Interview with Lawrence Davidson, March 29, 2022

Interview Lawrence Davidson (Audio).m4a

Owen Cutler: All right, so we're now recording. So my name is Owen Cutler, I'm conducting this interview with Dr. Lawrence Davidson. Dr. Davidson is a formal (stutters), former faculty member at West Chester University in their history department. Uh, and he also writes on his blog To The Point Analyses. Uh, so I'm, uh conducting, err, we're both conducting this interview over Zoom. I am personally in West Chester. Doctor Davidson, where are you today?

Lawrence Davidson: West Chester.

Owen Cutler: There you go. And I also-

Lawrence Davidson: About a mile away.

Owen Cutler: Hah, there we go. All right. And then I'm, I'd like to thank you for your time and, uh also for your contribution to the Louis B. Nunn Center for Our History, which is part of the University of Kentucky.

Lawrence Davidson: And I thank you for your patience in terms of sending me the link multiple times.

Owen Cutler: That's what I'm here for. All right. Uh, So let's get into the 00:01:00questions. So I wanted to start off, uh asking you about your family, uh. You know where you grew up.

Lawrence Davidson: Hold on one minute. I'm going to close the door so you don't have to listen to my dogs.

Owen Cutler: Sure thing. (recording stopped) Alright, yeah, go ahead.

Lawrence Davidson: All right. My family. Well, um I was born (pause) when I was born in June of 1945, actually, the Second World War was winding up, uh in the Pacific and would come to an end that summer. My father was in the military. He was a quote, I guess this is what they call them a communications officer. He was a lieutenant, he was a lieutenant in, in the Army Air Corps at the time. Um, and my mother was, uh, you know, she was a woman who was born and raised in 00:02:00Philadelphia, um. And I think she served as a as an Air A? board for Philadelphia. Not that they needed it. (chuckles) But, (clears throat) um so anyway, I was raised in a family. My mother was, actually, my mother was a pacifist, but being married to a, a man who, umeally never, uh lost his military point of view, um it was difficult to be a pacifist. Uh, anyway, they managed, they never separated. They, they managed and, um, um, it was even more difficult, as it turned out for me, because he was, you know, he was a man who found his worth, his sense of purpose,um in the military, and after World War 00:03:00Two, um, he was., uh, he was discharged, maybe he was he was released. They reduced the the the army and uh (cough) and in the navy and millions of men were, um discharged. So he ended up getting, um, he was always very, very active in the Air Force Reserve. In fact every, every summer he would spend two weeks of this during this reserve thingy.

Anyway, to make short, to make a long story short uh, he, like many, like many fathers, he saw in his son, uh a project, a project to essentially, uh recreate 00:04:00himself, okay. His values, uh should should logically be reinstilled or instilled in his son and so. (coughs) And he had no, no, uh conscious awareness of the psychology of the situation. Okay? So he he he treated me like more or less like a drill sergeant, you know, and the resentment built. And that was one of the bases for my eventual, uh radicalization, OK? You know, a rebellion against my father. So, um. (pauses) Anyway, it took, to you know, that part of me didn't manifest itself till, till I got to Rutgers as an undergraduate. Let 00:05:00me know if if if this story I'm telling isn't exactly what you want.

Owen Cutler: No, this is perfect, actually.

Lawrence Davidson: OK.

Owen Cutler: Um, but no, it's good that you mentioned Rutgers, because, you know how did you choose Rutgers for, um your undergraduate?

Lawrence Davidson: Um. (Coughs) Well, there was actually we had very little money I mean, you know, we had he was mortgaged to this house in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I grew up, or we all were mortgaged to that house. And so, um there was a little very little money left over, so I had to be very frugal in terms of tuition. Now get this when I applied to Rutgers in sixty seven in that 00:06:00the tuition minus room and board, because I stayed home and drove and commuted. This is to to Rutgers campus in Newark, um Tuition was about $500 a, a semester. OK?

Owen Cutler: Wow, I wish

Lawrence Davidson: Well, it was a different time. (chuckles) So, um anyway, so it was money I, I applied to a couple places. City College in New York, um and and, um I think I even applied to the New School in New York. Anyway, I got into 'em all, but I went to Rutgers and, uhnd that was an experience, um the quality of the education was as good as was recognized was as good as in New Brunswick, 00:07:00um. But I mean, I experienced, um for instance, in Newark, the the rioting in Newark, 68 I think it was. And, um this was part of a nationwide riot, so I'm driving down and you know, I'm naively driving down and I go to school. I'm not even aware (chuckles) what's going on, but I was stopped, you know, before I even got there and I had to turn around. And as I was turning around, I could see the tanks. They had tanks in the street, you know, and I never encount-, encountered, I never saw that, tanks in the street until I went to the Middle 00:08:00East, which is a different story.

Um, anyway, at Rutgers, my independent frame of mind started to manifest itself more aggressively. Um, I met other people who were very left leaning, um,and all of us were, all the men were very anxious because we had conscription. There was a draft. And, uh, the (clears throat) the object of the game was to figure out how to avoid that. Um, so there was a lot of anxiety, um, until they instituted a lottery system. So, you know, it was like a, a lottery system, like for the lottery, you know, really. I mean, they broadcasted on television. (coughs) Um, 00:09:00it it was it was dependent on your birthday, and and somehow this was randomly scrapped, um, yeah, scrambled. And then you had little ping pong balls, just like that would pop up. And with different general dates, and if your birthday fell within those dates, you were assigned this number. Well, (coughs) let me tell you, so what? So I'm sitting there watching this on TV. I can remember (clears throat) what number do I get? 32. Which, what, which which absolutely assured that I was going to Vietnam. I mean that ,they were drafting at 32, everybody got drafted. I mean, you know, I think you are sure to be drafted, up 00:10:00until. (Pauses) Maybe, uh the number was maybe around a hundred, or something like that. Um, that's a guess I don't really remember.

