Josiah Bunting

In 1957, Josiah Bunting enlisted in the Marine Corps. “It was the kind of thing you would do if you had something to prove to yourself,” Bunting once remarked. After the proof was in, he enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, where he eventually graduated third in his class and won a Rhodes scholarship. In 1966, Bunting began a six-year career in the Army, including six months on the Mekong River in Vietnam.

In 1974, Bunting wrote a novel entitled The Lionheads, a paean to the GIs who fought in southeast Asia. “They were utterly American, as American as a tall man with a crew-cut… casual, loose-jointed, confident,” he wrote of his fellow soldiers. “They knew what was coming. Almost half their company had already been killed or wounded, and they were going back for more because they were ordered to. The thing that got to you was that last year they had been taking cars apart in Pittsfield or driving tractors outside Bismarck or sinking jump shots in the gym in Cedar Rapids.”

Bunting then migrated toward academic life, teaching at West Point and the Naval War College, and becoming the president of Briarcliff College, a women’s school in New York, in 1973. In 1977, he was appointed president of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, an all-male school drenched in the Southern gentleman tradition. Bunting later became headmaster of a New Jersey prep school, then in 1995 returned to head VMI, just as the U.S. Supreme Court decided to force the institution to admit women.

Bunting’s time in the academic world was the catalyst for two books: In 1998’s An Education  for Our Time, a fictional wealthy businessman sets out to create a college devoted to things   absent from today’s higher education. All Loves Excelling, published this year, is a novel about a girl at an elite boarding school who aims to attend Dartmouth College, and all the pressures that go with such aspirations. Bunting manages to make the book a searing indictment of America’s obsession with ambition, status, and credentials, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the degradation of our teaching system.

Bunting, a father of four, and now 62 years old, runs long distances and plays classical piano for pleasure. He spoke with TAE associate editor John Meroney in the superintendent’s residence on the VMI campus.

 

TAE: How have the terrorist attacks of September 11 affected the cadets?

BUNTING: The cadets are members of a generation that has had things pretty much its way. There is no military draft. There is MTV. There’s also—so it appears to them—a broad white canvas on which to paint any career, project any ambition, and indulge almost any desire. “Hell, I’ll do whatever I want” is their primary view of the future. That presumption has just absorbed a deep shock. But the American capacity to sustain resolve—once the threat has receded a bit—is uncertain. For this generation, the tragedy and its long aftermath, the summons to their patriotism and notions of citizenship, may be ignorable. I do not know.

TAE: No doubt the cadets here at VMI will respond to the crisis differently than will their peers in the civilian world.

BUNTING: Well, about 40 to 50 percent of them will be commissioned directly into the military, many of them this coming May. Plainly, their lives will be very directly and constantly altered.

TAE: What is their mood?

BUNTING: Somber and determined. They were powerfully touched by President Bush’s speech to Congress in September, and they understand they’re in it for a long haul. It’s useful to remember that they were born when Ronald Reagan was President; they have no memory whatever of Vietnam—which is as remote to them as World War I is to many of us.

TAE: What lessons did Vietnam teach us that the nation can apply to this new war?

BUNTING: We never really understood the depth of our enemy’s determination to win. General Giap once said something like, “You Americans consistently underestimated the price we were willing to pay in order to prevail.” We must expend great effort to learn everything there is to know about our enemy.

I also hope we have learned that you don’t win wars by “sending a message” to an adversary. I hope we’ve learned something about the occasional necessity of bearing very high costs, human and material, over a long period. Our country expects its wars to be moral crusades in which spasms of military action attain overwhelming results early. That cannot be in the current instance.

TAE: Earlier this year, VMI made news when two cadets sued the school, complaining that an organized prayer said before supper violates their Constitutional rights.

BUNTING: On week nights, the first captain of cadets calls the corps to attention, after which an officer recites something like this: “For what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. Look after the Institute. Favor the aspirations of our country. Amen.” It’s the ultimate Norman Rockwell apple pie prayer. It isn’t sectarian. It’s connected with our VMI heritage, and also with the heritage of this country. Its provenance goes back to 1630 with John Winthrop in Massachusetts Bay. It simply says that we inhabit a favored country which, so far, a beneficent Providence has seen fit to sustain. That’s who we’re thanking.

