Full text of "Sixth chancellor, University of California, Berkeley, 1971-1980 : statistician, and national leader in the policies and politics of higher education : oral history transcript / 1995"

See other formats

University of California • Berkeley

Regional Oral -History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

University History Series

Albert H. Bowker

SIXTH CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 1971-1980;

STATISTICIAN, AND NATIONAL LEADER IN THE

POLICIES AND POLITICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

With an Introduction by
Joseph L. Hodges

Interviews Conducted by

Harriet Nathan

in 1991

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the Vest, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research
technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous
conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and
clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in
final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.

************************************

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.

Copy no.

Albert H. Bowker, 1980.

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;
craftworkers1 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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS- -Albert H. Bowker

PREFACE i

INTRODUCTION- -by Joseph L. Hodges, Jr. ill

INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Harriet Nathan vi

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION xiii

CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY (1971-1980) 1

Stanford Sidelight 1

Multiple Interviews, and Accepting the Chancellor's Post 3

Chancellor's Office and the Professional Schools 6

Student Affairs 9

Priorities: the Cabinet and the Schedule 12

Academic Management: Appointments, Advancement, Budgets 13

Faculty Personnel Cases 16

Decision on the Criminology School 17

Relations with the Press 19

Relations with Political Figures 21

Relations with Regents 24

Abolishing Departments: Demography, and Design 25

The Neighborhood Idea for Undergraduate Education 26

Educational Ventures in Health and Medical Science 28

Fund-Raising 30

Issues: Psychiatry Clinic, Sexual Harassment, Faculty Union 30

Relations with Faculty 33

Chancellor's Authority: Budgets and Appointments 34

California Politics 35

The Berkeley Fellows 37

Cultivating Berkeley Alumni 38

Separating the Fund-Raising Function 39

Entertaining Donors and Important Visitors 42

The Quality of Public Ceremonies 45
Asian Studies . 47

Appointing and Supporting Deans 47

School of Education and Other Professional Schools 48

Accreditation 51

Intercollegiate Athletics 52

Role of the Dean of the Graduate Division 59

Relations with Students 63

Issues of Racial Discrimination 64

Credit for ROTC 66

Craft-Workers' Strike 68

Petition for Nixon's Impeachment 69

The Bakke Case 70

Relations Between System Head and Campus Head 71

Reflections on the University Presidency 75

Report: Berkeley in a steady state 78

Money for Maintenance 78

Issues of Government Regulation 80

City of Berkeley and Local Issues 83

Regional Association of East Bay Colleges and Universities 85

A Variety of Posts 87

Chancellor's Priorities 88

Student Costs and Academic Levels 90

Some Personal Friendships 92

II LIFE AFTER BERKELEY (1980 ON) 94
Assistant Secretary for Post-Secondary Education, U.S. Department of

Education (1980-1981) 94

University of Maryland, College Park (1981-1986) 96

Additional Posts 97

Work on the Washington, D.C., Center 99

Some Honors and Activities 100

III FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS 102

Boyhood in New England 102

Living in Washington, D.C. 103

Mother's Interest and Forebears 103

World War II and the Bureau of Standards 105

High School Interests 106

Politics and Voting 108

IV MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (1937-1943) 110

Importance of Family Status 110

Courses and Majors 112

English Assignment and the Theater 112

Friends on the Faculty 113

Religious and Racial Discrimination 114

Scholar's Life and Student Views 115

V COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (1943-1947) 119

Statistics Taught as a Serious Subject 119

Statistical Research Group, Applied Mathematics Panel (1943-1945) 120
National Research Council Fellowship and Work at Chapel Hill

(1945-1946) 122

VI STANFORD UNIVERSITY (1947-1963) 124

Running a Project and Starting a Statistics Department 124

Intelligent Use of Government Money 126

Some Consequences of Berkeley's Loyalty Oath 127

Faculty: Young Ones from Eastern U.S., Seniors from Europe 128

Joint Appointments 129

Loyalty to the Discipline 131

Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory 132

Relations with Industry and Government 133

Computer Center and Department of Computer Science 134

Professional Honors and the Move to Administration 136

Berkeley-Stanford Seminar in Statistics 137

Terman's "Peaks of Excellence" 139

Decisions: Linear Accelerator and Three Physics Departments 144

Concern Over Commercializing 145

Looking for a Change 146

VII CHANCELLOR, THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK (1963-1971) 149

Graduate and Professional Work 149

City vs. Upstate 150

Expanding the University and Centralizing the Graduate School 151

Women Students and Faculty Members 152

Funding for Physical Facilities and Tuition 153

Vote of Censure, New Board, and Legislation 154

The Chancellor's Fund 158

Summary of Accomplishments 160

Open Admissions 162

Talent in the Central Office 163

VIII BERKELEY REMINISCENCES 166

Tenure for Harry Edwards 166

Library Cutbacks and Commitments 168

Extended University 169

Civil Disobedience 170

A Working Relationship with Local Police 171

Changing Generals During a Battle 172
Keeping College Open During Strikes

Master Plan, Open Admissions, Race Relations 175

Faculty Collective Bargaining and Open Records 177

Budgetary Strategy and Tenure at Berkeley 180

Fund Raising and Reporting 181

Inviting Speakers, and the Problem of Charter Day 184

I House Films and a Library Exhibit 187

Writings 190

Faculty Appointments and the Budget Committee 192

Selecting Administrators 193

Building an Academic Community 196

Keeping the University in the First Rank 196

Institutional Politics and Constituencies 198

TAPE GUIDE 200

APPENDICES 201

I Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker

a. Letter, Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker to Harriet Nathan,

September, 1991 202

b. Vita, circa 1983 204

c. Obituaries: New York Times. February 3, 1992; The
Washington Post. February 3, 1992; The Washington

Post. February 4, 1992; Berkeleyan, February 12, 1992 208

d. "Memorial Resolution, Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker
(1915-1992)," Stanford University, Office of the

President 211

e. "Memorial Service February 15 for Rose Bowker," Cleveland
Park Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C.,
March 12, 1992; tribute delivered by Albert Bowker; tribute

delivered by Nancy Bowker 214

f . Stanford Statement, Ingram Olkin, Stanford University

Statistics 219

g. "Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker: 1915-1992," Ingram Olkin,

The IMS Bulletin. 1992 221

h. "Theoretical statistician Rosedith Sitgreaves dies at
77," Campus Report, Stanford University, February,
1992 " 222

II Albert H. Bowker

a. Vita, 1988 223

b. Statistical Bibliography of A. H. Bowker, 1971 225

c. "The Center for Urban Education," Robert Dentler,

Sociology of Education, Spring, 1966 227

d. "From the '60s to the '80s, An Interview with Albert
Bowker," Marcy Kates, California Monthly, June- July

1980 229

e. "A Conversation with Albert H. Bowker," Ingram Olkin,

Statistical Science. 1987 231

f. "The Beginning," Al Bowker, speech, 25th Anniversary
Symposium, Department of Computer Science, Stanford

University, 1990 243

g. Letter, Bob Dentler to Dr. Albert Bowker, Research

Foundation, CUNY, 1992 247

h. "The Politics of Structural Change in American Higher Education:
The Case of Open Admissions at the City University of New York," by
Jerome Karabel, in The Compleat University: Break from Tradition in
Three Countries. 1983 249

INDEX 268

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 of 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 .

September 1994 Harriet Nathan, Series Director

Regional Oral History Office University History Series
University of California

Berkeley, California Willa K. Baum, Division Head

Regional Oral History Office

iii

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 A1--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

February 1994

University of California, Berkeley

INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Harriet Nathan

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.

vii

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. Ranter,
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;

viii

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.

xii

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."

Harriet Nathan
Interviewer /Editor

January 1995

Regional Oral History Office

The Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley

xiii

Regional Oral History Office University of California

Room 486 The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)

Your full name Albert Hosmer Bovker

Date of birth September 8, 1919 Birthplace Winchendnn, Mass.

Roy Clement Bowker

Father's full name

Occupation Sclentist Birthplace Baldvinville, Mass,

Kathleen Hosmer Bowker

Mother's full name

Occupation Housevife Birthplace Baldvinville, Mass.

Rosedith Sitgreaves
Your spouse

Professor
Your children

Occupation Professor Birthplace Easton, Penna.

Paul, Nancy, Caroline Bliss

Where did you grow up? Washington. D.C

Present community Washington, D.C.

Education B-S- Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Ph.D. Statistics, Columbia University,

Occupation(s) Canceller UC Berkeley; Chancellor and VP Research Foundation CUNY;
Professor Mathematics & Statistics and Dean Graduate Division Stanford University;

Dean Public Affairs and Executive VP University of Maryland
Areas of expertise Higher education j iim'vpycH-t-y rmnar;'?mgmen'^ nn^ Rdnrirn' st. -rat. inn-

department building; relationships vith government agpnc- IPS ., t.hp
students, interest groups

Other interests or activities theate^» reading, socializing, international
education

Organizations in which you are active professional societies,
Washington D.C.

I CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. BERKELEY (1971-1980)

Stanford Sidelight

[Interview 1: September 3, 1991

Nathan: You 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.

1This 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.

Nathan: 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--! 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

Bowker :

Nathan:
Bowker :

Nathan :
Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker:

Anyway, 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.

Internally and externally?

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.

And did they interview you also?

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--! 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.

What kinds of questions did the different groups ask you?
were they after?

What

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

about intercollegiate athletics, I remember. Up to that moment I
had never in my life probably given it one moment's thought,
[laughter] I gave the usual nonsense- -character-building,
competition, and so forth.

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

Hodges, who was an old friend from faculty days. I decided to
take the job.

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 Sherrif f s , 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, urn, let
me ask you a couple of questions." Then he asked about collective
bargaining, open admissions, and so forth, and said, "Yes, I'll

support you.
[ laughs ]

Then he went in and moved that I be elected.

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

Bowker: You 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

Nathan:
Bowker :

Nathan :
Bowker :

Nathan :
Bowker:

had. I asked him, however, if not as vice chancellor, to continue
as a kind of private and secret advisor to me on matters. I
talked to him once or twice , and I had Joe Hodges in somewhat the
same role, both that I could seek out their advice and that they
should tell me of anything they heard that I ought to know about
that wasn't going well and was not appropriate.

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.

How did that show itself?

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.

Would this mean restrictions in FTE
overscale faculty?

full -time equivalents] or

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.

That is, before you came?

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

chancellor for academic affairs. Whatever his virtues are, and
there are many, he would certainly present that point of view. I
remember in the Tony Platt appointment, I once said to him, "How
could this have happened?" He said, "Oh, well, it's only in a
professional school; what difference does it make?" Now,
engineering was sort of more "in" than the others, and the Law
School has such a strong ego that it didn't care, really.

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-a-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.

Criminology was one, obviously, and I think Education is another.
Ue can come to that.

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

Bowker: Then I abolished the vice chancellor for academic affairs, and I
had a deputy. Bob Kerley was vice chancellor for administration,
including student affairs.

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

with them when needed. The people who were the traditional
counsellor, dean of students types, had been tried and found
wanting; they just weren't very good in relating to students.
Kerley had student interns, and we had periodic, probably monthly,
meetings with the student body officers. We spent a lot of time
handling this and talking to the students.

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 1 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

Bowker: I 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. 1 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 1 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 proteges 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

a feeling there would be some crises at Berkeley, and I didn't
want to get over-tired when I had to face them. So I was perhaps
less visible than some chancellors. Be that as it may, I almost
never did anything like speak to Kiwanis or local groups or things
like that. I just didn't think it was very important, and I
didn't want to do it; I didn't enjoy it.

Academic Management : Appointments. Advancement. Budgets

Nathan: What 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.

Nathan: 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.

Bowker: 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--! 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

conservative departments, like History, English, Sociology, and so
forth- -they would hate to be called it, but they were very
academically conservative and male oriented- -began to appoint
women who were well qualified.

Faculty Personnel Cases

Bowker: You 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, arid 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

Bowker: The 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,
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 Radish, I think, and Phil
Johnson. There's a small doctoral program, which I've heard is
pretty good. I haven't really followed it.

Nathan: 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--

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

was a jury trial, and the jury concluded that they had the wrong
defendants, that I was guilty and the students were innocent,
[laughter] But they didn't have any jurisdiction over me.

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

Nathan: How 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

guesses." You really always want to do something like that on
Saturday or when there's something else going on.

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

Nathan: Do 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?

Bowker: 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--! 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.

Nathan: 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

dumbest things. They do it in Washington, too.
political work one on one and cultivated them.

I always did my

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--! used to have him around once in a while.

Relations with Regents

Nathan: Was 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

Nathan: I 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

Bowker: You 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--! 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

majors, and they were then asked If they wanted to join a cluster.
As I remember, something on the order of half of them did. If
their intended major was physical science, they would be scheduled
in mathematics and English, say, together, so there would be the
same people in two or three relatively small classes.

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

Bowker: The 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. Henna 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-Ralsine

Bowker: The 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

Bowker: The 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?

Bowker: 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

Nathan:

Bowker:

Nathan:

Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker:

us. We probably discussed it either with the privilege and tenure
committee or the budget committee, but I don't remember which.

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.

What was your thinking there?
union?

Why did you want to oppose the

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 proteges, 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.

Is a faculty union advocated as an alternative to the academic
senate?

No, they have them both ways.

Would they give more voice, let's say, to the junior members of
the faculty?

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

was a mistake. The Math Department at Berkeley is essentially
ungovernable anyway, so I didn't want to get anywhere close to
them.

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

Nathan: When you think of your position as chancellor, you clearly had
power and authority. Where did it come from?

Bowker: 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

Nathan: Is California politics worse than or different from that of New
York state?

Bowker: 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 A, 19911 ft

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?

Nathan: 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

Bowker: There'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

now one hundred and ten years old, there are one hundred and ten
members. You can't be an active member of the faculty, but
distinguished emeritus faculty, distinguished alumni, and some
major donors to the University are included. It was a group of
people that I enjoyed very much.

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

Bowker: At 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

president after Markey was, I think, George Link. For some reason
he had a longer term, maybe even four years. Then there was Earl
Willens and then Forest Plant from Sacramento, very strong
Berkeley-related people. Jack Rosston came in just as I was
leaving and was succeeded by Bill Milliken, a very close friend.
I really became very friendly with all of the leadership. One of
the things that was not very satisfactory was that the organized
fund raising was in the hands of the Alumni Association, and it
was pretty pedestrian.

Separating the Fund-Raising Function

Nathan: Do 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.

