UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interview #101
SEWELL, WILLIAM H.
SEWELL, William H. (1909- )
Professor of Sociology; Chancellor
At UW: 1946-1980
First Interview
Interviewed: 1976-1977
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 9 hours
Second Interview
Interviewed: 1983
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 2 hours
Third Interview
Interviewed: 1985
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 3 hours
Fourth Interview
Interviewed: 1988
Interviewer: Mark Solovay
Length: 3 hours
[Note: Tape 12 has not been transcribed. No audio exists for Tape 13, Side 2. Tape 16 does not
exist in any format whatsoever.]
See index for abstract and key words.
First Interview Session (1976-1977)
Tape 1, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
There was an article in the Cardinal, I think it was in July 7th, 1968, which seemed to me
to present a point of view that we could take. You might either be in favor of it or not,
but it has some nice things to say. They are speaking of the passing of you and
Kauffman, and of you both having been liberal scholars who cared for students and who
had thought of the institution as an educational institution. I'm not quoting them exactly
here. They said that this is no longer, I think they used the term, "where the university is
Sewell, William H (#101)
at." And, they said, what is needed is the--oh, and they speak about the bloodshed and
the police and that sort of thing--what is needed is the kind of chancellor who can do that
sort of thing and not feel bad about it afterwards, someone who can outwit the students
and who could, perhaps, split the protesters. They also said, "We doubt whether either
was personally responsible for the decision to use the police, but neither spoke out
afterwards." And it just generally--it's a very--they wish you luck in your subsequent
career.
WS:
It's nice of them.
LS:
It wasn't the usual tone of the Cardinal.
WS:
No.
LS:
But it was a good editorial.
00:01:17
LS:
Well, I'd like to ask, to begin with, well, why Fleming left.
WS:
Well, I think, clearly, that Fleming left because, during that year--in fact, within the three
or four weeks before he made his decision--he was the prime candidate for the presidency
of either Minnesota or Michigan. And I think Bob Fleming, clearly it was his desire to be
a university administrator. If you're going to be a university administrator, then certainly
being the top person in the system or in the university is the most desirable position. And
I can't think how anyone who had ambition to be a university president wouldn't rather be
president of Minnesota or Michigan than chancellor of Wisconsin, on the grounds that,
even though Wisconsin may be as good or better a university than either or both, that is
the Madison campus--although some people would argue with that--at least you don't
have anybody above you in the administrative structure interfering with or helping to call
the shots for what you're going to do. And I know that Bob Fleming, particularly, was
bothered by that although he and Fred Harrington got along very well. Still, he had
decisions that--he was limited in his choice by Fred's own ambitions, and Fred's own
style of administration, and Fred's own program. In fact, he suffered from having Fred in
the same building. The system hadn't been at all clearly defined by then. And Fred
maintained his office in Bascom Hall, and to many people he was still running the
Madison campus. I think that clarified with each successive chancellor and that Fred was
in the building only two or three months and then moved to Van Hise. And that physical
separation also was a symbolic one.
LS:
When you were chancellor.
WS:
When I was chancellor. And I think that was of considerable importance. But still,
nobody has as yet been able to work out this problem of the president of the system, or
whatever he may be called, and the chancellors. And it has been particularly difficult
where the head of the system was formerly the head of the major university that makes up
the system. California went through that with Clark--well, first with Sproul, and then
Clark Kerr, and finally, after Clark Kerr was forced to resign the presidency, they went
outside the system completely to get a president--oh, I guess they call him chancellor
there as the head of it. I'm not sure whether it's chancellor or president. But in any event
they went outside the system. And I think that gave the Berkeley campus much more
autonomy than it had had before. So to make a long story short, if you're going to try and
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run a university, and a university in the traditional sense of a campus and a faculty, you're
just a lot better off being number one than number two.
LS:
Especially if number one is Fred Harrington.
WS:
Yes. Yes. Or any, I think--. I don't think it's just Fred Harrington. Fred Harrington is a
prototype of the problem, but certainly the chancellors under Clark Kerr had exactly the
same problem. When Clark Kerr himself was chancellor and Sproul was president, he
faced the same problem.
LS:
Well, I was thinking of Weaver as president. It seemed to me that at that point the scales
tipped--.
WS:
By the time Weaver came--. I had much more autonomy, actually, in the administration
of the campus, than Bob Fleming ever had. And that, in part, was because by then the
system had really enlarged, and Fred Harrington had seen his role as the larger one, rather
than an immediate interference with what went on, or what went on in administration, on
the Madison campus. And also I demanded a bit more authority although I didn't, by any
means, have complete autonomy, especially when it came to dealing with the student
matters. But I think just the fact that Fred moved over to Van Hise Hall and really
wanted to escape some of the problems of the Madison campus, especially the student
problems. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and those as possible,
except the regents wouldn't let him, of course. So that, if you're going to be held
responsible, it's much better to make your own decisions in times of trouble. And I think
Bob Fleming clearly wanted to get out from under that kind of an arrangement.
Moreover, it'd be hard to argue with taking the presidency of the University of Michigan.
It's certainly one of the--all the ratings put it in the first five or six universities in
America.
00:07:31
It probably has more autonomy than any other state university. In many ways, it's just a
private university paid for by the state, you know. It's a constitutional university. The
legislature really has a hard time, even in these days, having much to say about what goes
on there. They only appropriate the funds to the board of regents, and the board of
regents decides, with the administration, how to spend them. So it probably has more
autonomy than any state university in America. And it's a fine university, so I could even
imagine somebody going from the presidency of the University of Wisconsin to the
presidency of Michigan.
LS:
Oh, I see. Well, that would be a--if that's the case, then--
WS:
But certainly, the chancellor should, easily. And I think Bob would have gone to
Minnesota. He was ready to go. I know that to be true when the Michigan offer came.
So that I guess that explains that aspect of it.
00:08:32
LS:
Did Harrington have much to do with his decisions about how to handle some of the
student problems?
WS:
No, I don't think so. I think he didn't pay much attention to it. As I say, he was trying to
put distance between himself and the responsibility for students.
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LS:
Even then.
WS:
Oh, yes, from the beginning, which shows him to be a wise man. But I'm sure that Fred
did not like some of the dealings that Bob had with the students, particularly bailing out
the students who had been arrested, because the regents put great heat on Fred over that.
LS:
Oh, they did.
WS:
Oh, yes. The regents were very unhappy with Fleming because they said that he coddled
the students too much. And so I'm sure he just did things like that completely on his
own. I'm sure Fred didn't--if he'd have talked it over with Fred, I'm sure Fred would have
said, "Don't do it."
LS:
So you presume he didn't talk it over with him?
WS:
No, I presume. I don't know. But I'm practically certain he didn't. And I think the
regents were probably, by then, putting a lot of heat on Fred about the student discipline
and student affairs generally. By that time, it had started to build up.
LS:
Although it wasn't yet as conservative as it became.
WS:
No, I think what really happened was, if you'll recall,
00:10:16
I think it was the first time in history, but it's certainly the first time in modern history,
that a governor had been in office long enough so that he could appoint the whole board.
See, there were nine members, and they served for nine years. So every year, barring
resignations and deaths when you could appoint more, the governor would appoint a
person to the regents. And traditionally in this state, even though it's always been--up
until recent years--predominantly a Republican state, and mainly with Republican
governors, there's always been a Democrat, or at least a token Democrat, left on the
board. But Warren Knowles had become so upset about the student problems that he had
appointed quite conservative people to the board and people who were told by him, "Now
look, the problem of the university and the thing that's getting the governor heat all over
the state is the problem of the students. And so be tough on that." And I think that
Warren Knowles was a very good friend of the university, except for that.
LS:
He was?
WS:
Oh, yes. In fact, you know, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but I would say, in general, in the
thirty-two years I've been here, we've fared better under Republican governors, almost
without exception, than Democrats. And that's in part because the Democrats elected
have been activists, and they tend to interfere more with the university and think they
know more what the university should do than have the Republicans, who tend to sit back
and say, "Well, let the university make its own decisions about what it wants to do"--until
you get a public clamor like you had about the students. And then Warren got very active
in that. But other than that I found him very cooperative about what the university was
doing. I think Fred Harrington would say the same thing. That was a source of
considerable problem. He called me down to his office on two or three occasions to tell
me, essentially, that as he went around the state, the most constant heat that he got was
about student behavior on campus. And he didn't understand why we couldn't control it
better than we did. But he was always very nice about it. That is, he never was, you
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know, saying, "You'd better quit if you can't control them," or anything of that sort. He
just, as a good politician, was upset when the public was upset.
00:13:12
So that the regents, then--by that time a number of them had been put on by Knowles
with rather specific expression on his part that he wanted to push the administration
toward more of a crackdown on the students. The last remaining non-Republicans both
turned out to be liberals, if my memory serves me correctly about who was last. No
doubt about their being liberals; one was the labor leader from Milwaukee. What's his
name? Jake Friedrick. Marvelous old gentlemen.
LS:
I know DeBardeleben would be the other man you had mentioned.
WS:
And DeBardeleben. But those two were very stalwart defenders of the administration
and they didn't necessarily understand why the students made the university their target,
but they wanted the administration to treat the students fairly and to listen to their
problems rather than to necessarily crack down on them. DeBardeleben was the last to
go, and that must have happened some time after I'd been in office four or five months-in the spring. And I remember our walking out to his car together. And he said, "Well,
you're going to have a hell of a time." He said, "You have already, but these conservative
members of the board are really going to give you all kinds of hell." I said, "I thought
they already had." But he said, "Well, it'll be worse." And it was, although I don't know
how much worse after that. It was already quite bad all along.
00:15:19
Very seldom was there a board meeting in which the board, in talking to me, wouldn't
spend most of their time on something or other that had occurred during the prior month
in relation to students. And I never found many of that board much interested in
academic programming in the university. Those weren't the issues they were concerned
with primarily. I remember being in one meeting in which they had appointed a
committee to come up with a long-term plan for the development of the University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee as an urban university. Bob Clodius had worked with the
committee, and they had developed, really, a magnificent long-term plan. I think they'd
worked two years on it. And we were meeting, I think, at Green Bay at that time. I'm not
sure whether the chairman, I guess the chairman was a member of the board of regents,
but he and Bob were presenting a report. After about ten minutes--all the regents were
looking at their watches--finally, somebody just spoke out, I don't remember who it was,
and said, "Look, I don't know why we need to go on talking about this. We can all read
it. Let's get on to the urgent matters." The urgent matters had to do with things that were
happening on the Madison campus in terms of students. They then went on with that for
a couple of hours, you know. And I don't even remember what it was, at that time, they
were upset about. But whatever it was, that was what they wanted to talk about. And
that was typical of many of the regent meetings. Fred used to try very hard to steer them
away. And Fred was a great filibusterer. He should have been a southern senator, you
know. They'd ask him a question about why students were permitted to do something or
other, and Fred would start off with a history of American universities and relations
between administration and faculty and parietals. And he'd do it by sections of the
country and, you know, after a half hour, they'd all be about asleep. And he'd never
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really get around to answering the questions. And my problem was always: they'd ask
me a question, and I'd answer it right off, and straightforwardly and usually in a way that
they didn't like. And one of them even told me--they weren't all unfriendly to me as a
person, but my position was what they didn't like--one of them even told me, he took me
to one side one time and said, "Look, you know, if you'd get"--this was one of the
Republican members--he said, "You know, you'd get along a lot better with this board if
you didn't lecture us so much." And I said, "Well, I don't talk very much." He said,
"Well, but whenever we ask you a question, you start talking about individual rights in a
democracy, and what the system of jurisprudence is, and that embarrasses us, and we
don't like to be lectured about those things." But Fred never lectured them. He'd just
give a historical statement. He was an expert on chapter nine, I remember, in the legal
code for Wisconsin, which sets up the universities and defines the campuses as state
parks. And he'd go on into all the ramifications of that for the control of behavior on the
campus and all the legal questions involved. He was really a master filibusterer. Now
they'd get quite upset by that, but not as upset as they would at me because I would
answer their questions very directly and usually in ways that they just didn't like. But I
think in light of the fact that--to go back to the original question, in light of the fact that
this was a pretty hot place and Michigan, in comparison, although they had lots of
trouble, was mild--you know, at the worst, Michigan never had anything that would
approach the problems that we had here--so it was a fine place to go. And it was time for
a change. And for an upwardly mobile academic administrator, it was one of the top jobs
in the United States. So I'm sure that's why Bob went.
00:20:18
LS:
I'd just like to ask you about the board. Were they at all awed by Harrington?
WS:
No, well, I don't know. I think the attitude of the board toward Harrington--you'd have to
talk about what board. The earlier boards were much awed by--impressed I think--by
Fred's ability to, his grasp of the big issues in higher education, his knowledge of, and his
power to get money. And Fred always knew just what was going on in Washington, and
what was going to go on. And he had a lot of influence on what went on, both directly
through his influence on people in government administration, and the Congress. Fred
was a very common testifier on all higher education bills. And he's forceful, you know,
and he's big and impressive. And I think they probably might have been awed by Fred,
but they were all that coupled with a very favorable impression of what he was doing for
the university. This must have made him, the regents felt, a very excellent person to be
president. Now, if you go to the later boards, after trouble started, then they didn't seem
terribly awed by Fred. They would tackle him on various issues, I thought quite often
tried to embarrass him, but he never was embarrassed. Or if he was, he didn't show it.
And I think Fred had a certain ill-concealed contempt for most of them anyway. Fred
was the kind of person that tended to ram things down their throat if they didn't swallow
them easily. And I think by the time the board that I knew, while I was chancellor, had
come into power, they were quite resentful of Fred. And I think, looking back over it, if
you could see, it was just a matter of time before they would ask for Fred's resignation if
things kept going on as they were.
LS:
So this attitude would backfire on him.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes. On the other hand there were people there like DeBardeleben, who was a very
strong supporter of Fred, although he didn't agree with everything Fred did by any means,
but he was a very strong--. Friedrick was a very strong supporter. Matt Werner was a
very strong, very strong supporter of Fred. And see, up until about that time, when there
were two or three resignations and retirements from the board, the board had been pretty
much under the leadership of Arthur DeBardeleben. Even when there was a majority of
Republicans, they didn't necessarily all vote together, and Arthur kind of whipped the rest
of them into line. And so the alliance between Fred and Arthur was very successful, and
I think, for the most part, for the good. And then, after Arthur, Fred's star just kept going
down and continued to go down until finally, of course, his resignation, which I'm told, I
don't know, was forced. Usually, such resignations are. I guess I should say, mine
wasn't. I just quit. But when I told Fred Harrington I was going to resign, he said that he
thought that it was probably a good idea because he thought it would only be two or three
or four months until the board forced me to resign or asked me to resign. And my main
debate was, well, should I resign or wait for the fun of being fired, which I thought would
be a marvelous thing, to be fired by this bunch of antediluvian conservatives. And then I
decided: oh, hell, it'd split up the year. It would be very difficult to find a replacement
and so on. I'd better just quit. I'd had enough fighting by then, anyway. But I did think
and had cherished the notion that, wouldn't it be fun to be the only chancellor ever fired,
and be fired for being too liberal, and so on. Anyway. But I wasn't quite up to the game.
LS:
Did you have your speech ready in case?
WS:
Oh, yes. I always have a speech ready.
00:25:18
But in any event I think Fred figured I was a liability by then. Fred and I understood each
other pretty well. We'd known each other a long, long time. And although we'd never
been bosom pals kinds of people, we had great respect for each other. And Fred and I
had our differences while I was chancellor. It was always over students, never anything
else: academic programs--anything else.
LS:
That's about all anybody thought about anyway.
WS:
Well, I was in trouble on a lot of other things, you know. I was in trouble over the
appointment of the dean of pharmacy; and law--
WS:
Oh, that's right, yes.
WS:
--and the director of the Student Union. All those things were big fights, you know. And
Fred supported me on all of those, never wavered in his support. But it was the student
things that, of course, determined everything in those days. And Fred, I think, felt that I
was too easy on students. On the other hand he was very worried about the faculty
support during that time, and he thought I had that, even though he probably didn't.
LS:
He was worried about it on his behalf, or yours, or--
WS:
Well, its whole effect on the university.
LS:
Oh, I see.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
He didn't want the faculty--this faculty's never been much alienated from administration.
There have been instances in the past, but in general the administration's been supportive
of faculty, and the faculty's been supportive of the administration. And I think Fred felt
that this was an issue on which there might be quite a serious rupture. There was for a
while. After all, you remember, after the Dow incident, the University Committee met
and came up with a resolution in support of me because they knew there would be a
resolution condemning me. I suppose that was the strategy that--they didn't consult me
about it--but I think that was the strategy that they felt was the proper one to take. And
you probably recall we had two meetings of the faculty. The first one went about seven
hours and the next one about five, with the Union Theater full and with two-way
communications through closed-circuit television with several other places where faculty
were. Of course, a lot of non-faculty got into the faculty meeting and voted and various
other things. But anyway, I thought from the course of the speeches that were made in
the faculty, certainly the first several hours, that the only thing--that they would vote
down a vote of confidence, and I would just resign. And probably giving a ringing
denunciation of the faculty, but that I would resign. But then, the second day, a few
people spoke in support, and I could see increasingly--I said nothing during that whole
time. I turned the meeting over to Jim.
LS:
Cleary?
WS:
Cleary, who was vice chancellor, and who was a masterful--an authority, actually, on
parliamentary procedures. He's written a major book on Robert's Rules of Order,
historically developed up to the present. And he turned out to be a very good presiding
officer and a very fair one. And I just turned the chair over to him after making a little
statement at the beginning of the meeting. And it wasn't until after the vote that I said a
word. But then, when the vote came in at the end of the second day, you could see. I
could tell the shift. Or what I could really sense was that the people who were verbal and
vocal about it were not being supported by the silent ones. And so when the vote finally
came, you know, it was about two to one in favor of the resolution, as I recall. But I don't
know how I got started on that other than to say, oh, that there was a real split in the
faculty. And I felt that it was very necessary to heal that breach. The split in the faculty
here was no different than any place else that had real trouble. Berkeley was even worse
split than we were and remained split for much longer. Our faculty very rapidly came
back to essentially a supportive position. And Fred was very worried about that split as
he had good reason to be. And I think Fred felt that some of the actions that I took, such
as appointing a student-faculty committee to come up with rules governing conduct and
such matters, that was the Crow Committee as I recall, and then another committee to
come up with a more appropriate system of hearings for people charged with violation of
university regulations. I've forgotten, I think, Merriman, no Mermin, yes, Sam Mermin
was chairman of that committee. And people got working very hard on those things, and
we had all sorts of hearings and faculty meetings on their report and so on. And I think
those things tended to heal the breach much more rapidly than it was healed in other
places. In part, it was because the faculty really wanted to support the administration, but
they were distressed that violence had occurred. And they were distressed that the
administration had had any part in the responsibility for violence. It didn't seem to
distress them--well, I'm sure it distressed them but not so that they'd make public
outcries--that the students were behaving violently. There wasn't much protest about that
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from the faculty, actually, although many individuals talked about it a good deal. But sitins in buildings had taken place, you know, a number of times during the Fleming period.
And the feeling, I think, on the part of the faculty wasn't that that wasn't proper behavior
but after all, it was the administration's problem.
00:32:51
But when it became apparent that the students were turning not only against
administration but the faculty as well, then the faculty got quite upset. You know, most
faculty members see themselves--they don't admit it--as kind of substitute parents to the
young people who come, and they really want their love and respect. And when they
don't get it, they just feel terrible about it. And I think some faculties--Columbia and
Berkeley, much more so than here--just couldn't recover from that. Harvard especially,
you know. What happened to Harvard was petty in comparison with Berkeley or here.
And yet you would think, if you talked to easterners, that the whole trouble started at
Columbia and Harvard. And we had it at least a year before. Well, I mean we had had it
for two or three years before, and we had bad trouble long before anything happened at
either of those places. But the faculty at those places were probably much, much more
alienated from the administration than here.
LS:
The difference here is that precisely the faculty who would be most caring about their
students were the ones who were most sympathetic with them. So that--
WS:
Yes, yes, I think that's true.
LS:
--and also who liked you.
WS:
Yes, that was a conflict for a lot of people, I'm sure, that there was a certain amount of
personal liking and a certain amount of understanding that I was in a hell of a mess,
partly of the faculty's making.
00:34:43
It was the faculty that had just the spring before, 9-to-1, voted in favor of continuing
interviews on this campus and insisting that people be able to freely be interviewed and
so on, you know. It was the faculty who had done all that and then, when the crunch
came and troubles resulted, the faculty, of course, felt, except for a few of the wilder
ones, felt quite embarrassed that they were now in the process, at least in those meetings,
of arguing whether to support or condemn somebody who had tried, at least half
heartedly, to carry out their mandate.
00:35:32
LS:
Let's go back to that vote in the spring. What interested me was what your own feeling at
that time was about whether protests would be allowed and what--.
WS:
Oh, well, my feeling, you mean at the time--in the spring--
LS:
How did you vote?
WS:
How did I vote?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
I voted against it.
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LS:
You did.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
You were one of the ones--among the ones
WS:
Yes, because I believed--I believed that it wasn't the business of the university to run
placement agencies anyway, and that there was no reason why we should get ourselves in
trouble over it when Dow, or General Electric, or Boeing, or anybody else could rent
rooms, just like the--. I read the New York Times: you know, full page ads in those days
about Dow, and Boeing, and all these companies, they'd be at the Roosevelt Hotel to talk
to students, you know. They didn't necessarily go to campuses; they don't in big cities.
And I saw no reason why we--I think the reason we had here, traditionally, for providing
space for people to be interviewed was convenience of students. But if it was going to
get us into a hell of a lot of trouble, avoid the trouble, you know. It wasn't a great moral
issue with me. It was just, if this is a source of trouble, let Dow take care of their own
troubles. We had enough of our own. And so I was opposed to it then. I was opposed to
it all along. I was also opposed to the war, but I never believed that the university should
be the target of protests. I felt that this university, of all the universities I knew about,
was least involved in any complicity with the government on our Vietnam policy, and
moreover it seemed to me that, you know, if you want to protest, go protest where the
action is, not where it isn't. So I've always been opposed--I was opposed to the war from
the very beginning, and I publicly stated that and publicly demonstrated it. But I believed
that the way you did such things was in meetings, and you got up and said what you
thought about it. It never occurred to me that the way to do it was to take over buildings,
or to burn buildings, or to bomb buildings, or anything else. I thought that citizens ought
to assemble where they are and protest, but that didn't mean closing down the university.
I could see no point in that. I never did, and to this day I don't. The other thing was that I
always felt that if I really felt the university were guilty of complicity, I'd do everything I
could to try to--publicly--to force the university to change its policies and I might even be
willing to engage in nonviolent kinds of actions in the tradition of the Ghandian tradition
and take my medicine for it. But it never occurred to me--and it still doesn't seem to me
correct--to assume that you can openly violate the laws and the rules, and not be willing
to pay whatever penalties have to be extracted, as a means of change.
00:39:22
LS:
How did you feel about Fleming's handling of that spring Dow protest?
WS:
You mean bailing the kids out of jail?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
Well, I thought that was nice thing to do. I never would have. Oh, the hell with them. If
they want to engage in things that get them arrested, let them take care of their own
arrest. I didn't see any reason why the university should, but I thought that was a nice,
humane thing to do. I would never have done that. I just figure, you know, if you want
to do illegal things and disruptive things, take your medicine. The medicine isn't all that
bad, you know. They'd have been hauled up in court and fined twenty-five dollars. Stay
in the caboose overnight. I don't think it would have hurt any of them.
00:40:09
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LS:
Did you know, personally, any of the people who were involved?
WS:
Oh, yes.
LS:
Evan Stark, of course, was in sociology. Did you know him?
WS:
Very well. I had him in seminars.
LS:
You did.
WS:
Evan was the genius behind the whole thing. He was the planner, the master strategist of
the whole thing. And I knew Evan quite well.
LS:
What is your assessment of him?
WS:
Well, that's kind of a difficult question to answer. He's bright. I think essentially
unprincipled. The kind of guy that takes advantage of any situation that he can to
promote whatever aims he may have at the moment. He came and talked to me a couple
of days before the Dow interviews. And he said, "I think there's going to be real trouble,
and I'll do everything I can to prevent it. And all I ask of you is that, if things get out of
hand and there have to be forces brought on the campus--I hope you don't do it, but if you
do--then I want you to promise not to let the sheriff with his dogs and deputies on the
campus because they'd like to beat hell out of the students." And I said, "Evan, there's no
way I can promise you anything." I said, "I hope nothing happens that they have to
come, and I don't intend to call them. I don't intend to call anybody. But if the police
come, and they want additional forces, there's nothing I can do about it. They'll just call
whomever they can get." And he said, "Well, he'd do everything he could to prevent it."
But the truth is, he planned the whole thing from beginning to end. And then, you notice,
he was not in the building when the police went in. He was outside. And he hadn't
suffered. Nor was Bobby Cohen inside. The innocents were inside, and they were
outside watching the fracas. But anyway, as an indication of Evan's character, after he
left here he went to Canada because he was in a draft category, you know, he had an
exempt status, whatever the student deferment was, but they'd been putting a lot of heat
on him. And he knew if he got involved in something like this, was kicked out of school
or the courts got to him, that he would be--reduce his draft status. So he went to Canada,
or at least I don't know if he went to Canada. That's what people say. He left within the
hour after the thing was over, unlike Bobby Cohen who stayed here and faced the music
of the whole thing. And then, nobody around here heard a thing about him until two or
three years later. By then he had passed the draft age, and maybe the war was going
down by then. But he went to Minneapolis, where he and Lee Zelden, who was a woman
who wasn't a student--
LS:
Oh, I know her, yes.
WS:
--but was very active in the student affairs during the student disruptions of the time,
were working on an OEO poverty program, organizing the poor somewhere as federal
employees. But anyway, to make a long story short, one of my friends at UCLA, who
knew Evan and knew about him, sent me a picture of Evan with a two-column story on
the first page of the Los Angeles Times, saying, "Blue collar workman takes part in panel
on poverty," or whatever it was. And Evan was representing himself as a Minneapolis
working slob, who was appearing on this panel. And he was quoted as saying, "Before I
came to this--when I accepted this, I didn't realize how difficult it would be for me to talk
11
Sewell, William H (#101)
with this bunch of learned panelists, professors and deans, and so on. So I waited until 10
o'clock until a bar opened, got three stiff jolts of whiskey before I could appear here and
talk." Here is a guy whose father is an eminent professor, who was raised in a
professorial family, who spent all-LS:
Where is his father a professor?
WS:
I believe at Brandeis. It's either Brandeis or one of the city colleges, but I'm quite sure it's
Brandeis. But in any event, here's an academic brat, you know, putting on this act, which
is typical of Evan. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, on any question. He's
now a graduate student again, at Yale, I understand, in social policy, or social planning,
or something of that sort. He's very bright. He's a smart guy, but I think, you know, my
reading is that he's essentially without character, and an opportunist. He abandoned the
student movement the minute he got in trouble. He wasn't in any part of--you know, he
left, deserted the cause, so to speak, rather than staying here like, at least, Bobby Cohen
did to face charges and to represent the student position. So I never--
00:46:28 End of Tape 1, Side 1
Tape 1, Side 2
00:46:30
WS:
Stark took a seminar with me. Then I didn't see him for several weeks. This is probably
the spring before I became chancellor. And I didn't see him for several weeks. And
finally I saw him out in the hall, and I said, "Evan, you seem to have quit the seminar.
Have you dropped it?" He said, "Oh, no. No, no." And I said, "Well, were you upset by
what I said the other day?" "Oh, no!. That's OK. Never even thought about it." And I
said, "Then why haven't you been coming?" He said, "Well, I'm organizing a strike at
Sears." And he said, "When I get around, when I get that all settled, I'll come back and
make up the work for the seminar." He has still got an incomplete. I don't think he ever
finished it. But you know, the intellectual life was not all that important to him, I don't
think. I never could quite make out his motive structure. I didn't know him all that well,
but it seemed to me he just kind of wanted to be in the forefront of the radical movement.
I haven't any doubt of his convictions about the war--
LS:
Oh, you don't? I was going to ask you whether
WS:
Oh, no. Oh, no. I don't know, you know; I don't know how anybody, hardly, could have
failed to be upset by the war.
LS:
But he was upset
WS:
Oh, yes.
LS:
That's the point, was he--?
WS:
I'm sure he was genuinely upset, but at the same time, he's a very complicated guy, and I
think he saw this as a chance to get a hold of the student movement at one university at
least--and to run it. And that's what he was doing. Well, you know, there were all sorts
of incidents that took place long before that he was engaged in. You remember, there
was one big fuss about him burning an American flag in front of the Union and, oh, there
were all sorts of things that he was engaged in the year or so before.
12
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
But somebody else did that, too. Is that right?
WS:
Yes. Oh, yes, that was a common trick in those days. But he did--so I'm sure that he was
sincere in his protests against the war.
LS:
Was he a genuine radical? Was he an SDS member, do you know?
WS:
I don't know, but I'm sure he--. I would guess that he was, sure. I don't know that. But
he was a genuine radical. I don't think there was any question about that, that he believed
in the overthrow of the government.
00:49:09
And he was like most of the radical students that I got to know at all. He was a real
elitist, you know. They always talked about the poor, exploited working classes and the
poor blacks and so on, but they were going to do something for them. They were not
going to bring them into the decision structure, by any means, but they knew what was
good for exploited people. And, you know, I never knew whether he was a Marxist or a
Maoist or what he was. None of those people was it ever very clear, you know.
00:49:43
Our generation, especially my generation, who finished college during the Depression
and many of whom were socialists or had turned to socialism or to communism--Russian
style, or Stalinism--they were ideologues. They could give you the answers to anything,
and they'd argue eight hours on public debate, you know. The socialists would debate the
communists, and so on, and refute each other and all that sort of thing, and their
interpretation of Marx and Lenin. But these kids had no such fix. And my generation
couldn't understand that. I remember Don Anderson was the editor, the long time editor,
of the Wisconsin State Journal, and he couldn't get it out of his head that these people
weren't being paid huge sums of money by the communist underground, you know. And
he couldn't believe it when I'd tell him that they'd condemn the Russians on many
grounds. "Well, that was just a front." And the truth is, I think they were much more
Maoist than Stalinist, but they didn't know what they were. They weren't, you know, in
any real sense, they had no set ideology. That made one of the things--. You know, for a
period of time, there was a focusing among liberal and radical students, there was a
focusing on the war that brought them together. They were greatly upset by the war.
They were also upset by their own escape from the costs of the war, very much--deeply,
psychologically upset by that. And that brought them together. They had a common
focus. It didn't matter whether they were Maoist, or Marxist, or Quaker, or what in hell
you were, just if you were opposed to the war, you were willing to go to meetings and
maybe even do things.
00:51:47
There were a lot of kids who--in that building, when the Dow riots took place, when the
police went into the Commerce Building, there were kids sitting there, thinking that that
would be--yes, I thought it would be, actually--primarily a symbolic protest. They'd sit
there. The police would come in and arrest them. We had arranged for buses and trucks
to take them down to the police station; I think even numbers to pin on them, you know,
so they could appear and be charged then, and that they would leave without any
resistance. After all, there had never been any resistance here, Berkeley, or any place
13
Sewell, William H (#101)
else before, and that's what we had planned for. And there were all sorts of kids in there,
you know, who were there, just like good Quaker kids or peacenicks of any kind,
traditional, religious, or whatever philosophical grounds upon which they were opposed
to the war, and who intended no violence whatsoever. And it's still, you know,
completely unknown what happened when the cops went in. The police claim that when
they tried to get into the building they were repulsed by the students. And they were,
some of them, hit with bricks and various other things. And you know, they just kind of
blew them right out through the doors, and then they regrouped and when they went in,
they just smacked everybody in sight, as far as I can learn. And a lot of these kids were
sitting there, you know, with their hands folded, getting their heads hit. I wasn't in there,
so I don't know what actually happened. But those are the kinds of stories that I got from
people who were in the building.
LS:
What is the name of that report? The Scotton Report.
WS:
Yes.
00:53:39
LS:
But I don't want to get too far ahead of where we ought to be.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
Talking about Evan Stark, and since we were talking about him, there's Bob Cohen and
Henry Haslach, and Bob Zwicker, they were all--. Did you know the others as well as
Evan Stark?
WS:
Yes, not as well as Evan, but I knew Cohen fairly well.
LS:
And you have a higher regard for him, I gather?
WS:
Yes, Bobby Cohen was a different kind of a guy. He was not a crafty planner of things.
He was a spokesman and an orator. He couldn't resist an opportunity to orate. Now Evan
was a good talker, but nothing like Bobby Cohen. And so Bobby, I think, was more the
tool of Evan than anything else, although again, he was philosophically committed to
what he was doing. But I don't think Bobby had any intent that there be violence. I don't
think he's that sort of a guy at all. But he spoke for them. He spoke for the students, and
he was very effective. As an example of how he loved to talk and speak, you know, he
demanded, sometime after the Dow thing, to go and speak to the regents in defence of his
dismissal of his attorneys in that trial, you know, that he was having, and stomping out of
the building. And then the hearing group, which--George Young was then dean of the
Law School--just kicked him out of school for what they did there; which you can do. I
didn't know that. In a court of law, you disobey the law, you don't need any trial. It's
there, and it's public, and bang, you can be sentenced. But in any event, George followed
the legal procedures when Cohen dismissed the attorney. It was Cohen, Zwicker, and
somebody else; I forgot now who were under hearing, who were being tried there, or
having a hearing. He dismissed his attorney and then turned on the hearing board and
condemned them personally. Among other things, he said George Young was a drunk
and an idiot or something and so on. And so they just threw him out of school right then.
I thought that was a big mistake. I thought they should have kept their cool, and
adjourned the thing, and gone into conference, and then decided what to do. Well, they
did!. They just adjourned it and walked in another room, and then they decided within
14
Sewell, William H (#101)
ten minutes what to do to these guys. But anyway, they did it. So you had to live with it.
Well, then Cohen demanded a hearing before the regents, and some prominent liberal
members of our faculty counseled him a good deal about what he should claim there.
LS:
You mean people like Anatole Beck?
WS:
Well, I won't say like whom because I'm not that sure who they were, but he was told
that, "OK, go before the board and make your case. Say that these were bad times and
these were terrible things that were going on--the war--and that you were very much
opposed to all this. The voice of students hadn't been properly heard in federal or local
places of power and that, in your frustration, you had done certain things. You're not
sorry for them because you knew of no other recourse available to you and that when you
felt that the hearing wasn't--you weren't being well represented by your attorney and that
possibly the hearing board was not sympathetic with your position, that you said some
things you shouldn't have said." Well, that was what he was to say, I'm told. Instead, he
went in and ended up giving the regents hell for all of their oppressive measures and
finally said that they were the biggest--that he had never stood before nine such complete
cretins in all of his life and on and on he went, you know.
00:58:21
Well, anyway, he then left here. Fred fired him, as you recall. And I protested that, not
because I had any love for him but because I felt that we were getting--well, I have deep
feelings about what justice is and how it ought to be carried out. I think in what I said--I
don't even have a copy of it anymore--I said that the university certainly could afford to
suffer some indignities from individuals in order to see to it that a fair hearing took place
and that it was part of our duty to teach young people what the system of jurisprudence
was all about, and that there were procedures set up for dismissal of members of teaching
staff, and that I thought they should be adhered to and so on and so on. But I would have
done that whether it had been Cohen or anybody else. I had no personal love for him, by
any means. He got me into all kinds of trouble. It was just that I didn't think that, in
times of stress, you could afford, in a university, to abandon the usual mechanisms that
you use. You're trying to force the students to follow the usual mechanisms, and
certainly the administration had to be as willing to do so. And I argued with Fred at
length on three different times that day about it.
LS:
Oh, really.
WS:
and tried--
LS:
He didn't agree with you?
WS:
Oh, I think he probably agreed with me, but I think he felt that he had to do it. The
regents were demanding that Cohen be fired, I'm sure. He didn't say that to me in so
many words, but I'm sure that's what it was. I think he didn't think it'd make that much
difference anyway. And it didn't. You know. I don't think it caused--
LS:
No, it didn't get him fired, in fact. I mean, he stayed, Cohen did.
WS:
I don't recall.
LS:
He was kept, yes.
15
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Was he kept on in this job?
LS:
Well, I think then he had the trial, but--
WS:
I don't think so. But he didn't go on teaching.
LS:
Wasn't the point that he was fired before he'd had his trial?
WS:
Oh no, but he wasn't fired by Fred. He wasn't fired for what he did as a student. He was
fired for neglect of his teaching duties, or something like that.
LS:
Yes, but the thing is that your opinion prevailed.
WS:
And that trial would have nothing to do with his teaching duties.
LS:
I think the tape is coming to an end, so we'll—
[Break in tape]
01:01:10
WS:
He had to do something to appease the regents, the legislators, the people of the state.
The people of the state knew much more about Bobby Cohen than they did Evan Stark.
It was only the insiders that knew Evan, because he didn't play the public game. So the
spokesman was Bobby, and he was the one who had everybody infuriated, you know.
And I think Fred just figured, well, you know, it was a fluke that he was on the staff to
begin with, and that he ought to--that it would help the university in its position with the
state, with the governor, with the regents, certainly, to get rid of this guy. So he felt that
move had to be taken. And as I say, I really think that Fred was kind of pleased, in a
sense, that I opposed him, and wouldn't fire him. See Fred asked me to fire him, which I
wouldn't do. And then he said he would. And I tried to talk him out of that, and I gave
him all the reasons. And he said, "Well, those are forceful reasons; I'll think about it."
And then he appeared on television on the six o'clock news saying he'd fired him. And
Fred had gone to Notre Dame for some reason that afternoon, so he must have made that
up. Early in the afternoon, he must have made the tape because he was present, you
know, saying--. But in any event, I think Fred figured that that had to be done. It was a
small sacrificial lamb to slaughter at that point, and I think he figured that: OK, that
would cost him some faculty support. But the fact that I came out in opposition to what
he had done would kind of recapture it, you know, in a sense; although I certainly didn't
have that as my intent, nor, I think, did he. I think that's the way it worked out, in that he
was smart enough to see that it would kind of work out that way. The faculty would be
mad at him, but they'd be kind of pleased with me.
LS:
But it would be only one segment of the faculty who would be mad; and the rest would
be very much in favor of it.
WS:
No, I don't think that's so. I absolutely don't think that's so. I think this faculty is so
concerned with the following of faculty procedures and dismissal that they might say the
bastard should be fired, but not without a hearing.
LS:
Do you really think so?
WS:
Oh, yes. I don't think there is any question about it. The one thing that I encountered in
dealing with the faculty during that period, and whereas there were little delegations of
16
Sewell, William H (#101)
eight to ten people who wanted to see me almost every day from the faculty--from the
liberal segment of the faculty--to tell me what to do, or to protest what I was doing, or to
give me guidance and inspiration, or whatever it might be, there were occasions when I
was confronted with the conservative members of the faculty. It turned out that the
University Committee was very conservative, and I had been their chairman when I
became chancellor, so I knew all those guys very well. And they used to call me in
periodically to say, "Look, we're trying to support you, but you've just got to take a firmer
stand against these students," and so on and so on, you know. And I'd lecture them the
same way as I did the regents, and then I'd keep pointing out to them--when they'd say,
"Well, we're going to do this, that, and the other thing"--I'd point out to them the
difference between being charged with the administration of the university and charged
with policy making. They could make policies, but they weren't running this university.
And that used to just make them madder than hell because I'd keep pointing that out, but
it was true. Still, they supported me all the way through. But every one of those people
believed in due process. Every one of them. And I remember I was asked to go to the
two then most conservative faculties to appear after the Dow thing and after my
statements about the interviewing and all that sort of thing and appointing these
committees and so on. One was the faculty of the School of Engineering, and man, they
were really upset. But with all of their admonitions on how we've got to crack down on
the students, how we've got to prevent violence, how we've got to prevent interference
with orderly procedures, and so on, with the exception of one man, whom I don't even
know, who got up and said, well, we ought to do like Hitler did when the German radical
youth rose up against him in the early days of his regime and get machine guns and tanks
and just mow the bastards down. And the Engineering faculty booed, you know. They
wanted a much tougher line, but they didn't want you to--. I wouldn't doubt but what they
were all used to, you know, for a hundred years in American universities and colleges
people have been thrown out by the dean without any hearing. And I think they kind of
were sad that those days were gone forever because there had been federal case after
federal case, you know, in which they had put the kids back in school. And they knew
about that, vaguely. And I, of course, told them about it, too, when I was explaining why
you couldn't throw people out.
01:06:56
But in general I would say the faculty was supportive of orderly procedures, of
procedures that were fair to students, that didn't prejudge their guilt, and so on. So I think
that, even though they hated--. Much of the faculty, too, thought that Cohen was the
great leader of all this, the plotter and the planner. And being the mouth for it and the
spokesman, of course, he got all the publicity. And most of the faculty didn't know what
was going on anyway. So you're sitting over in your office in Ag Hall, and you hear that
the students have taken over the Peterson Building or something. And you think what a
horrible thing it is, but you go on about your business, and you don't do much about it.
And I think that was true of most of the faculty. And when it came to their attention that
there were required procedures and so on, they believed in them, especially they believed
when it came to anything like an academic person. Even though Bobby Cohen was a TA
and not an instructor or assistant professor, still there were procedures, and they knew
there were. And they wanted those procedures followed.
17
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
I'm very glad you said that.
WS:
You know, it's partly their own self-interest.
LS:
Yes, of course, but still it's something to recognize.
WS:
And it's also decency and fair play.
LS:
It just ties in with, when I interviewed Edwin Young, his comment that he--this is during
the TA strike--he didn't worry about the liberal, vocal members of the faculty. He said it
was the quiet ones off in the Ag campus, that were worldwide scholars, whose opinions
worried him. That's why I said, when you said Harrington was worried about the faculty
who might oppose him--. But you're saying it would have been including those quiet
ones.
WS:
It would have been. Not all of them, but it would have been a lot of them. And you
know how all of those things are. Nobody's very absolute about such things. They might
have said, "Well, you can bend procedures a little when you've got a guy as bad as this
fellow, as flagrant as he is, a man who goes before the regents and calls them cretins and
who doesn't behave nicely in public," and so on. They might say, "Well, I won't feel as
bad about that as if he'd dismissed somebody that didn't behave in those ways." But still,
this faculty has been--. It's not an accident, I think, that this faculty has historically taken
a strong position on faculty freedom of expression, all going back to the plaque on
Bascom Hall that everybody talks about.
LS:
Don't say it!
WS:
But in any event, Cohen was not, then, much of a schemer, much of an organizer; he was
a spokesman. And as I say, he stayed and took his medicine, then went to the University
of Buffalo, where he again got involved in things. The philosophy department there hired
him, I think as an instructor, and he got involved in things there. I'll always remember, I
was at a conference on the student revolt that the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences held in Boston. You know, they print Daedalus. And the person who was
running it--they broke the group--there were about, probably, forty people invited, and
many of them gave papers, and others comments, and others a good deal of discussion. I
guess you know those kind, they go for two or three days, and then, a few months later,
they get people to revise their papers and publish them in Daedalus. But in any event,
they were ushering us off to the various rooms we were assigned to. And the fellow who
was running it said, "Now, you'll be with Marty Meyerson in such and such a room." He
said, "Do you"--and just then Myerson came up and he said, "Do you know each other?"
See, he had been chancellor at Berkeley during some of the troubles and then went on to
Buffalo as president of SUNY-Buffalo. And he said, "Do I know him? He's the bastard
that sent me Cohen!" What was his name?
LS:
Bobby.
WS:
Bobby Cohen, yes. Well, he knew me. But anyway, I don't know what's ever happened
to Bobby since then. Somebody told me he still--he got his Ph.D. finally, and is in
academic life somewhere.
LS:
I've heard he's still in Buffalo, but that's--
WS:
He may be; I just don't know.
18
Sewell, William H (#101)
01:12:04
LS:
Did you know Hank Haslach?
WS:
Not very well. He was kind of a, by then even, a perennial math TA, as I recall. And he
used to come in and talk to me about the union, not about these troubles. He was a very
humorless sort of a guy, I thought. I didn't really have much to do with him, nor did he
really have much to do with the student movement.
LS:
No, he wasn't involved in the--
WS:
He was involved, but--
LS:
In the first DOW, but not in the second one, I think.
WS:
Yes, but he wasn't any great shakes in the student movement, but he was a fairly
important figure, I guess, in the TIAA.
LS:
TAA.
WS:
Not TIAA. Teaching Assistants Association.
LS:
Yes. Is this the time to ask about Paul Soglin?
WS:
It's as good a time as any. You were going to ask me about that other fellow; what was
his name?
LS:
Oh, Zwicker; Bob Zwicker.
WS:
Bob Zwicker, I knew Bob Zwicker because he used to come in once in a while. He was
the Madison, or he was the local boy, you know.
LS:
I don't know anything about him.
WS:
He's a Wisconsin boy, from someplace up--oh, gosh, I don't even remember the
community--but from a Wisconsin family.
LS:
That's nice. I'm glad there were some Wisconsin--
WS:
He was a very handsome, big fellow and Ralph Hanson, who got along extremely well
with the radical students for somebody who had to be policeman to them, he just hated
and feared that guy. He thought he was a true radical in the sense that he would do
terrible things if called upon. Remember, during that year, they fire bombed South Hall
and burned out the dean's offices trying to destroy the records, of which we had copies all
over the place. You know, it was a typical syndicalist sort of a thing. If you can destroy
the records, you'll grind this monster to a halt, and so on. And Ralph immediately
suspected that must be the guy that did it. It didn't matter what happened around here, he
thought Bob Zwicker--
LS:
More so than Even Stark or Bob Cohen?
WS:
Oh yes, because he didn't see them as the desperate types who would do things.
LS:
Zwicker was an undergraduate, wasn't he?
WS:
He was an undergraduate in--I don't know. I haven't any idea whether rightly or wrongly,
Ralph just saw him as the kind of guy who would throw a bomb, or would light a
building, who would do the violent things.
19
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
That's the way some people felt about Marketti later on.
WS:
Yes, and I don't really know, you know. I used to kid Ralph about his mania against this
fellow, but I never really knew him very well. He was the one that--during the trial there
wasn't room in the law courtroom over there, in the law school trial courtroom, and they
had filled every seat. And he came and opened windows and crawled through the
windows and wouldn't leave, with a bunch of other people, and disrupted the trial. And
oh, they were all upset about that. But anyway, I really don't know much about that boy
at all. I met him once or twice. He was not nearly as intellectually oriented as the other
fellows. But Ralph really thought he was a dangerous fellow, and I don't know whether
he had any basis for that.
LS:
I'll have to talk to him.
WS:
Well, you ought to talk to Ralph, if you haven't, about the whole affair, because he knows
more about it than anybody.
01:16:04
Now, you're asking about Paul Soglin. Paul Soglin was a minor figure in whatever
happened on the campus. He's tried to make political capital of it and succeeded in doing
it. Again, he was a talker, not a doer. As far as I know, Paul was never apprehended in
anything. His greatest claim to fame was in that university forum after the Dow affair.
He made his speech. You know, there was this university forum with several--well, the
place was absolutely--the Union theater--was packed for it. And all my advisors and
friends had urged me to make this public appearance, in fact, to suggest the forum, which
I did to the forum committee, and that this would be a chance for me to say my piece-which I, of course, did--and for others to talk. And Paul was going to represent the
student view or something. I've forgotten who all was on it. But nobody paid any
attention to anybody but me, you know. When I walked in the room, I knew there was
going to be trouble because there was just a chorus of boos that followed me all the way
to the platform. This was being broadcast all over the state.
LS:
How did that make you feel?
WS:
I felt terrible. But it didn't give--
LS:
Angry? Or betrayed, or?
WS:
No, just--. No, not betrayed. I never felt betrayed by anybody in all this. I'm too much
of a realist for that. I guess I felt a little, at first, let down by the fact--not necessarily
betrayed--because I thought they were kind of pursuing their own self interests and so on,
but--
LS:
But this would have been boos from students.
WS:
Oh, sure!
LS:
Yes.
WS:
And the place was packed with radical students. Nobody else could get in, and of course
they booed and hissed me. Whenever I'd say anything, they'd hiss, and so on. And then,
there were no questions directed to anybody but me. And people were planted all over
20
Sewell, William H (#101)
the place to raise the questions. And I must have answered questions for an hour, until it
was just the same old stuff over and over again. And I said I just don't see any point in-LS:
Were they specific or where they general, or were they about--
WS:
Oh, no, general things about--
LS:
The war, and the university, and DOW.
WS:
Oh, yes, and me and why I didn't have the courage of my stated convictions about the
war, and why had I muzzled some people.
01:18:49
Joe Kauffman had gotten out some kind of a federal restraining order against certain
student radicals making speeches on the campus, or holding gatherings, or something.
And I really had nothing to do with that, but Joe did it, and-LS:
That was after Dow, was it?
WS:
After Dow, yes, a couple weeks after Dow. And then they went to the federal courts and
got it changed, you know. We were in federal court all the time. I never went there--
LS:
Soglin was the leader of that, though, as I understand it. But maybe that's a different-WS: You'd better look it up!
LS:
Yes.
WS:
--because Soglin claims a lot of things that weren't so. But anyway, Soglin was the
spokesman at that meeting. He spoke, and at a certain point in the proceedings, after he'd
given the speech, he raised his hand on signal, and about 400 followed him out of the
room screaming, " You fascist bastard. You've got blood on your hands." I've got a tape
of that, you know. If I wanted to ruin Paul in an election, I could play that tape. I've
never done it, but--
LS:
I didn't realize he was that involved in that part of it.
WS:
He wasn't. He was just involved in the--. I mean, I don't think he necessarily planted
people there with questions, but Paul has always got his finger in the air to see where the
wind's blowing politically. Paul, I think, has got as little firm, philosophical convictions
as Evan Stark, you know. He'll do whatever it takes to get elected, whatever it is to have
a following, and at that time he wanted to take over the student movement. And so, you
know, he did what he thought would help him to do it. But he never did. Nobody ever
took it over again, you know. It's really true that, from the passing of Evan Stark and
Bobby Cohen from the scene, which they did, effectively, from that point, never after that
was there an organized student movement on this campus. Nobody was able to take it
over. Various people tried. Paul, I'm sure, thought he was doing it, or might have a
chance.
LS:
Do you think he didn't have the strength of personality to do it?
WS:
Well, I don't have any idea. I don't know if he really wanted to that bad. I shouldn't
make that inference. I think he was opposed to the war. You know, he was floating
around. He thought he was a graduate student in history, your department. History kept
kicking him out because he wasn't getting anything done; hadn't for years, you know. He
21
Sewell, William H (#101)
was driving a taxi cab, and he was into this, that, and the other thing, and I don't think he
was at all settled about what he wanted to do in life. And it was only after that, some
years after that, that he came back to law school, you know.
LS:
He did run for alderman that spring.
WS:
Yes, he ran for alderman.
LS:
And was elected, in fact.
WS:
He was elected, yes, in a student district. But still, I don't know what you mean by a
student leader. I mean somebody that can organize them and get things done.
LS:
Well, I do mean that.
WS:
And that wasn't Paul. He'd never got that--
LS:
And he wasn't able to do it.
WS:
I don't know that he even tried. But he was certainly not--. You know, he didn't have a
following of convicted people that would do what he wanted done, which Evan Stark had
and which Evan and Bobby had together. And oh, there were various people among
students who tried to take over their role. But none of them ever succeeded.
01:22:31
I remember two boys, I can't even remember their names, a pair of twins, came into my
office one day. They were New York kids, and they said to me that, "We're organizing.
We have a plan to put you out of this office. And one of us will be sitting in your chair.
We're going to run this university before this year is over." And I said, "Well, that's very
interesting; I'd love to know how you're going to do that." They said, "Well, there's seven
thousand kids in the dorms, and we're going to organize those dormies. And boy, when
we get those seven thousand behind it, it's not going to be these few hundreds of kids that
will be behind various other radicals around here, and we're going to put you down in the
basement, in that office down there, and we're going to run this university." And I said,
"Well, guys, you know, that's interesting to me. I just wondered how you're going to get
them organized because nobody else has ever been able to organize them in an election or
anything else. They're the most unorganizable people in the world." "Well, we'll do it.
We'll take up issues like food, and visiting hours, and so on, you know." And I never
heard of them again. But there were various people who wanted to be leaders.
LS:
Were they undergraduates?
WS:
Yes, they were undergraduates. I think they were juniors at the time. I can't even
remember their names. I'm sure Burt Fisher would remember.
LS:
It would be nice to know what happened to them.
WS:
But oh, it would be nice to know what's happened to a lot of the people. But in any
event, I would say Paul's role was really small. He had nothing to do with the big things
that happened earlier; he had nothing to do with them. And then when the Dow thing
came again he wasn't in the building. He hadn't made any statements. He wasn't even
involved in it, so far as I know. It was only later than that, after the events of the Dow,
22
Sewell, William H (#101)
that he started trying to get--. Again, he's a talker, you know. Put a microphone in front
of Paul; he talks.
LS:
Was he a good talker?
WS:
Yes, quite good. Not as good as Bobby Cohen. Bobby Cohen was a real rabble rouser
type talker, but Paul isn't that good, but he's good. He's verbal, he's smart, and he's
clever. And he was by far the most consummate politician of all of them, you know. As
I say, I don't think Paul ever did anything in his life that he didn't test the water pretty
thoroughly first, even if it wasn't very apparent that he was.
01:25:00
But he's managed, you know. I think he's managed to do very well at it. And to stay in
office this long, it's a pretty good record. But I don't really think he has any very
profound philosophical conclusions about--or basis for his politics. It's appalling. Maybe
you don't get elected if you do, you know.
LS:
I was going to say, I'm not sure that was a requisite of office.
WS:
So Paul, I would just dismiss Paul as a minor figure in it. Now, he's been a smart enough
politician to play that as if he--here's the young radical who led the campus through its
strife, and now is mayor and responsible, and gets himself on TV with that image, and so
on. But that's pretty easy to do because newsmen don't do much homework, you know.
They don't really look into things and try to find out whether these assumptions are
correct. It makes a much better story to have Paul an important student leader during the
radical days, and now mayor, than it does to say he was one of the second or third rate
people in the movement. At least that's my view of it. I think that anybody who had
anything to do with the student troubles around here would tell you the same thing about
him, in terms of what his role was in the student movement.
01:26:29
LS:
I'd like to ask you about Joe Kauffman. You've mentioned him already several times.
You must have known him.
WS:
Not very well. When I went into office, you see, Robben made the decision sometime in
early summer to take the Michigan job. The search committee was a faculty search
committee, you know. They didn't have students or regents on them in those days. And
they soon came up with a list, in a month's time, I think. And I know at least two names
that were on the list.
LS:
Young was one of them, I know.
WS:
Ed and me. And I would be fairly sure, although I don't know it because nobody ever
told me so, that Fred probably called Ed right away to see if he would like the job. And
Ed was just early into his presidency at Maine, and I think he decided that he didn't want
to get messed up with all those troubles and so on, and that he'd stay where he was. But I
don't know that. But I think that's a fair inference. But in any event, Fred called me over
and asked if I would do it. He gave me three or four days to think about it, and I talked to
only two people, my wife and Burt Fisher. And Burt thought I should do it. Well, I
talked to Robben, of course, and I talked to--I meant outside of the administration. And
of course I talked to Bob Clodius, who was very anxious that I do it. He was vice
23
Sewell, William H (#101)
president at that time. And when I talked to Robben he said, "Well, you know, I really
think the worst of it's over. It's peaked. It's all down hill from here on." And he said, "If
I were you, I'd make Joe Kauffman vice president for student affairs. Let him handle
everything." And I talked to Fred Harrington, and I didn't--for his advice, and I didn't tell
him what Robben had said. And he said, "Well, Joe can handle it. You don't need to
worry about it. Just turn it all over to Joe." I wasn't at all satisfied that it was all over,
although I kind of believed that maybe it had peaked. You want to remember, looking
back over it, that it's much easier now to see that it hadn't than it was at that time.
LS:
Yes, I know.
WS:
And there were a lot of people who were saying that the whole student movement had
peaked. But I didn't quite believe that. But I thought, you know, maybe we'd learned
how to deal with it a little. But I talked to a lot of people around the campus, after I took
office, about what shall I do about student affairs? Can I turn it over to Joe? Almost to a
person, they said, no. I talked to my friend Burt Fisher, to Bry Kearl, to Leon Epstein, to
all sorts of people. I talked to Dean Pound, even though I knew that he would be, you
know, he was much more conservative about the whole thing. And I just got, generally,
the story that, well, Joe can't cope with it, that he's just--whatever capacities he had for
handling this, he's burned himself out. He's got no more good will among the students
because of what he's had to do. And he's lost patience with the radical students. And you
shouldn't! You can't fire him, but on the other hand you shouldn't turn it over to him.
And I still tried to turn everything I could over to Joe. But it was true. By then, Joe had
gotten pretty gun shy. He was terribly nervous. And another thing was going on.
01:30:54
Joe was issuing edicts of various sorts, without talking to me about them.
LS:
I wondered about that.
WS:
And he issued some edict about if they took a building, or something like that, they'd just
have to have the police. And there would be people thrown out of school and all that sort
of thing. And he didn't talk to me about it first, but I learned later that he talked to Fred
about it. And I think Fred had been putting the heat on Joe to do some of these things. I
don't know this, but--
LS:
It would have been extraordinary for him not to talk to you, I should think since you--
WS:
Well, it wasn't all that extraordinary because I told him to handle it, you know, and I
didn't want anything to do with it. That was what I'd said when I was appointed
chancellor.
01:31:36
End of Tape 1
24
Sewell, William H (#101)
Tape 2, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
I was called over there at the last minute, you know, to go to the regents' meeting, be
introduced to the regents, and then came out. And they knew it was announced. And
some people who saw me go in couldn't believe that was the guy. But anyway, it was
announced, and some local reporter said, "Well, now, what are you going to do about the
students' problems?" and so on. And I, in my characteristic, quick response, wisecracking way, made the following statement: "I didn't become chancellor of this
university to be dean of students." You know, it was lucky that the guy had enough sense
not to put that in the paper because that would have angered everybody right at the
beginning, I guess. But I didn't, you know, and I'd been kind of assured by Fred and Bob
Fleming and Bob Clodius that Joe would handle it, so I kind of turned it over to Joe.
And yet I was terribly uneasy about it all. And then when the Dow incident itself came,
Ralph, whom I had great respect for in handling the crises that he was called upon to
handle, said to me, "Now this may be a lot rougher than anybody figures, and I'm not at
all satisfied. We haven't got a police force here, really. We can't cope with anything of
any magnitude. So if things get out of hand, then Bill's got to"--Bill Emery, the chief of
police--"has got to come." But, he said, "Because of that, we'd better have a meeting
with Bill." So we had a long meeting with Bill, and Harrington, I think was his
lieutenant, at which we said, "Now we don't want any--"
LS:
Was Joe Kauffman at that meeting?
WS:
Joe was at the meeting, oh yes, Joe was in on all these things--"We don't want any rough
stuff whatever. We don't want confrontations in which you have to beat people or
anything of that sort."
LS:
He agreed with that?
WS:
Oh, he agreed with all that. And he went on to say, "Well, they aren't going to cause any
trouble. They'll come out peacefully, and be charged, and we'll have transportation to get
them down to the county judge, or the city judge, or whoever it was as soon as possible
and get rid of them. They may do like the kids at Berkeley and that Sproul Hall affair,"
which had taken place not long before that, which some of the kids, even though they
would relax and let them carry them out, the kids charged that the police would bump
them down the stairs, you know, and twist their arms, and do all that sort of thing. And
the cops claimed they resisted even though they claimed they didn't and all that. And I
said, "We don't want any of that kind of stuff." "Oh, no, there wouldn't be any of that
kind of stuff." Well, Joe was present during all that, and so was Ralph. But Ralph was
the one guy who really sensed that it might be much different from that because he said,
"Boy, I wish we had some larger force of less involved people we could call in here.
Because if they mean business, our little force and whatever Emery will bring here won't
be able to handle it." He said, "You need enough presence to prevent things." And I
never thought, although this is gratuitous, I guess, that he trusted Bill Emery. It wasn't
that he thought Bill Emery was an evil man. But the police had taken so much junk, so
much crap, insults, from the students, that he sensed that they were all up tense, that they
just couldn't stand much more. And that Bill couldn't control them. Although Bill was a
25
Sewell, William H (#101)
martinet, you know, in his relationship to his men. But Ralph figured in real stress that
he might go to pieces, I think, looking back over it. But in any event, he said to me,
"Now look, there's got to be distance between you and the students. We'll set up a
headquarters. I'll be in the building, and I'll try to reason with them in and out of the
building. Joe's office will be headquarters. And you stay in your office and under no
circumstances come down to Joe's office, because we will take them to Joe's office. This
will give us time to cool things off. Then we'll bring them to your office if we can't settle
things there," you know. It sounded like a good strategy. Well, to make a long story
short, Joe kept saying, "Well, the police have got to go in there. People are in danger in
there. They're so crowded. The secretaries can't get out of their offices." We don't
know, but he thought the Dow guys would be imprisoned in the rooms, and there was
danger of great violence. And Ralph would caution going slow, and he'd keep good
watch on it. And finally even Ralph got convinced that it was dangerous to let the
situation go any further. And Joe kept pleading, "We have got to let them go in; we have
got to let them go in."
00:05:49
So finally I went down to Joe's office, and there we had another meeting. Oh, Mike-whoever the president of the student council was then, a very lovely boy, Mike something
or other, later became a lawyer, he was a junior Phi Beta--and a boy by the name of Steve
Richter, who was vice president--Mike Fullwood-LS:
That's right.
WS:
--and Steve Richter were there all the time. They heard all the conversations. And Mike
Fullwood kept saying, "Well, we can't wait any longer. Somebody's going to get killed in
there. Something is going to happen. I agree that we have got to go in." And Bill Emery
was anxious to go, and so on. So we had Ralph keep repeating over a loud speaker: "This
is an unlawful assembly," and reading whatever the law is, you know, about unlawful
assemblies, and to get out of there, and he'd give them fifteen minutes. And they
wouldn't move, and he'd go back. Then, finally, a delegation came. Well, by that time, I
had decided I had to get down there. Well, Ralph didn't want me to go near the building
to do any negotiating myself. He was afraid.
LS:
Oh, for your safety.
WS:
Oh, yes, personal safety. He just said, "I don't want you or Joe in that building because I
don't know what the hell will happen to you. They can come out if they want to talk to
you." And Evan Stark and two or three other guys came to Joe's office to meet with all of
us and sat around the table. And they said that they'd come out of the building only if I
would promise to never again allow any interviewers to come on this campus.
LS:
Any interviewers, or any Dow interviewers?
WS:
Well, Dow or any other company that they said shouldn't come and so on. And I told
them there was no way I could make that promise, and that I hoped they'd come out
because if they didn't--
LS:
This was against your own belief because you, yourself, would have preferred not to have
interviews on campus, but you were-26
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes, but if you're present chancellor of the university, you don't--you can't run the
university on the basis of your beliefs if there's already rules of what you've got to do.
LS:
Yes, no, I understand. I just meant that it was a position--
WS:
I didn't want them there, but I wasn't going to be dictated to by students, either. If Bobby
Cohen and Evan Stark and those guys could dictate to me what I had to do, I figured that
would be the end of my administration anyway. I just didn't believe they had the right,
nor should I give in to it. So anyway, I just told them, "You guys better get out of that
building because people are going to come in and get you out if you don't." And they
walked away and went back. Well, then after that, Ralph made--I don't know, Ralph
claims he made, I think--nine different broadcasts over the thing.
00:08:44
And finally, the police went in, about thirty of them.
LS:
Could you see the--
WS:
Yes, I stood in Joe's office. I didn't stay where I should have, probably, to follow the
plan. I went down there, and I could see the cops go in. And all of a sudden, they start
coming out through the doors, you know, hurled back by I don't know what. Anatole
Beck says the kids were scared and pushed them out. The commerce guys who were in
the building claimed that the kids started hitting the cops with knapsacks with bricks in
them, you know. Here were the same people witnessing the same thing. I don't know
what really happened. I don't know to this day. So they came out and regrouped and
then went back in again. And apparently, I get this even from Ralph, with their clubs
swinging, you know. And they drove them out. Well, then the rioting outside, and kids
were up on top of Bascom Hall throwing bricks--those bricks down from the top of the
place.
LS:
Oh, yes--
WS:
Oh, yes. One policeman, you know, was in the hospital for nine or ten months. Got hit
somewhere with them, not on the head--that would have killed him--but it broke his leg,
or something like that. You could look out of the window and see some cops down on
the ground with the kids pummeling them. You could see cops hitting at others, you
know; it was just a horrible scene.
LS:
When you were with Kauffman, how did you feel and what was his reaction? Do you
remember?
WS:
I don't know. I just felt terribly upset and distressed that all this had happened. And I
think he did, too. I'm sure he must have. And--
LS:
A group of faculty came to talk to you. Hack Fain was one of them.
WS:
Not during that time; maybe later in the day.
LS:
That could be.
WS:
Because these events just took place so fast. There were a lot of faculty there including-a lot of my own colleagues were standing in front of the clock tower. And the cops were
27
Sewell, William H (#101)
shooting these--you know, after the kids had come out of the building--were shooting
these guns with tear gas.
LS:
Yes.
WS:
And some of them looked over and saw Marshall Clinard and Burt Fisher and all this
group over there, and I don't know if they thought they were trouble makers or suspicious
characters, but they lobbed a big one right amongst them. I always thought that was
funny. And, oh, Marshall Clinard was so upset. He said, "Why didn't you control those
damn cops?" Well, you know, I couldn't any more control them than the man in the
moon. But anyway, things were pretty bad around there for twenty, thirty, forty minutes.
Gee, I can't recall Hack Fain or anybody else coming in in the meantime. I remember my
own son and daughter-in-law coming in and saying, "Dad,--"
LS:
Oh, was he a student at the time?
WS:
Yes, he was a graduate student here at the time, and so was she. And they came in and
said, "Look at those cops going into the building. They're going to beat hell out of those
kids." That was in between the first and the second round, you know. And I said, "Well,
it's out of my hands now, you know. They weren't listening to me."
LS:
You couldn't--you didn't think you could--or that Ralph Hanson could stop them either?
WS:
No, nobody could stop them. Ralph knew that. I don't know that he tried. I think Ralph
felt that, by then, the building had to be cleared. You know, imagine those people were
packed in there like sardines for four or five hours.
LS:
Yes, but you know the Scotten Report is very vivid on that subject--
WS:
Yes. But the point is, you know, that we had no control over the police. This is one of
the myths that the faculty had. This is part of the city of Madison. The city police can
enforce law in any way they see fit under the law.
LS:
Oh, I see. So you're not talking about able to stop them, but you don't have any legal
control over them, either?
WS:
Well, I knew there was no stopping them anyway. I had no legal control, none
whatsoever. They were cooperative with Ralph. But once they'd gone in there and met
with whatever resistance they did, they were going back in.
LS:
They thought it was their own business and not yours. I see.
WS:
Yes, they took it over. They didn't come and ask me anything. In fact, it was, you know,
it was minutes--it wasn't any hour or half hour--five minutes may have ensued--
LS:
In ten minutes, I think the building was clear.
WS:
Well, does it say ten?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
Well, whatever it was. They went in there and went after them. And once the whole
thing had broken loose, there was nothing anybody could have done. It was just out of
hand, you know. The police went nuts. The kids went nuts. It was just lucky that
somebody wasn't killed--really.
28
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
Yes, it was.
WS:
Just absolute luck, nothing else, that someone wasn't killed in all that.
00:13:52
Well, I just felt powerless about the whole thing. In the first place, I kind of half believed
Joe that they weren't going to raise any hell. I half believed Ralph that they might, and I
didn't know what to do about it. Quite frankly, I was never trained as a police officer or
crowd control guy. I've never had any interest in applied kinds of things, you know,
applied psychology. I never even read about it. It's not any part of my dish of tea.
People used to ask me afterwards, "Well, didn't being a sociologist help you?" I said, "It
didn't help me a damn bit. I never learned anything in sociology in my life that would
have told me what to do in any of those emergencies that came up." And I didn't. I may
be too honest to say it, but it's true. Now there are people who, on second thought,
figured just--they would have known just what to do and so on. I didn't. Joe didn't.
Ralph Hanson didn't. Nobody did--once it broke loose, you know. Now you might have
said, "OK, you could have just let them stay there." The advice against that came from
people that I respected, particularly from Ralph, who thought there was great danger in
letting them stay there. There was also the fact that the regents wouldn't let them stay
there or wouldn't allow you to use that policy.
LS:
Where was Harrington? I know he was in Milwaukee--
WS:
Oh, Harrington went to Milwaukee.
LS:
He wasn't back yet.
WS:
Oh, no. He didn't come back until it was all over. And the governor called two or three
times during the afternoon to say that "Did I want the National Guard?" He'd call and
declare a state of emergency and send out the National Guard and clear out the building
and so on. Well I told him, "No, thanks." I wish I'd known what I knew later about the
National Guard. The National Guard turned out to be the most disciplined, best police
force we've got. And it's due, I think, primarily, to the colonel, who had been trained in
crowd control through special work in Washington, and so on, and who managed the--. I
thought they behaved beautifully once they did take over the campus. That wasn't during
my time; it was during Ed's. But I didn't know that then. And I knew nothing about any
of those matters, so I just felt helpless. I just felt, here it's gone; everything's gone to hell.
I've been in office a month or so, and everything's blown.
00:16:32
LS:
Of course, you didn't know that people weren't going to get killed in the midst of it.
WS:
Oh, no! I was very worried that they were. But I didn't know what in the world I could
do about it. Well, anyway, to get back to Joe. From then on, Joe was not much good in
the office.
LS:
You know, he made a statement--
WS:
Students discredited him completely. The faculty lost faith--
LS:
Why did they discredit him?
29
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, they knew that he'd issued the edict. They knew that he had been arguing that the
police ought to go in. They knew that--. Now, he issued a statement to the press right
afterwards when the press were interviewing him and so on. "Well, it's all the
chancellor's decision, you know."
LS:
That's what I wanted to ask you. He said, "The chancellor will take full responsibility for
this." What on earth did he mean by that?
WS:
I don't know.
LS:
That's a most extraordinary statement.
WS:
I suppose that the chancellor has to take full responsibility for it, in a sense. The buck
stops somewhere.
LS:
Was he saying that he'll take the blame?
WS:
I don't know what he was saying. He was a desperate man. And I don't know what--. I
never thought he should have said that. I thought he should have said, "Well, we had to
do this. I advised it."
LS:
If he'd said, "We--. We will," it would have been one thing.
WS:
Yes. I don't know that he said that. He's quoted as having said that by the newspapers.
I've learned long since that you can be badly quoted in newspapers. But in any event, in
subsequent events, I just didn't--Joe remained in office but I didn't rely on him for
anything. I just got Bry Kearl in as vice chancellor. He refused to do that, but he'd give
me advice about it. And then I learned about the chap in the Law School, Herman--now I
can't think of his name [Goldstein]. He's an expert on such matters. He's the guy that
teaches the Law School courses about how to handle police, and riot behavior, and so on.
He's still here and it turns out he's really one of the real authorities. He had advised
various police forces in big cities about crowd control and all that sort of thing. From
then on, I used him a great deal for advice.
LS:
I see. I wonder who--?
WS:
And we handled things much better from then on. For example, the second time Dow
came we moved the thing to the Field House. We had all kinds of police.
LS:
So Joe didn't have any part--
WS:
He had nothing to do with it. Herman handled the whole thing. I don't say this to
deprecate Joe. It's just that Joe was completely battle weary by then and I didn't, you
know, I didn't depend on him. I just had to make my own team for handling things, and--
LS:
I heard there actually was a "Joe must go" slogan circulating around. Did you know
about that?
WS:
From the campus?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
Oh, all over. Oh, sure, I knew about that. But--Herman Goldstein. He really is a
marvelous guy on such matters. I never heard of him until after we were in trouble. And
so from then on, he helped us plan--we figured those hearings on Cohen and company
30
Sewell, William H (#101)
would result in a great deal of trouble. He helped us plan the whole thing of how that
should be done, where the police should be stationed, everything else. He helped us plan
the interviews at the Field House, all those things.
LS:
He should have spoken up before, shouldn't he?
WS:
Well, I don't know.
LS:
Did it ever occur to him?
WS:
No, but he didn't think anything was going to happen either, you see.
LS:
That's right. One keeps forgetting that nobody could have known.
WS:
That's right. He didn't think anything was going to happen. I'm sure he would have come
over if he had thought there would be a riot. After all, there hadn't been one until then
anywhere, not anywhere. Remember, this is the first one.
LS:
I know. It's very easy to forget that.
WS:
And it's very easy to forget that. So I thought from then on Joe became rather ineffective
in the job, excepting that he was very good with all the rest of student affairs, you know:
the registrar, the Union, all those things. So we just kind of turned that over to him. And
I never excluded him from any councils or anything of that sort.
LS:
I see, yes. But did you ever discuss this, was it ever something--?
WS:
Oh, yes, we talked of it.
LS:
You did.
WS:
Yes, and--
LS:
Did he himself feel that he wasn't effective at it anymore?
WS:
I think so. Oh, yes. Well, it never came around to where I said, "From now on I'm going
to handle everything." Nothing ever came to that point.
LS:
He just thought--
WS:
But I was helping him find a job and all that sort of thing.
LS:
Oh, I see. So you were?
WS:
Yes, because I really felt if I stayed on, I would have had some--
LS:
So you were responsible for--
WS:
No, I was one of the people who was helping him find a job. There were other people as
well.
LS:
Because he was looking for one.
WS:
He was looking for a presidency somewhere. Fred also was, and various other people,
too. Joe's a very fine human being, and I think for the early years he was very good.
When you could assume that the students' problems were the kinds of problems that
counseling would cure--
LS:
Yes.
31
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
--but Joe, you know, had to stay in the mode that he knew. And so he'd counsel these
people. He thought they were kind of sick or something, you know, and they weren't.
They were tough, political realists, and you handle them in different ways.
00:22:31
LS:
You know, there's something I'd--we really don't have time--but, beforehand, there were a
number of things that could have been changed, such as the place of the interview.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
Did you discuss this with him--
WS:
Yes.
LS:
--or did you leave it all to him, or--
WS:
He came to me and talked about it. And I said that I thought that we ought not to meet
there. We shouldn't have interviews there. We should go to some more remote part of
the campus. The campus radicals won't walk very far, you know. And so--
LS:
Well, certainly, the crowd of 2,000 wouldn't.
WS:
--so I said, "You know, I think it's foolish to hold them there." But I think Joe--I've
forgotten, but I think his point was, "Well, we can't back down. We've already
announced it, and we're going to have to hold them there."
LS:
And you didn't feel that you could override him?
WS:
No. Oh, I could have overridden him. But I wasn't that convinced something was going
to happen, you see. And I didn't want to show that lack of faith in him. The people in
commerce would have all said that that was knuckling under.
LS:
Yes.
WS:
The Engineering School people were adamant. They all had to be--theirs had to be in the
Engineering School. And they didn't want other people coming over there, you see, so
we didn't have many degrees of freedom. But I trusted Joe's judgment, and I think he
trusted his own. He felt that that would be giving in to threats, and we shouldn't do that,
and so on. You know, it's hard to think back why you didn't say, "Oh, the hell with it.
We won't have any interviews there," or--you couldn't have called them off.
LS:
No, I suppose not.
WS:
You couldn't have called them off. The pressure was on from all quarters not to,
especially from the regents, and the governor, and so on. You couldn't have called them
off. But you could have moved them into the Field House or done something like that.
