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Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

University History Series

Lincoln Constance

VERSATILE BERKELEY BOTANIST:
PLANT TAXONOMY AND UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE

With Introductions by
William B. Fretter

and
Mildred Mathias

An Interview Conducted by
Ann Lage
in 1986

Underwritten by

The Chancellor's Office and

The College of Letters and Science

University of California at Berkeley

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal
agreement between the Regents of the University of
California and Lincoln Constance dated 15 May 1986. 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 at
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 at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
486 Library, 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 Lir. In Constance requires that he be
notified of the r st and allowed thirty days in which
to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited
as follows:

Lincoln Constance, "Versitile Berkeley Botanist:
Plant Texonomy and University Governance," an
oral history conducted in 1986 by Ann Lage,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley,
1987.

Copy no . yf

LINCOLN CONSTANCE
1976

Photograph by Dennis Galloway

TABLE OF CONTENTS ~ Lincoln Constance

PREFACE to the University History Series i

INTRODUCTION by William Fretter iv

INTRODUCTION by Mildred Mathias vi

INTERVIEW HISTORY xi

I YOUTH AND EDUCATION IN EUGENE. OREGON 1

Family Background 1

A Rural Youth 4

Interest in Natural History 7

Undergraduate at the University of Oregon 9

II GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 1930-1934 14

Applying for a Teaching Assistantship 14

Adjusting to the Grind on Fifty Cents a Day 15

Teaching Assistant to Professor Jepson 17
William A. Set ch ell and Willis L. Jepson: A Study in Contrasts 18

Dissertation on Eriophyllum 20

III WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE. PULLMAN. 1934-1937 24

A "Half-time" Position 24

Summer Work Collecting in the Redwoods 28

Collecting in the Northwest 29

A Network of Correspondents 31

Marriage and Job Offer from Berkeley, 1936-1937 32

Willis Jepson. in Retirement Years 36

IV ADDENDUM ON THE EARLY YEARS 38

Family and Family Life in Oregon 38

The Graduate Program at Berkeley 40

Looking at Photographs from the Pullman Period 42

Conservative Administration at Washington State 47

V BOTANY AT BERKELEY: THE PREWAR YEARS 51

The Department following Setchell's Retirement 51

Setchell and Jepson at Odds 56

Entries from Field Notebook, 1937-1942 58
Cytological Investigations with Marion Cave: Developing

Additional Information for Taxonomists 62

Early Work on Umbelliferae with Mildred Mathias 65

Prewar Trips 69

VI WARTIME SERVICE 71
Geobotanist for the OSS

Joint Intelligence Study Publishing Board 74

VII POSTWAR YEARS AT BERKELEY AND HARVARD 78

A Call from Harvard 78

Observations of Harvard, 1947-1948 81

The Associates in Tropical Biogeography 87

With Carl Sauer in Baja California 88

VIII BAY AREA BOTANISTS AND BOTANICAL THOUGHT 92

Women in Botany: Eastwood. Mexia, Alexander, Carter 92

The Biosystematists 95

Jepson' s Will: Creation of the Jepson Herbarium and Library 97

IX THE UNIVERSITY LOYALTY OATH CRISIS 102

Robert Gordon Sproul and the Faculty 102

An Extraordinarily Difficult Period — Background to the Oath 105

Sproul 's Strengths 109
Principles or Power Struggles?

Long-Term Divisive Effects of the Oath 113

X SERVICE ON ACADEMIC SENATE COMMITTEES 116

The Senate Editorial Committee — Advising the University Press 116
The Budget Committee: Jurisdiction over UCSF and UC Davis

Budgetary Affairs 119

The Question of Academic Titles for Davis Personnel 120

Budget Committee Chairman During Campus Transition 123

Special Problems of the School of Nursing 124

The Promotion Process 125

Faculty Role in University Governance 127

XI THE EARLY FIFTIES: ADMINISTRATION AND ADDRESSES 133

Relationship with Clark Kerr 133

"The Versatile Taxonomist, " 1950 138

"The Role of Plant Ecology in Biosystematics, " 1952 140

"Plant Taxonomy in an Age of Experiment," 1957 143

XII SABBATICAL YEAR IN SOUTH AMERICA 145
Guggenheim Fellowship to Study Plant Relationships North and

South 145

In Transit: Twelve Passengers and a Cargo of Dynamite 146

Life in Chile, Colleagues, and Field Work 152

Peru and the Trip Home 161

The Chilean Way: Disposing of the Car 164

XIII FROM DEPARTMENT CHAIR TO DEAN OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE 167

Chairing the Department of Botany, 1954-1955 167

Plans to Restructure Biological Sciences Departments. 1980s 170

Appointment as Dean of Letters and Science, 1955 172

Kerr's Goals for UC Undergraduate Education: Expansion and

Excellence 174
The Special Committee on Objectives, Programs, and Requirements 177

A Close Tie between Faculty and Administration 179

XIV ENFORCING NEW REQUIREMENTS AND HIGHER STANDARDS IN LETTERS AND

SCIENCE 182

Breadth Requirements 182

Letters and Science as a Campus Dumping Ground 183

Strict Enforcement of Regulations 185

Judging Cases for Special Admissions 188

Crusader against Misuse of University Extension 191
Maintaining Standards: the Problem of Junior College Transfers 193

XV ADMINISTERING THE COLLEGE OF L & S, 1955-1962 196

Staff Changes 196

A Decentralized Approach: Departmental Authority 197

Reforming Weak Departments 198

A Distinguished Roster of Assistant and Associate Deans 203

Working with Chancellor Kerr 209

Problems of Undergraduate Teaching 212

Kerr's Interest in Interdepartmental Cooperation 213

ROTC Controversy: Kerr's Intervention 216
Letters and Science: A College or a Collection of Departments? 220

Working with Glenn Seaborg as Chancellor 222

A Multiplicity of Committees 223

Seaborg 's Treatment of the Humanities 225

Relations with the Regents and Other Campuses 227

XVI BACKGROUND TO THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT 230

Chancellor Kerr's Use of Advisory Councils . 230

Kerr's Support for Social Sciences 233
Lower Division Teaching and Advising: A Source of Student

Alienation? 235

Accepting the Vice-Chancellorship, 1962 237

Year-Round Academic Proeram: A Divisive Issue 240

Sibling Rivalry between Berkeley and Other UC Campuses 245

Faculty- Administration Conflict over Rehiring Eli Katz 249

Chancellor Strong: Liberal, Contemplative, Principled 253

XV IT RECALLING THE TUMULT OF 1964-1965 257
Split in the Chancellor's Office: Strong, Sherriffs, and

Malloy Handle the Students 257

Mario Savio and a New Student Clientele 260

Representing the Chancellor's Office to the Faculty 263

The View from University Hall 268

A Siege Mentality in the Campus Administration 271

Incident at the Greek Theatre. December 7 274

Resignation Offer to Protect Chancellor Strong 278

XVIII MENDIJC THE CAMPUS: CHANCELLORS MEYERSON AND HEYNS 281

Changes under Meyerson 281

Selection of Roger Heyns as Permanent Chancellor 284

Advice to Heyns 285

Berkeley in the Dog House 287

Aftermath of FSM. Parallels to Anti- Apartheid Demonstrations 288

XIX IN PURSUIT OF PARSLEY 293
Beginning of Serious Research on Umbellif erae in Association

with Mildred Mathias 293

Graduate Student Shan Ren-Hwa and Sanicula 297

The Remarkable Mathiasella 300

Pacific Basin Urabellif erae 301

Rafael Lucas Rodriguez from Costa Rica 302

The Ambitious Hiroe from Japan 305
More Exotic Conquests: Students and Colleagues from New

Zealand, Pakistan, France 308

Describing the Shipwrecked Sailor, Naufraga balearica 310

Looking for Perideridia with Student Chuang from Taiwan 312

More Publications, More International Connections 313

Umbelliferae of India: Mukherjee and Vanasushava 315
Ripples from Umbelliferae: South America, Wyoming. Africa,

and Russia 319

XX FURTHER UNIVERSITY RESPONSIBILITIES AND PROFESSIONAL

AFFILIATIONS, 1963-FRESENT 324

The History and Function of Herbaria 324

Directing the University Herbarium in an Era of Retrenchment 327
The Managing "Assistants" of the Herbarium: Walker, Crum,

Carter, and Howard 331

Teaching during the Environmental Decade 334
Organizational Changes in the Research and Teaching of the

Biological Sciences 335

The Freshman Cluster Program: Antidote to Anomie 338
President of the California Academy of Sciences: Broadening

the Decision-making Process 342

A Lasting Influence 344

TAPE GUIDE 346

APPENDIX — Constance Curriculum Vitae 348

INDEX 351

UNIVERSITY HISTORY SERIES LIST 356

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 more than three decades
that followed, the program has grown in scope and personnel, and has taken
its place as a division of The Bancroft Library, the University's manuscript
and rare books Library. The essential purpose of the office, however, remains
as it was in the beginning: to document the movers and shakers of California
and the West, and to give special attention to those who have strong and often
continuing links to the University of California.

The Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley is the oldest such entity
within the University system, and the University History series is the
Regional Oral History Office's longest established series of memoirs. That
series documents the institutional history of the University. It captures
the flavor of incidents, events, personalities, and details that formal
records cannot reach. It traces the contributions of graduates and faculty
members, officers and staff in the statewide arena, and reveals the ways the
University and the community have learned to deal with each other over time.

The University History series provides background in two areas. First
is the external setting, the ways the University stimulates, serves, and
responds to the community through research, publication, and the education
of generalists and specialists. The other is the internal history that binds
together University participants from a variety of eras and specialties, and
reminds them of interests in common. For faculty, staff, and alumni, the
University History 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. For those who are interviewed, the memoirs present a chance
to express perceptions about the University and its role, and to offer one's
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,
members of particular industries and those involved in specific subject fields,
campus departments, administrative units and special groups, as well as grants
and private gifts. Some examples follow.

Professor Walton Bean, with the aid of Verne A. Stadtman, Centennial
Editor, conducted a number of significant oral history memoirs in cooperation
with the University's Centennial History Project (1968). More recently, the
Women's Faculty Club supported a series on the club and its members in order
to preserve insights into the role of women in the faculty, in research areas,
and in administrative fields. Guided by Richard Erickson, the Alumni
Association has supported a variety of interviews, including those with Ida
Sproul, wife of the President; athletic coaches Clint Evans and Brutus
Hamilton; and alumnus Jean Carter Witter.

The California Wine Industry Series reached to the University campus
by featuring Professors Maynard A. Amerine and William V. Cruess, among
others. Regent Elinor Heller was interviewed in the series on California
Women Political Leaders, with support from the National Endowment for the
Humanities; her oral history included an extensive discussion of her years
with the University through interviews funded by her family's gift to the
University.

On campus, the Friends of the East Asiatic Library and the UC Berkeley
Foundation supported the memoir of Elizabeth Huff, the Library's founder;
the Water Resources Center provided for the interviews of Professors Percy
H. McGaughey, Sidney T. Harding, and Wilfred Langelier. Their own academic
units and friends joined to contribute for such memoirists as Dean Ewald T.
Grether, Business Administration; Professor Garff Wilson, Public Ceremonies;
Regents' Secretary Marjorie Woolman; and Dean Morrough P. O'Brien, Engineering,

As the class gift on their 50th Anniversary, the Class of 1931 endowed
an oral history series titled "The University of California, Source of
Community Leaders." These interviews will reflect President Sproul's vision
by encompassing leadership both state- and nationwide, as well as in special
fields, and will include memoirists from the University's alumni, faculty
members, and administrators. The first oral histories focused on President
Sproul himself. Interviews with 34 key individuals dealt with his career
from student years in the early 1900s through his term as the University's
llth President, from 1930 to 1958.

More recently, University President David Pierpont Gardner has shown
his interest in and support for oral histories, as a result of his own views
and in harmony with President Sproul's original intent. The University
History memoirs continue to document the life of the University and to link
its community more closely — Regents, alumni, faculty, staff members, and
students. 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 in this volume.

ill

The Regional Oral History Office is under the administrative supervision
of Professor James D. Hart, the Director of The Bancroft Library.

Willa K. Baum
Division Head
Regional Oral History Office

Harriet Nathan

Project Head

University History Series

9 November 1987
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

INTRODUCTION — by William B. Fretter

I've known Lincoln Constance as a fellow professor at the University of
California for thirty-four years, but I worked most closely with him in the
College of Letters and Science, first as a. member of the Special Committee
on Objectives, Programs, and Requirements, then as assistant and associate
dean of the college during his deanship. When I eventually succeeded him as
dean of Letters and Science, the lessons I learned under his tutelege served
me in good stead.

In 1955, when Lincoln became dean of the College of Letters and
Science, the Special Committee on Objectives, Programs, and Requirements was
hard at work reezamining and upgrading the college's entire program, from
entrance and graduation requirements to major and breadth requirements, to
advising programs. It became the job of Dean Constance to enforce the new
rules, dealing with a sometimes recalcitrant student population. He was
unrelenting in his firm but fair enforcement of the rules, guided in his
task by his insistence — as he puts it so succinctly in his oral history —
that he did not become dean of L & S to "preside over the cesspool of the
campus." As assistant and associate dean, I sat in on weekly meetings with
Lincoln and the staff, in which we conferred on difficult cases as we sought
to apply the new rules fairly. It was in these sessions, usually discussing
the problems of individual students with a request to the dean for exemption
from the rules, that Constance's willingness to listen openly and his sense
of fairness were apparent, as were his high standards for himself and
others.

During the years we worked together in the College. I had many
opportunities to observe his skill at interacting with his fellow faculty
members. The new requirements meant change in many campus departments. And
along with an upgrading of student performance, the dean determined to
upgrade the few departments in the college which showed signs of neglect or
lethargy. Not all department chairmen were enthusiastic about the major
changes taking place. It was in dealing with this situation that Lincoln's
skills were most apparent, I think he succeeded where many would have
failed in large part because of his respect for his fellow faculty members
and for their individual disciplines. He always listened to the objections
of his fellows, never engaged in confrontational battles. Instead, he would
appeal with his considerable persuasive skills to the best side of his
opponent. Working individually, discussing the issues, stressing the
importance of undergraduate education and the high standards of the
University, he would gently bring the recalcitrant faculty member into line.

As a result, Lincoln Constance was highly regarded among his fellow
faculty members. His sense of fairness, his respect for individual
disciplines, his love and respect for the University of California were

readily apparent. Even at the height of the unfortunate "Free Speech
Movement," when Lincoln had moved on to the position of vice-chancellor, he
was one of the few administrators on campus to escape criticism.

Lincoln Constance's career on this campus has been a long and fruitful
one — coming as a graduate student in 1930; appointed as a faculty member in
1937; serving as chairman of the botany department, 1954-1955; dean of the
College of Letters and Science, 1955-62; and vice-chancellor of the Berkeley
campus. 1962-65. Always ready to serve, the consummate good citizen of the
Berkeley faculty, he has served on over fifty committees, subcommittees, and
task forces on campus ranging from the Committee on Junior and Irregular
Teaching Personnel, to the Advisory Committee to the School of Nursing, to
the chairmanship of the powerful Academic Senate Committee on Budget and
Interdepartmental Relations. Since his formal retirement in 1976, he has
continued to be an active member of the Berkeley campus community, still
pursuing his botanical research and still available for work on faculty
committees, advisor to students and fellow professors. He has received many
honors in his long career, none more significant nor important to him, I
suspect, than the high regard in which the Berkeley faculty continues to
hold him.

William B. Fretter

Vice President of the University. Emeritus

Professor of Physics, Emeritus

April 1987
Berkeley, California

INTRODUCTION — by Mildred Mathias

My association with Lincoln Constance dates back precisely fifty years
to correspondence in March 1937 concerning the loan of specimens of
Cogswellia (now Lorn ati urn) from the herbarium of the State College of
Washington at Pullman. Little did I expect that early request to lead to
decades of joint "pursuit of parsley."

Shortly after that initial contact Lincoln joined the staff of the
Department of Botany at the University of California. Berkeley, where I was
then struggling with the parsleys for the North American Flora. By that
time, I had accumulated a fair amount of manuscript and there was some
reason to believe that I might not finish it for publication. Consequently
I did a serious bit of arm-twisting and the team of Mathias and Constance
was born. It turned out to be a successful delivery since the manuscript for
the Umbelliferae for the North American Flora was completed in 1942.

The multiplication of my family, the war, and our respective moves to
Binghamton, New York, and the Washington, D.C.. area led to a lapse in
sciadography for a few years except for the inevitable proof-reading.

For the next five years my pursuit was not of parsley but of children
while Lincoln returned to Berkeley and renewed his studies of the family
Umbelliferae. In 1947 I joined the Department of Botany at UCLA and after
several exchanges of letters we agreed that cooperative efforts would be
resumed, the main research collections would be deposited at Berkeley, and I
would retain at UCLA a small reference collection to aid in routine
ide nti f ica ti ons .

However, the cooperative efforts lagged since Lincoln left Berkeley for
a year on an interim appointment at Harvard, where in spite of many other
duties, he managed to collect a significant amount of information on South
American umbels as the basis for future studies. He also became better
acquainted with the eastern establishment.

Carl [Epling] would be delighted to
know, I think, that I am talking to the
New England Botanical (Hub in a couple
of weeks on, "Is a New Taxonomy
Necessary." He might think it less
funny that I'm also talking to the
Biology colloquium this week on "Some
Foibles of B iosy stem ati cs." Thus, you
see, I try to establish my role as a
middle-of-the-roader, or a damned
hypocrite. [Constance to Mathias, 24
February 1948]

vii

The new taxonomy and biosystematics were catch words of the day with
the publications during the war years of Julian Huxley's The New Systematics
(1940). Clausen. Keck and Hiesey papers on "Experimental Studies on the
Nature of Species" and "Experimental Taxonomy" (1940-48), Edgar Anderson's
studies (1940-41) leading to his book on Ir.trogres^sive Hybridization (1949).
Dobzhansky on Genetics and the' Origin of _Species (1941). Ernst Mayr
Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) and papers by Ledyard Stebbins
leading to the publication of Variation and Evolution in Plants (1950).
Students returning to the colleges and universities after war service
brought more experience and maturity to their studies. They were exciting
years in the early fifties as taxonomy became "new" by moving from the
herbarium into the laboratory and the field with transplant experiments,
studies of populations, cytogenetics, etc. What was needed and what Lincoln
provided and still provides was a balanced view of the subject. Each new
approach adds and hopefully improves our knowledge and understanding of taxa
and their relationships. The herbarium still provides the voucher
collections where the variability and nomenclature are preserved and
documented As he entitled his 1950 presidential address to the American
Society of Plant Taxonomists. the "new" taxonomist must be "The Versatile
Taxonomist. "

To return to umbels: When possible during the next thirty years I
managed to ascend to the umbel level in the herbarium at Berkeley to pore
over the collections of umbels and manuscript drafts and discuss with
Lincoln problems and possible solutions.

Having temporarily disposed of the umbels of North America, we
concentrated on South America. Everything south of the United States'
border was pioneering. Collections were meaaer, often only a single sheet
or a fragment for a species, and many taxa still uncollected (as we found
out); the literature was sparse and ancient with the only "complete"
worldwide treatment of the family being that of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle
in 1829 and 1830; and many of the type specimens had been destroyed during
the wartime bombing of Berlin, where Hermann Wolff had been intensively
studying and describing South American Umbellif erae. J. N. Rose, following
a preliminary treatment of the umbels of Mexico and Central America, had
left a series of handwritten notes that I had been given after his death.
What was available in the way of notes, literature, and specimens was
concentrated at Berkeley and Lincoln accurately described the state of
knowledge in a letter early in 1948:

At any rate, Rose's eight herbarium names
aren't much help, and of the three things
Wolff described, he saw mature fruit of
only onel No wonder things were in a
mess. ...When I get done, they'll
probably still be in a mess, but a
slightly different one. [Constance to
Mathias, 24 February 1948.]

Vlll

The correspondence waxed and waned during the years as both of us became
more involved in administrative and other academic duties. The letters from
Lincoln were written in what he called "my hour" and kept me informed of
progress such as the arrival of an undescribed species from one of our
correspondents:

We have just had another "blessed event"
about which I thought you ought to know.
[Constance to Mathias. 10 May 1949.]

The enclosed items are.. .to keep you up-
to-date on the activities of the Center
for Prosecuting (mainly) Latin American
parsleys. [Constance to Mathias,
15 August 1961.]

There were letters back and forth bemoaning the lack of time for
research, the accumulation of loaned specimens that should be annotated and
returned but were still needed for study, and the masses of specimens that
were needed or came unexpectedly:

I suppose we might just as well offer to
determine all their Umbellif erae for them,
in order to get an opportunity to see what
we want. This way, every time we solve
one problem, we turn up two or three new
ones.. .more fun! I enjoyed Rose's [J. N.
Rose] notes: he seems to have been about
as confused as we are, possibly even more
so. With the stuff I now have on hand •
he'd have had ten new genera and fifty-six
new species, possibly he would have been
right! [Constance to Mathias, 21 July
1950.]

It was obvious that* in order to understand the Umbellif erae of the
western hemisphere we would have to pick away genus by genus on a worldwide
basis. One of the first genera to tackle was Oreomvrrhis with its unusual
southern hemisphere distribution extending from southern Mexico to the tip
of South America, across to New Zealand and north as far as Taiwan. In 1952
I wrote Lincoln:

I am going to dig into Oreomyrrhis now and
make some pretense of putting the whole
thing together in an orderly manner which
you will be privileged to tear apart.
[Mathias to Constance, 30 July 1952.]

That expresses well the cooperation. Sometimes Lincoln wrote the
entire paper and I tore apart the draft; other times it was the reverse; and
in some cases we split the effort and one wrote the introductory pieces

while the other did the descriptions of the taxa. Lincoln was able to have
excellent artists to assist and their superb detailed drawings of umbels
were exceedingly helpful in calling our attention to characters that we had
overlooked. As the years passed he was also able to grow quite a parsley
patch in the botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon and some of the old-
timers may remember the giant bromeliad-like eryngiums that sprouted there.
Umbels are still under cultivation there and for a short time some were also
grown in Los Angeles. Examination of these documented specimens has proven
exceedingly helpful as Lincoln wrote in 1975:

It is in Azorella (as I found with the
Ecuadorean stuff) that all the walls seem
to be coming down around our ears. Either
one has a species for each of several
dozen paramos, or else one is forced to
come to the conclusion that these cushion-
umbels are actually extraordinarily
plastic and variable, as their behavior in
the greenhouse should have told me.
[Constance to Mathias, 16 May 1975.]

By 1978 I was more and more involved in extra-umbel activities and the
cooperative efforts on the Umbellif erae have essentially ceased but Lincoln
has continued in the studies:

I came to the realization some time ago
that if I planned to continue with
Umbellif erae, I should have to pretty much
"go it alone." Going it alone is not a
very accurate description. I guess. In
attempting to handle the "Umbel business"
I am continuing to get involved in all
sorts of minor projects with various
people. [And he follows with a list of
eleven individuals from various parts of
the United States. Mexico. South America,
Europe and Asia with whom he is
. cooperating on joint umbel adventures,
finishing the list with] Alone...?
[Constance to Mathias, 18 September 1978.]

The numerous collaborators indicate the influence Lincoln Constance has
had on students throughout the world. The list of those who worked with him
during their doctorate programs includes many of the distinguished
taxonomists of today. Lincoln has been internationally known as a mentor
for over fifty years to generations of both undergraduate and graduate
students; as a distinguished researcher and student of the Hydrophyllaceae
and Umbelliferae; and as an able field collector who has pursued his
favorite plants through the herbaria of Europe and South America and in the
field, particularly in western North America and South America.

The innumerable honors that he has received are recognition of his
botanical contributions and his standing among his peers: president of The
American Society of Plant Taxonomists, The Botanical Society of America, and
The California Botanical Society; member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences; membership in the Academia Chilena d° O'er.cias Naturales, Sociedad
Argentina de Bot^nica, Socie'te de Biogeographie (Paris)v Institute
Ecuatoriano de Ciencias Naturales (Quito). Sociedad Botanica de La Libertad
(Trujillo. Peru), Linnean Society of London, and Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences.

The citation upon receiving the Asa Gray Medal of The American Society
of Plant Taxonomists, its highest award, expressed well his position in
botany :

Lincoln Constance has been mentor to all
of us. In a series of papers that are too
insightful and vatical to be considered
reviews, Lincoln Constance defined and set
the course for the coming age of
systematics. As a participant in
biosystematics his papers serve as models
for the field of cytotaxonomy. His
contributions to taxonomic research range
across fl eristics, biogeography,
cytotaxonomy, and palynology. [Systematic
Botany 12:186, 1987.]

He has been a continuing proponent of "Systematic botany — an unending
synthesis." It has been a fruitful fifty years, an honor and a privilege to
call him a colleague and a friend and to have contributed a small piece to
his research.

Mildred E. Mathias
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Los Angeles

March 1987

Los Angeles, California

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Lincoln Constance joined the faculty of the University of California at
Berkeley as assistant professor of Botany in 1937. As he explains in his
oral history memoir, the University had the policy of hiring promising
young scholars, with the expectation that they would, within the environment
of excellence provided by the University, advance to leading positions in
their respective fields. The faculty, once gaining tenure, expected to
finish out their careers at Berkeley. This sense of permanence and belonging,
coupled with a strong tradition of faculty participation in University
governance, encouraged the faculty's willingness to serve the Academic Senate
and the University as committee members, department chairs, and campus or
University-wide administrators.

The career of Lincoln Constance validates that University policy. As
he progressed through the professorial ranks, he also advanced steadily to
a role of national prominence in his field of systematic botany. His oral
history gives some insight into the everwidening scope of his investigation
into the parsley family, Umbelliferae, and the growing role that he took in
helping his field assimilate wisely the swiftly expanding state of botanical
knowledge. His prominence in botanical research, however, was not achieved
by a neglect of teaching responsibilities. In fact, as demonstrated by the
sampling of professor-graduate student relationships documented here, he has
influenced his field most profoundly, perhaps, by serving as mentor to nearly
half a century of plant taxonomists.

While pursuing his parsleys and guiding his graduate students, Constance
also engaged in the third aspect of the professorial role — service to the
University. He has served on innumerable Academic Senate committees, but
his remarks in the oral history focus on his chairmanship of the powerful
Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental Affairs — what effectively is the
University's faculty personnel committee, reviewing all appointments and
promotions and issuing recommendations to the Chancellor that are rarely
rejected.

By 1954, Lincoln Constance had already developed a reputation for
"knowing everyone on campus" and understanding how the complex system of
University of California governance worked. He was asked by Chancellor
Clark Kerr (based on the recommendation of a faculty committee) to serve as
dean of the College of Letters and Science during a crucial period in its
history. He recalls his work as dean to upgrade the college by strict
enforcement of the newly instituted faculty-designed reform measures.
Unyielding, but fair and evenhanded, Constance demonstrated his high expecta
tions for the performance of academic departments and undergraduate students

Xll

alike. His remarks make clear his devotion to the University and its
standards of excellence and his esteem for its faculty and tradition of
mutual respect among all its elements.

It is easy to underatand, then, why the explosive force of the Free
Speech Movement with its rebellious student (and nonstudent) activism and
its disregard for conventional courtesies and traditional academic modes of
operation were so dismaying to Lincoln Constance, who served as vice-
chancellor during this turbulent period. Although he was seldom involved
directly in working with the FSM leaders, he was in a position to closely
observe the operation of the Chancellor's Office, and his memoir brings a
valuable perspective to the historical record of this well-remembered
period of the University's history.

Throughout his administrative career, Constance found time to continue
his botanical research. Therefore, when he gave up his administrative
responsibilities in 1965, he resumed his professorial career and has given
more than twenty additional years to the joint pursuit of parsley and
service to the University and scientific communities. The final interviews
record this prolific period, including the directorship of the University
Herbarium, presidency of the California Academy of Sciences, and a host of
publications, often based on his cooperative work with botanical researchers
from Russia to India to South America.

This series of eleven interviews with Lincoln Constance took place at
approximately weekly intervals during the winter and spring of 1986 in
his office in the Life Sciences Building. There in his office were apparent
the interests and habits of mind of a professor in his fiftieth year at the
University of California at Berkeley. Still very much a working office, it
contained letters from his far-flung correspondents, sheets of obscure
Umbelliferae from around the world with requests for his assistance in
identification, and cabinets of carefully arranged files, from which he
could retrieve in minutes a significant letter from thirty years past to add
information to our recorded sessions.

Professor Constance's manner is quiet and low key, supremely courteous,
always modest. His ironic sense of humor, we hope, comes through in the
written transcript of these tape-recorded interviews. The transcripts were
lightly edited for continuity and clarity and reviewed by Professor Constance
with minimal changes. Tapes of the interview are available in The Bancroft
Library. On behalf of future researchers of University and botanical history,
we would like to thank the Chancellor's Office and the College of Letters and
Science for underwriting this interview.

Ann Lage
Interviewer-Editor

November 1987

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

I YOUTH AND EDUCATION IN EUGENE, OREGON
[Interview 1: January 23, 1986] //f/

Family Background

Lage : Let's just start with the most simple question of when and where

you were born and then tell us something about your family.

Constance: Okay. I was born in Eugene, Oregon — actually, it's now a part
of Eugene though it was two miles outside the city limits — on
February 16, 1909. My parents were Lewis Llewellyn Constance
and Ella Clifford Constance.

Lage: And had they been residents of Eugene for a while?

Constance: My parents moved to Eugene the year before I was born, from

Wisconsin, where they were both born and grew up. Three out of
four of my grandparents were immigrants. (I take it you want to
know about my grandparents.)

Lage: Right, I'd like to know back at least tc your grandparents,

where they came from and —

Constance: Well, a recent distant relative sent ice some genealogical

material on my father's family. According to her, the Constance
family, presumably, came from somewhere in northern France to
England with William the Conqueror and settled at a place
called Longhope, in Gloucestershire. I don't know the exact
occupations of the different ancestral line, but my impression
is that they were craftsmen of some sort. Somewhere along the
line I heard that ray great-grandfather made beer barrels, but I
can't really prove that. Somebody else said that they made
baskets, or some sort of more or less skilled handwork,
presumably.

////This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 346.

Constance: At all events, ray grandfather, who was Charles Enoch Constance,
born in 1321, came with his father and some other members cf the
family, I think, to North America about the middle of the
nineteenth century. My grandfather Constance served in the 21st
Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War and participated
in Sherman's campaign.

Lage: Were there any stories about why they came?

Constance: Don't know at all. I have no idea. His wife, Margaret Rogers,
was born in Cardiff, Wales.

I'm supposed to have some genealogical material on my
mother's family, but I couldn't lay my hands on it. At all
events, mv mother's family — the Cliffords — came to Massachusetts
quite early. They missed the Mayflower apparently by not more
than twenty years or so, and several were participants in the
Revolutionary War (Bunker Hill, etc.). And that's the only part
of the family that was in this country for a long time. Her
mother presumably was born on a ship coming to the United
States, while it was anchored off Prince Edward Island, Canada.
So, as I said, three of my four grandparents were immigrants. I
never saw any of them.

Lage: Was your mother's family English in origin, also?

Constance: Yes. There are Cliffords all throughout history. They're

mentioned in Shakespeare; I think they're all villains. I think
there was an Earl of Clifford; he was a thorough S.O.D. of some
kind.

Lage: But you don't know whether to trace yourself to that line?

Constance: No. It's a relatively frequent name, but it's English,
obviously.

So much for my grandparents. All of them were dead before
I was born, excepting my father's mother. I think I can
remember his receiving a telephone call telling of her death
when I was four. It made quite an impression on me because I
remember his answering the phone and then turning to my mother
and saying, "Mother died." For some reason, that seemed to
carry a great deal of weight with me, but I never knew any of
them.

Lage: Did you know why your parents came to Eugene?

Constance: Not reallv. My information en the suoject is garbled. My
mother and father were both born in Wisconsin. My father
attended Lawrence College and then the University of Wisconsin

Constance: Law School. He practiced law and was scrae kind of municipal
judge. For reasons I don't know — whether physical health,
mental health, cr what — he was not happy with it. He was urgec.
apparently, by some of his family, of whom there are a lot, to
c ora e W e s t.

So my parents did come, as I said, in 1908. My
brother suggested recently that he thought ray mother's
unexpected pregnancy — she was forty — might have had something to
do with it. I never thought of myself as being a causative
factor. I had always heard that they had come because of his
health, because that was the period when, if someone had poor
lungs, he immediately moved to Colorado, or Arizona, or
wherever, if he could do it.

At all events, I mentioned this to my mother sometime
before her death — she died at the age of ninety-four in 1963 — and
she said no, she wasn't aware that there was anything wrong with
his health. If it was anything, it was her health.

Lage : So maybe it did have to do with you.

Constance: Maybe so. I hadn't thought that I was the occasion for it. At
any rate, why they chose Eugene, I have no idea. Perhaps
because it was the seat of a university.

Lage: They cidr. ' t have relatives there?

Constance: I had an uncle living at Independence and an aunt living at
Salem, which are not too far away, but I simply do not know.
All I know is that they bought a ten-acre -plot of land
southwest of Eugene and tried to make a living farming at it.

Lage: Your father didn't go back to law?

Constance: So far as my brother or I am aware, my father never practiced
law in the West. He was once, so to speak, a candidate for
public office. A group asked him to run on the Prohibition
ticket for something, and he said he would do it if he didn't
have to campaign. So he didn't campaign, and he didn't w in.
That's about all we know about that.

He had been born on a farm, but at that particular time and
place trying to make a living on a ten-acre farm — unless you
were raising diamonds — would have been a disaster. So the move
was an economic disaster for the family. We had, I suppose,
what would be called a fairly hard-scrabble youth, although we
didn't know it. At least I wasn't aware of it. We had a very
strong sense of family stability.

Constance: Everything seemed normal, and certainly our parents did

everything they thought would be good for us. My mother was
always concerned that, living in the country, we would be
penalized by absence from cultural things of one sort or
another, and she was very anxious to try to counteract any lack
in any way she could.

Mother was quite a dominant character. In some ways, she
was a perfect liew Englander although she'd never been in New
England. I've sometimes said I never fully understood her until
I spent a year at Harvard, and then a lot of it became very
clear. She went to a seminary, which I guess was a sort of
equivalent of high school at that particular point. And she
worked as, I suppose, a secretary, or perhaps what we'd call an
administrative assistant, for, I believe, the publisher of a
farm magazine. We used to have copies of them around the house
when I was a child. Whether it was a publishing house that
published only farm magazines, whether they published only one
magazine, I don't know. The name that sticks in my mind is the
American Thresherman. Now, whether that is one of several
publications, I don't know. I think it was published in
Madison, or some other town in Wisconsin.

Lage: You say she went to a seminary. Is that where she was educated?

Constance: That's correct. It was roughly something beyond the high school
level. I don't know quite what. In those days, they had
academies and seminaries; it wasn't religious. But, at any
rate, she worked before she was married; that is the point. I
don't think she worked after she was married.

A Rural Youth

Constance: I think my parents married in either 1898 or 1899. My brother
was born in 1903, and I was born six years later — a year after
they had arrived in Oregon. So my mother never worked after
they came West, and as far as I know, my father never practiced
law — gave it up completely. And, from then on, his health was a
problem a good share of the time. So, we grew up "in modest

Lage: Were you far from Eugene? Was it quite a rural setting?

Constance: Two miles. We were equidistant from a rural school and a school
in the western part of Eugene, and ray parents decided we should
go to school in town. So we walked two miles every day each
way, which was fine when the weather was nice, but not always.
Eugene has a fairly mild cr slightly damp climate.

Constance: My family gave up the farm — we sold it — and moved to town when I
was eleven, which would make it 1920. I went to two elementary
schools, a junior high school, and the public Eugene high
school. I didn't go to school until I was eight. I started in
the third grade.

Lage: Was that unusual?

Constance: Yes, I think probably. My mother taught me at home, presumably,
so I could read and so en, before I went. She thought it was
too much of a hike for a youngster of six or seven years old.
And so I think tnat I went to the third grade, the fourth grade,
the fifth grace, and half of the sixth grade — I skipped half of
that and I skipped half of the seventh grade — and the eighth
grade and four years of high school.

Lage: Was that unusual to skip grades then?

Constance: I'm not sure. Obviously, I have no real basis for comparison.
All I know is what happened to me.

Lage: Did you show an interest in school? Did you excel in school?

Constance: More or less. I always thought all my teachers were wonderful.
I think they all thought I was a pain in the neck. Well, I
remember particularly — I think it was my fourth grade teacher — I
haa a great crush on her, and she was teaching us geography.
As far as she was concerned, Europe remained exactly as it was
after the Congress of Vienna, and this was after World War I. I
had been collecting postage stamps. She had never heard of
Czechoslovakia and what I thought was "Jugoslavia" and so on and
so on. I knew about the new countries, and I suppose I kept
raising ray hand and saying, "But teacher, the Austro- Hungarian
Empire isn't there anymore," and I'm sure she wished I would get
lost.

Lage: That's probably why you got skipped ahead.

Constance: That was one way to get tie cut of class. But, I think that I
enjoyed elementary school, and I don't think there were any
great problems that I can remember. I was, you know, a bit
naive and something of a country bumpkin. I was not athletic,
which was quite a handicap, in those days at least. Also, I had
to wear glasses, and any boy who did was fair game for the local
bullies. But I don't remember any particular difficulties.

I remember it snowed a time or two and made us several
hours late for school, things like that. We had to cross a
small stream, which was locally known as the Amazon Slough,

Constance: presumably because every winter it flooded, and we'd get two
feet of water over the bridge that we normally walked over.
That made for some irregularities in cur comings and goings.
But there were no .particular problems that I can think of.

We were somewhat isolated in the country, it's true.
Neighbors in that part of the world were usually a mile or so
away. There were relatively few who had children my brother's
age or ny age. We were sufficiently far apart in age that we
normally did not have the same friends. We were not terribly
close. Cur interests were different, our friends were
different.

Lage: So you relied on your own resources a great deal.

Constance: A good deal of the time. And that was probably one of the

reasons I got interested in natural history, because we were on

the edge of essentially wild country. My mother felt that, in

the absence of urban cultural vehicles of one sort or another,

it only made sense to interest my brother and myself in

natural history. With him it became a hobby filling all

his life, cherished all his life. And with me, it turned into a

profession.

Lage: What has he done as a hobby with it?

Constance: Well, he likes to wander around national parks, travel here and
there. He has a passing knowledge of natural history. It
didn't really become part of his education, per se. It might
have, I suppose, if things had happened to 'work out that way,
but they didn't in his case.

Lage: We didn't get his name.

Constance: His name is Clifford. Clifford Llewellyn Constance. He and I
both attended the University of Oregon. He graduated in
physics, went to Chicago, and worked for Western Electric
Company for some years. Much of the time he was supporting my
parents, in part, because they were getting in bad shape. And
then he wasn't very happy with that work; he found it was
pretty much prescribed work. He came back to Eugene and took a
master's degree in psychology. Then. I suppose, probably, the
Depression may have finished off the funding — I'm not quite
sure. And he took a job in the registrar's office and spent
most of his career as registrar of the University of Oregon,
from which he retired — when he retired — and he's still living in
Eugene. So that was the sibling situation.

Interest in Natural History

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

Let's go back and talk a little more about how you got
interested in natural history, and how your mother promoted it,
and what form it took.

Well, really about all it took was to open the door and let me
through it. There were woods around, and I went through all
the stages of interest that people involved in natural history
get into on their own. I used to think it would be a wonderful
thing to stuff animals, for instance. It seems to me I worked
on a couple of mice and discovered that my stuffing, my
taxidermy, didn't do much for either the mice or me. And so I
moved from that to butterflies, and I was very much intrigued by
butterflies and moths for a long time. I wanted to get
caterpillars and raise them, and have them flying around the
house. And then gradually I worked up to an interest in plants,
rocks, you name it.

Did you read about these things and classify them?

To some degree, yes, but it never became systematic. Well, with
butterflies and moths, I got to the stage where I was just
beginning to get into recognizing scientific names. I knew that
swallowtail butterflies were Papilio. If they still are, I
don't know. And I had some sense that caterpillars produced
adult insects, and what they lived on and things like that. I
knew that you could find milkweed larvae and grow monarch
butterflies from them. But it wasn't terribly systematic.

Then, I got involved in summers in some of the YMCA camps
after we moved to Eugene. In those camps we were often
encouraged to get involved in natural things; that probably had
a good deal to do with stimulating the interest. And some of
the YMCA secretaries or other personnel who were involved in
these camps gave me a good deal of encouragement about it.
Instead of being pointed out as the local crackpot, I was given
a certain amount of praise and recognition because I knew more
about these things than the others did.

Did the other kids value this also, do you remember?

I suppose one would say that, at best, it amounted to a certain
bemused tolerance. It certainly didn't carry the honor that
being a really good athlete would have, but it was not scorn.

I interrupted you when you started to tell about your botanical
interests.

Constance: The interest in plants is the one that survived. I don't know-
quite why. I suppose these natural history interests carried
along pretty much through high school. To some extent, they
dropped off in college. I was interested enough in college that
I took a biology major, but I never wanted to go into medicine,
and of course biology, to all intents and purposes there, was
headed for medicine. That's where all my classmates went.

Lage: Did they have a botany department?

Constance: Yes, botany and bacteriology. I took some bacteriology, which I
didn't particularly care for, but it was part of it. Well, one
of the things that happened, perhaps, is that I got acquainted —
I suppose, through my parents — with some of the people at the
university. And I found it a fascinating place to go; people
sent in things that they wanted to know about. The University
of Oregon had a small collection of scientific plant materials.
I believe they also had some animal materials, and so on, as
well. I don't remember so much about that.

Oregon has an organization called the Mazamas, which is an
alpine club, of sorts. "Mazama" is supposedly the Indian name
for the mountain that was Crater Lake. The secretary of the
Mazamas was a man named Martin Gorman, who had an office in
Portland and was an amateur botanist. He collected plants in
some of the mountain areas, primarily, and also in Alaska. At
his death, this collection went to the University of Oregon.
They really didn't have anybody capable of handling it, I
suppose, so they induced Louis F. Henderson to come and care for
it. He had been a professor at the University of Idaho, had had
his plant collection burn up, and had then gone into apple
raising in Hood River. He had more botanical knowledge of the
classif icatory kind than anybody else, I suppose, in the state
at that point. They got him to come down to Eugene, and I got
acquainted with him.

Lage: Was this when you were still in high school or college?

Constance: This was when I was in high school. I used to spend every

Saturday morning when I could, at least, up at the university
hobnobbing with him. They had a few graduate students, at least
two of whom went on into professional botanical life.

I had had quite a bit of experience and very little
knowledge, but I was fascinated by anything that came along that
I hadn't seen before. And without really knowing what I was
doing, I was very lucky at figuring out what some of them were.
So they used to save things that came in, if they couldn't
identify them readily, to see if this young squirt could, by any
chance, identify it. Sometimes I did. Of course, that was very
exciting.

Lage :

Constance :

Lage:

Now what does it take? Why did you have that facility?
because you knew so many different kinds of plants?

Was it

I suppose so, because I suppose I was a good observer and I was
interested in looking at what seemed to me to be relationships
or differences.

I mean, you must have had an ability to see things that some of
the others couldn't.

Constance: I suppose you have to. Well, a great deal of classification of
anything is, of course, observation, and doing your own
computing, shall we say. I read some, and I at least looked at
the pictures of the National Geographic and books on
butterflies, and this sort of thing. But I didn't get into it
with a really scientific basis for some time.

I got some help in the university. The chairman of the
department was a man named Albert Sweetser, who used to write
articles for the newspapers on spring plants, and things of that
sort. I remember he had a master's degree from Harvard, which
was quite an accolade.

I took biology in high school, and one of my teachers
there — her name was Ruth Sanborn — had a sister, Ethel Sanborn,
who was a botanist in the university at Eugene and later
transferred to Corvallis, to Oregon State College. She was
interested primarily in structural botany — in other words, how
plants are put together — and she came into contact with Ralph
Chancy, who was a professor of paleobotany here at Berkeley.
They worked together on a fossil deposit of plants, called the
Goshen floor. Goshen is a little town a few miles from Eugene.

I had her backing, and Sweetser's backing, and
Henderson's backing, and I had a pretty good academic record.
So when I came to trying to figure out what I was going to do
after I finished college, I was in a pretty good position.

Undergraduate at the University of Oregon

Constance: I don't know what there is really to say about my college

experience. It's relatively uneventful. I graduated from high
school in 1926. I went directly into the University of Oregon.
I flirted with the idea of going to Oregon State and taking
forestry, and actually went over there with a friend who had
been the president of the student body in high school during the

Constance: year I was treasurer. The people there were very much

interested in him and were not very much ' '-.terested in me. For
economic reasons, it made more sense to live at hone and go to
the University of -Oregon in Eugene, which I probably would have
dene anyway.

Lage: Was this something of a financial burden?

Constance: It was a financial burden on ray parents. My parents really
worked desperately hard to see that my brother and I got an
education. We always expected to go to college, university —

Lage: And that was always a goal for them —

Constance: Oh, yes.
Lage: And for you.

Constance: I've always felt that my father got me through college and then
almost collapsed.

Lage: Did he die soon after that?

Constance: No. He lived for nine years beyond that, but in very poor

health. I should say that, as I mentioned before, my mother was
a stalwart character. Certainly, physically she was the
stronger member of the team. My father, by 1920, really
couldn't handle farm work. They came to town. They sold the
place, which gave them, I suppose, a little security for a
while. He took up manual labor as what we call now a custodian
or a janitor, first in the public schools, and then at the
university. He was verv conscientious.

Constance: He was obviously better educated than many of the people he

worked with. As a result, he made friends with members of the
faculty, students, and so on. I suppose I wouldn't have gotten
access to the university in the first place if he hadn't known
people there.

Lage: Why is that?

Constance: Well, it would take considerable initiative, in those days at
least, I think, for a high school youngster to go barging into
the university. Nowadays, I suppose kids would think nothing of
it. They didn't have Lawrence Halls of Science in those days.

Lage: Oh, you mean go up there ^s a high school student. I thought

you meant enrolled as a college student.

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

No, no. I mean as a high school kid. Because, you know, I
already knew the biological end of the university before I ever
entered it, because I had been hanging arour.d it for two or
three years.

In 1928, Mr. Henderson unexpectedly got a small sum of
money from somebody. And, he was not well because he had over
worked himself and developed a hernia, as a matter of fact. He
sent one of the faculty members, your.g faculty members, and me
(then an undergraduate Junior) over to eastern Oregon, to
collect plants for him. That was my first professional
experience as a botanist. I collected plants in Klaraath County
and Lake County in eastern Oregon.

I did it the same way he did. There was a stage which was
usually an old seven- passenger automobile, which would ge a
couple times a week to some of these relatively widely dispersed
towns. You'd take this stage, say ten miles out of town, get
out, collect plants, and spend the day, should you be so lucky,
getting to the next place.

And how did you choose what spot te step in and pick your
plants?

I suppose simply on the basis of where it looked as if you
could make a pretty good haul. In other words, you might stop
in a marsh one day, see an interesting mountain over there,
and the next day, you would aim for it. As a result, you would
cover quite a bit of territory. Of course, you had to cart all
your stuff with you. Sometimes it was quite awhile between
meals, drinks, and whatever. But, at any rate, it was very
interesting because if everything worked right, you could, you
know, make a lot of good connections; if it didn't, you might be
there for three days waiting for the next stage.

I remember meeting one fairly salty character, who I
believe raised race horses at one time, and he insisted on
taking me home with him. I spent three days there, at a place
called Summer Lake, which was quite interesting. I remember
that's where I saw my first rattlesnake. We were out walking
around at dusk, and the rattlesnake came buzzing down the road
at us, I think a little bemused by the heat. So, he put his
cane on the rattlesnake's neck, and I put a rock on the rattle
snake's head. We obviously cut off the rattlers for a souvenir.
At any rate, I spent a couple of months in that area, which was
a really good experience.

Were you carrying a backpack or a suitcase, or what?

Constance : Well, I had a press, which I probably carried in a backpack. I
don't remember. I ^ay ever, have a picture of myself doing it.
But that would probably have been the way of doing it, because
with a frame and an assortment of papers and some sort cf
absorbent material, you could collect plants and dry them by
sticking these things out to dry. It was hot most of the time,
so they'd dry all right. That was the way of carrying stuff
around. It was an interesting experience.

Lage: You were a student at Eugene then, at college?

Constance: That's right. It was during the summer of my junior year. I'm
trying to think about particularly noteworthy college
experiences. The first two years I took a very heavy course
load, what was then eighteen units per period. We had a quarter
svstem, and that didn't leave you much time to spend. And then
the last two years I took a lighter load and worked in the
reference library. That was fur.; I enjoyed that. I don't
remember how they had the library divided, but this was where
the students came to get books for what were then the big
reading courses.

Lage: Were there any impressions made that affected your view of

education later?

Constance: I don't think particularly so. I dor.'t remember having any
particular thoughts on the subject. I took a rather erratic
program, myself. I suppose my mother may have had something to
do with it, I don't know how much. I never liked mathematics.
I had taken mathematics from the football coach's wife in high
school, and that dried up any interest I ever had in it. She
was a very glamorous gal, but she wasn't much of a mathematics
teacher, I think. Ar.d my mind is not very mathematically
oriented. I found mathematics repelling. I liked language, I
liked history. I didn't take as much English as I might have
liked to. I didn't take physics, primarily, I suppose, because
it had so much mathematics. I'm not quite sure if they gave
physics in high school when I was there. I didn't take it in
high school. I took biology by choice in high school, and in
college, I did take chemistry. But, it isn't the kind of a
curriculum that I would later have recommended for somebody
going into biology. It was just sort of hit or miss.

My problem, if it was a problem, was that I always got
interested in anything I got involved in. I took a course in
Scandinavian literature because everybody said it was the
easiest course on campus, which it wasn't. But I read
everything they recommended, so I learned quite a bit about
Scandinavian literature. I haven't had much chance to go back

Constance: to use it, but I found it fascinating. So I managed to pick up
various things, for no particular reason, just because they were
intriguing.

One year-course I remember was an obvious hodgepodge, which
consisted of one quarter of Chinese history, one quarter of
Japanese history, and one quarter of Latin-American history,
which was taught by Verne Blue, who had been a doctoral student
of Herbert Bolton at Berkeley. Bolton, of course, was the man
who essentially invented Latin-American history in this country.
So that was an early antecedent, I suppose, of an interest in
Latin America, which bubbled up later.

II GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 1930-1934
Applying for a Teaching Assistantship

Constance: I don't remember very much about my undergraduate experience
that was notable, but I know it was recommended by several
people that, perhaps, I ought to do graduate work. I wasn't
necessarily sold on the idea of doing graduate work. I think if
I could have gotten a job, I probably would have taken it. Of
course, that was about 1929 and things were not all that plush.

Lage: Did you have thoughts of what kind of field you would go into if

you didn't go on to graduate school?

Constance: Well, I suppose I might have gone into most anything that came
along. I applied, at the urging, I guess, of Miss Sanborn,
probably by way of Chaney, and also by way of one of the
zoologists. He was A. R, Moore, a very good research zoologist.
He had studied at Naples — an internationally famous marine
station there — and how he got to the University of Oregon, I'll
never know. Whoever thought he could teach elementary biology
should have had his head examined. He was absolutely impossible
as an undergraduate teacher. I got to know his teaching
assistant, one way or another — I really don't know how. Dr.
Moore would give beautifully-rounded lectures to a freshman
class on the development of the urino-genital system in verte
brates, let's say, or parasitism in marine coelenterates, or
something, but with no background, no nothing. I did ask the
T.A., "Where in the world can you get information on this sort
of thing?" And he gave me help and recommended some of the
standard zoological texts. I read them all.

I think that we must have had a class of one hundred and
fifty, or something like that. In those days, they used to post
grades at the midterms. My recollection is that about thirty
people got passing grades, and the other one hundred and twenty
all got Fs. I was one of those who received a passing grade, so
I became quite something in the eyes of this gentleman, anc he

Constance:

Lage:
Constance :

strongly recommended that I should come to Berkeley. He told me
there was very interesting work going on there. I think what he
was referring to, probably, was cytogenetic investigations in
tobacco which were being carried on by Professors Goodspeed and
Clausen at that time.

I had no particular interest in that, but at any rate, I
did apply to Berkeley — I think, maybe, along toward the end of
the spring quarter, because I didn't have any visible means of
support or anything else at that point — and I got a very nasty
letter back saying, "We fill our teaching positions before
Christmas. "

So that was that, and the summer went along. And along in
July I got a wire from Berkeley saying that someone had dropped
out, and that if I would care to apply, they would be happy to
look at my recommendation. Well, by that time, everybody I knew
was off the campus, so I had to go around and talk to my history
professor and my German professor, and so on —

You didr.'t have your botanical and biology professors?

I didn't have more than one or two of them, at any rate. And I
was quite pleased when the history professor said, "Are you
applying for an assistantship in history?" I said, "No," it was
in botany. But, at any rate, they all wrote for me,
apparently. The Berkeley Botany Department was probably lucky
to get anything that could wiggle at that particular time in the
year. Things were pretty rough in 1930, as you could guess.

At any rate, I came.

Were your parents pleased with that move?
I'm sure they must have been. I don't remember, really.

Adjusting to the Grind on Fifty Cents a Day

Lage: Did the teaching assistantship pay for the education?

Constance: Oh sure, yes. Let's see, I'm trying to remember what we were

getting. I know we had responsibility for twelve hours of lab a
week. And I know that I developed a routine. I didn't eat any
breakfast. I think I was eating on fifty cents a day. In those
days, you could get either, if I remember correctly, three what
we now call Danish rolls or a milkshake for fifteen cents, and

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance

Lage:
Constance :

that would leave you up to thirty-five cents for dinner. You
could get fried beans or chili or something of that sort, and
that was sort of standard.

Now you get about one candy bar for fifty cents.

Oh, I know. I lived around in all the boarding houses and
rooming houses south of the campus and north of the campus, and
wherever. We students managed to get along on very little. We
had to. But at any rate, I did nicely on that.

Ar.d the tuition — you must have had an out-of-state charge.

No, we didn't. We had an exemption as teaching assistants,
sure we didn't pay any. We couldn't possibly have; we didn't
make that much. I can't remember how much we got. I should,

but I don'

It wasn't all that much, but —

But it was enough.

It was enough. It could be done.

When I worked in the library during my junior year at
Oregon where the students came to get their books, I met my
wife. That was one of the reasons I was perhaps less
enthusiastic about graduate work than I might otherwise have
been. So mostly I worked hard as a student — I'd say, not
particularly inspired for the first couple of years. Then, the
third year, I began to get really interested.

So the first couple of years here at Cal-w

— were pretty much of a grind, pretty much of a grind. I didn't
like the professor who was in charge of the elementary course,
where most of the teaching assistantship was done, and he didn't
1 ike me.

Shall we mention names here?

No, I don't think so. He tried to get me discontinued as a
teaching assistant, and he might have been successful, but he
also took a dislike to the brightest, most senior graduate
student in the department at the same time and tried to get rid
of both of us, and that was too much. So we survived.

The chairman of the department called me in, along toward
the end of my second year, and suggested maybe I'd like to go to
the University of Hawaii, which I think was a general suggestion
it might be nice if I were somewhere else.

Lage: What was the dissatisfaction?

Constance: I was insubordinate, if I remember correctly. There was

a failure of con muni cation, I think. He was very overbearing,
and I was not about to be overborne.

Teaching Assistant to Professor Jepson

Constance

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

At any rate. Professor Jepson, at about that point, called me in
and asked me if I would be his teaching assistant for the next
year. And so I did that for a couple of years, and that got me
clearly started on a problem, and you know, things began to roll

along.

The first two years I was a graduate student, "30 and '31, I
spent the summer working as a ranger naturalist at Crater Lake
Park, which was kind of fun. Of course, you had to lead nature
walks, tell people about the birds, the bees, the flowers, give
lectures, and so on. I was pretty shy, as a matter of fact, and
that pretty much knocked it out ef me. You really had to be
able to stand up in front of a group and talk.

Did you find you rose to that occasion all right?

Yes, I usually rise to occasions. When I have to do something,
I usually do it. So, that was — Crater Lake — was a wonderful
place to be, as well. And it came along just, I think, at the
right time. I think that I developed fairly fast as a graduate
student during that period. I gained self-confidence and moved
on fairly well.

Was Jepson helpful in this process of moving along?

Not really. By the time I knew him, he was not very active,
shall we say. He was quite aloof. He didn't really know what I
was doing. And I was scared to death of him, as was everybody
else; there was nothing novel about that. He was a very aloof
character. I can't say just how, but I think I really got quite
a bit from him, as a matter of fact. He was a genius in his own
way, I think. He considered the flora of California to be his
oyster, and he more or less resented anybody else (other than
his students) who dabbled in it. And he had very high stan
dards, which, I suppose, we absorbed by osmosis, more than
anything else.

Not by direct teaching —

Constance: No, I don't think so. Well, we had very little contact with

him. He had a weekly seminar, which usually had anywhere from
three to eight graduate students in it. And they had the same
topics every year. Cf course, students get onto that very
quickly, so you'd get last year's list, and you added a few
references to it and give the same thing over again in your own
version. But still you learned something. There was a little
discussion, not much. I don't think anybody really felt at ease
in the seminar because you never knew quite what was going to
happen.

Lage: He was a little unpredictable; is that what you're saying?

Constance: Quite. One of the students, who was a colleague of mine, was
quite emotional. He got terribly excited about something, and
he said "damn," wnereupcn he was ousted from the seminar because,
(imitating professor's voice) "No one in my (Professor Jepson's)
history has ever had the affrontery to use foul language in my
presence," and so on. So you see, there was a little of a —

Lage: You were on edge.

Constance: A little bit of edginess. Or. the other hand, graduate students
learn a lot from each other. We did.

William A. Setchell and Willis L. Jepson: A Study in Contrasts

Lage: I don't see, in your discussion here, any evidence of great

inspiration from a teacher in the botany department. Was there
anyone in particular who did inspire?

Constance: The botany department, at that time, consisted primarily of two
stars, who were Setchell and Jepson. William Albert Setcheil
took his master's degree from Yale and his doctorate from
Harvard, and he came here as assistant professor and chairman ir
1894. He remained chairman until 1934.

Lage: He must have put his stamp on the place.

Constance: Oh, he did. And the only other person here, really, at that

time was Jepscn, who was a native brought up in Vacaville, near
Fairfield or Vallejo. He was somewhere in the graduate student-
assistant stage. I think he had the title of assistant, or
Setchell made him assistant, I'm not sure. They were pretty
much the same age and completely different as personalities.
Jepson was very shy, diffident, some would say paranoid.

Constance: Setchell was cosmopolitan, outgoing, hearty. Setchell was one
of the founders of the Faculty Club. He was an enthusiastic
participant in the Bohemian Club. He knew people all over the
world, and he was very active and very broad intellectually.

In fact, I had a visit from Professor Axelrod, now down at
the Davis campus — both of us retired, now, but he's a
paleobotanist — and he was talking about him this morning. He
said that he had found Setchell more stimulating than anyone
else he had ever experienced in his academic life.

I took a couple of courses from him, and I enjoyed that. I
suppose the age disparity, or whatever, was sufficiently great
that I didn't really feel too much at ease with either Setchell
or Jepson. But I had great admiration for both of them. I
don't think I ever took a lecture course from Jepson. I don't
know if he ever gave one while I was here. So the only contact
I really had, until I was working on my thesis problem was that
he used to pop into my office occasionally.

Lage : He directed your thesis, more or less?

Constance: I did it under his direction, shall we say. Actually, I got a
great deal of help from the man who was then his assistant,
Herbert Mason, who later became a full faculty member.

Lage: He was a young person at that time, wasn't he?

Constance: Well, let's see, he's eighty-nine now, so — he was some years

older than I — but he was young enough to be on an informal basis
with the students at that time, and that helped to bridge gaps.
But I would say there was a pretty major gap between the
students and faculty at that time.

Students like to say whether they were in various
professors' homes, or not. I don't think I was ever in more
than two. The year I took my degree, I was the only student in
the department who had reached that august pinnacle. There were
relatively few graduate students. Several of them were married
and were more or less in their own little worlds. I was
lonesome for the first two years. I was really very unhappy
because I didn't seem to be getting anywhere much. I didn't
particularly like any of my associates. Oh, no, that's not true
entirely. But I lived in boarding houses, and sometimes there
was someone there I enjoyed, and frequently there wasn't. I
worked pretty hard, and I would rather have been someplace else,
I think, but there wasn't any other place to be. But that, too,
passed, like everything else. Eventually I got thoroughly wound
up in it, and it was fine.

Lage: You spent four years?

Constance: I spent four years, that's right.

Dissertation on Eriophyllum

Lage: And what was ycur dissertation on?

Constance: I worked on a group of sunflower relatives, a genus called

Eriop'nyllu". One of the problems that graduate students have is
finding a problem on which to work. This is solved sometimes by
having somebody assign them something. In recent years, in many
areas — to ~y view, at least — a professor slices a little piece
off some problem on which he's been working for a long time and
which is really his, and then the graduate student does that
piece. With or without credit, that is sort of moved over into
the professor's stock of knowledge and what the student does
next is not quite clear — if he doesn't elaborate the same piece.

You tend to get this kind of specialized "schools" in
academic work. I think it may be particularly true of the
physical sciences, but it's true also of other areas. You
frequently have a particular laboratory, where the professor
works on a given group of plants, and he has ten students
working on various aspects of this same group. I've never liked
this. I've always thought a student should have something that
was truly his own. In fact, I've always discouraged students
from working in the groups that I've worked on, although some
have insisted or. doing so. Some have come here to work with me
because they were interested in the particular group I was. But
still, I try to be sure that they have something really of their
own.

Well, at any rate, Jepson made a list of things that I
could work on. He didn't tell me I had to work on one of them,
but I probably had asked him. Perhaps he volunteered it, I'm
not sure. At all events, he came in with a list. I looked down
the list and recognized at least one name, and I think that's
probably why I chose it — as simple as that. The interesting
thing is that the first thing he suggested, I think, was that I
work on the carrot family or parsley family or Umbelliferae of
Oregon. I turned that down flat because it was a very difficult
group, and I didn't think I should ever find my way successfully
through that. That, of course, turns out to be the group I have
spent most of my life working on! The second topic on his list
was the flora of Mt. Tamalpais. He had a propensity to divide
up the state and assign a mountain to each of his graduate
students.

Constance: In these days, you'd have te take the ferry te get to Marin

County, to begin with. I tried te figure out the timing, the
financing, and so on, and decided I couldn't possibly achieve it
within any reasonable time — and besides. I'd be broke if I did.
So I wasn't very enthusiastic about that.

I did do a master's thesis on Redwood Peak, which is one of
the higher members of the Oakland Hills, and that was a good
project for me because I learned every plant en it in every
stage ef its development. That kind of knowledge is very
useful.

I finally chose Eriephyllum te work on, and I spent the
summer of my third year doing field work. I bought an old
Chevrolet, and with the help ef the owner, who lived in one ef
the bearding houses I did, ground the valves. I drove it all
over that summer.

Constance: The field work involved nest of northern California, with, I

think a little digression into Nevada and then into Oregon and
Washington. I really needed te de mere in southern California,
but somehow, I didn't manage to work that in. So I basically
did without it, but it would have been useful.

Lage: New, what would be the basic purpose ef — ?

Constance: You select a particular group ef plants, and then you go out and
study them in the field. Then you study the accumulated
preserved material — net only what you have in the institution
where you're working, but you usually borrow from all ef the
other major institutions that have materials ef it.

Lage: And they're willing to send this te you?

Constance: That's right. It's an elaborate system ef inter- institutional
leans, which we all operate on.

And then you try te evaluate the group you're concerned
with — try te figure out hew many kinds ef representatives it
has. what their differences are, what their similarities are,
what their distribution is, anything else you can learn about
them. Ideally, you try te grow them. You may de some genetic
work en them. You may try crossing them, you may net. You may
study them in greater detail, anatomically. Nowadays, you very
possibly may make comparisons with not only microscopic, but
also electron-microscopic things like pollen, and things ef that
sort, simply to learn as much as you can about them.

Lage: Do you have te choose something that hasn't been studied in this

way?

Constance: Well, probably everything has been at least partially studied,
but the problem is to get it all together. Not only that, but
these things have to be updated from time to time because new
information comes in all the time.

For instance, someone just brought in two specimens for me
to look at: one each in two families that I work with. It's
perfectly possible that one of these might be something that,
you know, adds to or subtracts from previous knowledge. Now,
for example. I was looking at something in the herbarium the
other day, and the material was from Ecuador, I think. There
were two plants represented in this one collection. And it was
perfectly clear that the two plants, which were growing in the
same place and which the collector, at least, thought were the
same thing, represented what had been regarded as two distinct
species. This made me realize that, as a matter of fact, the
thing that supposedly was the second species was merely an
extreme form of the first one. So down gees one species.
That's one way change may go.

On the other hand, very often something comes in. and you
look at it, and you realize, well, this is net anything that
I've seen before in this group. Therefore, it must be something
new and different which has te be properly characterized, named,
recorded, and so en. And that's the way the thing moves.
You're adding all the time, you're reevaluating all the time,
and I hope that we'll be doing this as long as there are natural
things around.

Birds were pretty much classified a long time ago,
according to the erni thole gists. Mammals certainly have been
reasonably well taken care of, I would guess. I think most
entomologists would say that they are only at the beginning,
that there are tens of thousands of undescribed species.

Many botanists maintain that in the tropical forests of the
world, there are a great many things which have never been
entered into the annals of science, and the chances are a great
many of them will be lost before their discovery. So. that goes
on all the time. That is the kind of thing that I am interested
in.

For instance, that picture en my desk was taken in the
mountains of Idaho. A colleague ©f mine from the University of
Wyoming, who is studying here at the moment, and I gave it a
new name and designation. It had been confused with something

Constance: that was known only from Nevada. We got mere material and more
information about it, and we knew that indeed it wasn't the same
thing. What we're basically involved in is trying to describe
and classify and. insofar as possible, explain everything around
us. It's part of man's general assault on the the environment.

Lage: [Laughs] Gentle assault, though.

Constance: General. Not necessarily gentle, just general.

Lage: Well, your portion of it is a gentle one.

Constance: Yes, relatively speaking, that's correct.

Lage: Did you come up with seme new discoveries and explanations in

this graduate thesis?

Constance: Well, I don't think anything particularly earth-shattering. I

think I got a respectable thesis out of it. I learned hew to do
this sort of thing, hew to express myself, and so on. The
thesis yielded several of my initial publications. I even did a
little illustrating, which I've never tried to de since. I
don't have any artistic talent that anybody's aware of. Then I
never worked again in the area of that particular group (Com-
positae), s© it didn't really determine my direction. A thesis
is basically an exercise which may or may not contribute a great
deal to the world's knowledge en the subject, but it contributes
a good deal te your own ability to de comparable things. I
suppose.

III WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE, PULLMAN. 1934-1937

A "Half- Time" Position

Lage : By this time, were you thinking you'd ge en te university

teaching?

Constance: I didn't have any doubt about it, really, I suppose. I'm pretty
pragmatic. I work at what's in front of my nose and try to do a
good job of that. Other things tend te fall into place, I
think. I don't remember making any particular decisions, that
"Sure, this is it," and so on. I was already into it, mere or
less by accident. And it was like putting something in a tube:
you have te ge out the other end unless you're going to back up,
and nobody wants to back up.

Lage: Were there ether options besides university teaching for the

Ph.D. in botany?

Constance: Very few, very few. There are somewhat mere new, but it's not
the sort of field, you knew, that has IBM and Xerox waiting for
you te emerge when you earn your degree. Actually, the position
I took when I left Berkeley te go to Washington State — I think I
may have told you the ether day — I turned it down in January and
took it in June. But, that was the only job that anybody had
even heard of that year!

Lage: New, you turned it down in January of the year '34, was it?

Constance: '34, that's right.
Lage: Because —

Constance: Because I was close to finishing my doctorate, and I didn't
think I wanted to take a job at that time.

Lage: They wanted you right away.

Ranger-Naturalist at Crater
Lake National Park, ca. 1932

Ph.D. in hand, 1934.

THE THIRTIES

Wedding Day, July 12, 1936,
Portland, Oregon

**»*•".

Rocky Mountain Park field
trip, 1937.

Constance: Yes, they must have wanted to get somebody to come for the

spring quarter. I decided that it didn't make sense to spend
three and a half years working en a doctorate, and then drop it.
I think I probably realized that I wouldn't get a lot of time to
work on it. By and large, this doesn't happen so much nowadays,
but it used to be that people would take a position during their
graduate training and then try desperately to finish the darn
thing, while learning how to teach and so en, I don't think
that's a very reasonable way of going at it. I like to finish
something and then go to something else, if at all possible.

Lage: But the job was there for you in June?

Constance: They couldn't get anybody else. The depression was still

lingering on. This particular position had been a full-time
position and had been reduced to a half-time position. All the
faculty were given a 10 percent salary cut. It was very
democratic — they did it right across the beard. The instructors
were cut 10 percent, as well as the full professors, and so on.
So. as you might imagine, there wasn't a great deal left. It
wasn't a very attractive position, but I really didn't have
another choice, and I would rather have taken that than nothing.
So I took that. I'm trying to remember — I think it paid $875.00
for the year. You can see why a lot of people didn't want it.
But it was a wonderful experience.

Lage: Now. you say it was half time. Does that mean you were paid for

half time and worked full time?

Constance: Yes. I was paid for half time, and I worked about two-and-a-
half time. I wasn't married, and I worked twelve hours a day.
seven days a week, regularly.

Lage: Primarily teaching, or trying to keep up with your research?

Constance: I did a little research, but net much. I taught three courses
and was in charge of the herbarium. The herbarium had been
neglected for eight years, and the teaching was in pretty bad
shape, toe. I think I taught a total of five courses during the
year. I taught two courses in taxonomy. I taught one in
ecology, which I had never taken, and I taught one elementary
course. I guess it just was four courses. I have forgotten the
details of it new.

Lage: It was a let of preparation.

Constance: It was quite a bit. I was busy, no doubt about that, but I
enj eyed it.

Lage:

This was Washington State College?

Constance: Yes, it was then. Washington State College at Pullman, which was
(and to some extent, still is) basically an agricultural
college. It is now Washington State University.

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

Were you teaching agricultural students, then, primarily?

Primarily students in agriculture and range management. Botany
was net in agriculture, but it was on the edges of it. That's
where most of the students came from. They used to say that the
University of Washington had the School of Forestry, which
taught them how to cut down trees and that Washington State,
Pullman, taught range management, which was how to grow them.
So there was quite an emphasis on ecology, systematics, and
taxonomy.

Where did you get your guidance on how to teach, how to prepare
a course? Or was there any?

Constance: Of course, as a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant for
four years. When I worked in the Park Service, I lectured. I
suppose I learned by imitation, primarily. I always made an
outline of what I was going to talk about. I had notes. I
don't think I ever fully wrote out a class lecture in my life.
I'm sure that my lecturing may not have exactly delighted some
of the people who would have liked to see less of plants, and so
on, but I still think that if you knew your subject, are
interested in it. and are conscientious, you can probably do a
pretty fair job of teaching. I'm net much impressed by most of
pedagogy, per se, which I suspect you'll find, is characteristic
of most university professors. It used to.be a sort of accepted
view that people who thought most about the presentation of
information were probably net necessarily the most efficient in
doing it.

I took one course in education as an undergraduate, and I
thought it was a disaster, frankly. I remember they gave us a
final exam which had a hundred true and false questions. Each
section was supposed to do half of them. I did half of them,
and nobody else seemed to have moved, so I did the other half.
They graded me on all of them for being smart, and I missed one.
I think I missed the date of the founding of Harvard by two
years or something, which I should have known better. (My
apologies to Harvard's 350th anniversaryl) But, you know, there
wasn't much substance to it.

Undoubtedly, there is much te be learned about presenting
materials, but I don't think that that is the crying lack in
education. Seme people are good at it, and seme people are net
good at it. I don't think I'm the world's greatest, but I don't

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

think I'm the world's worst, either. At least I've been fairly
successful with students. By and large, a let of it depends on
the subject matter, and that depends on the individual, I think.

Now. you were teaching ecology, and you really hadn't had any
background in ecology. How did you go about teaching it?

That's true. Well, there wasn't much substance to it, in those
days, so I read a couple of books. I kept three jumps ahead of
the class. After teaching one book for one year, I couldn't
stand it anymore; I thought it was hopeless. So I got another
one and used that for a couple of years, although it wasn't
terribly appropriate for the area. Most of it was fairly
simple-minded. A lot of these things have gotten much more
complicated and much mere at least pseudo-scientific. Ecology
new runs to graphs much more than it used to. Hew much
substance there is in it, I'm net quite sure.

Had you taken courses in the School of Forestry here as a
student?

No.

I understand they had an ecologist. Was he Arthur Sampson?

That's right, and I knew him rather well; I worked for him one
summer; and in fact, I apparently made a great impression on
him. Somebody had accumulated tremendous piles of eucalyptus
from all ever the state — just a mess — and they wanted somebody
to work ever this collection and put it in some sort ef order.
I threw out nine- tenths of it and organized the rest of it.
He thought I was great. Well, ecology is mostly common sense,
and field observation, and so on. I don't think I did a sensa
tional job ef teaching it. I don't think many other people did
either.

It was sort of in its infancy at that time, wasn' t it?

Pretty much, pretty much. It was dominated by Frederick E.
Clements, who, I'm sorry to say. was a windbag. It was
terribly inflated, for one thing. Clements was a graduate ef
the University ef Nebraska, who became probably the dominant
figure in American ecology. He was particularly noted, among
ether things, for his love ef picking up Greek terminology.
They used to say he called a spade a geeteme. [Laughter] He
had something more than that to go on, but he didn't believe
in genetics. So he was not the world's greatest scientist,
but was quite an influential figure for a long time in the
field.

Constance: This department had a very lew and, tc some extent, I think,
deserved opinion of ecology at the time. It wasn't for many
years that we really could develop ecology in the department
because there was so much dubiousness about it.

Summer Work Collecting in the Redwoods

Lage: Is there anything to add about your experience at Washington

State?

Constance: As I said, I accepted the position there starting in September
of 1934. I took my degree in spring of '34, and that summer I
immediately went up to Humboldt County because Jepson had been
doing a survey of the recently-purchased Bull Creek Flat redwood
grove, which was then bought by Save- the- Redwoods League as a
park. He was making a survey of what was growing there, and he
was not in good health, so he asked me if I would go. The
arrangement was that I was to live in a CCC camp (Civilian
Conservation Corps) and make as thorough a collection as I
could. I could continue doing it until I felt it was no longer
worthwhile going on. So I did that. It was a CCC camp in a
place called Dyerville en the Eel River. Later, it was washed
away in a flood, which was the end of Dyerville. It was quite
an interesting experience because they had a group of young
people — if I remember correctly, they were mostly from Akron,
Ohio — and my impression was that probably most of them had never
seen a tree before, and all of a sudden they were out in a
redwood forest.

It was run by army officers. When I first got there — I
don't remember how I got up there — I presented a letter from
Jepson to the commanding officer and asked if there was any
place I could stay because we were miles from anything else. He
read the letter and said, "Doctor, we don't have anything that
would be suitable for you." And I said, "Well, I don't know
what's in the letter, but I'm not fussy." So I wound up living
in a bunk house with the staff, who were mostly eld lumbermen
who managed activities for the youngsters who were out making
trails, chopping down trees, or whatever. They — the lumbermen —
were a very salty crew and were really quite a bit of fun.
Naturally, having a young Ph.D. thrust in on them was a little
unsettling, if anything. But I get along fine with them. I
think the reason I did was that there was almost nothing by way
of recreation. These chaps would come in — of course, they'd
worked hard — they'd come in, have dinner, and go to bed. The
only thing around, after you'd read the few books — which I did
very quickly — were pulp magazines. They would read one of these
things for about an hour before dinner, or just after dinner,

Constance: and then go to bed. I would read three or four of them an
evening, and that really impressed them. [Laughter] That
really impressed them. Here was a real egghead. But they were
very nice to me.

The first few days I was there, the weather was beautiful,
and I collected masses of stuff. And when you collect the
stuff, you have to dry the papers you put it in, or put in
driers that you dry out, put in, and remove, and so on. It then
rained for the next sixteen days. And if you didn't do some
thing about it, you would have one of the most elegant examples
of mold in the country. So I waited until they had gene out in
the fields. Then I strung wires around the main room of the
bunkhouse, ran the wires through these blotters, and fired up
the wood stove to about ninety degrees to warm up the place, and
dried the blotters all day. I then tried to get it cooled off
by night. There was some mumbling about how hot the place was
by the time they all get back, although it had cooled it off
considerably by then.

But. at any rate, that stove carried me through, and I
managed to get this stuff through without it all spoiling. It
was kind of fun. It actually reached a point where people would
bring stuff in for me — both the kids and the staff would bring
in things. They went out, you knew, farther in seme direction
than I got. They brought in things I had never seen. I worked
at it for about six weeks. I think.

Collecting in the Northwest

Constance: Then I went up to Oregon and met an old friend of mine who,

incidentally, has just retired as a professional geologist for
the Geological Survey of America. We went up in the Cascade
Mountains and hiked all ever the place. I collected plants
there, which I took to Pullman. I believe I had gotten a thou
sand or so sheets — which is the unit we use for specimens. To
give you an idea of what I mean, this is something brought in a
couple of days age for me to leek at. This is a sheet. [shews
Ann a folded half newspaper with dried plants in it]

Lage: So a thousand of these is quite a collection.

Constance: That's right. One of the ways that you develop herbaria is to

get things from other institutions. You send them specimens and
then they send you specimens. So you collect things in
duplicate, and then you send the duplicates, and you get other
things back extensively ever the course of time. It's a so-
called exchange program. So I went to Pullman with seme

Constance: thousand sheets, or something of the sort, I think, to use for
exchange se I could start in. As I said, the herbarium there
had been completely defunct for all intents and purposes for
eight years, so I tried to build up an exchange program. I'd go
out and collect material, both to add to the collections there
and to send out and get other things in return. And in the
course of this, I learned the local flora.

Lage: Did you have students helping you with it?

Constance: Yes. This was in the National Youth Administration period — the
NYA — and I usually had one or two student assistants. I was
very fortunate in that one of the people I had as a
teaching assistant, starting the first year — who really was my
first graduate student — became a very distinguished botanist.
This was Reed Rollins, who recently retired from Harvard as Asa
Gray Professor of Botany. I wrote a biographical statement about
that part of his career, which you can add to your collection of
ammunition. It may give some sense to what we we were up to.*

Lage: Se Washington State did have a graduate program?

Constance: Yes — sort of.

Lage: Well, this was sort of fortuitous that your first graduate

student was very interested and capable.

Constance: That's right. He was one of the best students I ever had. if
not the best. He was about my age, or a couple of years
younger. You see, I was fairly young at the time, and we had a
good deal in common, as we still do today.

I get my degree at twenty- five, se at that age your ties
are much more to the graduate students, let's say, and students
in general, than to the senior faculty.

I should mention that Reed Rollins spent two years with me
at Pullman. Then [Harry] Clements and I tried to arrange his
going elsewhere for his doctoral work, and he went to Harvard.
Not only did he do well, but he did so well that his success
also helped me.

Lage: He helped you, you say?

Constance: He helped me because he made such an excellent record, and since
he always credited me with being the one who launched him, that
was nice.

*See "The Years of Preparation, 1911-1948"; TAXON 31(3):
404. 1982. Constance Papers, The Bancroft Library.

401-

Constance: During the first two years, we did a let ef work in the field.
The Pullman area is net terribly interesting, betanically; it's
open "prairie" country. So we worked mere in northern Idaho,
which was then quite wild, heavily forested. I don't knew what
it is like now, I hate to think, but it probably is considerably
less wild and considerably less forested. At that time, it was
a very interesting, challenging country to be in. There were a
lot ef things that were poorly known, if at all.

A Network ef Correspondents

Constance :

Lage:

Constance;

Lage:

People in other parts of the country interested in particular
groups ef plants were very anxious to obtain material from
there, so we get into correspondence with botanists around the
country and beyond. And it was easy, in a sense, to make a name
for yourself in your profession through correspondence. And I
was a pretty good correspondent; I did a lot ef letter writing.
I still do. I correspond with most everybody in my field in
this country and abroad, I suppose.

It seems to be a field that has mere ef a network of
correspondents and sharing than seme do.

I'm sure that's true. I think that's probably quite a good
insight that, since we do depend upon exchange of materials and
exchange of information — Well, I just get a letter from my
first Chinese student, who asked me to send him a xerox of
something which was written by a Frenchman, who had connections
in Nepal — this sort ef thing gets pretty complicated.

Pullman being somewhat isolated, about the only way you
could make contact with people in your profession was by
correspondence or by an occasional visit. Of course, if a
visitor came through, that was marvelous. When anybody came
through. I'd probably take two days off and take them up in the
mountains, or something of the sort. You made very good friends
that way, and so by the time I had been there two or three
years, I had at least made contact by mail with a fair share ef
the people in the country in my field. And the fact that I'd
come from Berkeley was probably a plus — people knew and admired
Setchell and Jepsen.

Se, Berkeley did have a reputation.

Constance: Berkeley had a good reputation, yes. Jepson was very much
respected — his work was very much respected. Not very many
people knew him personally. I think. In fact, I introduced him
to several whom he had never met, although they lived next door,
so to speak, for a number ©f years.

Net only that, but Professor Abrams, who was the taxonomist
at Stanford, was exceedingly nice to me. He wrote and asked
about something or he wanted some specimen, and he sent me
reprints. He treated me very generously. So I was the
beneficiary of a lot of good will from various people for
various reasons.

Lage : This must be a continuing theme because you've mentioned that

in your later career, people accused you of knowing everybody.

Constance: Yes, I suppose that's true. I've always enjoyed people in the
profession and out of it. And I always had a lot of correspon
dents; I sort of lived by it, I guess. I probably spend a lot
mere time on it than I ought te, but it's been satisfying.

Marriage and Job 0 ffer from Berkeley. 1936-1937

Lage:
Constance;

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:

Constance:

Lage:

Is there anything else we should say about Washington?
Did you get married while you were there?

Yes. Sara (Sally) Luten. my college sweetheart, and I were
married en July 12, 1936. So you can see that we're almost at
our golden wedding anniversary.

Was she from Portland?

She was from Portland. She had lived alternately between Seattle
and Portland. I met her when we were juniors in college at
Oregon. One ef the reasons I wasn't too happy in my first
couple ef years at Berkeley was that it was a long way from
Portland.

People in those days didn't think about just going ahead and
getting married and making do as best they could.

Some did. I thought what you were going to say is that they
didn't think of not getting married, but just started living
together. I don't think that that was an accepted part of the
general way of doing things at that time.

It seemed te me the decision te get married was more often based
on whether you felt you were economically secure.

Constance: It was. Remember, we were children of the Depression, Her
father was a banker, and her mother was the only girl in a
family of five. Her four brothers and her father, Sally's
grandfather, were all in the lumber business in one way or
another, at one time or another. One of her uncles became a
farmer ahead of his time in the Medford region. He should have
been Harry and David — the exporters of beautiful fruit — he loved
to grow beautiful fruit. But with the economy at that time,
transportation just didn't make it commercially possible. So he
grew beautiful fruit, but he didn't make a living doing it-
Then when Sally's grandfather and his sens came west, they
invested — they had done very well in Michigan — in timber in the
Pacific Northwest. There were a series of fires and transport
ation problems and so on, and they had a very rough time during
the Depression. My family was also having a very rough time, so
we had a great deal in common.

The first automobile I ever owned I bought before we were
married, so we took our wedding trip down the coast to Berkeley.
We tried to trace this a few years age and found that lots of
the places we remembered particularly were no longer visible —
and are now covered with people. But at any rate, that was her
first experience of California and after a year in Pullman, part
of the spring in the Snake River Canyon, and temperatures of
thirty-seven below in the winter, she was mere than willing to
come back to Berkeley — and we had the opportunity te come.

I mentioned Setchell before, whom I really hadn't known
terribly well as a graduate student; I was rather in awe of him.
He had retired by the time I went te Pullman. [He retired in
1934]. At all events, he was back East visiting his sisters in
Rhode Island, and for seme reason he wrote a note to me, just
sort of a well-wishing note: "If you have any problems, let me
know." By this time I was up te my ears and net very happy with
the situation at Pullman. And so I unloaded. I wrote him a
long, garrulous letter about what a dump it was, a "cow college"
with all the trimmings.

There were a let ef things I didn't like. It was a school
which had been progressively depleted. They had a conscious
policy of hiring young people, getting as much out of them as
they could, and then letting them go. That is, if you get an
offer from someplace — fine — se, they get somebody else for less
than they had paid you and worked the tail off him. As a
result, the staff consisted largely ef people who had never
gotten an offer from anyplace else and probably never would. I
remember that the vice-president of the college was an officer
ef one of the banks. One of my friends and colleagues said he
had te borrow money to get there, and he had te borrow money to
leave.

