Harvard Profs Do the Talk Show Thing

This was a busy week for Baird Professor of History Richard Pipes.

The Soviet studies expert and member of former President Ronald W. Reagan's National Security Council has been in demand by media and government types thirsting for analysis of the changes sweeping Eastern Europe.

A quick trip to Washington. Interviews on Cable News Network and C-Span. A barrage of phone calls from Voice of America correspondents.

And it's not over. Pipes will take part in a four-and-a-half hour special NBC Today show this Sunday.

"This week it is almost impossible to do any work," says Pipes.

Many Harvard professors are accustomed to acting as talking heads, but they say the pace of academic comment-on-demand has accelerated dramatically with the convulsions sweeping Eastern Europe in recent weeks.

From the election of a Solidarity government in Poland to the opening of the Berlin Wall to the announced end of Communist monopoly rule in Czechloslovakia, the East is entering uncharted waters, and the West wants to know what it all means--immediately.

"There are these kinds of sudden bursts of activity and, sure, people are looking for some kind of specialist to say something," says Marshall I. Goldman, associate director of the Russian Research Center who is himself an oft-quoted economist.

But Pipes says that the snappy question-and-answer format of television news shows does not always mesh easily with scholars' customary form of discourse.

"They don't want long expositions. You have to be very succinct," he says. "You really have about 20 seconds to answer their questions."

Scholars say they often focus on the historical process which has made ongoing changes possible, despite the constant demand for crystal ball gazing.

Adam B. Ulam, Gurney professor of history and political science, says that the best scholars can do is "present an objective picture of what has led to the present situation," with some indication about future possibilities.

"I think what has been happening is a very good proof that there is very little room for scientific prediction," says Ulam.

"People are asking 'What has happened,' `What's going to happen tomorrow,' but at the same time you can't answer any of those questions if you don't know what happened yesterday, a week ago, 10 years ago," says Goldman.

Goldman says he has been studying the economic transformations that swept Germany and Japan after World War II for insights into the "comparable" changes occuring in East Bloc countries today.

Among the interviews he has given recently was one to Radio Moscow, which was putting together a story on Gorbachev's meeting with the Pope and its effect on ethnic republics within the Soviet Union.

"I would take what I say with a grain of salt," says Professor of History Charles S. Maier '60, who was unaccustomed to being a media "expert" before being dubbed one during the recent upheavals in Europe.

Maier says that scholars are well-suited to provide historical context and a "menu of alternatives." But he is quick to caution, "You can't predict the future."