University History SeriesSixth Chancellor, University Of California, Berkeley, 1971-1980; Statistician, and National Leader in the Policies and Politics of Higher EducationWith an Introduction by
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Introductory Materials
Legal Information
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Albert H. Bowker dated April 3, 1993. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Albert H. Bowker requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Albert H. Bowker, "Sixth Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley, 1971-1980; Statistician, and National Leader in the Policies and Politics of Higher Education," an oral history conducted in 1991 by Harriet Nathan, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1995.
Cataloging Information
Bowker, Albert H. (b. 1919)
University Administrator
Sixth Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley, 1971-1980; Statistician; and National Leader in the Policies and Politics of Higher Education, 1995, xiii, 274 pp.
Family background; education at M.I.T., and Ph.D. from Columbia University, 1949; Stanford University: professor of mathematics and statistics 1947-1963, Dean, Graduate Division 1959-1963, and development of statistics department and laboratory, and government-industry relations; Chancellor, City University of New York, 1963-1971: establishment of new colleges, graduate center, handling race relations, open admissions, city and state politics; UC Berkeley Chancellor 1971-1980: Master Plan; report, Berkeley in a steady state; academic quality and fiscal stringencies; Bakke case, and issues of access and discrimination; intercollegiate athletics; ROTC; craftworkers' strike; government regulations; moving fund-raising to Chancellor's Office; role of professional schools, faculty union; ventures in health and medical science; eliminating departments; Strawberry Creek College; Experimental College Program; relations with alumni, other East Bay colleges and universities, faculty, students, University constituents, Regents, City of Berkeley; other Berkeley reminiscences; University of Maryland 1981-1986, and government posts.
Introduction by Joseph L. Hodges, Emeritus Professor of Statistics.
Interviewed 1991 by Harriet Nathan for the University History Series. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Preface
When President Robert Gordon Sproul proposed that the Regents of the University of California establish a Regional Oral History Office, he was eager to have the office document both the University's history and its impact on the state. The Regents established the office in 1954, "to tape record the memoirs of persons who have contributed significantly to the history of California and the West," thus embracing President Sproul's vision and expanding its scope.
Administratively, the new program at Berkeley was placed within the library, but the budget line was direct to the Office of the President. An Academic Senate committee served as executive. In the four decades that have followed, the program has grown in scope and personnel, and the office has taken its place as a division of The Bancroft Library, the University's manuscript and rare books library. The essential purpose of the Regional Oral History Office, however, remains the same: to document the movers and shakers of California and the West, and to give special attention to those who have strong and continuing links to the University of California.
The Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley is the oldest oral history program within the University system, and the University History Series is the Regional Oral History Office's longest established and most diverse series of memoirs. This series documents the institutional history of the University, through memoirs with leading professors and administrators. At the same time, by tracing the contributions of graduates, faculty members, officers, and staff to a broad array of economic, social, and political institutions, it provides a record of the impact of the University on the wider community of state and nation.
The oral history approach captures the flavor of incidents, events, and personalities and provides details that formal records cannot reach. For faculty, staff, and alumni, these memoirs serve as reminders of the work of predecessors and foster a sense of responsibility toward those who will join the University in years to come. Thus, they bind together University participants from many eras and specialties, reminding them of interests in common. For those who are interviewed, the memoirs present a chance to express perceptions about the University, its role and lasting influences, and to offer their own legacy of memories to the University itself.
The University History Series over the years has enjoyed financial support from a variety of sources. These include alumni groups and individuals, campus departments, administrative units, and special groups as well as grants and private gifts. For instance, the Women's Faculty Club supported a series on the club and its members in order to preserve insights into the role of women on campus. The Alumni Association supported a number of interviews, including those with Ida Sproul, wife of the President, and athletic coaches Clint Evans and Brutus Hamilton.
Their own academic units, often supplemented with contributions from colleagues, have contributed for memoirs with Dean Ewald T. Grether, Business Administration; Professor Garff Wilson, Public Ceremonies; Deans Morrough P. O'Brien and John Whinnery, Engineering; and Dean Milton Stern, UC Extension. The Office of the Berkeley Chancellor has supported oral history memoirs with Chancellors Edward W. Strong and Albert H. Bowker.
To illustrate the University/community connection, many memoirs of important University figures have in turn inspired, enriched, or grown out of broader series documenting a variety of significant California issues. For example, the Water Resources Center-sponsored interviews of Professors Percy H. McGaughey, Sidney T. Harding, and Wilfred Langelier have led to an ongoing series of oral histories on California water issues. The California Wine Industry Series originated with an interview of University enologist William V. Cruess and now has grown to a fifty-nine-interview series of California's premier winemakers. California Democratic Committeewoman Elinor Heller was interviewed in a series on California Women Political Leaders, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; her oral history was expanded to include an extensive discussion of her years as a Regent of the University through interviews funded by her family's gift to The Bancroft Library.
To further the documentation of the University's impact on state and nation, Berkeley's Class of 1931, as their class gift on the occasion of their fiftieth anniversary, endowed an oral history series titled "The University of California, Source of Community Leaders." The series reflects President Sproul's vision by recording the contributions of the University's alumni, faculty members and administrators. The first oral history focused on President Sproul himself. Interviews with thirty-four key individuals dealt with his career from student years in the early 1900s through his term as the University's eleventh President, from 1930-1958.
Gifts such as these allow the Regional Oral History Office to continue to document the life of the University and its link with its community. Through these oral history interviews, the University keeps its own history alive, along with the flavor of irreplaceable personal memories, experiences, and perceptions. A full list of completed memoirs and those in process in the series is included following the index of this volume.
University History Series
Regional Oral History Office
University of California
Berkeley, California
Introduction
by Joseph L. Hodges, Jr.
It was a pleasure to be asked to write an introduction to Al Bowker's oral history. I suppose I owe this invitation to being perhaps the only statistician who has been active in the U.C. administration and who has known Al fairly well for nearly half a century. I give here some recollections that are tangential to his.
Let me explain how our early acquaintance arose. By the 1930's, mathematics at Berkeley, once reasonably good, had become mediocre. As I have heard the story, leading scientists called on President Sproul to complain. He appointed a committee chaired by Joel Hildebrand of chemistry to find the right chairman from outside to revive the department. They came up with Griffith Evans from Rice. (Note that all three persons have been edified [each has an edifice, a building named after him].)
As Al says, Evans took a much broader view of mathematics than was customary in academia. For example, he brought in two Europeans, Alfred Tarski and Jerzy Neyman, to develop programs in logic and statistics, respectively. When I started my graduate work in 1942, I was attracted to Tarski--indeed one of my first publications arose out of a question he posed in a lecture. But because of the war, I soon found myself working in a group Neyman had started to deal with statistical problems for the military--for example, to find the pattern of bombing most likely to take out a bridge.
At the same time, Al was working in a similar, but much larger group at Columbia. This experience brought him to statistics, as did mine. Neyman who was perhaps the world's leading theoretical statistician aside from R. A. Fisher, had come to Berkeley in 1938 and at once set up a substantial instructional program in his field. I remember taking a quite advanced course around 1940. Those of us at Berkeley thought that by the mid 1940's Berkeley had the strongest program in theoretical statistics in the United States, though no doubt others would challenge this view.
My work with Neyman's group led to my going to Guam along with Erich Lehmann to be an "operations analyst" with LeMay's Twentieth Air Force. I recall being asked to find out what was bringing down our bombers that failed to return from raids on Japan. We solved this problem, but I have unfortunately forgotten the solution. Not unnaturally, because of such efforts, I began to find statistics more interesting (and easier?) than logic, and on returning to Berkeley in 1945, I decided to write a thesis with Neyman.
Not long after this, Stanford began to develop a statistical group. The two groups began a joint seminar meeting about every three weeks home-and-home. One of the out-of-towners would present his latest research to challenging questioners, then we would go to someone's home for cocktails and then to a restaurant for dinner. The groups were small and we soon were well acquainted.
In particular, I got to know and like Al--I guess this was about 1947. Al was chairman of the Stanford group and in charge of building it. I can still remember how startled I was to learn that he was at the same time a graduate student at Columbia. This remarkable double persona--statistician and administrator--continued all his career. Al was a very good statistician, especially strong in applied work. When he came to Berkeley as chancellor, the Statistics Department moved at once to add him to our roster and it is now a pleasure to learn how much he appreciated this.
If Al had devoted full time to statistics, I am sure that he would have been a real star, but it appears that from the first he found administration more attractive, and there he did become a real star. His first achievement was to build at Stanford one of the world's best statistics departments. He explains how the Berkeley loyalty oath troubles helped him in that effort, and this is bound to be of great interest to those who were involved. I feel sure, however, that anyone interested in Berkeley will find Al's memories fascinating, especially because of his great frankness.
Readers to whom the Berkeley campus is important are likely to be particularly interested in what Al has to say about his efforts to protect our academic quality. This was a very difficult time: student disturbances widely resented in the state, deteriorating physical plant, and unfriendly governors including Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown. Al got the students under control rather quickly. Among other measures he greatly stepped up fundraising, and dealt with governors and other state leaders in interesting ways that he describes.
Then as now I often lunched at a table in the Faculty Club favored by old timers. Al would join us from time to time, always making some crack or other. Last week, several of us were recalling a visit after Brown had submitted a budget that was especially damaging to the University. Al said, "I suppose we'll look back on Reagan as the last governor friendly to Berkeley."
A very attractive feature of Al's oral history is the large number of anecdotes. I especially like the story of his one-word answers to the nonnegotiable demands of which I had previously heard from an eye-witness. Many other anecdotes circulated on the campus, no doubt sometimes apocryphal. In one, a group of student protesters waiting for an appointment with Al, all wore dark glasses. When they were ushered in, they found him similarly outfitted. Before long the student leader said, "Chancellor Bowker, if you'll take yours off, so will we."
During the time of Al's predecessor, Roger Heyns, I had moved into administration, including serving on Roger's staff and as chairman of the Budget Committee. I suppose this is why Al discussed coming to Berkeley with me before making his decision and occasionally consulted me afterwards. I was startled to learn that only Roger and I had been consulted at Berkeley. Al did not offer me an administrative position, and his reason for not using friends in this way seems wise. I drifted into statewide affairs, serving as assistant to Vice President Angus Taylor as well as other responsibilities. This makes it possible for me to give an anecdote that I know to be true.
One evening, flying back from UCLA where I had chaired a meeting of the statewide Budget Committee, I sat next to the Berkeley representative. Knowing that he must have had substantial dealings with Al on personnel matters, I asked for his impressions. After long thought he replied: "Extremely intelligent....utterly political....a master of the calculated indiscretion."
Joseph L. Hodges, Jr.
Emeritus Professor of Statistics
University of California, Berkeley
Interview History
Creating the post of Berkeley Chancellor in 1952 marked a shift in the University of California's governing structure, and put into place a more decentralized allocation of administrative responsibilities. The University President remained the overall head of the statewide system, while the Berkeley Chancellor, like those at other campuses, assumed the duties of chief campus officer. As the leaders of the University's oldest campus, Berkeley's Chancellors emerged as key players in the life of the campus and the University as a whole, and their oral history memoirs form a key element within the University History Series.
Of the Chancellors who have served and become emeritus, three have completed their oral history memoirs. They are Chancellors Edward W. Strong, in office 1961-1965; Roger W. Heyns, 1965-1971; and now Albert H. Bowker, 1971-1980. Roger Heyns's memoir was completed in 1987; Edward Strong's in 1992, supported by funding from the Chancellor's office. Two earlier Chancellors have chosen to write their memoirs. They are Clark Kerr, 1952-1958, with a work in progress, and Glenn T. Seaborg, 1958-1961, who with Ray Colvig, has completed his work, Chancellor at Berkeley, published in 1994 by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Martin Meyerson, Acting Chancellor during a portion of 1965, is not on record in the series.
When Albert Bowker retired as Chancellor, the Regional Oral History Office placed his name high on the list of candidates for an oral history memoir in the University History Series. Before the Regents had summoned him to Berkeley in 1971, he had achieved wide recognition in the west and the east as well, as a leader in higher education. His record of achievement encompassed two fields: one was academic, including research and teaching; the other, administrative. Albert Bowker's own education included a 1941 BS in Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; during two years in residence at Columbia University, he was Associate Mathematical Statistician, and later Assistant Director, Statistical Group, Applied Mathematics Panel, earning a Ph.D. in Statistics in 1949. Two years earlier he had already joined the faculty at Stanford University, rising to Professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He remained at Stanford until 1963.
During the last four years there he was also Dean of Stanford's Graduate Division, and became increasingly attracted to administration. His significant administrative posts continued with eight years as Chancellor (equivalent to a systemwide presidency) of the City University of New York, where he developed expertise in multi-campus politics, academic policies, and administrative issues in a multi-cultural setting.
These experiences served him well when he came back to California to serve nine years as the sixth Chancellor of the Berkeley campus. Albert Bowker's new assignment was challenging, but he was not intimidated by the size and complexity of the campus and its occupants. This was familiar territory; many Berkeley faculty members had become his friends and colleagues through inter-campus links during his years at Stanford. He had also gained an understanding of Berkeley's history, statewide context, and political climate. It amused him to say that he was the first Berkeley Chancellor to be appointed because he had done well at Stanford. Both there and at CUNY he had built a reputation as an innovator in higher education, a creator of programs, departments, and colleges in an expanding series of opportunities. At Berkeley he found that his responsibilities required skill as a negotiator, consolidator, and defender of academic values in a climate of retrenchment.
Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien in 1990 issued an invitation to Albert Bowker to provide an oral history memoir, and he accepted on February 4, 1991. In preparation for the interview sessions, the interviewer gathered background materials and consulted with a number of his friends and associates on likely areas for discussion in the outline of proposed topics. Materials included clippings and files from the researcher's University History collection, and documents from the Bowker years at Berkeley were supplied from his own files. On request, he contributed materials from his earlier career and later activities that also had a place in his memoir. Further information, ideas, and materials were generously provided by a number of Berkeleyans including J. R. K. Kantor, Mark Christensen, Jack Rosston, Ray Colvig, Dick Hafner, and Angus Taylor. Their help and interest are deeply appreciated. In addition, Germaine LaBerge of the Regional Oral History Office supplied expert research assistance.
When he left Berkeley, Albert Bowker continued his active professional life with positions in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and New York, with his home base in Maryland. Fortunately for his Bay Area connections, he returned periodically to attend the dinners of the Berkeley Fellows and other groups, and to visit friends. He made one such visit during the first week in September 1991. By that time he had reviewed the proposed outline, and with administrative expertise solved the problem of scheduling Berkeley interviews without interrupting his work on the other side of the continent.
The solution was unique; he created the Bowker Marathon. Instead of a narrator's usual one-and-a-half to two-hour tape-recorded sessions at weekly to monthly or longer intervals, he provided twelve hours of interviews in four consecutive days: Interview 1, September 3, two hours; Interview 2, September 4, four hours; Interview 3, September 5, four hours; and Interview 4, September 6, two hours.
He volunteered to come to the interviewer's home in North Berkeley for the interview sessions, a graceful gesture that involved moving himself instead of waiting for files and tape recorder to be brought to him. At the first interview some twenty years after he first took office in Berkeley, he looked very much as he did then. He had the same easy smile with a hint of amusement in his eyes; a familiar-looking dark suit, white shirt, and a tie, rather casually assembled and worn. He had perhaps a bit more gray in the hair that had not lost a slightly rumpled look.
As Chancellor Bowker sat at the head of the diningroom table, he consulted the outline, laid it aside, and began his memoir with the Berkeley years. He changed the outline chronology of his life so as to give pride of place to Berkeley's University History. He spoke easily and readily, leavening the discussion with a bright-eyed glance and a chuckle. The day following a session when he had provided four hours of interviews with only a brief break for lunch, he remarked with some surprise that the experience had left him so tired that it was an effort to go out to dinner that evening. The flow of his comments and grasp of issues appeared effortless; the interviewer's assurance that in truth he had been working hard the whole time was of interest to him, but probably not convincing. After the interviews were transcribed and lightly edited, he reviewed and approved them, and responded to a few additional queries.
Berkeley Professor Emeritus Joseph L. Hodges, Jr., agreed to call on decades of memories to write an introduction to his friend's oral history. He was a colleague dating back to the Stanford days when both men were focussing on the developing field of statistics.
When Albert Bowker became Berkeley's Chancellor in 1971, he faced repeated cuts in state financing and some erosion in public support for the University. He saw himself primarily as an institution builder, but the need for financial austerity dictated retrenchment instead of expansion. Although his predecessor, Roger Heyns, had made significant progress in reducing antagonism toward the University and particularly the Berkeley campus after the Free Speech Movement, Chancellor Bowker recognized and accomplished his mission. He "circled the wagons and kept the Philistines at bay" while he sought to maintain academic excellence among faculty and students. In his words, he was determined to "get Berkeley the respect it deserves." He knew that he needed to connect with many constituencies, both on campus and in the wider community as he dealt with changes in academic policies, issues concerning student demands, unrest, and questions of racial discrimination. He attended to the quality of the professional schools and to the status of departments, supporting some and eliminating others, always with the aim of maintaining academic standards. He exercised his nonpartisan political skills, worked in concert with other colleges and universities in the Bay Area, kept a watchful eye on the conduct of the athletic program, and met representatives of the media. He enjoyed spending time with alumni, cultivated them in what was described as his "quiet but sociable" way, and developed a reputation for always doing what he said he would do. Throughout his term of office he made a point of attending Alumni Association Board meetings and alumni parties.
Reminiscing about his academic record, Albert Bowker said that one consequence of his choice of an administrative career was to diminish the amount of his scholarly publication. Nevertheless, between 1944 (midway in his studies and teaching at Columbia University) and 1965 (early in his chancellorship of the City University of New York) his publications included book chapters, articles in learned journals, and institute proceedings, as well as three major books. These included Sampling Inspection by Variables with Henry P. Goode; Handbook of Industrial Statistics, and Engineering Statistics, both with Gerald L. Lieberman. Of the textbook Engineering Statistics, Chancellor Bowker said that for ten or fifteen years it exerted substantial influence and was studied by many engineers. He added, "Chancellor Tien studied from that book, he tells me, as an undergraduate." Other publications he described as "some professional papers on multivariate analysis." He also did a joint paper with his wife, Rosedith Sitgreaves; they had been graduate students together.
Over the years, Albert Bowker's leadership in higher education brought honors and awards, and membership in prestigious groups. One paper in particular, prepared when he was Chancellor at Berkeley, received marked attention. After it was made available to the public, it became widely discussed and quoted: Berkeley in a steady state (mimeographed) a report to the Board of Regents of the University of California, September 21, 1973. The report included discussion of a model for faculty renewal, student participation on Chancellors' advisory committees, and forthright presentations of other campus issues in the context of a restrictive and inflexible budget.
He had many successes but noted with some chagrin his "greatest failure," the deterioration of the campus's physical plant, caused by a capital shortage that constrained efforts at maintenance and rehabilitation. This was true despite his success in consolidating fund-raising activities within the Chancellor's Office, a move that helped to boost contributions of private funds during his regime and those of his successors.
When Albert Bowker completed his term as Chancellor, his Charter Day speech gave rise to a "seedy and crummy" tour of the campus, showing the consequences of public and private reluctance to provide funds for upkeep and repair of campus buildings. Nevertheless, he noted that some maintenance money was forthcoming for every new building supported by private funds; some was available for rehabilitation, although not for remodeling.
He avoided permitting his schedule to become frantic, but he was in demand and had to do a certain amount of public speaking. He said he was not particularly good as a speaker, but thought his speeches improved as time went on, and that he was usually "fairly funny . . . short and funny." His face-to-face conversations, however, needed no improvement.
Chancellor Bowker has been described as a good listener, highly effective one-to-one, a man who is sociable and disarming in conversation. While he was Chancellor at Berkeley, he and the interviewer joined a small group who paid a visit to a San Francisco woman, recently widowed. The purpose was to present her husband's oral history memoir volume. On the way across the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, Chancellor Bowker asked a few questions about her, her husband and family, and the memoir. When she greeted the visitors, she was gracious and dignified but sad. Chancellor Bowker took the chair next to hers and gave her his full attention. They talked quietly together for some time; mostly he listened. Slowly, she relaxed and spoke more readily. By the end of the visit, he had lightened her mood, and changed the occasion from a pro-forma event to a pleasant gathering she clearly enjoyed.
Albert Bowker and his wife Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker enjoyed the traditional activities of the chief campus officer. They lived in and entertained frequently at University House, met prominent foreign visitors, alumni and faculty members, took a lively interest in public ceremonies, and indulged their taste for attending the theater.
Before her 1964 marriage to Albert Bowker, Rosedith Sitgreaves was recognized as a leading statistician with an impressive list of publications. Her background included teaching and government posts, with work in public health and education. When the Bowkers came to Berkeley in 1971, she taught for two years as a Professor of Statistics at California State University, Hayward; and eight years at Stanford University as Professor of Education (and Statistics, by courtesy), working with graduate students. She became emerita in 1980.
Soon after arriving in Berkeley, Rosedith Bowker said that she would continue her professional work. While she would not be available for daytime events, she would be glad to participate in evening activities and formal occasions. In this way, she introduced to the Berkeley campus its first experience of a Chancellor's wife who served successfully as official hostess without sacrificing her professional work. She also opened new possibilities for the spouses of subsequent Chancellors to shape their own roles. Many applauded her decision, particularly young women academics who welcomed her as a woman of her time, and as an understanding colleague.
Rosedith Sitgreaves had developed a notable career as a professional: a teacher, mathematician, and statistician. In mid-life she continued her career and successfully added a new one: marriage, a family, and the responsibilities of an official hostess. At both Berkeley and Stanford, she also became the confidante and friend of many young career women, who hoped to learn how she managed to live a complex life and still maintain her serenity.
Along with praise, the Bowkers received some criticism, which they accepted with the understanding that their vision was not necessarily acceptable to every person in their varied constituency. They expressed pleasure and mild surprise at the outpouring of friendship that came their way. They enjoyed it, responded, and went on about their work.
In many oral history memoirs, the narrator's spouse contributes an interview that may include an individual view of a shared life, as well as personal experiences and observations. Mrs. Bowker had agreed to an interview that would deal with the Berkeley years and include aspects of her personal and professional life. During the September 1991 visit to Berkeley, she met with the interviewer for a planning session. A correspondence followed, and the interviewer sent a suggested topic outline for her to consider. She responded with answers to a few questions, and a copy of her vita. The interview was to take place during her next visit to Berkeley.
At the planning meeting, she was responsive and thoughtful, a petite woman, soft-spoken, gentle, and at ease. She was interested in the interview plans, and spoke with quiet assurance and a modesty that made the vita she sent later even more impressive. Rosedith Bowker referred briefly to a history of heart ailment, but seemed hopeful that a scheduled operation would be successful, and spoke cheerfully of the coming interview. Instead of the planned visit, she died unexpectedly on February 1, 1992 at the Bowker home in Maryland.
Friends, including many at Berkeley and Stanford, were saddened and shocked by her loss. Some portions of her story, however, have been collected in Appendix I in this volume. There is a collection of papers her husband provided, including the text of several memorial statements by colleagues, and references to her professional eminence.
Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker's qualities as an individual and a family person are best suggested by Albert Bowker's comments in his memoir and the memorial tribute, as well the remarks in which his daughter Nancy Bowker said, "Rose was a great stepmother."
Interviewer/Editor
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
I - Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley (1971-1980)
Stanford Sidelight
[Interview 1: September 3, 1991]## This symbol (##) indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see end of transcript.
NathanYou were starting to tell me of some of your Stanford experiences.
Bowker
Stanford, when I first came, was not the major research university it is today, and Berkeley was the big brother across the way. I don't know how conscious I was of it at the time, but it was also true that my own field, statistics, was a relatively new development at both institutions. In a way, we were drawing together and fighting the conventional academic establishment, so we spent a lot of time back and forth between the two departments. Well, it wasn't a department here; it was a group in the mathematics department.
So I spent a certain amount of time in Berkeley. Later on, as I joined the administration at Stanford, I actually indeed spent a fair amount of time also with Berkeley people. Jim [James D.] Hart and I negotiated the famous treaty between Berkeley and Stanford that provided for exchange of graduate students when I was graduate dean. Sandy [Sanford] Elberg came in as graduate dean while I was still a graduate dean at Stanford, although I had also worked briefly with his predecessor, Morris A. Stewart.
I think that is kind of relevant to Berkeley, perhaps other things a little less.
That's a nice insight. I'm glad to have that.
Bowker
In some ways I thought, although it's a little backwards, I might rather start with Berkeley and then go back and do my earlier life.
Nathan
Fine. This would be '71 to '80?
Bowker
Yes. I had pretty much decided to leave the City University [of New York] in 1971. They had been excellent years and very tumultuous [chuckles] and creative years in some ways, but I was ready for a change. I wouldn't call it burn-out exactly, but kind of. I was getting very tired of the highly political nature of the job.
Nathan
When you say political, are you thinking of state and city politics?
Bowker
Yes. I had an opportunity to travel extensively. The Carnegie Foundation gave me a travel grant to use preferably not in Europe, although I went to Greece and Africa. While I was away--the same thing happened to Charlie Hitch, I think--I thought, "What do I do this for?" [laughs] When I came back, I said, "How are things going?" My deputy said, "Fine," so I decided it was a good time to make a move.
Nathan
When you asked, "What do I do this for," did you mean CUNY?
Bowker
Yes. I really got sort of tired of the tensions between city and state, and there were other reasons. I considered somewhat going into the federal administration at that time. The Federal Commissioner of Education, Sid Marlow, was very anxious to have me as his higher education deputy. I had been on his board in New York, and we were good friends. He had been superintendent of schools in Pittsburgh.
As I wandered around Washington, I remember talking to George Shultz, who was then in the White House--maybe head of OMB [Office of Management and Budget], but anyway was in charge of the domestic side--and I talked to two or three people in Congress. I never liked [Richard M.] Nixon, and he really didn't have anything in mind in education that interested me, although it is true that all of these big student aid programs started in the Nixon days.
Multiple Interviews, and Accepting the Chancellor's Post
BowkerAnyway, I decided not to do that, and then the Berkeley opportunity came along. I was approached by Charlie Hitch to see if I would be interested. I came out and was the choice of the search committee. The campus and the whole University at that time was in a state of deep suspicion if not open warfare.
Nathan
Internally and externally?
Bowker
It was a regents' search committee, but all of the regents insisted on interviewing me, so I had two interviews, one in northern California and one in southern California. There was a faculty-student search committee.
Nathan
And did they interview you also?
Bowker
Oh, yes. I can't remember now if the alumni had a separate search committee, or whether they were part of that one. Then the president had interviewed me at some length. After it was all over, people asked me what I thought of it, and I said I thought it was terrible and showed that nobody trusted each other.
The people on the faculty search committee included several people who knew me or knew of me, and they were probably my strongest supporters. That would be David Blackwell, George Maslach, Sandy Kadish--I never had met him, but he had been a City College graduate and then worked for a law firm I used in New York at one point, and they sort of knew me. The students had talked to the student government and CUNY.
The regents had had a kind of hard time at San Diego--and I've forgotten the details of that--and were anxious not to terribly politicize the choice at Berkeley. I suppose it's fair to say that [Chancellor] Roger's [Heyns] departure was quasi political, because Alex Sherriffs and the conservatives on the regents had had it in for him ever since Roger fired Alex. [laughs] They were making his life miserable.
Nathan
What kinds of questions did the different groups ask you? What were they after?
Bowker
Well, the faculty group more or less asked me about policies. One concern a lot of people had was the open admissions policy at the City University, and did I think Berkeley ought to have open admissions, and would I uphold the academic standards and rule at Berkeley. Bob Haas, who was on one of these committees, asked me
The president of the alumni association, Chris Markey, who had become a strong partisan of mine for some reason, after it was all over came out and threw his arm around me and said, "That's all right, Al; Roger Heyns wasn't interested in athletics either." [laughter] That annoys Roger, because he actually is, and I'm actually not.
The questions were mostly about open admissions and how I had done it in New York. The City University had a policy--which I'll come to in my discussion of CUNY--that was introduced by me of providing a place to every high school graduate in New York City by a mixture of senior colleges and community colleges, similar to but somewhat different from the University. It got a very prominent press all the time it was going on, and it was very much resented by some people; it was viewed as lowering standards, and still is by many people.
There also had been collective bargaining in New York, and that didn't come up originally in the interviews, but it did later: did I advocate collective bargaining?
Nathan
For the faculty?
Bowker
Yes. Otherwise they were the standard kinds of questions. I don't remember anything being particularly unusual or difficult, and I went through all of these interviews and presumably passed them. The funny thing about it was that many of the people were Stanford people--Bob Reynolds, Bill Wilson, Dean Watkins. I can't remember all the people now, but those three come to mind. Glenn Campbell [laughter]. Glenn, of course, opposed me, probably; it's hard to tell.
There had been a fair amount of checking about my activities at Stanford, and I really had an excellent reputation there. I've often said that I was the one chancellor at Berkeley who was appointed because he did well at Stanford. It certainly influenced many people, including Dean Watkins, whom I had actually known moderately well, although he was a political ideologue. He sort of mellowed later. I wasn't sure he would support me.
I spent a couple of days with Charlie Hitch, and before saying yes, I talked to Roger Heyns and to one other person, Joe
The night before the regents were to meet, Charlie Hitch called me and said he didn't know what was going to happen. At that time the right-wing, conservative regents met on the night before the meeting with Alex Sherriffs, and they still did when I came. It was Catherine Hearst, John Lawrence, and Glenn Campbell. I don't know whether Dean was part of the group. Charlie said they were meeting, and he heard rumbles that there was going to be trouble. He would call me as soon as he knew. I said, "Okay."
The next day comes along, and in the meantime I had called people in New York and told them I was leaving, because it was supposed to be announced. The only memorable one I called was John Lindsay. I said, "John, I'm leaving. I'm going to be chancellor at Berkeley. The regents are going to elect me today." He said, "Well, you will get along better with the regents than I do." He had recently been turned down for an honorary degree. If you remember, there was a big flap about it, which couldn't have delighted him more, because it was all over the papers and created ten times more publicity than getting an honorary degree. [laughs] To be turned down by the Reagan regents didn't hurt you in New York one bit, so they actually did him an enormous favor.
The day goes on, and there's no phone call from Charlie Hitch, so toward the end of the day I'm beginning to get kind of nervous. So I phoned him at Berkeley, but they were meeting in Los Angeles, and they had to give me the number to get Los Angeles. Charlie is rather private about his health, but he was in the hospital--some kind of thing he has once in a while; I guess I don't really know. I got Marge [Marjorie Woolman] on the phone, and I said, "I was supposed to be elected chancellor of Berkeley today. What's happened?" She said, "Well, [Chester] McCorkle is running things." I said, "Get McCorkle." She said, "He's in a meeting." I said, "Get him, for heaven's sake."
McCorkle gets on the phone, and I said, "This is Al Bowker, and I am supposed to be elected chancellor of Berkeley today." He said, "I don't know anything about it; it's news to me." He said the chairman of the search committee was Dean Watkins. So I said, "Well, get Dean on the phone." Dean came on the phone. It was kind of a dramatic incident. I said, "Dean, I understand I am coming up today to be elected chancellor of Berkeley." "Yes, well, mumble, mumble." I said, "Are you going to vote for me? If you're not, I withdraw right now." He said, "Oh. Well, um, let me ask you a couple of questions." Then he asked about collective bargaining, open admissions, and so forth, and said, "Yes, I'll
Nathan
That was a dramatic moment.
Bowker
It really was. [laughs heartily] Dean was very conservative and a kind of independent person, but he also, unlike some of the others, knew what it was to be the chief officer of an institution or to behave responsibly as a member of a corporate board. Actually, when he became chairman, he was very popular with the other chancellors, and with me, too. I mean, I got along with him all right, except I knew so much about him that I was a little surprised at how well he behaved. He had been chairman of the school board of Woodside, and he was very much also a member of the Stanford board, where he was usually a minority of one on most issues. I think his children grew up, and that mellows everybody. He would move that we increase our investments in South Africa because of the social good we were doing and things of that sort.
I came out to Berkeley, and actually I was invited to the Bohemian Grove that summer by a friend not Berkeley-connected, Allen Wallis. Of course, I spent a lot of time with people up there talking about Berkeley. Charlie Hitch was up there.
Nathan
There were quite a few from Berkeley, I gather.
Bowker
Yes, a lot of Berkeley faculty. In New York, two or three people had come to see me anyway; [Edward] Teller, saying he was a friend of Nelson Rockefeller and so forth. I never knew what he had on his mind. Roger told me some of the problems I would inherit, and he turned out to be accurate.
Then I came down and began to talk to people here.
Nathan
Which people do you mean?
Bowker
Deans, faculty leaders, budget committee, and so forth.
Chancellor's Office and the Professional Schools
BowkerYou asked about the organization of the chancellor's office. I have never either brought people with me in transitions or made big changes right away. Bob Connick was vice chancellor under Roger, and I asked him if he would stay on. He said no; he didn't think it was necessary. I think it would have been helpful if he
Fairly early on, and I've forgotten exactly where, I was asked by William Wheaton, I believe, to meet with the deans of the major professional schools. I had a long meeting at his house with Wheaton; Edward Halbach, who was dean of the Law School; George Maslach; and the dean of the Business School, Dick Holton. They unloaded a good deal of grievances on me. You asked why I came to the office organization that I did; this meeting was fairly influential in that decision that Berkeley was essentially run by and for the Letters and Science establishment. The professional schools were not ignored, but their resources were not adequate, the chancellor didn't pay any attention to them. Their only access to the chancellor was in the council of deans, where they sat with all kinds of deans of little schools--journalism, librarianship. They all felt that their morale was pretty low.
There was something to that. The view had been that this was true at Berkeley; that would be the general opinion of the academic world. And not true at UCLA.
Nathan
How did that show itself?
Bowker
The Budget Committee was almost always dominated by Letters and Science faculty. If anyone asked me who the strongest people at Berkeley were--this was when I was back at Stanford--actually I would have said Bill Fretter or the botanist, Lincoln Constance. They were the bigshots. I never heard of all these other people. [laughs] The dean of Letters and Science has always traditionally been the most powerful person at Berkeley.
Nathan
Would this mean restrictions in FTE [full-time equivalents] or overscale faculty?
Bowker
Yes, FTE, overscale salaries, and attention. I don't know; part of it is hand-holding, development. Berkeley, of course, had never done any fund raising to speak of.
Nathan
That is, before you came?
Bowker
Yes. Jack Raleigh, who is a close friend and someone I still see --I've seen him even since I've been here--I remember was the vice
But there is something to it. If you look at America's great universities--Harvard, Yale, Princeton, now Stanford--the things that matter are medicine, law, and business, and engineering at Stanford but not elsewhere; there are special reasons for that. You know, Harvard College is nice, but the things that matter at Harvard are law, business, and medicine, if you really know about the power structure and what concerns people. The graduate school of Arts and Sciences is important, but it doesn't dominate the place by any manner of means.
Nathan
I'm just wondering if the fact that the University of California is land grant vis-à-vis private, has any influence.
Bowker
Well, it does in the sense that the land-grant institutions have a handful of professional schools. Actually, it sort of works the other way; land-grant institutions were set up to be practical. The main difference between the major land-grant institutions and the major private institutions deals not so much with those schools but with social work, education, librarianship--a whole bunch of schools that are aimed at low-paying professions. Those are tagged onto Berkeley, and they're not at Harvard. Well, Harvard has a School of Education and Columbia has a School of Social Work, but by and large the big, great, private universities don't have these small professional schools.
Nathan
It sounds as though there is a distinction between the few big, powerful professional schools and then the other professional schools?
Bowker
Yes. There isn't the prestige. It's hard for an expensive, private university to be a serious supplier of people for low-pay employment--social work, librarianship. Most of the posh privates have abolished their schools of dentistry now. I wouldn't think that would be so low paid, but it's not "in"; that's a public university function.
I wasn't anxious to get rid of any of the schools. Well, I was, a couple of them. There are schools that don't really need to be in a research university of the caliber of Berkeley.
I guess it was because of some personal problems that we later became reasonably friendly with Walter Knight, who was then dean of Letters and Science. He was very unresponsive; he wouldn't take my phone calls. I really got mad at him. Of course, they can argue that Berkeley didn't really need a chancellor, especially one from outside, appointed by these regents. [laughs]
So I decided to change the administration; it was not a bad idea. The consequence, that has more or less stuck since, was that one of my senior officers would be for the professional schools; it was partly a result of this meeting I mentioned earlier. One of my other senior officers would be the dean of Letters and Science, who would be provost and part of my cabinet and not totally isolated from me, representing a large enrollment. I kept the dean of the graduate division the way it was, except that I moved the research portfolio into it. It really isn't a job. The vice chancellor for research when I came here was running the ORUs [organized research units] and was kind of a lobbyist for agriculture: Loy Sammet, a nice man. We're still good friends.
Student Affairs
BowkerThen I abolished the vice chancellor for academic affairs, and I had a deputy. Bob Kerley was vice chancellor for administration, including student affairs.
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Nathan
Why did you want to keep student affairs there?
Bowker
Partly because Bob Kerley was good with students, and he liked that. He had an attractive personality, and it was one of his major interests. It turned out in the sixties that the traditional student affairs people had just fallen apart. I would go and talk to them, and they would say, "Gee, what could you expect, when the students did this and that and this and that," and they weren't very useful.
What you needed was partly some people who would play politics with them as adults, partly people who could be tough
At the same time, I had decided that I would not permit disruption of classes or occupation of any buildings, period. Sandy Elberg, Dick Hafner, and Jack Raleigh, who was then in California Hall, tell me that one of the things they remember most about my early period was a demonstration outside my office, which I had intended to ignore and wanted to. They were all sort of cowering in their offices, apparently thinking it was going to be a repetition, which it might well have been, of some of the unpleasantness of the sixties. The students finally demanded to talk to me, and I had refused.
It went back and forth, and finally Kerley said, "You've really got to go out and talk to them. They'll go away if you do." So a group of student leaders came into California Hall, and they presented me, one after another, with nine non-negotiable demands. I can't remember what they were, but they were probably the start of the School of Ethnic Studies, probably reinstate Cathy and Mike (one of my early moves was to suspend them), and one thing and another. They repeated each one, and every time I said, "No." Nine times in a row, apparently, I said no. These were non-negotiable.
Then it was over, and they did go away. They went out chanting, "Bowker says no." [laughs] I had that incident used against me a couple of times; people would say how unresponsive I was. Apparently it was a very dramatic incident.
Nathan
It was. Was this related to the School of Criminology issue?
Bowker
I don't think so; I think it was before that. That might have been one of the demands.
When I first came in, there was the famous case of Cathy and Mike that was on my desk; Roger handed it [on] to me. They had disrupted Robert Scalapino's class. I upped the penalty, and they had been through a couple of years of hearings and disciplinary proceedings. It had been recommended, I think, that they be reprimanded, and as I recall I suspended them for a quarter; sort of slapped them on the wrist, it seemed to me.
I upped the penalty partly because my own view of Berkeley was that it was in some disarray. It had very little public support, and one needed at that time to begin to make some statements that things were going to be different. I don't think I'm particularly right wing--I'm very apolitical in the sense that I don't have an ideology--but I did think it was in the interest of the campus that there appeared to the public to be a sterner hand at the helm. That was my view, right or wrong; I think it was right.
It was reinforced by many things, not only the regents, of course, but by the press. I'd go to the Central Valley and visit Stockton or Modesto, and they'd say, "I'm not going to send my kids to a place like that." Although people don't admit it, Berkeley was having trouble filling its freshman class, and we were not close to filling the dormitories. People were not coming here. It's very different today, and it was very different when I left. Part of it was the general change in climate.
Nathan
May I ask what happened to Cathy and Mike?
Bowker
I don't really know, silly as it sounds; because it was a big issue. We had a freshman reception, and about every fifth person who came through the line mentioned Cathy and Mike: "How could you do that to Cathy and Mike?" These were kids in scruffy jeans. You know how the freshman reception works; there are student hosts and hostesses in tuxedos and gowns, and then these kids. When I left nine years later, everybody was dressed to the nines, both the hosts and the guests. [laughs] I couldn't help but remark on how different it was.
Nathan
When you came out to talk to the students, was that a departure? Does the chancellor usually sent a negotiator to talk to disaffected groups?
Bowker
I don't know. Bob Kerley sort of masterminded it. He did most of negotiating, and I did this at his request. I don't really know what Roger had done. I don't mean any of this to be much of a criticism of Roger, looking back over what he did and what he said. I guess I think I would have done about the same thing, but times were different, and a new chancellor coming in ought to make it better. That was very popular with the faculty. I had letter after letter from the faculty saying, "Thank God," including some of the bomb throwers from the sixties. [laughs] Not everybody, to be sure.
Priorities: the Cabinet and the Schedule
BowkerI did move Errol [Mauchlan] into the cabinet. I always worked with a cabinet in New York and in other places, so I had a cabinet, and we met. I asked Mark Christensen to be my first vice chancellor. Almost all the administrators at Berkeley have come from inside, and almost all the deans have come from inside. It's a very inbred place, but still you had two chancellors in a row from outside; it was kind of unusual. It seemed to me I ought to have really good roots into the faculty.
Rod Park had been chairman of the Budget Committee, and there is nothing more faculty establishment than that. Mark was head of the faculty senate also and was one whom I found very attractive and enjoyed working with. George Maslach came from the School of Engineering, and Errol Mauchlan, of course, was here. I've always had an executive assistant, and I inherited Jack Schuster; but I moved him along and put in Glenn Grant, who had been one of Bob Kerley's protegés in student affairs. I think when Norvel Smith was made chief student affairs officer, he was added and attended cabinet meetings, but these were the people whom I met with regularly.
I had one other thing that I thought was important, and that was called a scheduling committee. It seemed to me generally that it was very important how chief executives used their time, and therefore once a week I met with my secretary; my executive assistant; Dick Erickson representing the alumni association and later the development office; Lila Carmichael, social secretary from the house; Garff Wilson, in charge of public ceremonies; and Dick Hafner. All invitations to speak or to appear, or even most invitations for appointments, were referred to this committee. If someone called for an appointment, if it was a regent or a dean or something they might get one. The secretary would say, "The chancellor keeps his own calendar; I'll ask him to get back to you." I don't think it offended people very often; it may have on occasion.
Then I was very tight about what I did. If speeches had to be written, I'd say, "You do a draft." I have found this to be most helpful, both here and in New York.
I've seen many people who let their secretaries make appointments, and they just get scheduled to a frazzle. Also, I kept one afternoon a week free, sometimes two. I found in New York during the student violence that I often had to make decisions when I was quite tired and on top of a full day. I had
Academic Management: Appointments, Advancement, Budgets
NathanWhat were your priorities? What were the things you most wanted to do or felt to be important?
Bowker
One thing that I missed when I was at CUNY, and which attracted me to come back to a campus, was to be involved in the academic management of an institution. At Stanford I was really involved in building a university of first rank, and the job here was to keep Berkeley in that category. I just thought every academic decision, particularly on promotion and tenure, appointments, and budget allocations were very important, and that's where I wanted to spend my time.
