Archives & Special CollectionsTed Cross

Transcript of Interview with Theodore Cross

- [Richard] So, Ted, you've had a long and productive life, and Amherst has been a very important part of that life. And I'd just like to take you back to when you started as a student at Amherst College. Would that be 1941?

- That would be June of 1942.

- [Richard] Ah, okay.

- A long time ago. At the time, the country was at war, I had enlisted in the Navy.

- [Richard] Why the Navy?

- Well, to avoid the Army.

- [Richard] Okay.

- I would've been drafted in the Army, but enlisting in the Navy, in what was called the Navy V12 program, which was to train you to be an officer. And the assumption was automatically that if you were going to Amherst College, or it's a Ivy League equivalent, you were thereby qualified to be an a Navy officer, which was a silly assumption. But nevertheless, that was the rule at the time.

- [Richard] Well, we did win the war.

- We did honorably, despite having Ted Cross mess up a few times. Anyway, so, June, mother drove me up and it was amazing at that time, mothers always seemed to take their boys into Amherst College. A lot of mothers were there that day. And mother came, she fixed curtains for me. I had a little tiny room in Pratt Hall, Pratt dorm. I guess there's a new Pratt now, but this is the old Pratt. So we arrived there and I looked around and the amazing thing was, this was in the middle of the depression. The country had not yet recovered from that horrible experience, but there was an enormous wealth. These kids came with valuable leather furniture. And God knows, we didn't call them stereos then. They were various record players, but I mean, some kids brought thousands of dollars worth of stuff. And I had rather inferior furniture, but got along. Anyway, what impressed me was, I'd come from Deerfield Academy, and the arrangement there with Amherst was really quite unusual. Normally you applied to Amherst College and they decide whether they want you or not. At Deerfield Academy, the headmaster, whose name was Frank Boyden.

- [Richard] Yes.

- Who'd call up and say to Dean Wilson, "I'm sending you 18 boys this year." And so it was kind of a reverse form of admissions. Anyway, there were a huge number of kids, all the kids at Amherst that time, not all, but a huge percentage came from prep schools. Unlike Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, where you were admitted basically on pedigree.

- [Richard] Yes, but I think even at that time, a large fraction came from prep schools, certainly Yale--

- Yes, but a different type of, the prep schools tended to be from the Midwest, I think. And I don't remember any new Groton kids. And I don't remember pedigree being a qualification for admission, as it was at Princeton, and at Harvard at that time. So at Amherst, you could easily be admitted to Amherst if you paid the tuition of, what was it, $350, I think.

- [Richard] I see.

- 350 bucks.

- A little less than Harvard, when Eldon Morrison, I asked Eldon Morrison why he went to Harvard. He said, "I went to Harvard because my father had a thousand dollars."

- Good reason. So, at Amherst it was, that was the tuition. And probably a C-plus average, almost anywhere was sufficient. Amherst was not a selective school. Terrific, high-prestige school. But it was not selective. Anyway, that was the situation at the time. There were no working class kids, what you call blue collar kids. I never met a kid there whose father was a member of a labor union. Just, I don't even recall it, anything like that. There were a handful of Black kids, not many, not as many, obviously as there are today. One of the things that I remember at the time, which seems very odd, every Sunday the president had a brunch. And all, I think initially all the freshmen were invited, but the Black kids weren't. Now, at the time--

- [Richard] This is 1942.

- At the time, there was nothing unusual about this. The idea of say, segregation was firmly, not discrimination, Amherst did not discriminate, but segregation was firmly in place. And it never occurred to anybody that there was anything wrong with that. But looking back on it now, it was an extraordinary arrangement. And also, Amherst used to sponsor school dances and the Black kids could go, only if they brought a Smith girl, could find a Smith girl, a colored Smith girl--

- Yes.

- To go with them. So that was, that was the rule of race at that time. And as I say, it never occurred to anybody that there was anything wrong or unusual about arrangement of that sort. I worked at Valentine Hall, 'cause I was on a scholarship, I think 30 cents an hour. But you've got to put yourself back at that time. And that probably wasn't too bad. So, we worked, what else did we do? The war was on. So the Amherst boys made their contribution to the war effort. And we dug potatoes out in--

- Yes, yes.

- In Hadley, I guess it would've been. So that was the cultural description of Amherst at that time. In terms of academics, I remember taking a course in, it was some form of advanced mathematics, maybe not too far advanced, but the amazing thing, I was really lousy at it, but if you got your paper in on time, you got extra points.

- I see.

- So you could get a 105 just by turning your paper in on time which was an extraordinary arrangement, at a college. Of course, the great course there at the time was English one.

- [Richard] English one, who taught that Ted?

- Everybody, all these great people, Ted Baird, Reuben Brower, Armour Craig, couple of others. And they were terrific. And it was a wonderful, wonderful course. And you had to write a paper every day, every blasted day.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And that's five days a week. And the subjects were extremely difficult. For example, describe how you hit a baseball. Now very few people can write a decent paper on that subject. They can write a good paper on Freud.

- [Richard] Yes.

- But how do you actually hit a baseball? And so it was very challenging. And looking back on it, I think it was one of the finest, most valuable courses that I ever had. And it's a shame that it's, as far as I know, it's not required today.

- [Richard] No, unfortunately not.

- And I know that kids coming into Princeton, where I live, many of them are, that these kids are bright as hell, but they can't construct a decent paragraph. And many of them have to take sort of an affirmative action course in writing. So that's what the first year amounted to. Stanley King was president. A very stiff and austere kind of a guy. He was president, I think for oh, 15, 18 years.

- [Richard] Oh my, very long term.

- Maybe longer, very long. Not particularly popular, but he did a good job. But everybody was terrified of him. So that's the first, those are kind of the memories I have of the first year there.

- So there was the first year, but then there was this war going on. When did you go off to the Navy?

- I actually was in the Navy, I think within, we did one semester at Amherst. And then I have, as I mentioned, this V12 program. Where I was actually in the Navy where you were still not in uniform, but you were in and not being paid. And that was a preparatory, preparatory years for officers degree. But the, the odd thing was the whole group of V12 students at Amherst were sent to Williams College.

- [Richard] Oh.

- And everybody was, they had--

- [Richard] For inferior training.

- No, I would think it meant, actually the faculty at Williams is unbelievably good, right? You have to concede that. And so I spent a year at Williams in the V12 program, and it was a marvelous education there, but I was still in the Navy. And then of course we went off to war.

- [Richard] And which theater were you in, Ted? You were in--

- In the Pacific. In the Pacific, yeah.

- Now you were on, you actually rose to be pilot of a craft. You were commander of a craft, actually.

- Well, that was almost, that was after the war ended. What happened was some of these poor guys that were running these ships had been out there for 3, 4, 5 years.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And so the Navy had to get 'em home right away. For political reasons, be held dependable.

