for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.

com 847-401-3970
Abstract for reviewers: The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is unique in the history of U.S. higher education and a 1960s case study of the enduring conflict between U.S. religion and science. UWGBs founding plan suffered an early abortion at the hands of the regions conservative business and religious elite, supported by a popular revulsion to the prospects of change. It is Wisconsin history. It is United States history. For Wisconsin, the story is the playing out of cultural conflicts starting in Wisconsins early days of statehood and continuing yet today. The story in brief: UWGB was first authorized by Wisconsin government in 1965 as an expansion campus of the world-famous University of Wisconsin at Madison. Supporters of the Oshkosh State University, a campus of the Wisconsin State University (WSU) system, argued that state funds would be better spent in upgrading their 90year old campus rather than building a new one near Green Bay. When UW leaders rejected the idea of adopting WSU-Oshkosh into the University of Wisconsin System, a counterattack was made, starting openly in 1968 to de-fund or otherwise halt UWGBs development. While the present UWGB campus (the Shorewood campus) was under construction in 1968, a multi-campus UWGB operated through UW-Center campuses in Green Bay, Marinette, Menasha and Manitowoc. In 1969-70, the first academic year of current UWGB campus, an attempt to absorb to absorb UWGB into the WSU system, that proposal being promoted by a business coalition headed by the recently retired CEO or the Kimberly-Clark Corporation (Kellett.) In 1971, newly-elected Democratic Governor Patrick Lucey forced a merger of the WSU and UW into a single organization governed by a combination of the two former boards of regents. However, the emotional battle continued, with covert challenges marring the UW-O and UWGB relationship for at least two decades. The story of this conflict is important because it involved many state and national political, business and academic leaders yet in power today. In addition, emotional struggle likely affects the relationships of individuals, political parties and religious organizations who fought on either side of what might be called an ethnic conflict had it occurred in a distant nation.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 =================================================================== Opening quote: It is the first mark of a mature institution to know its history. Max Freedman
subhead: With great expectations, the newborn UWGB entered Day One in Fall 1969.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future,

Table of Contents
The Birth of the University of the Future ................................................................................................. 2 The First Earth Day ................................................................................................................................... 3 The Brilliant Chancellor............................................................................................................................ 6 A large and noble American vision ..........................................................................................................11 Its Who You Know ................................................................................................................................. 12 Competition in the public sector ............................................................................................................. 13 Old Rivalry Becomes New Culture War ................................................................................................. 15

The Birth of the University of the Future

The University of the Future came out of the womb in Green Bay, Wisconsin on September 2, 1969. Officially, it was an expansion campus of the prestigious University of Wisconsin based in Madison. UW-Green Bay shared its birthday with the first Internet message, sent 15 feet through cable at the University of California-Los Angeles, according to the National Geographic. UWGBs early accomplishments were equally humble, contestable claims. In 1969, both UWGB and the Internet were newborns, though the Internet pulled status as a national military secret--considered treasonous, at the time, to reveal. Both institutions were small steps for humankind, as it marched toward a future that most Americans believed would be a future of bounty. Expectations were distorted by the mood of the times. Just six weeks before UWGBs opening day, in July 1969, the first humans stepped foot on the moona feat that many of the elder generations doubted would ever happen despite the serious striving of their youngsters. A new optimism spread like a summer cold: If we can put a man on the moon, then certainly we can. That fill-in-the-blank syllogism was familiar to everyone of the era. It gave emotional confidence to UWGBs first enthusiastic students. While the topic of the moon was not new to human discussion, the meaning of moon had changed. UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 An unexpected and unforgettable image appeared had in color magazines. People passed the picture around with genuine exclamations of wow. Earthrise was the name given to the snapshot, taken impulsively by an astronaut from a point near the Moon. It was impulsive because the astronauts had the camera to scout landing locations on the moons surface for the first manned landing in 1969. There was no prior thought of making photos looking back at Earth. After a wild night of dancing to a full moon, humanity woke up to discover planet Earth next to them in the bed. During UWGBs first academic year, the first Earth Day was marked, on April 22, 1970. In Manhattan, in front of the iconic United Nations building, renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead shouted the awakening to a crowd like she was reading a poem: This is new! Weve never been in a situation like this before! Weve never known the whole planet before! Weve never known the whole human race before! Weve never seen this planet, a tiny little blue blob, a little blue tuft swirling in space. To be realistic, not everyone was paying attention, but many were among the 1,300 students attending classes on UWGBs Green Bay campus that fall semester, 1969. And among the 2,500 students attended UWGB feeder campuses. These were 40-60 miles away in the small cities of Marinette, Manitowoc and Menasha. As buildings took shape in the early 1970s, visitors commented that the campus felt like the Starship Enterprisethe spacecraft of the TV show Star Trek which was first broadcast on TV in 1967.1 Most striking was the experience of walking long, subterranean hallways linking the buildings. At irregular intervals along the tunnels, windows revealed that those walking inside were cocooned from the outdoors. The students were not unlike astronauts peering out portals. In a discomforting moment of revelation, alert students and faculty realized they were inside wanting to save the outside, aka, the environment. How ironic, the boosters smiled to themselves. The Starship Enterprise had landed in Wisconsin's north woods: We are the rescue ship to a doomed planet Earth.

