UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #333
CURTI, MERLE E. and CARSTENSEN, VERNON

CURTI, Merle E. (1897-1996)1
Professor of History
At UW: 1942-1968

and CARSTENSEN, Vernon  (1907-1993)2
Professor of History
At UW: 1945-1964

Interviewed: 1986	
Interviewer: Barry Teicher
Length: 2 hours

Background to writing The University of Wisconsin: A History, 1848-1925; Starting University Archives; Cooperation with departments; Problems with sources; Highlights of UW history; Relationship with Legislature; Important presidents and faculty; Charles Van Hise presidency; Curriculum and research; Women and UW; Origins of Wisconsin Idea, tradition of faculty governance and academic freedom; Richard Ely trial and sifting and winnowing statement; Libel suit against book.

Note: These interviews were done in conjunction with WHA radio, which is using them as part of a series of radio programs on the history of the University of Wisconsin.

Tape 1/Side 1

001	The interviewees comment on the hazards of oral history, particularly the problem of getting a readable and publishable transcript of an interview.  The interviewer explains the format of the interview.  

055	Curti: background to writing the history of the UW.  Centennial of the University provided an opportunity.  Read Carstensen's dissertation on University of Iowa.  Desire to put history of the University in a social and economic context.  
090	Carstensen: had been a civilian historian for the war department after leaving Iowa.  Recruited to Madison by Paul Knaplund to co-author a history of the UW.  Enormous amount of research done 1945-48.  Description of the sources.  Anecdote about discovery of regent papers 1848-57 after first volume had gone to print and subsequent revisions.  

130	Curti: no University archive existed at the time.  Records were spread all over campus in various states of deterioration; very difficult research.  Time pressure from University Committee: appearance of the history one of the major events of the centennial. 
 
160	Release of Ely papers.  1890s attempt by faculty to monitor athletics.

190	Starting the archives.  

215	Curti describes cooperation with chairmen of departments around the campus.  Dr. Ackerknecht, Professor of History of Medicine, contributed a valuable essay on the Medical School.  Writing of the history prompted departments to keep better records.

250	Carstensen: some departments and schools were puzzled by the project and many were quite ignorant of their histories.  Engineering had no records.  Law had bad records.  Destruction of records on high school accreditation by the University 1870-1920.  Thrown out by a secretary.

310	Question of division of labor between the two authors.  Carstensen recalls weekly meetings with research staff, development of outlines.  He claims that he had to work full time to keep up with Curti's productivity, and was glad that Curti was distracted by another book and teaching responsibilities.  Curti disagrees. 
 
240	Curti claims that Carstensen did most of the work.  Curti had far too many graduate students at the time.  Lack of students' notes as a source.  Reminiscences of alumni more common.  Horace Gregory autobiography of his undergraduate career at UW in 1920s.  Other autobiographical sources.

350	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

001	Another autobiography of student in 1890s.  Account of coed boarding house before the existence of the dean of women.  Chadbourne Hall.

030	Most information on student life from student newspapers and senior examinations.  Men's literary societies and debate clubs.  Account of William F. Vilas family.  Formed a literary society at age 16, chartered by the legislature.  Account of the debating society.
075	Commencement was reported statewide.  A day of limelight for the debating society.  Publication by Frederick Jackson Turner in a student newspaper on the importance of history was as important as any of his later work.

100	Curti: University started as a preparatory school because state high schools were so rare and of low quality.  Majority of students were from Madison.  Changing character of student body in 19th century.  Until Van Hise period UW was more like a small liberal arts college with a school of agriculture attached.  

115	Carstensen: students were more sedate and mature, but at the same time more naive than today.  Anecdotes.  

145	Curti: fathers of University emphasized the civic function and utilitarian value of training farmers and lawyers.  

150	Abrupt stop in the conversation.  End of side.

Tape 2/Side 1

001	Description of student rowdiness in 1880s.  1890s panty raid of girls dorm.  Women agreed to have "no intercourse" with the men until the clothes were returned.  At the time the term had no sexual meaning.  A future governor of Wisconsin was among the men.  Continuity of student rowdiness throughout recent history.

050	Question re changing attitudes regarding the civic and academic role of University.  Van Hise was the first proponent of the campus as a center of original research.  Van Hise had to educate the regents on the importance of research.  Controversy over time given to Turner for research.  Regents objected to his freedom from teaching duties.  Struggle with the legislature also.

095	Curti: problem of newly founded University of Chicago offering UW faculty positions with teaching duties of three hours a week.  Vilas was on board of regents, objected strongly to this tactic.  Curti ties this experience to his will which restricts Vilas professors to teaching no more than three hours a week.

