CUNY

DIGITALHISTORYARCGHIVE

CUNY Digital History Archive

Interview with Allen Ballard
Interviewer: Douglas Medina

April 4, 2014
New York, NY

Douglas Medina:

Allen Ballard:

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Today is Friday, April 4", 2014, and I am here with Professor Allen
Ballard. Professor Ballard, why don’t we start with you telling me
about yourself? Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I was born in 1930 —
November 1, 1930 — and grew up in Pennsylvania, and went to the
Joseph E. Hill Elementary School, and went to Central High School in
Philadelphia, and graduated from there in 1948 — February.

And what did your parents do at that time for a living?

My father was a police inspector, and my mother was basically a
Christian Science nurse.

Did you discuss politics at home, at the dinner table when you were
together?

No.

So how did you think of race at the time, in terms of your interaction
with people in your neighborhood, at school?

Well, Pll tell you something: if we’re going along with this, I think
you should read my book. I mean, because a lot of this is covered in
extreme detail in my book.


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Okay, so you know what, maybe we will skip that part. So, why don’t
we fast forward to the time when you first arrived at the City
University.

I arrived in City University in 1960 or so. I arrived at City College in
New York as an assistant professor of Political Science and as a Soviet
specialist. I taught Soviet Politics, then of course all the American
government and international relations — I taught everything.

You said 1960 — was that exactly 1960, or 1961, when CUNY became
a university?

Probably ’61 —’60 or ’61 — but I don’t have my vitae in front of me,
which I will send it to you; it’s got all that extra detail in it.

How many black faculty members do you recall were in the
department at the time?

In the entire school, there were three black faculty members. There
was myself; there was John Davis in the Political Science department;
and there was Kenneth Clark in the Psychology department. That was
it.

And what about students? I know that the demographics were very
skewed; it was mostly a white institution, right?

Yeah. There were no — very few black students; I had, in my first five
years at City College, I think maybe about three or four, at the most,
black students in my day classes. There were a few more in my
evening classes, because we all taught evening school at that same
time. But in my evening classes, sometimes there are more, but no
more than — I can remember almost by names, the names of the black
undergraduates in my class.

At what point did you begin to mobilize, or address, the issue of racial
inequality in terms of access to City College as an institution?

Well, I did that basically when — I got the idea to start the SEEK
program. And what I did, I went to John Davis. He was a senior black
person on campus; really more senior than Ken Clark. And he was,
you know, like a mentor to me, so I had this idea to kind of creating
something like what the SEEK program is actually. And I asked him,
what he would think if I went and talked to the president about it? And
he said don’t worry about it, just go on and write it up and go talk to
the president, which I did. Now this is 63 I think; 63, ’64. The
president, Buell Gallagher, agreed that this was a necessary step to

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take; he, too, had already noticed the racial gap and he said to me that
he had actually asked Ken Clark to set up such a program, but that Ken
had not had the time to do it. And so, the president told me “Go ahead
and write the whole thing up,” and he would actually deal with it. He
would pick it up and move it once he’d received it; well, it would
really put then into the hand off the undergraduate dean, who was
Dean Frodin. And then, the university set up a committee, and on that
committee was Dean Bernie Sohmer — he is dead now — and myself,
and Dean Leslie Berger, who was to become the first director of
SEEK. And, we were all put under the control of Dean Abe Schwartz,
a very distinguished professor of Mathematics and who had himself —
he basically was the chair of this committee, whose job was to
formulate the SEEK program. And in that whole structure, I was the
one who basically wrote the plan, with, obviously, input from all those
folks. Dean Berger was then a dean in the evening school under Dean
Schwartz —basically then Leslie Berger was made the first director of
the SEEK program; and that was the organizational structure.

Were there any differences between what you initially proposed and
what became the SEEK program?

Probably not at this stage of the game. I mean, they would all have to
be down on paper, but it’s pretty much what I proposed is what we got.
We had, I think, the ratio of counselors and the kind of academic
components of this kind of mixture of academic counseling, and
financial assistance, and books, and basic kinds of drawing out,
seeking out youth who had great potential, and doing it on an
individual basis; that was all there. That whole component was there
now; there may have been adjustments, budget-wise, you know, how
much money they would get for the books; how much money they
would get for tuition. And it was the type to ask what kind of class; the
way the classes would be structured. But the basic structure was there,
and we had all agreed upon that.

