PCR 11-27-01 CS Campbell
Sometimes a country loses people who are
irreplaceable, people who embody so many of the
steadfast virtues that their passing entails "a
weakening of the force." W. Glenn Campbell was one such
person.
One of seven children, Campbell was born (April 29,
1924) and raised on a Canadian farm without running
water and indoor plumbing. He made his way to Harvard,
where he acquired a Ph.D. (economics) and a lifetime
wife, Rita Ricardo, also a Harvard Ph.D. (economics) in
1946.
In 1959 Campbell was recruited by President Herbert
Hoover to serve as director of the research library that
he had established at Stanford University and to rescue
it from leftwing misdirection. This was a large
assignment, but President Hoover had sized up Campbell's
steadfastness correctly.
Campbell kept the Hoover Institution true to President
Hoover's vision. Under Campbell's direction, the Hoover
Institution on War, Revolution and Peace became the
premier think tank in the Western world.
When the U.S. regained its political footing with
President Ronald Reagan, the policies that defeated both
stagflation and the evil empire owed much to Hoover
scholars.
Maintaining the Hoover Institution's independence was a
thirty-year war—a war that Campbell won. He wasn't long
into that war before he found himself at war on two
fronts. Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him a regent of the
University of California system. Like President Hoover,
Reagan valued steadfastness. Campbell had the qualities
needed to prevent the looney left from evicting sanity
from a university education.
Campbell's friends and enemies wondered how he could
stand so much warfare. A president of the Bohemian Club
hit on the answer. Campbell, he said, was Robert the
Bruce. If Campbell was on your side, you had all the
help you needed.
Campbell never let the emotions of the battles get in
the way of an analytical approach and a dry sense of
humor.
There's no telling the embarrassments his steadfastness
and good sense saved Stanford and the University of
California. Both institutions owe him much more than
they will ever acknowledge.
We all owe him something, even those who never knew him.
Campbell had virtues that held things together, all the
while encouraging productive developments. He respected
truth and expected honorable behavior. A formidable
personality, Campbell could forgive almost as well as he
could fight.
According to the mythologies of our age, Campbell was an
improbable person. He made it to Harvard from Komoka,
Canada, without wealth. He married a woman his match in
intelligence and determination. He refused to make his
professional and social life easier by selling out the
ideas entrusted to him.
A country where Campbell was the norm would last a long
time.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author (with Lawrence M. Stratton) of The New Color Line : How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy
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