

would be included in the western model it has been your analysis, i sort of experienced it at berkeley. in 1996 you had the opinions about the uc-berkeley california student newspaper matt baloney referred to potential black student recruits from l a as crack dealers and the college republicans brought david horowitz of kansas at least twice. the first time i confronted him and sent him running was a question in which i subsequently had a commentary in the san francisco chronicle which took on his argument about reparations under the name joseph anderson in the san francisco chronicle but the second time he came in he talked about conservative students

trying to push buttons. i felt i had already dealt with him the first time quite adequately. i told in public media, i told liberal progressive students don't go just ignore him, make him but non event which happened and he expressed his disappointment that there weren't any liberals or conservatives there. when it was a situation when i am not writing formally, back in the day, my tactic was not to take the western-style conservative intellectually seriously. in fact i would take their side and parity them against my progressive colleagues comrades whatever you want to say and that flustered the conservative movement. my question for you is if i could make three very brief ones and you can answer them equally

brief. one, this catch an illegal alien today to me sounds pretty explicit racist as opposed to the bake sale which some people might indirectly say is racist. i don't know. i am wondering did that particular school have any speech codes about racist speech? the other question is i haven't seen them along time and my final question is does it ultimately boil down to borrow, modify public enemy, does it boil down to a fear of a black and brown planet to give the university's i have been at one in the midwest, was incredibly brown even when it was asian. does this boil down to this is not our parents university

anymore? all these people with all their cultures they identify with and celebrate, this is threatening me as a sort of generic anglo white male. >> let me start with the first one. the last one first. it sounds like what you are saying is what has been said about the tea party. there is too much change happening. we have a black president, we have all of these undeserving people around, we want to take our country back. and i am not sure i really see that on these campuses. these campuses are predominantly white. another one is in california. i will tell you that so there is not this kind of multicultural experience that we get in the

university of california system. is not my sense that it is just racial politics or for most racial. they really hate gender substitution. they really are concerned about national security and islam. they really despise taxes. it seems to me it is the more general kind of choosing hot-button issues on the western public campus. issues that can get people excited but those are not the only issues catch an illegal alien day and affirmative-action. working backwards, in california i had heard he was in a neighborhood in san diego, i am not 100% sure of that.

to really give a flavor of the style, i couldn't quote directly from our interviewees from the conservative newspapers because anybody with google could take that in and figure out what campus i was talking about so i used a description provided of his own early years coming of age in the style he didn't call that. and was just a dead ringer for what students talked about what we've doing. catch an illegal alien day, you need to talk with conservatives about what happened when they staged these events because this is where the real victimization discourse comes up again. when they staged an affirmative-action bake sale or

catch an illegal alien day what they say is security comes out to protect the protesters. they are not protecting us. our cash registers are being flipped over and money is flying. with the administration does is protect the other side. there are norm's a round speech and speech codes at this university. and these guys see that as a real problem. does that cap to your getting at? >> why did the university come down on something that seems pretty explicitly racist speech where i wouldn't even call the bake sale racist per se, but unless they had catch a slave

cupcakes. i am wondering, where was the university chancellor, the vice chancellor, that kind of explicitly racist -- >> the last big event of catch an illegal alien day was not at a public university and much ink was filled and there was a lot of controversy around it but i don't believe the university shut it down. it played out naturally. >> thank you for great presentation. my question is the presentation. a different style. i wonder if there is diversity

programs on those different campuses and how the activism. >> in much the same way we didn't find major differences of adoption among students who were fiscally conservative or socially conservative. religious students and nonreligious students on each campus more or less adopted similar styles. we did find differences among women. this is because we studied more women or sexual orientation, we wrote a chapter on conservative