You mentioned the counseling component, which I think is one of the
most important components of SEEK, even today. And it’s interesting
because when I read some of the literature and the history of SEEK
and open admissions, that was one of the points of contention that the
students raised; because there is a difference between having a
counselor, who has a psychological background, training, and one who
has academic advisement training. And they felt that — or at least that
is what some people said — they felt that students were viewed as
deficient, psychologically deficient, if you had a counselor talking to
them, as opposed to an advisor or a social worker. What do you think
about that?


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Well, there was a form of contention, let me put it this way, but it was
not — and this was because Dean Berger basically was a psychologist,
and a very good psychologist. And he felt that we should bring the
most highly trained professionals that were available. And he didn’t
think it that the students were mentally deficient, at all. He just thought
that trained clinicians would be better able to deal with the problems
that the kids would bring; and could offer them, let’s put it this way, a
very professional kind of outlet for whatever things bothered them.
Now, he and I differed on that a lot, but never in a cantankerous way at
all. But Les’ approach was just, let’s get the best PhD people around
here we can get, and the problem was — he, at the same time, wanted to
establish the prestige of the program, so that it would not be looked
down upon by other components in the college. At that time, you
couldn’t find any black PhD academic counselors, or PhD whatever.
Yeah, we argued a lot about that, and again in a very friendly way, and
sooner or later he was persuaded that we could bring in social workers,
but that was a big step for him. Because again, he felt that there was a
—and I think he was right, in a certain respect definitely in a way; that
there is a certain rigidity in our structures that comes with having the
discipline to get a PhD. And he thought that this would transfer to a
certain rigorousness in the entire program; that’s why he wanted to
push on that.

Interesting. That makes a lot of sense, actually. By the way, would you
happen to have some of the original reports and documents? I’ve
found some material, but it would be great to get it from you as well, if
you have it. If not, that is fine.

I may have some stuff. Sooner or later I have to give my permission to
the archives here at the University of Albany, but they have a lot of my
stuff actually.

Great; I will take a look, then, if that is the case. So you mentioned that
— to me it makes a lot of sense that the program from the very
foundation should be given credibility?

Right.

That is the important factor. Now, tell me more about any opposition
that you may have encountered in the process of making this proposal
to create SEEK.

Well, let me say this — again, I go onto the book. In the book, I go into
some great detail about this. On the campus itself, there was
opposition, as far as in the faculty council; not racial, but aimed at
again the standards — the question of standards, the question of

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lowering the standards. You have to remember what City College was
— this place had all these various high Nobel Prize winners— and it
prided itself on its academic excellence. A lot of the professors were
CCNY graduates, who had gone on to Harvard or Columbia,
particularly Columbia, and there was a wellspring of opposition on
that. “Are you going to lower standards?” It’s still the same question
today; it hasn’t changed at all, really. How are you going to actually
see to it that City College remains the actual kind of City College that
we have now.

Through this, you can’t have both, realistically; things are going to
change. There was no real opposition in the college about whose, but
indeed there was a lot of support for the program from all parts of it.
Actually, one of the people who became the most adamant opponents
against the SEEK program, against Open Admissions was Howard
Adelson. Adelson was in the History department; he’s actually a very
good friend of mine; we enjoyed talking history and things together.
He actually volunteered to be a tutor, a mentor to some of those
students; and he changed — he got irritated when some of them stopped
showing up for meetings with him. Frankly, he was very easily
offended. He became later vehemently against this whole program, but
he was a very good friend of mine.

So actually, as time went on and as more students came in, and some
of them didn’t perform well, and some of them failed to meet the
expectations, then you would begin getting resentment against the
program; that’s really what happened. I think, by and large, the white —
well, the faculty was white, but the faculty supported the program; let
me put it that way. And a lot of — he had to remember the time — again
this is still after the war and there are a lot of veterans; we didn’t have
professors or associates for professors, whatever. There were a lot of
veterans had been through a lot, and who basically are very — by virtue
of, I think, their war experience, or the worldliness of them — they
were prepared to see change take place; and they helped.

