UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #200
PENNIMAN, CLARA

PENNIMAN, Clara (1914-2009)
Undergraduate and Graduate Student; Professor of Political Science
At UW: 1947-1950; 1953-1984

Interviewed: 1981	
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 5.5 hours

	[See Index for Key Words. Portions of Tape 5, Side 2 unavailable on transcript]

First Interview Session (July 6, 1981): Tapes 1-2
Tape 1, Side 2
00:00:08
LS:    	-- Clara Penniman, and we’re in, talking in her office and this is July 6, 1981, and I’m Laura Smail. So we’ll just -- I'd like to ask you to begin with what in your family and your childhood led you into an academic career?
CP:  	 That's always a rather difficult question to answer with certainty. All I can say is that I came out of a family...   Well, neither of my parents had college degrees, they had some college background.  But primarily they were interested in intellectual things in the sense that they enjoyed reading, they encouraged reading on our part, they read to us until we were able to read by ourselves and, even then, there was sometimes family reading. My mother had taught history in grade school and she used to tell us stories— really almost bedtime stories—and as I think I said one time, I recall crying over Benedict Arnold.   And I also remember that our father, particularly, often taught politics.  And in, I think it was 1927, when Calvin Coolidge declared he would not run again, I vividly remember that our father came home and discussed the third term tradition throughout the whole lunch hour.    It, I suppose, it was that sort of thing that inevitably made both my brother and me interested politics, and interested in reading, and in doing well in school. My brother is actually a political scientist, too, in fact he was chairman of the department at Georgetown at the same time that I was chairman here at this department.
LS:   	You said that when, you said your father died when you were... 
CP:     	My father died when I was a senior in high school—which was 1930—and economically could have hardly been a much worse time. So the result was that I went to business school and then... 
LS:   	You said your brother...
CP:    	My brother went to LSU, an aunt and uncle put him through school there, so he went right straight through for all three degrees.    I detoured by doing a business school and then working first for a law firm in Lancaster and then working for the state of Wisconsin for ten years.
LS:   	Did you expect to go back to college then, when you were working? 
CP:    	Well that, you know, what does one expect?   In a sense, I suppose, this was always in the back of my mind.  I always felt that somehow I hadn't had what I wanted, that I really wanted to go to college, and that that opportunity hadn't arisen.  I had done a few credits, and I'd taken courses from time to time.   Actually, in the ten years that I was in Madison before I went to college, one of the problems with the extension courses—and other courses available at the university at that time—was that it was really impractical to put together courses that would lead you to complete freshmen or sophomore work so that one could then see an end to going through. Instead of that, of course, what I did was to work the ten years and decide that I was at a blank as far as a changing career or a further career.   And, therefore, I resigned from the state service and came to the university in June of 1947. At that point I had 12 credits that were applicable.
LS:	You said you'd been active in the League of Women Voters, and... 
CP:	Yes, I'd been active in the League of Women Voters and that, of course, was a very nice opportunity.  Both to give me opportunities to be involved in issues and politics of a non-partisan sort, but which could be, of course, very important in an issue oriented matters.   And it also was an opportunity to meet individuals, individual women, especially Elizabeth Brandeis, who was here at the university and who, thereafter, was helpful to me on more than one occasion in enabling me to go ahead while I was here and was doing my undergraduate and masters degree work.
00:05:23
LS:	So, it was logical that you'd come to the UW since you were here. 
CP:	Yes, there wasn't any question, at the beginning there, as to where I would go.    I was here, and economically and every other way there was no reason not to go to the university in Madison.   And that's what I did. 
LS:	And you said it was the age problem...
CP:	Oh, the age problem was not very significant in '47, because there were so many returning veterans, so that all the time that I was doing my undergraduate and graduate work through '53, there were always others, especially men, of course, who were roughly in my age bracket. Perhaps this wouldn't have been a problem or a concern to me anyway, since I was obviously pretty certain of what I wanted to do.   But, in any event, the fact that there were others who were within at least five years of my age made this issues a non-problem. Now, as far as faculty relations were concerned, there... Bill Young, who was in the Political Science Department there, actually had just come back to the Political Science Department here, was my advisor and was most helpful to me all the way through and encouraged my suggestions, and so forth.  And I remember, for example, that at one point he told me, "now if there's any time you want to have an exception to a rule, ask for it.  University rules are made for the norm but you're exactly the kind of person for whom exceptions can well be in order.  So don't ever hesitate to ask for an exception." 
LS:	Oh, that's nice, isn't it?
CP:	And then, Ineva Baldwin, I think we've mentioned that.
LS: 	Yes.
CP:	Then another person who was helpful—besides Bill and other faculty members within the department—others were very helpful too, but, and Elizabeth Brandeis, was Ineva Baldwin, who was at that time was Ineva Meier in the L&S Deans office, and she repeatedly was valuable to me.  I especially remember the time when I was taking more credits in the summer session than were ever normally allowed and she gave me a special telephone number so that if anybody tried to stop me in the process of registration—because what I was doing was so out of order—that they could call and everything could be straightened out.  As it happened, nobody did try to stop me. 
LS:	So, you finished up here and got your M.A.
CP:	Yes, I finished up here so that I got my bachelor's degree, actually I didn't technically get it till January '50, but in the fall of '49 I had senior grad status and had been awarded a teaching assistantship by the department, so I was a TA in '49-'50. And, in those days, it only took a full year—two semesters—and then you had a masters degree thesis to do, so I did the thesis in the summer and completed all my work—for the masters degree— before leaving for Minnesota in the fall. But, technically, my masters degree was in January '51.
00:09:07
LS:	Why did you go to Minnesota?
CP:	Well, when I decided to apply for graduate, and, of course, it really was a foregone conclusion, almost, from the time I started back to school, I applied for graduate work at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Berkeley, and Minnesota, as I recall. And I did get accepted, and did get a fellowship offer from all of those institutions. I guess, actually, the Berkeley one was a TA, but the fellowships in those years were rather small. I remember, for instance, that the fellowship—which was supposed to be the best one—at Yale was something like $400 and the Chicago one—which also was supposed to be the great Chicago fellowship, it was the so-called Walgreen Fellowship—was only something like $500.  And in all of those cases, you also had to pay the high tuition of a private institution.  And, although I'd had encouragement to go to a private institution to get the experience of that after a public institution, it seemed to me that it was simply too expensive for me to take on one of those institutions. So I agreed to go to Minnesota where I had a teaching assistantship.   Afterwards—after I'd made the, after I'd accepted at Minnesota—I did get the national Phi Kappa Phi fellowship, which would have made at least the first year probably feasible at any one of the other institutions. But I've never been sorry that I went to Minnesota.    I doubt that my career was in any way hampered as a result of going there instead of going to one of the prestigious private schools.
00:11:08
LS:	The material from here to approximately line 570 has been copied onto side one of tape two and can be ignored here. Please, therefore, go to about line 570. On the cassette copy it will be approximately a third further on this tape that you will turn to for the conclusion of this part of the interview. 
[Material repeated later in interview] 
00:21:04
CP:	And, in fact, the Chicago people gave me the Walgreen Fellowship, offered me the Walgreen Fellowship, which is the fellowship for a graduate student. And later, one of the men at Chicago said, in effect, "well we never have that turned down." Well, I couldn't afford that, and the Yale people, I know, used my case as a base for raising their fellowships in the future, that they would turn down, the fact that I'd turned them down, was something that they used. So, anyway, the only one I could afford, I felt, because I felt I had to have a reasonable amount of income, was the teaching assistantship at Minnesota. And then, after I had accepted at Minnesota, I then did get the national Phi Kappa Phi award, which would have made probably it possible for me to have gone to one of the other places. But I never regretted it. I was encouraged by the faculty, here, to go to a private institution for the contrast. But they understood the financial limitations, and it's possible that if I had waited around a bit, that Harvard might have been able to have done something additional. Because I know there was some negotiations going on with Harvard. But I got in easy and accepted, and as I say, I've never been really sorry, I think it's worked out well for me.
LS:	You didn't, let's see, you didn't have to TA there, did you? You ... 
CP:	No, when I, as a matter of fact, I didn't TA there, because then I got the Phi Kappa Phi, and I used the Phi Kappa Phi at Minnesota. And, I never did TA there. I had a project assistantship one year, the second year I was there, and then I had a very good research grant my third year for my dissertation. And Walter Heller had been very influential in getting me the grant that year. So, I really didn't have, I really couldn't complain of mistreatment at any point along the line.  I really got opportunities and offers and that were surely very much acceptable.
00:23:34
LS:	Just to follow this along, have you, you must have had offers since you got here, to go elsewhere.
CP:	Yes, never anything that I followed through very far. But I certainly had, you know, questions. The sort of thing you get when you, when people are trying to see whether you will or will not move. I investigated a couple of deanships and a few other things like that, yes. 
LS:	But didn't want to leave...
CP:	No, I didn't find that the opportunity was going to be that... 
00:24:14
Partly, I think, you partly make a decision in terms of the kind of base you build up in an institution by staying. If you're an unusually, if you do unusually well in research and scholarship, and this becomes the thing, alone, that you want to do, then moving around often makes, works out to your benefit. If you're more institution oriented, and I guess I've always been more institution oriented, then staying throughout one's career has its own advantages. And I think I've had them here. 
LS:	What makes you institution oriented?
CP:	That's a question I don't really know how to answer. It's, I think it's true. I know that not only am I institution oriented in terms of the university here—and I suppose because I've lived in Wisconsin the much larger part of my life—I've always had a certain kind of feeling of loyalty and enthusiasm and interest in the state as a whole. But there is another aspect here, which I'm conscious of in talking with individuals who are interested in going, I'm thinking as much of students in administration as I am anything else, at this point, and listening to other people. I always felt that if you worked somewhere, you had, you were expected and should be loyal to where you worked. And that if you really didn't like it you should get out. And I notice many people who work for state agencies or federal agencies or for private industry or whatever, seem to feel perfectly free to be extraordinarily critical about their colleagues, about the agency or the company that they're working for. To me, if I felt that way I wouldn't stay. That I suppose, part of my satisfaction is in working where I not only think I'm doing satisfactorily, but where I have respect for the institution. But that doesn't tell you why I have it, and I really can't tell you why I feel that way. All I know is I do. Maybe it's very old fashioned, I don't know. 
LS:	Well, it's interesting, you saying that, because I was just reading the tape index of my—I had an interview with Jim Scott before he left—and he, that was one of the points he made about what was happening in the '60s, was the decrease, the decline in people who were concerned about the institution and the growth of professionalism and that, you know, people were loyal to the profession rather than... 
CP:	I can't help but...
LS:	...he thought that this was a pity.    I don't know how you ... 
CP:	I think, I agree with him. I'm curious as to why then he went to Yale, but anyway. Of course, his background was Yale and you could say that...
LS:	He is, I believe he left because his wife couldn't get a job here. 
CP:	Oh. Well, that certainly could be another issue that you get into. No, I agree with you. I mean, I think it has increased in the '60s and '70s.  Partly, I suppose, the disciplines, many of the disciplines were maturing, which in itself tended to increase professionalism. 
00:28:08
Then, I think, also, that in a curious way the enormous availability of grants—substantial grants —whether to travel or to do research or whatever one was going to do with it, made competitive professionalism almost a necessity if you were going to do certain things, and in some fields, and, of course, Jim was in a field where you had to get abroad.   And I think that availability of grant funds certainly increased the professionalism.   That's got pluses and minuses. It certainly isn't either one way or another. But I think it contributed to it. And the identification with the profession, more than with the institution.
LS:	They do go hand-in-hand, also.    I mean, that's as you've seen, that’s just the period when grants were available. 
CP:  	Yes.
00:29:17
LS:   	Who invited you back here?   Do you know how that happened? 
CP:	Well, I think, if you mean in terms of individuals, I suspect Bill Young had as much to do with it as anybody.  But, the department was small at that time and I knew several of the people here in the department quite well: Jim McCamian, Lewellen Von Kukinen, and others whom I'd worked with as a student, and, of course, I knew slightly some of the people in extension that I'd worked with for those two or three years.   And, I suppose, this combination was what was important.  I do remember one thing very much, that at one point Bill Young talked to me about what I wanted to do, and I talked about going to, and the idea of enjoying, a small institution. And Bill said you can't afford to go to a small institution. Bill always has had a tendency to have, to be very sure about things, state them very surely. Anyway, his point was that he felt that a woman would have more difficulty, in those early fifty years, in a small institution than a large institution. I don't know whether that was true or not, all I know is I didn't have any particular problem here as a woman.
00:30:49	End of Tape 1, Side 1
Tape 1, Side 2
00:30:57
LS:	Well, when you came back here, did you, was it difficult to come back, having been a student?   And were you the only women in the department? 
CP:	I was the only women in the department.  And, to some extent, yes, I think it's always difficult to come back to a department that you were a student in. It takes a little while to be accepted as a full colleague. And I don't think that this is intentional on anybody's part, I just think it's just inevitable. No matter how much they like you, no matter how much it was their decision to ask you back, partly their fault and partly your fault. Because you too feel, well, you know, you still have a certain faculty-student relationship that you are conscious of.   And, I recall, a colleague of mine— he'd been a graduate student at Minnesota with me—and he went to Yale and then to Johns Hopkins and he was invited to Minnesota before he went to Johns Hopkins the second year he was out.  And he said to me, I don't want to go back to Minnesota yet.  He said, he'd actually done his undergraduate work at Yale.   He said, I'd be too much the student, it takes, it would take me awhile.  And, I think that there is an element there of the, of going back to your institution and having to—for yourself as much as for anybody else-establishing the fact that you really are a faculty member now and not a student.   Yes, I think that's true.   
00:32:26
As far as being a woman is concerned, I must say that I never felt any real problem about that here. I don't, I would not argue that every department was identical in that. I would not, I would say that as far as I was concerned, I didn't feel it. I used to say the one place that I felt I suffered prejudice, was that in the early years, especially, it seemed to me I was put on far more university committees than was the norm. As if every committee they decided they needed a woman on it, so they looked around and so I'd end up on a committee. So my proportion of committees in the first ten years I was here at Wisconsin, I would bet was higher than for many many men, or for the average man here. Now, I don't say that's all bad, that has its pluses, and it's really been sort of a joke, that it seemed to me, that was the place I noticed prejudice. I just had an extra amount of assignments this way.
00:33:32
Of course, having been named chairman, that threw me into a very special relationship. And, I was the only woman in the department, at that time. I was, the first time that the department had a woman chairman, and, in fact, a man—a professor I'd known in Minnesota, who had gotten his doctorate at Wisconsin many many years ago—wrote me a very cute note at Christmas time, and said how horrible, a woman chairman for political science, can you imagine such a thing? It could only happen at Wisconsin.   And so, this was the sort of situation I found. Now, everybody has a different experience.    I don't know what you want me to go on with. 
LS:	Well, your salary, was that...
CP:	I don't think that I was discriminated against in salary, no. Certainly when I was chairman, I was very much recognized by the deans there as other chairmen had been recognized. The salaries in the '50s, of course, were not very high, certainly by any modern standards they were horribly low. But I don't think that mine was in any, easily perceivable fashion, different from what the men were getting at that point. And there were two or three times in my career where I got very special recognition while I was chairman, in part of the time when I was director, and certainly in the years when I was on the university committee and the merger committee, those were times when, and those were mostly decisions of deans. They, because, as you probably know, the chairman, when you're chairman and when you're director or when, these are things that get done through the deans office, rather than by your colleagues. But, when my salary was subject to collegial judgment, I didn't find, I didn't feel I was being discriminated against.   And certainly, I wasn't discriminated against by deans. And there were several different deans over that period, because, while I was chairman Ed Young was dean for two years, then Leon Epstein was dean, and then it would partly have been Steve Cleany and, I guess it would have been Steve Cleany through the early '70s. And actually when I was named to the merger implementation study committee, the dean and the chancellor got in touch with me and told me, now, we know that this is very important, it's going to be very time consuming, and then made a big thing of reducing my teaching load at that point. So, I don't think I was treated differently than a man. How can you ever be sure, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't think I was.
LS:   	Well, now you know, because you can see salaries.  It wasn't comparable then.
CP:    	Well, I could see salaries then. 
LS:   	 But you didn't look.
CP:    	Oh, sure I could. In fact, I did. I mean, after all, I could, we've always seen salaries here, we've always been, you could... Anybody could always see what a faculty member's salary is here. This is one of the things some people don't know, but the budget's always laid them out and you could always go and look at a budget in the legislative reference library or anywhere else.    I always knew what salaries were.   But, I, maybe one thing, I dealt with salaries when I was in the state government and there was some point at which everybody got so upset about so many things that I sort of enured myself to taking every little difference in every dollar that seriously.   But, I'm one of the highest paid people in the department today, and I have been for ten years, or close to ten years, so well I suppose ten years. So I really don't feel that I have any reason to complain. 
LS:	I guess that sounds pretty good. 
00:37:56
Well, to go on with the Affirmative Action—when did you start, or did you start, getting acquainted with the other women on campus? And, did you, at any time, feel any special affinity to them as women?
CP:	I guess, the answer has to be no. I did not work with the women's groups here, partly because I never felt that...
LS:   	Wait, excuse me.   Wait, when you say women's groups, you must be referring to around 1969 and '70? 
CP:  	Yes.
LS:   	Because there wasn't anything before that. 
CP: 	That's right, no.
LS:	Well, what I meant was, before then. 
CP:	Oh, before that?
LS:	Just getting to know people, was there any kind of...   Well, for instance did you go to the University Club?   I know for quite awhile it wasn't possible for women to	have their own.
CP:	Well, that, no.   Well that preceded me really.
LS:	Oh, it did.   That's because of...
CP:	The discrimination at the University Club really was in the '20s and '30s. Somebody like Helen White could have told you those stories.  But that was... See, most of that kind of discrimination, in terms of where you could sit, etc., disappeared with World War II. 
LS: 	Oh.
CP:	For instance, in the Union, the pre-World War II situation had been the Rathskeller was exclusively for men.   Now, some of those things make more sense then we tend to think they do, now, because there was also some very special places where women could be in, and there were places where everybody was together.    But, that's one of the things that disappeared with World War II.   Partly because there were, either there were not many men around or the men were mostly men in service who were permitted to use the Union and, one way or another the whole issue of the Rathskeller as an exclusively men's place disappeared.   And, as far as I know, this disappeared in the University Club.   Now, I guess that reading room, that main reading room. 
LS:	Yes, the reading room was what I was thinking of.
CP:	I guess that did remain almost a man's preserve till, I don't know when.   Because I didn't pay any attention to the University Club. The University Club, like some other things, were sort of departmental matters. 
LS:	Oh, really!
CP:	Well, they weren't, but they worked out that way. 
LS:	Yes, well I know what you mean.
CP:	The Political Science Department, almost nobody belonged to the University Club. We all tended to go over to the Union, to Trip Commons for lunch, and for years, until some of the outbreak of the late '60s, there was practically a table for political scientists and sometimes after an election, or around election time, all kinds of other people would join us. And I remember, I've forgotten which election it was, we ended up with a table that practically, that had been added to until it was practically the whole east end of Trip Commons.
LS:	You're talking about presidential elections, here?
CP:	Yes. It was a presidential election. So that, the department didn't go to the University Club and, therefore, I didn't go to the University Club. Now, it was no decision, it just was that way.   And so, until the late '60s i would have been true, that the department as a whole...   So I didn't pay any attention to the University Club. But, somewhere, even before that, of course, Helen White had been elected president and so had Martha Peterson and so had other women, so that the University Club had clearly ceased to be a men's only club somewhere in those years, and I think I've seen the dates on that, but I've forgotten what those dates.   But they mostly preceded me, so that when I came here in '54 those were not major issues, around here. 
00:42:13
And some of the stories of substantial discrimination, such as the length of time that Helen White took to get tenure.   Although, that was ... you always had to put that in the context, because getting tenure was a much longer process, generally, in the ‘20s and ‘30s than it became in the '50s and '60s. The norm, in the '20s and '30s was six, seven years, or sometimes even more. And it's coming, to some degree, it's becoming more common again today. When, certainly by the middle '50s and '60s and into much of the '70s, three, four years became much more the norm. So that these are things that are not necessarily related to women. 
00:43:03
Whom did I know among the...   Well, of course the, I, Elizabeth Brandeis would have been the women I knew best among faculty women. But, I did get acquainted with Helen White and Ruth Wallerstein and a few other women. They were, in the social sciences, of course, Elizabeth Brandeis was the only woman there. Well, Helen Clark was in social work. There really weren't many other women in the social sciences. And the only one I can just off hand think of is Elizabeth Brandeis. So that the women were more in the humanities, and especially the English department where the most scholarly faculty members were mostly all women. And then there were a few in some of the sciences. I didn't actually know Elizabeth McCoy until, probably, the middle '60s or later, and she was certainly a person one had enormous respect and regard for.
00:44:18
LS:	Did you, was it a matter of interest to you, where the Political Science department hired another women, or didn't you think in those terms? 
CP: 	I didn't think in those terms. And, of course,... You know, these things, of course, have a sort of circular problem. If a profession or area does not appear to be very open, because there aren't many women in it, then, of course, there aren't many women who try to get, and you can use the same thing for minority groups, there aren't many women who tend to get doctorates and seek a profession.   So, the number of really quality women that we looked at, in the '50s and early part of the '60s, now we did have, we did hire one very distinguished women—who's become very distinguished—from Berkeley in the '60s while I was chairman. And there was no question about her quality, she actually went back to Berkeley, but that was not because we didn't try to keep her. And there was certainly no indication on the part of anybody in the department that they were opposed or, in fact, it was unanimous we'd like to have kept her. So it had nothing to do with sex.   And, as more and more women did become, did get degrees and looked good... We, of course, now have, I think there are six women in the department. So there's been a very major increase.   Now, while I was here, in the early, there was another women here for a period, but she then went to Milwaukee—Carol Edelman. But, other than that, we just really didn't look at women. I could add, that if you look at the political science profession nationally, there were some fairly distinguished women in the '20s and '30s, most of whom were in some of the women's colleges of the east. And there were some important women, Louisa Baker is one I think of, just off hand.   But there were others—Bell Zeller and a few others—who'd done some special work and there was no, they were important.   But, when I was getting my doctorate at Minnesota, there were a couple of women, besides myself, I think, in those whole three years, or there might have been more than that, but I don't think so. So that the proportion of Ph.D.s that were going to women in the '50s were very low. You know, this is a period when people, when the younger women were tending to have, make family extremely important, and there weren't too many women in the older group who came back and did as I did.
00:47:21
LS:	All right. Well then, let's go to, I think in 1970 yet, HEW came to campus and was concerned about how affirmative action was going on here. And in response to that, a number of women—Kay Clarenbach apparently got together some women over a couple of lunches—to discuss it.   Do you, were you in on that?   Invited to it...?
CP:	I don't recall whether I was invited to the original... Kay, of course, has always been in extension, and has not been a part of the Madison faculty. I think there was something a little earlier than the '70s. In fact, I think that that HEW visit was in part, brought about by some of the women who were anxious to have an investigation. I did not participate in that, I guess because I did feel that there were some hidden agendas there that I wasn't interested in participating in. 