- [Richard] Bring the boys home.

- Bring bring the boys home. So they put incompetent people like me in charge of these ships. And it was really ridiculous--

- [Richard] Where did you pick up--

- The crew were competent. But the officers were a total disaster.

- [Richard] But they were well educated gentlemen.

- Yeah, that's right. Anyway, my final orders were to take the ship from Ulithi, which is an island, huge atoll, south of Tokyo.

- [Richard] Oh, I see.

- And where we've been, we've been all sent there in preparation for what was to be an invasion of Japan. And of course the bomb came, the invasion was canceled, the war was over. And the ship, I got instructions, I was commanding officer at 18 or 19, and there were five other officers with me. But there had, they had, they were commissioned months after I, so I was senior, therefore more competent, sort of like the US Senate. Seniority is what counts.

- [Richard] Something must have worked, you're here.

- Anyway, so off, I got orders to go to Portland, Oregon, and I sailed, and I was doing all the navigation. We didn't have any electronics at that time.

- [Richard] So you plotted the course with maps--

- Working with a sextant.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And it was, good God, it was weeks, weeks and weeks. And never saw another ship. And finally, hit it right on the nose.

- [Richard] Where did you port?

- Oswego, Oregon. And it was a remarkable achievement. And the crew cheered, the first time they ever cheered anything I'd done in my life. And the horrible thing then happened, they didn't give me a pilot to take the ship in. I ran aground.

- [Richard] Oh my.

- But it was on sort of marshy land. And we backed off, and everything was okay. So I'm looking back on it, That's really probably the most important achievement of my life.

- [Richard] Well, you left college a boy and you came back a man.

- I know, absolutely. 5,000 miles and navigate all the way. So that, that was pretty good.

- Yeah, yeah. So Amherst must have seemed like kind of a piece of cake when you got back--

- Well, the amazing thing was, that people don't understand. The first thing we had to face was fraternity rushing.

- [Richard] Yes. And all the silly business of beanie caps and special uniforms, and bowing to seniors. And going through all these silly rituals. And these kids that had come back like me, had seen death. I'd seen a young sailor without a head. And a lot of these boys had been in Normandy and in the Italian campaign, and to come back and do that silly stuff.

- So how, how did they take--

- But it was very important because, at Amherst College at that time, if you weren't in a fraternity, you were a social outcast. And so it was important. And so we put up with it. But it, I think at first time, it focused my attention. And certainly I think the attention of a lot of kids on the absolute absurdity of the fraternity system. And its rituals. It's hazing and all that stuff. But Amherst was the same. Ted Baird was there.

- [Richard] Yes.

- Reuben Brower was there. Laurence Packard was there. You wouldn't remember him.

- [Richard] No, I didn't know him.

- Dwight Salman. All the great stars of the Amherst faculty were solidly in place. And the Amherst education went forward. And then, those years were very happy years. But it was a very odd situation after having been through the war, having all this fraternity business. The most dramatic change that occurred at Amherst at that time was, as I mentioned earlier, Amherst was a school for kids of privilege.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And there were, in 1942, there were no blue collar kids. But what happened was the GI Bill had intervened, and suddenly Amherst had kids from Lowell, Massachusetts, despicable places like that. And from very working class communities. So Amherst was transformed temporarily with a huge influx of kids who weren't, didn't have to pay tuition, because under the GI Bill, tuition was free. And I think we also got a check of a hundred bucks a month. And it was a terrific deal. So...

- [Richard] A revolution in American higher education.

- That's right. But it was imposed by the government. It wasn't one that is now being sought by the administration. As a sort of a voluntary matter. So that was the big change, I think, in the college at the time, the strength of the departments, everything was solidly in place as I mentioned before.

- [Richard] Yes. And so then you graduated from Amherst and went off to Harvard. Like so many of our graduates still do.

- Well, the reason there was, of course, you go to graduate school because the government's paying.

- Yes, right.

- And what else you gonna do in life? Anything to avoid taking a job. So, hundreds of us went off to law school. And there again, Harvard was easy entry, very easy.

- Really?

- Right now, admission to Harvard Law School is a very, very tough, unusual achievement. But in those days, huge numbers of us went from Amherst. And so there was then, that was followed three years of law school.

- And I won't let you get off so easily with that, Ted, you didn't just go to Harvard Law School, but you were on Law Review for two years and you were actually editor of the Law Review for two years. So you must have done a fair amount of work there.

- Actually, I was a grind. I always was a grind, working hard, even at Amherst, instead of going to football games, I spent time in the library.

- Yes.

- So I worked hard. If you work hard, you know, you can do, you can achieve that. Yes. So I was at the Law Review, on the Law Review, and that was, well, my mom and dad were very proud of that.

- Yes.

- And so am I.

- Yes. And again, like so many of our graduates, you went to law school or business school or graduate school or whatever, and then went off into life and became a raging success. And we, we sort of, at Amherst College, we ask our raging successes to come back and be members of the board of directors. And you've been a member of the board for a very, very long time. The board of trustees for Amherst College. What, what's the function of the board of trustees? What's their charge?

- Well, they very, theoretically, the board does one important thing. Two important things, raise money. The faculty at Amherst really view that as the essential function is raising money, I think. And then there's a secondary function of governance, which really means not to run the place, but to make sure that some flagrant error is not being made. And you know, then the trustees may not be particularly good at that, but in theory there is kind of a Supreme Court supervisory rule where they would act in that manner. So, but an Amherst, that was a little different in that we were broken up into committees and in many cases, the committees had operating authority.

- [Richard] Yes.

- [Ted] For example, the buildings and grounds committee would actually make decisions. Normally at most institutions, they would simply be there. Reporting, knowing very little, but purporting to keep the college from making a serious error. Amherst was different in that many of the trustees had hands-on responsibilities. So that was the, but I think the faculty said, look, "You raise the money and our salaries are paid." And they're okay. And that's all they, they view.

- Ted, let's discuss this business of raising money a bit, if we can. Because I mean, one of the great strengths that Amherst has is its financial independence and the great financial resources it has. It lets the college do a lot of things that are very important. And actually, you served, I think, as chair of the investment committee for a number of years at Amherst. And I've talked to a lot of people around Amherst who give you great credit for the extraordinarily fine financial condition the College found itself move into during that period of time. Can you talk to us a little bit about your experiences?

- [Ted] Well, yeah, Amherst, it was very strange. You remember the history of Amherst?

- Yeah.

- In 1850, 50% of the graduates of Amherst went into the ministry.

- I see.

- And so there was a kind of a culture--

- The percentage is a bit lower now, Ted.