Constance: The gap between the younger faculty members and the elder ones
was profound. There were about two older faculty members whom
we had any respect for — maybe three. They didn't include the
president of the college, by the way. The dean was henpecked,
but we respected him, otherwise; he was a chemist. And then
there was an eminent plant pathologist. Professor Heald. The
only reason he was there, as far as we could see, was that he
had an abominable temper, and nobody could get along with him,
So he stayed. His sen became head of Ford Foundation, if I
remember correctly. He was quite a distinguished guy, but
irascible. And there was a classicist that we were very fond
of. Otherwise, they were in entirely different worlds. Oh,
there were a few of the younger people that were, you knew, en
good terms with the people at the top. But when I was there,
the faculty consisted mainly of young people who were trapped.
This was the bottom, or as the current term has it, "the pits".

Lage: Trapped by economic conditions of the time.

Constance: That's right. I think fifty of us left the year I left, which
was three years after I got there. This was just the way it
was.

Lage: It was a pretty large school. If there were fifty leaving, it

must have been a large faculty.

Constance: I don't know how big it was then. I'd hesitate to guess — maybe
ten, twelve thousand students, something of that sort, I
suppose. Very isolated; it's, you knew, clear off in the south
east corner of the state. A long ways from the flesh pets of
Seattle, shall we say.

But. at all events. I wrote this long screed to Setchell,
who loved it, and encouraged me to do more of it. And so I
used to write him. He said, "Whenever you feel like unloading,
go ahead and unload on me. I enjoy it." [laughter] So, I did.

Lage: He must have understood something of what you were going

through.

Constance: Oh, yes. So. I told him I was going to get married and come to
California. By this time, he was back in California, and he
said, "Well, I'm going up to the Bohemian Grove, so you and your
wife can have my apartment," which was down en Dwight Way.
'^Because I realize you probably won't accept this otherwise, I'm
sending you the key." So there was the key enclosed with the
letter.

Lage:

Well, that is very interesting, from the way you described your
relationship with him when you were here.

Constance: That's right. Well, we had become very chummy by then. At any
rate, we came down and when we got here, we discovered he had
his apartment all ready for us. He said, "I would rather enjoy
being here with you than going to the Bohemian Grove for the
time being." So he rented the apartment across the hall. I
don't remember the duration of the Bohemian dub thing, but at
any rate, he went to the latter part of it. He insisted en
taking us all over the City and so on — a marvelous host.

Of course, this was a bit sticky because I was a student of
Jepson's. I didn't see Jepson during the time we were here, but
he couldn't help but hear about it. Later, he wrote and said
that if we came again, he would want the opportunity to play
host, or whatever. But, at any rate, that went along all right.

So we got married; we went back to Pullman. That is the
year that Jepson retired. And I had one colleague in the
department there that I was very fond of — his name was Harry
Clements, a plant physiologist. I regard him as one of the two
or three most influential people, really, in my life. He was a
wonderful person.

Lage: Was this at Washington?

Constance: Washington State. He got a position at the University of

Hawaii in 1937, and so here I was going to be left alone then.
But about three months after he got his invitation, I got one from
Berkeley.

My wife loves to tell this. I went over and resigned to
the dean. The dean regarded me as a sort of young hothead.
First, I had seen the chairman. And the chairman said. "Veil,
now, maybe we could do something about your salary." My salary,
as I said, started off at half-time. It was an eleven-month
salary at seventy-five dollars a month. At the end of the first
year, I applied to the president asking to be relieved of two
months of my summer obligation in order to get a job at the Soil
Conservation Service so that I would have enough money to come
back and teach in the fall — because I had had to borrow money on
my insurance policy (I had a small one) to last out the year,
even living in boarding houses and so en. I lived in a student
boarding house. For seventy-five dollars a month, you know,
you were lucky te be eating. And that worked: they doubled my
salary, putting me on at full-time.

But, at any rate. I went te the chairman of my department.
He was net my favorite character, nor I his, although he
disliked me less actively than he did my colleague Clements. We
probably shortened his life, I think. But, at all events, he
urged me te stay, and my reaction te that was. "Look, if I was
worth whatever new, I was worth it six months ago," and what I'm

Constance: interested in is. you know. "What would you do for me then?" not
what you would do for me new. I went over and carried the same
message to the dean, and he was very nice. He said, "Tell me,
what would it take to get you to stay?" And I said, "I can't
think of anything. I think the institution stinks from the top
to the bottom. It's rotten, especially at the top." He
listened to this, not entirely unsympathetically, I think.

But at any rate, this was a bright new day. A few days
later, my wife said, "By the way, did you accept at Berkeley?"
And come to think of it, I hadn't. [laughter] I was toe busy
resigning at Pullman.

Willis Jepsen in Retirement Years

Constance: That was the year that everything happened — I was married in

1936 and this job offer came during the spring ef 1937. Then I
get a letter from Jepsen saying that he was coming up to see me,
which was sort ef incredible. But, at any rate, he drove up.
He was a tall, lanky, very serious-looking person. He had
bought a maroon-colored roadster — a Buick or something of the
sort — en the grounds that — I can't remember. There was seme
reason for it, other than mid-life crisis; he was past mid-life.
At any rate, he arrived, and he came ostensibly to urge me net
to come to Berkeley because Berkeley was a "nest ef vipers" and
he thought the atmosphere was poisoned.

Lage: He had already retired?

Constance: He had just retired. But he hated practically everybody in the
place, with bells. For me, it was a very interesting experience
because I had always been rather in awe of him. And yet I
realized, in a way, that I was master of the situation, so to
speak. So I picked him up and drove him out into the country,
and we sat under a pine tree. He poured out fifty years worth
ef his grievances — real and imagined. I was very patient. And
he just went on and en. It was kind ef embarrassing, but as I
say. I realized that I was the parent and he was the child, so
to speak. And when he got all dene, I said, "Professor Jepsen,
I've already accepted the position. I'm sure you'd have wanted
me to." I said, "I'm sorry for the disappointments, the
frustrations and things that you feel. The people you're talking
about, you know, are the ones who are going to be my colleagues.
I have enough personality that I'm sure I'll make plenty ef
enemies of my own. I don't think you'd want me te start my

Constance: career at Berkeley by taking en yours." He accepted it, I took

him home for dinner, and he departed the next day. And that was
all that was ever said about it.

He stayed on the campus here. I had an office near him. I
went out of my way so that if people came through whom I thought
he might like to see, I attempted to arrange that. I encouraged
at least one couple to stay overnight on the chance that Jepsen
would see them, and he did. You passed little notes in, which
he might or might net respond to. In fact, he might embarrass
you by opening the door and appearing in person — you never knew.
But, at any rate, he was very nice to us, but it was a kind of
hands-off relationship. He was a very difficult person. I
never felt really at ease with him. But I feel that, as I said,
in some ways I got a good deal from him, although it's hard to
say exactly what and how. But the two of them, Setchell and
Jepson, really contributed a lot, I think , to my education in
ways which are net all that apparent, even to me.

Well, at any rate, we came to Berkeley in fall of 1937, and
here we still are.

Lage: That's a good place to pause and start up next time.

Constance: I think so. I probably left out things I should have put in.

IV ADDENDUM ON THE EARLY YEARS
[Interview 2: January 30, 1986] ##

Family and Family Life in Oregon

Lage: We're going to review just a little bit from last week.

Constance: I wanted to pick up a few points that you asked that perhaps are
not of great significance. You asked about my family back
ground. I mentioned that three of my four grandparents were
immigrants. My mother's family — the Clifford family — apparently
went way back in New England history. Three of her ancestors
were apparently volunteers at Bunker Hill, and the story is that
one of them lost his pants at Bunker Hill. He lest a bundle of
clothing, which may or may net have ever have been reclaimed — I
don't know. Presumably, one of the Q if fords was a governor of
Massachusetts, another one was U. S. attorney general in the
cabinet of the president who I think is generally thought te
have been the weakest of all presidents, notably Franklin
Pierce. So much for genealogy.

You also asked about family life, religion, politics.
social life and so en. My parents were Presbyterians — not very
rabid ones. My recollection is that they had attended the
Methodist church in Wisconsin, but when one of the ministers
asked them to pray for the poor ungodly Presbyterians down the
street, they severed their connections and moved over to the
Presbyterian Church. Church was net a particularly great factor
in my life, although the family, when I was quite young, used to
go te town, which was two miles away, to attend church. And, of
course, I went te Sunday school and had the various interests
that are cultivated for youngsters in that kind ef a setting.
Later, I think my parents probably stopped going very often,
maybe as a matter of health — I'm net quite sure. And then,
sometimes, I would ge with boys ef my age who lived somewhere
near me. So. for a series ef years. I know I attended the

Constance: Methodist church. Sometime after that — probably after we moved
to town — I attended the Christian church. It was something to
do on Sunday and I don't think it did a great deal to influence
me. although perhaps seme.

There was net a tremendous amount of social life. Seme-
times my parents would invite people from the church out to the
farm. People would like to come out for picnic. And some of
their progeny became good friends. At all events, they
furnished peer companionship.

Politics would be a little hard to classify, I think. My
parents were relatively conservative, but my mother was a bit of
a romantic. I remember she voted for Herbert Hoover because she
thought he was a great humanitarian. (And, of course, he was
after World War I). And I think probably after that, she either
voted for Norman Thomas or for one of the Democrats, but I
really don't knew. I don't remember my father ever really
discussing politics, as such.

Lage: It wasn't a highly political family.

Constance: It was not a highly political family, that's right. We were

always interested in everything, but I don't recall that we were
terribly doctrinaire about much of anything.

You asked about reading. I don't remember particularly.
I think I probably read everything that came into the house. I
remember I became fascinated by one of these amazing series of,
probably, thirty-nine volumes of the motorcycle beys and
what. But, I think I read quite indiscriminately most
anything.

Lage: There's nothing in particular that you remember that had a big

influence?

Constance: Net particularly. I de remember when my mother used to read to
me when I was a small child. And I remember, I think* that one
day, she completely disrupted me by saying, "Well, today you're
going to read to me." Just when that was, I don't know. I can
remember that she was ironing at the time, but I couldn't date
it.

Lage: Did you read any kind of nature- oriented books?

Constance: Yes. Of course, I had the National Geographic magazine. Then
when I get interested in butterflies, I would go to the public
library in town and get somebody's book en the moths of the
world and somebody else's on the butterflies. Now that was

Constance: really related to my developing natural history interest. But I
don't remember any really intensive campaign to read in any
particular genre.

Eugene was a 'town of. I believe, about twelve to fifteen
thousand at the time. There was one high school and — actually
there were two. One developed as an offshoot of the university
and was the university high school. It was quite small; I did
not attend it. I don't know of any particular reason why I did
or didn't, but I didn't.

Lage: They did have a public library?

Constance: Oh, yes, they had a Carnegie library. Every town did. Western
Oregon was largely settled by people from the East Coast and the
upper Midwest. It was the kind of town in which intellectual
affairs were maybe net stressed, but pretty well accepted.

One point I forget to make was that my parents were members
of a grange, and we used to attend meetings there. The thing I
remember particularly is the wonderful feed they had, which, ef
course, children enjoyed no end. I think I was barely mature
before it occurred to me that you could ge te a picnic and not
start with the cake, pie, and ice cream, but te eat all of that
ether stuff instead. It always seemed te be a terrible waste of
capacity.

The Graduate Program at Berkeley

Constance: I think I probably covered adequately my undergraduate education
at Oregon, which was basic biology with seme remarkable holes in
it, so that when I came to Berkeley, there was a lot I didn't
knew. Fortunately, I realized that te some degree before my
professors did. Se I did my best te fill in the notable gaps.

I think I said before I was not too happy in the first two
years. I didn't have any very clear goal. It's true that I
was interested in biology, and more in botany perhaps than other
kinds. There was nothing like dissecting a pickled shark on a
hot day te convince a biologist that plants are more attractive
than animals. And I responded te that.

Lage: So when you came here you weren't necessarily set in botany.

Constance: I came as a graduate student in botany — as a teaching assistant
in botany — so it was expected that I would go on in botany. It
would have always been possible, I'm sure, to change if I'd
really wanted te, but I'm net sure that I ever wanted to.

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

After I had obtained my master's degree and started assisting in
the systematics — or taxenomic area — under Jepson's general
jurisdiction (although without a great deal of personal contact)
I was thoroughly established and I knew exactly what I wanted to
do. There was no great problem in going en with that.

It was a period of considerable economic stress. I didn't
eat very lavishly, and I remember I managed to eat en fifty
cents a day. which wouldn't be possible new.

Did you find your fellow students were in somewhat the same
circumstance?

I suspect so. There were not very many of them. Several were
married. One or more of them lived in the same kinds of
boarding houses that I did — sometimes the same ones. We lived
en our teaching assistant ships, without any doubt.

Hew many women were in the graduate program, and how many
graduate students in the program?

It was a small program, no doubt about that. I don't know that
I can really tell, but I would say there were about as many
women as men. Botany has traditionally been a field that was
accessible to women. Many of the early writers felt that it was
particularly appropriate for women because of the delicacy of
plants versus animals.

I'm net sure I could give any real idea of the number of
graduate students. I can tell something about those who emerged
with their doctoral degrees, but there were quite a number of
women who didn't. They took master's degrees and went into
teaching, er they get married and didn't go on with it or didn't
go en with it for a number of years. I think it's fair te say
that there was always a sizable number of women. But on the
whole, it was a very small program. I don't suppose there were
more than ten to a dozen graduate students at most at any one
time.

There were several additional people associated with the
botanical garden er the herbarium. Of course, there were not
very many grants in these days — extramural grants. Professor
[T. Harper] Geedspeed was something of a genius and ahead of his
time in obtaining grants. He get money from the Rockefellers
and various other places, and he always had several assistants
working for him, one way or another. The interesting thing is
that, at the time, I think the general feeling was that this
sort of group approach really wasn't quite ethical, that you
should be doing your own work.

Lage: For him te have assistants doing the spade work?

Constance: That's right. It had not really taken in the field of botany,
at least. I think it probably did rather early in medical
research. But the whole idea of these mass approaches which are
so popular new just was not heard of. You leek at an article in
Science now — if there aren't six authors, it's amazing. In
these balmy days people used to wonder if it really were quite
right to have a co-auther. So it was a very different sort of
picture.

Looking at Photographs from the Pullman Period

Constance: I think we may have covered the whole of Washington State
enterprise, I have a —

Lage: You're looking at phete albums, very well-organized and labeled.

Is this from Washington State?

Constance: This is from Washington State. It was a fairly good learning
experience. I took a half-time job te teach three courses and
run the herbarium at seventy-five dollars a month. I lived in a
student boarding house.

Lage: You didn't have the status one associates with a professor.

Constance: In a way. All professors were automatically called "Dec." That
was the way they were designated. And we had very close rela
tionships with the undergraduates and relatively few graduate
students. Probably as young faculty members, we had much better
relationships than some of the older ones did. I still hear
from a few. There are three or four people who write te me
still who always address me as "Dec," which I find rather
amusing.

Lage: You gave me the piece on Reed Rollins, which was very

interesting.

Constance: Yes. Here's the picture of him in 1936.

Lage: It sounds as if you made a let of collecting trips with him.

Constance: That's right. I was in charge ef the herbarium. It didn't

carry a special stipend or title, but somebody had to do it, and
I liked it. I had a National Youth Administration grant.
Grants were made to the college, and I managed te get one ef
those and had several people working for me.

Constance: Most of the springs and summers, when I could, I tried to get
out into the field. Seme of these pictures shew trips to the
Big Bend country, which is the grain-producing country of
southern Washington. The Snake River, which forms the boundary
between Idaho and Washington — and Oregon in part — flows on into
Washington and gees ever toward the Columbia. Among my com
panions on trips were people like J. F. Gates dark, who is a
distinguished entomologist, new retired from the Smithsonian
Institution; Reed Rollins, who has retired as a Gray professor
at Harvard; Leonard Machlis. who was chairman of the botany
department here before his death, and a number of others.

Lage: Was Machlis a student ef yours?

Constance: No, he was a plant physiologist. He was a protege ef mine, but
net a student. We used to take the students on field trips
which usually combined — en their part at least — squirrel
shooting with investigating the biota.

Lage: Your album has maps ef where you went? [looking at photographs]

Constance: Oh. yes. I remember particularly a trip to the Blue Mountains,
an isolated range in northeastern Oregon, and perhaps even mere
interesting, the Wallewa Mountains, which represent a little
sort ef pocket range — a piece of the Reeky Mountains in terms ef
the biota.

I went into the Wallow as for a week's trip accompanied by
one economics professor and one mule. The economics professor
was considerably mere tractable than the mule, but it was a very
interesting experience.

Lage: Was he just going for the fun of it?

Constance: He just went for the fun ef it; it was something to do. Seme of
this country was extremely remote. There was the town ef
Imnaha. Oregon. It's off the Snake River; the Imnaha River
flews into the Snake.

Lage: Had you done any of that kind of thing as a young bey — or with

your family? Any kind ef wilderness trip?

Constance: Oh, not quite the same. The scale of the country here was much
grander, less civilized and se on. But I was always used to
being out in the weeds. Some ef the country in adjacent Idaho
and Washington was fairly spectacular — some ef this volcanic
country, waterfalls. We used to go particularly into northern
Idaho because the country around Pullman was net forested,
excepting the canyons around a few rocky hills (Steptoes). This
is Rollins again. [indicating en photo].

Lage:

Would the premise of someone like Rollins have been apparent to
you at the time?

Constance: It was to me. Yes. there never was any doubt about it.

One of the roXites we were interested in following was that
of Lewis and Clark, who traversed the country from Montana
westward. They came down the Qearwater River and had camps at
specific places, and we tried to find the same places, and
indeed, if we could, tried to find the same plants they had
collected.

Lage: So they did a considerable amount of collecting?

Constance: Yes.

Lage: And where are these collections?

Constance: Their official collections went to Philadelphia Academy, but a
good share of them went to the British Museum. So now if you
want to see plants collected by Lewis and Clark, Philadephia
thinks they have them, but the British Museum usually dees.
It was beautiful country — very wild country. We found plants
that were extremely interesting. One of them was actually named
for me: Cardamine censtancei. named for me by a botanist at
Stanford to whom I sent material. You see, it was rugged,
beautiful country. I would hate to go back to it now because
I'm sure it's so changed that it would no longer be attractive.

One of the things we used to do was to take a group of
students of botany, forestry or whatever, and spend five or six
days going up the Snake River, through the deepest part — so
called Hell's Canyon — and camp without shelters except tents.
The first year I see that my colleague, Harry Clements, was
in charge and I was the co-organizer. The following year the
clipping says: "Dr. Constance will direct the Snake River
excursion. "

There were seme interesting characters. One little motor
boat could take the whole group, excepting where the rapids were
tee shallow. It was a fast-moving stream. The Snake really
runs between the Wallow a range on one side — on the Oregon side —
and the Seven Devils range en the Idaho side, so the river is
constricted into a very narrow zone. We used to say it took one
day to get up the stream and about fifteen minutes to come down.
It was breathtaking, there's no doubt.

Lage: And you traveled up it by meterboat?

Constance: That's right.

Lage: They do that new, to a degree.

Constance: But. of course, they have flooded it to seme extent. I don't
know hew much — I haven't been back in years.

Lage: I took a raft trip there. There are seme jet boats, which are

considered to be intruding on the wilderness, that try te go up
it.

Constance: Well, that was the only way of negotiating it at that time.

There were several families who had their ranches on the Snake
River and also on the Imnaha and some of the ether tributaries.
Then there were only two ways of getting there: one was up the
river and the ether was te ceme in by pack train over the wall
of the mile-deep canyon. And in real emergencies, they
sometimes flew in and flew somebody eut — someone stepped on by a
horse, or something.

[indicating on photograph] This was one of the beats that
we were en and these are "bucking" the rapids. And every so
often, when it became particularly shallow and the water parti
cularly fierce, we all had to get out and walk around. One of
the places that we get eut and walked around was a river bar and
en that we found a spectacular purplish-red flowered plant which
was identifiable as a "four o'clock". Actually, the boat
captain had told us about it. Rollins and I investigated it and
discovered that* indeed, it was something that had not gotten in
the literature. So we described it and named it; we named it
after the captain — but that's the story of Mirabilis macfarlanei.

Lage: Was he knowledgeable about the plants?

Constance: He was knowledgeable about the plants to an extent. Eight years
before I got te Washington State, the botanist there was Harold
St. John, who has been at the University of Hawaii for many
years. St. John had apparently told him what seme of the things
were, and he had remembered. We didn't know that St. John had
actually collected this thing. When St. John left Washington
State for Hawaii, he took everything away that he thought might
be of any interest. Occasionally, we'd run across seme scrap of
paper, and we saw a note te the effect that there were several
things in the canyon that were interesting, which he was going
to do something about someday. One of them was a cactus, and
one was a member of the same family that the "four o'clock"
belonged to. But it was so wildly remote from the genus.
Mirabilis. it never occurred te us, frankly, that it could be
the same thing. He had it grossly misplaced.

Constance: I also was responsible for the naming of a phlox with Dr. Wherry
at the University of Pennsylvania who asked me to collect
material of it, which I did — growing in a clump of prickly pear.
He published it in our names. I don't think it had a great deal
going for it. but 'it was very interesting to be involved in such
a thing.

[indicating en photograph again] This was the ether way of
getting in — the pack train — going up the side of the canyon.
But those beat trips up the Snake River were certainly one of
the most interesting phenomena. While I was at Pullman, in one
way or another I spent as much time as I could trying to learn
the flora and to see what the country was like. I remember an
incident in one of the years — this one was 1935 — in which we got
thoroughly snowed-on when we were in camp. There was nothing
you could do; you were just snowed-on.

Lage:

Constance;

Lage:
Constance ;
Lage:

Constance :

What time of year would that have been?

It probably was about April,
off my beets trying to get my
horrible case of poison oak.

I remember that I burned the soles
feet warm, and Rollins got a

I took my wife en a trip in 1937 — we were married in 1936 —
and this was essentially her first outdoor experience. I
wouldn't say it was the last, but she was net as happy abeut it
as she might have been. I suppose it really didn't occur to me
hew much of a shock it would be for her because it was
completely foreign te her whole experience. I remember we
landed en this river bar. I was in charge ef the whole excur
sion and was responsible for trying to get things set up. And
what happened was that I get things set up, but I didn't do
anything for us. She was stuck with the job ef trying te put up
the tent, which she had never dene, and it was a fairly grim
initiation for her. But it was fascinating country; she appre
ciated the country but her tradition was not a —

She was mere ef a city girl?

That's right. She was not an eut-of-deers type.

New, did that continue? Did she net take part in your various
collecting trips?

She went with me most ef the time, excepting when I went some
distance off the road. But we did everything together,
essentially.

From time te time, somebody would visit Pullman, and that
was such a rarity and such an exciting thing that it was great
fun. One ef the visitors I remember particularly was the late

Constance: J. W. Stacey of the Stacey book company in San Francisco. He

was an expert on sedges, which are a particularly nasty group of
grass-like plants. He would go around to the colleges osten
sibly to peddle the books the Stacey corporation was publishing.
But if there was any herbarium material there, he usually would
desert the book-agency role for that of a taxonomist.

[indicating another photograph] This was Harold St.
John, who paid a visit to Pullman when I was there; he is new in
his nineties.

Conservative Administration at Washington State

Constance: I think I did tell you that when we were at Pullman there was a
student revolt, which I suppose was a sort of preeducatien for
Berkeley. I have a flyer of their demands which included
[reading from flyer]: "More student than faculty control, a
progressive clean-minded administration, new closing hours —
eleven o'clock week nights and one o'clock weekend nights — "

Lage: That's pretty radical.

Constance: "College and social rules should be published, no compulsory

class attendance. Wednesday night mixers and desserts, abolition
of Dean Annie's suggested picnic and social rulings, abolition
of ultraconservative dictatorial administrative policies."
Signed, the Students Liberty Association.

Lage: Can you elaborate en any of these?

Constance: My recollection is that students couldn't carry a blanket if
they went en picnics. And I don't really remember quite what
else. But restrictions were, by and large, fairly heavy-handed
Victorian rules. Pullman was a very conservative town. It had
more churches than most anything else. The people were basic
ally fairly solid midwest Protestants. My own chairman was, I
think, a deacon. I forget whether the Methodist church has
deacons or not. If they do, he was one.

Constance: He was also dean of the graduate division. The thing that was
particularly startling to me as a biologist was that he didn't
believe in evolution.

Lage: This was the head of your department?

Constance:

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

The head of the department, and also the dean of the graduate
division. We had seme sort of a departmental seminar — all
departments seem to have seminars — and some student was
reporting. I couldn't tell you what he was reporting about, but
it had something t'e do with evolution. The student said some
thing — some reference to evolution — and everybody said, "Heh,
heh, heh, heh. heh." Well, I didn't get the message, and I
climbed down the student's neck and —

New, why did you climb down the student's neck?

For pooh-poohing the idea of evolution, He made some nasty
remark about it and all the other kids laughed; obviously,
evolution was something you sneered at. My recollection is that
the chairman of the department didn't return to any of the
seminars thereafter.

Did he make any comment to you?

Constance: He never said anything, net te me, no.

[indicating a clipping in the phote beek] This was a little
item. One of the English professors was fired for writing a
book that had been reported to be racy. [reading] It said, "Dr.
Samuel M. Steward returned home here today" — this is Columbus,
Ohio — "and said his removal from the English department of
Washington State College resulted from 'rumors' that he had
written a racy novel. Dr. Steward, who was dismissed by
President Helland. also said that he had been accused of taking
part in a student strike. 'Four hours after the president
delivered his commencement address extolling the virtues of
liberty and free speech,' Dr. Steward said, 'he summarily dis
missed me for exercising a little academic freedom and told me
that my going was but the forerunner of six or eight more to
go. '"

Lage: Do you remember that incident?

Constance: Oh, yes, I knew him. He wrote a book called — I think it was
Angels en the Bough. I don't think I ever read it. I don't
knew how risque it was — by modern standards, net very. But I
think it dees suggest that it was a fairly tight little
community, and that there was a very strict dichotomy between
the older people and the - inger people. I think I've said this
before: there were abou o members ef the faculty the younger
people respected, and ve w ef the deans and the president

were included in that s- roup.

Incidentally, here ; committee notes and reports.

This is the Committee e .emic Freedom and Tenure reporting

on the Steward case at Wasnington State College. [reads seme of

Constance;

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

the report] "Angels on the Beugh has received favorable reviews
and appears to the chairman of the committee as a book showing
great promise. Since being refused reappeintment at the State
College of Washington* Dr. Steward has been employed by Loyola
University of Chicago.11 The administrators at this Catholic
institution had read his book before appointing him.

It was a big controversy, then, among the faculty.

This was a committee of the national group, the American
Association of University Professors. It was interesting because
when faculty members are net rehired, they are supposed to be
given some kind of adequate warning. Steward was fired after
commencement.

One of the regulations reads as follows: "In case it is
necessary to notify a member of the faculty he must sever his
connection with this institution, the Board of Regents is
authorized that this notice be given ordinarily net later than
April 15. and with very few exceptions, net later than
commencement day.11

So does that tell us something about the tone of the school that
you were portraying last time?

Constance: Yes. I think it tells you a good deal about it.

Lage: That and the head of the graduate division not believing in

evolution.

Constance: That's right. It's come a long, long way since then.

In spring of 1937, I was invited to come to Berkeley. One
of the last things I did from Pullman was to go to the one-
hundredth meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science at Denver. I drove with my colleague
Clements all the way to Denver and back. These were various
things along the way. [indicating en photographs] This was
Harry Clements, my colleague who went to Hawaii, and this was
Leonard Machlis. who was a student and who later was chairman of
Botany here. We were at Denver. Rollins, who had been at
Harvard, came out, and we spent a day together in Rocky Mountain
Park. These are pictures on the way back home. This was
another trip when they were building Grand Coulee Dam in central
Washington.

Lage: Did you do any collecting, in that instance, to get something

that might be destroyed by the dam?

Constance: No, we didn't. It was dene later from Washington State,
actually, after we had left.

Constance: This was more collecting in Idaho. My wife was with me, and we
met the Pennells from Philadelphia and camped. They were trying
to fellow Lewis and Clark's trail, and we got them up into some
fairly weird, wonderful country.

This is our last day in Pullman. We lived in an apartment
house which was familiarly known as "the slum." This is my
friend Harry dements and his wife. She just died in Hawaii,
recently. Ashley Weeks is a sociologist and Paul Fendrick was a
psychologist. They were among our closest friends. Sally had
her own opportunities to assert her independence, too. She got
the idea of painting the walls of our apartment blue-green.
Nobody in Pullman had had anything but beige-colored walls in
the memory of man. and this really created quite a sensation.

Lage: With the landlord?

Constance: No, the landlord apparently didn't give a damn. But just within
the community — "Do you like Sally's walls?" They were
horrible, according to seme ef the mere conservative residents.

One person who's net shewn was a women's physical education
instructor who was interested in dance and a disciple ef Martha
Graham. After we got to Berkeley she wrete Sally that she had
painted her walls "Australian prune"!

This, I think, gives you a fair idea ef my thoughts about
it. As we left Pullman, I looked back and took a picture and I
said, "A reusing Bronx cheer for you. Smug little cow college."

Lage: [laughing] It sounds like you were quite happy to be coming to

Berkeley.

Constance: That's right. And that's a picture ef Harry Clements and me.

Lage: Although you had a number of good friends, it seems.

Constance: We always had good friends.

Lage: All in the same beat.

Constance: Yes, that's right. Well, ef course, that makes, I think, for

long friendships. Mutual adversity is a very, very strong bend.

Lage: How about your wife — was she glad to be leaving?

Constance: Yes.

V BOTANY AT BERKELEY: THE PREWAR YEARS

The Department following S etch ell' 8 Retirement II

Lage: Let's review the situation in the Department of Botany at

Berkeley during the prewar period.

Constance: I officially joined the department in 1937. Setchell — the

forty-year chairman — had retired at the end of June 1934 (the
same time I received my doctorate and left for Pullman.) Jepson
retired in 1937. and that gave the occasion for my return.

Lage: You more or less replaced Jepson?

Constance: I was more or less a replacement for Jepson. Actually, when

Setchell retired, the question of departmental chairmanship came
up. The logical person to assume the chair was probably Good-
speed. Goodspeed was quite ambitious. As I've indicated before,
he was a genius at getting together a group of assistants in
some sort of a combined research activity, which some felt was
really not quite proper — a little ahead of its time, at any
rate. And he had apparently lobbied very hard to be chairman.
Why anybody wanted to be chairman still remains a mystery to me.

Lage: Who would pick the chairman?

Constance: The chairman was probably at that time picked by President

Spreul himself, probably on the nomination of the dean — though
I'm not sure about that — probably after some polling of the
wishes of the faculty. I know what it was like later; I'm not
entirely sure of what it was like then, but I expect that that
would be the way it would go. At all events. Goodspeed had
lined up some very strong support among the Regents but had
apparently antagonized others as well. There undoubtedly was a
faculty committee at work on the problem, because Sproul was
very good about using faculty committees.

Constance: Just about this time, Dennis Hoagland — who was in charge of the
laboratory of plant nutrition and was a very fine scholar noted
for his work on essential elements in plant growth — was elected
to the National Academy of Sciences. I assume, without really
knowing it, that the committee may have been deadlocked or at
least had varying' opinions. But here, all of a sudden, was a
botanist — at least a plant physiologist — who received one of the
highest accolades and was a natural alternative candidate.
Jepson would probably have been about the world's worst
chairman, but he hated Geodspeed and probably would have
accepted it rather than see Geodspeed get it. It would have
been courteous to offer it to Jepson. but they didn't dare
because he might have accepted it to keep Goodspeed from getting
it. [laughter] So the Heagland solution was really ideal
except for Hoagland, who, I think, hated all administration with
a great passion.

What happened was that — again. I assume as the result of
the advice of the committee, they took plant nutrition and part
of plant pathology and some other elements from the College of
Agriculture and merged them with botany to give botany a
broader, and. to seme extent, a mere experimental base.

Lage: New who would have determined that? Would this have been

Heagland' s idea, or was this something Spreul had in mind?

Constance: I don't knew. I suspect it would be a natural outcome of such
an investigation at that time. Plant physiology, which is
a key sub-unit ef any study of plant life, was very weak
in the department — so much so that the teaching of it had gone
pretty largely over te Agriculture. There was always seme
feeling that Agriculture was trying to muscle in on plant
science and seme feeling in Agriculture, certainly, that they
didn't like the way seme ef plant science was taught in the
botany department.

Constance: So there was always a certain amount of border warfare. Agri

culture, after all, had the weight of the agricultural community
behind it. And botany really didn't have any influential con
stituents when you come right down te it. Botany is always at a
disadvantage. Nowadays, there are very few botany departments;
most plant study, excepting in agricultural schools, is under
biology. In biology departments, botany is usually the runtiest
pig in the litter. Zoologists tend to look at plants as one
mere phylum ef animals and not necessarily the most important
one. S© the botanists are almost always in a minority, both in
number and influence.

Constance: I remember serving en a committee at Cornell, having to do with
the reorganization of their botany and biology because botany
there was in the College of Arts and Sciences, which is the
private institution, whereas most of plant science was in the
agricultural part,' which is the state College of Agriculture.
They were trying to put them together. I remember getting a
telephone call from one of the vice-presidents we had met with
saying, "Ve're having trouble with our botanists. Can you
explain it to me?" I said, "Sure, very simple. If people were
plants, you'd be having trouble with your zoologists."
[laughter] So there was always a little bit of that. Some of
my younger colleagues who were mycologists — students of fungi —
felt that the plant pathologists in the College of Agriculture,
were trying to overwhelm them and steal their stuff. Physiolo
gists felt rather similarly.

But at any rate. Alva R. Davis, who had a real flair for
administration, succeeded Hoagland after a couple years. Again
it's a guess, but my guess is that the committee originally
wanted to appoint Davis, but that they ran into the Goods peed
business; as a result, they put in Hoagland to serve in
transition. He served around two years, and then Davis became
chairman. Davis was chairman by the time I got here in 1937.
He was an outstanding chairman. He was not only my predecessor
as chairman of the department, but as dean of Letters and
Science and also as vice-chancellor. And I have a world of
affection and admiration for him. He certainly is the person
who get me involved in university affairs.

The interesting thing is that he was not very happy with my
performance, at least above the departmental level, because I
insisted on continuing to teach and do research. He felt this
to be a denigration of the administrative job. He, himself,
gave up his professional field when he went into administration.
Then, of course, when he retired from it, he was lest. I had
seen that happen to so many people that it was a trap I was not
about to walk into if I could help it.

Well, what happened was that a number of people were
brought into the department from plant pathology, plant
nutrition, and I believe a few others. Most of them ultimately
returned to the place whence they came; a few ethers stayed.

When I came, I was put in charge en very short notice —
right in the first semester — of general botany.

Lage: That must have been an introductory botany course.

Constance: That's right. Someone had decided that every laboratory section
should have a faculty member in charge of it. These people who
were transferred in from Agriculture, who would have had a

Constance: minimum ef student contact, were net very happy at this rele.

And, as I say. most of them had figured out some way ef getting
the hell out ef it.

But I remember one man. a plant pathologist who was still
there. I knew him; I liked him very much. But I finally went
to the head ef the department and said, "Leek, he's miserable,
and he really isn't doing anything for us. Why don't you let
him 'out ef it?" So they did. And that was pretty much the end
ef the amalgamation, I think, excepting that Davis remained as
chairman, and Howard Reed stayed until his retirement.

In one way or another, there was a broadening ef the
attitudes ef the department. Several of the people who had been
professors when I was a student were now retiring. Se it was
basically a new department, and Davis set out to build a
department with real morale. He was very successful; he built a
really distinguished one.

Lage: He was good at attracting faculty?

Constance: Not only that — he was good at developing high morale in the
faculty that were here.

Geedspeed essentially went his own way. Davis ence said
that he never gave him any trouble. He had the botanical
garden, and he went his own way and never came to departmental
meetings or things ef that sort, se that was net a problem. So
there was just a small group ef us. and we get along very, very
well.

Lage: Were you all ef a mind about what direction botany should take?

Constance: Well, I don't think there were any particular doctrinal

struggles. We did our best in our own areas, and we accepted
what our colleagues did in theirs. When eur activities touched
upon each ether, we cooperated. We used to have joint projects
from time te time, seme of which I will mention later. Mostly
we did eur own jobs, and we were on excellent terms with each
other. We saw each other socially, to seme extent — you knew,
seme more than others — depending partly upon age and where we
lived and so on. But it was a very harmonious time. In my
first years, up until, certainly, the time I went to Washington,
I lived essentially within my department.

I think I went te a faculty meeting very seen after I came
here. President Spreul got up and said something and seme
faculty member popped up and jumped down his threat. Spreul
very benignly heard him out, deferred te him, and se on. The

Constance: contrast with Pullman was fantastic, and I thought that the
university administration was in good hands, and I wouldn't
really concern myself with it.

I remember that fairly early Davis said once. "I think you
and [Ralph] Emerson ought to get involved in university
affairs." I told him, "I don't think we're ready to. I don't
think we really know enough." And I think that was probably
right. So we really didn't. We were working in our own vine
yards, to be trite. I was active in the herbarium and in
teaching elementary botany.

I worked closely with my senior colleague. Herbert Mason.
Ihe way things were set up, he had the graduate students unless
they expressly insisted en working with me. I didn't pay any
attention to who were his graduate students and who were mine.
He tended to give his students a sort of hands-eff treatment,
and they'd come to me and I'd try to work things through with
them and with him. It was all very harmonious.

Lage: So you worked with some students that were officially his.

Constance: That's right. I mentioned Morrison, who had been a student of
Jepson's, and was now a student of Mason's. We went on exten
sive field trips together; we were nearly the same age.

Lage: Did you enter in more with your students because of your

reaction to your own treatment — not just at Pullman, but when
you were a graduate student here? Or was it your youth?

Constance: I just don't know. I didn't have any scars. I was happy to be
here. Once I got to Berkeley, it would never have occurred to
me to leave.

One thing that's interesting — this came up years later —
that I hadn't known about, was that one of the members of the
Academic Senate budget committee told me that he had run across
a document that showed that somebody — either the provost or the
president or whomever — had recommended during World War II that
for economic reason a particular age group of faculty be let go.
It was my group — right across the boardl It included at least
one Nobel laureate and maybe a couple. Apparently, the budget
committee talked the president out of doing this and suggested
he give them war leave instead.

Lage: You mean, let them go so they could — ?

Constance: Let them go so they wouldn't be a drag on the University. You
know, the University was under straitened circumstances during
the war, so you would just fire them.

Constance:

Lage:

Constance;

I knew the University of Hawaii, after Pearl Harbor, fired
all the people they had hired in the previous year or two. My
colleague, George Papenfuss, had joined the staff at Hawaii and
come clear from Sweden, where he was studying; he was in Sweden
from South Africa. He got to Hawaii and was promptly fired
because they decided to cut back on faculty. At all events, we
didn't know about it. But, as I said, it never occurred to me,
once I get here, that they could get along without me.

That course would have had quite an effect en the University. I
wonder how seriously that was entertained.

I don't know. It could have been disastrous because immediately
after the war we had this fantastic flood of students, and the
University staffed very, very rapidly. It made some mistakes in
doing it. but en the whole it did pretty well.

Setchell and Jepsen at Odds

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

You told me before something about the division between Jepson
and Setchell and hew it came out in doctoral exams. I wonder if
you would want to tell something about that.

I don't think, as far as I know, that either of them ever used
the opportunity to attack each other through the students. If yei
remember in George R. Stewart's Rector's Oral — do yeu knew that?

I haven' t read it.

Well, it is a stery about a graduate student who is the victim
of warring professors. The thing is, we knew perfectly well
that Jepsen1 s ideas and Setchell' s ideas were somewhat
different. And it was even more tricky; I had Geodspeed and
{Ernest B.] Babceck en one or another of my committees with
Jepsen. Goedspeed and Jepsen were net on speaking terms.
[Richard M. ] Hoi man was on one of them, and he was on speaking
terms with scarcely anybody by that time. And there you were:
if you were asked a question, how were you to answer it? You
knew that if yeu said one thing, yeu weuld offend Jepson. If
yeu answered it te please him, yeu might offend the people in
genetics. So it required agile tightrope walking.

What kinds of things were the disagreements over?
just personal things, they were —

These weren't

No, they had te do. te some extent, with the fact that taxonetny--
the classification of plants — was at the stage of depending upon
a wider range of characters than previously, such things as

Constance:

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

cytology and genetics, which had net really been a part of the
mix of methodology in Jepson's training, let's say. He was
pretty much self- trained, anyway. But these things were just
coming to the fore.

I mentioned that one of my friends was Reid Brooks, who
was a graduate student with Goodspeed. I took a course in
cytology from Goodspeed here, but he didn't teach us anything I
really wanted to know. He didn't teach us methods we could
apply taxonemically. which is what I would have liked. We were
given prepared slides, and we looked at these endlessly. That
was fine, but it didn't really turn into something we could use.
I was working on the taxonomy of a group of plants. I had heard
about polyploidy. which is the addition and multiplication of
chromosomes — hence genetic material — and I wanted to investigate
it. So through Reid and others. I actually learned how to make
root-tip smears and counted a few of these things. But I didn't
dare tell Jepson that I had dene it. New. he might net have
minded — I don't know. But the general supposition was that he'd
probably throw you out on your ear if you get into things of
this sort.

I remember after one of the oral exams. I felt I had dene
wretchedly. I ran into Babcock and Goodspeed. who congratulated
me on having passed. Geedspeed said. "I think it's wonderful
the way you pulled the wool ever Jepson's eyes." Then a little
later I ran into Jepson when I was back in my office. Jepson
tapped en my deer and came in beaming, congratulated me. and
said it was wonderful the way I had taken care of Geedspeed and
Babcock. [laughing]

You must have had a way —

I must have had a rabbit's foot in my pocket,
very good to me.

But they were all

What about Setchell in that kind of controversy? Was he mere
receptive to new ideas?

Setchell was a "big-picture" man. He was interested in world
distributions, and formation of coral atolls, and all sorts ef
things. He was a very stimulating teacher in that respect. He
made you think; he knew what had been written about this or
that. A Scotsman came out with a three-part book on the evolu
tion of ferns. Setchell promptly taught a course on it. He had
dene a lot of traveling in the South Pacific, and he had
pictures and materials. He was extraordinarily stimulating.
Jepson. you see. we didn't have much contact with. He was a
remote figure, and we were in awe of him and had a great deal of
admiration for him.

Lage: He was more of a narrow-focused — ?

Constance: Yes, he was a native son who was interested in the flora of

California, He thought it was his God-given preserve, and it
was a time when just to know what was here was the first order
of the day, so to speak. So it was appropriate to the time. It
wasn't so much that Setchell and Jepson were opposed on some
theory, doctrine, or anything of that sort — it's simply that,
for one thing, Setchell was working on marine algae and seaweeds
and Jepson was working on the land flora. Setchell had broad
ideas — he was interested in the relations of temperature to the
flowering of plants, "waves of anthesis", for example. But
mostly they didn't cross each other in respect to science. But,
as I say, I never had the least trouble with either of them;
they were very nice to me. There were not very many up-and-
coming graduate students in the department, so the attention
wasn't too surprising. David Goddard was one of the most
distinguished graduate students we've had; he was on good terms
with both of them, too. So. I don't think that their rivalry
was a very major barrier for graduate students.

Entries from Field Notebook. 1937-1942
[Interview 3: February 13, 1986] ##

Lage:

Constance

We've covered a lot of personal background in the last two
interviews: early life, early career as a botanist. You tell
me that you've reviewed some things and have some additional
remarks, so you begin.

I went back and tried to trace the actual places and dates from
the time of leaving Washington State. College at Pullman in
August of 1937 down through my early years at Berkeley. I see
that we did, indeed, leave Pullman in August 1937 and drove to
Berkeley, stopping to see my wife's and my families in Portland
and Eugene.

In September, we saw my former associate Harry Clements off
to Hawaii, and another associate, Edward Ullman. returned to
Harvard to complete graduate work in geography. I find no other
entries until December, when we went north to Portland and
Eugene for Christmas with our families.

Lage: Let me ask you what you mean by "entries."

Constance:

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

Constance;

These were entries in my field notebook. Botanists who collect
customarily keep a running list of the things they collect and
the conditions under which they collect them — localities and
other data.

In 1938 I remember particularly being guests of Professor
Alva R. Davis, who was botany department chairman, at the Sierra
Ski Lodge. My idea, I'm afraid, of skiing was sitting by the
fireplace having something to warm you internally while other
people were out on or in the snow.

In 1938 I made an extensive tour of northern California
during the spring and summer — mostly by myself, partly in
company with Robert Hoover who was later a botanist with
California Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo.

Was he a student?

He was one of Jepson's last students that I actually had not
met. He took his doctorate here after an undergraduate
career at Stanford.

Professor Goodspeed. from his base in the botanical garden,
launched a series of botanical garden expeditions to the Andes.
The second one was just going off when I arrived; he invited me
to go but, obviously, when I was just joining the faculty I was
not in any position to take off for strange parts — so I didn't.

Did that expedition have a particular focus?
Goodspeed studying tobacco.

You've mentioned

Yes, that's right. Most of the tobaccos are native to the
Andes. That was the prime reason for going, and since he was
going. I guess people collected other things, which were accumu
lated in the herbarium. I'm sure that that model intrigued me
to some extent; South America looked very interesting. So, of
course, in time I followed it up.

Just to give an idea of the scope of my field work, this is
the list of counties I recorded: Alameda, Napa, Yolo, Santa
Clara. Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Kings County, Kern
County, Fresno, Tulare, San Bernardino, Kern, Tulare, Mariposa.
Napa, Lake, Sonoma. Colusa. And then with Morrison, in
Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado. Placer, Nevada, Butte. Tehama,
Glenn, and Contra Costa, all in April. In May, Stanislaus,
Tuolomne. Madera. Fresno. San Benito, Alameda. San Francisco
County. San Mateo, San Benito. Then with Morrison, again, in
the latter part of May for three days in San Benito in the
Idriaserpentine region where we climbed all of the larger
eminences — Santa Rita Peak, and others.

Lage :

Is this for the climbing of mountains, or the finding of
flowers?

Constance: No. I never cl imb. mountains just to be climbing. My interest
runs out as soon as the plants do. We were attempting to
retrace the route of William Brewer, who was one of the prime
geologists and also plant collectors in California in connection
with the California Geological Survey of the 1860s.

Lage: Were you comparing what he found with what was still there?

Constance: We were trying to find the places that he had collected things
so as to better reidentify the material. He got into this
really fantastic serpentine area in San Benito County and that's
why we were pursuing it.

In June, I was in Placer County, Nevada County, Yuba,
Sierra, Plumas, Las sen, Madera. In August, in Tuolumne, Mono,
Inyo. Mono, and Alpine. In most of these, my wife was my
companion and also my recording secretary. She had to put up
with a good deal in the way of the general inconveniences of
field work.

In December of 1938, we and my wife's mother and sister
spent the holidays in Victoria. British Columbia.

In 1939, I did considerably less field work. What usually
happened was that I did field work one summer and the next
summer I taught summer school to pay for it. So my field work
was alternately very considerable and rather slight.

Lage: You mentioned Morrison — have we identified Morrison?

Constance: Morrison was another of the graduate students who was here when
I came back. He started working with Jepson and finished his
work with Mason and spent his subsequent career teaching at
Syracuse University.

Lage: And what was his first name?

Constance: John L. Morrison, he's now retired to Occidental, California.
He was very influential in sending graduate students to the
department over the years, a number of them received their
inspiration from him, although he did very little research
himself. He apparently was a very successful teacher and
inspirer of young people who, indeed, might go on.

In 1939, a few events that I can document were the
departure of one of the University of California Botanical
Garden's expeditions to the Andes, of which Morrison was a
member, by the way. In May, I did field work in El Dorado,

Constance: Colusa and Mendocino Counties. In July, in Marin County. That
was also the year of the San Francisco World's Fair. Although I
did not visit it abundantly, we did, indeed, visit it. In
August, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences
held meetings at Stanford. My former student. Reed Rollins,
with a companion graduate student at Harvard. Carlos Munoz from
Chile, visited us in October. 1940 was another year of abundant
field work. Starting in March, I was in Contra Costa County,
San Joaquin. Merced. San Luis Obispo, Kings, western Fresno. In
April, in Alameda. Lake. Marin, Contra Costa, either by myself
or myself and my wife and other botanists.

Lage: Did you have a specific purpose in all this field work, or was

it just learning about the flora of the area?

Constance: It was a combination of both. I would say that in my first two
years at Berkeley I worked full-time at becoming a botanist, at
trying to learn the flora, and learn as much about California as
I could. I published, I went to scientific meetings. Those
were the main activities.

I was also starting to do research on the family
Hydrophyllaceae, on which I worked for a number of years and on
which I became, to some extent I suppose, an authority.

In May, I was in Merced County, and also in Alameda County
and was beginning to get interested in a polyploid complex in
the genus Phacelia, which became the subject of considerable
interest and field work for some years.

In June, with my first Ph,D. graduate student at Berkeley,
Alan Beetle. I did field work in the coastal counties of Mendo
cino and Humboldt. In Eureka, we met with Joseph P. Tracy, who
was a particularly excellent regional botanist. Later I em
barked on a six-week trip to the Pacific Northwest with my wife
and Alan Beetle. We traveled up the Oregon coast to Portland,
east along the Columbia River, where we revisited Pullman and
saw some of our friends there. We went on into Idaho. We
worked in the field by ourselves or picked up such local botan
ists as LeRoy Detling in Oregon and Marion Ownbey at Pullman.

Lage: Were these local, amateur botanists?

Constance: No, they were professionals. Detling was the botanist at

Eugene, and Marion Ownbey was one of my successors at Washington
State. (The herbarium there is now named for him.)

Then we went on, in June, to the meetings of the American
Association for the Advancement of Sciences in Seattle. In
Tacoma I picked up Louis F. Henderson (who had been my first
guide into systematic botany, really) and had the pleasure of

Constance: introducing him to Professor Jepson, who had never met him. So
that was some of the fairly extensive field work, mostly devoted
to the family Hydrophyllaceae, on which I began to publish in
1939 with a series of papers.

Lage: When you say you're studying a large family like this, is there

a particular point you're trying to get out of it?

Constance: Yes, in theory you're trying to understand better the
representation, distribution, and diversification —
physiologically, ecologically, structurally, and perhaps,
reproductively — and to learn as much as you can about it, to try
to organize it more efficiently than it's ever been organized
before. Hopefully, as each family or other group is studied
more and more intensively from various points of view, you hope
that you will put together something that can be used as a kind
of building block in attempting to understand better the whole
evolutionary picture.

I selected the family Hydrophyllaceae, specifically, when I
returned to Berkeley because I wanted to work on a group that
was well-represented in the area so I could study it in the
field, and one that was small enough that you weren't always
frustrated by the fact that some of its key representatives were
in Asia or elsewhere. This turned out to be a happy selection.

Cytological Investigations with Marion Cave;
Developing Additional Information for Taxonomists

Constance: At the same time, I wanted to try to use cytological informa
tion. So I began a survey — really a chromosome number survey
with Marion Cave. Marion Cave was a cytologist who had various
connections from time to time with the University of California
Botanical Garden. Although she was really an expert in three
different fields, she never had a formal university appointment.

Lage: Is there a reason for that?

Constance: Probably for the reason you would suspect. For one, her husband
was a professor of economics at San Francisco State, and the
idea that there should be a woman faculty member in the depart
ment simply had not yet arrived. She was an expert cytologist,
embryologist of the lilies, an expert on fresh-water algae and
also on Hydrophyllaceae. We published together over a series of
years and eventually I summed the work up. [looking at some
papers] In 1950, we published a paper on chromosome numbers in

Constance: the Hydrophyllaceae. She was senior author on all our papers.
As I always said, it was eminently fair because she was doing
all the work.

Lage: How was the work divided?

Constance: Well, the project was my idea. I did the identifications, I

collected material; she counted the chromosomes and made camera
lucida drawings; I wrote the papers.

Lage: Now, when you would write the papers, would she review them, or

was there mutual input?

Constance: She certainly reviewed the specifics of the proper stage of cell
division, but I was responsible for the identification and any
interpretations; in other words, she said, "You write the
papers." So from my standpoint, it was a very happy relation
ship, and I think she was happy with it, too.

A few of my colleagues looked a little askance at the fact
that I was junior author; but, as I may have said before, I
found that being junior author was a very fine position to be in
because the people who knew nothing about it assumed that you
probably did all the work.

I think that in all the joint authorships in which I have
been involved that there usually was a pretty fair division of
labor.

Lage: Did you and Marion ever discuss women in botany at the

University?

Constance: Not really, although I knew she felt strongly about it,
understandably.

Lage: What did it have to do with her husband being a professor in

economics at San Francisco?

Constance: Nothing, particularly, except the general assumption was that
since she had a husband with a good job — why did she need one
too? After all, the department gave her a place to work. I'm
sure you've heard some of this before. It wasn't very overt,
but it probably was rather characteristic of masculine thinking
of the time, I suppose.

At all events, that was what I was working on mostly. I
started really with the genus Nemophila — the baby blue-eyes,
which most people know by the common name, and moved on to other
genera, and eventually got into the Phacelia, which is the major

Constance: genus. I eventually wrote up the family for[LeRoy] Abrams's
Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States. I've done a little
work with it since, but not very much.

Lage: Was using the cytological information something new at Berkeley

or overall?

Constance: This topic, I suppose, is possibly of general interest. Cyto
logy is a pretty broad field, and today's cytologists would
scarcely think of this as cytology. But the fact that plants
have different chromosome numbers really turned up in the tens
and twenties of the twentieth century. It wasn't until about
1930 that there was any real attempt to put classification and
chromosome number together. One of the pioneers in it was
actually Professor Goodspeed in his work with Nicotiana, and
Edgar Anderson at the Missouri Botanical Garden was very much
interested in it. But most taxonomists and most cytologists
went their own ways and were largely isolated from each other.
The early cytologists who were interested in chromosome number
would go out into the botanical garden and look at the labels on
the plants, from which they took materials. If they got a
chromosome count, they would report it without any real documen
tation. And since material in botanical gardens is notoriously
unreliably identified, a lot of the counts could not be veri
fied — some of them are clearly wrong. So actually, all of those
before about 1930 are suspect.

Some interesting things were found: the discovery that
some plants carried a double set of chromosomes (which indicated
that they were derived by hybridization and so on from two
different species) — the classic example is Primula kewensis.
But in general, there was no close correlation. When I started
working on Nemophila, I originally got into the chromosome-
number thing because the most striking species — the baby blue-
eyes — is extraordinarily diverse in color and color pattern. I
had heard about polyploid complexes, and I thought this might
indeed be one.

Lage: Do you want to define that term?

Constance: A polyploid complex is a series of closely related things with
different chromosome numbers, some of which are usually
multiples of others. This has not only the value for classifi
cation in that it differentiates different populations because
they have different numbers; but if you have a species, let's
say, with a basic number of nine, another one with eight, and
some others with seventeen, there's at least a strong supposi
tion that there may have been some progenitor-descendent

Constance: relationship. And you get into autoploids and aneuploids and so
on; you can get a very complicated structure which may or may
not help to explain what has gone on in an evolutionary way.

I got interested in this, and I don't know that I would
call myself a pioneer, but by and large, the tazonomists ignored
this sort of thing and the cytologists didn't know enough about
taxonomy to know how to apply it intelligently. In the sense of
trying to put the two together, I think I probably made some
contribution. I went out of my way to try to publicize this, in
a way. I adopted the policy of. after publishing pictures of
the chromosomes, making duplicates of these and distributing
them with the appropriate specimens. I know for a fact that a
number of my taxonomic colleagues around the country threw the
pictures in the wastebasket because they didn't think this
cytological information was appropriate for a herbarium. Now. I
don't think anybody would discard it.

Lage: So is it part of a catalog of the herbarium now?

Constance: It's very likely to be — it's usually indicated on the label.
But then it was not a common practice, as it is now.

Lage: Was is even a little offensive to some of your colleagues?

Constance: I assume so.

Lage: It's interesting how disciplines develop certain prejudices.

Constance: That's right. But the general reaction to anything new, of

course, is likely to be negative. Mostly. I think, the reaction
was more one of amazement than anything else: Why would anybody
go to all this trouble? But I think it helped to popularize the
approach, and in that sense it was at least missionary work.
Probably the easiest way to make a reputation is to bring in
something from one field and inject it into another. You don't
have to exert much cerebral energy. At any rate, it worked out
that way.

Early Work on Umbelliferae with Mildred Mathias*

Constance: About 1940. I began working with Dr. Mildred Mathias on

Umbelliferae, which was the second of my coauthorship ventures
with a distinguished lady botanist. The way this came about was
as follows. When I was at Washington State, I did a lot of
collecting. As I did later in California, I tried to learn as

*See Mildred E. Mathias, Among the Plants of the Earth, an
oral history conducted by Mary Terrall in 1978 and 1979,
Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles,

Constance: much as I could about the flora by identifying material and

trying to get in touch with specialists elsewhere who might be
able to second-guess my identifications. In that way, I made a
large number of interesting associations.

One of the groups that was particularly well represented in
the area in Idaho and eastern Washington where I did field work
was the family Umbellif erae or Apiaceae which I usually refer to
as "the parsleys" and which Dr. Mathias always called "the
carrots." It is a group with very inconspicuous flowers, most
of which look very much alike, and common wisdom is they all
look alike, which of course isn't true. It's like saying all
members of a family look just alike and probably is not true to
the view of people in the family, shall we say. Most of their
classification is based on the fruits, and in fact that has been
the emphasis for the several hundred years that people have been
classifying them.

One of the groups that I had particular trouble with was
this family. I had heard that there was a lady botanist some
where, who had taken her degree at the Missouri Botanical
Garden, who was an expert in the group. I never could find out
where she was because every time I heard she was somewhere, I
learned that she was not there but had gone somewhere else. Her
husband, a physicist, had moved from institution to institution,
and she went along. When I came back to Berkeley, I discovered
that she was here working in the herbarium. She was working on
the revision of the genus Lomatium, which is —

Lage: Is this part of the family?

Constance: This is part of the family. It's the largest western American
genus of the family. This was being done as part of a fest
schrift for the botanist Jesse M. Greenman, who was her major
professor at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. In the
course of this study, she had to learn a good deal about the
geography of the western United States, which was unfamiliar to
her and, by and large, fairly familiar to me. So I kibitzed.
At the same time, I was still carrying around with me a hundred
or so specimens of Umbelliferae, which I had collected and on
which I was hoping to get expert advice. So we put the two
things together; she was impressed by the fact that I had
actually identified some of them correctly, which was unusual.

Lage: It must be a difficult family.

Constance: It's supposed to be, which makes it particularly nice because
most everybody leaves it alone. At all events, that was the
beginning of the association.

Constance :

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Then, about 1940 — maybe a little earlier — she came in one day
and said. "KJerald and I have decided we're going to have a
family, and I'm going to give up the Umbellif erae, and I want
you to take them over." I said. 'Veil, I'll have to think about
this for a while."

You already had a plant family.

I already had a plant family. At any rate, I countered the
proposal — that I would work with her until she had completed all
of the commitments she had made, and she had made plenty. She
was supposed to "do" the family Umbellif erae for Abrams's Illus
trated Flora of the Pacific States, for Mnrth American Flora.
which is published by the New York Botanical Garden, (which
includes all of North America including Mexico), Flora of
Arizona, and I believe some others.

Well, once you've done the North American, would the others just
be spin-offs, or would they go into more detail?

To some extent. In this business of specializing, you keep
repeating yourself; there's no question about it. On the other
hand, every time you do a regional or area! or local thing* you
usually try to go beyond what you did before. You're constantly
adding to, revising, subtracting from, and so on, so it isn't a
simple repetition; you have to reevaluate the whole thing every
time around.

Isn't this a giant family? How many different genera and
soecies would vou be runnina into?

XOLl U Lil-LO a. g,XO.UU 0. OLAU J-L.y • I.

species would you be running

It's terribly hard to say. Customarily, the estimates are
something like three thousand species, maybe three hundred
genera. The family is one of those which is a so-called
"natural" family. It was perhaps the first family of flowering
plants recognized as having been something of a unit, a recog
nition which goes clear back to the fifteenth or sixteenth
centuries. It was the first family to be monographed, by the
English botanist, Robert Morison, I can't think of the dates
offhand, but let's say it was in the seventeenth century [1620-
1683].

Members of the family have a very strong family resemblance.
You said it was a "natural" family.

That's right. Another example is the Compositae — the sunflower
family — also the Leguminoseae, or pea family. There is such a
strong family resemblance that the genera are founded on what
would seem to be rather trivial characteristics otherwise. And
as a result, you have the kind of general law that the more

Constance: "natural" the family, the more artificial the genera; therefore,
trying to say how many genera there are is almost futile. It's
very much a matter of opinion, and sometimes the next new entity
discovered torpedoes two or three established genera. The
figure of something like three hundred genera is just a figure
from the air, so to speak.

We did start to work in this way and our work — the early
stages of it — really culminated in the treatment for North
American Flora, which was a fairly major job. Actually, we
completed that in 1943 or 1944, while I was in Washington and
Mildred was in Binghamton. New York.

Constance: This is the treatment in North American Flora, volume 28b, of
which Dr. Mathias and I did the Umbellif erae.

Lage : Is this entire volume devoted to Umbellif erae?

Constance: It has a few other items in it. It also has the family

Araliaceae and the family Cornaceae, and a few others. We did
not do those. Then there was an extensive bibliography. But it
runs to four or five hundred pages.

Lage: So that was quite a major bit of work.

Constance: Well, it's something over two hundred pages long [looks at

volume] — pages forty-three to 295, which, I suppose, one would
call a book-length monograph.

Lage: How did the joint authorship work with Dr. Mathias?

Constance: It worked very well. We started working together here, and then
her husband went to Binghamton, New York, in the early stages of
the war. I worked here, and she worked there, and we shipped
stuff back and forth. Then, later, in 1943, I went to Washington
for a couple of years, and she was in New York part of the time.
We were not in the same place again for over a number of years,
but we had worked together long enough that we knew each other's
way of going at it. We found that one of us could start some
thing and work on it awhile and send it to the other one; the
other one could pick it up, modify it, and send it back. It
worked out very well. It says something about the turn of mind
that we were very compatible and were able to do this and con
tinue doing it for some forty years, thereabouts. So we were
the co-experts, so to speak, on the family and pretty well
monopolized anything that was done on it in the New World. We
really started publishing together, I believe, in 1940 and
continued for thirty-five to forty years.

Prewar Trips

Constance:

Lage:

Let's see if I can bring us up to my departure for Washington.
D.C. In 1942, the botanists were meeting with the AAAS
[American Association for the Advancement of Sciences] in
Philadelphia. I had never been East, and had been waiting for
an opportunity to visit the principal botanical establishments.
The AAAS meeting seemed to be the appropriate occasion. I
stopped first in Chicago to see Edward Ullman, who had been my
friend at Pullman and who was completing his doctorate there in
geography. I visited his family, and I caught the flu and spent
a week in bed, which slowed things up a little. Then I went on
to Harvard, where Rollins was going to meet me; but since I had
been put to bed for a week, he had had to go on home to Wyoming,
and some of his friends stepped in and took me over. Then we
went to the meetings in Philadelphia. Afterward I went to the
New York Botanical Garden, which is one of the big institutions
in my field, and then on to Washington, meeting the leading
botanists along the way and renewing acquaintances with others I
had met before. In Washington I stayed with Jack Clark, who had
been one of my field companions at Pullman. I met, pretty much,
my peers across the board, most of the important people in my
field. In most cases, I continued the relations by visit and by
correspondence. It was quite a valuable experience.

Was this standard in your field, that people would have a great
circle of acquaintances?

Constance: Not necesssarily. I liked it, I found it very fascinating.

One of the botanists I met in Washington was Ellsworth
Killip. quite an interesting chap. He was quite a good botan
ist. He had collected in both North and South America when it
was quite the thing to do. His principal problem was that he a
bit of an alcoholic, but he was fun to see at meetings if you
didn't see too much of him, shall we say.

Lage: Is this why he's on the page [in the photo album] with the

champagne glass?

Constance: I think probably. Well, he was on good terms with Goodspeed and
also with Charles B. Lipman. who was then dean of the graduate
division at Berkeley. He [Killip] always wanted to go on
parties. So far as I could discover, at any party he went on,
he got sadder and sadder as the evening went along: and when he
came out to Berkeley, I think he had hosted Lipman often, Lipman
wanted to do something in return.

Constance: So we picked up different people to provide a party for Killip —
A. R, Davis, Francis MacBride, who was with the Chicago Field
Museum, Dennis Hoagland, and Charles Lipman. Francis Drouet and
Don Richards were also from the Chicago Museum; they were, to
some extent, friends of Lipman's.

Lipman was a very interesting character. He was a very
good dean of the graduate division. He was something less than
the world's greatest scientist, I think. He got interested in
the presence of live bacteria, presumably in meteorites and
anthracite coal and so on. He was quite convinced that these
were semi-immortal organisms which had been there all the time,
happily ticking away. Most people, I think, felt that the
chances of contamination were considerably greater than the
chances that these were really indigenous. But, at any rate, he
went back to places like the Smithsonian and the Field Museum —
probably when he was on official jaunts — and looked over their
old collections to see if he could culture bacteria. We got
acquainted with some of these people. I remember on one occa
sion I took them over to the City to meet Izzie Gomez — did you
ever hear of Izzie Gomez?

Lage: No.

Constance: Well, Izzie Gomez was the King of Little Bohemia — one of the

last of the Barbary Coast. He was a big, fat Portuguese with a
broad hat, which he never removed. And what was it? — a Grappa
punch, or something, which must have be r. pretty awful. But
Gomez was kind of fun, you know.

Coming from a place like Pullman, we found it terribly
exciting to have access to San Francisco. I'm sure I spent more
time in San Francisco in those days than I ever have since.

In May of 1942, Reed Rollins, who was on the faculty at
Stanford, and I made a field trip together of several weeks into
northwestern California and adjacent Oregon. Reed was working
on the genus Ajj^is. on which he became the expert. I was still
mostly interested in Hydrophyllaceae. We took an old Dodge car
that belonged to Stanford University, and we had a wonderful
trip. We camped out and got rained on fairly consistently, but
we discovered some items which had never been collected before.
One item we were particularly interested in we found exactly
forty years after it had first been collected, and it had not
been collected since. We had an absolutely wonderful time, and
we decided we would do this every year. We never did it again.

Then in August of that year I made a trip with Milo S.
Baker, who was the botanist at Santa Rosa Junior College, and
that was the last trip before the war.

VI WARTIME SERVICE

Geobotanist for the OSS

Constance: Here's a picture of the department in 1942 as it was beginning

to break up for the war. Davis had a reserve commission — he was
the chairman. He went down to San Diego and in this picture he
was a major in coast artillery at Camp Cullan in San Diego.

Emerson taught physics for a while and then went to Salinas
and worked in the Guayule program. I stayed around for a while.
The university seemed, at first, to tell us that it wanted us to
stay on the job, and then we gradually became an embarrassment.
I tried to get into the navy, but I was turned down on eyesight
twice. By that time I decided, okay, they've got a Selective
Service that's supposed to tell you what to do, so I'll wait
until they tell me.

Our son was born on December 6, 1942. I wrote a little
poem and printed it and sent it out. [reading] "Santa CLaus
came to Berkeley, preceded by the stork, which made our Christ
mas letters as scarce as eggs or pork. These greatly bedazzled
parents, unused to baby things, hadn't time to notice the days
were taking wings. Better late than never, to send out New
Tear's wishes, so may your 1943 turn out a much happier year
than this is." I didn't really fancy myself as a poet, but it
was kind of cute and fun. I printed it myself, too; we had a
little hand-press. Here he is with his maternal grandmother and
his mother.

I was waiting until something called, and I got a call from
my friend Ed Ullman in Washington. D.C., asking if I would like
to come back and work for the OSS [Office of Strategic Ser
vices], which I'd never heard of. He said they often had quest
ions involving biology in one way or another, and they didn't
have any biologists. The OSS was populated at various times by

Constance: waves of historians, economists, geographers, or whatever. He

said that what they really wanted was somebody who was, I guess,
bright and adaptable. Whether that represented me or not, I
don't know. But at any rate, they really didn't know what to do
with me because I' didn't fit into any classification. So I was
appointed geobotanist, research analyst, and editor — the govern
ment's first geobotanist, I think.

Lage: This put you in the military service?

Constance: No, I was a civilian. The OSS was created outside the military
service. It was the forerunner of the CIA. Both the army and
navy had used their intelligence branches as dumping grounds
between wars. So President Roosevelt called on General Donovan
to set up a really quasi-independent intelligence outfit.
That's where I was, and I couldn't tell you now the way it was
all set up, but there were regional divisions, and there were
subject-matter divisions, I think. At any rate, I was in the
Research and Analysis Branch of the Euro-African Division.

Lage: What were you supposed to be doing?

Constance: Our job was supposedly to prepare background material ostensibly
for the use of our invading forces. We tried to find out all we
could find out about Sicily, and North Africa, and Normandy, and
so on.

Lage: Did this involve travel?

Constance: Some people went overseas, but by and large almost all were
working from published materials of one sort or another, or
somebody's confidential reports. It was an erratic kind of
thing; you wouldn't do anything for days, and then would work
all night for three nights in a row. I was pretty cynical about
most of it. I was there, it was my job. okay, and you do the
best you can.

There were a lot of young graduate students who came down
with their professors. Some of their professors had reserve
commissions, and they went from being professors to colonels and
so on. A lot of them were impossible. One of my bosses was
Preston James, who was a professor of geography at Michigan.
Another was Richard Hartshorne, who was a professor of geography
at the University of Minnesota. My friend Ullman was a geo
grapher, so I really came in with a geographer wave. Another
boss was Sherman Kent from the Marin County family of Kents. He
was a history professor at Yale, but he stayed in the outfit.

At any rate, I got a letter from Ullman asking me if I
would be interested in this. As I said, I was getting
increasingly embarrassed to be here, alive and not in uniform,

Constance: and I expected I would be drafted most anytime. I never was

drafted. The OSS had the authority to ask for draft waivers for
certain people, but I was just at the upper edge — I think I was
thirty-four, and obviously I wouldn't be much good as a private.
So I was always be'ing put up for —

Lage: They didn't ask for a waiver?

Constance: Oh, yes. They had put me on the list to ask for a draft defer
ral. But what would happen is that, all of a sudden, somebody
ten years younger than I, who was somebody's favorite graduate
student, was endangered, so they'd put him ahead on the list and
move me down. So I spent all my time sort of going back and
forth. I didn't pay much attention to it. I told myself I
didn't give a damn. It was in the hands of Selective Service,
and they could worry about it.

Here's a picture of one group, which gives you an idea — you
see, these people are mostly military. My boss. Preston James,
had moved me up and down and back and forth, and he came in one
day and said, "I've recommended you for commissioning" — it was
either for commissioning or for exemption, I'm not sure now.
And he said, "You're going to have to go before a board." So I
went before the board, and James said. "I've got to have you, so
get in there." So. I went in and met with this group of majors
and colonels and so on; they were all military people, half a
dozen of them. The first thing I was asked was essentially,
"Can you tell us why the war effort would come to a stop if you
were drafted?" I said, "No. I can't think of any reason why it
should." And that apparently waa not the thing to say.

The officer cleared his throat and said. "You mean you
could do what you're doing now just as well in uniform?" I
said. "Well. I'd sacrifice a little independence. I probably
couldn't talk back to the major as freely as I can now, but I
don't think it would make any particular difference." And this
went on for some time and finally they excused me. I came out.
and James buzzed around saying. "How'd you come out?" I said.
"If you think you're going to get me deferred, it's probably up
to you. I don't think I did anything to help you." Well,
apparently, this was such an unusual stance that I was deferred.

Lage: They probably thought you were slightly crazy.

Constance: They must have, and I think probably they were right. But I
became essentially a wandering editor. I had had more exper
ience writing than a lot of these young people. Some of these
people were — a lot of their work was just terribly naive. These
kids would get hold of an article in the encyclopedia and spend

Constance: a week getting down a half-page statement about something. In
the early days at the OSS they used to get retired YMCA
secretaries, or other people who had had experience in China, or
wherever. It turned out that a lot of the experts — people who
were really very good in their subject — were not much good at
doing the sort of .thing that we had to do.

Joint Intelligence Study Publishing Board

Constance: At any rate, as the war went on, it was pretty clear that the

Europe- Africa division's days were numbered. So Preston James,
now a colonel, called me in and said, "I think my opposite
number in the Latin-American section is going to ask for you and
I'm afraid that he's got more priority right now than I have."
I said. "Well, I've been invited to go over to something called
the Joint Intelligence Study Publishing Board," which was a
multi-service thing — army intelligence, naval intelligence, the
OSS, and I don't remember what else. The job there was to put
together almost a symposium on a particular area. The military
added things that were out of our province. But we'd do things
on the climate, the geography, the crops, people, all sorts of
things. Some of them would be done by these different
intelligence groups, and some we would do. Our job was to put
them all together.

Lage: And then who would they be used by?

Constance: The assumption was that they were going to be used by the people
who went into the area. What it turned out was that basically
they were used by the people who went into military government,
if at all. We published what were called the JANIS reports.
They were kind of fun because we had the services of the army
map division. and it was like publishing a book, really. That
was pretty good. I remember working with a geographer
(actually, he was originally from Berkeley) — whom I had not
known before. We were trying to describe Borneo. I remember I
came up with a phrase, something about a peripheral inhabited
zone versus a primeval interior, or something of that sort. It
was rather interesting. Those were the better parts of it, I
think.

Lage: Did your family join you there?

Constance: I went in February 1943. Since my son was born on 6 December
1942, that was one day from making me a legitimate father, you
see, for Selective Service purposes. So far as Selective

Constance: Service was concerned, I was childless; if my son had been born
on the first of December or earlier. I would have been
considered a legitimate father; but I wasn't — this didn't count.

Well, my wife took our son to her mother's place in
Portland, Oregon, and stayed there, She decided that this might
go on forever, who knows. So she decided to come back and join
me — she came to Washington in November, 1943. These are pic
tures of our son in Portland. When she arrived, he was about as
big as she was. They came clear across the country by train — a
miserable jaunt. But at any rate she arrived in November;
meanwhile. I had rented an apartment in Parkfairfax. which was
Metropolitain Life's very fancy community in suburban
Alexandria. I remember that Richard Nixon lived a few blocks
from us; we didn't know it. It was mostly young military and
civilian families. They used to say of the development next
door, Fairlington, that everything was pregnant, including the
dogs. Fairlington was a similar community, although Parkfairfax
was probably the more elegant. It was just at that stage when
everybody had children, which made it kind of nice, in a way.

We were out on the edge of Alexandria. The transportation
was pretty horrible. There were buses, and sometimes they'd get
there, and frequently they didn't.

Two of our best friends were Olga and Tom Lynch. Olga was
a truant officer in New Jersey — I'm not sure where. [indicating
on photograph] That's their daughter. And she [Olga] was, shall
we say, streetwise; Sally, my wife, was pretty naive and Olga
looked after her. Sally was very meticulous about looking after
our son, Bill.

The way the thing was set up, you had all these kids and
all these buildings, and the mothers usually became desperate,
so they dumped them out in the middle. You know, it was like a
scene from a mob in Iran, I would think.

Lage: Did they have playgrounds in there?

Constance: It wasn't developed, really. No, they just went tearing around
crying Indian, scalping each other, and whatever.

Lage: Having a lot of fun, probably.

Constance: Oh, a lot of fun. but only if your nerves were good enough to
take it. Our other close friends, who lived some little
distance from us were Kurt Stone, who was a geographer and has
just retired from the University of Georgia, and his wife — they
were our closest friends.

Constance:

Lage:

Constance ;

Transportation was difficult, and there were shortages. I
remember one classical incident. The pediatrician said our son
ought to have some fruit juice. You know, we were getting
things with red stickers — rationing. I had to do the shopping
in Washington, D.C., after the work day was over — mostly in the
colored section, because that's where my office located most of
the time. I finally found a can of pineapple juice for which I
paid some exorbitant sum in cash and ration points. I got it
home and opened it, didn't pay much attention, and discovered
our son was pouring it down the sink because he had never had
any before and didn't know what it was.

Life was fairly rigorous, but it was not bad considering it
was wartime. There were a lot of minor privations, et cetera,
but I'm sure there were everywhere. We took one trip down to
Williamsburg with a colleague of mine who was an English
professor at Columbia.

The whole group sounds like a group of professors,
uate students.

if not grad-

Lage:

We were, mostly. The OSS was largely inhabited by such,
[indicating on more photographs] This was the Joint Intelligence
Study Publishing Board that I was on. Part of it was under the
Joint Chiefs of Staff — I had forgotten that.

Peveril Meigs was a California doctorate in geography, whom
I had not known before. Stuart Sharpe was an expert on shore
erosion. Ed Ullman was really the senior member. We had a
colonel in charge, but the colonel just turned it over to him.
The colonel's sole aim in life was getting there early and
getting his name on the roster (we had to sign a roster every
day). If anybody got there before the colonel, the colonel very
carefully signed above it. Then he'd go out to breakfast and
wouldn't be heard from again until after noon; about then, he
started figuring out how to get home with the least difficulty.
This chap was another geographer from Pennsylvania. Louis Quam
was a geographer from Colorado; he became an official of the
Arctic Institute. Wally Werble was a very interesting chap. He
ran a little pharmacy trade newspaper in Washington. He was a
sergeant and everybody else in the place was at least a lieuten
ant. He was probably the most capable of the bunch, and I think
that probably everybody would have agreed. These were pictures
taken at various times. This chap, Grant, was sent over from
whatever the British equivalent of the OSS was — there were two
of them who came over. I made some very good friends there.
One of my particular friends was Thomas Chubb, who was a Yale
graduate, a gentleman yachtsman.

Were these people you kept in touch with?

Constance: Well, most of them have died, unfortunately. But a number of
them I did keep in touch with for some time. In fact, a few
years later I went out briefly and visited what had been the OSS
and by that time, I think, was IRIS. The chap who had been one
of my bosses, Dan 'Clinton asked if he could get me to come back.
I thought, "Does he have rocks in his head?" [laughter]

But it was a congenial group and I really enjoyed it. And
it was fairly intelligent work because at least you were doing
some writing and trying to organize things.

Lage: Did any of this kind of work carry over or make it easier for

you to write later? Did you learn things about writing, or did
you already take that with you?

Constance: I'm sure I learned some things about writing. One of the things
I learned there was that if you did anything for the military,
you wrote it in a series of progressive summaries because,
presumably, the thing went to a general; the general tore it
into three pieces, gave it to three colonels; the colonels tore
their parts into pieces and gave them to majors, and they tore
them up and gave them to captains and so on. So you had to have
a summary at each step. That was probably good practice. Stuff
that went to General MacArthur — he insisted it had to be com
pletely rewritten, I think, or it was rejected outright. And of
course, there's the usual story that before some invasion some
where, an army general looks at these documents and says. "Isn't
this marvelous? Here's all the stuff that we needed to know.
Too bad we can't use it — it's done by the navy." [laughter]
Whether that's true or not. it's good apocryphal stuff — there
was some of that involved, certainly. To some extent. I think,
we avoided that because we involved all the services.

One of the things we used to do was trace the coastline.
We did that by looking in the ifydrographic Office manuals; they
take you from point to point to point. Most of these things
were done by WAVES. Unfortunately, every so often they'd get
going in the wrong direction. I remember we did the coast of
China up one way and back down the other until we found one that
matched. But it was still interesting work and fairly
respectable.

The other thing I did — before my wife came, at least — was
to go and work nights at the Smithsonian Institution on botany.
So I got acquainted there, and I got quite a little work done.
I did some little botanical work while I was back there. At any
rate. I was there until the fall of 1945, and then we left as
soon as possible and drove back across the country and resumed
life in Berkeley.

VII POST-WAR YEARS AT BERKELEY AND HARVARD
A Call from Harvard

Lage :

Constance:

Lage: What kinds of changes did you see at the University after the

war?

Constance: By the summer and early fall of 1945, the war was coming to an

end, and a number of my colleagues in these agencies were trying
to see how they could stay on in Washington, and I was trying to
see how quickly I could get out and get back home. I remember
receiving a letter from my departmental chairman saying that I
had been promoted to associate professor while I was away and
that he hoped my salary would reach the four- thousand-dollar
figure by the time I got back. It didn't quite —

How did that salary compare with other universities?

I don't think I know. I would suspect it was probably about par
for the course. Berkeley salaries have usually been pretty well
comparable. At any rate, I was invited to return, and we drove
back across the country as quickly as reasonably possible.

Lage: That means that you were promoted to tenure status while you

were away —

Constance: That's right.

Lage: — so this kind of decision- making was going on —

Constance: I was also fired, as I think I told you earlier.

Lage: And you never knew it. [laughs]

Constance: I never knew it. So the promotion came as less of a surprise
than it night have otherwise. Well, coming back was a great
joy, of course. But the University was suddenly inundated by
returning service people and others. It was a very stimulating

Constance: period because the returning students were very serious,

somewhat senior, and many of them extremely talented. When I
came back, I continued to teach the first half of the beginning
botany course, and I remember that at least one year — I think
probably the first, one — I had four former majors as teaching
assistants. And since I came very close to being a private
myself, this was a fairly heady experience.

I don't remember any great change in affairs. I came back
in '45. I guess the most novel thing that came along, so
far as I can recall, was that late in 1946 I received a letter
from Harvard saying that I was being considered for a position,
and they would like to invite me to come back to the American
Association for the Advancement of Sciences meetings and then
stay a week to be interviewed.

For some reason, I seemed to have felt particularly harried
at the time. And I was so glad to be back in California that I
couldn't think of anything that would induce me to return to the
East Coast for any length of time. I wrote back and said I
appreciated the honor greatly, but I didn't think I would be
interested, and I didn't think it would be proper to take the
offered expense money since that was the case. Almost
immediately, I got back a telegram saying "We need your advice —
no obligation involved." As a westerner who had only once
visited Harvard and the East Coast, the invitation to go back
and give advice, of course, was an overwhelming inducement. So
I did accept the invitation. I persuaded my colleague. Herbert
Mason, who was very leery of eastern entanglements, to go back
with me. I stayed the additional week and was pretty thoroughly
interviewed.

Lage : Was this just a subterfuge, their needing your advice?

Constance: No. The situation with Harvard was rather an interesting one.

They had some eleven botanical institutions, and Harvard has the
philosophy which is commonly phrased as "Every tub on its own
bottom." They [the separate institutions] had as little to do
with each other as possible; thus, the botanical institutions
distanced themselves as far as possible from instruction in
biology, although most of the senior figures taught a course
under the general biology rubric from time to time. But the
senior figures in charge of the two principal botanical
institutions, which were the Gray Herbarium and the Arnold
Arboretum, respectively, were at the point of retirement.
Actually, Dr. Fernald of the Gray Herbarium had already retired
and Elmer D. Merrill, who had once been dean of the College of
Agriculture at Berkeley, was supposed to retire the next year.
Harvard's central adminstration had decided that there should be

Constance: a thorough reexamination of the situation before new

appointments were made. So a Harvard group of botanists and
biologists had independently started studying the matter
themselves. The chair, really, of this enterprise was Irving
Bailey, who was a -very distinguished wood anatomist.

The administration learned of the existence of such a
report and essentially ordered it to be produced. The wheels
were set in motion for a fairly extensive reorganization. This
coincided with the efforts, naturally enough, of the younger
people in the different institutions concerned to succeed to the
position of those who were retiring. As a result. Bailey and
others who were involved in this effort, found that they got
very conflicting advice, which was very much intermixed with
individual goals. They really did feel the need of someone from
outside, who was not personally concerned, to look at the
situation. The fact that I was not personally interested in it
made me seem unusually useful as a source.

Lage : They were probably even more glad to have you after they got

that letter saying you simply weren't interested.

Constance: If I had really wanted to be considered, that was the best way

to be considered, though I had not intended it that way. At all
events, I fell in love with Bailey, who was one of the finest
people I've ever had any professional association with, and
really my only regret in not staying. I think, was that I had
to disappoint him.

I talked to him and others — everybody went out of their way
to be nice to me. I talked a few times to students and others.
Pretty obviously, the velvet carpet was being unrolled. At any
rate, when it was about time to leave, I had a discussion with
Bailey, and I remember him saying. "Well, there are really three
choices." In the first place, he hoped that I would join them.
He suspected that I had some reservations about this. The
second one was that I would decline. The third was that I might
be willing, if it could be worked out with the Berkeley
authorities, to spend some time really helping them make an
appointment to the position if I declined it, and in general,
advising them on the whole business. They wanted to set up a
committee, which they wanted to have me on. It would really
have to do with planning the governance and organization of the
different botanical establishments.

