Harold R. Isaacs People" As Identified by Moscow
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Harold R. Isaacs people" as identified by Moscow. Straw Sandals lay in Isaac's files forgotten until Harold R. Isaacs died at age 76 on July 9, he rediscovered and published it in 1974. 1986, in the Massachusetts General When, after two years the Forum had to Hospital a week and a day after open close down because of the irreconcilable heart surgery. He was a major figure as conflict between Harold's idealistic prin- an actor in and chronicler of the China ciples and the Communists' rubbery scene, and as both a journalist and a changes of "line," he went on to Peking scholar-analyst of world affairs. He pio- and to a phase of withdrawal from activ- neered the field of ethnic studies with his ism as he toiled to make his mark as a work on group identities; he broke scholar-author by writing his great work. ground with his explorations of the men- The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. tal images American leaders had of There were then the years, first as jour- Chinese and Indians. He left us with nalist with Agence France and then, as much more than "scratches on our war came to Europe as well as Asia, he minds" —he left us with deep, indelible became a script writer for the CBS radio impressions of a truly exceptional and program Report to the Nation, which spirited man who had a remarkably featured an imperious Orson Welles. He adventuresome life. soon found that dealing with that irasci- First there was New York City and ble egotist and the trivial quarrels of the Columbia University where Harold had executive suite were intolerable, espe- his beginnings as a journalist, reporting cially at a time of momentous world for the New York Times on Protestant events, and he happily signed on at church sermons—for which he was paid Newsweek as war correspondent for $3.25 each Sunday, $3.00 in wages, Chungking, New Delhi, and Mountbat- 10 cents for the subway and 1 5 cents ten's headquarters in Ceylon. Then came for the collection plate. Then it was off to tours as a roving observer of the end of Shanghai to be caught up in the turmoil colonial rule in Southeast Asia and of the of the labyrinthian politics of Chinese American liberation of South Korea. His intellectuals of the left. There he boldly findings were put together in a disturb- founded and edited the China Forum, a ingly prophetic book, No Peace for Asia. publication that became a vehicle for the All of this before his academic years in tormented articulations of progressive Cambridge. writers. He associated with such illustri- From the moment Harold Isaacs joined ous figures as Lu Xun, China's greatest the Center for International Studies in modern author, Song Ching-ling, the 1953, and thereby began his second widow of the founder of China's Repub- career as an academic, he became a vital lic, Sun Yat-sen, who he knew fondly as force in provoking intellectual curiosity Suzie, and the later-to-be-famous, Ho Chi about urgent, real-world problems among Minh. a band of colleagues who were often With Song Ching-ling, Lu Xun, Cai more absorbed with spinning out their Yuanpei, Yang Qian, and Agnes Smed- own worlds of theoretical abstractions. ley, Isaacs founded the China League for Coming late to academic life, he was Civil Rights to expose the Kuomintang's never intimiated by the verbiage of the mistreatment of writers. In time, how- social sciences. Indeed, Harold had a last- ever, the league was taken over by the ing pride in his identity as a onetime jour- Stalinists in the Chinese Communist nalist, and he was always slightly Party as their front group. Isaacs with the amused at finding himself a professor. He help of Lu Xun and Mao Dun selected had a keen eye for the foibles of aca- some of the best writings from the China demia and enjoyed quoting C. P. Snow's Forum in the expectation that the collec- definition of a university as a place tion would be published in New York, but "where men indulge themselves by by the time the manuscript was com- bestowing honors upon each other." pleted, with Lu Xun's preface, none of Harold was able to preserve such a the leftist publishers would accept a bemused feeling for academia because work associated with an "enemy of the he kept enough distance to avoid learning 105 People in Political Science about academic administrative politics. singularly firm and unambiguous self- He was finally trapped into becoming a identity. His values were such that he full-status, full professor by the ingenious always knew where he stood even while but questionable administrative ruling he explored with infinite care and sym- that he could only be given a parking pathy the shifting uncertainties and psy- sticker if he became a bonafide faculty chic problems of people experiencing member. With that status Isaacs soon dramatic changes in their own sense of became both a lively role model for stu- group identity. How he maintained the dents and a sympathetic listener to those clarity of his attitudes and values was who had personal problems. something of a mystery, for he was also a person possessed of exceptionally In carrying out the research for his first strong emotions which in someone of M.I.T. book—Scratches on Our Minds, lesser character would have produced called a "classic" by the New York vacillation, contradiction, and ambiguity. Times— Harold, in probing interviews, peeled back layer after layer of the Harold's powerful emotions must have memories of American opinion makers to been a major factor in shaping his funda- get at the deeply buried images they held mental career identity, that of a writer of Chinese and Indians. That study of the and author. He undoubtedly came to his importance of unconsciously held pre- calling as a writer the hard way, by forc- dispositions of influential Americans con- ing himself to discipline what could have vinced Harold once and for all that the been unruly outbursts of feelings. The personal, human factor was far more agony of that disciplining process was, important in shaping history than the no doubt, learned as Harold struggled in class categories he had once used. Con- the solitude of Peking to write his great sequently, he turned his considerable work, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revo- energies to exploring the critical role of lution, in which he told in clear, precise, changing group identities in contem- unvarnished prose the story of what he porary world politics. On a two-year trip saw as two abominations, the Stalinists for the Center for International Studies he of the Communist Chinese Party and the collected material for a series of studies thugs in the Kuomintang. In doing so, he on the attitudes of American blacks practiced Wordsworth's definition of toward Africa, or American Jews living in poetry as "strong emotions reflected in Israel, of Untouchables in a changing tranquility." India, English-educated Chinese in In the years at M.I.T., Harold was usually Malaysia, Filipinos emerging from Ameri- hunched over his typewriter, pecking out can colonial rule, and of generational words with the journalist's two fingers, changes in Japan. His first-hand studies filling yellow pages with crossed-out were subsequently enriched by extensive words and scribbled, untidy revisions. book-learning to produce his wide rang- But there was nothing casual about what ing and profoundly thoughtful book, The he had done, as anyone so bold as to try Idols of the Tribe, which still stands as to alter even one word would discover, the pioneering work of the now popular for he was the consummate craftsman field of ethnic studies. As he observed in who worked tirelessly to find the precise that work, "The evidence of current words for what he had to say. He found human affairs seems to suggest that the the idea of copy editors abhorrent, for as House of Muumbi is where man really he repeatedly noted, "Who would think of lives, that his essential tribalism is so touching up a Rubens or even a Jackson deeply rooted in the conditions of his Pollock, or add some notes to Beethoven existence that it will keep cropping out of or Mozart? So why is it acceptable to whatever is laid over it, like trees forcing tinker with another person's literary crea- their way through rocks on mountain tion?" On the last day of his life a young sides a mile high." doctor came in to see him and cheerfully Harold Isaacs's career progressions said, "You look great," to which Harold might suggest a restless person in search responded, "Young man, I have always of himself, but this most certainly was tried to find the right word for whatever not the case. He was, rather, a man of needs saying, and I am sure on this occa- 106PSWinter1987 sion 'great' is not the right word." that his Shanghai days friends would Harold's reverence for language involved have nothing to do with him until the more than just the pride of the master Beijing authorities declared him no longer craftsman; it was sustained by his fre- pollution, and then when they finally met quently expressed belief that all serious in his re-encounters it was as in a time writing is to some degree autobiograph- capsule, for the Chinese sought to blank ical, embodying an element of the iden- out all that had happened between those tity of the author.