Oral History Center University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Earl “Bud” Cheit

Earl Cheit: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate Athletics

at UC Berkeley: 1960 - 2014

Interviews conducted by

John Cummins

In 2010- 2011

Copyright © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California

Since 1954 the Oral History Center has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed

witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation.

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*********************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The

Regents of the University of California and Earl F. Cheit dated February 12, 2012.

The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights

in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft

Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from

this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long

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Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The

Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of

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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Earl “Bud”

Cheit, “Earl Cheit: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate

Athletics at UC Berkeley: 1960 – 2014” conducted by John Cummins in

2010-2011, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of

California, Berkeley, 2017.

iii

Table of Contents—Earl “Bud” Cheit

Interview 1: August 11, 2010

Audio File 1 1

Summary of Cheit’s career at the University of California, Berkeley — Coming to

Berkeley’s Institute of Industrial Relations from the economics department at St.

Louis University in 1957 — His book, Injury and Recovery in the Course of

Employment — Dean E. T. Grether and the social and political environment of

business — Cheit becomes Associate Professor at the UCB School of Business in

1960 — Travels in Europe, a return to a campus in upheaval — The Free Speech

Movement — An appointment to the Emergency Executive Committee — A

meeting at University House with Chancellor Roger Heyns — Cheit’s Vice-

Chancellorship — Athletic Director Pete Newell, Basketball Coach Pete

Herrerias, Don Hopkins, and student athlete Bob Presley’s Afro — Race and

basketball at Berkeley — Jim Padgett, first coach at Berkeley to field an all-black

team — Pacific Coast Conference scandal — Cal football coach Pappy Waldorf

receives a public reprimand from Chancellor Clark Kerr — A controversy about

the playing of the National Anthem — Removing Standard Oil signage at Cal’s

stadium — Athletic facilities issues and resources — Cheit takes a half leave from

Berkeley to go to the Carnegie Foundation and writes the New Depression in

Higher Education and a sequel — And The Useful Arts and the Liberal Tradition

— Teaching the course “Financing Higher Education” — The Hass family and

Cal philanthropy — Creating a placement facility at Barrows Hall, and a business

school chairmanship honoring Professor E. T. Grether — Dave Maggard and Cal

Sports 80s — Bear Backers — Cheit’s deanship at Berkeley, 1976-1982 — And

serving as Acting Vice President for Business, 1981-82 — Other roles on campus

[Zellerbach Hall Policy Board, Committee on Arts and Lectures] — Budd’s

Group and the completion of the building of the Haas School of Business — Earl

Cheit Hall at the Haas School — Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien appoints Professor

Emeritus Cheit to Interim Athletic Directorship

Interview 2: November 10, 2010

Audio File 2 35

Dorothy Walker’s work on the covenants with neighbors of Cal’s stadium —

Working with Chris Dawson on Title IX compliance — Hiring architecture firm

Ellerbe Becket — The budget — The Big Game — Coaching — The athletics

budget and perks — Walter Haas, Katherine Graham, and a luncheon at the

Family Club with Chancellor Tien — The Haas Pavilion — Donor anger about

construction delays and overruns — Cutting sports at Cal— Coach Bruce Snyder

and the Cal football team — Top coaching salaries versus top faculty salaries—

Committee reports about athletics, mission, excellence

iv

Interview 3: January 10, 2011

Audio File 3 51

A vision for intercollegiate athletics — Walter Haas, Cheit, Tien, and donor

involvement in funding for football coaching salaries — Propriety — The

Smelser Report — The hiring of Steve Gladstone — Matt [Matthew] M. Lyon —

Chancellor Bob [Robert] Berdahl and the hiring committee — The increasing

influence and power of donors at UC Berkeley — Alumni donors and Stanford’s

offer to match a $4.9 million offer to the 49ers football coach Jim Harbaugh —

More about the Smelser Report and Berkeley’s commitment to excellence —

Budgets and fundraising — Deficits and “accumulated deficit” — Barclay

Simpson’s philanthropy — The Athletic Study Center — Philanthropy for

academics, athletics, arts at Berkeley — Wooing and thanking donors —

Connections between athletics and campus giving — Chancellor Birgenau’s

decision to cut sports — Costs and benefits of such a decision — The Faculty

Senate resolution and two reports on athletics and academics at Berkeley —

Financial crises Chris Dawson and the Pac-10 — Facilities and major and minor

sports — Guidelines for donors — The never-ending quest for money — A vision

for the future of Berkeley — Recreational Sports versus Intercollegiate Athletics

— Berkeley playing fields — The NCAA and the Knight Commission —

Exorbitant coaching salaries and university values — Student athletic

scholarships — More about the power of donors to college and university

athletics — Capital investment in the new Cal stadium

[End of Interview]

1

Interview 1: August 11, 2010

[Begin Audio File 1]

01-00:00:00

Cheit: If there are some things that I want off the record will you permit that?

01-00:00:06

Cummins: [static continues] Yes, if you want I can stop the tape, or you can take them

off and seal them afterwards. Let me begin by saying this is an interview with

Professor Earl Cheit, one of the great citizens of the Berkeley campus, who

has had an amazing role here for some period of time. It would be good—I

know that you’ve already given an oral history, so the record is there. But it

would be helpful, I think, for this taping to just summarize quickly your role.

This is August 11, 2010.

01-00:00:53

Cheit: My role in athletics?

01-00:00:54

Cummins: No just talk about how you came to Berkeley and the various roles that you’ve

occupied.

01-00:01:00

Cheit: Well, I came to Berkeley in 1957 as a visiting Associate Professor of

Economics, half-time, and half-time with the Institute of Industrial Relations

on a research project under a three-year contract. I was at that time an

associate professor at St. Louis University. Something I had written came to

the attention of Art [Arthur M.] Ross, who was then director of the Institute of

Industrial Relations. And the chairman of the Economics Department was

Andreas [G.] Papandreou, the now deceased father of the present prime

minister, and who was my teacher at the University of Minnesota in graduate

school.

Anyway, they brought me out here on a three-year contract, and I’ve been

here ever since except for leaves at various times. My initial work was in the

Institute of Industrial Relations, where I conducted a project on occupational

disability. My doctoral dissertation was in that field, and I had written some

articles on that subject. It was one of those articles that came to the attention

of Art Ross and Andy Papandreou. I was half-time teaching in the Econ

Department. I was teaching Econ 1A-B in old Wheeler Aud. before it

burned—it was larger then—and I did that in my three years. And I finished

the book; it’s a very good book if I may say so. I don’t see a copy here, but it

came out in 1962, and, believe it or not, all the years since it’s still the

defining work in the field. The book is called Injury and Recovery in the

Course of Employment, and of course there’s a play on the word recovery

because it involves compensation.

Anyway, I was invited to stay here by Dean [E.T.] Grether who’s a legendary

dean of business here. Dean Grether invited me to join the business school

2

faculty. There wasn’t a position; it was always clear this was a visiting, half-

time position in Econ, and in the meantime Andy left the chairmanship of

econ and [Robert] Aaron Gordon, a very famous man, was chair. He was very

open with me that they didn’t have an opening, and I don’t think they were

particularly interested in the work that I was doing in any case.

Grether was very interested in me because he wanted to introduce a new area

of work in the business school, which he called, and we called initially, the

social and political environment of business. And it interested him—he had

gotten to know me—it interested him that when I was at St. Louis University I

was for three years doing business and economic reviews for the St. Louis

Post-Dispatch. That’s a long story I won’t go into, but I had met Irving

Dilliard, who was a famous editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when it was

a great newspaper. He invited me to write a review of a book, and I did, and

he was so pleased he invited me to review—he would send me business and

economics books whenever they came in, and I would choose the ones. And

they ran my reviews right under that cartoon by their famous cartoonist,

[Daniel R.] Fitzpatrick, a great cartoonist, and so I was widely read. [laughs]

Anyway, Grether knew about this, and it interested him because I was very

much in touch with popular and non-technical writing about business.

And so I became an Associate Professor of Business, full-time, when I

finished that book for the institute, and I’ve been on the business school

faculty, except for leaves, ever since. That was in, I guess 1960 because I was

here three years. In 1960 I joined the business school faculty and I started

teaching on an experimental basis a course called the Social and Political

Environment of Business. It was popular, and it’s now become a field. I was

very pleased with the results, and in fact I got a nice grant from the Ford

Foundation to do a conference about teaching in this field. They gave me

enough money to give stipends to people, so I invited to come here to prepare

essays—[reaches for a book] I invited Bob [Robert L.] Heilbroner; John

William Ward; Henry Nash Smith, who wrote about the businessman in

fiction, Dick Hofstadter, the famous historian, and then Paul Samuelson.

01-00:08:20

Cummins: Amazing. What a group!

01-00:08:22

Cheit: Yeah, it was, and these two guys that I had met in Europe, who were very,

very good.

