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GARY EICHTEN: Four minutes now past 12 o'clock.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Good afternoon and welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. History is often dismissed as the dusty, dry pursuit of boring academics. But Hy Berman can make history come alive, especially Minnesota history.

University of Minnesota historian Hy Berman describes himself as a public historian, one devoted to translating Minnesota's past and Minnesota's role in the world. Over the past 37 years, he's been doing just that.

Hy Berman is Minnesota's preeminent historian. And during this hour on Midday, as part of our Voices of Minnesota Series, we're going to talk history with Hy Berman. We'll be focusing on politics, the University of Minnesota, the Tobacco trial. Hy Berman's theater career, for that matter.

We begin, though, with Hy Berman's personal history. It's a story that begins in New York City, a classic story of Polish immigrants who were determined to give their son a chance at the American dream.

HY BERMAN: What it is essentially is a immigrant parents, working class parents, poverty-stricken living sometimes in the depth of poverty, sometimes in slums, sometimes a little bit above that.

Garment workers in New York or small retail merchants in other cities sacrificing their all so that one or more of their children could get education, higher education, so that they could, in fact, escape proletarian status, escape being working class.

My father was a garment worker, worked in men's clothing, when he could get work. Toward the depression times, even before that, he was blacklisted for radical union activities by, of all people, a radical himself, Sidney Hillman.

And his brother-in-law, my mother's sister's husband set him up in business in a candy store, which didn't do too well. Didn't do too badly either. That was in the Bronx. Then he decided that doing something more creative was important.

And he became a chicken farmer in New Jersey. So I came out of that tradition of working class immigrants striving. And again, a typical tradition as well, because the pattern I followed was the pattern of immigrant children from 1905 to 1950. The public schools of New York.

An elite high school that was open only through-- well, through examination. Stuyvesant High School, in my case. Then from Stuyvesant High School to City College of New York.

GARY EICHTEN: You couldn't speak English, though, when you started school.

HY BERMAN: That's correct. When I entered kindergarten, the first English words I heard were from the kindergarten teacher. And I didn't know what she was saying. It was amazing. I wasn't the only one. All my classmates were that way.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, how did they deal with it back then? I mean, it's become an issue again. A lot of kids in school. English is certainly not their first language.

HY BERMAN: The whole issue of bilingual education, bilingual bicultural education, it wasn't called that at the time. Called issue of immersion. It wasn't called that at the time. The fact is we were bilingual, we were bicultural.

And except it wasn't in school. In school was all English. On the streets and at home, it was all Yiddish. Though we lived a bicultural and bilingual world, we learned English through the way I think people learn second languages nowadays, through immersion.

And my kindergarten teacher was an old Irish spinster. She didn't know a word of Yiddish. Yet the 35 kids in her school-- in her class were all Yiddish speakers. I'm sorry. There's one who didn't-- wasn't. That was one Black student in the class. We had one Black student in this class. By the end of the year, he spoke Yiddish, too.

But the fact remains that, that issue is a very important one. And I lived through it in a way. I'm a strong supporter of bilingual, bicultural education. Only define the way I define it. That is to say the education should be in both languages, whatever the language of the student, usually Spanish nowadays and English.

English is the language of access in our society. Any children-- any group of children that are either deliberately or for political purposes deprived of learning English are being deprived of access to advancement. So I'm opposed to that.

But I'm for bilingual education in the sense that both languages, both cultures should be given an equal standing in the educational curriculum. And the children should in fact be completely, completely at home in both languages, as I was after a while.

GARY EICHTEN: Did the young Hy Berman want to be a history professor?

HY BERMAN: As a matter of fact, the last thing I wanted to be. My first contact with this, particularly American history was in fact this kind of super patriotic claptrap. George Washington cut down the cherry tree. So what?

I never even heard of a cherry tree. What's a cherry? Much less a cherry tree. We never had cherries. Cherries, wow, what's that? Anyway, when I discovered what a cherry tree was, in fact, after I ate my first cherry, I said he should have cut them all down.

But I was confronted with that kind of super patriotic claptrap. And even at the tender age of 11 or 12, I knew there's something wrong with that. As a matter of fact, my ambitions initially were to follow a scientific line of inquiry and of learning.

In fact, Stuyvesant High School was, in fact, designed for people who were proficient in science and math. It's a science and math school. And I got very, well, completely detailed and thorough training in science and math.