00:48:28
And, in saying that, I don't say that there was no basis for complaint. Certainly, on the university committee, we had one or two cases to deal with where, at least one college—I don't know as I'll name it—but one college at the university here, had really treated, or some of the faculty had treated one women in just a disgraceful fashion. It was one of those situations where she'd been kept on for 20 years and suddenly got told she couldn't have tenure.   It was just ridiculous. And there was no question that deans—it was in the medical school—there was no question the dean in the medical school, the Chancellor, the vice-chancellor, and everybody on the university committee, felt this was outrageous. And it was taken care of. I'm sure that there were some other instances of that kind of treatment. As I say, it varied.  I think the problem varied by departments, and that I was fortunate to be in a department where it wasn't a major issue.   And, because I felt there were hidden agenda items in...  
00:49:48
One of the problems, and I don't know any solution to this, but it's one that has troubled me—and obviously troubles other people quite differently —and it's not the only issue here, by any means.   But sometimes a person was appointed here, and it could be either the husband or wife—but it tended, probably, more to be the husband—and then the wife seemed to feel a obligation on the part of the university to hire her. And, I must say that I never, I always thought that was unfair. I thought it was unfair to single women as well as to others, that if I, you know, that I didn't think... I thought I had to compete with all the candidates, and when a husband and wife were here and the wife felt that she had a right to something, obvious she didn't expect to compete with the nation, nationwide.   And, this issue came up again and again.   Also, given the kind of self-rule that departments have, I would have to admit—and I've always said it—I would not be comfortable with a husband and wife in my department.   Now some departments, apparently, can manage this reasonably well.    I think its easier to do it, if both husband and wife have established themselves as scholars. Then, I think, the problem tends to evaporate.   But if you take a husband and wife right out of graduate school, well one may turn out to be very good and the other one may not turn out to be very good.   What do you do? 
LS:	You're talking about within a department. 
CP:	Yes, I'm talking about... 
LS:	Essentially.   Has that ever happened? 
CP:	What?
LS:	Are there cases of people, within a department, who are...
CP:	Husband and wife, oh yes. Yes.
LS:	Yes, I can see that would be a...
CP:	And in the Wisconsin situation where salaries are determined within the department, where there are all kinds of issues that can come up, this can become a problem. And I've just never been very enthusiastic about this. And this puts me down by some of the women's groups, because I don't share that kind of a view. 
00:52:17
I'm absolutely opposed to discrimination when it's really discrimination. I just want to be sure we're not dealing with something besides discrimination, here. And, obviously, the word discrimination itself has both a positive and negative meaning. And so, if what you're doing is discriminating as to what is good and what is not good, here, then that's one thing. But you can use the term... I recall, very vividly, an individual we had here, a student—a woman—who was extremely good, and her husband was actually in another department, but he never rated has high as she did. And they both got jobs at Michigan State, and when tenure came up he didn't get tenure and she did. Well, fortunately, in this case, he did find a position in another institution within reasonable distance of East Lansing and, I guess, everything's gone relatively smoothly for them. My own advice to students, when I was chairman, and we had couples finishing their Ph.D.s here, my own advice was, look at large cities and whoever gets a job first, OK, then the other one should find it.   And where you've got several institutions in the same city, you can probably both get jobs in political science departments. And sometimes the woman was brighter than the man, and sometimes it was the reverse. And so, it was my view, that that was the best advice I could give them, go look for a job in a big city, choose institutions that are in large cities where whoever gets a position first, the other one can probably find something within the area. Now, this is the kind of advice that I think is good.   On the other hand, in my defense, I will say I think of one woman—and I will not give a name here—who used to tell our seniors, senior women, that they should go learn typing and that way they could always find a job. And I remember saying, specifically, in one of those meetings, look I tell my senior women, if you know how to type, don't ever admit it. And this woman subsequently became very major in the women's movement. I think my advice, which long preceded hers was much more reasonable and rational.
LS:	Who was that?
CP:	I don't really like to...it was Emily Turbenick. 
LS:	Oh, I don't remember her...
CP:	And she, well she was in advising here. And she was very important in the woman's movement and became much more militant than I ever did. And yet, I felt that, basically, I'd been giving better woman's advice than she'd been giving.
LS:	Well, maybe she needed converting more than you did.    
00:55:24
So, well, were you aware of this...   You say hidden agenda.   Do you want to ...   What do you mean by that?
CP:	Well, I think, sometimes, I think they had political ends in mind that were not necessarily part of it. I think they were trying to look after women who weren't necessarily that outstanding, and they were claiming they were being discriminated against. And sometimes they were trying jobs for people, just because their husbands were here. I mean these were some of the hidden agendas I saw there.   And they tended to be very willing to be anti-administration, in a way, again my sense of loyalty and institutional identification would have been, somewhat, on the other side. 
00:56:18
Now, as I say, I know there were problems. And I'm sure that in Cyrena's position, she identified problems that needed attention. Because, departments in colleges varied.  And some. Well, you know, the history department had a bad reputation for a long time. The history department, in fact, had a bad reputation on Jews and Catholics at one point. So the department had a bad reputation in a number of areas. Well, they got over it. But some areas they clearly did need some pressure. The English department, once Helen White and Ruth Wallerstein and Madelyn Dorn, etc., really hit their stride, which was in the '30s and '408, obviously the English department was not a place where a woman was going to get hard time if she could do it, she could do it, and they were certainly going recognize her. And, this simply varied. 
00:57:28
LS:	Did, where there women, I mean, for instance, one of the language departments, Barbara Fowler, Charlotte Brinkfort, think of people like that, who were on the faculty by that time, weren't they?...
CP:	They came in, I think, in the '60s. I don't think they were there before the '60s.
LS:	All right. I just wondered, because they weren't part of the group you're talking about, although they joined it for awhile. I know Barbara Fowler did...
CP:	Well, I see Barbara Fowler, of course, as another case where her husband was here and she wanted a position, here.   Now, I have no, I have absolutely no personal knowledge, either of how she stands scholarly or anything...  I don't even know how she got the position.   But, she obviously got, you know, wanted a position at Wisconsin because her husband was here. 
LS:	Yes.
CP: 	And, I can only make that statement:    I know nothing more about it. And I didn't know the women in the languages, I did know some of the men who, for varieties of reasons I knew, but I didn't know.    I did know Barbara Fowler, because I'd known her husband for, probably, the ten years before they were married.   And, of course, they were married and then they had a family and then she came into the university.   So, she could not have come before middle '60s into the faculty, and it may have even been a little later than that.    I really...
LS:	She didn't get on tenure until sometime in the early '70s, so presumably it was, uh --
CP:	Yes, well, she didn't come in until late, I think. You want to try to open that?
LS:	I was thinking that, I don't know whether you're hot, but... 
CP:	But, I'm afraid the fan would just make trouble, wouldn't it? 
LS:	Yes, it would.    It would be too noisy.   Anyway, one can live with heat.
CP:	You're going to have to ... 
LS:	Oh, all right. 
CP: 	It's all right.
00:59:38
LS:	Well, of course, what I'm curious about is...    Cyrena Pondrom was chosen to be--
CP:	Yes.
LS:	 --to go to administration.   And what, how you felt about that? Or whether you thought about it, what ...
CP:	Well, it seemed, I mean, at the point about the time that she was appointed, I think it became almost necessary, in almost any institution to have an affirmative action officer.   And you weren't, you really were not in the stream of things. And certainly she was involved in this one case in the medical school, that I was speaking of, in, nobody that had anything to do with that case would have said the woman had been badly treated.   And by the time it was in such a mess it didn't matter whether she was any good or not. You can't do some things, like that. And I don't even know the quality of this woman, all I knew was the story. Well, I'm sure there were some others like that, that were important and needed somebody, and maybe, quite possibly it was critical to have somebody who would ride herd on it. Although, in this instance, there was no division, that I know of, between anybody in authority over what ought to be done.   It was the immediate department that had, and the immediate chairman of that department, that was causing the problem.   And once you got out of that situation, everybody else was in agreement. 
LS:	That must be the case she mentioned, where the chairman said "she's only got six publications," and Cyrena said "Yes, on the first page, she only has six, but on the next two pages she has 30."
CP:	No, I doubt that that's the same case. I doubt that that's the same case. I'm not sure which one she's talking about, but I think—
01:01:38	End of Tape 1, Side 2
[Following portion not included on audio]

CP:	-- this is probably a different case. I'm not even sure the woman I'm talking about had any publications.   But it really didn't matter.   She might have had, she might have been a co-author with...    It was a case where a man had hired her because she had certain interests that were exactly his, and she worked with him, and helped him a great deal, and, why he didn't take some steps, I don't, I've forgotten all the details of this. Then he died, and the new chairman and the department, as it was then constituted, didn't want her as a member of the department.
LS:	Who was the man? 
CP:	That died? 
LS:	Yes.
CP: 	I can't even tell you at this point, Laura. I've forgotten. I know who the man was who was a troublesome man, but I don't know the man who had hired her in the beginning. And, I think, there was some question whether she ought to have been hired.   But, you know, all of those things were immaterial after somebody's been around that long, you know.
[Break in tape]
LS:	This is an interview with Clara Penniman, I'm Laura Small.   
[Audio resumes]
Tape 2, Side 1
LS:	We're talking in her office in North Hall and the date is July 6, 1981.   This is the beginning of the second tape of the interview. Ok, I guess I'd better repeat that.   
00:00:21
You were on the, went on the University Committee in 1971--
CP:	Yes.
LS:	--which was the year Cyrena Pondrom became head of the Affirmative Action.
CP:	Well, the reason I say in some ways I was very conscious and some ways I wasn't was because that was also the year of the merger bill in the state legislature. And so, unless there were problems that could not be handled within Cyrena's office, or in the chancellor's office, or for some reason, had to come to the University Committee—as this one case I was mentioning did have to come to the University Committee—except in those cases, which were pretty rare, as a whole, we were conscious, I mean, we were advised regularly of the general state of things. But we weren't, we didn't usually enter into individual cases. And so, except for that sort of thing, there were so many other issues that we were faced with that, and we certainly, as a University Committee, we were certainly not over, you know, looking over the shoulder, at everything that was being done here. On the other hand, one necessarily knew that the university was attempting to take certain kinds of actions. And, there were departments, that I understood, where salaries were pretty much, were out of line, very considerably.  And there was an effort made to bring those salaries into line. And that was done on at least two occasions in the '70s.   Now, the fact that my salary was never one of the ones that was helped to, was brought into line, I suppose, simply tells you that I'd had a different experience, a different treatment here.
00:02:12
LS: 	I happened to be discussing this with Pete Simon.   He must have been on one of your years...
CP:	No, he wasn't on the committee when I was. I can't remember... 
LS:	He just preceded you then.
CP:	Yes, I think that's right. I think he preceded me, I may have even, you know...you served three years and then there's a new, and then you go off. And it may even have been that I took, was one of the ones, you know two people come on and two people go off. And he may have gone off just before I did. I’m not certain.
LS:	He just, he mentioned that the University Committee had initiated the, uh, let’s see, for women, oh! Nepotism. That the nepotism rule, but you wouldn’t know about that because it must have preceded you. 
CP:	Well of course that nepotism rule is partly what I was referring to before. And the nepotism rule is a very touchy one. It had been carried to extremes, here at the university, at times. And it doesn't just affect women or wives. I know a case, this goes way back, I know a case where a son was not hired, in a totally different department, because his father was on the faculty. In fact, it wouldn't have been even in the same college. And, recently we had a father and a son and a daughter on this faculty.   Now, that's the sort of thing that would not have happened back in, probably as late as the '50s and maybe even into the '60s, it would not have happened. So that, the rule which, probably, was put into effect without any regard to women. My guess is, the old rule had nothing to do with them, there probably weren't that many women seeking positions on the faculty. But, of course, it was applied to women, subsequently. But it was an old one that had been there for years and years and years.
LS:	The issue was whether it was the University Committee that, I think it must have been 1969 or '70, that it was actually gotten rid of.   But whether it was the University Committee or the Chancellor's office that initiated it. 
CP:	I can't tell you. And the reason, you know, those things so often get into a discussion between the Chancellor and the University Committee until it might be hard to be sure who initiated, and then it would be the University Committee who would bring in the change of rule. They would be the ones who would bring into the faculty senate. But, it could have been, equally, a concern of the Chancellor, but I don't know. That's not something I had anything to do with.
00:04:54
LS:	But, alright, then you, if not as University Committee, as faculty member.   Do you remember the very great push that was made to have affirmative action in hiring, in the department, in the, you know,  '73-'74, and what was your view of this?
CP:	Well, actually, of course, some of that affirmative action went back before that, and certainly included blacks as much, or more, than women. 
LS:	I'm talking about women.    I guess it's because...
CP: 	It's hard to separate, because affirmative action was always intended to. . .
LS:	It should have been, shouldn't it? 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	I mean, it tends now to mean women.
CP:	Yes, well there, you know, our minority hiring practices were certainly as vulnerable as our affirmative action in terms of women. And in both cases, as I said earlier about women, there's a circle here in which if there is no opportunities you don't try.   And clearly there are many more blacks coming through for degrees, today, so you've got more blacks to choose from. So you can get caliber there, as well as you can in men, or as well as you can in women, in a sense that was not so possible in... Now we did hire, of course, we hired a very competent, black political scientist about '68, and were very very pleased in there...   Again, I don't think there was any question when we hired him, he was outstanding as a political scientist.   And when it came to...   Now, by ‘73-'74, I think, we already had hired two or three women, by that point, I'm a little vague as to when we hired whom at what point.   But, we would have had—Barbara Hinckley would have been here by then—and we did hire a succession of women, a couple of whom left, both cases left without any tenure decision here, and we hired a number.   
00:07:08
What do I think about affirmative action?   Well, my view is that you ought to be looking for quality, for the kinds of areas of your discipline that you need.  I do not argue that something in the way of affirmative action, no doubt, was desirable. At least it made people much more conscious of the necessity, not just to look, quite as they, perhaps, had looked before. Again, I would say, I don't think this was significant in our department, but I do think it was probably valuable in some other departments, that as the pressure grew to hire minorities and to hire women, there was a tendency to look harder than they had looked before.    I think that was true. Now, everyone of the women we hired came from one of the major institutions from which we normally hired.    It was not a change, we didn't start looking at inferior Ph.D. granting institutions, and, which still might produce an extraordinarily competent people.
LS:	You weren't supposed to do that, according to these [unclear]...
CP:	Well, we may have looked at them. But, we didn't need to. We didn't need to, because Harvard and Yale and Chicago and the Big Ten were giving degrees to top notch women.   We didn't have to look otherwise. I don't say, we advertised as we were supposed to advertise, and we...
LS:	You did advertise?
CP:	Oh, yes, and we got the applications. But, again, I'm sure that we tended to still to come out in the same, pretty much, in the same way as we always had. We hired from Stanford, one of the women we got, I know, was from Stanford, one was from Cornell, one was from Harvard, and Columbia, and so forth. You know, this is the sort of thing we were doing.   But, you see, by that time, your circle had begun to grow, because, partly, there were simply more women going to graduate school. Partly the fact that more women were going to graduate school was a change in the general cultural attitude toward women in professions in general, and the idea, either, that a career was a thing to have or career and marriage could be combined, and therefore, this had happen, so your number of candidates, women candidates, had simply increased enormously in, between the time I came here in the '50s and by the '70s it just been a totally different approach to it.   And, in fact, as a graduate student here at Wisconsin, before I went to Minnesota, there were two or three women out of, I don't think, maybe there might have been 5, but I, out of 100 men as graduate students, here. I remember that quite vividly. Well, by the '70s we were getting about even numbers of men and women. So this in itself, completely changed the picture.   And I'm sure it was true in other disciplines as well as in political science. But your numbers had simply shifted.   But, I think, that there were departments where it was probably a good idea to put that extra pressure on them to look more carefully at women candidates. I think it's conceivable that some departments, without even thinking about it, and, perhaps, not following the line at that letter I quoted to you at the beginning, but nevertheless, that type of thing. 
LS:	Yeah.
CP:	Just didn't really, seriously, consider a woman applicant, they didn't look at her record as carefully. I'm sure that happened in some departments. I would not want to suggest it didn't happen.
00:11:29
LS:	So you think, or did you think about it, that Cyrena Pondrom did an effective job as [unclear]?
CP:	Well, I would be hard put to evaluate her job as her job.   That the job itself, I mean, just how well she did as a person, I wouldn't want to try to evaluate.   But that the, that there was some, almost necessity, establishing that kind of position and putting some pressure on departments to act in this regard, I think was there.
00:12:05
LS:	She's talked a good deal about the change in the university's personnel policy, generally.   Apparently there was none in effect until the early '70s. That is, it wasn't possible to find records in which one knew who, what people were being paid, when they'd been hired, when they were promoted, that sort of thing.  This is both academic faculty, specialists... 
CP: 	Well now, forgetting the academic staff—and I don't totally, don't totally know the situation on the academic staff side—on the faculty side that's not true. You could always find it. Now, that you didn't, that, I mean, after all, a list went up, every single year, to the Regents listing all the faculty and their salaries and salary recommendations, this list went up, every single year, went up every single year going back for 50 years. I think it was true that one of the things that happened, the university grew very very fast between the early '60s and the following ten years. It just grew very fast. And, I am sure, that many kinds of data and information that one might, quite reasonably, want to know about a faculty's salaries, how long people had been here, and a number of things like that, were available, but they just were brought together anywhere. I'm sure that was true. And I'm sure that, in fact, I think we still lack some records, here, that we ought to have. I know that, sometimes, information about faculty meetings go out to people who aren't faculty members. We still don't...   
00:14:11
What has always scared me to death, is that if we ever got collective bargaining, we'd really have problems identifying who really are the faculty members who could vote on something like that.   Now that scared me for ten years, and I've talked about this to people. But I know it still continues. I know that in the medical school that they have people who are in, I don't know exactly the technical thing, but it's, they're not really faculty members, but they have a relationship with the medical school, and that these people get notices of our faculty meetings when they really haven't any reason to get them.  It isn't that I give a darn whether they get the notices, it's just it illustrates the issue. And we still have some problems along that line. So that for her to say there weren't good records, I'm sure she was right, there weren't good records. There still are some incomplete records. But, partly, I think, one does have to associate this with the enormous growth that took place in the ten years. I'm sure our department, as many other departments, I'm sure our department doubled in that length of time. And this was happening all over the university. Well, it's almost a miracle, if you keep, you know, if you really develop a record system and change it fast enough to take care of this--
LS: 	Yes. 
CP:	 --difference.
00:15:33
LS:	The, I guess, part of the affirmative action program entailed the approval of even faculty appointments in the Chancellor's office.   That is, well assuming upon him as head of the personnel, was approving them, and that this was in terms of whether there had been adequate search for women appointees. And, I imagine, one of the complaints was that this was taking, I think, some power out of the faculty and...
CP:	Yes. Now, I don't know how many times there was any veto on that. I don't know of any absolute veto on this, on an appointment, as a result of that kind of review. I'm sure that a department who—if any department got a veto at that point—I'm sure they would have been pretty furious about it. Because, this does take it away, both from the department and from the dean who pre [unclear]... Now, of course, the Chancellor always has, technically, has the last word before it goes to the Regents, but if I know Ed Young as I think I know him, I doubt that he very often exercised—if any time—he exercised his actual veto.   There might have been occasions when there was a discussion with the department chairman, but I doubt that the actual veto really occurred. I could be wrong, I don't know. I don't know at all. I simply, I know Ed Young and he finds actual vetoes on many administrative matters difficult and, in a case such as this, where you were actually dealing with a departmental and a dean's decision, I would think that would have been peculiarly difficult for him to have carried through. On the other hand, there was a kind of threat of this, that there might have been some carrying on of discussions. Well, that's part of the kind of pressure you tend to do when you're trying to achieve, university wide, a policy that goes against the practice of some departments.   And so, although I doubt the actual veto, I, there may have been some kind of a threat of this, a review and so forth. I don't know.
LS:	Ok.   
00:18:02
	The secretary of the faculty was, Charles Loomer, or Bill Loomer, was in the office at the time. I guess their function was somewhat taken over by Chancellor's office. Were you in on, did you have any notions about that?
CP: 	No, we didn't have much.   You see, Bill Loomer had, had he just been chairman of the University Committee or been chairman--
LS:	He had been [unclear].
CP:     --three years before, or something.   That again goes back to the whole issue of how your records are kept. 
LS: 	Yes.
CP:	And, I believe that the records did need improving, and as I say, I'm not even sure that today we've got them in thoroughly good shape. And, if I were to comment on Bill, he always has had a tendency to take life as easy as he can. I don't mean, now I'm not saying this critically, but Bill's not the kind to enter into a big fight unless he, or to be greatly innovative in this kind of thing. I suspect he took on the secretaryship of the faculty with the assumption that he could just carry on from Alden White. And he was not about to make big changes. And, of course, as you need new information for different purposes than you've used it in the past, then you begin to need information that hadn't existed.   And, so there, inevitably, there was going to be some conflict, I assume, there. This is one of the things I try to teach people in administration, that what kinds of statistics you have may determine a policy and if you want a different policy, you may have to make a big thing out of getting different statistics. And, this is, we often overlook this, but just the kind of data that's brought together in the... At one point, we had almost no bureau of the census data on county government. We had it on cities, occasionally on villages, and states. But very little on counties. Well, the County Government's Association really lobbied to get special information in the census data on counties. And this put the county in a totally different light, and with a totally different kind of opportunity for info than it had before. This same thing holds true here, and as long as the university was smaller, there were always people who knew these things. I mean, they knew how many women, they knew whether there were salary problems, they knew this—they may or may not have paid much attention to it—but they likely knew it. But when you had this tremendous increase in the faculty in the '60s and into the '70s, nobody really knew.
00:20:56	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (July 8, 1981): Tapes 2-3
Continuation of Tape 2, Side 2
00:20:56
LS:	Well, anyway, we're now starting on the second session of the interview, this is July 8.   And we're going to talk about the merger and your work on the merger implementation committee.   And I wondered if you would say first how you had been, what had been your views during the '60s of what was going on in the reorganization of the university.
CP:	I think that during the '60s when Mr. Harrington was president, there were so many changes going on that most people—and that in large part included me—really were quite unaware of the extent of change in the system and the really different kind of university structure that we had by 1970-71 as against the period of ten years before that.   Before that, for a long time...—or, of course, before there was Milwaukee, or Green Bay, or Parkside —the university had been a_ single institution with a president at the head of it, and the president always saw himself as the president of the Madison institution. And the center system and extension were, simply, particular parts of the Madison institution with their own deans. What happened in the '60s—and for a period this continued, even after Milwaukee became a part of it—the president was, in a sense, the president of Madison, in a special way, but also the administering officer for the other units of the, what was becoming a system. In the, and my dates here, I don't recall them exactly, but somewhere in the middle '60s or so, Mr. Harrington made the point of developing, in a much more formal sense, a separate system, or rather a system that included the whole set of institutions. 
LS:	Yes.
CP: 	And, this system then became Green Bay, Parkside, Milwaukee, Madison, Extension and the Center System.
00:24:02
LS:	Now, what I want, is your own...you say you're generally not conscious of it, you were so busy—all of you—thinking about--
CP:	Yes.
LS:	--things going on here.
