UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #313
JOHNSON, DAVID B.

JOHNSON, David B. (1918- )
Graduate Student; Professor of Economics; Dean of International Studies and Programs; Director, Industrial Relations Research Institute
At UW: 1947-1949; 1957-1988

First Interview
Interviewed: 1985	
Series: Department of Economics
Interviewer: Julie Nelson  
Length: 1.25 hours 

Teachers' union; Traditions of chairmanship in Economics Department; Period as associate chairman; Hiring undergraduate chairman; Move to new building; Pleasure of working in administration in early 1960s; Guy Orcutt's impact on Department; SSRI; Reduction of course load; Protest era; University Committee; Interest in international affairs in 1950s and 1960s; Ford grant for work in economic development; Decline in research support; IRRI; Hiring blacks; Women in Department.

Second Interview
Interviewed: 1987			    
Interviewer: Amy Fried
Length: 0.75 hours
	
Educational and career background; Industrial Relations Research Institute; Departmentalization; Graduate student funding.

First Interview
(1985)
Tape 1

00:00:01	Came to UW in 1947 as graduate student.  Had lost job at National Labor Relations Board.  Stayed two-and-a-half years.  Was on GI Bill.  Lived in Badger.  "Sponsor" was Edwin Young, who he met on bus.  Young offered him a job as a teaching assistant.  Also TA for Selig Perlman.  Financial problems.  Took first job offered and went to Washington.

00:03:00	Local American Federation of Teachers.  Jim Earley and Ed Young were active.  Organization torn between left and right wing.  Issues like Truman's policy in Greece and Turkey, NATO.  TA's tended to be the left wingers, faculty right wingers.

00:05:30	Edwin Witte was chairman of the department at the time.  Young became chairman later.  Then Lampman.  Then Earley.  Used to be that anyone that could be agreed upon by the "divisive" faculty would be chairman and continue to be.  Early started new tradition of three-year term.  Earley 1962-65, DJ chairman 1965-1968.

00:06:57	Unspoken tradition that, with the possible exception of Kiekhofer, chairmen were UW Ph.D.'s, until Gerald Somers.  Except for Hansen and Earley, were all labor people.

00:08:07	Bob Lampman solicited for Associate Chair during his term.  New position.  DJ became associate chairman for Earley.  Recruited for an under-graduate chairman in 1965.  Recruited Andreano, who continued in that probably through Somers' chairmanship.  Need for more attention to undergraduates.  Growth in popularity as an undergraduate major.  Contributions of Andreano and Hansen.

00:11:15	"Wild Bill " Kiekhofer was a "know-nothing" as far as graduate students were concerned.  They felt his text was out-of-date, not enough Keynesian theory.

00:12:34	Admissions was handled by chairman until associate chair formed.  Associate chair also decided TA position.  Transitional period.  Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation pressured by Fred Harvey Harrington, Ed Young and others into granting money to social sciences.  Paperwork increased.

00:15:24	Moved in 1962 from third floor of Sterling Hall.  Commerce on fourth floor.  Physics of floors one and two.  Economics expanded more rapidly than sociology or anthropology, and hence got more space.  1960s a period of rapid expansion of faculty.  Building got to be too small.  Orcutt instrumental in getting money for new wing, 1965.  During Somer's term, sociology expanded and got some of economics' space.  Maybe 25 faculty members in 1957; 40-45 in 1968.  Early 1970s freeze—went down to 35.

00:18:28	During decade of the 1960s it was a "delight" to be an administrator.  Numbers of students expanding and so were fees.  Dean would okay plans.  Joke with Young that when he was Dean he treated department badly.  Leon Epstein treated department better.  More money than he knew what to do with.  Resigned in 1971, Kleene became dean and Hansen chair just about the time of the money freeze.

00:21:53	Guy Orcutt greatly instrumental in making the department what it is today.  Credit to Young for recruiting Orcutt.  Steiner, Somers, Orcutt, came in 1958.  Orcutt made DJ personnel director of SSRI.  SSRI never turned out as Orcutt planned.  People didn't have same vision of team research.  Orcutt thought he had been misled on Brittingham Professorship (funded by WARF)—he thought it was permanent, but learned about 1966 that it wasn't.  Left.

00:27:36	When DJ was chair, he benefited from contributions of other members of department.  Goldberger was chair of graduate committee.  Steiner influential, talented but easily alienated people.  DJ felt he should have been chair at the time, but would not get the support.  (Steiner became chair and then dean at Michigan.)

00:29:17	Steiner on committee of Letters and Sciences that was concerned with credit requirements of courses.  Proposal for 3-4 credit courses.  Then two four-credit courses would be a full teaching load.  Necessary for recruitment efforts.  Significant accomplishment.  (In pre-interview conversation, said it was a big accomplishment during his term.)

