Extending University of Utah and University of California Leadership Experience to Other Settings

To move abruptly from the very public presidency of the University of California…to the very private presidency of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, a California-based charitable grant-making foundation…was at once difficult and welcome.  Incomparable factors of size, scale, and reach made the shift difficult, and the novelty made my endeavors welcome.  (Earning My Degree, p. 262)

1993-99—William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: President

The foundation had carved out an unusual niche in the philanthropic world of grants…Its areas of interest included population issues and conflict resolution worldwide; U.S.-Mexico relations; higher education issues nationally; environmental problems in the western United States; needful communities and neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area; and the [regional] performing arts…(Earning My Degree, p. 363)

1992-2004J. Paul Getty Trust: Trustee (1992-2004); Chairman (2000-2004)

The Getty Trust…has a simply stated and straightforward mission: to foster and encourage a greater understanding and appreciation for the visual arts in their many forms as an enduring expression of mankind’s intellect, creativity, imagination, sensitivity, and basic humanity…It is not a charitable grant-making trust, but an operating trust [in support of the Getty museums in Brentwood and Malibu, California and the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Grant Program].  (Earning My Degree, pp. 370-71) 

J. Paul Getty Center
The J. Paul Getty Center, West Los Angeles

1978-2004—Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Founding Trustee; Chairman 1978-1983)

This now quite famous and much respected series of lectures was founded in 1978 at Clare Hall, Cambridge University…funded by Professor [Obert C.] Tanner of the University of Utah’s Department of Philosophy, a successful entrepreneur in Salt Lake City’s business community and one of the most kind, gracious, and philanthropic persons I have ever known…The purpose of the Tanner lectures is “to advance and reflect on the scholarly and scientific learning relating to human values and valuation [embracing] the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition, interest, behavior and aspiration.”  (Earning My Degree, p. 297)

 
Tanner Lectures Trustees
Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Founding Trustees, June 1982—From left: Stanford President Donald Kennedy, Oregon and Minnesota President Emeritus O. Meredith Wilson, Michigan President Harold Shapiro, Utah President David P. Gardner, Harvard President Derek Bok, Vice-Chancellor Emeritus Lord Ashby of Cambridge University, Utah Professor Obert C. Tanner, and Professor H. L. A. Hart, Master, Brasenose College, Oxford University—Photo: University of Utah Public Relations

1981-1983—United States, National Commission on Student Financial Assistance: member representing the American Council on Education

Commission PublicationSigns of Trouble and Erosion: a Report on Graduate Education in America (New York: The Commission, 1983)

1988-1996—Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: advisor to the Planning Committee and founding member of the Governing Council

In late 1988 Professor Chia Wei Woo, newly elected vice-chancellor and president of Hong Kong’s just chartered and newly forming third university, called to see if I could find time to assist him in planning for and then helping build the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)…This assignment was the single most insightful and informative experience I had in Asia and the most helpful, as HKUST was being followed by the Chinese universities in the hope that China would itself try something new, and my colleagues in China all knew I was involved.  We in America have a great deal to learn from others, as they do from us.  (Earning My Degree, pp. 303, 305).

Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyHong Kong University of Science and Technology

Publication

Managing Transitions in a Time of Acute Modernity,” Trusteeship, 3, #4 (July-August 1995), 10-15