SDSU Template, Version 11.1

“GUTTURAL GERMAN”: HERBERT MARCUSE, THE MEDIA, AND

STUDENT RADICALISM IN SAN DIEGO DURING THE 1960S

______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

San Diego State University

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In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

History

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Beauregard B. Bennett

Spring 2017

iii

DEDICATION

For all the women in my life. The ones who raised me, nurtured me, supported me, loved me and endured me. Thanks for believing in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. And a special dedication for the young lady who I haven’t met yet, this work is for you all!

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

“Guttural German”: Herbert Marcuse, the Media, and Student Radicalism in San Diego During the 1960s by Beauregard B. Bennett Master of Arts in History San Diego State University, 2017

Many university campuses in the United States experienced increased levels of unrest during the 1960s. San Diego universities also contributed to facets of student rebellion nationally and globally. Arguably, no one figure became such a polarizing and inspiring icon of the 1960s as UCSD’s Professor Herbert Marcuse. Guttural German seeks to uncover the roots of Marcuse’s controversial dismissal from UCSD while exploring the factors motivating his most vocal critics. Guttural German utilizes secondary source material that contextualizes the detractors of Marcuse and traces their history of opposition towards contrarian thought in the region. Additionally, Guttural German relies heavily primary sources from The San Diego Union, as well as archival material originating from SDSU Library Special Collections, letters and transcripts from (Dean of San Diego Journalism) Harold Keen’s collected papers; and documents from the Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communism Collection at SDSU. While much has been written regarding Marcuse’s time in San Diego and his reluctant role as father of the “new left,” what makes Guttural German unique is its focus on the media’s function in the Marcuse controversy. Marcuse’s dual structuralist approach of synthesizing the work of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx is used to respond to his critics, who it is argued held merely a vulgar or cursory grasp of Marcuse’s complex ideas.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT ...... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Historiography and Historical Context ...... 3 2 CRITICS ...... 12 Alice Widener ...... 18 The Medium is the Message ...... 25 The American Legion ...... 28 3 COMRADES ...... 36 4 CONCLUSION ...... 60 Marcuse’s Legacy ...... 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 73

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sometimes the most difficult part in beginning a project like this, is knowing how to start. So, I must concede a special degree of thanks to Dr. Richard Gibson for providing me with the perspective, outlook, and worldview (weltanschauung) in which to pursue an advanced degree. I greatly appreciate your friendship, advice, and encouragement throughout the years. You have had a major impact on my thoughts and have guided me well for over 17 years. Thank you. Once I began this journey of obtaining a Master’s degree and studying the work of Herbert Marcuse’s time in San Diego, I found my path to equally difficult to traverse. Because sometimes the most difficult part in a project such as this is finding the motivation to continue. I need to thank specifically Dr. Ben, for the brilliant insights and great readings in the History of Modernity; Dr. Yeh, for her kind demeanor, perceptive seminar discussions and wonderful readings in Cold War History; Dr. Hicks for a fun, although somewhat unorthodox and helpful semester studying zombie fiction and applying it to my research on Marcuse. That paper is coming soon. A special thanks to Dr. DeVos and Adriana Putko in the History Department office for all the paperwork and “behind the scenes” administrative help you provided me. Also, some special words of gratitude to Dr. Beasley for his perpetual good humor, deep historical knowledge on any number of topics. Prof. Beasley allowed this thesis to rise from the ashes like a phoenix with his constructive critiques and careful readings of early drafts. You have completely made my graduate experience a rewarding one. While this thesis has benefitted from the help and guidance of several knowledgeable and capable advisors and colleagues, the historical determinations, claims, mistakes are mine alone. Much thanks! And finally, I need to thank my beautiful, loving, supportive, hard-working wife. Thank you for underwriting this endeavor. Thank you for enduring all of my boring discoveries, my long-winded discussions when I needed a sounding board, and all the

viii yummy meals you made. You are the best. I love you. And thanks to my unborn daughter who will be here shortly and I can’t wait to meet. Because sometimes the hardest part of doing a project like this, is knowing when to stop….

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

“Marcuse, you are a very dirty Communist dog. We give you seventy-two hours to live [sic] the United States. Seventy-two hours more, Marcuse, and we kill you.”1 On November 8, 1964, the San Diego Union newspaper printed a story with the following title: “Philosophy Prof Will Join UCSD Faculty.” The five-paragraph article mentions a little about the professor’s history at Brandeis University, his education in Freiburg University, his work with the United States government intelligence during WWII, and his scholarship, which sought to synthesize the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The article, (located on Section A, page 37) says very little to suggest the storm of controversy that would grip this new professor of philosophy and politics, the University of California at San Diego’s students and administrators, the San Diego news media and local citizens just four years later.2 The uproar after Dr. Herbert Marcuse’s appointment at UCSD in the latter part of the 1960s is a significant example of resistance to a larger movement of organized dissent that was playing itself out elsewhere in California and the rest of the nation. But the reaction to Marcuse during this tumultuous time also highlights the specific historical context in San Diego. Due to the overt anti-Semitism directed at Marcuse, the controversy culminated with a death threat, dated July 1, 1969, from those claiming to represent the Ku Klux Klan Unfortunately, The Union decided to report on this death threat in a manner that placed Marcuse in further danger. The short article not only explained the letter, but published Marcuse’s address

1 Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew, and Jim Miller, Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (New York: The New Press, 2003), 60. And in Alain Martineau, Herbert Marcuse's Utopia, trans. Jane Brierley (Montreal, Quebec: Harvest House, 1986), 18. 2 “Philosophy Prof Will Join UCSD Faculty,” The San Diego Union, November 8, 1964.

2 as 8831 Cliffridge Ave., La Jolla, thus placing him in serious jeopardy with many of the very reactionary readers of the local newspaper.3 To better understand the forces that shaped the Marcuse controversy in San Diego it is important not only examine the actions and theories of Marcuse and his supporters, but also the motivations and words of his most strident opponents. Conservative enemies pounced on Marcuse. Additionally, newspapers from both the liberal and conservative sides also criticized Marcuse. Papers like Pravda and the editors of The San Diego Union both sought to discredit him.4 Investigating Marcuse’s critics illuminates the somewhat opaque nature of conservative, right-wing forces operating during a period traditionally considered to be a time of left-wing, liberal ascendancy. Marcuse, however, also had his supporters. When it appeared he was at his most vulnerable, some citizens of San Diego rose up in solidarity with him by means of correspondence with the print and televised media. Letters sent to The Union and KFMB News Channel 8 showed that many interested individuals rejected the narrative which The Union and community leaders wished to present about Marcuse’s ideas. In addition, Marcuse enjoyed a remarkable amount of backing from his colleagues and students. Written evidence from Marcuse’s defenders indicates that many understood that The Union maintained a clear bias regarding the Marcuse controversy. Ultimately Marcuse was forced out of his teaching position at UCSD, but he in true dialectical fashion managed to seize a minor victory from an apparently devastating defeat. While the scandal involving Marcuse reached a global and national audience, it also highlighted local sensibilities in Southern California during the 1960s. Additionally, the controversy underlines the increasing importance of the media in creating and maintaining controversies such as the one that surrounded Marcuse and radical student activism in the 1960s.

3 “Marcuse Receives Threat in Letter” The San Diego Union, July 3, 1968. 4 John Abromeit and Mark W. Cobb, eds., Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004), 183.

HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT A broader context is required. As this thesis will show, the conservative forces aligned against Marcuse and student radicalism during the 1960s arose after a time of insecurity during the Great Depression and the uncertainty and sacrifice of WWII.5 A generation that grew up during a time of severe economic turmoil also experienced the delay of many aspects of American family life during the war. This group deeply felt the benefits of employment and financial security following the conclusion of WWII. This Silent Generation, later called the Greatest Generation, inherited an American economy on the verge of unprecedented growth and stability at the end of the war. An incredible upsurge in births began during the war years of the 1940s as the Silent Generation made up for their years of struggle and hardship by creating the generation that followed, the Baby Boomers.6 At the dawn of the Cold War, the Silent Generation moved to the suburbs to begin their “nuclear” families.7 Parents in the 1950s proved to be different from their predecessors in many ways. They provided their offspring with a level of economic stability and affluence unparalleled in the twentieth century. Hence the Boomer generation, for the most part, came of age at a time of advanced material prosperity with parents that largely doted on their offspring. The historian Elaine Tyler May has documented that post-war parents of the Silent Generation settled into lives of comfort and conformity even as men reestablished gender roles and endured a stressful existence at their jobs. Women for the most part experienced a reassertion of a domestic/homemaker role which, she argues, mirrored the containment model of keeping global

5 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 30-79; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001), 32, 33; John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 190, 191. 6 May, Homeward Bound, 120, 121. 7 It is important to note that “sunbelt” regions tended to be more politically conservative. Additionally, not all segments of American society had the ability to move into the spaces of post-war suburbia. African Americans, Jews, and other minority groups for example, where often excluded from housing, educational, and employment opportunities by informal means segregation — see Kevin P. Phillips, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” in The Suburban Reader, ed. Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese (New York: Routledge, 2006), 390. Also, see McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 41, 42.

4 communism in check.8 Marcuse was seen as a major critic for daring to question all of this conformity. The critics of Marcuse’s appointment at UCSD were numerous and varied. Greater investigation into the origins of just what made Marcuse’s time in San Diego so contentious has been neglected in other historical accounts. This thesis moves beyond traditional accounts of the Marcuse scandal by locating the start of Marcuse’s troubles with local critics. These include syndicated news columnist and conservative author, Alice Widener, along with her anti- communist magazine U.S.A.; and a pair of American Legionnaires, Harry L. Foster and Barsh E. Gwartney. The 1960s saw the establishment of many radical conservative groups. Historians such as Lisa McGirr trace the rise of conservative groups such as William F. Buckley Jr.’s Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the John Birch Society (JBS), and the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (CACC) in the sunbelt region of the American Southwest.9 Although groups like the JBS and the CACC were established in the 1950s, the JBS’s membership expanded, and the Anti-Communism schools grew largely in the 1960s. Conservative groups like YAF arose from the reaction to left-leaning groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The growth of conservative ideals discussed in McGirr’s book and embodied in Schwarz’s magazine reflected the gradual ascendancy of organizations like the JBS. The JBS was started by Robert Welch in 1958. This advocacy group was named after Welch’s hero, John Birch, a 27-year-old Baptist missionary killed in China by communist forces 10 days after the end of WWII.10 The subsequent government cover-up of Birch’s death convinced Birch’s parents and later Welch that the federal government’s withholding of files was part of a conspiracy designed to improve Cold War relations with communist China. JBS’s stated mission was and is “To bring about less government, more responsibility, and — with God's help — a better world

8 May, Homeward Bound, 163-185. 9 McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 59-66. Although the CACC was established in the 1950s the Anti-Communism schools grew largely in the 1960s. 10 The John Birch Society, “John Birch,” The John Birch Society, accessed May 1, 2015, http://www.jbs.org/john-birch. Also, compare with McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 6, 7.

5 by providing leadership, education, and organized volunteer action in accordance with moral and Constitutional principles.”11 Historian Lisa McGirr links Orange County and sun-belt religious conservatives to supporters of larger movements nationwide like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, which endorsed anticommunism, nationalism, anti-Semitism and racism.12 Marcuse’s theories highlighted the apparent contradictions within the ideology of these conservative groups. The libertarian values of limited government intervention in the personal lives of individuals did not sit well with other right-wing views regulating the reproductive rights of millions of women and the sexual education of children. McGirr does suggest that there were strong common tendencies among the Sunbelt region’s conservatives that pointed to the possible reasons for their continued success in the post WWII era.13 The confluence of post-war government spending, migration from the Midwest by mainly white middle-class Protestants, and a widespread fear of communism, as well as liberal economic and moral values, contributed to the conservative zeal with which the ideology of the right flourished in Southern California during this period.14 McGirr utilized archival sources, periodicals, oral histories, government documents and directories to help illuminate women such as Bee Gathright and Edna Slocum. She shows how rather than being passive spectators within the Republican and Libertarian movements, these conservative women were instrumental agents in the pre-eminence of the right-wing in Orange County.15 These women could successfully operate both the formal channels in organizations like the John Birch Society and act as instructors at community college, as well as doing informal work behind the scenes in bridge clubs, coffee klatches and backyard barbeques where much of the recruiting and dissemination of doctrine was carried out.

11 The John Birch Society, “Core Principles,” The John Birch Society, accessed May 1, 2015, http://www.jbs.org/about-jbs/core-principles. 12 McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 222 13 Ibid., 4, 5. 14 Ibid., 8-9. 15 Ibid., 82-83 regarding Gathright. And 86 concerning Edna Slocum.

Sociologist and cultural critic Todd Gitlin explores the growth of leftist radical groups. Gitlin himself was a member of the radical leftist group SDS. He examines this and other groups that grew out of the Boomer Generation’s frustrations over the political and social conditions they grew up in. Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope Days of Rage explores some of the more recognized incidents of this decade. Furthermore, The Sixties shows the media as seen through popular culture. He shows how Baby-Boomers were raised on fears of atomic destruction with routine “duck and cover” air-raid drills in school, along with popular media accounts which had the effect of consistently reminding them of the covert communist danger of atomic warfare. The anxiety of the Cold War was reflected within the music, movies, and comic books the Boomers consumed.16 A number of the radical youth groups which would become familiar to many Americans during the 1960s rebelled at the conformity and fear offered by their parent’s generation and the popular culture of the time. Gitlin places the origin of many radical groups of the left in the 1950s. He claims many grew out of the beat movement and the southern civil rights struggle, but they really took off in the 1960s with the military draft for the Vietnam War. The size of the Boomer Generation then led the media toward marketing movies, books and music addressing their frustrations.17 Yet another angle discussed in this thesis is the role of the local media in regards to the Marcuse controversy in San Diego, using several secondary sources. An important work on this subject is Propaganda by Edward Bernays. Bernays maintains, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”18 Bernays sees propaganda

16 Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 22-23. 17 Ibid., For greater depth concerning media consumed by Boomers see, Chapter 8 “Everybody Get Together” pp. 195-224. 18 Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928), 9.

7 not with the current meaning the word holds today, but understood it to be a force that could be used for great good in modern society if used wisely.19 The epicenter of the controversy surrounding Marcuse was the way it was reported in the Copley newspapers: The San Diego Union and The San Diego Evening Tribune. The choice of subjects to report on and the frequency and placement of material within these publications propelled what some considered a minor hullabaloo into a story of national importance, while also keeping the story on life support when interest appeared to fade in the public mind. Why did The Union dedicate so much coverage to this seemingly obscure philosophy professor? When exactly did the controversy over Marcuse begin? What elements of The Union’s reporting resonated with so many residents in San Diego region? Were there other unique local elements contributing to what appears to have been the persecution of Marcuse in the media during the late 1960s and start of the 1970s? In addition, how can the impact and legacy of Marcuse be evaluated over forty years after the events? The Copley press proved to be both a vehicle for his most vocal critics and also a power player in persuading public opinion regarding Marcuse in the region. Previous scholarship exploring Marcuse’s time at UCSD has been mostly derivative. These accounts mainly focus upon the well-tread paths of earlier works. Perhaps the strongest traditional account of the Marcuse controversy, because of its thoroughness, is the student documentary Herbert’s Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise. This 1996 film by Danish UCSD student Paul Alexander Juutilainen presents the most complete account of the controversy from a local perspective. Herbert’s Hippopotamus is unique because it combines local television coverage along with recorded interviews with individuals who were involved with Marcuse and student radicalism at UCSD.20 Juutilainen’s film and many other sources seem to be in agreement about the identity of Marcuse’s well-known adversaries: The Pope, Vice- President Spiro Agnew, California Governor Ronald Reagan, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch

19 Ibid., 20-22. 20 Paul Alexander Juutilainen, “Herbert’s Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise,” directed by Paul Alexander Juutilainen (1996; New York: Cinema Guild, 2006), VHS.

