These are only some of the bare facts, surrounded by all sorts of public blather about political correctness gone mad, and the supposed rottenness of universities beholden to fee-paying foreign students. How had it come to this, I wondered. Had Buchanan been an accident waiting to happen? Had hubris knocked at his door with a wrecking ball? And what was it about New Zealand that had managed to give him such a hiding?
Buchanan grew up in South America, until his father, who worked for General Motors, was drawn up as a kidnapping target by leftist Argentine guerrillas. Back in the US, Buchanan became an academic expert on Latin American politics and international security; he was invited to Washington and worked alongside the CIA. He started teaching at Auckland University in 1997. He also served another role as a public intellectual. His ten years in New Zealand have been what might be described as vocal: he has been regularly in demand as a media commentator on security issues, especially the Zaoui case.
He is a loud man. He shouted at me from the moment I arrived. It was as if he mistook that the world was hard of hearing; he may never have whispered in his life. He is the eldest of six children: ‘The Buchanan family is a nation of individuals, all of whom have extremely strong temperaments.’ No, he said, he wasn’t a Yank. ‘I’m a half-breed. A hybrid. Buenos Aires is my home town. I am what I am as a result of living through a couple of military dictatorships.’ Was he derelict in charm school? ‘Yes, I think I am. That may explain why I like to be by myself more often than not.’
Does he regret coming to New Zealand? ‘No, not for a moment. The best decision I’ve made in my middle life was to emigrate here – uh, recent events notwithstanding …’
Brought up in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, worked inside the Pentagon, studied and taught in Chicago, Arizona, Florida – and brought down by small, mean, pinched, stupid New Zealand. Of course he regretted the email: ‘That was a temper tantrum, one borne of a very frustrating day.’ When he pressed ‘Send’ he sent himself to an oblivion. The phone was never going to ring: although he does some consulting work, Buchanan has rendered himself unemployable. Perhaps he shouted at me because he wanted to be heard – he was loath for me to leave, so I hung around for three hours. He seemed an unreal figure, lost and bewildered, an outcast left to rot in a damp forest with the squawking lorikeets. I wanted to like him and I did; he has so much intelligence and energy. The worst I thought of him was that he seemed reduced to being a harmless eccentric.
When I asked whether he had ever wanted to work for the CIA, he said no, he wasn’t a person to betray trusts. ‘But I could have made a lot of money doing it. I fancied I might have made a great covert operative.’ This seemed preposterous. I asked him what covert abilities he possessed. He said, ‘Observational skills. I like to watch. I should rephrase that: I like to observe people. Mostly in their political interactions, but if I were a very old person I would not go to malls and sit around and watch people. I’d go to airports. If I’m going to observe a crowd, I’d rather I did it well, and airports are far more interesting places.’
He’ll soon have some experience of that: he is off to live in Singapore. ‘My wife has a job there, and since I don’t we figure the best thing to do is follow the employed person, and come back as required for the litigation.’ One reason I liked him is because he has an American optimism. He said, ‘My wife and I have dreams. Our original dream was to retire here. That still is a dream of mine, it’s just that the route is a little more circuitous than I anticipated. But my intention is to come back as soon as possible …
‘I think I’m going to win my court case. And I think that, with some luck, I can be very persuasive in making my case for reinstatement. I think I have a lot to contribute to the university and society in general.’
He said, ‘I’m a much more humble and chastened person now.’
There may well have been something Nietzschean about Buchanan. Now, though, he was like Superman doomed to live out his years as Clark Kent. Buchanan is a lifelong competitive triathlete, but something happened. It took a while for him to talk about that.
I asked him whether he was hopeless with people. He said, ‘Probably so. I sometimes think of myself as no-nonsense, telling it like it is. But what I’ve learned is that it comes across as arrogance, and at worst bullying, and at a minimum is undiplomatic in the extreme. The irony is that those very traits are what allowed me to work well in the Pentagon. I had excellent relationships with numerous military officers. I think I’m very well-regarded in the intelligence community. But in academia those traits seemed to be ill-suited.
‘Therein lies the tale. One of the reasons I thought academia was a safe haven for me is that it was the place where you were really judged on the merits of your work. And your work was the product of your mind. It didn’t matter where you were on the academic totem-pole. It was all about the strength of your ideas and your convictions, and you could talk straight to people without causing offence, and certainly without causing retribution. And it turns out that academia is far from that.
‘Academia is a very neurotic state. The trouble is my neuroses are not those of most academics. I worry about physically breaking down. After years of