When I entered City College, I entered in advanced math, advanced calculus, advanced science. I switched to City College. In my junior year, I discovered that there's little creativity in chemistry, maybe because I hadn't gotten that far yet. Maybe if I'd gotten far, I'd found greater creativity.

And this was a time when, in fact, World War II was on. And the whole issue of war, peace, fascism, communism, the future of the nation, the changes that were taking place in our society with the new deal, all of this were kind of roiling in the intellectual atmosphere of City College. And I was caught up in that.

And that meant I either went into philosophy, political science, or history. Philosophy was too abstract for me. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I didn't know about angels, and I didn't even know what a pin was.

Political science was too concrete and specific. And even then too kind of prone to methodology models and predictability. So history is what I fell into, so to speak. But before I could even do that, Uncle Sam called.

And World War II, I was drafted into the United States Army in 1943. Not being able to complete my college work yet, of course. And thus, my college work was interrupted. And I completed it when I returned in '46.

GARY EICHTEN: Where did you serve?

HY BERMAN: I served in the United States Army. I was drafted in the army. I served my first six or seven months after basic training was in the army specialized training program, which was a way in which bright students were sent to colleges and universities for further training in languages or in science, what have you.

But in the spring of '44, Omar Bradley discovered that there were short of troops in Europe, particularly on the Eve of the invasion, both from-- the Southern invasion of Southern France and the cross-channel invasion.

So the IST program was broken up. And all of the ASTP students were sent into first line infantry divisions. Well, the degree of destruction of talent by that move was devastating.

The brightest young people were killed in battle of Europe and various battles in Asia just because Omar Bradley was shot, a couple of troops. Anyway, I found myself in the 102nd Infantry Division as Browning automatic rifleman.

It was on the Eve of going over to Europe that the medical checkup, prior to going over to Europe, discovered that although I was sound in every way, I had two hernias. You can't say the guy with two hernias to get shot, you know. You have to be completely healed.

So they sent me to the hospital in Fort Dix. All my friends went off to Europe. That 102nd division went off to Europe. And by the time I got out of the hospital and recuperated and all that, most of them were dead.

Most of them were dead. Thanks for the hernia, I'm alive. Anyway. I was then sent to a replacement operation down in Virginia. And they discovered I had a talent for languages for some strange reason.

So they sent me off to an army language school at Fort Meade, Maryland, where I learned to interrogate German prisoners of war. And all that time, I never once set foot on a boat ship. I spent all of my time in the United States doing this kind of work. Thank God.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you regret that? You often hear people who, I mean, they're not warmongers or anything, but at the time, it was a noble cause. And people wanted to be part of it. Do you regret not having gone overseas with the 102nd?

HY BERMAN: I don't regret not going overseas with 102nd knowing what happened to it. But I do regret not having had an opportunity to participate in the defeat of fascism directly. I did it indirectly.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, let's skip ahead a little bit here now. You get out of the service, you get your degree, CCNY.

HY BERMAN: That's correct.

GARY EICHTEN: And then you get your master's at Columbia.

HY BERMAN: Doctorate.

GARY EICHTEN: Doctorate at Columbia.

HY BERMAN: What happened was I spent one year in New York University. One of the masterful things of the United States during this period was the development or the development of the GI Bill of Rights. People call it the US Servicemen's Reeducation Rehabilitation Act of 1944. That's its actual title. The GI Bill.

The GI Bill, more than anything else, made it possible for the explosion in higher education to take place. In my case, I already had free education through the City College of New York, undergraduate education.

But it would have been unlikely had there not been the GI Bill that I could have afforded to go to graduate school. I probably would have gone on to take my license in high school teaching, take an exam in New York City school system, become a kind of Mr. Chips of the Lower East Side of New York or whatever. And retire as soon as I could.

But as it turned out, the GI Bill made it possible for me if I conserved my assets correctly to go through the entire graduate program for a doctorate at the most expensive school in the country, Columbia University. Then it was the most expensive school in the country.

GARY EICHTEN: So how-- I mean, you're an academic high roller then. How is it that you end up out here on the prairie at the U of M?

HY BERMAN: That's a good question. Throughout the time that I was going to graduate school, I did, in fact, do some teaching on the side. And I taught at City College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and the city universities.

