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By Seth Rosenfeld
The FBI’s first investigation of Kerr, in 1947, was routine enough. The Atomic Energy Commission wanted to hire the Berkeley professor of labor economics as a consultant. FBI agents duly reported comments on Kerr’s character. The postmistress in the rural Pennsylvania area where Kerr grew up said he was “a very refined chap, very quiet and reserved.” The dean of Swarthmore, where Kerr went to college, said Kerr was “not the passionate type, being more influenced by logic than emotion.” The dean of the University of Washington Business School, where Kerr taught during World War II, said he was “very open-minded.” The dean of Berkeley’s School of Business Administration called Kerr “patriotic in every way.” But, as the Cold War intensified, Kerr took some stands in defense of academic freedom that angered the FBI, which already was misusing powers that had been expanded--in the name of national defense--to target law-abiding citizens engaged in dissent. For example, while Kerr backed UC’s ban on employing Communist Party members as teachers and signed the regents’ special loyalty oath for UC staff, he eloquently defended professors who refused to sign on principle. And, as Berkeley’s first chancellor, in 1952 Kerr refused to cooperate with State Senator Hugh Burns’s program to screen out “subversive” faculty, saying the plan was based on innuendo and would chill academic pursuits. He declared in a campus speech, “I shall be eternally vigilant to preserve freedom of inquiry....” When Kerr became UC president in 1958, the head of the San Francisco FBI wrote Hoover: “Dr. Kerr has always given the impression that he is a ‘liberal’ in the educational field, that he is not in sympathy with loyalty oaths....” The memo quoted a Burns aide alleging that Kerr “might be an undercover communist” and a “dangerous radical.” It concluded: “Dr. Kerr…at best is a highly controversial figure in California education.” Hoover became furious at Kerr upon learning that UC’s 1959 English examination for applicants asked, “What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly and is unresponsive to public criticism?” And after UC students joined a 1960 protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee at San Francisco City Hall, the San Francisco FBI chief wrote Hoover, “Since Clark Kerr has become president, the situation on all campuses has deteriorated to the point where so-called academic freedom has become academic license.” As for the memo saying Kerr was “no good”: Hoover made the remark in 1961, after Kerr refused requests from conservatives to cancel a campus appearance by a prominent critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Kerr had invited the FBI to present an opposing view, but Hoover declined.) This incident led Kerr to make a statement that could be seen as his credo: “The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas. Thus it permits the freest expression of views.... Only in this way can it best serve American democracy.” But it was Kerr’s refusal to use force against the 1964 Free Speech Movement that triggered the FBI’s attack on him. As President Johnson was considering Kerr for Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare later that year, the bureau sent the White House a report deliberately containing allegations that Kerr had disloyal associations--even though the bureau already had found them to be false. The report also was loaded with comments from Kerr’s critics on and off campus. Johnson withdrew the offer. As a federal appeals court later ruled as a result of my FOIA lawsuits, the FBI unlawfully used the background report as a pretext to sabotage Kerr’s career “because FBI officials disagreed with his politics or his handling of administrative matters.” As Berkeley became a center of protest against the Vietnam War in 1965, Hoover and CIA Director John McCone ’22 leaked FBI reports on students, faculty, and three Democratic regents to regent Edwin Pauley ’23, the board’s harshest critic of Kerr’s handling of student demonstrations. But the FBI realized that while Edmund G. “Pat” Brown was governor, Pauley could not muster the votes to fire Kerr. Then Ronald Reagan defeated Brown in November 1966, charging that the administration had stood by as a “small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates … brought such shame to … a great university.” Within weeks, FBI officials secretly briefed Reagan about the campus. On January 20, 1967, at the first regents meeting attended by Reagan, Kerr was fired in a 14-8 vote that turned on the new governor’s appointees to the board. One of our last conversations occurred at the El Cerrito home where Kerr had lived during most of his years with UC. One wall of the house displayed framed editorial cartoons depicting Kerr’s battles with the students and Reagan; from another hung a Japanese print of a windblown tree rooted on a cliff. As he reviewed FBI documents showing that some of the nation’s most powerful officials had secretly joined with his campus critics in an effort to topple him, he said he was proud he had defended academic freedom--especially when it was dangerous to do so--because it was best for UC and the nation. Seth Rosenfeld ’81 is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. His award-winning story, “The Campus Files: Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare,” can be seen at sfgate.com/campus. |
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