Iron Man at Washington

When the rain clouds lift from Mt. Rainier, it is revealed as a major embellishment of the state of Washington. And when the clouds of scandal and discontent lift from the campus that lies under Rainier, it appears as an equal adornment. This fall the University of Washington is relishing clear academic weather, part of a new climate that began in 1958. That was the year when Charles E. Odegaard took charge.

No self-serving urge to be liked animates President Odegaard, 54; he does not glad-hand students, and he keeps his contacts with faculty members short and pointed. But he has an accurate intuition of the interests of both groups, the courage to defend their valid needs, the intelligence to give the school a clear lead. A medieval historian whose intimacy with centuries of human experience has taught him to "question the certitudes of people," he continually argues that "knowledge must be humanized." Yet as administrator he holds the reins so taut that some faculty members call him "autocratic" or even "utterly ruthless."

Fisheries & Far East. Odegaard moved to Washington from his post as dean of the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts*--and into a mess. A scandal over a private slush fund to entice top athletes to Seattle had got Washington's all-too-famous football team kicked out of the Pacific Coast Conference. A loyalty-oath requirement imposed by the legislature was demoralizing the teachers and scaring off bright recruits to the faculty; such was the state of timidity that Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer had been banned from a campus appearance. Nor had the school's topside support always been wholly inspiring: the president of the Board of Regents at one time was Dave Beck, who later went to prison for tax evasion.

The new president started by thinning out deadwood; only three of 15 deans then ruling still hold their jobs. He brought in his own vice president, Michigan Anthropologist Frederick P. Thieme. In 1964 a teachers' suit, carried to the Supreme Court, killed the loyalty oath and let Odegaard hire capable teachers from near and far. Oppenheimer now appears on campus every so often--most recently early this month, when the National Academy of Sciences picked Washington for its annual meeting.

Odegaard added strong departments of genetics and nuclear engineering, strengthened Washington's already respected schools of fisheries, forestry and Far Eastern studies. This week a new $3,000,000 oceanographic vessel for the university is en route from Boston; later it will explore the bottom of the Bering Strait. Washington's medical school is now so respected that 75% of Harvard's 1964 medical graduates applied for internships in Seattle. Enrollment has grown to 25,000. Odegaard has raised admission standards for liberal-arts students and has sharply upgraded undergraduate instruction to catch up to strong graduate departments, which, one professor explains, "used to be the tail that wagged the whole university."

Dead Cats. "Odegaard does not hold our affection," says one Washington professor, "though he does have our complete respect." One reason, explained another, is that "before Odegaard, there was no philosophy from above--professors were getting fat and sassy building their own domains." If there is an absence of affection, it is party because Odegaard is so blunt. He says that "it's better to get dead cats out on the top of the table. I hate sitting down to a pussyfooting conversation." He startled the National Academy of Sciences meeting by declaring in a formal address that "scientism" at too many universities has "run riot," aided by "the contemptuous attitude of some scientists toward moral problems." A university, he said, must teach values as well as facts, since "the pressure of events each day forces all of us to make value decisions now of titanic consequence, and youth will not be put off to a later day for moralizing."

Despite aloofness, Odegaard seems sharply tuned to the student wave length. "Parents may still hope that the university will provide a pastoral, protective, quiet educational retreat for their offspring before the latter meet the cruel, cold world," he told the faculty recently, "but the present university-student generation does not look to me like a generation of lost and bewildered sheep; they seem hell-bent to take on not only the complexities of the university but also of the universe." The dissident students, he contends, "are not really running away from us. They are not proposing to expel the faculty. It is rather that they want the faculty to converse more with them about something they see in the world with the eyes of youth. In short, are they not trying to suggest to us a want of humanism in our teaching?"

Washington and many other universities still face problems in trying to prove that a school can be both big and human, but Odegaard already has demonstrated that a strong hand can do great things for a big institution's morale. "Odegaard is the dynamo, and this university is extremely ambitious," says a proud graduate student, John Anthony Mountain. Declares Far Eastern Department Chairman George E. Taylor: "He's done a terrific job revitalizing this place--it's become a really big university and a damn good one."

* Odegaard's successor at Michigan, Roger W. Heyns, has also headed west, is now chancellor of the University of California's Berkeley campus.

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