Things I've Learned, with Poli Sci Professor Benjamin Ginsberg

By: Leah Maniero

Posted: 10/9/08

Years ago, Professor Benjamin Ginsberg planned his future by closing his eyes and putting one of two letters - one turning down his acceptance to law school, the other turning down his acceptance to graduate school - in his mailbox.

After the graduate school and a long teaching career at Cornell, Ginsberg now teaches American politics in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and coordinates the Hopkins Atchison program in Washington, DC.

Ginsberg spoke with the News-Letter about his impromptu decision to pursue a career in the political science field and his predictions about the upcoming election's outcome.

News-Letter (N-L): What led you to pursue a career in political science?

Benjamin Ginsberg (BG): Well, it was actually totally by chance. When I was in college, like everyone else, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I didn't know what I would do working in an occupation anyway, except what I had seen on television.

I was a political science major, an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and most of my friends planned to go on to law school, but I didn't know if I could do that.

In all these lawyer programs I had seen on television, all these people were always standing up and delivering these brilliant orations. I thought, 'Wow, I can't do that.' However, the professors sat around the library looking at musty volumes, and I thought, 'You know, I could do that.'

I applied to law school and to graduate school. This was the pre-computer era, so no one knew what you were doing. I got my acceptances, and I put down my class deposits.

I put down a deposit for both [law and graduate school]. In September my girlfriend asked me, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I don't know,' and she said, 'You have to decide.'

I typed out letters to both turning down my place and asking for my deposit back. I stood outside by the mailbox with one in each hand, I closed my eyes, and I threw one in the box, then I opened my eyes to see what I was doing. I was going to graduate school. And I said, 'OK.'

N-L: So it was completely by chance?

BG: I might easily have gone to the law school. But once I started [graduate school], I really enjoyed it. It was an intellectual challenge, and in particular there were professors from whom I learned an enormous amount.

It turns out I had been completely mistaken about what people did in different careers. It turns out that hardly any lawyers set foot in a courtroom and talk; They usually sit in their offices or the law library staring at computer screens, whereas the professors, they have to stand up and talk. I learned how to do that.

N-L: You've had a very successful career as a professor, and you must certainly have some very interesting experiences to share. Who would you say is the most interesting person you've ever met?

BG: Oh, I've met a lot of really interesting people as a professor; some of them faculty, some of them students, some of them alumni.

One really interesting person that I met was a man named Harold Seidman whom I met when I first came to Hopkins.

One of the reasons why I left Cornell to come to Hopkins was because the then-dean of Hopkins, Lloyd Armstrong, and the then-president, William Richardson, wanted to do more in Washington, and I was very interested in involving myself in Washington activities. It was the place to be.

When I arrived at the Hopkins office space in Washington, I was sitting there and in came someone I had heard of but never met.

His name was Harold Seidman and he was then in his 70s. He was the assistant director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and had been a well-known person in Washington for years.

In Washington there are a number of people in the bureaucracy who sort of know everything. You know, the politicians are up there blathering. They don't know anything, but there are a small number of long-time civil servants who run the place and Harold was one of those, so I used to spend hours listening to him tell his stories.

For example, he was a staffer in the Lyndon Johnson White House and he was an assistant director of what was then called the Bureau of the Budget, but in those days they didn't have political staffers. The staffers were civil servants, and at the time he had an office right next to Lyndon Johnson's, as he had before for Kennedy and Eisenhower.

[He told me] he had to leave government for a while. Lyndon Johnson was a great man, he said, but he was a total lunatic. He used to be up all night - Johnson was a well-known insomniac - and would get a couple hours sleep in the afternoon. But if Johnson was up all night walking around and opened your door, he expected you to be there.

[Seidman] said everyone would go nuts because they would be in their office the whole night. And then [he told me that] Johnson would call two a.m. staff meetings in his bathroom. And Johnson would sit on the can with his pants down and hold a staff meeting.

So Harold Seidman said to himself, you know, here I am, an adult, and I am standing in this lunatic's bathroom holding a staff meeting. I am out of here.

He was also the one who wrote the legislation written by Congress admitting Alaska and Hawaii to the Union.

N-L: You must be very interested in the upcoming election?

BG: Well, it now seems like a foregone conclusion as a strongly democratic year. I listened to all the debates, which have become irrelevant this year. And I must say every time Sarah Palin says, 'You betcha.' I crack up.

But still, this is a year that will clearly be a democratic year. I'm thinking of 1964, when the Democrats swept to power, or 1980 when the Republicans swept to power.

The point is, we're in an economic crisis, and the party in power now is going to lose. You don't have to be a genius to figure this out.

N-L: What do find most interesting about the upcoming election?

BG: Well, you know, this is an historic race in a number of ways. I am totally fascinated by the fact that we will have an African-American president.

When I was a college student, we were still debating black voting rights. So in a very short period of time, our nation's race relations have changed so much that we will, in a month, elect an African-American president. So, that has to be the most important development in this election.

Other than that, I thought that Sarah Palin was pretty weird.

N-L: How would you respond to people who characterize Hopkins as a politically apathetic school?

BG: I don't think that's true. I think Hopkins has quite a number of political groups. I would not say that Hopkins is more politically apathetic than any other school.

Among all the elite schools, I think that we have more Republicans at Hopkins than at any of the others. You know, if you go to Harvard or to Penn, you don't meet any other Republicans. At most other schools, the spectrum is from extreme left to left, whereas at Hopkins there's much more variety.

N-L: Do you have any advice to undergraduates interested in pursuing a career in political science?

BG: Well, politics are everywhere; You don't have to be a political scientist to get involved in politics.

But at Hopkins we have the Washington Program, this semester we have 16 students living in Washington in the Atchison program. Students can definitely get involved in Washington.

I remember years ago at Cornell we had an intern who got an internship at the State Department, and I remember her complaining about how boring it was.

But she said one night all of a sudden the phone rang, and somebody on the other side was yelling, 'Iraqi tanks are coming over the border. What should we do?' She said, 'I thought I probably better not make the decision.' So the Atchison program is definitely something I recommend to students.