Charles Hill, 1936-2001

Charles Hill, 1936–2021 by Justin Zaremby Charles Hill, a retired diplomat who taught Habsburgs. Gérôme’s painting slyly calls at- at Yale University for nearly thirty years, was tention to the influence of those quiet, studi- a visual thinker. In the classroom, he would ous counselors who shape diplomacy. distill complicated theories of politics and Professor Hill was our gray eminence. Be- philosophy into simple charts on the black- fore arriving at Yale, he spent decades as a board. He taught students to parse the works member of the foreign service and as an advi- of Thucydides, Aquinas, and Tocqueville— sor to America’s top diplomats. Following a diagramming concepts of war, glory, law, and career in public service, he devoted himself religion just as students once learned to dia- to teaching and advising Yale students who gram sentences. His students would leave these gratefully flocked to his lectures, seminars, sessions in breathless awe, aware that they had and office hours. Yet like the friar in the witnessed the remarkable results of a capacious painting, he always stood apart, and it was mind engaging with challenging texts. that splendid isolation that made him such That visual approach took other forms a compelling professor. as well. Professor Hill enjoyed introducing He was born in 1936. After graduating from students to Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1873 paint- Brown and the University of Pennsylvania ing, L’Eminence Grise, now in the collection (where he received both a master’s degree in of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The American Studies and a law degree), he opted painting depicts an imagined scene from the out of a legal career and entered the foreign court of Louis XIII. A group of courtiers line service. He served in Zürich, Taiwan, Hong a grand staircase and bow to Cardinal Riche- Kong, and South Vietnam before returning lieu, who has just moved out of view. Because to Washington in a policy role, serving as a the viewer is unable to see Richelieu, it ap- member of the State Department’s policy plan- pears as though the sycophants are bowing ning staff and as a speech writer and advisor for to an ascetically dressed man whose gaze is Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He held a focused on a book. That man is Richelieu’s series of roles in Middle East affairs, including advisor: François-Joseph Le Clerc du Trem- as Director for Israel and Arab–Israeli Affairs blay, a Capuchin friar commonly known as and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Middle his “Gray Eminence” (in contrast to the red East, before becoming Executive Aide to Sec- robes of the eminent Cardinal). Richelieu, retary of State George Shultz. From 1992 to guided from behind the scenes by Père Jo- 1996 he advised the United Nations Secre- seph, transformed European foreign policy tary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He went in the seventeenth century by centralizing with his wife, the humanities scholar Norma power in France and allying France with Prot- Thompson, to Yale and remained there until estant nations in opposition to the Catholic his sudden death in March 2021. 86 The New Criterion May 2021 Notebook I first encountered Professor Hill as a fresh- needs, and conflicting priorities of families, man in Yale’s Program in Directed Studies, tribes, and nations. It was a higher-order con- an interdisciplinary introduction to West- cept than policy planning, which Hill often ern thought. From the head of the seminar viewed as reactive or narrow in scope. The table, he guided us through defining works culmination of statecraft was the creation of of ancient political theory. The suit he wore the international state system—the arrange- to class (a rarity among the professoriate) ment of sovereign states that was established evinced a seriousness of purpose, as did his in 1648 to end the religious conflict of the rigid posture. Whenever students made wild Thirty Years’ War. That system, he explained, speculations about Herodotus or Plato, he has been maintained through careful diplo- would delicately but firmly encourage them macy, but remains under regular attack from to defend their views through reference to extreme versions of nationalism, religious fa- the text. He expected us to read closely and naticism, and globalization. write concisely. He did not regularly offer For Hill, the world’s future leaders (a club praise to the budding philosophers in the to which his students regularly applied for classroom, and many of us experienced our membership) lacked a basic understanding of first-ever C- at his hands. Professor Hill was statecraft because they didn’t know how to not afraid of giving honest grades. read. In his book Grand Strategies: Literature, Unlike many practitioners who teach at Statecraft, and World Order (2010), Hill wrote America’s colleges and universities, Hill