The Cavalier daily :: Tuesday, October 17,1972 :: University of Virginia Library

"Am I a frustrated
politician? The answer is partly
yes. But I am reconciled to my
fate," admits History Prof.
William H. Harbaugh.
Nevertheless, as his former
students will testify, the
politician often creeps out of
the bewhiskered fifty-two
year-old American history
scholar and transforms a dull
history lecture into stirring
rhetoric.

What frustrates him even
more than politics are the
charges and accusations made
against his old friend George
McGovern. He first met Mr.
McGovern at Northwestern
University in 1949 when they
were both working for their
Ph.D.'s in history.

He remembers Mr.
McGovern as a "first-rate
student and the kind of strong
quiet leader for whom one had
such respect, one wanted his
respect."

"I rle," exclaims Mr.
Harbaugh, "when charges of
compromise are leveled against
McGovern." He points out that
President Nixon, not Mr.
McGovern, easily changes his
positions.

He cites the example of Mr.
Nixon supporting balance
budgets but creating the largest
deficit since World War II. "I
think the charges of being
chameleon should be leveled
against Nixon not McGovern,"
he says.

Especially disappointing to
him in this political campaign
is the drifting student support
towards Mr. Nixon. "When
college students were being
drafted in large numbers and
being killed in large numbers in
Vietnam, the students were
almost universally opposed to
the war and to the Nixon
foreign policy. Even the
athletes opposed the
Cambodian invasion!"

"Now that the draft calls
are down and fatality rates for
Americans in Vietnam almost
nonexistent, a great many of
the same students who
professed to be idealists in
1970 are now supporting the
President's foreign policy," he
remarked.

However, for all their
current apathy and support of
President Nixon, he finds "the
student body today a "much
more socially responsible
student body than in the days
of gross dissipation."

Sees Definite Change

He sees a definite change for
the better in students since his
days at the University of
Alabama, which he attended
from 1938 to 1942 after
finishing public school in his
home town of Newark, N.J. He
was lured to the University by
a baseball scholarship; however
he quickly adds that he did not
become a star.

"At that time the University
of Alabama was known as the
country club of the deep South
and the University of Virginia
as the country club of the
upper South," he recalls.

Fought In War

"I often suspect," Mr.
Harbaugh continues, "that
when some of the U.Va.
alumni call for a return to the
'good old days', what they are
asking for in essence is the
return to the kind of
anti-intellectualism which used
to prevail."

After earning his B.A. in
journalism, he fought in World
War II as an artillery unit
captain and was decorated
Crois de Guerre with gold star.

In America-occupied
Germany, he took charge of a
prisoner-of-war camp as well
as serving for a short time as
the burgermeister of a small
town. He also toured one of
the Nazi death camps.

Lacked History Knowledge

Mr. Harbaugh found how
much his knowledge of history
was lacking during the war. In
1947 he enrolled at Columbia
University and eventually
earned his M.A. in American
History.

Before coming to the
University in 1966, Mr.
Harbaugh taught at the
Universities of Connecticut and
Maryland, Rutgers and
Bucknell University. When
asked how the other schools
compare to the University, he
replied, "I like the University
of Virginia more than any
other place that I have been. I
am happy here."