Nathan :
Bowker :

Nathan:
Bowker:

Who chose the participants at this meeting?
that?

Were you involved in

Nathan:
Bowker :

I certainly talked about it, but I think it was Morrie Cox and
Monahan who really were pressuring me to do this.

So the impulse came from them?

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.

Do tell me.

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?

Bowker: 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

Bowker: You 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?

Bowker: 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

son came to Berkeley and lived with the Ericksons. I had him to
the house one night--

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.

Nathan:

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 .

Lovely. You know, that explains the outbursts of music that I
remember hearing at odd hours. How marvelous.

The Quality of Public Ceremonies

Bowker: I 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.

Nathan: 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

Nathan: You 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

Bowker: You 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

that I would support him. Budd has talked about it, and there
really weren't any numbers involved, but every time he really had
to have something, he says to me, it was forthcoming.

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 Radish 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; Radish 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. 1 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

Bowker: I 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

may have, but I'm not sure; yes, it did, but that was sort of run
by itself. Milton Chernin had been dean forever.

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 :

Nathan:

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.

What was the issue with the School of Education?
all the details?

Did you get into

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

disciplines coming in from the social sciences, new people. I
just thought what they did wasn't very important, and I still do.

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.

Nathan: 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

Bowker: I 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 1 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

Bowker: The 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.

Nathan: 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 Uillsey. 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."

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 felf 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 Haggard, 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

hired Mike as football coach quickly; that was before Stanford got
its act together. That was a decision I made. He was fair.
There weren't any overt scandals, but he wasn't squeaky clean, and
I fired him after a few years. I rather liked him.

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

depends on how well I do. I just have to win, and I just have to
do this. You've got to back me up."

I told Dave Haggard 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

very good. I don't think it's very good p.r. [laughs] I sort of
pretend I know nothing about it, which is true. I don't quite see
what that does for anybody.

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. 1 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 Haggard 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

expensive, like crew and others are. Actually, they put women on
crews now- -mixed crews.

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."

Nathan:

Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker:

He said, "Oh, don't worry. These are all good people." Of
course, he's out, now, after the Lenny Bias scandal. He just
wasn't in control at all. He didn't even know what the contract
was with the basketball coach.

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 .

Are you in the mood to think about the Board of Educational
Development at Berkeley?

1 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.

Was it your sense that there was an opportunity for innovation?
Was that what they were seeking?

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

Nathan: I 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

Nathan:

Bowker :

Nathan:
Bowker :
Nathan:

Bowker:

the protector of the basic values of Berkeley by a very large
number of people, and I think probably correctly. No, I don't
remember that, but it happens. I've given speeches on this
subject. By and large the graduate division thinks it should
control admissions, and the professional schools think they should
control their own admissions, and I guess that's right.

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.

That's interesting. In addition to the control over admissions,
would that have anything to do with curriculum or requirements?

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,
it was?

Did Sandy think

I don't know whether you've read his oral history--.
No, I haven't.

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.

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

portfolio, so to the extent that Berkeley had a policy toward
research grants, contracts, who was eligible to be principal
investigator, rules and regulations, human subjects, animal
subjects--! dumped all that on the graduate division. He was so-
so at some of that stuff. He was more an academic than a lawyer
and administrator, but they did it. He had a big staff, and they
did it well enough.

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?

It's sort of a

Bowker: I don't remember that as a big issue here,
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

Nathan: Is 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

them once In a while, and their stories of their relationship with
me are very different from my recollection. I had a policy of
trying to encourage people to get out of Stanford, so I would
waive almost any requirement if someone's thesis was really done.
A couple of people- -faculty members at other institutions --told me
how they as graduate students beat me over the head until I waived
requirements .

Nathan: When you say "get out of Stanford,
out into the rest of the world?

do you mean finish up and go

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

Nathan: This 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

getting minorities into doctoral programs where there was a
critical shortage. We spent a lot of money on that, as have other
people. I didn't really think it was very important that Berkeley
have more minorities as undergraduates.

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." 1 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

payroll, not as a member but as a staff support. That, I think,
was helpful and useful. It is important, I think, to have the
views of people of different ages, and I have always done that in
my career. There aren't any people older than I am any more, but
then I don't run anything any more. But when I was chancellor at
New York, I had older people and younger people. I tried to keep
an age distribution in my staff here, with less success, and there
are reasons for that.

Credit for ROTC

Bowker: You 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

that for military service, but this was distinguished civilian
service. Anyway, I have a medal from the navy. For courage.

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)1 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

Nathan:

Bowker :

There was an employees' strike in April of 1972.
that?

Do you remember

Nathan:
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.

Why would you call Ed Meese?

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.

Nathan: Uas 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

Nathan: The 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--! asked the students, if they could, to

bring them by to say hello as a courtesy. I don't like to appear
on the platform with candidates. Dr. Spock told me I was the only
college president who had ever received him. [laughter] He was
running for the presidency, I guess. He was very pleased. The
others took it calmly. You know, it's a matter of courtesy.
Still, you don't want the chancellor to be out there when there's
a partisan rally.

Nathan: Those are interesting sidelights.

The Bakke Case

Nathan: I 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- -

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--! 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

Bowker: The 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

deputies the same as you pay the college president, but you
shouldn't give them housing and those perks.

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.

Nathan:

Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker :

I wonder whether any of this comes from the fact that Berkeley was
the original and oldest campus?

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.

I came across a note that he was the director for alumni fund
raising in the sixties.

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.

Yes, and it was the pattern of the future,
moved with the times

She was really one who

So it was little stuff like that. Did it matter, all this
business with the president? A little bit, I guess.

Nathan: 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.

Nathan:

Bowker:

The truth is that almost all the funds that came- -there have been
more under Governor George Deukmejian — were essentially cost of
living increases and faculty salaries, and they were almost all
formula-determined. The amount of discretionary money the
president had wasn't very great. Now, he had reserves, and still
does--big reserves — and every now and then you could go after one
of those for a special project. Berkeley always had a richer
funding than the other campuses as a result of more over-scale
faculty and more distinguished professors, although UCLA was fast
creeping up there.

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.

It's interesting how it looks in retrospect. You have mentioned a
couple of times, I think, that you and Saxon had been classmates.

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

Bowker: Then 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

these old guys. I don't know what turned him off then, something.
After that I urged David Saxon to take the presidency, which he
did.

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.

Nathan :
Bowker :

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--! 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.

Does that accord with your own thoughts?

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

governor. On the other hand, Clark was a partisan Democrat, and
maybe he asked for it. He had been on the War Labor Board, and
supported Democratic candidates, and he had been very buddy-buddy
with Pat Brown. Now, I never have involved myself in partisan
politics, period, and I'm not registered in a party. I've just
kept away from that.

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.

Nathan:

Bowker:

Nathan:
Bowker:

Anyway, I saw no reason why the head of the university should
be identified politically, so I never was.

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?

That's always been my style,
a lot for the University.

Obviously both Sproul and Clark did

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"?

No, tell me about "the million."

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."

You would have been nicer to him if you had known?

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,

and they decided that under Nixon they had to change law firms, so
they made some very generous settlement with Pat, of which we got
our share. I've forgotten the details of it, but it was something
like that. I still see Pat every summer and at one dinner at
Berkeley; we are good friends.

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"

Nathan: You 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

Bowker: When 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."

[laughter] I'm glad that Mike has been able to do better. I had
a hard time getting rehabilitation money to keep the campus up to
scratch. I had money for a couple of new buildings, but I wasn't
getting enough. LSB [Life Sciences Building] was a disaster, and
that's been solved now, so things are better.

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.

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

do it ourselves. Willis Slusser, who was general counsel at
Bechtel [Corporation] at one time, took over the fund raising for
I House and gave quite a bit of money himself. With a combination
of University money and private money we fixed the ceiling in one
of the rooms. A big area had an elegant ceiling that had been
covered over, so we dug that out. It's in pretty good shape now.

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

Bowker: One 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

based on their word. The feds really threw the book at us.
penalty was that they would cancel government contracts.

The

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

the house. We were beginning to mainstream them and move them out
of Cowell Hospital and put them in less institutional housing. We
put a lot of money into that and some into access. We couldn't,
with any conceivable sum of money, give handicapped access to all
the buildings on campus in any finite amount of time. We were
always in violation of whatever regulation there was. [laughs]

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

their privacy, but I can only do the best I can." So we Xeroxed
them and sent them to Washington. Ue said the agency could come
and look at them but couldn't take them or something.

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

Nathan: Would 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?

Bowker: 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

Bowker: One 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,

it was mostly this way. The Graduate Theological Union was also
in that, and I really very much increased the cooperation with the
Graduate Theological Union so that those students could take
courses on the Berkeley campus if they wanted to. None of these
things were big, but they were important symbolically. I was sort
of proud of that organization. It was a unifying one for this
region, and it was useful.

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]

Nathan: You don't sound too sad about that.

A Variety of Posts

Bowker: No. 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?

Bowker: 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

Nathan: We 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 suppose. There wasn't any clear indication as to how it was to
be done. Admissions were soft and on the borderline of filling
the freshman class. A lot of people were still looking at
Berkeley with some fury because of the student unrest and excesses
and so forth.

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

just thought it was time for me to move on, but I really thought I
had done a good job at Berkeley. I came away with a feeling of
satisfaction and enormous affection from the faculty, the
students, the alumni, the foundation. My God, the parties and
support that I got on the way out. As I often said, if I had
known I was so popular, I wouldn't have left.

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

Nathan: How 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

humanities, were getting worried about placing all of their
students. The gist of it is that if you really look at the
enrollment, by cutting back on some of the professional schools
and by cutting back on some of the doctoral students, it would
reduce the graduate enrollment by about a thousand, and you would
replace them with undergraduates, keeping the funding the same,
because it didn't matter which kind you had.

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 1 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?

Bowker: 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

Bowker: I 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. 1 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)

Nathan: For 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)

Bowker: I 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

or the secretary would call and say, "The Secretary would like to
see you in an hour." I'd say, "Well, I'm busy." No one ever said
that, and I would usually give in and go over. But I said, "You
really ought to schedule things." "Well, [harumph, bluster]."
The secretary had been Al Haig's secretary. I don't know how
Shirley got her, but she was really a tiger.

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)

Bowker: Then 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

Bowker: I 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 Uagners
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

advise on them; not everything, but on a number of them,
lot of searching for them.

I did a

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

this month. I think I will not continue to work in New York. For
one thing, I'm nearly seventy -two- -Sunday , I guess.

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.

Vork on the Washington. D.C.. Center

Bowker: I'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?

100

Bowker: 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

Nathan:
Bowker:

Nathan:

Bowker :

We can append this list; there are so many activities and honors.

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.

I see I have you listed wrongly as treasurer,
your own list.

I'd be glad to have

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,

101

but there was one difference between him and Chancellor and Mrs.
Bowker; they deserve it and he doesn't. [laughter]

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.

Albert H. Bowker in high school, 1937.

Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker, Albert H. Bowker, Paul Caroline, and Nancy Bowker.
Inauguration at City University of New York, 1964.

Photograph by Conrad Waldinger

"Freshman aghast at the fox- trot;" Rosedith and Albert Bowker at the
Chancellor's Freshman Reception, 1979.

Photograph c 1979 Jim Yudelson

Clark Kerr, Glenn T. Seaborg, Edward W. Strong, Roger W. Heyns , Albert H. Bowker, and
Ira Michael Heyman, 1981.

Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker, Albert H. Bowker, Therese Thau Heyman, and Ira
Michael Heyman, 1985.

Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker and Albert H. Bowker, 1990.

102

III FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS

Boyhood In New England

[Interview 3: September 5, 1991 ]##

Nathan: Perhaps 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.

103

There was a cemetery on the hill with a view of Mt. Monadnock,
very similar to Grover's Corners. Although there was a touch of
Peyton Place. [laughs] You knew everything about everybody.

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.

Bowker: Life 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

Nathan: At 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

104

Nathan:
Bowker :

Nathan:
Bowker:

Nathan :
Bowker:

her friends did. Those were the days when the women who went to
college were blue stockings and went on to professions. She was
very close to her college friends. [telephone interruption]

You were talking about your mother being a blue stocking.

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.

Did she have an advanced degree?

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.

Did your mother read to you?

Yes, a lot. But I read fairly early, as she did.
think, at two or three or four years old.

She read , I

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.

Were you at all attracted to politics in your early years?

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

105

right after World War I and the other when I was in high school.
That, particularly the second death, very much depressed my father
and also probably encouraged my mother to throw herself into club
activities. So she was very, very active in all kinds of
organizations from the church to the Red Cross to the women's
clubs. She was big in the DAR [Daughters of the American
Revolution] and was a national officer, very much a club woman
type until World War II, when she gave up some of this. By then I
had been away at college and worked during World War II, as she
had done during World War I and World War II, more or less for
patriotic reasons. There was a tremendous shortage of talent.
She was a "gofer" and receptionist and secretary; I mean, she
didn't have an important job, but she worked and opened the house
to people who stayed there.

World War II and the Bureau of Standards

Bowker: Obviously 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

106

trusted. This was all before General Groves and [J. Robert]
Oppenheimer and all that. Ernest was in early on. Neither Van
Bush nor Conant were totally convinced that it was a good idea.
In retrospect, the amount of resources used was really enormous.
Well, it's neither here nor there, and it is questionable, I
guess, really.

High School Interests

Bowker: In 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. 1 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.

107

Nathan:
Bowker:

Nathan :
Bowker:
Nathan :

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.

Did it influence you in your attitudes towards income and money?

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.

What course offerings did it have?

I took Latin, German, English, chemistry, biology. I didn't take
physics in high school.

It was a college prep school?

Oh, yes.

Was there any interest in your family in private schools?

108

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

Bowker: I 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

109

priest got up and said, "Isn't it too bad that none of these
people can ever be president of the United States?" I suppose we
were vaguely anti-Catholic, coming from New England. My parents
were Republicans, pretty "stand pat." Many of their friends were
liberal, and they were fairly tolerant. Many of them voted for
Norman Thomas that year. I remember there was a big anti-Smith
vote; certainly there was a lot of liberal feeling against
electing a Catholic president of the United States in that year,
and Norman Thomas got an enormous vote.

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.

110

IV HA.SSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (1937-1943)

Bowker :

Nathan:
Bowker:

My 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.

Was tuition a problem?

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

Bowker:

Nathan :
Bowker:

I knew Nevitt Sanford a little bit.
remember who he was .

I remember him, yes.

