Clark Kerr 1911—

Widely considered one of the twentieth-century's leading experts on higher education, Clark Kerr was born in 1911 and grew up on a farm in Stony Creek, Pennsylvania. Clark's father and mother had a strong influence on his life, instilling in him an appreciation for hard work, the courage to be an independent thinker, and a life-long love for learning. Kerr felt a strong affinity for the values he found at Quaker Swarthmore: pluralism, pragmatism, principled action, and the balance between the autonomous individual and the group consensus. Kerr continued to graduate school immediately after finishing Swarthmore, completing a master's degree in economics at Stanford University in 1933, and then attending University of California at Berkeley to pursue a doctorate in economics and labour relations from 1933 to 1939. Kerr accepted the Regents offer in 1958 and served as President of the University of California system for nine years.