As it turned out, as time went on that didn't always work out, but for the first year or two I read in detail and spent a lot of time on every faculty appointment myself. Later I found I could rely on--well, you can always rely on a budget committee, actually; they're a hanging jury if there ever was one. [laughter] When I disagreed with them, I usually overruled them.
Nathan
How often can a chancellor overrule the budget committee?
Bowker
Not often, but you can. A lot depends on the reasons and if you go down and tell them why--and you have to go down and tell them why or write and tell them why. But then they report to the faculty senate how many times they disagree, and all the insiders know what the cases are.
One of the problems, though--the faculty had voted to establish a School of Ethnic Studies or Black and Hispanic Studies or something like that, and the people who had been appointed, particularly to Black Studies, were totally unqualified. The budget committee got to the point where they refused to review them, saying they were just political appointments, so I was handed a bunch of people. That was really a tough one. I had to fire them all.
They had come in as assistant professors?
Bowker
No, mostly lecturers. They had tyrannized the campus to some extent, and they thought they had it made. I went around and got some of the Black faculty to help me, but most people were nowhere to be found. The chairman of the budget committee the year that I had the crisis was Elizabeth Colton, an anthropologist, and she was very, very helpful. Oh, they threatened and put bombs near the house. I don't know who did it, but it was really pretty tough. They banged on the door and threatened that there was going to be violence and so forth.
The day they were supposed to leave, the police chief called me and said he wanted to put a guard on the office because they were going to steal the files and the furniture and so forth. I said, "You're kidding," and he said, "No, I'm not." I said, "Don't put a guard on the office, whatever you do." And they did; they stole the safes.
Nathan
They stole--?
Bowker
Yes, they stole things. So Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally comes down to support them. I said, "These people are crooks; they stole stuff." He demurred, "Oh, well, that's different." [laughs heartily] And the police were going to stop them. Nothing discredited them more than that, stealing furniture and files and books.
Nathan
About when was this?
Bowker
Probably in my first year.
Nathan
About '71 or '72?
Bowker
Probably. Merv Dymally came charging down here--well, he didn't really care; someone had worked him up. You really always had to distinguish between the public posturing of public figures and what they really cared about.
Nathan
When you were speaking of appointments and said you were reading the qualifications of the person nominated for advancement, what was it that you looked for?
Bowker
Oh, scholarship and research primarily. Berkeley never paid much attention to teaching.
Nathan
[laughter] I wondered if you would tell me that.
It is also our competitive position: Is this really one of the best people in the country? It might be different now, but I don't think so. The academic quality game is highly competitive: are they really good? Are there really other people after them? Is this really important to the campus? Or is it somebody who has been around and who is just being promoted?
It turned out that early on we had to make a decision on whether to authorize recruitment of senior people or whether, in view of the limited resources, to put a kind of quota on promotions. This was called the renewal model, I think, or anyway a mathematical model. Finally it was decided--I decided, I think, although who knows; maybe there were a lot of people involved, too--to operate in such a way that the number of people recruited as "stars," distinguished full professors, would be relatively small, and we would concentrate on very intensive recruiting of able young people. That seemed to work.
I believe, by the way, that Berkeley's academic distinction was maintained during my regime in very difficult circumstances, and I think the ratings of the national research councils when they came out supported this view. Berkeley was still probably in that sense one of the best universities in the country, if not the best.
Nathan
Did the budgetary constraints have any effect on what you were able to do?
Bowker
Yes. I mean, it made us make that choice; we couldn't do both.
Nathan
So you weren't buying Nobel Prize winners during that time?
Bowker
No. Guessing.
Nathan
Hoping for the next one?
Bowker
That's right.
Nathan
Were you getting any women applicants?
Bowker
Well, the women came, and the number of women on the faculty increased considerably during my regime, partly due to the general affirmative action moves around the country. We did encourage any department where there was a chance of doing it to appoint women. We probably were easier not on standards but on FTE allocation for a woman or a minority candidate; most people are. That seemed to work fairly well, although the number of women in engineering and the physical sciences was still minuscule. But the very
Faculty Personnel Cases
BowkerYou mention the Tony Platt case [in your outline], and there were two rather difficult personnel cases while I was chancellor. One, as I was leaving, was Harry Edwards, and the Platt case was in the beginning of my tenure.
Clark Kerr had once or twice tried to abolish the School of Criminology, I'm told, and had failed because the establishment of police and public safety complained so much that he was overruled or backed down. But I had decided pretty much that, with the limitation on resources, some units ought to be curtailed or eliminated, and criminology had become politicized to the point where it really wasn't taken very seriously by the public safety establishment any more.
Nathan
How do you mean politicized?
Bowker
It had become radical. There weren't any policemen in it or any law enforcement people; they were sociologists and social scientists. It hadn't become a serious professional school.
Nathan
They weren't training chiefs of police in August Vollmer's tradition any more?
Bowker
No. Probably they hadn't been for a long time. That isn't something you'd probably want to do at Berkeley anyway, when you come right down to it. The school wasn't in very good shape. There weren't very many tenured people, only a couple. Platt had been recommended for tenure, and then his recommendation had been withdrawn. As I saw it, he probably should not get tenure, and therefore I refused to send him up to the regents again, although I must say that he had a pretty strong procedural case, not an intellectual case. That started a big fight on campus, and in the end he went to the Privilege and Tenure Committee. They wrote a report sort of dumping on me, and I said, "Well, appoint another independent faculty review committee. I will abide by their decision." They did, and the faculty review committee reported negatively.
I won't say that was all there was to it. You see, he had been passed by the Budget Committee and gone to the regents as associate professor with tenure. In the interval he had been arrested for something or other, so his name was withdrawn. It was something to do with the campus. Then he sued the campus authorities for harassment or false arrest. One of the weaknesses here has always been that the general counsel reported to God or to the regents, and not to anybody running the place. They settled with him, so he could claim that he had a victory. It would have been much better if they hadn't.
So here he was, and with this one thing he had a pretty strong case. I assumed, actually, that he'd get tenure in the courts, but he didn't. It's a complicated story. He went to a judge who wasn't very sympathetic to him, and then he decided to handle his own appeal before the appellate division, which was very self defeating. You never do that. Anyway, he didn't get tenure.
Decision on the Criminology School
BowkerThe other reason was that I thought the Criminology School wasn't serving any useful purpose and didn't need to be at Berkeley. There was some criminology at [UC] Santa Barbara which could have been the basis for whatever needed to be done at the University of California. So I decided to abolish the school, and I got a faculty committee to recommend that. If they had recommended otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to do it. It was a fairly prestigious committee, chaired by Allen Sindler. People were jumping up and down. John Vasconcellos was unhappy, and everybody in Sacramento was jumping up and down and said they had to be involved in it. However, I announced my decision on election day.
Nathan
On purpose?
Bowker
Yes. Everybody was so busy [laughs], I never heard from them. It was perhaps a little manipulative, but still--. Then some of those people who had tenure were moved over into the Law School into a program of law and criminal justice or something, which apparently has had some success. There were several people in criminal law over there anyway--Sandy Kadish, I think, and Phil Johnson. There's a small doctoral program, which I've heard is pretty good. I haven't really followed it.
I think in a Daily Cal article there was a statement that the weakness of the school might have some connection with declining to put another FTE there. Is that the way you see it?
Bowker
One could have turned it around and built it up, sure. I wasn't looking for things to build, particularly. With few exceptions--
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Bowker
Maybe we ought to finish up the criminology discussion. You're right, a criminalistics group was moved to Public Health because it still had a professional background. It's not entirely clear how many resources we saved--some, as time went on. In addition to that, to turn around and build a school up to one of importance and distinction would have taken substantial resources, which we didn't have.
This did represent the major student demonstration during my day. The criminology building, which is adjacent to University House, was occupied. There really were hundreds of students involved, and the question was whether to open it, to clear it, after it had been occupied during the day, clear it overnight. Mrs. Bowker was teaching at Stanford, and when she drove home she heard on the radio about the occupation. The head of the student body, the dean of criminology, the vice chancellors, and everybody was gathered at University House in the late afternoon.
The police chief was there, and he said, "Well, we have to decide pretty soon if we're going to clear it." They all recommended that I not move on it, and I didn't. Then I went in my study and thought it over, and I came out and said, "Move." Mrs. Bowker and I went to a motel, not because we were in any immediate danger, but just so the police wouldn't have to waste resources on the barrier between University House and the School of Criminology, which is right next door.
Nathan
Which building would that be?
Bowker
It's the one where social work now is.
Nathan
Oh, Haviland Hall.
Bowker
Yes.
Nathan
So you went to a motel, and what happened?
Bowker
Well, we cleared it. Nothing much happened. Students were arrested. I can't remember when it was, then or later, that there
It was hard on some of the young people who were quite radicalized by the faculty. Some were, like many children of the sixties--I've known a couple of children of friends, although it's always kind of hard to know about such people. There was a cost to it, no question about it; it was hard on people, hard on some faculty, hard on the institution. But I still believe it was the right thing to do. I had just made a decision that we would not allow disruption of classes or occupation of buildings.
Of course, it had always seemed to me in retrospect that if Clark [Kerr] or the people who were running Berkeley had taken a firm stand all along, Berkeley would not have had all the troubles it had. If you read the history of that period, they waffled all the time. First they said this, and then they said that, and then this and that. Be that as it may, we never had any serious activity after that, and part of it was changing times. It wasn't the most pleasant thing in my administration, and I remember that practically all of my senior officers, the president of the student body, and everybody were there saying, "No, don't do it; there will be bloodshed." Sometimes you have to crack a few heads.
Nathan
Did the students go limp and have to be carried out?
Bowker
Oh, yes. It was quite bloody, but not as bad as some of the things in the sixties. It was quite significant.
Relations with the Press
NathanHow did you deal with the press, both the Daily Cal and off-campus media?
Bowker
On this particular incident I don't really remember. Dick Hafner was always good with the press, and I was always open to the press. In the case of the criminology decision, I had a press conference because there was so much attention to that, but on election day. [laughs] I learned that at Brooklyn College. I decided to clear it once in the late sixties, and I cleared it at 2 a.m. A reporter from the New York Times,who is a very prominent man now, and I keep bumping into him, says, "Why did you do that at 2 a.m.? You ruined my story." I said, "Three
You'd have to ask Hafner, but I think I had good relations with the press on the whole. On the whole, however, I tried to keep Berkeley out of the papers: the less said about us the better; now is the time to sit down and not be counted. [laughs] Berkeley never gets a good press somehow.
I have a funny story. Fred Hechinger is a main writer for the New York Times,and the truth is that he used to--I don't know if he still does--spend a month in Palo Alto every summer. Then he tries to think of professional reasons to extend his vacation a few weeks. Part of the detailed coverage of the trouble in the sixties was due to Hechinger and his vacation plans. It was the New York Times that adopted Berkeley as the news center.
He was out here one summer, and he was writing a story on homosexuality on campus. I said, "Fred, you've done enough to Berkeley." His wife and Therese Heyman were friends, and I've known him; he's a City College boy. "Okay, I won't mention Berkeley in the story." So a magazine story in the New York Times comes out, and on the cover of the magazine section are two boys holding hands, with the campanile in the background. [laughs heartily]. He said, "I had nothing to do with the covers." It was probably true.
Nathan
Does he still come out?
Bowker
I don't know. His children are grown up now, and it was partly his summer family vacation.
I went and visited all the editorial boards and got to know them. I think I had reasonably good press coverage, but the Daily Cal was pretty hopeless. We were friendly; in fact, we supported them. They were always running out of money.
Nathan
Were they off campus?
Bowker
They were off campus during my time; I helped negotiate that. But we still had to subsidize them some, or look the other way while the student government subsidized them. But there's not much you can do about that.
Relations with Political Figures
NathanDo you feel that you are particularly effective one-to-one when you meet people face to face rather than in bigger groups?
Bowker
Yes. I never was a particularly good public speaker.
Nathan
But you seem to be able to deal with the important centers, the press and politicians.
Bowker
In New York I was a very important figure politically. There are little ways you can tell. When the Pope visited New York, I was one of those people invited to meet him at the airport. It was the governor, the mayor, a handful of cardinals, Senator Kennedy. I mean, there were thirty or forty people, but there weren't any other college presidents in the crowd, let me put it that way, except maybe the president of St. John's College, but I don't remember.
Anyway, I was really important, and here I wasn't particularly. I went to see [Governor] Ronald Reagan when I first arrived as a courtesy call. He said, "You're the first chancellor of the University of California who has ever come to see me." That wasn't true, by the way; still, he said it. [laughs] We had a pleasant talk, but he had no particular message. And I went to see Robert Moretti, who was the speaker. I called Willie Brown and asked him to come over for lunch.
Nathan
Did he come?
Bowker
Yes. We had a nice lunch, and then I said, "I'll give a little reception for you. Give me a list of people you'd like." So he gave me a list, and boy, what a collection in University House. [laughs] They were startled, and so was I. I was always courteous. I remember saying to Willie, "You've got a great future here if you keep your nose clean."
I'd just come from New York, where we had gone through about six blacks for deputy mayor, and there had been a scandal about each one. Willie replied, "Don't worry about me; I have a good Jewish accountant." We were reasonably friendly, not close friends, but I think he respected me. If his law firm ever tried to nose around too much, I would call him and say, "You're in the wrong." It only happened once or twice, I think.
Nathan
What were they looking for?
Oh, just fighting for blacks. They were representing people who were black that I had fired. It was personnel matters mainly.
Nathan
In California you overlapped [Governor Edmund G.] Jerry Brown [Jr.]. How did it go between you?
Bowker
Oh, yes. I don't know, I never really cared much for him. One of the funny incidents--I had known Al Lowenstein at Stanford and then a little bit in New York. One summer, Jerry decided he'd have a lot of student interns in Sacramento. They began to arrive, and it suddenly occurred to somebody that they hadn't planned anything for them to do. So Jerry called Allard, who was sort of floating around, and he came out to organize the interns. Allard came down two or three times in the summer, and we had lunch. He said, "You've got to get together with Jerry. You two will hit it off." I said, "No, we won't. I don't like him. We won't get along at all." Al said, "You've got to hit it off with Jerry." He said, "You come over to the house, and my wife will cook dinner. It will be just the four of us sitting around. You two will just--you've just got to get together." Finally I said, "Okay, I'll do it."
We go up to Sacramento, and we're going to meet in the governor's office. We never did get to Allard's house. It turned out that he and his wife were never on very good terms in these years, and I didn't know that; I had no reason to. I said to Rose, "We'd better stop off here in the bar and have a couple of drinks. I fear the worst." So we stopped and had a couple of drinks, and we were a little late. No Jerry, and no Jerry. Finally, about nine-thirty he called, and we said we would all meet over in this restaurant. We went to this awful place, a vegetarian restaurant where I sort of choked on a soybean steak.
By 11 o'clock, Jerry had never shown up, so I got up and went home. Apparently no one had ever done that before. They said he was busy. This was typical. I mean, I knew something dumb would happen. Every time I saw him after that, he apologized, "I'm sorry I didn't get there." I'm the chancellor of the University of California; I can't wait around all day for everybody. I didn't say that to him, but I have said it to others. I had to say it to John Lindsay once. I said, "I'm the chancellor. You're the mayor, but I'm the chancellor; don't forget it." [bangs table] "Oh." [laughter]
I think some educational figures are too easy with politicians, too accessible, and I just never was. I guess I was reasonably successful; who knows? I didn't do much politically here except keep us out of trouble.
I guess Jerry, as the governor, was the chair of the regents?
Bowker
Not really. He was the president of the regents, and they elect a chair who presides at the meetings. He didn't come very often. Reagan always came, and Reagan used the regents. Jerry didn't care much for them. Once in a while he'd come. He didn't like big institutions. Once he asked me why I made more money than he did. I said, "Because I'm older, wiser, and more valuable." [laughter] I don't think you got any budget out of Jerry, no matter what you did, and those things were settled pretty much with University Hall. I always talked back to him. Like getting up and leaving--now, that really startled everybody. No one had ever done that to the governor before.
Nathan
I read in the Daily Cal a nicely balanced statement that you made, in which you said something to the effect that Jerry Brown was really more interested in the University than many people thought --you know, very friendly and nice.
Bowker
When Jerry was governor, I had Pat [Edmund G. Brown, Sr.] up once and gave him a citation at Charter Day. In the introduction I do remember really bringing down the house by saying, "Your generosity to the University looks better and better every day." [laughter] Pat laughed. He said, "I'm going to tell Jerry about this."
Nathan
I gather that you are not really in awe of political figures.
Bowker
No, not really. But I have had an interesting life, in that I've had to work closely, really, with Nelson Rockefeller, Bob Wagner, John Lindsay, Ronald Reagan, and Jerry Brown. Now, that's quite a collection.
Nathan
What have you learned from all of that, or what did you teach them?
Bowker
Both here and in New York I worked with a lot of people in the legislature, and there has never been a feeling that anything that I was advocating was for me, but it was for the institution or for the students or for the faculty. So many of the people who hang around up there are looking for fees for lobbying or something of that sort. I think basically most people respect the University and the fact that the University acts in a dignified way.
I think the worst thing you can do is what the University of California does--have a legislative day, in which you bring all the legislators together. They hate each other anyway, and they see each other all the time. It's always struck me as one of the
I always liked [State Senator] Nick Petris; we used to have him to dinner, for example. We got him very interested in Nemea and the Greek excavation. He was actually born in Greece, or his father was, in a little village not too far from Nemea. I actually went with him over there once myself after I wasn't chancellor any more, and we had a good time traveling together for a couple of days.
I was quite friendly with Warren Widener, the mayor of Berkeley. I couldn't stand the next mayor. I didn't really socialize with people I didn't like. I was friendly with John Vasconcellos, but I didn't really like him, so I don't think I ever had him to the house. There weren't too many people politically important to us. You have the speaker of the Assembly--oh, I had some of the [state] senators in; I kind of liked them once in a while. But whenever I did anything political, it was one on one.
For example, Nick Petris several times helped me with things. He was always senior enough and on the budget committee so that I could call him and say, "I've got to have this." "Okay." I think it's fair to say that he really bailed the University out later on in the animal rights thing and allowed them to go ahead with these biology labs--privately, but up there at the legislature he was a good friend.
Ken Meade--I used to have him around once in a while.
Relations with Regents
NathanWas there any question of not intruding on statewide University activities?
Bowker
Yes. Any regent who was Berkeley-related, I felt free to see socially and did, and they were all at the house some. I was quite friendly with Elinor Heller and went down there [to her house] once or twice a year; and with the Moores, and some with Bill Coblentz. I can't remember other people. If I talked business with them at a social event, I would tell the president. He didn't like it particularly. [laughs] I'm not going to ignore Berkeley alums just because they're regents, period. The staffs would fuss.
Abolishing Departments: Demography, and Design
NathanI don't want to skip over some of your other activities with various departments, if you'd care to pick up on that again. Let's see, we had Department of Demography--
Bowker
Demography was a small group, and it had a lot of trouble recruiting faculty, largely because it was dominated by Judith Blake. I just decided to abolish it, largely because it was just one person, really, on permanent position. It's just something you can have or have not, not an important subject.
There are some subjects that every university must have--mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, English, philosophy, some of the languages, and others. Demography is not one of them, and criminology is not one of them. If you have it, it ought to be good and large. They kept bringing it back, and apparently that was not so much on intellectual grounds. It's a silly subject and the group there couldn't be very effective. Then Judith left, and somebody revived it, not in my day.
Nathan
Do you remember the Department of Design?
Bowker
Vaguely. Yes, we abolished that for the same reason, I guess. I've forgotten now what design was.
Nathan
Design had to do with the practice and principles of art, of options in the use of materials, and history of the development of, say, fiber art, sculpture--many things that pulled together a rather interesting group of knowledge. Apparently it had pretty distinguished faculty members and students. It went to Davis.
Bowker
It was something where there was probably nothing wrong with it, but we just didn't have to have it; it wasn't a core subject. Neither Art nor Architecture fought very hard for it, as I remember, although they probably dumped on me some. I don't really remember much about that. I think it was sort of on the skids when I arrived.
Nathan
So in a sense it would have to do partly with faculty support in other departments?
Bowker
Part of it, yes. Part of it would be on enrollment and budget, and part of it may be on a kind of accident of having a critical mass of people. Every field has to have a certain number of faculty people to really be successful. Demography really only had one. You don't run a doctoral program with one person.
The Neighborhood Idea for Undergraduate Education
BowkerYou mention in your outline Strawberry [Creek] College, for example. I thought I ought to do something to try, at least for some number of students, to have a different kind of undergraduate experience. We considered Strawberry College and Joe Tussman's activity, Tussman Tech. Tussman resubmitted his proposal. I had lunch with Tussman last year, and he said, "Why didn't you take mine instead of Strawberry College?" Now, [the College of] Letters and Science always opposes anything like this, whatever it is.
Nathan
No reforms of undergraduate education?
Bowker
Not to take away from the conventional departments in other ways. I told Tussman that I couldn't remember all the details. He's sent me a paper about that experiment, that had a name besides Tussman Tech: the Experimental College Program. I said, "It all depended on you. You didn't get a cadre of faculty interested in it. It was a one-man show, and it didn't look as if it could be institutionalized." And the same thing happened to Strawberry Creek College after I left. Was that Charles Muscatine's?
Nathan
Yes, Strawberry was Muscatine's.
Bowker
I thought that might have more chance, but it didn't. Apparently it has gone away, hasn't it?
Nathan
It has. Is this part of the attempt at reform of undergraduate education?
Bowker
Well, in a big place like Berkeley--I think I'm indebted to [Earl F.] Budd Cheit for this analogy: "How do you like New York City?" "I hate New York City, but I like my neighborhood." It seemed to me that in a great, big place like Berkeley there ought to be neighborhoods. For some students, the neighborhood is a department or a departmental club, for some students it's a residence group, and for some students it's extracurricular activities. I just thought we ought to try and create--
##
Bowker
--the freshman cluster program. This was developed by Alan Searcy and Errol Mauchlan, really, and I supported it. The freshmen were grouped by intended major. Many of them didn't have intended
Each cluster had a faculty advisor. The advisors were given a small amount of money so they could take the students to tea or to lunch and were encouraged to have them to their homes if they lived nearby. The idea was to kind of artificially generate a group of people who would know each other.
About half of the students who went into the program--I've forgotten the exact numbers--thought it was one of the most important things that had happened to them in their undergraduate experience. The other half didn't think it mattered very much. These questionnaires were all the same. So about a quarter of the freshman class thought it was something pretty important. Well, I thought that was well worth doing, and it was very cheap. I thought Strawberry College would appeal, and I've had many people tell me they thought it was one of the great things when they were undergraduates. You have to keep working on building neighborhoods in a big place like this.
Mike [Ira Michael Heyman] was actually more ambitious in undergraduate education than I ever was, I think. I didn't think you could do too much, but these were some things I thought should be done. He actually had a vice chancellor assigned and various programs. I don't know how much difference it made; I don't know that it didn't. He went to Dartmouth, and he really thought maybe it could be turned into a collection of Dartmouths.
I think it was probably worth doing, although it is very difficult to institutionalize something like that in a place dominated by departments. One of the problems of Santa Cruz is that they never really decided between departments and colleges, and it's still very confused to this day.
At Stanford we used to experiment with enriching the residence programs, and they did some of that here, but again, that goes up and down. One thing I did do was put computer terminals in all the residence groups. That struck me as essential. I was sort of a computer buff myself.
Educational Ventures in Health and Medical Science
BowkerThe Health and Medical Science Program is an interesting one in a way. When I arrived here, there had been a group of people and some money collected with the notion that the East Bay hospitals could be used more for clinical training. I thought in principle it was possible to use the basic science at Berkeley and some of the clinical facilities in the East Bay to run a kind of practice-oriented medical training program. This turned out to be an extremely naive idea.
Another thing that had always interested me personally, I don't know quite why, but I had some interest in psychoanalysis. It had always seemed to me that the practice of psychiatry did not really need an M.D. as its basis, and that even with the increasing chemical nature of psychiatry it would be possible to train people essentially in psychoanalysis by having them take some anatomy, physiology, more pharmacology, and some science subjects that M.D.s take, but not go all the way to an M.D.
In addition to that, there were people around interested in genetics and the establishment of a professional degree in genetic counseling, which would be some combination of biology and the School of Public Health. It was possible to get state money for these ventures without competing with others; health sciences was budgeted separately. So I really put a fair amount of effort into developing these programs, most of which have been quite unsuccessful. [laughs]
Nathan
Were there faculty members who were interested, too?
Bowker
Yes. Oh, the faculty liked them. Don't forget, we still have physiology. I saw Paula Timiras the other day, and she was very interested. Bob Biller from public policy kind of ran the thing for a while. Lenny Duell was a psychoanalyst, but he was also interested. Yes, there were a lot of people interested.
Well, the M.D. thing got going, but the medical association and the accrediting group wouldn't have anything to do with it unless the medical school at San Francisco sponsored it, so we got them to sponsor it. Frank Sooy was a wonderful man, and he sort of did it for me, I think, because everybody over there thought the whole idea was crazy. It turned out that the students who came into it really were interested in getting into medical school. They weren't particularly interested in anything different, so it was just sort of a back door to UC San Francisco.
The psychiatry thing absolutely infuriated the profession. I got Bob Wallerstein. He had been the former president of the American Psychoanalytic Institute and was then head of psychiatry at Mt. Zion, later to be professor of psychiatry at our medical school, a position from which he has been ousted by the scientists, more or less. It may not be true, but that's the gossip. His wife Judy taught here.
Nathan
Yes, in social welfare.
Bowker
He agreed to help me with the mental health. We proposed a new degree, Doctor of Mental Health, and we were seeking accreditation. Well, we got some. Then the genetic counseling got going, and we got it funded from foundations and outside. But the psychiatry profession did us in. Herma Kay, who was head of the faculty senate here and a very good friend, is married to a professor of psychiatry over there. Every time I'd see her husband he'd go into a diatribe about this program: it's no good, the people are stupid, they couldn't get jobs, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it failed.
I bumped into Wallerstein three or four years ago at the center at Stanford. He said, "If I'd known what I know now, I never would have done it."
Nathan
Some things are worth trying.
Bowker
I think the main thing about these things is that they were sort of inconsistent with Berkeley's mission. They were educational ventures.
Nathan
Educational ventures are inconsistent with Berkeley's mission?
Bowker
This is a research institution. When push comes to shove, what do you care if doctors are trained a little differently in one way or another? I'd say that psychiatric social work and clinical psychology are the main sources of therapists. I always thought these people would have a lot better training. However, it all failed. Well, the nutrition counseling may still be going on, and the M.D. track is still going on, I think, but it seemed to me, at least that it was conventional.
Nathan
These are pretty bold ventures.
Bowker
Yes, but they didn't succeed.
Fund-Raising
BowkerThe relationship between the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford is quite unusual, and it's been a friendly one for a long time, partly due, I think, to Wally Sterling and Clark Kerr, who developed a good relationship. It may have been before that; I don't have any knowledge. There was supposed to be, I gather, some kind of treaty that Berkeley would work mainly with its alumni, and Stanford would sort of have the first hit at the corporate and other philanthropic money, but I don't know; I never paid any attention to that, and I don't know whether anybody else did.
I do remember, when UCLA announced a big drive, the regents in southern California bitching about competition with a private institution [USC]. I thought it was pretty horrible, but I didn't pay much attention, nor did I ever ask the regents about my fund-raising activities. [laughter] I didn't pay much attention to them, either. Carter always said, "You don't have to worry about Berkeley; the regents don't have anything to do with it, but neither does anybody else as long as Al Bowker is in charge." [hearty laughter] He was a good friend. He's still alive; I saw him this summer.
I don't know whether there was a negative reaction to starting fund raising at Stanford. There might have been. Dick Lyman made some crack about it once or twice in public meetings, but I didn't pay any attention to him.
(Perhaps the loyalty oath thing would be better talked about in the Stanford segment rather than here.)
Issues: Psychiatry Clinic, Sexual Harassment, Faculty Union
BowkerThe psychiatry clinic was fun--no, it wasn't really fun, but it just seemed to me that psychiatry had gotten too expensive and too precious at Berkeley. It was dominated by analysts, some of whom were charging the University for professional trips and one thing and another. The Health Service was getting out of hand in terms of costs. I forget exactly what the issue was, but I fired nine psychoanalysts. It gave me the greatest power feeling I ever had in my life. [laughter]
Nathan
They're not tenured faculty?
No, they were local clinicians. I brought in Jim Brown as director of the Health Service, and I think he has done a very good job. I always supported him. The Counseling and Psychiatric Service is now under the supervision of a clinical psychologist, a woman, I think, who came from New York. I thought it was in very good shape when I left, but we just couldn't handle severe psychological problems.
Sexual harassment was a tough one. Mike [Heyman] really handled that; I didn't have much interest in it. I knew I had to do something. Charges were brought by a woman student.
Nathan
Mike Heyman was the vice chancellor at the time?
Bowker
Yes. He got a faculty member from the Law School at Davis, a woman, to handle it and make recommendations as to what to do, on the grounds that the student would be more apt to talk to a woman. We did suspend or do something to the faculty member. My recollection is that we docked him.
Nathan
He was suspended for a quarter, if I have the story right, and he was on sabbatical that quarter, so there was some question about what the net result was.
Bowker
It was toward the end of my regime. I remember being grandstanded by Gail Fullerton the same day we announced this penalty. She fired somebody for sexual harassment, and this penalty--you're right--didn't seem very severe. The department and the faculty were furious with me. Oh, I really got it.
Nathan
They were furious with you?
Bowker
Yes, for doing this. They didn't believe her story. The faculty establishment was very anti any punishment for this guy.
Nathan
That put you right in the middle.
Bowker
Sure. We slapped his wrists, as you say. We did something, anyway. We didn't get much credit for it. [laughs]
Nathan
In a case like this, did you work with the existing, say, academic senate committees, or would you name another faculty committee?
Bowker
I think we did it administratively, although we probably consulted a faculty committee. I don't really remember; Mike did it. I do know we had a woman lawyer from the Law School at Davis to essentially conduct the investigation and make recommendations to
I did write to the faculty at one point, when Dave Feller and company were trying to get the faculty union going, recommending against it. They were sort of mad for a while.
Nathan
What was your thinking there? Why did you want to oppose the union?
Bowker
There had been no evidence in my view that faculty unions had done anybody any good. In fact, the papers this weekend have been full of the decline of the importance of unions. The faculty union in New York was put in for political reasons; it wasn't terribly grass rootsy, although there was more strength for it here. The arguments for the union are: to protect the rights of the faculty, and they're protected pretty well as it is; and that they'll be important politically; but unions have been negative politically. I can't see that anybody has any advantage. And you have the system of collective governance.
The people who have written favorably on faculty unionization--one of my protegés, Bob Birnbaum has written a book--say that if it is done right it sort of improves the morale of the campus, the consultation with faculty, and so forth. But Berkeley is pretty much run by the faculty as it is. In fact, a number of private institutions--maybe not all, but anyway a number of big ones--have been excluded from the National Labor Relations Board, the federal legislation, on the grounds that faculty are management. So it's only at public institutions, where there are state laws; whereas a private institution hopes for collective bargaining.
Nathan
Is a faculty union advocated as an alternative to the academic senate?
Bowker
No, they have them both ways.
Nathan
Would they give more voice, let's say, to the junior members of the faculty?
Bowker
Joseph Garbarino, who has written some on this subject and who is a labor man, believes that in the SUNY state university case it strengthened the organized administrators at the expense of the faculty, not in terms of power but money; it improved the salaries of librarians, registrars, and so forth as opposed to faculty. He's written an article to that effect. I was never terribly impressed by the article, but, still, it might be true.
There was no great advantage to the faculty that I could see. Santa Cruz did, I think, vote to organize. I don't know if it's done them any good. It would add a level of consultation. I wouldn't have predicted the precipitous decline of the union movement that has occurred, but I couldn't see what advantage a union would give the faculty. Suppose the faculty of Berkeley went on strike. Who would care? So what? So there's no weapon that they have. It's just another bureaucracy.
Relations with Faculty
Bowker[looking at outline] Did I hold a professorial appointment? Yes, after I was appointed chancellor and before I came to the campus, the Statistics Department very graciously voted me to be a professor of statistics. When I left, the senior members, three of them, wrote me and asked me to return to the department, which I didn't particularly want to do.
Nathan
But it was rather a compliment.
Bowker
Also gracious.
Nathan
So you could have gone to the department if you had wanted to?
Bowker
Well, I could have anyway; I mean, I had the legal right to. But they would have made it easy.
Nathan
It is customary, isn't it, that chancellors do have a faculty appointment?
Bowker
Yes. It's a question of how it's done--whether it's done gracefully or not. Maybe Charlie Hitch had something to do with it, for all I know. They did it, anyway, gracefully, as far as I was concerned. I would have thought I had pretty good faculty relations in general. There is a question later [on the outline] about whether I ever interfered or went near anything I didn't know anything about.
Nathan
Did I ask a question like that?
Bowker
I absolutely did not ever vote or appear or do anything in terms of the Statistics Department. Once or twice I leaned on them; I didn't think they were computerizing fast enough. I think it's a mistake to meddle in your own discipline. Roger [Heyns] told me that he had gotten mixed up with the Psychology Department, and it
Obviously Erich Lehmann, Joe Hodges, and David Blackwell were reasonably close personal friends. We had known the Blackwells long before coming to Berkeley, and I had known Erich and Joe as colleagues roughly my age when I was in Stanford, and I kept up a relationship with them--some.
Nathan
I wondered if strategically that would be where your main faculty support would be.
Bowker
I don't think so. I met with the faculty senate leadership every month, usually at the house and sometimes at the club [the Faculty Club]. I was very open with them. I think I had the advantage, in that with Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown as governors, they figured there were enough external enemies, and maybe we ought to stick together around the table.
Nathan
Get the wagons in a circle and keep them there?
Bowker
Oh, yes. That's what Ed Carter said I did: keep the wagons in a circle. [laughs] You know, I think I was a good chancellor for Berkeley in that period, so I don't have any apologies, but the faculty supported me. They bailed me out on the Platt thing; they bailed me out on other things. If they had been mad at me, they could have dumped me on that one. I would have had to go to the regents and say, "I want to appoint Tony Platt with tenure." I probably could have done it, but it would have been awkward. They didn't want to do it, and they might have turned him down. I would have had to resign, or we'd be in trouble with academic freedom cases or something. That would have been a big mess. It would have been very costly to the campus, to me and to the institution.
When I left, the faculty gave party after party for me. I didn't realize I was so popular. They gave me presents, some of which I still have.
Chancellor's Authority: Budgets and Appointments
NathanWhen you think of your position as chancellor, you clearly had power and authority. Where did it come from?
Well, I had budgetary authority and appointment authority. That really was delegated by the regents. The president's office has some budgetary authority, but it's mainly in allocations between campuses.
Nathan
I was interested when you mentioned Nick Petris and the appropriations bill. Is that sort of a separate agreement other than what statewide negotiates with the legislature?
Bowker
Once in a while. [laughter]
Nathan
How did you manage that?
Bowker
It wasn't easy. Usually it was part of the budget that was in jeopardy that had been opposed by statewide. For example, we had something called the California Poll or something like that. It was the darling of the legislators. Essentially it was the data from the Field Poll that was deposited here to be analyzed, and then UC could get questions on it. University Hall kept cutting out the funding for it, and I said, "It's going to get funded. Why do you cut it out?" "Well, it's not high priority." So then I'd have to call somebody upstairs, and they would want to put it back in. I'd tell Charlie, "It's going to be in anyway. You're just being childish." It wasn't anything great in my young life; it was just that I thought it was a good idea. Berkeley asked for it, and it was going to be funded.
The funniest one was demography. After I abolished the Department of Demography, they cut $75,000 out of the budget as a punitive measure, which is a sum so small it didn't matter. I called Nick: "You were at the conference. I wonder how it happened?" He said, "Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but in the budget things go on, everything is one second or two seconds at the final conference. The best friend of the guy across from me just died of skin cancer, and he thought it was dermatology."
Nathan
Oh, that's scary.
Bowker
Well, that's the way it goes. It wasn't the time to argue.
California Politics
NathanIs California politics worse than or different from that of New York state?
Yes, it's quite different. It's kind of hard to explain. For one thing, all the leaders and people in New York are old men. You get Jerry Brown as governor, John Vasconcellos on Ways and Means--all these kids look like adolescents to me here. It was very different in age. I remember talking to Bob Moretti when I first came here, who was speaker, a very nice man. I said, "I can't understand it. In New York Nelson Rockefeller wants the new freeway, and we want a new college or a new this or that, and it all works out." He said, "It doesn't work with this guy," talking about Reagan.
[Interview 2: September 4, 1991]##
Nathan
I did have one or two questions that arose out of what you were saying yesterday. You mentioned that you had consulted with your predecessor, Roger Heyns, about some issues on the campus. I wondered if he gave you any sense of the earlier history of the campus: the reorganization of the Academic Senate and some other issues that seemed to split members of the faculty from the administration. Did you get into any of that?
Bowker
I don't remember discussing that very much, no. I think I talked to him about the regents and the political situation. Obviously, coming into a situation where Ronald Reagan was governor and dominating the regents, one kind of question I had was whether the government was hostile to the point that it would be very difficult to run Berkeley. The answer was no, that he [Heyns] had attracted some hostility himself, really because of Alex Sherriffs and personal relationships. By the time I got here, Reagan had lost interest, really, in picking on the University.
I remember that I was giving a public lecture in New York, which is unusual for me, on politics and higher education and some of the things I had accomplished there. I was speaking to a fairly large group at Teachers College, and somebody came in and interrupted my speech, saying that Clark Kerr had just been removed as president of the University of California. So I said he [Reagan] was trying to turn the board of regents into a board of Reagans, which was widely quoted in the New York Times. [laughter] However, he didn't seem to remember that, fortunately.
Nathan
Quips like that should not be lost.
Bowker
How bad was it? I'd gone over some of this, obviously, in some detail with Roger Heyns. He strongly encouraged me to take the job, and said he had really enjoyed most of it. You've interviewed him, I guess?
Yes, he did an oral history memoir with me, and it's very good.
Bowker
When I came in, Roger Heyns was head of the American Council on Education, or he went there from here. We went back and had dinner with them a couple of times in their house in Washington, and we always had them to dinner at least once or twice a year.
The first time the Heyns's came to the house for dinner, when they left Esther was crying. It was not because of our rudeness; there must have been some unhappy experiences there for them.
Nathan
They showed grace under pressure, but they had lots to deal with.
Bowker
She was obviously more emotional than he.
The Berkeley Fellows
BowkerThere's something called the Berkeley Fellows, which he started. I had meant to bring it up under alumni relations.
Nathan
This is as good a time as any.
Bowker
The Alumni Association had not been very supportive of the campus in the sixties, and many of the presidents of the Alumni Association, who were conservative businessmen--Bill Hudson, Wendell Witter, and so forth--didn't really defend the campus. In fact, they weren't very helpful, I gather; I wasn't around. I'd run into people in New York who'd say, "I went to Berkeley, but I wouldn't admit it."
Roger thought it would be useful to have a group of very distinguished Berkeley-related people, comprising people who had been helpful to the campus, mostly distinguished alumni, supporters, and friends. So the Berkeley Fellows was formed. It was, I believe, to have a hundred members.
Nathan
Oh, it was for the University's hundredth anniversary.
Bowker
That was it. We kept it at a hundred, but Michael [Heyman] increased the number to be the number of years. If the campus is
Nathan
You became a Berkeley Fellow.
Bowker
Yes. Well, you see, I'm not connected with the University. I guess the chancellor sort of entertains them. Mike isn't a Berkeley Fellow, for example, because he is still active, but he did entertain them. That was a very positive thing that Roger did. We had some senior political figures--Pat Brown was a member, for example--but mostly donors and alumni and very distinguished people. I maintained that membership, and that's the one thing I still go to. I come out in February for that dinner, which is an annual event. I enjoy it and have a lot of friends there.
Cultivating Berkeley Alumni
BowkerAt the same time, it seemed to me important that the Alumni Association be supportive of the campus in and of itself. There was a group of Young Turks in the Alumni Association, and Chris Markey had become president with that in mind and throwing out the old guard to some extent. Dick Erickson became a strong supporter and a good friend; it's kind of hard to know what his role was in these years. He was not a flaming liberal, to put it mildly, so he probably wasn't as helpful as he could have been, either.
However, beginning with Markey's term I went to every single meeting of the Alumni Council, all the years that I was here. I might have missed one or two, but almost never, including retreats. I just made that effort. I went to every one, and they really were often awful--long arguments about hundred dollar items in the budget and rather minor issues--but I just said that I was going to cultivate and have the Alumni Association. And they supported me all the way, every time. I never had any problem with them. I thought in general that it was time to try and get public support again for Berkeley, and the alumni are a large group. Although the Alumni Council represents only who is on it, it had an influence. It had a political influence, too.
Early on in my regime I was fairly friendly with and influential with the leadership of the Alumni Association. The
Separating the Fund-Raising Function
NathanDo you know how that happened to occur?
Bowker
I think nobody had ever done anything much, but they sort of did it for intercollegiate athletics and alumni scholarships. It seemed important--to others, actually first, and then to me--to separate fundraising from the Alumni Association. There was a fairly crucial meeting of four or five people, including a fellow named Bob Monahan, who had been an official of the University; E. Morris Cox; Pres Hotchkis, Sr., who came up from Los Angeles for the meeting (Pres, Jr., has just had a term as chairman of the foundation). Preston, Sr., was married to the daughter of the Bixby family, which had one of the big ranches of California. The Bixby Ranch was one of the big landholdings in California. Pres had come as a poor boy to Berkeley but married great wealth.
There may have been some other people there; and I think Erickson was. We decided to separate; it really was important to separate a fund-raising foundation from the Alumni Association and have a different board and a professional fund-raising staff. These were all people who were kind of givers and donors and fund raisers for various causes, museums and so forth. Morrie was to be or had been head of the California Academy of Sciences. It's also true that the Alumni Association board consisted mostly of people of modest means, kind of clubwomen or clubmen or activity types, not the heavy-hitter philanthropists.
So we moved to set up a board for the foundation. By then I think George Link was president of the Alumni Association. Colette Seiple was especially interested in the Alumni Association, and Erickson came over and worked for the foundation. He became secretary-treasurer but was really the operating head.
Who chose the participants at this meeting? Were you involved in that?
Bowker
I certainly talked about it, but I think it was Morrie Cox and Monahan who really were pressuring me to do this.
Nathan
So the impulse came from them?
Bowker
Oh, yes. Well, sort of mixed. You see, I had never particularly wanted to do a lot of fund raising, and I didn't think I'd be very good at it. I had been in the administration at Stanford, and it seemed to me that Wallace Sterling led kind of a dog's life; he was always buttering up donors and meeting with them. Now, of course, he probably loved it. Once when I was up fighting with my board in New York, somebody called me up and asked me if I wanted to be considered for president of Brown University. I said, "Oh, I wouldn't think of it." They were so insulted. There's a funny story about that.
Nathan
Do tell me.