The First Earth Day

The first Earth Day took place during UWGBs first school year, in the Spring 1970 semester. Appropriately, a Wisconsinite is credited with originating this national day of concern for the environment. He was a former Wisconsin governor and a strong supporter of the University of Wisconsin-- U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson.2 It looked like a coincidence. Nelson was not vested with any given authority to create Earth Day, and its likely that a majority participating in the first Earth Day couldnt identify who Nelson was if told his name. Senator Nelson was not on the social fringe, but rather one of a large mass of middle-aged
1 2

Star Trek was off the air in 1969, but it has made many resurrections since then, the mark of an indelible myth. Gaylord Nelson earned a law degree from the UW-Madison law school, though his undergraduate education was at San Jose State University in California.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 conservationists (in 1970 he was 53) concerned about the environment. Since joining the Senate in 1963, Nelson had focused on getting other legislators to accept that average voters and taxpayers were concerned about Nature and the quality of their environment. Too often when he spoke, Nelson would say, other elected officials shook their heads dismissively. The nonverbal message was clear: There he goes again, worried about the birds and the butterflies. This was the American atmosphere before the environment was recognized as a vital concern. Nelson knew, from years seeking re-election to the Wisconsin legislature, that average Wisconsinites were indeed concerned about such silly things as bluebirds and sturgeon, no matter how often pedestrian politicians dismissed these as unworthy concerns. Working through his Democratic Party connections, Nelson instigated a 1962 national media tour for President John F. Kennedy. The plan was to visit natural areas and parks, holding press conferences in places of expansive beauty.3 Flying across major media markets in September 1962 for a national tour, Nelson and JFK found the news media uninterested in reporting on nature. It just wasnt hard news. The response was understandable, perhaps, but unfortunate. The topic that stole headlines was the first US-Soviet treaty to halt atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. However, nuclear testing fallout was indeed central to the creation of Americas environmental awakening, Barry Commoner would document that on multiple levels.4 Federal scientists were shocked by radioactive fallout migrating up the food chain, causing greater damage than the scientists ever imagined. That said, it was a stretch for most of the public to draw a connection between nuclear bombs and the environment, causing journalists to ignore that story angle. From Nelsons perspective, the tour was a firecracker that fizzled without a boom. Inspired by Thomas Edison trying a thousand different filaments for his light bulb, Nelson kept trying variations on his stump speech. In 1969, the stars aligned with the polestar. Nelson gave a routine conservation speech, this time in Seattle. Impulsively, he tossed in a new idea: a teach-in focused on the environment. A teach-in like the Vietnam War protesters were conducting. In part through the association of environmental and antiwar teach-ins, Nelsons speech became more attractive. The account of a single wire service reporter was reprinted in newspapers across the nation. Editors welcomed a good news campus story for middle class readers troubled as their youngsters left for college campuses teeming with angry, demanding students.5
3

Perhaps in a characteristic poke of mockery, in 2001 the technique of policy announcements at national conservation sites was copied for environmental policy announcements by President George W. Bush..
4 5

Barry Commoner, 1964, The Closing Circle. Teach-ins were a popular new event form on campuses, and reported on by TV network news. At a typical teach-in, students would gather on campus but outside of classes, in a semi-organized quasi-educational meeting. They would view films, discuss books and received handouts in the form of crude mimeograph booklets and alternative newspapers. There commonly were black/white posters advertising national protest events (color printing then being cost-prohibitive for all but rock concert promoters.) A bullhorn with crackly sound characteristics would sometimes carry commentary by a member of the audience. Hair styles and dress were a mix of conservative and hippie. Remarkable today, there was always cigarette and pipe smoking, almost never cigars, which were a symbol of old and wealthy powerful. Extremely rare was the public smoking of marijuana, then a new and considered a highly experimental drug in white American culture. 5

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

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In 1970, the new environmental notion gained the legs of a sprinter. UWGB's founding chancellor, Edward W. Weidner, was asked to testify at a House Congressional hearing in March 1970 about the need for a national program of environmental education. Simultaneously, a corps of Ivy League college students working with Nelson--led by Harvard Law student Denis Hayes--was advising hundreds of organizers of community actions scheduled for April 22, 1970an environmental awareness day later renamed Earth Day.6 More than 10 million Americans took part in activities of the inaugural Earth Day, today an annual international event with much greater participation.7 President Nixons staff was said to be frightened by the tremendous turnout of average Americans in events akin to protests. The fear was not fear of violence; it was fear of losing power in Congress and in state governments.8 Nixon hurriedly created the cabinet-level U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA was formally created in December 1970. In the weeks before that first event, UWGB faculty conducted eco-learning sessions in small towns across the state from Neillsville to Rosendale. Emeritus Professors Bud Harris (wetland ecology) and Bob Wenger (mathematical modeling) report that in Spring 1970, no one on campus imagined that the event would accomplish what it didwhich was to mark cultural history with the revelation that a majority of Americans were now seriously concerned about the environment. Margaret Mead, distinguished anthropologist, delivered an impassioned speech in New York City to a large crowd gathered for the first Earth Day rally: I want to stress, first, the fact that this (Earth Day) is an absolutely unprecedented event in the history of the world. Men have been frightened before. Theyve had plagues before. Theyve died in wars before, and of epidemics. Never before have we faced together what is happening in the whole world. This is new. Weve never been in a situation like this before. Weve never known the whole planet before. Weve never known the whole human race before. Weve never seen this planet, a tiny little blue blob, a little blue tuft swirling in space.
6

Two dates in addition to April 22nd are today designated as Earth Day- the United Nations Earth Day in June and John McConnells Earth Day on the Spring equinox. 7 Also on 22 April 1970, President Nixon convened the National Security Council for a meeting at the White House to decide how and when to invade Cambodia (With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace and Politics, Dale Van Atta, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.)
8

