Oral History Interview with Daniel Bernstine (1997)

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

TEICHER: This is Barry Teicher of The Oral History Project. Today is July 8, 1997. I'm in the Law School Dean's office of Daniel Bernstine, who will be taking a job at Portland's, is it university?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, Portland State University.

TEICHER: In a?

BERNSTINE: Portland, downtown Portland, Oregon.

TEICHER: When will you start?

BERNSTINE: I feel like I already started, but officially right after Labor Day.

TEICHER: Okay. I was very fortunate. I found out about Dean Bernstine [00:00:30] leaving just about a week, two weeks ago. I think it was very gracious and allowed me a couple of interview sessions. So, here we are today. Let's just briefly go back into your past. Tell me where you were born, a little bit about your childhood, your early schooling.

BERNSTINE: I was born in Berkeley, but actually grew up in a city called Richmond, which is right in the Bay area. I have, well now, I had three sisters [00:01:00] and a brother. Basically working class family. My father was a 00:01:00laborer but mostly a janitor for most of his life. And then my mother didn't work after I was born, said that I kind of put her out of commission.

TEICHER: Where did you fit in?

BERNSTINE: I was in that kind of indistinguishable middle. I was the fourth of five. I wasn't the first son.

TEICHER: You suffered all the outrageous things…

BERNSTINE: That’s right. At least that’s the way I…that’s my story when I go home.”

[crosstalk 00:01:31] [00:01:30] .

BERNSTINE: That's right. That's my story when I go home. Probably a little bit exaggerated but at least it works sometimes. Kind of an intact family throughout. My parents were together all of their lives, pretty normal childhood.

TEICHER: What about your schooling?

BERNSTINE: Well, I went to [00:02:00] elementary school and junior high right in 00:02:00the neighborhood. And then went to high school also kind of in the city, in the district but not in the neighborhood. My elementary school was pretty much all black because it was just kind of the neighborhood. Then the junior high school kind of became I'd say maybe three quarters black, and the rest were non-minority.

TEICHER: This was a working class neighborhood.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. [00:02:30] It became less working class from elementary school to junior high school. Then my high school was predominantly white and not necessarily, well working class but maybe people who were more likely to be executives and that kind of thing. I guess in terms of the prosperity per capita of the students in my school increased [00:03:00] as I went from elementary 00:03:00school to high school.

TEICHER: When did you start beginning to think you might go to college?

BERNSTINE: It's hard to say. I mean, my parents certainly didn't go. My father finished the fourth grade. My mother finished the eighth grade. It wasn't really, but there was almost kind of the expectation that I would go. It's kind of hard to say [00:03:30] exactly when I decided because I kind of always assumed I would.

TEICHER: Did your parents, they supported that?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. Even though they really had no concept of what college was about. They just knew that it was probably the thing to do.

TEICHER: [inaudible 00:03:46] Were there any teachers that you had who were an influence on you in those early years, high school, grade school, who might've said go, go?

BERNSTINE: Not really, but I mean, I was [00:04:00] fortunate enough to be in 00:04:00the usually, you know, they have that tracking system. I was usually fortunate enough to be in the highest track. I guess I was kind of always in a group of kids that, certainly from junior high school and high school, I was in a group of kids where the expectation was that people were supposed to do well in school, which translated eventually into people going to college. Certainly in my high school I [00:04:30] suspect that the vast majority of the kids that at least in my track and probably a couple tracks below went to college. I mean it was just, so I was just in a group that…you know.

TEICHER: What about your siblings? Did they go?

BERNSTINE: My sister, I have a younger sister who, four years younger, and she graduated from Stanford and is a physical therapist in Houston. [00:05:00] Actually works for the school system. My brother went to college but actually 00:05:00after the both of us did and got a degree in art from Cal State-Hayward, which is actually where I started out in college.

TEICHER: Is he an artist now or teaching art?

BERNSTINE: No, he's the kind of guy that likes to stay by himself. I haven't seen him [00:05:30] in four years. I don't know what he's doing. I'm not sure. He says he graduated from college.

TEICHER: Okay. Did you apply to any other schools? Did you consider any other schools besides Berkeley?

