North Carolina People; Charlie Rose Interviews William Friday

Production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from what could be a bank a symbol of strength stability and service for over a century. My name is Charlie Rose the program is North Carolina people. And in this case the host of the program is the guest. My guest for this edition of North Carolina people is Bill Friday. For 25 years he's been the host of this program for 30 years he was president the consolidator University of North Carolina few North Carolinians have had more impact on their state and a better known around this country. He has been involved in the growth of the state he has been involved in its controversies and he is known throughout this day for a remarkable series of conversations he has had with North Carolinians about their life about their culture about their politics he's interviewed poets and politicians players and all kinds

of people involved in everything that affects this day. So I am in his. What shall we say. I am in his honor that he allows me to come here on his program and talk to him about his life and the things that he has seen in a very distinguished career as all of us celebrate 25 years of North Carolina people. Bill thank you for letting me do this. Charlie granda so you're welcome. Good to have you back. I think it's probably easier to ask questions and to answer them and you probably know that as well as I do. Here is what Time magazine said about you. This is Time magazine. November 5th one thousand fifty six you are 36 years old you have been made president of the University of North Carolina one of the surest ways time says a board of trustees can anger the faculty of a college or university is to pick a president a man who has never been a scholar to earned a Ph.D. or three taught a class. Last week the trustees of the consolidators North Carolina picked just such a man but not a single professor voiced even a hint of objection.

One professor noted he is the kind of person who can humanize the scientist and Simonize the humor. Minister how did you feel about assuming this responsibility even though you had seen it up close. It's a terrifying experience. You know all of a sudden there you are. I had been there sitting in that office for five years and Gordon Gray was the kind of man that gave you every opportunity to perform. He tested you all the time. Gone a lot. But let me tell you you know the minute you sit down in that chair the fact that you have so much to do with things in the in the judge mental sense that it's over if you make the decision and affect the lives of so many people it sobers you it really does. What are the skills though that are required to run a public university. You have faculty members who have demands. You have alumni who have

demands. And more importantly you have state legislators who are voting on your budget who have demands. What does it take. One of the lessons you have to learn Charlie very quickly is you deal with eight or ten publics a student faculty member the trustee the legislator the editor or the Charlie Rose as a dancer and then the alumni the people out in the field. Now it's not that you're a split personality but this it means that you are such that you have to be of such an intense attention to what you're doing because of. You shift conversationally with different clients so quickly sometimes the telephone is the action but it does it today you see me sitting there with three faculty members in the conversation and the governor stated goal you up. Well you know you're in a different arena but a public university has to be responsive. It has to do what Edward Kidder Graham said bounders of the campus a coterminous of the boundaries of the state that means the university itself is

occupied with the problems of the people as well as its basic mission which is teaching and research. It is these things that it must do at a public university has the third element of public service. And that's why this institution was so involved in the good health program in the 40s building roads earlier than that. The schools today. Health care. It's just the way it should be building a state wide public television system to reach people in a variety of ways. Back to skills though. How was it there I mean what what do you have to do in terms I mean do you have to be a master compromiser. I mean in the end it is the art of the possible that you have to deal with. First you have to be a listener. Very important when you come into the office. Whatever's on your mind is the most important thing that you're thinking about that. If I am cavalier with you then you don't think up and paying attention I'm not doing what I should listen to that study a lot.

You have to read tons of material. Three you develop a sense about principle. When the speaker band Lowell came to the state under the shadow that it entered into suspension of rules no hearings this kind of thing. There was no doubt in my mind what I had to do. I got in the car went straight to Rome and we came within three votes of reversing that thing overnight. But you know when the university's heart is being challenge and it was that because if you don't have the right of free exchange of ideas then you are not functioning as a university so it takes courage. Listen read study be it have a high sense of interest in the person with whom you're working in a rather substantial amount of courage. When you know the issues drawn as cleanly as it was then what was the toughest call for you during 30 years. Because there was the Dixie classic There was a speaker band there was desegregation. There was radicalism on the campus there was student

protest and student involvement. A whole series of issues. What was the toughest in all of those that you just enumerated as a fundamental principle. The university must be free if its going to live and flourish and be strong in what it's doing. That's a tough call about explaining to people why something as popular as the Dixie classic had to be suspended or saying why you want to have a communist speak on the campus. Or And you can just take all of them in that order thing. There is no one tougher call. There's been plenty of very difficult calls and the one I guess that vexed us the most was that 10 years of debate with the federal government three presidents eight secretaries or of AGW and also over how you let the university govern itself. There was never a racial question. It was the right of the university to say what will be taught where it will be taught in bio.