Now, you shouldn't either assume that everybody was willing to have their buildings used
for these things. You know, I had to force that decision on the athletic department.
LS:
Oh, you did.
WS:
Sure, and when we finally met in the spring, when we had some interviews, they were
threatening, we met in Engineering. And I just had to force that down the dean's throat,
you know, that we want those rooms, and we're going to meet there, and we're going to
32
Sewell, William H (#101)
do the following things. Then--it was Dean Kurt Wendt--and once a decision had been
taken he cooperated fully on it. But he didn't want them there, you see. And you don't
just go around saying to deans you must give us your buildings whether you want to or
you don't. After all the president--the chancellor of this university isn't a dictator. He
doesn't have the right to go--the traditions are very different around here from that. And I
was really--I had grave misgivings about having the interviews there with the kids
threatening and all, although I had no idea that it would be more than-LS:
Than a hundred or two.
WS:
Well, I--I thought they'd fill up the building, but I thought they'd be arrested, and go
away, and that would be the end of it, and they would have made their point, and that that
was it. Well, it didn't turn out that way. If you think of it now, it seems rather stupid not
to have seen that things were developing to that point. But if that is true, then there were
all kinds of people who didn't see it either. In fact, there were some people that were
very upset that we had police there at all. They said, "There wasn't going to be any
problem. Why are you having those thirty or forty police around there?"
LS:
Oh, I see.
WS:
Quite a few people talked to me about that in advance. "Don't have any police up there
because the kids aren't going to do anything."
LS:
This would've been liberal faculty, or just anybody?
WS:
Yes--liberal faculty. The rest of the faculty's not--doesn't come around and advise you
much. The liberals are the more articulate, the ones who feel more convinced that they're
right, you know. And so they're the ones that bug you.
LS:
Yes.
WS:
As I say, of all the meetings that I had in my office at the behest of groups in the faculty,
there weren't over one or two that were from the conservative elements of the faculty.
LS:
Yes. That's certainly true because they weren't really--I mean, they were remote from the
whole thing.
WS:
They were upset. Well, they were upset about what was going on--very upset. But they
didn't think it was their business to come and tell you what to do.
LS:
Yes.
00:27:04
WS:
So, anyway, those were awful days for me. I wanted to quit right then.
LS:
You did?
WS:
Oh, yes. I thought, God, you know, I have to take the blame. I doubtless made mistakes,
you know. I should have overridden my advice. I should have maybe even moved them
or cancelled them, would have been much better than having a riot. On the other hand
I'm convinced now that the riot and the troubles were coming. They had to come, and that
the people who planned them planned that to come, and that if it wasn't there it was going
to be the next place or somewhere else, and it had to come. And maybe it's just as well it
33
Sewell, William H (#101)
came then as any other time, excepting that I felt the full responsibility for it. And I felt,
well, you know, I'm disgraced. I haven't been able to manage this thing. Some part of it's
my own fault. I should have done things that I didn't do. I didn't know what they were,
but I should have. And that--oh, for--you know, I used to wake up in the middle of the
night for months afterwards reliving the whole thing. And I guess that by the end of the
year I felt that I'd managed, with the help of others, to turn the situation around. And I
could quit, you know, and not feel that I had let down the side, that at least I'd restored
the place to some semblance of what it had been before, and that it was just a bad
decision to ever be chancellor in the first place, and-LS:
Who persuaded you not to resign at that time?
WS:
I didn't talk to anybody but my wife about it.
LS:
And what did she think?
WS:
Oh, she said you have got to see it through, so--
LS:
So that helped.
WS:
She was never very anxious for me to be chancellor anyway.
LS:
Oh, she wasn't?
WS:
No.
LS:
You hadn't said what she--. You said you talked to her, but she--
WS:
No, she said, "You have got to do what you want to do. You think you're better at this
kind of thing than other people, and you've done everything else you've wanted to do, go
ahead if you want to. And I'll be glad to do my part." And she was marvelous as
chancellor's wife, you know. She's a lovely person, she really is, and gracious, and
considerate of others, and she did all sorts of things that greatly pleased the women--and
men on the faculty, for that matter--and their wives, and so on. And she really did it with
ease, and so on. She was much better at it than I was because she's basically a much
more social sort of a person. I'm a more private type, basically, than she is, by far. And
she's one of those people who never sees any fault in anyone, absolutely no one. When I
would rail about Evan Stark, and about Bobby Cohen, or about the regents, she'd always
say, "Well, they're not all that bad," and say good things about them. What she didn't like
was--. She thought that I was just getting more nervous, more tense, more--I talked more
and more about my troubles, you know. And she just thought it was foolish for me to
continue. The strain was just too great, the hours too great, and so on. And so she
wanted me--she was relieved when I quit. She really was greatly relieved. But I think
more for my sake than hers. She didn't even mind the alumni and all these formal things
that you had to go to and be with people you didn't like, particularly, or weren't interested
in. She didn't mind that at all. And I did.
LS:
We'll talk about that next time because there's still a lot to be said about your
chancellorship. And you did say one of the things that was difficult about it was the
social obligations.
34
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes, that was only one, but it was--yes, well, there were a lot of other things that
happened, of course, during the year, too, than just the Dow. But a good deal of the time
the rest of the year, on my part, was spent trying to get adequate procedures together and
all that sort of thing.
00:31:45
End of Tape 2, Side 1
Tape 2, Side 2.
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
Here we are in our second interview.
WS:
Yes. I want to make a correction about what I said about Governor Knowles and the
National Guard. After thinking about it, I think I probably didn't state what had happened
quite correctly. Governor Knowles had talked to me before the Dow and said if we ever
had any trouble on the campus, that he could always mobilize the National Guard. But he
would only do it if I asked him to. I think you have to declare a state of emergency, or
something of that sort, to do it. So on the day of Dow, after the troubles began, he then
called and said, "I understand there's rioting on the campus, and I will send out the
National Guard, but you have to ask me to do so." And I said, "Well, I'm not asking you
to do so." And he seemed quite upset about that.
LS:
Oh, he did?
WS:
Yes, and I said, "Well, if you do it, it's on your own." And then, an hour or so later, he
called again and said, "I understand there's still a lot of trouble up there, and I'm quite
willing to send the guard. I talked to the colonel," and so on. And I said, "Well, I think
that a show of military force would be just exactly the wrong thing to do. I think it's
quieting down and that might just throw it into a serious situation." So he said, "OK,"
and that was the end of that. But I did think--I think I said earlier in the tape that he had
called me several times during the day before--or implied that it was before the troubles,
but that isn't correct. So, I don't know what you want--
LS:
You didn't discuss that with Joe Kauffman or Ralph Hanson?
WS:
No. Oh, I did with Ralph. I didn't with Joe, but I did with Ralph, I'm sure. Ralph
thought that things were under control, and he was very pleased with the way the county
forces that were brought in behaved. They didn't come until the trouble had started, you
know, until the actual difficulties were underway.
00:02:38
And he had been worried about bringing in the county people because he didn't think they
were well enough trained to show restraint. So he used them mainly for directing traffic
and things of that sort, but they behaved very well indeed. There were, oh, I don't know
how many people, a hundred people or maybe more than that who came. And so they
didn't--. The students' leaders, like Evan Stark, had been very much worried that if they
came in they would start beating up everybody, but they behaved, really--they weren't
faced with the problem that the police were faced with-LS:
They didn't actually get into the fracas at all.
35
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Oh, no. That was all over. The building was vacated, but the troubles outside were going
on. And, of course, once the news got out, all sorts of people came, you know. There
were thousands of people watching the goings on, and so they came and directed traffic,
kept people away from this, you know, from getting directly involved in the action. So
there was really no need for the National Guard. And I think, perhaps, well, it's hard to
know what the governor's motives were, but I'm sure that he didn't want any sort of
continuing rioting, as he called it, going on without his stepping in and doing his part.
But in any event, that, I think, is all there was to that. There was no need for the guard
then or at any time after that.
LS:
I guess that was an ultimate shock, wasn't it, when the National Guard was finally called
in.
WS:
Yes, well, that was never during my days. That was later on, and the guard behaved, I
thought, extremely well once they did come during Ed's periods of trouble--Cambodia
spring, and that whole time. I thought the guard probably behaved better than anybody
else we had in at any time.
LS:
Yes, but they were--
WS:
But they were very well trained. And their colonel was a very intelligent man. And he'd
had all sorts of riot control training in the guard, and so had his troops, so they behaved
very well.
LS:
Did you know about a meeting between Harrington, and Olson, and the head of the
National Guard--who was also a colonel I guess--later on, well, in the late fall.
WS:
You mean that same year?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
I think I was involved, too. I was there.
LS:
Oh.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
I read about it in the Cardinal.
WS:
Yes, I was involved. It was just to tell us what the guard could do and get us acquainted
with whoever the colonel was, I can't remember his name anymore--who--maybe it was a
general [Colonel Olson] but the head of the National Guard. And if we ever needed
them, what to expect from them, how much notice they'd need, that kind of thing. There
was no immediate threat of anything going on, so it was just a kind of get acquainted,
here's a resource that could be used, and so on. And I think--it wasn't in our--we didn't
initiate the meeting. I think the governor initiated it, as I recall. He just wanted us to
know what was available if we ever had any more troubles.
LS: Well, you have some other things you want to talk about.
WS:
Well, I was just going to say, the Dow thing--of course I think we talked last time about
the fact of the meetings following Dow--and the thing I was just going to say, there were
a lot of other things happened during the rest of the year.
36
Sewell, William H (#101)
00:07:02
LS:
I would like to ask you--I went to the faculty senate meeting yesterday, and Irving Shain
gave his first talk, and Anatole Beck had a motion. It was treated rather cavalierly.
WS:
By the faculty--as well as--
LS:
By the faculty, yes.
WS:
Yes, the faculty's just tired of him, you know.
LS:
He was--. You mentioned him, I think, last time.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
And he--would you--did he say something rather effective at that point?
WS:
He said a good deal. I've never known him to say anything that was effective. He says
things that are provocative, but he's not a man that I consider had very good judgment.
And he's not a man that the faculty trusts, not even the people who are on his side. They
just think he's too quixotic and that he is not a particularly good presenter of their point of
view, actually. At least, that's my impression. At that meeting of the faculty, he spoke
several times about police brutality and all sorts of matters of that sort--very emotionally.
And of course, he did command a good deal of attention and was one of the main
spokesmen, I would say, for the people who felt the students had been greatly wronged.
That's true, but he is not the sort of person--
LS:
He's not the faculty gadfly, then.
WS:
Yes, he is a faculty gadfly but not a leader.
LS:
But a gadfly is effective. One thinks of a gadfly as something useful.
WS:
Oh, well, maybe at times he's been useful. But he isn't the sort of person, you'll find who
faculty--any of the faculty so far as I know--would place a great deal of confidence as
being a man of good judgment. That's why, when he speaks on some issue in the faculty,
it's almost always defeated. I can't think of anything that he's spoken on that hasn't
provoked more opposition votes than if anyone else were to take that stance.
LS:
So he might actually harm a cause, rather than--
WS:
Oh, yes. That's often true in faculties, you know. There are some people whom the rest
of the faculty just kind of ignore or think that it's a nuisance. Sometimes those nuisances
are useful. I'm not sure that he isn't. I couldn't imagine, though, a sillier business than
the first time the chancellor--the chancellor hasn't even taken office officially and doesn't
until the fifteenth--asking him about a matter that he had nothing to do with--that
happened two or three years ago.
LS:
You were there, were you?
WS:
No, I read the paper. I wasn't there. But that's typical of him--and not being willing to
take a reasonable response. It seems to me I would have just said to him, "Look, I don't
know a thing about it. I'll talk about it. I'll investigate it and talk about it later and if I
feel it's worthy of talking about." And, if he pressed me, I'd say, "Look, I've given you
the only sensible answer that a sensible man can expect, and that's the end of it, as far as
37
Sewell, William H (#101)
I'm concerned." I wouldn't have been nearly as nice as Irv was about it. But he is, in my
opinion, he's kind of a gadfly. He's fairly irresponsible. He represents very little but
himself. From time to time, he becomes president of the United Faculty, but that's only
because they can't get anyone else to do it, you know. The group itself tries to avoid him
because he seems to get them into lots of trouble, and he has come to be such a symbol of
his position and what many faculty think is kind of the radical left, not necessarily
Marxist left, but just kind of radical, irresponsible left that they can't get people to join
their union. And that bothers them, of course. Under more reasonable people, like Bob
Alford when he was chairman, their membership grew, but it doesn't, apparently, under
Beck. You know, he's a perfectly nice man, personally, and all that, but I just think he's a
rattle brain myself. And I think a lot of other people think so, too. And that I thought
long before I became chancellor. So I think some people who spoke much more
effectively than--many people spoke much more effectively than he did who were on the
side to condemn the actions and so on. I thought he probably hurt it more than he helped
the cause, but that's the role of some people. You know, there are some people who are
just overkill by nature or are so sure of the righteousness of their own position that they
alienate those who are not nearly so convinced, you know. He just seems to be that sort
of a person.
00:12:51
So I missed Irv's--. I've made it a practice not to go to faculty meetings. I've never been
willing to serve on the senate. I just felt that if I were going to stay here, I had to be in a
position of never appearing to, in any way, be speaking publicly for or against the
administration. I just wouldn't be comfortable. I wanted to stay here because I've been
here all these years. And I have a big research program that I immediately returned to,
and I could have moved it someplace else, but it would have been inconvenient. I had all
sorts of offers: foundation presidencies, even another university presidency of-LS:
You don't want to say where?
WS:
No. And I just--but it was a Big Ten university. Not an offer--I shouldn't say that--but an
inquiry about if I would be willing. And then, of course, a lot of departments thought that
I would be available--departments of sociology. So I got offers from Columbia, from-that was an actual offer--inquiries from Yale, but they were the kind of inquiries that if
I'd said, yes, the next day the appointment would have been made; UCLA--oh, I've
forgotten--Minnesota. Several places figured, you know, "This is a good time to get this
guy to move. He's probably mad at them," and so on. But I wasn't. I mean, I didn't want
to move. So I decided that, if I did stay here, I had to get out of faculty matters entirely.
LS:
So you haven't been on any committees since then?
WS:
No, I've been on one committee or two that deans have had. I was on the committee to
evaluate the School of Social Work and one of these internal investigations, that kind of
thing. But I haven't been willing to be on university-elected committees or appointed to
university-wide committees. But why should I? You know, I've been on almost
everything there is. And I figure it's time for somebody else to do that kind of work
anyway. I would have concluded that, by now, in any event. But I did feel that if I
stayed here I certainly could not in any way appear to be second guessing, confirming, or
38
Sewell, William H (#101)
disaffirming anything that the administration did. So that's why I don't go to faculty
meetings.
00:15:50
Now I did go once. I broke my rule once when I thought that freedom of inquiry was
being threatened by Bill Proxmire. And I certainly went then and I delivered an oration
of-LS:
What was the subject of that, Ph.D. dissertation subjects?
WS:
No, it was on the subject of Elaine Walster's research, which he called a great waste of
government money and all that sort of thing. And on that occasion I felt that that was
nothing that had anything to do with the administration anyway. That was a faculty
matter. And I felt that I could speak to it probably as well as any member of the faculty
because I probably had more experience on NSF and other national committees than
anybody in the social sciences. And I felt that it was time to invest a little of my capital
and goodwill from my past in the faculty. And as you know, the resolution in my speech
was printed in the faculty minutes in its entirety. The motion to essentially censure Bill
Proxmire passed, of course, with one dissenting vote in the whole faculty, so--
LS:
What was the date? Approximately when was that?
WS:
About two years ago. Something like that. I could look it up. I've got the remarks,
copies of all that sort of thing that you might like to have. Oh, yes, that was in the
newspapers, the Cap Times scolded Bill and said, "Look, why should one of the leading
scholars at the university, a lifelong Democrat, have to come out and chide you in this
way. And isn't it time you started getting at important issues, and not just seeking
publicity as you have been doing," and so on. The only honest work, other than being a
politician, the only nonpolitical job that Bill's ever held in his life, you know, it's literally
true, was that for about a year he was a reporter for the Cap Times. And he's always been
their darling. While he was establishing residence in the state in order to run--you see
Bill was a resident of Illinois, and he decided during the war and the period just after that,
when he was with Harvard Graduate School of Business, to be a politician. And he did it
in his usual careful, planning sort of way, and he looked around to see where he could go.
He decided that the--and I don't think it mattered much to Bill whether he was a
Democrat or Republican--he decided that Illinois was no place to run, that both parties
were so strongly established there. Where could he make entry into a weak party and
take over its leadership? The Wisconsin Democratic Party was certainly that. Post
World War II, we had never elected a Democratic governor, except one man, Loomis,
who died before he went into office and was succeeded by the lieutenant governor who
was a Republican. So, really, until Gaylord Nelson, there had never been a Democrat
governor of this state. And the party was just as weak as anything. Bill came in,
organized it, got things going, got himself elected to the legislature, then took on old Alex
Wiley and beat him. No, he took on--well, yes. He got the Democratic nomination, and
then took on Alex Wiley, and beat him for the Senate, and became the successor of Joe
McCarthy. And, in many ways, has behaved, you know, with the same kind of political
skills as Joe. He never intended to be involved in this Wisconsin thing, just as Joe
McCarthy, you know, never investigated anything in this university because he knew that
39
Sewell, William H (#101)
would cost him votes. And the only way Bill got into this was that he made the mistake
of making his award of the month--the fleece of the month--to Elaine Versheid, a very
prominent psychologist at Minnesota. And some bright young reporter there, when he
picked up the story, knew--he was the guy who covered the university for the
Minneapolis Tribune--he knew that Elaine had been working with our Elaine Walster,
and that they'd published books together, and that this was the same project, essentially,
even though each of them had their funds in their separate universities. So he just called
Bill on the phone and said, "Look, you've blasted Elaine Versheid and given her this
award, and you haven't said a word about Elaine Walster, who, if anybody is guilty, is
equally so, because she is the co-principal investigator in this research. They publish
together, everything else. And if you don't do something, then I'm going to have a big
story in the Tribune saying, `Look, here's Joe McCarthy all over again.'" And of course
Bill couldn't do anything but blast her, and of course had to back it up, you know, with
interviews and everything else. So that's what got him into trouble. I'm sure he never
would have done it in the world.
00:21:38
LS:
Did he ever get in touch with you in advance of that?
WS:
In advance?
LS:
I mean do you know--yes, just to see what--
WS:
He never got in touch with anybody in advance.
LS:
He didn't.
WS:
Well, he knew that he'd be hurt worse by a prominent paper like the Minneapolis Tribune
blasting him for these tactics than he would by carrying through on it here. But I'm sure
he knew it was going to cost him a lot of friends and votes. Now obviously he ran
against a very weak person and won by a landslide. But he's a smart enough politician to
know that it's not your friends that you have to worry about, it's your enemies. And they
build up and accumulate over time. And he doesn't like--Bill is essentially an
intellectual--he doesn't like to be alienated from the intellectual community. Can you
imagine? The only other U.S. senator from Wisconsin whoever was reprimanded by the
University of Wisconsin faculty was Joe McCarthy. So you know, that's a company he
doesn't like to keep, I'm sure, whatever he may feel about the faculty. Oh, no, Bill never
checks anything like that with anybody, I'm sure. But he was too deep in it. What could
he do? He was already--you know, he doesn't read the stuff himself. He's got some guy
in his office who digs up these things, you see. And if he'd ever read it he'd know that
what he charged about Elaine just wasn't in the project. But he's a cheap, publicityseeking person. They asked me--I was interviewed, you know, and I was hoping they'd
put some of the things in the paper that I said, but they didn't. Like somebody called me
from the New York Times and said, "Do you know, Mr. Proxmire?" And I said, "Yes."
And he said, "Do you know him at all well?" And I said, "Well, quite well, yes. We're
on at least a first name basis." And he said, "Well, could you, in a sentence or two, tell
me what sort of a person he is?" And I said, "Well, Bill Proxmire is the only man that
I've ever known in my life whose friends hate him." That, you know, I just thought of it
like that, and it's true! I don't know anybody that knows him well who doesn't dislike
40
Sewell, William H (#101)
him. And everybody who's worked with him, everybody in the Democratic Party--. And
then he said, "Well, you don't seem to have a great deal of respect for him." And I said,
"Well, I've always supported him and voted for him, but," I said, "when he does
something that hurts me and what I stand for, I'll punish him any way I can. That's the
only language he understands, that most politicians understand." So, anyway, the guy
said, "Well, do you think he's a publicity seeker?" And I said, "Sure. He'd murder his
own mother on television if you could give him five minutes of prime time."
LS:
I can see why they didn't publish it.
WS:
No. It's not libelous. It's an opinion. They should have published it; it would have been
fun. And it would have hurt him.
LS:
It would have, yes.
WS:
And that's why they didn't want to do it, I suppose. But, anyway, that is the only time
that I've ever appeared at a faculty meeting. I would have gone to hear Irv yesterday, but
I didn't know he was speaking. I would have probably listened--gone for his speech--and
then left.
LS:
It was very, very brief.
WS:
Yes, I thought he probably wouldn't say much or talk very long. Well, anyway, I guess
that settles that. Well, as I was saying, I think the rest of the year was kind of tensionfilled, too. Right after--.
00:25:52
Oh, one of the things I should tell you because you hit upon this a little: after the Dow
incident, even before that, I started feeling that I just didn't have a dependable and
sufficient staff in the chancellor's office. There wasn't anybody there that I'd known
before. And there wasn't anybody I had any great confidence in. What had happened
was that Bob Fleming had been a one-man show. When he first came and he took over, I
think he was first provost, and then they changed the title to chancellor, and Bob is a
terribly energetic man and he likes to, you know, be on top of everything himself. He can
delegate; that's no problem. It's just that he had, at least in those days, so much energy
that he just wanted to learn the job in every dimension. So he took on two people as
assistants to the chancellor, one of whom was Bob Atwell and the other was Jim Cleary.
Then, when I took over--when I agreed to take over--he called me in and said, "There are
two things you must do immediately, this day, if you want to take my advice: One, go
and ask Emily Peterson," who was his secretary, "to stay on as your secretary. You just
won't ever find anybody who is any better,"--and I agreed with that, after I'd had her. She
was that good--"and two, go and tell Bob Atwell that you want him to stay on because",
he said, "he's just a genius at all of the new budgeting procedures." And he was a whiz
kid from the McNamara days, and he was chief budget officer for NIMH, so he really
knew that side of it. And he said, "You'll like him, and he has a very good sense of the
university. And he's the kind of person that faculty and deans like to work with. So nail
him down because he can get another job so fast that, if there's any doubt in his mind,
he'll just go someplace else." And then he said, "You had better make up your own mind
about Kauffman. I think he's competent. He may be a little battle weary, but," he said,
41
Sewell, William H (#101)
"if I were staying, I might make him a vice chancellor. But I wouldn't do that until I'd
seen how things work out with him." Fred Harrington urged me to make him vice
chancellor of student affairs. But I wasn't at all convinced. I wasn't convinced because I
thought Joe was just worn out from the struggles of the preceding years. And so I didn't
ask him to be vice chancellor. And then he said, "Jim Cleary is very competent and very
useful but I don't know whether you'll want to keep him or not. He'd like to go
someplace else. He's very ambitious to be a college president or chancellor somewhere.
It's obvious he'll never make it here." And he said, "The one handicap he has is that--he's
willing to do almost anything you ask him, and he'll do it competently, although not
brilliantly," he said, "but the problem with Jim is, the faculty doesn't accept him. I
appointed him as assistant and there was no screen committee." Of course there weren't
so many screen committees in those days. "And then I was satisfied that he had given
good service so I made him vice chancellor for academic affairs. But the problem is that
neither the deans nor the faculty really accepted him in that role in the sense that they are
willing to talk to him instead of to you if you're busy. Now, he's fine at getting up the
appointment forms and seeing to it that research applications get channeled in the right
direction, and getting ready for various rating committees and things like that. He's fine.
He works well with the University Committee, but," he said, "he's never really been
accepted." And he said, "That's for two reasons: one, he's young" and he was a relatively
young man at that time; I'm sure under 40, "and, two, his scholarly background is
suspicious because he's from the speech department, and not many people in the faculty
are likely to think of speech as a proper place of origin for a vice chancellor unless they
happen to be in that physiological and medical kind of aspect which was then a part of
the speech department."
00:31:06
But anyhow, that proved to be true. Jim was very cooperative, very nice, very useful for
routine and ordinary things, but took no load, really, off of me. And the load was just
unbearable. With the student troubles, with my no longer having any great confidence in
Joe to handle things, with the students going over Joe's head all the time anyway--which
was Bob Fleming's fault because he'd encouraged that. He was handling those matters
himself. There was no way I could pass it back to Joe--and so I just felt helpless, just
overwhelmed by the burden of all the things you had to tend to in that office in times of
crisis, with very little help. Now, it turned out that Bob Atwell was unusually useful. I
valued his counsel on other matters than the business end of the university. But he really
ran that. He'd come in and see me every morning and inform me what he'd done the day
before, what he was going to have to do, so I'd know, but I just let him do it. That's all
there was to it, except for some big, crucial, budgetary decisions. But he was also very
useful just to--. He tended to be terribly sympathetic with the students, and I thought it
was good to have somebody like that around. But he also knew the faculty quite well.
And he was very helpful, but still his real role kept him busy as administrative vice
president or whatever we called the business end.
LS:
He wouldn't have much to do with students, would he?
WS:
No, but he did because they liked him. He was young, and he was liberal. And so they-quite often, whenever there were any building take-overs after that, he always came to
42
Sewell, William H (#101)
my office. And he'd go down and negotiate with them because they wouldn't talk to Joe.
But they'd negotiate with him. And he negotiated them out of buildings, he and Ralph
together, you know. In a very friendly way, they'd say, "Look, you guys, the chancellor
is willing to let you stay in here, you have made your point. But if you're in here more
than two or three hours, then the regents are going to start raising hell, and the governor's
going to start raising hell, and you only got a hundred guys in here, and we'll clean you
out of here in no time. You'd better get out." You know, that kind of talk. And they
could do it, and they both did it very well. They maneuvered people out of the--when
they seized the Peterson Building and various other--two or three other--smaller and
abortive kinds of things. So they were very useful. But still I needed somebody whom I
knew well and really could trust. Very soon after the Dow-LS:
Could I ask you why you decided to keep Jim Cleary?
WS:
Oh, he was very useful.
LS:
Useful enough, was he?
WS:
He was useful. Somebody had to be doing the job he was doing. He just wasn't able to
do what I think a vice chancellor for faculty affairs is, and that is, serve as the substitute
for the chancellor when he's needed, when the chancellor is busy with other things or
gone someplace. Well, anyway,
00:34:49
Burt Fisher came over. He's an old, old friend. I brought Burt here in the department
many years ago. We had worked together in the bombing survey in Japan, and I had
known him for a long time. And I had great respect for Burt. And Burt is very closely in
touch with students and faculty, and everybody knew that he was my friend. And so they
would come to Burt and tell him their tales. And Burt would come to me and say, "Look,
I think you ought to do the following things." Well, I asked Burt if he would be willing
to come in as a vice chancellor and officially serve in that role, because I knew he'd be
accepted both by faculty and the students. And he said, no, he was willing to give me all
the time I wanted but he thought he could perform a more useful function not being
identified as officially in the administration. And he didn't have any taste for
administration, anyway.
LS:
Do you think he was right?
WS:
Yes. He probably was right. He is a supreme and crafty negotiator and the sort of guy
that's always got his ear to the--I was going to say both ears to the ground--but he's
always got his ear to the ground. He knows what's going on. He knows more people
than almost anybody I know of on the faculty. And yet he was sympathetic with me.
We're old friends. He would do such things as hear groups in the faculty who were upset
because I was being too lenient with the students, and he'd bring those groups in to talk
with me. He'd leave, and we'd talk for an hour or so. Or he'd hear of the people in the
faculty who were, say, of a more moderate persuasion, who said that nobody was being
listened to excepting the radicals, and the student friends, and the conservatives. So he'd
bring in people--groups of fifteen, ten--we'd sit and talk, and I'd hear their views. And
likewise with what was then thought of as the more radical element of the faculty.
43
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
But there you mean faculty, not students.
WS:
Yes, faculty. Yes, faculty. Well, students--the radical students came to talk to you
anyway. You didn't have to bring them. And the conservative students came to talk,
whatever they are, the somebody-for-freedom group, the Republican ultraconservative
wing, those people came. The more radical students came. And the rest of the students,
you know, I don't know how you can get them represented. They won't vote in an
election. You don't know who they are, even. But anyway, it was mainly faculty that
Burt was dealing with although he knew a good deal about what student opinions were on
a variety of topics. So he was very useful. He came in and worked around the clock for a
couple of weeks.
LS:
Did he actually have an office up there?
WS:
Oh, he would just come over and sit in an office, yes. But he didn't see people there. He
just--
LS:
But I mean, he had, there was a space.
WS:
Oh, yes.
LS:
I was just thinking that if he had been an official vice chancellor, he could have been in
on meetings at crucial times. But apparently, he wasn't in on--
WS:
Oh, yes. He was in on all of the meetings that had to do with planning for how to handle
a threatened crisis with the students.
LS:
Was he even there the--
WS:
Oh, yes. He was in on all those things. Not the Dow; This is post-Dow.
LS:
Oh, I see.
WS:
No, I wish he'd been there then.
LS:
Yes, I see.
WS:
But he wasn't. But this is post-Dow.
LS:
You hadn't gotten around, by that time, to asking him to do this, I suppose.
WS:
Yes.
00:38:56
And then, he had been working with me two or three weeks. And boy, we were just
working around the clock trying to put things back together and making strategy
decisions. I felt that one of the first things we had to do was to clarify the whole situation
about the student discipline procedures--hearings and all that sort of thing--because that
was all messy, you know. And the students complained that they weren't represented in
disciplinary proceedings and yet actions were taken which affected their lives and their
careers, and that the system was loaded against them.
LS:
Now, was this because policy was unclear or because Joe Kauffman had--
WS:
No, policy was perfectly clear.
44
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
Oh, it was.
WS:
Yes. The existing rules of the university provided for all sorts of little misdemeanors to
be handled by a student court. But anything serious went before a faculty discipline
committee. And that was in the rules.
LS:
Yes.
WS:
And had been for years. Any university had those discipline committees in those days.
LS:
But were the students unjustified or--?
WS:
Well, they weren't on those hearing committees. That was their point.
LS:
I see, yes.
WS:
Students were not given a chance to sit in judgment in those kinds of cases. Moreover
there was no provision for having an attorney represent. And there were a lot of things
that probably under later and current interpretations--I mean now--would have been seen
as being improper by the courts. In fact, there were decisions all over the country around
that time setting aside disciplinary judgments made arbitrarily and without due process
and proper hearings. I'm not sure that ours were that bad. I don't think they were. But at
least students weren't represented. And there were a lot of questions about the whole
effectiveness of disciplinary procedures. If, indeed, the students weren't represented,
would they pay any attention to the judgments that were made, the decisions that were
made? So Burt and I talked at great length about the need for some reform.
00:41:36
So we set up a committee that was chaired by Mermin in the Law School. And Burt
helped me a great deal in picking the people for that and keeping contact with the
committee, supplying them with the results of the deliberations on similar matters at
Cornell and various other places. He was really my liaison with that committee. Then
we set up the Crow Committee, about the same time. Of course, these were--. I got, you
know, motions from the faculty to do these. But they were our ideas, none the less. And
then we set up the Crow Committee, which was designed to study the question of
whether we should continue to have the same policy about interviews on campus, which
only the spring before we had reaffirmed by a huge vote. And again, the vote was not as
high, but it was at least four to one in favor of continuing interviews. And the Crow
Committee sketched out the conditions and so on.
LS:
The Crow Committee or the Mermin Committee?
WS:
The Crow Committee. The Mermin Committee was on discipline, disciplinary
procedures. The Crow Committee was on whether or not we should continue to have
interviews on campus--and under what conditions and so on.
LS:
With Hack Fain, Hugh Richards, and--
WS:
I don't know which one Fain was--
LS:
They were the Mermin Committee. Well, that's--
45
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, there were two quite separate reports. There are copies of them. They were printed
in their entirety in the Cardinal--
LS:
Yes.
WS:
--and various other places, in the faculty minutes and so on. But you wouldn't have
Mermin for whether you had the interviews, you'd have him for the legal things. I'm sure
that's right. And Jim was the chairman of the other committee. But anyway, he helped
me a great deal in setting up those committees and liaison with them and so on.
00:43:54
And then, after Burt had been helping me for a while, he said, "Look, the flow of work
through this place is just absolutely impossible. The three of us who are really handling
it--Bob Atwell, and you, and me--just can't do. We're getting behind all the time on the
daily business of the university. And you ought to have somebody come in who'd really
be vice chancellor and be your executive vice chancellor in the real sense, who serves for
you over everybody else when you can't give attention to the broader things."
LS:
The job you wanted him to do.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
--which he didn't want to do.
WS:
--which he didn't want to do. And so we talked about it and agreed that by far the best
person if we could possibly talk him into it was Bry Kearl, whom we both knew very
well. And Bry had been, for several years, the social science vice dean of the Graduate
School. And Bob Bock relied on him more than anybody else, and he kind of served as
his real executive vice dean whenever he couldn't be there, and he turned over a great
many matters other than social science matters to him. And we knew that Bry had the
energy and that he knew probably more people in the university than any single person in
it, and that he was a guy of good judgment and had just the skills we wanted. So I
proceeded, then, to ask Bry to do it, and he didn't want to. And the reason he didn't want
to was he didn't want to get involved, as he felt sure he would have to, in the troubles of
the students. So the only way I finally talked him into it was to say, "OK, we'll leave you
out of the student things. I'll try to handle all those that I can with whatever help I can get
from Joe, and you can be vice chancellor. You'll deal with deans most of the time, you'll
deal with department chairmen, and you'll deal with faculty. And we'll meet every
morning for an hour or so and say, what's up, and what're you up to, and what I've got
new that's confronting me? And we'll just parcel out the work and keep each other
informed." Well, it was the happiest choice I ever made.
LS:
You didn't have to have a search and screen committee.
WS:
No, not in those days. I didn't. I just did it. I talked to Fred, and he said he thought it
was a great idea.
00:46:54
End of Tape 2, Side 2
Tape 3, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
46
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
--what're you up to, and what I've got new that's confronting me? And we'll just parcel
out the work and keep each other informed." Well, it was the happiest choice I ever
made.
LS:
You didn't have to have a search and screen committee.
WS:
No, not in those days. I didn't. I just did it. I talked to Fred, and he said he thought it
was a great idea. So I just did it. Oh, there wasn't any time for search and screen. These
were times of crisis, for God's sake. All this fuddle de diddlin' around about search and
screen! You know, half the search and screen committees in this university have not
come up with the name of the person who ultimately got appointment to the job. And the
search and screen for my successor didn't come up with Ed Young's name.
LS:
I'd heard that.
WS:
Well, that's a fairly important instance, and there are others that I could name.
LS:
It was Harrington's choice.
WS:
Yes. Harrington wanted him. And who's to tell--you know, it's such damn nonsense-who's to tell the chancellor who he can have or should have as his vice chancellor?
Advice is good, but when you're responsible for everything that happens in that office
you ought to have the choice of who you want to do it.
LS:
Yes. I should absolutely agree with that. It would be different with the chancellor.
WS:
And it's lousy administration to think anything else. But it's part of the overdemocratization of the administrative process, in my opinion. You know--nice, sure, I
want faculty advice. But I'd walk into the faculty and say, "Look, this is the kind of guy
I'm looking for. If I had my choice, I'd take Bry Kearl. If you can come up with or
convince me of a better name, fine."
LS:
You actually did this at a faculty meeting?
WS:
No, I would have. No, I didn't do a damn thing. I just appointed him, period. I didn't-there was no rule then that you had to have a search and screen. That all came later for
vice chancellor. But it's a silly rule. A vice chancellor's job is to stand in for the
chancellor, to be his right hand, to be his substitute. And for the Lord's sakes, he ought to
have free choice over who that person is going to be. He's got to have enough sense to
get somebody that will be respected by the faculty. I didn't appoint--I went to the deans,
and said, "Look, I want to talk to you very frankly. I can't handle the load in these times
of crisis, as evidenced by the fact that some of you have been waiting to see me for two
weeks. And I've got to have somebody I trust. The person I trust and would love to have
would be Bry Kearl." And every one of them said, "We'll work with Bry. Now, if half of
them would have said, "Now look, I won't see Bry; I have got to come directly to you."
Then that would have been a different matter. So I talked to them before I talked to Bry.
I talked to Fred before I talked to Bry. And then, when Bry agreed, he was just
appointed.
00:03:08
LS:
Why is he so good?
47
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Why is he so good? Well, one reason he's so good is that he knows everybody and he's
trusted by faculty. He's a very knowledgeable guy. He's a very bright guy. He's a very
good administrator, really good administrator, and gets things done, and he does it
without making many people mad. And then he has this tremendous energy that you
need for that kind of job. He is just an unbelievably energetic man. He works fast, he
works well, he's a very literate person. You know, he has his Ph.D. in political science,
but he was chairman of agricultural journalism. But he writes just beautifully. I don't
know anybody--. I've never had anybody write speeches for me in my life. I always
write my own. I'm fairly literate for a scientifically oriented kind of a scholar. When I
start writing articles for journals, I get all crunched up and into the tight sort of a rhetoric
pattern of thought and writing and so on, but I am fairly good at the freer sort of thing as
the occasion demands. But I have never had Bry look any remarks over that he didn't just
make much better as a result. He's very, very good. So, you know, there's no--. And
then I trusted him, absolutely and completely. I figured I could leave the campus in an
emergency for a month and I'd be perfectly satisfied with what Bry did. And it proved to
be true. That is, when I'd get all tied up with all the student things, or legislative
hearings, or whatever else it might be, Bry would just kind of take over. He'd always tell
me what he was up to, and if there were big important problems, he'd say, "Look, you've
got to know what the alternatives are. I think we ought to do as follows. But if we do
that, the following happens or is likely to happen. Another course would be to do so and
so." And those are the kinds of talks we'd have. And then we're close friends. You
know, it's nice to have a friend that you trust in that kind of job. But he just took an
enormous load off from me. And then he continued throughout the year. And I think by
the end of the year we had a lot of things put back together. I think we'd re-established
faculty support. And students, at least, were coming around to the point where they kind
of thought I wasn't such a horrible person. Even the radical students, I think, thought
that. I always thought it was kind of touching that, when they hanged Joe and me in
effigy some time later in the year in front of Bascom Hall, that they felt they had to come
in and tell me that it was my office that forced them to do it, not my personal behavior
and so on. I then started, you know, whenever I had a chance, I knew that--oh, I had to
tell my staff, of course, what I was doing. So I talked to each one of them individually.
And I told them I just had to have Bry and what he would be doing, and in a sense that
would reduce their role, but unfortunately that's the way it had to be.
00:07:07
Nobody seemed particularly resentful although I always felt Jim Cleary thought it was a
vote of no confidence, which, in a sense, it was. And Jim then started, quite actively,
looking for jobs, and I started helping him to look for jobs. And by the end of the year he
landed the job as president of San Fernando Valley State College, then. I guess it's a
university now. And he's been there ever since. From all I hear, he's done a good job.
And Joe also started looking for things, and I encouraged him and tried to help him in his
aspirations to become a college president. But I didn't use either of them a great deal
after that. I mean, they did routine things, but the big things I left to others.
00:08:10
LS:
Did Burt Fisher go on?
48
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
No. Once we got Bry into the fold, Burt withdrew, excepting that he was always
available for emergencies. For example, he did such things as the mail after the Dow
thing. There were just sacks full of mail.
LS:
From the state.
WS:
From all over, alumni and every side of the opinion, you know. And Burt said, "You
can't read all this junk"--and I, of course, knew I couldn't-- "and you can't answer it, but it
needs to be answered." So he prepared, then, a set of letters, you know, for various--.
And then he and Emily classified the files. And then Burt and Emily made up the letters
and answered everything. He did a lot of things like that that would move things along.
And then, whenever we needed him or wanted him, he'd come. And I kind of used him,
really, as a substitute for Joe on crucial issues. His judgment was so much better. And
so, when the students took over whatever--the administration building, Peterson Hall--Joe
was in the office, too. We sat there in my office and had telephone communications to
Bob Atwell and to Hanson, and Burt was there as one of the main strategizers. He was
the one I listened to.
00:10:04
Bry would come to those things, too. He couldn't keep out. He was very helpful,
actually. And later in the year, when the black students' uprising came--I was away at the
time, and Bry took that over and handled it beautifully, actually. He prevented any really
serious developments. And he also proposed to me the minute that I got back that we set
up a real blue-ribbon committee to talk about their demands for black studies programs,
and housing, and all the other demands that they made. And we did. And he, then, was
the main contact for that committee. So he did--he couldn't avoid--there was no way he
could avoid--. This was the great problem, you know. There was no way anybody in the
administration could avoid being involved in it. That had been my foolish idea, you
know, when I took over. Well, I can turn all this over to somebody, and I'll stay out of all
the student things. You can no more stay out of student things than anything. And Fred
Harrington tried very hard to, but in the end, he really couldn't. That is, he was blamed
by the regents for not being here when the Dow troubles began. And he was blamed by
the regents when the students would come over there and try to prevent them from having
a meeting or disrupt the regents' meetings. After all, he's the boss as far as the regents are
concerned. And he isn't handling these things well. If he hasn't got people in offices that
are supposed to handle them that can't, then he should get somebody who can, you know.
You know, old Harry Truman was just right, the buck stops here, in those jobs. And it
doesn't matter whether you don't care about that kind of use of your time, you don't feel
you're very good at it, anything else; you've got to do it when the crunch comes. And
Fred isolated himself as much as he possibly could. And in general he left everything up
to the chancellor, and let the chancellor take all the blame. But eventually the regents and
the legislature and the governor started blaming him as well. So you know, in those
times, you just can't--no way you can--occupy a top administrative post and insulate
yourself from a true crisis.
00:12:57
49
Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
I would like to make a little tie-in here. I happened to be reading or hearing Zillman's
interview yesterday, and he looks down on all of you, beginning with Fleming, for having
so much to do with students in this. In his day, students had to go through this channel
and that channel and couldn't just come in.
WS:
Oh, sure, of course. But Ted, you know, doesn't live in the modern world. He doesn't--
LS:
I was going to say, it's a difference in students.
WS:
Oh, well, even when Ted was in office, my own son and my daughter-in-law were on the
student council, and they had utter contempt for him as did all the rest of the students.
They called him "deanie wienie," and they claimed, you know, that he puts up all these
barriers, and that this means that student self-government has nothing to say or nothing to
do. My youngest son ran for the president of the student council with a platform to
abolish student government because it was useless under Zillman, and he damn near won!
He lost by about eighty votes, as I recall. He claims to this day that Zillman called up all
the fraternities when he saw the big turnout and saw that his party was probably to be
elected and marched them all down there to vote, to retain for the other side. So he was
absolutely, you know--. It's true. In those days, a dean could walk up to somebody and
say, "You're kicked out of school; you're breaking a rule." No hearing, no nothing. But
you're dealing with a different kind of people in those days than you're dealing with-during the late '60s, you know. So trying to divert them to somebody else, they just
absolutely came to the top. They'd break the door! They literally did it several times
when Emily would have the door locked, after hours or something. They would just bang
against the door and break the lock; storm into your office. What would Dean Zillman
tell them to do? Go see somebody else? Oh, you know, he just didn't know what was
going on. In fact, I think he was out of date, for his times even, in handling students. But
anyway, that's one man's opinion.
00:15:27
But anyway, the Crow and the Mermin committees were taken very seriously by the
faculty. They held all sorts of hearings, and then their reports were adopted by the
faculty. And I think that, you know, that helped the faculty to feel that their position was
adequately heard, that what emerged from all this was a faculty rather than an
administrative set of decisions. I think that tended to heal some of the wounds in the
faculty. And so I think by the end of the year--and the appointment of Kearl was very
well received by the faculty and by the deans--and I think by the end of the year, we had
things in pretty good shape. Now, there were several other crises that had less, much less
to do with the students that arose during that era.
00:16:32
LS:
I'd like to ask you a question before you leave this. Did you feel that the faculty did their
share in talking to the students?
WS:
No. The faculty, you know--I was told by every person I knew intimately that had been
in higher administration that, when the crunch comes, the faculty will desert you. I was
told that by Bob Fleming. I was told that by Fred Harrington. I was told that by Roger
Hines, who was chancellor at Berkeley. I was told that by Marty Meyerson, who got
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Sewell, William H (#101)
through various Berkeley troubles. Every one of them said, "Look, when it's really--the
going gets tough and it comes to you and the students, the faculty, at least a good hunk of
it, will side with the students." So, I was still disappointed. I didn't believe it. Well,
having said that, most of the faculty didn't side with them, obviously, but the vocal
faculty did.
LS:
Now you're talking about those particular meetings.
WS:
Well, the whole year long.
LS:
It went on--
WS:
Yes.
LS:
--during the year.
WS:
The number who, however, shifted over is what I'm talking about. The number who
shifted from identifying with the students to identifying with the administration just kept
increasing all the time. The faculty felt disavowed, too. They were getting carried out of
their rooms for not allowing the students to take over the class to put on pantomimes, or
to make radical speeches, or to make speeches about the war and various other things.
No less a personage than Bill Young was carried out and dumped in a snow bank because
he put to a vote whether or not to let a group of students come in to his introductory
American government class and take thirty minutes to present their views about the war.
And when he put it to a vote and the kids voted it down about five to one, they picked
him up, and carried him outside of the building, and dumped him in a snow bank. Well,
you know, faculty don't mind. My own son was then teaching at Chicago, and was
terribly upset about the way President Levi handled the Chicago problems, you know.
They've got only a few hundred undergraduates, a couple of thousand at most.
Everybody knows them. They let them sit in the room, and sit in the building, and take it
over, and they copied down their names. And when they left, then they prosecuted them
under the rules of the university about occupying buildings. And they kicked out forty or
fifty kids, put a lot of others on probation, and built up--. It was very vindictive and
wrong and so on. And he stood up in a faculty meeting and argued that cause. About
three weeks later, they dumped Bill Young out in the snow bank, and he said, "By God!
that's terrible when they invade a man's classroom and treat him in that way. Or they
come in to your class and try to take over a man's classroom." And I said, "Well, you
used to holler at me all the time because I didn't want them to come in, twenty or thirty of
them, and take over my office. You thought that I ought to sit there all afternoon or all
day patiently talking to them." And that's the way faculty are, you know. When the
students started invading on faculty prerogatives, they got very, very, anti-student--even
the most liberal of them.
00:20:26
End of Tape 3, Side 1
51
Sewell, William H (#101)
Tape 3, Side 2
00:20:32
WS:
Well, I did just want to say that faculty comes around in these things. They have
everywhere. But their identification with students is like father-son, mother-son, motherdaughter sorts of relationships. They are, in their own mind, somehow, close to students.
They have to be close to students. It's part of their role. It's part of their conception of
themselves. And when students get alienated from the university, and then turn against
them, they're terribly upset. Well, when students start invading their prerogatives, then
they kind of fall back in support of the university, and the administration, and tradition.
And most of them do that eventually; even the radical ones are really committed to the
university, its traditions, its ideals, and so on. They may temporarily depart, but it's when
you need them that they depart. Then they come back. Now, having said that, at least
two-thirds of the faculty never once deviated from full support of university traditions,
academic freedom, the support of the administration. But they were kind of quiet people.
They voted with their feet. They came to the meetings and voted. But they didn't make
any speeches. And so when you talk about the faculty dividing in crisis, it may be,
instead of their being 90 percent or so united and holding to the same values and goals-or 95 or 98 or whatever it is--it maybe becomes 20-80, or 25-75, or some other sizeable
fraction. And then the job, it seems to me, of the administration then is to wean them
back to a position that they really basically believe in anyway and have only temporarily
abandoned. But it still means that you're in real trouble when that happens. And very
few people in an administration survive that anyway. At Columbia, both the president
and the provost--who was a marvelous guy, David Truman--were sacrificed in that.
Really, Berkeley, there's a whole string of chancellors, and President Kerr, probably the
outstanding university president of his time--a man with a true philosophy of education,
articulate, smart, excellent administrator--but he still, eventually had to be sacrificed. If
Bob Fleming had stayed here and gone on doing what he was doing, he'd have been fired.
Fred Harrington, who tried to stay away from it, eventually, had to resign. I don't know
anybody who survived the whole period where there was real trouble. Oh, you know, the
namby pamby sort of stuff that took place in a lot of colleges, where the students took
over the newspaper and put in radical articles--as they were seen by the administration-or where they held protest meetings in class hours and all that sort of thing; that just blew
people's minds at places like Arizona and Utah, you know, terrible troubles. But I mean
where they had real trouble--I don't know--maybe somebody survived through the whole
period. I don't think so. I don't know of anybody. So Harvard certainly didn't. Pusey-that was his undoing eventually. There are always a lot of other things involved in the
undoing of anybody, but that was probably the main factor. Columbia, Berkeley, here,
Kent State, those were the five places that had the worst troubles. Then Bob went from
here to Michigan--where they had much less trouble to begin with, much less violence,
much less violent people--and weathered it. Whether he could have if he'd been there the
whole time, I don't know. In Minnesota, nothing much happened. The other places--.
Ohio State was another place that, toward the end, got really tough. And it lost provost,
presidents in succession. So it's a pretty hard thing to survive, and I'm not saying that
because I didn't survive. But I'm saying that where the troubles were great it was pretty
hard to survive. You could kind of mend the fences and get out, as I think I did. But I
don't know what would have happened to me if I'd have had the Kent State and all those
52
Sewell, William H (#101)
things that Ed had after that, you know. I'd have known more about how to handle them.
But I'm not at all sure that I could have stayed in office, if I'd wanted to, once further
troubles came. In fact, I'm not at all sure, as I might have said last time, that I could have
stayed in office very much longer anyway. The regents, I thought--. I think Fred tried to
protect me from the conversations that he had with the regents, some of whom were
demanding that he fire me--later in the year.
00:26:35
But the real telltale thing was in the spring meeting when they got around to voting salary
increases. I got the smallest increase of any administrator anywhere--dean, vice
chancellors, presidents of the other units like the chancellor at Milwaukee, and at Green
Bay, and at Parkside. Oh, you just look down the whole list. I've forgotten what it was:
eight hundred dollars or a thousand bucks, something like that, you know, increase. And
everybody else got three, five, six thousand dollars. Well, that was a message that the
regents wanted me to have, I'm sure; that they weren't at all happy with my
administration. That had no effect on my resignation.
LS:
It didn't? I should think--
WS:
No, I didn't care.
LS:
--you would have been very angry.
WS:
No, I wasn't even angry. I figured, you know, poor bastards have got to take it out some
way. And I was a frustrating person to them because I wouldn't do what they would tell
me to do when they tried to get their nose into administration. I'd point out, "Well, that's
an administrative matter, and I'll handle that.”
00:27:56
And I always thought Mr. Kahl--did you know him? He was the elected head of
education, what do we call him? Not minister of education-LS:
Secretary?
WS:
Secretary of education? No, that isn't what we call him.
LS:
You mean in the state. I don't know.
WS:
Yes. And he is an elected official. You know, there's a woman who's in that office now.
Is it commissioner? I don't know what it is. But anyway, he's head of the state
department of education in the capitol. He's an elected, not an appointed, official. And
Mr. Kahl was an old ex-superintendent of schools. That's a usual career, you know: the
ex-superintendents run to head the educational agency of the state. And they're ex-officio
members of the regents, by law, that person is. And Mr. Kahl would always--with a vote,
however--and Mr. Kahl would always say, "Well, you know, gentlemen, I just don't
approve of your telling the chancellor what to do. The way it should be done is you hire
a person to be the executive officer of the university, and you don't tell him what to do.
But if you don't like what he does, you fire him." And he said, "I happen to like what he's
done and I wouldn't vote to fire him, but that's your alternative. You can't constantly be
telling him how to run the university." And I always liked that support. But anyway, so I
would--in the regents' meetings, both open and closed ones--I'd just say, "Well, I'll have
53
Sewell, William H (#101)
to handle that and thank you for your advice." And they didn't like that. And then I'd
lecture them a good deal about things they didn't want to be lectured about. So as the
year went on, even though I got stronger with the faculty and probably with the students,
I got weaker with the regents. And I'm sure that they would have fired me in two or three
months anyway. That was Fred's opinion. And I just was so torn about it. I thought it
would be so much more fun to be fired than to resign. And it'd be kind of a vindication.
They were firing me for really representing, essentially, a faculty position before them.
And rather than doing what they wanted done, I was trying to do what the faculty wanted
done. And I thought that would be kind of fun to be fired. And I thought it'd be fun to be
fired by a bunch of antediluvian Republican conservatives anyway, you know. But I
finally decided that that wouldn't be fair to Fred. It wouldn't be fair to the university, and
it would cause a lot of trouble for the university. So, since I didn't like the job anyway,
I'd just quit at the end of the year. So that's what I did.
LS:
You wouldn't have enjoyed going on at all.
WS:
No. I wouldn't have enjoyed going on without the complete support of the regents. I just
didn't--. If there had been some way you could separate out the student problems, which
I foresaw lasting for a long time at that point--I didn't think, you know--I figured I could
cope. But I didn't enjoy it. And I just figured, the hell with it. I'll do something more
useful, something that I enjoy more. So that was the reason for--. That was when I
decided to resign.
00:32:02
LS:
Had Harrington brought back Ed Young with a mind to--
WS:
Oh, I'm sure he had. He never said so. I always said, "Well, Fred, you're stockpiling Ed
Young for when they fired me." And he'd laugh. But I'm sure he had that in mind. He
knew I would probably want to quit anyway. He told me--when I told him I was going to
quit--he said, "Well, I would never have asked you to. But I think your analysis of the
situation--. It's going to continue this way and isn't going to get an awful lot better. You
obviously don't enjoy it. If you want to quit, OK. But I would never ask you to," he said.
Well, I don't know whether he would have or not. He never did. And he seemed quite
surprised when I, you know, at that moment, that I proposed to do it. I shouldn't say that
he begged me to stay on. But if he had, it wouldn't have made any difference. I'd
decided to quit. No, I think Fred was kind of relieved to see me go because he figured
that I had become a source of constant trouble for him with the regents. And so he
figured he had to have somebody else, you know, who didn't represent that added
dimension to his burden.
LS:
Then why didn't the search and screen committee come up with Ed Young's name?
WS:
I have no idea. I wasn't there. All I know is the same rumor you know. I don't know that
it's true although I was informed by quite a reliable source. I don't know. I haven't any
idea. I thought they would. I would have if I'd been on the committee. I thought Ed was
ideal for the job and for the times. I thought he had the characteristics of lots of cunning,
very smart, knew the university well, had all this negotiating and labor negotiating
experiences. I just figured--. And he wouldn't be as precipitous as I was about things.
And that wouldn't get him in as much trouble. I just reasoned that Ed was the right guy.
54
Sewell, William H (#101)
If I'd have been on that committee, he would have been my first choice. So--Ed and I
have always been very close friends. So I thought that was an ideal choice myself. But if
they didn't come up with that name--. I'm told, actually, by a member of the committee,
that they didn't. So I don't know. But then Fred called them in and said, "Look, I want
Ed Young's name on that list." And they agreed to put it on and then he chose Ed. But
again, I guess I feel less that the chancellor has to be the sole choice of the president
because he isn't really his assistant.
LS:
No, I would think that would be rather different.
WS:
He runs a separate job. In fact, one of the great problems of every one of these systems is
to define autonomy for the local administration. And it's gradually coming about all over
the country. At first, California--Sproul and then Kerr--couldn't keep out of the local
management. Fred couldn't here, although he did a fairly good job of it. He probably
kept out of things here much more than he did at Milwaukee or the other places. But still,
he had been the guy who sat in that chair, and he knew more about it, he thought, than
you did or anybody else could. And so he wanted to and he couldn't avoid getting
involved.
00:36:09
So that was one of the great advantages of bringing in somebody like Weaver is that he
had nothing to do with it. In fact, he never did understand it. Probably it was the best
thing that could have happened to the university is to bring in somebody like Weaver
who really was weak as a president and who wouldn't interfere too much with local
autonomy. I think the autonomy of the university grew greatly under Weaver, and we
should all be in his debt for that.
LS:
And Young will promote it because he believes in it. Is that right?
WS:
Well, and Young will promote it for a number of reasons: one, he believes in it,
especially for this campus, and two, Ed is not a man with great energy, and he has to
delegate a great deal to others. He's not a Bob Fleming, you know, or an Irv Shain. He
doesn't have the physical stamina and the resources to cope with constantly having to be
involved in big decisions and running things. In fact, I think that was one of the
hallmarks of Ed's chancellorship was that he just had to have somebody around like
Shain or Bry Kearl who'd take over and do the day to day management of things. Then
when he lost those two guys, he never found anybody who could do that. And so
everything got diffused all over the place. By the time Ed left Bascom Hall, the place
was a shambles in terms of administration. Nobody knew who did anything around the
place. The deans insisted that Ed appoint an acting chancellor and specified that it be
Glenn Pound, who is a very good administrator, to clean up things and get things in
shape. They didn't even want to wait in the interim until the new chancellor came
because they felt it was such an administrative mess. So Ed's long suit isn't
administration. Ed's long suit is being a wise, judicious, and crafty sort of a guy who gets
the main things done that he wants done and he leaves other things to other people.
00:38:45
LS:
Why did Bry Kearl leave?
55
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
He didn't want to work with Ed. He liked the relationship he had with me, where he'd
come in, we'd talk about things, and I'd say, "Do it," you know. He'd go and talk to Ed,
and Ed would say, "Well, I'll have to think about that." And he could never get any--. Ed
doesn't make decisions. He lets the events make them. He waits until the events make
them and then moves. But Bry just found it terribly frustrating. He'd go, let's say
something comes up about the environmental institute, and he goes and he works out a
compromise. And he goes back to Ed and says, "We ought to do the following." Well,
Ed would say, "Well, let's talk about that some more next week, you know. Let's think
about that." And meanwhile, it's all come undone. Well, Bry just couldn't--Bry likes Ed
and admires him--he just couldn't stand to work for him. Now the difference between
Bry and Irv is a very interesting one. Irv is a complete take-charge guy. He'd go and say
to Ed, "I'm going to do the following." Unless Ed said, "Don't do it," he did it. And
pretty soon, he got to where he just would do it and then go tell Ed and--.
LS:
So this is why Bry Kearl isn't chancellor and Irving is?
WS:
Probably. Well, in part, it's another thing. Bry withdrew his name from the list for
chancellor. I know he's been offered top administrative posts in other universities. I
think he just doesn't want to do that. I don't think he wants the real heat that comes from
the top job. He loves the kind of thing he does as vice chancellor with somebody he likes
to work with. And he's marvelous at it. I'm sure he'd be a marvelous chancellor. But he
just doesn't like--. I think he just doesn't want the top administrative post where he's
subject to all of the pressures. You know, there are people like that in this world. There
are some people that want to be number two.
00:41:04
LS:
By pressures, you mean people not liking you and--
WS:
Or making all sorts of demands upon you. And I don't think he wants to make the
decisions himself. I think he doesn't want to make the decisions, the unpopular ones.
Nobody minds making the popular decisions, but I don't think he wants to make the
unpopular ones. And I think he just is an excellent behind-the-scenes kind of operator.
And that's what he likes to do. That's what he's superb at. He's exactly what Ed should
have had. Ed should have said to him, "Bry, you run the day to day things and tell me
what you're doing." But Ed is not that decisive. So he never told him that. He didn't
have to tell Irv. Irv just did it.Irv once told me, he said, "You know, what I do with Ed is I
size up a situation. I tell him about it. I tell him what I'm going to do. If Ed isn't here, I
don't even tell him; I do it. But I've told Ed, anytime you want somebody else to do this
job, get him. I'll go back to chemistry, gladly."
LS:
That's just what Ed said about his job, that he could do what he wanted to, that he'd be
glad to leave if they wanted him to.
WS:
Yes. So that's why I think Bry didn't want to be chancellor. He didn't want to be
chancellor. He acted as chancellor after I resigned until Ed came in. But that's just the
summer, a couple of months. But he didn't want to be considered then. He did stay on
with Ed for a year or so, I think. Not more than that. But he didn't enjoy it that much.
LS:
I'm glad you said that. I've heard reasons that were much more complicated than that,
and this sounds like a very-56
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
No, I think that's the real reason. I probably know Bry almost as well as anybody on the
campus. He's one of my really closest friends. We play golf together. We do all sorts of
things, and Ruth is very close to Liz and, you know, that sort of thing. So I think I know
him. I think I know him better than he knows himself. I think he doesn't know that he
doesn't want the challenge of a top job.
LS:
But what I meant by "thank god" was that one needs desperately, I suppose, people who
are willing to stand behind and not be famous and yet make important decisions.
WS:
You need two different kinds of people. You need either that kind of a person or you
need the kind of person--. Oh, and Bry needs variety. He may do that for two or three
years, then he's got to do something else. You know, he won't do that as number two
man forever. But he'll take another of that sort of job doing something else, like when he
left on leave to go to the Agricultural Development Council, which is one of John D.
Rockefeller's foundations. He was number two man. He ran the Asian office. When he
was asked by John D. and the board--I was on the board, so I know--if he would be
willing to consider being president of the foundation when the president retired, he said,
no--again. So I have several bits of evidence that make me quite sure that Bry doesn't
want whatever it is that's involved in the top job. Ambitious administrators always are
aiming for the top job. You need those kinds of guys. You need the Shains who want to
make the reputation, use the job, do the best you can, learn on the job, and move to the
higher level. You need both kinds. Bry happens to be the rarer type, I'd say.
00:44:59
End of Tape 3, Side 2
Tape 4, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
It was some time in February or March--
WS:
I thought it was.
LS:
--because I was just looking at it yesterday.
WS:
It was after Dow, long after Dow.
LS:
Well, we are recording now. Well, why don't you tell it again.
WS:
Well, I was just going to say. There were other crises than Dow during the year. I think
maybe the one we were most worried about, I guess, was the second Dow, when the Dow
people came back in the spring. But we were much more prepared for that. Essentially
what we did was to move the interviews to the Field House on the advice of various
experts and brought in adequate police force to guarantee that people could get into the
building and that it wouldn't be blocked. It's very hard to block a building of that size
with many entrances. And moreover, we scheduled all the interviews very early in the
morning--I think about 8 o'clock--and had enough interviewers there so that the
interviews could be over in an hour total. People had to register in advance if they
wanted to interview and were given a specific time to be there. They all had to be there
at whenever that time was, I think it was 8 a.m. And of course they all went in at once.
Doors were barred, and then they all went out at once. And then we had on reserve, I
would guess, maybe 150 sheriff's deputies who were inside of the Field House. Wait
now, I've got the terms confused. The practice hall is what we used, you know, where
57
Sewell, William H (#101)
they practice all the sports. That great huge building next door to the Field House is
where the interviews were held. That's bigger than a football field. That's quite a huge
building. And then the Field House where basketball is played is where we had the
county sheriffs and all of their minions from around the surrounding counties on reserve
if anything broke loose. But we didn't want them out with a show of force. Moreover,
we told everybody we had them there. And of course nobody knew how many there
were. There could have been hundreds. You could put 14,000 people in there; obviously
you wouldn't have that many law people. But they knew there was a goodly number
there. And also it turned out that the second Dow interviews were held just the day
before the primaries-00:03:22
LS:
Before the referendum.
WS:
--before the McCarthy--
LS:
Well, the referendum on the war was on the second of April.
WS:
No, this was before the primaries when McCarthy was running for the Democratic--the
state primaries in which McCarthy was running for nomination and for support in the
state.
LS:
They were March 30th.
WS:
March 30th?
LS:
The day of the Dow interviews.
WS:
OK, I don't remember when they were. As I recalled, it was early spring. But, in any
event, that probably kept all the McCarthy kids from coming because they realized they
had to exhibit good behavior or it would hurt his chances in the primaries.
LS:
Did you deliberately schedule them for--
WS:
Yes, very deliberately. There were some people very upset, some of my liberal friends,
but I told them, "You can't have it both ways. If they feel they've got to disrupt the
interviews, there will be certain costs, and one of those costs will be it'll probably hurt
their political cause." And I know Midge Miller was upset and several others, but it
seemed to me that we had to play our strategy to win just as they had to play theirs. And
I just told them--I didn't say it in the newspapers--but everybody knew why we scheduled
it right at that time. It was to be within a week or so of that anyway. So we figured, the
closer the better. I think that effectively kept out a great many kids who might have come
there to raise hell. And then the fact that, really, the back of the radical movement had
kind of been broken, temporarily at least, on campus because of lack of leadership. And
then the fact that we'd held it and announced what we were doing and that police would
be there, and that force would be used if necessary to keep people from entering the
building who weren't permitted to enter, and so on. But, whatever, it went off without an
incident.
00:05:46
LS:
How did you feel about having Dow on campus? You originally hadn't been in favor of
having-58
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
I wasn't then!
LS:
You still weren't.
WS:
No, but by then the faculty had again said we'll have interviewing. The regents had said,
under no circumstances can you cancel interviews. I could have resigned over it, but that
didn't seem to me to be a very sensible thing to do.
LS:
There was a regents' meeting at which you--on the 20th of March. Do you remember
that?
WS:
Not particularly.
LS:
And you went in and announced when you had scheduled the interviews to be. They
would have expected to have discussed the interview policy, I guess, but they didn't. And
there was some speculation about that.
WS:
I don't remember it at all.
LS:
You don't?
WS:
No, it wasn't any--to me, no big incident. We told them what we were going to do and
just did it. And that's all there was to it, as I recall. Now, earlier, I had said, in that forum
that was held after Dow, that I would not allow the--I guess it was the CIA was next
scheduled to come--I would not allow the CIA on the campus if I felt that there was any
likelihood of bloodshed and great disruption. And I know that the regents questioned me
about that, asked me who I'd consulted with, and I told them "Nobody." That, after all, I
was the chief executive office of the campus, and I made such decisions myself. On the
other hand, I was pretty sure the CIA wasn't coming. The reason is--
00:07:58
LS:
Did they cancel on their own?
WS:
Yes.
LS:
They did.
WS:
Well, they cancelled. They started cancelling all over the country.
LS:
I see. It wasn't somebody here called up and--
WS:
Yes, somebody here called up. At least three or four people I know of called up--
LS:
And told them what?
WS:
--and suggested that they not come.
LS:
Do you know who? Who was it called?
WS:
Yes. I don't think I should tell. After all, you know, it was done as a favor to me as a
person, to the university, and so on. That's a matter I don't think I can reveal to anyone,
but there were three or four calls. I don't know that anybody from the administration
called, but I know that some faculty people called. And one person, in particular, who
was a friend and a classmate of Helms, called. And he had his assurance, long before the
policy was made, that they weren't going to go to campuses to interview, that they
wouldn't come. So I was pretty confident they weren't going to come. But if they had
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come and when they were scheduled, which was just two or three weeks after the Dow
thing, I would have told them you just can't come on campus. You'll have to go
someplace else. We can't protect you. You can go to the federal building. You can go
someplace else, and the students can come to you. But in any event I think Helms, you
know, despite his recent conviction and all, he was basically a very decent sort of a man.
And I don't think he wanted the CIA to have trouble on campuses. He was interested in
getting the best people he could to join and at least that's what I'm told by some of his
friends.
00:10:00
LS:
Why couldn't Dow have? If they brought so many people here to interview, why couldn't
they have spent the same amount of money and transported the university people?
WS:
Well, they could have.
LS:
Did they think of it?
WS:
Yes, it was suggested to them by nobody less than me. I had a meeting with them, and I
think they would have been willing, but they would have done it with reluctance. They're
kind of intransigent people, you know, themselves, and very great in their own
righteousness. But by then the regents and the faculty committee and the student
referendum had all been held again, and it was agreed to have interviews on campus. I
think I could have forced them off campus, but I don't think the regents would have stood
for it.
LS:
Well, I didn't mean in terms of your forcing them but just a suggestion that they do this
which would have been what they could have done.
WS:
Yes. That was a very strong suggestion. I met with the vice president in charge of
personnel and others of Dow--
LS:
Did you actually go there?
WS:
No, they came here.
LS:
They did?
WS:
Yes.
LS:
In early--
WS:
Well, whatever it was, sometime, oh, a couple or three weeks before the interviews were
scheduled. But they didn't want to do it, and I couldn't force them. That was the point,
see. I could have said to them, "OK, you can't come." But then I would have been in
trouble with the regents and I think with rather large elements of the faculty by then and
would have gone against everything that, through the democratic process, we'd decided
on. You want to remember that, even in the spring when the students held their
referendum again on interviewing, they were three to one in favor of interviewing on
campus. You know, we tend, we liberals, to think that student opinion was expressed by
the liberal students on this campus. It never was, you know. It's still true that most of the
kids did not agree with what the liberal, radical kids on campus were doing. And they
couldn't win a referendum. Now, they could get elected to the student council if only
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Sewell, William H (#101)
2,000 kids voted. But in the referendum about 11,000 voted. And that would, of course,
kill them. If they'd keep them from voting, then they can win because they can pack it.
00:12:44
But in any event, we then went on with interviewing for the rest of the year, but always--.
I think the Dow was the only threatening one. The others were--. We held the interviews
with somebody, I've forgotten, General Motors or somebody they were mad at, in the
Engineering Building; all of them over there because the engineers were the ones that
wanted to do the interviewing mainly, and commerce people, ag. So we just made the
interviews in those places, the College of Agriculture, nothing up here centrally. And
there was a little trouble, as I recall, whenever those interviews were held in Engineering.
There were several hundred people went there to protest. But again we'd learned the
business, and we had enough police and officers to maintain order. And we had no real
trouble. I think a few windows were broken, a few things of that sort, a few arrests made,
but that was it.
00:13:49
LS:
I'm curious about your remark that the Dow people were intransigent. You mean, they,
in a moral way--was that it?--that they took a moral position?
WS:
Yes. Very much so. They said they had always worked and cooperated with the
universities, including the University of Wisconsin, that they had always interviewed on
campus. We had agreed to that, and there was no reason--. They didn't feel that they
were immoral people, that they had as much right to hire people as anybody else and to
come and go in the university as anybody else. They saw no reason why they should be
singled out for special treatment or to be denied any rights that were offered to any other
company or any other employer.
LS:
What was their reaction to the October--? Didn't they see that there was something a
little special happening?
WS:
Well, they knew something special was happening. It wasn't only here.
LS:
No. Exactly.
WS:
They got exactly the same thing everywhere; or not everywhere, but in a great many
places. But again, they were not about to knuckle under to what they saw to be radical,
liberal students trying to prevent them from the same rights that anybody else had to
interview.
LS:
So they weren't the suave, sort of bureaucratic man who just gets done what he wants to
do, but they really had a moral feeling of opposition to radicals.
WS:
Sure.
LS:
It's interesting.
WS:
Well, opposition to being denied freedom of speech and freedom of access, which is
guaranteed under the U. S. constitution, you know. I'm not sure I wouldn't have agreed
with them if I'd been in their position. These kids were denying people their rights. They
were denying kids their rights to come in the building. They were denying companies
their rights to come here. Now you could say that those rights should not have been
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Sewell, William H (#101)
granted. But as long as they were granted to other companies, they had to be granted to
Dow. The University of Wisconsin is not in a position of deciding who's moral and
who's immoral, is not in the position of deciding what people have a right to come here
and interview and don't, you know.
LS:
No, I didn't mean--I meant them. I was thinking of individuals--
WS:
Yes. Well, that's the position they took.
LS:
--that they might have said, "Well, we don't want to give you so much trouble next time,
and we don't want to get all your--. you have to spend so much money to police, we
might as well, just this time, do it a little differently." I thought they might have done
that.
WS:
We don't want trouble, yes. Well, at least CIA was smart enough to do that. But I can
understand their position, too.
00:16:45
Oh, we were talking about the other major student crises. There were a number of taking
over of buildings but leaving, and coming to my office--under the guise of having a
discussion--and then staying and refusing to get out, and all that sort of thing. But none
of those were any real crisis. When I got through talking, I'd just say, "OK, I'm going,"
get up, and leave, you know. People would kind of get in front of my way, and I'd say,
"Get out of the way, son. I'm going out of here." And that would be the end of it. There
were no police around on the outside to make arrests and so on. And I would have
charged anybody who attempted any battery or any hindrance of my freedom of
movement. And they knew it. So they'd get out of the way, and I'd go out.
LS:
Was this SDS people, or Committee to End the War people, or--
WS:
Oh, no. They were the SDS, and I think we had probably as many Weathermen here as
any place in the country. We had the real tough ones here. That was the difference
between us and Michigan. They said we had the real--the people who were committed to
do destructive things. But they weren't going to do them against the wrong odds, you
know. And so there were such people. In fact, you know, I don't know if I ever told you,
but after the Dow, both Bill Emery, the city chief of police, and Ralph Hanson insisted on
having a twenty-four hour guard on our house even though we lived, you know, way out
at the very edge of town. They had policemen sitting in cars; first a couple of cars and
later on only a couple of guys in one car. And those poor guys would sit there all night
on five-hour shifts, you know. And I'd go out and try to get them to leave. So did Liz.
But they insisted on staying. Nobody ever came, that I know of, during that time. But
they were quite worried because there had been threats and so on, but nothing of that sort
ever happened. I would walk through the Union, where Ralph had forbidden me to go
without police. But I'd go anyway, and people would hiss as I'd walk down the halls, or
make remarks, you know, about that fascist bastard, and so on. That isn't all the fun you
might think it is. But anyway, I never felt that they'd do anything to me. I was quite
confident of that.
00:19:50
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Sewell, William H (#101)
But anyhow, there were no really serious, big things that came up after that. There were
all sorts of threatened things, but we always managed to plan for them. And we learned
that the way you plan was always to have more, much more force available than you
needed in the event of any threat. I think that was a big mistake at Dow. If we'd have
had three or four hundred policemen up there, we probably would have gotten by,
excepting, I'm also convinced, that something like Dow had to come, that it was going to
be forced there or elsewhere, so--. I'd rather it had come later when I'd learned more
about what to do in these things. But we came to manage the things much better later on.
Well, about the only other things that I-LS:
Well, I'd be curious, since we've touched on SDS briefly, if you remembered individuals,
if they came to your attention. There were--John Coatsworth was one who was in SDS.
Or Don Bluestone. I don't think he was SDS. But I just wondered if any of these--
WS:
There were kind of minor figures. They came in to talk to me and they were all in the
business of making threats, not to me personally, you know, but, "If you don't do so and
so, we're going to take over this university or we'll--." One guy said, "I'll be sitting here,
and you'll be sitting in the basement."
LS:
That was the Kaplan twins.
WS:
Yes, those were the Kaplan twins. They'd come in once in a while to talk to me. But
mainly they were just figures on the campus. I didn't know any of them personally.
LS:
You couldn't distinguish among them as to which was more effective or which was more-
WS:
None of them was very effective.
LS:
You mean, there would have been better ways of disturbing the campus, you think.
WS:
Yes. Oh, yes. The only real organizer and planner that there was in the whole student
movement was Evan Stark. And he was a masterful tactician. And once he left they
never got anything well planned again, you know, with the clock-like precision that Evan
had. Evan had the driveway to the Bascom Hall parking lot blocked with old cars right
on the second, you know. He had everything laid out. And they never had anybody like
that. These were mainly kind of idealistic, middle class kids, you know, who had these
great, burning convictions about freeing the laboring classes from exploitation once the
war was over and all that sort of thing. But they weren't very capable leaders of
movements. You know, they'd get up and talk very effectively at meetings and get
people shouting, and yelling, and going up the hill. But they wouldn't know what they
were going to do when they got there. So I would say that none of them was an effective
leader of a movement. There's a difference between being a good speaker--. You go to
our faculty meetings when there are troubles and certain people get up, and make
impassioned pleas, and get tears, and so on. But they're not effective in getting
legislation through or implementing it once it's through. And the same with student
leaders. They're much better at talking than they are at organizing or doing anything.
