...succeeded in getting the nomination. We used to have—we did have here in the University at Chapel Hill, a student, a Miss Wells, whose dad was president of a small college in Georgia. But she had since married a Branscomb, who was the head of a research for IBM. She had proposed to Mr. Carter's people that I be invited to be his chairperson on his Task Force on Education. I agreed to do it. We put together a good group. Did a lot of work on position papers, and turned them all in dutifully, as we were asked to do, to his people in Atlanta. And once he had got the nomination and had been elected, he set in process a series of meetings. And I was called and asked to meet with Stu Eisenstadt, who is an alumnus of this institution, in Atlanta, along with other people who'd been assembled, to make the trip to Plains, Georgia, which we did. And go down and there in rotation, each one of us presented some ideas about a whole variety of subjects. Spent the whole day down there. In his mother's place, out in a little pond. We came back to town we went over to Billy's place and bought a bag of peanuts, and went back to Atlanta. Soon after that I got a call from Stuart Eisenstadt one day, and he said that the President didn't think that the Secretary of HEW should either be anybody from education, or medicine, or welfare. It should be an independent person. I said, "Well, are you asking me if I'm interested in being the Secretary?" I said, "Stu, you don't—I'll be glad to talk with you." I said, "I am not in the —" I said, "Let me give you a suggestion." And I was the one who suggested Joe Califano to him. Now I had dealt with David Matthews and Casper Weinberger, and Elliot Richardson, when they were in that job, all during that long, long protracted HEW controversy. But, I think there's a classic irony here when I was the one who put him in the minds of people, and he turns out to be as adversarial with me in the end, having worked together as much as we did in the Johnson Administration. But that's getting beyond it. But the inauguration came and the Task Force report was turned in, and I got a call from Stuart one afternoon, saying the President wanted to meet with a group of college presidents—would I put the group together and bring them to the White House, and give him a chance to listen a little while? And I did. And I got Kingman Brewster to come from Yale. Bob Fleming from the University of Michigan. Oh, Barbara Newell, Norman Francis from Xavier, a whole group. And Dave Saxon was President of the University of California, and so on. And we met together and rehearsed our presentation. And we all marched into the Cabinet Room, and a great little scene took place there. He turned to me and he said, "Alright." So we started going around the room and we had two or three statements, and I said, "Now, Mr. President, David Saxon, we've asked him to talk with you about graduate education." Mr. Carter said, "Just a minute." He said, "When I was Governor of Georgia, I used to sit on platforms at commencement, and I thumbed through the program. And I would read those dissertation topics." And said, "I never understood them, most of them, let alone knowing any of their value," or the words to this effect. Well, I could tell that President Saxon—this was an unusual experience for him, to say the least, to have the President of the United States, in effect say, "I don't know whether all of this is worthwhile or not." Well, it was a little flustering. So, Kingman Brewster looked at me, and I looked at Kingman, and I nodded my head to Kingman, and jumped into the conversation. And among Brewster, Saxon, and Friday, we finally got through it. And then went on and finished the discussion. When we were excused from the Cabinet Room, Joe Califano came running over there to me, and said, "Look here, we can't leave this where it is." He said, "You've got to get graduate education positioned the way it ought to be." And nothing would do, but Joe just insisted that we all go down to his office and try to put together a letter in text form, to go back to the President, which would say, "Here's some more information. We want to get this case firmly stated." That letter was developed and we sent it back in a week or ten days later. Some time after that, Kingman Brewster, after he'd been appointed to the Court of St. James, told me that he'd never met President Carter before that day. And he was certain that that exchange and that scene there was the prelude to his appointment later on. And he was just, in a way, saying that he was just so pleased that he'd been invited to be there. But all through this, of course, the smoking controversy was beginning to heat up. And I was down on the Outer Banks, and I had a terrible toothache. It was an abscessed jaw tooth, and I'd been to the dentist down there and was waiting until I could get back to Chapel Hill to the dental clinic. And I was—they'd been giving me something for the pain of it, and the telephone rang, and I answered it, and they said, "This is President Carter calling you." And I said, "Well, I'm here. And I'm ready." And he got on the phone, and I said, "Good morning, Mr. President." Well, it was two o'clock in the afternoon. And he said, "Well, if you can pull that off, you're a better man than I know around here." And I said, "Well, Mr. President, you'll have to excuse me. I've got a terrible toothache." And he said, "Well, I'm calling because I'm going to be in some community of the Eastern part of the State." And he wanted to know what reaction he was going to get over the tobacco controversy. I said, "I don't think—you're the President of the United States. People are not going to be disrespectful. They might say things, but not in my experience in North Carolina, that won't happen." And he sort of let