Society, the local media and the American Legion. But the unsatisfactory nature of the historical treatment of the Marcuse incident has pushed me towards toward the primary source material in the local San Diego media to provide much-needed background and context. Another important secondary source is Nancy Scott Anderson’s An Improbable Venture: A History of the University of California, San Diego. The special contribution of Anderson’s treatment of the Marcuse incident comes from her access to many internal documents from the administration at UCSD during Marcuse’s tenure. Scott also gives a more nuanced history of the Eldridge Cleaver scandal concerning his Sociology 139X course; students seizing the Administration building; and the barring of military recruiters on campus. But Anderson’s history fails to discuss actors not directly associated with the administration at UCSD. People such as Cleaver, Angela Davis, Harry Foster of the American Legion, and Marcuse’s more famous students are left out or presented in a marginal way. Administrators such as Academic Senate chairman Walter Munk, Chancellor William McGill, Governor Ronald Reagan (officially the president of the Board of Regents for the University of California), and a variety of UCSD faculty play a larger role in Anderson’s account.21 Most other accounts of the Marcuse incident contain only the briefest of summaries. Both Jim Miller and William McGill locate the origins of Marcuse’s persecution in the actions of the Copley Press in the spring of 1968 while he visited Europe. Apparently, Marcuse visited the German Student Socialist Organization and praised a young radical named Rudi Dutschke who was recovering from a gunshot wound.22 Later while Marcuse was in Paris for a celebration of Karl Marx’s birthday in May 1968, a general strike emerged out of a student protest. Signs were held with the “3 Ms” (Marx, Marcuse and Mao). As word of Marcuse’s popularity with student radicals on both sides of the Atlantic began to appear in the U.S. media, The Union got a hold of three newspaper sources, the most reliable being The New York Times, that cited Dutschke as either coming to visit UCSD after he had recovered, or which gave the impression that Marcuse

21 Nancy Scott Anderson, An Improbable Venture: A History Of The University Of California, San Diego (La Jolla: UCSD Press, 1993), 91-112. 22 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 227. And also in William J. McGill, The Year of the Monkey: Revolt on Campus 1968-69 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 39, 59.

9 had invited Dutschke to UCSD to become his assistant.23 Apparently, Dutschke used Marcuse’s name in Germany as a reference when he intended come to a Boston hospital for treatment for his injuries.24 Yet, a closer examination of the published accounts of Marcuse in the Copley Press during this time indicates that the effort to besmirch the reputation of the professor of philosophy at UCSD, who was becoming a hero to students of the “New Left,” was well underway two years prior to the Dutschke incident. In Under a Perfect Sun and The Year of the Monkey considerable space has been devoted to an investigation into the actors and disseminators of the “controversies” which led to the Marcuse scandal and his eventual dismissal from UCSD. Both books do share certain commonalities. For example, Perfect Sun and Monkey agree that the Copley media in San Diego was largely responsible for steering public attention toward the controversy.25 However, the conclusions reached by these two accounts of Marcuse are dissimilar. McGill is honest about his conservative nature, which he admits grew more conservative as he aged.26 Meanwhile Perfect Sun, written in three parts by three different authors, criticizes McGill’s motivations and his version of events as Chancellor of UCSD. Jim Miller, author of the second part of Perfect Sun, describes McGill’s book as a “self-serving account of his years in La Jolla during student revolts of the late sixties…”27 Likewise, Kelly Mayhew, the author of the third part of the book, largely agrees with Juutilainen’s characterization of McGill as being racially insensitive. Mayhew’s section of Perfect Sun is an oral history of San Diego which includes her interview with UCSD Professor Carlos Blanco and his wife Iris, who was a graduate student at UCSD in the late

23 “A Matter of Information: Here Comes ‘Red Rudi,” The San Diego Union, June 6, 1968. 24 Martineau, Herbert Marcuse's Utopia, 18. 25 McGill, Monkey, 87-90. Also, Miller, Perfect Sun, 227-229. 26 McGill acknowledges he grown “weary of great causes…”, and “I saw myself become calloused and eventually cynical on the subject of great causes.” McGill, Monkey, Preface, xii. On some of the disturbing aspects of McGill’s conservatism see his references to largely discredited LeBon’s The Crowd. — McGill, Monkey, 273n, 277n. 27 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 222.

10 sixties. Prof. Blanco admits that, “I didn’t read McGill’s book on his time at UCSD as chancellor. I looked at a few pages and it’s all lies. Not only is he a racist, he lies.”28 Perfect Sun is not the only source that takes issue with the depiction of events at UCSD in the late sixties. In her autobiography, Professor Angela Davis, a well-known radical scholar and student of Marcuse, takes issue with McGill’s version of many events. She disputes with McGill’s account of the creation of UCSD’s Third College (Lumumba-Zapata College).29 Yet McGill’s book is an import facet of the Marcuse controversy for several reasons. First, McGill was a first-person witness to events surrounding Marcuse and student radicalism at UCSD. He also provides a nearly ideal example of the type of sunbelt conservative that McGirr discusses in her book. Although McGill, an academic, differed from the white-collar conservatives discussed by McGirr, he is honest about his conservatism. It should be noted that he never allowed the type of confrontations between student radicals and law enforcement that other campuses experienced during the same period. In terms of primary source material, Guttural German utilizes autobiographies and monographs from key individuals. These include William McGill, Angela Davis, Todd Gitlin, and Herbert Marcuse himself. Guttural German also tries to incorporate Copley newspaper articles as much as possible. Moreover, this thesis employs primary sources from Marcuse’s most vocal critics. However, the feature that makes Guttural German most distinctive is its attention to archival research using San Diego State University’s (SDSU) Library Special Collections.30 In particular, the Harold Keen papers and The Barsh E. Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communism Collection have proved vital in revealing previously unreported portions of the Marcuse controversy. The collection includes American Legion materials from Gwartney’s time with the organization. It also contains the anti-communist newsletters and magazines he subscribed to, such as Alice Widener’s U.S.A. magazine and Fred Swartz’s CACC. Gwartney participated in several civic groups and conservative organizations. His work as a real

28 Mayhew, Perfect Sun, 289,290. 29 Angela Davis, An Autobiography (1974; repr., New York: International Publishers, 1988), 197-98. 30 San Diego State University (SDSU) was known as San Diego State College (SDSC) in the 1960s.

11 estate agent as well as his aide in setting up schools for anti-communist education made him well-known in Southern California. Gwartney’s papers play a pivotal role in Guttural German’s contention that several conservative groups worked together in “an underground conservative pipeline.” The key pieces of evidence linking the American Legion and The Union in the collection are draft letters from Gwartney, where he explains how he has worked in collaboration with the editor of The San Diego Union to write an article attacking Marcuse for their paper. The first part of this thesis explores Marcuse’s critics. Special emphasis is placed on The Union, which was responsible for generating the majority of the controversy. Specific sub- sections will introduce Marcuse’s other primary critics, including journalist and author Alice Widener, religious leader Fred Schwarz, and American Legion leaders. These critics are presented along with their particular complaints about Marcuse during his time at UCSD. The second section examines supporters of Marcuse through the examination of letters written to newsman Harold Keen, and transcripts from his televised interviews with Marcuse on KFMB Channel 8. This thesis finishes in the third section by looking at how the controversy eventually concluded, and what can be deduced from it.

CHAPTER 2

CRITICS

“The photos which appear in the daily newspapers and magazines with mass circulation, often in nice and glossy color, shows rows of prisoners laid out or stood up for ‘interrogation,’ little children dragged through the dust behind armored cars, mutilated women.”31 Arguably, the most powerful adversary Marcuse dealt with during the scandal was The San Diego Union and Evening Tribune newspapers. Without a doubt the Copley family media machine underlay much of the seemingly intense public outrage concerning Marcuse. But The Union was not alone in its long history of biased reporting and conservative ownership. Other regional newspapers shared a viewpoint which was “Allied with urban industrial and agribusiness interests…” to control and shape conservative thought throughout the region.32 In fact, Lisa McGirr’s book, Suburban Warriors, documents how large Southern California newspapers such as Raymond Holies’s Santa Ana Register had furnished Orange Countians their news since the 1930s, with a steady source of anti-tax, anti-public schools, and a large amount of conservative opinion contained in the editorial pages. McGirr also maintains that other newspapers such as the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Los Angeles Times engaged in strong anti-unionism and “vociferous Red-baiting,” while it “boosted the region’s libertarian proclivities.” Moreover, these papers remained “tightly linked to the Republican Party” in their editorial pages.33

31 Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 259. 32 McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 36. 33 Ibid., 36-37.

Similarly, in The Union pro-business and anti-labor tendencies had already taken root when owner John D. Spreckels acquired the paper in 1890 (adding the Tribune in 1900).34 Spreckels came from the San Francisco sugar family that built lucrative plantations on Maui. His wealth allowed him to buy large areas in the “Midcity” part of San Diego. He also owned San Diego’s trolley car system and controlled electricity with the “modern coal wharf at the foot of Broadway” in downtown San Diego.35 According to Andrew Wiese, Speckles helped create the suburban conditions necessary for conservatives to thrive in San Diego suburbs. He purchased “land along a street radiating from the city, lay tracks along the property, and then reap[ed] tremendous profits reselling the land as suburban subdivisions.”36 These subdivisions are discussed in Perfect Sun. The book cites a study by Leroy Harris that claims San Diego was characterized by “overt social and economic discrimination faced by people of color in San Diego in employment and civil rights.”37 The Harris study further shows that real estate agents and restrictive covenants played a major part in producing segregated housing patterns in San Diego.38 Historian Jim Miller describes the conservative nature of Spreckels and San Diego’s deference towards him when he writes about The Union’s anti-radical stance regarding the Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) “free speech” fight in 1912. Miller chronicles how Spreckels underwrote the San Diego vigilante committee that wanted to stop the IWW’s recruitment of low-wage workers in the ethnically diverse Stingaree neighborhood of downtown. Spreckels supported the vigilante terrorism meted out with the tacit endorsement of the police and wealthy business interests. His newspapers remained the loudest voice against the IWW’s right to speak openly and organize workers in San Diego.39

34 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 29. 35 Ibid., 28-29. 36 Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, eds., The Suburban Reader, 3. 37 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 165. 38 Miller quoting Leroy Harris, “The Other Side of the Freeway: A study of Settlement Patterns of Negroes and Mexican Americans in San Diego California,” in Perfect Sun, 165. 39 Ibid., 183-192.

The Union came into the ownership of the Copley family in 1926 following the death of John D. Spreckels. The liquidation of Spreckels’ assets brought Republican ex-congressman, Colonel Ira Clifton Copley to San Diego from Illinois. The title “Colonel” came from Copley’s time leading the Illinois militia.40 He obtained his considerable wealth from a combination of utility companies and newspapers in the Midwest. Ira Copley’s long-held conservative inclinations seem to date back as far as his time with the militia when he worked to crush the wildcat strike of workers for the Pullman Company. Although Copley bought several other papers around the country, The Union and Tribune newspapers were easily his biggest acquisitions.41 The next generation of the Copley press ownership proved to be just as conservative, Republican, pro-American and anti-labor as Ira Copley had been. James (Jim) Strohn Copley, one of two adopted sons of Ira Copley, took over his father’s conservative newspaper empire following Ira’s death in 1947.42 James Copley maintained the paper’s focus on right-wing causes and conservative editorial policies. In fact, James Copley began a practice of hiring retired Navy and Marine Corps officers to lead the paper’s editorial policy and served as columnists. The most prominent of these ex-military figures were Admiral Leslie Gehres, Captain E. Robert Anderson, and Lieutenant General Victor (Brute) H. Krulak.43 James Copley’s support of Republicanism is rumored to have been the original reason for scheduling the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1972. Historian Lisa McGirr has documented well how James Copley and his

40 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 53. More about the Pullman Strike and state and national militias in Illinois and the rest of the nation in: Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston: South End Press, 1972), 84-96. 41 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller Davis, Perfect Sun, 54. Perfect Sun details how Ira Copley purchased The Union and Tribune newspapers upon selling his utility interests following a losing clash with fellow Midwest utility magnate Samuel L. Insull. Also, see Bernays, Propaganda, 75. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, in his famous book, shows that Insull understood the power of the media, stating, “It matters not how favorable the conditions of service, if you haven’t behind you a sympathetic public opinion, you are bound to fail.” 42 Ibid., 70. 43 McGill, Monkey, 74, 88. C. Arnholt Smith, another important figure, had not served in the military but used Gehres for labor disputes in companies he owned.

Union “adhered to staunch Republican lines” and made up “part of a broader conservative press axis in the region.”44 A prime example of James Copley’s twisting of facts to serve his larger conservative message can be observed in a rather benign story in The Union regarding Marcuse before his appointment to the faculty at UCSD. It is unclear if the reporter covering a symposium sponsored by the philosophy department at UCSD misunderstood Marcuse’s comments or deliberately mischaracterized them in order to forward The Union’s anti-Marxist leanings. In an article titled “Marx Disproved, Educator Declares” the quotations attributed to Marcuse appear accurate, but they are taken so grossly out of context that the general reader of The Union could be forgiven for assuming that Marcuse was not actually a Marxist scholar.45 The Union quotes Marcuse this way: “Marx’s theory is based on the existence of an historic class of workers devoted to changing intolerable conditions and capable of changing them. This proletarian majority was to be the base of the revolution. But in advanced capitalist countries this class has disappeared.”46 Rather than being a repudiation of Marx’s ideas, the theories of Marcuse are far more complicated than the easy conclusion suggested by The Union. Marcuse was most likely presenting ideas from his book One-Dimensional Man, which was also published in 1964. Instead of a simple rejection of the conventional Marxist doctrine of an increasingly alienated proletariat and the specific historical and material conditions it must pass through in order to obtain a degree of class consciousness, Marcuse’s ideas were more complex than The Union wished to acknowledge.47 Marcuse believed that modern Western society, particularly the United States, had stifled consciousness through technological productivity and a mass media which protected the dominion of corporate capitalism. The working class through their consumer

44 McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 37. 45 “Marx Disproved, Educator Declares,” The San Diego Union, February 23, 1964. 46 Ibid. 47 Tom Bottomore, Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan, and Ralph Miliband, eds., A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), s.v. “stages of development” and “mode of production,” 335, 458- 460.

16 behavior tend to mimic the middle class in patterns of material and cultural merchandise.48 Instead of the denial of a revolutionary proletariat The Union insisted upon, One-Dimensional Man emphasizes, The flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and the unsatisfied needs. Here, the so-called equalization of class distinctions reveals its ideological functions. If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.49 In other words, Marcuse is implying that the way in which advanced capitalist society maintains and reproduces itself is by changing itself, with improvements and comforts for the laboring classes. The capitalist bribes of affordable consumer goods coupled with the need to manage overproduction coalesce in the mass media through advertising.50 In One-Dimensional Man Marcuse confronts the interconnection between the modern media in advanced Western societies and the reasons behind the failure of the proletariat to gain the needed class consciousness. He maintains that “we overrate greatly the power of the ‘media,’ and that by themselves the people would feel and satisfy the needs which are now imposed upon them.”51 The local media in San Diego was about to prove him wrong. It should be noted that the ideas expressed by Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man led to criticism from both the “right” and “left.” Not only did he eventually face condemnation from the supposedly liberal media of America, but he also faced criticism from the Soviet state newspaper, Pravda. By denying the orthodox historical stages that mandated that material abundance must be realized, along with questioning the existence of a proletariat that had to pass

48 Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 15. This reference is from an essay five years after the article in The Union, but states Marcuse’s views more succinctly. 49 Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 8. 50 Marcuse, Liberation, 13. 51 Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 8.

17 through a stage of estrangement before consciousness was achieved, Marcuse’s comments made it necessary for the leaders of the Soviet Union to distance themselves from his brand of Marxist thought.52 Furthermore, Marcuse maintains that “the way in which socialism in the Soviet Union deviates decisively from the Marxist concept is in the authoritarian and bureaucratic construction of society in which the regime is imposed upon the people instead of the people actually determining the development of their own society.”53 In the United States even the Progressive Labor party (PL) rallied against him. Marcuse claims the PL attacked him for being an agent of the CIA. Moreover, PL blamed Marcuse for suppressing student rebellions around the globe, and felt the need to collaborate with Marcuse’s critics in impugning his intentions.54 Furthermore, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of the French student movement, attended a lecture by Marcuse in Italy in the summer of 1968. Cohn-Bendit interrupted the lecture several times and eventually demanded Marcuse confess to his past work with the CIA during WWII. This false and inaccurate claim was then picked up by the European press and later spread.55 The accusation of Marcuse being a CIA agent may have come of his having escaped the Nazi terror in Europe during the Second World War. After this he became a US citizen while working for the American government, gathering intelligence on Nazi Germany and crafting propaganda. His strong anti-Nazism led him to work for the United States government in the Office of War Information (OWI) to distribute anti-Nazi propaganda, and later as a researcher and analyst in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) he wrote memoranda that helped advise American military and political leaders. Moreover, Marcuse joined the State Department and acted as the Central European divisions head until the death of his first wife in 1951.56 This fact

52 McGill, Monkey, 48. And also in Miller, Perfect Sun, 226. 53 KFMB interview with Herbert Marcuse by Harold Keen, 25 February 1969, p. 2, folder 37, box 1, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 54 Ibid., 2, 3. 55 Franz Neuman, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer, Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 1. Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a current European Parliament member. 56 Abromeit and Cobb, Marcuse: Critical Reader, 4. (and 31n. on page 31 regarding leftist émigrés role in

18 should have proven Marcuse’s loyalty to the U.S., however; The Union chose to ignore Marcuse’s personal history in order to focus on a Marxist media spectacle and “witch hunt” instead. There is an important aspect of the Marcuse and the Copley press controversy that needs to be examined further. Precisely what started the animosity between The Union and Marcuse? Once The Union either figured out Marcuse’s political beliefs, or realized they could no longer blatantly misrepresent his views so publicly, the tone of their coverage regarding Marcuse shifted drastically.

