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for Voyageur word count excl footnotes: 10Nov2011 [email protected] 847-401-3970

UWGB: A History of Wisconsins University of the Future

Abstract for reviewers: The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is unique in the history of U.S. higher educationand a 1960s case study of the enduring conflict between U.S. religion and science. UWGBs founding plansuffered an early abortion at the hands of the regions conservative business and religious elite, supported by apopular 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 yettoday.

The story in brief: UWGB was first authorized by Wisconsin government in 1965 as an expansion campus of theworld-famous University of Wisconsin at Madison. Supporters of the Oshkosh State University, a campus of theWisconsin State University (WSU) system, argued that state funds would be better spent in upgrading their 90-year old campus rather than building a new one near Green Bay. When UW leaders rejected the idea ofadopting WSU-Oshkosh into the University of Wisconsin System, a counterattack was made, starting openly in1968 to de-fund or otherwise halt UWGBs development.

While the present UWGB campus (the Shorewood campus) was under construction in 1968, a multi-campusUWGB 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 WSUand UW into a single organization governed by a combination of the two former boards of regents. However, theemotional battle continued, with covert challenges marring the UW-O and UWGB relationship for at least twodecades.

The story of this conflict is important because it involved many state and national political, business andacademic 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 conflicthad it occurred in a distant nation.


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===================================================================

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 ofWisconsins University of the Future,

Table of Contents

The Birth of the University of the Future ................................................................................................. 2 The First Earth Day ................................................................................................................................... 3The Brilliant Chancellor............................................................................................................................ 6A large and noble American vision .......................................................................................................... 11Its Who You Know ................................................................................................................................. 12Competition in the public sector ............................................................................................................. 13Old 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 theUniversity of California-Los Angeles, according to the National Geographic. UWGBs earlyaccomplishments were equally humble, contestable claims.

In 1969, both UWGB and the Internet were newborns, though the Internet pulled status as a nationalmilitary secret--considered treasonous, at the time, to reveal. Both institutions were small steps forhumankind, 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, inJuly 1969, the first humans stepped foot on the moona feat that many of the elder generationsdoubted 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 wecan. That fill-in-the-blank syllogism was familiar to everyone of the era. It gave emotionalconfidence to UWGBs first enthusiastic students.

While the topic of the moon was not new to human discussion, the meaning of moon had changed.


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An unexpected and unforgettable image appeared had in color magazines. People passed the picturearound with genuine exclamations ofwow.

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 moonssurface for the first manned landing in 1969. There was no prior thought of making photos lookingback at Earth. After a wild night of dancing to a full moon, humanity woke up to discover planet Earthnext to them in the bed.

During UWGBs first academic year, the first Earth Day was marked, on April 22, 1970. InManhattan, in front of the iconic United Nations building, renowned anthropologist MargaretMead shouted the awakening to a crowd like she was reading a poem: This is new! Wevenever been in a situation like this before! Weve neverknown the whole planet before! Wevenever known the whole human race before! Weve never seen this planet, a tiny little blueblob, a little blue tuft swirling in space.To be realistic, not everyone was paying attention, but many were among the 1,300 students attendingclasses on UWGBs Green Bay campus that fall semester, 1969. And among the 2,500 studentsattended 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 StarshipEnterprisethe spacecraft of the TV show Star Trek which was first broadcast on TV in 1967.1 Moststriking was the experience of walking long, subterranean hallways linking the buildings. At irregularintervals along the tunnels, windows revealed that those walking inside were cocooned from theoutdoors. The students were not unlike astronauts peering out portals.

In a discomforting moment of revelation, alert students and faculty realized they were inside wantingto save the outside, aka, the environment. How ironic, the boosters smiled to themselves. TheStarship Enterprise had landed in Wisconsin's north woods: We are the rescue ship to a doomed planetEarth.

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 theenvironment. He was a former Wisconsin governor and a strong supporter of the University ofWisconsin-- U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson.2

It looked like a coincidence. Nelson was not vested with any given authority to create Earth Day, andits likely that a majority participating in the first Earth Day couldnt identify who Nelson was if toldhis name. Senator Nelson was not on the social fringe, but rather one of a large mass of middle-aged

1Star Trek was off the air in 1969, but it has made many resurrections since then, the mark of an indelible myth.2 Gaylord Nelson earned a law degree from the UW-Madison law school, though his undergraduate education was at SanJose State University in California.