CP:	So, I don't pretend that I know much about this, except that when we came into the '70s, where the problem lay, was that when we came into the '70s and the governor proposed, and succeed in getting across, the merger bill which now added the WSU institutions along with these other institutions that had taken on a separate identity within the University of Wisconsin, so that Madison, in one sense, was simply one of the institutions within a number of institutions. And, one of the issues that then became much clearer than it had been for, or became much more, most people became more conscious of, was that certain steps had been taken in the '70s which laid possible precedents for the new and much enlarged system that were detrimental to Madison. 
LS: 	Yes.
CP:	And this had to do with the way in which funding had been done, the way in which certain bequests that and been made to Madison had, in fact, been shared with Milwaukee and, I believe, Green Bay at one point.   And it was these kinds of issues that, again, became extraordinarily important when we were talking about organizing and structuring the system that resulted from the bringing in of the WSU institutions. And it was in this regard that the University Committee and, well, especially the University Committee, worked very hard in getting certain provisions into the merger bill that would help to assure that Madison's resources would not be available for general distribution to all institutions in the system. We were largely successful-- 
LS:	Yes.
CP:     --in this, though there were some problems.
00:26:32
LS:   	The reason I'm interrupting you, is that I'm trying, I want you to, I mean, this is in your chapters, so... 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	--who do you think, do you remember how this first, I know Ed Young mentioned it as something he feels that he was, perhaps, responsible for noticing... And Dave Cronon has also talked about it. Do you have a sense of how this realization came about?  Incidentally, what was this meeting that the University Committee had with Harrington? Or, you weren't there?
 CP:	No. That’s was just... 
LS:	I couldn't find the...
CP:	That was, well I think those minutes are over there. 
LS:	That's what I want to [find]...
CP:	That was a meeting that the University Committee had with Mr. Harrington just after he resigned.   And, this was the famous meeting in which Mr. Harrington said that if he'd been on the University Committee, he would have been a lot tougher on him, as president--
LS:	Oh, did he really?
CP:	.--than the University Committee had, in fact, been on him. And they would have made many more inquires into what he was doing. It was one of these fascinating bits, fascinating statements that one is really interested in But it was clear, and to an extent, once seeing this all the way through. It depends on what position you hold. There's a famous story in public administration about where you sit, is what you see. I'm not saying it very well, but everything depends on your point of view in the responsibility that you hold.   And Mr. Harrington as president, so needs, which he tried to take care of for the several units in the system before merger, which were not necessarily in the interests of Madison.   And so, when he made his statement, he was saying, in effect, "Madison has not been looking after it's own interests as well as it probably should have." And whoever is president here, Madison ought to make more certain that it is seeing to its interests via the individual who is president, whose responsibilities are different than the responsibilities of the Madison institutions, the Chancellor, the University Committee representing the faculty, and so on.
LS:	So it was really the Chancellor and the University Committee that, in fact, really should have been [unclear].
CP: 	Yes. And I think one of the problems was, which it's always hard to learn, is that many people assumed since Harrington had come out of the faculty here, had been president of the Madison campus, that he obvious understood and would look after Madison's interests--
LS:	[Unclear]
CP:     .--in the office of president. And this is, again, the kind of an assumption that people too often make, and that fail to recognize, that in a different position the person, no matter what ties he may have with a part of that system, has to take on different responsibilities when he holds, when he takes on the presidency of the whole thing. And must, in effect, recognize other interests.
LS:	Did you have anything to do with Bob Clodius, during this period, yourself?
CP: 	Oh, very incidentally, I wouldn't consider... I knew Bob Clodius fairly well, I would see him from time-to-time, but I don't think I had enough to do there, that I would have any comment. It would be hard for me to distinguish anything I knew about what Bob Clodius was doing there from what I knew myself and what I had sort of picked up as a sort of the general gossip, if you will, it was, perhaps, more than gossip, but, you know. It was that sort of thing that I knew there.
00:30:50
LS:	Well, all right.   You said, how... Incidentally, were you a supporter of Lucey? When he ran for governor?
CP:	Yes, I did support Lucey for governor Yes. Not, I never have been, I probably signed a statement that may have appeared in the newspapers, I may have given him a little money in his campaign, I voted for him. That's about as much as I've ever done in a gubernatorial campaign, and I haven't done even that at times.
LS:	What was your view of merger, when he proposed it? 
CP:	I was opposed to merger. 
LS:	Completely?
CP:	Yes. Now, as I say in that article or that chapter in the Bogue Taylor book, I found myself seeing issues as I really tried to write the chapter and look back on greater, in greater depth on the history of the institutions of higher education in Wisconsin...
00:32:37	End of Tape 2, Side 1
Tape 2, Side 2
00:32:49
LS:	You don't have to repeat.   Alright, tell me about your appointment to the merger implementation committee.
CP:	Well, I was, by the time the merger bill went through, of course, I'd been on the University Committee for a few weeks, I guess it was probably a few months, and had participated in some of the meetings of the University Committee with some of the legislative leaders down there to attempt to get the best provisions possible from the point of view of merger.   And if we... 
LS: 	Was this at your...whose instigation was this, that the University Committee should go down and talk to legislators?   Do you remember? 
CP:	As far I know this was instigated by the University Committee, itself. 
LS:	The whole...everybody on it.    I mean, or one, did somebody--
CP:	All.
LS:	--spearhead the alarm?
CP:	I don't know that anybody individually... Now, you have to recognize that I'd just come on the University Committee, therefore, the other, four of the people out of the six had been dealing with the idea and the possibility and the probability of merger for several months, by the time I came onto the committee. And, therefore, they were aware of issues in a more detailed sense, probably, than I was, and I would be competent that they had talked with the Chancellor and, probably, with others here at the university. But, I think, that, as near as I could tell, from the time I went on, the committee itself was reading every possible bill, or any possible or suggested change in the bill, and was concerned and that the committee's view was: 1) that we against merger, 2) if merger was inevitable, then we wanted to get the very best possible terms we could get. 
00:35:06
And, it was in this context that we talked to the leadership in both the Assembly and the Senate.  Especially in the Assembly. And that we attempted to talk with other people in terms of the provisions that were being suggested. As you...
LS:	Excuse me. Did you go together?
CP:	Yes.
LS: 	All of you?
CP:	Yes.
LS:	The whole committee?
CP: 	I remember vividly, that we, that one time we had a luncheon in Norm Anderson's office.    If you will recall, I believe Norm Anderson was speaker of the Assembly at that time.   And, we had a meeting in Norm Anderson's office. And Norm was there, and Tony Earl, who was at that time was majority leader, I believe that was his position, and I think they were the people we worked with that particular noon. But we had a sandwich, everybody brought a sandwich and we sat around a big table and talked about issues. And, I recall that Norm and Tony said to us, "Look the bill's going through. There's just no question it's going through." So the whole, the thing that you can do, and we'll see what we can do to help on it, is to get those provisions in the bill that will be valuable to Madison.   
00:36:38
And so it was at that connection that we were especially anxious to get into the original bill—and this was the bill that was in the budget, if you will recall, in '71—and it had nothing to do with the merger implementation study committee, because that was in there, but that was separate.   The bill itself really provided, generally, for merger and made certain kinds of conditions, and one of them had to do with the idea that each institution—it wasn't, of course, they didn't just write it in Madison—but each institution would retain its own resources that represented bequests and the like. And that these were not something that would be shared or moved around in the system.
00:37:28
LS:	I’d just like to ask you about the committee, at that time. Who, which were the most effective members?   Do you remember, I mean, how you must have, sort of, rated them as to--
CP:	Oh, well, I think... I suppose the people I that thought were... Ray Bowen was chairman, and I thought was very effective; Hector Deluca contributed, partly, because his father-in-law was Senator Swan from Rock County—I believe it was Rock County—and Senator Swan was a very conservative republican.
BACKGROUND VOICE: I’m here Clara when you’re done. [John Witte?]
CP:	Senator Swan was a very conservative republican who could help us on occasion, he didn't always agree with us, but at least this was an in that we did have since he was Hector's father-in-law.   And Dave Cronon, I would say that they were the most effective on the committee.   But others... 
LS: 	Stedman and ...?
CP:	Wilson Thiede. Wilson Thiede was on the committee and... Who was the other man?
LS:	Stedman?   Was he...?
CP:	Stedman, John Stedman. Yes.   John had been elected with me, so that John and I were knew to the committee. And Wilson made contributions but, I think, the other three, especially Ray Bowen and Dave Cronon, probably, made the most contributions. Dave had a number of contacts in the legislature as a result of his work through the historical society.   And so, all of these were important in what we were trying to do.
00:39:21
LS:	I'm curious, I don't know, maybe you can't answer this. But do you, did you, have you had a feeling that your training as a political scientist gives you a different outlook on some of these events than, let's say, a scientist, or is it not particularly relevant to how good you are as an administrator?
CP:	Well, of course, I think yes, I think there are two things here. One, because public administration has been my specialty. I think, in terms of how good I am as an administrator, I think that it does have something to do with it. I don't say other people can't be, but I think it has something to do with it.   And I think it's always had something to do with my willingness to see an administrator's point of view in a situation. And, therefore, to be more tolerant of administrators than some people are. And in the slightly broader context, my sense of politics and the role of legislators, probably, made me more sympathetic to some of the things that they were involved with, than it might make many other people.
LS:	Did you notice this on the committee when you went to talk to legislators? Did you, were you aware of having, perhaps, having a greater sense of the things they were coping with?   The legislators?
CP:	Well, it's hard for me to reconstruct that with certainty. I think it would be certain...be true that I took a fairly active role from the beginning, a more active role than Mr. Stedman did, who, though a lawyer, I had had very little experience with politics. And I think that over the time that I was on the University Committee, this sense of politics, probably, had some significance for me.
00:41:28
LS:	Ok.   Well go on. You're leading up to the circumstances of --
CP:	Well, anyway we worked hard to get certain provisions in the bill. And, as a matter of fact, we got, if we had to have merger, we got, probably, as good, about as good a bill as we could have gotten in interest to Madison. Then, of course, the problem became who was going to be appointed to the Merger Implementation Study Committee.
00:41:56
LS:	I want to ask you, before you get...   Was Ed Young also down there?
CP:	Not with us.
LS: 	Do you know whether...   Actually, I should talk to him about this, I guess...
CP:	No.  I think that what you would find is, I'm sure that the Chancellor did deal with the legislators and certain individuals and the governor, for that matter, on these issues. But, he acted independently and we acted independently.   There were, at times, exchange of information, these were not things that were done totally in isolation, so that we certainly were aware that he was talking to people as he knew we were talking to people.   This was a situation in which the, there was almost no disagreement—I can't even think of any—disagreement between the university and the Chancellor on the issues that were involved.   Hence, exchanging information was simple, but there was just an assumption that we would be more effective by our operating independently and this is, in fact, what we did.   
00:43:17
And, I don't know whether anybody has told you, even before any of this that I've just been discussing, after the governor's merger bill was sent up to the legislature, there was a meeting with the governor of about 15 or 20 faculty leaders. 
LS:	I think I saw that...   He came for a half-an-hour? 
CP:	No, no.
LS: 	Or is that a different...
CP:	I think you're talking about something different.   He talked to the university senate here, in the summer. That was in the summer of '71, but what I'm discussing is something that goes back to February, I think, and the, I couldn't repeat to you who all was there.    I simply have forgotten. I know Hank Lardy was there, I know Bob Ozanne was there, Jack Barbash, Dave Fellman, I was there.   But I'm vague about just who all else. But I know that it amounted to 15 or 20 faculty members, representing a wide spectrum of disciplines and colleges within the Madison campus. I think only Madison faculty were there.   And there was a general discussion with the governor. I'm not sure that we achieved anything, but at least there was an exchange of views, relative to merger. And then, there was... 
LS:	Who?   Do you know who organized that?
CP:	I think Bob Ozanne did, but I'm not absolutely certain of that.   But I think it was Bob Ozanne who organized that.   And there was simply, as I say, a broad discussion.   And I remember that one of the things that was said was that Governor Lucey said there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the university and especially Madison in the legislature, and of course, this was in part due to all the difficulties that the Madison campus had in the early or late '60s and early '70s in connection with Vietnam.   And I remember that I reminded the governor that he and I were both from southwestern Wisconsin—he originally from Prairie du Chein and I from Lancaster—and that he probably would recall when a man by the name of Chapel from Ashland, I believe, Ashland or Superior, but I think it's Ashland, campaigned for the U.S. Senatorship and for some other positions in politics here by attacking the university and he had never won anything by doing that and, in fact, it had been the normal role of governors to support the university and to defend it against its critics. So that whatever criticism and unhappiness did exist within the legislature, that it'd seem to me, the governor might take a role in this. He recalled the incident that I referred to, but, of course, he saw himself, in his view, of protecting Madison by the merger.   This was part of the argument that he made at that time, and so this was part of what when in that, at that particular incident. And then--
LS: 	So, it wasn't a very satisfactory meeting.
CP: 	No, it wasn't a terribly satisfactory meeting.    It was probably alright, I don't think it did, I'd be certain it didn't do damage, whether it did any help any, I'm not at all certain that it did.   
00:47:32
And then in July, I believe it was July, when the merger bill was going through, I think the governor asked to come out and talk to the faculty senate. I'm not exactly certain where/how the invitation came about, whether we invited him or he asked to... I know that there was a second meeting a year later, in which the governor did call out, or one of the people in the governor's office called out and asked to have a meeting with the faculty.   And this took place, I now forget the date, but I know it could be checked out, it must have been '72 or, it certainly it would have been '72. 
LS:	Well, that will be on the records, somewhere.
CP:	Yes. I'm sure there was. In any event, that was all the background here. 
00:48:29
Now, when they set up a merger implementation study committee as a part of the attempt to get the final version of the merger bill, there was... The committee was quite a large committee, and it included one representative from the Madison faculty...Oh no, excuse me, it included one representative from the UW system and one representative, one faculty representative from the former WSU system, a student from the UW system—as it had been—and a student from the old WSU system.   Now, I think, that there wasn't very little argument in terms of the WSU system. The man who was then president of TAUWF became the WSU faculty representative and there was a student who had been, kind of, the student leader of the WSU grouping, who almost automatically became the student representative.   He also had been a strong supporter of Mr. Lucey, as had the WSU people.   On the UW side, this was a very much more complicated matter.   And initially the University Committee, it wasn't the University Committee—I can't think of the title, the name that it represented—it was in a grouping of all the University Committees of the UW system, so that we...
LS:	The Faculty Council, wasn't it called.
CP:	Faculty Council.   The Faculty Council initially suggested Ray Bowen— nominated Ray Bowen—to the governor.   And the governor made it clear that he would not accept Mr. Bowen as the nominee. 
LS:	Why?
CP:	Well, it, this was at a time when Mr. Reagan was governor of California and Mr. Bowen, at a meeting in which a member of Mr. Lucey’s group had been there, had made the remark that Mr. Lucey was doing about as well for the university here as Mr. Reagan was doing in California.   And Mr. Lucey didn't like this comparison.   This is among the problems that existed. And, so, he made it clear he wouldn't accept it. So then, of course, the issue became who could be, who, you know, whom the Faculty Council could nominate. And, there was a real question whether it might be a faculty member from Milwaukee.   Naturally, Madison wanted to have a faculty member.   And in a, this is off the record isn't it?   I mean, it's--
LS:	Oh yes, yes.
CP: 	--nobody is going to...  In a very private Sunday morning breakfast, brunch meeting—after Ed Young had told us that under no circumstances would the governor accept Mr. Bowen—Ray Bowen and Dave Cronon and I had coffee at my house, and there was an agreement that I would accept the nomination from the Faculty Council.   So, at the very next meeting of the Faculty Council, there was...Dave Cronon nominated me for this.   Now, since I was brand new, this was a little unusual, but anyway, they did nominate me for it, and it was approved by the Faculty Council.   So then the nomination went to the governor.
LS:	Incidentally, did, was there any question of Dave Cronon's wanting to it?   Do you thing, or...? Was it a plum?   Or was it a chore?
CP:	Well, it was a chore. And, don't ask me why they decided that, probably, politically, I was in better shape to take it than Dave Cronon was. But that was the presumption that was made in this meeting.   There was another...I think it may have had to do with another situation in that there was only one other woman in the Faculty Council and they didn't feel she was strong enough. She was from the Center system, I believe, and they didn't think she was strong enough to handle it.   And, I think, maybe, they thought that making an appointment of, suggesting a nomination of a woman would not only appeal to the Council, but would appeal to the governor because I was the only woman on it. 
LS:	Yes, you were the only...
CP:	Yes. And, I think there was, I think there were these kinds of considerations, here, that I was probably personally acceptable to the governor, it would give him a woman appointment, and so forth. 
00:53:34
In any event, that was the inside deal that was made as far as I know it. 
LS:	How did you feel about it?   I mean, that's was an exceedingly important commission, wasn't it? 
CP: 	Oh, yes, it was.    It was very. 
LS:	Representing the whole university.
CP:	It was very important. Well, then the thing, of course, the nomination, this was a nomination or a proposal, it wasn't the governor's appointment. And, then there was a lot of maneuvering as to whether or not the governor would go along on this. And there were some connections and some pressures, or some influence, attempted. In any event,... 
LS:	On him?
CP: 	On him. In any event, I remember that I was called and asked by him if I would accept it, if he did, in fact, appointment me.   And I said yes. And then there was some in between period and I know that Esther Kaplan, from one person and curiously Dave Carley for another, I know both of them supported me with the governor.   And, I know I got a telephone call on a Monday morning from Esther telling me that she was sure it was going through that day. And then there was a University Committee meeting at which I told them what I knew and then that afternoon there was a faculty senate meeting and in the middle of the faculty senate meeting I was called out for a telephone call from the governor saying that he was appointing me. And I went back and told the University Committee members that it had happened. So that's, that was it. 
00:55:25
Now, as far as what went on afterwards—now that was in the early spring, I believe... 
LS:	Yes.
CP: 	--I, of '72, I sort of lose my dates exactly, but it was sometime in the early spring—and then we started meeting.   And there was lot of, perhaps, kind of the usual problems when the big committee met, as to what we really were going to do--
LS:	Yes.
CP:	--what was the intent, and there was a lot of, sort of, spinning of wheels there for a bit, for a period.   And then, Jack Pelisek was named chairman of a, presumably, ad hoc committee that was going to re-write the statute.
LS:	Yes.   Now, this... these, that kind of detail is in your chapter. 
CP:	OK.
LS:	 I'm curious about the people, how they behaved, what the, sort of, what the line-ups were, in terms of what they wanted?   Ed Solberg was the chairman, Weaver the secretary...   Did Weaver really play any role in...? 
CP:	Basically, Solberg and Weaver and some of the others, I would have said, played almost no role. I don't want to suggest that they had nothing here that they did, but they never...    I'm sure they were, they would have attempted to veto anything that they actively opposed. 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	But, I think there was not enough in the, as things developed, to make them take a major role.
LS:	Now, are you just being polite, now?   Or, I mean, --
CP:	No, I think that's my memory of it.   No, I'm not just being polite. I just don't think, I just don't think, my memory is they just didn't take an active role.
LS:	I was just wondering if it was because they didn't...weren't strong enough, didn't have strong enough opinions. I don't know them...
CP:	Well, you see, initially, there was a lot of discussion about whether the committee should try to write a paper on, sort of, the philosophy of higher education in Wisconsin.   And whether you would do this and whether you would do that, and so forth and so on.   And then, in the long run, and certainly Jack Pelisek was by far the strongest voice in many respects in that committee, did the most work and all.   Jack was the one who somebody, and perhaps because he was a lawyer, his whole view was we re-write the statute, period.   We don't try to do all kinds of other things, that's not, there isn't any way to do it, we couldn't every get anywhere with it, we'll re-write the statute and that's it.   And, that is, of course, in fact, what they did. And then, but I don't remember how I wrote it in the chapter...   
00:58:28
The fact is I was not, there was no faculty member, neither I nor the WSU representative was originally appointed to that ad hoc committee that did the real re-writing. And we heard, as we were bound to hear, that there were some...that, you know, they were just, sort of, going ahead glibly without knowing a good many things that we felt they ought to know.   And so, there was going to be a meeting one day, I called up Mr. Pelisek and said "Jack I'm going to come to the next meeting," just to...you know, I could come as a, as part of the public, I was entitled to do that.   So, I said I was going to be there, at the next meeting of the committee. And he said, "Oh. Is Ray Bowen coming?" I said "Yes." He said, "Is Dave Cronon coming?" I said, "Yes."  And I said also the WSU faculty member is coming. And, he said "Hmm, be a full house." And so we went down to the meeting and he just included me and the WSU faculty member around the table that the committee was sitting at. And... 
LS:	I'm wondering why you weren't put on the committee to begin with? That seems to me preposterous--
CP:	Well...
LS:	--they wouldn't have [unclear]. 
CP:     ...you see...    I just don't think...   Mr. Solberg had been on the Board of Regents, I believe, of the WSU system. 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	And, I think that he wasn't very, he wasn't very knowledgeable or very...just wasn't conscious, didn't think in terms of having faculty members on this kind of a committee.   Maybe he, maybe his view of the role of the committee... I think it was less deliberate in the sense of just keeping us off than it was a kind of non-thinking about it. His sensitivity to this sort of thing simply wasn't there.
LS:	Weren't there people on the committee who, including yourself, who could've protested [unclear]?
CP:	Well, we didn't do anything about it at the time.  I guess we, I guess at that time we weren't, either, totally clear as to how the thing was going to progress. In fact, from the time I went to that first meeting--
LS:	Yes.
CP: 	--Jack Pelisek acted as if I and the WSU faculty member were, in fact, part of the committee.   And when the committee report was signed, he included us as members of the committee.   Now, all of that was done on his own initiative and never with a formal appointment from the, from Mr. Solberg. Now...
LS:	So, he was capable of independent action, obviously?
CP:	That's right. 
01:01:30
And he was...that's why I keep saying he was a strong man on the committee.   Now, I would also say something else, that I don't think I wrote.   He wrote, he operated a very interesting kind of committee situation.
LS:	You did say he gave everybody a chance to say...
CP:	Everybody had a chance to say whatever they wanted to say.   And he just let everybody talk.   And whether they were people who weren't on the committee, people who had interests of this kind or that kind, as we, in effect, sort of went down the statute and talked about areas of the statute. And we were permitted, everybody was permitted to, sort of, talk as they wanted to. And then, after several months of this, he then began to tie the thing together in a very tight and careful way, and I was tremendously impressed with his ability to handle this kind of desperate situation and yet get something that really went together in the end. 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	And, ...
LS:	Are you having...
CP:	No, that's alright.   
01:02:30
So that, now what were we interested on in the, on the statute?   Well...What they did was to take the old statute governing Madison...
LS:	Thirty-six.    Chapter 36.
CP:	Chapter 36, and simply went down the language of that chapter to try to make it make sense for the WSU system as well as the UW system. And the fact was, that as we went over it, that there were a number of things in it that no longer made sense for the UW system, even quite apart from merger itself.   
01:03:14	End of Tape 2, Side 2
Tape 3, Side 1
00:00:18
CP:	And, basically, there were only a few things that got into major arguments. Now, on the old WSU Chapter 37 had had a provision that seemed to read that once a faculty member had been given tenure, they had a permanent appointment regardless of anything. Now this was one of the things that we felt was not only unnecessary, but it didn't make any sense. And we opposed that it the new statute. We won on it. Some faculty members sued under that old provision, where they had been WSU faculty members with tenure and there was a lay-off, and the court disagreed with them and said under no circumstances could permanent mean permanent in that type of fashion. 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	So that, not only did we win, because this was our position, but we won because it simply made more sense.