When President Nixon and his staff walked into the White House on January 20, 1969, we were totally unprepared for the tidal wave of public opinion in favor of cleaning the nation's environment that was about to engulf us. If Hubert Humphrey had become President, the result would have been the same. From Earth Day Recollections: What It Was Like When The Movement Took Off by John C. Whitaker, former Nixon-era federal administrator, EPA Journal - July/August 1988. UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 Dont let people fool you by saying there were environmental crises in the past. Dont let people fool you by saying, well, weve had epidemics in the past and weve survivedDont let people quote the past in trying to make the future. Like a new Hollywood starlet, the environment became a cover girl for magazines. In its first few years, fifty-plus national publications would publish stories about UWGB. The campus was tagged Eco-U by Newsweek.9 In reporting on the nations first environmental education conference, New York Times reporter David Bird reported on the new UWGB where environment was the only subject. 10 Before cable TV, middle-class American households got most of their common understanding about events around the nation through large-circulation magazines like Parade and Readers Digest, Look and Life. Several of these conduits informed Americas broad middle class about UWGB. Intellectuals read in Harper's magazine that UWGB was the Survival U prophesied in the official Earth Day handbook. International academics at conferences learned about UWGBs new space-age terminology for undergraduate education. The Shahs Iran bought UWGBs entire educational approach for a new university in Tehran, asking for UWGB faculty to visit and consult.11 A new university in Canadas Alberta province sent a delegation to UWGB, later transferring some UWGB concepts to a region that would develop Canadas tar sands as the next-generation oil replacement. In 1974 Weidner was named the sole U.S. rep on the governing council of the new, post-doctoral United Nations University headquartered in Japan.12 In his rarefied life, Weidner was in constant contact with top scientists, academics and news media. Long before the general public, they were aware of the scary things that top scientists around the world were saying in stuffy small-circulation journals and at unnoticed technical meetings. Trapped in its own world, science was shouting. Outside, it was heard as a restrained and hushed voice shouting, sotto voce, that solving environmental problems was critical for human survival. Seeming to walk backward onto the stage, UWGB was blinded by the spotlight and the unseeable audience applauding. The announcer proclaimed, the first university in the world to relate all studies to the environment. Everything from theater to business management, from introductory English literature to analytic chemistry all were supposed to be taught with some connection with the environmental crisis. At least that was Weidners vision, the academic plan he laid out for subordinates to follow.

The Brilliant Chancellor

Ed Weidner had been studying the university all his adult life. In fact, he had only one job outside
9

Newsweek labels UWGB as Ecology U, identifying the campus as an activist concept of the university. June 14, 1971 Ecology is only academic problem for students at new Wisconsin campus, New York Times, 9 December 1970, by David Bird. 1111 The Iranian governments interest in UWGB ended with Irans conversion to theocracy in 1979. 12 The nuclear bombings in 1945 Japan were forceful symbols of environmental concern beyond war and peace concerns.
10

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 academe, and that was a one-year position with the National Municipal League, a non-profit association led by academics and government careerists. Though not business, the NML was definitely outside academe. Ed Weidner was born in Minnesota in 1921, by age 24 he had a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota.13 By 31 he was already a full professor and department chair of political science at Michigan State University in Lansing. Weidner was part of the GI generationthose born between 1901 and 1924 who are considered civicminded by social historians, regardless of left-right orientation.14 The latter part of this generation included diverse but action-oriented individuals like Presidents John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, and Wisconsin Senators Joseph McCarthy, Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, It was a generation described as holding an implicit belief in progress and in the central role of great men.15 As it happened, Weidners transplant to northeast Wisconsin was notable by the initial rejection of Wisconsins wealthy and powerful political conservatives. Wealthy individuals refused to consider gifts. Even an adult ballroom dancing club refused admission to he and his wife. Perhaps, this should not have been a surprise. UWGB was in the heartland of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, a condemning and of the John Birch Societya shrill Republican fringe group who frightened both columnist William F. Buckley16founder of the conservative National Review magazine-- and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, commander of Allied Forces in World War IIs D-Day. As a political scientist, Weidner specialized in state and local governments of the United States. He was not a leading figure in constitutional law, yet on January 14, 1954, the 33-year old Weidner was first quoted in the New York Times on the topic of federalism.17 Noteworthy is that Weidner was the only academic quoted at length in the Times report on a national conference of 60 leading Constitutional scholars and political scientists. The elite gathering was called by the Ivy League Columbia University to discuss Eisenhowers approach to federalism. As quoted in the Times, Weidner reveals his interpretation of states rightsthe current claim by Southern conservatives that each state in the United States is sovereign and has jurisdiction in composing its own peculiar laws on issues like racial discrimination and pollution control.18 Weidner also signed a bipartisan New York Times endorsement of 1960 presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. While the pro-JFK statement is not known to be authored by Weidner, the prose includes a

