Stanley Hoffmann

Stanley Hoffmann stared down at his lap, then fingered a nob on his desk drawer. A few minutes later he groped for a paper clip and stuck it between his teeth. Hoffmann was being accommodating, talking about himself, but he wasn't used to it, and he probably didn't enjoy it.

He discussed what he called his "most powerful experience," living through World War II in France. He and his mother were alone and part-Jewish. When Hoffmann was II, the Nazis occupied Paris, where they were living, and he and his mother fled to Nice, first unoccupied and later controlled by the easy-going Italians. In 1943, Italy capitulated and the Germans took over. The Hoffmanns dwelt in terror; many of their countrymen--expatriate Austrians--were picked up by the Gestapo.

"We spent much time in those days planning how to escape through the roof of our home, if an unwelcome knock came on the door," Hoffmann recalls.

After three harrowing months, the Hoffmanns fled to a hamlet of 800 people on the Mediterranean coast, where their heritage would be safely obscured. Nine months later, in August of 1944, the Allies liberated France.

Hoffmann had survived the Nazis' reign, but not its effect. He says that his present deep interest in the study of war springs from "that long, long night-mare from which one never knew if one was to emerge alive." For the past five years, he has taught a course on war, now Soc Sci 112, and ultimately he plans to write a book which will develop his lecture ideas more fully. Next year he will publish a study of American foreign policy, dwelling on its relations to war.

Vietnam is his immediate concern. He talks about it in his courses, writes about it in letters to the New York Times, and supports anti-war activities on campus. At a Faculty meeting soon after the Dow demonstration, he proposed that a student-Faculty committee be created to discuss the University's role in the war. Elections of student delegates are about to begin now, and soon the committee will be a reality.

Hoffmann no longer likes to talk about his proposal. "It's bad for one man to be in the limelight too much around here," he says. "Bad for the committee and bad for me."

He admits, though, that he sponsored the committee not only because of his worry over the war, but because of his affection for Harvard. "The University is truly a community here," he says. "Faculty, students and administrators are continually inter-acting, and this makes Harvard a fascinating place. After Dow, I was afraid this community might fall apart."

Hoffmann's zest for Harvard, still very evident and unabashed, dates from 1951, when he spent a year here working for his Master's degree. He had entered the Institute d'Etudes Politiques in Paris after the war, when he was 18, and had begun studying for a law degree at the same time.

Hoffmann graduated from law school, which he loathed, and the college of political science, which fascinated him, the same year, 1948. He then hoped to enter a newly-established school for French career civil servants. But his Austrian birth--in Vienna in 1928--made him temporarily ineligible. School regulations required that applicants be naturalized French citizens for five years, and Hoffmann, who received his citizenship in 1947 although he had lived in France since 1929, couldn't quality until 1952.

So he had some time to spare. Pursuing a growing curiosity about the United States, he applied to Harvard's graduate program in government, came here in 1950, and was appointed course assistant to McGeorge Bundy, then an assistant professor and teacher of the college's main undergraduate course in American foreign policy.

In late 1951 Hoffmann returned to France, but through a freak accident (his subscription to Le Monde had expired three days before a change in the application deadline was announced) he arrived home too late to apply to civil service school. Instead he languished in the French army, fulfilling his military obligation in Paris as an aide to the Minister of War--until January, 1955, when Bundy wrote and invited him to fill a vacant Instructorship at Harvard.

Again in Cambridge, Hoffmann resumed his position as assistant in Bundy's foreign relations course. Since then, he has proved himself an innovative leader in matters of curriculum. In 1960, together with Bundy, who by this time was Dean of the College, Hoffmann established the Social Studies program. He is still chairman of the department, which offers an interdisciplinary persective on the social sciences. And in 1962, as the peace issue began emerging at Harvard, Hoffmann first taught his course on war.

He remains a leader, as his anti-war activities demonstrate. But he extrovertive side to his personality isn't entirely dominant: he gives the impression that, if his concern over Vietnam hadn't stirred his conscience, he would be content, even anxious, to lead a quiet self-effacing academic life.

He yearns for time away from his major preoccupation in recent years--international relations--so that he can devote more of his energies to his other field--France. "I've always longed to be French," he says. "And when I have the time, I hope to do much more teaching and writing on French society, French literature, and DeGaulle."

Hoffmann will infuse these planned works with his own concepts of political science, which aren't concerned so much with "statistics, quantitative analysis, abstracting politics from political issues, and working with 'systems' rather than the people in them," he says. "I will limit myself to studying concrete politics, and extracting generalization based on them."

Hoffmann's preference for a humanistic approach to political science harmonizes well with other facets of his personality. He seems genuinely excited by fellow scholars, Harvard undergraduates, and his friends, such as Bundy, despite his stance on the war, and French sociologist Raymond Aron ("the two most brilliant men I know"). He likes music, though he can't make any. "I don't see why I should play an instrument badly when I can listen to someone else do it well, so I have a very good record collection."

Married since 1963, Hoffmann lives with his wife in a rented home near Radcliffe. He appears fairly content with Harvard, although he permits himself one general disgruntlement. "The thing I miss here is beauty," he says. "There are too many buildings in Cambridge, and the weather is abominable. Since my youth in France, I've come to expect a warm ocean as a natural right, and I think no one has an excuse for living in New England. We professors who enjoy Mediterranean landscapes--and there are many of us--should petition Harvard to buy us a farm in southern France when we retire."

Having expressed his complaint, Hoffmann settled down in his chair, stuck the paper clip back in his mouth, and his voice returned to a somewhat nervous, reflective timbre. His behavior changed so because I had asked a more serious question, and as before, he was having trouble talking about himself.