i

And I saw the huge raccoon again today as I got home from work. It is a gigantic stoic beauty. And I found out last night that an Intellectual Giant named Robert nozick died on the 23rd of January. And it has bothered me all day because now there is one less genius in the world and I was here thinking he was alive for the last 3 months and hes a ghost. But get this I was reading his anarchy, state and utopia when he was perishing! And I dreamed about him also./ po knoes, I went into a bookstore and recognized him and he signed my book and he was jovial and other things I drempt. And of course he was one of the last great handsome perfect thinkers. I am the only one left, I fear! And I saw a real snake in nature yesterday.

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JS: The students were not overly hostile either?

RN: Ah, that's different. The Harvard graduate students of the late 60s and early 70s were the center of SDS activity on campus. I had been here for two years as an assistant professor, and left and went to Rockefeller University for two years, and came back in 1969 when I was 30 years old as a full professor. In the previous semester, students had taken over the universitys main administration building; their occupation was ended by police action. Feelings ran high. I announced a course, and it was printed in the catalog, titled "Capitalism," in the philosophy department. The course description was "a moral examination of capitalism."

JS: I see. I imagine the students expected something very different from what they got.

RN: That's right. Somehow a rumor had spread, or maybe they saw what books were there in the textbook section of the bookstore, where in addition to something by Marx and some socialist book were Hayek and Mises and Friedman. So one graduate student came up to me at the beginning of the term and said, "We don't know if you're going to be able to give this course." This was a graduate student in philosophy. And I said, "What do you mean?" He said: "Well, you're going to be saying things..." and he mumbled something, "there may be interruptions or demonstrations in class." And I said -- I was then, you have to remember, 30 years old -- I said, "If you disrupt my course, I'm going to kick the shit out of you." He said, "You're taking this very personally!"

<laughter>

I said, "It's my course. If you want to pass out leaflets outside the classroom door, and tell people that they shouldn't come in and take the course, that's fine. I won't allow you to do things inside the classroom." He said, "Yes, well, we may pass out leaflets." Time went by and nothing happened during the first week, the second week. So I saw him in the hallway and asked, "Where are the leaflets?" He said, "Well, you know, we're very busy, we have a lot of things to do these days." I said, "I called my mother living in Florida and told her that I was going to be leafleted, now come on!" But nothing ever happened.