13

Other noted Americans born in the early 1920s include Presidents George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter, Beat poet Allen Ginsburg, protest folk singer Pete Seeger, New York City Mayor John Lindsay. 14 William Straus and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of Americas Future, 1584-2069, William Morrow, 1991. 15 Straus and Howe, p. 263. 16 Buckley spawned many high-vocabulary emulators including George Will, adviser to both Presidents Bush 17 January 1954 is the earliest New York Times-- then considered a national newspaper of record-- listing for Edward Weidner from an internet search of the Times archives. 18 The states rights argument was then being used by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and his pro-segregation Dixiecrats to support resistance to federal civil rights legislation. While Weidner was building UWGB, the same arguments were being made by American Independent Party Presidential candidate George Wallace. Wallace drew a strong showing in Wisconsin voting in 1968.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 biting attack on Republican attempts to squelch discussion of the dangers of the nuclear arms race and the futility of duck-and-cover strategies for civilian defense.19 Mr. Nixon has attempted to suppress meaningful debate on these paramount issues of foreign policy in his repeated urgings that Senator Kennedy cease discussing the world dangers that face us. He would have the American people abdicate their responsibility for critical judgment. We believe that his is a disastrous prescription. This is not the time to suspend the exercise of reason. It is a time for imagination, a time for facing and meeting the demands of a new historical epoch.20 These common-sense statements were not popular with Green Bays conservative elite. With skilled PR advisers, Weidner could have been presented very differently. He had boots on the ground credentials with Americas expanding empire.21 In the late 1950s, Weidner moved within MSU to the federallyfunded Vietnam Advisory Group (VAG) organized by MSU political science professor Wesley Fishel. According to the 2009 book, A Bomb in Every Issue, investigative reporter Robert Scheer stumbled upon news of the VAG-MSU project in 1966. He contacted former VAG co-director, Stanley Sheinbaum, a former MSU political scientist of Weidners era.22 Sheinbaum explained to Scheer that part of his duties was working with CIA employees to recruit trainers for a new police force in South Vietnam. Traffic control, crime control, etc. Unexpectedly, Sheinbaum learned that some of the CIA officers on his project staff were torturing prisoners during interrogation in the MSU quarters. Soon after, he resigned when informed that he would be included in a conspiracy to assassinate a Vietnamese person.23 The extent of Vietnams impact on Weidner and UWGB are not known, but they are undoubtedly significant linkages. Later Weidner would insist on another culture experience for every UWGB student, with foreign travel if the student could afford it. Then there is the curious coincidence that September 2, 1969--Day One of UWGBwas also the day that news of Vietnamese rebel leader Ho Chi Minh died.24
19 20

Panic:A Cultural History, Jacqueline Orr, Syracuse University Press, 2006. This We Believe, Committee for a Strong Foreign Policy, New York Times display ad, October 21, 1960, p. 22. 21 But then, so did Vietnam combat veteran and U.S. Senator John Kerry. 22 Peter Richardson, A Bomb In Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America, The New Press, NY, 2009. Sheinbaum cooperated with Scheer in preparation of an expose in the April 1967 Ramparts. The article gave major impetus to leftist efforts at UW-Madison to force removal of the Army Mathematics Research Center in Sterling Hall. 23 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Group reports: When the request for assistance came through U.S. government channels, the staunchly anticommunist Hannah was deeply interested in pursuing the contract. He sent a small evaluation contingent to Vietnam, consisting of three department chairmen who would be involvedEdward W. Weidner (political science), Arthur F. Brandstatter (police administration), and Charles C. Killingsworth (economics)along with James H. Dennison, head of university public relations and Hannah's administrative assistant. After a brief, two-week visit, the quartet reported in October 1954 that a state of emergency existed in Vietnam, and recommended that the project should be immediately undertaken. 24 Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969, according to U.S. datekeeping, but because of the international date zone difference, it was actually September 3 in Vietnam. There is also the curious coincidence that September 1, 1969, the day before UWGBs Day One, Army infantryman James Wozniak, age 22, was killed by friendly fire in South Vietnam. Corporal Wozniak (no relation) listed his hometown as Armstrong Creek, Wisconsin, roughly 50 miles northwest of UWGB. In another circumstance, he might have been a student at the new UWGB. 24

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 Before Vietnam became a household name, the new nation was temporary home to Ed and Jean Weidner, Twin Cities natives in their early thirties. The Weidners were one of the first American families to live among the post-colonial Vietnamese, previously known to Westerners as Indochinese. The timing was historic, for the Weidners were in Vietnam-- a nation unknown to most Americans precisely when two unflattering descriptions of Americans in Vietnam hit American pop culture. Were the Weidners ugly Americans or quiet Americans? Such labels originated in best-selling novels later made into films.25 Common to both stories was a picture of Americans visiting Vietnam with declarations of were here to help, but with behavior promoting disorder and random violence. Clearly, the Americans were deluded, not a pleasant selfappraisal. The Third World population explosion was just starting to be discussed in the American news media, whose discourse had long been USA-centric. Gaining attention were demographers and ecologists like Barry Commoner, Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich, quantitative scientists who were accurately forecasting a future that would be more problematic in the decades ahead. In the early 1960s, Weidners destiny became linked to Wisconsin after he was closely observed by Harrington. Weidner was secretary of the American Council of Education (ACE), organizing national conferences on the future of higher education. Observing him once again was Harrington, then president of the ACE, and also new president of the famed University of Wisconsin. When a 1966 search committee for UWGB's first chancellor did not give Harrington a candidate he felt confident about, Harrington phoned Ed Weidner, then at the University of Kentucky running a statewide economic development project. Harrington once said he sought staff members with a great deal of push. In a 1980s oral history, Harrington said his habit had been: If a person was not on the make in those days, I tended to be rather suspicious of him. Weidner at first refused the UWGB assignment, after consulting with Jean and eldest son Gary. There just wasn't enough preliminary work done (on the university), said second-wife Marge recounting what she'd heard from the Chancellor. However, Weidner was playing musical chairs when the melody stopped. Weidner had resigned from the University of Kentucky, and then got promises the UK would find a grander position for him. But that position didnt appear. Weidner preserved his employment by accepting Harringtons insistent offerleading the 45-year old to become major architect of the new University of Wisconsin, tentatively located near the city of Green Bay. One of Harringtons last speeches as UW president was to UWGBs June 1970 commencement. Harrington told the 1970 assembly that UWGB represented a new wave of educational thought and was destined to become a truly great university. Also on the platform wishing well to graduates was Regent James Nellen, Vince Lombardis team physician for the Green Bay Packers. A Catholic, Nellen lived

25

Before video and cable TV, novels were much more powerful in what we call pop culture. The Ugly American, 1958, a political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer tells a story predicting that the United States eventually loses its Southeast Asian campaign against Communism because of American arrogance and failure to understand the local culture. The Quiet American by Graham Greene, 1955, tells the story of misguided Americans secretly smuggling bombs and weapons into then-demilitarized Vietnam, thus escalating conflict.

