Delaney interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: This is really good. This is really what I'm looking for. One thing you've mentioned that I'm really curious about is where have the Jewish students gone? De Laney: Well, some of them are still here. I don't know the numbers that are here, but it's really funny, there used to be a professor here named Keith Shillington, who's dead now. He was a chemistry professor, and Shillington was one of the first Catholics who was hired on this campus. Shillington used to tell stories about his interview here. His religion came up in the interview, and somebody finally said, "Oh, well, you can't do much damage, you're just going to be teaching chemistry." But Shillington used to tell me, and he came here in the fifties, and I knew Shillington ever since I was a kid, because I'm Catholic and Shillington played the organ at our church, etc. Shillington used to tell me that the school used to take a total—and I don't now whether this is true, but this would be what he would say—the school will take a total of thirty Catholics and Jews a year, and sometimes it might be twenty-nine Jews and one Catholic, and the next year it might be opposite. Or some years it might be fifteen Catholics and fifteen Jews. In any regard, during the sixties there were these two fraternities, and I don't know how many boys were at either house at the time. I'm sure the university—you can look at Calyxes and you can count numbers. It was the ZBT house and the PEP House, as it was called. What I suspect that you probably would find today is that a lot of the Jewish students have sort of disappeared into—or sort of assimilated, I guess, 16 would be a better word, but Richard Marks sort of heads up a Hilel for the campus, so there is a Jewish organization on the campus. How many students are in that organization, I don't know, but I think they have an annual Passover Seder, even, so there are some Jewish students still here. They just simply may not be as obvious as they used to be. There certainly are a lot more Catholics now, I think. I'm not really sure of this, but I think that when you look by denominations rather than religious groups, the largest denomination, I think, is Roman Catholic, with the Episcopal Church coming next, and Presbyterians, etc. So those kinds of things have changed, but then times have changed very much, too, and just think of the kinds of suits that you'd have if there was religious discrimination, to say the least. The admissions director is also Catholic. [Laughter] Washington and Lee used to recruit primarily in the South, and one of the Jewish students that I continue to have contact with, who is a good friend, is an attorney in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is where he's from, a guy named Gary Poliakoff, who was in the class of '73. Gary was one of those first students who didn't belong to one of the Jewish fraternities. In fact, he belonged to the Pi Ka House, which is right across from the First Baptist Church. But I think the Jewish students are certainly still around. Warren: I don't have a strong sense of them, whereas people do talk about these Jewish fraternities, and that it was a presence before, and I don't have the sense of a presence of them here. De Laney: No, I think you'd probably have to talk to Richard Marks and get some feel for what Hilel is all about today. I think that's the only Jewish organization that's around. And certainly there aren't many adult Jews in the community, in fact. Two years ago, we used to have a friend who lived here, who has since moved to Oregon, but she used to have parties at her house to celebrate Jewish feast days. Even though 17 we were Catholics, we were close friends with her and we'd get invited to these things. We also, in those days, had some sense for who the Jewish members of the community were, but anymore, when you go beyond Molly Pellicciaro and the Grunewalds, I still have to scratch my head and try to think who they might be. Warren: So gradually the numbers of minority students began to grow? De Laney: Well, can we really say that the minority numbers have ever grown? One of the things is, yeah, Washington and Lee has a hard time recruiting, and certainly there are reasons for Washington and Lee having a hard time recruiting. Warren: Why do you think that is? De Laney: Well, one is certainly the image of the Confederacy. One of the things that black people have tended to be repulsed by this whole romanticism of the Confederacy and the lost cause, because there's no reason for black people to romanticize the lost cause. My God, they were slaves during that "glorious lost cause." On the other hand, this silly argument that goes on about the Confederate flag, I mean, one of the things that our students love to do is to display the Confederate flag. Certainly you have recruits on campus, and they see Confederate flags being used as curtains in dormitory windows, etc., that's a real turnoff. And why is that a turnoff? Well, the Southern student is going to argue that the Confederate flag is only a symbol of or an artifact of the war. Well, that's nonsense. The Ku Klux Klan appropriated the Confederate flag years ago and the Confederate flag became a symbol of racial hatred and violence. To try to say at this point in time that the flag means anything different is absurd. So one of the things is that whole controversy that surrounds Confederate image and this campus means that it's going to be difficult to recruit black students, for one reason. Another reason that it's going to be extremely difficult to recruit black students to a campus like this, and there are some publications that I've seen that indicate this, in fact, I was reading an article not long ago, is that good black students follow black 18 faculty. Certainly, black students, and, even more particularly, black parents, are hopeful that there are going to be good black role models in place. I had hoped when I came