I don't know whether you

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.

Ill

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.

112

Courses and Majors

Bowker: MIT, 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

Bowker: Going 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]

113

Nathan: 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

Bowker: At 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 off ice --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

114

at Berkeley, and later there, mathematics has fifty or a hundred
majors, so it's not possible [to be close]. That may have been
part of the attraction. I was entertained socially, and of course
I stayed there for two years after I graduated, so I was at MIT
all told for six years. Some of these experiences came after 1
did work as a research assistant and teaching assistant.

Religious and Racial Discrimination

Bowker: Anti-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 1 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

115

Jewish. However, Harvard didn't have Jews on the faculty. That
was sort of an issue that I became aware of. Of course, with the
growth of Fascism and the treatment of Jews by Hitler the
awareness of Jews grew. I even had it in Woodrow Wilson High, I
remember. There were homes who would have parties and wouldn't
invite Jews .

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

Nathan: Before 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.

116

Nathan:
Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker:

Nathan:
Bowker :

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.

Were women admitted to MIT at that time?

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 .

The notion of the tutor in the house to help the freshmen, that's
a very interesting notion. How did it work?

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.

So if you were stuck on a problem--?

We'd go ask him. It helped a lot. He was a good tutor, a good
teacher.

117

Nathan: 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.

118

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.

119

V COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (1943-1947)

Statistics Taught as a Serious Subject

Bowker: Harold 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

120

course, basically a statistical problem. Statistics had been
developed more in England than in the United States, in
experimental design, and a lot of statistical work came out of
classification of species and physical anthropology, too.

Statistical Research Group. Applied Mathematics Panel (1943-19A5)

Bowker: Nevertheless, 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

121

the war; he was teaching at Howard, but we used to talk to him
some about problems.

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

122

work in that field. Subsequently that was one of my main areas of
professional interest.

National Research Council Fellowship and Work at Chapel Hill
(1945-1946")

Bowker: As 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

123

the war. He had run the radio research laboratory at Harvard,
which was the counter radar. MIT and the radiation lab did the
radar, and they did the counter measures. Anyway, it was war
work. He was very interested in developing Stanford.

124

VI STANFORD UNIVERSITY (1947-1963)

Bowker: Mina 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

Bowker: Anyway, 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

125

are. Much credit is due to Griffith Evans for the development of
statistics as well as to Raymond Birge of physics, who was an
expert in the accuracy of physical constants.

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,

126

though he didn't stay indefinitely. He was dean of the Business
School most of the time he was at Chicago. He also started the
Statistics Department at Chicago, and he may have gone just as a
faculty member. He had been in the Economics Department at
Stanford, and he remains a close personal friend.

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

Bowker: Fred 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 -bear ing 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

127

Stanford was more interested in engineering than in other
subjects, unusual for a private institution. But it wasn't
comprehensive across the board.

So Vally 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

Bowker: I 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

128

wasn't sensible for him to raise his family in Palo Alto, so he
went back to Howard and ultimately ended up here at Berkeley.

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

Bowker: You 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

129

student of mine at Columbia (and also now a Nobel Laureate in
economics). He left and came back; he's still at Stanford.

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

Bowker: Well, 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?

130

Bowker: 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

131

Arrow does." [laughter] Claude did a master's thesis with me and
got a Ph.D. in economics and is kind of a famous figure.

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

Nathan: You 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.

132

Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory**

Bowker: There 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
other socially and spent a lot of time in each other's homes as

133

other socially and spent a lot of time in each other's homes as
well as around the office. That, of course, has deteriorated
through the years but kept up pretty much as long as I was at
Stanford. Even when I went into the administration, I kept an eye
on the laboratory and the various parts of it.

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

Nathan: Did 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?

134

Bowker: 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

Bowker: Kind 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

135

was doing, but anyway I suppose guessing right is part of wisdom,
[laughs] I gave this lecture around the country, and I remember
being laughed at in several places, including in an IBM company
meeting. Computer science is a separate discipline, and I have
actually given a lecture within the last year or two on the
history of this; maybe I could send you a copy of it.

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

136

of the Courant Institute at NYU.
negotiated with and approached.

I guess I was ; I was certainly

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

Bowker: I 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

137

abilities. I was elected president of the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics, which is an honor. It goes to a lot of
people, but, still, it's a one-year term.

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

Bowker: Continuing, 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

138

senior people here--Jerzy Neyman and many of his proteges, two of
whom, Evelyn Fix and Betty Scott, are dead. Erich Lehmann and Joe
Hodges are still kicking. Blackwell, when he came; Girshick. We
all went, and we were very close. Partly we were fighting the
enemy, and some of these visitors we shared.

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 Cramer 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]

139

Terman's "Peaks of Excellence'

Bowker: The 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
protege, 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.

140

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. 1 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.

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.

141

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

142

radiology, Henry Kaplan, who was a very strong appointment. Not
all the clinical appointments at Stanford made in the early days
were first rate, and I don't think that Medical School has ever
had the status of, say, San Francisco or UCLA; but it's obviously
a good one, and they've done better since, although they've always
had a hard time there. I really don't know much about it today,
but it's always been a tough one.

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 Terraan 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

143

in Americanism." He had a few ideas which we managed to bury.
Yes, the trustees were a little testy sometimes.

I remember when David Packard was chairman once when I was
there. Of course, he had been a protege 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--! 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

144

always working closely with Bob Sears and with most of the
chairmen who were powerful and important. We had a couple of big
fights about things. We never thought that things like the Jet
propulsion lab at MIT, the rad lab at Livermore, and classified
laboratories like that were very helpful or really worth it. So
we had a policy against running big government installations.

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

Bowker: We 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

145

or other here- -and Bob Hofstetter, another Nobel Laureate, came in
and argued that it was immoral and irrational and so forth to let
them use the existing accelerator; that it was against values and
principles and so forth. There was a terrible fight, and they
threatened to resign if we forced the issue. Fred and I wanted to
call their bluff, but Wally overruled us, maybe correctly. We
were pretty tough.

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

Bowker; That 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

146

the right thing," and he would, too.
Scout.

He was the ail-American Boy

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

Bowker: Well, 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,
Rochester. [laughter)

he was president of the University of
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.

147

Nathan: 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.

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.

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.

148

Nathan: 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 Dal ton 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.

149

VII CHANCELLOR, THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK (1963-1971)

Bowker: The 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

Bowker: What 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

150

me for about a year. The girls were entered in a public junior
high school up in the Bronx. After that I got married again, to
Rosedith Sitgreaves.

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

Nathan: The 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

151

supporters of higher education. There were probably more Catholic
voters in New York than there were Jewish voters, but the Jewish
people controlled the press, the city council, the legislature,
and the milieu in which Wagner operated.

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

Bowker: But 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

152

and Berkeley, and saying they were all going to be off over here
somewhere. Well, it wasn't like that.; none of them had Ph.D.s.
But each Ph.D. that was created was put in a central location, in
a way. The faculty were supposed to be joint with the colleges,
and some were and some weren't; but most were.

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

Bowker: It 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

153

other professionals. Many of them were single, but it was still
better to be in New York than Palo Alto, which is a very dull
place for a single person. It really is. And Berkeley was only
so-so.

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

Bowker: The 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

Nathan:
Bowker :

154

constitutional limitation on the amount of borrowing you could do
directly. Nobody believes this, but it's true.

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.

Why were they upset?

"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

Bowker :

Nathan :

They 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.

You got the mayor to appoint the people you wanted?
it worked?

Was that how

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

155

Dean McHenry. We decided we might move to Santa Cruz. They
thought I was bluffing, but I really thought I wouldn't go back.
I just said, "The board can't meet without me, period. It's not
acceptable."

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

156

him. One night he was running for something, and he was speaking
at the Logans'. He came in and started talking, and someone asked
him, "What about Chancellor Bowker and his plans for expansion?"
He said, "I wish I knew what the chancellor was up to." I said,
"Well, I'm here, governor; I'd be glad to tell you." [laughter]
When he saw I had the blacks, he was all right.

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 —

157

Bowker :

Nathan:

Bowker:

one of the brightest people I've ever known. He was an aristocrat
in a way; his mother had been a Wadsworth, which is the main
family of New York, and he had a big place in Genesee, up near the
Wadsworth family. He had married a Catholic and converted to
Catholicism, apparently very upper-class. He used to say, "I have
to go have dinner with old Mrs. Auchincloss tonight." He was the
Cardinal's personal attorney; he was a senior partner in Davis,
Polk, Wardell, which is one of the biggest corporate law firms in
New York. Just a marvelous person.

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 .

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.

When you were working to get people to accept these ideas, did you
have p.r. people to help you?

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

158

York, and building trades are in favor of construction,
[laughter] I had the support of most of the good government
groups. Yes, we worked hard at mobilizing support. I had the
Times . If you have the Times . you have the Times . and if you
don't have them, you don't have them; it's either one way or the
other. So I had the press; once you have the Times . you have the
press.

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

Bowker: By 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--

[laughs] it was funny,
else and cancelled it.

159

He got mad at me later about something

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.

Nathan:
Bowker:

Nathan :
Bowker:

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."

I saw that headline. I thought it was goofy.

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.

It doesn't seem too major somehow.

You know, Nelson got mad at me because of student demonstrations.
He thought we were paying for them from the Chancellor's Fund, and

160

I hope we weren't. At least he never could prove it, and I never
could find out. Once when I had a budget crisis, somebody
mobilized students, and it got out of hand. They chartered bus
after bus and went up to Albany and tore the place apart, ruined
the lawn and screamed and yelled up and down the corridors. Now,
this happens every day at city hall, but somehow in Albany--.
Nelson got furious, and he decided I had used Chancellor's Fund
money for this purpose.

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

Bowker: I 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; Eugenic 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

161

founded a wonderful little community college in Queens, La Guardia
Community College, which has always been one of my favorites.

Nathan: What is there about it that you especially like?

Bowker: Well, I liked the president; he was one of my proteges. 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.

162

Open Admissions

Nathan: With 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.

163

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

Bowker: I was able to continue that at CUNY in a way. I had a really
extraordinarily talented group of people in the central office,

164

some of whom were my executive assistants, some of whom were my
vice chancellors. Mina Rees, of course, is president of the
Graduate Center. My vice chancellor for academic affairs was
Timothy Healy, a Jesuit Priest, just stepped down as president of
Georgetown University where he's had a distinguished career. My
vice chancellor for budget and planning was Ted Hollander, who was
most recently chancellor of higher education in the State of New
Jersey and one of the major SCIOs, as they're called—state
coordinating officers in higher education; he's been very active
in that movement. My deputy was Seymour Hyman, who is president
of a small college in New Jersey.

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

165

Bennington when I was on the Bennington board. I went on because
Joe asked me to; he was an old friend. He didn't do quite as well
as I had hoped. Now Ann Reynolds has that chair. It's not so
long; she's doing very well so far. Joe did pretty well; he just
never was tough enough with the political figures. He let them
cut the budget, and he didn't cut enrollment enough.

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.

166

VIII BERKELEY REMINISCENCES
[Interview 4: September 6, 1991 ]//#

Nathan: When 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

Bowker: Harry 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: Vould 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

167

he'd been hired. He was the highest paid assistant professor by
far and had been given all kinds of incentives and support, with
one exception and possibly two.

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.

168

Library Cutbacks and Commitments

Bowker: I 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 .

169

Extended University

Bowker: I 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 .

170

Nathan: Wasn't one of their interests to train, in a sense, for a career

Bowker:

and not to train for the first job?
expressed.

That's how I have heard it

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

Nathan: One 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.

171

Bowker: 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

Bowker: My 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

172

precinct, who was sitting right outside the door. Finally the
police said, "Let's go out and break some heads," and that's what
they did. That's what really caused all the bloodshed at
Columbia; that was really stupid. It actually turned out that the
head of the Harlem police was a personal friend of mine; he and
his wife were good friends.

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

Bowker: The 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

173

a battle. That was really something I learned from Berkeley. Ed
Strong took a stand, and Clark Kerr kept reversing him. Every
time you do that, the students are reinforced and encouraged. You
don't change. I mean, it may be a dumb stand he took, but it's
better to stick by it than to waffle when you're dealing with a
mob. So I said, "I'm not changing generals in the middle of a
battle." [Lindsay said] "You mean your presidents are always
right under all circumstances?" I said, "No, they're frequently
wrong." [laughs] Anyway, this all went away; there was nothing
to it.

Keeping College Open During Strikes

Nathan: I 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.

174

Nathan: 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.

175

Bowker: About a week later there was a wests ide 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

Nathan: Thinking 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?

176

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.

177

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

Bowker: In 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

178

senior faculty, kind of like the Dave Fellers at Berkeley, so it
wasn't hard to deal with.

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 .

179

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

180

and Science, met with small groups of new faculty and explained to
them what was expected, what the criteria would be, and so forth.
That's probably done from time to time. Whether it's done
systematically, I don't know. It's a good idea to do it.

Budgetary Strategy and Tenure at Berkeley

Bowker: In 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--! 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

181

reallocations. I don't know if they're really doing it, but they
say they are. We'll see. He was sort of unaware of the strategy
that I had before, so maybe it ought to be in the record.

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

Bowker: What 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?

182

Bowker: 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.

183

Nathan: 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:

184

had about that wasn't serious. She was elected chairman of the
Board of Regents while I was here, and she had a wonderful
advantage which no other chairman had. She had, I think, been a
Democratic National Committeewoman. She could turn around and
say, "Now, Jerry [Brown], be quiet." [laughter] There weren't
many people who could. When somebody got up and said, "Madame
Chairperson," she said, "I am the chairman. None of that nonsense
for me . "

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

Nathan: We 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?

185

Bowker: 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.

186

Nathan:
Bowker :

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 1 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.

Remember the fake plaque?

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

187

headline was, "There Goes Berkeley Again." I wanted to abolish it
and change it to a television program, but no one would let me.
We'll see what happens to it. The truth is, public ceremonies
like that are less and less important; fewer and few people go to
them. People watch television nowadays. We could have some kind
of public television, we could still have people march around, but
we could have a smaller, controlled audience.

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

Bowker: There 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

188

this." I said, "Well, issue a statement, then." The statement
would be, "The chancellor is looking into it." [laughter]

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. be ing 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

189

not so surprising. One night a group of students who were members
the drinking society that has a little hut up the hill got drunk
and came down the hill. They walked across the top of some cars
in the parking lot , and then they went over to Chabad House and
kicked down the sign, yelling, "Hitler was right." So the
president of Chabad House, needless to say, was in my office.

