University Times

As director of Pitt's American Experience Distinguished Lecture Series, Robert G. Hazo has seen some of the best minds of his generation at close range.

Since the series begin in 1971, Hazo has orchestrated lectures and seminars, refereed question-and-answer sessions, haggled over speakers' fees, and pleaded for funds from the University and local foundations.

He has amassed a wealth of memories from the lectures, such as the times that:

* Patrick Buchanan excoriated the news media, just a year after his former boss Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace.

* Teresa Heinz surprised Pennsylvania Republicans and made headlines by denouncing Rick Santorum's bid for her late husband's U.S. Senate seat.

* William F. Buckley ran up huge room service bills.

One of Hazo's warmer memories involves the late John Connally, former Texas governor and one-time presidential prospect. During Connally's appearance here in 1978, Hazo interviewed him for 30 minutes on WTAE-TV and shepherded him through a lecture and question-and-answer period, a press conference, a reception and a dinner.

Hazo recalls: "When it came time to give Connally the check for his fee, he gave it back to me. He said, 'Mr. Hazo, I've got a lot of money. You're doing good work, so you keep it.' He started to walk away but then turned back and said, 'Now, make sure I don't get a W-2 Form for this.'" Speakers' fees have always been problematic for the American Experience series, which can't begin to pay the fees that many big-name lecturers normally charge. Hazo declines to reveal the average American Experience lecture fee, except to say that "it's in the lower four-figure range." "Three times during the last 25 years, I've tried to get a speaker through a talent agency, but their fees were unbelievable," Hazo says. For example, the agency that represents Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf told Hazo that the Desert Storm honcho usually gets $85,000 per lecture.

Procuring high-profile speakers at low prices is an art, says Hazo. It helps to know how to appeal to the egos and ambitions of the powerful (and the would-be-powerful, as well as aging movers-and-shakers seeking to shore up their reputations for posterity), he says.

"It's a lot easier, for example, to attract people who are out of office but looking to get back in," Hazo notes. He says he lured former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro to Pitt in 1988 by pointing out that the American Experience audience includes a large proportion of wealthy and politically active western Pennsylvanians — corporate execs, attorneys, foundation directors, political party leaders and the like. At the time, Ferraro was contemplating running for the Senate, Hazo says.

Government conflict-of-interest rules forbid some speakers from accepting lecture fees. For example, Attorney General Janet Reno spoke here for free in October 1993, just six months after the FBI siege at Waco.

According to Hazo, some speakers accept fees well below their normal rates because they like the idea of discussing weighty issues with a relatively informed and civil audience.

Occasionally, someone will agree to do an American Experience lecture because he or she is scheduled to be in the Pittsburgh area at the time. That was the case in 1974 when conservative guru William F. Buckley Jr. spoke here on "The Neglect of Freedom." Hazo remembers: "Buckley had other business here, so he stayed for two days. We put him up at the Carlton House. He'd given me a special rate, and we agreed to pay his expenses.

"When I got the bill, I said, 'Oh, my God!' It was huge. Buckley had ordered bottles of whiskey, friends were coming in for lunch and I don't know what. But I thought, 'Well, I've got to pay it.' "Later, the [Pitt] treasurer sent the bill back to me and said, 'You didn't look at the other side.' On the back of the bill, Buckley had written, 'Send all food and drink charges to William F. Buckley.' Now, you can say that he could afford to do that. A lot of people could afford it, but how many would actually do it?" According to Hazo, the all-time American Experience charmer was former Hollywood child star Shirley Temple Black, who was U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia at the time she spoke here. For Hazo, the highlight of her lecture came when she emphasized a statement by raising her right arm and leg simultaneously — a distinctive gesture that Hazo remembered from her movies. "She was charming, very accommodating, and all the old-timers came to see her. But as a serious lecture on a political or economic or social issue, I'd give it maybe a C+," Hazo says.

A more unlikely charmer was Pat Buchanan. "He was an excellent lecturer and he was quite gracious. His [1975] lecture was basically an attack on the media, which got much of the audience aroused and offended the reporters who were covering the event." But according to Hazo, the series' most impressive speaker — "at least in terms of delivering a serious, analytical lecture" — was Elliot Richardson, attorney general during the Nixon administration. In 1974, less than a year after resigning rather than fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, Richardson spoke here on "The Future of the Republican Party." "I spent the whole day with Richardson, and his manner of speaking impressed the hell out of me. The man never split an infinitive. He gave his speech from notes and when I transcribed it, the grammar was flawless." With one exception. "Someone had told him that he came off as too much of a Brahmin," Hazo says. "He'd been told to vulgarize himself. Remember, Richardson was being considered as presidential timber at that time. So at one point in his lecture, he said, 'I submit: This is where it's at.' When I mailed a copy of the transcript to him, I enclosed a letter in which I wrote, 'I have only one criticism. You cannot submit that this is where it's at. Because once you've done that, it's not there anymore.' "The transcript came back to me with a red line drawn through that sentence." By far the worst American Experience lecturer was New York Times columnist James Reston, Hazo says. "He gave one of the most superficial talks. He'd obviously just copied a few notes on the airplane on his way here." Hazo admits that he can't always read American Experience audience reactions. In 1989, cable-TV mogul Ted Turner delivered what Hazo considered to be "a strange mixture of stream-of-consciousness and simple-minded liberalism. There were some serious moments, but for the most part it was entertainment. Afterwards I was apologizing for his lecture, but people said they enjoyed it very much. Some even said they learned something from it." In terms of newsworthiness, the appearances by Teresa Heinz in 1992 and Attorney General Janet Reno in 1993 rated high.

Heinz took the opportunity to condemn fellow Republican Santorum's ultimately successful bid to fill the U.S. Senate seat of her late husband, H. John Heinz. Reno defended the FBI siege at Waco. n Hazo, a Pittsburgh native, was senior editor for political, legal, social and economic articles at Encyclopedia Britannica before coming to Pitt. Since 1970, he has seen the American Experience program transferred from the College of General Studies to the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and, in 1990, to the Honors College.

Until 1992, the program offered non-credit seminars during which area administrators and executives would discuss public affairs problems. According to Hazo, the seminars ended when local foundations withdrew funding. "They said they had done their part over the years, and it was time for the program to stand on its own or for the University to fund a larger portion of it." But neither option was fiscally feasible, Hazo says.

Of all the changes affecting the American Experience program over the years, the one that most disturbs Hazo is what he calls the decline in public political discourse. "As late as the 1960s, political advertisements on television often consisted of half-hour speeches on the issues. Gradually, the time slots have gotten shorter and shorter until we've ended up with 30-second and even 15-second ads, many of them negative.

"What you end up with is not public opinion but public sentiment, a visceral reaction that involves no thought. It shouldn't be dignified with the word 'opinion.' It's capricious feeling, and like any feeling it's changeable and no more worthy of our trust because it's collective." But Hazo does not see the American Experience series as keeping alive a fading tradition of widespread, enlightened political discussion — because no such tradition has ever existed in the United States, he says. "It's always been a fairly small minority of people who have taken an interest in public affairs. What's changed is that the larger majority used to take more of a cue from the informed minority. Today, the majority takes its cue from TV, and all opinions are considered to be equal."

— Bruce Steele