- Penurious culture that infected the place for many, many years. And it was, it wormed its way into the investment policy. And Amherst money when I arrived, not when I arrived, but in a few years before I arrived, was invested in treasury bills. Very, very conservative. And the result is that the endowment performance was very weak. You know, it was about the equivalent of putting money in the savings bank. So at that time, it was decided that there had to be a radical change. Other institutions were investing in securities and real estate and doing these marvelous things. That were prudent, but different.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And so what happened was that Kurt Hertzfeld, who was treasurer for many, many years, and I and a few members of the board, concocted an arrangement under which the endowment would go almost entirely in securities, what we call value instruments. That is value companies with lots of inherent value, with gold in the ground, or oil in the ground, or very solid resources. And we happened to hit it very lucky at that time, there was a firm named, I forget, let's see, the name of the firm was, I can't think of it at the moment. But anyway, there was a firm that specialized in that kind of environment. And we gave them most of the money, and they did very well. And it turned out because of that particular decision, which was lucky in many ways, although I don't think Kurt would view that--

- [Richard] Most of the people I talked to didn't view it as primarily luck.

- Anyway, it turned out that Amherst performed better than the 20 largest colleges of the country, well into the 1980s. So the endowment did rise to a really solid amount. But in 1974, or maybe a little later, the endowment of the college was only $70 million. And you know, now it's $2 billion.

- [Richard] Yes, yes.

- And at the time, that caused a bit of a panic really in the board. And they did some extraordinary things. There was actually a debate on possibly selling the Lord Jeff.

- [Richard] Oh my. You know, not that Lord Jeff would bring any money. I don't know who'd pay a cent for it, but I believe the college is now gonna spend 20 million bucks--

- [Richard] Very much overdue.

- I mean, but my God, at the time, I mean this, but you don't sell the Lord Jeff because the Lord Jeff is an icon. It's very important part of the college. And another thing they did, which I think was a big mistake, they got rid of the Folger Shakespeare Theater and on the theory that it cost too much money to run. And actually, I remember arguing at the time that the cost was tiny, compared to the advantage that brought to Washington DC. Especially to the minority kids there.

- [Richard] Yes.

- So, but there was, there was a period in the '70s, when the endowment was low and the faculty was worried, and the trustees were worried. And there was some thought of cutting back, maybe on expenses. But as you know, Amherst always goes first class.

- [Richard] Yes, it does.

- And ultimately it went first class. No matter what. And the endowment rose. And we did okay.

- Yes. Well, you served on the board for really quite a long time. In fact, you're still a member of the board, Ted, and you've done a lot of things as a board member. But I think you did something rather controversial back in 1980, when you gave a significant gift to the college to endow a chair for a Black professor in science. Could you, could you tell us that story? Why did you do it? And what are some of the things that happened as a consequence of it?

- Well, there was a strange attitude at Amherst that Black people really were not qualified to teach white kids. And that there was no Black in the country, Black person, who had sufficient qualifications to teach a very complex subject, say particle physics or something of that nature. And even though faculty hold themselves out as very liberal and open, often they've got a very inherent bias and prejudice about their own profession. And that kind of made me angry. Now, at the time I'd sold my business, my publishing business. So I had some money. And so I said, well, the hell with this, this is a nonsense. And I gave the college a million dollars, which, now a million bucks is nothing. But it was sufficient to establish a chair. And one of the qualifications or requirements of the chair was that the first appointee, only the first appointee had to be an African-American person. And amazingly, hell broke loose. There were major stories in the New York Times, that this was a form of reverse discrimination. Absolutely improper for any institution that chooses people on merit to do anything of this nature. There were members of the faculty of Amherst that were very upset. We had a very solid legal opinion that this would stand up constitutionally. And we were, we felt okay about that. But there was, there was a lot of controversy and ultimately, that went away. But it worked. And the choice was very, extremely successful. Everybody was pleased. But the holder of the chair now, I forget who holds the chair now.

- [Richard] Bob Hilburn.

- Bob Hilburn, obviously he's not, he's not African-American. So it was kind of a strange thing to do at the time. But it was kind of a chink, it was kind of a first step in affirmative action. And it was a very moderate, I think it's, it withstood ultimate criticism or serious criticism, because it was moderate, in the sense the first person, if you tried to establish a chair in perpetuity--

- [Richard] Yes.

- It wouldn't work, it just wouldn't work.

- [Richard] Pretty true.

- So that was the story there. And looking back on it, it was okay.

- Yes. One of the applicants for that position was Shirley Jackson, who didn't take the position. But Shirley Jackson, of course had an illustrious career, career first with Bell Labs. And then she became president at Rensselaer, where she's done extremely well.

- I didn't know that.

- [Richard] Yes. One of the opinions at the time you created that chair was that there wouldn't be any Black applicants who would be able to take on such a job.

- Well that was the attitude at Amherst. And it was the attitude of people who simply weren't informed. And 'cause they lived in this little cocoon of Amherst College, and the way searches operate in who do you know, who are the good people? And so forth. And so it was, that attitude was universal and it was Amherst and it was racist.

- Yes. Of course, things have changed a great deal at Amherst College now. The searches are totally open. We try and include as many different groups as possible. And it's really a major turnaround and a major change.

- Absolutely.

- Ted, but everything doesn't always work out well. And sometimes mistakes are made. You sat on the board for a long time. Did you ever see, ever come across a situation where maybe you thought the board was making a mistake? Maybe not doing quite the right thing, not making quite the right judgment?

- Well, I mention, I mentioned getting rid of the, the Folger Theater was a stupid thing to do. The cost wasn't great. That was an error, it wasn't a catastrophic error that did damage to the college. But the theater was a wonderful gem. It decorated the college too. And it performed a very important social and educational function in the District of Columbia. So I certainly, and the other would be English 1, if you eliminate the requirement for English 1. And I'm not sure when that happened. I would consider that a major mistake. But that's an academic error. But I think if the trustees had said, "Look, you guys, this is a mistake." Maybe the faculty would've backed off. And I think too, the issue of curricular reform. Amherst's strength when I went there was based on really a great man named Alexander Meiklejohn who was president of Amherst College during the war, in the World War I years. He was an extraordinary man. He brought, Neils Bohr to Amherst and people of that consequence and admired everywhere, probably one of the most, the important First Amendment scholars in the country at that time. And my sense is that he produced a curriculum at Amherst that other great institutions emulated, I think even Harvard looked to Amherst English department to guys like Baird and people who went before him. And so it seemed to me that if another mistake that might have been made, even though it may not have been a trustee error, was that the faculty have never really attacked this issue of curriculum reform. And it would be very exciting, if someday what Meiklejohn did for Amherst in those years, many, many years ago, if that could happen again, and people would say, oh, we spoke, if you want a model of excellence, look at Amherst College.

- [Richard] Well, we are the best college. I guess the question is, do we still give the best education?

- Well see, I didn't--

- [Richard] And if you compare your Amherst education with the education we're giving now, could you give us a frank comparison of how you view the education you got at Amherst College, with the education you see now.

