New School Scandal.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Bob Kerrey, legislator - Brief Article

When the Bob Kerrey-Vietnam scandal broke, I knew just where to turn. Kerrey, the former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, is now the president of the New School University in New York City, and that's where our columnist Adolph L. Reed Jr. teaches.

But it was more than this peculiar coincidence that brought Reed to mind. I also wanted someone who could wade through the bog of crap about Vietnam and put Kerrey's scandal in proper perspective. Reed has a refined b.s. detector, and he has no illusions about the squalid role the United States played in Indochina. He was the person for the task.

When I e-mailed him to see if he would do the piece for us on deadline, he shot back: "Matt, you read my mind. I'll get on it right away."

And so he did. For my money, it's the best piece out there on the subject.

Hours after completing his column, Reed went to an all-university forum. Students, faculty, and staff were "invited to make brief statements and express their feelings," a university bulletin announced.

"Did he resign?" I asked, when Reed called to report back.

"No, he began by saying he wants to stay at the New School, and that his Board of Trustees has full faith in him, though he was prepared to bear the consequences if there was an overwhelming desire for him to leave," Reed said. When it came to discussing the murder of more than a dozen civilians, Kerrey acknowledged that it was an atrocity "but reduced it to a least-common-denominator horror of war, saying that all war is about killing, not fighting, and that the killing is savage. He then moved from this All Quiet on the Western Front moment to his personal trauma, which he says will always be with him, adding that all these experiences made him a better man."

What bothered Reed most, he said, was that Kerrey did not squarely address the whole issue of the U.S. role in Vietnam. (A one-time opponent of the war, Kerrey wrote a column in The...