that end there with a pleasant little visit, and the conversation closed. But, then a little bit later, I got a call from Mrs. Carter inviting me to come and help her redo the Library of the White House. I didn't know what she meant, really, but I didn't know that they had any kind of formal library. But, nonetheless, I went up there, and we met in what I guess is called the Roosevelt Room. And I walked around looking at the shelves, to see what books were there. And I saw volumes that had been in there for, I'm sure, twenty-five years that nobody ever touched. The Annals of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the United States Navy, and things like that. So, we got a group together—book publishers, press association people—and we completely redid it. And worked out a system whereby other people who published books would make available to the White House current volumes that could go from there on over to the Library of Congress. However that move required. And she took us upstairs to see the library up there, and they did have the most current books there. And, of course, the publishers were very generous. They were very—they saw to it that this was done. But I kept looking around trying to find anything in there from the University of North Carolina Press. So, later on Hugh Holman presented to the White House a set of the famous John White drawings, and when I was up there recently I excused myself, and went down to the library. I wanted to be sure they were still there. And there they were. And very pleased to see that. But, after we got so involved in the HEW thing, my involvement with the Carter program began to fade away. Because I was looked upon as adversarial, and Joe wrote about this in his book, which I thought was not an accurate statement, and told him so, later on when he called me one day. But from then, you know, I met Mr. Reagan and visited with him when he was at the Reynolds Coliseum but his attitude about the utilization of the university community for the benefit of the nation in ways that were exceedingly important in national defense and research. He just was such a complete reversal from the way Kennedy, and Johnson, and Nixon, and all these other presidents had used the university structure to great advantage. Mr. Reagan—I guess his experience with the University of California, was still—when he was Governor—was still in his mind to the degree that it was something that he couldn't—just didn't want to have anything to do with. And he didn't. And of course the advent of William Bennett closed those open-ended discussions quickly. And that was a great disappointment, because I knew Bill Bennett well when he was head of the National Humanities Center, and I really—I saw none of that in him, at the time. And I guess hindsight says that Bill's had a consuming ambition, I guess, to be president someday himself. And everything he's done since then has had a political coloration to it, which I regret to see. With Mr. Bush, two things: In 19—I've got the date down here—in 1986, President Robert Atwell, who was Head of the American Council on Education asked me if I would chair a national commission on higher education. That is, National Challenges for Higher Education for the United States. And this, again, was a very strong group of people, with people like Derek Bok at Harvard— [unclear] oh, a great cross section of college presidents from all over the United States. We did—we finished our work. And in 1988, Mr. Bush invited Atwell and myself, and the President of the University of Maryland to come and—I presented the report of that, of the Commission to him. Had a very nice conversation with him for about an hour. About these priorities. Soon after that, Benno Schmidt, who's now president of Yale, had worked it so that he wanted to bring a group of eight presidents to meet with Mr. Bush and talk about the same thing. And these were people like President Cunningham of Texas. And Alexander of Tennessee. And I was not there representing any institution. I was just from the commission. But then he had Mr. Cavazos there. And he had Dan Quayle there, Sununu, Governor Sununu, and the others. That discussion was more less a recapping of the priority system, and the restatement of his desire to be known as the education president, but there were no commitments about money whatsoever, at any time. Well, that enthusiasm at that point, was the high point. He gets a healthy B+ on rhetoric, as fortunes here rated him, a D- on performance, when it comes to education president. And that's regrettable, because he is a smart person. He believes in what colleges and universities and schools should do. But somehow he can't bring himself, apparently, to put it in a priority statement. I've had, quite the contrary relationship with Mrs. Bush. She has gotten awfully interested in literacy. Particularly family literacy. And the executive we have heading our program has met with her on numerous times. And her name is Sharon Darling. And she's now a member of the foundation that Mrs. Bush created to deal with literacy. And that led to Mrs. Bush coming here to the Kenan Center and spending the day. And she toured one of our centers in Henderson. And came back here and met with the members of our board and talked with us at length about what she was doing. And it didn't end there. She had gone back, and we'd been working back and forth, and was keeping her informed. And then she called a major conference at the White House, and foundations and people who were interested in literacy, and I went to represent us. And it was very interesting to see how the Kenan Family Literacy Project has moved to the very top of those considered as an exemplary in this field. Let's stop a minute. My throats - [Recorder is turned off and then back on.]