ALICE WIDENER “A three-year record of the Marxist student and faculty movement in the United States in this publication. It is an ‘inside’ story that should have been an outside story.”57 On September 16, 1966, an unusual article appeared in The Union’s editorial section. It represents the real origin of Marcuse’s troubles at UCSD — at least two years prior to what is traditionally considered the start of the Marcuse scandal. The syndicated columnist Alice Widener discusses her attendance at the second annual Conference of Socialist Scholars at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan, New York.58 Widener’s article on the conference reads like an account straight from the Joseph McCarthy era. While the casual reader may be shocked and frightened by the language used, The Union seems to have chosen the article because it contains all the necessary verbal signifiers that appealed to many of the conservative Republican readers in San Diego, whipping them into a frenzy. Widener states that she learned that leftist agitators, “are on the march toward revolution in our country—violent revolution by practicing the strategy

government). Also in Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) Herbert Marcuse Official Homepage, “Biography,” Herbert Marcuse, last modified February 2, 2017, accessed May 2, 2014, http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/index.html#biography. 57 Alice Widener, “Student Subversion: The origin of the America’s Leftist Agitators, How they Emerged in the 1960’s  Slowly, When no one was Aware  and how in 1968 they Burst Forth with Disruption, Violence, and ‘Guerilla Politics,’” special issue, (New York: U.S.A. Publishing Company, 1968), preface ii. Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communist Collection, series 1, folder 7, box 2, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 58 “Socialist Scholars Map Campaign Among Poor,” The San Diego Union, September 16, 1966.

19 and tactics of disruption.”59 Here she gives the impression of a raucous mob ready to overthrow the existing society. The nation had witnessed free speech riots on television reports at Berkeley in 1964 and Southern violence against civil right demonstrators throughout the 1950s. Back in San Diego this type of prose had a large amount of currency with the conservative readers of The Union. Widener further reports that the main paper presented in the session called “Poverty and Powerlessness,” written by Prof. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Piven of Columbia University, was entitled “Organizing The Poor: Can It Be Done?” The idea of the poor and needy (read Brown and Black people) being organized under the banner of socialism scared some residents of San Diego. It is also interesting to note the extent to which Widener uses this tiny article to denounce and document the names and universities of all the professors mentioned in the story. Even Marcuse, who was not present at the conference, had his name and university printed because a paper was read for him by another attendee. Widener concludes her persecution of Marcuse by quoting a portion of his paper, “The Marxian ideology of socialism is not radical enough…We must develop the moral-sexual rebellion of the youth.”60 To an audience witnessing images of political and sexual youth rebellion on television and in other forms of media, Marcuse’s words, as relayed by Widener, must have provided a confirmation of their worst fears of Cold War Communist conspiracy. It turns out that Widener had shown strong connections to conservative values since the 1950s. In fact, many of her views mirrored those held by many sunbelt conservative Republicans and John Birch Society members. Evidence of this can be seen in her book, Behind the U.N. Front (1955), a 128-page tirade attacking the leadership of the U.S. for not admitting that membership in the United Nations is tantamount to working with the Soviet Union. The U.N. is an organization that aims “at smashing capitalism and creating a world Communist dictatorship under Kremlin control.”61 Widener also wrote four other books. One outlined a conspiracy by a growing number of educators in America seeking to subvert youthful minds and foment a

59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Alice Widener, Behind the U.N. Front (New York: The Bookmailer, 1955), 125.

20 socialist revolution. The book says more about communist plots than it does education, yet Widener is able to conclude that all Marxist/Marxian educators should be deemed “teachers of destruction.”62 The idea that Marcuse sought to inspire the development of a moral-sexual rebellion of the youth was fabricated by Widener in her original report in U.S.A. magazine, then carried by The Union, and finally adopted by the American Legion. The notion that Marcuse was engaging in subversive teaching methods entered the public discussion by means of a hostile media outlet bent on purging Marcuse from UCSD, whether the facts supported the claim or not. Marcuse replied in the February 25, 1969 in a television interview with Harold Keen. When asked about advocating such a moral-sexual rebellion, Marcuse responded, I didn’t mean that because I didn’t say it. That is one of the beautiful falsifications of quotes of which, let me say, our local press is full. What I did say, and I think the quote is literal, is that “The New Left should develop the implications of the moral and sexual rebellion of the youth,” which is almost the opposite, because it means we should try to transform the sexual and moral rebellion into a political movement.63 One problem with Widener’s original report in The Union on September 16, 1966, was that as even she acknowledges, Marcuse was not present at the Socialist Conference in New York. Furthermore, since Marcuse authored the paper and the text still exists, the burden of proof as to the quote about a “moral sexual rebellion of the youth” rests with Widener. The historian Elaine Tyler May has written about the topic of American sexuality during the Cold War. She reveals how Cold War feelings concerning communism and homosexuality were inextricably linked. Marcuse, a critic of American society who sought to combine the works of Freud and Marx to highlight patterns within industrial society in the West, was set upon by defenders of conservative Cold War values like Widener. May’s book, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, shows that the logic of Cold War values saw perversion

62 Alice Widener, Teachers of Destruction: Their Plans for a Socialist Revolution: An Eyewitness Account (Washington DC: Citizens Evaluation Institute, 1970), 13, 16, 23. 63 Marcuse, interview by Keen, February 25, 1969, p. 11, folder 37, box 1, KFMB-TV Channel 8 Transcript, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access.

21 and deceit in both communist beliefs and homosexual behavior.64 In addition, the historian Robert D. Dean has written about how conservatives like Widener saw the loss of China and Korea to communist forces as defeat for American values at the hands of morally and sexually perverse powers. Dean links muscular conservative anti-communist masculinity to the earlier red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy in what he calls “lavender-baiting.”65 Widener’s rhetoric also appealed to those who wished to maintain the female gender roles of the Silent Generation. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) had already given voice to the female Boomer Generation. Friedan’s addressed the problem of female domesticity and containment when she wrote about “the problem that has no name.” Marcuse did not exactly name Friedan’s “problem,” although he was at least addressing it, if not subtly challenging it.66 Widener clearly enjoyed a status professionally and socially atypical of many of her female contemporaries.Therefore her sardonic refutation of Marcuse’s true thoughts concerning a tranformation of the moral and sexual rebellion of the New Left into a political movement is interesting. Other conservative female activists appear in the correspondence with newsman Harold Keen following the televised Marcuse interview. Edna E. Hamilton, who wrote a letter dated March 14, 1969, relates how she wishes to “commend” Channel 8 and Keen for the program but, “did not think that he put up a good talk.” Hamilton continues, “However …I felt like there was still hope for America in its struggle against the communist influence.”67 Likewise, the letter from Mrs. Harriet Fester points to her concern, “that I do not feel that I would like to have my sons educated by professor’s advocating Marcuse’s views.”68 These women buttress Lisa McGirr’s central argument that women played important roles in spreading conservative ideas

64 May, Homeward Bound, 82-85. 65 Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), chap. 6. 66 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963), chap. 1. 67 Edna E. Hamilton to Harold Keen, 14 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 68 Harriet Fester to Harold Keen, 26 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University.

22 through informal networks. Regardless, Mrs. Fester insists that, “The responsibility for the campus unrest may be laid on the doorstep of the liberal faculty members and the permissive administrators.”69 Many San Diego viewers had strong feelings after watching the interview of Marcuse on February 25, 1969 on KFMB-TV Channel 8. Some chose to write to Keen in order to express their thoughts. One letter from viewer J. A. displays the typical xenophobic anti-communist hysteria that permeated much of San Diego in the late 1960s. J. A. resented, “being made to swallow the double-talking philosophies of Marcuse whose guttural, heavily accented English was hardly intelligible and extremely biased.”70 J. A.’s comments exhibited the same fear of diversity that was espoused by Widener and McGill. Not long after The Union printed Widener’s report of the Socialist Scholars Conference, the conservative reaction began to emerge in the “Letters to the Editor” column. D. K. Dunlap from 5357 La Jolla Blvd., references Widener’s article from the previous month. Dunlap asks, “Should tax monies be used to support this type of man in our community to ruin the morals of our coming scholars? Is this America?”71 Three days later another writer known only as J. L. also refers to Widener’s report on the Socialist Conference in New York. But instead of attacking Marcuse, J. L. lays the blame for Marcuse’s paper being read at the conference at the feet of UC President, Clark Kerr. J. L. then asks whether the support from UCSD is going toward “faculty members and chairmen whose goal appears to be student decadence, à la Berkeley?”72 Widener’s fear-mongering concerning the sexual rebellion of the youth played directly toward the sensibilities of many San Diegans. The sexual rebellion of hippies was a constant source of anxiety for conservatives during the 1960s. The panic over free love and sexually liberated women with access to widely available oral contraception, beginning in 1960, posed a genuine threat to the existing social status quo. The ideas taken out of context by Widener

69 Ibid. 70 J. A. to Harold Keen, 26 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 71 “Question Asked About Professor,” The San Diego Union, October 4, 1966. 72 “UCSD Support Is Discussed,” The San Diego Union, October 7, 1966.

23 originate from Marcuse’s text, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955), which sought to amalgamate the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Rather than solely focusing on Marxist topics like alienation and class conflict, Marcuse explored the conflict between surplus repression and sublimation on individuals in advanced capitalist societies. Marcuse borrowed some of the ideas in Freud’s book, Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Freud had argued that, “Civilization therefore obtains the mastery over the dangerous love of aggression in individuals by enfeebling and disarming it and setting up and institution within their minds to keep watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city.”73 Basically Freud is suggesting that in advanced capitalist societies, structures exist which constrain the sexual/love aggression or Eros (the life drive). The restriction of instant gratification allows individuals in a society to repress sexual instinct and redirect it toward what Freud calls the “reality principle.” Marcuse believed that this type of living is harmful to individuals and society. It causes an increase of aggression and violence due to Thanatos (the death drive). Marcuse was using Freud’s theories to show how society comes to oppress the individual, how social control is internalized, and how citizens conform to society’s needs. According to Douglas Kellner, Marcuse came to feel that “Freud’s individual psychology is in its very essence social psychology.”74 The difficult work of civilization is only possible when religious and political leaders repress the pleasure-seeking behavior of individuals and redirect it to the benefit of the culture. In other words, individuals through their semi-conscious ego regulate their unconscious id by means of guilt feelings and the shame of the completely conscious superego.75 It is crucial to recognize the importance of what Marcuse was seeking to tackle in Eros and Civilization. Marcuse felt that Freud’s theory explained an entire realm of domination and repression in societies. In essence, Freud was willing to accept a certain prescribed level of

73 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. Joan Riviere (1929; repr., n.p.: Wilder Publications, 2010), 60. 74 Douglas Kellner, “Marcuse and the Quest for Radical Subjectivity.” Abromeit and Cobb, Marcuse: Critical Reader, 83. Kellner quoting Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1974), 22. 75 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 16.

24 repression within society, whereas Marcuse was not. Furthermore, Marcuse contends that Western civilization has paid a very big price for industrial progress and material prosperity. He insists that there exists a “hidden trend in psychoanalysis” that hints at the dominant ethic of labor, while suppressing the pleasure principle.76 A further issue concerns memory and how Marcuse says it is used for remembering of tasks and duties instead of memories of pleasure. In modern civilization memory is “linked to bad consciousness, guilt and sin.”77 And this is where Marcuse offers a solution to punishment and repression, one that embraces daydreaming and fantasy as observed in artistic expression.78 What could have been the motivation for Widener’s reporting on the New York socialist conference? Did she have an ulterior reason for attacking Marcuse and the rest of these scholars? A New York Times obituary provides some information about Widener’s life and interests.79 Prior to her passing away on January 24, 1985, Widener’s work appeared in over 100 newspapers in the United States, including Life, The Atlantic Monthly, and Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly. In 1954 she founded, wrote and published the U.S.A. magazine. In a special edition of U.S.A., Widener reprinted her original reports from the Socialist Scholars Conference. A clue to Widener’s political outlook can be seen in her magazine.80 The seemingly innocuous title U.S.A. actually stands for Unite Save America. In the Preface of the U.S.A. Widener addresses the questions, “How did you get the facts?” and “How did you get into the radical meeting?” Widener responds that the “answer is not a cloak and dagger tale.” Widener collected the open and public publications of Leftist radicals to initially discover the conference. She paid the fee to attend, but she furtively observed and took notes on everything that

76 Abromeit and Cobb, Marcuse: Critical Reader, 83-84. 77 Ibid., 85. 78 Ibid. 79 The New York Times, January 31, 1985. 80 Widener, “Student Subversion,” Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communist Collection, 1937-1981, series 1, folder 7, box 2, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University.

25 transpired. Additionally, she recounts how on April 25, 1967, two days following the occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, she was led around the campus by minority students from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).81 It seems obvious that while Ms. Widener took advantage of the openness afforded to her by the Socialist Scholars Conference, she remained incognito for all of the conferences and never disclosed that she was the publisher of an anti- communist right-wing magazine. Later, the Associated Press requested permission to use previous issues of U.S.A. that reported events about a student rebellion at Columbia. Widener states her articles were then picked up by other “client” papers across the country.82

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE “Television, even more than radio, is actually a return to our old-time tradition of talking to the stump…But now, via the medium of television, they all can see him and hear him. And let me reveal something known to actors—you can’t lie to the camera.”83 When examining The Union coverage of the story, it looks as if the overwhelming majority of citizens despised Marcuse and his ideas. This observation is not so difficult to understand considering the demographics of the San Diego region. If older, ethnically whiter, wealthier, and more conservative San Diegans subscribed to the Copley Press, than younger, poorer, more ethnically diverse, and less conservative members of the community consumed their news about Marcuse through television and radio coverage. The difference in correspondence between both media forms is striking. Viewers of Harold Keen’s interviews were far more sympathetic towards Marcuse than letter writers to the editors of The Union. Professor, media critic and philosopher Marshall McLuhan predicted these very forces. He wrote about the mosaic nature of newspapers and the way in which printed press material, “is a group

81 Ibid., 1, Preface, ii. 82 Ibid. 83 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 204. The phrase “The Medium is the Message,” coined by McLuhan originally appeared in this somewhat controversial book and subsequently became the title of his 1967 book. McLuhan asserted forms of media could be categorized as either “hot” or “cold” form, depending upon the amount of participation spent by the consumer of the media. See, McLuhan, Understanding Media, 7-21

26 confessional form that provides communal participation. It can ‘color’ events by using them or by not using them at all.”84 Jim Miller documents well how William J. McGill, UCSD’s chancellor from 1968-1970, feared both ethnically diverse and economically ambiguous “street people” of Southern California in his Year of the Monkey: The prospect of tough street people from Los Angeles and San Diego [like the Black Panthers and Brown Berets] appearing at UCSD to beef up the demands of our minority students was real enough and frightening. That was the direction the struggles with radical minorities had taken at San Francisco State, Berkeley, and in a number of other places. I made a mental note to call Walter Hahn, San Diego’s city manager, to brief him on our new problem. It might be his problem too!85 It is precisely this sort of rhetoric concerning people from poor and racially diverse backgrounds by McGill that played directly into the hands of America’s adversaries around the globe during the Cold War, argues political scientist, historian, and professor of law Mary L. Dudziak. Dudziak demonstrates how incidents of U.S. violence and injustice against African Americans in society ran counter to the professed Cold War ideals championed by U.S. leaders. The U.S. government in seeking to influence non-aligned countries’ sphere of influence discovered its own human rights record difficult to explain. Press accounts in Fiji, Ceylon and China highlighted the embarrassing inconsistency between America’s stated democratic principles and the reality of discrimination and racism directed towards Blacks in areas of the United States.86 San Diego and UCSD were not immune from the sort of civil rights injustice explored by Dudziak. McGill typified the attitudes of many American university administrators in the 1960s. McGill, confronted with Black radicalism, reacted dismissively and with limited cultural understanding. McGill admits that he was tested twice during his tenure as chancellor of UCSD by the type of Black radicalism present in many other American universities during this era. The

84 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 204. 85 Miller, Perfect Sun, 223. Quoting from McGill, Monkey, 127. 86 Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000), 31.