01-00:08:31

Cummins: The name of this book, for the record, is The Business Establishment, and this

came out in 1964.

01-00:08:43

Cheit: So I held this meeting, and if you look in the introduction you’ll see the names

of people we invited from around the country who were teaching or interested

3

in introducing work in this field. There were about thirty of them or so, I

think, and we brought them here. So that was my first project after I

completed the book for the Institute for Industrial Relations.

01-00:09:24

Cummins: Now you were still in the Economics Department?

01-00:09:25

Cheit: No, no. I was now in the business school.

01-00:09:33

Cummins: So you didn’t have a joint appointment, in other words?

01-00:09:35

Cheit: Yes, my initial appointment was Econ and Institute.

01-00:09:39

Cummins: Yes, right, but this was business?

01-00:09:41

Cheit: Now I’m full-time in the business school but I have an appointment in the

Institute of Industrial Relations, which I can’t remember now; it may have

been a small fraction of time. The Institute at that time was really a

powerhouse.

01-00:10:02

Cummins: Oh absolutely. Lloyd Ulman, Clark Kerr.

01-00:10:07

Cheit: And Walter Galenson, Reinhard Bendix, Mason Haire.

01-00:10:14

Cummins: Amazing, yes. I was just thinking that, exactly. I mean that’s very interesting.

01-00:10:20

Cheit: At any rate, I was then--1964 was my seventh year here. I came in ’57, and I

was eligible for some sabbatical time in ’63, I think. Anyway, I took a half

sabbatical, and I went to Geneva to write the essay that’s in this book, my

essay. I took my wife and four children on a ship. In those days you could

still, on two thirds salary I think—or no, full salary for a half a year is what I

got. But to rent a furnished apartment in Geneva you needed a work permit.

“Why? What are you doing here?” And I said “I’m writing.” And they said,

“No.” So anyway, I called an old friend of mine who was head of an institute

in Geneva, and in exchange for my going out and giving a few lectures, he

signed a work permit that I was working for him, so we got to live in Geneva.

There’s a back-story here, and that is that in the meantime Andy Papandreou

had gone to Greece, back to Greece. He set up an institute, an economics

institute in Greece that he ran, and he wanted me to come to Greece to study

the social insurance arrangements in Greece. And we didn’t do it, There were

4

a lot of reasons. One was pasteurized milk [laughs] with little kids, and I

needed to do some writing on this project. But I’ve often thought about it

because it’s social insurance in Greece under Andy that’s gotten them into a

lot of the trouble that they’re in now, and the son is undoing some of the

generous social insurance benefits.

Anyway, I went to Geneva, wrote this essay and did a lot of traveling in

Europe, came back. And when I came back the FSM [Free Speech Movement]

was underway and going on. I wasn’t here, but then I went back to work. Then

there was the upheaval on the campus, and the faculty Academic Senate

created, or wanted to create, an executive committee of the faculty, which

they called the Emergency Executive Committee, because at that time the

then-Chancellor, Ed [Edward W.] Strong, was in bad shape, and it was clear

that he wasn’t going to be here for long, and then he resigned or was forced

out. And so—

01-00:14:03

Cummins: This is ’65?

01-00:14:05

Cheit: Sixty-five, this is ’65.

01-00:14:06

Cummins: Sixty-five, yeah, because Roger [Heyns] comes in then.

01-00:14:09

Cheit: Well, it was before Roger arrived. It might have been late ’64.

01-00:14:13

Cummins: Right.

01-00:14:14

Cheit: But then the Academic Senate put up a bunch of nominees for this Emergency

Executive Committee, and I had a call at the Institute, Walter Galenson, who

was also a famous economist and Marty—the sociologist—

01-00:14:43

Cummins: Trow?

01-00:14:44

Cheit: No, no, no, not Trow, no. I’ll think of his name. Marty Lipset. He left here, he

went to Harvard and he went to various places. He died just recently, very—

one of the most productive sociologists around. Anyway, they called on me

and asked me would I consider putting my name in. I was not, to my

knowledge certainly, very well known on the campus. But I think that they

thought somebody from the business school might be useful on that

committee. Anyway, I was elected to the Emergency Executive Committee.

01-00:15:30

Cummins: Who chaired that?

5

01-00:15:32

Cheit: It was chaired by Art Ross. He was elected. There were six or seven of us on

the Emergency Executive Committee, and the Emergency Executive

Committee was really the faculty voice at a time when there was no

Chancellor, and the campus was in really a great deal of upheaval. Then there

was a search committee, and the search committee came up with Roger

Heyns’s name. Roger was appointed Chancellor. Roger asked two of the

members of the Emergency Executive Committee to join his administration—

Bob [Robert E.] Connick, chemist, and myself. So on August, Friday the 13th

of August 1965, the Regents, meeting in University Hall, appointed the three

of us and elected—

01-00:17:03

Cummins: And Connick’s role was the—

01-00:17:05

Cheit: Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

01-00:17:07

Cummins: Okay, and you were on the business side?

01-00:17:09

Cheit: I was Executive Vice Chancellor.

01-00:17:12

Cummins: Oh, so you had a senior position over Connick.

01-00:17:14

Cheit: I did, yeah.

01-00:17:16

Cummins: Okay, interesting. Now, you have to tell the story about after the meeting,

going to University House. In case that isn’t in your oral history I want you to

get that out here.

01-00:17:28

Cheit: Yeah, I don’t know if it is.

01-00:17:30

Cummins: Okay.

01-00:17:31

Cheit: Well, after the Regents made the appointment, Roger and I—Roger didn’t

have an office, and so he decided he’d walk up to University House, which

was now his house, but he didn’t have a key. And so we walked up there, and

it was locked. He tried some windows, and there was a window that he could

reach; it wasn’t locked. So we climbed in the window and sat down and

started talking about our work. And I’ve often thought about that as the first

meeting of the Heyns administration; we crawled through the window.

[chuckles] Anyway, that was in the afternoon of that Friday the 13th

of

6

August, 1965. So I was Executive Vice Chancellor for four years. In 1969 my

sabbatical term came up again, and I decided to take leave again.

01-00:18:47

Cummins: And then who replaced you in that role?

01-00:18:49

Cheit: Well, I think—Connick, Connick’s role was enlarged when I left, and he

stayed with Roger for another couple of years.

01-00:19:06

Cummins: Okay, so he probably took on those—yes, okay.

01-00:19:12

Cheit: And so during that time—I know our focus here eventually will be Athletics,

Athletics reported to me—

01-00:19:32

Cummins: Oh it did!

01-00:19:33

Cheit: --at that time, although—

01-00:19:35

Cummins: For those four years?

01-00:19:38

Cheit: For that period of time, although the lines weren’t that clear at the time. I had

a lot of interest in Athletics. My wife and I were season ticket holders, not

from the first day we arrived here but as soon as we could afford it. We’d

been going to games. And so my recollection of that period is that I thought

about Athletics almost not at all. I mean I was busy. It was a very hectic time.

01-00:20:18

Cummins: Absolutely.

01-00:20:20

Cheit: But the one thing during that time that came up, that involved our office, was

an issue in basketball. And that is, the athletic director at that time was Pete

Newell and the basketball coach was a very good coach by the name of Rene

Herrerias. And it was the first time that they started recruiting black players

that were highly visible, and they had a very good guy who played center, I

think by the name of Bob Presley.

01-00:21:06

Cummins: Presley, yes, exactly.

01-00:21:08

Cheit: Bob Presley. Presley was wearing an afro, and it bothered Herrerias; he

wanted him to cut his hair. And my assistant at that time was a man by the

name of Don Hopkins.

7

01-00:21:37

Cummins: I know Don, yeah, gosh, okay.

01-00:21:40

Cheit: Who after he left me—

01-00:21:41

Cummins: Went to [Ron] Dellums’s office.

01-00:21:42

Cheit: That’s right, that’s right.

01-00:21:43

Cummins: Yeah, exactly.

01-00:21:45

Cheit: Harvard Law—a very, very good guy. He worked for me, and he went to see

Presley since they were brothers you know; they were both black. And he

came and said to me, “This is going to erupt. This is not a good scene, because

the word is going around the black community about this.” So Don and I went

to see Pete Newell, just to say that we didn’t want to interrupt, interfere with

coaching and coaching standards, but that social norms were changing and

that it would be a good idea if he looked into this and was aware. And we had

a very nice—what I thought was a very nice talk, but not an easy talk.

01-00:22:55

Cummins: And this was about ’67, ’68?

01-00:22:58

Cheit: Probably in there when the—

01-00:22:59

Cummins: Yeah, because they both resigned—Herrerias and Newell at the same in ’68.

So anyway, go ahead.