00:24:00
LS:
What would you say to the statement that it wasn't that they lacked leaders but that they
took different tactics and just went underground, started trashing and-63
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, certainly they went underground when they couldn't do the things that they needed
to do more openly or couldn't get sufficient support. Trashing is kind of an easy thing to
do once you get into a mob spirit and start breaking windows and doing things of that
sort. You can get a lot of people in that at the university to go along and throw bricks at
windows. That doesn't take much organization. It does a lot of harm, and it cost us over
$400,000 to fix the windows; you know, these big, double, thermopane windows in this
building [Social Sciences], I think every one of them was broken, all along the lake. You
know, they'd throw bricks right through them, things like that. There are a lot of people
that will do that. But I don't know how much organization that takes. Get twenty good,
committed Weathermen to do something like that and pretty soon--. They can do it by
themselves, you know. Most of that was done, not in big mobs of people, but relatively
small groups working in the middle of the night. They could do all that kind of stuff.
There must have been a leadership for that. I don't know who it was, and obviously I
don't think anybody else knew. Ralph was trying his damnedest to find out who was
organizing this kind of stuff. I would guess there was a certain amount of spontaneity
about it. And there were certainly people who were doing it. But we didn't know who
they were. So I don't know who did the underground things. I don't know who set the
fires. If I did, I'd have had them in jail, you know. There was no question. I don't think
anybody should misinterpret what I would have done if I could have caught those people.
I think it's just a, you know, it's a criminal act to go around and destroy $400,000 of
university windows and take money we could have used for black students fellowships
and scholarships and various other causes, you know. And if I ever saw anybody, I'd turn
him in in a minute. Or we had twenty-two fires set within a week after Dow, several of
which were in Bascom which, if they hadn't been discovered right away, would have
destroyed the building. We had the gutting of South Hall, fires that cost us thousands of
dollars. Any of those things, you know, I don't think there's hardly anybody on the
campus who wouldn't have been in favor of finding out who did it. We did everything
we could to find out who did those things. We had the help of the FBI, the state fire
marshal, everybody else. We couldn't find out. If we had them, we would have
prosecuted to the hilt.
00:27:02
LS:
Was it that you suspected but didn't have any evidence, or you didn't even get that far?
WS:
I don't know. Without question, people like Ralph thought that it might be one of a dozen
students. And I always kidded Ralph and said they were the people he didn't like. But
you know, he had no evidence. Nobody had any evidence. If we'd have had any
evidence, I'm sure enough evidence, we could have--. If we had good evidence or some
good suspicion that it was a particular individual, then, as I understand it, police work
changes very much, and you concentrate on that suspect. And you try to find out, minute
by minute, where he was during all that time. You try to get his friends or his
acquaintances to squeal on him. I don't know what police do. But you know, if you've
got one or two suspects, you can run them down pretty well. We never were in that
position, that I know of.
00:28:10
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
Joe Kauffman was accused of getting Ralph Hanson to have plain-clothes policemen
infiltrating parties and that sort of thing. That comes up in a Cardinal article in the spring
sometime.
WS:
I knew nothing about whether he did that or not. Certainly, it wasn't with my knowledge.
I guess I wouldn't have had anything against it. I mean, I don't find anything immoral
about trying to track down people who are burning buildings and doing things like that,
using whatever techniques you can use. I don't see anything immoral about infiltrating
somebody's organization if that organization has as its avowed purpose to destroy you. I
don't see anything wrong with that. LS: I guess it's standard police tactics.
WS:
Oh, standard tactics throughout the society. I don't find anything that requires the state or
representatives of the state to not use whatever is constitutionally permitted in the society.
There's no constitutional guarantee that people won't squeal on others or that you can't
plant stooges and so on, you know. There's nothing in the world that guarantees you the
freedom to plan to destroy without vulnerability to police tactics.
LS:
I suspect the point of the article was that the dean of students was doing this.
WS:
Oh, I suppose.
LS:
I think that was probably it, not that--
WS:
I don't know that he did. I haven't any knowledge about it. I wouldn't doubt but what-whether the dean of students was doing it or not, the FBI was doing it. Certainly, the
state and the city police were doing it as part of their regular tactics. Whether it was done
with aid and help from Joe Kauffman, I don't know. But I don't know what help he could
give them. You know, it's part of the student--the Cardinal--mania to decry such things.
But I don't know what constitutional or legal arguments were made to support it. But I
read the Cardinal, partly for amusement and partly because I figured that the Cardinal had
been pretty well captured by the group and that you could get pretty good ideas of what
they were doing, what they were thinking, what they were planning.
LS:
I guess it would be invaluable to read at that time. Letters to the editor--
WS:
Yes. Oh, yes.
LS:
There was a very good one from William Rice on another solution to the Dow problem,
which I wondered how the faculty reacted to because he's so highly respected, isn't he?
WS:
I don't know. I didn't think so, but--
LS:
You didn't think he was?
WS:
No.
LS:
Oh, I see. Maybe it was just by the liberals.
WS:
Yes, by the liberals he is, but I don't think otherwise. I don't know. I don't know that
much--. Bill was never a force on the faculty of any sort.
LS:
Oh, he wasn't?
WS:
No. No, not really. And he very seldom talked at faculty meetings, for that matter. So
he was well known to the members of the Civil Liberties Union and things like that,
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Sewell, William H (#101)
which I belonged to, and so on, but I don't think, generally, in the faculty that he was a
well known person or necessarily treated with great respect by everybody.
LS:
It is a perspective then.
WS:
Yes.
00:32:21
LS:
I'm curious about the Mermin and the Crow committee reports and what--the action taken
on them by the University Committee. Do you remember that whole series--
WS:
No, I don't. I remember the committees, of course, because I proposed them, and then the
University Committee appointed them, as I recall, rather than my appointing them.
LS:
How would you choose a committee when you'd know, pretty much, how they would be
likely to vote on an issue, such as student--
WS:
I don't think I chose the members. I suggested to the faculty that we have such
committees. But I had nothing to do with the choice of members.
LS:
Who would have chosen them?
WS:
The University Committee. They were a university committee.
LS:
I see.
WS:
They were committees of the University Committee.
LS:
The choice of a committee, pretty much, if you've got an issue such as--. Well the
Mermin committee was dealing with how you would face disruption on campus. And the
choice of a committee--you'd know how people would be likely to vote on an issue.
WS:
I didn't. I don't know how you'd know. I don't understand why you think they'd know.
LS:
Well, you take somebody like Haskell Fain, and you know pretty much what his
conclusions are going to be, or David Cronon, and you can guess--
WS:
I don't know who appointed those committees, but I think it was the University
Committee. I'm sure I didn't. And I think that the University Committee probably tried
to figure out who are people representing various points of view, who are reasonable
people, and who are amenable to argument, you know, and to being convinced by the
force of various arguments brought. That's the way they did when I was on the
University Committee anyway. So David Cronon, you say, as an example. I suppose the
inference would be that he'd be somewhat traditional and conservative in his views about
what the university stance should be and that Haskell Fain would be more liberal. But
certainly neither of them were prominent in the defense of the students, or in the defense
of causes, and so on. They're both, in my opinion, quite reasonable people. I guess I
wouldn't know how Haskell Fain was coming out on it. I know him very well. I knew
him very well then. But Haskell Fain is very much of a traditionalist when it comes to
what the university is, and what it should be, and what it should stand for, and so on. So
that gets immediately into conflict with whether or not you're going to permit students to
ignore university traditions and rules and so on because they have such strong feelings
about a cause. I'm not sure where Haskell came down on any of those things. I don't
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Sewell, William H (#101)
remember. I wasn't ever at the meetings, but whatever the committee comes up with it's
going to be argued and debated in the faculty.
LS:
Yes, actually, the committees did reflect quite well the composition of the faculty--
WS:
I think that was what--. I'm sure that's what the University Committee was trying to find.
00:36:21
The University Committee doesn't want to be accused--even though, as I recall at that
time, the makeup of the University Committee, in my opinion, was very conservative-because they used to come and tell me what to do and that I had to do this and that to stop
various actions by students and so on. And I would just tell them, "Look, I thank you for
your advice, but these are administrative kinds of decisions, and your business is policy,
and there's a thin line between, and I'll do what I think is best, given the policies that the
university has. And you just tend to your knitting, and I'll tend to mine."
LS:
How did they take that?
WS:
They didn't like it. Nobody likes it, but some of them could see that they were really
talking about day to day running of the university, and that wasn't their business. And I
was very quick to point that out to them. They also knew me very well because I'd been
on the committee with them, and I kept telling them that all the time when they were
trying to tell Bob Fleming how to run the university, too. So they kind of expected it, I
think. They're good friends, Phil Cohen and Cameron in geology, who was a very, very
conservative man.
LS:
Cameron. You know, I, for some reason, was thinking that he was Rondo Cameron--
WS:
Oh, no.
LS:
--of course, not.
WS:
No, no. He was a very distinguished geologist and a very fine, decent, human being. He
just happens to take very, very conservative positions on almost every kind of issue,
whether it's political, or in relation to the university, or anything else. But he's very fair
about it. He lays it out and says, "This is where I stand," kind of thing. And I've never
been able to hate people because they believed in something different than I did. In fact,
he was a very reasonable guy. Jim Villemonte would, the year before when he was
chairman of the committee, he would--Jim is a very good friend of mine and has been for
years, but Jim really didn't know the difference between administration and policy. And
he was over telling Fleming not to pay people's fines and all sorts of things that I took to
be a personal matter, not even administrative. And I kept telling him that. And Jim
would write letters to Fleming and would want us all to agree with him. And I'd lead a
fight against the letters and usually stop them in that way. So they knew what I was all
about, but they still did a little of it. They did much less of it with me than they did with
Fleming, but again, the University Committee can't be in the position of setting up a
committee whose report is completely predictable. They've got to represent different
aspects of the faculty, whether they agree with them or not, or they'll just be discredited.
And when it comes before the faculty it'll be voted down. They know that. And so I
think they had a quite representative committee as far as the faculty was concerned.
00:39:56
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
Would your job have been easier or different, would you have had more support, if there
had been a less conservative head to the University Committee at that time?
WS:
No. I think that helped. I think that helped.
LS:
I see. The conservatives would have felt that everything was weighted in the wrong way
if there had been a liberal there.
WS:
Yes, and I think the faculty is essentially conservative, if you have to put it in a liberalconservative continuum. And I think the majority of the faculty tends to be quite
conservative when it comes to anything about university procedures and university rules
and so on. And I would say the great majority of the faculty is quite conservative. They
believe that these rules and traditions and attitudes and values have evolved over
hundreds of years of university experience abroad and in this country. And then they
have their own respect for this university's traditions. And they're conservative about
them. They don't see that some pressing, current, moral issue is enough to upset the rules
of the game. And basically I don't think you'd find ten percent of the faculty that would
believe that they would. You know, I never could buy the argument, myself, that certain
people didn't have a right to speak in this university because they were immoral people in
support of the war in Vietnam or whatever else it might be, but that was the position that
was being taken. And that the kids had a right to occupy buildings and to trash and to
raise hell because they were in favor of stopping the war and the government wasn't.
And there aren't many on this campus who believe that, very few indeed. So that, you
know, it's that kind of a--. That was what the problem was. It wasn't political liberalism
and conservatism. The problem was not that. There were a number of Republicans who
were very much opposed to the war, you know.
LS:
Oh, of course.
WS:
And there were many Democrats who were, and the numbers kept increasing as the war
went on. And you had people, you know, like Robben Fleming, when it was all over
practically, then gave a ringing denunciation from the presidency of the University of
Michigan against the war, which I had done before I became chancellor for God's sakes.
But that's the difference between the guys who know the game and those who don't, you
know. But anyway, how did we get off on that?
00:43:13
Oh, about the University Committee. No, I think the University Committee was
supportive, that it took the steps that it had to take, like when there was a motion--. They
foresaw right after the Dow that there would be a motion to condemn me, and so they
introduced a motion to support me, which is a good political move if you're trying to head
off a condemnation thing. And they were smart enough to call a special meeting of the
faculty, to make sure everybody could be heard, and to keep the meetings going, and
keep open the discourse as long as anybody wanted to keep it open. And they took the
position within the University Committee themselves that they were available to students,
to faculty, to come and talk to them if they wanted to try to change things. Anything that
could be done in an orderly, procedural fashion, they were in favor of. And I think they
were a source of strength, not only to me but to the university in general, I think, to help
us get through the crisis. And I admired them for it. They must have spent at least a half
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Sewell, William H (#101)
of their time throughout the year meeting and on committee work that they had to do. So
they did it at great sacrifice. What little warning they did of me by coming up every now
and then and telling me that I couldn't move the interviews to the Field House or off the
central part of the campus and things like that I just, you know, I'd just say, "Well, thanks
for your advice. And I know you have the best interests of the university at heart, but I
have to make these decisions, and I'll make them as follows." And I'd tell them. They'd
go away grumbling, but there wasn't really much doubt that those were administrative
questions. And so we got along quite well actually. I guess, though, there were a number
of other things that I would have called crises with the students, but nothing ever came up
that approached the first one.
00:45:37
Now, there were other troubles. The only other big one that students were involved in
was when, in the pre-campaign period when Johnson was probably trying to decide
whether or not to run for another term of office, we got a call from the President's office.
I've forgotten who the person was there--it certainly wasn't the president--but from some
presidential assistant saying that Orville Freeman was going to be--the secretary of
agriculture wanted to come to Madison and-00:46:26
End of Tape 4, Side 1
Tape 4, Side 2
00:46:29
WS:
He was going to make an important agricultural policy declaration, and they wanted to
hold it in the student union. And they wanted us to be sure that the room would be filled
and proper news and television coverage and so on. I always thought, as did those
around me, that this was purely a political thing and that they probably--. The president
had been making some speeches at places like Texas A&M and places where there was
no student movement, and being cheered, and I think they perhaps had decided to test the
water in some other places. And I told them--
LS:
You mean, as to the reception to--
WS:
As to the reception that a representative of the president's office might get on campuses.
And I told them there was no way we could possibly guarantee any large audience for
Orville Freeman, that I didn't think there was much interest in him and anything he had to
say, and that certainly students weren't interested much. And I would predict that
representing President Johnson and at the time when the question of his running for office
had come up, that it wouldn't be just agricultural but would be an attempt at having a
major political speech, that obviously the University of Wisconsin was not going to deny
the secretary of agriculture or anybody else an opportunity to be heard on this campus. It
might very well provoke some strong student reaction, but by then they must be used to
that because they were getting it in other places in the country. And if they wanted to
come, I and my office would do whatever was possible to provide an adequate meeting
place, but we didn't provide crowds, that the speaker had to draw the crowds. And so we
had a little council on the matter and decided that it probably wouldn't draw over two or
three hundred people at most, and so we asked Dean Pound to hold it in the School of
Agriculture in the auditorium there, which he did. And Orville Freeman came and was
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Sewell, William H (#101)
introduced by the dean, and there were a number of students in the audience, and they
started making catcalls and various other things. They were said by the papers and
others, I don't know, to be McCarthy followers. And I really, I don't have any way of
knowing who they were, other than what the newspapers said. And Orville Freeman
finally just said, "Well, there's no way I can speak on this campus. The radicals have
prevented free speech, and I'll have to withdraw." And then he was interviewed by the
television people and everybody else, and what a sorry state of affairs we had in America,
that the Secretary of Agriculture couldn't be given a hearing when he wanted to talk, even
about a nonpolitical matter and so on." I always suspected that they predicted that result
and hoped that that would lead to a great show of indignation throughout the country and
perhaps that it would lead to greater sympathy with the Johnson administration. And I
certainly don't mean to imply that it wasn't picked up by all the newspapers, but it really
never created much of a splash. By then, people had been shouted down at Harvard, and
Princeton, and Yale, and all the polite places. So I think most people thought, "Well, it's
too bad that this happens in a university, but they should have known it would and
shouldn't have gotten into trouble with it." And instead of any great wave of sympathy, it
just seemed to have no great effect. And it was embarrassing to us. It was certainly
embarrassing to me. I sent a telegram and a letter, offering the apologies of the university
to the secretary, which I sincerely meant, because I think it terrible when anyone can't
speak on a university campus and be treated with courtesy.
00:51:43
LS:
But you thought he probably ought not to have given his talk.
WS:
Well, I didn't, but people who were there, newsmen, thought so and so did others. I didn't
go to the meeting myself. But those who were there seemed to think that he could have
gone on. He'd have had catcalls and insults but politicians, you know--all you have to--if
you've ever been in Britain during a political campaign, that's standard fare. In the
United States we're more polite to speakers, generally, political speakers. But it certainly
wasn't--. It was disruptive, no doubt, and still seems to me that an educational institution
is something different from just going speaking to any group, that we, above all, should
allow people the freedom to say what they've got to say, and to weigh what they say, and
decide on whether or not we, as individuals, think what they have to say has any merit.
But those weren't times in which people were that rational about freedom of speech.
LS:
Did you have many policemen there?
WS:
No, I don't think there were--. I don't remember the details.
LS:
Because you had said that you--
WS:
We had policemen.
LS:
--thought it might have turned into a--
WS:
Yes, we had policemen there. But by then, we had learned to gauge these things much
better. We had learned from experience. Well, how many people are likely to come out
to hear the secretary of agriculture? Well, our information, our best guesses from a
variety of people were that you couldn't fill the ag school auditorium, which only holds
300 people or some such number, and that it was a relatively easy place to police. And, I
don't know, somebody figured out about how many people we needed there, and we had
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Sewell, William H (#101)
that number. It wasn't a huge number. It was probably more people than we had on the
grounds for the Dow thing, which was about thirty to thirty-five people, as I recall, at
first. So that there were police there. They were in the hall. They were outside. To get
in to Ag Hall, you had to go up that middle staircase, you know, up to the second floor, or
something. And so, it was rather easy to have that, more or less, lined with police, I
suppose. But there were no huge numbers. And as I recall, there was no threat to disrupt
that by the radical left. I think it was mainly the McCarthy liberal kids rather than the
radical left, who saw no great profit in being disruptive.
LS:
Yes, I would imagine.
WS:
So that passed.
00:54:52
Well, let's see, what other things. I think the other things were more academic kinds of
things during the year. We had troubles. We were in a time when the faculty learned to
protest every decision. Everybody was in a protest mood. It didn't matter what you did.
People, instead of taking the position that faculty normally take--OK, we'll make our case
with committees, with administration for what we want, and if we lose, we'll lose
gracefully, and we'll run back at the target next year with a better thought-out plan or
whatever else--but it got to where every decision, or almost every decision, that the
University Planning Committee would make, the minority got beat, and it would come
and protest in my office. Oh, I don't mean by that they'd sit in. But they'd come in and
try to figure out ways to change the decision. Oh, even little matters like whether the
Hoofers should be permitted to put a new dock out in front of the Union was protested by
Art Hasler--an old friend of mine, much respected colleague--even though he was out of
the country at the time the decision was made, and he was on leave in Finland or
someplace. But his people were thoroughly heard and the committee on the lake ecology
reported favorably on it. But when Art came back, he wanted to stop the whole thing and
came to my office and raised hell about it. And finally I said, "Art, just go away, we're
going to do it."
LS:
This was the point of view of ecology or--?
WS:
Well, his view of what it would do to the looks of the lake and so on, you know. But the
point is, you have a faculty planning commission. It has open hearings on these things.
It notifies all the interested parties. They come and present their views. His own lake
ecology committee said it was too bad that they had to put the dock out where they did,
but it wasn't going to hurt anything. And they went along with it. But that was just--I
just give you that example as a--
LS:
Yes. It was interesting because--
WS:
It didn't matter what you did in those days, somebody came to protest about it.
00:57:26
And so when we got around to making certain appointments, we also got into difficulties.
The first one was the Law School. Robben Fleming, himself being a graduate of our law
school and a law professor, believed that the Law School needed a new leadership. And
George Young was then dean of the Law School. And George is still here and was a
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Sewell, William H (#101)
classmate of Robben's in the Law School. They were good friends. But a number of
people from the Law School, apparently, had been over--influential people there--to say
to Robben that they thought the Law School was going downhill in terms of its
reputation, that it needed new blood in the faculty, that it had suffered some rather
important losses, and that it needed revitalization. And that, while George was a good
dean, the students liked him and alumni liked him, that he wasn't an active person in
recruiting faculty and getting research monies, matters of that kind. And they felt that it's
time for a new dean. So Robben then, apparently, got those people to go back to the Law
School and collect further--talk to more and more people, and finally, on the basis of
what he saw to have been a movement from the Law School, which I think he generated
himself, there were delegations waiting on him who said, "It's time for a new dean." So it
was a very difficult thing for Robben because George was a friend of his. But he did,
finally, call George Young in and tell him and that he wanted him to resign, and he would
appoint a search committee, and they would have a new dean.
00:59:53
LS:
This sounds rather drastic. Is it? Does this happen often, that a school gets together and
says the dean's inadequate?
WS:
No, not often. But it's certainly not unheard of.
LS:
It would never happen in L&S--. It isn't?
WS:
No, not at all unheard of, I don't think. You mean in this university or in universities
generally?
LS:
I can't imagine, say, one of the L and S deans--
WS:
I think it--
LS:
No, here, I meant.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
It has happened?
WS:
Not to my knowledge. We've only had, you know, up until Mark Ingraham resigned,
there'd only been two deans of L&S or three, maybe. I think that it would probably take
a little administration push. But there have been administrative pushes that resulted in
new deans, in education, certainly; in the School of Commerce that happened. In fact, it
was in process while I was chancellor in the School of Commerce, and the next year it
did occur. No, it's not unheard of by any means. But I think that in this instance it was
probably stimulated partly by Fred Harrington. Fred wasn't at all satisfied while he was
president, and this was his university. He wasn't satisfied with George Young's
performance. And Robben wasn't. And Robben, being a lawyer, was worried that the
school was slipping, and it was, in the national rankings. And there were a number of
very influential people in the Law School that felt that way, too. So there was
dissatisfaction. Well, anyway, to make a long story short, George would come in one day
and kind of agree to resign. And he'd go back and talk to his buddies in the Law School,
and they'd say, "Well, why don't you stay, George." And he'd come back and talk to
Robben and say, "Well, they want me to stay, the people I've talked to. It's not so clear
they don't want me," and so on. And I think, finally, Robben got around to saying,
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Sewell, William H (#101)
"Well, George, it's just, I've decided that it's time to make a change." So I came into
office. Well, George and I are old friends. Again, I'm old friends with almost everybody
around here, but, you know, if you've been here that long. So George came in
immediately to see me to say, "Well, now, this business of the resignation," he said, "I
think I should not. I haven't formally tendered a resignation. I think I'd like to stay on as
dean, and I think there's support for me in the faculty." I decided that it was time to just-. In fact, this is the way I tend to do these kinds of things anyway. I said, "George, we're
old friends, and I just want to tell you that I think it's time to have a new dean, and I want
you to keep your resignation, and I expect to have your resignation." And then George's
friends in the Law School started coming to see me, several of them, and saying they
thought that Robben's handling of this had been very high handed and that I, too, was
falling into the same trap. So I met that one head-on and said, "OK, tell me when you
can call a meeting of the law faculty and I will come over and talk to the law faculty
about this matter."
01:03:42
So I asked the law people to call a meeting of their faculty, and I'd come over and
discuss the matter with them. And George introduced me, said what the topic was, and
asked the vice dean to take over the meeting, and left. And so I told them what I
understood had happened in the past, which I'm sure they knew pretty well, and what my
understanding was of how Robben had handled it, that the decision had been made before
I got there, and that I happened to agree with the decision, and I told them why, but that
I'd come over there to talk to them, that I was not going to remove a dean that they
wanted for dean, that the Law School could choose its own dean. I certainly wasn't going
to force somebody to resign if they, indeed, wanted to believe that his administration was
good and that they wanted him. Well, it was a very interesting thing to me because it's
kind of a professional stereotype. I don't think a single person spoke up in the defense of
George as dean, other than to say he had been good with the students and fine with the
faculty, but they all--all those who spoke--said that they felt things had gone downhill
and that he didn't give any vigorous leadership, but he was a fine man, and he shouldn't
be treated this way. And then they objected to the procedures used--as lawyers are great
procedural people, you know. There's a proper procedure for doing everything. So I said,
"What do you think the proper procedure would have been in a case like this?" I said,
"My experience in administration is there's no right way to do something that will hurt
others, that my way is to just come right out with it and do it. Other people do it by
degrees as Robben was doing. What do you think would have been the proper
procedure?" Well, they said, "Robben shouldn't have worked with a few people. He
should have come over here, and put the issue to us, and given us a vote on it, and let
people just make their arguments. We'd weigh them and vote." So I said, "Well, that's
exactly what I'm here for today is to say to you people how it's been handled, that I
personally don't have confidence that George has the energy or the skills to do a
rebuilding job of the Law School. I want to see it built up. I want salaries increased, and
I want you to get some new people here. And if you think George is the person to give it
that leadership, you tell me so." Well, they seemed reticent to talk right then, and I said,
"You need time for this, so I will give you ten days. And I want every member of this
Law School who has a vote on such matters to either come and see me personally, or Jim
Cleary, and tell us what your vote is. Do you want George, do you want somebody else?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
And anybody who doesn't want to come can write a letter to either of us. You've got to
sign it, obviously, so that we know that you've got a right to vote, and I want that done in
the next ten days because I'm not going to have this dragging on forever." Well, to make
a long story short, I don't know what the size of the faculty of the Law School was then-thirty or thirty-five-- there were only three people who wanted to retain George. So I
called George in and said, "George, it's perfectly clear that they want somebody else." I
didn't tell him the vote, and he agreed to resign and then did. So then we set up a search
committee, in which we included members of the bar; Judge Heffernan, I think, from the
Supreme Court; somebody else--oh, a very prominent attorney in one of the big firms in
Milwaukee; members of the Law School; and I think that might have been the first one
we put students on or maybe we just had students in a consulting role with the committee.
I've forgotten what it was. Well, once that got started, then all hell started breaking loose.
The alumni association of the Law School were very strong for George, and so--they
thought he'd been handled badly and they came to see me. And I told them just what had
happened, and about the vote, and that kind of calmed most of them. Then the student
association, they just loved George and they were very upset about it. And they
demanded the reinstatement of George, and they weren't quite so easy to satisfy. Well
anyway, the search committee got going, and they came up with several excellent people.
And we finally chose--. I've forgotten, there were four or five names; one of them then
became the dean, after we offered him the deanship here, at Yale Law School. One of the
others was the man who headed the arms embargo negotiations, who was a Harvard Law
School professor. I believe he is now dean of law at Harvard.
01:09:31
LS:
Really?
WS:
Yes, so we had very good people and very good names.
LS:
I suddenly have a vision of search and screen committees doing the work for other
universities.
WS:
Yes. Well, it helps, you know, to get offers made to people. And then we came up with
the man who became dean. Oh, what's his name; I've forgotten.
LS:
Kendall, isn't it?
WS:
Yes. Kendall, who was at the University of Michigan. Kimball.
LS:
Kimball.
WS:
Kimball, who was at the University of Michigan and an eminent authority on insurance
law. He had been here several times doing research and consulting with the state
government on the writing of insurance laws in Wisconsin. So he was well known to the
faculty, the people in the state, and to the bar in the state, and a very good administrator.
And he drove a hard bargain. He said, yes, he'd come, but only if I would see to it that in
the next two years there would be a very large increase in salary money to get Wisconsin
up somewhere within the reaches of what the better law schools paid, and also to hire
new people, and so on. And he was a very vigorous dean and a very good one. And he
immediately moved in--. Well, before he got here though, then there was one last gasp.
And I've forgotten just the details, but I remember we were having the meeting of the
regents in Green Bay. And a flock of telegrams came to the regents early that morning
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Sewell, William H (#101)
and the night before in their motels, signed by certain attorneys and students in the Law
School, condemning Kimball for dean, and demanding that the matter be reconsidered
and that George Young be taken up again as a possible candidate. We got in touch
immediately--when we heard about it that morning, we got in touch with Judge
Heffernan, and he was quite upset about it. He said that that was all foolishness and
they--that the alumni association were--and the bar association were very strongly for
Kimball. But, by then, you see, there were people on the regents who were very sensitive
about these matters. And they thought I handled it badly, and appointments generally.
And so Walter Renk and two or three others were ready to hold up the appointment. So a
hurried call was made to Judge Heffernan, who immediately said, "Well, fortunately this
noon at the Madison Club the state bar association executive committee is meeting. Hold
it off until afternoon, and I can guarantee you a unanimous approval of the bar
commission. We're going to take it up before them anyway." And so along about one
o'clock telegrams started arriving for every member of the board of regents saying, this is
the most brilliant choice we could possibly make, and the state bar association urges you
to approve it. So it went through, and that was the end of that crisis.
LS:
Wow, what luck!
WS:
Well, it wasn't all luck. There was a plan.
LS:
That the state bar association was meeting?
WS:
No, but Heffernan would have called it--the bar. And we knew where--who to deal with
on that one, and Bry did most of the dealing. And he had it all pretty well cased. But
anyway -
01:13:16
-unfortunately, just to end the story, Kimball only stayed two or three years. And I think
the main reason he left was that Ed wouldn't make good on my promises. I made good
on the first year of the promise-LS:
For salaries and new--well, the faculty money was suddenly starting to tighten up then--.
When he came that year they were talking about it.
WS:
For, I suppose--tightening up?! It was tightening up when I was there! It wasn't that.
LS:
Oh, it wasn't?
WS:
There was money. Look, the chancellor keeps a half of one percent in his special kitty.
The dean keeps a half of one percent in his kitty, in each of the places. Let's say six
percent is--I mean, a half--yes, a half of one percent of what's given. The dean is given
his allocation--let's say it's six and a half percent. He keeps a half percent to use beyond
what the departments do. The chancellor does the same thing. So you got quite a chunk
of money there to be used at the discretion of top administration. And you can put it into
the Law School, you can put it in Engineering, you can give it to a number of key
professors, you can do what you want. So there's some discretion.
LS:
So it wasn't lack of money then.
WS:
Well, Ed thought it was. Ed didn't think it was as important to put the money there as
someplace else. It's a matter of opinion. I did it because I really thought that the Law
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School needed a lot of improvement and that was one way to bring it about. You bring in
a new dean, you don't give him anything to work with, I don't know what he's going to
do. But anyway, Ed did not come through, for whatever reasons. And I don't know, I'm
not blaming Ed or passing judgment. His judgment was that he had other places to put
the money that he'd rather put it. And the upshot was that Kimball stayed about three
years and left and became head of the American Bar Research Foundation in Chicago, on
the University of Chicago campus, a magnificent organization, beautiful building and no
hassles, you know, about money, things of that sort. And he's been highly successful in
that. So anyway, that was that one. Then I had the pharmacy one.
00:15:35
LS:
But hold on. Did they consider a man from the Law School as dean?
WS:
There was no one on the committee. I mean, no one on the--. They must have
considered, surely. But there was no one who came through on the list of five names.
LS:
Was that an issue? Did some people want to have a--
WS:
Not that I know of. There wasn't any prime candidate. There wasn't any candidate that
anybody in the Law School wanted and felt could lead them out of the wilderness, I
think. They felt they needed somebody from the outside to come in. There wasn't a
single person who emerged in the list, nor was there any advocacy of any single person
that ever reached my ears, at least. And lawyers let you know if they've got somebody
they think would just make a magnificent candidate for dean of the Law School. And
they didn't--
LS:
So you didn't have to cope with that particular problem?
WS:
No, that was no problem. It was George versus--or the change--versus getting somebody
who would maybe pump new life into the school.
LS:
What finally happened to the Law School?
WS:
Well, the Law School, I think, improved under Kimball considerably. But that's a longtime process, you know. The Law School currently is not--the last ratings I saw--it is no
longer in the first ten law schools in the United States. And there are very few schools or
departments in this university that aren't in the first ten, so that's kind of a blow. It's had a
great tradition. It's never had the prestige of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, and
Chicago. You know, the big five have much more prestige than the next five. But we've
always been in that next five. We've always been an activist kind of law school with a
good deal of legal research, particularly society and law kinds of traditions. Chicago,
Minnesota, a number of schools have taken that off, and we no longer are terribly
distinctive in that area. But the Law School is a good, you know, very good law school,
but not as distinguished as it once was. My personal opinion is that it has had weak
leadership ever since Kimball left. When we did go within and got George Bunn, who's a
lovely man but not a powerful sort of a leader and dynamic person--. The current dean I
don't even know, but again he's not a terribly forceful, national figure, you know. And I
felt that that's what you needed for the Law School. So they get along nicely over there
I'm sure. It's a very, very highly respected Law School. But it still doesn't have the vigor
and the prestige that it once had.
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01:18:55
Well, the pharmacy thing I thought was interesting, too. And, again, this is one of those
things I inherited from Bob Fleming. Pharmacy, at this university, was once the great
graduate school of pharmacy in America.
LS:
Oh, really? I didn't know that.
WS:
I think it was the second. Pennsylvania was the first, I think, university to establish a
pharmacy school. You learned pharmacy through an apprenticeship, of course, in the old
days. And this was the first school to really establish graduate training in pharmacy and a
great research tradition to go along with it. So we weren't just turning out pharmacists.
We were turning out pharmaceutical researchers. And that's really been the great
tradition of this university. At one time, more than half of the deans of all the schools of
pharmacy were our graduates, our graduate Ph.D.'s in pharmacy. And there have only
been, again, two or three--. There had been only a couple of deans of pharmacy, and the
man who was dean had been dean for twenty-five years, and he was well over--
LS:
Was that Uhl?
WS:
Yes. And he had been dean for some twenty-five years. And during his early years, he
had been a very interesting, vigorous sort of man. But the place kind of stood still as he
got older, and the other schools rose to greater and greater prominence. And still people
were saying, all over the country, well, there at the University of Wisconsin, the
pharmacy school had slipped badly and needed rejuvenation. There were even such
reports from the accreditation committees--not threatening to discontinue accreditation,
which would have been ridiculous on the face of it, but saying that the place had slipped
and needed new people. But Dean Uhl had continued his interest in research and had
brought in some research professors during his regime, one of whom was David Perlman,
the son of Selig Perlman and an eminent biochemist--pharmaceutical biochemist--who
headed Squibb's research laboratories and was really a very significant man, not just in
the field of pharmaceutical chemistry but biochemistry generally. And he had been
brought in as some kind of a distinguished professor, a named professor in the School of
Pharmacy. Robben Fleming had appointed a search committee the year before I became
chancellor, and they had come up, as their prime candidate, with a distinguished
pharmaceutical researcher and biochemist, again, from the University of Chicago. And
that was by far their first choice. And it turned out he wasn't a pharmacist but a
pharmaceutical chemist or a chemist of some sort. So Robben apparently talked about
this with a number of people, like the State Pharmaceutical Association and so on, to see
what they would say about it. And he sensed that there would be resistance to
appointment of a non-pharmacist, so he just dropped the matter. And then it fell on me
because Dean Uhl was already beyond retirement age. So it fell upon me, then, to name
another search committee, which I asked the University Committee to help me in the
appointment of. And we appointed a new committee with representatives from the
pharmacy school--the majority were from the pharmacy school faculty, but with
somebody from Medical School, and somebody from the general biological science
community. And again, they surveyed the situation. There were about three people who
wanted to be dean, including the vice dean.
001:23:36
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
People from the--
WS:
From the pharmacy school.
LS:
--from the school.
WS:
And there was no enthusiasm for any of them on the part of the pharmacy faculty. And
they brought in several people to be interviewed, including some pharmacy deans. And I
must say that even the best pharmacy deans were not very attractive in terms of having
any scholarly reputations at all. And so the committee came up with their first choice,
David Perlman. And I had been warned that there might be some resistance to this on the
part of the pharmacy association, but I didn't think that it was the pharmacy association's
business to say who should be dean of the School of Pharmacy. But it was the faculty
deciding. So I studied it pretty carefully, and I sent my own people over to the School of
Pharmacy to talk to a number of people over there. It's a small faculty.
LS:
By your own people, you mean vice chancellors and--
WS:
Yes. And they came away with almost unanimous support for David on the part of
everybody but the dean and the three people who wanted to be dean.
LS:
Not the dean, though. What did he want?
WS:
The dean was against it.
LS:
He was?
WS:
Yes. He wanted his assistant to be dean, thought he'd earned it through all these years of
faithful service. But it would have been just a continuation of the same downward path.
And most of the pharmacy people thought that too. So anyway, we took the name of
David Perlman to the regents, and they unanimously approved. The word got out that he
wasn't a pharmacist, and the State Pharmaceutical Association started just raising hell
about it. And there were literally hundreds of letters and telegrams rolled in, not to me
but to the regents, about it, demanding that this insult be righted, that David Perlman was
certainly a distinguished professor of pharmacy, one of the most distinguished in the
world, but he wasn't a registered pharmacist, and therefore it was not proper for him to be
dean.
LS:
How on earth did he--what time is it by the way?
WS:
It's 10 minutes until--
LS:
Well, how did he escape being a registered pharmacist if he was a--?
WS:
He just got his Ph.D. in biochemistry.
LS:
I see, OK.
WS:
And Squibb and Co. didn't care whether he was a pharmacist. They couldn't care less.
They wanted a great researcher to head their laboratories. And we couldn't care less-including the dean. He was brought here as a distinguished professor of pharmacy to do
research and to give us reputation. But he wasn't a pharmacist. So anyway, the State
Board of Pharmacy and the State Pharmaceutical Association met in my office to tell me
that he was a wonderful man, and my plans for the School of Pharmacy, which I put first
on the priorities list to get a new building--all this was wonderful. They agreed with all
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this. But they couldn't have somebody who wasn't a pharmacist as dean. I told them that
was ridiculous. I thought his ideas were much better than anybody else's I talked to about
what to do for the School of Pharmacy; that he was interested not only in the research
side but in turning out good pharmacists. Well anyway, the big protest went on, then, and
the regents got so excited about it that they called a special meeting of the board to
reconsider the appointment after they'd already made it. Well we really prepared for that
one. So when the meeting came, all the School of Pharmacy people, the whole faculty,
were invited. And people were asked and-LS:
By the regents.
01:27:38
WS:
By the regents. But we told the regents they ought to have them all there. And every
person came. And we asked that those who were opposed ought to speak and be heard,
and the three people who wanted to be dean all spoke in their own behalf, which was very
embarrassing and very--. And the regents just thought that was all wrong, you know, that
none of them could be dean, obviously, after they heard them. Then a young man spoke
for the pharmacy faculty--the younger faculty, assistant professor--and one, a
distinguished full professor, spoke, all in favor of David Perlman. Then one of the
distinguished professors of the Medical School came and said why there ought to be a
closer link between pharmacy and the Medical School and why David Perlman was just
the man to establish that link because he was one of the most respected researchers on the
campus and so on and so on. And then, finally, the regents asked David Perlman to speak
about what his plans would be, and he spoke, and they unanimously voted not to rescind
but to reaffirm their act. So we got by that one, but they were furious with me about it.
They thought that I--
LS:
The pharmacists, the state pharmacists--?
WS:
No, no, the regents were full of--. The pharmacists were so furious! Do you know that
they never--in David's five year term as dean of the School of Pharmacy, they never
asked him to a state pharmaceutical convention. This was such a deep thing with them
that they felt this was an insult to their profession, you see, that some non-pharmacist
could get a school of this sort. Now I pointed out to them that, at that time, there were
four medical schools headed by non-MDs, but they paid no attention. This was just a
deep insult to their profession. Then I don't think I did it any good when I said to this
committee, when they were meeting in my office, "Well, if you must have a pharmacist, a
registered pharmacist, for dean of the School of Pharmacy, I'll go over and be dean
because I'm a registered pharmacist." And of course I had become a registered
pharmacist from an apprenticeship in my father's drug store and writing off for the
pharmacy exams in Michigan. And that, of course, was adding insult to injury. I knew it
was, I guess, but I couldn't resist the chance.
LS:
If they'd had a sense of humor, they would have enjoyed it.
WS:
Yes, but the national association sent people to the regents to protest. The president of
the national association came. It was just a terrible insult to all of them. And they never
forgave David or me. They never cooperated with him a bit. I think the faculty of the
school was very cooperative because they wanted him. I don't believe, as it turned out,
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that David was a great administrator, but he at least brought in some new people, and
strengthened the school, and got them new quarters. The building never came, but they
took over much of the Chemistry Building and remodeled it. Anyway, that was a hectic
one; much, much more serious than the Law School-LS:
Yes, I can see that.
WS:
--because it was the first time that I've ever heard of--at least in the history of the
university--of the regents having a special meeting to reconsider a decision they'd made
only three weeks before. But they were terribly worried about political pressures. After
all, think of this. As one of them said to me, look, there are some 3,000 registered
pharmacists in the state of Wisconsin. Most all of them run their own drug stores.
01:31:37
They are much respected people in their communities, and if they're down on us and on
the university, it's going to hurt us badly, you see. But, again, they overestimated. We
never really heard any more from them. I don't think it made the university all that many
enemies, except among the pharmacists. And most of them, once it was over, forgot it,
you know.
LS:
I'm curious. Once this opposition from the State Pharmaceutical Association was--maybe
that was just because a particular man happened to be the head of it at the time and
maybe it wasn't unanimous.
WS:
No.
LS:
You think it was unanimous.
WS:
It was not very spontaneous, and, I always thought, the ex-dean helped to organize it.
LS:
I mean, but the continuous bad feeling--
WS:
I think Uhl was really quite effective in helping keeping the fires burning and getting
them to make this protest. I always thought that, although I have no proof of it, but I
think that's true. Certainly he didn't help us in any way. But there was just no question
that pharmacists in general, I guess, were insulted by this once it was called to their
attention. And, see, telegrams went out to all of them from the state headquarters to
make the protest and to get in touch with their own regent--the regent in their area-which, of course, they all did. So it was quite a hectic time. But again, we survived. But
by then we had learned this business of what you do to cope with protest, and we
organized this thing--just orchestrated the whole thing at the regents' meetings: who
would speak--
LS:
This, you say, was Bry Kearl and--
WS:
Yes, and me, and Burt Fisher. And we just orchestrated the whole thing just beautifully.
And actually, see, insisting that the regents call on these three people who wanted to be
dean. And then some man gets up and says, "Well, I really think I should be dean. And
I've been here twenty-five years, and I've been associate dean, and I've done so many
things for the School of Pharmacy." And so, you know, there's nothing worse than
putting a person in a position of pleading his own case in public. And anyway, the
regents were very upset with me because I had embarrassed them. I had done this thing.
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Why didn't I give them a pharmacist for dean in the first place? It didn't make all that
much difference. It's small potatoes anyway. Why didn't I have the good sense to
foresee all this and not cause them to have to do this? Well, I guess, it was one of those
things, you know, where I thought that if the faculty wanted a particular person and if he
were eminently qualified why in hell not name him?
LS:
And they, themselves, were convinced by him, you said.
WS:
Sure, they were convinced but they still didn't like the trouble, you know. All this uproar
from valued members of the community, you see.
LS:
Well, it was like having Dykstra be president of the university. It's, it's--
WS:
Excepting that I always felt that anybody who could be a member of a faculty of a school
or department ought to be able to be chairman, dean, director, whatever was involved.
LS:
Yes, that's right. It wasn't as if he wasn't in the faculty.
WS:
No, you weren't bringing in some guy who was not on the faculty and not a pharmacist.
But here's the best known professor in pharmacy. So, anyway--
LS:
And a famous Wisconsin--I mean, just like Perlman. You say he was Selig Perlman's
son.
WS:
Son. Yes, he's still on our faculty. A very, very distinguished man; very lovely man.
And a man with great ideas, really. As I say, I don't think he was able, for whatever
reasons, to carry out many of his ideas. But still, I think if you were to add up
everything, he was quite a good dean. But he tired of it after a few years and quit.
LS:
Well, let's stop for now.
WS:
OK.
01:35:49
End of Tape 4, Side 2
Tape 5, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
The date today is November 22nd. I would like to find out about the removal of Porter
Butts, which various people seemed to take credit for.
WS:
Well, I don't know who should take credit or whether it's a matter that really involves
credit in the first place. One has to remember that Porter Butts is the father of the
student union movement as we know it in the United States. He established what was by
far--and what has remained, I think, by far--the most important student union in the
country because, unlike many places, the student union here has always remained kind of
a center for student living and activities. At Many universities and colleges where they
had just as big student unions, none of the fraternity or sorority people would be caught
dead in the place, whereas here it was very, very popular. They had a program that
appealed to almost everybody. So Porter, I think, deserves a great deal of credit, not only
for what he did nationally but in the university itself. He somehow or other was able to
capture some--had a good idea of student needs. He always had a good board, made up
of students and faculty and alumni. And he ran a good show. So that that wasn't the
problem with Porter. The problem was that Porter had been at it a long time. He started
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as a young man and stayed here his whole career. Before I became chancellor, there had
been--it had been decided on a policy of age 65 for retirement of administrative people-deans, chancellors, directors, and so on. And of course, Porter fitted under that category
and he'd already reached 65. He was probably 67 or 68 by the time I became chancellor.
Moreover, Porter didn't know how to handle the new situation that was developing, of
students having a different orientation to the Union, many of them living in apartments
now rather than rooming houses--didn't need it as badly. He was rather an arbitrary sort
of man in dealing both with his staff and with students. He thought they ought to go
through certain procedures that neither students nor staff anymore liked to do. And by
the time I became chancellor there was a good deal of discontent with Porter, both on the
part of the students and his own staff. But yet, everybody knew that Porter had this
tremendous following among alumni, and they felt that some exception ought to be made
for him. Or at least that's what the rumors were. I guess the reason why I felt that he had
to be treated the same as other people was I felt that, in other instances, where we would
be asking people to retire at age 65, it would look--. If you made an exception for Porter
Butts, they would also seek exceptions. Moreover, I felt that he had really outlived his
usefulness as the director, that he wasn't able to adjust to the times. And then, I think,
finally, my mind was clinched when he opposed the building of Union South with
everything he had at his command. And I felt that it was long since time that we had a
union facility on the other side of the campus where agriculture and engineering--you
know by then it was six, seven thousand students--nursing and, to a small extent I
suppose, medical school personnel might use it. Others were convinced that--. The
Union board was convinced of it, of which Lowell Frautschi was chairman, I think, at the
time. And so we just told Porter that he had to retire at the end of the year, that is, from
the directorship. But he'd stay on with his salary for his remaining years, which were
only a couple more years. And we'd start a search. He didn't like it, but he didn't make
any big fuss about it. He recognized that that was true. I think he always blamed me
personally because exception had been made before, but he wasn't at all nasty about it.
00:05:32
But what did happen, of course, was that we immediately set up a search and screen
committee, which consisted in that instance of a couple of faculty people, a couple of
alumni--I think Lowell Frautschi was chairman of the committee, as I recall--and a
couple of student officers of the Union. That was the first time we put students on a
search committee, but it was a student union, after all. Well, they came up--they
searched the country--and they came up with three excellent people. We interviewed all
of them.
00:06:13
And the person they placed first was Ted Crabb, who was the director of the Union at
Milwaukee.
LS:
Oh, I thought he was here.
WS:
No.
LS:
Because he'd been here earlier.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
He had been here earlier as a student. I think he was editor of the Cardinal and then
stayed on after that, maybe while doing some graduate work, I don't know, as associate or
assistant director of the Union, that's true. He had to have that background. But he had
been in Milwaukee for several years and had developed an excellent union there. And so,
since he was placed first, since he appealed to those of us who interviewed him more than
any of the other people, we did ask him to become director. Now, we were forewarned
that some of the students were quite opposed to anyone other than the man whom Porter
had brought in two or three years before. I think his name was Henry Herman. Lovely
man. An ex-Unitarian minister, just a lovely person. And he was the choice of a great
many students, but certainly he was championed primarily by the more radical students.
Henry had been able to get along pretty well with them as associate director of program,
or whatever it was called. And he had had one or two serious heart attacks, just within a
year or so of the time that Porter stepped down. So the people on the search committee
just didn't feel that he was the proper man. In the first place, they felt that he wasn't a
good administrator although a very nice person. And they also thought he would be
completely in the pockets of the radical students on all sorts of points. But we decided
then on Ted Crabb. And I called Ted Crabb in and told him of our decision. He
bargained very hard about what Porter's role should be. He had worked with Porter. He
knew what a strong personality he was, and so he insisted that Porter not have anything to
say about the running of the place. He said he'd have enough to say, whatever we had
told him, but he insisted on that. And he insisted that he be given an office as far from
Porter's as possible--all the usual things in such matters--and that he be permitted to
choose his top staff and things of that sort. So we agreed, and we knew that that was
likely to cause some trouble. We didn't realize quite how much. So meanwhile, the word
got out, of course, that Ted was our choice.
00:09:49
And so the students who were opposed to that choice and had Mr. Herman as their
candidate went to Milwaukee for the regents' meeting the following month and made a
big protest there. And Walter Renk, who had only been on the board a very short time
and who had rather close contact with the students, although they didn't necessarily like
him and what he stood for, he was a nearby resident and came to all sorts of things on the
campus, was always available to students for discussion, he kind of championed their
cause. He said, "Why in the world--this Mr. Herman seems to be a perfectly nice man,
students want him--why do you in the administration insist on appointing somebody
else?" Of course, the meeting was open. Some people came from the search committee.
I think Lowell came, which was very effective, of course. And he gave the reasons why
we wanted him and not Mr. Herman. And one student leader, I forgot who, of the formal
governance of student government, got up and spoke in favor of Ted Crabb. And then
people from the other side spoke. Well, to make a long story short, the regents then
decided, after some discussion, that Crabb was, indeed, a good choice and went ahead
and approved it. We never really had any great trouble. Ted came. He and Porter got
along, I think, rather well on kind of an avoidance basis. The new union was developed
and in the plans for it Ted had a great deal to do with that and he has, to my knowledge,
never had any real trouble with the students, including those who were opposed to him in
the first instance. But, again, it was one of those situations where a choice was made on,
I think, rather rational kinds of grounds and in accordance with the procedures. But those
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who didn't like the decision had opposed it. All sorts of dire predictions were made, of
boycotting the Union and all that sort of thing, but none of it ever really happened. And I
think Ted has done a good job in the Union since that time. At least, I have never heard
any great amount of kick. But again, the regents' attitude toward me was, why do you
make us all this trouble?
LS:
There he goes again.
WS:
Yes. Why are you always appointing--they even asked me right out, you know: Why is it
you've got to always appoint somebody that brings all this opposition? And I guess what
they didn't understand was probably there was nobody you could appoint that you
wouldn't--these were the times when people protested, you know. The faculty would
protest appointments. The students would protest almost any decision you made. This
was more serious than that because it was a public meeting, the regents, and it looked, for
a while, as if they would possibly not refuse to approve or to delay the appointment. But-
00:13:37
LS:
Do you remember what part of the year? I have it somewhere.
WS:
I think it was towards spring. But I don't remember. I think it was after the other cases,
probably. This is at least the third major protest before the regents of an appointment of a
dean or director, so they--. But they still couldn't understand why I always had to have so
much trouble about these appointments. They hadn't had that trouble in the past and so
on. And I'm sure they blamed me for it. They thought better handling of it--. If I had--.
They all seemed to have the idea, I don't know why, that if you'd just go and talk to the
students, all these things could be settled. Well, I had talked to them. The minute the
students who were opposed to anybody other than Mr. Herman heard about it they were
in my office in force, you know, to argue and protest and so on. And I explained to them
why, and they just refused to accept that sort of reasoning. So what can you do?
LS:
The students that came in would have been people involved in the Union, not just radical
students as radicals, I don't suppose.
WS:
I can't really remember the composition, but that doesn't follow, necessarily. Whenever
there was anything that anybody was dissatisfied with, the radical students would join
and come and see you, and make all sorts of threats and all that sort of thing. But you see
now, there was something in this particular thing that--radical students had a real stake in
this. After all, they had--the Cardinal offices were located there. No, the student
government offices were located there, and a number of them were on the student
council. And they used the long distance telephone for calling their cohorts all over, in
Berkeley, and in all of the other places where the student movement was active, Michigan
and so on. And Mr. Herman, they felt, you know, protected them and had given them
office space and all that sort of thing. So they had a real stake in that. It wasn't that--
LS:
I see. I suppose also they could use the Rathskeller and--
WS:
Oh, yes. And all sorts of rooms and things. Of course, they were always open to all
students, so I don't think they had any real problem about that. But they might have. I
think the real thing they had the problem about would have been the telephones, and
typing services, and things of that sort that were furnished.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
And Mr. Herman died then--
WS:
He died within a year or so, I think. My memory is that Ted Crabb kept him on as
associate director.
LS:
Yes, you are right.
WS:
He was a lovely man. He did come to see me afterwards and said that he was
disappointed, that he really didn't know whether he could have handled it, that his health
wasn't good, and so on. But, you know, he was never bitter or anything of that sort. I
think his candidacy was really pushed by some of the student groups, but he wasn't all
that anxious himself to occupy that role.
LS:
The Union had come under the dean of students office. I know Porter Butts didn't like
that one bit. That would have been before you became chancellor.
WS:
That was before I became chancellor. It was kind of an interesting thing. You see, what
had happened was, Kauffman was dean of students, which included all--student affairs, I
think it was called--which included all things, then, that had to do with the care and
feeding and welfare of students, not only the traditional deal of student discipline and that
sort of thing, but it included as well the registrar's office, student housing offices, the
dormitories, you know, and all that sort of thing.It included the Union, the student union.
Oh, I don't remember, but it was quite a chunk of university activities, other than
anything that had to do with teaching and instruction. And Porter didn't like that.
00:18:24
One of the problems that Robben had encountered when he became chancellor was that
so many things, over the years, had been created that reported directly to the chancellor
or to the president, and all that was turned over to the chancellor. And that's always a
problem in universities. You know, everybody wants a direct line to the number one
boss. And so they kind of fight for not having to go through a dean but coming directly.
And all of these things, as I understand it-- registrar, intercollegiate athletics--all those
things directly reported to the chancellor, and he just apparently decided that some
reorganization was necessary.
LS:
Oh, I assumed that was Harrington's doing.
WS:
Well, it might have been Harrington's decision. I don't know who made the decision, but
I know Robben said that was one of the things you always had to guard against. So I
don't know when the decision was made to have a dean of student affairs. But whenever
it was, all those things were included. And a number of those people didn't like it.
Certainly, the leading--the person who like it least was Porter Butts. At least, he was
most verbal about it. So he never did like that. Interestingly enough, he didn't get along
very well with Joe. That is, he ignored Joe by and large. But he dealt rather closely with
Bob Atwell, who was vice chancellor for administration and controlled the purse strings.
And Bob felt he ought to go, too, both on principle and because he had gotten out of
touch, in Bob's opinion. But Bob dealt with him very directly in terms of--because of the
fact that the Union stands or falls on how many dollars it gets out of student fees. You
see, students have no choice about it. A certain amount of their fees goes for the Union
operation. And of course, that was one of the targets of the radical students again was,
you know, here we're being taxed without our consent and so on. And so that was in
85
Sewell, William H (#101)
some jeopardy. And Bob dealt with him almost exclusively. And Joe, very little indeed.
At least, that was my experience. I had kind of a feeling, though, that Joe had rather good
relationships with those various things like the registrar, and Newell Smith, and
dormitories, those people. I think they got along rather well with Joe. Joe understood
their problems and argued for them. The main argument was always money, you know,
and staff positions, and things of that sort. But Porter paid no attention to Joe, just
ignored him completely, and I guess tried to continue to come directly to--maybe that's
how he got with Bob Atwell--he always tried to come directly to Robben Fleming, and
Robben, I think, finally got him over onto Bob Atwell.
LS:
If the Union was under the dean of students, was it the dean's immediate job to decide
whether he was to stay on or not or did his--how did you--?
WS:
No, I don't know. No, if there's going to be an exception in this university--if there's
going to be any exception to any rule like staying on beyond age 65--the chancellor has to
make it.
LS:
But I mean, since he was, in effect, being retired, would that not be Joe Kauffman's
decision since the Union was under--
WS:
I don't see how it's his decision. He could have come to me and said, "Would you keep
him on?" If that's what you mean. But I would have said, no, whatever he said--
LS:
But what I'm trying to say is,
00:22:58
who fired--I'm saying, who tells him that he is out?
WS:
Who actually told him?
LS:
If he's under the dean to students, wouldn't the dean of students tell him?
WS:
I don't honestly remember, but I think I told him. I asked him to come over and probably
told him in order to--because I felt, you know, that he was wanting an exception, and I
had to be the one who made that.
LS:
And you felt that he'd been around here too long just to be summarily told by the dean of
students that we didn't--
WS:
Well, I'm not sure. I really am not sure. Joe might have told him, and then he came to
me. Bob might have told him, and then he came to me. I'm not sure, but I remember
talking with him about it.
LS:
It seems to me someone said that the 65-year retirement was created, that is, specifically,
in order to have a reason for--
WS:
No. I don't think so.
LS:
No?
WS:
You mean Porter? No, I don't think so. I really think--it was created before I came into
office, I know that. I thought it was a great idea because if you had to you could make
exceptions. You know, in a really difficult situation where you didn't have someone in
advance, couldn't find someone within a reasonable limit of time, you could ask
somebody to stay on a year while the search was made or something like that. But I
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Sewell, William H (#101)
thought it was sensible, and most people ought to be out of administration by 65.
Granted that every now and then a great administrator is lost. But for every one that's
lost, a lot of other people who might have been great once, you know, their tyranny no
longer has to be maintained. And so I thought it was a good administrative principle to
begin with. I don't think it was created for that purpose.
LS:
Or for any other person. It occurs to me it's the sort of thing you would think up when
you were trying to find a reason for--
WS:
No, but you've got costs involved in that--
LS:
--getting rid of somebody.
WS:
--you know, who would have--I'm not sure where it came from. My guess is Fred
Harrington, but I don't know. But Fred Harrington, for God's sakes, he wasn't afraid to
go and tell somebody that their usefulness had ended, I don't think. So I can't imagine
that. I think he just thought it was a good principle. I know Robben agreed with it
thoroughly. I did, and when I talked to the deans about it, they all agreed with it. So I
don't think there was much resistance to that. And I don't think it was put up for Porter
Butts. If it were put up for anybody, there were about three people that I can think of that
Fred Harrington wanted to be rid of, and Porter Butts was the least of them because what
Porter did really didn't matter an awful lot to what Fred thought was the university. He
probably was very anxious to get rid of George Young, but he had no way of getting rid
of him under those grounds. He was very anxious to get rid of the dean of pharmacy,
who again was small potatoes, but he felt long since should have been retired. He was
very anxious to get Erv Gaumnitz out of the deanship of the School of Business-Commerce as we called it in those days, I guess, and get more vigorous leadership there.
So he had some people that he thought ought to be out. And I remember that Fred
thought Ivan Williamson ought to go, but you see, only two of those people--I think Fred
probably thought Porter ought to go, too, but out of the five people I've mentioned, only
two could be gotten rid of by that route. When Erv Gaumnitz hit 65, he resigned. So I
can't believe that that was the real reason. I think it was a genuine belief in that's the way
you ought to--that you ought to have some mandatory retirement age for people in the
administration. That's always--there's a very serious aspect of that, other than the chance
that you might lose some great administrator as a result of it. And that is you have got to
find something for the guy to do for the next five years of his life at a very high salary,
and that's not always easy. What do you do with the ex-director of a union? What do
you do with the old dean of pharmacy, although he was so near complete retirement age
that that was no problem. But what do you do with these people who have been in
administration for some years and especially if they come out of an academic
background. They're likely to be just out of touch with the developments of their field
and so on. So you have got to find some way to--they're kind of dead weight to carry for
four or five years.
00:28:03
LS:
Do you know what they did do? I know that Luberg gives a very clear--I mean, he knew
he was being gotten rid of as dean of men and that his job would become extinct--
87
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, I think, you know, it's interesting. What happened to Luberg was that they moved
him over to the president's office and called him vice president for public relations, and
made him the university's principal plane meeter and greeter, and which he did very well
indeed. And he was much liked by--loved, you could say--by alumni and by the regents.
The regents would, on numerous occasions, according to Fred Harrington, and I
witnessed it once--we'd have a meeting and, you know, the regents make the
determination of top administrative salaries in the university. It's hard to recommend
yourself and so on, and they have a screening committee. And every time they would
say, well--I think Fred Harrington probably made his suggestions for everybody but
himself, and then they'd argue over these. But anyway, I remember that--and Fred said
that happened almost every time--he recommended a thousand dollars or so for LeRoy
Luberg--he didn't have much use for him--but the regents would always double it. They
thought that LeRoy really was doing a lot of good for the university--which he probably
was. He's a very nice looking man, very nice person, and very--kind of formal looking
and always wore a homburg hat, you know. And he'd get the Black Maria, as they used
to call it--the president's car--and go out and meet planes when visiting dignitaries came.
And he was always available to talk to alumni or citizens when they complained about
something that was going on in the university--very good at it. I thought he earned his
money. But it was not a role that most faculty and administration thought was terribly
important to the university. I rather thought it was, myself.
LS:
Certainly, in those years, it was.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
This is interesting. So it was Harrington, was it, who decided about George Young and
the dean of pharmacy?
WS:
No, not at all.
LS:
Well, I know you--
WS:
Not at all. I decided.
LS:
But I mean, you say he wanted to--
00:30:51
WS:
Oh, no. No, I just mean that from talking to Fred you could tell who he thought were the
important deans and the people who ought to be replaced. No, he never took any active
steps on any of those. I never felt any pressure from Fred, at all. In fact, Fred did say,
"Well, now you've gotten the dean situation cleaned up excepting for Erv Gaumnitz.
Why don't you find some way to get rid of him?" And I said, "Well, Fred, I've learned a
little lesson along the way." I said, "From all I can determine, Erv runs a very good
school. He's inaugurated a graduate program. It's very successful. The school's
maintained its status somewhere around tenth among business schools in the country, and
he has brought together a fairly good faculty. And if you would like to see it really get
into the big time, be one of the great schools of business, it's going to take about two
hundred thousand dollars more a year. And are you willing to come up with the money if
I am willing to ask Erv to resign and find a more ambitious person?" That ended the
conversation. But it's true! Just getting a dean isn't going to change anything very much,
excepting over a gradual period. And unless you are willing to put up the money to hire
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some additional outstanding people, you're not going to change things much. And so I
made that point, and that was the end of the conversation, as I recall. And Erv was a
good dean under ordinary circumstances. He wasn't aggressive. He wasn't as
imaginative as some of the other deans, certainly, but he ran a good show. No, Fred
always was looking around the place to see what he--. He had his ear to the ground as to
how the outside world viewed the various schools and departments as well. He was very
much tuned to the fact that the sociology department, for example, was going up rapidly
in the world and very much concerned, earlier on, before I became chancellor--long
before that, because I talked to him a good deal about it--about the status of the
economics department and how it could be improved. Fred always was looking toward
the improvement of the departments and the schools. He knew where they stood, at least
the important ones.
LS:
Well.
00:33:50
WS:
I guess the other--. There were all kinds of troubles that took place in that year I was
chancellor. I think, maybe, another big crisis was the one in relation to the black students
because there was a good deal of--. We had done everything we could here to increase
the number of black students. You remember that we had begun the five-year plan for
minority students, most of whom were black, a year or so before. And Mrs.Doyle had
been running that program. It had become increasing clear that we needed more minority
people in the administration of the program. And so, at the beginning of the year I had
appointed a committee, which kind of supervised and advised--I suppose it was called an
advisory committee for the minority student program. And I had said to that committee-and Ruth Doyle and I had talked about the need for more minority people in her office
and in that program. And I had talked to the committee in those terms, and I felt that we
ought to expand the program considerably over the level at which it was at that time.
And the committee was not a very effective one. I had appointed one of my ex-students
and colleagues, Archie Haller, to be chairman of the committee because of his views
about such things, which I knew very well. It turned out he was a very ineffective
chairman under the circumstances. But in any event, they had come in with a report of
some sort. I don't remember whether they ever wrote it or whether it was just a verbal
kind of a report. Before they had been in existence very long, they thought that the
program should be considerably enlarged and that we just had to have even more
emphasis on going out and recruiting minority students and pretty much financing their
way through the university. And of course that meant a lot of dollars, and it meant a lot
of recruiting effort. And I wish I had before me the timing and so on, but I don't. But I
think Jim Baugh had already come, was on the staff. But if not, he came during that year.
LS:
Jim Baugh?
WS:
Baugh. B-A-U-G-H. A black. A young black man who succeeded her the next year as
director.
LS:
Succeeded Ruth Doyle?
WS:
Yes, as director of that program. It's a very interesting thing. Ruth had done a very good
job on a small scale and demonstrated that you could take kids who couldn't get into the
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Sewell, William H (#101)
university under usual admissions procedures and through pacing them more slowly in
the first couple of years through the university, through intensive tutoring and careful
counseling, you could get them through, and repair a good deal of their background. She
had special courses in English and in arithmetic and basics to bring them up to near the
level of most entering students. And then demonstrated that it could be done. You could
find people with promise who didn't score well on tests--and in that time, they had to take
the ACT tests to get in--or who didn't have good high school records, and so on. She had
demonstrated that, but at the same time, as the number of black students, particularly,
increased, it became apparent that you were going to have to have a black director of it.
And she knew that, too. And we talked about it. Primarily, Ruth was concerned with
when it should take place and whether Jim Baugh could take it over and do it. I don't
really remember whether she resigned at the end of the year, something toward the end of
the year when I was chancellor, or what. We had talked about it a good deal. And Jim
Baugh then took over. Well, that's all by way of background. The students were here.
They were experiencing difficulties.
00:38:40
After all, you know, Wisconsin is not a--is almost a lily white state. Blacks are just about
two percent of its population. And we were trying to get some eight, nine hundred, a
thousand black students here. Well, the blacks are concentrated in two places, really-Milwaukee and Racine-Kenosha. And at both places there were institutions they could
go to and stay at home. And of course the majority tended to go to those places. So we
had to go out and actively recruit black students--from Chicago, from Milwaukee, from
other places in the state, and even more distant places--and Jim Baugh was very good at
that, and he got two or three other blacks to join him. And so by the spring of 1968 we
probably had seven or eight hundred black students. You know, that was a tremendous
increase. We had had a handful of blacks here in all the previous years that I'd been here-very, very few blacks. But it was getting to be--their presence was becoming a factor.
And they had gotten pretty well organized. They demanded separate dormitories. We
refused to do that, but we were quite willing to let them, you know, choose roommates,
and that ended up with floors pretty solidly black and so on in the dorms. They were
demanding such things as a separate minority student union or meeting place. Kwame
Salter was the person hired to handle black student affairs. I think he was part--yes, he
was part of the dean of students office. And he became kind of the leader of the black
students as well as the person who was charged with and paid for their care, the
administrator of black students program. At that time, you will recall, there were no
courses, there was no curriculum, there was nothing special done for them, other than
bringing them here and trying to prepare them and to pace them through the university.
Well, that's background. They used to come in and talk to me about black dormitories,
about a really sizable structure that they would run themselves--first exclusively for black
students. Then, later, they said other minorities could come there but no whities around
except on invitation. A good deal of conversation about those things. And I was
sympathetic to the idea of something like an international house, or something like that,
but that was clearly not what they wanted. And they wanted to run it. They wanted us to
turn over money to them, and they'd run the whole show. No--not money through the
dean of students, but directly into--that sort of thing.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
I see. This was undergraduates, I expect.
WS:
Well, mainly because there weren't many graduate students. Yes, almost exclusively
undergraduates.
00:42:22
But anyway, we'd had several meetings with the black students and got along, I thought,
you know, passably well.
LS:
Was Joe Kauffman in on these meetings?
WS:
Yes, I suppose he was. I don't really recall. Everybody wanted to come to the top in
those days. I suppose, if I knew they were coming, I'd call Joe in and that sort of thing.
But I'm sure he was involved. And Joe had a good deal of sympathy with their general
position, but of course wasn't willing to segregate dormitories and do things like that.
But anyway, all that was going on. And we really didn't have much problem with the
black students.
00:43:11
And then the Martin Luther King assassination took place. And that was really the signal
all over the country for the black students to protest and to organize. And in any event, as
soon as I heard about the assassination-LS:
Do you remember where you heard about it?
WS:
Where?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
No. Where I was when I heard--?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
I probably heard about it on the radio or TV or some kind of news. I decided that--well, I
thought it was a great tragedy. And I had great respect for Martin Luther King, whom I
had met when he came here one time to talk, had a little visit with him. And I had
admired his career and so on. And I thought it was just a terrible thing and that the
university just had to do something about it. So I--it was in the evening, I think. I don't
remember when--but anyway, that evening I remember calling Leon Epstein. We had a
long talk. He came over to my house, and I told Leon that I thought the best thing we
could do would be to declare a day of mourning at the university and cancel all classes.
And by then the black students had called. By the time Leon and I were talking about
what we were going to do and so on, they were demanding we close the university for a
week or something. I've forgotten what it was, you know. But in any event, I decided,
well, that we ought to close the university for a day of mourning and to meet the next
morning early with representatives of the black students. And I brought in the deans of
all the colleges who could get there. We met about eight o'clock in the morning. And a
marvelous gentleman from the Law School, Professor Katz, who retired soon--the next
year or so--who came here from the University of Chicago after his retirement there and
was an authority on minority law--a lovely man--and
00:45:50
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Sewell, William H (#101)
we had the meeting. And it was a rather trying meeting at the beginning. The black
students were not just the ones which we had invited, but many others came. And some
of them did the main talking. And they fell into the jargon of the ghetto immediately,
calling us honkies, you know, and white mother fuckers, and all that sort of thing.
00:46:25
End of Tape 5, Side 1
Tape 5, Side 2 [Blank]
Tape 6, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
And they went on with that for a while. I remember it particularly because when I was
just about to intervene and say, "Look, you know, you speak English and so do we. Why
don't we communicate a little better?" the--I'm not sure, I think it was the dean of the
nursing school, it was one of the women deans--just spoke up and said, "Look, you can't
challenge us with this kind of talk. Let's get down to facts and talk about what you've
come here for." So anyway, that kind of changed the tone of things and one of them said,
"What do you plan to do?" Well, I said, "I've already announced"--by that time, I had
announced that the university would be closed for a day of mourning and that at ten
o'clock that morning, we would ask the students to gather on Bascom Hill, and we would
conduct some kind of services there, a memorial service. And it became apparent right
away that was not enough to satisfy. And I said, "I would like you people to say who you
would like to speak," and things of that sort. And they were rather antagonistic about
that. They said that, after all, there was no call for anybody but them to speak. So finally
I just said, "Well, I'm perfectly willing to turn the whole thing over to you and let the
black students decide what the memorial service should be. And I'll just leave it up to
you to plan it. But you have got to do it fast because we have only got, you know, it's
only a couple hours. And we have got to get microphones there and everything else."
That kind of took them right off their feet. They weren't quite prepared for that big a
concession. Everybody agreed--interestingly enough, everybody, the faculty, the
members of the group there, all agreed that that was a good idea. And I know some of
them didn't really like it. But they figured, well, there was some logic to the fact that their
grief was greater than ours and that they ought to have an opportunity to speak. So
anyway, we told them that. And a little committee got busy right away. But the
interesting thing was, as they started to go out the door--they were kind of baffled by all
this--I said, "Now you can use the conference room. You can sit here. You can decide
what to do. You tell me what you want my role to be in it and what you want any of the
rest of us to do." And one of the black women said, "Well, I know what your honky trick
will be. It'll be to shut off the microphone. So we can't--. If we just say things you don't
like--." And I said, "No, I'll assure you that you can have the area until at least noon.
You can say whatever you please. You will--it'll be your program. And if there's any
way in the world we can keep the microphones going, nobody's going to shut them off or
anything else." So then somebody said, "Well, that's nice, but what effect's that going to
have? What good's that going to do in getting across our problems to the white students,
who don't really understand us and understand our problems?" And, if I may say so I had
a slight--all of a sudden a flash--that I thought was one of the better things I did during
the year.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
00:03:53
I said, "Well, look, why don't we announce, at the beginning of the program, that Bascom
Hall, the Social Science Building, the School of Business--the Commerce Building--and I
think one other, the Zoology Building, all of which are the most central buildings on the
campus, have many classrooms, that those buildings will be open for as long as anybody
wants, for the black students and the rest of the student body to get together informally,
talks or lectures, anything you want to plan. And they all agreed that was a great idea.
And they got another committee figuring out, you know, where they should have these
meetings, and who should talk, and so on. Well, they decided that I should open the
meeting and say a very few words about, not so much about Martin Luther King, but
express the university's and my personal grief at this and to announce that the program
from thence onward would be turned over to black students and that after that the whole
afternoon and as far into the evening as anybody cared to meet, black students would be
in these various buildings to confer and talk with whomever might come, town's people,
anyone else. All this was on WHA, you know, so it was broadcast. So-LS:
You mean live.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
Oh, was it?
WS:
Yes. It's my memory--
LS:
Oh, you mean the program. But not your preceding--
WS:
No, no. My statement was all on--
LS:
Yes. Yes.
WS:
I don't remember if TV was there or not. I just don't remember. But, in any event--I'm
sure the TV people were there for parts of it--in any event, they then proceeded with the
memorial services, and there was a good deal of protest, you know, this terrible country,
and talks about suppression and racist universities, and all that kind of stuff. At the end
of the program the black students started a peaceful march down to the capitol square,
where they wanted to hold a little, short, again, memorial service. And we called the
governor, and he came to it and so on. And the march started down State Street, singing
"We Shall Overcome", and by that time--people kept joining all along, Liz was there--and
we went with the students, of course. But I had guessed, by the time they reached the
square, there were ten thousand people in that march, you know. They turned around and
came back up to the university. But I thought they would just disperse there but they
started into the buildings. And I must say, it was the white students responding. The
Social Sciences auditorium downstairs, the big one, was full for hours with black students
talking to white kids, getting up and talking.
00:07:36
LS:
You went to some of these?
WS:
Oh, yes. I went to many of them. Liz went to many others. Joe and various other people
went to them, just, you know, out of interest. And I thought it was one of the great
educational experiences of the year in the sense that for the first time, black students who
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had been going to classes with white students, largely ignoring them, and white students
ignoring them, and the white students not understanding their real problems, and so on,
got a chance, you know, to really talk out some of these things. One of the most
interesting things to me--it took place downstairs in the auditorium here--there was a big
gathering there. There might have been others in other buildings, but anyway, the black
students got up and talked, and one of the radical students--I have forgotten who he was-jumped to the platform and demanded the microphone, which they gave him. And he
went on to say that this was going to be a hot summer in Chicago. And many of them
were from Chicago, and the radical students would be their with their guns to shoot down
the honky pig police and so on and so on. And they asked him to quit talking and sit
down. And somebody got up and said, "We don't need your guns. We don't want
anything to do with you bastards." And they went on and on with this. And everywhere,
apparently, the radical students saw this as a chance to take over the black--incorporate
them into the movement--and as you know, all over the country they were just buffeted
by the blacks, who weren't going to--not because the blacks weren't making radical
demands, but they didn't want whitey taking over the movement. And they just gave
them hell all the--. There were just--several of them were just absolutely defeated after
this because they saw this as a great chance to get about eight or nine hundred solid,
tough kids behind them. But the Blacks just wouldn't do it. Well, then, meetings went on
in some buildings until after midnight. You know, just an amazing sort of thing. There
was such a need for the students to talk about some of these issues in ways you don't talk
about them in class, you know. And to try--many of the white students were just there
trying to understand what it is they want, Haven't we given them civil rights? We're
doing all these things. We resent, we're against the kinds of prejudice and segregation
that they have to endure, but we aren't to blame for that. We don't believe in it. But then
the blacks would, you know, tell them about what the consequences of it were, what it
was to them, and how the university really, even though it was trying to help them, did it
in a manner which they found degrading and so on. So it was a--and kids would get up
and say, "Well now, why is it? I've always been a liberal. I've always wanted to--I've
always felt this was our country's greatest problem. And when I know one or two of you,
we're good friends, we walk over to the Union, I walk in with my friend into the
Rathskeller, and I'm told I can't sit with him: "We don't want any honkies." And he said,
"My friend tells me that, immediately. And this I can't stand. I can't understand. How
am I going to help you if you won't listen to me?" And they'd explain all this. It was
really an amazing experience for the kids. And I know that, well, I got letters from white
students and others saying how useful this had all been, how much it had promoted
understanding.
