Jack Citrin Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Where did you finally wind up going to college?
I went to college at McGill University in Montreal as my first entry into the western hemisphere.
What did you major in?
I had a joint major in political science and economics at McGill.
Any mentors there who influenced your career?
Yes, there were several people on the faculty who were influential. In the end there was one professor, he was a professor of international relations, Michael Breecher, who visited Berkeley at one time in the past. He was the one who influenced me in the direction of graduate school later on.
And for graduate school you came to Berkeley.
I did come to Berkeley.
And in what year was that?
I came to Berkeley in '64, I think.
So, you were here right before the breakout of the Free Speech Movement.
Yes, right before, just before.
And in the department, what did you gravitate toward, what fields, and why?
I came here really thinking I would study comparative politics. That had been my background at McGill. One of the books we read was by Herbert McClosky, called The Soviet Dictatorship. So, when I came and they asked me, "Who do you want to be your advisor?," I looked on the list of faculty -- that was an era where prospective graduate students didn't do the kind of assiduous research that's done now with -- you know, you don't go on recruitment trips, you sort of show up and are dealt with. And so, I recognized McClosky's name. I think his was the only name that I really recognized, and so I went to see him and I said, "I'd like to study with you. I read your book." He sort of sheepishly said, "Well, I don't do that stuff anymore. What I do now is called political behavior, political psychology, but you're welcome to come to my seminar," which I did and I became engaged with that, and then he offered me a position as his research assistant. That really is what shaped what I've been doing ever since.
Given your background, how did you see events unfolding in Berkeley as the Free Speech Movement began to occur?
Well, as a sort of an outsider, not an American and not someone who had gone through the Civil Rights movement and been aware of it, I was a little detached initially. I thought it was odd, the free speech issue, the kinds of barriers that existed, so I was immediately sympathetic to the idea that you should be able to say what you want on the campus. But I wasn't as outraged, I suppose, as some of my graduate student colleagues and friends. I did become more involved in it because of knowing people who actually were in Sproul Hall and arrested in December 8. I kind of followed in McClosky's wake, because he was one of the faculty members who crafted the resolution that sort of ended the crisis.
Did any of your background, having experienced this international turmoil, your parents and registering your parents' response to the Communist revolution, and so on -- did that ground you, in a way, in terms of your perspective on what you were seeing?
I think it grounded me throughout the time in Berkeley. As we've had many convulsions here over the years, political convulsions, however legitimate the grievances and complaints, I [always] felt they paled by comparison to the kinds of experiences that many of the people that I had known had gone through. During the course of all of these events and backgrounds, some people survived pretty well, others did not. Others did not land as easily on their feet as our family was fortunate enough to do.
So, you accepted a position in Berkeley and stayed here. Did Berkeley become the home that you [never had]?
I and a couple of my very closest friends who had the same background as I did in China and Japan, we were looking for a home. We didn't want to be permanent expatriates, at least I didn't. I loved Japan and I loved Hong Kong (I go back there with enormous pleasure and nostalgia even), but I really wanted to be rooted in a place. I think I deliberately did not study international relations or Asian politics, [where] I might have had an advantage, right? I didn't want to do that. I think I wanted, really, to be in a place that I could consider home. Berkeley is a welcoming and accepting place, institutionally. You can never become Japanese. My parents lived in Japan for 42 years. You can't become Japanese. But you can become American, and that was one of the things that has always kept me here.
Talking now about your career as a political scientist, why did you choose political science? Why didn't you go into the professions, law, medicine ... ?
I think that also was related to where was your home. My home where my parents lived was Japan, but I couldn't be a lawyer in Japan, I couldn't be a doctor in Japan. I could have stayed in Canada, I suppose, and done those things. With my major, law, government, or business would have been the alternatives, law or government, and I did think of that. But even there, which country would you settle [in]? Academia was, in some ways, a default choice for me, and it's not something that I planned on, not even when I came to Berkeley as a graduate student. I didn't really have a conception of what the professorial career would be like. But that did develop here, and then I was very lucky.
If students were to watch this interview, what can you tell us about the skills required to do what you do as a political scientist?
To be really successful you have to persevere, you have to be disciplined, and it helps to be engaged and interested in your material. You have to, to some extent, detach yourself from the hurly burly of daily politics and have an analytical detachment. That's difficult, because many of us are interested in politics precisely because we know it's important and affects large numbers of people. You want to say something that is meaningful in that context, relevant in that context, policy relevant as well as just relevant in the sense of adding to the store of knowledge. Balancing that is difficult. How to manage that is something that beginning graduate students especially need to learn.
And then I think you have to be able to be a scientist. I don't mean a scientist necessarily, but as a detective, as a historian, you have to be able to keep on digging and digging, and then synthesize things. You have to be willing to defer gratification, because the process of publishing, which is important, is a difficult one. The other thing you have to get used to, which I certainly didn't realize, is that you may be the professor but in a certain sense you're always in school, you're always being judged by your peers, by anonymous reviewers, and that's something that is useful to know and prepare yourself for.
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