-- we were doing interviews around the time, if i may, just alter your question for a a little bit we were doing these interviews at the time sarah palin was on the ticket about what it meant to be a conservative woman and you are really interested to come to understand to be a conservative woman is to be feminine and to disguise liberal feminism because they saw liberal feminism as narrowing the opportunities for women and directing them more toward careers than they would like to be. they are all planning on being career women that follow the rule of feminism as closing off opportunities to choose other kinds of endeavors and they also saw liberal feminism as shutting

down the opportunity to embrace a real feminine -- we found that interesting. that was what we studied in isolation of others. >> how do they feel about sarah palin. >> the women loved her. this is true at eastern and western and they didn't love her entirely. they realized she was a flawed candidates and they didn't like that. lost and they didn't like that she couldn't say more profound things about russia. but they did find her appealing. they found her outside the old white network, they liked it that she brought this femininity

to the floor and they voted for her. >> last question. >> all the people you interviewed, do some of them talk about becoming feminists after that? >> we found both. recalling habits some of them had been active in protests and one of the staged a fake bill o'reilly debate. and so several of them came onto campus with activism in and. the pro-life group when they staged the action that featured fetus's and so forth the students had been active and came onto campus and tried to

that and realized that wasn't the way. and they had never had to think about their conservatism and it was only once they got to this liberal universities that they needed to express themselves as conservatives. >> to follow up that eastern models, she is pretty bombastic. >> asked every single one of my interviewers about her. they saw her as when they voted for mccain they were voting for a ticket that contained sarah palin and she wasn't very good with the women, resonated with what it is like to be a conservative women after having it all family, career success

and so forth. not all of them agreed with the way she conducted herself and certainly the way she talked about the issues, but they did resonate with that. >> any students who were initially conservative influenced the other way. >> yes. that is another question. we found most of these students came in thinking of themselves as generically republican or conservative although there were a a few had moved toward greater conservatism. in college students further refine how they refer to themselves as conservative so people who initially identified as republican or conservative became fiscal conservatives or

catholic conservatives, one of our interviewees, one particular concern of -- referred to herself as a crunchy conservative very pro-life but pro environment, pro social justice and some other ways so things get messier once they get to college. >> please join me in thanking amy binder for this wonderful presentation. [applause] >> booktv will continue prime time next week when congress is in recess. it deals with slavery and the emancipation. craig grand and author of empire of necessity, freedom and deception in the new world conlan and slavery's exiles the story of the american maroons

and later, david byron davis talks about the problem of slavery in the age of the emancipation. booktv in prime time all next week on c-span2. >> the museum of history, the exhibit we are in is the agriculture exhibit and we highlight the three cs of florida agriculture, citrus cattle and came. they made for the what it is today. they were originally brought over by the spanish, the first inhabitants of florida. the cattle in the first place was brought over as a food source for the settlement of loren and citrus and came were brought over as cash crops. the catalyst that. itself as almost a native breed in florida. the early american settlers who

came down here to herd the cattle were free roaming. the florida cowboys, what we call the florida cracker would herd the cattle once a year during season when they bring them to market but other than that they just roamed the state and adopted well to our environment. the florida scrub cattle you see behind me it was the species that was predominantly here all the way to the 1900s and was able to stand the cold in the wintertime and the heat and humidity that we have here but did very well in the swamps. and the saw grass and adapted well to the political environment. when the united states purchased florida from the spanish face started the transaction in 1819 completed in 1821. at that point the government was

encouraging people to settle for a and one of the main draws for florida was to come down here and captured these free roaming cattle and use that as a monetary source, as a business and that industry release started in nearly 1800s, building through the civil war, very important issue during the civil war. >> this weekend booktv and american history tv look at history and literary life of fort myers fla. including a stop at southwest florida museum of history. today at noon eastern on c-span2 and sunday at 2:00 on c-span3. catholic university professor amy binder 11 talked-about his book "the conservative turn: lionel trilling, whittaker chambers, and the lessons of anti-communism" about the impact of lionel trilling and whittaker chambers on the modern conservative movement. this was recorded at catholic university of america in washington d.c. as part of our

college series. >> professor michael kimmage who was lionel trilling? >> guest: a preeminent literary critic of the 1940s 50s and 60s, born to a family of jewish immigrants from poland, educated in new york public schools and spent his education and professional life at columbia university, was a literary critic of a kind one could hardly imagine today in less cents he had absolutely enormous readership at the highest level of esteem from his colleagues from feller scholars and writers but also was able to engage a very large public. he was also associated with the word liberalism in ways that are quite complicated. in affiliation with the democratic party was once invited to the kennedy white house as a sympathetic intellectual figure but the connection ran deeper was

