God Put a Smile upon My Face

HUTTENBACK: No, he wasn't. Although he made himself chairman of our search committee. I

did all the work, but he was the chairman. [Laughter] But I thought Harold was a very bright

guy. He wasn't right on everything, but I liked him. I thought he was fun to work with.

Let's see, my student incarnation I did mainly with Lee DuBridge. But the social science

part was mostly with Harold Brown. You probably have a better idea of what the health of the

social science program is now. Because in the seventies, it was a very good department and

placed good people in good places. I hope that's still true.

COHEN: Why do you think these people left?

HUTTENBACK: I think it was a bigger commitment, bigger program. You know, we were a little,

tiny thing, not terribly visible. And I think you get sick of always being the beleaguered

minority. And in the case of Mo Fiorina, here is a young man who'd grown up and would have

gone to East Appalachian State or whatever it was; there was no greater flattery than to be

offered a job at Harvard. In the case of Ferejohn, I don't think it's so clear. I think they just

made him a very good deal. And in the case of Jim Quirk, there was no particular reason at all.

Roger Noll was very unhappy. Do you know why? This was absolutely idiotic. Roger

was head of the search committee for a new provost. And the committee chose him. They

thought he would be good; I think he would have been good, too. One night Murph phoned him

up and said, "Roger, the committee chose you to be provost. I think you'd be absolutely

marvelous. I'd be delighted, but I can't do it. Arnold Beckman just won't stand for it." First of

all, you don't tell things like that to people. And second, you should try and prevent your

trustees from telling you what to do on the operational level. [Tape ends] Huttenback-32

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Huttenback_R

ROBERT A. HUTTENBACK

SESSION 2

November 6, 1995

Begin Tape 2, Side 1

COHEN: Perhaps you've had some thoughts about our last interview, things that maybe you

hadn't mentioned that you'd like to say.

HUTTENBACK: I did happen to think a couple of days ago about the admission of women to

Caltech, because that's become an almost universal issue--that almost every place that was only

a man's place became coeducational. It must have been sometime in the late 1960s when we had

the great dramatic debate in the faculty about whether women should be

...