TAE: The cadets here are intensely loyal to VMI. Why would they sue their school?

BUNTING: I can’t speculate on what motivated them. Often I feel just like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby when he says he’s become a magnet for “the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.” One of these cadets is a Lutheran, the other a Catholic. I take them at their word that this is brought with integrity, but I regard the suit as preposterous and frivolous. Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union are representing them.

TAE: In An Education for Our Time you draw up, through your fictional mouthpiece, a blueprint for a college unlike any other. What was your impetus?

BUNTING: A book editor was talking to me about Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University and asked, “Have you ever thought about doing the same thing in our country? Would you consider designing an ideal American college based on the things you seem to believe in?” This was one assignment I had spent my entire life preparing for. I tried to create a plan for preparing virtuous citizens who would be the leaders of tomorrow.

TAE: How successful is VMI at producing that type of graduate?

BUNTING: We’re very close to what I described in the book, and we do a better job than any place in the western world, with the exception of religious seminaries. In fact, one of the models I used for An Education for Our Time is a Benedictine monastery.

TAE: VMI is Virginia’s version of a monastery?

BUNTING: We’re trying to explore the hinterland between intellect and character. I’m interested in that terrain. I want to make what we learn and believe bite down deeply enough so that it superintends our conduct. VMI strives to lodge a set of standards in the personal habits and consciences of these cadets.

TAE: If one encounters a VMI graduate who’s a stockbroker, lawyer, or businessman, how will he be different from a Harvard graduate in the same profession?

BUNTING: Reliably, almost universally, the VMI man will be characterized by absolute integrity, a ferocity of opinion, an independence, and a willingness to stand up and say what he believes. VMI is also a terrific arbiter of democracy because of the cadets’ living conditions. There are no snobs here. This is the ultimate leveling experiment. And it lasts a lifetime.

TAE: The youth of the ’60s certainly had a “ferocity of opinion” about any number of issues, especially as compared to many of today’s young people. Is it better to be passionate about issues than to be uninterested, even if you are wrong?

BUNTING: “The ’60s” has become a slipshod synonym for what happened between the years 1967 and 1970. Up until 1965 was a glittering time to be a young person in America. It was a period of noble idealism: There was the Peace Corps, the Green Berets, and this notion that intellect could do great things in the world. But in the aftermath of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Alan Alda man of the ’70s, what did we get? Everyone seemed to say, “I’m going to become rich—and to hell with everyone else!” We’re still living with the consequences of that. Millions of people are obsessed with the little stock market shifts from second to second, with nothing better to do than figure out their personal net worth.

TAE: Earlier this year, The Atlantic Monthly published a cover story about students at Princeton, depicting them as the future workaholics of America. They believe they don’t have time to read newspapers, follow politics, and get involved in political activism. Dating is rare. If they have sex with someone, it’s called “friendship with privileges.”

BUNTING: Well, he’s correct so far as romance is concerned: It no longer exists.

TAE: As a former headmaster of a prep school that supplies Princeton with a fair number of students, does this ring true?

BUNTING: In ways it’s a fair picture. Compared to the Princeton classes of 1925 and 1945, today’s students are much more occupied. But today’s kids carve out very big chunks of time for themselves that you and I and reporters don’t know about.

I went to graduate school at Oxford, where a great premium was placed on being perceived as a man of leisure. If you were seen working, you were regarded as the ultimate dork; the ideal was to be perceived as brilliant without studying. The American ideal, of course, is to be perceived as brilliant and constantly working.

Incidentally, the word “leisure” comes from the Latin stem word “licere,” meaning “to be free.” It doesn’t mean lying on the beach. It is time to do what you really want to.

TAE: What’s your opinion of the 1990s?

BUNTING: Americans became obsessive about possessions and items of fame. I’m certain that if Alexis de Tocqueville were writing about America now, he would take note of the unbelievable proliferation of televised awards programs. There are the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, and what seem to be about a hundred others. Ambition for riches or fame can block development of intellect and character. President John Adams, for one contrary example, would acknowledge only posthumous fame as an appropriate reward for work.

