Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Jennet Conant Man Of The

One but if not incredibly compelling, a very lively and engaging had a difficult time putting down. Would you please encapsulate the life of your grandfather briefly . Because he seems to have compressed four four owe five s into one lifetime. Guest he did pick in fact, to book a memoir called my several lives. The only problem with it, it was, the New York Times declared he was a great man and he it was a dull book turkey didnt me secrets. My grandfather had an extraordinary career because he served the country in three wars essentially, too hot and one cold. He helped make the first weapon of mass destruction poison gas for the chemical war service during world war i. He then became president of harvard and was a leading educator but then because of his wartime experience and because he was a brilliant chemist by training, he ended up being recruited by roosevelt to be one of scientific journals of world war ii. He was in charge again of all chemical weapons but that included a new weapon, the bomb. He ended up overseeing the Manhattan Project laboratory at los alamos where they built the first atomic bomb. Then he became one of the key architects of our Cold War Nuclear policy. He had advised roosevelt of course during the war and then it became a key advisor to treatment and eisenhower all during the cold war on our Nuclear Weapons policy, how to control Nuclear Weapons, how to confront the russian threat. He later became ambassador to germany during the height of the cold war when it was believed the third war might be fought right there on the lines of east germany because of the soviet aggression. Because of his antiwartime experience he became convinced the only way for democracy to survive, the best way to beat our enemies and be a strong country, was to have a great School System where we showed that democracy was better than dictatorship, and that we would have sufficiently brilliant people, talented people in government, in science, and the way to do that was to have the sat which he helped implement to produce what he felt were the kind of leaders, the kind of technically advanced people that we would need in positions of power if we were going to be a great nation in the hightech world that he foresaw approaching in the 50s in the 60s. He had an extraordinary impact on american life. Host he really did and im glad you brought in the sat and the focus on meritocracy because i think many people dont realize what a Critical Role he had in shaping the future direction of our country in that regard. Guest many people is often referred to as the father of the american meritocracy. Really this whole notion that everybody should have access to a college education, that that access should be determined entirely by merit, not by birth, not by family, not by geography. That really came about through his early work at harvard and applying the military intelligence test to the sat and try to use the sat as the tool really to open up college to everybody based on merit to make it a system as fair as possible. The sat has become very controversial now and has its many critics but originally the idea was fairness, openness, to traits my grandfather thought were absolutely key to the american democracy, the idea of a free and open society with social mobility. He thought that was key to try and strengthen and preserve that quality in our country. He felt that was the best way to combat fascism and communism. He was a real cold warrior, and he saw the sat as a tool to do that. So it is a a very important pat of his legacy which is almost forgotten now. Host how much of that do think came out of his own background in terms of his boyhood in boston, the experience he had at Roxbury Latin, the very privileged opportunity he had to go to harvard and his own experience . Guest it came entirely from his childhood. He was from dorchester, which is, you know, in those days was a workingclass suburb, a new workingclass suburb of boston. It was often called the commuter suburb because workingclass people moved out there because land was cheap and plentiful, and they took the new railroads and then trolley cars into boston to work. The old brahman governing class, the old ruling class of boston very much look down on dorchester as kind of the outer wilderness of uncultivated, uncultured behemoth that was growing up around their precious old city. He was a scholarship boy. He had been very lucky after going to local Public Schools to get into Roxbury Latin, which was a partially private but also public funded school, a very, very good school. And he won a scholarship at 16 to harvard, and so he was a scholarship boy very much from the wrong side of the tracks in those days at harvard, which was very much a school of rich mans sons. And he really felt it. When he entered harvard, you know, in 1914, it was such the school of rich mens sons rick is graduating class of 1914 had boys that he come to school with service and butlers and he lived in vast apartments, and they had large stipends and had residences with fireplaces in swimming pools and their own tailoring facilities and laundry services. Scholarship boys like him lived in and he did really houses very dilapidated on the outskirts of the campus. He had no heat. He had no running water, and he didnt even have electricity the first few months he was in the running house. He used to bathe in the gymnasium. So it was a much harder life for the scholarship boys, and he never forgot that experience and the fact the boys like him couldnt get into any of the better fraternities. Many of his friends had parttime jobs where they worked long hours to try and pay for the books in the meals. He was luckier than that. His father by the time he went to college was making a pretty good income, and so his father provide him with money for books and meals, but he never forgot the huge divide between the haves