back here last year to join Jarvis Hall, who was an assistant professor of politics who had been here for four or five years. I get back last summer to find that Jarvis has resigned, and that I'm going to be the only one in the college. Of course, there's Steven Hobbs in the law school. But certainly you're not going to easily attract enthusiastic and good black students where you don't have good black role models in place. Black students want to see black professors in a classroom. So that's a problem also. Warren: So why do you think we don't attract black faculty? De Laney: Well, for some of the same reasons that we don't get students, some of which that I haven't mentioned. One is the town. Black professionals like to be in communities where there are going to be a lot of other people like themselves. For instance, young black doctors are more likely to gravitate to cities because they're going to be able to find a professional community of their peers. They're going to be able to find other people who have the same experiences, not necessarily that they want to make their friends along racial lines, but oftentimes racial lines provide some of the same experiences and means of sharing some of the same frustrations, etc. As far as the black professional community in Lexington is concerned, I mean, this is a touchy issue with black folks in town, and rightfully so, because they don't want to put themselves down, but the black professional community in Lexington is largely a retired community of schoolteachers, people who once taught in a public school system here, and have since gone home to spend the rest of their lives living on their own time and enjoy life the way they want. So if you're after a young black PhD to come to Washington and Lee to teach, then it's like, well, what's the social life going to be like for me after I get there? Is the social life going to be such that it sustains the person's enthusiasm about the 19 community? That's a real problem with the college. There are no black faculty members at VMI. There essentially are none here. I mean, the only reason I'm here—I shouldn't say the only reason I'm here, but one of the main reasons I'm here is because this is my home town, and I wanted to come back. I also wanted to come back because this is a better job than the one that I had in New York. I do have a real bond being with this university. I like, to some extent, living in a small town. Steven Hobbs is here because he likes a small town and thinks it's an ideal place to raise children, and is originally from a small town himself. But there is some frustration. I miss Jarvis Hall tremendously. We overlapped when I was here on a teaching fellowship. Washington and Lee oftentimes cites the reason for no black faculty as the reason I've just expressed, the difficulty of attracting people to a community like this. The same is true with students. In fact, there are a lot of white students who aren't going to come to Lexington because they want a social life beyond the campus, and a small town isn't going to offer the social life beyond the campus. So there's a lot of stuff that's just sort of is self-perpetuating. Another thing with the recruitment of students that's a tremendous problem for us, and I'm sure the admissions office is very sensitive to this, is the kind of black students that Washington and Lee certainly deserves and certainly would like to have, they have to compete with fairly prestigious places to get those students. When the name of the game is competing with places, say, like an Ivy, for a black student who is really good, and that black student also looking at prestige and saying, "Well, Washington and Lee is a good school, but what's a degree from Princeton going to do for me?" Washington and Lee has a very, very difficult time in a situation like that. But I'm also critical of the college because I think that the college sometimes I feel is a little too content with those answers. Warren: They come very quickly. 20 De Laney: They come very quickly, and the other thing that I saw is what we did when we decided to be coeducational. I mean, there was a very concentrated effort, even before coeducation, to recruit female faculty. I don't think that the effort to recruit black faculty compares with the effort to recruit female faculty. I don't think that the effort to recruit black students compares with the effort to recruit female students. I'm delighted that I have women colleagues. Some of my favorite colleagues are the women who are on this campus. I am delighted that I have female students. But I'm also troubled that we just celebrated the tenth anniversary of coeducation, and the thirtieth anniversary of the arrival of black students passed unnoticed. When I left here, I was here on this graduate fellowship, which is a way the college attempts to bring blacks to the campus as well. I was here for two years on an ABD fellowship, and during the two years that I was here, we had fifty-three black students. I come back this year, we have thirty-five black students. So I think that there's a real problem with recruitment. I think that oftentimes, also—I'm a little troubled sometimes about the ABD program as well. Warren: I don't know what the ABD program is. De Laney: Well, several years ago, the college decided that one of the ways that they could attract black faculty was to create this program by which you brought advanced graduate students to the campus to teach part time while they wrote their dissertations. These people have taken their PhD comps, and the only thing they have to do is to write their dissertations. Washington and Lee gives them a fairly modest salary for a year's work, and it's renewable for one year. When I did it, a $2,000 travel grant to do research, a lot of study in here. I mean, you taught one class a semester for two semesters and you had a third one off. Ideally, it's a good way to be able to do a little teaching while you're working on your