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Spielberg Flunks History at Harvard
Steven Spielberg delivered Harvard’s 365th Commencement address this past Thursday, urging graduates to learn history (or else become “a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree”). Funny, then, that Spielberg also would quote an antisemitic Harvard president to applaud the sacrifice of Harvard alumni who died in World War II. He apparently was unaware that before President James Conant honored those fallen students, Conant was against hiring refugee Jewish scientists on the basis that they were “very definitely of the Jewish type.” His antisemitism and Harvard’s was not unique among so-called intellectual elites in the West before World War II.
Today our intellectual elites do not care to remember history, let alone learn from it. They rather adore “making history,” which is about the grand spectacle of an unexpected or “first” event — as with the “historic” election of a black man as US president, Obama’s “historic trip” to Cuba, the “historic nuclear deal” with Iran, celebrating the first gay Army Secretary, and so forth. “Making history” might appear devoid of any moral content, but of course we know it is an advertisement for the vapid Leftist goals of “inclusivity” or “openness.” It is also an advertisement for feats without virtue; a failure to discern what is right or wrong about what gets the most attention.
This is why Spielberg’s Conant gaffe was not such a big deal compared to his assertion that the battle against the Nazi menace is analogous to opposition to today’s “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.” He urged students to combat such “monsters” of our time “because there’s no difference between anyone who is discriminated against, whether it’s the Muslims, or the Jews, or minorities on the border states, or the LGBT community — it is all one big hate.”
Recalling his cinematic vision, Spielberg exploits the great cause and sacrifices of World War II, attempting to graft its achievements onto certain leftist projects of the 21st century, namely, the destruction of nature in favor of a genderless world, the creation of an open-border cosmopolis, and the appeasement of Islam-inspired violence. One wonders whether the anti-Nazi protesters at Harvard in the 1930s were ridiculed by the likes of Conant for being too closed-minded and discriminatory of the Nazi ethos.
Graduation speeches of course have become silly, so meaningless now that our time is better spent on an autograph session with the speaker than having to sit through his insipid talk (mercifully, Spielberg’s clocked in at less than 20 minutes). There was, however, at least one great speech at a Harvard Commencement. On June 8, 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned the Harvard audience that socialism was not the answer to the perceived ills of Western society — it would only exacerbate the materialism that caused Western fragility. Solzhenitsyn cautioned the West to avoid an excessive reliance on legalism. (“One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint…. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses.”) He said our utility-centric politics and “moral poverty” would ultimately destroy the country. (“We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.”) Solzhenitsyn also doubted that American leaders were courageous enough to ensure its survival. (“To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being.”)
Memorial Day was a day of special remembrance for the great courage and sacrifice of our American warriors who did more than “serve” (as Spielberg and others put it, perhaps innocently) — they were our guardians who stood ready to die for something nobler than themselves and to ensure its survival. That belief and sacrifice, which cannot be honored enough, is contrary to the appetitive “me-first” instinct for ever-expanding civil rights and self-preservation that causes so much of the moral decay in our society. We must learn something from our fallen warriors. That involves getting acquainted with not only what they did but who they were — the selfless character that inspired their deeds.
Indeed, if we are to meditate on military courage, we should also consider today the state of our society’s moral courage, our character. Spielberg exhorts his crowd to “be courageous” and “make the correct moral choices.” He is speaking in part about a morality that affirms any individual’s belief (or “intuition,” as Spielberg puts it) for anything that person wants, as long as he does not “discriminate” or “hate.” While that attitude is fine for many matters, certainly it does not require much courage in our times. Today courage is necessary to defend, for example, Christian precepts against the relativistic diktat that any precept, especially moral law, embodies “hatred.” As Solzhenitsyn cautions, it is difficult to oppose that unrestrained diktat with empty lawyer-talk of “States’ rights” or “separation of powers.”