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.

190

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

Nathan: Are 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.

191

Bowker: 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 had known.

She wouldn't have come if

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

192

benefit. But the relationship between him and Clark [Kerr] was
not very friendly.

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 Committeetf#

Nathan: Your 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

193

answer back. So when it was absolutely necessary I would give
private assurances that I would support the appointment before all
the machinery had been gone through; but I didn't do that very
often, and I was never caught at it. Sometimes you have to move;
somebody has to know. I'd say, "Okay, you can tell that person
that it's definite. They won't hear for a couple of months, but
it's definite."

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

Nathan: When you were bringing people into the administration, naming them
to their posts, what was it you wanted from them?

194

Bowker: 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--! 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. 1 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 ray 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

195

executive assistant, not by somebody else that they worked with.
So he was slightly unpopular in space allocation and in the
president's office.

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?

fiowker: Yes. That's sort of a weakness of my regime, isn't it? I did ask
Henna 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

196

in which I grew up; women weren't much of a factor in the academic
world in my formative years.

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

Bowker: I 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

Nathan: Well, you had your laughs at Berkeley as well as your serious
times .

197

Bowker:

Nathan:

Bowker:

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
You can't slip fast, which is lucky; these things

I felt in the end that I left Berkeley as good as
and that's about all I could hope to do
I couldn't build a lot of new things

can slip.

change slowly.

or better than I found it

under those circumstances

Nathan:

with the level of funding I had from those great lovers of higher
education, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown. [laughs]

Just watching the cracks and the crumbles and shoring it back up
is a very big job.

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.

If you had any words of friendly advice to the chancellor, what
would you say?

198

Bowker: 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

Bowker: There 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

199

thing, but how the community reacts, how the alumni will react,
all have to be taken into account.

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

200

TAPE GUIDE- -Albert H. Bowker

Interview 1: September 3, 1991

Tape 1, Side A

Tape 1, Side B

Tape 2, Side A

Tape 2, Side B

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
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
Tape 11, Side A
Tape 11, Side B
Tape 12, Side A
Tape 12, Side B

1
9

18
26

36
44
53
61
70
79
88
98

102
111
132
140
147
147
150
157

166
175
183
192

201

APPENDICES--Albert H. Bowker

I Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker

a. Letter, Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker to Harriet Nathan,

September, 1991 202

b. Vita, circa 1983 204

c. Obituaries: New York Times. February 3, 1992; The

Washington Post. February 3, 1992; The Washington

Post. February 4, 1992; Berkeleyan. February 12, 1992 208

d. "Memorial Resolution, Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker

(1915-1992)," Stanford University, Office of the

President 211

e. "Memorial Service February 15 for Rose Bowker,"

Cleveland Park Congregational United Church of Christ,
Washington, D.C., March 12, 1992; tribute delivered by
Albert Bowker; tribute delivered by Nancy Bowker 214

f. Stanford Statement, Ingram Olkin, Stanford University

Statistics 219

g. "Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker: 1915-1992," Ingram Olkin,

The IMS Bulletin. 1992 221

h. "Theoretical statistician Rosedith Sitgreaves dies at
77," Campus Report. Stanford University, February,
1992 " 222

II Albert H. Bowker

a. Vita, 1988 223

b. Statistical Bibliography of A. H. Bowker, 1971 225

c. "The Center for Urban Education," Robert Dentler,

Sociology of Education. Spring, 1966 227

d. "From the '60s to the '80s, An Interview with Albert

Bowker," Marcy Kates, California Monthly, June- July

1980 229

e. "A Conversation with Albert H. Bowker," Ingram Olkin,

Statistical Science. 1987 231

f. "The Beginning," Al Bowker, speech, 25th Anniversary

Symposium, Department of Computer Science, Stanford
University, 1990 243

g. Letter, Bob Dentler to Dr. Albert Bowker, Research

Foundation, CUNY, 1992 247

h. "The Politics of Structural Change in American Higher
Education: The Case of Open Admissions at the City
University of New York," by Jerome Karabel, in The
Compleat University: Break from Tradition in Three
Countries. 1983 249

CU.

202 Appendix I-a

. Albert H. Bowker

10450 LOnSFORD ROAD. *1 1 17

MITCHELLVILLE. MDt&f^b 3 ~~\ V.

iv/^N

V \

/svv^\
\

203

-'/m

,J-voo._ C'

VITA

204 Appendix I-b

NAME: Rosedlth Sitgreaves

a.k.a. Rosedith Sitgreaves Bouker

ADDRESS: 4415 - 39th Street, N.W.

Washington, B.C. 20016

HUSBAND: Albert H. Bowker

DATE OF BIRTH: January 30, 1915

PLACE OF BIRTH: Eastern, Pennsylvania

EDUCATION RECORD: A.B. Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA., 1935

M.A. (Statistics) The George Washington University,
Washington, D.C., 1940

Ph.D. (Mathematical Statistics) Columbia University,
New York, N.Y. , 1953

PROFESSIONAL RECORD:

•>

1. Principal Positions
— •

National Institute of Education, Washington, D.C.
Senior NIE Associate, 1980-51 £i

Stanford University, Stanford, California

Professor of Education (and Statistics, by courtesy)

1973-80

Professor Emerita, 1980-

California State University, Hayward, California
Professor of Statistics, 1972-73
Lecturer in .Statistics, 1971-72

Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
Professor of Education, 1964-71
Associate Professor of Education, 1960-64
Assistant Professor of Education, 1957-60
Research Associate and Part-time Instructor, 1954-57

Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory, Stanford University,
Stanford, California
Research Associate, 1952-54

Division of Occupational Health, U.S. Public Health Services,
Washington, D.C.
Statistician (GS-5 to GS-11) , 1943-52 (except for perex^l of

leave to attend Columbia University) .
Statistical Clerk, 1937-43

205
Rosedith Sitgreaves Page 2

2. Other Activities

The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Visiting Professor of Applied Science, 1970-71
(on sabbatical leave from Teachers College)
Statistical Consultant, Project in Longistics, 1960-70, 1971-75

Statistical Consultant, Department of Housing and Urban Development,
1974-75

Member, Advisory Panel on Score Decline, College Entrance Examination
Board, 1975-77

Member, Advisory Committee, California Assessment Program, California
State Education Department, 1978-80

Representative of the American Statistical Association on the Board
of Directors, Social Science Research Council, 1978-80

Representative of the American Statistical Association on the
Management Committee of the Journal of Educational Statistics,
1980- -

MEMBERSHIP IN PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

American Statistical Association, '1938- < .-.r-oi^J •- • ^ior,

(Chairman, Selection on Training, 1968)

Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 1946-

i
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1965-69

(Secretary, Section U - Statistics)
FELLOWSHIPS:

Fellow, The Commonwealth Fund, 1946-47
Fellow, American Statistical Association, 1960-
Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 1960-
Guggenheim Fellow, 1963-64

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Heimann, Harry, David, Wilfred D., and Sitgreaves, R. The acute illness, in
Air Pollution in Donora, Pa., Epidemiology of the Unusual Smog Episode of
October, 1948, by H. H. Schrenk, Harry Heimann, George D. Clayton, W. M.
Gafafer, and Harry Wexler. Public Health Bulletin No. 306. U. S. Govern
ment Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1949.

Sitgreaves, R., and May, I. Potential sources of error in blood lead deter
minations due to different methods of blood sampling. Arch. Indust. Hyg.
and Occ. Med., 1: 467-470 (1950).

Rosedith Sitgreaves 206 Page 3

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (Continued)

Sitgreaves, R. On the distribution of two random matrices. Ann. Math. Stat.,
23: 263-270 (1952).

Girshick, M. A., Rubin H. , and Sitgreaves, R. : Estimates of bounded relative
error in particle counting. Ann. Math. Stat., 26: 266-285 (1955).

Sitgreaves, R. , and Solomon, H. : Research methods: Status studies and sample
surveys. Review of Ed. Research, 27: 460-470 (1957).

In Studies in Item Analysis and Prediction, edited by H. Solomon. Stanford
University Press, Stanford, CA, 1961. „

Sitgreaves, R. A statistical formulation of the attenuation paradox in
test theory. (Chapter 1).

Sitgreaves, R. Optimal test design in a special testing situation.

(Chapter 2).

Sitgreaves, R. Further contributions to the theory of test design.
(Chapter 3).

Elfving, G., Sitgreaves, R. , and Solomon, R. Item-selection procedures
for item variables with a known factor structure. (Chapter 4).

Sitgreaves, R. Some results on the distribution of the W-classification
-statistic. (Chapter 16). _______

Teichroew, Dl , and Sitgreaves, R. Computation of an empirical sampling
distribution for the W-classification statistic. (Chapter 16).

Bowker, A. H. , and Sitgreaves, R. An asymptotic expansion for the dis
tribution for the W-classification statistic. (Chapter 19).

Sitgreaves, R. Statistical Theory. Ann. Review of Psych., 17: 423-434 (1966).

Sitgreaves, R. Measurement of attitudes and sociometric techniques, in Methods
for the Evaluation of Comprehensive Schools, edited by Karlheinz Ingendamp.
Verlag Julius Beltz, Berlin, 1969.

Haber, Sheldon, Sitgreaves, R. , and Solomon, Henry. A demand prediction tech
nique for items in military inventory systems. Naval Research Logistics
Quarterly, 16: 297-308 (1969).

Sitgreaves, R. Comments on the "Jensen Report." Presented at the meeting
of the National Academy of Education, Los Angeles, California, November,
1969. (Mimeographed.)

Sitgreaves, R. Some properties of Stirling numbers of the second kind.
Fibonacci Quarterly, 8: 172-181 (1970).

Rosedlth Sitgreaves Page 4

207

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (Continued)

Haber, Sheldon, and Sitgreaves, R. A methodology for estimating expected
usage of repair parts with application to parts with no usage history.
Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 19: 535-546 (1970).

Sitgreaves, R. Statistical methods. Chapter 15, in Psychology of the
Educational Process, edited by J. Davitz and S. Ball. McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1970.

Haber, Sheldon, and Sitgreaves, R. A unified model for demand prediction.
Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 19: 29-42 (1972).

Sitgreaves, R. Some operating characteristics of linear discriminat

functions. In Discriminant Analysis and Applications, edited by T. Cacoullos.
Academic Press, Inc., New York and London, 1973.

Haber, Sheldon, and Sitgreaves, R. An optimal inventory model for the
intermediate echelon when resupply is possible but uncertain. The
George Washington University, Project in Logistics, Technical Paper
Serial T-3.00 (1974). Journal of Operational Management Vol. 1, 1981.

Haber, Sheldon, and Sitgreaves, R. An optimal inventory model for the inter
mediate echelon when repair is possible. Management Science, 21: 638-648.
(1975).

Sitgreaves, R. Computing the value of the maximum likelihood estimate of the
parameter of a Poission distribution truncated below one. The George
Washington University, Project in Logistics, Technical Paper Serinl
T-310 (1975).

Sitgreaves, R. A comparison of properties of three estimators of the

parameter of a Poisson distribution truncated below one, when the sample
size is small. The George Washington University, Project in Logistics,
Technical Paper Serial T-311 (1975).

On further examination - Report of the Advisory Panel on the Scholastic
Aptitude Test Score Decline. College Entrance Examination Board, 1977.

208

Appendix I-c

HEW YORK TIMES

Monday, February 3, 1992

BOWKER— Rosedith. With orief,
we note the dearth on February 1
in Mlfchellvllle. MO. of Rosedith
Sitoreaves Bowker, lovino wife of
Albert H. Bowker, former Chary
cellar of CUNY and of the Univer
sity of California at Berkeley. She
was his constant companion, con
sort and mate. Partners they were
and partters Into eternity. -Truly
also she was a lovino and devoted
stepmother. As Dr. Sitoreaves, she
was an eminent teacher and re
searcher -on statistical modes;
methods and theory at Columbia
University and at Stanford Univer
sity. She served as national secre
tary of. .the American Statistical
Assn. Modest, gentle and kind, she
was to her friends a most stimulat
ing .and cherished companion.;; In
memory, she will remain wlth^us-^-
and with him — evermore.- '.irv'tJ^-
Doris and Robert Birnbaum"
Helen and Herman E. Cooper,
Nancy and Julius C C, Edelsteln
Timothy S, Healy
Harriet and Ted Hollander
Ann and Theodore W. Kheel
Christine and J. Joseph Meng
Margaret and James P. Murphy
Susan and Joseph Shenker.
Robert F. Wagner, Jr.'

THE WASHINGTON POST
Monday, February 3, 1992

BOWKER, ROSEDITH S.

'• 1992' of :MitcheHville.
8owker' 'Slcpmolher .of
e Bowker; aunl of 8*r-
James E'chlme. Memorial

S w w wK ^ark C^"rch, 3400 Lowell

fry S : 199^ V, h'n£"on- 0-C-. on Salurday.-'Febro-
>ry is, 1992, al 2 p.m. PJease omlJ flowers.

209

WASHINGTON POST

Tuesday, February 4, 1992

ROSEDITH SITGREAVES

BOWKER

Statistics Professor

Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker. 77.
a former professor of statistics at
Stanford and Columbia universities,
died of heart ailments Feb. 1 at her
home at Collington • Episcopal Life
Care Community in Mitchellville.

Dr. .Bowker was born in Easton.
Pa. She graduated from Wilson Col
lege, and received a master's de
gree in statistical mathematics from
George Washington University and
a doctorate in statistical mathemat
ics from Columbia.

From, 1943 to 1953 she was a
statistician with the Public- Health
Service in Washington.

Later she was a research associate
at Stanford and- a professor of edu
cation and statistics at Columbia. She
returned to the West Coast in 1971
and taught 'at Hayward State Univer-"
sity and Stanford until I960, when
she moved back to the Washington
area. Later she worked for the Na
tional Institute of Education.

Survivors include her husband.
Albert Bowker of Collington; and
three stepchildren. Caroline
Bowker of Berkeley. Calif., Nancy
Bowker of Redwood City. Calif.,
and Paul Bowker of Suisun, Calif.

210

Berkeleyan
February 12, 1992

Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker, con
sidered by many the First Lady of the
Berkeley campus during the 1970s,
died Feb. 1 in suburban Washington,
DC.

She died of heart ailments in her
Mitchellville, Md., home; she was 77.
Her husband, Albert Bowker, served
as chancellor at Berkeley from 1971-
1980.

