Interview with Allen Schick
Allen Schick is a fellow of the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science at the University of Maryland.
Begin
Contents
Max Raskin: So you’ve spent your professional life writing about and studying federal budget issues — how did you get interested in that on a personal level?
Allen Schick: I got interested because when I was in graduate school, I took a course with a professor — Ed Lindblom was his name.
He was an economist at the time, although he later became president of the American Political Science Association. Lindblom was concerned with the following: How does a society collectively make rational decisions? He looked at budgeting, not because he was interested in budgeting, but he saw that as the most organized attempt to rationalize public choice.
MR: Was he influential in your life?
AS: He was one of the more influential in terms of teachers. He was a wonderful teacher. He gave us a weekly writing assignment. He'd write "No" if he disagreed, in long block letters across the page. You'd come running to his office to argue with him. Half the class were economists, half the students were political scientists. He would begin a class, "Begin," and we'd argue.
MR: Who were some of your other great teachers in life?
AS: I had a lot of great teachers. Robert Dahl, who was also President of American Political Science Association.
MR: Dahl and Lindblom both lived to be very old. Why is that?
AS: You can say that the academic life was pretty leisurely — that could be one explanation. But I noticed orchestra conductors also tend to have a long life, and they have to move vigorously for a concentrated period of time.
MR: Same thing with judges.
AS: You don't have all the risks of people who are blue-collar workers, who face physical challenges.
The Rav
MR: What about in your Yiddishkeit — who was influential in shaping your worldview?
AS: I'll tell you who influenced me the most. My greatest teachers were the following: One was Rabbi Anshel Wenhaus, who was a rebbe in Toras Emes in Borough Park. He was from the Mir. He was just a brilliant teacher. And then I had Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Warshavshik. He was Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef (RJJ).
And then finally when I moved to Boston for about seven years, every week without absence, I attended Rav Soloveitchik’s Motza'ei Shabbos shiur. I grew up in Borough Park and from time to time I’d hear belittling comments about Rav Soloveitchik. I moved to Boston and I started attending his shiurim and I said this is the frumest guy in the world. He doesn’t deviate one iota from the dalet amos of halacha.
He's ascribed to be the founder of modern orthodoxy — he never was modern. He never used the term modern. He never gave an inch. He was a fundamentalist. He was a brisker with yiras HaChet. That's what he was. So he had a great influence on me, even though I had very little personal kesher with him.
Once in a while I asked a question and once in a while he jumped down my throat with the question and he goes, "Do you think I am altogether an idiot?"
MR: What did you get from the other two?
AS: From R’Shmuel Dovid Warshavshik I got the love of talmidim.
He had learned in Baranovich and Kaminetz. He was a talmid of R’Boruch Ber Leibowitz. He came to America after World War II but unlike almost every other rabbi who had a difficulty adjusting to American students, he had an attachment of love and understanding of American students. His younger daughter is about our closest friend for more than 70 years. He also knew how to give a shiur.
R'Wenhaus was someone who expanded my breadth of my learning.
MR: Over the years has your faith changed?
AS: Yes.
MR: In what ways?
AS: Not in a conscious way. The area which I thought about the most is that of hashgacha pratis. I have difficulty reconciling the notion that Hashem wills the movement of every leaf and every human with the concepts of teva and free will, or with the evils and tragedies that one experiences or observes. And so I migrated to the notion — which is not mine alone — that we live in a world that hester panim. Do I have answers? No.
MR: Who have you read that influenced your thinking on this?
AS: I think it's more my own experience. I look at Ramban every week, thanks to ArtScroll, which is maybe its greatest work.
The One-Finger Typist
MR: I want to ask you about your famous typing.
AS: For years I typed with only one finger on my typewriter.
MR: Why?
AS: Because I'm a klutz. I started with a manual typewriter and the closest I came to divorce was the day I came home from work and my wife had replaced my manual typewriter with an electric typewriter. I was bereft. I had a connection to the manual typewriter.
I moved there then to a Selectric with correcting ribbons. And now of course you got to use a computer.
A student of mine put together a YouTube video, “When 40 WPM Meant Something.” I've typed 600-page books using tiny fonts with one finger.
MR: What’s been your favorite typewriter over the years?
AS: This Selectric. I had three of them at one time.
MR: And what do you do now??
AS: I don't use them at all anymore. I use a computer, which actually slows me down because as you surf from one key to the other, if you gently touch any keys it records it. I spend more than half my time correcting my text.
MR: A lot of people are not so thrilled about modernity. You've seen the long arc of technology from nothing to where it is today. What's your thought on that?
AS: Look, when fire was discovered, it gave you warmth and it killed people. Technology always has been a two-edged sword and standing in the face of technology doesn't get you very far. I admit though the yeshiva world builds fences around technology. Even though I'm technologically challenged, I'm not even close to being a Neanderthal. I welcome it.
I have other challenges though. I'll be honest — I was a teacher for 60 years and I never lost some of the habits of the Yeshiva world.
If you’re in a class in Yeshiva and the Rebbe says something — students without raising their hands would jump into discussion and one student would challenge another student. When I started teaching at university, I felt like a policeman. You raise your hand, and you wait. And if students disagree with each other, they talk to me rather than to each other. It's a very different culture in the Yeshiva world. And I have to tell you this, despite the fact that I was a teacher for 60 years, I never fully adjusted to this culture.
Teaching: Then and Now
MR: What advice do you have for a young teacher?
AS: Don’t crack jokes. They usually backfire. Don't make personal comments at all to students. Respect them and challenge them.
MR: What was is like moving from a very insular community in Borough Park to Yale?
AS: Well, it wasn't as insular as today. When I started at Yale, for some crazy reason — and I can't even believe I did it because it could have derailed my whole career — but every Thursday I went back to New York to work in my family bakery, and that's how I met my wife. But I didn't feel I had to make very much of an adjustment. I wore a kippah in class. But I decided very early that I would not wear a kippah as a teacher. That was a decision I made consciously, and I didn't feel a sense that I had to make an adjustment.
MR: Why didn't you wear a kippah as a teacher?
AS: I didn't want them to see me as any different as any other teacher. I didn't want to ask who I am, et cetera. It's a decision I made very quickly. I never looked back that.
MR: Do you think you would make the same decision today?
AS: I'm not sure. I've actually asked myself that. I made that decision quickly. I never reconsidered it. Would I be starting out today? I think there's a greater probability that I'd wear a kippah.
I find it remarkable that today there are very few frum Jews going to academia. In my generation, there were many more there. We were small in numbers, but you had the Twersky family. My twin brother Marvin and I went into academia. Today it is rare. It's not on many yeshiva boys’ checklist of possibilities.