Bowker
I mentioned this to my staff, and they said, "Well, you really were terribly rude. What you should say is, 'That's very flattering. I'll think it over'." I mentioned this story to Dick Lyman, who while he was president of Stanford somehow was flirting with Dartmouth. I don't know why; it seemed like a dumb thing. When Charlie Hitch stepped down as president of the University of California, my phone began to ring one day: "Dick Lyman says that he is interested and would like to think it over." I had about three phone calls, though it was supposed to be a deadly secret.
Finally I called Dick, and I said, "What the hell is going on? There's one thing you can't do, and that's move from Stanford to be president of the University of California. It's just impossible." He said, "I'm just following your advice: 'That's very flattering. Give me a day to think it over'." I said, "You've thought long enough." [laughter] Ed Carter called me, somebody on the faculty called me, and it was all supposed to be a dead secret, you know. It was funny.
Be that as it may, two things were clear. Berkeley was really way behind in terms of fund raising, compared to other major public universities, including UCLA, but more particularly Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois. No one here had ever done it. I think Roger did try to do a little and would have been pretty good at it probably, but it just couldn't be done in those years.
So we started out with a foundation of people of substance and means who would be willing to give and to help solicit others. It was a board, and Dick Erickson was brought over. We really ran the fund raising from about $2 million a year, mostly for intercollegiate athletics, up to about $25 million a year. I had one or two very large gifts. Perhaps the largest one was from Steve Bechtel, Sr., for the Bechtel Engineering Library. Since I left, Michael [Heyman] has doubled or tripled that, and it's gone on and on. I don't know whether I could have done that or not. I don't know whether it can be sustained at that level, either. It will be interesting to see. He's more aggressive in fund raising. Anyway, I started that tradition, and most of the people that Mike used in the early years were people that I had involved in Berkeley: Morrie Cox, Gene Trefethen, Gene Shurtleff, and other people.
In a private university, a board takes on that responsibility. In a public university, particularly in a multi-campus university, you couldn't get the board to do that.
Nathan
You're thinking of the regents?
Bowker
Yes. Although the Moore family between them, including Joe, have always been reasonably generous to the University. Joe's sister is Jane Mock, and his brother is Jim Moore. They're a moneyed family, and nice people, too.
Gene Trefethen and Morrie Cox were the most successful fund raisers I had, and they helped me put it together. I think that was important. Some of the things we talk about I really don't think are very important; they're amusing to me in retrospect. But it really was important to start fund raising for Berkeley; it's meant a lot to the campus, and it meant a lot in my day because it gave me some flexible money. It gave me a couple of buildings--the Bechtel Library and an Optometry addition. It didn't solve the Biology problem, which was known to be a problem then, and one I handed over to Mike.
After Christensen left and went to Santa Cruz, Mike Heyman was my deputy, so it wasn't so much of a major transition in leadership, although he was really quite different in many ways. I had lunch with him yesterday. He knew about the fund raising and was well up on what I was doing.
Nathan
There was a very interesting comment in Mrs. Heard's memoir about her interest in working on a Chancellor's Circle. Do you recall how that got going?
Winifred was probably a trustee in the foundation and obviously a moneyed person with philanthropic interests, much of which went to their museum in Arizona. She was generous, and I'm sure she was on the foundation board. She would have been the kind of person I reached out to.
We had this Robert Gordon Sproul Associates group, and toward the end of my regime it was decided that we ought to have a group of identified donors who were more substantial. Gene Trefethen and another fellow who had been at Bechtel put this together, and I didn't think it would go anywhere. The idea was that you would give $50,000 in unrestricted money for the chancellor. It could be at the rate of some thousands a year--five or ten, I guess--or you would just give $50,000; and a lot of people just gave $50,000. We had something like thirty or forty members when we started the thing, and Winifred probably was one of them. That was money for me to play with, or to use.
That's gone on and on, as far as I can tell. I remember Wally Haas, who had given millions and millions, saying didn't I think he should be a member of the Chancellor's Circle. I said, Yours are not unrestricted funds, Wally." [laughter] That was a little chintzy, wasn't it? But, anyway, that's the way it was.
Entertaining Donors and Important Visitors
BowkerYou really had to give unrestricted money for that.
Nathan
Separately from whatever else you had given?
Bowker
Yes. Many of these people had given plenty in other ways. When I first came here, we had the Sproul Associates every year for dinner at the house, and then we had two dinners, three dinners, and it just got out of hand--the donors of a thousand dollars or more. But the Chancellor's Circle, then, was a group that was entertained at the house, as the Berkeley Fellows were. We really ran a pretty toney restaurant over there and were very popular as a place to go. Maybe it still is; I'm sure it is. It always was a lovely house, but we put a lot of effort into good food and good parties. I was always amazed that practically nobody every said no to an invitation to University House. It may have been true at other places, too.
Nathan
When you put these parties together, did your wife help you?
Some. She was very popular. Of course, she taught at Stanford. The person who really did an awful lot for her and for us was Lila Carmichael, who was her social secretary. Lila came from a very socially prominent Hawaiian family. They lived in Berkeley and were not people of great wealth. She herself knew society better than anyone else who was involved with us professionally before or since. We had a social secretary who was good at organizing things, but Lila really knew who was who, who was rich, who was related, who to sit with whom. She was very, very good at it and also helped plan the menus and so forth. We used Narsai David in the beginning, and then he trained our cooks. He got too expensive for us, but we always had very good cooks. Narsai was a Berkeley graduate in mathematics, so he was always helpful.
Nathan
It's nice to know that the locals helped out, too.
Bowker
Well, Narsai's restaurant is gone now, but he still has something to do with food. He helped us with some of the entertaining. I've been to a lot of university presidents' houses. Stanford was really pretty pedestrian compared to this, for example. We really did well, and they were good parties. I think people will say so.
To be invited to a group at the University House was something that people liked. They really did like it, and it was fun. Rose was very gracious and charming and very popular, but she didn't really organize the parties so much. The scheduling committee that I mentioned would often work on parties. For example, the Bechtels--Steve, Sr., and Laura--always came to the house when they were invited. Now, you would think, since they were the richest people in the world, that probably they'd have something else to do, but--. I think most people were afraid to invite them anywhere; they always seemed to be free. [laughs]
Nathan
Are you a sociable person at home?
Bowker
I suppose, although most people think I'm really shy. But people liked us and liked the parties; we were popular. Faculty would be invited. We had a lot of important foreign visitors in those years, and we would use those events to bring in some faculty and some people who would be interested. Prince Charles, I suppose, was the height of our social season. We had a reception and lunch for him. We could seat a hundred or a hundred twenty-five people in the basement at the house. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a Berkeley alum, and he came through. There were lots of people like that, and some heads of state.
I had gotten fairly friendly through a distinguished Berkeley alum with a famous Japanese prince, a cousin of Hirohito, whose
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Bowker
Chalmers Johnson came over finally and said, "Don't you know who that is?" I said, "No, who is it?" "The butcher of Harbin." It turned out he had been in charge of the occupation of Harbin during the war. So I asked him about it, and he said yes, he'd been back to Harbin and so forth and so on. He entertained us in Tokyo some, and we had a good time. The fanciest dinner I ever went to in my life was at his ancestral mansion, which was a French villa. They'd also had a Japanese house. They had gold service, and I've never seen anything like it.
Nathan
Was this in Tokyo?
Bowker
Yes. He was a friend of Togosaki, who was a famous Berkeley alum in Tokyo who died out here at Rossmoor; he moved back to the States.
I just give you some flavor of what went on. We had the prime minister of India once for a reception. Indira Ghandi was out of office briefly, and this was an old man. We invited in a lot of people to meet him. I can't even remember his name now.
Those were the main people, but we'd have people from the Economist and other English papers. I would say there were two or three important foreign visitors a day at Berkeley, you know, a lot. There was an office that took care of them, so we could only entertain a very small number. Every now and then we'd kind of pick one at random and give a little party for them if we were free. This was the place to come in those years. People would want to see Sproul Plaza and all the radicals' things.
I made a specialty of Asia while I was here.
Nathan
Was there a reason why you focused on Asia?
Bowker
Partly because the Asian Studies here were probably better than anywhere in the country, or I thought they should be; and I think they are and were. Part of it was adventitious. A young man named John Jamieson was the person who had opened relations with China by escorting the ping-pong team around the United States. He's a faculty member here. We had an opportunity both to raise money in that area and to get really a leg up on most other institutions in terms of exchanges and agreements and travel in China. It was fun, actually.
There was some criticism. After I made two trips to Asia in one year, the faculty Christmas party featured a song called "Won't you Come Home, Al Bowker." [laughter] My senior advisors told me that people thought I was away too much. But that was funny, because I had gone for a meeting sponsored by the Luce Foundation of Asian Educators. I think it was in the Philippines. I went regularly to meetings of non-Communist educators, but then I went to China as soon as I got the chance, twice only, to be sure, but I organized several other trips for faculty and staff.
The reason I thought of it is because we'd often have important people here from the People's Republic of China, and once they were picketed by Berkeley Maoists. They were so charmed; they said they hadn't been picketed anywhere in the world except in Berkeley. This was after Mao died.
Actually, meeting opponents was true of Prince Charles, also: a group of Irish thugs started in on him as he left lunch. We thought so many people would like to see him, we published where he was going to walk across the campus and about what time. Some Irish thugs started in on him, and I was actually knocked down by the security people but not hurt. They just moved right in and surrounded him.
So we had a lot of important people coming through, and we tried to use each visit to build interest, to involve more than just visiting the top administration--faculty, alumni, and people who would be interested. One thing we did, that Garff Wilson did, who was always part of scheduling--he and Dick Hafner were involved with foreign visitors--was that if someone came to see me and afterward we went over to the Faculty Club for lunch, as we walked by the campanile they played the national anthem of whatever country it was. Really, people would have tears in their eyes.
Nathan
Lovely. You know, that explains the outbursts of music that I remember hearing at odd hours. How marvelous.
The Quality of Public Ceremonies
BowkerI will say that the public ceremonies when I was chancellor here, and probably before and for a little while afterwards, were the best I've seen in any university in the country. This was due to Garff Wilson, who really was good at it. They really were fun and interesting. He's written a book on this subject.
He did an oral history, too. He had a lot of nice feelings about you and your wife. Clearly, he loved to work with you.
Bowker
Oh, he was good. He asked me--and it's in his book--which was my favorite. I told him it was at the anniversary of the Greek Theatre, when we did a program there. Luciano Pavarotti sang, and we had the orchestra from the opera in San Francisco, directed by Kurt Herbert Adler. We couldn't afford a symphony orchestra or an opera. One of my memories of Berkeley was the opera Medea that they put on when Clark Kerr was inaugurated in the Greek Theatre. I just thought that was marvelous. We never could afford to put on an opera there while I was chancellor; it was just too expensive. Even this cost $50,000 or something. But even though Patti Hearst had been kidnapped and there were all those problems, we approached the Hearst family, and they helped us with it.
Nathan
In earlier years there was always an opera performance in the Greek Theatre, a matinee each year.
Bowker
It costs thousands of dollars to do those things.
Nathan
It was wonderful.
Bowker
Yes, I remember Medea, although I'm not much of an opera fan.
Garff, in the midst of the Greek Theatre anniversary, had people walking down the middle of the aisle, people who had spoken there--Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson. I don't remember everybody, but lots of famous people. In the end, there was this woman with a great big parasol and bustle--Phoebe Apperson Hearst. [laughter] It absolutely brought down the house. It was marvelous. One of the Hearst grandchildren was there, and he said, "Oh, wonderful." He was so tickled.
Garff really was spectacular. Charter Day was always well done when he was doing it. The present chancellor's inauguration, in sharp contrast, was really a dud; it was as dull as dishwater and lacked graciousness. Many people--the president of Cal Tech and many college presidents--were invited to the ceremony. And that was it--no lunch, no reception.
Asian Studies
NathanYou were speaking about your interest in China and entertaining the Japanese here. Was the talk about the Pacific Rim developing at that time?
Bowker
Yes. That was part of the intellectual activity. The Japanese government gave us a million dollars once when one of the prime ministers was visiting, and I raised money. I remember going to old Mr. Haas, saying, "I need money for a chair for Asian Studies."
Nathan
This is Walter Haas, Sr.?
Bowker
Yes. He said, "I have no interest in Asian Studies." I said, "I know, but I need the chair." "Well, I guess there's nothing like a free lunch," he said, and he gave it to me. [laughter]
Nathan
And you think you're not a good fund raiser?
Bowker
Well, it was set up by Morrie Cox, and Mr. Haas knew what was going to happen before we went to lunch, but he still gave me a little bit of a hard time.
I helped Scalapino, and I helped the various centers. It was an academic strength at Berkeley and one that needed money, and I thought the potential was there.
Appointing and Supporting Deans
BowkerYou have a question here [on the outline] on the good people in secondary positions, and that is something that I really was proud of here. I worked hard on the searches for deans. Of course, Budd Cheit was here and a reasonably natural choice to be dean of the Business School to succeed Dick Holton, but he had to be talked into it. Actually, I was interested in a couple of people outside also, one of whom almost took it and has been a successful dean at Dartmouth and NYU since.
Nathan
What sorts of arguments would you use to try to persuade someone to take a post like that?
Bowker
The question is whether he could really do a good job, and would the resources and backing be there; I would give him assurances
Ernie Kuh was also my choice. I don't remember him bargaining very hard, but he always got my support, and I would be even today a loyal supporter.
Nathan
What was his position?
Bowker
He was dean of Engineering. He was after George Maslach.
Bill Wheaton was here when I got here. If anything, I probably let him serve a little too long. I liked him.
Nathan
He was city and regional planning?
Bowker
Yes. Architecture, basically. Dick Bender was his replacement.
Sanford Kadish had been on the search committee and became a good friend. He was really the Law School's choice as well as mine. He was in London when he was appointed, and I called him and asked him if he'd be dean. He said, "Well, I told them yesterday I would take it." So what did I have to do with it?
I would say that Kuh, Cheit, and Bender were really personal appointments that I worked on; Kadish was someone I wanted, but he was also kind of brought in by consensus. Roderic Park emerged from the faculty as their choice, and I brought him in as provost and worked with him. William Bouwsma was never in my administration; he was in Roger's, went away, and came back. We were good friends. Loy Sammet I inherited and replaced, and I abolished that job in the reorganization.
Those are really all good people. I didn't fool much with department heads in Letters and Science. I talked some to Rod about the associate deans. In Letters and Science the department heads vary a lot in their importance, and I didn't get involved in that.
School of Education and Other Professional Schools
BowkerI did get involved in those deanships, as well as some of the other professional schools. I remember Librarianship turned over while I was here. I don't think Journalism did. Social Welfare
This is somewhat irrelevant; we were talking about the School of Education being sort of up for grabs when I came here.
Nathan
Had there been a faculty committee to evaluate it?
Bowker
No, the deanship was filled at exactly the same time I was appointed, by a committee chaired by Clark Kerr. I wasn't in any position to argue about it, so I approved it. The committee appointed Merle Borrowman, who was fair enough but injured himself, I think in a bicycle accident. He hit his head or something, so after a while he had to be removed, and we never did very well there for a long time.
Nathan
What was the issue with the School of Education? Did you get into all the details?
Bowker
I really thought the school ought to be abolished. It has to do with the nature of a professional school, and this is not a view I had early on in my life. In fact, at Stanford I was very active in building up the School of Education. I would guess that a Law School exists primarily to train lawyers, and a Medical School exists primarily to train doctors.
The School of Education, it seems to me, ought to exist primarily to train teachers. However, jumping to something I said yesterday, if you take a posh private university like Stanford, very few people are going to go and pay that tuition and then enter a low-paying profession like teaching. It's sort of less true at Berkeley, but it is sort of true.
The School of Education here, as well as there, considered their job to be research, the training of administrators, the training of scholars, the training of people who teach education in the state colleges. Now, it's true, I think, of most of these schools of applied social science--let's take Teachers College at Columbia as an example--that they were started by kind of famous people; Dewey's ideas were important, George Counts, the elder Thorndyke, interested in measurement and testing, people like the elder Terman at Stanford, although he was never involved in education, and the IQ tests, Stanford-Binet tests, and things like that.
There were a lot of original ideas, but then the schools began to be peopled mainly by the students of these people and then by their students' students. It didn't have enough
Nathan
A lack of creative vitality?
Bowker
They do research, but when you sit back and say, "What has educational research done for education in this country?" not much. I think the policy research they do--this Jim Guthrie group called PACE [Policy Analysis for California Education] is pretty good, and I read some of their stuff. They have experts in school finance; he was one before he got into this. And there are people who teach early childhood education, but all told it seemed to me it would be a much healthier operation if it were a research institute on top of a really big teacher-training program, and that's really a state college function, not a University of California function.
So I had sort of gotten the School of Education on the skids by the time I was leaving, but Mike decided to keep it. Of course, Don Kennedy also began to give a lot of emphasis to working with the schools. The idea was that Berkeley and Stanford were going to save the schools. Mike was meeting with the superintendent, and then Bernie Gifford was made dean. I don't think it all amounted to very much, but, anyway, that's not my history.
Nathan
These are the issues that you were having to deal with.
Bowker
There's a long report that the Ford Foundation put out on education, and it studied a number of schools, including Stanford. It's a very funny report. It's had a strong influence on me, and it's been totally ignored--by the Ford Foundation, too; they were sorry they commissioned it.
Nathan
Do you remember the title of it?
Bowker
I have a copy of it somewhere.
Nathan
What did it say?
Bowker
It recommended abolishment; it said the graduate schools of education didn't serve much function. They really weren't involved with the profession. It would be like a law school that studies about the law but doesn't ever practice law. And that was my feeling.
Do you feel that a university should have departments that deal with the actual functioning or practice of a discipline? Is that a fair statement of your views?
Bowker
Only in the case of the professional school, I would say. A professional school ought to train professionals in its field, and that should be its primary function. Obviously, scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities is devoted in part to practitioners but largely to people who teach and are scholars, and that's fine. I'm talking about professional schools. The Journalism School trains journalists--or broadcast journalists increasingly; the Library School trains librarians; the School of Social Welfare trains social workers, I suppose, although it's kind of hard to know. I was never enthusiastic about that, but I never--. The reason I mention it is because I know you have some interest in this field.
Nathan
I know some very good social workers.
Bowker
With social workers it's a question of--I don't know; for a while I thought they were a little too psychologically oriented.
Nathan
The new dean kind of thinks that, too, I believe.
Accreditation
BowkerI don't think it's very important, but I saw Sandy Elberg yesterday, and he said he remembered accreditation as one of his memories of my regime. When I was first here, in the first year or two, the national association which accredits schools of social work came to Berkeley and annoyed me. They had open hearings, listening to students and community people, and they went around and got a lot of gossip from what I suppose would be the Berkeley Left.
They came in with their final report to me and said they were going to give the school a provisional accreditation. The normal term was eight years.
The summary really irritated me, especially the way they went about it, so I said that in that case the school would be abolished, that I would not have a provisional school at Berkeley. I mean, Berkeley is a great university; we just don't have things that are provisional and not accredited, and if it is not accredited, it will be abolished.
Milton Chernin and Sandy came in, and they just couldn't believe me. I said, "That's it," [pounds table] "That's my decision." We got an eight-year accreditation in the end. That was a funny story, but it was really true, though. What a bunch of nuts. I've never thought much of accreditation anyway. I don't know, but they were mostly minorities complaining about the way the school handled minority problems. And there was something to it; it was not entirely unfair. At the time, I was faced with very tight resources, and I just said I wasn't going to fool around with building a lot of new faculty positions to satisfy this and that. The School of Social Welfare couldn't possibly afford to do it, so if it wasn't going to be accredited, we weren't going to have one. It was accredited.
Nathan
That is a marvelous story.
Bowker
I don't know how important it was. None of us have liked these professional accrediting groups--business, engineering; they're always a pain in the neck. MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] isn't accredited, and Cal Tech isn't accredited. The big schools don't bother with it.
Nathan
That's interesting.
Bowker
There are two kinds of accreditation. There's something called WASC [Western Association of Schools and Colleges], and it accredits the whole institution. Everybody goes through that. A lot of my good friends have been active in it. Then there are these various professional accrediting groups, and a lot of people don't bother with those. Not all the business schools are accredited, but small public institutions want to be. In New York, CUNY would want to be accredited by everything in sight. If you're not accredited and you're not a famous school, then there's some status involved.
Intercollegiate Athletics
BowkerThe other thing that came up in my first year almost immediately, besides these matters of student behavior and discipline, was intercollegiate athletics. When I arrived, the campus had recruited a fairly well-known football player named Isaac Curtis, who was not eligible to play. Partly in fairness to him and partly because we thought we could explain his recruitment away as a special case, the coach recruited him.
How did he get recruited?
Bowker
It was a very technical thing. He hadn't taken a test that you're supposed to take and get a certain grade-point average. He had a reasonably satisfactory high school record, but he hadn't satisfied everything. The coach and athletic director at that time was a fellow named Ray Willsey. I called him in, and I said, "I'm not very happy about this. But I'm new, and he's reasonably popular, so I don't think we should make a lot of changes. But I want to play clean; I just want to play by the rules. This was an irregularity; it happened, and we'll accept it. It's also partly the fault of the faculty athletic representative."
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Bowker
I said, "Tell me if there are any other problems that exist, and we'll decide what to do about them. You've been operating with certain understandings and with a certain faculty athletic representative, and I don't want to change it. I have no particular reason to be dissatisfied with you, but just tell me if there is anything else." Well, in about a month rumors began to reach me. People in the athletic department began to think about their own skins and began to tell stories. The place was ridden with corruption.
There were three football players who had identical transcripts from a community college; only the names were different. They were just absolutely phony. I called the president of the college, and I said, "What are you doing?" They were official transcripts. He said, "Oh, I'm just trying to help out."
I felt I had no alternative but to fire Willsey, which I then did. It was really quite an unpopular decision. He had a very distinguished alum who represented him who still doesn't really speak to me. So I didn't have either an athletic director or a football coach, and I hadn't done a lot of work on it. I appointed Bob Steidel as faculty athletic representative, and I said, "I want you to represent me and the campus." He was interested in athletics, but I wanted an honest representative. I picked up the track coach, Dave Maggard, and put him in as athletic director.
Nathan
Who would advise you on these matters?
Bowker
Bob Kerley was the main one. Advice--oh, there was plenty of that. Mike White was loose; Bill Walsh, the famous coach at Stanford, was leaving. Mike was assistant coach at Stanford. I
I didn't pay a lot of attention--well, you do, in a funny kind of a way, have to pay a lot of attention to athletics. For one thing, there's a game all the time, and I used to go to all the games and entertain at lunch before the game. Before the Big Game there was a joint luncheon meeting at my house or at Dick Lyman's of the UC board of regents and Stanford the board of trustees, those who cared to come. It was a very unifying event.
I went to the football games, and I went to many basketball games. There's also this PAC 8-PAC 10 group, and they meet all the time about something or other, with phone calls in between. Nothing much ever comes of it, though some people take it very seriously and put a lot of effort into it. I spent a lot of time on it, and a lot of alumni are really interested in athletics--Wally Haas. Walter Haas, Sr., sat with me always in my box, and he always brought his heart specialist with him. If we were losing, he would say, "Al, I'm going to have a heart attack and die." I said, "For heaven's sake; it's only a game. Stop acting like a sophomore; you're old enough to be grown up." [laughs]
Once I had Wally, Jr., in my box, and I invited the president of the university we were playing to sit with us. Every time his team did well, this guy would get up and cheer. Wally left; he said, "I can't stand it." [laughter]
Actually, I think the jocks sort of liked me, but they knew my heart really wasn't in it. But we had good parties and good fun. I had a long talk with Mike White. I said, "I kind of like you." But one thing he kept doing was to make commitments--they're called letters of intent, and he would issue them--to players before we had reviewed their entrance credentials. Somehow we never could get control of this, and I'd either have to repudiate him or overlook it. I'd say, "[bangs table] You've got to clear them with somebody first," and he'd say, "Oh, yes."
Then the next year he'd do the same thing. He just said he lived in a different world. He said it was actually a little better at Stanford: "I lived on the campus, and I was more part of the community. Here, I'm over in Walnut Creek or somewhere, and I never see anybody but alumni who want to win." When he was at Stanford he lived on the campus; he was assistant coach. He said, "I just have to win. The future of my assistant coaches
I told Dave Maggard that whenever the chance came we had to make another change, because I really didn't trust Mike. We never knew it at the time, but afterwards people called me and complained that they had given him money for the players, and they didn't know what had happened to it after he left. I said, "Well, tough." I don't know how much hanky panky there was.
Nathan
Is this typical of university athletics?
Bowker
Yes, I'm afraid so. People would call me and say, "Boy, did you hear what USC [University of Southern California] did?" Or, "Did you hear what UCLA has offered this one?" You'd meet with these presidents, and either they're terrible liars or they don't know. It's just full of corruption of that sort. Michigan is a distinguished university, and it simply runs a major in Physical Education. Kids who aren't smart enough to take regular courses go into that. Berkeley has never done that. Stanford never flunks anybody in any subject.
Nathan
Is that right?
Bowker
Yes, they abolished the "F" during the sixties. Rose was chairman of the committee on academic progress once at Stanford, and it was called "the committee to bring back the 'D'." In other words, you don't flunk at Stanford. You don't have to graduate the student, but you don't flunk him at Stanford, period. At UCLA I don't know what they do. USC cheats all the time, or they used to; they may have changed now. Nobody ever caught Washington, but I just can't believe they don't cheat.
I think Steidel and Maggard were squeaky clean, and to the best of their ability they ran a clean program. On the other hand, we never did very well. [laughs] Mike White went to Illinois, and both Mike Heyman and I were called by the authorities in Illinois when Mike went there. I told them about my reservations, but he was hired anyway. I think he's ended up in the pros. I think he got in trouble at Illinois, but he took them to the Rose Bowl first, which he never did for me.
As he was leaving Berkeley, his daughter needed some help getting into Berkeley, and I did it. I liked Mike well enough. Of course, all of this happened under Roger's regime, and he claimed he knew nothing about it. You should know about it. As I told Willsey, I just wanted to know what there was.
We never did very well, and Mike Heyman thought he could do better, marginally, in basketball--not especially in football. I don't really follow it. The reason it's interesting is that the present chancellor thinks he is really going to do better. Mike also thought he could reform the system, and so did Dick Lyman, and they put a lot of effort into it.
Nathan
Policing it and having rules? How could you reform it?
Bowker
I think it could be done, but nobody wants to do it. The main thing you could do is to ask the players to waive their privacy so that one could actually see what the academic records of these players are. I was always told, after I refused somebody, that USC grabbed them. I never believed any of these stories necessarily. Some of them might have been true. Really important people would call me; Wally Haas would call me, and a lot of people would call me. I told them that was just the way it is. Actually, people didn't call me too much, because they knew where I stood on these things, but there was a certain amount of grumbling.
Nathan
Did this kind of focused interest in athletics have any consequence for bringing athletes into the University?
Bowker
Well, that's what I meant. We did have preferential admissions for athletes, but we did want to have some standards. As I said, Mike White would often issue letters of intent to people, which essentially meant that we were going to play them before they had been screened academically. And there are a lot of other things.
The problem with regulation was that it always made things worse, it seemed to me. For one thing, there was a limit in the number of scholarships. That sounds good, but then it turns out that if a student is admitted--a black boy from a poor family--and doesn't play too well his first year, then the Athletic Department wants to take him off scholarship. Well, that's really not right. I don't know whether we called them athletic scholarships or not, but I had to intervene there. Limiting the scholarships had pluses and minuses.
The rules that are involved in super policing are just very difficult. Even today, you go up to the Bohemian Grove, and in the summer there are there great big guys walking around as wine waiters. Everybody thinks it's a great thing; they're Berkeley football players. I don't know who does it. It's not illegal, as far as I know, to arrange summer jobs for these people, except that they don't know anything about wine, and their English isn't
I don't know what the answer to this is.
Nathan
Is there a financial issue about how much the football team brings in?
Bowker
The question that is a little hard to measure is--one theory is that donors love a good football team. I suppose at Notre Dame and some other places it's worthwhile, but at most institutions it's a terrible drain.
Nathan
It's a drain rather than a moneymaker?
Bowker
Yes. It is here, I think. You have to put student fees into it, and Dave Maggard had to raise money like mad. The cost of getting rid of it is significant. It has a big constituency. Dick Lyman and I talked once in a while about Stanford, and Berkeley would talk about pulling out of the PAC 8 and trying to get into the Ivy League. The Ivy League won't touch us unless we're much cleaner than we are, and Dick always said he couldn't afford it. When I say it's a moneymaker, football, in and of itself, probably pays for itself from the way the television revenues come in, because they are a split--like the Rose Bowl is split even-Steven--after the expenses of the home team. None of the other sports make money.
Nathan
Not basketball?
Bowker
At UCLA it may; here it's marginal. But even if it does, you've got crew, wrestling, and all kinds of things which I used to say are minor sports. But that's the wrong answer; they're non-revenue-producing sports. They're major. Then the women came along and demanded equal treatment.
Nathan
How do you feel about that?
Bowker
We did what we had to do. I guess it seemed to me that one of the least attractive parts of higher education was intercollegiate athletics, and if you were not in it, why would you force your way into it? But that wasn't a very popular opinion. The net result has been, of course, what one would predict: you have to do the same for men as you do for women, so the easiest thing is to do nothing for either. So all kinds of sports have been eliminated all over the country for men, because you can't have a tennis team for men if you don't have one for women. Well, tennis isn't very
I thought athletic scholarships for women were a mistake, but we had to have them for equity reasons. But you understand that I am a man of the older generation. Chuck Young used to go around making speeches on how enthusiastic he was about women's sports, and about how UCLA was going to do everything. Once at a chancellors' meeting we got together and awarded him the Order of the Golden Bra. [laughs]
But that's a big problem for Berkeley, and not one that I solved with any great satisfaction. It took a lot of time and was always kind of a problem. Then we'd meet with these college presidents. There was a wonderful guy who was the president of Washington State, and we discussed behavior in the stands. After we had been on that for an hour or two, he'd say, "Why don't we go on to something else that we can't do anything about," and then we'd talk about referees' errors and I don't know what all. You know it was big money here, especially in the Rose Bowl.
We had some dramatic meetings. USC decided that it wasn't going to stay in the PAC 8 if we wouldn't admit the University of Arizona and Arizona State. I don't know whether they were serious or not. I thought it was a reasonably good idea. For some reason people didn't know about USC's demand. We discussed it, it seemed to me, and Dick Lyman wasn't at the meeting when it was discussed, but Bob Rosenzweig was there representing him. Anyway, we came to the next meeting, and it was moved that we admit Arizona and Arizona State. Dick and somebody else--maybe somebody from Washington or Oregon--walked out of the room. They were furious. They said we were ruining their league. I don't know, I thought it had all been decided.
You know, if you play another one of these big football pro schools, you're going to lose all the time, but you'll make money if the games are popular. Dick was absolutely furious, and I don't know why. I went up and talked to him, and he was just boiling mad. I said I thought it had all been decided. Finally, after a few hours, he calmed down and we voted it in.
I don't have much interest in that, and I've never paid any attention to it since, except that I was at College Park [University of Maryland] and went in to see John Slaughter. I said, "John, you're not in control of athletics here, and you're just going to get in deep trouble. I don't know what it is, but if you don't control the athletic director, the coaches, and the faculty representative, then you're just making a big mistake."
On the other hand, when Donna Shalala went to Wisconsin as the chancellor at Madison--she was president of Hunter College--she asked if I had some advice for her. I gave her two pieces of advice: "The graduate dean is important, very important, in Wisconsin; just remember he's probably more important than you are. Secondly, you can't trust anybody in athletics. Have your own people." About a year later I read in the New York Times an interview with Donna, saying, "I was told I couldn't trust people in athletics." The advice was good. She said she was going to win, and she lost a lot.
Those are things that are back in the early part of my regime.
Nathan
Are you in the mood to think about the Board of Educational Development at Berkeley?
Bowker
I didn't have a lot to do with that. That was probably started by Mark Christensen when he was vice chancellor. It sounds sort of like him.
Nathan
Was it your sense that there was an opportunity for innovation? Was that what they were seeking?
Bowker
Also to help faculty. Not so much innovation, but just improve their technical ability to teach, and materials. I don't remember much about it.
Role of the Dean of the Graduate Division
NathanI think you've already spoken about criteria for support and some of those aspects. You mentioned in giving your advice to Donna Shalala that the dean of the graduate division was a very important figure. During your tenure on the Berkeley campus, was there any tension between the professional schools and the graduate division? What was the relationship there?
Bowker
There's always a certain amount of tension. I don't really remember any big issues. Elberg himself came from a professional school; he was from the School of Public Health. He is considered
The question is, what about the Ph.D. and engineering business, and Doctor of Social Welfare, Ed.D., etc.? There's usually a bureaucratic wrangle about that, but I don't know how important it is. Well, it has never been a big issue here. Elberg is not one to rock the boat particularly.
Nathan
That's interesting. In addition to the control over admissions, would that have anything to do with curriculum or requirements?
Bowker
Not really. The faculty senate has elaborate machinery for improving curriculum changes, and every now and then they pick on Extension. They're capable of picking on other people, but I don't remember them ever doing it. I never paid any attention to that whole side of the campus, sort of on the grounds that if you can't trust faculty on the curriculum, what can you trust them on? Now it turns out you probably can't trust them on that, either, with all the political correctness and what John Searle calls "the feel-good courses." Those were pushed by the administration, not the faculty. The faculty is pretty conservative here on academic grounds.
I don't remember that as being a big issue. Did Sandy think it was?
Nathan
I don't know whether you've read his oral history--.
Bowker
No, I haven't.
Nathan
It is really very fine and was finished recently. He interpreted something that someone said as, "Do we need a graduate division?" as though that was being questioned.
Bowker
There are two kinds of graduate deans, and the tradition at Berkeley is sort of mixed. Some of the graduate deans look upon themselves as graduate registrars. That means they do want to control admissions, financial aid, maybe get into curriculum matters, progress toward degree, and so forth. Sandy's predecessor was sort of that sort, and Sandy had a big portfolio.
On the other hand, there are other things: the creation of new graduate programs. I really gave Sandy the research
When I was graduate dean at Stanford, I considered the research portfolio to be what interested me, and I didn't pay much attention to any of the rest of it. There is a graduate registrar, and that can get in the way of the bureaucracy and the professional schools. It's a problem, but it's a bureaucratic problem. There aren't any really basic issues involved.
Every now and then when the secretary who ran the graduate division at Stanford was mad at me or something would happen, she would put in a hanging jury on, say, a thesis in education, and they would turn it down. Then I'd have to do a lot of work to straighten that out, ruffle some feathers. I guess you turn down dissertations once in a while. It's pretty hard, though, after a faculty member and a student have worked for years on something, to say it's not acceptable.
Nathan
The committee is presumably fair?
Bowker
I don't remember that as a big issue here. It's sort of a bureaucratic issue with graduate deans.
##
Nathan
Was there a certain amount of overlap in jurisdictions that gave rise to some of these tensions? Different people could claim some jurisdiction that overlapped with that of someone else? I was thinking of admissions.
Bowker
The graduate dean's academic responsibilities in most universities really applied to the Ph.D. degree, and therefore it was primarily involved with the College of Letters and Science. I tried to broaden Sandy's portfolio some, but I wouldn't instinctively have done it by giving him more registrar functions or more policy matters. He was pretty set in his ways when I came here; I said he was graduate dean in '63 when I left Stanford, so when I came back here in '71, he was still graduate dean and served all the way through my regime. Whatever he had to say is true, but he supported me thoroughly all the way. I never felt, ever, one hint of any disloyalty or lack of support, but he had his own ideas about life.
For example, I always thought we had too many things like--oh, Bodega Bay [Bodega Marine Laboratory] always struck me as a boondoggle, and Sandy would never let me get rid of it. White Mountain Research Station was marginally useful, and there were a lot of little things like that: "We've always had them," and so forth. I went up to White Mountain about five years ago, and I don't know whether the ranger took in that I had something to do with Berkeley. She gave a long diatribe against the chancellor at Berkeley and how the chancellor at UCLA saw the importance of the White Mountain bristle cone pine collection. I didn't say anything.
Mike got rid of some of these things. I never succeeded in moving Sandy and Errol; they sort of ran things.
Nathan
Were you interested in more streamlining? Is that why you thought you'd like to spin off some of these areas?
Bowker
Just that they cost something, and they didn't seem to me to have much academic value.
Nathan
Were they advocated as research resources?
Bowker
Yes. There was some work in aquaculture at Davis, which is the artificial breeding of fish, raising fish for food in tanks. I thought that might be a good function for what went on up there. The White Mountain station had originally been involved with the faculty in physiology and other fields who wanted to study what happens to people at very high altitudes, but by the time I got here there were only a couple of people towards the end of their careers involved in that--Nello Pace, maybe, and a couple of others. I just thought that we didn't need them, but it wasn't a crusade of mine. Charlie Hitch loved the bristle cone pines; he thought they were the greatest thing in the world, so he would have been very unhappy to have the University pull out of that.
Nathan
It's very interesting, your view of who are the constituents of a particular idea. I'm sure you must have to take that into consideration.
Bowker
Charlie Hitch loved bristle cone pines. I don't remember why. They are fascinating. I never went up there when I was here, but I have since, and it is fascinating up there; the oldest living things in the world are up there on White Mountain.
Relations with Students
NathanIs there more you'd like to say about your relationships with the students? I think you touched on some different forums.
Bowker
I met with the student officers fairly regularly, and most of the student body presidents and vice presidents, and other people would feel I was reasonably responsive. Of course, you always want to be a little more friendly with the student leadership than the faculty constituency, so you always act as if, and you are, maybe, a little more pro-student. They are, after all, what you are here for. Student leaders, on the other hand, are not terribly representative of the student body.
When I left, five or six people who had been student body presidents said they wanted to give a party for me. I was kind of startled, because I had found some of them a problem. Finally I agreed, and they came to the house and gave me a present. Several said of them said that working with me had been the greatest experience in their lives. I was sort of touched by that. I've kept in touch a little bit with one of the student body presidents, although he's sort of disappeared recently.
Nathan
Your habit of listening very intently may have been important.
Bowker
Well, we got along all right, and Kerley was very good with them. We used to have interns who kind of worked with them. I didn't expect them to stand up for me, and they didn't ever, but they didn't dump on me, either. If there was a student uprising, they'd be like the Berkeley City Council, egging them on or standing by, but not leading.
They would, indeed, tell us if there was something big going to happen. They were co-opted to some extent. That was true in New York, too. I actually talked John Lindsay into putting a couple of students on the board, and they really were mine, sort of my votes if I needed them.
Nathan
When you were at Stanford, did you have occasion to get to meet students particularly?
Bowker
When I was a department chair, I had worked with all the doctoral students and my own doctoral students. Your own doctoral students are almost like your own children. You're very close to them, or you can be. I didn't have very many, and I am close to all of them and still see them and keep in touch with them. As graduate dean, I used to see some of the graduate students and bump into
Nathan
When you say "get out of Stanford," do you mean finish up and go out into the rest of the world?
Bowker
Yes. I'd waive the language requirement or waive this or that requirement. I remember I'd give them a scholarship for a quarter if they'd finish their thesis so they didn't have to teach, things like that. I did a certain amount of that on a personal basis. At Stanford, residence was defined as paying three years' tuition. If people had finished their degree without satisfying that particular requirement, I'd waive it. Sometimes people would continue on as TAs [teaching assistants] in order to pay off their tuition, and I tried to stop that.
But I didn't have much personal relationship that has continued with students. I wish I did, in some ways. I had a lot of fun with some of the students here, but I just have lost touch with them. Some of them write me once in a while.
Issues of Racial Discrimination
NathanThis is interesting about your relationship with the students. There was a question about some of the discussions back in March of '72, when you started the open forums. Do you remember discussions about racial discrimination? Was that an issue that stuck in your mind?
Bowker
Well, I was always accused of it pretty continuously, I guess, by these certain radical students.
Nathan
Why was that?
Bowker
It just goes with the territory. The white radical students have always used Berkeley's insensitivity to minorities as one of their big points. Minority students have never been, for the most part, particularly active in pushing; it's been the white rads. I usually listened and ignored them. I think Berkeley had a good enough record. I put a lot of effort, largely unsuccessful, into
I had just come from New York, where I had opened the whole university and really done a lot for minority undergraduates. The minority enrollment in New York had just blossomed, as well as the white enrollment under expansion. Here, it seemed to me, even if Berkeley were all black it wouldn't make much difference numerically, but that we could have a role in professional and graduate schools in training minorities. It's gone moderately well in the professional schools--law, business, others--and quite unsuccessfully in the doctoral program when I left. We put millions into it--I mean, a lot of money.
On faculty, ordinarily we would be more flexible with FTE if a minority faculty member were being recruited. We wouldn't waive standards; we'd be more forthcoming with FTE. Mike continued that. I remember once that Ernie Kuh, the dean of Engineering, managed to get a class with very few women and no minorities--and he'll deny this--and I really had to bawl him out. I said, "You've got to get some black kids in here."
He's very affirmative-action-minded now, but that was then. He's been radicalized a little bit. I had lunch with him about five years ago, and he said, "You know, there are only twenty of us here on the faculty at Berkeley." I said, "What do you mean 'us', Ernie, for heaven's sake?" That's what he meant. I guess it's true--and Ernie was the first Asian to have any serious post at the University of California.
Nathan
So did "us" mean Asians?
Bowker
Yes. That's what it meant. Anyway, there are plenty of "us" now. [laughs]
Nathan
It must be sort of fun for you to sit back and see how things have developed over the years.
There was a question of students on the administrative committees.
Bowker
We put them on. They didn't show up very much, but it was a gesture that didn't do any harm. Most students are not really very interested in sustained work. Kerley was very good with students, and he also had a lot of interns. If a student really wanted to work on a committee, sometimes he'd put them on the
Credit for ROTC
BowkerYou mention [in the outline] ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps]. When I came here, the Berkeley faculty had voted not to give credit for ROTC courses, and the regents had voted to ignore that and to give credit for ROTC. One of my challenges was that I was told by the regents to straighten this out, which meant talk the faculty into giving credit. I somehow consulted some of the senior members and appointed a commission. Andy Jamieson was involved, and Bob Connick and other people. We went through some negotiation with the Defense Department, which resulted in what we could say was an upgrading of the caliber of the ROTC faculty assigned to the campus.
In the meantime, I found out that one of them had been pumping Regent Catherine Hearst up. She was always asking me very detailed questions. Finally she said, "Al, I might as well give you this," and she gave me a stack of letters this high [demonstrates] from one of the ROTC faculty about various outrages on campus. It really fried me, and with all the problems I had.
Nathan
Did that get resolved during your tenure?
Bowker
We finally had a mail vote of the faculty, and they voted to reestablish credit.
Nathan
But it was not compulsory to take ROTC?
Bowker
Oh, no. Then the ROTC people came around and asked me if I would reinstitute the chancellor's review of the troops every year. That had been abolished, and I didn't really want to, but I did. When I left, the ROTC people came and had some ceremony for me. I didn't realize it was going to happen, but some admiral flew out and gave me a medal. Once I said it was a medal of honor, and some navy man nearly hit the ceiling. Apparently you only get
Nathan
Well, there was some courage involved.