01-00:23:06

Cheit: And this whole story about Presley and hair never became public; actually it

never—that is, our meeting with Newell was private and this talk. Newell I

think resented it. He saw it as interference. And Herrerias did not take well to

this, and they eventually both resigned.

01-00:23:49

Cummins: Now those black basketball players at one point threatened to resign from the

team.

01-00:23:59

Cheit: They may have; I don’t remember that.

01-00:24:00

Cummins: Yes, I think they did, and then I think he removed Presley from the team, and

he also removed a white player. I can’t remember his name, but this is in the

8

book that I mentioned to you, the book is called A Good Man: [The Pete

Newell Story]. It came out in ’99 by Bruce Jenkins, the current reporter for the

San Francisco Chronicle. And he was then under pressure to reinstate Presley,

and he gave in to the pressure, which then alienated the white players on the

team. So it was a real mess, no question, at that point in time. And I think

actually, now thinking about it, it was the white players who said, “Okay,

we’re not going to play.” So it was a very difficult period of time, plus

Herrerias was coach for four years, and he was not a successful coach. He left

in ’68. [Jim] Padgett then became the coach. He was coach for four years,

till ’72. Dave Maggard comes in and fires Padgett; [he] was not a good coach.

Padgett was the one who recruited Presley. He had this relationship in the

black community and had the ability to bring in—

01-00:25:35

Cheit: I’ve read about Padgett. I should have known this, that Padgett was the first

coach at Cal to field an all-black team.

01-00:25:46

Cummins: Yes, exactly. So it was a very rough period of time, that’s for sure. Now

since—in this book Jenkins talks about the fact that Newell was

discouraged—this was a very difficult period of time, the sixties. For him it

was a very difficult adjustment period because of all the turmoil on the

campus. From a values perspective he was upset, and he thought that the

administration didn’t back him, and he included you, Clark Kerr, and Roger

Heyns in that statement. He never complained publicly about it; he wouldn’t

do that. But that was one of the factors that led to his resignation. So do you

recall what Clark Kerr’s role, if anything, was?

01-00:26:47

Cheit: No.

01-00:26:47

Cummins: You don’t.

01-00:26:49

Cheit: Well, I have no recollection that Clark played any role at all.

01-00:26:52

Cummins: Yeah, okay.

01-00:26:53

Cheit: Obviously, some things may have happened that I didn’t know about.

01-00:27:00

Cummins: Sure, sure.

01-00:27:01

Cheit: But to my knowledge—

9

01-00:27:05

Cummins: Yeah, it’s interesting, because Glenn Seaborg is the faculty athletic rep

from ’52, when Kerr is named Chancellor, until Seaborg becomes Chancellor

in ’58 or ’59. And that’s a very difficult period as well because the Pacific

Coast Conference dissolves as a result of scandals involving boosters paying

players. And one of the things that happens at that point is that Pappy

Waldorf, the famous coach here, is publicly reprimanded by Clark Kerr in the

context of these scandals because UCLA, Berkeley, Washington, and USC

were the major offenders. The amount of money that boosters were putting

into athletics at Berkeley was quite small; it was around maybe $400,000.

Pappy Waldorf made it clear that he was involved in this, and the money was

used only for those players who had a very difficult time financially. In ’56

the Pacific Coast Conference approves the use of athletic scholarships. Kerr

and Sproul do not agree with this and do not allow athletic scholarships to be

used until ’62 for UCLA and Berkeley. So they were trying to indicate that it

was students first, athletes second. Then you’ve got the public reprimand of

Pappy Waldorf, which did not sit well with many, many people. The coach,

blocking on his name, at UCLA at that time was also—Red Sanders wasn’t it?

—who was heavily involved, was never censored publicly, was one of the

heroes to UCLA. And so that contributed, I think, to all of this, but I’m trying

to—

01-00:29:27

Cheit: Well, in addition, in his memoir Clark says that he and Wally [J. Wallace]

Sterling decided that they were going to try to get Cal and Stanford into the

Ivy League.

01-00:29:40

Cummins: Yes, exactly.

01-00:29:43

Cheit: And he said they divided up the Ivy League presidents and they each called,

and Wally Sterling called back to say that the first one he talked to said

absolutely not, and so it was a non-starter. Although Clark said he had some

very—he didn’t say who he called and who Wally Sterling called.

01-00:30:07

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:30:07

Cheit: At any rate, that’s also in the background here.

01-00:30:10

Cummins: Yes it is. And there was also the issue when the Pacific Coast Conference

dissolved they formed another conference, the Western University Athletic

Association [Athletic Association of Western Universities, AAWU],

something like that, and Stanford would not join it. So you may remember

this, and again it took—Stanford would not join it because Sterling felt that

USC and UCLA, and UCLA in particular, and this would have been Raymond

10

Allen as Chancellor then, when they were accused of the violations of the

NCAA rules they said, “Well yeah, okay, yeah we do, but they do up north

too and they’re just better at hiding it.” Well, Sterling was furious at this, so

he wouldn’t join this new conference, and so it took a special meeting over at

a hotel in San Francisco. Kerr said, “Look, in order to deal with this problem,

since you can’t stand the fact that your vote would be equal to UCLA’s, I will

vote, and I’ll vote for both Berkeley and UCLA in this new conference.” And

so that’s why they joined. So yes, that’s a very good point though, Budd,

about the push for the Ivy League.

01-00:31:38

Cheit: Right, right.

01-00:31:39

Cummins: So that’s where that comes in, and that’s all part of this environment.

01-00:31:42

Cheit: So I don’t know of anything that Clark did directly that would affect Pete

Newell. However, since he mentions, or Jenkins mentions that I was one of

the problems, and Roger was, I’ll tell you about something that’s not in my

oral history—I’m almost certain it’s not—and that I’ve never publicly

mentioned before. And that is, we had a confrontation with Pete Newell about,

of all things, the national anthem. The national anthem used to be played at

basketball games before they started play. As the campus became more

radicalized some things had happened. One of the groups pushed—the

cheerleaders used to be elected and one of the groups got elected, a

cheerleader who used to wear a peace outfit and—

01-00:33:06

Cummins: This is in the Jenkins book, so go ahead. You’re not mentioned in this context;

go ahead.

01-00:33:14

Cheit: Well, I didn’t get to many games then; I was otherwise engaged. But one day

we got an irate letter from an Old Blue who said, “Why is there not the

national anthem not played before the basketball games?” Roger said, “I don’t

know. Isn’t it?” So we looked into it, and it turns out that Newell was really

spooked by what happened on this campus, and he stopped having the

national anthem played before the games. And to the best of our ability to

figure out, he was afraid that it might provoke an incident or something in

the—

01-00:34:28

Cummins: Harmon.

01-00:34:28

Cheit: --the gym, in Harmon. And so Roger and I talked to him about this, and what

he said was that [chuckles] he was afraid that if everybody stood up and then

sat down that maybe the bleachers would not hold up everybody at Harmon

11

Gym. Roger was incredulous; he thought this was absurd, so we ordered—we

ordered—that the national anthem be played. There weren’t a lot of decisions

we could make in those days that had to be carried out, but this did. I think he

resented that deeply. So I would say, and I think, of course we played the

national anthem, and that was the end.

01-00:35:28

Cummins: Right, exactly.

01-00:35:30

Cheit: Now I would say that those are the only two times that I had a run-in with

him. There was one other instance of something that I did. I took a lot of heat

from my colleagues when I became Executive Vice Chancellor about getting

advertising out of the stadium.

01-00:35:59

Cummins: Oh, that’s interesting.

01-00:36:01

Cheit: And there was only one ad in the stadium. It was Chevron’s predecessor,

Standard Oil—I’ve forgotten if it was called Standard Oil—it was a Standard

Oil sign at the end. And I think that was the only big sign that was out there,

so I had somebody, probably Don or Jean Dobrzensky, who worked for me—

you knew her, didn’t you?

01-00:36:32

Cummins: Yes, I did. I did.

01-00:36:34

Cheit: I probably had one of them look into the question of how much money was

Athletics getting from that sign, and I was stunned by how little it was. It was

just a few thousand dollars. And so I called Newell, and I said that I wanted

that Standard Oil sign removed, that I would add the equivalent amount to the

budget that they lost from that, losing that sign. So I would say those are the

three things that I can remember that might have been the source. I suspect

that of the three, it was Presley’s hair and asking him to intervene with Rene

to try to be more accommodating to black players that was really the most

important.

01-00:37:40

Cummins: Interesting, and that’s very interesting about the Standard Oil sign because it

is so dramatically changed since then.

01-00:37:48

Cheit: Oh my.

01-00:37:50

Cummins: Hasn’t it still. And so let’s go on now to talk about what happened—you leave

in 1969, step down, take leave, Bob Kerley is the new Vice Chancellor then.

12

01-00:38:06

Cheit: For business.