When you look at that 30 year tenure from 56 to 86 What regrets. I know I want to talk about regrets read things you chose not to do but just regrets in terms of your tenure there. If you could have walked on a different road what would it have been during that time. Well that in hindsight I would have worked much harder with the public school. I don't mean it saying that it was more dramatic than people read to read it to be. I just would have felt better about doing more to bring the university to the hands of public schools. I would have worked harder at Student Aid accessibility. Most people don't understand today that there are lots of very poor people in this in this country. Lots of them here. We're still an agricultural state primarily. And I know from my own experience that somebody held out that opportunity for me and I'm always going to be on the side of low tuition Charlie. You know if you get let me get in here I can take care of myself once I get here. But if you raise it so high

it's prohibitive then. Then my economic ability. Has more to do with my getting here than my educational competence or my preparation. And that's the wrong policy for the state to have any state. Because you're not developing you great resources. And so I've always been a low tuition argue are. You have seen as present University a whole range of controversies having to do with the public discourse. The speaker band was in fact part of that. You have seen it at communism. In the fervor of anti communism as it's sort of that battle was was fought out. Now we're in the post-Cold War period. But there seems to be in our country a kind of absence of civility in public discourse. What you couldn't be you couldn't be more correct. And it's a very dangerous phenomenon I think. We are not a happy people. Charlie in the United States today I don't mean it. Happiness is what we all see that you can. Maybe the

world is uncomfortable. We argue about guns. We are afraid of guns but we don't want to oppose what happens on gun legislation but let me tell you something. I sat and talked with a history teacher in the West Mecklenburg schools and city of Charlotte last week. He looked me straight in the eye and he said last week I buried my 12th student shot by gunfire in the city of Charlotte. Boy his experience as a teacher he then angry about all of this. Organize what is known as Students Against Violence Everywhere say they say he wound up in the White House getting a citation from the president for his volunteerism. But look at the incivility involved. If this business of harshness and language harshness and conduct and power at the end of a gun and greed you know greed to form a power to you know and that this troubles me very much I was talking with Evan Miller who is the head of Cummings engines and

last weekend and he he says I don't like what I see happening. I said Well two of us and that's it's not cause we're older either. You put your finger on a very desperate need in our country and learned sit down and talk in rational ways. This business of some of the talk show people who who have to have controversy and if they don't have it they generate it to keep their audience ratings up and unleash these pent up hostilities and people. That's not a healthy thing. I'm always for freedom of expression but I'm not for license and destroying people. But the problem of public service today getting people to run for office you would subject your family to that kind of tortuous journey that I don't think of it surprises me that men are willing to do it I'm glad they are but we have got to get a hold of ourselves in this country to get back on what you're talking about. Rational really intense debate but not hatred. Not abuse.

When you were asked to run for the Senate and more than ask the important people in this state in the Democratic Party leaned on you heavily. Why did you resist. Well maybe it was a rationalization but I had three reasons. I had been very close to Dr. Graham and I saw what happened in that campaign. He never got over it. I try to zing that. This shews defocus biographers say that now. It was it was so destructive so mean spirited that I just turned my back and I was out took him up there that night after that awful defeat. And at one o'clock in the mornings down the front porch of his house in the moonlight shining on his face and he turned to me and said I'll see you in the morning. To this day we never talked it over again and I've never really I guess I've never really seen how

devastating it was to number one number two. I had plenty of things here that I want to get finished but I just and maybe again I say maybe I was right and lising but I don't want to subject my family to all of that and I thank God it would have been quite the other way she'd had me jump right into it. She would have chosen for you but she wasn't second that morality well. But do you regret it. I mean you never know that the one decision that I really did I think in hindsight I regret regret was not that one. It was when John Gardner called me one day. Senator Vitter from up here I want you to take over this job and be assistant be assistant secretary for while in the world of the universities. Now there's where I could maybe have helped in the ways that I couldn't do from here. But I think I think in the end it was really my affection for what I was doing here. If you really understand what being President or university is. It's the number one position in any

state. Because you can do so many things for so many people for a longer period of time. You say you're not running as governor you're not doing in the legislature every two years that are Congresses so you get to lay out a plan of action with a lot of wonderful people bright talented faculty members and staff people who know what they're doing. But most of all Charlie are committed to the state itself. So you get in league with them you get up and say Let's go guys let's get something we can do. So we built public television we built the Area Health Education Center program we expanded the university and built three institutions that I feel we're going to start now. What's more important and that nothing that I can think of and I think people who suggested Everybody run for public office simply value public office too high and don't value other things in private. However having said that I think that you and I can sit here and talk about the cynicism that prevails in our country and what it does to people who are out front