I guess probably the most extensive, outside activity, consistently demanding, that I ever engaged in was the work of the Carnegie Commission on Education in the country. That ran from 1967 to 1973. It was a group of—one the most wonderful groups I've ever been associated with. It was presided over by Clark Kerr. And it had people like David Riesman at Harvard. Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame. Carl Kaysen, the great mathematician from MIT. Governor William Scranton from Pennsylvania, who ought to have been President of the United States. A very able man. Norton Simon, the great art patron from California. The dear, lovable Catherine McBride. She was head of Sweet Briar. Nathan Pusey. Patricia Harris, who in her own way became Secretary of HEW, a little later on. Carl—well, I mentioned Kaysen. This group produced thirty volumes of work, and we spent quite a few millions of dollars, trying to take a—and did take—the most thorough assessment ever made of American higher education. And I think provided some enormous guideposts for policies. One of the first recommendations in the field of health, was in a meeting on the campus of Spelman College in Atlanta. After a long legal discussion with Professor Rashesh fine, who was then at Harvard—he had been here before. He's a medical economist. We decided to get behind and did advocate the Area Health Education Center idea, which was the way to get health care to the far reaches of a given state, since they couldn't afford doctors, and doctors couldn't afford the sparse practice. Happily, North Carolina was the first major state to adopt the idea. We now have nine such centers. They've spent well over 100 million dollars a year delivering adequate health care to thousands and thousands of people. I used that example of the range of the Carnegie Commission to show how extensive its work was. Just from local interests' point of view, a very historic meeting took place in the faculty lounge at the Morehead Building, because in a session there—out of that session, came the recommendations that led to the Pell Program of scholarship assistance in the United States—the need-based scholar funding program. The Commission made that recommendation to be moved into the Congress, out of the work. There were dozens, and dozens, and dozens more, but I don't know of anything on the scene today that will equal the scope and intensity of work that went on there to try to help the academic community. It was enormous. Another effort was financed by the Sloan Foundation, which has been a good—it was single—more singularly dealt with the universities of the United States. It was headed by a man named Louis Cabot, who at that time was head of First Boston Corporation. And he was a Cabot of New England. This Commission had people like Secretary Tom Gates, Secretary of Defense. He used to be head of one of the great corporations of the country. Ed Carter, of Carter-Hall stores. Carla Hills, whose now Mr. Bush's representative. Sam Proctor, who was then—he had been head of A&T College, and he was then the head pastor of the Abyssian Church; he followed Adam Clayton Powell in that pulpit. And then went to Rutgers University as a professor. Leon Higginbotham, a great federal judge. And Dan Yankolovich pollster. James Kagan, who was head of MIT. This was the type of person. That particular program, the effort of that foundation had a lot to say about structure, in relationship of the federal government in several states. And it was a very interesting piece of work, but a very directed and singular approach, aiming at just that kind of—that series of questions. Let's see, the Sloan Commission—the Markel Foundation. I was on that board for several years. This was a group that interviewed bright, young medical faculty. And in those days, this was in the sixties and seventies, if you were chosen, you received grants totaling over thirty thousand dollars to conduct—for your own research. And the process would bring twelve young medical men to a given location, and out of that you'd pick six that got this kind of funding. These were two-day retreats at places like the Williamsburg Inn, or Broadmore in Colorado Springs. Just another intensive kind of screening experience, that turned out to be quite educational to you, as well as the people who were getting the grants. And while these things were going on, I was busy in the work of the American Council on Education, and served my term as its chairman of the board under President Logan Wilson. Logan Wilson was at one time chief academic officer at the University at Chapel—of here. Went from here went to be president of the University of Texas, and from there to be president of the American Council. He was a Ph.D. out of Harvard. A sociologist. A man of real stature. He died last week at eighty-two, or three years of age. But, I got into that role-playing early on. And moved in and out of the American Council before the tough years came on. But then I served my term as the president of the Association of American Universities. And then that experience—we brought to Chapel Hill, through an exchange program, the vice chancellors of all the major universities in the Commonwealth of Nation's of Great Britain. And we had them here from Capetown, [unclear] Two from Australia. All the Canadian institutions. They came and spent virtually a week with us. Just the AAU fifty would meet with their group. And we just had a glorious time visiting, that way. And it worked out quite well. But, the Association of American Universities, in its own way, was a spokesman for all higher education in the country like nobody else could