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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 averagevoters 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 nonverbalmessage was clear: There he goes again, worried about the birds and the butterflies. This was theAmerican atmosphere before the environment was recognized as a vital concern.

Nelson knew, from years seeking re-election to the Wisconsin legislature, that average Wisconsiniteswere indeed concerned about such silly things as bluebirds and sturgeon, no matter how oftenpedestrian politicians dismissed these as unworthy concerns. Working through his Democratic Partyconnections, Nelson instigated a 1962 national media tour for President John F. Kennedy. The plan wasto 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 thenews media uninterested in reporting on nature. It just wasnt hard news. The response wasunderstandable, perhaps, but unfortunate. The topic that stole headlines was the first US-Soviet treatyto halt atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

However, nuclear testing fallout was indeed central to the creation ofAmericasenvironmentalawakening, Barry Commoner would document that on multiple levels.4 Federal scientists wereshocked by radioactive fallout migrating up the food chain, causing greater damage than the scientistsever imagined. That said, it was a stretch for most of the public to draw a connection between nuclearbombs 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 tryingvariations on his stump speech. In 1969, the stars aligned with the polestar. Nelson gave a routineconservation speech, this time in Seattle. Impulsively, he tossed in a new idea: a teach-in focused on theenvironment. A teach-in like the Vietnam War protesters were conducting.

In part through the association of environmental and antiwar teach-ins,Nelsons speech became moreattractive. 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 youngstersleft for college campuses teeming with angry, demanding students.5

3Perhaps in a characteristic poke of mockery, in 2001 the technique of policy announcements at national conservation siteswas copied for environmental policy announcements by President George W. Bush..

4 Barry Commoner, 1964, The Closing Circle.5 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 viewfilms, 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 butrock concert promoters.) A bullhorn with crackly sound characteristics would sometimes carry commentary by a member ofthe audience. Hair styles and dress were a mix of conservative and hippie. Remarkable today, there was always cigarette andpipe smoking, almost never cigars, which were a symbol of old and wealthy powerful. Extremely rare was the publicsmoking of marijuana, then a new and considered a highly experimental drug in white American culture.5


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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 theneed 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 oforganizers of community actions scheduled for April 22, 1970an environmental awareness daylater renamed Earth Day.6

More than 10 million Americans took part in activities of the inaugural Earth Day, today an annualinternational event with much greater participation.7President Nixons staff was said to be frightenedby the tremendous turnout of average Americans in events akin to protests. The fear was not fear ofviolence; it was fear of losing power in Congress and in state governments.8 Nixon hurriedly createdthe cabinet-level U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA was formally created in December1970.

In the weeks before that first event, UWGB faculty conducted eco-learning sessions in small townsacross the state from Neillsville to Rosendale. Emeritus Professors Bud Harris (wetland ecology) andBob Wenger (mathematical modeling) report that in Spring 1970, no one on campus imagined thatthe event would accomplish what it didwhich was to mark cultural history with the revelation that amajority of Americans were now seriously concerned about the environment.

Margaret Mead, distinguished anthropologist, delivered an impassioned speech in New York City to alarge 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 JohnMcConnells 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 todecide how and when to invade Cambodia (With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace and Politics, Dale Van Atta, Universityof Wisconsin Press, 2008.)

8When President Nixon and his staff walked into the White House on January 20, 1969, we were totally unprepared forthe 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 LikeWhen The Movement Took Off by John C. Whitaker, former Nixon-era federal administrator, EPA Journal - July/August1988.


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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 fewyears, fifty-plus national publications would publish stories about UWGB. The campus was taggedEco-U by Newsweek.9In reporting on the nations first environmental education conference, NewYork Times reporter David Bird reported on the new UWGB where environment was the onlysubject. 10

Before cable TV, middle-class American households got most of their common understanding aboutevents around the nation through large-circulation magazines like Parade and Readers Digest, Look andLife. Several of these conduits informed Americas broad middle class about UWGB. Intellectuals readin 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 forundergraduate education. The Shahs Iran bought UWGBs entire educational approach for a newuniversity in Tehran, asking for UWGB faculty to visit and consult.11 A new university in CanadasAlberta province sent a delegation to UWGB, later transferring some UWGB concepts to a region thatwould develop Canadas tar sands as the next-generation oil replacement. In 1974 Weidner was namedthe sole U.S. rep on the governing council of the new, post-doctoral United Nations Universityheadquartered 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 worldwere saying in stuffy small-circulation journals and at unnoticed technical meetings. Trapped in its ownworld, science was shouting. Outside, it was heard as a restrained and hushed voice shouting, sottovoce, that solving environmental problems was critical for human survival.

