The Education of Al Shanker
It's a cold December evening in Washington, D.C. A light snow is falling, and over on Capitol Hill, members of Congress are debating whether to support President Clinton's decision to send 20,000 troops to Bosnia. But here, amid the wood-paneled elegance of the Hay-Adams Hotel, a stone's throw from the White House, the atmosphere is warm and friendly. About 200 members of the education establishment have gathered in the hotel's John Hay Room to honor Albert Shanker, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, on the 25th anniversary of his paid column, "Where We Stand,'' which runs every Sunday in The New York Times.
Shanker, a large man with thick glasses and the droopy face of a basset hound, isn't much of a schmoozer. He's an eloquent writer and speaker on matters of education, but he seems utterly incapable of making small talk. Nonetheless, Shanker--armed with a glass of red wine--makes an effort to circulate throughout the room, accepting congratulations from a variety of politicians, pundits, and policymakers, including Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Claiborne Pell, Secretary of Education Richard Riley, columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, and noted sociologist Seymour Martin Lipsit.
The crowd tonight is predominantly moderate to liberal, but there are a few exceptions: neoconservative author and talk-show host Ben Wattenberg is here, and so is Linda Chavez, who worked for Shanker in the late '70s and early '80s before joining the Reagan administration as head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She now runs a conservative think tank called the Center for Equal Opportunity and writes a column for USA Today. "I went from Al Shanker to Ronald Reagan,'' Chavez says, "and it wasn't...
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