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2 I'm Peter Carroll. I'm interviewing Eric Solomon. For the oral history project of the San Francisco state strike of 1968-1969, including its background and things like that, and I guess Eric, the way to begin this is for you to maybe just give us a little bit

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about your background, you know, birth, age, education, things like that. OK, I was born October 8th, 1928. Uh, I was educated in the Boston Public schools. Uh, until I, uh, uh, reached the 7th grade that I went to an endowed school, a kind of private school

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which you didn't have to pay to go to named Roxbury Latin, and that's where my education was, uh, and, and, and began and really ended because it was a wonderful education and then I did spend, uh, a dozen or so years at Harvard, uh. I didn't

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learn much, but I got all the requisite degrees, uh, BA, MA, and PhD in English, in English, uh, two years out after I took my PhD orals when I was in the service. Uh, that was, uh, uh, 53 to 55. Uh, I was stationed in Germany.

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And um. I I finished, I came back to Harvard where I finished my PhD and. Did some administrative work as a uh. Um, I think I was called assistant director of the Bureau of Study Council for a couple of years and worked in the tutorial program.

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My first job, real teaching job then was at Ohio State where I stayed for six years. What are the dates about? Ohio State was 1958 to 1964 and I had a little administrative post there too, um. Executive secretary, I guess it was for the English department

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and became, I've always been very since age 25 or so involved in politics and got very involved there. And we my last year there we spent uh kind of kind of non-paying fellowship at Johns Hopkins where my wife had a. Paying fellowship. I was on sabbatical

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and that's where I wrote the book that. Was my best book on Stephen Crane and a lot of work there and we decided not to return to Ohio State. By that time 15 of the best people in my department have departed to quit. And so I

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Got myself a job at San Francisco State on the premise that whereas in Columbus, Ohio, uh, I was always being called on in any political business. Indeed, I spent 2 years as president of the Central Ohio ACLU, uh. At San Francisco State where everybody was political,

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that was its reputation, I could fade back into the woodwork and do my teaching and writing that probably was the worst premise that I've ever lived on. Let me ask you something about Ohio State for a second, just maybe briefly you could give me a sense

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of what some of these political issues involved. OK, uh, the major issue was free speech. Um, we. Uh, had hired as an institution at Ohio State what, um, Governor Mike DeSalle told me, uh, the president, a man with the improbable name of Novice G. Fawcett, a

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former basketball coach, uh, called the unfortunate, uh, acquisitions from Eastern universities, which meant Jews, uh, and people somewhat left of center, and, um. The Immediate item, I mean there have been a lot, there were lots of political activities. I, I was involved in trying to integrate,

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uh, the fraternities, for example, with a man, uh, who was a very good organizer, a fellow named Philip Luce. It was not my fault, but he was a FBI informant, uh, during that whole period, uh. And with the ACLU, obviously we dealt with the usual items

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that one does in such an organization. But Columbus was a very reactionary. City and it was the state capital so that we were always under the eye of the legislature in 19. Uh Oh, I would say it was 1961. One Or 21, um, whenever the uh

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HUAC came to San Francisco, uh, and 6060. OK, well, uh, it, uh, you may remember had a uh lot of uh national coverage of the protests there and one of the uh people. Who, uh, was most visible and most attractive to some of us on the,

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uh, television was a man named William Mandel who you know refused to talk and so. Uh, one of the part-time faculty, actually a PhD candidate, simply invited. Mandel to come to Columbus to speak. And we had had other people who had been invited to speak and

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uh uh Ohio State operated still under a gag rule that went back to the 1930s. We discovered that no one really could speak unless the board of trustees uh uh said OK, it was almost never applied, of course, in, in later days. Well, in the case

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of Mandel, they did. And uh the problem was that there wasn't an appropriate organization this man had invited him and so then an organization, I believe it was the dissent for uh covered and uh they I think their faculty advisor and they went through it and

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of course the thing escalated and escalated to a massive extent. It was, it was a real standoff between the faculty. Uh, and really the old time faculty leaders had come and I was just a kid being drawn into this and sort of a golfer, uh, people

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like Ray Ray Dulles, uh, uh, who you probably know of the historian, and, uh, my own department chair and others were, were the leaders in trying to persuade the president and trustees that this would be all right, and it finally culminated in a massive faculty meeting.