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for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 along the smelly Fox River near De Pere. Nellen was also a World War II Navy commander and a Catholic with strong right-leaning political views. Nellen could trace his position as regent to the 1939 takeover of the regents by ultraconservative Republicans. In the 1930s, Nellen had been a fraternity member at UW-Madison in a period when socialist, pacifist and liberal students debated and demonstrated to restrict possible military involvement overseas by the United States.26 A military surgeon during World War II, Nellen could conclude, with a veterans pride that those demonstrators had been wrong, and todays Vietnam War protesters must be wrong, too. In the 1930s Nellen was a UW Badger football player of note in a period that saw Badger football players assaulting anti-militarist picketers, throwing them in Lake Mendota and warning them to not return. (It is not known with certainty whether Nellen was personally involved in the incident.) The public memory of the Sixties focuses on images from chasing ghetto street riots, wounded soldiers on Vietnamese battlefields, and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan TV Show. However, other important events were happening beyond televisions gaze. Little noticed by the general public were newspaper ads and meetings of industrialists who sounded terror-stricken. They predicted dire consequences if Congress approved proposed worker safety rules or proposed controls on air and water pollution.27 Some Wisconsin business people hired PR people to advance the notion that proposed federal worker safety rules were part of a communist plot. One rumor spread and reported in the newspapers was that the Earth Day was a secret tribute to the deceased Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin. In response, local nature teacher Clara Hussong28 wrote a letter to the Green Bay Press-Gazette saying how happy she was that Earth Day fell on her own birthday. Some of the anti-Earth Day activists lived and worked in northeast Wisconsins paper mill valley known as the Fox Valley. Fearful of damage to their economic interests, they characterized any government-required pollution control as evil----antithetical to the free enterprise system as well as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Assuming a moral superiority, they argued that their views were based on foundational American principles: Said simply: Business leaders should have the complete freedom and liberty to decide when pollution controls should be installed, if at all. To the more moderate of this faction, regulation at the state level might be acceptable. States rights aside, business owners proclaimed that they knew what was dangerous and what was not, and that they were intrinsically more concerned about their workers and the well-being of the general population than were government regulators.29
26

UW football players from unidentified frat houses played vigilante with demonstrators of the time, but the author doesnt know whether Nellen participated. However, such participation appears consistent with his later views of the 1970s. 27 Stang and similar John Birch Society authors. 28 The Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary has a nature trail named after Clara Hussong, who wrote a weekly column about nature in the Green Bay Press-Gazette for 25 years. 29 A similar attitude is seen in modern times by the president/owner of Massey Energy, a coal mining company. Speaking to a Labor Day picnic for Massey workers in 2009. CEO Blankenship proclaimed to a cheering workers: No one in the federal government cares more about miner safety than me. Theres nothing new that the federal government can bring to me to improve miner safety. Eight months later, an explosion in a West Virginia Massey mine killed 27 and injured others. One of the largest coal producers in the United States, Massey was charged with 450 procedural rules the year before the collapse, by the federal Office of Mine Safety. In late 2011, Massey personnel were found guilty of deliberate safety violations.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 S. Fred Sargent II, a scientist of truly national reputation and UWGBs original environmental science dean, offered to help Fox Valley businesses and Chambers of Commerce. Sargent had both MD and PhD degrees, and was one of the founders of a new science called biometeorology.30 Sargent was already advising the federal government on air pollution solutions, so he offered to help Fox Valley businesses develop local air pollution control plans. Such plans could prepare them to meet potential new rules at either the state or federal level, should new laws being proposed. (This was before Congressional passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972.) -=-=-=

A large and noble American vision

When Ed Weidner accepted the task of creating UW-Green Bay in October 1966, he had spent at least two months brooding over acceptance of the challenge. It was a job so large that he seriously hesitated to accept it, according to widow Marge Weidner.31 But Ed Weidner's bio listed a string of challenging jobs. Maybe this would be just another trophy as he continued an evolutionary competition to make a future in which his progeny could survive.32 After all, he was only 46 years old. While Weidner founded the worlds first environmental university, there's nothing in his resume suggesting that he envisioned a campus with heavy emphasis on physical or biological sciences. If his formal record suggested anything, it was likely public order and a fair, rational, democratic government was the end, for Ed Weidner was a political scientist specializing in public administration. Weidner took pains to repeat that UWGB was not strictly a science university, but instead a liberal arts undergraduate institution. In the mid-1950s, young Professor Weidner was in South Vietnam for several years advising the first post-colonial government in Saigon. While nominally on the faculty at Michigan State University, Weidner wasnt training youngsters from Kalamazoo. Instead, he was advising Vietnamese in procedures to train public administrators and civilian police. Weidner helped an MSU professor of police science set up the National Police Training Academy to train leadership for a civilian police serving rural villages that had not known service of that type. Vietnamese students would visit Lansing, Michigan for nine months of standard MSU coursework. Armed with little more than revolvers, whistles and night sticks, the new South Vietnamese police brought sarcastic comments from local U.S. CIA leader Edward Lansdale, who suggested the MSU professional police were feeble and undermilitarized. Despite that critique as too civilian, Weidners
30

