UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #817
KUTLER, STANLEY

KUTLER, Stanley (1934-2015)
Emeritus Professor of History and Law
At UW: 1964-

Interviewed: 2006	
Interviewer: Robert Lange
Index by: Rob Rabe
Length: 3 hours, 36 minutes

Abstract: Childhood and early education in Cleveland, OH; Family influences; Undergraduate education at Bowling Green University; Graduate study in History at Ohio State University; Dissertation research; Hiring by UW; Research and Teaching; Student protest era; Writing and publications; Changes in the history department; Foreign travel and exchanges; UW students over the years; Research on Richard Nixon and Watergate; Legal efforts to gain access to Watergate materials.

NOTE:  THIS INTERVIEW WAS RESTRICTED DURING KUTLER’S LIFETIME 

Interview Session 1 (October 16, 2006)

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction.

00:00:17	Kutler was born in 1934 in Cleveland.  He was a 3rd generation immigrant and grew up in an ethnic, working class neighborhood.  He talks about Italian Jews.

00:02:33	SK talks about being a “proud product” of public schools.  He feels his education was very rich.  He discusses some of his elementary school experiences.  Language instruction.  He talks about getting in trouble at school.

00:04:42	He recollects his English teachers, who he feels were excellent.  The authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship.

00:07:02	He talks about reading and acting in theater.  His mother encouraged him to read and bought him books.  He discusses the cultural life of Cleveland during his childhood.  Young People’s Concert series.

00:08:54	He talks about some memorable teachers from high school.  Discipline.  

00:11:28	SK talks about leaving Cleveland with a lot of “good baggage” from his childhood and education.  Culture and history.  He feels that students today come to college with a less rich cultural experience and historical understanding.

00:12:47	He was interested in history in high school, but intended at the time to be a lawyer.   He talks about his love of reading and his mother’s encouragement and influence.

00:16:21	He talks about the expectation that he would go to college.  The problem of education expenses for a working class family.  He graduated from high school in 1952.  Many of his friends went to Korea right after school.  SK was the first member of his family to get a college degree.

00:17:27	He talks about winning a $500 scholarship to Oberlin College, but he did not go there.  He talks about deciding where to attend college.  He went to Bowling Green University.

00:20:01	He discusses some of his professors at Bowling Green.  He feels he got a solid education, especially in freshman English.  Toscanini. Reading Atlantic Monthly.  

00:23:01	Kutler talks about the influence of a fantastic history teacher named Virginia Platt.  He was nominated for a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to go to graduate school.  He did not win the fellowship, but he decided to pursue history rather than law.

00:27:31	He graduated from Bowling Green in 1956 and got married.  He talks about the threat of being drafted.  

00:28:49	He talks about deciding where to attend graduate school.  He went to Ohio State.

00:30:30	Kutler finished his Ph.D. in 4 years.  He wrote his dissertation on the Supreme Court and labor in the 1920s.  He talks about the dissertation as a license.  He published 4 articles based on the dissertation and then moved to new topics.

00:33:00	He talks about taking his first teaching job at Penn State.  He taught survey courses in American history with no teaching assistants for two years.  He discusses his enjoyment of teaching.  Teaching as theater.

00:34:41	Kutler talks about learning about teaching from Harvey Goldberg.  He talks about the emphasis on teaching large classes and the importance of having senior faculty teach survey courses. 

00:36:00	He discusses the lack of interest in teaching large classes in more recent time.

00:39:09	He talks about his first teaching experience in grad school at Ohio State.  Role models.  Harvey Goldberg was a better lecturer than a seminar teacher. Kutler feels that he was a better lecturer than seminar teacher during his own career.

00:42:08	SK took a tenure-track position at San Diego State College in 1962.  He was recruited by UW and took a position there in 1964.  He explains why UW was interested in him and why he decided to come here.

00:45:55	He talks about the “explosion” in the profession in recent years.  He talks about a scholar (David Brown) who is writing a history of the UW history department and the archival material both Kutler and Merle Curti have left to the State Historical Society.

