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EARLY WILLIAMS YEARS
“Intellectual Man of Mystery”

Publish Or . . .

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I can’t remember if we ever talked about the expenditure of time, energy, resources, whether it was better to spend all your waking life thinking about your teaching and whether you ought to forget about that for a while and write books. I don’t think we ever had that conversation. [Another department member] and I […]
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He had not published and I think he definitely felt the need to go off and do something stimulating, something that he could write about. For some reason he got fascinated with Eastern cultures. His Fulbright dealt with the Indian University, and he wanted to compare the university system in India with the university systems […]
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He got involved with the Peace Corps, which was organized after the Kennedy period. Do you remember [President] Kennedy’s brother-in-law? Sergeant Shriver became the head of that and then [Harris] Wolford took over, and he was a classmate of Bob Gaudino’s and Bob Gaudino got himself involved in the Peace Corps, and in the course […]
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He was interested in village structure for one thing, in India. Somewhat interested in the relationship between Hindus and Muslims but more in the way in which villages were organized and what young people did in them and what their chances were for education. And, you know, it was a rather tough book. I read […]
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My guess is that if he hadn’t gotten The Indian University published he might not have gotten tenure. I think it was very close. And also I think he made some enemies. Straussians were widely regarded as arrogant, opinionated, difficult people throughout the entire profession. Not only did they have a point of view which […]
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I suspect there were some elder types who were involved in the decision who raised questions about his judgment. It would be within Political Science, but it would be within a wider circle. I can remember these things because they were the people who were deciding the verdict on me, as well–and of course President […]
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It was controversial in the sense that he wasn’t making brownie points toward tenure the way most professors did. He wasn’t bound to publish many scholarly papers. He wasn’t bound to give courses in a certain way. He was a free spirit in many ways and this was something which upset some members of the […]
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