Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 702 › Conversation 702-003
Nixon & Butterfield on Higher Education and Student Radicalism
Tuesday, April 4, 1972 · 3:11 PM–3:12 PM ET · Oval Office
AI Summary
President Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield engaged in a broad ideological discussion regarding the state of American higher education and the radicalization of the student body. The conversation explored how the depersonalization of large university campuses and the influence of young, inexperienced instructors have fostered an anti-establishment, emotional, and non-rational culture among students. Nixon contrasted this perceived instability with the perceived patriotism and moral decency of the American labor movement, questioning the long-term survival of the nation in light of these societal shifts.
- Higher Education
- Student Radicalism
- National Identity
- Labor Movement
- Social Conservatism
Audio
This conversation has not yet been cut into its own clip, so the player above contains the full tape segment shared with neighbouring conversations. It begins about 00:33:37 into the tape and ends around 00:39:26.
Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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· Timestamps are positions within the full tape recording.
33:39And came out of a certain generation, from the 50s and so forth.
33:41And more often than not, they're leading the charge.
33:46And I don't mean that you shouldn't lead some charges.
33:50But he's leading the charge of no nice.
33:53Basically, the modern so-called radical, the one that charges and yells the four-letter words and all that sort of thing, one, two, three, four, we don't want to talk about it, and so forth and so on, the modern radical is not a thinking person.
34:09It's not.
34:09It's not based on thinking.
34:12It's not based on philosophy.
34:13But it's an emotional, animal-like attitude.
34:20I don't know.
34:21And an awful lot, and a lot of it is led by, as I said, the people that aren't my children, the students.
34:31And why that would be, I'm sorry to figure out, too.
34:34But do you see some improvement there, too?
34:36Not much yet.
34:37It will come, I suppose, as the present generation of undergraduates is more sensible already for the past two years.
34:42Those who are looking to graduate school will tend to be less ideological and more sensible.
34:49It comes slowly, which I suppose we don't have to expect too much, you know.
34:53change the original other reforms that were in place once it appeared.
34:57There are several reasons for this ideological advances.
35:01One is that these people who are the infrastructures, these professors, have never been anywhere except in school.
35:07They are studying in society.
35:08Yeah, that's right.
35:10Full intellectual presumption.
35:11They assume that they know how to govern society, only they will recover.
35:13I don't know about any kind of rational experience.
35:16Well, that's always the answer.
35:17You pointed out that the most dangerous person
35:23intellectual position of power, because it's sheer, dedicated evil.
35:30Particularly if that's all they have, that's it.
35:35That's right.
35:37That's right.
35:54The other thing, of course, that leads and brings one to its present attitude is the fact that the average B campus was simply a very unpleasant place to be.
36:01Everybody had been included.
36:02There's math education.
36:05Among the other instructors, the same spirit we found among the undergraduates and graduate students at Berkeley.
36:11Why is it an unpleasant place?
36:12Well, we don't want to be IBM members, is the idea.
36:15But masturbation, too big, too impersonal.
36:17You face a class, so the young people who face the class, as you know, anywhere from 3,500 students or, of course, some New York City college students, about 1,500, about your own.
36:27And you don't know them.
36:28They don't know you.
36:30It's an impersonal relationship.
36:31You were right.
36:33Even the members of your own department is too big, but it's a place like Ohio State nowadays, there isn't even a coffee house you can go to to sit and talk to everybody.
36:43It's all humanized and personalized.
36:47So it's lost.
36:49Just to say an undergrad who's lost is a great big mass.
36:51So the young instructor is lost.
36:52Now, the senior professor is done so badly off.
36:54He's been there longer.
36:55He knows people.
36:56He's got a nice house and so on.
36:57He can take it all.
36:58It's a little different.
36:59But the young instructor, especially, is not lost.
37:02I see, I see.
37:03The biggest place is Gaffer, the more personal the Gaffer is, the greater the acceptance of the script, and the more personal the Gaffer is, and the greater the society becomes, right?
37:11Yeah.
37:12Here's Michigan State, where I was going to graduate, which is now 44,000.
37:16I was going to be personalized.
37:18Now, the first idea, of course, was always conservative until recent years, through most of the farm boys in my day.
37:24And people still come from suburban backgrounds and the farms and so on.
37:29But, so they come there with more or less conservative prejudices.
37:32Then they're transformed by being part of a mob.
37:35By the mob, the young instructors were radicalized.
37:38by the collective dormitory life, big television screens, .
37:42It's an .
37:44What is your feeling?
37:46Do you think this country can survive?
38:01I mean, I'm speaking now in terms of not how we handle such things as Vietnam and China and Russia.
38:07I mean, maybe we can handle those things.
38:10But do you think it can survive from the standpoint of this, of, can it?
38:17When you see, like, the demands more and more for less and less, I don't refer to it very much now,
38:25As a matter of fact, I must say, some of the more impressive people that I have seen, if I am talking about men as men, I go with Frank Fitzsimmons, or Giorgiamini, for that matter, or Peter Brennan of the Billiard Tree.
38:41These decent-nosed guys who came up the highway and so forth, but they're about guys that wear American flags and their repels,
38:50When it comes to the great national defense issues, they're with you all the way.
38:54True, there's naturally a softness in all the rest, but they're highly moral and highly decent.
39:05They believe in the law and so forth and so on, and must be starting to steal electric help out of them.
39:10Now, you take your average businessman that I see.
39:13There are a few of the old-timers, the guys that made it and so forth and so on, but for the most part, they're a new managerial class that have come up through the numbers, and they are playing both sides, putting a little on one horse and the other when it comes to strength and courage and guts and so forth.
NARA Description
On April 4, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:11 pm to 3:12 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 702-003 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 702-3
Date: April 4, 1972
Time: 3:11 pm - 3:12 pm
Location: Oval Office
The President met with Alexander P. Butterfield.
Lyndon B. Johnson
-Trip to Washington, DC
-Accommodations
-Madison Hotel
-Blair House
Butterfield left at 3:12 pm.Also recorded on April 4, 1972
- 701-017 1:17 PM · 14 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:17 pm to 1:32 pm.
- 702-001 2:47 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:47 pm and 2:55 pm.
- 702-002 2:47 PM · 28 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Ronald L. Ziegler, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:47 pm and 3:11 pm.
- 702-004 3:12 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John K. Andrews, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:12 pm and 3:45 pm.
- 702-005 3:12 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:12 pm and 3:45 pm.
- 702-006 3:12 PM · 14 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:12 pm and 3:45 pm.
- 702-007 3:45 PM · 1 hr 22 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, Alexander P. Butterfield, John N. Mitchell, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Manolo Sanchez, Charles Lucet, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:45 pm to 5:06 pm.
- 702-008 5:06 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 5:08 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 702-003, April 4, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/702-003 (accessed October 12, 2026).