Wow. Now, did you seek any outside support from community
organizations for this project? Because it seems to me that if you are
going to start with a program like SEEK, you would need community
support, so that people know about it— so that there’s a broader support
base for it; did any of that occur?

Yeah, it occurred, but it occurred in a way, how can I say it, primarily
through the political black politicians. That is how the support came,
from Basil Paterson and Charlie Rangel and Percy Sutton — 1 am
leaving somebody out.


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Adam Clayton Powell?

No, he wasn’t. David Dinkins. All of those four were the four of whom
I was in contact, and who really provided the political muscle for the
program. Now, they all had contacts in the community— but there was
no real — at that time, there was no Black community besides those
folks and the churches, there was no Black community organizations,
such as Haryou-Act, which came in later. When Ken Clark came in,
there was a different ball game. But there were still — the primary
community support came through, actually, the politicians.

Interesting. Now, in many ways, SEEK was the model for what would
later become open admissions, and it seems like things happened so
quickly. Because SEEK was established in — I believe 1966 was the
first year that the first class was brought in. So, at what point, from
your recollections, do you remember students mobilizing for
expanding SEEK? For getting more students access to CUNY?

Well, all that is in my books too — I mean all that’s covered in brief in
(0:20:26 indiscemnibie), Basically, the death of Martin Luther King
precipitated all of that. From then on, that’s when students really got
very active. As the Black students came in, and the Puerto Rican
students came in, they noticed the lack of Black and Puerto Rican
students on the campus. So now, then they start saying, hey, let’s just
have more, more, more. So that’s what that was about, realistically. I
mean, the ones who were there became a catalyst for change. That’s
how that happened.

Okay. You mentioned before that this idea of academic standards
always came up as the factor that was the main opposition, usually
from faculty. They would say, yeah, you get all these students coming
in, then the standards will suffer. And, at the same time there’s a
contradiction of sorts here, because CUNY always has presented itself,
historically, as the Harvard of the poor, working class students can, are
welcome here. Except if you’re black and Puerto Rican, you’re not
necessarily in. But my question is this: do you remember any of these
debates about access connected to the idea of CUNY’s mission as a
public institution?

I mean, that was an underlying theme in all of the kind of policy
positions taken by the black and Puerto Rican politicians, and by that
whole side. I mean, that’s an underlying theme. It’s like — holding
Thomas Jefferson to the Declaration of Independence. It’s the same
thing, really. I mean, it was just pervasive as we went into office.


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Now, ultimately, we got Open Admissions. But interestingly enough,
the demands that the students presented to the administrators, to the
president, did not include the language of Open Admissions. What
they called for, and this is demand number four, was equal,
proportionate representation of incoming students who were admitted
into City College in CUNY to reflect the proportion of the black and
Puerto Rican population in New York City. But those are two different
things, aren’t they? Open admissions and proportionate admissions;
what do you think led to that?

What led to Open Admissions, or what led to the proportion to their
demands?

Actually, both, but let’s go with what led to Open Admissions.

Well, what led to Open Admissions was — again, you’ ll see in my book
as I talk about this. The demands from the students, and all these
demonstrations basically, provided the — all over the place — the others
[without]didn’t have no peace at all. Every time you turn around,
there’s [were] students demonstrating, right here, they’re everywhere,
“bum-buto- bum-bum”. Yeah, you couldn’t sleep, man. It’s like,
you're thinking well, who, what are they going to do the next day? So,
it was almost like Kiev, that’s how, it’s just like Kiev a few weeks ago.

And, you know, you’re feeling like the Prime Minister of Ukraine:
what the hell am I going to do with all of these folks. So that’s what
led to it. I mean, that was it. But then, there was a liberal — no question
about it — there was a liberal kind of context. And that includes
Bowker, and it includes the administration. And I talk about this,
again, in some detail. It included all those votes who were basically
inclined towards changing the composition of the university, and who
also saw the change in composition of the city taking place, and slow-
rising political — black and Puerto Rican political power.

These things are all tied up together, in a situation where they had to
appease the white constituencies of the city. And that meant, in effect,
that we’re now talking about Queens College. Brooklyn College.
Lehman College, which was newly founded. But basically, Brooklyn
and Hunter and Queens, which were the basis of the university — those
places had to be [appeased ]- and their constituencies, which are
overwhelmingly white.

