Richard Nixon? It’s Complicated
Inside Whittier’s tortured relationship with its most famous alumnus
On a recent Monday ushering in the last week of classes for the fall semester, a crew of students is busy setting up tables in the Campus Courtyard. It’s around noon on December 2 and the day is starting to warm up, the sun shining a bit after a late-November barrage of rain. Professor of Political Science, Sara Angevine, directs students setting up table displays while running back and forth between the courtyard and Club 88, where students from her Media and Politics class will play videos they made promoting environmental awareness. If they can get the uncooperative projector to work, that is.
The event marks the school’s first EPA Action Day, celebrating the 49th Anniversary of the landmark Environmental Protection Agency, signed into existence by President Richard M. Nixon, Whittier College class of 1934. As if on cue, following the rain and the wind, the air quality is good for the first time in weeks and there is no smog dimming views of Los Angeles’s skyscrapers to the west or the hulking cranes posted up at the Port of Long Beach to the south.
While the event in the Campus Courtyard is meant to activate environmental awareness among students, the fact that it is celebrating nearly a half-century of the Environmental Protection Agency — which represents decades of progress on clean air and water that the current administration threatens to undermine despite the climate-change crisis— puts one of Whittier College’s more curious conundrums back on center stage.
What do we do with our most famous alumnus, the man who signed the EPA into existence and who also left office in disgrace?
“If you look at the war as the most significant thing that happened, it’s really unfortunate…because he did a lot of good, too.”
There have been forty-five presidents of the United States of America and thirty three of them graduated from college, just 24 of them from private undergraduate institutions. Harvard, Yale and Princeton account for 11 of those college-graduate presidents. Whittier accounts for one — Richard Milhouse Nixon. Brown has none, nor does Dartmouth. Our SCIAC rivals, Occidental, claim Barack Obama, but as he finished his undergraduate degree at Columbia.
The alma mater of a president is pretty exclusive company to be in, but for all the fanfare that it might bring, Whittier College doesn’t seem to go out of its way to promote its association with Nixon, and perhaps for good reason. After all, there is some irony in a liberal, humanities-based campus crowing about a conservative president, one who retired rather than face an impeachment hearing that even his Republican counterparts agreed wouldn’t go his way.
“Most professors here do not like Richard Nixon,” says Joe Dmohowski, Associate Librarian at Wardman Library.
Dmohowski, whom colleagues refer to as the resident “Nixon expert” occupies and office behind the main desk of the library that is tastefully cluttered from his years at Whittier College. He adjusts his glasses as he prepares to speak on a subject he’s been invested in for the past 30 years or so.
“The way I looked at it is that he’s a very important political figure — the Watergate era ended his career, you had the Vietnam war. Kennedy started it, Johnson prolonged it, and Nixon got in there,” says Dmohowski. “Of course, it took him four years to end the war. Over 50,000 Americans died…and some of that blood is on Nixon’s hands. But if you look at the war as the most significant thing that happened, it’s really unfortunate…because he did a lot of good too.”
Whatever your politics, it’s true Nixon had significant impacts as President. The way Dmohowski sees it, Nixon was more of a foreign-policy president, focusing on the overseas issues, including opening up relations with China. This, he insisted, did not mean Nixon didn’t have a successful domestic policy. The Environmental Protection Agency that Professor Angevine’s class recently celebrated was a huge step forward in the environmental movement.
“We have to implement environmental policies into the poli-sci curriculum. It’s an excellent way to show political will,” explains Professor Angevine. “Of course Nixon’s EPA act is important. On campus, no one’s quite sure what to do with Richard Nixon. He did some stuff I think is bad, but he also did some stuff I think is good. We shouldn’t pretend either didn’t happen. It’s empowering to our students to think they could be a president. Most presidents came from Harvard or Yale…it’s exciting that he came from a small liberal arts school.”
Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California and moved to Whittier with his family when he was nine. It is no secret that Whittier College wasn’t his first choice. Harvard University was, but Nixon had to stay close to home as his family coped with the extended illness of Nixon’s older brother, Harold who would succumb to tuberculosis, as had his younger brother Arthur. According to Dmohowski, Nixon had a successful student career at Whittier College, which included a “very low key” and successful run for class president. Nixon was also played football here and co-founded the Orthogonian society.
Professor Mike McBride, who has taught at Whittier for over 50 years, jokes that Nixon “learned his ethics at Duke [University]” where Nixon earned his law degree. McBride’s office looks presidential: it is easily one of the largest one campus and featuresa polished brown desk, and a smooth, clean carpet. He is sitting at one of his many computers, responding to a student email when the subject of our most-famous alumnus comes up.
“We were probably a more conservative campus back then,” McBride says, recalling his time when he first started working at Whittier College. “Students and members of the board of trustees. Some of the members of the board at that time were old classmates of Nixon. They were very positive about him, and didn’t believe Watergate when it happened…but as more facts came in, people started to believe.”