Biometeorology investigates how living organisms respond to weather. It is an interdisciplinary science, representing an amalgam of other disciplines: phenology, physiological ecology, and environmental physiology. Frederick Sargent, II, Hippocratic Heritage: A History of Ideas About Weather and Human Health, New York and Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1982. 31 Marjorie Fermanich Weidner had been Chancellor Weidners administrative assistant since 1967. After Jean Weidners death and Chancellor Weidners retirement, Ed Weidner asked Marjorie for rides to health care appointments. Marjorie joked, Well, Id already been married to two Eds who were dog lovers, so it seemed predestined. 32 An allusion to Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought, a landmark 1966 book by evolutionary biologist George C. Williams. The books concepts were embodied in UWGBs cutting-edge education, sometimes using the popularization of The Selfish Gene by Stephen Dawkins.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 role would be seen as too military by some in U.S. academe.33 Something about Vietnam deeply troubled Weidner. Someone gifted him a videotape set of the 1983 PBS series, Vietnam: The Documentary History, according to his widow, Marjorie. She recalls that her husband never talked about Vietnam, except in the context of his young familys positive adventures living there. She recalls the retired Ed Weidner getting the videotapes in as a gift, and together they started to watch the first episode. Partway through the first tape, the Chancellor turned the TV. He didn't say why, and Marjorie sensed not to probe his internal turmoil. I tried to get him to watch them, she recalls. To her knowledge, he never watched any of the series again. Ed Weidner appears twice in the final production, once standing next to a short Vietnamese man in the coat-and-tie of Western business attire. The man was Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. sponsored leader of South Vietnam and later a victim of an assassination by a broad conspiracy of South Vietnamese military leaders.34 Diem was the premier, recounts Mrs. Weidner as she recalls what her husband told her. He (Diem) was a very nice person, but he was very inept. Previously appointed, Diem was seeking the peoples election, and Diem would visit impoverished villages wearing a European white three-piece suit, surrounded by peasants clothed in rags. The shocking visual contrast can be seen in the PBS video. It was a hard time, and there was lots of corruption, recounted Mrs. Weidner of what she was told.

Its Who You Know

According to UWs official history, UW President Harrington was a tall, very articulate, and very forceful man whose sharp intelligence and recall of facts that sometimes intimidated.35 As a scholar, Harringtons academic specialty was U.S. foreign relations, and his influential Ph.D. students produced The Wisconsin School of Diplomatic History. The Wisconsin School is characterized by searches for economic motives in government strategy, treating skeptically any selfreport by government of its motives. Its a school not popular with U.S. military leaders because its scholars have chronicled the misuse of many overseas military operations for private and corporate financial gain.36 Harrington surprised Weidner with the grandest job offer that anyone in higher education could receive: Design your own university, the way you think it should be. Build it, hire its top leaders, and launch it as part of the University of Wisconsinone of the top brand names in education. However, make it
33

When some of the 50 visiting MSU staff published candid accounts of troubles they saw in South Vietnam, Diem expelled the entire project, which terminated in June 1959. [See Ramparts 1967] 34 Between 1 November 1963 and 21 June 1965, there were eight successful or abortive coups detat, all involving various factions of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces. [Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam, 1961-1973, Roger P. Fox, Office of Air Force History, USAF, 1979.] The coup ending Diems life was the first, taking place a few weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. 35 UWGB's Craig Lockard got his Ph.D. from UW-Madison in 1969 and says Harrington as a historian was a political liberal, although he was seen as a conservative on matters of governing the campus. Harrington later reflected that he was blamed for a couple of his Ph.D. students who later became radical activists.[interview with Rads author Tom Bates, 1988. 36 A high-profile student of Harrington is Cornell Universitys Walter LeFeber, co-author of Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898-1968, UWPress, 1993.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 uniquenot duplicating the all-purpose model of Madison. The university would be in northeast Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, a major manufacturing region with dozens of paper mills, machine makers and dairy processing plants. It would be a major new 4-year university with more than 10,000 students at the end of the first decade.37 The catch was-- Harrington needed the campus up and running by fall 1969. Weidner would have to start from scratchwithout even knowing firmly where in the two candidate counties the campus would be built. Could an offer out of the blue be more outlandish? The time line was unheard of in the academic world of that or this era. Non-academics may think the pattern for a university is established, found in a cookbook of some sort. For most colleges, that notion has some truth. However, UWGB was to be very, very different. The university of the future needed to address problems making themselves evident across the USA and the rest of the Westernized world. It needed to address where trends were taking the planet.38 According to original plans, UWGB would provide something unique for the entire state, not just for northeast Wisconsin.39 UWGB would address unmet social and economic development needs, and expand the horizons of Wisconsin's future leaders. It would help the state's trade and cultural relations with Canada. Students would be encouraged to study abroad for a brief time with UWGB faculty as guides. (While mainstream today, in the 1960s, studying abroad was unheard of in the United States outside the Ivy League.) The Regents of the University of Wisconsin had previously authorized conceptual studies on the university of the future. The largest concern was undergraduate education. The Madison campus had grown so large that students and faculty were feeling lost in a crowd. Alienation was apparent before the raucous turmoil of mass protests. Another Regent focus was cost. The cost of undergraduate education was skyrocketing, and fundamental restructuring was needed. The option of choice, according to the Regents minutes, was putting more responsibility on the student to educate themselves.

