Charles Schwartz

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ORAL HISTORIES

Interviewed by

Patrick Catt

Location

University of California, Berkeley

See catalog record for this interview.

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Interview of Charles Schwartz by Patrick Catt on 1995 July 19, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5913

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Abstract

This interview was conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation, the focus of which is the study of "radical" scientists in America, 1968-1974. The format of the interview incorporates background questions on childhood interests in science (physics) and politics; family political and scientific histories; interviewee's formal education (to include political activism and the nature of scientific specialization); perceptions on local, national, and global events up to 1974; those factors attributing to one's radicalization; the interviewee's experiences and impressions of radicalism within physics, most especially within the American Physical Society; involvement in the creation of and subsequent participation in radical science organizations (such as Scientist and Engineers for Social and Political Action); specific questions on interviewee's social, political and philosophical development as impacting the conduct of physics research and teaching; and in-depth discussion of physics-society relations as influenced by internal and external socio-political struggles (such as the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, and Women's Liberation Movements).

Ah yes. Well, that was, I think, a very Gandhian sort of exercise, not that I had studied Gandhi. At some later time I wanted to undertake a fast, and I decided I should do some reading and studying to understand Gandhi’s theory of civil disobedience; it’s not simple, it’s complex. And I ended up in the library finding a whole wall of Gandhi’s writings Which…well, I read episodes from one or two books. Yes, this is Lawrence-Berkeley Lab, up on the hill, it’s just had its name changed again. This is the place of Lawrence and the cyclotron and all that history, but originally part of the university but a little bit removed up in the hill. Financed by the federal government, this would be the Atomic Energy Commission, now the Department of Energy. Integrated with the university but still somewhat separate, so it has this ambiguous relationship. Many faculty members having staff appointments up there, and many just on staff. And from I guess the beginning of my relations as a faculty member having summer jobs up at LBL, just sort of available summer salary to do research there. Now there were a number of people associated with the lab, Owen Chamberlain in particular, who had been trying to get some kind of free speech program going there.

They were considering the Vietnam War and why couldn’t there be some kind of discussions of those things there. But the management of the lab didn’t want this to happen at all. Now the sorts of things you’re talking about before, that maybe that stuff is okay for the campus, or in fact many people then and now still think that free speech ruined the University of California. I mean a couple years ago I got involved with an art project, that’s one of the things in the boxes you don’t have to look at, the Berkeley art project. I was just walking home one day and saying, “I love this campus but it needs some good public art.” And fancifying that if I had millions of dollars what I might donate. See, now that’s the terrible politics of individual, rich people. Now what could you do in a political way of creating public art and raising money? Then I said, “Oh the 25th anniversary for the Free Speech Movement is coming up in 2 years, let’ s have a 25th anniversary celebration of Free Speech Movement with the commissioning of a piece of public art to commemorate that!” So I created this idea, found a couple of art faculty to join it and watch this project, which succeeded in the end. Now there is a thing in Sproul Plaza which is the result of that, which is hard to notice, hard to understand, rather abstract.

Catt:

Yes, rather abstract.

Schwartz:

Therefore, I would require students to tell me that they at least adopted these principles, though I would leave it to them how to apply them. And I was teaching a graduate physics class that spring, and there were some interesting discussions between me and the students in the first few classes. For the first two sessions I led this discussion: what did this mean, and was this a bad thing to do? There were a couple of faculty who visited the class, taking notes. The discussions with the students were really very good, very interesting. What does social responsibility mean? What right have you to require that I take an oath? They discussed these things, and as it turned out, I did not kick any student out of the class. I didn’t make them sign anything, I just walked around during the discussions asking them if they agreed with the general principle of responsibility. One student said, “I’m Hindu and I don’t like the restriction to human life. I believe all life is sacred.” And I said that’s fine with me. There was another student who felt very strongly that he should not be forced to give to me certification of his moral bona fides. He just refused to do that. So I invited him to my office, we sat around and talked about all these issues for a long time. I told him I respected his position, that he felt he should not be obliged to show his moral codes to me, and I said on the other hand, I feel I have an obligation as a teacher not to hand over my knowledge to any student unless I have some reassurance that the student will handle that knowledge in a thoughtful way. And after our long discussion I said to this student, “Well, you’re accepted in the class because I am convinced that you do in fact believe these principles.” Well, he got very upset then, feeling that I had somehow tricked him into revealing his private moral side, which he was morally opposed to being forced to do. So it was very awkward. But it was an interesting process, and the student did stay in the class.

