The portraits of the Berkeley School presented by other contributors to this symposium foreground the intellectual and political commitments its members shared. My focus, however, is less on these shared commitments and more on the institutional climate at Berkeley in the 1950s and 1960s that prompted them to take shape. For both the department and the university, this was a time of rapid growth, unusually favorable to the creation of new things. ^{Footnote 1} Political theorists at Berkeley had rare opportunities to define themselves as a group and in relation to political science during this time. Their first attempts at self-definition tried to claim a central place for political theory in political science in alliance with those crafting theoretical approaches to international relations, comparative politics, public administration, and political behavior. When these attempts ran aground, some turned to creating a space for themselves and like-minded colleagues outside the political science department. Most notably, Sheldon Wolin and John Schaar, along with several junior colleagues, launched a 1967 effort to secede from the political science department to form a separate department of political theory. Although he did not support Wolin and Schaar’s effort, Norman Jacobson also pulled away from the political science department for a few years in the mid-1960s. ^{Footnote 2} What some now call the Berkeley School emerged from the experimental eclecticism and secessionist spirit of this turbulent period. In this article, I sketch elements of the institutional environment at Berkeley in the 1950s and 1960s that nourished each mood. I then discuss the imagined space for the study of political theory at the heart of a proposal for a separate department of political theory and what it adds to our understanding of the Berkeley School.

When Berkeley political theorists had their first opportunities to define themselves intellectually, they affirmed their connection to political science rather than a wish to separate from it. Several substantial Rockefeller Foundation grants to the department provided the earliest institutional and financial occasion for doing so. In 1956 and then again in 1961, Rockefeller awarded two $200,000 grants to the department to support “political theory and theoretical aspects of international relations,” mainly to provide release time for research and writing for younger faculty. ^{Footnote 3} The first of these grants gave those who taught political theory at Berkeley in the mid-1950s (i.e., Eugene Burdick, Norman Jacobson, and Sheldon Wolin) an early impetus to articulate what “political theory” was in a way that made sense to them, their colleagues, the administration, and the foundation. ^{Footnote 4} Being involved in deciding what fell inside or outside of the bounds of “political theory,” as well as applying for the grant funds, first spurred theorists at Berkeley to think about the type of group they might be. ^{Footnote 5}

As both Wolin and Jacobson would later recall, the sense of what “political theory” meant during this time was eclectic or diffuse—so much so that it was allied with rather than opposed to early studies of political behavior. For example, Burdick, who taught political theory at Berkeley from the early 1950s until his death in 1965, coedited an early collection of essays on voting behavior. ^{Footnote 6} Jacobson expressed support for what would become The American Voter project and especially for one of its authors, his former Berkeley colleague, Warren Miller. ^{Footnote 7} For his part, Miller (Reference Miller1988) later recalled that both Jacobson and Wolin had belonged to his small intellectual circle during his brief time at Berkeley. ^{Footnote 8} Wolin recalled endorsing the hiring of another scholar of political behavior, Herbert McClosky, in 1960 after Miller’s departure (Wolin Reference Wolin2005). Schaar, who joined the faculty in the late 1950s, coauthored several articles with McClosky (e.g., McClosky and Schaar Reference McClosky and Schaar1965). Michael Rogin (hired in 1963) was initially understood by his colleagues to be a scholar of political behavior as well. The sharp critique of behavioralism that many now see as a defining feature of the Berkeley School, therefore, did not take shape until the late 1960s. In the 1950s and early 1960s, interests in “theory” and “political behavior” were not at odds but rather jointly affirmed by many ambitious younger scholars who appeared to be thoroughly at home in Berkeley’s political science department.

So, what happened? How did the optimistic eclecticism of the late 1950s and early 1960s give way to the spirit of secession so quickly? For as short a piece as this one, “political conflict and its reverberations through a rapidly changing university” is probably the best answer. As those who we now call Berkeley political theorists were drawn to take positions on the Free Speech Movement (FSM) and then the Antiwar and Reconstitution Movements, their ideas took new democratic and oppositional turns. ^{Footnote 9} Moreover, their sense of whether Berkeley’s political science department was the best place for what they wanted to do changed as well.