And after I got my degree, my first teaching position was at City College, then at Brooklyn College for three years. After three years at Brooklyn College. I think there was a mutual decision that I'd be better off out of Brooklyn College and they'd be better off without me being there.

It was kind of a mutually agreed upon thing. Actually, John Hope Franklin, who was the distinguished African-American historian, now chair of President Clinton's race commission, was chair of the History Department at Brooklyn College.

And he said to me, you don't want to stay here, do you? I said, not really. He said, I'm not going to stay here either. I'm leaving next year. I'm going to the University of Chicago. I said, OK. So I got a job at Michigan State University.

And this was quite, quite an eye opener, despite the fact that my parents were in chicken farming and I had some knowledge of at least New Jersey type of rural America coming into the heartland of the midwest, particularly Michigan East Lansing. Moo U, it was called, then cow college. This was a trauma, a real trauma.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it. But within three months, I bought a house, settled in because I was going to stay for a long time. But then three months, my friends, acquaintances here at Minnesota called me and asked me if I would be interested in being considered for a position at the University of Minnesota.

And I said, looking at the cows and the cows are coming along and licking my face, I said, sure, I'd be very happy to consider Minnesota. I came here. Not in the winter time, but in late fall. Gorgeous weather. Leaves were turning. It was marvelous. The city. Cars.

GARY EICHTEN: Seduced.

HY BERMAN: That was marvelous. It was just great. They made me an offer and I said, I take it. By the way, there's a little other incident that may be really revealing here about what Minnesota was like in 1961 and '62.

My academic advisor at Columbia University was Dean Harry Carman, distinguished historian, but more noted for the fact that he was Dean of Columbia College. And he ran Columbia University when Dwight David Eisenhower was president of Columbia university, knew nothing about universities.

So anyway, when I called Harry to tell him from Michigan that I had received an offer from Minnesota, I didn't tell him I accepted it because know, I was going to defer to him should I take it or not. I had already accepted it too.

So his response was, oh, no, you didn't get an offer from Minnesota. I said, what do you mean? I have it right in front of me. No, impossible. You can't. Not that history department. I said, why not?

He said that history department doesn't hire Jews. And the word he used was the Nazi word. A Judenrein Department. That was the reputation that the Minnesota history department had. In fact, that's the reputation that the University of Minnesota had generally at that time.

Unknown to Harry and unbeknownst to me, that had been-- that Barry had been broken a couple of years before. And I was not the first Jewish academic to come to the history department. But nonetheless, that was the kind of climate that existed in the university and in the state, which is why I--

GARY EICHTEN: This is the late '50s, isn't it?

HY BERMAN: This is the early '60s.

GARY EICHTEN: And it still had that reputation, and it's still a deserved reputation even then?

HY BERMAN: Quasi deserved. Yes.

GARY EICHTEN: Wow.

HY BERMAN: Quasi deserved. But it had that reputation. Yes. So I thought I'd throw that in just to get the listener an idea that, hey, Minnesota nice ain't always been Minnesota nice. There's been Minnesota prejudice, there's been Minnesota ugly, there's been Minnesota lousy.

GARY EICHTEN: Early '60s and it was still that bad.

HY BERMAN: Well, the afterglow of evil existed, let's put it that way.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, when you came here, did you set out to become Minnesota's preeminent Minnesota historian? I mean, you're always identified, of course, as a labor historian. And I want to talk to you about that. But I think in a broader sense, you have become the Minnesota historian.

HY BERMAN: When I decided to move in the area of public history, I had no choice. Well, let me put it this way. In a way, I fell into it. Let's be frank and honest here. I knew nothing about Minnesota before I came here.

I barely knew where it was. But when I first came here, Ole Meredith Wilson was president of the University of Minnesota. And he was a historian, a very good historian, a historian of education.

And he had close ties with the Ford Foundation and with the history of education group and the Ford Foundation. And it was his ambition to have a project, research project investigating the impact of education on immigrants in Minnesota.

And the specific area that we focused upon. It literally became the focus was the immigrant iron miners. Northeastern Minnesota. And my role in this was to look at informal education, education as it played itself out within the ethnic communities, in the labor movement, and things like that.

That's why I was chosen because of labor history. And ties with the labor people. I spent three years-- three, maybe four years on this project. And that three or four years I got to know Northern Minnesota, at least, the iron range, the people up there. That's when I met Rudy Perpich.