00:49:17	SK talks about the well-known professors at UW when he started to teach here.  The department was one of the very best and had many significant professors.  

00:51:26	He discusses the significance of Willard Hurst of the Law School.

00:55:00	Kutler explains his early research in the Reconstruction period and legal history.  He talks about how the Reconstruction period was severely misunderstood by historians.

00:56:50	He talks about his research interests that change over time.  He is not a historian who wants to study the same topic or era for his whole career.

00:57:30	He talks about achieving tenure and how the tenure system was different than it is now.  Changes in the way new faculty are recruited and hired by the department.

01:01:49	Kutler continues to talk about his first years on the faculty at UW.  He turned down a lucrative offer from Cornell during his first year.

01:04:09	SK explains why he was so happy to have a position at Wisconsin.  

01:05:18	He discusses the courses that he taught in his early career, including survey courses and a graduate seminar.  He talks about some of the department requirements and course offerings at the time.  

01:06:39	He talks about being uninterested in committee service and meetings in general.  He declined an offer to serve on a Letters and Science committee his first year.  He talks about his lack of ambition to be a Dean or administrator.

01:09:10	Kutler talks about getting tenure in 1965.  He did not have a book published at the time, but had 8 major research articles and his book was nearly complete.

01:11:31	SK talks about working with Harvey Goldberg.  

01:13:54	He talks about teaching during the student protest years.  The effect on some of the faculty.  The Sterling Hall bombing.  

01:19:03	He explains why he never had any real problems with his students.  Only faculty who were easily intimidated had problems.  

01:22:29	He talks about dissension within the History department at the time.  His relationship with David Cronon. Fred Harvey Harrington. 

01:27:02	Kutler talks about the onset of his interest in President Nixon and Watergate.  Watergate made his course on constitutional history relevant to students.  He did not immediately begin writing about Nixon.  He talks about his other research.

01:29:52	Kutler outlines some of his history writing.  Textbooks and legal casebooks.  Looking for America, a book of documentary readings.  Editing reference books.

01:31:35	He talks about his belief that academic historians should try to reach a general audience.  The difference between “real” history and popular history.

01:33:13	Kutler talks about the publication of his first book, Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics, by University of Chicago Press.

01:35:16	He talks about Stephen Ambrose and the problem of plagiarism.  Kutler’s book Privilege and Creative Destruction. His book on political crimes and trials, The American Inquisition.  He talks about how some of his books emerged from courses that he taught.  The Freedom of Information Act.

01:38:48	His book The Wars of Watergate.  He talks about being invited to appear on television programs as an expert on various issues.   The public role of the historian.

01:40:51	He talks about how his books represent stages of his career and development.  Awards.  He points out that he writes to please himself, not any audience.

01:42:21	Kutler discusses a play about Nixon that he is currently writing.  The difference between writing history and writing drama.

01:47:10	Kutler talks about Nixon as a fascinating subject and a successful public role player.

01:48:47	SK outlines his teaching in the 1970s and 80s.  He taught fewer graduate courses and increased his focus on undergraduate seminars.  

01:51:28	He talks about his leadership of the American history division of the department.

01:52:50	Academic exchange trips to China beginning in 1981.  Going to Peru with the Fulbright organization.  Trips to Japan, Italy and Israel.

01:59:40	SK talks about the department’s encouragement of his travel and teaching overseas.  He explains how the success of one professor was seen as a boost for the whole department. He talks about the links between the UW history department and scholars overseas.

02:02:11	Kutler talks about the generous support of the department for his research.  He was awarded the E. Gordon Fox Chair of American Institutions in 1980.

02:03:51	Kutler continues to discuss the Fox Chair and the research support it offered.  It allowed him to travel so he could do the Watergate book.  A $5000 research award provided by David Ward of Letters and Sciences.

02:06:58	SK discusses the national reputation of the UW history department.  He believes the department no longer enjoys the same reputation as it did in the 1960s.  The quality is not less, but other universities have grown in stature.  He talks about the example of the University of Virginia department.  Spending money to recruit excellent students and faculty.

