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Scholarship Repository University of Minnesota Law School Articles Faculty Scholarship 1979 In Pursuit of Excellence -- A History of the University of Minnesota Law School, Part IV: The Pirsig Years -- A Time of Transition Robert Stein University of Minnesota Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Robert Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence -- A History of the University of Minnesota Law School, Part IV: The Pirsig Years -- A Time of Transition, 63 MINN. L. REV. 299 (1979), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/435. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in the Faculty Scholarship collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Pursuit of Excellence-A History of the University of Minnesota Law School Part IV: The Pirsig Years-A Time of Transition, 1948-1955t Robert A. Stein* When Everett Fraser retired as Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School in June of 1948, he left to his successor a school ripe for change. The length and the strength of Dean Fraser's administration,together with the dramatic effects of World War II on the size and atmosphere of the school, had stifled the articulation and resolution of several problems. In the years following Fraser's retirement and the War's conclusion, issues long muted began to surface and developments long postponed began to require atten- tion. Through his seven-year administration,the new dean, May- nard E. Pirsig, preserved the school's tradition of excellence in its faculty and curriculum, while the groundwork was laid for the diffi- cult transitionto a new faculty-dean relationship. Under Dean Pir- sig's direction, the law school maintained the course established by his predecessors in the continuingpursuit of excellence. Dean Fraser's 28-year administration of the University of Minne- sota Law School had been a powerful one. Significant innovations in the school's educational program had been made at Dean Fraser's initiation early in his administration; thereafter, these innovations were carefully developed. Once the Minnesota Plan,I Fraser's major achievement, had been instituted, stability had become either a goal or a natural consequence of his style of leadership. With a reputation t Copyright 1979 by Robert A. Stein. The first three articles in this series described the development of the University of Minnesota Law School under Deans William S. Pattee, William Reynolds Vance, and Everett Fraser. See Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence-A History of the University of Minnesota Law School Part I: The Pattee Years-A Time of Accommodation, 62 MINN. L. REv. 485 (1978); Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence-A History of the University of Minnesota Law School Part II: The Vance Years-A Time of Ascendancy, 62 MINN. L. REv. 857 (1978); Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence-A History of the University of Minnesota Law School Part III: The Fraser Years-A Time of Excellence and Innovation, 1920-1948, 62 MINN. L. REv. 1161 (1978). * Vice President for Administration and Planning, University of Minnesota'; Pro- fessor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. I would like to express my appre- ciation to Andrew J. Mitchell, J.D., University of Minnesota Law School, 1978, for his extraordinary assistance in the research and writing of this series of articles. 1. The Minnesota Plan, which allowed students with two years of undergraduate work to enter the law school on a four-year plan is discussed in Stein, In Pursuit of Excellence-A History of the University of Minnesota Law School PartIII: The Fraser Years, 1920.1948, 62 MINN. L. Rev. 1161 (1978). MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63:299 not only for brilliance in scholarship and teaching but also for a powerful personality and firm adherence to his views, 2 faculty defer- ence to his leadership was natural.3 Surrounded by a supportive and familiar faculty,' the last years of Fraser's administration had been concerned largely with the War's effects on the school, and not with any major reevaluations of its program or educational approach. Fraser's retirement and the return to normalcy after World War II, however, encouraged more frequent expression of faculty opinions about the future of the school and about the relationship between the faculty and its dean. The faculty, following the trend in legal educa- tion circles across the country, was anxious that its concerns regard- ing the school and the faculty's role in its administration be heard. Minnesota's early deans, like early law school deans elsewhere, had held a great deal of power. Though they governed with the aid of their faculty, they had great personal authority over their schools' opera- tion. But, perhaps as a consequence of the growth in the size and professionalism of faculties, both in the law schools and elsewhere, more of the power began to shift to the faculty.' At Minnesota this transition, slowed under Fraser's strong leadership, was to accelerate upon his retirement. 2. Testimony to the dominance of Dean Fraser's personality is given in the Uni- versity of Minnesota Senate's eulogy to him: "[His] intense dedication to excellence in teaching and to the improvement of legal education made him seem grim and forbidding to most students, colleagues and lawyers . It is too bad that so many students and teachers saw only this aspect of the man." Minutes of the University of Minnesota Senate, 1971-1972, at 144 (1972). 3. In the words of one of Fraser's faculty members-Dean Pirsig, Fraser was one of the most powerful personalities you could meet. His analyt- ical abilities, evidenced for example in his classes, were so impressive that one hesitated to argue with him. He enjoyed debate and respected the talents of those with whom he dealt. Yet, he was always tolerant of the weaknesses he saw in others. But if he thought he was being criticized unfairly by those whose opinions he respected, he would, while maintaining his composure, show his resentment with a red line coming up the back of his neck and a face flushed and stem. Interview with Maynard E. Pirsig, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Law School, in Minneapolis (Nov. 15, 1977) [hereinafter cited as 1977 Pirsig Interviewl. 4. There had been only three new faculty members in the nine years preceding his resignation. 5. Testament to the development of this transition in the Yale Law School, for example, was given in its 1940 memorial to William Reynolds Vance: The organization of the schools within Yale University is such that Mr. Vance did not wholly escape from the problems of administration. The dean of this law school is a moderator, not a dictator. The government of the school and the direction of its policies are in the hands of the faculty, includ- ing young as well as old. WILLIAM REYNOLDS VANCE, 50 YALE L.J. 195, 196 (1940) (memorials by A. Corbin, A. Gulliver & E. Morgan). 1979] THE PIRSIG YEARS Although the assertion of greater authority by the faculty was one of the strongest currents that made the post-Fraser years turbu- lent, other challenges also existed. The fluctuations in enrollment caused by World War II were no sooner over than the Korean War began to have similar effects. The faculty, after several years of sta- bility, began to lose some of its continuity as a result of growth in size and a return to a significant amount of turnover. Finally, the library, after years of continuous growth, had filled to overflowing the struc- ture built for it in 1928 and needed additional space. These challenges ensured that the post-Fraser period was not to be an easy one. Follow- ing Fraser's unusually stable administration, the new dean, Maynard E. Pirsig, was to preside over a seven-year period of tumult and transition, a difficult but productive period for the school. A. THE DEAN Maynard E. Pirsig was born in 1902 on an Iowa farm just south of the Minnesota border.' After attending country school and high school in Elmore, Minnesota, Pirsig came to the University of Minne- sota, where he completed three years of undergraduate work before beginning his law school studies. Surprisingly, Pirsig's decision to pursue a legal education was more his father's choice than his own. His father, a farmer and livestock dealer with no formal education beyond the eighth grade, had an abiding but unsatisfied ambition to be a lawyer himself and strongly desired that his son would vicari- ously satisfy this ambition. To that end, Pirsig's father supported 7 him through law school. Entering the law school in the early twenties, Pirsig studied under a faculty largely chosen by Dean Vance but then under the administration of Dean Fraser. Henry Ballintine, Wilbur Cherry, George Osborn, and Wesley Sturges were some of the outstanding scholars under whom he studied.' But his first grade was from Jimmy Paige, a faculty member from the time of Dean Pattee, who gave him a D in Criminal Law, a course Pirsig was later to teach. According to Pirsig, that grade was probably the most valuable one he received, because it frightened him into more serious study.' Whatever the source of his motivation, Pirsig's subsequent academic career was stellar (including an A in the next class he took from Paige),' culmi- nating in service as Note Editor of Volume 9 of the Minnesota Law 6. See ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS, DIRECTORY OF TEACHERS IN MEM- BER SCHOOLS, 1936-37, at 121 (1936); 1977 Pirsig Interview, supra note 3.

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