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Um, where we were sure we had the votes, the 1000 or so faculty, and the president called in all the adjunct faculty according to constitution had votes, which meant all the county agents and all the. 0.10 uh physician medical doctors and we were defeated in a

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very raucous faculty meeting uh and we lost and uh Mandel came anyway and spoke on Henry's this man was named Henry Saint Anne's backyard. He Henry Saint Ange Saint Ange Saint and then O N G E. And um he lost the job that he had been

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hired for uh in Nebraska, one of the universities there um he won his case 10 years later and they've been on blacklisted really ever since it's almost 30 odd years um and. Things went on, but um. People said if this is going to be this kind

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of place, then with California opening up and all sorts of other jobs, uh, we, my English department was the ones who founded really, uh, the humanities division at UC San Diego. People went to. Uh, Santa Cruz and um so I looked for a job. Let me

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interrupt one more question back at Columbus. There was a very important NSU meeting, National Student Union meeting in Columbus, in 1961 or 2. Were you? I remember anything about that. I remember the meeting. Uh, the man who was at that time president of the student body,

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a man named Phil Moots, uh, was, uh, very big in that operation, but, uh, no, I wasn't involved. That was the meeting that brought the free speech issue to, to the students around the country in loco parentis. It was because of, of, of this. Yeah, OK,

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very good. So you came to state, San Francisco State in the fall of '64. What kind of place was that? You, can you describe it as you remember it? Oh yes, it was a Liberal Teacher's dream. Progressive I guess is the term I would, I would

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use, but most of us thought of us as liberals in those days, you remember, recall, um, it was, uh, filled with a, uh, faculty that, uh, had most unusual backgrounds. Uh, these were not, uh, the traditional research faculty, but they were, uh, artists that. It was

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done by Daniel Weiss, my office mate, who was not only a sculptor, one of the best psychoanalytic critics I have ever encountered, a seven steps beyond the black belt, judo, uh, a champion, a musician, and a wonderful teacher of literature, a man who had known everything,

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uh, who hadn't published enough and so had left, uh, been fired really from the University of Washington. Uh, multiply that, uh, by 6 or 700, um, it had the university a tradition of faculty control which was very new, uh, they'd had a very authoritarian president, um,

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a man named Glenn Dunkey before that a man named Paul Leonard, uh, but, uh, when I got there. There was a relaxed, tired, prematurely aging, uh, wonderful man named Paul Dodd who had come from, uh, UCLA, I believe, and, uh, he simply said the academic center

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should run the institution. I'm not interested in such details, and it was a very heady time there. The student body As it Uh, developed, but at that time, uh, was not particularly, uh, political. Uh, it was educational. They ran what was called the experimental college where

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gurus like Paul Goodman and Harold Taylor would be given professorships to come and, uh, talk for a semester. Saul Alinsky was one of them. And of course obviously a great deal of organization was going on which when I got there among the students I didn't really

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know much about um. What I'm describing is a tremendously open and experimental campus. We had incredibly heavy teaching load for courses, which meant we could teach damn near anything we wanted because we just created courses. I was brought in to teach courses, for example, to create

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a little field in literature and society, and so I gave courses in. Novel and politics, which you know was was uh good. Could you just briefly, could you describe what your appointment procedure was like when you came out here? Were you interviewed and absolutely I could

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describe it. You are dealing with someone with total recall about himself. Maybe we all have that, um. I decided, uh, my wife was a physician at that time, uh, um, involved in academic medicine, uh, there would be 6 cities that we could both function in. I

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betrayed her once by bringing her to Columbus where she couldn't, um, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, so on, uh, and San Francisco, and, uh, I did work for a guy at, uh, uh, Harvard whose brother was, uh. Uh, as far as I knew at that time, head

