Hillary Rodham of Wellesley College talks about student protests which she supported
In 1969, Hillary Rodham wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College titled There
Is Only the Fight . . . ": An Analysis of the Alinsky
Model. The subject was famed radical community organizer Saul Alinsky.
Rodham researched
the thesis by interviewing Alinsky and others, and by conducting visits to
low-income areas of Chicago (near where she grew up - but not in the same
neighborhoods) and observing Community Action
Programs in those areas.[1] Her thesis adviser was
Wellesley professor of political science Alan Schechter.[2]
The thesis was
generally sympathetic to Alinsky, but offered a critique of Alinsky's methods
as largely ineffective, all the while describing Alinsky's personality as
appealing.[3] The thesis sought to fit
Alinsky into a line of American social activists, includingEugene V. Debs, Martin Luther King,
Jr., and Walt Whitman.
Written in formal academic language, the thesis concluded that
"[Alinsky's] power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing
social conflicts" and that Alinsky's model had not expanded nationally due
to "the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict."[3]
In the
acknowledgements and end notes of the thesis, Rodham thanked Alinsky for two
interviews and a job offer. She declined the latter, saying that "after
spending a year trying to make sense out of [Alinsky's] inconsistency, I need
three years of legal rigor." The thesis was praised by all four of its
reviewers[4] and Rodham, an honors student at Wellesley, received an A grade on
it.[3]
The work was
unnoticed until Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the White House as First Lady.
Clinton researchers and political opponents sought out the thesis, thinking it
contained evidence that Rodham had held strong radical or socialist views.[3]
In early 1993, the
White House requested that Wellesley not release the thesis to anyone.[3] Wellesley complied, instituting
a new rule that closed access to the thesis of any sitting U.S. president or
first lady, a rule that in practice applied only to Rodham.[2] BiographerDonnie Radcliffe instead used extensive
recollections from Schechter in order to describe the thesis in her biography
published later that year, Hillary Rodham Clinton : A First Lady
for Our Time.[5] David Brock was similarly unable to
access the thesis for his 1996 book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham,
writing that it was "under lock and key", and instead also used some
of Schechter's recollections.[6] By the mid-1990s, Clinton critics
seized upon the restricted access as a sure sign that the thesis held
politically explosive contents that would reveal her hidden radicalism or
extremism.[7][4][8]
Syndicated
columnists Jack Anderson and
Jan Moller tried to gain access to her thesis in 1999, but were rebuffed by
both Wellesley and the White House.[9] Writing in their "Washington
Merry-Go-Round" column, they surmised that the thesis's
conclusion might be at variance with Clinton administration policies, saying
they had "discovered the subject of her thesis: a criticism of Lyndon B.
Johnson's 'War on Poverty' programs. Mrs. Clinton's conclusion? Community-based
anti-poverty programs don't work."[9] Clinton biographer Barbara Olson wrote in her 1999 book Hell
to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton that, "The
contents of Hillary's thesis, and why she would want it hidden from public
view, have long been the subject of intense interest. Most likely, she does not
want the American people to know the extent to which she internalized and
assimilated the beliefs and methods of Saul Alinsky."[10]
In her 2003 memoir Living History, Clinton mentioned the
thesis only briefly, saying she had agreed with some of Alinsky's ideas, but
had not agreed with his belief that it was impossible to "change the
system" from inside.[11]
Years after the
Clintons left the White House, the mystery thesis held its allure.[3] For example, in 2005, columnist Peggy Noonanwrote that it was "the
Rosetta Stone of Hillary studies . . . [which] Wellesley College
obligingly continues to suppress on her request."[12] Clinton staffers still did not
discuss why it had been sealed.[4]
In fact, however,
the thesis had been unlocked after the Clintons left the White House in 2001
and is available for reading at the Wellesley College archives. In 2005, msnbc.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman sent his journalism class
from Boston Universityto
read the thesis and write articles about it; one of the students, Rick Heller,
posted his article online in December 2005.[13] The thesis is also available
through interlibrary loan on microfilm, a method reporter Dorian Davis used
when he obtained it in January 2007, and sent it to Noonan and to Amanda Carpenter at Human Events, who wrote a piece[14] on it in March.
The suppression of
the thesis from 1993 to 2001 at the request of the Clinton White House was
documented in March 2007 by reporter Dedman, who read the thesis at the
Wellesley library and interviewed Rodham's thesis adviser. Dedman found that
the thesis did not disclose much of Rodham's own views.[3] A Boston Globe assessment found the
thesis nuanced, and said that "While [Rodham] defends Alinsky, she is also
dispassionate, disappointed, and amused by his divisive methods and dogmatic
ideology."[7]Schechter told msnbc.com that "There
Is Only The Fight . . ." was a good thesis, and
that its suppression by the Clinton White House "was a stupid political
decision, obviously, at the time."[2]
Interest in the
thesis and in Clinton's relationship with Alinsky continued during the Democratic
Party presidential primaries, 2008, as Clinton battled Barack Obama, who had also been reported to
have been exposed to Alinsky-style ideas and methods during his time as a
Chicago community organizer.[4]
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