and havenots. And it marked him for life. It very much form the core of his educational philosophy. Host he seems to have had a strong sense of self and a very strong sense of purpose from a very young age. I remember reading in your book that his parents wanting to go to milton academy, a private high school, and he rejected the idea and you wanted to go instead to Roxbury Latin because he knew it had a good science and chemistry program. Thats pretty extraordinary for a boy about age. Guest absolutely extraordinary. He knew at a very, very young age that he wanted science, tt he showed real aptitude for it. He was already tinkering with batteries and electricity and all the kind of new apparatus. Theres a story about being a very the bullet and doorbells were introduced, brandnew technology and often broke and he would go to his neighbors and rejigger the battery and the electricity that triggered the mechanism, and that gave him such a huge thrill, the sense he could fix something it work and that he played with all kinds of apparatus after that, took things apart and put them back together. He built his own microscope. He built a lot of experimental equipment. So he knew by the time he was very young that this is what he wanted to do. It was a time when science was changing Bulletin Board at enormous speed. It was quite an exciting field at that time. Host he also seems to have been quite driven because i recall he not only with to harvard at 16 but he went as a sophomore because hed already completed enough advanced work in high school to entered as a sophomore. I i think he completed harvard n three years, did he not . Guest really about two and a half exactly turkey entered pretty much as, well, well ino his sophomore credentials. So the thing is that specialization was very common in those days. You trained, you went to harvard, particularly if youre from a scholarship background. You really went in not for a general education but to train for a profession. So he had two older sisters. The fabulous not particularly will alter key had a sense he sense he was driven to succeed any profession, that for a boy like him he would have to make his own way. He was very ambitious. And he wanted to get it as quickly as possible, get onto the graduate program in chemistry and start training for his profession. So yes, he moved very quickly, as he said, about a very no track at harvard, taking as much chemistry and site as he could and then Little Things like english and history as he could get away with at that time in his life. Host he reminded of the subject of your first book, tuxedo park, as similar experience at yale and going on to harvard law school. You seem to have picked up to driven people. Guest well, you know, its interesting but its not uncommon. If you read the biographies of truly exceptional men, it is that often the case that they knew very, very young, maybe its a coincidence of brilliance and lock lock that they find a vocation breadline and theyre very focused and driven individuals. And so you see that very often with scientists, mathematicians and politicians as well, a course that is set at a very tender age. Host you begin your book with a very powerful scenario. I think it is Christmas Eve 1945. Your grandfather is in the kremlin with the Foreign Ministers of the nuclear power, the allies. You have stalin, molotov, the former minister from russia. County when you begin the scene with that particular time in history. Well, it was an extraordinary moment to history. The war had just ended. Rush had been our ally. But we had exploded the most powerful weapon ever made by a man. We had dropped to a atomic bombs of different designs on hiroshima and nagasaki to bring the pacific war to a quick and decisive end. We have not told our allies that we had this weapon. The british the course new because they have helped us make it, but it came as something of a surprise to the russians. Not as much as a surprise we thought we later found out because of espionage. But nevertheless, wed use this weapon and the russians were quite disgruntled that in all the wartime, postwar conferences that were being held to sort of divide up the spoils of war, geographically, to redraw the boundaries, the russians were being very difficult. We had thought of course that with this weapon we would be really in the dominant position in the postwar negotiations. Truman at her secretary of state byrnes were convinced we were in the catbird seat. But the russians would never acknowledged the father they never made reference to it, and in the first conferences they kind of ridicule it. They kind of made fun of this ostentatious bulge in our pocket, molotov kept making jokes about it. American policymakers were astounded. Here we were the most powerful country in the world. We were the most victorious nation. We had this huge weapon, and the russians refuse to take it seriously. So negotiations had not proceeded as we had anticipated, and a desperate effort to negotiate with the russians. A special conference over christmas in moscow, yet taken a long the leading expert, james e kona to try to talk to the russian scientists. And the hope was the russians would acknowledge the bomb, was this decisive weapon and agree to some kind of nuclear controls, agreed to International Committee to control the future of all Nuclear Weapons. This was crucial because my grandfather and the need for bush, that of the Manhattan Project, and with almost all of the site is the work on the bomb at los alamos in chicago and other laboratories Vannevar Bush felt this was not a secret we could keep, that the technology that went into making the bomb would very quickly proliferate. They couldnt protect it and it would be a matter of time only before not only the russians had it but other enemies, petty dictators could conceivably get a hold of this technology. So there was a great fear that this weapon was so powerful that it could really destroy