27 first test came when Regents of the University of California refused to allow course credit for a Social Analysis 139X. Additionally, they imposed severe restrictions on guest lecturers in courses offered for credit.87 The proposition that taxpayer funds should support an ex-Black Panther member proved to be extremely distasteful for many of the Regents whose hands rested on the levers of power. McGill’s second test against the forces of Black radical activism involved Marcuse’s most cherished student, Angela Davis. Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944. She spent her childhood there until she went to New York to attend high school. Her mother was an educator and her father owned an automobile service station. Both parents were considered activists in their own right and active in the Communist Party, U.S.A.88 Davis went to Brandeis University where she met Marcuse and studied in France during her junior year. As a graduate student, she went to Germany to study philosophy. After returning to the United States, Davis followed Marcuse to UCSD and eventually obtained her master’s degree. Davis aligned herself with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and their leaders.89 Eventually she received her doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University in Berlin. As she began working as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and quickly ran into the same difficulties as Marcuse had with the Regents and Gov. Reagan because of her political views and activism.90 Once again McGill confronted Black radicalism when Davis led a group of students in the shaping and naming of UCSD’s Third College. Davis’s group wished to establish the Third College as a school of revolutionary social justice named in honor of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The Third College was to be a school based on Social Science education that UCSD lacked with its heavy emphasis on a curriculum of scientific study. A glimpse of McGill’s racial insensitivity can be

87 McGill, Monkey, 12. 88 Davis, An Autobiography, 77-84. 89 Ibid., 160. 90 Ibid., 216-222.

28 seen when he shares thoughts “of Angela Davis dressed as Joan of Arc surrounded by legions of Black Panthers and Brown Berets.”91 McGill’s fixation on Davis in Year of the Monkey is curious, but fearful dreams of Black legions points to the fact that McGill was rather oblivious to the greater civil rights issues dominating university campuses and American cities in the 1960s.92

THE AMERICAN LEGION “Herbert Marcuse is a remarkable hybrid. a Freudian Marxist. Marx has given him the imperative to destroy society; Freud has shown him the practical method which to do this.”93 If it can be said that the Copley media machine was the captain of Marcuse’s troubles in San Diego, then it would be fair to state that the American Legion outposts of San Diego and their principal spokesman, Harry L. Foster, was their first lieutenant. He was a founding leader of the American Legion in 1919.94 Pumped up with bravado from earlier Red-baiting success with the dismissal of San Diego State College Professor of psychology Harry Steinmetz, Foster believed the Legion would accomplish the similar results with Marcuse. The Legion, led by Foster, went after Steinmetz as early as 1936 for his service with the local Labor Council and his socialist sympathies. Foster approached the Board of Education, asking them to investigate Steinmetz for his “subversive activity.”95 However, the Legion and The Union were not able to make their allegations stick until the Red Scare of the McCarthy era. Eventually under pressure from of The Union and the Legion, Steinmetz was called to testify under subpoena in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1953. While under oath in front of the committee Steinmetz chose to assert his Fifth Amendment

91 Ibid., 146. Also in Miller, Perfect Sun, 223. 92 McGill, Monkey, 9, 34, 114, 235. Examples of McGill’s fixation with Davis’s appearance can be seen on these pages. 93 Fred Schwarz, “A Timely Warning,” Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (Long Beach, California: April 1, 1969), 4. CACC newsletter found in Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communism Collection, 1937-1981, Series 1, Folder 3, Box 2. Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 94 Martineau, Herbert Marcuse's Utopia,18. 95 Miller, Perfect Sun, 223.

29 rights by refusing to answer any questions. President Malcolm Love of SDSC was less than sympathetic to Steinmetz’s predicament.96 The Attorney General of California, Edmund G. Brown defended Steinmetz’s position by affirming that he could not be fired legally for asserting his Fifth Amendment right to not testify against himself. This development inspired two state legislators to join the fight. San Diego Assemblyman Frank Luckel and Riverside’s Senator Nelson S. Dilworth introduced a bill to purge Marxists from California’s education system.97 Under this intense pressure from many sides SDSC eventually fired Steinmetz, making him the first person in the state to be dismissed for insubordination and subversion.98 With the dismissal of Steinmetz, Foster and his fellow American Legion allies felt emboldened by their methods of intimidation in destroying the career of a college professor for their ambiguous political goal of containment of a vague communist threat. In The Year of the Monkey, McGill recounts his private meetings with both the editors of The Union and Foster, at separate times and locations, concerning the Marcuse controversy. It is intriguing to note that McGill never arranged similar meetings with Marcuse or student radicals the way he did with their opponents. Perhaps it is of no real surprise since McGill freely admits he “has become harder and less compassionate” in terms of his idealism and liberal-minded nature as Chancellor.99 But even a conservative like McGill recognized the direct link between Foster’s legion attacks and his partners in the Copley Press facilitating them. Foster’s mistake with McGill was to pressure him with the tactics that had worked over a decade before at SDSC with President Malcolm Love during the Steinmetz affair. But these were different circumstances, at differing schools, and during a different time. According to McGill’s account, he responded, “Frankly, Mr. Foster, I am reasonably confident you are working hand-in-hand with The San Diego Union to drive Professor Marcuse out of the university. It is very destructive. If it continues, our attempt to build a first-rate campus in San Diego will be

96 Ibid., 218. 97 Luckel Act, Statutes of California: 1952 and 1953, ch. 1632, sec. 1-5 (1953). 98 Ibid., 217. And also in McGill, Monkey, 72. 99 McGill, Monkey, 5.

30 doomed.”100 What McGill was trying to get Foster to understand was that the world-class professors, educators and researchers that UCSD administrators were seeking to recruit would never agree to an appointment at UCSD if in doing required approval from the local American Legion. If Foster and The Union did not have direct communication and cooperation regarding the Marcuse scandal, then they certainly collaborated in the letter writing campaigns that inspired community outrage in the Copley Press. Alice Widener was one such member responsible for stirring up controversy—being a contributor of a news wire service that sold conservative stories to newspapers around the United States. Bill (Barsh) Gwartney was also an additional American Legion leader who worked in Southern California, including Los Angeles as well as other posts. Gwartney also subscribed to the JBS newsletter, Schwarz’s CACC materials, and Widener’s U. S. A. magazine. The exchange in these printed materials demonstrates the dissemination of right- leaning propaganda materials among conservative agents focused on swaying public thought against Marcuse. A significant aspect of the Marcuse controversy is the involvement of leaders of the American Legion. Their leaders collected and distributed material in an “underground pipeline” of communication associated with anti-Communism and Christianity. The anachronistic figure of Fred Schwarz, and his Christian Anti-Communist Crusade were central to Marcuse controversy. Schwarz appears to have emerged out of the previous decade’s “red menace” scare of the McCarthy era, published a magazine, he published a magazine also named CACC, in the Orange County suburb of Long Beach.101 Born in Indiana on March 21, 1897, Gwartney served in the Navy in WWI. He was a teacher at age 21 and a lecturer for Ladies Home Journal at age 22. By the age of 24 he became a real estate broker and by 32, a civic leader. He helped to organize the Rose Queen Festival in Portland, Oregon. Later in life he became active in the American Legion in Southern California and was a member of the La Mesa Writer’s Club.

100 Ibid., 72. 101 Fred Schwarz, a surgeon and psychiatrist from Sydney, Australia, gained notoriety during the 1950s-60s for his multi-day schools on anti-communism held throughout Southern California.

Gwartney worked closely with Schwarz’s CACC. Gwartney’s Collected Papers show the cooperation of the leaders of the American Legion and the CACC. Evidence of communication between Gwartney and Schwartz can be seen in a letter dated November 30, 1962. Schwarz begins the letter by saying, “I will never forget your splendid work in support of the Southern California School of Ani-Communism. On that occasion our combined efforts struck a blow for freedom and alarmed the forces of Communism throughout the entire world.”102 The correspondence displays the knowledge both men had concerning the use of various forms of media. Schwarz tells Gwartney that he is planning another event called the “Peace and Freedom Anti-Communism Rally” which was to be held “in the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, at 8:00 P.M.” Schwarz asks Gwartney if he can “give the same energetic effort to promoting this rally as you did for the Southern California School of Anti-Communism?” The CACC plan was to have “Many patriotic film stars…” and he will provide (Gwartney) as many leaflets and tickets need to fill the auditorium since Schwarz expected “at least a portion of the proceedings televised.”103 But Gwartney’s collected papers also expose the connection that the Legion had with the opinion editors of The Union and the preferential treatment the Legion enjoyed in getting correspondence critical of Marcuse published in newspapers. The collected papers contain correspondence addressed to someone named Fosdick. The Fosdick letter from Gwartney is actually two separate drafts which are heavily revised and were in the process of being edited. The letters are typed, but with large sections handwritten in ink by Gwartney himself with considerable cuts, edits, and modifications. Gwartney reveals this little-known secret of collaboration with the Copley Press: “Why did I, with a touch of nostalgia, think of you when I was ordered to write a letter requesting that Dr. Marcuse’s contract not be renewed for 1968- 70?”104 It was clearly inappropriate for The Union to covertly work with Gwartney to place letters in the media aimed at discrediting Marcuse.

102 Fred Schwarz to Mr. Bill Gwartney, 30 November 30, 1962, Gwartney American Legion and Anti- Communism Collection, 1937-1981, folder 3, box 2, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 103 Ibid. 104 Barsh E. Gwartney to unknown (possibly Fosdick), n.d., Gwartney American Legion and Anti-Communism

Gwartney’s difficult-to-decipher letter to Fosdick is somewhat frustrating. This is due to the lack of a first name to accompany it. But Harry Emerson Fosdick was a fundamentalist pastor. Harry also had a brother named Raymond who was interested in Christian religious issues and was in charge of the John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s philanthropic foundations. Additionally, Harry had a daughter Dorothy who worked for Henry Jackson, a United States Senator from Washington. Regardless of which Fosdick the letter was addressed to, it goes on to relate how Gwartney was approached to fill opinion spaces in a local newspaper. He asked Fosdick for help and advice for composing the hit piece against the “New Left” positions on education.105 After relating to Fosdick some of the internal politics of Gwartney’s local American Legion branch, Gwartney reveals. “I paid my dues and sat in the back rows until they found I could read my own writing and I was appointed adjutant. Last week they decided Marcuse should be fired and directed the adjutant to write a (the) letter!”106 In another version, Gwartney exposes the underground pipeline of cooperation with The Union when he writes in the margin on the back of a heavily edited draft, “The editor of the S.D. Union indicates that he may understand the problem. He may be able to help and advise. He read this, “(off the record).”107 The Gwartney draft letters clearly show an attempt to discredit Marcuse in The Union using a covert underground pipeline of cooperation that existed between the American Legion, The Union, religious leaders, and local government officials.108 The Marcuse affair occupied a great deal of space in regional and national newspapers. The evidence indicates that significant actors played a crucial role in fanning the flames of discontent regarding Marcuse’s reappointment following revelations about his views in the media. The Copley Press provided the platform for conservative activists like Alice Widener to

Collection, 1937-1981, folder 7, box 2, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Since the Gwartney to Fosdick draft does not include Fosdick’s first name the link remains uncertain as to whether this pipeline is connected to a political leader or religious leader.

33 operate in the interest of female conservatives for the benefit of right-wing causes and their political and social agendas. The Marcuse case provides ample proof that forces existed in churches, the military, business, education, government and the media that worked in tandem to advance the values of causes important to right-wing interest. American Legionnaires like Gwartney and Foster attempted to ingratiate their organizations to the larger pro-American military community in the region. By inserting them into what really amounts to an educational debate, these men located the Marcuse issue into a larger conversation regarding the Vietnam War, the draft, and youth revolt around the world. In a region where defense contracts mean employment and war equals work, Foster’s and Marcuse’s ideas were bound to collide. Right at the height of the Marcuse reappointment controversy and the trouble over the creation of UCSD’s Third College, another divisive issue on campus grabbed the attention of many San Diegans. An unexpected confrontation occurred on the steps just outside UCSD’s placement office that involved one faculty member, eight other students and Marine Corps Captain David Stout. The confrontation began when a group of students barred the entrance of Capt. Stout to the placement office in solidarity with the people of North Vietnam and to stop the recruitment of students enlisting in the Marines (aided by interviews conducted in the office.)109 George Murphy, Dean of Student Affairs, had been able to photograph eight of the offending students and witnessed one faculty member refuse to move when instructed by Murphy to do so. Once again, the readers of The Union were further driven into a frenzy due to reporting of the Copley Press. This time the underground pipeline of cooperation was discovered by McGill on this issue. It turns out UCSD’s Dr. John Geddes began to write politically incendiary letters to The Union despite George Murphy’s insistence that he stop. Subsequently, McGill learned that Geddes had been working as an education advisor to Assemblyman John Stull.110 Stull appeared on the February 22, 1969 Harold Keen interview against Marcuse. Once this news began to be printed in The Union, it provided the American Legion with more material with which to criticize the administration of UCSD. Meanwhile Nancy Scott Anderson explains that much of

109 McGill, Monkey, 116. 110 Ibid., 257n.

34 the supposed outrage over the Cleaver and Marcuse incidents had significantly more to do with lucrative Defense Department grants and contracts. According to Anderson, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration rules mandated, “that by federal law no NASA money could go to anyone even vaguely identified with ‘civil disorder.’”111 In a remarkable piece of irony, the placement office Capt. Stout sought to enter was once a Marine Corps barracks on Camp Matthews. An Improbable Venture explains well UCSD’s military beginnings and describes how the federal government gifted the one-time rifle training center to the state of California, under Representative Bob Wilson’s legislation H. R. 8476 and H. R. 3099 on January 23, 1961.112 The increased commitment by the government to universities in partnership with the military and industry came as a result of the Soviet Union’s successful 1957 launch of Sputnik. The location of UCSD’s campus was in no way unintentional either. With its aeronautical industrial decline following the end of WWII, UCSD was ideally situated in the city that included General Dynamics and many of its associated military-industrial partners. The university was also near the Jonas Salk Institute in Torrey Pines and “the heavily Navy-funded Scripps Institute of Oceanography.”113 According to Berkeley’s first chancellor, Clark Kerr, “Intellect has…become an instrument of national purpose, a component part of the military-industrial complex.” Government spending increased from $742.1 million in 1945 to $6.9 billion in 1965.114 It is no surprise that Marcuse encountered so much opposition considering his positions concerning the uses of American industrial power and his anti-war activism. Yet, while much media attention was spent covering problems concerning Marcuse and related student unrest at UCSD related to anti-war activism, there was another side to the criticisms leveled. Namely, many students, colleagues, and residents of San Diego supported

111 Anderson, An Improbable Venture, 117. 112 Ibid., 63, 116. 113 Davis, Mayhew, and Miller, Perfect Sun, 68, 72-73. Scripps Institution was involved in Operation Wigwam that tested a thirty kilo-ton atomic bomb underwater off the coast of San Diego. 114 Gitlin, The Sixties, 20-21. Kerr was widely respected during his time at UC Berkeley, however; he was targeted for dismissal by Gov. Reagan for appearing too lenient to “Free Speech” protestors at Berkeley in 1964.

Marcuse. The Union press coverage about Marcuse in the region was deliberately engaged in swaying public perceptions about the scandal. As the next chapter will show, the defenders of Marcuse were willing to support and stand up to the unfair depictions of him so that these depictions could be challenged. Broadcast media proved to be a different angle which to observe the Marcuse controversy in the region. The Boomer Generation grew up with television and became transformed by images of death in Vietnam and civil unrest on American streets. They consumed new forms of media (music, television, movies, and print), designed specifically to target their sense of angst. Media images of the assassinations of leaders such as President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert affected the nation. Coupled with the murders African- American leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Black Panther Fred Hampton left many in the United States questioning America’s professed values. However, television could also be utilized to unify student disaffection and demonstrate community support for Marcuse.