But anything below a certain number, you were screwed, you know, unless of course, you had some, some something wrong with you or you could manufacture something wrong with you. I remember going to, um, my first physical. This isI was in Washington and they they they trucked us up to, or bussed us up to Halliburton. This is Fort Halliburton in Baltimore. And I went with a friend of mine from from Rutgers. Uh, we were both scheduled for that physical. (coughs, laughs) So you go, umt you got 50, 50 guys, guys, uh most of them kids, you know. 50 guys left standing, uh naked in a row, um. And this doctor is coming 00:11:00around checking you for, um (pauses) What what did they check you for when they put your finger next to your your scrotum and say "cough," they're checking -

Owen Cutler: They're checking for a hernia, I think.

Lawrence Davidson: Hernias? Thank you. If this becomes too, uh, too blue, uh too risque-- (chuchles)

Owen Cutler: If needed, we can cut this out of the interview and it'll-

Lawrence Davidson: Anyway, so OK, so the doctor is coming down the row. And one thing I noticed is that he's only he's only testing one side, which is pretty screwy, you know? (Laughs) So, OK, my friend, uh Neal is standing next to me, and doctor comes and he says, "cough," and Neal coughs and the doctor stops and he says, "You've got a hernia." And Neal says, "really? I didn't, I wasn't aware 00:12:00of it," he says, "yeah, you should get this fixed." (Laughs) And Neal said (stutters). OK. OK,he said, maybe, actually what he's thinking and what he says to me later is "I'll get this fixed right after the war." (chuckles) You know? So I was immediately jealous because I didn't have a hernia, see.

So, um, anyway. That's when I was at Georgetown, but getting back to Rutgers, I was, you know, we had a rad- like like, say, a left book reading, book club and all that kind of stuff. And, uh so I was, you know. I just was. My whole 00:13:00experience was, uh going in that direction. And, uh, I was a history major there and uh I read, you know, greatly, um. In fact, that's almost all I did was read, um. But I actually I did well (coughs), I did very well in history, and I did, the second level was biology, which I did well in, and, um, we had very good professors in both, in both those fields, um. But in the end, um, I, I, we had a biology professor who actually could transform itself into a bird on stage, see, on stage. He was a chubby guy and, uh so he would be lecturing and then he'd 00:14:00start to bob and he put his hands behind his back and start flipping his hands. And all of a sudden he looked like a bird. (laughs) I saw it, God, you know, it's great. What a terrific guy. And, uh anyway. I, I had slightly higher, I had better grades in history, and so I, I just did history, um. And, uh that was it. So then (clears throat) by the time I went to Georgetown... (Pauses)

Owen Cutler: Now, now, real quick, uh, how did you choose Georgetown?

Lawrence Davidson: Yeah, I had, uh, an uncle in the area, um, who actually worked in, worked for the government. He was a civilian working worked for, in the Pentagon. I think he was a procurement, he did procure- procurement. In other words, when, when the, the uh, Pentagon bought things, he was liaison, you 00:15:00manage that right? Hopefully, he was not the one who bought, you know, the $500 hammer (mutters). Because they do they did that. Anyway, um I had an uncle in the area. And so (coughs) my mother, who is her brother, felt that, OK, you know,if something happens, then, um, he would be there and actually, someth-, eventually something did happen and I got. You know, I, I, I had trouble with my feet and they became swell, swelling up, and I had to go to his house to sort of, you know, I went to a doctor and I couldn't, I was on crutches, I couldn't really walk. So I went to his house to recuperate. Um. But basically, that's, 00:16:00you know, uh, that was it.

I. It, it was, you know, I was,there was contradictions in all of this. One thing I wanted to get away from my father. Or another thing I chose to stay home for my undergraduate and drive into Newark. So what the hell was, um I doing? And, uh, it was, you know, it was, uh, a genuine, psychologically based contradiction. Um (coughs). Anyway, that contradiction ended. That particular contradiction was, uh, solved by my finally leaving home and going to, uh, Georgetown, where, you know, I I I lived in an apartment building near the school, I had a roommate. You know, and, um. and all that kind of stuff. Um. So 00:17:00I went-

Owen Cutler: Yeah, um, when, when were you at Georgetown or when did you start there?

Lawrence Davidson: Uh, I graduated in '67 from Rutgers, so it was, you know, the fall of '67, and then I think, uh I was there for two, two and a half years. And it is amazing. And that's where I linked that with the SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, which was the archetypical student radical organization of uh, of the time. Um-

Owen Cutler: Yeah. could you tell me more about them?