Brooklyn still had — was not, basically what it was. And the Bronx was
what it was, too. These are — the city is changing, but it’s not changing
that fast. So, how are you going to satisfy them? And they basically
didn’t want large numbers of blacks and Puerto Ricans,

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underachieving students coming into their colleges. They all held their
college at a high, high reputation. But they can’t — it’s a mistake not to
see that the Presidents in all these places — the names escape me now,
It was Wexler down at Hunter, right, Lief in the Bronx, Murphy out at
Queens College.

These folks all had their own kind of liberal tendencies, but they also
were — had huge alumni associations behind them, and they were
White. And they had to deal with the alumni associations; they had to
deal with a faculty that was not used to all this turmoil. So basically,
Open Admissions was a compromise, that’s what it ended up being.

Right. And it seems like it was middle, White working class students
and families who benefited from Open Admissions.

Yes, large numbers of them. Yes. That was the in other, the quid pro
quo. Really, that’s what happened.

It’s interesting also, because, as you know, there was a plan already in
the works that Bowker had crafted, I believe; and it was presented in
the Master Plan of 1968, calling for the implementation of an Open
Admissions program in 1975. So, in some ways, the social movement
led by students pushed that deadline forward — in 1970.

Definitely.

So, you know, now here’s where it gets really interesting. In the
research that I’ve done —I have not found any work that makes an
explicit, in-depth connection between Open Admissions and the
imposition of tuition.

Right.

To me, it seems interesting that 1970 is when Open Admissions was
implemented, and 1976 — six short years later, the imposition of tuition
came about. There are some theories out there that basically say, well,
look at how the complexion of the university changed, and then you
get tuition. What do you think about that, I mean is there any weight to
that theory that says it was a racist policy in many ways: the
imposition of tuition?

Yeah, I think there is, no question it was. In my mind, there was no

question it was. I don’t know — again, I see in my mind the board

meetings; I think I was there when that board meeting took place.

There were three or four vehement anti-Black and anti-Puerto Rican

board members. And the, there were, three or four vehemently anti-
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Black and anti-Puerto Rican board members. I can see one of them,
right now, I forgot what his name was — he was pounding his fist on
the table when the final vote was announced, and with joy. And he
raised his hands. There are graduates so — former graduates of the City
College. I see a guy, I see him right now. And there’s no question in
my mind it was racial. It was racial.

Interesting. So, that was a watershed moment in CUNY’s history
because it was the end of a 129-year old policy of no tuition. You
know, a lot of people attended because it was free, otherwise they
would not have been able to attend, right?

That’s right.

At the same time it occurred in the context of one of the most serious
fiscal crises that New York City has faced; they were almost bankrupt,
right?

That’s true.

So, I’m wondering to what extent racism had something to do with the
imposition of tuition, and to what extent the fiscal crisis was a catalyst.

Well, you know — it’s like White — all things are, I’m not going to say
— I’m not going to sit here and say it was — let me say this, the
university, in open admissions, bit off more than it could chew.
Alright, we didn’t have the money to do it. Which is why, when you
read — you see that I wrote — now, I was opposed to open admissions,
which was going to drown the university, rather than having a targeted
kind of program, such as SEEK, and continuing that.

So the result of all this was that the university was not funded
properly, and the place really kind of deteriorated; no question about
it. It was just in awful physical shape. And so they needed money, but
there was none. So I’m not going to sit here and say it was totally a
racial kind of decision, but I will say that — and as a historian, you
can’t say I wish it had been this, I wish it was that. It was exactly what
it was.

It was probably a comp... these folks who had been against open
admissions felt, “Hey, at least now we’re going to make them pay for
it, right.” At the same time, as these same folks who were against open
admissions were fiscally conservative people anyhow, most of them
bankers or whatever, you know, whatever they were. So they may
have — these forces may have conspired.

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So ’m not going to say it was totally that; that would be wrong.

Yeah, of course. It was a complex issue and complex time in many
ways. There were so many moving pieces at the time. So, do you
remember what the role politicians played, and which ones in
particular, played a role in the imposition of tuition? Because in some
ways I recall reading that some Black politicians agreed with the
policy, but with a caveat that the state had to provide funding for
minorities through TAP, the Tuition Assistance Program.