really do, because you had all of the very top institutions there. Because N.C. State was in the structure of the university, I kept up with the National Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities. But I didn't attend those meetings, because John Caldwell and the—Chancellor Caldwell, and his successors, all did, and it was just more than any human being could do. But I kept in touch through their executives and primarily, in the beginning, through a wonderful man named Russell Facklick who ran that association and was a formidable force in legislative developments in higher education in this country for years. It was through Russ and a young man he brought to work there named Allen Oster, a spinoff group created the National Association of State Universities, which is now larger than the Land Grant Association. And Oster was its first and their only president, up to now. I think he's stepping out right now, but it was a spinoff out of that structural group. And then—so the Association of American Universities, the American Council, the Land Grant Association, and then the State Universities group, you see, that you stayed awfully busy. In and around this were assignments such as being the Chairman of the Advisory Panel to the Secretary of the Air Force on ROTC developments. The same role, being a member of the advisory panel on ROTC Affairs for the Secretary of the Army, Secretary Brucker, at the time, who was a former Senator from Ohio. But these are things that you do because of these various association memberships, and you just do them. You don't spend a lot of time arguing about it. It usually takes a day a year. I was also a member of the Board of Trustees at Howard University for a period of five years, at the request of James Cheek. And I found this a very interesting experience, because Howard University is primarily a federally funded institution. It's a very large institution, I guess, among the predominantly black schools, it would have to rated among the best. It was very instructive to me to be on that side, for a while, having been where I had been playing the role here, being with the five historical black schools, with a very different context, though. And I found that trusteeship a very rewarding one. Governor Sanford was also a member, but his duties didn't let him attend very often. But I—when I got to where I couldn't make the schedule, I asked to be relieved, because it was just more than I could continue to do. But it's a grand institution that I hope someday will get the kind of support base that it ought to have to do the job it's there to do. So many dozens of young people from all over the world come to school there, particularly the countries of South Africa, and other third world countries. And they do a good job of getting them involved in the American culture, in a way that's important. Now, one of the things you wind up with after you've been around this business any length of time, you get asked to either to testify a lot, or consult a lot, or speak a lot, and I decided the third one, I wasn't that good at any way. It takes a lot of work. So I concentrated on the first two. And these last five or ten years—and this is all by happenstance—I can honestly say I didn't set out to be a consultant for anybody. I don't really like it. Because I think it's a dangerous thing to do. But I have personally met with the boards of trustees of the University of Michigan; Ohio State; Maryland—the University of Maryland; the University of Florida; the University of Iowa; the University of Nebraska. The heads of the University of Tennessee and Alabama. This process was varied a good deal, when we came to the State University of New York, because the-then president Clifton Wharton, wanted to have a thoroughgoing study made of that institution. It had sixty-some campuses, and it was so choked to death by legislative regulatory entanglements. And this was a very interesting group, too, because it had a—its chairman was a Mr. Blakenwood, who was a New York stock broker. But if it hadn't been people like Mike Blumenthal, who headed one of the biggest industries of the country, and was Secretary of Treasury, at one time. And a former Governor of the state, a man named Wilson. And it was just a lot of fun. Chaired by the-then chairman of the board of Time Magazine, Davidson. And we had several meetings. In fact, four or five—we finally jelled on a series of recommendations, and Mr. Davidson asked me to go with him with another member of the Commission, who was an Italian, who was then New York State's, I believe, housing chief, Mario was his name. We all went up to give our report to Governor Cuomo. And we flew up in this Time helicopter and walked into the Governor's office, and there was one of his aides—was a Chapel Hill alumnus. And we walked in, and we said to the Governor right off, "We're not here to ask for anymore money." Well, that took the tension out of the thing right off. And he wanted to talk then. We stayed for well over an hour. Talked about to let the University be free of that kind of process, and let it spend its money, as it had programs to spend its money. Then it would show some real results. And the last piece of that package was legislated a year ago. Wharton—Cliff Wharton, has since left there to become head of the Teacher's Insurance and Annuity Company. But he tells me that all of those things have been implemented. And it was a very interesting experience to have. But, as you can see, with all these institutions and doing things like that, it takes you away. And when you're trying to move in and out of the political scene, you're trying to