He was then a dentist and a school board member. And my informant in a way. And so what was going on and who was important, who to see, where sources were, and things like that. So that was my first introduction to Minnesota history.

After that started, look, if I were going to do even labor history, shouldn't I become acquainted with what, in fact, is the labor history of this region? And I discovered it was a rich, varied, and very, very complex, interesting, and important aspect of national labor history, international labor history.

Ranging all the way from its contacts with the Soviet Union and China down to what was going on in the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul. So this got me interested in that aspect of it.

In my normal activities as a citizen, I became actively involved, not as actively as many people, but actively involved in local politics as well. The city of Minneapolis state and so on. And got to know the actors and so on. And participated in that. And got even further involved in Minnesota issues, Minnesota politics.

Before I knew it, you guys here at MPR press, of St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune keep calling me and asking me questions about Minnesota history. The State Historical Society, Minnesota Historical Society makes me a fellow, a senior fellow.

I become a member of their board. They give me a place to work. And now I'm identified as a Minnesota historian. Me from the sidewalks of New York, whose only contact with agriculture is chicken farming.

The only mining I know, mining, of course, in direction, the only mining I know is digging sand out of the beach of Coney Island. But anyway, that's how it came. And don't get me wrong. I enjoyed every minute of it. I do. And I still do.

I think it's important because I think it's not only important in the context of its own sake, but I think Minnesota history is important in the National context, and even in the international context. And that's the focus I'd like to put it in.

Most people who have an interest in Minnesota history have an interest in some aspects of curiosity, genealogy, artifacts, this building, that building, that gangster, the other gangster. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that's not important. It is important to those people who feel that is, in fact, what they want to know.

But to me, as a professional historian, I want to put things in context. What is the significance of what I'm studying in the context of the national experience? What is its significance in the context of the world experience? How does it fit in to the totality of our picture of humanity even? I mean, that may be a little ambitious. But anyway, you get my point.

GARY EICHTEN: University of Minnesota historian, Hy Berman. We spoke with Professor Berman as part of Minnesota Public Radio's Voices of Minnesota Series. We asked Hy Berman for some snapshots of famous Minnesotans, beginning with Hubert Humphrey.

HY BERMAN: Hubert Humphrey was probably the most important, the most significant, the most powerful and influential political figure of-- Minnesota political figure of the 20th century. I put him ahead of Floyd Olson. I put him ahead of Harold Stassen, obviously. I put him ahead of all of these figures.

His influence and impact was great in terms not only of transforming Minnesota Public policy and Minnesota law. Minnesota politics, but also in the context of his role as a Minnesotan in national and international affairs.

A man who was perhaps his own worst enemy. I knew him very well. We were very close. Yet by that, I mean, he was too interested in having everybody love him. Therefore, he was not willing to break with something or someone when he thought he should.

He should have broken with Lyndon Johnson two, three, four, five, six months before he did. He probably would have won the presidency had he done that in '68. But he didn't. Loyalty was a trait which is good that he had, but it also was something that could and did betray him.

GARY EICHTEN: Rudy Perpich, who you were a kind of a special, unappointed but widely recognized advisor to Rudy Perpich during his first term in the '70s.

HY BERMAN: Rudy was a very close personal friend. As I mentioned before, he was the person I met and up on the Iron Range when I was doing that Iron Range project, and got to know him very, very well. Got to know him even better when he came down to the Twin Cities as a State Senator, and then as Lieutenant Governor.

During the two years before he was defeated by Al Quie, I worked very closely with him. Every spare moment I had outside of the university, I was over at the state capital working with him. Wrote most of his speeches, most of his position papers and things like that at the time.

And I did it, of course, without getting compensation, without getting paid. I didn't say he didn't want me to take leave from the university and go work for pay for him. But I didn't think that was the right thing to do.

For simple reason, If I had done that, I'd be an employee and I couldn't say to him, you're damn wrong. This is on the air. I would have said it with a different mix of words.

We remained good friends, Close friends until he ran in again for election for the second time. At that point, he shifted his orientation and position, adopting what was an anti-abortion position from what had been a pro-choice position before.

GARY EICHTEN: We're talking-- this is in 1982?