00:32:09	1960s also years of terrible student unrest.  Chair at time of DOW police riot across the street.  Almost continuous meetings in Social Science lecture halls in the evenings.  Was member of University Committee final year of chairmanship.  Went to Singapore the next year.  Nothing else on the agenda.  Departmental affairs not terribly effected.  Ed Feige was very active, most faculty members were not activists.  Were advising the students.  Not disruptive.  Many felt strongly about Vietnam.

00:35:21	Department had possibly taken less interest in University affairs since the 1960s.  Partly emphasis on technical matters and theory.  Faculty members tend to identify more with people in the discipline than other people in the University.  Earley, Young, Lampman had been members of University Committee.  Still very active in state and federal affairs (Wisconsin Idea), e.g. Nichols as economic advisor to governor, Haveman and Smolensky on federal level.  One of the real achievements of the department.  Early years with Witte, Groves.

00:38:54	Departmental interest in international affairs in the 1950s and '60s.  Indonesian Project on Young's initiative.  Hiring of Everett Hawkins; big controversy.  (DJ in England that semester—this is all hearsay.)  Young got $70,000 from Ford Foundation if he would hire Hawkins, distinguished Indonesian scholar at Mt. Holyoke.  Guy Orcutt and Reed Tripp, a strange alliance that opposed hiring.  Tripp had been close colleague of Young, came in labor.  Controversy in spring of 1961.  Hawkins hired in 1963.  Hawkins was influential in getting money for Philippines and Singapore projects.  Hawkins also keenly interested in getting Kang Chao.  1966 or 1967 controversy over whether to make Chao assistant or associate.  Hawkins supported Sam Morely and Gaulladet appointments.  Ford money dried up in 1970s.  Project no longer exists.

00:45:45	Research money greater in 1960 than 1970s.  Ford Foundation.  Federal support of Poverty Institute.  

00:46:43	End of side.

00:46:44	One-third of FTE's on research, one-third teaching, and one-third away on leave.  Opportunities for being away are much less now.

00:47:41	Questioned about National Institute of Public Affairs funded cost-benefit analysis training program.  Rowen, assistant director of Bureau of the Budget, was very interested in PPBS (Planning programming budgeting system).  Sent people to universities to be trained.  Master's program.  Ed Feige was director/advisor.  Department had no great enthusiasm.  Service program.

00:51:40	IRRI.  He did not have a very strong association with it in 1950s and '60s, since gave all support to Gerry Somers.  Loss of Somers equal to loss of Orcutt, in a different way.  "Vintage Year" when he, Steiner and Somers came.

00:53:08	With Steiner at London School of Economics in 1961, when he formed a close association with Lipsey.  In 1966, when Steiner was in Greece with Roger Miller, he asked DJ to be trustee of fund from textbook royalties.

00:55:57	Somers contribution for first twelve years was in establishing IRRI as a degree-granting institution.  Able to get money for department.  Million dollar grant in 1961.  Active in IRRA (Industrial Relations Research Association).  Young, Somers, DJ ran organization from Madison for many years.  Witte, Barbash, Kassalow also have been IRRA presidents.  UW dominates national organization.

01:00:05	Great loss of Gerry Somers.

01:01:20	Brief association with University program.  Bob Atwell resigned, hadn't done affirmative action that was supposed to be doing.  Black uprising in 1969.

01:04:24	Women became more assertive about their rights somewhat later.  Met with committee of women.  HEW teams coming to check on compliance.  Cyrena Pondrom became assistant chancellor.

01:09:10	University hasn't done as well as women would like, but women have done better than blacks.  More women around with training.  Problems with affirmative action.  Problem of two careers in hiring women.  Paula (Voos), Rachael (McCollough), Bobbi Wolfe.

01:12:41	End of interview.

Second Interview
(August 14, 1987)

Tape 2

00:00:01	David B. Johnson came to UW as a graduate student in 1947.  After working in Washington, D.C., he returned to UW in 1957 as an assistant professor of economics.

00:02:49	He attributes his interest in the Industrial Relations Research Center (later Institute) to the enthusiasm of Gerald Somers.

00:09:13	Somers convinced DJ to serve as the director of the IRRI.  He worked primarily on arguing for departmental status; the dean rejected these overtures but allowed the IRRI to work with departments to hire faculty.  DJ wanted departmental status in order to replace the losses of impending retirement.

00:13:42	Robert Lampman convinced Letters & Science Dean E. David Cronon that departmental status for the IRRI would “balkanize” campus departments.  Existing departments also opposed the departmentalization of the IRRI.

00:18:40	DJ talks about Edwin Witte.

00:21:45	He thinks it might be logical to move the IRRI to the business school.  He also discusses the possibility of amalgamating the IRRI and the School for Workers into a new school.

00:27:14	DJ talks about sources of funding for graduate students.  Funds from the Ford Foundation dried up by the late 1970s.

00:38:24	He describes Gerald Somers.

00:42:37	He speculates about the impact of the diminution in interest in collective bargaining, and greater interest in human resources, upon the study of industrial relations.

00:46:24	End of interview.

End of Oral History #313