dissertation. The problem, however, that—well, there's several problems with it. One is that I think that it also stigmatizes the people who are in this situation. It stigmatizes them because the students do not know that a great many of their esteemed professors who 21 have PhDs, who are white, came here as ABDs many years ago, when it wasn't important to have a PhD when you started. So all of a sudden, the only people that you have that are new on the campus were teaching classes without a PhD, are these black folks who are in a special program. And I worry about the stigmatization of black professionals—"Well, you've got to give them this break in the ABD program in order for them to finish, and there are no white ABDs on the campus, so this is a black thing." It becomes an affirmative action thing, for sure. Now, certainly, there are good things about the ABD program as well. The other thing that bothers me is that I think that oftentimes the ABD program serves as a means of pacifying the need to really actively recruit black professionals. These ABD candidates, there's no tremendous investment in them. They're not on tenure track, they're here for a year, they can be renewed for a year. If they finish their PhDs, then it's possible that the department might consider to offer them a job, but it's also possible that they won't be offered a job. So this year we're going to have two on campus, one in geology and one in politics. Hopefully, they will get their writing done, but I don't know. I'm putting you to sleep. Warren: No, not at all. No, I'm very, very interested in this. De Laney: It cannot be an excuse for recruiting people who've finished and people who will become a permanent part of the university. Warren: I've been curious about you as a role model in that you went here. We have a lot of black graduates of Washington and Lee now, who know exactly what Lexington is, who've gone out and, I presume, some of them have pursued advanced degrees. Why aren't those people being looked at, or are they being looked at? De Laney: Well, I think one of the problems is what kind of advanced degrees. One of the things that any black PhD can tell you is that if you look at the graduate schools across the United States, that certainly you find black people in graduate schools, but 22 the ones who are in PhD programs, there are very few. What people who are talented do is they go for the money, which is something blacks couldn't do thirty years ago. The vocations that were opened to black people thirty years ago were limited—or forty years ago. But if you go to the graduate schools anymore, you'll find that most of your blacks are going to be in the law school, or they might be working on MBAs, or they might be in medical school. But to find people who are going to teach at the college level, nobody's— Warren: Are you that unique? De Laney: I don't think that I'm unique, but I don't know of any other black Washington and Lee graduate who has gone for a PhD. I know of lots of black Washington—I shouldn't say lots, because there are not lots of us—but I know of other black Washington and Lee graduates who have gotten law degrees. I even know of two who went to medical school. I would be really very, very surprised if there was another black W&L PhD out there. Warren: So I'm fantasizing about something that doesn't exist. De Laney: Yes. In fact, I think that the number of Washington and Lee graduates, period, who go to work on PhDs is probably much smaller, in spite of racial lines, is much smaller than people who go to professional school. I think most of our people are probably headed for places like medical school, business school, and law school, and not to end up on the limited incomes that college professors have. So I think that there's no role model with regard to other black Washington and Lee alumni, because my experience certainly at William and Mary was that talented black students did not want to teach. Of course, my experience at both William and Mary and at the State University of New York was that talented white students didn't want to teach. I mean, they have this idea of making money, and you don't get rich teaching. So, anyway. Warren: That's discouraging and enlightening. De Laney: It's very sad to me. It's very sad. 23 Warren: You're a wonderful witness. I'm really glad to be talking with you. Another thing that I know has happened in recent years here was there was some controversy about some of the themes of Fancy Dress. De Laney: I remember one of them, although I wasn't here when it happened. I read about one of the in the alumni magazine. I guess one of the themes was Reconciliation Ball. I suppose it was another way of glorifying the lost cause within the context of Fancy Dress. But I think one of the things that probably is more basic is the cultural differences that have emerged during the last twenty-five to thirty years that weren't there before. For instance, one of the things that sort of echoes the beginning of this interview is I talked about how wonderful it was growing up close by with fraternities, listening to the music. When I look at the late sixties, and even the early seventies, the music that the students enjoyed on this campus was largely black music. I mean, one of the sweethearts of the campus was Dionne Warwick, who the students brought here time and time again. I can remember some friends of mine who, after a concert, invited the Four Tops to their apartment, got them to autograph their living room wall. Okay? So there were people like the Temptations who were coming to Washington and Lee's campus. Something happened during the psychedelic era where the music that was enjoyed by the two races veered in opposite directions, and I think that this has been more of a problem than Fancy Dress themes, what you can do with regard to music, first of all, that is going to be acceptable to both races of students. What I see now is that it's even worse. I don't like my son's