BERNSTINE: Actually what I did is I went to Cal State Hayward for a year because I was going to play football. I ended up deciding that [00:06:00] I wasn't going 00:06:00to play football, pretty much once I got there. I just transferred to Berkeley after the first year.

TEICHER: Okay. When you went to Berkeley, you said in your CV that you majored in poli sci and minor in soc.

BERNSTINE: Right.

TEICHER: Why did you happen to choose that? For the same reason I chose anthropology?

BERNSTINE: That's exactly right. You just stopped in A, you know. I went to P, that's all. [00:06:30] Well, I guess too, I was probably thinking about going to law school. I guess, like many students, mistakenly believed that poli sci was the best preparation for going to law school. As a matter of fact, doesn't matter what you major in, [00:07:00] in order to get into law school, and I 00:07:00don't think the poli sci prepares you any more to succeed in law school than most other disciplines. In some ways it was a mistake on my part, misinformation.

TEICHER: What should you have majored in?

BERNSTINE: Well, actually when I was at Cal State Hayward, I was also thinking about med school, so I took a lot of science courses. [00:07:30] Then I decided that, and although I was doing well, I decided it just wasn't for me. I really had thought about law school for a long long time. That's kind of what happened.

TEICHER: When did you start thinking about law school?

BERNSTINE: It's hard to say. I used to help my father clean up this lawyer's office, and I'd be [00:08:00] cleaning up and see the stuff sitting around. I'd 00:08:00look at the stuff, and looked kind of interesting. I said, "Hey, I could do this." For my father, I think, it was kind of like the only real profession that he knew, and then he knew it only because he cleaned up this guy's office. He worked also for the city, and so, I mean, he saw a lot of lawyers because he cleaned up the jail and that kind of stuff. I think he perceived that as kind of [00:08:30] -

TEICHER: Were the lawyers in jail, or were they -

BERNSTINE: Some of them may have been. Some may have been.

TEICHER: Was it out of a sense of moving upwardly mobile, or was it a sense of social -

BERNSTINE: No, no, I think for him it certainly was upward mobility and I suspect for me too, the upward mobility. And, just not having to punch a clock. It's good clean work. Indoors.

TEICHER: [00:09:00] When you graduated from Berkeley, you were pretty much 00:09:00intent at that point?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, I'd already decided, yeah, pretty much. I'd also been accepted in the PhD program at the School of Education at Berkeley, but decided that law school was really what I wanted to do rather than the PhD in education.

TEICHER: Education had been something that you had been thinking about -

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TEICHER: In administration?

BERNSTINE: Not really. Probably just [00:09:30] teaching. Administration I just kind of fell into.

TEICHER: We'll get to that a little bit later on. Interesting seeing how you fell into that, as you said. Which law schools did you apply for or to?

BERNSTINE: Well, let's see, I applied at Davis, which was actually a brand new law school at the time, UC-Davis, Hastings, Northwestern, Howard, and Harvard. Didn't get into [00:10:00] Harvard. Got into every place else. Decided I wanted 00:10:00to go to the East coast to go to law school, so I went to Chicago.

TEICHER: Had you ever been away from Berkeley before?

BERNSTINE: Well, I'd been on a trip to Louisiana with my family once and been down to Tijuana as a teenager. That's pretty much kind of the extent of my travels. [00:10:30] For a Californian, Chicago really is the East coast. I mean, when you think, most Californians when they think of the East coast, they say well from Chicago on is the East coast. I had really no concept of kind of what I was getting myself into weather-wise for sure. I'd been in snow before, but we used to go on snow trips. You take the bus, go up to the snow, and turn around and come home. Actually I'd never seen snow [00:11:00] fall from the sky before. 00:11:00I'd seen snow, but I'd always gone up on a nice, clear day. Snow was on the ground.

TEICHER: It was already there, yes. Just before we get to law school, did you enjoy the weather, or how'd you feel about it?

BERNSTINE: Hate the weather. I still do.

TEICHER: I've lived here a pretty long time, and I feel pretty much the same.

BERNSTINE: I refuse to get used to it. I accept it, but I refuse to get used to it.

