Santa Cruz in the ’60′s
“How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? —and I tell my life to myself.”
Nietzsche: Ecce Homo
by Paul A. Lee
Bumping into a friend at the Harvard Coop who told me he had applied for a position at Santa Cruz but had changed his mind, I said, “Well, maybe I’ll apply.” He looked at me askance and said: “Do you know anything about the California University sssssystem?” I didn’t, but I registered the hiss in the way he pronounced the word system. I thought: snake in the grass? I was teaching at M.I.T. and my term was about to expire and I needed a job. Soon after an article appeared in the New York Times that Kenneth Thimann had been appointed Provost of Crown College, UCSC. I went to the phone. I was a Fellow of a Radcliffe House where Thimann was Provost and I knew him. He was a very distinguished professor of botany at Harvard. We went over for tea and he hired me.