Because of his role in the university crises of the 1960s, we usually think of Clark Kerr primarily as an administrator and proponent of the research university. Yet Kerr's work in higher education rested on his background as a labor economist and industrial arbitrator. Kerr frequently used models
and metaphors from his work in industrial relations to describe the task of educational administration. Like many cold war liberals, Kerr subscribed to an ethic of non-ideological problem solving that could serve one equally well in any number of administrative situations. However, he both wrote about and engineered a more substantive connection between the industrial and the knowledge economy. He developedespecially in his book of 1964, The Uses of the University-- a socially instrumentalist view of the purpose of higher education. He was also influential in the passage of California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, the framework within which the state attempted to meet the "Tidal Wave" of new students who entered its higher educational system in the 1960s. This paper looks at Kerr as an important participant in the formation of American liberalism in the Cold War period. It will try to answer three inter-related questions: What is the source and character of Kerr's administrative theory and practice? Why is an idea of management derived from industrial relations amenable to the administration of higher education? Why is higher education so important to Cold War liberals?

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