One of the last century's most influential figures in higher education, Clark Kerr was a leading visionary, architect, leader, and fighter for the University of California. Chancellor of the Berkeley campus from 1952 to 1958 and president of the university from 1958 to 1967, Kerr saw the university through its golden years--a time of both great advancement and great conflict. This absorbing memoir is an intriguing insider's account of how the University of California rose to the peak of scientific and scholarly stature and how, under Kerr's unique leadership, the university evolved into the institution it is today.
In this first of two volumes, Kerr describes the private life of the university from his first visit to Berkeley as a graduate student at Stanford in 1932 to his dismissal under Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. Early in his tenure as a professor, the Loyalty Oath issue erupted, and the university, particularly the Berkeley campus, underwent its most difficult upheaval until the onset of the Free Speech Movement in 1964. Kerr discusses many pivotal developments, including the impact of the GI Bill and the evolution of the much-emulated 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education. He also discusses the movement for universal access to education and describes the establishment and growth of each of the nine campuses and the forces and visions that shaped their distinctive identities.
Kerr's perspective of more than fifty years puts him in a unique position to assess which of the academic, structural, and student life innovations of the 1950s and 1960s have proven successful and to consider what lessons about higher education we might learn from that period. The second volume of the memoir will treat the public life of the university and the political context that conditioned its environment.
Clark Kerr (1911-2003) was President of the University of California and a giant in public education. His books include The Uses of the University (1995), Higher Education Cannot Escape History (1994), Troubled Times for Higher Education (1994), and The Great Transformation in Higher Education (1991).
"This is a major piece of work going far beyond California in interest, and you cannot doubt that I am an ardent supporter. Truly, on this occasion we can say that we will never see his like again."—John Kenneth Galbraith, professor emeritus Harvard University
"In this account of his role in shaping the ‘private’ life of the University of California —its internal, academic, and administrative side— Clark Kerr has given us much more than a witty, insightful, down-to-earth history of the University of California in its most active growth phase; he has provided an extraordinary chapter in the history of higher education in this country. But then, what else would one expect from one of the wisest and most courageous educational leaders of our time?"—William G. Bowen, President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, President Emeritus of Princeton University
"This book not only contains the memoirs of one of the greatest university presidents of the 20th century, it also gives an illuminating, first-hand account of what is surely the century’s most spectacular achievement in higher education: the rise of the University of California system."—Derek Bok, President Emeritus of Harvard University
"This is a wonderful book at many different levels….Clark Kerr —statesman, scholar, and thoughtful citizen of the academic commonwealth — brings to his writing the modesty, generosity, commitment to principle and openness to many points of view, the humane values and sense of mission that have always marked his extraordinary leadership." — Hanna Holborn Gray, President Emeritus of The University of Chicago
608 pp.6 x 9Illus: 45 tables, 10 figures, 50 b/w photos
9780520223677$42.00|£35.00Hardcover
Oct 2001