120	Question re origins of Wisconsin Idea.  Carstensen: practical need to help the state.  Intellectual origins go to the beginning of the University.  Term coined in a 1911 book.  Van Hise period is solidification of this idea.

160	Role of religion and politics.  1848 constitution of state delineated separation of church and state.  But many of the early faculty were ministers.  Problem of low church attendance in 1870s.  One of the first in the country to abandon mandatory chapel.  Religious diversity of Madison also important.  
190	Carstensen: 1850s move in legislature to sever the University from the state budget and let it be the Dane County high school.  John Spooner, 1852, sponsored legislation that stated that because the federal land grant to the University was such a bargain, the state owed the University the difference between the real value of the land and the price at which it was purchased.  By 1870s legislature more receptive to regent demands.

235	Curti: denominational colleges (Lawrence and Beloit) made competing claims for land.  Leading churches in Madison urged to form student centers to meet the charge by Beloit president that Madison was a godless campus.  Demands for a religion curriculum.

270	Early personalities on campus.  Carstensen: Lathrop an itinerant college president, also at Indiana and Missouri.  Women admitted during Civil War.  Lathrop a careful man.  Speculated in land, bought pews in more than one church.  Bascom a minister.  Twombly ill-fated, dismissed by the regents for incompetence.  Remembered in this century because he did not raise tuition.  Petition to name Peterson Building after Twombly by a student organization. 

355	Chadbourne was unwilling to come here as long as they had coeducation.  Location of Chadbourne Hall intended to isolate the women.  Twombly had set up an isolated women's university.

375	Birge story on the naming of Chadbourne Hall, a punishment for his opposition to female education.  

390	Curti: contribution of John Bascom.  He was opposed to growth of specialization, proponent of the unity of all knowledge.  His textbooks and teaching experience wide-ranging.  Interdisciplinary courses for seniors.  Bascom was dismissed and returned to Williams College.  Similar to Meiklejohn's philosophy with respect to the Experimental College.

450	Carstensen: Bascom brought a sense of standards to the college curriculum.  Some embarrassment over his dismissal.  La Follette praised him in his autobiography.  Contributions of Chamberlin: geologist also with a very spacious outlook, wide-ranging interest.  A true predecessor of the Wisconsin Idea.

485	Curti: Chamberlin's importance to development of Graduate School.  Felt strongly that Ph.D. was an important measure of the achievement of certain standards.  Insisted that Turner get his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins before he was promoted.  

500	Carstensen: comparison with Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton at the time.  Wilson called Chamberlin one of the best judges of men in the country, he routinely stole UW faculty whom Chamberlin had appointed.
520	First UW Ph.D. was Van Hise, with Chamberlin as his major professor.  Chamberlin provided the ground work and Van Hise the mechanisms by which UW became a first-rate research university.  Van Hise, McCarthy, and Extension.

600	Succession of Van Hise by Birge, who studied with a Swiss naturalist.  Birge, when faced with post-WWI problems, recalled what had happened to the University after the Civil War. 

620	Question of faculty.  

End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

001	Curti: undergraduate curriculum before 1900.  First historian William F. Allen in 1867, one of the first nationally distinguished scholars at the University.  Bascom's courses.  Washburn Observatory gave the University a name as a center for astronomy, but in general the sciences were weak and underfunded.  Bascom's books were well known nationally.  Reorganization of campus after Civil War. 

055	Carstensen: James Davies Butler, teacher of Greek and Latin, letter concerning his teaching at a godless university.  Slichter hired by Bascom to teach mathematics. 
 
095	Most presidents before Van Hise very paternal with respect to the faculty.  

100	Change in 1890s with return of Turner; Ely coming from German universities; Chamberlin, Van Hise; methods of teaching and quality of research both improve.  Turner's use of primary sources in the Historical Society.

115	Home Economics people were first women on faculty.  Helen C. White nearly alone in her generation.  1970s the turning point for the role of women in the University.  

145	When did term "faculty governance" obtain real substance?  Story is that faculty took over when there was no president during Civil War.  But really not until Van Hise period when the University became populated with towering scholars who were concerned about the University.  

165	Concept of academic freedom associated with 19th century German universities, imported by American scholars who had got Ph.D.'s in Germany.  Not really institutionalized until Van Hise.  Ely case which produced the "sifting and winnowing" statement an important turning point.  
210	Why was the history ended with Birge administration, 1925?  Time pressure from regents and the press.  1930s was a very complex period and they did not have the time or the resources to tackle it.  

241	Very good reviews.  Impact of Rennebohm's reading of the history on his activity as a regent. 

275	Reference to libel suit by Allen, president of Stanford.  

360	End of interview.

END