Competition in the public sector

Despite being government, Wisconsin tax-supported colleges feel the competition of the
37

Ceilings on campuses set by CCHE; set at 11,000 were UWGB, Stevens Point State, UW-Parkside, March 27, 1969, Milwaukee Sentinel.
38

Future studies and futurism flourished in the academic lexicon during the 1960s. Future-oriented education was another pillar in UWGBs original academic plan. 39 At the July 1966 UW regents meeting, UW President Harrington suggested planning the two new universities was something that the Regents might want to be involved. "Regent Greenquist stated that it seemed to him that the Regents were afforded a tremendous opportunity in this situation, since it was the first time in over 100 years that there has been an opportunity to start a new University from the beginning." Greenquist was named chair of the "Special Regent Committee on Development of New Third and Fourth Year Campuses in Northeastern and Southeastern Wisconsin." Minutes of UW Regents, July 13, 1966, Vol. 33.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 marketplace. The 15 campuses compete for students. Campus payments rise or ebbs with enrollment numbers. Because students can switch campuses any semester, each campus had to work to please its constituencystudents, and for undergraduates in the Sixties, their tuition-paying parents. In addition, with two college systems, there was competition for legislative allocations between systems for faculty and staff. WSU paid faculty a certain rate, while UW paid a higher rate. The WSU had excellent talent, but the UW had world-class talent. The UW felt higher compensation justified to compete for highly-mobile, and often egotistical faculty who were weak when wooed by money or better facilities elsewhere. After 1951, the teacher colleges of the WSU became state colleges and expanded programs to many fields, from business to nursing to liberal arts. In the 1960s, a flood of Baby Boom Wisconsinites wound up on comfortable WSU campuses, which were less threatening than the elite UW at Madison and often closer to the small towns they found comfortable. In every biennial budget, the WSU system competed with the UW system for legislative funding. On average, WSU faculty and staff were paid lower rates than UW's. Legislators bought the UW argument that it was especially important for Madison to have top-quality professors and administrators. Madison was competing with New York, California and Michigan among others and it carried the weight of Wisconsin's reputation. From UWGBs Weidner, Harrington needed growing student counts to make the budget argument, and if the local region continued resistant to higher education, attracting out-of-state was a viable backup. Besides, on undergraduate education Wisconsin turns a profit. State Senator Robert Warren (R-Green Bay) reported that UW graduate students in 1967-68 received an annual state subsidy of nearly $2,000 while undergraduate students actually paid state government a tiny profit through tuition. The idea of a UWGB graduate program was put on hold, and UWGB was told to focus on undergraduate education. At the same time, politicians in neighboring Outagamie County publicly blasted plans for UWGB's site location in Green Bay. State Assemblyman William Rogers (D-Kaukauna) argued that the new UW campus would be closer to large populations in Kaukauna, a small city just north of Appleton. Rogers filed a lawsuit and the case went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which rejected the lawsuit in 1969. Joining Rogers in anti-UWGB activity was Rep. David Martin (R-Neenah) who voted to stall or eliminate budget provisions for UWGB. At that time, Martin worked full time for Kimberly-Clark, one of Wisconsins largest corporations and a major paper company with financial interest in fighting pollution abatement regulation. In 1970, Martin was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Other K-C operatives joined the fray. K-C CEO William Kellettin his role as a government commission chair--proposed that UWGB be given to WSU, making it a daughter campus to WSUOshkosh. This happened during first semester, fall 1969, for UWGB. In a surprise move, in August of 1970, voices began to raise questions about K-Cs role in setting Wisconsin policy. It was a few months after the first Earth Day. Political campaigning was starting for the fall 1970 elections. Is it right for industry to regulate itself? The loud voice asking the disturbing UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 question was a former GOP state senator named Gordon Bubolz. In 1970 senior citizen Bubolz was also CEO of a prosperous Appleton insurance company and a long-time conservationist associated with nature education and the hunting/fishing crowd. Bubolz had invested himself in UWGB. In 1968, he chaired the citizens and expert advisory committee convened to design the environmental science curriculum for the future UWGB. Unfortunately, Bubolz had some enemies in his own Appleton-Oshkosh area and in the Republican Party. Voicing the same conflict-of-interest charges was Democratic gubernatorial candidate Patrick Lucey.

Old Rivalry Becomes New Culture War

Critical to all higher education in Wisconsin is the State Building Commission. While the Joint Finance Committee of Senate and Assembly leaders theoretically hold final authority, the State Building Commission must approve any construction requests that Joint Finance reviews. In the late 1960s, the Building Commission had received new legislative members through the agency of Appleton House Speaker Harold Froehlich. New was Kenneth Merkel, a newly elected assemblyman from suburban Milwaukee. Merkel was a young engineer and outspoken John Birch Society member the only Wisconsin legislator to publicly identify his membership with the Birch Society. He was also a conservative Roman Catholic in an archdiocese that was openly fighting state legalization of the sale of birth control like diaphragms to unmarried females. These were contentious times, even in liberal Madison. State Senator Fred Risser recalls that a UW Madison professor was arrested for displaying a contraceptive device in a class; birth control devices were on a government list of indecent articles. It took five biennial sessions10 yearsfor Rissers bill to pass, decriminalizing the open sale of birth control devices in Wisconsin in 1976. Although not an official arm of the Catholic Church, the John Birch Society at its January 1969 national convention announced a new political campaign aimed at stopping artificial birth prevention (i.e., contraception) and also government distribution of information about family planning. Merkel was father of several youngsters, traveled across Wisconsin speaking loudly against pregnancy contraception and the Legislatures immoral turning. After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in a 1973 ruling, Merkel added abortion to his speeches. Unaware of the conservative communications network around them,40 UWGB was actively advancing public discussion of contraception, abortion and family planning, hosting a national conference of experts met held at UWGB in January 1970 and again in January 1971.41
40

In 2009-10, the author interviewed more than 15 staff, faculty and top administrators of the 1969-72 era, asking whether the Catholic Church or social conservatives had ever raised the issue of UWGBs discussing birth control issues. All were surprised and said theyd never heard a comment, much less protest in that era or later. Marge Weidner, the Chancellors secretary from 1967 until 1986, said she did not recall anyone contacting the Chancellor in complaint about such matters. 41 1970 conference was titled: Population Growth: Crisis and Challenge and it featured speakers from Planned Parenthood, Sex Information and Education Council, the Association for the Study of Abortion, the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, and the Population Planning Program. The second annual Population Growth Symposium at UWGB was announced for January 8-9, 71. In addition, UWGB professors were local chapter leaders of a new national organization called Zero Population Growth (ZPG).