music, period, and I'm usually thankful that he's not a rap fan, because I don't think that's music at all. I think that my generation of young blacks would have found it an abomination. I mean, compare Iced Tea, for instance, to the Four Tops. I mean, there's no comparison at all. I don't know. I think the music veering apart is worse than the themes for Fancy Dress. The only theme that 24 I remember that was controversial is the Reconciliation Ball. The other themes, I mean, I can remember one time it was New York. How could that be controversial? Black students didn't choose New York as a theme, there are not enough of them to matter, with regard to selection of a theme. One time, I think it was ancient Egypt. I mean, that's not going to offend black students. But I remember vividly black students being unhappy about the music. One time the university was even permitting sort of a parallel ball, where there would be this annual Black Ball, which would be the way of appeasing the black students, because then the black students were able to have the kind of music that they wanted for the Black Ball. But I think the cultural divide that has occurred is worse than anything. I'm not sure how to explain that. Of course, when I was a student, it really didn't matter, because I was married, had a child, was president of the PTA, etc., and so I wasn't doing the kinds of things that students half my age— Warren: So you wouldn't have gone to the Black Ball. De Laney: No. In the first place, I don't dance. I went to Fancy Dress once, and it was enough for me, and I never wanted to go again. That was before I became a student, and my wife and I went. Because I don't dance, and never have been talented as far as dancing is concerned, I don't feel comfortable at stuff like that. I've heard other people say that they don't like to go to Fancy Dress because they don't like to be around drunks. I can't say that, because the time that I was there I didn't notice anybody who was drunk, but the other thing is that I just don't want to be there, period. I enjoy music, and if I can sit there and listen, fine. But if I've got to sit there and watch people dance, and feel like an oddball because I'm not, then I don't think that's a lot of fun. I think that students oftentimes blow things like that out of proportion, and when alumni sometimes get involved in those debates, I think it's inappropriate. I think alumni ought to keep their mouths shut and let the students attempt to work things like that out with the guidance of the appropriate people on the campus, in both the 25 administration and the faculty. I can remember that there were alumni who felt very strongly that there should be a Reconciliation Ball, but I don't know. I'm not sure I think it's much of an issue. Warren: All right. So you've come back, and you're a full-fledged member of faculty. What's it like now? De Laney: Well, it's interesting in many different respects. One of the things that I've really enjoyed is being welcomed back in by people who were both my mentors when I was a student, people who've been my friends for a number of years, and the students themselves. The students have been really nice to me, and unlike other black alumni, I don't have the bad experiences of students up close, and I need to explain how I learned later, how I learned about bad experiences that black students did have. I wonder, however, if after I finish this I can excuse myself long enough to tell my son that I'm not going to take lunch at twelve, unless you want to take lunch at twelve or something. Warren: Do you want to take a pause now? De Laney: Yes, if I could. [Tape recorder turned off.] Warren: All right. So you were saying how you knew there were problems. De Laney: I thought we were on what it's like being here— Warren: Now. De Laney: Oh, okay. Warren: You seemed to sort of be going two ways, and I'm not sure which way you were going. De Laney: One of the ways that I was going was what it was like to be back on the faculty, but I was also saying that later in the interview I need to reflect on how I knew that there were problems among the students. One of the things about being back here on the faculty is that I really love teaching. My wife used to tell me during the early years of our marriage that I would 26 probably be very good at teaching, and it was my wife who pushed me to finally become a full-time student. That was something we didn't talk about either, was what it was like to be an adult student at Washington and Lee. Warren: I've got a note there that I want to get back to that. De Laney: But one of the things that I really enjoy is my teaching here. Now, the acceptance by the faculty has been overwhelming. For instance, I got nominated for a couple of faculty committees this year, and the first one I got nominated for was the Faculty Executive Committee. I think I'd gotten something like thirty-five votes or something, and somebody told me after the meeting that I had been elected by more votes than any faculty member had been elected to a meeting in years. Thirty-five is maybe half of the faculty. Well, apparently this thirty-five votes meant there was just extraordinary enthusiasm for me being on the Faculty Executive Committee. So I was sort of flattered with the things people were saying. Then I guess it was at the next meeting I got elected to the Student Affairs Committee, and the vote for the Student Affairs Committee was fifty-five, and there was this warm applause by the faculty. So I certainly am humbled by, and feel very grateful by, the vote of confidence from the faculty. Many of these people have known me for years, and a lot of the new people are just getting to know me, and I'm just getting to know them. So certainly there's that side of it. The other side of it is that it's kind of fun at my age to have a new challenge. I had an alumnus that I got pretty angry with, and I used to get angry with him when he was a student. He said to me, "I heard what