00:11:37
Well, as you could imagine, I didn't consult with Fred Harrington about it at all. I just did
it. I called him up and said, "Look, Fred, I'm going to announce this day." And of course
I had to get him out of bed because it was early in the morning. But anyway, he said,
"Well, go ahead, if you think that's the thing to do. The regents will be mad." And I said,
"Well, I know that, but we'll go ahead anyway." So anyway, the regents were mad, but-LS:
They were?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes, some of them. But on the other hand they also had been reading the papers and
getting the feedback, and they knew that this had been a great day. And I remember
saying to them that I felt that it was the most educational--it was the greatest day for
education that had ever hit the campus in all the years I had been here and that it was
largely inadvertent, that nobody knew it would succeed like that, nobody planned it, but
that I had just felt that was the thing to do. And they grumbled, some of them, a good
deal about it. And apparently grumbled a good-- quite a bit, to Fred. And then they
passed some kind of a resolution that, in the future--one of the other campuses followed
suit. I don't think it was Milwaukee, but it might have been, it might have been
Milwaukee, and all around the country a number of places declared it a day of mourning-but in any event they passed some rule that in the future, if you're going to declare a
holiday, you had to have permission of the president and the executive committee of the
Board of Regents.
LS:
That was what bothered them, was it? Closing the university?
WS:
Yes.
LS:
Not the Bascom Hill talk or anything, or the teach-ins or anything?
WS:
Oh, no. No, no. It was just that you're giving in again, you know--that was their
statement to me--to pressures, you're giving in to student pressures. They were all hard
line.
LS:
I was going to ask you if they gave you credit for it. But obviously not--
WS:
Oh, no. No, no. I'm sure some of them--Arthur DeBardeleben thought it was great, of
course, and Mr. Friedrick thought it was great. But the rest of them were pretty solidly
opposed to it. They thought it was giving in to the students, and that was something you
weren't supposed to do. But anyway, then, I think, that put us in, made us credible at
least, with the black students. And they were aware of our sympathy.
00:14:07
Then, later on in the spring, I went to visit our junior-year-abroad places in France, and in
Germany, and one or two placesLS:
Now, is this related to the black students--
WS:
Yes. I went to visit those places, not about the black thing. But I went there because we
were trying to work out a deal at Aix for the housing of our students. And there were a
lot of misunderstandings. And they thought we could go and raise a couple of million
dollars, or use state money to build a dormitory in France and all that sort of thing. And
Henry Hill insisted that I had to go and talk to them because he hadn't been able to
convince them of that, so they were threatening to stop the whole program and so on. So
anyway, I thought it was a good time to go, and things seemed to be kind of quiet, so I
went. And during that time Bry Kearl was, of course, acting chancellor as vice
chancellor. And during that time, then, there was kind of an uprising of black students.
They were making demands like separate dormitories and the usual kinds of things that I
mentioned before. And apparently they got fairly well organized and went through
buildings, like this building. They broke a few windows and everybody was scared to
death that it was going to be like Cornell and all of that sort of thing. And Bry and Bob
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Atwell handled it. Well, I don't know what all happened, but I know there were all
night-conferences-LS:
I had this all down in my notes, but I hadn't reviewed them, so--
WS:
Yes. Yes, they were all-night conferences. And among other things--you ought to check
this with other people because I wasn't here, so I don't know exactly what happened--but
among other things there were all-night conferences out at Bob Atwell's place, out on a
farm out near Verona. And I know that Burt Fisher was there, and I know that Bob and
Bry were there, but I don't know who else; I imagine some of those committee members.
Anyway, they agreed that there should be some kind of a black student or an AfroAmerican program. That's one of the things that they were demanding, an AfroAmerican college, or department, or something. So that was one of the things that Bry
agreed to. They were demanding a center, and Bry agreed to a certain amount of money
and so on to improve their center facilities.
00:17:26
[Blank]
00:17:56
I had just said that, as a result of that conference, the things that I remember were agreed
upon were (one), that there should be some kind of a program in Afro-American studies,
and (two), that there should be some expansion of the facilities for minority students,
more money for it and so on. And I'm not sure whether it was a full-time director, but
staff and that sort of thing. This one I'm not sure of, but I'm--it would have to be
checked. I think they were demanding at that time black direction of the five-year
program, the minority student program. But by then it had been pretty well settled
anyway that there would be a minority program, but they didn't know that, I guess. I
don't know what the other issues were. I guess Bry and Bob and whoever was there just
said "No" to the black dormitory questions. But they were willing to negotiate on a
number of matters and did, I think rather successfully.
00:19:19
Then when I came back, it was settled, really, in that sense. I immediately, with the
counsel of Bry, appointed a committee to study what we should do about an AfroAmerican program. Wilson Thiede headed the committee, and it was a really star
committee, and they just worked to beat the band. They explored all the possibilities
from a separate department to an interdepartmental major to a distributed major, all sorts
of things. And they finally hit on the--I guess a department with an interdepartmental
staff is the way they finally decided upon it, which was less than the students wanted.
And then, of course, that had to be argued like any new program does through the faculty.
There were some people quite opposed. There were some people who felt it wasn't
enough. There were a number of people who felt it was too much. And a great many
people had great reservations about the scholarly quality of such a program and so on.
And I was, of course, present and chaired those various debates in the faculty, making it
very clear that I favored a setting up of a program and that I felt that there was a scholarly
content, that it would be difficult to organize and so on, and that the way to do it was to
take advantage, full advantage of the resources we had in history, and sociology, and
96
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various other departments. But there would have to be a staff for it and so on. Well,
anyway, we came through that. I don't think we ever had any serious problem again with
the black students. I don't think we have since.
LS:
Did the regents object to the--
WS:
By the time the plan came in--I'm not sure about this--I think by time the plan came in,
the department was set up. It took a year or so, you know, to get through all these things.
I think I was, by then, out of office. But I don't know whether they objected or not, but
they approved it. I'm sure there were people who didn't like it because there are still a lot
of people in the faculty, to this day, who think it, you know, it was a mistake. I have
never felt that way, and one of the reasons--you know, it's had troubles, lots of troubles-but one of the things I've always been impressed by is the fact that it hasn't been just a
haven for ill prepared black students. Their courses have more white students in them
than blacks. And it has been a means, again, of interested students informing themselves
on a lot of questions they didn't know about the black heritage and the black contribution
in this country. So I think it's, overall, been an important educational venture. It's had its
troubles, you know, with its staff, and with promotions, and other problems. But I think,
on the whole, it's been a worthwhile educational program in the university.
00:22:49
Well, I think that kind of brings me to the end of the things I can think of that we had
trouble about.
LS:
But I would just have one question on this. Did any of the, any individuals, do you
remember any particular individuals that names of--
WS:
Students?
LS:
--of the black students whom you dealt with that stood out?
WS:
I really don't remember because it was always a changing cast of characters. There was
obviously no leader, you know, in the sense that, say Evan Stark was a leader of the
radicals, or Bobby Cohen was a spokesman for the radicals. There wasn't anyone who
played that role. There was one person who was tremendously effective. And he was a
black history major working on his Ph.D., a graduate student who went from here to an
assistant professorship at Yale, Bill--something [Hale? WS]
LS:
I'll have to find out who he was.
WS:
He was very good indeed.
LS:
And he was one of the activists.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
And would he be one of the people who came to your office that morning?
WS:
He came. But he was a very, very impressive person. For example, he was the one who
worked out the two-weeks program we had on Afro-American culture, in the spring,
which was so well attended. We brought in national figures, and music, and art, and
politics, and so on. And he was the person who had the idea for that program. And he
was present, but he wasn't one of the loud and demanding ones. I found that an
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interesting experience as an administrator, too. It was going to take about twenty
thousand dollars, ten to twenty thousand dollars, to bring off this program, which we felt,
I felt, various people on my committee felt, people in my office felt, was a very important
thing to do late in the year and that was to sponsor such a program, organized by the
black students. But again, it was going to cost a lot of money, and we wanted to do it
right. So I started searching around. And here you are, running a budget, a university
with a budget of two hundred and fifteen million dollars, and you can't find ten thousand
bucks, you know. That was literally true.
LS:
Even in your discretionary fund.
WS:
Well, the discretionary funds--you don't have much discretionary fund as chancellor of
the university. You have money out of savings. You spend everything you get and more,
at the beginning of the year. You're committed. And then a little money kind of gathers
in the deans' budgets, and you remove a little of it for this, that, and the other thing. But
the truth was we had just, as I recall, purchased a new computer, a Univac computer, with
a million and a half dollars of these funds. And for anything of this sort we just didn't
have the money. So I had to go on my knees to Fred Harrington and beg it out of funds
that he had control over. And these were the gift funds, the trust funds, and all--
LS:
Oh, I see.
WS:
And after arguing a lot about--I remember his famous statement, "Well, you want ten
thousand? You need a minimum of ten thousand dollars? Well, you guys lose that much
money on the way to the bank every morning with the big budget you've got." But the
truth was we didn't really have any money for that sort of thing. So I talked him out of
the ten thousand bucks or whatever it was he gave us, and--
00:26:28
LS:
This was completely his own decision. He didn't have to get anybody else's--
WS:
No, he didn't have to get any approval. He might have had a committee. As you said, I
was on a committee on trust funds. I didn't even remember that I was. He just decided
that was a good expenditure of the money. Maybe I ought to say, too, that Fred was very
good on all the things that had to do with disadvantaged students. He committed most of
the monies that were not already committed--like Vilas professorships, and Knapp
fellowships, and so on--practically all of the funds I know, while I was in office, and I
know for some time afterwards while Fred was president, practically all of the
university's gift funds that weren't specifically labeled for some purpose or other were put
into the minority student program. And of course that was one reason why we didn't
have any money was that it was very expensive to bring in students, pay their tuition,
their board and room, in some cases even furnish travel, you know. That's a very
expensive program. And that was before the loan and government subsidy programs had
developed to any great extent. And the university just took that out of its gift funds,
primarily, because you couldn't use state funds for it, obviously. You did use state funds
whenever we got people from the state because there were programs that would allow us
to at least use part of it. But in any event, by then I was used to that sort of thing. I
mean, here you have the responsibility for huge budgets, but you really don't have much
to say about what's done with them. Programs are already operating, and in place, and
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have been for years. No way you can say to the dean of liberal arts--or of arts and
sciences--such and such a department ought to be abolished and turn the money back to
me, you know. There's no way you could do that nor did you even say to them, cut them
twenty thousand dollars because, if you did, they had another place for the twenty
thousand dollars. One of the great things that one soon--simple things--that one soon
learns about universities when you're in top administration, private or public, none of
them have as much money as they need for really legitimate demands of the educational
and research program. They just do not. And this university, particularly, does not,
because it tries to maintain a level of quality that's well beyond its means. And it always
has. And that's what's made it such a great university. But it always means that you're
always straining for every dollar, you know. And there aren't excess funds.
LS:
But what about WARF, with all its money? Couldn't you have gone to a place like that
for a program--
WS:
Not at that time, no. I don't think so because they'd define it entirely in terms of research.
You just couldn't call that research.
LS:
And they wouldn't make an exception for--
WS:
I don't think so. They never have. And I didn't even, didn't even occur to me to go there.
I figured Fred had some money squirreled away over there that I could get my hands on.
So I went to him.
LS:
Or one of the rich men around the state--
WS:
Yes, now that happens from time to time. And that's one of the things about some of the
rich men around the state. When the university's in the good graces of the public in
general, and most of the time throughout the recent history of the university, we have had
enormous support--both publicly and in quiet, less public ways--from some of the very
top--I hate the word but--decision makers in the state, outside of the political level. This
university has been unusually freed from legislative and state government interference in
its programs.
00:30:50
LS:
Because of their influence?
WS:
I think in part because of their influence. I wouldn't want to play down some other
influences in this either, but I think they've helped us a great deal. Contrast this with the
University of Texas. Texas has much more money than we have, of course, from the oil
leases and so on. But the University of Texas has been constantly interfered with by the
legislators, by the governor. They are down the street just about the same distance as we
are from the state capitol to the university campus and instead of there being practically
no direct influence of governors, and legislators, and politicians with the ongoing
educational and research program of the university--they're constantly in it there.
They've fired presidents, they've gotten rid of professors, they've done all these sorts of
things. That's the one, that's the only thing that's kept Texas from being one of the really
great universities in America. It's got more money than anybody else, more money than
Harvard, even, you know, plus state appropriations. And yet they've never been able to
achieve real greatness, and I think that's because of the political pressures under which
they have to operate, or seem to operate. The tradition here has been the opposite. And I
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think in some part the business elite of the state has helped us in that regard. They have
planned--somebody starts an investigation or starts wanting to make professors sign oaths
here. Some of these people just quietly get to the, in those days, to the Republican Party
and say, "Get off it."
LS:
What's their motive? Why do they--?
WS:
Because they believe, I think, they're--the motive I can't tell you--but I think their belief is
that a great institution is of tremendous value to the state, to business, to the people of the
state; that it brings prestige to people who do business in the state; it is a source, a
constant source, of first class recruits into their businesses; and then there's the general
level. I think it's true, probably, almost everywhere, that there's a general appreciation of
higher education on the part of the upper classes. You know, they all send their kids to
college. But the interesting thing that happens here, unlike many states, is that most of
them send their kids to this university, not to Harvard and Yale and Princeton, and the
places where most upper class people send their children. They send them here. That has
helped us in a great many ways. Some of the leading people of this state are graduates of
this university, even though they came from well-to-do families, back forty or fifty years
ago, or more recently, with the consequence that this university, almost throughout its
history, has been able to appeal, if it wanted to, in quiet ways for their support. And they
haven't had to directly appeal. Many times they'll just go to the legislature or call up
somebody and say, "Look, lay off the university. This is the wrong tack to take." And if
you're one of the people contributing very largely to the campaign funds of the party, you
have quite an effect when you're doing that. Well, but I think some of them are quite
visionary people. I think, you know, they really understand what universities are all
about and that, if you're going to be a really great university, you have to have freedom of
speech. You have to have freedom from interference on the outside. Then this whole
Wisconsin idea--not being from Wisconsin, I've always puzzled about, you know, the
borders of the campus are the borders of the state and all those kinds of slogans, which, I
think are overworked.
00:35:03
Still, very early on, the university became a great resource to the state in terms of the
solution of all sorts of problems. And I think that has given it a place of respect that
many state universities have never gained, and that has maintained friends for us. I think
it's significant that Joe McCarthy never once came into this state and made any attempt to
embarrass the university. And certainly we had as liberal a faculty as Harvard or
Michigan or Chicago--much more liberal faculty, to be honest about it than any of those
places. And yet he never touched this university. He knew it would cost him votes. He
was a good politician, and he knew we had lots of friends.
LS:
Some people say that was due to the influence of President Fred.
WS:
Ah, I think it was more due--Mr. Fred certainly behaved very well, and he knew Mr. Fred
would fight it--because Mr. Fred, whatever his strengths and weakness were, that was one
of them. He knew that you had to support the faculty on academic freedom. And he
believed in it, and he did it on numerous occasions. And I'm sure Joe McCarthy knew
he'd fight it. But I don't think that--that isn't what motivates politicians. It's the votes that
motivate politicians. And to attack this university might have cost him the election. You
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know, there is a thought, and a part of it's due to sociologists and their use of public
opinion polls, that public opinion determines what a politician will do. You know, and
that's a false conception. It may, in the long run, have a lot to do with what he'll do. But
what determines what a politician will do is who will go to the voting polls and vote for
him and who'll vote against him. And they are the guys you've got to watch.
LS:
--contribute to his campaign chest, I suppose.
WS:
Yes, and they're the people you've got to watch. If it's going to cost you just ten thousand
votes in the state of Wisconsin to attack the University of Wisconsin, you'd better not do
it. And Joe McCarthy knew that, and he knew it well, and so he stayed off us. In
general, nobody has made the university the target of political attacks, and I think it's just
because they feel that it will hurt them.
00:37:23
Now, during the student uprising, the student troubles, we started losing even those
people, although not completely. But there's no doubt in my mind that as I went, not
many times but a few times, among the alumni to give talks and so on, the constant
concern was about the students, and why can't you control them, why are they behaving
so badly, and why can't you keep them from doing all these terrible things? They're
hurting our great university and so on. And the governor told me that that was the
biggest problem he had during the time--Governor Knowles--that he was in office in
those later years was that everywhere he went he got that same question. And so you
started losing support. And I can't tell you for sure that I think that support that we had
from what I'm calling as kind of the citizen elite of the state--I think that diminished, too,
considerably.
LS:
Considerably.
WS:
Yes. But on the other hand, when somebody tried to get through a bill to limit the
number of out-of-state students--many people saw the out-of-state students as being the
source of everything--
LS:
Yes, that's right. That was the year, that began In your time, didn't it?
WS:
Yes. A bill was introduced, and it never got out of committee.
LS:
Now, do you think that was the work of--?
WS:
I know. But I can't name names. But I know that certain people, very high in the
business community, without consulting me, without consulting Fred Harrington or
anybody else, just said that they disapproved of this. And that was enough to keep it
from really developing. Now, I shouldn't, I shouldn't under--I shouldn't overplay their
importance. That was only one factor. We testified, at great length, about why we
shouldn't restrict out-of-state enrollment beyond the point that we already were restricting
it, which was about thirty percent of the undergraduate student body. And a great many
others testified against it. And we had many friends in the legislature, too, who were
graduates of the university who were against limitations. I'm not trying to say that just
they pressed some button, that is, the elite pressed a button. But they were on our side on
that. In fact--and of course you might expect this--the Chamber of Commerce, which
was terribly critical of what we were doing around the university, they were right there in
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full force to testify against it, too, because they figured it hurt the business community,
I'm sure. And they also made the good arguments about how this made the university
more cosmopolitan and so on and so on, but they were there, too. So that I'm not sure
they ever completely deserted us, but I do feel that a number of them just couldn't quite
understand why it was that we couldn't manage things better, so that students didn't clash
and do all these kinds of things.
LS:
They felt it was Harrington's and your fault, I suppose.
WS:
Yes, I suppose. Well, they felt that there was some defect in the management of the
university if, that is, if you had this trouble. For example, they'd say, "Look over at East
Lansing, Michigan State, they haven't any trouble. Minnesota had no trouble. They're
bigger than you are. How come you have so much trouble?" And no end of saying to
them, you know, you couldn't say to them, "Well, we have a different kind of student
body." Immediately, they'd say they're the out-of-state students. Fortunately, almost
every major ruckus we had, there would be a few in-state students involved. But the
other thing I'd noted over the years, and I don't know that I could really document this, is
that it is true that, at the beginning, when a new cohort of students--freshmen--comes in,
it is the out-of-staters and especially the New York kids who kind of seize the political
structure and get elected to the student council and so on. But by time they've been here
three or four years, the Wisconsin kids have taken over all the offices as well as the
informal political leadership. And so that, you know, we are not dominated by them,
weren't then, by the out-of-state students by any means.
00:42:03
Well, anyway, these people, though, had helped in various other ways, and-LS:
Can you name some of them?
WS:
Oh, sure. I could name some names. Well, Oscar Rennebohm as governor, of course,
and as a member of the Board of Regents, and as a friend of the university, did a great
deal for the university in terms of, well, of course, obviously, his handling of the Hilldale,
you know, the University Farm, turning it into that. That was pretty largely his idea and
his development. I don't think anything is ever any one person's, but he certainly had a
lot to do with that. As governor, he was very friendly to the university. And he finally
left his fortune, you know, to a trust fund that mainly support things within the university.
And when the university was in trouble, he was always quite understanding and
attempted very much to understand its problems and to help. Now, he was also a
politician so that wasn't quite as much behind the scene. I would mention, for example,
people like Oscar Mayer, who's been very, very friendly to the university. He's one of the
few rich men that I know of who've made sizeable contributions anonymously to the
university for various programs.
LS:
Are you supposed to say that?
WS:
Well, I didn't say what ones. I just said that he has done that, and he has done it for years.
I know that if I had gone to Oscar, which I would have done if Fred had said he didn't
have the money for the blacks, I would have just called up Oscar and I'd have had the
money in no time. And it's nice to know there are people like that. Oscar also--he's not
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as active a person in the political spheres and so on. But again, he's willing to help the
university there.
LS:
I'm going to have to stop this now. I guess--
WS:
You could ask me about WARF if you want to--
LS:
Well, we're back again this following Tuesday, and you had been talking about Oscar
Rennebohm and sources of money for the university.
WS:
Yes, and I also talked about Oscar Mayer. And I think I had said all I had to say about
either of them. I'm sure there are people who would know either of them better than I
knew Mr. Rennebohm or than I now know Oscar. But in fact, if you haven't talked to
Bill Young, you ought to someday, about Rennebohm and his relationship to the
university, because Bill has been the contact, was with Oscar himself and he's on the
foundation board, Rennebohm Foundation board, and so on. So he knows more about
that than any other person, I'm sure.
00:45:00
Well, the others that I think of in terms of people that I've known well that are important
friends of the university and who can be depended on in times of need are, of course, the
Frautschis', the two of them. I know Lowell less, although, when I was chancellor, I used
to see a great deal of him because he was the long-time alumni representative on the
Union board and probably by far its most influential person. In fact, he was chairman of
it and had been for many years, I guess, when I became chancellor. And so we had a
great many discussions, both in the appointment of a new director and on the
development of Union South.
LS:
So his very soft and gentle manner hides a--
WS:
Oh, yes. He's a very effective person. And I'm sure, there are many other ways in which
his—
00:46:11
End of Tape 6, Side 1
Tape 6, Side 2
00:46:12
WS:
--both in the appointment of a new director and on the development of Union South.
LS:
So his very soft and gentle manner hides a--
WS:
Oh, yes. He's a very effective person. And I'm sure, there are many other ways in which
his council has been sought by the university and he also isn't reticent about volunteering,
if he feels the administration needs his opinion or help on any particular topic. But
during that time those were the two major problems that he was directly concerned with.
And I found him very helpful indeed, helpful because he had rather clear-cut opinions
about what we ought to be doing in terms of the Union, and he was not in the least afraid
to express them, and then he had tremendous influence on the other members of the
board. He is--
LS:
Including the student members?
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WS:
Yes, including the student members. They all respected him very much. There might
have been one or two student members who kind of represented the radical students who
paid less attention to him, but he certainly could carry the board on anything he wanted to
do. And he did so. And that, in a sense, is a very important function because the Union
still had, at that time, and I'm sure it does today, although maybe less so, it had a great
following among the alumni. The alumni were probably as concerned about the Union
and its future as with any single topic. And you hear a great deal about how much the
alumni care about athletics and football, but that's a tiny, loud portion of the alumni, who
make maybe five dollar contributions. They're not, really, a very important aspect of the
alumni, and we have not had leadership in the alumni office, for the most part, that could
appeal to the great mass of intellectually oriented graduates of the university. But we've
at least had people like Mr. Mucks, who appeal to the athletic interests, and people like-and the Union has appeal to a fairly wide cross-section of people. They have very, very
fine and fond memories of what it did when they were here as students, and who continue
to contribute to it. And then, of course, they also have Bob Rennebohm and his
Wisconsin Alumni Foundation, who does a very good job of trying to appeal to the mass
of the alumni that are missed by the athletic and Union kinds of interests. But all I was
wanting to say about Lowell was that he has been very helpful to the university, at least
in those connections.
00:49:28
LS:
I would just like to ask you, what was his relationship with the radicals?
WS:
I don't know.
LS:
He was not as opposed to them as Porter Butts, I would imagine.
WS:
Well, I never knew how much Porter was opposed to them. He thought they got in the
way and made it hard to run the Union. But I never had much evidence that Porter was
all that--. He really tried to appeal to the students and to make the Union a useful place
for students. So far as I know, he never held back on the facilities. In fact, the Union
was almost taken over, as far as its use was concerned, by radical students, and I never
noted that he did anything to discourage that. I just don't know. I wouldn't doubt that his
views would be very different from theirs, but I think he saw his professional role
somewhat differently, and then he had Mr. Herman as his associate director, who worked
very closely with those students. So I have no reason, really, to believe that, whatever his
personal views were, that he had any great opposition to the radical students making full
use of the Union, which I think they did. And I have no idea what Lowell's position was,
you know. I never discussed anything of that sort with him.
LS:
But he never said something like, "Get these long hairs out of here," or anything like
that?
WS:
Oh, of course not. No. And I don't think, and I don't think--
LS:
Because some of them probably did--
WS:
Oh, alumni, many of them did. But I don't think that either Porter Butts, or Lowell, or the
board felt that way. After all, you know, the Union's always been the center for what
were, in their day, the radical students. They're not unused to having other than the fully
washed over there, by any means. So that--I don't know what other charges one might
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bring against Porter, I don't have any, particularly, except he got old and crotchety, but I
certainly don't know of any evidence that-LS:
I thought you had felt that he--
WS:
I just thought he was out of touch!
LS:
--that the Union wasn't being quite used--
WS:
I thought he was out of touch, sure. But most people by the time they get to be late in
their careers are really out of touch and have lost a lot of their enthusiasm.
LS:
Except Lowell didn't.
WS:
Well, I'm not sure of that. All I know is that he was a very good chairman. And he tried
to listen to everybody's points of view, and that he did, very subtly and effectively,
organize his forces to get through the things that he wanted. And that's, really, as much
as I know about him. I don't know what his personal views about things like radical
students or matters of that kind. Nor did I ever know Porter that well--to really know
him. He was never a friend, you know, in the sense that I saw him frequently and talked
to him much, before or after being chancellor. In some ways, I never was very much in
touch with the students and what students cared about here. I don't know, I wouldn't say
it's a disinterest in students, but there are so many other interesting things that I was
concerned with that I never really had much contact with what you might call the student
culture. So I'm not a very good person to judge some of those things. I never served on
any committees that had anything to do with students in all the time I've been here.
LS:
And later on, when you talk about your teaching, we can bring this up again.
WS:
Now, I had great contact with graduate students but not the undergraduates.
00:53:52
Well, anyway, to go on with the Frautschi's, Walter Frautschi is a very different sort of
man. He's a very highly organized, outspoken person, rather conservative in his
economic--quite conservative in his economic and political views. I find it interesting
because he tells me that when he was a young man he was considered a campus liberal, at
least. But certainly he's a very conservative gentleman now and has been in over twenty
or so years that I've known him. He has served the university in a great many capacities.
I think the most important one has been as a member of the WARF board and as its
chairman. And he has been very effective on the WARF board in getting what the
Graduate School and the chancellor want out of the WARF board. The WARF board,
from my one or two meetings with them--which were not terribly pleasant, I must say--is
rather an interesting group. It's made up of--they have to be graduates of the University
of Wisconsin and they tend to be, for the most part, people who are executives of various
kinds of engineering and agri-business kinds of activities. And, oh, people like the
president of Campbell's soup, I don't even remember his name anymore; one of the top
people in Ralston Purina; of course Mr. Romnes, who is head of the AT&T; various
industrial firms, many of them located in Wisconsin. And I wouldn't say that they are,
for the most part, intellectuals. They have great interest in technology and technological
change. And it has been very difficult, for whoever has been dean of the Graduate
School or president or chancellor of the university, to get them to be willing to support
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things that they didn't see as having a direct, technical payoff. I remember that one of the
times that I met with them, one of the members was wondering why in the world the
University Committee was supporting some project in archaeology, and another one in
history. What in the world use would that ever be to anyone? And there was kind of a
chorus of like views. And at that time Mr. Romnes was president of the board, and he
said, "Oh, we don't have time to talk about all those things. We've talked about them
many times before. For the most part, the money's going for research in biological and
physical sciences. No one ever knows"--and he went on to talk about the Bell lab a little,
you know--"what will pay off. And after all, we have to support a great university and
its many activities," and he just went on, you know, and they didn't have any more
questions. But there's always a need for that kind of person, and I think Walter served
that role very well. He understands very well the need for scholarship. Both he and his
wife were junior Phi Bet's, and I think she has had a great deal of effect on his thinking
about what a university ought to be. And he, himself, has a very broad conception of it.
On several occasions, he's told me he couldn't understand why we got into this or that
kind of trouble, but he'd always defend us. And I think that he's been very effective in
that way. He also has been an important figure in the behind-the-scenes aspects of the
Republican Party, and so, again, he's been very useful although I can't give you specific
instances. I understand he's been very useful in putting in a word now and then to
someone in the party to tell the legislature to get off some particularly silly kick or other.
But anyway, he has been very helpful. And during the time of merger he was especially
helpful. Ed Young and I went and talked to him, got him to lunch one day, I think out at
Blackhawk Country Club or maybe at Maple Bluff, but anyway,
00:59:05
we started working on him about what the merger might do to trust funds, and that one
interpretation that could easily be made is that WARF funds and Vilas funds and Knapp
funds should be shared throughout the system and that there were some people pressing
for that. And we thought that Fred Harrington had made a great mistake to ever extend-in the fight to get WARF funds, extend it to Milwaukee. And we went on and made the
point that this was the research institution, that it ought to continue to be, and that those
funds were of great importance to the university, and that when those funds--all of those
trust funds--were left to the university or set up for the purposes of the university, it
meant Madison and nothing else. And that Mr. Knapp never had any desire to leave
money to what he would have thought of as Whitewater Teachers College, nor did any of
these other people, and that Milwaukee, also, was an afterthought in the development of
the university and that it was never intended for those purposes. I indicated that as a
Vilas professor I would be willing to have a friendly suit in my name to challenge the
right of the regents to extend Vilas monies to other places because I could argue that it
would threaten the funds that were designated for my appointment. And we had a long
conversation. And essentially he would say, "Well, I agree with you, but we can't change
what's already been done. We'll have to continue to give money to Vilas--or, we'll have
to continue to give WARF monies"--he was then chairman of the WARF board--"we'll
have to continue to give WARF monies to Milwaukee, at least." But we kept working on
him. I think Ed might have had--I think I had another meeting with him, and I think Ed
had one or two more. But we finally got him convinced and then started talking to some
of the other--he started talking to some of the other WARF members and finally the
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WARF board decided that the monies were for this campus and this campus alone and
even withdrew future funding from Milwaukee. That, then, became the model for the
other trust funds. And that was a terribly important move, and it wouldn't have been
possible without getting someone who was powerful in that board to make the initial
decision and to talk to the others. And I don't know; it might have been that Ed could
have just gone to the board, you know, and even to a stranger on the board and made the
case. But at least we felt much more comfortable doing it this way. And he became the
leader of the movement, and it was a very successful thing. And it's meant that these
funds, which are of considerable importance to the university, will continue to come to
the university, that is, to the Madison campus. Now, I don't know of other instances.
That's the one important instance that I was directly involved in with Walter Frautschi,
but he's also been very important in the Alumni Association. He's a past president of the
Alumni Association. He serves on various committees that are important, of importance
in the community and in the state, so that he's been a very useful friend of the university.
01:03:30
LS:
You used the phrase, "Harrington had to fight to get WARF money for Milwaukee." Is
that the way it was?
WS:
Yes, Oh, yes.
LS:
They didn't want to, at the beginning, they didn't--
WS:
No, no. I don't think the board wanted to give the money to Milwaukee at all, but Fred
argued that that was going to be the urban university, that it was going to be a part of the-that it was going to have a full graduate program in those days. That was Fred's aim.
And certainly it had to have some start-up money, and WARF was a source. I don't know
how much money they ever gave. I think it was two or three hundred thousand dollars a
year. You'd have to check that. I really don't know. But it was--
LS:
They were opposed to the idea at first. They had to--
WS:
Oh, yes. The board was opposed. And Fred, in his usual way, you know, just kind of
sledge hammered it down their throats. And so I think they did it rather reluctantly. But
this had been going on for several years and was now a policy. It's kind of hard to go
back and change policies of that kind, but--
01:04:40
LS:
Under what circumstances would you--this was as chancellor, I presume--go to WARF
meetings?
WS:
Well, the chancellor is supposed to go to WARF meetings.
LS:
Oh, I see.
WS:
--to present to them the needs of the university.
LS:
I see.
WS:
You see, WARF spends no money on anything but the university. Its charter directs it to
spend its funds on the University of Wisconsin. And so they spend no money on
anything else. They have a good deal of money. The amount of accumulation each year
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runs into the millions, and several millions, and they would like advice from the
university as to how much of this should go for one purpose or another, such as building
a new building, how much should go for equipment, how much should go for research
leaves, how much should go for the support of new projects, things of that sort. And
actually, the main presentation is made by the dean of the Graduate School, who is also
the chairman of the Research Committee, and most of the dealings of the staff of WARF
and their chairman are with the dean of the Graduate School throughout the year. But I
think at least twice a year the chancellor is supposed to go for the main meetings and be
there to talk to them about what he sees to be the ways in which WARF could help the
university, usually in more general than specific terms. And then the dean takes over and
works out the specifics with them.
LS:
So it makes some difference who is dean and who is chancellor--
WS:
Yes.
LS:
--as to where the money goes?
WS:
Yes. Now Fred Harrington, once he forced through the inclusion of the social sciences
and humanities under the WARF funds, he apparently left enough bodies in his wake that
he never went back to the WARF meetings. He always had Bob Bock do it. So by the
time--and Bob Fleming, on the other hand, went to the meetings, but again, Bock did
most of the talking and really handled the major business with the WARF trustees. But
they were very pleased that Fleming would come, and they were very pleased that I
came. And I remember the one meeting--one of the meetings--I went to in the fall and in
the spring, as I recall--but the fall meeting, they wanted to ask me more about student
disruption than they did anything to do with the money.
01:07:30
But Bob, on the other hand, had a whole agenda printed up of what we needed money for
and so on. And he's very effective in dealing with them.
LS:
So it would be not just a question of where his interests lay but--
WS:
Oh, no.
LS:
-- how strong a person the dean of the Graduate School is.
WS:
Yes, well, the dean of the Graduate School doesn't, you know--it's like all of those
administrative things--your personal interests don't make all that much difference. What
you would love to see money go for doesn't make all that much difference. You can't,
you know, you can't be an accepted dean of the Graduate School and pour all the money
into biochemistry, where you happen to come from, or molecular biology, where Bob is
now. He's got to see to it that the other sciences get their share and that the various--and
the budget is built by the Executive Committee of the Graduate School and by the
University Research Committee, you know, and so you might have a little--you might be
able to emphasize the things you're most interested in, as Mr. Fred, indeed, did all those
years, and Connie Elvehjem, seeing to it that it didn't go to the social sciences and
humanities, but once that decision is made it's kind of the flow of business through the
Graduate School that determines what they'll ask for.
LS:
But it would make a difference how strong a person he was, I should think.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes. I think so. But really, the WARF trustees don't have much choice, either. If all
they can spend money for is for the University of Wisconsin, then they aren't going to, all
of a sudden, decide the University of Wisconsin ought to have some new building or
some new equipment without the advice of the chancellor and the dean of the Graduate
School or the advisory committees. They've been receivers of ideas and had things
explained to them. So far as I know, I can't remember, I don't know, but certainly during
the period that I had contact with them, they never turned down anything the university
asked for; excepting they'd say, "All we've got is so many dollars this year. Tell us what
you want, how you want us to use them." And then the members would argue with you
as to whether you ought to support Mr. Mansoor's project in looking for the Dead Sea
scrolls or something like that. But then the chairman and other people would always
overrule it, and the budget would go through as requested. So there wasn't--yes, they're
like most boards of trustees, their service is, actually, rubber stamps to the administration
unless there are times of trouble, and I suppose they might behave differently. But Bob is
very effective in dealing with them. He knows more about them than anybody because
he's now been dean quite a long period of time. They have great respect for him as a
scholar, and as an administrator, and as a person. He's a man who merits all that respect.
He's one of the really capable, unusually capable scholar-administrators in this university.
Well, I guess that's all I know about Frautschi. The other person I know quite well is
Don Slichter, who, of course, was the son of Sumner Slichter, not Sumner Slichter but
Charles Slichter, wasn't it? Who was first dean of the Graduate School. Yes, Charles
Slichter. And Sumner is one of the sons, a very world famous economist at Harvard. A
very eminent set of sons. I think they're all in Who's Who. Many of their children are in
Who's Who. They're very prominent people. And it was Slichter, E. B. Fred, and
whoever was then dean of the School of Agriculture, I suppose it was Dean--was it Dean
Henry?--was he--no, the one who succeeded him, the bacteriologist [Russell]. Anyway—
01:12:22
LS:
Baldwin, probably.
WS:
No, no. Oh, no. No, no, before that. There were two great deans in the School of
Agriculture, and I can't remember the names right at this moment. But anyway, longtime deans. And when Steenbock made the vitamin A--vitamin C? Whatever the
vitamin discoveries were that were patentable--those four people, presumably Steenbock,
and the dean of the Graduate School--it was E. B. Fred--and Slichter, and the dean of
agriculture, and Steenbock, sat down and thought up this idea of WARF. And it was kind
of an interesting idea because several very important people had left the university when
they made great discoveries that were patentable. For example, Burgess was a professor
of engineering, and he's the person who developed the wet cell battery that became the
battery for automobiles, you know. He left the university and started his own firm, the
Burgess Battery Company. Many people believed that if there had been some deal
whereby he could get part of the profits, he might have preferred to stay at the university.
But anyway, Steenbock worked out this--with these men--this idea of a small share of the
profits of such inventions going to the inventor, or discoverer, or whatever it might be
and the rest of it going to this fund for the university. And of course the great genius of
the fund was the investment of the money. So far as I can learn, and this is terribly
rough, the total take of WARF from all of these patents probably isn't over forty million
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Sewell, William H (#101)
dollars--thirty or forty million. But the investment of those funds has been the--in a great
growth period in the economy in the common stocks, which they couldn't have done had
they been turned over to the university regents, for example--the investment of those
funds has been the great success of WARF. They had to have the seed money to start
with, but once they got the seed money, the investment--at the suggestion of Tom
Brittingham they bought Xerox stock for fifty cents a share, Minnesota Mining for fortyfive cents a share, and so on. And, of course, those shares were split many times and
have been--then, the other thing they did is they invested a great deal of money in
Wisconsin corporations that they knew a good deal about. And so the big story of
WARF has been how they've multiplied that money so many times over.
01:15:48
And Don Slichter, who was the son of the first dean of the Graduate School, lived, as a
child, on Francis Street, right next to the lake, and that was quite a little settlement there;
the Slichters lived there, the Slaughters lived there, the E. B. Freds. Some of the people
who became the really powerful, and were at the time the very powerful, figures in the
university. So he was kind of brought up an academic brat. He followed his father,
however, and went into engineering, and graduated from our School of Engineering, and
then at some point got into Northwestern Mutual, became its president later on, and is
now, still I guess, chairman of the board at Northwestern Mutual. His big contribution
there has been investing funds, as I understand it, and managing their investment policies.
Well, anyway, Don knows the university, I suppose, in a more intimate sense than any
other of these important rich men around the state because of his connections through his
father. And he has always been a very staunch defender of the university. He has served
on many commissions that the governor sets up and various governors have set up, and
he's always looking out for the welfare of the university in all of those connections, and
how the university may be brought into programs, and so on. He has been president of
the Alumni Association. He's been on the WARF board for a number of years. I think he
served, or is serving, as its chairman now. But he's, again, one of those people who has
served on boards and commissions that tended to link the state with the university. And
he's unstinting in the time that he'll give to the university when his advice and help and
counsel is needed. So, again, he's another one of these important persons. We also
talked to him in connection with the WARF scheme--or the attempt to get the WARF
monies restricted to the university.
01:18:32
Well, those are the people that I have known fairly well. I'm sure that there are other
people. There must be some key people on the boards of regents of the past that people
would know about. For example, Mr. Fred used to spend a great deal of his time just in
the care and feeding of Mr. Sensenbrenner, who was chairman of the board during many
of the years that he was president, used to visit him every day in the hospital when he was
ill during his later years. He used to be on the phone with him and so on. And I'm sure
there are other people. And again, he was a very rich man. He ended up leaving all his
money--all the money he left to universities--to Marquette rather than here, so I always
thought Mr. Fred wasted a good deal of his time in courting him, but at least he did help
the university in many other ways. There are a number of others, I'm sure, that other
people would know about. I have never had that close a contact with them. In fact, every
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one of these that I've mentioned I've known--I guess I knew most of them before but I
got to know them much better as a member of Town and Gown than any other way since
they belonged to that group.
LS:
You haven't talked about that on tape.
WS:
About Town and Gown?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
Well, it started ninety-nine years ago. I've forgotten who the original people were, but it's
always been an organization in which a limited number of people from the city and a
limited number of people from the university faculty have met together once a month,
usually throughout the year. In recent years we've given up the summer because we
never get a quorum together.
LS:
How many people?
WS:
Twelve people. Usually six and six. And if you'd study it over the years, almost without
exception, up until recent years, the governor's always been a member. And up until
recent years, the president of the university has always been a member. All the
chancellors have been members, that is, the first chancellor was Robben Fleming and Ed,
and we've all been members of the group. And then other prominent people. Their
purpose is not to aid the university. Their purpose is to meet together over intellectual
conversation. Somebody gives a paper, usually about thirty minutes.
LS:
Oh, you do that, do you?
WS:
Oh, yes. Usually, it's not read. It's, you know, excepting people like Don Anderson, who
was the editor of the State Journal, always wrote his because he was a writer. The rest of
us would just talk from notes or--. And there are frequent interruptions and a good deal
of discussion. But it always interest me that, whenever Ed is present, the first twenty,
thirty minutes of the conversation, before the paper, drifts off into the university and its
current problems, and with some feedback from the townspeople, and some--Ed always
carefully planting a few seeds about what he thinks the next issues and problems are that
they might conceivably help with--although he never says that.
01:22:07
End of Tape 6, Side 2
Tape 7, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
Vilas was a member. As I say, most of the governors, up until very recent times, have
been members.
LS:
Was it by invitation?
WS:
Oh, yes.
LS:
Would they automatically--
WS:
Strictly by--
LS:
--be invited, the governors?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
No, not automatically. Oh, no. That's why, for example, in my time, at least, Pat Lucey
was never invited.
LS:
That must be quite a--
WS:
I don't know, really, whether--I don't think Gaylord Nelson was a member. I'm not sure
about John Reynolds. I know Kohler was a member. And--oh, and Knowles was not
invited. I don't know why because I wasn't a member at that time, so I don't know what
was involved.
LS:
I thought you said Knowles was a member?
WS:
No, I don't think Knowles was. Kohler was, Governor Kohler.
LS:
Oh, well, OK.
WS:
I don't think Knowles was. I'm not certain of that. [He was not.WS]
LS:
And Harrington, you had said--
WS:
Harrington, I think, was invited. If you talk to the members, they say they never invited
Fred. They asked him to come to a meeting, and they decided not to ask him. Fred says
they asked him, and he turned them down. And I think I saw in the book, in some of the
old notes--the book now goes back to about the thirties, or late thirties--there are separate
files in the archives in the State Historical Society. Every meeting there's a record, a one
page record, of what transpired. And my memory is that I saw in the book that they had
voted to ask Fred to join. But Fred told me he found it so boring that he just couldn't
stand it, and so he didn't join.
LS:
I thought you said it had--it didn't have something to do with their policy--evidently that's
some other club.
WS:
Oh, that's the Madison Club.
LS:
Yes.
WS:
No, it had nothing to do with--just boredom as far as Fred was concerned. And I must
say, there were some very boring meetings, indeed. One of the great problems of the
club is it tends to get--its age composition is always on the old side, and people enjoy it
so much after they get older that they don't want to leave. And so the problem is always
to replace the old members with younger members. And what the old members consider
to be young, most people would consider already to be old, obviously. I was the
youngest member for a long time, and I've been a member now ten years or something
like that. So you can see, I was fifty-eight probably when I joined, and I was really a
whipper snapper. We have now--through the good offices of two or three of the people
of my cohort, we've forced the age down considerably.
LS:
You can't have much leeway if you only have twelve members, and all of them stay on.
WS: Well, of course, the old ones die off, and then in the last two or three years some of
them have had the good grace to retire. Mr. Fred hasn't been to--he comes to one meeting
a year, but he was off the list as far as an invited member is concerned, at his choosing, at
least ten years ago. Recently, Don Anderson, who is not in good health, has also asked
not to be notified, and Dr. Weston also has. So we've had three people drop out, and
we've had a number of deaths, of course, in the ten years I've been there. And each time,
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I have insisted, along with a couple of others, that we get really younger people, so we're
down--I think our most recent member is actually Carl Weston, who is probably not forty
yet, just about forty. And just before him, Hector DeLuca, who isn't over forty--forty to
forty-five. So we've been getting down to below fifty.
00:04:21
LS:
Who are these people?
WS:
Carl Weston is a very prominent internist in town. He's at the Jackson Clinic and also
holds some kind of a clinical appointment at the University Hospital and Medical School.
And Hector DeLuca is a very famous young biochemist who is chairman of the
biochemistry department, and so we've been forcing the age down to the those younger
levels. The youngest--well, Carl would be the youngest person considered a town person.
Next youngest would be Webb Smith, the former president of the First National Bank.
He's relatively, you know, a young guy--fifty-five, probably, something like that. That's
added a lot of spark to it. It's not nearly as dull as it used to be. But, in any event, Fred
never had any patience with that kind of organization, so he didn't join. And Mr. Weaver
was never asked. I know that because I was a member all that time. So--
LS:
Has Irving Shain been asked yet?
WS:
I guess I can't say. [He was later asked, and joined.WS]
LS:
Oh, I suppose not.
WS:
There's about to be a--. I really can't. I'm not supposed to say. So anyway, Town and
Gown, you can way overemphasize its importance, but it does mean that there's always
been contact with people like editors, members of the supreme court, people who are
important in the state government, and--not a representative sample--a selected sample of
the university administration. Almost always the dean of the Graduate School seems to
be--Connie was a member. Of course, he was a member before he became dean of the
Graduate School. Bob Bock's been a member. So that there have always--and very often
the dean of letters and science is a member. That's when Ed became a member as I recall.
Now Mark Ingraham wasn't. David Cronon isn't. But they belong to another one of
these groups. I don't know the name of it, but it's the one that Lowell Frautschi is very
prominent in. Bry Kearl belongs to that group, too. There used to be quite a number of
these clubs in town--. Ours was the only one called Town and Gown, but they were the
town and gown type of clubs. And I think there's still maybe--. Well, I know, those two
are active, and I think there's a third one, too. And they have that function of
communication in an informal way. And also it means you get to know some of those
people very well. If you need to represent the university to them, you don't ever do it in
the meeting, but you can do it outside. So I think it served a very useful purpose. I think
you can overemphasize it. I heard one--Gunnar Myrdal was a guest of John R.
Commons.
LS:
Was he in Town and Gown?
WS:
John R. Commons? Oh, yes. So was Frederick Jackson Turner, Paxson, Joseph Jastrow,
you know, it's kind of a who's who of the faculty although it leaves out some very, very
prominent people because you can only have six in. But, yes, he was a very active, John
R. Commons was a very active member, apparently, one of the leading lights of it. And
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Gunnar Myrdal, when he was a young man, came to this country to do the Carnegie study
which resulted in the book The American Dilemma, came to Madison and--to visit with
Commons--and was here for two or three months. And Commons brought him to Town
and Gown where he gave a talk. Then--they're now back here these almost forty years
later--and I think that was '38 or '39 that he was here, and the Myrdals are here, as you
know, as distinguished visiting scholars. And so I had the Myrdals at the last meeting of
Town and Gown, and broke all precedent and invited the wives to come without asking
anybody's permission, and we had a private dining room at the Blackhawk Country Club.
And they both spoke a little. And that was the first thing that he said. It's delightful to be
back at Town and Gown, that he had spoken there thirty-nine or whatever number of
years ago it was, and he was a guest of John R. Commons at that time. He said to me, it's
a very powerful group. He said, they're very powerful with the legislature. And I think
there's kind of a broad myth that these are the people who really pull the strings. That
isn't true. But at times they're very useful, and they do serve this communication kind of
function.
00:09:37
LS:
Is Walter Frautschi on it?
WS:
Oh, yes, he's in it. Don Slichter's in it. He comes over from Milwaukee almost every
meeting. Oscar Mayer is in it. Webb Smith. Carl Weston. Then the university people
are, who are active, are Ed Young, Bob Bock, Tom Brock--who's the Elvehjem professor
of biological science, Hector DeLuca, Bill Sarles, and myself.
LS:
Very scientific group.
WS:
Oh, yes.
LS:
Not deliberately.
WS:
Oh, you mean--no. Oh, I left out Judge Curry, who used to be in the supreme court and
who also taught in the Law School for a while.
LS:
No humanities people, unless you call yourself one.
WS:
Well, I'm certainly not humanities, nor is Ed. Ed would come closer than anybody else
because he's a labor historian, I guess. But that doesn't necessarily follow. Some of the-in the past, there have been a number of people from the humanities.
LS:
Well, you mentioned the historians.
WS:
And people from the arts and so on have been members. I don't know, you know, the
complete list, but had I gone through some of the history of the thing--
LS:
You could never have had Helen White as your--
WS:
Oh, no. There's never been a woman elected. That's the thing I'm advocating now. I
really upset these guys. They think I'm a real radical because I'm always coming up with
things like that. Now there have been two or three women address the club, but that's a
very recent thing, too. But I've been trying to get them to elect a woman, and my
candidate is Shirley Abrahamson, the first woman member of the court. And this is
gratuitous, you know, but I wouldn't doubt but what, if she gets made chief justice,
which she inevitably will, they may then break it. If we have a few more retirements and
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deaths, you know, we might do it. I don't know that she'd join, but I think we have to get
somebody that eminent, you know. But I'd like to see it broken myself. It's a pretty
conservative group in its social views, and it's pretty conservative in its economic views.
But it's kind of an academic and business elite, none the less. That is, they're not like the
president of some soup company, you know, that wants to know where the profitability
will lie if you do certain things for the university. They're much broader in their views of
life. You know, they're--the town part of them are--represent the true intellectual
business elite, really. And those people may be conservative about money matters, but
on the other hand they're pretty broadly based intellectuals generally. That's my
experience in meeting them nationally, too. Well, anyway, that's—
LS:
I'm curious about one thing.
00:13:15
Do you remember, at the time of the TA strike, I just wonder, would the subject of Ed
Young's recognizing the TAA and his handling of the affair have come up there? And do
you-WS:
--in this group?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
No. No, no. They never discussed things like that.
LS:
You did say that affairs of the university would be discussed lightly, at the beginning, but
not--
WS:
Yes. Well, if Ed wants to come in and say, "Look, we're having a great deal of trouble
with the legislature, they're punishing us because of the problems on the campus, but I'm
trying to do the following things," and so on. They'd hear all that. But the problems of-he wouldn't go to them and talk about the TA strike.
LS:
And they wouldn't say to him, "Why did you recognize this?"
WS:
And they wouldn't say to him what you ought to do. Oh, no. No, nothing like that. That
would be--. These are very sophisticated gentlemen. They aren't going to get their nose
into the running of the university. Even if it's killing them to say so, they wouldn't--to
ask about it, they wouldn't do it, you know, unlike the Board of Regents where there are
always some members who feel that they ought to move right in and tell the president,
the chancellor what to do in specific situations. These are much broader gauge people
than that. They know better. They know that isn't how you run things. So they would
never ask him about a thing like that. If he brought it up, they would make their
comments or ask him questions, but he wouldn't bring it up.
LS:
And he didn't bring it up?
WS:
And he didn't that I know of. I'm not there. I'm probably there the least of any member
because I travel a good deal. But I don't think he would bring that up. I know I would
never dream of bringing up anything like that with them. Ed is not the sort of person who
goes around asking much advice.
LS:
Oh, no. I'm sure not.
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WS:
He talked with people about--
LS:
I was thinking about their giving him--
WS:
--many things, and he'd be much more likely to go in and say what the problems are
choosing what building to support or something like that, and what pressures there are in
the state and the faculty--
LS:
Just giving them information--
WS:
Yes, that kind of thing. But when it comes to some tough policy issue, I don't think Ed
would say a word to any of them about it.
LS:
Just one more question. When you're away, does somebody take your place? Is there a
waiting list like there is in your poker group?
WS:
No. No, no. No, no. There's no waiting list. There's no--
LS:
Or substitute list?
WS:
--no substitute list. And I would say the average meeting would be about nine of the
twelve there. And as I say--well, Ed is probably there less than I am because Ed has a lot
of things that pull him out of town. Ed thoroughly enjoys it. Ed enjoys it much more
than I do. In fact, if I go more than two times in a row, I get terribly bored with it,
usually. I go four or five times a year.
00:16:26
And I must say, I've kind of enjoyed seeing how the other half lives, you know. I grew
up in a well-to-do, but not rich family, and people like Oscar Mayer and Lowell Frautschi
and Don Slichter, do live on a somewhat different plane of living and life style, you
know, than even prosperous and well paid professors. And it's kind of interesting to see
what they do, and where they go, and what interests them, I think, and fascinating,
actually, but I don't--the one thing I really enjoy least about them is that it's terribly,
terribly old Madison. People like Bill Sarles was born and raised on a farm just outside
of town, you know. And his father was a--he was born and raised on a farm--his father
was the Congregational minister here, First Congregational Church. So he knows
everybody. And he starts these conversations about the faculty of forty years ago and
people--the other old geeks all fall in with it, you know, and it's just boring as hell after a
while--of who married whose sister, and then some of us trying to interject some
intellectual note into all of this, you know, and get them off the track or they'd go on
visiting throughout the dinner hour, until the talk started, on that kind of stuff. And as I
say, it's terribly old Madison because most all of them, I guess all the locals, other than
Oscar--well, even Oscar, I suppose, has lived most of his life in Madison, practically all
of them.
00:18:23
Well, that kind of ends that topic as far as I'm concerned.
LS:
Why don't you just, while you're on the subject of groups, just mention your poker group,
how long you've been in it and how--
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WS:
Well, I've forgotten when we--. The founding members were Jim Earley, who was
professor of economics for many, many years here and at about age sixty left to go to
Riverside where he's now an emeritus professor, and a young sociologist by the name,
then a young sociologist, by the name of Bob McGinnis, who has, for many years, been
at Cornell, and myself. And for the first two or three years we had kind of an indefinite
membership. David Baerreis from anthropology used to play. Hasler from the education
school--
LS:
Oh, you don't mean the zoology Hasler? Arthur Hasler?
WS:
No, not Arthur. Maybe it wasn't--I think his name was Hosler. He was kind of the
commerce, business education guy over there. Hosler. He played for a while. A number
of people. But, finally, we settled down with a much more permanent group. And I'm
the only remaining founding member of the lot. I think possibly the next people to come
in were Al Sessler and Zingale.
LS:
And Andy Clark must have been--
WS:
Well, no, I think probably after Zingale and Sessler, I think the next one was Phil Cohen.
Then Andy, Robinson--Arthur Robinson--Chuck Bridgeman from psychology--
LS:
And Rondo Cameron was some--
WS:
Rondo Cameron was in fairly early. Rondo might even have been a founding member. I
think he probably was. Yes, I think Rondo was. And then Peter Steiner in economics,
who is now at the University of Michigan, joined. Oh, Folke Skoog has been a long time
member, came about the same time as--a little after Phil Cohen. And then John, and Bob
Bridgeman, and our most recent addition, I guess, is Lennie Stein. But, anyway, over the
years, the losses, the attrition has come from death and departure to go to other
universities. I think we only lost three members through death. The first was Al Sessler,
who died, you know, relatively young, probably mid-fifties. And then, in very quick
succession, Andy Clark and Chuck Bridgeman; both of them died of cancer. But,
anyway, that's been a group that meets twice a month on Friday nights. We always, in
the early days, called it the probability seminar. And we'd have our secretaries call
around, and I had a marvelous secretary, Alice Thompson, for many years here. And I
would ask her to call up the members of the probability seminar, and I think she'd been
calling for two or three years until finally she called somebody and said that the
probability seminar would be meeting at my house at seven o'clock on Friday night and
got a hold of the secretary of this person who said, well, he can't not possibly come. He's
playing poker at seven o'clock that night. And she didn't know that it was a poker club,
so I, then, explained it to her. But, anyway, it's been a very faithful group. Everybody
tries to get there each time. And I guess one would have to say that it probably has
absolutely no impact on the university. It is the most amazing group, and it's been this
way from the very beginning. The minute you get there, they start dealing the cards. If
you're five minutes late, they give you hell for being late. They start dealing the cards,
and if somebody starts to tell a story or to ask about something that happened in the
university, they'll say, "I thought we gathered to play poker, not to gossip," you know.
And they'd have no time--it's not that they aren't perfectly willing to gossip. It's just that
they're so intent on playing poker that they don't do anything else. But it has been a nice
way to get a broad spectrum of the faculty acquainted with each other, at least.
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LS:
I gather that, perhaps, the one exception to that rule was during your troubles.
WS:
Yes, when I was chancellor, when I would come--which was about half the time or
maybe less because of my other engagements--but when I came, they would ask me what
was going on and kind of sympathize with me.
LS:
And I believe they expressed their support.
WS:
Yes. Oh, yes. They were very supportive, I must say.
00:24:10
LS:
While we're on the subject of social life, it has been a question we ask people, where do
you eat lunch and how that's changed over the years.
WS:
Well, I guess that I've always eaten lunch--I don't go home for lunch except on the rarest
of occasions. So I usually eat lunch and have--I've always been a member of the
University Club. So I usually have my lunch at the University Club and--
LS:
Still?
WS:
I still do. Seldom go to the Union. Again, I don't enjoy--the cafeteria, I just despise
going there and sharing tables with students and all that sort of thing. I like to get off
with the faculty, and visit, and talk. And I used to go quite often to Tripp Commons
because so many of the faculty went there, and I suppose more of them go there now than
to the Union--oh, I mean than to the University Club. But I've always been a member,
ever since I got here, at the University Club.
LS:
Have you regarded that as an important part of your way of meeting other faculty
members--the University Club?
WS:
In the early days it was very important because most of the younger people went in those
days. For reasons that I don't know people don't do that anymore. But I met a great--of
course, when I came here, right after the war, there was a whole influx of new, young
people, who already had their Ph.D.'s, usually before the war and then were recruited
during the war period to come here. And it was there that I met all sorts of people. The
backbone of my real friendship patterns throughout the university started there, with
those people, who were a very, very unusual and able group of people and who rose very
rapidly within their departments and schools. And many of them have stayed the whole
time. So I got to know a great many people in those days. But you could, you know.
The whole university was twelve or thirteen thousand students, and the faculty probably a
third of what it is now. This department had--it was the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology and when I came had nine members assistant professor and above. And at
our height, we had fifty-six. And we're now maybe down to fifty-two. So, you know,
you hardly know your own assistant professors, let alone all the people who are coming
in history, and law, and in agricultural economics, or engineering. I really got to know
those people as well, and I met a lot of them at the University Club. And the University
Club, in those days, used to have dances--it had more of a social life--about once a month
during the winter. And people would come to these. They were usually formal, you
know. You wore a tux, and the women wore long dresses, and huge tables would be
formed, and usually not within departments but across departments. And you got
acquainted with a great many people of like age. And so that was really quite important
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in establishing a network of people. Over the years, the University Club just went
downhill, you know. Fewer and fewer people belonged, and its average age increased
very greatly until it's kind of an old man's club for the most part these days. I still go. I
have always paid my dues, even though, you know, you can go and eat there without
paying dues--I've always paid my dues, primarily to support the club because there must
be twenty-five to thirty old, retired professors, all of whom are good friends of mine, who
come there almost every day for lunch and hang around two or three hours. And as I've
told people, it's worth sixty dollars a year to get--as a subsidy to the club in order to get
them out of the house and out from under their wives feet so they can--the wives can do
something else, you know. And some day I may be in that shape myself, but I doubt if
the club will survive that long. It demands a great deal of subsidy from the university in
various indirect ways. But, anyway, I continue to go there.
00:28:39
I am a somewhat private person. I don't like to eat in public places where it's noisy and
where I don't know people. I don't enjoy, particularly, being inundated by students and
townspeople, so, you know, I like to go there and eat. Now, the only exception to that is
that it's not really a very nice place to take guests. And I have a rather large acquaintance
internationally with social scientists and especially sociologists, I am very active in the
International Sociological Association. And when any of those people come through or
when people who are on committees that I'm on are here for one reason or another, I
always take them up to Blackhawk Country Club, which is really a beautiful place to eat.
And it's quiet and a lovely spot; food's better, and you're served and all that sort of thing,
whereas at the Union--or I mean at the Club--now, you know, you have to go through and
serve yourself, all that sort of thing. Well, anyway, our University Club is going the way
of all others. I don't know of a single one--. Well, I haven't been to the Quadrangle Club
for several years at Chicago or at the Harvard Faculty Club in several years, so I don't
know about those in the best of the private universities, but certainly the public
universities are becoming more like cafeterias. So anyway, those have been the main
mechanisms, other than serving on committees, by which I've known faculty. We don't
have a very active social life with the faculty like some people do. You know, maybe we
give three or four dinners a year at most that faculty people are involved in, unlike some
people, who are on a circuit. The family we know best is Bry Kearl's. If you want to
have them for dinner or anything of that sort, you have to--on Friday, Saturday, or
Sunday nights--you have got to call them a month at least in advance because they're
booked solidly, you know. And there are people who are much more active in that sort of
thing than we are. That is mainly my fault. When I go, I always enjoy it, but I'd just
rather read and do other things with Liz than I would to go to things like that. She, on the
other hand, is quite a social animal, and she would enjoy more of it. In fact, early on-well, not early on--somewhere in the mid-part of our family life, when the children--after
she got through the stages of being Dane County PTA chairman, and Girl Scout
chairman, and doing all those things you had to do with children as they went through the
school system, when she was very active, she all of a sudden found she didn't have much
to do. She always did do volunteer social work at the Red Cross. She's a trained social
worker. But that was one day or a day and a half a week. And so she just kind of
decided that she'd just have to develop a social life of her own, and interests of her own,
so she's been active in a great many things in order to meet more people and be with
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people more because of my kind of reticence about such things. As I say, she always
says, you always enjoy yourself when you go, but you never seem to want to do it. And
she also complains that I tend to make my immediate colleagues my friends. But
anyway, the result of all that is that I don't know the number of people in the faculty that
many people would know who have been here as long as I have.
LS:
Well, also, as you say, your are away a good deal, I think, so--
WS:
Yes. Well, always, you know, always I've set my sights on more distant goals. I don't
know for what reason, probably how I was reared, at least that's what we social
psychologists would say. I've always been very, very achievement oriented and need
national recognition, international recognition rather than local and cosmopolitan kind of
recognition. And I suppose that's why I'm so active on so many, and have been over the
years on so many national committees, and government advisory committees, and the
Social Science Research Council, and the American Academy and National Academy
committees, things of that sort, is probably that--is probably answered by the fact that
those are my significant others, not that my colleagues aren't, too. But the local
community and the faculty in general are certainly not my reference group. So anyway,
that may help to account for why I am gone a lot and why I serve on so many of those
kinds of things; I don't know.
00:34:18
Well, are there any things we need to talk about? I guess it's almost time to quit today.
LS:
Did you have anything on your--?
WS:
Well, we never did talk on tape. You were going to ask me some questions about my
career, I guess. You were going to ask about teaching. Well, I've always considered
teaching kind of a minor part of my career.
LS:
Do you want to talk about that now?
WS:
I'd just as soon say it, sure, for a couple minutes.
LS:
There is a whole section that we haven't done yet, which you talked about earlier, how
you got into the business of sociology and teaching. Maybe this would be a good time to
talk about teaching since--
WS:
Well, all I was going to say is I really have always felt that writing and scholarly work
were the really important part of my own career. I used to enjoy undergraduate teaching
when I was young. In fact, I went into academic work because I wanted to be a
university teacher. And I think during the earliest years, especially when I was a TA, I
was just terribly enthusiastic about it. In fact, I was so good at it that they made me an
instructor instead of a TA at Minnesota at the end of the first year. And I actually
handled courses up through about the intermediate level on my own, lecturing to groups
of three hundred and so on. And I really enjoyed all that. And I enjoyed the feedback
from it. Over the years, that's lessened more and more. The one part of it that I've really
enjoyed is the teaching of graduate students and especially the informal teaching of
graduate students, that is, the Ph.D.'s and master's theses direction, and that kind of thing
I've really enjoyed. But I guess the undergraduate teaching has been less and less of a
source of great satisfaction to me over the years. And in recent years it's really been a
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burden to me in the sense that I don't really feel I understand them anymore, and I don't
really feel that I get over very well to them or that the way I do my course is particularly
appealing to them. I'm not sure it's not because it's so abstract, because I'm a simplifier,
you know. And in sociology that's an awful sin, to simplify things. The more
complicated and more muddy you can make it, the more they appreciate it. And with my
bent toward quantitative and model kind of building sorts of things, I tend to try to cut
through all of that and go look at what are the central issues and how can you somehow
or other study them and put them together into some kind of a model that will explain
something. And the kinds of kids who take undergraduate sociology just aren't hellishly
interested with that, in that kind of approach, I guess. And yet I can't--. I teach what I do
and what I'm interested in, you know, and that doesn't seem to interest students as much
as what I used to teach in the old days. I don't know what I taught in the old days, but I
was quite a popular teacher in the early years.
00:37:51
LS:
You have said that you feel that you make--you stick rather rigidly to an outline, and that
you don't just talk when you get there, that you feel that--
WS:
Oh, gosh, no. Oh, I always prepare. I'm probably over-prepared most of the time, you
know. So I'm not very available to questions that will divert me from what I want to get
said. I get a lot said in the course of a year. I can remember when I was an
undergraduate how disgusted I used to be at--I was a good note taker, and I'd end up in
some courses with ten pages of notes, you know. The kids who were good note takers in
my classes end up with a book's worth, you know, and if they don't get so bored that they
go to sleep in the process, but--so there's a lot of content, and I cover a lot of literature,
and I cut through it, and evaluate it, and just take the main points, that kind of teaching.
Now that appeals to kids who want to be professional sociologists, if they already know
that's what they want to do. But that's not many of the kids that we get, even at the junior
and senior level in classes. So anyway, I guess the other reason probably why I don't
enjoy teaching so much is that it takes time that I kind of resent giving to it. I'd rather be
doing something else than preparing, and correcting, and reading term papers, and so on.
LS:
You did say that your undergraduate students have since become outstanding
sociologists, so you thought perhaps your methods paid off.
WS:
Oh, yes. Two of the most famous sociologists in the world are my undergraduate
students, but that was in those early days.
LS:
Oh, I see.
WS:
One of those guys is sixty-two years old and the other's fifty-seven, you see, so they were
students in my very early days.
LS:
Then it's true about your record more recently?
WS:
No, I don't think I've inspired many people to become sociologists through my
undergraduate teaching although I'm always amazed that somebody will walk up to me in
a meeting someplace and introduce himself or herself and say, well, I went into sociology
because I took such and such a course with you as an undergraduate, something of that
sort. But that's out of thousands of people, you know. That's a handful. But no, so
undergraduate teaching, I'm not all that enthusiastic about anymore. I've been trying to
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make up my mind whether to continue teaching my Personality and Social Structure
course in the next two--my last two--years of teaching, or whether to just give two
seminars and call it quits. If I could get somebody in social psych to take it over, that's
what I'd do. I'm trying to get someone.
LS:
Does it benefit your own work to do undergraduate teaching?
WS:
No, not a bit. Not a bit. It really doesn't.
LS:
That's a pity.
00:40:42
WS:
It might have a long time ago, but it doesn't any more. Graduate teaching does because
that forces me to read lots of technical articles, and to keep up on the latest
methodologies, and so on. And I find that does help. And then you discuss problems.
You share the research problems you're currently working on. For example, yesterday
was a near disaster in my undergraduate class because we were talking about social class
in various aspects of personality. And I've probably done more than anybody else in the
world on the relationship of social class to aspirations and achievements, which are an
aspect of personality. And I developed all these models that are used all over the world
in that kind of research and have pioneered in different approaches to it. Well, I decided
yesterday, for some foolish reason, to try to--well, somebody had asked me something
about one of the simpler models the previous day--so I decided, well, I'll go and tell them
about that study which started eighteen or nineteen years ago and is a longitudinal study
of a huge sample of people and how the ideas moved from just cross tabulations-relatively simple presentation--to these complex mathematical models. And, boy, by the
time I was half through, half the class was asleep, and I'm sure that not more than two
honors students and one graduate student in there understood what I was talking about for
the last half an hour, you know. And I tried to make it just as simple as I could. And
that's one of the things that fascinates me--and maybe that's kind of egocentric, but
especially in those areas where I've done a lot of work--is how the ideas developed, how
a research question arises, and how people then--not just me but other people--attempt to
bring a more satisfactory answer to that question and its ramifications, and how that leads
to certain kinds of approaches that are erroneous but stimulating to others to correct the
erroneous aspects and go on. And that just fascinates me. It's kind of the--kind of the
sociology of knowledge or the development--in the old days, you'd have called it
intellectual history, I suppose. But in any event--or the history of ideas. And I think of a
couple of things: I think one thing is that it bothers the students because they think you're
going on an ego trip, especially if you've been much involved in the research. And it also
bothers them because they don't really care all that much about the development of these
ideas, and they may not even thinking ideas are all that important, you see. And they
don't want all the tedium of why it was a mistake to study social class using the socioeconomic prestige or prestige-of-occupation scale rather than to look individually at the
components or something like that. Graduate students may be fascinated with that but
not undergraduates.
00:44:03
LS:
Now these are undergraduate majors, are they?
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WS:
Oh, yes. Most of them are majors in social psychology. And some of them are very
smart, you know, but still that sort of thing apparently is kind of tedious or the way I do it
is tedious. I don't know. But it never seems to send them. Now when I was an
undergraduate student, I remember my greatest fascination was with a genetics professor
that I had. And we all used to say that he was a great, world famous geneticist. And like
those mathematicians and various people we thought were famous and got away from the
campus and found out nobody had ever heard of them, I thought the same would be true
of this man. But it wasn't. He was a world famous geneticist. And he just died recently,
a long time member of the National Academy and so on, but he would start off with how
he got interested in a particular genetic problem, and the experiments that he did to test
his hypotheses, and how when he would reject one hypothesis that would lead to a
branching whereby he'd start on another train of research. And I used to find that the
most fascinating stuff in the world. But the general run of even good students are not that
interested in what they consider to be the detail. And so anyway, I don't know what it is
but for some reason or other my teaching has not been a highly satisfactory thing to me. I
think it's kind of--
LS:
Excepting the graduate students.
WS:
Excepting the graduate students. And I could do without them.
00:45:46
End of Tape 7, Side 1
Tape 7, Side 2
00:46:39
WS:
(garbled because of tape speed)--and have a small group of people working on research.
They've always been the fun ones anyway, the ones that were kind of apprentices. And
then the other thing I've tried very, very hard to do in the teaching of graduate students is
not to produce any disciples, to just force them to think differently, to argue, to try to get
them to take different tacks than I do. And I've had a number of them that have wanted
to stay on, and I've had a number stay on as post-doctorals, but not more than two years.
Then they have got to get out and get on their own because--. And I've always-whenever I've done work with graduate students, I always included them, their names, on
the publications. If you'll notice, most of my books and monographs and articles are coauthored. But you know, there were some of them that had to get away from here ten
years before anybody ever thought of them as independent scholars because they had
several articles or things with me, you see. So anyway, I've never tried to create disciples
but always kind of independent types. And for the most part I've been fairly successful
with that, I guess. So my relationship with graduate students has always been a collegial
one. My relationships with undergraduates has always been a distant one. In other
words, with a small group of graduate students, I can become quite intimate. They have a
hard time calling me by my first name, but most of them do after a while. And in the old
days they'd say they couldn't wait until they got their Ph.D., so they could call me by my
first name. But nowadays they'll call me by my first name, and we have very close, very
collegial kinds of relationships.
00:48:39
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LS:
Now, I want to ask you, and it fits in so nicely here, did any of your graduate students,
were they active in the TA strike? Or were they TAs, and did this create a rift between
you?
WS:
Well, this department housed a number of people who were very active in the TAA.
LS:
Yes. Well, I mean you personally.
WS:
Well, I don't--. Do you mean my major advisees?
LS:
Your own graduate students.
WS:
Evan Stark, for example, took a course and a seminar with me--
LS:
People that you'd call your graduate students, who might have been TAs, did their--
WS:
Oh, people who were my graduate students weren't TAs.
LS:
They weren't.
WS:
They were RAs.
LS:
They were always RAs. So you weren't personally involved in--
WS:
But I knew many of them who were involved because they'd been in my seminars and
took my course.
LS:
Did it create any friction?
WS:
No, not at all. They knew where I stood on the TA matter, and they accepted--
LS:
And where did you stand on it?
WS:
Oh, I was opposed to the TAs from the beginning. I did everything I could to prevent the
successful organization of the TAA and was very effective in it during my period as
chancellor. And I still feel the same way about the TAs. I wouldn't mind the TAs
organizing for economic purposes, but I don't want them organizing as a political force in
the university. And, too, I don't want them to organize to take over the functions of the
faculty. That's been my main--
LS:
Now, did people who were fond of you as a professor, did they challenge you on this
particular issue?
WS:
Oh, they'd argue with me a little. But they knew it wouldn't make much difference. By
then I didn't have much to say about what was going on around here, so they weren't
worried about me. They used to be quite critical of me when I was chancellor because
they said I didn't meet with the TAA, and wouldn't bargain with them, and all that sort of
stuff, which I didn't. And Robben Fleming was more encouraging of them and, of
course, Ed recognized them, which I always thought was a great mistake. But if you
think of their political careers, their academic careers, both of them are labor negotiators.
And they can't afford to not, at least, go along and talk to them, and bargain with them,
and deal with them, whereas I had no such professional identity whatever. I was a
defender of the faith for the faculty and for the faculty prerogatives and made that very
clear to them. And so I was always opposed to the TAs. In fact, I thought we ought to do
everything we could to get rid of them and to replace them with assistant professors, and
announced various plans by which we could do that.
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00:51:42
This department was one of the first departments to quit the use of TAs. The only place
we've had TAs is as lab assistants in our statistics courses for years. Yet when I came
here it was the main source of subsidy of our graduate students. Well, what happened
was--I think I had a good deal to do with it--when I became chairman of the department, I
was the only person in this whole department that had an outside grant. And I soon
taught the other people how to get them, and by the time I left the chairmanship of the
department, we were getting over a million dollars, you know, in outside funds. And I
think at least two-thirds of the faculty bought off part of their time and hired research
assistants. Then about that time, after I left the chairmanship, these various training
programs started being subsidized by NIH, and by NSF, and other--NIE--or not NIE. In
those days, it was the Office of Education. And so we developed those kinds of training
grants. We had more than any other university in America of them. It is the biggest
department in America, anyway, but we had six of them at one time. And that must have
subsidized at least a hundred students. Then we had all these research projects, and so we
had a little handful of six, eight, nine TAs--whereas we used to have sixty or seventy
TAs--who helped in statistics courses, and that was the end of it. So anyway, that's still
true in this department. It may change some day, I suppose, as these sources of funds
become less available, especially the training funds are about all gone. There are two
programs still remaining, I think. So that may change, but of course at the same time
we've been cutting down on the number of graduate students anyway because of the
market.
