Stevenson: His Impact on Education, International Affairs, Nixon, and Politics

Abstract

In 1952, while a student at Oxford University in England, on the eve of the presidential election in the United States that year, I joined several other Americans to put on a mock “National Convention” at Rhodes House where I nominated Adlai Ewing Stevenson as the candidate of the Democratic Party for President. I also wrote, for a student journal at Oxford, an essay entitled, “Why I’m voting Democratic in November,” in which I sharply criticized the candidacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, praised Stevenson, and went so far as to predict a Democratic victory. So politically intense was I and so greatly did I admire Stevenson that I had reprints of my article made and sent to, among others, Paul M. Butler, a lawyer from my hometown of South Bend, Indiana, who was the Democratic National Committeeman for the State, and William McCormick Blair Jr., a Chicago attorney who was Stevenson’s law partner and close associate.

Dr. John Brademas is President Emeritus of New York University (NYU) and served as President from 1981–92. During that time, he led the transition of NYU from a regional commuter institution to a national and international research university. In 1955–56, he was Executive Assistant to Adlai E. Stevenson, in charge of research on issues during Stevenson’s second presidential campaign. An Indiana Democrat, Dr. Brademas served as U.S. Representative in Congress for 22 years (1959–81), the last four as House Majority Whip. In Congress, he played a leading role in writing federal legislation to assist schools, colleges, and universities; libraries and museums; the arts and the humanities; and to provide services for children, the elderly, and the disabled. Former Chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he is today President of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center of New York University Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and National Academy of Education (USA) and member of the Academy of Athens, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and National Academy of Education of Argentina. A B.A., magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, John Brademas was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he earned a D.Phil. degree in social studies. He has been awarded honorary degrees by fifty-two colleges and universities, most recently (2003) by Oxford University. The degree citation described him as “a man of varied talents and extraordinary energy, the most practical of academics, the most scholarly of men of action.” Dr. Brademas is author of Anarcosin-dicalismo v revolucion social en Espana (1930– 1937), published in Barcelona by Ariel in 1974. He is, with Lynne P. Brown, author of The Politics of Education: Conflict and Consensus on Capitol Hill, published in 1987 by the University of Oklahoma Press. He is also author of Washington, D.C., to Washington Square, published in New York in 1986 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.