We are going to need a lot of moral courage if we are to enliven our society devoted to “despiritualized humanism,” “endless materialism,” and “freedom from religion and religious responsibility.” We recoil at the thought that our Western world, victor over Communism, shares any resemblance to that dead society — but it does. Solzhenitsyn knew that the “ossified Enlightenment” was linked to the Marxism that imposed a scientific utilitarianism on every aspect of life: “Not by coincidence all of communism’s meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness.”
We can at least begin by asking of ourselves and others the questions Solzhenitsyn posed at Harvard: “Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?” The only way forward, he argued, was “upward.”
This is not unlike Winston Churchill’s June 1941 entreaty to Americans that “The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men’s souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
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Louis,
I am glad you did this post. First, I have always felt Spielberg was an empty shell. He found a great movie money making method and stuck to it. Other than that there isn’t much to him.
As far as Universities and Jews, there literally was an inverted quota for Jewish professors. No more than the quota allowed. Even though some of the German refugee profs had Nobel Prizes (and not like Obama but for real accomplishments) the prejudice was palpable.
Spielberg made a grand name for himself over the holocaust film. However, when the wind isn’t blowing the right way he is more than capable of stabbing Israel in the back. He is a creature of Hollywood culture. In a strange way, this is more limiting than the old studio system ever was.
Boring left-wing conformist non-conformist. Couldn’t care less what he does.
Regards,
Jim
This is an excellent post, and you have cited one of my all-time-favorite speeches, Solzhenitsyn’s address to Harvard.
But I can’t get too angry at Steven Spielberg’s not knowing about James Conant’s anti-Semitic past because unless one is looking for that, one wouldn’t suspect it.
However, it is interesting to learn this about James Conant–his real evil contribution to western civilization, in my opinion, was his development of the SAT, which evolved from the California Personality Assessment Test and has been dubbed in some quarters as “the great sorting.” His belief that it was possible to sort people out would go hand-in-hand with prejudice.
But as a loyal fan of Spielberg’s movies, I can forgive him for his errant liberal ways and this error. :) I’ll just have to add him to my list of people whose ideas I cannot fathom even though I admire their works of art, like Norman Rockwell and Aaron Copland. :)
Marci,
I didn’t mean to be so tough. One can like the movies but not respect the movie maker. As for your comment on Solzhenitsyn, you are 100% right. It is amazing that American High School students don’t study this. This bears directly on how they view their country, its form of government, and how they view their own lives.
It is a shame that we have become so much smaller in vision.
Regards,
Jim
A culture that understands freedom only as “the right to decide for myself” and does not equally promote duty, responsibility, or devotion to others is simply an empty culture. Hollywood is anxious to preach that everyone should be able to do whatever they want to do, but they neglect (or fail in) examining what people ought to do.
It strikes me odd that Hollywood, which markets itself as the capitol of drama, and in turn, conflict … espouses a moral principle that abolishes conflict. In Hollywood’s perfect world, there is no conflict; everyone is right. They have no sense in which conflict is good, and healthy, and usually necessary for one’s moral, emotional, and spiritual development.
Conflict is not a distraction away from the road to maturity … it is the road to maturity.
That’s okay. You’re right. :)
I loved ET–it remains my favorite movie. The scene where ET and Elliott take off into the night sky on the bike caught me totally by surprise, my heart soared for a moment, and I’ve been a fan of Spielberg ever since. As one reviewer wrote at the time, Spielberg seems to know where all my buttons are. :) And I really admired Lincoln. I think he did a fantastic job with that movie. I say that knowing that my favorite Civil War historian, James McPherson, originally an adviser to Spielberg, walked out on the project halfway through. :)
Another speech at Harvard I greatly admire was given by a Jewish president, Larry Summers. It is well worth reading.
I deplore anti-Semitism, but I know Spielberg does too. I just can’t fault him too much for his not knowing this about Conant. It was a terrible error to make, but understandable.
Matt Damon is the commencement speaker at MIT this year. I’d say the commencement address as a thing is pretty much over.
Well how do ya like them apples! Matt Damon once played a savant MIT janitor. Doesn’t that qualify him?