CHAPTER 3

COMRADES

“Anyone who believes in Marxist principles, as Herbert Marcuse does, is trying to bring about a change that will result in more freedom and happiness and less conformity and economic exploitation.”115 It is certainly true that the critics of Marcuse vocalized their dismay concerning his political ideas and teaching, yet it must be understood that supporters of Marcuse had a strong desire to be heard as well. The picture that the mainstream Union seemed to convey was of a city boiling over with contempt for the aging philosophy professor. He was depicted in the Copley newspapers as a man who squandered public funds while espousing Marxists beliefs, displaying support for unpatriotic anti-war protesters, and showing questionable social values by engaging with law-breaking UCSD students wishing to establish the Third College at UCSD along the lines of a revolutionary school of social justice. Not to mention his alleged shocking comments advocating a sexual revolution. However, a deeper examination of Marcuse’s defenders points to a larger community of support. Not only were some citizens of the San Diego area essentially blocked from expressing words of encouragement within The Union, but also, supporters cast a suspicious eye over The Union coverage relating to Marcuse. Sensibilities at the time precluded many from championing Marcuse’s ideas openly in such a public forum as the region’s biggest daily newspaper. Harold Keen’s KFMB interviews with Marcuse and his critics offered an opportunity for Marcuse’s supporters to if not directly defend Marcuse against his attackers, to subtly challenge the claims being made against him.

115 “Let Marcuse Teach, Letter Advises” The San Diego Union, September 19, 1968.

Keen’s KFMB interviews with Marcuse, titled “Who is Herbert Marcuse?”, took place at the KFMB studios prior to the broadcast date on February 25, 1969. The KFMB interview with his critics, Assemblyman John Stull and American Legion representative Harry Foster, aired three days earlier on February 22, 1969. Keen acknowledges that pre-interview questions were submitted to all the participants in advance of the broadcasts. According to a letter from one of the many viewers who wrote to Keen, the Marcuse interview aired at least three times. This was because a power outage occurred in parts of San Diego during the original broadcast.116 In addition, an audio version of the interviews was aired on KSDT radio on February 16, 1969. Later, Chancellor McGill was interviewed by Keen on May 5, 1969 regarding his decision to reappoint Marcuse the following year. The broadcasts of these interviews marked a significant turning point in the Marcuse controversy. Although San Diego newsman Harold Keen was no supporter of Marcuse, his professional integrity as a journalist provided the space Marcuse and his supporters needed to combat the Copley media empire. Perhaps the most important factor regarding the KFMB interview, is the personality of Harold Keen himself and his relationship with the citizens of San Diego. It is difficult overstate the respect afforded to Keen. Keen was born in New York and attended UCLA. He came to San Diego in 1936 and worked as a reporter for The San Diego Sun and The Union newspapers. Later he became a contributing editor for San Diego Magazine as well as the editorial director of KFMB-TV. He received several news awards and has been long considered by many to be the “Dean of San Diego Journalists.”117 An important aspect of the Keen/KFMB interviews was that they provided San Diegans with the clearest most unbiased hearing of the Marcuse controversy up to that point. Viewers of the interviews were freed from the warped lens of the Copley Press while having the opportunity to hear Marcuse respond to the allegations made against him in his own words. Also, both Stull and Foster were able to lay out their grievances against the German professor of philosophy in a medium outside the Copley Press.

116 William Richards to Harold Keen, 2 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 117 “Harold Keen Papers, 1936-1981,” Special Collections & University Archives, accessed January 30, 2016, http://scua2.sdsu.edu/archon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=198.

Keen’s commitment to his profession as a journalist is impressive. He often would correspond with viewers of his programs and commentaries, supplying them with transcripts and additional information if requested. An example of Keen’s commitment is seen in his typed response to viewer Mrs. G. John Carpenter, Jr., on March 4, 1969. After thanking her for her thoughtful comments Keen writes, “Our mail following these interviews was the greatest response to any subject in years. We had anticipated some angry reaction to our providing air time to Dr. Marcuse, but this was infinitesimal. The vast majority approved the opportunity to hear this controversial man’s views at first hand.” Keen goes on to relate that even amongst those “who disagreed strongly” with Marcuse’s views “there was an expression of gratitude for the chance to judge from direct observation, rather than from second or third-hand information.”118 Mrs. Carpenter’s correspondence with Keen showed a desire for the San Diego community to make their own meaning and decisions concerning the consumption and dissemination of news media free from prescriptions offered by the Copley media enterprise. Mrs. Carpenter’s original letter to Keen reveals local sensibilities regarding the Marcuse matter. Mrs. Carpenter relates that she saw none of the political upheaval that was at the Berkeley campus, and she really believed that Marcuse “is not the threat to our society that his enemies claim.” Carpenter additionally hypothesized that “continued persecution of him will result in his becoming a twentieth century Socrates.”119 Mrs. Carpenter’s letter is significant for another reason. The letter shines a light on the gender values of the times in which she lived. The paper the letter was written on is Mrs. Carpenter’s own stationary with her complete address at the heading. However, her name, also contained in the heading, is printed as Mrs. G. John Carpenter Jr.120 This easily overlooked detail exposes the tradition of women during this time still relating to the world outside the domestic sphere by means of their husband’s name and not their own.

118 Harold Keen to Mrs. G. John Carpenter Jr., 4 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 119 Mrs. G. John Carpenter, Jr. to Harold Keen, 21 February 1969,folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 120 Ibid.

However, another female supporter of Marcuse and Keen, Mrs. Helen L. Walters, contradicts any view that suggests women had to be protective of their husband’s public identity. Mrs. Walter’s letter, dated February 26, 1969 on company stationery, with a letterhead of Clyde John Walters Fine Printing, proves that not all women were fearful of expressing controversial opinions while exposing their husbands’ and family businesses to possible public backlash. Walters congratulates Keen on his in-depth interviews with Mr. Stull and the American Legion representative, but felt they “gave no valid reason for advocating the firing of Chancellor McGill and Dr. Herbert S. Marcuse.”121 The sophistication of Mrs. Walters can be witnessed in the thoughtful comments contained in her letter. Walters stressed that Marcuse was quite articulate in his views and that he was advocating changes within the U.S. political system, not pushing for an overthrow of the existing system. Furthermore, Walters refers to the Stull and Foster interview in her letter. She recalls the point when Keen asks Foster, “what makes you believe that Marcuse is intent on destroying our form of society? Do you have any proof of that?”122 Foster’s answer, in the interview, is to assert that Marcuse’s position is that the U.S. cannot survive unless the current system of democracy is destroyed. Foster claimed, “he [Marcuse] fails to take into account that we have a system of democracy in this country that every four years the people who do not like our form of government as it has existed, change it.”123 Walters was perceptive enough to understand Marcuse’s critique that the American voters’ ability to select from among an acceptable group of candidates does not automatically equate to democracy. In contrast to Foster’s comments Walters writes, “the two politicians who stated in effect that we can be heard at the ballot box. Many of us know this does not help as much as believed. We need some changes in our voting system.”124 Interestingly, Walters in the late 1960s clearly was able

121 Mrs. Helen L. Walters to Harold Keen, 26 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 122 KFMB Transcript of interview with John Stull and Harry Foster by Harold Keen, 22 February 1969, p. 4, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 123 Ibid., 4, 5. 124 Walters to Keen, 26 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University.

40 to comprehend something that many Americans were increasingly coming to understand regarding democracy in the United States. Whereas Foster and The Union exemplified the overly simplistic, traditional outlook concerning American democracy and conventional journalism, Walters and Keen epitomize a more nuanced interpretation of American participatory democracy, with its long history of dissent coupled with the media’s very crucial role in keeping citizens informed. Or, as Marcuse explained in his interview with Keen, I never proposed that an intellectual elite govern. If the choice would be between a democracy and an elite, a democracy would be infinitely preferable…The question I raised is whether we indeed have an authentic democracy, whether indeed we are not governed—if you don’t want to call it an elite—by a relatively small stratum. And, if it is between government by an intellectual elite and a government of a nonintellectual elite, I prefer the first.125 Other letter writers, like Carpenter, praised Keen for his treatment of Marcuse. Douglas Hilt wrote to Keen on behalf of both his wife and himself on February 27, 1969. Hilt thanks Keen for allowing Marcuse the opportunity to defend himself, and he says, “Unfortunately, the only newspaper in San Diego has seen fit to mount a concerted, albeit distorted, attack on this great scholar, without even concerning itself with the true facts or even quoting Dr. Marcuse’s words correctly or in context.”126 A further letter from Hubert Hubbard of Chula Vista, dated May 9, 1969, supports Hilt's letter. Hubbard commends Keen, "for the very interesting manner in which he conducts his interviews." He continues by stating that he "particularly enjoyed his interview of McGill on May 8, when he forced that august authority to answer some questions that went against McGill's grain very much."127 The Hubbard letter affirms the notion that The Union was clearly known to be leaning towards the conservative perspective when he concludes

125 KFMB Transcript of interview with Herbert Marcuse by Harold Keen, 25 February 1969, p. 5, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 126 Douglas Hilt to Harold Keen, 27 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 127 Hubert Hubbard to Harold Keen, 9 May 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University.

41 that, "he [Keen] set forth the responsibility of TV stations to report the news without fakery and without fanning up unnecessary controversy."128 Both Hilt and Hubbard were essentially expressing what many San Diegans seemed to have known or at least suspected; namely, that the owners and editorial staff at The Union were engaged in more than just reporting the news. Hilt and Hubbard with their praise for Keen’s objectivity and fairness were in effect pointing a critical finger at the utter absence of such objectivity in The Union’s coverage and commentary. One postcard sent to “CBS Programming and News – KMFB TV” voices the viewer’s interest in maintaining a vibrant and educated citizenry in the United States. The postcard written by J. H. Wingo of Mission Beach stated that his enjoyment of Keen and his interviews by saying he, “greatly appreciated in the interests of a healthy society and keeping a democratic republic well and honestly informed.”129 In fact, Wingo reaffirmed in his short message to Keen that “I’m convinced that a well-informed democracy will be a healthy democracy; and probably non- violent.”130 Other letters to Keen were more opaque. They can, perhaps like Keen himself, both indicate sympathy for Marcuse and hint at support for his critics. It is possible that they reflected the very balance Keen sought to highlight in the interviews. One postcard that was extremely succinct and came from Bob Ross of Chula Vista, and was dated March 2, 1969. In its entirety: “Just watched your Marcuse interviews & wonder, could you find out the names of the secret committee and persuasion, i.e.: ─ Left or Right or whatever?”131 Even the most careful reading of such a brief request provides the reader with no identification of what Ross felt about the Marcuse matter. While it is noted on the Ross letter that Keen responded it on March 4, 1969, the contents of the response for the “persuasion of the secret committee” is not indicated.

128 Ibid. 129 J. H. Wingo to CBS Programming and News – KMFB TV, 26 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 130 Ibid. 131 Bob Ross to Harold Keen, 2 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. The address is difficult to interpret, but C.V. most likely refers to the community of Chula Vista, which is just south of San Diego.

Another letter dated February 27, 1969 by Vernor Vinge from Mission Beach briefly summed up the interviews by claiming that “the fundamental conflict between the two sides is also the only thing they agree on: Evil people should not be allowed on campus. Evil ideas should be suppressed.”132 The Vinge letter is very short but meaningful. By stating “Evil ideas should be suppressed,” Vinge expresses his opinion concerning the Marcuse affair in his correspondence by chastising both detractors and supporters of Marcuse for attacking free speech. The part of the interview referred to by Vinge is the exchange between Keen and Marcuse addressing repression. The KFMB transcript shows Keen asking Marcuse, “Do you consider yourself repressed in our society? Don’t you have a tremendous amount of freedom of critical expression which would be actually denied you in a communist form of government?133 Marcuse responds that he believes himself to by extremely fortunate to enjoy a rather privileged position in the university system. However, when Marcuse turns to the situation as it pertains to his colleagues he replies, “if I, for example, look to my colleagues who do not have tenure, who have a family to feed, I know how much afraid they are that they might lose their job for political activity and may not so easily find a new job.134 What Vinge seems to be alluding to in his comment is the same rather savvy idea expressed by Marcuse himself — Savvy because Marcuse wrote and spoke about this idea also, but came to somewhat different conclusions. Vinge channels Marcuse’s own theories as expressed in his essay, Repressive Tolerance. Regarding the suppression of “evil ideas” expressed in Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse states, The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for the intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes and opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed and suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period—a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and

132 Vernor Vinge to Harold Keen, 27 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 133 KFMB Transcript of interview with Marcuse by Keen, KFMB-TV Channel 8, 25 February 1969, p. 11, folder 37, box 1, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 134 Ibid.

practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.135 Again, what Marcuse is seeking to convey is the idea that “freedom of speech” is a worthy goal, up to and until the given form of speech interferes and restricts the freedom of other individuals or groups.136 Another intrigued viewer, Juel Franzen (Mrs. Roy), of La Mesa wrote to congratulate Keen. The Franzen letter goes on to express, “It was the public service to the community to hear Dr. Marcuse’s point of view. The local community does not have the opportunity for an unbiased view.” Franzen shows her solidarity with Marcuse when she concludes, “Dr. Marcuse is an asset to our community, to our state, & to our country. This was clear on T.V.”137 Not only is Franzen commenting on the lack of objective reporting surrounding the Marcuse affair, but she also proves support for a view that the medium of television may contain an additional dynamic factor lending objectivity, a function missing from print journalism. Marshall McLuhan believes television has the power to involve, “us in moving depth, but it does not excite, agitate or arouse.” As evidence for this assertion McLuhan discusses televised events surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination. One the one hand, Americans were greatly moved watching both the Abraham Zapruder footage of Kennedy’s assassination and the Kennedy funeral on television. But on the other hand, guards who were charged with the protection of Kennedy’s assassin were caught awestruck and paralyzed at the mere sight of television cameras at the exact moment Jack Ruby was assassinating Lee Oswald.138

135 Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: BeaconPress, 1965), 81. 136 Vernor Vinge was a graduate student at UCSD at the time of the Marcuse controversy. After obtaining his Ph.D. from UCSD, Vinge became a professor at SDSC in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department. Vinge also became an award-winning science fiction author and is credited with developing the concept of a “technological singularity.” Vinge’s “singularity” predicts an artificial super-intelligence which will signal the end of the human epoch. 137 Juel Franzen to Harold Keen, 27 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. Underline emphasis under “clear” in the original. 138 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 336-337.

San Diego residents and viewers of the interviews clearly comprehended the power and functions of the media, and television in particular. Charles and Lois Young’s letter of March 4, 1969, remarked “It was especially good to have Dr. Marcuse there to speak for himself.”139 Again, without saying it directly, the Young’s letter is speaking to a strong desire for the people in San Diego at this time to consume news and obtain information that is free from bias and distortions so often seen in the Copley Press. Again, just few years prior to Marcuse’s media controversy with the Copley Press, Marshall McLuhan wrote, Today’s press agent regards the newspaper as a ventriloquist does his dummy. He can make it say what he wants. He looks on it as a painter does his palette and tubes of pigment; from the endless resources of available events, an endless variety of managed mosaic effects can be attained. Any private client can be ensconced in a wide range of different patterns and tones of public affairs or human interest and depth items.140 One viewer was not so convinced of Keen’s objectivity. One concerned viewer and supporter of Marcuse wrote to Keen to air his concern that Marcuse was being unfairly represented in the interview. Richard A. Brosio from the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego took issue with the commonly held belief that Keen was actually a “voice of objectivity.” Brosio claims to have studied the history of industrialized society, Marxism, and the criticism of Marxism at the University of Michigan. Brosio also states that he read One-Dimensional Man in the Spring of 1968. According to Brosio, “Marcuse belongs to the great tradition of intellectual as critic.”141 Brosio’s letter is unique because not only does he call Keen’s objectivity into question, but also the very notion of objectivity itself. Brosio states, “People who understand society and its spokesmen realize that objectivity means ‘a point of view,’ unless one can posit … a universally verifiable outside point of reference. You cannot claim to have a private pipeline to such an outside point of reference!”142 Brosio insinuates that Keen is using “stereotype

139 Charles and Lois Young to Harold Keen, 4 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 140 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 213. 141 Richard A. Brosio to Harold Keen, 28 May 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 142 Ibid.