"Rosedith Bowker was a warm, soft-
spoken woman whose seeming shy
ness belied an easy sense of humor and
an unflappable presence. As First Lady
of the campus, she was hostess at
hundreds of official events, while con
tinuing an impressive academic career,"
said Richard Hafner, now-retired head
of public affairs.

Bowker was reportedly the first
Berkeley chancellor's wife to have her
own independent career during her
husband's tenure.

A theoretical statistician who used
Sitgreaves as her professional name,
Bowker held teaching posts at Califor
nia State University — Hayward in sta
tistics and later at Stanford's School of
Education, where she retired in 1980.
This followed an appointment in edu
cation at Columbia University, where
she rose from assistant professor to pro
fessor between 1 957 and 1 97 1 . She was
an authority on the application of statis
tical methods, particularly multivariate
analysis, to educational research issues.
She was a fellow of the American
Statistical Association and of the Insti
tute of Mathematical Statistics.

The Bowkers were married in 1964.
In theirretirement they lived near Wash
ington, DC. Currently Chancellor
Emeritus Bowker is president of
Washington's Cosmos Club.

211 Appendix I-d

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-2060

FFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

MEMORIAL RESOLUTION
ROSEDITH SITGREAVES BOWKER

1915-1992

Rosedith Sitgreaves died of heart failure February 1, 1992 in Mitchellville,
Maryland at the age of 77. Thus ended a long career as statistician in
government, as a Professor of Education, and as mathematician. She was a
devoted colleague, friend and adviser to many students. Her guidance to
doctoral students was legendary and not readily emulated by her successors.

Rosedith was born on January 30, 1915 in Has ton, Pennsylvania. She
attended Wilson College, a women's college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in 1935, she went to work for the U.S. Public
Health Service in Washington, D.C. It was common in those days for those with
a full-time job to go to graduate school in late afternoon or night. Rosedith
launched her statistical career in this manner and received a master's degree in
statistics from George Washington University in 1940. Following this, she took
periods of leave and matriculated at Columbia working towards her doctorate.

In 1947 Rosedith Sitgreaves was part of the first postwar cohort at
Columbia University, whose faculty in Statistics was particularly distinguished at
that time. This was an exciting period, when the field of statistics was being
developed, and many, like Rosedith, became distinguished statisticians. She
completed her doctoral degree in mathematical statistics with T. W. Anderson,
currently Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Her dissertation was a tour
de force and dealt with the problem of classifying an observation in one of
several populations. This procedure, generally known as discriminant analysis,
was used during World War II to classify air force officers. Rosedith's
contribution was to determine the distributional behavior of this classification
procedure.

212

She came to Stanford in 1952 as a Research Associate in the Applied
Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory. The Department of Statistics was formed
in 1948, and the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory was established
two years later, both under the leadership of her future husband Albert H.
Bowker. The Department and the Math-Stat Lab, which attracted many visitors,
were the scene of pioneering new work in statistics and the mathematical
sciences. In later years Rosedith often spoke fondly of the excitement that
pervaded the activities in Sequoia Hall and of the sense of participating in bold
new developments.

In 1954, she returned to Columbia, rising through the ranks at Teachers
College to Professor of Statistics in 1964. That same year she married Al Bowker,
who had left Stanford to become Chancellor of the City University of New York.
They remained in New York until 1971, when Bowker returned to California as
Chancellor at Berkeley, and Rosedith to a faculty appointment at California State
University, Hayward. In 1973 she was appointed to a Professorship in the School
of Education at Stanford, where she remained until her retirement in 1981.

Her impact on faculty and students was legendary. She enjoyed consulting
and helping colleagues with statistical advice. Many times this involved a novel
approach, and she would work out some new procedure. Her role as teacher and
adviser was recognized by the students, and she won the Students' Award for
Excellence in Teaching. The then Dean of the School of Education said, when
presenting the award, "An unusually dedicated colleague, she is extending her
superb competence to provide advice on the research program in our Center for
Research and Development in Teaching, and to participate in the decision-
making curriculum of our new program in administration and policy making in
education. I don't know what we would do without her, and I hope that we will
not be confronted by the question." Rose stayed on another six years before
retiring.

Rose's research was mainly in multivariate analysis and test design. She
liked applications and became involved in a wide range of problems. She
participated in a study in tracking SAT and college entrance test scores; she
disagreed with Arthur Jensen on genetic factors in education. From an early date

213

she was interested in the education of women, and was actively engaged on
panels and committees to help further their careers.

The years at Stanford were joyous ones for Rose. She enjoyed the
intellectual stimulation and excellence of students. She also enjoyed her role as
hostess, both as the wife of the Chancellor at the University of California,
Berkeley and also as a member of the Stanford faculty. Students were welcome
guests at her house. This merger of roles came easily, and she introduced herself
simultaneously as Professor Sitgreaves and Mrs. Bowker.

Rosedith was recognized by the profession and received numerous
honors. She was a Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund 1946-47, a Guggenheim
Fellow 1963-64. She was a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of
the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Rosedith was a dose friend to many — to students, to colleagues at
Berkeley, Stanford, Washington and New York, to the many whom she helped
and stimulated. She was a kind and gentle woman, and will be missed by all
who knew her.

Ingram Olkin, chair
Lee J. Cronbach
Gerald J. Lieberman
Halsey Royden

Marion Lewenstein
Academic Secretary

Donald Kennedy
President

Appendix I-e

CLEVELAND PARK CONGREGATIONAL

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
3400 Lowell Street, NW
Washington, DC 20016

202/363-8211
12 March' 1992

MEMORIAL SERVICE February 15 for ROSE BOWKER

The sanctuary was virtually filled with friends and colleagues on
Saturday afternoon, February 15, to celebrate the life of Rosedith
Sitgreaves Bowker. Mrs. Bowker, who had been suffering from a heart
ailment, slipped away peacefully, though unexpectedly, in her sleep
on Saturday morning, February 1, at home at Collington in Mitchelle-
ville, Maryland.

The service was as she would have liked it — simple with music,
favorite hymns, familiar scripture passages — and a bit upbeat
with a jazz pianist (who played "Sophisticated Lady" brilliantly)
as a nod to the Bowkers' fondness for jazz. Reflections by Mr.
Dodds, her husband Dr. Albert Bowker, stepdaughter Nancy Bowker,
and a colleague friend were of the qualities which made her so
personally exceptional — soft-spoken, unassuming, compassionate,
generous with time and help wherever needed, great sense of humor,
devoted to her racily — just to list a few.

Exceptional as a person, Rose Bowker was equally exceptional in
her career. With, a master's and doctorate degree in statistical
mathematics and a wealth of experience, Rosedith Sitgreaves (as
she was known professionally) was a theoretical statistician noted
as an authority on the application of statistical methods. Accom
plishments would take pages, but some highlights include several
years as a statistician with the Public Health Service in Wash
ington, professorships among others at George Washington Univer
sity, Columbia and Stanford, as a consultant for the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, a Fellow of the American Statistical
Association and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statis
tics. In the years Dr. Bowker was chancellor at the University of
California, Berkeley (1971-1980), she again spent some years in the
School of Education at Stanford from which she retired in 1980.

215

TR16UTE DELIVERED BY ALBERT BOWKER AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE

After I speak.-my daughter Nancy Bowker will speak , and
Dorothy Gilford will read a message from Stanford U. An additional
celebration of her life be held in Berkeley on Feb. 26

In the last play Rose and I saw together "Marvin's Room" the
heroine is dying of Lukemia after a lifetime of caring for a catatonic
father (Marvin), a crippled Aunt, a psychotic nephew, a selfish
neurotic sister says "I'm so lucky, I had the opportunity to give so
much love." I don't mean to imply that Rose was surrounded by people
like that, fan from it but she had the the ability to give love and warm
friendship. She loved her family-mother, sister and niece ,nephew,
grandniece Colleen and grandnephew, Joey who-^re here today. She
loved my mother and my children. who are here. Students and
colleagues were enriched by her strength.. .Friends and neighbors all
over the country felt her warmtruand affection.

We once wrote a joint paper "An Asymptotic Expansion for the
Distribution of the "W" Statistic^ An asymptote is something you get
closer and closer to and our shared life experiences, mostly fun
times but some bad ones, had made us closer closer every year. And
that is how we felt about each other.

I have received many letters of condolence with memories of
Rose, and various adjectives describing here. The words gentle and
cheerful are repeated by many, Yet combined her gentle manner there
was a fighting spirit and a serene optimism. . Graduating from
college in the depression as an English major she became a
statistical clerk in the public health service. Studying nights at
George Washington and on a series of leaves at Columbia earned a
PhD. in mathematical Statistics. She climbed the academic ladder
when, how shall I put it, women were not as welcome in academe as
they are today. She took on a family with teen age children and
accepted social responsibilities that come with being a College
President's wife. Widely liked as First Lady of the Berkeley campus
she was hostess at hundreds of official events and was the first UC
Chancellor's wife to have her own independent career. (Commonplace
now but raised eyebrows t the time.) Her retirement was a happy

216

one. Five years in New York which she loved and new friends at
Collington meant a lot to her. Events at the Cosmos Club were fun.

Her optimism showed just two years ago two years ago when
she drove back and forth across the country to Lake Tahoe a lone, with
only two speeding tickets. Her bridge group at Collington tells me she
announced on the first day "I never underbid" and consistently
fulfilled that prediction.

Her death was relatively peaceful in the early morning hours on
February 1st after an illness that began with a heart attack
Thanksgiving Day. She did not expect to die; her fighting spirit
intended to lick this heart problem, as it had two mitral valve
operations. • And it seemed so unlike Rose to go this way, because
she never did anything that was harder on her friends and loved ones
than on herself.

217

TRIBUTE DELIVERED BY NANCY BOWKER AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE

Rose was a great stepmother. 5he was no different as a
stepmother than as a person -- she was good, kind, intellectually and
culturally active, thoughtful and generous with her time and with
herself. She brought a lot of enthusiasm to the task of being a
stepmother. We greeted her in that role with less enthusiasm, but
after a while she cared so much she won us over.

She was devoted to her family and we can all remember many
different ways she showed this. She took Caroline and me to hear
Martin Luther King speak. She tried to interest us in a Beatles song as
the latest thing, but we weren't convinced she was right until much
later. Caroline remembers Rose took her shopping for clothes for
college; Rose wanted to buy junior sophisticate dresses while
Caroline was privately and correctly convinced that all college
students actually wore was blue jeans and T-shirts. Rose showed
many kindnesses to Paul, such as helping him with school projects
and comforting him when he had problems.

Rose had a well-developed if irreverent sense of humor.
Driving with her at Eastertime we passed a church and I read the sign
aloud which said something like, "Jesus Died. He rose again and was
reborn. Rose said, "rJesus Christ, maybe, but you and me, Nancy, we're
on the same escalator, getting older and older.

Rose was notorious as a bad driver. When she backed up in the
car it was more probable than not that she would hit any other cars
that were in the vicinity. When she said she was going out, people
would offer to move their cars to giver her a clear field She
admitted a weakness in driving in reverse, but always said she was a
fine driver, going forward, straight ahead. In the main this was true,
although Caroline remembers the time she drove forward straight
ahead over a gas pump in a gas station.

Rose and my father were both always fascinated with all the
possible different routes for reaching a particular destination. To go
from New York City to our place in the country generated discussion:
Shall we take the Tappan Zee Bridge or the Henry Hudson Parkway? Or
shall we take the alternative route on the Merritt Parkway. For me,
if I master a way from point A to point B I am happy to go the same
way every time. I wondered what it would be like to be in a family
where such things are not so exhaustively discussed.

218

Rose approached her driving in about the same way she approached
her life. Secure in the love she gave her family and the love they gave
her, she had a quiet confidence and courage that things would all turn
out for the best It will be hard not to have her in our corner anymore.
I like to think of Rose setting off for her final journey the way she
faced her journeys in life — having considered all the alternative
routes and having selected the one that for the moment seems like the
best one. leaning slightly forward in the driver's seat, confident, full
of courage, hands firmly placed on the steering wheel poised for
forward straight-ahead driving, her eyes would be lit up with
anticipation as she contemplates how it will be when she reaches her
final destination.

Appendix I-f

Stanford Statement

My first association with Rose was in the summer of 1947 at Columbia. She had
graduated, from Wilson College and went to work in the US Public Health Servies in
Washington. She received a masters degree in statistics at George Washington University
in 1940, and that launched her statistical career. She took periods of leave and matriculated
at Columbia.

We were the first postwar crowd at Columbia and were anxious to complete our
education. The class was numbered 111 A and B and was taught by Jack Wolfowitz. Rose
and I struggled together especially watching Wolfowitz chew on his xvrist. There were
at least forty in the class, and many, like Rose, became distinguished statisticians. She
completed her degree at Columbia with Ted Anderson, and then spent three years from
1952 to 1954 at Stanford. The Stanford Statistics Department was started in 1948 by Al
Bowker, and there was a lot of intellectual excitement. There were many visitors at that
time and lasting friendships were made.

Rose joined the faculty of Teachers College in 1954 and was there until 1971, after
which she came west. She spent two years at California State University, Hay-vvard and
then was at Stanford from 1972 until her retirement in 19SO.

Rose and I were the two statisticians in the School of Education. Her impact on faculty
and students was legendary. She enjoyed consulting and helping colleagues with statistical
advice. Many times this involved a novel approach, and she would work out some new
procedure. Her role as teacher and adviser was recognized by the students, and she won
the Students' Award for Excellence in Teaching. The then Dean of the School of Education
said, when presenting the award "An unusually dedicated colleague, she is extending her
superb competence to provide advice on the research program in our Center for Research
and Development in Teaching, and to participate in the decision -making curriculum of our
new program in administation and policy making in education. I don't know what we
would do without her, and I hope that we will not be confronted by the question." Rose
stayed on for another six years before retiring.

Rose's research was mainly in multivariate analysis and test design. She liked appli
cations and became involved in a wide range of problems. She participated in a study in
tracking SAT and college entrance test scores; she disagreed with Arthur Jensen on genetic
factors in education. From an early date she was interested in the education of women,
and was actively engaged on panels and committees to help further their careers.

Rdse and 1 were very close during her Stanford years. We taught together, worked

220

with students together, and had many student parties. Al was Chancellor at Berkeley
during this time, and Rose often invited the students to their house. She was a warm and
gracious hostess. We also started a Stanford-Berkeley colloquium series in education that
brought together students and faculty in the behavioral and social sciences, and education,
which continues to this day.