- I really, I really couldn't make a fair judgment on that. I know there's a lot of criticism of the college.

- [Richard] How about an unfair judgment?

- Well, no, I would, the comment I would make, the great quality in the English department was this guy Ted Baird, who was an old rascal. And he was scary as the dickens, but he uses the Socratic method to teach. He never told the students the answers. He always drew it out, drew it out. Even if it, I remember on King Lear, we'd spent two, three weeks on King Lear, every day, when one paragraph, "What does it mean?" "What's this guy saying?" And it was a brilliant way of teaching. And a couple of months ago, I went to one class. There's a wonderful professor there, I guess he's head of the English Department. His name is Chickering. Harold Chickering, do you know him?

- [Richard] I know him.

- And I sat in that class and I said, holy smoke. This is, he's using, in many ways with elaboration, the same technique that Baird used in 1942. So that's good. In other words, maybe some people would say that's traditional. But it was certainly impressive. And I thought the way he worked the class, it was a small class of 19 students, I think. And he, he used that same technique of with drawing, in a kind and gentle way of drawing out the answer. So that would be one example of what's happening up there. But I can't say that's universally the goodness that I saw there, is universal at the college. 'Cause I don't know. I don't know. Amherst's reputation is great.

- [Richard] It certainly is.

- And probably as great as it was in 1942, its leadership has been strong. And there's been certain other aspects of the college, which definitely have contributed to it. And to improve it. You know, I was reading an article the other day, a plumber comes into your house.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And you look at him and he's dressed, and he's got a dirty old shirt, and he's got a Boston's Red Sox hat on and he's wearing it backwards, and he's gonna fix your plug, he's gonna fix something very important to you. Now, how many people can talk to that guy, know how to engage him in a conversation, some sort of a preliminary conversation before he engages in doing something very important. Now it seemed to me that if you, if you were a, if you went to Grotton and Yale in the old days, you would have absolutely no preparation for that. There was no one in the class. There was no one in your class who would possibly be from that, from that background. And so it wouldn't, and I thought of it in terms of John Carey. He was a mess because he could not, he could not talk to people who are the basic contingency that he needed for election. And so what has happened there at Amherst now, originally at Amherst, when there were no, when everybody, there was most people there were privileged. You never met any, you never met any kids. Now, in my case, I was in the Navy for two years. And that saves you.

- [Richard] Yes, yes.

- You really learn the world. You learn to talk to people.

- [Richard] You had better.

- Right, but if you didn't, if I hadn't been in the Navy, God knows. I dunno if I could talk to that plumber who came in the other day. So what has happened at Amherst now, we have a much more diverse student body.

- [Richard] I'd like to ask about that, Ted. What do you think about Amherst plans for diversification? Not just racial diversification, but--

- It's a basic problem. Originally, the idea was that it was a Black problem. And the affirmative action was originally directed at Amherst, as it was elsewhere aimed at ghetto kids.

- Yes.

- Kids who really would have to struggle to make the grade at Amherst. Now, if you go to Harvard, 90% of the black kids there, are sons of doctors, engineers, dentists, academics. And I noticed the other day a story that Harvard is now tuition free for any family earning less than I think $70,000, $80,000, I don't know what the figure is. It doesn't matter. But one of the faculty members commented, or asked the admissions department, how many black kids at Harvard would, would that make a difference? Would it make a difference for any of them? No, they're all above the 70,000. The 70,000 figure. So that what has happened was, we're doing affirmative action on skin color. But what is, what the elite schools are, is bringing in black kids of privilege.

- Yes, yes.

- Now, I think what an important thing is, I think is what's going on now, Tony Marx is addressing that in terms of income. There's is a major effort underway now, which I think in the country, which I think Tony is leading, at least he's getting a lot of the heat for doing it. 'Cause there's a lot of criticism from the alumni. And a lot of people say that he's lowering academic standards by reaching out to low-income kids whose SATs will be lower on the whole, on average. You take the mean score of a kid from a family, not have nothing to do with skin color. From a lower income family, the chances are the SATs will be lower. Not that the SATs are necessarily biased, but that's the way it is. And so the criticism of the Amherst plan, and I like to think of it as an Amherst plan because I think Tony's been leading it and others are following. One of the major criticisms is the alumni think, well this is, this is bringing in kids who are not qualified to be at Amherst.

- Some people who do say that.

- A lot of alumni. And who also see that maybe they're taking the places of, of their children and grandchildren., who are not being admitted, with higher SATs. And who are able to pay full tuition.

- Yes.

- So it's a matter of criticism, but I think, I think what Amherst is doing is addressing that flaw that we now have, that affirmative action is benefiting medium to upper income blacks.

- Yes, yes it is.

- You know, I don't know. You see the students at Amherst. Would you say that's true there, too?

- That's my general perception. But Ted, many of us know that when it comes to educational statistics about blacks and about economic levels, you're one of the world's experts on this. You publish a journal that is an authoritative version of, of statistical surveys, of matters like this. Maybe you would talk just a little bit about whether or not it wouldn't be possible to get kids from the lowest economic quartile who academically will be able to compete very well at Amherst.

- Yes, absolutely. The point that's being made, the mean SAT--

- Yes.

- Of a white kid at the University of Michigan, who comes from a lower, what we call low income family, is going to be lower on average. Now there may be kids with 800 perfect SATs, but you bet otherwise, in other words, if you're betting on income--

- [Richard] But why should Amherst be picking average?

- What happens is, okay, there are many, there are probably, take any high school in Detroit, there are probably a dozen kids, with near perfect SATs. Black or white. From low income families. But the competition then is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, is competing with some very powerful institutions. So they are there, but the problem is how does Amherst capture them? How does Amherst get those kids? And so they are no threat to the mean SAT, at Amherst whatsoever. They've got terrific scores, they're bright as hell. They don't even take a cram course. They know the SAT from the day they were born.

- [Richard] You're describing kids like Robert McNamara.

- Right, and you know what happened to him?

- [Richard] A number of things.

- So it, I think the problem is, they are there, those kids are there, but everybody's focused on them. Berkeley, Texas, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke.

- [Richard] Yes.

- You know, the senator from Boston, Senator Kennedy, he doesn't have his brain surgery in Harvard. He has it in Duke. The world has changed. And that's, they're terrific institutions. So I think the problem is that Tony's absolutely right. There's no diminution or damage to the SAT in embarking on this program, which brings in some terrific kids that you otherwise wouldn't see at Amherst.

- [Richard] If we look hard enough--

- But you've got to send people out there. You've got to recruit. And also people say, well, what is Amherst? You know, they know Harvard, they know Yale, they know Princeton. But when you say Amherst College, it doesn't have that clout, that the big boys have. So, but I think Tony's on the right track. There have been negative stories and there's been some commentary from alumni, but I think everybody settled down. And the SATs at Amherst, average SATs are perfectly solid. So it's working, but going back to what I said about the plumber coming in, as you sit and watch Amherst College kids graduate, it is so totally different from what it was.