deal with the educational aid structure, you know, on top of everything else you're supposed to be looking at, you finally reach a fundamental conclusion, that is, you have to put a priority label on use of your time. Because they'll take every second of it, if you'll give it to them. And in and around all of this, too, are such things—I made some notes here: The Southern Regional Education Board. Now here is an organization that a Chapel Hill alumnus created. It was an answer thirty-some years ago to the absolute need of access to established standards of academic programs, where states couldn't afford to duplicate them. Veterinary schools. Schools of public health. Schools of law. Now, lots of people said, "Alright, this is the way your going to deal with the integration issue." Well, that issue just really didn't come up, because you can't build schools of public health in every state. They're so expensive. And the same thing was true in medicine. So, these, what they call interregional agreements, were worked out. That board was a creature of governors. A governor is always the chairman. But the vice-chairman is always an academic person. Well, I twice served as vice-chairman of that group, and that was because the University of North Carolina was so much a provider, rather than a takee—if I may put it that way. But that was good, because we'd had the established confidence, and the people were here to utilize it. We ought to make it available. And the first chairman of that was John Ivey, then Robert Anderson, and then Winfred Godwin. All three of them graduates of Chapel Hill. And I took a lot of pride in that, because I felt like we were making a regionwide impact in some fourteen states. And our people here in the different schools, and departments, really did have a major impact on what happened in their particular areas of operation, all over the South. It was a very important thing. Now that was followed by the Southern Growth Policies Board, which Governor Sanford helped suggest to create, which is more of the policy-determining group. And it was out of that group that came the Southern Regional Literacy Commission, that's just turned it its report a few months ago, which I chaired at the request of Governor Roemer, of Louisiana, who was then the chairman of the Growth Policies Board. To take a look at what needed to be done all over the South, in dealing with this literacy problem, of some twelve million people, in these fourteen states who literally cannot communicate adequately enough to survive in the economic warfare that's going on out there. And it's a deadly serious problem that I don't know how anybody is going to resolve. But we've taken some giant steps. We've called for the establishment of a literary forum here in the Triangle, and Governor Jim Martin will succeed Governor Roemer, so he's got it right close at hand. And once again North Carolina might be able to demonstrate through the Kenan literacy example and other things, that here are ways others can choose, adapted to your own situation. But the idea is here for you to utilize it, if you want to do it. Now there have been other things of one week or two weeks, dozens of those are not worthy of your record, but, major things like the Southern Regional Education Board, and the Southern Growth Policies Board, were my way of continuing the tradition that Frank Graham set, when he was a member of the board of TVA, and the other people. See, those went their way into the history. These were the next generation of organized efforts to deal with the great social question in the southern region. So I was trying to continue the role that President of the University of North Carolina had historically played for more than a half a century. And I think we kept the light shining where they could see it. And it really worked out. Now, in and around those things were such things as: Testifying before then Congressman Paul Simon's committee on the education in the House. And he and I carried that relationship on since he's become United States Senator. And we've done a lot of work together. The Aspen Institute spun out of this. And I've been to Aspen three times as an involved participant in dealing with that. The—let's see, the Coca-Cola Scholars Program which began two years ago. It's there because Mebane Pritchett, who had headed the Morehead Foundation program for so many years, and so well, was enticed away from Chapel Hill, by the Coca-Cola interests. He's now dealing with a program there that reaches every state in the union, and makes grants of five thousand dollars per year value to this wonderful group of young people. He asked that I help him put it together. And I served as the chairman of the selection process. This will be the third and last year. I was with Fred Morrison once when he introduced me to his great and good friend James Johnston, who was then the partner to Johnston and Lemmon Company in Washington, which was a great stock brokerage firm. Jim Johnston didn't have any heirs. He wanted to do something for the University. He'd come here for two years of his education. And Mrs. George Carrington, who's a Scott—was Senator Ralph Scott's sister and Bob Scott's aunt. They were kin to the Johnstons, so she peppered him with letters about making available some of his great wealth and set up some scholarships at the School of Nursing at Chapel Hill. He got interested in this, and I met with him several times. He created a trust, and out of that trust grew the James M. Johnston Scholars Program at UNCG, N.C. State, and Chapel Hill. And this trust, last year, put one million dollars into these scholarship programs