LS:	You know, I'm curious as to... I guess we'd better change the tape.
[Break in tape]
00:01:50
LS:	Well, I would like to know whether the committee divided on who, people who were pro-UW-Madison and people who were--
CP:	Well, there certainly were some, there were certainly a pro-UW and anti-UW faction.    It didn't come out very strongly in many areas, it did in a few.   The issue, again, of institutional resources came up and we could, of course, refer back to the statute, the merger statute, and we did succeed in getting that, essentially, made a part of it.    There were strong differences between the WSU system and the UW system as to what tenure meant and how you could get tenure. The WSU system had, in effect, given tenure to anybody who served four years and had not been let go.   So that there was no, there didn't have to be a positive decision, an affirmative decision for tenure in the UW (shouldn't this be WSU?) system, merely being there four years without being told you wouldn't get tenure allowed you to have tenure.   Now, the Madison— and the whole UW system followed the same practice—had had a very strong view that there had to be an affirmative decision by the department that a person would be to, would get tenure. As you know, it's not only the department that makes the decision, but—and this was another issue that came up—but, in our system, the department makes the initial determination.   And while the department's recommendation for tenure can be vetoed there has never been a situation in the UW where a person could get tenure without the affirmative decision of the department. And this has been a fairly critical point and, of course, another way in which the independence and the faculty governance role within departments has been significant in the history of the university. Now, we don't give tenure for...well, we can give tenure any time we want to, but tenure doesn't have to be given for seven years.   So that a person could be here seven years and only in the seventh year be affirmed as a, affirmative action taken that they would be given tenure or even negative action.   So that this is the decision, in Madison, and so we felt that the four year tenure base in the WSU system was quite inadequate, did not do it adequately from the point of view of assuring a real probationary period for faculty, and did not make the department the determining group here.
LS:	Now, you're getting into what is already there, on the record, and I'm trying not... 
CP:	Oh, OK. Alright.
LS:	...to say ... it's hard, I know its...   But when you think about the interview, people listen to this have already read...    
00:05:27
I would like to know whether...   Well, Joe Nussbaum was on the committee. 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	What, I've heard some comments about him.   Did you get any sense of what sort of a person he was?   And how much influence he had? 
CP:	Well, actually, I knew Joe from Minnesota. He and I had...he had been working on a master's degree in Minnesota when I was working for a doctorate at Minnesota. So that Joe and I knew each other and had known each other over a period of some, let's see, almost 20 years. We hadn't been close during many of those years, but we had known each other and were on perfectly friendly terms. Now, Joe was the governor's man on the committee, there wasn't anybody, nobody ever questioned that assumption. He was head of DOA and he had been named by Lucey to head DOA and he was named by Lucey to this committee to make sure that Lucey's general view of merger took place. Now that was Joel's role. And, again, some of these issues were not of very great consequence to the governor. Some of these issues relative to tenure were not of great consequence to the governor. They were consequence to people on the committee and, in particular, they were consequence to people, to faculty members. But they weren't of great consequence to them. 
LS:	Yes. No, I can see that.
CP:	Now, I don't mean that they didn't...I mean, they would have had, if we had tried to make tenure automatic after one or two years, that might have been of consequence to the governor, but nobody was trying to do that sort of thing. And Madison was trying to make it a longer period. And so, there again, it was not of consequence there.
LS:	Was he interested in that sort of discussion, do you remember? Joe Nussbaum?
CP:	Oh, yes.    I think he...
LS:	Did he come to all the meetings?
CP:	Oh, sure, he had some interest in that. I think Joe tended, Joe has tended to be a very fine administrator, an administrator who wanted to have, to lead very precisely, and in that sense, wanted flexibility in terms of personnel. Therefore, from Joe's point of view, the more you could have flexibility in getting your own team together, the better.   And, so there were some other areas in which Joe was interested.   
00:08:10
Also, I remember very much in the—it must have been July 4,  '72—Dave Hanson and I worked out—and incidentally Dave Hanson, who was not on the committee, but was the attorney in the Chancellor's office—I worked with him very frequently on elements of this.   Partly because, to try to be sure about the legal language and for a variety of other reasons.   Of all the people outside the committee—and outside the University Committee—that I consulted with, there was no question Dave Hanson was the person I consulted with as much as anybody.    I did it for two reasons.   First of all, Dave is one of those lawyers—which don't always exist—would put into legal language whatever I wanted and not something he might want, it was what I wanted.   Now, he might have taken exception to something if, in fact, it had been directly contradictory to somebody saying the Chancellor wanted.   Because, the Chancellor...he did repre...he was working for the Chancellor. But, I think, with one possible exception—and again this was, it had to do with a role of students and it had to do with the problems of what you could and could not get through—with one possible exception, maybe two, there was never any difference between the Chancellor and myself on the general track we were taking.   Now, he might have operated differently and he might have done a number of things, that doesn't mean we were identical. But the general philosophy and track that I was on, I knew was in agreement with the Chancellor. There wasn't any particular reason it
wouldn't be, because he was concerned for the Madison campus, we were concerned for the Madison campus. So things that were of interest to Madison, specifically, we would have been in general agreement on.   Anyway, on that particular 4th of July, we were trying to hammer out the language as to the Chancellor's role, the president of the university's role, the Chancellor's role, the dean's role, the faculty role, the student role.   And, we would work in Ed's office and we called Joe Nussbaum, who was working downtown, and we exchanged views on how to write particular things. So that that language, however it's been subsequently interpreted or however it's been seen in the... that was language that was developed in that situation.   And our proposals then became what, in fact, the ad hoc committee accepted.
LS:	Was Joe Nussbaum...I’ve gotten the impression he was unsympathetic to the university.   This is just from one person, that could be...that he--
CP:	Well, whether people were...
LS:	--that he was sort of dangerous.
CP:	Yeah, who was sympathetic and what was, and you know, what constitutes sympathy is a very difficult thing.    
00:11:25
I had another connection—which I haven't even mentioned up to this point, with the Lucey administration—which I used on occasion, and that was Dave Adamany. 
LS:	Oh, yes, that's right.
CP:	Dave once had been a, had gotten his Ph.D. here while I was chairman and for a variety of reasons I knew Dave quite well.   Now, Dave...if the idea for merger came from anybody, it came from Dave. And, there was no question. Now, Dave Adamany and Pat Lucey would've have said they were sympathetic to Madison and Madison's problems. And, in a sense, I think they were absolutely honest in believing that. Now, others of us might not have thought that was a peculiar way to say, to show it. But that they believed it, generally speaking, I think is true. And, I think that in many respects, Joe fits into this same pattern. They had a view, that the state needed a single system, and they had a view that basically this was not going to hurt Madison, might in fact help Madison.  Especially to the extent that there were problems with the legislature downtown as a result of the campus friction and campus disturbances of the late '60s. So you were, you had to, you're always dealing with different people's view of what was what. 
00:13:05
And so, this is the way I would put it, Joe wasn't a big problem on the committee, from my point of view Most of the things that I was anxious to get into that legislation got in, and there were, there was very little that Madison wanted, that we didn't get.    In fact, I can't at the moment...well I know one thing, we had never counted, we had always counted as part of your tenure clock years when you were on leave. WSU did not count years on leave as part of the tenure clock. Well, they argued and argued about it, and at some point we gave in on that, feeling that that was not as major as some other issues that we really wanted to win.   And sometimes you can't, it just isn't sensible to argue everything down to the last minute. And, there was an attempt, also, to write in something for a review of faculty that, I don't have the wording, but it could have been very difficult for faculty members to have had the kind of review. It depended entirely on how the language was written, just how this would have turned out. Well, anyway, I did vote for it initially, for a whole series of reasons, but it worked out extremely well, because then I could ask for reconsideration. And, in the meantime, before I did ask for reconsideration, I had talked to enough members of the committee, that I knew I could get a majority vote.   And this was one of the times when Jack Pelisek was just enormously helpful. I remember, very much, that I had talked to him about reconsideration, and then he came in one morning, when there was going to be a meeting, he said, "Clara we don't have the votes today," and I said...or "you don't have the votes today"—I don't remember whether he said we or you—and I said "Well do I have to bring it up today?"   And he said, "No."   I said, "Ok." And then it went on for several, oh we had quite a number of meetings.   And I know that Dave Cronon was in the audience and Dave said he'd swear, he would have sworn, that Jack counted the votes and then turned to me and said "Clara you've been wanting to ask for reconsideration of something here and I haven't given you an opportunity yet.   Do you want to do it now?"   And I did, I made the reconsideration motion and somebody immediately said, "Well, you voted against that." 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	And Jack said, "Oh, no she didn't."   And, which I hadn't, I had voted for it, so I had a perfect right to make the reconsideration motion.   And then it passed with a nice margin of safety.   But this was, as I say, this was one of the ways   in which I found Jack extremely valuable. And, basically, sympathetic to Madison. I think Jack, Jack is very bright man and he doesn't take to fools kindly and I think he felt that the quality at Madison was something he wanted to help maintain, where it was feasible in this. 
00:16:32
LS:	Who was the problem on the committee?   Or a, who, what people?   Do you remember?
CP:	Well, it's hard to say who was a problem, because it certainly varied with issues. And, I suppose, more than anything else, the WSU representative and I were the ones who were most...
LS:	The focus – were you – of the point--
CP:	We were the focus of the 	...
LS: 	This was Marshall Wick, wasn't it?
CP:	Yes, Marshall Wick. Marshall and I probably were most often the ones that had differences.   But that may be exaggerating it, because there were, as you went through the law, there were peculiarities here and there and you might get a minority of people who wanted to change this or change that or add this or that to it, which didn't particularly make sense to people who were more knowledgeable in the university affairs.   And, of those people might have a lot of chance to talk, but they usually had very little role in any
decision.   One would have to go back over all those minutes and who voted for what, I suppose, to get the—and those minutes, I assume, are in the archives or will be in the archives, they were in the presidents office—to get the detail of this.   But I think as a whole most of the significant issues arose as to, rose relative... What ya, how much you put into the statute.   And as a whole I should add here, I represented the view that the less you put into the statute, the better.   And that, as far as faculty were concerned, Marshall Wick was much more apt to want to get things into the statute. If you recall,
the Madison campus had never had tenure as a statutory matter, it had been a regents rule.   And we would have been content to have left it that way. The WSU people were not content to leave it there, and Marshall Wick representing them, of course, wanted details in the statute.   And so, these sorts of things came up. I believe the statute as we wrote it provided for the legislature to...that they had a veto power on any decision of the university to eliminate a center or institution.   Now, that wasn't totally out of line with what the old statute had read, but there was no question the legislative members on the
committee wanted to be sure, in certain respects, that they, the legislature, was going to have its role here.   Another issue that I recall, and I don't know that we ever really wrote anything in the statute, there was an argument, for example, about transfer of credits. And...
LS:	Oh, yes. 	...
CP:	That, they wanted automatically, that every credit taken anywhere could be transferred anywhere else without any question. Well, and I'm trying to think who was the man who particularly had that point of view.   He was, I believe he was a legislator.
LS:	He's Hollander, Heinen and Molinaro.
CP:	Heinen. It was Heinen, had that point of view. And, as usual, he had a whole series of horrible examples. Well, of course, the trouble with that provision is that this can, it could make it necessary to transfer credits when a student was totally changing his program.   There were a whole number of issues that arise in this connection. Well, we had to reduce anything of that kind. So those were issues that came up. And there was also an issue that came up relative to the role of the UW system via vi the vocational system. And there was, there were people, or one or two people, who were looking at the vocational system and trying to get, make certain the university didn't overlap with the vocational system.   Now, there were others, including Mr. Holand... no Mr. Molinaro, who strongly felt that the problem lay in the other direction. And that it was the vocational schools that had deserted their mission and, rather than the university encroaching on the mission of the vocational school. So issues of that kind came up. 
00:21:58
LS:	Why did Dave Cronon come to the meetings?
CP:	Well, this was simply, I suppose you could say, Dave Cronon and Ray Bowen came to most of the meetings just to make sure that it was, that people were conscious that there were other people supportive of the position that I was taking.   There were others that, for instance, I think Music, Ed Music came most of the time as... Ed Music who is head of TOFF now, and who was vice-president under Marshall Wick, so that there were people like that who came. These were not meetings held, these were, I should say, these were meetings held more-or-less in a fishbowl so there was no reason anybody couldn't come.   Now, I vote...
LS:	Yeah, but I mean it must have been very time consuming [unclear]
CP:	Oh, it was time consuming. I voted, as Marshal Wick voted, as a...and this, of course, was when Jack Pelisek really established, even though we hadn't been officially appointed, he, we voted on the committee regularly. And he simply took us, coopted us, that's all there was to it. 
LS:	That's really extraordinary, isn't it. I mean, somebody later could have said, well these peoples votes don't count, because they're not
CP:	Yes, it could have been said, but it was not said.   And whether... Jack Pelisek was a very compelling chairman, and it would have taken a good deal of nerve to have raised that issue, since we were members of the overall committee.   And I suppose, Jack felt confident he could've legitimized the whole thing if he'd wanted to, by just making, getting Solberg to, officially to appoint us. But as far as I know, we were never officially appointed to the committee. We simply came, and voted, and operated, and got all the minutes, and notices, and everything else after the first couple of meetings or so.
00:23:54
LS:	You were lucky to have somebody like Pelisek as the chairman... 
CP:	Oh yes, Jack ...
LS:	 ...Who was responsible for that?   Do you know?
CP: 	Well, now...   You see, Pelisek was on the UW Board of Regents and this, again, was one of those things, I think he would have been the natural chairman of that committee, but there was some friction between him and the governor. And, so, the governor made Solberg chairman. But, there wasn't much question that Jack was almost the natural for this. His whole behavior and operation made that evident as things went on. And, I guess, Solberg didn't want it, wasn't interested, or something, in taking this big a role. Why he appointed Jack Pelisek as chairman...
LS: 	[Unclear]
CP:	Yes, John Solberg had appointed him chairman of this so called ad hoc committee...
LS:	You don't think Lucey could have manipulated it, at all, and said
we've got to have Pelisek as [unclear]--
CP:	No.   No, I don't think so.   Because if Lucey had really felt that way about it, he could have named Pelisek as chairman originally. 
LS:	Yeah.
CP:	You see, there was a constant balancing on that committee between UW and WSU and, supposedly...well certainly pro-merger, and to a limited degree, there was certainly anti-merger people in it.
00:25:20
LS:	Fish? Renk? Was either of them on the...
CP: 	Renk was on it. Was Fish?
LS: 	They were both on the –
CP: 	On the ad hoc—
LS:	--big committee. 
CP:	Yes they were both on the big committee. 
LS:	--but Renk was on the ad hoc committee.
CP:  	Wilber Renk was on the ad hoc committee, I know. 
LS:	Oh, what sort of a person, how did he behave...?
CP:	Well, Wilber was a pro-Madison person on it and he, of course, he was a good republican and not particularly pro-Lucey. And he was one of the ones that I was able to convince on the, on this one motion that we wanted to recommit and get a reconsider and get a change in vote.   And he was one of the ones who had originally voted for it and whom I remember having lunch with and convincing him that it was a poor one. That while review of faculty, even after they have tenure, might be desirable, it was undesirable to put it into the statute and get all the possible misinterpretations and possible court cases and so forth. He was generally, as I say, sympathetic to Madison. I suspect if you looked over the record you would find that he voted about the same as I did. I don't recall that in detail, and there probably were some instances when we didn't vote alike. But he voted pretty much with us on things.
LS:	Did you enjoy this?
CP:	Oh, yes.  It's fun to do that sort of thing. It was very time consuming and, as I said before, the dean and the Chancellor, both made a point of talking with me about it, and telling me, you know, to help me give up others things so I had time to do it.   Now, there were times when there wasn't much to do, but there were times when it took, you know, there were hours and hours when you went on and on with it. So it varied as to exactly the amount of time consumption that was here. As far as I was concerned, I think, this is one of the things Madison's always been good about, the administration's good about. They do reward you financially when you take on big burdens this way. And, I felt they did.
LS: 	This is the question I had asked you the other time of your service, various services to the university... 
00:27:45
Is there something more we should say about the merger and implementation committee, do you think? That is not in your chapter.
CP:     I don't, you know,...  Of course, I haven't re-read the chapter, so I don't recall exactly what's in it. I'm not sure that there's any major thing that's missing there, that we haven't discussed. As I said earlier, this is one of the ways you learn something about institutions.    I first learned about institutions, well I learned...  I suppose I'm sensitive to this, because of my training is in administration, so that I was conscious of problems even before I became chairman of the department. And I don't mean problems that are horrors or things you can't solve, but that you're conscious of the things that need to be considered and looked at.   And that, as chairman I knew this and dealt with it and got a feel for the college, got a feel for the department, in ways that you never quite do except as chairman.    There are things you learn even about your college that you never learn except by being chairman. 
00:28:56
As a member of the University Committee, of course, I had a great opportunity to learn a good deal about the institution as a whole and that's certainly interesting and valuable and gives you an appreciation of issues that you wouldn't otherwise have. And both in the merger committee and because I'd been on the North Central, am on the North Central higher education commission, not on the commission itself, but as a consultant advisor, and because I've reviewed other institutions, I became even more conscious than I was before of the very real role that departments have. And that most of the faculty governance that we talk so glibly about here in Madison is in the department. And this is where one can be most influential and where one can have a very very considerable role.   And I think I've mentioned, I don't know whether I mentioned on the tape here, that as chairman I knew the then chairman of the Harvard Department of Government. And he was out here one time, in fact, not too long after we had hired Austin Ranny, who was, of course, a very major appointment. And we got this curious, I'd had this very fascinating discussion with Merel Kingsod on the differences here, and he was very impressed, almost floored, by the fact that we had essentially made a major appointment, made a recommendation for a salary which was as high or higher than anybody in the department was getting, and that we could do that as an executive committee. Whereas, of course, at Harvard and in many of the private institutions, they needed public institutions.  It is the dean that makes all these decisions, it's the dean that makes every decision as to salaries.   And our role here in a department and as a faculty on salaries is fairly unprecedented around the country. 	?
LS:	Yeah.
CP: 	Now, anything else that you think of that I haven't covered here?
00:31:16	End of Tape 3, Side 1
Tape 3, Side 2
00:31:42
LS:	This is July 15th and this is our third session with Clara Penniman. So you want to add something to your discussion of the merger implementation committee?
CP:	Yes. Something came up recently at a luncheon conversation and I was reminded of the fact—also it's been very much in the legislature—for years, as anybody who's familiar with the statute knows, the state legislature, or state statutes passed by the legislature gave the individual legislators scholarships that they could use for any purpose they wanted to, for any person they wanted to, and historically many of these scholarships were the source of support for athletes coming into the football team or the basketball team or whatever.   And the tendency of most liberals and many people to sort of downgrade this whole idea, and this section actually came to the specific attention to the merger committee as we were looking at it.   And so, there was a sort of general view of the committee, well, we'll get rid of it.   At which point Ed Hales—who I believe is the first black ever to have been on the Board of Regents, and he was a member of the merger committee—and after all this kind of general discussion and assumption well, obviously, this is not a good item to have in the statute.   And Hales rather quietly said, "Well, you know, that's how I got to go to the university." And I couldn't help seeing that as a fact.   And one of the things about our society and our government is, that no matter how wrong-headed we've been at times we've always seemed to have left some kind of opening that somebody could push through. And in this case, however blacks might have been discriminated against in various ways, the fact was athletics and an athletic scholarship did provide openings for a minority.
LS:	Hmm. That must have, that is symbolic isn't?   And it must have been a...I suppose the whole committee reversed its position. 
CP:	That's right, the committee reversed its position. It's more...I think it's more...I kind of react against that word "symbolism" or "symbolic" because it almost is as if we're doing it for no other purpose. The idea here was, surely, not originally to take care of blacks, it was to take care of athletes.  And then in the development of time, in fact, it took care of black athletes.
LS:	I meant HE, himself, became suddenly a symbol of all the people who'd managed to get to the university.
CP:	Oh, he...   Oh, yes. Oh, yes, he...there's no question he did become a symbol of what was possible through this, sort of an opening and therefore, we as you suggested, we definitely reversed our position, we left the provision in. And I don't know that the legislature is going to end up taking out this year or not taking it out. But I've been tempted at times to call somebody or tell somebody this story and to suggest, maybe, it has a value that we don't always see, just on the surface.
LS: 	Hmm.   
00:35:06
Are there any other things you'd think of?
CP:	At the moment, I haven't thought of anything else, in terms of the merger committee, unless, you've got a question that...? 
LS:	Well, not really, unless there's something in how you came to understand or think about the other campuses as a consequence of your work on the committee, and I don't have anything in mind.
CP:     I suppose to some degree, in working on the committee, you did become a little more conscious of the varied roles that the different institutions performed. I thought that even more when I wrote that article, or chapter, in the Bogue and Taylor book. In a very real sense, after I had completed that chapter, I came to the conclusion, almost, that merger was inevitable. That there had been so many attempts over the years to achieve something of that kind.  And while one might, in some ways, regret that the merger didn't take place 15 years earlier before the great increase in size, when we might have gotten better planning of the number and ways in which the institutions were established. Now the basic institutions, of course, were already there. But many of the state universities or state colleges as they were then called, really weren't much more than high schools, and their whole campuses showed that kind of thing in the middle '50s.  And if we had had a merged system that then could have done a bit more planning as the great surge of students came in the '60s, we might have gotten a bit less competition just to outstrip each other institution to add, willy-nilly, and to have planned a bit more. Not only to take care of the surge of students, but to have anticipated the possibility that the numbers might well decline in some subsequent period. And that certain types of areas, or fields, required conditions that were only possible at one or two major institutions in the state.   Now that's all wishful thinking, because, of course, that's not what we did. 
LS: 	Yeah.
CP: 	 It is true, that there was in, around the middle ‘50s, that, of course, Milwaukee was added to the university system and that, surely, was a good move and it was good that it occurred early, because that gave a symbol, if you will—after I had objected to it earlier—to this, to the older system. And made certain that one of those institutions, even though it was now part of the UW, had a very significant role. And it does seem to me that in the largest city of the state, that was very important to do. 
LS: 	Hmm.
CP:	But, if we had included all of them earlier, there might have been better planning.    It's all a might have been.
LS:	You mean because they expanded as state colleges...
CP: 	They expanded as state colleges and--
LS:	...during the '60s and with all that [unclear]--
CP:     --eventually as state universities in the '60s. And there was real competition between the two systems as well as among institutions within the two systems. And, therefore, if you had gotten it at an early point, where everyone of those institutions would have gained something, there was almost inevitable, they were going to gain something in the '60s.   But there couldfve, they might not have gained, some of them would not have gained as much and, therefore, would not now be in the difficult position of: how do you pull back and reduce, when you've got a large plant and you've got the expectation that there, in the community as well as for individuals. This is obviously true in terms of the center system.    Even if you ignore or assume the other institutions that had existed for so many decades had continued, you surely wouldn't have gotten some of the centers that we got.   And there was, during that period, there was a kind of competition between the system. So that if UW put in a center somewhere, then the WSU people put in a center somewhere.   And you've got this throughout the state, and if you look at your center systems, and when they were established, you can easily see the tug and pull there.
