What do you think?
Rate this book
Class Divide: Yale '64 and the Conflicted Legacy of the Sixties
Members of the Yale College class of 1964—the first class to matriculate in the 1960s—were poised to take up the positions of leadership that typically followed an Ivy League education. Their mission gained special urgency from the inspiration of John F. Kennedy’s presidency and the civil rights movement as it moved north. Ultimately these men proved successful in traditional terms—in the professions, in politics, and in philanthropy—and yet something was different. Challenged by the issues that would define a new era, their lives took a number of unexpected turns. Instead of confirming the triumphal perspective they grew up with in the years after World War II, they embraced new and often conflicting ideas. In the process the group splintered.
In Class Divide, Howard Gillette Jr. draws particularly on more than one hundred interviews with representative members of the Yale class of ’64 to examine how they were challenged by the issues that would define the 1960 civil rights, the power of the state at home and abroad, sexual mores and personal liberty, religious faith, and social responsibility. Among those whose life courses Gillette follows from their formative years in college through the years after graduation are the politicians Joe Lieberman and John Ashcroft, the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt, the environmental leader Gus Speth, and the civil rights activist Stephen Bingham.
Although their Ivy League education gave them access to positions in the national elite, the members of Yale ’64 nonetheless were too divided to be part of a unified leadership class. Try as they might, they found it impossible to shape a new consensus to replace the one that was undone in their college years and early adulthood.
In Class Divide, Howard Gillette Jr. draws particularly on more than one hundred interviews with representative members of the Yale class of ’64 to examine how they were challenged by the issues that would define the 1960 civil rights, the power of the state at home and abroad, sexual mores and personal liberty, religious faith, and social responsibility. Among those whose life courses Gillette follows from their formative years in college through the years after graduation are the politicians Joe Lieberman and John Ashcroft, the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt, the environmental leader Gus Speth, and the civil rights activist Stephen Bingham.
Although their Ivy League education gave them access to positions in the national elite, the members of Yale ’64 nonetheless were too divided to be part of a unified leadership class. Try as they might, they found it impossible to shape a new consensus to replace the one that was undone in their college years and early adulthood.
- GenresEducation
310 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 23, 2015
4 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 1, 2019
young people can read this and reflect on how much more realistic and humane the ambitions of rich-kid baby boomers might have been than the Brooklynites, Austinites, and San Franciscoans of today---as well as what aging realistically means. (No one ever attains godhood, not even Yale alumni---and political obsession destroys marriages and parent-child relationships.)
the old can reflect on what the 60's means in a more nuanced way than Forrest Gump or Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
the old can reflect on what the 60's means in a more nuanced way than Forrest Gump or Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Displaying 1 of 1 review