01-00:38:07

Cummins: For business, appointed by Al Bowker. Athletics reports to him; he hires Dave

Maggard. He also appoints Bill Manning as Director of Rec Sports. And

in ’76, so this preceded Bob by a little bit, the Women’s Intercollegiate

Athletics was created, the actual program. It used to be in Physical Education,

but it now had a separate designation.

01-00:38:35

Cheit: That’s right.

01-00:38:35

Cummins: And so there were four groups—Men’s Intercollegiate Athletics, Women’s

[Intercollegiate Athletics], Rec Sports, and Physical Education that were the

units that were involved in this whole matter of athletics, and there were

facilities issues that were driving everyone nuts.

01-00:38:56

Cheit: That’s right, about getting—the basketball team couldn’t get time to practice

and so forth.

01-00:39:01

Cummins: Exactly. And those four—whoever the chair of Physical Education was, I

don’t know involved he was—but they were at each other’s throats, basically.

The use of facilities, I think apart from Memorial Stadium, was controlled by

the Department of Physical Education, and then that changed as a result of the

setting up of this committee and the attempt to work these things out. But

certainly Dave, Lu Lilly, and Bill Manning were at each other’s throats for a

considerable period of time because Dave was AD here for nineteen years, all

the way from ’71 or ’72 up to ’91. So that’s a very interesting part of the

history here. But anyway, why don’t you continue then from your role in

terms of athletics, then.

01-00:40:06

Cheit: Well, stepping back for a moment, you know the sixties followed a decade,

the fifties, the late fifties in which Cal [background sound of campanile

chiming the hour] was in what Clark Kerr’s memoir describes as “the golden

age of Cal Athletics.”

01-00:40:27

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:40:28

Cheit: Oh, we have till 12:00 so we’re in good shape.

01-00:40:34

Cummins: Yes, we’ve got till 12:00, yeah, good.

13

01-00:40:37

Cheit: So you know we had the Rose Bowl, the NCAA championships under Newell.

01-00:40:47

Cummins: Right.

01-00:40:48

Cheit: And I think we had some crew championships and some track and field

championships so it was a—I think Clark is right.

01-00:40:58

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:40:59

Cheit: So the sixties, you not only have the turmoil, but after this tremendous period

of athletic success you have what is essentially a much more mediocre period.

01-00:41:14

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:41:15

Cheit: I can’t remember precisely, but my recollection is that we were kind of

middling to lower middling in the—

01-00:41:26

Cummins: That’s right, that’s exactly right. There may be some exceptions; Dave

Maggard would certainly know, but Bruce Snyder, and he brought in Bruce

Snyder—Dave—I think he was hired in ’87, and he was the one that started

changing again and then building some really good teams.

01-00:41:47

Cheit: So there were good football teams, that’s right

01-00:41:48

Cummins: Yes, exactly. Right, yeah, it’s a very important point. So there was this real

sudden shift, that’s for sure. Okay, so then you come back from—

01-00:42:02

Cheit: Well, I went on leave in ’69, and what I did was I visited Harvard briefly. An

old friend of mine was Dean of the Harvard Business School, who at that time

he was really worried because he was having to hire a new pastry chef for

their dining room. [laughs]

01-00:42:37

Cummins: Oh that’s a tough one!

01-00:42:41

Cheit: And he delighted in pointing out to me that his annual budgeted deficit, that

he then had to make up, was much greater than the whole budget of the

business school here. Wonderful man by the name of Larry Fouraker. But, by

14

the way, he liked it here. When he finished his work at Harvard he came out

here for a year.

01-00:43:04

Cummins: Interesting.

01-00:43:05

Cheit: Now, Clark Kerr in the meanwhile, who had been fired, was hired by the

Carnegie—actually, the CFAT is where the money came from, Carnegie

Foundation for Advancement of Teaching. Carnegie created a foundation

which is called corporation, by the way, the Carnegie Corporation. I think the

corporation originally hired him, but he was getting the money from the

foundation. Anyway, they’d created this commission on higher education, and

Clark had asked me if I would do some writing for them, and he asked me if I

would do something about the economics of higher education.

So I took a half-time leave from the business school, was half-time with the

Carnegie Commission, and I wrote a book called The New Depression in

Higher Education. I see a copy [reaches for the book], The New Depression in

Higher Education, [sound of pages turning], Marty Lipset—

01-00:44:41

Cummins: Oh, Marty Lipset, that’s right.

01-00:44:44

Cheit: This came out in 1971, and I worked on this in ’70 and ’71 here, partly while

on leave and then part sabbatical and partly on half-time leave from the

business school, or maybe quarter-time leave. Anyway, and the book attracted

a lot of attention, and the Carnegie Commission was very pleased and invited

me to work on something else. I did two more things for them. I did a follow-

up a few years later, The New Depression: [Two Years Later], after two or

three years to see what’s happened. And I did a book for them—I don’t have a

copy here, but the book was entitled—a wonderful book that was a lot of fun

to do—called The Useful Arts and the Liberal Traditio. And the focus of the

book was how the useful arts came into the university—business, forestry. I

looked at—

01-00:46:14

Cummins: Was there a journalism school at that time? Public Policy?

01-00:46:16

Cheit: No, no, I looked at four fields that I called useful arts and how they came into

the university.

01-00:46:26

Cummins: Agriculture, no?

01-00:46:27

Cheit: Agriculture. Agriculture, forestry, business and—it might have been

engineering. I’ll think of it. It’s interesting that I can’t remember the fourth,

15

sort of like forgetting your wife’s birthday; you know I was quite close to that!

[Cummins laughs] Anyway, what I did was I got a grant to help me, a further

grant, and I think I got that from Ford to present my findings to develop an

analysis of what each of these fields was doing and to present my findings in a

seminar in the schools themselves. And I did one in each of the four, and it

was very interesting. And out of that seminar then came the book. I presented

the findings and then—

01-00:47:50

Cummins: Was that a graduate seminar?

01-00:47:52

Cheit: Yes, it was.

01-00:47:54

Cummins: Okay, yeah.

01-00:47:55

Cheit: And, yeah I’m looking in vain. Those copies are kind of hard to come by, and

somebody probably swiped mine. I’ve lost it.

01-00:48:05

Cummins: Yeah.

01-00:48:06

Cheit: Anyway, I did that, The Useful Arts in the Liberal Tradition, and that book

attracted a lot of interest, and so I did those three things that I wrote for Clark.

In the meantime the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education became the

Carnegie Council. What was involved here, instead of having a big

commission with a national advisory board and so on, it was created as an

ongoing research institution, and Clark asked me to be the associate director.

He had two associate directors, Peg [Margaret S.] Gordon and myself.

01-00:48:59

Cummins: Aaron’s wife.

01-00:48:59

Cheit: Yes, and so I did that. In fact I was associate director at the time I did The

Useful Arts in the Liberal Tradition book. Anyway, I left the council, and after

about three years I came back to full-time teaching in the business school.

01-00:49:22

Cummins: And that was located just in downtown Berkeley, right?

01-00:49:24

Cheit: [chuckles] It was located—well, in two places, but when I joined it it was

located in the building on Shattuck just off Center, that high-rise, about twelve

or thirteen—

01-00:49:40

Cummins: The Power Bar Building.

16

01-00:49:41

Cheit: Yes, that’s the building.

01-00:49:42

Cummins: The Power Bar Building, that’s right, okay.

01-00:49:45

Cheit: In fact, you know, I can’t remember the floor we were on, seven or eight or

whatever, but on the top floor was the FBI.

01-00:49:55

Cummins: Yes, yes, exactly.

01-00:49:56

Cheit: And there had been an explosion there, somebody put a bomb in the toilet up

there or something to scare the FBI. But it was in that building.

01-00:50:07

Cummins: And the Center for Research and Development in Higher Education was in

that building—

01-00:50:14

Cheit: It was?

01-00:50:15

Cummins: Because that’s where I started in ’72, and that was [Walter P.] Metzger—

01-00:50:21

Cheit: Yes.

01-00:50:23

Cummins: And gosh, blocking on some of those names now, but anyway Pat [K.

Patricia] Cross was down there. Okay, very interesting, yeah. That’s what I

thought. Okay, go ahead.

01-00:50:33

Cheit: So I came back to full-time in the business school. In the meantime, because I

had done this book on financing higher education, I thought in a university

you should be teaching what you’re learning in your research.

01-00:50:53

Cummins: Yes, yes.

01-00:50:53

Cheit: So I went to the Dean of Education, and I said I’d like to teach a course for

you because it’s something I’ve been working on. I feel I should be teaching

my research. And he was delighted and I—

01-00:51:07

Cummins: Who was that, [Merle] Borrowman?

17

01-00:51:09

Cheit: Yes.

01-00:51:09

Cummins: Borrowman, Merle Borrowman, okay.