Lawrence Davidson: Yeah. I just want to say it's a, it's a small miracle I actually got a master's degree, which was I, what I was registered for. I wasn't trying to do a PhD yet. It was a small miracle that I could do both of these 00:18:00things. Um yeah. I mean, again, I mean, I uh the group I was in at Rutgers was left, it was a left leaning group. And so when I got to Georgetown, I just looked for the same kind of people. And, you know, at Georgetown, there was lots of things there was, um, there was a peace group, you know, like a pacifist peace group run by a, a Jesuit. He was actually, um, he was out of the mainstream doing this, um, but he (coughs) he, um, he, um counseled this peace group they had. And, uh, but, you know, by that time I was I was certainly not a 00:19:00pacifist. OK. Um (pauses). So I, I ,I linked up with these guys and we formed a chapter of the SDS. And there it wasn't the only chapter. There was a chapter at every single university in that area, um and, um, and there was, uh, also a, a house on Washington Street I think it was, uh, where not, people not affiliated with any university, but still in the SDS. They lived there. And those guys, um, linked up with other organizations. So, so if you had a million people coming into Washington to protest the war, that aspect of our of our group, of though, 00:20:00the one the secular element, um, that wasn't really students, um, they coordinated with that with other groups to bring people in. (coughs) So, anyway.

Owen Cutler: Okay.

Lawrence Davidson: Yeah.

Owen Cutler: Yeah, what was your role in bringing SDS to Georgetown?

Lawrence Davidson: I was, you know, me and three others founded the thing. Two or two of them are still in contact with, um. So, uh, you know, I mean, we were all a bunch of us was talking and one said, one person said, "why don't we, you know, start an SDS chapter, are you interested in that?" And I said, "Yeah, that's a good idea." And we did. Um, generally speaking, most of the people in 00:21:00the SDS, at Georgetown were sane, not all of them, but most of them were sane, you know, (laughing) some of them were saner than the others.

Owen Cutler: Uh

Lawrence Davidson: But the, the organization was completely democratic. There was no one really in charge, um. And, you know, if a decision had to be made, um,e'd all get together and talk about it and make the decision. For instance, at one point, I shouldn't really give myself away. I mean, actually, actually, this this there was something that had to be done that was illegal.

So, uh, what it was is that the mayor of San Francisco, whose name was Alioto, 00:22:00um, was coming to give a speech at Georgetown. Now this guy had, had just shut down, um, left organizations, one white, one black in the San Francisco area, in other words he, you know, he didn't represent free speech, OK, so he had hadd been instrumental in, in making sure these groups couldn't express themselves, um, in public venues. So we decided, OK, if that is his position, we won't let him express himself at Georgetown. See? Now this was, (pauses) I mean, he was a 00:23:00mayor, I guess he could do what he did. We were not elected officials and we could not do what we did, legally, (chuckles) but we did it anyway. (coughs) We managed to, um, run him out of town. But, but. That's when that's when Georgetown discovered the SDS. And at least two or three people were expelled from the college, from the university. Um, and, uh. (clears throat)

Others were put on probation, and this sort of thing. Um, (coughs) So but me, I mean, I was under the radar for some reason. So they didn't. They didn't do anything to me, even though I, you know, they had pictures. You know, there was 00:24:00video security cameras, and they had pictures of everyone. So in fact, that action was investigated by the, what was at that point, the House Committee on un-American, un-American Affairs or something like that. There was such a committee. It investigating that incident and produced a booklet, you know, a summary of their, of their findings, which is still available, I think, from the government printing office.

So (coughs) anyway, we ourselves, the SDS chapter produced a explanation, a 00:25:00rationale. You know, I think it was called "Why We Did It, Why It Had to be Done," something like that, which I wrote along with this other guy. There was another guy who is very active in the two of us wrote it and and then came the problem with distributing it because what we wanted to do is get it in every faculty mailbox. Well I mean, you really had to be careful doing that because otherwise you would screamed at, you know, that something was very unpleasant. Anyway, that was a, a typical thing that we were into, um. But as the war-- Oh, and actually, I. I did beat the draft, but we won't go into that. Um (coughs)

Owen Cutler: I mean, that would be something interesting if you'd like to talk about that now or later.

Lawrence Davidson: Yeah. Off camera, because-

Owen Cutler: OK.

Lawrence Davidson: It was extremely, I mean, I cheated, um, but it was in a good cause. I mean, so I'll tell you the particulars afterwards, OK? It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. Um, OK. (coughs) I had my bags packed, and I was if I either I (pause) beat the whole thing, or I got went to the airport and went to Canada.

So anyway, so anyway, as the war wound down the SDS itself entered a crisis period, and this is when the organization divided and what it divided into 00:27:00Weatherman, I mean, I don't know whether you've ever heard of this, this group that was known as the Weatherman and they took their name from a Dylan song. You know, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind's blowing," or something like that. Um, and then there were, there were others. It was called rim to birds, people who weren't Weathermen. I decided, this was the around I had graduated. I got my degree, my masters, and I decided it was time to get out, get out of the country because, for for this, for emotional reasons. I mean, um, not only was I. And. You know, in trouble with the government, I had 00:28:00been arrested three times. No, I mean, you know, so won't they arrested me for inciting to riot. I was on top of an automobile leading a chant. The other time-

Owen Cutler: When was that?

Lawrence Davidson: Hm?

Owen Cutler: When was that?