00:53:45
But in any event I thought that the TAs, in general, demonstrated during the times of
trouble and the whole Vietnam protest, many of them demonstrated their unwillingness to
do what they were hired for anyway. The best example of that was English TAs who
would not teach rhetoric or composition but were perfectly willing to talk about all sorts
of political problems, and problems of the society, and things of that sort. And I felt that
if you got assistant professors you could at least insist that they teach the course they
were supposed to teach although you wouldn't go into the classroom and monitor them,
by any means, your--their profession is at stake and promotion is at stake, so I favored
full time faculty teaching introductory courses. I still do. I think it's better. I really think
that--in my undergraduate days, the only TAs there were were in chemistry and zoology
lab courses. All other courses, from freshman upward, were taught by faculty. Many of
them--for example, English composition was taught by little old ladies with master's
degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan and they taught
fifteen hours a week, and really taught composition. Made you write at least one paper a
week, corrected it, called you in and told you how to spell and how to punctuate and did
all the things that were necessary to teach composition and rhetoric to students. And I
thought they did it much better than TAs do it. They also taught all the beginning
language courses, and I'm not at all sure that wouldn't be a better system today, excepting
that it cuts down on the subsidy of graduate students. But when we need fewer graduate
students anyway, maybe that would be all right.
00:55:58
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[Break in tape]
00:56:20
LS:
You have written in your autobiography briefly, which will be in the files, about how you
got into sociology. But is there anything you'd like to add to the bare facts that you were
in pharmacy and you had a course in your senior year in sociology--
WS:
No, I was never in pharmacy in college. No, I was in premed in college. But I wasn't in
pharmacy ever. In fact, I had--
LS:
How did I get that notion?
WS:
My father ran a drug store and was a pharmacist--
LS:
Oh, I see. Oh, you got a 95 in a pharmacy test.
WS:
--and I was an apprentice. I was an apprentice pharmacist under the old laws and used to
study under my father. And I never had any intention of being a pharmacist, but--
LS:
But you did qualify--
WS:
I was in college. Yes, I was in college and was in premedicine. And so I had taken a
good deal of chemistry, and zoology, and all the required stuff. But I got that all out of
the way during my--somewhere in junior year. So I was taking various other courses-sociology, psychology, things of that sort--and I got quite interested in sociology at that
time--
LS:
What you said that I have is that you had been accepted at Michigan med school but
decided to stay with your father for awhile--
WS:
Yes.
LS:
--and you took the pharmacy test--
WS:
Yes, I took the state boards.
LS:
--and you got 95 on it.
WS:
I just took it out of boredom.
LS:
So you were a registered pharmacist?
WS:
Oh, yes. I just took it out of boredom. My mother had died very suddenly, and I had
finished anyway in the middle of the year. So I stayed home, and to have something to
do I studied for the state pharmacy boards, and took them, and I was the only person in
some years, I guess, that had ever taken them without going to pharmacy school. But I
did pass with one of the highest averages, much to the embarrassment of the state board
of pharmacy and the pharmacy schools, I guess. But I--the interesting thing was that
while I had probably filled thousands of prescriptions under the supervision of my father
before I became a registered pharmacist, I don't know if I ever did after that because I
went off to graduate school and never worked as a pharmacist after that date although I
still have a lifetime certificate as a pharmacist in the state of Michigan.
00:58:58
LS:
Well, I think I would like to have you move on, then, to when you came here until-126
Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, I did some things before I came here, of course, because I came here as a full
professor. I already had my Ph.D. and had gone from assistant to full professor at
Oklahoma State University and then had been in the navy during the war as a lieutenant
in the navy. So that by the time I came here, I was a well established sociologist.
LS:
And I think there is quite a bit about that in this autobiography of yours.
WS:
It's really not an autobiography. It's just a brief, ten-page statement.
LS:
Autobiographical statement, yes. But you came here in 1946.
WS:
Yes, right after I got out of the service. It was in April or March, I think, of 1946. I
stayed here only two months, I would guess. My family was still in Washington D.C.
And then I went back to Washington to finish the strategic bombing survey. I was
research leader of the branch of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey that studied the
effects of bombing on civilian morale in Japan. I had been in Japan; I got there within a
week of the signing of the surrender and was there to work on the bombing survey.
LS:
Now is that written up somewhere?
WS:
Oh, yes. It's a book listed with the U.S. government; I guess it's in there somewhere
[indicating his file]. I'm sure it is, I never forget to put anything in there. It was kind of
an interesting survey because essentially we found that the Japanese were ready to
surrender from strategic bombing and had made two attempts, once with the Russians and
once with the Swiss, to surrender before the dropping of any atomic bomb. And I think,
for that reason, it was suppressed. I know that by the time I got--I really wrote the main
part--the effects of bombing part of the report. And it was published in the U.S.
Government Printing Office. And within a week or two of its publication I wrote for a
copy, and they said they were out of print. So I can't help but feel that it was suppressed.
The air force was very upset, of course, with the findings and so were various others. In
fact, our findings were, essentially, that bombing was not a way to break civilian morale,
that it seemed to increase the will of the country to fight, and that lesson had already been
learned in England, in Germany, again in Japan, and they still continued with that right
into the war in Vietnam, of course, with exactly the same results. But in any event it was
unavailable. Then the overall director of the whole survey, that is, all aspects of
bombing--I've forgotten his name, now, and he's president of one of the big insurance
companies--I wrote to him, and he sent me a copy. So I have it somewhere, and it's in
our library. I found it in the library. But very, very few copies ever got out, and
somebody made great hay out of it several years after the report was published with a
book and articles about the fact that there was no need to drop the bomb in the first place.
But we had found that out long, long before. So anyway, I came here in April, and the
report wasn't quite finished. Then I went back to Washington. I was out of the navy, of
course, but I went back as a civilian and helped finish the report. Then I came back with
my family, I think, about June--something like that--and have been here ever since. So I
came here. The agreement to come here was made during the war without any idea when
the war would be over and when I would be coming. The negotiations for salary,
everything else were made then.
LS:
Who was it who invited you here?
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WS:
Well, I was invited by the chairmen of the two departments, rural sociology--the
chairman was John H. Kolb, a very famous, world famous rural sociologist, who started
rural sociology here. It's always been the main center in the world for rural sociology.
And by Tom McCormick, who was chairman of sociology. And I made the negotiations,
actually--I was in Washington. This was before the bombing survey--oh, maybe a year
before, and Mr. Fred was in Washington running the bacteriological warfare program for
the national academy. So he invited me to come over to his office and talk to him
because he thought that people hadn't interviewed me and in those days he saw all the
candidates, especially anybody who was coming with tenure. And it was a strange
interview. We never talked one word about anything I'd ever done, anything I wanted to
do when I got here, or anything else. He just talked about hybrid seed corn or whatever
was on his mind, as he always did I learned later. But somehow or other I guess he was
impressed with my ability to listen, I don't know what else, because he wrote back, Mr.
Kolb told me, very enthusiastic letters and to go ahead with the appointment. But he was
an enigma.
01:05:58
So I came, then, and then about a year or so later, I guess maybe a couple of years later,
Mr. Kolb decided to step down as chairman. He had been chairman of rural sociology, I
suppose, for thirty years, its only chairman. And I was elected, much to my surprise, as
the chairman, because there were two or three older people who had been expecting it.
And I didn't want to serve as chairman and went to the dean and told him so. And I had
suspected that the dean probably was making me chairman because he wanted to work
with me, but he got out the ballots and showed me that I had won the election and was the
choice of the department, so I decided to do it. And I don't remember, really, how long I
was chairman, three or four years. I was bored with it by the end. I got in two or three
new people right away and made a lot of changes in the department in the direction that I
thought it should go. And as I've always been in administrative jobs, once I got the
things I wanted done, I found the routine things rather dull and boring. And so I decided
it was time to get out of it. But by that time I had become, I suppose, one of the leaders
of the new group of social scientists who had come onto the campus right after the war.
There was quite a number of them: Willard Hurst and Jake Beuscher in the Law School,
both of whom became among the two or three most prominent scholars. A whole series
of people in various departments. Fred Harrington came in history, and Dave Fellman,
and, among the very young people, Leon Epstein in political science. Ray Penn in
agricultural economics. I immediately brought in Gene Wilkening in sociology. You
could go through the campus and practically every social science department had brought
in two or three people that they had stockpiled against the days when the war--they'd
made arrangements with--to come here against the days when the war would be over.
And of course in 1946 I don't suppose there were more than twelve or thirteen thousand
students in the university, and the faculty was correspondingly smaller. The University
Club was still fairly active in those days, and so you--most of those people ate their lunch
at the club. And within a year's time I knew all of them and got to know some of the
older members of the faculty as well. And I was amazed at how this university, with its
great, historic reputation as the first university in America to really become very strong in
the social sciences--at least, other than the University of Chicago, which is a special case
and a private university, but certainly, among public universities, it was one of the first to
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become strong in the social sciences and to find how really underdeveloped the social
sciences were here. What had happened, essentially, was that Richard T. Ely had been
brought here sometime at the turn of the century, and he was a great promoter. He
brought in John R. Commons, Paxson, history, Hicks, history, Frederick Jackson Turner,
E. A. Ross in sociology, Kolb in rural sociology, H. C. Taylor in agricultural economics,
all of whom were to become great figures in the social sciences--Ogg in political science.
And those people, then, built the place up very rapidly and built its reputation, especially
some of them like John R.Commons, who really founded institutional economics in
America in this university. So there was this image of the past and all of those people, by
the time I got here, were long since retired, and their places had been taken primarily by
their disciples, some of whom were quite outstanding scholars but were not destined to be
the great figures in social science that the originators were.
01:11:03
LS:
So this would have been in the period of the--well, Commons was here in the thirties and
early forties--
WS:
Well, their great strength was the late twenties--
LS:
But I mean--the deterioration was--
WS:
--through the thirties, and the deterioration was well under way in the forties, I would say,
early forties. By the mid-forties, by the end of the war, their disciples were old men.
They were people like Groves, for example, in economics, and he was certainly one of
the most prominent. Witte was a very prominent person. But those people were nearing
retirement, you see, by the end of the war, so that the departments were all, by the end of
the war, were, I think without exception, all the social science departments--with the
possible exception of psychology, which had brought in some very good young people
just before the war, Harry Harlow, Grant, and Wolf Brogden, who all became quite
prominent people, and Harry became a superstar. And they were already here before the
war, those people, just fresh out of graduate school. Probably most of them about my
age, a little older. But they had come just before the war, whereas sociology and
economics, particularly, was in pretty bad shape, and economics always had been kind of
a leader of the social sciences in this university.
01:12:35
So one of the first things that some of the young people wanted to do was to get the social
sciences a little more strongly organized internally to get a stronger staff, get more people
involved in research, and this turned out to be terribly difficult because there weren't any
internal funds available--oh, piddling funds. I think the state legislature used to give a
hundred thousand dollars a year for faculty research, most of which went to the social and
biological sciences. But that's piddling money. Social science research costs a fair
amount to do because you have to go out and gather data, and that's an expensive process,
at least in the more--the less historical of the social sciences that would be true. So there
were, by then, the beginnings of government sources of funds, and of course the
agricultural--rural sociology and agricultural economics--had always had federal monies,
well not always, but ever since their origin because they went back to the experiment
station connections. That was one of the main reasons why I had worked in rural
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Sewell, William H (#101)
sociology was because that was the only place you could work and have research funds
and research time. Although I was also pretty much of a country type. I was born in a
little community of five hundred people, and my father was the druggist. And we moved
when I was about twelve, thirteen, so that we children could go to an approved high
school. And then we moved to a city of fifty thousand, where my father ran the most
rural drug store in the community, kind of a--. Well, it was a strange drug store because
it was highly professional, that is, no ice cream, cigars, or any of that sort of stuff. It was
really an old fashioned drug store, was what it was. And being an old fashioned
drugstore we had the quantities and amounts of chemicals and sorts of things that farmers
needed. So we really had a kind of a three-pronged attack on the pharmacy business,
which was kind of unique. We supplied the industrial firms with most of their research
chemicals and things of that sort, and we supplied farmers with their insecticides, and
various things for the cattle, and so on. And then we had a big prescription store. So
anyway, I don't know how I got off onto that excepting that my rural background.
LS:
Small town, yes.
WS:
So when I came here, I--well, I found it quite compatible to be in rural sociology. I did
most of my teaching over in Letters and Science, but I did my research there. But
anyhow, I had been quite a productive researcher and was already, I guess, quite well
known when I came here. I must have been thirty-five when I came, something like that,
and I'd had my Ph.D. for several years. But in any event, I kind of took a leadership role
in trying to move the administration into greater interest in providing funds and facilities
for social science research.
01:16:22
LS:
Now, was this through the Committee on Social Science Research?
WS:
Well, no. Before that.
LS:
Before that.
WS:
And the result of all that prodding of the deans and the vice president and president, Mr.
Baldwin and Mr. Fred, was, they set up this Committee on Social Science Research. The
committee originally consisted of Ralph Nafziger, who had just been brought here to
enliven--to rehabilitate and enliven the School of Journalism, which had been one of the
great centers of journalism and had gone downhill terribly. And from the University of
Minnesota. And he was a unique guy because he was a real researcher, and so he was put
on it. Burt Fisher, my colleague, who had just come here at my insistence, to be kind of
the all around social survey man for all departments. It was an interdepartmental
appointment. He was brought here from the Survey Research Center at Michigan, and he
was on the committee. Willard Hurst from the Law School, who by then was an eminent
legal historian. Harvard was trying to get him away with even a named professorship
even that long ago. And let's see, who else? Virgil Herrick, who died a few--well,
sometime in the fifties probably--who was about my age and a very prominent person,
who was brought in from the University of Chicago at a tenured level. And he did
research on education and curriculum. He was very good. Let's see, who else? There
was somebody else on the original committee [Unesta Harris.WS]. But anyway it was a
group of the younger people. Then, later on, various other--as those people got off the
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Sewell, William H (#101)
committee, other people came on. But the principal aim of the committee, I think in
Mr.Fred's mind, was that we should go out and get money. And the reason that he set up
the committee at all was that the Ford Foundation had left the university off from its first
sets of grants to some ten or eleven universities to--they made block grants of anywhere
from two hundred to four hundred thousand dollars for the strengthening and
development of social science research. And that--it was a great shock to the
administration to be left off because, even in those days, even with the decline of the
great earlier period of social sciences here, you still would have had to rank the
University of Wisconsin easily in the first ten in the social sciences in the country. And
here--I think they gave it to twelve different universities-LS:
Yes, that's what you had said before.
WS:
--and left us out. So that agitated Mr. Fred, Mr.Baldwin, and Dean Ingraham, and they
decided, well, we just had to do something. So they appointed this committee, asked me
to be chairman. And I think Mr. Fred's main idea was that the committee would get some
money out of the Ford Foundation. In fact, I had been in touch with the chairman of the
committee that granted the money, Don Marquis, who was then the chairman of the
Department of Psychology at Michigan, which was then and is now one of the two or
three greatest psychology departments in the world. And Don had told me, over the
phone, "Well, we left Wisconsin off intentionally, and we set aside a sum of money,
which Wisconsin will get when those bacteriologists and biologists at the University of
Wisconsin show they have some real interest in the social sciences." So I think Mr. Fred
thought that if we set up such a committee, that would show them we were interested, and
secondly, that such a committee would be useful anyway in tapping other foundations
and government sources. There were some government sources, by then, of funds. And
so he set up the committee.
01:20:41
As far as the Ford Foundation thing was concerned, what happened, essentially, was that
I got the president to invite Don Marquis here to talk about what the Ford Foundation's
interests were. But his principal purpose was to come and visit with the administration
itself to see if it was really in earnest about supporting the social sciences. And he made
me promise that he would have at least one hour alone to talk turkey to Mr. Fred, so I
made all those arrangements and got him here. And Mr. Fred was kind of reluctant when
I suggested all this to him, but I finally said, "That's a condition of his coming is that he
have an hour with you." I made that very clear, that I was to leave the room when Don
came, that Don didn't want anybody there. He just wanted to confront Fred. And to
make a long story short, Mr. Fred insisted that I stay. When I got up to go, he just
grabbed me by the arm and said, "No reason why you can't stay right here and talk. And
I said, "Well, but we had promised--I had promised Mr. Marquis that he could talk to you
alone." It was a summer day, as I recall, and the door was open. He called almost
everybody who walked by in to meet Mr. Marquis Childs, as he kept calling him instead
of Don Marquis. And as part of the interview, or the use of Marquis's time, we had
agreed that he was to talk to a representative selection of social science people, prominent
social science people. So I had scheduled the hour with--a little more than an hour--with
the president and then a meeting with other people in the conference room--with the
social science people. So by the time the hour was up, people started coming into the
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conference room, and Mr. Fred kept running out to find chairs for them, and Don
Marquis turned to me and said, "Look, I haven't gotten to talk a bit to him so far. What
am I going to do?" So I came up with the brilliant suggestion that he ignore what he was
going to say to the faculty and just say his prepared remarks to Mr. Fred. And that he'd
have to listen. But I guess that I overestimated Mr. Fred's feeling of obligation, because
people would keep coming in late. Don was talking and Mr. Fred would run out of the
room to get another chair. Finally, his secretary called him out of the room for a long
distance call. And he must have been on the long distance call for twenty or thirty
minutes, at least. Meanwhile, Don Marquis was talking. And finally he did come back
into the room reading a magazine, and the meeting ended. And Don Marquis, I took him
to the airport, and he said, "Well, it was a complete failure." And we never got a dime
out of the Ford Foundation. I did, however, go ahead and work with other foundations--I
saw it to be part of my role to keep prodding the administration and also to try to generate
some interdisciplinary kinds of studies because that was at the period right after the war
when there was great interest in interdisciplinary successes made during the war time—
01:24:45
LS:
Excuse me, but I just wonder if you want now to comment on Fred as a president, or--
WS:
Well, maybe we ought to save that for a minute and let me just finish--
LS:
Oh, excuse me. OK.
WS:
--the social science research committee. So anyway, I went on then to try to get the
faculty moving on things, and a number of things were done. Jack Gilchrist, and Bert
Brimm, and two or three other young social psychologists in psychology and social psych
were interested in doing some joint research. And we got money from the Air Force
Academy, which was one of those special post-war interdisciplinary research units that
was set up by the government. We got money from the Carnegie fund for a big study of
tax administration by Harold Groves. It turned out to be a very famous study, indeed.
We got funds for some--a good deal of research in education that Chet Harris and Virg
Herrick and various others worked on in mass communications research. I don't
remember how much the money was, but I would guess, in the two or three years, that it
might have--oh, and also a big study of a--a big, interdisciplinary study of settlement
patterns in the Venezuelan Andes that we negotiated between the Carnegie Foundation
and the Venezuelan government. I would guess that maybe in those three or four years,
however long it was, maybe it was two or three years that I was chairman, we might have
brought in a half million dollars or more, which in those days was a lot of dollars. And it
did get things kind of started. I had been asked how I wanted to carry out this task,
whether I wanted to be —
01:26:34
End of Tape 7, Side 2
Tape 8, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
And I had been asked if I wanted to be in the dean of the Graduate School's office or in
the dean of Letters and Science because everybody thought some kind of deaning title
would help it. But the only place I saw any sense in being with a title would be in the
Graduate School as one of the associate deans. There was already someone there, Wolf
132
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Brogden, for the social sciences. So that didn't seem a very good solution. And
moreover, Connie Elvehjem, who was dean then, said that if I came in I would have to
share in the deaning work--you know, advising graduate students and all that kind of
stuff, which I had no desire to do. So I decided to operate independently as a social
science faculty divisional committee kind of agent. But I must say that I did encounter
real difficulties. There was no outward resistance from any of the major people involved.
Mr. Fred was very crafty and noncommittal about everything. I never felt he had any
great interest, even understood what the social sciences were all about. One of the first
things the committee did was to advocate the use of internal funds and the extension of
the WARF monies to cover the social sciences. And that was met with deafening silence
by Mr. Fred. Mr. Baldwin wasn't all that opposed to it, but Connie Elvehjem just
absolutely couldn't accept the idea at all. In fact, that's a reason, I think, he didn't want
me in the Graduate School. But in any event, that was one of the things we were
interested in doing. We saw that such money for starting up projects and getting people
research leaves and so on would be a very important thing in the development of the
social sciences. And Mr. Fred--he never would come out and say he was against it. He
just resisted it, saying it violated the constitution of WARF, which it didn't, and various
other things.
00:02:31
So I guess after three years I felt that I had done just about all I cared to do, that it was
somebody else's turn to take it over. Meanwhile, Vernon Carstensen from history had
joined the committee, and Vernon said he would take it for a year or so and Vernon told
me then that his move would be to get Fred Harrington to do it. Fred was not on the
original committee but he would try to get Fred on the committee and get Fred to take
over, and that Fred knew how to maneuver these things and he would indeed be willing
to--he would make it one of his conditions that he be placed in the president's office
where he could have more direct contact with Mr. Fred as things came up. So he took it
under that agreement and within a year Vernon stepped down and Fred took over and
Fred moved right into the president's office. And Fred's style of administration was
always to take charge. So he started making commitments right and left and fighting for
the WARF money, which Mr. Fred successfully avoided, and finally Fred was made an
assistant to the president. I don't know when all these things occurred. Then when Mr.
Fred retired--finally, two or three years after reaching retirement age--there was really
quite an internal struggle for the presidency between Mr. Fred's obvious choice, Connie
Elvehjem, and Fred Harrington. I was surprised at how much strength built up behind
Fred Harrington--actually, as I understand it--you know, you only know these things by
rumor-- when the vote finally came down it was something like five to four. The regents
had nine members, and Fred got four and Connie got five--as I heard the story, at least it
was badly split, it might have been six and three. To get a unanimous vote for Connie
they had to agree to appoint Fred as his vice-president. Which I know Connie didn't want
at all, because he and Fred were very different kinds of people and he saw Fred as a great
threat to the WARF money and so on. So Fred then became vice-president and of course
at Connie's death was made president--and continued to extend the social sciences during
that period. And just to finish the story of the WARF fight, Fred, as soon as he got to be
president, got the social sciences and humanities included under the WARF grants to the
university. And I guess that was a bloody enough battle so that Fred never had much to
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do with WARF after that. He turned it over to the dean of the Graduate School, who was
then John Willard, and to Bob Bock when he succeeded Willard.
LS:
You mean the direction of the WARF--
WS:
The handling of WARF, yes.
LS:
--would finally accepted it.
WS:
Yes, it was pretty much pushed down their throat, I'm sure. But in any event, that's kind
of the story of the committee. The committee came to an end. I don't think Fred ever had
the committee meet once he got into the president's office as advisor.
LS:
He didn't need it.
WS:
He didn't need the committee anymore, and that was fine, because Fred was a great
promoter of the social sciences here and he did a number of things after that. He became
president--after he became vice-president he very greatly increased the strength of the
social sciences,
00:06:28
including a renewal of great support for sociology. During the time I was chairman of
this department we went from about nine members--tenured members--and that included
two tenured members in anthropology--to thirty-three, I think, in the five years that I was
chairman of the department. Of course it was a time of great expansion in the university,
but economics brought in various star young people during that period of time, and
history, and all the departments, really, brought in a great many very good people with
Fred being the person who greatly encouraged this.
LS:
I'd like you to make the point that you made in our preliminary talk. I think I asked you
if the university hadn't been overexpanded, and you said not at all--that the other
universities had started in the '50s, and the UW just sat back.
WS:
We had to really catch up. We had been living on the fat of our guts in the social
sciences for twenty years, to be honest about it. When I became chairman of the
sociology department I was the only member of the department with an outside grant. By
the time I got through being chairman some five years later about two-thirds of the
members--at least twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three--had outside grants that paid part of
their salaries. That took some pushing and some teaching of people how to get funds and
all that sort of thing. The same thing was going on in other departments under the
leadership, mainly, of those guys who came in about the time I did and who were in the
new--you know, were young and enthusiastic people outside of the tradition of writing
textbooks and into the tradition of doing research. So a great transformation really took
place in the social sciences. Our social sciences all went up in prestige in the ensuing
years. And actually the University of Wisconsin, if you look at the more recent reports
on the prestige of graduate departments and so on, all of them have gone up in the last
twenty years. Some of them, like sociology, have become really star departments in that
period of time. Economics has never gotten up that high, history has tended to go down
over the years because of its great importance in the early days as a major center of
American history. I'm sure the history department is much better than it was then
because it's very strong in European and many other fields of history that it wasn't in
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those days, but so have other departments gone up. So that history has remained in the
first ten. Probably sociology is the only one that would be in the first four or five.
[Actually ranked first in the American Council on Education report made shortly after
this interview.WS] But all the rest of them are like seventh-ranked in the country, or
eighth or something, none of them outside of the first ten. Actually, if you were to take
all the ratings into account you'd find that the biological sciences--as they've historically
been--are our best departments on the average, closely followed by the social sciences,
and a bit behind that would be the physical sciences, but a larger gap would be the
humanities. But none of them would, if you would just take the ratings and had to look at
them by any sort of an average, you'd find that maybe the humanities would get as low as
twelfth or thirteenth on the average and up through the social sciences--physical sciences
around eleventh or tenth and the social sciences around seventh, on the average, and the
biological sciences around second or third. So that they came back very strongly and
they're still very strong.
00:11:03
LS:
So you think Fred was a good president for the university.
WS:
Fred was a good president for the university. I don't really think it made an awful lot of
difference who was president at that time, the time of his presidency. It was a time of
great expansion in the student body all over the country. It was a time when the
government was making available monies--I don't think Mr. Fred took any leadership on
any of those things.
LS:
Wait. I'm saying Harrington.
WS:
Oh, Fred Harrington. I thought you meant E.B. Fred.
LS:
No, no.
WS:
I think Fred Harrington was probably the greatest modern president of the university,
easily. Fred had his faults, too, but they certainly were not lack of understanding of what
it took to make a university great. And it was certainly not lack of understanding how to
get money and hire people and to bring in prestigeful people. It didn't matter what field it
was in, he just happened to know a little more about social sciences. But he was just as
good in any other area. So Fred, E.B. Fred--
LS:
I don't think you thought he was a very good president.
WS:
No. E.B. Fred and Connie Elvehjem--both of them were very distinguished scientists and
great scholars, Connie especially. Connie was a truly great scholar. But anyway, they
kind of sat on top of the university. They were very good at things like knowing what a
faculty wanted. Both of them knew that. Both of them were very strong defenders of
freedom of the faculty to say what it wished and do research on what they wanted to do.
They were not great people to try to organize everybody to do a single thing. They
understood that the best faculty is the faculty that governs itself and they were great for
that, so they had kind of loose administrations. But neither of them was an energetic
person for going out and getting money or promoting anything. They just kind of sat
there and when the money came along, they took it. But that was especially true, I think,
of E.B. Fred.
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00:13:19
LS:
You said he was the most complex person you had ever known.
WS:
I guess that's true. He was the most hard to understand--I don't know if he was the most
complex. I never could figure out Mr. Fred, quite honestly, and I don't know anybody
who ever did. If you talk to people who've been around here a long time and who knew
Mr. Fred well, they tend to fall into two groups. One group would say he was the
craftiest person you ever saw and was a great and crafty president. And the other half
tends to say that he really didn't know what he was doing most of the time, he was just
the most blundering person they ever encountered. I think he was something in between.
I am sure he was a very crafty man.
LS:
What about--
WS:
I don't think that he ever had any philosophy of education but he--he had the sense, that
most great scientists have, of how important it is to have great scholars around. Not
ordinary ones. And how you have to leave people alone so they'll be great scholars. You
can't manage their research, you can't tell them what to do, you can't push them around at
all. He fully understood that. He was very good at it, and if somebody was threatening
to leave here or if one of the departments in the fields that he knew, in the biological and
physical sciences, showed any signs of weakness, he was quite active in finding money
for them and getting people in. Social sciences and humanities--he was useless at that
because he didn't understand them at all. He didn't know the difference between the great
scholars and the poor ones.
LS:
How much affect did Ira Baldwin and Mark Ingraham have on affairs of that time?
WS:
I think that both of them had a fair amount of influence. But I don't think either of them
ever felt that they understood what he was up to, either. They found him very difficult to
deal with. Both had considerable respect for him, but on the other hand I've talked with
Mr. Baldwin time and again about something that he had agreed to get Mr. Fred to do,
and then Mr. Fred would leave him with the impression he was going to do it, and then
not do it, and how disappointed Mr. Baldwin was. He told me one time, "I probably
know more about the workings of E.B. Fred's mind than anybody else, and I think I can't
do much better than I'd do by flipping pennies to decide what he was going to do," after
some twenty years of being his right-hand man. So he was never--and yet he had
admiration for him too. And I always felt that Mark Ingraham found him rather
enigmatic to deal with. But Mark, on the other hand, kind of took over the intellectual
leadership role in the university. I think Mark was by far the most respected
administrator in the university during all those years. In those days, of course, we didn't
have an elected council, but general faculty meetings. And Mark was certainly the most
influential person in those faculty meetings. The other deans, people from other schools,
all had great respect for Mark and for his intellectual integrity. As a result he kind of
informally became the intellectual leader of the university.
00:16:51
LS:
But he couldn't do much for the social sciences without--
WS:
He could have--he did a good deal. He went along with the suggestions, he was very
cooperative with me while I was in that role. While I was chairman he was very, very
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helpful. He understood the social sciences much better than Mr. Fred. And he was in a
position to do something because vacancies would come up and new monies were
forthcoming with increased enrollments, and so he was very helpful. But the helpfulness
had to come from somebody else telling him what was needed. Not that he was--I don't
mean to imply at all that he wasn't an alert and astute person, but he needed department
chairmen who could tell him what the department really needed to get ahead. Ed Young
was superb at that. Leon Epstein was excellent at it while he was chairman of political
science.
LS:
Oh. I thought you meant dean.
WS:
No, chairman of political science.
LS:
Oh, I see. Ed Young as chairman--
WS:
As chairman of economics.
LS:
I see.
WS:
He understood very thoroughly what economics needed--
LS:
--and he could--
WS:
--and he could go to Mark and say, "Look, we need to do the following things." I did the
same thing in sociology. I think that was less successfully done in psychology, but they
already had a pattern of eminence there that they didn't want to change--a fairly narrow,
experimental approach to the world which is still dominant in the department. But in any
event, Mark was willing to do what he could as dean, but he never did take on a role of
promoting the social sciences university-wide. I think he would have thought it improper
to do so, because he didn't like to get into the business of the education school, and the
Law School and the Ag College, all of whom were great hirers of social scientists. So
that the university, really, in those early days, needed somebody around here. Mark, after
all, was a mathematician. So you had the president of the university a bacteriologist, the
vice-president a bacteriologist, the dean of the Graduate School a biochemist and the
dean of Letters and Science was a mathematician. The dean of agriculture, until midway
in that period, was some kind of a biological scientist. Rudy Froker came as dean
eventually and he was a social scientist, but he was really kind of a marketing specialist-a rather narrow, narrow marketing--and a very able man--sort of a person, and he vaguely
understood what the social sciences were all about and was very helpful in agriculture in
strengthening them. But the dean of law, at least after I got here, was primarily a lawyer-you know, an attorney-type person rather than a social scientist and lawyer, which there
are very many now. And the dean of education was John Guy Fowlkes, who was an
administrative expert. So there wasn't much of a voice for the social sciences operating
in the university. Well, there's this to say about Mr. Fred--I return to Mr. Fred--I've
always felt he probably was cleverer than I ever gave him credit for being. He probably
knew more what he thought he was up to than I ever understood. But he certainly was
not a great, clever leader that some people, some of his devotees, have said that he was. I
would say that he was like many university presidents at that time. He just kind of sat
there and let the events move things ahead, and it was the right time. The government
was building buildings for him, government programs were pouring money into research
in universities toward the end of his career, and he just accepted that.
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00:21:27
So the only really strong president that we've ever had since I've been here was Fred
Harrington. And he definitely was a very strong, dynamic president who knew what he
wanted and was almost uninhibited in how he went about getting it, you know. So he did
a great deal for the university. I think probably more than anything else, Fred's style, his
tremendously aggressive administrative style, and the coming of the student movement
and, in general, the university's inability to cope with it--which I don't think the regents
ever understood. I know they used to ask me, "Why is it that Michigan State and
Minnesota, they're not having any trouble. What are those fellows doing up there that
you guys aren't doing?" Essentially it was that they didn't have any problems there.
They had never had the reputations of liberal universities. They didn't have many out-ofstate students, they didn't have many radical students or kids from liberal homes and
backgrounds. So they didn't have the problem to cope with and seemed to do much better
at it. But any place that had them--had such students--had real troubles. And we just had
them in greater proportion, and Berkeley had them in still greater proportion than we did.
So we didn't handle it as well here, but the regents never really understood that. But I
think eventually that, more than anything else, was Fred's undoing. Over those years,
Fred's relationships with the regents, the gap just got wider and wider. And finally they
asked him to resign. It's kind of a tragic thing because I think Fred, if he had continued to
have the support of the university regents, once the troubles were over would have still
been a great president.
LS:
They asked him to resign. I know that his announcement came very suddenly, and--
WS:
Well, that's what everybody who knows anything about it--I don't think there's any
question about it.
LS:
Did it happen the day they asked him, in the morning? Because I know--
WS:
I don't know.
LS:
--a group had gone to see him about the Cambodia affair and expected him to give a talk,
I think, and he announced to them that he was going to resign. This is what Mort
Rothstein told me.
WS:
I don't really know when--Fred was never--I don't know how Fred felt deep in his heart,
but he never openly opposed the war, I think maybe on grounds of conscience. He was,
after all, an American diplomatic historian and he might very well have believed, as did
some other very sincere people like George Bundy and various others, that that was the
course to follow. But he never came out and opposed the war at anytime that I know of
until it was over, as he might have, as Bob Fleming did and many other people--made
great heroes of themselves after the trouble was all over by saying that they had decided
that this was an evil and foul war and so on. But that's--
LS:
That's interesting. I didn't realize that he hadn't made a statement.
WS:
No, he never made any statement against the war. And as I say, neither did Bob Fleming
until it was popular--everybody was doing it by then, then he gave a ringing denunciation
of the war. That was probably about late '70 or something like that. But those of us who
were opposed to the war from the first, of course, were in constant trouble both with
students and with faculty and with administration and everybody else. But that had
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nothing to do with Fred's stand on the war--it had nothing to do with his resignation, I'm
sure. But the fact that the university had failed, in the sense of the regents, to control the
students--and coupled with that, Fred's very harsh administrative style in which he ran a
lot of things down the regents' throats.
00:26:00
LS:
And other people's throats.
WS:
And other people's throats. He had accumulated a lot of enemies. In fact, Fred had pretty
well lost the faculty by then, too. So he was in kind of a vulnerable position. But I had
no doubt that if Fred had been able to survive that he would've continued to be a great
president for the university in the sense of going out and getting the things the university
needs.
LS:
Even when the money supply was cut off.
WS:
Yes, but he was a powerful force in the Congress. Fred probably had more to do with
Congressional appropriations and legislation in favor of universities than any president in
the country. He was always down there. He was an impressive guy, he was big and he
was tough and he was forthright and he stated what he wanted very clearly and what he
thought the Congress ought to be doing and he bullied the Congress just like he did the
regents. The great tragedy in American higher education was that he wasn't made
president of the American Council on Education. Which was supposedly the major
spokesman for higher education in Washington. And Fred could have, in time of need-Roger Hines was named president--the former provost at Michigan--and later, of course,
the troubled chancellor of Berkeley was named president. And he's a very fine person
and a very knowledgeable man about universities and their needs. But he just doesn't
have that forceful, driving personality that was needed when you're in crisis that Fred
had. But Fred finished second in that race, too. He very much wanted that job and I
think he would have gotten it, again, if it hadn't been for the fact that he had made a lot of
enemies along the way in that group of people as well. He ran roughshod over people.
LS:
That's an important aspect. I mean, if you're going to make enemies you're not going to
get very far.
WS:
Yes. But on the other hand, you're not going to get very far unless you do make some
enemies, too, and stand up and push for things, and Fred knew that. He knew the risks,
I'm sure. LS: He made a few too many.
WS:
Well, the trouble is, you know, if you become a champion of something and you harass
the people who are going too slow and who are too compromising and embarrass them a
little by pointing that out to them publicly as Fred was not remiss to do, you incur some
negative votes along the line. And I'm sure Fred must have--Fred was, by nature, by
socialization, he's just a rough guy. He's the sort of person that steamrolls through things.
You make a career of steamrolling things for ten, fifteen years and you accumulate a lot
of enemies. Fred was never a very politic sort of person and I'm sure he had a lot of
enemies among the university presidents. Anyway, I guess that's enough on my
evaluation of the presidents. I still say Fred may have been the greatest president the
university ever had. He was certainly the greatest it's had in modern times.
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LS:
Would you want to comment on Ed Young, while he was chancellor, on his handling of
the problems he had--lack of money?
WS:
Well, I really shouldn't comment much on Ed because I--you know, I wouldn't have come
back here if I hadn't intended to stay out of every aspect of administration and policy in
the university. Ed and I are friends, never really close friends but really good friends.
Not intimates in our social life but certainly very close friends. Otherwise, Ed and I
worked very much together when he was chairman of economics along towards the end
of my reign as chairman of sociology.
00:30:24
LS:
How about his deanship?
WS:
As dean--that was an interesting thing too, because Fred had sent an emissary to ask if I
would accept the deanship if it was offered, and I said no. Then a couple of days later Ed
was named dean. So we have kind of gone along in a certain amount of tandem. Then
when Ed became dean--of course, it was still in the Santa Claus days, all kinds of money
to pass out. I think I remained chairman for a year or two after Ed became dean.
LS:
Let's stop here.
00:31:10
End of Tape 8, Side 1
Tape 8, Side 2 [Blank]
Tape 9, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
Ed always had a very different style from my style, which is kind of open and straight
forward, and make decisions, get it over with, and go on. Ed was always a more cautious
sort of a person in the sense of wanting to make sure that the situation was exactly right
for whatever he did. And very often that meant just sitting there until the decision became
almost inevitable from the flow of events. But with all that, Ed still was a chance-taker in
terms of money. He was willing to invest in faculty and all that sort of thing. And so he
continued to strengthen the social sciences. He was a very good dean in the sense that he
didn't take the position that, since he was a social scientist and since he had been
chairman of the economics department, that he knew more about how those departments
ought to develop than they did. He was very good about that, I thought. In fact, he used
to call me in every now and then to try out ideas on me, and he continued to do that after
he was chancellor, for that matter. But in general he was--I remember one or two times
he would say, "Well, look, those people over in economics want to do the following
things. And I really, you know, my sense is that I'd rather see them go in another
direction. What's your sense?" And I'd usually side with the department and say, "Well,
Ed, you know, you can't run the department from here."
00:01:38
And he'd say, "I'm trying very hard not to do that." And I think in general that was his
stance, not only about economics but all the other departments. He relied very heavily on
the judgment of the people he knew and trusted in the departments. That might not
necessarily be the chairmen. It might be that he'd call in somebody that he knew and
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whose judgment he respect and say, "Look, is this what the people really want to do in
the department? And why?" and that sort of thing.
LS:
Who were those people?
WS:
Oh, I don't know. I suppose Bob Lampman, particularly. And I think Dave Johnson,
probably, in economics. Me in sociology--
LS:
In political science?
WS:
Leon, probably. Everybody kind of stamped Leon as the leader and a solid guy in
political science rather early. He was a young chairman, you know, and a very successful
one. I don't know who all Ed counseled, but he did--and Ed is kind of a sort of person
who has friends that he relies on. He never says, "OK, I'll do what you say." You still go
away not having any idea what he's going to do. But it is an input into his decision. I
think Ed hates to make decisions. Some people kind of enjoy it. I always thought that
was what an administrator ought to do and you make the decision, you take the flack, but
you do what you think ought to be done. And you don't worry too much about who's
going to be mad about it and so on. And obviously I got in a lot more trouble than Ed did
just because of that.
LS:
Except for his decision about recognizing the TAA, which was a--
WS:
Well, he was captured by his profession there, I think. He couldn't afford as--he knew he
wasn't going to be chancellor forever, and he might want to--and he had his friends and
his supporters from the labor union movement, you know. They were probably the most
important factor in his becoming president--was support of the labor movement. So he
couldn't afford to--. And he probably feels, deep down, that--he comes out now against
unionization of faculty for some very good reasons, in my opinion. But I don't think if
Ed were ever confronted with a strong unionization movement in the faculty he could
afford to resist it, in terms of his historic commitment to the labor movement and the fact
that he's a labor dispute settler kind of guy. I don't think he could do it. He can do it
now, you know. He can speak out and say, "I don't believe in faculty unions for the
following reasons," when maybe not seven percent of the University of Wisconsin faculty
in Madison believes in it, either, you see. And that's his reference group. Maybe seven is
the wrong percent, but it's a very small percentage who are certainly in favor of it. So—
00:04:38
LS:
Well, that's what interests me, that that should be his reference group now but was not at
the TAA decision because, after all, the faculty was, to a man, pretty much not in favor of
recognizing the TAA. But his profession was more important to him than the faculty at
that point.
WS:
Oh, I think he recognized that it's going to come. What's the difference whether he
recognizes now or not. He has his good standing with the labor movement. He probably
can't forestall the unionization of the TAA for very long anyway, so what's the
difference?
LS:
I think you're right.
WS:
The other thing was that Ed was forced into this position by some stupid guy in the
legislature who was holding hearings on a bill to retroactively take away the tuition
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grants from TAAs. And that's what--. The TAAs, up until that time, didn't have twentyfive percent of the teaching assistants in the movement. And so all of a sudden he's got
them voting ninety-five percent to be in a union and join a union. So he's faced with a
reality that he has to cope with. And I don't think there was anything Ed could have done
at that time to prevent it, so he went along gracefully with it.
LS:
Anyway, go back to your--what you were saying about his being--the deanship.
WS:
Well, I think he was a very good dean of Letters and Science. I don't think it'd be hard to
be a good dean in those days when everything was going well, money was running out of
your ears, you know. But he was, nonetheless. He was a very good dean, I think. And it
was out of that deanship, of course, that he became fairly well known, and prominent-because he wasn't well known as a scholar at all--in administrative affairs. And Fred also
always sponsored Ed, and when the presidency of the University of Maine came up,
here's a Maine man, a native son, who's had good experience, and Fred pushed him for
the job. And he became president of the University of Maine. So he went there and was
there for a few years, had a great deal of trouble with the legislature, and that was no fault
of his, I don't think. It was just that it--Maine is one of those states that doesn't have the
funds, really, to have a--and isn't willing to support even a modestly good university.
And there were factions wanting branches of it all over in each city. And Ed was trying
to prevent that development, as I understand it. So he wasn't a really successful president
there. And it was--I think after four or five years, he wearied of the battle, and
meanwhile it became apparent that they were going to need another chancellor here, so
Fred brought him in and, as Burt Fisher always said, stockpiled him against the day when
I would be fired--by the regents; Fred probably never would have fired me. And made
him a vice president of the university. And then, when I resigned, he became chancellor.
00:07:52
LS:
Our time is getting short, and I would like you to comment, if you would, on what you
think are the most significant developments in the university over the past ten or seven
years, both good ones and bad ones.
WS:
Well, I don't know if it's a--yes, ten years would include it. I think the worst thing that
ever happened at the university was the student movement and its impact on the
university. Up until that time, the university had been in a very, very special position in
relation both--for a state university--both in relationship to the citizenry of the state and to
the legislature. And I think that the student movement, and the various disruptions and
violence that occurred on the campus, and the inability of the faculty and the
administration in the eyes of the people on the outside to cope with this, led to a great
loss of status and a great loss of support from the people of the state that we never have
recovered from. And I don't think we ever will. And I think that is part of the whole
problem of higher education in the United States, probably in many parts of the world.
We're never going to be accorded that very, very special sort of a status that universities
had. Private universities face the same problem with their alumni and their trustees and
the rich people of the community who supported them. Their credibility is just not
unquestioned any more. And I think places that had real trouble, like we did, I think we
were especially hurt by this. It was felt, although we managed to avoid it pretty well, that
there ought to be more of the hand of the governor and the legislature, and probably the
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governor's wishes ought to be more fully followed by the regents that he appoints and so
on, and that somebody on the outside has to help run these places. And also our great
vulnerability and the nature of our administrative systems and so on all became apparent
for the first time to the world outside of the university community. And they were rather
shocked by these things. I think of one thing that shocked people even more than the
behavior of the administrators, because some people could understand that, look, they're
faced with a--with what they saw on the TV as a raging mob of students, and obviously
they aren't very good at police work and all that sort of thing. I think people could
understand that although a lot of people didn't. But what they couldn't understand was
the faculty's behavior in these things, that the faculty would get up on the floor of the
faculty meetings and defend the students, and side with them on all sorts of issues that the
public thought they shouldn't side with them on, and so on. I think all of that and the fact
that the administration didn't have any direct control over faculty. The idea of the
average person in America, I'm convinced, is that a university is just a bigger high
school, you know, that treats somewhat older kids. And they see the president as the
superintendent of schools, and the chancellor as the principal, and they're responsible for
discipline, and all that sort of thing. Well, all of a sudden they found out that isn't so, and
it doesn't work that way, and that these institutions are slow to respond to changing
conditions, and all that hurt the universities. That's the biggest thing, and it's hurt this
university. Now we were fortunate. We had enough strength and enough people who
understood us in this state that, even in the times of dire disruption, there were some
people who went along with their support. And the legislature never really punished us,
excepting to hold legislative hearings, which I guess we never talked about, which I had
to appear in and various other people. But that was a way, really, of draining off the fire,
not of trying to pass legislation that would give greater control in the universities.
00:12:23
Second major thing I think that's happened that I find of importance in the last ten years
was merger. I think it was a great mistake. I think that what was really needed in the
state was some coordination of higher education but not a merging of the universities. I
think that every state needs a differentiated system of higher education. And that
differentiation means that, if it's to have any eminence and great respect in the field of
higher education, it's got to have one or more truly outstanding universities. And the
threat to that one or more outstanding universities is constant under merger. There is
always the desire to make all the places equal--in salary, you know, there's been a good
climb, an increase in the salaries of people in the various other parts of the university, the
old teachers college, the state college, the state universities, whatever we might have
called them. There's been a tendency to put more and more money into the salaries there.
There has been an attempt on the part of those schools to be more like the University of
Wisconsin in their programs. And I think, you know, the state of Wisconsin probably can
only support one such university. And it's a strain to support one such university. And
so, there has to be a constant battle to prevent that leveling. You could reduce the
University of Wisconsin to kind of a distinguished mediocrity in ten years if there weren't
this constant battle. So far, I think we've done very well. And I must say for Ed Young-he's been one of the important figures in that because he saw that it was necessary to not
dissipate these very special funds that we have here. He saw to it that mission statements
were written into the missions of each of these other universities that excluded real
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graduate training and research programs and so on. On the other hand, you know, you
have to constantly fight that battle because everybody wants to be like the great
university, you see. And the people of the state can make very forceful arguments:
"Well, why should my son or my daughter have to go off to Madison if he wants to study
Sanskrit? Why can't he do it at Stevens Point? We're part of the university, too. And
why shouldn't we have a veterinary school, or wherever else it is, at River Falls?" And
constantly that battle has to be fought. And I think that's a great problem. And I think it's
one that is a constant threat to the university. I think that we were fortunate in having as
our first president of the statewide university under the merger law a very weak person as
president, who was pretty much content to just play a ceremonial role up until retirement,
which gave the chancellors a chance to solidify their positions. It's interesting to me that
many of the chancellors are not anxious to have "Whitewater-like" universities. But what
they want to do is to become very strong regional institutions, and they want to have a
particular mission that seems to fit their area of the state. On the other hand, the pressure
of the alumni, and the pressure of the students, and the pressure of the populace in those
places is to go in the other direction. So that Ed was very important, I think, in that. It
was very important that the vice president for academic affairs, Smith, is a person who is
committed to the idea of one, great, central university, too. He came from the vice
presidency of academic affairs at Minnesota, where they were going through less of a
merger than here.
LS:
Smith?
WS:
Yes. Apparently, still the vice president for academic affairs. Ed insisted that he stay on.
LS:
So he's an important figure then.
WS:
Oh, yes. Because he has known that you had to preserve the great university, and so he
has done all that he could to do that--without, you know, being an open advocate. You
can't be in central administration and advocate only here. But he's been very good at
strengthening the other places, their faculties, without great sacrifice to Madison. And so
we've had, you know--we've been lucky to have two very strong vice presidents, Percy
and Smith, Percy for the business end of things, who really were out of a great university,
either Minnesota or here, who had all their prior administrative experience in Madison or
the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. And so they looked out for us a
great deal. And Ed, as chancellor and president, really looked out for us, too. So that that
has been the other thing.
00:18:19
I guess the only third thing that I would say is that it's just very recently universities have
fallen on such hard times because of the decline of the federal dollar for research and
inflation. You know, we're still getting more money out of the federal government than
we ever got in the past; every year it's more than in the past. But its purchasing power is
way down. And faculties have learned to live in a style of having research support from
the federal government. And that's getting harder and harder. Even the very best projects
are being cut back because of the--certainly the Nixon administration has not felt, in light
of future enrollment predictions, that we need to turn out more Ph.D.'s. And so they have
said, let's have a program in which we encourage the training of people who will do
things rather than research, who will be active and who will be technologists rather than
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Sewell, William H (#101)
research scholars. We've got enough of them. And to a certain extent the Carter
administration has followed that line or hasn't come up with any new line or anything.
But I think it very unlikely that the Congress is going to continue to support graduate
training in large measure, and that's what great universities have to have for their
intellectual survival and expansion. And I doubt very much if Carter, either, will go in
that direction. So we have to learn to live with declining graduate enrollments, with
declining--if not declining funds, declining purchasing power of funds, without new
programs with government support. And that's a hard adjustment for this university.
We're no different from anybody else excepting we depend more on that than some of the
others. That's a tough adjustment for the future, I think. So those are the problems that I
see, and I guess they're all problems there is not an awful lot you can do about, that any
administrator group can do about them. There are more clever ways to handle a declining
budget and, you know, there are cleverer and poorer ways. There are problems of
shifting of priorities and things of this sort as funding sources change. I think there is
great need for leadership in the Graduate School and chancellor's office, and the
president's office on these things. And I think, you know, we don't do too badly on them.
I think we've done better than most places. We are very fortunate, in my opinion, in the
dean of the Graduate School, whom I think is one of the really outstanding scholaradministrators in the university in all the time that I've been here. And he pretty much
handles the university policy in relation to research and research support and I think is as
on top of it as anybody that I know of. And with our new chancellor we'll have a real
activist and a very forceful administrator who's a fine scholar, too. So that I expect that
team will--I'm very confident about the future. I think Ed will be kind of a standby
president, that he will, you know, be very much governed by what the Madison campus
wants. So I think it's fortunate to have him in that position, and I hope that by the time
Ed ceases to be president and we go out and find another president, that by then the crisis
of merger will be over and the patterns will be well established although I think, you
know, we have to be constantly vigilant. It's easy for a great university to become a little
less great. One of the great tragedies of it is that prestige goes on but your quality goes
down until, finally, you may discover that your prestige has also slipped. But there's a
tendency, you know, to remember, if you're rating departments--for example Columbia
had two great superstars in sociology. The only department that did have two really,
really superstars, Bob Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. Well, Paul's been dead a couple of
years, and Bob has reached retirement, but I'm sure a lot of people will still rate
Columbia as number one or number two on the strength of Lazarsfeld and Merton, who
aren't there anymore. And there's nobody anywhere near their equals there anymore.
But, you know, the tradition goes on. But after a while you discover, as Minnesota did-Minnesota was always one of the top five departments in sociology due to just one or two
great reputations, especially F. Stuart Chapin, and it was ten years after Chapin was gone
and another chairman had come in who'd filled the place with mediocrities before the
world discovered it. And Minnesota went from about the fourth ranking department
under Chapin or the third ranking, depending on the time, to sixteenth or seventeenth-and ought to have been twenty-fifth--in fifteen years' time. And that can happen to
universities, too.
00:24:22
LS:
And that's the chairman, isn't it?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, it's often, it's administrative, what the chairman is able to get the rest of the
department to do, and it's what the administration can do, and what--
LS:
If only to pay for it.
WS:
Well, I think the administrations have to take an activist role in departments when they're
threatened with decline. They just have to move in and say, "Look, we won't have this
department go to pieces. If you people can't build it up, then we're going to bring
somebody in to do it.
LS:
Is that what Dave Cronon is doing with his investigation of departments?
WS:
I don't know. I don't know what Dave's doing, really. I've been on one of those
committees, but I think he's trying to see to it that they don't slip too badly or, if they are
slipping, that he has some forewarning and so he can take some steps. But I never really
discussed it with Dave, so I don't know. But I suspect that that's true. California has this
marvelous system in which they can declare a department bankrupt, you know, if it starts
going downhill and can't cure itself. And the budget committee of the university--which
is an elective, system-wide budget committee--can declare a department bankrupt,
appoint one of its members or somebody else chairman until it gets on its feet. And they
make the decisions. And they've done that, time and again, with departments--
LS:
I wonder if that's what--
WS:
We don't do it here--
LS:
They do that in one department here, but--
WS:
Minnesota obviously doesn't do it. Oh, it's been done here. It's been done several times.
It was done with economics under--Mark Ingraham served as chairman for a couple years
when economics was its lowest. The division, really, became the holders of the
bankruptcy proceedings for journalism. And the divisional committee went out and hired
Ralph Nafziger and brought him in here because the department couldn't, or the school
couldn't agree on anybody. So it's happened. But there's no formal procedure for it
happening. But it is one thing that university administrations have to do. I made myself
very unpopular at Minnesota when I gave my report on the status of sociology there.
And the vice president and the president--of course the president didn't really have
anything to do with it--but the vice president and the dean of Letters and Science said,
"Oh, it was a tragic mistake to ever appoint so-and-so chairman," and so on. And I said,
"Yes, it was, and it was a tragic mistake that the administration ever allowed things to go
downhill for fifteen years without making a single move to correct it." And they were
both deans and vice presidents during that period, you know, so they took it as quite an
insult. But it was true, you know. A good administrator doesn't allow things like that to
happen. And so I think we've got the kind of local administration now that--if we can
keep them in office, I think that we are in the strongest position we've been in years as far
as the campus is concerned. I think Dave is a very good but ultraconservative
economically kind of dean and that's probably what you need in tough times like this.
00:27:36
I think that Irv is a much more chance-taking sort of guy and a marvelous administrator,
runs a tight ship, which you need to run, as does Dave, in these kinds of times. And Bob
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Sewell, William H (#101)
Bock, as I've said, is just a marvelous administrator in the broadest sense of knowing
what the research needs of an academic community are. And I think if Irv can get a real
good academic vice chancellor, that we will be in by far the best shape we've been in all
the years I've been here, really.
LS:
That's a good note on which to end.
00:28:21
End of Tape 9, Side 1. End of Interview Session.
Second Interview Session (1983)
Tape 10, Side 1
[Note: John Jenkins (JJ), who was doing research for an update of the Curti-Carstensen history of
the UW, was present at this interview.]
00:00:00 Start of Interview
00:00:20
LS:
You've talked about your background, you've said something about your own work,
you've talked about the TA's, but you really didn't say much about the department in our
earlier interview, and what I'd like you to first talk about is Ross and what his actual
influence in the department was.
WS:
When Ross came here--I don't remember exactly when--but after his dismissal by Mrs.
Stanford for his various attacks on the Southern or Union Pacific Railroad, whichever it
was that Leland Stanford owned. I think he was out of work, and I think he went first to
the University of Nebraska for two or three years. Is that your memory of it too?
LS:
That's in the book about him, yes.
WS:
And then he was brought here by Richard T. Ely, who was then called Dean of Social
Sciences. I haven't gone back to look it up in Curti, but apparently he was brought here
as dean of social sciences and to build up the social sciences and to establish graduate
training in social sciences. One of the first moves he made was bring in E. A. Ross. He
also brought Frederick Jackson Turner, and, very early John R. Commons. He really
brought some of the people who made Wisconsin almost immediately famous in the
social sciences. In fact, I guess it would be more my liberal kind of interpretation of
history that the University of Wisconsin was the first American university to pay much
attention to the social sciences as such. For many years it was thought of as the
paramount university in the social sciences. It was particularly known for its radicalism
and its liberalism, as people then saw it. Mr. Ross himself was considered by people of
his time as a very liberal sort of a person. After all, he lost his job at Stanford for
criticizing Leland Stanford for having built up his fortune on coolie labor and preventing
the railroad from becoming unionized and so on. He was the darling of American labor
at that time. He also was one of the early presidents of the American Civil Liberties
Union, and I think that he was always enlisting in various kinds of liberal causes. He was
a Chautauqua-type speaker. In fact, I think he was on the Chautauqua circuit for some
time. Great orator, you know. So he was very popular and very well known by the
general public--not just locally, but all over the country. He was the big sociologist of his
time.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
00:03:55
LS:
Yes, that's clear from the biography of him.
WS:
He wrote some twenty-eight books, as I recall, only two of which ever had any impact on
the field. One of which was his book on social control, which indeed had a very great
impact. And even to this day, modern social control books almost follow the outline,
although not the content, of his early work. The other great book wasn't all that great, but
it was the first, and he was the first--he and McDougall, the famous instinct psychologist,
were the first people to write a book under the title of social psychology. And while
social psychology bears little resemblance to what either of them wrote, they were, you
know, the first ones. Ross's approach was fairly social, and McDougall's was entirely
based on inherited instincts, where everything you could think of--I think he had some
two hundred instincts that he talked about in the book. But in any event, they were, both
of them, great pioneers. I don't know if one knew what the other was doing, but the
books came out in exactly the same year, so I would suspect they didn't. So he's given
credit as being one of the originators of social psychology. All the rest, most all the rest-he wrote a couple of textbooks with other people-- they made him a good deal of money.
He even wrote high school textbooks. But his big-selling books, popular-selling books,
resulted from his travels. He would take a semester and a summer off from time to time
and he'd go to China, to the Soviet Union--which was, of course, only a few years after
the revolution then. He visited Latin America, all over the world, and then he would
write a book on his travels, kind of a sociological observation of his travels. Then he'd
come back and go on the lecture tour and give lectures on it to pay for his next round of
travels.
LS:
Is this while he's here?
WS:
Oh, yes, that's all while he was a professor here.
00:06:29
And he was an enormously popular public speaker. Big fees for those days.
LS:
Was he a good teacher, do you know?
WS:
Well, there aren't many people who took a course with him who still live, but I have two
quite contrasting views of Mr. Ross as a teacher. He apparently was a rather popular
introductory teacher, because he stood six feet six, which was a lot for a man in those
days. Not an ounce of fat on him, big broad-shouldered man, and he had a voice that--he
just bellowed like a bull, you know. He knew how to talk, and I understand from others
that his introductory sociology course, which was a very popular course, was largely
based upon these lectures that he gave as he went around the country and the course was
interesting to most students. One student who came here to study with Mr. Ross was
George Lundberg, and George Lundberg was a very famous person to the sociologists-probably did more than any single man to make popular highly empirical approaches to
the study of social behavior. He wrote, I think, probably the first book on research
methods and sociology some time around 1938, something along that period, maybe even
earlier than that, probably earlier, maybe even as early as 1930. George Lundberg,
himself was a colorful character. His parents were Swedish migrants to South Dakota,
and he never went to school beyond about the eighth grade, whatever the country schools
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Sewell, William H (#101)
taught in those days, because he had to stay home and help his parents on the farm. So he
studied for high school, took high school courses by correspondence. I'm not sure
whether this is true or not, or whether I've got him confused with somebody else, but I
believe it's true--he also kept studying, taking correspondence courses, and went to the
University of North Dakota, and worked off his bachelor's degree. Then he came here to
study sociology with the great giant, Ross.
LS:
In the '30s or in the '20s?
WS:
That would be in the '20s, yes, early '20s. Because George was at least fifteen years older
than I am, which would make him now, you know, almost a hundred. So anyway,
George told me this story: he came here to work with Ross, and he got here and Ross
assigned him to be a teaching assistant in his introductory course, and then gave a
seminar which he called "Social Theory" which George had to take as part of his graduate
studies. He said, here he'd go to hear Mr. Ross in the morning and Mr. Ross would give
these lectures which he said had very little content but were very entertaining. And then
he said twice a week he'd get the six people who were in the seminar in a room like this
around a table and he'd give the same lectures--never a question permitted or anything
else. And George, who was a very serious intellectual, said that he just decided at the end
of the semester that he was going elsewhere.
00:10:38
So he went to see Mr. Gillin, who was also a full professor but a junior to Mr. Ross--in
fact, had been Mr. Ross's student in a little rural school in Iowa at some time when Mr.
Ross, shortly after getting his degree, had started teaching school for a living. Mr. Gillin
was one of his students, and he encouraged him to go on to college and to become a
sociologist. So Gillin went off to Columbia and got a degree and immediately came and
spent his whole life here--and became a very famous criminologist. If it weren't for Mr.
Ross's priority of being one of the earliest of American sociologists, I'm sure Mr. Gillin
would outrank him for his substantial contributions. He was, in this country at least, the
father of criminology and penology, and wrote books that had a great impact--were on
poverty and dependency, on juvenile delinquency, on crime and punishment, on
penology, and had a great deal to do with the penal system of Wisconsin, which in its
early days was the model for other states. Now I got off on that, but what I was going to
say about it was, at least from the standpoint of one of the most able sociologist this
country's ever produced, Mr. Ross was a horrible teacher.
LS:
That is a damning statement.
WS:
Now on the other hand, there is a person here in this department by the name of Odin
Anderson who's younger than I am but who claims to have taken an introductory course
with Mr. Ross, and he thought he was quite an important figure--quite important, and a
good teacher. I have no doubt he was a good lecturer. He must have been very good.
Then there can be no doubt after--I took a course on social control when I was a student
at Michigan State as an undergraduate, in which we used Mr. Ross's book on social
control and it was a serious, carefully done sociological exposition of the theory of social
control and illustrated--and proper illustrative materials. It's the only book of his I ever
read that I ever thought had much sociological importance, but that did. So those two
people are the only people I ever talked to that took a course with Ross, excepting John
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Kolb, who was the original professor of rural sociology here. And Kolb had studied with
both Gillin and Ross and had great admiration for both of them, but he always said that
while Mr. Ross was certainly a great and wonderful figure, that he learned a great deal
more from Mr. Gillin than he did from Ross, but he did his dissertation under Gillin too.
So at least by his action, one would think he probably thought much more highly of Mr.
Gillin as a teacher than he did of Ross, but I can't say that. It could have been that the
reason he didn't do a dissertation with Ross was that Ross was so busy out lecturing and
running the American Civil Liberties Union that he didn't have time for anything else--I
don't know. Mr. Ross never produced, so far as I know, any notable students.
LS:
That's what the biography says.
WS:
I can't think of anybody. There's one possible exception to that: the long-time chairman
of the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska, Joyce Hertzler, probably
was a Ross Ph.D. And he was a very well-known man in his time. He's been dead for
fifteen, twenty years, but he was a very well-known scholar. I'm just not sure. I could
look it up and see under whom Hertzler got his degree. But there wasn't anybody else
that I know of that worked with Mr. Ross who ever had any real impact on the field.
LS:
It seems surprising that the department should have had such a reputation in the '20s and
'30s.
WS:
Well, Ross was a big figure. Even in the field of sociology proper he was much looked
up to. He was, I think, the third or fourth president of the American Sociological
Association. The first person to be president was Lester F. Ward, who was really the
founder of sociology in America. I think he was the only person ever to be--he's often
been said to be the American Aristotle. In fact, somebody who wrote a biography of
Ward called it The American Aristotle. That's the name of the book--Dorfman, I think, is
the author of it. And I'm not sure that Ross wasn't the next person to be named president.
He might even have been the second president. So he was much respected. At least
those two books just, you know, made him a big reputation.
00:16:24
Then later on he did another book that made him very popular and made him a big
reputation, but in the eyes of modern people it blackened his name. He wrote a book
called Standing Room Only. And Standing Room Only's main thesis was that if the
mongrel races and the inferior races like the blacks--but particularly he was worried
about the "yellow peril," as he called it--that if the Chinese and the Japanese kept
breeding like they were that they would populate the world and there wouldn't be any
room for good white Anglo-Saxons and they'd take over, and this was a very, very
popular idea at the time. And the kindest people, the people who were most kind to Ross,
termed him as a "nativist," rather than a racist as all the students now call him and the
younger people all call it. I've always had such a mixed sort of a view of him. In his
time everybody was a racist, I don't know who wasn't. Nobody. John R. Commons was
a racist, you know. Most people were taken in by the whole eugenics improvement
movement, and they thought that you ought to be breeding humans like you do animals,
and improving the species and all that. And Ross was no different from Spencer, and the
great European scholars all talked this way. I don't know of a single American scholar
who attacked him for this position until forty, fifty years later. But anyway, here's this
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man who was at one time seen as a great friend of the laboring classes, a great liberal
fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of thought. He appeared in legislature after
legislature during World War I and World War II to prevent the legislature--to try to
prevent them from making faculty sign oaths of allegiance to the country, all that sort of
thing. And in his day he was thought of as this great champion of liberalism. Now, in
the reevaluation, thirty years after his death, people are saying, you know, he was a
fascist, he was a racist. The best anybody says of him was that he was a nativist. That's a
nicer term, I guess, for people who believe that their own group is superior to all others.
Anyway, Mr. Ross was a complicated man. But on the other hand he was certainly very
well known. Now why he didn't attract students is another question, and I don't think the
young man who wrote that book says so.
00:19:41
LS:
You seemed to have answered that. I mean, if you say that he wasn't---
WS:
Well, he probably wasn't a great teacher, but lots of great Ph.D. professors aren't great
teachers, you know. My guess is that he was--
LS:
You're saying there wasn't content to his--
WS:
Well, there must have been some content to his mind. He couldn't have written some of
the books that he wrote, particularly.
LS:
You said he was an egomaniac. That's the term you used.
WS:
Yes, and he turned everybody away because all he'd talk about was himself. He didn't
give a cuss about anybody else or what they thought or anything else. I imagine he
ignored the students' opinions. His definition, at least by his action, of the proper role of
the professor was to be a public man, you see, and that's the way he behaved.
LS:
Glenn Frank must have liked him.
WS:
Well, Glenn Frank--I don't know whether he would have or not--
LS:
I mean because he was a public man himself.
WS:
Well then I think he might have seen him as a rival, I don't--because I know nothing
about that period and I know nothing about Mr. Ross when he was a younger man. But
there was a series of Ross-Ward letters, and anybody who wants to know Ross's character
and Ward's too, incidentally, should read them. They've been published in Social Forces
over, oh maybe, twenty years ago. It turns out that Mr. Ross was a nephew of Lester F.
Ward, and Ward was writing his Glimpses of Cosmos, his various sociology treatises.
Glimpses of Cosmos, by the way, was five volumes long--I've got it up there, yes, there it
is. I read it for a report in a graduate class, and it was the dullest stuff you ever heard.
But he was trying to encompass all of the world and all of the science of the world. He
himself was an eminent paleobotanist and head of the U.S. Geological Survey before he
turned sociologist. So he was probably fifty years old when he started being a sociologist
and writing these sociological things. But anyway, he was considerably older than E.A.
Ross and E.A. Ross was an uncle once or twice removed. I don't know what the details
were but they would write to each other and the letters are two egotists exchanging
letters: "Dear uncle so and so, I have just read the manuscript for your fourth volume of
Glimpses of Cosmos. You will forever be known as the world's greatest scholar," or
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something of that sort. Maybe that's where they got the "American Aristotle". Maybe he
said that, I don't remember. So there's one paragraph like that: "By the way, uncle, I am
now working on the third chapter of my social control book in which I...," and then he
goes on and on and on bragging about what he's done and said and what speeches he's
given. Then Mr. Ward would write back, "I think the work you're doing is excellent,"
and off he'd go again. It's fascinating.
00:23:19
But anyway, my guess is that he didn't attract students probably in part because he didn't
care about students. I think in part because his technique, his idea of scholarship was to
write books, not to teach students, and I think probably that he really wasn't--he didn't
give the time to them. I think the biography on him indicates that he really didn't have
much time for his colleagues, his students, anybody else. He certainly was concerned
with making money, and he made a lot of money. On the other hand, he wasn't an
entirely selfish man. I remember he told me this himself. He said that he had made a lot
of money from his lectures and from his textbooks, and by the time he was fifty-five
years old he had so much money he didn't know what to do with it. Of course he
invested it rather well. But in any event, he built a house for each of his children as they
got married. One for Ward Ross, who was head of WARF for so many years. One for
his son who was the dean of the Music School at the University--that was Lester Ross,
after Lester Ward. I think there were three or four sons, at least, and a daughter, and for
each of these he built a house. One of them is up in Shorewood now, right next door to
the old Ross home. Beautiful place. And then he said, "I didn't think it was good to give
it to them." So he said, "I said to them, 'You'll never have to pay me a penny for the
house. Just pay me the interest on what I've got in it." And then he said, "I lived so long
that they each paid for the house four times over." And he laughed to beat the band.
00:25:23
He was an interesting man, no doubt. When I first came they always used to put me next
to him at the A.K.D. [Alpha Kappa Delta] banquet and various kinds of things because
they figured I would talk to him and keep him going, because by then he was quite old.
And it was fun for a while, because he'd tell you all these stories about his travels, and
how many Chinese men it took to carry him over a mountain, and those chairs that they
used in those days, all that sort of stuff. But in any event, I said to my wife one night,
"We've got to sit next to Mr. Ross, and I'm not going to ask him a thing about himself.
Let's see if he makes any conversation."
Well, they put us at a table--head table--and
here were the speakers, and I was here and Mr. Ross was there. So he had nobody else,
you see, to communicate with but me. And so we exchanged greetings and a few things,
and finally I--after asking him a question or two, in which he went into great detail-telling his marvelous stories--I didn't ask him anything. Five minutes, he was sound
asleep. He slept through the whole dinner. But the amazing thing was that an
anthropologist from Northwestern, Mel Herzkovitz, who was a very well-known person,
was giving a talk on Africanisms, the carryover of African culture into American life,
which was supposedly not happening because they had scattered slaves in selling them so
that they didn't have a language to communicate in and any shared traditions and so on.
And he talked at least three-quarters of an hour, and then, as was their wont, they'd
always first call on Mr. Ross, "Professor Ross" as they called him. Tom McCormick was
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chairman at that time, and he turned and cleared his throat three or four times, and I
nudged old Ross and finally got him awake. And he said, "Now, Professor Ross, we
would like to have you lead off with a question. So make whatever comments you want."
He stood up and talked for about five minutes, and he went on to say various things
about Mel Herzkovitz's position, which he didn't necessarily agree with, but
congratulated him on his fine exposition. So I wondered how he'd done it, but I'm sure he
must have read something of Mel's at some time or other or heard him at various times
because Mel was well-known for this view that there were Africanisms carried over when
everybody else thought there weren't. So I'm sure he must have known that, and he just
spun his five minute's talk on that. But anyway, maybe that's enough about Mr. Ross.
But by time I got here, he was thoroughly retired, and had been for maybe ten years,
although Mr. Gillin had just retired a couple of years before. And both of them lived in
Shorewood.
00:28:46
End of Tape 10, Side 1.
Tape 10, Side 2
00:28:47
JJ:
Was he responsible for bringing in important people?
WS:
Oh yes. He brought in John Gillin. He was the first person he brought in. Then, after
Gillin, he brought Kimball Young. Kimball Young, certainly in his day, was the bestknown social psychologist in America. And many, many Ph.D.'s from here were Kimball
Young Ph.D.'s, either Ross or Kimball Young Ph.D.'s.
LS:
He's a psychologist, then?
WS:
A social psychologist.
LS:
Does that make him a sociologist or a psychologist?
WS:
Yes, yes, he was a sociologist. [Young first studied sociology at Chicago, then transferred
to Stanford for his Ph.D. WHS] He had studied psychology at Stanford and got his Ph.D.
there, but his interests were always in social psychology rather than animal psychology or
any other kind of psychology. In other words, what effect does social structure have on
man's behavior was how he defined it, and how many people still define social
psychology. So he brought Kimball Young here, and Kimball was here for most of his
productive career. During the war, he left.
LS:
Well, he left in '38, I think.
WS:
Yes.
LS:
And Wendell Bennett was another well known---
WS:
There were a whole mess of them. A much more important guy than Wendell Bennett
was brought in by Ross, must have been, and that was Ralph Linton, who was probably
America's most distinguished cultural anthropologist, social anthropologist ever. And
Ralph was here, brought in by Ross. Wendy Bennett came a lot later.
LS:
I just mentioned that because---
WS:
Did you know Wendell Bennett?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
LS:
No, just that they left, and it is spoken of as an exodus of valuable scholars. Because of
the temper of the times around here, was that it?
WS:
I doubt it. Oh, no. You mean that's why they left?
Who said it?
LS:
Another statement is that they couldn't hire good sociologists because of, I gather, the
conservatism shown by the state.
WS:
I can't believe that is true. Kimball Young left for one very good reason. And that was
that he had an affair--maybe it ought to be off the record, I don't know. Everybody seems
to know it.
LS:
Oh, no, don't put it off the record. The record's dull enough.
WS:
O.K. Well, I'm only basing this on what I've been told, but Mr. John Kolb told me, so it
must have been so. Because John Kolb was here at the time and thought the world of
Kimball. Kimball got involved with and finally married one of Dr. Jackson's wives. Now
I don't know enough about the Jackson family to know who, but the Jacksons were very
prominent people. And somewhere along in those days, must have been in the '30s,
Kimball Young became involved with her, and she opted to divorce Jackson and marry
Kimball. Now Kimball, meanwhile--I don't know whether his wife had died or he'd
divorced her or she'd divorced him or what--but whatever happened, the word was that
Dr. Jackson was going to shoot Kimball if he didn't leave town. Now whether there was
anything to that and whether Kimball had any fear of it, I doubt. But he had become
persona non grata with the elite of Madison, and in those days you didn't run off with or
steal another man's wife and run off with her if you were a college professor without
getting into trouble. So Kimball, then, left. It had nothing to do with the liberal position
or the state of Wisconsin.
00:33:10
LS:
I wonder if one could--how many of the departures and arrivals---
WS:
And Wendell Bennett--I knew Wendy Bennett, too. Wendy Bennett left to go to Yale,
and Yale was maybe the premier anthropology department in the country. And there was
no anthropology department here, you know. So I find that difficult to believe.
LS:
"Exodus of valuable of scholars" was the phrase.
WS:
It was an exodus of valuable scholars, no question about that, because these were two
very well-known people. So--that must have been in the newspaper, wasn't it? Sounds
like the Cap Times, too.
LS:
I think it's from the biography of Ross.
WS:
Oh, was it? Oh, well, again.
LS:
You know he's talking about the department.