01-00:51:12

Cheit: And so I started teaching a course called Financing Higher Education. I really

liked it, and the students really were interested. And so I then said him, “Well,

look, if I’m going to be here I ought to be part of your faculty.” They agreed. I

caused to be transferred half of my FTE to Education, and I was half-time

Education and half-time business school. I did that for a few years; this is now

the seventies, probably ’74, ’75. Anyway, the business school had a dean’s

search underway because the existing dean was retiring, and they had a very

good candidate—

01-00:52:17

Cummins: Who was that? Who was the existing dean?

01-00:52:19

Cheit: It was probably Dick [Richard H.] Holton.

01-00:52:23

Cummins: Yeah, Dick, okay. Right, that would be right.

01-00:52:25

Cheit: Yeah , and he was retiring. He had served very well for I think ten years,

maybe nine years. There was a search committee; I was not on the search

committee. In fact, I didn’t really know what was going on very much, and the

search committee found a very good person, a guy whose name I can’t

remember now, who was dean at Oregon and who agreed to come. And they

were thrilled with him because he had done a terrific job at Oregon. At the last

minute he punked out; he said he couldn’t come. His wife was too worried

about their teenage kids coming to Berkeley with what might happen to them,

and so on.

01-00:53:22

Cummins: Interesting. So that was a concern for recruiting faculty, it was also a concern

recruiting athletes.

01-00:53:31

Cheit: Yes.

01-00:53:32

Cummins: Okay, go ahead.

01-00:53:32

Cheit: So he pulled out, and so in an act of absolute desperation the search

committee came to me and said would I be willing to be considered as Dean?

So, I hadn’t thought about it, and I said, “Well, okay.” I said, “I’ll consider

that.” And that’s how I became Dean in 1976. I then said to Education, “Well,

18

my FTE ought to come back over here now.” As Dean I did try to teach for a

while. And I did, but it’s hard, so then my FTE came back over here. As Dean

I did—you know it’s interesting that you have given me this memo, because

as Dean one of the first things I did was to lay out objectives, and one of them

was that horrible space we had in Barrows Hall.

01-00:54:46

Cummins: Ah yes, God that was awful, wasn’t it?

01-00:54:49

Cheit: And so one of the first things I did was to pay a visit to Walter Haas.

01-00:54:57

Cummins: Now had you had a relationship with him?

01-00:54:59

Cheit: I knew him, and I knew Wally, and I knew Peter. I can’t remember the first

time I joined this group, but a group of us used to go to the basketball games

together and sit together.

01-00:55:16

Cummins: Interesting.

01-00:55:17

Cheit: Wally and Evie Haas, Vernon and Marion Goodin—

01-00:55:31

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:55:38

Cheit: Oh gosh, a guy who was on Wally’s board, Dyke Brown, the guy who started

Athenian School, the founder of the Athenian School.

01-00:55:51

Cummins: Oh yes, okay.

01-00:55:55

Cheit: He and his wife—I’ll think of it—those two, four, six; there were eight of us

and sometimes ten.

01-00:56:05

Cummins: Now how did that start? How did you—because let’s see, Wally Haas would

have been running Levi Strauss right, at that point?

01-00:56:13

Cheit: Wally was the CEO, I think. His father was the chairman or chairman

emeritus by that point.

01-00:56:21

Cummins: Okay, so he was still alive then?

19

01-00:56:22

Cheit: Oh yes.

01-00:56:23

Cummins: Wally senior was still alive at that point in time?

01-00:56:25

Cheit: Yeah.

01-00:56:27

Cummins: Okay, and so—

01-00:56:28

Cheit: Senior died in ’79.

01-00:56:31

Cummins: Okay.

01-00:56:33

Cheit: And so one of the early things I did—I’m still scanning but I don’t see that

book here. I went to see Walter, and I got to know him because he really took

Roger Heyns under his wing. He really liked Roger Heyns, as did Walter.

01-00:56:59

Cummins: Yes.

01-00:57:00

Cheit: And so I went over to see him, and Levi’s was then in those buildings that the

Rockefeller money built on the Embarcadero One, Two and Three; it was in

one of those buildings. That was before the Levi Plaza of course.

01-00:57:23

Cummins: Now let me just say that Dave Maggard had a close relationship with Wally

Haas too.

01-00:57:32

Cheit: With the son, that’s right.

01-00:57:34

Cummins: Now you’re talking senior?

01-00:57:35

Cheit: I’m talking about—well, yes I’m talking about the man after whom the

business school is named, Walter A. Haas, Jr.

01-00:57:41

Cummins: Yes, yes.

01-00:57:43

Cheit: Dave and Wally—we’ll call him Wally—were very good friends.

01-00:57:51

Cummins: I see, and Wally then takes over the Oakland As at some point?

20

01-00:57:54

Cheit: That’s right.

01-00:57:55

Cummins: And so we have the same person.

01-00:57:57

Cheit: That’s right

01-00:57:57

Cummins: Okay, so go ahead.

01-00:58:00

Cheit: So I went to see Walter Haas, and I told him I wanted to talk to him about the

business school. Now he knew the business school well because he was the

first chairman of the advisory board of Grether, and he was our alum, Class of

1910.

01-00:58:17

Cummins: Ah, yes, that’s amazing. Okay.

01-00:58:19

Cheit: So I went to see him, and the four of us met in his office.

01-00:58:24

Cummins: The four of you being, again?

01-00:58:27

Cheit: Peter, Wally, and their father, Walter Haas, Sr.

01-00:58:31

Cummins: Exactly, okay, okay.

01-00:58:33

Cheit: We talked about the University, and I told them that we needed a new

business school. They knew that, and Walter didn’t need to be convinced of

that. He had stayed in touch, and he had very much admired Greth, and he was

close to Greth. So he said, “Well how much would a business school cost?”

And of course I didn’t know, but I thought I’d pull a number that I thought

was a big number. I said $10 million.

01-00:59:15

Cummins: Way undervalued!

01-00:59:17

Cheit: This was 1976.

01-00:59:18

Cummins: Yes, yes.

21

01-00:59:20

Cheit: “Ten million,” I said,” and he said, “Well, I can’t do that now, but don’t give

up the idea, stay in touch with it. But in the meantime we’ll give you

something that can help you.” And they gave me $300,000, and I used

$150,000 to create a placement center—the business school didn’t have a

placement center—to create a placement center in the basement of Barrows

Hall. I created a rather nice facility. I hired an interior designer, a woman.

Andy, you know Andy Stern in Journalism?

01-01:00:12

Cummins: Yes.

01-01:00:12

Cheit: His wife, Mary Lou Wyatt Stern, now deceased.

01-01:00:14

Cummins: Yes, right.

01-01:00:15

Cheit: She did the design.

01-01:00:16

Cummins: I didn’t know that, amazing.

01-01:00:17

Cheit: Yeah. Anyway, I created that facility, and I used the other $150,000 as the

seed money for a chair honoring Grether, [E.T. Grether Chair in Business

Administration & Public Policy] because I knew that would please Walter,

and Grether ought to be honored.

01-01:00:37

Cummins: Sure, sure.

01-01:00:39

Cheit: That’s how the Grether Chair got started, and that’s how the business school

got a placement center. And we had a wonderful time when the placement

center was dedicated and a wonderful time when the Grether Chair was

dedicated. When the placement center was dedicated Wally and Peter came

over, and we had a nice affair in the Lipman Room on the top of Barrows, and

thinking what can you give, what kind of gift? So what we did was we

created a card, a very nice card, to each of them giving them permanent use of

the placement center for their own careers, which they just loved.

01-01:01:34

Cummins: That’s great. [laughs]

01-01:01:36

Cheit: Anyway, but I mention that visit to them because out of that eventually came

this business school.

22

01-01:01:45

Cummins: Yeah, amazing, and that’s in your oral history?

01-01:01:49

Cheit: It’s in the oral history, yes.

01-01:01:51

Cummins: Okay. This connection is so interesting for me, the basketball, going to these

basketball games, because what Dave Maggard does in 1980 is create Cal

Sports 80s, and that’s the first effort to raise money for the capital side of

Intercollegiate Athletics. And who are the co-chairs but Roger Heyns and

Wally Haas.

01-01:02:21

Cheit: And who was the campus chair?

01-01:02:23

Cummins: You?

01-01:02:24

Cheit: Yes.

01-01:02:24

Cummins: Damn. [laughs] So that’s amazing, okay.

01-01:02:28

Cheit: They invited me. They were the co-chairs of Cal Sports 80s, but they said we

need a campus leader because we want someone who can write to faculty

members and others, and to give it more legitimacy among the faculty and

staff, so I was the campus chair.

01-01:02:51

Cummins: Now did you know Dave?

01-01:02:53

Cheit: Yes. Not well, but I knew him.

01-01:02:55

Cummins: Okay, so you had some relationship with him?