TEICHER: Does that have something [00:11:30] to do with your going to Portland?

BERNSTINE: Well, I certainly, one concern has always been weather. I want to go someplace where weather doesn't determine so much of what I do with my life. Having grown up where Christmas could be 70 degrees, but it certainly was not going to be any lower than 50, that's my idea of a great Christmas [00:12:00] day. Yeah, so weather certainly had something to do with it. I mean, I certainly 00:12:00would have taken the right opportunity even in a colder climate, but all things being equal, weather has become increasingly important.

TEICHER: Let's get back to Northwestern. Tell me a little bit about law school. Did you enjoy it?

BERNSTINE: Not really. It's kind of hard to enjoy law school. It was [00:12:30] okay. It was a lot different from being at a place like Berkeley. I suspect the whole law school was smaller than some of the classes that I had at Berkeley. Went from a school of probably 25,000 students to a school of 500 because the law school's downtown.

TEICHER: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

BERNSTINE: Law schools even on a campus like this tend to be kind of islands unto themselves. For most [00:13:00] students, we're talking about the 950 00:13:00students here, that's the main group that they interact with even though we're sitting in the middle of campus. That's pretty typical of law schools. Northwestern wasn't even on the main campus. It was right downtown with the med school and the business school. There was an even further kind of isolation. When I went to law school, it was basically the four or five hundred students that sat in that building every day. [00:13:30] I wouldn't say that I liked it, but didn't dislike it. It was there, something I had—I mean, I had to do it to get out and practice, and so I did it.

TEICHER: I'm not very familiar with law schools at all. Do you have sort of a specialty that you go into in law school?

BERNSTINE: No. Well, now increasingly students are able to specialize, but generally speaking, the answer's no.

TEICHER: It's just a basic.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, [00:14:00] just kind of the basic stuff.

TEICHER: Did you find yourself drawn to anything?

BERNSTINE: Towards the end, I liked labor law a lot. That actually was my first job out of law school. For me it was as much just kind of getting out. If I had to say there was something that I really got drawn to in terms of substance it would have been labor. [00:14:30] Coping of unions and management. My father was a big pro-union guy. I mean, I've kind of been, had pretty lousy jobs in some ways, punching clocks. Work was the only kind of thing I could relate to, I think.

TEICHER: Well, that makes sense because of your background.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. Contracts and a lot of the other [00:15:00] stuff that 00:15:00you talk about in law school was really just kind of foreign to me, but I did know that people have to go to work every day.

TEICHER: Was there any particular course that you didn't like?

BERNSTINE: I mean, there were some I didn't like, but it probably had much more to do with the individual faculty member than anything else. I think you got the regular mix of people [00:15:30] that were good, some who weren't. Again, I guess I just saw it as much more functional. Hey, you gotta do three years.

TEICHER: You do it.

BERNSTINE: You do it.

TEICHER: Were there any professors there who influenced you or who you think -

BERNSTINE: I'd say actually a couple people, one I didn't even have, Vic Rosenbloom, who is actually still on the faculty who had actually just come back from being the president of Reed [00:16:00] College in Portland. As it turns 00:16:00out, his daughter-in-law is on our faculty too. She just joined us from Northwestern two or three years ago. He's been someone that I've kind of stayed in touch with and over my career has kind of been an advisor. I'd say somebody [00:16:30] like Vic Rosenbloom. The other guy, the really kind of strange connection when you think about it, the dean of the law school at the time was a guy named Jack Ritchie who was born and raised Virginia. I call him a Virginia gentleman. I had him for Trusts and Estates. I think in some ways he influenced me in the way [00:17:00] he just related to people. I mean, he was clearly kind 00:17:00of a Virginia aristocrat, but he was just also very much down to earth. His course was pretty basic. As it turned out, he had been the dean here before he went to be dean at Northwestern.

TEICHER: So, Wisconsin [crosstalk 00:17:27].

BERNSTINE: Yeah, kind of all over the place yeah.

TEICHER: [00:17:30] When did you start thinking about what you were going to do after law school? What were your thoughts about where you wanted to go after law school?

