ustxtxb_obs_1969_01_24_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

THE TEXAS OBSERVER A Journal of Free Voices The Texas Observer Publishing Co. A Window to the South 63rd YEARESTABLISHED 1906 Vol LXI, No. 2 January 24, 1969 The Johnson Complex Austin The prospect of Lyndon B. Johnson’s imposing presence on the University of Texas campus here has caused the widest range of reaction in the UT-Austin community from elation among those university administrators, regents and teachers who believe UT has engineered an academic coup, to sullen apprehension among those here who, it might exaggeratedly be said, wonder whether the 36th president’s presence here might mean UT will begin raining napalm on College Station. In any case, ready or not, Johnson is coming. What roles he’ll assume as a retired president has been the subject of extensive speculation nationally as well as in Texas for months now, but no more so anywhere than in Austin, where the massive framework of the 150,000-squarefoot Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library rises eight stories above the prominent hill just east of the. UT Tower as an unavoidable reminder of the advent to the campus of Johnson. The library’s prominence is being accented further by the construction of an east mall to link visually the Tower and, at the mall’s eastern terminus, the library. The library will be adjoined by a 935-foot-long, 275,000-square-foot East Campus Library and Research Bldg., which will house, among other things, UT’s newly established Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Service. The two buildings are being erected at a cost of $11,859,000′ by the T. C. Bateson Co., Dallas. The library building will have a 1,000seat auditorium, classroom lecture hall, art exhibits, display of volumes and original manuscripts from the UT rare books and manuscript collections. The larger building will house the UT Texas and Latin-American books, archives, the Latin American Institute, the headquarters of the Texas State Historical Assn. and the new LBJ School of Public Service, a two-year postgraduate institution that will prepare students for careers in government. In announcing the plans for the two massive buildings, W. W. Heath, Austin, then chairman of the UT regents, emphasized several times, a bit defensively, that only 100,000 of the 425,000 square feet of the new structure would house the LBJ Library; the remaining space will be for university academic purposes, Heath stressed. 2 Heath’s precaution reflects his, and others, acknowledgment of the undercurrent of concern about the propriety of this marriage of a political dynasty with a public university. “This was a very ticklish operation,” Frank Erwin, the present regents’ chairman, told a reporter. “I’m the national [Democratic] committeeman, you know. I’ve got to be extremely careful.”‘ Erwin’s term on the national committee expired last year; he nonetheless is still understood as a man deeply involved in both the politics and higher 1. All footnotes are on page 16. education of this state, and as a person who, with Heath and others, labored hard to bring the LBJ Library to its Austin hilltop home, a site Johnson chose personally.’ The concern mounted a bit higher recently when, late last year, it was announced that Walter W. Rostow and his wife would join the UT-Austin faculty. Rostow was one of the key architects of the Johnson policy in Vietnam; some say he was the main force behind US involvement there. The Observer hears on good ground that the Rostows will between them earn $58,000 annually, he $35,000, she $23,000. Rostow very much wanted to return to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on whose faculty he served before joining the Kennedy-Johnson administration in 1961. 5 It is widely believed that he was not allowed to return to MIT because of his identification with the US role in Vietnam and, further, that he was blackballed by Ivy League schools for the same reason, it being felt that his presence on a campus might be a “disturbing influence,” as US News and World Report recently reported. 6 THE ROSTOWS will join the UT faculty on Feb. 1, he to serve as a professor of history and economics, she to be an associate professor of government. It is expected that Rostow will teach in the LBJ School, though this is not yet certain because the dean of that school, who will decide such a matter, has not yet been chosen. Incorporating the State Observer and the East Texas Democrat, which in turn incorporated the State Week and Austin Forum-Advocate. We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Editor, Greg Olds. Associate Editor, Kaye Northcott. Editor-at-large, Ronnie Dugger. Business Manager, C. R. Olofsen. Business Manager Emeritus, Sarah Payne. The editor has exclusive control over the editorial policies and contents of the Observer. None of the other people who are associated with the enterprise shares this responsibility with him. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them the editor does not necessarily imply that he agrees with them, because this is a journal of free voices. The Observer is published by Texas Observer Publishing Co., Inc., biweekly from Austin, Texas. Entered as second-class matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Second class postage paid at Aus The search for a dean has proven difficult. A faculty committee whose recommendations were to guide but not bind the UT administration was formed. Around mid-1967 the university began actively looking for the dean. 7 It had been anticipated that the dean would be selected by the fall of 1968, but the difficulties of finding just the right man evidently have delayed the selection beyond that tentative date. 8 Political considerations are present in the selection process. Dr. William S. Livingston, a government professor, the chairman of the faculty committee that is searching for the dean, maintains that “The President and Mrs. Johnson have been extremely careful to give the impression that they will not try to influence the shape of this thing.” Yet, Livingston has told the Observer, the names of candidates are being relayed to Johnson.i Nonetheless, Harry H. Ransom, the UT-Austin chancellor, says “In the course of the total [selection] process the president will certainly be advised of our choice. But he doesn’t have any veto powers. We would not submit to anything like that.”li Erwin partially concurs, saying, “I don’t know of anyone who has shown the list [of candidates] to the president. But I’ll level with you. I’m sure he’ll be asked at one point or another whether the man .we have in mind is acceptable. That doesn’t mean, however, that he’ll pick him.” 12 A number of Austin government and faculty members have been apprehensive tin, Texas. 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