Nozick, Walzer Predict Jews Will Focus on Jewish Issues

Jewish professors at Harvard will probably spend more time examining Jewish issues in coming years, Robert Nozick, professor of Philosophy, said yesterday in a discussion of Jewish life at Harvard with Michael L. Walzer, professor of Government.

Nozick said Harvard is a "universalist institution," employing Jewish professors who want to make a contribution to Western intellectual culture. He said some professors formerly tried to conceal their Jewish origins, but "Jewish motivation would begin to bear on their work."

"I have always thought philosophy was a way of thinking about issues I most cared about," Nozick said, adding, "so why compartmentalize my interests?" The Harvard-Radcliffe United Jewish Appeal sponsored the seminar, entitled "On Being Jewish at Harvard." More than 100 people attended.

Walzer agreed Jewish intellectuals were beginning to examine Jewish issues more fully. He said the growth of Israel and the acceptance of Jews in modern culture makes unnecessary the "traditional, detached, skeptical Jewish intellectual" in the university and the world.

"We will gradually lose the special intensity that has characterized our intellectual life in the last century," Walzer said. "Everywhere we go we are outsiders. What is it inside that sustains us?" he asked.

Both professors agreed that "particularism versus universalism" is a major issue facing American Jews today. Nozick said the universalist doctrine says one should "care about everybody equally," while a particularist doctrine allows one to care especially about one particular gorup.

Nozick said when he was an undergraduate at Columbia he was an atheist and thought special concern for Jewish issues was parochial. He said the Black student movement and sympathy for Israel during the Six Day War helped make particularist principles acceptable to American Jews. "Whe I was an undergraduate, I would have avoided this lecture," he added.