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of a newly joined English department. They took something was called Language Arts that had been run by a very tough lady named Carolyn Schroeds and, uh, kind of very traditional English department and other things. They put it all in one department and so my friend Charlie

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Whitlock wrote his brother Baird and, uh, said, Here's a good man. Uh, you should interview him. Unbeknownst to me, there had been a revolution in the department. Uh, Baird Whitlock, much loathed, had been removed, uh, and Carolyn Schrodes had taken over, uh, despite that fact, uh,

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she did answer my letter. She answered it and said that, uh, there was no job but that she would talk to me at the Modern Language Association meetings. Um, I went there. I, uh, met her for a drink. I charmed her and, um. She wanted to

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hire me. Uh, I met later that day with a couple of guys who I assume were the hiring committee. And that's all I heard for 2 or 3 weeks. Uh, she went right back and, uh, betrayed the guy she had sort of promised a particular job

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to. Her name is Sheldon Sachs from Berkeley, who later went on to Chicago, did very well, and, um, I got a letter offering me an appointment, um, as an associate professor, which was the rank I had had in Columbus, uh, not with tenure. They never gave

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tenure. I had tenure. Number of years at Columbus like it was my 3rd year I think um. And I accept it. Uh, the only twist on that was she then called me. Uh, about two months later and said, uh, uh, that he had been fortunate to

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meet this absolutely wonderful man named Joel Dorius who had been a teacher of mine. He actually had been when I was at Harvard, uh, and was in Europe now. He had actually been the fall guy victim of, of a very bad business that happened at Smith

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College where. Newton Harvin and other people were involved in using the mails to accept pornographic literature as a. Anti-homosexual movement and he had actually gone to prison for a while, Joel, and uh he was unhireable. She hired him. That was the kind of person she was.

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And then she said, uh, we only have one associate professorship, uh, but I've gotten a lectureship which will turn into one next year. And since he's older than you and was your teacher, would you, uh, uh, be willing to give him? No. And, uh, so he

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came as a lecturer, but that was it. You came out of selection. Oh, he did. He did. I did. I did. When I arrived, there was a certain amount of scrutiny at the part of A department that had many uh assistant professors uh with my age

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but not with my publication record but anyway they they looked at me askance because they really hired at the higher levels in those days but I charmed them too. Uh, did you join any faculty organizations when you first came on the campus? Yes, uh, I, uh,

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was utterly charmed and bemused, uh, to discover, uh, that, uh, along with the normal range of faculty organizations such as AAUP to which I had belonged when I was at Ohio State. Parenthesis say a UP there was the only faculty organization and we turned it political

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in this free speech fight had huge meetings there in which I remember one. Argument I had. Life threatening to me I think with Woody Hayes, who was a professor, the coach, and a member, and, and so on, but that was useful here at San Francisco State,

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um, they had a, uh, a local, um, 1552 I guess it was of the American Federation of Teachers which frankly I'd almost never heard of, you see, and, uh, uh, so I was recruited guy next door, uh, kind of that. Pleasant alcoholic named Bob Hall, I

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think was uh. Secretary of it or something and I said sure and I joined uh the first meeting uh was held in a dining room. My first day on campus, uh, uh, really, and it was kind of disappointing. Because one of my English department colleagues, a

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large, deep-voiced man named Dan Knapp Chaucerian, got up and Bewailed the situation and the awful chancellor and the bad this and that and money stuff, uh, betrayals and said, uh, we should strike a very deep voice, but he said, but of course we can't strike. I

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said shit, what is this union but I stayed in it. Do you want me to talk more about the union at that time? Sure, yeah, your impressions would be very interesting actually. Yeah, um, it was an organization, uh, filled, uh, a small organization. I think there

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were about 150 of the 600 faculty, uh, belong to it. It had been started a few years back, uh, I believe in response to the HUAC, uh, visit. It was a defensive move. And people like Herbie Williams who was a uh anthropologist and Art Bearman and

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a number of um. Um, sort of middle of the road political, uh, people, uh, the really old fashioned liberal, uh, uh, uh, type, uh, who later became cold warriors, uh, I say later cold warriors in the San Francisco state context, um, founded this union, um, and,