45 predicates… to define complex subjects.” Moreover, Brosio cautions Keen to inform viewers when he speaks polemically even if he, Keen, has the right to his opinion. Brosio is further troubled that Keen steadily refers to Marcuse as a “controversial Marxist professor” because Brosio feels this tends to distort the viewers’ identification of Marcuse, in that most believed Marxism to be identified with Russian, Stalinist terror.143 Contrary to the thoughts contained in the Brosio letter, La Jolla resident J. Stuart Innerst wrote to “commend you [Keen] and Channel 8 and hope you will continue to deal with controversial issues in this way.”144 Innerst continues, “Your questions addressed to Dr. Marcuse were well chosen and, it seems to me, should have satisfied his critics.”145 If Brosio and Innerst represent opposite poles of opinion about Keen’s reporting, then viewers like Mrs. George Szanto appear to represent viewers who responded to Keen without strong sentiments either way. Mrs. Szanto’s letter shows the characteristic high praise for the manner in which the interviews were conducted. Apparently, Mrs. Szanto viewed a rebroadcast of the interview since as she writes, “there had been a power failure in Del Mar at the time of the original broadcast.”146 On the first page of her letter, Szanto requests that she “would like to have two (or if possible, three) transcripts of the program you did with Dr. Herbert Marcuse.”147 Szanto was by no means alone in requesting transcripts of the interview. Many letters asked Keen for one and often times several copies of the transcription of the program, even after the rebroadcast. This suggests that there was a serious appetite for this news event. Perhaps the interviews in some ways eclipsed The Union coverage of the story. In an article from The Union on January 23, 1968 that describes a story of the UCSD students and faculty involved in drafting a telegram “congratulating Japanese students

143 Ibid. 144 J. Stuart Innerst to Harold Keen, 5 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 145 Ibid. 146 Mrs. George Szanto to Harold Keen, 4 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. Szanto’s first name is not legible, but she places Mrs. George Szanto below her signature in parenthesis. 147 Ibid.

46 demonstrating against the arrival there of the U. S. nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise.” The telegram was addressed to a student group in Japan named Zengakuren, and went on to state, “We, the undersigned students and faculty members at the University of California, San Diego, congratulate you and your courageous and persistent anti-imperialist action in Sasebo and Tokyo. You encourage our continuing opposition to America’s war against humanity.”148 A closer examination of the article shows that one of the professors quoted in the article was none other Dr. George Szanto, professor of literature at UCSD who told The Union, “the wording was composed of faculty and students.”149 If Mrs. George Szanto was the wife of UCSD professor George Szanto then it might help to explain the level of repression individuals experience in industrial societies and what Marcuse sought to explain in his work. Marcuse felt that advanced industrial society had efficiently and effectively developed structures within itself that shaped and molded the behavior of individuals. Marcuse references, “the superego. It originates from the long dependency of the infant on his parents; the parental influence remains the core of the superego.”150 The structure of parental upbringing may have been a factor censoring open public support for Marcuse during his controversy. Addition structures, many of which may have been below the level of recognition in the minds of his supporters, played a role in the restrained amount of support offered to Marcuse publicly. According to Marcuse, other societal structures influencing the superego include: religious beliefs and practices, cultural, mores, taboos, education, and various media images. Therefore, no single entity need threaten an individual to abide by social norms. Instead, each person becomes their own “warden” unconsciously in their minds. According to Marcuse (borrowing from Freud), A number of societal and cultural influences are taken in by the superego until it coagulates into the powerful representative of established morality and ‘“what people

148 “UCSD Group Hails Japanese War Protest,” The San Diego Union, January 23, 1968. See also, McGill, Monkey, 246n, for more on McGill’s reaction to the UCSD faculty’s letter to Zengakuren in Japan and attacks against U.S. Navy servicemen. 149 Ibid. 150 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 31-32.

call the ‘higher’ things in human life. Now the ‘external restrictions’ which first the parents and then the other societal agencies have imposed upon the individual are ‘introjected’ into the ego and become its ‘conscience’: henceforth, the sense of guilt — the need for punishment generated by the transfigurations or by the wish to transgress these restrictions.151 Despite these repressive restrictions, students in the 1960s at UCSD and in Japan rejected pressure to conform. The telegram illustrates how UCSD students and faculty were seeking to connect with like-minded students and faculty internationally to protest America’s Cold War footing. The UCSD Chancellor at the time, John S. Galbraith, admitted that he had not read the telegram, but cautioned that “They spoke as individuals, and their views must be judged as individual opinions. As an individual American, I can state that I disagree most emphatically.” Galbraith goes on to say, “As Chancellor of the UCSD campus, I can only affirm that the university does not endorse nor repudiate political viewpoints.”152 The Union reports that the telegram was placed out in the “free speech area” of Revelle Plaza on Sunday for students to sign. Besides Dr. Szanto the article lists (or seeks to expose) many other professors who signed the telegram: Dr. Richard H. Poplin, Dr. Herbert Marcuse, Dr. Stanley Malinovich, T. A. McCarthy, and Ronald Kirby from the Philosophy Department; and Dr. Fredric Jameson, Dr. Andrew Wright, Dr. James Monroe, Dr. Peter C. Marlay, Dr. Reinhard Lettau, Dr. Abraham Dijkstra, Dr. Thomas Dunseath, Dr. Alain Cohen, Dr. Claudio Guillen, Dr. Kenneth Lavender, and Dr. Low from the Literature Department. Readers can only wonder as to the motivations of The Union to include such a lengthy list of names in their reporting of this rather minor story.153 The Harold Keen interviews undoubtedly generated interest and acclaim for Keen’s journalistic professionalism as well as support for Marcuse from the community. Evidence can be seen from the volume of letters sent to Keen from the general public. To obtain a more

151 Ibid., 32. 152 “UCSD Group Hails Japanese War Protest,” The San Diego Union, January 23, 1968. 153 The Union misspelled Dr. Popkin’s name as Poplin. It is crucial to recognize the level of repression and evidence of “repressive tolerance” Marcuse frequently discussed. Considering only a few years following the Free Speech conflicts at UC Berkeley, UCSD and other universities then relegated “free speech” to an area of campus rather than it following an individual. As if confining speech to specific zones somehow addressed the 1964-65 protests. Also Dr. Reinhard Lettau would later experience trouble with Chancellor McGill due to his political activism.

48 balanced picture of Marcuse’s supporters it is helpful to examine the comments of students and colleagues of Marcuse at UCSD and other colleges in the region. Several letter writers to Keen freely shared their support for Marcuse while also exposing themselves to public scrutiny by revealing their positions as local students or educators. Prior to the Keen interviews, as the American Legion was continuing their assault on Marcuse, the faculty of UCSD exhibited an impressive level of defense regarding Marcuse’s right to academic freedom. In fact, according to UCSD chancellor McGill, UCSD physicist Walter Kohn, who was chairman of the senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom and considered “one of the pillars of the campus,” openly supported Marcuse during the scandal. Kohn indicated, “He was perfectly willing to draft a statement supporting Marcuse …” and lead the effort to rally the faculty’s support concerning Marcuse.154 Eventually Kohn presented his widely-endorsed statement of the faculty in support for Marcuse by the Committee on Academic Freedom. It read, We wish to assure [Professor Marcuse] and our chancellor of our complete support against the current attempts to silence him, whether they be by well-intentioned citizens, by persons capitalizing on false rumors to agitate public sentiment, or by individuals making threats against his person….We are confident the great majority of the public supports us in our determination to develop here in San Diego an outstanding university free of violence or threats of violence, and dedicated to the principles of freedom of expression and scholarship without which a democratic society cannot long survive.155 This milder version of the draft passed the senate by a vote of 109 to 3, despite the Philosophy Department’s objection that the statement did not contain a rebuke of the American Legion’s interference into their domain. Nor did it mention Marcuse’s reappointment. And the final criticism being the reference to Marcuse’s critics as being “well-intentioned” did not sit well with the faculty of the Philosophy Department.156

154 McGill, Monkey, 67. 155 Ibid., 68. 156 Ibid.

Provost of UCSD and biologist Paul Saltman’s letter to Keen provides further example of the coalition of Marcuse supporters. Saltman provides the obligatory congratulations and thanks to Keen, but then states, “It is most imperative that Herbert is seen through the relatively undistorted eye of the television camera by the people of San Diego rather than through the somewhat myopic and distorted view that is available to the citizens.”157 Again, the letter indicates an acknowledgment by San Diegans that The Union newspaper was not serving the community with its coverage on Marcuse. It should not be a surprise that UCSD’s Provost spoke out in such a public manner in defense of Marcuse since he was directly involved with the individuals related to the controversy. Yet it is honestly unexpected that other educators would lend words of encouragement to Marcuse during a period of such turmoil. An employee at UCSD from the Literature Department made the difficult choice to write to Keen regarding the Marcuse interview. Mrs. Robert R. Hively of La Jolla shared her appreciation on Keen’s “probing interview."158 Mrs. Hively does not appear to be a professor or lecturer since the letter does not mention it or any other credentials Hively might have held. Hively was “especially interested of your [Keen] bringing into focus all of the issues and problems besetting that campus. May I compliment you on a job performed with the utmost skill and tact as well as genuine impartiality.”159 Perhaps the reason Hively felt so comfortable with her somewhat public support of Marcuse was that many of the faculty and staff at UCSD also held Marcuse’s right to hold unpopular views without fear from punishment. The prominence of UCSD and its faculty made it difficult to discipline any one person when so many held similar views. San Diego Mesa College student Christine H. Dougherty wrote to Keen after hearing the interview “Who is Herbert Marcuse?” on February 26, 1969 over KFMB radio. The significance of this letter is that Dougherty was not affected in any way by the visual nature the medium of

157 Paul Saltman to Harold Keen, 1 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 158 Mrs. Robert R. Hively to Harold Keen, 25 March 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 159 Ibid.

50 television, but still appreciated how Keen “conducted the program.”160 Although Dougherty did not attend UCSD, she “was particularly interested in Mr. Marcuse’s statements.”161 An increasing number of college-age women had been actively participating in civil unrest throughout the U.S, as in the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, which was mainly led by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).162 Of course Dougherty was not engaged in anything as radical as the events the previous year in Chicago, yet college-aged youth around the nation were influenced by images of dissent on televised media on a nightly basis. San Diego State College (SDSC) faculty likewise lent words of encouragement to Marcuse. Melvin L. Murphy’s letter to Keen was extremely brief. Written on letterhead from the SDSC School of Social Work, Murphy simply states, “The Marcuse interview was great!”163 And Murphy was not the only faculty member at SDSC to write a letter backing Marcuse. Occasionally The Union chose to print letters supportive of Marcuse. An example of a supportive letter from Karl Keller of SDSC’s Department of English begs the question as to why The Union who clearly held a bias toward Marcuse would allow such a letter. In a unique response to The Union, Keller claims that “In the campaign against UCSD Professor Herbert Marcuse, you have published many interesting (though mostly irrelevant and inaccurate) arguments.”164 Keller goes on to explain that perhaps it would be better if Marcuse left on his own from UCSD because “San Diego does not deserve his humanness. It does not deserve his originality. It does not deserve his inspiration.”165 Another California education employee, Jim Shaff, opted to stand by Marcuse and face possible retribution on the job. Shaff was a librarian for the Grossmont Union High School

160 Christine H. Dougherty to Harold Keen, 27 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 161 Ibid. 162 Gitlin, The Sixties, 362-376. 163 Melvin L. Murphy to Harold Keen, 27 February 1969, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 164 “English Professor Voices Opinion,” The San Diego Union, August 3, 1968. 165 Ibid.

District. Shaff shows a touch of empathy with Marcuse when he states, “Prof. Marcuse was refreshing to me and I’m sure rewarding to him for the opportunity to get his views before the interested public.”166 Shaff was not merely exaggerating when he mentions the public interest about the trouble involving Marcuse. His letter discusses that Shaff had talked to many people regarding the broadcast and expresses to Keen that several had thought the interview with Marcuse would be aired on February 26th rather than on February 25th. Shaff relates, “Through this misunderstanding, many persons who really need to hear more than one side of this conflict missed the opportunity.”167 And once again this demonstrates another admission, by a high school librarian, that citizens of San Diego were only receiving a one-sided version of the story from the largest printed daily newspaper of the region. The fact that academia decided to champion Marcuse should come as no surprise to those who grasp the intellectual gravity of Marcuse’s accomplishments. And while it was evident that members of the Frankfurt School could provide necessary and at times harsh criticisms, they could offer a large degree of support as well. Examples of the degree of support offered to Marcuse can be seen well prior to the controversy at UCSD with the March 31, 1964 letter of reference from colleague and fellow Frankfurt School member, Leo Löwenthal. The Löwenthal letter is a response to the request from Professor Richard H. Popkin of UCSD’s Department of Philosophy for a letter of recommendation to secure Marcuse an academic position at UCSD.168 It would be difficult to find a more positive recommendation written for a teaching position than the Löwenthal letter. Löwenthal describes his relationship with Marcuse at Brandeis University and their mutual membership in the Institute of Social Research, beginning in Frankfurt and continuing in Geneva after the rise of Hitler, and then at Columbia after WWII. In mentioning Marcuse’s professional work Löwenthal states, “I consider Mr. Marcuse one of the outstanding scholars and intellectuals of our time and definitely one of the leading figures among his

166 Jim Shaff to Harold Keen, 26 February 26 1969, Harold Keen Papers, Folder 11, Box 4, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 167 Ibid. 168 Leo Löwenthal to Richard Popkin, 31 March 31 1964, Herbert Marcuse, Towards A Critical Theory of Society, vol. 2 of CollectedPapers of Marcuse, ed. Douglas Kellner (London: Routledge, 2001), 210-211.

52 generation.”169 Löwenthal adds that Marcuse’s areas of scholarly background include “a superior knowledge of history and the problems of philosophy,” and he additionally maintains, “unusual familiarity with the fields of political science, cultural history, sociology, and depth psychology.”170 The letter provides an example of Marcuse’s ability to acquire new information as well. Löwenthal acknowledges that Marcuse is “completely tri-lingual in English, French, and German.” Furthermore, the letter reveals that Marcuse’s interest in Soviet Marxism led to his learning Russian to better read original texts when he was already over fifty years old.171 The Löwenthal recommendation became necessary because of an incident at Brandeis in 1965 with the president of the university, Abram L. Sachar, who had helped to found the university. Apparently, university anthropologist Kathleen Aberle stated to students, “Viva Fidel! Kennedy to hell!”172 And when Sachar voiced his disapproval, fearing that the campus might be labeled Marxist, Marcuse took a public position against Sachar. Marcuse stated openly, “When I came to this country in the Thirties, there was a spirit of hope in the air. Now I detect a militarism and a repression that calls to mind the terror of Nazi Germany.”173 After showing such a bold display of support for a fellow colleague, the following May Marcuse accepted an offer from UCSD, where this pattern of scrutiny from university leadership would repeat itself again and end his teaching career. Colleagues were not the only overtly supportive figures who rallied around Marcuse. Marcuse did not leave Brandies alone. It speaks to the popularity and academic standing of Marcuse that graduate students Angela Davis, Erica (Ricky) Sherover, and William Leiss followed him to UCSD.174 These students and others proved to be important for Marcuse’s protection following the death threat from the Ku Klux Klan. Marcuse’s students kept watch

169 Ibid. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 Martineau, Marcuse's Utopia, 16. 173 Ibid., 17 174 Davis, An Autobiography, 151.