that the “international world of states and never boasted about his remarkable career. their modern system is a literary realm.” His He would not violate the confidence of the goal as a teacher was to awaken students to leaders he counseled or ask students to bless the structure of international affairs and its the decisions made at the State Department origins by teaching them to read classic texts during his time in public service. Because his and to put those texts in conversation with goal was not to teach students to regurgitate each other. He expected us to read Sun Tzu, what they read in The New York Times, his Machiavelli, and Clausewitz, as well as Mon- courses often seemed divorced from contem- taigne, Austen, and Whitman. As a student porary foreign policy. They were not named I would regularly visit his office, not only “The Middle East Peace Process” or “Foreign to seek his counsel, but also to see what he Affairs after the Cold War” but instead sport- was reading. Professor Hill was Borgesian in ed evocative and humanistic titles like “The his command of the published word and—to Architecture of Power,” “Intellectual Circles,” paraphrase Borges—his universe seemed to and “Strategic American Fictions.” Although be a library. he might spend afternoons on the phone ad- Hill’s agenda, however, was more radical vising Secretaries Kissinger or Shultz, in the than simply encouraging students to read classroom he encouraged students to think important books. Statesmen, he explained, about timeless principles of politics and di- understood that the books they read remained plomacy. His goal was to teach students the relevant across time and geography. “Prior to lost art of statecraft. sainthood,” he wrote, “Thomas More read What did Hill mean by statecraft? World Roman poets and playwrights. Queen Eliza- affairs, he explained, were shaped by a com- beth I read Cicero for rhetorical and legal bination of strategy, power, politics, religion, strategy. Frederick the Great studied Homer’s art, and culture. The practice of statecraft Odysseus as a model for princes. John Adams required understanding how individuals read Thucydides in Greek while being guided interact with institutions, institutions with through the ‘labyrinth’ of human nature by cultures, cultures with nations, and nations Swift, Shakespeare, and Cervantes.” Each of with other nations. Statecraft was a learned these figures made decisions within the limi- practice which, like the law, offered a frame- tations of the time in which he or she lived, work for managing the variety of impulses, but they all thought across time. For Hill, The New Criterion May 2021 87 Notebook few problems were new problems, and ideas not need to be a member of the English de- remained available for use decades or centu- partment to play the literary critic. Profes- ries after they were originally written down. sor Hill had no reason to follow the rules of In his lectures and writings Hill reveled in traditional academic disciplines. He taught dramatic or unexpected parallels. Talleyrand, whatever courses he chose and as often as he the French diplomat who survived multiple wanted, even when faculty encouraged him revolutions, sought inspiration at the tomb to “stay in his lane.” But because his lane was of Richelieu. The War in Iraq might be un- statecraft, he decided that he should have ac- derstood through a theatrical production at cess to the full range of human expression. Yale of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy. The Oresteia elucidated Huckleberry Finn. A Students loved Charles Hill because of this schoolboy history of Rome was a useful tool intellectual defiance. He taught us not only for critiquing Livy. Hill’s courses introduced to read difficult authors, but also to listen for students to the written word, as well as to their echoes. We found comfort in the fact how those words were received by later gen- that, after a lifetime in diplomacy, he turned erations. He encouraged his classes to engage to a life of unadulterated intellectual curiosity with authors and their interpreters. He sug- at Yale. Although we looked up to him as a gested that there was a larger conversation to father figure, I actually think we adored him which great thinkers, great statesmen, and his because he seemed a bit like us. He retained students were invited. the curiosity of an undergraduate who has not Many at Yale criticized this anti-historicist yet been funneled into a major or a career. He tendency. Contemporary academic practice encouraged us to tackle large questions that prioritizes the study of authors within their spanned disciplines and to approach them with context, rather than the creation of grand patience and method. His intellectual agenda narratives. The historical study is praised for was young, even if the books he studied were being detailed, humble, and incremental.

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