Dr. Clifton R. Wharton Jr., reflects on his career and shares his
insight on the current status of African Americans in higher education
When Dr. Clifton R. Wharton Jr., was appointed president of
Michigan State University in 1969, he became the first African American
to head a major Research I institution. The graduate of Harvard
University (B.A., 1947 cum laude), Johns Hopkins University (M.A.,
1948), and the University of Chicago (M.A., 1956; Ph.D., 1958) went on
to become chancellor of the State University of New York system, was
the first African American to head a Fortune 500 company, TIAA-CREF,
and led an esteemed career in higher education, business, and foreign
policy before retiring in 1993. He is currently working on an
autobiography and spoke to Black Issues In Higher Education from the
TIAA-CREF executive offices in New York.
In your estimation, why haven’t more african Americans been
appointed to presidencies of Research I Institutions since your initial
appointment back in 1969?
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. There have been a significant
number of Blacks who have become presidents of colleges and
universities over the intervening years, but it is, to a certain
extent, surprising that there haven’t been more at the
mega-universities, the large graduate research universities.
How do you think your appointment to Michigan State would be perceived today?
Today? It would probably get as much attention as it did then, but I
don’t think it would last as long. When I was appointed at Michigan
State, it was front-page news for the New York Times. Over the next two
or three months, I think they must have done almost a dozen in-depth
profiles on me for major newspapers and magazines. My wife and I were
under the media microscope for easily a year because it was so
unusual…. During that first year, many of the stories would say, “The
Black president of Michigan State University.” By the second year, it
was “The president of Michigan State University, who is Black.” By the
third year it was just “The president of Michigan State University.”
What’s the lesson, given what we’re now going through with rose and racial identification?
