The Chicago Connection

Official Washington has often seemed to be an employment agency for the Ivy League. Even before Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought down all those bright young men from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, graduates of the Big Three and the other Ivy schools were almost beyond counting in Government. There are still hordes of them around, but after seven years of Republican rule in the White House, so many men and women from the University of Chicago have moved into Government's command structure that Washington has begun to talk about "a University of Chicago Mafia."

Among its most important members: Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Attorney General Edward Levi, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz (though he only studied at Chicago for a summer en route to a doctorate from Purdue), Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, Presidential Adviser Robert Goldwin and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin. The biggest representation is at the State Department, an almost exclusively Eastern preserve until after World War II. Now Chicago takes credit for the department's No. 2 man, Robert S. Ingersoll, Deputy Secretary of State who was educated at Yale but is a trustee at Chicago, its No. 3 man, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Joseph S. Sisco, at least eight ambassadors, and a dozen top-level assistants to high-ranking officials.

The Chicagoans in the Administration have numerous alumni allies in Congress: Senators Roman Hruska of Nebraska, Gale McGee of Wyoming, Charles Percy of Illinois and Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut; Representatives Abner Mikva of Illinois and Patsy Mink of Hawaii; and House Parliamentarian William Brown.

Government officials with a Chicago connection range broadly from one end of the political spectrum to the other. Says Gale McGee: "The only school tie that carries over is in conversation at cocktail parties. There's no real affinity." Adds Marcus Raskin, a Chicago alumnus who directs the Institute for Policy Studies, an ultraliberal think tank: "The people from the university literally don't know each other here. Chicago's position was always as an outsider from among the ruling elite of American schools. The people there are highly individualistic, even eccentric, and they see themselves as making it on their own. There's a sense of great arrogance."

Strong Cadre. Nonetheless, the university's impact has been felt in a number of ways. During the Nixon Administration, the President and his top economic advisers embraced the monetarist theories of conservative Chicago Economist Milton Friedman. Chicago Political Scientist Leo Strauss impressed several generations of students with his vision of the general leftward trend of world politics. One of these students was Robert Goldwin, who now serves as President Ford's resident intellectual.

Levi, who was Chicago's president before becoming Attorney General, considers the university to be "underrepresented" in Washington. Says he: "I'm amazed that we have so few." But other members of the Chicago Mafia see the influence spreading. Says Anton de Porte, an alumnus and member of the State Department's policy planning staff: "There's a very large number of alumni in the civil service because they felt that was where the power lay. It's a good strong cadre, and now it's moving into the upper levels of Government." Harvard, take note.

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