1965 debate between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin

The Media Resources Center at the University of California at Berkeley has made available online a 1965 debate between the late William F. Buckley and the late author, James Baldwin. Buckley was a national figure from the time he founded the conservative “National Review” in 1955 at age 29.

The UIC Library lists 45 titles of the 54 titles authored by Buckley, the first being God and man at Yale: the superstitions of academic freedom, published in 1951, and the most recent being Rake: a novel, published in 2007. In the UIC University Library “The National Review” is available in print format from1955 and electronically from 1975. The CNN article referenced below gathered some of its information from the electronic resource Contemporary Authors Online, an electronic resource accessible through the library Website.

View the “Debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, October 26, 1965. Sponsored by the Cambridge Union Society, Cambridge University.” The topic of the debate was “The American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro”. [Requires Windows Media Player or Flip4Mac ]

Excerpted from the MRC blog:

On February 27, 2008, William F. Buckley, conservative author, journalist, TV commentator, and all-around pundit died at 82 (SEE CNN article for details ). For those of us who came of political age in the 60s and 70s in the embrace of the New Left, Buckley was something of a right-wing anti-Christ. We loathed his patrician accent and showy erudition; his quirky mannerisms and his maddening condescension. But mostly, we hate him for his infuriating habit of glibly bashing everything we held sacred.

Now, forty years later and from the perspective of political developments in the last few decades, Buckley is looking better and better. Even if one still disagrees with his politics and social viewpoints, Buckley’s wit and intelligence, his commitment to civil and informed discourse must be acknowledged and at least grudgingly appreciated.