Seeming to walk backward onto the stage, UWGB was blinded by the spotlight and the unseeableaudience applauding. The announcer proclaimed, the first university in the world to relate all studiesto the environment. Everything from theater to business management, from introductory Englishliterature to analytic chemistryall were supposed to be taught with some connection with theenvironmental crisis. At least that was Weidners vision, the academic plan he laid out for subordinatesto follow.

The Brilliant Chancellor

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

9 Newsweeklabels UWGB as Ecology U, identifying the campus as an activist concept of the university. June 14, 197110Ecology is only academic problem for students at new Wisconsin campus, New York Times, 9 December 1970, byDavid 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.


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academe, and that was a one-year position with the National Municipal League, a non-profitassociation led by academics and government careerists. Though not business, the NML was definitelyoutside academe.

Ed Weidner was born in Minnesota in 1921, by age 24 he had a Ph.D. in political science from theUniversity of Minnesota.13 By 31 he was already a full professor and department chair of politicalscience at Michigan State University in Lansing.

Weidner was part of the GI generationthose born between 1901 and 1924 who are considered civic-minded by social historians, regardless of left-right orientation.14 The latter part of this generationincluded diverse but action-oriented individuals like Presidents John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter andGeorge 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 greatmen.15

As it happened, Weidners transplant to northeast Wisconsin was notable by the initial rejection ofWisconsins wealthy and powerful political conservatives. Wealthy individuals refused to considergifts. Even an adult ballroom dancing club refused admission to he and his wife. Perhaps, this shouldnot have been a surprise. UWGB was in the heartland of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, a condemningand of the John Birch Societya shrill Republican fringe group who frightened both columnistWilliam F. Buckley16founder of the conservative National Review magazine-- and RepublicanPresident 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 wasnot a leading figure in constitutional law, yet on January 14, 1954, the 33-year old Weidner was firstquoted in the New York Times on the topic of federalism.17 Noteworthy is that Weidner was the onlyacademic quoted at length in the Times report on a national conference of 60 leading Constitutionalscholars and political scientists. The elite gathering was called by the Ivy League Columbia Universityto discuss Eisenhowers approach to federalism. As quoted in the Times, Weidner reveals hisinterpretation of states rightsthe current claim by Southern conservatives that each state in theUnited States is sovereign and has jurisdiction in composing its own peculiar laws on issues likeracial 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 AllenGinsburg, 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 Bush17 January 1954 is the earliest New York Times-- then considered a national newspaper of record-- listing for EdwardWeidner from an internet search of the Times archives.18The states rights argument was then being used by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and his pro-segregationDixiecrats to support resistance to federal civil rights legislation. While Weidner was building UWGB, the same argumentswere being made by American Independent Party Presidential candidate George Wallace. Wallace drew a strong showing inWisconsin voting in 1968.


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biting attack on Republican attempts to squelch discussion of the dangers of the nuclear arms race andthe 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 ceasediscussing 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 PRadvisers, Weidner could have been presented very differently. He had boots on the ground credentialswith Americas expanding empire.

21 In the late 1950s, Weidner moved within MSU to the federally-funded 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 stumbledupon news of the VAG-MSU project in 1966. He contacted former VAG co-director, StanleySheinbaum, a former MSU political scientist of Weidners era.22 Sheinbaum explained to Scheer thatpart of his duties was working with CIA employees to recruit trainers for a new police force in SouthVietnam. Traffic control, crime control, etc. Unexpectedly, Sheinbaum learned that some of the CIAofficers on his project staff were torturing prisoners during interrogation in the MSU quarters. Soonafter, he resigned when informed that he would be included in a conspiracy to assassinate a Vietnameseperson.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 UWGBstudent, with foreign travel if the student could afford it. Then there is the curious coincidence thatSeptember 2, 1969--Day One of UWGBwas also the day that news of Vietnamese rebel leader HoChi Minh died.24