Rose's presence on the faculty led to great days for the Stanford community, and
especially for me. I remember the search committee's report before Rose was hired at
Stanford. The summary was "She is the best in the business." And indeed she was.

Ingram Olkin

from Stanford University Statistics

221

: 1915-1932

7 he IMS Bulletin
Vol.21. No.2. 1992.99.

Roscdith S itj, reaves Bowkcr died of heart failure on 1 Fcb
ruary 1992m MitchcUvillc. Maryland. She was born on 30
January 1 9 1 5 in Eastern, Pennsylvania, and ai tended the all-
women's Wilson College in Chambcrsburg. Pennsylvania.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in 1935. she went to
work for the US Public Health Service in Washington. DC.
It was common for those who had a full-time job to go to
graduate school in the late afternoon or night. Roscdith
joined this group and received a master's degree in 1940 in
statistics from George Washington Unrversiry.This launched
her statistical career. She took periods of leave and matricu
lated at Columbia University towards a doctorate,

Rosedith was part of the first postwar crowd at Colum
bia, all anxious to complete their education. In the summer
of 1 947. the classes were numbered Statistics 1 1 1 A. B.Thc
• instructor was Jack Wolfowitz, and there were at least forty
in the class. Many, like Rose, became distinguished statis
ticians. She completed her PhD at. Columbia with T. W.
Anderson; her thesis was on the distribution of the Wald
classification statistic. After graduating, she spent 1952-
1954 at Stanford: the DcpL of Statistics was started in 194 8
by Albert H. Bowkcr. that was a time at Stanford when
there were many visitors and a lot of intellectual ferment
In 1954. Rosedith returned to Columbia University and rose through the ranks to appointment in 1964 as
Full Professor of Statistics at Teachers College. That same year she and Al Bowkcr were married in Penn
sylvania. RowV.tr had left Stanford University as dean of the graduate division to become Chancellor of the
City University ofNcw York. They remained in New York City until 1971 when Al became Chancellor of the
University of California. Berkeley, and Rosedith was on the faculty at California State University. Haywa/d.
In 1 973 she was appointed to the faculty in the School of Education. Stanford University, where she remained
until her retirement in 1981.

Koscdidi had always been interested in applications. Her carry work (1948) dealt with an air pollution study
and with blood lead determinations. Later, her contributions focused on measurement problems in general, and
on item analysis in particular. But she continued working on mul t ivariatc distribution theory .especially on the
Wald classification statistic. She became involved in the "Jensen Report" and disagreed with the thesis that
there were inherent genetic factors in minorities that generated lower test scores.

From an early dale, she was interested in the education of women, and she was actively engaged on panels
and commitiecs to help further their careers. After her retirement, she continued to participate in government-
sponsored studies that involved statistics. Her impact on faculty and students was legendary. She enjoyed
consulting and helping colleagues with statistical advice. Many times this involved a novel approach, and she
would work out some new procedure. Her role as teacher and adviser was recognized by the students, and she
won the Students' Award for Excellence in Teaching. The then Dean of the School of Education said, when
presenting the award. "An unusually dedicated colleague, she is extending her superb competence to provide
advice on the research program in our Center for Research and Development in Teaching, and to participate
in the decision-making curriculum of our new program in administration and policy making in education. 1
don't know what we would do without her. and I hope that we will not be confronted by the question." Rose
stayed on for another six years before retiring.

Rosedilh received a number of honors. She was a Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund 1946—1947 and
received a Guggenheim Fellowship 1963-1 964. She was a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
(IMS) and the American Statistical Association (ASA). Rose's presence on the faculty led to great days for
the Stanford community. I remember the search committee's report before Rose was hired at Stanford. The
summary was "She is the best in the business." And indeed she was.

INGRAM OLKJN
Stanford University

Appendix I-g
99

222

Appendix I-h
from Campus Report
Sanford University
February, 1992

Theoretical statistician Roseditb Sitgreaves dies at 77

Roseditb Silgrcavcs Bowkcr, professor of statistics in Stan
ford's School of Education from 1973 to 1980. died of heart fail
ure Feb. 1 in MhchellviUe, Md. She was 77.

Bom in Easton, Pa., she attended all-women's Wilson Col
lege in Chambers burg. Pa., and received her bachelor's degree
in 1935. She was appointed to a civil service post in Washing
ton, D.G, in 1937. She continued to work in Washington as a
statistician for die U.S. Public Health Service after earning a mas
ter's degree in gati^fv-* at George Washington University in
1940. She earned a doctorate in mathematical statistics from
Columbia University in 1953.

Sitgreaves came to Stanford in 1952 as a research associate
and worked under Albeit H. Bowker. who was then associate
professor of statistics and dean of the graduate division.

In 1954, she returned to Columbia and rose through the
•ranks to appointment as a full professor of education there in
1964. Also that year, she and Bowker, who had left Stanford in
1963 to become chancellor of the City University of New York,
were married in Pennsylvania. The couple returned to Califor
nia in 1 97 1, he to become chancellor of the University of Cal
ifornia-Berkeley and she to assume a teaching post at Califor
nia State Universiry-Haywaid.

In 1973. she was appointed professor of education at Stanford.
a position she characterized as "very exciting and challeng
ing." As a theoretical statistician, her special concerns were the
applications of statistical theory to research problems in education
and psychology.

Calling her "an unusually dedicated colleague" and praising
her "superb competence," Arthur CoLadarcL, then dean of the
School of Education, said: "Prof. Sitgreaves represents a giant
step forward in our instructional and research capability."

Sitgreaves left Stanford in 1980 to return once more to Wash
ington, D.C. when her husband retired as chancellor of UC-
Berkeley and was appointed assistant secretary of education for
postsecondary education by President Jimmy Carter.

Sitgreaves was a fellow of the American Statistical Associ
ation and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

She is survived by her husband; stepchildren Nancy Kathleen
Bowker -of Redwood City, Stanford alumna Caroline Anne
Bowker. 12, MD 77, of Berkeley, and Stanford alumnus Paul
Albert Bowker. *70, of Suisun, Calif.; a niece; and a nephew.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 pjm. Saturday. Feb. 15.
in Washington, D.C •

Born:
Married:

Education:

ALBERT IIOSMER BOWKER

September 8, 1919, Winchendon, Massachusetts

September 26, 1%4 to Rosedith Sitgreavcs,
Professor of Education and Statistics,
Stanford University

B.S. in Mathematics,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1941
Ph.D. in Statistics, Columbia University, 1949

223

Appendix Il-a

Professional Record:
1941-43
1943-45

1947-63

1959-63
1963-71
1971-80

1980-81
1981-84
1984-86

1986

Research Assistant, Mathematics Department,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Associate Mathematical Statistician, later

Assistant Director, Statistical Research

Group, Applied Mathematics Panel,

Columbia University
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor,

Professor of Mathematics and Statistics,

Stanford University

Dean, Graduate Division, Stanford University
Chancellor, The City University of New York
Chancellor, University of California,

Berkeley
Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary

Education, U.S. Department of Education
Dean, School of Public Affairs

University of Maryland
Executive Vice President,

Central Administration,

University of Maryland
Vice President for Planning,

Research Foundation of

The City University of New York

Member:

National Drug Abuse Council (1972-79)
Advisory Council of Presidents, Association of

Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges
West Coast Board, Institute of International Education
Board of Trustees, Bennington College
Board of Governors, University of Haifa
Committee on Graduate Education,

American Association of Universities
Board of Trustees,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1967-75)
Board of Directors,

San Francisco Bay Area Council (1972-77)
Command and General Staff College

Advisory Committee (1977-79)
National Association of School of Public Affairs and

Administration, Executive Council
Association for Public Policy and Management,

Policy Council

224
Member. Professional Societies:

American Association for the Advancement of

Science (Fellow)

American Society of Quality Control (Fellow)
American Statistical Association (Past President, 1964,

and Fellow)
Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Past President,

1961-62, and Fellow)
Operations Research Society of America
Sigma Xi (Honorary) (Executive Committee, 1963-66)
Phi Beta Kappa (Honorary)

Awards:

Doctor of Science, Morehouse College, 1988
Order De Leopold II, 1980
Distinguished Public Service Medal,

Department of the Navy, 1980
Berkeley Citation, 1980
Doctor of Laws, Antioch University, 1980
Shewhart Award, American Society of Quality

Control, 1978
Medal for Distinguished Service, Teachers College,

Columbia University, 1973
Doctor of Humane Letters, Board of Regents of the

State of New York, 1972
Doctor of Laws, Brandeis University, 1972
Doctor of Humane Letters,

City University of New York, 1971
Frederick Douglass Award for 1969,

New York Urban League
Bronze Plaque, Municipal Association for Management

and Administration, 1967

Books:

Sampling Inspection by Variables (with Henry P. Goode),

McGraw-Hill, 1952
Handbook of Industrial Statistics

(with Gerald J. Lieberman), Prentice-Hall, 1955
Engineering Statistics (with Gerald J. Lieberman),

2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, 1972
"Writing Skills and Institutional Articulation," in

The Teaching of Expository Writing

(J.D. Keener, Editor),

Alfred Sloan Foundation, 1977

225 Appendix II-b

STATISTICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A. H. BOWKER

1944 Note on the consistency of a proposed test for the
problem of two samples, Ann. Math. Statist.. 15: 98

1946 Computation of factors for tolerance limits on a
normal distribution when the sample is large, Ann. Math.
Statist. , 17: 238

1947 Tolerance limits for normal distributions, Chapter 2
of Techniques for Statistical Analysis, Churchill
Eisenhart et al (editors) , McGraw-Hill

1947 On the norm of a matrix, Ann. Math. Statist. , 18: 285

1948 A test for symmetry in contingency tables, J . Amer .
Statist. Assn. 43: 572

•* r

1949 Asymptotic expansions for the distribution of certain
likelihood ratio statistics (abstract), Ann. Math. Statist. ,
20: 131

1952 Sampling Inspection by Variables (with H. P. Goode) ,
McGraw-Hill

1955 Handbook of Industrial Statistics, (with G. J. Lieberman)
Prentiss-Hall

1956 Continuous sampling plans , Proc. Third Berkeley Symp. on
Math. Stat. and Prob. . Vol. V:75, University of California
Press

1957 Recent developments in continuous sampling (with
G. J. Lieberman), Proc. Internat. Statist. Inst. ,
30th Session

1959 Engineering Statistics (with G. J. Lieberman) Prentiss-
Hall

1960 A representation of Hotelling's T ana Anderson °s

classification statistic W in terms of simple statistics.
Essays in Honor of Harold Hotelling; 142, Stanford
University Press

226

1961 An asymptotic expansion for the distribution function
of the W-classification statistic, (with R. Sitgreaves)
Studies in item analysis and prediction: 285, Stanford
University Press

1965 Quantity and quality in higher education J. Amer.
Statist. Assn. 60: 1

5/27/71

227

Appendix II-c

W g.

B- £. g T>

fiMHi
Hi ?f |ti

«5

Zir. n
_. c a>

,iUt

'CM?.
3. . B

22 cs

f| j

o^ o
& p !•« S. 1- g- i-

J^ JL S S g 5' g- 5'

5 ?. » o B a, B

81 B I

228

D- 2 * S

els

?•

hill

H - V t

229

Appendix Il-d

California Monthly
June- July 1980

From the '60s to the *80s

An jnterv/fMv \\-ith

When Albert H. Bowker stepped
Jown as chancellor of the University
>f California's Berkeley campus
June 30, he took with him the record for the
longest term in that office — nine years.
Since he came to Berkeley in 1971 from the
City University of New York (before that,
he was graduate dean at Stanford), Bowker
has earned the reputation of being a soft-
spoken but tough-minded administrator
who likes to get a job done with a minimum
of fanfare.

Bowker, 60, helped guide the flagship
campus of the UC system out of an era of
student strife and through subsequent
years of increasingly severe budgetary
constraints.

By MARCY KATES 73

His excellence as an administrator has
not gone unnoticed. President Carter has
appointed Bowker to the position of
assistant secretary of education for post-
secondary education, following a recom
mendation by U.S. Secretary of Education
Shirley M. Hufstedler. Bowker assumed
his new post July I.

In a recent interview with the California
Monthly, Bowker reflected on his years as
Berkeley's chancellor.

. Q: How has the University changed since
you became chancellor in 1971?

A: When I came here, Berkeley accepted

every qualified student. The dormitories
were not full, and the vacancy rate was a
little disturbing — considering that we're
on 40-year bonds.

The legacy of the '60s much reduced the
popularity of the campus and public sup
port. It seemed to me that one of the things
I had to do was turn that around. We went
to work and talked about Berkeley in all
parts of the state. We really uncovered an
enormous interest in Berkeley. Now, we've
become extremely popular. The dormi
tories are jammed full, with waiting lists,
and we're trying to get additional housing
as fast as we can.

It seemed to me that Berkeley, which had
(Continued on page 15)

Albert Bowker

(Continued from page I)

Jost 1 10 faculty positions the year before 1
came, was spread too thin. 1 felt we ought
to reorganize and deemphasize some of our
weaker programs and change the emphasis
in some others. This led to changes such as
the abolition of the School of Criminology.
We're no longer as involved in teacher train
ing as we were, but the School of Education
has important other functions. At the same
time, we were faced with an enormous
demand for places in engineering and
business, in particular, as well as in law.
These represent the long-term trends.

Q: What about the side of your job that
isn't quite so visible to the outsider — the
internal administrative structure of the
campus. Did you make changes there?

A: In a way, the thing that has pleased me
most about my years at Berkeley has been
the number of talented people willing to
work in the administration. I reorganized
slightly, bringing in two provosts to operate
the institution, one for the professional
schools and one for the College of Letters
and Science. It turned out very well because
in principle when I came here all of the
deans reported to me, and there were too
many to have an effective working relation
ship with.

Q: Some of the decisions you've made as
chancellor, such as cutting out 35 admini
strative positions last year, can't have been
very easy.

A: Yes, that's true. It was pretty painful.
But our whole intention has been to try and
live with budgetary stringencies without
affecting the academic quality of the
institution.

Q: And do you think you've succeeeded
in doing that?

A: I believe so. One of the first things I
did was to look at the number of faculty
positions we had with respect to exemptions
and retirement. We adopted a recruiting
policy which made it certain that roughly
60 new faculty would be added to the
campus every year. This meant slowing up
replacements in some cases and speeding
— them -up -in -others,' but managing our
resources so we had a steady flow of new
people and a renewal of the campus. And
that we've been able to stick to for nine
years.

