[Alumni-chat] Antioch presidents

[Art Dole]

On 2/12/08 6:43 PM, "David Apter" <david.apter at yale.edu> wrote:

> I go back to Henderson who in my day was sensible, practical, and in
> his quiet way a visionary but had the charisma of a cuttle fish.  He
> went on to be the first to establish the multiple campus system, i.e.
> SUNY, although with the inevitable politics the results were not
> exactly as he envisioned them.  He was a more modest version of Clark
> Kerr whose ideas of the multiple chance, multiple campus, three
> tiered system was about as close as you could get to providing for
> different levels of academic promise and opened the possiblity of
> students moving from say a community college on up to Berkeley if
> they were motivated, inspired and smart.  I taught at Berkeley during
> the sixties when, one might say the vision exploded in his face.  But
> both Henderson and Kerr were quite extraordinary educators.
> 
> MacGregor arrived during my senior year and was as they say a horse
> from a different garage.  He and his sidekick Knickerbocker turned
> the whole campus into a group dynamics experiment.  The method was
> more important than the accomplishment.  MacGregor was good cop and
> Knickerbocker was bad cop.  Given the engagement of students in the
> first place pushing around in group dynamic groups (I forget the
> terminology) the whole thing was a bad trick.  Nor was MacGregor
> scholarly except in the sense that he used Antioch as a playground
> for his games and then published some of the results.
> 
> Looking back, Henderson was the last good president of Antioch.  Art
> Dole: would you agree?
> 
> David Apter "50
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> At 04:48 PM 2/12/2008, you wrote:
>> The mention of Henderson - MacGregor - Gould prompts another
>> comment. (Gould was president during my five student years at the College.)
>>    I know less about Henderson than about MacGregor or Gould, but
>> my sense here is that something cyclical
>> was operating -- or at least MacGregor and Gould had
>> very different styles and strengths (as well as being very different
>> personnae).  MacGregor was more the (dare I say "academic"?)
>> visionary, who wrote about organizational behavior but was not
>> thought to be good at details, or fund-raising, and Gould was the
>> administrator/seeker of funds that the College then
>> needed after MacGregor.
>>    Although matters were better (relatively) financial then than
>> they were later, they were still pretty close to the edge -- the
>> endowment was small, and small "perturbations" could make matters
>> dangerous. When Boss Ket gave the money for the library, but didn't
>> give money for its maintenance, that extra demand on the college's
>> operating budget hit hard.
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> 
>> Steve Wasby '59
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>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <Sistersara at aol.com>
>> To: <alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 3:47 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Alumni-chat] Antioch presidents
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> In a message dated 2/12/2008 12:03:43 P.M. Central Standard Time,
>>> aadole at roadrunner.com writes:
>>> 
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>>> 
>>> --
>>>
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David, your characterization of Henderson and McGregor fits my
recollections. One point in McGregor's favor. He attracted some very fine
people to the group dynamics field (e.g. Matt Miles, Warren Bennis, etc.)
Art