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By Neil J. Smelser Earning My Degree, Memoirs of an American University President by David Pierpont Gardner University of California Press, April 2005 530 pages, hardcover, $49.95 In 2001 Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, published a memoir in which he recounted his philosophy, his work building the University, and his struggles with the tumultuous conflicts of his time. Now David Pierpont Gardner, another extraordinary leader who served as UC president from 1983 to 1992, has written a work that reveals much about the man, the artistry of his leadership, and the history of the University he led. Gardner’s years at Berkeley coincided with my own. I arrived on campus as a young faculty member in 1958 and retired in 1994. Gardner began his graduate studies in Berkeley’s School of Education in 1962 and retired in 1992. During his presidency I served as faculty representative to the Regents, and in other posts. We worked closely together, became friends, and I advised him on this book at many stages. Gardner’s memoir covers his boyhood in Berkeley, his Mormon background, his education, his work with the California Alumni Association, his time at UC Santa Barbara, his triumphal decade as president of the University of Utah, his role in producing the inluential report A Nation at Risk, and, of course, his years as UC president. The book ends with an account of Gardner’s leadership of the Hewlett Foundation and some personal reflections on his life. Gardner was a master in the art of conflict management. In normal times, his job as assistant to the chancellor at Santa Barbara would have been important though routine, but history intervened. Beginning in 1966, the campus was swept into the heat of political protests that included the burning of a Bank of America building. The young Gardner was propelled into the center of these events, partly because of his superiors’ distaste for dealing with them, and partly because even by then he’d displayed unusual skill and sensibility. The trademarks of Gardner’s style as president—to listen, analyze, and confront honestly rather than with deceit, and, above all, his coolness and rationality in irrational situations—were all evident there. Gardner developed his bold leadership style during his presidency of the University of Utah. There, he successfully pushed one initiative after another, often against poor odds. He did so by assembling rational arguments, by well-timed admonitions, and by sheer doggedness. As its new president, Gardner also took the University of California by storm. He visited every campus in the months after his appointment. I witnessed meeting after meeting in which he would present his views and plans, and draw audiences to his way of thinking. Almost all of these meetings ended with igorous applause—even those with faculty who are often stingy in granting appreciation to administrators. These early months gave his presidency great momentum. His greatest triumph was securing a 32 percent increase in UC’s 1984-85 budget—a dramatic reversal of 16 years of budgetary hammering. This was one of the great coups in the history of the University. Gardner went against the advice of his key staff members, who were convinced that such a request would be ridiculed and rejected. I credit this victory to several factors: a public awareness that the University had been unduly bludgeoned by Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown; a state economy that was beginning a great upsurge; a new president with unusual confidence, enthusiasm, and bravado; and a governor who had developed almost sacred feelings about the value of higher education in a democratic society. Gardner’s triumph, along with similar but less spectacular pacts with the state engineered by Richard Atkinson and Robert Dynes, have worked to keep the University of California in its premier place among the universities of the world. In 1988, Gardner’s plan for selective campus expansion and the opening of three new campuses was equally bold, but crumbled in the financial crisis of the early 1990s. The ultimate result was only within-system expansion and the single new Merced campus—an important move, but completely inadequate to answer the long-term threat of demography and finances to overwhelm the Master Plan. The state’s long-term aacumulation of more and more budgetary entitlements and responsibilities means that higher education (a weakish constituency in any event) may expect an ever-diminishing piece of the public pie. This movement is very widespread. If this history continues, then though he favored moderate sanctions against episodes such as Gardner’s budgetary triumph will have to be regarded as heroic blips in a process that is transforming, if not eradicating, public higher education. Gardner describes many initiatives undertaken in his administration—including the Keck optical telescope, the creation of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at San Diego, several new research centers, and improvements in undergraduate education—in which he was either mover or facilitator. He also describes various “bumps and barriers,” such as the recurring controversy over UC’s management of the weapons laboratories, the conflict over animal rights research, and the tempest over the issue of checkoff student contributions to CALPIRG (in which he locked horns with Ralph Nader). In almost all these matters the president either got his way or led the way into a compromise. His one defeat was over UC divestment in South Africa. Gardner believed that the University should not take offcial stands on partisan issues, even though he favored more moderate sanctions. His loss was all but guaranteed when Governor Deukmejian, engaged in a gubernatorial election battle with Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, supported divestment. Much of Gardner’s success with the Regents and other groups rested on his leadership style. Those who knew him stress his fastidious preparation and mastery of facts and issues, his capacity to synthesize, his reasoned discourse (the quip was “He thinks in full paragraphs”), and persuasive intervention at the right moment of consensus formation. In the exercise of these skills, he was, in President Jack Peltason’s words, “a virtuoso at work.” The chapter entitled “Tragedy and Tribulation” refers to the death of Gardner’s beloved wife Libby and the disastrous end to his presidency. When Libby died of multiple myeloma, Gardner was shattered, and his decision to resign the presidency was the direct outcome of his grief. This personal tragedy was followed by a public outcry over Gardner’s retirement benefits—and that of a few others. This tempest was a surprise at the end of a highly successful presidency. As things turned out, the retirement package was ill considered and ill timed. The years 1990-93 had been among the most dismal years for morale in the history of the University, despite heroic efforts he made to stem the damage. The 1991-92 budget was savage, spurring a hiring freeze and layoffs; a freeze in cost-of-living and merit increases; a 40 percent rise in student fees; and a reduction in admissions. The 1992-93 budget saw a 24 percent loss in state funding. When the recommendations for Gardner’s benefits were first approved there was little reaction, but in subsequent weeks two Regents and State Senator Quentin Kopp attacked Gardner over what they called an excessive package, and various interested constituencies and the press magnified the imbroglio. Gardner contemplated, but was talked out of, accelerating his resignation. In fact, the retirement package was within Regents policy guidelines and would not have been regarded as excessive in other times. At the time of the crisis, Gardner displayed his customary coolness, self-control, and rationality. These qualities, however, which were his virtues and strength for so long, could not douse the flames. The great “tragedy” of these “tribulations” is that they blemished and obscured, for a long time to come, one of the most brilliant presidencies in the history of the University. |
 Gardner believed that the University should not take official stands on partisan issues, even though he favored moderate sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
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