Q: It sounds like Berkeley has had to
spend much of its resources reacting to
things like budgetary constraints. Has the
campus still been able to lead, to break new
ground?

A: It's obviously easier to start new
programs when you're in a period of expan
sion; nevertheless, we have gone into new
areas. We started a program in energy, we
started a very interesting new program in
health and medical sciences, combining
training of physicians (jointly with DCs
San Francisco medical school) with other
kinds of professionals such as genetics
counseling and mental health. But most of
the innovations here come within depart
ments and schools that are constantly
changing curriculum.

Q: What about programs to attract new
students to Berkeley or students who might
not be as well prepared as they should be?

A: We have outreach programs into the
high schools and programs that identify
talented students in the sciences, where
minority enrollment has tended to be the
smallest. We've also had new leadership
and some new funding for our learning
centers, which assist students who are here
and in need of help. Probably the thing that
has been most successful — it's been copied
all over the country — is the Bay Area
Writing Project, where the teachers here of
Subject A and elementary English hold
workshops and summer programs with
teachers from our major feeder high
schools. As a result, there has been a
considerable drop in the number of people
who have had to take remedial English at
Berkeley.

Q: How would you describe your rela
tionships with students here over the years?

A: I am usually accessible to elected

\ student leaders. And I've tried through the

years to meet with other groups, Regents'

Scholars, the Inter-Fraternity Council,

and athletic teams.

I find it difficult to relate to 30,000
people [chuckle], and probably am not
highly visible to most students — at least
that's a criticism that has been made of my
administration.

When I walk on campus, some students
look the other way and some look toward
me. Many students stop and speak to me.

Q: Do they tell you about their gripes?

A: Usually they just want to meet me and
say hello. We receive about 3,000 students
each year at the reception for new students.
It's quite an experience, shaking hands for
three hours!

Q: As Berkeley's chief promoter, you've
done a lot of entertaining, haven't you?

A: You don't have to do entertaining, but
I have thought it important in these years to
pep up the fundraising. In Berkeley's
earliest days it was heavily supported with
private funds, but in the late '40s and '50s.
under Governor Warren and Governor
Brown, the University turned more to the
state in a period of rapid expansion. Now
Berkeley, in common with most public
institutions, is finding the state not as
generous as it has been. We've turned more
and more to private fundraising, which is
absolutely essential if Berkeley is going to
remain an institution of quality. We've
done pretty well at it.

Q: / recall seeing a figure that alumni
support went from S3 million in 1973 to 123
million in 1978.

A: Yes, mostly from individuals, with
some corporations and private founda
tions. And we still have a way to go. But for
a campus without a medical school, we do
quite well.

Q: Which of your goals for Berkeley have
you had the most difficulty accomplishing?

231

Appendix Il-e

IM7. Vol t No. 4, 477 -OJ

A Conversation with Albert H. Bowker

in^ram O!.;in

Albert Bowker was born in Winchendon, Massachusetts, on Septem
ber 8, 1919. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT in 1941, and
a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics from Columbia University in 1949.
He was on the Stanford faculty from 1947 to 1963, serving as founding
Chairman of the Statistics Department and Dean of the Graduate
Division. In 1963, he became Chancellor of the City University of.
New York. He returned to California in 1971 as Chancellor of the Uni
versity of California at Berkeley. In 1980 he was appointed as the first
Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education in the newly formed
U. S. Department of Education. In 1981 he went to the University of
Maryland as founding Dean of the School of Public Affairs and later
became Executive Vice President. In September 1986, he returned to the
City University of New York, and now serves as Vice-President for
Planning of its Research Foundation. In 1961-1962, he was president of
the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and in 1964, president of the
American Statistical Association. Honors include the Frederick Douglass
Award of the New York Urban League; the Medal for Distinguished
Service of Teachers College, Columbia University, Shewhart Award of
the American Society for Quality Control; Berkeley Citation; Distin
guished Public Service Award, Department of the Navy, Order De
Leopold II; and honorary degrees from the City University of New York,
University of the State of New York (Regents), Brandeis Universi.y and
Antioch University. He has been a member of the boards of various
professional and educational organizations including MIT, the Univer
sity of Haifa and Bennington College.

The following conversation took place in his home in Washington,
D. C. in October 1986.

I STARTED AT MIT

Olkin: AI, perhaps you can begin by telling us
•bout your statistical background before and after
your education at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Bowker: In June of 1937 1 graduated from Wood-
row Wilson High School, which is a block and a
half from where we are now sitting in Washington,
and that fall enrolled in MIT as a freshman. My
original idea was to become an engineer of some
sort, although my father and most of his friends
had been research scientists at the National Bureau
of Standards. But finally, discouraged largely
by a drafting and chemistry laboratory, I decided
that I wasn't inclined enough mechanically to
become an engineer. I then transferred to mathe
matics.

It was very pleasant at MIT because, although
mathematics is a very large major today, there were

only a few people in my class. Actually, mathematics
had graduates every now and then in those days rather
than every year. So by transferring as an undergrad
uate to mathematics, I became part of a small com
munity and was entertained socially by the faculty; I
had a small office as a junior.

Olkin: Who were the faculty at that time?

Bowker: The people in statistics were George
Wadsworth, who was in the mathematics department,
and Harold Freeman, who was in the economics de
partment. I became quite close to both of them as well
as with Ken Arnold, who had just finished his docto
rate and was an Instructor, and with some of th*> '••:'••?
mathematicians.

Olkin: Was Norbert Wiener there at the time?

Bowker: Wiener was there, and I took a course
from him as an undergraduate. Although I never
understood it, I got an A in the course. But it was
really Freeman and Wadsworth who interested me
in statistics.

472

232

CONVERSATION WITH ALBERT H. BOWKER

473

THE STATISTICAL RESEARCH GROUP AT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Bowker: After I graduated in 1941, I went to
work at MIT on a military project, which was trying
to use statistical methods for weather forecasting, and
in fact was exploiting some of Wiener's ideas of pre
diction. When it came right down to it, however, these
methods were essentially the same as multiple regres
sion. Although I enjoyed working at MIT and in
Washington at the Weather Bureau, I became dis
couraged about the project and moved to the Statis
tical Research Group at Columbia in 1943.

I must say that the Statistical Research Group
(SRG) probably had a major influence on my thinking
and career, because I believe it was the most distin
guished and creative collection of statisticians ever
assembled.

Olhin: For the record there wore t\vc statistical
research groups, one at Princeton and one at Colum
bia. Can you clarify that?

Bowker: Yes. We never referred to Princeton as
SRG although officially it was SRG Princeton and we
were SRG Columbia.

Olkin: So the major center was at Columbia.

Bowker: Yes. The Columbia group was much
bigger. For example, Fred Mosteller, who was associ
ated with SRO Princeton. pi™ ^-r* an ofr>r° at C«'VT<-

groups.

Olkin: What was the charge to the Statistical
Research Group?

Bowker: SRG was set up by the Applied Mathe
matics Panel of the Office of Scientific Research and
Development. There is a very good history by Allen
Wallis in the June 1980 issue of the Journal of the
American Statistical Association.

We worked on military problems that were referred
to us mostly but not exclusively by the Navy. I worked
a lot on methods of firing various weapons, aerial
torpedoes and bombsights.

Olkin: Was this with Harold Hotelling at the
time?

Bowker: The three figures who formed the group
were Hotelling, Allen Wallis and Jack Wolfowitz,
but Wallis was the Director and real spearhead. The
other members comprised a statistical 'who's who':
Abraham Wald, Churchill Eisenhart, Jimmie Savage,
Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Abe Girshick, Ken
Arnold, Harold Freeman, Herb Solomon, Fxi Paulson,
Millard Hastay, Rollin Bennett.

It was a great experience to be able to see significant
applied problems analyzed by the best theoreticians
in our field given the best available research support
and computational facilities. Computing facilities in
those days consisted of rooms full of people pounding
Fridens, Monroes and Merchants, and my responsi
bilities included supervising this activity. Most of the
young women who worked for us were either from
Hunter, trained by Hobart and Jewell Bushey, or from
Vassar trained by Grace Hopper. SRG was an open-
door operation. I could drop in and talk informally to
people who were then the leaders of our field or many
who would later become leaders, my contemporaries.
And in many ways, the atmosphere at SRG contrasted
sharply with the formality of Columbia University as
a place to study. SRG was a good model later on for
the statistics department at Stanford, hopefully hav
ing a series of problems come in from either govern
ment or industry, having enough space so that all of
the young scholars, graduate students and the faculty
could be housed in the same building, easily accessible
to each other. I think in the early days at Stanford's
Sequoia Hall and before that at the Knoll, we came
close to achieving the kind of environrr.rr.t th.v. we
had at SRG.

Olkin: Al, let me interject one question here.
Physically, was SRG housed separately from the sta
tistics group that was later to become a department
at Columbia?

233

Bowker: Oh yes, we were housed at 401 West
118th Street, whereas the statistics department was
boused at Fayerweather Hall on campus.

Olkin: So that was close geographically, but off
campus.

Bowker: Yes, but both Hotelling and Wald prob
ably spent more time with the SRG than they did in
their offices at Fayerweather Hall.

Of course, all those other people were at SRG, so it
was certainly the center of gravity of statistics. In fact,
students who weren't involved with us were kind of
shortchanged at the time. This was wartime and there
were lots of other groups around us. We also had a
strong group of mathematicians in our building and
next door. They had no relation to us. It was just
another group of the applied mathematics panel. And
we collaborated with them. I worked with Jim Stoker,
who at the time was a member of that group rather
then Ccur-art's. We worked on severe! problems, par
ticularly measuring the characteristics of the evasive
action of ships bombarded by aerial torpedoes.

Olkin: What was happening in New York at that
time? Was there a statistical community or was the
activity mostly at Columbia?

Bowker: I don't recall too much activity else
where. While I was at Columbia I went down to the

New School to hear Richard Courant lecture several
times. But he was giving a course on calculus of
variations, aimed mostly at teachers. It had very little
to do with statistics.

Olkin: Were you formally a student at Columbia
during this period?

Bowker: Yes, but I didn't really do anything
more than take courses. All the courses then were
given in the late afternoon. But when the war was
over, I received a National Research Council fellow
ship to study full time during the academic year
1945-1946 at Columbia. I think that Jack Wolfo-
witz was on the faculty during those years as well.
P. L. Hsu, in particular, was on the faculty, and I
started to work on a dissertation with him- He was a
great lecturer and one of the clearest expositors in our
field. In the fall of 1946 he moved to Chapel Hill, and
I moved down there for a quarter. I was also at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh the summer
before. This was an exciting summer program and
a lot of my fellow students from Columbia attended.
R. A. Fisher, among others, lectured for the summer.
We had an opportunity to hear ideas from the great
man. Since we had taken statistical inference, which
was based on the Neyman-Pearson theory, from
Abraham Wald at Columbia, we were not as respectful

234

CONVERSATION WITH ALBERT H. BOWKER

475

of R, A. Fisher as he might have liked. However, he
managed to survive our class.

MY MOVE TO STANFORD

Bowker: In the meantime Allen Wallis, who had
been director of the Statistical Research Group, had
returned to Stanford where he was a member of the
economics faculty. Mina Rees, who had helped War
ren Weaver run the Applied Mathematics Panel dur
ing the war, was then developing Applied Mathematics
and Statistics programs at the Office of Naval Re
search and had offered Allen a project to help develop
statistics at Stanford. I have always thought that Mina
and ONR have not been given enough credit for the
development of mathematical statistics in this coun
try. In most major universities it is the only new
discipline (until the recent addition of computer sci
ence) added to the Arts and Science area since World
War II; ONR certainly played a major role at Stanford,
Berkeley, Chapel Hill, Chicago, even Princeton and
Columbia. Largely at Allen's urging, the statistics
community at Stanford decided to use the availability
of project funds as a base for an academic program in
statistics; the move was authorized by Donald Tres-
sider, then President of Stanford, and by the academic
Vice President, Alvin Eurich, who also approved an
offer to me and asked Fred Terman to recruit me as
Allen was moving to Chicago. .The mathematics de
partment received me with a certain detachment. Al
though he became a strong supporter of statistics,
Gabor Szego was then chairman of the mathematics
department, and explained to me very nicely that
while what I did was very interesting — it wasn't math
ematics. So we moved rather quickly to a separate
department.

Olkin: So the department was actually formed in
1948?

Bowker: It was announced by Alvin Eurich in
184S, and I was asked to be chairman thou{jn suil
technically a graduate student at Columbia. (Talk
about student power!) In the meantime, President
Tressider died. Wally Sterling was appointed presi
dent, and I think it's fair to say that he reaffirmed the
whole decision. I find file accounts of long conversa
tions with him. In some ways a turning point was the
availability of Abraham Girshick to join the depart
ment. He was then at RAND Corporation. Girshick
had a remarkable mind with a deep interest in theory,
but firmly grounded in applications from his govern
ment experience at the Department of Agriculture and
wartime work at SRG. He was a warm and attractive
person who drew in other scholars. The Annual Report
of the Statistics Department that year lists Meyer A.
Girshick, Professor; Albert H. Bowker, Assistant Pro
fessor; Zivia Wurtele and Gladys Rappaport (later
Garabedian), Research Associates.

Other people were also around. When I first went
to Stanford, Herb Solomon came out with me for a
year to help on a Sampling Inspection by Variables
Project. He went back to the Office of Naval Research,
and later moved to Teacher's College, Columbia Uni
versity. Herman Rubin joined us fairly early on.

Olkin: Was Ken Arrow already on the faculty?

Bowker: No. Allen Wallis had been in the eco
nomics department, and I was appointed to the
mathematics department. The economics department
agreed to this move, as I remember it, on the basis
that they wouldn't lose their statistics position. That
was also up in the air for a little while, but they
decided to recruit someone.

235

476

STATISTICAL SCIENCE

I strongly urged them to appoint Ken Arrow. There
was no one comparable. Kenneth came in with a joint
appointment between statistics and economics from
the beginning.

O!kin: V.'here hacl Ken been at the time?

Bowker: Cowles Commission. Although I was at
Stanford first, Ken was very important in the devel
opment of the department.

Olkin: Was Pat Suppes already at Stanford?

Bowker: I was not involved with hiring Pat, but
I helped keep him at Stanford. He had been a student
of Ernest Nagel at Columbia and was interested in
logic and the foundations of physics. He didn't find
much of an intellectual community at Stanford, and
joined us on several projects working on decision
theory and inventory models. In June of '49, Quinn
McNemar was appointed Professor of Statistics in
addition to his appointment in psychology.