Yes. These are my two trophies, these letters. So again, the way the system works, once you’ve been reprimanded by the administration, you can appeal to the Faculty Committee on Privilege and Tenure for a formal hearing to see if it’s justified. And I thought that hearing would finally be a place where these issues could be debated. In the process there was an opinion memo from the Faculty Academic Freedom Committee that criticized and condemned what I had done, saying that is wrong to place any ideological criteria governing admission into the classroom. And I agree with that as a general principle about academic freedom. The question was, what ideological barrier had I constructed? Nobody ever answered that, so again frustrating. But at this hearing, which was open to the public at my request…I think a journalist attended but never wrote anything about it, and there was a tape recorder going that eventually it turned out it wasn’t working.

So all I have is my memory and I tell the story many times about all of the interchanges. I had a medical doctor who had written about the Hippocratic oath come and talk about its significance, historically, which has an interesting background. But the interesting question is then, this concept of social responsibility, and the concept of academic freedom. Now this is a field for conservative philosophy, right? Nobody’s freedom is infinite, it’s bounded by their moral responsibilities. And that’s Sunday School issues, right? Freedom versus responsibility. And here I’m raising it at the world’s most famous public university, talking about freedom and responsibility. They want to talk about academic freedom, and I want to talk about the social responsibility. The question is these two things intersect. There’s a boundary that has to be acknowledged and dealt with. And I could never get anyone to deal with, so I tried in this hearing. And one of the people testifying there was a law professor who was chair of the Academic Freedom Committee. So I said to this law professor, I said I want to find out what are the boundaries of academic freedom, in this case meaning that anyone in the university can explore any ideas that they want, research any topic they want, there should be no barriers whatsoever placed by any sense ethics. That’s what I was trying to do in my class. That certain knowledge would be withheld, in suggesting that my knowledge would not go to some students who were not giving any indications that they would think about the consequences of how they use that.

So I took an example from research. I said to the law professor, “Suppose some member of the faculty wants to do research on the ways to make more efficient gas ovens for the extermination of certain ethnic groups. What would be the reaction of the Academic Freedom Committee to that person?” At once, he gave the response, “He is absolutely entitled to engage in that research. We have nothing to say from academic freedom!” I said, “I don’t believe you. That’s not how you would behave. There are human values that you would bring in here.” But he would not acknowledge, could not, didn’t want to admit that there was a lot to the debate. The next witness was the Vice Chancellor, speaking f or the administration, who happened to be a chemistry professor. And I gave him this hypothetical, I said, “Suppose a student comes to you, says: Professor give me your knowledge of chemistry, of how to make explosives, I want to put a bomb under the Bay Bridge at rush hour. What would be your response to that student?” He’s asking you for knowledge and you know what he’s going to do with that knowledge. And his response was, “It’s my obligation as a professor to give him that knowledge.” And I said, “I don’t believe you. You’d call the cops. That’s your response.” But he would not talk to that. Well, I’ve told this story occasionally in classes, and I’d say to students, “What’s going on here?” This is nonsense, they’d say, the responses from these two serious, responsible representatives of the academic community.

I mean it’s two parts. One was just making the point repeatedly, that science is engaged in human affairs, in politics, in war, and in economics. That it’s not this isolated, pure intellectual thing on its own, and that science is political. That’s the first step, which shouldn’t be radical in itself, right? But it’s radical only because the practitioners and the institutions of science traditionally say, “No, science is neutral. Science has nothing to do with politics.” Now to understand that debate you have to say, what do you mean by the word “science?” And in my course [on science and politics) this is the first lecture. If by science you mean just what’s in the books, that collection of knowledge, then yes that has no politics to it. But science is the work of scientists. It’s a human activity. It’s the work of doing research, of teaching, of learning, of deciding either this research project or not that research project.