Bowker
There was. There really was. Berkeley has had a very interesting ROTC. A lot of famous people have come through it.
Nathan
I gather you had no conviction one way or the other personally about it.
Bowker
It's a little hard to say. Going back to City College, at one time I looked at the ROTC there, and most of the people who had been important generals, some in the air force, who were Jewish had come through the City College ROTC. There was a little bit of that at Berkeley. For example, General Colin Powell is from City College ROTC. They've abolished it, naturally. I thought, by and large, it ought to be an opportunity open to students. It was a land-grant tradition. When I went to school, ROTC was compulsory, and although it isn't widely known, MIT is a land-grant institution. ROTC was compulsory, but it isn't now anywhere, as far as I know, except at a military school.
I was in favor of it, not for any hawkish or military reasons. It has been, particularly for minority people and for others, a means of entry. Berkeley really had a tradition of "poor boy makes good." When I was chancellor here, the student body was quite affluent; it would be comparable to Stanford's. So it was kind of hard to argue that these were underprivileged kids who needed this as an opportunity. But, anyway, that's where I was coming from. I thought it had been important.
One year (1975) I gave the alumnus of the year award to General Frederick Weyand, who was the chief of staff of the army, an ROTC graduate. I had him at the house to stay over. He's from an Oakland family. I asked him how he happened to be general of the army. It turned out that before World War II he was a member of the Berkeley police department, which used to be closely related to the University. Then he went into the service, and when he came back there were no vacancies in the Berkeley police department, so he stayed in the service and became general of the army.
There were quite a few distinguished people who came through Berkeley ROTC in the old days--generals in World War II.
Nathan
I see.
Craft-Workers' Strike
NathanThere was an employees' strike in April of 1972. Do you remember that?
Bowker
Oh, indeed--craft workers. It wouldn't have taken much financially to settle that strike. I talked to the president of the University, and in fact I even called Ed Meese, and said there probably wasn't very much money involved.
Nathan
Why would you call Ed Meese?
Bowker
Because it was a political matter. The governor had just broken a couple of strikes of public employees, and they were just not [bangs on table] going to give in to the public employees. It might even have needed a little money. I might have called Verne Orr, who was budget director and told him it wouldn't have taken much to settle this, but the answer was no, that I had to break the strike. The regents, of course, all loved to act like big shots where the University was involved. That's a little unfair, but you see a lot of them give in to their own companies.
Anyway, I had to break the strike, and I didn't think it was worth it. But I did it. Some of the things that happened were kind of amusing. In the first place, I published the salaries of the craft workers, and many of them were making more than assistant professors. They were absolutely furious, so they published my salary in return. Then there was a big rally by the students, who decided to support the strikers, and I had to come to the rally; so I did. You see, these craft people were nice old men, for the most part, very staid and so forth. I remember there was one of these Berkeley women who came with a baby in her arms. She sat in the front row, opened her dress, and started nursing her baby. These old guys, the craft workers, were all blushing and so horrified. You know how blue collar workers would react to that kind of behavior.
After while a few faculty decided that they would support it. So John Kelley announced that he wasn't going to teach. I called him; he's an old friend, actually, from Stanford days. I said, "Kelley, why don't you keep your mouth shut?" "It's a matter of principle. I'm not going to come on the campus and cross a picket line." I said, "Then on a matter of principle, I'm going to dock your pay." He says, "I know that. That's okay." [laughs] If you're going to strike, you're going to suffer. Kelley's a funny man.
Was he in math?
Bowker
Yes. I think he's married to Ying Lee Kelley at the present time, but he had another wife when I used to know him. He was a friend and wasn't going to make any problem for me.
Nathan
Were you obliged to respond to the students?
Bowker
I just said, "We're not going to give in." We just broke the strike. The only thing that bothered me was that I always had a policy--people don't realize that most public institutions don't spend all their money, whatever it is; every little dean or department head keeps a little bit for a rainy day. Toward the end of the year, all these little bits add up to a lot. I used to make Errol very nervous, but I'd say, "Estimate how much that's going to be, and overspend. Overspend, and it'll all come out all right." We were saving $50,000 a day or something, and there was no way we could spend it, so we had to turn money back to the state. Oh, that hurt. [laughter] I said, "Errol, get that money spent," but he couldn't do it.
A lot of the discretionary money I used--it got obligated--and then at the end of the year all these little dribs and drabs would be unspent. So I would put it all back in my discretionary fund.
Petition for Nixon's Impeachment
NathanThe next thing that comes to mind is the 1973 petition to demand the impeachment of Nixon.
Bowker
Oh, yes. The student body wanted to do it. I don't really remember whether we were demanding impeachment; I guess we were. First the students proposed several plans that I didn't approve, and finally I approved Bill Brock as a speaker. When they got him to speak, I said, "Okay, we can have the meeting." We got out there, and we did it.
Nathan
The demand came from the students?
Bowker
Oh, yes, from the ASUC. It wasn't anything I would have liked to have done. I actually tried to depoliticize the campus as much as possible. On the other hand, when a public figure came to speak on the campus to a student rally or something--a congressional candidate, for example--I asked the students, if they could, to
Nathan
Those are interesting sidelights.
The Bakke Case
NathanI think you've already spoken of the decision on Criminology and the takeover of Haviland Hall in '74. We're coming to the end of a tape, so maybe I shouldn't ask you now about the Bakke case.
Bowker
I wasn't particularly heavily involved in the Bakke case. The president took it very seriously and was heavily involved. He felt that a lot of admissions policy at the University was at stake and that it was important in principle. The interesting thing to me was that the student body here were very ambivalent about it. Although the Daily Cal had been denouncing practically everything--
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Bowker
It didn't support the University's appeal of the Bakke decision on the grounds, I guess, of just sort of self interest. Radical foreign and domestic policy was one thing, but admission to medical school was a more serious matter. [laughs] They were in favor of settling the Vietnam war and other things. Of course, practically all the graduate professional schools and other schools in America were giving preference to minorities, so the question is why Davis got caught. Just by being, I always thought, too open, too explicit. The whole thing seemed to me unnecessary. All the other medical schools admitted minorities preferentially.
When the Supreme Court--I think Potter Stewart wrote the decision--made a decision, it was hard to tell what it said, it seemed to me: "on the one hand, and on the other hand." I thought it was much ado about nothing, and that they ought to get a new dean at Davis rather than make a federal case of it. But David Saxon really wanted to make a big issue of it, and I suppose it was an issue of principle.
Relations Between System Head and Campus Head
BowkerThe relationship between the head of a flagship campus and the head of a system has never been easy anywhere in the country. I think I was particularly sensitive to that because I had been chancellor [at CUNY, the chief campus officer is called the president, and the systemwide head is called the chancellor], the head of the system in New York, and I never got along very well with the president of City College. There I really thought it was a matter of his competence. The truth was that Brooklyn, City, Hunter, and Queens, the four older senior colleges, were really competitive. In the traditional role of City College having the best and the brightest Jewish students in New York, that had pretty much drifted away, mainly to Queens, by the time I got there. But City College still had this tradition of being the leaders and had the only the Engineering School and a few other professional schools.
But there, I think it was more a matter that the City College president himself wanted to be chancellor, expected to be, and wasn't. There it wasn't so much a matter of jurisdiction, maybe some. The other presidents, including some who were really extremely able, like Harry Gideonse at Brooklyn College, tended to support me.
Here it was partly the staff. Many of the staff at University Hall lived in Berkeley, and the rest seemed to be married to Berkeley staffers or faculty members. They all had opinions about everything. The general counsel didn't report to anybody, and he and a huge staff lived in Berkeley or around here.
Nathan
That would be the general counsel to the regents?
Bowker
Yes, it was. So there was an enormous number of people who were minding Berkeley's business. I used to hear gossip about University Hall. The University maintained Blake House for the president and University House for me. Then, in what I always thought was kind of a dumb move, they bought another fancy house for the vice president, so there were three people entertaining VIPs.
Nathan
Is that the house that William Fretter lived in, in Berkeley?
Bowker
Probably. Chester McCorkle was the first one who lived there. It always seemed to me in such a situation that you should pay the
Was there friction? Some, yes.
Nathan
You can tell me if this was important: I was thinking of the relationships among the president, the Berkeley chancellor, and Sacramento. There was a University lobbyist, of course, or there's a lobbyists' office in Sacramento.
Bowker
I tried not to go behind the president, and I think I discussed one or two little items when I did--maybe saving the medical program one year and saving the California Poll project once or twice. But I didn't do it very much, and I didn't enjoy it. I didn't like Sacramento; I didn't like the people there. John Vasconcellos was our chairman, and I could work with him, but I didn't like him. Senator Nicholas Petris I liked fine.
I didn't do very much of that; I didn't like to go to Sacramento, and I didn't think we did well in Sacramento, especially with Jerry Brown. We had a bunch of middle-aged, elderly, white males, and it was a fairly young and liberal state assembly. I used to send Mike Heyman; he used to enjoy it more. Now he's a middle-aged, white male, but he seems at ease with political figures. I stayed away from Sacramento as much as possible.
Most of the frictions were about silly little things. For example, Charter Day: Garff Wilson ran Charter Day, and once we didn't have a receiving line. Charlie Hitch was furious, so after that we had a receiving line. But I said, "If you really want a receiving line, why don't you call Garff Wilson and tell him? Charter Day isn't for you, and it isn't for me; it's for Garff Wilson." He grumbled.
Once Garff decided to issue tickets and limit attendance. Charlie said he was embarrassed, so we changed. It really couldn't matter very much. The staff would work him up: "You know, at Berkeley they're going to do this, and they're going to do that." I tried to talk to him about it. When David Saxon came in, who was a college classmate of mine, I said, "David, if I believe half the things I'm told about you, I think you ought to be institutionalized. Remember that, will you, about me?" The staffs were just sort of always sniping at each other, including social secretaries. It was all kind of petty, and it bothered Hitch some.
I wonder whether any of this comes from the fact that Berkeley was the original and oldest campus?
Bowker
Oh, yes, the flagship campus. We didn't think we needed anything at University Hall, and we didn't much. Berkeley and UCLA have always been pretty self-sufficient. We didn't really even consider systemwide much of an asset. I will say this, though, that David Gardner has really gone and gotten money. For the first time, I think, people at Berkeley think the president has done them some good.
Nathan
I came across a note that he was the director for alumni fund raising in the sixties.
Bowker
For the Alumni Association. He was employed by the association as Field and Scholarship Director. He did work for the Alumni Association, but long before I was here. When I was here, for some reason he had been sent down to Santa Barbara to help cool things. Then he was vice president for Extension and Continuing Education, and he started the Extended University, which Berkeley played a role in. He was a creative person. He did a good job here. He never really had an academic job.
For example, little things would happen. When Mark Christensen was appointed to Santa Cruz, Nancy Hitch told H. E. (Mrs. Christensen), that she hoped she wouldn't work professionally the way Rose Bowker did. Of course, that immediately got back to us, and it seemed kind of a dumb thing to say, because in fact today practically every college president's wife works. To be frank, running a Section Club didn't really seem like a big deal to either one of us or very important, although maybe it was. I mean, Rose went to it and was well enough liked, but she of course didn't put in much time at it, and I guess her predecessors had.
On the other side, it seemed to me that a lot of the young women faculty would come and talk to her, and some who were teaching at Stanford carpooled with her. I thought on the whole it was kind of a good image.
Nathan
Yes, and it was the pattern of the future. She was really one who moved with the times
Bowker
So it was little stuff like that. Did it matter, all this business with the president? A little bit, I guess.
I offer this to you to either take up or not, a possible explanation or guide if another chancellor wanted to see where the bear traps were: is this something you have to watch out for?
Bowker
You see, David Saxon really liked--like me--the academic and didn't care too much for a lot of the things he had to do. Once in a while he'd call me in great excitement about something, and I would say, "It's none of your business." [laughs] He'd laugh; he'd take it from me. But I wasn't that easygoing with Charlie, and Charlie isn't terribly easygoing. I think he did well as president. He appointed me. "How were you appointed?" I'd say, "Hitchcraft." But he was terribly formal.
For example, at the dinner parties on formal occasions, he would sit there and read, "Now is the time to toast our guest of honor, Mrs. So and So." Kind of like Reagan, you know, he never moves without a note. Oh, I was friendly with them. Nancy has died, and Charlie still lives here as a bachelor and bangs around some. I bumped into him in a restaurant the other night.
Nathan
I gather that your way of getting along was more or less on a personal basis, not so much on a structural division, although that must have been part of it.
Bowker
What issues would be jointly handled? When I first came, they decided to have the Lawrence Berkeley Lab report to the president rather than to the chancellor of the Berkeley campus. I thought it was probably a mistake, but it was done, fait accompli. Then when appointing the director of the Lawrence Lab came up, various people--Glenn Campbell, John Lawrence, and Edward Teller--had their candidates and not Charlie's. The vote was very close, so I had to go to work on the regents to support the president. I always did; I did what I was told or asked. I did that, and it wasn't all that brilliant a choice, but still it was better than letting those fellows get their way, I suppose.
That's the kind of thing that Dean Watkins would stand up for--it would come around to him, with Reagan probably voting against the University president--and say, "Well, our main job is to appoint the president of the University, and I think we either have to support him in his appointments or remove him. I am not prepared to remove him. I vote 'aye'."
Nathan
I see. I was wondering about the allocation of funds among the campuses. Does the president have responsibility there?
Bowker
Yes, but there never were any new funds to speak of. Once in a while they tried to do us in, and I would scream and yell and win.
If there had been a lot of discretionary money for new programs and other things, I might have fought more. But as it is, the few programs I started were in the health sciences, and I got that money without much enthusiasm from University Hall, but I got it, all the same, one way or another. So that wasn't an issue.
Once we had a big fight with Saxon about something (I can't remember what it was). We asked him to get rid of the vice presidents and talk to the chancellors as a whole. I was asked to do it, and so I did. We spent a couple of hours, and we were mad about something. It must have been some budgetary strategy, but I guess it passed.
Nathan
It's interesting how it looks in retrospect. You have mentioned a couple of times, I think, that you and Saxon had been classmates.
Bowker
Yes, at MIT. We weren't close friends, but we had known each other then. He got married in college, which was pretty unusual in those days. I used to see him. He was in physics and a friend of my roommate. When I became chancellor and he was vice chancellor at UCLA, I used to call him once in a while when I needed a kind of joint position with UCLA on issues. I found him easier to work with than Chuck Young, and besides I knew him. So I did talk to him.
Reflections on the University Presidency
BowkerThen David Gardner came up. He was a vice president of the University under Charlie Hitch. When Charlie stepped down, actually, some of us were interested in Dave Gardner at that time. Frank Sooy and I talked to him, and he felt, I guess, that he just couldn't do it. I don't know what he felt. He was too junior, I guess; he couldn't come and hold his head up among all
I actually thought they might offer it to me, and I didn't want it. They didn't offer it to me, so I didn't have to face that, but I really didn't want it. I had had a systemwide job, and I liked the campus job better, and I didn't want to have to cope with a couple of things like the laboratories and other issues. I had told Charlie Hitch that if my name came up to withdraw it. But it wasn't necessary, he said. [laughs] It's just as well.
Nathan
So often people will refer to the "president" of the Berkeley campus. In the public mind, the chancellorship and the presidency are not clear. In a sense, it's like running a whole university when you're running this campus.
Bowker
There was plenty to do. [long pause] A lot depends on tradition. Things started here with Robert Gordon Sproul; well, it didn't start with Sproul, but my memory of Berkeley does. He was just the big figure in higher education and was a very successful president for the most part and very congenial with Earl Warren, who pumped a lot of money into the University when the state had it after World War II.
Then Sproul was replaced by Clark Kerr, who had been the architect of the expansion of the University into other branches and reasonably close to the Democratic establishment, mostly Pat Brown. I can't remember exactly when the transition was made. Then, of course, he was persona non grata to Reagan, who used the student violence and Clark's inability to handle it as the reason.
Probably half the regents who were on the board at the time of the transition from Brown to Reagan have given me their version of the firing of Clark Kerr, and they're not all the same. Many are Democrats, and some were appointed by Pat Brown. Mrs. Chandler--I once went to dinner with her, and she gave me her story. The gist of it was that they all thought that somebody who couldn't get along with the governor couldn't be a useful president of the University, period.
Nathan
Does that accord with your own thoughts?
Bowker
I didn't like it. I suppose it's true, but I don't think the governor should be dominant. I wouldn't like to see the leadership of the University turn over every time there's a new
In New York, Governor Nelson Rockefeller was a Republican, Bob Wagner was a Democrat, and John Lindsay was a Republican. Those were the public figures I had to deal with. Actually, I had lunch with Lindsay on my way out the day he changed to become a Democrat. He came to a luncheon I gave for my successor just after he made that announcement. Of course, Rockefeller hated Lindsay, and he and Wagner were hand-in-glove; so you never know.
Anyway, I saw no reason why the head of the university should be identified politically, so I never was.
Nathan
That certainly accords with the statutes and in fact the constitutional provision for the University as being separate. You found your way by not being in one camp or another?
Bowker
That's always been my style. Obviously both Sproul and Clark did a lot for the University.
When I was talking to Pat Brown about it a couple of times, he has always said that he didn't do too much for Berkeley, but he did help start some of the other campuses with Clark. Did we talk here about "the million dollars"?
Nathan
No, tell me about "the million."
Bowker
Maybe five or six years ago Pat Brown gave Berkeley a million dollars. He came up to me and said, "Have you heard?" I said, "Terrific, Pat. I didn't even know you had a million dollars. I don't approve of rich politicians."
Nathan
You would have been nicer to him if you had known?
Bowker
Oh, no. He was always very friendly, and he came to every fund-raising event in southern California that he was invited to, and he spoke and ordered his people to support the University. We were quite friendly, really.
He said, "Well, considering the way I got it, I decided I had better give it away." It had to do with his firm having been counsel to the Indonesian government or oil industry or something,
Nathan
When you come in the main library, it is the Bernice Layne Brown gallery--lots of marble.
Bowker
That's right. She went to Berkeley. She used to come around some. The family is all quite pleasant except for Jerry.
Nathan
People say to keep your eye on Kathleen.
Bowker
Yes, that's what they say.
Report: "Berkeley in a steady state"
NathanYou had been chancellor for a couple of years in 1973. Do you remember that famous report to the regents, "Berkeley in a steady state"?
Bowker
Yes, I do. I described how we were managing under tight budgets. Errol Mauchlan and the whole staff worked on it. It sort of ended up with a plea for more capital, but it was mostly how we were doing. It was kind of politically charged. Reagan came and listened very intently, although you never know whether he ever hears anything. But he was there listening, and his staff was there.
Several people said they thought it was a very significant statement and document. It was about how one thing is done at the expense of another; we have to eliminate some programs. It went through a popular version of the renewal model, but it said that the biggest problem was the deterioration of the physical plant.
Money for Maintenance
BowkerWhen I left, I spoke at Charter Day and said that was my greatest failure, that I had a "seedy-and-crummy" tour of the campus. On the way back someone had put a sign on one of the temporary buildings, "Stop one on the chancellor's seedy-and-crummy tour."
But in any public institution, the maintenance, deferred maintenance, and upkeep of buildings is a problem--in any public building, all over the country. Curiously enough, the feds don't do too badly in Washington, but the State of California doesn't do too well. I mean, the state capitol was terrible when I saw it, even with Reagan, and Jerry never did anything much up there.
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Nathan
You were just saying that people don't like to give money for maintenance.
Bowker
I wouldn't. It is true, however, that we were able to get maintenance money in the sense of janitorial or basic maintenance for every new building that we were able to get private money for or any rehabilitation we were able to do. We did some; the state budget office was pretty good about that, but not any major remodeling of LSB or the chemistry building, some of the things that badly needed doing.
I was chairman of the board at International House, and I House was really never very well run while I was here. In fact, I started a big investigation into whether we should change the leadership, and in the end the board didn't want to. But I put in a fee structure and put aside quite a bit of money for deferred maintenance. We charged the same for every dormitory room, including some that had been given as gifts. At least there was a fund that could keep up the buildings, and we put I House more or less on that basis, but we still needed a lot of money for seismic corrections.
Finally I got Charlie Hitch to put up some of that money from the reserves. I House is now in pretty good shape, actually. There have been a few major gifts, a few nice rooms.
Nathan
Did people somehow feel that the Rockefellers were always going to support I House?
Bowker
Well, we went back to them. Rudy Peterson, who was another trustee of the UC Berkeley Foundation, and I went to see David Rockefeller, and he just said, "No." Maybe they gave a little money recently in one of the centennials, but basically we had to
Nathan
I was wondering, when I read a little about the dramatic shutdown you did at CUNY over budget issues, whether you thought of doing it here?
Bowker
Well, we never did anything like that here. Berkeley was never in that much trouble. I used to argue that we ought to fire a few tenured faculty members or do something to dramatize our budget situation, but I never did get anywhere. Charlie didn't want to do it, and we didn't do it.
Issues of Government Regulation
BowkerOne thing I did have a lot of trouble with, all the time I was here, was government regulations. We haven't talked much about that. The worst one was affirmative action.
Nathan
Tell me why.
Bowker
People were dumping on us all the time, and people were trying to make an issue out of Berkeley. I think it had to do more with a kind of militancy of some of the women faculty members, HEW staff, and the general spirit of the times. Usually when we would go back to Washington we could calm things down. Year in and year out they were here complaining about this case or that case, or that we didn't have enough women on the faculty, or--
Nathan
The feds were doing this?
Bowker
Yes, usually the civil rights group in the Office of Education in HEW [Department of Health, Education, and Welfare]. We had to go back several times and talk to the top people. Once the Art Department ran a search and appointed a candidate. They also wanted the second person in that search, but they only had one line. Someone was retiring, so they put that person on a temporary line. When the position became available, they filled it. Well, it was clear that they hadn't done an affirmative action search, and they hadn't documented any of this, so it was
There is something that used to be called the Naval Biological Lab. It was in Oakland. At one time it had been used for chemical warfare research and training, but after that it was given over to the School of Public Health here and was used for research on very dangerous diseases. It had one of the few collections of bubonic plague virus in the United States. It also had a great collection of mosquitos with sleeping sickness--encephalitis--and various other goodies like that.
The contract for renewal came up, and they cancelled it. We went back and talked to the general counsel of HEW, and he kind of calmed things down for a while, but it came up again. It turned out that the Department of Labor, however, had delegated this responsibility to HEW and had ultimate responsibility. I remember I went back and had a meeting with Labor Secretary Ray Marshall. I said, "What are we going to do with bubonic plague? I'm going to let loose all those mosquitos and kill everybody in the Bay Area." He says, "I hope not; I have children at Stanford." I mean, this was ridiculous. As I recall, we had to go to the White House to stop this.
Nathan
Were these affirmative action issues?
Bowker
Yes, because the Art Department hadn't done an affirmative action search, so the penalty was cancelling government contracts, and this was the next contract that came up. Mike and I went back several times just to argue, and finally there was some accommodation. You know, the University of California has about 15 percent of government research money in the United States, and there really isn't any way to cancel it. What are you going to do, cancel Livermore because the Art Department didn't do something? The penalty didn't fit the crime. I'm not sure of this, but I think in this case Mike finally called Clark Clifford in the White House to calm it down, and a way was found out of it.
Once we got in something else, and I remember Charlie Hitch called Cap [Caspar] Weinberger, who was then secretary of HEW, to help us out. We'd get in these situations, and our record was just as good as anybody's in hiring women. We were just always under the gun.
Then we had OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Agency], we had the handicapped. We had to make all our buildings accessible for the handicapped. Actually, Berkeley had a pretty good record for physically handicapped students; it had been a specialty of
Nathan
How did you think that compared with the treatment of other universities?
Bowker
It was sort of similar, but Berkeley had a worse time. San Francisco is a nice place for investigators to visit. What I had proposed at one time was, "Okay, let's try and make Berkeley do what it does with physically handicapped. Blind students go to Davis, and other handicapped students go here or there, specialize." We were not allowed to do that, so if a blind student came to Berkeley, we had to provide readers and support services. In the end we had to divert money that we were using for the physically handicapped into helping other people. We never really did a very good job of it, because it's terribly expensive.
Then there were regulations on human subjects and animals. I sort of ignored the animal thing, and it came to a head later. I tried to ignore it. What was I going to do? There wasn't any money to comply with any of these rules and regulations. There never was. We made a big show of complying, but we were continually being investigated by somebody or other.
Marshall, the Secretary of Labor, was a Ph.D. of Clark Kerr's. I thought he ought to have some sense. He didn't seem to. They sent people out to investigate a complaint of somebody who was an assistant professor who claimed he was doing the same work as a full professor and getting paid less, and he should have equal pay for equal work. Maslach had the brilliant idea: the answer was seniority. They understood that, and they went away. We said, "Full professors have seniority." [laughter] One thing after another. It was really bananas. It may be true of our society as a whole that it's over regulated. That was a side of Berkeley that was very unpleasant.
Once they decided in some lawsuit that they had to have the faculty hiring files in the History Department. They were subpoenaed, and they [history] said they wouldn't give them up. I said, "What would you do if I came over and seized them?" Anyway, there was a big flap about that. Everybody was denouncing me, but I went before the faculty senate and said, "It's the law of the land. These records have been subpoenaed. I'll try to protect
It went on and on and on. I think probably it was that more than anything else that kind of tired me out at Berkeley--this endless nitpicking on purely administrative, regulatory sorts of issues. There really wasn't any way we could comply with almost all of these things.
I think we did a good job on hiring women faculty members. We did the best we could and better than many universities. I did the best I could. Of course, we had rooms full of people producing huge statistical analyses that were sent back to Washington. I didn't realize until I got there later than no one ever looked at them. The Department of Education has rooms full of data that no one has ever looked at. Well, there wasn't any way you could read all this junk. [laughs]
That was sort of a downside of the chancellor's job, and I don't know whether that's gotten any better or not. Mike's a lawyer; he didn't mind it as much. I found the whole subject annoying and distasteful and boring.
Coming back to people, I think I had a very good group in California Hall. Mike was my deputy, and Rod Park and George Maslach, Errol Mauchlan, Sandy Elberg, Glenn Grant, my secretary, Janet Starkey. It was a good working group. Lila Carmichael at the house, and a personal staff also included--as I said, Dick Hafner and Dick Erickson.
I don't know if there's much else that I have to say.
City of Berkeley and Local Issues
NathanWould you like to talk about your relationships with the City of Berkeley and the Bay Area people? Did you feel it was part of your job as chancellor to maintain these kinds of relationships?
Bowker
Yes, I had to get along reasonably well with the City of Berkeley. I had people in the office whose job it was to attend the city council meetings of Berkeley or Oakland and tell me what was going on and what would affect us. We did try to work with the city on certain joint projects. I don't remember that much ever came of it.
One of the projects I was very much interested in was the school for the blind and the deaf.
Nathan
Why were you especially interested in that?
Bowker
It just seemed to me the only conceivable use of it was for University Housing. The Reagan people wanted to sell it to a developer, and we managed somehow to stall that or delay it until Jerry Brown got into office. Not that it was sensible to sell it to a developer, because no developer will build in Berkeley nowadays with the way the city behaves toward new development--rent control and all of that. It just seemed to me that because housing was getting more and more expensive in this area, we were going to need that for faculty and student housing mainly. There wasn't anything else, really, to do with it. We never pulled it off while I was here, but eventually it had to be done. There wasn't anything else to do with it.
The neighbors were all screaming and yelling, but as soon as the place was deserted it would fill up with bums and hobos, and they'd be much better off with University housing. But they couldn't see that. Now they're reasonably happy with it, I think. A little noise, but--.
Nathan
The combination of some student and some elderly housing seems to be a rather pleasant arrangement.
Bowker
Well, I don't know if there was any real elderly housing there. They were talking about it.
Nathan
I see people waiting for the bus, so I assume that they are residents.
Bowker
Sandy Elberg lives there.
Nathan
Does he like it?
Bowker
Yes, he likes it.
Nathan
But you were not involved in calling it unsuitable for the school for the blind?
Bowker
No, that was done before I came here. I think it was quite suitable for the school. I went to see them, and they were kind of old, conservative, WASPy administrators. They were horrified by what was going on at Berkeley and wanted to move.
Nathan
Was that it? Wasn't the question of seismic safety raised?
Seismic safety can be corrected. A lot of work had to be done on those buildings. The question was whether to do it there or move to another site. I think they wanted to move. I think some of them are sorry. I have heard criticisms of the new locations. One is that if handicapped persons learn to get around in Berkeley, they can get around most anywhere; they moved into flat land, which is atypical. I don't know that for sure; I've just heard that.
Nathan
A lot of the kids from that school went to Berkeley High School, and the Berkeley High kids learned to be helpful.
Bowker
Yes, I think it was a good thing, but that was all settled long before I came, and the future of it was still unsettled when I left, although it was clear there wasn't any alternative.
Nathan
Yes, you were on the board of trustees of the Bay Area Council?
Bowker
I don't remember much about that.
Regional Association of East Bay Colleges and Universities
BowkerOne thing I did start and did enjoy was something called the Regional Association of East Bay Colleges and Universities; it was called RAEBCUE. It was essentially the presidents of all the colleges in the East Bay. We met once a month at the different colleges. It was kept up by Mike. We had some projects that we put forth jointly; the Bay Area Writing Project was one, which was mostly Berkeley. We made it a RAEBCU project. Jack Schuster ran that for me for a while before he left to go to Claremont College.
I had been head of a system that had community colleges in it with more or less state colleges, and I really kind of missed the contact with that and was interested in that level of education. Bob Wert of Mills College was an old friend. I became friendly with Ellis McCune of Hayward State and Tom Fryer, who was then head of Peralta Community College. They were helpful to me in some ways. The community college guys were more politically involved than I was, so sometimes I could get them to talk to assemblymen. But we also talked about articulation.
Mills College was always in trouble, and I set up an exchange program with Mills so that students from here could take courses there, and students from there could take courses here; of course,
Nathan
You mentioned that magic word, articulation, between the University and the community colleges. Is that something that could be worked out so that people could transfer as juniors?
Bowker
Some issues were resolved. I think we were more interested in working together. The Bay Area Writing Project essentially was to try and get some standards of English in the high schools, not by dictating them but by working jointly with high school teachers and bringing them in for workshops and so forth. It was something we were all interested in. Articulation we did have in engineering and a few fields, but Berkeley really isn't too interested in transfer students.
Nathan
That Bay Area Writing Project was fine; Jo Miles was very much interested in it, wasn't she?
Bowker
Yes, she was involved in it; we made it a joint project with the high schools.
Nathan
I gather you like to bring people together.
Bowker
I've always liked a bunch of presidents, and I still keep in touch with those people. Bob Wert just died. He and I were friends from Stanford days, so we were always very friendly with the Werts and with the McCunes. I still see Ellis every summer.
Berkeley had never paid much attention, frankly, to these other places, so it was appreciated and reciprocated, I thought.
Nathan
I can see how helpful that would be.
Bowker
The Bay Area Council I don't remember much about, so I didn't play much of a role in it. You consciously limit your outside activities, not enough, some people thought. I tried to do things that were different, and I never did get involved heavily in national educational associations. In fact, Roger, who was then head of the American Council on Education, asked me to go on the board, and I said I would rather wait a year or two and do it later after I had Berkeley under my belt. By that time he was gone, and I never had to do it. [laughs]
You don't sound too sad about that.
A Variety of Posts
BowkerNo. I was a trustee of MIT when I came here, and I enjoyed that. I was a trustee of Bennington College; the president was a friend of mine. That was different, and I enjoyed that. I was a trustee at the University of Haifa as I left New York, and I went over there every other year or every year for the trustee meetings and was quite active in Haifa affairs. Those gave me a view of other institutions.
Then I did different things. I served on the Drug Abuse Council (1972-1979), which was a foundation-sponsored kind of VIP group that was put together to bring heroin maintenance into the United States, though we decided it wasn't a very good idea at the time. It was kind of a government in exile during the Nixon administration. [laughs] There weren't many educators on it. Bill Hewlett was the other California member.
I went on the Sloan Commission on Government and Higher Education, which Ed Carter and Carla Hills were on. It didn't amount to much in the end. But the Drug Abuse Council did quite a lot; it was important. It helped sponsor marijuana legislation and a lot of good research.
I tried to do different things, most of them are higher-education oriented. I did try to keep active with a little traveling in Asia.
Nathan
Besides your two trips to China?
Bowker
There were two trips to China, but then I went every year to a conference of Asian educators, which gave me a chance to visit Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, and the Philippines.
Nathan
Was it fun?
Bowker
It was sort of fun. Henry Luce's sister, Mrs. [Elizabeth Luce ] Moore--who was a great buddy of Winifred Heard, by the way--used to come. It was the Luce Foundation that sponsored the conferences of Asian and American educators. They were fairly serious.
Nathan
Did you do this partly to extend Berkeley's reach?
Partly, yes. Partly I was asked to do it. It was a good group of people. We had Edwin Reischauer with us one year; Henry Rosovsky was with us another year. We had really important people. They were other college presidents mostly. We also did some sightseeing.
Beth Moore is still alive and active. I haven't been able to talk her into any more junkets. She and Henry Luce were actually born in China. Their father had founded Peking University. I bumped into her once in China and had a great time. She was with a group of right-wing Republican women when we were over there once, and they had no idea who she was. The woman who runs the restaurant up near Sacramento, the Nut Tree, is very active in politics, and she had organized this group. I forget her name.
Beth came out here once and thought it would be fun to meet Ellie Heller, then the chairman (not the chairwoman) of the regents.
##
Bowker
Mrs. Moore was chairman of the board of the State University of New York for many years and probably was then, Ellie was chairman of the Board of Regents, and Bob Brown was chairman of the trustees at Stanford. Ellie gave a lunch and invited me and Dick Lyman. The reason I remember it is that I decided to wear a Mao suit that I had bought in China. I suddenly showed up there in a Mao suit, and Ellie and Bob Brown didn't quite know what to make of it, but Mrs. Luce was absolutely charmed. Every time I see her she mentions it. [laughter] Ellie liked it, too; she was a good sport.
This is kind of minor stuff--social stuff, travel.
Nathan
It is interesting.
Chancellor's Priorities
NathanWe might get into something larger, if you like. You might say a word about what you wanted to accomplish as chancellor and your sense of what the outcomes were.
Bowker
As I have said, when I came to Berkeley, the campus was in some disarray. The faculty had voted under extreme pressure to start a School of Third World Studies with no intention of ever doing it,
I guess my first priority was to try and maintain the academic excellence at Berkeley and secondly to try and restore respect for this campus. I used to say, "Get Berkeley the respect it deserves." The academic management at Berkeley has been quite good. I spent a fair amount of time, though, on helping recruit that handful of distinguished professors we tried to recruit, meeting competition for good people, reviewing faculty credentials, working with the faculty, listening, trying to keep up the standards.
On the other side, I went around and met with the press, met with alumni groups all over the state, and just tried to normalize things through all of these networks--the alumni network and the foundation network, putting our best foot forward, and some in Sacramento. I was pleased, on the whole. There's no question that Berkeley the last time around--in the early eighties when I left, when one looked at the quality of American research universities--was still right at the top in spite of everything. In terms of student popularity, admissions became really competitive. I really started private fund raising. There was growth in the Alumni Association and support for the University, which had eroded during the sixties.
Now, I didn't have a great impact on Berkeley, really. I wasn't quite a caretaker, but I was something closer to a nourisher and supporter, and I circled the wagons and kept the Philistines at bay. [laughter] I think I did that. It was very different from anything else I've ever done. I've always been, as we'll see as we go to other parts of my career, a builder, an innovator of new programs, changing things. But there at Berkeley I wasn't, so it was quite different.
I felt I had done a good job. I was tired of it. Also, my senior staff was kind of restless. Mike Heyman, I guess, was about ready for a college presidency, and he would have left if he hadn't gotten a crack at Berkeley; he probably would have been president of his alma mater, Dartmouth (he's now chairman of the board) or Stonybrook or something.
So I was faced with putting together a new administrative team. Rod would probably have gone or else would have been deputy. My administrative team was getting kind of restless. I
Nathan
I have heard comments that you were the right man at the right time.
Bowker
I think so, but it would be hard to tell that because it was very different from anything else I had ever done. I did try to start a few programs, and there were a few things I tried to cut out, but the bulk of Berkeley I supported and tried to enrich and support the way it was. And I guess I did that. At least I felt that I had done it well.
Nathan
Were there any continuing issues that you would warn other chancellors about, suggest that perhaps they watch out for?
Bowker
The maintenance and the size of the physical plant and its rehabilitation is a continuing problem, and even after all the fund raising that's been true. The campus is stretched very thin for space, and there isn't, I gather, enough money to really build a business school and build something to house what's in Cowell Hospital and some of these others that are really scratching around right now. I think it's important not to get over committed on the physical plant.
Student Costs and Academic Levels
NathanHow about the growth in both the undergraduate and graduate student population? Is there an optimum size?
Bowker
Yes, I don't see any reason to grow. One thing I should have mentioned, now that I think about it, when I was talking about budget matters, is that the University had a formula that was to give more money for doctoral students, some for master's students, some for undergraduates, and there may have been even another level.
Reagan scrapped all that and simply funded the University on a per-student basis, faculty-student ratio. It was the same no matter what mix you had. While I was here the academic market softened, and some of the departments, particularly in the
Charlie Hitch and some of the others wanted to negotiate a new funding formula, but John Perkins, who was vice president, and I and a few of the old-timers said, "Let's not. Whatever funding we get out of Reagan isn't going to be worth having, and Jerry Brown ain't going to be any better." We didn't know that at the time, but he wasn't. So we just kept this. I don't know what they do now. The health sciences had a different formula, and you could get money for them.
So one of the ways I was able to keep Berkeley afloat was to replace students who were expensive to train, by students who were cheaper to train.
Nathan
The higher up you go, the more expensive it is?
Bowker
Oh, yes. Nobody ever knew I was doing that, or nobody really noticed it very much, but it was important in our fiscal management.
Nathan
Did you ever give thought to giving a little more attention to the undergraduates--that is, smaller groups.
Bowker
Not much. I mentioned the freshman cluster program and Strawberry College, but beyond that, no. On the other hand, the popularity of the campus grew reasonably. We did, in fact, when Santa Cruz was in trouble, make an agreement with them that they would revise their first two years a little bit, and we would guarantee transfer. They did that. They were having trouble because they were a sort of a touchy-feely college, and when that became unpopular, their enrollment began to go down. It's gone up again now; now everybody's full. That turned out to be better for Santa Cruz than for Berkeley. I mean, it didn't hurt Berkeley, but in the end a lot of the kids who went there stayed there, so they were happy with the arrangement. But people who applied to Berkeley were sent to Santa Cruz with a guarantee of automatic transfer once we got popular again toward the end of my regime.
Nathan
Would they transfer as juniors?
Yes, but they didn't, a lot of them, and that was fine with Santa Cruz. So we were trying to help out in that way. I think Mike may have some special arrangements with community colleges, but I wasn't involved with them.
Some Personal Friendships
BowkerI was happy with my years at Berkeley, and I particularly enjoyed the friendships I made in the community, in the alumni, and Bohemian Club and places like that, where I have close friends. I didn't make a lot of new friends on campus. It's tough when you're the chief officer to be too friendly with people.
Nathan
You have to make some hard decisions?
Bowker
And you don't want to be influenced by personal ties any more than necessary, so I didn't make many new friends. I have more personal friends among my old colleagues at Stanford, where I was an assistant and associate professor, than I do at Berkeley.
Nathan
These were in slightly easier circumstances, I would imagine.
Bowker
Also we were all kind of new, out from the East, and were a natural community.
Nathan
As this is transcribed and you see it, other things might come to mind. I see that you were friendly with C. P. Snow.
Bowker
That was actually while I was at Stanford. C. P. Snow and Pamela came to Berkeley, and he was, I guess, a Regents Professor. I had been a great fan of his.
Nathan
Yes, those books of the two cultures?
Bowker
Mostly the novels. The two cultures were all right. I wrote to him and said I would like to meet him. He was here at Berkeley, and he didn't like Berkeley. He told me he'd never understood it. I had him down to Stanford two or three times, and we had a good time. He was then thinking of writing a novel on the politics of getting the Nobel prize, so we introduced him to all the Nobel laureates at Stanford. I still remember Bob Hofstadter, a Nobel laureate in physics, saying, "Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that; it's all politics." [laughter]
We got to know her, Pamela, a little bit. She was teaching at Mills some while she was here. She's written a very amusing book about a subsequent visit they made to Wesleyan in Connecticut, called Night and Silence: Who was There? She said how much she enjoyed teaching at Mills, "a charming little girls' college. Too bad it doesn't exist any more." This was about ten or fifteen years ago. I sent it to Bob Wert, naturally. [laughs]
II - Life After Berkeley (1980-on)
NathanFor this new segment, we could go back to your early life, or we could go on to life after Berkeley, whichever sounds best to you.
Bowker
We might as well go forward. The University of Massachusetts tried hard to recruit me as president, but I didn't see any point in it. When I left here I was actually thinking of retiring, but probably I would work somewhere else for a while.
Assistant Secretary for Post-Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education (1980-1981)
BowkerI became Assistant Secretary of Education under Shirley Hofstetler. I didn't enjoy that very much; I was there such a short period of time.
Nathan
What was that experience like?
Bowker
I had a whole bunch of responsibilities. The main function of the Department of Education in higher education has been in student aid, so I said I became the largest loan collector in the United States. But it wasn't very interesting, and it wasn't very well done; still isn't. I tried to push programs in international education, and I had all the programs for the minority colleges--black college programs. I inherited a staff that was so-so. I had a few good assistants, and I brought in a few good people, but I really wasn't there long enough to be very happy with it.
Shirley Hofstetler was a lawyer, and she was used to getting her own way. I got along with her all right. She would call up
They had done a very bad job with Congress on the re-authorization of the higher ed bill. The Carter administration was kind of unraveling. It was pretty clear when I went there that he wasn't going to go anywhere. I don't think it was crystal clear, but he wasn't paying much attention to this department. I tried to orient it toward the university world and somewhat away from political and social issues.
Shirley was a great enthusiast for bilingual education. She had actually been a judge in Lau vs. the Board of Education, or heard the appeal or something. There wasn't any evidence that it was doing anybody any good. In fact, several congressmen came in to Shirley and said, "You lost the election for us with that bilingual nonsense." They were pretty mad. She's an able, effective woman, not too experienced in education.
The department had been put together kind of hastily and sloppily. It had too many assistant secretaries; every special interest had been given one. We had one for non-public education, who had no real function. We had one for the handicapped. We had two in my general area; there was an assistant secretary for research and development as well as for higher ed, and we had research libraries in the National Center for Education Statistics, in which I had actually been moderately active. I probably had fifty people and many, many millions, but I didn't have a chance to make much of an impact on it. I kind of said I would stay on and help in the transition--I was acting secretary for a few days between--but people in the White House apparently vetoed that. I don't think Reagan ever knew anything about it. People I have talked to since said they didn't really even know who I was or that I had had any connection with Reagan.
So I left; not left, I was fired when the new administration came in. I didn't want to stay as assistant secretary, but I told the new secretary I would help for a while, and I didn't.