00:40:25
LS:	I guess that's one of the reasons Harrington felt that he had to get the Green Bay and Parkside campuses in the UW system. That he had to, in order to balance it with the center system.
CP:	Well, I think that was, to some extent, true. And, it's also true, of course, that Green Bay and Parkside represented urban areas of the state, that didn't otherwise have anything very important in an educational institution. One of the regrets, perhaps, that one could easily make, is that the WSU people, for reasons that, in part, I think, lay with the kind of leadership that was in the institution, didn't develop Oshkosh in the Fox River Valley as a really significant institution. If Oshkosh had developed as a significant institution that, but early, that would have taken care of another major urban area with an important institution. As it is, or as it was, it remained very much a rather backwater college.
00:41:41
LS:	Weren't you in on the westside campus plan?
CP:	Not really.  I, because I was on the University...or as chairman of the University Committee, I had a small role on planning. 
LS:	No, this was before that. 
CP:	Well, then, I really wasn't. 
LS:	This was in the '60s.
CP:     I was on the Parking Committee in the '60s.
LS:	No, this wasn't...   Ok, I really thought you had.
CP:	If I was, I must admit I've managed to erase it from my memory.
LS:	Yes. Well, that was a possibility, having extra students, freshmen and sophomores, for instance, be on a campus out, a second campus out...
CP:	Yes, I did have some, I forgot...that's you remind me. Yes, I did have some minor role in that.    I don't...there was discussion of the possibility of putting a center or freshmen/sophomore campus out on, in one of the Charmany Farms or one of the other farms-- 
LS:	Yes, that's right.
CP: 	.--of the university that still existed in the Madison area. 
00:42:58
LS: 	Well, then let's go back to how you got...when you... You started in 1953 and what moved you towards administration first as department chairman? You...
CP:	Well, actually you, you don't really... there's no career line to department chairman--
LS:	No, I know.
CP:	 --here at the university.
LS:	That's, but that's ...
CP:	And, I can honestly say that I never expected to be department chairman, never even thought about being department chairman. And I think two things happened.    I think that I did serve as chairman of the fellowship committee—which at that time was one of the major, probably the major committee in the department—and I think I did that in a fashion that was very satisfactory to many of my colleagues. And secondly, there's a...you...one gets to be chairman, in any department, in part, because there are objections to other possible candidates.   And I think one has to say that in my case, as in many other people's cases, you, partly, get to be chairman because you are viewed with the most equanimity or the least antagonism of anybody in the, anybody else that's likely to be chairman. And I recall very vividly that... Leon Epstein was chairman and Leon asked me to have lunch with him one day and to my surprise he said to me that my colleagues would like me to take on the chairmanship. And I said, "Well, Leon, I must say this is something that I never expected to be asked to do." And he said, "Well, maybe that's why you're being asked to take it on." So, I think, that's about as good an explanation of how I became chairman as is possible for me to give. I think...chairmanships are very much an internal, politics, developmental matter, in any given department. And I did have the chairmanship, in a period of substantial growth. And as a whole, I think, my chairmanship went relatively smoothly.
00:45:34
LS:	How...?   Had the department been having the three year...? 
CP:	The three year term actually started with Leon Epstein, who just preceded me. Prior to that, the department was a good deal smaller and chairmen tended to have fairly indefinite terms.  Some of them ran—and they often seemed to run four, five, six, seven years—somewhat depending on how the person who was chairman felt about it. That is, as long as there was no big deal about it, and the individual was willing to continue the responsibility, that seemed to be what happened. And in my immediate predecessors, as I say, at first it was Leon Epstein, then it was Bill Young before that, and Jim McCamy before that, and Lewellen Van Cookin before that. And I believe Lewellen and Jim had it for four years each, and Bill had it, I believe seven years. Bill was a longer period.   And Leon, I think, reflecting in part the considerable change in the make-up of the department and the growth of the department generally, and the probability that there were going to be more available candidates for the chairmanship, I think, all of these things probably entered into his consideration. In any event, he declared that he would keep it for only three years and, more-or-less, established that as the precedent.   And it certainly has been the way in which we have operated since then.   Every chairman, beginning with Leon, has assumed that he has a respons- ..., he or she, has a responsibility for three years, and is going to be able to give it up at that time. 
LS:	Um-humm.
CP:	The chairman, as you know, is a chairman that's elected with the ballots going to the dean.   And the dean, technically, then has the appointing power, but is normally guided by the results of the election within the department.
00:47:55
LS:	You didn't have any Walter Mortons, or people of that sort, in your department?   Is that right?   Or did you?
CP:	No.   That's...no, that's pretty much true.   Certainly in the years through, oh I think, the years through the '60s.   Certainly in the years through my chairmanship.   We had a very smooth operating department with very few occasions on which there was any great division. And I, in fact, I think it was a year or two after I was chairman, that for the first time in my experience here, we actually had a formal vote on a tenure case and accepted the results of the formal vote.   Whereas before that, either in appointments or in promotions, we had a kind of, we always had a chance, everybody spoke their peace and there was a kind of consensus developed that, as I always said, we didn't allow somebody to simply veto what the, what the maj...what most people in the department wanted.   On the other hand, there was no tendency to rough, ride rough-shod over a minority.   So that, we usually came to an agreement on what, I can only say, is a consensus vote.   We didn't allow for an absolute veto by somebody in there. 
00:49:32
LS: 	So, what happened that you decided...?
CP:	Well, the first...  Well we had a case whether somebody should be promoted to tenure and there was considerable division within the department and the people who wanted him promoted, finally insisted on a vote. And, I remember, I protested on the grounds that it was not our norm. But, there was an insistence on the vote. And the people who protested it, and wanted the vote, lost on the vote by a very small number. It was a very evenly, in other words, it was a very evenly divided department But in the past whenever it was an even, more-or-less evenly divided department, then we would not have given tenure.   Well, as it turned out, of course, we didn't give tenure, because the more-or-less even division was just enough against giving tenure, that that's the way it worked out. But in the past we would have agreed to that, without the formal vote. Subsequently, of course, we have had formal votes and now today, of course, it's a requirement. It's a university requirement.
LS: 	Is it...?   I see.
CP:	Yes, this is... Well, this is all because of all the possibility of legal action, whether an individual was properly treated, who voted how, all of the rest of it.   So that for almost ten years now, this is, I've forgotten the exact year that that provision went in, but it certainly was sometime in the early '70s.   This became an absolute requirement. So, of course, our earlier, more informal methods of decision no longer applied.
00:51:14
LS:	During the '60s, the Political Science Department was split on the Vietnam War issue, wasn't it?
CP:	Well, yes.  Of course, I never thought the Vietnam War issue was something that ought to have been a part of the department consideration. And I think that was one of the problems in the university, that too many people decided that their politics ought to be a part of their university decision making. And didn't affect us, particularly, within the department.  I don't think there were, I don't recall any decisions made as a department that one could relate to the Vietnam War.
LS:	Well, but in the sense that the, there was a group who tended to be against the war or a generation gap, I guess I would say, or didn't work out that way...
CP:	I don't think it was a generation gap. No. I think that was one of the errors that was often made in discussion. Because there were certainly younger people who were on both sides as well as older people who were on both sides.    I don't think it was a clear generation gap.  I couldn't possibly reconstruct whether it was a majority or minority, but that you had people in all age groups on both sides, it seems to me it was true.
LS:	But, that somehow—I think in the History Department this is certainly true—that somehow there was a division in the department, even though it may not have affected decisions...that split departments in a way that they hadn't been.
CP:	I don't think that that was true in this department.  It's always hard to say "how do you mean split a department or didn't split a department." I'm taking it that there were differences of opinion, but there were always differences of opinion over political issues.   This one just managed or was manipulated to become a very highly explosive issue.  I suppose the greatest area where it, perhaps, showed up was in terms of the degree of discipline or approval or disapproval of discipline of student actions. But even that, I seldom became much of an issue within the, in departmental matters. I'm not quite sure whether I'm distinguishing here, but I think there is a fairly important distinction here. I suppose the other place showed up that some faculty members were much more operating, or cooperating, with students in objecting to the war than other department members were who took a more neutral or opposition stand to student matters. In my own case—and I've always said, I know that I was not dealing generally with the more radical student groups—but, I had one exp...well I had two experiences, I suppose. The first experience that I had was right at the time of the Dow thing. I was off the campus and came here to give a seminar, had no idea on any problems that existed, and came onto the campus into all the turmoil that had resulted from...  The campus was almost cleared at the point I came on and I met my seminar and the students were all pretty excited and reporting many of the clichés, and so forth.   So, since this was an administration seminar, I tried to pose it, knowing not very precisely what had actually occurred, but trying to pose the general problem to them on the grounds that if they were administrators what would they do and how would they handle it. And I managed to maintain the class from 3:30 to 5:15, or whenever it normally ended, by that kind of discussion. I also remember fairly vividly, one student saying- very irritated—that they were just a number on the campus, that as long as all they had was a computer number that's all they amounted to on the campus.
00:56:02
 	And I suggested that you might consider that a legitimate complaint if you never used computers for anything else, but unless they were willing to give up the use of computers for research and for all the things that I knew perfectly well they were using computers for, that I didn't think they had much basis for making a complaint of that kind. That the university's use of computer numbers and registration, recording grades, and all the rest of it, was pure convenience and a development that had come out of that type of handling of large numbers. And they, the students, obviously weren't going to give up their computers. So we sort of had a draw on that issue. The other time that I was more-or-less directly involved, was when, was right after the Cambodia invasion. And, again, for reasons I can't explain except coincidence, I had been in Colorado for a North Central Creditation visit and got back here Thursday night, and I think much of, most of the uproar had been on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. In any event, I got a notice from my seminar that they were much too upset to meet and to complete the work that they were supposed to complete, but they agreed to talk to me the next day. And so, the next day I went in and told them that they could only get a grade, as far as I was concerned, if they came to my house and carried on the seminar as we had planned to do. And, I remember talking for maybe ten-fifteen minutes, making the point that it was not...I wasn't discussing politics, I was merely trying to carry on the responsibility as a faculty member. And one of the young men finally said, "But, Ms. Penniman we're upset."   And I laughed and I said, "I'm upset, too."   And they then agreed to come to my house at six o'clock.   Well, what we did as a final thing in that seminar, and I still use it the technique, was to have them present a summary of their seminar papers, much as you would do at a scholarly meeting, and then have critics and commentators and all the rest.   So they were supposed to come to my house in the middle of the afternoon on Friday, and then be there Friday night and Saturday morning, till we were through.   And it was a class of about 18 people, I've forgotten, 15... 
LS: 	They were graduate students?
CP:	They were graduate students, 15, 18 people. And, anyway, they finally agreed to come, and they came, and it was a very tense evening. But they did what I expected them to do, and they gave summaries of their papers and we had critics and so forth. So then they were do back at 8:30 the next morning, as I recall it, anyway, I went out and got some donuts and made some coffee, so that when they arrived there were donuts and coffee.   Well, one of the girls arrived with donuts, too, she didn't know I was getting them and, of course, I didn't know she was.   But, anyway, she brought. Well, the morning session was then very very much more relaxed, very natural, in fact. And I had the feeling that I had done exactly right, that by getting off the campus, which we'd intended to do all along, and doing what was their normal kind of responsibility as students, that they'd all begun to, kind of, calm down and take things in stride. And when we got through, nobody made a move to leave, and they just sat there and chatted about everything under the sun. And finally, somebody finally suggested...said, "Well, I need to leave," and so most of them left.   But two asked if they could stay back and talk with me. And I said "Sure."   And so, as soon as the others had gone, why they said they wanted to apologize, and I said, "You don't owe me an apology, you did exactly what I asked you as students to do, that's all there is to it, you don't have to apologize to me for anything." Well, then we sat and chatted, and of course, they talked about everything, including the war, and the problems on the campus, and so on.   And this went on for an hour or so, and I didn't think we were getting anywhere on this. It was good for them, probably, but I didn't think it was important.
LS:	Did they, were they of the...among the people who protested the Cambodia...?
CP:	Yes, I think they were.   How actively, I never inquired.   But that they were on that general side?   Yes, that's the impression I had.   But I never inquired how actively they were involved.   So, I finally said, "Let's go get a hamburger."   And the next week every single student in that seminar came into my office, on one pretext or another, they never discussed what had happened, they never did anything, but they just found...they had some reason that they could think of to come in and talk with me. So, I was very convinced that I had done what was the appropriate thing to do. And I think if some other faculty members had followed that kind of a routine and recognized this as a teaching responsibility, I think we might have had fewer problems on the campus. But, everybody had their own approach.
01:01:40
LS:	The tension that...the previous... the first night was between them and you, or among them, or some--
CP:	Oh, I think it was just the natural tension of a situation in which they were still very high-strung over what had occurred on the campus, the various kinds of things that occurred.   They had, somehow, convinced themselves they didn't have to do this and would still get through and I had pushed them on this and insisted that's the only way they could get their credits.   And I think it was all those things. I didn't have the feeling it was particularly aimed at me, but just, almost the normal situation given all the past. And that by the next morning, they had begun to get back into the, into the norm of activity as a student.   And, therefore, they were just much...they were just about as natural as they could have been, in terms of their actions the following morning. 
01:02:48	End of Tape 3, Side 2
Tape 4, Side 1
00:00:03
CP:	I just couldn't have asked for anything better. It was a good group of students, good group of people. Now, as I would say, you don't get, generally, real radicals in the public administration field, and hence, I wasn't dealing with people who were all out leaders in any of the campus activities. That most of them were more-or-less in the anti-Cambodian group, I think, was true. But that's a thought and not something I ever tried to test. I didn't think it was my business. And
00:00:51
[Break in tape]
00:01:03
LS:   	You said they weren't TA's because they were master's degree... 
CP:	Yes, there could of been a graduate... there could of been a Ph.D. candidate or two in that seminar, I don't recall, but I don't believe there were any TAs in that group. I think that they were all masters degree candidates, all getting their degrees in the center for public policy and administration, all going into government service. And that's my memory of it, I don't believe there was a TA in the group. I have TAs occasionally in those seminars, but I don't believe it was true then. 
00:01:40
LS:	Did you have anything to do with any TAs during the TA strike? 
CP:	I had very little to do with the TAs during the T.A. strike because we don't use TAs in our graduate courses and I've been almost exclusively teaching graduate courses in the last 12 years. 
LS:	But some of them might have been TAs.
CP:	Yes, yes, they could of been. I guess I remember once, starting to come on the campus and a man whom I'm quite sure was a TA, and whom I knew quite well, said to me, simply because he was being protective and for no other reason, "I don't think you ought to go up on the hill because there's been difficulties and the police are there and there is tear gas." He said, "I think you really ought not." But this was a purely protective kind of statement by this young man, who had, I think he'd been up there or started up there and discovered there were problems. I really was pretty much, aside from those kinds of issues in that period, I had my own views about it.... 
LS:	What were they? 
CP:	What were what? 
LS:	Your views about the TA strike.
CP:	Oh no, no.    I didn't particularly mean views on the TA...  Well, I guess, my view on the TA strike, like my view on most of these things, is that I don't, didn't think the university was the appropriate forum. That if we are going to maintain universities of quality and distinction, you can't have them spending a great part of time into opposition to whatever particular issue, at any particular moment, the students or individual faculty members may oppose, that the government's doing. It's been clearly one of the very major problems in the German universities, the East German universities, but the West German universities, too. And some of the other universities around the world. I've listened to George Masi and others talk about some of the real horrors of quality of university, at the Free University of Berlin, for instance, where they really just are--, laying no pretence to being a university anymore. I've got... What people view as their...what they assume is their political views, is their freedom to do that and they're free to vote, to do all the other things that seem to...that are, hopefully, going to, from their point of view, hopefully going to achieve what they want. But, I just don't see interrupting the operation of the university as being a legitimate activity in this. People differ on this. I just don't happen to believe that's a legitimate activity.
00:04:50
LS:	Their grievances, in forming the TAA, in terms of pay and hours and that sort of thing.   Were you sympathetic with those?
CP:	Well, you know, I think, apparently, there were some departments where there were problems. In a department such as ours, where being a TA had previously been a major, one of the major achievements, and where you, I don't think we ever had more than a dozen or fourteen TAs at the very most. I don't recall the actual number, maybe it got up as high as twenty.   But we had a relatively small group of TAs with whom we, generally, interacted quite well and quite readily, so that this department is not a department that was...had reason to be as involved as some. I think the departments where you really had big difficulties, in that issues...were some of the language departments, and English, and so forth. Now, of course, I don't want to suggest that every large, department of large numbers of TAs had trouble. Obviously, chemistry has always stood out as not having trouble despite the fact that it had almost 100 TAs. We've had TAs organize, I believe the last strike with our TAs were pretty much involved. That had nothing to do, of course, with Vietnam. But I think that became almost an ideological matter of agreement that unions were, of themselves, something that was politically well to support. I think it had almost nothing to do... 
LS:	You mean by the TAs? 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	Or do you mean by the facility? 
CP:	No I'm talking about the TAs.
LS:	With the faculty... But, I mean, that the faculty and... Well, of course, Ed Young approved of the idea of their having the union. Or, at least recognized them.
CP:	I think that Ed had varied views on this, if any, on the situations. But I'm talking about the idea that our TAs in the last TA strike—what was it, three years ago, two years ago, whenever it was—our TAs were more united at that point, then they had been in any of the previous ones and I think the reason they supported the union was less for any benefits they expected or demanded or felt entitled to, then it was a view that it was desirable to support the idea of collective bargaining for TAs. But, that...I wasn't discussing faculty views here at all.
LS:	Yeah. no.   Because, obviously, the people who were in labor economics, for instance, would have a...more of an assumption that it was a reasonable thing to do, that the TAs might organize.   Then people in...who were not, themselves--
CP:	I think there, yeah, I think--
LS:	--as interested in the...
CP:	--there were variations on that.   Although, certainly, some of the labor economists I know are absolutely against faculty collective bargaining. So that they're...the mere fact that they... 
LS:	The whole faculty, yes.
CP:	Yeah.   So that...   Well, the two are to some degree intertwined, almost, inevitably.   Anyway, that's what I observed of the situation. But as I say, because I wasn't using TAs, wasn't, by that time was almost entirely related to the center, and the center itself, doing all graduate work, doesn't use TAs. I was always, sort of, more of an observer than a very tightly involved participant. I do know, I should add, that I do know colleagues who ceased to use TAs since they would not get themselves involved in all the detailed rules. And I know that happened on occasion. So that in...and I know that happened in other departments than this.  So that, in fact, the net result of much the TA collective bargaining and strikes, was to reduce the number of TA positions actually available.   And these were individual faculty member decisions, they were not anything that was a departmental decision, or a university decision, or anything else. But some people just didn't want to have to bother with all the rules and regulations they felt they'd be tangled up with.
LS:	Did Ed Young ever talk to you before he recognized the TAA or consult with you about what your views were?
CP:	No, I have no memory of that.   There wouldn't have been a particular reason to.   Now, I've forgotten when the TAA was actually... 
LS:	Well, 1969.
CP:	Yeah, alright.   Then there wasn't any reason I would have been involved.    I was trying to think, when I was on the University Committee there was some bargaining between the university and the TAA group.   And there was, then, there was discussion, in mostly, as I recall those discussions, it mostly had to do with issues that faculty members considered a faculty prerogative and only incidentally salary.   Because salary, of course, was always something that was, more-or-less, set up by the legislature. There were some other elements.
LS:	 [break in tape] about being made a vice-chancellor? 
CP: 	No, no, no, no, no, no, no.   Not at my age.
00:10:54
LS:	Well, no...I just am curious...   Many people do seem to feel that the TA's had legitimate grievances—although, many feel that in their own departments this wasn't the case, but--
CP:	I think that's right.
LS:	--in 1969—in '68 and '69—and I'm just wondering what's your attitude to that [unclear]?
CP:	Well, my trouble is that, I was one of these people that you heard all the discussions, but I wasn't involved. And, consequently, I feel like my memory could be faulty and, moreover, I'm repeating only what other people said.
LS:	But, I mean, you...you, yourself, didn't, at that time, say, "Well, yes they ought to have this or that or 	..."     You know, the inequities of pay among different departments, that sort of thing. 
CP:	Well, of course, you know, most people didn't know differences among departments.   And didn't know some of the ways in which a few departments handled it. And, repeatedly, the story has been that the...it was the language departments, and perhaps the English department, where they had large numbers of TAs, where they tended to put off much of the freshman teaching, or beginning teaching, on these people, and, perhaps, didn't always recompense them exactly the same as others. Now, part of the difficulty could have been, which could easily be said, was that the normal teaching load, in the language departments, at least, has frequently been somewhat higher—and I'm talking about faculty members—been somewhat higher than it has been in other departments.   And so, consequently, the faculties there may not have been as conscious that they were asking more, because they, themselves, were being asked to do a little more. When most departments had a three-course load, the language departments often had a four-course load.   And part of this reflected the old idea that much of the teaching was repetitious and required very little preparation, not the same kinds of preparation, that was required at other departments.   And, I think, even today that if you were to check around departments in this university, you would find that the teaching loads are not identical.
LS:	Oh, yes.    I know they're not.
CP:	And, I think that, perhaps, some of the problems the language departments had with their TAs came about because they were, in turn, putting on the TAs some of the kinds of burdens that they, themselves, had.    I don't know that, I only suspect it could be true.   But I'm really not the person to explore this in detail...
LS:	No, it was just your view.    I know, I mean, I --
CP:	There are other people that have much more detailed knowledge. I guess, having been one of these people who grew up in the New Deal period, etc., and believing on the one hand that industrial labor unions were absolutely necessary, and absolutely critical, that I do not feel the same way in professions and saw the...so neither support collective bargaining for faculty nor, necessarily, viewed the TAs as requiring that in order to get a fair deal. But, that was a kind of general view of it, without detailed knowledge.
00:14:42
LS:	Yeah. Could I push you a bit further on that?   The Mulvihill Report came out in 1968 on...detailing a number of steps that should be taken to improve the condition of the TAs.   And it's been one of the complaints, and many faculty members have spoken of it, that the faculty never dealt with this report, never made any effort to implement any of these...   Do you remember the Mulvihill Report and the...   Well, you must have been on the senate...or I mean, going to faculty meetings at that time...the senate ...
CP:	I'm, well, yes. I've forgotten what year the senate was established...
LS:	Not till the '70s sometime.
CP:	Was it '70, it was there by '71, I know, and just when before that... There, I have to admit that there have been so many faculty reports. I remember there was a Mulvihill Report.    I remember, I've always had great confidence in Bob Mulvihill’s general judgment.   And if the faculty felt that it had never been, they had never dealt with it, obviously, they could have if they'd wanted to.   Nobody can say you couldn't. 
LS:	You're saying “they” instead of “we.”
CP:	Well, I guess, I said they instead of we because I don't recall complaining about it, therefore I'm saying, those people who felt that they had not had a chance to discuss it, could have done so if they had wanted to. So this is the only reason I use the they/we here. 
LS:	Yeah, alright.