at these three institutions. It's the largest financed, undergraduate scholarship program anywhere in the University. Bigger than any of them. In dollar value. It all grew from this humble man who was buried out here at the New Hope Presbyterian Church, who grew to great wealth and influence in the nation's capital. He made his money in the stock brokerage world, but he was also a great civic person. He owned the Washington Senator's baseball team, at one time. I used to go up there with him; he'd take me to the games. We'd sit and watch the Senators play. They weren't scaring anybody to death, in those days. [Laughter] But, this leads inevitably in a conversation like this to having to say several things about individuals. Fred Morrison will never have a book written about himself. He ought to be, but he won't. But he, early on, became the law partner of Governor O. Max Gardner, when they went to Washington, after Governor Gardner's term here in North Carolina. Fred Morrison was one of the guiding spirits in all that went on to get the Ackland Museum for the University here. He had a lot to do with the emergence of public television in North Carolina. He was working on the Washington side of the thing. He was a great friend and close confidante of Frank Graham for many years. Governor Hodges took him with him when he went to visit the Pope in Rome on one of his junkets when he was Secretary of Commerce. He, being that close to Secretary Hodges. He grew up in Rowan County. Had the role—he was principal at Chapel Hill schools, then decided to become a lawyer. But while he was here, he was football coach in high school. He won a state championship, which he thought was probably the greatest thing he ever did in life, I think. But Fred was a man of that old tradition—that wonderful tradition—who believed so much in the value of education. And he never let anything interfere with doing what he could do, to make it become about. And he was always available to you—day, night, whatever—when you needed anything in Washington. He never wanted any credit. Never took any credit. But he deserved credit, for thousands of things that he did. He and his wife, Emma Neil, who's equally that kind of dedicated woman, created a scholarship program at UNCG. They have one here at Chapel Hill. They've given hundreds of thousands of dollars to put stability into the Roanoke Island Historical Association. The Lost Colony drama. And they've given—they've built dormitories there for the actresses. They've bought land to protect the area. They've financed all kinds of projects that people never hear about. But Fred, he created the Morrison Series in Southern Politics, which now finances publications in the University Press. The Morrison Series—that was his gift to the University Press. And so when you do all of these things in and around Washington, you have to have an anchor. And Fred Morrison was that anchor. His law firm had a suite of rooms in the Mayflower Hotel, and Fred just gave me the key and said, "Anytime, you just bring your people here and do your work here." In another way, in an equal significance, you have to say words about Bill Cochran. Bill Cochran went to Washington with W. Kerr Scott, as his administrative assistant. He stayed on with B. Everett Jordan, when he became Senator. Bill is referred to very often these days, as North Carolina's third senator, because when Mr. Jordan was head of the Rules Committee of the Senate, Bill was the man who really ran the operation. So he did everything from assign senators to their office space, to hiring all the personnel to Congress. And I've walked the corridors of the Senate Office Building with him and actually had everybody from the elevator boys to the people whose operating the railroad, all stopping and talking with him to visit. But, Bill is probably the most essential representative that North Carolina has had in the Congress, to my knowledge. Just by the sheer force of his contacts, all over—he's just a person of just enormous energy. And there isn't a week that doesn't go by that I don't call him about something. And he does little things like helping people with passports, or helping deal with some federal agency. And then he does the big things that really are significantly like the Library of Congress work. Because he was a great friend of Daniel Bopstin. And so on. An invaluable servant of the University, without a doubt. And then no man ever could be in this job and not find out that very quickly. He has actually drafted legislation. He's gotten things in the Congressional Record that were important to get there. In a month or two, services like that that he's brought. People like Fred Morrison and William Cochran are the reasons the University had such a strong identity, where it makes a difference to have an identity. Along with these things I served as a trustee to the Shakespeare-Folger Library in Washington, for a while. This was, I'm sure, because at that time, the then-director was O. B. Hardison, who had left Chapel Hill where he was Kenan Professor of English to become head of the library. This was a very interesting experience because Dr. Hardison was the kind of man who tried to make the library come alive to children. They had little plays and visitations, but—and it's really an inspiring experience to walk into a place and see the original folio. To see the original works. But, there again, I served the nominal period of time and asked to be relieved, because I felt I'd made my contribution there. The fascinating way to tie the university in with a great international academic center. Well, I'll just stop there. What time is it?