consistently engage in his career to determine what liberalism was and argue to make a case for it not in political forms of argument but literary and cultural forms. >> what is the difference? >> guest: he never wrote about all right -- party politics or foreign policy liberalism was a sensibility. and attitudes a cultural posture that had its roots in the 18th-century in the thinking of the enlightenment in the 18th-century and was carried forward by poets and philosophers and riders in the nineteenth century and was very much a part of the 20th century. and secular in its basic outline, highly invested in the life of books and pluralist position that entertains multiple view that doesn't commit itself to any single point of view. >> host: who was whittaker

chambers? >> guest: a classmate at columbia and was not quite friends and associates at the same university, he was born into a very different world. his family was protestant, loosely speaking, declining middle-class family when he was born into it and made his way from that family to columbia university where he rather quickly entered into radical political circles and joined the communist party without graduating. the story is rather long and complicated. you was in and out of the party in the 1920s and by 1932, very interesting quirk of fate after publishing the stories was asked to rejoin the party formally not as an open member but a spy for the soviet union. this you was until 1937 and with all kinds of disputes about who he knew and when and what he did with espionage circles in washington d.c. in the 1930s.

most significantly affiliated with a man named alger hiss was not front-page news in the 1930s but a high-ranking government figure, somebody who was socially intimate with the roosevelts and in the state department and other areas of government. by 1939 chambers has broken with soviet communism and become both a christian and an anti-communist conservatives. he proceeds to the 1940s for the media empire as a star journalist. as things start to heat up a little bit matters of domestic anti communism and communism 1946-47 he enters public domain as someone who accuses alger hiss as becoming a communist. this becomes a major set piece court case of the early cold war. the word of chambers against the word of alger hiss he was more

handsome, better spoken, better connected and seemed to be evasive and vague on many basic issues. chambers was always described as overweight, there were allegations of homosexuality in the air at the time of the case. he felt to many viewers to be a man on the margins. chambers you could say won the case in the sense that he was convicted not for espionage but for perjury and sent to jail for a time lost his government position and in the 1950s chambers gave his version of the case in his autobiography, 1952 autobiography witness which is among the most significant books of the postwar conservative moment. for ronald reagan, john wayne and many others who declared themselves conservative in the postwar years. that is his most significant

role as an early instigator of the conservative intellectual movement and participate in the founding of "national review" in 1950s and dies in 1961. his career is politically speaking more important. >> host: did lionel trilling and whittaker chambers remain friends and in contact throughout their lives? >> yes. even when chambers was a spy they had lunch at a restaurant in new york city and were aware of each other. in the 1920s they were not really friends but the intriguing detail for me is 1947 the moment his case is beginning in public life lionel trilling published a novel called the middle of the journey ended is clear one of the characters in the book is based on whittaker chambers. whittaker chambers appears in fiction and in the public sphere at the same moment and lionel trilling users and as a symbol for the infatuation with communism, moved away from

communism and as a lens for looking at american society in the 1940s. the most interesting historical point you can attach to this novel is lionel trilling sees a new conservatism on the rise before the candidacy of barry goldwater, decades before the career of ronald reagan and yet lionel trilling sees a new conservatism on the horizon attaching it to the figure of whitaker chambers. intriguing connection to be sure. >> host: what did lionel trilling have to do with communism? >> guest: he was never a member of the communist party but there was a time, 16 months, 1932, roughly when he was emotionally invested in the destiny of the soviet union. it was not a matter of public acts, he didn't go to committee meetings or write anything on behalf of the communist party but felt this emotional

affiliation. you can sense that in book reviews. as with many in his generation, and critical of the party, goes through a period of rather extended disillusionment, 1932-1941-42 he is reluctant when the second world war begins to endorse american involvement because he feels it might be a kind of reassertion of american capitalism so 1939 quite deeply in the radical or but but 1941-42, at the end of the second world war, something approaching an establishment liberal voice so long progression for him and for him in his career, as important political progression he experienced. >> host: in your book titled "the conservative turn: lionel trilling, whittaker chambers, and the lessons of anti-communism," what do you mean by that? >> guest: something i feel