University of Maryland, College Park (1981-1986)
BowkerThen I went out to the University of Maryland at College Park as dean of the School of Public Affairs (1981-1984). I was recruited to start a school from scratch, which was a lot of fun, actually, something like the School of Public Policy at Berkeley. It was quite similar in size and scope. I enjoyed that. I recruited new faculty; I had one person from Maryland. I started a new program, a new Master's degree. I came and visited all the programs, including the one here, the Kennedy School at Harvard; the Woodrow Wilson School; the Johnson School; the school at Minnesota, the Humphrey School; the School of Carnegie-Mellon. There were a bunch of them.
I started that school, and it's really one of the best in the country now.
Nathan
Was that around '82?
Bowker
I think we may have opened in '82. I left here in '80.
Nathan
And you were at the federal department for a while.
Bowker
Until January, '81, probably. I was at Maryland for about five years, so I think I probably went there in March or April of '81. I took another look at the University of Massachusetts and decided it was even less for me then than it had been before, though I'm sure they would have appointed me.
After I had been at Maryland for about three years, the school was up and running (Frank Levy, who had been here in this school, was a member of that faculty). They were very, very good. It was fun to start new faculty from the beginning, some political scientists, some economists, some policy people. The president of the University of Maryland asked me to come and work as acting vice president for the year, and so I did that. I was the executive vice president of the University of Maryland for about two years (1984-1986), either acting or in title. I decided I didn't like it and that he wasn't doing a particularly good job. [laughs] We had kind of a parting of the ways.
Additional Posts
BowkerI have since then been a professor at the City University of New York, vice president of the Research Foundation (1986), and involved in various activities in executive searching or in policy development with the board of the City University or the Board of Education. This time Bob Wagner, Jr., is the chairman of the board. Of course, I had been very friendly with the Wagners through the years. In fact, he used to come around the house some when he was a student and I was in New York. We lived not very far from Gracie Mansion. So we knew Bob, and we knew Duncan, his brother, who visited us here at Berkeley. We kept in touch with him, and he had asked me to help out.
I chaired the search committee for superintendent of schools twice in New York, once when we appointed Richard Green and once when we appointed Joseph Fernandez. I was more or less responsible for Ann Reynolds' move from here to there to head the City University.
Nathan
Did you know Ann Reynolds when she was in California?
Bowker
Oh, sure. We looked into her record here pretty thoroughly and thought she got kind of a bad deal from the press. Be that as it may, she's there now. And I've helped with three or four presidents. I've tried to work between the university and the school system some. The CUNY Research Foundation, of which I'm vice president, is essentially the administrative agency for research contracts and grants for the whole city college system. Although none of the individual campuses are very big operators--maybe some run $20 to $30 million a year--in toto the system runs to $100 or $150 million in grants and contracts. However, that is more or less an advisory role; I did not have line responsibilities there.
Nathan
You consult when they are writing up the grant proposals?
Bowker
Oh, not too much. I looked at some and made suggestions more about new funding opportunities. I sat on that board and on a couple of other administrative boards in New York.
In terms of my duties, I did a long analysis of terms of office and conditions of hiring of presidents. There are nineteen or twenty presidents in the city university system. So personnel activities in terms of senior officers, vice presidents, presidents, superintendent of schools was mostly what I did--help
Nathan
When you do the searching, does it involve their record and meeting them?
Bowker
Usually, yes. In the case of the superintendent of schools, what you really do is look at the successful urban superintendents around the country, and that's not a very long list. [laughs] It's often hard to get people interested; most people aren't interested in the job. In the case of the university presidency, people are nominated and apply. There's a certain amount of screening that goes on. I attend all the interviews and presided over the ones when I was chairman. It's a lot of work; both of those searches were a lot of work. It involves checking and finding out things, visiting people on their home ground or seeing that they are visited; I don't do all the visiting myself.
Nathan
Do you find that you enjoy that?
Bowker
Yes, I enjoyed that. In the case of Ann Reynolds, since she was so controversial, I sent the board out to nose around. They talked to the governor, and the speaker, and members of her board, and other educators.
##
Nathan
The press reports were one thing; and perhaps the facts were something else involving her and the budgetary decisions?
Bowker
Salary, yes. Her board approved of salaries, and they're much less than those people in the University of California got, but they got into some political troubles, partly because the chairman of her board had misrepresented her own credentials. She had said she had an associate in arts degree from a community college, which she didn't have. When the L.A. [Los Angeles] Times went after her, she said it didn't really matter. The reason she was made chairman of the board was because her husband was a major contributor to Governor George Deukmejian's campaigns. People said, "How can this dumb woman pay everybody all these high salaries?" Then she said she didn't approve the salaries and didn't know anything about them, all of which was a lie.
Nathan
Do you think Ann Reynolds is doing a good job?
Bowker
Yes, I do. Not everyone at the University of California liked her. She was always sort of edging in on their turf. I think she's good. I have lunch with her scheduled for a couple of days
Nathan
Happy birthday.
Bowker
Thank you. I think it's probably time for me to retire or at least--
Nathan
Maybe pick and choose what you want to do?
Bowker
At the moment I'm president of the Cosmos Club of Washington, which is actually quite a distinguished club and something of an honor. You've probably never heard of it.
Nathan
I have, yes.
Bowker
That's going to keep me very busy this year. There's quite a lot to do there. After this year, then I'll be seventy-three, and I really should retire. [laughs] Stop all this.
Nathan
What's magic about seventy-three?
Bowker
I don't know. I'm getting too old to work.
Nathan
You can still come out for the Berkeley Fellows dinner?
Bowker
I always have every year since I left; this is the eleventh year. So, yes, I'll be out in February. But that's just a one-week trip. My children are all out here, so I visit them. They'll give a party for me Sunday, and then we'll go home Monday. I usually don't stay for my birthday. I did for my seventieth, when we had a party here in Berkeley. Really because of this [interview] I stayed over a week; I wanted to get this started and maybe done.
Work on the Washington, D.C., Center
BowkerI've had a good, interesting time since I left. The University has given me an office in Washington in the building they own there, so I have a small office. Theoretically I'm sort of involved in helping this Washington Center get going, but it doesn't seem to be going very fast.
Nathan
What is the Washington Center?
The University of California has a committee planning a center which would contain a number of internship programs which are now run by UCLA, Davis, and I think Santa Barbara. These are formal academic programs. The Washington Center will have a think tank; it will be an all-University presence; it will contain the Washington office; it will contain space for visiting faculty--office space or perhaps some residence space. There's a fairly detailed plan about this [demonstrates] thick, but they kicked it around so long we got into a financial crisis before the thing was built.
Nathan
Would this be primarily political science, journalism--?
Bowker
Yes, although some people could work at the Smithsonian in art history or at the Library of Congress. There are a couple of programs that would be similar, one run by Stanford and one run by Cornell, but I don't really think I'm going to live long enough to see this thing get going.
I don't know about these things here [referring to a list].
Some Honors and Activities
NathanWe can append this list; there are so many activities and honors.
Bowker
The honors that I have that really mean something are half a dozen honorary degrees. I'll send those to you. The presidency of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the presidency of the American Statistical Association [ASA] came on early in my career in the sixties. I'll send you a better list. For example, in 1965 it says, "Institute of Mathematical Statistics." I was president of that.
Nathan
I see I have you listed wrongly as treasurer. I'd be glad to have your own list.
Bowker
I can send you a better biography. The Phi Beta Kappa thing is sort of amusing. I was never a member of Phi Beta Kappa, because MIT doesn't have it. Mrs. Bowker wasn't, either. So when I was appointed chancellor at Berkeley they had a special meeting, and we were elected and so forth, along with Earl Warren, who was still alive. I said I wasn't a member because MIT didn't have it, and Wilson College, where Mrs. Bowker went, never had it. Then Earl Warren got up and said he was very pleased to get it, too,
Nathan
That was gracious of him.
Bowker
Oh, a very nice man. He died shortly thereafter, actually. He must have been a wonderful man. I never knew him. Mike Heyman was very, very fond of him.
So the Phi Beta Kappa was part of my Berkeley chapter. Of course, Sandy Elberg had me elected. [laughs] He runs Phi Beta Kappa here.
III - Family and Early Years
Boyhood in New England
[Interview 3: September 5, 1991]##
NathanPerhaps we could start with your very early years and something about your family.
Bowker
I was born in a small town in Massachusetts, Winchendon. My parents were really living at the time in Washington, D.C., where my father was already working at the Bureau of Standards. However, my mother and father were both born in the same small town, a village called Baldwinville, adjacent to Winchendon, which was the metropolis that had a hospital. But we had a summer home on a lake in Winchenden, and she had gone home to be with her mother, I guess, during the end of her pregnancy and the birth.
I did spend all my summers as a child either in the lake or in the town and have a lot of memories of it. Both of my grandfathers--my mother's father I never knew--had been from very old New England families going back before the Revolution. Both of my grandmothers had come to this country from Canada, were immigrants, more or less. I never knew my father's mother, but his father was alive, and my mother's mother was very close to the family and in fact lived with us part of the time and was in charge of me most of the summers when I was old enough to be away from my family. So I spent part of the summers with her, and then the family would join us.
I don't know how much it influenced my career, but it gave me a sense of small town culture, a town in which, if you walked up and down the main street, you would know who lived in every house. Most of them were relatives or distant relatives, and it had a kind of quality of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," in a sense.
My grandmother had been one of nine. My father had not come from a big family, but it did have a kind of sense of extended family.
Nathan
And of course everybody knew whose kid you were?
Bowker
Everybody knew whose kid you were, and you knew everything about everybody else, their foibles and so forth. The gossip was sort of like the academic world [laughs] in some ways, I suppose.
Living in Washington, D.C.
BowkerLife in Washington, D.C., where we lived, was, I suppose, kind of like the life in Walnut Creek or Palo Alto; the Washington where we lived was a standard suburbia. We lived quite near the Bureau of Standards, where my father worked, to be sure, but there were houses and schools, and everybody had cars. Of course the schools were segregated. It was much like the kind of life you'd find, I suppose, in suburbia today, so I really grew up in a congenial neighborhood.
Most of our family friends in Washington were professionals. Our closest friends were colleagues at the Bureau of Standards, most of them scientists or engineers. In a way, the life values of those people were much like academic people. The transition from that life into the academic world didn't seem very abrupt. I think government service, and the Bureau of Standards in particular, was somewhat different in those days from what it is today, probably a higher level of people on the whole. There were many fairly well-known scientists.
Mother's Interests and Forebears
NathanAt home were there many books, magazines, and papers around?
Bowker
Yes. My mother particularly was a voracious reader. She had gone to Smith College and was a woman of considerable ability and, somewhat unusual, had gotten married and had a family. None of
Nathan
You were talking about your mother being a blue stocking.
Bowker
She wasn't exactly a blue stocking, but all of her friends were career women, many of them distinguished. Some of them were college professors. It's interesting that she graduated from college in 1914, and, with a couple of exceptions, all the people she lived with for four years, her housemates, were career people. She had a few friends who were married and had children.
Nathan
Did she have an advanced degree?
Bowker
No, just a college degree, but that was pretty unusual in 1914. Her mother, of course, had not been educated except at high school, although she was reasonably cultivated. She could recite poetry by lots and lots of American poets and things of that sort. My mother studied mainly foreign languages, history, and classics.
So my mother was a great reader, and I read a lot as a child. She read a lot, and my grandmother read a lot; the house was always full of books. Mother had been the youngest child of a fairly old man, second marriage. He had no children with his first wife. He had gone to an academy or something that wasn't exactly a college but something that evolved probably into a prep school.
He had gone to school, and he spent a lot of time educating and reading to her (my mother). She had been her father's darling as she grew up and was educated. He died while she was in college. He was quite a bit older than his second wife.
Nathan
Did your mother read to you?
Bowker
Yes, a lot. But I read fairly early, as she did. She read, I think, at two or three or four years old.
It wasn't, I suppose, a super highbrow household, but we read a lot of books and talked a lot. In Washington you talked a lot of politics, and you read the local papers no matter what goes on.
Nathan
Were you at all attracted to politics in your early years?
Bowker
Not a great deal, really. My childhood was colored to some extent by some very tragic events: the deaths of two sisters who died when they were about six or maybe a little younger than that, one
World War II and the Bureau of Standards
BowkerObviously science in World War II was extremely important. I was involved in it. The responsibility for the atomic bomb had been assigned to the Bureau of Standards originally, and a lot of the people involved in the early days of that would hang around the house or would come even when they moved down to Oak Ridge. One of our family's closest personal friends was General Leslie Groves' science advisor all through the war. He gave up his house in Washington, but he always stayed with us. I won't say we knew what was going on, but we knew more than we were supposed to. [laughs] I knew something, but I had no idea exactly what was going on.
It's an interesting history. It was totally beyond the capability of the Bureau of Standards, so the responsibility was then transferred to Van [Vannevar] Bush and Jim [James Bryant] Conant, who really fumbled it, more or less.
Nathan
In what way were you thinking that they fumbled it?
Bowker
Well, Conant was very doubtful if it was worth the commitment of resources. There are obviously a lot of things I didn't know first hand, but I've read since about the interaction between him and various people. I think it's fair to say, however, that the person who finally convinced most people to build the bomb, for whatever reasons, was Ernest Lawrence. I never knew him; I've just been reading this since. He was a full-blooded, right-wing, conservative American who believed that it could be done. The Jewish community and the refugee scientists really weren't
High School Interests
BowkerIn high school I was always a very good student, not terrifically popular. As today in suburbia, I suppose, the leading heroes of high school were the athletes. But I was quite active socially and reasonably popular and reasonably active in various clubs and activities.
Nathan
Were you especially interested in math or science, or other things?
Bowker
I always assumed I would be a scientist. It never occurred to me to be anything else. Looking back on it, one of my English teachers influenced me more than other people. One thing I did enjoy a lot in Washington was the kind of thing you see now on television more, the National Geographic lectures. I used to go to those every week for years, and I'd see Admiral Byrd, Amelia Earhart, Martin and Osa Johnson, and all kinds of people.
Science in those days had more to do with exploration and adventure. I was also a great fan of [Robert Hutchings] Goddard, the rocket man, and space. He wasn't around; he was at Clark University, which wasn't very far from our summer place, but I didn't know that. I used to read about him, and I would think of building rockets and things of that sort.
I worked at the Bureau of Standards some summers. I wasn't terribly interested in sports or music. I know I took music lessons for years. I did become interested in the theater in high school. I used to go downtown on Saturday afternoon at the matinees at the National Theater. They had a stock company, but they also had wonderful touring companies. The first musical I ever saw was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and I remember seeing Ethel Barrymore do "The Corn is Green." That was really a great experience. Lionel would come. I don't remember seeing John Barrymore in person. That interest was also reinforced later in Boston in college.
I have a very strong memory of the Depression. Many of my mother's cousins were essentially unemployed, and a lot of them were kind of marginal economically all of their lives. However, in these little towns everybody has a house, a yard, and a garden. Even if they're broke and have no money at all, somehow they manage to get along. I had a great-uncle who ran a gas station unsuccessfully, a store unsuccessfully, a restaurant unsuccessfully, and yet he always lived in the same house, and we always went there a lot. I had two great-aunts who lived in a great big, old, gorgeous house which had been a colonial inn. One of them worked part time as a librarian in the village of two or three hundred people in North Orange, Massachusetts.
So a lot of my mother's relatives had no money, and many of them came and stayed with us. We always had a house full of people during the Depression. Many of them went to Florida; I don't know why. They drove old beat-up, Okie type trucks and cars, and they'd come and spend a week or two with us on the way. Whether we gave them money, I don't know.
The Depression did have a very noticeable influence--not on us; my father had a government job, and we had lots of money. He often said he never was as well off later.
Nathan
Did it influence you in your attitudes towards income and money?
Bowker
It should have. Not much. No, I was never threatened economically personally, and in fact have never paid much attention to financial affairs, somewhat to my disadvantage, I find, in my old age.
Woodrow Wilson High School was, I suppose, an upper-middle class high school. I was in the first graduating class; it was a brand-new school. It remained for many years the elite high school of Washington, D.C., and it may still be.
Nathan
What course offerings did it have?
Bowker
I took Latin, German, English, chemistry, biology. I didn't take physics in high school.
Nathan
It was a college prep school?
Bowker
Oh, yes.
Nathan
Was there any interest in your family in private schools?
Bowker
We lived quite near the Friends school, and my sister, who died, had been entered there in a pre-school program. Whether she would have stayed there or not, I don't know. No great advantage in those years to the private schools. I had friends at St. Albans, which was nearby. I don't remember having friends at the Friends school, which was just a few blocks away, but I did have friends at St. Albans--boys I hung around with. The neighborhood was fairly near a Catholic church, and there were an awful lot of fairly big Catholic families in the neighborhood, so there were a lot of kids around. We played in the streets after dinner and before dinner. It was a very child-centered kind of neighborhood, which it isn't now, I must say. We went back there to live in that house when I left Berkeley.
Nathan
How did it seem to you?
Bowker
It was much better for adults--lots of restaurants, near the subway; you could go anywhere. There were still a half a dozen of the old Catholic families; there would be one member of the family living in the family home. There was a big private parochial school adjacent to all of these schools I went to. I went to really good schools.
Nathan
Were there any teachers you remember as being particularly stimulating to you?
Bowker
Yes, I remember my English teacher, whose name was Celia Oppenheimer. She was from an old distinguished Washington family. We were good friends. And my German teacher was kind of unhappy with us because we weren't militantly anti-Hitler in those high school days. She kept saying, "We've failed; we've failed." [laughs]
I did hang around school a lot, but I didn't have any great relationships with the math or science teachers. I don't suppose there were super people anyway; it's hard to get them. Many of the teachers had Ph.D.s or were studying for advanced degrees at George Washington University in the evening. They were good teachers.
Politics and Voting
BowkerI do remember, since we lived in a Catholic neighborhood, the election when Al Smith ran for president. I remember going to a Christmas pageant or something in the neighborhood where the
When I say, "voted for," in those years, if you were a government employee you were encouraged--more than encouraged; you really had to keep your voting residence in a state and vote. I mean, you were pushed to do that.
Nathan
Your voting residence was not Washington?
Bowker
No, Baldwinville, Massachusetts. Washington didn't have any vote.
Nathan
You as a voter could not have your home in Washington?
Bowker
No. The government of Washington was run by three commissioners appointed, I think, by the president. The chairman of the school board was appointed, I think, by the Supreme Court. I know it sounds dumb, but that's my recollection. One of my high school friends was from a really old Washington family. He was later president of National Geographic, which is an old Washington establishment thing. His mother, Mrs. Henry Gratton Doyle was always chairman of the school board, and her husband was a famous dean of George Washington University and once president of GW. They were neighbors. He's dead, apparently. I haven't seen him in recent years. It was a kind of nice, suburban growing up and good schools.
IV - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1937-1943)
BowkerMy family couldn't consider going anywhere but Massachusetts to college. When I got ready to go to college I looked at Cornell, but I decided to go to MIT.
Nathan
Was tuition a problem?
Bowker
It seemed fairly expensive. On the other hand, my cousin--a distant cousin--was chairman of the MIT Club of Washington, and the first year I had the Washington, D.C., scholarship to MIT. [laughs] But things were a little different in those days.
Importance of Family Status
BowkerI knew Nevitt Sanford a little bit. I don't know whether you remember who he was.
Nathan
I remember him, yes.
Bowker
Sanford was at Stanford when I was there, and later he came up here and had something to do with one of the clinical psychology schools around here or something like that. He was actually quite a distinguished man. I remember meeting him. We were talking, and he was saying that really, when he went to Virginia it was who you were that mattered--the family. Other things didn't matter very much.
That's some exaggeration of the way life was before World War II, but it certainly was true in this little town, for example. I was from one of the good families, and my character would be judged by my behavior and my father's character; not by his income, but whether he fooled around or whether he supported his family properly. It was always, "Roy is a good providah." [laughs] He took care of his family.
Nathan
Do you feel there was not too much social mobility?
Bowker
There wasn't a lot of difference. This had been traditionally a mill town and a manufacturing town, and the difference in income between the school workers and the moguls in the town was not that great. I had cousins who worked in the factories, and the owner of the factory, who was the head of the family who runs the only existing factory, was a friend of mine. They had a cottage on this lake.
Nathan
I was thinking that if you were not from a good family, regardless of income, would you ever be acceptable?
Bowker
I don't know. That whole area became overwhelmed by immigration, largely French Canadians. But you wouldn't have been taken into MIT if you hadn't been from a good family probably.
Now, the man who founded Worcester Tech had been a tin peddlar in this town, and people from this town, I think to this day, including my father and uncle, went to Worcester Tech at half tuition. I had some thought I should go there, but I decided to go to Cambridge instead. Well, it's a better institution by far.
##
Nathan
You were just telling me that MIT was a land-grant university and that ROTC was compulsory.
Bowker
Yes, when I went there for two years. I obviously took it.
Nathan
How did you like it?
Bowker
Hated it. It wasn't very serious.
Courses and Majors
BowkerMIT, when I went there, was very grueling, and if I left or flunked out, as many of my friends did, I thought it would be because of physical exhaustion rather than intellectual challenge. We had something like thirty-five hours of classes a week. We had drill, gym, English, mathematics, chemistry, and physics--both the lecture recitation and laboratory--our freshman year, and six hours of drafting a week. So at MIT you were kind of nine-to-five, except for one afternoon or one morning, depending on your schedule.
Nathan
When did you do your studying?
Bowker
At night. We studied all night. We worked very hard. It was kind of ridiculous. Many engineering schools were that way in that time, and they have since eased up a good deal. Maybe drafting was only four hours a week; whatever it was, I was terrible at it, and I was obviously not destined to be an engineer. My lab assistant in chemistry was the son of someone at the Bureau of Standards for whom I had worked one summer. He took me aside one day and said, "You're not an experimentalist," [laughs] which was true. I switched then to mathematics.
English Assignment and the Theater
BowkerGoing back to the theater, none of us took courses in English or economics or humanities as being serious subjects, of course, at MIT; we thought that was all pretty frivolous. But I did take a course my second year in theater, drama. You had to take English, and this was the one I picked. One of the things we had to do was go to plays and write reviews of them. I can't remember exactly whether it was four or six, but Boston had a WPA theater going at that time, and it was really a lot of fun.
I remember--and I have since looked it up, and it's really true--that I went to the opening night in Boston of "Our Town," Thornton Wilder's play; it opened in Boston. I always thought it was such a great play. And I went to the opening night of "The Man Who Came to Dinner." Alexander Woollcott was in the audience. We also went to other plays, Clifford Odets and various things. Our faculty were a little radical. It didn't take, of course, like Berkeley. [laughs]
No wonder you got hooked on the theater.
Bowker
Whenever I've had time--and I must say that at Berkeley not much, and when I was head of CUNY not much--but since then, whenever I've not been very busy I've gone to the theater a lot, and I do today. That comes both from my high school days and MIT.
Friends on the Faculty
BowkerAt MIT I became very friendly with lots of faculty.
Nathan
Are there any names of people you remember?
Bowker
The two statisticians who had a good deal of influence on me were George Wadsworth and Harold Freeman, but I was also friendly with the chairman of the Mathematics Department, Ted Martin; the young instructor named Kenneth Arnold, who is still a good friend; Norman Levinson, a very famous mathematician, we used to see. Not all of them--not Wadsworth--were, but many were Left and members of the Communist Party; that was sort of the specialty of the house in the Mathematics Department at MIT and in the Astronomy Department at Harvard. These were the two left-wing activities.
Nathan
Did they talk politics particularly?
Bowker
Oh, yes; they wanted me to join the Party.
Nathan
What held you back?
Bowker
I don't know; I didn't want to. It was sort of socially acceptable in these circles.
Nathan
How was it that you, as an undergraduate, became friendly with these teachers?
Bowker
Well, mathematics was fairly small; it was not a very big major in those days. There were only a handful of students in it, and now there is a major. I actually had an office--not as a student; I went to work, as my father became ill while I was at MIT. He was depressed and not working, so I applied for one of these NYA [National Youth Administration] jobs and got it, correcting papers and working around the department office. So I had a desk.
There were only two or three of us who were majors at the time, and they [the teachers] were glad to see young people. Here
Religious and Racial Discrimination
BowkerAnti-Semitism was an issue that came up. Growing up in Washington I didn't pay much attention to it, but by the time I left I became rather shocked at the treatment of blacks in Washington, D.C.--segregated schools and substantially inferior housing--although in many ways they were better off than they were in other parts of the country.
After the Civil War there had been a good deal of movement in improving the condition of blacks in Washington, and Howard University was opened by General Howard--there was a Howard School near where I lived, a segregated Black school--and some housing was built. There wasn't a great deal of segregation just after the Civil War. It was introduced mostly by Democrats and reinforced very much by Woodrow Wilson, who was the first southerner to be president after the Civil War.
When I say Democrats, the chairman of the district committee would always be Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia or the local congressman, and they sort of ran the District of Columbia. It was pretty thoroughly segregated when I was growing up.
Nathan
Seniority again?
Bowker
No, the local people from adjacent communities in Maryland and Virginia still have undue control over the affairs of the District of Columbia to this day in terms of taxes and transportation. The metro, for example, the BART of Washington, D.C., was superb as a service to Montgomery County [laughter] and so forth, and it's still true. The district doesn't have any clout.
I still remember when I went in to see the chairman of the Mathematics Department at MIT, and he said, "Bowker, why do you want to major in mathematics?" I said, "I don't know; I like the subject." He said, "You must be Jewish." I said, "Well, no, I'm not." "Okay, then, because if you were Jewish we'll never be able to place you." Now, this was a department that was predominantly
I had a friend who was the son of the local pharmacist, and I once took him to a party with me where he hadn't been invited. It wasn't an unusual thing to do in those days, but the family bawled me out: "We don't accept that kind of person here." So there was a certain amount of anti-Semitism, not in my family or even in my immediate circle, but very strong in the academic world before World War II. Harvard, particularly, was [anti-Semitic].
You had people like Norbert Wiener, his brother-in-law, Philip Franklin, and Norman Levinson, all of whom had been spurned by Harvard and were at MIT. It made MIT a very good department. Harvard has changed now.
So I was fairly liberal in those days politically, although I was not, when I graduated from college, in favor of the war [World War II]. I can't remember exactly. I remember when President Compton spoke at our graduation, strongly advocating intervention in the war, and we booed him. We were "America Firsters" or something. That soon became moot.
I went to work almost as soon as I graduated in war work on a project involving weather forecasting.
Nathan
This was when you were an assistant statistician?
Bowker
Yes, when I graduated at MIT.
Scholar's Life and Student Views
NathanBefore you graduated, did you have a job as a teaching assistant?
Bowker
Just a grader. I was a TA afterwards. One thing influenced me a good deal. I belonged to a fraternity, although I never enjoyed it very much, and after a couple of years I moved out, next door. I ate with them every day. I enjoyed the people, but I didn't enjoy the physical arrangements.
Our fraternity had a policy of having a tutor for freshmen, a graduate student who lived there free and whose job was to see the freshmen through. The tutor that we had was a physical chemist named Bernard Vonnegut, with whom I became very close. He was [author] Kurt's older brother, actually. Kurt used to come around some in those years, and I had no idea he'd be important. They were an Indianapolis family.
Toward the end of the evening Bernie always went down to a local cafe for a couple of beers, and I began to join him and his group. They were mostly graduate students, and they talked a lot about the life of scholarship and the life of scientists. There was a chemist named Epstein and another famous chemist named Walt Stockmeyer, who went first to MIT and then moved to Dartmouth. I did associate with a lot of graduate students in those days as well as some of my friends around MIT. I was pretty clear--not that there was much to do with mathematics in those days--that I was drifting toward the academic world more or less all along. It didn't seem inconsistent with what my parents had done.
I never had any particular ambition to be "big time." I don't suppose, in fact, that I had any real sense of the pecking order of American universities. My idea was that I would live in a seedy old New England house, maybe near Williams and be Mr. Chips. [laughs] Nothing ever turned out that way.
Nathan
Were women admitted to MIT at that time?
Bowker
Yes, we had some women. We had a woman in my class; I wonder what ever happened to her? I just went to my fiftieth reunion, and nobody could seem to dig her up. Maybe she was above or behind me. Yes, we had women and always have had; more now. It wasn't an issue.
Nathan
The notion of the tutor in the house to help the freshmen, that's a very interesting notion. How did it work?
Bowker
Fine. He tutored us. In addition to all these classes, there was one hour a week reserved for quizzes, and it alternated between physics and mathematics. The night before he prepped us for the exam. At night, in the early part of the evening, we could go in and ask him about homework. He went down to the bar about eleven.
Nathan
So if you were stuck on a problem--?
Bowker
We'd go ask him. It helped a lot. He was a good tutor, a good teacher.
Could anything like that happen at Berkeley, do you think?
Bowker
Oh, it could. I don't know whether a graduate student would live in a fraternity house at Berkeley.
Nathan
Well, there are dorms. It's a very appealing idea.
Bowker
Yes. This had been a tradition. I guess he was a member of the fraternity.
Nathan
What was the name of the fraternity?
Bowker
Kappa Sigma. David Saxon was there [at MIT]. He did belong to a fraternity, but then he got married, and I suppose he lived with his wife. One of my fraternity brothers, James Tyson, with whom I've been friendly through the years and who was a physics graduate student, was very friendly with David. I knew him slightly.
There was another physicist named George Vineyard, who was either director or co-director of Brookhaven. Once, when Vineyard was out here chairing a review committee of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the Saxons gave a party for the Vineyards and us and Sinsheimer, who was also in our class.
I haven't actually kept a lot of friends from college, one or two. One of the mathematicians to whom I was close has died.
I spent about two years, and I had a very good education at MIT, and they [the regulations] were really sort of flexible, since I wasn't especially interested in engineering. MIT has always been pretty heavy in science anyway. Until the last two presidents, in fact, they've always had physicists or businessmen or something as presidents. They never really had any engineers in recent history, and now they have two in a row. Still, a major emphasis today is on biology. They're putting an enormous number of resources into biological research because they think, and everybody thinks, that's where the action is going to be, even in technology and engineering in the future.
We were heavily involved in politics in college. Oh, the Spanish Civil War, of course, was very moving to our generation. I was quite Left in college, but not all the way, though enough so that I did have trouble with security clearances later on in life. My first wife, Elizabeth Rempfer, was, in fact, a graduate student at Harvard at the time. She was a student of Rulon and Truman Kelly, who were educational statisticians.
She was in the School of Education. Truman Kelly had once been at Stanford, and I got to know her partly through statistical circles and partly through left-wing circles. She wasn't, but her family were very active in the Left. Her brother-in-law was in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and her brother has been kind of a famous communist in some ways; he's a mathematician. Her father, in fact, had been fairly Left. He was a German banker and had gotten interested and went to Harvard. He opposed World War I and had a lot of trouble with that.
Nathan
Did she continue her studies after you were married?
Bowker
Not exactly. Well, she was studying as long as we were at MIT, but after a couple of years there I became disaffected with the project we were working on, statistical weather forecasting. I didn't think it was really very important or useful.
V - Columbia University (1943-1947)
Statistics Taught as a Serious Subject
BowkerHarold Freeman, one of my faculty friends, was then doing some consulting for the Statistical Research Group, so I went down there and interviewed and moved to Columbia University. That's where the statistical research group was. That particular group really had an enormous influence on me intellectually. Columbia was one of the few places where statistics was taught and was a serious subject in those years. That would not be true of either Berkeley or Stanford in those years.
Nathan
How do you account for that?
Bowker
It's sort of an offbeat subject, wasn't terribly well recognized. It had grown up in this country in a couple of places, Columbia being one of them, largely due to one man, Harold Hotelling, who was trained in mathematics but turned to mathematical economics and mathematical statistics. He had had students who had fanned out to some extent. The big impetus for statistics in this country came from schools of agriculture, with design of experiments and analysis of crop yields. Ames, Iowa, was a very leading place. Why nobody was in California is strange, but they just weren't any good out here.
Nathan
There is so much agriculture here.
Bowker
Well, they had some statistics in agriculture. Even today Davis has a group, but it's more or less a copy of the Berkeley group. It didn't thrive so much out here, but it did in North Carolina and Iowa. There were a few people at Ann Arbor, Michigan and at Iowa who came in sort of through the actuarial side, which was, of
Statistical Research Group, Applied Mathematics Panel (1943-1945)
BowkerNevertheless, Harold Hotelling was at Columbia and had been instrumental in forming this Statistical Research Group, which was part of the NDRC, National Defense Research Committee, which was part of Office of Scientific Research and Development, the operation that Van Bush ran. My father by now was working for Van Bush. He had come back to work and had worked in war work very hard all during the war. It had nothing to do with me, though.
This group was under the general supervision of Warren Weaver and Mina Rees. There were a number of groups. I believe Griffith Evans had brought Jerzy Neyman and Alfred Tarski to Berkeley by this time, but I don't really remember that for sure.
Nathan
This was still relatively early days for statistics?
Bowker
Here, yes. Hotelling had been at Stanford at one time but had left; he went to Columbia to the Economics Department. Anyway, he had a number of famous students, including Sam Wilks, who came out of Iowa but studied with Hotelling. Princeton was fairly active.
Allen Wallis was hired to work in this group. He had been an economist but had come East to work some with Hotelling on statistical questions. It became pretty clear that he was going to have to run the group if anything happened, so he really became the director, and Hotelling was called principal investigator. The group had as big a collection of people in my field as has ever been put together. It included people like Hotelling, Abraham Wald; Jack Wolfowitz; a fellow named Abraham Girshick, who was later the mainstay of the department at Stanford; a fellow named Jimmy Savage, who was the mainstay of the department at the University of Chicago; Ed Paulson; Herb Solomon, who was later at Stanford.
None of the Berkeley people were there, which is sort of strange, but Erich Lehmann and Joe Hodges, who are roughly my age, did operations research for the air force and were actually overseas. David Blackwell didn't come into the field until after
We also had some mathematicians. In addition to that, Allen, who was a statistician but also an economist, brought in Milton Friedman and George Stigler, both of whom have gotten Nobel Laureates in economics since. So it was a pretty stellar group all told. We worked very hard together, mostly on classified military problems.
I came to run the computing services as well as working on projects. I had done that at MIT, too. So I had already begun to do minor administrative chores, even as a graduate student.
Nathan
You were pretty accelerated. Do I pick up the feeling that there is such a things as critical mass in quality research?
Bowker
Yes, there was a critical mass. We had very good people.
Nathan
That must have been exciting.
Bowker
It really was. It was really great. Social life--well, the Ken Arnolds came down from MIT, and I spent a lot of time with them. I used to work with him one evening a week on something or other, and we'd have dinner. They had one of these great big apartments near Columbia with her sister and her husband. It was a big family. They were biologists, one at Columbia and one at Brooklyn College. There was another engineer from MIT who came down, Julian Bigelow, with whom we were friendly, and they were neighbors. My wife worked there, too, as kind of a secretary and on the computer.
Nathan
You were saying that your wife worked with your group at Columbia?
Bowker
Yes, she worked there. That was an experience that was really better than almost any graduate training. I worked on problems with the supervision of and cooperation with the best people in our field. It really was extremely stimulating and interesting. I don't know that I had much doubt at this time, but this settled in my mind that I would be a college professor and researcher.
A lot of the work we did had to do with weapons, optimum utilization of weapons and things of that sort, but some of it had to do with manufacturing of war materials and war goods, ammunition and products of various sorts. The field became known as quality control and sampling inspection, and I did a lot of
National Research Council Fellowship and Work at Chapel Hill (1945-1946)
BowkerAs the war ended, there was a program of the National Research Council to take people whose graduate work had been interrupted by the war, so I had a fellowship to study for a year afterwards from the National Research Council.
The man I had been working on my dissertation with had moved to North Carolina. He was not part of this group. He was a famous Chinese statistician, P. L. Hsu; he has since died. Erich Lehmann here actually wrote the obituary of him, which we have. After a year at Columbia, I've forgotten the exact year of my fellowship, I moved down to Chapel Hill.
Nathan
One quarter in 1946 is what I have.
Bowker
I guess it was in '45-'46 I had a fellowship, and then that summer R. A. Fisher, who was one of the founders of statistics in England, was lecturing at a special summer session in North Carolina. I went down to Raleigh for the summer and then went to Chapel Hill in the fall for just a quarter to finish up my dissertation with Hsu.
Nathan
How long had you been working on your dissertation at Columbia? You had been advanced to candidacy at Columbia?
Bowker
Oh, I don't know. Sometime during that year. I had pretty much taken the course work as I went along, so I probably was working on the dissertation and studying for the exam during the year '45-'46. I actually didn't finish the dissertation then until a couple of years later. I think my Ph.D. was officially awarded in '49. P. L. Hsu was a brilliant man. He had studied in England and came over here. Erich Lehmann studied with him, and other people did. But he decided to go back to China.
In the meantime, Allen Wallis had been on the faculty at Stanford and had come back to Stanford to start a committee to promote statistics there. Al Eurich was the vice president of Stanford, who had some interest in statistics and knew what it was a little better. His field was education, but he had been involved in testing. Fred Terman had come back to Stanford after
VI - Stanford University (1947-1963)
BowkerMina Rees by now had moved--this was the "old boy and old girl" network if there ever was one, but that's the way life was in those days--to the Office of Naval Research. She had been a career faculty member at Hunter College. A great woman and a great mathematician; well, she wasn't really a great mathematician, but a great figure in mathematics. She had been willing to finance some continuations of the military work on acceptance sampling.
I can't remember exactly, but I think Allen got a grant for that purpose with the understanding that he wasn't going to do it, but he would get people to do it. There was an expert in that general area at Stanford named Gene Grant.
Running a Project and Starting a Statistics Department
BowkerAnyway, they decided to approach me about coming to Stanford to run this project, to be in the Mathematics Department and to start organizing a program in statistics. The chief negotiator was somehow Fred Terman, although Allen was behind the scenes. He and I met and came to an agreement, so after a quarter at Chapel Hill, although I had not at the time finished my Ph.D., I came on out to Stanford and undertook to run this project and to start a department.
By this time Neyman was pretty well ensconced, so it is possible that he came out to Berkeley just before the war. Actually, he was in the Mathematics Department, which at Berkeley was very broad, not narrowly devoted to pure mathematics as many
Nathan
How did a nice Massachusetts boy like you come out to California?
Bowker
It was kind of wild.
Nathan
Did you feel very bold?
Bowker
Yes. Well, it was nip and tuck. Many people thought it was a foolish move. On the other hand, I was sought after. I didn't look for this job; I was sought after, and that's always a big plus, I think. One of the things I find so distasteful today about these presidential searches is when the presidency of the University of California is opened, you have to fill out an application form. I mean, you have to indicate an interest, and you have to be a candidate. In my case there weren't any candidates, there wasn't any screening; a bunch of people looked around at who they thought could do this job, decided that I could, and asked me. And I said yes. That's pretty influential, especially when they're people like Wallis and Terman.
Was it sensible to come out here? Well [laughs], yes, it turned out to be a great success. But I still remember there were some faculty members at Stanford--two in particular, Spencer and Schaeffer in mathematics, who must have been a little older than I was, because Don Spencer was actually one of my teachers at MIT; but he wasn't that much older. We used to sit around and talk about whether Stanford would amount to anything or not, and Schaeffer decided it wouldn't, it was hopeless, and left and went to Wisconsin. [laughter] Spencer left after a while and went to Princeton because he was made an offer; he was sought after.
Nathan
Were you at all attracted by the idea of creating something?
Bowker
Yes, that did have some attraction to me. I always liked Al Eurich, and I found working with him rewarding. On the other hand, the president at that time was named Donald Tresidder, and he soon died. Wally Sterling was appointed, and I still remember when he was appointed. I was still an assistant professor, and a fellow named Doug Whitaker, later vice president of Rockefeller University, a biologist, was made provost.
In the meantime, Wallis left before I got here, really, and went to Chicago, where he'd always kind of wanted to be. He was from the Chicago School of Economics, and he and Milton and George were all students of Frank Knight. They were all there together,
Now, statistics is a relatively new discipline. I started out building the group at Stanford. I had to ask for separate departmental status fairly early on because the Math Department was not really interested, as was the Math Department at Berkeley.
Nathan
Did you have any problem getting money to support the FTEs that you needed?
Bowker
Well, at Stanford FTE isn't a concept; money is.
Intelligent Use of Government Money
BowkerFred Terman had the view that the intelligent use of government money in those days, when things were pretty easy, meant it could be used to support faculty and could be used to support a department. So in the first few years of the department most of us were heavily in a percentage on what would be called soft money, even though some of us had tenure-bearing ranks. That's really how Terman built the Engineering School.
He jumped into federal money much harder and faster than Berkeley, aside from the laboratories, or Harvard or most places, and had lots and lots of federal money all over the place. He brought people in, and the good ones were appointed to the faculty. And we had graduate students like David Packard and William Hewlett, and Russell and Sig Varian.
Terman decided to build the tube industry here and did. Berkeley was much more conservative in those years. On the other hand, it had lots more money than Stanford. The real question was whether Stanford--and I don't know how much it would have influenced me, actually--would try to go first rate or whether it would continue as a kind of respected regional university, sort of in the league of USC and UOP [University of the Pacific]. I don't suppose they would like to have it put in those terms. Stanford when I went there was first rate in physics; it was first rate in psychology; it was strong in engineering; it had some strength in English and history. The Business School was pretty pedestrian. The Engineering School had some bright spots; from the beginning
So Wally came in, and I hardly knew what it meant. He had a long talk with me about, "Do you think we can really go first rate?"
Nathan
What did you say?
Bowker
"Sure, why not?" but I didn't know what I was talking about. Finally he said, "Is there any point in doing anything else in this environment?" So he decided to go for broke. The way they did it was with government money largely. That isn't understood. In the early years some income from the land came along. I never thought that was important.
Some Consequences of Berkeley's Loyalty Oath
BowkerI was asked whether I could make our department one of the most famous ones in the country, and it was nip and tuck until the Berkeley loyalty oath, curiously enough. The Berkeley oath shook this group enough so that I became confident that we could. And we were; we did. I think Berkeley and Stanford today, along with Chicago, would be the leading Departments of Statistics in the country, at least by the ranking.
Nathan
Could you go into a little detail about how the loyalty oath helped you?
Bowker
By this time I had started to become a fairly large operator in terms of government funds, not only in statistics but in mathematics and some related fields of social science, particularly mathematical economics. I had lumped a lot of this activity into something called the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory, which was a big, multi-million dollar operation financed largely by the Office of Naval Research.
One of the statisticians' statisticians is a fellow named Charles Stein. He had left Berkeley possibly before the oath but would be unwilling to come back to Berkeley; he went to Chicago. So we recruited him to come to Stanford, and that was a big coup. Erich Lehmann took a leave of absence and came down and taught for a year, and we negotiated with him, but he didn't stay. David Blackwell spent a couple of years at Stanford, finally deciding it
But in mathematics, Paul Garabedian, who was really a big figure in our activities, left and came down. Hans Levy came down for a year. So we had a lot of talent, and it sort of gave a shot in the arm to the whole university in a way. Wolfgang Panofsky came down to run the linear accelerator. I had nothing to do with that; I did, actually. It's a little hard to explain how Stanford was run in those days, but it was run by a clique. The clique consisted of the provost, a few deans, and a few very strong department chairmen. We made the decisions.