WS:
Yes. So I just don't know. But then Wendy Bennett lost his life in a swimming accident
just a few years later. But anyway, I'm sure Kimball Young was not chased out by liberal
opinion. I mean, unless that's interpreted to mean that there was some prejudice against
people who had stolen other people's wives. Anyway, Kimball left, and only died a year
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or two ago. He was a very good friend of mine. I never went to this university, but I
knew all the characters later. The man in the middle at the top [I said this while pointing
to pictures of famous sociologists on my wall.WHS] is Kimball--I haven't put the date of
his death on there because it was the last year or two. Kimball Young, you see, there's a
man of real origins. His grandfather was Brigham Young, and his other grandfather was
Heber Kimball, the two real developers of Utah and the Mormon power structure. They
were both--actually, Brigham Young was the guy who made the Mormons work, and
Heber Kimball was the head of the Council of Nine, or whatever it's called, that runs the
Mormon Church. So he came out of this background, and he wrote a fascinating book
you might want to read sometime--One Wife is Enough. He was actually brought up in
the Young household--one of the sons or grandsons of Brigham Young. And then he had
these--there were two or three of these Young households, because of the belief in
polygamy--or polygyny I guess is the real term, but what they called polygamy in those
days. One man having more than one wife. And it was true of the Kimball family as
well. So he wrote this book, one of the last books he wrote, maybe sometime in the '40s-One Wife is Enough. And it's telling of the conflicts that arose in this type of family
relationship where, unlike in many polygynous families--cultures where there are
polygynous families, it's in the tradition there. These are women who came out to Utah
from Massachusetts and New England, the old American stock who got converted, and
they never did understand this business or accept it. It's a fascinating kind of sociological
examination of that period of Mormonism. Well anyway, now where are we? I'm
probably telling you a lot of things you don't want to know.
LS:
I still feel a little puzzled. The reputation of the University as being very, very great in
social sciences, and Ross being one of the foremost ones--well, you have said what you
think of him, that he did write two good books.
WS:
The people then thought much more of him than I do now.
LS:
I know what I was going to ask. I withdraw that.
00:37:27
Ross was tried by a legislative committee in 1935. I wondered how much that would
affect how people would think about sociology around the University for the next ten or
twenty years.
WS:
I really don't know. The fact that he was vindicated, so to speak--
LS:
Well, [to John Jenkins] actually this was your point, wasn't it John, about sociology being
a discipline that wants to change society for quite a while.
WS:
Well, there were several things about sociology, one of which was that early sociology,
especially in the United States, was very closely linked not only to social control but to
social welfare. Most departments of sociology were also departments of sociology and
social work. Ours was never called that, but it was. And so reform of the cities--most all
of those early books on social reform were written by people who claimed to be
sociologists--you know, "The Sin of the City," the great Philadelphia study, the New
York studies--all those were written by people who were known as sociologists. Now,
they weren't trained as sociologists, because there wasn't any training to be a sociologist,
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really, at that time. But in any event, social work was seen as the applied side of
sociology. Social reform, most people saw it as what sociology was all about.
00:39:14
And John L. Gillin, the famous criminologist/penologist, was very much interested in the
state of prisons and jails and how people were treated in them and all that sort of thing.
And there was a great deal of that. It wasn't until much later that people tried to make
sociology into a science and to be value-free and all that.
JJ:
When did that start developing?
WS:
I don't know when first it developed, but probably sometime in the early '20s. Again, it's
difficult, unless you did a lot of research on it, to say just when and where it developed.
But in Europe it grew out of Max Weber, who believed in value-free sociology and
became a model to many people. A great many people in America--the early
sociologists, Ross is an example--were trained in Germany. There was no Ph.D. offered
in America in their day, you see. So in the '80s they went to Germany and studied and
got Ph.D.'s. And they studied--in those days it only took one or two professors, and there
were some great ones in Germany and France and England. But they went primarily to
Germany and they studied and got their Ph.D.'s there and came back. Park--Robert E.
Park, one of the famous Chicago people, W. I. Thomas, another one of the famous
Chicago people [but Thomas took his Ph.D. at Chicago in the 1890s--I was
mistaken.WHS], Giddings, who was a great giant at Columbia in those early days--all
those people were trained in Germany. Probably not by Weber, but that kind of teaching
was kind of a social philosophy, but a social philosophy governed by value-free, to the
extent that it could be, investigation. And they all believed you couldn't be part of a
reform movement, and were probably right, and give a value-free kind of analysis.
Now, of course, lots of people nowadays say you can't anyway, but at least you could try
very hard. Well, in this country, I would guess that probably the first advocate of a
value-free kind of sociology was Giddings at Columbia. And then he turned out-probably the main leaders of sociology from the '20s on were all Giddings Ph.D.
students--or mainly: F. Stuart Chapin at Minnesota, who was probably the greatest of the
lot; Odum at North Carolina who founded the department there that still ranks in the first
five in the country; William F. Ogburn at Chicago was a Giddings student. There were a
number of these people who went out and kind of became the disciples who tried to turn
sociology into a science. And their model was essentially one of examining problems
with data, doing what we now would think of as very simple but then thought of as very
complicated kinds of statistical analysis and arriving at judgments based upon their
analysis of real data rather than just their feelings after examining the problem. And that
became the mode of American sociology--still is, although it's much under attack.
LS:
That's what you were trained in, is that right?
WS:
What?
LS:
That's what you were trained in?
WS:
Yes. I was trained by Chapin in what we now call quantitative sociology, I guess.
00:43:20
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But in any event, 90 percent of American sociology is still that. There's about 10 percent
of various kinds of people who attack it, and quite convincingly at times, including the
Marxists. There's a new wave of Marxists, as there is in almost every field right at the
moment. And some of the leading Marxist sociologists are in this department, actually.
It's called critical sociology, or political economics, or political economy, but it turns out
to be basically neo-Marxist approaches, which have never held sway, but every now and
then it rears its ugly head to threaten the core of the hell-bent attempt to be scientific. So,
in any event--no, Mr. Ross wasn't any part of that. That never occurred to him that there
was a science of sociology. He was really trained as a social philosopher. And I think
Mr. Gillin would be more characterized as a person who--again, Gillin was a student of
Giddings, so he kind of fell into this tradition of examining data. But his purpose,
mainly, was to help make things better in the country, kind of a social-welfarist approach.
Now, we have a lot of people who are like that still in sociology.
00:45:00
One of the things, to get back to your question, one of the things that might have been
true is that the reputation of Wisconsin as being a center for radicalism probably grew out
of the fact that people like Ross were going around the country arguing for civil rights
and arguing for restricting immigration of these lesser races, particularly the Asians. In
fact, Ross is said to be the only sociologist who ever was an advisor or confidant to a
president. He was very influential in getting the restrictive immigration laws passed.
Teddy Roosevelt and Ross were really quite good friends. They wrote back and forth to
each other and on and on. So his kind of sociology might have made followers, but it
didn't produce students. And people don't want to learn to be that. Yet he could be a
great figure and was certainly a great figure in his time.
LS:
It didn't cost any money, then, really, for him to do his work--is that right? I'm trying to
think of how much research costs.
WS:
Oh yes. His research consisted of taking trips, and reading. So research costs were not a
big thing. I've often wondered--I'd love to go back and see what teaching modes were
like then. Someone once told me that those guys didn't teach very much anyway, that an
important full professor wasn't expected to do much teaching. And I know that when
Vilas wrote the will, he said that under no circumstances could any Vilas professor be
required to teach more than one course in a year. So he wasn't thinking they ought to do
much teaching. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the assistant professors and instructors
taught fifteen, eighteen hours and these guys didn't do all that much teaching. They were
supposed to write books. He financed his travels through lecturing. That's quite apparent
from the book you've read or are reading. He had a rather handsome lecture fee, and he
charged it and collected all of his perks in the process. And he also made money off his
books. So, you know, this was kind of a self-financed kind of career. That was not
uncommon among professors of that day. In fact, the professor tended to be recruited
from upper-class, educated families--business families, and families that could afford to
have their sons and daughters be professors. When you go up to University Heights and
see some of those houses that have as many as twenty rooms, all with solid cherry
woodwork and moldings and all that--those were built on $3,000 salaries in this
university. So somebody must been putting up some money from the outside, even in
those days. And I think it was quite common for people to be recruited to academic life
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through, and to be subsidized in part by, their family connections. It certainly was true of
anthropology. There was no money for going off to Egypt and digging around the tombs.
You had to finance your own field trips, hire your own help and all that sort of thing.
And so most of the early anthropologists were very wealthy people. Well, anyway, now
where are we?
00:49:08
LS:
So the department is very weak in the 1940s. One keeps coming into that.
WS:
The department was weak, but still only weak by comparison. The earliest ratings that I
know of, I think were made in 1928. The American Council on Education had a
committee to rate graduate studies in the country, and there was a rating made in 1928.
And I think Wisconsin ranked fourth or fifth. Chicago was always first in those early
days. Because when John D. Rockefeller started Chicago to be a Baptist, liberal arts
college and went off to Hopkins and hired President Harper to come and run the place,
Harper just took over, and he decided to turn it--which he was already doing--Hopkins
was the first graduate university in America--he just came there, to Chicago, and went all
around the country, pulling in the best people he could get. He brought together a
collection of sociologists that was better than any three departments all put together.
Some people used to even say that in the early days, just at the turn of the century, that
they probably had--maybe I should say more like 1910, '15, more in there--they probably
had more of the top sociologists than there were in all the rest of the departments in the
country. And that was almost true. So they dominated everything. And then after them
usually came Columbia, and Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin were right in there,
close. But it was kind of a second tier after Chicago. They were all good places, but
you've got to remember in those days it only took two or three people to make a
department.
LS:
There must have been more than Becker, McCormick, Clinard, yourself.
WS:
When are you talking about, 1947?
LS:
Well, this is around--
WS:
Well, look. You want to remember that in 1946, I came, and in 1947 Clinard came---
LS:
And Kolb.
WS:
And who?
LS:
Kolb. He was here, wasn't he?
WS:
Oh, he'd been here for a long time.
00:52:04
See, what happened here was, Mr. Ross got an offer from someplace, I don't know where.
And Kolb was already here, was an assistant professor in agricultural economics, and
Ross and Gillin were professors in economics--see, that was where sociology was. And
Ross told Mr. Kolb that he was going to the dean and tell him he was going to leave
unless he'd give him a separate department of sociology. Gillin was already here by then.
So he marched off and formed the Department of Sociology. And Kolb had an offer
from the University of Minnesota, and he went to the Ag dean and told him he had to
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have his own department. So the departments were both started in the same year. I think
that was '28. So they became a separate department then.
LS:
But were very close, evidently.
WS:
Oh, yes. You see, the interesting thing about sociology here is we've always been one
graduate department. For graduate purposes we don't differentiate. Everybody takes the
same set of requirements, everything else--exams, everything. And many of the
professors in rural sociology teach courses that are, in our catalogue, in Letters and
Science. And all courses in sociology, whether in rural sociology or here, count towards
majors in Letters and Science or Agriculture. But they do operate in separate
departments in the sense that they have their own budget, and of course they have the
Experiment Station money, and the money from Extension, whereas we don't have
those things over here, or we didn't in the early days. So Kolb was here.
00:54:11
When I came here--I wrote it down somewhere here--I was looking at some of these
things. When I came, in 1946, the professors in sociology were Howard Becker and
Tom McCormick--two very well-known people, certainly among the best-known
sociologists in the country. Then Marshall Clinard and I came at the same time. I went
to rural sociology, and Marshall came here to take Mr. Gillin's place, who'd retired a few
years earlier in criminology--a few years before. There was a man here who was an
associate professor by the name of Reimer, Svend Reimer, who was a Swede, and I
guess in everybody's opinion it was a mistake to make him an associate professor. And
when he got a chance, two or three years later, to leave, he left. He went to UCLA and
spent the rest of his career there, actually. But he was here. So the following people
were here: Becker and McCormick; Clinard came six months after I did; and Reimer was
here; Hans Gerth was here as an assistant professor. That's all the sociologists other than
two instructors. And the instructors in those days were like they are now--about to get
their Ph.D.'s, through with their A.B.D.'s, so they let them do a lot of teaching for a little
money. One of them was Don Martindale who later--a few years, maybe the next year-went to Minnesota when he finished his dissertation. And probably was--he's retired
recently--the best-known of the Minnesota scholars in sociology after Chapin retired.
But, see, that's one, two, three, four, five--five people assistant professor and above. Now
one of the reasons for that was that in those days they used, as we still do--the people in
rural sociology also counted as part of the sociology group for graduate purposes. And
there were two people--professors--George Hill and John Harrison Kolb. Kolb was a
world-famous man. Equally famous--well, more famous than McCormick and as famous
as Becker in his field. And then I was there, and then two other people--John Barton and
Arthur Wileden. John Barton was one of the wisest men I ever knew, but he wasn't
trained much in sociology. I think he'd been to Yale Theological School. And he'd
gotten interested in the folk school movement in his various visits around the world, and
when Christensen became dean of the College of Agriculture he brought John in to run
the short course for the farm kids and make it like a folk school in Denmark. And John
did that, but then later deans didn't like that idea and kicked John out. Kolb had given
him a rank of associate professor in the department, so he came to lodge with rural
sociology. Really never had any affect on the graduate program, but he was a marvelous
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teacher and one of God's own gentlemen and he stayed here until he retired, and soon
after died. Wileden was the Extension guy in rural sociology.
LS:
Did you have much to do with Wileden?
WS:
Wileden and Barton had a little more to do with undergraduate majors. They taught rural
sociology undergraduate courses, but nothing to do with graduate training. They were
never invited to the executive committee meetings over here. Hill and Kolb and I always
were, but none of those guys. They weren't seen as part of a sociology group. And then
anthropology was in the department and Bill Howells was here as a young assistant
professor when I came. Now, I don't know if you've ever heard of W. W. Howells, but
he's certainly one of the three or four best known physical anthropologists in the country.
He was here for about ten years, became a full professor rapidly, then went back to
Harvard--and Kolb and I always were, but none of those guys were seen as part of the
sociology group.
00:59:20
End of Tape 10, Side 2.
Tape 11, Side 1
[Note: Jenkins also present at this interview (see note at beginning of Tape 10]
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
[Here we were talking about a brief memo about the history of sociology that was
unsigned but which was attributed to Gillin.WHS] We don't quite understand why Gillin
wrote it like he did because he pays no attention to the fact that rural sociology and
sociology were offered as a single department, he doesn't mention Kolb, his old student,
or anybody else. He only talks about the sociology department.
LS:
That's why I wondered, because that would be the normal thing, wouldn't it, for people to
ignore the Ag end of things.
WS:
Yes, but they never did here, you see, because that's been--I guess I would have to say to
this day it's the best-known single major we have. We've turned out--whereas sociology
has just recently, although we've been up there very close, got to first or second place in
national ranking. Depending on how you do the figuring, rural sociology has been the
preeminent department of rural sociology from the beginning of time. And we divide up
sociology into various fields, and rural sociology has probably always been our strongest
single field. Less than stratification is now, but it's been a very important part of our
sociological enterprise here.
LS:
That's not true of ag economics, is it?
WS:
No, although that's a very outstanding department but it's not gone the way we have over
here. They give their own degrees, they give their own examinations, and they're
different from the ones over here and these guys--the people in economics-- claim they're
much easier--I don't know.
LS:
How did you people relate to the Ag--you must have had to go to Ag meetings as
department chair. Did you go?
WS:
I came here in rural sociology.
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LS:
Yes, I know.
WS:
I came here in rural sociology primarily because, I suppose, quite frankly, that was the
only place you'd get time subsidized for research.
LS:
By the Experiment Station.
WS:
So I was half-time in the Experiment Station, and I did some of my early significant work
in those days because I had money to do field studies.
LS:
Was that actually a factor in why you came?
WS:
Oh, yes. Big factor.
LS:
Somebody wrote you and said if you come here, we'll--you already knew?
WS:
I knew that, because I had been at Oklahoma State where all that was also true, and at
Minnesota as a graduate student where it was also true. The only people who got any
money for research were the people who were in the Experiment Station. So I was very
cognizant of that. In fact, my appointment at Oklahoma was half-time in the experiment
station and half-time in the Department of Sociology. And that was a unified department,
it was a single department. Now, half-time in those days meant that you taught two
courses a semester, but I felt relative deprivation and I felt that I had all kinds of time for
my research, and I guess I couldn't say it on that, but I almost became famous in those
seven years. You know, I turned out things that got me national attention.
LS:
You wrote so much. I was looking through your list--there must have been three or four
or five things a year.
00:03:20
WS:
And then the war came along, and I got a direct commission in 1943, and was in the navy
for the better part of three years. While I was in the navy, I got a letter from Kolb--and
also from McCormick--asking me if I would be willing to make an agreement then to
come here when the war was over--nobody knew when the war was going to be over-and I remember I thought a good deal about it. I guess the only hesitancy I had was I
thought of Wisconsin sociology as do-gooder sociology. And I didn't know whether I
wanted to be associated with that. Well, I came out and talked to Kolb--who was
certainly a do-gooder man himself but also a good, careful scholar--and he said that was
the very reason they wanted me to come, and I talked to McCormick and he said the same
thing. So I decided I'd come. It was--I don't know when that letter was dated, but it was
only a year or so later that the war was over. Seems impossible thinking back now, but I
thought that might be eight, ten years away. You know, it was before the invasion of
Europe, it was before the fall of Japan, obviously everything else. So I didn't know how
long it was going to be. But I thought that would be a good place to go, so I agreed to
come.
LS:
Did they offer you a good salary?
WS:
Yes, for a thirty-five-year-old in those days or whatever I was. Yes. When they offered
it I was about thirty-three, I guess, something like that. They offered me $4500 on the
nine-month basis. That was a good salary, because people like Kolb and Becker were
getting about $5500, you know, in those days. So anyway, I had offers from Cornell and
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several other places, and I decided that I'd rather be here. I also had offers at every level,
up--well, then it was assistant professor or associate professor--and full professor at
Minnesota, where I got my Ph.D. But I didn't want to go back there. I felt I had to be
away longer and establish myself, you know. So I decided this was the place to come.
But as you can see there were very, very few people. If you count even all the people
that there were here, in this department over here, there's six people including
anthropology above the rank of assistant professor--associate professor and above.
00:06:40
LS:
Where was your office?
WS:
My office was in Ag Hall. One of the reasons McCormick wanted to come was he was
kind of a quantitative sociologist and he wanted me to teach research methods. So I
taught the course in research methods that everybody, all graduate students, had to
take. I taught that for--up until I became chancellor, I guess. So that's 1967. So
everybody who got a Ph.D. at this university passed through my hands one way or
another, in sociology, for all those years, from '46 to '67.
LS:
That's a graduate course.
WS:
Yes. Strictly graduates only. So I knew everybody. And then I decided that--oh, when I
started teaching it, there'd be six, eight people in it, and by 1966, the last time I taught it,
there were sixty-four people and I decided it wasn't fun anymore. And I tried to get the
department to agree to break it up, have two or three sections of it--somebody else give it
one semester and I'd give it the other--and they'd never agree to that, because they
thought I ought to teach it. So I just quit. And I guess Burt Fisher took it over, I've
forgotten who did. But in any event, in some ways it was a considerable personal loss for
me, although I'd gotten where I really didn't enjoy teaching. The problem was that when
you had seven, eight people sitting around a table and you're working on research
methods, you could take some guy who just got here from South Dakota and never had a
course in statistics or anything else, and then you'd have some guy over here, maybe who
got his master's degree at Michigan and had practically everything, but you could assign
things to those guys so that they would further develop their talents. You get sixty-four
people there, and one day you'll see half the faces looking as if you'd talked over their
heads, and not understanding a word you said. And so the next day you'd come--and the
other guys pleased, so the next day you'd say, "Well, I've got to get this down to a level
that these poor guys can understand." You do that, and all the other half of the class
would be bored. There was no way you could pace it. I wanted to stream the course
once; no, they wouldn't do that at all. In other words, have one group that were kind of
the unprepared, and then have the prepared.
LS:
Why wouldn't they?
WS:
I don't know why. I just don't know. I wasn't chairman anymore, so I couldn't tell them
what to do. I don't know why. I really don't. I think they just felt--well, in those days the
enrollment was so huge that we had great pressure to have some courses that were going
to be required for everybody, that would, as they used to say, bring them all up to
standard, that they felt ought to be taught by the same person. They were perfectly
willing to have me teach it two semesters in a row, but I wasn't going to do it. So, you
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know, it was just one of those things. The theory courses were as big, too. I've forgotten
who taught them in those days [Joseph Elder.WHS], but they also were required. We
required a year of theory and year of methods. One part of it was general methodology,
which I taught--all the different ways in which you study social behavior, and then the
second part was the statistical part that somebody else taught. And I guess the proposal
was, when I demanded we break it up, was essentially, well, we'll make those each yearlong--statistics and methods--year-long courses, and the same people will teach them.
You see, that was one of the proposals. Now, immediately after I quit doing it, then the
department decided that they had to have it offered every semester, and it did cut the
numbers in two. It was tolerable, it wouldn't have been--it was still too many people.
But what I meant to say is that whereas, of all people who got their Ph.D.'s, say, before
1970, I probably knew every one of them, and of all the people who got their Ph.D.'s
since 1970, I probably don't know twenty of them. Oh, more than that. So I missed that
a good deal.
00:11:43
But anyway, the size of this department--one of the reasons why this department had
slipped is that you had the retirement of Gillin, the retirement of Ross--of course, ten
years earlier--but Gillin very shortly before I came here, two years before I came here.
You had Kimball Young, who was the biggest name in social psychology, leaving. You
had Ralph Linton, going off to Columbia, leaving. In other words, there were several
very serious losses took place in that time. Becker was brought in--a relatively young
man, I suppose he might have been forty when he came and already had quite a good
reputation, but not as big as those people. And McCormick, who was a year or two older
but had started his academic career much later, was relatively unknown. He was known
as a demographer, a population sort of scholar. But neither of those were really big
names at the time. So you had a period, then, in which the reputation of the department
suffered because there were no huge stars. That isn't to say that it wasn't a good graduate
department, by any means, but it did sink to about twelfth in the ratings at that time.
When I came in I think it was twelfth or thirteenth. And you want to remember, there
probably weren't over twenty-five Ph.D.-granting departments in the country then. So
that was a serious loss.
00:13:22
In part I was brought in to help jack it up. And everybody said that. The next year I was
made chairman of rural sociology, then chairman of this Social Science Research
Committee and then chairman of the department over here and all that was in a move to
try to strengthen sociology.
LS:
Did you have a question, John?
JJ:
Was this decline that you're describing taking place when--say, from 1935 to the end of
the war?
WS:
It was taking place, yes, I'd say about '35 to '45.
JJ:
Why weren't the people replaced as they left?
WS:
I don't know that. I never asked anybody, I just assumed that--I suppose they did feel
they were replacing some of them, but I really don't know the answer, why the weren't
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replaced. Clinard was brought here very clearly to take Gillin's place and that was seen
as a start to fill one of the great areas of the department.
LS:
Lundberg wrote to Gillin in 1940 that, "Hiring is affected by the ascendancy of certain
groups in Wisconsin and the resulting exodus of valuable scholars." [Presumably
showing WHS a document from Archives files.] That's where I got that little bit, over
there. But that is--it says hiring is affected, too.
WS:
Yes, 1940. Now, I've got to say something, because two people who just couldn't stand
each other's kinds of sociology were Lundberg and Becker. See, Lundberg had no use for
Becker's kind of sociology, which was big theory kind of thing. And on the other hand,
certainly Howard Becker had no use for George Lundberg's kind of sociology, so that
may be what he thought. Howard was his star in the department. Maybe that was
enough to keep--maybe that was the reason. I'm trying to see here. Howard Becker came
here in--must've come about 1937. He was already a full professor and known as a
theoretician, and grand theory, in fact in the tradition of Germanic theory. And
Lundberg, on the other hand, was in the other camp of quantitative sociology. So that
may be what he meant.
LS:
So the answer to John's question might be that the people who were really here weren't
interested in replacing some of those who had left--
WS:
I really don't know the answer to the question.
00:16:20
One of the problems--from when I first got to know the department intimately after I got
here, one of the great problems was the tremendous split between McCormick and
Becker. McCormick had a vision of this being a great quantitative department, and
Becker had a picture of it being a great theoretical establishment. And they could never
agree on anything, including the time of day. And Becker was, without question, a
paranoid. He was the most difficult person to work with that you can imagine. Tom was
a nice, old, Alabama southern gentleman, you know. And Tom would oppose everything
Becker did, but without screaming and hollering. And Becker would oppose everything
McCormick proposed, in the way of people to come here, excepting he did scream and
holler and did everything he could to prevent them from coming. I know one story that I
believe is true, as it was told to me by one of the young men who came in, in those early
years, as an assistant professor. And he said that he got here a couple of weeks before
school started, and Howard Becker walked in his office and said, "I'm Howard Becker,"
and shook hands with him, and he said, "I understand you'll be teaching one of the big
sections in introductory sociology," and Dick said, "Yes I will." And he said, "I assume
you're going to use my book, Man and Society, or whatever it was called, his
introductory book. And Dick said, no, he hadn't intended to. And Becker said to him,
"Well, you'd better if you ever want to get promoted around here, young man," and
walked out the door. And he was perfectly capable of blocking somebody's promotion if
he could. The only thing was that most of the other people in the department would go
against him. But I know it to be a fact that there were several people who, once they
came, didn't stay because they couldn't stand being in a department that was this torn by
quarrels and division between people as to what kind of sociology you ought to have.
For example, Becker insisted that everybody take Social Theory with him, even though at
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times Hans Gerth or somebody else would offer it. And the people who worked with
McCormick, who were mainly in demography and population problems and things of that
sort, claimed that it was almost impossible for them to pass Howard's courses. Now, I
never saw actual evidence of that, but that was in the minds of the students. And
certainly he was perfectly capable of blocking an appointment or trying to prevent
somebody from being promoted, very often on the grounds of what kind of sociology
they stood for and their failure to pay proper deference to him and so on.
00:20:01
So it was in 1959 I went out to the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences as
a fellow, and while I was there I was offered a regent's professorship at UCLA, and I was
about to accept it, not because I wanted to be at UCLA, although that was as good a
department as this was at the time, but because I had been chairman already for a couple
of years--two or three years, I guess--and had been dealing with Howard, and I had
decided that it wasn't worth it. As much as I loved Wisconsin as a place to live and
everything else and liked the University, I had just decided that the costs of having to
deal with this guy were too great to come back. Just about as I was ready to go or to
accept, we got a telegram that Howard had died of a stroke. And my wife said, "Oh, he'll
go back to Wisconsin." She liked California so well. But anyway, he was a terribly
difficult man, and just kept the department in ferment and trouble all the time. And I
think that probably accounts--although I couldn't say so for sure--for some of the
departures and I'm sure it accounted for some of the reasons that people didn't come.
And also that they probably couldn't agree on people. I'd often wondered--I never asked
either Tom McCormick or Kolb--I wouldn't be at all surprised that the reason I was
brought here with my position in rural sociology rather than over here, when they wanted
me to teach the major course in methodology, was probably because Howard would have
blocked it if I had been placed over here.
LS:
He was willing to let you come.
WS:
He couldn't stop me if rural sociology appointed me. But he could have if they tried to
appoint me to general sociology. Then immediately they started making overtures to me
to teach the course, then they paid part of my salary, and pretty soon it was half-and-half.
And finally they wanted me to come over and be chairman. And for a couple of years
the dean of Agriculture paid half my salary and Mark Ingraham paid the other half, and
finally Mark brought the three of us together and said, "Look, how much time are you
spending over there?" And I said, "Well, I haven't been there in rural sociology at all in
the last year or so." And Rudy Froker said, "Oh, that's all right. We'd just as soon
continue it as it is." And Mark said, "Well, I'd feel a lot better if I paid his full salary."
So I made a deal with Mark. I said, "No, I don't want to do that, because I'd lose my
research time." And so Mark then gave me half-time for research as part of the condition
of my coming over. I mean permanently half-time. He was relieved of that a few years
later when I was given the Vilas Professorship [1964]. That was how that all came about.
LS:
Tell the rest of the story about In a preliminary talk we had, you said that when you came
back, there were still a couple of troubled department meetings?
00:23:34
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WS:
Oh, yes. One very troubled one--I think it was about the second one after I got back-people just behaved like beasts toward each other. And now we had another problem.
We had a couple of guys by then, in anthropology, who were almost as difficult as was
Howard Becker. One was Bill Laughlin and the other was C. W. Hart. And so you had
three of them that were just like three Iago's, you know, in a department of sixteen,
seventeen people. Anyway, I got back, and some questions--some perfectly decent
questions like who was going to teach such-and-such a course or something of that sort,
and they started fighting just like dogs. So I just rapped for order and said, "I'm
adjourning the meeting until such time as the members of this department can act like
gentlemen. When you're ready to, let me know, and we'll call another meeting." And in
deathly silence I got up and walked out the room. I got to the door and I said, "I just want
you to remember one thing. Howard Becker's dead." And, by gosh, from then on they
just behaved just beautifully. And to this day it's the least troubled department I've ever
known--as big as we are now, fifty-some people.
LS:
You've never had to go to--in economics, they went to the dean and the president because
of Walter Morton. It wasn't that bad? Or--
WS:
I think it was worse. We just didn't have enough sense to go up to the dean. But the dean
was having that trouble at the same time with economics, you see, and finally the way
Mark settled that was he became chairman of the economics department for a year and a
half or two years, until he could get some more people in. He came over and would run
the department meetings. At the same time he was pushing very hard to get me to be
willing to be chairman of sociology because he thought I could handle it--and I was able
to. We weren't having quite such bad times. The only way you could do it, though,
would be to go around before the department meeting and talk to Howard, tell him what
was coming up and what your position was going to be, talk to Tom and tell him that, and
two or three others, you know, and hope, then, that it wouldn't hit them as some big
surprise over which they'd fly into some wild rage about. It just took so much time-you're spending all your time messing around with trying to prevent big squabbles from
developing.
LS:
Did this affect the caliber of the department?
WS:
No, I don't think so. I think it had earlier. By the time I got here, it wasn't long until--if
you will, there was kind of a cabal within the group, and I was kind of looked to for
leadership, in that we would just get together and just roll through the things that--you
know, we started bringing in good young people, and we saw to it that they weren't
defeated when it came to being made associate professors and things of that sort. Then
we also had the great good fortune to--at about that time, it became possible to get
outside research money.
00:27:22
When I became chairman in 1958, I was the only person in the department that had one
penny of outside research funds. And by the time I left in 1963, or something like that,
we were getting more than a million bucks a year, and about half of the members of the
department had research grants. I had to teach them how to do it, you know, and
everything else. And then when I brought in young people, I always brought in researchoriented people who already knew a little about it and then pushed them as far as I could
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with Graduate School University Research Committee money. And then they'd be ready
to go out and get their own. So that the whole department changed in that period, not so
much because of me but because the opportunities became so much greater. NIH started
funding social science research. NSF came in with a small program at first, but then it
kept enlarging. Enrollments were increasing by leaps and bounds, so we could bring in
new people. So that I'm sure the department was turned around by responding to the
opportunities that were occurring during that period. Minnesota, for example, which was
probably a much better department than this one in 1947, didn't do that. I don't know--it's
almost unexplainable that that's not the problem here, but Minnesota went from fourth, I
think, to where now they're thirtieth in the rank of graduate departments. Sociology, to
this day, at Minnesota, doesn't have over twenty, twenty-two members, something like
that. Just a terrible case of allowing a department to go to pot. But here we did try to-LS:
That's sort of like anthropology here, is that right?
00:29:43
WS:
Yes. I separated anthropology from sociology. I was a surgeon on that job. I was
convinced--and the anthropologists wanted a separate department--I was convinced that it
would do both departments good, and I told Mark that, and he said why? And I said,
"Well, whenever I come over here and tell you that we need some new full professors in
this department and we ought to get out and get some, you'd say, `Well, you've got all
sorts of famous people there. Howard Becker and Marshall Clinard and Tom
McCormick and Bill Howells and Dave Barreis.'" The latter two were anthropologists, of
course.
00:30:22
End of Tape 11, Side 1.
Tape 11, Side 2
00:30:23
WS:
So when we separated anthropology and sociology--we really separated before we moved
over to this building, this was a new building then--we just reallocated the offices over
there. Then we needed new people and anthropology needed new people. It was quite
apparent. So we then had a big hiring campaign, and anthropology, for a few years,
looked like it was going somewhere. I think in the ratings in the early '60s hey were
something like twelfth or something like that, in the country. Most recently I think they
were thirty-fifth or something. So they got a lot of people, but somehow it never jelled as
a real--it was a pretty good department for a while, then started going downhill. And in
the last ratings, as you probably know, it's the only one out of the seven social science
departments that didn't get a distinguished rating. Five were rated four or above, which is
usually considered distinguished. And psych was 3.9, so it was up there close. Of
course, psych has lost some of its big names by death in the last ten years--and
retirement. For example, Harry Harlow was one of the great psychologists in America,
Wolf Brogden was one of the great experimentalists, and Dave Grant was one of the
leading psychometricians--just the loss of those three was enough to put a department
down a long ways. But they brought in good young people, but they suffered those
losses. But they're very close to being a distinguished department. And here's
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anthropology, rates about 2.8 or something like that. That is really the only weak social
science department we have.
00:32:36
What I tried to do when I was chairman was--I really kind of went on talent searches. I
remember going out to Berkeley one time, and stayed there two or three days. I had good
friends in the department. I'd just ask them, "Who are the two or three best Ph.D.
candidates you've got here?" And I got them [The three were Warren Hagstrom, Robert
Alford, and Jay Demerath.WHS], and I talked to them, and I made arrangements for one
to come that year and two to come the next year. Then I'd have to come home and sell
them, but that wasn't too hard to do. Then I made forages to Michigan, which was very
strong at that time, to pick up some people there. I brought in Joe Elder from Harvard
and various other people. And then I would go to the Graduate School and get them
research semesters and summers, until they could get their own work started.
Unfortunately, some of those people are gone now. Bob Alford, who was really one of
the great stars of the bunch, he left a few years ago. And Jay Demerath left a few years
after.
LS:
Wasn't that a question of their not giving him enough money to stay--Bob Alford?
WS:
No. Not with Bob. No, he wanted to get back to California. His parents lived there, and
he went to Santa Cruz, which had nothing then in the way of a sociology department, to
start one. And he has a little handful of people. They don't even give graduate degrees.
Oh no, it wasn't money with Bob, it was California, I'm sure. And he had a very good
salary for those days. That's the other thing we tried to do, is always see to it that those
people, those young stars, got research money, got salaries. In fact, that's still the tactic
to this day. At the present time, this department is made up of young stars. There aren't
any old stars. There isn't a person--I should look this up--but I don't think s anybody
that's over fifty-two, maybe not even fifty. There might be one that's fifty-five.
LS:
That's lucky.
00:35:04
WS:
Well, excepting everybody's after them. Two years ago, Dave Featherman turned down
an absolutely fabulous offer from Columbia. Last year, from Harvard. This year,
Harvard's offering Bob Hauser and Aage Sorenson unbelievable offers. That's our
problem. If you've got a bunch of old stars, people know you aren't going to be able to
pick them off. But if you've got guys in their forties--Dave Featherman's forty-one and
Bob's forty-two, and they're offering Bob a Harvard salary of $59,000-plus there on the
academic basis, plus $500,000 to start his own research institute with $200,000 a year
guaranteed for the first five years to keep it going, you know. That's your problem. You
can hold guys that aren't quite such stars. And that's the problem Wisconsin always faces
is, can it keep enough of its stars? But I can go through those cards and tell you all the
people who have been through here. And if you have them all together in one place--not
all of them, the ones you want, in one place--it'd be the greatest department in the world.
In the thirty-seven years I've been here, there have been some tremendous people. Here
for a few years, and gone. And that's the way universities like Wisconsin have to operate.
We have a lot of people coming in because we're big. We keep the best of them we can,
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and as long as we can, and hope that a few of them, like me, will just stay. I had, over the
years, offers from every major sociology department in the country. Very attractive ones,
always more than I was getting. The University never met the offer that year, but the
next year I'd be up there. And the truth is, you can be in this university--you never want
to look at Wiscosin's average salaries. They are absolutely meaningless. We've got guys
like Art Goldberger, whose published salary for nine months is $80,000 a year. That's
what this university can do. I don't know if it can do it next year, and that's what worries
me about the Hauser case. If there's no raise money, what in the world are they going to
do with people like that? But in the past, we've had such a differentiated salary scale, that
the stars got as much here as they'd get anywhere. And the equipment and facilities here-you can't believe it, but in sociology, there's no university that's comparable. Harvard
has nothing--Bob Hauser would have to go there and build an institute, when we've got a
far better one than he can build right here.
LS:
The Social Systems Research, is that what you're talking about?
WS:
No. The Demography and Ecology Center. Two big, Vax computers, you know, for a
quantitative guy--they've got nothing like that at Harvard because they've had mainly
social theorists and social philosophers sitting around there. They don't need such stuff.
LS:
So that was an important development, was it, that Center for Demography?
WS:
Oh, yes. Very important to the department.
00:38:32
LS:
That was—what was his name?
WS:
Well, it started when Norm Ryder--
LS:
Norm Ryder, yes.
WS:
But Norm never did anything with it. He just hung a sign on his door and said "Center
for Demography and Ecology." Norm's a great demographer. Probably one of the top
four mathematical demographers in the world--he was then. But the problem with Norm
was, he sits and does his computations by hand. And now I guess he's been converted to
an Apple computer or something like that. He doesn't need real numbers, because
mathematical demographers just work out mathematical models, plug in something and
say, "What would happen if we were to change this constraint or that constraint?" But
anyway, that may not be a very fair characterization of what mathematical demographers
do, but that's what Norm does, mainly. So all he needed was a little money. So he got
Guy Orcutt to buy part of his time in the Social Systems Research Institute, as did many
other professors around. And Guy thought they would all chip in to make the master
model of the U.S. economy, but none of them did much. But he still subsidized them for
several years, and that got the center started. Then Leo Schnore came, and a little later
Stan Lieberson, and neither of them ever did anything for development because they're
all lone types of scholars. Stan Lieberson is certainly one of the leading people in this
field now. He's just turned down Harvard, too, to go to Berkeley. But in any event,
finally we decided that the center wasn't going anywhere with three prima donnas, so
when Stan left we brought in Hal Winsborough. And Hal has been the spark and the glue
of the thing, you know. I don't know how much money--on average, he's brought in a
couple of million dollars a year to that institute for research. He's a fine scholar and a
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great promoter. He gets all the guys together, and they work on things, and so it's
become a very important facility in this department. Then they define demography very
broadly, so the kind of stuff I do counts too. I never thought of myself as a demographer,
but I get free time on their computers down there, and free access to their technicians and
programmers and things of that sort. So does Bob Hauser, although Bob is more of a
demographer than I am. In any event, if he goes to Harvard, he'll spend five years and
won't have as good as a facility as he's got here, so that may help us to keep him here, I
don't know. [He stayed.WHS] But what has happened here is that--and I know that's true
since I was chancellor, that's what happens in other departments, too. Not trying to say,
by that, that everybody that gets an offer gets it met. But as old man Fred used to say,
"Who are the blue ribbon ones? No pink ribbons, no green ribbons, just blue ribbons-and we'll do whatever we can to hold those people." And that's what, I think, the
University does. It doesn't say it's got such a policy, but--wasn't it last year or the year
before, I think there were fifteen people in the University in non-administrative positions
that got more salary than the president or the chancellor. Now, in not many universities
is that true, but that's always been true around here, at least ever since I've been here. So
that's how we do it. We bring in a lot of people, we keep the best of them as long as we
can and fight like heck to keep them.
00:42:55
LS:
Was Borgatta one of your stars? He came in on some of this money, this Brittingham
money.
WS:
Yes. Well, that was one of the things Ed Young and I did. He was the chairman of econ
the last year or two I was chairman of sociology. We got together and discovered this
Brittingham money that was being used primarily by--I suppose at that time by Elvehjem,
if not Fred, surely by Elvehjem, just for biological things they wanted, meetings or
conferences and so on, and came up with the idea of a couple of Brittingham
professorships. And we brought Borgatta and Ed brought Guy Orcutt.
LS:
Stories are so different, aren't they? There's one version of that story--I'm not sure it's not
in this document here--which says that Brittingham voluntarily gave money so that the
social sciences could have something, and that the administration told sociology and
economics that they could get some top people in and that you all were put out because
you hadn't been consulted as to how you might want to use the money. I heard that.
WS:
I don't know how those stories get there, because I know Ed and I found out about the
money and started scheming. I think Fred Harrington, by then, was assistant to the
president and we were scheming with Fred. You can ask Ed when you talk, but we
discovered the money. Now, it may be that Mr. Brittingham had wanted it to go to social
science--I can't any more believe that than the man in the moon.
LS:
It is from here.
WS:
What we have been trying--I have been trying to get more money for the social sciences.
That was my main thing for that department.
LS:
This is a different story. Aren't we going to talk about--I mean, if you're talking about
money for the social sciences--then that's the other part of our interview, when we get to
that.
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WS:
This came later. This came well after the thrust to try to get the WARF money, which
was unsuccessful for years. But we were always on the lookout for money. All I was
going to say is,my guess is that Mr. Fred, in order to hold us off from the WARF money,
or, I don't know if it was Fred or Connie who suggested that we could get some of the
Brittingham money. But both of those were dead-set against our getting the WARF
money, because I can also tell you that-
00:45:53
-when Connie became president--he went from dean of the Graduate School, and he had
his faculty committee--you didn't have to have search committees in those days--and they
came up with three names to be dean of the Graduate School, and I was their first choice.
And Connie felt that he had to call me in, because we were old friends--been battling,
yes, but we were good friends.
LS:
Were you? I'm surprised to hear that.
WS:
He was a very nice man except that he didn't have any idea what the social sciences were
all about and was very suspicious of them. But in any event, I went to see him, and he
said, "I suppose I have to tell you that you're first on the list to be dean of the Graduate
School. I don't want you because you'll be moving in on the WARF money if you get
that job." So he appointed John Willard.
LS:
I've heard that Johnson of chemistry was considered. And somebody else, not you--I
mean, that's some other version of this thing--oh, Brogden. Brogden and Johnson.
WS:
Brogden was not on the list, I know that, because I know what people were on the list.
Connie would have loved to have had Brogden, but he couldn't get him on the list.
LS:
He knew that the social scientists wouldn't have anything to do with it.
WS:
He couldn't get him on the list, you see. That's the true story of Brogden. He couldn't get
Brogden on the list because the committee wouldn't put him on. See, Brogden not only
was distrusted by the social sciences, but the other guys didn't like him either. So that
cooked Brogden's goose.
LS:
This is from Harrington, so he didn't know about your being on the--
WS:
Strange that he wouldn't. He probably has just forgotten about it. But anyway, Fred was
just terribly opposed to Willard being dean, and got rid of Willard as soon as he could
after he became president.
00:48:01
LS:
I wanted to know whether Borgatta worked out.
WS:
Borgatta took my place as chairman, and was very good in a number of respects. He was
the most promotional guy that ever hit here. He got lots of money for research, he
brought in lots of people. His attitude was essentially, "We have to fill up courses." By
the time Ed Borgatta became chairman, this place was just expanding so rapidly. And so
Ed would say, "I don't have time to go around, looking around the country hunting for
intellectual ivory. Just send out some letters and we'll hire ten guys as assistant
professors, and if they're not OK we'll fire them." And that was his way of going about it.
It wasn't all that bad a way. We brought in a lot of people and got rid of a lot of people.
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Ed was chairman for about three years, and he brought in some very good people during
that time. He brought in some people that after three years we had to let go but it was no
great problem. So he was quite good, I would say. Then after he became--he tired of
being chairman very fast because that cut in on all his other operations. He did a lot of
consulting. At that time he was buying land, forest land, and reforesting it. He had a big
operation collecting gems--not expensive ones, like diamonds, but he'd hear of some guy
up in Alaska who had a trunk full of amethysts in rough form, and he'd go up there and
buy it. And then he'd send it off to various people to polish, and then he'd sell these
stones wholesale. He had a million enterprises going. He was only here eight or nine
years, I guess, and during that time he bought and sold several houses, he owned two or
three rental properties on State Street. He was a guy out to make an awful lot of money
in a short time. But anyway, I would say Ed's influence on the department was very good
indeed. He had lots of very good students--he brought them in because he'd have big
research projects in which he'd need ten people. So Ed did a great deal for the
department. Not that there wasn't a great deal of criticism of him, but if you look back
over--his style was absolutely the opposite of mine. Get everything done the easiest,
quickest possible way because you could always correct your mistakes. He used to even
argue, "Well, if we make a mistake and make some guy an associate professor that
shouldn't be and discover it two or three years later, I'll get him a job as chairman
someplace else." And that was true. You could do it in those days. You could send a guy
to Western Michigan as chairman, improve their department and ours at the same time.
LS:
John, I really have monopolized the questions. We've got some more time on the end of
this tape. Do you have some things on the department that you--
JJ:
I think I'm going to save up for next time.
00:52:02
WS:
Well, anyway one thing I was going to say is this department has never been in any rating
below twelfth, and only once then and that was in the '40s. By the time I had ceased to
be chairman, I think there had been another survey right after that, the American Council
on Education survey, and we'd gone from twelfth to fifth, were tied with Michigan for
fifth, something like that. And then the next survey we also were fifth. And then the
next survey was the survey by Lipsett and Ladd, which was really not a very good
survey. It was just kind of tacked on the end of another big questionnaire, but we came
up second, I guess, in that. But on the last survey, which was by far the most complete
because it had so many different things on which you're rated, we were rated in first place
far more than any other single department. Almost every criterion. In the prestige of
faculty I guess we were 4.6, our average was, and Chicago's was 4.7 or something like
that. But on quality of graduate program, we were considerably ahead of them,
publications, almost anything else you can think of. It probably is the number one
department in the country right now. How long it can stay there is a very real question,
because I can't imagine as many very, very good young people as we've got--we can't
hold them all. It just isn't in the cards. And we certainly won't be able to hold them all if
the budget--if we run into two or three bad budget years.
LS:
Well, Karl Taeuber, whom I interviewed, said when he was chairman he was distressed at
the difficulty of getting top people. He only could get young unknowns.
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WS:
That's right. But, see, I brought in all young guys except Ed Borgatta. All of them were
brought in as assistant professors. All these guys who are big stars today were, every
one, brought in as an assistant professor. In fact, the people that we brought in to tenured
levels aren't as good as those people--right now, don't have as good a rating, don't have as
much prestige in the field as these people who were brought in in the last fifteen years or
so as assistant professors. So it's true. We've always had that trouble. Just recently the
department has attempted to bring a very well-known senior scholar from Indiana, and
he's just recently turned us down. We can't really do anything for him that Indiana can't
do for him. We probably got him a good, big raise and maybe a named professorship.
We don't have that kind of money that we can go out and buy reputations. We have to
make them. And that isn't too hard to do in a big department. See, Wisconsin's got some
things going for it that no other university has. The main thing is WARF. You can bring
a young person in here who has great promise and we can say to him that we'll go over to
the dean and they'll work out that for the first year he's only going to teach one semester.
Then he'll have a summer and a semester off to work on his research, and even
sometimes to get them to give him the next summer, too. It's all part of a package before
he comes here. And by then, if he's really hot he'll have enough stuff going so he can go
outside and get his money. We wean them off in that direction fast. And if he keeps
doing it all the time--this is another interesting thing about this department—
00:56:40
It's not an easy department to be a member of unless you are productive. I remember
when I was chairman a young man left that I wanted so badly to stay here--he's since
justified my faith in him. And I said, "Why are you leaving? We're doing all these things
trying to keep you here and everything else." And he said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I
get so damn nervous because everyday I go to the mailbox and two or three reprints have
been stuffed in my box by other members of the department." It's a highly publishingoriented department. And mainly, since we are on the scientific end--if there is one--of
sociology, most publications are journal articles and monographs and not textbooks and
things of that sort. We just expect that by the time a guy has been here four or five years
he will have published a dozen or so articles, and most of them in the best journals. And
that isn't easy. You've really got to work to do that. So, the only thing that I see at all
negative about this place is you can't be comfortable in it. I've never been comfortable,
and yet I've been the leading producer in the department.
LS:
Really? You've felt the competition too?
WS:
No, I guess I'm self-generated. But, you know, you're in an environment where
everybody's working on projects and turning it out, and you don't feel it's that easy to stop
and coast for a while.
LS:
Would that ever mean that somebody who ought to have taken more time to develop
something would in fact rush out and publish and not really do a good job?
WS:
Yes, Ed Borgatta is the best example I know of. Ed Borgatta's published some of the best
stuff in sociology and some of the worst trash, and that's because he just gets it out so fast
that he doesn't work it over enough to always produce good stuff. Nobody always
produces great stuff. If in a career you do three things that really affect the field, you're a
superstar.
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LS:
What are yours?
WS:
Mine? My earliest stuff was on measurement.
00:59:03
LS:
I mean, what are your three things that have most affected your field?
WS:
I suppose, starting backwards--two of them were here. The whole series of articles I've
done on status attainment and the development of status attainment models. That has
started a whole field of sociology. A quarter of the journals and articles in journals, these
days, are on that stuff. That's probably the biggest thing. Then, earlier on--and that's all
in the field of stratification, but that particular kind of stuff. Then earlier on, after I first
got here, I did a series of papers in which I tested the psychoanalytic hypotheses
empirically, and that, in that day, brought a great deal of attention. And then, while I was
still at Oklahoma I developed a scale for the measurement of farm family socio-economic
status, in which I borrowed all sorts of ideas on scaling that I'd learned in psychology.
01:00:31
End of Tape 11, Side 2. End of Session.
[Tape 12 has not been transcribed. It is a recording of a discussion Martin Dowling, a research
assistant for the Oral History Project at the time, had with Professor WS in 1974 for his advice
on people to interview for a series of oral history interviews on the merger of the University of
Wisconsin with the Wisconsin State Universities system.]
Third Interview Session (1985)
Tape 13, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
This is the third interview with William WS. This time he is going to talk about his
research. We're doing it in his office on October 10, 1985. I'm Laura LS, and the
interview is being done for the University Archives Oral History Project. It's in the
context of interviews that have already been done with Robert Hauser and David
Featherman, who have talked about their own research which overlaps considerably at
times. So Bill, where would you like to begin for this part of the interview?
WS:
Well, I think I would be more comfortable beginning at the beginning and working up.
You see both of those men are younger than my oldest son, so that I had done an awful
lot of research before I met them. So I was just thinking in terms of my research
interests. They developed in various ways over time.
LS:
I was thinking of college--your undergraduate. But when you said begin at the beginning
you don't mean babyhood then.
WS:
No, what I meant was just begin at the beginning of my research.
LS:
No, I want to go back before that, as to why you went into sociology.
WS:
Well, that's a good question. I had prepared to go to medical school. In fact I had
already been admitted into medical schools after I got my bachelor's degree or, you
know, I applied during the year. But during the last year or so of my undergraduate
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education, I got interested in social sciences, and the accident of the time was that there
was very little in the way of psychology at Michigan State University, where I was a
student, in those days if you can believe it. There was only one professor in psychology
in the place, although there were five or six professors of sociology and several of
economics. So anyway, I more or less drifted into sociology and economics, and found
that I was more interested in sociology than economics, so I just took enough courses,
probably five courses, something like that, that was enough to be a major in those days,
and so I graduated with sufficient chemistry to have a chemistry major, and sufficient
sociology to be a sociology major, and to have fully qualified in the pre-med curriculum.
It wasn't all that difficult because you had lots of choices, you know, subjects.
00:03:09
LS:
You'll have to say why you got interested in the social sciences. Can you remember?
WS:
Well, it was the Depression, you may remember. I graduated from college in 1933, and
so I was in college when the Depression hit. And as many of us became very much
concerned with the extreme suffering people underwent at that time--after all, the college
I was attending was in Lansing, Michigan, and thousands upon thousands of people who
had been prosperous working people, found themselves without food, you know. I took
one course in social work, a field course in which I had to go out and interview people for
the Family Service Agency, and my main job was to go out and tell them that they no
longer could have milk from the agency because they didn't have any more money. This
was before Roosevelt had brought on the New Deal. So anyway, we were much
concerned about all kinds of social problems at that time, and my interests, more and
more, have focused in that direction.
LS:
You know it is interesting you should go to sociology for that. When I went to college in
the early 1940s sociology would not have been seen as an area fit to explore the
sufferings of people at all.
WS:
Oh yes, but that was a change in sociology. At that time sociology and social work were
in one common department in most universities. Even in big universities that was true.
In fact, after I came here in 1946, social work was still in the sociology department here.
[The department was called sociology and anthropology with no mention of social work,
but the seven or eight social work professors were in the department.WHS] We were one
of the last places to separate sociology from social work, here at Wisconsin. But in those
days much of the teaching of sociology--there were theory courses, but much of the
teaching had to do with social problems of one kind or another, and especially
emphasized in that Depression period. So, I got interested along the way, and the more I
took of chemistry and physics, the less interesting I thought I found it. Then during the
interim between--I was graduated from college in spring rather than the end of the spring
semester. There were three quarters, and I graduated at the end of the second quarter, and
my mother died at exactly that time, very suddenly.
00:06:03
I went home and stayed with my father during the following summer and the rest of that
academic year, meanwhile having been admitted to medical schools, and I got an offer
from one of the professors at Michigan State of a small tuition fellowship and some
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Sewell, William H (#101)
hourly work on a research project, and I thought, well, I might just as well get a master's
degree, I can always go to medical school. Once I got into that I never decided to--I just
forgot about going into medicine. Medicine was primarily, I think, a family aspiration
for me, since my father was a pharmacist, and I had an uncle who was a doctor, and it
wasn't that the Depression kept me from going, because my father, despite having lost a
great deal of his money, was still quite well-to-do throughout the Depression. Three of
us all went to college at the same time, so that it wasn't a matter of sacrifice, it was just a
matter of change in interest as far as I know. I hadn't thought much about it in a long
time, but I think that would be a fairly objective answer as to what happened.
00:07:33
Once I got into graduate work-LS:
Wait, though. You said that you had the choice of going, or you wanted to go, to either
Chicago or Minnesota, and that your professor at Michigan State recommended
Minnesota. Have you ever regretted that choice?
WS:
Yes, but not that much. Well, it was a wise choice in one sense, in that the person with
whom I went to study, F. Stuart Chapin, was unquestionably the leading exponent and
promoter of quantitative sociology in the world at that time probably. Chicago, however,
was a much more prestigious department because they had at least four or five people of
equal prestige to Chapin, whereas the rest of the people at Minnesota were not nearly so
prestigious, and Chicago was the dominant department as it remained for many, many
years, just because of the fact that it had brought together such a great group of
sociologists. There were no three departments, or four, in the country, taken together,
that had as many stars as Chicago had, real stars in those days. It was kind of interesting
that in 1952 I was offered the chairmanship of the department at the University of
Chicago but decided to stay here. But in any event--
LS:
Being near home didn't influence you? But you were in Michigan, weren't you?
WS:
No, I'm from Michigan. I was from much farther away. I had to come on up around the
lake all the way to Minneapolis. No, home had nothing to do with it. The real choice I
was trying to make—
00:09:28
my father didn't know what sociology was but was a little suspicious of it, sounded too
much like socialism to him I suppose, and so he said, well he knew I was very much
interested in Harold Laski and some of the liberal British social scientists at the
University of London, and he offered to pay my way to the University of London if I
wanted to go and study economics, which he felt was a much more respectable discipline.
But by that time I had decided I wanted to study sociology, and I knew who I wanted to
study with pretty much, and that was why I went to Minnesota. Whether it was a good
choice or not I just don't know. I missed a lot that I would have gotten at Chicago.
LS:
Including fellow graduate students, I suppose. It wouldn't have been quite as inspiring-
WS:
Oh no. Minnesota, however, was not worse than third-best graduate department in those
days, but the difference between first and third was greater than it is now. There would
have been better graduate students, there's no question about that, and there would have
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been other people that--I would have had better theoretical training than I got at
Minnesota I'm sure, because there were some rather outstanding people there, although
again even Chicago was not a highly theoretical department. There has always been
something, still to this day, about mid-western sociology that's terribly pragmatic and
empirical and quantitative, and Chicago was that. It just happened that there was no
advocate of quantitative methods that was quite the equal of Chapin, I suppose. So that's
why I went there. I'm sure I missed other things but I really loved it there. Minneapolis
is a lovely city. I think it would have been better for me than Chicago with all its slums
and complexity and all.
00:11:42
LS:
You had a heart condition, didn't you?
WS:
For a while.
LS:
But you got over it.
WS:
Oh yes. I got over it long before I knew it I'm sure, because I was walking, I was being
careful about running up and down stairs, and things. It wasn't until I got to the
University of Minnesota and went over to the student health center at the medical school
for an examination that they said my heart was fine, that I had overcome the rheumatic
fever and so on. But that took several years, but by then I was in fine shape. Never had
any problem with it since.
00:12:28
LS:
Why did you decide to go into quantitative work?
WS:
I guess I just took the statistics, and I'm sure that something about the chemistry training
and biology and bacteriology and experimental, even though experimental method was
much more primitive than it is today, it was quantitative and we learned the logic and
statistics of experiments and so on, and I was just attracted to that. I have always been
attracted to precise types of research and analysis, and my real fascination and reason, I
suppose, for going to Minnesota, was that I believed that you could measure things much
better than social scientists usually did. I think I must have got that out of my training
seminars in psychology, but in any event at Minnesota, particularly. When I went to
Minnesota I was interested in statistics. By the time I left Minnesota I was interested in
measurement. In other words not just statistics but how can you measure attitudes better,
how can you measure social status better, and so on. And that really was where my
research started off. I stayed at Minnesota three years and passed my prelims and all of
my course work, taught half time, was an instructor most of the time I was there. In those
days if you already had a master's degree and they thought you were a white-haired boy,
they would make you instructor, and that meant that you could teach courses
independently, and you got a little more money which wasn't very much in those days.
Half of eighteen hundred instead of half of twelve hundred for your stipend, so that I got
experience rather early in handling courses independently.
00:14:46
LS:
Do you want to talk about Chapin? Both Dave Featherman and Bob Hauser have talked
about their association with Dudley Duncan.
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WS:
You know that Duncan was my undergraduate student. Anyway, Chapin was an unusual
man. He scheduled his time by minutes, even his own work. He'd get up in the morning,
for example--he was telling me about this one time, even when he went to his summer
cottage, he'd get up in the morning and work for four hours, right by the clock. He'd stop,
have his lunch, then he'd go fishing for the afternoon, and read in the evening. That was
his pattern. As chairman of the department and its most famous professor, he was
involved in a great many national activities, of course. He was one of the founders of the
Social Science Research Council in New York, and various things of that sort, and way
before his time he started the Social Science Abstracts, and took leave from the university
to do that. That was before I got there, of course. But in any event that failed, but then
thirty years later the idea was picked up and was a huge success. So he was a hard man
to see, you couldn't see him without an appointment of some days in advance usually.
Many of the students--and then he was not a very outgoing person until he got to know
you quite well, and then only if he respected your intellect, so that there were a lot of the
graduate students who feared him terribly. On the other hand I always found him warm
and always helpful. Any time I wanted to see him I'd tell the secretary and she'd get me
in the next day, or something of that sort. But still, anybody who regulates his time in
that way, you know, you don't just go in and visit and mess around. What else could I
tell you about him? He wasn't a very good lecturer. Always competent--you know if he
came to talk about social stratification in the city, it would be all outlined and it wouldn't
be on the board, but you could see the outline emerge as he taught but not very
interestingly. So again he wasn't a popular teacher. At the seminar level he was the best
I ever saw, and in those days, you know, there probably weren't over ten full-time
graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, and then a few hangers-on who came in from jobs
around the city for a seminar now and then. His seminar used to attract more people than
anyone else, both because of its reputation and his fame. In any event there would be
some people, one or two of us, who had very similar interests with Chapin, whose level
of performance in the seminar would be much higher, say, than one of these fellows who
just was trying to fill in a seminar from somewhere or other. But it didn't matter where
the person giving the seminar presentation left off, Chapin would always go on from
there and expand, and point out implications and possibilities for research, and so on.
And that would include even the people who just weren't able to do much at all. The
result was that you learned an awful lot in the seminar. So I very much admired his
teaching in the seminar.
00:19:17
LS:
Did he encourage discussion and challenge in his students?
WS:
Oh yes he did, but you know, I used to challenge him and one or two others, but hardly
anyone else did. They were afraid, you know, they didn't know enough.
LS:
But he welcomed it?
WS:
Well he welcomed it from those of us who really had something to say, but he didn't have
much time for anybody who didn't. Truth was that I thought I was going to be studying
with a great statistician, but it turned out--I say this, I hope with sufficient modesty--I
knew more statistics by the time I got there than he did because I was so much more
recently trained, and I had gone out of my way to take statistics outside of my
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department, that I really knew more technical statistics than he did. But he had ideas
about--he used to say, "Anything that man does or says can be measured," and in those
days that was a very radical statement. Anything that's worth observing is worth trying to
measure. But then he didn't know enough even in those days of theories of measurement
and things of that sort to do an elegant job of measurement. But he always was trying
something way before anybody else did, you see, and now that wasn't his only--he
published six or seven books, all of which were outstanding, on social change, on various
other subjects, but for his time he was way in advance of other sociologists, at least other
prominent sociologists.
LS:
In imagination.
WS:
Yes in his imagination, and in his logical structuring of ideas and things of that sort. But
not a colorful person. In fact most of the students would be very bored at the detail at
which he would press the logic forward and backward and things of that sort. And then
they would often say, "Well you know, he doesn't--it's not exciting when he talks about
it."
00:21:45
I remember a generation, or not a generation, the next group to mine, Chapin had gotten
interested in what is called sociometry, or was called sociometry in those days, which
roughly has to do with how in interaction people size up other individuals and place them
in a social stratification system within that system of interaction, so that you have some
people who are stars that everybody wants to identify, then you have other people who
are stars to only one or two people. But then there are some people who really contribute
very little to interaction, just ordinary sorts of folks. Well, it's a rather difficult thing to
picture, at least on a flat piece of paper, so Chapin got Tinker Toys and he'd put the
height and the status of the people in the group represented through these features. I
remember when I asked him at a meeting--I noticed some of them, they were Tinker Toys
like kids later played with, but when I was a kid and we had Tinker Toys they were all
just plain natural wooden color. These were red and green, so I asked him if the different
colors had any indication, for example such as that this person tended to be a leader in
some aspect of the group project, others in others, and he had never thought of that, and
he said, "Aha! That's the other dimension that I could get." Well anyway, the students
all referred to it as Tinker Toy sociology. But in any event he was quite an important
person, and one of the things he was working on when I was there, was the idea of ex
post facto experiments. He felt very much that sociology was badly handicapped by not
being able to experiment with people in the sense, say, that a psychologist could
experiment, or a biologist, or any other scientist could experiment. And so he had
devised a technique whereby you could take data on say a large number of people, 3,000
people, and then there would be some outcome you were interested in. But first you
knew that their social class made a difference in how they behaved, that their sex made a
difference, that race made a difference, that the amount of education made a difference.
Let's just take those four, it could be more than that. So you'd go back then and look at
their background characteristics which you already had in your survey instrument, and
you would pair these people on each of these characteristics, throw away all the rest of
them that you couldn't match, and then with these matched people you would see how
they come out. Are there still differences between those who live in public housing and
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those who live in private housing or whatever else it might be, and from that you would
perform something like an experiment instead of randomly selecting people and
assigning them to different treatments. You would go back from the treatment to the
earlier conditions. Well that never caught on very well but the logic of it was very great.
And the students again always had great wisecracks about that, and they said that his ex
post facto experimental method was the best way in the world to throw away about 90
percent of your data. In any event he was always thinking of things of that sort, so he
was a very interesting man and I grew really to have not only great respect for him but, I
think, probably a great deal of love and admiration for him after I left there, you know
how students are, and I never was one to particularly apprentice myself to anyone
anyway.
00:26:21
But anyway as I think back over my whole training, he's probably the only one who ever
had much influence on me. And none of my fellow graduate students did, they just
weren't good enough. [Only one exception, Louis Guttman, who I had first met as an
undergraduate student, and later we overlapped for one year as graduate students. Louis
taught me much about measurement of social phenomena. WHS] Now many of many of
colleagues have, but certainly not my fellow graduate students.
LS:
Did he take a personal interest in you? And he went out of his way?
WS:
Oh yes. The other students, although they liked me, always referred to me as "the whitehaired boy." Yes he did go out of his way; as much as he went out of his way for
anybody he went out of his way for me. I remember when I resigned as chancellor, by
then he was quite an old man, he certainly must have been eighty or near eighty and
retired many years, he wrote me a letter in which he said something about he was so glad
that I was quitting a terrible kind of job, that it was much better that I use my God-given
talents to do research and so on, which he went on to praise. So he kept very close track
of me, and I'm sure that he thought when he turned out three people that later became
important, really important people, and one of them was George Lundberg who was a
generation older than me, and another was Louis Guttman, who took his first course in
sociology from me when I was an instructor there, and then later became the really top
person in measurement in the social sciences for many years thereafter. But anyway he
did take great pride in the three of us. I'm sure he must have taken pride in a lot of the
others because there were a lot of good people who over the years were Ph.D.'s under
Chapin. I think in total he had at least five people who became presidents of the
American Sociological Association, and that's pretty good you know.
00:28:45
End of Tape, End of Side
Tape 13, Side 2
[NO AUDIO]
LS:
How much influence has he had on the work you've done?
WS:
On my work? On the early work he had a good deal because the first thing I did when I
left Minnesota, the first job I got was--
LS:
You're still talking about Chapin, I should say, on this side of the tape.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yes. Of course he helped my to get that job, but he wanted me to stay at Minnesota, but I
wanted to go and there wasn't a real job there anyway you know, in some sort of a
temporary capacity until something developed. But anyway this was 1937 and jobs were
few and far between. I had an offer of a job at the University of Indiana as an instructor,
and a full-time instructor at the University of Indiana in those days taught four courses.
That was a standard load. I wanted to go someplace where I could have some time for
research, and I had met a man, O.D. Duncan, who was just forming a new department at
then Oklahoma A&M College, now Oklahoma State University, and he had come to
Minnesota to do some additional graduate work. He was twelve or thirteen years older
than me and he was just starting in the department, and so he wanted me to go there with
him, and he worked out an arrangement whereby I had a half-time appointment in the
College of Letters and Sciences, and half-time in the Agricultural Experiment Station, so
I could have half-time for research. And I thought I had great leisurely half-time for
research. I taught two courses each semester which nowadays we think of as a full-time
load. Four different courses, but anyway that gave me some funds and money for my
research.
LS:
That surprises me that that would have been thought of then, you know, giving people
that much research time.
WS:
Oh yes. The only way they could possibly do it was to put you in the Agricultural
Experiment Station, because Agricultural Experiment Stations had money for research.
Nothing else did in those days. And so that's were I went. I had grown up in a little town
when I was a kid. I was interested in rural people and so on, just as interested in them as
anybody else and could do the things I wanted to do.
LS:
You already had some things you wanted to do.
WS:
No, I wasn't all that sure what I wanted to do, not when I went there. At just about that
time, just a little before that, during my period of graduate work, Thurston at Chicago, the
psychologist--he had nothing to do with sociology-- Thurston was developing techniques
for attitude measurement and I was reading all that stuff, and so I was very interested in
making some attitude scales and then applying them to try to get at differences among
people in their attitudes and backgrounds, and how you might account for them.
LS:
I had better ask you, you had said that you were reading all that stuff, and earlier you said
that you didn't get theoretical training and wouldn't have very much at Chicago. Did you
take care of this on your own?
WS:
I meant formal theoretical training. Oh I read Durkheim, I read Weber, I read everything.
You know graduate training in those days, if it's not true today, was much more
dependent on what you did with your own time than it was what happened to you in
courses and seminars, so I read those things. They were new--well, Durkheim wasn't
new but the translations were new. In fact I read Durkheim's methods book in French to
pass my French language exams, and I suppose I must have read some of Weber in
German, although there were translations coming by then, and those were two of the
great classical sociologist. So I read those things. But in addition to that I was much
more interested than in those things, in what Thurston and some others were doing in
terms of attitude measurement, and so I read the technical articles, I could do that. I
presented them in seminars and so on.
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LS:
Was this unusual, that you were doing this much outside reading? I don't really get the
impression that graduate students do a whole lot of that now. Maybe they do.
WS:
But you know in those days there weren't many courses and there weren't many seminars.
There would be a whole semester and maybe there would only be--well, maybe Chapin's
seminar on theory and method would be the only seminar given that quarter.
LS:
How did you find out about Weber?
WS:
From reading, and classes. People would mention them in lectures, but there wasn't a
course in the history of social thought, there wasn't a course in formal social theory
offered. They were in the books but nobody ever taught them. So you had to dig that
stuff out by yourself. They did not hesitate to ask you the questions about it in your orals
or in your exams.
LS:
So it was important to your getting your degree.
WS:
Oh sure. Very important that you do the reading. There was probably a reading list, I
don't remember, I'm sure there was, in different areas that you should study even though
you didn't have any courses in it. But that had nothing to do with my reading about
measurement. I discovered that from talking to psychologists, taking courses with them
and doing things of that sort, so I was reading things of that nature on my own and
talking with other graduate students, not in sociology, but graduate students in
particularly psychology. And then I also had a minor in economics and this was just
when the revolution in economic thought came along, and the theory of imperfect
competition had just come out, and that was a very quantitative theory. So I took the
seminars and advanced courses in that, and that didn't appeal to me nearly as much as
psychological statistics and measurement ideas but I had very good grounding in that as
well, so when I say I didn't get the training in sociology, in theory and so on, that I might,
I was picking it up in other places, but not from sociologists but from other disciplines in
the social sciences. So that wasn't all that unusual I don't think. I think the only place
where you could have gotten--where there was enough top level scholars, where you
could have gotten all those things right within the department would have been Chicago.
And even there the people went out for special kinds of things that they wanted. So it
wasn't all that bad. I'm sure that by the time I came out of the University of Minnesota I
was as well trained as anybody. In fact I was probably one of if not the best--probably
the best quantitively trained person in the country that came out of that experience. Well,
just the peculiar interests that I had and other people didn't at that time. The interests that
I had really grew directly out of my contacts with Chapin, but he would say to me, "Go
and look at something else," that he hadn't himself looked at, that sort of thing. But in
any event, in addition to my work with him, as I say, I took courses-- quantitative courses
and experimental psychology, and economic statistics, and I even went over and took a
course with the famous biometrician Alan Treloar while I was there--so that was more
than you'd get if you were at Chicago and just took what they told you to take.
LS:
And did you get from these various courses tools that you could put together and develop
your own--
WS:
Yes. In fact for my Ph.D. dissertation--in those days it was quite common once you
passed your prelims to go and get a job, so I took a job at Oklahoma with O.D. Duncan,
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and then gathered the data from certainly one of the first, might have been the very first
rural sample that ever was done by modern sampling designs and so on, and the name of
the project as I recall was The Social Correlatives of Land Tenure Status. You think of
land tenure as having a very status hierarchy from rural owners, to the mortgage people,
to the renters, to the sharecroppers and so on, and what's associated with that in terms of
the health of the people, their income, their wealth, their level of living, their education,
and so on. Anyway, when we designed that study--another fellow and I did it together-he was all interested in getting at all those kinds of things, but I was interested in devising
a scale for the measurement of socio-economic status of farm families and so I did that,
hit upon that idea, and then I used that for my Ph.D. dissertation. Chapin didn't even
know what I was working on, and never saw it until I sent it in. But I did the whole thing
in a year I guess, and this was in the days before even--well, we had--counting sorters
were the most advanced statistical devices we had, so I had to work out all the statistics
for this which were quite complicated for item selection, and then combined it and went
out and tested it, tested its reliability and validity and all that sort of thing.
LS:
You were in command of all this? There weren't any uncertainties as to how to go about
it?
WS:
Well, there might have been some uncertainties, but I read up and did it. There wasn't
anybody there who could help me at all, nor could Chapin for that matter, but in any
event I went ahead and did that and sent it in. I had gone over it a couple of times very
carefully before I sent it in. It was all complete from beginning to end which is what I've
tried to tell every graduate student I've ever had since: do it and present it as a whole
instead of running in with three or four pages every ten minutes. But anyway, it was
accepted just as it was written, by him and by the committee.
LS:
What was his reaction? Did he write you a letter or talk to you about it?
WS:
He talked to me a good deal about it afterwards. Oh, he thought it was a great job. Well
anyway, it was the first what you could call--it was the first use of modern scaling
methods in sociology. Since then there have been all kinds of measurement things done,
but that was the first one. So it gained an awful lot of attention and I was invited to
various places to talk about it, and all that sort of thing. Harvard, Chicago, Texas,
various other places to give seminars on it.
LS:
Were you prepared for this kind of--
WS:
Oh sure. I was a brash, smart--kids would now say, "smart-ass sort of a guy," you know,
that just loved to go in and reveal the truth to them--you know, show them how to do
things. But anyway--
LS:
But I mean did you know that it was going to be so exciting?
WS:
No, oh no I didn't know that. But I knew it was good, but I didn't know people would be
that interested.
LS:
So you were surprised when you got this response.
WS:
Yes I expected that I would get quite a favorable response, but I didn't expect that it
would be that--in those days, you see, there was a great deal of argument, it still goes on
in sociology, about quantification, with many people in sociology believing that if you
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quantify something you'll ruin the spirit of it and the real character of it and so on. On
the other hand the topic I chose was to measure the socio-economic status of a family,
you know, kind of made a lot of sense. There was another very fortunate thing about it.
Up until that time you couldn't use the usual substitutes for farm people for trying to get
at their social and economic position in the community. What you'd usually do was find
out what their income is, how they live and things of that sort. It takes hours to do that
with a farm family. You've got to have a budget, so you sit there with a budget and work
it all out. Of course we did that budget thing, and then I had these various items of
household equipment and matters of that sort, and reduced that from 128 items to thirtysix by statistical techniques, not that I had invented but borrowed from other fields, and
ended up with a rating scale it which you could, in ten minutes, rate a farm family's
socio-economic status better than you could with these other techniques that took hours
to do. So that was kind of exciting to even people outside of rural sociology obviously,
because you could also do it for other groups.
Well, anyway, that was that. Now, one of the reasons where I got that idea was that
Chapin, earlier on--before I went there--had devised something he called a "family living
room scale," in which you'd go in and sit in somebody's living room and see if they had a
piano and various other things. But he didn't know anything about scaling, so he just put
a whole mess of them together, and it turned out to work quite well. Later on, Louis
Guttman, who came after me at Minnesota, did his master's degree taking this "living
room scale" of Chapin's and applying a still newer technique of factor analysis to it and it
turned out that it wasn't too bad a scale. It scaled on factor-analytic methods, and--but
anyway, that was where I got the idea to do it, only to do it in a different way in terms of
content and a different way in terms of selection of the items. LS: What was your goal
in doing it? Why were you doing it? Why were you interested in the socio-economic
status of rural families?
WS:
Because I've always been interested in social stratification. If you look through that
rather long bibliography there, you'll see that about, over the years maybe, 60 percent of
the articles deal with some sort of stratification.
LS:
But why?
WS:
Why? Because that's the most fascinating thing there is about man, is how he, how
individuals in the group separate themselves from each other on the basis of such things
as their wealth, their income, their education, their occupation, their general position of
respect in the community--and so, well, I find that just fascinating. How does it come
about, and how can one generation pass it on to the next, parents to children, and so on?
What kinds of factors are involved in it, in the whole process of stratification or social
mobility? I've always been fascinated with that question. In fact, there are many people
who would tell you that's a principle business of sociologists. Now a lot of them will tell
you it isn't, too. But at least it's been a matter of great fascination to me. Perhaps you've
dealt with many sociologists, but you'll find they're always the most status-conscious
people in the world. I would bet that when they published the list of salaries, that every
sociologist here went down through it to see, you know, who was where and how much
behind them they were and all that.
LS:
I would imagine everybody did.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Well, they do, but we do it--you know, we have a great interest in these kinds of things.
And then, it's a terribly important thing, is how do people get sorted out into these areas
or kinds of positions within a society? And how do they maintain them? Can they
change them within a lifetime? Most of my recent work has been really on career
mobility. What are the factors that result in people--
LS:
There are policy implications of it--is that right?
