• Jackie Robinson, ballplayer and civil rights leader: Jackie Robinson: A Biography
  by Arnold Rampersad
• In the American university system, Princeton is far from the norm: Anne Matthews *81
  by Michael Lewis '82
• Das Intellectual Capital: Pete du Pont '56's Web magazine
• Short Takes
  
• Books Received
  
• The vampire strikes back: Carol Dunne '87
  
• Chip Monk '82 rocks
  

Jackie Robinson, ballplayer and civil rights leader
Rampersad offers a richly detailed portrait of discrimination

Jackie Robinson: A Biography
Arnold Rampersad
Alfred A. Knopf, $27.50

IN JACK ROOSEVELT ROBINSON, Arnold Rampersad has chosen a fine subject for a biography. Jackie Robinson, it is widely remembered, is the man who overcame the taunts of opposing players and fans, as well as the deep-seated prejudice of most baseball owners, in breaking major league baseball's racial barrier. It is less widely remembered that, before his premature death in 1972, Robinson became a prominent--if maverick--force in civil rights and electoral politics.
Rampersad, a professor of English and Afro-American studies at Princeton, handles his subject sensitively and with exquisite clarity. He marshals a masterful attention to detail, and he almost never overplays his material. This last habit, however, is also his prime failing. Rampersad's biography dwells on lists of award-dinners, speeches and quotations from letters, all the while giving short shrift to the colorful narratives that infused Robinson's life. Perhaps most frustrating is Rampersad's tendency to avoid almost every opportunity to analyze Robinson's life within the context of American race relations, particularly considering how much race relations have evolved during the 25 years since Robinson's death.
Rampersad avoids the temptation to airbrush Robinson's warts, especially his on-field temper, which, as he correctly points out, was not always triggered by the racist actions of others. And he describes with sensitivity Robinson's relationship with Branch Rickey, the Dodger executive who hired him, as well as Jack's lifelong devotion to his wife, Rachel.
Above all, Rampersad deserves credit for his richly detailed portrait of discrimination. The prejudice begins early, with the story of how the Robinsons--a rural Georgia family into which Jack was the last-born--decided to move to California. It was common in the deep South for local police to prevent black families from fleeing, but the Robinsons were not hindered. Although Pasadena, where the family settled, was noticeably more welcoming, it, too, was imperfect. For instance, we are told that the Pasadena city pool only allowed nonwhites as patrons during a weekly "International Day," after which, officials assured residents, the pool was drained and refilled.
During World War II, Robinson toiled on the homefront as an officer in several racist training camps, which led to his widely publicized acquittal on charges stemming from an episode of discrimination he had refused to tolerate. The court-martial experience, no doubt, steeled Robinson for the rigors of integrating baseball.
Later, in both the old Negro Leagues and in the majors, Robinson suffered the torment of Florida's Jim Crow laws during spring training--even after becoming a national celebrity. At least once, after being refused at several Miami restaurants, he and his black teammates were reduced to buying bread and meat to eat in the street.
Most breathtaking of all is the harrowing tale of how Jack and Rachel had to travel from California to Florida in 1946, his first season in the Dodger organization. That passage is one of the rare ones in which Rampersad really shines as a narrative stylist. Unfortunately, Rampersad's interpretive hand does not show itself enough. For instance, the Robinson family's monumental decision to leave the South for California is handled in about three sentences. Similarly, how Jack passed from wild youth to strictly religious adult is insufficiently explained.
The chapters on Robinson's political pursuits show most glaringly the book's analytical deficit. There is no question that Robinson's politics were imbued with selflessness and high-mindedness; working from within the Republican Party, Robinson sought to promote a civil rights agenda, usually in cooperation with whites, and especially Jews, who had been quick to support him as a player in Brooklyn.
On occasion, Robinson's political insight was keen, yet the author comments too little about situations in which Robinson seemed naive, as when he avidly supported Richard Nixon for president in 1960 based on flimsy evidence and when he urged the Republican Party to simultaneously compete for both black and white votes in the South. Rampersad also leaves under-explored the meaning of Robinson's position as a vice-president of the Chock Full o' Nuts restaurant chain.
And the author misses a chance to plumb the obvious question of why Robinson's status as hero was ultimately eclipsed by Muhammad Ali. Indeed, what is most striking about Robinson's (and to a lesser extent, Ali's) activities is how much more serious they are from the typical off-season pursuits of today's generation of highly paid athletes.
The fact that Rampersad glancingly raises most of these issues indicates that he's aware of them. But it remains a pity that this distinguished scholar does not use the 50th anniversary of Robinson's major-league debut to mull the ultimate significance of integration, both in baseball and the rest of society.
--Louis Jacobson '92
Louis Jacobson received a certificate in Afro-American studies and writes frequently about baseball.

