Clark Kerr, 92; his ideas remade model of universities

Dr. Kerr died in his sleep after complications from a fall, according to the University of California at Berkeley.

"He clearly was one of the nation's leading figures in higher education, especially the scale at which he thought about higher education," said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, an umbrella organization for the nation's major universities. UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl said Dr. Kerr "is, without question, a legend in higher education."

Dr. Kerr, a labor economist who served as UC-Berkeley's first chancellor and then as the 12th president of the entire University of California system, was the chief architect of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which says that the top eighth of the state's high school graduates are eligible for the University of California and the top third for California State University, while anyone who can benefit from additional education can attend a community college.

The implied promise of the plan, adopted in 1960, is an affordable place in public higher education for all.

"Clark Kerr did for higher education what Henry Ford did for cars," Arthur Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College in New York, once wrote. "He mass-produced low-cost, quality education and research potential for a nation that hungered deeply for both. . . . [Dr. Kerr] not only built the modern University of California, he transformed American higher education."

"He was a thinker, a man of tremendous intellect who was generous with his ideas," said former US Secretary of State George Shultz, a fellow economist and longtime friend.

During his time as UC president, from 1958 to 1967, Dr. Kerr presided over the creation of three campuses -- UC-Irvine, UC-San Diego, and UC-Santa Cruz -- while clarifying the missions of the other six. He was proud that, while he was president, UC-Berkeley was rated the number one US graduate school, the first public university ever to top Harvard.

Meanwhile, his book, "The Uses of the University," published in 1963, changed the way America viewed the modern research institution, what Dr. Kerr called the "multiversity."

Despite these accomplishments, Dr. Kerr was perhaps best remembered for how his presidency ended, with his abrupt dismissal by the UC Board of Regents. In January 1967, the board, frustrated by Dr. Kerr's refusal to use force to quell student unrest on campus and worried about his tense relationship with newly elected Governor Ronald Reagan, voted 14-8 to fire him.

"I left the presidency just as I entered it, fired with enthusiasm," he quipped at the time. But Dr. Kerr would later describe his dismissal as the most painful event in his life.

"I was prepared to be fired," Dr. Kerr said in a 1997 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "But saying it was `effective immediately,' as though I was some kind of criminal who had to go to the guillotine instantly, that was a little too much for me."

In an investigative report published last year by the San Francisco Chronicle, it was disclosed that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover conspired with then-CIA Chief John McCone to covertly try to get Dr. Kerr fired because bureau officials disagreed with his policies.

After the publication of the Chronicle report, Dr. Kerr said that "the FBI came in and added some fuel to the flames."

"What happened might have happened anyway, but it was more likely with FBI support," he said.

Born in Stony Creek, Pa., Dr. Kerr was the son of Samuel and Caroline Kerr, both of whom had a reverence for learning and education. His mother, a milliner who had only gone up to the sixth grade, put off marriage for years until she had saved enough to pay for the college education of all her future children. His father, an apple farmer who had been the first member of his family to go to college, spoke four languages, held a master's degree from the University of Berlin, and taught his son the value of independent thought.

"He believed that nothing should be unanimous," Dr. Kerr once said. "If he found everybody else for something, he'd be against it on principle."

Dr. Kerr went to Swarthmore College and joined the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Later, he would credit his Quaker faith with helping him to endure hard times.