and say how unless those people you know I was just really who said you know all that has to happen is for good men not to step forward and to translate this day to good men and women not to step forward at a time and be not. Not in Iraq. AF I agree with that completely. And I think you've been deficient in not in some way doing something like that once I got out of office. But I have wanted to finish at 65 what I had to do and I felt like I brought it to the point that somebody could take over. You know the other thing that has to do with the point we made earlier. It is about one's credibility. Somehow there is a tradition in this community that we all live in. That if you go when Colin Powell is going to face this what you into the political process you are somehow a different person. Bill Moyers when he's been pushed to enter politics says I once crossed that Rubicon.

And if I go back it's different and it's a it's true but it never said state of affairs that people of that stature have to use that thought process in making a decision like that but I guess this weighs men in history though all along you go back and read what was said. Abraham Lincoln you know the others they've been this is profane. But that's the difficulty the Colin Powell faces and exactly right as a national hero who knows once he gets in the political process and although it's a different game for him and that he will come out of that either as president or vice president come out with some lessening probably. It's a signal for all the negative forces to be unleashed. We will show him what we will show what kind of person this private person really is. What does that mean that there is somehow something terribly wrong with our politics in terms of this tearing at each other and terms of character assassination. I think it is I think we go much too far today. You know you just listen to any campaign you read. You watch the

ads that are on television they get meaner and meaner. In fact Charlie in this last campaign it was some of us in the state thinking about buying a full page ad deciding our names and had one sentence we will vote for the person who is positive and constructive and talks to the issues in this campaign. And that's where our money will be sent quarterly. Let's take a public stand. I mean some of it this way. I don't know what good it would do except serve notice that people must understand that you've got to be decent about this. You ask in public life today is very difficult work. You know being a university presence difficult to do but you can't you can imagine some other CROSSFIRE you get under in this business and I was even told one time in the discussions about this I had this lawyer come over from Raleigh and he said you need to know that they've been keeping a file on you and everything you've ever done. And your wife

and everything she's ever done in the minute you say you're going to get into this. It's open season on your disorder stand there and that's what I was told. Now I knew that I had seen that happen. Dr. Graham but here it was right in front of me now is that choice. I have an opt in to what I'm doing then have you seen. And does the state suffer in this state in every other stuff or because the do you David Halberstam phrase the best and brightest don't go into government. I think the state I think ever go to universities they go to business they go to journalism they go to other places. I think we suffer from that. Yes we do. And this and it's I don't know how to remedy it except from the people. People have got to get so concerned about this. But the worst part of this whole equation Charlie is that look at how few people vote. We had a bond election in a city here in North Carolina not so long ago where I guess 40 million dollars of debt was approved by fewer than 20 percent of the people. It's

just been a sieve. I'm just so fed up you know I think about our countrymen. The last poll you saw showed you the public attitude about the Congress. You know what goes on attacking the office of the president the United States. It's an endless process. Look at the judicial spectacle TV's creating on the West Coast. Now here we are legislative executive and judicial branches of our government. Where's the strength. What are we going to do to get away from this and start saying that what Thomas Jefferson and all these other great architects of the the republic put in place. We are the stewards of that right now. What are we going to do. Well let me ask another question about Thomas Jefferson. He was very concerned about separation of religion and state. What do you think about the impact of organizations like the Christian Coalition.

Well I'm both a Baptist and a product of the public universities and a lawyer. So you know where I am in the Constitution. But I think I think this is something we've got to be very careful about. I realize how sensitive people are about instruction and religion and what goes on and what it means to them. But Charles we haven't talked about the basic problem and that's been the disintegration of the family. You can pass all the laws you want and you can harangue about the right of the left. But if we don't start worrying about what this child is learn from 0 to 6 and we don't go back to appreciating that mother is the first teacher and the best teacher in lots of ways and it's here that these principals get it cooked it in children right through high school and get the church back into this mechanism. This is where I think the great problem is in society today is we are not functioning this way and I know the family that I knew and you grew up with that in going to happen in this country anymore. But something like it in the sense of values that