19 Panic:A Cultural History, Jacqueline Orr, Syracuse University Press, 2006.20This 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, TheNew Press, NY, 2009. Sheinbaum cooperated with Scheer in preparation of an expose in the April 1967 Ramparts. Thearticle gave major impetus to leftist efforts at UW-Madison to force removal of the Army Mathematics Research Center inSterling Hall.23http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Groupreports: When the request for

assistance came through U.S. government channels, the staunchly anticommunist Hannah was deeply interested in pursuingthe contract. He sent a small evaluation contingent to Vietnam, consisting of three department chairmen who would beinvolvedEdward 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 administrativeassistant. 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.24Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969, according to U.S. datekeeping, but because of the international date zonedifference, it was actually September 3 in Vietnam. There is also the curious coincidence that September 1, 1969, the daybefore 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 ofUWGB. In another circumstance, he might have been a student at the new UWGB.24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Grouphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Vietnam_Advisory_Group


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Before Vietnam became a household name, the new nation was temporary home to Ed and JeanWeidner, Twin Cities natives in their early thirties. The Weidner s were one of the first Americanfamilies 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 Americansprecisely when two unflattering descriptions ofAmericans 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 apicture 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 self-appraisal.

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 likeBarry Commoner, Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich, quantitative scientists who were accuratelyforecasting 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 nationalconferences on the future of higher education. Observing him once again was Harrington, thenpresident 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 feltconfident about, Harrington phoned Ed Weidner, then at the University of Kentucky running a state-wide economic development project. Harrington once said he sought staff members with a great dealof push. In a 1980s oral history, Harrington said his habit had been: If a person was not on the makein 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. Therejust wasn't enough preliminary work done (on the university), said second-wife Marge recountingwhat she'd heard from the Chancellor. However, Weidner was playing musical chairs when the melodystopped. Weidner had resigned from the University of Kentucky, and then got promises the UK wouldfind 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 newUniversity of Wisconsin, tentatively located near the city of Green Bay.

One of Harringtons last speeches as UW president was toUWGBs June 1970 commencement.Harrington told the 1970 assembly that UWGB represented a new wave of educational thought and wasdestined to become a truly great university. Also on the platform wishing well to graduates was RegentJames Nellen, Vince Lombardis team physician for the Green Bay Packers. A Catholic, Nellen lived

25Before video and cable TV, novels were much more powerful in what we call pop culture. The Ugly American, 1958, apolitical novel by Eugene Burdickand William Lederer tells a story predicting that the United States eventually loses its Southeast Asiancampaign against Communism because of American arrogance and failure to understand the local culture. The Quiet American byGraham Greene, 1955, tells the story of misguided Americans secretly smuggling bombs and weapons into then-demilitarized Vietnam,thus escalating conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Burdickhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ledererhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ledererhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Burdick


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along the smelly Fox River near De Pere. Nellen was also a World War II Navy commander and aCatholic 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 whensocialist, pacifist and liberal students debated and demonstrated to restrict possible militaryinvolvement overseas by the United States.26 A military surgeon during World War II, Nellen couldconclude, with a veterans pride that those demonstrators had been wrong, and todays Vietnam Warprotesters must be wrong, too. In the 1930s Nellen was a UW Badger football player of note in a periodthat saw Badger football players assaulting anti-militarist picketers, throwing them in Lake Mendotaand warning them to not return. (It is not known with certainty whether Nellen was personally involvedin the incident.)

The public memory of the Sixties focuses on images from chasing ghetto street riots, wounded soldierson Vietnamese battlefields, and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan TV Show. However, other importantevents were happeningbeyond televisions gaze. Little noticed by the general public were newspaperads and meetings of industrialists who sounded terror-stricken. They predicted dire consequences ifCongress 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 workersafety rules were part ofa communist plot. One rumor spread and reported in the newspapers wasthat the Earth Day was a secret tribute to the deceased Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin. In response, localnature teacher Clara Hussong28 wrote a letter to the Green Bay Press-Gazette saying how happy shewas that Earth Day fell on her own birthday.

