Mixed Legacy of Clark Kerr: A Personal View, The

Academe, Jul/Aug 2004 by Lustig, Jeff

What goes on in the classroom between teachers and students is at the core of the university. Its other functions and responsibilities are ancillary and supportive. ("If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery," Newman noted with impeccable logic, "I do not see why a University should have students.") No matter how large its student body or how immense its budget, a university that sacrifices its obligation to foster individual growth and cultivate cultural and political sensibilities in order to train students for jobs, or even undertake research, is a stunted institution. But Kerr's Uses, in addition to posing a threat for professional autonomy, lacked a firm commitment to liberal arts teaching.

I do not mean here to reduce Kerr to the dimensions of his theory. His was a large presence, and his course, again, ran through conflicted times. The contrast he provides with many current academic managers, moreover, is clear. Where he hoped for a postindustrial society, they openly look for "business leadership." Where he was a proven scholar and writer, many of them seek higher status by simple force of salary accretion. Where Kerr eagerly debated his ideas with colleagues, many leaders today have grown more manipulative, the former chancellor of my own system writing of the need for "leverage and constraint mechanisms . . . to effect change and improve client orientation in response to consumer and patron expectations."

Yet Clark Kerr played a major role clearing the path to where we now find ourselves. That merits attention from those who recognize the threats to higher education posed by the corporate university. And it also accounts for a certain pathos in Kerr's own career, unremarked in the recent eulogies. His tone, from the heights, was always of mastery. But his underlying message was ultimately drift. I was surprised when I first found running as a subtext through his famous book allusions to courtesans, profitable liaisons, and the "young lady from Kent/who . . . knew what it meant-but she went." But with his trademark lucidity, Kerr refused to dodge the implications of his approach, alluding to the world's oldest wage workers in an effort to reconcile his colleagues to becoming wage thinkers.

Both trades, among other things, wait upon the bidding of others. And Kerr's final advice in Uses unfortunately confirmed the point: "The process cannot be stopped. The results cannot be foreseen. It remains to adapt." Those who would honor the man's larger objectives and reclaim the university's rightful roles will have to find a different route, a bolder vision, and a more independent counsel than those that Kerr, for all his gifts, provided.

Jeff Lustig is professor of government at California State University Sacramento and a member of the executive committee of AAUP's Collective Bargaining Congress. He has been active at the campus and the statewide levels of the CSU faculty union, the California Faculty Association.