Mom and Dad will tale me talk with me teach me examples set the example for. That's what I want to see us do. That's what I hope that doesn't sound to me like a Democrat or Republican or conservative or a liberal position it sounds to be about a basic value question. It's what I've learned being here in this university watching dozens and dozens of generations of children come through here. You see the pain that they feel. You talk a little bit about qualities that make that you think about about achieving something by taking what you have and making something out of it. Disciplined energy he wants Tommy's great story about Frank Porter Graham which was that you after you've been in work for what you soon recognize it problems have a way of coming back they just change shirts or change suits but there is still a student problem or a tuition problem. Catherine a different Thanks. The important rule of

administration is be ready for that 10 to 15 percent that hasn't been up here before. Keep your body strong and your mind alert so that you can see it. Not only see it but deal with it. Deal with it aggressively and that has been a very good roux for me to follow. Because in public arenas things change dramatically sometimes. And just like you wake up one day and speak a bad law on the books but you physical strength mental discipline are two very very strong roots. One time it took Helen Hayes down to the last comic Charlie and I will forget this. She walked out on stage of the last Carly that night. Sixteen hundred people stood up that nobody had introduced as great. Well you know America's Greatest the theatrical personality. She said to the crew that I'll be at the rehearsal hall of eight o'clock in the morning. One hundred twenty nine people in the show one hundred twenty eight were there. If you never have

a question Ms Hayes what do you attribute your success. She said the CIPA live any and everything you do. Well that's the discipline. You know it's an interesting of all the people I've interviewed five nights a week for a long time. I have had not one person say to me I have achieved what I have whether it's a great concert soloist in any musical discipline or a great artist or a great athlete. Very few have ever said Well the reason I'm here is because I'm smarter than every other person. They always say it because I was willing to get up earlier because I cared more I had more passion for it. I wanted more I wanted to do it more than anyone else did. That makes the difference in the end. If you think it can be done in a year the way you look at it I think it's that early arise again. Resist any sense that you believe that sort of you were a lucky man because you ended up in education somehow that was your destiny. Well I'm not that much a Presbyterian.

But I'd say it was an exceedingly fortunate thing for me. I found it a hugely rewarding experience it's very hard work and anybody who thinks being the chief administrator of an academic community is easy work doesn't understand it because the rule is persuasion. You know you have all the power in the world but the day you use it you're less the president because you don't play that game. And in the academic community if I may use that expression it's a community of people trying to achieve some objective teaching research serving people. Being the creative center of a state or community is it a lot harder to be a presenter today because during most of the 30 years from 56 to 86 television did not have the impact it had today in 1905. And you can do less behind closed doors. Well I always try to operate on the principle that any decision I've

made or the reason for making it I should expect to be on the front page of the local paper the next day. You operate on that roof you don't worry about this problem. Now you can't get to decisions sometimes that quickly but I always dealt openly with the press and with the media the the the problem about television today is the standard It sets. For the American public you're here. Well we give the people what they want. You create demand in the media sometimes and I just think we got it. I thought the president was absolutely right in saying what he said when he was in California to meet violence and abuse moral instruction. All these things are a part of what a university has to deal with because when a student gets here you can't change him too much. Let me let me end this conversation on a couple of notes one is that your family

has been with you fifty three years. You bet. What's the secret of that. I mean how do you find someone that's perfect I guess that's what we would say. And in deference to I but what's how do you explain a relationship that in a world that has endured so well. Well when you were both reared in the Depression you both we were married went through war together. These kinds of things mailed a relationship and we came back to study at the same time. She you know so we were nearly 20. Twenty seven years old Charlie before we could do anything as a couple and been married a long time. I don't use children. They're one of her influence on you. Has it been more often to say yes or to say no. It's been the best influence of my life because I trusted her. She would always tell me when I was wrong and she didn't Has that might have been painful but I've never known a time when she would not say you do it you're not doing the right thing.

I thank you for doing this this is your program I've said I have never. I don't normally do other people's programs because I have my own to do but to come here and share this conversation with you about a life and a contribution to the state that I love has been a real pleasure for me and I thank you for doing and I know that throughout your life it has been marked by an attitude of not reaching for the nearest camera or reaching to be on the front page with trying to do things and I say that not to flatter you but of the reality that you don't do this very much so the fact that we could do it here on this program and where you're the subject and not the you know you were because of I think something that your audience out there would love to hear. Thank you. Well having known you and seeing your career become what it is I take great pride in you. Thank you for doing one for clemency. This is Bill Prady and Charlie Rose on North Carolina people. Thank you for joining us production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from what could be a bank a symbol of

strength stability and service for over a century.