Lawrence Davidson: It was at, um, I can't remember the date, but it was at a protest at, um, George Washington, not George Washington.. Yeah, George Washington University. Um, they had a, um, a think tank group on the campus, it was called the Sino-Soviet Institute, you know, they studied. Stuff about China, 00:29:00and they also are doing a government contract, studies for, about Vietnam. So that was the angle that led to this protest. And (clears throat) and I seem to be inciting to rush leading this chant. They grabbed me off of the thing and I spent the night in the pokey, um. But in the end, George Washington refused, uh, to, uh, file charges against me. So I went out. Anyway-,

Owen Cutler: That didn't stop you?

Lawrence Davidson: No, no I was just, you know? Oh, that was just, you know, part of the (coughs) part of what you could you would expect. Um (coughs) So anyway, I then, as has things started to crumble not only was I antagonistic in 00:30:00that and in an antagonistic relationship with the government. Not only was I in it antagon antagonistic relationship with my family, my father OK, (coughs) but the organization as the SDS was falling apart. And that was my, you know, surrogate family at the time. OK. I mean, I don't know how I got the Masters, but you know, those guys, those people were my, my soul mates, I guess you would call and things were going nuts. I mean, some people were becoming part of this Weatherman organization, which, which was bound to be very violent. I mean, 00:31:00their analysis was that United States, people of the United States were, um, scabs. You know, like on the Third World that (coughs) we were, you know, just sucking the resources and the, and the lifeblood out of the Third World and therefore we were like, if you were part of that group, you figured you were like, uh, an agent trying to stop that you were, you know? You were going to figure out how to blow up military installations like that.

My feeling was that that was suicidal. I mean, you might at the time, you might 00:32:00have said, OK. There is something to that analysis by trying to, to figure out how to blow up military installations. You know, (sighs) you had bunch of 20 year olds running around trying to sweat down nitroglycerin, you know, to make um, to make bombs. In fact, at one point there was a woman that I knew, um, I shared a house with her at some, at one point. It was a communal house. Lots of people lived there. Um, and, uh she was involved in the. She became a weatherman 00:33:00and they, were her family had a brownstone in New York. So there were, I guess, for one, three or four of them there, their family, then her family was sailing into doing as a cruise in the Caribbean and they were trying to create, make bombs. So what they did was, um, I don't know exactly how they did it, but they had some sort of element or, or mineral or something. And if you, uh, heated it, you could, it t would sweat. And what it would sweat became nitroglycerin. You know how unstable that can be. And so there was a guy in the basement, two girls 00:34:00upstairs, including my friend. And the whole damn thing blew up. Uh, you know, it was the whole brownstone was destroyed. The guy in the basement, they only could identify him because they found his thumb and they got a fingerprint from the thumb, and then they got they knew who he was because he had been arrested several times too. Well, my friend survived this, you know had to go underground. The government hunted her for several years, and finally, she gave her self up. She's, uh she's still in New York anyway. (coughs) It was that kind of environment.

I was not getting involved in that. I did not. That was just not me. I could understand it. But I couldn't do it, so I, uh, I packed my bags and I went off to Canada not because I was a draft dodger, but I simply wanted to get out of the country because I needed a break from this. And so I decided I'd do a PhD because what the hell? It's the only thing I knew. Right. It's the only thing I knew I wasn't gonna, I wasn't going to do a nine to five job if I could avoid it. And so and I knew I wanted to be a professor or, you know, a teacher at a university level. I figured that one out by the time I was 18 right? In my first semester at Rutgers, when I saw the guy who could turn himself into a bird and 00:36:00we had a really hot shot, uh, young professor in the history department, um, I knew that's what I wanted.

So, (coughs) so I went to I went to Canada, what I did is I applied to every single English language university in the country. There weren't that many, maybe eight or nine, and I got accepted to a lot of them. But the one in Alberta, University of Alberta gave me a stipend. So and guess what it was, it was $500 a month. With $500 a month, I could rent a one bedroom apartment in Edmonton, Alberta, and feed myself. Can't do it now (laughs)

Owen Cutler: Sounds like a good deal.

Lawrence Davidson: (laughs) You can't do it now. But I did it then. But then you could do it. And of course, Edmonton. It, it, you know, if I think about it now, it was probably a mistake to do that. I should have gone to McGill, um, or the University of Toronto, both of whom accepted me, um, and, you know, got a job in the library, something like that, you know, I would say, stayed in graduate dorms or something. Oh, actually, I did stay in a graduate dorm in Alberta, and there's a funny story there because they were distributing furniture. Uh, so I went down to the office to, you know, ask the kind lady there, um, you know, for 00:38:00certain pieces of furniture. So she says to me, "Would you like a Chesterfield?" And I said, I don't smoke. Well, (laughs) it was silly because it's a, that was their word for a sofa. See? So anyway, I did get the Chesterfield, OK, but, uh, yeah, we both broke up laughing. Both she and I over this whole thing, tis misunderstanding.

Anyway, it was a mistake because it was such a cultural shock to go to Edmonton, Alberta. First of all, it was very cold. Very cold. And second of all, there was 00:39:00nothing there was no one I could relate to. You know, no one I could relate to until I hooked up with this screwball professor of intellectual history, um, who had, they recruited out of Stanford. Now how could they do that? Because Edmonton was an oil center for, in Canada and had money coming out of the zoo, and so they could buy an excellent faculty. Most of my professors were, you know, from England, um, who they essentially bought, um, you know, who were Oxford educated and that kind of thing. Uh, and, uh, and this guy was out of, uh, he was out of Stanford. And so, you know, I have done and I became his student. He was in intellectual, intellectual history, which I ended, which I 00:40:00also was interested in, and ended up majoring in. (laughs) But here is he was completely gay. He was totally gay and I was com-, totally straight. But we managed. He kept coming on to me and I said, "Ron, no, no, no, no. You got to go someplace else." Um, So finally he learned. And, uh, but it was a very good relationship, uh, but it was a very intellectual. It was, um, a deep intellectual relationship. Where I learned enormous amounts of, from him. Um, so I was happy, I was happy, uh, with that situation and it gave me somebody, somebody to relate to. Hmm.