After more than a decade of rapid growth, questions about what type of an institution Berkeley should be were raised with increasing urgency during the course of the 1960s. Among the many answers offered, the recommendation that it continue on its current course to becoming a “multiversity” was particularly contentious. The idea, popularized by University of California President Clark Kerr in the early 1960s, compared the postwar research university to a large, diverse city; the days of universities as tightly knit communities, Kerr argued, were over (Kerr 1963/1982). To the political theorists who criticized it, however, the multiversity drifted away from any sense of educational purpose as it moved toward serving the state and corporate interests that fueled its growth. Students (especially undergraduates), they argued, were overlooked and impoverished in this new academic city. Smaller communities were the best environments for education; only there was it possible to combine the teaching of tradition with a spirit of experimentation and respect for students (Wolin and Schaar Reference Wolin and Schaar1967, 69–72/1970).

There were some notable attempts to form such small scholarly communities at odds with the multiversity’s ethic. Berkeley in the 1960s was teeming with educational experiments and ideas for reorganizing academic structures, a few of which almost certainly influenced how particular theorists imagined creating new spaces for what they wanted to do. The small Experimental College was one of the earliest, beginning only a year after the FSM of the mid-1960s. ^{Footnote 10} Its organizer, the philosopher Joseph Tussman, constructed a “great books” curriculum around the theme of “cultures in crisis.” Such a curriculum, Tussman argued, best equipped students to take up their “political vocation” as democratic citizens (Trow Reference Trow1998, 2, 9; Tussman Reference Tussman1969). Although Tussman discouraged students from discussing their political activities in class, the deliberately small size of the Experimental College, as well as its self-conscious refusal to assign grades, set it apart from the multiversity that the FSM had so pointedly criticized. Not only was Jacobson briefly among its faculty (Trow Reference Trow1998, 83–129; 427, appendix A); Schaar and Wolin also were beginning to articulate commitments similar to Tussman’s “great books” curriculum as well as to his aim that students be educated for their “political vocation” (Wolin Reference Wolin1969; Wolin and Schaar 1967/1970).

In the next few years, other initiatives aimed to advance the FSM’s challenge to university paternalism by granting students more control over many areas of university life, including curricula, administration and governance. For example, a report of a special committee of the Academic Senate, charged with exploring how the university could continue to grow without sacrificing “the traditions of humane learning,” prompted the creation of the Board of Educational Development that allowed faculty and students (with the support of faculty sponsors) to propose topical new courses. ^{Footnote 11} A more ambitious initiative, the Study Commission on University Governance composed of faculty and students, met throughout 1967; it ultimately recommended a “radical redirection” of the university, greater student participation and decentralization. ^{Footnote 12} Such new ventures must have seemed encouraging to the political theorists who found themselves increasingly at odds with many of their former allies in the political science department. Collectively, they seemed to promise that the multiversity might cede a little space to approaches at odds with its defining ethos.

Other aspects of the institutional environment at Berkeley in the 1960s, however, were decidedly less hospitable to secessionist experiments. For instance, several proposed plans for reorganizing the political science department sought to increase administrative control, not faculty autonomy. As early as 1964, an administrator noted that the political science department was suffering from “too much democracy” and that some reorganization to contain this might be in order. ^{Footnote 13} Some faculty favored creating a new, smaller College of Social Sciences headed by a powerful dean who would also be a prominent social scientist; and an administrator suggested dividing the department into three groups of fields, each to be led by a vice chair. (This plan put political theory and political behavior in the same group.). ^{Footnote 14} Although none of these plans to increase administrative control over the faculty came to fruition, they indicate that some planned reorganizations sought to contain the fractiousness of the department rather than give it free rein.