01-01:02:57

Cheit: I had some relationship with him but not close. I knew—

01-01:03:01

Cummins: So they really were the ones that said to Dave, “We want Budd to be involved

with this.”

03-01:03:06

Cheit: I assume that.

03-01:03:08

Cummins: They had to have—is that interesting! Okay.

23

03-01:03:11

Cheit: But I knew Dave and liked Dave, and indeed—who was the Athletic Director

right after Dave?

03-01:03:24

Cummins: Bockrath.

03-01:03:26

Cheit: No, no.

03-01:03:31

Cummins: It was Dave—it wasn’t—yeah, I think it was Bockrath, wasn’t it?

03-01:03:34

Cheit: I made a couple of notes last night, in anticipation of this. Bockrath was ‘91

and ‘93.

03-01:03:45

Cummins: So, that’s right, after Dave then.

03-01:03:48

Cheit: That’s right after Dave. Then—

03-01:03:55

Cummins: And then you, right?

03-01:03:56

Cheit: Well, after Bockrath left, that’s me.

03-01:03:58

Cummins: That’s you.

03-01:03:58

Cheit: Yeah.

03-01:03:59

Cummins: And then Kasser, right?

03-01:04:00

Cheit: And then Kasser.

03-01:04:01

Cummins: Yeah, exactly, okay fine. The interesting thing here, because this is such a—

you know, Athletics has always been controversial, but this connection, and

that’s what I’m very interested in, where the research that Bill [William G.]

Bowen and [James L.] Shulman did in this book called The Game of Life:

[College Sports and Educational Values], and then Reclaiming the Game,

talks about the fact that there isn’t a direct relationship between the amount of

money that is used for Athletics, and fundraising. And what I’m finding—that

may be true, I don’t, certainly, deny that. But it doesn’t appear to be the case

here because what Dave told me, which was very interesting, was that when

he came in there was a booster association. I think it was called the Golden

24

Bear Athletic Association, something like that. Stu [Stuart M.] Gordon was on

that as a young guy at that time. I don’t know who the other people were, and

this was ‘72, say. And Dave went to Bowker and said, “We can’t have this.

It’s not a good idea. It’s outside the organization here, and you’ve got

problems.” There were NCAA violations here at that point in time, et cetera.

So Bowker said, “Okay. I think that’s right. I’ll support you.” Dave was brand

new then, as AD. He goes over and meets with this Golden Bear group. They

immediately start telling him that, “Here’s how we’re going to do things,

Dave,” and blah, blah, blah. Dave says, “No. I’m afraid not. I’m in charge

now, and things are going to be different.” And they say to him, “Well, if

that’s the case you can’t count on our support.” And he says, “Okay, fine.” He

gets up and walks out. And he said that just stunned them and everybody else.

And right after that they create Bear Backers, so that’s where Bear Backers is

created. And then you’ve got this Cal Sports 80s. The people that are in Bear

Backers are still significant donors to Cal today. Mike Heyman then becomes

Chancellor in 1980, starts the first major capital campaign here, tells Dave,

“You’re raising more money than anybody else on the campus, maybe with

the exception of Engineering. I’m going to adopt your model. The only thing

that changes, Dave, is you have to come to me for permission now to contact

these people.” [laughs] And Dave says, “Oh, I understood that.” Who knows

what that conversation was really like! Mike confirms all of this. So here

you’ve got this group of donors who began in Athletics, and now your role

with the Haas family, the Cal Sports 80s; it’s hard to deny that there’s a very

significant relationship here. And it’s not like those people are going to forget

Athletics in the process of making such major contributions to Cal. So you

would agree with that?

03-01:07:12

Cheit: Yes.

03-01:07:15

Cummins: Okay. Anyway, I’m sorry for interrupting.

03-01:07:16

Cheit: No, no—so I became Dean and I was Dean from 1976 through 1982. And I

had always thought that deanships are not career jobs at Berkeley. I enjoyed

being Dean a lot and got a lot done. The business school project didn’t start

under my deanship. In 1982 was another sabbatical, and I decided to leave the

deanship and to rotate out, and I did.

I got involved—this is a long aside—but a group was formed in Europe to

evaluate the first time ever, the business schools in Belgium—the project was

started by a guy who was very important in the organization that was set up

after World War II. You know, the Marshall Plan gave money, but the

Marshall Plan didn’t say how the money was going to be spent. They said

locals and they set up groups—I’ve forgotten what they called them,

productivity councils or something, and they gave the money to them, and

25

they did the allocating. And out of that the guy who was active in Belgium,

who was now kind of a grand old man in Belgium with a wonderful name. He

had both a French and a Flemish name. His name was Gaston Durinck.

[laughs]

Anyway, he caused to be created a review of the Belgian business schools and

asked me to be on an advisory committee to the group, and so I did. And the

study was to be led by an American, a guy who then punked out; he quit on

us. So they asked me would I pick up the pieces. So I said, “Well, I am going

to be on sabbatical.” Anyway, I did it, and it was quite interesting. I had a

little apartment that I went to occasionally in the Place Stéphanie in Brussels

and had a staff over there and visited—believe it or not there are eight or nine

business programs, not schools. Some were schools, some were programs.

Anyway, I visited them all, had them fill out questionnaires, did evaluation of

what happens to their alumni. Just what you’d expect. And I presented a

report to them, and they were very pleased with that and took some of my

recommendations. Some of the people—I recommended two schools’

business programs be merged. And one guy never spoke to me again! [laughs]

Anyway, so I did that and then after the sabbatical I came back; this is now in

the early eighties. And so I became a serious member of this faculty and did

teaching and writing. I did that, and I should say that in 1981 I think it was—

boy, I’m hazy here, we’ll have to check these dates. Dave [David S.] Saxon

was President.

03-01:12:19

Cummins: Oh yes, I remember this, yes.

03-01:12:22

Cheit: And the Vice President for Business had a heart attack. And I can’t even

remember his name now, wonderful man. Dave Saxon was President and his

Vice President was Bill [William B.] Fretter, the physicist.

03-01:12:40

Cummins: Yeah, Bill Fretter, that’s right.

03-01:12:42

Cheit: And they invited me to come down to University Hall [Office of the

President] and asked would I fill in part-time just to keep things going in the

Office of the Vice President of Business, while I was Dean.

03-01:13:01

Cummins: Wow!

03-01:13:01

Cheit: So I thought about that, I talked to some faculty people, and I decided—they

said just a few months. You know the story. So anyway, so then I became

Acting Interim, I guess, Acting Vice President for Business of the University

while I was Dean here. I think it was ‘81 and ‘82. And, of course, three

26

months stretched out, but they had a search going. That’s when they hired this

fellow [Ronald] Brady, who did a lot of things and had left a lot of negative

impact.

03-01:13:48

Cummins: Yes, because [David P.] Gardner comes in about ‘84.

03-01:13:49

Cheit: Yes, that’s right. Gardner liked Brady.

03-01:13:52

Cummins: Yes he did. Oh and so—Saxon, that’s right, Saxon hired Brady.

03-01:13:55

Cheit: Yeah. So anyway, I was Vice President and Dean. So I finished being Dean,

and I finished being Vice President. I can’t remember now whether they

unwound about the same time or not, but I unwound because they had Brady.

And then I came back to the faculty, and I was busy in the faculty. I’ve left

out here—at one point I was asked to become Associate Director of the

Institute of Industrial Relations. I did that for a year.

03-01:14:47

Cummins: Well, and you had to have been involved with Cal Performances by now.

03-01:14:52

Cheit: Well, I was—see, I was involved with performing arts on the campus long

before that.

03-01:14:59

Cummins: Before that, yeah; it used to be called Committee on Arts and Lectures,

correct?

03-01:15:03

Cheit: That’s right. And when Zellerbach Hall was built I was Executive Vice

Chancellor. And the Zellerbach Hall, like so many things on this campus, they

created Zellerbach Hall but there wasn’t a budget to operate it!

03-01:15:24

Cummins: Does that sound familiar? [laughs]

03-01:15:26

Cheit: Yeah, and so I had to create a budget. So I created a group called the

Zellerbach Hall Policy Board. The Zellerbach Hall Policy Board set up who

can use it and who has the priority and where does the money come from and

when can it be rented—all that sort of thing. And it was a very good

committee, a lot of good people on it. Jean Dobrzensky was with me, and

Betty [J.] Connors who was then head of Committee for Arts and Lectures. A

very good person. So that’s—but I had been involved in and interested in the

arts before that.

27

03-01:16:05

Cummins: For a long time, yes.

03-01:16:09

Cheit: My oral history will tell about how I supported a young History major who

was interested in opera and tried to do a student opera, and the Music

Department turned him down. I gave him some money, and he and a friend

put on two operas. There were two students; one did the business, one did the

artistic direction. The artistic student graduate here, I think in History. He

went on to become the director of the New York City Opera. Christopher

Keene was his name.