you've done, but aren't you awfully old to be an assistant professor?" I mean, that's the other side of what happened the other day in the health food store. In any case, I was awfully old to be an undergraduate, too. But what I find is that I'm thrust into a situation where the stakes are higher than they were for many of my colleagues, for instance. I'm expected to publish as a part of getting tenure, and that was not true twenty years ago when many of my friends came 27 to Washington and Lee to teach. I'm also, because of that, forced to spend my summers doing research and scholarly activity rather than planning my courses for the fall, or rather than teaching in summer programs, or rather than gardening. I'm having a good time with it. One of the things that's incredibly fun to me is that my PhD has 1995 on it, and already I've got a contract with the University Press of Kentucky to publish the dissertation. So I'm fifty-two years old, and I'm doing things that I probably would have enjoyed doing thirty years ago, but thirty years ago was not the time it was meant for me to do those things. I love my students. Generally, the feedback I get from my students is positive. I look at the evaluations that my students fill out and I find myself both humbled and flattered by the evaluations. I also find myself both humbled and flattered by the summer communications by the students. For instance, one of my students is Sandy Hooper, who will be the president of the student body this year. Sandy is up at Middlebury. I've had E-mail from Sandy, from Middlebury College. I had good experiences in New York with my students, even though many of the bad experiences in New York sort of stand out in my head, because students were not particularly well mannered and not always well behaved in class up there, which is very different from Washington and Lee. But the one thing is that being back here is very important to me. One of the things that troubles me, probably, is that I don't have much of an impact on black students, and I think that's partly because of where I am in space and time and where some of them are in space and time. One of the things is that I don't get a lot of black students in my classes. I'm not sure why. Warren: Are they taking history? De Laney: Yes, some of them are. When I was here before, I had a black student to tell me that the reason he hadn't taken any of my classes was because they were too much work, which was sort of a sad revelation. I will never cut down on the amount of work 28 that I assign in order to attract students, no matter what their race may be. The other thing is that I had a black student to say to me this year, and I was really troubled by this, that he had found my introductory U.S. history class completely demoralizing. When I asked him he why, and he said his great talent was when he was discussing issues of race, and I said, "Well, this is introductory United States history. It's not a class in race inequity—ethnic relations. It's the wrong class if you think that every class is going to be a forum on racial matters, because it can't be. You've got to cover a whole range of things from such and such a date to such and such a date." The thing that also distressed me about the criticism was that we had two paperbacks in my class for that particular semester work, W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, and a wonderful little paperback—last name of the author is Miles, but the name of it's Lunch at the Five and Ten. It was about desegregation of lunch counters in Queensboro, North Carolina. I vividly remember—and I keep careful records—that he had cut that class when we were discussing Lunch at the Five and Ten. There was his opportunity to talk about race, and it wasn't my fault that he didn't get that opportunity, it was his own. So I guess at this point in my life, I sort of think that one of the things that black students have got to do is that they've also got to be very realistic. A course in United States history is not a course about race. Certainly race is going to be one of many factors, as well as gender, but there are lots of other things that I have to do in a course in introductory United States history, too. I'm teaching for the first time in Washington and Lee's—it's not exactly the first time in Washington—Holt Merchant has taught a spring-term course that has been called a Seminar in African-American History. I'm teaching a two-semester course this year in African-American history at the 300 level, certainly the first time African- American history has been taught at the upper level. There are eight students preregistered for that class at this date, which has space for twenty-five, and to my 29 knowledge, not a single one of those students is black. I'd love to have black students in there. I would love to have black students study with me, but I'm not going to assign less material, in the case of the one student who told me that my classes entailed too much work, in order to attract anyone. The other thing that I'm not going to do is that I'm not going pander to bad scholarship. The one thing that I think that is true of a lot of the Afrocentric scholarship, a lot of it's good and very important, but a lot of it is bad. A lot of it is not scholarly at all, and I'm not going to do that. So I realize that there are going to be black students, also, who are going to view me as a conservative sell-out because I'm not going to participate in scholarship that I do not think is quality scholarship in many of the Afrocentric claims, there's no evidence to prove, and I'm not going to do that. So I don't know what the situations are, but if students want to come, they're free to exchange ideas, and I'm never ever going to grade anybody down because their opinions differ from mine, but the one thing that I am going to require is that all students, no matter what their race is, work hard and do the very best job that's possible. Warren: Let me change tapes.