53 over his La Jolla home and guarded his lectures at UCSD. Marcuse was quoted as saying, “Quite a few students came to this place because of me, and as far as I can I will not let them down.”175 On May 21, 1969, many students and faculty at UCSD engaged in a “convocation” in solidarity with students at the University of California at Berkeley over the situation concerning the People’s Park. The dispute began earlier that month on May 15th at the University of California Berkeley campus when workers began erecting a chain link fence, in the early morning hours, around a long-neglected three-acre plot of land adjacent to the campus. Berkeley students were upset over the university’s decision to retake control over a piece of property the university originally purchased in 1967 to be a site of married graduate student housing.176 The plans for the vacant lot languished due to funding problems, so over time the lot became a nexus of the San Francisco counter-culture movement and a location for free parking. Eventually the community made significant improvements to the property. Grass, flowers and donated playground equipment were added to the land without permission from the owners. Therefore, the university leaders felt the best way to reclaim their property was to construct a large chain- link fence before dawn with a sizable contingent of about 150 law enforcement officials.177 Shortly thereafter students and other community members started an illegal occupation of the lot that became known as People’s Park. When bystander James Rector, 25 years old, was shot by police while attempting to flee rioting connected with People’s Park in Berkeley, Governor Reagan called out the National Guard and both the Berkeley and UCSD campuses erupted with anger. After a police officer was stabbed by a rioter at the Berkeley campus, the police were issued birdshot for their shotguns to help manage and disperse the crowds. One rioter was blinded by the birdshot while as many as fifty others were hit and at least a dozen were seriously injured after the authorities ran out of

175 McGill, Monkey, 60. 176 Ibid., 154-157. 177 Ibid., 154-156.

54 ammunition and switched to the more lethal buckshot. It is within this context that convocation at UCSD began in unity with the demonstrators of People’s Park. 178 Marcuse, true to his critical nature, found himself at the center of the convocation and subsequent student strike on the La Jolla campus. This bold campus-wide demonstration of activism from the students and staff at UCSD shows the remarkable level of encouragement Marcuse enjoyed from his charges and colleagues when he chose to point his critical finger at contemporary American society. The famous UCSD professor of biochemistry, two-time Nobel Prize winner and peace activist Linus Pauling joined with Marcuse to address the crowd of students and community members in attendance shortly after one o’clock on the day of the convocation. According to McGill, “Linus Pauling and Herbert Marcuse joined each other on the platform in the din of a standing ovation from the crowd.”179The description offered by McGill proves that many of the striking students associated themselves with Marcuse’s ideas, if not the man himself. Further evidence of this assertion is seen when McGill writes, “The students leaped to their feet as one person and cheered and cheered their approval. Pauling and Marcuse embraced each other at the platform and the convocation ended.”180 What makes McGill’s account of the convocation and student strike at UCSD so compelling is not only that a world-famous scientist and peace activist joined forces with Marcuse. Arguably the most compelling event that day was the presence of the majority of UCSD’s student body, including the newly elected student body president, Tom Shepard and another student when McGill describes as a “splendid orator” and philosophy graduate student, Lowell Bergman.181

178 Ibid., 163-165. For more background regarding UCSD’s connection with the events at People’s Park see McGill, Monkey, Chapter 7 “People’s Park”. Also, see Gitlin, The Sixties, 353-361. Gitlin maintains that People’s Park tapped into a crucial need for communal living and cooperation in the area which can be seen in the construction, maintenance, and sharing economy experienced at the Park. Furthermore, Gitlin suggests Gov. Reagan’s used of the National Guard, chemical weapons (MACE), and armed Guardsmen in helicopters was analogous to the tactics used in the war in Vietnam. 179 Ibid., 175. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., 174, 175.

The importance of Bergman and his speech to the students that day may in fact speak to the legacy of Marcuse himself. Perhaps due to these events and the treatment of Marcuse, Bergman, according to McGill, left the university soon after McGill himself. Bergman became a free-lance reporter in the San Diego region. He went on to work as a producer for major television networks, both ABC and CBS news, and to cofound a public-interest research group, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).182 Bergman currently is the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair of Investigative Journalism at UC Berkeley and a correspondent and producer of PBS’s Frontline investigative news program. He is a graduate fellow at UCSD and has received several journalism awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2004. Immediately after leaving UCSD Bergman, with other UCSD students, cofounded San Diego Free Press, an alternative biweekly newspaper.183 Using his critical theory training under Marcuse, Bergman and student Richard “Black Dick” Blackburn launched an investigation which eventually led to the collapse of former Union editor C. Arnholt Smith’s business interests. The irony here was that the start of Marcuse’s troubles in San Diego that began with the syndicated reporting of Alice Widener, carried by The Union, was later to be rectified by Marcuse’s own student who in all likelihood was drawn into journalism out of the turmoil heightened by the Copley Press’s own near-sighted bias against his professor at UCSD. Lowell Bergman was by no means the only well-known student of Marcuse. Alain Martineau cites that among Marcuse’s most famous students were Angela Davis, Paul Piccone, Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trent Sherover, Shierry Weber, William Leiss, Erica Sherover, and John David Ober.184 It seems that Marcuse’s popularity with his students was well known at UCSD,

182 Ibid., See 19n. See page 265 for more on Bergman. 183 UC Berkeley “Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism,” Berkley Journalism, last acessed March 18, 2016, http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/bergman/. And in Miller, Perfect Sun, 434n384. Bergman is also known for his production of the famous CBS “60 Minutes” story exposing tabacco Company executives lying to the United States Congress regarding knowledge about the addictive nature of nicotine. 184 Martineau, Herbert Marcuse's Utopia, 21. Another important student of Marcuse not mentioned by Martineau is Andrew Feenberg who taught at SDSU’s Philosophy Department. Also Erica (Ricky) Sherover later became Marcuse’s third wife. “Sherover-Marcuse, 49; Ran Group Encounters” Obituary of Erica Sherover, The New York Times, December 22, 1988.

56 however; Marcuse also took his teaching duties very seriously. Micheal Horowitz, who was enrolled in a course taught by Marcuse in modern political theory at Brandeis during his final year maintains, “that while Marcuse supported and encouraged student protests, he refused to allow protest in his classes.”185 The camaraderie experienced between Marcuse and his students was not a one-way relationship. Instances abound that back up this assertion. One example is witnessed during the protests at UCSD regarding the proposed Third (Lumumba-Zapata) College and the seizure of the Registrar’s office by Angela Davis. In describing the conversation leading up to the occupation by UCSD students of the Registrar’s office and the request that Marcuse join the protest, Davis maintains, “I asked whether he would come with us. There was no question about it—of course! The fact was, according to Angela Davis, “The first person to occupy the building was Herbert Marcuse.” 186However, during the occupation break-in the door to the building was damaged and McGill demanded that the responsible parties pay for the repairs. Since Marcuse took part in the sit-in, which he claimed included readings from Plato and Third World writers, Marcuse later anonymously paid for the repairs, totaling $77.50.187 In another instance of camaraderie with students, Marcuse and his second wife Inge helped Angela’s sister Fania (also a student of Marcuse’s) financially when she was arrested for attempted murder on a police officer. Inge and Herbert Marcuse contributed bail money when two San Diego sheriff’s deputies broke into Fania’s Cardiff apartment and shot her husband Sam while the couple were lying in bed. Sam was shot in the shoulder because he reached for a shotgun when startled by the intrusion and fired at police, forcing them to retreat.188 Marcuse’s monetary support in both cases involving the Davis sisters underscores the solidarity and praxis of combining critical theory and critical practice that Marcuse strove to live by.

185 Ibid., 20. 186 Miller, Perfect Sun, 225. 187 Ibid., McGill, Monkey, 149. Also, compare Angela Davis’s version of events in Davis, An Autobiography, 195-198 with McGill, Monkey, 147-150. 188 Davis, An Autobiography, 224, 225.

Carlos Blanco and his wife Iris Blanco were also backers of Marcuse during his time at UCSD. Carlos was a professor of literature who came to UCSD in 1964 to help found the university. He relates when the first students arrived in 1965, there was “not a single black or Mexican” out of about 500 students admitted. “By the way, there was not a single Chicano professor, nor a single black professor at the time, either” Blanco claims that by 1968 there were about forty Chicano and forty black students. The humanities courses offered at that time consisted of “The Bible, Plato, the Greeks, the Romans, the English middle ages, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the great French and Russian novelists.” However, after the 1968 death of Martin Luther King Jr., the African-American students started to demand a more authentic humanities curriculum that offered more relevance.189 Blanco shares how he worked with student organizations at UCSD such as the Black Student Council (BSC), Mexican American Youth Association (MAYA), and Movimento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), to incorporate Urban and Rural Studies within the Third College. Blanco engaged in demonstrations, sit-ins and occupations alongside Davis, Marcuse and SDS. Blanco includes a letter from chancellor McGill which starts, “Dear Professor Blanco, I understand from a good source that you are one of the people occupying 3-F…. I know that on your honor you will tell me if you were.”190 Blanco replied to McGill, “Dear Chancellor McGill, I don’t know 2-F or 3-H. [Because the buildings in Muir didn’t have names yet, they had only numbers.] How could I know if I was occupying it?” Blanco concludes this account by saying plainly that he read only a few pages of McGill’s book on his time at UCSD and sums up that “Not only is he a racist, he lies.”191 Some of the community support for Marcuse, at UCSD, it did appear on occasion in The Union. James J. Kavanaugh of 6212 Bayside Walk affords at least the attempt by The Union to try to appear neutral in their reporting. Kavanaugh opens his letter by likening the local

189 Kelly Mayhew, “Life in Vacationland,” in Perfect Sun, 286, 287. 190 Ibid., 288, 289. 191 Ibid. Blanco was part of the budget committee when Marcuse’s promotion came up he was asked, to solicit assessments from all over the world, beyond the more than qualified recommendation his committee had already approved. Jean-Paul Sartre replied, “Why are you asking me about Herbert Marcuse? Don’t you know who he is?” 412n, 383.

American Legion’s “parley” with UCSD over Marcuse’s teachings to a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan.192 Remarkably, Kavanaugh questioned whether the Legion can even intellectually comprehend what Marcuse is trying to say. He even calls for the abolition the Legion whose “blind nationalism and ignorant patriotism leads to Dachau.”193 The letter also places blame for the continued fighting in Vietnam squarely with the Legion. In closing Kavanaugh implores the Legion to “do itself and the American citizenry an honor if it would restrict its activities to poker parties and family picnics rather than attempting to determine the qualifications to a teaching candidate at an outstanding university.”194 A letter to the editor on July 25, 1968 from Beatrice Ruffin of La Jolla also defends Marcuse. Ruffin maintains, “Herbert Marcuse is not only supported by his students, by the UCSD faculty and hopefully by the UCSD administration, but by many of the towns-people.” This is a rare acknowledgement in The Union of camaraderie with Marcuse. Ruffin’s frustration with the Copley Press is similar to many of the letter writers who wrote to Keen: “It is a sorry fact that the people who hate him are the ones that write to the paper and the ones that your paper are sure to publish.” Ruffin includes that she is not an employee of UCSD, but merely a taxpayer and she wishes that Marcuse will be with the university for years to come.195 While Mrs. Ruffin’s words of encouragement towards Marcuse do indeed suggest a marginal attempt at journalistic balance by The Union, the editors were not about to allow Ruffin’s view to go unchallenged. When it comes to the space allotted in the “Letters to the Editor” section of The Union, size does matter. Foster was given roughly three times as much space to respond to Ruffin.196

192 James J. Kavanaugh, letter to the editor, “American Legion Called Archaic,” The San Diego Union, August 9, 1968. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid. 195 Beatrice Ruffin, letter to the editor, “Letter Voices Hope Marcuse Will Stay,” The San Diego Union, July 25, 1968. 196 “Marcuse Defense Brings Challenge,” The San Diego Union, July 27, 1968.

Furthermore, while Ruffin was required to have her address printed publicly, Foster only had is local Legion outpost printed. Considering the events surrounding Marcuse’s death threat by the K. K. K., it appears The Union was adding another layer of repression aimed at anyone who dared to defend Marcuse. Taking into account the previously disclosed collusion between The Union the American Legionnaire Barsh E. Gwartney mentioned previously, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Foster may have been solicited to craft this rebuttal to Ruffin. It is more than probable that The Union included letters like Ruffin’s only to elicit other writers to engage and respond to contrarian voices that sought to disturb the existing state of affairs in the San Diego region. While there existed a highly motivated conservative “underground pipeline” of sharing and disseminating of source material aimed at discrediting Marcuse and enflaming public outrage through the media, there also was a parallel group of supporters and defenders which strove to buoy Marcuse and directly challenge the narrative set forth by media sources like The Union and the CCAC. Men like Harold Keen provided a forum where Marcuse’s could be heard without the biased filter offered by the Copley Press. Letter writers from throughout the community participated in the defense of Marcuse by speaking out to a trusted newsman. Surely the supporters of Marcuse were a minority of the greater San Diego region, but possibly not as small as the American Legion, Copley Press, and religious leaders might insinuate or wished to acknowledge.

CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSION

I neither advocate nor give up. The only question is whether the working class, historically in the given situation, is still the same as it was when Marx wrote, and my opinion was that in this country at least, the working class, for very understandable and justifiable reasons, is not a revolutionary force.197 Three days before the first broadcast interview of Marcuse’s critics on KFMB, on the evening of Wednesday, February 19, 1969, Chancellor McGill met in San Francisco with the Committee on Educational Policy. The meeting at Berkeley was to review the decision by McGill on whether Marcuse should be reappointed for the following academic year.198 On November 22, 1968 at the University of California Regents meeting at UCSD, McGill had assured the group that, as Chancellor of UCSD, he possessed the authority to determine Marcuse’s reappointment. Governor Reagan was in attendance at this meeting and was subject to a sizable protest because this meeting finalized the decision that any students enrolled in Cleaver’s Social Analysis 139X course would not receive academic credits. Thus began a pattern of passive aggressive decision making among the Regents regarding anything that smacked of campus revolt. On the one hand, the Regents avoided a repeat of the Free Speech fights that occurred in Berkeley by allowing Cleaver to speak just once. But at the same time, the Regents

197 KFMB Transcript of interview with Marcuse by Keen, 25 February, p. 8, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 198 McGill, Monkey, 100.

61 denied him an audience by restricting him as a guest lecturer (due to his felony conviction) and taking away his students by removing course credit.199 As the author of the critically acclaimed book Soul on Ice, Cleaver became a student of the militant African American leader Malcom X in jail and prison stays during the 1950s. Meanwhile the head of the University of California Regents, Governor Ronald Reagan, who was always the Cold Warrior on the lookout for radical leftist infiltration, “threatened his colleagues with dire consequences…” if Cleaver were allowed to set foot on University of California campuses.200 Reagan rose to his governorship in California with tough talking rhetoric aimed at his like-minded supporters. In a 1966 speech addressing the Free Speech demonstrations at Berkeley, he placed both faculty and administrators on notice when he said, “It could be demanded that administrators be told that it is their job to administer the University properly and if they don’t we will find someone who will. The faculty could also be given a code of conduct that would force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency for the young people in their charge.”201 Eventually the Regents would draft a resolution based on a little-known regulation called the “Harvard Rule.” The Harvard Rule mandated that “any lecturer who appears more than twice in the same course, must hold a regular faculty appointment.” Using the Harvard Rule as a type of parliamentary maneuver, the Regents allowed Cleaver to teach the course while denying course credit for students of Social Analysis 139X if Cleaver were to remain as the instructor.202 The main justifications for the opposition of the Regents was that Social Analysis 139X was to be taught by ex-Information Minister to the Black Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver had several felony criminal charges, including assault with intent to commit murder. Social Analysis 139X was created following the 1964-65 Free Speech

199 Ibid., 85-86. 200 Ibid., 13. 201 Ronald Reagan, The Creative Society (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1968), 127. From a speech “The Morality Gap at Berkeley” given by Ronald Reagan at the Cow Palace, May 12, 1966. 202 McGill, Monkey, 228, 229nn #4, Cleaver also became the Peace and Freedom’s presidential candidate in 1968. He later fled to Cuba due to legal trouble that may have violated his parole. He then reemerged in 1980 as an evangelical Christian and supporter of Reagan for president of the U. S. Also, see Gitlin, The Sixties, 350n.

Movement at Berkeley to satisfy demands from students that the University of California curriculum should more authentically represent the current social conditions facing students and the nation.203 At the same February 19, 1969 committee meeting McGill placed the Regents in a tenuous position, having assured them earlier that he had the Marcuse decision under control. McGill, had come under increasing pressure in San Diego from the American Legion and Copley Press to come to a decision regarding Marcuse. He, chose a select committee to examine reappointing Marcuse. The committee determined that based on Marcuse’s academic standing, not only should Marcuse be reappointed, but he should also be promoted to full professor.204 A nervous McGill, caught in a trap of his own design, was now forced to renew Marcuse’s contract. It seems McGill had expected the committee to recommend the termination of Marcuse. Perhaps remembering the Cleaver decision, McGill chose a third path using a now familiar brand of sophistry. On February 14, McGill drafted a document that on the one hand secured Marcuse’s reappointment, but on the other hand denied him a contract going forward. Using Marcuse’s age as an excuse to deny Marcuse future employment, McGill was accepting the reappointment for 1969-70, while also demanding the termination of, “all existing commitments to over-age professors as of June, 1970.”205 McGill ran into further trouble two days later while announcing his decision at a press conference on Sunday February 16. One reporter asked whether McGill had signed the document. McGill responded, “as a courtesy to the Regents I had not signed the papers and would not do so until there was an opportunity to discuss the decision with them on Thursday or Friday.”206 When this information broke in the media the Regents, and Gov. Reagan in particular, felt betrayed by McGill who had told them he was going to determine the Marcuse decision as Chancellor by himself. McGill was giving the press the impression that the decision about Marcuse’s reappointment was that of the Regents and not the Chancellor.

