The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

He spent the fifties at Harvard and they were happy years for him. He was immensely popular with the undergraduates, he was very accessible and not at all pompous; rather, he was considered open and challenging. In an atmosphere sometimes distinguished by the narrowness of professional discipline, Bundy was a generalist, in touch with the world at large, and he brought a sense of engagement of energy and vitality to his work. He loved taking on students, combating them and their ideas, challenging them, bright wits flashing back and forth, debate almost an end in itself. In the world of the Harvard government department, where towering figures like Carl Friedrich and William Yandell Elliott seemed distant and unapproachable, men who belonged more to the graduate students than the undergraduates, Bundy was quite a contrast. He particularly liked teaching freshmen, he was a spectacularly good Government 1 section man, a role that few other bright instructors cherished, and he held on to his freshman sections as long as he could. His major undergraduate course, Government 180: The U.S. in World Affairs (his successor in teaching it was, fittingly enough, a young German émigré intellectual named Henry Kissinger), was taught with great style and enthusiasm. His Munich lecture was legendary at Harvard, and when word got out that it was on the day’s schedule, he played to standing room only. It was done with great verve, Bundy imitating the various participants, his voice crackin...