Owen Cutler: Was there much activism in Alberta?

Lawrence Davidson: No, that was the shock. See, I went from Washington, D.C., which was a bedlam of anti-war movements and, and, and, you know, the civil rights movement was still going on, I had some connections there in that, and it was, it was bedlam, you know, everywhere you turn to going to this cow-town. You know, um, now, it's a much more vibrant place if you went there now. But then it was a (chuckles) cow-town And so I didn't. I hadn't. I didn't know I did this to myself till I got there. And I remember very quickly, certainly by October, the 00:42:00temperature was under, was below zero centigrade and, you know, things froze. The side of the building froze (chuckles) it was wet, so it's got its sheet of ice on it. And, uh, so I remember coming into the history department in my first semester there, and I said to the woman who was in charge, or the administrator, You know, I said, "You know this, this is some god's bad joke, this weather." She didn't appreciate that. But the coldest I ever was out in, in Alberta, was, uh, I think it was 42 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That's without the wind chill. And I remember you, you couldn't wear gloves, you had to wear mittens 00:43:00because they, they kept your hands warmer. And if you took, I remember taking off the mittens to take a, a snapshot of the building, I was, I was in. By the time I did that and got the, and started getting the mitten on, the tips of my fingers were going numb. Were going numb. It was that quick.

So you had to dress for this, um, or as you were dead, (chuckles) you could die. I remember once in the graduate dorms I, they they gave me a roommate he was from Malaysia, and he came in and he had a, a windbreaker. And I said to him, "do you have anything else? You know, in terms of, uh, coats?" And he said, "No, 00:44:00uh, this is all I have." You know, he didn't even, he had never seen snow. I said, "No, no, you must get heavy, heavy coat. You must have a hood. You must have mittens. I'll help you, I'll go shopping for this, because otherwise you're going to die." And I wasn't kidding. He thought, he couldn't imagine, um, this was early September, and I said, "that's it. No, you're going to die." So eventually he did it.

But, uh, anyway, my saving grace was meeting this professor and working with him. Um, uh, tolerating his, trying to seduce every, you know, every boy in the 00:45:00class. Um, that became a problem, uh, for him towards the end. I was there, um, (coughs) from 70 to 76 three, six years, which is quite normal. Towards the end he was, uh, he was getting into trouble, you know, because you're not supposed to sleep with the students, (chuckles) right? But he was incorrigible. So eventually he went back to California. But, um, (clears throat) but he he he did well by me. I mean, you know, as a as a as an intellectual mentor. So and people assumed-

Owen Cutler: This-

Lawrence Davidson: I mean, yeah, go ahead.

Owen Cutler: Oh, yeah, well, I was wondering if many of your peers from Georgetown ended up leaving the country?

Lawrence Davidson: Oh. I don't think so. I do not think so. I think that many of the weathermen ended up in jail for at least a little bit. (Pauses) The others, some of them went to, you know, because because of the ideology, the non, uh, weathermen you know, felt you should work, go and be a working class worker and try to convince the working class, the workers of the being left. So you had a whole lot of those guys essentially working in the mills and wherever factories and, uh, that sort of thing, um. But, uh, I don't know how many of them, you 00:47:00know, kept that up, um, because of, what I realized very quickly was the working class, if that's what you want to call them, thought they were middle class. They thought, (chuckles) unless you were homeless you thought you were middle class, but even some of the homeless people. So there was no real class consciousness in the United States, um, except the closest you could come me is, uh, the wealthy elite. They were class conscious, right? But these guys were, you know, trying to be Karl Marx following the, uh, to go where, you know, join 00:48:00the working class. So a lot of them did that. Me, no, I was- God, I keep fading in and out, with the light don't I? Keep disappearing. I was. I was a nerd through and through right? Still am.

Um, so, uh, so I had, you know, I left the country and I spent seven years, six or seven, six or seven years, six years in Alberta. Whereupon I met my first wife and that sort of thing. And I got the degree. I got the degree at the regular scheduled time. I taught there, I taught us history for them for a 00:49:00while. Um, I worked as, uh, attached to professors who had humongous classes who didn't want to do the grading and I did the grading and that sort of thing, and so, you know, you know I, I seduced a certain number of female students because I was only a student myself, that was legitimate. Couldn't do it as a professor.

Owen Cutler: So, uh, how, how did you find yourself back in the United States?