Nathan
Did you find yourself in this clique?
Bowker
I was in the clique. I knew I was in the clique when I was elected to the co-op board; that was hands-on. [laughter] The co-op board was sort of a hit here for a while. I remember we would meet jointly with the Berkeley board, and [Robert] Aaron Gordon was always chairman. [laughs] He was a big figure; it wasn't quite as much of a clique.
Nathan
When you first were working to establish a separate Department of Statistics you were still an assistant professor without tenure?
Bowker
Yes. I guess I didn't have tenure.
Nathan
That seems kind of advanced for someone in that position.
Bowker
Yes. I used to explain that to the students here at Berkeley. I'm a great believer in student power. I was a department chair before I had my Ph.D.
Nathan
Remarkable.
Faculty: Young Ones from Eastern U.S., Seniors from Europe
BowkerYou see, right after World War II there was an enormous shortage of faculty of all sorts, and a whole bunch of us who were young--most people had their Ph.D.s but not everybody did--came out to Stanford from the East. For example, Wallis had been in the Economics Department, and I was put in the Math Department. Well, the Economics Department of course immediately demanded that they had to have a statistician to replace Wallis. I worked with them, and we recruited Kenneth Arrow, who had been a fellow graduate
There were a whole bunch of us who were about the same age, about the same age as some senior graduate students, and we formed a kind of community that was fairly friendly. We were really in great demand. The GI Bill was filling in. So I was lucky to go up very fast, really. My future at Stanford was never in doubt, in my mind at least. I was a big wheel. [laughs] I did get a Ph.D., and I was running a multi-million-dollar laboratory. I was also really half-way running the Mathematics Department after a few years because it was so chaotically run and needed better management, and it needed the kind of infusion of federal funds that I was bringing in.
I helped bring in a lot of these senior Europeans. George Polya and Gabor Sego were there, but I brought in Charles Loewner and Stephen Bergman; helped support a very distinguished appointment, Max Shiffer, et cetera. Paul Garabedian was there. And I did other things. Patrick Suppes, who is a very distinguished philosopher and logician, began to work with us. He became interested in some of our problems and then branched out into computerized learning theory and has been a major figure in that field. A lot of the mathematical economists were there, attracted by Ken Arrow, whom I had helped to hire. Suppes got interested in learning theory, and we had a very distinguished group at one time, including Dick Atkinson, now an old friend, whom I recruited from UCLA and who is now the chancellor at UC San Diego.
Not everything was institutionalized, but most things were. It was really a big operation and a very good one in mathematics. I took a year off and went back to Columbia.
Joint Appointments
BowkerWell, maybe there are a couple of other things. One of the techniques I used in building the department was a whole series of joint appointments. Quinn McNemar was already there as a statistician in the Psychology Department, and I made him a joint appointment. Arrow was more of a joint appointment.
Nathan
What was the advantage of the joint appointment?
There are two advantages. One was that it made it easier to coordinate. One of the problems with statistics, and it's true here to some extent, is that psychology, sociology, public health --all the departments want to teach their own elementary courses, and they are taught ordinarily by people who are fair statisticians and practitioners but are fairly applied. The standard view of our profession is that you're better off to have your basic statistics taught by the professionals in the field. If you have joint appointments, nobody has such a vested interested in one department or another. It also gives you an increased number of people. It gives you a lot of influence all over the university.
In fields where there wasn't very much statistics, like education, the joint appointments offered them an opportunity to get very good people they wouldn't be able to get in psychology and economics. It led more to cooperation. The only one we never cracked, and they never cracked here, either, was the Business School; it's always had its own. It's always insisted on having its own.
Nathan
Are there any disadvantages to joint appointments to the departments?
Bowker
Oh, it takes a little extra administrative trouble, and sometimes people's loyalties are mixed. Stanford was a small enough place; here [at Berkeley] it's harder, actually. Here the departmental mechanisms are so much more inbred. There, I think there were many of us who would take a universitywide point of view on things. Of course, I was fighting hard to get enough elementary teaching for my statisticians to keep a department at critical size, and that probably was helpful in doing it.
I think it was helpful intellectually. For example, many of the students I had in the early days in my courses in statistics, people who were my age or a little junior or senior, now are very important in psychology. Wayne Holzman and Lyle Jones are a couple of names that come to mind, very distinguished people, one at Texas and one at Chapel Hill. I had a number of economists--Harvey Wagner, who is now at Yale. So people who were interested in statistics could drift over and work with us, even though they got Ph.D.s in other subjects. I remember a student I had, Claude Brinegar, who went to work for Union Oil and was federal Secretary of Transportation later on. His wife was a secretary in the College of Letters and Science called Humanities and Science, and she kept raising my salary. I always thought I was greatly indebted to her. She'd say, "You ought to make as much as Ken
So it helped interdisciplinary worked. It's sort of vanished now. It's also true that when I was a graduate student, mathematical economics and mathematical statistics were much closer as subjects than they are today. We all took the same courses and worked on the same problems.
Loyalty to the Discipline
NathanYou have traced the careers of various people. First they're at Columbia, then they're at Stanford, Chicago; they're moving a lot. Is there any issue of institutional loyalty? Did it become a problem that people are so mobile now?
Bowker
I think it is something of a problem. There are people whose loyalty is primarily to their discipline, and there are people who become totally loyal and good citizens of a campus. It is a problem. I think both Stanford and Berkeley have enough people who make their whole careers here and are loyal to the institution, so it isn't a critical problem.
Nathan
I was wondering about some Academic Senate problems--say, campus government and universitywide issues--and how much interest people would have when they're coming and going.
Bowker
I was of course very much influenced by Fred Terman, and he was totally devoted to Stanford. But he really viewed the academic world as a highly competitive one. I've done some talking about his style, and I want to talk more about it as I move into the central administration at Stanford, because he also had an enormous influence on me. One of his famous statements is, "The academic administration is something like intercollegiate athletics, except there are no rules." [laughter] He was a real bandit in some ways. He really believed in competitive bargaining, hiring the best, and doing what it took to get them. He is the one who made Stanford what it is today, in my opinion.
Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory
##
BowkerThere are a couple of points about the Statistics Department at Stanford which I would like to touch on and then go on to more general things about Stanford.
It was my idea in building the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory to use the SRG--Statistical Research Group--as a model. That meant that while it couldn't be the same, we would have projects; we would have particular organized activities. The continuation of work on sampling inspection was one of them, and there were several others, some of which were of military significance, most of which were not. These were funded by government grants and contracts.
The groups of people working on the projects, of course, were always directed by faculty; but it meant that we had visitors, research associates, and research assistants, all of whom were graduate students. We had a building large enough so that most of the faculty members and most of the students and research associates all had offices. There was a community of interest. Sequoia Hall at Stanford housed the Statistics Department and part of the Mathematics Department. The Serra House had the mathematical economists, and we had a building also nearby for Suppes and his activities in computer-assisted instruction. So we had a series of buildings, old dormitories. One was an old residence, and Sequoia was an old dormitory that was structurally unsound, so they took off the top story and what had been a two-story dormitory became one story. Before that we were in the old president's residence, which was called The Knoll and had been the residence of Ray Lyman Wilbur. The president's residence now is the Herbert Hoover residence--the Lou Henry Hoover House--built by the Hoovers when they lived at Stanford and before he decided to become president of something more important than Stanford [laughs].
So it really was a high point of graduate work for those people who were there. It's nowhere near as pleasant and attractive now as it was then, nor was it ever really that attractive here at Berkeley, although Neyman tried some to create a community. They were in Dwinelle Hall, for one thing, which was awful. Before that, it seemed to me they were in the building west of Cowell, was it Durant Hall? Is that possible? Anyway, in Dwinelle it was sort of hard to have common areas and so forth. I don't know that all that is important, but it was true that we had a series of communities that were fairly inbred, and we saw each
Nathan
At Stanford were there any visitors or foreign students?
Bowker
Lots of visitors and some foreign students; we always had a handful of Indians and some students from Europe, but lots of visitors from the University of Washington. I remember especially Birnbaum, a whole bunch of people came. Occasionally people would come even though it was from Berkeley. Erich Lehmann came for a year, and Hans Levy came for a year, as I said, but that was really because of the oath and the dissatisfaction with things here. But we always had four or five visitors, particularly from the universities that were likely in the future to send us graduate students; so we built up our graduate student body that way.
We had government money to finance most of these activities.This was a model that Terman had introduced. He built up electrical engineering and other branches of engineering that way, and in addition to that there was a very large research institute, called the Microwave Laboratory, jointly with physics, which was heavily government-financed and had lots of graduate students and so forth. I suppose in some ways it was similar to Lawrence Berkeley Lab, but this was all in mathematics, and we were early on jumping into government money in a big way.
Relations with Industry and Government
NathanDid you have special contacts within the government?
Bowker
Yes, we cultivated them. But, as I say, Mina Rees was head of mathematical science and then deputy director of the Office of Naval Research. It depends on the productivity of the investigator, so in the end each person really helped. We had more projects--that can't be done again, but it could be done in those years, and it was very, very productive.
Another thing Terman introduced was instruction by television, and we participated in that. UC Berkeley has a little bit of it.
Nathan
What do you think of that system?
This system is different from the others. A group of students in a local laboratory or in a local industrial lab would be in a room, and the lecturer would talk before television. They could interrupt and ask questions by telephone; so they were telephone-interruptible. They were actually televisions. There was a little bit of that between Davis and Livermore and a couple of places like that, but Terman really pioneered that.
We charged double or triple tuition to the local industries who paid it, so it actually made money. We didn't give elementary courses; these were advanced courses, people working for masters' degrees. You couldn't get a Ph.D. that way, but you could get a master's degree. It was a money-maker, and it also enabled us to give masters' degrees to lots of people in local industry as the technological industry and the Stanford Industrial Park were developing.
So there were lots of ways that we related to both industry and government. People who studied this have pointed out some disadvantages. If you compare the Engineering School at Stanford with the one at Berkeley, they're probably roughly equivalent in quality, and that means close to the top in the country. On the other hand, Stanford wouldn't have very much development in anything that the federal government wouldn't support, like, say, road construction or civil engineering. Oh, they had some, but then, you usually find that more typically in land-grant universities anyway. I mean, this University, Berkeley, traditionally has had to have engineers for roads, sewer systems, and whatever the state needs, so they've done that. In the areas in which Terman chose to operate, those departments were close to the top in the country. He did go into aeronautical, and of course had mechanical and some civil engineering.
Computer Center and Department of Computer Science
BowkerKind of early on in the game, he and I talked together about starting a computer center. There is some history of that. There was one of the very early IBM machines, and then I helped negotiate gifts from the companies and got the equipment going. A lot of it was paid for by charges from local projects. We asked Professor Jack Herriot of the Mathematics Department to be the co-director of it with, I think, Professor Alan Peterson in engineering. I told Fred Terman that I thought we really should move into a full academic Department of Computer Science. I turned out to be right. I wasn't absolutely sure I knew what I
It was interesting. We decided to go after George Forsythe at UCLA to head this thing up. UCLA had an enormous head-start in computing; it had been the center of something called the Western Regional Computer Center, financed by the Bureau of Standards, although it was mostly by pass-through money from the Department of Defense. But this thing was breaking up for political reasons, which had nothing to do with its excellence. They had many of the famous people in computing, some who came to Berkeley. UCLA sort of dropped the ball. I was always kind of envious of that operation anyway.
Nathan
Did they have lots of wonderful equipment? Was that part of it?
Bowker
They had the equipment. Their equipment probably would have been obsolete fairly soon, but they had the talent that has probably fueled most of the computing activities around the West Coast for a good many years, including people who have gone to Cal Tech, Berkeley, and other places. They didn't see it as an important discipline, and they put it in the Math Department. Forsythe himself was offered a regular faculty position when this thing blew up. The reason it blew up was that Secretary Charles Wilson --"What's good for General Motors is good for the country"--decided that he would not put federal Defense Department money through other agencies. He was especially mad at the Bureau of Standards because they were picking on a battery additive called ADX2, which was a fraud; but he said this just showed how anti-business they were.
Anyway, he began to pull the funding. If UCLA had jumped they could have found other funding and so forth, but they didn't. So we got Forsythe to come to Stanford. He was a man of great vision. We promised him essentially a separate department, but for a year or so he was head of a group in the Math Department, which had autonomy--made its own appointments--and has become a world center in artificial intelligence. Then we did organize it separately, and then it became the computer center, and the Department of Computer Science was set up in Letters and Science.
I guess that hadn't gotten going until after I came back from Columbia. While I was at Columbia I was offered the directorship
Nathan
Was the Courant Institute named for someone?
Bowker
Richard Courant, the famous mathematician.
Nathan
Why did that not appeal?
Bowker
It had some appeal. It was similar to the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory. It had no probability or statistics; it had nothing that I was professionally interested in. But it was at that time a rival of Stanford in applied mathematics and in classical analysis, and it's a very significant institute. There's a historian of mathematics who lives in Berkeley whose name is Constance Reed, Julia Robinson's sister. She has written three rather famous books: one on Hilbert, who was the great father of modern mathematics; Courant, who was his pupil; and Neyman. [laughs]
Do you know who Julia Robinson is? She is the wife of Rafael Robinson, who is a professor of mathematics, and she herself was a very famous mathematician. She was elected to the National Academy of Science but never was a member of the Berkeley faculty. Toward the end of her career she agreed to become a part-time faculty member at Berkeley. Rafael was in the Faculty Club at lunch yesterday, so I guess they're still around; but they're both probably over retirement age. She is one of the world-famous mathematicians who was married to a faculty member here and therefore couldn't be a member of the faculty.
Nathan
I think that rule has finally been rescinded.
Bowker
Yes, indeed, it has.
Professional Honors and the Move to Administration
BowkerI talked to Fred, and I decided at the time that I really would probably leave statistics as a profession and devote myself to administration, which would have been involved if I had taken the directorship of the Courant Institute.
I should mention, though, that I had had a very interesting career and had had a couple of honors which are partly, I suppose, also a tribute because of my organizing and administrative
Just as I was leaving Stanford I was elected president of the American Statistical Association [ASA], which is a much larger and applied organization. Most of the senior faculty members at Berkeley in statistics would be elected to be president of the Institute, and that's something that goes through to leading people in our profession. Probably not the American Statistical Association; I can't think of anyone at Berkeley who's ever been president, although there might possibly have been in the old days.
Nathan
Did you have duties as president of these associations?
Bowker
The association would run big professional meetings. It's a fair amount of work to be president of the ASA, and you have to give a presidential address, which is a lot of work. Actually, I was in New York when that happened.
Those are the two distinctions that came to me in my profession.
Nathan
Was it hard to decide to leave statistics?
Bowker
Well, I don't know. You can see that even as a statistician I'd always been kind of involved in both management and the entrepreneurial side of it.
Nathan
Right, very early.
Bowker
Very early in my career. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened, but not for very long; I don't usually regret things. [laughs]
Berkeley-Stanford Seminar in Statistics
BowkerContinuing, though: because statistics here at Berkeley was kind of a new discipline and not fully accepted by everybody, and because statistics at Stanford was somewhat the same, we had a joint Berkeley-Stanford seminar, which we all went to every time. Now, Rose went to one yesterday, and there was practically nobody there from either department; but it was still an audience. We had dinner afterwards, and I would often have dinner with the
Neyman had enormous contacts all over the world, because he had been born in Russia and had lived in Poland and probably was very Left. Anyway, he had intellectual contacts all over the world, and sometimes he'd bring people here that we were very happy to have on our seminar series--our visitors for a period, like Harald Cramér from Stockholm.
So we actually worked very well together. We were very different in personality in many ways. Neyman was a real promoter and entrepreneur also.
Nathan
Just who was the enemy that all of you were fighting?
Bowker
I mean that we stuck together. Most universities didn't have statistics departments; now they all have. So we stuck together. I remember once at a cocktail party asking Lincoln Constance, "Why on earth don't you start a separate department in statistics? We've had one [at Stanford] for many years. This is kind of ridiculous." He said, "If you had someone between you and Jerzy Neyman, would you change it?" Neyman was a little difficult. I will hand it to G. C. Evans, the long-time chairman of the Math Department at Berkeley. He had a very broad view of mathematics. He himself had broad interests and had some famous students, like Frances Dresch and Donald Shepherd in mathematical economics, and he really thought statistics and all kinds of applied mathematics were legitimate. That tradition has maintained at Berkeley and almost nowhere else; most mathematics departments are very snobbish and very pure--to their disadvantage, in my opinion. In fact, the Berkeley Mathematics Department has given a joint appointment to the famous economist here, named Gerard Debreu. The Berkeley Mathematics Department is the only Mathematics Department in the world that has a Nobel Laureate as a member; he has a Nobel Prize in economics.
Most of the mathematics departments are very jurisdictional, including Stanford. When I was there, we tried to specialize in two or three fields of mathematics. Now it's become a general math department and isn't anywhere near as eminent--in my opinion, not in theirs. [laughs]
Terman's "Peaks of Excellence"
BowkerThe main thrust of Terman's leadership and Terman's advice was "peaks of excellence"; pick certain things and put enough resources in them to be first rate. "Peaks of excellence" was his famous saying.
Nathan
That foreshadowed some of your thinking when you got to Berkeley?
Bowker
Yes. He was the best academic administrator I have ever seen, so he had a great deal of influence on my thinking. I often consulted him, even when I was back in New York and when I went to work for him for two years as his assistant and then for two to three years as graduate dean. That was somewhat different from the position of graduate dean here, although I had most of that portfolio; I really was a kind of vice provost.
The number two man at Stanford is the provost, and I was one of his deputies. Bob Wert, later to be president of Mills College was the other, although he was really kind of Wally Sterling's protegé, not Fred's.
We reviewed all budgets and all faculty appointments as a provost staff, and I had responsibilities in certain areas. But the main thing we did when Fred was provost was to look around the university and decide what opportunities there were to continue to build Stanford into a great university and where to put our resources. There were certain things, I suppose, that one would have to do. The Chemistry Department was not in very good condition, and Fred, pretty much by himself, nosed around a lot and finally decided that a couple of organic chemists named Johnson of Wisconsin and Carl Djerassi, at that time at Wayne State, could build a department. We needed to get a building for them, and he worked on a corporation to donate a building and put that all together. I think Johnson has died. I think Djerassi was the intellectual brains behind Syntex.
That was a brilliant move in some ways, and the department has had first-rate people ever since. It would not have been so distinguished when I went there, as we began to take over. Once we were talking: "We have a good History Department, but it isn't absolutely at the top of the heap." Maybe Dick Lyman was chairman then. "It wouldn't be very expensive to improve it." So we decided to do that, and we put three rather famous historians in--Gordon Wright, Gordon Craig, and David Potter. These three people immediately put Stanford into a first-rate category.
We did the same thing in English. One day I went in and said, "You know, we really have this big activity in radio astronomy, largely in engineering. I don't know how things are going to happen; maybe we should think of astronomy." Fred said, "I don't really think so. For one thing, we'd need an awful lot of optical equipment, and we don't have it, and it's pretty expensive. Cal Tech and Berkeley and other places are well established. I really don't think we could compete." I kept arguing--electronics might be the way to make astronomical observations in the future. He said, "No, I don't think so. I just think it would be too expensive. We'd never be very good, and we'd waste a lot of money." He was right.
We felt we had to be good in certain languages. Stanford never made up its mind about classics. We started to build a Classics Department, and it kind of fell down. That would be a lack, I would say. We didn't have a great one when we were there, and we built it up with a few appointments, and then it kind of waned again. I don't know how it is now.
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Bowker
We didn't think too much of the Stanford Business School, and Wally more or less shared this. He may have recruited a local banker or businessman who showed some interest, Ernie Arbuckle. We put a lot of resources into the Business School and told him to build a good one, and I think he did; it is a distinguished Business School today. Certainly in the East it has a better reputation than Berkeley with some, but I don't know if that's fair.
I actually took a very direct hand in upgrading the School of Education and hired, in cooperation with the dean, three or four professors, and we put in a new dean. There was Kronbach and two or three other people from the Midwest who were really research people; and I built in a mathematics education component, and so forth. These were all pretty distinguished people. Glaser was one, and there were a number of social scientists. I think it would be considered by most people that Stanford had the best research-oriented School of Education at the time and for a period after that. As I say, I've never been sure in retrospect that that was sensible, but it was part of the pattern of the way we thought about things; research was important, teaching wasn't. [laughs]
Nathan
It's interesting that building research was your goal.
Bowker
The fundability of research was also important. In the case of computer science, for example, one of the factors was that with all the government money floating around we would be able to have strong research support in computer science. That wouldn't be true in all fields; it was true in chemistry. We struggled off and on with geology, and I don't think we ever did really move there. It was so-so, we thought. It was a big school. I don't know; I'll have to ask Mark Christensen whatever happened there.
In other words, generally we went over each area of the university, and where there seemed to be the possibility of distinction, we put in some resources. We strengthened the Departments of Sociology, Anthropology, and all the professional schools. The strategy was, in the first place, that when we thought an area wasn't very good, we would hold up filling appointments for a period of some years. I wasn't there very long, so it couldn't have been too many years.
Nathan
What were you waiting for?
Bowker
To get a critical mass in order to make several appointments at once to be attractive to people. One of our famous successes was that we decided to start a Biochemistry Department in the Medical School, and we made an offer to Josh Lederberg, who was then at Wisconsin. He didn't accept, so then we made an offer to Arthur Kornberg, who came (both of these people were to be Nobel Laureates) and let him build up his department. After we had done that, Lederberg called up and said, "If you have the kind of place that hires Kornberg, I would sort of be interested myself." So then we hired him [laughter] in a different department. One was called Department of Biochemistry, and the other was something else.
So if there was something of that quality available, the money was always there to do it. I remember the same day we made the offer to Kornberg, sitting in on a meeting when Fred turned down the request from some program for another half teaching assistant, saying that we couldn't afford it. Then we spent about $75,000 in the next half hour. It all depended on what it was.
By and large, the move of the Medical School to the campus wasn't terribly well handled. We really were kind of nosed out of it. We disagreed on the first few clinical appointments.
I think Stanford was hurt by some of its early appointments. I had worked out, as you point out, a lot in the Medical School myself and then started a bio-statistics group, so I knew a little bit about it. And I was fairly friendly with the head of
We weren't terribly satisfied with the way things were going there, but, again, in the basic science area we made big, big improvements. Probably in some ways they overshadowed the Biology Department, although we tried in the Biology Department; we brought in a couple of people. Don Kennedy was there; he is always kind of a star at whatever it is he does, as he was then. And we brought in a fellow in biochemistry who is now a senior official at San Diego.
Nathan
When you would bring people in, was it in consultation with the faculty of the department or the chair of the department?
Bowker
Yes, we had to work with the chair, but most people would say that if you got an opportunity to make a distinguished appointment, they would take it. We would often approach the chair and say, "Well, we're willing to listen to some serious talk." There was also the dean of Letters and Science, who was heavily into many of these moves, who, when I first went, was Clarence Faust. He had come from Chicago and was not part of the Terman establishment. Then there was Phil Rhinelander, who Wally brought in from Harvard with the idea of pepping up undergraduate education. Then there was Bob Sears, who was from an old, distinguished, academic family, too. His son, I think, is dean of something at UCLA--social sciences, or maybe the whole arts and sciences. Bob had been chairman of the Social Relations Department at Harvard and then was chairman of Psychology. He was dean most of the time of the Terman regime, and he was compatible with Terman's views and values.
It was in consultation with everyone, but it was clear that if you were willing to go for quality and had a rational plan, we would help you.
Nathan
Did the board of trustees have to approve any of these?
Bowker
Not really. They were sort of peripherally involved in a lot of this stuff. One of them, married to a Chandler, came in one day and said he had decided, "We're first in science, we're first in engineering, we're first in this and that; we're going to be first
I remember when David Packard was chairman once when I was there. Of course, he had been a protegé of Terman; Terman had actually helped finance Hewlett-Packard with the royalties from his textbook. We brought in some building project that was probably a hundred percent over budget and two years late, and Packard said, "Jesus Christ, what a bunch of stupid--I can't stand it." Wally was away, and he turned to Fred and bawled the hell out of him. Everybody came back doom and gloom; what were we going to do? I was elected, so I went to see Packard. I said, "David, nobody can talk to Fred Terman that way, not even you. You have to call and apologize." "[shouting] All right." [laughter]
Nathan
And he did?
Bowker
Of course he did. It's true; no one can talk to Fred Terman that way.
Nathan
You were pretty brave to be the messenger.
Bowker
Somebody had to do it. [laughs] I didn't have a lot to do with the trustees. I think Wally considered me more of a back-room boy, but he was very smooth and very good with them. I remembered that later, because I got into a fight in New York and was out of office for a while. So Jim Hester, the president of NYU, called me and offered me the number two job at NYU, and I turned it down; I didn't think I wanted to do that. He said he had just talked to Wally, and Wally told him I was a great man, but he might occasionally have to remind me who was boss. [laughter]
I was sort of young and determined to get my own way on most things, and did. But not everything. Sometimes Terman and I disagreed. I would always be in charge of bargaining with people in the Economics Department, because he couldn't stand them. You know the way economist are; they like to bargain. Once I was arguing with them for about an hour and half over a five-hundred-dollar raise for someone, which I had agreed to. I mean, it was several thousand plus the final five hundred, which clinched the deal. Fred wouldn't approve it; it wasn't worth it. He had papers, he had numbers, he had arguments. Finally he said, "Oh, well, Al, if you have to have it, you have to have it." [laughs] I said, "I have to have it."
Perhaps I'm exaggerating a little bit the role of the central office, but Stanford really was run by a handful of people. I was
One of the reasons the Stanford Research Institute was started was to take on whatever seemed appropriate in that area, and it never ran big things. It had lots of projects and lots of consulting. I guess it was okay. It never seemed very important in my day, but it since then has made enough money to give the university some, so I guess that's worth something. Most people there take it a lot more seriously than I'm saying.
Decisions: Linear Accelerator and Three Physics Departments
BowkerWe decided, however, to go for the linear accelerator.
Nathan
Was that fully government funded?
Bowker
Yes. That's roughly comparable to LBL [Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory]; it's a two-mile-long gadget down at Stanford which, at the time it was built, was the largest accelerator and the most advanced. Wolfgang Panofsky came down from Berkeley to head it. We had a small linear accelerator going that the Physics Department had built also with government money. This was, I suppose, Atomic Energy Commission funded. It would be like one of the laboratories; in a way, though, it's more like Brookhaven and the super collider in the early days of the cyclotron up here, rather than like Livermore or Los Alamos.
Anyway, we had stayed away from big government activities of any sort. They were not integrated with the academic program. If anybody who wanted government money was a professor, he could get it, and we would support it if we had the space. We began to hire people, first to build the accelerator and then do experiments on it. The Physics Department, which had strongly supported the accelerator, refused to give these people faculty appointments. Also they wouldn't let them use the existing accelerator. It was always done under great moral values. I just thought it was an outrage and that they were behaving selfishly and foolishly.
Felix Bloch, who was a Nobel Laureate and very distinguished --and whose daughter, Natalie Bloch, is a professor of something
So we started a department. There are three physics departments at Stanford; I'm not sure what they're called--maybe high energy physics, physics, and something else. We also started a Department of Applied Physics, which came out of the microwave laboratory and had more gadget-minded people. One of the main figures there is Art Schalow, who was the co-Nobel Laureate with Charlie Townes on the laser. Schalow is also Charlie's brother-in-law. And there were people who were active in microwave devices and other things.
So we had three physics departments. I spoke a few years ago at the anniversary of the Applied Physics Department, and all the chairmen emphasized to me how well it was working.
Concern Over Commercializing
BowkerThat was one of the big fights we had. We had a fight over appointments in the Medical School. I really was a little uneasy about the increase in commercialization of Stanford. I don't know; Djerassi bothered me some, because he was running big government projects, as we expected him to do, running lots of graduate students. Somehow he was involved with patents at Syntex, and I don't know; it all seemed a little too close for comfort. Now he's a multimillionaire, so I suppose it all worked out all right. Fred was a multimillionaire by now.
When we built the linear accelerator there was some criticism of the fact that we were using Ginston. He was a key figure who had been a professor of physics and had taken over Varian Associates because Russell had gotten ill. We were using Ginston a lot, and we were buying a lot of klystron tubes from Varian. Somebody said that didn't look quite right. I said to Fred, "That's getting a little close to home." "Oh, that's ridiculous," he said, "I own a lot more Varian stock than Ginston does." [laughter] I said, "I wish you hadn't told me that. What would you do if there was a conflict of interest?" He said, "I would do
What happened was that right after the war he started writing a book, called Radio Engineers' Handbook. He had a good salary, and they lived very simply. This book was used by every engineer in every country in the world, so he had all this royalty income, and he never had any use for it. So he put it into Hewlett-Packard and to Varian and other places; he helped these companies get started. I don't really know how much money he had in the end, because I've never been told; but it must have been a lot.
Looking for a Change
BowkerWell, why did I leave? It's a little hard to tell. Partly I was getting kind of tired. Somehow, when you're in control of the government money and when you're in control of the industrial relations and all of that, and you're running the show, it's one thing. I was very much influenced by this fight with the physics people. Hofstadtler and I had been very close friends, and now he wouldn't speak to me. I had gotten a divorce; my first wife was somewhat disturbed, and I had custody of the children.
Nathan
How old were they?
Bowker
They were in junior high school or maybe finishing elementary school. My son had been sent to a prep school. I don't know; I thought I really would like to try a college presidency, but one that was sort of consistent with my needs and interests. I interviewed at a couple of places. One was the University of Rochester. On the way home I went on to Washington and came back and stayed overnight with the Wallises in Chicago. I told them I had just been to the University of Rochester for an interview a week before. He said, "That's funny; I just accepted that job this morning." Anyway, he was president of the University of Rochester. [laughter] It wouldn't have been a good job for me.
I had at this time acquired a young couple. The boy had lived with us for his first two or three years. He was a Spanish exchange student. The fraternity had brought him over as an exchange, and then he lived with me and helped me with the children. There was an English student and his wife who also lived there and helped me. Anyway, this boy got married, and he and his wife sort of agreed to come back to New York and keep house for me. The girls were fond of them.
Before we get too far away from your children, would you like to give their names?
Bowker
Nancy and Caroline are twins, and Paul is my son. He is older slightly. They were all born in Palo Alto.
Nathan
They are pretty much grown up by now?
Bowker
Yes, the girls are forty-one, and Paul is a couple of years older. They all live here in the Bay Area.
Nathan
Are they academic types?
Bowker
No, none of them. [laughs]
Nathan
That follows very often?
Bowker
Well, it does and it doesn't. I think Caroline might be, but she's a doctor, and she's chosen to emphasize practice. She had some experiences which kind of soured her on the academic world when she was a student. She was involved in some of the sexist crises at Stanford, which have not improved a great deal since she was a student, but a little maybe.
I probably thought I was never going to be president of Stanford, and I probably saw that I didn't want to be. There was a kind of precious quality to Stanford which bothered me a little bit. I thought I really would like to try something in the public sector. In some ways I've been happier in the public sector.
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Bowker
Let me say one more thing about Palo Alto. After I was divorced, I had a few men friends and a few other friends, but it was really a mama-papa community.
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Bowker
I was really bored socially. Irving Howe, the critic, was getting a divorce, and he came out to Stanford for a couple of years. I had dinner with him some, but practically all my friends were couples. It just wasn't a very pleasant life for a single adult. I think it's better now, and better in Berkeley. Divorce was quite unusual in the circle in which I moved. I met a few other divorcees, and there were usually reasons for that. [laughs] I just didn't find it very pleasant. Probably I should have gotten married again sooner, but I didn't.
You were ready for a change.
Bowker
Yes, yes. It was hard on the children; there's no question about it. But in the end they went to Dalton School in New York, and Paul gave up his school in Arizona and came to the Collegiate School. They had very good educational experiences, and I think on the whole were reasonably happy with it. But the adjustment was very difficult and, of course, harder than I thought.
VII - Chancellor, the City University of New York (1963-1971)
BowkerThe City University of New York had been essentially founded in 1961 and had had a chancellor. The City University of New York at that time really had been a collection of city colleges, seven institutions; four senior colleges: Brooklyn, City, Hunter, Queens, and three community colleges: Staten Island, The Bronx, and Queensborough in Queens. It really had never been an integrated institution.
Graduate and Professional Work
BowkerWhat does it mean if it's changed from a collection of colleges into a university? That means graduate and professional work, presumably. They were looking around for somebody as their second chancellor who had a record in graduate work particularly.
The people who knew me were Mina Rees and Ruth Shoup. Ruth Shoup was a graduate of Stanford, as were her three sisters (named Sneden), one of whom was Pat Sears, the wife of the dean of Letters and Science, also a professor at Stanford. They were all important in the Stanford community. Her husband's brother was the professional head of the Alumni Association. The Snedens were an old Massachusetts family, and the Shoups were an old California family, one of the railroad families. So they knew about me, and I had worked under Mina Rees during the war, so she knew me. And a few of the other people knew me.
After a certain amount of shenanigans, I decided to accept the CUNY job, without really knowing what I was doing. I moved back East, and the Spanish couple came with me and kept house with
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Bowker
Anyway, I had decided to try this job. It really was very hard. Bob Wagner was still mayor when I went, and he became a good friend and remained so all his life. I liked him. But the board he has appointed through the years was of mixed quality.
Nathan
The mayor appoints the board of the City University of New York?
Bowker
Not now, but he did then. Rockefeller was governor, and he was interested in building a great state university and pouring money into it.
City vs. Upstate
NathanThe City University of New York, then, would be in competition with the state university for funds or prestige?
Bowker
For funds, possibly. But not direct competition in the sense that the state university, except for a few professional schools, doesn't operate in New York City. And the City University operated only in the city, with a few little exceptions, so it was city versus upstate. Governor Rockefeller was interested in higher education generally and really believed in it. Wagner hadn't done a lot with it, but I got him very interested in the university in his last two years, and he maintained that all his life. He was on various boards and task forces and so forth that connected with the City University until he died last year.
Nathan
How did you go about getting him interested?
Bowker
Partly through his staff. His senior advisor, who later became my political advisor, was Julius Edelstein. New York basically respects intellectual activity and intellectual people more than one would think. When I was there, and it's still probably true, the Jewish population of New York was the predominant political force. Most of the students in the City University were Jewish, most of the faculty were Jewish.
They wanted education; the resident Jewish immigrants in New York have always been the strong beneficiaries of and strong
He himself had gone to Yale, I think. Wagner's father had gone to City College. He believed in education. Health had been his big interest, but he had put a lot of money into the system, and he thought he ought to have some education backing. The school system at the time was about to erupt into enormous racial explosions--Ocean Hill, Brownsville--and the mayor would always pretend he had nothing to do with that, although he did appoint the board. But he could distance himself from the board.
My real task was to start graduate work. You asked me how I got Wagner interested. I don't know, I just kept him interested. I went to see him, I explained things to him. The chairman of my board was very resentful of my speaking for the university and my actually dealing with political figures. He wanted to be a judge. It had sort of been true that the chairman of the board of education from time to time had been appointed a judge, and this was a sort of a way to be a judge. He had given, apparently, at some critical moment in its history, some money to the Liberal Party. Bob always kind of kept the Liberal Party and Alex Rose in his back pocket. So it was kind of touchy.
Expanding the University and Centralizing the Graduate School
BowkerBut I kept pushing both the legislature and the mayor for more and more money to expand enrollment. No planning had been done for the big bulge that comes after the battle--this was the bulge of the GI children coming along. We just had four colleges and I forget how many students. It was totally inadequate to the needs of the city. We were not responding adequately or hardly at all to the recent wave of immigration to the city, which had been blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans from the slums. We had practically no black enrollment and an all white, heavily Jewish and Irish student body in a city that was becoming increasingly minority. I just said, "We've got to expand."
The expansion of the university was, in a way, my biggest achievement. I did start a graduate school, and I centralized it. This was very difficult, because each college wanted to be chosen as the chosen instrument. It would be like taking the University of California and taking the Ph.D.s away from Davis and Santa Cruz
Some of the faculty there were as distinguished as any in the country in paper and pencil fields. The English Department was extremely good, the History Department was extremely good, the Mathematics Department was extremely good. Physics and chemistry were not, and I didn't try to centralize those. I tried to have a central planning group and then different laboratories in the different colleges.
Anyway, we started Ph.D.s in dozens of things. A few were ranked even as the best in the country, like Portuguese. Within New York State, the graduate school is a lot more distinguished than I thought it would be. It really worked well, and we had good people as chairmen. Mina Rees was the dean. Before I left, I made the graduate school a separate institution and made her president of it, so it would be institutionalized and have its own budget.
Women Students and Faculty Members
BowkerIt still is very good, and it's especially good about women. It's been a great place for women who are housewives or who are in New York for some reason or other, largely because they're either single or married. [laughs] Either way, it's better to be there than elsewhere. No, I'm serious in a way.
We had very famous women on the faculty. For example, probably the most famous woman anthropologist in the country next to Margaret Mead was Hortense Powdermaker. She was at Queens. She came out here when she retired. We had famous people at Queens. We had Helene Neustadt in English; Gertrude Himmelfarb, who just got a national award, was at Brooklyn. We actually had a very large number of distinguished academic women in the country there, which is interesting.
I wrote an article on that once. It isn't true any more, but an academic woman had two choices, really. She could go to the Seven Sisters, or she could go to a big city like New York. The number of people in 1963 at Berkeley or Stanford who were women would be negligible. Many of them were married to people who were
Bowker
I was talking over at the Faculty Club about how I know several people who have moved to Stanford from Berkeley because their wives are at San Jose State University or at UC Santa Cruz. It's very typical. Whereas in New York you may not be married to another college professor but a lawyer or doctor and so forth, and it's easier for professional couples.
So we had some very distinguished graduate programs in humanities and some that were pretty good in the social sciences, good in mathematics, and so-so in the sciences--not too bad, but not ranking.
Nathan
Did the funding come from the City of New York?
Bowker
When I first came there, the funding for the university came from the city, except the state paid the cost of teacher education plus some fraction of the budget of the community colleges. It was changed while I was there, and it's been changed since. Let me come back to this question.
Funding for Physical Facilities and Tuition
BowkerThe biggest problem I had was physical facilities, both for the graduate school and for the colleges. The capital budget of the City of New York had no possibility of doing anything serious for any of the institutions, and they were real slums. I mean, awful buildings, under-maintained, old. So I devised a plan to create an authority--Rockefeller was very big on authorities--kind of like the Triborough Bridge Authority. That wasn't his; it was Robert Moses', but we had the State University Construction Fund, we had the Mental Hospital Construction Fund.
For example, they built mental hospitals in New York by the following device: they charged a fee for occupants of mental hospitals, and most of them couldn't afford to pay it. But then there was an appropriation to pay the fees of people who couldn't afford it. The fees, however, were pledged to amortize construction bonds, so-called revenue bonds. You couldn't appropriate public money directly because there was a
So a lot of these authorities in New York are ways to transfer public money into pretend private money. I proposed a system for the City University of New York, introducing a tuition which would be a dummy tuition, and practically no one would have to pay it. My board was absolutely furious about this.
Nathan
Why were they upset?
Bowker
"Oh, there's a free tuition" has been the big rallying cry in New York. They ordered me to bury the plan, and I released it to the New York Times.
Nathan
Were you daring.
Vote of Censure, New Board, and Legislation
BowkerThey met without me and passed a resolution of censure. I got together with the president of Brooklyn College, Harry Gideonse; the president of Hunter College, John Meng; and my deputy, Harry Levy. We got together, and we resigned on a late Friday night. I had said I had to think it over; I was in my forties and had children in private schools and so forth. That really was a gutsy thing to do. On the other hand, I remember getting up on Sunday morning and looking out the window (we were on the second floor; we had a brownstone on 95th Street), and there was my picture in front of every door up and down the street, on the front page of the New York Times. [laughter] It was fairly dramatic.
Well, all hell broke loose. The legislature started an investigation. Some of the very powerful people on my board started circulating rumors about me that weren't true--my income and one thing and another. Anyway, I agreed to return if the chairman of the board resigned and if someone else was made chairman. When he resigned about six other people went with him, so I got a chance to make a new board.
Nathan
You got the mayor to appoint the people you wanted? Was that how it worked?
Bowker
Well, yes. I didn't pick them, except the new chairman. He wanted me to come back, and the faculty called me and urged me to come back. I came out to [UC] Santa Cruz with Rose and talked to
After a lot of hemming and hawing, Bob Wagner, who was still mayor but going out of office, came and met with the board and told them to rehire me and meet my conditions, which was nice of him. It was great fun. [laughs] We were great friends in a way. I hadn't told him I was going to do all this. That's the kind of thing people in New York love--resignations, crises. [laughter] Nothing is ever easy.
Nathan
But you did come back?
Bowker
Yes, I came back after a while. Then the committee was chaired by Manfred Orenstein, who, if you noticed in the New York Times today, has had his indictments finally lifted by Morgenthau, the D.A. of New York. Manfred was then a young senator, and he started a hearing. There were still people against me who stayed on the board. There was an old man named Charlie Tuttle, who had been a famous lawyer in Breed, Abbot, and Morgan, one of the big law firms in New York. He had actually run for governor against Franklin Delano Roosevelt at one point. He started in on me, but it turned out that he and the chairman didn't make any sense at all in the hearing; they didn't know anything about it. And the young legislators, led by Manfred Orenstein, made a hearing that led to what is a bill, which was really my biggest triumph in New York.
This bill first set up the City University Construction Fund, more or less along the lines that I had suggested, with fees; the evening sessions always had charged fees. All the fees of the university were put into this fund, but it was also supplemented by state and city contributions. We changed the funding of the senior colleges of the university to fifty-fifty, city and state.
We introduced something called the SEEK program, a big Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge. It was a big minority-oriented program--scholarships, tutoring, and so forth. It was a very comprehensive bill, and it took months to get through. The SEEK program got the Black Caucus. The blacks supported me. I had gone out of my way to cultivate the black community, first Kenneth Clark, who was the leading black figure in many ways in New York at the time. Then the Watsons were a very distinguished black family, and Arthur Logan.
Rockefeller sort of kept his distance from me, not right now but in the beginning. I had a little trouble getting in to see
Nathan
The bill eventually passed?
Bowker
It passed, and he signed it. He hated Orenstein; he really didn't like him. In the first place, in order to get the bill passed we had to change the name of it from the Orenstein Bill to the Travia Bill; Travia was then speaker of the house. Fred [Orenstein] agreed to it. I always thought he was a wonderful person; still do. When he was in trouble in New York, I called him and we had lunch. I said, "Any time you need someone to talk about your good character, you've got one." I always thought he was fine. (Of the other two also involved in the case, one also went to jail, and the other one is dead.) There were three young legislators who took this on as a crusade. We passed the bill, and the governor signed it. We were pretty good friends from then on--up and down; he's a touchy man.
The next year we appointed a community college president in the Bronx who was black. I called and said I would like to have the governor speak, and they said he was too busy. I said, "This is the first black college president in New York." "Oh." He showed up, and we had a great talk. [laughs] Well, he knew. Lindsay, of course, was mad, but he can't have it both ways. They hated each other. By now Lindsay was mayor.