At all events, I did come back to Berkeley, and I did go to
my chairman, A. R. Davis. Before I had gone to Harvard, he
asked me just one thing — not to make a decision until I
returned. So I frankly more or less forgot about it until I ran
into him in the hall one day. He asked me if I had made the

Constance: decision, and I said, "I've already declined, and I forgot to

tell you." But Harvard asked if I would come back for a year as
a visiting lecturer, as it turned out. I told him this, and he
supported me. He went to Provost Deutsch for approval, and
Deutsch was dubious.

Lage: Was this unusual to get leave to go to another university?

Constance: I really don't know. I was too unsophisticated in university
ways to know. At any rate. Provost Deutsch was very skeptical
about it. He said, "I think they're just trying to get him back
there so they can work on him." And Davis said, "Okay, probably
true." But he said, "I think that if he goes, he will come
back, and if he doesn't, that's too bad. But I think he would
always resent it, feeling that he had been denied an opportunity,
whereas if he goes and does come back, then I think he'll be
quite content, and everybody will be happy." At all events,
Deutsch did agree to that, and I did go.

Lage: Do you think you would have felt some resentment if they hadn't

agreed to it; would it have changed your perception or your
feeling about being at Berkeley?

Constance: It's hard to say. My feeling about Berkeley always was that I

was better treated than I deserved to be. When I did tell Davis
that I had turned the thing down, he said. "I will see that you
never regret it." I said, "Well, I'd like you to know that I
made my decision on the treatment I have already received and
not on anything I was expecting to gain." One of the things
that depressed me about Harvard was that I observed that the
latest person to arrive always got the best deal. And one of
the reasons I was not particularly attracted to it was that
there were people on the Harvard faculty whom I thought were
considerably more deserving than I, who were still at the assis
tant or associate professor level. They were perfectly willing
to offer me a full professorship. I didn't think that that's
the way you want to play the ball game.

At all events, I don't know how I would have felt. I did
go, and it turned out to be a quite fascinating year in many
ways.

Observations of Harvard. 19A7-1948

Constance: I was asked if I could get there by the first of July, so we

drove across the country again. We had an old car which we had
driven West from Washington in 1945, and there was no way you
could get a new car at that time without getting it on the

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Constance: black market, so we drove back East again. We expected it would
collapse part way there, but it didn't. So we sper.t a little
time visiting the Pennsylvania-Dutch country, which my wife's
family had come from.

We got to Cambridge about the first of July, and I had beer,
told about a committee that was operating to administer things;
but it turned out that of the members. Albert C. Smith was in
Fiji doing field work, Ivan Johnston was at the Harvard Forest
teaching a summer class, so I was the only taxonomist in town.
Bailey immediately took me out and put me in charge of the Gray
Herbarium, which produced all sorts of agony on the part of
various people who were hoping to succeed to the directorship.

Lage: Had that not been part of the agreement before you went back

there?

Not with me; it was news to me. But I was there; I was at their
service. That's what they wanted me to do.

Did that need some reorganizing, itself?

Well, it needed somebody to manage it, I discovered that my
prime duty was to convince the former director, Professor
Fernald, that he had indeed retired because, as Bailey said, he
had been running the place to his own advantage for the last
twenty-five years, and Merrill had been doing the same thing at
the Arnold Arboretum. All the younger people were standing
around waiting their turn. So it was a little difficult to
reorganize things peacefully. Basically, I didn't do much
reorganization. My job was mostly to keep it running.

But it was a very interesting experience because I was the
man from Mars, so to speak. By this time, I knew all the
characters, and there were some very fine people. But there was
considerable emotional upset on their part as the picture was
changing, and they wondered where they were going to fit into
all this

At the same time, I was very much interested in observing
another university up close. I remember remarking, rather
naively, to someone at a luncheon, I guess, that I really didn't
understand how the Harvard budget system worked. After having
put in one budget, I think, everybody laughed at me — they said
they'd been doing it for years, and they didn't understand it
either. [laughter] It was quite an education, all the way
around.

Lage: Were there a lot of contrasts with the way Berkeley worked?

Constance: More similarities than differences, I think. A private univer
sity certainly has differences. A university with the kinds of
traditions Harvard has probably has even more. The alumni have
a much stronger voice in things. I was there when Conant was
president. One of things I found particularly interesting is
that I was asked if I would serve on a couple of appointment
committees. Bailey said I might find it interesting, and "the
fact that you're here and Harvard wouldn't have to pay your
expenses would be a very strong inducement." So I served on a
committee to appoint the director for the Farlow Herbarium,
which was the mycology, fungus herbarium. And I served on the
committee which would appoint a director of the Gray Herbarium.
The appointee was Reed Rollins.

Lage: Had he been a professor there at the time?

Constance: He was a professor at Stanford then. He had been a graduate

student at Harvard and a university fellow, but he was then at
Stanford. That was very interesting. Conant served on both of
those committees. That was something different from Berkeley
because here the administration does not appear on appointment
committees, so far as I'm aware.

Lage: Did he take a dominant role?

Constance: He took the role of devil's advocate, and since I was one of two
outside people, I got in an argument with him first with the
mycology appointment because he started saying. "Vhy don't we
just forget about the Farlow Herbarium and get the greatest
mycologist in the country?" And I said. "Well that's fine in
theory, but you have a major institution that's got to be pro
vided with leadership, and I don't see much point in worrying
about the greatest mycologist in the country if he isn't capable
of running the institution." Conant didn't particularly like
this, but he did go along with the appointment we proposed.

When we got to the Rollins committee — this sounds a little
like Marcos in the Philippines — they had to present a brief on
the candidate. I think I wrote the brief for the candidate.
And then I was one of the "impartial outsiders," and Reed had
been my first graduate student. So that was kind of a shooin.
The thing that happened that was most interesting is that Henry
Gleason from New York Botanical Garden, who was a friend of
mine, was the other "outsider." As soon as Rollins' name was
proposed. Gleason remarked that he had just recommended Reed to
replace him at the New York Botanical Garden. It was the last
thing he had done before he left New York. Since both he and I
were strongly pro. that appointment-committee meeting didn't
last very long. I remember Conant took us to lunch afterwards.
Conant was a chemist, of course. He went to some length to tell
me how he almost became a botanist himself, as a matter of fact.

Constance: Anyway, I learned something about how Harvard worked. In
many ways, as I say, there are more similarities than
differences. I even went to a few Harvard faculty meetings;
they sounded very much like Berkeley Academic Senate meetings.
You could pick out the long-winded individuals, the special
pleaders, and so on. They are more or less equivalent from
institution to institution. That was my Harvard experience.

The one fly in the ointment was that there was a feeling
that, having come back for a year, if somebody spoke the proper
words I might decide to stay. I made it perfectly clear that I
didn't intend to. Bailey came to me in the spring and said,
"I'm quite sure you mean what you said. Although I don't like
it, I'm willing to accept it, but some of my colleagues won't
accept it. So I wonder if you'd be willing to meet with the
provost." Buck, a historian who later became director of the
Widener Library at Harvard, was provost. Bailey said. "If you
will meet with Buck and he can't change your mind, then I think
my colleagues will agree to go ahead with an appointment." So I
did meet with Buck. Buck, who, I think, was from Ohio, remarked
how much he thought of Berkeley and that if he'd had the
opportunity, he'd have liked to come here himself. So he didn't
talk me out of it.

The funniest thing was that the Baileys wanted to give a
party for us. a reception. But my wife and young son spent most
of the year fighting flu, measles, or something, and they
couldn't really get things together until almost the time we
were to leave. About that time, George Wald, who is a Nobel
laureate expert on the retina and a strong political activist,
had just been appointed. So they decided it would be nice to
combine the two occasions.

Lage : Now what had he been appointed to?

Constance: A professorship in biology. So they had a reception for us.

They had the Walds on one side, the Constances on the other, and
Mrs. Bailey was between Wald and me. She was an absolutely
marvelous person, a bone-deep Bostonian. Somehow, she got the
idea that his name was "Bald," and he was, as a matter of fact,
[laughter]

At any rate, it was a hilarious occasion because as people
were coming down the reception line, she introduced them to "Mr.
Bald", and people were saying, of course, "We're so delighted
you're joining us." And then she introduced them to Mr.
Constance, but what do you say to Mr. Constance — "We're so
delighted you're going"? It was really just hilarious because
every time she said "Mr. Bald," poor George blushed.

Constance: Well, we made wonderful friends at Harvard. I thought then, and
I think now, that we were happier here, and I think that they
would be happier having us here than they would have been if we
had stayed in Cambridge, although I think we probably could have
gotten along all tight.

Lage: You made the comment in our first interview that you never

really understood your mother until you spent that year in
Cambridge. Elaborate on that a little bit.

Constance: That's right. You really have to read some of the books on the
Bostonians, I suppose, to get to the bottom of that. There's a
certain proper-Bostonian atmosphere that's really difficult to
characterize. It's a seriousness of purpose, a recognition of
the importance of intellectual things. A certain lack of sense
of humor tends to go with it, but, basically, they're very fine,
somewhat reserved. But once they accept you, you're in, so to
speak. And I never really felt at all strange, although I'm
probably much more informal. But I was always treated with
great respect and affection, I think, which I always returned.

The other thing I was going to say was that, when I did
talk to Buck, toward the close of the conversation, he said,
"We've enjoyed having you so much here. I'm assured that you've
been a great help to us in our planning, and I wonder if you
wouldn't like to have some continuing association with Harvard
after you get back to Berkeley.11 Well, it sounded fine. I
said, "I don't know what you have in mind, but certainly I shall
always have great respect for Harvard; after all, it isn't every
institution that offers you a position. Anything I can do, I'd
be interested in doing." Bailey asked me afterward what Buck
had said. I told him. He said, "You know what he had in mind,
don't you?" and I said. "No — no idea." He didn't explain it.
He said, "Some of my colleagues got the idea that maybe we could
work out an arrangement with Berkeley whereby you would spend
six months of every year here and six months there." I said, "I
think it's absolutely preposterous. I wouldn't be any damn good
to either of them." He said, "That's what I thought."

Lage: [laughing] Buck never made that clear.

Constance: Buck didn't make that clear.
f*

Constance: I suppose the natural sequence to that was that I did serve

Harvard for seven years on the Visiting Committee for biology.
So I did have a continuing relationship with Harvard. Actually,
at one time I had three former students who were professors at

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Harvard. Reed Rollins is now retired, Carroll Wood is still
there, and Otto Solbrig is still there. So in some ways, I
have, I think, had a continuing influence and association.

How did your wife' feel about the possibility of living in
Cambridge?

She had a pretty miserable year. It was a very snowy, wet one.
She and our son had the flu and measles and various other
things. She liked some parts of it, but I think her mother had
told her that she thought that she was too "western" ever to
really enjoy living in the East. I don't think that's neces
sarily true. I think we would have enjoyed it all right, but I
don't think either of us ever felt any great regret about
staying.

I had a question about Harvard's interest in you, and we really
didn't make it clear, partly because you're very modest.

You asked why Harvard was interested in me. The nearest thing I
know about it is that Harvard has a very diverse faculty—always
has had. Harvard, by and large, has the policy of waiting until
people have "made it" and then giving them a call. That used to
work; it doesn't work so well anymore. Not everybody comes when
Harvard whistles. They were losing, by retirement, some of
their senior members so they had a committee, or committees,
debating the possible replacements. I don't know how my name
originally got in the pot, I think probably one of the major
reasons was that I had sponsored Reed Rollins at Harvard, and he
did fabulously well. So that shed glory' on me.

Sometime when I was at Harvard, I ran across a letter which
I probably should not have seen, but it was in the files, I
guess, in my office. It said, in essence, that Constance is
reputed to be one of the best of the younger people in the West,
although his record doesn't show it. Of course, most of the
people at Harvard weren't trying to teach four courses on a
half-time job, working seven days a week, twelve hours a day. as
I had been at Pullman for three years.

At any rate, undoubtedly there were various candidates
favored by various people, who, in the face of different rival
ries, and vested interests of one sort or another, cancelled
each other out. And perhaps because I wasn't very well known to
some of them 1 was favorably known to a few, they discovered
they could r agreement on me, whereas they couldn't on some

of the others o were under consideration.

Would there have been contact or any closeness with faculty
members here who might have recommended you?

Constance: Elmer Merrill had been Dean of the College of Agriculture here,
and he went on to be director of the Arnold Arboretum at
Harvard. He almost surely was in touch with somebody here. But
I really don't know. I knew several of the people at Harvard
reasonably well or not very well. The field is so small that
"everybody knows everybody" to some degree. It's probably old-
boy network. I suppose.

I just don't know. Probably not primarily my published
record. I would guess. But I think the feelings at Harvard were
so intense that they were hoping to have someone who would be
relatively objective, dispassionate, not too closely tied to any
particular group. At least after they interviewed me, they
decided that I was such a person.

The Associates in Tropical Biogeography

Constance: I realize I passed by one thing. At Christmas 1946, before I
went back to the American Association for the Advancement of
Sciences meetings in Cambridge. I had been asked if I would be
interested in taking a trip to Baja California under the imprint
of the Associates in Tropical Biogeography. This was an
organization which was established largely, I think, at the
instance of Carl Sauer, who was the dominant influence and one
time professor of geography. Sauer and other people in the
natural sciences — particularly those branches of the sciences
that were involved in field work — felt that the university gave
rather a short shrift to support of field work as opposed to
support of laboratory science. So a number of people, including
[Ernest] Babcock from genetics, I think probably [Richard]
Goldschmidt from zoology, and [G. Ledyard, Jr.] Stebbins from
genetics and a number of others — people from paleontology and
geology — got together and formed this organization.

Lage: Were you involved in that at all?

Constance: I was involved in that in several ways, as a matter of fact. At
any rate. I think we got a grant of twelve thousand dollars from
President Sproul, which I think Sauer probably negotated
personally. Eventually, at least. Morris Stewart who was an
parasitologist and dean of the Graduate Division — I'm not sure
of the exact timing of all of this — but for a number of years
he, as dean of the Graduate Division, and I. as dean of Letters
and Science, kept the Associates in Tropical Biogeography going.
I don't think it's still going. But at any rate it enabled a
lot of people, particularly graduate students, to get support

Constance: for field work in Latin America. It was tropical biogeography;
we called it tropical, defined as meaning anything south of San
Diego. I used to characterize it by saying that Carl Sauer
would give a graduate student in geography a handful of raisins
and a hundred dollars and tell him to go south and come back
with his thesis.

With Carl Sauer in Baja California

Constance: At all events, they decided it would be nice to have a kind of a
sample model expedition involving people from different
disciplines. One of the arguments for this was the thought that
maybe people in different disciplines could combine forces in
field work. So much to my surprise, when I got back from
Cambridge, I discovered that this expedition was leaving the
first of February or something of that sort — which at that time
was an intersemester interval. The personnel was Carl Sauer of
geography; Howel Williams, a volcanologist in geology; Reuben
Stirton, a vertebrate paleontologist; myself; and a graduate
student in entomology and two in geography, as I recall. I
think that was the entire personnel. We had two little
International Harvester trucks. We started out from Berkeley
and drove to San Diego. Carl Sauer was back on the east coast
as a member of the Guggenheim selection committee, so he didn't
join us until we were fairly well down the peninsula.
Basically, what we did was to drive from Berkeley to the tip of
Baja California, making a number of stops, mostly along the west
coast, but with some trans-peninsular jaunts and —

Lage: Did you have an overall goal?

Constance: Well, the overall goal was a bone of contention. As I said, the
thing was supposed to be a model and was to have people with
different objectives and different disciplines work together in
the field. And each of us went with some objective. Howel
Williams wanted to see volcanoes. There are three volcanoes,
the Tres Virgenos in Baja California, and he got to spend a half
day with them. Stirton really was interested in fossils, but he
figured that on such a short trip he probably couldn't do much,
really, extricating fossils if he found any. So he took along a
fairly elaborate kit to collect modern mammals. I had some
specific botanical objective, but mostly I wanted to obtain
material for the herbarium and for my own information, which was
fine.

But Sauer had objectives for all of us which he didn't
confide to us except during the course of the trip. He was
interested in the human use of plants, so he had me in the role

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage:

of collector of and identifier of, obtainer of, ethno-botanical
information. He was interested in the concept of eustatic
terraces, which is the phenomenon that the rising and falling of
sea level has left telltale terraces so that you could tell what
had happened geologically, if you had such terraces and
evaluated them properly. And he wanted Stirton to teach one of
his graduate students how to excavate the remains of any
aboriginal natives who might have been interred over time. So
there was some confusion of objectives, shall we say.

So he had an overall purpose for this expedition, but it wasn't
defined in advance.

He had an overall purpose, and it wasn't necessarily the same as
ours. But he was a very interesting chap, very broad in his
interests and so on. but he was used to traveling with strictly
his subordinates and mostly graduate students. His wiser
colleagues knew better than to go in the field with him. One of
them remarked later that he had never gone into the field with
Sauer. That was John Leighley. who was a long-time
associate. [He recently died in his nineties.]

Was Sauer older than the rest of you?

Yes. he was older. We got along just fine until Sauer caught up
with us. And then we discovered certain idiosyncrasies of his
which didn't necessarily jive with the certain idiosyncrasies of
ours. My first experience with it was that I was trying to
collect plants. You can't collect plants and dry them properly
without a considerable outlay of time, which obviously would
complicate things for other people. So I would get up at the
crack of dawn and go out and collect plants and try to get them
all organized, usually foregoing breakfast in the process so I
wouldn't hold anybody up. And I got a lot of stuff. But I had
to stop sometime during the day to dry out the driers that were
taking moisture out of plants so the things wouldn't spoil.

The second or third day, I think, after Sauer j oined us, I
had gotten up at dawn, collected, and was drying out some
plants. Sauer walked up to me and said, "You won't have time
for that today11; this didn't please me much. He elaborated on
this a bit. and I pointed out that 1 had gone way out of my way
to keep from holding up anybody. This didn't impress him, so I
finally said, "Well, if you think that I spent the University's
money to collect plants only to let them rot. you have another
think coming." So that was the beginning of a certain amount of
unpleasantness.

Did the others speak up as well?

Constance: They couldn't speak up really. Williams was the chairman of

geology, and he probably was the only person who could've told
Sauer at his own level to buzz off. Williams was a quiet little
Welshman, a wonderful guy, who'd mutter about Sauer under his
breath, but wouldn't really take a stand. Stirton was an
associate professor — very outspoken and fairly emotional.

Things got tenser and tenser as time went along because we
were completely frustrated. If Sauer wanted to stop, we'd stop
for half a day while Sauer chatted with one of the estancia
owners or whomever, and we found ourselves camping in the yard
with all the buffalo chips, fleas, and so on. and eating in
places which were really impossible. We would have been much
happier camping out in the country, but Sauer liked to be around
people. So things got more and more tense. Sauer wouldn't let
the graduate students stop at a cantina even though the tempera
ture was soaring. So pretty soon, the group divided between the
two trucks; Sauer and the graduate students were in one, and the
rest of us were in the other. We'd stop where we pleased and
they'd go by with their tongues hanging out, so to speak.

At any rate, I decided that Stirton might very well find
Sauer on his review committee for promotion or something, but
Sauer wouldn't be very likely to be on mine. So things began to
build up. We were down in one of the southern towns near the
tip of the peninsula and one of graduate students who happened
to be riding with us that day wanted to stop at a bakery to get
some pan dulce [cookies], if I remember correctly. I think he
was the entomologist. So we stopped for that. And then my two
colleagues were kidding me by saying, *Vhy don't you go ahead
and collect plants?" Here I was in tropical country that I'd
never seen before. I resisted for a while — I was driving. They
said, "Oh. we'll help you," so we did stop. We weren't very
much delayed, but we were about an hour or so behind the other
truck. Sauer always said we had to stay within sight of each
other, which was silly because the second truck always got all
the dust from the first one. It was really dusty!

At all events, we did collect things, doing it as fast as
possible. I was driving, and I looked up the stretch of road to
see the other car parked at the side of the road. Sauer was
standing in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips,
glaring. So I drove up to a few feet from him, turned off the
engine, and got out. I said. "Professor Sauer, we're delayed
because I stopped to collect plants." He glared at me, took off
his hat and slammed it down in the dirt, turned around and
walked off. That's all we ever heard about it.

Lage: What an experiencel

Constance;

Lage :

Later. I applied for a Guggenheim fellowship. Henry Alan Moe
was the executive secretary. I think. Sauer had had a long
history of association with the Guggenheim Foundation. I wanted
to go to Chile to investigate the relationship between
California plants -and plants of the southern temperate zone. I
don't remember how much I asked for, but at any rate. Moe
responded that I really had asked for too much for too short a
time. I think for a half-year I was asking for something like
fourteen-hundred dollars, maybe. Moe said, "But that's all
right. I'm sure it can be worked out, but what you really
should do is go over and talk to Carl Sauer on your campus." So
I went over and talked to Sauer. Nobody could have been more
helpful.

That's very interesting.

Constance: He was very nice. All he needed was somebody to talk back to
him.

Lage: Was he an influential figure on campus?

Constance: Probably at various times. He was quite a faculty leader at one
time and sort of dropped out of it. But he was a very
interesting personality and a very forceful one. He was one of
the major Calif or ni a- La tin American associates.

VIII BAY AREA BOTANISTS AND BOTANICAL THOUGHT

Women in Botany: Eastwood, Mexia, Alexander. Carter

Lage : I wanted to talk a little more about women in botany. That's a

project our office has begun — interviewing a few women in
botany. You worked closely with Marion Cave and Mildred
Mathias. I wondered what other women botanists you knew here in
the Bay Area. For instance, you mentioned Alice Eastwood in one
of your articles. Was she associated with Cal?

Constance: No, she was the grand old lady at the California Academy of
Sciences. Of course I knew her.

Lage: You mentioned something about her j oy in making new species,

Constance: Well. Alice Eastwood is a very revered San Francisco figure.

She had been a high school teacher in Grand Junction, Colorado,
and just under what circumstances she came West. I really don't
know. But at any rate, she's been written about fairly
extensively. She appeared at the California Academy of Sciences
and became the chairlady of botany. She was there for many
years. She never married; there's a story that she was engaged
to a distinguished geologist, but he died suddenly, and she
never married. She did a great deal of field work in
conjunction with her associate John Thomas Howell, who had been
one of Jepson's students. He is now in his early eighties and
has been working for many years on the flora of the Sierra
Nevada.

She was a very hearty soul. I think it would be fair to
say that she was. to some extent, a perpetual amateur. She knew
a lot. She had to handle all the questions that arose in San
Francisco about cultivated plants. She knew everything in
Golden Gate Park. She had a tremendous knowledge of the flora
of California, but I think that she wasn't particularly inter
ested in any one specific group. She tended to know quite a
little about almost everything, which perhaps was appropriate

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

for her role as the principal botanist at the Academy and the
sort of plant information service it provided for San Francisco,
She didn't have any students because she was not in a teaching
situation; she had no other institutional affiliation.

In what age group would she have been?

She lived into her nineties. I couldn't, just off the top of my
head, tell you — but I could easily find out. [goes across room]
She lived from 1859 to 1953. One of the cute things about her
was that she was very nice to younger botanists. She always
made a point of knitting a sweater for each of the younger
botanist's first child. She said she wouldn't go beyond the
first one. She knitted one for our son.

As I say, her interests were very generalized — she knew a
lot. Like most amateur botanists, she was tremendously
interested in novelties, and she turned up a lot of them.

One of her good friends remarked once that she had
described more kinds of manzanita than there were shrubs on Mt.
Tamalpais. which may have been a slight exaggeration, but was
probably not too far off.

How about Ynes Mexia?
University?

Was she somebody who was around the

Mrs. Mexia was the daughter of a Mexican general whose name was
Mexia. There's a town of Mexia in Texas. I believe that he was
one of the Mexican officers at the Alamo. She was married — I
don't know what happened to the marriage — but she returned to
her maiden name and was known as Mrs. Mexia. She was a
professional collector. She collected from at least Mexico to
Patagonia that I know about. I'm not too sure of all her
comings and goings. I think that she supported herself simply
by sale of collections.

Does this imply "identify" or just "collect?"

I don't think she identified. I think identification was made
by others. The material was handled, at least part of the time,
through the University herbarium here by Mrs. Floy Bracelin, who
acted as her secretary, amanuensis, agent, or whatever. We have
quite a lot of her material, which is very valuable; it's also
at the Smithsonian and a number of other places.

She seems like a very adventuresome woman.

Well, she was very frail in appearance and didn't look at all
husky, as I recall — I didn't know her well. I can't tell you
exactly when I saw her. I suppose she probably was here when I

Constance: first came, or she came in from time to time. But that's really
about all I know about her. She has been written up briefly by
Mrs. Bracelin.* I think that she did some collecting for the
botanical garden while Goodspeed was in charge of it. He may
have sponsored some of that.

Lage : Was Annie Alexander interested in botany?

Constance: Annie Alexander was one of the university's great benefac
tresses. I wrote once that she was as important to the sciences
as Phoebe Hearst was to anthropology and classic archaeology.
She was the descendent of one of the first families of Hawaii —
the Alexander family. But she had no interest in social things,
per se. She was brought up on a ranch in Kauai, was a great
horseback rider, and so on. When she was at Berkeley as a
student, she became interested in paleontology. Later, she was
primarily responsible for the establishment of both the Museum
of Paleontology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology — in other
words, the fossil and the living. She got her interest or her
stimulation, I assume, primarily from John C. Merriam, who was a
professor in geology.

There was no Department of Paleontology at that time. The
Department of Paleontology was a spin-off from the museum. She
was responsible for Joseph Grinnell coming here as the first
director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. And as a matter
of fact, there are letters in the university's files in which
she needles President Wheeler to get busy and make the appoint
ment and get the museum established.

Lage: Does it sound as if she chose Grinnell?

Constance: It sounds very much as if she chose him. He was at Throop

Polytechnic, which was the ancestor of Cal Tech. At all events,
she was the guardian angel of the Museum of Paleontology and the
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Lage: Did she help fund botanical enterprises?

Constance: Unfortunately, she didn't. Late in life, she and her associate,
Louise Kellogg, got interested in collecting plants. They
worked particularly on the east side of the Sierra Nevada, which
is the most difficult place for people with a full academic
schedule to get to. They turned up some very interesting stuff.

*Mexia family papers and material on Ynez Mexia are in The
Bancroft Library.

Constance: An unfortunate result, however, of her activities was that she
set up the two museums in such a way that they had faculty
members as curators; but the herbarium and botanical garden did
not share in that largesse. As a result, they did not have
faculty members as curators; so we had to go to a non-faculty
series of position's to staff them. It would have been nice if
she hadn't used up all her assets before she got interested in
botany. She was a wonderful person.

Lage: Anybody else that you can think of?

Constance: There were several people associated with the University

Herbarium who were quite outstanding people. One of them is
Annetta Carter, who is still active. She got interested a
number of years ago in Baja California. She actually went there
accompanying the Misses Alexander and Kellogg. They went there,
I think, because they were interested in what various people who
had done field work there — including myself — reported about the
place. And from that initial experience, she has had a career-
long concern with the flora of the Sierra Giganta; she is still
working on the plants. I think those are the people that come
to mind offhand.*

The Biosystematists

Constance: You asked a question about the Biosystematists. This was a

group which was formed, I believe, in 1936, which was the last
year I was still at the State College of Washington. So I was
not in on the initial founding of the group. Someone asked me
not long ago in the presence of Professor Ledyard Stebbins if I
had been a charter member of the group. And I said, "No. I was
sure I had not. I think it actually was founded in 1936 before
I returned to Berkeley on the faculty." Professor Stebbins
said, ''Oh, nol Nobody knew who you were, so we didn't invite
you." So I assume that that was probably the official reason
that I was not a charter member.

In the thirties, approximately, the effects of the findings
of cytology and genetics became employed more and more in dis
cussions of evolution and systematics. And I believe that the
group — the Biosystematists — which involved plant taxonomists,
geneticists, paleontologists, and a few others, was really

*See interview with Annetta Carter in California Women in
Botany. Regional Oral History Office, 1987.

Constance: created by the leaders of the Division of Plant Biology of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington, who were at that point, and
still are, located at Stanford University. Several of the
appropriate senior people at Berkeley were also involved, not
ably Professor Babcock, who was chairman of genetics; Professor
Sauer, who was chairman of geography — although he did not remain
active in it; Professor Chaney, who was chairman of the
Department of Paleontology. There were quite a few others, and
a number of younger people.

I think that the group was originally organized to conduct
general discussions of Huxley's book called The New Systematics,
I believe is the title. Huxley's book was really the
compilation of discussions held by a similar group in England.
So apparently the same kinds of discussions were going on not
only here but also in England.

Lage: And this wasn't just botany?

Constance: No. This was quite broad — primarily natural scientists, that

is, biologists, geologists, geographers, geneticists, and so on.
But it particularly marked the influence of genetical and
cytological information on discussions which previously had been
based almost wholly on morphology — structure — and so on. This
organization has continued to the present day and is still
active, although I haven't been very active in it for some time.

Lage: What is their focus now?

Constance: Their focus is still the same. It's really — although they're
not wedded, obviously, to any single topic — evolution. They
hold bimonthly meetings and they have to do, primarily, with
discussions of evolution, of phylogeny, classification, and so
forth.

I remember that in the early days, we spent most of our
time debating such issues as the proper definition of species.
In retrospect, it amuses me that this serious group of scien
tists sat around and debated that subject. We'd come in with a
different definition almost every month, and it was very easy to
shoot down any definition anyone came in with. But I must
confess that it wasn't for another ten years that I realized
that a single definition of species is obviously impossible and
that, mostly, it was a waste of time. But the discussions were
very good, and I'm sure they influenced the thinking of all of
us.

In this instance, discussions of this type — the
Biosystematists sort of thing — were far ahead of anything that
was going on in the eastern United States, so far as I'm aware.

Constance: There were many people who were interested in all the different
components of our discussions, but they never put them together.
Indeed, when I was at Harvard in '47. I gave a lecture on the
relationship of cytology to classification of a particular group
and discovered that the subject was completely novel. I gave it
to the New England Botanical (Hub, and I had visions of being
thrown out on my ear because this wasn't considered really an
appropriate subject for discussion. All the information was
there. The geneticists had one end of it. the systematists had
the other. But there was little if any effort to put it
together. And it wasn't really for some time until — well, I
suppose that I pioneered, actually, at Harvard, the linkage of
these two things.

Lage: How did they accept your ideas? Did they throw you out on your

ear?

Constance: No. One of my good friends, who was a taxonomist, kept saying.
"How do you know that the next chromosome count you get won't be
different?" I said. "You don't," But over time, statistically,
these things narrow down, and in most groups, you find that
there is some pattern to these things, and it's the pattern that
you're after. So I think that that attitude certainly infused
my teaching and research and. basically, that of all the
students who went out of Berkeley in that general period to
other institutions.

Lage: It's an interesting attempt at sort of a larger picture.

Constance: That's right. Well, systematics. as I've probably said many

times over, has always had the same general objectives. But it
changes its configuration by the addition of all kinds of data.
That's always been my message, that this, indeed, is what should
happen.

Lage: But is that the message of most of your field?

Constance: I think that's all accepted now. The pioneering stage is past

and now they're on to other things, some of which I'm conversant
with and some of which I'm not.

Jepson' s Will: Creation of Jepson Herbarium and Library

Constance: One thing I didn't mention, which has been of some importance,
is the Jepson Herbarium and Library, because that was a
recurring theme. Willis Linn Jepson was my major professor, and

Constance: when he died in 1946, he left his herbarium, his library, and
his house to the University. Altogether, after his house was
sold, I think the estate came to about $300,000, to set up the
herbarium and library as basically a memorial to himself.

My first contact with that situation was a notice in
November 1946 from his attorney saying that I would shortly
receive by mail a printed notice of the probate of Dr. Jepson's
will. It is sent to me [reading] "because you are mentioned in
the will. He says, 'I give to my former student, Dr. Lincoln
Constance, my silk gown and doctor's hood.1 And he also names
you as one of the three trustees to administer the Jepson
Research Fund." The other two trustees were Alva R. Davis, who
was departmental chairman, and Helen Marr Wheeler, later Mrs.
Beard, who was a close friend and daughter of a college
classmate here at the university. This was an interesting
situation because I was the sole plant taxonomist — which was
Jepson's field — of the trustees. Miss Wheeler was uncritically
devoted to Dr. Jepson and his memory and was anxious to see
carried out to a last dotting of an "i" everything he specified.

Lage: Did he specify quite a bit about how it should be run?

Constance: He left a will, if I remember correctly, with twelve hand
written codicils, each of which was a little more drastic than
the preceding. I don't think they contradicted each other — they
simply added on. Jepson was a remarkable man, a very fine
scientist in his own way. I said somewhere in writing his
biographical sketches, which I have done several times, that he
had an exaggerated sense of the dramatic. Other people call it
paranoia.

At any rate, he managed to be at odds with almost everybody
most of the time, certainly with all the university people with
whom he had contact who were at all close to his field or in
anyway related to him administratively. So he didn't like the
president, he didn't like the vice-president, he didn't like any
of the deans — especially the dean of the graduate division, who
was a particular bete noj.r. He had disliked Professor Setchell,
who was chairman of the botany department, for most of the forty
years he had been chairman.

Lage: He must have liked Davis, though; he made him a trustee.

Constance: Davis had gone out of his way to be very deferential to him.
Davis was a very fine person, very fair, and he certainly did
everything he could to make life pleasant for Jepson. So, he
did like him. He probably wouldn't have liked him for very
long, but at least initially it worked out well, and it would be

Constance: part of Jepson's respect for institutional integrity that the
chairman of the department should be director of the trustees.
After all, I was pretty young at the time; I was an assistant
professor who had been here a relatively few years, and he would
have thought it a little premature, I think, to give this much
responsiblity to me.

It became quite an interesting exercise to know how the
University should handle this. I wrote a letter to Davis as
chairman in March 1947, the main thrust of which was that I knew
for a fact that most of Jepson's accumulation of specimens — and
a good deal of his accumulation of literature — had been done on
university time and with university funds. And I thought the
University ought to simply take over, or claim, the material,
which was largely housed in the Life Sciences Building, part of
the area where the Biology Library is now, and not pay much
attention to the stipulations — only to those which seemed to
make some kind of sense. Because, clearly, in addition to, in a
sense, threatening the University with losing this material,
Jepson was also trying to pay of f a number of personal grudges,
particularly against my colleague Professor Mason, who was the
director of the herbarium.

Lage: So he didn't want the two collections merged?

Constance: Well, that was part of it, but there was more than that. He

specified that the director of the herbarium should have no part
in any aspect of the estate. And to some extent, the thing was
set up so if I had wanted to continue his work, it was really
set up to make it possible for me to do so.

Lage: Had he discussed that with you?

Constance: No, he never discussed it with me at all. [reading Jepson's
will] He said, "On account of his strange and unexplainable
treachery in the years 1934 and later, I direct that H. L. Mason
shall not in any way share the benefits or endowments of this
will, and I express to Dr. A.R. Davis the hope that this
intention will be carried out." That, I believe, was the final
codicil.

At all events. I remember meeting with Davis, with Jepson's
attorney, and with President Sproul. I believe those were all
who were present. I remember making the points that I have just
noted orally, and Sproul saying, "I'm sure the University could
make a good case out of it. But from a public relations
standpoint." — perhaps he didn't say this, but at any rate, that
was the idea — "Jepson was a professor for fifty years at the
University, and he was recently given an honorary doctorate. He
has given this large" — for its time — "donation to the University,
and it would really be a scandal if we did this, and probably we

100

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

Constance :

might very reasonably do it. So I think the best thing to do is
for the University to accept it with the fewest commitments
possible, and long after you and I are dead, it may prove to be
useful." Basically, of course, that is what happened to it.

When you say that "long after you and I are dead, it will be
useful," does that mean that his stipulations didn't allow it to
be useful?

Some of the stipulations couldn't be carried out. One of them
was to publish an anonymous document after his death, the title
of which, if I recall, was something to the effect of "Men Who Are
Vile," and then which went on to enumerate a fair share of the
faculty, administration, and whomever.

We did not have possession of this manuscript at that
point. I think probably Miss Wheeler had it, because she was
the one who was going to be the anonymous publisher. Davis
suggested he might like to see some of the letters Jepson had
written me to give the judge an idea of what was probably in
this volume. The university lawyer was involved also.
Apparently, they turned the letters over to the court and I
didn't get them back, which I rather regretted. But apparently
the judge was convinced, and when the estate was settled, a
number of these things were simply ruled out.

Was Miss Wheeler amenable to that?

She wasn't very happy about it, but I guess she didn't think she
could do much about it. Over the course of years, I think she
has clearly come to realize that some of these things were not
prudent, shall we say, at least.

Is she still alive?

She's still alive; I've been chairman of trustees for a number
of years, and still am. and I'm still in touch with her. The
trustees haven't met for several years, primarily because she
lives in Trinidad [California], and it's not easy for her to get
down. I've offered to hold a meeting anytime she wants one, but
she hasn't wanted to.

The Jepson Herbarium finally was integrated with the University
Herbarium, wasn't it?

That's correct. The Jepson Herbarium and Library have stayed as
a distinct unit — it was necessary to box a lot of the books
because we didn't have room to put them together. We even got
the best of the furniture in his house. But during World War
II. it was stored in various odd places and got pretty well
demolished. We used to have some of the chairs around the

101

Constance: dean's office, but eventually they've gone down the tube, too.
So there isn't much left in the way of furniture. But the
herbarium and library operated very successfully as a research
unit. And now in-the new plans for reorganization of biology,
the herbarium is combined with the University Herbarium. The
Jepson Herbarium is solely of California plants, and it has been
combined with the California representation of the general
herbarium, although they are all in separate folders and dis
tinctively marked. So anyone working on the California flora
has all this material together. This is important at this point
because one of the other specifications in Jepson's will was
that his Manual of the Flowering Plants of California, which was
published in 1925, was to be kept permanently in print. It is
now being revised with a number of people working on it.

Lage: And the funds that he left allow for this?

Constance: The funds probably are insufficient to publish it. and exactly
how it's going to be financed still remains to be seen. But
at least the work is going forward with it. so I think that we
are carrying forward at least all the important things that
Jepson really wanted to have done and at the same time, passing
over things that probably would not have been very wise to do,
which I think, really, in his deepest thoughts he would not have
wanted to be done.

102

IX THE UNIVERSITY LOYALTY OATH CRISIS

Robert Gordon Sproul and the Faculty

Lage : Let's move on to our university-related topics. We were going

to start off talking about the loyalty oath.

Constance: It comes out a little better, I think, if we go at it another
way. You asked also about Sproul, and I noticed [in my files]
the first thing I have that relates specifically to him. He
handed me my Ph.D. diploma when I took my degree in 1934, but I
had no reason to believe that he remembered me. I note that on
December 9. 1942. I received an invitation, which reads "On
Tuesday, December 22. I'm inviting a few members of the faculty
to the President's house for cocktails before the Faculty dub
Christmas dinner. I should like very much to have you join us
between four and six o'clock. Sincerely yours, Robert G.
Sproul." I didn't know it at the time, but apparently this
group comprised the assistant professors who were to be recom
mended to go to associate professorship and tenure the following
year. As I say, I didn't know that until much later.

I think I told you earlier that I found out a few years ago
that with the stringencies of World War II, it was decided to
fire my generation of assistant professors, but that, instead,
the budget committee, I am informed, convinced Sproul that he
should ask the Regents to approve war leave (which was already
available to those going into the armed services). And I find a
letter. June 30, 1943, addressed to me in "N" Building.
Washington. D.C.. where I was working for the O.S.S.. saying
that he had recommended that my leave of absence be extended for
the year 1943-44. [reads from letter] "Unless you hear from me
to the contrary, you may assume that such extension has been
granted." And, presumably, it was.

Lage: The invitation to cocktails — would that have been a way of

looking over these young assistant professors?

103

Constance:

Lage :

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

I think so. Sproul wanted to be sure he knew them. Oh. I think
the decisions had already been made, probably. But it was a
very gracious gesture, and it was, so to speak, welcoming us to
the permanent faculty.

Would you give some background about Sproul and how he related
to faculty members?

You have to go out of the chronology to make it sensible. I see
that on July 14, 1949, I have a communication from Sproul —
obviously not a personal one — in which he relates that the
Regents of the University of California, on June 24, 1949, after
consultation and agreement between the President of the
University and the advisory committee, of the two sections of
the Academic Senate approved the following resolution (which is
a long resolution): "Beginning at its birth, the University of
California was dedicated to the search for truth . . »" And at
the end attaches an oath, and then at the bottom there is a
detachable portion which is to be mailed to the President: "I
do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution
of the United States and the Constitution of the State of
California, that I will faithfully discharge the duties of my
office according to the best of my ability, that I am not a
member of the Communist Party or under any oath, or a party to
any agreement or under arty commitment that is in conflict with
my obligation under this oath." And this one was supposed to be
signed and notarized.

What was the date of this?
July 1949?

Was this the one that came out in

That's right. And I have another letter from Sproul on
September 28. This one asked me to serve on a committee to
advise him on the need for a marine laboratory. On October 20,
a letter from Sproul says, "No reply having come to the form
letter about the loyalty oath which I sent you some weeks ago, I
am writing to ask if you received it and also to call your
attention to the following statement which was agreed upon and
issued with the advisory committee of the northern and southern
sections," which is quoted. "It is hoped that we shall hear
from you soon in order that errors in recording the responses of
faculty members, and the absence thereof, may not be made.
Yours sincerely..."

My understanding is that President Sproul called each of
the people who had not sent in the signed oath. (In those days,
one had to sign his contract and send it in annually.) When he
called me. he said he understood that my contract had not been
received with the oath and so on. He asked if this were inad
vertent or intentional. I said it was intentional, and he asked
if I would like to tell him why. I said I would be delighted

104

Constance: to, and I told him why at seme length. He was very patient and
very pleasant about it. And I said, "Now that I've told you,
I'm going to write you what I told you, and I will send in my
signed contract because I feel I'm not in a position, at this
point, having just turned down a professorship at Harvard, tc
make an issue of it."

So I wrote him on the 24th of October:
Dear Mr. President:

In answer to ynur letter of October 20 may I
assure you I did receive the form letter about the
loyalty oath. I hope that your letter may be con
strued as an invitation to say a word as to my reasons
for having failed to sign and return the form before
this time. Like many of my colleagues, I delayed
complying with the original request for early return
of the signed oath in the earnest hope that The
Regents would pay serious heed to the fact that its
objections to what many of us believed, and still
believe, to be an ill-advised requirement, severely
prejudicial to the reputation of the University. This
hope has now, of course, been disappointed, since it
seems evident that The Regents have no intention of
making any important modifications in the original
stipulation.

I should like to make it perfectly clear that I
agree fully with the stated objectives of The Regents'
policy. Not only do I have no personal commitment to
the Communist Party (of which I am not now, and never
have been, and certainly never expect to be, a member)
or to any other organizations which impairs my impar
tiality as a teacher and scientist but I also do not
believe a Communist would be a fit member of a university
faculty. If there is such a thing as "inactive
Communist," I've never seen one, and I am sure no man
can serve two masters wholeheartedly. I do think,
however, that charges against an individual should be
based upon his activities rather than upon his
associations.

This point of view does not automatically lend me,
however, to enthusiasic acceptance of what seems to me
a unilaterally imposed change in the qualifications
for tenure appointment in the University Faculty. My
reluctance to sign this or any similar special oath
can be summed up in the statement that I feel the
imposition of such a test to be incompatible with the
high reputation of this University, and being required
to sign it to be incompaf' ble with the dignity and
self-respect which every member of this Faculty should

105

Constance :

possess. Since the oath requirement evokes this
repugnance in me, I believe I should have ill-served
my employers, my students and my conscience, by
exhibiting, unseemly haste in complying with this demand.
This might have been interpreted as agreement with a
policy I cannot conscientiously defend. My delay in
compliance was. then, deliberate and constituted my
personal protest.

I realize that a series of mistakes and misunder
standings have so confused the fundamental issue that
it is now difficult to discern its original outlines.
Since further protest has been rendered ineffective
and likely only to give comfort to the group the
requirement was originally designed to embarrass (and
which I personally despise), I feel I should now comply
with your original request. I should like to make it
clear that I am signing the oath without any mental
reservation, but with a feeling of deep humiliation.
Respectfully your s. ...

An Extraordinarily Difficult Period — Background to the Oath

Lage: I hope we can elaborate on some of that.

Constance: Do you want to elaborate on it? Doesn't it say enough in
itself?

Lage: Well, it leads to other things, like the different groups of the

faculty that you referred to and —

Constance: Well, it was an extraordinarily difficult period. Again, the

old story, "I don't know how much I know and how much I think I
know. "

In my files I found a Daily Californian editorial page
item, which will give an idea of the temper of those times. It
had a paraphrase of a pamphlet entitled "Red-ucators at the
University of California. Stanford University and California
Institute of Technology." This was May 17, 1950. [reading]
"Thirty-three professors at the University of California have
been affiliated with the following communist front organizations
and enterprises." It then goes ahead and lists seventy-six
organizations. They singled out Raymond T. Birge. who was the
chairman of physics for twenty-five years, I think, and Robert
Gordon, professor of economics. Then there were G. P. Adams. R,
A. Brady, 0. Bridgman, A. G. Brodeur (Engl ish) ,' Constance
(botany), Denr.es.

106

Lage: They named you also?

Constance: Oh. yes.

Lage: What organization do you think they were speaking of with you?

Constance: God knows.

Lage: Now. this was the Daily Cal talking about this report?

Constance: Yes. Well, it was one of the McCarthy things, you know. It was
interesting in a way because it was indicative of the kind of
McCarthy era atmosphere in which the loyalty oath was hatched.
I don't want to belabor that. I'd forgotten I had been listed.

Lage: They painted with a pretty broad brush.

Constance: Oh. yes. This was the McCarthy period. At any rate, the

universities and all public bodies were under stress. McCarthy
was fishing "communists" out of the federal government and most
any place else. The legislature was affected. The President
was convinced that if the University did not do something to
blunt such an attack on the University, the legislature might
very well push through some much more damaging regulation. The
President did consult with certain senior figures in the
Academic Senate.

Lage: Is that the advisory committee the letter referred to?

Constance: I'm not sure exactly whom — I'm sure he did consult a number of
them. I mean, he was on close, personal terms with most,
essentially, all the senior faculty, and I'm sure that he did
consult with the people who were in positions which were
regarded by the faculty as leadership positions. They knew
Sproul. They were aware of the situation. They had a deep
feeling of loyalty to him, and I think, probably, the general
message was "We know you, you know us, we can trust each other.
We don't think that the faculty will seriously object."

And Sproul came to the presidency by way of the controller's
office rather than by faculty membership. Considering this,
Sproul was extraordinarily astute in judging the "faculty mind."
But this was one spot where, he admitted later, he made a
serious mistake. I think that most faculty members would have
recognized that some of the faculty, at least, would be offended.
Faculty do not like to have other people make decisions for
them, even for their own good! I don't want to say that faculty
members are childish, but it's very much like making decisions
for an adult child. It may well be for his or her own good, but

107

Constance: that doesn't mean it will necessarily be applauded. And you

could be almost sure that someone would kick ever the traces on
this.

There was a very wide range of responses. I know some
people signed the thing because they were sure that no one would
ever be fired. It would be incomprehensible that the University
would fire anybody so just go ahead and sign and forget about
it.

Lage : They didn't give it that much thought as an issue.

Constance: That's right. I had a very good friend who was a humanist, very
astute, for whom I had tremendous admiration and affection and
still do. Ke said, "Well. I figured there was going to be an
oath of some kind, so I decided to sign it and then never think
about it any more." But then there were some who felt it was a
life and death issue. My good friend Curt Stern who was a very
distinguished geneticist and zoologist, felt that this was the
first stage in the appearance of America's Hitler. You see.
there was every range of opinion at that period as to how
serious this was. I had trouble, myself, trying to decide. Is
this where you star. a on barricades, or are you kidding yourself?
Are you blowing it clear out of proportion?

Lage: Even at the time —

Constance: That's right. I mean, I didn't like it. I thought it was

insulting, and it was insulting. There was no question about it
because the faculty were really picked out as a suspect group.
It was completely unjustified, and they never did find a real
live Communist in the University. I think they finally found a
woman who was playing the piano in the physical education
department at UCLA who reportedly was a Communist. But if there
were any Communists in the faculty, they remained cryptic, I
think, so, it was completely unjustified in my judgment.

It was tragic for Sproul because he had done extraordin
arily well over a long period of time, but the Regents boxed him
in. They were playing politics. Sproul was very close to
Governor Warren, and there were one or more of the Regents who
had always had wanted to see Warren embarrassed.

Lage: Do you think it was a way of getting at Earl Warren?

Constance: Oh, I dor.'t think there's any question that it was employed

politically in the Regents. The Regents split on it. Admiral
Nimitz was one of the Regents. He was a very fine naval
officer, but his attitude towards the faculty was basically,

108

Constance: "Well, they've been ordered to do it, so they do it, or else

they'll be flogged at the main mast." It was that sort of

thing. The faculty were treated as ordinary employees, a
treatment which faculty don't particularly appreciate.

There is always the question of "Who is the University?"
The students think they are; the faculty think they are;
occasionally, the administration gets the misapprehension that
it is. So all these different things played in their own way,
and I think it was a very tragic and damaging thing to the
University. Quite a number of people left and didn't return. I
was reminded today of one classicist, who had gone to the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, who would never
return to this campus. They tried to bring him here as a Sather
lecturer, but he refused. He would have nothing to do with the
Berkeley campus after that had happened.

Lage: How about the Department of Botany? Were there a lot of

different opinions within your own department?

Constance: I don't remember much discussion of it. The department was

pretty conservative. I don't think anybody really liked it, but
I don't think it was discussed much at the departmental level,
really. It was kind of above and beyond. I'm sure that Davis,
the chairman, who was an intimate friend of Sproul's, would have
been very unhappy about it. On the other hand, he might not
have been too sympathetic about people stirring up a fuss,
because he could see that Sproul was sort of caught in the
middle.

Lage: Were there any members of the department who would have left or

planned to leave?

Constance: I suppose that I was the most under- the-gun, as one of the
youngest.

I do remember that when I went to Harvard, someone made a
great point of the fact that I would not have to sign a loyalty
oath at Harvard but I had to sign one for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts [laughter], so it didn't really matter all that
much.

Lage: Did you get involved in Academic Senate meetings and — ?

Constance: Not very much. I was on the budget committee by that time. And
the chairman of the budget committee was Malcolm Davisson from
economics. The oath virtually destroyed him.

109

Lage: In what way would that have been?

Constance: Well, he was generally conceded to be. I think, the faculty's
fair—haired boy and he might very well succeed Sproul as
president. The whole thing left him a wreck. He was a very
decent, sensitive person who was absolutely destroyed by some of
the Regents' politics. There were some who were particularly
brutal. John Francis Neylan, who was Hearst's attorney, was
originally opposed to the oath. He really got Sproul to commit
himself to it and then he wouldn't let him out of it. His
lieutenant was Goodwin Knight, who eventually succeeded Warren
as governor. So that's part of the business.

Lage: When you say that a faculty member was virtually destroyed, you

are referring to the politics within the faculty?

Constance: No. Well, of course there were problems with the faculty, too.
Lifelong friendships were broken up. people stopped speaking to
each other. It was quite dire, shall we say.

Sproul' s Strengths

Constance: I noticed here's a note I wrote to Sproul — don't ask me why — I
thought it was a good idea. I guess. I said,

"Dear Mr. President:

I wish to express my personal gratification for the
manner in which you defended before the Board of
Regents the faculty's interpretation of the signifi
cance of the hearing held in the Academic Senate
Committee on Privilege and Tenure. We all earnestly
hope you will be wholly successful in convincing the
Regents of the justness and reasonableness of the
committee recommendations. However, I share what is,
I believe, the essentially unanimous conviction of the
factor that win. lose, or draw, you have not in any
way spared yourself on behalf of the welfare of the
University in a defense of true academic freedom. No
matter what the outcome may be, I sincerely hope that
no consideration whatsoever will induce you to deprive
us of your tested leadership in the undoubtedly
critical days ahead," (There were rumors that Sproul
might leave.) "I. for one, feel that such a loss would
be truly calamitous to all of us and to our university."

110

Lage:

You felt that after making the origir.al mistake Sproul came
around?

Constance: Sure, there's no question about it. He replied August 1, 1950:

"Your letter of July 18. in which you were good enough
to express continuing confidence in me, even in the
face of the difficulties which have plagued us all
during the past year, is deeply appreciated. In reply
I can say no more than that I shall not run away from
the presidency as long as I am convinced that I can be
useful to the University. Thank you very much for
taking the trouble to write to me at a time when an
encouraging word was most helpful."

I was never really close to Sproul, but I had a lot of
admiration for him and I was fond of him on a personal level
too.

Lage: What were his most admirable qualities or accomplishments?

Constance: I suppose his strength was his ability to weld the University's
various factions together and to hold the alumni — build the
alumni into a feeling of family solidarity — and to command
legislative support and respect. Those, I think, were the
paramount things.

I suppose it's fair to say that Wheeler was the president
who really succeeded in bringing the University to a level of
national, international distinction. But he ran the place with
an essentially iron hand. Eventually he came a cropper. After
that, things were somewhat chaotic. There was a president or
two and there were various committees and various regents and
whatever.

But Sproul came in as a young man in 1930, and for nearly
three decades, he really was the University of California in the
eyes of the faculty, the state, and just about everybody else.
Not everybody was equally enthusiastic. I'm sure. There were
those who felt, since Wheeler was a student of classics, that
probably the president ought to be a student of humanities or
something of the sort. But Sproul was the first president after
Wheeler, I think, who really subsumed the university.

Lage: You have always been a strong spokesman, in the conversations

we've had. for faculty as administrators.

Constance: Oh yes, I believe in it.

Lage: And here we have Sproul, who was an exception.

Ill

Constance: Yes, but Sproul also believed ir. it. That's right. Sproul was
very good about consulting the faculty. As I said, he was
exceptional, considering his background, in understanding what
made faculty minds tick. And that's why it was so sad. in a
way, that in this one instance, as he himself said, when he made
a mistake, he made a beauty. He certainly did; he missed the
boat on that, but how much he could have done about it is hard
to say.

I came across something I wrote about President Sproul.
I don't know quite when it was written, but I listed myself
as Ph.D.t 1934, so it may have been an alumnus thing of some
sort. I said:

"Each of us will have his own recollections of
President Sproul. My first one is of his inauguration
as President during my first semester at Berkeley as a
graduate student. To me, he and the distinguished
institution he did so much to build were never again
wholly separable in my mind. My second is of his
presiding ably over meetings of the Academic Senate or
answering barbed questions at the early All-University
Faculty Conferences. He could call every speaker by
name, and he could lister, with good-natured patience,
even to attacks on his own policies. My third is of
the grim Year of the Oath, when he found himself caught
between an intractable faction of the Regents, and an
indignant and increasingly embittered faculty, and an
uncomprehending or unsympathetic public. He struggled
gallantly and ultimately successfully to save the
University. His lasting legacy is the inspired vision
of what a great state university can become and what
this one partially has become."

I guess that's probably about as close to my version of him
as I could reasonably come up with. I don't know what I wrote
that for.

Principles or Personal Power Struggles?

Lage : David Gardner [current president of the University], in his book

on the loyalty oath [The California Oath Controversy. Berkeley,
1967], said that the controversy over the loyalty oath was not
over principles but was a power struggle, "... a series of
personal encounters between proud and influential men." Do you
agree with that interpretation?

112

Constance: I think that probably was true about the Regents. I read the
book, but I haven't seen it recently enough. I think that
agrees with what I said about Neylan and the governors — Warren
and Knight. In that sense, it was indeed a series of personal
encounters although it had very strong political motives in it.
But I think the faculty resistance and unhappiness were clearly
a matter of principle. I don't think there's any doubt about
that.

One can argue that the non-signers perhaps exaggerated the
importance of the thing. A number of them were people of
European extraction who had seen fascism in Europe and felt that
they had been quiescent when it came up the first time and they
should have done something about it. And here it was coming
again. So I think it's no accident that quite a few of the non-
signers were Europe an- trained. They were also, to some degree,
people who liked to make issues of things and who were not about
to take something in which they didn't believe. I had great
admiration for them. I didn't admire the judgment of all of
them, but they certainly had the courage of their conviction.
In fact, I was always a little unhappy that I didn't take a
stronger position myself. But I just felt I was not in a
position to do it. Tolman could afford to; I couldn't.

Lage: Well, I think that was probably true of a lot of people.

Constance: But one of the people mentioned again today was David Saxon, who
apparently had seven daughters, I think, at the time, and he
refused to sign and was fired. I think he pumped gas, or
something of the sort, during part of the time he was out.

Lage: And then came back to the University?

Constance: That's right. One of the interesting post-mortems on the oath
was that Kerr eventually prevailed on the Regents to name the
building that houses psychology Tolman Hall, after Edward
Tolman, who was the leader of the non-signers. My recollection
is that Kerr got Catherine Hearst to make the action!

Lage: [laughing] Wonderful 1 In reading a few of our oral histories —

and I don't remember which one it was in — that was mentioned.
It was also mentioned that Kerr felt that it led to a residue of
ill feeling toward him, on the Board of Regents.

Constance: It could be. I don't know how many people were still on the
Board of Regents at that time who were involved. And, of
course, I really don't know the situation in the Regents very
well. I was not a visitor to the Regents' meetings at that
time. I was sometime later, but even then, you know, you were
excluded from the real fights.

113

Long- Term Divisive Effects of the Oath

Lage : Anything on long-term effects of the oath that you'd want to

say?

Constance: It's very hard to know just what things contributed to it, but I
personally felt that, to some extent, it loosened the bonds
which I. at least, had always felt between faculty and
administration. In other words, as you would say I am a great
believer in faculty being involved in administration. I never
felt that there was ever any distinction between faculty and
administration. A lot of the younger people — people who came
later from different backgrounds — probably did not feel this as
strongly as I did. But I think the faculty never trusted the
administration as fully after the oath as they had before. And
when things like the troubles of the sixties came along, there
were, if you like, fault lines or zones of weakness which could
very easily be exploited. It certainly had continuing effects
of divisiveness, but again, it's very hard to pin them down
exactly.

Lage: What about effects on recruiting? Would you know of any cases

where it was more difficult to get — ?

Constance: There were certainly instances in which people flatly refused to
join the University. It hurt the University's reputation
nationally, without any question. Again, it's awfully hard to
document that sort of thing. I remember some discussion
somewhere, which I'm sure was second- or third-hand, in which
two or three people from other institutions were talking down to
a University of California faculty member. One of the people
from another institution said to a second, "The only difference
is that at California, they fought it, while at yours they all
acquiesced without a struggle." [laughter] So there was a little
of that — there was some admiration in academic circles, I think
that the faculty didn't take it lightly. But I don't think that
that compensated — I mean, it should never have happened in the
first place because Berkeley did have a faculty that enjoyed
more influence than at any other university I know of.

Lage: Were you aware of how the faculty at the other UC campuses felt?

Did Berkeley take the main brunt of it?

Constance: Berkeley took the main brunt. UCLA took some. I don't

remember. I think there was probably someone on almost every
campus. I would guess that something like two-thirds of the

114

Constance:

Lage :

Constance :

Lage :

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

non-signers were at Berkeley and, if not another third, at least
another quarter at UCLA. There were several people at UCLA who
were very strong opponents of the oath.

So it wasn't a case of division between Berkeley and the other
campuses?

No. I don't think so. One would guess that the Davis faculty at
that time — it was much closer to the soil and, let's say, the
farmers of the state would be much less sympathetic to the
Berkeley faculty's attitude, but I don't even know that.

I was looking at George Stewart's book- which is interesting,
written right in the heat of the battle [The Year of the Oath.
New York. 1950],

Yes. well George's, of course, is very much my idea of it.
George was a good friend of mine, too, although I didn't know
him particularly well at that time, I think.

He implied a great sense of paranoia — the feeling that phones
were being tapped, that certain people were stool pigeons, and —

Well, there was certainly that; I don't remember the phone-
tapping sort of thing. Certainly, nobody tapped mine, I'm sure.
But there was distress among the faculty.

One of the lines of cleavage: Ernest Lawrence, of course,
was the big gun in the physical sciences at the University
because of the distinction he had obtained with the cyclotron.
I didn't know him well, but he was a very decent person. He was
very close to John Francis Neylan and that was pretty much the
center of the pro-oath sort of thing. Anybody tied in with that
was pretty much a suspect to everybody else.

Tied in with Lawrence and his group?

Constance: That's right.

Lage: I noticed the reference to "certain scientists".

Constance: Well, Ralph Chaney, who was a paleobotanist, somehow got

involved with Lawrence and acted as a kind of stalking horse. I
don't know how much Lawrence was involved. I'm sure he deeply
deplored it and probably didn't understand or see that it was
all that important. But you expect, particularly, the humanists
to be shocked at this sort of thing. But it was very erratic.
I knew most of the non-signers. Some of them were on the faculty
and had very distinguished careers.

115

Constance: One of the things that was most painful — I was on the budget
committee at the time, and several young people who were not
tenured were r.cn- signers. They came up for tenure review, and
it was very difficult because nobody wanted to turn them down.
Yet some of them were clearly born losers, and this produced a
lot of hard feelings. I remember we went to great lengths to
try to get away from the political cleavage here, and if we
could get a really liberal committee to say no, we knew we were
doing all right. And I think, by and large, we were successful;
but it made the whole business of judging faculty and all sorts
of other judgments very difficult for some years. So, I'd say
it hurt the University externally, it hurt the University
internally. There was no excuse for it in the first place. But
we survived it.

Lage : How long before it was just sort of forgotten?

Constance: The moment that you bring it up to the faculty in my group, you
immediately get the adrenal glands flowing. In fact, I tried it
out today at lunch — a couple of people who were there then still
feel strongly. So I suppose that, say, the sixties put it out
of our minds. But I think it did the institution quite a bit of
damage. Tough institution, though.

Lage: Did it increase faculty self-government at all? Did it bring

back new interest in becoming active in governance affairs?

Constance: I'm really not sure. I would say it was overshadowed, really,
by the great and rapid influx of new people at about that time.
People were basically back here after the war by 1945-46. This
was 1950-52. The old unity was pretty much superseded partly by
the oath, perhaps even more by the influx of people who were not
familiar with it. Let's see, Sproul retired in '58. It was
kind of a new ball game* I suppose, so it would be pretty hard
to say just when it faded out. I would say there were still
repercussions for ten years, but maybe not major ones.

116

X SERVICE ON ACADEMIC SENATE COMMITTEES

The Senate Editorial Committee — Advising the University Press

Lage :

Constance ;

We should talk more about the budget committee, I think,
that fit into the chronology here?

Does

Lage:
Constance :

Okay. I think we can probably talk about my Academic Senate
committee activities — probably that is the best way to get at
this.

My recollection is that the first Academic Senate Committee
I served on was probably the Editorial Committee in about 1948.
That's as soon as I came back from my year at Harvard. I think
that my departmental chairman decided, although nobody here had
ever recognized it. that if Harvard thought I had some adminis
trative talent, maybe they better take advantage of it. So I
believe I was recommended to serve on the committee for research
before I went to Harvard; but the invitation had not been issued
so I didn't have to respond to it. So I never served on a
research committee — I heard about that afterward. But I think I
did go on to the Academic Senate Editorial Committee. And,
indeed, the Editorial Committee is something that I served on,
off and on, really almost up until my retirement. I noticed I
was on it in '71-'72. I served on it, I believe, for a year at
that time.

I remember we had something like five committee members
from Berkeley and three from UCLA and that was it. We operated
for the entire university faculty.

Did you meet together with UCLA faculty?

Yes. My recollection is that at that time, we always met up
here because that's where the majority of us and the office of
the press, were. My recollection of the makeup of the committee
was as follows: Theodore McCown, of anthropology as chairman;
Arthur Hutson of English, Ronald Walpole of French, and James

117

Constance: King of history are the others that come tc mind. I wouldn't
dare try to tell which of the UCLA people were on it. But the
Editorial Committee is a particularly plush committee from the
faculty standpoint,! because what you're discussing is basically
books, articles, and scholarship. And. of course, the faculty
is never happier than discussing that sort of thing.

Lage: And what does it basically do?

Constance: The University Press was originally organized to publish the
scholarly productions of the faculty, and it did this by
publishing a number of so-called series. There were series in
different biological sciences and history and English — all sorts
of things.

Over the course of time, the nature of the press changed so
that, now, university presses are simply scholarly publishing
houses. They do not feel any particular affinity for the
faculty of the institution with which they are associated. In
fact, if anything, they sometimes feel a hostility toward it.
They're always afraid they're going to be pushed i"to publishing
something thev don't want to because somebody at that particular
university wrote it. At one point, the University Press was
involved in publishing university documents and so on, but that
job was shunted off many years ago to the university printing
office, or whatever they call it. So basically, it's a
publishing house, but with an emphasis on scholarly books.

The Editorial Committee is the only agency that can
authorize the use of the University's imprint. In other words,
the director of the press and his staff cannot publish anything
under the University of California aegis without the concurrence
of the Editorial Commiftee. So what the Editorial Committee
basically does is read manuscripts. These manuscripts are also
reviewed by outside readers either suggested by the staff or by
the committee or both. At least when I was concerned with it
(and I think it still is the case), every manuscript was
discussed — sometimes ad infinitum. So it's a fairly scholarly
apparatus.

Lage: And was the Editorial Committee really the decision-making body

or did the press — ?

Constance: It was the decision- making body, period.

Lage: Period.

Constance: That's right.

Lage: I wonder if that has changed over time.

1 18

Constance :

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:

Constance:

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

Constance

I don't believe so. Now, the different editors, who are members
of the staff, may very well discourage manuscripts they dor.'t
like the looks of from ever getting to that point.

They seemed more concerned with profitability now.

I don't know. I think probably one would say that they are
concerned with making the losses as little cataclysmic as
possible. But it's only once in a decade that something like
Theodora Kroeber's Ishi comes along, which turns out to be a
best-seller. I don't think the University Press has ever
approved anything on the grounds that it probably wouldn't be a
best-seller. They certainly have discouraged things that they
didn't think they could manage to get into more than three
libraries. They have to keep some kind of balance; but the
general view, at least when I was concerned with it (which, as I
said, was over a twenty-year period at least, off and on), was
that they published things that were of true value and that the
chips had to fall where they might.

Were you on the committee during the time of the transition from
publishing primarily University faculty?

Yes. In fact, I was always an exponent of their continuing to
publish some of the series in fields where I thought that kind
of publication was appropriate, which, it happens, includes my
own, but it's considerably broader than that.

Over time, as it became easier to publish things as books,
a great many of the series simply went out of business for lack
of interest. But there still were, and 'still are, fields in
which this kind of publication is the accepted way to go. I
became a champion of that aspect of it and. several times,
sponsored revisions to the rules, to keep them going.

And did you succeed?

I succeeded as long as I was on the committee. I'm not quite
sure where it is now. But the last I knew, they were still
following the Constance plan on series as late as something like
'75, shall we say. I was on it for 1948. and then I was asked
to replace at least two other committee members who died later
on. So I was on it intermittently over a series of years.

And did you work closely with the head of the press?
have worked with August Fruge?

Would you

I know August very well. I never chaired the committee. I
knew the various committee members well, as I went along.
When I went off the last time I managed to get one of my

119

Constance: colleagues appointed. He was on it very successfully for

several years. At any rate, I served on the Editorial Committee
for the first time in 1948-49.

The Budget Committee;

Jurisdiction over UCSF and UC Davis Budgetary Affairs

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance :
Lage:
Constance:

Then in 1949-50, I went on the Academic Senate Committee on
Budget and Interdepartmental Relations.

And you became chairman of it in 1950?

The first year I was on it, the chairman was Malcolm Davisson
and the others whom I recall were Robert Erode of physics. Harry
Wellman of agricultural economics, Willard Farnham of English,
and I think there must have been another member, but I can't
recall who it might have been.

Obviously, this was an exploratory year for me. We actually
served as a faculty personnel committee. We were the senate's
voice to consult with the President on all appointments and
promotions. We also voted on salary increases. We looked into
things we were asked to look into; we also looked into anything
we thought needed to be looked into.

Having to do with budget — ?

That's right. We also. I should say. represented the Northern
Section of the Academic Senate, and we had jurisdiction over the
Davis and San Francisco campuses, as well as Berkeley.

And you must have had some representation from them.

We did not at that point.

No representation? That must have made for ill-feelings.

At that point. We divided up the budget in different areas. By
some miscue of fate I got the budget of the university's medical
school at San Francisco. This apparently was the first time
that any budget committee had ever looked at it, and it was a

mess.

Lage :

Had the others just overlooked it on purpose, do you think?
they not want to interfere?

Did

120

Constance: It may r.ever have come to them. It may well be that it was

settled between the President and the San Francisco campus — I
don't know. The San Francisco campus was run as, shall we say,
an oligarchy, maybe? It probably wasn't a complete dictatorship.
But we found all sorts of things that were contrary to
University practice. We found ladies who had been on non-
faculty, non-tenure appointments for at least ten, fifteen
years — and they were supposedly limited to eight — and a whole
series of things which seemed to us to be transgressions of all
that was a good, pure, and proper in the university system. I
was not one to pull my punches. And, while nobody ever told me
so, I suspect it created a hell of a furor.

At any rate, Davisson seemed to be able to handle this.
Then, as I think I mentioned, he was siphoned off to represent
the faculty in the oath controversy, and Erode became chairman.
Erode, I think it would be fair to say, was really a militantly
independent faculty member — a very fine person. We often used
to disagree because of the our different points of view. He
used to pull out a slide rule and say, "Classics doesn't deserve
more than one professor of Greek because they've only had so
many students, " and so on. I would come back and say, "Look
Bob, I don't give a damn how many students they've got. A
university that's worth a hoot in hell has to have a strong
classics department and you can't do it on the slide rule."
So. we argued a lot.

Malcolm Davisson stayed as chairman of the committee for
the rest of that year (I went on in January), but the next year
Brode was chairman, and that year we got along beautifully. I
think he was so impressed with my operating on the medical
school budget that he gave me the Davis campus budget.

Lage: To create more friendships.

Constance: That's right. At the same time, they put John Saunders. who
later became chancellor of the San Francisco campus, on the
committee, so I got rid of the medical school. They got
themselves put in order by someone who was really competent to
do it.

The Question of Academic Titles for Davis Personnel

Constance: Again. I had a very ir. esting assignment because this was just
at the point when it h. been decided that each of the campuses
would have its own committee structure. So there was to be a
Davis budget committee. This was a little like the — what did
the British call it? It was a "shadow committee".

1 21

Constance: The Davis Committee on Committees set up a shadow budget

committee, and I was the liaison officer between the Northern
Division Budget Committee, which had some power, and the shadow
Davis committee which didn't yet have any. My job was to
educate them and to try, if possible, to communicate to them cur
way of thinking. Brode used to say, "You mustn't let them do
that. Tell them not to do that." I said, "Look Bob, you can't
tell them to do anything and make them do it. You simply have
to convince them that they don't want to. And if we're lucky,
why, maybe we can."

Lage: What were the differences?

Constance: Davis had a relatively unique situation. It had started as an
agricultural experiment station, I suppose largely because land
was cheaper in the Sacramento Valley than it was in Berkeley.
So for many years, it was just that — it was an experiment
station. It worked very closely with the county agents, and
they gave short courses for farmers and so on. There was
relatively little teaching of a university type. It was a
short-course, extension sort of thing which was obviously very
important; but. it wasn't really the thing that universities
were made of. So most of the people had titles in the
experiment station, but did not have academic titles — a few of
them did. Since they were very scarce, they were very
desirable, and everybody wanted an academic title.

The faculty of the Davis campus felt terribly put-upon
because they didn't all have academic titles, and they would use
all kinds of devices to try to get them. They would assign
three people to teach one one-semester course, and they all
wanted academic titles although it was a two-unit course, which
obviously meant there would be a very minimum involvement in
teaching. And then a lot of them were teaching a short course
sort of thing to people who probably couldn't have qualified to
enter the University, anyway.

So the general feeling of Berkeley people, which probably
was not shared by Davis people, was that most of these Davis
people were simply not entitled by the terms of their activities
to have academic titles. There was a strong feeling on the part
of the Davis people that Berkeley, which was directly identified
with anything unpleasant, was preventing them from getting
academic titles, which would add directly to their prestige. So
there was a very strong push on the part of some of the Davis
faculty that, as soon as they got out from under the
jurisdiction of the Northern Division committee — which was
Berkeley — that they then were going to give academic titles a
lot more liberally than had been the case in the past. There
were passionate speeches at Academic Senate meetings and so on,
because there was a Northern Division of the Academic Senate,

122

Constance

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage :
Constance

Lage:

Constance :

Lage :

which probably met in Berkeley all the time. So, as you can
imagine, there was considerable animosity toward "erkeley and
some basis for it. It used to be said that it was a lot farther
from Berkeley to Davis than from Davis to Berkeley. [laughter]

But I became very well acquainted with the people on the
Davis committees. I think all of them have now had buildings at
Davis named for them; it's very nostalgic when I get up there.

Would their decisions have to be approved by your committee
anymore?

No, they would not after the next year. They would go directly to
the President. I said, "Look, I know there's a lot of
pressure or. you to do this, and there's nobody to stop you if
you want to do it. But I think before you do it, you ought to
realize that the people who have really held the line are some
of the most distinguished faculty members you have."

How about Wellman — how did he feel about that?

He was not on the budget committee any more; he was only on it
my first year and he refused to be chairman. I think he became
director of the Giannini Foundation at that time or he was
already amply loaded with committee assignments.

I'm sure that I had support from Claude Hutchison, who was
the vice-president for agriculture statewide. At all events,
the Davis committee basically adhered to our standards, and
didn't give in to the pressure. In fact, one of the provosts
told me later, "They were worse than you werel" So we really
felt the transition was very successful.

Was there a thought at that time of their broadening to a
liberal arts college, or did that come a bit later?

It came later [1959]. I'm sure there was thought about it, but
most of these things were not seriously thought about until
Sproul's retirement. I think it would be fair to say. Later, I
did serve on the search committee for a chancellor, so I learned
a lot about it.

One of the things, incidentally, that Sproul did that I
think was very good in his later years, was to inaugurate an
All- University Faculty Conference, which was held on different
campuses. [looking at some documents] I see that he asked me
to be a delegate to the fifth conference. This was dated 1950;
they must have started about 1945.

Was that an attempt to provide more unity to the various
campuses?

123

Constance: Yes. And he was awfully good at it. He'd have a question

period. I think, at the end of things, over which he presided.
Ke'd take any question from anybody on anything and handle them
in a masterful way. He was very good at that sort of thing.

Budget Committee Chairman during Campus Transition

Constance: Why don't we go on with the budget committee? The sort of

normal sequence, if you didn't think of an excuse to get off
earlier, was to serve two years as a committee member and a
third as chairman. So I did that and at that point. Kerr came
in as chancellor.

Lage: That was '52?

Constance: That was '52. I was asked if I would serve an additional year
as budget committee chairman. I remember Davis saying, "Sproul
makes great use of the budget committee because he thinks it's a
good idea. Kerr will also, because he believes in it."
[laughter] I think you asked some place where the budget
committee came in in its decisions and recommendations. You
always have to remember — I always point this out — that the
President was instructed by the Regents to consult with the
faculty, and we were the faculty's consulting arm in this
business. Our opinions, our recommendations, were always
advisory; there was never any question that the administration
could ignore our recommendations if it wished. But I think that
the administration followed our recommendations well over ninety
percent of the time. So. as far as most of the faculty was
concerned, they felt we had made the decision. I learned later
that UCLA's budget committee didn't have that high a batting
average.

Lage: With Sproul?

Constance: With Sproul. yes. At any rate, he took us very seriously. Even
after I was off the budget committee. Sproul called me up about
some faculty matter. He said. "I'm being pressured very
strongly for a promotion, and I see the committee is divided. I
really don't know what to do about it. What do you advise?" I
said, "The only thing the committee agreed on was that it was
premature." I said I thought that that would probably be a
fairly safe position to take, and he took it.

124

Special Problems of the School of Nursing

Constance :

Lage:

Constance :
Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

He had regental pressure on him. There was pressure from the
School of Nursing.- The School of Nursing was the epitomy of the
plight of a largely women's group — or exclusively women's group —
in a very macho male community. I don't think it would be
unfair to say that the prevalent state of mind of most male
physicians was that nurses ought to be happy emptying bedpans
and smiling while they're doing it, damn it. and bring back some
coffee on the way. [laughter] That may be overstating it a
little, but not too much.

The subject of nursing. I would say, is very hard to detect
a field of scholarship in. In fact, I don't know anybody who
ever really succeeded in doing it. So. since the budget commit
tee automatically investigated cases where there had been no
change in status for the normal period (three years, or even
five), we would reinvestigate. We'd appoint committees and the
committees would split or come in with a negative report.

Now this would be for someone to get reappointed?
For advancement, for tenure.
Were they professors?

They were instructors, assistant professors, and usually the
chairman would be a professor; but it was awfully tough-going
for them.

Because they didn't publish research?

Well, it is not an academic field, is what you actually come
down to. If you tried to make it an academic field, the
physicians were really huffy because you were invading their
territory. They used to write theses on the curriculum for
the School of Nursing at Minnesota State College, or something
like that. It was just awfully hard to make something out of
that. I remember Sproul — I think it was a different occasion —
called again. I think, when I was off the committee. He said.
"What am I going to do about the School of Nursing?" and I
said. "Look, you're always going to have this problem as long as
you have an external committee looking at this thing. He said,
"Well, I wish your committee would tell me what to do about it."
But there wasn't much of anything you could do about it. really.
It was just one of those things.

Could they have devised different criteria for the School of
Nursing?

125

Constance: They probably should r.ot have giver, professorial appointments, I
suppose. I don't know; it's hard to say. They really were more
at the technical level. I was on the advisory committee for the
School of Nursing at one time or another. But it was very
tough, because their faculty weren't really trained for an
academic role. The only thing they could do was to teach other
nurses to teach other nurses to teach other nurses. It was one
of these very unfortunate things. But the real problem was that
there wasn't a basic field of scholarship there. Certainly,
there is something to patient care, but it's awfully hard to
find a really academic, really scientific field in that.

Lage : It's clinical.

Constance: It's pretty much clinical, that's right, and clinical's always a
problem too. So much for the budget committee. I did serve on
it for four years — two years as a chairman.

The Promotion Process

Lage: I have a few more questions on the budget committee.

Constance: Go ahead.

Lage: I want to get the general idea of how you reviewed faculty

appointments — how they came up. and whether you listened to the
departments as much as Sproul listened to you. and so on.

Constance: All appointments originated at -the departmental level. Exactly
how the department arrived at its recommendations was not always
all that clear. In the better-governed departments, according
to my way of thinking, particularly the larger ones, there would
be a specific committee, an ad hoc committee appointed from the
faculty members. Having. I presume, decided where an
appointment should be made, they would come up with a list of
candidates, look into their writings, get other information
about them, and probably make a report to the faculty as a
whole.

Certainly there were some departments in which the chairman
did this himself. That was generally frowned-upon by people
like me who felt that the responsibility should be more widely
spread. The recommendation would go from the department to the
dean of .whatever college or school was involved. It would then
be forwarded, originally to the President's Office, later [after
1952] to the Chancellor's Office. The budget committee would be
notified and asked to react, normally; but there are all sorts
of variations possible on these things. Where an administrative

126

Constance:

Lage:

position was involved, the Chancellor or President might ask for
a slate from which he would select. In our day, the thing came
to the budget committee, and we would appoint an ad hoc
committee to review the case.

So every promotion or appointment had a committee to review it?

Constance: That's generally true. There has been some modification of that
in recent years. I think, perhaps, they don't do as much
reviewing in the early stages, now, by committee; I'm not quite
sure. Certainly, advancement to tenure is a time of review.

Lage: And then in choosing the committee, what did you think about?

Who you might get to serve, or — ?

Constance: We never thought about that. We thought about the people who
were best qualified. We assumed they would serve.

Lage: And was that the case?

Constance: Almost unanimously so. People very rarely ducked out of it. I
remember one potential committee member calling me and saying,
"I feel that when I'm called upon I should do my duty." This
was the general faculty attitude. He said, "In this case, I
just don't think I can be objective. You see. the candidate was
married to my sister, and there was a messy divorce." I said,
"I don't think you need to tell me any more,"

Overall, it was pretty rare for a faculty member to refuse
to serve. Again. I haven't followed it in recent years. I
gather it's progressively more difficult. But, of course, the
character of the faculty has changed a great deal — partly as a
matter of size, partly as a matter of, I suppose, different
priorities would be the nice way to put it.

Lage: One thing that occurred to me is probably something you just

accept, but it's what you say and hear about the vision of the
University. What kind of a vision was there as you were
deciding who to promote and who to hire? You know, the
difference between somebody who was competent and somebody who
really had qualities of excellence.

Constance: We had to rely primarily on the recommendations we got. And
this goes on through the whole business. I think that I. at
least (I don't know how many people I want to try speak for) —
My feeling has always been that the University is strongest if
it appoints the best young people it can get and gives them good
support. I don't like the system, by and large, of looking for
stars, which Harvard made a great deal of. and the University of
Texas has been using in recent years.

127

Constance: But I think the kind of unity it seems to me we once had or. the
faculty arose ir. large measure from this way of going at thir.as.
Now, there's r.o question that you can't have a purely home-grown
institution, because if you aren't careful, you get an internal
old-boy network, and the whole thing stagnates. You need to
bring in people from time to time. You have to keep examining
yourself to be sure you're not developing weaknesses; and when
you discover that you have, you may have to make some senior
appointments to get away from it. But I don't think that the
system of simply so to speak, combing the journals for upcoming
stars is any way to build a strong university. But, as I say,
Harvard has been verv successful with it.

Faculty Role in University Governance

Constance: Sometime in the fifties, I guess, the late Professor Joseph
Harris, who was in the Department of Political Science, was
asked to look at the University's committee structure and see if
this is the way these things ought to be done. And I take it
that I was chairman of the budget committee at the time and
wrote this account of it to him. [reads letter to Professor
Joseph P. Harris; see following page]

Lage: It seems to indicate that there was some ill-feeling toward the

budget committee, I would say.

Constance: Every new professional dean that arrived objected to the budget
committee. I remember —

Lage: Deans of the professional schools, this would be?

Constance: That's right. And there were various moves to take the
different professional schools out from under the budget
committee. The one successful move was accomplished by the
School of Law. The budget committee — I think, when Brode was
chairman — met with Bill Wurster, who was the dean of what's now
the College of Environmental Design and Bill Prosser, who was
dean of the School of Law. We thought that this would aid
relations. They were not used to working with a faculty group
of this sort, and to some degree, they felt it was an
imposition. They felt they should to be able to go directly to
the President or the Chancellor. And I suppose, probably, the
Chancellor may have encouraged their meeting together.

128

Constance

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance :
Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

They had given us recommendations for faculty appointments
almost completely devoid of any documentation at all. They were
prone to recommend appointments at above-scale salaries of fifty
or twenty- five thousand, which were not in the cards at that
time. And no doc amenta tion whatever excepting. "I say he's the
best man in the country — we've got to have himl"

The dean of the School of Law came in with the names of
people he would like to appoint, and he had on it the name of
substantially every dean of a major law school in this country.

— who he wanted to appoint as faculty here?

That's right. And the dean of Environmental Design came in with
pretty much the same sort of thing. I remember Brode. who was a
scientist and very objective about things, kept probing Wurster
and saying. 'Veil, all right, these people are all distinguished
architects; but. you know, there are an awful lot of good
architects out there. How do you decide which architects you
would like to have in your faculty as opposed to others?" And
Wurster sputtered and finally said. "It's soull"

Soul?

Well, we couldn't do very much with that. But we insisted that
when he recommended an appointment, we should have some documen
tation, and that he get letters for us. So he sent in. in one
case I think, something like fifty letters from his cronies
around the country, the general gist of which were about two
lines that said, "If Bill Wurster says he wants it, you should
let him have it," So we let him have it, all right.

Did he get the people?
Not very many.

So was this a case where he wanted more appointments than you
thought were warranted?

There were certainly more appointments than warranted, no real
evidence of a rational plan, no evidence of consideration of
what the rest of the university was going to run on while they
were doing their thing, and so on. The constraining role of the
budget committee was a common complaint of the professional
deans.

I discussed this somewhat with Henry Vaux. who was quite
understanding —

Constance: Which wav?