03-01:16:50

Cummins: Amazing. Okay, I don’t want to distract you from that though. So go ahead, so

now mid-eighties, a professor—

03-01:16:56

Cheit: Yeah, I’m a professor, and I was very active in the arts then. I was on the

Committee for Arts and Lectures, the head of which was then Donald Coney,

the librarian, very good man. And then Mike Heyman—and I’m sure you may

have had a hand in this—kind of eased out the woman who ran the Committee

for Arts and Lectures after Betty Connors. I can’t remember her name. Swift?

03-01:17:35

Cummins: I can’t either. I can see her. She went to Hawaii, right?

03-01:17:37

Cheit: Yeah, but then eventually with Dan [C. Daniel] Mote to Maryland.

03-01:17:43

Cummins: Oh really? Oh, I didn’t know that.

03-01:17:47

Cheit: Anyway, Mike Heyman set up a committee to evaluate the arts on the campus,

especially Cal Performances. They had then changed the name. Dick Hafner

had been involved. So I was on that committee, and the chair of that

committee was a guy from Slavic Studies, a terrific guy whose name I can’t

remember now. I still see him around. [beeping sounds in background]

03-01:18:14

Cummins: Hold it. I want to make sure this is still recording. Yeah, we’re getting down

there pretty low, but okay, but there’s still enough.

03-01:18:24

Cheit: So we created a report—

03-01:18:28

Cummins: [beep continues, static and hum return for a few seconds] Oh, it must be--

[static]. Okay, this is a continuation of the interview with Budd Cheit on

August 11, 2010, on Intercollegiate Athletics. I changed the chip here. Okay,

go ahead. We have about twenty minutes left for today on the interview.

28

Okay, so you were talking about the involvement with the arts on campus, et

cetera.

03-01:19:11

Cheit: That report was submitted to Mike Heyman, and he accepted it. Its most

central recommendation was that the director, when he or she was

appointed—because there was then a search committee looking for a director,

and I was not on that search committee—that the director would have final

authority. See, with the old Committee for Arts and Lectures, the faculty

members on the committee had decision authority. And without going into the

issues I think from your experience you can understand why that was

becoming a problem. At any rate, Mike accepted it, and then he said that when

we had a director he would like to appoint an advisory committee to the new

director. That was a way of getting the faculty members involved—would I be

chair of that advisory committee? And I said yes. In the meantime the search

committee came up with Robert Cole. And Mike hired him, a very good

decision because he was outstanding.

03-01:20:44

Cummins: Absolutely.

03-01:20:43

Cheit: So that was 1986. So then I was chair of his advisory committee, and I worked

with Robert the whole time he was here.

03-01:20:55

Cummins: Exactly. It was an incredible, no question, contribution. Boy, does he

appreciate that, Robert—seriously, we still play golf together, and he still

talks, “Oh boy, thank God for Budd!”

03-01:21:08

Cheit: Well, he’s a terrific guy. We just had dinner with him the other night, and with

Susan. Anyway, he’s a terrific guy. and he did a great job. I worked with him,

and we had a lot of fun and got a lot done.

03-01:21:21

Cummins: Yeah, but no real involvement with Athletics very much at this period.

03-01:21:26

Cheit: No, at this period I am a season ticket holder and no—well, I shouldn’t say

that. No, no, no. Well—my involvement with Athletics picks up again after I

become Interim Director and after Chang-Lin [Tien] becomes Chancellor.

03-01:21:52

Cummins: Exactly, and then there’s the search committee, right? At that point isn’t

there—

03-01:21:59

Cheit: Well, the search committee—

29

03-01:22:04

Cummins: Because that’s—Bockrath comes in.

03-01:22:04

Cheit: Bockrath was here. Then he suddenly left to go to Texas Tech.

03-01:22:11

Cummins: Exactly, exactly. There were problems.

03-01:22:11

Cheit: But Bockrath did a lot of heavy lifting.

03-01:22:15

Cummins: Yes, he did.

03-01:22:16

Cheit: [laughs] He merged Men’s and Women’s [Athletics] and Recreational Sports

into one department.

03-01:22:23

Cummins: Exactly, as a result of the Smelser Report.

03-01:22:28

Cheit: Right, right.

03-01:22:28

Cummins: Yes. Now you were not on the Smelser Committee.

03-01:22:31

Cheit: No, no.

03-01:22:32

Cummins: Okay. Did you have any conversations with Neil [Smelser]?

03-01:22:40

Cheit: Yeah, but nothing very deep about this, no.

03-01:22:44

Cummins: Okay, all right.

03-01:22:43

Cheit: So then in 19—I’m sure I’m skipping a lot, but then 1990, ‘91? My successor

was Ray [Raymond E.] Miles, who did a good job but then decided after, I

think, seven years that he would rotate out. And they had a search committee,

and the search committee didn’t come to a conclusion, unlike the previous

search committee that had a guy who punked out. So the search committee

hadn’t come to a conclusion. Now, I can’t remember the exact sequence, but

in the meantime Chang-Lin was Chancellor.

03-01:23:39

Cummins: Yes, 1990, yes.

30

03-01:23:45

Cheit: Either the search committee came to me or came to Chang-Lin. Anyway,

Chang-Lin called me and asked me if I would be Acting or Interim, I can’t

remember which, Dean for a year till they brought this search to a conclusion.

But Chang-Lin, who was an extraordinary man—you worked closely with

him, you know. Chang-Lin said that he had another agenda item; that is not

only that I should keep things running but mainly that I should finish getting

the money for the business school building. Ray Miles had started the

campaign for the building and raised—I’ve forgotten, but he was stuck. The

campaign was stalled. And Wally was very unhappy. Ray doesn’t know a lot

of this, but Wally came to see me and said, “You know, we gave the

cornerstone grant to you.” Gene Trefethen and I had made the presentation,

and they gave $15 million, for what was to become the Haas School. But

nothing was happening, and there wasn’t even a location yet designated.

03-01:25:13

Cummins: Wow! And this was 1990?

03-01:25:16

Cheit: Ninety.

03-01:25:18

Cummins: Wow! So this was—because the next problem they have in terms of the

donations is the Haas Pavilion, then. It was kind of a replay, it sounds like.

03-01:25:31

Cheit: Well, what happened then is—so Chang-Lin said to me, “I really want you to

finish this project.” So I said okay. So I agreed to become Acting Dean and

we went back to the Haases for a second gift.

03-01:25:57

Cummins: Boy that has to be hard to do.

03-01:25:59

Cheit: That was not easy, that’s right. But Gene Trefethen and I went. In the

meantime, of course, Walter Haas had died. He died in 1979, as I remember.

And we went back and said we need this now. Anyway, skipping a lot of

intermediate steps, they said, “Okay. $8.75 [million], I think it was, additional,

which ended up to $23 something [million]. I can’t remember exactly.

Anyway, I did a lot of things that we needn’t go into here, but I set up

something called Budd’s Group, and Budd’s Group was a group of people

who were dedicated to finishing this project. And terrific people on that—

faculty and alums, and we got it finished. We raised the money—

03-01:27:05

Cummins: And how much was the total then?

31

03-01:27:08

Cheit: Well, the total then—we were aiming for $40 [million] and it increased to

about $45 [million]. And I think the project ended up at $52 [million], as I

recall.

03-01:27:18

Cummins: That’s my recollection. Good, okay. That’s what I thought. What an incredible

contribution.

03-01:27:25

Cheit: Well, at any rate, we got it done during that time. And it was a lot of—I had a

lot of satisfaction in that! [laughs]

03-01:27:35

Cummins: Oh goodness, absolutely.

03-01:27:37

Cheit: Yeah, and the Haases—the letter that brought the gift, the $8.7 [million], the

second gift, said that it was given on condition that the education wing be

named for me in honor of my service to the University.

03-01:28:00

Cummins: That’s amazing.

03-01:28:04

Cheit: And so that’s why it’s Earl Cheit Hall.

03-01:28:09

Cummins: That’s amazing. It really is.

03-01:28:11

Cheit: At any rate, I finished being Acting Dean and then in ‘92, ‘92-‘93.

03-01:28:22

Cummins: Yeah, ’92.

03-01:28:24

Cheit: And then there was the VERIP program, and I decided—I was sixty-five then,

I think—and I decided I would retire because I was doing a lot of other things.