Lindsay didn't help too much in the beginning of all this, but he did in the end; he had to. Then he got to reshape the board, so he consulted me; he really did. He put people like Frank Keppel on the board. He was dean of the School of Education at Harvard, one of the last gentleman deans, as he says, and commissioner of education in the Kennedy administration. A very major figure. Lindsay put Fred Burkhardt on the board, who was the former president of Bennington; he put Nils Wessel, who was head of the Sloan Foundation. It changed the board from a bunch of bums into a bunch of fairly respectable people. It isn't too good an idea to put too many educators on the board, but they behaved. Ruth Shoup, of course, was kept on the board. I had Lindsay put a couple of students on the board, and then I owned them. [laughs]
No, I had the board. I had the most marvelous chairman, whose name was Porter Chandler. It's just hard to describe him--
He was a widower at this time. He was a contemporary of, and sort of similar in some ways to Larry Walsh, who is the investigator now. Larry had retired and was brought back. Porter died, but he would have been about that age in vintage, a man of commanding stature in the legal fraternity and in the Catholic Church. And a very nice man, a man with time; his wife had died, his children weren't around. He lived quite near where we all lived on Madison; he lived on the corner of Madison and 79th Street, we lived between Lexington and 3rd on 79th, and the university headquarters was at 80th Street and East End Avenue. Nils Wessel lived on 79th Street, and Frank Keppel lived a couple of blocks up the street. Well, we had to have representation on the board from Queens.
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Bowker
The threat of no room for new freshmen then was part of my pressure to get the construction fund bill passed. It took a while for the construction fund to get organized and then amount to much, and it has been, I think, one of the not-very-well-known ones. It's spent about $2.5 billion since it was founded. It built some beautiful new campuses all in New York City, mostly not in downtown, although Hunter College has two enormous towers that are quite visible. Most of those colleges really have beautiful physical plants as a result of all this, but this was twenty--goodness, that was probably '65, so that was a long time ago.
Nathan
When you were working to get people to accept these ideas, did you have p.r. people to help you?
Bowker
Edelstein had become my political advisor, and yes, I had a p.r. man named Hank Paley, who was quite good. I had the union; I had Al Shanker. I formed a citizens' committee to support this with the head of the United Parents' Association, which was very important then; it isn't now. And Shanker, who was head of the teachers' union, was the co-chairman. I had strong support from Harry van Arsdale, who was very important. He was head of the building trades, probably the most powerful labor person in New
Nathan
Did you deliberately cultivate the Times editors?
Bowker
Oh, sure. Well, Fred Hechinger is a City College boy, and he was on the Times. I used to see the Times people socially quite a bit, not so much the Sulzbergers, though on occasion. Yes, Punch always supported me. A. M. Rosenthal I think was city editor then; Abe Raskin was the labor editor. We still see Abe when we're in New York. Yes, we were good friends.
I had the blacks. I cultivated--and we were still good friends until he died (and we've been friendly with his widow since)--the editor of the Amsterdam News. He was a good friend of mine; I had the Amsterdam News. That was the SEEK program, and he always said it was settled in his office. It could be. And I had Kenneth Clark, Skiz Watson, who is now a federal judge but was then the leading black legislator. I had Percy Sutton. I had the blacks. I worked hard at this; I mean, I went around to everybody. Nelson gave in.
The Chancellor's Fund
BowkerBy the way, there's a funny story. At the last minute, he put an item in this bill for $500,000, called the Chancellor's Fund, which was to be given to me directly to spend without any controls. Sam Gould, who as president of State University, was of course furious, and I was, too. I wasn't furious exactly, but I had the legislation amended to have it deposited with the controller of the City of New York and be subject to audit. [laughter] But what a lulu!
Nathan
Oh, that's a wolf trap right there.
Bowker
[laughs] It sure was. I don't think it occurred to Nelson that people with small amounts of money like that could get in trouble. I really don't. But to me, the thought of New York City having $500,000 that was purely discretionary and not audited was just--
Whenever we had some little thing that had to be done every now and then, I'd say to take it out of the Chancellor's Fund.
Nathan
It wasn't maintained at $500,000?
Bowker
Yes, every year, and I used it for entertainment some. Everything was audited. But one day Nelson got mad at me and cancelled it. I don't know that it is a very important story. I had a chauffeur, called an MVO--probably motor vehicle operator--who was a civil service employee. He had such overtime, because I worked all the time, that he used to go to Europe in the summer. One summer I rented a house in the country, after the university bought me a house, and I wanted to be driven; I was driven up there all the time. Everybody else was, too; there wasn't anything wrong with it. We had another car, and Rose drove up usually by herself, and then I came up at the end of the day or later.
For some reason my chauffeur was away, so I told them to get me a student to drive me up. They got a student, but he was somehow under eighteen and couldn't rent a station wagon that I wanted, because we were going to move something from the house to the country. So Rose went and rented the car, and the student drove us up to the country. We unloaded whatever it was, and he drove back and turned in the car. But somehow, the way it came out was the Mrs. Bowker had rented a car for the chancellor to move things to the country.
After I was appointed at Berkeley and had been here about a year, this big scandal comes out in the front pages of the [San Francisco] Chronicle: "Chancellor Bowker Misuses Funds."
Nathan
I saw that headline. I thought it was goofy.
Bowker
The reason I remember it is that I walked into the Bohemian Club for lunch that day, and Wally Sterling was sitting in there. He yelled across the room, "Al, Al, does Rose have any time this afternoon? I need some things moved to the country." [laughter] It was a funny story. That was carelessness on my part, I suppose; I didn't think anything of it at the time.
Nathan
It doesn't seem too major somehow.
Bowker
You know, Nelson got mad at me because of student demonstrations. He thought we were paying for them from the Chancellor's Fund, and
So that year, I was about ready to leave anyway, he cancelled the Chancellor's Fund at the last minute. He sent in an emergency message at 11 p.m. one night, cancelling the fund. I didn't even know about it until it was all over. And then he told the people to find something to discredit me, which they never did succeed in doing. Thank God I had the God-damned thing controlled by the controller. It was such a silly thing. Anyway, those are sort of irrelevant stories.
Summary of Accomplishments
BowkerI think one of my big contributions was starting the graduate center. The second one was this change in funding formula and the construction fund and the SEEK program; that was really very important. Then I kept adding institutions. When I left there were twenty institutions; when I came there were seven. There were already plans on the drawing board for two new community colleges, and I opened them promptly in '63.
Then I decided to take the embryonic program in criminal justice and make it into a college, so I founded something that I called the College of Police Science. It became John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which is still a very distinguished place. I separated the Business School from City College and made it an independent institution; that's Baruch College. I started a new college in Queens, York College, in response to the Jamaica community. I started a new college in The Bronx called Hostos College; Eugenio Maria de Hostos is the hero of Puerto Rico; that's a community college in response to the Puerto Rican community. I separated The Bronx campus of Hunter College from Hunter and made it a separate institution; it's Lehman College. I started an upper division college in Staten Island called Richmond College, which has since folded. I affiliated the university with Mt. Sinai, although it's largely private; its official name is Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York. I
Nathan
What is there about it that you especially like?
Bowker
Well, I liked the president; he was one of my protegés. It was all co-op, and it just seemed a wonderful idea to take the kind of population we had in New York, give them work experience as long as they were working. It has also started two or three high schools that it runs, one called Middle College, and then a high school. It's been a very imaginative and innovative place. I guess the first two, Kingsborough and the Borough of Manhattan, were on the drawing board, and I started those. They both have beautiful campuses now, just gorgeous. Kingsborough is out on an edge of Coney Island with absolutely beautiful beaches and views.
The last one, I guess, was Medgar Evers. It had been a big project that Bobby Kennedy was involved in, and Paley and a lot of people in New York, to do something about Bedford-Stuyvesant. Franklin Thomas, now president of the Ford Foundation, was the staff director. One of the things they wanted to do was have a college, so I started a college out there. John Lindsay was furious with me, but he couldn't stop it. It was called Medgar Evers, and it's still going.
So I founded, I suppose, thirteen colleges in eight years. That's pretty fast. Maybe it would have been better to have done it slower. With this expansion was an introduction of an open admission policy which offered a place to every high school graduate; it has been widely criticized. But it isn't all that different from what we have in California, given that there are seven community college. There are some differences. All the senior colleges took a certain number of people with marginal qualifications originally for reasons of racial integration, which is no longer necessary; most of the colleges are all predominantly black now--not all of them--or Hispanic. They're changing because the city is changing. The immigration to the city is not predominantly black any more; we're getting Asians, a lot of Russian Jews, all kind of people from all over the world, particularly from Central America.
Open Admissions
NathanWith this open admissions policy, how is the graduation rate?
Bowker
Pretty low.
Nathan
Any efforts to support or help the students?
Bowker
Lots of efforts. It's hard to know. It was started with great fanfare and lots of support in tutoring and counselling. Then the budget crises came, and it's really been eroded to some extent. The support services are so-so. There is a lot of literature on this subject. There's no question that there were a number of people uncovered and given an opportunity, who would have been overlooked in terms of tests and high school grades, some of whom are important figures, some of whom have gone to Harvard and gone to Law School. It's also true there are a lot of people who drift in and out.
The average age of the student body has increased fairly steadily. I would guess that the able undergraduates from the city colleges in the city now probably go out elsewhere to the state colleges or more conventional institutions. Not entirely; Hunter has had quite a comeback in the middle of Manhattan. An awful lot of people come back to take a degree or take a course or two. The average age of students there is probably in the late twenties, rather than at Berkeley where it would probably be twenty for undergraduates.
There's a lot of literature evaluating open admissions. It came in part because we had with the SEEK program and one of its predecessor programs a very strong preference for minorities. In a way it is a lot more sophisticated than people have here. To be eligible for these programs you had to be a resident of an officially designated poverty area at the time there were such things. So there were no explicit racial criteria. One of the programs I had that preceded this was called The Top Hundred. The top hundred people in every high school would get into a senior college. Well, it had something going for it.
The senior colleges like Queens and Brooklyn maintained pretty high academic standards. City College, in the middle of Harlem, has had a lot of problems with its College of Liberal Arts. There's been a lot of white flight from City College, and most of the people who write about this are City College graduates who are mad. The School of Engineering at City College is like ours; when you walk through it, it's half Asian.
In the end, the open admissions policy was strongly supported by the church, by Harry van Arsdale. One of our trustees was one of the trustees of one of the electrical workers foundation, which put money into scholarships. It was just clear to everybody that the way the thing was working, the blue-collar ethnics were not going to get their children into college. They strongly supported open admissions, and they've benefitted from it enormously. It was really labor that wanted this.
After I announced this policy, we were in the middle of a mayoral election or approaching one, there was a very famous regent who came who had a big estate in Purchase, New York, Carl Pforzheimer. He called me and said, "I have a message from Nelson." "What is it?" "Well, you can go half way. The way you are now, to pull open admissions, he's not going to swallow the whole thing in one year." I said, "Tell Nelson I can't stop it now. It's gone too far." [laughs] He went in to the regents, and Max Rubin and Kenneth Clark were now regents of the State of New York. The regents endorsed it, although Carl had brought the message not to. It couldn't be stopped.
Then the governor's secretary called me. "Okay," he says. This time it was clear that John Lindsay, who had endorsed open admissions--Markey, who was the conservative Republican, had endorsed open admissions, and Proccacino. I think Lindsay was running on the Liberal Party ticket then. Proccacino may have been the Democratic nominee, and he endorsed open admissions; he was against it, but he sort of endorsed it. So the governor's secretary called me, and he said, "I can't believe it. You know, Lindsay's going to get elected. We're going to have to go along with this." I said, "You're right." [laughs] Whoever thought?
So that was a policy. Whether it was an achievement or not is for history to tell. I think it was. I mean, it was certainly an achievement; whether it was a good idea or not to go that far, there are many who think it wasn't.
I haven't talked about my individual doctoral students, but the number of students and young faculty that I helped develop at Stanford was a great source of pleasure to me.
Talent in the Central Office
BowkerI was able to continue that at CUNY in a way. I had a really extraordinarily talented group of people in the central office,
My executive assistants included Bob Birnbaum, who was president of a college in Wisconsin and a distinguished scholar of higher education; he's been a professor both at Teachers' College and the University of Maryland. Joe Shenker was president of La Guardia and now president of Bank Street. Joe Meng was my executive assistant, now vice president of Boston University. There were others. I had probably a group of talented people, at least for the central office, as good as any I've seen anywhere, and that includes here at Berkeley. The trouble is that those central office jobs are basically dull. You sit around there and shuffle papers. It's all right to do it for a while. Much of it bored me when I was chancellor. So you're not going to get sparkling people.
At CUNY, the headquarters was where the action was. I was sparking new colleges, new ideas, in the papers every day, fighting with this one and that one, stirring up everybody. It was pretty exciting. If you ran the New York Times references on me, they'd be this [demonstrates] thick because I had the Times. When I left, the Times criticized the mayor for my leaving. It said that if he had been nicer to me, I wouldn't have left. [laughs] Either you have it or you don't have it with the Times.
I had wonderful trustees. Many of them are still friends, and many of them are now dead. It was quite exciting. When I had a chance to go back there and do some elder statesman observation, I was very interested to see what it was like.
Nathan
This was after you had become emeritus at Berkeley?
Bowker
And at Maryland and elsewhere. My successor was a fellow named Kibbee, who had been a vice president of Carnegie-Mellon. He had actually grown up in New York; he was the son of the movie actor and looked exactly like Guy Kibbee. He kept the university together. Then he was succeeded by Joe Murphy, whom I had appointed as president of Queens and who had been president of
Nathan
There is still that kind of balancing?
Bowker
You have to know what to do. Gardner--this has nothing to do with this discussion--thinks he's done very well this year; $400 increase and a freeze in enrollment.
Nathan
Any cuts?
Bowker
No raises, but he thinks he'll be protected from that stuff, so we'll see.
Nathan
We didn't get to your writings, and they are important.
Bowker
Maybe we should have one more session and go over some of these things.
Nathan
Yes. That's a good idea.
VIII - Berkeley Reminiscences
[Interview 4: September 6, 1991]##
NathanWhen we first met you mentioned two cases in which certain decisions had to be made. One was the Platt case, and the other was the Harry Edwards case.
Tenure for Harry Edwards
BowkerHarry Edwards had been hired by the Sociology Department probably before I was chancellor, I'm almost sure, although it doesn't sound entirely reasonable in terms of the fact that I was here for nine years. He was hired as an assistant professor of sociology. They wanted a kind of New Left minority sociologist, I guess, or whatever they wanted. He had been at San Jose State and had been an Olympic athlete and had been involved in protests.
He came up for tenure. The campus was in a conservative mood, and the Department of Sociology was sort of split. By and large, the faculty establishment at Berkeley probably didn't want to give him tenure, and I did. It was quite a controversial decision on my part.
Nathan
Would you say a little more about why you felt he should have tenure?
Bowker
I felt that his scholarship was, in fact, adequate or satisfactory; he worked on the sociology of sports. There was a feeling of equity involved, that he had been hired to fill a certain role on the campus and had done that. There was never any misrepresentation about who he was. The fact that the campus had maybe changed its mind a little bit seemed to me capricious, since
Every black member of the faculty wrote in support of his appointment, and they are not a very radical bunch; at least they weren't at that point. I myself, whenever I differed from the budget committee--you asked me earlier when I differ from them--it was usually on the basis of University service, maybe even occasionally on the basis of teaching.
I felt that as far as I was concerned, he had been a useful role model for the black athletes, and in several particular instances had been quite useful. The black athletes were hustling at the bookstore; there was a minor scandal when I was here. Somebody gave them charge cards, and they ran up big bills. He bawled them out and straightened them out. He always told them when they were off on the wrong track. I felt he was a useful citizen of the campus and that he deserved to get tenure on the basis of fairly long service at this point to the campus.
So I called it the way I saw it. There wasn't a big stir on the faculty. Several people, some of the liberals on the faculty, wrote me and said they disagreed with almost everything I had done up to now except this. [laughter] Not quite that, but they had always disagreed. Looking back on that and on much of my career, I think a lot of people have tried to put a lot of my decisions into some kind of ideological framework: liberal or conservative, or Right or Left. I think I have my own views, but I think I have always tried to do what was in the best interests of the campus. In this case, I thought this was in the best interests of the campus and of its academic values.
I don't particularly seek this kind of embrace, but that same week after I made the decision I attended some ceremony, probably the swearing-in of Lionel Wilson as Mayor of Oakland. Willie Brown came up and hugged me and kissed me. [laughs] It just wasn't the high point of my life. It gives you an idea of the sense that this issue had, not only in the black community on campus but all through the city. It was one that was significant in terms of the public image of the University, and there were several regents who were boiling mad. [laughs] That's the way it goes; that's what the chancellor is for, the flack-catcher.
Library Cutbacks and Commitments
BowkerI think there was another issue when I first got here; I still remember there was something about the library. The library had announced that (these are all kind of minor things) they were cutting back on evening hours because of the budget. There was a big flap in Sacramento for some reason. Somebody called me, possibly Meese, or maybe Verne Orr, the budget director: "You know, this is kind of ridiculous, given the budget of the University of California, and given what we've done for it. Is there any particular reason why the library can't be open Thursday night?" or whatever night it was. Of course, there really wasn't any particular reason. Apparently this had been written as a response by the library to budget cuts, and it had gone through my office unread and through University Hall unread.
It was kind of an inflammatory statement, so I reversed it. A group of faculty came in and was very critical. They said, "Why aren't you going to dump on Reagan?" I said, "He has just been re-elected, and it isn't my policy to dump on people from whom I am trying to get money."
Nathan
I'm sure it may have crossed your mind that the library might have been seeking to dramatize the cut issue.
Bowker
Yes, it was. But it was a few hundred dollars of hourly money for students that was at stake; it wasn't appropriate. On the other hand, Reagan made the remark, "If they're so hard up, why don't they get rid of their rare books?"
Nathan
Selling the rare books, yes.
Bowker
That really stirred the troops. Edgar Kaiser was married to, I believe, his second wife; I've forgotten the details. He was a friend, Berkeley-related, possibly an alum; I think he attended here, yes. He told me that they had flown all the way to Mexico with the governor and Nancy to the opening of a hotel which he was involved in; he had taken the governor in his plane. Nina had bawled out the governor all the way about this selling of rare books, that it was just a terrible thing to do, and how could he, since they were interested in rare books? So I got a small check from Ronald Reagan for rare books. He had a wonderful sense of humor. [laughter] I didn't say anything, but I didn't have to on that one.
Extended University
BowkerI tried to get along with the governor, and I got a few new things. I did get funding for a part-time MBA [Master of Business Administration] program in downtown San Francisco, which was part of David Gardner's Extended University effort. It's a program that's been quite successful, I think, modeled somewhat after the one at the University of Chicago, not a typical evening program, but one aimed at serious people who had responsible positions in the banking and financial industries. That, I think, still goes on and has been quite successful.
And I got some money for these new health science ventures. So I got a little bit out of him, but not a lot.
Nathan
I'd like to ask you a little more about the Extended University. Does that lead directly to a degree?
Bowker
Yes, the part-time MBA.
Nathan
And the other aspects of the Extended University are also degree-related?
Bowker
Yes, but nothing else here. This was a statewide effort. I didn't see anything else--I played around with a part-time master's degree in architecture. I don't see any point in part-time bachelor's programs; that's a state college function. So it was only in certain professional areas that we had the master's degree. I don't know whether Hastings [College of Law] is part time; no, it's full time. There are dozens of part-time law schools all over California. Golden Gate Law School had an MBA program, but it wasn't anything of the caliber of the Business School. This was a serious venture with regular faculty going over and teaching. It was good for the faculty, too, because it gave them contacts and work in the business community.
The Business School at Berkeley had always been considered kind of an academic enterprise and not as related as to the business world as some others, so it was part of the general plan. As you know, I have a view that professional schools ought to have something to do with their profession. [laughs] The Business School here was--the criticism wasn't entirely fair, but it was sort of the image that it was kind of an academic enterprise. It was extremely strong in accounting and a few technical areas of business.
Wasn't one of their interests to train, in a sense, for a career and not to train for the first job? That's how I have heard it expressed.
Bowker
Anyway, this [Extended University] was a notion; it was something the business community wanted and liked, and we were able to get new funding for it from the state. There were a few little things like that.
Nathan
Those were victories in those hard years.
Bowker
Yes, they were. Gardner actually was pretty effective, and remained so, with public officials, both on the Left and on the Right. I mean, he's very popular among some of the very liberal Democrats in Congress. He's pretty skilled at that. He pushed this, too. That was his initiative when he was vice president. He really was in charge of Continuing Education, which is mostly Extension. Extension is mostly non-credit, though there's some fuzziness about some of the elementary courses; they can, then, be transferred for credit. But this was a new venture.
Nathan
That's very interesting. Is there any more you want to say about this?
Bowker
No.
Civil Disobedience
NathanOne other issue under the relationship with students: in June of '78 there was a sit-in of thirty-eight students at Sproul Hall to protest UC's interests in South Africa. You had said earlier that you did not permit overnight occupation of a building by protesters. Do you recall that?
Bowker
Not particularly, but I must have cleared them out. I should say, I suppose, that among the people who were here, the police chief, Bill Beall, was a great asset to the campus. I inherited him; I didn't appoint him. He was a great help to me and had a lot of common sense. He was very helpful to me in several situations. Probably this one he cleared out, though I don't remember it. South Africa was a big issue was later.
Nathan
This was early, and the Student Conduct Committee apparently judged that they were guilty of violating University regulations.
That may have been the time that I took them into court on charges of criminal trespass, as I mentioned earlier, and the jury ruled that they were innocent and I was guilty. [laughter]
Nathan
Apparently you had made some statements about civil disobedience and what that meant, which involved responsibility--
Bowker
I don't object to civil disobedience, except that you have to understand that it means that you go to jail or you pay some cost. There is a cost. Otherwise the whole thing is pointless if you're not willing to pay a price for it, and a lot of them really didn't. I just don't remember this incident very much. I'm sure I cleared it out. People in Sproul [Hall] were pretty shell-shocked in the beginning, and they didn't know what to do. They panic pretty easily over there. [laughs] Well, they'd had some bad experiences, obviously.
A Working Relationship with Local Police
BowkerMy own view is that a firmer line at some point--well, I don't know; it's hard to second guess. I had a lot of experience with student trouble in New York, and I had several principles, well, not exactly principles. Every campus president in New York was asked to (I won't say ordered to; that isn't the way these things are done) be on good terms with the head of his local precinct and have them around the campus and work with the police on occasions when there is no crisis. So when there is a crisis, there is a working relationship. It was especially important during John Lindsay's administration, because the police hated him.
There was a very bloody riot at Columbia which illustrates exactly this point, although I had figured this out before. There were a lot of sit-ins and occupations at Columbia, and Grayson Kirk, who was president of Columbia, was sitting in his office, probably with Dave Truman, the number two man, with an aide to John Lindsay. John had these young aides who would go around, and I told everybody to ignore them.
Nathan
You told everybody to ignore them?
Bowker
Yes, they were a pain in the neck. [laughs] So in this sit-in, phone calls or reports would come in to the president. The president would talk to this aide, and this aide would talk to John Lindsay or somebody in his office and then call the commissioner of police, who would then call the head of the local
Nathan
Who finally decided to break heads?
Bowker
The police. They just lost their temper: "Let's go break some heads." Boy, I tell you, I would have been talking to Lloyd Seeley, the chief of police in Harlem, a wonderful man anyway. It's a little exaggeration, but they just got so mad at all of this.
After the Cambodian business, I had had to remove the president of City College because he couldn't keep the campus open. There was an acting president who was a real tough hawk, although he was a teachers union official. One night about eleven o'clock the phone rang, and it was John Lindsay. He said, "Al, City College is about to explode." I said, "Oh?" He said, "Yes, the president up there has got the police in there chasing students," and so forth. I said, "Oh, my goodness." So I called up the president and asked, "How are things going?" He said, "Don't worry. We got a few of them, but some are running this way, and we're going to catch them. We've got the police going." "Don't you think you ought to cool it a little?" "Oh, don't worry, Al, I'll get 'em."
So I hung up and called the mayor back and said, "I think things are under control." He said, "My people up there tell me Harlem's about to burst." He was a little high, I think. So was I, for that matter; I had just had a couple of drinks. So I said, "All right, I'll work on it," and I called back. I got some guy on the phone, and he says, "Oh, yeah, a few are still getting away, but we're going to get them; we're chasing them down 125th Street." I said, "Maybe you shouldn't do that." "Don't worry; we'll get 'em." [laughs] I called John, and I said, "John, go to bed. Forget it. You ought to go to bed, and I will, too. There's nothing I can do."
Changing Generals During a Battle
BowkerThe other rule was, you don't second-guess the man in charge while something is going on; you don't change generals in the middle of
Keeping College Open During Strikes
NathanI gather that one of your principles,then, was not to change generals in the middle of a battle. I'd like to hear any more principles that you evolved.
Bowker
We didn't have in New York an absolute bar against demonstrations. In the Cambodian situation we had a lot of trouble, and many of our colleges were closed. It became a political issue. I remember going down to Washington and talking to the Commissioner of Education, then James Allen. I said, "Jim, I just don't know if we can keep the colleges of this country open." Berkeley, I guess, was in a shambles then.
Nathan
You were at CUNY?
Bowker
Yes. One was the Cambodian bombing, where things erupted all over the country--Kent State and so forth. That would have been in '70. "I just don't know if we're going to keep them open. Half of my colleges are closed right now because of all this." I had one advantage over Berkeley, Stanford, and other places. By and large this was an upper-class, middle-class, intellectual phenomenon, and wasn't working-class.
Most of the students at the city colleges were from working-class backgrounds. If they started misbehaving, their parents thought they ought to be punished; they should go to school. Whereas here, many of the parents tended to support the kids. I remember talking to the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin during one of these, and he said, "If I didn't have New York Jews and faculty children, I wouldn't have any problem at all." I went on television and said, "Well, you don't learn calculus by discussing the issues or by striking. Everybody's going back," and I removed several presidents--a couple at the time.
Did you reach into the faculty on the individual campuses, or were just the presidents the ones that you dealt with?
Bowker
Just the presidents. We had a citywide faculty organization, but it didn't amount to much. I started it partly to stave off collective bargaining, unsuccessfully, so I was always sorry I had it. No, I worked with the presidents. In a way it's a bigger system than this one, although not in enrollment by very much. But there were twenty units, so I didn't have really deep ties into the faculty. This was when the election was coming along, and one of the mayoralty candidates had even gone to court to get an injunction to open City College.
The president of City College had been a minister in Berkeley at one point in his career.
Nathan
Who was that?
Bowker
Buell Gallagher. He had been a Congregational minister here, and had been president of Talladega. He actually came out here for a few months once to be head of the state college system before Glenn Dumke was appointed. He didn't like it and went back to City College. But he was unable, in a way like Clark Kerr was, to use violence, in his case particularly against black students. He simply was unable to discipline black students, and they had to be disciplined.
During one of the big strikes that was going on at City College, a couple of Harlem ministers and some of my staff said, "You have to meet with the students and discuss some of these issues." I said, "All right, I will, but it has to be done today, and it has to be done at such-and-such a time"--like seven to eight, or something like that. I said, "The problem I have is that I'm having dinner with the governor at eight o'clock, and I have to be there, and I have to be in formal clothes; it's a fancy dinner." I wasn't having dinner alone with him, but I was on the dais with him at a banquet, and I had to be there. "So I'll do it, but you have to promise me there won't be any embarrassment if I have to come and negotiate in formal clothes."
So I go into the basement of this church in Harlem, all dressed up with these guys with dashikis. [laughs] We discussed things, and I said I would do the best I can. This was before open admissions. "I'm trying to satisfy some of your demands, but I'm going to open the college, and you guys are going to get penalized." Of course, I had police protection. In Harlem, when I was there, it wasn't safe for a white person.
##
Bowker
About a week later there was a westside newspaper that had a news story: "Insensitive chancellor, coming dressed up and in his luxurious limousine."
Nathan
The issues that were related to these riots were not particularly the Cambodian issue?
Bowker
Well, they wanted us to settle the Vietnam war. My board frequently voted to do that. They were more flexible than the Board of Regents. [laughs] But it also had to do with City College admissions policy. I promised to work as hard as I could for open admissions to the university. By this time it really wasn't necessary, but--.
I mentioned to you briefly the sociologist here at Berkeley, Jerome Karabel, who wrote an article about this whole scene. He was chairman of the recent committee on admissions policy under Heyman. The Marxists have written, of course, that this was a real revolt of the masses and that the establishment was forced into doing what the students and the people wanted. He has written an analysis, and I thought a fairly interesting one, about power-making in New York. Bowker, he would argue, used such incidents to further what he had in mind all the time. So who knows? There's something to that.
I really don't think the students forced the change in admissions policy. It is one that seemed sensible to me, and I had articulated early on in my administration as an objective in the university to have a place in some institution of higher education for all students who graduated from high school, which California has.
It was done here over a long period of time, and smoothly; it was done in New York very quickly and stirred up a lot of opposition in Washington, in Congress. There are even a lot of books about open admissions policy. This article I spoke of I thought was pretty interesting.
Master Plan, Open Admissions, Race Relations
NathanThinking of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, it sounds familiar when you're talking about a slot for every student. Were you familiar with that master plan?
Bowker
Oh, yes. It was actually written near my office; not really. The chairman of the commission, who was the president of one of the private colleges, became ill while the master plan was being written. Bob Wert was vice chairman of the commission, and he sort of wrote the master plan when I was at Stanford in the sixties. So I know all about it.
Actually, a one-sentence summary of the master plan would be, "We did what Clark wanted." [laughter] This is Clark Kerr's scheme, essentially, but he had a commission to come up with it. Yes, I knew all about the master plan, because Bob was writing it.
Also at the time, I think it's much less true now, the schools in New York were going through a terrible period where there was a lot of racism. The schools in New York have always been an area where one immigrant group taught the next. I suppose the WASPS taught the Irish and Italians, and the Irish and Italians taught the Jews. But when I got there, the Jews were teaching the blacks. I'll tell you, if there were ever two mismatched sets of people in New York, there were these hard-working, upward-mobile, intellectually oriented Jewish teachers and principals and administrators all through the system, up to Al Shanker, head of the union--and these blacks from the South. It was just a tremendous cultural gap. It was unusual for any black student to get good grades. The amount of implicit prejudice in the school system was enormous.
I really didn't feel at the time that the credentials from the high schools were fair. I had a dean in my office who lived nearby. He was a Ph.D. from Harvard, and his wife was a social worker or medical technician. They went to register their children in the local junior high school and were handed a welfare application.
Perhaps I was wrong in that, but I really didn't trust the high schools and the credentialing system, and they didn't trust me very much, either. I took a lot of criticism from the principals that open admissions was taking the pressure off the high schools to make people take college entry courses and to study hard, because they knew they were going to get into college anyway. I don't know; it's difficult to say.
At Ocean Hill-Brownsville there were strikes, there were riots. The school system really was in bad shape in many parts of the city, and in the white areas it was the traditional school system. It's still not doing very much for blacks.
Whatever can be said about the policies, even though I describe some student strikes and riots that came around at the time of the Cambodian crisis (which was sort of a national thing at the time), by and large the University was not a racial battleground while I was chancellor. We just moved fast enough, and we kept people satisfied. There was some criticism of what we were doing, but we moved politically rather skillfully.
We had the explicit leadership of the Jewish community with us all along, in open admissions and in expanding opportunity. Now, those were the sixties; I don't know what would happen today. Things are much more polarized. And we had the leadership of the black community, and we had the church. That's what you need in New York.
Nathan
You apparently had also cultivated good personal relationships with these individual groups?
Bowker
Yes. We had them. They were consulted, they were listened to, and they supported us. The blacks with the SEEK program, and the unions and the blue collar workers were great supporters of both open admissions and the construction fund. I was surprised here when I came, the unions probably weren't ever very important, at how badly the University was doing in construction. Since then there have been a couple of bond issues that have helped things along, but it was just dead in the water when I got here. We even had the head of the AFL-CIO on the Board of Regents for a while, but they didn't have any clout.
Faculty Collective Bargaining and Open Records
BowkerIn New York the unions really have a lot of clout. In fact, when Rockefeller was running for governor this last time when I was there, Arthur Goldberg was his opponent; he had been general counsel of one of the major unions--steelworkers, maybe. I should know. Rockefeller unnecessarily decided he needed the union endorsement and support, so he put through a law which made it very easy for public employees to organize, the so-called Taylor Law, after a Professor Taylor of Wisconsin. It really made it very easy to organize, to show interest.
That was when we got faculty collective bargaining at CUNY, which I opposed, and everybody I know said they weren't for it; but it was voted in in a very large way. It was something called a Legislative Conference, run by a series of fairly conservative
I remember telling the attorney general, Louis Lefkowitz, at some party that nobody was running against the governor; "Arthur Goldberg couldn't find his way to a phone booth, and Rockefeller's going to be re-elected by a landslide. Tell him to relax." It didn't make any difference.
Nathan
So this faculty collective bargaining issue that arose again at Berkeley was something you had familiarity with.
Bowker
Oh, yes. It's been bad for some places, like Rutgers. It wasn't too bad for us, but it means that the union has to have grievances to keep their membership going. So they grieve a lot about promotion and tenure. It tends to erode the standards for promotion. For one thing, they insist on the records being open. Well, that's been happening around the country. I know a lot about this subject, but I really didn't want it, and it wasn't a bad problem for me once we had it. But it did mean that probably some people got promoted who wouldn't have.
I had a couple of very amusing cases. The procedures for evaluation were such that you had to have people observe classes and write teaching evaluations and get letters of recommendation. You had to build a big pile of paperwork. I had a guy come up for tenure, which was turned down. He grieved, and the grievance procedure turned it down. His complaint was that none of this paperwork had been done. You looked in his file, and there wasn't much in it; it hadn't been done. In order to fire somebody, you really had to have a record not to give him tenure. If he didn't have a record, you'd give him tenure and it didn't matter. So that's what happened.
Berkeley actually was immersed in paperwork by the time I got here. That wouldn't have been a problem here. I had some other problems here. I decided we were going to stick on this one, and so we went to court.
Nathan
You wanted to deny him tenure?
Bowker
Yes. The judge made a marvelous ruling. He said, "Well, it's true that when you look in the file there's nothing in it, but tenure is too important to be conferred by procedural error," which I thought was a pretty good case. But sometimes I lost cases.
Here, with that in mind, and knowing that the personnel record would eventually be leaked and be public, I got a group of people to go through and sanitize them to some extent. Not take out basic material, but I said, "You'd better go through and make sure." We came across one file from the chairman of one of the modern language departments, saying, "We used to use women to teach these courses, but we found that the more women we had, the more trouble we had. So we only use men now." That was all I needed. [laughs]
Nathan
Talk about incendiary.
Bowker
Burn that.
Nathan
I take it that this openness of the files is not something that bothers you.
Bowker
Yes, it does. It means they're useless, almost. It depends on what your objective is. I am very reluctant to write a candid negative opinion of a faculty member. I had one bad experience, even in the good old days. I had a student who was teaching and applied for a job at the University of Chicago. I wrote that he wasn't up to being at Chicago. The department secretary showed him the letter. Okay, that was a fluke. He is still a good friend, and he ended up teaching out here at Hayward most of his career. I said, "George, I'm sorry I wrote that, but it's true. I don't think you would have made the grade at Chicago." As I've mentioned, I was very close to the Chicago department in many ways. When you know that's going to happen, and it's going to be made public and made part of a hearing, then you don't write that.
Nathan
Do you learn ways of conveying what you mean?
Bowker
Only by phone. Then in Oregon there's a law that you have to put a memo on all phone calls.
Nathan
There's a trade off there, some good and some bad?
Bowker
Well, there's equity to the faculty involved. It's very hard to turn people down for tenure, and small colleges hardly ever do it. There's too much socialization after a person has been around for a while. Berkeley does it.
Nathan
Are there warnings issued by a department: pull up your socks, publish, or something?
Bowker
Yes, there are supposed to be, but some departments are well run, and some aren't run at all. Rod Park, when he was dean of Letters
Budgetary Strategy and Tenure at Berkeley
BowkerIn talking to the chancellor yesterday, I spoke to him in a little more detail about budgetary strategy at Berkeley. Maybe we ought to talk about that.
Nathan
That would be great.
Bowker
I mentioned that I had taken a look at the situation here and decided that we would probably add about--I have forgotten the exact number; it's in one of these documents--sixty Berkeley faculty a year. The question was, then, how many of those could be appointments to tenure and how many could be non-tenured appointments. Now, that second question is more complicated than it sounds, because it is also true that if a department has a faculty position--as they're called here, FTE--and if they are going to lose it if they don't promote this person, they will make a strong case for promotion. The big question was whether budgetary considerations would be a factor in conferring tenure or not, and whether we could devise a strategy where it wouldn't be.
That meant, among other things, that if a position was assigned to a department, it would not be taken away from the department if someone were not promoted; they would get to refill it. In the case of resignations or retirements, those were eligible for reallocation. There were not a lot of reallocations in my day, but there were some. We moved some positions from Letters and Science into the professional schools, as I mentioned earlier. It was not a terribly complicated calculation, but it took some analysis to come up with these numbers. One of the criteria was that no department would ever lose a position by not promoting or freezing someone in it. That's still pretty important.
Nathan
Was there a time limit on when the position could remain unfilled but still be held?
Bowker
No. Once it's there, it's there, if it's a junior position; if it's a senior position. Chancellor Tien mentioned that because of the large number of resignations they were able to make a lot of
That was about all. It wasn't very complicated. It was a little complicated to do the arithmetic. I told Errol Mauchlan and his staff that I wanted a model. They were kind of stirring around, and finally I thought of what I really wanted: a computer program that projects faculty size. "Oh, a computer program." They understood that. Everybody has computers now; every desk in California Hall has a computer on it now, but it didn't then.
Nathan
That almost suggests that if somebody has a bright idea for a new Strawberry College or something of that sort, this would be the time to go for it, if there are slots floating around.
Bowker
Retirements are creating a lot of slots. It's also true that some departments were over-tenured, so I put positions in, for example, to the Physics Department for one, with the notion that they knew all along that some of the impending retirements would be recaptured. It expanded the department size temporarily because the age distribution was bad. When I discussed that with some of my senior officers, they said, "Well, it's just too bad, because they mismanaged their own affairs." I said, "Yes, but the Physics Department at Berkeley has to be protected against a certain amount of mismanagement if need be. Physics is physics." [laughs]
Fund Raising and Reporting
BowkerWhat else would you like to discuss that I've missed?
Nathan
This relates to your friendship with some of the regents, particularly Elinor Heller. There was information about a fund that she and her husband, Edward Heller, had allocated to the University, and he had not been receiving reports on how these funds were being handled. Do you recall that?
Bowker
Yes.
Nathan
You had some feeling of responsibility to them?
I forget now what the purpose of the fund was, but I think it is true that it wasn't being handled very well. I certainly repaired any damage there was.
I had a fund from the Bank of America, which they had given to Roger Heyns for something or other--academic improvement or improvement of teaching or something--and I had used it as a kind of contingent fund. When I went over there and hit the bank up for money once--it's kind of an interesting story--they complained some about this. They had some justice, because no one had paid much attention, and the truth is that I used the fund for whatever I wanted to use it for, overcommitted it every year, and then I saved it at the end of the year. I told you everybody always has a little bit of money, and that was one of the funds. I'd never spent it actually, but I'd used it ten times over.
So I made up a bunch of things I had used it for, and then I went over again. They gave me a hard time, and they went over it again and gave me a hard time. I really was getting kind of mad, because Walter Hoadley was an old friend, actually. He had been a chief statistician or economist for Armstrong Cork and president of the American Statistical Association just before the time I took office. I didn't know anything about Berkeley at that time or that I would ever be here or that he had anything to do with Berkeley. But he was vice president of the bank, and I said, "Walt, they're really giving me a hard time." He said, "I don't think they want to give money to a public institution." I said, "I'm really mad about that."
So I went to see Tom Clausen. I said, "Tom, your philanthropic people are giving me a hard time. They don't want to give money to public institutions." He said, "That isn't our policy, and that isn't true." I said, "That is your policy, and it is true." He said, "Well, let me look into it." He's a graduate of the University of Nebraska. He called me and said, "It is our policy, and it is true, and you've got a grant." [laughter] Then he came over to dinner after that. I still see him; he's around the Bohemian Grove.
I went into PG&E once when I started fund raising, and of course they were all Berkeley people, and they gave me a check for whatever it was I asked for.
Nathan
Going back to a moment to that special fund--
Bowker
The Heller fund? I don't even remember what it was for.
No, I was really thinking of the Bank of America fund, in which you had to account for the way you were spending it. This PG&E grant, were you also obligated to report on it specifically?
Bowker
For some specific purpose, like Asian Studies, and I just transferred it to Asian Studies. I had used the other as kind of a chancellor's slush fund.
Nathan
Very interesting. You really uncovered some policies.
Bowker
Well, I hadn't paid much attention. I was having dinner the last time I was here with one of the student interns, and he said he remembers my saying once that Errol Mauchlan had finally told me where 95 percent of the money around here is. [laughs] It took a lot of digging.
Nathan
That's the culture, I think--to keep the information close?
Bowker
It was a problem, I always thought. That was really why--I never knew why; there were some other reasons, possibly. McCorkle had a big kitty of money in University Hall. I think when Saxon found out about it he fired him.
Nathan
McCorkle was--?
Bowker
Vice president under Hitch and then under Saxon. I used to be a little annoyed when I found secret pots of money that I hadn't been told about, but I went to work at it and worked Errol over. I was very fond of Errol. In fact, I'm going to have dinner with him tonight.
Nathan
He's retiring, isn't he?
Bowker
Yes, I was here, actually, for his retirement party on August 13. I came down from Tahoe and went right back.
Nathan
He sounds as though he's the man who knows where the bodies are buried and where the funds are tucked away.
Bowker
The last two chancellors have been down on him. In fact, the present chancellor removed him, although he's seventy years old.
##
Bowker
Ellie Heller lived in Atherton, and she was very much involved with Berkeley and some with Stanford, mostly with Berkeley. We would go there once or twice a year to parties, and we would have her at the house; so we were friends, and any little annoyance she
Nathan
You might want to read her oral history memoir; it is fascinating. She has nice things to say about you. She also understands about the state and its politics. It's worth reading.
And did Jerry subside?
Bowker
Certainly.
Inviting Speakers, and the Problem of Charter Day
NathanWe had spoken a little about your relationships with national and international figures, but I have some notes to ask whether you have had any particular criteria for inviting people to speak on campus. You decided, apparently, against Henry Kissinger but for the Dalai Lama.
Bowker
I have a kind of uneasy feeling about inviting people to speak on campus. I don't believe that I would have invited the Dalai Lama to speak, but maybe somebody did and I received him. I don't actually remember that. Once Claude Welch, who was a good friend of mine, called and said they were having a visit from Pope Shinuda at the Graduate Theological Union. He is the Coptic Pope, and Welch really thought someone of that stature ought to be received by the campus.