the world in the wrong hands, become something that terrorists could use. All of this was clearly envisioned by its creators really before the war was over, and they began trying desperately to put in place some kind of International Control so that this weapon could not proliferate. You would not have people stockpiling it, tilting Nuclear Weapons left, right, and center. And so this meeting in moscow Christmas Eve was so crucial because my grandfather and the americans that went were desperately hoping that they could convince stalin and molotov to agree to control the future of this terrible, terrible force. They were very optimistic that it could still be done, but by the time they left moscow, they were less convinced that the russians really wanted to participate in these negotiations. Host and what did they envision might be the form of control that might be able to convince the russians to submit to, or to agree to . Guest the scientists hope was that an exchange of an enormous gesture of goodwill on our part, that would be sharing the secret as it were, the Nuclear Secret of the ball, in exchange for giving this technology to the world in the hopes they could be used as a form of clean power for nations all over the world, nations would come together and form an international organization. They would later try and do this to the u. N. But at this time there were thinking of it as an international organization. The community of likeminded nations that would then have a board that would supervise all nuclear laboratories, policeman as it were, hold inspections, make sure all of these laboratories were just used for power, for peaceful purposes, and in no way towards making more weapons. That was their idealistic hope, and he really believed at that time that it was achievable. But as my grandfather wrote, you know, what other belief could they have accept it so for International Control . Because the weapon now existed. It had been used and it could be replicated. So they had to strive for International Control because that was the only way to avoid a desperately dangerous arms race from developing. And so i begin the book with this Christmas Eve summit at the kremlin, because that is where they had all their hopes pinned on that meeting. Host it also seems to be the cusp between the world war ii in cold war to follow, but very poignant time in our worlds history. Guest yes, and it was really, really our last hope in a way of bringing the russians around to our way of thinking, we thought. We still believe when they set off for that mission at the was a chance that they could convince the russians. And by the time i grandfather returned from that trip, he began to have grave doubts that the russians would come to the negotiating table. Of course, as we now know for sure years later the russians exploded the first atomic bomb in 1949 and the cold war began in earnest, along with the desperate arms race that we are now still struggling with. Host over the long span of history while he may not have accomplished a shortterm objective, the many way he and others were quite precedent because International Atomic Energy Agency indeed fulfills some, not all, some of those functions you just described a moment ago. Guest yes, though i think, you know, my grandfather again, Vannevar Bush and so many of the scientists they were incredibly prescient, and they foresaw in a meeting with truman, oppenheimer even outlined the possibility of Small Nuclear suitcase bombs in the hands of our enemies. They really understood all too clearly what this weapon and what it falling into the hands of our enemies would mean, that america would really never be safe again, that will be terribly vulnerable and that a Nuclear Conflict of the kind that would involve these weapons would be devastating beyond belief really unthinkable in their mind. So they foresaw this and they really struggled mightily to try and bring russia to the negotiating table. And when the opportunity faded and the Atomic Energy commission was founded, they did feel, particularly my grandfather, terribly fearful that he would not really have the powers needed to keep the arms race from developing at a terrible rate and from the weapon falling into enemy hands. And david very right about that. Host why dont we step back . We now have a sense of what he accomplished during world war ii, but he grew up in the family, if i recall, where his mother was a quaker. And he, in world war i, my recollection is while he was a student at harvard he was not enthused about the prowar efforts that were then beginning to build in the United States, and he went through a rather substantial conversion, perhaps because of the german gassing of the french and belgian troops. Would you describe some of that, how you think that conversion came about . Guest in really many ways i think its the saddest aspect of his life. As weve talked, he loved chemistry. He loved science, and his gret ambition was to become a nobel prizewinning scientist. His mentor at harvard, Theodore William richards was. He began his fatherinlaw. This is the career path he had in mind his mother was a quaker. Many of his relatives, in fact, were quakers. He was really averse to work so much so that when he was at harvard and world war i broke out in 1914 and he was entering graduate school, great many of his classmates and friends became very hot in the war, so were the faculty particularly divided the campus. But ahead of harvard became very prothe war, very prothe allies. They started the early versions of rotc on campus. Students were drooling in uniform. Many of the strands were volunteering for the ambulance corps, and he was horrified. He really saw world war i as these aggressive old empires with plenty of fault on other side battling it out over territory and money. And he did not see it as as a l cause and he did not see a reason for america to get involved. He personally had no desire to get involved,