One secessionist plan, however, did succeed in this environment. In 1969, a number of public-administration faculty achieved a long-standing aim to leave political science to form their own Graduate School of Public Affairs (GSPA), despite the objections of many faculty both inside and outside of the department. ^{Footnote 15} In several ways, the success of this plan undermined the attempt to form a department of political theory. Not only were these two secessionist efforts unfolding at the same time; Aaron Wildavsky, the leader of one, also played a central part in quashing the other. As chair of the political science department from 1966 to 1969, Wildavsky strongly opposed the 1967 attempt to form a department of political theory (Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1992, 88; Wolin Reference Wolin1992; Wolin Reference Wolin2005). ^{Footnote 16} Wildavsky then left the department less than two years later for the new school of public affairs, along with a number of his colleagues in public administration. He served as the GSPA’s first dean, a position he held until 1977 (Wildavsky obituary, In Memoriam, UCDA).

The archived papers of the university’s upper administration suggest that plans to form this school had been in the works for nearly a decade and that administrators supported them over the objections of several faculty committees. Already in 1960, some political science faculty circulated a proposal to establish a master’s in public administration program; during the next seven years, as some of these faculty worked particularly with Berkeley’s vice chancellor, the proposal expanded into a plan for a stand-alone professional school. ^{Footnote 17} Several faculty committees rejected that proposal in the spring of 1967, citing concerns about the proposed school’s curriculum, the large number of faculty required to staff it, and fueling the perception that Berkeley was growing too quickly. ^{Footnote 18} The vice chancellor overrode these objections, however, and the school was formally approved by the regents of the university at the end of 1967. It opened in 1969.

I have focused on the founding of Berkeley’s GSPA not only because it overlapped with the attempt to form a new department of political theory but also because these two efforts represent such starkly contrasting responses to the “multiversity.” On the one hand, faculty advocates for the GSPA emphasized how their proposed school would strengthen the university’s ties to the state. Such a professional school, they argued, would attract students who already held government positions, along with the tuition revenue and prestige they and their government-agency employers promised. ^{Footnote 19} By contrast, those who argued for the creation of a separate department of political theory promised the multiversity little beyond possibly alleviating some conflict within the political science department by dividing it up.

Still, this little-known attempt to create a department of political theory marks an important if brief chapter in the history of the Berkeley School even though it did not succeed. But reconstructing what happened in any detail is difficult. For one, the episode left a faint documentary trail; a draft proposal from the summer of 1967 is my most substantial source for how its architects imagined this new space for political theory. ^{Footnote 20} And many who took part in it also did not wish to discuss it at length. ^{Footnote 21} Nevertheless, with the notable exception of Jacobson, at least four political theory faculty and many graduate students designed or supported this effort at the time. ^{Footnote 22}

How an intellectual community understands what its members know and do deeply informs its ideas about the institutional spaces in which they are most likely to thrive. Those Berkeley theorists who sought to create a better institutional space for political theory outside of the political science department, therefore, also were thinking about how they saw themselves becoming a more distinct intellectual community. The space they imagined was, for one, interdisciplinary. ^{Footnote 23} The proposed undergraduate and graduate programs required substantial coursework in other departments, including history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and anthropology. Faculty from departments other than political science also were recruited to join; among those who were prepared to do so were Peter Dale Scott (English) and Philip Selznick (Sociology) (Scott Reference Scott2005; Wolin Reference Wolin2005). The department of political theory also was imagined as a space devoted to small-scale instruction—small seminars for undergraduate majors and graduate students, individually designed programs of study for graduate students. At times, the outlined academic programs that accompanied the proposal emphasized strictly defined points of academic focus. For instance, first-year graduate students were to be examined on a small number of books determined by faculty (G 2); undergraduate majors were to take an introductory seminar to political theory focused on “one significant work of political theory” (U 1). ^{Footnote 24} However, along with such narrowly specified points of focus, the draft programs also stressed students’ responsibility for crafting their own individualized programs of study and appearing before their teachers as scholars in their own right. ^{Footnote 25} Only a small, tightly knit intellectual community—the proposal implies—could hope to realize such contrasting intellectual imperatives. ^{Footnote 26}

Other contributors to this symposium comment more extensively than I have done here on the core ideas and tenets that they believe characterized the Berkeley School. As I have suggested, however, there are important connections between the defining ideas of a group and how it imagines a good institutional space in which to develop them. Reflecting on how a department of political theory was envisioned as an academic space—along with all that prompted this secessionist vision—adds to our retrospective picture of a “Berkeley School.”