203 Ibid. 204 Ibid., 91. 205 Anderson, Improbable Venture, 119. 206 McGill, Monkey, 94.

Thus, McGill provided himself with cover for the unpopular decision with the press, the community, and UCSD faculty and students. Seeking reelection and looking toward higher office, Reagan reluctantly agreed to McGill’s decision though he claimed new charges had been leveled at Marcuse that might block his reappointment.207 Given the timing of various student demonstration and radical action surrounding the reappointment, it appears in hindsight that Reagan needed these issues and controversies to seal his reelection campaign. Always the showman, Reagan relished the opportunities to play the victim to his supporters. His law-and-order, Cold War values often allowed him to play the hero role he adored so much in his Hollywood acting days. By standing up to radical student activism and lamenting the subversive threat to traditional American life, Reagan was successful in using media to connect and mold public sentiment the way Edward Bernays describes in Propaganda.208 Rather than all this being a resolution to the conflict, according to UCSD Philosophy Department Chairman Dr. Avrum Stroll, Marcuse would still “be permitted to teach classes as a guest lecturer, receive fees and hold his seat on the Faculty Senate.”209 McGill was forced to clarify the precise status of Marcuse with UCSD in The Union. In the article McGill relates how all retired professors are given office space and granted use of all facilities for research purposes. Moreover, Marcuse still held his post on the examination committee because he still maintained eight graduate students at the university.210 In fact, Marcuse was also permitted to teach course work through the University’s Extension Division. The behavior of the Copley Press is not without precedent in modern media. The historian Judith R. Walkowitz has documented well how newspapers have historically had financial incentive to generate controversy in the reporting of news stories in order to sell more copies. And more copies meant more advertising dollars in the newspaper. There is no doubt that

207 Ibid., 99. 208 Ibid., 253n- 254n. 209 “Marcuse Position Clarified,” The San Diego Union, July 31, 1970. 210 Ibid.

64 readers of the Marcuse scandal in San Diego helped the financial bottom line for The Union. Additionally, it was not beyond the editors and managers of The Union to manipulate the letters section of the paper to further fan the flames of the controversy. Historian Lisa Z. Sigel has shown the place of letter writers in newspapers and magazines dealing with controversial topics. Sigel has investigated how modern print media and consumers of the media have struggled with corresponding with one another over controversial issues. Publishers have been concerned with assuring readers that letters to the editors are real and not manufactured by the editorial staff. So, in order to verify that letters printed in media are from actual readers, the standard practice for most forms of print media is to require letters to include both name and address with the correspondence. Yet Sigel also explores the chilling effects which can limit participation when a name and address is required of letter writers dealing with controversial issues. Where The Union deliberately failed in their responsibility to remain unbiased in the Marcuse scandal is when they published the K.K.K. death threat along with Marcuse’s address. After all, Marcuse was the victim of the hate-mail and it should not have been his address that was exposed in the newspaper to an enflamed public. As time went on attitudes against student protest and radical activity increased throughout the nation on college campuses. Although 69 percent of students in a fall of 1969 Gallup Poll characterized themselves as “doves,” the opposition to war in Vietnam grew when President Richard Nixon expanded the war with an invasion of Cambodia in April of 1970.211 However, a conservative “silent majority” furthered the political ambitions of both Nixon and Reagan. Conservative politicians buttressed by friendly media and conservative religious leaders led the backlash against the excesses of student New Left radicalism of the late 1960s. As a decade of turmoil came to a close, a new decade brought a swift reaction which may have caused New Left activism to collapse under its own weight and early successes. Marcuse had commented on the fusion of aggressive tendencies and media in his book Negations, published before the zenith of his controversy. Marcuse states, “surplus-aggression is released in quite unsuspected and ‘normal’ behavior, we may see it in areas which are far

211 Gitlin, The Sixties, 409

65 removed from the more familiar manifestations of aggressions, for instance the style of publicity and information practiced by the mass media.”212 Marcuse referenced Freud’s death instinct as originating in Freud’s own analysis of the “repetition compulsion.” Furthermore, Marcuse maintains that even “Hitler knew well the extreme function of repetition: the biggest lie, often enough repeated, will be acted upon and accepted as truth.” Marcuse goes on to explain that it is this imposition of destructive repetition of untruth on captive minds creates submission and rejection of change. The type of inertia produces a sort of unsatisfactory form of heightened tension that displays itself in disturbing ways socially.213 The depiction of media stories at the close of the 1960s appears to back up this contention. Could there be another explanation for the disparity between newspaper and television coverage of the story? Care should be taken in conferring too much importance to Marcuse’s television supporters. It must be understood that Keen was such a well-respected personality at KFMB that some of his respectability may have been transferred to Marcuse unwittingly. One point is clear regarding the televised interviews with Keen, in contrast to the reporting about Marcuse in the Copley Press; viewers welcomed and even celebrated the platform and opportunity afforded to Marcuse to share his ideas directly to the public unfiltered. Highly covered news stories in the media would signal the end of student radicalism of the decade. For example, the fracturing of SDS into a diminished version of itself and a terrorist arm known as the Weatherman marked the end of one of the most radical student organizations in America history. The Weathermen faction signaled SDS’s demise when they went underground plotting to make New York into Saigon when they proclaimed, “We have to create chaos and bring about the disintegration of pig order.”214 There was also a California version of the Woodstock music festival that, unlike the earlier music/counter culture festival in New York, ended in violence. At Altamont Speedway Free Festival (close to San Francisco), the Hell’s Angels biker club, acting as semiofficial security for the event, killed a young Black man

212 Marcuse, Negations, 267. 213 Ibid., 267-268. 214 Gitlin, The Sixties, 399.

66 accompanying a white woman on December 6, 1969. The Angels were then confronted by an angry crowd and continued to overreact by roughing up many fans attending the festival.215 If that were not enough, many residents of Southern California were consuming media stories detailing a series of horrific murders by the Charles Manson Family beginning earlier that year on August 9 and 10, 1969. Details of the murders became public knowledge because of a succession of law enforcement leaks to the media. To the average citizen not involved with campus radicalism in the 1960s, Charles Manson and his long-haired cult following became to associated with all hippies, especially those connected with illegal drugs, free love, and the youth counter culture. Besides appearing on the cover of Life magazine, a free advertisement for Manson’s recordings appeared in The Los Angeles Free Press along with a regular column he wrote. Additionally, Tuesday’s Child, an underground paper, included a representation of him as a hippie on a cross.216 Clearly the media knew violence and drama sold more copies and increased profits. Moreover, the public seemed only too interested to consume the sensational stories they were being sold. Student radicalism also sustained a huge blow when at Kent State University in Ohio, in reaction to the incursion of American troops into Cambodia, radical students burned down the campus ROTC building. In response to the destruction, on May 4, 1970 the National Guard was called upon to maintain order at Kent State. Angry students who felt the war was coming home from Vietnam then began to throw rocks at the guardsmen. The guardsmen responded by firing their rifles into crowds of students, injuring nine and killing four. A famous media photograph of a young female Kent State student crying over the body of one of her fellow slain students highlighted the deadly seriousness of student activism.217 The image became a dividing line through much of the U. S., with several campuses erupting in violence and conservatives growing increasingly disgusted by radical student actions. Students at American universities

215 Ibid., 406. 216 Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), 296. 217 Gitlin, The Sixties, 409-410.

67 during the 1960s turned out to be highly influenced by popular culture and media images. According to Gitlin, “The rock ‘n’ roll generation, having grown up on popular culture, took images very seriously indeed; beholding itself magnified in the funhouse mirror, it grew addicted to media which had an agenda of their own—celebrity-making, violence mongering, and sensationalism.”218 Meanwhile, closer to home, UCSD had begun to simmer down from the height of the Marcuse troubles by 1970. Yet a few students still were despondent over the escalation of the war in Vietnam during the spring of 1970. Leaders like Byron King of SDS at UCSD sought to protest, when he advocated, “against war research and against the Vietnam War.”219 On May 10, 1970 history graduate student George Winnie Jr., emulated the famous newspaper photo of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quảng Đức, immolating himself in protest of the South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm. Winnie also set himself on fire, in the middle of Revelle Plaza. Winnie died the next day. Marcuse was one of several speakers that spoke at a memorial for Winnie at noon on May 11, 1970.220 Marcuse understood well the irrational nature of the society he lived in. He also had deep concern for the regimentation of daily life, the rationalization of productive work in modern Western civilization, along with the high degree of repression in society that made students like George Winnie want to harm themselves. His work with the OSS during WWII allowed Marcuse to develop a unique perspective on political news events that might appear rather ordinary to the average person. The Keen interview again provides useful insight to Marcuse’s thoughts: I find reason for change in this country because we have a society which is engaged in a destructive, and in my view, aggressive war against one of the poorest and weakest people on earth, a society which has accumulated a terrible degree of aggressiveness and brutality, a society which wastes its incredible resources while at the same time sustaining poverty and misery, not only abroad but even within its own frontiers. It seems to me that such a society, precisely because of the tremendous potential for the improvement of the human condition which it has, that such a society

218 Ibid., 6. 219 Anderson, Improbable Venture, 125. 220 Ibid., 124.

should be examined, to determine whether certain fundamental changes are not necessary.221 It is this very ugliness associated with modern capitalist societies in the Western nations that pushed Marcuse to return to his argument that human liberation rested in the rediscovery of the aesthetic form of artistic expression.222 Indeed, Marcuse’s forced retirement did not diminish the aging professor’s commitment for qualitative change or his commitment to critical analysis of American society. Marcuse continued to lecture as well as write. His last two books (Counter Revolution and Revolt and The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics) appear to come to terms with what had occurred in the 1960s while offering a prescription for a potential utopian future. It would be incorrect to assume Marcuse returned to the artistic realm, because he really was never far from it, in The Aesthetic Dimension, he displayed a recommitment to his interest in artistic expression.223 Ever the contrarian, Marcuse spent his final days in Germany crusading for the release of Rudolf Bahro, an East German dissident. Just as he had done for sisters Angela and Fania Davis during the 1960s, Marcuse remained engaged with political activism until the end. On July 29, 1979 Herbert Marcuse died in Strarnberg, Germany. Bahro was freed from prison only a few days later, demonstrating that the obstinate nature of Marcuse’s activism survived his passing.224

221 KFMB Transcript of interview with Marcuse by Keen, February 25, 1969, pp. 6- 7, folder 11, box 4, Harold Keen Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University. 222 Herbert Marcuse, Counter Revolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 79. 223 Abromeit and Cobb, eds. Marcuse: A Critical Reader, 7. Marcuse’s received his first doctorate in 1922 for examining the German artist novel (Bildungsroman) and how the individual and art are transformed by capitalist modernization. 224 Ibid., 15.

MARCUSE’S LEGACY step by step nowhere not a single one knows how tiny steps nowhere stubbornly225 November 6-7, 1998 at the University of California, Berkeley a conference was held to mark the 100th anniversary of Herbert Marcuse’s birth. The conference was titled “The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse.” Out of this meeting came a multitude of papers and presentations which speak to the continued interest in the work of Marcuse and its sustained relevance. Yet, it tends to be problematic when attempting to place one’s figure on precisely what Marcuse’s legacy is. This thesis has sought to shine light on a the often-repeated story about Marcuse’s trouble and eventual dismissal from UCSD in the context of a generational shift on college campuses in the U. S., a highly destructive war in Southeast Asia, and a growth of conservative reaction to the spread of student radicalism. Endeavoring to use the media, both print and broadcast, has provided the vehicle used to justify the claims of this project. Yet the work must have limits. Future study is still required. Further research into the dialectical relationship between left-wing versus right-wing radical speakers and student groups is needed. Both left and right shared space on college campuses in San Diego. For instance, the invitation by students at SDSC of the leader of the American Nazi party (George Lincoln Rockwell) in 1962 should be examined. How did the Copley press respond to radicalism as expressed on the far right? Did the American Legion call for the dismissal of any faculty at SDSC? And how did religious leaders such as Schwarz and his CACC react to a speaker representing an ideology of a real enemy that America had genuinely fought in WWII? Student groups like the YAF which was founded by William F.

225 Ibid., 1. Poem by Samuel Beckett, dedicated to Herbert Marcuse on his 80th birthday. English translation by Edith Fourier from French original.

Buckley Jr., had profound impacts, but much less is written about their activities. How did local media report on groups like CACC and YAF? Where are the leaders of these organizations now? Angela Davis claims that it is difficult to separate Marcuse’s work from the highly charged context of the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, Marcuse from being at one point the most famous member of the Frankfurt School, somehow became the least studied in the 1980s and 1990s. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin were focused on far more during that period.226 Perhaps the most important legacy of Marcuse may be that he prepared the next generation to pass on his critical theories to the future. Considering Marcuse’s most famous student Davis went on to become a professor of History at the University of California Santa Cruz and was also a fairly well-known activist in her own right. Therefore Marcuse’s legacy endured. Her activism and connections to the Black Panther Party make one possible legacy of Marcuse, the cultivation of the next generation of activist educators, and thinkers who could then influence the future generations. Andrew Feenberg was also a student of Marcuse who accompanied him to Paris in 1968 and witnessed the strife of student radicalism in the streets of France while there. Feenberg went on to become and professor at SDSU and wrote serval books taking up issues he studied while under Marcuse. While at SDSU Feenberg’s student, Robert O. Phiel constructed a brilliant master’s thesis exploring Marcuse’s theories on art and its liberating potential. Phiel asserts that “given advances in science and technology, human survival and growth is no longer dependent upon organizing the world under the master-slave relationship. The struggle for freedom should be addressed against the ugly and aggressive features of society which have been promoted as necessary for survival.”227 Likewise, Lowell Bergman has continued with critical observations on contemporary society through the field of investigative journalism. He currently teaches the next generation at UC Berkeley. Marcuse’s son Peter, a professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University, continues to struggle with his father’s legacy. Peter Marcuse has situated his father’s legacy in the concept of

226 Angela Y. Davis, “Marcuse’s Legacies,” in Abromeit and Cobb, Marcuse: Critical Reader, 43. 227 Robert O. Phiel, “Marcuse’s Aesthetic Theory” (master’s thesis, SDSU, 1987), 68.

Marcuse’s identity. Peter sees his father as being European and German even though he spent most of his life in the United States. Herbert saw himself as American and preferred to live in the United States rather than go back to Germany as others in the Frankfurt School had done. He spoke English, but always with a noticeable accent. Herbert was raised in the Jewish tradition, but remained mostly secular throughout his life.228 Perhaps Marcuse can be considered a bridge connecting not just generations, but other nationalities as well. In conclusion to a project such as this and upon reflection during the editing process I am reminded of a lesson that all history graduate students are taught in introductory historiography seminars. That is, it is important to acknowledge the publication date. Much of the construction of this thesis was done during the incredibly long election season of 2016 where media played a more significant role in political events than usual. In a truly Freudian way, I am aware that the hyper focus on all things media over the past year may have infiltrated this work at a level below my conscious recognition during the crafting of my thoughts. Not unlike Reagan, the winner of the 2016 presidential election has used scapegoating and fear to motivate the basest elements of American culture. Reagan’s rhetoric did not always align with his actions. He used the media in order to hype controversies rather than concentrate on reasonable solutions. At the start of 2017, it appears the globe is experiencing another wave of conservative ascendancy. The world could benefit from a renaissance of Herbert Marcuse’s ideas. Furthermore, it is our collective responsibility to monitor and understand the power and use of media. The media’s ability and the desire of leaders to generate controversy needs to be consistently examined and taught to all segments of society as a check against the sort of abuses Marcuse spent his entire life warning against. The legacy of Marcuse remains difficult to grasp. Whether it is Marcuse’s philosophic writing, studies or lectures; his activism in support of teach-ins, sit-ins or love-ins; his celebration of human liberation or simply his ability to resist prevailing forces in society, he is possibly more relevant than ever. The life of Herbert Marcuse seems almost fictional. He accomplished more in his life than many ever dream of. In the final analysis, it appears that

228 Peter Marcuse, “Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Identity’,” in Abromeit and Cobb, Marcuse: Critical Reader, 249-251.

Marcuse experienced ups and downs throughout his long and productive career. The unfortunate media firestorm the encircled him while at UCSD was unjust and capricious. Marcuse remained engaged and committed to work in social realm. If he did not shape events in the 20th century, then he surely helped illuminate events for others to see more clearly. His impact may continue to wax and wane as the years unfold, but it just may be that his most lasting legacy is for each new generation to rediscover and reconnect to his ever relevant, insightful and prescient work.

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