....was a man—his presence was commanding. He wanted everybody to know that he was in charge, he was running it. But that didn't mean that he dealt with it. He would move in in center stage. He was the kind of fellow that would pull you right up to you. Big, strong, and had a hand that would just swallow your's up, and he'd pull you up close. Sometimes you felt like his mind was somewhere else, when he was talking with you about your subject. But, very much a product of the congressional system of development. Mr. Carter was quite the other way. Very bright. A product of gubernatorial training. Much more attentive to individuals, rather than the system. He's a man that didn't have the feeling—you didn't feel as warm when you were talking with him, as you did with Johnson. Not that that meant anything, but it was just a different personality type. You had the feeling that he could be very severe, if he had to be. His eyes, at times, you could see a fixed stare in them. He had a great team of people. Eisenstadt was a first-rate domestic chief. What you learn about all these men, though, is that they soon drift away from immediate sense of commitment to domestic things. They want to deal with foreign policy. They want to deal with the world. And I think each personal history shows you that. Mr. Nixon was so much that way, that he really, I think, had any time for domestic affairs. Mr. Johnson was exactly the opposite. It was a thing that—the Vietnam War did him in, as he said it. Gerald Ford wasn't in there long enough to go either way. But Jimmy Carter, through his work with Israel and Egypt, and their two premiers, Sadat and Begin, he became an international figure by it. And it's so interesting to note how Mr. Carter has emerged in the last ten years. Such a distinguished figure in international involvement. Mr. Reagan: I don't know, I've never felt that history would deal with him in a very generous way. Because I've never felt that he really was our leader. He had an agenda that got this country in the worst deficit situation that it will ever see. It's got its educational system in a very bad way. He deliberately and willfully set out to establish a tax policy that benefited the wealthy. That's openly admitted. He really diverted the resources of the country to the military strength issue. And while president turned the whole thing around to where the wall came down. It was obviously a massive expenditure, which they say he brought about, but that's not what history says. It was the internal decay of the communist system that killed it. And the building of a great military structure might have been a force in it, but it was not by any means the real element of the destruction that went on there.

Was part of it—I gather, a lot of the problem with Reagan, in terms of his light attentiveness to, really, education —was it that he didn't have the people around him? Was that it? Johnson did, obviously—had all these people who were very interested—

That's right. But you know one of the interesting things about it is he dealt so much with the business community, yet he never listened. David Kerr, for example, with Xerox recently made a statement that I only wished that Mr. Reagan had heard. He said when you—"Education is not to be viewed as in competition with national defense, and AIDS, and foreign affairs of this country. It should be viewed as a solution to these problems." Which is really what the truth is. Now Mr. Eisenhower saw some of this when he admonished us all: "Keep your eye on the union of the military-corporate alliance." You're seeing the effect of that under Mr. Reagan. I just don't think Mr. Reagan ever really understood it. Nor did he care, therefore, for the role the academic educational process plays in developing the economy of a country. It has everything in the world to do with it. Especially now with the intelligence level in plant operations being so high. They never grasped this. Some governors do, some don't. For example, Governor Hunt in North Carolina, I felt, really mastered that. As did Governor Sanford. Others just sort of ignore it, or leave it alone, and let it lie fallow. That's, I think—it's what happened in the Reagan years. It's got us now where we're not the number one economic force in the world. And we're rapidly sliding into third or fourth position. Had we kept up the level of achievements that went on in the educational community under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, we would not be in the fix we're in. I saw it happen. This country had the greatest university mechanism the world's ever known. The Japanese universities can't hold a candle to the American structure. We stand with anybody. I guess you have to acknowledge that Oxford and Cambridge, for purposes of their root system, and what they've done, and who they are, would have to rank as the world's premier universities. But, it was during those post-World War II years that we built in this country the greatest teaching research and service program ever known in education in the world. And we perfected two of the great contributions this country has made. Community colleges and the public university. In no other place in the world will you see things like it. Well, all of that was left to lie out there, and has now for nearly twelve years. And it's a very costly neglect, in my opinion.

Since you've raised this question, higher education in the nineties, what do you think of the various efforts, reform efforts, toward higher education that have come since the 1980s, including this recent Carnegie report and a series of reports that have sort of come out from the mid-80s on?

