Collection Summary
Information for Researchers
Administrative Information
Biographical Information
Scope and Content of Collection
Collection Summary
Collection Title: David P. Gardner papers
Date (inclusive): 1949-2005,
Date (bulk): bulk 1983-1992
Collection Number: BANC MSS 2004/249
c
Creators :
Gardner, David Pierpont, 1933-
Gardner, Elizabeth, 1935-1991
Extent:
Number of containers: 17 cartons, 3 boxes
Linear feet: 21.25
Repository: The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract: Contains personal, professional, and family papers (including
correspondence and papers of his wife, Libby Gardner) of David Pierpont Gardner, including
writings, speeches, correspondence, committee papers, and photographs.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English and Japanese
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite
and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Information for Researchers
Access
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
Materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17,
U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of
University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and
publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials
protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of
the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html .
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], David P. Gardner Papers, BANC MSS 2004/249 c, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Alternate Forms Available
There are no alternate forms of this collection.
Related Collections
Office of the President Records, CU-5
Separated Material
Printed materials have been transferred to the book collection of The Bancroft
Library.
Videotapes/sound recordings have been transferred to the Microforms Collection of The Bancroft Library.
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog.
University of California,
Berkeley--Presidents--Biography
University of California
(System)--History
Gardner, David Pierpont,
1933--Archives
Gardner, David Pierpont, 1933-.
California oath controversy
Gardner, David Pierpont, 1933-.
Earning my degree
Loyalty oaths--California--Berkeley
Photographs.
Administrative Information
Acquisition Information
The David Pierpont Gardner papers were given to The Bancroft Library by David Gardner in
2004.
Accruals
No additions are expected.
System of Arrangement
Arranged to the folder level.
Processing Information
Processed by Bancroft Staff in 2007
Biographical Information
David Pierpont Gardner was born in 1933 in Berkeley, California to Reed S. and Margaret
Pierpont Gardner. In 1958 he married Elizabeth (Libby) Furhiman, and they had four daughters
together: Karen, Shari, Lisa, and Marci. Libby died in 1991, and Gardner married Sheila S.
Rodgers in 1995. Her son, Matthew, was twelve at the time.
Gardner earned his bachelors degree with majors in political science, history, and
geography at Brigham Young University in 1955 and his M.A. in political science at the
University of California, Berkeley in 1959. He earned his Ph.D. in higher education at U.C.
Berkeley in 1966. Even before completing his Ph.D., he became Assistant to the Chancellor at
U.C. Santa Barbara (UCSB) and then in 1967 accepted a joint appointment as Vice Chancellor
and Professor of Higher Education at UCSB. In 1971 he moved to the U.C. Office of the
President as Vice President for Public Service Programs and University Dean of University
Extension.
In 1973 Gardner left the University of California to become the president of the University
of Utah, a position he held until 1983 when he became the 15th president of the University
of California System. After his wife Libby's death in 1991, Gardner chose not to continue as
U.C. president without her and resigned in 1992. He became the president of the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation in 1993, leaving in 1999. In 2001 he returned to the University of
Utah to become a professor of educational leadership and policy in the Graduate School of
Education. Gardner also served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty
Trust in Los Angeles and as a member of the Governing Council of the Hong Kong University of
Science & Technology.
During Gardner's career in higher education, he served on several national commissions. He
was chairman of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, whose 1983 report,
A Nation at Risk, helped spark the national effort to improve and
reform schooling in the United States. He also served on the National Commission on Student
Financial Aid, and on other such committees and commissions for the major national
educational associations in Washington, D.C. He wrote the seminal work on UC's loyalty oath
controversy,
The California Oath Controversy, as his doctoral
thesis, published by the University of California Press in 1967. After he left the UC
presidency, he was the subject of an oral history at UC Berkeley, and later wrote his
memoirs,
Earning My Degree: Memoirs of and American University
President,
published by UC Press in 2005.
Gardner's honors include election as a member of the National Academy of Education and the
American Philosophical Society, as a fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the National Academy of Public Administration, as a 40th anniversary Fulbright Distinguished
Fellow in Japan, an Honorary Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and as chairman of
the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. He was Cal's 1988 Alumnus of the Year.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection contains personal, professional, and family papers (including correspondence
and papers of his wife, Libby Gardner) of David Pierpont Gardner, including writings,
speeches, correspondence, committee papers, and photographs.
David Gardner's interests in the study of issues in higher education are reflected in two
series:
Earning My Degree and the Loyalty Oath Controversy.
Earning My Degree: Memoirs of an American University
President
is an insider's account of the evolution not only of Gardner's own career
in higher education but of the institutions of higher education over his career. His PhD
dissertation,
The California Oath Controversy, covers a
seminal period in the history of the University of California and in the struggle for
academic freedom in the United States. Both series include background materials such as
copies of university documents, oral histories, and related correspondence. Gardner also
chaired the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which published its influential
report
A Nation at Risk in 1983.
The collection is organized into twelve series: Appointments and Inaugurations, Articles
about/Interviews of David Gardner, Biographical Information, Conferences and Meetings,
Correspondence, Earning My Degree, Libby Gardner's Papers, The Loyalty Oath Controversy,
Organizations, Speeches, Writings and Published Works, and Photographs and Scrapbooks.