- [Richard] The average name is no longer Smith.

- I used to sit there at graduation with the program, and I'd count the number of kids from the elite SATs. And you know, the Dariens and they had the, the ones outside of Chicago and so forth. And for many years it didn't change. But then all of a sudden, it changed. And even though there's a very solid representation of wealthy kids from Dariens, Connecticut, still in the totality of the picture, the demographics of the student body at Amherst is very different from what it used to be. And that means that a kid who never, who doesn't know how to talk to a plumber, might learn a little bit how to talk to a kid from a different economic scale than his own. Terrific. Diversity is a wonderful, the arguments for diversity are, to me they don't often make the right arguments. To me, this is one of the great arguments. Going back to the one, one thing that was important, I think. You wonder what the trustees do. And that's co-education. I'd like to just say a few words about that. For many years there was tremendous opposition to co-education everywhere. And of course the alumni just couldn't see it. Dear old Amherst.

- [Richard] The women would be taking alumni seats.

- Also, how can you have a party, invite girls in from Smith, send them home. But they have, they're actually going to classroom with you and so forth. The opposition was enormous. So the trustees heard the issue. This was in Bill Ward's presidency, which I look back on as one of the strongest presidencies from this issue alone.

- [Richard] I've often heard you speak of Bill Ward and his presidency. Could you tell us just a little bit about him?

- Well, the best thing of Bill was that, he was sort of a truck driver academic. A really tough guy. But a great scholar, came from Princeton and very strong ethical issues and moral issues. But he took on this issue of co-education and he brought it up, year after year, every year the trustees voted it down. For reasons, even though Harvard and Yale and everybody else had moved in that direction. The only lagger was Princeton, which was very late in doing it. So finally, and he was angry because the faculty weren't with him. Many of them were, there were many with him, but there were many who were in the closet, who were not making the case against it. And you know, there were issues. There was Mount Holyoke there, there was Smith College there. There were arguments for a single-sex male college. Not good ones in my view. But there were arguments. And, but Bill, finally, I guess I may have mentioned this to you, wrote a brief against co-education. It was a brilliant piece of work.

- [Richard] No, I haven't seen that.

- Because Bill was terribly interested in process. You know, sometimes the process by which something happens is better than the result or betters the result. If the process is, is proper. So that, he wrote a marvel, I wish it were in the archive somewhere. He wrote a terrific brief against something he dearly wanted to happen. And I said, holy smoke. This is a really remarkable guy who would do this. Well, he did that and that still didn't work. Then he had one more weapon. He brought in someone from the English department. I don't know who it was. I don't think it was Baird. It was one of the stars of the English department to explain to the trustees why it was impossible to teach King Lear in an all-male classroom. That the vital part of it was the relationship of a father to his girls. His children. And the commentary would be so much broader, so much more interesting. And why the teaching, the teaching process of King Lear would be much better if we could do, if we could have women in the classroom. And then someone else he brought in to teach the same thing with Joyce, James Joyce, how Molly Bloom, an understanding of Molly Bloom would be much better if there were women in the classroom. And you know, the trustees suddenly said, well we hadn't thought of that. And they voted for co-education.

- [Richard] So an intellectual argument--

- Argument. It wasn't just a general statement that diversity is good as an education for the educational process. He brought in two examples, which the trustees understood and they voted it. So, and of course, Bill's life was sad, marriage was troubled. He was drinking too much. I saw him, I think a week before he committed suicide. But you look back on presidencies, the strong presidencies are often ones, not where we raise money or that you did a good job. But where something, there was a crisis, that was an important issue, which transformed the college forever. And I think you can say that. I think I see with Pouncey too, during Pouncey's years, there was a dramatic change in the diversity of the student body. And I think to some extent the faculty.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And that's happening now, a similar trend with modifications because of the problems I mentioned of affirmative action, is now happening with Tony Marx. So you look back on presidencies and the good ones, or the strong ones, or the ones that'll be remembered are often ones where, you just didn't do a good job of managing. You know, as I look back during some of the presidencies of Amherst, the only thing that happened is that maybe 20 trees fell down at the Alpha firehouse. Nothing, nothing happened at all.

- [Richard] Yes, yes.

- So that would be my comment on presidencies. And I think we've got very strong leadership now, but I cannot, I cannot comment on the difference in the quality of education then in 1942 as now. Except that Checkering example is to me, comforting. That things are pretty, pretty much the same.

- Were there maybe some other differences though, in your experience, Ted? In other words, coming in as a student in 1941 or even 1947, '46, would you have chosen all of your own courses or would you have had assigned courses? Would the college have dictated to you what you take?

- [Ted] I wouldn't remember. I guess I don't remember what the requirements were in '42. What are they open now?

- We have an open curriculum now.

- Yeah. Well I certainly think with young kids, they've gotta be taught. They've gotta take, certainly they've gotta take a course in science. I have a, I know a kid who went through Amherst without taking a single course in science. How do you do that? It should be illegal.

- It is not.

- It should be illegal in my view. I don't care what it is. You, it is wrong not to have some exposure to science and maybe a language, other than your own. There certainly should be some requirements. And I think, I don't know if Amherst had them, or see, I don't remember whether, I think probably we chose our own stuff, except remember having to take a course in astronomy, which I took simply 'cause it was an easy grade. Now, was it required?

- I don't know.

- Would astronomy have met the test?

- It would certainly be a science course.

- But everybody took it because it was easy. And go, you're gonna get a sure A. So I think probably for the young kids, for a kid 18-years-old that comes into Amherst college, there ought to be some, there ought to be a requirement in science. And I think another language other than your own and some in humanities, obviously, you will take anyway. And basic English, as I mentioned, English 1.

- Should the trustees have anything to say about this?

- Yes. I think, I don't know why the faculty resisted a lot of these things, but I think there comes a point where the argument is so strong. I think the argument for English ! is so strong throughout the nation, that maybe the trustees should say, look, we ordinarily do not interfere with the academic process, but this is wrong and we can't force it on you. We cannot, you know, the trustees cannot force it. But we can use a lot of sanctions and a lot of other initiatives to get that, to see that it's accomplished.

- [Richard] Yes.

- But I don't wanna leave the impression that there's any, that I know of anything wrong there today. Because what I, what I've seen there is very positive and very nostalgic in some ways.

- Yes, yes. Ted, you've had a lot to do with making the college's endowment an enviable one around the country. And a lot of people have noticed that institutions like Amherst, Harvard and Princeton have very large endowments, state legislatures. Even some federal legislatures are beginning to feel like maybe, what they would like to do is help the colleges spend some of that money. What are your views on that?