Well, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was a group which, in the sixties and seventies, used to meet once a year, and had a very distinguished board who'd sit around and have a nice dinner the night before, and get together the next morning and talk about a topic, elect the next year's officers, and go home. And the time came either to energize that or move it, get in and out of New York, where it wasn't identified with the Corporation. A group was pulled together to study that question. I was a member of it. We recommended that it be moved to Princeton, and create a new mechanism. Robert Fleming was the head of the University of Michigan then, and the question came about, "Well, what do we do with it? And who do we get?" And he called me and wanted to talk about Ernie Boyer. And I recommended that Boyer get it. He's there and has done a good job with it. Its primary emphasis has been in the public school arena. And I think he's done some very good work because he had the benefit of being Commissioner of Education before he went to that job. Bill, I really think the great problem in the country today is not that we don't know professionally what the problems are, it's the attitude of the American public as to the roles schools play. We've got to stop being so caustic about schools. Now, we've criticized them enough. You don't have to go around looking for what the issue is. Everybody knows that now. But we've got to reposition the schools in our priorities. We've got to agree we're going to finance them the way they should be. We've got to make teaching a respectable career again. And create and surround the principals with the time, and effort, and money to do his job. I met over here with 116 principals on a—at the Institute of Government not so long ago, and before I started on what I was there to do, I asked a series of questions. The first one of which was, "How many of you, each day, spend fifty percent of your time on what you think your they're to do?" I think twenty hands went up out of the whole congregation. I said, "Wait a minute now. What are the rest of you doing?" Well, I've never heard such an outpouring of everything from campaigns for the band, Blood Bank drives. We've dumped all of society's problems on the school mechanism. And what does that say? It says the church is defaulting. Civic clubs are not doing their jobs. Whatever the other mechanisms are—social agencies. But we've got to get all of that out of the schools, you see. And I'm one who now—I've grown very weary of the professional critic. I saw where somebody appeared before Rich Preyer's commission over here the other day, saying that the model—what we've had is awful, throw it out. Well, if I had been dutiful member of that Commission—it's my own fault that I was not there—I would have asked him this question: "Why is it when I go to commencement at Chapel Hill, and UNCG, and N.C. State, and Appalachian, and I look up there, and every June I guess I see 100,000 graduates. Now eighty-five percent of those young people came out of the schools of the state. If they're so corrupt, how is it that the university can put its label on them? They didn't walk through this place. They were pushed like you do in the public schools, you say." So, you see, it doesn't fit. Now there is a lot of malfeasance. I know that. And you know it, too. But it isn't all evil, so I say let's start talking more positively. And I think this condition of mine, about the schools, is the same thing that's wrong with other things in government. When you have political campaigns like the last senatorial race here, that's based on negativism and racism, it gets into everything else. We've gone on now for twelve years with this garbage. And we have only ourselves to blame for it. And so I'm a turnaround fellow. I keep fussing about this all the time now. But you need not expect the educational system to do the job of adequately teaching young people, if you put upon its back the burdens of the world. It won't happen.

In the Johnson Administration, particularly you seemed to have close contact with people like Eric Goldman, and Joe Califano and Bill Moyers also, I gather, you didn't mention him. Did he —

Well, one of those days when we were up there with the White House Fellows Program, we were all standing there at the East Room, and I was standing with Bill. And he turned to me and he said, "When are you coming up here to work with us?" And I said to him, "I don't—what do you want?" He said, "Well, we've got to talk about this." And I said, "Well, now Bill, wait a minute, I don't want to mislead you. What you do and what I do are two different worlds. And I know you're short of people, but.." I just cut it off. But I had—it was Bill Moyers, John Gardner, people like that in that structure, that were there in with Mr. Johnson. But I was a busy fellow. I could have been twice as busy, but I had to cutback some of that. They're always wanting all the free help they can get, you know. Especially when they don't have to pay your travel.

Right. You mentioned to me once before in another context that Eric Goldman first contacted you on the basis of a conversation with —

Robert Goheen.

Robert Goheen. Was that —

That's where it started. I didn't know him from Adam. And Bob told him—that was Christmas week, the very first Christmas that Mr. Johnson was in office. And as I said, I was in the basement of my old office down there working. And Goldman called—and we had a phone extension down there, so I sat down on a bench and talked to him for about thirty or forty minutes, and then went to Washington and met with him. He's written all this up in his book. Not that much, but he makes two or three references of the two or three things we did in there together. But that relationship ended as soon as it began. And you just move from advisor to the next one, as they came along.