largely true for the time period. a two part process. the first part of the process embodied in both biographies was a deep engage and with soviet communism. with the actual structure you can call the soviet union, soviet communism and recoiling from that which you see across the 1930s which happens in many ways with many different consequences. one could write about this within the history of the last to be sure but it felt to me in researching the subject that among the most crucial consequences was an uptick of enthusiasm, broadly construed, atonement for the sins of one's radical youth and so a new conservatism becomes possible. is different in these two biographical cases. chambers is in our right

conservatism to rediscover links to christianity, link to western civilization and conservative political party. that is not what he felt the republican party was in the 40s and 50s but hoped that was what the republican party would become. for lionel trilling it is a balancing act. liberals need conservatism to prevent themselves from going off the rails as they had in the 1930s, have to balance themselves with this kind of conservatism and that will keep them healthy and stable but in both cases you see a new connection to conservatism and that will play itself out in the 40s and 50s across the second half of the 20th century. >> you mentioned lionel trilling was a supporter of jfk. >> with a card-carrying democrat from the moment he they converted from socialism to his death in 1975, never voted for

republican. and the conservative he could have been sent to the plea was felt to be by his radical critics in the 60s and 70s, was never a political conservative out right. >> but wasn't necessarily favored by the left. >> especially at times when done. the seat of the conflict is planted in 1940s when he has a young precocious student writing a lot of poetry and studying with the master and this is allen ginsberg of very warm relationship really but the relationship would fall apart, a voice for radical youth in ways lionel trilling felt he couldn't endorse was very suspicious of what he was an signify. is really a battle almost between radical students on the one hand and not only lionel trilling but professors like lionel trilling and on the campus of columbia university

where lionel trilling was a professor, he symbolized the old guard a commitment to high culture that was no longer fashion symbolize the political temporizing in the eyes of the radical youth that was no longer accessible and white male spirit that is the criticism levied throughout the 1970s and after the 1970s as to lionel trilling was. a kind of unsustainable set of cultural commitments. that is the crucial part of it. >> host: why did you write this book? where did it come from? >> guest: it began when i read the novel the middle of the journey and felt it captured something crucial about american political life. there are patterns in the book that link various decades of the 20th century into something very organic. the liberal dimples, radical impulse, conservative impulse are all in this book and the

connection to whittaker chambers makes it fascinating. i wanted to puzzle flat out in the course of my research but i think beyond that i wanted to write a book that engage as a liberal and conservative audience and that is why i feel the pairing of the two figures is so useful. when is a significant figure on the left, the others crucial figure on the right yet they are bound together they study the same places they are preoccupied by many of the same questions and answer the same questions similarly despite the political differences between them and that became the agenda of the book, get those cemeteries across as much as anything else and through that to engage various factions and fragments of the political culture. >> host: did conservatism change after world war ii? what was american conservative fought in the 19th century and

early 20th century? >> host: >> guest: it was in choate. it was fragmentary. it was often rather unrealistic to look from the vantage point of the second half of the 20th century. there was hope of returning to medieval times in american culture. you associate that with speakers like henry adams and others. a return to medieval catholicism, rage against technology and the modern city and modern machine age. you can associate with t.s. eliot and burgeoning libertarian movement in the 1930s blanc and -- not lincoln material wastes to material sentiments. as the buttons on the part of conservatism in 1945 to translate their ideas into politics. that starts the pain in 1945 and somebody like whitaker chambers is emblematic of that change. he was a highly politicized intellectual, wonderfully

trained by his years in the communist party to link ideas to movements parties, initiatives, and he and others brought that strategically thinking about politics to conservatism and for example when he argues in the 1950s with william f. buckley jr. politics--he says we have to use the republican party. neither us like it we don't think eisenhower is a conservative a huge distance traveled before this becomes a conservative party but we need to use the means available and the pragmatic and realistic and work through the gradual mechanics of social change. that spirit is quite new. after goldwater becomes the spirit of the conservative movement and this becomes a kind of political fact in the larger culture. it is the 40s and 50s you see this transition. how does one both the conservative and strategic? that is the question. >> host: what do you teach?

>> 20th century american history, literature, a little bit of great books. >> host: is this your first book? >> guest: yes. ..