My Experience With Ronald Reagan and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. – The American Spectator

In 1978, I was a tenured professor of English at Eastern Michigan University. Of the 77 members of the English department, I was the only Republican. I thought that balanced.

The faculty of Eastern Michigan University went on a strike that was illegal by state law. Before the strike, I wrote to every faculty member at the college to share the specific reasons why I would not join the strike, including its illegality and the unreasonable demands of the faculty.

I was the only faculty member at the college of 20,000 students to cross the picket line. It was a nightmare for me; I was treated brutally. At the time, George Roche, the president of Hillsdale College, asked me to work for him. I agreed and left Eastern Michigan University. There went the balance of one to some 2,000 faculty members.

At Hillsdale, I soon got to know a very young man, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who was living in Bloomington, Indiana, and publishing “The Spectator.” It was great stuff. And, my goodness, was Tyrrell young, but he was putting out very mature articles. I had the pleasure of running into him at various events. I have no reason to believe that he remembered me. But for certain I remembered him and his achievements.

Meanwhile, Hillsdale College was helping candidate Ronald Reagan, and we invited him to visit. Shortly before he arrived, I wrote a long article specifically recording the brutal way that I had been treated by the Eastern Michigan University strikers, who before the strike had been very friendly colleagues of mine. Reagan saw my article, and a week after his visit to Hillsdale, he wrote a nationally syndicated column on me and how I had been treated. He told me that the Screen Actors’ Guild had done a similar hatchet job on him, which was why he left the guild and changed his affiliation from Democrat to Republican.

Then shortly after Reagan was elected, I got letter out of the blue that asked me to accept a top-level position at the United States Information Agency, which required Senate confirmation. I really didn’t know what all this meant or what the agency did, but I was told that people would walk on their knees to get such a high-level job. So I investigated the job and regretfully left Hillsdale College. (I would later return.)

I was given sole authority at the United States Information Agency to issue grants. The General Accounting Office (GAO) advised me that 95 percent of the grants, which were all to be discretionary, were locked in with left-wing agencies. I wanted to offer some political balance, but doing so became virtually impossible. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the person of Peter Galbraith, son of left-winger John Kenneth Galbraith, called me to the Senate carpet every time I sought some balance in giving grants to any group on the other side of the aisle.

I did manage to get a grant to Ernest Lefever’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, but, wow, did all hell break loose. I was called to the Senate Foreign Relations’ carpet with a vengeance and scolded for trying “to politicize USIA’s grant program.” Yes, having 95 percent of the grants locked into liberal outfits was understood as “balanced.” It was so bad that I left USIA to become chief of staff for Chief Justice Warren Burger and the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U. S. Constitution. There, I could breathe.

But I did manage at USIA, by working in a low-key manner, to give a small grant to R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who was not yet nationally known.

Tyrrell did not know at the time how nearly impossible it was to get a USIA grant to anybody even centrist, let alone right of center. Reagan was president, but the Senate was something else.

The director of USIA was a personal friend of Reagan’s, but he wanted to keep everyone happy and not stir the political waters. He did not know what “The Spectator” was, so I could move forward carefully with that grant.

It is now an honor for me to work with The American Spectator. In a way, it’s like coming home after a long while.

Ronald L. Trowbridge is a Policy Fellow at the Independent Institute, Oakland, California, and a former director of the Fulbright Scholars Program. He later served as chief of staff for former Chief Justice Warren Burger.