I don’t remember who that was. I don’t — no I guess that would just be
—I don’t remember.

Okay. So let’s move to sort of talking in more abstract terms here,
because it seems to me that there’s a big issue here in terms of the idea
of meritocracy, and the language of standards. — I think that’s really
how you see it — and the idea of democratic access which, I think the
students represented at the time in 1969.

That tension came to a head in 1969. The students basically challenged
the whole idea of meritocracy, didn’t they?

Right.
So that tension seems to continue; it was never really resolved, right?
Right.

What do you think about that? I mean, how do we solve that tension
between meritocratic standards and democratic goals?

Well, you can’t — realistically, it’s everything. We have a EOP
program [Educational Opportunity Program] here at SUNY Albany.
And I go there all the time for those meetings. We had a meeting — not
a meeting, this honors program, you know, dinner for this graduating
seniors, et cetera. And, you know, some folks got up and who are staff
— there were some people got up who were EOP graduates, early ones,
and they talked about where their children were.

And then someone said, maybe remark in a nice way, they said,
“That’s great.” Because an EOP graduate should not have children
who are EOP. In other words, that’s what happened, basically you see
that that was the whole purpose of setting up a upwardly mobile,
facilitating program. That was the whole purpose of it: to invest funds
and get it open out there; they’re kind of investors, so that they would

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be able to move higher in life, and into a higher economic status, and
social status.

I think that’s basically what the programs have achieved. Now, it’s
certainly — you can see still a disparity — Lenin used to say, you can’t
make your eggs without breaking an omelet. [sic] And that’s just true.
There’s no way that you’re going to have a situation where you have
generations of Whites who have been nurtured in certain literary
traditions today, and whose parents are literate and read — and have
had access to the books, and concerts, and things of the sort. There’s
no way you’re going to take those folks and their values, and the
leisure time that they and their children have for broadening their own
education.

That’s been transmitted to the lives of peasants from Africa, or the
descendants of slaves from Africa, or peasants from Puerto Rico, and
all of a sudden expecting, “Oh hey, we’re one big happy family.” It
doesn’t work like that. It works through time. There’s a melding
together of these things, and it’s like, one Puerto Rican doctor here,
one Black doctor here, one Black PhD in physics, et cetera et cetera, or
economists. These things are kind of cumulative and slow. It’s not
like, all of a sudden, you bring somebody into the university, and then
they graduate — Phi Beta Kappa is going to happen. It does happen; we
have a large number of Dean’s List who are students on the EOP
program up here. A lot of them, actually. But you can’t suddenly
expect that the university is not going to be changed. It’s going to be
changed.

Absolutely right. You mentioned upward mobility. It’s interesting
because the concept of upward mobility — and its sibling, the American
Dream — they usually go hand in hand, upward mobility and the
American Dream — are both inflicted with class and race factors. The
issue of access to higher education is both a racial and a class issue. I
wonder because to me, that’s an important point, because in American
society, we tend to think of access in terms of racial terms, and not
necessarily in terms of the class perspective. For example, colleges and
universities are heading towards full privatization nowadays.

You know, public institutions — more and more students are expected
to pay out of their pockets for supporting the mission of the institution.
That process in my mind began in the 1960s and the 1970s; and that’s
why I’m using CUNY as a case study for this.

Right.

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[00:42:47]

So what I’m saying is that, yeah, fine, let’s focus on diversity;
multiculturalism is a good thing; upward mobility is a good thing. But
let’s also look at the way capitalism works. We haven’t really talked
about that. So, I’m wondering what your thoughts are about this issue.
How can we focus on upward mobility, but at the same time, question
the very notion of upward mobility; a critique of capitalism, let’s say.

That’s off my — that’s off the reservation. I mean, we’d be here
forever. Seriously, right at this stage of the game. Because it’s class,
and it’s economics, and my politics are kind of far left, but not quite
socialist. I support most of the things that were done to bring around
leveling. But I also lived in the Soviet Union for a long time. I studied
there and stuff. And each side has its advantage, whatever.

Right.

So, I'll let that one just slide, it’s difficult.

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