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um, it had no standing, it was simply had been. Uh, given a charter by the AFT, but of course we had never had an election of any kind on the campus for representation, and we weren't unionized per se, uh, so it was, uh. Kind of an

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organization, um, the, uh, head of the, uh, the union statewide there was uh there was a local actually in each, uh, uh, campus, uh, was a man named John Sperling who, uh, I had known well, uh, at, uh, Ohio State. He actually had recruited me to

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become chair of the ACLU. I followed him in that, uh, in that role. And uh John uh. Did, uh, come to see me, uh, my first year there, uh, there was a question about the, uh, alcohol capacity of, uh, Bob Hall, um, who had the office

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next to mine, and, um, I didn't respond to John particularly. I just said, well, here are the people, Bernest Biggs, uh, and that would know because they have worked with him. Uh, but Hall took, uh, took this very badly. He felt always that, uh, before we

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fired him. State hunt for many years that that I had somehow helped do him in and he lost his job as state secretary um. Which is relevant because my 2nd year, I believe it was, or 3rd year, probably my 3rd year on the campus that I'd

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have to look up. Uh, people asked me to become president of the local and um. I said, Yeah, all right. And usually that is to get one person willing to do it, that's all, but we had a contested election because Hall took this askance and uh

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uh ran against me and I won. And I became president of the local, um, so this would be about 6667. Yeah. OK. Could have been 6566. Probably was 660, probably my second year. I really think it was my second year 6566, OK, yeah, uh, and it

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happened that um that was the year that uh. The leaders of uh of the AFT nationally, a man named Dave Selden, who was in charge at that time, decided that we would, uh, without any uh state or system support simply uh Have an election, uh, demand

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to be, uh, the agent for San Francisco State, and, uh, and we did, we had an election and so it was a hell of a difficult year for me. Uh, a lot of people, uh, helped me and supported me. Uh, Peter Radcliffe was my right arm

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at that time, uh, a philosophy professor, um. Cleveland Hall and Hart and Williams and so on and we ran against um the a a sort of conglomeration called the ACSCP I think uh or the Association of College something or other than professors um and it was

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a lot of debates and and and balloting and we lost. Uh, didn't mean anything to them either. I mean, but they proved that, um, this place was not ready for the AFT to represent them even though there was nothing to represent them to. Was, was this

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a bitter election or just a busy election? That is a very good question. Somewhere in between the two, it was surprising, I think, to the AFT people, uh, to discover that this other organization, there were, there were some cross memberships. There were people who joined everything

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and so on, um, really spoke for the faculty. We were still under the illusion, which was the illusion that under which I arrived there. That we were a, as a faculty, a very progressive. Group Now, as it turned out, uh, as, um, the years went on,

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uh, we had not understood the nature of the school of business, uh, the, uh, most of the people in the school of science, uh, the fact that, uh, all we thought all our part-timers by nature looking around us as we did with the tunnel vision that

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people in the behavioral and social sciences and the humanities are inclined to have. Uh, where our part-timers were even further out in every way, uh, emotionally, uh, sexually, creatively, professionally, uh, than the tenure, tenure track faculty were that take, for example, uh, uh, the bulk of

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the lecturers were in business and in creative arts, and in creative arts they were in music, and musicians are notoriously apolitical, if not conservative, but they had these people for 12. You know, hours a week and so on. So, um, uh, this was, uh, part of,

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uh, one's education. What I was wondering about, I guess why I brought up the question was whether Out of this kind of a dispute, you discover um lines of anger or disagreement that persist. I mean, would it have been possible to predict on the basis of

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this election in '66. How the faculty would have lined up two years later. I mean with the benefit of hindsight. I don't think so because um the organization that won which uh I think only about 300 people uh probably voted and many of them were. Uh,

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in, uh, the, uh, the same humanities and, and behavioral and social science school, and it was, it was seen almost as a kind of in-house, uh, uh, argument. There were no issues. Uh, the only issue was, uh, do you want to be affiliated with a labor