L28a

Dear Professor Harris:

I welcome your Invitation to comment on your recent memor
andum with regard to the Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental
Relations. Inasmuch as I shall be away from the campus next se
mester, I hope you will not object to my making a rather broader
reply than the Immediate memorandum , Itself, may seem to Indicate*

The University of California possesses a system of government
In which the general faculty, through the eommlttees of the Aca
demic Senate, enjoys a degree of Influence unprecedented, to my
••knowledge , among American universities. It is a natter of pained
surprise to me that most proposals to "reorganise11 procedures here
apnear to have as their objective the weakening rather than the
strengthening of this faculty role. That such an Impulse should
come from some deans and chairmen, particularly those who are
relatively new to the University of California and accustomed to
systems wherein administrative officers enjoy a very large measure
of autonomy, Is not difficult to understand. But why It should
also enjoy some support among the faculty at large, I find incom
prehensible. It would appear that some faculty members would
prefer being told what to do rather than to exercise the role of
constructive academic citizenship which the University of Cali
fornia system expects of them.

Complaints against such active faculty participation in
academic government usually allege that it is unorthodox, time-
consuming, capricious, largely uninformed, and irresponsible.
Conversely, it would be assumed that more ortnodox academic con
trol solely by professional administrators is speedy, consistent,
all-wise, and fully responsible. From my own limited experience
with three large Institutions, in two of which the faculty had
essentially no role in the determination of affairs above the
departmental level, I have found no basis for such a comparison.
On the contrary, I find no indication that either faculty or
Administration has a monopoly upon good Judgment, freedom from
error, or devotion to the welfare of the institution. Maintenance
of the high standards of an institution demands the vlgllence and
effort of both faculty and Administration.

The unique aspect of the University of California system Is
that it has all the usual administrative officers and channels and,
^n addition, a mechanism whereby the administrator faced with de
cisions may also secure advice from regularly constituted faculty
committees quite Independent of the regular administrative chain-
of-command. It would appear to be only sensible that any adminis
trator should enjoy full freedom to secure counsel wherever he
thinks he can obtain it. And yet, the effect of a number of pro
posals put forward in recent years, some of them by faculty groups,
has been in the direction of limiting the advisory role of the
Senate Committees, ox^eelng to It that their advie-e reaches the
administrator so late, or In such general terms, that he will be
less inclined to consider it with any seriousness. The assumption
seems to be that "good government" lies only along the regular
administrative channels, and thatjladvlce from any other source Is
apt to be uninformed and Irresponsible. As a palpable sop, it is
suggested that the Senate Committees forego their work with "minor
details." which will be delegated to sub-deans, budget officers.

of "principles" and "policy." These suggestions run counter to the
common knowledge that significant policies and principles usually arise
out of decisions with regard to "minor details," and that If these de
cisions are withdrawn entirely from faculty Influence, they will be
made by administrative "experts." This appears to me to be a decidedly
backward step.

As concerns the Commit tea on Budget and Interdepartmental Relations,
the criticism seems to be that, although It obtains Its Information only
from the written record and concentrates too much on "minor details,14 it
is economy-minded, and Its advice is taken so seriously by (some) deans
and higher administrative officers, that it results in chairman and
(some) deana failing to get what they want. The implication is that
the chairmen and (some) deans could get what they want if there were
only the normal administrative channels to deal with, but that "irre-
'sponslble"^ from the Budget Committee constitutes a frustrating and in
surmountable obstacle. (If this advice is uninformed and capricious,
it is difficult to see why any administrator attaches Importance to it'.)

During recent years, the Budget Committee has recommended both
decreases and increases every year. If it has rather more frequently
supported the former than the latter, this la because of: (1) the
trend of Legislative climate with regard to the University budget;
(2) the fact that the Budget Committee has more recent information
from the office of the President and/or the Chancellor as to the level
of expenditure the Administration will support; (3) the fact that soae
rec oooi en ding officers fall to recognize the existence of any budgetary
celling whatever. Under present conditions, without some equalization
of sacrifice, it is more than likely that the basic and leas aggressive
departments would suffer in comparison with the shinier and more spec
tacular activities, which sometimes come equipped with their own,
highly vocal, pressure-groups. Such a function is of both administra
tive and faculty concern, since distribution of funds profoundly in
fluences the form and quality of the whole institution. It seems to
me that the faculty, through the Budget Committee, should have an
Important voice in the equalizing process.

Whereas the Budget Committee frequently doe s consult with recom
mending officers about their budgets, it la to be assumed that fcrery
budgetary request should standybr fall on the basis of the documentation
provided. I should agree that there might well be freer and franker
two-way discussion up and down the present administrative channels,
and I understand that the Chancellor is taking steps to bring this
about. Tola, however, is an administrative flatter and not a direct
concern of the Academic Senate. I should be inclined to think that
the same thing is true of the precise organization of the office of
the Dean of the College of Letters and Science.

I should like to re-emphasize one common misconception: the
Budget Committee makes n£ administrative decisions'. Decisions are
made only by administrative officers. Since the Budget Committee only
presents advice to the administrative officer, there is no violation
of the principle that responsibility for results whould go with budget
decisions. It is of the utmost importance, in my opinion, that the
committees of the Academic Senate keep themselves out of the adminis
trative chain- of -command, but that the Administration should always
be able to turn to them for carefully considered, independent advic«,
which Is based primarily on concern for high academic standards un
modified by the expediency wnlch administrators customarily find them
selves bound to heed.

128c

administrator* depends upon when it would be moat
uaeful to him and when he would me most inclined to
give it weight. Moat deans have not, I believe, wel
comed the idea of a faculty committee having an op
portunity to exeunlne their comments on the recommen
dations of the departioenal chairmen . Others have not
indicated any such reserv.at ions; and still others, I
suspect, do not give any weight at all to Budget Com-
a it tee comments and recommendations.

Specifically, I believe the chief concern of the
Academic Senate and of its Reorganisation Committee
should be that the advice of the Budget Committee be
of the kind found most useful by the decision-Baking
administrator, and that it should be available to
him when he most needs it. To violate either or
these common-sense points would be to substantially
diminish the Influence of the faculty in the whole
budget-making process.

Sincerely,

Lincoln Constance

•6

2
O
D

129

Lage: Of the budget committee's point of view, but also his own needs

in the School of Forestry.

Constance: Oh. sure. Anybody that worked on both sides of the street, as I
did later, knows there's something to be said on both sides.
But I still think the budget committee is simply one of the
greatest things we have going for us.

Lage: His point was that it was difficult when he needed to appoint

somebody in a field that was professional — that required
professional competence — to get the budget committee to
understand somebody's excellence.

Constance: That's quite right. The thing is that there's no question that
the budget committee system worked best in relatively "pure"
academic areas. When you got into the professional areas, it
was more difficult. The law school was a very difficult one, no
question about it, because the prevailing salaries in the legal
profession go far beyond the University's, and it would be very
difficult to build a really first-rate law school without
granting above-scale salaries. But I don't think the way either
of the deans was going about it was any way to build one either.
Be that as it may, I still stick by my guns. I think that it
basically was and is a sound system.

Lage: How did the people on the budget committee — just being faculty

members in various departments — develop this broad view of what
the University needed?

Constance: We learned fast. Ideally, they had the same kinds of considera
tions within their own departments. If the department was
democratically run, they had participated in these kinds of
decisions. I mentioned the budget committee nominated ad hoc
review committees, and they had served on that sort of thing.
Partly, it was inbred, it was observed, it was produced by
experience, by discussions with other people involved, and so
on. It seems to me that any academic could do it, if he got his
mind out of his particular field. These people were very
carefully chosen by a committee of their colleagues, who were
elected. You see. this is the democratic end of it because all
committee appointments of the Academic Senate committees are
made by an elected Committee on Committees. At one time, I
served on the Committee on Committees. Somewhere in these
papers I found the notice of my election.

Lage: And that was actually elected by mail vote of the faculty?

Constance: That's right — all the faculty that voted, anyway. [finding what
he is looking for] Ah. here we are. [reads] "Nineteen fifty-
three, the result of the recent election was as follows: 942

130

Constance: ballots received." I remember Kerr was absolutely stunned that
as a member of the budget committee — chairman of the budget
committee — I got the highest number of votes.

Lage : [laughing] You were supposed to be an unpopular figure?

Constance: I wasn't popular with everybody, including some of the deans,
but basically I got along all right with them.

Lage: What about with different departments that you had to deny

requests for — or advise against, I guess we should say — ?

Constance: That's right — we advised against. And. as I said, something
over ninety percent of the time, our advice was taken. We
didn't do it idly.

In the first place, the budget committee had the best
records, I think, of anybody on campus, and they were
cumulative. By the time a faculty member had worked his way up
the ladder to associate professor, we had comments that had been
made at each of his salary steps, for his tenure promotion, and
so on. So we really knew quite a lot about him. So I don't
think we made very many internal mistakes. The mistakes we made
internally were probably being too easy rather than too tough.
In my administrative career, the worst mistakes I made were
going against my better judgment and being too easy.

Lage: Earlier you mentioned a faculty member whose failure to get

tenure was controversial.

Constance: Well, one of the common phenomena that, of course, is a little

derogatory to students, but has at least a little bit of wormood
in it, but also a bit of truth to it, is this: the students are
dying to come to the University because of its great distinction.
As soon as they get here, they do their best to transform it
into a junior college they will be happy with, and all the
things that make the University important, and its cachet of
value, they would destroy (an overstatement, obviously).

But there are certain faculty members, from time to time,
usually those with some gift of gab. who often are quite fancy
lecturers, but who aren't anything else because they have
nothing else to back them up. The students see the glitter and
very often the instructors, professors, or whatever they are
recognize that they're not all that important to their col
leagues. They find the students are a much more sympathetic
audience, and so they play to it for all they're worth.

So when they are reviewed by their colleagues, their
colleagues often say, "Well, the teaching presentation is
obviously very popular, and it may even be very good. But we

131

Constance: don't find any record whatever of serious scholarship." It's
common knowledge that this kind of flashy lecture performance
usually does not last throughout a career if the man isn't doing
anything beyond it to grow as a scholar. Therefore, we think
the individual's a bad risk.

Of course, a common student response is that his colleagues
are mad because he's getting all the students; therefore,
they're out to cut his throat. People being human, undoubtedly
there is some element of truth in it in some instances. But I
think that, in general, the budget committee-ad hoc committee
combination tends to get away from that. That's probably the
best insurance you could get; you can never be absolutely sure.
Certainly, some people have been dinged, perhaps, improperly.
But I think that on the whole it has usually worked out pretty
well.

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

But you see. I'm an advocate of faculty government, and I
think it works out much better than an administrator could do
alone. And I say this because I was an administrator for ten
years, and I think I know what I'm talking about. During that
time, of course. I reviewed all the appointments and promotions
in Letters and Science for seven years and all those on campus
for three years. I worked closely with the budget committee,
did not always agree with them when I was in an administrative
position, but I wouldn't do anything without them.

If you didn1 1 agree with them, did you turn down their advice?

I never was in the position of making the final decision.
I'm not sure whether the Chancellor ever overrode my advice when
I was vice-chancellor or not. I would not have objected if he
had, but the times when I disagreed with the budget committee
were so rare that it really didn't amount to anything.

When I became dean of Letters and Science, incidentally, I
insisted that I should see the budget committee's recommendations
before I made mine. That was objected to by some of the other
faculty members and some of the other deans because they didn't
have that privilege. On the other hand, I had fifty-odd
departments and they had one or two. And I found the budget
committee advice overwhelmingly important. As I said, the only
times I think I probably was wrong was when I didn't follow my
own hunches and say "no" in a few cases. I would think, "Ten
people have looked at this. Who am I to say that my judgment is
better than theirs?" Unless I really had very strong reasons. I
went along with committee decisions. That's what you have to do
if you have a democratic system and you believe in it.

But were there times you were sorry later?

132

Constance: Yes. a few, but relatively few.

Lage : [laughs] I think we should finish up for today.

Constance: Is there any thing- that we need to clean up at this point?

Lage: To wind up our discussion on the budget committee, we should

talk about the effect of dark Kerr coming in as Chancellor.

Constance: Well, I think probably the only thing that you can say about it,
really, is that Kerr indeed did use the budget committee, at
least as conscientiously as Sproul had. As chairman of the
budget committee, in that fourth year — my second year as
chairman — I got to know him very well, and that is probably why
I got involved in administration later.

133

XI THE EARLY PIETIES: ADMINISTRATION AND ADDRESSES
[Interview 5: February 27. 1986] ##

Relationship with Clark Kerr

Lage: We're going to start today with a discussion about Clark Kerr

and your work with him. You covered quite a time span. We'll
probably elaborate more when we get into the period of the L & S
dear.ship.

Constance: Well, it's part of it. really. Obviously my tenure in

administration is a kind of a block in the middle of the road,
so you can't go around it. It comes i"to almost any discussion,

I think.

My relationship with Clark Kerr. my acquaintance with him,
really dates from my experience as a member of the budget
committee. I just ran into — I don't think I've mentioned
before — the notice of my appointment on December 14, 1948. I
was to replace Ken Pitzer. who took leave from the university to
accept a position with the Atomic Energy Commission. At the
same time, Robert Brode- who died just recently, also came on
the committee as a replacement.

I served four years on the committee. I think it prohably
was my second or third year on the committee that I met with the
Committee on Privilege and Tenure, which Dr. Kerr chaired. As
far as I can recall, that was my first direct acquaintance with
him. I just uncovered, in looking in my files, a letter from
Murray Benedict — who served on the budget committee, at least a
couple of years with me — who was then in Washington D. C., and
he refers in a letter of February 6, 1952. to the appointment of
Kerr as chancellor. He says, "I'm really quite delighted about
the selection that has been made, though I had not previously
thought of Kerr in this connection. My contact with him has
been less ir.timate than with some of the others who are under
consideration. I believe, however, I would put him about at the

134

Constance: top of my list. As you have mentioned, he is of the faculty and
will have a real appreciation of its problems and attitudes. In
addition, dark is a very fine person — well-balanced and easy to
work with. He also has a good deal of ability. He comes, I
think, with the Pennsylvania Quakers and has in his makeup a
good deal of their quiet friendliness and dignity. I don't
think he is an over- ambitious climber. My guess is that he will
fill the gap there in an effective and generally satisfactory
way. "

Benedict was quite conservative, but a very fine person in
whom I had a great deal of confidence. So I think I was probably
predisposed to be pleased with the appointment, even though I,
again, knew some of the other people considerably better than I
did Kerr.

Lage : You say you knew who was being considered. Did everybody kr.ow

who was being considered and have some say in it. or how did
that work?

Constance: There's no doubt that there were discussions of who was being

considered; whether any of it was official or not, I don't know.
I was not involved in any direct way that I can recall. So I
suspect that maybe it was just faculty conversation. Such
matters are usually discussed, and newspapers often pick it up
and send up a few trial balloons, and so on. I don't remember
very much discussion about it. But Kerr, who was the head of
the Institute of Industrial Relations, was very well-known in
some parts of the campus but probably less in mine, let's say,
in the scientific area.

Lage: Had he become somewhat well-known in the loyalty oath dispute?

Constance: Indeed he was. and of course he won great respect from the
faculty because he defended the faculty very strongly, if
unsuccessfully. I remember that he told the Regents, "You're
not catching Communists; what you're doing is imprisoning the
free spirit of the faculty," which, as a statement, is rather
hard to beat, I think.

Looking in my own files, the first item I find from Kerr
was dated May 29. 1953, congratulating me on receiving a
Guggenheim Fellowship for 1953. He says [reading], "This will
mean a well-deserved year of research for you after the heavy
obligations of your service as chairman of the budget committee.
I hope the South American flora will prove as alluring, in fact,
as is the vague memory of Dorothy Lamour movies, which the words
conjure up. With all best wishes, Clark." Perhaps I should say
that that was at the end of my second year as chairman of the

135

Constance: budget committee. I had served that year primarily because Kerr
had indicated that coming in as chancellor, he wanted to have
the advice of the budget committee. I think I've said that I
was almost the only veteran on it. so I agreed to stay on for

that time.

Lage: Last time, we talked about the budget committee, and then we

looked at the reference to the Academic Advisory Council and the
coordinating committee. Do you recall working with Kerr in
those capacities?

Constance: That's correct. I was involved with both the AAC [Academic
Advisory Committee] and the CAAC [Chancellor's Advisory
Administrative Council]. I'm trying to sort this thing out so
that it makes sense. I find a letter which I wrote to Kerr in
September 1953. "With regard to a question raised by the
President as to whether the chairman of the budget committee
should be on eleven months' appointment during his term of
service, I believe I shall have to maintain the same position I
have in the past in regard to such arrangements. You may recall
that I unsuccessfully advocated the departmental chairman not be
put on eleven months' appointment, and this matter was discussed
in the Chancellor's Academic Advisory Council." This was the
29th of September, so Kerr was in office.

"In the latter case, I suppose that a chairman of the
department is more nearly a part of the administration than is
the chairman of the budget committee. Basis for my view is the
perhaps rather idealistic position that no extra compensation
should be paid for services rendered by a member of the faculty
to a colleague. In arguing against an increase in stipend for
the chairman of the budget committee, it seems to me that
granting monetary advantage would have two undesirable
tendencies: one. to perpetuate the chairman in office for too
long a term, and two, what is really another aspect of the same
thing — to make committee chairmanship a career in itself. I
fdrmly believe that all members of the faculty should be active
scholars, insofar as possible, and that, unless they go
completely into administrative work, they continue to have an
obligation to scholarship in their field. If greater financial
awards come to be attainable in a number of other ways, there
will always be a tendency for individuals to bypass scholarship.

"As I have told the CAAC, this is an idealistic and perhaps
unrealistic position, The university seems to me to be moving
steadily and rapidly in the direction of eleven months' appoint
ment for everyone. At least there's no certain rhyme or reason
in the present division of terms of appointment. There's no
question in my mind that the chairman of the budget committee
must actually serve an eleven month period or more. However,
his responsibility is peculiarly toward his colleagues on the

136

Constance: faculty rather than to the administration, He should be giver.
special consideration, I think, in relieving him from other
duties during his term of service. Perhaps this is the same
thing that was proposed to the president, but in a different
guise. For whatever it is worth, however, I shall forever
remain a champion of the idealistic position. Sincerely, — "

What that seems to say is that, yes indeed, as chairman of
the budget committee, I did. from the beginning of its
organization, serve on the CAAC. with the others members of the
group, who were primarily deans. My role, as I recall, was in
large measure to assist in the process of informing the deans,
because the CAAC was largely an informational thing. As I think
I've said earlier. President Sproul really preferred to deal
individually with the deans. Kerr preferred to deal with them
as a collectivity, so to speak. Not that he didn't, of course,
have contact with deans individually, but he wanted to equalize
things and treat them essentially all the same way. which often
wasn't possible because the responsibilities of the different
deans varied so widely.

I find a note written to me by Kerr on March 26, 1954. I
probably received it in South America. It says, "Dear Lincoln,
I was very pleased to receive your card and to learn you've
given up trying to set the world on fire." That's a private
joke. "Climbing a volcano sounds strenuous, but no more so, I
assure you, than pouring water or gasoline, as the case may be,
on sparks which fly on campus. I suppose none of our current
grievances can be characterized as 'unusual', for my perception
of what constitutes 'unusual' grows dimmer with experience. You
might be interested to know that we now have an addition to
CAAC — a new group, also called CAAC. for purposes of general
confusion. This is the Chancellor's Academic Advisory
Committee, made up of several key deans and senate committee
chairmen to consider broad topics which cut across budget, educa
tional policy, physical planning, and other major areas. We've
also set up a committee on criteria to consider qualitative
measures so as to forestall imposition of rigid quantitative
standards. Life sure is busy. I envy you your locale, even
without palm trees or Dorothy Lamour. Best regards, dark Kerr."

Lage: So you did keep in touch while you were on your sabbatical.

Constance: Yes. Not much, but some.

Lage: It makes it sound like that chancellor's advisory committee was

new at that time.

Constance: That's right, March '54, so apparently it was set up — well, I

don't know quite when it was set up — in the '53-'54 year, which
is the vear I was on sabbatical.

137

Constance: I know he also wrote me, perhaps later — I don't seem to have
such a letter. But on May 7. I received a letter. He says.
"On recommendation of Dean Davis, I take pleasure ir. appointing
you chairman of the Department of Botany for the academic year
1954-55."

Lage : Had that been discussed before, or did you just receive the

letter?

Constance: No. He wrote and asked me. The occasion of the other letter
was, I think, when I got to Puerto Montt, which is in south
Chile. The farther south I got, just for fun, I sent a few
postcards — I sent one to him and I sent one to President Sproul.
I don't think President Sproul answered, and I was very much
surprised that Kerr did. So it was probably the next month
after this, or so, that he wrote and asked if I would be
amenable to becoming chairman — Davis had recommended I be
chairman of the Department of Botany. [indicating a document]
This is simply a formal notification. [reading] I said, "I just
received your letter of May 7, forwarded to me here" — this is
from Santiago, Chile — "advising me of my appointment as chairman
of the Department of Botany for the academic year 1954-55. If
it is the desire of my colleagues in the department, of Dean
Davis, and of yourself, I shall, of course, accept the appoint
ment for 1954-55 and do my best to justify your confidence in
me."

And here is a letter I wrote to him from Santiago in
response to his first note. [reads] It says, "Your good letter
of March 26 was as welcome as it was unexpected. Time since I
returned from the south — it being winter here — has been spent
largely in collecting in other people's herbariums, which has
proven to be rather more rewarding on the whole than my own
efforts in the field. We've just returned from a week's visit
at the flesh pots of Buenos Aires, which was the high spot of
our trip. A beautiful city — very spacious and metropolitan. It
seems incredible that such an apparently up-and-coming people
should have had the bad luck to be stuck with the government
they have. The steaks were all they are reputed to be. and the
Chilean food is a pretty sad anticlimax. We flew both ways, and
the trip back to Santiago yesterday made in clear sunshine was
something to remember. We came so close to Aconcagua, the
highest point in the western hemisphere, that we could
practically have tweaked its nose. At any rate, we had that
week in Argentina before receiving your official letter.

"Momentarily, I feel so completely remote from anything
resembling departmental affairs, that I can't help feeling that
you and Sailor must be completely mistaken to harbor the view
that I am the man for the job. I hope I can rise and stay risen
to the occasion when I get back into the familiar locale. I was

138

Constance: just beginning to let myself hope the lightning would strike

somewhere else and that I could look forward to a few pleasant
years of uninterrupted — hah! — teaching and research, and mostly
the latter. But there is the considerable probability that my
colleagues will vote to throw me out by a year from now, so I
can keep hoping. Seriously, I am glad to fit into the precedent
of 'reluctant administrators,' which you yourself have set. and
I'll do my best to justify your trust.

"We have booked passage to Callao, Peru, for June 4 so there
is a desperate lot of packing to be done here. I may yet have to
take my truck to sea and sink it. In Peru, I hope to get in a
little more field work- but we also want to see something of the
country. Our post-Peruvian program depends upon the whimsical
schedule of Grace Line freighters, but we expect to reach
Berkeley in August. I hope I shall not see you then, because I
trust that you will be enjoying a muy tranquil lo vacation
somewhere with your family in Berkeley."

Constance: Then I had a note from June 1. He says. "Dear Lincoln: By your
account, I'm surprised you're even coming back to Berkeley. But
needless to say. we will be delighted to have you back and
serving as department chairman, even though a reluctant one,
dark"

Lage: At some point, are these letters going to get into The Bancroft

Library?

Constance: They'll probably get into my own file, which probably will be in
the Jepson Herbarium. After all. they have my library, and
someday will have my correspondence.

"The Versatile Taxonomist". 1950

Lage: Let's talk about three of the influential papers you gave in the

fifties — what the occasions were, what some of the general ideas
were, and what their influence was.

Constance: Most of those things are questions you really can't answer. I

can tell you the occasions for them. In September. 1950, I gave
the presidential address for the American Society of Plant
Taxor.omists. I don't remember exactly when my affiliation with
the American Society of Plant Taxonomists began, but my
recollection is that I served for several years as a member of
the council. I remember raising the caveat that, being on the
West Coast. I really was a long way away from the center of the
thing. Dr. Henry Allen Gleason. with the New York Botanical

139

Constance: Garden said, "Nonsense. There are probably more good

taxonomists within a hundred miles of Berkeley than there are
of New York City."

Lage: AT. admission I wouldn't expect.

Constance: He was from Illinois, which might have accounted for it. At any
rate, I found myself giving the presidential address in
September, 1950. One of the things that I think spots my career
probably is that I like to think up titles, which I hope will be
provocative, and then try to figure out how to write up some
thing to go with the title.

Lage: You start with the title?

Constance: I started with the title; I don't always do it, but I did this
time. The title I thought of was "The Versatile Taxonomist,"
and that became a phrase which more or less haunted me over the
years. In fact, I'm not infrequently introduced as "the
versatile taxonomist. "

The general theme that I tried to emphasize in that, and as
I have, I think, throughout my career, is the same idea that was
expressed in The New Systematics. Plant classification is as
old as people's knowledge of plants. One can go back to tribal
ethno-botany, if you like, as Professor Berlin in anthropology
does. And really, the only thing that changes are the different
kinds of information from different kinds of methodology that
can be applied to the same purpose.

And so I was advocating the idea that taxonomy cannot get
along without support from the basic disciplines of the science;
and as an evolutionary synthesis, it can serve as a necessary
bridge between the experimental and the observational phases of
biology. In short, we can all be proud of being taxonomists,
but only when we have made a taxonomy in this country something
of which to be proud.

Lage: Did you have the feeling that taxonomy needed to be upgraded?

Constance: Yes.

Lage: How was that received by your colleagues in the society?

Constance: Some probably didn't like it very much. But I think I said that
the groups like the Biosystematists on the West Coast had really
pioneered in bringing evidence from genetics and cytology into
the general exercise of classification; as a result, this was
gradually entering and spreading, I would say. throughout the
country. But some areas succumbed to it more quickly than
others, probably.

Lage:

140

Did being president of the Society of Plant Taxor.omists give you
an ability to make any changes or encourage changes?

Constance: It gave me an ability to talk to them.

Lage: What kinds of things would you do as president of the society?

Constance: The only thing you had to do as president of that society was
give a speech when you stopped being president of the society,
[laughter] I might say it was an almost ideal society.

So the governing council didn't have a great deal of influence.

Constance: Not very much. I mean, it had some, but that's
probably all.

"The Role of Plant Ecology in Biosystematics," 1952

Constance: The second paper you asked me about, "The Role of Plant Ecology
in Biosystematics," was a vice-presidential speech. The
American Association for the Advancement of Sciences [AAAS] has
a series of sections, and section G is. I think, the botanical
one, although it could have been broader than botany. At all
events, I was vice-president of that section, and I had the
responsibility of giving a talk as I went out of office. This
was given at St. Louis on December 29, 1952.

Lage: You weren1 1 speaking particularly to ecologists, were you?

Constance: Well, this was part of the problem, as a matter of fact. At

this particular point in the history of the American Association
for the Advancement of Sciences, a number of the societies of
which it was made up (which had their annual meetings with the
AAAS) were breaking away and having their own meetings. There
was a real question as to whether very many people would show up
for this meeting. It occurred to me that I might have to get my
own audience. So I picked a list of about twenty or twenty- five
people who were either in St. Louis or in the general area of
the Midwest, who I thought might conceivably attend, and gave a
series of topics that I might talk on. I think I gave them
about half a dozen.

I don't remember now what the topics were, but two of them
were plant ecology and biosystematics. which really had never
been brought together before. I discovered on the basis of this
informal poll that these were the two topics that most

141

Constance: people expressed an interest in. So I decided to put them

together, thereby hopefully additively increasing my audience,
[laughter]

It actually worked out pretty well. The paper discussed
particularly the work of the Carnegie Laboratory team of
Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey, then situated at Stanford University.
Their work was really a series of experiments--basically,
transplant studies — of the behavior of parts, clones of the same
plants under different altitudinal and. hence, climatic
conditions. These were collectively labelled "experimental
taxonomy." My thesis was that these were actually "experimental
ecology" because taxonomy has really a further dimension.
Taxonomy involves a decision, a judgment, based on accumulated
information. And the kind of new information that was being
produced was clearly ecological.

Lage: They were clones — they were actually the same plant put in

different ecological settings?

Constance: That's correct — to see what characteristics remained unchanged,
and what characteristics did change. In other words, an
opportunity to distinguish between those changes which were
genetically determined and those which were habitally or
ecologically determined.

Several of the ecologists had made a few slightly
deprecatory remarks to the effect that this work really ought to
be a lesson for taxonomists. But none of them seemed to
realize that it had anything to do with ecology, whereas,
basically, it was ecological. So I made a survey of ecological
textbooks and found there was almost nothing in them that was
related to the topic at all. A few of them mentioned a little
European work of the same general nature; but otherwise the
ecologists proceeded as though species were distinct objects
which were immutable — an idea that most taxonomists had already
learned was hopelessly passe.

I found one paper in the ecological literature which
challenged this view. It was written by a man I didn't know
named Egler and was published two years earlier, actually. It
was called "A Commentary on American Plant Ecology Based on the
Textbooks of 1947-1949." I didn't know about this, and I didn't
know about him. But. to a large extent, I really followed up on
his survey — at least his critique of ecological literature.

Lage: Did he have some of the same criticisms that you do?

Constance: He had almost the same ones. The interesting thing was that it
turned out he was there, sitting in the second row, I think, and
nearly had a stroke when he heard me lecturing on his topic.

142

Lage: Now, were you not aware of his article at the time?

Constance: I was aware of his article. And that, in some ways, was really
the theme of my talk. It was a nineteen-page article, published
in Ecology. But certainly nobody paid much attention to it, as
far as I was aware. That was his view, too — that nobody had
really responded to it.

At all events, it was rather fun to beat ecologists over
the head.

Lage: [laughs] You did seem somewhat critical of the field.

Constance: I was very critical. The reason I was critical is that I once
taught ecology and one of the things I learned early about
American plant ecologists at that time was that most of them
didn't know anything about the plants they were talking about.
Very often their identifications were wildly off. and, as I
mentioned, they almost all proceeded on the basis that species
were essentially, if you like, separate acts of creation — again,
something that taxonomists, by and large, had long ago given up.

The paper had rather interesting repercussions. Some of
the ecologists were greatly offended, and some of them were
delighted. I had drawn an amazing number of ecologists. as a
matter of fact, with my title. They didn't know what to expect
and some of them didn't like what they got. It had been
customary to publish the presidential address in the journal,
Ecology. I gather, although I cannot prove this, that there was
considerable debate on the board of editors whether or not this
should be published. But finally it was. From the number of
reprints I was asked for, it was widely subscribed to. That was
my only excursion into plant ecology, shall we say.

Lage: Have you followed up on the field, since?

Constance: No. Well, ecology has become much more complicated. It's

become mathematical and so on. Whether or not it's become much
more profound, I don't know. Of course, ecologists are in a
difficult position because ecology is really, if you like, field
genetics, field ecology, under conditions that make experiment
very difficult. It can be descriptive, and often is; but as
soon as it becomes more experimental, they probably have to
bring it into the house and then it becomes something else —

Lage: They've lost the ecology part of it.

Constance: That's right. It's really difficult to do. Well, one of the
great improvements in the field has been the development of
controlled greenhouses, or phytotrons, etc., where all the
conditions can be controlled at once. Otherwise, the ecologist

143

Constance: has the problem of trying to control all but one variable, and
in the field this is extraordinarily difficult for numerous
reasons. The first phytotron was at Cal Tech; they abandoned
that one when all- the biologists went over to molecular biology
instead. So the first one in California, I guess, was also the
last one. But now the tendency is not to build these terribly
elaborate things, but rather smaller greenhouses or growth
chambers that can be controlled.

"Plant Taxonomy in an Age of Experiment." 1957

Constance: The third address you mentioned was in 1957, "Plant Taxonomy in
an Age of Experiment." This, again, was an invitational affair.
The occasion for this was the celebration of the fiftieth
birthday of the Botanical Society of America, which was
eventually commemorated by a book published by McGraw-Hill under
the title of Fifty Years of Botany; Golden Jubilee Volume of
the Botanical Society of America and edited by William C.
Steere, who was then director of the New York Botanical Garden.
The attempt in this jubilee was to have a series of people
discuss the half-century of development in their particular
specialties. The papers were mostly, at least, given at a
meeting at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

What I was trying to do was. as I've indicated, simply to
indicate the changes that had occurred. My thesis was — as
usual, I think — that the goal of taxonomy 'is. as it has always
been, an attempt to further the understanding of, in this case,
the plants of the world by an arrangement that would indicate
their relationships and their similarities and dissimilarities
at the same time so that the maximum amount of information could
be expressed.

Lage : By this time, was that still a controversial point of view?

Constance: Not really, I think. Everybody was for it, but not everybody
was doing it, I'd say. Again, I talked about the inclusion of
information from comparative morphology, from cytology and gene
tics, from embryology, from paleontology, and a lot of miscella
neous things that were all more or less tied together.

[looking through some papers] I noticed that I have a
letter from Kerr. [reading] It says, "I was interested to read
in the Berkeley Gazette recently of your participation in the
Golden Jubilee Symposium sponsored by the Botanical Society of
America at the annual convention of the American Institute of
Biological Sciences." (The Botanical Society was now meeting
with the AIBS instead of the AAAS.) "As you know, I am highly

144

Constance: i-r- favor of leavening the loaf of administrative responsibility
with continued work in one's chosen academic field. I know this
is hard to do. My congratulations on your doing it. Best
regards, Clark Kerr."

Lage : So that address came in the midst of your dear-ship?

Constance: That is correct.

Lage: And was that somewhat unusual for a dean to keep that active?

Constance: It was very easy then, and perhaps is still easier now. to be
pulled out of your academic discipline by getting into admini
stration. It's probably like a diet. You have to keep at it,
or very soon you're lost.

Lage: Did you have a regular time for working in your office here?

Constance: I mostly came down to the office about seven o'clock and worked
till eight. It sounds awfully early to me now, but I believe
those were the hours. At any rate, I was the early morning and
Saturday morning worker, and that is the way I managed to do at
least something all the time.

I don't know that this particular paper had any great
resonance, but it was nice to be asked and people seemed to be
relatively happy with the results. So it was another duty
discharged in my field while I was getting more and more
involved in other things.

145

XII SABBATICAL YEAR IN SOUTH AMERICA. 1953-1954

Guggenheim Fellowship to Study Plant Relationships
North and South

Constance: I applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year

1953-54. which was the year after I completed my four years on
the budget committee. I felt strongly in need of some refresh
ment. I had never beer, able to travel very much, and this struck
me as something very nice to do. There had been a tradition in
the department of some involvement with South American botanical
exploration, primarily by the botanical garden through the
efforts of my then colleague, T. Harper Goodspeed. This
University of California clip sheet of November 17, 1953, says,
"Plans for a plant-hunting expedition in the western regions of
South America have been revealed by Dr. Lincoln Constance,
professor of botany at the Berkeley campus of the University of
California. He plans to spend about eight months in South
America, most of the time in Chile, but hopes to visit Peru and
Argentina as well. The purpose is to gather plant specimens,
seeds, and information leading to an explanation of the
relationship between native plants of the North American temperate
zone and similar plants in the temperate zone of South America."

Lage : You had a larger, overriding purpose.

Constance: That was the broad objective. [continues reading] '"It seems
strange,' said Dr. Constance, 'that some plants are common in
both northern and southern temperate zones, but are not found at
all in between the two zones.' He will confine his studies to
two families of plants on whose North American species he is a
specialist. He says that he hopes the results of his published
research on South American varieties will help to explain how
these plants have come to be where they are today."

Lage: And did it?

Constance: Oh, to some degree, but not to the point that you could write a
general essay on the subject. But I found out pretty much what
I wanted to know about the specific things, and I learned
something about the botany of the area.

146

In Transit; Twelve Passengers and a Cargo of Dynamite

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Shall we talk a little bit about that trip more specifically —
about what it was-like? I hear you had a very interesting
vehicle that you had prepared for the trip.

Ah. yes. Well, the problem of doing field work in Latin America
is basically the problem of transportation. I had very helpful
advice from Professor Goodspeed, He put me in touch with the
Grace Line, which then ran freighters from San Francisco part of
the way around Cape Horn, at least around the southern tip of
South America. Through his good offices I was able to get them
to take a vehicle for me. I think we also got a reduced
passenger rate, if I remember correctly. It may be that the
reduced passenger rate had something to do with the fact that
they were carrying a cargo of dynamite, but I'm not quite sure
about that.

They were carrying a cargo of dynamite?

We were — we were carrying a cargo of dynamite. They didn't tell
us this until we were almost ready to leave and, not too
surprisingly, my wife, who with my eleven-year-old son was going
with me, was somewhat perturbed at this, and we went over and
talked to the Grace people. They assured her and me — I wasn't
too concerned about it — that carrying explosives was standard
procedure; one had never blown up yet I

At all events, we did go. I tried to find a suitable
vehicle; I'm not sure whether jeeps were available then or not,
but people impressed upon me. the necessity of having a car that
you could lock because they were sure that everything you had
would be stolen if you couldn't. So I finally obtained from the
university garage an International Harvester delivery vehicle.
It was essentially a box-like, enclosed truck. My friends used
to say it looked like a milk wagon, and indeed I understand that
the one we left in Santiago was used as a milk distributor for
some years.

So you left it down there when you came back?

Constance

Lage:

I left it down there when we came home. The Grace Line was
willing to carry it one way, but not the other, and it would
cost considerably more to bring it back than the thing was worth
when we got it here. It wasn't, unfortunately, all that
satisfactory anyway. It did have to advantage that you could
lock it. When you've said that, you've said most of it.

It must have had four-wheel drive.

THE FAMILY

Upper and lover left: Passport photos
for South American sabbatical, 1954.

Latter right: Constance with wife,
Sally, and son, Bill, on Berkeley
campus, 1952.

147

Constance: I don't remember — I'm not sure that it would have that much

luxury to it. At any rate, it was better than nothing — mejor
que nada.

Lage : Were you fluent in Spanish at this time?

Constance: I never was; I'm not yet.

Lage: Oh. you're still not? I saw this Spanish paper here.

Constance: Oh, I can read it reasonably well, but I'm essentially self-
taught.

At any rate, we made all our arrangements and we left a
little before Christmas. Traveling on a freighter, as
passengers, we were clearly supercargo, and we moved when
the freight moved and in the same direction, but not before and
not with any very special flourishes. We were supposed to leave
sometime in the fall and then things dragged on and on and we
didn't know when we were going to leave. Finally, we left about
two days before Christmas.

The thing I remember is that we went aboard the ship, which
was one of the Santas, the Santa Eli ana, in the early evening.
Then in the middle of the night we moved over to Hunter's Point,
and the stevedores loaded dynamite all night. There were lights
cast on the operation, and it certainly looked like a scene out
of hell. The ship was a little world all of its own. In the
morning, we sailed out under the Oakland-San Francisco Bay
Bridge and the Golden Gate and past the Farallones and so on.
One had the interesting sensation that the umbilical cord had
been cut. We were simply operating on another trajectory
completely. Some of my friends had been worried that since I
was known to be fairly active and not a little impatient, I
would drive myself and everybody crazy on shipboard, but that
didn't turn out to be the case. I felt perfectly relaxed on
shipboard.

Lage: How long was the whole trip?

Constance: The whole trip was about six weeks, I think. Six weeks to
Valparaiso from San Francisco. We stopped in every country
south of Mexico, excepting Honduras, I believe. We had some
interesting times.

148

Constance: We were out in the Gulf of Tehuantepec when lightning was

striking all around us. Since we were carrying dynamite, it
was, shall we say. fairly exciting.

Lage : Your son must have found all this pretty exciting.

Constance: Oh. yes. He had a ball. It was a wonderful experience. There
was a maximum of twelve passengers. As I said, they were
clearly supercargo and had no special privileges. We ate with
the officers, and they loved to tell us specious yams of one
sort and another. My recollection is that when we went down we
had, I think, a maximum of about eight people. One was a
Guatemalan boy going home from some private schooling somewhere.
One, who was very dignified and uncommunicative, was reported to
be an Argentinian general. There was some elderly lady, who I
think was a European refugee of some kind, going down to visit
her son somewhere. There were several others: a graduate
student from Santa Barbara who was going to a teaching position
in Bolivia and his wife.

The trip was interesting because we had the run of the
ship. We ate the ship's fare, which was wholesome if not
spectacular. We could go down in the middle of the night and
make ourselves sandwiches and coffee if we wanted to. It was a
kind of floating picnic in some ways. I spent some time getting
notes and things ready for my travel, but I spent a lot of time
working on Spanish. I had the reputation, by the time we got
there, of knowing more Spanish grammar than anyone else on the
boat and being able to speak less of it than anybody.

One of the things that I was amazed by was the amount of
communication that took place between the ship's officers and
the various characters they ran into in ports and so on. The
officers knew a few Spanish words, and the people in the ports
knew a few English words; neither of them knew any grammar — with
rare exceptions. But mostly they operated with about one word
from the other language and three from their own, but understood
each other perfectly. I didn't have the courage of my
convictions.

Lage: You mean you didn't try it out as much as you should have?

Constance: No, I apparently didn't. Well, at any rate, whenever the ship
stopped. I wanted to get off naturally; I wanted to see the
plants of the areas we were going through. Sometimes I could,
sometimes I couldn't. If we were going to be there for a few
hours, they were careful not to let us off. If they were going
to be there for some time, they were dying to get us out of
their hair. So. among other things, we spent a week in

149

Constance: Salvador; that turned out to be a fairly hairy adventure, as a
matter of fact. It was quite warm at this time, this must have
been January. It was suggested to us that perhaps we would like
to go to the capital, San Salvador, and then in a couple of days
"they would call us," and then we'd drive down to La Union on
the southwest coast, which I think is probably in non- governmental
hands at the moment, or at least it was.

We went up to San Salvador and stayed there for what seemed
to be day after day after day and heard absolutely nothing. We
were in the most expensive hotel at the time and. of course,
were paying our own way and getting a little disturbed by this.
I think probably all the passengers were off the ship; there
were about seven of us who were together in San Salvador.

Eventually we decided to drive down to La Union, which
essentially meant bisecting the country. El Salvador, of
course, is about the size of a postage stamp anyway. So we
rented a taxi and drove to La Union. On the way, we picked up a
few roadside refreshments, which turned out to not have been one
of the wiser activities we might have engaged in. My son became
very sick by the time we got to La Union, and I promptly
followed him. I remember spending what seemed like an
interminable time — it was actually maybe two or three days —
lying in a hammock in what passed for a hotel on the ground
floor of a court, listening to the ox-carts rolling over the
cobblestone streets and hoping I would die before morning.
Occasionally, I would get down on my hands and knees and crawl
to the other end of the patio, where there was an appropriate
facility, and then crawl back again.

But, like all things, it came to an end. About the time I
was almost over it — it must have been nearly a week. I think.
collectively — in the middle of the night, a wild-haired chap
came in. saying that the captain of our ship, which was now in
Honduras and was supposed to come back and pick us up. wanted us
to go with this man in an open boat across the body of water
that separated Salvador from Honduras to join the ship. The
party immediately split as to the advisability of doing this.
The women were unanimously against it; the men were divided, and
I came down on the side of the women. I couldn't believe that
it would be wise for us to go out with someone we didn't know,
who had no identification, cross an international boundary,
involving two countries of which we were not citizens, in the
middle of the night. I thought if the captain really intended
for us to go- he would have sent us something in writing.

At any rate, we didn't go. Later we discovered that,
indeed, it was valid. I don't know why the captain sent this
chap; but. he wasn't a very prepossessing ambassador. At all

150

Constance :

Lage:

Constance:

events, there was a little train that ran from the town out to
the dock. The ship had to come back and pick us up. which the
Grace Line was not very happy about. When we started to get
off. we discovered that there were police present who were going
to arrest the whole bunch of us.

Wher

you started to get off the train to go on the ship?

Right. It turned out that it either was, or had recently
become, illegal to go in one port and come out another. The
Grace Line advised us to do it — I'm sure in good faith — and of
course we didn't know anything about it. I was still too sick
to do very much, but two or three of the men volunteered to go
with the officers, and eventually they decided to let us go.

I can't remember whether they fined the Grace Line or not.
At any rate, the Grace Line spent quite a little money getting
the ship back to pick us up. The captain basically assumed
responsibility for it. He said he would appreciate it if — if
we felt we wanted to — we helped to reimburse him. But he said
he wouldn't ask unless everybody agreed to it. One couple did
not agree to it, so it wasn't done. I feel badly about this
because the captain was very nice.

So at all events, we got out of Salvador. We stopped in
Nicaragua. We went ashore briefly. We were at San Juan del
Sur — Saint John of the South — and there was a big crowd on the
beach. The reason for the crowd was that there was a large
shark which had been caught or beached, and the people were
swarming around with knives carving out its liver, while the
shark was still operating. The other thing that was interesting
was that pelicans were diving for fish. They looked as if
they'd break their necks when they hit the water, but they
didn't. We went ashore briefly, and we were impressed by the
very attractive pastel-washed houses — they were really quite
lovely.

From Nicaragua we went to Panama. We were there briefly.
We went up the Panama Canal a ways, while our ship was docked at
Antigua, the old port on the Pacific.

Then the next stop was in Buenaventura. Colombia, the port
on the west coast. We were there only, I think, for some part
of a day. In Nicaragua we thought about going up to Managua —
the capital — but it seemed difficult to arrange. It was
difficult to take off from the ship for any length of time
because they never knew quite when they wanted you back again.
They used to tell us, helpfully, that if they were ready to go,

151

Constance: they would go. and if we weren't there, why. they'd leave us and
we'd wind up in jail. And none of us were very anxious to be in
a South American jail. In fact, we weren't anxious to be in a
jail of any kind, -but least of all in a South American one.

We stopped several places in Peru, but I think Callao. the
port of Lima, was the only one where we really could get off and
spend some time. We went from Callao to Lima and then stayed
there. My recollection is that we were there several days and
we got a pretty good look at it. Lima, of course, is a fasci
nating city. Then we returned to the ship at Callao and went
south to the town of Mcllendo. Mollendo has a railroad that
runs to La Paz, Bolivia.

I think I mentioned that there was a former graduate
student in anthropology at Santa Barbara and his wife on board.
He was going to a teaching position at a private school in
Oruro. Bolivia. This couple had a small child, who was a very
cute youngster, but the couple was ultra- permissive, and their
child drove the crew absolutely crazy. The Automobile
Association of Southern California, which had worked out their
schedule for them, had decided that he should drive their cat —
which was aboard — from Mollendo to La Paz.

There's a road from Mollendo to La Paz, but they thought
that the road trip would be too difficult for his wife — twelve
hours — and that, therefore, she should stay on the ship and go
on to Arica in Chile. And from there, there is a railroad line.
But I gather the travel agency in Los Angeles didn't tell them
very much about the nature of Peruvian ports. I remember we
were at the side of the ship, as we were coming toward Mollendo,
and the only thing you could see was a big, circular tank. Ke
kept looking for the city, which was somewhere behind the tank.
He asked me to go ashore with him and I did. There was a town
there, of sorts, and I saw him off to La Paz.

There are almost no ports on the west coast of South
America, so various devices are used to get goods and passengers
from ship to shore and vice versa. One of the ways is to crank
them up with some sort of a motor. The first experience we had
of this was actually in Guatemala, and there they had what was
really a kitchen chair with four chains attached to the four
corners of the chair as seen from above. My wife sat in the
chair and our son and I. and I think the other two men, stood on
the chair around her and hung onto the chains as we were lifted
up to the dock. That was one way of doing it. Otherwise, the
people were lowered into lighters (shallow boats) and then,
somehow or another, lifted off at the other end.

152

(3onstar.ce: When we got to Arica, there was a notable lack of volunteers to
get the lady and her daughter ashore, so I volunteered.
Fortunately, I managed to get them landed safely.

Lage: Now. what was your role in getting them off?

Constance: I carried the baby, stepping down into the lighter and getting
cranked up. so far as I can recall, on the other end. [laughter]

At any rate, we got there.

Life in Chile. Colleagues, and Field Work

Constance: We went on down to Valparaiso, where we were met by at least
three people, two of whom had been associated with Professor
Goodspeed on one or another of his trips, and the third was
Carlos Munoz. who was, I think I've said earlier, my first Chilean
friend. This reception was particularly touching because this
was February, and I think we had been expected for at least a
couple of weeks. So my friend Munoz, who was spending his
summer vacation — the southern summer — in the city of Los Angeles,
Chile, had probably spent at least ten days waiting for us.

I remember we were hauled off to lunch — I can't remember
what they called it. It was, in essence I think, the navy club,
decorated with pictures of ships and admirals. Most of these
were memorials of the Guerro de Pacif ico — the War of the Pacific —
which, fortunately, I had heard about; otherwise, it might have
come as a complete surprise. The British Admiral Cochrane
apparently lent his services to Chile in the War of the Pacific,
which was initially between Peru and Chile versus Bolivia — it
ended in taking away Bolivia's coast and leaving it a landlocked
nation* as it still is. In the second stage, it became a war
between Peru and Chile over who got the spoils. Chile, which
was successful in the maritime war. came out the winner.

But it was very interesting that in Peru there were all
sorts of memorial statuary, mostly to people who were in charge
of defeated units during the war; in Chile, to successful
admirals, of one sort or another. In the town of Arica, which
is in northernmost Chile, and either in or close to part of the
coastal area taken from Bolivia, there is a very large rock.
The Peruvian general apparently was in a hopeless position and
rode his horse off the rock in an heroic, typically macho
gesture. The Peruvians, of course, regarded this as a symbolic
act of patriotism. The Chileans, somewhat less admiringly,
referred to it as the first time in history a horse had ever
committed suicide, [laughter]

153

Constance: At any rate, we got to Valparaiso and went through customs and
rather quickly got to Santiago, which is about seventy- five
miles inland. Santiago supposedly has a climate which is
nearest to that of Sacramento, but it never seemed to me to be
quite that warm.

Munoz invited us to use their home. He was in the Ministry
of Agriculture at that time and had a company house, so to
speak. But my wife and I decided that neither of us was really
up to doing the marketing in a Spanish-speaking country, so
through the good offices of some of the people that he knew in
the Museum of Natural History, we were able to find a pension
run by a German woman in a suburb of Santiago. Pension Huber,
incidentally, has now become a legend in our family.

Lage : How were the accomodations there?

Constance: They were quite pleasant. I was away a good share of the time,
but it was a nice place for my wife and son. I had originally
planned to take them out in the field with me, but after very
little experimentation in this direction. I didn't think they
would be very happy. The accomodations in small towns in Chile
left a good deal to be desired. I couldn't very well take them
into the field; it just wasn't very practical. We thought about
putting our son in school and then we decided he wouldn't be
there long enough for that to make much sense, so we didn't.

Originally, I started out to do my own driving, but I
discovered that if you did this in Chile, you tended to lose
caste; however, I tended to lose my way -as well. I could find
my way from town to town. But when I got into town. I often had
trouble getting out in the right direction, so it didn't work
very well.

I don't know any way to summarize my experience there very
well, quickly. I tried to sample all the different kinds of
habitats. I got up into the lower Andes somewhat above. I
tried to get to as many places and do as many different kinds of
things as I could. When I had corresponded from California with
people, my Chilean friends were practically standing in line —
you know, they would drop their jobs and/or their commitments —
to have the pleasure of showing me the country. When I got
there, I discovered that they were not quite that available. It
was probably the La tin- American tendency to be more than
willing, but not to be able to really follow up. So it took
about five weeks before I could really get started. I learned
later that that's sort of standard procedure. Part of that was
the problem of getting things through customs, which turned out
to be a bureaucratic snarl with any goings or comings.

154

Lage: Getting your possessions off the boat?

Constance: That's right — and getting the necessary licenses tc operate.
You had to have a came, which is a personal police permit of
some sort —

Lage: To collect plants?

Constance: To do anything. And every place you turned around, you had to
get three more revenue stamps — come down next Tuesday, between
the hours of this and that and such and such — to have something
stamped. And, of course, when you did there was nobody there,
and you had to come back next week. It was quite maddening, in
a way, but in between times I learned quite a little about
things.

Actually, we got to Santiago in February, and it's a little
like being in the Sacramento Valley in July — it was brown as far
as you could see. What I really needed to do was get up into
the high country, or to get farther south.

I kept hearing about all these people who were going to
make trips with me. Finally, I discovered that one of them — a
Swede, Dr. Benkt Sparre, who was at the University of Concepcion
considerably to the south — was the only one who was seriously
prepared to go out in the field with me. So I provided myself
with a chauffeur by buying the vacation time of one of the
government chauffeurs and drove down to Concepcion. I bought
his vacation. He acted as my chauffeur, companion, and
assistant.

We went into the volcanic country, which is south of the
Andes proper and is really very beautiful. It's sometimes
called the Switzerland of South America, both on the Patagonian
or Argentine side and on the Chilean side. It has very high
volcanic mountains — Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in
the hemisphere, is there. We discovered that about timberline
was at that time of the year the best place to look for
materials of the kind I was interested in. There were ski
resorts which were not operating at this time of year. But
usually, they had someone in charge and usually we could get a
meal and a place to stay. So we went up a series of the major
volcanoes. We went to timberline. and I got a lot of material I
was anxious to obtain. Sparre did general collecting for me, so
I was able to come home with a sizable amount of material.

We really led two lives there. One was the life of the
pension, which was very interesting. People there were from
most everywhere. Two of the most notable individuals were an
Englishwoman real estate operator, who had come with her husband
to Chile a number of years before. He had died, and she had

155

Constance: carried on the real estate business very successfully after
that. Her name was Bobbins, and she looked exactly like the
pictures of the later Queen Victoria. She turned out to be a
remarkable and very warm person. I looked her up in 1966,
shortly before her death.

The second one, who was particularly nice to my family, was
Charles Scott, originally from Aberdeen [Scotland], a forester,
who had been in the British forest service — I can't remember now
if it was in Singapore or Malaya. He had retired, and he was
working for F.A.O. — the international food and agricultural
organization. He and a retired French professor were trying to
set up, under United Nation auspices, a graduate school of
forestry at the University of Chile. They (Mrs. Hobbins and Mr.
Scott) remained friends for the rest of their lives. So we made
some very close friends there; on the other hand, I was out in
the field as much as I could be. And in the course of it, I got
to know all the Chilean botanists.

Lage: Did you then take other field trips with other botanists?

Constance: I took one with Agust£n Garavanta. who lived in Limache. north
of Valparaiso. We climbed together, in company with an
Argentine botanist. La Campana de Quillota. a mountain Darwin
had climbed during the course of his voyage of the Beagle. The
Chileans had put up a little memorial plaque to Darwin, and my
friend Garavanta had carried it up there. He was of Italian
extraction and was an excellent amateur botanist; he had a
garden in Valparaiso, in which he grew a lot of native plants.
I stayed with him and his family one weekend, and there was
no one there who spoke any English at all. I think my Spanish
probably hit its apogee. But then this visitor from Argentina
arrived. Osvaldo Boelcke, who spoke colloquial English, which he
apparently had taught himself. Language, unfortunately, doesn't
come easy to me. I believe in it, but I'm afraid I have no
natural ability for it.

Lage:

Did you make any comparison of what you found on the mountain
that Darwin climbed with what Darwin found?

Constance: There wasn't anything particular, I think, about that. It was
interesting because it was the highest point in the coast
ranges, which are not very well defined there, anymore than they
are here. But mostly, I was absorbing information. I obtained
a lot of interesting material; as I wrote someone, I was
spending about as much time collecting plants in other people's
collections as I was getting them in the field. People were
very much interested in finding someone who shared their
interests.

156

Constance: One of the people I remember particularly was Gualterio

Looser, who was the Chilean expert on ferns. He was of Swiss
extraction, and he had a little business making doorknobs or
locks or something of the sort. My friend Muf.oz arranged for me
to go and see hitnl I used to arrive, if I remember correctly,
at something like 5:30 on Thursday afternoons. And his sister,
who spoke English, would fix tea for us. Then she would excuse
herself, and he would bring out his plants, and we'd go ahead
and talk about plants. He didn't know any English, I knew very
little Spanish, we both knew a little German — you can use Latin
plant names. But we had no trouble communicating. I always
wondered what language we did it in reallyl

Ke was a delightful person. He took me to a meeting of the
Chilean Academy of Sciences, or whatever it's called. I was
really concerned because I received the invitation, and I
couldn't read the signature, and I didn't know who had sent it.
I was afraid it might produce some sort of a gaffe. As you may
know, Latin-Americans do not sign their names. They basically
have a special cryptic designation, which indeed is their name.
I later discovered that wherever you went — if you had to sign
into a hotel — you had to sign the register. On the register,
there were separate columns for your name and for your
signature. Both in Chile and Peru I noticed the clerk would
watch me sign my name and turn the thing around and say, "Ah, el
mismo!" — the same. Therefore, it's difficult to recognize some
of these scrawls.

In Chile, then. I essentially sampled the flora as well as
I could with my somewhat restricted means of getting around. I
should have liked to have gone out to the Archipelago of Juan
Fernandez. I looked into it far enough to find that I could
probably get out, but there was no assurance I could get back,
I also was interested in the big island of Chiloe. But there
again, it is a very popular tourist area — that is, tourist in
the sense of mainland Chileans — and it didn't seem very likely I
could get accommodations or transportation either, so I didn't
do that. I stuck to the land, and we got down as far as Puerto
Montt, which is where the Pan-American Highway ran out. You
couldn't get beyond that without going over into Argentinian
Patagonia.

Lage: Which you did later.

Constance: I did that later, but not on this trip. Almost the last thing
that we did in Chile was to spend a week in Argentina. We flew
across the Andes, and in some ways this worked out rather well
because when I went to Chile I had talked to people in the
consulate in San Francisco. They impressed upon me that if I
planned to stay more than six months, I should not go with a
tourist visa.

157

Constance: So I wer.t with some kind of an entrance permit. I found, of

course, when I got down there, that this was the worst thing you
could possibly have done because it was practically impossible
to get out.

Lage : It's an entrance permit but not an exit — ?

Constance: Exactly. In going over to Argentina, I had real problems. I

got a young lady botanist from the faculty of the University of
Buenos Aires to go over with me. and she helped me through it.
So we went to Buenos Aires, clearly as tourists, and then came
back still as tourists, and after that there was no problem.
When we actually left Chile, I went by myself and had no trouble
going through the whole business.

The visit to Buenos Aires was very pleasant because I met
most of the botanists around Buenos Aires, and it was quite a
distinguished group. Some of them are still close friends.
That facilitated my having an opportunity to go back to
Argentina some twelve years later.

Lage: Did it also facilitate exchanges?

Constance: Oh, yes, all sorts of interrelations.

Lage: Did you find things on this trip that weren't in various

collections, or is it just of value to see where they grow?

Constance: Well, I certainly brought back things we didn't have in our

collections. We probably have the best collection, anywhere, of
the two groups of plants I'm interested in. My collecting, both
in the field and getting material from other people, and
establishing communication of one sort of another were highly
instrumental in that. I don't think I found any real novelties,
shall we say. You never know about these things because you
collect things and maybe fifty years down the line, somebody
will discover that this is something that had never been
collected before. But I'm not aware that I did; that wasn't
particularly what I was trying to do. I was really trying to
see what the biogeographic circumstances were like, see what was
where, and how they grew.

This was the sort of thing that interested me: Two members
of the parsleys, with which I had been particularly concerned,
grow together in woodland in western North America. I found
that in Chile they also grow together in woodland. You could
practically transpose the two woodlands in general appearance,
but their other species are not the same.

Lage:

Is there any explanation?

158

Constance: There are more explanations than there are proofs. But one of
the common explanations, and probably the most generally
accepted at the present time, is long-distance dispersal by
animals, primarily birds. There are some things in California
which look as if they were native which probably are not, and
which may have been introduced by moving grazing animals back
and forth between the hemispheres.

I happened to run across a note wherein a botanist in
southern California stated that there was no evidence they ever
exchanged sheep between South America and North America, but if
they did, it would be a lot easier to explain the distribution
of some weeds. The moment I got to Chile, I recognized all the
weeds.

Lage : So they're the same plants growing in the two — ?

Constance: The weeds are the same; that is, in both places they're mostly
introductions from Europe and Asia.

Lage: Oh, I see. When you say "weeds," you mean —

Constance: I mean exotics — I don't mean the native species. No, weeds are
aliens. For instance, you have not only the Old World Eurasian
things that have been introduced in both places, but you have
some introductions back and forth. For instance, the California
poppy is so very abundant in some parts of Chile that they call
it the flor jde ferrocarril — flower of the railway — because it
grows along the railroad tracks. They hadn't, at that time at
least, developed the weed-killers which kill off such species
here. But they would also grow on the railroad tracks here if
given half a chance. There they have the chance and take it.
The common yellow-flowered lupines that used to be around the
Presidio are quite abundant on the Chilean coast.

Lage: Those are weeds?

Constance: Those are weeds — that is, they're weeds down there. They're

native here. So a weed is largely a matter of opinion, you see.
If you want it to grow, it's not a weed; if you don't, it is.

I can't think of anything particularly distinctive about
the trip. It was my first excursion to South America and it
deepened my interest in South American plants. It gave me a
great many associations, which I had not had before. After we
returned to Santiago from Buenos Aires, I worked largely in the
museums there because it was getting too late in the year to do
much in the way of additional field work. Then we obtained
return passage to California on another .Santa ship.

159

Constance: Unfortunately, my wife and I both got the flu just before we
left, and we spent a couple of uncomfortable nights in
Valparaiso. By the time we got on the ship, we were both pretty
miserable. So we. spent the ship time between Valparaiso and
Callao pretty much in bed. Meanwhile, our son was having an
absolutely wonderful time because we couldn't keep watch en him.
I didn't say much about him before, but he had a wonderful time.

Lage: I wonder how he did on his own?

Constance: He had the run of the ship. He read the sailors' manual and

then asked the officers questions. He was generally referred to
as a horrible little monster, and the captain thought he was
wonder f"l because he said that most of his officers hadn't dealt
with any of this information since they were commissioned, or
whatever thev are, in the first place. Bill would ask them
questions like. "Well, at this point on the map, if there's a
light here and a light there, whv is the light there brighter
than the light here if they have the same electrical power?" and
so on. He learned to read the charts and follow the ship's
course. He had a thoroughly delightful time.

Lage: What about on land — how did he like the experience in Chile, and

how did your wife like it?

Constance: They enjoyed it. They enjoyed the life in the pension. There
were very pleasant people there, and it was interesting.

Lage: Did they leam Spanish?

Constance: They learned some. If he had had the chance, my son would have
picked it up like a sponge. He didn't have too much chance, and
I somewhat regret that we didn't get him into school, but it
really wasn't very feasible. But they led a pleasant life — they
read a lot, it was pleasant to walk around and there were enough
people that they knew, or got to know, to prove interesting.
They got a little coaching in Spanish by one of the women in
pension, who had a Norwegian name.

One of the things we discovered about Chile is that it was
very hard to find any Chileans.

Lage: I was wondering — so many of the people you mentioned came from

here and there.

Constance: The thing is, they almost invariably told you. "I'm Swiss," or
"I'm Swedish." or "I'm German." I know that one of the people
who met us at the ship — an associate of Goodspeed's, a senior
physician at one of the hospitals in Valparaiso — was as English

160

Constance: as anyone I ever met. I didn't discover until I was back here

that, sure, he was English on his father's side, but Chilean on
his mother's. He certainly looked more than half English.

This was one ' of the real problems in Chile — that people did
not identify themselves ^s Chilean. They thought of themselves
as whatever their foreign origin had been. They tended to keep
up these national distinctions. I remember Mr. Garavanta had
his children, I believe, in a school where they were learning
German and then would send them to a French or English school.
The different nationals tended not to mix. Before my year was
out, I was introducing Chilean botanists to each other. Some of
those of German extraction and those of Spanish extraction had
nothing to do with each other.

Lage: Was it a caste system, more or less?

Constance: There was a pecking order, at any rate. South Chile is,

essentially, German — heavily German — settled in the middle of
the nineteenth century. Most of the big farms are German-owned.
And along with this, the Germans carried their tradition of
interest in natural history. So most of the work on botany and
things of that sort were done in the old German naturalist
traditions.

Lage: What about native Americans?

Constance: The Chileans pretty well eliminated the natives. The most
durable opponents of the Chileans were the Araucanians, who
lived south of the Rio B£o-B£o, which runs through the town of
Concepcion, If you think of Chile in relation to California, I
always think of Concepcion as being approximately Santa Barbara,
which gives you a little idea of place.

The Araucanians were very fierce. They had the reputation
of cutting the hearts out of anybody they captured. That tended
to keep the Spanish Chileans at some distance. They pretty much
maintained their control until relatively late. I can't tell
you exactly how late that was, but at any rate, the Spanish
Chileans didn't make much progress in the southern part of
Chile. But the Germans did; they came in in large numbers.
They were very industrious. They built towns like Valdivia and
Osorno, which were very odd in a way, because they follow the
plaza plan — you know, the Latin- American plan. (I suppose it's
Spanish, too.) It has the ca<iiedral on one end of the square
and the saloon on the other. It's usually a square where people
walk around and eat and so on. That's a customary set-up, a
Spanish plaza but northern European wood construction. So, in
Puerto Montt, for instance, all the buildings are wood, which is
very un- Spanish looking. I must say.

161

Constance: At all events, the Germans and the Spanish went their own ways,
for the most part. I had one correspondent in Punta Arenas — a
German — and I remember his writing, "We have lived with them for
twenty years; we'll never understand them, and they'll never
understand us." There's probably some truth to that. Whether
that explains, to any considerable degree, the present divisions
in Chile, I don't know. In a general way, the Germans were the
builders, who really built up agriculture and so on, and when
the effort to spread out economic goodies came along, a number
of these estancias were simply mobbed by landless people who
were sent out from the cities. At least one Chilean now in this
country, who I think has pretty liberal sympathies, told of his
family's estancia in the province of Aconcagua. The people who
came out from Santiago to settle completely looted the place.
They looted and wrecked everything in it, and then they went
back to the Santiago barrios and left it deserted.

Lage: When was that?

Constance: That was when Aller.de was in power. Not that I'm defending the
current military regime, by any means. But I think that, to
some degree, you could guess that that would happen if you take
people out of an urban slum and suddenly throw them into the
countryside. I don't think that the San Joaquin Valley would be
very fruitful for a few years if the same thing happened here.
So there were some critical regional distinctions of that sort.

Lage: But it's basically European — ?

Constance: Chile is very European in many ways. The countries are really
very different. Peru is much more Indian — almost colonial in
some ways.

Peru and the Trip Home

Constance: We went to Peru when we came back from Chile; we got to Callao
in the middle of the night. It never rains in Callao, either,
but the mist was so thick you could cut it with a knife. We
were both suffering from the flu and were tossed out about three
a.m. Customs people took our baggage and pretty much littered
it over a half block, probably because we didn't bribe them
enough in the right way; but the art of bribery is a very fine
art, and of course you could get yourself in worse trouble by
trying it than by not trying it. So we didn't. They even taxed
us on things we had bought in Chile to take to the United States.

162

Constance: This, of course, they had no business doing, but at any rate —
We got into the old Maury Hotel, which is an old Spanish-type
hotel in Lima. And then I'd say we enjoyed being sick for about
the next week.

We got over that, and we got a very pleasant pens ion in San
Isidro, which is a very pleasant suburb of Lima. Lima is really
on the coast but never, somehow, strikes me as a coastal city.
It's a very, very interesting city — really quite beautiful. And
there I had very good connections with the principle Peruvian
botanist, Ramon Ferreyra — who dropped in to see me here last
year, by the way. (I hadn't seen him for several years.) I
worked in a museum there. He was unable to get away, but with
the driver from the museum and a young associate of his named
Oscar Tovar, I went up into the Andes and across, down into just
the edge of the headwaters of the Amazon for, I guess, about ten
days. This gave me a pretty good, short cross-section of
Peruvian vegetation because you rise very quickly above Lima.
The pass is around nine teen- thousand feet, if I remember
correctly. I think there was one thing I was particularly
anxious to see in Peru, and it's the first thing I nearly
stepped on when I got out of the car at that point.

That was a fascinating experience. Peru is a remarkably
rich and diverse source of not only botanical, but also
archaeologial — you name it, material. So, at any rate, with the
help of Tovar, I got a pretty good sampling of things, and I saw
a lot that was very interesting. Neither of my companions spoke
English. Occasionally, Tovar would come up with an English word
like "bread", which wasn't of any great use to me at the time,
but my companions were thoroughly compatible. Oscar is a very
fine person. He has spent a lot of time in this country since
then, He's the expert on Peruvian grasses — he has worked at the
Smithsonian. But at that time he didn't know English. I
remember being out on the streets in the town of Tarma and
thinking to myself, "Perhaps I'm the only person in this city
who thinks in English."

I remember that we were there on a particularly beautiful
night, and the stars were absolutely stunning. I don't know how
high it is — seven- thousand feet or something — maybe not that
high, but it seemed high. I remember trying to explain the
Southern Cross to my companions. That, again, was a fairly high
point in my Spanish. I think, which tailed off rather rapidly
thereafter.

Lage: Sounds like it had to be a high point, by necessity.

Constance: That's right. It was very interesting, and I enjoyed this

little jaunt. We were up on the high puna, as they call it, the
above treeline area — a dry area — one night. The next night, we

163

Constance:

Lage:

Constance ;
Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

were down in the tropical area at the headwaters of the Amazon.
We were freezing to death in sleeping bags up there and sleeping
in hammocks with nothing on, practically, on the other two
nights.

And were you finding members of your plant family in both
places?

Oh, yes.

It's a very versatile family.

That's right, it is indeed, for a versatile taxonomist.

[laughter]

We had a very pleasant time in Peru, but we didn't make
any close friends in this pension.

How long did you stay there?

I'm trying to remember. I suppose it must have been at least
three to four weeks, I suppose, something like that.

At any rate, we went back to Callao and picked up another
Santa and came home. The trip home was very pleasant, but not
very interesting. We didn't stop as many times. We did stop in
Ecuador, and I remember the town of Manta where they make Panama
hats. Panama hats are woven under water, in case you didn't
know this. Manta is also the home of the mar.ta ray, which is a
horrible flat fish with a stinging tail. ' We stopped at some
other town in Ecuador, but I don't remember which one. We
landed again at Buenaventura, Colombia, and after that we came
directly home.

We had pleasant companions. The ship's captain was very
nice. I remember I was out talking to him on the bow of the
ship one day, saying something about whales. He said. "Turn
around." I turned around and here were some whales spouting.
There was a lot of sea life. There were dolphins. One of the
things on the Peruvian coast, both going and coming, that was
fascinating, was the flights of cormorants. They would go by in
masses for what seemed like hours.

The Peruvian coast is studded with rocks covered with guano
from the birds. At night, you can easily tell when you're
getting close to the islets on the coast without seeing them.
We didn't go to the Galapagos Islands — that would have been
interesting. But it was a very pleasant trip coming home.

Is there any final remark on the trip?

164

Constance: I wrote a sabbatical report. In summary I said, [reading] "I
think it is at least equally significant that I was able to
learn something of the native and cultivated flora of western
Central and South America, to secure a good transect of
vegetation in Peru, to see something of the pampa and delta
vegetation around Buenos Aires, and to make a fairly intensive
study of the Andes, the volcanoes, and the temperate forests in
Chile. In addition, I met and got acquainted with most plant
scientists in Chile and Peru and in the Buenos Aires area, where
there is considerable botanical activity. It is my earnest hope
that these recently stimulated contacts will do much over the
coming years to supplement my own efforts to obtain research
materials for my students and myself. Finally, I feel I
obtained a much-needed change of scenery, my family and I
received a liberal dose of a different culture and language, and
my youngster learned the rudiments of Spanish and marine
navigation. From my own standpoint the trip was successful, and
I hope it may prove to have been from the University's also. In
a few years, I should like to go back and study the spring
vegetation of the southern hemisphere."

Lage: Was it routine to write a sabbatical report?

Constance: That's right. It's a routine that a lot of people never got

around to doing. Yes, it is supposed to be a specification of a
sabbatical leave.

The Chilean Way; Disposing of the Car

Constance: The other thing I can think of that I left out was the problem
of what to do with my car when I left Chile. This got to be a
wonderful little theater of its own. Chile had strict
regulations about importing cars; they were very severe because
of the financial hemorrhage of international movement of goods —
bringing things in, taking them out, whatever. I got an
international permit from the American Automobile Association, I
guess, and that specified that I had to follow Chilean law
wherever I was.

What I had originally planned to do was to take the truck
to Chile, use it, send it up to Peru, and then dispose of it
there if I could. Actually, I think I paid four hundred dollars
for it, so obviously, it wasn't worth much to begin with. But
you couldn't just leave it; you had to do something with it.
The question was, "What could you do?" Pretty obviously,
whatever you did with it was going to cost you more than you

165

Constance: paid for it in the first place. By the time I had run it pretty
well around Chile, there wasn't a great deal I could do with it.
Well, I applied for permission to sell it and I was turned down.
I went to our embassy and asked them what to do. The embassy
sent me to the appropriate Chilean agency which had to do with
exports, imports, and so on. My recollection is that it had an
acronym — I think it was CONDECOR, Exactly what that stood for,
I don't have the remotest idea, but I know it regulated imports
and exports. As I said, I was referred by the embassy and I
decided the thing to do was to follow the embassy's protocol and
do exactly what I was told to do. So I did exactly what I was
told to do and I went to CONDECOR. I spoke to the man in
charge. I think we agreed that trying to take it into Peru
would probably be hopeless. I would never get it in when I
could use it, and I'd never get it out again. I'd still be
stuck with the damn thing.

Well, I seriously considered paying the Grace Line to take
it out and dump it overboard. (Ocean pollution was not a
recognized problem at that time.)

Lage: You'd think they might need cars.

Constance: Oh. they needed them; the docks were covered with them — cars

that had come in that they wouldn't let off the dock because of
problems with quotas and so on.

So I went to talk to this gentleman and he said, "Well, you
know, there are two ways of doing things here. There's the
formal, strictly legalistic way — and then there is the Chilean
way. It just so happens I have a brother who has a Chevrolet
agency, and I suggest you go talk to him." So I went and talked
to him. I wanted, if I could, to get out of the vehicle the
money I put into it. As compared with used cars available in
Chile, it was not in all that bad shape. I tried to give it to
my friend Munoz, but he said, "No, I couldn't touch it." He was
in government employ. He said, "Your colleague, Goodspeed, got
some people into trouble by leaving and selling equipment or
something of the sort." It probably wasn't intentional. But it
was a tricky sort of thing.

At any rate, it was finally agreed that the Chevrolet
dealer would buy it for $500. He would pay me $400 down and
send me the $100 "sometime." I wasn't under any illusions that
I would ever see the $100. I should say that I had a $100
deposit on the international permit; I didn't expect I'd ever
see that, either. That was one reason I wanted to get anything
I could out of the car.

166

Constance: At all events, I left the car. I heard later that it was
delivering milk in Santiago. I think it still had the
University sign on it, or at least a portion of the sign.

When I got back — I guess in October 1955 — I wrote the
American Automobile Association: "Unfortunately, I have to
advise you that both car and papers are presumably still in
Chile. At the end of some five months of Chilean roads, the car
was not worth the the expense of shipping home. Moveover, tires
were rationed, and I was unable to secure the rubber necessary
to get it to the dock in Valparaiso. Accordingly, on the advice
of the U. S. embassy, I embarked on the procedures necessary to
secure permission to leave the car in Chile. One month after
starting the necessary steps, we left Chile for Peru. At that
time, it seemed evident that we were unlikely to receive any
decisions for months and months. Thus, the car and the papers
were left in the hands of a Chilean automobile dealer, who is
supposed to forward both cash and papers when the car is legally
admitted. I'm afraid I do not really expect ever to see the
money, nor the car, again. I then anticipate having to forfeit
the cash deposit on the latter. However, I hope I may be given
a period of grace, at least until the date of expiration."

Much to my amazement, they returned my deposit.
Lage: The Automobile Association?

Constance: That's right. The interesting thing is that I received a letter
from the Chilean automobile dealer, who by that time had sent a
card with "Consul of Chile" crossed out. He had been to New
York, apparently, as Chilean consul sometime after that but by
this time was back in Chile.

Lage: Did he ever send the $100?

Constance: Oh, no. Let's not wish for miracles, [laughter]

167

XIII FROM DEPARTMENT CHAIR TO DEAN OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE
[Interview 6: March 6, 1986] «

Chairing the Department of Botar.v. 1954-1955

Constance: You wanted to know something about my chairmanship of the
Department of Botany.

Lage: Right.

Constance: Well, there isn't much, really, to tell about it. My late
colleague, Lee Bonar, accepted the chairmanship when his
predecessor. Professor, later Dean, later Vice- Chancel lor [Alva
R.] Davis, during World War II became the officer in charge (he
had a reserve commission) of an artillery school at Camp Callan
in Southern California. Bonar became acting chairman and then
chairman. When Davis returned, he moved into the deanship of
Letters and Science, and Bonar became chairman on a regular
basis and served in that role for several years — I don't
remember exactly how many. By the time that I went to South
America in '54, he had served beyond what was supposed to be a
normal term. A normal term was presumably something like three
to five years. There were chairmen who served for twenty-five
years and some departments had difficulty getting anybody to
serve for a year or even at all.

Was service as the department head seen as a burden, or as a
compliment from your peers, or how was it viewed?

Constance: I'm sure it was various. To some people it was an opportunity
to exercise their superiority. By others it was considered a
burden and a diversion from one's real role in the university,
and I suppose everything in between. I think in most instances,
it was thought to be a service you rendered your peers, when
asked, with the understanding that when you had done your bit,
thev would do theirs.

Lage:

168

Constance: I was always particularly impressed by the English department,
in which their finest writers and scholars accepted the
imposition of such responsibilities, even though I know some cf
them hated every moment of it. But it was simply good
university citizenship.

Some departments imposed it on people they felt were least
productive and wouldn't do anything very important anyway, so
they might as well be chairman. There were some departments in
which there was so much antagonism among the older members that
they would have to get one of the junior members to do it.
There were all sorts of situations.

Lage : What does being department chairman involve?

Constance: Well, it is a mini-adminstrative post; in some ways, it is a
very demanding one. In some ways, I think it is the most
demanding administrative post. You are responsible for the
welfare of your staff. You are responsible for the development
of your faculty; that is, you have to look ahead and see whom
you are going to lose. You have to try to keep sufficiently
abreast of your field so that you recognize important develop
ments coming along and try to see that these are adequately
covered in some way or another. Since most everything in the
university is run by committees, you have to be able to work
with your faculty, which is never easy.

And that doesn't even mention the students, of course, who
are not always the easiest people to work with. In some larger
departments, for instance, you have essentially a student union,
which regards its role as, well, not identical to that of the
faculty in the department, shall we say. It isn't always at
direct odds with it, but it's not too unusual to find itself at
odds.

Lage: Was that true even in the fifties — this idea of the student

union?

Constance: I think it's always been true; whenever you have a large

department and large student group, you ca*n be reasonably sure
that they will not see eye to eye with the faculty on every
point. For one thing, they would like to have the faculty's
jobs, so that can make sort of a permanent point of friction,
shall we say.

In this case, at any rate, I had been very happy with Dr.
Bonar as chairman. When I received a letter in Chile from Kerr
asking me if I would serve as chairman. I assumed it was my
responsibility and I couldn't think of any way of getting out of
it. so I said. "All right, I'll do my best."

169

Constance: It wasn't until I got back that I discovered that the

departmental decision, if it were that (which it really wasn't),
to have me as chairman was something less than enthusiastic. In
fact, I discovered that the department had unanimously asked
that Bonar be continued as chairman. If I had been here, I
would have been perfectly happy to sign it. But I know that
Davis felt that the chairmanship should be rotated, and I think
he also felt that, while everybody loved and respected Bonar,
the department probably needed somewhat younger and more
aggressive leadership. At any rate, there was at least one
member of the faculty who was adamant that I should not be
chairman under any circumstances, but here I was.

Lage: Did you have to deal with that faculty member for the year?

Constance: Yes. but it wasr.'t very serious. His chief act of, shall we
say. defiance was never to attend faculty meetings unless
expressly invited for each one. I saw to it that he was
expressly invited to each one; mostly he came.

My year as chairman was not particularly startling. As I
think I said earlier, the only thing I can remember from it of
particular importance was that I was afraid that the botanical
garden might get away from us, with Goodspeed's retirement. I
appointed a committee to make a proposal to the administration
for the botany department to formally resume control of it.

Lage: They had not had formal control during Goodspeed's directorship?

Constance: Well, it was really lost when Goodspeed became director.
Lage: But wasn't he a member of the department?

Constance: Yes, but it was his private institute, if you like. And while

he was generous, to some degree, with use of the garden and with
its produce, it still was very clearly his and not to be
considered part of the common departmental pool. At all events,
this was successful, and the garden was returned to the
department by the administration, and there it has stayed.

Lage: Was there any opposition to returning it?

Constance: I don't think so. I don't think anybody else really wanted it,
so far as I know.

Lage: Now does the department have some direct say in how it's run?

Constance: It's hard to tell. Since the department is being

de-departzer.talized. I really can't answer for what is going to

happen to it.

170

Plans to Restructure Biological Sciences Departments, 1980s

Lage : There's not going to be a Department of Botany?

Constance: I haven't followed it that closely. But the present plans, at
least, are to — divest, maybe, is the word; I'm not quite sure —
to reconstitute biology and remold it into a different
structure. The old structure, you see, was really based on the
four major divisions — plants, animals, bacteria, and pre-medicine,
with agriculture, in large part, being really another branch of
biology. The plan is to dissolve most of these, if you like,
vertical divisions centered around organisms, and as I
understand it at least, to reconsitute departments horizontally
with regard to the particular level of organization with which
they work, such as molecular, cellular, organismal, and so on.

Lage: So you'll have a Department of Molecular Biology, a Department

of Cellular Biology, a Department of — what would be the
organismal title?

Constance: That's my understanding. I'm not sure I can answer that. I
have not followed it closely because I assumed it would not
affect me greatly. Presumably, there is going to be a department
which I think is currently called Integrated Biology, which will
unite those faculty interested in ecology, systematics, the
whole organism. This will include the museums — the natural
history museums — and it's at least possible that the botanical
garden will be attached there. But it's not entirely clear to
me, at any rate, and there are interests in the botanical garden
by people who will, presumably, not be in that department. That
may make for some counter- influences.

How all these biological fragments are to be interrelated,
if at all, I don't know. It's my feeling that nobody else does,
either, but I could be mistaken. Certainly, nobody can guess
the whole arrangement. This is not unique. More and more
departments around the country have first combined botany and
zoology into a department of biology. Then this usually proves
to be unwieldy, particularly because it extends from biochemists
on one end to ecologists and system atists on the other: people
working with microbes on one end— very closely related to
medicine, let's say — and those on the other end interested more
in organisms and the environment. So these large biological
groupings tend to become colleges of biology or subcolleges or
groups. Then they subdivide and usually there is some unit
interested in organismic and ecological matters. Within the
university the first real instance of this was at Irvine.

171

Constance: The Irvine campus set up their biology originally, since they
were starting from scratch, by dividing biology into the same
divisions which the National Science Foundation had employed to
organize its biology. This presumably would make it much easier
to apply for grants — straight across the board — instead of
someone in the Department of Botany applying to the National
Science Foundation, where someone would have to say, "Should
this request go to the organism ic or the molecular or the
morphological or the systematic division or something else?"

Lage: Is this also going to mean a new college, breaking away from

L & S?

Constance: Some have proposed that. Whether it should or not, I don't

kr.ow. As a former dean of Letters and Science, I don't like the
idea because it clearly would destroy Letters and Science: I
can't imagine a college that would consist of physical sciences,
humanities, and social studies.

I was rather interested that in the notice of the meeting
for the Berkeley division [of the Academic Senate] there was a
comment by the Committee on Educational Policy, [reading] It
says "CEP" — that's the Committee on Educational Policy —
"reviewed the report of the Chancellor's Advisory Council on
Biology, which proposed a major reorganization of departmental
arrangements in the biological sciences with a view towards the
educational policy implications. CEP's major concerns were: A)
The plan offers the potential for massive disruption of
educational programs, but the impetus for the plan was somewhat
unclear. It appears as though the fact that there will be a new
annex facility drove the need to reorganize; B) The plan
included no discussion about the implications, advantages or
disadvantages for undergraduate education. CEP believed that
the definition of "department" should be based heavily on their
teaching missions; C) It was unclear as to whether arrangements
that foster research collaboration are equally useful for the
educational development either of undergraduates or graduates.
CEP further argued that the structural lump unit has obvious
implications for other units and thus urged that a long-range
plan be developed to consider the whole as well as the part."

Again, I have not been close to it. I have not been
consulted about it. As far as I've been able to tell, I do not
think that the people pushing the plan have even taken up the
question of undergraduate education.

Lage: So it's research-oriented?

172

Constance: It's very heavily research-oriented and medically-allied,
because it's thought that the reorganization will increase
visibility of people working in the biological area and make it
easier for them to get grants and presumably attract
distinguished faculty and students. I imagine it means they'll
get hold of more laboratory space that way.