HY BERMAN: '82. And before that, he had told me that he'd never again be defeated in any political campaign. He'll do everything he could not to be defeated. So we were estranged for a while.

And that estrangement lasted for significant time. It became even deeper during the Hormel strike when I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which I said very objectively that when a DFL governor calls out the troops to keep the Hormel plant open, the strike's over. That's what he did, remember.

I wasn't condemning him for it. I was just stating it as a fact. And apparently, his father, who was an old trade Unionist, radical from back in the 20s, and whom I respected very much and who I think he respected me as well, he read that piece in the tribune and he gave his son Holy hell.

And of course, that didn't endear Rudy to me again for a long time. We made up toward the end of his political administration, became friends again. The last year or two of his life, we saw each other-- I saw him quite frequently.

He was a decent and very important figure-- decent human being, and an important political figure in Minnesota. He achieved more than I thought he would be capable of achieving as governor.

He accomplished things that were revolutionary in many ways. He transformed the appointment process. Making it possible for people who had previously been excluded from state governmental positions, including judicial appointments to enter into these positions.

Women, minorities of various kinds. And it was based on merit and talent, not just on the fact that they're a woman or Black or whatever. He is longest serving governor in our state. I think no one will ever-- well, it's hard to say no one will ever. Political science will say that of a historian.

I doubt that anyone would serve three terms. Therefore, you need to serve three terms now to exceed the 10 years that Rudy served. So when he died, Minnesota Public Television asked me to give the kind of appreciation, whatever you want to call it, on the special program they had on Rudy Perpich.

And I gave a two-minute kind of statement, which I ended with the statement that with all its faults, Rudy was a mensch, a real mensch. Mensch is the Yiddish word for a decent human being.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, I have so many Minnesotans run for president so unsuccessfully, I might add. But why have so many given it a shot far out of proportion, you'd think, to the size of the state and the population?

HY BERMAN: That's a very, very good question. And I think there are very many different answers to it. Basically, I think what we have is really four people who have run for president in the 20th century. John Johnson in 1908. But he died before he could be a contender.

But he was, of course, a symbol that was grasped upon by the anti-Wilson forces, anyone but Wilson. But the fact of the matter was that he did have a significant national reputation and could be so identified. But outside of 1908, what we have is Harold Stassen, Hubert Humphrey, Fritz Mondale, those three.

GARY EICHTEN: Not McCarthy. You wouldn't put him on that list?

HY BERMAN: No, I wouldn't put McCarthy into that at all because McCarthy didn't run really for president of the United States. He ranted to prevent Lyndon Johnson from getting the nomination. I don't think he was serious or I don't think he seriously considered that he had a chance to get the nomination. He acted as if he did, but he really wasn't a serious contender.

I think he would have been happier running for poet laureate than president of the United States. But you'd have to include him perhaps in that list. John Johnson-- if you include John Johnson, you have to include McCarthy.

GARY EICHTEN: Why do people-- so many people seem to be so utterly disinterested in politics these days.

HY BERMAN: I mean, you look around at what's going on in the public arena today, and who in the hell would be interested? I mean, look, it's discouraging. I mean, money talks and power behind money walks.

GARY EICHTEN: But wasn't that always the case? I mean, you're a historian.

HY BERMAN: Not really. Not to the degree that it is now. With the proliferation-- well, with the ending of really personal campaigning and the replacement of personal campaigning by electronic campaigning, the costs of election campaigns have escalated to the degree that one can't afford to run even for minor office.

I mean, to run for mayor of Minneapolis or mayor of St. Paul, who the hell would want to be mayor of Minneapolis or St. Paul? But even to run for that office requires an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And where is that going to come from? My 50 buck contribution. Your 50 buck contribution. That'll help a little bit. But really, you can't nickel and dime yourself into $100,000. I'm not talking about minor position now. You're going to have to have some contributions of 1,000, 10,000, 20,000.

GARY EICHTEN: So money in your mind has really corrupted the whole system and made it so unappealing that people just-- there is no reason for them to be interested.

HY BERMAN: Exactly. That's exactly it. And the fact that the issues have become much more complex. And one can be also a little bit cynical and say that, hell, things are not that bad for most Americans. It's bad for many Americans, but not bad for most Americans.

The economy has been booming for the last 4, 5, 6 years. Sure, labor standards have eroded to some extent. Wages, real wages have not kept up. Production workers and things like that.