In the American university system, Princeton is far from the norm
ANNE MATTHEWS, who holds a 1981 M.F.A. in art history from Princeton, ran the university's undergraduate writing program for four years. She currently teaches at New York University. Her book, Bright College Years (Simon and Schuster), has been reprinted four times since its initial publication earlier this year. Designated a recommended book by the New York Times, it also has reached the top of the education best-seller list compiled by the online bookseller Amazon.com. Anne Matthews was interviewed recently by Justin Harmon '78, the university's director of communications.

Q. Bright College Years closes with a rendering of a Princeton Reunions. How much of the book is based on your experiences at the university?
A. The book ends at Princeton, but it also began there. In the time I ran the Writing Program, I probably worked with 2,000 undergraduates. Sitting in the basement of McCosh Hall, listening and reading, I realized I was in the middle of one of the great untold stories of our time. People don't know what goes on in the minds and hearts of college students, what it is that happens to them and for them on the American campus. So, some of the voices in the book are Princetonians. Most of them aren't. I spent months visiting hundreds of campuses around the country, passing from friend to friend. Faculty introduced me to their students, then handed me off to their colleagues.

Q. What did you learn in researching the book that you didn't expect?
A. The biggest surprise was how much life there is beyond the two educational systems I grew up with: the large land-grant universities like the University of Wisconsin, where my father taught, and the elite private schools like the Princeton University I encountered at age 21. I learned there are excellent opportunities for undergraduates at virtually any college in the country. Many of them are doing inspiring work with skimpy financial resources and devoted faculty. Good students are everywhere: They study hard and they care enormously about what they are learning.
Unfortunately, however, a two-tiered system of colleges and universities is forming. There are perhaps 50 schools in the country that are relatively well-off. Then there are campuses of grinding poverty.
The demographics of education have also changed markedly. As recently as the period following World War II, the campus held a very different place in American life. Not as many people went to college. Not everybody cared who went. But as the economy became more knowledge-based, everybody began to want in. What we used to think of as the typical college student--the 22-year-old male living on campus--is becoming extinct, an anachronism of sorts. The more typical student today is an older female, in debt, attending school part-time on a public campus. Only one student in five still fits the Princeton model of the residential undergraduate attending full-time.

Q. To what extent does the American system of higher education require defending?
A. People don't understand the campus until they are in the middle of it. And yet, the extreme otherness of campus life is precisely what gives it value.
If there are 800,000 faculty teaching at colleges and universities across the country, there may be 8,000 who, in the course of their careers, will have a really good idea that contributes in an important way to a particular discipline. Maybe eight will have an idea that will quite literally change the world. That's hard to explain to folks on the outside. Not everybody sees that it's worth it.

Q. How do you think Americans view the professoriate?
A. Most Americans seem to view education as a business transaction. At most campuses, people are interested in outcomes: how directly this experience will guarantee a good job. What people most seem to want is consistency of experience. It enrages them that a credit costs as much when the teacher is lousy as it does when the teacher is marvelous. Faculty are the most important variable in the equation.

Q. What are your own most vivid impressions of Princeton as a former teacher and as an alumna?
A. My teaching experience at Princeton allowed me to watch intelligent students come up against an established academic culture and deal with it. You accommodate to Princeton, not the other way around. The intensity of the experience surprises some students.
Most Princeton alumni I've talked to tend to remember the friendships they made first and foremost. I've spent 20 years watching, and I find Reunions and the P-rade very gallant. I love the notion that you bond with people in the freshman dorm and somehow stay with them to the grave.
--Justin Harmon '78

THE PARENTS' GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVES IN EDUCATION, by Ronald E. Koetzsch '65; (Shambhala Publications, $17). Ronald E. Koetzsch '65, who believes parents should take as much care choosing a school for their children as they do choosing a new house or car, has written a consumers' guide to 22 educational approaches available outside the country's public-school system.
Koetzsch, a teacher at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California, doesn't endorse any one method, but spotlights the philosophical goals of each educational system. These include international movements such as Montessori and Waldorf, religious options such as Jewish Day and Friends schools, and progressive approaches such as multiple-intelligences education. His reports of on-site visits to classrooms and interviews with teachers and administrators are helpful, as well as his overview of American education. He also includes practical advice on choosing a school or creating a school of one's own. The book, conversational in tone, is a good starting point for parents.
--Maria LoBiondo

The vampire strikes back
Carol Dunne '87 appears as Mini in an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula through November 8 at the Cleveland Play House. Dunne, who makes her home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, has appeared in several Play House productions as well as in work produced by the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, and other regional companies.