KERR, Clark

(b. 17 May 1911 in Stony Creek, Pennsylvania), labor and management expert, economist, and university president who led the 1960s expansion of the University of California and wrestled with growing campus unrest including the Free Speech Movement.

Kerr is the son of Samuel William Kerr, a teacher and apple farmer, and Caroline Clark, a homemaker. His father, the first member of his family to go to college, held a master's degree from the University of Berlin and spoke four languages. He instilled in Kerr the importance of independent thought. Kerr received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1932. While at Swarthmore, he was captain of the debating team and president of the student body.

Kerr received his M.A. degree in economics from Stanford University in 1933. He completed additional studies at the Institute of International Relations in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1936 and 1939 Kerr studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He married Catherine Spaulding on 25 December 1934; they have three children. Kerr began his teaching career in 1936 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. From 1937 to 1939 he was a teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Berkeley in 1939. From 1939 to 1940 Kerr was acting assistant professor of labor economics at Stanford.

In 1940 Kerr began teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle as an assistant and then as an associate professor. In 1942, in addition to teaching, Kerr undertook his first labor arbitration assignment when the Pacific Coast Coal Company and its operating engineers were unable to agree on wage increases. He continued to solve hundreds of labor/management disputes in several industries including public utilities, newspapers, aircraft, canning, oil, and local transport. Known as the busiest arbitrator on the West Coast, Kerr became renowned for his toughness, his sense of fairness, and his expensive fees. Kerr tried to find what he called the "inner logic" of every situation. He was skilled in the arts of persuasion. With his mild expression, his unostentatious suits, and rimless glasses, he at first would strike the observer as a typical organization man who melts into the background. The resemblance disappeared once Kerr began to dispense his own brand of inner logic. He chose the most difficult disputes, worked tirelessly, and tried to reach settlements as quickly as possible. Kerr was soon the highest paid negotiator (he charged $200 a day) on the West Coast.

Kerr served on many federal fact-finding boards in labor controversies. During World War II he was a member of the National War Labor Board. As a public member, appointed by President Harry S. Truman, Kerr served in 1950 and 1951 on the National Wage Stabilization Board, which recommended wage policies and administered any pay controls imposed on labor. In 1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Kerr to the Commission on National Goals. Kerr reported to the commission several months later on "the effective and democratic organization of the economy."

After five years at the University of Washington, Kerr returned to Berkeley, where he developed and directed the Institute of Industrial Relations. When the statewide University of California (UC) system was reorganized in 1952, he was appointed the first chancellor of the Berkeley campus. He initiated the modernization of the residence halls, student union, and intramural and recreational facilities. During the period of his leadership, the American Council on Education designated the Berkeley campus as "the best balanced distinguished university in the country."

In 1958 Kerr succeeded Robert Gordon Sproul as the twelfth president of the multicampus University of California, one of the largest university systems in the world. As president, Kerr had to coordinate the operations of all UC campuses and establish their role in a state educational system that also supported four-year and junior colleges. In so doing, he was often called on to resolve conflicts of interest similar to those involved in sensitive labor disputes. Kerr was already familiar with the art of mediation, having over twenty years of experience resolving hundreds of industrial controversies as a private and federal mediator.

Because of the postwar baby boom, U.S. colleges and universities were growing rapidly. During Kerr's tenure as president, the university doubled its enrollment to more than 50,000 students. The previous president had restricted political activism on campus, not even allowing the presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson to speak. In 1949 Kerr had voiced his disapproval of mandatory faculty loyalty oaths, thus earning him the label of liberal. When he became president, he opened the campus to even controversial communist speakers and relaxed some other campus rules. The American Association of University Presidents gave Kerr the Meiklejohn Award in 1964 for his contributions to academic freedom.

Kerr believed the role of a university administrator was mostly that of a mediator among students, faculty, regents, alumni, and public groups. Civil rights activist groups in 1963 and 1964 put Kerr's free speech policies to the test. Students were actively pressuring the administration to find remedies to racial discrimination in the university community. The activist students confronted local businesses, which led to protests and arrests. Kerr responded to the activists by banning on-campus recruiting and solicitation of funds for off-campus groups. Student activists denounced Kerr's action, and the Free Speech Movement (FSM) was founded. This movement's activities at UC Berkeley ushered in the age of student activism in the United States.

In 1964 the police tried to arrest a nonstudent who was promoting the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at Berkeley. The police action led to a thirty-hour sit-in in which student activists denied access to campus buildings. Kerr met with Marco Savio, the FSM leader, and negotiated an apparent solution to the crisis. But Governor Edmund Brown intervened the next day, ordering the arrest of the students. The Berkeley faculty responded by voting overwhelmingly to meet FSM demands. From 1964 to 1967 the Kerr administration attempted to mediate between the university and various interest groups. When Ronald W. Reagan became governor of California in 1967, a conflict arose over cuts to the university's operating budget and a proposal to end free education by imposing tuition and other fees. An impasse developed, and Kerr was fired by the California State Board of Regents on 20 June 1967 for his failure (in their opinion) to deal effectively with the unrest at Berkeley.

Kerr's major accomplishment during his tenure as president was the evolution of the University of California into what he called a "multiversity." Kerr believed the university was a "prime instrument of national purpose." He assumed the leadership of statewide efforts to develop a master plan for higher education in California. He also held that a university must cater to the elite, but at the same time meet the need of several constituencies including government, industry, and the general public. Kerr developed a plan to coordinate programs in the state's colleges and universities. His hierarchy would give the top twelve percent of high school graduates admission to the University of California. The rest of the top third would be admitted to a California state university, and the remainder would be admitted to junior colleges.

Following his dismissal, Kerr returned to teaching at Berkeley's School of Business Administration. He assumed a leadership role in the development of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education from 1967 to 1973. In 1968 Kerr was appointed to head a Carnegie Commission study on the structure and finance of higher education. The commission called for the development of a federal civilian "bill of educational rights" to guarantee a college education to any qualified student regardless of his or her ability to pay. Kerr led the Carnegie Council on Policy Issues in Higher Education until 1979. The commission and the council together produced over 150 seminal reports and books on the condition and future of higher education. Kerr's final commission report, Three Thousand Futures: The Next Twenty Years in Higher Education (1980), became the benchmark for reform in higher education.

Information about Kerr can be found in Clark Kerr, The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California 1949–1967 (2001). Key publications by Kerr include Unions, Management, and the Public (1948); Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960); The Uses of the University (1964); Labor and Management in Industrial Society (1964); and Marshall, Marx, and Modern Times (1969).

Reed Markham