- Well, of course that's a very delicate issue. But let's take Harvard, with an endowment of 35 billion. I don't know. Is it equivalent to the whole value of Sweden? I don't know. It's a big, big figure.

- [Richard] It's a big figure.

- Huge. And I think many people have demonstrated, good mathematicians have demonstrated, take all of Harvard's costs, all its depreciation, all its faculty costs. They really wouldn't have to charge tuition. You know, the 15% return on an endowment of $30 billion is what, 7 billion, 7 billion a year?

- [Richard] 4.5 Billion a year.

- Yeah, whatever it is. Now it's not always 15%, it may drop to 10, but it's always 10. So it's three and a half billion dollars. And how much is that a day? I don't know. It's a huge amount of money. And so mathematically, it's baloney when they say, oh, we need the money, even to do what they want to do across the river, you know.

- [Richard] At Allston.

- It can be done. They could always raise money for it. Harvard, when Princeton goes into his fundraising mode, they take in a million dollars a day. They don't even do anything. It's like Barack Obama, the money roars in for some reason. For good reason, for good reason. Anyway, so the guys in the Congress who say, most foundations have to spend 5%, why should the great endowments be different. Now take Oberlin College, which struggles. And actually mirrors Amherst in many ways, or what Amherst used to be, because Oberlin always sent more kids to PhD programs than anybody.

- [Richard] Oh, really? Wasn't aware of that.

- Because a lot of the parents were high school teachers and stuff. And Amherst I think, competes very well that way. You know, they're not all going to work for Goldman Sachs.

- [Richard] Some are going to work for Morgan Stanley.

- Right and some of them maybe are going to get PhDs in comparative literature. So that, to apply that rule to Oberlin, would be insane because Oberlin's endowment is so small, they really struggle. But when you have Harvard, Yale, and Princeton with endowments that are equal to the gross national product of Europe. I mean, I'm exaggerating, obviously, but the figure is so huge, that yes, I think it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be unsound to say, look, you've got, your draw from endowment should be higher. Many years it was 2%. We could be higher. And of course, the colleges are fighting it now by eliminating tuition for low income kids. And for all those benefits and so forth, which is great and which is progress. But it seems to me, there reaches a point, that why do you need any more money, some of these places? Why? Because what you become is a mutual fund. Right? A mutual fund that does education also.

- [Richard] So you think some of these legislators actually have a case?

- Yeah, and they're reasonable--

- [Richard] And you're making it.

- These are not radicals that are arguing for this. And I'm not saying punish them. I'm saying, well, look, make them subject to the same rules as other foundations. 5%.

- Ted, you're a surprising guy. And that's, I threw that question at you, knowing what you would say, knowing you would say they have no right to do this. They're all kinds of qualifications that go with much of this money. They are crazy. And you said 180 degrees opposite of what I thought you would, and you do that all the time, and you're in a lot of different things.

- Well, I believe in free, it's so important to have these institutions free from any legislative, control or influence. That would be a disaster. But to a modest rule, a 5% rule, to me is insane. And it is punitive and would make sense. But the problem is it has to be limited to certain places because Oberlin isn't Harvard.

- Yes, yes.

- And Amherst isn't Harvard.

- No.

- I'm talking about money.

- I understand. Of course, you consider the number of students.

- Well, still, still, I mean--

- A lot of money.

- If you take, if you take the endowment of Princeton and divide it by the students, it's something like a million and a half dollars per student. It's the endowment. Amherst would be down maybe 800,000. So it's up there. But Harvard is unique.

- Yes.

- Well, no, Yale's pretty good too. Princeton is enormously wealthy.

- Yes. Ted, why should a, why should a student get a liberal arts education as opposed to an education at a good institution like MIT or place like that?

- Well, there's two parts of that. First of all, you get a terrific liberal arts education in MIT--

- [Richard] Now.

- Right?

- [Richard] Now you do.

- MIT's not a trade school.

- [Richard] Not anymore, yeah.

- So I think the comparison should be, why pursue a liberal arts education as opposed to learning how to do something? Why not just go to law school? Or why not go to business school and so forth. So I think the answer there is, well, first of all, Amherst, one thing I would say about Amherst is, I think Amherst still has a tremendously emphasis on the humanities, on teaching kids how to think. Rather than how to teaching kids how to get a good job. You know, the career careerism, you know, that work, careerism that's infiltrated many, many schools. I think in Princeton they teach a course on investment banking. Now that doesn't, has no place. I may, I may be wrong about that, but there's pressures all the time. Well, look, we're paying a tuition now $50,000. Why don't we learn something useful? And there is that, there is that problem. So, but the answer, the basic answer to your question is that in my view, take a guy who wants to be a lawyer or a woman who wants to be a lawyer, and ultimately maybe a judge. And compare, say someone like Clarence Thomas, to a Cardozo. Now the difference is, one has a very broad humanities background, knows things, read things, understood that there are certain issues way beyond what we call Stare decisis, that is the rule of law. Clarence Thomas is a bureaucrat. He doesn't have that vision. He was well trained at Yale, didn't do very well at Yale, but he was well-trained at Yale. But he doesn't have the vision that would have to go with being successful in any profession. Now, I think probably in medicine, certainly in academics and in law, you're a much better lawyer if you've had four years of intense training in the humanities, than you would otherwise be. So, and your life is bigger and better. You think about your thoughts. If you've had a humanistic background. You say, what am I thinking? There was just, we oughta finish up here pretty soon. But one, one thing I want, I think I'd like to make, there's a new president of Princeton, who's a wonderful, wonderful person. She just received--

- [Richard] Shirley Tilghman.

- She just received an honorary degree from Amherst, and she gave the most brilliant address at the Princeton graduation this year. And it revolved around a guy named Goheen, who was president of Princeton for many, many years. And her story was that she built around his life, what Princeton education does for a child. How you come in with biases, you come in with prejudices, you come in knowing things that ain't true, Or things that aren't knowable. What did he say? Something silly. You remember Rumsfeld famous--

- [Richard] Said a lot of silly things recently.

- Anyway, I had lunch with him the other day. It was really interesting. Anyway, she made the point was, he was Goheen, I think at age 38, was plucked out of the classics department at Princeton and made hit of this great university. And Princeton then was a place that took dumb kids from the south. And really, you know, Princeton was not what it is today. Anyway, he was to transform the place and make it into the greatness as it is today. And she pointed out that, he came across the education, the question of co-education, and he was against it. Then he thought about it for a while, saw how it was going in other places, and he changed his mind. Then he saw the question of, Princeton was way behind on the admission of Blacks, way behind. I mean, he went into the early '50s. It was really bad. But he was an old timer. And he said, well, I keep Princeton the way it is. And then he thought about it, and ultimately he changed his mind. And so Shirley Tilghman's point was, that diversity and humanities education in the classics or whatever, makes it possible for kids to change their mind, to create conflicting ideas, to see that there's other points of view. And that the most important function of a college is to do that. So that it's, I go again, go back to being a judge or a lawyer. You've got to have the ability to change your mind. The facts change. Rumsfeld should have changed his mind. He didn't.