TAE: The Clintons often seemed to be the First Celebrities more than the First Family.

BUNTING: Of course. For some time, Americans have tended to confound celebrity with character and even leadership. Many people now think a good leader is someone who’s a celebrity.

For example, several years ago, when the Baltimore Orioles were having a difficult season, the manager said to shortstop Cal Ripken, whom we all admire, “You’ve got to come forward and lead us in the locker room.” Ripken replied, “I’m not that kind of a guy.” He leads quietly, by example. Somehow, there’s this notion that if one gains fame, particularly as vindicated by television appearances, then he must be some sort of a leader.

TAE: President Bush has shown he can be incredibly powerful when he speaks formally, such as in the speech he delivered to Congress declaring war on terrorism. What do you think accounts for his difficulty with conveying the same conviction in impromptu settings?

BUNTING: There are many people in democratic history who were quiet, circumspect, and weren’t eloquent or articulate but who were incredibly strong and capable in times of stress. And I’d much rather be led by those people than ones who have an admirable facility with words but little else to offer.

TAE: Historian Joseph Ellis was exposed this year for systematically lying to his Mt. Holyoke students, claiming, among other things, that he’d been in combat in Vietnam. If Ellis had been a professor here at VMI, what would have happened to him?

BUNTING: Well, with our honor system and tradition, Joseph Ellis wouldn’t stay here for very long.

TAE: While most colleges and universities look at grades and SAT scores as the primary basis  for admission, you seem to place special emphasis on whether a candidate has carved out a particular “passion” for himself. Why is that important to you?

BUNTING: There are a number of characteristics in people that are very important, and I feel that chief among them are a capacity for wonder, an independence of temper, and a willingness to take lonely positions. Here at VMI, I found that one of the best predictive qualities in a prospective cadet is the attainment of Eagle Scout rank—it shows a tenacity of purpose.

TAE: But the things you’re talking about can’t really be quantified, while grades and SAT scores represent actual concrete evidence.

BUNTING: Strong avocations—artistic, literary, whatever—show something about one’s capacities for doing and thinking that can’t be measured by credentialing agencies. I’m always interested when I read about a person such as Malcolm Frager, a concert pianist who’s also a professor of English at Columbia. A profound interest in aesthetics shows me a capacity for wonder and emotional sympathy. All of the professions need that.

TAE: Don’t the “experts” tend to say otherwise?

BUNTING: “Nothing is so deeply inculcated by the experience of history as that you must never trust experts.” Lord Salisbury said that. Look, in national disasters, one of the first figures who inevitably emerges is a so-called “grief counselor.” What does that mean? If we lose the capacity to respond to crises ourselves, and we’re not sufficiently the masters of our own emotional and intellectual beings, then we’re in really big trouble.

TAE: Is it pretty safe to assume that Josiah Bunting isn’t a cheerleader for the College Board?

BUNTING: I think the SAT is of some modest value when used in concert with a number of other measurements. It mainly assesses the likelihood of a student succeeding in a tough freshman curriculum in a new academic setting, especially one where there’s heavy-duty reading in literature, history, and philosophy. Beyond that, I wouldn’t give the SAT much efficacy. When I meet someone who just achieved a perfect 1600 score on the SAT I almost always find him curiously non-verbal and not particularly interesting. I wonder how the ability to excel at very fine analogical distinctions—gray is to maroon as indecisive is to (a) confident (b) cocksure (c) diffident (d) uncertain—can prove one’s fitness.

TAE: In your novel All Loves Excelling, one of the characters says that the SAT reminds him of crossword puzzles. Those who do well at them often don’t amount to anything.

BUNTING: Imagine Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, and George Marshall—the really great men of contemporary Western society, particularly in government. They had a kind of wisdom that eludes academic success.

It’s become a chestnut topic of cocktail conversation: “Smith had a C-minus average when he was at Wake Forest and now he’s the head of Brown Brothers Harriman. How could that be?” Everybody shrugs and somebody says, “Well, he had common sense. Get me another drink.” And the conversation ends. People don’t want to fasten on that. But wisdom that grows over time has many sources other than academic acuity.