WS:
Oh, there are policy implications.
LS:
Is that what interested you?
WS:
No.
LS:
It was like finding out what's in the atom, or--?
WS:
It was just the fascination of---oh, sure. That's not my only interest in sociology, by any
means. I also am interested in looking at the policy implications of things, but I don't do
research for that purpose. I do it because I'm interested in doing it. And then I never get
into the policy business myself. I think that's a waste of time. You know, let the people
who were called on to make policy fool around with those. Politicians, administrators,
and so on. That's no place for scientists. They always ass it up the minute they start
doing anything in terms of real social policy, because they don't have enough experience
with the kind of realities in which you have to make social policy.
So I've never been much for doing that, but I have--I guess I have pointed out--I'm sure
that, I know it to be true, that two or three things I've done have had results that--have
had consequences once they were found out about--some of them--that were rather large.
In fact, one study I did years ago--and several other people and other--I designed the
study, but a number of other people worked on it--resulted in farmers being accepted into
Social Security in the United States. Up to that time, they'd been denied Social Security
on the claims of various farm representatives in Washington that farmers didn't want any
of this socialism, that they could take care of themselves. And we made a study here in
Wisconsin that was repeated in a dozen or so states, and it showed that about 80 percent
of the then-active in the age group from forty to sixty had no idea what they'd do in their
old age. They had no insurance, they had nothing. And once that was presented to the
U.S. Congress--not by me, but by advocates of the bill--the bill passed. And it's actually
documented in the Congressional Record that this was the main reason--that this the first
real data they'd ever had on this question. So, you know, if you do things--the stuff I've
done on educational and occupational aspirations, especially the education thing, has had
quite an impact. Mondale used it, and various others--congressmen, people like that. But
I never did--
LS:
But it wasn't your, that wasn't your job.
WS:
That wasn't my doing, no. I was glad it came out that way, but I wasn't--some people feel
if you do some research and you have some findings--economists--it's part of the
economic tradition that we're always engaged in policy research and telling people what
to do, but I guess I never thought that was being a scientist. So I didn't do things like
that. Well, anyway, we've strayed from--
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So, anyway, I stayed at Oklahoma about seven years, finished my Ph.D. while I was
there in the first year or so, and taught my load. Then, because I was being asked to write
more and more about this--during the period from '37 to '43, I probably published fifteen
papers and monographs on various aspects of socio-economic status, how you
standardize such scales for use in other areas, measurement questions about item
selection. Things of that sort. In fact, I got tired of it, because I wanted to do some other
things. But sometimes you get caught up in--you're partly directed by what others--what
they invite you to come and give a paper about. So then the war came on.
LS:
I'd like to ask you--you were way off in Oklahoma. Did you have a chance to meet other
sociologists at meetings?
WS:
Oh, sure. I went to all the meetings. I got invited to conferences. It was never any
handicap.
LS:
So you were right--who were the people you were most interested in at that time?
Sociologists---
WS:
I suppose Bob Merton, who was a contemporary--we're the same age--and he was the
leading theoretician of sociology. And he brought a new message to sociological theory,
and that was essentially that somehow you had to test social theory, which up to that
point had been rather armchair, arid sort of theorizing, and to test it by social research.
Well, he never succeeded in doing much research himself and testing it. He was kind of
the inspiration for people like me who didn't want to do theoretical or just empirical
things, but who wanted their research to be guided by some sort of theory. So he always
came up with beautiful terms, but the fortunate one was "theories of the middle range."
And by that he meant propositions that you might derive from some theoretical position,
and then figure out how you could test it, either in an experiment if you were a
psychologist, or through survey research or longitudinal research in the social sciences.
He had a very great influence on his own contemporaries. He's still alive, he's retired--he
retired about the same time I did. But he spent--his first few years were out at Tulane.
He went to Tulane when I went to Oklahoma, and we first met, I think, in a meeting of
the Southwest Sociological Society, which he promptly termed the dustbowl of
American sociology. And it was. Also, at the University of Oklahoma at that time was
William Foote White, who later became very famous for Street Corner Society and spent
the rest of his life at Cornell. Then I met Robin Williams--a little younger, but in that
same generation, and he was a Harvard Ph.D. as was Merton, one of his contemporaries
there. Kingsley Davis--well, a whole group of people who became the leaders. There
were about six or eight who just constituted the leaders of American sociology for the
next generation. They were all in key places--Cornell, Columbia, Wisconsin, Chicago.
LS:
You knew yourselves as leaders at the time?
WS:
Oh, yes. We figured we were--they were not an unconfident generation, having been
fired in the Depression, and having made our way through our first jobs at $1800 a year
and so on, and risen rapidly. I don't know--I've never looked it up, but I went from
assistant professor to full professor in four years. Bob Merton was in better places, so it
took him a little longer--about five years. And those were the days when some people
would stay an assistant professor forever.
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End of Tape 13, Side 2
Tape 14, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
This is the continuation of this 1985 interview with Bill WS.
WS:
In other words, I would say the main influences were not the older scholars, but your
contemporaries. And they were all doing interesting things. And every one of those that
I've mentioned has become famous in sociology. And we used to get together at the
meetings--regional and national meetings. I remember all of us, at our first national
meeting, all stayed at the YMCA in Chicago. It was really quite an experience. And then
there were some younger ones that were coming along that were very good, and it's hard
to say, when you look back, now that time has passed, then they seemed much younger.
They were three or four years behind us, you know, but they constitute a part of that
generation. And one of the foremost of those was Louis Guttman from Minnesota, who
became really the master mathematical statistician of the social sciences, including
psychology--those that dealt with measurement rather than with mass statistics, like
economists--all the rest of them, political science. The name Guttman is just a household
word among social scientists because of Guttman scaling and technique that he developed
and was very ingenious. Anyway, those people were the influential ones. The older
people were very nice, very tolerant, and among them there were Sam Stouffer, who had
his first position at the University of Wisconsin--he came here as an assistant professor
and was here about three years, as I recall. He's the man over there with the glasses with
the figures behind him. [In my rogues' gallery of famous sociologists.WHS] Sam was
here only about three or four years, then went to Chicago, where he got his Ph.D.
originally, and then for years he was the young teacher of quantitative methods there. He
was very encouraging to people of my group. He was probably ten years older than we
were. And then the man next to him is, this way, the bald-headed man, is William F.
Ogburn. And he's a very, very famous man at Chicago and, again, another--you know, he
probably was ten, twelve years older than--Stouffer was his professor. He and Chapin
were really the rival figures in quantitative methods, but Chapin was the more
imaginative and less just plain statistician-type, although Mr. Ogburn was a marvelous
person and also a great scholar. They did rather different things.
00:03:05
Anyway, those people just encouraged you. The development of sociology, once it
started on the quantitative trend--and that was much enhanced by the coming--by the
New Deal. You had to collect statistics and make surveys and find out how poor the
people were and you had to do all these kinds of things. So Mr. Ogburn went to
Washington to head up the social trends work of the federal government for several years
during the Depression. And many other sociologists went in. Then they hired young
people to come and work with them. I never went because I didn't have much taste for
government to begin with, and I never expected to work for government until I was called
up in the navy.
LS:
Excuse me--O.K.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
So I was at Oklahoma, then, for those years, and, as I say, it was my peers around the
country that were the influences, with a good deal of encouragement from the older
figures in the field, who were always putting you on programs and doing things of that
sort.
00:04:34
LS:
Did you actually consult others, like Merton? Did you talk to each other, did you tell
them what you were doing, and ask for suggestions or vice-versa?
WS:
No.
LS:
None of you did that.
WS:
I'm sure some of them did, but--I talked to Bob Merton about what I was doing, and he
read papers--I'd send him papers and all that, and he'd critique them. But the kinds of
things I was doing were not the kinds of things he worked on.
LS:
Or anybody else, either.
WS:
Well, there were other people who did, sure. I used to send things to Sam Stouffer, who
could critique them, even though he was---
LS:
But he's one of the older ones. I meant with your own generation.
WS:
We were good friends, rivals--
LS:
That's what I was wondering about, the rivalry. There must have been quite a bit of that,
I suppose.
WS:
Yes, there was a lot of rivalry, but, you know, it was a very interesting kind of rivalry.
None of us were together in the same institution, with the exception of Kingsley Davis
and Bob Merton for a few years. They didn't get along at all once they were in the same
institution. Because both of them demanded a great deal of attention from everybody
else, and they were concerned about their position in the field, and so on. And so that
made it a little harder. But there was lots of room at the top. There were no cut-throat
sorts of things. Nobody was doing the same thing and worrying that the other would
scoop them or anything like that.
LS:
There's more of that now, I imagine.
WS:
Probably, but not like there is in real science, you know, where twenty guys are working
on the same kinds of machines trying to beat each other to the same idea--the idea that
they may have gotten suggested to them by their professor or something like that. No, it
wasn't that way, and I don't think it's too much that way now. There is rivalry, you know,
and then there are some people that just are rivalrous. And others that can just go along
their own way and not need all that kind of acclaim and so on from other people to
motivate them to work.
LS:
Which are you?
WS:
I'm a pure self-starter, and it doesn't worry me who does what. I figure there's plenty of
room for credit in the world and I'll get my share. In fact, when they asked me, "What
are you going to do about a replacement for you?" I said, "We've already got eight in the
department." Which was almost literally true--that could do what I'm doing. Not that it
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took eight to do it--any one of them could do it better. But, you know, some people are
more jealous and rivalrous than others. Bob Merton has always enjoyed the highest
accord of anybody in the whole group, and I think that bothered somebody who worked
with him, like Kingsley Davis, who was, without question, the great demographer--in
addition to being demographic theorist--of his age. And those two were in one
department. And even though they were doing different things--Columbia, by then, was
a great center for sociological training--and I suppose, you know, I don't know if I'd have
been all that good if I'd have been where other people were or not. But I never had that
problem particularly.
00:08:25
Also, there was another thing about being out in Oklahoma those seven years. While I
say I saw these people and we talked and I read a lot, I've always done an awful lot of the
basic reading and thinking on my own anyway. I've never been great to sit down and talk
long hours with people about things. I have gone to people for advice, obviously, and I
have always had some colleagues within the department that I'd have critique things in
early stages. Fortunately, there's always been somebody like that around ever since I've
been here. Some of them come and go, but still, somebody else turns up.
LS:
You said another thing about being at--is that?—
00:09:15
WS:
Well, I was going to say the thing about there was you were somewhat isolated. So you
did---
LS:
So you had to time to--or you were forced to---
WS:
At least you were forced to read. Thinking never was such a problem. It's reading that's
a problem. Because, you know, I remember one time when John Dewey was asked how
come there were only about twelve footnotes in his great book on logic--or some such
number, very small number--and he said, who knows where he gets ideas, I read all the
time. And I don't bother, necessarily, to try to think of where I got some idea or other.
Well, if you read enough you're going to get some ideas as you go along. And so I spent
an awful lot of time reading. I still do. I just finished a paper just recently that I must
have a--my review of literature must be thirty pages long. Of course, I've got to squeeze it
all down. I have to go back and read the stuff so I know what other people are doing and
how they did it wrong and how it can be done better and so on. I think I have maybe not
needed a great deal of, or at least in those early days I didn't need much external
stimulation. I had more to do than I could get done. So that kind of ends Oklahoma,
excepting that we had three kids there, I became a full professor at less than age thirty,
and the war came on.
00:11:00
Of course, the war was on a couple of years before. I had a commission. I took a
commission because I figured I might be drafted anyway, and if I had to go I'd better go
as an officer. It was then, during the early part of the war, part of my time was spent
teaching naval history to WAVEs. They had two or three thousand WAVEs filling the
dormitories up and taking courses. So I was one of the people who taught them. And
that prevented them from calling me up right away. But I was finally called up in 1943,
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and immediately was asked for by people in Washington, the national headquarters of
Selective Service, to be assistant chief of research and statistics there. That was my first
experience with large-scale statistical processing. We had 18,000,000 registrants;
nobody knew where they were. The system was lousy and I helped to develop the system
that they later used. And so I was there all the rest of the war until the--late in the war, in
Germany 00:12:41
They--various others the Assistant of the Navy, decided that they ought to have a study of
the effects of bombing on civilian populations. Particularly on the morale, but also what
it did to transportation, what it did to communications, to food supplies--all that sort of
thing. So they set up a "bombing survey," as it was called--U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey. And I was asked by social psychologists who ran it--Rensis Likert, who later
started the Institute for Social Research at Michigan--to join the group. And I couldn't
get released from my assignment at that time. Although we didn't have much to do by
then--we'd already drafted everybody and all that sort of thing. But I was under the
command--since I was in the navy I was under the command of a Navy captain who was
a very bitter man because he had graduated I think it was fifth in his class at the Naval
Academy and then in peacetime had gotten into trouble with somebody. He was trying
to become head of the Bureau of Personnel against a rival person and he was in the
wrong faction, so he sat out the war in Washington jobs, which made him very bitter.
But in any event--so I couldn't go to Germany when the first group went. There were a
number of people, non-social scientists--Arthur Hasler was one of the people who went
on that study because he spoke German. But a good deal was learned on how to go and
survey a population like that. There was one division called the Morale Division, and
that was made up of social psychologists, primarily, who were to go and try to find out
the effects of bombing on civilian morale. And I was chosen to go on that and then they
did release me to join the survey in Japan, because the war was over--or, so we thought,
was going to be over.
So, anyway, I was one of the first people on this survey to get to Japan--flown over there,
and started getting the thing organized. And I was there, then, for several months, until
we finished the survey. It was the first time, again, that there had been--I didn't design it,
Morris Hansen and some by-then expert samplers came in and devised the sample of the
civilian population and all. And then we went into different areas and had teams of
interviewers--who were mainly Japanese-Americans, mainly from the west coast and
Hawaii--who did the interviews. So I had that experience during that period, along with
this massive statistical experience in Selective Service. Of course, I didn't have any time,
during that time, to do any of my own research. I did a lot. I wrote, I would guess, at
least half of the bombing survey report, and I wrote all sorts of things--on manpower for
Selective Service. But in any event the experience on the bombing survey convinced me
that what was needed in the social sciences in the future was to have interdisciplinary
teams studying important problems. Because we got together--there were four or five
psychologists--all very famous now, one psychiatrist, a couple of political scientists,
about three sociologists, four sociologists. And we sat there and designed that whole
study in three weeks' time, put it in the field, interviewed a sample of several thousand
Japanese and did all that. Some of the best ideas about social structure came from
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political scientists, and some of the best--you know, the naive questions that would be
asked in the group would spark off all sorts of things.
00:17:26
I thought that was wonderful. So when I came here--I had agreed, by the way, to come
here during the war. I had been recruited, well, personally, by E.B. Fred, who was in
Washington at that time. And, well, the department had said that they wanted me, and
E.B. Fred was in Washington running the Biological Warfare Program. Mr. Baldwin
really was running it, but Fred was the head of it. And so, anyway, Bill Sarles was there
as his right-hand man, too. And Bill and I met--I had never met any of them--having
lunch in Potomac Park, where the Navy Auxiliary ladies used to serve outdoor picnics or
lunches under the trees for officers in the area. And Bill and I sat next to each other two
or three times at those picnic benches and got acquainted. And finally he said--we got
talking, I found out he was a professor--doesn't take long, you know. And I told him I
was, too. And he said--and I asked him where he was, he said the University of
Wisconsin. I said, "That's interesting, because I've had some inquiries from them." And
he said, "Oh, have you?" The next day I saw him. "Oh, yes, I know all about you now.
Mr. Fred's got all the information on you and he's very anxious to see you." So that
started it off. I didn't know, of course, at that time, when the war would be over and
when I'd get there. Meanwhile, I had agreed to come here as soon as the war was over.
LS:
Did you have offers anywhere else?
WS:
I had had offers from several places before that, but not right at that time. Nobody else-that was one thing that somebody here was smart to do. They went out and picked a
number of people in different fields, and then made them offers while the war was still
on. Then they came here afterwards.
LS:
I wonder who did--
WS:
Well, I'm not sure that I know exactly who all they were.
LS:
I mean, I wonder who thought of it.
WS:
Whose idea it was? I don't know. It could even have been Mr. Fred's. He was always
looking for what he called "blue ribbon horses", you know.
LS:
Usually in the life sciences.
WS:
Yes, but he knew he needed some in other places, too. He never understood the social
sciences, but he knew that he needed people to strengthen other fields. So, anyway, I was
all scheduled to come here. So when the war was over and the bombing survey was over,
about that time my points came up. You know, depending on length of service and so on.
In fact, my points came up while I was in Japan, but I didn't want to come home then.
00:20:41
So I not only came back, but also Herbert Hyman and I--from Columbia--went to
Swarthmore for about two months and laid out the coding scheme and the analytical
scheme for the survey. And then I came here. But then I'd go back every now and then
to scribble on it and work on it and so on. So I got here maybe in April--something like
that--of '46. And didn't really--I was being paid, but I was really working on that stuff
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until it was finished. Then that fall I started a regular program of teaching and research.
My appointment, my real appointment, was really in rural sociology, but I was jointly a
member of sociology as well. And then over the years I taught more and more in
sociology and finally was asked to come over and be full-time and be chairman of the
department, and so that's how that all came about.
00:21:51
Well, anyway, after I got here, then, I dropped all of that research. Because I had gotten
interested in what I would call Personality and Social Structure. I taught a course by that
name all the time I was here, right up to my last day. It was the last course I taught.
Personality and Social Structure, I'm sure you'll understand, attempts to try to understand
how the social structure influences the social behavior of the individual.
LS:
This is where your article on Freud--
WS:
So then there was a whole series of articles, not just on Freud.
LS:
I mean, testing his theory.
WS:
Yes. There were about maybe fifteen articles, twenty articles--something like that. I
wrote it down here somewhere. Between the period of about '47 to '62 was what people
call my socialization period. Because I was interested in how people are socialized to the
kinds of roles they play and what effects this has on later behavior and so on.
LS:
How did you come to that?
WS:
How did I get interested in that?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
Again, I guess there was a lot of--during the war, there was a good deal of interest on the
part of people in anthropology, like Margaret Mead, for example, and, well, who were
some of the others--and Kardner, the psychiatrist, who was a Freudian psychiatrist. Erich
Fromm, Horney--and a great deal of interest in trying to understand essentially how the
early socialization of the individual was reflected either through psychoanalytic or other
means. How lasting that influence was, and how--Ruth Benedict was certainly one of
the leaders. And they particularly thought that it not only influenced their behavior, but
influenced the society's behavior. So Japanese, because they were so rigidly trained as
children, especially as infants, had this very great respect for authority, did exactly what
was expected of them and so on. And Ruth Benedict, of course, wrote books about the
Japanese in those terms. Well, I got interested in all that stuff, so I was reading it--you
know, I got awfully bored at the statistics at Selective Service, so I was reading that. I
even visited—
00:24:58
-a couple of times I visited the Kardner seminar at Columbia.
LS:
What seminar?
WS:
Kardner. He was a famous--he, and why can't I think of our famous anthropologist from
there, who was part of it--Ralph Linton. Kardner-Linton seminar.
LS:
Was Linton ever here?
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Oh, sure. He did his most famous book here. Yes, Linton was here--full professor,
actually, was here for several years. And just, during the war, left and went to Columbia.
And during the war, he and Kardner had this seminar on personality--Culture and
Personality, they called it, rather than Social Structure and Personality, it was Culture and
Personality. And they inspired all sorts of research among anthropologists,
psychologists, various others. But I got interested in, particularly, the proposition, the
basic psychoanalytic, psychosexual development of the individual. And I decided it was
time somebody tested it instead of just inferring it from the patients they see in the clinic
or something of that sort. So anyway, that's why the Infant Training Study was done.
That was, I suppose, my most famous thing. Even more famous than any single thing I
ever did. You've got to remember the stuff we've been doing the last twenty years is a
program of continuing research, building on various things. But in any event, that one
article was really the humdinger because it completely contradicted everything that
psychoanalysts had said about these things. Again, that had a lot of publicity--not
through me, but through Parents magazine and various other things--had quite an impact,
I suppose, on child-rearing beliefs. There were all these tormented mothers whose
children, in adolescence, had committed suicide because of their incestuous desires for
one parent or the other, and they were full of guilt. I once had a raft of letters that I got
from various parents--mothers, usually, and usually Jewish--writing and saying, "You
have freed me from my guilt. May God bless you," and so on. I never wrote any of the
popular things about it, but some other people did. Anyway, I was intrigued with that.
LS:
Did you have to train yourself, beyond what you already had, to do that study?
00:28:06
End of Tape 14, Side 1
Tape 14, Side 2
00:28:07
LS:
I mean, it was quite a different field from socioeconomic status of farm families.
WS:
Oh, yes. I read what all these people had written---
LS:
You must have had to read all of Freud.
WS:
Oh, no. You never read all of Freud, you know, but I had to read that part that had--and
mainly, you know, it's hard to tell what Freud actually said about that. It's what his
followers said that you--because Freud would say one thing at one point in his
development and leave it and go to another thing or change it all around, you know.
Freud was a free-floating kind of a genius. After he'd made these statements of great
causal intensity, then, later on, he'd change and do something else. But his followers
took it up and treated it just as if it were gospel. And as a result, unless a woman would
agree to breast-feed her children, she couldn't go to a hospital in the city of Chicago and
all that sort of thing. Anyway, it wasn't my intent to change things, and I was very
surprised, to be truthful about it, that it didn't have some effect on later childhood
behavior, at least we couldn't discern any by very careful statistical analytic techniques.
Now I knew how to do all that. All I had to do was to transform these statements into
hypotheses to be tested. And that's what I did.
LS:
You did that study from here.
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WS:
Yes.
LS:
And you, what, had your students--or did you hire people?
WS:
I trained people to do it. Oh, no, I did--we developed the questionnaire, took weeks
trying it out in various stages until we got it to where we could use it. Then we did a trial
run. We selected Richland County as the most "old American" county in Wisconsin,
which one of my colleagues had found in earlier research. The reason we did that is we
thought that we wanted to get--to hold constant, ethnicity, since ethnicity could--even
though the Freudian theory didn't say so, it's just good sense. True, you didn't want
someone to say you should have used different people or different ethnic groups. So we
just said let's take old American, that's fair enough. So we went there. We interviewed
about 167, I think it was, mothers. Intensive, long interviews, which everybody said you
couldn't ask farm women--about whether children, the infant child, played with himself
and how she fed him and how she toilet-trained. God, you couldn't get away from them
once you opened up the topic, you know.
LS:
You did some of the interviewing yourself?
WS:
No. I probably could have, but, you know, everybody said well, for a man, it was
certainly, "a strange man can't do that but a women can," so I hired and trained women to
do it. And they were all good. They were ex-social workers and psychologists, and so on.
LS:
Where did you get the money?
WS:
Oh where did I get it? Rockefeller Foundation I think, somebody. I think it was
Rockefeller--I got the first money. And I got a fair amount of money out of the
University Research Committee. I had some money from my Experiment Station grant.
Any anyway--so we did that, and then we did social class and personality, intelligence
and personality. We did a whole raft of stuff.
LS:
All based on those questionnaires.
WS:
No, no. New questionnaires. Different surveys, different samples and so on.
00:32:10
And then we got off onto--during that same period we got off onto the, still within the
general corpus of socialization ideas which were really being formulated rather nicely by
a number of people at that time, we got interested in adolescent socialization--and
socialization, really, throughout life. Unlike the psychoanalytic people who thought it all
took place in the first few months and weeks of your life, as sociologists we thought
people were socialized to roles at they got into them, and that they do change, and so on.
So anyway our next interest, in part because the money was made available for it, was to
study the adjustments of foreign students on American campuses, and that's were I did
the Scandinavian student study. And somebody else did Indian studies. Dick Lambert at
Pennsylvania and somebody else did various other national--Asian and American,
Japanese students were done at I think Ohio State. I've forgotten just where everybody
did them, but we all followed pretty much the same questionnaire which a group of us
developed.
LS:
In other words, a group--you mean you met somewhere.
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WS:
Yes. We were a committee. The Social Science Research Council to study foreign
students, and we decided to do it ourselves rather than get other people to take it on so
there would be some uniformity there. We did it in different places. There wasn't all that
much uniformity, but the basic questions were much the same. A whole series of books
came out on it including ours. And UCLA did Mexicans, you know. Anyhow that was
still part of the socialization project, and there was a book and several articles on that.
00:34:26
So that brings us up to about 1960. Well, I finished the book, rewriting the book, while I
was at the Center for Behavioral and Social Sciences--at the Ford Center at Stanford, but
while I was doing it I got interested again in going back to stratification kinds of stuff.
LS:
Maybe I might ask you a couple of questions because the stratification study seems to be
a major one to talk about.
00:35:07
Writing came easily to you, I gather. You wrote easily.
WS:
No. I write hard. You mean I just sit down and write?
LS:
Yes.
WS:
No.
LS:
It wasn't like that?
WS:
Oh no. I have to outline, I go over and over and over it.
LS:
Is it difficult for you to make yourself sit down and do it?
WS:
I hear people say, "Oh I just love to sit down and write." Well I don't, but I've done an
awful lot of it, and I tend to write clearly, and so on, but I'm always fussing with it to
make it a little better.
LS:
Has your approach changed since you started back in Oklahoma--I mean to writing?
Have you developed techniques--
WS:
Oh I'm sure. I don't know what but I have. But I've always outlined, and then I'd make
the outline finer. And then finally--and I've always got a mess of tables by me, and then I
sit down finally and put it together.
LS:
You make yourself do it at particular times of the day or particular times of the week?
WS:
No, oh no. It used to be I'd stay up all night for deadlines and all that. As I've gotten
older I've paced myself a little more, but I still spend a lot of time on writing. And if you
read my writing I think you'd agree that it's clear and well-written and all that sort of
thing. But, you know, it's nothing flowery or--I economize on words, I don't try to look
up something that would force somebody else to look it up too. I'm not writing literary
stuff, I just write--I say what I'm going to do and I do it and write it, and then tell you
what I've shown.
LS:
Is there less jargon in stratification research than in some sociology?
WS:
No, there's a lot of jargon.
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LS:
Is this something you try to steer clear of?
WS:
No, but I don't try to do anymore of it than I have to. You know, there are some terms
that you use that have a specific meaning and you've just got to use them. You can't let
the newspaper guys mess with--you know the problem, it seems to me, with all written
communication is that when you make it more general and more readable for more
people you lose some of the most important details. Well there are people who are very
good at that, who can take--who could never write the original piece, who can pick it up
and translate it into something that the people in the New York Times can read, for
example. I can do that, but I don't. I write for professional journals and professional
audiences. I think I do it clearly and well, and all my life I think I've only had--I've never
had an article that I was single author of turned down by a journal, and that's quite a
record for as many as I've done, and only a few which I was co-author of. But writing
isn't fun. You know, I don't just sit down and enjoy writing something, and I always
write it over at least once or twice, or go through it piece by piece and work it up. So
writing isn't all that much fun. It's work and it's discipline. And then when I do it I
usually do it in intense batches, not four paragraphs today but maybe eight pages today,
or something like that, and I don't type so I have to write everything out by longhand.
I've always thought that was an advantage because you think as you write, and you can't
write nearly as fast as you can type if you're any good at typing. I don't know whether
that's a good thing or not, but anyway that's what I do.
00:39:45
LS:
My other question has to do with the year at Stanford. Dave Featherman described his
year and how important it was for him. Was it anywhere near that for you?
WS:
Yes. It was quite important. At that time I felt that I had done about everything that I
wanted to do in the field of socialization. I thought I was kind of grinding to a dead end
as far as I was concerned, and so I was looking for a way to expand my interest in how
the social structure influences individual behavior, and I had always been interested in
stratification, and particularly in educational attainment as a means of people rising in the
social strata--in the social system. So I got to visiting with--there were several other
people who had similar interests at the center at that time, and we did talk a lot. We
never had a formal seminar but we used to meet in each other's office and visit. A
psychologist and an educational psychologist and an economist and I used to get--you
know it wasn't always the same group, but we talked a fair amount. And so during that
period I was looking for some data to analyze on educational and occupational
aspirations and how they might lead to achievements in those fields, and I learned about a
survey that Cliff Little had done of all the high school students in Wisconsin in 1957 and
had written a little report. A mimeographed report.
LS:
How did you learn about it?
WS:
He had told me. I knew him very well, but he had told me before I went to India in 1956
that he was going to do this study. And he had asked me if I wanted to join him on it, and
I said, "God, I can't. I'm going to India." And then I got involved in things in India, and I
was there as Ford Foundation Professor of Research Methodology at the Delhi School of
Economics. I had two jobs there. One, the real job, the nominal job, and that was to
show the Indians how we developed seminars and graduate training in the United States,
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because they didn't have any such thing. And particularly, they were terribly deficient in
how to do research. So that was my job, and I did that with great resistance from the
faculty until the end. And toward the end, then, they thought it was great. The other
thing I was asked by the Ford Foundation to do that they didn't know about was to look
over Bombay, Poona, and Delhi universities--and Calcutta--and decide whether or not
they should have some sort of an institute for social and economic research. And so I
spent a good deal of time on that, and then drawing up the plans for the two that they did
develop--the one at Poona and the one at Delhi. But I was away, then, while Cliff was
doing this study.
LS:
And when he asked you, there was no spark in your head that said do this?
WS:
Yes. Oh, yes.
LS:
Oh, there was.
WS:
Oh, yes. But I didn't want to get involved in--I was going to India in the next month or
something, and I didn't have any time to sit and work with him. So I kind of wished him
well.
00:43:56
Well, when I got back, in a year or two, he got out his report. And I read it. It was just,
you know, simple bivariant tables on many kids. In fact, the reason the State Department
of Instruction wanted it, and the regents wanted it, was to get some idea of how many
kids in the future are going to want to go to college, and what kinds of programs they
might promote to get them to go. And that was what he did, and it was fine for that.
Anyway, I went through the questionnaire and I saw there was a lot of good stuff in it.
LS:
You were in Stanford still.
WS:
No, I was back here.
LS:
You haven't finished with Stanford---
WS:
No. When I found out that he had finished with this survey, and he offered to give me
the data--the cards, the IBM cards--I packed up a sample of them and went off to
Stanford. While I was at Stanford, I was running this stuff through sorters and doing that
kind of stuff. And I knew--I had a pretty good idea of things that I wanted to do with it
right then, because I had published--even though I had these periods, I had been
publishing in social stratification as well, but I hadn't focused so strongly on it. So I was
looking at the data and seeing what could be done with them, and what you'd need to add
to them, and what indexes and measuring devices I could work out of them and all that
kind of stuff. So when I got back, then I applied for money to do that--to do a study,
which I laid out, the whole of what I thought was the proper strategy for the analysis of
these data once we got them in the proper form. And that was financed by the National
Institutes of Health.
LS:
How did you feel about the data when you first looked at it? What was your feeling
about its completeness?
WS:
Oh, I felt it was too bad I didn't spend some time with him, helping him on some of the
questions. There were some things that one would love to have had in it that he didn't
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have, and some of the questions could have been asked better. But they were better than
most surveys, even then. It wasn't a bad job. But, sure, there were other things you
would like to have known. But there were some other things that I could get, you know,
without knowing them, once I had the list and the sample. He had a sample of about
5,000 of the 36,000 kids, randomly drawn by Joe Lins, who was his assistant--later
became associate dean of the Ed School. Then I thought the sample wasn't big enough
for what I wanted to do with it, so I drew another random sample and put them together,
and then started finding--making new indexes and cleaning up the data in a variety of
ways and adding things that I could get about the schools they attended and the
communities they lived in from census and other materials. Stuff on their standing in
their high school class, which I got from the State Superintendent of Education. And
even things about their parents that weren't adequate in the original questionnaire, which
I got by having research access to income tax, state income tax files. So it took three or
four years to build up the data to that extent.
And then we started off on, I guess, what you would call the models that we eventually
developed. And essentially what we were concerned with was the question of, given a
person's social origins, as indicated by the economic status of his family, his father's and
mother's education and their occupation, whether they were small town, little town, farm-their size of community sorts of things--oh, I neglected to say we were also able to
obtain their scores on intelligence tests from the State Testing Service. Given all these
things, you could look at the question of to what extent are their aspirations, that is, what
they want to do in terms of how much education they want to get and what kinds of
occupations they want to get into, to what extent are they influenced by their social
background characteristics, and to what extent is it dependent upon how bright they are
as measured by tests and how well they do in school? So that was really kind of the
question, this basic model. And then we elaborated that with other social-psychological
data about the extent to which their teachers, parents, and peers encouraged them to have
high levels of aspiration. Out of that, then, we developed the first model, which I think
we did about 1964 and published about 19--no, maybe in 1965 or '66 and published in
about 1969, something like that. Now that's what is called the Wisconsin Model. I didn't
name it that. Other people thought of that.
00:50:04
Then Bob Hauser came in, I think about 1970. And then he joined me on that research at
that time. But by then the model was already developed and published.
LS:
You had intended to have him do, to join you to do the research. Is that right?
WS:
Well, I had intended--Archie Haller, who got his Ph.D. with me, and who, during the
interim sometime between--he must have got his Ph.D. in the mid '50s, stayed with me as
a post-doc for three years, and we wrote a series of articles together at that time. Not
based on these data, but other data on stratification. Then he went to Michigan State as
associate professor and stayed there several years, and then came back. And all that time
we had been working together on this set of data, and he and I published a number of
things together, including these so-called Wisconsin Model things. Then Bob came about
1970. But I was looking for somebody to come who could work half-time on the project.
And he had just finished his Ph.D. with Dudley Duncan, who was then at the University
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of Michigan. And Dudley told me that he was the star methodology student, and he was
just the guy that would be very, a very good collaborator on the project. So we brought
Bob here and he worked on the project half-time and taught statistics half-time. That was
the beginning of our collaboration. It must have been--I don't know just when he came,
but it was about--LS:
1969.
WS:
Sixty-nine he came. Well, he didn't, the first year I didn't---
LS:
He didn't work with you the first year.
WS:
Well, the first year I gave him the time off and he rewrote his Ph.D. thesis and published
it.
LS:
He was busy, he said.
WS:
Yes, that's right. And then the next year we started working together, so it must have
been 1970.
00:52:27
Then in 1972 we published the big model, you know, in which we disaggregated the
number of the indices and had lines running all over the graph. But we developed that,
the bigger model. The model that most people use and call the Wisconsin Model is the
old one, because that's simpler and it's easier to get the data--I mean, they're more likely
to have the data for it. So anyway, we did a whole series of articles during that period in
which we not only were making the model more complex by disaggregating the socioeconomic indexes, the indexes of significant others' influence, but then we were adding
dependent variables like earnings and income and later occupational attainment and so
on.
00:53:27
But before we could do that--oh, I left out, in 1964 we had done a follow-up study of all
these people.
LS:
The parents.
WS:
Through the parents, yes, asking them questions about had the kid gone on to college,
where, how long had he stayed, had he or she gotten a degree, are they now in school or
had they jobs, where do they work and what's their occupation, what's their address?
That kind of stuff. And also whether or not they were married. I think that was about all
we got in that survey, just a fold-back postcard. But we succeeded in getting an 87
percent response rate, which was unheard of in those days. And with those data we
developed the models, including the bigger model, when Bob came into the scene.
00:54:28
Then again, in 1975, we went back and interviewed all of them by long-distance
telephone. And Bob had a big part in the design of the questionnaire and so did Tess
Hauser, who kind of was our main supervisor of clerical help and so on. Then we--we
had been working on it and publishing ever since.
LS:
We're getting to the end of the tape.
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WS:
Yes.
00:55:04
End of Tape 14, Side 2
Tape 15, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
LS:
This is tape three of the 1985 session with Bill WS.
WS:
One thing I've left out of all this and just thought of, in rushing through, is the fact that
you asked me earlier about colleagues and their influence and that sort of thing. From oh,
I don't know just when, but I brought Dudley Duncan here as an assistant professor--well,
I ought to go back a little further: when I went out to Oklahoma, Dudley Duncan's father
was chairman of the department and they were neighbors kind of catty-corner from us.
Dudley was about fifteen at the time and in high school, and a brilliant kid. And he's just
twelve years younger than I am and his father was twelve years older and all were born in
November, so we always kept track of it that way. But anyway, he was absolutely--you
could tell the minute he talked to you--he was absolutely brilliant. And he was in high
school, and he used to come over and talk to me, and he also babysat our kids and
polished our floors and did all those kinds of kid jobs, you know. And we became very
close, and he used to come over and ask me about sociology--of course he hadn't had any
in high school--and what could he read? And Talcott Parson's Theory of Social Action
had just come out about that time. Most graduate students can't read it at all, it's the most
convoluted writing I've ever seen and filled with his own special terminology. But there
are some excellent ideas in it. So anyway then I said to Dudley, "Why don't you go read
that if you want to know what sociology is," and he came back in about a week, and he
said, "If that's sociology I don't want anything to do with it." Which I've told my
graduate students many times.
00:02:06
But anyway, somehow or other he'd decided that he'd be a sociologist. And so when he
came to college--he went to college there--I was his major professor, and he took one
course with me. And I urged upon him to take all the math and statistics he could take. It
turned out that, I don't know how good the math there was, but the statistics was very
good, because as an agricultural experiment station, you know, they have these analyses
of variants and experimental design people, and he took what he could get of that. Then
he took the basic mathematics, and I told him that the way to glory was to learn these
things much better than people like me had ever had the opportunity to do. So anyway,
he did all that. And then I suggested he go to Minnesota to study with Chapin--but only
stay a year, get his master's degree. Then the war came on, when he got his master's
degree, and when he got out of service he joined a whole group of absolutely brilliant
students at the University of Chicago--were all ex-GI's, you know. And there he was
probably the most brilliant of the lot, but there were some terrific people.
00:03:38
And then when he finished his Ph.D. I got him his first job out at Pennsylvania State and
then after he'd been there a year brought him back, brought him here because there was
an opening. And he stayed about three years, I think. Two or three years; I'm not sure of
the exact number. But from then on we informally collaborated--we talked to each other
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about our ideas, because he was interested in many of the same things I was. So then
after he was here for those two or three years he went to Chicago as associate professor
and later became professor, and stayed there several years. During all that time we'd see
each other several times a year and we'd talk about our common research interests. Then
when he got to Michigan--he left Chicago and went to the University of Michigan--and
he spent another maybe ten years at Michigan. And during that time, or during the time
he was at Chicago he and Peter Blau--who was much more of a theorist and Dudley was
a quantitative wizard, although not slow in theory by any means--they did a book called
The American Occupational Structure. In that Dudley has a chapter in which he talks
about path analytic methods of studying social stratification. And they worked out what's
called the Blau/Duncan model. And the Blau/Duncan model is much simpler than our
model. It just takes father's education, father's occupation, son's education, son's first job,
and son's current job, and puts that into a model. That just took the country by storm.
Meanwhile, he had been teaching me to do this kind of stuff with our data, but he never
did suggest the model we developed because he was very anti-social psychology, and this
was really social psychological intervening variables. And the purpose of our model was
to explain what intervened between one's origins and one's destination, you see. And
that's a much more complicated thing, but anyway, I would guess we'd get together-either I'd go over there, or he'd come over here, with his wife--we were all good friends-and work on this stuff. We never collaborated in any of that. We did write an article
long before that, when he was younger, together, but it was more of a theoretical article
about stratification. But anyway, and then he'd teach my graduate students how to do
some of this stuff, including Haller and Vimal Shah, some of the people whose names
you see on these things.
00:06:42
But I was always interested--since I am basically interested in social psychology--in as I
said earlier social structure and achievement: what are the paths by which people go
from their origins to their destinations, and what sorts of social-psychological influences
by other significant persons affect their achievements? And I figured you couldn't have
achievements without having aspirations. If you could explain aspirations maybe you
could explain achievement. So I was always struggling with that kind of a model. And
so I just want to acknowledge the extreme debt I had to my own undergraduate student,
Duncan, for some of the technology by which we were able to develop these complex
models.
00:07:36
LS:
There's another part of that story, which involves Sewall Wright?
WS:
Well, yes, I think I--did I tell that one before?
LS:
No. I mean both of them.
WS:
Well the interesting thing about it is that Dudley's professor at Chicago, whom he had
great reverence for, was William F. Ogburn. And William F. Ogburn taught a course in
social statistics, in which he just did routine correlation kinds of analysis--relate this
variable to that variable and so on. And out of that he developed some ideas about the
qualities of cities. You know it was well and carefully done, but all this time Mr.
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Ogburn is playing tennis at the Quadrangle Club with Mr. Wright. And Mr. Wright
would keep saying, "Now Will, I've got a technique that's far better than that which I call
path analysis. You ought to be teaching it to your sociology students. I'll come over and
lecture" and so on, but Will never paid a dang bit of attention to it. Then, all these years
later when Dudley was over at Michigan he discovered Sewall Wright's famous article on
hybrid seed corn, or whatever it was, in which he developed what we now call structural
equation models, or path models. And then he started collaborating some on the statistics
of all that with Arthur Goldberger, who was relatively new here then, in econometrics.
And they did a book together on such models. The economists called them econometric
models and sociologists and Mr. Wright called them path models. And they're all
structural equation models, is what they are, actually. And both--Dudley has been the
most influential person by far in sociology in the adoption of these models from Mr.
Wright, and probably Arthur's been the most influential economist when it comes to this
kind of modeling.
00:09:58
Well anyway, one day we're sitting here talking and I said, "You know, you guys ought to
meet Mr. Wright." And they both almost blanked out. They said, "Why, he's surely dead
isn't he?" I said, "No, he's a professor here. When he retired from Chicago he came here
and I'm sure he'd be glad to meet you." So I gave Mr. Wright a ring, I knew him, I had
met him because of the WS name, you know. He's always tracing through our common
ancestry, some of which I found very dubious. But as a geneticist, you know, he's always
interested in that. So anyway, I said, "When could you have lunch with a couple of
brilliant young men, one an economist and the other a sociologist, who are using the
kinds of methods that you developed?" "Oh I'd be glad to meet them, who are they?"
And I told him, he made me spell out their names. They were already well known in our
fields of course. But anyway we went over to the University Club and it was the most
fun I've ever seen. They both treated him with such great deference, you know, as he's a
tremendous man. He should have had the Nobel Prize. Not for that, but for his theory of
genetic drift and two or three other things. Certainly one of the great geneticists of
modern times. But anyway, Mr. Wright said, "Now what kinds of problems are you
dealing with?" And they scribbled something out on a piece of paper, and he got out his
pencil and an art gum eraser and pretty soon he had the graphs and diagrams all over the
tablecloth, back in the days when they used to give us tablecloths and serve us, you
know. And they sat there and they'd say, "But Mr. Wright, shouldn't this term or that
term be inverted?" or something. "Oh no, no"-- for the following reasons. And he'd
work it all out, and they'd try to prove to him the opposite, you know. Well they just had
a circus. They stayed there until mid-afternoon, then I guess they met with him once or
twice after that. But at the end of that meeting he turned to Dudley and he said, "Now I
understand from Bill WS that you're one of Ogburn's most famous students." He said,
"Well I don't think I could say that." "Well," I said, "you can." And he said, "Well, you
know"--this was when I first heard this story--he said, "You know, for years Will Ogburn
and I used to play tennis together, and I used to try to get him to adopt these methods
because I knew they'd work with sociological data. But," he said, "I couldn't get him the
least interested. And here," he said, "twenty or twenty-five years later, here you're his
student and you're doing them." You know, he was so tickled with it. Well anyway that's
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the story, and so every time Dudley came after that, if he could he'd try to see Mr.
Wright, at least pay his respects.
00:12:47
Well anyway, so I didn't want to pass through all this stuff without--you've asked me who
influenced me. I would say that, except for Chapin the two people who've influenced me
most have been two of my students. Louis Guttman, who overlapped with me one year
as a graduate student--and we became very warm friends, but I taught him his first course
in sociology. And Dudley, who was my undergraduate advisee.
00:13:22
Then when Bob came--Bob was just a superb quantitative methodologist. He's really not
a mathematical sociologist because mathematical sociologists, just like mathematical
economists, don't use real data. They imagine a system and put numbers in it and grind it
through a computer and see what will happen. That's also the difference between Art
Goldberger as an economotrician--he's concerned with putting real things in the models
and seeing what happens. Bob is, I would say without a doubt, the top mathematical
statistician in sociology. So when he came, the models started getting much, much more
complex. We've written a lot of things today, and just as I did--should I say this?--just as
I did with Arch Haller, I've been trying to wean him off to where he'd do more things on
his own, completely independent of me. And I finally got to that point with Arch Haller,
although we still occasionally do something together. But I want them to have their own
careers, so people don't all say, "Well, you know, you've done this stuff with Bill WS" or
something. And Bob has increasingly been doing more and more things on his own with
our data, mainly, because he's just fascinated with this kind of work.
00:15:04
Some of the most recent publications that he's done have to do, not with these models but
with models of father-son mobility. Right now, he's doing a lot of work with father-son
mobility matrices that he gets from abroad--there's a group of us together in the
International Sociological Association Committee on Research. Both Bob and Dave are
members of that group. They've established excellent contacts with foreign scholars who
have either done models like ours, or, more likely, the Duncan models that are simpler,
and then have gathered father-son data on occupational mobility and have developed
rather complicated log-linear models for trying to account for how much of the individual
mobility is due to changes in the occupational structure and how much of it is due to
actual mobility apart from that that can be accounted for by the occupational structure.
See my point? Supposing 80 percent of the population are farmers in the father's
generation, but it's only 40 percent in the son's generation. Then the sons are going to
have to move to urban occupations of different classifications. Likewise, if you were in a
period like we are now, where the old-fashioned mass-production industries are being
replaced by newly-driven kinds of technological manufacturing and communication
industries and so on, then obviously not everyone can remain a blue-collar unskilled
worker. They've got to go up, or go on relief, or whatever else it may be. So part of any
system of mobility is dependent upon how the structure changes, and part of it is due to
what influence the father can have on the son--or the family can have on the son. So Bob
is working more in that field, and I'm not.
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00:17:35
But we did do another thing. When we interviewed these people about their
achievements, in 1975, we got a complete roster of their siblings--their brothers and
sisters--and then we took a random sample of them and interviewed, really, a stratified
random sample of those people. With that, we can do a lot more complicated things.
That project, again, was an idea that I had been wanting to do for a long time. But the
statistics of doing it become so complex--or the analysis--that some of what Bob does I
just can't do. So I just say, "You publish that by yourself. I won't publish a paper unless I
can at least understand what we've been doing in it." And what will happen is he'll
suggest or I'll suggest an idea, and then I'll suggest how to do it--and he'll think of a much
more complicated and better way. So we're into such things like the influence of error
structure on models that we've developed in the past. You find that out by making
repeated measurements of the same thing over time and correlating them. It takes really
complex computer programs that you couldn't possibly have done ten years ago, or
fifteen years ago--it would have been impossible. Bob is working on those kinds of
things.
LS:
How do you work together? Do you meet regularly?
WS:
It depends on--yes. Not regular. Nothing regular about Bob. I've never been one of
those people who's scheduled times for things. Look at all the outside things I do.
LS:
I know.
WS:
Look at all the things I've done here all over the years. So I'm never one of those people
who can say, "On Tuesday morning we'll get together" unless it's already Monday or
maybe Friday. But what we do--we officed up here in the same area, we had the same
research--we had a big joint-research staff and area. And for the first years, it was mainly
elaborating these models that had already been developed and extending them and so on.
So it was relatively--the idea of what to do was relatively simple, how to do it was really
the difficult question.
00:20:36
LS:
Did you have to hash this out?
WS:
Oh, sure, we'd talk about it, you know. For the first--up until five, six years ago--well,
I've forgotten just when--but the first years it was my project with him helping me. Then
as time went on, we became co-project leaders. Then when I retired from the University,
we remained co-project leaders, but I told him, "You're in charge now." I don't know-we've always worked very harmoniously.
LS:
Did you ever disagree about anything?
WS:
We've never had a quarrel, we never had a quarrel in our lives. Not one word of nastiness
between us. I don't know why that's true, but it's true. We get along very nicely. Coauthorship and things like that. I guess on the things earlier that you see my name on
first, I probably wrote the first draft. Or, in some of the papers--people who know us can
tell--the first half you can see that I wrote and the last half, that has to do with the
analysis, that he wrote. And then the two of us would write the conclusions and
discussion. I guess I would have to honestly say we've never had, really, had a harsh
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word. Sometimes I have--he's a burst worker, and sometimes he's off on a million other
things and you can't get him right when you want him to come. Or he'll be an hour late or
something like that. But, on the other hand, he'll sit and work there by the hour, doing
things. So you've got to have a little patience. I really think that he's at genius level
when it comes to quantitative analysis. He'd just think of marvelously clever ways of
doing everything. I wouldn't say he doesn't contribute to the ideas, because he does.
00:23:03
People tend, in talking about Bob around the country, to say, "Oh, well, he's a number
cruncher and mathematical wizard and all that. But what does he know about social
stratification?" The truth is that he's one of the best-informed people on the literature of
anybody I know. But that doesn't come out in the meetings. What comes out is when he
gets in a big controversy with somebody about how you should do things--how you
should do analysis or what kind of conclusions you can draw from it. Things of that sort.
And also he is a little bit combative when attacked by other scholars. He comes on very
strong in those situations, so people get the idea that he doesn't know or care about the
substantive things. But he does know, and he does care. But he does feel much more the
need to defend against every criticism that anybody can raise than I do. I always said,
"Ah, the hell with them." I've answered--I've been attacked on the Freudian stuff, I've
been attacked on a number of things. But I always answer them in what he calls "the cool
way." I'll say, "His point is interesting, but careful reading of what so-and-so said would
have revealed to him that that does not represent the position that's being tested here."
But Bob will say, "The idiot did this, that, the other thing." I mean, that's his first draft,
and I have to--I always go through all his answers and critiques to people and try to--I
can't get him to make them like I do. My technique, you know, is more to underplay but
to make it very clear in a polite way that the guy is wrong.
00:25:15
He always thought one of my most masterful statements was in--I was asked to criticize
the program that was being set forth by the Office of Education, the head of the Office of
Education, in what was called the Institute of Education's Research Program. I was asked
by somebody to give my evaluation of their work. And I said that they had indeed set up
these fifty or sixty different centers, and that most of them had been, at best, modest
failures. Well, that guy was furious, you know, but I didn't say it nasty, but nice. And it
was true. That was the problem. Anyway, Bob wished he could say things like that. We
get along beautifully. Always have. He's very, very--you know, he'll just come out and
say, "Look. You're dead wrong. That's not the way you do something." Or, "You can't
draw that conclusion." And I'll say, "What's wrong with it?" Then he'll sit patiently and
explain it to me. And if I agree with him--but we really collaborate in kind of an
interesting way, because neither of us seems to get mad at the other. We often approach
problems in different ways. It seems that something I'll do or say will spark him off to
something or vice-versa. So it's really a very nice collaborative sort of relationship. I
think that he shows me too much respect and deference sometimes, and I tell him so.
But I hand him something--I'll say, "What do you think of this?" And he'll just say--he
doesn't try to be gentle or anything like that because he knows I want to know what he
thinks of it. So we get along very well.
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LS:
That's fortunate, isn't it?
WS:
It's very nice. But I never had a collaborator I had any trouble with, really. That's not
because I'm such a nice fellow,I guess, but I pick them very carefully.
LS:
I suppose it might be.
WS:
Well, I doubt it.
LS:
Somebody spoke of you at the Tripp Commons luncheons, that you made them--the
sociology luncheons where people used to gather. It was a nice remark about you. You
have been criticized for this data.
WS:
Oh, sure--not for the data, but for the analysis and the models, sure.
LS:
I thought for the data also.
00:28:12
End of Tape 15, Side 1
Tape 15, Side 2
00:28:16
LS:
Wait. Say that again.
WS:
Well, people have criticized, they've raised the question of can you generalize from a
sample like this to other places, and all I said is, just test the model and see. You know
that's all any honest person could say. The truth is that wherever--and a number--our
models have been replicated nationally, internationally, and where they measure and get
the data in essentially the same way and with relatively the same questions it's just
amazingly corroborated by other things--that is, by other researchers. And that's all in the
literature. So I never made any fuss about that, just said, well, you know if you don't
think it--I don't know if it'll work in Nigeria. Go try it and see what happens.
00:29:15
So, then we've also been criticized for it being too social psychological. You see, social
psychology has kind of gone out of style, in both psychology and sociology. Right in the
post-war period when there was all the excitement about measurement and all that sort of
social psychological phenomenon and all the advances were being made, all sorts of
people found these kinds of problems interesting to work on. And then over the years,
increasingly sociologists would say these are reductionist explanations, you should be
explaining social behavior with social behavior, not at a lower level of psychological
behavior. And so there's been that sort of criticism. That's never bothered me at all,
because if I'm not a sociologist by their definition it doesn't bother me. The profession
seems to think I am. And certainly psychologists aren't calling me a psychologist. But in
any event that's kind of a style and a mode change, and we are in a period right now when
people are interested in questions of organizational change and national change and
international social systems and how they change. And that's fine, it just doesn't happen
to be what I'm personally interested in. So we're criticized from that standpoint. But you
know that's an age-old criticism in sociology anyway so that doesn't bother you.
00:31:17
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Then some people have argued about what they call the central psychological claims,
social psychological middle part of this model, and they've asked questions about
whether or not we properly take into account--since we're using linear causal models-whether or not we properly take into account the fact that there is feedback from one unit
to another. And that, you know, that's quite a legitimate question to raise. And some
have even claimed that they have been able to find much greater--we have tested those
things, Bob and I have in some of our most recent articles, and you find that there isn't
much going back. For example, one guy has made even so bold as to claim that parents
only encourage their children for higher education because the kids want to go on to
higher education. So the parents really are reflecting what the child wants. Well, such
bull, you know. Anybody who's ever raised kids and worried like you and I have as to
whether these kids would study hard enough and whether or not they could get to the
right colleges knows a hell of a lot better than that. But, you know, people have raised
those kinds of questions. And again, you know, we answer them. If I answer them it's
much more gentle; if Bob answers them it's much nastier.
00:32:58
But anyway I consider all of those things fair game. If somebody thinks there's a better
way to do it and our models have suggested to them--if our models are in error and there's
some better way to do it, and these models have caused them to think of that error and if
they can show that it works better some other way, fine, let's see them do it. That's
always been my attitude. And there have been improvements in the models made by
other people. Somehow it doesn't seem to me that one has to feel that--if somebody can
find something wrong with something or some better way to do it. God, it seems to me
that that's the whole process of science. And one expects that to happen. I keep calling it
real science--in the physical and biological science models are being replaced all the time
as better theories come along, as better--especially with those guys--better equipment
comes along and enables them to do more complex things. It seems to me that's a natural
course of science and that anyone should expect that. I'm surprised the models have
lasted--stood up as well as they have for so long.
00:34:17
LS:
Have other people used your data?
WS:
Yes. Not many. All kinds of graduate students. There are about twenty-some Ph.D.
theses out of it.
LS:
I mean people from other institutions.
WS:
And I don't know how many--not so many masters', because we usually just take on
Ph.D. students. But in the early days there were some masters' students as well. Yes,
people have borrowed the data. There's one book actually that we list by a couple of
people at the University of Chicago who wanted to use our data to test an idea they had
about the effect of closeness to college on aspirations and achievement.
LS:
You mean geographical?
WS:
Yes. You know, is there a college in the town? Is there one within one day's riding
distance, are there three or four in the town, and so on. It does make a difference, but not
nearly as big a difference as it would appear, because by the time you take into account
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the differences in the levels of ability and socio-economic background and so on, then
these locations near a college makes a difference. But it doesn't make the difference that
if you just looked at location near a college and whether or not they went, that's too
simple an explanation. So, yes. And all of our data now are in the public domain. We
put it all in DPLS [Data and Program Library Service] down here and anybody who
wants to use it can write in and get it.
00:35:54
You know the project has been a very--it's been quite an experience. On the other hand,
I've been married to it far too long.
LS:
I wondered about that, I was just going to ask whether you ever got tired of it.
WS:
You see, wherever I go somebody wants me to talk about some phase of it. See, I was
invited to the University of Michigan last week to talk on the influence of family
structure on achievement using the sibling data that we have. And especially on the
whole question of the influence of birth order on achievement, because there are all sorts
of old myths about that. And it turns out that the principal theorist of the new birth order
stuff is a psychologist at Michigan. And our stuff just disproves this theory completely.
And of course I had quite an interesting time over there. But he doesn't take quite the
attitude that I do. Whenever anybody finds anything wrong with his theory he changes
the theory to see if he can match it to the data. Until now you can hardly tell what his
theory means. But in any event--you know he's just so defensive of that idea. It was a
good idea, it sparked all kinds of research. It turned out to be wrong, but we've learned
an awful lot since then, so I think he ought to be proud of it, but he still fights.
LS:
That's what you said. You said that approaches that are erroneous stimulate others to
correct the erroneous aspects.
WS:
Yes. And we're doing it too. And that seems to me what the game is. Now you asked me
something a long time ago about—
00:37:45
I've often wondered to what extent are my attitudes over the years about trying to make a
science of sociology conditioned by that early experience in studying chemistry and
things like that as an undergraduate. I've never been able to figure that out. Jim Crow
asked me once, "Well look, maybe the reason why you've always pushed toward a kind
of a natural science approach to the study of man is because of that?" I don't believe it. I
believe it's because I honestly think kind of philosophically that a natural science of
man's social behavior is just as possible although more difficult--much more difficult,
many times more difficult--than a natural science of his biological or physiological
behavior. But I doubt that what you learned in an undergraduate major in chemistry-probably the logical thought process but you learn it lots of other places--I never really
thought that made much difference to me. It may have. It may have made me more
anxious to be exact and precise and things like that.
LS:
I suppose your very willingness to consider a medical degree and courses in chemistry
would already suggest that you are interested in science.
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WS:
Maybe some orientation in that direction. Well, anyway, it's been a long career. I'm still
working, still publishing a few things now and then.
00:39:38
But what I started to say about the project--it's also become a burden in a sense. We've
had a lot of money from funding sources, we've delivered far more than most people ever
do. But on the other hand if somebody says to me, "Why don't you come and give a talk
on future possibilities for research in social psychology?", you know I'll say no, because I
don't want to sit and read and work on that when I've got so many things that I'm
supposed to be finishing on this. So it does kind of, the project kind of becomes your
master after awhile especially when it's as big as this. And there are so many incomplete
and undone things that could be done. Every now and then I take off and do something
else. Right now I'm--but again I'm using project data. I'm working on a paper on
intelligence and fertility out at the East-West Center which is now about seventy pages
long, with a young collaborator out there. But it's kind of a break from what we've been
doing, You get into all the controversies about whether or not the intelligence of the
population is declining because of fertility differences between the lower, less educated
lower classes and the higher classes. Fortunately we don't have blacks and whites so I
don't get into the race problem. But anyway I've been working on that. And every now
and then I go off and give some informal talk like I'm going to do in Iowa next week on
what I see to be the present condition of sociology and things like that. But you know I
never write those up--take the time to really sit down and write them up, although I'll
outline it and talk from it. So the project has been both a big--certainly added something
to knowledge and it's added something to the careers of the younger people who worked
on it, and I'm sure it's added to my reputation. But it's also been a master, you know, that
you couldn't shake.
00:42:09
LS:
Bob Hauser said, I think it was he, that Dudley Duncan had just deliberately moved from
one field to another, three or four times just dropped the--
WS:
About every seven years, I think.
LS:
Did you ever think of changing?
WS:
Well, I did in the early days, you know I did that.
LS:
Right, yes you did.
WS:
Not really. You know by the time I got well into this project, I was also involved in
administration in the department, the division, and in the University for awhile, and I was
being elected to offices in the sociological associations and all that kind of stuff. And I
thought there was a lot more needed to be done than this. Of course Dudley did too but
he quit it.
LS:
He didn't join, doesn't join associations.
WS:
No, he doesn't even go to meetings. In fact the only ASA meeting he's gone to in the last
twenty-five years, was when I was president. He came, stayed just that day, and went
home. But you know he's mad at them because they're too do-goody and too political and
that sort of thing.
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00:43:37
But I had done a lot of that kind of work. I had worked on the National Academy
Committees--Dudley's also a member of the National Academy but he never goes. I'd
been chairman of the social sciences and I work on getting the people elected and that
kind of stuff. I've always done everything.
LS:
I think you said in maybe one of the other interviews that you thought that was very
important.
WS:
I think it is, you know. It's a release you know, and it's a big--I think that over the years a
few of us working in these ways have opened up the National Science Foundation,
National Institutes of Health to support sociological research. They weren't getting a
penny in these fields. I guess Kingsley Davis, Robin Williams, and I were the first
sociologists to be appointed to any National Institutes of Health committee. And then we
just elbowed and wormed our way and educated those guys until, up until Ronnie Reagan
came in, they were perfectly happy to support us and became our main source of support.
Likewise the National Science Foundation. You could attribute the fact that the National
Science Foundation now supports the social sciences to, oh, maybe a dozen, two dozen
people, who over the years worked with those people and took early leadership once they
gave us a little room in the door to expand it. Well that's fun too, you know. I've enjoyed
that. And what I enjoy most is every now and then meeting somebody in one of those
organizations. They've heard of you as a scholar but never knew you had anything to do
with founding what they're doing.
00:45:28
For example that I was on the first committee that set up the national--the NIGMH, the
National Institute--NICHD I should say--the National Institute for Child and Human
Development. I was on the founding committee that got together informally in NIH and
started talking to them about having a special institute for child health and child
development, to include, finally, development throughout the life cycle. And there were
about five or six of us who worked on NIH for years to finally get the institute
established. Now I meet the head of that institute and he never heard of me. Now that's
when it's good--when you've been able to do things without--and the people there think
they've done them, you know. That's nice. That happened in India, too.
LS:
I don't know that I'd find it so nice, but---
WS:
Well, it's the people who know, know that. But the people that are there now have no
sense of history, you know.
LS:
Yes, one sees that happening.
00:46:38
WS:
So, anyway. So it's all been fun. I wish I had it all to do over again. I might do different
things, but--
LS:
That's a good question to end with. You don't really think you would have, I gather, done
different things?
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WS:
I don't know. So much, you know, there is an element of accident and luck. I think that,
if instead of taking all that chemistry I hadn't waited until the last quarter of my senior
year to take bacteriology, which you didn't have to take as pre-med--you had to take
botany, zoology, chemistry, you know. And I was so fascinated by it. It was just about
the time when they were discovering the viruses the first time. You know I graduated
from college--what is it, fifty-three years ago. I was just so fascinated with it. I went to
see the dean of the graduate school to see if I could major in bacteriology.
LS:
Really?
WS:
And he said he wouldn't let me, he wouldn't even let me minor in it, because I didn't have
enough bacteriology. So, you know. But I'm not sure that I wouldn't have done
something else if I had know more, you see. I'm even arguing--I had mentioned earlier
that I might have been a psychologist if they'd had decent psychology there. I might
have been an economist if they'd had better economists. I might even have been a
chemist if the teachers were better or somehow had inspired me.
LS:
Teachers are terribly important. It comes through in every interview.
WS:
Yes, it does, but when you put in teacher effect in the models it hardly ever shows
because most people aren't affected by any teacher, that's the problem.
LS:
Oh, I read that. Yes, that's interesting. But that's high school teachers.
WS:
Yes. But even college teachers too, you know, When you think back, try to figure out
how many of them really excited you and inspired you, rather than entertained you.
There were quite a few that were quite entertaining. Well, there aren't many.
LS:
No, but one's enough to get people going in their field.
WS:
Well, that's true, that's true. But supposing it happens to be in a particular field other than
the one you went into. You can't tell what you would have done. But I'm not sorry for
the choice, that's the main thing. I've enjoyed the sociological enterprise. I think it was
good for me because there was a certain amount of promoter and developer in me, you
know.
00:49:12
The times were fortunate, but I took this department over when there were thirteen
members, and by the time I left it six, seven years later we had thirty-five.
LS:
You could have done the same thing in a science department.
WS:
Yes, that's--oh, sure, even more so. But you know I did enjoy that for a few years. I tired
of it. At the end of five years I was very tired of the whole thing--because it becomes so
routinized after awhile. And also you set a goal, you know--what kind of people you'd
like to have, what kind of department you'd like to see it turn into. And it arrives, and
you know, you kind of feel like you've done that, you ought to be doing something else.
But the one thing I've never really, from when I was a graduate student onward, ever quit
doing was research. Somehow I've kept it going. The only year that I didn't really spend
any time on research was that horrible year when I was chancellor. But I used to, when I
was chairman and building up the department--if you look through those years, I
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published just about as much in those years as others. I'd sit in airports and on airplanes
and write articles because I just had to keep it going.
00:50:36
LS:
Did you neglect your family then?
WS:
I don't--they say not, my kids say not. I spent time with them. The other thing I might
have been would have been a child development person, because I've always been
fascinated with children. To this day, they're my favorite people--young children. And
every stage through which the kids pass was an increasingly interesting one to me. And
we did spend a lot of time together. Sometimes I think I influenced the kids too much.
Every one of them went into academic work.
LS:
I don't expect they're sorry.
WS:
I don't know. I guess not. Anyway, we really always had a very good family life.
LS:
Yes. I didn't really mean to say you didn't spend any time with your family.
WS:
I spent a great of time with them. I know one of the great advantages I've had is that I
never required an awful lot of sleep.
LS:
Oh, yes.
WS:
When I was young I think I probably averaged about five hours of sleep a night. Now I
don't average much more than that, but I nap off a little during the day. And I used to be
able to work at night and then go to bed and go to sleep. I can't do that anymore.
LS:
What do you mean, five hours?
WS:
I mean go to bed at twelve and get up at five. There's something about five o'clock--I still
get up then, and I have for years. Then I get up, and nobody else will be up, and I read
for two or three hours. I never tried to write in the early morning, but I did a lot of my
reading at that time.
LS:
That's probably, actually crucial, the crucial factor in output, isn't it? Not sleeping too
much.
WS:
Probably. And the other point is--in the early days, almost everything was solo, but in
years since then I've worked with people. That makes a lot of difference too. Especially
if I find somebody that--you collaborate and are happy in kind of a mutually-reinforcing
way, that's great. I'm sure I would have dropped off the sled on the model stuff some
years ago if Bob didn't always offer encouragement and so on--for the different ideas that
I've had and things of that sort. So, I don't know anything else to tell you unless you
think of something.
LS:
Well, there's just exactly time to--the red light is about to start flashing.
WS:
About to blink anyway.
LS:
This is the last tape I have. Thank you very much.
WS:
You're welcome.
00:53:37
End of Tape 15, Side 2
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[No reference in Index to Tape 16. No digital file for this interview.]
Fourth Interview Session (1988)
Tape 17, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
MS:
My name is Mark [Salofay?]. I'm talking today with Professor William Sewell of
sociology. A number of tapes with Professor Sewell have already been made as part of
the University Archives Oral History Project. Today's talk is meant to supplement those
tapes already available.
00:00:21
I thought we could start today, if you could tell me something about the relationship
between social science, sociology in particular, and social reform. Or maybe you could
tell me something about the changes over the decades of your career in this area.
WS:
Well social reform has long been a, a part of the sociological objective. In fact in the
earliest days of sociology, um many sociologists were primarily concerned with social
reform. Among other things, they were influenced by and helped to make social surveys
of particularly the poor and the problems of poor in the large cities. Around 1900 uh
such studies were made in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and a number of, of cities
following pretty much the model of the [Booth?] surveys in England and the purpose of
those was to find out in fairly graphic form and detailed form the conditions under which
the poor lived in terms of their housing, employment, food, fertility. One of the great
problems of course was the terrific crowding of the immigrants, particularly as each new
wave of immigrants would enter the cities. That was true whether they were immigrants
from abroad particularly true for them and also for people from the rural areas of the
country migrating into the cities seeking employment seeking presumably a better life.
On the other hand there were always American sociologists who were trying to keep
these surveys quite objective and to try to derive at least propositions about the poor, and
how poverty might be dealt with, probably from the very first.
00:03:14
One of the -- the founder of American sociology, as he's often called, wrote books on
pure sociology and applied sociology. William Graham Sumner, and some of the other
leading, [Albee and Small?], and some of the other earliest sociologists in America did
not -- they were all -- they all had the idea that sociology would be useful in social
reform, but didn't see themselves as reformers and didn't do these surveys. The surveys
were actually done often times by citizens who were just terribly concerned about the
problems of the urban poor in the slums.
00:4:24
And it was some, it was probably some time until actual social surveys as we now think
of them came into being, probably in the early 40s. There were surveys I'm sure as early
as in the 30s, but the survey movement really got its start sometime in the mid-30s to
mid-40s. And then the idea was essentially to try to study problems of social behavior.
Not only of the poor, but farmers, suburban people, particularly in order to learn more
about their behavior, their views of the future, their own aspirations, their achievements.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
A good deal of it dealt with their attitudes toward family planning and having -- and
fertility in general. And there were a number of studies, particularly of working class
people, and of farmers, about their levels of living and actual levels at which they live.
And these were detailed studies that tried to get information on their family budgets, how
much they spent for various categories: food, clothing, healthcare, housing, and the others
of that sort. Those studies, in general, tended to be much more carefully designed then
the earlier studies, and often involved training interviewers to -- often sociology students
or economic students to make the interviews.
00:06:20
MS:
And you said this was starting mostly in the 40s?
WS:
Well in the late 30s there were a number of such studies. The depression certainly had a
great impact on the number of studies that were made and on funding for studies for that
matter. There were government agencies that would -- the Department of Labor studied,
financed great national studies of levels of living and employment and unemployment.
And there were studies in the agricultural experiment stations made by rural sociologists
on migration and why people migrated. On their housing, their levels of living and
conditions of life in rural areas.
00:07:15
MS:
How did these things that you are talking about relate to -- I know there was this group of
sociologists called the Chicago School and they were studying conditions of city life.
Was that the same sort of thing?
WS:
It was the same, essentially the same sort of thing. The Chicago Department of
Sociology at the University of Chicago chose as its area of research, physical area of
[solution?], poverty in its suburbs and in Burgess and Ogburn, in particular, they did very
impressive studies of the conditions of different areas of the city. And they finally came
up with maps, ecological maps of the city that showed the different zones of the city.
They were interested in the central business district - the area surrounding the central
district made up primarily people of relatively low socioeconomic status, slum areas
pretty much. Then going out more and more toward the fringes of suburbia and out into
the suburbs. And they of course mapped the areas along the lake with the coast people,
the rich people, the city lived, and they came up with the Zonal Hypothesis, which
probably guided most urban issues for 30, 40 years to come.
00:08:59
People would study, for example, one of the things studies of -- in Chicago using the
Zonal, trusting the Zonal Hypothesis and using those methods. There is one by Farris
and Dunham, a famous study that they made of mental illness and where mental illness
tended to be -- among what populations mental illness tended to be concentrated in. That
study showed that especially the people living in transitional areas where they've gone
from good residential areas into slums that the people in those areas had the greatest
incidence of mental illness. There are many faults with this study, [words unclear], in
terms of sampling, in terms of the kinds of measures they used and so on. But that really
gave birth to a whole series of studies, studies still going on, on the relationship between
social class and mental illness. And it became a kind of a sub-occupation of a great many
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sociologists. I did my own Masters thesis on studying my home community, Jackson,
Michigan, a city of about 60,000 in mapping the delinquency areas of the city following
techniques of Ogburn and Burgess's students, who made similar studies. So I had to
write an incidence of effect on the whole field of sociology.
00:10:55
Now, to get that back to the relationship to reform, all of those studies were done with a
hope that they would reveal something about the nature of urban life and rural life and so
on, but needed correcting. But the people making the studies were not reformers in the
sense that they somehow would re-integrate [that?] to overcome these problems. And I
think that gets us up at least into the 40s. Then the people who -- then again the people
made the studies, all sociologists, many of them quite distinguished sociologists, varied
in extent to which they felt that once they had made the study they should lead -- in some
way or other, outline the program by which betterment of these conditions could be
made. But most sociologists kind of stopped short of themselves becoming the advocates
for new programs and things of that sort. And that's still true today, in varying degrees.
The -- Sociologists see their role essentially as being, as investigating certain kinds of
problems: problems of crime, delinquency, mental illness, divorce, all of these kinds of
things, but primarily to fill in further knowledge of [word unclear]. And very often,
they're quite concerned with how -- what uses are made of that knowledge that they
themselves don't, which I would call a reformer, they don't themselves try to lead such a
program. [In fact?], one of the books with which I'm associated with is the book [Lazer,
Seltzer, and Valinsky?], The Uses of Sociology, which sold thousands of copies in the
United States. And this was essentially an attempt to set foreword the ways in which
sociological knowledge then mainly from social surveys was put to use.
00:13:22
Another great example that occurs in wartime is the American soldier, for a while the
American soldiers had been studied, which Sam Stouffer was the research leader of that.
He was a University of Chicago Ph.D. and a professor there. After the war, he went to
Harvard and stayed there for the rest of his days and was the first one to introduce survey
and quantitative techniques. And in the Harvard scheme and he had a great deal of
influence on his colleagues and his students. But essentially, that was a study, those were
a series of studies sponsored by the military, the people [that?] are in the Army, to study
the problems of soldiers in -- through a variety of contexts, including their induction and
problems they encountered during their training, and the stress they felt being away from
their families, what their attitudes were toward the war and toward their having been
drafted. And then actual battlefield studies as well. [Proper name?] studies of their
adjustment problems once they went abroad. In -- Those studies had a great deal of
importance on how well our army organized its programs. For example, the integration
of blacks started having a completely separate battalions and troops, black troops usually
under white officers. Finally, during the latter period of the war, based on studies
actually made in the field on attitudes of men. Integration, some degree of integration,
complete integration took place, particularly, well starting at the very beginning of
peoples' induction, and their training, and their selection for their various jobs that were
done during the war. But a great deal of that --
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00:15:44
Oh and finally, even the decision -- all of a sudden the war is over. Japan surrenders,
Germany surrendering before that all, of a sudden you've got 13 million men in the
Armed Forces and what are you going to do with them? You can't let them all out on the
same day, and also there is a need for occupying forces and many other things. So a big
study was made under the direction of Stouffer. A number of sociologists who were
involved, including Louis Guttman, who is famous for the Guttman scale and just died a
couple of weeks ago, and whom I introduced to sociology. And Robin Williams, Paul
Lazarsfeld, Merton and a number of social psychologists were brought in together in
Washington to do this work. But it was probably the greatest single use of survey
techniques that's ever been made, then or later. Kind of became the design for how they
did it. And they had good samplers, and they, when they were sampling they used the
most advanced measuring techniques. It was really a marvelous achievement, and of
course it made Stouffer famous. He was already very well-known. But that's probably
the biggest single example. Now is that reform? To the people who want integration it's
reform. To people who want a fair method of letting people out of the Army it's reform.
But "Reform the Army," that wasn't the purpose that people made to study. They wanted
sociological and social psychological knowledge used, put to use to deal with problems
encountered by the military and the people in the military. It was very different, I'd say,
from studies that were made in the old days to try to get rid of poverty, or crime, or [all of
those] various elements. And that became the model since then, I would say, for most
sociological research.
00:18:11
And what the point that we tried to make and use this as sociology, was, despite the fact
that many people outside of sociology saw that sociology as an abstract, unsure,
theoretical kind of a pre-occupation -- having a preoccupation on a certain level, that was
certainly true. But sociological research had been greatly used in all walks of American
society and social life. And that was the purpose of both was to demonstrate some of
those uses. For example, I was involved with some others in the study that was
responsible for bringing the last large group of uncovered workers into the -- under Social
Security. For years, farm workers and farmers had been left out, because it was argued
that, especially by their representatives, that farmers didn't need Social Security. They
had their land and their farms, and all of that, they did do very well. So we made a
survey of the plans that farm people had for retirement and their security and old age, and
found practically none of them had anything, hardly any of them had any kind of
insurance. They had savings that were not adequate to possibly, and they were greatly
worried and unhappy because they were not covered by Social Security and other
workers with the various outputs on millions of people who are added to Social Security.