It is a human activity, there are choices involved, and it has human consequences. And it’s funded by somebody and all those reasons are imbedded in the world of human affairs and politics. So it’s the abstract knowledge versus the human activity which differs. And, of course, once you talk about funding, well it’s obvious that it’s politically determined to an enormous degree. But that’s the first step is acknowledging what this activity of science is. And it’s radical only because the traditional mode of behavior within science is to say no, it’s got nothing to do with us. So the second part then, is to engage in particular issues, and then you are partisan as a radical scientist. For example, trying to say the war in Vietnam is bad, we as scientists are contributing to that, so we’re going to agitate and make noise this way. Or I could go the other way, Bill [William] Shockley, for example, convinced himself that race determines intelligence, and he made a public issue of this. He was doing what I might call a right-wing radical action in science, bringing politics and human affairs in. I don’t know whether people who identify with right-wing ideology would be insulted with my giving that label to it. It’s obviously a heavily race-invested set of opinions, so I apologize to anyone who feels that. But in fact there is a long tradition of those views being associated with a political act. Now the political left has its racist elements as well, I’ve discovered. So those are the two meanings of why it’s radical.

Catt:

The definition that I’m somewhat testing is when you’re a radical, you’re striking at the root of something. So my question is, what were you striking at in science? Was it institutional, the way science operates as a community, or was it personal?

Schwartz:

Well, the standard Left answer...

Catt:

A very complex question, I admit.

Schwartz:

No, it’s very simple. If you’re a Marxist you got a simple answer for this. I was not, am not, a Marxist, but a lot of Marxist stuff is worth learning about. The standard Marxist view for me and for many within Science for the People, who advocated a strong component of Marxism, says capitalist society is organized to meet the needs of capital and capitalist class, and science is one of those “forces” of production. Is that the right word? That science is controlled generally by capital to serve the needs of capitalism, right? So that is a radical view. It’s a strict left, radical, Marxist view of what science is in this society. Now one could say, of course, and I would say, okay let’s look at the Soviet Union, a supposedly Marxist state. Science there is absolutely in the service of the government. No question about the political control of science there. And in this country it’s somewhat more subtly done.

One of the tasks then, for radical scientists, is to expose the way in which the ruling forces of society, let’s get a little bit away from Marxist language now, that the powerful sectors of American society to a large degree control and orient the work of scientists; the military, other government agencies, large corporations, through their funding and through the kind of jobs that they make available. So it’s a lot more softer controlled than in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, bright kids in high school are sent to scientific institutions, paid for, well- taken care of, and when they graduate they’re told where and on what to work, for what the state wants. Here it’s much subtler. Of course when you’re a new Ph.D. in physics and you can’t find a job, it’s not that subtle. But in the times when money is flowing easy, yes, it seems no problem. As any professor in the university will say no one’s telling me what to do. Maybe I’m taking money from the defense department, maybe I’m not. It doesn’t matter, I do the work that I’m interested in, nobody tells me what to do. They look a little bit more closely, why are they being funded to do this and not something else, where will their students get jobs, and how does that serve the military and that’s the kind of thing I describe later on in those other booklets. [Cf. Charles Schwartz, Career Information for the Socially Responsible Physics Student, Social Responsibility: Volume 1 (Private publication, 1989); and Information for Students on the Military Aspects of Careers in Physics, Social Responsibility: Volume 2 (Private publication, 1989).]

Catt:

The control of funding, I think you would agree, directs the research front in science. What problems, what areas scientists will research.

Schwartz:

Yes.

Catt:

Would you say that, as some in the science studies field argue, the knowledge produced by science organizations, these institutions for knowledge production, can be directed or shaped? That what problems the scientist will work on, in some very real sense, are defined and this determines the knowledge that’s coming out of research? Which really gets at the issue of objectivity. Would you agree with that view, which is called the social production of scientific knowledge?

Schwartz:

Sure.