Ambassador Barzun and multi-generation intellectuals

The news that former Ambassador to Sweden Matthew Barzun is likely to be appointed the next Ambassador to the UK by President Obama inspired various thoughts. Barzun is well-known as the grandson of the late Jacques Barzun, a distinguished (and long-lived) scholar and intellectual who, though not exactly aligned with me on many polemical issues, nonetheless was an exemplary homme de lettres. His grandson had a successful career in the tech industry before receiving his first diplomatic appointment. As admirable as that is, this stirred a soupçon of regret in me that Matthew had not gone into his grandfather's business. I thought of multi-generational baseball families like the Boones or the Hairstons; why can't there be multi-generation intellectual families? Wouldn't it be great if Matthew had written books in some way in a lineage with his grandfather? There are many families--like my own--where the child goes into academia as his/her parents had--but I cannot think of a single three-generation academic family. Maybe in the sciences...

Part of this, of course, is because academia, even at its most lucrative and rewarding, pays so little. My parents were able to enter academia, and to live lives as, respectively, a bohemian artist and a left-wing activist, because their parents had, for their time, a good deal of money, and this is indeed the sine qua non for many bohemian artists and left-wing activists. Equally, if your parents are such, the asceticism contingent on even the most laureled intellectual's life is no doubt seen as confining, and you want to go into business, make some serious money. One can see one generation sacrificing this urge, but less likely two...

In any event I wish Ambassador Barzun well on his likely next appointment, to the Court of St. James.