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 When it came time for the state Building Commission to consider Chancellor Weidners request for building funds, UWGB didnt have the votes. Weidner had first been given assurances in 1966, when Fred Harvey Harrington was influential the Regents, Legislature and public. Everything was a go. In two short years, with visible conflict on campus and a determined conservative activist faction anxious to stop the racial integration of LBJs Great Society, Harrington quickly became inconsequential. The ultimate housing goal in UWGBs Regent-approved Comprehensive Development Plan was 12,000 beds.42 With out-of-state recruitment, these beds could be filled to help Wisconsin increase its reputation as a higher education center. For a world economy globalizing and a state hungry for economic growth and reputation, it was a plausible scenario, at least to Weidner. Lack of media attention plus lack of dormitories ended UWGB's early success attracting students from population centers on East and West coasts. Whether it was led by WSU-Oshkosh or a more general network of Oshkosh-Appleton boosters, a significant web of opposition developed south of Green Bay. Weidner's Director of Development was Paul S. Davis who left a memoir based on his daily journal of UWGB's early years:
In the UWGB building program, the failure to get any dormitory space authorized for the first phase was a serious setback, although not much seems to have been said about it...The very integrity of the academic plan, as Weidner had written it, appeared to be threatened by the absence of dorms....Virtually every projection, after all, had seen dorm students as making up a large proportion of the total enrollment.

While UWGB was just starting up, its dreams were being aborted by unseen forces. Regent Bernard Bernie Ziegler of Plymouth suddenly [check time Davis MSS] challenged some expense already approved by the Legislature, baffling Weidner's staff. At a meeting of the Board of UW Regents in 1968, Regent Roger Gelatt, Sr., suddenly expressed hesitation about something in UWGB's budget plans. Harrington felt blindsided. Gelatt was a moderate Republican who had shown nothing but support prior to this first hint of concern shown to the regents. Harrington noted that Gelatt's apparent shift did not amount to complete withdrawal of support. Insiders in Madison suggest that Gelatt and Harrington developed a personal feud over Gelatts dating a faculty wife. Harrington was described by his housekeeper as a moralist whose book collection included hundreds of books about Jesus Christ. Gelatt later divorced his wife and married in Madison in 1972. A foursome had developed on the Board of Regents with the intent of toppling Harrington. The four were Gelatt, Ziegler, Pelishek and Nellen. Joining them was Regent Renk, who wanted to set a tone for UW campuses by confining all female students to female-only dorms after 5 p.m. The regents rejected Renks proposal. In 1970, Regent Nellen was elected president of the Regents board. According to an oral history recording made 15 years later, Harrington knew Nellen was out to oust Harrington, and Harrington says that he had made a private decision to resign in late 1969, feeling a loss of influence among the regents and legislature. Also a factor, Harrington said, was dropping federal support for higher education
42

Letter from EWW to Wallace Lemons, UW Central Administration, 31 December 1969.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 paul@beyondearthday.com 847-401-3970 initiatives, this due to the Johnson Administrations inability to raise taxes to fight the growing Southeast Asian war. In addition, there was the emotional strife of a campus in turmoil, windowsmashing riots on State Street, students being clubbed and tear gassed, military troops on campus, and random arson in campus buildings, fires apparently set by war protestors. Harrington disclosed his intention to resign privately to the regents who opposed him about February 1970, according to Harringtons recollection in an interview many years later. Before Harringtons resignation was made public, UWGB what became labeled theDeans revolt happened.43 The resignations were a mystery to most faculty, staff and community members. Weidner and other UW officials did not issue a public explanation while Weidners top recruits fled a ship they saw as sinking. Among the leavers was UWGBs most celebrated science faculty member, S. Fred Sargent II, M.D., Ph.D. The first dean of the environmental science part of UWGB, Sargent resigned to pursue other opportunities. He wound up in Texas at a well-funded public university. Harringtons public declaration of resignation came the first week of May, just after the Kent State University killings of four students by Ohio National Guardsmen. This was the kind of treatment that Regent Nellenand the majority of Americansthought appropriate for campus protesters in 1970.44 Using the classic calculus of tit for tat, two local Madison youth felt the Kent State homicides gave them justification to oust the Army Mathematics Research Center from the University of Wisconsin, which they attempted with a truck bomb exploded 3:42 A.M., Monday, August 24, 1970.45 As published in the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, Madisons AMRC was known to do research done specifically to more efficiently kill Vietnamese insurgents. Some Madison observers speculated that the bombing was either set up or permitted to proceed by J. Edgar Hoovers Cointelpro forces who were placed on campus to monitor anti-war protest.

END/END/END

43

According to an unpublished memoir by Weidners development director Paul Davis, UWGBs new deans were dissatisfied with Weidners communication and decisionmaking style. In what became known on campus as the deans revolt, most of the new deans resigned. However, their resignations came simultaneously with the abdication of UW President Harrington, so it is difficult to determine the loss of his support versus Weidners difficulties. 44 Gallup polls in May 1970 report that of American adults felt the unarmed studentsseveral of whom were simply walking to class-- deserved to be shot. 45 New York Times obituary for Dwight Armstrong, September 3, 2010.

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future