Clark Kerr
By Michael Falcone
Daily Bruin senior staff
[email protected] Distanced from the student protests, the
tear gas, the damning vote of the UC Board of Regents and Ronald
Reagan ““ the chaos of the 1960s ““ Clark Kerr tells me
that he pities those who are poised to take the reins of leadership
at the University of California. Calling it a time of uncertainty,
Kerr predicts the next few decades will be rough-going for
university planners and administrators. “I pitied myself, I
might say, back in 1960 facing all those enormous problems, but I
went into it with a sense that I was certain of what was going to
happen and no one can be certain today,” he says. But there
is a particular pathos in his assessment. The soft-spoken Kerr, who
turns 91-years-old today, also knew his share of uncertainty. He is
a consummate futurist, largely by nature, but probably also because
most who speak with him can’t seem to resist the urge to tap
into his foresight. In his 1958 UC presidential inaugural speech,
Kerr envisioned a “Golden Age in the life of the University
of California during what may yet become a Golden Age for
mankind.” Today it is a vision worth sharing, especially at a
time of uncertainty. “¢bull; Â “¢bull; “¢bull; Daily Bruin: Do
you notice any parallels between 1950s McCarthyism and the
post-Sept. 11 era? Will the events of the past year have a lasting
impact on college campuses?
Clark Kerr: It’s impossible to know. The answer to that is
how serious the world situation is going to get. For example if we
were to attack Iraq or if there was all out war in Israel that
would change the situation quite a bit. At the time the oath
controversy went on here at Berkeley and at UCLA too, there was a
real threat. There was the invasion of North Korea into South
Korea, and the (Korean) War was going on. When I was a young
chancellor during that period of time, faculty members would come
in (and) ask me if they could give a speech. I’d say to them:
“That’s a decision for you to make not for me to make
but you’re an American citizen and you ought to do whatever
you think an American citizen has the right to do, and if I were
you, I’d give the speech.” People were afraid to even
give speeches on what would seem like unexceptional subjects. The
strange thing was: Why was I, as a young faculty member, the person
that stood up and opposed the regents most vigorously in public?
And the reason was because nobody else would do it. That’s
just what the atmosphere was. So, I wouldn’t compare the two
periods yet, as indeed, uniquely similar. There was a threat then,
there was a reality too. Now there’s a threat but not much
reality, not yet, at least.
DB: Right now the UC is building a new campus in Merced. Given
its location and the kinds of programs it could attract what would
you recommend as the new campus develops?
CK: Merced has got problems. I built three new campuses for the
university, but I had the chance to build them in San Diego, Irvine
and Santa Cruz. The San Joaquin Valley is just not as attractive a
place for the faculty members to live as these three locations
““ that’s a handicap that they have. Also the San
Joaquin Valley has a rather difficult population situation. The UC
is basically a middle class institution, not an upper middle class
institution as Stanford, but a middle class institution. In the
Valley you tend to have a class structure where you have the
landowners who are very wealthy and send their kids to USC and
Stanford and they live in the winter time in Santa Barbara. Then
you have a very large mass of manual workers and you don’t
have a middle class situation that is more normal in San Francisco
or Los Angeles. It’s going to be hard to get faculty to go
there and, in terms of developing a student body, to get people who
will move into a four-year situation. They may go to a junior
college, but it’s a little hard for that group where no
member of the family has ever gone to college or known anybody who
has gone to college. It is a little difficult building a student
body out of that particular kind of class structure.
DB: At UC Santa Cruz, one of the new campuses you built, were
you attempting to bridge the gap between the multiversity and the
small liberal arts college?
CK: What we were trying to do is set up a public institution
which would have some of the aspects of a small liberal arts
college.
DB: If it didn’t work at the time, can it work at any time
in the UC?
CK: I think so, yes. There are some things which I would put a
little more emphasis on than I did at that time in Santa Cruz. The
best of the undergraduate training tends to take place on
residential campuses as compared with commuter campuses and that
costs money. I think we neglect how much students educate each
other by talking with each other and by motivating each other and
not going home to their families or their neighborhoods. I would
say if you want to build a new public institution you ought to try
to make it 100 percent residential. I think that’s very
important. Also, you have to have a better ratio of faculty to
students. The liberal arts colleges and the Ivy League that we were
competing with were running ratios of about 9 students per faculty
member and we were running about 18 or 19. I think with those two
big changes and a more normal period than the 1960s you could make
it work, and I hope somebody someday tries.
DB: Now that university research has been transformed by the DNA
revolution and progress in the “pure” sciences, what
are the outcomes for the other branches like the humanities and
social sciences?
CK: The great winners have been the physical sciences ““
initially it was physics and chemistry in the middle of the last
century. Within the physical sciences, it’s now shifting from
physics and chemistry to biology. The great losers have been the
humanities. Once upon a time in most universities and colleges the
biggest departments would have been English, philosophy and
departments in the humanities. That’s not true any more.
It’s had an impact upon them. They became discouraged with
their lives and their influence in the (UC) Academic Senate, for
example, has gone way down as compared with the influence of
engineers and scientists. They tend to get less money because they
don’t get promoted as fast; they don’t get money to
travel around the nation and around the world. An in-between
situation is held by the social sciences. It’s in-between in
this way: first of all, it isn’t the basic sciences so
it’s not really at the top and at the same time … the
social sciences have become more important to the running of
government at the state, local and national level. So you’ve
got more people taking economics and political science, etc. and
the fields have expanded a lot in size and also in content.
They’re doing well but they’ve never made it to the
top, so they’re kind of in between. But the physical sciences
really took over the last century and they’re going to do
even better in the coming century. The humanities clearly lost and
the social sciences both lost and won.
DB: We are approaching the coming of the electronic university.
Is there a way to balance tradition with technology?
CK: When we were starting the Irvine campus in the late 1950s
and ’60s, one of the things there was to make good use of the
new technology. We put in rooms for their computers, etc. One thing
which I learned there and lots of people learned since is that the
computer isn’t enough. We found very quickly that as soon as
the students got through with their computers and computer rooms
they wanted to talk to someone. The computer just wasn’t by
itself a totality of a method. There are these people who think
that this new technology is going to take over. I’m
absolutely convinced as I was at the beginning that this is not
going to come along as a replacement; it’s going to come
along as an addition just like the book came along, not as a
replacement of classes in prior times, but as an addition.
We’re going to have to find out what is the best way to put
the two together rather than what is the best way to supplant one
with the other and I think that’s what the story’s is
going to be in the end. I quote Peter Drucker in the book as saying
that in 20 years all existing colleges are going to disappear. I
just think that’s absolutely impossible. This is an addition
which can improve some things and maybe save some money but it is
not a replacement. It’s going to be an interesting period of
time. It’s going to be harder on older faculty members, in my
particular case, I got raised entirely on the old system and I know
I would find it really hard to adapt myself to the new one. But
then we pass away and a new generation comes along and that one is
going to depend on the young faculties of today.