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union or not? Uh, I felt, uh, I want to back up a moment because it's, it's probably of some relevance. Um Before I got there, the legislature, uh, voted, uh, that spring a pay raise to, uh, a state university, state college we were at state college

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faculty, and, uh, because they had given a large raise the year before to the instructors and assistant professors, uh, they decided, uh, to make up for that this time and they gave a 10%, I believe it was across the board raise. My golden days, huh? Uh,

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but they said, uh, the associate and full professors didn't get anything to speak of last time, so we will give them a 7% raise, and, uh, the, uh, assistant professors, uh, uh, they, they did do a, uh, little math there, uh, something like a 2%, uh,

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uh, raise and the other 1% to be used for, uh. It was an overage, um, they discovered, of course, uh, no matter how you cut it, they discovered late September, early October that the math didn't work. You give the higher paid people a larger raise, it

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doesn't come out to 10%. And so, uh, they announced that, uh, they were giving the, uh, full and associate professors for the rest of the year, in order to make up for money we've already got on a 6.4% cut. And yes, uh, uh, the, uh, the

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AFT, uh, was the most active in fighting that because they had two members, uh, uh, I think it was only 2 people in the entire state system that had been hired at the rank of associate professor. I was one of them and so I was introduced

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to Victor Van Borg, who was a lawyer, and he said, You have a letter promising you a salary. Obviously people who are already there had no such letter. It was just the usual thing. He said, This is a contract, he said, and so you will sue.

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Uh, the, uh, CSU, uh, so I did. I thought it was somewhat ironic. I'm a non-litigious person. When I left Ohio State too, we had a lawsuit. We were suing, uh, uh, the various administrators on the free speech issue, uh. And we did actually go into

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court. Uh, that was one of my early humiliations, uh, uh, in, uh, this job. I've had many, uh. I remember the judge holding my letter of appointment in his hand. He said this is not a contract. This has never been a contract. This never will be

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a contract, and he threw the case out of court, OK, but, uh, uh, so that, uh, yeah, we had a different philosophy, the AFD, uh, it was, it was still, uh, that, that. You, you were activists. You, you yelled, uh, the, uh, other organization believed much

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more firmly in working through the statewide academic center and, and such matters, and that was, so there was a philosophical difference, uh, but the main learning, uh, uh, process that. In some of my Speeches was that if we are to be treated. Like working people. Uh,

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then, uh, we had better organize ourselves like working people, and that means a union. Ah, it is very difficult for someone who is part of the professariat, who is middle class, ah, who has achieved a PhD, and who may not have started from such a position

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or even if one had to face the fact that one is a working person and so that was the philosophical difference we said let's face it as it is. are no different from the janitors, and these people said yes we are, we are part of a

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tradition that goes back to the University of Paris, and we are intellectuals and we are not working men and therefore and women and therefore we do not want to be part of a labor union and that was the distinction. OK, now this all occurs during your

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year of presidency during that year, which now we've sort of identified as being about 6566. Were there any Of the national political issues that came onto the campus, OK, during your tenure as president, now we're talking about, you bet you there, uh, uh, uh, was, uh,

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the, uh, uh, Vietnam War protest. Now again, by coincidence, when you look at that thing you'll see that I, uh. Uh, for various reasons, mainly connected with, uh, my wife's family who were communists and, um, uh, things that happened to me in the army because of

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this where I became a security risk, uh, I, who grew up in an apolitical, probably Republican family in Boston, very few Republicans where I lived, but my father was one at that time, um. Uh, I, uh, love politics, but I certainly had none to speak of.

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Uh, I never heard of Henry Wallace, you know, I, I thought he was hostile if I could have voted, and so on, and I was with Stevenson. I worked for Stevenson, that kind of thing. Um, but the, uh, my own experiences, uh, pushed me to the

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left, and I, uh, was a reader of the National Guardian when I was in, uh, Columbus, one of the few subscribers of that journal, uh, I believe Wilfred Burchett and others, uh, and I, uh, uh, believed in, in really class solidarity because the army really did

00:31:47.060 - 00:31:49.690

try to court martial me and it was the officers.