But it's an attempt also to try to bring together
organizationally those faculty members who have the closest
interests, so that you can have something like the process of
photosynthesis being worked on in chemistry, biochemistry and
several branches of plant science all at the same time.
Theoretically, it would be nice to get all these people
together, presumably, in the same building, same floor, same
laboratory, or whatever. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't —
whatever, as we'd say in Minnesota.

Lage: I asked you here [in the interview outline] how your style of

department leadership can be described.

Constance: I don't think that in a year you accomplish a great deal. After
all, I had been brought up in the department. By then I had
been in the department for eighteen years, and I certainly didn't
make any major changes. We were a very democratic department.
All members of the faculty had equal voice, and sometimes it
seemed as if the junior members had unequal influence. So I
certainly didn't produce any major changes. Things went along
perfectly normally and I had every expectation that I would
continue for my term — I don't remember if I ever really thought
about what the length of the term would be.

But in the spring I began to be diverted by discussions
with the Chancellor about assuming the deanship of Letters and
Science. So I really had only about three-quarters of a year,
so to speak. And, as I say, it was relatively uneventful as far
as I can remember.

Appointment as Dean of Letters and Science. 1955

Lage: Why don't we move on to this process of appointment as dean of

Letters and Science?

Constance: Yes. The way people are appointed to administrative office '".
this campus, so far as I know, is usually by the senior
administrator requesting from the [Academic Senate] Committ- .n
Committees a slate of names from which an ad hoc committee can

173

Constance: be appointed to conduct a search for suitable candidates for the
particular office. I served on quite a number of these on this
and other campuses. I think they all go along pretty well with
this scheme.

Under this scheme, you don't know who put the finger on
you. I've always thought that it really isn't proper to try to
find out. From time to time, somebody drops a suggestion so
that you perhaps can reconstitute where the particular menace
came from; but by and large, not.

The chancellor began talking to me about this and frankly,
I was not greatly attracted. My experience at Washington State
had done nothing to improve my general impression of deans, and
I remember telling Kerr that, so far as I was concerned, dean
was a dirty, four-letter word. He said. "Yes, but look at
'chancellor.'" I said, "I never knew any chancellors, so I
never got to hate them." [laughter]

At Pullman, deans were authoritarian figures who usually
had allowed their scholarly status, if any, to atrophy; and as a
result, they commanded very little respect from the younger
faculty.

Lage : But had that been the case here?

Constance: No, I don't think so, but I really hadn't known deans. The
deans of Letters and Science prior to Davis were basically
disciplinary deans; they were concerned w-ith the requirements of
students, the mechanics of getting them 'through the university.
They had no budget, and therefore they had no budgetary power
and therefore they didn't have much power. So they were just
there. They were very respected people — people like Joel
Kilde brand [1938-1944] and George Louder back [1930-1938]. a
geologist who was dean of Letters and Science during part of my
junior faculty status. Davis, of course, had been chairman of
botany, and for him also I had great respect.

Lage: And he became a budgetary dean?

Constance: He was the first budgetary dean of Letters and Science. He was
a personal friend of President Sproul's. Sproul had great
confidence in him, and he was really an excellent choice. He
was interested in the administrative organization of the
college, and he was very good at it. With essentially no help
whatever, he had an amazingly broad view of the college and of
this campus of the University. He was one of the University's
wise men, without any question whatsoever.

174

Constance: Kerr and I had several discussions about the dean ship, and

it was clear that I was not the sole person suggested by the
committee. I remember his discussing several possibilities with
me. One of the them was Malcolm Davisson, who had been chairman
of the budget committee the first year I was there. I told Kerr
I would be delighted to serve under him as chairman or anything
else. Kerr said, "Fine," but that he could never get him
appointed by the Regents because he had led the faculty in their
losing struggle against the loyalty oath, He mentioned one or
two others who did not seem to me to be really strong
characters. So I guess that I gradually began to lose my
adamance against taking such a position.

Kerr's Goals for UC Undergraduate Education;
Expansion and Excellence

Lage : Did Kerr discuss with you what his goals were, or what he would

hope — ?

Constance: I can't remember now at what point we discussed different things
because I used to meet with him weekly after I was appointed
dean. I do remember his saying at one point that he thought we
were only about half as good as we thought we were.

Lage: As a university?

Constance: As a university or campus, which irritated me because I thought
we were at least as good as we thought we were, if not better,
[laughter] But it was certainly a good approach.

Lage: So he wanted to see changes?

Constance: That's correct. The situation was this. You see, Sproul had

been president since '30, and he was a very effective president;
I don't think anybody would now quarrel with that appraisal.
When he was originally appointed, there was some unhappiness
because he was not a senior faculty member, shall we say — he
wasn't another Wheeler. He came from the Comptroller's Office.
But he was, I think, amazingly successful in directing the
University, in getting legislative support for it, and I think
so far as possible, in having a harmonious faculty and a good,
you might say, family feeling. I think that, although there was
always some dissent at Berkeley — I'm sure it goes back to 1870,
probably — it was not a very significant factor as far as I can
remember. And Sproul. in some ways, really ran the place like a
family. He knew everybody; everybody knew him. He was freely
accessible and he'd walk across the campus and talk to the
students.

175

Constar.ce: But after the war — I dor.'t have the figures — the University grew
very, very rapidly ir. terms of numbers of students, hence also
in numbers of faculty. There was a considerable acceleration ir.
appointments, in hiring. A lot of people came in from
elsewhere. The Berkeley system, by and large, had been to
appoint assistant professors and instructors and let them
develop. And the ones who seemed to be developing, we
encouraged; those who weren't were discouraged; we grew our own.
This was, of course, interpolated with a certain number of
senior appointments, but these were rather minimal. We never,
in my experience, ran on the Harvard system of waiting till
people had arrived and then bringing them in with their entire
entourage. Some of that had to be done, especially as new
fields developed and things of that sort. But on the whole, I
think Berkeley tended to be a somewhat slow growing, not
terribly competitive institution. I never felt in it the kind
of competition that I felt in my brief year at Harvard.

After World War II, this changed a great deal, and more
people came in who had not had this kind of a tradition and who
were used to a more competitive situation. The University was
developing other campuses. There was clearly a need for more
institutions in the state, and the question was really whether
the University would somehow meet this need or whether it would
be completely superseded by colleges of other types here and
there. State colleges — many are now state universities, of
course — developed, and the University was in the position of
either developing and expanding to meet some of this need or
else simply being left in the shade.

It did manage to retain its monopoly on really advanced
graduate education. Some of the University's members. I think,
would have been very happy if it could have retained that and
shed all undergraduate responsibilities. But it was generally
felt this wasn't a really viable arrangement — that the
legislature and people of the state would not look kindly on
this. Their interests would be where their kiddies were, and
that, of course, would be in the other institutions that did
mostly undergraduate teaching.

There was a whole series of plans — I've forgotten what they
are, by and large. But at all events, it was clear that the
University had to expand very quickly. Toward the end of his
career, I think Sproul really didn't feel that this was his job.
He had done a fine job. and he was, I think, a little inclined
to rest on his laurels. And when Kerr was appointed as the
first Berkeley Chancellor, he felt that he really had to make
serious and extensive changes, to some degree in spite of the
president.

176

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

You mentior.ed in one of our earlier conversations that Sproul
really didn't want to give Kerr much power.

I don't think Sprqul wanted to give away any real authority
within the University. As I said, he ran it very much as a
family. It's true he had a provost at UCLA, but Sproul's heart
was at Berkeley. I mean, Berkeley was where the University was;
all these other things were necessary and presumably viable, and
you did the best you could with them. When you talked about the
University of California, it was Berkeley — all over the country,
all over the world. And that's where his heart was, which was
kind of tough on people at UCLA, Santa Barbara, and other
places.

It's true that Kerr had to fight to establish any kind of
independence. It clearly had to come because you simply
couldn't run what was rapidly becoming a multi-campus .university
by one person located at Berkeley or located anyplace else, as
far as that goes.

At any rate, part of the changes that Kerr foresaw for
Berkeley related to expansion, a careful tightening of
standards, the careful examination of all the units to see if
they were functioning properly and so on. The fact that I had
worked with him to some extent when I was budget committee
chairman, I suppose, made it very easy for him to visualize such
a relationship — and I suppose for me, also, because I had and
have great admiration for him. And while I hadn't given a great
deal of thought to it, I think our general objectives were
probably pretty much in harmony. I thought it was the best
institution in the world, and I wanted to be sure it would stay
that way or possibly get even better.

And he thought maybe it wasn't quite as good as everyone thought
it was?

Constance: I think he thought that.
Lage: Or was he challenging you?

Constance: There was some of that, I suspect, and it certainly worked. But
whether we really had that discussion at that point or later on,
I'm sure I couldn't tell you.

At all events. I did agree after considerable discussion to
accept the deanship. Of course, I didn't say anything about it
until one of my younger colleagues came dashing in one day. He
said. "I saw the list of departmental chairmen for next year,
and you're not mentioned. What does that mean?" So that
particular kitty was out of the bag. Somewhere it was said that

177

Constance: I was the first administrator ir. the history of the University
who had accepted a position before the position was vacant, so
perhaps I was overeager — I don't know.

The Special Committee on Objective s. Programs, and Requirements

Constance: I became dean on July 1, 1955. As I think I said earlier, my
predecessor as dean. Alva Davis, proposed a resolution to the
faculty of the College of Letters and Science in 1954. [reading
from a report] It says, "This resolution was introduced by
Professor Alva R. Davis, then dean of the college, on behalf of
the executive committee of the college. It provided for the
appointment of a special committee of seven and directed this
committee, 'to formulate a statement defining the objectives of
the college and to reexamine its major and curricular programs,
together with its entrance, graduation, other requirements in
reference to such objectives.' The committee is further
directed upon completion of its studies to make a final report
to the faculty of the college, in which it should make such
recommendations as it judged advisable by which the college
might better achieve its objectives."

And Sproul did, indeed, set up such a committee [the
Special Committee on Objectives, Programs, and Requirements] by
appointing nominees presented to him earlier by Professor
Francis A. Jenkins who was vice-chairman of the faculty of
Letters and Science. And this, then, led to a thorough report
on the college.*

Lage: Did you get involved at all in preparing the report? The

committee had already started when you became dean,

Constance: It was already started. I knew that I was going to be in the
position of carrying out, or not carrying out, some of its
recommendations. They had a series of meetings for the faculty
on almost every aspect of the report. My recollection is that I
attended most of them and that in most of them I listened. I
was never a member of the committee. Committee membership
changed from time to time. It started out with Griffith Evans
as the initial chairman of the committee. He was the professor
of mathematics for whom the Evans Hall is named. And then he
was forced to withdraw — I don't know — for reasons of health or

~*cl 51 Chretien, chairman. "Report to the Faculty of the College
of Letters and Science by the Special Committee on Objectives,
Programs, and Requirements." 125 pp. Berkeley, 1957.

178

Constance :

Lage:

Constance ;
Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

whatever the case may be. At any rate, he was superseded by
Professor Chretien, who was in what was then the Department of
Speech but was also a mathematician and a linguist, so he had a
number of different interests. The wh«le committee included
[Clarence] Brenner1 from French, my colleague [Ralph] Emerson
from botany. Evans remained on the committee from mathematics,
[William] Fretter from physics, [Theodore] McCown from
anthropology and [Sanford] Mosk from economics. So I was in an
almost ideal position, having an agenda already laid out for me.

[reading from a newspaper clipping] "Appointment was made
on a joint recommendation by Sproul and Kerr . . . Davis retired
from active duty as dean on June 30, 1954. But he was recalled
to active service by the regents for the present year, 1954-55.
Appointment of Professor Constance follows a considerable period
of faculty consultation and study. In accordance with the
bylaws of the Academic Senate, the Committee on Committees was
requested by the Chancellor to nominate a panel of names of
faculty members to serve on the special committee, whose charge
would be to recommend candidates for the deanship. From the
panel, a committee of senior faculty members of the Berkeley
campus was chosen to survey the qualifications of prospective
candidates. In its final report, the special committee
recommended several names for the consideration of the
university administration. Dr. Constance's name was chosen from
this group and his candidacy was presented to and approved by
the Regents at their April 22 meeting." and so on.

Actually. I looked in the University Archives. There were a lot
of records of that committee, and you were overwhelmingly the
favorite of them.

Oh, really?

It was surprising to me that any group could agree. You must
have made your impression on the budget committee or —

I suppose that was it primarily, because the budget committee.
I think, was pretty generally respected.

[looking through papers] I have all sorts of nice letters.
Here's one from Ken Pitzer, dean of chemistry. One from one of
my students, who writes, "God Almighty, it's happened!"
[laughter] My students, of course, regarded it as a great
defection from all that's right, normal, and moral.

What about graduate students that you were working with at the
time? Did you continue to see them through?

179

Constance: Oh, yes, I saw them through. I had some all during the time I
was in administration. [looking at letters] One frcm Carl
Bricenbaugh of history; one from Norman Buchanan — he was from
economics and was one of my fellow budget committee members; one
from Richard Eakin, zoology — he had been a fellow graduate
student; one from Will Denr.es, who was then dean of the graduate
division; one from Lawrence Kinnaird, who I learned died about
six months ago at the age ninety-two; one from Milton Chernin;
one from Dean Wurster of architecture; lots of them — one from
the dean of librarianship.

A Close Tie Between Faculty and Administration

Constance :
Lage:

Constance :
Lage :
Constance :

[reading] "Constance Presents Opinion" — ha!

[laughs] That's the kind of thing you'd like to see in a
headline. "Constance Presents Opinion."

Yes. Daily Calif or ni an. too.

Was that at the time of your appointment?

Yes. That was May 10, 1955.

To quote, "The wisest administration comes from the people
who have worked in the college." As his examples, he pointed
out William R. Dennes, dean of the graduate division, professor
of philosophy; Chancellor dark Kerr, professor of industrial
relations; Alva R. Davis, professor of plant physiology,
emeritus, and former chairman of the Department of Botany, who
was Constance's predecessor as dean of the College of Letters
and Science. He explained that some people make a career of
being dean — dropping all of their activities — but Chancellor
Kerr has a different idea of how deans should work. He feels
they should be appointed to the deanship long before retirement
age and continue to pursue their academic work so that after
about five years of being dean, they can return to
professorship. This way, the "deans have a better knowledge of
the problems the professors in the University face, and there's
far less chance of the dean's office becoming hopelessly lost in
bureaucratic red tape."

Lage :

Was this an idea that Kerr initiated or one that you did?
seems like it was a real concern of yours.

180

Constance: It was mutual. My predecessor, Davis, had gone into

administration so that, with the intervention of the war and so
on, he did retire at the end of it. The great problem with
administrators is that they abandon their field of scholarship
and then have no place to go, because a retired administrator is
simply retired, period. The University is not quite as brutal
as the big corporations, which essentially cashier them when
they reach a certain age; hopefully, they've managed to feather
their nests in the interim.

I remember discussing this with Kerr and saying. "Okay, if
I have to do a stint of administration, great; look me up in ten
to fifteen years and I'll be glad to think about it." I think I
was forty-six at the time. My only understanding when we went
into it was that I was going to accept the deanship for three
years. By the time he announced it, it had become five years;
by the time I got out of it, it was seven years.

Lags: That's the way those things happen.

Constance: At any rate, I remember his saying. "I need you now." I guess
that's probably why I went in when I did. But we both agreed
that the dean should continue to be active as scholar, as I
think I said earlier. And I think it's right — I still believe
in it. The University has become much more complicated. There
is a much greater necessity for having all sorts of technical
assistants of one kind or another. And there are more and more
people who are purely administrative. I still think that,
although some of this is necessary, it's regrettable.

Lage: It affects how the college is run, you think?

Constance: Yes. I think so. And I think it tends to put faculty and

administration in separate categories, which I abhor, [looking
again at the Daily Cal article] "Referring to the present
investigation of the curriculum (this is the study I referred
to), he said, 'Nothing is ever perfect. Every few years we
should take stock of ourselves and perhaps make a few changes.
This study, which has been in progress for over a year and will
take another year for completion may point out defects in the
present lower division requirements for L & S students.'
Speaking of duties for professors, he stated. 'No professor can
just give out information gleaned from other people and still be
worthy of the name. On the other hand, professors must teach
besides doing research. If you can't do both, you shouldn't be
in the university." (I'm afraid the subject and the verb parted
company there someplace.) "Asked how he felt about taking over
the deanship. he said his reply would be about like Anthony
Eden's when Churchill retired, with two differences: 'I don't
think he was really very much surprised, and he did want the
job.'" I'm not sure that I said that, or not, but —

181

Lage: It sounds like you did.

Constance: It sounds as if I might have, you know,

1 82

XIV ENFORCING NEW REQUIREMENTS AND HIGHER STANDARDS
IN LETTERS AND SCIENCE

Breadth Requirements

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Do you remember the process of getting the report of the special
committee approved by the faculty? The committee prepared the
report with a lot of research, it seems, and deliberation, and
then it went to the faculty of the college.

That's right. I don't remember too much about it. Most of
things that people disagreed about were pretty well settled in
discussions before that.

So there was a lot of input to the committee deliberations?

That's correct. One of the things that was changed — perhaps the
most profound change — was that the series of breadth requirements
was set up. In the past, there was a long list of requirements,
which kind of grew haphazardly. The moment you set up a series
of requirements, of course, the students set out to figure out
how to beat them. Given a few years, they will have completely
emasculated every requirement you can set up, you can count on
that.

There were various requirements which had diverted students
in particular directions. So one distinguished department got,
essentially, all its undergraduate students through one course.
The reason it got students through one course is that that was
the only alternative to taking a mathematics course, which many
students would do anything to avoid. There were all sorts of
little gimmicks like that. And as I say, the students master
them all.

Finding the easiest way to satisfy the requirement, is that the
idea?

1 83

Constance: Students finding the easiest way to satisfy requirements is as
basic as water running downhill, as far as I'm concerned. I've
observed it for many years, and they're very, very good at it.
To some degree, the colleges have- -unintentionally- I thirk —
fostered this.

At the time of registration — there was no preregi strati or. —
students all came and had to be there physically, and so as the
campus population grew, so did the lines of students, which
sometimes extended halfway across the campus, particularly for
the most popular courses. The college, faced with the problem
of "How do you handle this business?" which the students were,
not surprisingly, very critical of, decided to enlist student
assistants. So they got one of the student honorary groups, I
think, to man desks and act as student advisors. Well, I
discovered very quickly that what they were doing was telling
the students the easiest way to satisfy requirements. So I
discontinued the practice.

Lage : This was after the breadth requirements were introduced?

Constance: This was after breadth requirements came in. There was a laxity
of requirements, which had developed over the years because,
although I'm sure they were probably well thought out
originally, they had undergone steady erosion. That was, I
think, the thing that the report addressed particularly.

Letters and Science as a Campus Dumping Ground

Constance: One of the other problems was that the College of Letters and
Science was used essentially as a dumping ground for everybody
on the campus; if you couldn't do it anywhere else, you could do
it in Letters and Science. The college had the responsibility
of admitting students for one, two, or three years who were
planning to go on to a professional school of one sort or
another. They could go into business administration at the end
of two years. They could go into medicine if their grades were
sufficiently good and they were accepted at the end of three
years — that sort of thing. Law wouldn't take them until they
had graduated. Engineering, fortunately, took its students at
the freshman level and so did architecture. Chemistry did also;
it had both a major in Letters and Science and one in the
College of Chemistry proper. I think agriculture, perhaps, was
the only other one that accepted freshmen. I've forgotten now
but those were at least the principal ones. But Letters and
Science students, of course, far outnumbered all the others.

184

Constance:

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

It not only had students who were going into professional
schools on campus, but those who were going into things like
nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, and medicine in San Francisco.

So they all had different objectives and different requirements?

They all had different objectives; they had different
requirements. Letters and Science had the authority only to
admit them or to eliminate them. Medical students, for
instance, if they went for three years in Letters and Science
and then on to the University's medical school and did passably
well in the first year, were retroactively given baccalaureate
degrees from Berkeley.

The faculty didn't like this; I didn't like it. We decided
that everybody who was in the college, now that we had some
pretty straightforward requirements, would meet the require
ments. This was particularly violently opposed with regard to
foreign language. They were required to have two years of
foreign language. My interpretation of this was that, since
students would tend to defer this, they'd take them in the first
two years, or else. So they took them the first two years, or
else. And the students who were going into pharmacy and so on
were very bitter about this because they had obviously put this
requirement off for two years, and then, of course, they never
had to take them. So it was a kind of battle of wills.

The language requirement seemed to be a controversial one among
the faculty, too. Is that right?

To some degree, but not so much. Some of' the faculty felt that
students should have had language before they got to the
University — that at the University, they should only be taking
what were basically university-level language courses. The
foreign language departments were not terribly keen about the
great number of reluctant students they had thrust upon them.

But I would think it would help their budget and their staffing.

It did, but it was not entirely popular. I'm sure I was hated
more for enforcing the foreign- language requirement than for
anything else. But then, I used to get all sorts of complaints
from students who had a "block" against foreign language. I
used to say that a block against foreign language is certainly
regretable, but I see no reason why you should give a bachelor's
degree for it.

[laughs] Now what was you own personal feeling about why foreign
language was such a central element in liberal arts education?

185

Constance: My personal feeling was that my experience with foreign

language, limited as it was. was one of the most rewarding
cultural experiences I ever had. I used to defend it when I
talked to the students. I said. "Here is perhaps the only
opportunity you will ever get to really look at the world from a
different perspective." Well, of course, the sad part of it was
that the way much of the foreign language was taught, they didn't
get much of that. But they should have. I tried to get the
foreign language departments to develop really cultural courses,
so to speak. And some did. and some of them worked pretty well.

Strict Enforcement of Regulations

Constance: I was very pragmatic about this sort of thing. If you have a
requirement, you enforce the requirement. If it's not an
enforceable requirement, if you decide you don't want it, then
you change it and then you don't enforce it anymore. But none
of this nonsense of having requirements and letting everybody
duck them.

Lage : Had that been the case before, to grant exceptions freely?

Constance: That's right — that was the tendency. You know, you have students
who don't want to do it, and so it becomes unpleasant to refuse.
If you want to have nice relations with your students, you don't
force them to do anything they damn well don't want to.

Lage: There were a few notes in the files from the Chancellor's Office

about the complaints from students.

Constance: I'm sure — from some of the faculty, too.

Lage: They were mostly about the staff in the Letters and Science

office and their treatment of the students.

Constance: There might have been some validity to some of these, but mostly
not. We were getting a group of students who had always had
everything they wanted. I remember my associate dean explaining
to me why, when I talked to individual students, I couldn't seem
to make any impact on them.

The students said, "I want to do so-and-so," and I said,
"Well, unfortunately that's not possible under the college's
rules. If you want to do that, then you should be somewhere
where you can do that, but this isn't where." And they'd keep
reiterating. "But, I don't want to do it." I said, "Well,
that's regrettable, but you're going to if you're going to stay
in the college."

186

Constance :

Lage:

Lage :

Constance :

I remember Ted McCown saying. "A lot of these students have
never been said 'no' to. Nobody has ever told them. 'You damn
well cannot do that.1 and stuck to it." I damn well told them.
and I stuck to it. So in that sense, I was really pretty nasty.
But all I was doing, as far as I could see. was enforcing the
regulations that had been very carefully put together by a
series of superior faculty members. And I didn't think that the
students' version of what was good for them outweighed these
regulations.

And. of course. I was particularly hard on the athletes,
who had been, at least according to campus mythology, the
beneficiaries of a great many exceptions. I remember being
called upon by one or another of the coaches and their aides,
and I told them I was happy to assure them that the athletes
were going to be treated exactly like everybody else — no
problem.

Did they want exceptions on requirements, or changing a grade?

Constance: They wanted exceptions on everything, probably, but they didn't
say so. naturally. I just said. "I assure you there will be no
discrimination against athletes. They'll be treated like
everybody else."

Well, we made some exceptions for them, as we did for
students working part time, who were given a relaxation in the
program; they were allowed to carry fever units during the time
when they were working. We did the same thing for athletes.
During their active season, football players probably cannot
carry a full load. Okay, so we'll reduce it to some fixed
reduction which seemed to be reasonable, but we expect them to
produce in their remaining courses.

The thing that caused the biggest uproar, though, was that
a number of the students who were contemplating going into
professional colleges — or at least said they were — were not
accepted into the professional college unless they had a given
gradepoint, so they stayed in the College of Letters and
Science, which was strictly illegal. We had something like
f ourteen-hundred. if I remember, students in the college who
were not under the jurisdiction of the college, who could not
get into the professional school they wanted — they were j ust
there and had no maj or.

Now, why were they not under your jurisdiction?
admitted into your college.

They had been

They had been admitted to our college. They were
pre-professionals; we had nothing to say about it. excepting

that we could throw them out.

187

Lage: Were their gradepoints up to the college's standards?

Constance: Probably not. Well, it didr.'t matter whether they were or not.
This was in the report. There was the specification that every
student, by the end of his second year, must have an approved
major in the College of Letters and Science and be making
reasonable progress to meet the college requirements. In other
words, I tended to enforce all the college requirements, insofar
as possible, in the first two years. But the professional
people would have preferred to have let those go until their
upper division years, and then they'd get out of them. I was
not having any of that, so these students either had to get a
major or go elsewhere.

And then there were a lot of students who had been eligible
for dismissal and who were not dismissed. I took the view that
if a student was eligible for dismissal, he would be dismissed
unless there were overpowering reasons why he shouldn't be.
You'd be surprised how few of those there really were. So there
was a considerable slaughter — no question about it. I think,
and I think most of the members of the college thought, that it
was necessary, desirable, and probably long overdue.

Now. my predecessor, Dean Davis, was interested in the
administrative organization — the budgetary side of the college —
and he really made the college a budgetary unit. But he never
really got into the student end of things, so it had just sort
of accumulated over years. It was handled rather casually.
There were faculty assistant deans, but since there was not very
much concern about this at the top. there wasn't very much
concern at their level either.. Most of the decisions were made
in the clerical office by clerical staff.

Lage: Giving exceptions? By clerical staff?

Constance: There were all sorts of horror tales about people who had been
exempted from their entire foreign language requirement and so
on. There was a strong suspicion that nice-looking white males
got a great many more exceptions than other people. How much of
this was true, I don't know, nor did I ever particularly want to
find out. All I know was that it was changed.

I think I told you earlier that the clerks in the office
had a list of exceptions that they could make to the rules
without any approval. I abolished the list, saying that any
exceptions we make will start with the rules. We had a series
of assistant deans — four assistant deans — who handled students,
who met with the students and kept appointments. A lot of
things could be handled by the clerks, but when it came to
exceptions to rules, they were solely in the hands of faculty

188

Constance: assistant deans. Some of them were superb; some were not that
good. It simply put teeth in the system; it didn't change
things wildly. I had the committee report to work from, and I
interpreted it and enforced it. It was about as simple as that,
I guess.

Judging Cases for Special Admissions

Constance:

Lage :

One point I did leave out, which I should mention, was that
there had been created something called a general curriculum.
Ideally, the general curriculum was a device to enable students
with a personal, well-formulated plan to pretty much have free
reign within the facilities the college had to offer. It was
pointed out at various times that more Phi Beta Kappas came out
of general curriculum than any other major area, which, as I
said, was no surprise. Since you could subsist almost entirely
on "Mickey Mouse courses" in general curriculum, you ought to be
able to make Phi Beta Kappa; in fact, you ought to have your
head examined if you couldn't.

Well, it became, like so many of those great ideas, a
device to get rid of students who were regarded as inferior; it
got them out of the departmental majors. If someone couldn't
make it as an undergraduate in political science, okay, here was
a place you could shunt him off to. And so it was a kind of
cesspool, with some excellent students in it — no question about
it — who liked that kind of independence.

Well, we corrected that with the help of my executive
committee — I always had an excellent executive committee — and a
change in personnel. I always tried these things on them. Not
all the things, because a lot of them were clearly simply
enforcement of rules already on the books. I wrote my own
enforcement rules. I would usually check with the executive
committee, and I usually had their endorsement. I was only
moderately high-handed, as I recall. But I simply set higher
admission requirements to general curriculum. Finally, I told
the executive committee we couldn't handle it, and if they
didn't abolish it, I would. So they did. A lot of people
didn't like that. They felt I was destroying the liberality of
liberal arts.

What about the problem of special admissions? I noticed several
letters in the file where you were outraged at people being
admitted who didn't meet the requirements.

189

Constance: I don't remember about special admissions, per se. We ha'd

something called a second baccalaureate, which may have beer,
what you have in nir.d — I'm not sure. There were various kinds
of admissions.

At any rate, the graduate division would not accept any
student in graduate status unless he had achieved a
baccalaureate — an approved baccalaureate. However, there were a
number of students who were well-qualified for graduate work,
but who were not quite at the stage of becoming full-time
graduate students in a particular discipline because of change
of interest, or because they came from an institution that
lacked certain required courses, and so on.

So somebody at the University felt there should be some
mechanism for this. Letters and Science being the general
dumping ground, cf course it was dumped on Letters and Science.
I discovered that this was another miner cesspool, but I cleared
it up without much difficulty. I simply made a B-average in the
previous undergraduate work a requirement for entrance. They
had to meet two requirements: They had to have a B-average in
all their previous undergraduate work and they had to have an
objective sufficiently meritorious that a dean or I would feel
we could sell it to a California taxpayer who might wonder why
he should finance two baccalaureates for the same student. This
worked out pretty well.

One of our outstanding alumni through this route was the
recent Governor Jerry Brown [son of the then Governor "Pat"
Brown], who had an ecclesiastical undergraduate education with
the objective of. presumably, entering the priesthood, but
decided instead that he wanted to go into law. Graduate law
schools were unlikely to accept at face value the theologically
oriented courses he had taken. I was alerted by the University
administration — by the President's Office, I suppose — that the
governor's son was coming to seek admission for a second
baccalaureate. I said, "That's fine. That's nicely taken care
of. He will meet a clerk. The clerk will give him an
appointment with an assistant dean or with me. and he will have
the opportunity to convince the dean that (1) he has a B-average
in all his previous work, and (2) his objective is sufficiently
meritorious that it could be justified to a California taxpayer.
I'm not going to intervene in any way. If he's assigned to me,
fine; if he isn't, fine."

The only thing wrong is that I never found out who actually
admitted him. But I think that, probably, the lack of respect
for the University he showed as governor may very well have come
from the fact that we didn't treat him somewhat more drastically.
He went into classics, I think, and got a degree from classics

1 90

Constance:

Lage:

Constance:

Lage :

and then went to whatever law school he went to — I've forgotten
where it was. I think we probably didn't work him hard enough
to really imbue him with respect.

At any rate, another cne was one of Hallinans — the senior
Mrs. Hallinan. I got a call from the President's Office that
Mrs. Hallinan was coming to enroll, and I told them the same
thing. I would not intervene in any way; she would be treated
exactly the same. I was told that not only was Mrs. Hallinan
coming, but probably also her husband Vincent Hallinan, who had
just served a term, I believe, at MacNeil Island for I suppose
defying the witch-hunting committees of the fifties. And I
said, "That's fine. We'll treat them exactly the same way."
Whether they ever arrived or not, I don't know; neither of them
ever entered. But at all events, we were prepared. Speaking of
Hallinans, just as a footnote, I remember one student who
appealed to me for a reduction of his student load because of
other diversions was one of the younger Hallinans. This
particular request was induced by the fact that his father was
currently in the penitentiary. We reduced his load. What else
could you do?

It seems to me I've wandered all over the deanship.
We're not through, though.

It gives you an idea of the authority of the dean. Let me add a
couple of things.

One of them is that, as I said, I insisted that all students
who wanted exceptions to the rules must have a satisfactory
interview with an assistant dean. I usually did not see the
students myself, unless they were particularly insistent, or
particularly difficult, or the case was particularly remarkable
for one reason or another. I agreed I would see the toughest
cases that they could dream up.

I remember one very frustrating interview. A very
attractive young woman came in who had an absolutely perfect
record. I can't remember what it was she wanted; it was
absolutely trivial. And it was very pleasant. But after she
left, I went out and asked one of the clerks, "Why in the world
did you send her to me?" She said. "Well, we thought you ought
to see a good student for a change." [laughter]

Mostly, I saw the three- time losers, and so on. It gave me
a somewhat warped view, I'm sure.

I bet it did— a warped view of the students who were trying to
get around the system.

191

Constance: I didn't get all the students who were trying to beat the

system. My assistant deans got a bunch of them. But I remember
the most difficult ones were those who were being dismissed;
there's no question about that. There were often reasons
somewhat beyond their control and so on; but we had a policy,
which I think is probably still maintained in some form or
another. If they went down one semester, okay — one quarter —
that could happen to anybody. But, by the next semester, they
ought to be well on their way back up. If they were still going
down — out! And this, of course, was very bitter medicine. I
did not do it for reasons of persecution or whatever, but
because I simply observed that a student who once started down
kept going, but faster, if something didn't interrupt his fall.
And the something might be almost anything, but one of the best
things to do was get them the hell out as fast as you could.
That was fine for me to think, but, of course, was very
difficult for them. I remember more than one fighting back
tears, saying. "I'll show you." I looked him in the eye and
said, "I don't think you're man enough."

Crusader against Misuse of University Extension

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance

Was the "I'll show you" a promise of making it up at another
campus?

Well, whatever. Of course, the big problem was that there was
no obvious way for them to make it up. What they wanted to do,
of course, was to go to University Extension. And that was one
of my crusades.

That was another issue I wanted to bring up.
something you felt very strongly about.

I saw that was

I was a crusader against the the misuse of University Extension —
not because I don't think an outreach program, or whatever you
want to call it, or adult education, is desirable — but because
it was being misused. Because students who wouldn't or couldn't
get passing grades in a program comparable to those of other
students could get around it by going to summer school or taking
correspondence courses. They'd flunk Math 1, and get an A in
the summer session or by correspondence. And they'd come back
and say, "See. I've got all these wonderful grades."

And then they used those to make up grade points?

That's right. So I ruled, again I'm sure with the concurrence
of my executive committee. But we couldn't do anything about a
student who had not yet come into the college. We had to take

192

Constance: what we got. But any student who was in the college could not
take extension work without prior approval. So that way we
controlled that. That was one of the great abuses.

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

There were other abuses that happened through Extension.
Extension had the problem of having to pay its own way. So
there was a strong motivation to encourage people to take more
and more extension courses. There were at least three examples,
that I recall, in which this clearly was abused.

There was some chap on Guam who was taking correspondence
courses by Extension. I've forgotten how many units he had by
then, but I think there were enough probably to graduate him two
or three times over. It didn't fit any sensible pattern. There
was somebody who wrote from Brazil with a similar situation.
And there was an Indian living on the Hupa reservation in
northern California. I think she had at least enough units to
graduate three times.

And she was asking that a degree be granted?

But even in Extension she had hardly gotten a single passing
grade. I was accused of being anti-Indian and all sorts of
things. Someone in the President's Office promised her that,
she took "x" more units and got passing grades, she would be
admitted. This was strictly illegal.

Wasn't there a residency requirement?
amount on the campus?

You had to take a certain

Constance: Exactly. But of course, all the pressures were to try to get an
exception. So I waged warfare with Extension. I used to say
that if Extension ever got a new building, they would have a
model of my head in the front lobby. But I must have been
supported by people in the Chancellor's and President's Offices
or I could never have gotten away with it. But they were
clearly abusing their prerogatives.

That doesn't mean that all Extension was like that; but it
had no place, as I saw it. to give undergraduate work or
remedial high school work for students in the University. We
wanted full control of our students' programs. Our job, it
seemed to me, was to try to see that they got the best education
possible. And if we couldn't control what they were taking, we
couldn't very well advise them. So I pretty much won those
battles.

193

Maintaining Standards; The Problem of Junior College Transfers

Lage : Bid Kerr, or anyone else in the administration, ever put a

little more pressure on you in specific cases?

Constance: Well. I'll give you one. When [Glenn] Seaborg was chancellor,
there was a meeting in the President's House on the Berkeley
campus of the administrators of the junior colleges. This was
another bone of contention.

The junior colleges, not surprisingly, wanted to have the
requirements at each campus of the University all the same for
admission at the junior level. That made good sense for them.
They could prepare students and then kr.ow that a student who
finished could go to Santa Barbara or San Diego or Davis or
Berkeley or wherever.

The junior colleges used to have two separate lineages or
curricula. One was terminal, and usually vocational; the other
was college preparatory. As long as they kept them separate,
there was no great problem. But for economic or other reasons,
they tended to combine them and thus to weaken the college
preparatory program. Not only that, they tended to attempt to
bargain with the different campuses. If they could get one
campus to accept one of their courses as an equivalent to a
University course, then they felt the whole University should
accept it. On the contrary, I thought the University should not
accept it unless we had really good evidence from the past
performances of students that, indeed, it' was comparable. A lot
of them clearly were not. They were often clearly downgraded,
diluted, simply not what they were supposed to be. So, I
refused to accept the argument that if one campus accepted it,
everybody else had to. We weren't going to accept anything
which we did not think was adequate.

At this particular meeting, we were to meet with the junior
college people to see what their gripes were. My recollection
is that it was a pleasant meeting. It think it was cocktails,
and we were all having a nice time. I think Clark Kerr was
hosting it, and he said, "Most of the criticisms I've heard of
the University seem to involve transfers from junior college to
the University, and Lincoln. I guess that means you."

Well, I really wasn't quite prepared for this, but I said,
"I realize there are strains. Transfer from one institution to
another is probably never easy." I said. "If the junior col
leges want us to cooperate with them to raise the standard of
their courses, why, we certainly would be delighted to. If they
want us to lower ours to match theirs, the answer is no."
[laughter]

194

Constance:

Lage :

Constance

Lage:

You could hear a few cocktail glasses drop, but actually it was
very friendly. I think I got a little more respect than before
out of the junior college people, although probably not
everybody was happy about it.

I think I ran a pretty taut ship. I had excellent help in
my deans; I had a very good staff. I had the backing of the
Chancellor, and I was trying to do exactly what he had asked me
to do, which was to clean up the college and make it a first-rate
operation. And I think, by and large, we were pretty successful.

Did the college have the authority to decide if a junior college
course was comparable and would be counted, or was that the job
of the University registrar or whom?

It was the Admissions Office. Otherwise, if I could have
controlled it completely, I wouldn't have had to fight with any
of the administrators up the line. But as I recall, we simply
exerted pressure on them, particularly when we found students
who were floundering because of this sort of thing.

It came up particularly with regard to foreign language, as
you might guess. The students would come in with two years of —
I can't remember quite how the equivalency was judged. I think
two years of high school French, let's say, supposedly added up
to one year of college French, so they should move right into
the second course. Of course, most of them flunked it flat — or
many of them did — and that, of course, is why foreign language
was such a hurdle. If they had not had any prior language
course, they probably would have come out all right. If they'd
had any, it was a disaster. This was true with a number of
other things as well.

Of course there's always a lot of jockeying around about
Subject A. I once recommended that passage of Subject A be a
requirement for admission to the College of Letters and Science.
Of course, I was shouted down.

There are an awful lot of students who don't pass Subject A.

Constance: That's quite right.

Lage: It would have cut down your student body considerably, or

improved the high schools sooner.

Constance: I don't know. You never can tell. It's awfully hard to know
what works. But I remember — and I may have told you this, too
going somewhere in a plane with Bill Fleming, who was then dean
of dentistry at San Francisco and later was acting chancellor.

195

Constance: I remember Bill saying, early in my deanship, "We used to say
that what we really needed was a tough dean of L & S. I guess
we got him." [laughter]

But most of these things worked out pleasantly. I mentioned
that L & S was the kind of place on campus which wasn't something
else. It was defined almost entirely negatively. I never knew
when I enforced a requirement of some sort what would happen.
Suddenly I would get a scream from the other end of the campus,
and I had no idea whatever that pre-dentistry students were
taking a course in sculpture or something. Or there was some
particular course that was specially tailored for somebody way
off somewhere else. When you really put the screws into it,
why, somebody got wounded. I had no visible way of knowing it.
So there were always little things of this sort.

I remember one of the professional deans at one of the
Chancellor's councils of deans getting up and saying. 'Vho does
the dean of L & S think he is?" And I got up and said, "Anybody
who thinks I accepted the deanship of L & S to preside over the
cesspool of the campus ought to have another think."

So there were a few interesting moments from time to time,
but mostly I had very harmonious relations. I used to have a
lot of fencing with Mike O'Brien, who was the dean of engineer
ing. But by and large, we got along very well because
engineering admitted its own freshman, and Mike did not want
people in other colleges of the University trying to go through
engineering when they weren't admissible to it. Some of the
students in the pre- professional group were trying desperately
to get into engineering. Some of them had been trying to get
into engineering for five years, and God knows, they'd never get
into engineering. And of course, they weren't getting an
education either.

Lage: What about engineering — did they use some of your classes,

though, to round out their students' education?

Constance: Oh, yes.

Lage: They didn't try to present comparable courses?

Constance: That wasn't a great problem, but there were always some matters
of that sort. Engineering, at one point, considered setting up
its own English department, and its own mathematics department,
a few things like that; but budgetary restraints, probably, took
care of that pretty well.

196

XV ADMINISTERING THE COLLEGE OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE, 1955-1962
[Interview 7: March 13, 1986]##

Staff Changes

Constance: I probably should say, about at this point, that the College
staff changed very quickly. Not that I tossed people out;
Marjorie Carlson, who had long been in charge of the student end
of things, retired by dint of reaching the retirement age. I
inherited three assistant deans and one associate dean from my
predecessor. I also inherited one administrative assistant,
Barbara Annis, who had been with the University for many years
and had at one time been personal secretary to Provost Monroe
Deutsch and who knew the University intimately.

But I had to appoint a new administrative assistant in
charge of the student end of affairs. I was very fortunate in
getting Beatrix Bakker, who had worked in the Office of
Admissions and who was very familiar with the University's
processing of student admissions and so on. She had very high
standards and was very tough, so we had a great meeting of minds
and things worked out very well.

The other major appointment I really made to some extent at
Kerr's insistence, I suppose; he simply said it was ridiculous
for me to have charge of a budget that covered at least half of
the campus's activities and not have some kind of a budget
officer. So, I appointed Edward Feder, who was then in what is
now the Institute of Governmental Affairs. It was then a bureau

under the direction of Samuel May [Bureau of Public
Administration]. But, Mr. Feder is still with Letters and
Science and has become associate dean and assistant provost.
Feder is absolutely devoted to Letters and Science, and his
knowledge of it is second to nobody's.

Lage: So he's provided a lot of continuity.

197

Constance: That is correct. They both turned out to be superb appointments,
so I was very fortunate in that.

Lage: When you picked Edward Feder. how did you choose him?

Constance: I actually chose him on the recommendation of Milton Chernin,

who was then Dean of Social Welfare. I believe he was the only
candidate I looked at seriously. Chernin said, "The person you
want is Ed Feder." And he was so right.

Lage: What was his role, then?

Constance: His role was budget officer, essentially. The way we worked on
budgets when I started was rather ridiculous on the face of it.
Davis, my predecessor, was the first budgetary dean, as I
mentioned, of Letters and Science. He and Miss Annis, the
administrative assistant, simply took last year's budget and
projected next year's.

Lage: Without much change?

Constance: Without much change and without much basic research. And I did
the same thing. But the point is that both of us had learned a
lot about the constituent departments and so we weren't simply
whistling in the wind. For several years Feder used to come
back in astonishment after working things out very, very
carefully, saying, "My God, how did you people know that?"
[laughter] And I used to say, "Veil, what the hell do you think
I've been doing for the last V years?" So some things,
probably, we didn't detect, but we knew th« major problems, we
knew the weak areas, we knew the strong 'areas, and so on.

A Decentralized Approach: Departmental Authority

Lage: Let's talk just a little bit more about that — about what the

budgeting involved and how the figures were reached. The
departments must have had something to do with the budget.

Constance: Everything originated in the departments. In fact, in this
system, basically, everything does originate in departments.
Appointments originate there, budgetary proposals, and so on.
And the system, unless it's changed greatly, is quite unlike
that in many universities and colleges where higher levels of
the administration initiate a great many of these different
things.

198

Constance: I may have mentioned earlier that in attending a meeting of the
land grant colleges and universities, I found that my role as
dean was entirely different from that at most other land grant
schools. There, the deans essentially initiated the
appointments. Presumably, they had gotten some promptings or
suggestions from departments, but they initiated the
appointments themselves.

Lage: So, at this university decentralization is more the rule?

Constance: Well, I suppose the answer is that the departments really arose
before the colleges, by and large; at least the departments were
budgetary in Letters and Science long before the college was.
The college dean was simply a curricular officer, who was
imposed, you might say, almost arbitrarily on the departments.
The departments were the real operating, working centers. I
don't think anybody really wanted to change that very much,
because I think that's part of the strength of the University —
that the people closest to the local situation probably know the
most about it; but you do have to have some check on them.

Lage: Especially if resources are limited.

Constance: That's correct. To some extent, during the era that I was dean,
lack of resources was not really the greatest limitation on
things. With strong departments, it was mostly a matter of
control; if given their head, some would have liked to appoint
all the stars in the field in the country. I can think of one
chairman I used to say would be an ideal one if you could cut
his telephone cord. He loved to start the morning by calling up
all his colleagues around the country, asking them how they
would like to come to Berkeley. When he didn't have any
openings in the staff, this could be a little embarrassing.

On the other hand, with weaker departments the problem was
pretty much the opposite. You might say they didn't want to be
strengthened. If you get mediocrity established in a pretty
much self-perpetuating faculty, all it breeds is greater
mediocrity because you don't look so mediocre if the people that
are surrounding you are at least as mediocre as you are.

Reforming Weak Departments

Lage:

Now how did you become aware that certain departments were
mediocre?

Constance: The quickest way to find out was where the students went.

199

Lage:

[laughing] You mean they went to the mediocre ones, or they
didn't?

Constance: They did.

Lage:

But not at the graduate level, right?

Constance: No. not at the graduate level. Remember, I was basically an
undergraduate dean.

I'll give you an example. When I faced my first operations
under a new budget, I found that there were three departments
that were oversubscribed by students. In each case, my
predecessor had written very carefully to the chairmen of the
departments saying. "I am no longer dean, and any decision is up
to my successor. But if I were still dean. I would, in essence,
approve your request." And the requests were for more staff to
teach in the departments of Speech, Italian, and Decorative Art.
I looked into these and discovered not too surprisingly that
these were, indeed, essentially the three weakest departments in
the college; or at any rate, they had generally available
elementary courses which were known not to be rigorous and into
which the students poured in great numbers, doubtless in search
of excellence. And one of the first things I had to do was to
appeal to the Regents for, if I remember it. an unbudgeted
$20.000, simply to meet the staffing requirements in these areas
because there was no way I could really close down the courses
after the students had registered.

Lage: Now this must have been j ust certain courses — certain beginning

levels.

Constance: Well, Italian was known to be easy. Not only that, but there
were different requirements of numbers of classes for a given
number of units. If I remember correctly — and I may not —
perhaps French had five meetings a week for four units, German
had four meetings a week for four units, but everybody thought
German was more difficult than French. On the other hand,
Italian had four units and had four meetings — and everybody knew
Italian was easier than German. So students had it all figured
out. All you had to do was see where the students went and you
found out where your weak spots were.

Lage: So would this mean that the department as a whole was weak, or

that they just offered one or two lead courses?

Constance: There was some of both, although those three departments were
spectacularly weak. There wasn't any question about that.
Speech had become an alternative for English because students
were expected to take either English or speech at the beginning
of their career, and speech sounded easier than English. Some

200

Constance: speech sections, I'm sure, were excellent, and some of them were
probably pretty awful. In both those cases, much of the teaching
was done by people who were hired just for the particular
course — for that precise function — and many of them were not
even regular facul.ty members. They were hired from Extension or
somewhere. These were mostly people who were associates. Some
faculty members taught some sections, and some of the associates,
I'm sure, were superb. But a lot of them weren't. And a lot of
them were not rigorous. The students recognized this very
quickly, and this is where they flooded courses.

As I said, a weak department normally gets weaker, in the
first place because everybody knows the department is weak and
the general reaction is, "Why throw good money into a weak
situation?" So whether at Kerr's suggestion or my own
initiative, over time I fell back on the technique of appointing
a faculty committee to look at an ailing department and see what
could be done about it. I found this very effective. I tried
to use some of the most distinguished members of the faculty;
among others, I remember using Professor Bertrand Bronson in
English to chair a committee. I used S. Griswold Morley, who
was at one time chairman of the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese. I used James Hart of The Bancroft Library and the
English Department. [going to files] My memory deserts me, as
usual. I know where to find them, but it takes a moment,
[searching through files] Madison Beeler from German and
linguistics. All of those, at one time or another, chaired
committees for me on, among others, the departments of Italian
and of Near Eastern Languages.

I had a committee on Slavic; it wasn't really because the
department was so weak but because the chairman was retiring and
there were some problems about the department or perhaps Kerr
thought there were — I don't remember. At any rate, this device
worked out very well. I could not always follow the complete
suggestions of the committee, but at least they gave me good
guidance. From what I knew, from what my executive committee
knew, from what the Chancellor knew from various sources, we
usually had a pretty good line on things.

Lage: And then what kind of changes would be in order?

Constance: Well, staffing changes, primarily. Very often, the chairmanship
of the department was a problem. If a strong chairman was
retiring, now where do you go? Well, we've had at Berkeley — and
I trust we still have — a system whereby faculty members in any
given department indicate their preferences. I think that my
predecessor had started this. I'm sure I didn't, but I
certainly used it.

201

Constance: I had the system arranged so that I asked whoever was chairman
at the time to poll his staff and to let me have the returns in
such a way that I knew who said what. This was terribly important
because sometimes a department was badly split. I asked them to
make choices, perhaps list their choices one to three — you might
have fifteen votes for one person and fifteen for another and
absolutely nothing in between. But if you looked at their second
choices, you might find twenty and five, or whatever numbers I
was dealing with. Sometimes you could go down the list and find
someone who was not the first choice of either faction, but who
was generally acceptable to everybody. This was often the best
you coul d do.

Or sometimes, you might simply decide: This group is a
forward-looking group, this group is dragging its heels, this
group is strong, this group is weak. We had better take the
bull by horns and take the strong person here, but perhaps back
him or her up with a vice-chairman that is more more acceptable
across the board.

Lage: So it's primarily politics?

Constance: Oh, there's politics in it. One of the most successful moves we
made was to appoint Andreas Papandreou. who is now the
controversial premier of Greece, chairman of Economics with
Emily Huntington as vice-chairman. That really worked out very
well. The department was very badly split, and I think Kerr
pushed at least as strongly as I did in deciding that Papandreou
was needed to lead Economics into the new world, so to speak.
But he certainly would have had very serious trouble if he
hadn't had Emily, whom everybody loved, working with him. So
that worked out ideally. It didn't always work that well.

One of the problems, since you mentioned departments and
administrative problems, was rotation of chairmen. The
University has a policy — I'm not sure how explicit it is, but
it's generally understood — that administrative officers rotate.
At Berkeley, at least in my experience in the College of Letters
and Science, department chairman rotated on about a three- to
five-year basis. But there were a few chairmen who went on more
or less forever. Just prior to my regime. I think, Raymond
Birge was chairman of physics for twenty-three years. I don't
know how long Carl Sauer was chairman of geography, but probably
too long.

One of my problems was Walter Fischel, who was chairman of
Near Eastern Languages. I think, for fifteen years. This
problem, this particular one, was one of those in which I
utilized a committee of faculty members outside the department.
I had a departmental revolt on my hands. All the younger
members of the department called on me and said the situation in

202

Constance: the department was simply one they couldn't live with. I
learned such interesting things as, if they wanted to use
departmental stationery, they had to call the chairman at his
home. He would issue it one sheet at a time — and various other
strange and wonderful things. I carried out enough investiga
tion to discover that the charges were essentially true. So I
"rotated" him. This was simply an extreme case.

One of the ways of strengthening a department, as I
mentioned, was by appointment. Again, with a weak department
the chances are that you would not get a recommendation for a
strong appointment. And while I think the idea of appointing
most faculty at the beginning levels and then monitoring them
carefully and promoting the deserving — rapidly, if necessary — is
the strongest way to build, it still is necessary to go outside
from time to time. Only once did I ever go recruiting myself,
and that was at Kerr's suggestion, and that was with regard to
Italian. We had a peculiar situation: a chairman whose prime
interest in Italian was the introduction of Italian into the
high schools. This was almost a nationalistic enterprise.

Lage: Was he Italian himself?

Constance: He was of Italian origin. He staffed by getting young people

from Italy. About the time they learned English after teaching
for a few years, he said, "They're no good. We should fire them
and get some more." By this scheme, he became and remained the
only tenured member of the department. He essentially dared me
to do anything about it. So I accepted the dare.

Lage: Sounds like it was just what you needed.

Constance: Exactly. And that's, I think, where I used Bronson as chairman
of a committee. I think what we had was three junior Italian
staff members and the committee recommended that — if I remember
correctly — one be let go and two be promoted. That's what we
did.

Well, I went back to Cambridge to meet with a former
faculty member of Italian, who at that time was teaching at
Harvard. He didn't agree to come; apparently he had already
agreed to go to Johns Hopkins, but was not entirely free to tell
me about it. He did recommend one of his students, who was then
teaching at the Catholic University of America in Washington;
that was Arnolfo Ferruolo.

Ferruolo came and really built the Italian department as I
wanted it built. I mentioned that Italian had a special
attractiveness because it had fewer class meetings than French.
let's say, for the same number of units. I suggested that it
institute a fifth class meeting and that this really be a

203

Lage:

Constance :

Constance: cultural lecture, I suggested that all the foreign language

departments do this. He brought with him his best student, who
I believe is now chairman of the Italian department. So that
worked out very well.

How did you deal with the gentleman who had been in charge of it
for so long?

He was rotated out of the chairmanship. If he didn't retire at
that time, he retired shortly thereafter and the move was made.
I can't say that all my attempts worked out as well, but at
least —

Lage: It was a good case study of how a big change could be made.

Constance: Yes, these were mechanisms.

Lage: Of course, that was a small department, and it must have been

easier to effect change.

Constance: The real problems were in the smallest departments because there
were no alternatives, you see. You might have a department of
two or three people, one of them strong, another weak, and a
third one may be a good scholar, but nobody could visualize him
as chairing anything. And that can be a problem in universities.
While I think that most faculty members can administer, there
are some who are sure they can't, and there are some who simply
won't, for reasons that are diverse and may or may not be
compelling.

A Distinguished Roster of Assistant and Associate Deans

Constance: You asked about assistant deans. That might be appropriate to
bring up at this point. Professor Edward Strong was associate
dean for my predecessor, Professor Davis — Dean Davis. The first
thing I did when I became dean was to ask Ed if he would continue
with me as associate dean, but he very graciously declined. He
said he had been devoting a lot of time to administration and
he'd like to get back to his own work. That seemed reasonable
to me, and in a way, it gave me a freer hand. I inherited three
or four assistant deans from my predecessor and a couple of them
stayed with me for a while. We tried to keep the deans only for
a term of something like three years. I felt that that was long
enough. And I was also concerned about getting young men very
early in their careers because I was afraid that this might lead
them away from their primary obligations to instruction and

204

Constance: scholarship. Some of them could handle all this very well, and
some probably couldn't. I preferred to have people who were
probably a little better established.

Lage: At least tenured or beyond?

Constance: Well, they couldn't all be tenured, but most of them were. I
think I got my numbers wrong because there must have been, I
think, five assistant deans. One of them was considerably
senior to the others, Charles Aikin in Political Science.

Lage: Was he one of the ones you inherited?

Constance: He was one of those I inherited. The difference between him and
the others was that he said he was always in the minority on any
decisions, so he sounded like my man. He was a tremendous help
to me in my beginning days in the office because he believed the
University of California to be the greatest place on earth, and
that there was nothing we couldn't do. He said that in his
department one of the chairmen at one time or another would say,
"Well, we can't hold so-and-so. He could get a job at one of
the better universities in the country." He found this
offensive. So did I.

We had to have a pretty steady supply of assistant deans.
So we had discussions about how we should go about this. Should
we go after the people we thought we could get, or should we go
after the people we'd like to have but didn't think we could
get? We quickly decided we would do the latter.

I can't remember now the exact sequence of asking people,
but I do remember that one of the first people I approached was
Robert Connick in chemistry. He is one of the ablest members of
the Berkeley faculty, who has been vice-chancellor, and dean of
chemistry, and held about every academic office you can think
of. I didn't really expect to get him because although
chemistry has a major in the College of Letters and Science, or
did then at any rate, it was also a separate college and had its
own larger major there. He did me the favor of thinking it over
for the weekend, but then said he just didn't feel he could do
it because Wendell La timer had just died and left him with
additional responsibilities.

I wanted a physical scientist. I had tried to get
assistant deans in each of the major subject areas of the
college. I turned to William Fretter. I had thought about him
earlier, but I knew he was engaged in a lot of different
things — he had been a member of the L & S study committee — and I
felt I shouldn't ask him to do anything else. Well, Fretter did
come. He served as assistant dean, and one year as associate
dean, and then succeeded me as dean.

205

Constance

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance :

He eventually became vice president of the University with
President Saxon and served as acting president until David
Gardner came. He .said that I was the one who started him down
the primrose path to administration.

Do you remember particularly how you recruited them? Did you
use — ?

I used any information I could get.
budget committee —

From my experience on the

You already knew people across the campus.

I knew a lot of people, that's right. That was the wonderful
thing about the budget committee and probably the reason I was
where I was anyway — because I did know people, and if I didn't
know someone. I knew where to ask. Of course, I got conflicting
views, but usually I could filter these out.

I had served under Connick on the Committee on Educational
Policy, so I knew him personally. I knew most of these people
personally. Then Peter Odegard, who was chairman of the
Department of Political Science, retired and Aikin was chosen as
chairman. This, clearly, was the office that he most valued on
campus, so I was left without an associate dean.

I turned to Theodore McCown, whom I had known from the
editorial and budget committees, and he was one of the most
effective appointees I could possibly have had. He served with
me for five of my seven years as dean. Aikin was associate dean
first, and then Ted McCown was associate dean for five, and he
resigned his post a year before I left the deanship. He was
from anthropology, and he was a perfectionist. In essence, I
gave him authority for the student-end of things, although I
never entirely retreated from it. We had weekly meetings of the
deans, and cases that the deans felt they did not wish to decide
individually were brought there, and we hammered them out. I
remember one assistant dean coming to me after a meeting and
saying, "I shouldn't be on there. I should get off because I
disagree with everybody. I'm tougher than they are." I said,
"I know it. You're tougher than I am, and that's why I need
you." [laughter]

So you weren't the toughest member of this group?

Hopefully not. Some of them were younger than I. When you're
younger, you're tougher — I think. You haven't seen so many
reasons for problems. I think. But the system worked very well.
Nobody ever got his way completely, and if I found I thought

206

Constance

Lage:

something and five deans didn't, I suspected they probably were
right. But we worked these problems out very well. I'm not
saying we made only right decisions. We made, undoubtedly, a
lot of bad ones, but I think on the whole that we had a pretty
good system of checking so that nobody went wildly amiss.

Philosophically, were the deans pretty much in tune with each
other?

Constance: Yes. I'm sure they wouldn't have stayed on if they hadn't been.
I had a superb group of people. Really, if you look at the
people who have been prominent in the campus from Letters and
Science over the years since then, I had a good share of them.
Bill Bouwsma. professor of history, who later became
vice-chancellor; Charles Muscatine from English, who developed a
little honors college of his own — there are a whole series of
them — really very distinguished people from all over Letters and
Science. So, I think it was a very good learning experience for
them, and it certainly worked well for the college's standards
and so on.

One of the problems was that, as I mentioned earlier, the
departments were really here and operating as the centers of
activity, and in most respects, responsibility, and the college
was kind of imposed on top of them. I'm sure if you had asked
them a few years before my deanship what college they belonged
to, they would have had to scratch their heads, "Let's see, do
we belong to a college?"

One of the ideas of the study committee had been to make
the college a college, period. This was one of my concerns, in
a way, with Kerr because he felt — and various other people felt
from time to time — that the college was too big. Some people
objected because it tended to dominate the campus. That
probably wasn't Kerr's objection. Kerr thought it would be
stronger if it were divided into parts, and I was adamantly
opposed to its being divided into parts. I said, "Maybe at some
future time. But before you divide it, you had better be sure
that people know they're in a college. Then you can worry about
that. "

Subsequently, divisional deans were created, and although
the college has still stayed together to date, how much longer
it will, I don't know.

Lage: So the divisional deans would take one area like biological

sciences?

Constance: That's right. I didn't use my deans that way. I used them
solely for student interviews and making decisions on the
student end of things.

207

Lage: They didn't get into the budgetary — ?

Constance: They didn't get into budgetary things. Undoubtedly. I asked
some of them for information from time to time.

Lage: How about faculty promotion decisions — did they get into that?

Constance: No. The promotion thing went entirely independently of that

part of the college. From time to time, if I had to be away or
something of the sort, I would ask my associate dean to stand in
for me. I only had three associate deans, Aikin for a year,
McCown for five, and Fretter for one. So all of them did get
into the decision- making process.

If you go into decision- making of course, the dean at

that time was, not final on any promotion. He merely
recommended to the Chancellor. But, at the same time. I was the
only dean of a college who met regularly with the Chancellor.
So, in a way, I had a second chance at all recommendations.
Also, I arranged to have the special privilege of seeing the
budget committee comments before I made my recommendation, which
the other deans did not have. They made their recommendation
and then the budget committee made its. and the two sets of
recommendations and the budget committee's went together to the
chancellor. The other deans, of course, frequently felt they
had been undone at that level.

Lage: Now, why did you insist on seeing the budget committee

recommendation?

Constance: Because I knew the budget committee and what it could do, and
the kind of information it had, and the kind of integrity it
showed. Also, I had umteen more faculty members and departments
than anybody else on campus. I had nearly half the campus.
It's one thing to operate as a college with a single school or
department; it's something else to operate with something like
fifty departments.

Lage: So you wanted to use the budget committee's recommendations and

comments?

Constance: I needed them. I felt that my decisions or recommendations

would be infinitely better if I had that information. And Kerr
agreed and let me do it. Some of the other deans were not happy
about it and I can understand that. Over the course of time, I
think more and more effort has been made to give the other deans
a better chance to rebut by giving them at least the gist of
comments that have been made and so on.

Lage:

It sounds as if you didn't want to use it to rebut the budget
committee.

208

Constance :

Lage :

Constance

No. I wanted their help,
about it than I did.

I figured they probably knew more

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

The other deans seemed to feel differently, is that what I'm
gathering?

[pauses] It's a little hard to say. isn't it? I think deans
tend to want their own way, shall we say. I don't know the
intimate workings of most of the professional schools, but I
would guess that there was considerably less faculty input in
most of the colleges compared to Letters and Science. There
probably were exceptions — I don't know. Chemistry might well be
an exception. But I had the feeling that many of the
professional colleges were run much as the colleges I mentioned
in other land grant institutions, where the dean made the
decisions, including personnel and whatever. But there probably
were all degrees of it. All I know is the way L & S was in my
day.

How did the College of Chemistry develop its own college?

Well, it developed its own college because of the strength, I
suspect, of [Gilbert N. ] Lewis, who was the chemistry great. I
don't know quite when he started; I really don't know the
history of the College of Chemistry excepting that chemistry had
a very strong faculty and I would imagine that whoever was
president essentially gave him a blank check and said, "How
would you like to organize it?" So that's the way he organized
it. Chemistry's had very, very strong traditions, very strong
faculty, and they liked it that way.

The natural place for chemistry to be would be in Letters
and Science. Well, Lewis also developed a faculty, or a
curriculum, of chemical engineering, which really is an applied
arrangement and would be essentially out of place in the College
of Letters and Science. So the question is, "Vhat would you do
with it?" Well, one place you might put it is in engineering.
The chemists, at least, felt that they could do a lot better job
on it than the engineers could. So they didn't want to be
there. It wouldn't be appropriate in Letters and Science. So I
think we have, or had, the only chemical engineering program in
the country which is not in a school or college of engineering.
There were some elegant rows about that. At one time,
engineering started building up a program in process
engineering, which seemed to be the same thing. I seem to
remember that I was given the job of reporting on this and
trying to work out a compromise, but at ju.- what stage of my
career, I've forgotten — probably fortunately.

It seems like something you wouldn't have to worry
about in L & S.

209

Constance ;

Lage :
Constance ;

No, I was co-opted to do it. Whether it was from the budget
committee or my deanship or the vice- chancel lor ship, I've
forgotten.

Well, I took us off the track, there.

No, that's all right. I was trying to point out how things
worked.

Working with Chancellor Kerr

Constance: At one time, rather early in my deanship, Kerr suggested that
perhaps I ought to move over to Dwinelle Hall where we could
work more closely together. I told him I enjoyed very much
working with him, but I had a feeling we would get along a lot
better if we stayed where we were.

Lage: Now where were you?

Constance: I was over in Sproul Hall.

Lage: You were in Sproul — was he in Dwinelle?

Constance: He was in Dwinelle. I felt that I could manage the college

better if it were pretty clearly an institution of its own. If
I were next to the Chancellor, I didn't think I would have,
shall we say, the maximum opportunity to exercise my
independence. He accepted it.

Lage: Was there any problem that way, of his maybe taking too much

interest in the college?

Constance: He felt the college was vital to the campus, and he felt that it
had been in bad shape. I think examples are probably better
that any generalizations I might try to make. As I said, I used
to see him weekly, and he always had a list of topics. We'd
sometimes go down a list of, say, twenty-five different topics —
things he wanted me to do. or comments he had, or things he
wanted me to look into and so on. We never got through that
list, because next week he'd have another twenty topics or so,
and maybe we'd get fifteen of them done. I took notes on them
and we both had copies; unfortunately, I didn't keep mine. But
I remember one afternoon after the usual weekly session, there
still were a number of topics to go. He looked at the list a
little dejectedly and said, "It doesn't seem to me that we ever
get through the list." I said, "It doesn't to me, either." He
said, "You know, we'll really have to fly to Los Angeles
together sometime and see if we can't clean up the list."

210

Constance: So. there was a Regents meeting down there, which for some

reason I had to go to, or else I had to go down for some other
reason. So we found ourselves flying to Los Angeles. We sat
together and I remember Regent [Donald H.] McLaughlin came along
and spoke to Kerr.' Kerr greeted him and said. "Well. Constance
and I have some work to do." So McLaughlin went and sat
elsewhere, and we worked together all the way to Los Angeles; I
don't think we got the list done. Sometime later. I was looking
at this list, and I made some remark about it. Then I discovered
that Kerr had a second list, and I remarked about that. He
said, "I started that with your predecessor, but I didn't think
he'd ever do any of these things, so I saved it for you."
[laughter] So we kept going down the list, and that way we could
compare notes on all sorts of things.

Kerr was very sensitive to comments that came from outside,
and I'll confess that I resented this at times. I suppose that
any senior administrator has to listen, but some of the comments
were strictly inappropriate; people were talking about things
they didn't know anything about.

Lage : People who came to him with complaints?

Constance: That's right. They wrote, or a regent told him, or something;
and of course, he had to look at those. I always thought he
paid a little too much attention to them. But I enjoyed very
much working with him; he was wonderful to work with. I had
great respect for him, and he seemed to have respect for me —
which didn't mean he didn't tell me to stir my stumps on
something occasionally, if he felt it wasn't changing the way he
thought it ought to or going the way he thought it ought to.

Lage: So would he inquire of you what was going on in the Department

of Italian — something that specific?

Constance: Something of that sort, although I'd tell him probably, or we'd
decide, "What are we going to do about it?" One of the things —
we decided jointly on all the chairmanships. I would bring him
the results of the poll. We'd discuss them, and I'd ask, "Now
what do we do? This one is clear — eighty percent of the people
have opted for this individual, he's clearly qualified, he's a
scholar in his field, he's respected outside the University — no
problem. This one — three votes here, four there, seven there.
What's the problem? How do these people line up?" So he
participated very actively in guiding the way things developed;
but still, he left it to me to work out. He obviously put a
good deal of stock in what I told him, when I told him what my
impressions were.

Lage: Did you know people on campus more than he?

211

Constance: Yes — at least he thought so. [laughs] The Kerrs occasionally

gave a reception for chairmen, deans, or whatever — all sorts of
groups — at their home in El Cerrito, which they had rebuilt in
such a way that it had a considerable area. I remember being
there once for some reception of that sort. (Hark and I were
talking and Kay Kerr, his wife, came over and said, "Lincoln,
you know everybody. Get out there and introduce people!" So of
course, I went out and tried to introduce people. The first
thing I did was to misintroduce an engineer to somebody else. I
never did get all the engineers straightened out — they weren't
in L & S.

But dark, at affairs of that sort, used to ask me, "Who's
that, who's that, who's that?" I probably did know more
individuals than he did, at first. I had the reputation of
knowing everybody, which of course, I didn't. But, I knew a lot
of people from the budget committee, plus my Letters and Science-

Lage: Well, being in charge of L & S — over half the campus.

Constance: That's right. So, I knew a lot of people, and so perhaps I

could assist him in that way. It was a great challenge working
with him. I thoroughly enjoyed it. He's very quick. He was
obviously smarter than I am, and quicker. I'm a little more
reflective, I think probably, or was at the time. On the other
hand, he really got things done.

Lage: Was he open, if you had a different point of view?

Constance: He certainly would listen to it. You didn't always change his
mind. I don't think he ever agreed with me that the college
should not be divided up. I never agreed with him that it
should. And I'm sure he had his reasons; I was sure I had mine.
He respected them.

I don't recall any — I mean, I'm sure we certainly gave
ground to each other; he was clearly the boss, but on the other
hand, I wasn't timid in telling him what I thought. So, I think
that most of the decisions we made — good or bad — were probably
joint decisions.

Lage: He didn't need "yes-men" around him, it seems.

Constance: No. This, of course, is always the danger with any

administrator, he gets too many "jres-men." I don't think that,
at that point, he had too many 'yes-men." When he was
President, I'm not so sure he didn't. The presidential
atmosphere can be pretty much diluted so that nobody says "no"
anymore. I remember, at least on one occasion when he was
President, I spoke to him very frankly, and he pretty clearly
didn't like it. I think he was probably out of the habit of

212

Constance: getting it [laughter], whereas I reassumed exactly the stance
that we had always enjoyed together. But we're good friends.
He certainly hasn't resented it.

Problems of Undergraduate Teaching

Lage: What about interest in teaching? It seems Kerr had some concern

about improving teaching at the undergraduate level. Was that
something you discussed with him?

Constance: Well, it's always a problem. Obviously, if you have the big

undergraduate load, you're deeply into problems of undergraduate
teaching. The principal problems were the ones I indicated, I
think, in talking about weak departments: a very swollen
enrollment in lower division courses, which almost by definition
could not be adequately staffed by really well- qualified
faculty. Thus, if you had fifty sections of Italian, let's say.
and supposing any instructor taught two of them four or five
days a week, where are you going to get your faculty? You
obviously had to comb the streets to get a faculty. If you had
really distinguished scholars working in Italian literature or
whatever, they would not be very happy to spend their time
teaching three or four sections of students who were taking
Italian because they thought it was the easiest way to meet the
foreign language requirement.

So it was basically the problem of the inflated enrollment
at the lowest levels, and inadequate faculty to handle it, or,
to some extent, a lack of faculty who, shall we say, had a real
gift for that kind of teaching. This was particularly a problem
in the elementary foreign languages. It was a problem also in
English and speech, and it was a problem in mathematics.
Mathematics was a little different. One of the problems there
was that they had so many foreign graduate students that the
students complained bitterly they couldn't understand their
teaching assistants. And the teaching assistants were given
pretty wide scope. And of course there again, with that infla
tion of enrollment and the recruiting of marginally qualified
people, who had to be given essential autonomy, you could wind
up with a rather unfortunate teaching situation. That's the
only one I remember particularly, but it was cause for concern.

Lage: In math. I wouldn't think enrollment would be inflated because

it wasn't rigorous.

Constance: No, it wasn't because it wasn't rigorous. It was because it was
basic to physical science in general, to most of biological
science, to engineering, and so on. So, it was just a man/woman-

213

Constance: power situation. And about the only thing you could do was to
try to see that the department worked out some device whereby
there was fairly strict control of all sections. That was done
by getting a few faculty members to take enough sections so that
they knew what was going on. And then, perhaps, they could act
as lateral teachers of the people who were in charge of the
others. Some of that, I think, was done in all those departments.
Some of the foreign language departments brought in a person who
essentially took as his major role the direction of beginning
language courses. I know German did that, for instance, and I
suppose to some extent, Ferruolo did that in Italian.

But I don't recall other particular problems, although I'm
sure there were a lot of them. With that many faculty and that
many students, that many departments, you're bound to have every
kind of a problem you can think of and a few others. But I
don't remember any really generic ones that would fall under the
head of problems of teaching.

There was always a problem about Subject A — whether the
university should teach it, whether it should receive credit,
who should teach it. Should there be control over the topics
assigned because, every now and then, some imaginative
instructor thought of a few topics that would send one of the
regents on a one-way flight into the stratosphere.

Lage: There was one about the F.B.I. which was controversial when I

came — I forget what it was.

Constance: I think they loved to do that because, you know, it could embar
rass the administration. So, there were little problems like
that, but they were the spice of the daily menu, so to speak.

Kerr's Interest in Interdepartmental Cooperation

Constance: One thing that Kerr was interested in, or one of the things
that stemmed from, or perhaps repeated his concern about the
possibility of dividing the college into areas — He felt that
in that way you could keep closer tab on the different areas. I
think his criticism of me was that he didn't think I was
sufficiently innovative, and he thought that, somehow, I ought
to have plans for given areas. He soon discovered that I was
not particularly innovative. My role was, "Damn well make the
thing work," and not so much figuring out what ought to be done.
I just didn't think I had that kind of knowledge or was very
likely to develop it. I think I was rather more modest. I felt
that the people in the areas probably had a much better idea
than I did as to what they ought to be doing.

214

Constance: So we kicked around the idea of having area councils, which

would consist, perhaps, of the chairmen of the departments in
the humanities, and so on. He had already started the Social
Science Council before I came aboard. They developed various
things: an integrated social sciences course and the Institute
of Social Sciences. It was an internal granting agency. There
was also one that did various polls — the Survey Research Center.

We talked about trying to create councils in each of the
disciplinary areas. Several started out, but physical science
didn't seem to need one. The biological sciences took to it and
kept at it for a number of years. They created an integrated
beginning biology course, and eventually this developed into a
teaching department of biology, to which staff was contributed
from the different biological departments. That remained active
for at least twenty years. There was at least at one time a
foreign language council, one of the few in the humanities that
ever really got off the ground.

Lage: And were these concerned with both research and teaching?

Constance: These were concerned with everything in those areas. I remember
Kerr saying essentially, "Well, if you can't think of anything
to do, why — " I said I thought the advice would come much
better from the appropriate faculty than from me. And he
agreed, "Okay, we'll let you run the thing, and we'll let these
councils tell us what ought to be done." That worked out pretty
well.

Lage:
Constance :

Oh, one of the things the foreign language council
developed was a language laboratory. And various other things
came out of these arrangements. Those were fairly good
arrangements, I think.

I think in some ways Kerr was disappointed that I did not
have a specific agenda, so to speak — and I didn't. I had great
respect for the judgment of people in other fields, and I
thought they probably knew infinitely better what they should be
doing that I did, so I didn't try to tell them.

And yet, they each were tied to their own department. It sounds
like he wanted to break away from too much departmentalization.

Yes, that's true. Everybody who wants to reform the place wants
to weaken the departments. But if you weaken the departments, I
think you weaken the institution because I don't believe these
other arrangements can ever be quite held responsible. I mean,
they can come up with great ideas, but groups, committees, and
panels are not very good at day-to-day supervision.

215

Constance: I believe in our structure. The department is the basic unit
and. while it can be too rigid, you can also weaken the whole
institution by weakening the department, because I think that's
usually where responsibility comes to rest, Most of the
proposals to do things by councils, committees, or whatever —
with perhaps the exception of some of the graduate groups, let's
say — usually go along fine for a few years, and then go down the
tube. I think there are endless examples of this — great, bright
ideas that start out as little special colleges, and so on.

There was one undergraduate college — the name of which I do
not now recall — which started out with great gusto and four, I
think, interested faculty members. In five years, there was
only one interested faculty member left, and he was trying to
get people appointed from outside the university just to teach
in this course because all the others had lost interest in it.
I think that's usually what happens. The department really
doesn't have that luxury — it's held responsible. I think this
is something to bear in mind when departments are kicked around
or remodeled.

Lage: We haven't talked about outside institutes and research stations

and things that you were responsible for.

Ckjnstar.ee: I wasn't really responsible for many of these in Letters and
Science. Sproul liked to have them report to him, and Kerr
didn't like to have multiple reporting; he liked to have
everything channeled. He wanted all institutes and so on
attached to something. Sproul was very prone to give a
distinguished scholar his own thing, especially if another
university was competing for him at the moment. That's probably
one reason that Lawrence did so well here, because Sproul
essentially gave him a blank check.

As I said, Kerr insisted that everything be nailed down
somewhere. I remember one rather odd circumstance of this. He
looked at the Mount Hamilton astronomical observatory and saw
that it was hanging out there all by itself. Somehow, it had
been redirected to report to Berkeley. This was a little
humiliating to the astronomers because they were one of the
first parts of the university and they really thought of
themselves as a separate campus. Kerr didn't like the idea of
their coming in independently to report to him, so he had Mount
Hamilton report to the dean of Letters and Science, who was I.
The head of the astronomical observatory was a very nice chap
with whom I was on good terms, but he obviously was very much
humiliated to have to report to me. I certainly sympathized
with him. Eventually that problem was solved when Lick
Observatory was made a part of the Santa Cruz campus. How they
handle it there, I don't know; but, at all events, he didn't
have to report to the dean of Letters and Science at Berkeley.

216

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance:

Mostly. I think the institutes reported through the graduate
division. There was a lot of reorganization of these things.
somewhere along the line, I think perhaps when I was on the
budget committee. The first thing we did was to find out what
there was — nobody seemed to know, really — what these things
were, where they were, what their status was, what they were
supposed to do, to whom they reported and why, and then to get
some general rules for them. It's my recollection that I, as
the chairman of the budget committee, and the chairman of the
Committee on Educational Policy — who was Roy Jastram from
business administration, were asked to work out various rules
for their administration, and review. I think that Letters and
Science had almost none, if I recall. So that wasn't a prime
consideration for me.

I can't remember now which things were my concern when I
was dean or which when I was vice-chancellor; it's kind of hard
to remember when some of these things occurred.

Now, you had programs like physical education in L & S.
that a letter or a science?

Was

Physical education was a department. It was more nearly a
science because they were fairly heavy on physiology and
kinetics. It was not a major chosen by athletes, interestingly
enough.

It wasn't a recreational program?

They developed a recreational program, but even that was
somewhat serious. Not that you'd expect physical education to
have the greatest standards in the world, but theirs were not on
the bottom by any means. I also had the military departments.

ROTC Controversy; Kerr's Intervention

Lage: Yes. I ran across a couple of instances where you had to review

some controversies in ROTC.

Constance: Ah, yes.

Lage: Do you remember some of those?

Constance: I remember one. Let's see if I can get it straight. I had
almost forgotten about it.

Lage:

I have the name here, I think.

217

Constance:
Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

I've forgotten the chap's name.

Creighton. Is that the one you're thinking of?
uniform to picket?

He wore his

I'm sure that's the one. I've forgotten his name. It was an
instance of a — I don't now remember what they were picketing
about. It could have been most anything. At any rate, it is
true that one student did wear his ROTC uniform to picket
against, I suppose, ROTC being on campus or some cause of this
sort. And apparently, he was a very good student. His
immediate instructor had reported an A for him. The chairman of
the department, who was a colonel, changed it to an "F" because
of "action unbecoming an ROTC student."

This matter came to Kerr — I don't remember how. I think,
probably through the dean of men's office. Kerr told the dean
of men not to touch it and to leave it for me to handle. And
Kerr told me how to handle it, and how I was to handle it was to
call in the chairman, who was Colonel [John] Malloy, and, in
essence, dress him down and tell him to change the grade back.
[laughs]

Well, Colonel Malloy was a very amiable Irishman who had
considerable experience around the world, and who, it would be
fair to say, probably had never been accused of left-leaning.
It really was ridiculous on the face of it. I was very much a
civilian. My nearest brush with military experience was that I
came close to being drafted as a private in World War II, and
here I had the job of telling off — or disciplining — a full
colonel.

Now, would he have been a faculty member too?

They were faculty members during the time that they were
assigned to the University. So he was a professor and a
colonel. I remember telling him almost word for word what Kerr
told me to tell him. His face flushed and he closed his eyes
and said, "Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir." I felt like a fool, but
I did it, and he took it.

From the reading I did on this, that wasn't the way it came out.
It came out the other way — unless it was a different case.

It was the same case. It went 'round and 'round, all through
the University.

And went to the Academic Senate?

It went to the Academic Senate, and I can't remember what the
Academic Senate did with it.

218

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

They supported the ROTC.

Well, the point is that only a department can give a grade, and
nobody in the University has the authority to change it. period.
I had no authority to change a grade. The only thing I could do
was to tell the department that it was decided that the grade
was unfair, that the student had been treated unfairly, that
they should reexamine it. My recollection is that the
department stuck to their guns. This chap, who had an almost
perfect record, had this F-grade on it.

Bill Fretter told me a few years ago that he ran into this
fellow, who mentioned this and asked if there were any way that
it could be expunged from his record. Bill looked into it and
said he couldn't think of any. The chap said, "Oh, well. So
much for youthful enthusiasm," or indiscretion or something of
the sort. It was quite a celebrated case. Some of the faculty
felt very strongly about it. I didn't think the action was
appropriate; the chairman essentially overrode the person who
was doing the grading. I don't think that that was proper. I
don't remember all the details of it now, but it went 'round and
'round. The only thing I remember particularly is my having to
dress down the colonel, whom I liked, personally.

And getting direct orders from Kerr on what to do, which I
assume did not happen too often.

That was very rare. But he felt absolutely outraged — partly, of
course, because Kerr is a good Quaker, as I mentioned earlier.
I rather liked the military as people. .They were very
hospitable. They invited me to various drills. I didn't go to
all of them, but I tried to go to some. My wife went to some
with me, and we used to say it was a pleasure to see students
being told what to do and, by God, doing it, which was so
unusual around Berkeley. You never could, you know, really
order anybody to do anything and expect them to carry it out,
but here it was done. [laughter] But that was before there was
so much feeling against ROTC, of course, which expanded later.
And it still bubbles up,

That's the only case I remember particularly. There were a
few times when. I think, some of Kerr's staff members wanted to
intervene in the college. I certainly discouraged it, and I
think he must have. I certainly must have gotten support from
him that I didn't even know about in dealing with University
Extension and various other things that I thought were
detrimental to the college. He must have had a lot of
complaints about my severity, and lack of sympathy with
athletics, and so on.

219

Lage: He must have had to handle a lot of the athletic end of it.

Constance: He must have, yes.

Lage: But did that ever -come back to you?

Constance: I don't think so, I think it stopped there. No, he certainly
gave every evidence that he had confidence in me, and I had
confidence in what I was doing, so I did it.

Lage: What about relations with the faculty as a group, the faculty of

the College of Letters and Science?

Constance: There's a Faculty of the College of Letters and Science, which
is not terribly active. The dean has an executive committee,
which is quite active. All proposed legislation goes —

Lage: Does the executive committee consist of his assistant deans, or

is it something else?

Constance: No, that's faculty- elected. You see, the faculty of the college
elects its own committee on committees and that appoints all
other college faculty committees. So there is an executive
committee, and all proposed changes in legislation and so on
have to go through the executive committee. Then there's an
annual meeting, which is usually not very well attended, where
Letters and Science faculty can come, ask questions, bait the
dean, or whatever the case may be. But, I think when things are
going well, it's not very active. That's generally true of
faculty things, as you know. If they don't have enough people
to have a quorum at an Academic Senate meeting, things must be
going very well indeed — or else they are absolutely disastrous.

Lage: Well, they met in connection with the report, I would guess.

Constance: They met a number of times. There was a whole series of

meetings when the report was being developed. I've forgotten
now, but there may have been a mail ballot as well — I don't
recall. But. every section of the thing was discussed in one or
more meetings. In that sense, they were active, yes. But after
the thing was actually adopted. I don't recall very much
feverish meeting or debate or whatever the case may be.

I know I gave a kind of annual report as to what had
transpired, what was in the works, the number of exceptions to
rules of graduation and so on, which I tried to cut back to
zero. But there wasn't much — if you want to call it —
intervention or real action. I imagine that if some faculty
members thought something wasn't being done right, or they felt
something else should be done, they came to tell me about it.