Whittier College did join in celebrations for would have been Nixon’s 100th birthday on January 9. 2013, and a post about the events on Whittier’s website suggests that the successes Nixon had as a student at Whittier were foundational. Nixon, despite his desire to have attended Harvard, did give back to the school fate selected for him. He was a member of the Whittier College Board of Trustees from 1940–1968 and Dmohowski claims that Nixon was a generous donor to the school before he became President, giving money back long after he graduated, even returning during his presidential campaign.
After he became president, though, Nixon didn’t visit the campus.
“He was going to come back,” English Professor Charles Adams says. “But then he died.”
As with other faculty members, Professor Adams has mixed feelings about Nixon. “As a man who was eligible for the [Vietnam War] draft, to me, Richard Nixon was the worst,” says Adams. “But now I’m here. I’m more at peace with it, now that Vietnam seems to be more of a cultural memory.”
“He was going to come back, but then he died.”
No one quite seems to know for sure when the college moved away from championing Nixon. Dmohowski noted that Sharon Hertzberger, who served as Whittier College president for 12 years before retiring last year, emphasized the college’s connection to Nixon, including starting a scholarship in his name. In 2007, Nixon’s controversial Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, visited campus in order to endow the Nixon scholarship. This led to furious protesting from both faculty and students.
Professor McBride says he never supported Nixon, but did respect him — referring to Nixon as one of the smartest presidents. He points out a photograph in his office from 12 years ago, a picture of him and Kissinger, side by side, smiling thinly at the camera.
“You’ll find more fans of Nixon here [Whittier] than anywhere in the world except China,” Dmohowski is quoted as saying in the post about Nixon’s 100 year birthday celebration.
Fourth-year Nicky Segura, an active member of the Orthogonian Society Nixon founded, disagrees with this sentiment. “I think Nixon is a [expletitive] clown,” says Segura.
The Orthogonians, though, recently completed a repair of the long-suffering North Lawn Fountain near Wardman Library, including new, shiny names engraved in the black marble near the foundation. The names appear next to Orthogonian symbol — a rearing boar, highlighted against a yellow background. The refurbishment includes his very own plaque for the society’s founder, touting Nixon’s campus achievements, not the least of which is: “Founding president of the Orthogonian Society 1930.
Segura is lounging outside the Spot after participating in a campus-wide event to promote climate-change awareness. Initially, Segura had no plans to join a society, thinking them “too fratty.”
Says, Segura, “I remember when I met up with the Orthogonian Society, and them saying ‘Oh, Nixon founded us’, and I was like ‘Yeah, [expletive] that shit; I’m for sure not gonna vibe with y’all.”’
Despite this initial introduction, Segura and friends managed to click well with the actives at the time. “It didn’t end up mattering that he founded the society, because it was a long time ago,” says Segura.
Segura, though, does see some lingering influences, if not from Nixon directly. “We get our values from our boy Nixon. Patriarchalism is still in our society just a little bit, and it’s been decreasing over the years — our low-key sexist values that have been in our society for a hot minute,” Segura explains. “In terms of his character, though, he did give us a lot of cool values that I cherish, and I think it personally helped me become stronger. So besides his own idealogy, his values really helped me in doing better in school, and just being a better person.”
“His ideology, though, no…. that shit’s wack.”
Segura most pointedly takes issue with another agency known for a three-letter acronym that got started under Nixon: The Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA. “He did a lot of harm to a lot of people in the U.S.,” says Segura, “starting the whole war on drugs fucked up Latin American politics. In a sense, it fucked with my family, too. My dad got caught up in that war on drugs type of shit. It had a really strong affect on my family, and I can’t appreciate that from the guy, you know?”
“In terms of his character, though, he did give us a lot of cool values that I cherish… His ideology, though, no…. that shit’s wack.”
In Wardman Library, all the way in the back, past the study rooms, where students frantically study for finals, flipping through books, typing away, there is a closed, locked door, leading into a windowless room. A small plaque rests besides the door, dedicating the East Wing of the Library to Richard M. Nixon.
You wouldn’t know this, unless you walked all the way to the back of the third floor of the library — away from most people. Supposedly, there is a bust of Richard Nixon tucked somewhere back here, but the student librarian just offered a blank look when asked about it.
The library’s Nixon Room is tucked into the far, northwest corner of the third floor. When I walk up there and put my my hand on the doorknob, ready to push down. I wonder if maybe the mysterious bust of Nixon can be found in there, hidden from sight. Then, I notice the keypad next to the door. “Enter code to disarm system” it reads.
I hesitate, and step back, away from the door. For now, the bust of Nixon, which I later confirm does indeed reside inside this room, remains tucked away, on campus but mostly out of sight.
