that consumed his father, Donald Barr, then the headmaster
of the tony Dalton School and a respected voice in academics,
on the right-wing opinion pages, and at the center of America’s
calamitous culture wars.
William Barr’s origin story is, in fact, a parable of how fam-
ily, education, protest, and principle served to shape the era—
and shape a young man who would become America’s chief
law enforcement officer. At the same time, it is also a narrative
about how a charismatic, domineering, and doctrinaire figure
named Donald might have helped define the contours of his
son’s formative years.
G
arrick Beck never doubted where his friend and
high school classmate Billy Barr stood on the ques-
tion of executive authority. Barr made his views
known soon after he came to Horace Mann, then arigorous all-boys private school in Riverdale, a leafy suburb in
the Bronx. It was 1965, and juniors Barr and Beck, due to alpha-
betical destiny, were once again seated next to each other—this
time in American history class.
They were 16 years old, privileged boys of their era, their hair
neatly Brylcreemed, wearing ties and blazers, combs tucked in
their back pockets. In class, they were addressed as Mr. Barr
and Mr. Beck. As part of their curriculum they read To K i l l a
Mockingbird and The Ox-Bow Incident. In the second semester,
they began a line-by-line analysis of the Constitution, using
Your Rugged Constitution as a primer. The book’s deep dive into
the meaning of the document, Barr would later insist, had a
profound effect on him.
In future histories of the Trump era, Beck will perhaps
become a footnote, the accidental witness who first perceived
how fiercely Barr believed in the sweeping powers invested in
the commander in chief. “I was left wing; Billy was right wing,”
Beck recalled. “Our debates would draw clusters of listeners dur-
ing lunch.” The two teenagers argued at length about the spread
of communism, then known as the domino theory. “It was the
height of the Vietnam War,” Beck remembered. “Billy would say,
‘If Vietnam would fall, Indonesia would fall. Hawaii would fall.’
He did not lack for patriotism, and neither did I. I would argue
that when we were out there supporting dictators, we were also
supporting the heroin smugglers and the totalitarians that had
divided America. He would say things like, ‘If you guys get your
way, we will be living under the Communist flag in no time flat.’
We sparred constantly. But we respected each other.”
Turn the lens one way and they were boys in a time machine
of entitlement on a campus of rolling lawns and tennis courts.
Turn it another, and they were absorbing the highest ideals
of an enlightened education. Barr was the William F. Buckley
Jr. of the class of 1967, a droll outlier who lived in a rambling
Riverside Drive apartment with a framed “Goldwater for
President” poster in the foyer. Beck, in contrast, was the first
Horace Mann student to wear a peace-sign button, and when
a teacher forced him to remove it, Beck argued that his right to
free speech had been violated.
At the time, his parents, Julian Beck and the actor and direc-
tor Judith Malina, ran the experimental Living Theatre. They
fled to Paris after authorities charged them with tax evasion
in an attempt to shut down their provocative off-Broadway
performance space. Barr’s father, Donald, meanwhile, had
been part of a circle of Columbia University conservatives and
libertarians. The elder Barr, a moderate Republican, became
steadily more conservative as the country was polarized by
civil upheaval and the tide of youth-movement activists, who
began to look upon authority figures with contempt and suspi-
cion. Donald Barr had recently been appointed headmaster of
the progressive Dalton School and was already at odds with a
few students and parents, who considered him a reactionary
who ruled the corridors and classrooms like his own personal
fiefdom. (Donald Barr was a school headmaster from 1964 to
1986; he died in 2004.)
I found Garrick Beck at his house in Santa Fe more than 50
years after he graduated from Horace Mann. As teenagers, he
said, he and his friend Billy debated a subject that has become
a touchstone in American politics today: What are the param-
eters of presidential authority as defined by the founders?
Beck had a granular recall of those discussions: “What we
believed innately was already showing through. We argued
about the Constitution as it was reflected in President Lyndon
Johnson’s treatment of the war. I argued that Johnson did not
have the constitutional authority to enact this war. Billy said, ‘All
the president needs to declare war is an executive order. That is
all!’ I said, ‘Nonsense. The president needs a declaration of war
from Congress.’ I really believe that Billy saw the Constitution
as concentrating power in the chairs of the committees, and in
the cabinet secretaries, the Supreme Court—and the president.”
Beck and his classmates never doubted Barr’s decency. “He
never cheated on an exam,” Beck insisted. “He never belittledSCHOOL FOR SCANDAL
The entrance to Dalton, the elite Manhattan private
day school, circa 1979.82 VANITY FAIR DECEMBER 2019
PHOTOGRAPHS: LEFT, COURTESY OF SUSANSEMEL; RIGHT, BY FRED W. MCDARRAH/GETTY IMAGES