Some of the anti-Earth Day activists lived and worked in northeast Wisconsins paper mill valleyknown as the Fox Valley. Fearful of damage to their economic interests, they characterized anygovernment-required pollution control as evil----antithetical to the free enterprise system as well as aviolation of the U.S. Constitution. Assuming a moral superiority, they argued that their views werebased on foundational American principles: Said simply: Business leaders should have the completefreedom 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 rightsaside, business owners proclaimed that they knew what was dangerous and what was not, and that theywere intrinsically more concerned about their workers and the well-being of the general populationthan 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 aboutnature 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 toa 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 tome 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 thecollapse, by the federal Office of Mine Safety. In late 2011, Massey personnel were found guilty of deliberate safetyviolations.


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S. Fred Sargent II, a scientist of truly national reputation and UWGBs original environmental sciencedean, offered to help Fox Valley businesses and Chambers of Commerce. Sargent had both MD andPhD degrees, and was one of the founders ofa new science called biometeorology.30 Sargent was

already advising the federal government on air pollution solutions, so he offered to help Fox Valleybusinesses develop local air pollution control plans. Such plans could prepare them to meet potentialnew rules at either the state or federal level, should new laws being proposed. (This was beforeCongressional 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 leasttwo months brooding over acceptance of the challenge. It was a job so large that he seriously hesitatedto accept it, according to widow Marge Weidner.31 But Ed Weidner's bio listed a string of challengingjobs. Maybe this would be just another trophy as he continued an evolutionary competition to make afuture in which his progeny could survive.32 After all, he was only 46 years old.

While Weidner founded the worlds firstenvironmental university, there's nothing in his resumesuggesting that he envisioned a campus with heavy emphasis on physical or biological sciences. If hisformal record suggested anything, it was likely public order and a fair, rational, democratic governmentwas the end, for Ed Weidner was a political scientist specializing in public administration. Weidnertook pains to repeat that UWGB was not strictly a science university, but instead a liberal artsundergraduate institution.

In the mid-1950s, young Professor Weidner was in South Vietnam for several years advising the firstpost-colonial government in Saigon. While nominally on the faculty at Michigan State University,Weidner wasnt training youngsters from Kalamazoo. Instead, he was advising Vietnamese inprocedures to train public administrators and civilian police. Weidner helped an MSU professor ofpolice science set up the National Police Training Academy to train leadership for a civilian policeserving 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 policebrought sarcastic comments from local U.S. CIA leader Edward Lansdale, who suggested the MSUprofessional 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 anamalgam 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, 1982.31Marjorie Fermanich Weidner had been Chancellor Weidners administrative assistant since 1967. After Jean Weidnersdeath 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 1966book by evolutionary biologist George C. Williams.The books concepts were embodied in UWGBs cutting-edgeeducation, sometimes using the popularization of The Selfish Gene by Stephen Dawkins.


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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 1983PBS series, Vietnam: The Documentary History, according to his widow, Marjorie. She recalls that

her husband never talked about Vietnam, except in the context ofhis young familys positiveadventures living there. She recalls the retired Ed Weidner getting the videotapes in as a gift, andtogether they started to watch the first episode. Partway through the first tape, the Chancellor turned theTV. He didn't say why, and Marjorie sensed not to probe his internal turmoil. I tried to get him towatch 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 thecoat-and-tie of Western business attire. The man was Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. sponsored leader ofSouth Vietnam and later a victim of an assassination by a broad conspiracy of South Vietnamesemilitary leaders.34

Diemwas 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 peopleselection, 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. Itwas 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 veryforceful 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 self-report by government of its motives. Its a school not popular with U.S. military leaders because itsscholars have chronicled the misuse of many overseas military operations for private and corporatefinancial 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 itas 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 expelledthe entire project, which terminated in June 1959. [See Ramparts 1967]34Between 1 November 1963 and 21 June 1965, there were eight successful or abortive coups detat, all involving variousfactions 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 politicalliberal, 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 ofPower to Imperial Presidents, 1898-1968, UWPress, 1993.


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uniquenot duplicating the all-purpose model of Madison.

The university would be in northeast Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, a major manufacturing region withdozens 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-- Harringtonneeded the campus up and running by fall 1969. Weidner would have to start from scratchwithouteven 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 worldof 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. Theuniversity of the future needed to address problems making themselves evident across the USA andthe 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 fornortheast Wisconsin.39 UWGB would address unmet social and economic development needs, andexpand the horizons of Wisconsin's future leaders. It would help the state's trade and cultural relationswith Canada. Students would be encouraged to study abroad for a brief time with UWGB faculty asguides. (While mainstream today, in the 1960s, studying abroad was unheard of in the United Statesoutside the Ivy League.)