So I did. And I became emeritus. And then, athletically speaking, Bockrath

resigned in ’93. And I was Chang-Lin’s advisor and was on the payroll for a

modest sum, and I was doing some things, some assignments for him and for

Jud [C. Judson] King. I did some things for Jud. I did disagreeable work for

Jud King. That is, disagreeable because nobody wanted to do it. [laughs] And

one day after Bockrath resigned Chang-Lin called and said he’d like me to

come over there to see him. So I figured, “Aha, he wants to set up a search

committee.” So I made up a list of people who—because you don’t want to go

there empty-handed. So I went to see him, and on the one end hand he’s so

open, on the other hand he was so sly. He said, “We need to find an Interim

Director.” And I said, “A search committee.” “Oh yeah, yeah.” We’ll get a

search committee, but I don’t have to worry about it. He said, “We already are

32

thinking about a search committee.” So he didn’t want to talk about a search

committee. He wanted to talk about an Interim Director. What happened was

that he said, “Now, I don’t think it’s a good idea to appoint an Associate

Director.” Because I had Chris Dawson, I had Bill Manning, I had Bob

[Robert G.] Driscoll. He said, “I don’t think it’s good practice to appoint

somebody who might be a candidate.”

03-01:30:48

Cummins: Could be a candidate, right.

03-01:30:51

Cheit: So it should be somebody who isn’t a candidate, and it should be somebody

who has—anyway, he went through the criteria, so I said, “Well, who does

that leave?” And he said, “You!” [laughs] I said, “Chang-Lin are you

serious?” “Yes, yes.” He says, “We’ve talked about it, and we want you.

You’ve had a lot of contact with Athletics, and so on.” So I went home and

talked to June. I told her, and she said, “Are you crazy?” [Cummins laughs]

But I said, “I think I ought to do it!” So I did it. So then I became Interim

Director, and so what I decided was that we should really be focused, and they

shouldn’t be drifting. And this statement of objectives that you’ve given me—

I don’t think I even have a copy of this anymore! [laughs]

03-01:31:49

Cummins: You can make a copy. You should cite the date on there, Budd, just for the

record.

03-01:31:55

Cheit: The date of this is October 1, 1993, and I guess I was appointed Interim

Director probably September.

03-01:32:07

Cummins: Yeah, it had to be around then.

03-01:32:08

Cheit: About September 1, maybe.

03-01:32:10

Cummins: Exactly.

03-01:32:10

Cheit: Maybe late August. And I wanted not just to be a caretaker but to move things

along. One of the first things I did was to bring people together to ask them

what are they working on. What are they trying to get done? And then hash

out a list of objectives. And I’m holding here a copy of my objectives, which

apparently the Provost asked to see. She was interested in what I was doing.

03-01:32:51

Cummins: Yes, Carol Christ.

33

03-01:32:53

Cheit: Yeah, and so I did, and I won’t go through this. Now you have the copy. But

one of the things I did was to—and I don’t know if it’s on this list or not—was

to explore this company, this architectural firm in St. Paul, I think it is, who

had specialized in expanding existing facilities. And I don’t know that I see it

here. It may be on here.

03-01:33:40

Cummins: Bill Manning references it, I know, in his oral history on this.

03-01:33:49

Cheit: Bill Manning had identified the company.

03-01:33:51

Cummins: He did, he did, yes. Ellerbe Becket.

03-01:33:52

Cheit: And he said they did something at Duke or somewhere on the East Coast, and

it was very successful, and he went to see it. So I told him to pursue this. We

made contact with that company, thanks to Manning. And that’s the company

that eventually did the design, or at least some of the design.

03-01:34:14

Cummins: Exactly.

03-01:34:19

Cheit: So—anyway, I had—my oral history says a lot about my time there. This was

about four, a little over four months maybe.

03-01:34:30

Cummins: Do you talk about the Todd Bozeman—

03-01:34:36

Cheit: Well, yeah—

03-01:34:37

Cummins: Is it in there?

03-01:34:38

Cheit: I don’t know that it is.

03-01:34:43

Cummins: Tell me about that then.

03-01:34:43

Cheit: Well, one of the things I did was to ask Chris Dawson, who was one of my

associate athletic directors, to really be vigorous about our Title IX

compliance. In fact, that’s number one on my list of objectives here. And so

she had a group, and they really did a terrific job. She’s a very able woman.

No longer here now.

34

03-01:35:17

Cummins: Absolutely. She’s at the Pac-10.

03-01:35:17

Cheit: Oh, okay.

03-01:35:20

Cummins: Yeah, we’ll get into this later, the next time, but there’s a lot to that.

03-01:35:25

Cheit: Anyway, I really admired her, and she knew what to do. So we got people

together, went through the requirements and the data. I was not involved in

the details of that at all. And so when she was ready with a kind of an interim

report of what they were finding and what they were likely to recommend, I

called a town meeting. The town meeting was a device we used in the

business school for talking about things without actually having to vote on

them. And it’s a very good device, you know? If you have a departmental

meeting then there’ll be motions, so I called a town meeting. And it was in the

Hall of Fame Room up there. I love that. You know, the Hall of Fame Room

had in it a framed bear from—I can’t remember now, but the thirties or

something. It’s a wonderful bear, and I used to urge people that that bear

ought to become our official bear. I just love it; it’s an old-fashioned bear. But

it was not a high priority, and nothing ever happened. [laughs]

But at any rate, at that town meeting everybody, virtually everybody, came.

But Todd Bozeman wouldn’t show up. And he just snubbed me, you know?

And my secretary then, a wonderful woman I think is still in the department,

Dayna Sannazzaro.

03-01:37:32

Cummins: Yes, she’s still there, works for Sandy [Barbour].

03-01:37:35

Cheit: Is that right? I really liked her. We had a very nice relationship. Anyway, she

phoned people to make sure if they were coming. And he snubbed me or the

process. [knock on the door] Come in! Come in, come in. [conversation with

Michelle McClelland not transcribed]

03-01:38:09

Cummins: So I’m going to stop this, Budd and we’ll pick it up right here. This is part of a

little oral history we’re doing.

03-01:38:19

Cheit: Oh I see the sandwiches are here! Can we make a date?

03-01:38:26

Cummins: Yes, we will do that.

35

Interview 2: November 10, 2010

02-00:00:01

Cummins: Okay, so—where we ended was we were discussing the period when you

were the interim AD. We were talking about Todd Bozeman and the snub, or

whatever you want to call it, when you had indicated you wanted to meet with

all the coaches. So we thought we would pick it up from there.

In doing some other work I was reminded about the Raiders playing at the

stadium here, and I think that was when you were the Vice Chancellor. Was

that right? With Roger Heyns. And the way it was put to me was that that was

a decision that was largely to generate more revenue for Athletics, because it

was, again, one of these struggles with the budget. Do you remember—

02-00:01:00

Cheit: God, my memory is so—

02-00:01:00

Cummins: --about that?

02-00:01:02

Cheit: I can’t remember why.

02-00:01:03

Cummins: Okay, fine. I’ll pursue that in another way. I know that Dorothy Walker was

the one under [Chancellor] Bowker, shortly after that, who worked out the

covenants with the neighbors that affects the ability to use the stadium for

other events, and that’s been a continuing problem for years in terms of being

able to use that—

02-00:01:30

Cheit: Right. Well, it’s now part of the agreement, the legal framework, or whatever

it is.

02-00:01:38

Cummins: Yes, exactly. So why don’t you go ahead then and talk about the—starting

there with Bozeman and then we’ll—

02-00:01:46

Cheit: When I became Interim AD I asked each of the people on the senior staff to

tell me what they were working on. And once I had a list of all those things,

then I prioritized them, and one very—either at the top or very close to the

top, was our Title IX compliance. And that work was being done by Chris—

02-00:02:29

Cummins: Dawson.

02-00:02:30

Cheit: Chris Dawson, yeah, a very able Associate AD. And when I looked at what

she had done we went over it and I said, “Well, when you finish these things,

36

let’s call a meeting of our department, so that they know both what the

expectations are and where things stand.” And it was that meeting that he

declined to come. And we met in the Hall of Fame Room, and we had a very

good meeting. She laid it out, I thought, very effectively and very clearly. I

was impressed with her. In fact, a slight digression here. I was only going to

be AD for a few months—I’ve forgotten, three or four months. So when there

were meetings—there was a meeting of the Pac-10, there were others—I

didn’t go to any of those meetings. I thought this would be kind of a career

development opportunity, so I sent her, I think, to Pac-10 meetings, and I sent

other people. But I really was very admiring of what she had done on Title IX.

Anyway, that’s when he didn’t show up. And I was disappointed, of course.

But then he did come to see me later because he wanted rings for the players

because they made the Sweet Sixteen.

02-00:04:29

Cummins: Yes.

02-00:04:28

Cheit: And somebody, and I can’t remember who now, turned him down. And I

think it was somebody in the departmental bureaucracy. I can’t remember

now. But it was the first time I’d heard of it.

02-00:04:43

Cummins: That’s interesting.

02-00:04:48

Cheit: And he was feeling aggrieved because he wanted to get their rings. And so I

looked into it to see how much it would cost, and I approved the rings. So he

did come to me when he wanted—he wanted the rings. [chuckles]

02-00:05:05

Cummins: Interesting, interesting. Okay.

02-0