Remembering Nieman curator, historian, writer
Remembering Nieman curator, historian, writer
Sabam Siagian, The Jakarta Post, Editor at Large, Nieman Fellow
Class '79
Prof. James C. Thomson, former Nieman Foundation curator
(director), East Asia historian, college professor and a key
figure in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the
1960s, died Sunday, Aug. 4, 2002, in Massachusetts at Newton-
Wellesley Hospital of cardiac arrest after a brief illness. He
was 70 years old.
A memorial service was held on Sept. 12, 2002 at Harvard
Memorial Church followed by a reception hosted by the Nieman
Foundation.
The Nieman fellowships were established at Harvard University
in 1938 as the first mid-term career education program for
working journalists. A bequest of US$1 million from Agus Wahl
Nieman, widow of the founder of the Milwaukee Journal, instructed
the university to spend the money "...to promote and elevate the
standards of journalism..." and educate persons deemed specially
qualified for journalism.
Since Harvard's board of overseers did not quite know what to
do with the money in concrete terms while establishing a school
of journalism was then considered below Harvard's dignity, advice
was sought from Walter Lippmann, the prominent journalist and
political thinker.
Lippmann advised that Harvard each year allow a number of mid-
career journalists to be part of the Harvard community for one
academic year as a novel experiment. That advice was accepted and
implemented.
Each year, 25 journalists from the U.S. and abroad are
selected in a competition process and awarded Nieman Fellowships.
The fellows spend one full academic year at Harvard, engaged in
the intellectual life of the university. They can attend any
courses they are interested in and have a wide range of choices,
from "the History of American Jazz" to "War and Peace in the
Nuclear Age".
During his 12 years as Curator (1972-1984), Jim Thomson
broadened the Nieman Fellowships to include more minorities,
women and journalists from small news organizations and
broadcasting.
I was accepted as a Nieman fellow for the academic year of
1978-1979. My application was actually submitted way past the
deadline, since I had to overcome the agonizing problem of
leaving my active job of deputy chief editor of a lively
afternoon newspaper and my family and yielding to the
irresistible temptation to be at Harvard as practically an
"intellectual tourist."
It was the late Ambassador Soedjatmoko, a Harvard alumni, who
urged me to take the opportunity and who wrote the necessary
recommendations to secure the funding for my program.
When I arrived in Cambridge, Mass., in early September 1978,
foul weather had already set in. The Nieman Foundation had just
acquired its first home, a unique house built in the New England
style of architecture, which was the former home of the
university's chief carpenter. It was appropriately named as
Walter Lippmann House.
When I reported my arrival to Jim Thomson and thanked him for
cutting the university's bureaucratic red tape so that I could
still be accepted on time, he responded with his sardonic wit
that I was to become familiar with during the coming months.
With a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other, he said,
half-seriously and half-humorously: "Well, in the long history of
this Nieman program you are the first Indonesian journalist
accepted.
"I persuaded my colleagues to be somewhat lenient in accepting
our first Indonesian since we need to indoctrinate him with our
American democratic values, lest General Soeharto's regime
corrupts the entire Indonesian press."
A twinkle in his eyes told me he was just teasing. As a matter
of fact, during the entire academic year he never talked about
the superiority of American values.
Jim was the third curator (an esoteric name for director, as
if the Nieman fellows were museum pieces) of the Nieman
Foundation from 1972 to 1984. His parents were missionaries in
China, teaching at the Christian College in Nanking. Jim was
brought up in China until the age of six, but later continued his
interest in China and was proficient in the Chinese language. The
title of his Phd dissertation that he wrote at Harvard is: "While
China Faces the West."
When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, Jim
Thomson, like so many other bright, educated Americans, joined
the government. He was working for the State Department under
Secretary Chester Bowles. In 1964 MacGeorge Bundy, the former
dean of Harvard College who was heading the National Security
Council at the White House, asked Jim to join him.
As Jim told me, MacGeorge Bundy, who was known to have a
brilliant and incisive mind and was an exponent of the Eastern
establishment, said: "Jim, this Vietnam business is getting more
serious. I need somebody who has at least some historical
background of the region and who has the intellectual honesty to
prepare for me an accurate assessment of the U.S. involvement. A
person who is not easily over-awed, either by this place (the
White House) or its occupants."
As it turned out, Jim Thomson became the in-house dissenter
who had serious doubts whether the U.S. sacrifice in Vietnam
served America's strategic interest. In 1966, he left the White
House totally exhausted, mentally and physically. He then joined
the Harvard faculty as assistant professor of East Asian history.
In April 1968, the Atlantic Monthly published Jim Thomson's
long essay under the title How Could Vietnam Happen? - An
Autopsy. It was a brutal assessment of how a world superpower
that possessed ample military strength and was governed by "the
best and brightest" could stumble in a war that had no clear
strategic purpose.
It won the Overseas Press Club Award and influenced a
generation of reporters and policy analysts. MacGeorge Bundy was
very upset about that article. It was not that he disagreed
entirely with Jim Thomson's analysis, but he thought it was a
serious breach, coming from a former White House official who
should show loyalty to the president.
In spring 1979, David Halberstam, the former New York Times
correspondent in Saigon who wrote what is now considered the best
book on the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (The Best and the
Brightest), came to Walter Lippmann House to address the Nieman
fellows. From the exchanges between Jim Thomson and David
Halberstam I instinctively knew that Jim must have been the "Deep
Throat" for some intimate White House revelations in that book.
After terminating his assignment as Curator of Harvard's
Nieman's Foundation in 1984, Jim joined Boston University as
professor of international relations.
Looking back, the experience that I consider most valuable
during that one academic year at Harvard, besides attending the
classes, is my getting acquainted with Jim Thomson. He was a man
who at one time was involved in the highest councils of decision
making in the U.S., who knew about the trappings and temptations
of power centers, yet who maintained a balanced view and a sober
realism about life. He told me once that what was important in
occupying a lofty bureaucratic position was to always maintain
one's moral and intellectual courage to submit a realistic policy
recommendation.
I kept remembering Jim Thomson's words when I became
ambassador to Australia (1991-1995), but I never had the chance
to thank him for that wise counsel. The Nieman fellows from
Indonesia in the succeeding years under different Curators are
Goenawan Mohamad (Tempo newsweekly), Ratih Hardjono (Kompas
daily) and Andreas Harsono (Institute for Free Flow of
Information Studies).