We run after success which exalts us over our neighbor. It’s like they’ve flooded the atmosphere with cocaine and Ecstasy. All the soccer moms have to get in their Lexus and take the kid down to an SAT cram course because if they don’t, Mary Jane next door is going to have a 1340, and poor Amanda—she only scored a 1290. What is going to happen? Amanda may have to go to Hamilton instead of Bates. Oh my God! Is Mary Jane at Bates? Where’s your college bumper sticker?

TAE: Parents feed this.

BUNTING: Indeed they do. Headmasters occasionally have to throw people out of school. But today you’d better have Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett standing behind you—and maybe a few armed guards, too. Parents now have an overwhelming prejudice in favor of the kid, no matter how terrible he’s become. I was thrown out of the Hill School when I was 15 or 16 and I richly deserved it. It was because of excessive demerits—real ’50s stuff that probably included smoking. I remember my father being very hard on me and shaking hands with the headmaster. Those days are over.

TAE: In All Loves Excelling, you paint a disturbing picture of a boarding school student who becomes hooked on antidepressants.

BUNTING: The prevailing wisdom seems to be that if medicinal drugs can be the servitors of our desire to excel in ways that can be measured by credentials, then they should be taken. The classic drug that I describe in the book is Inderal, which is used to slow the heart rate. Doctors connive in this: Paxil, Xanax, Prozac—they’re drugs that are now being widely prescribed by kindly   family practitioners. “She’s nervous and has some serious worries about things. Why don’t we start her out on this?” Pretty soon, that view leads to dependency. It also leads to aggressive trafficking among students.

TAE: Boxing is probably one of the most politically incorrect sports going. Why are all students at VMI required to take a class in it?

BUNTING: Boxing as an athletic art has a provenance of three or four thousand years. It tests a number of physical, emotional, and moral qualities: One must put oneself in harm’s way to score. It requires staying cool in a situation of superficial danger. Plus, boxers have to be flexible, strong, and aerobically fit. All of those are good qualities to inculcate. It’s politically incorrect because there’s this notion that nobody should unnecessarily put himself in harm’s way in the year 2001—we all should live to be 350. When we have a military campaign we brag about only having one casualty out of the 50,000 troops who are engaged.

TAE: But isn’t that something to celebrate?

BUNTING: Hey, I wish we didn’t have any casualties, but America has become obsessed with safety, disallowing any threat to our health even when the activity produces other good effects. The idea of a sport in which people are superficially hurt, and where there’s a clearly identifiable loser, is now really obnoxious to some people.

TAE: Tell us why a 1955 film called The Bridges at Toko-Ri starring William Holden and Grace Kelly is one of your favorite pictures.

BUNTING: I like it because it’s the moving story of a man who has everything and yet makes the ultimate sacrifice. Holden plays a World War II veteran; he’s also a husband and father. He’s again called up for military duty when South Korea is invaded. Soon, he’s flying Navy planes off the deck of a carrier, fighting an enemy in a country that most Americans know little about. He’s under terrible conditions of danger and privation, and eventually is killed in the line of duty. “Where do we get such men as these?” is one of the great lines in the film. Where did we get the 15,000 men in Pickett’s division who crossed that open field at Gettysburg? They were heroes because they thought, “This is my obligation.” In my heart of hearts, I’m hopeful those same kinds of men are still out there in abundance, in Phillipsburg, Kansas, and Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Places where people are still anchored.

TAE: So how does the question posed by The Bridges at Toko-Ri apply to today’s men and women being called to defend the United States?

BUNTING: It applies fully and directly. Remember, those who’ll be prosecuting this effort in uniform will be regulars and active Reservists, not draftees. The active Reservists, some already being called up, are of the same métier as the young Navy flier played by William Holden. They are us. Some will pay the final price; and they will understand the terrible sacrifice that they must make; but they will make it, if they have to. In a sense, these reserve forces, a million strong, have already committed themselves. Most know in their bones the wisdom of Housman: “Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.” Here comes trouble.