Barr is a longtime supporter of the unified executive theory of virtually unlimited presidential authority over the executive branch of U.S. government. [1] [2] [3] In 1989, Barr, as head of the OLC, justified the US invasion of Panama in order to arrest Manuel Noriega. As assistant attorney general, Barr authorized an FBI operation in 1991 to free hostages at Talladega Federal Prison. An influential advocate of stricter criminal justice policies, Barr, as attorney general, authored The Case for More Incarceration in 1992, in which he advocated for an increase in the rate of incarceration in the United States. [4] On Barr`s advice, President George H. W. Bush pardoned six officials implicated in the Iran-Contra affair in 1992. However, as college admissions unfolded, Barr was a strong advocate for his students, frequently traveling to campus to meet with admissions counselors on behalf of Dalton`s top prospects. Part of Dalton`s appeal was the implicit promise that the school`s most accomplished graduates would likely move on to an Ivy League education.
“Donald Barr was aware of class differences,” Semel said. “He often talked about the `Columbia Mafia` – the world he came from – and the wealthy families of the Upper East Side. There was a struggle between Dalton`s old German Jewish values and the new money that had arrived. Friedan, the most diplomatic of the group, was tasked with negotiating with Barr. “Our first action came when we were in second grade,” he recalls. “It was a sympathy strike at the high school after Martin Luther King was killed and Columbia shut down.” There were riots throughout the city, including one outside Dalton. “Barr was furious,” Edelman recalls, “and he yelled at Jonathan for not respecting the school,” encouraging impressionable children to follow the lead of older college-age rebels who engaged in acts of civil disobedience. “There were two problems that really sent it into orbit,” Edelman continued. “The dress code and the Vietnam War.” “Barr had to put Dalton on the map,” Semel recalls. “A lot of people thought he was a genius and a madman.
School was going nowhere. Barr was installed to give him a mandate. Pleshette Murphy explained, “The values of the 1960s were not about money. They were trying to train the next Jackson Pollocks. Dalton`s father, Jacob Javits, then a Republican senator from New York, came to Semel`s fifth-year to talk about his growing experiences. So did Dalton`s mother, Norman Podhoretz, editor of the left-wing magazine Commentary, who would transform into a leading neoconservative in the 1970s. What better way to teach 10-year-olds than to make them hear how Schrafft`s best and brightest learned to handle cutlery? In a short period of time, the principal managed to double Dalton`s enrollment and make it one of the city`s most desirable schools, according to the Times, by renaming an institution that had lost its appeal despite its stellar history. For his teachers, Barr brought photographers, Belarusian aristocrats, anti-Castro Cuban greats and a group of gifted dropouts, including a certain Jeffrey Epstein. A charismatic teacher who had jumped into high school for several years, Epstein often walked through school in a long fur coat. In Horace Mann`s 1967 yearbook, Barr had already received his future personality: “a staunch conservative on political issues,” a master of “facial contortions,” and a brilliant imitation of his Catholic school priests.
He often took the subway home with another classmate, Barry Scheck, who became a lawyer and eventually co-founded Project Innocence using DNA evidence to free wrongfully convicted prisoners. “We argued throughout school and until we got home,” Scheck said. I first heard Donald Barr`s name in 1972. New to New York, I worked as an assistant in Paramount`s stories department. My boss, an ardent feminist, was a Dalton mother and sympathized with parents` efforts to push Barr out of his job. In 1971, New York magazine published an article, “The Parents` Revolt in Dalton,” and it began with a report on a Dalton PTA meeting where an insurance executive was beaten. An accompanying cartoon showed Barr using a large device to chase away recalcitrant students. These were his autocratic tactics and the power struggles of the school – in the context of an America that imploded because of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the policies of Richard Nixon. Anyone caught smoking weed, even off campus, was inappropriate.
“He was one of the people who opposed a cultural tidal wave that he didn`t understand,” recalls Dalton student Marc Edelman, now a professor of anthropology at Hunter College. Dan Freedman recalled an encounter he had 20 years after graduating from high school: the day he met William Barr, who was then the head of George H.W. Bush`s Office of Legal Counsel at the White House. At the time, Freedman was working for Hearst`s newspapers. “Barr,” he recalled, “had already written a famous legal memo stating that presidents could not be impeached. I thought: this is Donald Barr`s son! I came to interview him and said, “Your father was my enemy and we fought tooth and nail.” He said, “I hope this won`t affect your coverage of the Department of Justice.” He was a direct shooter – and I respected him. The School of Scandal The entrance to Dalton, Tony Manhattan`s private school, circa 1979. Shortly after Donald Barr left Dalton, he surprised many who knew him by publishing Space Relations, a strange science fiction novel that envisioned the kingdom of Kossar, a hellish landscape where power, drugs, and boredom turned the ruling caste into vicious sexual predators. The hero John Craig – “a young diplomat of the Earth in the making” captured and enslaved – finally triumphs, restoring virginity and monogamy to the colonized. Barr worked for the CIA from 1971 to 1977 while pursuing graduate studies and law school. [19] He was first hired as a summer intern for two years. [16] While in law school, he was an analyst in the Intelligence Branch from 1973 to 1975, then became an assistant in the Office of the Legislative Counsel, and from 1975 to 1977 in a congressional liaison office.
[19] [20] [21] [22] New York`s private schools have never been democratic citadels. In the `60s and `70s, and for nearly a generation thereafter, elite colleges regularly filled a disproportionate share of seats with students from privileged and competitive strongholds like Dalton. And at no time was their complicated preferential system more evident than during the university admissions crisis, when a principal`s raised eyebrow could affect the chances of even the most promising student. In this environment, what happened to Friedan — a Class A president with near-perfect results on the university`s board of trustees — was astounding, even by New York standards. Barr announced his resignation as part of a deal; The Dalton Yearbook, which played well, had this to say: “All Dalton owes Donald Barr a great debt. We are all very sad about his departure. Barr found a new job as principal of Hackley, a more conservative private school in Westchester County. In an interview with The New York Times, he said: “The kids here are. Better and less. It`s a relief, Barr pointed out, to be freed from the “display of ego and radical chic of Manhattan`s private schoolchildren.” What he used to do: During college and law school, Barr worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. After graduating from law school, he worked for the U.S.Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Court, joined private practice, and then served for just over a year as deputy director of legal policy at the Reagan White House. In 1968, Jonathan Friedan`s second year in Dalton, Colombia, students began what turned out to be a wave of protests and the campus was closed. Friedan sympathized with his cause. As part of a group of four successful Dalton friends — and the school`s most dedicated activists — he was adamant in his opposition to the Vietnam War, which put him in the principal`s crosshairs. The most vocal supporters of these Dalton students were their parents, including Betty Friedan, whose public figure mocked Barr. Donald Barr was a guest on the popular David Susskind Show and was featured in The New York Times Magazine. In the `60s, when New York`s private schools still had implicit Jewish quotas, Dalton, mostly Jewish, was decidedly inclusive. “There were students of color and students with disabilities,” Semel said.