Olkin: So that was the composition of the group.
There was yourself, Ken Arrow, Abe Girshick,
Herman Rubin and, to some degree, Pat Suppes and
Quinn McNemar.

Bowker: Lincoln Moses was also at Stanford.
He had been a Stanford undergraduate and had
come btck after the war to study. He was en
couraged to come into the statistics department as
a student. Our first two doctoral students were
Moses and Solomon which may have been a good
omen. In any case, both later played important roles
in the department.

Olkin: One of the striking features of the Stan
ford department is that we have a lot of joint appoint
ments. In fact, at one time we had 9 out of 16 faculty
joint with other departments. You indicated that to
some degree the model came from the Statistical
Research Group. Did you consciously think of joint
appointments at the time, or was it just a natural
evolution?

Bowker: The idea from the beginning was to
construct a research laboratory with students and
faculty working on problems, many of which would
come from applied fields; to treat students as col
leagues, with office space; to provide first class com
puting facilities. Implicit in this arrangement were
projects to cover computing costs and stipends for
students. Also implicit were joint appointments with
other departments. A large ONR project naturally
evolved from SRG. It dealt with what is called vari
ables inspection, and comprised a large part of our
activity for the first few years.

The policy on joint appointments was also derived
from my view that the department ought to dominate,
if not be formally responsible for, all of the statistics
instruction and that the instruction ought to be in the
hands of professional statisticians. This had been a
theme of Harold Hotelling for many years. And the

easiest way to implement it appeared to be through a
series of joint appointments.

In my first few year; I triec? to STHT.C as rruch time
c. 1 could cor.su. iing with oiner lacuiiy and 1 worked
some at the medical school, which was then in San
Francisco. That led to a joint appointment with the
Department of Public Health and Preventive Medi
cine, although most of my work was not with them. It
was with other scientists. Lincoln Moses was eventu
ally brought back with a joint appointment with the
Medical School.

The School of Education joint appointments came
quite a bit later, when an attempt was made to reform
the school as a distinguished research school. Joint
appointments with industrial engineering always
seemed natural because there was a strong quality
control activity there.

Olkin: Was Gerald Lieberman in the picture at
this time?

Bowker: Jerry came as a student. I was doing
some consulting at the National Bureau of Standards
and met Jerry and invited him to come as a student.
He did and worked on the quality control procedures.
After he got his degree in 1953, he accepted a joint
appointment with industrial engineering.

David Black well was a frequent short term visitor
and spent one or two academic years when he,
Girshick and Arrow undertook their work on decision
theory. This became a major activity for a number of
years.

Although few recall it now, Stanford was not an
exceptionally distinguished university when I first
went there. It certainly was not one of America's great
universities as it is today. Most people thought I was
crazy in accepting a position there. I remember that
one mathematician left Stanford because he thought
it had no future.

Although I'm a little ashamed of it, the Berkeley
oath controversy, in 1952, actually afforded us a spe
cial opportunity. Charles Stein who was on the Berke
ley faculty decided that he would not return there. He
went to the University of Chicago and then we re
cruited him to Stanford. Erich Lehmann spent a year
at Stanford and also considered moving. Other events
were taking place throughout the university. Paul
Garabedian came to the mathematics department,
Wolfgang Panofsky, later head of the Stanford Linear
Accelerator (SLAC), came to the physics department.
Other visitors in mathematics came from Berkeley. In
particular, i remember Hans Lewy came at that time.

Although not very many people moved, the ones
who did were pretty important to the university.
Panofsky was to be the key figure in SLAC, which
might very well have been at Berkeley.

And there was also a very substantial increase in
funds from the Office of Naval Research spurred in

236

CONVERSATION WITH ALBERT H. BOWKER

477

part by the increased military investments due to the
Korean War. So when I look back on that period there
were a number of incidents that may not have
been w*" gooH for the county *t large bui-that s*iM

1958-1959, 1 joined the faculty in 1961 together with
Richard Atkinson, who was joint between Psychology
and Education, and Kai Lai Chun?, who was a full

So Charles joined us, and then we recruited Herman
Chernoff. Together with Moses and Lieberman, it
gave me, at least, the feeling that we could be as good
as any place in the country in our field.

I want to say, however, that the Berkeley people
were very cooperative in the '50s. We had a joint
Berkeley-Stanford seminar in which everyone, grad
uate students and faculty, went. It still exists but does
not play the key role that it did then. And we did feel
part of the same statistical community. Both Jerzy
Neyman and I were empire builders and we saw ad
vantages in cooperation.

Olkin: Was Samuel Karlin part of the group at
the time, or did he come shortly therafter?

Bowker: Well, he must have come a little there
after. The roster of the department in "56-'57, the
year after Girschick's death and toward the end of my
term as Chairman shows Kenneth Arrow, Herman
Chernoff, Samuel Karlin, Quinn McNemar, Charles
Stein, Gerald Lieberman, Lincoln Moses and
Emanuel Parzen.

THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES AT STANFORD

Bowker: In the meantime, I had taken a very
ambitious role of leadership in the mathematical sci
ences at Stanford. I was made a member of the math
ematics department again and had a lot to do with its
direction under Gabor Szego and later, under Mena-
hem Schiffer when he was chairman. The mathemat
ics department had always been strong in classical
analysis. My general notion was to build a mathemat
ics department that emphasized classical analysis and
other fields of mathematics that were applicable. I
didn't use the term applied mathematics as the center
'of gravity for the department; I think applicable math
ematics is a better word. . .
:. Before Karlin came we had brought in Charles
Loewner and Stefan Bergman.

Olkin: Of course, George Polya and Gabor Szego
were already there.

Bowker: Yes. Ivor Stakgold and Harold Levine
were brought in as applied mathematicians. Halsey
Royden was already there as were Paul Berg and
Gordon Latta. David Gilbarg joined us. And in addi
tion to that, I had supported Pat Suppes in his ambi
tions to build a group in learning theory. We first
recruited Richard Atkinson, and later William Estes
joined the faculty.

Olkin: I suspect that this was between 1958 and
1962. Although I visited Stanford on sabbatical in

pomunem was joint witn education.

Bowker: With Ken Arrow as a nucleus, we had
really a very interesting and stellar group of mathe
matical economists. Marc Nerlove, Hirofumi Uzawa
and Herbert Scarf were around. Harvey Wagner, who
had been an undergraduate and master's student at
Stanford, got his Ph.D. at MIT and came back to join
the faculty.

So we had very substantial activity by mathemati
cally oriented social scientists as well as by a group in
statistics and a group in applied mathematics. These
groups were loosely linked together in the Applied
Mathematics and Statistics Laboratory of which I was
director. The Laboratory was a kind of holding com
pany for government projects and a unifying force in
providing administrative services of a fairly high cal
iber compared to what most people had available in
those days.

Olkin: I meant to ask you whether J. V. Uspen-
sky, who wrote the probability book, was alive at that
time? This was a name I recall from his book on
probability. It was a rather unique book in containing
material that is not readily found in most texts.

Bo >vker: Uspensky died practically upon my ar
rival, so I never knew him. Mrs. Uspensky was still
alive, and I met her several times.

Olkin: There was another person in Applied Me
chanics who was mathematically oriented. This was
Stephen Timoshenko. Was he involved with your
group?

Bowker: No, he didn't have much to do with us.
He had a brother, Vladimir, who was a statistician
and economist, I think in the Food Research Institute,
and some of those people collaborated with us a little
more, such as Bill Jones and Holbrook Working,
among others. Holbrook was not actually part of the
group, but was associated with us. I don't know why
we never offered him a joint appointment since he
was a strength to us. Another person in a similar
relation to our group was Eugene Grant in industrial
engineering.

We never had a very close relationship with the
Business School. Although I was friendly enough with
the Business School and played . a role in several
doctoral dissertations, we never got as far as a joint
appointment.

Olkin: Another person who was around at this
time was George Forsythe.

Bowker: Yes, in the mid 50s I joined forces with
Fred Terman, a great friend and supporter since our
initial interview, to organize a computer center and
get an IBM 650. The computer center led by Jack

237

478

STATISTICAL SCIENCE

Herriott was housed in the Electronics Research Lab
oratory, but through various transformations was my
responsibility until I left Stanford in 1963. 1 recruited

to take him. He was at UCLA which missed the
opportunity to be a leading center of computer science,
although it had a lot of money, particularly from the
National Bureau of Standards. We hired George ex
plicitly with the idea of starting a computer science
department which was later formed with Forsythe as
the first chairman.

I am usually given the credit for that action, cor
rectly I think, although I find, as I reminisce about
Stanford, that there are a lot of other people who take
credit for the things that I think I did. I am reminded
of the military saying which John Kennedy used in
talking about the Bay of Pigs, "Victory has a hundred
fathers, defeat is an orphan." A unique opportunity
for Stanford was an enormous mathematically related
center of high quality activity. We even chatted a bit
about a school of mathematical sciences bringing all
these interests together.

I mention all of this because in 1955-1956, 1 took a
sabbatical and went back to Columbia where I did
some research. It was during that year that I wrote a
paper on a representation of Hotelling's T square and
Anderson's classification statistics in terms of simple
statistics. This paper appeared in the Hotelling
Festschrift volume that you help edit.

It was a year of stock-taking, and I had to decide
whether I saw my future mainly in statistics or
whether I would go into more general administration.
I was probably offered the directorship of the
Courant Institute in that year. I certainly was offered
it by Henry Heald, who was president of NYU, and
Harold Stoke, who was the dean (and was later to
work with me as president of Queens College). I re
member visiting Courant in his home, and he showed
no sign of being willing to transfer authority. So if I
had really pursued it, it might not have worked out
And indeed NYlTs directions, although they were
close to that of the Stanford mathematics department,
were not particularly close to mine. However, I had a
number of good personal friends there.

After thinking it over and talking to Fred Terman
at Stanford, I decided to return to Stanford first as
his assistant (by now he was Provost of the university)
and later, when it became available, as Graduate Dean.
So from 1956 or 1957 on, I was at least part time, later
tc Lc fo',' lime, in the Si.cr.iord cdnjinisiration.

And I made, I guess implicitly, a decision that I
would look for my career in university administration.
Although there was a high element of chance in all of
these decisions.

Olkin: So your term as Chairman of the Statistics
Department ended in 1960?

Bowker: Herb Solomon was a visitor in 1958 and
he was appointed chairman the next year. I was then
De^v, M- ***** 1 w*» Ft** T<m»on!i atf»sf-
1 slfo Kfpt the cLairir.ansr.ip of me Department
until we could recruit someone.

I continued an interest in the mathematical sciences
picture, generally. For example, in that year I had
organized a committee on operations research with
Lieberman, Arrow— I can't remember all of the peo
ple — Karlin, Scarf and probably someone from indus
trial engineering, to look at the future of operations
research, which had been started as a graduate division
interdepartmental committee; the committee had the
authority to grant Ph.D.s but didn't have much struc
ture, and I kept negotiating for newer and bigger
machines for the computer center.

To some extent things began to fail apart in these
years. The mathematics department, with David
Gilbarg as Chairman, decided not to be as specialized
as I had intended and branched out more into pure
mathematics. Although some of the appointments
they made were very good, I have never been sure that
this move was wise. I have often thought that mathe
matics departments around the country, especially the
small departments, might be stronger if they had more
specialization. I have been particularly critical of my
alma mater, MIT, which did not specialize ir applied
mathematics, and now doesn't have any representa
tion in statistics since Herman Chernoff retired. I've
been on several visiting committees there, and found
that there are more Ph.D.s in the mathematical sci
ences outside the department than within it. Much of
the basic work in communication theory and infor
mation theory there has been done in other depart
ments.

Somewhat later the group around Pat Suppes left.
William Estes went to the Rockefeller University and
Richard Atkinson became director of the National
Science Foundation, but Pat has continued in a very
active program at Stanford in computer-assisted
' instruction and has had a big impact nationally.
Kenneth Arrow left and went to Harvard, although
now he is back at Stanford, and the relationship with
economics continues to flourish. The Department of
Computer Science flourished and the Department of
Statistics flourished, although there were some mo
ments of trepidation. One thing: the Statistics De
partment could have incorporated the operations
research activity poing on in the university and
decided not to. I guess this was a mistake.

Olkin: Yes, I remember this decision. The de
partment was offered the opportunity to incorporate
operations research, but the departmental vote was
very split and it was decided not to enlarge the scope.
Then operations research became a separate depart
ment in the School of Engineering.

238

CONVERSATION WITH ALBERT H. BOWKER

479

So in effect then, during the late 1950s, two new
mathematical sciences departments were formed: the
Department of Operations Research and Computer
Science.

in me School of Humanities and Science. I gather that
within the last couple of years they have made the
other decision themselves.

Olkin: They have just moved to the School of
Engineering. Did you have anything to do with math
ematical biology, which also has a group at Stanford?

Bowker: No, I wasn't involved with that. In the
early days I consulted with Frank Weymouth in phys
iology and Willis Rich in biology. That really led to
the medical school relationship there, because Wey
mouth was in the medical school. When did the math
ematical biology group get started?

Olkin: I can't recall exactly, but Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza must have come in the middle 1960s,
as a visitor I think at the beginning, and then Marcus
Feldman joined that group. But that must have been
later.

Al, let me come back now to some of the scientific
aspects. There is the Bowker-Lieberman book which
clearly had a major impact in the industrial field. In
fact, it's a book that is still used very heavily. How
did your collaboration start? Was this a natural evo
lution from the Statistical Research Group Columbia
to your work at Stanford in quality control?

Bowker: I think so. And Jerry, of course, had
started to work both in variables inspection and in
continuous sampling in his early days. We were fairly
close personally, so we started to write this book.

It was, I think, fairly influential for a while in the
sense that I once estimated that about 10% of the
engineers in America must have studied out of it. The
book is out of date now in that it has never been
revised to reflect the impact of modern computers. I
have been encouraging Jerry to revise it and he has
been encouraging me, and I suspect that we probably
won't do it,

But it did have a big impact. I keep bumping into
people who studied from it, and I have correspondence
every year about an error or a question.

Olkin: I think until that time there was just the
book by Harold Freeman, is that correct?

Bowker: He wrote a book with more emphasis
on experimental design and experimental statistics.
Our book not only had quality control but tried to put
in the standard Fisherian technioues.

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Sixth chancellor, University of California, Berkeley, 1971-1980 : statistician, and national leader in the policies and politics of higher education : oral history transcript / 1995"

See other formats