- [Richard] Neither did McNamara--

- Yet, he went to Princeton.

- [Richard] He was like McNamara. He was very helpful for him to change his mind.

- The difference is McNamara is a beaten man today. Rumsfeld isn't. So he didn't, he and the now, and there'll be instances where you don't change your mind when confronted with facts, that contradict your opinion, your preconceived opinion. But this was a marvelous talk. I'll send it a copy to you because it, she just made the point so well about how one of Princeton's greatest presidents came in with biases against women, against blacks and changed his mind. And that is what the classics, a humanistic education does for you. And I think that's the argument why there should be an Amherst College and why you shouldn't go to trade school if you wanna be a lawyer. So, well.

- You're kind of a poster child of this sort of education, Ted, and if we're wrapping things up, I'm not gonna let you wrap things up without turning to something totally different. And that is, you've done rather well at the professions and there's more than one you've chosen. But I think you could have made a decent living as a photographer. I've brought to you this wonderful book of yours. In fact, I brought three of your books. But let's take a look at something called "Birds of the Sea Shore and Tundra." And could we show just one of the pictures from this? Can we show this particular one. Isn't that gorgeous?

- Yeah, that's a skimmer.

- [Richard] It's absolutely incredible. And how did you ever get that picture?

- [Ted] If you live in New Jersey, you'll find, you'll see lots of skimmers. You don't have to travel to see a skimmer.

- [Richard] But how do you get a picture of him doing that?

- [Ted] If you come to Princeton in August, I'll take you to see a skimmer.

- [Richard] Great.

- [Ted] And that's the way they fly. And the lower bill is longer, you noticed? The mandible is longer. Because they hit a fish and they, these are like a flying pair of pliers.

- [Richard] Yes.

- [Ted] Boom. And they touch a fish and it's a goner.

- [Richard] It's amazing.

- [Ted] But this is the streak they leave behind.

- [Richard] Yes.

- But you know, you are never gonna make a living at doing things like this-- Now, if Audubon and had kept alive from a company, and we were just, we were just talking about the one at Amherst, the first folio, what do you call it?

- [Will] The elephant folio.

- The elephant folio. Each print in there is worth half a million dollars.

- They should've held onto them.

- People are tearing it apart. And selling the prints.

- You mentioned some of the interesting presidents at Amherst, you mentioned--[crosstalk]

- He came in, he came in just the second time for me. In other words, I think he came in in '46.

- Yeah.

- Will, would that be right? I think, I think '46. And he was such a gentleman and everything Amherst was perfect in those days. The only point I'm making is nothing happened in Charlie Cole's. So... You know, and that's what, that's what makes presidencies interesting. But you have co-education or fraternities, but that was Armour Craig's, remember Armour Craig got that lousy job.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But apartheid was a big issue too.

- Yes. The investment in South Africa, yes.

- And I remember so well, the students were in the early '80s, the students were, you weren't there, no, you missed a lot of that, didn't you?

- I was there for some of it, yes. Well, the Amherst endowment was doing so wonderfully. We were outperforming everybody. The place was unbelievably rich and everybody was proud and fattened. And, but I remember one of the graduations, all the students had arm bands. They either came wearing shorts in opposition or they had arm, they had their gowns with arm bands and in opposition to apartheid, in that the purpose was that the college should not own any security, that had any business in South Africa whatsoever. So at any, you remember, at all the annual graduations, the trustees march--

- Yes.

- Through the students.

- Yes.

- Well, I remember marching one of those years and one of the students would say, all the students would say, "Hey Ted, how are profits?" "How are profits?" And it's a long march. It is a long podium. And so the students were up. They got their way. You remember, if you remember what happened, Amherst was--

- Was it divestiture?

- Yeah. You know, interesting thing on divestiture now, is there are arguments now, that colleges should not own any securities in any of the Middle Eastern countries that are so oppressive. You say Saudi, anything related to Saudi Arabia.

- Yes.

- Now it means under the law, say of Saudi Arabia, what do you call the law of the Arab, of the Muslim?

- Sharia Law.

- Sharia Law. Under the Sharia law, you can't own a bank stock. Brilliant. What has happened was they couldn't own any bank stocks. And the bank stocks have collapsed, so that they've gotten done very well because of their ancient law. So with Amherst, we had to sell all the drug companies and I think we lost money on, on divesting. But that was a huge issue with the students.

- Oh my, yes.

- And it wasn't a serious problem, and of course there was a lot of disagreement on the board, and that was certainly a big issue at the time. But again, in terms of going back to college presidencies, Bill Ward's presidency will go down in the annals for the simple reason that he brought co-education to the college. A brilliant move against the opposition. And wrote the brief against it.

- [Richard] Well...

- Brilliant. And that's memorable. So, well.

- [Richard] A good lawyer or a good philosopher should be able to argue both sides.

- That's right. Make the case so the process is better. So that, but Amherst has been very, Charlie Cole, he was a dream of a president. Everybody adored him, but there was no issue--

- [Richard] No crisis he had to deal with.

- There was no great crisis, that he had to deal with. Goheen at Princeton had crisis after crisis, deal with him brilliantly. And he is now, people say, well, this, this is the man that made modern Princeton.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And it takes a hundred years before you're gonna know, who were the greats. Meiklejohn is clear. I think Meiklejohn probably, despite his horrible problems, remember he borrowed money from the trustees at the end?

- [Richard] Oh, he did?

- Ted Baird had written terrific stuff on this, or wrote great stuff on this. I don't know what kind of, if he was gambling or had girlfriends or what he had. But he would, every trustee's meeting, he would panhandle the members of the board and they would all lend him money. But meanwhile, he was bringing Neils Bohr to the college.

- [Richard] Yes, right.

- And putting Amherst on the map.

- [Richard] Absolutely.

- Those are not stories about Meiklejohn you read in the anthology state.

- Well, you know, Amherst college won't talk about those things. You know, it's like the University of Pennsylvania will tell you how many of their graduates have made $20 million. $200 million. But they won't tell you how many of them are in prison.

- Quite so, yeah.

- [Ted] And you know, if you do your homework, you'll find a few of them are prison. At Amherst, another story that never, I always was amazed at, in 1820, there was a guy named Henry Lyman. Does that name mean anything to you?

- No.

- Will, do you remember that name? He was a missionary, a kid missionary, graduate of Amherst. And they sent him to Borneo. And he met up with some tribe. They properly dismembered his body and ate him all, all the parts, I never knew this had happened to any Amherst graduate, but we had missionaries and we sent them all to these terrible places. But those stories are not told.