But overall, people are better off now than they were five, six, seven years ago. And they become more privately-oriented than publicly-oriented. This has a very negative impact on public consciousness as well. And develops a politics of selfishness.

I mean, people rally against taxes. I mean, there's even a movement afoot to eliminate all taxes and let people save the money from taxes to pay tuition for their children in schools. That means kill the public schools.

Marketplace. Marketplace economics has become, in fact, the counterpart of the indifference to politics that's I think, ruling the present mix of attitudes, public attitudes that I deplore. Obviously, I would deployed. I came out of a public education, public institutions.

GARY EICHTEN: And a father who was involved in some radical union activity, you said, is that how you got involved in labor history?

HY BERMAN: Yes, actually, I did not do my dissertation.

GARY EICHTEN: Are you a bomb thrower? [LAUGHS]

HY BERMAN: I wish I were a bomb thrower. I'm just too phlegmatic to throw bombs. I'd rather sit back and listen to the Kreutzer Sonata or a good Opera than let's go out and throw bombs. But in any case, my father was going to change the world, obviously. My mother particularly, she was going to change the world. But my father was going to change the world.

So he found Sidney Hillman, who was the president of the Amalgamated clothing workers. And of course, one of the more radical trade unionists in the 1920s and '30s, too conservative. So he found himself on the outs.

But the point is that even he, who was an immigrant, recognized that there is, in fact, a public role that has to be played in the society to improve the status of people, at the very least through education.

I mean, he may not have learned all of the nuances and the constitution. He may not have known all the ins and outs of American history, but he was a hell of a lot better American than any of the libertarians I hear nowadays.

GARY EICHTEN: Thirty years, speaking of education, 30 years, you've been at the University of Minnesota.

HY BERMAN: 37 to be exact.

GARY EICHTEN: Once the Crown Jewel of Minnesota, it's the place where all the sons and daughters were sent. Is it still a good University?

HY BERMAN: It's still a good University. It's a better University than the state deserves.

GARY EICHTEN: Right so?

HY BERMAN: Yes, it's underfunded and unappreciated. Well, in a historical context, I think I should take that back a little bit. It was very, very much appreciated and very much kind of a crown jewel of our educational institution until the 1970s when erosion started taking place.

And the erosion in public attitudes coincides with the erosion in state funding. And when I arrived in Minnesota, the state provided for a little bit better than 1/3 the cost of education of an undergraduate student. Now it provides a little bit under 1/5.

Now that's an indication of what's going on. The consequences is that the university has to cut or had to cut in the past, or look to the students themselves to make up the difference. Therefore, we've done things that are unconscionable, raise tuition to one of the highest in the big 10 out of necessity. So in that sense, I think we're a better university than the state deserves.

Yes, things have been somewhat reversed in the last year. But then again, we've had budget surpluses of the kind we've ever experienced before. And there's a strong public dislike for putting that money into baseball and football stadiums. So let's put them into laboratories. So that that's been a change.

But basically, by all measures and all standards, the university is not worse off now in the national standing than it was when I arrived. Maybe eroded a little bit here or there, but basically it's not any worse off now. There are areas where it's worse off. Our academic health center is in real trouble.

But that has to do with the nature of medical practice nowadays. But outside of that, I know it's a great university. I'm proud to be part of it. Proud to be an integral part of it. And I think I'm proud to have made my modest contribution to it with all the students and all that.

GARY EICHTEN: How bad did the tenure fight hurt you and all the business about unionization? You supported unionizing the faculty.

HY BERMAN: Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, the tenure fight could have been disastrous, and could have resulted in a quick erosion of the university had the tenure battle gone in a different direction. Had, in other words, the militant radical reasons won out and tenure eroded?

The likelihood is great that our chances of recruiting good faculty would have diminished. And we would have lost many of the top people in the faculty, which then would have really meant an erosion of the university.

Fortunately, it worked out well. Yes, I was in favor of unionization. And we did-- and the union vote was a key ingredient in resolving the issue. The outcome of that, remember, was that the collective bargaining lost by six votes out of what? 2,000 votes cast, whatever. That was the best of all possible outcomes.

It scared the hell out of the regions. And did not obligate those of us who believed in collective bargaining to start the process with a mandate of six. So it was the best possible outcome you could have gotten.