220

Lage: Not through that formal process?

Constance: No. not by and large. I think. At least, I don't recall

anything that was really legislated which I had not invited or
didn't find acceptable anyway.

Lage: It sounds very pleasant.

Constance: I think probably time dims any unpleasantnesses.

Letters and Science; A College or a Collection of Departments?

Lage: Last time you said that the college was pretty much defined

negatively. Did you ever make an attempt to define it
positively?

Constance: Well, that was my major attempt, and I tried to carry the

recommendations out in action. The engineers had the strong
feeling, "We're engineers, we're all engineers you know."
Foresters were all foresters and so on. But Letters and Science
was pretty much everything else. That's what I meant.

Lage: Things that just didn't fit anyplace else?

Constance : W el 1 —

Lage: Did you see it as comparable to a liberal arts college, like

Pomona College for example?

Constance: Well, I never had the experience of a small private college.

That's probably something missing in my education. For instance,
my respect for departmental organization is probably contrary to
that mystique, to some extent. About the only thing we had that
resembled that, I think, was the general curriculum major, and
it turned out to be an abysmal mess. So that example didn't
particularly encourage me in that direction.

A lot of it is simply the function of size. As I said,
various attempts to create little colleges often started out
with a big brouhaha and then dwindled out in a few years. I

didn't think that was the kind of thing we could do best. It
seemed to me that our problem was not to imitate Pomona but to —
It's what I used to refer to as "the Swarthmore Complex". Kerr
had some of it. and he used to like to bring up Reed College, in
Portland, Oregon, as an example of what we ought to be doing. I
said, "Look dark, if all the Berkeley faculty members who have

221

Constance: children at Reed College took them out at one time, the college
would fall flat on its face." which was essentially true. It
was mostly attended by college professors' children. They
thought that this was the right environment for their hopeful
children. But as -I say, I was never very sympathetic to the
idea.

Lage: Now, that's an interesting comment in itself — if you're really

not just being funny about that — that the Berkeley faculty would
send their kids someplace totally opposite from this environment.
So they must have thought something was lacking in this
environment.

Constance: I suppose that's true. There's no question you can see that

rigid departmentalism can be antithetical to various things. On
the other hand, I never could see how you could really do these
things well. It always seemed to me that they became sort of
general curriculum. Well, Riverside started out with the idea
of — what was it? Western culture, I think. A series of courses
was mandated. It seems to me it was a total of four courses
which students had to complete by the time of graduation, which
would essentially encompass western culture. Well, students
went for two years and then transferred someplace else so they
wouldn't have to take it, or they wouldn't have to complete it.
Santa Cruz, I suspect, has done a better job of that sort of
thing. It seems to me if you take Berkeley and try to chop it
up into little pieces, it just doesn't work very well.

Lage: It is an organism of its own, perhaps.

Constance: That's right. But on the other hand, I've never had that small
college experience, you see. So, it may well be that I missed
something.

Lage: You didn't send your son to Reed, did you?

Constance: No, I sent him to Riverside. That didn't work very well,
either.

Lage: Did he finish there?

Constance: Riverside? Yes.

Lage: He took the whole western civilization course?

Constance: I think it had been changed by then. I think they dropped it
because so many students weren't taking it.

222

Working with Glenn Seaborg as Chancellor

Lage: Could you compare Glenn Seaborg, the next chancellor [1959-

1962] , with Kerr?-

Constance: Well. Glenn, as you know, succeeded Kerr when Kerr became
President. And I think I told you that when he became
Chancellor, it was suggested that I become vice-chancellor with
him. I begged off on the grounds that the first thing he would
have to do was get a new dean of L & S. I thought that in 1959
I was four years into it and felt I knew pretty well what I was
doing, and I didn't think it would be any favor to him.
Besides, I didn't think that the vice-chancellorship had really
settled down into a very significant role. I thought that the
role of the dean of Letters and Science was a lot more specific
and essential, and that the other remained to be worked out, to
some extent.

So I worked with Glenn essentially the same way I had
worked with Clark. We met weekly. As I said, I ran into him
recently, and he mentioned that he had found this file of all
the notes I kept on our meetings. He said, "You wrote down
everything that we did!"

Lage: I wish he had turned it over to me.

Constance: I think he's being interviewed.

Lage: Maybe, but on his science — not on the university history.

Constance: I don't know. But at any rate, he had run across it.

I think that there wasn't any great difference, excepting
that I had had a lot more experience by then in the campus
government than he had. Probably I was more of a source of
information to him than I had been to Kerr, who had been there
longer than I had. It was a very harmonious relationship, so
far as I was concerned. The interesting thing is that I really
don't remember very much. I have to stop to see when Glenn did
become chancellor.

Lage: There wasn't a big break in the points of view?

Constance: That's right.

Lage: Had Seaborg had an administrative role on the campus prior to

that?

223

Constance: I can't remember what his relationship was to what's now the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. He certainly had been active
there. I believe, however, they had it set up — and I think that
setup has changed at various times — I think that he chaired the
chemistry part of.it. Now, what the title was — associate
director — maybe? Because he and Ed McMillan, who was the
director, shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of plutonium.
I suspect that it was tnat kind of relationship. I think he
probably came directly trom the radiation laboratory.

One of the reasons that he was selected, I think it's fair
to say, was that there was probably considerable regental
support for having Ernest Lawrence succeed Kerr. Ernest
Lawrence was pretty far to the right on the political spectrum,
had been fairly active on the Regents' side during the oath
controversy, and would have been unacceptable to a fairly large
segment of the faculty. I can't really prove this, but my bones
tell me that this is right. Kerr thought that Seaborg, as a
Nobel laureate and a distinguished scientist, was also
considerably more liberal and would be a better choice.

Lage: And would be acceptable to the Regents?

Constance: That's right — acceptable both ways. He wasn't identified with
support of the loyalty oath as Lawrence was.

Lage: So the oath was still figuring in — ?

Constance: The oath still figured in the choice because there were still
some pretty deep divisions in the faculty.

A Multiplicity of Committees

Constance: I find it difficult to remember particular things in that era.
I was looking over some of the things I had written down. I
seem to have been doing a lot of traveling. I was serving on
national committees of one sort or another for — the National
Science Foundation, the National Research Council. All these
fantastic committees come marching along —

Lage: You could do a treatise on committees.

Constance: Yes. I've forgotten what a lot of them were, as a matter of
fact.

Lage: It seems to be part of a professor's life — serving on committees.

224

Cor. stance

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:

That's right, and particularly, I suppose, if one is in
administration and perhaps in a field — I don't know if I can
really detine that. Well, I was just looking at the kind of
things I was doing — You have this, too, don't you? [indicating
a chronological record of service. See appendix.]

Yes.

Well, I was in the Representative Assembly,
the Hitchcock professorship committee —

I was chairman ot

Now were these part ot your responsibility as L & S dean or were
these just extra things that you did?

No, these were extra things. I was on the AIBS [American
Institute of Biological Sciences] advisory committee to the AEC
[Atomic Energy Commission] on education and training. We
visited all the national laboratories. I chaired a committee to
advise the National Science Foundation on the status of the
Missouri Botanical Garden. I was a member of the National
Science Foundation Divisional Committee for Biological and
Medical Sciences, so on and so on.

I like the Committee to Prevent Duplication in Official
Publications.

Constance: Isn't that wonderful? I think I must have been very short
lived — I don't remember. [looking at record of service]
Committee on Interdepartmental Faculty Seminars — what that was,
I haven't the remotest idea. I do remember being on the
advisory committee of the School of Nursing in San Francisco.
National Science Foundation ad hoc Panel on Biological
Education.

I chaired an AIBS and NSF committee on communications media
in biology. This was when they first started talking about
computerizing library facilities. It was away ahead of its
time. I have learned, much to my surprise, that that was a
fairly historical committee.

Lage: Because it was a first?

Constance: Yes, because it was early. I was asked to chair it because I
knew absolutely nothing about the subject. I got a call from
Washington asking if I would be willing to chair it, and I
ducked. They said, "We need an impartial chairman because there
are a number of people involved in various librarian- abstracting
services and so on, particularly where their concern is
biological abstracts." They called me a week later and said,
"We're having the first meeting at the CLaremont Hotel. Now
will you chair it?" So I said okay.

225

Lage: So how would you handle a situation like that if you weren't

that familiar with the field?

Constance: A committee is a committee, Ann. You know, if you've chaired
one, as Reagan would say, you could chair any of them — to some
extent. Well —

Lage: It must be an art, though, chairing a committee in that way.

Constance: It's experience, primarily. If you have a lot of people with
vested interests, all struggling for the floor, you don't have
to do much except try to direct traffic and try to see that
things go in a constructive direction. Besides, this was
publication, and I had published and served on editorial
committees at the University and outside. I've never been an
ofticial editor, but I've been an unofficial editor a good many
times, so it wasn't all foreign to me. But it was interesting.

Seaborg's Treatment of the Humanities

Constance ;

Lage :

I don't think of anything that pops out of the Seaborg
administration, particularly. I remember our discussions about
some super appointments. I think that Chancellor Seaborg was
rather more prone to major appointments than I was. I still
come back to the idea that a good junior appointment is better
than one very major one. I rememDer there was one proposal for
the appointment of someone, a Nobel laureate, who was just about
at the end of his career. The departmental statement said
something to the etfect that, whereas most of the students and
most of faculty wouldn't be able to understand what he was
talking about, for some of the superior ones he would be a very
fine influence. And I said I couldn't go along with this. I
would much rather have two bright assistant professors. I don't
think Glenn was convinced, but the man died before he could be
appointed, so I won.

[laughing] Well, you win in all different ways.

Lage:

Was there any feeling that Seaborg was more removed from the
campus, having been sort of on tne hill and very much into
physical sciences? Did he understand problems of humanities and
language?

226

Constance:

Lage :

He certainly understood science much better than Kerr did. Some
other areas, I think, he had less feeling for. But he tried
very hard to be fair and even-handed. I remember one incident
when one of the professors in English was otfered a Sterling
prof essorsnip at Yale. The chairman of English came in feeling
there wasn't much of any chance that he could do anything about
it because the salary was quite high. I can't remember whether
he went with me to the Chancellor or not. It seems to me that
he did, and then it seems to me that pernaps he didn't.

But at all events, I discussed it with Glenn — I think just
the two of us — and Glenn's reaction, which I think shows where
he was coming from, was, "Well, if he were a professor of
chemistry, I think we'd try to match this one, wouldn't we?" I
said, "I sure as hell think we would." He said, "Well, I don't
see why we should do any less for someone in the humanities."
We didn't quite matcn it. We came close — close enough that the
man stayed. And I remember that the chairman of English was
absolutely overwhelmed when I told him. But he was sure that
with scientists, they would do this in a moment, but with
anybody else, not so much. I said, "You might like to know that
if we did match this, it would be the highest salary on the
campus, I believe, excepting for some people who had an
administrative position as well."

Glenn tried very hard to be responsive. But it's true that
some of the areas were less familiar to him, which is not
surprising. Nobody knows it all. Of course, Kerr felt most at
home in the social sciences, and I always thought he was rather
over-awed by science, and I always thought he didn't appreciate
the humanities as much as perhaps he should. He felt, I
suppose, that scholarship in the humanities tended to be rather
barren. Social sciences, you could imagine at least, were
dedicated to the betterment of mankind. Kerr, I suppose, in the
best sense is a humanitarian in that way. But he might think of
humanistic scholarship as being somewhat cloistered and arid,
wnereas to some degree that appealed to me.

Now you come out of a scientific background.

Constance: I'm a dirferent kind of scientist, you see. I'm in what the

present scientists call a "merely descriptive" science, which is
a put-down.

Lage: [laughing] Is it closer to the humanities, do you think?

Constance: Yes, I do think it is because it involves history, and it

involves what people did and how knowledge has developed over
time. You have to consider who did it, under what ircumstances,
and what it meant, and so on. How much it's the field of

227

Constance: interest, how much it's personal, I don't know, and how much

it's experience I don't know. Of course, you remember for ten
years I had had to thresh around in all these dirferent nelds
to som e ext ent.

Lage: You had to deal with all these humanists.

Constance: That's right. I've always felt my best support was from the
humanities, as a matter of fact.

Lage: Okay, there's just one other thing that maybe we could talk

about before we wind up —

Constance: Yes, go ahead.

Relations with the Regents and Other UC Campuses

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

Did you have any contact with the Regents during your deanship?

Not much. I'm trying to remember — I never had to go, that I can
recall, and speak for the college. The Regents weren't
interested in listening to the college, so far as I know. The
Chancellor essentially handled it. I'm sure I did attend some
Regents' meetings — I can't remember why. When the student
affairs came up in the sixties, then, of course, I had to go in
case they wanted to tlog somebody. But I don't recall — I think
I did go a few times when I was chairman of the budget
committee. We had a Northern Division Academic Council, of
which I was a member as chairman of the budget committee. We
attended one or more Regents' meetings, or had meetings with one
or more regents — both, I think. But I don't recall that I had
any direct connection.

For the most part, what went on went through channels?

The Regents don't normally — or haven't normally — gone below the
Chancellor's level. At a Regents' meeting, a chancellor is the
lowest thing you'll see. [laughter] In fact, I used to find
the Regents' meetings a litte embarrassing because all the
chancellors sat on the front row like so many schoolboys waiting
to be scolded, or to get up and brag, one or the other,
alternately.

[laughing] We'll get into this more in our next session, I
hope.

What aDout relations with other L & S colleges within the
UC system — is that something that happened?

228

Constance: Yes. When I first took on the job. I went down to UCLA and

talked to Paul Dodd, who was dean of Letters and Science there
and who was one of the handful of faculty members that osten
sibly really ran the campus. He was very gracious, very help
ful, and we discussed problems — it was some time in the fall of
my first year — and he told me what he had done aoout them and
gave me considerable ammunition.

Lage: Dia their system work similarly to ours?

Constance: Yes. There were some differences. They had a College of Arts
and something, which covered a multitude ot sins. That's where
all their weakest activities were; they had ROTC, and physical
ed, and something like decorative art there. It was kind ot a
grab bag. I don't think their standards were as good as ours,
but when I told Paul what we were going to do about certain
things, he would say, "Well, we've been doing that for years."
And so I came back to Berkeley, and said, "UCLA's been doing
this for years, so why don't we go ahead and do it?" I found
out later that nobody at UCLA, at least, knew they had been
doing it. But at any rate they were now doing it at Berkeley on
the strength of the belief that they had been doing it at UCLA,
and something needed to be done anyway.

I recall a little incident that might illustrate others'
opinion of my way of acting as dean. At some party, I heard Jim
Hart, whose voice is very distinctive and sounds a little like
the late President Sproul's, talking to somebody behind me. I
don't remember what the conversation was about, but at any rate
I heard Jim say in his very loud voice, "Well, you know, I do
what Lincoln Constance does." I turned around and tapped him on
the shoulder, and said, "Jim, I'd sure like to hear the tirst
part of that sentence." He blushed and said, "What I said was
tnat I do what Lincoln Constance does. If something needs to be
done and I can't find anything that says I actually can't do it,
I go ahead and do it," which I think is probably exactly what I
did. I thought it was a perfectly fair characterization.

Well, at all events, Dodd was very nice to me. He later
left UCLA and became president of San Francisco State. He's
still around. He comes to emeriti taculty atfairs here
occasionally. *

We had a group of deans of Letters and Science from
Riverside, Davis, Santa Barbara, Berkeley, and Los Angeles; that's
all the colleges of Letters and Science there were at tnat time.

*See Paul Dodd, Patient Persuader. UCLA Oral History Office,
1986.

229

Constance: We discussed mutual problems. I was particularly impressed by
Herbert Young at Davis, who was a chemist, and Robert Nisbet at
Riverside, who was from the Department of Sociology here and had
been an assistant dean in the college of Letters of Science, in
fact, under Joel Hildebrand years before. We found ourselves in
agreement on most things. The Santa Barbara and Los Angeles
people were, I felt, not quite as rigorous. But I think that it
was very useful to all of us; I found it very helpful. It was
very informal.

Lage: You made no attempt to standardize or make — ?

Constance: It worked in that direction. This, of course, was always a bone
of contention, as I stated earlier, in relations with outside
institutions. These outside institutions wanted to establish a
relationship with one campus and then extrapolate it to the
others. But our organizations were sufficiently dirferent that
this, to me, never made sense. I was always opposed to the idea
of the central administration dictating how we should handle
things. I thought we could handle them considerably better on
our own.

But that was a state of what, I suppose, you'd call
creative tension. It's never settled any more than it is in the
federal government — whether you should have strong federal, weak
state, strong state, weak federal, or whatever. For some things
certainly autonomy is much to be desired; in others, perhaps,
considerable standardization is desirable. But the standards
ought to be clearly intelligible; I think that's the most
important thing. There's no doubt that other institutions were
left in some confusion because there were so many different
university agencies they could address, and they could probably
get rather different answers from them simply by complexities of
size.

So that [the meeting ot UC deans or Letters and Science]
was a very useful thing. I think, so far as I recall, it
continued as long as I was dean. I don't know whether it goes
on any longer or not.

Lage: But the feelings were amiable enough?

Constance: Oh, very amiable, yes.

230

XVI BACKGROUND TO THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT
[Interview 8: April 3. 1986]##

Chancellor Kerr's Use of Advisory Councils

Lage:

Constance;

Lage:
Constance :

We're going to move into the period of your vice-chancellorship
today. As a little background, I wanted to get some comments
that you had told me off the tape about how Kerr used his
advisory committees — the Academic Advisory Council and the
Advisory Administrative Council. Could you comment on that?

Yes, briefly. Tne Chancellor's Advisory Administrative Council,
which consisted, predominantly, of deans — particularly
professional schools — was mandated by the regents, I tnink, when
Kerr was appointed because they had had complaints from certain
of the deans that the academic types were frustrating their
endeavors to build major schools of business adminstration,
architecture, engineering, whatever the case might be. And Kerr
used that committee, primarily, to diffuse information because
his predecessor, President Sproul, tended to deal with people
very individually. If some dean screamed loudly enough about
something, why, Sproul might maKe an individual concession for
him, which was not necessarily extended to anybody else. In
other words, it was a one— to-one negotiation kind of
relationship.

Kerr, on the other hand, felt everything ought to be
essentially equal in equal situations. This also produced some
problems because the title of dean sometimes went to a school
with a single department, very few taculty.

Like forestry.

Well, that would be a possibility. I was thinking of something
like social welfare, perhaps, or public health, where there
might be no undergraduate teaching, and often wasn't. So the
problems were different, the situations were dirferent, the

231

Constance: responsibilities were ditferent, but Kerr felt that all of them
should at least know wnat was being done. I don't think that he
told everybody what everybody else's salaries were, but it was
pretty generally understood that if one dean did something,
other deans did rhe same cning unless there was some particular
reason why they shouldn't.

There were different classes of schools or colleges that
required ditferent treatment. I know wnen I became dean of
Letters and Science, a number of the deans apparently had
objected to cne fact that in appointment and promotion matters,
the dean of Letters and Science was authorized to see the
comments and recommendations of the budget committee, wnereas
the other deans were simply toid about them after they had made
their recommendations. As dean of Letters and Science, I said I
could see some logic to this, but I thought the situation was
completely ditferent because I had fifty-odd departments where
some ot them had one. I had had four years experience with the
budget committee, and I felt I could do a much better job if I
saw and utilized the budget committee comments. The budget
committee was not happy about seeing that authority dispensed to
other deans because, whereas the role ot the dean of Letters and
Science was pretty much an adjudicating role among a series of
departments, in the case of the very small schools, the
recommender and the adjudicator were the same individual. Kerr
finally agreed that the situation was different, and he allowed
me to do what I wanted to do; not only that, but I think I was
the only dean who met with him on a weekly basis because so many
of rhe campus problems involved the College of Letters and
Science, and only peripherally some ot the others. Well, so
much for the Advisory Administrative Council.

Lage : So that was more of just an information channel?

Constance: It was primarily an information channel — and we discussed
problems, cross-campus concerns and so on. In one way or
another, I was a member of it, first as chairman of the budget
committee — I think that's right — and then as dean of Letters and
Science. I'm never quite sure about my timing on these things.
Yes, Kerr was inaugurated as chancellor in 1952, so that meant
that I was involved as budget committee chairman for a year,
anyway; and then I came back to it when I became dean.

At the same time, Kerr was very anxious to have faculty
advice. So he set up on his own the Academic Advisory Council
in 1954. Tnis represented the chairmen of the principal
Academic Senate committees and I think the dean of the Graduate
Division, and I'm sure that I as dean of Letters and Science was
on it. Oh, I might say before I forget it that the Advisory

232

Constance: Administrative Council also brought in the Lawrence Radiation
Laboratory, or wnat was then just the Radiation Laboratory,
which hitherto had been completely outside campus control of any
kind, even the President's, reporting directly to the Regents.

Lage: Just directly to the Regents?

Constance: That's right. So Kerr used that device to bring that

organization into the campus, which I think was a very positive
one. But tne Academic Advisory Council was his way of
exchanging information, advice, and so on with the committees of
the Academic Senate, primarily. I don't think there's much
question that in Kerr's thinking it was the more important
the two. My recollection is that for some time, they both L
every week. T jn I have a feeling, though I'm not sure that j.'m
right, that th i Advisory Administrative Council tended to meet
less often because it certainly played a less significant role.

Lage: What kind ot things would go on at the Academic Advisory

Council?

Constance: I find it very hard to recall specifics.

Lage: This might be something that could be gotten trom the minutes

rather than from —

Constance: I'm sure it could be. I don't have any minutes, but I would say
mere was no end to the things we discussed. We discussed
everything involving teaching, research, what have you, that
arfected the campus, and most everytning did.

So it was simply that the different committee chairmen
could bring cne uiings that their groups were discussing. The
Committee on Educational Policy very otten was concerned
particularly with problems of instruction of one sort or
another; budget committee, problems with appointment, salary,
departmental balance of one sort or another, questions of
whether certain institutes or special bodies of one sort or
another should be created.

Lage: Again, we're probably taring your memory, but I wondered it Kerr

had any particular things that he was interested in that he may
have tried to foster'/

Constance: Well, Kerr was always anxious to think about the campus in

tainy broad terms. One of the things that he was particularly
interested in was developing a master plan for the campus, and
the Academic Advisory Council was drawn very heavily into that.
In fact, I guess, he had essentially produced a master plan.

233

Lage: A physical plan?

Constance: Not so much the physical, but the general question of wnat the
campus thought its role should be and how it should develop.
Again, I can't really put my fingers on very many specifics.

Lage: This is something that can be gotten out of the records.

Constance: Yes, I'm sure that's true.

At all events, I think both groups were very useful, but
again, the administrative one primarily for information, the
other primarily for analysis of problems and setting the stage
for action of one sort or the other, although many of the same
things were discussed at both places. But you'd get a rather
different emphasis in the way the topic was handled in the two
places.

Kerr's Support for Social Sciences

Lage: I've heard it said that unaer Kerr that the humanities and

social sciences bloomed here — that there was more emphasis put
on these two areas. Would that be something you'd agree with?

Constance: Kerr told me — and I can't tell you exactly when, but I think

probably when I became dean — that we're only about half as good
as we think we are. And then he said that in his view, Berkeley
was strongest in the physical sciences, next strongest in the
biological sciences, third in the social sciences, and last in
humanities. His particular concern was the social sciences
because he was a labor economist — that was his particular area
of expertise and one in which he was extremely critical. He
felt we had undue duplication and very little unification
through the social sciences, which I suspect was probably
correct.

I never felt that he was particularly sensitive to the
humanities. It is sometimes said that he thought the humanities
were what a tired social scientist did in the evening when he
didn't have something better to do. That may not be quite tair.
I don't tnink he had much sympathy with, or really comprehended
the significance of, humanities research. If anything, he
probably felt this was a contradiction in terms. I think it's
tair to say that he was basically a reformer, and I suppose most
social scientists are. After all, that's wry they go into the
study of society, its problems, its organization; it's the
phase, I suppose, of arriving at solutions to problems.

234

Constance: He certainly was fair to the humanities, I think, but I

don't tnink that he had any particular appreciation — as I say, I
always thought he was overim pressed by the sciences. Others
might have a different view, but I had the feeling that the
humanists didn't r-eally feel tnat Kerr was tneir man, though I
don't tnink they felt any hostility. It may be that the
humanists don't feel that any administrator is their man, so to
speak. But, oddly enough, I think I got more support from tne
humanists, probably, than anybody else; why, I don't know
really, except I think I had a little more sense of what they
were trying to do. I didn't quite understand wnat they were
trying to do, but at least I assumed tnat they knew what they
were trying to do and tended to be sympathetic with it. And I
didn't feel I knew so much aoout it that I snould tell them how
to do it.

Lage: That's why you got quite a bit of respect.

Constance: Well, the humanities had particular problems with very large
classes at the first two year levels: English 1A-1B, the
elementary language courses, and so on. There was a built-in
contradiction because we wanted the best scholars we could get
in these areas, and the best scholars, by and large, were not
about to spend their time teaching English 1A-1B for the rest of
tneir careers — and the same in the foreign languages. So the
tendency was to leave a lot of the lower division teaching
either to tne lowest levels of the faculty or — particularly in
the foreign languages — to go down to graduate students —
associates, teaching assistants, wnatever they were at the time.

Some ot them were very good, but it produced criticism, and
I suspect that Kerr, as any administrator would be, was
sensitive to that kind ot criticism. I mean, it's the kind of
criticism you hear every day. You know, it's in the Sunday
newspaper. I think you may have missed this, but there was an
article in one of the sections telling what's wrong with the
university — "the university is not doing its job." It's rather
amusing; they quoted Charles Muscatine at one end, who is a
protessor or English, who was one of my assistant deans, by the
way. I think it would be fair to say that Chuck's objection is
that lower division teacning is not sufficiently elitist. On
the other hand, they quoted tne state assemblyman, John
Vasconcellos from San Jose, and his criticism, ot course, is

that the university isn't sufficiently democratic. But they're
both able to criticize the university because it now is a bit or
a helpless monster, to some extent.

235

Lower Division Teaching and Advising:
A Source of Student Alienation?

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance

We are kind of setting the background for FSM [the Free Speech
Movement] now. As exiting dean of L & S, were you satisfied
with the teaching and the advising? Tnis came up in the FSM a
great deal — the students' alienation, particularly in the
humanities, I tnink, trom not knowing faculty.

There's some of this always. I tried to strengthen foreign
languages, particularly; also, mathematics had the same problem.
I tried to get more faculty involved in lower division teaching.
English was such an excellent department that I frankly didn't
feel tnat I could tell them what they ought to be doing.

What about history? Were there complaints about that?

History had some or tne same problem. I don't, somehow, feel as
close to that. History certainly went in for big lectures. On
the other hand, they went out ot tneir way to get really
outstandingly good lecturers. I know one history professor who
came here from Harvard, I think as an associate protessor,
possibly as an assistant professor; he actually went out and
took a course in public speaking because the department felt and
he felt that he really wasn't making the best presentation
possible.

Now it's also true that English had very high standards of
discourse.

They didn't have the huge lecture classes.

That's right; I don't tnink English did. History had some
superb public speakers, if you like. There were certainly
problems in nistory, but I don't think that was primarily a
historian problem. It was more in the humanities. And of course
some of it was fueled by a general student dislike of foreign
language because they felt it was difficult, and students don't
like things that are difficult. And of course, when I was dean
of L & S, I was enforcing the language requirement with gusto.

There was something else that came up tnat I can't
remember; you mentioned, you alluded to — I guess you were asking
if I was satisfied with everything in L & S.

Right. Tnere were the criticisms of advising, for instance.

The

Advising came in as part of the Letters and Science report,
report recommended that all faculty members in Letters and
Science be advisors, and we treated that as gospel. We assigned

236

Constance: students to all faculty members in Letters and Science. I
remember I had one telephone call from a processor in the
physical science area who objected strenuously to tnis and said
that if he would have to do this he would LOOK for another
position. I told Turn I realized he might have some particular
problems — he happened to be in astronomy, by tne way — and I
would be WLLling to hold back the assignment for a semester, but
that I was not authorized to waive it, and the following
semester I would give him an assignment of students. So the
following semester, we sent him over the advisor sheets or
whatever they were, and he sent them back. I called him up, and
I said they were being returned to him. He told me again that
he might have to leave, and I said, "I think if you don't want
to teach in the university, perhaps you'd better seek another
position." The interesting thing was that I heard he became a
fabulous advisor; he was absolutely attached to his students and
loved it. [laughter] So you never know.

There were certainly some faculty who were not happy about
this. There was one man who was pretty much on the verge of re
tirement. The story which I heard, told to me as a fact, at any
rate, was that if a student went to Professor So-and-So, he'd see
his administrative assistant. The administrative assistant would
ask if he were a graduate student or undergraduate. If he said
he were an undergraduate, the answer was that Professor So-and-
So doesn't have time to talk to undergraduates. I never followed
it up for two reasons. One, I was reasonably sure it was true.
The second was that the man was on tne verge of retirement anyway
and I couldn't see any great merit in raising a fuss about it.

As I said, the advisory system tnat I used was essentially
dictated by the college. I know that there was seepage in it.
Pretty soon, in some departments, it turned out that the
administrative assistants were doing the advising, or the
teacning assistants were doing it, or somebody else. But we
stuck with that as well as we could during the time that I was
in the College of Letters and Science. Later they went over to
essentially professional advisors. And maybe it's unavoidable;
I realized it might be. But I wanted to follow the directions
of the Letter and Science committee, and I did not think it was
unreasonable that faculty members should do this. Students
complained tnat some were great advisers and some were terrible.
Of course, the ones who were great were the ones who would let

them do anything; the ones who were terrible were the ones who
insisted on their meeting the college requirements and probably
gave them good advice. So be it,

Lage: And then, of course, we talked about this, but one of the other

complaints brought up was the rigidity ot the requirements and
the grading system, which actually may have been in reaction to
the cnanges that L & S —

237

Constance:

Lage:

Constance :

I don't tnink the grading system changed at all. And again, if
you have standards, standards tend to be rigid. I don't see how
you can avoid that. I think the real question is whether
they're unreasonable or not. My view as dean was simply that
the standards are- the standards, and you conform to the
standards unless there is some overriding reason why you should
make an exception.

Did you ever feel that the upswelling of alienation, as it was
described, had something to do with the tightening of L & S
requirements?

I've always wondered if that may not have been the case. Nobody
ever specifically said so, as far as I know. I mean, I can't
account for ail the things the students said. But I don't think
I was ever personally attacked about it, and yet there was never
any question about who was enforcing what. Some of them didn't
like it; I threw a lot of them out. And most of them who went
out were, I think, probably improved by tae experience. In
tact, I used to meet people in grocery stores and so on who
would introduce themselves and said, "You know, you kicked me
out of the College of L & Si" And I said, "I didV" And every
now and then, somebody would say, "It's the best thing that ever
happened to me." I think it probably was. [laughter]

But a lot of these things, Ann, are perennial. I mean, if
you're interviewing somebody twenty years hence, you'll get
exactly the same — the rigidity of standards, the arbitrariness
of administration, and so on. All you have to do is read
today's editorial in the Daily Californian, The administration
is rigid. Why is it rigid? Because it won't give us what we
want — right now! I'm airaid I've come to the sort of
generalized view, which is one I really don't like to hold, that
a lot of undergraduate response is essentially a temper tantrum.
Tney were spoiled brats. They want what they want, and they
want it right now; because they want it, they should have it,
Everybody else lie down and play dead. [laughter] I'm not very
sympathetic.

Lage:

I can see that,
specifically.

[laughter] But we'll get into it more

Accepting the Vice- Chancel lor ship. 1962

Lage

Let's talk about your accepting the vice-cnancellorship. You
had said that you'd turned it down earlier; it wasn't well-
detined. I wondered when this changed.

238

Constance:

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

That's a good question. I hesitated when I noted your question
ton the interview outline]. I suppose one reason I accepted it
was that I had been told ever since Seaborg became cnancexlor in
Iy59 that when I got tired ot being dean of Letters and Science,
I was going to have to do a stretch as vice-chancellor. So
after seven years as dean ot Letters and Science, it seemed to
be a reasonable change to make.

There had been at least two vice-chancellors in the
meantime. Professor James Hart, the current director of The
Bancroft Library, was vice-chancellor for two or tnree years,
and tnen Edward Strong was vice-chancellor for several years.
I'm sorry I don't remember the dates.

Wasn't there someone else that you immediately replaced?
Adrian Kragen?

Was it

Kragen was never academic vice-chancellor. Tney used the term
vice-cnanceilor for business managers and various other kinds of
people at one time or another, but I always think of the line of
descent as being those who were really the academic vice-
chancellors, aithougn tney did not always have that formal term.

So you more or less stepped into Strong's position?

Tnat's right. And Strong came to it from the en ai rm ansh ip of
the Committee on Educational Policy, which is sort of out of the
chancellor's academic advisory group, you see.

I don't remember any particular reason for accepting the
position. Wnen I first became dean of Letters and Science, I
had asked Dr. Strong to stay on as associate dean. I nad Known
him well and favorably for a number ot years. Wnen he [when he
became chancellor in 1961] picked up on Seaborg1 s announcement
that I was to do a term as vice-chancellor, tnis seemed to be
tne time to do it, if I were going to do it. I had no wish to
remain in administration for any length ot time, but this didn't
seem the sort of thing that, you know, would drag on forever,
and I guess I thought I could be of considerable help to him.
It was pretty clear that anybody taking over sometning like the
Berkeley campus probably needed help.

There was also some question about Strong's appointment as

cnancellor, primarily I think, because of his age. I don't know
nis age. My recollection is that he was over or about sixty.
Somewhere I have a note tnat I wrote to Kerr, saying how pleased
I was that Strong had been appointed. He wrote back and said,
"I'm pleased that you're pleased."

But there's no question that the faculty, I think, were
strongly behind his appointment — in favor of it.

239

Lage: Wouldn't Kerr have had a strong voice in who was chosen?

Constance: Kerr would have had a strong voice in who was chosen. Kerr

would, whenever he could, defer to wnat he thought was majority,
or reasoned, or whatever faculty opinion. He was very sensitive
to faculty opinion, and I unir.k would, in most instances, not
have gone against what he thought was a widespread support for a
given individual in a given position, unless, I suppose, he had
reaily negative inside information, or whatever the case may be.

It's a little hard to say what the job involved, how well-
defined it was, what major goals you brought to it [referring to
interview outline]. I think it's fair to say that I never bring
major goals to anything. My general reaction to the University
always was that it was a very tine institution, and if you could
keep it that way, or perhaps improve a little bit here and there
when it got seedy around the edges, that's really about all one
could hope for.

Lage: You're not a master planner?

Constance: I'm not a master planner, no. I'm a day-to-day pragmatist, I
think. I think I know what's good, and I think I know wnat's
bad. I think I know what represents quality and what represents
shoddy, and I tend to prefer the former to the latter.
[laughter] It's about as simple as that.

As academic vice-chancellor, I really was almost an alter
ego to the chancellor in most of the things involving the campus
because of my budget committee experience, my service on just
about ail the committees in the place, my seven years as dean ot
Letters and Science; I had, you know, been on tnis sort of
thing. [indicates a document]

Lage: You're looking at the list of committee service that's going to

go in the back of this interview. Lsee Appendix]

Constance: That's right. I actually handled academic personnel. I wrote
all ot the promotion and appointment recommendations. I worked
directly with the budget committee, and to some extent,
negotiated with them where there seemed to me to be disagreement
either on my part or on the chancellor's part. But by and
large, the chancellor followed my recommendations, and by and
large, I followed the budget committee's.

There were a few that we disagreed on. I think I probably
deferred to them more often tnan they deferred to me. I usually
decided that if the faculty committee and the budget committee
both were unanimously for someone, even though I had my doubts.

240

Constance: I probably was wrong. And I can still see a few of the mistakes
walking around the campus. [laughterj Certainly if I had made
the decisions on my own without regard to their view, there
would be a lot more of them walking around.

Year-Round Acacemic Program; A Divisive Issue

Lage : Can you recall any issues in this early period, before we get

into FSM, where there were tensions with the faculty?

Constance: Weil, you listed several here that I thought were very

perceptive. The issue of year-round operation, I tnink, was a
very divisive issue; perhaps I think so because I didn't like
it. It was clearly an economic issue. It was a businessman's
approach to the university. I can well believe that, to many
businessmen, here is a very expensive plant just sitting vacant
in the summer, and here are some relatively hign-paid faculty
just sitting here all summer or bouncing around the world not
doing anything and getting paid; and that, obviously, is
ridiculous on the tace ot it.

So there was a national fervor which developed aoout this
time — about the idea of somehow making better utilization of the
campus. It was an economic problem. This was the period when a
number of these master plans were made. Kerr was very anxious
to do tnis because before he became president, even, it was
clear that President Sproul had really not planned ahead much.
He was concerned with carrying through a long and very
productive presidency, and it's not too surprising that he
didn't particularly want to go full tilt into this. Some of the
Regents clearly did want more action, and I suspect that some of
Kerr's stimulation came from that. At all events, I think I may
nave said earlier that the different campuses were called to
produce master plans.

Lage: I don't think we talked about the year-round operation on the

tape.

Constance: Okay. Well, the year-round thing was really a kind of outgrowth
of the kind of planning that led to the master plans. There was
a question ot how many campuses there should be; there was some
suggestion that there should be what was by then, I think, an
eleventh campus in the Bakerstield area, or something or that

241

Constance;

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

sort. Someone decided, whether trom the computer or not — I
don't know — that if you simply ran the major campuses year-
round, you wouldn't have to build another campus, which would be
a big saving.

I've always had the feeling that some of the business-
minded people involved felt that you should run it all year-
round and have the faculty teach year-round with the salary they
were getting now, since they weren't doing anything the rest of
the time, anyway.

This is just your suspicion, though?

Tnis is my suspicion; this is my conjecture. I'm sure it would
be bitterly denied, but I think trom a businessman's standpoint,
it might make some sense.

You nad mentioned to me at one time that you were involved —

I was involved in it, to some extent. But I was going to say
chat nationally it was first tried out at Pittsburgh. I cannot
now remember the name of the young industrial whiz who thought
it up; what he thought up was the tri-semester. He was killed
in an airplane crash, as it happened, and the University of
Pittsburgh went broke and nad to be taken over by the state
because it didn't work.

Much was made or the fact that Stanford had four quarters;
but the point is that the summer quarter was not anything like
the other three, and it wasn't manned by tne people who were
there cne other three, most of the time. I was firmly convinced
from my knowledge ot students that students would not come in
the summer, period. And they didn't.

The faculty might not want to teach in the summer. Was that a
consideration?

Constance: Tnat was not as much of a problem. You could always get

faculty, but you usually didn't get faculty nere, or you got
very junior faculty. But there are a lot of faculty in the
other institutions who would be nappy to come and teach; you
have all of the state colleges and junior colleges in the state,
for one tning, and a lot of people on the East Coast would be
happy to spend a summer in California. And that's fine; I have
no objection to that kind of summer school. That's great. But
summer school, I think, is usually most successful when it is
not a replica of your other units, because people who come to
summer school usually don't want to work that hard. That's the
reason there are such popular summer schools in Hawaii, Florida,
and Arizona, you name it.

242

Constance ;

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

A lot of faculty didn't like it. Experienced taculty have
usually invested a number of years in the particular courses
they teach, and any scheme that cnanges the plan they already
have is disruptive. Some of my biological colleagues were
particularly upset about it because some of the best teachers
had orchestrated a whole series of support mechanisms so they
had animals that matured or behaved or whatever essentially on
schedule; and they could run a whole semester with live animals
or plants at every session, doing what they were supposed to do.

Any scheme of year-round operation involved a change of the
units of the year, whatever you did.

Either the tri-semester plan or a fourth quarter.

That's right, because nobody ever suggested, so far as I know,
six month semesters without any vacation at all. That was one
possibility that certainly might have been explored.

I think this was somewhat divisive.
Were you responsible for dealing with the faculty on it?

Well, to some extent I was involved in tne planning. I always
felt that Kerr put me in charge of it because he knew I didn't
like it, and perhaps he thought that someone who was not a great
advocate would be better at pointing out the strengths and
weatoesses than somebody who was enthusiastic for it. I don't
know whether any faculty were enthusiastic for it or not.

Forestry was, I hear from Henry Vaux; they felt it allowed them
to treat their subject matter better because, as he described
it, forestry was a synthethic subject, and they needed to
include a lot of dirferent courses in their curriculum.

Constance: Forestry has essentially a summer program in at least a couple
of their years, I believe.

But he preferred tne quarter to the semester as a unit of class
institution.

Constance: This was another disruptive — Okay, mathematics did, too.

There were a number of different issues. One was whether
it should be year-round or not. Then the second series of
issues revolved about the best teacning time. Here you get
into, to a large extent, the history of the people who had been
exposed to ditferent systems. It so happens I had my
undergraduate education on a quarter system; I didn't know there
was any other kind of system, really, until I came nere.

243

Constance: Others had had their own education ana uneir teaching on the

semester system. It was very easy for people to divide on the
issue; each one is tne only possible way to do it. I would say
in a rather general way that people in subjects requiring a long
attention span preferred semesters. The humanities, the social
sciences, where people wrote, and where the term paper was a
common educational device; sciences, where they felt they wanted
maximum laboratory, hands-on experience: these people, by and
large I tnink — certainly there were exceptions — saw the semester
as a more effective unit.

Students — and here again, you never can generalize students
across tne board, obviously, certainly not at the level of
twenty- five to thirty thousand ot them — many of tne students
liked very short contact in anything because if they felt they
made a mistake, they wouldn't be stuck with it, and they could
fly around like bees to flowers, taking a little of this, a
little ot that, a little ot something else.

You mentioned the student objection to rigidity of
requirements and so on. A lot of their ODJ ection came from that
propensity, I think. They don't like to be held to anything
that IOOKS like a rigorous plan, whether it's tne number of
class meetings, the number of laboratories, or whatever it may
be. It's much more fun to do a little ot this and a little of
that and a little of something else, and next semester if
somebody says, "This is good," you could take that. If someoody
says, "He's easy," then you flock to him and so on. So I think
that, naturally, it would be a divisive issue.

On the one hand, you had the Regents thinking in financial
terms, feeling that year-round operation would be a partial
solution to a ditticult economic problem. The solution had been
recommended by people whose reasoning they understood, and I
tnink that it's more than a suspicion that Kerr was told to put
this into force and not to let the faculty try to squirm out ot
it.

Lage: Now you say that is more than a suspicion.

Constance: Yes. I once told Harry Wellman tnat I had a feeling that that's
what happened. He said, 'Well, you weren't far otf."
[laughter] I think that my suspicions are usually fairly good
because I don't run around having wild ones, particularly, but I
used to go to Regents' meetings, and I think I have some sense
of how the minds of some of them would indeed work.

But I think the thing that was most disruptive was that
Kerr, I think, didn't really level with the faculty and say,
"This is a Regents' decision and we don't have any other
choice." Tnat might or might not have gone over. It's like

244

Constance;

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage:

telling the students now that tnis is the way it's going to be.
whether you like it or not. It may or may not go over. But he
tended to put the responsibility on the faculty for the decision
to do it. And they had little polls: Do you prefer a quarter
system or a semester system? Do you prefer two, three, or four
sessions a year?

Tne faculty was put in the position of voting among
different alternatives, none of which was for keeping it the way
it was. And then the administration toid the faculty, basically,
"You voted for a quarter system." Well, taculty may have voted
for a quarter system, as preferred to a trimester system, but
tney were never given the other choice.

Now, when you say "we," you're allying yourself with the
taculty. Were you in the administration wnen tnis Happened?

I was in tne aamini strati on, and I thought it was very
unfortunate and very unwise. I was opposed to it heartily. And
one ot tne reasons I was opposed to it was that one of the few
studies that nad been made of this thing was made by a
consulting firm — I couldn't tell you which one now — for the New
York State system. One of their conclusions was that it would
be very unwise to go into this unless they were assured of
maximum enrollment year-round. My point was, "I don't think
you're going to get maximum enrollment year-round; I don't think
you ought to go into it." I wasn't listened to very seriously,
and perhaps that's aoout where my influence on tnis, it any,
ended. I was opposed to it; I thought it was a mistake.

Wnen you talk about giving your opinion and advice, where would
you have the opportunity to give your opinion?

Constance: Well, I know I told Kerr personally, but I couldn't tell you
exactly what the opportunity was.

Were there formal meetings ot discussion — ?

Constance: Oh, yes, there were a lot of discussions about this. I don't

remember when this first came up. I suppose it probably came up
in Kerr's two councils, because I think that's probably the only
place I would have had the opportunity to talk to him about it.
At any rate, this was an issue that hung around for some years.

Lage: I see. It wasn't new.

Constance: It wasn't new. But, as I say, I think it did become divisive
because the faculty were put in the position of saying, "You
asked for it," when most of them didn't, and a lot of them
abhorred it.

245

Constance: I had one colleague, who was one of the most conscientious and
able teacners we ever had in tne department, and he was yelling
about this. I finally said, "You Know, tnis really isn't a
moral issue." Tue interesting thing is, to him it was. "It _is
a moral issue. I -nave built my course, and after years I hav~
it where it ought to be. It's generally recognized as the best
course of its kind in the country, and the administration is
destroying it — destroying my teaching function — tor some damn
oureaucratic wnatever!" That was one of the most extreme views,
I think, but it was a faculty view, and there's something to be
said for it, without any doubt.

On the other hand, the mathematicians felt they did better
with their students if they didn't have them for too long at a
time. They would rather see them here for a few hours and go do
something else. So it was a sore point.

Sibling Rivalry between Berkeley and Other UC Campuses

Lage:

You have an allusion here [on interview outline] to the loss of
the Berkeley Academic Senate's veto power over the statewide
Academic Senate. I suppose that probably is true. It's a
little hard for me to put myself in that position because when I
was involved with the Berkeley Academic Senate, it never seemed
to me that we were really legislating for other campuses and
telling them what to do. Tnere's no question that Berkeley, as
tne oldest, the most elite — the one that thought, at least, it
was the most elite — was strongly resented by some people on
other campuses. Most of them would have given their shirts to
be here, and I think most of them would have agreed, if you
would have asked them. But there's no question that we had the
experience, we had the prestige, and we did pretty much call the
shots. No doubt about it.

Apparently, there was some reorganization by Kerr. It's referred
to in several books. I didn't get the exact details of wnat it
was.

Constance: Tne reorganization that I think of in the senate — one I think I
mentioned earlier — was the one that went into erfect the third
year I was on the budget committee.

Lage: That would've been before Kerr was President.

Constance: Tnat's right. He had some statewide organizations built up.
The Academic Senate created an Academic Council that was
statewide. Earlier, we had it divided into north and south.
Most things were proportionately represented. Since there were

246

Constance: more faculty in the north tnan there were in tne south, the
north had tne dominant number. And there's no question that
some of the Regents who were rrom southern California didn't
like this.

There was. in general, quite a different relationship, I
think, among regents north and south. A number of southern
regents took a hands-on approach to UCLA. Deans would call up
the regent wnen tney wanted to do something, and so on. I
suppose it probably happened in the north, but I don't think it
happened very often.

Lage: That's interesting about their relationship with the Board ot

Regents.

Constance: Oh, yes, it was quite different. Well, tne argument, of course,
is that UCLA had farther to go; it was starting late and needed
extra help. One of the regents would simply call up his deans
and say, "What do you want?" And he'd fight for it, which was
great for tnem.

With an institution the size or this, and with the
geographical spread, you're bound to have some animosities
develop. And Berkeley, of course, always suffered from the
handicap that the statewide ottice was nere. As one of my
colleagues — I don't know which one — once remarked, by the nature
of things the different campuses are going to be mad at the
university's overall administration at least part of the time,
and so they attributed that to Berkeley. "This is what Berkeley
is doing to us, " you know.

It's like the attitude ot political dissidents around the
country toward Washington, D.C.; the Middle West is America, and
Washington. D.C., is that nest of whatever — the same kind of
resentment.

Lage:
Cons Lance:

It is true also that when Kerr became president, he tried
very conscientiously to use Berkeley as a model, and to build up
other places on that model. He set up committees from both UCLA
and Berkeley to launch the campuses at Riverside and Santa Cruz,
particularly. Irvine too, I guess — I'm not quite so sure about
that; I think that came mostly out of UCLA. And I suppose that
also could reverberate, to some extent. I know a number of
faculty members here served on the committees for Santa Cruz; I
never served on any of these, as a matter of fact.

Tne thing I ran across was that the Berkeley faculty felt
alienated or angry with the administration —

I haven't quite gotten there yet. I'm trying to set the stage
for that. Tnat was certainly a feature.

247

Constance: Then Kerr also felt that each of the campuses would be

strengthened it it had something that was unique and special to
it. By this time, at Berkeley practically anything you could
think of, we had one. And if you build up, let's say, at Ut^LA a
center on tne politics and the history of the Near East — which
was an actual example — that meant that you had one here which
nad been established in good faith, which might or might not
have built up a reputation, which had staff and program, and all
of a sudden, here came a competitor starting trom maybe nothing.

One or the problems was the Armenians — this is pre-Governor
Deukmejian. I don't think he was involved in this; he might
have been. But you know that there's a big Armenian colony in
the Fresno area, many of whom have become quite prosperous.
Tney tend to be very nationalistic, and they wanted Armenian
taught on every campus. UCLA essentially cornered the Armenian
market, but we had orfered courses in Armenian before they had
even started. Somewhere in my multifarious career, I had to go
to UCLA and talk to the people down there — the Letters and
Science people and a particular Near Eastern scholar they had,
who was quite an aole cnap. Tney sprung the "chosen instrument"
argument on me — that UCLA was the university's chosen instrument
in this area, and Berkeley had no business being involved in it
at all.

Lage: Did they want Berkeley to do away with its Armenian courses'/

Constance: Whether tney pushed it that far or not, I don't know. But they
certainly didn't want to see any development; whether it was a
reduction or simply not an expansion, I couldn't tell you. But
they had their Armenians, and we had our Armenians. [laughter]
Eventually, we stayed at a very rudimentary level. Whether we
still teach it or not, I don't know — we may.

At ail events, you nad that kind of thing, and a number of
different competitions developed. Also, quite a number of
Berkeley raculty were recruited to go to these new institutions.
For instance, Bob Nisbet, going to Riverside as dean of L & S,
came trom Berkeley. The first chancellor of Riverside came rrom
UCLA. To some degree, the new campuses were staffed from
Berkeley and UCLA. I think it's really family psychology —
Berkeley being the oldest child with a monopoly on everything,
seeing all of its toys being dealt out to siblings, was a little
upset by it. So in that sense, there was some growing dissatis
faction with the central administration simply because it was
feit. "Berkeley is what made this place; who are these people
who nave just come along? Berkeley's goodies are being parceled
out among them." So there was some of this feeling; no doubt
about it.

248

Constance: There was also the feeling, as you've indicated, tnrough the
presence ot an Academic Council and various other statewide
groups within the University, that Berkeley was reduced to just
one among several atter having been clearly dominant for a long
time. Sproul never really took any other campus seriously.
UCLA was there, but that was aoout it.

Lage: UCLA was quite resentful of that, I'm sure.

Constance: On, I'm sure they were. It isn't difficult to see some of the
reasons for this; there are a lot of them.

And also, each of these campuses did its best to follow the
Berkeley model, to get the best scholars it could, but ran into
scholars who wanted libraries. Well, how many libraries are you
going to have? How many real research libraries? I was never
directly involved in this, but I think it probably was at least
as hot an issue as year-round operation. Eventually, it was
pretty much decided that there would be a major library north
and a major library south, and there would be improved means of
people from other campuses getting to and using this material.

Then, of course, you ran into the phenomenon of some
protessor, who had had the entire series of I-don't-know-what in
nis orrice for the last twenty-live years and somebody got a
call to send volumes twenty to thirty to a colleague on another
campus who wanted to use it. You can imagine it this happened
at Harvard and the authorities wanted to send it to Worster
Polytechnic or something, all nell would break loose.

So there were a lot ot little frictions that grew up,
along with tne diver siti cation of the University. I never felt
that any ot them by themselves were all that strong; but on the
other hand, I have a fine reputation of not anticipating how
serious things can get. So that was one of the divisive issues.
As I said, some of these things go back to tne oath. And then
there's always a certain amount ot friction between the
different elements in the university, be it faculty, students,
administration. Faculty, by definition I think, do not tend to
be great compromisers. Administrators tend to be, and the
faculty doesn't respect them if they are, and it hates them it
tney aren't. [laughter] In other words, as an administrator
you can't possibly win.

Lage: Now as an administrator, you saw yourself as a faculty member.

Constance: That's right.

Lage:

249

And when you came in, your statement was that one of your goals
was faculty self-government, or that was one of your guiding
lights.

Constance: That's right. I've never changed.

Lage: Did other people see you differently, though? I mean, did you

get a different kind of feedback from your colleagues once you
went into the central administration?

Constance: I don't think that's anything I can answer, really. I don't

think so. I think that the people who knew me, at any rate — but
that's different.

Lage: But many, many people knew you.

Constance: Yes, and many didn't, of course, as the younger people came

along. If they knew me at all, I don't know what they thought,
really. I think that I was always very apparently a faculty
member first. I'm sure that there must have been a contrary
view, because there's no question that some people did not like
the rigor with which I enforced college requirements. I said to
you earlier, I thought I was generally respected, but I'm not
sure I was much loved.

I think I always made it perfectly clear that I considered
myself primarily a faculty member. I continued to teach. I
always taught an undergraduate course during the ten years I was
in administration. On the other hand, of course, I got much
more of an inside view of the administration than most faculty
did. I probably had a more tolerant view of the administration's
problems than many faculty members; so I suppose I was hybrid.
But there's no question that I've always thought of myself as a
faculty member, and still do.

Faculty-Administration Conflict over Rehiring Eli Katz

Lage: The Eli Katz case seemed to create some unhappiness with

Chancellor Strong, I guess.

Constance: That's correct. As I recall it, Katz was appointed to the

German department. My recollection is that he was at UCLA, as a
non-tenured lecturer. During the McCarthy period, he had been
called before one of the investigating committees and had taken
the Fifth Amendment or whatever. The German department, in its
wisdom, decided that this was none of the administration's

250

Constance: business. So they didn't mention it in the recommendation for
appointment. It was not a strong recommendation. Katz stayed
here; he never made tenure, and eventually left, I believe.

Lage: Was the controversy over a recommendation to hire him, or to

promote him?

Constance: To appoint him here. You see, he had a non-tenured position at
UCLA. The German department felt they needed someone who had
his special expertise — Yiddish, and they thought he was the best
candidate.

Lage: So he was hired.

Constance: So he was appointed. And I approved the appointment somewhere
along the line as vice-chancellor. I remember I wasn't very
enthusiastic about it; I thought it was a weak case, but it
seemed to be a very specific need in a field in which there were
not many alternatives.

Lage: Now, was the issue of his testimony to the congressional

committee brought up at that time?

Constance: That wasn't even known here. The department did not alert the
administration to it, which I thought was a gross omission on
the part of the department. The University is always under
pressure on these political things; while certainly an
individual's political stance should not be a major part of his
appointment, when it's as controversial as this, it's only fair
to give the administration a break.

I mention this because there was one appointment made at
about the same time of a man who was the son of a Communist
Party official, and as a younger man had himself been a
Communist organizer. He was also a very fine scientist. The
department recommended his appointment and gave the administra
tion the entire history of the thing. The President took it to
the Regents, gave them the whole history, and they approved it.

Lage: He had no longer had this activity, I gather.

Constance: He still had the same sympathies, by and large; but he was not
involved politically. We appointed him as a scientist, and he
remained a scientist, although he never made any bones about his
leftist preferences. To me, that's the way it should have been
handled.

Well, this wasn't. This was given to the administration
blind. We didn't catch it; somebody picked it up in the
newspaper, and there was a spread about it. Chancellor Strong

251

Constance: was very much concerned. I would say it was basically a fatherly
concern because he felt that the young man might really suffer
for it. He asked him to come in and he talked to him.

I don't think. I can really tell you exactly what
transpired, but I'm sure that Strong assured him that he would
have all the protection to which he was entitled and so on.
Strong, at least, was left with the impression that the thing
was essentially settled — that the individual had accepted
Strong's advice, whatever it was. But a day or so later, he
went to the newspapers saying that the Chancellor had attempted
to coerce him or something of the sort. I don't remember the
exact timing; my recollection is that it was just about the
middle of the sixty-four thing.

The thing I remember about it is that when I was vice-
chancellor the thing got blown up; some of the faculty picked it
up, and it became a really festering ulcer. There wasn't
anything you could do with it. Somewhere along the line, I know
the Chancellor's administrative assistant took the whole file
and put it on my desk, and said, "You handle it." It became a
regular time bomb.

Lage : Do you recall what you had to do with it? I'm unclear about

whether he was being considered for promotion or was it being
considered that he be dismissed?

Constance: I'm not quite sure now, either.* The case was taken up by the
Committee on Privilege and Tenure, and it became a faculty
issue. The thing I remember about it particularly is that the
committee was asked to report to the Academic Senate. By this
time the Academic Senate had become quite strongly anti-local
administration. I was in the position of being expected to
report on the matter for the Chancellor if the issue came up.

Lage: It might have been during that fall [of 1964J .

Constance: I think it was; I'm sure it was, because — whether it was this
issue or not, I don't remember, but — at one point I had to
report to the Academic Senate for the Chancellor, and I was

*According to Verne Stadtman in The University of California.
1868-1968 (1970), Strong had notified Katz, who refused to
answer questions concerning his alleged Communist affiliations,
that he would not be rehired as acting assistant professor. In
November, 1964, the Academic Senate voted 267-79 to condemn
Strong's action. Katz was eventually rehired as acting
assistant professor pending a hearing by the Committee on
Academic Privilege and Tenure. — Ed.

252

Constance :

Lage:

booed, which I must say was a bit of a shock. But or. the other
hand, I was pleased because one of the most strongly anti-
administrative faculty members got up and made a speech on my
behalf, which was nice.

But at all events, I was put in the position of being
called on at any time to make a report on this thing. Again,
I'm not sure what question it was I was supposed to answer, but
it was a question that really had to be answered by the
state-wide administration as well as the campus. I was warned
that this issue was coming up. This was during the student
thing because we were having these tremendous faculty senate
meetings all over the place. This one was particularly jam-
packed.

I had decided what I was going to say if the issue came up.
I wrote the President. I think the Chancellor was out of
circulation at the time, probably in the hospital, and I was
trying to keep things running. I wrote the President and told
him that, unless I heard to the contrary, if I were called upon,
this is what I planned to say. I gave him several days' warning
on it. And while I was sitting there, waiting to see if I would
be called on, I noticed the Chancellor's administrative
assistant was crawling up the aisle on her knees. She handed me
a paper — a note from the President — which essentially said, "I
forbid you to make the statement," or something like that.
That's the thing I remember about it particularly. Fortunately,
I was not called on.

As a matter of fact, I got a call from the president of
Simon Eraser University in Vancouver — the call was referred to
me by the Chancellor's Office, I guess — saying that his faculty
was interested in one of our faculty members and he'd like our
permission to approach him. When I asked him who it was and he
said it was Eli Katz, [laughter] I think I nearly had hysterics.

You gave him permission?

Constance: I told him the situation. I told him he could draw his own
conclusions.

Lage: Can you recall whether you were going to recommend that he be

dismissed or —

Constance: I was not. My view on it was that I didn't think it was a

strong appointment — I said this many times. I didn't think it
was a strong appointment, but I didn't think it was worth
jeopardizing the welfare of the university.

253

Constance: An interesting thing, to look ahead a little bit, was that when
[Roger] Heyns came (I was introduced to him by Kerr), I asked
Kerr for authority to settle it so Heyns wouldn't have to start
off his appointment that way. When Heyns left a few years
later, my wife and I talked to him in a reception line, and this
was the thing he had remembered about me. [laughter] Kerr
wouldn't let me do it, and I could understand why because it
pretty clearly had gotten to the Regents and become an issue on
which the President was over the barrel. He assumed — he didn't
tell me this, but I think I know how he felt — that Heyns, coming
in as new Chancellor, could indeed handle the matter, whereas if
_I did it, who was I? Kerr basically would get blamed for it.

I can't remember exactly what the issue was. The situation
was that he had indeed testified, and it was a time when the
Regents were still looking for Communists.

Lage: I think we should hold off on it, but I seem to remember that he

wouldn't be forthright with Chancellor Strong — he wouldn't
answer his questions, either.

Constance: Apparently not, that's right. I suppose it probably was

approving his appointment; I guess that must have been it. And
Kerr just wouldn't allow that to happen. As I said, I didn't
think that he was worth it. But it became a very strong issue —
administrative arbitrariness and so on.

I don't think that Katz, himself, ever really was involved
in any of the business. It was all about him. It was the
people on the Committee on Academic Freedom or the committee on
welfare, and so on. Some of the real activists seized on this
in connection with the student unrest.

Chancellor Strong: Liberal, Contemplative, Principled

Lage: What had been Strong's position on the loyalty oath?

Constance: He was against it. It's rather interesting. Strong is and was

a philosopher, — an almost storybook philosopher — a contemplative,
soft-spoken, pipe-smoking, very agreeable, big man. Nothing
small about him. He was quite liberal, and if there were
anything in his political dossier, it probably was negative in
the sense that he doubtless had written letters for or backed
people who were under attack for being too liberal, whatever the
case may be. The fact that he was cast as an arbitrary, hard
line conservative was one of the great injustices and anomalies
ot history because he was anything but that. But he got caught
in a vise.

254

Constance: To some extent, I suppose, Kerr was right that a man of Strong's
age might perhaps find it more difficult to adapt to a new,
explosive, hitherto unknown situation than someone younger.
Then again, he might not have; I don't know that you can really
be sure. But that's really about all one can say. He was and
is a wonderful, fatherly, decent, honest, liberal person.

Lage: Do you happen to know if he had a particular concern with

students? Did he enjoy teaching?

Constance: He did enjoy teaching. He did enjoy students. I think he

probably felt fairly close to students, but he was basically a
scholar who was a true humanist, a senior faculty member. He
was chairman of the Committee on Educational Policy for some
years. He obviously was trusted and respected by a great many
members of the faculty.

Lage: What about administrative experience? One thing I read in the

California Monthly was that he had, during the war, become the
manager of the Lawrence Lab.

Constance: I had forgotten about that. He did function in the Lawrence
Laboratory. I really don't know the details of this at all.
During the war, most faculty members went and did something else
as opportunity presented itself. As you know, I went to
Washington and worked for the OSS, so I wasn't even here. I
don't know. He did become associated with the Lawrences in some
role, but I doubt if that affected his general slant on the
world.

Lage: No, I was thinking more of it as an administrative experience.

Constance: Well, I'm sure it was that, but I don't know the details. I
don't think, as I said, that it really affected his general
attitude towards things.

Lage: I found an interview with CLark Kerr — just a very short one that

our office did — in which he discusses FSM. Actually it was
conducted on an airplane. Just by chance, one of our
interviewers caught him on the airplane, and she had a tape
recorder. This was in '69.

Constance: That's a good time to interview him.

Lage: She had a tape recorder and persuaded him to spend that hour,

and it's quite interesting. His recollections were very fresh,
of course.

He describes Strong as being rigid, I believe, "a rigid

person.

255

Ckjnstar.ee: Well. I don't think that he was. originally— well, it's hard to
say. He became rigid in the circumstances, there's no doubt
about that. I can't really get into that without going into the
events themselves.

Lage: I just wondered if beforehand you had seen him in this way.

Constance: No, I didn't have that perception of him.

Lage: Was he someone who had very strong principles that he wouldn't

deviate from?

Constance: He had strong principles, but I think he was a very, very

reasonable person. I sat in on the first meeting he had with
Savio, and I had to control myself because I wanted to reach
across the table and smack Savio right in the face because he
was insolent and brash, and frankly I thought he was off his
rocker. He was just spouting. And Strong reacted to that; I
did too. I'd have loved to punch him in the nose, and I think
it might have been an historical favor if I had. Probably I'm
not a great puncher, but — no, he was completely objectionable.

Again, it's like the stuff you read now. The administration
hasn't done what we want, so now do it, or else.

Lage: We ought to put on the tape here that we're in the midst of an

ant i- apartheid demonstration while we're interviewing here on
April 30, 1986.

Constance: That's right. But at any rate, Strong did react to that, and he
took the view that you should not negotiate with the students
until they conformed to the existing, prescribed rules of
behavior — just as simple as that. And every time the
administration and the students have a confrontation, you get
some of the same things because the administration really
doesn't have any other position it can take, as far as I can
see.

Lage: Let me just back up before we get into the FSM. I wanted to ask

you about one other thing that sort of fits along with what
we've been talking about. I've heard that the faculty was
already unhappy with Strong before FSM had started, that some
had asked that he be replaced.

Constance: That I don't know. I don't think I have anything really to
contribute to that, excepting that some faculty members are
going to be unhappy no matter what. He didn't make any

Lage: Well, my notes say that he wasn't giving the leadership he

should have been, and the Regents and Kerr were considering
replacement. My notes don't say "the faculty," I see.

256

Constance: That could be, and there's no question that that was one of the
reasons that Kerr was worried about Strong as a chief campus
officer. I mean his attitude, as I think I indicated, was,
"Well, you wanted him, you get him, but I have my reservations."
So I don't know really what was getting to the Regents.
Somebody's always going to the Regents, as you may guess,
although it's strictly verboten. And I don't know what
particular occasions there may have been, but I wouldn't say
that Kerr was wrong. I think it could be that he was correct in
what he says, but I think it's also fair to sav that he would be
sympathetic to a complaint of this sort, because of his own
initial reservations. So there you have it.

257

XVII RECALLING THE TUMULT OF 1964-1965

Split in the Chancellor's Office:

Strong, Sherriffs. and Malloy Handle the Students

Lage : Well, we've talked about Strong now; how about talking about

some of the other vice-chancellors and how they worked as a
team?

Constance: Originally when I went in. the other vice-chancellors were
[0. W.] "Hump" Campbell, who was the business manager. Alex
Sherriffs, who was — I don't remember what the title was —

Lage: Vice-chancellor for student affairs.

Constance: Yes, it was vice-chancellor. Kitty Malloy was the administrative
assistant. She had been in Kerr's office,. I guess, as a second
member of the staff. Alan Searcy was a faculty assistant.

Kerr had started the practice of bringing in faculty
members for a term. I think quite successfully, into the
Chancellor's Office and using them in all sorts of specific
roles.

Lage: That's the way Sherriffs was originally brought in. apparently

by Kerr.

Constance: That's right. Originally, Kerr was very sympathetic with the
undergraduates. You see, Sherriffs is a psychologist; he also
was a member of the Berkeley school board at one time. He was
very much interested in students — really quite devoted to them.
And what he was concerned about, ironically, was that students
were not sufficiently concerned about the outside world and all
the things that were going on in it. He was an advocate of,
shall we say, student activism. But again I would say within
fairly well- prescribed boundaries.

258

Constance:

Lage:

Among other groups that we had on the campus, there was a sort
of student council, which was really a kind of cabinet including
deans of students and a number of student representatives, at
which Sherriffs presided. It may have been called the student
affairs committee* We basically tried to take up, consider, and
if possible, solve problems that came to the students so that
the Chancellor would be provided with student opinion — I'm sure
this was started under Kerr. I probably didn't get into it
until I became vice-chancellor, although it's possible I did
before that.

But at all events, Sherriffs had a student clientele and a
particular role with students in which he was very active.
Certainly, some of the different campus concerns came up in that
way. Katherir.e Towle, who died quite recently, by the way, was
the dean of students, and I think most people would say a very
able one. But to some extent, I suppose Sherriffs was a little
like the president's foreign affairs advisor, who tends to
overshadow the secretary of state, shall we say.

Well, what happened when the student thing broke, and I
think I really have to put this in at this time, the Chancellor's
Office really split down the middle, in a sense. The Chancellor
and Sherriffs and Kitty Malloy were the nuclear unit who were
spending essentially full-time on the student business. I was
trying to carry on the general business, at least with the
faculty. John Jordan from English was a faculty assistant at
that time. I think he was the faculty assistant who was really
assigned to me. Alan Searcy from Engineering was also a faculty
assistant and became a vice-chancellor. At all events, I was
basically excluded from the student thing.

By choice or by design or — ? When you say "excluded," it sounds
like you were left out against your will.

Constance: Sherriffs was handling it.

Lage: This was after it broke? I mean the initial decision apparently

was Sherriffs's to take back the controversial sidewalk strip.

Constance: The initial decision was one of those completely inconsequential
things which arose at a staff meeting. You've heard the story
of this many times, I'm sure. The story is that there was a
growing use of the sidewalk at Bancroft and Telegraph, and the
City basically assumed it was the University's and the University
assumed it was the City's. During the Republican convention in
San Francisco, the representatives of one of the candidates used
this strip for, I think, recruiting people to participate in the
convention one way or another, whatever the case may be. I
think the Oakland Tribune looked into the matter and discovered
that part of this strip really was under the jurisdiction of the

259

Constance: University and not the City. At that time, the campuses were
under the Regents' directive that there should be no political
activity on campus, that is, extramural political activity on
campus. Such speakers as Adlai Stevenson had to speak
off campus.

Lage: By then they had been allowed to speak on campus, I believe.

Constance: It had been changed, okay. But I think about the one thing left
was that they couldn't solicit funds on campus.

Lage: Right. And organize off-campus activities.

Constance: Yes, and particularly violent ones. At any rate, they were
doing it. That was before they moved on campus, as far as I
know. It just involved the area out there. I can't remember
now whether Katherine Towle or Alex Sherriffs or somebody else
said that this is something we probably had better do something
about because we're going to be under attack in the press if we
don't. So it was decided to simply recognize that this should
be a non-political area. Now just what the timing was between
the event and the movement of political action clear into the
campus — this happened very shortly and precipitated the original
trouble — I don't remember; but it was within a week or two.

Lage: But that decision, as you recall it, wasn't made with any sense

that it was going to be a heated battle?

Constance: None whatever. It just looked like a little bit of tidy

housekeeping that we had somehow neglected, and we had better
attend to. I don't know that I commented on it; I certainly
didn't have any particular feeling about it.

Lage: Let's get back, then, to your point that you were excluded. Did

you want to take a role in it?

Constance: Not particularly. I never fancied myself as a particular nurse
maid for students. [laughter] I respected their role, and I
expected them to respect mine as faculty. I never felt as a
faculty member that it was my job to turn over the teaching of
the course to the students, or mine to get down and do their
role by going through that. I had not been directly involved in
any of the student things, excepting on this particular council
of Alex's; I served on that as a courtesy to him, and if I could
contribute something, okay. I suppose I did things from time to
time when it seemed important, but it wasn't my kettle of fish.
I felt my role was with regard, primarily, to the faculty.
Somebody had to carry on these things, so basically I did.

260

Constance: Then from time to time, as things blew up, I got dragged into
it. But I found, as I expected, that I couldn't talk
effectively to these students. They didn't listen, and I didn't
particularly like to be shouted at and spit on.

Lage: So day-to-day decision-making —

Constance: I tried to carry on the general work of the office, and I tried
to stay out of this sort of thing because I didn't think I was
any good at it. From time to time it was suggested that it
would be just great if I'd go and speak to a group of the
students milling around. I knew perfectly well I wouldn't have
been in the least bit effective, and it probably would be fair
to say I was afraid to. I would probably make it worse! My
reaction was not a friendly reaction; I felt they were
misbehaving badly and doing damage to an institution I loved,
and I had no sympathy with them. I don't yet.

Mario Savio and a New Student Clientele

Lage: You mentioned that you did have one meeting with Savio —

Constance: Only in connection with Strong and Sherriffs. I don't remember
how many of us were there, but —

Lage: Was this an early meeting?

Constance: Yes. This was, I suppose — well, again I have trouble

remembering exactly how it developed.* As you know, there was a
table on campus where they were soliciting money, and the police
moved in and removed it and the individual who was collecting
money. They got him as far as a police car. and there was bad
timing on the thing.

Lage: September 30, 1964.

Constance: It was surrounded by students and others. A sit-in started. I
can't remember now quite the length of that, at what point they
moved into Sproul Hall and sat in there — whether it was all the
same day or during the same week or whatever.

*For a summary of the events of 1964-65 and a detailed
chronology, see California Monthly. February, 1965. See also
Stadtman, Verne, "The Berkeley Rebellion", in The University of
California. 1868-1968 (McGraw-Hill, 1970).

261

Lage: And your office was in Sproul Hall, wasn't it?

Constance: No. I was in Dwinelle by then.

Lage: Oh, you were in Dwinelle?

Constance: The Chancellor's Office was in Dwinelle.

Lage: So you wouldn't have been involved directly in the sit-in.

Constance: I was not involved directly, no. But I was involved in the

decision, which was a staff decision, to close in on this table
because it clearly was in violation of the Regents' rules. We
had planned to have it done early, but unfortunately, for one
reason or another, they waited until the noon rush. If it had
been done early, it probably would have worked. Then they
probably would have come back later.

Lage: Yes, something else would have happened.

Constance: But getting back to this meeting with Savio, he came directly

out of that confrontation. You see, he came from nowhere. The
top of the police car, surrounded by the people, became the
forum. I don't recall whether he was the first, but he was one
of those who jumped on top of the car and harangued the
audience, you know. "Throw our bodies against the — " whatever,
"machinery of this foul system," and so on and so on, which was
a lot of — whatever.

Lage: So he wasn't a student leader?

Constance: He was not. He never completed any work in the University, as a
matter of fact; unless he did 'later, I don't know.

Lage: He didn't get a degree?

Constance: He finally got a degree from San Francisco State in physics. He
was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. I thought of resigning, but I
didn't. But he was suspended here before he completed a semester.

Lage: You didn't form a favorable impression of him at that meeting?

Constance: No, I never have. He was, I would say, insolent. It is true
that Strong reacted, if you like, rigidly. But my feeling was
not very different, I think.

Lage: When you say "reacted rigidly," you just mean he refused to

bend, or he actually got into a personal exchange?

262

Constance: I don't remember how much of a personal exchange there was, but
Strong was perfectly adamant that as soon as you respond to the
rules, we'll talk. Until you do, as long as you're acting
illegally, we can't discuss it. I don't know what other
position he could have taken, whether the incident was designed
to produce that effect or not, I don't know. It's very hard to
know what was random and what was intentional.

I can't believe that Savio had any sinister scheme in mind,
or whatever the case may be; I think he was an accident,
actually. He had been down South in some of the voter
registration things. He and a few others brought that kind of a
tempo, kind of milieu and injected it into the campus in a
situation which seemed to me not to call for it.

It's a little bit like the things you read about in South
Africa now, and you see on television; you could understand why
they're screaming and yelling there, but it doesn't quite tell
you why they're screaming and yelling up here.

Lage : Did you deal with the faculty over the FSM issue, then? You

were dealing with the other aspects of the University and
relating to the faculty. Did you have a major role in
interpreting the Chancellor's position on the student
demonstrations to the faculty?

Constance: Not really. I had to represent the Chancellor at things when he
couldn't do it himself. He and Sherriffs were having lots of
meetings with groups. The campus leadership simply broke down,
is what it amounts to, and there was a real hiatus. Strong was
not well and got pretty much upset by this sort of thing. At
one point he was in the hospital for a week, and I tried to keep
things running. Occasionally I was asked to meet with some
group that he couldn't meet with. But the only thing I really
did was to try to keep things under some kind of control and
running.

Lage: Keep the routine business going — the promotions and appointments?

Constance: That's right. I can't tell you now all the things that went

through the office, but I was handling the things that needed to
be handled. I tried to stay out of the student thing, again, as
I said, I didn't think I would be at all effective.

I know Searcy very bravely went out and, at least at one
time or another, met with groups of students. But I kept my
head down and tried to keep the place running, is what it really
amounted to. If I had felt that I could do anything, I probably

263

Constance: would have done it. This was, I suppose, as much of a shock to
me in some ways as it was to Strong, though there had been a
radical push in the students at about this time.

There was a group [SLATE] that — I can't now remember who
they were, really. They sounded a little like the present
Berkeley city council — the BCA [Berkeley Citizens Action]. They
certainly had objectives which were rather different from those
that had been usual in student government. But I don't think
that any of us took them terribly seriously. How really
politicized they were, I don't know. As you know, there are all
sorts of background works on why the students behaved as they
behaved, and so on, but I don't think we probably want to get
into that at the moment. Besides, I'm not sure I can shed much
1 igh t on it.

Lage : Well, people have commented pretty fully on it.

Constance: I know they have. I've said this before, and it's probably on
the tape somewhere. I've always said two things about it: one
is that all the things that have been said about it are probably
true, but inadequate; the other one is that, improbable as it
may seem on the face of it, if I had made all the decisions
myself, it would have probably been a worse mess than it was.
So I don't feel very qualified to comment on it.

I do think that a widening of the student clientele, which
took place at about this period, brought a lot of students to
the University who had no previous cultural background to speak
of and who expected miracles. What they found was a lot of hard
work and a lot of competition in which they were not, by and
large, terribly successful. They then decided that the
University was not what it ought to be because it was not
fulfilling what their needs were. The University was irrelevant.

My version of it has always been that the University is not
irrelevant, but a lot of the people who were here were here for
the wrong reasons and were clearly irrelevant. So, there you

Representing the Chancellor's Office to the Faculty

Lage:

Do you know of the book by a graduate student who did his
sociological dissertation on FSM — Max Heirich?

Constance: No, I don't know about it.

264

Lage: It's quite a lengthy thing. He did his dissertation and then it

came out as a book.* In all these accounts of FSM. this is the
only time you've been mentioned in the different books that I've
read, and you were misidentif ied as dean of the Graduate
Division. [laughter]

Constance: That's about as accurate as they usually were.

Lage: And he does have a lengthy memo that you wrote up, which I

thought I'd give you a copy of. This was, I think, October 2,
yes, where you met with a group of faculty

Constance: Oh, yes.

Lage: — at Chancellor Strong's request. [reading] Kornhauser.

Peterson, Smelser, Matza, Glazer, Seabury, Scalapino, and Haas,
Radner and Rosovsky, Schorske and Tussman. And it was after the
incident with the police car.

Constance: Yes, that's right.

Lage: Does that bring back any memories of some of the faculty

relationships?

Constance: I remember that. That group wanted to see Strong and were

unable to. I don't remember what was happening. But this was a
group of, basically, social scientists, and Rosovsky, you
probably realize, has just retired as the dean of Arts and
Sciences at Harvard after a long service there.

I should say that the Chancellor's Office was in very close
contact with the city police, and there were all sorts of rumors
circulating of imminent uprisings. The group of the Chancellor,
Sherriffs, and Malloy became highly emotional and felt
threatened. I'm sure there were telephone calls and other
things that suggested that there was going to be mob action on
campus. One of the stories was that they were going to recruit
people from west Berkeley, primarily blacks, bring them to the
campus, and produce a bloody confrontation with the police and
so on. There were a lot of rumors circulating.

Lage: These were rumors that maybe came from the police?

Constance: I don't know where they came from, but part of them did, yes.
Lage: Did you feel at the time that they were being misinformed?

*Heirich, Max, The Beginning; Berkeley 1964 (Columbia
University Press, 1970).

265

Constance: I felt they were probably a little hyperbolic, shall we say, a
little exaggerated, probably. But a lot of the behavior at the
time was strictly mob behavior, and once you get a mob started,
it's a fairly fearsome thing. Some of these rumors were not
beyond possibility.

How many political groups were getting into this, I don't
know. The Chancellor's Office was pretty much convinced that
there was a strong Communist-radical block in this. And there's
no question that certainly representatives of that group were
around. For instance, when Sproul Hall was cleared, one of the
local prominent communists was discovered to be one of the
occupants. So I'm sure that they dipped into it; but of course,
this question has been kicked around nationally as to how much
was planned, how much was random, how much intercommunication
there was between different campuses and different factions and
so on. I'm sure I don't know. I have a feeling that these
things tend to be spontaneous, but that usually you have a small
hard core around somewhere.

You mentioned the Spartacus League? I mean, they're here;
they're probably on every campus.

Lage : But I wouldn't guess that they were engineering the

demonstrations.

Constance: No, I wouldn't either; but they're there to help pick it up if
something happens.

Lage: Yes, and taking the more radical view, but I don't think they're

running the show.

Constance: That's right. I don't either. One of the things that was
characteristic of these things was that the President,
particularly, would try to deal with a group of supposedly
student representatives, and he'd think he had some sort of an
agreement with them. Three days later the group would have been
completely reorganized, and there were only three left that he
had dealt with. The nine new ones were probably to the left of
the nine that had been deposed. That went on all the time; it
was a very, very fluid sort of thing.

I remember the group of faculty that came to me. They
wanted to see the Chancellor to ask to go to the President,
because they felt campus leadership had failed, that there was
imminent disaster, and that this was the way to go. They talked
to me about this, and I listened. I remember saying, "After
all, you know, I'm representing the Chancellor, and you're
asking to go over his head. It must be very apparent to all of
you that I couldn't possibly give you that permission. But
you're all big boys now, and I assume that you'll probably do

266

Constance: what you think you need to do." I didn't see what else I

could've said. I said. "I can't bless the enterprise, but if
you're going to do it, I suppose — "

I don't know -what this [the memo in the Heirich book] said
that I said, but — [reading] "They asked me if I would call the
President, and I said, 'No. It would not be appropriate for me
to do so.' Someone then asked if I thought they should call the
President. I said I did not think it proper for me to give
advice of this kind. Seabury. I think, said he felt that as
faculty members they would feel they had not really discharged
their duty unless they had made an attempt to get in touch with
the President and asked if it would be possible to call from the
Chancellor's Office. Rosovsky was finally designated to call.
I can't remember now who told me that the telephone at the end
of the conference room should be used. Rosovsky did call, and a
few minutes later, came in to ask for a copy of the proposals,
and either said or I inferred that they were read to President
Kerr over the telephone and presumably record it at the other
end. The discussion continued and some time later Rosovsky came
back into the room. As I recall, his statment was something to
the effect that he had never heard Dr. Kerr so depressed in the
time he had known him. He appreciated their efforts, but that
it was too late and that all of his work over the years was
going down the drain. The group began to talk about what they
should do, and I stated it was clear that I should not be
present. I excused myself and left."

Lage: You saw yourself as the representative of the Chancellor?

Constance: Well, I clearly was at that point. Incidentally, I do not think
that that was a wholly accurate copy of my memo.

Lage: But you didn't feel you could be involved as a faculty member in

resolving it outside of channels.

Constance: I cetainly couldn't undercut him. That would not have seemed to
me to be proper, and it doesn't yet. The faculty were spinning
their wheels.

One of the tragic things that happened was that Strong felt
that any time any faculty member became involved, he had turned
against him. I kept telling Ed that, "Look, a lot of faculty
members are getting involved in this. A lot of them are
probably doing more bad than good, but I don't think there's any
reason for thinking they're not being involved for what they
feel are the very best reasons. They're trying to dampen the
thing." I think that's true. I don't believe that any faculty
member, to my knowledge, was really trying to stir this up. The

267

Constance: thing is. it was out of hand, and most faculty members had some
group of students they felt very close to — particularly in the
social sciences — and they believed they could, with their
special knowledge, special relationship, put a quietus on it,
and get the thing somehow in some kind of normal channels.

What happened was that, okay, so they worked out something
with this particular group of students, and then whaml the whole
thing had moved down the street. They were just left talking to
themselves. A lot of social science faculty, particularly,
really lost face over this, and quite a number of them left, I
think, primarily for that reason because they had felt, indeed,
that they could command the situation. But it was a very fluid
situation — one that kept changing all the time. I don't know
where he [Mr. Heirich] got hold of that memo, but I don't have
it.

Lage: He apparently had access to all of the files. He did a good job

actually —

Constance: Good. I never saw this account.

Lage: He did a lot of interviewing, and he did a lot of —

Constance: One of Neil Smelser's students, I suspect.

Lage: I think he might have been. Right at the beginning, he said

he'd like to do this as his dissertation. He got permission,
and then he went about it.

The time is such that I think we should finish up today,
but we have more to go into.

Constance: There were so many, well, possible solutions and so much going
and coming that I suppose I tended to shut it out of my mind,
because I didn't want to think about it.

Lage: At that time, or since?

Constance: Well, since, primarily.

[Tape turned off temporarily]

Constance: I don't know whether I felt I was frozen out or whether I really
didn't want to get in, because I didn't think I could contribute
anything. I'm sure that Sher riffs felt we should all be out
talking to the students and talking them out of their activities.
I didn't feel that I would be the least bit successful in doing
it, and I thought that I would be wise to stick to my role of
trying to keep the essentially routine matters of the

268

Constance: Chancellor's Office functioning, because for all intents and

purposes nobody else was doing it. Sherriffs and the Chancellor
and Mrs. Malloy were trying to handle the student affairs. I
wasn't privy to most of the reports they were getting. The only
times I really got into it was when things were referred to me
or when there was nobody else to handle them.