02:10:13	He talks about internal strife in the department in the 1980s and 90s.  He is not aware of significant internal problems.  Poor leadership of the department in the latter years of his career.  

02:12:21	Kutler explains why he did not want to be department chairman. The positive influence of Tom Skidmore.

02:15:31	End of Interview Session. 

Interview Session 2 (October 17, 2006)

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction.

00:00:12	Kutler continues to talk about his research and teaching agenda that kept him from serving as department chair.

00:01:24	He talks about the department’s trouble getting good leadership.  Tension about the direction of the department.  “Weakness begets weakness.”

00:03:08	He discusses some “excellent” new hires to the faculty in the 1990s and other strengths of the department.  Steven Stern and David McDonald.

00:04:45	SK talks about helping to raise money for the department.

00:06:43	Kutler discusses a few of the significant students that he taught at UW.  He explains his feeling that the quality of the grad students declined in the 1980s because there were few job opportunities for historians at the time.

00:10:39	He talks about his enjoyment of teaching undergraduate students.  Department colloquia and lecture courses.  He discusses a few specific notable students.

00:18:34	Kutler begins to discuss his thoughts about how students have changed over time. He believes classes and professors are less important to students today.  Today’s students are less committed to academics and spend more time on other activities.

00:23:42	Kutler explains how he got an appointment to the faculty of the Law School.  He talks about scholars in various departments who study law and legal issues.

00:26:00	SK discusses the establishment of the Harvey Goldberg Center for the Study of Contemporary History.  Fund raising.

00:28:59	He talks about the potential for the center and their lack of success in making the most of the program.  Problems with fund raising and hiring.

00:32:49	Kutler discusses his research on Richard Nixon and Watergate.  He was fascinated by Watergate when it was happening in the early 1970s.  He turned his scholarly interest to the topic in the mid-80s.  He decided in 1985 to write the first academic history of Watergate.

00:35:30	Research assistance from David Ward.  The release of Nixon’s papers from the National Archives.  Archival research and interviews.  

00:37:38	He talks about the reception of the book and his experience as a “Nixon expert.”  Watergate as a problem in American law.

00:41:50	He talks about the National Archives and the release of the Watergate tapes.  His legal battle to gain access to the tapes.  He believes that Nixon was able to block release during his life time. 

00:44:08	Kutler talks about the Nixon estate’s lawsuits over the papers and tapes.  Kutler’s lawsuit won a substantial release of the tapes and the last 900 hours of tapes are being processed for release.

00:48:37	He mentions a book about Nixon and Kissinger being written by Robert Dallek that makes use of the new tapes.

00:50:01	Kutler talks about the “enormous” amount of interest and research centered on the tapes.  

00:51:05	He discusses some of the things he learned about Richard Nixon from listening to the tapes.  He talks about why he thinks Nixon never admitted wrong-doing.  Nixon’s character and personality.  Comparisons between Nixon and Clinton.

00:56:00	He talks about some of Nixon’s positive traits and his tendency to see everything through the lens of politics.

00:57:47	Kutler talks about Nixon’s introspection and shares some examples from Nixon’s speeches and writing.  He talks about trying to work the Nixon material into his new play.

01:03:48	He tries to answer the question of why Nixon was elected to the Presidency in the first place. 

01:05:21	He talks about meeting John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman.  Leonard Garment.  Richard Helms and CIA involvement in Watergate.

01:08:35	He talks about John Dean, whom he describes as a “great person.”  

01:11:20	Kutler talks about Pat Nixon and Richard Nixon’s emotional detachment.

01:14:29	Nixon’s parents.  Psychiatric assessments of Nixon.  Nixon’s respect for John Connolly.  

01:16:56	Kutler explains why Nixon was consumed by the Kennedy family.  He talks about Nixon’s implicit and explicit admissions of guilt on the tapes.

01:20:49	Kutler concludes by mentioning the support that he has received from his wife and family over the years.

01:21:32	End of Interview.

END