So I received Pope Shinuda and sponsored a public lecture for him and had a lunch for him at the house. It was absolutely fascinating. The Coptic popes go into seclusion for twenty years or so--a long period of time--as young men, so they don't know whether they're going to be pope or not necessarily. They live in a cave, and then they emerge. He said he was a little bit of a museum piece, but he was pretty serious. He had visited the Catholic Pope in Rome, and he had visited Jimmy Carter.
Nathan
He speaks English?
Oh, yes. He lives in Alexandria.
I don't remember the Dalai Lama particularly.
Charter Day bothered me a lot. I thought it was a big nuisance. I had to have a speaker who could speak in the Berkeley environment without causing a riot. I guess, therefore, I did my best to do that and to have people who were relatively non-political. For my inauguration, which I decided to have at Charter Day, I did manage to get Jacques Cousteau to come; and if there is one person in the world whom nobody can object to, it's Jacques Cousteau. The students love him, the environmentalists love him, the fishermen--everybody loves Jacques Cousteau. He was a terrible speaker, but nevertheless, that was a satisfactory one.
Henry Kissinger, if he had been invited to speak on campus by somebody, I would have supported it. I actually thought the treatment of Jeanne Kirkpatrick wasn't good. Mike [Heyman] took an awful beating on that, too, in many circles. I would stand up for anything, but I wouldn't start it. That's true. I had Barbara Tuchman one year; she was okay. I had the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau; he was very good. The only problem we had was seals; there were some seal lovers.
Nathan
They were concerned about the clubbing the baby seals?
Bowker
That's right. But he was very good. He rushed over and talked to them. We had Edward [F.] [Ted] Kennedy, and a couple of the right-wing regents were mad; but he was successful. Dean Watkins said, "Al, why do you do all these liberals?" I said, "Come on, Dean, I've got to keep the peace."
Nathan
Did people, then, sometimes suggest speakers, and then you would choose?
Bowker
The Charter Day speaker was the only one I chose. Anyone else who spoke, I would protect their right to speak, whoever it was. I tried to do that, but I really did think about the impact of the Charter Day speaker on the behavior of the campus. Once I decided we would honor cities on Charter Day, so I had [Los Angeles ] Mayor Tom Bradley. He was the speaker; we introduced him. Then I also introduced Helen Putnam, Mayor of Petaluma; and Warren Widener, who was Mayor of Berkeley. I gave him a citation and said "This isn't for you, Warren; it's for the taxpayers of Berkeley." It really brought down the house. He was delighted, too. He's a nice man.
Garff Wilson always helped with these things. The last year I was here it was the four-hundredth anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's voyage, so we decided to have Elliot Richardson, who was then our ambassador to England, and Peter Jay, who was the English ambassador to the United States, as co-speakers. A couple of other times I had had two speakers at Charter Day. I remember once that somebody cancelled at the last minute. I had two people, one of whom was Arthur Schlesinger. I called Arthur and said, "You've got to do this for me," so he did. I've forgotten who we had with him.
By and large we got through those ceremonies without too much trouble. I was actually in China during the last one, but Garff Wilson organized, as part of the ceremony, Sir Francis Drake and several of his men in costume to wander around the platform.
Nathan
Remember the fake plaque?
Bowker
Well, we were not talking about the fake plaque. We knew it was fake at the time. The ambassador from England got up and said, "Of course, this deals with England and America, and Chancellor Bowker knows where the future is; he's in China." [laughter] He was a great wit.
So we got through that. I just considered it a nuisance. It amused me that David Gardner moved Charter Day away from Berkeley; he had his first one in Los Angeles. They still have something here now.
Nathan
There's a convocation. Well, the academic procession was always rather spectacular, I thought.
Bowker
It was. Again, Garff Wilson organized it. For one thing, they had people carrying banners. The banners didn't mean anything, but they added a touch of color to it.
Nathan
The classes' banners?
Bowker
Yes, but then they had all those banners up in Zellerbach [Hall], which are just for decoration. Then they had the oldest alumnus, and he would read out what the different parties were and what the different colors and the gowns meant.
It was kind of fun, except people would try to disrupt it. We made a lot of effort. One thing we would do would be to control the tickets so no group of students could get a whole bunch of tickets sitting together. And we had the police. Nobody disrupted it too badly in my day, but no matter what happened, the
Once Berkeley, not when Warren Widener was mayor, adopted Havana as its sister city. The mayor, Gus Newport, called me and said they had done that. I said, "That's nice." He said, "The mayor of Havana is going to come to visit Berkeley, and of course you won't let him speak on campus." I said, "Of course I will; of course I will. If you get the mayor of Havana, he can have any auditorium he wants." The mayor of Havana would have more sense than to have anything to do with these nuts. I wasn't worried about that. Of course that was the end of that. Berkeley's mayor was trying to create an incident.
I House Films and a Library Exhibit
BowkerThere were right-wing speakers.
I tried once to censor speeches and films at International House. I said, "This is your living group." There was a bunch of Arabs and radical students who were showing PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] propaganda films at I House, and I said, "You can show PLO films on campus, but I don't know why you have to have them in your living group if it's offensive to you." He denies it, or says he can't remember it, but Louis Heilbron, the present vice chancellor's father, was on the I House board, and he really chewed me out. He's a great lawyer for freedom of speech and is a liberal, so that faded away.
Charlie Hitch actually called me once and said that they were very upset about these PLO films on campus. For some reason, their child converted to Judaism, and they were in a big stew. I said I would work on it, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, obviously.
Nathan
It's very interesting to know what you can do something about and what you can't.
Bowker
Every now and then, when things got out of hand, Glenn Grant, my executive assistant, would say, "People think you ought to move on
Nathan
If I remember this particular I House flap, the issue was partly who would be allowed in to see the film. So it became very complex; there were lots of issues, and who could untangle them?
Bowker
The worst crisis I ever had was absolutely inadvertent. The librarian, who had been appointed about the time I was and I really liked him, had allowed a group of Armenian students to put up an exhibit in the library. It was largely devoted to genocide of Armenians by Turks. The Turkish government protested. I thought it was inappropriate for the library; it was quite a political thing. I told the librarian either to shut it down or give the Turks equal time or something.
Then the Armenians all over the state began to yell and scream, so I met with the Armenians. In the middle of it I remember Nick Petris calling me, and he said, "Al, you know I never interfere in things, but one thing is true: you can't trust the Turks." [laughter] He said, "You can only be elected president of Greece by running against the Turks."
It went on and on, and the librarian was furious at me for censorship.
Nathan
Was this Joe Rosenthal or his predecessor?
Bowker
His predecessor, Dick Doherty. He went to Michigan. I liked him, though I did pick Joe Rosenthal. He came from New York Public Library, where I had a lot of contacts. Dick Doherty was a very good professional librarian. He just didn't like it here. He didn't like being part of a system; he didn't like having priorities in part determined by University Hall. He was kind of independent and a little scratchy.
Nathan
Whatever happened? Did the Turks get equal time?
Bowker
We just sort of compromised. The exhibit was revised slightly, and I agreed to do something about Armenian Studies in the University, which I don't supposed really ever happened. I just talked it through with people, which is what you had to do. It did seem that the exhibit was a bit one-sided without having a strong view.
There are a lot of things like that that come up all the time at Berkeley; everybody is fighting with everybody else. Given the student body we have here, students from all over the world, it's
I said, "There's really nothing I can do about it. I know what they're up to." I read a lot of novels, and I had read a lot of the Meyer Levin novels. I had just finished one about the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, so I said, "I have just finished the novel My Name is Asher Lev. " He said, "That's the story of my life." So I managed to change the subject. [laughs] What was I going to do? I disciplined some of them, of course.
A lot of prominent alumni belong to the group. Every time I landed on them, I'd hear from Sandy Hoagland and various people. I'd say, "Sandy, in your day maybe you could get away with this, but you can't today." He's still a very good friend and a supporter of the University. But he knew what happened already the next day.
The day after I disciplined the ringleader, I got a call from his mother: "Al, you'll never be able to show your face in Woodland again. We're going to boycott Berkeley." I said, "Come on now." "Boys will be boys," she said, "It's just harmless pranks." The next time she saw me, she kissed me; so it was all right. I wasn't really very tough on that kind of behavior, but that really was not politically correct--as we never said in those days.
Nathan
Yes; do you have thoughts about political correctness? I don't know if that's a term we should use.
Bowker
I mean drunken behavior and disruption--they had to be disciplined.
Nathan
Would that be a suspension or a reprimand?
Bowker
This kid eventually got in so much trouble he was expelled; I don't think it was for that. He may have been suspended for a quarter or very likely told to move from his house.
Nathan
Do the deans have some disciplinary responsibilities?
Bowker
There was Bob Kerley, and we had a couple of lawyers around who looked at these things. It's the dramatic ones I remember.
I really felt that at I House--the students in I House were offended, and you just shouldn't have to look at this stuff in your own home. But I was overruled. No great matter.
Writings
NathanAre we ready to talk about some of these interesting things you have written?
Bowker
I started my professional career fairly early. At Stanford, when I was on the faculty, I was chairman. But I had taken on the continuation of this work from the Statistical Research Group in Industrial Statistics, that would be the book with Henry Goode on Sampling Inspection by Variables. Then several other people wrote articles with me, Lieberman for one. Engineering Statistics and the Handbook of Industrial Statistics were textbooks; they weren't scholarly books. Engineering Statistics for ten or fifteen years had a very substantial influence and was studied by many, many engineers in the country; Chancellor Tien studied from that book, he tells me, as an undergraduate.
I keep bumping into people who did. We have never brought it up to date and computerized it, so it isn't too modern at the moment; there are a lot of new things that should be in it. It still sells two or three thousand a year, I guess, particularly in Canada and South America. There's a Spanish edition and an Asian edition, and there may be a Russian edition, too. It was a fairly major book at the time.
Nathan
Are you at all tempted to update it?
Bowker
No, I'm not currently involved with it. Lieberman was my student and now provost at Stanford, too busy to write books.
Then I wrote some professional papers on multivariate analysis. I read a joint paper with Rose, my wife. We were graduate students together and had been in touch. She worked at Stanford some, too, in my laboratory.
I really have written very little. I've written a few things on education, but I really have not written very much through the years and am not much tempted to write today.
Nathan
Well, you had a great deal on your plate all those years.
I've given speeches, and there are certain documents that have been written about me. There's a lot of literature about the New York days. There was even a play about open admissions, in which a faculty member is forced by social pressure to give A's to black students. It was quite a negative play. It wasn't a big hit. [laughs] It wasn't politically correct.
Nathan
Do you particularly like working in collaboration?
Bowker
I have done mostly. I guess so. I usually write my own speeches, although I guess in New York my political aide would occasionally do a draft of the speech for me, but I would usually rewrite it. I don't give a lot of speeches, and I give the same speeches several times, usually. If I bothered to put one together, I tried to make it a multi-purpose speech. I've never been a particularly good speaker. Mike Heyman, on the other hand, loves to talk and is always good on his feet. I became better as time went on, and I usually was fairly funny. I tried always to be and often succeeded, but usually short and funny.
We were talking about Elinor Heller; she was bitterly opposed to honorary degrees and even thought the Berkeley Citation was inappropriate. I got her to come to Charter Day once; I said, "I have to have you there." I turned around and said, "I'm going to give you a Berkeley Citation, and I just want you to understand, Elinor"--or probably I said "Chairman Heller"--"the chairman of the Board of Regents has lots of authority but can't decide what we do at Berkeley." [laughter]
Nathan
Did she submit?
Bowker
Oh, she came up and took it, of course. She wouldn't have come if she had known.
I still remember trying to think of something to do when I introduced [Edward F.] Kennedy. I said something like, "What a wonderful challenge to be carrying on the great tradition of this great family." I couldn't say anything good about him; he was sort of in the dog house at the moment for something--maybe Mary Jo Kopechne.
The John Kennedy thing was before I got here, when he came out with Robert McNamara and other people, and they had Charter Day in the stadium. I had seen the little tape of it, and it was kind of fun. I was talking to Ed Strong one day, who is a nice man, and I said, "I just saw your picture." He said, "You know, I've never seen it." So I had him in and had a showing for his
Nathan
You will probably enjoy Chancellor Strong's oral history memoir from your own experience and the story he tells.
Bowker
I didn't know he had done one.
Nathan
Just before he died. I think you would see a lot in it.
Faculty Appointments and the Budget Committee
##
NathanYour ability to find and attract the people that you wanted in specific slots apparently was very significant. I wonder if you care to say a word about what it is you look for in professors and what it is you look for in administrators. Are there certain qualities?
Bowker
I don't think I had a great role in attracting professors. If there were distinguished persons that the campus was trying to promote, I would agree to interview them, and I would agree to talk them into coming to Berkeley. It was probably more often that I was pulled in to keep people from leaving. I remember when Aaron Wildavsky was thinking of leaving, and I spent a fair amount of effort unsuccessfully on him; he did leave.
The reason I mention it is that I had learned that when people leave that you really want, put them on leave of absence. The job he took in New York blew up, so he was eligible for appointment at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and every major university in the country. You can't go out and hire anybody anymore; you have to have an affirmative action search. I called him up and said, "Come back." He was on leave, so I didn't have to go on a search. So anyone I really wanted, I always put on leave when they left, even if they weren't coming back. He did come back and has been a useful member, one of the more distinguished members of this faculty in political science.
I would help. I had some discretionary money, so I'd up the ante if that was necessary. The procedures here were rather cumbersome, and sometimes when people were negotiating, they'd have to agree to make an appointment by a certain date at a certain salary. All of that stuff had to go through the budget committee, and I had to consider all their recommendations and
Sometimes you just have to answer. The Law School had a special salary scale, and it wasn't too much of a problem, but the Business School and the Engineering School always wanted one. The rest of the faculty didn't want to give it to them, and David Saxon never wanted to give it to them. I think he may have eventually done it. In essence we had to have it, and the budget committee was often unhappy with those salaries, but we did what we had to do.
Nathan
These are really over scale?
Bowker
Yes, or accelerated. Once I wrote to the budget committee and said, "It looks to me like a lot of the people you have over scale aren't worth it any more. Don't you think you ought to reconsider people who are over scale and not give them raises?" They wrote back a nasty letter: "Once over scale, always over scale."
By and large I felt I had reasonable relations with the budget committee. You'd have to ask them, but certainly the chairman was always very friendly. Berkeley in my day has not ever had a very sharp division between the faculty leadership and the administration.
Nathan
People go back and forth? Is that what you're thinking?
Bowker
Partly people go back and forth, partly I met with the faculty committee chairman regularly and with the head of the Academic Senate regularly and told them what I was going to do. Of course, I wasn't doing a lot. Now, we didn't have the stresses and strains that Roger Heyns had. There was a certain amount of tension in those days.
Selecting Administrators
NathanWhen you were bringing people into the administration, naming them to their posts, what was it you wanted from them?
I didn't recruit an awful lot of people actually, but in terms of the provost I wanted good academic management, and I wanted improved academic management in the professional schools particularly. The College of Letters and Science--I don't actually remember. I never knew Rod Park before he was the dean, and I guess he probably was the establishment's choice for being dean. He actually came in ahead of Mike Heyman, though he and Mike had been friends for a long time and were very close.
In the case of the deputy, it was becoming clear that I was going to have to spend more and more time outside the University and on fund raising. I guess I wanted someone who could really be the chief inside operator. Mike wasn't really terribly experienced as an administrator, so that was a bit chancy. But he was a man of energy and ability, and I thought he could do it. He ran everything that I didn't keep my own hand in. I'd say, "This is mine; stay away," but he ran everything else. I didn't have to delegate to him formally, and we worked very harmoniously together.
It's a little bit hard to say. I really wanted people who would work together. I hate bickering in the central staff. Whether that's just me or whether I picked people who were able to get along. I certainly didn't pick "yes" men; no one could ever accuse me of that. [laughs] But I also wanted people who would carry out what they were told if I made a decision. I didn't want people to work around me or try to undermine my positions, and I don't think they ever did. On the other hand, most people are people I inherited.
I've always had an executive assistant. There is a difference between New York and Berkeley. In New York I could always have an executive assistant for a couple of years and make him a college president or a senior person somewhere. That wasn't available here; we weren't expanding, so I had a more or less permanent executive assistant. There really was a lot of responsibility in that position. All my mail was seen by him and by me but handled by him. I would get a Xerox, and on the Xerox it would be noted where it had been routed. Occasionally I'd change it.
He also ran the office in that sense. One of the weaknesses of these offices is that the budget office reviews everybody else's budget, but nobody reviews their budget,and they always build themselves up. Errol, whatever his virtues, had no self control on salaries for his staff or number of staff. We had to do that. All the vice chancellors--everybody who would report directly to the president--had their budget reviewed by my
In New York one time I actually created the title of vice chancellor for the Chancellor's Office. It's a little high-faluting. He was scheduling me, and he said that was a pretty important position. You need someone who is devoted to the institution, who will work harmoniously. I've never had close personal friends among at least the senior members of my administration. I mean, I had never met the Heymans before. We were friendly socially, and I'm very fond of them. I became very fond of Mark Christensen, and we are close friends. He went to Santa Cruz and then returned to the faculty here. In fact, I always used to stay at University House until the last couple of years. The Heymans didn't live there for a while, but when they were there I always stayed there when I was in Berkeley.
Nathan
Did you feel you were under any pressure, let's say, to put women and people of color on your administrative staff?
Bowker
Yes. That's sort of a weakness of my regime, isn't it? I did ask Herma Kay if she wanted to be a vice chancellor, before I picked Mike, and she said no. She had just finished a term as head of the faculty senate. It is true that there were no women in my inner circle. Norvel Smith was a cabinet member. He wanted to be vice chancellor for student affairs, and he was an excellent administrator and a fine man. He had one disadvantage; he didn't like students. That's a little unfair, but he wasn't used to these spoiled brats. He was a poor boy. I don't think I spoiled my children quite as much as the average Berkeley student, but I knew what the middle class values were. He had no children. He wasn't always comfortable dealing with all these kids. But he was a wonderful administrator, and he ran things well, so he was in my cabinet.
Colie [Colette] Seiple, of course, was a factor in the Alumni Association. I worked harmoniously with her. When I went to Washington, I worked for Secretary Hofstetler. I worked for women. I had appointed two women college presidents in New York, two very interesting women. One was Jacqueline Wechsler, president of Hunter College, who was a former nun. Sister Jacqueline had left the order and had been president of Webster College. Mina Rees was president of the Graduate Center. Minorities--I had a good record there in New York, but here not so good. I suppose I've always been more comfortable in the company of men in administrative positions. It's partly the kind of age
Nathan
That's very sage. Yet you've certainly gotten along with a lot of women--Elinor Heller, Jo Miles.
Bowker
Yes, we were friendly with Jo. After all, Mrs. Bowker was a professor at Stanford, and a number of the young women faculty members would come and talk to her about problems of tenure and roles and this and that. She was actually very popular here, as far as one could tell, with the faculty and even with the wives, whom she ignored according to some people.
Nathan
That was probably an oversimplification.
Bowker
She was pleasant. She used to go to the things; she just could never remember anybody's name. But that was all right. Actually, Mrs. Steidel was a great help to her in those matters.
Building an Academic Community
BowkerI think building an academic community is important. I tried to have students and faculty at all appropriate events at the house. I mentioned a couple of them. Particularly when we had these distinguished foreign visitors, we'd usually have the head of the senate and some of the student body officers. They all kind of liked me in the end. There was one boy named Mike Aguirre, who was the president of the student body. He was around for years and years, and finally I said, "Mike, if you will promise to leave, I will have you and your parents to dinner." [laughter]
He first was an undergraduate, and then he went through Law School. He was here in politics indefinitely. Oh, he brought his parents over. He used to come over and say, "You know, it's been such a great experience for me to be able to work with the chancellor and Rose." He really infuriated my wife. [laughs] He would drop in.
Keeping the University in the First Rank
NathanWell, you had your laughs at Berkeley as well as your serious times.
There were serious moments. I suppose in the end the thing that I thought about every day, almost, was, "Am I really maintaining a university of the first rank with the erosion of funding and the erosion of the physical plant on the campus?" I must say, it was nip and tuck for a while whether Berkeley could survive, and it wasn't entirely clear when I left that it was going to go on. It's never entirely clear; it's really a battle every day. You have to be well funded, you have to have first-rate faculty, you have to have the right environment.
Faculty move mostly for prestige and status, not so much for money. I mean, the money is part of it, but it's the general milieu of the department. It is an honor to be a faculty member of Berkeley, and you have to keep it that way. So you think a lot about the competitive battles you lose and the people who leave and why and what could you have done.
I reviewed carefully every major departure from the campus, and I worried about it, because I hated to lose people. Curiously enough, the biggest problem I ever had was Princeton; Princeton really could get people from here. I had two or three losses to Princeton, but not so much otherwise. Harvard was not much of a problem for us.
But that's what this game is; that's what this place is. It's a collection of some of America's greatest scholars, and you can slip. You can't slip fast, which is lucky; these things change slowly. I felt in the end that I left Berkeley as good as or better than I found it, and that's about all I could hope to do under those circumstances. I couldn't build a lot of new things with the level of funding I had from those great lovers of higher education, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown. [laughs]
Nathan
Just watching the cracks and the crumbles and shoring it back up is a very big job.
Bowker
It really is, and that's probably really why I left. It had seemed very hard to me for nine years. Mike lasted ten. He said he had to last a year longer to show he was a better man than I was. But I don't think he could have done it much longer. He was getting tired and heavily committed to development activities, which I spent a lot of time on toward the end of my regime but not in the beginning. I don't know whether that can continue or not; that's a lot of work. But the momentum is there; we'll see. The chancellor wants to continue, but it takes a lot of time.
Nathan
If you had any words of friendly advice to the chancellor, what would you say?
I think the academic management of the place is the thing to worry about, particularly now with this new retirement policy. It bothers me in several ways. The replacement of high-salaried people by low-salaried people sounds good and sounds like it's saving money, but the money that I had was often from--it sounds silly--the high-salaried people on leave. About 14 percent of the Berkeley faculty would be on sabbatical every year, and another 10 or 15 percent would be charged to the lab or to a research unit or contract. So there was an awful lot of money floating around that was a so-called temporary budget that you could count on year in and year out and spend on teaching assistants, teaching associates, lecturers, visitors, and also on other things. Now that looks pretty tight to me. There's more private money.
Berkeley runs itself, and the machinery and the bureaucracy here is such that if the chancellor doesn't intervene too much he could be generally considered irrelevant. All the appointments flow from the departments to the deans to the budget committee. One of Mark Christensen's problems at Santa Cruz, when he went down there, was that it wasn't set up that way. So if the chancellor didn't actually do things right, they weren't done. He had made an appointment, I think, without going through the budget committee. It couldn't happen at Berkeley, even if the staff were trying to do it. The secretaries who run California Hall wouldn't let it happen; they know what's right. So there's a good bureaucracy here, maybe too much sometimes, but it runs well.
Nathan
But the larger picture, the worrying about erosion and so on, the chancellor has to do that?
Bowker
Yes. The big ones, and if there were new directions--which there weren't, really, in my day, except a few things around the edges that I tried to push--the chancellor would have to take the initiative in those. I suppose I pushed the University a little bit toward the Pacific Rim Studies area, but that seemed fairly natural.
Institutional Politics and Constituencies
BowkerThere is a down side to a lot of decisions that you make. I think my talent has been to see both the pluses and the minuses. When I was dissatisfied with someone's performance and wanted to remove him or wanted to turn down a recommendation or wanted to fire somebody, I wouldn't always do it. My dissatisfaction was one
For example, as I mentioned, in the case of Mike White, after I had decided that it really wasn't going to be possible for me to work with him, it would not have been possible to fire him at that moment without difficulties. It was the wrong time anyway, and I didn't think of it. You've got to think that you've got this constituency: those alumni, these fund raisers, this, that, and so forth. I think we finally let him go after a particularly unpleasant Big Game, which in itself wasn't very important, but at least he was sort of in the down period of popularity then. There were still consequences, but at least they were minimized.
It's this kind of sense of institutional politics as a whole and all the constituencies of the University. I still remember the other decision I made when I cleared out Haviland Hall that night when it was being occupied. There was no question that it was an unpopular decision in my immediate circle and in a large part of the campus, but I just kept thinking about the regents and the newspapers and the editors and all of those people out there. What they really wanted to see was a new regime at Berkeley and a tough one. I just didn't see how I could face the public, even though I had to overrule my own people.
Nathan
That was a hard call, I'm sure.
Bowker
In the end the faculty really liked the restoration of order on the campus. They really did [laugh] in the end, although if it had failed--. [laughter] In the end most people thought we were better off to be very strict with what were called "time, place, and manner" regulations, and to stick to them. Because once you waffle, then some people will take advantage.
I guess that's about it. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. I guess you're pretty tired, too.
Nathan
It takes a certain amount of effort, but I will say that it has been worth every minute. I'm delighted with what you have done and appreciate this valuable account. Thank you.
Transcribed and final typed by: Judy Smith
Appendix
Tape Guide--Albert H. Bowker
Interview 1: September 3, 1991
Interview 2: September 4, 1991
-
Interview 2:
September 4, 1991
- Tape 3, Side A *
- Tape 3, Side B *
- Tape 4, Side A *
- Tape 4, Side B *
- Tape 5, Side A *
- Tape 5, Side B *
- Tape 6, Side A *
- Tape 6, Side B *
Interview 3: September 5, 1991
-
Interview 3:
September 5, 1991
- Tape 7, Side A *
- Tape 7, Side B *
- Tape 8, Side A *
- Tape 8, Side B *
- Tape 9, Side A *
- Tape 9, Side B *
- Tape 10, Side A *
- Tape 10, Side B *
Interview 4: September 6, 1991
-
Interview 4:
September 6, 1991
- Tape 11, Side A *
- Tape 11, Side B *
- Tape 12, Side A *
- Tape 12, Side B *
Index--Albert Bowker
- Adler, Kurt Herbert, 46
- Aguirre, Mike, 196
- Amsterdam News, 158
- anti-Semitism, 114-115
- Arbuckle, Ernie, 140
- Arnold, Kenneth, 113, 121
- Arrow, Kenneth, 128-129
- Atkinson, Richard, 129
- atomic bomb, responsibility for, 105-106
- Bakke, Allen, case, 70
- Barrymore, Ethel, 106
- Beall, William, 170
- Bechtel, Laura, 43
- Bechtel, Steve, Sr., 41, 43
- Bender, Richard, 48
- Bennington College, 87
- Bergman, Stephen, 129
- Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 43
- bilingual education, 95
- Biller, Robert, 28
- Birnbaum, Bob, 32, 133, 164
- Blackwell, David, 3, 34, 120-121, 127, 138
- Blake, Judith, 25
- Bloch, Felix and Natalie, 144
- Bohemian Club, 159
- Bohemian Grove, 6, 56-57
- Borrowman, Merle, 49
- Bouwsma, William, 48
- Bowker, Albert Hosmer
- education, early:
- high school classes, interests, 106-108
- education, higher.
- See Chapel Hill, N.C.; Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- family:
- professional posts.
- See City University of New York; Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; life after Berkeley.
- selected honors and awards, 100-101, 136-137
- education, early:
- Bradley, Tom, 185
- Brinegar, Claude, 130
- Brock, William, 69
- Brown, Edmund G., Jr. (Jerry), 22-23, 34, 36, 72, 184, 197
- Brown, Edmund G., Sr. (Pat), 23, 38, 77-78
- Brown, Jim, 31
- Brown University, 40
- Brown, Willie, 21, 167
- Burkhardt, Fred, 156
- Bush, Vannevar, 105-106, 120
- California Poll, 35
- Campbell, Glenn, 4-5, 74
- Carmichael, Lila, 12, 43
- Carnegie Foundation, 2
- Carter, Edward W., 30, 34
- Chabad House, 189
- Chandler, Porter, 156-157
- Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 122
- Charles, Prince of Wales, 43, 45
- Cheit, Earl (Budd), 26, 47-48
- Chernin, Milton, 48-49, 52
- Chicago School of Economics, 125-126
- Christensen, Mark, 12, 41, 59, 195, 198
- City College of New York, 13, 67, 141, 162
- City University of New York, 2-4, 13, 97, 149-165, 177-178
- Research Foundation, 97-98
- Clark, Kenneth, 158-163
- Clausen, A. W. (Tom), 182
- Clifford, Clark, 81
- Coblentz, William, 24
- Colton, Elizabeth, 14
- Columbia University, 119-121, 135-136, 171-172
- Conant, James Bryant, 105-106
- Connick, Robert, 6-7, 66
- Constance, Lincoln, 7, 138
- Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C., 99
- Courant Institute, 135-136
- Cousteau, Jacques, 185
- Cox, E. Morris, 39-41, 47
- Craig, Gordon, 139
- Cramér, Harald, 138
- Curtis, Isaac, 52-53
- Daily Cal, 18-20, 23
- David, Narsai, 43
- Debreu, Gerard, 138
- Djerassi, Carl, 139, 145
- Doherty, Dick, 188
- Doyle, Mrs. Henry Gratton, 109
- Dresch, Frances, 138
- Drug Abuse Council, 87
- Duell, Lenny, 28
- Dymally, Mervin, 14
- Edelstein, Julius, 150-157
- Edwards, Harry, 16, 166-167
- Elberg, Sanford S., 1, 10, 59-62, 83, 101
- Erickson, Richard E., 12, 38-41, 83
- Eurich, Al, 122, 125
- Evans, Griffith, 120-125, 138
- Faust, Clarence, 142
- Feller, David E., 32
- Fernandez, Joseph, 97
- Field Poll, 35
- Fischer, R.A., 122
- Fix, Evelyn, 138
- Ford Foundation, 50
- Forsythe, George, 135
- Franklin, Phillip, 115
- Freeman, Harold, 113, 119
- Fretter, William P., 7, 71
- Friedman, Milton, 121
- Fryer, Tom, 85
- Fullerton, Gail, 31
- Gallagher, Buell, 174
- Garabedian, Paul, 128-129
- Garbarino, Joseph, 32
- Gardner, David P., 73, 75, 165, 169-170, 186
- Gideonse, Harry, 154
- Gifford, Bernard, 50
- Ginston, ___, 145
- Girshick, Abraham, 120, 138
- Goddard, Robert Hutchings, 106
- Goldberg, Arthur, 177-178
- Golden Gate Law School, 169
- Goode, Henry, 190
- Gordon, Robert Aaron, 128
- Gould, Sam, 158
- Graduate Theological Union, 86
- Grant, Gene, 124
- Grant, Glenn H., 12, 83, 187
- Greek Theatre, 46
- Green, Richard, 97
- Groves, Leslie, 105-106
- Guthrie, James W., 50
- Haas, Robert, 3
- Haas, Walter, Jr., 42-56
- Haas, Walter, Sr., 42-56
- Hafner, Richard P., 10, 12, 19-20, 45, 83
- Halbach, Edward, 7
- Hart, James D., 1
- Harvard University, 113-115, 142, 162
- Healy, Timothy, 164
- Heard, Winifred, 41-42, 87
- Hearst family, 46
- Hearst, Catherine, 5, 66
- Hearst, Phoebe Apperson, 46
- Hechinger, Fred, 20, 158
- Heilbron, Louis, 187
- Heller, Edward, 181
- Heller, Elinor, 24, 88, 181-184, 191
- Herriot, Jack, 134
- Hester, Jim, 143
- Hewlett, William, 126, 146
- Heyman, Ira Michael, 27, 31, 37, 41, 50, 55-56, 62, 72, 81-85, 89, 101, 185, 191-197
- Heyman, Therese, 20
- Heyman, Seymour, 164
- Heyns, Roger, 3-6, 10-11, 33-40, 55, 182, 193
- Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 152
- Hitch, Charles, 3-6, 33-35, 40, 55, 62, 72, 74-80, 183, 187
- Hoadley, Walter, 182
- Hoagland, Sandy, 189
- Hodges, Joseph L., 4-7, 34, 120, 138
- Hofstetler, Shirley, 94-95
- Hofstadtler, Bob, 145-146
- Hollander, Ted, 164
- Holton, Richard H., 7, 47
- Holzman, Wayne, 130
- Hotchkis, Preston, Jr. and Sr., 39
- Hotelling, Harold, 119-120
- Howard University, 114, 128
- Howe, Irving, 147
- Hsu, P.L., 122
- Hudson, William, 37
- Hunter College, 162
- Jamieson, Andy, 66
- Jamieson, John, 44
- Jay, Peter, 186
- Johnson, Chalmers, 44
- Johnson, Phillip, 17
- Jones, Lyle, 130
- Kadish, Sanford, 3, 17, 48
- Kaiser, Edgar, 168
- Kaplan, Henry, 142
- Karabel, Jerome, 175
- Kay, Herma Hill, 29, 195
- Kelley, John, 68-69
- Kelly, Truman, 117-118
- Kennedy, Don, 50, 142
- Kennedy, Edward F., 185-191
- Kennedy, Robert F., 161
- Keppel, Frank, 156-157
- Kerley, Robert F., 9-12, 53, 63, 65, 189
- Kerr, Clark, 16, 19, 30, 36, 46, 49, 76-77, 82, 173-176, 192
- Kibbee, ___, 164
- Kirk, Grayson, 171
- Kirkpatrick, Jeanne, 185
- Knight, Frank, 125
- Knight, Walter, 9
- Kronbach, 140
- Kornberg, Arthur, 141
- Kuh, Ernest, 48, 65
- land-grant institutions, 8
- Lawrence, Ernest, 105
- Lawrence, John, 5
- Lehmann, Erich, 34, 120, 122, 127, 133, 138
- Lederberg, Josh, 141
- Lefkowitz, Louis, 178
- Levin, Meyer, 189
- Levinson, Norman, 113
- Levy, Frank, 96
- Levy, Hans, 128, 133
- Levy, Harry, 154
- Lieberman, Gerald, 190
- life after Berkeley, 94-101
- Lindsay, John, 5, 22-23, 63, 77, 156, 161-163, 171-173
- Link, George, 39
- Loewner, Charles, 129
- Los Angeles Times, 98
- Lowenstein, Allard, 22
- Luce Foundation, 45
- Lyman, Richard, 30, 40, 56-58, 139
- McCorkle, Chester, 5, 71, 183
- McCune, Ellis, 85-86
- McHenry, Dean, 154-155
- McNemar, Quinn, 129
- Maggard, David L., 53-57
- Markey, Chris, 4, 38
- Marlow, Sid, 2
- Marshall, Ray, 81-82
- Martin, Ted, 113
- Maslach, George, 3, 7, 12, 48, 82-83
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 52, 87, 110-123
- Kappa Sigma fraternity tutor, 116-117
- Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 175-176
- Mauchlan, Errol, 12, 26, 62, 69, 78, 83, 183, 194
- Meng, Joe, 164
- Meng, John, 154
- Meese, Edwin, 68
- Miles, Josephine, 196
- Milliken, William J., 39
- Monahan, Bob, 39
- Moore, Mrs. Elizabeth Luce, 87-88
- Moretti, Robert, 21, 36
- Murphy, Joe, 164
- Muscatine, Charles, 26
- National Research Council Fellowship, 122
- Neustadt, Helene, 152
- Newport, Gus, 187
- New York Times, 20, 36, 154-158, 164
- Neyman, Jerzy, 120, 124, 132, 138
- Nixon, Richard, 2, 69, 78
- Oppenheimer, Celia, 108
- Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 106
- Orenstein, Manfred, 155-156
- Orr, Verne, 68
- Pace, Nello, 62
- Packard, David, 126, 143
- Paley, Hank, 157
- Panofsky, Wolfgang, 128, 144
- Park, Roderic B., 12, 48, 83, 89, 179-180, 194
- Paulson, Ed, 120
- Pavarotti, Luciano, 46
- Peterson, Alan, 134
- Petris, Nicholas C., 24, 35, 72, 188
- Pforzheimer, Carl, 163
- Plant, Forest, 39
- Platt, Anthony, 8, 16-17, 34
- Polya, George, 129
- Pope Shinuda, 184
- Potter, David, 139
- Powdermaker, Hortense, 152
- Powell, Colin, 67
- Proccacino, Mario, 163
- Putnam, Helen, 185
- racial and religious discrimination
- Raleigh, John, 7-10
- Raskin, Abe, 158
- Reagan, Ronald, 5, 21, 23, 34-36, 95, 168-169, 197
- Reed, Constance, 136
- Rees, Mina, 120, 124, 133, 149, 152, 164
- Regional Association of East Bay Colleges and Universities, 85-86
- Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), 66-67
- Reynolds, Ann, 97-98, 165
- Reynolds, Robert, 4
- Rhinelander, Phil, 142
- Richardson, Elliot, 186
- Robert Gordon Sproul Associates, 42
- Robinson, Julia, 136
- Robinson, Rafael, 136
- Rockefeller, Nelson, 6, 23, 36, 77, 150, 158-160, 163, 177-178
- Roosevelt, Theodore, 46
- Rose, Alex, 151
- Rosenthal, Joseph A., 188
- Rosenzweig, Bob, 58
- Rosston, John W., 39
- Rubin, Max, 163
- Sammet, Loy, 9, 48
- Sanford, Nevitt, 110
- San Francisco Chronicle, 159
- Savage, James, 120
- Saxon, David, 70-76, 117, 183, 193
- Scalapino, Robert, 10
- Schaeffer, , 125
- Schalow, Art, 145
- Schlesinger, Arthur, 186
- Schuster, Jack, 12
- Scott, Elizabeth, 138
- Searcy, Alan, 26
- Searle, John, 60
- Sears, Bob, 142, 144
- Sego, Gabor, 129
- Seiple, Colette, 39, 195
- Shalala, Donna, 59
- Shenker, Albert, 157, 176
- Shanker, Joe, 164
- Sherriffs, Alex, 3, 5, 36
- Shiffer, Max, 129
- Shoup, Ruth, 149, 156
- Shultz, George, 2
- Shurtleff, Gene, 41
- Sindler, Allen, 17
- Slaughter, John, 58-59
- Slusser, Willis, 80
- Smith, Al, 108-109
- Smith, Norvel, 12, 195
- Solomon, Herb, 120
- Sooy, Francis A., 28, 75
- Spencer, Don, 125
- Spock, Benjamin, 70
- Sproul, Robert Gordon, 76
- Stanford University, 1, 4, 13, 27, 54-57, 61, 64, 124-147
- departments:
- fundraising, 126-127
- laboratories and institutes:
- schools:
- technology, uses of:
- Starkey, Janet, 83
- State University of New York (SUNY), 32
- Steidel, Robert, 53, 55
- Stein, Charles, 127
- Sterling, Wally, 30, 40, 125, 127, 143-145, 159
- Stewart, Morris A., 1
- Stigler, George, 121
- Stockmeyer, Walt, 116
- Strong, Edward W., 173, 191-192
- student demonstrations, UC Berkeley, New York, 170-175
- Sulzberger, Punch, 158
- Suppes, Patrick, 129
- Sutton, Percy, 158
- Tarski, Alfred, 120
- Teller, Edward, 6
- Terman, Fred, 122-126, 131-136, 139-145
- Thomas, Franklin, 161
- Tien, Chang-Lin, 180, 190
- Timiras, Paula, 28
- Townes, Charles, 145
- Trefethen, Eugene, 41-42
- Tresidder, Donald, 125
- Travia Bill, 156
- Trudeau, Pierre, 185
- Truman, Dave, 171
- Tuchman, Barbara, 185
- Tussman, Joseph, 26
- Tuttle, Charlie, 155
- Tyson, James, 117
- United States Government
- University of California
- University of California, Berkeley
- Academic Senate committees:
- accreditation, 51-52
- alumni relations, 37-41
- athletics, intercollegiate, 4, 52-59;
- Berkeley Fellows, 37-38, 42
- Board of Educational Development, 59
- Bodega Marine Laboratory, 62
- Chancellor's Office:
- Charter Day, 78, 185-187, 191
- colleges:
- departments:
- divisions: Graduate Division, 59-61
- faculty:
- International House, 79, 187-190
- library, 168, 188
- loyalty oath, and consequences of, 127-128
- programs:
- schools, professional, 6-9, 50-51:
- services:
- students (including other universities, conduct and relations), 9-11, 63-66, 170-175, 186-190
- handicapped, physical access, 81-82
- studies:
- University of California, campuses
- University of Chicago, 120, 125-126, 169
- University of Maryland, College Park, 58-59, 96
- University of Massachusetts, 94, 96
- University of Southern California (USC), 30, 58, 126
- van Arsdale, Harry, 157, 163
- Varian, Russell, 145
- Varian, Sig, 126
- Vasconcellos, John, 17, 24, 36
- Vineyard, George, 117
- Vonnegut, Bernard, 116
- Wadsworth, George, 113
- Wagner, Bob, Jr., 97
- Wagner, Bob, 23, 150-151, 155
- Wald, Abraham, 120
- Wallerstein, Robert, 29
- Wallis, Allen, 6, 120-128, 146
- Walsh, Lawrence, 157
- Warren, Earl, 76, 100-101
- Watkins, Dean, 4-6
- Watson, Skiz, 158
- Weaver, Warren, 120
- Wechsler, Jacqueline, 195
- Weinberger, Caspar, 81
- Welch, Claude, 184
- Wert, Bob, 85-86, 139, 176
- Wessel, Nils, 156
- Weyand, Frederick, 67
- Wheaton, William, 7, 48
- Whitaker, Doug, 125
- White, Michael K., 53-56, 199
- Widener, Warren, 24, 185
- Wiener, Norbert, 115
- Wildavsky, Aaron, 192
- Wilks, Sam, 120
- Willens, Earl, 39
- Willsey, Ray, 53
- Wilson, Charles, 135
- Wilson, Garff, 12, 45-46, 72, 186
- Wilson, Lionel, 167
- Wilson, William, 4
- Witter, Wendell, 37
- Wolfowitz, Jack, 120
- Woolman, Marjorie, 5
- World War II, 105-106
- Wright, Gordon, 139
- Young, Charles E., 58, 75
Harriet Siegel Nathan
University of California at Berkeley alumna with two Journalism degrees: A.B. in 1941 and M. J. in 1965. Wrote for the on-campus paper, The Daily Californian ("Monarch of the College Dailies") as reporter, columnist, assistant women's editor, and managing editor. Prepared President Sproul's biennial report to the Legislature, 1942-44; wrote advertising copy; edited house journals; served on local and state boards of the League of Women Voters primarily in local and regional government and publications. As a graduate student, wrote for the University's Centennial Record. Worked as an interviewer/editor at the Regional Oral History Office part-time from the mid-sixties; concurrently served the Institute of Governmental Studies as Principal Editor doing editing, writing, research, production, and promotion of Institute publications. Wrote journal articles; and a book, Critical Choices in Interviews: Conduct, Use, and Research Role (1986) that included oral history interviews in the analysis. Also with Nancy Kreinberg co-authored the book, Teachers' Voices, Teachers' Wisdom: Seven Adventurous Teachers Think Aloud (1991), based on extended interviews with the teachers.
Courtesy of Regional Oral History Office. The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, Calif., 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1p3001qq&brand=oac4
Title: Albert H. Bowker
By: Bowker, Albert H., Nathan, Harriet, editor
Date: 1995 (issued)
Contributing Institution: Regional Oral History Office. The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, Calif., 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu
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