Lawrence Davidson: (Coughs) Yeah, that was interesting. Now you have to keep in mind that at a certain point in my Ph.D. program, I started to publish, OK? Um, I publish in all kinds of things. Drugs, for instance, um, and how the 00:50:00population related to drugs, to you, to drugs. This, you know, U.S., Canada or whatever. So I think that's the first paper I published. And after that, I just kept going. So I, I really- and in terms of trying to get a job, that's very important, you know, to, to publish. OK, so (sighs) I was doing that, but, you know, when I got finally got the degree six years in seven years in (coughs) what was I going to do? I was a landed immigrant, which meant I could stay in Canada if I was gainfully employed. I could stay. Uh, I couldn't become a 00:51:00citizen without renouncing the U.S. citizenship where there was no dual citizenship at the time. Today you can have dual citizenship. So it was a dilemma. One of my many, many dilemmas. Um, what to do. So what I went to, I went to uh, uh, something called the Canadian Manpower Office, its a government office today, you couldn't call it that, see, of course, today you would have to be employment somehow for women and men. But in those days, the middle of the 70s, they called it the manpower office. And of course, it catered to women, too, I mean, it was just the name. So anyway, I went there. And I remember the, 00:52:00uh, bureaucrat that I was speaking to was a woman, and I explained my situation and, and I said "I'd really like to stay in Canada," because by that time I had acclimated, and, and so but the the thing is, I need, you know, I need a job. Um, and then she said to me, "Well, why don't you become a Canadian citizen and then we can talk about employment?" As I said, "That doesn't make any economic sense." Because to do that would be to eliminate or wipe out whole subcontinent? That is the U.S., a whole subcontinent of potential opportunities. So she said, "don't you have any patriotic feelings towards Canada or the US?" And I said, 00:53:00"No, I do not." Well, that was the end of that conversation, so. So, um, you know, they weren't going to help me find a job. Um, they, Canada was then starting to- and this made sense - to give preference to their own citizens in terms of employment in academia unless this institution could prove that there was no Canadian, um, who is suitably educated, capable to, of filling that slot. Then they'd let you go abroad. But so, (coughs) you know, I wasn't going to be able to to find a job under these circumstances.

So I went, I left, you know, my mother, of course, was hawking me to, to come back. And so I came back, OK. And, uh, and then what I found was a horrible job market, just a horrible job market. I mean it. For every job in aca- in my field, there must have been like over 200 applicants. See? So it was very, very difficult. So I entered, you know, for a while, I was, entered the adjunct business. I did adjunct work. Um, and finally, I ended up back in the area where my mother lived because I had a kid. I mean, I was, I had a wife. I had met her 00:55:00in Canada. (clears throat) We had a child. (coughs) We had a child, a son, and when the kid was two, she left, (clears throat) which was a whole nother story, but left, there I was with this two year old and who I liked. I mean, I had no problem being a single parent because he was a good kid. You know, never gave me too much trouble. Even now he's a good. He's 42 now. Um, (coughs) But, you know, to raise him was alone wasn't going to be a challenge. So initially I went back to where my mother, my mother, was living with her, her sisters. Um, so there is about five of them, and they were living in Broomall. Broomall, right here, down 00:56:00uh, route three. So I, you know, I just came there and of course, they adopted my kid. And what I did is I sat down (coughs) and wrote to every school, every university and college within a 50 mile radius. You know, it wasn't that hard, I just drew up a letter of introduction and told them I was looking for adjunct work, um, and sent it out. Turned out that I had more work than I could do. Alright? (coughs)

So one of the places that I got to this adjunct position was your, was West Chester. Right now I had published, I had published a lot in terms of the Middle 00:57:00East: the Israeli-Palestinian problem, all kinds of events, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. I published a lot about this, studied the language, (clears throat) studied Arabic to some extent anyway. And I had gone to Hebrew school as a kid, and, so I could kind of fake it, you know, in two languages, so. (coughs) Um, so there I was. And, that's- I was teaching there, I was teaching at St. Joseph's. Uh, where else? I think-- I was teaching down at Temple. It was hectic. Anyway at a certain point. The guy who was doing Middle East at West Chester quit, he 00:58:00retired. So there, there was, there was this opening. And even though I had, didn't have a degree in this field, I had a whole list of publications. So I went to the chair who was at the time, Dick Webster, I think. And I said, you know, "I wouldn't apply for this because here's the deal, I mean, I have this list of publications. I've traveled through the region," which is true. Um, and, uh, "I had met with a whole lot of people and particularly at more both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." It was turned into my forte. But, I, you 00:59:00know, in other places in the region, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. This was before deconstruction. So I had a real resume. So I said, I'm going to apply for this spot. Well, they had to do a national search, right? And, uh, I think I got it because I was the inside candidate, that they knew me, they liked me. I was going to give him any trouble. There was no surprises. And so I got it. Um, not everybody was happy with that, in the department, but I did get it and, never looked back. So (coughs) how did my radicalism transform? This is the-

Owen Cutler: You took the question right out of my mouth.

Lawrence Davdison: Right. Because it never went away. One of the things about me, I guess, is that I never changed. I was a radical. By the time I was 18 in the sense that I was left of the norm. And I never changed. Um, so, when I say that, I, you know, I say that being left is that I believed in certain things. I believed in international law, human rights. Um, I thought those, those kinds of principles were more important than national policies, particularly in the 01:01:00United States, because I was here as a citizen, so I became a very big critic of American foreign policy. I wrote a book called Foreign Policy Inc. I n c period and tried to analyze the sources of policy through that, during that book. Of course, I don't think more than 200 people have ever read it, but, uh, it's a wonderful book (coughs) published by the University of Kentucky. Anyway, so you know, I did this. I wrote five books, some of them on U.S. behavior. Some of them on, uh, you know, Middle East, Middle East problems. And they were all 01:02:00published. Got to be a full professor, no particular problem.