And then I think the outcome was made even better by the fortuitous selection of Mark Yudof as the next president of the university. Mark's a remarkable man. Any man who could win over Arnie Carlson to support the university budget, to support everything in the university outside of basketball. As a master politician. And Mark is that.

GARY EICHTEN: You always hear-- not only at the University of Minnesota, but universities across the country, you hear this criticism that a whole generation of professors who were kind of weaned in the 1960s, the anti-war movement and stuff, have become tenured professors at universities around and near destroying higher education, throwing out the classics, offering goofy courses, and just pushing a political agenda. Is that true?

HY BERMAN: Well, it may be true in some places. It isn't true at the University of Minnesota, not to the degree, at least, to those who claim that this is happening. I've not seen it happen. I see Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare still being taught in the English Department.

The English Department is generally pointed to as the most egregious department in terms of this kind of horrendously anti-intellectual attitude. Yet I still see the English Department doing its core work, the core teaching.

In the History Department, we have not moved in that direction whatsoever. That isn't to say that there aren't questions that the '60s generation raises that aren't important and should be raised. Many important questions.

And they don't have all the answers, nor that those of us who trained the '60s generation, after all, we're responsible for them, have all the answers either. The fact that they're raising questions having to do with the relative power relations in the society, particularly as it affects racial, ethnic, and gender issues are important, I think.

They raise questions about, what is the nature of culture in our society? And how is the power arrangement, the power relationship reflected in that? That's an important question. That doesn't mean that I'm going to accept their analysis, that we should throw out everything that was done by White, dead Anglo-Saxon males. Absolutely not.

Many things done by White Anglo-Saxon males deserve to be thrown out. And I'll be the first to throw it out. But many things are important, and should remain in the curriculum. That there are crazies out there that say throw out Shakespeare and let's use Lumumba instead. Fine. They want to do it, let them do it. But don't force me to do it.

GARY EICHTEN: I have to ask you, you served as a witness for the tobacco industry and the Minnesota lawsuit against the big tobacco companies. There were eyebrows raised. Did you catch a lot of static for that?

HY BERMAN: Not really. Some, but not really. Actually, put it in context. I was asked about 2 and 1/2 years ago, almost three years ago, to look into the question of what, in fact, was the knowledge of the health hazards of smoking that was held by Minnesotans over time? How did they accumulate or receive that knowledge? What did they respond? And how do they respond to the knowledge?

And what did the state, through its various agencies, do or not do about this? I decided that this was a significant enough series of questions that it deserves looking into. And having received-- well, complete kind of freedom to do this as I pleased and to present what I found without any question of whom it would hurt or whom it would help, I went ahead and did it.

The lawyers for the tobacco companies knew very well that my basic approach-- my basic prejudice was against him. After all, I'm also-- I also live in the 1990s. But they felt, OK, go ahead and do that.

So I did that research. And it was my findings that I presented to the court, to the jury in the three days that I presented testimony in what will go down as one of the landmark cases of the 20th century, landmark civil cases in the 20th century. Did it help the tobacco interests or did it hurt them? I don't know. I have no way of knowing. And I don't care.

GARY EICHTEN: You did invite the jurors over for coffee afterward. Did they come over?

HY BERMAN: No.

GARY EICHTEN: They did say later, though, the ones who met with the reporters anyway, that you were one of their favorite witnesses.

HY BERMAN: They did say that?

GARY EICHTEN: Absolutely.

HY BERMAN: OK. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Thank you. That never came out in the press, at least I didn't read it.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah.

HY BERMAN: So I'm glad to hear that.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, you're a great storyteller. How did you learn-- how did you tell such great, great stories?

HY BERMAN: My teaching. When you teach.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah, but some teachers, as you well know, are not good storytellers.

HY BERMAN: Shall I give away a secret? I'll give away a secret. One of my alternative career paths after high school, early years of college was the theater. I did, in fact, spend some time in the studio, Actors studio. Not the famous Actors Studio. The Actors Studio of the RPF, which is the Yiddish Actor's Studio, which was related to the other one. Of course, Lee Strasberg was part of it.

My teachers were people like Jules Dassin, who did never on Sunday, and Topkapi was married to Melina Mercouri and still lives in Greece, and Melina is dead. And I think I made the wrong choice.