The Regents of the University of Wisconsin had previously authorized conceptual studies on theuniversity 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 beforethe raucous turmoil of mass protests.

Another Regent focus was cost. The cost of undergraduate education was skyrocketing, andfundamental restructuring was needed. The option of choice, according to the Regents minutes, wasputting 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

37Ceilings on campuses set by CCHE; set at 11,000 were UWGB, Stevens Point State, UW-Parkside,March 27, 1969, Milwaukee Sentinel.38Future studies and futurism flourished in the academic lexicon during the 1960s. Future-oriented education was anotherpillar in UWGBs original academic plan.39 At the July 1966 UW regents meeting, UW President Harrington suggested planning the two new universities wassomething that the Regents might want to be involved. "Regent Greenquist stated that it seemed to him that the Regentswere afforded a tremendous opportunity in this situation, since it was the first time in over 100 years that there has been anopportunity to start a new University from the beginning." Greenquist was named chair of the "Special Regent Committeeon Development of New Third and Fourth Year Campuses in Northeastern and Southeastern Wisconsin." Minutes of UWRegents, July 13, 1966, Vol. 33.


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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 betweensystems for faculty and staff. WSU paid faculty a certain rate, while UW paid a higher rate. The WSUhad excellent talent, but the UW had world-class talent. The UW felt higher compensation justified tocompete for highly-mobile, and often egotistical faculty who were weak when wooed by money orbetter facilities elsewhere.

After 1951, the teacher colleges of the WSUbecame state colleges and expanded programs to manyfields, from business to nursing to liberal arts. In the 1960s, a flood of Baby Boom Wisconsiniteswound up on comfortable WSU campuses, which were less threatening than the elite UW at Madisonand often closer to the small towns they found comfortable. In every biennial budget, the WSU systemcompeted with the UW system for legislative funding.

On average, WSU faculty and staff were paid lower rates than UW's. Legislators bought the UWargument that it was especially important for Madison to have top-quality professors andadministrators. Madison was competing with New York, California and Michigan among others and itcarried the weight of Wisconsin's reputation.

From UWGBs Weidner, Harrington needed growing student counts to make the budget argument, andif 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-GreenBay) reported that UW graduate students in 1967-68 received an annual state subsidy of nearly $2,000while undergraduate students actually paid state government a tiny profit through tuition. The idea of aUWGB 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 sitelocation in Green Bay. State Assemblyman William Rogers (D-Kaukauna) argued that the new UWcampus 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 in1969. Joining Rogers in anti-UWGB activity was Rep. David Martin (R-Neenah) who voted to stall oreliminate budget provisions for UWGB. At that time, Martin worked full time for Kimberly-Clark, oneof Wisconsins largest corporations and a major paper company with financial interest in fightingpollution 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 governmentcommission chair--proposed that UWGB be given to WSU, making it a daughter campus to WSU-Oshkosh. 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 settingWisconsin policy. It was a few months after the first Earth Day. Political campaigning was starting forthe fall 1970 elections. Is it right for industry to regulate itself? The loud voice asking the disturbing


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question was a former GOP state senator named Gordon Bubolz. In 1970 senior citizen Bubolz wasalso CEO of a prosperous Appleton insurance company and a long-time conservationist associatedwith nature education and the hunting/fishing crowd.

Bubolz had invested himself in UWGB. In 1968, he chaired the citizens and expert advisory committeeconvened to design the environmental science curriculum for the future UWGB. Unfortunately, Bubolzhad some enemies in his own Appleton-Oshkosh area and in the Republican Party. Voicing the sameconflict-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 FinanceCommittee of Senate and Assembly leaders theoretically hold final authority, the State BuildingCommission must approve any construction requests that Joint Finance reviews.

In the late 1960s, the Building Commission had received new legislative members through the agencyof Appleton House Speaker Harold Froehlich. New was Kenneth Merkel, a newly elected assemblymanfrom suburban Milwaukee. Merkel was a young engineer and outspoken John Birch Society memberthe only Wisconsin legislator to publicly identify his membership with the Birch Society. He was also aconservative Roman Catholic in an archdiocese that was openly fighting state legalization of the sale ofbirth control like diaphragms to unmarried females.