Um, but I nev- how did my radicalism manifest itself? It manifested itself in choosing sides in contentious arguments based on my principles, and this is what got me involved in the Israeli-Palestinian problem. So I'm Jewish myself, uh, but, you know, I have no tribal connection, really, um, I'm much more loyal to my own principles, than I am to, say, the nation state of Israel. And (coughs) I didn't like the way they were behaving. Um, so I became real, at least I started 01:03:00to write analyses of the way Israel behaved. I wrote analyses of the way the US government behaved, um, relative to that conflict. And of course, I wrote analyses as to how the Palestinians behaved because they were no angels either. Um, so, (coughs) the uh, and I, I did that even as a, when I was a professor at West Chester. Now, how did I survive that kind of thing? Well, that's an interesting- and, very briefly, why not when you when I got to Westchester, one of the things you have to do is you have to do university service. OK? I mean, you have to do public service for the community. You have to do university 01:04:00service and of course you have to do what academics do, which is teach and write, publish stuff. (coughs) So, OK, they put me- this is the university service- they put me on the, on the budget committee. This is the university,. I don't think it exists now, It was a, there was a university budget committee and it had, um, it, people who sat on faculty, uh, service, representatives of the service union, the workers union, and uh, and Administrators, those, all of those people sat on it, and I was just one of the faculty guys. Um, turns out that I took over, (laughs) I became the chair of this thing, (coughs) and I 01:05:00started writing, writing reviews and reports because all the, all the administrators, you know, the deans had to come in and make report to the University Budget Committee, of which I was the chair. (laughs) And I would write up these reports and some of them were positive and some of them weren't, you know. (coughs) Well, it turns out that screw the deans. I mean, the provost and the president loved this and as did the bursar, OK. So when (chuckles) there was a point where there was a bunch of scientists in West Chester, and of course, they were upset with me. And they called up the university, and they 01:06:00ended up getting the bursar, the treasurer, talking to, they were talking to him. And they said, "we're not giving you any more money as long as this guy's there." So the bursar said, "well, how much money have you given us?" which turned out to be something most, most moderate, most modest. You know, I mean, if they had said, "we had, we gave you 20 million dollars for an endowment," well, you know, the person might have sat up and listened to 'em. (laughs) But as it was, he said no. Don't bother me. This is a question of freedom of speech and all that kind of stuff. And your $500 donation doesn't change anything. Um, so I survived all that.

And at one point I had arranged, I called up the Israeli embassy, the not the 01:07:00embassy, but the consulate in, in Philadelphia, and I said, "Why don't we do a debate. When we have a debate, you know, and you send send somebody up here, I'm sure we'll have a good audience. And I'll debate you." And they did for two years, they did it for two years. Well, I'm, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to be modest about this. I took them apart, really. But you know, I mean. They had thought they were violating, as they are now, every international law, every Geneva Convention and human rights treaties. I mean, you know, Amazon, not Amazon, um, Amnesty International just brought out last month a very detailed, 01:08:00uh, report that said, you know, Israelis are running an apartheid state. Like South Africa. The same kind of report came out from Human Rights Watch and from the Bensalem, which is the, the um, human rights organization of Israel accused the government of, of running a, developing a apartheid state. So, yeah, this was before those reports, but I mean, the evidence was there. I couldn't get him to come back the third year, so.

That's how my radicalism manifested itself. (coughs) When I retired in 2013, I think it was. I, you know, one of the secrets of retirement, of a good 01:09:00retirement is to find something in the job you've been doing for God knows how long I was at West Chester for 27 years. Find something in that job that you like that you can carry over. And for me, it was always the writing, and publishing and that kind of stuff. Yeah, (coughs) so, um, but one's energy flags at a certain age. So I developed this blog. I had always been writing short analyses and sending them out to selected people. And, uh, you know, I got very, very positive feedback on this. So I decided I'd just set up to blog and, and, and do it that way. Well, the thing really exploded. It took off. And, you know, I think that, uh, I think the last month I had twenty eight thousand hits, um, 01:10:00which is down from what I got when I started and I started, it was really. amazing. People were, I did have offers to monetorize (sic) it. I don't know. I turned it down, I couldn't stand- If you go to, you know, some of the sites. You know, you get these pop up ads and, um, all this kind of stuff, it's very annoying. And so I said, no, I don't do that. So we just leave it plain like it is. But it's been pretty successful. I get a lot of feedback, both positive and negative, and uh, I feel that, you know, it's a, it's a good accomplishment. I can express my cockamamie leftist ideas and uh, and it's OK. So that's where I am.

Owen Cutler: Yeah, no, you were talking right about the Middle East. So do you see any, uh, kinds of parallels between U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and in Israel and the Middle East?