I think I should have gone into the theater, because my colleague, friend, classmate there was Sidney Lumet, who became one of the great directors, Hollywood directors. He went from actor to director. I probably would have taken that path as well.

Well, the theatricality, perhaps, and that built-in theatricality is--

GARY EICHTEN: Leading man or a character actor?

HY BERMAN: Look, I never-- I mean, the only time I'd be a leading man would be if they were looking for someone who was short and stocky. And that very seldom that would happen.

So anyway, so you ask the question. I think that's part of it, the theatricality. But to get back to the witnesses, I had a lot of fun, really, even with the cross-examination, with Mr. Ciresi who I considered one of the top talented lawyers of our day.

I think he had some fun with me, too. I think we had mutual respect and admiration. I enjoyed doing it. And as far as doing it at all, you asked earlier if I got any kind of guff. I had some hate mail unsigned, some faxes that were nasty.

But my friends know the only negative statements that came to me from some of my colleagues was even if what I was doing was historically correct and accurate, I shouldn't do it because these are evil people that I was defending by doing it.

My response to that was they may be evil people. I don't know. I assume you're right, they are. OK. But they may be evil people. But even evil people deserve an adequate defense in our judicial system.

If you're going to make a determination who is to have adequate defense, then your evil person may not be the other guy's evil person. And I recall that one of the traumas of my life, early life in the 1950s, was being the son of my father. And being hounded and harassed by the super patriots.

Not McCarthy himself, thank God. But the junior McCarthys. And if there's a question as to who is evil, then can't you define those people like my father and me as being evil after all? We are going against the establishment. Therefore, we don't deserve adequate defense.

I said, if that's the case and you're the definition of the tobacco companies not deserving an adequate defense, then the victims of McCarthyism don't deserve it either. I can't buy that at all. There can't be a separate judgment-- value judgment for one or another. There should be uniform for all. Some accepted that reasoning. Some did not.

GARY EICHTEN: How long is Hy Berman historian going to be teaching at the U?

HY BERMAN: I have-- I'm scheduled to teach the next academic year. What happens after that? Who knows. Probably, I will take a leave of absence if I can, for one semester, the following year, and come back for the second semester to fulfill my obligations for that leave and then retire, if I can do that.

GARY EICHTEN: Get a job at the Guthrie, you think?

HY BERMAN: I doubt it. I doubt it. I doubt it. I doubt it. Mr. Dowling wouldn't particularly appreciate the fact that my training was training in the theater of 50 years ago.

GARY EICHTEN: Put your Hy Berman historian hat on, if you would, please, and assess Hy Berman, the historian.

HY BERMAN: It's hard to do. Very hard to do. I'm not a conventional and traditional historian. I have not done the kind of conventional historical-- traditional historical work in great depth or detail that others have done.

What I have done-- what I have attempted to do is I've attempted to translate the best and the most accurate historical knowledge regarding the state, the nation, our society for the public at large as a public historian through the use of newspapers, television, radio, lectures, and things of that nature. I think I've been reasonably successful in that.

GARY EICHTEN: University of Minnesota historian, Hy Berman. We spoke with Professor Berman as part of Minnesota Public Radio's Voices of Minnesota Series. The series is produced by Dan Olson.

Well, that does it for our Midday program today. Sure, would like to thank you for tuning in. By the way, we're going to be rebroadcasting this interview with Hy Berman at 9 o'clock tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio so you get a second chance to hear the interview. That's 9 o'clock tonight. Conversation with Hy Berman.

Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Valleyfair Family Amusement park, where season passes are now available. It's entertainment for the whole family. On Monday, over the noon hour, a special documentary report on the life of Helen Keller, one of this century's most influential women.

Monday marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Helen Keller. And we're going to be broadcasting a special documentary. I hope you can join us for that. Sarah Meier is the producer of our midday program, associate producer Mike McCaul Pengra.

We had help this week from Clifford Bentley, Rick [? Kozinski, ?] Scott Liebers, and Amy Randall. News headlines are coming up next. And then right after the news, National Public Radio's Richard Harris will be along with Science Friday, a look today at the debate on the-- debate about organic food standards.

LORNA BENSON: I'm Lorna Benson. The Monet exhibit arrives in Minneapolis. It's expected to draw the biggest crowd ever to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's all things considered weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio KNOW-FM 91.1.

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