- We think of ourselves as nourishing the world intellectually, but certainly not corporally. Well, Ted, I think you know that the analysis of citations, it's very important for academic work, it's important for promotions, it's important for scholarly research. And some years ago you owned a company, the Institute for Scientific Information that pioneered some very important methods in citation analysis. Could you tell us a bit about that company and about that particular approach?

- Yes, the best way to understand this company, I think you must understand what it does, before I tell you the history. Suppose a biologist or a science person at Amherst College has a suspicion without evidence that there's some sort of a link, genetic or otherwise, between Lou Gehrig's disease and childhood measles. You know, just a wild idea, a suspicion. And often great ideas often just happen that way. Now, there's no way for him to really pursue that, except there is one route that was developed by the Institute for Scientific information. And that is by doing a computer research, a keyword research. What is possible now, is that professor could ask a computer in Philadelphia, give me every single science paper ever published or published in the last 20 years, that mentioned Lou Gehrig's disease. And then you'd use the technical word for it, which I don't remember, ALS, AL something or other. Anyway, I want every paper that mentioned Lou Gehrig's disease and measles, use those words within four words of each other, or five words. And I'd also like to know whether they were ever mentioned in the same paper at any point in the same paper. Now, if that had happened, there would be some suggestion that someone else in the field had once thought of this idea, or that there might be some going on here, something of importance going on. And so that kind of a search can be made and the computer will tell you within seconds where there are any papers, how many there are, where they are and so forth. So that becomes a very, very important weapon for scientific research, which was developed by this company called ISI. Now, after I sold my publishing interest in 1980, this company became available. And it's a Philadelphia company, and it was for sale. And I arranged for some financing in New York and bought it. And it turned out to be one of the most exciting endeavors in the publishing world that I'd ever touched on. So to explain more what this company does, it records every, it subscribes to every journal of any consequence in the world. It'll leave out some second or third tier journals, which aren't of importance, and all the journals come over to Limerick, Ireland, and just piles and piles of them come in every day. And there, there are 150 women, all Irish, most of them young in their teens, who go through these journals, record every title, record every footnote, record every bibliographic reference. And often if there's no abstract of the paper, they make an abstract. And amazingly they're able to do it in many languages. They are able to do it in Russian, Chinese, where the education and training came from. I don't know. But it's done in Ireland and done very effectively. So that all these journals are then indexed in that way. Then that information is transmitted to a computer in Philadelphia where it is stored. Now that information permits, that digitally permits some very, very exciting research. The one example I just mentioned, to be able to find out if any crazy person in the world had ever had the same thought that you had of a connection between one disease and another. But another function of the company was you could take an existing paper that is, say, written 20 years ago and find out every paper that had cited it. So you could do research that way. If you could find a key paper on a certain subject, often your best research would be to do a citation count of every time that paper had been cited. And what you look for is is a very basic, important paper. What do you call them in that type of paper anyway?

- [Richard] A seminal paper.

- Seminal. And then do a citation count based on it, so that it becomes very valuable as a way of researching, rather than plowing your way through a library and hit or miss, how you spend hours and hours and hours in the library doing that kind of research, so that the computer made that kind of research possible. Also what it made possible was you could see or determine if people are reading these papers, and where they've been cited, so that if a professor at Amherst had written a certain paper and he would say up for tenure, you could go to the computer and find out how many, what his papers he'd written and when they'd been cited, how often. And academic administrators often use that, or department had used that to determine whether the, the person's work was serious and whether other scientists viewed his or her work in a serious way. So it became a very valuable tool in evaluating the competence of a person or ability of a person or reputation of a person in some sort of a quantitative way. And so there were citation counts on people. For example, the most cited person in the world is Sigmund Freud. And you can, you can actually, we have a list somewhere of the 50 most cited people in history and it's all there. There you go. And you can find out in 10 seconds, two seconds who they are. Who is the guy at Harvard that's so controversial, or MIT who is so controversial? Anyway, he's number two, I forget. Sometimes memories, memories go. Anyway, the company became very valuable for that purpose and for researching information and for also determining the qualifications or reputation of a scholar. Now one of the weaknesses of it is, if your name is Smith, the computer cannot deal with that.

- [Richard] Yes.

- You've gotta be Dick Goldsby. And I don't how many Dick Goldsby's there are in genetics. Probably not many. That's, that's manageable. But your name is important. So it's very important that when you're born, you choose a name that is searchable.

- [Richard] So you don't wanna be a Smith or a Kim?

- No. It's really tough. So that, that is absolutely critical. So that, that part is very valuable. Now, the flaw of the system is that people can rig their own citations, 'cause they can cite themselves. Or they get friends to cite themselves and they can create an artificial track of citation use that isn't on, that isn't valid. The other, the other criticism of it is that it, a lot of people will cite the paper as being wrong. And that's a negative citation. But the computer doesn't know that. The computer just says, Dick Goldsby was cited. And people say, check another, another point for Dick Goldsby. So that is a, that's a weakness in the system, but the argument is made, it's better to be cited negatively than not cited at all. So that is, that's essentially the story of ISI and that company. I didn't develop that company, but I, I had control of it for many years. And ultimately we sold it to British interests. Regrettably, because it was certainly one of the most fascinating enterprises I was ever connected with.

- [Richard] They also developed a notion of impact factors of journals too, didn't they?

- Oh, yes. I should mention that journals are ranked according to academic quality in any given field. There'll be same brain research. There might be 20 journals in the field. And, but librarians often want to know, should we stock them all? They're very expensive. I think brain research, maybe $20,000 a year. So they have to make a judgment. They wanna know what are the best journals, what are the most reliable journals? And the question is, what are the ones that are most highly cited? And so ISI can tell you immediately the five most highly cited journals in any given field. And that becomes a very valuable thing, a resource for a librarian in determining what journals to stock on the stock, on the library. Of course it's now reaching the point where you won't have to have these library journals in print form at all. You can simply sit your desk. Sit at your desk. Every journal will have a number, a barcode in effect.

- [Richard] Yes.

- And you just search that number and the journal will appear on your PC immediately, the article will appear. So that is another very valuable, that that is now coming fast. And will be a great blessing in libraries.

- [Richard] It's a revolution.

- Because they, you won't have to run to the library for the journal. You can simply sit and then punch out the request and down it comes.

- [Richard] In the experimental sciences now, most of the journal reading is done via PDFs, electronically transmitted. You're absolutely right. Yeah, absolutely.

- A lot of people in the humanities want print. In other words, they want to give out print copies to friends. And I'm not sure that if you're doing research in Shakespeare, you might be using, would you be using this as a research tool as effectively? I don't know. Probably so. But it's genius in science. It's genius in law research. And medical research. Very exciting.

- [Richard] Indispensable.

- Yeah. So that's the story of ISI.