Lawrence Davidson: (coughs) Yeah, I mean, I do think the Middle East in Israel is gonna to win, you know, at least for some period of time where we did win. But it's the same kind of, uh, imperialist attitude. When (clears throat) Israel, you know, when the British initially promised the Israelis, the European Zionist Jews to a home, a homeland in Palestine, that was 1917 and in 1917, 01:12:00imperialism was OK. It was an accepted kind of thing in Europe uh, because people felt that through imperialism, you spread European civilization, and make people civilized, and that kind of thing. Well, you uh, you know, suck the resources out of them and control them through a military ways or stuff like that. So, but, but it was least among the Europeans and the Americans, too it was an accepted policy. I mean, you know, the United States (coughs) uh, at the end of the 19th century fought a war with Spain and as a function of that, they took the Philippines as a colony um, as well as Puerto Rico. Um, and for a 01:13:00while, they occupied Cuba. So, um, so all of these countries, um, did not see anything wrong with it. And it, and so the European Zionists, Right? I mean, you got to keep in mind that the initial Zionist impulse, they were Europeans. I mean, they might have been Europeans who were persecuted because they were Jews, but culturally, they were Europeans. So, um. Let me turn this light on, see if it's better.

So essentially when they came to Palestine it was Europeans facing natives who 01:14:00they assumed were uncivilized and culturally backward, this sort of thing. So I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but that's changed, so essentially (coughs) what, you got the promise, you're revved up. Um, World War Two has confirmed the need for a Jewish state, a Jewish homeland. And so people were going there, right? And they're going there with an imperialist, 19th century imperialist attitude. By the end of the Second World War, the whole national point of view starts to change, (coughs) largely because of what the Nazis did, OK. So imperialism and imperial control of other people goes out of fashion. And 01:15:00that's why the British and the French start, starting, started, eventually, took her French a little longer to get out of their colonies. You know, the British created the Commonwealth, um whereupon you had most of their colonies independent, but it was an economic organization, um, the Commonwealth. And eventually after, you know, doing stupid things and losing wars in Algeria and in Vietnam, the French also left their colonies, the Belgians uh, who controlled the Congo, and they left, all kinds of things. So there you were.

Now you had an anti-imperialist point of view. And what are you going to do with 01:16:00that, with those Zionists in Palestine because they are, they're taking over. So you get these white Europeans and they're taking over, OK? Um, so there was a contradiction. And, but the Europeans, and the Americans were so guilt ridden over the Nazis and the Holocaust that they let them go that they gave him a, you know, free free ride. It was the exception to the rule. But the problem is, you cannot take a, in this case, a European group and plop them down in an environment, in an area that's like millions of non-Europeans all around them. 01:17:00And then you have that group declare that they have a right to create a state for them in that area. What, what, what are the natives going to do? They're going to object. Inevitably, they're going to object. o you could just see how this was going to work out. And, um, (coughs) so in order to have a Jewish state or a, uh, Jewish homeland in an area that has zillions of non-Jews, you, you're going to have to create laws that segregate, that segregate Jews from non-Jews in terms of their schools, in terms of their living areas, uh, and of course, 01:18:00your, you know, your ambition, the Zionist ambition was to bring all Jews to Palestine. Which wasn't going to happen, but that was there and still is their ambition. And so you needed more and more land. You know, because more and more people were coming in. Um, and so inevitably it leaded to, it led to an apartheid scenario, at, which was predictable.

Anyway, that's, and, of course, where my father though I was a communist, and I wasn't. Where, you know, I I. Where most people in the history department in 01:19:00Alberta thought it was a homosexual and I wasn't. Um, (coughs) because of who I was working under. Um, I don't know, I think I was I was pretty forthright in West Chester. Nobody thought I was something else. But, you know, here I am, same old radical. Uh, and this is, its gets expressed this way instead of what it used to be. So. It's who I am.

Owen Cutler: This has been really interesting. So, uh, we've, we've reached most of, uh, what I want to talk about, so I do have some questions, uh, to wrap up.

Lawrence Davidson: Sure.

Owen Cutler: Uh, and you just mentioned your father, um, so, and your mother, you said was, uh, living in Broomhall when you got back fuh, rom Canada. So was 01:20:00your father still around and did you get to-

Lawrence Davidson: It's interesting. My mother was a widow at that time. My father had, during the Second World War, I had been in the tropics, OK? And he picked up every single parasite. He had malaria. Everything that you could get, he got. And so when he got back, he didn't realize how beat up his, his innards were. But by the 19, late 1950s, he, he was, you know who is under doctor's care, he was in and out of the hospital. Various things. He died at the age of 54 in the 1970s. You know, they called me back from Canada. So, yeah, that, that happened. Um, and, uh, he was dead by the time I got there, there was no recon, 01:21:00there was no way to reconcile, you know, to get closure. Which was a psychological, a certain psychological problem for me, but I I had, uh, reconciled myself with this issue long before, um, and so I managed to get through it without too much trauma. My sister, on the other hand, was, uh, you know, she was, when my father died, she was basket case. She's OK now.

Owen Cutler: Yeah, um. I guess. What do I want to ask now, sorry. Is there anything that you would change about your activism back in the 70s err, uh 60s and 70s or even when you were a college professor?

Lawrence Davidson: In terms of it specifically about the activism, no, there's nothing I'd change. Maybe I wouldn't get on top of that car, OK? But no, there's nothing really that I would change. I'm I'm pretty much at peace with who I am and what I did. I mean, there are things, I did stupid things on occasion, personal things, but in terms of the political stuff I don't any regrets.

Owen Cutler: Well, Dr. Davidson, I'd like to thank you for your time. Uh, before we end the recording, is there anything else you want to share?

Lawrence Davidson: No, I mean, that's about it.

Owen Cutler: Well, thank you for your time, thank you for your contribution. Uh, and then we're going to stay on the line after I stop recording to just finish all the forms.

Lawrence Davidson: Sure.