The View from University Hall

Lage : We're continuing with the discussion of the FSM movement, and

your particular role in it. Last time we sort of got a general
evaluation of your reaction to it, and the part that you played
in the campus administration. Did the session bring back some
memories, or some new thoughts you might have had since last
time?

Constance: Well, there are a couple thoughts I had about it that might be

worth getting into the picture. You asked about the relation of
President Kerr to the Berkeley campus. It's a rather complicated
one. I think it's fair to say. as I did, that Kerr really used
the Berkeley campus primarily, and UCLA secondarily, to try to
build up new campuses of high quality much more rapidly than you
would expect to be able to create new institutions with a
faculty of very high grade.

In doing that, I think he felt that, since he came from the
Berkeley campus, what he did would be understood and well-
received at home. I think he was shocked, upset, and. to some
extent, antagonized when he found himself subject to criticism of
the sort that you mention — that Berkeley was being dismembered
for the glory of new institutions of dubious promise, et cetera.

Lage: Were these criticisms openly being passed around?

Constance: Well, certainly one heard them. I don't know how prevalent they
were, but I'm sure that they got to Kerr.

I was thinking about — I think I may have put this in the
story before — that before he became President, when we were
having our chancellor-dean sessions, he asked to talk to me
about his personal problem, personal problem being this pressure
for him to accept the presidency. And I had, really upon being
pressed, said that I thought that he might not find the

269

Constance: presidency — an office about which I really knew nothing — as

attractive as the chancellorship, because I thought he valued
his contact with students and faculty, and I thought in the
presidency those relationships would be much more remote.

Of course, he did accept the presidency. Somewhat to my
surprise — I think this may have been a Thursday — and on a
Monday, when I was in my office in Sproul Hall, where at that
time the Regents used to meet from time to time, he came to see
me. He said he really came to apologize for not taking my
advice. [laughs] I just laughed and said, "Well of course,
dark, you had to do what you had to do. The only thing I can
say is, I think you'll be a wonderful president, and I certainly
will do everything I can to help."

And he said, "I sort of assumed that." I think in a way
that was his feeling about the Berkeley campus: he assumed that
his friends on the Berkeley campus would understand, would
sympathize, and would not fall prey to the kind of alienation
which may not have been terribly important but was there,
without much doubt.

The other thing you asked was. "After he moved off the
campus, what was his relation to the campus?" Well, when he
first became Chancellor, his big problem was to get President
Sproul to withdraw his tentacles, if you like, or his grip,
which he'd been establishing for twenty-seven years, and let
Kerr run the campus. To some extent Kerr suffered the same
withdrawal symptoms as Sproul did. There was a standard joke in
the Chancellor's Office that every time a fire engine came onto
the Berkeley campus they would get a call from the President's
Office.

Lage: [laughs] This was even after Kerr came in.

Constance: This was after Kerr had become president and was on the seventh
floor of University Hall, where he had a wonderful view,
including the campus. And, as I say, it became a kind of joke.

I think that this did have several consequences. One was
that I don't think Kerr really felt that anybody else could run
the Berkeley campus. He had done a very fine job himself, and I
don't know really what he thought about Seaborg's administration;
I never heard. I don't imagine he was terribly unhappy about
it, but he may not have been entirely enthusiastic either — I
just don't know. But that did set the stage for his being very
prone to take a critical view of anything that his successors
did. That much I'm sure of.

270

Lage: Did he maintain contact with you, for instance?

Constance: No, not really.

Lage: He didn't come to.you and skirt around Strong?

Constance: No, I wouldn't have gone along with it if he had. It just never
would have occurred to me, I guess. I believe in a hierarchical
relationship, and I think he did too, as far as that goes. It's
only when things began not to go well that he was disturbed.

I've been particularly interested in thinking about the
situation then because of the current situation, which has a
number of things in common, and some different. At the height
of the troubles in '64, the Chancellor was often tied up in
important meetings having to do with student and other things,
so quite often visitors were shunted to me, which was a kind of
a bonus for me, so to speak. I don't remember the name of one
particular visitor, but I think that he had been chancellor of
the North Carolina university system.

As I say, he was shunted to me, and he arrived on one of
the days everything was coming unstuck. The first thing he
remarked was that, 'Veil, you know, your system is quite a bit
like ours." I said, "Yes, I know it is, we copied yours." It
was the only university, I think in the country, that had a
central president and chancellors for individual campuses.
Where they had the two offices elsewhere they were reversed:
the chancellor would be the statewide officer, and the president
the local one.

Well, we talked a little about the situation, and he said,
"If your people are wise, the Regents will back the President
and give the Chancellor complete authority, and then stand
behind him." It seems to me that, so far, the difference
between the situation then and now is almost precisely that. I
don't think there's any question that Chancellor Heyman, for
better or worse, is in charge of the situation, and I notice
that President Gardner, as far as I am aware, has kept very
quiet, and there has not been any regental pressure or public
statements of which I'm aware.

Now, I'm not reading the daily newspaper regularly, so I
may miss some of it. But from what I hear on the radio and
television, and so on, it seems to me that what's happening this
time is much better in that relationship.

271

A Siege Mentality ir. the Campus Administration

Constance: I think it would be fair to say that the Chancellor's Office

fell victim to a siege atmosphere, a kind of paranoia. It's a
very difficult thing to prevent when you have crowds of people
running around screaming their heads off and occasionally
breaking windows and things of that sort. Because a mob is
really, to me, a very frightening thing.

I think there have been some demonstrations of it here,
that it can very quickly go to a violent phase, and as I
mentioned before, there were a lot of rumors. A lot of these
were coming apparently from police sources, so that we were
certainly under the impression that we were likely to be
attacked — more or less momentarily — by screaming hordes, or
whatever. Since this was, as far as I know, the first
experience of this kind in an American university, it was a very
difficult thing to contend with.

I was reasonably sure that the level of apprehension was
too high, but I couldn't prove it, and certainly I didn't have
information sources from the police. I used to tell Chancellor
Strong, when I did see him, of things that I thought were
probably not the way to go — not that I felt I had any great
inspiration. I finally said, "When you get tired of hearing me,
just tell me, and I'll shut up." He said, "No, that's what I
want to have you here for." So he was always willing to listen.

Lage : What kind of direction were you trying to take?

Constance: A more moderate direction. The thing I was particularly

concerned about — I think I mentioned earlier — was that as the
student "demonstrations" went on, more and more faculty felt
that we weren't getting anywhere, that the administration wasn't
really coping with the situation, and they felt they should take
a hand. So more and more of them dabbled in it; they were sure
they knew and could influence their students.

When this happened, the campus administration essentially
drew up a black list of those faculty members who were quoted in
the press or elsewhere; they had really become enemies. This
was part of the build-up of the paranoia. Some of the more
conservative members of the faculty came running to Strong to
encourage him to hold out: "Don't give an inch; these are a
bunch of pinko liberals, and so on. who are leading this thing."
Strong was, I think, at times convinced that faculty members
were actually out there leading the demonstrations. I think
this was seldom, if ever, the case.

272

Lage: Some faculty were implying that others were feeding into the

situation.

Constance: That's right. Well, some probably were, consciously or not,
because, after all, the faculty represents a very broad
spectrum — always has — of political interests, as I've said
before. With a name like the Free Speech Movement — I can't
imagine any faculty members being against free speechl It's
like now trying to imagine any faculty members being for
apartheid. Obviously it's a sympathetic issue; it's very easy
to involve people just because it sounds good. I mean, this is
generally what we're for.

But I think the contrast then and now is that the various
faculty groups bypassed the Chancellor and went to the
President.

Lage:

You mentioned several groups, some of which I don't
remember at all — The Committee of Two Hundred, was that the —

I think that came up in December. They seemed to be sympathetic
with FSM.

Constance: I doubt if there were two hundred faculty members who were
really sympathetic with FSM in its extreme manifestations.

Lage: Well, maybe they felt it should be handled more liberally.

Constance: That may well be, but there was a strong feeling that there was
a vacuum at the center. I was impressed that Chancellor Heyman
the other day issued, very quickly, just a one-page statement
saying essentially what had happened, what the issues were, what
he was doing, what he would have to do. I think, in recollection,
that's something that we did not do. We were so caught off base
by the thing that we really didn't know how to react; there was
a kind of panic, and the most was made of it.

At all events, the thing that really encouraged this growth
is that the President essentially blamed the Chancellor. Not
only blamed him, but cancelled the Chancellor's move to clear
the "in-sitters" from Sproul Hall at the last moment. So, of
course, the students had a great victory. Then, having done
that, the President, in the course of the normal regular
meetings of the Regents, was given the backing of the Regents
for acting as he had. And the press, interviewing some of the
Regents, discovered, yes, they were backing the President all
right, but when they asked about the Chancellor all they got was
"no comment."

273

Constance: This was a perfectly obvious indication — invitation, if you

like — to the protesting forces. The Chancellor was in such a
position that shake the apple tree a little harder and you might
get a nice apple in your lap. And of course that's what
happened. But it seemed to me that all the things my North
Carolina visitor said were necessary were exactly what were not
done. I've indicated before that I think anybody sitting in the
Chancellor's seat at that time was going to be a casualty.

Lage: You don't think it was necessarily Strong's weakness, but just —

Constance: Well, of course a situation like that plays to anybody's

weakness. I'm sure that Dr. Kerr felt, as an experienced labor
negotiator, that he probably could handle this. We'll never
know, of course. That's Monday morning quarterbacking. You
mentioned in here [the interview outline] the Greek Theatre
experience. That was the first time the President was publicly
brought into the thing. I think it's fair to say that he
received a very bad shock to find the degree of animosity and
potential violence that prevailed at the time.

That was one of the many things I was not really involved
in. I had nothing to do with the Hey man Committee [mentioned on
interview outline]. I knew about most of the committees and
things that were set up one way or another, formal or informal.
Quite often I was invited to things by the departmental
chairman, particularly. Again, as I said, there was the feeling
that there was a vacuum at the center, and they would invite me.
Now, whether they first invited the Chancellor, and he declined,
I really don't know.

They invited me, and I would sometimes go and answer
questions, if asked, but I always left if any action was to be
taken, because I thought it was not appropriate for me to be
involved in it. They were very understanding about that. I
don't know if I really contributed anything, but I was a
symbolic figure, shall we say.

Lage: You must have had contact with these life-long colleagues and

friends. Would they come to you, to try to influence the
direction that the Chancellor should take?

Constance: Oh. to some extent. But at that particular point I had no

influence. As I told you before, this whole thing was being
handled by a small, beleaguered, nuclear group.

Lage: You mentioned the administrative assistant, as if she had a

rather important role.

Constance: Yes, she did, there's no question about it.

274

Lage: That seems like an anomaly, sort of.

Constance : Well, she had a strong Irish temper. That helped.

Lage: [laughs] Mall cy,. was she?

Constance: Kitty Malloy.

Lage: What would have given her the kind of influence she must have

had?

Constance: Well, administrative assistants have a lot of influence, if
indeed they wish to take it. It was rather tragic in a way.
She and Gloria Copeland, who was Kerr's administrative
assistant, were very close friends. I think that they actually
shared a summer place over in Marin County, if I remember
correctly. There was a very severe rift, each of them adhered
to her principle.

Of course Sherriffs really had started as a protege of
Kerr's. so there was more than just a distancing, there was a
feeling of fairly violent hostility. I remember Sherriffs
saying, "It's not the Kerr that I used to know." I don't
remember what brought that on particularly, but there certainly
was the feeling that Kerr had betrayed the campus
administration.

Lage: Had Kitty Malloy worked for Kerr also?

Constance: Yes, she had been in the Chancellor's Office. Both she and

Copeland had. So they came out of the same group, but there was
simply a very strong alienation. I can't tell you exactly how
it got going, what kept it going, but Kerr didn't approve of the
way things were being done after he left, and the campus people
felt that they should be left to do it as well as they could.

In fairness, I don't think that Kerr often was as close to
the situation as he probably thought he was. Like anybody in an
administrative post, your sources of information tend to be
limited, and you tend to rely more and more on the ones you're
familiar with, and he may very well have been misinformed. But
at all events, that was the situation.

Incident at the Greek Theatre, December 7

Just a word about this — well, it probably jumps ahead just
a little bit. The Greek Theatre incident is one I remember very
strongly. You indicated that Henry May was the chair of the

275

Constance: department chairmen. I don't remember it that way. I remember
that Henry was there, but my recollection is that Bob Scalapino
of Political Science was.

Lage: I think Scalapino' was at the Greek Theatre representing that

group, but Henry May had some leading role in it.

Constance: I'm sure he may have.

Lage: He presented it at the Academic Senate. I believe.

Constance: Could well be. All I remember is that it was Scalapino who
asked me to be present at the Greek Theatre thing. It was a
fine example of being a completely empty symbol, because my
recollection is that the Chancellor was in the hospital, and I
was covertly trying to run the campus. I remember when we got
there, Kerr looked at me and said, "Are you here, Lincoln?" or
something like that, and I said, "Yup." [laughs] I was there,
as I said, as a completely empty symbol.

Lage: Was he implying that you shouldn't have been there?

Constance: I didn't take any implication, particularly. It was a faculty-
arranged thing, and I had been invited by the faculty members.
It seemed to me probably appropriate that I should attend.

Well, there was one incident connected with that that
probably ought to be on the record, that isn't. A faculty
member came to the Chancellor's Office just before the meeting
was to start, just at the time we were getting ready to go, and
said, "They've got a riot all planned, and it's going to break
out in fighting in the Greek Theatre." I don't remember what
clear details there were. Earl Bolton, one of the vice
presidents had come up to attend the thing —

Lage: He was a vice-president of the university?

Constance: That's right. This was obviously a worrisome situation, because
a large crowd, particularly a vociferous one, in the Greek
Theatre, which is quite precipitous, could be a very serious
problem. So he asked me what I thought — I think he made the
proposal, I agreed to it.

They had campus police directing traffic on Gay ley Road,
and he said he thought it would be a wise precaution if, when
they finished directing traffic, they would come up and stand
outside the curtains around behind the stage, so they'd be there
if anything happened. He asked me if I didn't think so, and I

276

Constance: said, yes, I did. It seemed to me that the chances for serious
accident were great enough that the University would be
irresponsible if it didn't do something. At all events, I
agreed to it.

As you probably know, Kerr made his talk. I think he was
really shocked to find the air of hostility, which the rest of
us had become pretty well used to by then, I couldn't tell you
now what he said, but he was obviously striving for some kind of
peaceful solution. There was quite a bit of argument. Students
from the FSM — I keep saying "students," but I mean the people
who were involved in the FSM, some of whom were students, many
of the leaders of which were not — demanded that they share the
podium, or that they make a counterstatement, or whatever.

Scalapino was very calmly and very pursuasively saying,
"No, no, no, this is the faculty's turn, and you can have your
turn somewhere else some other time." Eventually that's the way
it went. But about as Kerr finished — I was sitting, so I saw
our FSM hero get up —

Lage: [laughs] Mario Savio.

Constance: I saw Savio get up and start sort of crawling around the edge of
the chairs. I thought, "I don't know what he's going to do,"
but what he did, of course, was to grab the microphone. As I've
always said, if I'd known where you unplug the microphone I
could have been a hero! But I felt that basically I was a guest
of the faculty—it was their show; I really didn't know what to
do. So probably the best thing for me to do was not to do
anything.

Lage: You were on the podiun also?

Constance: They had several of us on the stage. I think I probably sat
between Kerr and Scalapino, or on one side of either one — I
don't remember the details now. But at all events, when Savio
all of a sudden made a jump for the microphone, the police
grabbed him. They thought some kind of violent action was going
to occur, and that of course set the whole thing off. Then it
really did look like a riot. I was intrigued by the fact that
the — the names keep escaping me — the communist official's
daughter, you know —

Lage: Bettina Aptheker.

Constance: Bettina Aptheker was clearly the one most effective in calming

the audience down, because it looked as if they would pour right
down over the stands in the Greek Theatre, and somebody would
have gotten killed, I think. At any rate, she calmed them.

277

Constance: I was interested when you were referring to Henry May, because I
think probably it's true that Henry May may have initially had
some sympathy toward the FSM movement. But I fell into step
with him down toward Sather Gate, and he said, "I would prefer
some kind of order, in fact, any kind of order." That's the
particular thing that I remember.

I think I said before that the following week the President
sent a call to have the Chancellor come down, and, in our view,
probably be taken to the woodshed. I asked that Mr. Mauchlan
and Dr. Searcy and I come too, because the Chancellor had been
off the campus for a week and certainly wasn't in any position
to talk about what had happened.

Constance: We were given some kind of assent — I'm not sure really by whom —
and we did go down. I had the very definite impression that the
President was not at all happy to see us. He didn't tell us to
go away, but he did make some very strong statements about being
betrayed by the faculty, and so on.

Lage: He felt betrayed by the faculty?

Constance: Oh, yes, he accused the faculty of betraying him, specifically
the departmental chairmen. I said, "Well, dark, I can
understand your distress at the Greek Theatre episode, and I
don't think there's any question that the departmental chairmen
tried to do something that they were not able to bring off
successfully. But I don't think you have any basis for stating
that they were not doing their very best to try to resolve the
situation peaceably. It certainly was not an attempt to
undermine you," He clearly did not like it.

Lage: I thought that the faculty voted confidence in him at several

times along the way.

Constance: They may have.

Lage: He submits that he didn't know police were present, and that was

a violation of an agreement he had made.

Constance: He may not have. I don't know what agreements he had — neither
did we, you see.

Lage: So that was just a confusion of —

Constance: I doubt if there was any such agreement. It's possible he may
have said that, but at any rate it was Earl Bolton. who was his
representative, who suggested it. And again. I supported the
suggestion, and I'd do it today, because I think that it was

278

Constance: very important that they be there. It could have beer, a very

nasty business — all you'd have to do is break a few legs and kill
a few people, and with one of these mobs screaming its head off,
as that one was, there was no telling what's going to happen.

But at any rate, that's the particular part of that
incident that I remember. Then, as to other things you have on
the interview outline, the different committees [the Ad Hoc
Committee on Student Suspension (Heyman Committee), the Study
Committee on Campus Political Activity] : I didn't have direct
contact with any of those committees, as far as I can recall.
Individual faculty members did come to me to express their
various views, mostly to deplore whatever was or was not
happening. Strong was made the fall guy, without any question.

Resignation Offer to Protect Chancellor Strong

Lage:
Constance

Lage:
Constance ;

Lage:
Constance

Did you get involved at all in his resignation, the
circumstances leading to that?

Well, not really. The one thing I turned up — this has never
been opened, [handling an envelope]

This is a piece of history in the making, an unopened letter.

Yes. [opens envelope with letter-opener] I wrote him a letter of
resignation, and I said somebody's going to take the rap for
this, and I think this is what you have vice-chancellors for. I
mean, I don't remember what —

When was that?

Well. I'll have to — I haven't read it.
it up. I wrote it December 31, 1964.

"Dr. Edward Strong

[laughs] I just turned

December 31, 1964

Dear Ed,

As soon as it can be arranged to suit your convenience,
I should like to be relieved of my responsibilities as
vice-chancellor in order to return full-time to teaching,
research, and the direction of the University of California
Herbarium, which has been receiving considerably less of
my time this year than it deserves and needs.

For nearly ten years as departmental chairman, as college
dean, and most recently as vice-chancellor, not to mention
the preceding four years on the budget committee, I have
devoted a very large proportion of my time to administrative

279

Constance: tasks. This has been a rewarding and fascinating experience,

in which I had the good fortune to work with all three of
the Berkeley chancellors and a very broad spectrum of
exceptional faculty members, and I should not have wished
to miss this opportunity. However, I am rapidly approaching
my last decade of active service in the University, and I
believe it can best be spent both to the University's
advantage and my own if I devote it to my scholarly interests.

I shall, of course, always be willing to serve to the
best of my ability in any capacity that seems indicated.
You have my full confidence and warm best wishes in your
difficult task.

And I accompanied it with this note:

"Dear Ed,

I'm sure I do not understand fully the significance of
the various actions growing out of your recent Conversation
with the President and the Regents. However, one possible
interpretation, reinforced at our recent conference with
the President, is that there is a lack of confidence in
your staff which places you at a disadvantage. Quite inde
pendently of these developments, I've suspected for some
time that I've become more of a liability than an asset.

With this thought in mind, I think it might be to your
advantage to have my resignation in hand for whatever use
you wish to make of it at the appropriate time.
Theoretically, I believe I am "committed" until February,
1966, and I shall honor that commitment if you so desire.
However, I believe you should have the flexibility of
terminating my service before that time, without any
compunction, of course."

He didn1 1 open it.

Lage: He knew what was in it. I take it.

Constance: "Personal — Dear Lincoln" was on the outside of the envelope.

"I thought you wished me to receive whatever is enclosed
as possibly of help to us in our difficult situation. You
should know that so long as you are willing to continue in
service as vice-chancellor, I have been and would be
grateful for your invaluable contributions, and insistent
on their continuation. I am grateful, too, for your advice
to Harry Wellman in response to his call to you." (I don't
really remember that.)

"The Regents believe that I have promulgated the
recommendations of the Committee on Academic Freedom as the
rules fully in effect on January 4. The statement that I
was preparing for publication in the Daily Californian on

280

Constance: January 4, both in text and appendix, made evident that

such was not the case. The rules that were to be announced
on a provisional basis were in substantial agreement with
the recommendations of the Committee on Academic Freedom
and the Student Affairs Committee, with the incorporation
of revisions supplied by the Meyer Committee of the
Regents. The Regents believe that I had some other
intention, and without inquiry of me about the facts,
appear to have decided on my termination as chancellor.

—Ed"

So, there's a little vignette for you. He never read my letter,
but he apparently gathered what was in it.

I don't remember — I know Harry Wellman and Don McLaughlin
were a delegation from the President, or from the Regents, or a
combination of the two, to persuade Strong to resign. Which I
guess he did, did he not?

He did resign.

It was clearly a forced resignation, but I guess he actually did
resign.

But apparently Meyerson was acting chancellor until March, and
then the regents accepted Strong's resignation in March. I
don't think that's too important — he was effectively out in
January.

Constance: No, Meyerson stepped in right at the first of January, I think.
Meyerson, as dean of the College of Environmental Design,
reported to me as vice-chancellor, so I knew him quite well. In
fact, when they were looking for a dean of Environmental Design,
he had been my first choice, although I was not here at the time
he was actually appointed. At any rate, I wasn't directly
involved. I think probably I was on the committee and looking
into it, and it seemed to me that he sounded very good, although
Mrs. Wurster had a few doubts about him.

I mentioned that there seemed to be a vacuum at the center,
and although I think that what I showed you indicates that I
still had the Chancellor's confidence, whether I still had the
President's or not is something I couldn't answer. I seem to
have it now, but right at that time I don't think anybody in the
Berkeley campus had very much. He felt, you know, that Berkeley
was making his life miserable. It seems to be the role of the
hyperactive Berkeley campus to make the University President's
life unhappy. I don't imagine Dr. Gardner's very happy with
Berkeley at the moment, if you come right down to it.

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

281

XVIII MENDING THE CAMPUS: CHANCELLORS MEYERSON AND HEYNS

Changes under Meyersor.

Constance :

Lage :
Constance :

Lage:

I guess we probably read about Ed's resignation in the newspaper.
I don't remember when this [indicating his letter of resignation]
was returned to me. I don't remember what Dr. Wellman told me.
We were all aware that something of the sort was going on; it
was getting worse and worse. Clearly the campus was not getting
any central support that we were aware of.

I had nothing to do with the selection of Meyerson, but it
was, I think, a very good one, actually.

Had he been very involved, or was that one of his virtues, that
he was removed?

No, he had not been directly involved — so far as I'm aware.
There were so many people involved in so many ways, it's very
hard to say anybody was not involved, because they may have had
their own little faction somewhere. I don't recall any
involvement on his part, but he was obviously a sophisticated
person with considerable leadership propensity, and of course, I
found myself in a difficult spot. There I was: I had been in
charge of the campus for some part of the more painful aspects.
The campus administration was tarred; I was certainly tarred
along with it — not only tarred, I was tired, I think it's fair
to say.

Alan Searcy, and — I think it was — Errol Mauchlan. and I
were the three "outsiders" in the office, basically: Alan
Searcy, who was faculty assistant to the Chancellor, Errol
Mauchlan. who was budget officer, and myself.

Three outsiders under Strong?

282

Constance: That's right. I mean, we were the ones who were not being very
involved in student affairs. Searcy, and, I think Errol, did
meet with some students, or FSM leaders, at one time or another.
Of course, we all did at one time or another, but certainly none
of us played a very major role in that.

Every now and then, in the early stages at least, Sherriffs
would say rather bitterly that he wished someone else were
really taking a hand in this. On the other hand, we were
certainly very carefully screened off from participation and
just to be tossed to the FSM crowd was not a particularly
pleasing prospect, especially if you. were not in a position to
know what was happening, or what you could say. So I didn't
exactly dash to the barricades.

At all events, either Errol or Searcy called Meyerson when
they heard that Strong had resigned and that Meyerson was going
to assume office. Meyerson invited us to come to his. home — he
said he'd been very anxious to talk to somebody on the staff and
didn't really know how to go about it. So — you know, I'd had
very good relations with him — he was very cordial, and what he
said, in essence, is, 'Veil, you three people have beer, running
the campus, so you keep on running it, and I'll see if I can
handle the student thing and damp it down." That's the way we
operated.

For all intents and purposes, I don't think any of us really
got involved further in the student thing. He brought in Neil
Smelser from Sociology and John Searle from Philosophy. Searle
could yell louder than the FSM leaders, and Smelser, who was a
very persuasive and loquacious sociologist, tied them up in
knots.

Lage: Was this on a one-to-one basis or a group meeting basis, or —

Constance: Well, this was mostly one-to-one, or small groups. It wasn't

going out and confronting a mob. I don't remember how much mob
sort of thing there was in the spring. It may have dwindled
down after the change in leadership. I don't think there was
ever the hostility in the spring that there had been in the
fall. Everybody was pretty tired by then.

Lage: In the spring they had the "filthy speech movement."

Constance: That didn't amount to anything, that was a little "pff" on the
end. It helped to discredit it. The glory days were pretty
much over by then. I'm sure there were more incidents in the
spring, I just forget.

At all events, things went reasonably well in the spring.

283

Lage:

Constance

And what did Sherriffs do in the spring?
staff, wasn1 1 he?

He was still on the

Lage:

Constance

Lage:

Constance;
Lage:

Constance

Lage:

Ke was invisible,, as far as I can recall. I don't remember that
he played any role whatever. It's my feeling that he didr.'t
play any significant role after about October or November.
Certainly he did not appear conspicuously in the new Meyerson
regime.

One of the first messages I got after Meyerson came in was
one from Kerr, that I was to go and fire Kitty Malloy. Kitty
had broken her leg. which didn't help things much. I went up
and talked to her. She knew why I came. She invited me in, we
had a drink, discussed the bad old days [laughs], I told her.
"You know. Kitty, you know why I'm here. "Oh, yes," she said.
I suppose I had to present her a letter relieving her of her
duties, or something — I don't remember just what.

But that was the stipulation the President made, apparently.
I suppose, in a sense, it was inevitable and probably wise,
because she was so embittered she couldn't possibly have managed
to cooperate with the acting Chancellor, who was trying to
restore relations with the University. How good those relations
were. I don't know. I don't think they ever became terribly
friendly.

Between the University and the campus.
Between Meyerson and Kerr.

Well, they did do a joint resigning — remember the public
resignation that they —

I had forgotten all about that. What did they do?

This came after the "filthy speech movement." The "filthy
speech movement" created a great deal of disgust, and Regent
Carter phoned Kerr and insisted that he dismiss the students.
Kerr and Meyerson, in response to this kind of interference,
made a public resignation.

Isn't that funny, I'd forgotten that; I'd forgotten that
completely.

And then their resignations were not accepted. Things might
have been a little wilder than you remember in the spring.

284

Constance: I'm sure they were. I'm afraid I was numb by that time. My

sister-ir.-law, who's a physician, remarked that I lost fifteen
pounds that year, and she didn't think I'd make it through the
year. There were times I didn't think I would either [laughs],
But, at all event's, I was not involved in that.

Selection of Roger Heyns as Permanent Chancellor

The place I next came into the picture was late in the spring.
Let's see, how did this go? Of course, I had an office over in
Dwinelle Hall, then I was over here [in the Life Sciences
Building] in real life part of the time when I was teaching. I
got a call over here saying that Meyerson was trying to reach
me, so I went over to Dwinelle. Meyerson had been told that he
was not to be the President's candidate to be Chancellor, which
made him quite upset.

I was sympathetic, because I thought he'd given a lot to
the job. I knew nothing about whatever arrangement he had had
with the President in the first place, whether the President had
given him any encouragement to think that he might indeed stay
there. But I remember him saying, "Lincoln, why don't we go
start our own university?" About then the President called me,
while I was in Meyerson's office — we had a central exchange. He
asked me if I would take charge of the campus during the summer.
It was pretty clear there wasn't anybody else to do it, if
Meyerson wasn't going to. I was a little annoyed, because I
thought Meyerson had been treated rather badly — I thought Strong
had been treated badly, and I thought Meyerson likewise.

So I said I would do it under certain circumstances, and he
said. "All right, what are they?" And I said. "Well. I'd like
to do it. if I do it, with my title of vice-chancellor; I don't
want any phony acting title. I'd like to commit myself to only
a month at a time, because other opportunities might come along
that I might want to take advantage of during the summer. And
by the end of the summer I want to be completely out of the
administration, permanently." He said, "You mean that?" I
said, "I do." That was it.

Well, Meyerson and, I guess, others were probably brought
out and interviewed. There was a chancellor's selection
operation going on which I was not invited to attend. Kerr
hosted some sort of a party, and I was not invited. I think
probably the reason I wasn't is that the invitation came to the
Chancellor's Office and Meyerson threw it in the wastebasket.
[laughs], if I had to guess. But at all events I heard that we

285

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance:

were going to have a new Chancellor. It was all very nice, but
I felt a little irked. I thought I perhaps deserved to be at
least clued in on what was going to happen.

So you didn't hear directly; you heard through the grapevine.

That's right, I heard through the grapevine. Finally, Kerr
brought Heyns over and introduced me to him, or vice-versa, and
I can't remember whether all the Chancellor's staff was there or
not. It's quite possible. But I remember that is the time when
I asked Kerr to let me handle this famous Katz case, so Heyns
wouldn't be stuck with it. I said we all knew it was a nasty
kind of thing, it was a ticking bomb, and if I could take care
of that, then at least Heyns would have one fewer thing on his
plate. Kerr didn't go along with that. But as I mentioned,
Heyns always remembered it gratefully.

That was the first time I had met Heyns.
That was in the sunnier at some time?
I suppose.

Advice to Heyns

I can't remember whether it was at that point or whether it was
some weeks later that I received an invitation from Kerr to have
lunch with him and Heyns, since I was going out, to talk things
over. Heyns already had been provided with the two vice-
chancellors. Earl Cheit and Robert Connick. My recollection is
that they were having a meeting that afternoon of the deans and
chairmen, to introduce Heyns. Connick — at I don't know whose
initiative, perhaps his own — asked if I would introduce Heyns,
which I thought was nice, so I said, "Sure."

At all events, for this lunch Heyns was to come to my
office in Dwinelle and we were to walk up to the Faculty dub.
where we would meet Kerr and have lunch. I can't remember
exactly how we started it, whether he started it or I did, but
at any rate I said, "These are the things that the faculty think
you ought to know before you assume office, and I've only got a
few minutes to tell you. so listen carefully." [laughs] It could
be he asked me. "What can you tell me that I ought to know that
we can't discuss with the President?"

I said, "The first thing is: don't agree to put the
Chancellor's Office in Sproul Hall." (where Kerr wanted it)
"because you'd be a hostage to anything that comes up on the

286

Lage:
Constance

Constance: Berkeley campus." And I said, "You ought to know that you have
a faculty committee that has looked into this and is strongly
opposed to it." I think the Regents and the President thought
it would be a great idea,

I've forgotten the few other things of that sort.
Sounds so interesting, I wish you could recall itl

I don't remember any of the others at the moment. I did tell
him a little about the kind of faculty resources he had, that in
our system could be very helpful to him — he ought to know about
them, he ought to use them. I treated him in sort of an
avuncular fashion, I think. I very much liked him and was
favorably impressed. He was very able. I also think he was a
bit of a hero to come here at that time.

Lage: He left a situation in which he was going to be promoted to

president of a statewide university.

Constance: That was the understanding. The University of Michigan is not a
statewide university, I believe. I don't think they have
separate campuses. They have separate institutions in Michigan.
His father, I believe, had been dean — although I'm not sure.
He'd been a faculty member at any rate, and apparently Heyns was
expected to ascend; it is anybody's guess why he didn't. That
will come out in some oral history sometime, I think.

Lage: Actually, our office is doing an oral history with Heyns now.

Constance: I hope they are. It certainly was a courageous act [to accept the
chancellorship at that time] .

Lage: Did you have further contact with him after?

Constance: Not much. I was just going to go on to tell you about that
meeting. The meeting was really grim.

Lage: The meeting with Kerr?

Constance: No, that was pleasant but guarded, shall we say. I think Kerr
probably felt that he could place no trust in anybody in the
Berkeley campus, including me. And I didn't feel terribly
kindly toward him. Relations had been strained; there's no
question about it, although I'm very fond of him, always have
been, and still am. So be it.

But we did have the meeting to introduce Heyns to the deans
and department chairmen in the afternoon. As I said, it was
very grim. Deans and chairmen were wondering what was going to
happen next. I talked to Roger Heyns and said, "Do you mind if

Constance:

Lage:

287

C try to liven it up a little bit?" And he said, "Please do!"
[laughs] So I said. "Well, I like to think of this as the year
that I had three chancellors shot out from under me." That sort
of set things going. So it worked out all right.

That was it.
Was that the extent of the transition between the administrators?

Constance: As far as I was concerned. Oh, I suppose we tied up things in
various ways, but I can't tell you now how.

You'd think there would be a tremendous body of knowledge that
you'd have to impart to somebody coming from off campus,
wouldn1 t you?

Constance: No, no. I suspect it was intended there should not be, but I
don't know.

Berkeley in the Dog House

Constance: The Berkeley campus had failed. There were other indications of
this. I attended Regents' meetings in the fall, anyway, and I
was there for just one purpose, and that was in case any of the
Regents wanted to blast the Berkeley campus, they would have
somebody there to receive the chastisement. I knew all the
Chancellors at that time, some of them quite well, and it was
very interesting the way they used to distance themselves from
me. I wasn't good company to be seen in. Actually, I don't
think anybody ever asked me anything, except Kerr did, once. He
asked me something I couldn't answer, so I didn't help much.

But clearly Berkeley was in the dog house, and we weren't
allowed to forget it, shall we say. I was amused because
sometime along the line Heyns said publicly a couple of times
that he never could persuade me to work for him. As a matter of
fact, he never asked me.

There's one little interesting thing in there: Alex
Sherriffs showed up from somewhere, and remarked "Heyns is a
psychologist; maybe I'll stick around and see if he could use a
good psychologist." I never heard any more about it.

Nobody asked me to stay on. but I had clearly asked not to
stay on. and I had no intention of doing so. I wouldn't have.
It was hell. That year was unmitigated hell from my standpoint,
not so much because I suffered personally. I didn't make any
enemies, I think, or no permanent ones. I didn't approve of the

288

Constance: conduct of some faculty members; they probably didn't approve of
mine, but I've always felt that by and large the faculty are
very well-intentioned. Sometimes I don't think they line all
their brains up as well as they could, but — [laughs]

At any rate, that was the end of my administrative career.

Aftermath of FSM, Parallels to Anti- Apartheid Demonstrations

Lage:

(3onstar.ce

I have read references in articles, and elsewhere, about other
campuses raiding the Berkeley campus during FSM for faculty
members. Was the faculty leaving because of all the disturbance
a problem?

No, I don't think so. Well, it's true that some faculty members
left because they were disgusted with it. The usual problem,
though, were the splits in attitude toward the Free Speech
Movement on the part of different faculties.

One of the things that was very apparent in the earlier
stages: once departmental chairmen tried to pick up the
administrative ball, so to speak, they spoke for their staffs,
and then they were undermined. In other words, the chairman of
English, who was Mark Schorer at least part of the time, took a
relatively strong position. 1 can't tell you now what the
position was, but he submitted it to a vote, as the English
department does with essentially everything. He was overruled
by, I suppose, primarily younger people, who felt that this was
too conservative a stance.

The history department was one classic example. It was
split down the middle, and people on different sides weren't
even speaking to each other. Several of them left. Several
left Political Science. So particularly in the social sciences
and in the humanities, several people just couldn't stand their
colleagues any more. It was almost as bad as the oath in that
respect, that old friendships were broken because people took a
very different attitude toward this business. It was a very
murky sort of thing.

I was interested in looking for parallels in yesterday's
paper. I don't know if you happened to see the Daily
Californian, but there was a list of the goals of the blockade
of California Hall— they listed thirteen. Did you happen to see
that?

289

Lage: Yes.

Constance: You get down here, through the apartheid things, to "there will
be no increased course-load requirement; there will be no
lowering of student wages; there will be no IBM product
demonstrations at the Men's Faculty CLub" — the Men's Faculty
Club is a private organization; it has nothing to do with the
administration and even less to do with the students; "that
Heyman meet student and faculty representatives this week to
discuss these demands."

Well, it's the old story; it's all over the lot. It was
supposed to be all about apartheid. One of the items I like is
"that Heyman take a public position in support of an ethnic
studies graduation requirement and promise that the graduate
rate of students of color be made comparable to admissions
levels." That, I think, is a lovely one. All that means is
that everybody passes, no matter what.

So again, the issues, to me, are extraordinarily unclear
both then and now. It seems to me they are in most of these
incidents.

The same thing was true of the Free Speech Movement; it
went into the business of educational reform and so on. What
was "educational reform"? [reading from one committee report of
the time] "The committee recommended offering 'Pass/Not Pass'
option, non-graded courses, and using plus/minus grading, rather
than straight A-B-C-D-F. Also urged the University to disregard
first term grades when computing grade point averages. The
committee recommended further experiments with grading and
stated that the student view should be considered in shaping
educational policy," etc., etc.

This had nothing to do with free speech, as far as I can
see; it simply spilled over into all sorts of student
irritations with the University, with society, and with anything
else. As a result it was very difficult to find clear lines.
You might think that it was important that the University relax
its requirements against having political figures speaking on
campus, and I think most people did. But that hasn't anything
to do with educational reform.

As I look at it, as a former dean, these are all efforts to
weaken scholastic rigor. The people who are strongly in favor,
and are still quoted, are people who never demonstrated any
rigor — I'm talking about faculty members. There was at least
one who passed everybody, no matter what.

Lage: These are people who were in favor of the educational reform

aspect?

290

Constance: That's right. One of them is a professor of education. My

reaction is that professors who refuse to grade are simply not
meeting their responsibilities. It's like being a policeman and
saying. "I'll be a policeman, but I'm not going to arrest
anybody." Well, you can't have — as I see it — quality education
if you guarantee ahead of time that everybody's going to pass
whether they do anything or not.

Lage : It's a very idealistic view of human nature, to think that you

can take away the grading incentive and everybody will apply
himsel f .

Constance: I think you're charitable. I think it's the old story of trying
to get into a university because of its prestige, and then
trying to convert it into a junior college where you don't have
to work very hard. Somebody protested that the courses were so
rigorous that they hardly had time to protest! My reaction to
that is. isn't that too bad! Isn't it a shame! I think that
one really ought to do a little census on what courses, if any.
are being taken by people who are spending full time protesting.
This is something else you see, that betrays my age.

Lage: Are there any other long-term effects that you might want to

mention — you have talked about the faculty splits, and so on.

Constance: Yes. Well, there's no question that the college requirements
which I had laboriously and fairly strictly put into operation
were almost completely undermined. This happened all across the
country. Academic standards went down the tube.

Lage: It happened in the elementary and secondary schools too.

Constance: Well, I think they'd always been that way. I mean, the college
and university things were made to resemble them. I think the
whole educational enterprise nationally was seriously
compromised. Over the years since they have gradually been
built back up, but this current objection about having a more
than twelve-unit student course load is clearly one left over
from that. In other words, college is a nice place, why spoil
it by having to do anything serious? Everybody knows that it's
the contacts you make, and so on. that really count.

There are many different opinions, of course, as to what
effects the so-called Free Speech Movement had. I have a
colleague who feels that it clearly relaxed the generally
conservative character of the University, made better
opportunities for minority groups, and so on, although my
impression is that that was mostly something that came later,
with the Third World business.

291

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

I think that too. in '69 and '70. around in there.

That's right, that's my impression, but as I say there are lots
of different opinions. There are many who think that this was a
great liberalization of the University. I don't think so. I
always thought the University was pretty liberal to begin with,
but undoubtedly it was perceived differently by different people
with different experience, before, after, and here. I never
felt any constraints on my liberties.

I personally have not seen anything I would think of as a
positive long-range effect. There certainly are some who think
that student-involved educational policy is a plus. I believe
student opinion is valuable for some things, sometimes, but
mostly not for what they want to exercise it for. What they
would really like to do, of course, is determine faculty
appointments, promotions, salaries, etc., and they'd like to
determine how their courses are made and what's asked of them.
My reaction to that is that it's like having the patient tell
the physician what his treatment should be.

There's no question that selected student opinion can be
very valuable, but it mostly wouldn't be obtained from a mass
protest. These protests usually wind up being rather thoroughly
stupid, in my estimation, So, since I don't believe that
'liberalization" of the development of the educational process
by "average student input" does much for it, I don't see much
positive gain.

Did it encourage the faculty, though, to sort of think through a
little bit more about their teaching and their relations with
students?

That's always possible. Anything that tends to shake up the
establishment makes some of the faculty, who would not otherwise
have been, aware of the fact that they really do have some
responsibility. But on the whole I think most faculty do;
that's why we pick them. Being farther from the process of
selection, it seems to me in more recent years we have tended to
worry much less about any interest in teaching, as opposed to
prowess in obtaining large research grants, prizes, and
whatever — but I'm not sure if that's true.

I think most faculty go into university teaching because
they enjoy teaching. Let's face it, most of them are
missionaries in one way or another, and I'm sure I'm no
exception, Where else can you get as large a captive audience,
and have people hang on your words?

[laughs] And write them down.

292

Constance: That's right.

Lage: And sometimes even tape-record them.

Constance: Sometimes they even reread their notes — probably rarely. I

don't think that by and large people join faculties in order to
escape contact with students and their teaching responsibil ties.
But it is true that any uproar that comes along does probably
jog that part of their repertoire, shall we say, so that they're
rather more conscious of students than if they hadn't raised a
rumpus. But, again, I would say it's a hard way to get there.

293

XIX IN PURSUIT OF PARSLEY
[Interview 10: April 29, 1986]

Beginning of Serious Research or. Umbellif erae
in Association with Mildred Mathias

Constance: This may be a bit of a separate transection through my career,

but last fall I was asked if I would talk to a group of graduate
students who were interested in sy sterna tics. They call
themselves the Taxonomy Lunch, and they try to get someone,
either a student, or a faculty member, or a visitor, to speak to
them. I put them off as long as possible, but finally got
nailed for April 23rd. I was asked in the hall a couple of days
before what my topic was. and just sort of offhand I said, "In
Pursuit of Parsley."

It occurred to me afterwards that perhaps the title is
misleading, because I think rather than my pursuing parsley,
parsley has tended to pursue me. Parsley is an obvious common
term for the particular plant family in which I am supposed to
be a specialist. In other words, the Umbellif erae. sometimes
called Apiaceae. When I was a graduate student, about the
beginning of my third year, I asked Professor Jepson — I took a
master's degree, and then thought, well. I might as well go on
and try to get a Ph.D. since the Depression was still on. So I
asked him what I could do a thesis on.

He suggested several things. One was the flora of Mt.
Tamalpais. I probably have said before that I figured out how
expensive this would be. how much time it would take to get
across the bay and back on the ferry, climb the mountain, and
try to do some work as well. So I ruled that out. One of the
topics he had suggested was the Umbellif erae of Oregon. I
vetoed that because it was a group I knew absolutely nothing
about, so that, perhaps, was the first sign of something
pursuing me.

294

Constance: At all events, when I was in my first teaching position at
Washington State, I collected extensively and tried to send
representatives of different plant families to people who were
specialists in those particular groups, as I learned of them.
One of the groups 'very well represented in that area was the
family Umbellif erae, the parsleys, and I heard that someone in
the East had been working on parsley, but I never could find out
who she was, or where she was, so I accumulated the Umbelliferae
specimens. By the time I got back to Berkeley, on the staff, I
was carrying around perhaps a hundred or so specimens.

Much to my surprise I discovered that Dr. Mildred Mathias
was here. Her husband, a physicist, was then working for Shell
Development Corporation in Emeryville. She had taken her
doctorate at Washington University, Missouri Botanical Garden,
with the late Jesse M. Greemnan. She wrote her doctoral thesis
on members of the Umbelliferae in 1928, and by the time I came
back here in 1937, she had worked at a number of different
institutions across the country, and on a number of different
groups within that family.

At that particular point she was working on the genus
Lomatium. which is the largest west American genus of the
family. She was impressed by the fact that I had collected so
many representatives of the family and actually had been fairly
successful in identifying them. Also she knew nothing about the
geography of the West, and I knew quite a little by this time,
having been born in Oregon, educated in California, and taught
in the state of Washington, so I kibitzed to some extent and
tried to help her out on geographical questions, and that led to
our working together informally.

She had not been well. She had an ulcer, and she was very
much pressured by the fact that she had agreed to prepare
taxonomic treatments of this family for a number of different
publications. All of it was beginning to weigh on her. One of
the problems was that the classical treatment of the family for
North America is that in the monograph by Coulter and Rose, done
in the year 1900 as a volume of the U.S. National Herbarium
Contributions, a very important publication in its day.

Since then, really, nobody had worked on them consistently.
Coulter became the president of the University of Chicago, and
Rose remained at the Smithsonian — I don't remember exactly how
long he lived, but I think he probably died in the twenties, if
not before that.

Lage : Coulter was another botanist who went into university

administration.

With Rafael Rodriguez, Mt.
Oso, California, 1949

With Harry F. Clements on steps
of Life Sciences Building, 1937

With Mildred Mathias, UC Botanical Garden, 1985

CONSTANCE AND COLLEAGUES

295

Constance: That's right. He's one of the most prominent ones, probably.
There are quite a few university presidents and other
administrative officers, as a matter of fact.

At any rate, any time Dr. Mathias required more material,
she resorted to the practice that's customary among museums,
herbaria, that is, to borrow material. No one institution can
possibly accumulate, house, and take care of all the material
that a serious student needs for a particular project. So as
soon as you start working — not as soon as you start, but
somewhere along in the process — you borrow from other
institutions. So she was doing that in her revising of
Lomatium, but every time she wrote to an institution to borrow
something, they would send her all the accumulated members of
the family they'd acquired since Coulter and Rose's time, if not
before. So we had rooms full of specimens to correctly identify.

Lage: Literally.

Constance: Literally. Some of them she hadn't even unpacked. So I tried
to help her organize that, and so on. Informally, I was doing
other things as well; in fact, I was working on another plant
family myself.

At all events, one day she came in and said, •'Gerald" (her
husband) "and I have decided we're going to raise a family, so
I'm going to give up the Umbel liferae, and I want you to take
them over." I said, "I'd like to think about that for a while."
Because with all the work she had done on them she was still
overwhelmed; I wasn't sure that I wanted to get into that
situation. But finally I made a counteroffer; I said I would
work with her until she had met all the commitments she had
made, and then we'd see what would happen.

So that is the beginning of my serious research and later
publication on Umbel liferae. These three stacks of books are
all, to some extent, outgrowths of that activity on this
particular plant family. They include not only my work with
her, but my work with students, visitors, work by some of the
visitors, work of my own. I have omitted most of the small
things and included things that are pieces of books. So I will
to some extent ennumerate them as I go along and also say a
little about the other people who come into the picture.

I think the first treatment that we did to fulfill a
commitment was a treatment of Umbelliferae for The Flowering
Plants and Ferns of Arizona, by Kearney and Peebles. It doesn't
seem to have a date on it. it's simply an extract. The thing
was originally published as a government bulletin in 1942, but

296

Constance: very shortly thereafter it was revised and issued as a book by
the University of California Press, The Arizona Flora, of 1951.
It's the same treatment, but somewhat updated, in the two
versions. A second, rather larger commitment, was to do an
account of the family for Abrams's Illustrated Flora of the
Pacific States. Abrams was a taxor.omist of Stanford University,
and we contributed the text to that.

Lage: It's called the carrot family there, is that —

Constance: Well, Mildred usually calls it the carrot family, I call it the
parsley — it doesn't matter, the family includes both. This was
about a sixty-five page treatment, and it's particularly nice
because the Stanford people furnished the illustrations.

Lage: Ordinarily do you have to come up with your own illustrations?

Constance: Either that or you don't illustrate.

So that came out in '51, and I remember sending the
manuscript of our treatment to Professor Abrams just before I
departed for Washington, D.C., in 1943. But the big commitment
was to a publication known as The North American Flora, which
was serially published — and still is — by the New York Botanical
Garden. This is an attempt, which has never been completely
fulfilled, to provide a classif icatory treatment of all plants
of all kinds growing naturally in North America.

The reason it has not been completed is primarily, I think,
that so little is still known about the flora of Mexico. But it
was really the first attempt to correlate the U.S. and Canadian
material with Mexican, Central American. West Indian, and so on,
and it was a tremendous job.

Lage: So when they say North America they're including Central America

also?

Constance: That's correct. That's usual. For some reason the British
always put Panama in South America, but we follow Theodore
Roosevelt in regarding it as really part of the United States,
[laughter] At least part of North America. Well, this was
about a 250-page construction, our major accomplishment. This
came out while I was working in Washington for the O.S.S. I
used to keep galley proofs in my desk and work on them in
between times. It was finally issued in 1944-45. So to that
extent we had completed Dr. Mathias's various commitments, but
we continued to work together for another thirty-some years.

297

Graduate Student Shar. Rer.-Hwa and Sanicula

Constance: I made it a practice over the years, when I got sufficiently
interested in the group, that when I heard that someone
somewhere was interested in the same group, quite often I would
write or send them a reprint, or else I was written to. One of
the first foreign correspondences that I think bore interesting
results was with a Chinese, whose name is Shan Ren-Hwa. The
Chinese put the family name, Shan, first, and his personal name
is Ren-Hwa. Within the past year or so he has retired as
director of the Botanical Garden of Nanjing (the old Nanking, or
Southern Capital). [Shan Ren-Hwa died on December 31, 1986.]

I wrote him on the twenty-fifth of September, 1941, and
sent some reprints which he acknowledged on the ninth of
December. We corresponded for several years. I tried to help
him with literature, and so on, and at various times made some
conversational remark to the effect that it would be nice if he
could sometime come over here and work for a while. After the
war, Chiang Kai Shek decided that China needed to have its young
scientists brought up-to-date. Shan used my letter essentially
as an invitation; he was able to come to this country and was
here for the years 1946 through about April, 1949.

He originally came primarily to learn research, and I
convinced him that while here he might as well see if he could
complete his doctoral work and go home with a degree. I thought
it would be interesting if we could work together on a couple of
genera that had representatives both in Eastern Asia and in
North America, and he liked that idea. Together we produced two
monographs, one on the genus Osmorhiza, and the second one on
the genus Sanicula. His thesis was: "The Old World Species of
Sanicula. "

He went home in the spring or early summer of 1949 on the
last American ship to reach Shanghai. He had come to me and
told me that he didn't know what was going to happen in China,
but that he had his family there, and he thought that there was
very likely to be a separation between East and West. He thought
it was his duty to go home, and I agreed with him. My colleagues
in the department always swore that I wrote his thesis for him,
which isn't true — as I said, I just translated it from the
Chinese. I did type it a few times, and I helped him express
himself in English.

At any rate, I put the thesis into a publish able form after
he had gone home. I started it out with this statement:

298

Constance: "The nucleus of this study is a doctoral dissertation by

Dr. Ren-Hwa Shan, entitled 'The Old World Species of
Sanicula (Umbellif erae).' Dr. Shan returned to Shanghai
just before the fall of that city in April, 1949. I have
expanded the paper to include the American species of the
genus and made other extensive emendations. Because of
the cessation of communications between China and the
United States, Dr. Shan has had no opportunity to examine
and criticize these alterations. I entertain no serious
misgivings, however, as to his approval of the data added
and any conclusions obtained, since we worked closely
together throughout his stay and always approached the
group from a world point of view."

You may have noticed that I said the "fall" of Shanghai. If I
had said the "liberation" of Shanghai, I'm sure that I could
have been a cultural hero even during the Red Guard period.

Lage: No telling what would have happened to you here.

Constance: That's true. Since I did most of the Osmorhiza study myself, I
was the senior author of that, and since Sanicula was based upon
his doctoral thesis — a large part — he was the senior author of
the second.

He left before he knew that his thesis had been accepted
and a degree awarded. I tried various devices to try to get
copies of the published thing to him. I didn't know whether I'd
made it or not, but it turns out I had. • He had gotten them.

Lage: What devices would you have tried?

Constance: Well, I was in correspondence with a Chinese in the Academia
Sinica in Beijing, and I asked him if there was anyone in
China — I sent him some reprints — who shared my interest in this
family. He said, the only one he knew of was Dr. Shan. So I
sent Shan a couple of copies, and addressed them, as though I'd
never heard of him before, and that his name had been given to
me by somebody in Beijing. I didn't hear from him at that time,
and I had no idea if they had gotten to him or not.

Lage: Was this to protect him?

Constance: Oh, yes. The interesting thing is, as I said, I saw him off

from San Francisco in 1949, and we reestablished contact in 1978
after several groups of American botanists had visited China.

A sort of long-delayed consequence of that are these two
volumes — eventually there are to be three — of the Flora of the
People's Republic of China that deal with Umbelliferae. It

299

Constance:

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

turns out that he was the senior author. His institution, and
he as director, was responsible for publication on this family
in the Flora.

We have had a very pleasant current correspondence. In
fact, I was invited by Nanjing to go to China last year, but I
regretfully decided that probably I'd better not undertake this.
Shan was about my age, and I knew he was not well, but it was a
very nice gesture. I wrote them that I thought they would get
considerably more out of having a younger, more vigorous
American visit. They offered to let me change my mind any time
I wanted to, but I haven't yet.

But you might.
I might.

During the year I was at Harvard I had relatively little
time to do research — I had administrative responsibilities
there — but I did start working a little on South American
Umbellif erae. Here's a small paper that I did in January '49,
"The South American Species of Arracacia."

After I came back from Harvard. Dr. Mathias and I continued
to work jointly but in different places. By this time she was,
I think, originally in New York, then went to UCLA, where she
spent the rest of her active career. We started working on
Andean plants, and one of the Andean genera that particularly
intrigued us was the genus Niphogeton.

This was not field work; this was borrowing specimens?

I have never seen one of these in the field. I have grown some,
but I wasn't in the field. Anyway, I'm jxust illustrating that
we began to get more into South American things. Then here is a
treatment of Umbelliferae for a Flora of Texas in 1951. In the
paper that Shan and I published on Sanicula. at the end of that
paper, we speculated about some very narrowly restricted
populations and suggested that possibly these might be the
result of hybridization, or some other sort of genetic
interchange.

A few years later I had a graduate student, who has now
retired from the University of North Carolina, who was much more
of a geneticist than I. He took that last piece of the Sanicula
paper and wrote a thesis on the Sanicula crassicaulis complex,
and he's done a number of other things in the family.

Did he find that they were hybrids?

300

Constance: Some were, some weren't.

The Remarkable .Mathiasella

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:
Constance

One of the things I've really always wanted to do was to name
something after Dr. Mathias, because she certainly is one of the
outstanding woman scientists of her generation. The fact that
she was in taxor.omic biology, which is not regarded as a
startlingly significant field by many people, probably means
that she didn't receive as many honors as I think she is
entitled to, although she has received a great many.

People sent specimens to us jointly, so she always saw the
same things I did. In one particular instance, however, the
late Dr. C, Leo Hitchcock at the University of Washington, who
used to take groups of students into the field in summer, one
year took a group into northeastern Mexico. He had sent
material to her, which she had sent on to me to name. When I
supplied the names to him I told him that since his specimens
were going to remain at UCLA. I'd like to have any duplicates up
here he could spare for Berkeley if he ever got around to it.

A year or two later he did get around to it. He also sent
me something that had not been sent earlier because it had not
been recognized as belonging to the family. It was quite a
remarkable plant, which unfortunately has never been found
since.

Just that one sighting of it?

That's right, the only collection of it. A lot of people have
looked for it. But we had a large collection, which is now
represented in about ten different institutions. So at any rate
I wrote up the plant as an ur.de scribed species of a new genus,
named it Mathiasella, and sent a typescript to my friend
Hitchcock and put him down as junior author. He wrote back and
said, "How do I know it's any good?" I wrote back, and said,
"Who asked you?"

[laughs] Well, why did you put him as junior author?

Because he had collected it, and I didn't particularly like to
be solely involved personally. He was a classmate and an old
friend of hers, so it made it a rather nice gesture.

301

Pacific Basin Umbel 1 if erae

Constance: Another genus we worked or. together really started out with

Mexico and South America — the little genus, Oreomyrrhis. It was
interesting to follow it all down the Ar.des and thence all
around the Pacific Basin,

Lage: Do you find that pattern very often?

Constance: There are others of that sort, but not many. This was

interesting because it got me into working on things from
Australia and New Zealand.

Lage: Now, is it distributed here without a lot of variation?

Constance: According to me there are, oh, I think about twenty species.

Actually, twenty-three species in the monograph, and I've added
one since. Some of them are startlingly different. There is
one that forms cushions, some that have grass-like leaves, while
most of them have very much dissected leaves, and so on.
They're quite similar; I mean they're recognizably alike.

This is a map showing variation. [shows map] It's just a
particular mode of display; I like to try to do "something
different" in every publication.

Lage: I haven't seen this type of presentation.

Constance: It's rather nice. It's the old "pie-diagram." These segments
represent contrasting characters. You see, when you get down
here in the Falkland Islands (the Malvinas), all of the sections
are clear, whereas up here in the northern Ar.des, at least half

of the sections are dark.

Lage: And that represents different characters?

Constance: They represent six different contrasting characters.

At any rate, this got me into the Australia-New Zealand
area, where I certainly can't claim any great expertise, but I'm
just showing my dabbling around the world, so to speak. The
same student who wrote this paper on Sanicula for his doctoral
thesis, C. Ritchie Bell, also decided it would be nice if
somebody — namely, he and I — undertook a survey of the chromosome
numbers of Umbellif erae, which is simply a means of bringing
gross cytological information into taxonomy. We started a
series together in 1957.

302

Constance

Lage:

Constance

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:
Constance

He noted at that time that there were something like 214 taxa of
Umbelliferae that had had their chromosomes counted. Since then
we have gone en to publish five papers in the same series. With
the work of other people, I imagine there are at least two
thousand counts by now, which means there's about as much
information on this as on perhaps any higher plant family.

Here is a treatment that Dr. Mathias and I did in 1957 for
a Flora of Nevada.

Excuse me for going back, but is the cytological information
significant?

It's just a chromosome number.
Is that significant in your —

Oh, it's another kind of data. For instance, all the Oreomyrrhis
species have a chromosome number of six. which is found almost
nowhere else in the family. Sometimes it helps, mostly it doesn't.

Does it help in some families more than other families?

Exactly, it does. For instance, all the pines have the same
chromosome number, I believe. I think all the lilies do; I
think all the eucalypti do, not the same number as each ether,
but all the species of each of these genera are identical. In
some general genera, every species has a different number. Some
species have several numbers. Most species have a single
number. Sometimes the whole genus has the same number,
sometimes it has 150 numbers. So you never can tell in advance,
you can't tell why.

It's just one of many different characters.
It is another character.

Rafael Lucas Rodriguez from Costa Rica

One of the most interesting students I ever had was Rafael Lucas
Rodriguez, who was professor of biology in the University of Costa
Rica until his untimely death from leukemia three years ago. He
came to Berkeley ostensibly to do a pharmaceutical study of some
medicinal plant, because that made sense to people in Costa
Rica — if you were interested in plants, there must be a mecicinal
value, or obviously you would have no reason for doing it.

303

Constance: Rodriguez not surprisingly had no idea how the system for
graduate students worked. He spoke to a professor in
agricultural biochemistry to ask him if he could work with hin.
The professor didn't quite understand what he was asking, but
was affable, and Rodriguez thought he had, so to speak, plugged
into the circuit, but he was really drifting.

Professor Machlis, who was chairman of my department at
that time and was never one to let things drift, stopped
Rodriguez in the hallway one day and asked him what he was
doing, and ascertained that something was wrong. He called up
the professor in question and found that he had no idea of any
such relationship. Machlis interviewed Rodriguez and asked him
what he was interested in. Then Machlis came to see me and
said, "You know, he's really interested in systematics, or
something like that. Would you talk to him?" And I said,
"Sure. "

So Machlis brought him in, and we discussed Costa Rica, his
interests, and so on. Rodriguez asked me. "What could you do
with plants for a thesis?" I said, "Just off-hand, I'm
interested in the family Umbelliferae, and it just so happens
that in Costa Rica you have an umbel that is the nearest thing
to a tree of anything in the family in the New World. I think
that since Umbelliferae are supposedly related to Araliaceae,
which include ivy and are usually woody plants, while
Umbelliferae are usually herbacious — it might be interesting to
see how a woody umbel is put together, how it relates to other
families and so on.

We talked about various things, and when he got up to leave
he said, "I'll take it." And I said, "You'll take what?" And
he said, 'Veil, that problem you suggested."

Lage: Was there any language barrier? Was that part of the reason he

hadn't plugged in?

Constance: No, his English is excellent.

Lage: Just figuring out how the system worked.

Constance: That's right. So he shifted to work with me in 1949. He worked
with me and my colleague Adriance Foster, who was a plant
morphologist and anatomist. He spent seven years as a graduate
student. When he left the graduate students gave him a special
award, as being the first graduate student who'd earned a
sabbatical in residence.

He lived in International House where he was a great
favorite, because he was also an artist. He used to do all
their posters, and he sang songs, made up songs, knew songs.

304

Constance: His real problem was whether he should be an artist

professionally and a botanist or naturalist as a hobby, or the
other way around.

He never could quite make up his mind, but at all events
the thesis that he eventually — these are all his drawings — that
he eventually produced is a classic in its field. He not only
worked on the woody, the tree-like, arborescent Costa Rican
umbel, which is the genus Myrrhidendron — which simply says
"umbel tree" for all intents and purposes. He compared it with
related families, and, as I say, it has become a classic. The
thing he probably will be remembered for, more than that, was
that he set out a number of years ago to make watercolors of all
the Costa Rican orchids, and he moved on to those of Central
America and eventually wound up with, I think, something like a
thousand.

Lage : So he ended up combining those two interests.

Constance: That's right. In 1986 there was published a book, "Genercs de
Orquideas de Costa Rica" by The Editorial, which, I take it, is
the publishing arm of the University of Costa Rica. The
problem, of course, was the expense of getting all these really
gorgeous illustrations published.

One set of Costa Rican stamps has his orchid illustrations
or. it; also some of the currency does, or did. In Costa Rica
they named a nature reserve for him, and he also won the highest
humanist award the country gives. The only thing we ever
published together was a little paper called "An Unpublished
Letter from La Gasca to De Candolle," which we published in 1975
at his request in the little Revista that he edited in the
biology department of the University of Costa Rica.

This is the rest of the publication. [handing something to
Lage] When I was borrowing material to work on a particular
group of South American plants, the herbarium at Geneva included
in the loan a crude drawing and a copy of a letter written in
Latin. The letter was from La Gasca, who had been director of
the Madrid Botanical Garden, to De Candolle of Geneva, who was
one of the principal European botanists. It turned out to be a
critique by La Gasca of De Candolle's treatment of the family
Umbelliferae in the Prodromus, which was De Candolle's great
work and one of the standards of the nineteenth century.

So, with the help of a cleric, who was a friend of Rafe's,
and using our own ingenuity, we did our best to translate the
letter. Meanwhile I translated some of La Gasca1 s writings,
which were all in Spanish, and we used that as part of the
background for the little publication. The ironical thing is

305

Constance: that it was I who translated the Spanish into English, but he
got even by putting in a Spanish version of the letter in the
publication. He was one of my favorites, and a tragic loss.

The Ambitious Hi roe from Japan

Another character in my umbelliferous experiences was Dr.
Minosuke Hiroe, who retired from the University of Kyoto a few
years ago. I was never sure exactly what his position there
was. He published a paper or. some umbels in Japan, and I wrote
him in November, 1949. Somehow or other I managed to get the
Rockefeller Foundation to give him enough support to come here
for the year 1955-56. He wanted to work on the Umbelliferae of
Japan, and he arrived with a complete manuscript ar.d some
beautiful pictures.

I started looking at the manuscript and found it a bit
difficult to follow because of the mixture of English. Japanese,
and Latin. So I looked at his key — that is the short-hand way
of getting to an identification — of the species in the first
genus, and discovered I couldn't make any sense out of it. Then
I discovered that the descriptions of the first three species
were all identical! I tried to discuss this with him and I got
very affable looks of complete incomprehension.

Lage : Now was this the language problem?

Constance: This was certainly, in part, a language problem. So, in

essence, I put his manuscript on the shelf and learned about the
Umbelliferae of Japan, wrote a revision, and used his pictures.
Just_how he came by the pictures I don't know. He didn't do
them; one of his Japanese friends did. But, at any rate. I put
together a revision of Japanese Umbelliferae. made him senior
author, and we published it.

Lage: Now. did he have an input into this revision process?

Constance: No. I don't think he ever understood what I was doing. He

spent almost his whole time copying the data off the labels in
the herbarium. Occasionally, he translated something from
Japanese into English for me.

Lage: He furnished the pictures and the collection of plants?

Constance: He had furnished a lot of specimens, that's riaht, and the idea
of doing it. I certainly would never have gone into this on my
own, I think.

Lage:

306

Sounds like quite a task to undertake just because it happened
to be dropped in your lap.

Constance: That's right. That's where the most interesting tasks come
from.

Lage:

Why did you make him senior author?
contribute much.

It sounds as if he didn't

Constance: Well, as I told you, I learned a long time ago that being a

junior author is a privilege because everybody thinks you did
the work.

Lage: And, in this case, it was certainly true.

Constance: This was published, as you see, as really a book-length

publication, and I assumed that when he got home he would send
copies — because I think he had a hundred of them, something like
that — to other Japanese botanists. I kept on getting requests
from Japan for this thing, a lot of them, so I wrote and asked,
what's happened? He wrote very apologetically and said, "I
distributed reprints in the Japanese fashion." I take it this
means that you send copies to all your aunts and uncles, and ten
copies to the Emperor, and so on. So I got him another fifty or
so, and I did receive a nice note from the Emperor's librarian,
saying how much the Emperor appreciated it.

He also wrote that as a veteran of the war — I hadn't known
he was until he sent me a picture of himself in uniform — because
his graduate work was interrupted by the war, if he could
publish something under his own name before a certain time he
could receive his doctorate, which, of course, would open a
whole new career for him in Japan. So he wanted to know if,
essentially, I would take my name off the publication.

Well, I wrote him as calmly as I could, and said that I had
put so much work into it that I really didn't think I could do
this, and secondly, I didn't think it would be quite honest if I
did, because I thought he would recognize that I had changed
what he had done very appreciably. But I said, if you want to
translate it into Japanese and publish it locally, that's fine
with me, but otherwise I didn't really see how I could conform
to his wishes.

He wrote back very positively, saying forget that I ever
asked, and so on. Then he published this paper [shows] in '58,
the same year, "The Umbelliferae of Asia, Excluding Japan, No. 1
by Minosuke Hiroe. What this is, essentially, is a description
and listing of all the Asian material that he had seen here and

307

Constance: in Kyoto, which was not Japanese. Some of his label reading was
not very satisfactory, and so I began to get queries from all
over the world as to just what had happened.

A few years after he got home I received in the mail a very
formidable package, which is a manuscript much like the one he
originally arrived with, only considerably larger, which is
entitled Umbelliferae of World, by M. Hiroe and L. Constance,
1958 — that was the same year.

Lage: Of the world?

Constance: No, of world. I hurriedly wrote, thanking him profusely for the
great honor he had done me but said I didn't think I really was
competent to author such an extensive treatment and asked him to
take my name off it, which, fortunately, he did. Frankly, I
thought that ended it.

Lage: A very ambitious sort.

Constance: But, as you see, it didn't end it. Here is Umbelliferae of

World, published in 1979, printed by the Ariake Book Company.
Matsuo Biru, Tokyo. This has been quite a sleeper, because it
didn't get into the normal library circuit, and people heard
about it and often wrote to me and asked me about it. Here is a
review of it in Russian by a friend of mine. Dr. Pimenov. He
sent me an English version. I believe. It's been reviewed
twice, by two Russians.

The editor of one of the Scandanavian journals wrote me and
said they didn't solicit reviews, but they had received an
unsolicited one by one of the' Russians. They didn't like to
publish things that they thought might have a political bias to
them. They felt this was rather a scathing review, and would I
tell them what I thought? I wrote and said that I thought it
was very merciful. He reused all the plates and script from
The Umbelliferae of Japan, as well as some articles that he had
done before.

Lage: So he used some of your —

Constance: Yes, well, that was all right. The book costs a hundred dollars.

Lage: It's not the definitive treatment, I assume.

Constance: In my opinion, it's not. I told Dr. Pimenov the story of how
The Umbelliferae of Japan was put together, and he said he'd
always thought it must have been written by somebody else, not
the same Hiroe.

308

Constance

Lage:
Constance

Lage:

Constance:

Lage:
Constance:

At any rate. Dr. Hiroe certainly was not frightened by large
projects, shall we say? He's a very interesting chap, and I'm
very fond of him. I've never been to Japan, but I'm sure if I
got to Japan he would practically give me the country.

Is he a professor somewhere?

He's retired, but I don't think he was ever a professor. I
think he taught in several university extensions, or preparatory
colleges, or something of that sort.

In retrospect, do you ever feel that maybe you shouldn't have
done so much for him? Maybe you gave him his start with
The Umbelliferae of Japan?

Well, he'd probably have done it anyvay.
With the original manuscript he brought you?

My feeling is that I learned a lot, and I'm sure that although
he's messed it up somewhat, the Umbelliferae will survive. It's
a good family if it can survive forty years of my efforts.

More Exotic Conquests;

Students and Colleagues from New Zealand, Pakistan, France

Dr. Mathias and I continued to write treatments of the family.
This one is The Flora of Panama, in 1959. Another umbel student
was John W. Dawson, who is now reader in botany at Victoria
University of Wellington, New Zealand. In 1953 he applied for a
teaching assistantship here, on the recommendation of one of our
previous graduates, because he wanted specifically to work with
me on Umbelliferae. He did a thesis on the New Zealand genus
Anisotome. And he has carried on a career as a New Zealand
expert on the family ever since.

That was an example of one of our former graduate students
knowing about my interest and sending potential students here.
Another one was Eugene Nasir, who has just retired as director
of the National Herbarium of Pakistan. He wrote me in 1952

about coming to the United States for graduate work. He was a
protege of Dr. R. R, Stewart of Gordon College, and Rawalpindi,
a second-generation Christian Pakistani, which is a rather
unusual phenomenon, I take it.

He wanted to take a doctorate, but he only had two years,
and it simply wasn't possible to do all he wanted to do in two
years. While he was here he did work on some Himalayan plants

309

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

and got a little paper out on it. He started producing what was
originally a Flora of West Pakistan, and then, after the civil
war. it has become the Flora of Pakistan. (It's on a sort of
three-foot shelf Op there on the left lower side.) It's quite a
nice job, and he did the Umbellif erae for it, published in 1972
with an excellent artist. They were really very nicely done.
So that was another one of my exotic conquests, if you like.

A very interesting correspondence I got into was with
Madame Marie- Therese Cerceau-Larrival, who is the head of the
polynological laboratory of the National Museum of Natural
History in Paris. In 1961 she wrote to Dr. Mathias to see if
she could obtain pollen of the genus Mathiasella, which I had
described. Dr. Cerceau actually wrote her thesis on the pollen
of French and North African umbels at the University of
Montpellier — she's published a tremendous amount of material.

So she's a specialist in the pollen?

She's a specialist in the pollen. She's gone from pollen to

seeds, to seedlings, and so on.
of the South American plants.

I furnished material for most

Lage:

Is that something you collect when you collect the plant, or do
you specifically-
Well, if you collect the flowers and buds you collect the pollen
in them. It may or may not be in the right state, but I
furnished a lot of material for her — almost all her publications
cite our contribution.

I met her in Paris in 1963. She was working in a suburban
laboratory, we were in her home. Her husband is a very
delightful person, and she has two daughters who are very
charming, just about through the college stage. We met her
again in 1977, and were in her home again in a different suburb
of Paris — she's a lovely person.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. I guess. Dr. Mathias and I
were continuing our work on South American umbels primarily.
After I went to South America in 1954 my attention turned more
and more in that direction. This particular paper, published in
"62, is a revision of Asteriscium and related genera. I started
out to revise one genus and wound up revising five of them; one
thing led to another.

Here is a treatment of the family for the Flora of Peru,
1962, so you see we were kind of expanding our range.

Were these outgrowths of your sabbatical year?

310

Constance: To some extent. I looked at a lot of stuff down there and got
more and more interested. I mentioned the first Andean genus
that Mildred and I worked on together was Niphogeton. This
paper we published in 1962 was "The Andean Genus Niphogeton
Revisited," because more material had turned up. and we
described in it species from Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia. As
you'll see, that genus has haunted us to some extent. Then we
published a revision of the genus Bowlesia in 1965, which is
again South American. It's in a particularly nice form because
I had the services of a very good Finnish botanical artist,
Reino Alava, who did this on the side, so to speak.

Lage: You're usually responsible for getting your artwork?

Constance: That's the only way you get it.
Lage: And who do you go to?

Constance: It depends. We have a part-time herbarium artist, but she's
hopelessly swamped, so over the years I've sort of fended for
myself, one person at a time, if I had a little grant money,
which I usually didn't. Or I use the departmental artist when I
can get her time, which is not always easy, unfortunately.

Describing the Shipwrecked Sailor. Naufraga balearica

One botanical coup, I suppose, is the genus Naufraga. which
means "a shipwrecked sailor." It makes a nice match for the
genus Saxif raga which means a "rock-breaker," actually. At all
events, one of my umbel friends is John F. M. Cannon, who is the
Keeper of Plants at the British Museum of Natural History. He
works on Umbelliferae and on other families, particularly on
African ones.

The Europeans, a few years ago, set out to do a complete
flora of Europe, Flora Europaea, with international committees
on both sides of the "iron curtain". It was really sparked by
the English. They have carried the whole thing and completed
it. They didn't attempt to work exhaustively with each group,
but tried to get the latest, best treatment of each and
correlate them. A lot of different people had their hands in
the pie. John Cannon was responsible for dealing with much of
the part on Umbelliferae.

He wrote sometime in the sixties, saying that as they got
down to the bottom of the barrel, as people were looking at
everything in European herbaria, they had found this rather

311

Constance: strange little plant which nobody recognized. They knew it was
an umbel, and he thought possibly it was an American thing that
might somehow have wandered into Europe: Would I think about
it?

Lage:

He wrote me a little description of it. and I wrote back
and said I couldn't recognize the plant description, and how
about sending me a piece? So he sent me a piece, and I
dissected it and had an illustration made. I wrote back to say
that so far as I could see, it was an undescribed species of an
undescribed genus. It's from the Balearic Islands and has its
nearest relationships probably in Tierra del Fuego and Tasmania.

Since they were having periodic meetings of the committees
in charge of the project, he took this information to the next
meeting. Then he wrote that the committee says: "Since you've
figured this out, why don't you do something about it?" So I
wrote it up as a new genus and a new species, Naufraga balearica,
from Mallorca, put him down as junior author, and sent it back.
It was published, and as far as I'm aware it is the only really
new genus of higher plants that turned up in the four-volume
Flora Europaea.

When I was in France in 1977, Professor Heywood of the
University of Reading introduced me to some Spanish friends — or
vice versa — and said, "I know that in the States you're known
for other things, but over here you have only one claim to
fame — you're the author of Naufraga." So that was really fun.

Then many people tried to find the living plant,
unsuccessfully. It turns out that there is a big limestone rock
on Mallorca, right at one of the places where most of the ships
land. European botanists have been taking their students down
there on summer and spring vacations for the last hundred years
or so. It's strange that no one other than one Belgian plant
ecologist stumbled across it. Apparently it grows in little
crevices in the rock; it blooms very early and then dries up
completely, so there's nothing left to be found.

Is the idea that it was brought here from Tierra del Fuego, or
somewhere?

Constance: Nobody knows. That's where its evolutionary predecessors live.
John Cannon claims that somebody thinks they have found it in
Corsica, but I don't know; we have been unable to confirm that.

Several years later a couple of English amateurs did turn
it up — it was growing at Kew [The Royal Botanical Garden,
London], and I got some plants. I grew it here and obtained a
chromosome count.

312

Lage:

Constance :
Lage:

Constance :
Lage:
Constance :

And the original idea that it's a new species, and a new genus-

Nobody's challenged that. I don't think they will.

Then you gave it that name that you described as "shipwrecked"?

Naufraga balearica.

And what does it mean?

"Shipwrecked sailor." You see. it's a long ways from home.

Right. That's a good name.

I thought it was kind of cute.

Looking for Perideridia with Student Chuang from Taiwan

In 1960 I had a letter from Taiwan from a Mr. Tsan-Iang Chuang.
asking for reprints of The Umbelliferae of Japan, the revision
of Oreomyrrhis, and so on. He came as a research assistant and
graduate student in 1962. He was planning to come a year before
that, but he was in the Taiwanese army, in the force defending
the little islands which the Chinese mainland forces were bom
barding periodically and were threatening to take. He actually
made a herbarium between cannon shots while he was there.

I gave him a California problem to work on, the genus
Perideridia. We used to joke about this, that he would do his
thesis on a genus whose name he could never pronounce — neither
could anybody else. These are the so-called California
caraways. They turned out to be quite interesting. He's a good
cytologist, so he had a lot of information on cytology, but he
had trouble finding material. A lot of these things had been
known to appear in the Pacific Northwest, and he wasn't able to
find anything north of California. His explanation for this,
after taking a couple of trips, was that the cows had eaten them
all. I didn't take this very seriously, but I was away in 1963,
so that I didn't share his first year of really working on the
problem. So I said I would spend a summer working with him and
that we would go up to Oregon and Washington and find them.

We did. We went first to KLamath Falls, on the east side
of the Cascades, and then went across the Cascades. I could see
what his problem was as soon as we got down to the Willamette
Valley. In late spring and early summer the whole lowlands are

Constance :

Lage:

Constance ;

Lage:

313

simply covered with wild carrot, Daucus carota. a weedy form,
and trying to find another white-flowered umbel in this sea of
carrot flowers was really quite daunting. I thought about this
before we started looking seriously. I remembered a place near
the town of Albany where there were swales along the road that
dried up and thought that this might be a likely place.

So we went there and must have spent two or three hours
looking without finding them — all we found were carrots all over
the place. Just as we were about to leave, I thought I'd take
one last look. There was a little enclosure, where some concrete
blocks had been thrown from work on bridge abutments, with a
barbed-wire fence around it. I thought the plants inside the
enclosure looked a little bit different, so I climbed the fence.

Over the barbed-wire fence?

Over the barbed-wire fence. And sure enough, there were the
plants, Perideridia oregana, that we were looking for. After
that we managed to find species of the genus in a number of
places. I worked extensively with him in revising his thesis,
and we published it together in 1969. He stayed in this country
and is now at Illinois State University at Normal-Bloomington,
Illinois. He acts as my chromosome counter and has replaced Dr.
Bell as the one who co-authors the series on chromosome number.

And he did get his doctorate?

Constance: He did get his doctorate. He's a full professor, or associate
professor — I'm not sure which.

More Publications. More International Connections

Constance: Some good things come in big packages; this a Manual of Vascular
Plants of Texas, published in 1970. Dr. Mathias and I did the
treatment of Umbelliferae for that.

Another foreign influence was Dr. Hans Froebe. He wrote me
from the Botanische Institut of the University of Mainz in 1963.
He was a graduate student working under the direction of the
distinguished German plant morphologist Wilhelm Troll. What
Froebe was interested in was the way the flowers of certain
Umbelliferae are arranged in a so-called inflorescence pattern,
how the flowers are borne. He attempts to interpret this in
evolutionary terms. It gets pretty complicated and rather
f ancy .

314

Constance: The two groups in which he was particularly interested were

Sanicula. which I've mentioned earlier, and the genus Eryngium
and then some other things that are related to both of them. In
these the flowers, are arranged in heads rather than umbels. He
wanted material; I was able to supply some. Then he arranged to
come and work in Berkeley for a few weeks in the spring of 1971.
In 1979 he published a monograph on the inflorescences, that is,
the floral arrangement in another group (Hydrocotyloideae) of
Umbelliferae. As you can see this is fairly complicated stuff.
Some of the diagrams, which are partly philosophical, partly
realistic, are really quite elegant. [holds up an illustration]
This is a sample extraoolation of some of his stuff.

Lage: Abstract in appearance.

Constancp: That's right. In 1970, a little before, I was approached by
Professor [V. H.] Hey wood of the University of Reading in
England, who had participated in the International Botanical
Congress in Edinburgh in 1964, which we had both attended. The
Scotch arranged to have several day-long symposia each devoted
to a particular plant family. They used the botanical garden
and herbarium as sources of representative material, and the"
had people come in and talk about various aspects of each of
these families. Thus, there would be a day devoted to a single
family. We thought it would be nice to take this idea and
extend it, to have an international symposium on a family, with
somebody talking about the cytology, somebody about the
biochemistry, and so on.

He became interested in Umbelliferae I think primarily
because he was involved in what has become known as scanning
electron microscopy. This is a mode of magnification which
enables you to see things that you can't see with an ordinary
light microscope. The scanning electron microscope gives you
surface features. I think he was casting around for some
suitable plant material, and he hit on the spiny fruits of the
things like carrots, and so on. which are covered with all sorts
of fancy prickles, tubercles, and so on. From that — mavbe not
solely from that — he became interested in the family
Umbelliferae.

To some extent we co-hosted this conference, which was held
in Reading, as the list of contributors probably indicates.
Note the names of Ritchie Bell, John Dawson, Rafael Rodriguez,
Madame Cerceau-Larrival, et al. I had the initial historical
paper, followed by John Dawson (I actually read his paper), Hans
Froebe, Mildred Mathias, and others.

Lage:

The ones we've been talking about right now.

315

Constance: That's right. So they almost all got into the picture in one
way or another. This very nice volume, on Th e B iol ogy and
Chemistry of the Umbelliferae resulted from the conference.

The French members of the conference thought it would be a
nice idea if we would adjourn the conference in Reading and move
over to Paris for another conference, but that had to be delayed
for another few years, as I'll indicate in a moment.

Here's the treatment of Umbelliferae for the Flora de
Venezuela. Increasingly, as we went along, I probably took a
larger and larger chunk of our joint responsibility, but Dr.
Mathias was largely responsible for this one. Here's a little
revision of the genus Huanaca, which is Patagonian, but with
relatives in Tasmania, which was a result of my being in
Patagonia in 1967. It was published in an Argentinian journal.

Here's a treatment of Umbelliferae in an illustrated flora
for the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. They're doing a whole
series, which is that [on the bookshelf], and I've got more of
them but haven't room to put them up. This got us over into the
Atlantic part of Brazil.

Lage: You contributed the Umbelliferae?

Constance: That one has three authors. The third author is the one who

translated it into Portuguese. Then here's another paper that
Dr. Mathias and I did, one of the last we did together, on a
number of Mexican things, particularly those that had been
accumulated at the University of Michigan.

Umbelliferae of India, Mukherjee. and Vanasushava

Another foreign correspondent is Prasanta K. Mukherjee, who is a
reader in botany in Calcutta University. He wrote me in
January, 1968, to say he was taking up the study of Indian
Umbelliferae, and he asked for reprints and bibliography. In
fact, he asked for so much stuff that when I xeroxed it, it must
have been $100 worth or something of that sort. He made the
same request to the British Museum, but I think the English tend
to dismiss Indian requests sort of out-of-hand.

But I happened to have some funds available in my research
fund which I was not going to use, so I thought well, okay, I'll
do it. Later I had a letter asking if I would read his doctoral
thesis. Here's his doctoral thesis, "Taxonomic Studies on
Indian Umbelliferae" 1972, submitted for the degree of doctor of
philosophy.

316

Lage: At what university?