CP:	I think one of the problems you always get into in those things—and I suspect this is the answer in this case—is that you can look at a report like that, you can look at the recommendations, and you can say to yourself, "Well, our department's not involved, our department does this."   And I would say, that in terms of political science, we did...I'll bet we followed everything that was, or almost everything, that was recommended by that report.   But, as you know, university departments are little kingdoms and they don't want to be dictated to other little kingdoms, and they don't want to be dictated to.
LS:	But, this is different. Because this isn't individual department decisions. What he was recommending was a general faculty adoption of a number of rules which the—and the administration was involved—for instance, one was that the Chancellor would have a committee of TAs that would meet regularly. In fact, it may be that Ed Young actually did that.
CP:	I was going to say, I suspect that was adopted. I think he did adopt it. I still...
LS:	But that was just one of them.
CP:	I still go back to the proposition that very often in this university we get a report like that and bits of it will be adopted by the administration, and individual departments may adopt part of it. But we know, we have a strong tendency not to tell the other department what it ought to do.
00:17:37
LS:	Yeah, but...
CP:	And even though you see those as broad rules, but you see that isn't the way they would be translated in a faculty meeting.
LS:	Well, eventually the affirmative action program was done that way. 
CP: 	Sure, I know it was.   And it was...
LS:	And, I guess, the notion is that the same thing should have been done for the...at that time.
CP:	Well, you're...  I don't say whether it should or shouldn't. I'm not, I'm really not trying to deal with that problem...I’m trying to deal the procedural thing. It's a very important one, because we get into it in government. We...people who've got bright ideas as to how to improve a whole series of things, are quite willing to write rules and regulations for the other fellow.   But when the other fellow's got a different kind of sense of what he needs rules and regulations for, then all of a sudden my individual freedom and independence becomes very important, and I don't want those darn rules over there.   And, we do the same thing in the university. And historically, if you look at the rules of this campus, we have now gotten into a whole lot more rules than we ever had before.   And this is a protest in, I mean, there are people who protest as an interference with the department. And so, in the case of this report, I think these reports are important, and they often have an impact even when they don't get adopted as policy. Because, I think, for instance, certainly the TAs and any individual department could have brought up this report as a base for change. Certainly the, and I'm sure you're right, that Ed Young did adopt the idea of a TA committee and some of the things from the point that was practical for the
Chancellor's office to do. I'm sure he did it. I know, for instance, that Ed Young is very fond of Bob Mulvihill, trusts his judgment, has worked with him a lot. So that I would find it almost inconceivable that Ed wouldn't have taken on what he could do unilaterally.
LS: 	[Unclear.]
CP:	So, I suspect that's what happened. So what remains are the things that...were you telling every department they had to conform in this way? Or were you going to let them operate as they decided to achieve this? And I suspect the latter is true. And I think it's simply, again, represents this question of how much you're going to rule, centrally, via-vi the departments, and how much you're going to let the departments make their own decisions. Now, this didn't always work out well. I'm not defending it as producing, perhaps, the kind of results you would prefer. But, I think it's what happens.
LS:	But aren't there across the board rules, say for retirement? 
CP:	Oh, sure.
LS:	I mean, that's all I mean, that the faculty does absolve(?) to... 
CP:	Oh, yes.   But the more you get into that... Retirement hasn't very much to do with an individual department. It has very little to do... But the TA does have quite a bit to do with an individual department.    How you make your decisions about selecting your TAs, how much role an individual faculty member—who's going to use a TA—has in the selection of that TA. These sorts of things become very significant to the individual faculty member and to the department.   Now, in terms of hours and pay, I'm sufficiently hazy about that that I don't want to get into it.   Presumably, there always were concepts of what represented a third-time or half-time TA. We usually had third-time TAs, the language departments usually had half-time TAs and, I think, the English department usually had half-time TAs. Now, I'm also sure there was a kind of sense of how many hours were involved for these two different things, but I think it's entirely possible that what was expected to be accomplished might, in some cases, be less feasible than in others to be achieved within the hours that we're talking about here. 
LS:	Yes. That is sparrows, isn't it. 
CP:	Yes. I think it is. 
LS:	Well, that's a... 
CP:	Part of it's the machine.  
00:22:16
There are two elements of faculty governance here. One is the one, the division between the administration and the faculty. And given the way our faculty meetings, or faculty senates, or so on operate, there is nothing that a faculty member can't bring up for discussion, if he wishes to do so. How it will be handled, is a different question.    But that it can be brought up and some discussion take place...   But, there is not an issue of faculty governance between the administration and the faculty. But there's a issue of faculty governance within departments and... Our faculty governance, the most significant part of it is within departments. It's because of what is left to departments to determine that really constitutes the bulk of our important faculty governance. This is where decisions are made about hiring, promotions, salaries, etc., and the major decisions are all there. Well, naturally, many departments see as integral to that the hiring of TAs, the kinds of contracts they agree with them on, the kinds of notices they give them, and so on. Now some of this has been taken away from them. And, I'm sure, there are faculty members who feel that their role as a faculty member, in faculty governance, has been diminished because they have less control over what kind of a TA they have, and what kinds of roles they have with it. So, therefore, what I was simply trying to suggest before, is that you've got major differences among departments here in some things that may seem like very logical, and reasonable, and may be perfectly reasonable and rational. May affect different departments differently, and departments may suddenly, individuals in departments who normally may be on one side of an issue may suddenly revert, if they find that this is going to interfere with their role within their department. And it's this kind of thing that I was trying to suggest makes this distinction. When you get reports that may look like very good reports, very appropriate reports, very much on time, and then not much happens to them. And, especially, is of what...not much happens to them, it's something that is generally within the control of the faculty members. My guess is, that mostly this is when you don't want to come bang up against another department.   And they're very sensitive on that.   You go to senate meetings time after time and while a lot of the discussion and the points of view you can predict in advance, because there are always a few faculty members who like to talk and who always have their position.   But you'll be amused at times, that suddenly one of these people, that's always taken a particular position, has suddenly reverted and is on the opposite side of the issue.   Well, that usually means that this is something that affects them in their departmental capacity.   And, so that's my suspicion, without knowledge, here.   My suspicion of what happened in this case. 
00:25:32
LS:	This is your chairmanship-- 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	--that we’re... ’63 to ’66.
CP:	Well this, yes. The early '60s saw a tremendous expansion in the number of faculty members, in the number of students, in the amount of support.   Because we got substantial monies through the National Defense Education Act, this was very important to us. 
LS:	With the fellowships?
CP:	With the fellowships, and...   And then it was, also, the period in which we were suddenly having many opportunities for overseas research work. So that the emphasis of the demand for support was actually being fulfilled fairly well at that time because of the Ford money, the federal grant money, and always a little bit of money around the university that we seemed to get. I suppose there's never a time in which some people didn't want more research money than they had.   But my recollection, as chairman, was that we were— one of the problems we were dealing with was leaves of absence, and having to be sure we had coverage for it. So that, I do not have the sense that we were seriously involved in that. Now, there were two or three things. And I think the one thing happened after I was chairman. We, in recruiting, we had certain types of problems and one of the problems that we definitely had difficulty with was our course load, which tended to be higher than other institutions. So we play...we attempted to make a lot of adjustments—try to find ways in which faculty members could have some kind of support from this money or that money.  And, of course, there was some Rennebaum money coming in, there were some other funds coming from a few sources, so there was some money that the graduate school could assist us with. And, eventually, and I think it must have been by somewhat later, we did reduce the course load in effect, whether we officially did it or not. And this, we felt, was the most necessary thing we needed in order to recruit the quality of faculty members we. . .
LS:	Brought it down to two courses?
CP:	It's essentially two courses.    It, partly, was achieved by changing the amount of credits that you got for the courses, so that, whereas, a nine or ten credit load had been the norm in the past, which meant three courses, we stretch this to sort of an eight credit load, and by changing the amount of credits of certain courses, it tended to get toward eight credits.   But the effect of all of this was a two course load in...   And this was achieved, I think, after I was chairman and somewhat later in the '60s.   But that was one of the real problems we had in recruiting.   Just very definitely, it was the course load.   Because Harvard, and Yale, and Chicago are the places we generally competed with for faculty members, had a two course load, without any question.  In initial hiring, we had, I don't recall we had much trouble on salary, we could usually get a competitive salary at the initial hiring point.   What happened later was a different matter, but at the initial hiring point, we could get a competitive salary.   And, most people in their beginning aren't going to ask you great details about whether your retirement system is adequate or comparable to other people's retirement systems.   So on those issues we weren't too badly off.    It was almost entirely on the issue of course load and the general sense of what quality department this is, what are my chances of going ahead, being somebody here, you know, that sort of thing. But, I would say, the course load was more important to us in those years than the amount of research funds we had access to.  I, which I'm not saying weren't important, but I think, for recruiting, and I'm really thinking more for recruiting...I think that was more important.   
00:30:06
Now, there were...I do know that during my chairmanship, we...  And I think it was, maybe Leon had to initiate, but I think I did—we shifted out of the chairman's office the placement of graduate students who were finishing their degrees. Up to that point the chairman had, usually, been responsible for attempting, along with the major professor, of course, always the major professor.   But to the extent we attempted to operate a centralized placement activity for Ph.D. students, that had been done, more-or-less, in the chairman's office. And that shifted to a separate faculty member responsibility. After, and let's see, the fellowship thing was separate... The recruiting still was in the chairman's office. I did 90% of all the initial, maybe even higher –
00:31:12
[Break in tape]
00:31:35
CP:	--90% of all the initial, maybe even higher than that, of all the initial work in recruiting. I called chair...I remember particularly, a chairman at Yale with whom I was on very close terms, and actually there was one at Harvard, and I would just call. And one, I actually went out and did a field recruiting of meeting people in New York City, and meeting people in Cambridge, and so forth. I think that's about the only time that was ever done.   And there was some thought that it would be cheaper for a pre-screening by the chairman than bringing too many people here into Madison. But, that was it. Now, in subsequent years, and I don't know the time it became true, there has tended to be more a committee type of recruiting for different areas of the department.
00:32:35	End of Tape 4, Side 1
Tape 4, Side 2
00:32:50
LS:	Did you recruit new graduates students? Or were you trying to recruit more senior people?
CP:	We mostly recruited junior faculty. And that was true with a few exceptions.   Austin Raney had been recruited while Leon was chairman, and Murray Edelman, I guess, was recruited while I was chairman. And, subsequently, of course, we recruited—not when I was chairman—Matthew Holden, and a few others of a more senior level.   But our general policy had been to recruit at the beginning level and hope that they would work out well and would stay.
LS:	Your policy, what you expected them to become tenured [unclear].
CP:	That's right.   That's right.
LS:	I mean, some departments took a whole lot of people and didn't expect a lot of them.
CP:	No, we didn't...we were not in the practice of taking more junior people than we presumed we had tenure slots for.   So, theoretically, everybody who came here as, who was selected to come here as an assistant professor or an instructor, if he didn't have his doctorate, could get tenure here if he worked out satisfactory, he or she. It didn't have to, they didn't have to be competing against each other. In fact, I don't think we have, in the almost 30 years I've been here, I don't think we've ever had a situation where we actually had juniors competing against each other for a limited number of slots. Now, I don't say we won't reach that situation, although it still looks fairly respectable on it. But, either because some people dropped out, or some people weren't satisfactory, or this or that happened. And our intention was never to recruit more people than we had tenure slots for. We never practiced that, at any point since I've been here. And I know that varies with departments, and it varies in some part for a good reason. The English department used to do that in very substantial way, and I always... that was partly because they hired for freshmen teaching, even when they didn't use TAs there, and therefore, there was a limit to how long those people would stay in a freshmen teaching position. So they did it.   But we didn't have that kind of situation. 
00:35:24
Now, the only other thing that you might be interested in, that I think of—this is incidental, but nevertheless not totally unimportant—we moved from South Hall to North Hall... 
LS:	Yes.
CP:	--the fall that I was chairman. And, actually in the previous year, or at least previous four-five-six months, after it was evident I was going to become—well, I guess, it was even before it was evident I was going to become chairman—Leon had said to me one day, "Clara somehow, I think, women know more about buildings than men do, would you mind being a committee of one and sort of watching over the transfer to North Hall?"   And I said, sure, I didn't mind doing that. And, so I did. And, I think it's true, that this was the first building that got more than one color paint in it. I thought that was important.
LS: 	[You] were right. 
CP:	I was sick and tired of seeing only bump colors on all the walls. And I think...so we did.   We even matched a bit in terms of flooring and things like that, which didn't cost a bit extra.    It was just a matter of thinking about it. So I practically was in a situation where I'd go down to lunch at the Union, and every noon as I'd come back from lunch, I'd stop in here and... There was one wild thing that happened... I saw a fire hose that was seemingly going...or there was an area that looked like it...that was going into one of our faculty offices.   And I finally asked what was going in there, and they said, "the fire hose."   And I said, "Within a faculty office?" "Oh, yes." Well, it took a few calls, but the fire hose box didn't get built into the faculty office.   And there were a few things like that, that were kind of amusing and amazing. But it's true that I did find, for example, that—at least at that point—the building people never had a list of what ought to go into every single room. It seemed to be that would be obvious. And, for example, because I didn't pay attention to the classrooms—and there were two or three classrooms in here—when it got all done, it turned out there were no electric outlets, there were lights, but no electric outlets in the room. And there...and in some of the faculty offices, because these had originally been faculty...or had been classrooms, there were no screens on the windows. It seemed to me that those sorts of things I would have assumed, as a person looking over remodeling, that I would have a list of things that automatically had to be checked for every building. But I discovered, at least in 1963, that wasn't true.  I don't know what the situation is today. But, basically, we got a quite satisfactory building. I know Leon was very pleased with the results, and, I think, the department as a whole was pleased when we came into the building and the condition it was in. It was...we had simply gotten too big for South Hall, where the L&S deans office was, and mathematics had been in this building.   And, of course, everything has been in this building since it's the oldest building on the campus. And, so when...we took over when mathematics went into Van Vleck.
LS:	It seems to me I remember Leon saying something about—or somebody saying something about the—Political Science feeling that it had fallen through several holes in getting a building that...
CP:	Well, there had been discussion of whether the Social Science building—that has economics and sociology and anthropology—whether we would be housed there. Then there was a brief flurry of discussion of housing us with law, which law didn't take very kindly too.   And I...what happened in the case of the Social Science building, I'm not totally sure. There was some view that Bill Young and Jim McCamey didn't particularly want to go over there, and that they influenced that decision. Whatever was the facts in it, we did...then we did get this building and it has both the advantages and disadvantages of being the oldest building on the campus.  It's not all one way or the other.
LS:	Yes, I'm sure of that. It's got nice thick walls. 
CP:	That's right. It's got nice thick walls, and it's...it has many attractive aspects of it. And as chairman, I had the third floor corner office looking over the lake and the woods, so I didn't, exactly, complain about that. 
00:40:15
The other dramatic thing, in connection with that, was that we actually moved...we were in the processing of moving on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated and we were very much involved in that. I mean, we were all involved in getting moved and all, you know, all the upsetness that you get in that kind of...and we went...and several of us went down to the Union for lunch—which is where we generally ate lunch, at that time, in the department—and I still recall Jack Barbash came over and told us the news, and at that point they didn't know if he had died or not. And we... everybody sort of came wandering back to North Hall, and there was a telephone man here who was installing telephones and he had a radio and everybody kind of gathered around him.   And then when the news came that he had died, everybody just dispersed. It was a very interesting to see how people behave in that sort of situation. 
LS:	Hmm. Went home, you mean?
CP:	Yeah. Well, or dispersed around the building to their own offices or something.   There was almost, once it was known, there was no immediate general discussion.   They just sort of, as I said, dispersed.   Whether going home or to their offices or whatever they did at that stage.   So it—the move —has always had a certain drama connected with it. 
00:41:43
I'm not sure that I think of any other major events. If I were to re-read the department minutes for that period, I might be tempted to talk about some other things that happened during my chairmanship. But, I think, as a whole it went off fairly uneventfully except for the general growth that was going on throughout the university then. And, of course, budgets were loose. I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but I've always recalled the story that, when Ed Young was leaving I went over to say goodbye, and to tell him that we were, you know, that I'd appreciated working with him, and that I enjoyed him as dean, and all this sorts of things you normally say. And, Ed being Ed, first poo-pood it and then said, "Clara, it's awfully easy to be a good dean when budgets are going up and up." And, I've never forgotten that. It was true for chairmen, it was true for deans.  It's a much tougher thing today for deans and chairmen when budgets are very tight.
LS:	Yes, you have...by '66 it was still alright, wasn't it?
CP:	Oh, yes. Oh, the budgets continued, actually, to grow substantially until, almost, the middle '70s.
LS:	Oh, no.   Steven Kleene was dean when...   The early '70s there was a terrible period of [unclear].
CP: 	Well, alright.
LS:	I thought so too, but I've been looking at [unclear].
CP: 	Well, that may be true. And, of course, part of that would have been all the adjustment during merger, so that the exact way in which the budgets were being divided, and all these things, would have come up in those early years, which may have affected it. But, I'd sort of forgotten... I suspect if you actually looked at the budgets, they were still going up. But you did have increases, I mean, you had increased pressures on the budget, at that period, I'm sure. And, we...also, once you've had close to ten years of, or more than ten years of growing budgets, it's always hard to even take a stable budget. And that's...I think that's what was happening in part. But I don't want to be precise about the dates because I haven't looked at those figures recently.
00:44:09
LS:	You expressed some, when I mentioned Jim Scott the other day, you expressed some, and I said that I understood he'd left here because his wife wanted a job [unclear]. And you expressed some doubt about that, was there something?
CP:	Oh, I guess I shouldn't have expressed that. I suspect that was right. It was also obviously true, and this is not uncommon, Jim went back to where he got his Ph.D. And Yale was his...where he got his...earned his degree.   And, I think, there's always a certain kind of satisfaction in going out, and spreading your wings, and doing well enough that you get back to your home alma-mater, where your Ph.D. was earned. So, I think there was a good bit of that in Jim's view. That's all I meant on that.  
00:45:00
Dave Fellman and I were talking about it, I was mentioning the fact that you had asked the question as to why people seem to have less institutional loyalty. Assuming that's true, and that I had said I thought that part of this was the availability of grants and funds that people competed for nationally and Dave certainly agreed with me on that. He added, though, which I'm sure...that I know he's so obviously right, is that this was a period of expansion so the opportunities for people to move had expanded very greatly. He tells, that when he went to school in Nebraska in the mid-20s, that there were some very outstanding faculty members there, who would have been stars in many good institutions, but who had spent their whole life there. And the tendency has always been that where you get your first job can be extremely critical as to what kind of career you have. But that was peculiarly true in, it is peculiarly true when faculties are very very stable, or even decreasing. And there is very little competition, very few people reaching out to find somebody good. So that I think that your lessening of institutional loyalty, both is the question of the great availability, of much increased availability of grants, and therefore in national competition. But, also the fact that so many departments were looking around the country because they needed more people and they didn't want to get too unbalanced a staff with all just beginners.   And therefore, they were looking around the country, where is there somebody that's really done something that we'd be happy to have on our faculty. So, I think both those things were very important in the '60s and '70s. I don't know anything else on that particular area that you may want. 
LS:	I don't think of anything.
00:47:17
CP:	You ask what difference I saw between Ed Young and Leon Epstein, who were the two deans when I was chairman, and I would respond that for me, at least, the difference was probably minimal. Perhaps, more minimal than for some people because on the one hand Ed has always been a fairly relaxed administrator and he was certainly a relaxed dean in a period when budgets were very generous. And I had a very free and easy relationship with him. I'd heard stories of chairmen, years ago, dealing with a dean where they were practically shaking when they went to talk to him. That there was never, even remotely, my experience dealing with Ed Young or Leon Epstein. And, of course, as far as Leon was concerned, I'd worked with him so carefully, or so long, and he had been chairman of the department, so he knew the department so well, so that there too—and the budgets continued to be generous—there too there was a relaxed relationship, so that I don't ever remember having any conflict with either one of them. Certainly, there might have been a disagreement over some minor thing, but it must have been so minor that I...it completely escapes me as anything that I... I do remember once when Ed gave us a budget request arrangement where we could divide up a certain amount of money for salary increases, and then there was a second column in which you could put down, sort of, what you would like to see people get if money were not much of an object. And when I went over to talk to him about our budget he said "I gave you everything you asked for."   And I said, well I didn't think he'd quite done that, that there were these questions, and so forth, in my second column. And I still remember Ed just looking at me and saying "You, and your second column." But far from those kinds of obvious differences that anybody would have, and which are not serious from an administrators point of view, I can't recall any difficulty. Either in selection of faculty members, or in promotions, or in budget items. 
LS:	You were lucky.
CP:	Well, it was a budget period, in part, plus, of course, the quality of the deans.   But it was the budget period, you have to...that always has to recognized. I had some differences later when I was director of the center, then I dealt with Steven Kleene and occasionally, there, I felt I had to exert a great deal more pressure to get things that I thought the center ought to have. Which, of course, was not quite a department, and is not quite a department but kind of a semi-department. This type of situation, and it was new, it was an additional item in the budget, and so forth. I got along alright with Steve but given both the fact that the center was an additional item in the budget, the budgets were not quite as generous as they had been, for reasons such as that, I probably had to exert more pressure, or try to exert more pressure, to get closer to what I was seeking with Kleene than I did with the other two.
LS:	Did you shake in your boots when you went to Kleene?
CP:	No, I never shook in my boots when I went to see Steve Kleene. Occasionally one...
LS:	[Unclear] Sellery. 
CP:	Yes, I'm sure it was Sellery the reference was to.   The only problem with Steven Kleene was that he...his hearing was not...is not to good. And once in a while you might think you had an agreement with him that it turned out you didn't because he hadn't really heard you. And I did have one instance of that kind, and I remember laying out the problem then in a letter and getting a reply that under those circumstances yes, of course, it was
alright. And so, this was one of those physical handicap problems that you need to be aware of if the other person has it or if you have it.
00:51:53
LS:	Tell me how you organize your time.   Your work day, and then generally your time for research and for writing versus teaching, administration, and --
CP:	Well, I don't... I have some sense of organization, but I'm not sure I've as much sense of organization as one needs. I usually try to set certain days as being times that I would spend more on a research project, and other days that I would spend in preparation for teaching or teaching or dealing with students.   And, of course, in the times when I had administrative responsibilities I usually was teaching less, so that—and I would also have to add I didn't do too much in research in some of those periods—but, so you simply turned over...I simply turned over more time to administration and gave less time to some of these others. I think that, sometimes that can be very difficult, and I suppose, at least one of the years when I was—and perhaps it was the year I was chairman of the University Committee—the conflict in demands of the University Committee and the needs there, and the routine of administration after being director of the center, at times lessened the amount of opportunity that I had to either to prepare my own teaching or to talk with students in the center program. And, that told eventually... And that's simply when anybody, and in this case it was myself, has more demands than they can actually fulfill in a number of hours that they can work. And that occasionally happens, but most of the time, I think, most of us tend to put our teaching responsibilities, and our seeing student responsibilities, pretty much at the top, and then let our research work take second place. But that depends on the situations, you can't generalize completely. Sometimes if you're at the very...completing something, then you may try to shake off a bit of the responsibility on the teaching side. You do it, but you may not come as well prepared or have brought in all the newest information. But, those are circumstances that you try to control.