Certainly I and others who were involved in that study were interested in seeing farmers
adequately, you know, get their share of the welfare system and their [word unclear] in
society other than for crop, not planting crops. But the studies were very carefully done,
excellent samples, and good interviewing. And they resulted within two or three years of
their publication in the Congress passing legislation that included farmers in Social
Security. So there are many uses that sociology can put to resulting from surveys, but not
with the intention of the people who did the studies of themselves trying to reform.
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MS:
So I hear you saying that this is pretty much since the time when you first got out of
graduate school in the late 30s and the 40s. Ever since then, in the mid-30s.
WS:
There was some of it before that, I don't want to minimize the fact that some people, like
the Chicago School and others, were doing this kind of work. Before that, certainly when
I took my masters degree I already knew about all the ecology studies, unless they
happened earlier in Chicago. So that I think those were in fact about, oh, mid-20s [word
unclear], but not much anyplace else, that's where the action was at.
00:21:51
And then Chicago, having been almost from the beginning a major place where people
went for Ph.D.'s in sociology, but a number of others know such numbers now. But
there probably were 15, 20 places you could go and get a Ph.D., but Chicago is by far the
most prestigious. So those people went out and wherever they went, they tended to
follow the same model. But even today, one of the more recent presidents of the
American Sociological Association, Peter Rossi, gave his presidential address on the
application of sociological findings to current problems. So there still is strong emphasis
and strong urges among sociologists, most sociologists, to have their results used. They
are not reformers in the sense that they go out and carry out those reforms.
00:23:00
MS:
Since, I don't know, let's say the 1940s, have you noticed any trends maybe certain times
sociologists have tried to remove themselves more from reform?
WS:
I think it's, by the 40s, it was pretty well accomplished. That is reform in a sense that
we're out to do good. And we're going to do it by studies, by what our observation, and
by setting up programs. And I'm not about to say that no sociologists in the New Deal
period, for example, many sociologists were called into Washington to help plan kinds of
New Deal programs that were in use. A number of people. But most of those programs
that sociologists were involved with involved bringing together past information about
the problem, making new studies. And some of them, all of them, I suppose, tried to
point out the policy implications of this, but it's interesting to note that no, I think this is
true, no person I would consider a sociologist, ran any of the program, studies. They ran
the research programs. They did social policy analysis. But they did not then run the
programs for reforming, or running the problems they were trying to -- programs that
were to deal with the problems. And I think over the years, it's become more and more
removed from problem-oriented research to more [words unclear] or basic research in
sociology. Research that tests sociological theories and hypotheses.
00:25:13
MS:
I am sure sociologists were put to good use probably during the 60s and when there was a
new, sort of "attack" on poverty and studying the educational system. Did their
involvement follow the same sort of paths that the sociologists in the New Deal would
have followed?
WS:
I guess not quite the same, that is they weren't -- they were great on crime problems. The
problems of education in the 60s were not nearly as serious as the problems of
unemployment during the Depression, of lack of adequate medical care, housing, food
and all those things. So there wasn't nearly the urgency and nor was there the likelihood
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that people would then come up with policy-oriented statements about the research they
did, but there certainly has always been some of that. Economists have been much more
policy oriented than sociologists. I think that that comes about in part because
economists, especially out of the [Johna Commons?] tradition of Wisconsin, felt that it
was their duty to not only study these problems, but tell the government what to do about
them. And to this day I can remember one time when I was presenting something before
the Economics Association. People, the critics of the research I was presenting, said that
there was no evidence that I was laying out policy implications in my research. And I
guess I don't know how I answered them, but at least I told them that I didn't think that it
was a God-given province of sociologists to tell them what to do about things. But they
do. They train the people the policy, and they also have a large part in how the
government functions because of that.
00:27:40
MS:
Maybe my last question relating to social reform is, I remember us talking some time ago
about some new programs in Sociology department that had been more applied --
WS:
Yes, I think it's interesting that sociologists in their attempt to be more respectable and
more respected, I suppose, have tried to be more and more what they consider scientific.
And have, for the most part, not been interested primarily in applied [programs?]. On the
other hand, all it took was the overproduction of Ph.D.’s in the United States for people
to suddenly become aware of the fact that sociologists weren't going to be employed
almost exclusively in universities. And so many departments became very much
concerned about what the -- how sociologists might be useful in government agencies local, state, international programs. What they could do, what they could offer, other
than just their knowledge, in the way of programs, policy statements, the legislators, and
even the administrational programs designed to correct problems. And in the last 15 or
so years a number of departments have emphasized, among their various fields, the
development of policy and applied uses of sociology, and people training people in those
skills. I guess I couldn't say any of the major departments have done that. But, certainly
a number of departments trying to find a way -- the major departments always place their
students, no matter how bad the times. Everybody's anxious for Chicago, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Columbia, etc. Ph.D.’s –
00:30:20
End of Tape 17, Side 1
Tape 17, Side 2
00:30:22
WS:
Sometimes when there’s an overabundance of Ph.D.'s coming out of the graduate
schools. Even the best departments increasingly place some of their people in state
agencies and federal agencies and see that as a good outlet. Our department most
certainly for the last 10 or 15 years been one of the most prestigious, if not the most. As
a number of people who are doing research jobs in the state civil service, for example.
Not always are they our best Ph.D.’s because they are in great demand, but certainly very
adequate people. And I think that this has greatly raised the standards of research that is
turned out in the process of day-to-day business of these agencies because all our people
are well trained in statistics and quantitative methods. But it's also an introduction of a
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good deal of sound sociological research in the state of California. The same was
happening in other states and certainly with other governments as well.
00:31:41
MS:
We've been talking a lot about basic research in sociology and sociology as a science and
wonder if you could say something about in what ways is social science scientific, and
how would the social sciences compare with the natural sciences?
WS:
Well I suppose that the major claim that social sciences have to being sciences is the fact
that they follow what they think of as the Scientific Method. In other words, identifying
a problem of intellectual importance to their field, carefully defining their variables,
setting up hypotheses, designing studies to answer all of these questions of the
hypotheses, give evidence for rejection or acceptance of hypothesis. In general, most of
the social sciences have seen the way of doing this to either gather the data themselves or
to use already available documents like census documents, for example, which are very
heavily used by demographers and economists. And then testing out propositions using
their data. On the other hand, I suppose that most social scientists have to gather their
own data, design their own studies, gather their own data. And by far the most common
method of gathering that data is extensive sample surveys.
00:33:41
Now that's not true particularly of some fields, for example psychology, because
psychology has been very much tied to an experimental parameter. And wherever
possible, experimental techniques are used. But a great many criticism to their
experimental techniques, but not much on statistical grounds, maybe on sampling
grounds. At least other social scientists point out that real sampling is seldom done by
psychologists, they just take the captive audiences they have, and that's mainly students,
and especially freshman in Psych One, since that needs large numbers. And it does mean
that many other generalizations and conclusions are based upon a rather small segment of
American society and to some extent, then, extensions of those conclusions to other
populations may be somewhat faulting because of that. Of course there are some
psychologists, especially social psychologists, who do sampling. But the psychologists
are well trained in statistics, are well trained in experimental methods, and they make up
for many of the shortcomings of their samples, like doctored design, and things of that
kind.
00:35:22
Economists in general don't do surveys. It’s only a few economists that ever do gather
their own data. They take the records of businesses and firms and the Department of
Labor and the Department of Commerce and various other kinds of records. And
economists track, test their propositions mainly by means of very complex econometric
models, and, but they don't generate the questions themselves for getting the data. They
don't gather the data, they don't pay much attention to quality of data, they just assume
that it's in the Census of Transportation it must be right. Whereas, in general, most
census and other kinds of data can be badly faulty in terms of people in the firms and so
on, that are omitted. But still you learn a great deal from -- the sophistication of analysis
in the models [can be?] enviable among other social sciences, so that, in general, I would
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say, that the social sciences depend not on their content or what they know for a claim to
science, as some sciences like physics do for example, chemistry. The results of all their
years of experimentation and study produced a body of knowledge that most people will
call scientific. That's less true in the social sciences, although the body of knowledge in
economic, sociology, psychology is rather great and often quite good. And from books,
and general propositions, conclusions, probably not laws, can be drawn.
00:37:35
But even the laws of physics have changed with new techniques and new means of
observation and new means of analysis. But physical science is certainly a model that the
social sciences are following. I'm not at all sure, for example, if much of biological
science is superior in its research design and care with which measurements are made in
social science, certainly the borderline. The laboratory biological sciences probably are
more precise in measurements, well designed experiments. But a good deal of what
biological sciences, ecological, observational and so on are subject to the same kinds of
problems that the social sciences are.
So if you are trying to have a hierarchy of the sciences, certainly the physical sciences,
clearly, everyone would agree are most scientific. They're not very good when they try to
study social problems, because they just don't understand the kinds of complexities that
arise and so on. And so they often offer terrible advice as to how you'd solve various
problems of education, or housing or whatever else. But, still, certainly their general
recognition is that this is real science. Biological sciences and so on are next, and then
social sciences will be the last in those three sets. Part of that is due to the fact that much
of some of the social sciences have a large humanistic component. For example history
and political science, geography to some extent. And a great many of the practitioners in
those fields, the scholars in those fields, do not use the kinds of techniques that
sociologists use, and the economists, and so on use. But there's a growing body of [word
unclear] history of quantitative historians, of which one of the leading figures is here,
Professor Beale in history.
00:40:08
MS:
What's his name?
WS:
Beale. No wait – Bogue. Allan Bogue was called the father of cliometrics which is the
point of the discovery of historical theater. And he's nearing retirement age, so it's been
going on for some time in history, but it's only a small block of historians who use those
techniques, but an increasing number. So that when we talk of social science, we usually
include history, political science, geography, psychology, sociology, economics, and part
of those have orientations that are more in the humanistic direction than what I will call
the scientific direction.
00:41:00
MS:
I know sometimes social scientists have tried to defend themselves as being scientific and
some have tried to model themselves after the physical sciences, well the natural
sciences, and others say, "No, because of our subject matter, we shouldn't even try to
adopt those particular methods, because there are certain problems of the social sciences
which just can't be solved by those methods." I was wondering if, during your career as a
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sociologist, if you have noticed any, again I'm looking for some trends?
WS:
Oh yeah, no doubt can go along with that. The social sciences are much more accepted
by biological and physical sciences than they once were, certainly when I entered the
field. Well, one evidence of that is support for the research they're doing. When I
entered the field, the only possible source you could get for research was limited funds in
your own university and money that you could get out of some of those foundations. But
none of the foundations primarily, none of the big ones, primarily were devoted to [words
unclear] were devoted to the social sciences. They would finance medical research.
They financed basically science research. Sociology -- social sciences, however, were
included and could get some support, but the bulk of the money went to other things. So
only a few people could be supported, and most people didn't even expect to do a great
deal of research. In Chicago School we're able to, because of the evidence of scholars
who are able to attract money from the foundations and especially local foundations.
Chicago has many very, very rich people, and some of those people formed their own
foundations to support social science or included social science in their support.
00:43:24
But for a good Ph.D. coming out of a good department, his [sic] expectations were
mainly, you get into a decent department, and there he would teach, almost full-time, and
that possibly, every now and then, he'd be able in the summers or in sabbatical to do a
little research, but most of them expect to write textbooks. In the theme of many of the
early sociologists came from writing textbooks, and certainly the wealth of most
sociologists came from writing textbooks. But some very common figures, for example
the first really standard high quality textbook in sociology, there have been many before
that, including The Civilian Laws, and so on, was a book by Ogburn and Burgess, which
was almost universally adopted in the better departments of sociology. Kimball Young,
another great figure in sociology, then Ogburn and -- oh Park and Burgess I should have
said for the book. Then Ogburn and Nimkoff, and Kimball Young, a series of people
wrote textbooks that really, in many ways made their reputations, because they were
excellent textbooks. That's seldom the case anymore. Most of the textbooks nowadays
in sociology are written by people who aren't research scholars, but are good teachers
who read writing and journals. But I still find it interesting that it took about 10 years
from when our first studies developed a model for social aspirations, occupational,
educational inspiration, took at least 10 to 12 years for any of them to get into any text in
introductory sociology. Now most textbooks have something on it, you know the model,
or something about it, but it took at least 10 years. And that's fairly typical in the lag
between research and what gets into the teaching materials that are used in textbooks in
this country, so that most people couldn't expect to have a research career.
00:46:10
MS:
What time period are you talking about, or when do you see things changing?
WS:
We started seeing things changing very differently towards World War I. There were
researchers, some of the professors at Chicago who had research careers, as well as
graduate teaching careers. Ogburn, Burgess --
MS:
World War II. World War I? World War II?
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WS:
Well, before World War II. And then there were more isolated people, I mean people in
good departments, but only a few of them. Like Chapin at Minnesota, I'm trying to think
of anybody at Wisconsin. Professor John Coleman, he wrote sociology, he did research,
but most of the early Wisconsin post-World War I to post-World War II people wrote
books. Mr. Dylan did his famous study of Wisconsin prisoners, but most of the rest of
his books were not based on research data that he himself gathered.
So there were only a few of these people around. Odum at North Carolina, Rupert
Vance, also at North Carolina, and a few people at Columbia. But most, the great bulk of
the Ph.D.'s never wrote, did any, what I would call scientific research. They might have
done research based on their reading a great many studies and a great many writings of
other persons and tried to make some synthesis of what they were working on. But it
wasn't until after World War I, really, that a great many people, who became almost the
norm, to expect [words unclear] sociology. Well trained sociologists that they do
research, they do some research in addition to the teaching, and I must also say that even
to this day, probably meant more than half of the people who get Ph.D.'s in sociology in
the United States ever do research.
00:48:36
MS:
Really?
WS:
It's true, it's true.
MS:
Is that because half of the Ph.D.'s in sociology never get a job as a sociologist?
WS:
Oh no, oh no. To this day, at least 85 to 90% of all Ph.D.'s in sociology work in
universities and colleges. We're the most college-centered of any, or university-centered
of any of the disciplines that I've talked about. For example, if you're in physics there all
sorts of places you can work for industry, economists can work for industry. Very few
sociologists do, a few psychologists, but in general, the social science guys are found in
greater concentration in universities than either biological or physical science people.
But I haven't seen a study recently, based on physics for example, which is a, in my
sense, a new member of the sciences. But not more than 10 or 15 years ago was only a,
the majority of Ph.D. physicists have never published any physical experiment.
MS:
That's interesting.
WS:
I know, they [words unclear]. Not everybody, know matter how well they train, as we do
at this university, train people in our department to be research scholars. Not everybody
does research, by any means. Many of them get interested in administration. Many of
them love to teach and just make a specialty of teaching. And, you know, basic ideas
about research ideas, they're just not that common. Some of the best students I've ever
had never produced research.
00:50:39
MS:
Could you say something about the debates among social scientists about the sorts of
methodologies they should use and how these debates have taken shape in your career?
WS:
I think I could tell you that better about sociology, because every one of them had a
somewhat different course, but probably much the same sort of conclusion. The social
sciences from the beginning have tended to have people who did what I would call
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unsure research. They sat and reflected about how societies behave and the major
questions about the social institutions and so on. And that's common for all of social
sciences, I believe. After all, they all grew out of philosophy. And much of the early
training was in philosophical techniques. They were good scholars in that they read
widely in many fields and knew how to evaluate historical data, things of that sort. And
so they wrote things like the famous book, the most famous book that E.A. Ross wrote
was on social control. I don't think there is, I haven't read it since I was a student, but I
don't remember that there was a single instance of what would be accepted as research in
these days. For example, you talked about crowds and mobs and various other groups
that form and try to force social change. And these would be well documented
observations of someone who was at the French Revolution or whatever else it might be,
observers.
00:52:41
But, mainly, scholarship consisted of trying to focus on problems of social control and
how it had seemed to work out different kinds of group situations and that sort of thing,
but no experimental studies, no actual surveys. And that was pretty much true of
criminology, certainly true of poverty, independency, although less true there because
there were these early surveys that at least dealed with some kind of factual knowledge.
It was true of social psychology, early social psychologists reflected on how this is social,
how social, how individual behavior was influenced by the social structure in which
individuals operated and all that sort of thing was done. And I'm not trying to say that
those weren't, those were very clever people, some of them excellent scholars, but they
were not staying by much actual research, gathering of data and analysis, which is so
common in the scientific fields. Then over the years, probably more at Chicago than any
other place, people started to actually do careful research studies. The techniques of
sampling, of observation, even of the kinds of questionnaires and schedules they used.
It's almost [gap in tape] things were proved by modern-day standards, of course, because
over the years all of those things have improved greatly. But still, there was an intent to
do empirical studies and that it seems spread, and, as I said earlier, by World War II that
had become the model. It's just increased, in fact it's increased now to the point where in
many social sciences, including sociology and certainly economics, psychology, unless
you're hired, trained in statistics, you just don't understand the results of the studies. So
the move has been from the emphasis on the empirical, to the emphasis on the elegance
of measurement and analysis.
00:55:27
And there are many people who've been very critical of that, to people who couldn't do it
particularly, I've always thought. But people have been very critical in sociology of,
especially theorists, have been very critical of the attempts of what they think of as small,
now large, but it's mostly imperfect sample surveys, meticulous kinds questioning of
people to test a theory. It doesn't encompass with the theory really meant, and all that, so
it a big waste of time according to some people. One of the recent presidents of the
American Sociological Association devoted his presidential address primarily to the
kinds of studies that we do here. That is the, what he called the Status Attainment
studies, couldn't really tell you anything about why or how people were motivated to seek
higher levels of attainment and so on. And it's all a mess of statistical jargon and
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nonsense according to him. So it's still, there's a lot of criticism, but I would guess that
something around 80% or 85% of all sociologists follow that ideal in that model. Not my
model, but quantitative kinds of models in their own work and in their own [word
unclear].
00:57:07
End of Tape 17, Side 2
Tape 18, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
MS:
--Solovy. I’m talking again with Professor Sewell of Sociology. Today’s talk is a
continuation of my first hour with Professor Sewell. These tapes are meant to be part of –
or supplements to – the University Archives’ Oral History Project.
00:00:18
MS:
I'm curious about the boundaries between the social science disciplines. I was wondering
if you could say something about the relationships between sociology and the other social
sciences.
WS:
Well, first thing one has to say is that the boundaries are not terribly clear and tend to
overlap. A good deal after all, all of the social sciences I believe, came out of philosophy
with economics being the first one to separate them probably political sciences -- then
probably psychology. I know when political science and sociology and social history
separated. Probably social history really grew on to history rather than being a part of
philosophy, because history as far as I can remember. Or as far as I know is always had a
separate place in universities in the early days. After two or three of the departments at
separated. It was very common to have a Department of social sciences, which would
include at least sociology psychology, political science. Jeremy had a somewhat different
role, because geography is part physical, in part, social science here for many years it's
been separated. I don't know when it actually separated out as you probably know from.
If you read about the history of the social sciences. I mean, if you read about the history
of the University. At one time. It was a social science college sometime in the early 19
hundredths. But it wasn't long after that, that the department started emerging
particularly psychology was already well established as a separate department and
economics and sociology broke away from economics. I know when he are political
science got started, but probably very nearly.
00:02:46
MS:
So this was already by the first decade or so of this century?
WS:
Yes, during the first decade of the 19th century.
MS:
20th century?
WS:
20th century these things started happening in the 1900s... So, and nobody's ever been
really crystal clear about what the boundaries are here or elsewhere. It much depended on
the scholars who were in the universities. In general, sociology here and elsewhere was at
first, combined with anthropology and social work. I think that that was probably the
reason was that sociology in those days was rather closely related to social work. Most
sociologists, by then considered social work to be an applied aspect of sociology and
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anthropology was not all that different in those days from sociology at least, not social
anthropology and social anthropology, of course, had a rather early separation in Britain
and apology departments far out of date. Sociology departments, in fact many of the
major universities in England have only recently established sociology because they saw
social anthropology took care of everything that sociologists do. That's not too surprising
for a big empire country that is involved in problems of having colonized. Almost all the,
all the continents of the world and social anthropologists. If they describe the life in
villages and cities in all these various places was a rather respected discipline in Great
Britain. In this country, however, sociology, had a much more rapid growth, but didn't
comprise kind of as a little sisters anthropology and social work. Also it was a
convenient little match to drop these places and because departments of sociology are not
very large. There are some exceptions to that. There are places like, in this country, like
Harvard, Princeton, Yale. All of which had anthropology departments before sociology
was admitted as a Department. It was only in the 30s that Berkeley had an established
sociology department. It was really late 30s. Maybe as late as 40, but certainly in
Harvard didn't have the sociology department until Pitirim Sorokin went there from
Minnesota in 1930 or 31. He went there to start a sociology department so that the
origins there's no great rule. But by far the greatest majority of sociology departments.
Also included anthropology and social work. In this department did in fact, when I came
here in 1946, both social work, and anthropology were part of sociology. It was called
the Department of sociology and anthropology they never did call it social work and there
were only one or two professors. One professor, I guess when I came here to when I
came here in social work at the next year. A school of social work was set up.
MS:
So that was --
WS:
That would've been 1947, probably.
MS:
You remember at all why, why they --
WS:
Social work was a very anxious to be separated. It wanted to be a professional -- many
other, University of Minnesota had 10 or 15 years before that separated off its social
work in social work. The people in social work saw it as a professional training rather
than general education, and they were training people. States had requirements for social
workers in terms of education requirements to get jobs. So, social work was very anxious
to escape from sociology everywhere.
MS:
How did the sociology people feel about that?
WS:
Well, pleased to have them go.
MS:
Because they wanted --
WS:
Because they wanted to be more pure science types of department.
00:08:15
With anthropology, it was - what happened here, at least - was that anthropology wanted
to be separated from sociology. When I came here there was only one anthropologist in
the department. Of course, there were only nine sociologists in both rural sociology and
sociology combined at that time. So it was a very small enterprise. But within two or
three years after I got here, anthropology had four or five professors and sociology had
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grown, too. And they felt they’d do better off without us, and we felt the same way. It
was a very peaceful separation. They wanted to go and we were willing to let them. It
wasn't because - we thought, we thought that if they felt that they had now had enough
people to have a Department, that there was no reason why they shouldn't go. We didn't
feel we were losing anything. In the old days when I first came here, we taught a course
called “Man and Society” which was an introduction to both sociology and anthropology
and anthropologists, and sociologists shared in the teaching of the course. So, as I say, it
was some time - the first or second year when I was chairman here - that this separation
took place in the late 50s.
MS:
Before the separation took place, do you remember how similar would two graduate
programs be? If someone was going through the sociology program, someone was going
through the anthropology program, did they have a very separate --
WS:
I'm not even sure there was a Ph.D. in anthropology, I don't think there was till they
became a separate department. And undergraduates would just take it, they could take
courses in either. There were some prescribed courses like this “Man and Society” and a
the course in - two or three other theory courses. But other than that there is nothing
required that was different from one of undergraduate majors. And I think if somebody
wanted to get a masters degree in anthropology, emphasizing anthropology, there was
some set of requirements. They weren't terribly different. In other words, it wasn't much
of a differentiated department until they separated and added additional added staff. So
they'd have enough people to cover the various fields of anthropology. And anthropology
again is a strange package. Traditionally, anthropology, was what we now call physical
anthropology and archaeology. But most - then and now - most anthropology
departments feel they have to thoroughly cover the field of archaeology, thoroughly
cover the field of physical anthropology - man's make up physically - and so on. In fact, I
think the major general biology courses here are taught by the general one that students
take to fulfill their requirements are taught by an anthropologist. And then social
anthropology or cultural anthropology. Either of those terms refer to the same thing, and
most of the courses are really in social anthropology and social anthropology is close to
sociology, excepting that in the past the tradition of social anthropology has been to study
primitive and developing societies in other parts of the world. And in recent - since the
late 40s mid-40s, anthropologists have also been interested in applied anthropology.
00:12:33
And that's social anthropology and lets you advise governments and societies what they
ought to do differently. What traditions and what mores of the society have to be
respected when you plan to do something. Like, for example, you probably read in the
papers recently about some place where they're trying to start a new real estate
development in the area. But before they can do it, they have to be sure they're not doing
it on an Indian Cemetery or burial grounds and things of that sort. But anyway,
sociology, in terms of its interest, is different from social anthropology in its methods.
Social anthropologists usually use observation techniques, try to steep themselves in the
culture they're studying, the language, and observe how the society functions, its
institutions and its groups. Sociologists – that’s a main concern of sociologists, as with
contemporary societies and with the development and analysis of social structure. But
there are many fields in sociology, social problems, crime, social organization, social
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stratification, social psychology. Social theory is a separate field. Social methods,
quantitative methods and methodology are separate fields. There are many, many more
fields probably in sociology than in anthropology. So that they are really characterized by
their differences in how they study and what they study.
00:14:53
MS:
So the field experience in anthropology where you go in and immerse yourself in another
culture... That's still the rite of passage?
WS:
That's still as I understand, that's still an absolute prerequisite to becoming a, getting a
Ph.D. You know, I’m only talking about – I haven’t watched anthropology in the last 10
years or so. Up until that time, certainly. Now, a physical anthropologist, for example,
could study bones that somebody else found - that would be no problem, but, and a
archaeologist studies essentially, the history of primitive cultures and they do that from
all kinds of sources, of course. But the feeling, as far as I know, still are there that... To
get a Ph.D. in anthropology, you must study all three of those fields, one of which you
major in and one of which is the principal emphasis, but you've got to do [gap in tape].
00:16:09
And I think one of the reasons why an anthropologist has to study all three fields or three
areas is that anthropology departments are small, especially in liberal arts colleges. There
may be only one anthropologist, and that's to teach everything or two anthropologists.
But there's also some – or was when I knew more about it - a great commitment to the
fact that every anthropologist should know all of these areas and be influenced by them in
their studies. I guess that's enough about sociology and anthropology. And I think you
would find that most places, where the departments have separated, it’s been a matter of
convenience rather than any battle over territory. As far as I remember here, there wasn’t
anybody here that was very much interested in even studying developing societies.
American anthropology – or, American sociology has been very parochial in the sense
that, for the most part, people have studied the United States and what goes on in this fast
and complex kind of a society. In recent years there's been – we even have a major, I
guess - in developing nations, the sociology of development it's called, and a number of
people go off to developing countries to study contemporary historical problems. But the
theory in the two fields don't greatly overlap either. Much of the theory in sociology has
to do with how social structures develop and how social structure influences personality
and personal behavior, I should say – not just personality, but what you believe in what
you do and so on. Anthropology does that too, but their emphasis is much more on the
total culture of a society than just on its social structure. So there's still a good deal of
overlap. Economics and sociology are fairly separate. In my time, I can't think of a single
instance in which sociology and economics were in the same department. Yet there's one
area of it, where it's true still in some places, agricultural economics and rural sociology
would be in the same department. But again, I think that's a matter of size and numbers.
In most places, but still, they're very few of those. But as far as economics being a part
of – of sociology being a part of economics, it's not in my memory that it's true. Mr.
Ross came here in the early 1900s, maybe. I'm not sure just when he came, but.
00:19:35
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MS:
I think it was 1906.
WS:
And he was a professor of economics in the economics department, but was a sociologist
as he defined himself. But that's where sociology was in those days. And I think maybe
20 years or so later, it was 20 years or more later, that he got a separate department for
economics. Sociology -- I mean for sociology, separate from economics, but that's before
my time.
MS:
What do you see as the major differences between the fields now?
WS:
Well, I think it's fairly clear. The major difference is that economists’ central concern is
with the economy. Now that doesn't mean they don't do anything... But it's all always in
terms of economics of something or other. For example, a place where we overlap
currently is the economics of education, as they call it, and we call it educational
sociology. Much of the kind of work that Bob Hauser and I have been doing the last 15,
20 years is accepted by economists as being really their territory, and while they think we
do it very well, they think the economists ought to be doing that kind of stuff... Because
we developed what they call econometric models, more broadly, structural equation
models, to talk about what kinds of social background and factors influence peoples
earnings. It wasn't until we got into making models to explain earnings that they felt we
were really in their territory, I guess. But anything that has to do with money and jobs,
and so on, is -- and that characterizes all their work. For example, in the earlier days of
studies of modeling of factors in predicting individual income, they didn't have, because
they didn't make their own studies, they didn't have any way to have independent income
as the variable to study in these processes. So they just substituted occupational status,
and they even would point out that on average, clerical workers did so many thousand
dollars. Physicians 10 times as many thousands of dollars, and so on. But they had no
individual figures for income, so they'd take occupation to predict income in their
models. In other words, measurement in monetary terms is absolutely essential in
economics, but it's not very essential to sociology.
00:22:54
MS:
Wouldn't sociologists be interested in, I don’t know, sociology of the marketplace and
industry and things like that?
WS:
Oh sure, sure, some of the best work that's been done on labor markets has been done by
sociologists, for example. And then of course there are a whole body of people who are
economic historians, and there's a good deal of overlap between... A good deal of things
that sociologists also study economic historians study. Some fascinating studies have
been made by economic historians of slavery, for example, in America. Some economic
historians study transportation historically, you know, so that -- but almost everything
that economists do have to do with economy. They're not nearly as broad a discipline as
sociology. Now that isn't to say that they don't divide it up into all kinds of different -labor economics, labor history, economics of corporate society, monopoly economics,
money and banking, you can go on and on of the various kinds of economics they study.
And I would say that economics, even since it had monetary values to deal with, became
quantitative much earlier than sociology, and much more thoroughly quantitative than
sociology. But I don't think anybody much disputes the fact that these are two separate
clearly separate disciplines, some with overlap.
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00:24:56
MS:
My next question has to do with -- how much effort has there been, I don’t know, in the
last few decades – or what you're aware of – to do interdisciplinary social science
research?
WS:
There was a good deal of it right after the war. After World War II. Up until then very
little.
MS:
Why do you think that was?
WS:
Well I think it was the model of the American soldier that we talked about last time.
Stouffer was research director of that in the Army and gathered together social scientists,
primarily sociologists and psychologists. A few economists a few political scientists
also. And they demonstrated. - I think very well - the possibilities of interdisciplinary
approaches. And I was involved in a big interdisciplinary study following the war, and
that was the strategic bombing survey, which again, the morale division, which I was a
member, was made up of anthropologists sociologists and psychologists. And we were all
terribly impressed by the fact that people from different disciplines came up with insights
and hypotheses and --
MS:
-- different perspectives.
WS:
-- and different perspectives. But the most interesting thing to me of all, since we were a
group of 11 or 12 people, all Ph.D.'s, with a fair amount of experience by then, that some
of the most important sociological questions were being raised by people in psychology
or anthropology, and sometimes the most creative suggestions for solution to some of
these research problems came not from the people in their own discipline who were kind
of imprisoned in the thought that they had been trained in. So I was very enthusiastic
about the idea and so were many people and there were established around the country a
number of departments that were interdisciplinary. For example, usually sociology and
anthropology and psychology to study social behavior. There was a great trend to start
talking instead of the social sciences about the behavioral sciences, or the sciences of
human behavior.
00:28:00
Columbia, Michigan and Harvard, particularly, have very strong interdisciplinary degree
granting departments and would, sat, put together a sociologists and psychologists and, in
some instances, social anthropologists.
MS:
And this was in the 50s?
WS:
Yes, right after, right after the war from --
MS:
-- or late 40s?
WS:
-- late 40s. But in a period of 15 years they'd all disappeared.
MS:
What happened?
WS:
Why all this happens, I think in most interdisciplinary enterprises, and that is that the
traditions of departments and departmental loyalty – the market demand for Ph.D.'s
comes from departments, not from interdisciplinary programs. Well Chicago also had a
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big program, and some shreds of that are still in existence. But in any event. So, they
usually start these kinds of enterprises off - research institutes, departments, and so on interdisciplinary research institutes and departments usually start them off with a group of
people terribly interested in it and that had good experiences with it and believe that this
is the way of the future. Then it isn't long until they expand and have to hire people and
since no such people have yet been produced you hire them out of sociology and
psychology departments, and their departmental identity is very strong. They also know
very well that if they do mostly their productivity, if most of their productivity is
published in interdisciplinary journals, they don't get nearly as much credit.
00:30:10
End of Tape 18, Side 1
Tape 18, Side 2
00:30:12
Academic rewards are made by departments, and unless you have departmental status it's
hard to, you know, it's hard to get people promoted and so on. Even if you have
departmental status, there is a tendency for people to go back to the departments or the
thing to unravel when the founders leave and so on. Also, interdepartmental kinds of
departments and tend not to have as much status in university as departments. So there
are all kinds of reasons why they unravel. I think it's interesting that the one big area in
which the social sciences tried to function broadly was social psychology. The only
separate department by that name – I guess it wasn't even a department there, a program
that emerged was at University of Michigan. And I must say it was a marvelous,
marvelous thing because some of the top people in psychology who were social
psychologists, and the top people in sociology, and some of the top people in
anthropology, who were interested in social psychological behavior, got together and
they turned out just marvelous people. But within 10 years, there were factional fights
between the departments over the control of this and the departments were jealous
because the best students were going to it, and within 15, 18 years it disappeared from the
scene. Columbia didn’t last nearly as long, and even the Department of Social Relations,
as it was called under Parson, at Harvard, lasted only about 20 or 25 years. They just
broke up because they didn't fit the culture of universities. Now I find it very interesting
that when similar interdisciplinary things that occur in the biological and physical
sciences, they have become departments in their own rights, and they've become very
strong, prestigious departments. Biochemistry broke away from chemistry. First it was
agricultural chemistry, and then it became biochemistry and biochemistry in many ways
overshadowed traditional chemistry in its development. Molecular biology essentially
occurred when some physicists got interested in the kinds of problems that biologists
dealt with rather - they thought - rather clumsily, and then they introduced elegant kinds
of physical theory and thinking into biology. Well and so did departments of molecular
biology, and they succeeded. Geology broke off – I don’t know where from, physics or
biological science - but broke off and became a separate entity. The success both of the
research institutes and the interdisciplinary departments, originally under
interdisciplinary departments, has been much greater in the biological science and the
natural sciences. And I think maybe that's because they had a lot more research to report,
they got some of the very best minds to form these interdisciplinary groups and so on.
Although I think that was probably true in social behavior kinds of departments too, but
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at least in the social sciences they have not been very likely to succeed.
00:34:28
MS:
Have there been any attempts in the last few decades at the University of Wisconsin to do
interdisciplinary social science research?
WS:
Yeah. In fact, I headed up a group to try to get sociology and anthropology and social
psychology together into a social psychology program that would be interdisciplinary.
And I got money from Social Science Research Council to hold faculty seminars for a
period of about 18 months in which we'd have two or three people who have these
interests meet together and try to map out - first to talk about their joint interests and what
it was they'd like to talk to each other about. It went very well because we had sufficient
money to have the evening meetings started with a fine dinner and some good wine and
so on paid for by SSRC - and also people had a very genuine interest.
MS:
What year was this?
WS:
Oh. I'd have to look it up to know for sure, but it was probably in the early 50s, maybe
late 40s and early 50s. And we even mapped out a joint program for a Ph.D. in social
psychology. A program, but not a department. And we went and then to - the two main
departments where sociology and psychology. Psychology here has always had strong
emphasis on experimental types of psychology. It's been a really strong, top 10 until
recently of experimental centers in psychology. But never very interested to develop the
social psychology part of it, and the people who were in social psychology have never
felt really supported by the Department. They feel, you know, even though they're
psychologists, they feel like they're surrounded by people who have very different
orientations and needs. So anyway, we were very worrisome, as were the psychology
people, about whether psychology would go along with it. And they would only if we
made certain compromises like, to make sure that everybody in it had to take their proseminar which is their sorting device and major overall educational device in the
Department. I think it's still as it was up until very recent times anyway. And we thought
that would be okay. But when I got back to sociology, I couldn't sell it to sociology at
all. Social psychology was kind of at its height everywhere. Great demand for social
psychologists. And we had small social psychology program - a major in it in this
department, which one of the anthropologists and, well really, there were about three of
us involved in it, one anthropologist and two sociologists, one of whom was me and the
other was Tom McCormick, who really wasn't much of a social psychologist, but he was
a good statistician for his day. And anyway, the sociology department would not agree to
it. So that kind of ended the program, although we patched it up, you know, and made it a
program, but it never really got going. A few people took this interdisciplinary Ph.D., but
I don't know how many ever did. Maybe a dozen or so... So in the social sciences,
nothing quite of that kind has emerged.
00:38:43
Now there was a period later on when Guy Orcutt came here with about $4-5 million that
he got from the Ford foundation as a professor in economics to organize a social systems
research institute, and the purpose of that was to try to make a model - an economic
model - of the US economy. Something that nobody's ever succeeded in doing since,
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really in a serious sense. They might make a model of the market of something or other,
but the market of the whole of economy... So Guy had this broad view, was an excellent
econometrician himself, and he thought it could be done and he convinced the Ford
Foundation. But he also felt that to do it you had to have sociologists and psychologists
and political scientists, and so on, so we formed a thing called the Social Systems
Research Institute. And Guy insisted that I be co-Director of it to represent the rest of the
social sciences. He brought in some very outstanding economists with that money the
University furnished. And we brought in some sociologists to profess that they were
interested in that. They were both demographers and ecologists and it turned out they
never did any[thing], although they got half their pay. They just went on doing their
same research, and really didn't contribute in any intellectual or material way to the
model. But it didn't take long until the people - even the people they brought in in
economics - thought the task was too great for present computers and so on, and started
off on their own smaller, more or less ambitious ways, but it served as a nice umbrella
and tent for some years. Finally the money was gone – to put it very bluntly - and Guy
had gotten Guy Orchid had gotten rather discouraged. So, the Urban Institute was being
formed in Washington as a not-for-profit corporation that makes similar kinds of studies.
So Guy went there to join that group, and somebody else. By then, I was long since out
of it because I never pretended even to Guy or anybody else that I was interested in that
problem. But I was interested in seeing this collaboration from people in different fields.
Anyway once Guy left somebody else was appointed the director and in a couple years it
almost disappeared. There’s still such a thing, but it functions entirely in the
Department of Economics. I don’t even know what kinds of things they do. And they
also have -- one of the things that Guy started immediately was to have a library of
computer programs and computerized data library of projects and databases from
wherever he could lay hands on them, and that still functions. But as a going concern, as
an interdisciplinary sort of thing, it’s long since passed. And then we had the
Interdisciplinary Institute on Poverty, which again has involved political scientists,
sociologists and I think a historian or two, and several sociologists. And that still goes.
But none of these have become degree granting kinds of things. They don't stand apart
like biochemistry or some of the other departments. So that's, you know, a crude and
dirty history of what's happened here.
00:43:21
I mean, I left out some important things. There’s an Environmental Institute that has been
mainly biologists, but it's also ahead had climatologists, and several biologists from the
College of Agriculture have been very active in it. And one physical anthropologist who
has since retired, David Berris, played a very important role in it. But that still goes on,
but then again that's really 90% biological science, and very little social science. I think
there may be a social scientist or two involved in it. And we've had other sorts of things.
We have the Land Tenure Institute, which has been going on for almost 20 years,
agricultural economists, sociologists, consumption economists, people interested in
housing for developing nations, and people like that in it. But again not any kind of
degree-granting sort of thing, so that the research institutes that are interdisciplinary
haven’t been so badly in the social sciences. But nothing has emerged in the way of an
interdisciplinary kind of training or department from all these efforts.
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00:44:51
MS:
Maybe I could just change the direction of this talk just a little bit. Getting back to your
impact on sociology, and this thing that you and other people call quantitative sociology,
I wonder if you could maybe just describe it briefly and tell me what you think the main
contributions have been of quantitative sociology, and who have been the critics of
quantitative sociology?
WS:
Well, I know of good deal -- I'm not all that conscious of who the critics have been.
MS:
What sorts of criticisms have been made?
WS:
Well, first maybe we ought to say what it is. It's an attempt to gather data - usually
through survey methods, but sometimes observational methods even experimental
methods as well - that are amenable to and that are adequate for multivariate kinds of
analysis. I find it hard to say just when that started and where that started, but probably
the two or three most important people in the early days were William F. Ogburn at the
University of Chicago, Stuart Chapin at the University of Minnesota, and Howard Odum
at the University of North Carolina, all of whom were getting students out of Columbia.
He was the first person I ever knew of that talked about quantifying social science, other
than used in the census and things of that sort, but interested in measuring things better,
interested in studying them instead of in a bi-variate relationship, in a more multi-variate
relationship. And certainly Chapin and Ogburn were the leading people. Ogburn was a
good statistician and he knew correlation analysis, so that was the way he went. Chapin
probably wasn't as good of statistician, but he was interested in measuring things. Ogburn
was interested in taking measurements and subjecting them to correlation analysis.
Chapin did that to, but his real interest was “Can you measure it?” can you measure
people's attitudes, can you measure the strength of family ties, can you measure the
characteristics of families from which you can derive a single measurement of their social
status, their economic status, and so on? And all these measures that Chapin was
interested in were much more complex than just taking income. Just taking occupation,
but putting somehow those things - or things that represented them - into useful scales in
those days. So he was very important.
00:48:18
Their students then, in turn, became the advocates of quantitative sociology. They were
advocates, but nobody -- a lot of people had to pay attention to them, because they were
such important scholars, but they didn't have -- they had an early impact that developed
greatly among their students and their students’ students. And they all insisted that their
students get good training in quantitative methods – statistics - in those days, primarily
more than in research methodology and, I should say, research methods. Research
methodology, I take it to refer to the whole philosophical question of measurement and
quantification. But survey methods, interviewing, coding of data, all that sort of thing.
And all their students were much more apt at that than they were because they studied it
much more. And I remember Chapin sent me off to study - to take statistics taught in the
economics department - and suggested that I go over and take courses in biometry, which
I did. I don't think I took them, I sat in on them and read and stuff. So to get decent
statistical training - or what I thought was decent statistical training - we had to go out of
the Department and go places where they did it better. I even sat in on a course by one of
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RA Fisher's students on design of experiments, and he became very famous himself later.
So that kind of emphasis came out of the generation of students pre -- there were a
number of us who were pre-war Ph.D.'s. Then the wartime experience came on and the
American soldier and prediction measurement, and many of these guys went and worked
in that group. Louis Guttman, the father of Guttman scaling, all sorts of people. Then
when they got -- some of those people like Guttman didn't get their Ph.D.'s till after the
war. The postwar group, which would include, just to name a few, Louis Guttman in
scale and measure, Otis Dudley Duncan, who may be the best-known sociologist of his
generation -- it'd be between him and Jim Coleman of Chicago...But there are many
others, those are just three outstanding ones.
00:51:26
Well there were enough of those people to go around so that they got into big
departments. Paul Lazarsfeld who was a German émigré, a little older than those people
kind of fell between the Chapins and Ogburns and that generation of people, came here
from Germany trained in psychology and mathematics and got interested in surveying
radio markets and things of that sort and developed all sorts of skills and techniques, and
then went to Columbia, which was a terribly important department. When he and Merton
and Herbie Heinemann were all there at the same time. I guess I was the person here
older than Duncan and that group by about 10 or 12 years, but not, you know, a student
of Chapin. But there were many others like me in different places, who came in to
leadership positions and just changed the nature of graduate training in sociology from
courses that included much more than quantitative courses. I established the first
research methods course here 40 years ago, 42 years ago. When I first came here, I
started teaching research methods. We brought Duncan here to do quantitative and
statistical methods. Sam Stouffer was here earlier than I was, but he only stayed two or
three years and went to Chicago so he didn't leave much of an impact. And then I started
bringing in people who had good quantitative training, all kinds of them. And some of
them, all of those people were considerably younger than me. Some of my own students
stayed, but we got them from all the leading departments -- I mean, who were trained in
leading departments, and who are just wanting to make a research career as well as
teaching. And I virtually handpicked them, always having however to sell the
Department, but --.
00:54:04
MS:
Was there any resistance in the Department or were they all for this?
WS:
In the early days there was some resistance, but after that not much. Everybody could see
by then that sociology was becoming dominated by quantitative empirical studies and
methods. And then of course, the great thing that happened was the computer revolution,
which made it possible -- I knew how and actually did multiple regression studies, a
couple that I published using multiple regression techniques... Not greatly different –
excepting they weren't as complex as now – as the kinds of stuff they do in our models
these days, except it all had to be done by [indistinguishable] and very primitive
computers, which didn't have the storage capacity, so a lot of work had to be done by
hand. We had students here doing factor analysis for example, which is, you know,
demands a great deal of -- doesn't demand anything of a modern computer. One of these
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$5,000 IBMs. You could do a factor analysis like I did of one of my studies that
overloaded the computer in the early 50s, so badly that it just spit out just [unintelligible].
It did that in 15 minutes’ time on even a modern extensive desk computer with a lot of
storage capacity. Well, the coming computer then made it possible for people to do much
more complicated kinds of analysis, and also it stimulated - and in kind of an interesting
way - the mathematicians and the statisticians to develop new techniques that heretofore
couldn't be used, although the ideas were in peoples’ heads, in which you could control
variables, you could get their multiple effects, you can do all sorts of things. You could
even -- the more recent big developments have been for what you would call the analysis
of variates rather than analyzing variables in the sense that you would quantify them.
You know, you just rank them and all sorts of modern complex stuff is done in nothing
more than in ranked data. That's just seemed to - in the last 15 years - been a
preoccupation of statistical methodologists. So over the years, almost anything you
wanted to do could be done with modern computer technology, and that I think more than
anything else has kind of put the cap on the quantitative revolution in all social science,
not just sociology. Even economics is probably ahead of us, political science behind us,
and psychology using experimental techniques that are very complicated...
00:57:20
... rather than the kind the rest of us use. All of this has really become possible in the last
20-25 years. We made a good stab of it early. For example, I developed the socioeconomic status scale for farm families that involved the analysis of 136 independently
measured items, and did it all practically by hand, and ... All I’m trying to say is that
almost anyplace one might go for a Ph.D. in the last 15 years, he would have an
opportunity to learn the new statistics, the new methodology, the new measuring
techniques and computer use. Here he had to, because we required it. It didn't matter if
you were a major in sociological theory, you had to go through all of that stuff. I think
we've turned out outstanding people in part because of that. Michigan is very close to us
in that emphasis -- and Chicago. But there are still a few places where that's not true. It's
finally caught on in Berkeley, and they've brought in now that you could get a Ph.D. at
Berkeley up till about five years ago without ever taking a course in statistics. But now,
everybody has to, so I don't know what to say about the critics.
00:59:02
End of Tape 18, Side 2
Tape 19, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
MS:
This is Mark Solovay and I’m talking again with Professor William Sewell of Sociology.
Today’s talk is a continuation of my first two hours with Professor Sewell. These tapes
are meant to be part of, or supplements to, the University Archives Oral History Project.
I thought today we could talk about the sources of funding for social science research.
Um, well, first, what have been the major sources of social science funding and what has
been your most important contributions to these areas?
00:00:45
WS:
Well, when I first came into Sociology, about the only source of funds for research and
sociology came from the foundations, particularly from the Rockefeller Foundation,
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Carnegie Foundation, and somewhat later on, in the 50’s, from the Ford Foundation, and
those were the principle sources. Those were the principle sources. There were other
foundations, obviously, that had certain special purposes that once in awhile a sociologist
or other social scientist would get a grant from. But in general, I think it could be said
that all of the social sciences were primarily dependent upon foundations and sometimes
small research grants from their own universities, usually from their graduate schools.
Consequent was that there wasn’t an awful lot of funds for social science research. The
only other major source was in the experiment stations of the colleges of land grant
universities and their colleges of agriculture. Certain funds, especially the Hatch funds,
were available and Purnell funds as well, were available for research in all areas of
agriculture, including rural sociology and agricultural economics, and that constituted a
fair amount of support. Ah, the biological sciences got the major share and the share that
went to agricultural economics and rural sociology were relatively small, but they were
enough to provide for research on problems of rural population and that has continued
even up to this day; however, when it came to larger amounts of money, the funding from
federal sources soon took over and dwarfed the foundations and any other sources,
particularly the institutes of mental health. The institutes of mental health started making
grants in the social sciences and particularly in relation to mental health, sometime –
00:03:55
MS:
In the late 40’s or 50’s?
WS:
Just a minute . . . I just may as well get it right since I have it here someplace.
MS:
O.K.
WS:
The National Institute of Mental Health started, including social science research on
mental health, in 1948, and over the years there was increasing amount of support as
Congress supported more and more money to the National Institutes of Health. The
Mental Health Institute was particularly well funded, and I became – in 1956, I was
appointed the Mental Health Study Section. That’s the body that’s charged with
reviewing the research proposals. I was the only sociologist on that, and I began, of
course, to advocate the broad definition of mental health to include many of the things
that I thought were related to mental health that sociologists do. We started getting a
great many proposals after I joined the Mental Health Study section. In fact, so many
proposals came in that in 1959, I was asked to chair a new study section to review all
social science proposals relative to mental health other than those from psychiatry and
psychology. Ah, that program continued – I served as chairman for three years, the usual
length of time, and that continued right up to the time the Reagan administration took
office and as a way of cutting down on the support of social sciences and NIMH, very
greatly restricted the definition of what kinds of research would be supported.
00:06:39
MS:
You said you were made chairman of this new section in 1959? How long were you
chairman?
WS:
I was chairman for three years.
MS:
Three years, O.K.
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WS:
Through 1961.
MS:
O.K.
WS:
And then other social sciences, mainly sociologists, became chair and chairman, and that
lasted up until the time that Reagan got around to insisting on placing his people in the
National Institute of Mental Health at the top levels, and they very greatly restricted the
definition of what was relevant in mental health from what I and others had been trying to
include, and that greatly cut the flow of projects proposals to the Mental Health Institute.
On the other hand, I also was instrumental – at least I was a member of a planning
committee – that recommended that there be a new agency set up, the National Institute
on Human Development, and that was set up and has -- since that time, has funded
research having to do with population and demography, and this has become the main
source of support for demographic research.
00:08:26
MS:
This is a branch of NIH?
WS:
This is a – it’s a new institute called the National Institute of Child Health and
Development, and that supports everything related to children, including adolescence. In
fact, it really supports a good deal of research having to do with human development
beyond childhood. So that has become a big source of support for the social sciences,
and particularly for social psychology, but also for the study of demography and
population. It’s a major source of support in those areas. In addition, in 1963, I lobbied
for and chaired a new behavioral sciences training committee which was established in
the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 1963, and I became the chairman of
that committee and it provided funds for training and research methods, especially
quantitative methods, demography, medical, sociology, and social change – a number of
areas of that sort. In fact, at one time, this University had five dif – I think this
Department, Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin, had five grants for
different areas of Ph.D. training and many another universities, of course – I don’t know
if any of them had quite that many, but they had them in different areas.
00:10:19
Then, I should also call attention to the fact that in 1973, a new emphasis developed on
adult development and aging was established and a new institute, the National Institute
on Aging, was established in 1973, and that institute has made a great many grants to
sociologists and other social scientists for studies of aging. To put all that together, that
is all of the things that are in the National Institutes of Health. It’s by far the largest
amount of money.
MS:
For social sciences?
WS:
Largest source of money for – I can’t say for all social sciences, but certainly for
sociology, psychology, social psychology, anthropology. I’m sure it isn’t the largest
source of support for economics, but at least it’s for those areas that are most vitally
related to aging, including economic stints that get more of its support from MSA more
often than the National Bureau of Research, economic research.
00:11:53
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Sewell, William H (#101)
The other major source of funding for all of the social sciences is the National Science
Foundation. When the Act, when the National Science Foundation, was proposed in the
Congress, sociology – social sciences, were excluded. In the first attempts to set it up,
however, I think about 1947, along that period, social sciences were included. But when
the jockeying took place in the Congress, finally, Congress passed the bill that left out
social sciences. I think that was primarily because all of the other major sciences, the
biological and physical sciences, were jockeying for position and making sure that the pie
wouldn’t be cut in too small of pieces. But in any event, there was a good deal of
support, even in those days, for including the social sciences. So when the legislation
was finally passed setting up the Foundation, the social sciences were left out. But there
was nothing said in the Act to leave them out.
MS:
They just weren’t mentioned.
WS:
They just were not included --
MS:
Right.
WS:
In the original Act. The social science people did a great deal in those days to try to
convince that they should remedy that situation, but they didn’t do a thing about it. So
when the National Science Board, which governs the National Science Foundation, got
into operation after a good deal of lobbying by a number of people of which I was only
one in the social sciences, they finally decided to recommend that a limited program of
research and fellowship support be made available to the social sciences wherever in
areas of convergence between natural sciences and the social sciences. And in 1953, a
friend of mine by the name of Harry Alpert, who had worked in the Bureau of Budget
and became a professor of sociology in several places, and a very good administrator,
was brought in to handle this kind of introductory program, and he proceeded quite
cautiously, actually, and only recommended grants, or invited grants, in the social
projects in the social sciences, which clearly had some close connection to the covered
natural sciences. For example, they were quite impressed with him, and he was quite
impressed, and invited studies that were experimental in nature, which meant some of the
psychology things came in, and even some sociological experiment studies. But mainly
they had to be quantitative, not necessarily experimental, but at least quantitative, factual
kinds of studies. And, actually, he was successful in getting a number of quite
outstanding projects and the program kept expanding. In 1957, ’58, the Foundation
started taking social science projects that were not necessarily closely convergent with
the natural sciences. And by 1965, ’66, there was a well established program in social
sciences and social science became – and there was a director for the social sciences, and
by then, I would say that the social sciences had a very firm position within the structure
of the Foundation. About ten, eleven percent of all the Foundation support, research
support money, was allocated to the social science, and that was a lot of money, because
NSF has been very well supported by the Congress.
00:17:12
MS:
Um-hmm. What percentage of the NSF budget do the social sciences get today?
WS:
About the same.
MS:
About the same.
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WS:
Except the budget’s gotten much bigger. It’s now well over a billion dollars, so ten
percent’s a fair chunk of money. And all social sciences are now [inaudible]. I think
there is quite a tendency, a trend, or a characteristic, of most of this research is that it’s
quite quantitative. It may be based on surveys; it may be based on some existing
quantitative data, but from the census, from the reports of businesses and so on, but it’s
pretty largely quantitative. Ah, there is, of course, some interest in the history of social
sciences, too, and the NSF, and so they take care of things of that sort. I wouldn’t say
that they automatically rule anything out. I would just say that the areas that they
covered, the projects they covered, tend to be a quantitative, to result in quantitative
findings. Ah, I’m not sure – I don’t believe that the Act has ever been changed to include
the social sciences, but obviously the Board has to go along with the officers of the
Foundation before the Congress at the budget period and present the total budget,
including the social sciences. And the only times that those social science budgets have
been threatened were in the 1981 budget that the President, President Reagan, submitted,
and in that, he cut the social sciences well over 50% of what they had had the previous
year –
00:19:10
MS:
Wow.
WS:
In his recommendations. I was very surprised to find there was a lot of support, however,
in the Congress and when leaders of the social sciences testified before the Congress or
talked to Congressmen in various ways, we found that there’s a great deal of support, and
actually, even in that budget, about half of the cuts were restored and by – and over the
years, the amounts of support for social sciences have increased – the amounts, but the
percentage of total support has stayed around 10 or 12%. I think currently it’s about 12%
of the budget. Now once the money started coming in, and it was known that social
sciences would be supported, obviously one person or two or three persons couldn’t
handle all of that, so they set up -- within the division of social sciences, they set up
separate people under the Director of social sciences, whatever his title might be;
sometimes it was Vice Director of NSF for Social Sciences and sometimes he was just
called the Director of Social Sciences, but in – he or she, actually, a couple of them have
been women in recent years. But in any event, the ones that were established with – as
separate sections included: psychology and much brain behavior type research has been
funded by them, but social psychology, other things as well, and experimental
psychology, although still NIH has been the greatest supporter of psychology, especially
clinical psychology, personality psychology, social psychology.
00:21:08
[Break in tape.] But one of the big sanctions has been economics, and I would say that
probably basic economic research – I don’t know enough about the support of economics,
but I believe that most of the basic support, support for basic economic research, comes
from the National Science Foundation, from its section on economics. And that, in a
way, was a – the fact that so much economic research is supported by NSF was one of the
things that helped us to get the budget restored after the Reagan recommendations for the
big cuts, because many Congressmen, almost all Congressmen, had had courses in
economics. They were respected in the field at least, and most of them had views;
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economic forecasting, economic models and various other things. But I still say that it’s
significant that they didn’t want to cut sociology any more than economics. Another
field that has less support is political science. Psychology, I’ve already mentioned, gets a
good deal of support. There is support for geography, but it comes both from the
physical science and social science sources. Ah, what other social . . . history – about the
only kind of history that is supported is the new social quantitative type of history and
history of science, obviously. In fact, history of science was one of the first little niches
that they carved out in the social sciences. So that I think it could be said that basic
research in all the social sciences probably receives its greatest support from NSF. Now,
there are other agencies of the government that also provide funds for the social sciences.
Ah, for example, the Labor Department has supported the research on poverty, the
Poverty Institute at the University of Wisconsin – large amounts of money, and still does.
Um, the Department of Education also supports a good deal of research in the field of
sociology of education and economics of education. Their research had tended to take
the form of setting up usually within schools of education a center of some sort or
another: centers for secondary education; centers for economics of education, things of
that sort. So it hasn’t been quite as available in the sense that individual scholars might
apply for it, but still a fair amount of money has been given for the support of educational
research by the Department of Education. There are others: the Department of
Agriculture provides a great deal of money for research in rural sociology and economic
and agricultural economics, marketing, things of that sort. Housing, also, the Department
of Housing, also provides funds for studies of housing needs and things of that kind that
social scientists participate in. In fact, there’s probably no – I guess except specialized
branches of government, that don’t have some social science support, or provide for some
social science support, but the big sources are NSF and the National Institutes of Health.
00:25:20
MS:
Do universities have any money to support social science research?
WS:
Well, depends on their condition, I suppose. I think all of the major, private universities
have some sort of a center or institute for social science research. Ah, Yale, Harvard,
Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, and a number of other important, private universities,
have such. And the public universities, I’m sure, can more than match the support for
social science research from various resources. The public universities, however,
probably tend to provide less of their own appropriated funds for research. I’m really
sure of that. This university, for example, provides rather generously now for social
science research. When I first came here, and probably up until the late 60’s, maybe even
the early 70’s, there was a rather small amount of money available for social science
research.
00:26:52
On the other hand, there was all kinds of money available for the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation (WARF), for biological, physical science research. And I led a
campaign to get the social sciences –
MS:
On the map.
WS:
Established as eligible for such monies; however, President E.B. Fred and his successor,
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ah, President Connie Elvehjem, both were very opposed and – but we kept pecking away
at them, and when Fred Harrington became President, he had – I had been chairman of
the Social Science Research Division and then later as chairman of the Social Science
Research Money, it was supposed to go out and raise money for the social sciences from
the new, would-be developing sources. We did a lot of that, but our real objective was to
get included in WARF and I never succeeded in that, but my successor was chairman of
that committee, Fred Harrington, became vice president and then president of the
University, and one of his first acts was to force – I don’t know if you’d say force – the
WARF trustees – I rather guess it’d be force a good many of them. Some of them were
always supportive. But in any event, he succeeded in getting the WARF funds made
available for social sciences. As a consequence, this university has been very well off
because it had access to a large fund of large resources from the university from private,
that is the private sources of WARF, and that has been very useful in building up the
departments, particularly giving young people time off for research during their assistant
professor years and getting them, including whole semesters or whole – actually four
years, half time, summers, things of that sort, in addition to this initial support for them to
get their field work and laboratory work done, and I think that is one of the big factors in
the renaissance of the social science departments. Because when I came here in 1946,
there were the vestiges of the famous economics department and sociology and various
other departments, political science, which have all been very strong and were among the
early strong departments in those fields. They were rocking along on rather uncertain
grounds. The great figures of the past had gone on to their reward (laughing) or had left
and had not been replaced with people of the same quality and the same motivations and
so on. Usually they’d been replaced by disciples, and disciples seldom are as important
contributors as the original scholars that make a department or university famous. So the
coming of – the opening of the WARF funds regenerated a number of the departments,
particularly the sociology. We took every advantage of every opportunity to get funds
under the WARF grant. Mainly, however,
00:30:52
End of Tape 19, Side 1
00:31:02
-- At least as long as I was chairman, and I think that’s continued ever since, only for the
young people who were coming into the department to get their research up to the point
where they can go to the National Science Foundation or NIH or other agencies for the
funding they needed or for the development of the research. Now I don’t mean that
exclusively. We had some full professors who were – who really kind of renewed
themselves by getting funds from the graduate school through the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation and then, finally, learned how to go on and make applications to the
agencies that would be glad to fund them, and I had a lot to do with teaching them how to
do that and –
MS:
How to write applications.
WS:
Yes, not only how to write applications, but where to send them because I had been
engaged and worked in all of these – in both NIMH and – I guess I didn’t say anything
about the fact that I had a number of opportunities at NSF as well. In fact, I was the first
person to be asked to be director of the social science division, but I wanted to stick to
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my own research than jobs of that sort, but I was on the research advisory committee that
got the director to first establish this limited program in social sciences. I remained on
the advisory committees to the director for several years after that. I was even on an
NSA committee to reorganize NSF later on in setting up a complete new organization for
NSF and –
MS:
Did that get done?
WS:
Yes, it got done quite expeditiously, actually. Ah, we had to interview all of the top
people and try to point out where we thought would be advantages to make changes in
the organization.
MS:
What years?
WS:
Well, I’d have to look it up, but it was probably –
MS:
Approximately.
WS:
Oh, ah, ’69 and ’70, I think.
MS:
So it was right after your chancellorship?
WS:
Yeah. In fact, they had asked me to be on it and then I refused because I just had too
much to do as it was as chancellor, and then when I resigned, they asked me to join the
committee, which I did. So that, again, was a major – it gave me a chance to pump for a
separate division of associate sciences and so on, which I did. I’m sure NSF has been
reorganized one or two times since, but at least that was a crucial one of the
reorganizations. Ah, then I’ve been – I think . . . one, two, three of my students have
been – at least three, maybe four, have occupied the position over the years as head of the
sociology section that is full time in NSF as director of social science – sociology section.
00:35:07
MS:
Who are these students?
WS:
I beg your pardon?
MS:
Who were they? Which students?
WS:
Oh, I’d have to look at my records, I guess. Um . . .
MS:
That’s O.K.
WS:
I guess I’d have to give you that later, because I don’t –
MS:
O.K.
WS:
Don’t remember exactly which order they were, but – oh, Roland Lever was the first one.
He is now at the University of Illinois, where he’s the professor of sociology and runs
their social science research center. The next one, ah, is now the Dean of Agriculture at
Washington State University, got his Ph.D. Depending on memory is a (tape cuts out) –
another one is Joanne Miller and Jim Zuiches. He’s now the Dean of Agriculture at
Washington State University and director of experiment station there, and Joanne Miller
is now director of the social sciences at NSF -- all social sciences.
MS:
Some pretty important decisions.
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Sewell, William H (#101)
WS:
Yeah, and the fourth one, I just can’t remember. There is another one, but I just can’t
remember which one it was. In any event, the NSF continues to be a major – certainly
the major supporter of basic social research. But all of the things that they – at NIH, are
supposed to be applied -- that is, applied in a sense that they have relevance for some
disease category or something else. On the other hand, a great deal of it is basic research.
00:37:28
MS:
That’s a great distinction.
WS:
Yeah, it’s very difficult to make the distinction. I’ve never been able, myself, to make it.
Every now and then somebody will cite me as one of the major contributors to applied
research in sociology and I’ve only done one or two projects in my life and I would have
thought they were applied. On the other hand, a good deal of research is proved to be
useful to people. Now, let’s see . . . so that’s – there is still support for research in the
Foundations. I don’t want to – it’s just been dwarfed by the amount of money that’s
available from the federal government, but it’s still a basic source of support. The Social
Science Research Council, for example, exists primarily on money that it gets from the
Foundations: Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller, and to a certain extent, the Russell-Sage
Foundation. But they use their funds to bring together groups of people and committees
to see what next ought to be done and look to social psychology or socialization of
children or the development of economic [inaudible] models or the political processes
and things of that sort, and it’s an excellent organization from that standpoint in that they
generate – these people get together and work for three or four years, usually, meeting
maybe four times a year, presenting materials and ideas and then trying to integrate these
and it’s not so much that the field tends to follow what they do, but then they go home
and develop the projects themselves and with their colleagues. And, ah, so that social
science research gets a lot of its stimulation out of the Social Science Research Council,
and that is what it was set up to do. They also give training fellowships, but they’re small
potatoes in comparison with NIH or NSF, but in crucial areas.
00:39:46
The other thing that I should mention is that in the National Research Council, there are a
series of – there is a social science division. It’s called Social Science and Education –
Social Behavioral Sciences and Education now. The title will be exchanging, but there’s
been a social science division of the National Research Council for a number of years.
Also, there has been for at least 30 years, a commission on human resources. I was a
member of that for some time. It’s changed its direction many times. But, again, it deals
with the education of people in all areas of sciences, including social sciences. Ah, it
points out the needs of the minorities and disadvantaged people in all sorts of terms:
food, housing, education, things of that sort. And, again, that’s been a source of support,
but usually they go to other agencies to get the money for the different studies that they
make. And that is true, of course, also in the social and behavioral sciences and
education. Ah, in fact, that’s the biggest single division of the National Research
Council. They bring in the most money. But mainly what they do is get committees
together to help one of the government agencies to develop a program either for research
or just to – for example, there’s a big one working now which is trying to map out and to
determine what the influences have been on the Civil Rights Act of 1974 in terms of
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educational, occupational, political participation and so on of lives in the United States.
00:41:56
Now they – these people – they get money from the agencies that are concerned with
these kinds of questions and they appoint the committees, and the committees’ members
and staff that they hire then bring out reports on each of these topics. That, in turn,
stimulates considerable research outside, but they don’t normally finance proposals. For
example, if I wanted to make a study of something, I wouldn’t think of going to NRC for
it, but government agencies will ask NRC to make studies for them, and that’s a perfect
enterprise. I think that pretty much – I should mention, of course, that states and
municipalities also provide money for research studies that bare on the particular
problems they’re interested in, but that’s a relatively small source of funding for social
science research.
00:43:00
Now you asked me about the National Council -MS:
Yeah, um-hmm.
WS:
On Research, of which I was a chairman. The National Council, however, was set up not
primarily for the funding of research, but to work out some of the big problems that were
arising between the government agencies and the research community, especially in the
universities. And that commission was primarily concerned with the problems faced by
the universities in dealing with the government funding agencies.
00:43:53
[Gap in tape. No audio for remaining portion of interview.]
WS:
Talking about the Management Commission on Research.
MS:
Right.
WS:
Of which I was chairman. The primary purpose of that – I think I said this before, but the
primary purpose of it was to help to review the existing relationship which, by then, had
become quite unsatisfactory both to the government and to the universities surrounding
the university government relationships. But it must be remembered, of course, that in
the United States, something like 95% of all government funded research is done in the
universities, not in special institutes. The government does have a big agricultural
research center that helps [inaudible] materials, laboratories. Some place -- I think at
Cornell, it has one on weather and climatology at the University of – located in Boulder.
You know, a number of those things, but the great bulk of all the research funded by the
government is done in universities through project grants and contracts. And, ah, over
the years, as people got more interested in accountability and turned over more and more
of the investigation of the research contracts and whether they were properly carried out
to accountants and lawyers, which had been the first of the United States government in
some respect. For example, a bill will be written saying that – maybe to set up a housing
– research in housing to be carried out through the Department of Housing, and maybe it
would take a page to talk about what its functions are and what kinds of research is
covered, then lawyers will be hired to develop the detail on that and it may end up being
800 pages of regulations. Ah, Congress never reviews those regulations, but then the
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accountants take all that seriously and they want to make sure that every dollar that’s
spent is spent only on that project and in ways in keeping with their rules and regulations
and so on. As a result of all that, dispute after dispute arose between universities and
government. Finally, the accountants, for example, in their review, would decide that the
University of Minnesota had not carried out for the maybe 500 projects that it has in the
whole university, or more than that, that not every detail was, in their opinion, in keeping
with their accounting procedures; not necessarily the university’s accounting procedures.
So they claimed then that the University of Minnesota owed them over 50 million dollars
for money that wasn’t properly spent, and the University finally went to the federal courts
and the whole thing was settled for a very tiny amount of that – a portion of that figure,
but this just made terrible relationships between the universities, between the scientists
and the federal government.
So, the group of major agencies on research, including the American Council on
Education, American Association of Universities, the National Science Foundation, the
National Academy of Sciences, and the Social Science Research Council decided that
this had to be – that some commission had to look into these problems and to make
recommendations as to how they might be solved, and this committee is set up to do it
and give them a period of three years, and I’ve forgotten how much money, but it was
adequate, at least for their purposes, and were given a period of – it was set up in 1978
and at the end of 1980, we made our first report.
MS:
Was it about half a million dollars, does that sound –
WS:
Oh.
MS:
It was more than that?
WS:
I would guess a half million dollars. And the way we proceeded was that we, the
committee itself, hired an executive director and a small staff and they arranged meetings
for the commission with various funding agencies of government, and we listened to their
problems. We then chose, I think, 11 or 12 universities that we went out to and again
would meet for two or three days with members of their faculties and we would listen to
their stories. We made a special attempt to understand the accountants. That was the
most difficult thing, because they had such anal views of how the money should be spent.
For example, they would take a research proposal. I could give you an example of one of
the most famous scientists in this university, but I won’t bother with the details, except
that this is one of the most creative people in the intersection between the biological and
the physical sciences and has done some of the greatest theoretical work in that field, and
was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit for his career; a member of the National
Academy of several foreign academies – absolutely great, creative guy. He started – he
had a big grant from one of the federal agencies which they understood well enough that
they –
MS:
A grant.
WS:
A grant, for him to do what he thought was permission to do in that borderline area. But
because every one of the goals that were set for that were not met, the accountants
claimed that he owed the federal – the university and the federal government millions of
dollars. And it was just laughable, you know? Here the guy would start on one of these
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problems and it would go no further and he’d get another idea to his people and they’d go
on and do something very creative.
MS:
Right.
WS:
The accountants would claim, “Oh, he doesn’t have – or authorized to do that.” Well,
that – we heard it all over the country. So we tried especially to understand the
accountants and tried to educate them a bit as to what we do in research. And, oh,
ridiculous things happened. For example, they denied – they asked one of the Nobel
Prize winners in physics in America how come his Nobel contribution didn’t result from
the money he had been getting from them. And he said, “but it did,” and they said, “well,
in your Nobel acceptance speech, you said you got the idea while you were riding to
work on the subway,” and they said, “you know, that wasn’t what you were being paid to
do,” and so on, and so he said, “well, you know, I’m not responsible for when I get
ideas.”
MS:
Right.
WS:
“And how I get them and whether or not they’re actually covered by the grants.” So
there was all sorts of ridiculous stuff, including, say, somebody who was working with
animals having spent some money that wasn’t detailed in the proposal because he found
that the animals created a great deal of janitorial problems that he hadn’t anticipated
(laughing) and things of that sort. Well, anyway, we tried to educate them a little bit and
I think succeeded and then we published a series of reports, five of them in all. Probably
the most important one was a report on accountability in which we tried to outline and to
talk about what would be an adequate system of accountability, cutting out – never
condoning or anything – or wanting there to be any possibility of fraudulent use of
money or misuse of government money or anything of that sort, but a certain flexibility
that would allow somebody who had money for a general purpose to, without getting
direct consent, to branch off a little in other ways so long as they notified the agency that
that was what he was doing. Ah, anyway, we then have this rather detailed report
suggesting what both the government and the university scholars might do to restore the
old – the quality of the partnership that had formerly existed between the federal
government and the universities. Among other things, we proposed that a forum be set
up which would try to anticipate these problems. People from government, corporate,
interested citizens, representatives of the scholars and universities would meet several
times a year in Washington and discuss new problems that were coming up and make
recommendations about how these relationships would be handled. That proved to be a
terribly important factor in changing the relationship between government and the
universities. It was published in full, I guess, in science magazines and many other
places so it was broadly, or it was briefly, you know, briefed and given in various sources
were available to government and to the industrial sources as well as to the universities.
The other ones we did -- we talked about industry and the universities and government as
a third party, and how cooperative research relationships could be established in the
national interests between universities and industry and the vast industry, for the most
part, has done its own research, but not spending anywhere near the money they ought to
spend on basic research and had been hoping that the universities would do that research
and if they gave money to the universities, expected full right to all of that
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XX:XX:XX
End of Tape 19, Side 2
Tape 20, Side 1
00:00:00 Start of Interview
WS:
[Continuation of discussion from previous tape.] And prior approval of articles written
and so because they didn’t want the knowledge to be disbursed to the competitor, so we
published that report on industries and universities. Those were the two that had the most
impact. We also did a critical review of the research for the grant review process issue in
assessing the quality of proposals. I don’t know how much attention is paid to that, but
probably some by a couple of agencies.
00:00:53
And then we had another one on funding mechanisms – how it would be best for the
government to set up funding for the kinds of research they were interested in supporting.
There’s tremendous variation among the government agencies; some of them will just
have an internal committee of a few people to decide on where all their research money
will go and to what projects. They pick out the people, invite them to submit proposals,
ask them to make research contracts. Others just say, “We’re willing to support anything
in these areas” and then have committees, internal and external committees, for review of
the processes. And even within the agencies, like NSF, there’s a wide variety of how the
different divisions and sections review their projects and, again, we tried to point out
what some of the difficulties would be and then, I think, we also had a – at the time, in
the late 70’s, ’78 through ’80, there was a good deal of drawing back from financing
research training. Earlier on, after Sputnik, all kinds of money was being forwarded to
the universities to train scientists of post-doctoral and pre-doctoral grants, but that had
been slowing down during the late 70’s, mid to late ‘70’s and so we again looked into
that process and made a series of recommendations about what it would take to maintain
the scientific resources in terms of personnel for the coming years and reported on some
policies that we believed were important.
00:02:58
Now, none of that had anything specific to do with sociology.
MS:
Right.
WS:
Ah, I suppose I was asked to be chairman of it because I had been prominent in working
for the Board of Social Sciences at the government level and also because I had been
Chancellor of a great research university. Whatever the reasons, I was asked to be on it.
I think that I was the only – turned out that I was the only social scientist, you know,
social science researcher. There were a couple of philosophers. Oh, there was one
economist, I guess. Most of the rest of the people were biological and physical science
and engineering people. But we did do something that was different than most national
commissions, and that is we wrote our own reports.
MS:
Ah-huh.
WS:
We didn’t hire writers to do it. We just sat down and wrote these various reports and as
chairman, of course, I had to review all and so I had a chance to get my licks in. I’ve
often been asked how important this was, you know, can you point to specific evidence?
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Well I know for one thing that they did establish this forum that we were suggesting that
now goes under a different name and I know that it has continuously been able to avert
certain kinds of problems that arose.
00:04:39
I also know that we influenced the accounting procedures, and I know that at least for
awhile we influenced the major people who were responsible for the research grants
coming out of the government, and I think we did a great deal, actually, to convince the
scientists that they had some responsibilities, too.
MS:
Right.
WS:
That they had to – that if they took a contract for research, or accepted a research grant,
they had certain obligations to complete the work, to try to complete it on time, to give
reports back to the agencies in proper form and so on. So I think that it had a good deal
of influence, but how you would document that influence, I don’t know. So that’s about
that.
MS:
O.K. Thanks.
00:05:42
End of Tape 20, Side 1.
END
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