Clark Kerr, 1911-2003

Former UC President Clark Kerr, an unparalleled visionary in 20th century U.S. higher education who expanded the reach of California's public university system, died in his El Cerrito home yesterday. He was 92.

Complications from a recent fall led to his death. His health had deteriorated after suffering a stroke about a year and a half ago.

The first UC Berkeley chancellor and the UC president until 1967, Kerr made California's university system "the envy of the world" for its prestige and affordability under the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education.

But his tenure at the helm of the UC system was cut short during the Free Speech Movement when he came under attack from both student protesters and the state's conservative leadership.

Under pressure from newly instated Gov. Ronald Reagan and the FBI, the UC Board of Regents fired Kerr in 1967.

"History will simply know him as the most distinguished university president of the 20th century," said Marty Trow, professor emeritus of public policy at UC Berkeley. "The word ‘protean' was invented for Kerr. He had six careers, any of which would have been successful for one person."

Raised on an apple farm in Pennsylvania, Kerr became the architect of a new model for public higher education-one that would balance academics of the highest caliber with the demands of the state's burgeoning population.

The blueprint mapped out a three-tiered university system that eventually became UC, CSU and the California Community Colleges.

Now a prototype for university systems across the world, the master plan was designed to safeguard higher education from the bitter wrangling of Sacramento politics.

Not only an eminent professor and administrator, Kerr was an ardent scholar of the evolving role of the university in modern society.

In Kerr's eyes, the university had become a loose federation of students and faculty, scientists and humanists, administrators and other community members, that was accountable to legislators, alumni and the public-it had become a "multiversity."

"The university is so many things to so many different people that it must, of necessity, be partially at war with itself," Kerr wrote in his 1963 book, "The Uses of the University."

Kerr himself fell prey to that war when protests erupted on the UC Berkeley campus in 1964. The arrest of a student protesting a ban on political activity on campus compelled hundreds to swarm Sproul Plaza in a 32-hour sit-in that sparked the Free Speech Movement. Regular protests ensued, and on campus Kerr faced a sharply divided faculty and an outraged student body. In the public arena, Kerr was assailed by conservative regents and state politicians for being too lenient with the protesters.

"I think the Free Speech Movement took him entirely by surprise," said UC Berkeley history professor Reginald Zelnik, who wrote a book on the Free Speech Movement. "He was caught in a crossfire from which there was no escape."

Unbeknownst to Kerr at the time, the FBI was conspiring to oust him from office. After Reagan was swept into the governor's office on a platform to crackdown on student protesters, Kerr became a political target for state conservatives and was soon fired.

Kerr later remarked that he exited the university just as he entered-"fired with enthusiasm."

A professor of economics and industrial relations, Kerr began his career at UC Berkeley in 1945 and was founding director of the Institute of Industrial Relations.

A labor economist, Kerr's academic work put structure and theory to the formation of organized labor in the United States, said Raymond Miles, professor emeritus of business.

Kerr came to prominence after backing 32 UC Berkeley faculty members who refused to sign a Loyalty Oath to the U.S. government renouncing communism.

Although Kerr signed the oath himself, a strong commitment to academic freedom propelled him to advocate for the nonsigners, and help them regain their lost jobs and salaries.

With his newfound popularity from the Loyalty Oath controversy, Kerr became the favored choice for UC Berkeley's first chancellor.

In his six years as chancellor, Kerr pushed UC Berkeley into greater prominence, actively recruiting many of the rising stars in academia.

He oversaw the construction of new student housing-the 12 high-rise residence halls on Southside.

Taking on the highest UC office in 1958, Kerr guided the university through a period of unprecedented growth from the baby boom, opening three new campuses-Santa Cruz, San Diego and Irvine.

"Kerr and I were facing uncharted times, and we never knew what crisis the next day or next week would bring," said Martin Meyerson, who was chancellor briefly in 1965.

Kerr advocated for a more decentralized and multicampus university, and believed that higher education should be available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

"The best investment that any society makes is in the education of its young people, and this shouldn't basically be looked upon myopically as a ‘cost'; it should be looked upon as the best investment that any society can make," Kerr said in his 1967 farewell speech.

To many, the man who was described as "a giant in higher education" was unassuming.

"Here is a man who was capable of really steady vision and he had this unusual capacity to figure out how this vision would work out in practice," said Neil Smelser, professor emeritus of sociology.

But with the erosion of state support for higher education and surging student tuition in recent years, Kerr was concerned about the future of the state's promises in the master plan, colleagues and friends said.

Born in Stony Creek, Pa. on May 17, 1911, Kerr graduated from Swarthmore College in 1932. He received a master's degree from Stanford University in 1933 and a doctorate in economics from UC Berkeley in 1939. Kerr taught at a number of different universities before landing a job at UC Berkeley.

He chaired the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education until 1973 and was chair of the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education from 1974-79.

Kerr continued to write about higher education, most recently publishing the second volume of his memoirs in 2003.

He is survived by his wife, Catherine, three children, Clark, Alexander and Caroline, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

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