Constance: At Calcutta University. The general feeling among most American
academics is that .there are few worse things in the world than
Indian theses; they cringe at being asked to read them and
usually refuse. However, I was impressed by what he seemed he
know, and when I read it I was even more impressed. To some
extent it's Indian English, and it was short on literature.
There were some niceties, really, that weren't observed, but he
obviously had learned a great deal. This was important, because
the last treatment of Indian Umbelliferae of any extent was in
the Flora of British India, by Joseph Dal ton Hooker. That
treatment of Umbelliferae, published in 1879, was by C. B.
dark. It's now over a hundred years old, and almost anything
would be bound to be better than that, simply for the rate at
which scientific knowledge grows.

At any rate, he said he had no chance of getting it
published in India. I played with the idea of trying to see if
I could get it published through blocked funds — the so-called
public law 480, if I remember correctly. There are funds in
India, as in many other countries, where relief supplies were
sent during the war and sold. The funds can be used for
cooperative educational projects and some other things. In
other words, an American scientist could go to India and live
off them, and so on. I'm not quite sure what they're doing now,
but at any rate they're administered by the Smithsonian
Institution. With the help of one of the people at the
Smithsonian I finally got the Smithsonian to agree to arrange
for publication of his thesis manuscript, with the stipulation
that I edit it. I am still editing it.

Lage: Oh, it's not finished.

Constance: No.

Lage: Is the money tied up, so that you can use it, when you do finish

the editing?

Constance: I hope so. I'm not absolutely sure of that, but I really don't
know. They certainly have been carrying it along. At any rate,
we've been working at it separately; it's difficult, because I
have very little material, and he has very little literature.
Most of the early work on botany in India — probably most of any
work done on India — was done in Europe, particularly in England,
through the auspices of the British East India Company. Their
people collected plants, as well as everything else. So most of
the classical herbarium material is in London, or Edinburgh, or
Paris, or Geneva. And trying to get from the stuff that was
published to what they actually had is really very difficult.

3 17

Constance: At all events we have been working away and still are. We have
now gotten out three small papers. This illustrates the kind of
thing you run into. This particular umbel was described 130
years ago. as I said in '74. It was clearly put in all the
wrong places. For over a hundred years people were saying: "It
probably doesn't belong in the genus in which we have it, but we
don't know any better place to put it." So they kept it there
until we took it out. I managed to concoct a semi-Sanskrit name
for it. Var.asushava, which, according to my Sanskrit scholar is
a slightly bowdlerized version of "forest" and "caraway", which
is another common umbel.

That little genus Vanasushava became intriguing, because we
took it out of the large, primarily Asian genus Heracleum — .
There's a native Heracleum here called cow parsley that grows
six feet tall, which you may recognize. People who recognize
umbels at all would probably recognize that one. This
publication was rather an innocent act, something that needed to
be done in trying to organize the material. But there was a
group of people in France who had organized a sort of multiple-
approach to problems of systematics and evolution. They hit on
a so-called pluri-disciplinary approach, and they selected our
Vanasushava as a kind of guinea pig. They wanted to see,
basically, whether if you applied morphological information,
chemical information, or whatever, you could demonstrate
conclusively whether we were right or wrong in' taking this plant
out of the genus Heracleum and setting up a new genus for it.

I received a letter from Perpignan, from one of the French
people who attended the Reading conference in 1970. saying that
they were going to have a conference, and they would like to
have me attend. This was to be held in 1977. I wrote back and
said that I had just retired, that I was an old and penniless
emeritus professor, and that my chances of going anywhere to
attend anything were, shall we say, not the best. I really
forgot about it. About six months later I received a letter
saying that they'd like very much to have me come, that the
National Research Council — or whatever the French equivalent
is — would be delighted to pay my airfare from Los Angeles to
Perpignan and return, and that they hoped I would reconsider.

I really wanted to take my wife, and this bothered me,
because I couldn't ask them to pay for her and, clearly, if I
could pay for her, then I could have paid for myself. So I
discussed this with the late Professor Michel Loeve, a French
mathematician on campus. He predicted: "They will write and
say, we will be delighted to have Madame Constance." He was
right. So I did reconsider, we went together, and we had a most
memorable experience.

318

Constance:

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

The particular excuse for my being there was that one of the
topics was to be the multi-disciplinary examination of
Vanasusnava. Everybody got their hands and toes into it.

How did it hold up?

They all agreed that it was justified, that we were correct in
creating a new genus. But another thing they decided was that
it was most closely related to something that had also been
incorrectly placed in Heracleum. So we were asked to go back
and study that and see what should be done with it. Well, we
did.

Was this another Indian plant?

Constance: Yes. another Indian one. So we described another new genus.

But it wasn't considered the same genus as Vanasushava?

Constance: No, not the same, nowhere near it, as a matter of fact. I don't
think it had any close relation to it.

Lage: You don't think it is its closest relative, after all?

Constance: No, I don't think it had anything to do with it. In doing that,
we discovered two other things that had been tucked in where
they didn't belong either. Then there was something new
collected by Dr. Mukherjee. So we described three other
genera — Pinda. Karnataka, and Kedarnatha. all in '86. These are
things that have grown out of the Mukherjee relationship. Mr.
Mukherjee and I are still trying to finish this thing off.

In the spring of — I think it was — '84, I spoke to Vice-
Chancellor [Watson M,] Laetsch about this project. Laetsch has
good Indian connections, and he suggested I talk to the dean of
the Graduate Division. I did so and was able to get Dr.
Mukherjee over for a few weeks. He was able to go home by way
of London, where he could study material at Kew and the British
Museum. Next month he's visiting my friend Pimenov in Moscow,
because the Russian Academy is cultivating the Indian Academy.
So he got a chance to travel, and I've been strongly encouraging
it.

Lage: When you talk about the attitude towards Indian dissertations,

is this in your field, or in general?

Constance: In general.

Lage: Is it that the universities aren't well- regarded?

319

Constance

Lage:
Ckjr.star.ee

I'm not sure that I can tell you, but my impression is that the
quality of Indian education is extraordinarily spotty. Some of
the work is very good, and at least by western standards, a lot
of it isn't very good. To some extent, I think, it's a master-
colony sort of depreciation, but a lot of it comes from
experience. We've had some very good Indian students here;
we've had some that were not so good. So I think the general
caliber — probably, with the number of people they handle, the
kind of support they've got, and so on, it's amazing they can do
anything. That's what it really comes down to.

Are you happy working with Mukherjee?
Oh, yes, he's a very likeable person.

Ripples From Umbellif erae; South America, Wyoming, Africa, Russia

Lage: I'm getting more impressed with each thing you bring out here.

There are so many connections.

Constance: Well, that's the point. I mentioned the genus Niphogeton.

First we (Mathias and I) published a little revision of this
Andean genus. Then we found more material, so we published a
re-revision, calling it "revisited." Then a Dutch student of
moss ecology went to Colombia and did a fabulous job of getting
around in the paramos. These are the high, above tree-line,
rocky, wet areas, which happen to be a happy hunting ground for
Niphogeton. He started sending stuff to us, and, needless to
say, I encouraged it. We got so much new information that in
1976 we published a third paper on the genus Niphogeton. which
I entitled "A Second Encore."

Lage: Now was this something that Dr. Mathias was working with you on?

You have her down as senior author.

Constance: I carried her. [laughter] She was involved.
Lage: Has she moved on to another family, or — ?

Constance: Oh, she's busy leading treks for University Extension at UCLA.
She loves to go to the Amazon or Central Australia. She has
been head of the major horticultural organizations in the
country. She's published a book on horticultural botany. She's
an amazing person, but she's essentially dropped Umbellif erae.
She dropped it when she retired. In fact, the last time she was
here — a few weeks ago, giving a lecture — she said that she had
handed them off to me.

320

Lage: Which she's been trying to do now for how many years?

Constance: [laughs] That is true, that's a good point.

This is a 1976. this is a treatment of Umbellif erae for the
Flora of Ecuador, which is published in Sweden, They're doing a
whole series. I had a letter from an enthusiastic amateur, whom
I knew nothing about, who has a summer place in western Wyoming.
A rather unusual letter. He said he had a peculiar member of
Umbelliferae which he thought might be a new species. He said
he didn't know what genus it belonged to, and if it were a new
species in a known genus he would like to describe it himself.
If, however, I thought it were a new genus, he would like to
have my help in describing it.

I concluded that indeed it did not fit any known genus,
which is rather surprising for the Rocky Mountains, so we
published an article, "Shoshonea pulvinata, a New Genus and
Species of Umbelliferae from Wyoming," by Evert and Constance,
1982. These are all little things that keep coming to me from
one place or another, in one way or another. It is a little
like throwing a rock into a pool, the waves keep spreading — if
you encourage them. Obviously I encouraged them. If I didn't
write letters and left it all to the computer to do, most of
these things wouldn't have happened.

Lage: This network that started so many years ago just keeps building.

Constance: That's right, it keeps going.

The Perpignan conference included, among other people,
Madame Cerceau-Larrival. Dr. Bell was there from North
Carolina; he and I were the only Americans. John Dawson wasn't
there, but I read his paper. And I also got Dr. Mukherjee into
it; he wasn't there but sent a paper, later published.
Professor Heywood was there. Again, it was a gathering of
students of Umbelliferae from all over the world.

Constance: A number of years ago I had, among a lot of undergraduates, a
girl named Jean Pawek, who I think as an undergraduate was
probably a botany major. She and her husband went to east
Africa as science teachers in a Catholic mission — Jean and
William Pawek. Somehow I learned that she was collecting plants
from time to time; I think that perhaps the botanical garden was
getting a little material, seeds primarily. She was sending
specimens occasionally to Kew, which was naming them for her.

321

Constance: I wrote her and told her what my interests were, and said we
really hadn't collected much material from Africa and that we
would be very happy if we could get hold of some. She not only
collected material' for us, but she even collected buds so we
could get chromosome counts. I got help from some other people,
and eventually put together in 1982 with Dr. Chuang a paper on
chromosome numbers of Umbelliferae from Africa south of the
Sahara, which is my sole African sortie.

Lage: Are there other people who have described African Umbelliferae?

Constance: Well, there are people working on African Umbelliferae, viz Dr.
Cannon, but this was the first accumulation of chromosome
numbers of any significance.

Let's see, in 1968 I had a letter from Michael G. Pimenov,
who was then in the laboratory of crude drugs and has for a
number of years now been at the botanical garden at the State
University of Moscow. He was interested in obtaining reprints.
He works on Umbelliferae, principally those of Central Asia, and
publishes very, very vigorously. At times I wonder if there
could be possibly that many Umbelliferae in Central Asia, but I
think his work is good, excepting that I don't really read
Russian, so I have to go by the illustrations, the scientific
names — which are in Latin — and an occasional English abstract.

I met him at the Leningrad Congress, in 1975. These
international botanical congresses are held at about five-year
intervals. I really didn't expect to attend the one at
Leningrad, but I received a letter saying that I had been
appointed an honorary vice-president of the congress, and I
think it went on to say that in order to get this, of course,
you're going to have to show up.

One of my friends is professor Kenneth Thimann, who was
head of one of the colleges at the University of California,
Santa Cruz. Ken is a very distinguished plant physiologist, and
he had been president of the International Botanical Congress
preceding this one. which was held in Seattle.

I think he called me up about something else, but he asked
me if I were going. I said, "I can't imagine it." After all,
this was after I had retired, or was about at the point of
retirement, and I didn't plan to go anywhere. I said, "If there
were twenty-five Americans invited I would feel some obligation
to go," and he replied, "So far as I know, you and I are the
only ones." I started thinking about it, and one of my graduate
students at the time was talking about going* so we thought

322

Constance: maybe we'd go together. He was slow about getting his

permission to get in and got disgusted and withdrew, and I just

about did too.
w ith vou."

Then my wife amazed me by saying, "Well, I'll

So we went, and we've never regretted it. It was a
wonderful experience. At one point there was some sort of a
session which Heywood was trying to get Mildred Mathias to
preside over. She had a number of other things on her mind, so
I was drafted. The session was at least partially devoted to
Umbellif erae. The interesting thing was that in that room were
all six of the Russians that I had corresponded with over the
years. I had never met any of them. It was old-home week.

Lage : Were they enthused about meeting you?

Constance: Oh, yes. Several of them spoke English, some didn't, but they
couldn't have been nicer, or friendlier. One of the people to
whom I was particularly attracted was Michael Pimenov, whom I
have mentioned before. He even went home and got his wife to
come back and meet my wife and myself.

One of the things I've always very carefully avoided in my
career as a taxonomist is getting embroiled in nomenclature,
which is highly legalistic and involves all sorts of library
work. Pimenov got the idea that it would be nice if we together
did a paper on the internal nomenclature of Umbellif erae. I
didn't particularly want to do it, but I like him, and in the
interest of international good will I said, "Okay, I'll try it."
He sent a long, multi-page opus; I had to check everything
fifteen ways and squeeze a lot of the juice out of it.

Then I called up one of my friends at the Smithsonian
Institution, who's active in this sort of thing. I said I
couldn't really believe anybody would publish this stuff. He
referred me to one of his colleagues, who's very much interested
in it, and as a result they published this paper: "Nomenclature
of the Suprageneric Taxa in Umbellif erae/Apiaceae."

Lage: I'm not sure what you mean by nomenclature.

Constance: Just names. There's a whole legal structure of biological

nomenclature. In order for a plant to get into the literature
you have to go through this business of writing a description of
it, giving it a name. The names have to meet certain
requirements. You have to designate a type specimen, and so on.
Over the several hundred years that the Umbelliferae have been
around, various people in various places have been using
different names for different categories, in different ways.

323

Constance: You have to get all these usages ironed out and be sure that a
particular name has priority in this particular status--tribe,
subtribe, sections, and so on. So, at any rate, we got that all
together.

The final publication I have is by Muhammad Yusuf Sheikh,
who wrote from the University of Baghdad in 1968 saying he would
like to come and do graduate work with me. I was brought to his
attention by someone who was teaching with him there, who was a
graduate student of mine, although he didn't work in umbels. He
was an Indian. So it's rather interesting that a Christian
Indian recommended a Moslem Pakistani. He came and did a thesis
on Eryngium in California. Unfortunately I've not been able to
get him to do more than to describe three new species from
California. The first one of which, of course, is Eryngium
constancei, the second one is E. mathiasiae. These are plants
that grow in and around vernal pools in the valley.

That probably isn't all the ripples from Utnbellif erae. I
suppose I should wind it up by saying that I'm still working on
the umbels of India. I'm supposed to be doing umbels for Flora
Neotropica, which I don't expect ever to finish. I'm also
working on them for the Flora de Colombia, and the EL o£a dei
Veracruz. I have a manuscript or. umbels for a flora of
Nicaragua. There are several other things in press or waiting
to be dealt with. So that is my "pursuit of parsley," or vice-
versa.

I should say that not all of my students have worked on
Utnbellif erae, and mostly I've not encouraged them to. I like
them to work on their own things.

Lage: But there seems to be so much in Umbellif erae.

Constance: Well, the thing is that if you become a specialist on a group,
you know where the problems are. So it's easy enough for me to
say that this could be an interesting project. I have a lot of
Umbelliferae around I couldn't get anyone to work on. Also,
when I became dean, the chancellor gave me a research assistant.
I used the research assistantship to bring, among others.
Daw son, Chuang, and Sheikh. I had four or five graduate
students, and since their job was not only to be graduate
students but to serve as my research assistants, it was easy to
work them into things. Daw son wanted to work in umbels when he
came, and Chuang insisted on working on them, I guess because I
was doing it. So, that's that particular slice of life.

324

XX FURTHER UNIVERSITY RESPONSIBILITIES AND PROFESSIONAL
AFFILIATIONS. 1963-PRESENT

[Interview 11: May 8, 1986] ##

The History and Function of Herbaria

Lage: Let's start with the herbarium.

Constance: I think to explain about herbaria to people who are not familiar
with them I should enumerate the ways of studying plants. To
find out what plants there are. how they can be grouped together
so that you can talk about them to other people, and for almost
all other kinds of purposes, there are really three major ways
of studying them. First, studying them in the field, where
they're growing naturally; but. obviously, access to all the
plants in the field is restricted because of geographic
constraints, by the very numbers, and by the fact that they're
available only in certain seasons, in certain stages. This
means that that is not completely satisfactory.

Second, and one of the obvious ways to get away from that
problem, is cultivation. The third one, really, is to study
preserved materials, one way or another. All three have been
used since time immemorial. The story supposedly is that
Aristotle had a garden in the middle of Athens, and his student,
Theophrastus. who presumably is the originator of the study of
plants, was given the garden as a place to live. So he lived in
the garden in Athens and studied plants and wrote books about
them.

Botanical gardens are usually traced back to Padua, in
about the sixteenth century. Herbaria are almost coextensive
with botanical gardens. Specimens that are properly prepared
and protected are essentially permanent. However, they are
subject to such hazards as fire, insect attack, and so on. We
still have the herbarium--"we," that is, the botanical
community--the Linnean Herbarium, of the famous Swedish botanist
Linnaeus, or von Linne, or whatever you want to call him.

FAR AFIELD

Upper Left: Sally and Lincoln Constance,
Hawaii, 1979

Photograph by Sherwin Carlquist

Lower right: Collecting in Tierra Del Fuego,
1967

325

Constance: (His name was used in various forms.) The Linnean Society of

London preserves that; it dates from the eighteenth century, and
there are even older specimens still in existence.

Lage: And the specimens are still in good shape?

Constance: That's right. Well, they're there; they can still be used, and
they are still used as a basis of finding out what kinds of
plants people were talking about in earlier times. I suppose
that that is really the most basic use of an herbarium. A
description is fine, but the earlier descriptions were very
patchy. Botanists were very careless about the locations where
their material grew. If you think about it, as long as one
believed in special creation of each species, it presumably
didn't matter much where they came from. Because if you had one
specimen of one species, it was representative of that species.
Presumably all the representatives would be just the same, so
what difference did it make where it came from?

It's interesting that even such able botanists as Joseph
Hooker and George Bentham at Kew — Hooker particularly, I
think — used to take specimens that came in from collectors
working in northwestern America, for instance — and probably
everywhere else as well — and simply discarded the information
about the plants that the collectors had recorded — the places
where they got them — and simply wrote "Northwest America."
David Douglas, for instance, was one of the famous plant
collectors on the Pacific Coast and in Hawaii, where he died.
He kept a journal and often gave a very full description of
everything he collected, including Indian uses, and so on.

A few of those are still preserved in the British Museum of
Natural History, and presumably a good many more at Oxford, al
though I have not seen the latter. There, if you turn over the
sheets on which the preserved material is mounted, you may find
a whole paragraph about the plant, often including Indian names.
It's tragic that so much of that information was simply thrown
away. They didn't recognize as we do now that species consist
of a tremendous number of individuals which vary in many different
ways because of their genetic make-up, environment, and so on.

The standard mode of preserving specimens of flowering
plants is to dry them and then usually to mount them on sheets
of cardboard, which are almost standard. That is, many
countries use the same size, which is handy for manufacturers of
herbarium cases, but unfortunately some don't. Thus Kew has
little ones, Vienna and Stockholm have big ones, etc.

At all events, the herbarium of the University of California
at Berkeley, like the botanical garden, has existed almost from
the time the first instruction in botany occurred here, in the

326

Constance: 1870s. However, there are very few specimens from that early
date, because it was the custom that whenever a botanist moved,
he took his herbarium with him. His herbarium was his personal
possession and his stock-in-trade.

There were echos of this when Professor Jepson, who was the
prime plant taxonomist for fifty years or more in this
university, died. He willed his herbarium, as well as his
library and house, to the University, but with certain
stipulations, and presumably if the University had not agreed to
the stipulations, his herbarium would have gone elsewhere. He
would probably have liked it to go to Kew, but I'm not sure that
Kew was really that much interested in it.

Lage: Tell me what Kew is.

Constance: Kew is the Royal Botanical Garden in London. It started out as
the king's garden — or was it the queen's? — and became one of the
great botanical centers of the world, which it still is. It's
quite a sightseeing place on the lower Thames. Just down river
from London. It's a gorgeous place, and when you go to Britain
you should by all means see it. At any time of year it's
interesting.

When I was appointed to the Botany staff, one of the
stipulations of my appointment was that I would not maintain a
private herbarium. I remember that the department chairman
apologized to me for this and said that the University simply
did not want another situation to arise like that of Jepson's.
I said that was certainly fine with me. I had no intention of
maintaining one, and I took the view that when you are appointed
to an institution, that institution becomes the repository of
your materials when you're no longer using them. I devoted any
collecting I did to building up the University's collections.

When I came to the University on the faculty in 1937, I was
immediately given a position in the herbarium, so I participated
in its activities essentially throughout my career here. Dr.
Herbert L. Mason became director of the herbarium in. I believe,
1933, or thereabouts, and he was very happy to let me do what I
wanted to do. He didn't really consult me about management of
the herbarium — it seemed to more or less manage itself, with the
help of some very competent ladies — what positions they held then
I'm not quite sure — associates, assistants? They would now be
research scientists, and various kinds of administrative aides.

327

Directing the University Herbarium in an Era of Retrenchment

Constance: I became director .when Mason retired, and I continued until

within a year of my own retirement [1963-1975], I didn't devote
much time to it until I retired as vice chancellor. My
directorship was basically undistinguished. When the Department
of Botany moved into the Life Sciences Building in 1930, for the
first time in a long time all parts of the department were
brought together in a single building. The University Herbarium
had been housed in the Hearst Mining Building. It was brought
into the new Life Sciences Building in specially prepared
quarters built like the library stacks — and actually quite close
to them — in which there were nine floors in a five-story
building.

The actual herbarium or plant collections filled only about
half of those nine floors to begin with, but by the time of my
directorship, we had completed filling the whole bunch.

Lage: How did you handle that, as far as expansion?

Constance: We couldn't expand. We had no possibility of expansion, because
we couldn't get support from outside for construction.

Lage: Did you attempt to?

Constance: Oh, we did a lot of talking.
Lage: With the University?

Constance: With the National Science Foundation, and so on. I did get the
National Science Foundation to put in all the herbarium cases we
could accomodate. During my regime we filled up the last free
space. We had used the seventh level for graduate students up
to that point, and at that point we filled that and all the
other nooks and crannys insofar as we could with cases. There
simply was no visible possibility of expansion, because the
University was, shall we say, not in a building mode during the
sixties and seventies. I don't imagine the University Herbarium
would have been very high on the list, even if it had been.

Lage: Did you do any lobbying with the University administration?

Constance: Well, I suppose not really. I knew what the situation was, and
it makes it more difficult to lobby if you know what the
University is up against. If you have no idea, if you think the
University's pockets have no bottom, I suppose it's much easier
to demand what you think is needed.

328

Constance: It seemed to me that the only choice was to cut back or. the

input of material, so in essence, I put a stop to bringing in at
least routine material. I think it's fair to say that our
herbarium, like any repository, tends to fill up with repetitive
material unless somebody looks at it from a fairly strongly
selective point of view. Perhaps I was mistaken in doing that
instead of screaming for more space, but, at all events, that's
what I did.

Lage: Did you do any cleaning out?

Constance: Well, you can't do very much. The best thing you can do is
exercise birth control. It's very, very hard; it's like
abortion and birth control. There's much less quarrel about
birth control than about abortion. When you have material in a
repository which has been generally available for a long time,
the moment you start to discard something, you may discover that
it has been the basis of somebody's research.

One of the nuclei on which the University Herbarium was
built was a series of duplicate specimens collected in the
course of the geological survey of California, mostly done in
the 1860s. I remember a number of years ago one of the graduate
students brought in some specimens to the lady in charge of the
herbarium, Ethel Crum, and said, "These ought to be thrown out
because they have no data." It turned out that these were part
of the original geological survey specimens, which, of course,
are irreplaceable. They had numbers on them which would lead to
the data. So it's very difficult to discard.

Lage: Did they get thrown out?

Constance: No, they did not get thrown out. When the Boston Museum of

Natural History was turned into a children's hands-on museum, it
had a herbarium, and the late Professor Fernald at Harvard
claimed that he went through the discarded material and
discovered a whole series of irreplaceable "types", which is
very possibly true. So it's very much like a library; in fact,
a herbarium is really a library of plant material.

The collection here at the end of my regime represented
something like a million and a half specimens. It's one of the
largest and most important, certainly in the western United
States. Figures vary; I consider it about the fifth largest in
the country, but you can always get arguments as to which is the
most extensive, the most important, and so on. It's the only
one in the western states in which a student or a staff member
can essentially begin work with a group from any part of the
world.

329

Constance: Now, r.o herbarium is self-sufficient, so there's an intricate
system of loans, exchanges, and so on. Exchanges are where
material is sent to be retained, loans are where it's sent to be
used and returned.' For any serious research to be done, one has
to have that kind of access, the ability to get at much more
extensive material. We can borrow material from essentially any
part of the world, and we essentially lend to any part of the
world. Sometimes we're not very happy about lending it. We had
material burned up in New Guinea, and some was lost during
various wars here and there.

Lage: Do you exercise any discretion based on what type of institution

you are willing to exchange with?

Constance: That's right, we do exercise that kind of discretion. You
usually do not lend to a private investigator; private
investigators usually have to work out an arrangement with an
institution. There are people here, or have been, who are not
directly associated with the University, but for whom the
University acts as an agent in borrowing things.

You mentioned the story on the herbarium in the
"Berkeleyan" [April 30, 1986], and you'll see there that the
present director. Dr. [Thomas] Duncan, has managed to obtain
space in the dark Kerr campus, and so now the herbarium is
divided between the Old World and the New, which is inconvenient
in some ways, because it means that you won't make comparisons
between one hemisphere and another, or you're not likely to, and
you may very well overlook matters of considerable interest.
But it probably is the next best thing to having adequate space,
and presumably in the plan for the biological sciences, the Life
Sciences Building will eventually be gutted and rebuilt, and the
herbarium will all be put back together.

I should live so long. At any rate. I was allowed to keep
my material together.

Lage: Do you keep yours here in your office?

Constance: No, no, it's in the herbarium. I keep a little stuff here that
I'm actively working on. but most of it's in the general
herbarium.

Lage: That would make sense in your case, since you do so much with

plants from around the world.

Constance: Well, the thing is that I dabble in Old World, New World, and so
on. I am working on Indian Umbellif erae, for instance. Of
course that's Old World material, and I need to have it where I
can get at it. So I have been humored in that respect.

330

Constance:

Lage:
Constance :
Lage:
Constance :

I don't knew much more to say about the herbarium. I made some
effort to try to do a small amount of purchasing of material
from areas in which we had very little — notably South America,
where I had good connections. But on the whole mine was an era
of retrenchment. ' Probably regrettably so.

Speaking of my own activities, in relation to these
different ways of working on material, I started growing
material in greenhouses when I was a graduate student and have
continued to do so ever since by utilizing the University
Botanical Garden. In later years, in which I've gotten quite
active, I've served as a back-up manager for the garden from
time to time. My own field work pretty much ended when I took
on administrative responsibility in the mid-fifties. Something
has to go, and if I were to continue to teach and to do
research, as I did, field work — which is more fun — mostly went
out the window.

Except you did go to Patagonia. Was that field work?

I did go to Patagonia. That's right, that was field work.

In 1967-68?

That's right. Of course, I did a lot of field work in the
western United States, starting when I was a child, really, and
on up through college years, with varying degrees of enthusiasm
at different times. Then, when I was at State College of
Washington, my first three years of teaching. I did a great
deal, partly because the herbarium there needed building-up, and
one of the best ways of building it up was to get duplicate
material and send it out as exchange. It also enabled me to
learn the flora while I was doing it. It also was a lot of fun.

Then, when I came down here. I had the task of trying to
learn the California flora, which is very diverse and pretty
complicated. So for the first ten. fifteen years I did a good
deal of that. In 1954 I went to Chile, and did a certain amount
of South American field work, and then I went back in *66-'67,
and did some more. But other than that I've done very little in
recent years. Occasionally I've gone out to one end of the
state or another, for some specific thing, but I've not done
much general field work — which I think in many ways is to be
regretted, because I've worked on plants from a lot of areas in
which I have never seen the plants in the field. And that, in
many ways, is not very satisfactory.

Lage:

About the herbarium again — is there any public service aspect to
the herbarium?

331

Constance: There's a good deal. It consists of everything from routine
casual identification to association with the poison center.
Particularly in the section of the herbarium that deals with
mushrooms and toadstools, they're always busy with public
inquiries, and then there's a great deal of routine inquiries
just from day-to-day. It comes into both the University
Herbarium and the Jepson Herbarium. In recent years, with the
focus on the environment, the steadily increasing interest in
rare and endangered species, and so on. there's a great deal of
it. It comes in all the time.

Lage: A lot of questions that need to be answered.

Constance: That's right. I get it primarily because people have questions
about the two groups of plants that I think I know something
about. It would be a rare week that I don't get a written or
telephoned request, and sometimes you get a great many of them.
So that goes on all the time.

The Managing "Assistants" of the Herbarium;
Walker. Crum. Carter, and Howard

Lage: The other question I have is — you mentioned the lady managers,

and then we have the director, who is a professor.

Constance: That's right.

Lage: What are the different roles there?

Constance: It works various ways, depending upon who's directing, and how
he or she is doing it. I'm not quite sure how many herbarium
directors there have been, because I don't think the title was
really given until it was given to Dr. Mason in the thirties. I
succeeded him, so perhaps I was the second formal director, but
other people were certainly in charge of it before that. As far
as I know, perhaps the earliest one was Harvey Monroe Hall, but
I doubt that he ever had that title.

He was succeeded, I think directly — although I've not
really checked on this — by Nathaniel Gardner, who was an expert
on seaweeds. Then Or. E. B. Copeland, who was an expert on
ferns.

Lage: Does this mean you have a seaweed collection in the herbarium?

Constance: Oh, yes. We have one of the best ones in the world. I can say
a word about that, if you like.

332

Constance: Berkeley has been a center for research on seaweeds — or marine
algae, which is another term for the same thing (this is also
termed phycology) — because that was the field of William
Setchell, who was. the first really formal departmental chairman.
He came in 1894 and remained as chairman until 1934. He picked
up as an associate Nathaniel Gardner, who was teaching high
school I think on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, and brought him
here, and they worked as a team. Gardner was an excellent
technician, although more than that, and Setchell was a
wide-ranging thinker, philosopher, and whatever. And it turned
out to be a very effective team.

So they really built up a school of phycology here, and
then after Setchell's retirement a South African, Dr. George F.
Papenfuss, was appointed and carried on this work. It's
certainly one of the strongest areas of the University
Herbarium, and it has made Berkeley a center for seaweed
research.

Lage: Is it still an active area?

Constance: That's right.

Lage: Do students come here for seaweed research?

Constance: Yes, and there's a lot of interest in the sea and the sea's
resources, so this is bound to have considerable practical
importance; also it's an area of considerable interest.

Lage: We were talking about what the relationship is between the

herbarium directors and the managers, if that's the right term.

Constance: Oh, yes. I think it's fair to say that Mason was particularly
good at finding a skilled, competent, and self-reliant
assistant — again. I'm hesitant about the terms. Actually, the
herbarium to some extent was sustained by the intrastructure,
while directors, to some degree, came and went — which, of
course, is not unheard of in other places as well. In fact the
whole university runs that way, according to some.

I never met Harriet Walker, but apparently she was the
mainstay of the herbarium for many years. I don't know really
with whom she started, but she outlasted several directors, in
my judgement. And then Ethel Crum, who originally was an
assistant of Jepson's, became the manager of the herbarium under
Mason.

333

Constance;

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

When Miss Crum retired, Annetta Carter, who had been an
assistant to her. became the principal person in the herbarium.
She carried on into my regime, but retired before I did. Alice
Howard succeeded her and served during the rest of my regime.

Now, were they responsible for the day-to-day decisions?

They were responsible for almost everything. I don't suppose
any of them would have initiated a brand-new policy of some
sort, but Mason and I and also Dr. Robert Ornduff, who succeeded
me as director, tended to leave the day-to-day operations pretty
much to them in varying degrees. I probably was more involved
than Mason in some aspects of it, and I think Ornduff probably
was less involved than I, because he was also carrying the
directorship of the botanical garden at the same time. He
elected to give up directorship of the herbarium and retain that
of the botanical garden, and Dr. Duncan was appointed to, in
essence, replace me, although we do not make person- to- per son
replacements per se.

Miss Carter is a very remarkable person, who is also a
research scientist on her own. She obtained a master's degree,
and in more recent years has been working on the flora of the
Sierra Giganta in Baja California. She's really become the
department's representative in Mexican botany. She's widely and
favorably known in Mexico, she attends various Mexican
congresses and so on. and has been instrumental in enabling us
to have good relationships south of the border. I guess I can't
go beyond that, really.*

It sounds as if we have a pretty good picture of the herbarium,

then.

Constance: Okay. What else do you want to know?

Lage: You mentioned a little bit about the environmental decade, and

you make reference to it in your book on Botany at Berkeley.**

Constance: Oh, yes. That's right.

*See Annetta Carter interview ir. California Women in Botany,
Regional Oral History Office, 1987. Introduction by Lincoln
Constance.

**Constance, Lincoln.
Years, 1978.

Botany at Berkeley; The First Hundred

334

Teaching during the Environmental Decade

Lage: I wondered what yqur experiences were working with students

during the seventies?

Constance: There's no question that the student and public interest in

environmental things had a considerable impact on the make-up of
the student body in the department, and it certainly pushed up
the enrollment in a very popular course on the flora of
California, which Professor Ornduff really began. I had taught
systematics for a number of years on the semester system, and
when the quarter system was instituted, it more or less
destroyed the course organization that I, and many others, had
built up. I think it was at that time that Professor Ornduff
suggested that we pull apart some components of the course I had
given and make one of them really a non- prerequisite flora of
California course.

Lage: Is that lower-division?

Constance: Yes. It proved to be immensely popular, and he and I gave it
alternately until my retirement.

Lage: Is that Botany 10, by any chance?

Constance: No.

Lage: Was there a Botany 10?

Constance: There was a Botany 10. There still is, I think. That dealt
with all the aspects of botany on a not very deep level. But
this dealt almost entirely with flowering plants, and Ornduff
actually did a little paperback on it, which is very well done.
It was very popular. The number of people in the course
multiplied severalfold, and it was good for the department
because botany's not likely to be a very heavily enrolled
course; it obviously doesn't lead to work in computers,
engineering, or whatever are presumably pots of gold at the end
of the rainbow.

Lage: You taught that course yourself?

Constance: Yes, I taught it a number of times. I taught both that, and, in
later years, a graduate course. The graduate course got to be
more and more historical and philosophical, and whatever. No, I
kept up the teaching of California flora for a number of years,
so that was my continuing contact with undergraduates.

Lage :

Do you like teaching undergraduates, versus graduates?

335

Constance: Well. I think that teaching graduates is more satisfying in many
ways. I enjoy teaching across the board. I think probably I am
a better teacher at the graduate level than at the undergraduate,
althouffh I'm used -to teaching classes of four hundred or so. I
taught originally the first half of the big undergraduate botany
course for something like twelve, thirteen years.

•

Lage: Is that the 1A series?

Constance: Yes. Botany 1A. And I began to feel I was running out of gas on
the thing, and that took me up until almost the time of my
deanship. I think that I used to alternate between teaching
Botany 10 and Botany 1A. and I believe the last time I taught
either of them was p-obably about 1955, which is the same year I
became dean. Maybe it was my year as chairman, in 1954-55, that
I taught it. I think the chairman wrote me in South America and
asked me if I'd be willing to teach Botany 10, and I couldn't
think of a good reason for not doing it, so I said I would. But
I don't believe I taught it again after that.

Organizational Changes in the Research and Teaching
of the Biological Sciences

Lage:

Constance
Lage :
Constance :

Lage:

Since then the many aspects of plant biology have changed so
much that I wouldn't dare to try to teach the elementary course.

What w<->uld be your goal in that kind of elementary course? You
wouldn't assume too many are going on with botany.

No.

Althouah in 1A and IB they must have something in mind.

Yes, it's supposed to provide a basis for anybody who wants to
go on in plant science of one sort or another, but now, of
course, with the molecular approach — molecular, biochemical, and
so on — it's much more complicated. As I say, I wouldn't dare to
talk about aspects of plant physiology that I used to teach.
Fortunately, I don't have to. What they're going to tearh in the
future, I haven't any idea. So far as I can tell, nobody else
does either, but that's something else.

[laughs] Should be interesting. The Berkeley an article
discussed the different types of biology which the herbarium
would be associated with: "the group of integrative,
organismal, ecological, and evolutionary biology." That's
referring to the whole organism?

336

Constance: What they're talking about is that, traditionally, biological

science has been divided into the plant and animal kingdoms, but
even the division into the plant and animal kingdoms isn't as
sacrosanct as it used to be. Now people think maybe there are
anywhere from three to a dozen different kingdoms, really. Some
of them simply dwindled away, disappeared entirely during
evolutionary history, or were so reduced that —

Lage: You mean three kingdoms other than plants and animals?

Constance: Well, there's the question of what are fungi? Are fungi plants?
Maybe so, maybe not. Are algae plants? Maybe they are, maybe
they aren't. Are all algae algae? That's debatable too,
because if you go to a chemical basis for judging, you find
different processes of obtaining energy, producing energy, of
manufacture of nutritional material, and so on. If you take a
strictly chemical view you probably could come up with I don't
know how many — a large number.

At any rate, the old division between plants and animal
isn't what it used to be. But historically most courses in
organisms and living things were organized that way. So what
you did was to discuss the structure, the function, the
physiology, the chemistry, whatever: the organization of
different levels all the way from the cell to the highly
complicated multicellular organisms, within the framework of
animals on the one hand and plants on the other. But everybody
knew that at the unicellular level the distinctions between
plants and animals are so vague that they probably don't really
exist, and that the botanist and the zoologist, to some extent,
study some of the same things as parts of their own kingdom.

Well, because of that, and the fact that it's been
discovered that much of the genetics and chemistry in plants and
animals is very similar, more and more institutions have tended
to combine botany and zoology and make it biology per se. Then,
in more recent times, not only have they done that, but the
modes of study are so different; that is, in much of molecular
biology, which is really the biochemistry of large molecules and
proteins the modes of study are much more like those of the
physical sciences, with very complicated laboratory equipment.

So the tendency has been to slice things the other way:
instead of slicing them vertically between plants and animals,
to slice them other way and study them at the molecular level,
the cellular level, the tissue level, organismic level, and so
on. Much of the information at the genetical level, the
unicellular and cellular level, is almost directly applicable to
matters of medical interest — neurology, and so on. There's a

337

Constance :

Lage:
Constance:

Lage:

Const anc° :
Lage:

Constance ;
Lage :

Constance

tendency to chop off biology at that point, and say that
everything beyond that, that isn't related to people, is of no
importance anyway. And that's where organismic biology is
usually left, nowadays, with system atics and ecology. And it is
very often centered around museums.

That seems to be the trend. Here at the present time, the
herbarium and the sy sterna tics' end of botany may indeed combine
with the comparable aspects of zoology and paleontology into an
organismic organization of some sort. What the rest of the
organization is going to be I don't know — nor do I know what
they're going to teach. There's something to be said for it;
it's been done in many institutions, and obviously biology is so
big you can slice it various ways, if you have to slice it.

It certainly will affect the types of research though. I would

think.

It won't affect the types of research as much as the teaching, I
don't think, because the question is, what are you going to
teach? The whole bio1 ogical reorganization has been set up in
terms of research, as far as I can see. They haven't even
talked about teaching yet. No doubt we'll have a super
committee which will figure out something — I don't know what. I
don't think you will really be able to tell for perhaps twenty
years whether it was good or bad.

That's right. On the other hand, sometimes thinking all this
through can enliven it.

It can, there's no question about that,
about every so often.

It ought to be thought

I had read that system atics was given a boost because of the
environmental concerns about destruction of habitat.

That' s quite right.

More people went into study, and more money was available for
research?

Well, it simply has a wider public than it did. This also goes-
I think, with gardens, that if it's fair to say that scientific
support has tended to be inflated — or at least greatly increased
— at the molecular, biochemical level, this doesn't do much for
the public, at least outside of its medical applications. A few
years ago there was an account in the Daily Californian that
somebody was complaining that students who were interested in

338

Constance :

Lage:
Constance :

Lage:

Constance :

biology were being pressured to go into biochemistry and
molecular biology, when what they really were interested in was
plants and animals. So, you know, you can never satisfy
everyone.

At any rate, the general public is interested in organisms,
and it's rather intriguing that a number of physical scientists
raise orchids, or are expert gardeners, or something of the
sort, but that they consider this recreation, not science.
Whereas, of course, those interested in organismic biology feel
it's just as much science as anything else, and that by
comparison chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology spend all
their time dealing with things that are submicroscopic, or so
simple they're not even interesting.

So there's a bit of tension between those two?

Well, there's no tension, because they have all the support,

since it ties in with medicine. No, it's just a different

concentration of interests. I think chemistry is fine, but I

don't find it very fascinating.

That's why you're not a chemist.

That's why I'm not a chemist,
but that's something else.

I almost became a geologist once,

The Freshman Cluster Program: Antidote to Ar.omie

Lage: Okay. I have a note here on the Freshman Cluster Program — that

was after you retired?

Constance: That is true. The Freshman Cluster Program was devised in the
College of Letters and Science. In every agency in the
University that's involved with undergraduate students — at
Berkeley, at any rate — there's always concern, although the
students, I take it, wouldn't believe it, for trying to
alleviate the sense of anomie, or whatever it is, that students
tend to feel here. Because Berkeley is a big place a student
has to be fairly sophisticated to simply move into it and take
advantage of its opportunities. I know when I came here as a
graduate student I was pretty much lost for a year or two.

Many students who come here, who have the capacity to do
well, don't, to some degree because they're lonesome and
homesick and don't find anything to identify with, or find their
own things to identify with. It really affects their work
negatively. Some students, who are self-contained and

339

Constance: self-directed, will sail through very nicely. There's no

question that for a student who has the capacity and knows what
he wants to do. Berkeley's perfect. But for many students it's
not; i t1 s a very d-ismal place to be.

So what do you do? Well, one of the obvious solutions — any
committee, of course, will decide that advising should be
improved. So one is always improving advising. I mentioned
that when I became dean, the committee on Letters and Science
had recommended that every faculty member become a student
advisor, and I carried that through as well as I could. But,
like any system, that one goes for about so long, until people
figure out how to beat it.

So that was allowed pretty much to decline, until someone
came up with the idea for what became the freshman cluster
program. Many people I'm sure have had the same idea; there was
something that was in vogue when I came here as an assistant
professor. You gather together somehow a group of new students,
or old students, and put them in touch with an advisor who has
similar interests. And you do various things to try to encourage
interrelationships, so they feel easy with each other, so that
the new student is able to get special attention. He feels that
somebody knows him; he has access to some kind of advice.

The whole mechanism of setting up an ombudsman, not only in
universities and on this campus, but in public life in general.
is pretty much that same idea. Any institution becomes
bureaucratized to some extent, and you wouldn't have the
lobbyists in Washington, probably, if it were so easy to get the
right kind of attention when you need it. But instead you have
a very elaborate system of influence peddlers who are doing the
same thing: they're enabling people to find their way through
the machinery. And a lot of the complaint about the University
from the students, in the sixties at least, was that the
machinery was more or less impenetrable, or at least they
couldn't get what they wanted.

So the cluster program was one of these devices for getting
a faculty member to take under his or her wing a group of
students with ostensibly similar interests. I think the first
faculty director — this was set up in the College of Letters and
Science — was Walter Horn, in History of Art. He is a very fine
and distinguished scholar, and a very warm person, and he
successfully acted as director of it for several years. The
director's job was primarily to induce faculty members to take
on responsibility. Shortly after I retired, it occurred to the
college that I wasn't doing enough to keep me busy, so they
induced me to take it on, and I did it for several years, so
long as the program continued.

340

Constance: The results were pretty much what you would expect — that with
the right people and the right chemistry, it works just fine.

Lage: The right chemistry?

Constance: Between the faculty member and the students. Some of these were
highly successful, and a lot of them — Well, let's put it this
way: one of the things that quite often happens is that the
faculty member would decide to get his group together and would
arrange, say, for a barbecue, or a restaurant meal, or
something, and two of his twenty people would show up. That was
fairly common. Part of it was the difficulty of newly arrived
students on campus in finding where they were supposed to be.
Simply failure to make connections.

Part of it was — well, it's another story--but the students
will tell you that they go to their faculty advisor's, student
hours, and he isn't there. The faculty member will tell you
that he kept his student hours religiously for the first two
months, and no students ever showed up until after the first
midterm. So it's trying to overcome those natural reactions in
the college community.

Lage: There must be certain sense of awkwardness, between this young

freshman and —

Constance: Well, yes, that is part of the problem. Some of the students

want absolutely nothing to with any advice whatever. They feel
it's an assault on their manhood or womanhood; others want it
and are afraid to ask; and the ones who don't need it usually
get it.

Lage: Usually they're the ones who come in and know how to discuss

things.

Constance: That's right. It's a very difficult problem, and I'm sure every
college and university struggles with this. The larger the
institution, the more it's a problem. In small colleges I
suppose that very often the problem is the other way around:
there's so much togetherness that nobody gets anything done. I
remember talking to someone who came here from Oberlin, and I
said, "It must be very nice to be able to work so closely with a
small number of students." He said, 'Veil, it's nice for the
students when they think nothing of calling you up at two
o'clock in the morning and telling you the details of their love
life, and that gets rather tiresome."

Lage:

[laughs] Two extremes.

341

Constance: Nothing's perfect. At any rate, I enjoyed the college cluster
thing.

Lage: Did you mainly get students together as a group, or would they

come in — ?

Constance: Well, mostly it was getting faculty members to agree to take

them. I did not get involved with individual groups. I forget
how many groups there were, but let's say there were forty or
fifty or something like that; my job was simply to come up with
faculty advisors, and that wasn't always that easy. Rather
interesting that the most difficult people to get any help from
were, I think, the great research scientists on campus — with the
exception of people like Glenn Seaborg who enjoyed, apparently,
doing this sort of thing. Most of the very hot research people
couldn't be bothered.

In choosing the advisors I worked through the deans and
departmental chairmen. Since at about this time the great
reform of biology was coming along, and they were going to do
away with all antiquated biology and just have, you know, really
very significant biology. So I went to the then dean of
biological sciences, and I said, "Since this is the direction
that biology is going, it seems to me that we probably should
stop selecting the advisors in the Freshman Cluster Program from
people who are interested in plants and animals, and get people
who are interested in the new, revolutionary biological
research. "

He said, "Oh, that is great." I hoped that he would give
me a little help. He gave me some names of people, and I called
up a number of diem, and I found they were all too busy to waste
their time on undergraduates. So not everything works. But I
was very fortunate. My name was still remembered as the former
dean.

Lage: You still knew everyone around the campus.

Constance: No, but they knew my name, and that helped. It was rather fun,
and, as I say, I kept it up until there was a change in the
deanship, and the new dean decided he would handle it a little
differently, and then he left, and it's no longer in existence
as far as I know.

Lage: They're no doubt trying some other method for solving that same

problem.

Constance: The same problem. The problem is still there, and the same and
many other methods will be tried, without a doubt. And to some
extent that's good, as we talked about looking at biology from a
different view. All these attempts have their value, and also

342

Constance: it's a good idea to change every so often, because any system
you set up is going to come unstuck within a few years. It
simply runs down because people see that it is less than
perfect. So they f.eel, 'tyhy should I spend my time on that, when
there are so many other things I ought to be doing?"

But it gave me a nice little chore, gave me contact with the
college, so I stayed with it for several years.

President of the California Academy of Sciences:
Broa de ni ng the Decision- Making Process

Lage:

Constance :

Lage:

Constance

Lage:
Constance:

We have just a few odds and ends for you to comment on
[referring to interview outline].

Yes. There's one thing on that list, incidentally — I think
somewhere it says something about my being a member of the
Association of the Advancement of Science. One of the things I
learned going through records was that I became a fellow in
1949, which I'd forgotten. I've told you about the Patagonia
project, I think. There is an ongoing Flora of Patagonia, which
is being published in Argentina, under the aegis of what really
amounts to the research arm of the Ministry of Agriculture
(I.N.T.A.). I was invited to come to Argentina and do field
work preparatory to providing a treatment of Umbelliferae for
that. I did that in '66-'67. For various reasons it's been
delayed. Presumably it's on the verge of appearing — I used to
think it was going to be my first postmortem publication, but
with luck it may actually come out soon.

What did the presidency of the California Academy of Sciences
involve? That's more than an honorary position?

Yes. I was also a trustee at the same time; you can't
really differentiate the two. I was active in the California
Academy, really, for about ten years, and served as president
for three, I believe, [trustee, 1969-1985; president. 1975-1978]

»f

Does the president of the academy have a policy-making role?

Yes. Well, the academy really has a dual organization. It is
governed by a board of trustees, with a chairman, which is made
up primarily of city fathers and mothers of San Francisco —
interested, dedicated, contributing citizens — and a few
academics. It has a permanent director. The president of the

343

Constance:

Lage:

Constance:

Lage :

Constance :

Lage:

academy, who is automatically a member of the trustees, is
really the head of the academics. He chairs the Science
Council, which consists of the director, the chairmen of the
departments, plus -the few academic trustees, and now also a
couple of representatives from the Fellows of the Academy, who
are the collective elected members of the academy.

This Science Council really sets the policy for the
research activities of the academy. So it is of some
importance. Any contribution I made, I think, was probably in
the direction of trying to get the Science Council to become a
kind of academic senate. Because, at least when I first became
involved, the departments — the staff — had almost nothing to say
about anything. Nobody asked their opinion, or at least not
very often. And certainly they weren't deeply involved in any
decision-making.

And was it the director who made the decisions?

The director determined essentially everything. With some of my
predecessors and the fellow academic trustees particularly, we
set out to make this a more democratic and responsible
organization. I think that that has worked out very well.

Is that a function of the particular director, or just the
tradition of the organization?

It was the tradition of the organization, and like many of these
things, when one person is in office for a number of years he
tends to follow the pattern of doing it himself and not
particularly welcoming extraneous advice.

The person that really carried it through was the late
Professor Richard Jahr.s, dean of earth sciences at Stanford
University, who succeeded me as president. I didn't start it,
but I pushed it hard, and he pushed it further; I think it has
worked out exceedingly well. There also was a change in
director, and the new director — being new — was a little more
receptive. I think it has considerably strengthened the
academy. So I'll take that much credit, anyway. But I enjoyed
the academy association very much,

Let's see. I think I was trustee for fourteen years and
decided that was long enough, Besides, I wanted to reduce the
age of the trustees. The most obvious way to do that easily was
get people like myself off it. so I declined to stand for
re-election.

It is an elected office?

344

Constance: There is a membership committee, which determine people's wishes
as they go along. It was pretty clear that it was time for me
to step out. Besides they're in a big fundraisir.g mode, and I'm
not able to do very much in that direction. My contributions
were pretty clearly academic. [See "Reflections on Fourteen
Years as a Trustee." Fellows Newsletter 6:7-8, (1986).]

Lage: Did the presidency of the Botanical Society of America [1970]

carry with it certain responsibilities?

Constance: No, most of those national organizations are pretty purely
honorary.

Lage: You make an address.

Constance: You make an address as you go out. You don't have any great

opportunity to do much — at least, I didn't do much. I treated
it as- an honorary office.

A Lasting Influence

Lage: Are there any outstanding graduate students you want to mention?

Constance: I was thinking about that. I had two graduate students at

Washington State, one of whom went on to become one of the most
distinguished people in my field in this country. He's retired
now as Asa Gray professor at Harvard. That's Reed Rollins.

Then, when I came to Berkeley I didn't take any graduate
students for some years. The department was set up in such a
way that my senior colleague. Professor Mason, would normally
have the graduate students, and I would not. unless I either
made an effort to obtain some, or some student expressed a
stubborn wish to work with me. I was perfectly happy working in
conjunction with my colleagues Mason and Foster. I served on
the committees of essentially all the students that came along
in systematics, and there didn't seem to be any particular
necessity for me to carve out a slice of my own — or else I
wasn't very aggressive in doing so.

The first graduate student I had was in 1941; that's four
years after I came here. That was Alan Beetle. I don't know
that there's any particular point in going on through this, but
I have had quite a series of distinguished students, and they
are pretty much all over the country. I think I may have said
earlier that I had four Chinese Ph.D.s, and a Costa Rican one, a
New Zealand one. I think all the others have been American. At
one point I had three former Ph.D.s on the faculty at Harvard!

345

Lage: That does make your influence kind of spread.

Constance: That's right. I think I've been able to influence the direction
of my tiny field t;o some extent. Of course, that's a
satisfaction, and that's probably why I've headed various
societies at one time or another. This August I'm supposed to
go East to receive the Asa Gray Award of the American Society of
Plant Taxonomists; that's probably my final kudo. I suspect.

Lage: You probably said that a couple of years ago.

Constance: I said that a couple of years ago and meant it too. But at any
rate I've been very well treated. I've received as much
recognition in my field as I could hope for. I've stayed
active, by and large, longer than most of my contemporaries, I
think. And I intend to keep on doing so as long as possible.

Lage: From the looks of your office —

Constance: From the looks of the unfinished efforts we have around here, it
is pretty clear that —

Lage: Well, it's a working office. I wasn't commenting on the piles

here.

Constance: I know, but I was. It is a working office, there's no doubt
about that. No, I find it stimulating. It's very pleasant
indeed, and it is a great privilege to be able to continue to
work. People apparently trust me enough to still lend me
specimens and send me inquiries, and I have a lively
correspondence, which is getting out of hand, as usual.

Transcriber: Kate Stephenson
Final typist: Johanna Wolgast

346

TAPE GUIDE — Lincoln Constance

Interview 1: January 23, 1986
tape 1, side A
tape 1, side B
tape 2, side A
tape 2, side B

Interview 2: January 30, 1986
tape 3, side A
tape 3, side B
tape 4, side A
tape 4, side B

Interview 3: February 13, 1986

tape 5
tape 5,

side A
side B

insert from tape 4, side A

tape 6, side A

tape 6, side B

insert from tape 5, side B

insert from tape 9, sides A and B

Interview 4: February 20, 1986
tape 7, side A
tape 7, side B
tape 8, side A
tape 8, side B

Interview 5: February 27, 1986
tape 9, side A
tape 9, side B
insert from tape 12 side A
return to tape 9, side B
tape 10, side A
tape 10, side B
tape 11, side A

Interview 6
tape 12,
tape 12

March 6,
side A
side B

1986

tape 13, side A
tape 13, side- B

1
1

10
21
31

38
38
47
51
52

58
58
68
71
78
85
92
97

102
102

108
119

127

133
133
138
140
145
147
155
164

167
167
170
179
192

347

Interview 7:
Cape 14,
tape 14,

March 13, 1986
side A
side B

tape 15, side A
tape 15, side B

Interview 8:
tape 16.
tape 16,

April 3, 1986
side A
side B

tape 17, side A

tape 17, side B

Interview 9: April 10, 1986

tape 18, side A

tape 18, side B

tape 19, side A

Interview 10: April 29, 1986

tape 20, side A

tape 20, side B

tape 21, side A

tape 21, side B

Interview 11: May 8, 1986

tape 22, side A

tape 22, side B

tape 23, side A

196
196
205

214
225

230
230
240
249
260

268
268
277
288

293
203
302
312
320

324
324
332
342

343

APPENDIX

LINCOLN CONSTANCE
Curriculum Vitae

Born 16 February 1909, Eugene, Oregon
Married Sara Luten, 12 July 1936, one son

Education:

B.A. 1930, University of Oregon (Biology)

M.A. 1932, University of California, Berkeley

Ph. D. 1934, University of California, Berkeley

Employment :

Instructor in Botany, Assistant Professor, State College of Washington,

1934-1937

Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1937-1943
Associate Geobotanist, 1943, Geobotanist, 1943-1944, Research Analyst,

1944-1945, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.
Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1943-1947
Professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1947 to 1976
Visiting Lecturer and Acting Director, Gray Herbarium, Harvard University,

1947-1948
Emeritus Professor, 1976-present

Honors :

Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi

Guggenheim Fellow, 1954-1955

"Certificate of Merit," Botanical Society of America

"Miembre Correspondiente, " Sociedad Argentina de Botanica

Elected to Societe de Biogeographie (Paris)

"Miembro Academico Correspondiente," Academia Chilena de Ciencias

Naturales

Member, Institute Ecuatoriano de Ciencias Naturales (Quito)
Member, Sociedad Botanica de la Libertad (Trujillo, Peru)
Elected Foreign Member, Linnean Society of London, 1969
First Parodi Lecturer, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1967
Invited Symposium Speaker, Xth International Botanical Congress,

Edinburgh

Elected Foreign Member, Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, 1971
Invited Speaker, Symposium on Umbelliferae , University of Reading,

England, 1970
Honorary Vice President, Xllth International Botanical Congress,

Leningrad

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1950
Moses Lecturer, 1978

Fellows Medal, California Academy of Sciences, 1985
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1947
Asa Gray Award, American Society of Plant Taxonomists, 1986

LINCOLN CONSTANCE

Record of Service to the Berkeley Ca-.npus , compiled from Biobibliographical
Supplements (which go back only to 1950-1951); department committees and
promotional committees not included:

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs 1962-1965

Acting Chancellor at various times during this period of extreme

upheaval, including the interlude between Chancellors
Dean, College of Letters & Science 1955-1962; ex officio on many committees

Acting Chancellor for one month
Chairman, Department of Botany 1954-1955
Director, University Herbarium 1963-1975

Curator of Seed Plants, University Herbarium 1943-47 (Asst.), 1947-66 (full)
Trustee, Jepson Herbarium & Library ca. 1960 to date; Chm. ca. 1967 to date
Advisory Committee Systematics Collections for the Berkeley Campus ?-l?73
Regents Professorships & Lectureships Committee 1971-1975, chm. 1973-1975
Search Committee, Dean, College of Natural Resources 1974-1975. chm.
L&S Reading & Composition Cocnittee 7-1975, chm.
Graduate Council Committee on Paleontology 1972-1974
Lowie Museum Advisory Committee 1971-1973, chm.
Life Sciences Building Space Subcommittee 1968-1973
Chancellor's Task Force on Reorganization 1971-1972
Hitchcock Professorship Corjaittee 1958-1963, chm.; 1971-1974
Letters & Science Executive Committee 1968-1971
Representative Assembly, Academic Senate 1971-1972
Committee on International Exchange 1969-1970
Academic Planning Committee 1967-1970
Comittec on Naming of Buildings 197C-1S71
UC-Chile Program, Science Subcommittee 1966-1970
Environmental Health & Safety Committee 1964-1969
UC Press Editorial Committee & various additional advisory capacities extending

back as far as the files go (1950-1951)
UC-Negro Colleges Program 1965-1966

Berkeley Committee on Year-R.ound Operation 1963-1964
Chancellor's Academic Advisory Committee 1956-1964
Chancellor's Advisory Administrative Council 1956-1964
Chancellor's Committee on Television 1961-1963

Advisory Committee for the White Mountain Research Station 1961-1963
Committee on University Affairs 1958-1963
S'.udent Affairs Committee 1958-1963
Advisory Committee to School of Nursing 1958-1963
Student Affairs Committee 1958-1963

Bancroft Library Ccmiittee 1954-1963, chm. 1960-1963
LY.ecutive Coinr.ittee, Associates in Tropical Biogeography 1958-1963
Advisory Committee, Naval Biological Laboratory 1958-1961
Ad hoc Ccm:iittee on Grants & Contract Research 1960-1961
Ad hoc Coui.r.iutce on Berkeley Personnel Office 1960-1961
Ad hoc Coirjnitt'je on Berkeley Registrar's Office 1960-1961
Ad hoc Committee on Late Applications for Readraission 1959-1960
Advisory Ccr.ran.ttee for Teacher Education 1957-1960
Counseling Center Advisory Committee 1958-1959

Committee to Prevent Duplication in Official Publications 1958-1959 •
Committee on Interdepartmental Faculty Seminars 1958-1959
DtiL-kolc-y-Staurord Liaison Committee 1958-1959
Committee on I'.ducational Policy 1954-1955

350

LINCOLN CONSTANCE

Special Committee on Student Facilities, chairman 1954-1955

Budget Committee, 1950-1954; chairman 1952-1954

Academic Council, 1952-1962

Coordinating Committee, 1952-1962

Letters & Science Committee on Committees, 1952-1955

Committee on Graduation Matters (ex officio), 1955-1962

"Outside" Service;

American Association for the Advancement of Science: Vice President and

Chairman, Sec. G, 1952
American Academy of Arts & Science: Member, Executive Committee r Western

Division, 1969-1971
American Society of Plant Taxonomists: Council, 1944-1951, 1952-1958;

Chairman of Ccuncil, 1947; President, 1950
California Academy of Sciences: Trustee, 1969-1983; Vice President,

1972-1975, President, 1976-1979
California Botanical Society: President, 1955
Botanical Society of America: President, 197.0, Council 1970-1973, Committee

on Corresponding Members, 1971-1973; Merit Awards Committee
Kosmos Club: President, 1969-1970

Sigaa Xi: Vice President, 1967-1968; President, 1968-1969

Member, Commission for Education in the Biological Sciences (CUEBS) , 1964-1965
Member, Commission on Education in the Agricultural Sciences & Natural

Resources (CEANAR) , 1965-1968
Member, Svstematics Subcommittee, International Biological Program, NAS-HRC,

1965- 1966

KSF Divisional Committee for Biological & Medical Sciences, 1960-1963
AI33-NSF Committee on Communications Media in Biology, Chairman, 1960-1963
Visiting Committee to Cornell University on Systematic Collections, 1965-1965
Advisory Committee to Secretary of Smithsonian Institution 1964-1965
Steering Committee, Flora North America Project, 1966-1968
Advisory Committee, Hunt Botanical Library, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1965-19(
Visiting Committee for Biology and Related Research Facilities, Harvard

University, 1965-1971
Chairman, Visiting Committee for Stanford University Natural History Museum,

1961-1963

Member, Search Committee, Dean of Natural Sciences, Ss.n Francisco State Univer
sity, 1974-1975
Hoblitzelle National Award Committee, 1961-1963

351
INDEX -- Lincoln Constance

academic freedom, 48-49,249-253 .

Aikin, Charles, 204,205

Alexander, Annie, 94-95

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 49, 61, 69, 140

American Society of Plant Taxonomists, 138-140, 345

an ti- apartheid demonstrations, 272, 288-289

Aptheker, Bettina, 276

Bailey, Irving, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85

Bell, C. Ritchie, 301-302

Benedict, Murray, 133-134

Biosystematists, 95-97, 139

Bolton, Earl, 275,277

Botanical Society of America, 143-144, 344

botany

field trips, 11-12, 21, 28-31, 43-47, 59-62, 70, 88-91, 154-156, 162-163

taxonomy, 8-9, 21-23, 56-57, 62-65, 67-68, 95-97, 138-144

teaching of, 170-172,334-338

women in, 41,62-68,92-95,331-334

See also ecology, plant; herbaria; Umbelliferae
Brown, Edmund G., Jr., 189-190

California Academy of Sciences, 92, 342-344

Cannon, John, 310-311

Carter, Annetta, 95, 333

Cave, Marion, 62-65

Cerceau-Larrival, Marie Therese, 309

Chile, 152-161, 164-166

Chuang, Tsan-Iang, 312-313,321

Civilian Conservation Corps, 28-29

Clements, Frederick E., 27

Clements, Harry, 30, 35

communists, 107, 249-253, 276

Constance, Clifford Llewellyn (brother), 4-6

Constance, Ella Clifford (mother), 1-5, 10, 12, 38

Constance, Lewis Llewellyn (father), 1-5, 10

Constance, Sara Luten (wife), 16, 32-36, 46, 74-76, 86, 146, 317

Constance, William (son), 71,74-76

Crater Lake National Park, 17

Crum, Ethel, 328,332

cytology, 62-65, 95-97, 139, 301-302

352

Davis, Alva R., 53-55, 80-81, 98-100, 108, 173, 177, 179

Davisson, Malcolm, 108, 174

Dodd, Paul, 228

Depression, 1930s, 15-16, 25, 33

Eastwood, Alice, 92-93

ecology, plant, 27-28,140-143

education, undergraduate, 8-13, 17-18, 26-27, 171, 182-195, 212-213, 220-221, 235-

237, 289- 292, 334-342
Eriophvllum. 20-21

Goodspeed, T. Harper, 41, 51-52
Grace Line, 146-152, 159, 163

Feder, Edward, 196-197

Ferruolo, Amolfo, 202-203

Fischel, Walter, 201-202

Free Speech Movement (FSM), 235, 254-280, 288-289

Fretter, William, 204-205

Froebe, Hans, 313-314

Harris, Joseph P., 127

Han, James D., 200

Harvard University, 79-87, 97, 108

Heirich, Max, 263-264,267

Henderson, Louis F., 8, 9, 11, 62

herbaria, 29-30, 65, 324-327. See also University of California, Herbarium; Jepson

Herbarium; Washington State College
Heyns, Roger, 253, 285-287
Hiroe, Minosuke, 305-308
Hoagland, Dennis, 52
Hydrophyllaceae, 61-64

Jepson, Willis L., 17-20, 28, 31-32, 35, 36-37, 51-52, 56-58, 62, 97-101, 293, 326
Jepson Herbarium, 97-101

Katz, Eli, 249-253
Kerr, Clark

as chancellor, 123, 132, 133-138, 143-144, 173-176, 179, 196, 202, 206, 209-219,
226, 230-234

and loyalty oath, 112, 134

as president, 193, 238-240, 243-247, 253, 254-256, 265-288 passim

353

Latin America

botanical research in, 59, 87-91, 154-158, 162-164, 319-320, 342

personal experiences in, 137-138, 149-166
Lawrence, Ernest, 1 14, 223, 254
Lipman, Charles B., 69-70
loyalty oath controversy, University of California, 102-1 15, 223, 253

Machlis, Leonard, 43, 303

Malloy, Kitty, 257, 264, 268, 273-274, 283

Mason, Herbert, 19, 55, 79, 99, 326, 332, 333, 344

Mathias, Mildred, 65-68, 294-296, 299-300, 302, 308, 309, 313, 315, 319

Mathiasella. 300

Mauchlin, Enrol, 277, 281-282

May, Henry, 277

McCown, Theodore, 205

Merrill, Elmer D., 79, 82, 87

Mexia, Ynes, 93-94

Meyerson, Martin, 280-284

Mirabilis macfarlanei. 45

Moore, A.R., 14-15

Mukherjee, Pransanta K., 315-319

Munoz, Carlos, 61, 152, 153

Nasir, Eugene, 308-309

Naufraga balearica. 310-312
New Svstematics. The. 96, 139
Nimitz, Admiral Chester, 107-108

Oregon, boyhood in, 4-9, 38-40

Papandreou, Andreas, 201

Pawek, Jean, 320

Pimenov, Michael, 321-323

Pullman, Washington, 47, 50. See also Washington State College

Rollins, Reed, 30, 43-44, 46, 61, 83, 86, 344
Rodriguez, Rafael Lucas, 302-305

Sauer.Carl, 87-91,201

Savio, Mario, 255, 261-262

Scalapino, Robert, 275-276

Seaborg, Glenn, 222-223, 225-226, 269, 341

354

Searcy, Alan, 257, 258, 262, 267-268, 281-282

Setchell, William A., 18-19, 31, 33-34, 51, 56-58, 332

ShanRen-Hwa, 297-299

Sheikh, Muhammad Yusuf, 323

Shemffs, Alex, 257-264, 268, 274, 282, 283, 287

Sproul, Robert Gordon, 51,99, 102-1 11, 122-123, 173, 174-176,215,230,240,248,

269

Stacey, J.W., 47
Steward, Samuel M, 48-49
Stirton, Reuben, 88-90
Strong, Edward, 238, 250-256, 261-282
student unrest, 47, 255, 283. See also Free Speech Movement

taxonomy. See botany, taxonomy
teaching. See education, undergraduate
Towle, {Catherine, 258-259

Ullman, Edward, 71,76
Umbelliferae, 65-68, 293-323, 342
United States

Joint Intelligence Study Board, 74-77
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 71-74, 77
university governance. See Harvard University, University of California, Washington

State College
University of California
Academic Senate, 106
Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental Relations, 102, 1 19-132, 134-135, 205,

207-208,216

Editorial Committee, 116-119

See also University of California, Berkeley, Academic Senate

Board of Regents, 51, 103, 107-109, 111-112, 223, 227, 243, 246, 253, 255-256, 287
intercampus relations, 119-123, 176, 227-229, 245-249, 268
Lick Observatory, 215
See also loyalty oath controversy; University of California, Berkeley, relations with

statewide administration
University of California, Berkeley
Academic Senate, Berkeley Division, 171, 231-232, 251-252. See also University of

California, Academic Senate
Associates in Tropical Biogeography, 87-88
Botanical Garden, 54, 59, 60, 62, 169-170, 330
Chancellor's Academic Advisory Council, 135-136, 230-233
Chancellor's Advisory Administrative Council, 135-136, 230-233
Chancellor's Office, 237-288 passim
College of Agriculture, 52-53
College of Chemistry, 208
College of Letters and Science, 171, 172-222, 232-237, 338-342

355

University of California, Berkeley (continued)

Department of Botany, 15-20, 40-42, 51-58, 108, 137, 167-172, 327, 334-338. See
also Jepson, Willis; Setchell, William; UC Berkeley graduate education, Herbarium

Department of Italian, 199, 202-203

Department of Near Eastern Languages, 201-202

departmental governance, 167-172, 197-203, 213-215, 218, 335-342

Extension, 191-192

faculty appointment and promotion, 35, 55-56, 78, 113-115, 125-131, 175, 225-226,
231,249-253

faculty-administration relations, 51, 54-55, 102-113, 179-181, 240-245, 249-253, 257,
265-267,271-273

graduate education, 15-23, 40-41, 56-58, 297-319 passim. 344-345

Herbarium, 99-101,325-333

Jepson Herbarium, 97-101, 331

professional schools and colleges, 127-129, 230-231, 242

relations with statewide administration, 268-288

students, 130-131,168,182-195,338-342. See also Free Speech Movement

vice-chancellor of, 237-288 passim

See also loyalty oath controversy; undergraduate education, University of California
University of California, Davis, 120-122
University of California, Los Angeles, 1 16, 246-248
University of California Press, 117-119

University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, 1 19-120
University of California School of Nursing, 124- 125
University of Oregon, 6, 8-13

Vaux, Henry, 128-129,242

Washington State College, 24-37, 42, 47-50, 173, 330

Wheeler, Helen Marr, 98, 100

Williams, Howel, 88-90

women. See botany, women in

World Warn, 55-56,71-77

Wurster, William, 127-128

356

UNIVERSITY HISTORY SERIES

Documenting the history of the University of California has been a
responsibility of the Regional Oral History Office since the Office vas
established in 1954. Oral history memoirs with University-related persons
are listed below. They have been underwritten by the U C. Berkeley
Foundation, the Chancellor's Office, University departments, or by
extramural funding for special projects. The oral histories, tapes and
transcripts, are open to scholarly use in The Bancroft Library. Bound,
indexed copies of the transcripts are available at cost to manuscript
libraries.

Adams, Frank. "Irrigation. Reclamation, and Water Administration.11 1956.
491 p.

Amerine. Maynard A.. "The University of California and the State's Vine
Industry." 1971. 142 p.

Biervan. Jessie. "Maternal and Child Health in Montana. California* the
U.S. Children's Bureau, and WHO. 1926-1967." 1987. 246 p.

Bird. Grace. "Leader in Junior College Education at Bakersf ield and the
University of California." Two volumes, 1978, 342 p.

Birge. Raymond Thayer. "Raymond Thaver Birge. Physicist." 1960, 395 p.

Blaisdell, Allen C,. "Foreign Students and the Berkeley International
House. 1928-1961 " 1968. 419 p.

Blaisdell. Thomas C. Jr. (in process). Professor Emeritus of Political
Science.

Chaney. Ralph Works. "Paleobotanist. Conservationist." 1950 277 p.

Qiao. Yuen Ren, "Chinese Linguist. Phonologist. Composer, and Author,"
1977. 242 p.

Constance, Lincoln. "Versatile Berkeley Botanist: Plant Taxonomy and
University Governance." 1987. 358 p. (est.)

Corley. James V.. "Serving the University in Sacramento." 19*9 143 p.
Cross. Ira Brown. "Portrait of an Economics Professor." 1967, 128 p.

Cruess. William V., "A Half Century in Food and Wine Technology." 1<»67.
122 p.

357

Davidson. Mary Blossom. "The Dean of Women and the Importance of Students."

1967. 79 p.

Dennet, William R., "Philosophy and the University Since 1915." 1970.
162 p.

Donnelly. Ruth. "The University1* Role in Housing Services." 1970. 129 p.
Dornin. May (in process). University Archivist.

Ebright. Carroll *Ky". "California Varsity and Olympics Crew Coach." 1968.
74 p.

Erdman. Henry E., "Agricultural Economics: Teaching. Research, and
Writing: University of California. Berkeley. 1922-1969." 1971. 252 p.

Evans. Clinton W.. "California Athlete. Coach. Administrator. Ambassador."

1968. 106 p.

Foster. Herbert B.. "The Role of the Engineer's Office in the Development
of the University of California Campuses." 1960. 134 p.

Gordon, Walter A,. "Athlete. Officer in Lav Enforcement and Administration.
Governor of the Virgin Islands." Two volumes. 1980. 621 p.

Grether. Evald T. (in process). Dean Emeritus. School of Business
Administration.

Griffiths. Farnham P.. "The University of California and the California
Bar." 1954. 46 p.

Ha gar, Ella Barrows. "Continuing Memoirs: Family. Community. University."
1974. 272 p.

Hamilton. Brutus. "Student Athletics and the Voluntary Discipline." 1967.

50 p.

Harding. Sidney T. . "A Life in Western Water Development." 1967. 524 p.

Harris. Joseph P.. "Professor and Practitioner: Government. Election
Reform, and the Votomatic." 1983. 155 p.

Hart, Janes D.. "Fine Printers in the San Francisco Bay Area." 1969, 86 p.

Hays. William Charles, "Order, Taste, and Grace in Architecture." 1968,
241 p.

Heller. Elinor Raas. "A Volunteer in Politics, in Higher Education, and on
Governing Boards," 1984. 851 p.

358

Heyns. Roger W., "Berkeley Chancellor. 1965-1971; The University in a
Turbulent Society." 1987, 180 p.

Hildebrand, Joel H., "Chemistry, Education, and the University of
California." 1962. 196 p.

Hotchkis, Preston, Sr. , "One Man's Dynamic Role in California Politics and
Water Development, and World Affairs," 1980. 121 p.

Huff. Elizabeth, "Teacher and Founding Curator of the East Asiatic
Library: From Urbana to Berkeley by Way of Peking," 1977. 278 p.

Hur.tir.gton, Emily. "A Career in Consumer Economics and Social Insurance."
1971. Ill p.

Hutchison. Claude B.. "The College of Agriculture, University of
California. 1922-1952." 1962. 524 p.

Jenny, Hans (in process). Professor of Plant and Soil Biology.

Johnston. Marguerite Kulp, and Mixer. Joseph R,. "Student Housing. Welfare.
and the ASUC." 1970. 157 p.

Jones, Mary C.. "Harold S. Jones and Mary C. Jones. Partners in
Longitudinal Studies," 1983, 154 p.

Joslyn. Maynard A. "A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry,"
1974, 151 p.

Kendrick, James B. Jr. (in process), Vice- President, Agriculture and
Natural Resources, retired.

Kingman, Harry L. . "Citizenship in a Democracy." 1973, 292 p.

Kroeber-Quinn. Theodora, "Timeless Woman, Writer and Interpreter of the
California Indian World." 1982. 453 p.

Landreth. Catherine. "The Nursery School of the Institute of Child Welfare
of the University of California. Berkeley," 1983, 51 p.

Langelier, Wilfred F.. "Teaching, Research, and Consultation in Water

Purification and Sewage Treatment. University of California at Berkel ey-
1916-1955." 1982. 81 p.

Lehman, Benjamin H., "Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay
Area from 1920 Onward." 1969. 367 p.

Lenzen, Victor F. . "Physics and Philosophy." 1965, 206 p.
Lessing, Ferdinand D. . "Early Years," 1963, 70 p.

359

McGauhey. Percy H.. The Sanitary Engineering Reaearch Laboratory:

Administration. Research, and Consultation. 1950-1972." 1974, 259 p.

Mclaughlin. Donald, "Careers in Mining Geology and Management. University
Governance and Teaching." 1975. 318 p.

Merritt. Ralph P.. "After Me Cometh a Builder, the Recollections of Ralph
Falser Merritt." 1962. 137 p.

Metcalf. Woodbridge, "Extension Forester. 1926-1956." 1969. 138 p.
Meyer. Karl F. , "Medical Research and Public Health." 1976. 439 p.
Miles. Josephine. "Poetry. Teaching, and Scholarship," 1980. 344 p.
Mitchell. Lucy Sprague. "Pioneering in Education," 1962. 174 p.

Neuhaus. Eugen, Reminiscences: Bay Area Art and the University of
California Art Department." 1961. 48 p.

Neylan. John Francis, "Politics. Law, and the University of California,"
1962. 319 p.

O'Brien. Morrough P. (in process). Dean Emeritus, College of Engineering.
OLmo, Harold P.. "Plant Genetics and New Grape Varieties." 1976, 183 p.

Olney, Mary McLean, Oakland, Berkeley, and the University of California,
1880-1895." 1963. 173 p.

Pepper. Stephen C., "Art and Philosophy at the University of California,
1919-1962." 1963. 471 p.

Porter. Robert Langley, * Physician. Teacher, aad Guardian of the Public
Health." 1960. 102 p.

Richardson, Leon J., Berkeley Culture, University of California
Highlights, and University Extension. 1892-1960." 1962. 248 p.

Robb, Agnes Roddy; Robert Gordon Sproul and the University of California,"
1976. 134 p.

Selvin. Herman F.. "The University of California and California Law and
Lawyers. 1920-1978." 1979. 217 p.

Shields, Peter J.. "Reminiscences," 1954. 107 p.

Sburtleff. Roy I~. "The University's Class of 1912. Investment Banking, and

the Shurtleff Family History." 1982. 69 p.

Sproul. Ida Wittschen. "The President's Wife," 1981. 347 p.

360

Steven*. Prank C.. "Forty Year* in the Office of the President. University
of California. 1905-1945." 1959, 175 p.

Stewart. George R. . "A Little of Myself," 1972. 319 p.

Stewart. Jessie Harris. "Memories of Girlhood and the University." 1978.
70 p.

Struve. Gleb (in process). Professor of Slavic Language and Literature.

Taylor. Paul Schuster

Volume I: "Education. Field Research, and Family * 1973, 342 p.
Volume II and Volume III: "California Water and Agricultural Labor."
1975. 519 p.

Towle. {Catherine A.. "Administration and Leadership." 1970. 369 p.

Underbill. Robert M., 'University of California: L-ando, Finances, and
Investments." 1968. 446 p.

Vauz. Henry J. . "Forestry in the Public Interest: Education. Kcononics.
State Policy. 1933-1983." 1987. 337+ p.

Waring. Henry C. . "Henry C. Waring on University Extension." 1960, 130 p.

Well man, Harry. "Teaching. Research, and Administration, University of
California. 1925-1968." 1976, 259 p.

Wessels. Glenn A.. "Education of an Artist." 1967. 326 p.

Wilson. Garff B.. "The Invisible Man. or, Public Ceresionies Chairman at
Berkeley for Thirty-Five Years." 1981. 442 p.

Winkler. Albert J.. "Viticulture! Research at UC Davis. 1921-1971." 1973.
144 p.

Witter. Jean C., T^e University, the Community, and the Lifeblood of
Business." 1968. 109 p.

Woods. Baldwin M. . "University of California Extension " 1957. 102 p.

Woolman. Marjorie J. (in process). Secretary Emeritus of the Regents.
University of California.

Wurster. William Wilson. "College of Environmental Design. University of
California, Campus Planning, and Architectural Practice," 1964. 339 p.

361

Multi- Interviewee Series

Blake House Project (in process)

Includes interviews with Mai Arbegast. Igor Blake. Ron and Myra
Brocchini. Toichi Domoto. Eliot Evans. Tony Hail. Linda Haymaker.
Charles Hitch. Flo Holmes, dark and Kay Kerr. G«rry Scott. George
and Helena Thacher. Walter Vodden, and Norms Wilier.

"Centennial History Project, 1954-1960." 329 p.

Includes interviews with George P. Adams, Anson Stiles Blake. Walter
C. Blasdale. Joel H, Hildebrand, Samuel J. Holmea, Alfred L.
Kroeber. Ivan M, Linforth, George D. Louderback, Agnes Fay Morgan.
and William Popper.

"Thomas D. Church, Landscape Architect," Two volusjes. 1978. 803 p.

Volume I: Includes interviews with Theodore Bernardi. Lucy Butler.
June Meehan Campbell, Louis De Monte. Walter Doty. Donn Emmons,
Floyd Gerow, Harriet Henderson, Joseph Howland. Ruth Jaff e. Burton
Litton. Germane Milano* Miriam Pierce. George Rockrise. Robert
Roys ton. Geraldine Knight Scott. Roger Sturtevant. Francis Violich,
and Harold Watkin.

Volume II: Includes interviews with Maggie Baylis. Elizabeth Roberts
Church. Robert Glasner. Grace Hall. Lawrence Halprin, Proctor
Mellquist. Bveritt Miller. Harry Sanders, Lou Schenone, Jack
Stafford. Goodwin Steinberg, and Jack Wagstaff.

"Dental History Project. University of California, San Francisco." 1969.
1114 p.

Includes interviews with Dickson Bell. Reuben L. Blake. Willard C.
Fleming. George A, Hughes. Leland D. Jones. George F. McGee, CS.
Rutledge. William B. Ryder. Jr.. Herbert J. Samuela, Joseph Sciotto,
William S. Smith. Harvey Stallard. George B* Steninger. and Abraham
W. Ward.

Disabled Students Project (in process)

"Julia Morgan Architectural History Project." Two volumes. 1976. 621 p.

Volume I: "The Work of Walter Steilberg and Julia Morgan, and the
Department of Architecture. UCB. 1904-1954"

Includes interviews with Walter T. Steilberg. Robert Ratcliff. Evelyn
Paine Ratcliff. Norman L. Jensen, John P. Wagstaff. George C.
Hodges. Edward B. Hussey. and Warren Charles Perry.

Volume II: "Julia Morgan. Her Office, and a House"

Includes interviews with Mary Grace Barron, Kirk 0. Rowlands. Norm a
Wilier. Quintilla Williams, Catherine Freeman Nimitz. Polly Lawrence
McNaught. Hettie Belle Marcus. Bjarne Dahl. Bjarne Dahl. Jr..
Morgan North, Dorothy Wormser Coblentz. and Flora d'Ule North,

36;

"The Prytaneans: An Oral History of the Prytanaar. Society and its Members,"
Volume I: "1901-1920." 1970. 307 p.
Volume II: "1921-1930." 1977. 313 p.

"Robert Gordon Sproul Oral History Project." Two volumes. 1986, 904 p.
Includes interviews with Horace Albright* Stuart LeRoy Anderson,
Katherine Bradley, Dyke Brown. Natalie Cohen. Paul A. Dodd, May
Dornin. Richard E. Erickaon, Walter S. Frederick, David P. Gardner.
Vernon Goodin, Marion Sproul Goodin, Louis Heilbron, Clark Kerr,
Adrian Kragen, Robert S. Johnson. Mary Bluaer Lawrence, Donald
McLaughlin, Dean McHenry. Stanley B. McCaffrey, Kendric and Marion
Morrish, William Penn Mott. Jr.. Herman Phleger. John B. deC. M,
Saunders, Carl Sharsmith. John Sproul, Robert Gordon Sproul. Jr..
Wallace Sterling, Wakef ield Taylor. Robert Underbill. Garff Wilson,
and Pete L. Yzaquirre.

The Women's Faculty dub of the University of California at Berkeley. 1919-
1982." 1983. 312 p.

Includes interviews with Josephine Smith, Margaret Murdock. Agnes
Robb. May Dornin, Josephine Miles. Gudveig Gordon-Britland,
Elizabeth Scott, Marian Diamond, Mary Ann Johnson, Eleanor Van Horn,
and Katherine Van Valer William a.

9/87

ANN LAGE

B.A., University of California, Berkeley, with major
in history, 1963

M.A., University of California, Berkeley, history, 1965

Post-graduate studies, University of California, Berkeley,
1965-66, in American history and education; Junior
College teaching credential

Interviewer /member, Sierra Club History Committee, 1970-1974;
cochairman, 1978-present

Coordinator/Editor, Sierra Club Oral History Project,
1974-present

Codirector, Sierra Club Documentation Project, Regional Oral
History Office, 1980-present

Interviewer/Editor, conservation and natural resources,
university history, Regional Oral History Office,
1976-1986

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