00:54:53
LS:	Do you have...do you always have a research project going?
 CP:	I think that, in some sense, I've always had a research project going. You occasionally...you're trying to think through what you want to do next, but most of the time, you've got some kind of overlap between what you're finishing and what you're thinking about.   And,...or you're working on...I've done...I did one book for, you know, the assignment kind of book that you use in a class, a regular textbook, and I did a chapter in a couple of books that were used as textbooks. Well, even when you're doing that sort of thing, you often are aware of areas that you don't know much about, and that there doesn't seem to be much writing on.   And, if something appeals to you, of that nature, then you sort of are thinking about what you can do on that for your next research or/and writing.    I haven't been a enormously productive scholar, on the other hand, if all the writing I had done were put together it would be, what I would consider, a respectable amount.   Not enormous, certainly I have colleagues who have done a great deal more in research and writing. Mine, I put at a kind of middle level.
00:56:28
LS:	Do you enjoy writing?   Do you find it difficult [unclear]--
CP:	I find writing difficult. I find, as most people do I suspect, it's great fun to go out and do the...much of the research work, whether it's library work or interviewing or whatever...organizing your material, and putting it together, and thinking about things.   But, when you have to sit down and really put it together—and I don't have great literary skill, and this always troubles me as I write—and I just don't find writing that much fun.    It's one of the things you have to do, there's no point in a research if you're not going to write it up. Nobody else is ever going to have any value from it, whatever value is there is going to be there only if you write it up. And, so, I don't find it easy to write, some people, I think, find it easier than I do.    I think most people find writing difficult to some extent.
LS:	Do you make drafts?   Do you--
CP: 	Normally, I do. Normally, I do make a draft, I type.   My writing is poor, and of course, in more recent years I've had some arthritis in my fingers and I find typing, I think on the typewriter. I also do, what is probably wasteful on the typewriter, I write something and I don't like it, and maybe I correct it, and then I retype the whole thing. Maybe if I were to learn...start over again, I'd learn some of these new computer methods of typing, and where you can make your changes right on the machine and can go ahead. And I think this would save time if one were to do it that way. The very modern word processing machines, which I've never used at all, apparently would help with some of this. I've tried dictating, but I can only do that in a limited fashion, for limited types of reports, or obviously, for letters and so forth.   They're just a few...I don't find dictating an easy way to think. I think, now again, I think that just as a word processing machines, or as typing as I do—I know people who have done all their writing by writing it out, Dave Fellman has done an enormous amount of writing, always writes his out. He never does...hand written. It's all hand written. Most of these are things you have to work at and at some stage I worked at composing on the typewriter till I find that the normal way to compose.    I'm sure if one were to work hard enough at it, one could learn to compose by dictating, and one certainly could learn to compose on these new word processing machines. But you do have to work at it. There's sort of...there are...seemingly there are different thought processes in your own ways of thinking, and in your brain, the way you operate, which way you're doing... I like to look at what I've just written and see whether that fits. I'm pretty good at outlining, I tend to have a fairly substantial outline of what I'm going from to where and points of that outline. I tend to be quite structural minded in that sense. I think it's valuable to do it that way and I think that value is pretty consistent for most people.   Though some types of work, I'm sure, some kinds of research and writing sort of just naturally fall into the...into a one, two, three arrangement, where other things, you've got to think it through much more carefully and see what's related to what.
01:00:42
LS: 	Do you...   [Break in tape.] You say you try to save a day, when you're writing can you do that?   Say, I'm going to write...you've got your research all done, can you say I'm going to write every Thursday or that sort of thing? 
CP:	Yes, I can usually do that, and that's what I try to do. In the summertime, of course, one has more...since I have never taught it here, in the summertime, and you asked earlier about support. For a whole variety of reasons, and sometimes there's a reward for administrative work or sometimes for this or that, I have never taught here in the summer.    I've had support here in the summer all the time—one summer I did teach at Johns Hopkins, and one summer I think I only got paid half-time. But other than that I have one way or another had support in the summer without teaching. Obviously, if you've got the flexibility of the summer, this helps a good deal in putting together and giving you some freedom in writing where you can start working on something and keep going on it. Because interruptions in writing time can be very difficult to handle. It just, if you’re really going well, you need to keep on. 
LS:	Yeah, that's what I should think.    That's why I wondered if you could do this.
CP:	Yes. Yes, you really have to keep going once you get into it. But you can break...I mean, some breaks don't hurt at all.   Sometimes it's wise to take a break, either because you know that you seem to be stopped and, therefore, you'd better get away from it a bit.   And one's always amazed at how some answers suddenly come to you when you haven't even been thinking about that, and I know it happens to me, and I'm sure it happens to everybody else. You've been writing something, you just don't see how you can go along with this particular direction, or there isn't anything here that –
01:02:48	End of Tape 4, Side 2
Tape 5, Side 1
00:00:00
CP:	You've been writing something, you just don't see how you can go along with this particular direction, or there isn't anything here that seems to make it. Your analysis just doesn't seem to add up. And you go leave it alone and do whatever other things you have to do, and all of a sudden, maybe in a day, maybe in two or three or four days later, you suddenly have an answer as to how you can handle that. 
00:00:30
And working with other faculty members, can sometimes help. I have not worked as closely, in my research and writing, with colleagues as some people do. In some respects, I'm doing more of it right at this point in time than I've done almost any other time in my life. Partly, I think, it's because I have been interested in something that, much of what I've been interested in has had to deal with tax administration in some sort or other. 
LS:	Do you just...?
CP:	Well, when I'm saying that about tax administration I mean it in this sense:   many of my colleagues had very little interest in the field, and I had done some work with economists on it—with Harold Groves here, with Walter Heller at Minnesota, and at times, in subsequent years, I've consulted with Bob Lapman. But his interests--
[Break in tape]
00:01:37
LS:	This is the beginning of Tape 5. [Break in tape.]
CP: 	In the earlier years, when I was here in the department—as I started to say—my interests were very substantially in the field of tax administration, and in a general sense, in tax policy.   And there were not too many people in the department, now almost no one, who had these interests. Consequently, partly because of my own personality, I suppose, and partly because of this topic, I tended to do most of my work alone and only consulted occasionally with others.   Probably more with Bill Young than with anybody else, occasionally with Jim McCamey, and in the years when Herb Jacob and Ira Shurkanski were here, occasionally with them. We have suddenly gotten several young people that have a somewhat overlapping and certainly complementary interest. And I'm finding it a real joy to work with John Witte and Bruce Wallin, who especially share some of these interests.   And while we're not doing anything collaboratively, it's fun to be able to share our interests and we both have strengths and weaknesses in what we are able to do.   But I am not a statistician and, hence, much of the work that one would do on a computer or in highly sophisticated statistical matters are, more-or-less, beyond my kin. With the result that, when I get into some areas of this kind that I need some assistance on—and yesterday was one of those days, I've got a very good project assistant who's working on it, and then John Witte spent an hour with us and he and I share enough background that I can be sure that what he is giving in technical information still produces the kind of data and the kind of analysis that I want. And this is a very satisfying sort of thing to do. 
LS:	I should think so.
CP:	And it's nice in these last few years that I'll be here, that I have people to work with of that kind.
LS:	That's one of the big problems with a field that is...which one's the only representative, that there isn't anybody to talk to.
00:04:20
CP:	Yes.  Now, of course...yes. Now my...other people had some kind of sense of it, but my detailed institutional sense of tax administration was... I remember, in fact, talking to Oliver Oldman from Harvard, back in the '50s, and he and I agreeing that we didn't think there were a half-a-dozen people in the country that shared our particular kind of focus.   That was an attempt to marry something of economic theory and the law and political policy in the tax field and administration. So that we were really encompassing at least four different directions in our attempt to develop what we were working on. And Oliver Oldman has continued to do a good bit of work. He's actually in the law school at Harvard, but he works, pretty much, in the same general direction and focus that I have had, and he's been helpful to me, on occasion, over the years because we do share that interest. 
LS:	Then your project assistant is...uses the computer?
CP:	The project assistant I have now—who is just getting his degree from economics, here, and who was there, apparently their number one student this year because he got Ely Award—does know computers, does know statistics beyond my knowledge of statistics, and altogether, is working out extremely well.   Besides being a very nice person.
LS:	How did you get him?
CP:	Well, he's a student here in the Center and his name is Dan Specard, and he is a student in the center here, so I'm paying him, and that's helping him.   And I certainly intend to give him some credit when I get this written up, because he's been very helpful in the way he's operated. 
00:06:28
LS:	You’re talking about collegiality, in a way, and this is something that Jim Scott spoke about. Or maybe I said that earlier, did I?   How much being, having a family that you have to go and take care of, interfered with it. He felt quite, while his wife was working on her degree. Do you, does that subject, the subject of collegiality in the department, does it, has it, do you feel that it's, was once good and has changed or is getting better or? 
CP:	I think that collegiality depends on everybody, of course, everybody that's involved. I think there is a sense in which collegiality was stronger when the department was smaller, in... But it would also be true that when the department was smaller there were fewer real distinct differences in research interests, there were differences in emphasis, but we didn't have quite as varied a faculty in research interests. And so, for each individual, both the individual's personality, the size of the department, and the people who may share particular interests, and that you feel comfortable working with. I think this has differed over the years, it is probably different for individual people. But in a very broad, general sense, I think you will... there was a...probably somewhat more of it when there was a small department. But we have, certainly, found—I have found, I should put it that way—I have found, in the recent years, because of some of the young people we've hired, especially with interests in the center, that there's been a very nice relationship, an easy inquiry of what they know about such-and-such or what I know...or they're asking me what I know about such-and-such, and nobody worrying that that's going to put you down because you don't know some particular thing. Just feeling very comfortable about asking questions and exchanging information. And so, I would say that, as far as I'm concerned it's gone a little bit in cycles, and this is sort of ending with a very good cycle.
00:09:00	End of Third Interview Session. 

Fourth Interview Session (July 27, 1981): Tapes 5-6
Continuation of Tape 5, Side 1
00:09:03
LS:	This is a continuation of the interview with Clara Penniman. This is July 27, and we're going to be talking about the University committee from 1971/2 to 1973/4. And you will begin by talking about the Wilson...talking about the central administration issues.   Alright. You don't need this, we're not using that. It's inactive.
CP:	Oh, I see.  With merger coming on and, by the time we're discussing this merger has been in place, there were a great many issues over how new administrators should be appointed. The Madison campus and, in fact, the UW system had pretty much taken on the Madison campus methods. The Madison campus had had a long tradition of faculty committees, as search and screen committees, with possibly...with one or two administrators, depending upon the level at which the appointment was to be made, responsible for producing a list of candidates from whom the appointing—or from which rather—the appointing officers would make their selection. The old WSU system had not had a standard practice of using search and screen committees in the same fashion, and the administration under President Weaver fumbled at first in terms of developing adequate guidelines, at least from the point of view of Madison, in making these appointments.   Further, there were problems of the meshing of the administrations between the old WSU system and the UW system, and there were one or two very major crises in which appointments were made by the administration—and I recall specifically the appointment of Don Percy as the vice-president for finance—that did not clear any faculty committee. And there were a good many questions raised over the procedure, and while nothing was redone, in terms of the particular... those particular appointments— including the Percy appointment—there was a procedure developed, then, for the system as a whole, and for system officials as well as for individual university officials, that included faculty input. And it was over these years that this development took place, until today the selection of system officials, that is officials that are going to be related in an importance sense to faculty concerns, do come through a list that is achieved by a faculty administrative committee. 
LS:	Hmm.
CP:	And, this is the major thing.   But there were a...there was a lot friction in those earliest months, even the...perhaps a year or two, over the ways in which it had been done.   And the real fact was the administration, and even the new board of regents—the combined board of regents—which, were again the WSU members were unacquainted or unused to as much faculty input as Madison was, simply didn't recognize problems that we thought were of considerable consequence.   The...in...there was also a question of just exactly how the regents, themselves, operated.   And they attempted...they wanted regents on committees, and we felt that as a general rule regents on committees were a mistake, because it was the regents that had, would have the final selection process in whatever list we proposed to them.   And, but although there was this friction, the general outcome was fairly satisfactory to Madison. But it did take a couple of years to achieve that.
00:13:41
LS:	Well, who was the...the friction was between the Madison faculty and the central administration.
CP: 	And central administration.
LS:	And what about the WSU faculty?   Did they...?
CP:	Well, we tried to encourage the WSU faculty to join us in this, and they did in a sense, eventually joint us. But it was clearly the Madison faculty and the UW system that led the criticism here, and pushed for a change in practice. This was, since, just as the WSU faculty weren't used to doing this thing, the WSU regents weren't used to it, so they weren't the ones that were initiating as much of the criticism as we were doing. 
00:14:26
LS:	And, who made the appointment of Don Percy? 
CP:	President Weaver.
LS:	Who had been a Madison president, or at least a central--
CP:	No.
LS:	--UW system president.
CP:	Yes. He had been a UW system president, but only for a very short period in time, and without having gotten back to the understanding of the Madison campus in the sense that, perhaps, at one time he may have had. 
LS:	Hmm. That was quite a slip, wasn't it?
CP:	We thought it was very significant, and we really had one or two very major confrontations with Mr. Weaver. And, as I said, I don't think it, it didn't effect any specific appointment that was in preparation, or was going through to the regents, or that the regents took action on. It did effect, however, the rules that were eventually hammered out in terms of search and screen for the system, so that today's regulations or rules, and, in fact, those that were developed by '73, I believe, did incorporate the kinds of means that we had always seen as the traditional way for Madison to gain a new administrator, in which the faculty input was substantial. The faculty input really means that the faculty committee—with some administrators on it—is able to look over possible candidates within the system and across the country and to screen out those candidates that the committee believes would not make satisfactory administrators, or would not satisfactorily fill the deanship, or the chancellor, or the top positions in adminis...in the system:  the vice-president for academic affairs, president, etc. And in those cases, to insist on having a review by the faculty and having only those candidates on the list that meet the standards that the faculty believes are critical here. 
LS:	Yeah. [Unclear]
00:16:50
CP:	I should add, there was also in this some power playing between people representing the UW system and those representing the WSU system. Some power playing as to who, out of the administration—out of the set of administrators —of the UW system and the WSU system, would have the positions.   And so, part of this was a power play between those two groups of people and, in fact, Mr. Weaver had insisted upon a search and screen procedure when it involved somebody from WSU, and had not insisted on it when it involved somebody from the UW. And so, we were really in the middle... playing something here in the midst of a power play where we were not directly involved.
LS:	Yes, that's curious. You mean, what you wanted, which was search and screen, he did enforce for the WSU people--
CP:	He tried to enforce for the WSU people.
LS:	--who weren't particularly concerned about it.
CP: 	Yes.  But didn't enforce it where there were UW people. So that the promotion of Mr. Percy was done unilaterally by Mr. Weaver. Whereas some of the other things he had tried to insist upon a search and screen procedure. 
LS:	But why?
CP:	Because, I think, he was trying to get as many UW system people into those positions as he could do. 
LS:	Yeah, ok, yeah.
CP:	And while we might have approved of some of the outcomes, we felt that it was...they were bad precedents being set and that we, regardless of the outcomes, it was critical that we make certain that the procedures be such that we could live with them in the future.
00:18:36
LS:	And, was it Don Percy that, specifically, that you objected to? Or just the--
CP:	Well, it was the Don Percy appointment that really alerted us to the problems here.
LS:	Oh, you mean he, was it he as a person...?   Would you have chosen somebody else, if you'd had the say in the matter?
CP:	The fact is, we weren't...we were very careful and, I think rightly, of not saying that we approved or disapproved of Don Percy. 
LS:	No, but I mean, I'm asking you whether you did...?
CP:	Actually, even that, I don't really have a distinct comment. Because our problem was procedure and not the individual. 
LS:	Oh.
CP:	And it was important to us on it. Now, some of us may not have been particular enthusiasts for Mr. Percy, but that was really beside the point, the point was the procedure.
00:19:26
LS: 	Oh, yeah, ok.    But, it is interesting. I think that Fred Harrington brought in Don Percy and Don Smith and Charles--
CP: 	No, Don Smith came in... No. Harrington did not bring in Don Smith. Don Smith was brought in by Weaver. 
LS:	Oh, alright.
CP:	He had known him from Minnesota. And, actually, Don Smith came in later, and he did come in under a—what we would consider—a standard search and screen procedure.
LS:	I see. You know they're both being Dons, and both being vice-presidents, one tends to—or at least I have—to equate them. 
CP:	Yes.
LS:	But, I suppose, they're not at all equatable, really. 
CP: 	Yes.  Now, I find difficulty with certainty.  I think Don Smith came in originally as academic vice-president. And Don Percy had been put into the executive vice-president, I think that was the title he had. He was, in fact, in charge of all of the budget and financial affairs of the university, which inevitably linked up with academic concerns. 
LS:	Hmm. Well, what...   Did you know him? 
CP:	Don Percy?
LS:	You must have had a lot of dealings with him?
00:20:40
CP:	Oh, I knew Don Percy and, of course, I knew Don Smith. Yes.
LS:	Well, how...what were they like as administrators and how did you rate them as...what they did for the UW or against it?
CP:	Well, Don Smith came... Actually, Don Smith had gotten his Ph.D. from Wisconsin.   And President Weaver had known him for many years, because Smith, I believe, got his Ph.D. under President Weaver's father when he was here. I think it was under Andrew Weaver, and then, he had had most of his career at the University of Minnesota. And President Weaver had begun his academic career at the University of Minnesota, and for a variety of reasons had known Don Smith quite well.   The general opinion of Don Smith, I believe, would be that his heart was always in the right place, that he understood what a good university was, and that he was sympathetic to Madison concerns, but like so many people in central administration, we weren't always sure that he took as strong steps to take care of Madison as we wanted. Now that's, no doubt, a very biased position, and one would need somebody more outside it than I am or than most Madison faculty people probably are.   As you know, Don Smith is now on the Madison faculty.   And there was no question of his competence, there was no...  I know, for example, that I wrote to a close friend of mine on the Minnesota faculty, and asked him about Don Smith, just for my own information. And you couldn't have gotten a more...a stronger endorsement of him than I had from this faculty friend at Minnesota. So, he...Don Smith, although he was definitely somebody President Weaver wanted, and sometimes one is always suspicious of whomever you that know an administrator wants very badly, but the fact is, there was nothing in Don Smith's career that faculty members could have objected to.   He had all the background, he had the kinds of distinction, he had the kind of knowledge, he had been vice-president at Minnesota for a period, so he had both the faculty academic training, experience, and administrative experience that were important.   He came here, and wanted to come here, probably, because of some personal reasons that made it, made the transfer from Minnesota desirable at his own terms. But they were entirely personal reasons, that had nothing to do with the quality. 
00:23:42
Now, there was one other problem with Don Smith, in the fact that he didn't come to take over that position until many appointments had been made. Appointments that, probably, Don Percy had a good deal of input in making.   But, whoever made them, they were the junior positions. So, when Don Smith came, he really had a staff in place--
LS:	Oh.
CP:	--and that's not necessarily the best way in which to take over, and really have control in an operation.
LS:	Yeah, I can imagine that. And he couldn't do much about it. 
CP:	Well, he didn't do much about it. I don't recall all of it. It seems to me that at the time the appointment was proposed and made, he was in the Far East on some kind of an activity, whether for AID—whom he was working with in Asia—I have forgotten. And he didn't come for some months, so that, in fact, much of the staffing was done prior to his arrival.
LS:	Do you have any names in mind?   Of people, like was it Wally Lemon or is that [unclear]?
CP:	No.  Wally Lemon was in a different... No, actually I can't think, now, who the people were.
LS:	Well, doesn't...
CP:	They were junior staff people, but I have forgotten. 
LS:	Okay.
CP:	I just know it was true. And if you looked at the listing payrolls you would find that when Don Smith arrived, there weren't many additions or changes that could have been related, specifically, to Don Smith. 
00:25:19
LS:	And then... So what about Don Percy, then?
CP:	Well, Don Percy is an interesting person in many ways. He is very bright, he had had substantial administrative experience. I always insisted he had a kind of love/hate relation as far as the faculty were concerned. He was contemptuous in some respects, the faculty didn't understand administration, didn't know how to do things that were necessary to be done in a university. On the other hand, I think, that he was always a bit uneasy, because he didn't have the academic qualifications that faculty members had. So that you've got a certain type of tension. And I've used this term, love/hate, in talking about him to a number of people. And, I think, most of the people I've mis-said it to, have agreed with me. 
LS:	Hmm.
CP:	That he found it very difficult sometimes not to be a little extreme or to do things because he just, in ways that tended to be very irritating to faculty members. His competence there was simply no question of. He had come here initially from the Department of Defense, I believe he'd been one of McNamara's, so-called, wiz-kids—at least in a junior sense he had been—and he came here, initially, to work with the mathematics defense contract. And then, he had worked with Ed Young in the L&S deans office, and then he had gone up into central administration. I believe Bob Clodius was the one that found him valuable, or made the appointment. There are always arguments that he was never very loyal to anybody. That people he worked with, that he sometimes undercut them if he saw the opportunity. I would certainly have to insist that I think he's bright and that he had real administrative skills.
00:27:35
LS:	I've heard it said, and I guess this is probably common knowledge, that he and Don Smith ran the administration, in effect.   That is that Weaver really wasn't-- 	.
CP:	I think most people felt that Weaver enjoyed the ceremonial, status side of the presidency much more than he enjoyed any of the give and take and necessity for administration.   And he got very upset—as he got upset with the university committee and the committee that represented the UW, the faculty UW system—he got very upset when we questioned his method of doing certain things.
LS:	Really?
CP: 	This was not appropriate. We weren't supposed to do that. And he went so far as, one time when we were in this crisis on the search and screen, to threaten to resign. And--
LS:	Was that a threat?   I mean, would you have minded?
CP:	Well, this was early, and we...   I'm not sure all of us would have minded, but we weren't exactly prepared to be the cause célèbre in this situation. Anyway, I don't really think he meant it. I think he was just trying to, he was just very irritated with us for taking the kinds of positions of criticism that we took. He's by no means the only president of universities, or other major institutions, who find the ceremonial status things more satisfying than having to get down and really make hard decisions on a variety of issues.   Because, inevitably if you make hard decisions— and I suppose, in a sense, inevitably even if you try not to have to make them— there are going to be people who don’t agree with you, and people who object fairly strenuously to what you- and be very critical. So, it was in that sense that he found the presidency distasteful. In the long run, he didn’t find it distasteful as long as he had things relatively smoothly. And it was one of the things of course that I’m sure accounted for the fact that the regents, in effect, did not make any real attempt to give him an extension after he reached 62, which had become the retirement age for major administrators. But the regents themselves were dividided. And there was of course another thing that was difficult in this. The board of regents had made the appointment of Mr. Weaver after they had in effect fired Harrington. They made the appointment of Mr. Weaver just before the election results, so that even though it was probably that Mr. Lucey was going to win the governorship, and even though that meant in all probability that you were going to have a different, you weren’t going to have as absolutely republican-dominated board of regents. And it might could mean several other things. Despite all of that, the regents in fact made the appointment within days before the election in 1970, and the resulting change in political structure in the state government at that point. And that put the thing in a bad light, so that Weaver came here, came almost immediately and uh-- 
00:31:14	End of Tape 5, Side 1
Tape 5, Side 2
00:31:29
LS:	This must’ve had an effect on how the whoel thing went.
