In 1969, Hillary Rodham wrote a 92-page senior thesis for Wellesley College about the views advocated by community organizer Saul Alinsky, titled "There Is Only the Fight . . . ": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.
While the work by Rodham as a college student was the subject of much speculation in articles and biographies of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 1990s, access to the thesis was limited by the college, at the request of the Clinton White House, during her time as First Lady of the United States.
Thesis
Rodham researched the thesis by interviewing Alinsky and others, and by conducting visits to low-income areas of Chicago (nearby to her hometown, Park Ridge, Illinois) and observing Community Action Programs in those areas. Her thesis adviser was Wellesley professor of political science Alan Schechter.
The thesis was sympathetic to Alinsky's critiques of government antipoverty programs, but criticized Alinsky's methods as largely ineffective, all the while describing Alinsky's personality as appealing. The thesis sought to fit Alinsky into a line of American social activists, including Eugene V. Debs, Martin Luther King Jr., and Walt Whitman. The thesis concluded that "[Alinsky's] power/conflict model is rendered inapplicable by existing social conflicts" and that Alinsky's model had not expanded nationally due to "the anachronistic nature of small autonomous conflict".
A 2007 review in The New York Times summarized Rodham's thesis as follows: "Ms. Rodham endorsed Mr. Alinsky's central critique of government antipoverty programs—that they tended to be too top-down and removed from the wishes of individuals. But the student leader split with Mr. Alinsky over a central point. He vowed to 'rub raw the sores of discontent' and compel action through agitation. This, she believed, ran counter to the notion of change within the system." In 2016, reporter Michael Kruse quotes the thesis and describes a centrist theme:
In the acknowledgements and end notes of the thesis, Rodham thanked Alinsky for two interviews and a job offer. She declined the latter, saying that "after spending a year trying to make sense out of [Alinsky's] inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor." The thesis was praised by all four of its reviewers and Rodham, an honors student at Wellesley, received an A grade on it.
White House and Wellesley limiting of access
The work was unnoticed until Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the White House as first lady. Clinton researchers and political opponents sought it out, contending it contained evidence that Rodham had held strong far-left or socialist views.
In early 1993, the White House requested that Wellesley not release the thesis to anyone. Wellesley complied, instituting a new rule that closed access to the thesis of any sitting U.S. president or First lady, a rule that in practice applied only to Rodham. Biographer Donnie Radcliffe instead used extensive recollections from Schechter to describe the thesis in her biography published later that year, Hillary Rodham Clinton : A First Lady for Our Time. David Brock was similarly unable to access the thesis for his book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham (1996), writing that it was "under lock and key". Instead, he, too, used some of Schechter's recollections. By the mid-1990s, Clinton critics seized upon the restricted access as a sure sign that the thesis held politically explosive contents that would reveal her hidden radicalism or extremism.
Syndicated columnists Jack Anderson and Jan Moller tried to gain access in 1999, but they were rebuffed by both Wellesley and the White House. Writing in their "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column, they surmised that the thesis's conclusion might be at variance with Clinton Administration policies, saying they had "discovered the subject of her thesis: a criticism of Lyndon B. Johnson's 'War on Poverty' programs. Mrs. Clinton's conclusion? Community-based anti-poverty programs don't work." Clinton biographer Barbara Olson wrote in her 1999 book Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton that, "The contents of Hillary's thesis, and why she would want it hidden from public view, have long been the subject of intense interest. Most likely, she does not want the American people to know the extent to which she internalized and assimilated the beliefs and methods of Saul Alinsky." >
Thesis made available
The thesis was made available after the Clintons left the White House in 2001 by the Wellesley College archives.