These were contentious times, even in liberal Madison. State Senator Fred Risser recalls that a UWMadison professor was arrested for displaying a contraceptive device in a class; birth control deviceswere on a government list of indecent articles. It took five biennial sessions10 yearsfor Rissersbill 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 1969national convention announced a new political campaign aimed at stopping artificial birth prevention(i.e., contraception) and also government distribution of information about family planning. Merkelwas father of several youngsters, traveled across Wisconsin speaking loudly against pregnancycontraception and the Legislatures immoral turning. After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortionin a 1973 ruling, Merkel added abortion to his speeches.

Unaware of the conservative communications network around them,40 UWGB was actively advancingpublic discussion of contraception, abortion and family planning, hosting a national conference ofexperts 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 whetherthe Catholic Church or social conservatives had ever raised the issue of UWGBs discussing birth control issues. All weresurprised 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.411970 conference was titled: Population Growth: Crisis and Challenge and it featured speakers from PlannedParenthood, Sex Information and Education Council, the Association for the Study of Abortion, the Association forVoluntary Sterilization, and the Population Planning Program. The second annual Population Growth Symposium atUWGB was announced for January 8-9, 71. In addition, UWGB professors were local chapter leaders of a new nationalorganization called Zero Population Growth (ZPG).


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When it came time for the state Building Commission to consider Chancellor Weidners request forbuilding funds, UWGB didnt have the votes. Weidner had first been given assurances in 1966, whenFred 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 anxiousto stop the racial integration of LBJs Great Society, Harrington quickly became inconsequential.

The ultimate housing goal in UWGBs Regent-approved Comprehensive Development Plan was12,000 beds.42 With out-of-state recruitment, these beds could be filled to help Wisconsin increase itsreputation as a higher education center. For a world economy globalizing and a state hungry foreconomic 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 frompopulation centers on East and West coasts. Whether it was led by WSU-Oshkosh or a more generalnetwork 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 ofUWGB'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 BernardBernie Ziegler of Plymouth suddenly [check time Davis MSS] challenged some expense alreadyapproved by the Legislature, baffling Weidner's staff. At a meeting of the Board of UW Regents in1968, 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 concernshown to the regents. Harrington noted that Gelatt's apparent shift did not amount to completewithdrawal of support. Insiders in Madison suggest that Gelatt and Harrington developed a personalfeud over Gelatts dating a faculty wife. Harrington was described by his housekeeper as a moralistwhose book collection included hundreds of books about Jesus Christ. Gelatt later divorced his wifeand married in Madison in 1972.

A foursome had developed on the Board of Regents with the intent of toppling Harrington. The fourwere 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 rejectedRenks proposal.

In 1970, Regent Nellen was elected president of the Regents board. According to an oral historyrecording made 15 years later, Harrington knew Nellen was out to oust Harrington, and Harrington saysthat he had made a private decision to resign in late 1969, feeling a loss of influence among the regentsand 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.


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initiatives, this due to the Johnson Administrations inability to raise taxes to fight the growingSoutheast Asian war. In addition, there was the emotional strife of a campus in turmoil, window-smashing riots on State Street, students being clubbed and tear gassed, military troops on campus, andrandom arson in campus buildings, fires apparently set by war protestors.

Harrington disclosed his intention to resign privately to the regents who opposed him about February1970, according to Harringtons recollection in an interview many years later. Before Harringtonsresignation was made public, UWGB what became labeled theDeans revolt happened.43 Theresignations were a mystery to most faculty, staff and community members. Weidner and other UWofficials 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 otheropportunities. 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 StateUniversity killings of four students by Ohio National Guardsmen. This was the kind of treatment thatRegent Nellenand the majority of Americansthought appropriate for campus protesters in1970.44

Using the classic calculus of tit for tat, two local Madison youth felt the Kent State homicides gavethem 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 Aspublished in the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, Madisons AMRC was known to do researchdone 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

43According to an unpublished memoir by Weidners development director Paul Davis, UWGBs new deans weredissatisfied with Weidners communication and decisionmaking style. In what became known on campus as the deansrevolt, 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 simplywalking to class-- deserved to be shot.45 New York Times obituary for Dwight Armstrong, September 3, 2010.

abstract-111011who killed my alma mater-pwoz

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