I’m in the middle of reading an article in Vanity Fair magazine about the financial trouble Harvard is in, having pretty much blown a very significant part of the $36.9-billion-dollar endowment it had just a year ago, and, being about Harvard, the article brought to mind a question that occurred to me sometime ago while watching William F. Buckley’s closing speech during a debate on the Panama Canal Treaty in 1978.
In it, Buckley says, “We are prepared to desert Taiwan because three-and-a-half Harvard professors think we ought to normalize relations with Red China…”
I’m trying to figure out who these professors were and what Buckley meant by facetiously referring to one of them as half a professor. (I’m guessing one was short of stature, but I guess it could also refer to one not yet tenured.)
Does anyone know or have an educated guess as to who these professors were and what their stance was with regard to Taiwan and China?
P.S. - I would suggest that anyone who enjoys a good speechifier should watch this clip in its entirety. I thought Obama was a pretty good speaker until I happened upon this.
I’d guess that three of them were “full” professors, and one was not a “full” professor, though he could well have been tenured.
As a full professor, I often joke about what it is, exactly, I’m full of. It’s a peculiar expression, and one we’re not encouraged to use, but an Associate Professor and an Assistant Professors are correctly referred to as “Professor,” so sometimes we need a verbal way to pull rank, which we will pompously do by distinguishing ourselves as “full” (or just-plain) Professors.
There’s always the possibility of him employing a rhetorical device.
The translation would be “I believe a small number of liberal academics have an undue influence over the Carter administration”. It sounds a lot better Buckley’s way.
Your comment is interesting also, samclem, because Buckley was good friends with, at least, Galbraith and Kissinger. Perhaps his comment was in the way of a good-natured gibe at his buddies.