CP:	Well, it did. Although I don’t know exactly what changes would’ve been made. It had nothing to do with merger. And of course part of the – what I was talking about - some of the power struggles there when merger occurred in the fall of ’71. The question of course was who was going to be president? And there really didn’t come an understanding, partly because of Mr. McPhee’s age and so-on. That it would be Mr. Weaver. And then there were apparently some deals made as to who would be the different vice presidents and so forth, all related to that merging of the two system top administrations.
00:32:25	
[Transcript unavailable for portion of interview] 
00:56:54
LS:	[Break in tape.] I, uh, your view of Borchers’ appointment, if you know anything about him. This is just because Cyrena Pondrom talked about him and I thought it would be interesting to know whether you had any [trails off.] He was vice chancellor for a while. He replaced Irv Shain, and he went to Washington. 
CP:	Oh, I’d really forgotten, but now that you say... I knew Borchers slightly.
LS:	No, he was working under Irv Shain I think. Anyway, he was uh.
CP:	Well, all I can say is Borchers had worked with us – of course he was here on the faculty, and he had worked with us on a number of faculty or University Committee subcommittees, so forth, that we had appointed. And my memory is that he normally did the, contributed what one would expect from a substantial member of the faculty. It seems to me, he was an associate dean of the graduate school at that point.
LS:	Yes, that’s right. He was, in charge of the hard sciences.
CP:	Yes, and, but we sometimes asked him to work with us on given policies. While I didn’t know Bob Borchers well, my impression is almost totally positive.   There may be something that I'm not thinking about, but my general impression is almost totally positive. That he was successful as associate dean, that he was helpful to us on problems that we brought up, that he, sometimes, he joined us, occasionally, on some of the faculty—inner university—faculty meetings or...yeah, faculty committee meetings that we had, and was valuable there.
00:58:50
LS:	I meant to ask you what the dinners, the dinner parties you had. 
CP:	(Laughter)  Well, there wasn't, there was no...I didn't even know that came out in the minutes... 
LS:	Yes, it does.
CP:	Well, alright. During the last, certainly the last two years, that I was on the University Committee—and perhaps even the first year—we felt that it was important, as a University Committee, to get in touch with certain people. Now, that included all members of the board of regents, it included certain leading legislators—those are the two groups that I think of particularly. And we decided to do that by having small suppers—we didn't invite them all at one time, on any occasion—having small suppers, or occasionally having a cocktail party, and we did it at my house. The other members of the University Committee thought, and obviously found, that very satisfactory. Because there was nobody else around. It was...I was the only one that would be there, in the house, and there was no question then of anybody running in and out, anything unrelated happening.   And so, we had these affairs, I forgot now just how many we had, but we had quite a number over time. I know—when I was talking about the legislators—we had both the Madison delegation as a whole, and then we had certain other leaders from the legislature, apart from the Madison delegation, as I recall. And, I think we had about three times, we divided the board of regents into three or four groups, and invited them.
LS:	Yes.  Oh, I see, it was that...  I could...that's what I couldn't figure out, you'd have three.   But it wasn't...you'd have the other three--
CP:	Yes, we'd just have three or four people...we didn't have the whole board of regents. 
LS:	--at once... 
CP:	No.
LS:	But you eventually had them all?   Is that right?
CP: 	We'd eventually tried to have that...   Oh, and then we also did that with the top central administration. We, I recall, we had Mr. Smith and Mr. Weaver, I know, and I've forgotten just who else.
LS:	Did you do this with wives?   I mean--
CP:	No, no, no.    Oh, no.
LS:	--did you have [unclear], this was just strictly business?
CP:	It was simply business, and it was simply the University Committee members.   And since I was a member of the University Committee, there was nobody else there but the University Committee members and these officials whom we invited. And, some of the time we talked very real business, and strategy, and tactics, and so forth and so on, sometimes we did it on a much more social basis. Partly, this probably differed in terms of whether we felt we were going to be able to work with these people closely or not.
LS:	Yeah.
CP:	But, I felt, and I think other members of the University Committee felt, that this was well worth doing. That we, too often, deal with people at such an arms length basis—I mean university does, oh and university faculty as represented by the University Committee—deal with them at such an arms length basis that we never get into as close a relationship as...   And the chit-chat kind of thing that's possible in this situation. So we, by no means, had formal agendas, we didn't insist on it being business. It varied, sometimes it would turn into a kind of business thing—well it was a supper party—after supper it might turn into a kind of business thing as we talked strategy and tactics. But other times, it didn't.    It just –
01:02:48	End of Tape 5, Side 2
Tape 6, Side 1
00:00:10
CP:	--differed. And that's the way it worked. And I think it was worth doing. 
LS:	Who cooked the dinners?
CP:	I did.  In some cases, they...  Well, some of the men would come in early and help, they were good about this.  I mean, they would come and help do the last minute kinds of things, and they would contribute the liquor, and they would contribute certain things.    I remember that the man from, Mr. Kellman, from the Ag college brought me very fancy potatoes once, it was some that the Ag colleges were working on. So they did things, there was no question most of these men knew how to help around the house and they helped. 
00:00:58
LS:	Yeah, yeah. The other question I'm curious about is, among the people who were on the University Committee with you...were you talked, you mentioned some particularly effective ones. Of course, Anatole Beck who stands out in all faculty senate meetings.   How was he as a University Committee... 
CP:	Well, Anatole's a very fascinating person, on a committee like that.
00:01:22
[Break in tape]
00:01:39
LS:	Yes, alright.
CP:	Well, talking about Anatole back on the committee.   He was certainly not the easiest person to get along with on the committee. On the other hand, it varied greatly as to what we were dealing with. There were certain things that as a matter of principle he always took a particular point of view. He tended, always, to be anti-administration.   No matter what the issue, if it was possible to be anti-administration, he was anti-administration.   This was almost an ideological commitment to be anti-administration. On the other hand, there were other issues where this was not an element of it and he was...he's intelligent, he can sometimes be very witty, indeed, there can be some very funny things. In fact, when they went to this very formal way of calculating leave for facuity... sick leave for faculty—which probably was necessary, but which was totally contrary to the Madison's way of doing things—he drew up an elaborate structure for us to form our own corporation. He was sure that we could...that the University Committee could handle it much more expeditiously, much cheaper, and, in the long run, make money out of it. And he had this thing all drawn out, we really enjoyed his entertainment on that, because he was probably right. And of course, he was a mathematician so he had it all worked out in highly mathematical terms. But, it really, it wasn't practical, but it was very witty, and interesting, and, in many respects, real. 
00:03:13
The one thing I would say—and this is probably interesting as far as historical—when Wilson Thiede was chairman of the committee, in the second year, and Anatole was on the committee, he had a tendency to try to find some way of adjusting differences between Anatole and the rest of the committee.   And I finally objected strenuously to this, because what it amounted to was five people compromising to meet something mid-way that was Anatole's point. And what was even worse, even after we'd agreed to it in the University Committee, Anatole was very likely to go into the faculty senate and oppose it. Even after he'd agreed to it in the University Committee. And, so, finally the rest of us got together and insisted to Wilson that he not do it that way.   We'd never had formal votes in the University Committee, but we pushed that, under the circumstances, whenever we had an issue of this kind—and a lots of issues weren't this kind—whenever we did, that Wilson was just going to have to call for a vote.   And if the vote was five to one, as it probably was going to be, then that's the way it was going to stand, and we weren't going to compromise our positions to satisfy Anatole.   When, in fact, it wasn't going anywhere anyway. And so, that's what we finally did, and that's the way we developed it.    But, you just had to learn to operate with Anatole, because he had some strengths, he is bright, he's just...has certain kinds of strong ideological positions.    In many respects, they're the kinds of positions that a good, somebody growing up in a good labor family in the '20s would have. They're not, by any means, necessarily positions one might take today.   That doesn't always show up in faculty meetings, but we had instances of where this would show up. Anyway, he was an interesting person to get acquainted with.
LS:	Huh.
00:05:26   
	You were going to say something about the Comp Lit department which was discussed--
CP:	Oh, yes. Well, we had to deal with the Comparative Literature department as previous committees have had to do. And it seems to me it's of some interest, because it demonstrates the difficulty the university has in a very much faculty run departmental system that we have here at Madison. That when you get a department that has weaknesses, there is no easy way to solve that.   Well, some departments have been weak and brought up. When a department is weak and cannot seem to reform itself, there is no easy way to succeed. The, in fact, in the case of the Comp Lit department, I believe at least two deans have put in chairmen from outside—and that one of those occurred while we were, while I was on the University Committee, when Steve Kleene came in and reviewed the problems with us and they put Fred Hubberman in as the dean.    Subsequently, I believe, Dave Cronon made Bob Mulvihill dean...
LS:	Chairman.
CP:	I mean, chairman, excuse me, in both cases it's chairman. That they made them chairman of the department, simply because the department could not operate as a department, there was so much internal dissention. And the problem in the Comp Lit department largely is internal dissention. They cannot agree among themselves on where they're going, they can't agree, often times, on appointments, they can't agree on promotions, they can't agree on salaries, they can't agree on where they're going. And part of the difficulty may be that Comp Lit has lost a good bit of the role it once had at this university.   There was a time when the Comp Lit department had very distinguished faculty members, when it...Filo Buck was very well respected in the Comp Lit department.  But, at that point none of the language departments offered literature in translation, and that has changed, so that you can get literature and translation in the vari...in the several language departments. And once that occurs, the exact role of the Comparative Literature department as distinct from English, and as distinct from the other language departments, is confused, and...  But the deans have shown great reservations in, for example, in limiting new appointments there, and yet that probably is one of the things that should have done. There was--
LS:	Reservations? You mean they were...they withheld from...
CP:	No, they were unable to withhold, they were unable to take a strong stand and not let them make appointments...
LS:	That's what I meant. They withheld from making a strong stand. 
CP:	Yeah.   They really didn't maintain...  And I...deans in retrospect often say, "Well, I really wasn't strong enough on that issue, I shouldn't have let them do this or that."   But, a series of deans are involved in this, certainly from Ed Young on, every dean has had to deal with that department. And no dean, I suspect, wants to brag about how he handled the situation. And there was a very real movement some—in the recent period—to eliminate the department. But one of the problems is that, that while some of the people there could easily find a home in another department in the university, there are some in the department that couldn't easily find a home, there really isn't very much place that they could go to. And so, deans have hesitated to take such a drastic step. And, I only mention all of this, because I do think it's illustrative that, when there is a weak...a really, really, truly weak department, with great dissention within it, and is...  There is no easy solution within our university administrative arrangements to repair that. And the solutions that are possible, deans hesitate to take, because they're really very drastic solutions.
LS:	Yes.  It's fascinating problem. 
00:10:07
I did want to ask you about the Chancellor's Council on the Status of Women, which was meeting all this time and at every agenda of the University Committee there's a statement...or I guess, the minutes, that problems having to do with grievances and that sort of thing, were turned over to this committee. But I've talked to Barbara Fowler—who was chairman of the committee for a year—and she said that in fact, they, the committee, never did anything.   That there was one...only one case ever actually referred to them. This is in connection with how much they were given to say from the administration. You know, how much power they were given. So I just wondered if you knew anything about it, had any views about it or...?
CP:	I have forgotten exactly the role that that committee was expected to have.   And I know we talked about this early in the tape, when we talked about some of the things that Cyrena Pondrom was doing.    I think the major thing I would say at this point is simply that those were the years in which affirmative action, so far as women were concerned—and that's, of course, only part of it's meaning, or charge—they were trying to deal, primarily, with women on the campus who they identified as not having, presumably, had as equitable treatment as they should have had.   Now, when I say they I'm talking about the administration, I'm talking about Cyrena Pondrom, and I suppose, to a degree, I'm talking about any other committee that had any input here. The attempt to deal with this equitably, of course, inevitably took on a kind of formula method. In other words, they would look at a woman who had been... woman salary who had been in a particular department X number of years and see how her salary compared with salaries of others in the department, and if it was out of line to insist that it should be adjusted.   And this occurred both for faculty women and for academic staff.   Any such formula is bound to create certain kinds of problems and unfairnesses. It didn't make much attempt to distinguish between women who maybe didn't contribute much in the department and, therefore, whose salary reflected the fact that they had not been...done well as scholars, and, perhaps, in some instances...other instances, included women who had done fairly substantially, and who had not been treated well. But they, also, would have only been brought up to whatever it seemed to be the equity point.    So, nevertheless, those sorts of actions, probably made the issue of salaries for women, in much more conscious matter for concern in departments.   And any department, in looking over its faculty salaries, became...was much more likely to be sure that no woman in that department had been differentially treated from men who had done equally well. 
LS:	Yeah.  But you don't...you're...on a specifically, on this committee, you don't have any--
CP:	No.
LS:	 --notion of what it's having any...
CP:	No, I really don't.    I really...    I think we rarely heard from that committee. We didn't hear from the administration. 	
LS:	Yes, there's no record of there ever...
CP:	No, I don't recall that they did. Some of the problems, of course, I think the committee was dealing with, with academic staff as much as with faculty, ...
LS:	No, it was meant to be... Well, I... 
CP:	It...I think it was both.
LS:	Maybe it was both. Alright.
CP:	Yes, I think we were dealing with both.
LS:	And, I guess, Barbara Fowler did once come to committee, but I don't think that it wasn't any...    I don't think	...
CP:	I believe that. In fact, I think we appointed the committee, and made Barbara chairman.   My memory is that I went to their meetings on occasion and that the discussion was almost always on academic staff. 
LS:	Huh.
CP:	But, you see, they came in a little later, after the...
LS:	Well, Shirley Abrahamson was the president for the first two years.
CP:	Was chairman?
LS:	And then Bar...chairman...and the Barbara Fowler and then it disbanded.
CP:	Oh. Well I'd even forgotten that Shirley Abrahamson had been on it. 
LS:	Yeah. So, you may be thinking there was another committee later. 
CP:	Now, Shirley always...  Yes. And Shirley, of course, both from her legal training and her whole background was very very good at that sort of thing. She was hard-nosed as to what you used as evidence, and hard-nosed as to what was quality, at the same time she was going to look after any women who had been mistreated.  She was very good at that sort of thing. 
00:15:17
LS:	Was it...so you... You, I'm sure, enjoyed your period on the University Committee?
CP: 	Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I guess, I said that almost at the beginning, that I found this very fascinating to work with the University Committee. 
LS:	I guess you did, yes.
CP:	It's an enormous amount of work, and it was an especially enormous amount of work in those years, because of the merger and, of course, because I was on the merger implementation study committee. All this together made for enormous amounts of work.   But it was fascinating, I enjoyed it, it certainly is one of the experiences I would hated to have thought of not having, now that I had it.
LS:	I was just wondering...
CP:	The experience on the University Committee, I'm sure, makes almost anybody who's had it, view the university differently once they've been there, and worked with the committee for the three years. Ed Young used to say, on occasion, partly, perhaps, because he had once chaired the University Committee, that if he had...he ought to have an ongoing committee of all the previous chairmen of the University Committee, that that would be the basis of getting the best advice that probably would be possible within the university. University Committees do vary in quality, accidentally, for a great many reasons.    I think I was privileged to serve with a very strong University Committee, almost all the time that I was...in fact, all the time I was there. Most of members of that University Committee both were good scholars, strong faculty members, many of them had been chairmen of their own departments, they came to this with a real interest in the university, with a real devotion to the university, and willing to spend a lot of time on it.   And this was very critical, it would have been possible to have had a much weaker University Committee at the time of merger than there was.   And I think the university was rewarded because it was the type of committee that...   Had the membership...
LS:	You think you actually had some effect on things?
CP:	Oh, yes.   Oh, yes.    I think we had some effect.    One can...
LS:	I just wondered if that might be a...if the University Committee might feel that it was treading water, and making passing motions, that didn't get...
CP:	No. No. We...I'm sure we didn't feel that way, and I doubt that most University Committees feel that way. I think we had a real impact. I think we had a real impact on the direction that the regents took, I think the fact that we got Madison funds, and grants, and bequests, really back under the control of Madison. I think we played a very significant role, there. 
LS:	But, Ed Young said that he did that. I mean... 
CP:	Alright. OK.   Ok, this is, of course, one of those things... How...the exact division of glory, or power, or what have you between the chancellor, at any given time, and the University Committee is no doubt hard to measure. I wouldn't even attempt to do it.   All would argue is, I'm sure, for example, on the search and screen—I can't believe that Ed Young would have taken any kind of particular role at that point. I, secondly, believe that even in the case of the funding, that we played an important role there, whether it would have been done otherwise, I wouldn't even want to be sure about it. A chancellor can't look after everything, number one—and neither can a University Committee—and number two, a chancellor often finds it advantageous to have a faculty committee that has a strong voice if there's agreement there. 
LS:	Yeah.
CP:	A chancellor with a faculty committee that's in agreement with him is much stronger than a chancellor without it.   And most of the time, while I was on the University Committee, we were in agreement. I suppose...there were only occasionally items where there was any major disagreement between the University Committee and the chancellor.   And, so that, I would say we reinforced each other. 
LS:	Yeah.
CP: 	And that that reinforcement was significant. And, secondly, there were some things—and I would say that the search and screen committee would be definitely one—where I think it's highly doubtful that the chancellor would have taken any action. He had too many other things to fight about, than to fight about whether or not there was a faculty input to search and screen at the central administration level. 
LS:	Yeah.
CP:	In those particular years, I think, he would have found that something he just couldn't make a big issue of.
00:20:16
LS:	You know, in that connection, I do...there has been some question about his appointment of Cyrena Pondrom as a vice-chancellor, and his not having used a search and screen committee. Was this...did...do you remember that? And how you reacted?
CP:	Yes. Well, of course, she wasn't originally appointed as a vice-chancellor, she had a different position. 
LS:	She was assistant to the chancellor. And then... 
CP:	Yes. And by the time she was appointed vice-chancellor, I've forgotten what year that occurred...
LS:	I think it was '75.
CP: 	Well, that was after I was there. I would have assumed that the University Committee would have protested.    I think they should have protested, whether they did or didn't, I don't know, because I wasn't there, then. But, I would say, yes, that should have been protested.
LS: 	But you don't remember your own reactions at that time.
CP:	Well, I wasn't on the committee... I mean the University Committee...
LS:	But, I mean, here, as a member of the faculty?
CP:	Well, I'm sure as that as a member of the faculty, I didn't like it. Because that's exactly the kind of situation where... And most of the time it's unnecessary, because, I would say, it would have taken a very very special committee—which I can't quite imagine—that would not have included Cyrena on a list. She was too obvious a candidate, and, I think, it would have been impractical and improbable for a committee to have omitted her. And, further more, the chancellor has a major input in just setting up a committee, so that he could obviously have set up a committee that was bound to include Cyrena Pondrom on the list. 
LS:	That's right. Yeah.
CP:	So that, I think, it was unnecessary, and I think it was unfortunate it happened. Clearly, it has not been a precedent that has been followed, because the subsequent vice-chancellor's have been cleared on the search and screen process.
00:22:10
LS:	Incidentally, she was also, she felt...she was a very strong candidate to be chancellor, when Irving Shain was made chancellor.
CP:	I doubt that. 
LS:	You do?
CP:	Yes. I would be willing to bet almost anything that she wasn't on the list that went to the president. I can't tell you that with absolute certainty, but I doubt it very very much.   And the committee that was established for the chancellor's search and screen, was not a committee that I would expect to have considered her a major candidate.
LS:	She said there were...she named two of the people whom she said were in favor of her candidacy, and I've forgotten who there were. 
CP: 	Well, of course, even two people on a committee that I'm sure had about seven or nine people on it, and even those two people who might have been sort of favorable to her, might well not...  Either they didn't have enough voice or they might well have been willing to see some other people as even stronger candidates. I simply doubt that she was on the formal list. 
LS:	Alright, you had...you...
00:23:21
CP: 	Oh, there's just one little story that I'd like to get into the record, because it has come up again.   When I was director of the center, and this would have been in 19—the year I'm talking about would have been 1971—I thought it would be nice to have the center named for Robert M. LaFollette. We don't have anything at the university named for Mr. LaFollette, and obviously, he has been a great political and leader of the state at the beginning of the century, and it's a little too bad that nothing had been named for him.   So, anyway, I made this as a proposal, it cleared the deans office, it cleared the chancellor's office, and it was cleared with the LaFollette family by Dave Hanson, who was then the lawyer in the chancellor's office—Dave was a good friend of Bronson LaFollette, and he cleared it with Bronson—how much more it was cleared, I don't know, in the LaFollette family. Anyway, the proposal was sent up to central administration by Ed Young and Don Percy decided that at that point it was not politically feasible. I thought that was very poor judgment, even though it was a, perhaps, a conservative board of regents, and there were some other things. But it was near the time of merger and Don didn't want to do it.   He wouldn't do it. In other words, he would not put the thing on the agenda, and he was in a position to stop it from going on the agenda. It must have been after Mr. Weaver was here, so that it was a question of Don having that kind of authority.   Well, I bring this up, because several things have happened since then, and at the moment there's an issue in the state budget...   Perhaps I ought to put a couple of other items...    Then in the spring of '81, we had a variety of affairs for Mr. Karl Runge, who was retiring, and at one of these Tom Loftus, who was in the Assembly, a majority leader, accused the university of being neglectful of LaFollette and not having done anything of this kind.   Well, at that point he was told by several others that there had been this attempt and that we were trying to revive it. In the meantime, there was a decision made, and an amendment made to the state budget by Mr. Harnish to have a LaFollette institute or school here at the university. But by the time it got into the state budget, it includes more than the center, and it has a great many other issues with it which change it from what I attempt to do ten years ago. What’s going to happen in the state budget, or what’s going to happen as a result of this proposal out of the legislature, I’m not sure. I think it would have been much better if it had been handled the way I attempted to do it initially. And, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future as to how the name issues, what kind of an institute is developed, etc.
00:27:03
LS:	That’s very interesting. How many [unclear] was it possible for somebody in Don Percy’s position to leave off of an agenda?
CP:	I don’t know. I don’t know. At any given regents meeting, certainly there were some selective things made that were not brought up. I’m sure they would normally have been the type of thing that this represented. It was something new, it was something that was not absolutely critical to be decided. It was something that had come up in the Madison campus. Although I think it would have gone through without anybody making any kind of issue at all. I think this is one of the cases where Don Percy simply misunderstood the politics of the state. I just can’t believe that a board of regents – even a republican board of regents, with the membership that board had – that they would have made any big deal out of this. I just don’t believe. But he thought they might, and he was treading very carefully in those days, and didn’t want to disturb anything that didn’t absolutely have to be brought up. I think that’s the best way of explaining it. But it has led, they have left a residue of problems that we may regret over time because the regents have, I mean, the legislature has in fact, as it now stands in the budget bill, interfered with some of the internal organization of the university in a fashion that we always dread the possibility. Probably. I’ll see. We always dread the possibility the administration is always scared to death if the legislature tries to say “we should establish an institute of such-and-such” or “we should do this or that.” Because that kind of internal organization decision-making at the legislature can create some very real problems.
LS:	Yes, I’m sure.
00:29:23	End of Tape 6, Side 1. End of Interview. 
END