In2-MeC

Kolhapur, Maharastra
17 January 2003

Back to the fifties:

I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last year. The past doesn't change for anyone. But at least I can learn from the past. I've learned a lot about life. I've learneda lot about myself and about the responsibilities any man has to his fellow men. I have learned a lot about good and evil. They're not always what they appear to be. I was involved--deeply involved--in a deception. I have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them. I lied to the American people. I lied about what I knew, and then I lied about what I did not know. In a sense, I was like a child who refuses to admit a fact in the hope that it will go away. Of course it did not go away. I was scared, scared to death. I had no solid position, no basis to stand on for myself. There was one way out, and that was to tell the truth. It may sound trite to you but I've found myself again after a number of years. I've been acting a role, maybe all my life, of thinking I've done more, accomplished more, produced more, than I have. I've had all the breaks. I have stood on the shoulders of life, and I've never gotten down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I've flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy. That is why I am here today.

This is the confessional testimony of a mundane academic "guru," Charles Van Doren, before the US House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight in 1958. I find his story instructive, so I thought I would write something about it here.

Mr. Van Doren was a young, handsome literature teacher at Columbia University in New York City. Besides his PhD in literature, he had a degree in astrophysics. His father was Mark Van Doren, professor of literature at the same university and a prizewinning poet and author. His mother was a noted author too, as was his uncle Carl. The Van Dorens were considered to be one of the leading intellectual families in the USA.

A friend of Charles had appeared on a television quiz show, the type of program where guests are asked questions in a chance to win prize money. This friend urged Charles to take a chance too. So he applied at NBC (National Broadcasting Company) where several such quiz shows were aired. The production team of a program called 21 was ecstatic. Charles Van Doren was just the man they were looking for: a good-looking, charismatic intellectual.

At that time, 21 was one of the most popular quiz shows, attracting 40 million viewers every time it aired. But what all these viewers did not know was that 21 was totally "fixed." The contestants answered the questions right or wrong from a script. Who won and who lost was planned by the show's head producer, an NBC executive named Dan Enright.

Enright persuaded Charles Van Doren to be 21's new winner. At first Van Doren wasn't happy with the idea of winning dishonestly. The argument that convinced him was that as a TV star he would be able to give a big boost to education in America. At that time Americans were afraid that the Russians had surpassed them in science. The year before, 1957, the Russians put Sputnik 1 into orbit. This was the world's first artificial satellite. The Americans, with all their money and technology, had for several years tried without success to launch a rocket into space. They were most chagrined to be beaten by the Russians, whom they looked down upon as ignorant, vodka-swilling peasants.

So the foremost question on America's mind in 1958 was, how do we get our young people excited about higher learning so that they will excel in science and put the country back into first place?

Charles Van Doren was fated to be that "exciter" America was looking for. Though he never shook off his inner doubts about 21's deception of the public, he reasoned (as Shakespeare stated in Merchant of Venice), "To do a great right, do a little wrong."

The previous star on 21 was a very ordinary-looking fellow by the name of Herbie Stempel. Dan Enright orchestrated a duel between Stempel and Van Doren that played out over three showtimes. Many more viewers than normal tuned in to see the dramatic contest of minds. At last Stempel lost on an easy question. In reality he knew the answer, but producer Enright had persuaded Stempel to fail on a question that most viewers themselves would know the correct answer to, so as to heighten the dramatic effect. In return Enright promised to put Stempel's name in the works for appearances on other NBC shows.

But NBC just dropped Stempel. Feeling cheated, he testified before a New York City judge that 21 was a big fraud. However this got him nowhere. NBC persuaded the judge that Stempel was mentally unstable. So his testimony was not made public. But a lawyer named Richard Goodwin who worked for the US federal agency in Washington that had authority over television came to know of this case. He started his own investigation which led to a federal inquiry by a subcommittee of US congressmen.

In the meantime, Charles Van Doren became the most popular personality on American TV. Students around the country--especially the female students--worshiped him as a hero. Indeed, he was an intellectual Elvis Presley. In a culture where men normally ask women for marriage, Van Doren was getting a dozen marriage proposals a week, many from women he had never met. His rocket flight into stardom reached its zenith when his face appeared on the cover of Time, America's leading news magazine.

And he was winning money. After a few weeks he had "earned" more than a hundred thousand dollars. In the 1950's, a hundred thousand dollars had a great deal more buying power than the same amount does today.

Dark clouds began to loom on Van Doren's sunny horizon when Goodwin, the lawyer from Washington, came to interview him. As it turned out, Richard Goodwin was himself an intellectual who had graduated first in his class from America's most prestigious university, Harvard. Van Doren and Goodwin spoke the same language. They became close. Out of concern for his friend, Goodwin confided that he had collected evidence showing that 21 was rigged. But Van Doren insisted he knew nothing about that, and that he personally had won honestly. Goodwin urged him to walk away from NBC and to make no public statements until the federal inquiry was over. But although Van Doren stopped appearing on 21, he accepted NBC's offer to become a regular on NBC's popular Today show. For a few minutes air time each week, he drew a yearly salary of $50 000.

The "quiz show scandal," as it came to be known, engulfed Charles Van Doren. Although he tried to follow his friend's advice to make no public statement, his millions of devotees demanded that he clear himself of Herbie Stempel's accusations. Herbie had testified before the congressional subcommittee. The cat was out of the bag.

One thing Stempel's performance before the subcommittee made clear was that Stempel's own character was questionable. He admitted that he willingly participated in the fraud, and he admitted he had been diagnosed by a doctor as having psychological problems. Everyone was still inclined to believe that whatever deception might have been going on at 21, Charles Van Doren, PhD, knew nothing about it and had won his prize money honestly.

Van Doren issued a press release confirming that opinion. He claimed to be innocent of any wrongdoing and ignorant of it as well. This prompted the inquiry committee to subpoena him. The subpoena was a development that Richard Goodwin never wanted. Now Van Doren would have to tell his side of the story under oath.

Van Doren, fearing that his exposure as a liar before the subcommittee would shame his whole family, caved in and submitted the sworn statement I quoted at the beginning. It sent a shock wave across America. Charles Van Doren retired from teaching and public life to write books at his family home in the Connecticut countryside.

As I noted early on, he was a mundane academic guru. I have often observed that if we take care to look, we can find an almost mystical symmetry between events in the nondevotee society and those in ISKCON society. This despite the warning that "what the karmis do is all maya, Prabhu." So why do it? Well, there's that often-quoted line about those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. After all, Srila Prabhupada said history was his favorite subject.

An air of emergency..."we gotta do something fast!"...the appearance of a young, gifted kavi (learned speaker) with good intentions...shady backroom planners take note that the kavi has what it takes to capture the public's imagination and solve the emergency...he falls in with them and is persuaded on the basis of "sastra" that one may do a little wrong to do a great right...danam, janam and sundarim surround him...he becomes attached to his position...someone who early on tries to expose the fraud is outmaneuvered and ends up being discredited as a nutcase...the kavi is urged by a good friend to free himself from entanglement before it is too late...the kavi tries, but only half-heartedly (for oh! How addictive name and fame can be!)...convinced still that he acts not for himself but only for the sake of the faithful, he prolongs the lie into the danger zone...at last he can't bear it anymore...in great shame he confesses the truth and goes into seclusion...the faithful are left shaken and dismayed...the "nutcase" whose testimony everyone dismissed at first is vindicated, though his own flaws are manifold.