BERNSTINE: Well, I wanted to get a job, and I ended up getting a job at the Labor Department. At the time I was married. My then-wife who was also in law school but a year behind really wanted to go back to Washington, D.C. And so the combination [00:18:00] of getting a job in Washington meant that I went to 00:18:00Washington. Did that for about a year and a half too.

TEICHER: What was your job?

BERNSTINE: I was in the legislation legal counsel office, the Office of Legislation: Legal Counsel. Basically what we did was we reviewed legislation that had, either legislation coming out of the Labor Department or legislation that affected the [00:18:30] department. Drafted testimony speeches for the secretary, that kind of thing. Probably the place where I learned my writing skills. My writing skills probably got honed.

TEICHER: That sounds very interesting.

BERNSTINE: I was in an office where detail, perfection was really cherished. Even though it was a government office, I mean, so again, you know, that kind of 00:19:00Wisconsin people really expected you to perform at a pretty high level. Actually Jim Jones, I don't know if you talked to him.

TEICHER: No, I haven't talked to him yet.

BERNSTINE: Been at that office before, so [inaudible 00:19:12] Wisconsin.

TEICHER: I should interview him.

BERNSTINE: It was a place probably where I learned that the only way you can really write something that's vague is to know exactly what you don't [00:19:30] want to say. I mean, because a lot of times students will write something, and it's vague, and they think well, that's just the way lawyers write. Well, it's being intentionally vague, and then there's being unclear. Right, right, right. There's a distinction. You can only be vague when you know exactly what you don't want to say. Being in an office where the secretary had to go [00:20:00] and testify, you knew exactly what it is that the secretary shouldn't say, but 00:20:00you had to figure out a way of coming kind of close to it without boxing the secretary in. It took some skill and learning, but I think it really allowed me to figure out.

TEICHER: Great training.

BERNSTINE: Yeah.

TEICHER: From there, is that when you applied for the Hastie?

BERNSTINE: [00:20:30] Yeah, actually what happened is I went out to recruit lawyers for the Labor Department at the National Bar Association Convention in San Francisco. I was sitting in the booth. This guy came up to me and sat down and turned out he had worked in the Labor Department, had a career in the Labor Department, and it was Jim Jones. He was out looking for people to [00:21:00] be 00:21:00the first Hastie fellows program that he had.

TEICHER: Had Jim Jones started that?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, it was basically Jim's concept. I was supposed to be recruiting lawyers for the Labor Department and ended up getting recruited by Jim to do the Hastie. It turned out that both my wife and I did the Hastie at the same time, so we were really the first [00:21:30] two.

TEICHER: The first Hasties. What exactly did Jim Jones tell you about what a Hastie fellow was?

BERNSTINE: Well, he said it was, at the time it was an attempt to train or get people into the teaching, minorities into the teaching profession. It was a two year program at the time, and the Hasties spent half the time being the academic support counselor for the minority students and the other half of the [00:22:00] time working on the LL.M. It was almost like having a assistant dean for 00:22:00minority students and working on LL.M at the same time.

TEICHER: I didn't realize you did so much counseling.

BERNSTINE: Yeah.

TEICHER: Did it actually turn out that way?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, it turned out to be probably at least half.

TEICHER: Any qualms about after a year in nice, warm, toasty warm Washington DC and coming back?

BERNSTINE: See I'd been to Chicago, so I knew what [00:22:30] I was getting myself into. I figured what the heck. It's only two years. I can stand cold weather for two years. I saw that in government you very easily got to a point where it was difficult to leave, that you either had to get out early or stay for a fairly long haul, and then hope that you could get out. I saw a lot of people [00:23:00] who kind of missed those opportunities, and they're still just 00:23:00kind of -

TEICHER: It wasn't unpleasant. It was just that you didn't feel like you wanted to stay there for -

BERNSTINE: Yeah, that's right. I was learning a lot, but also being in the Labor Department during a Republican administration, especially a Republican administration that was under siege for Watergate, [00:23:30] the Labor Department was not kind of high on their list of priorities. Yeah, I mean, there were some things that were interesting and learned a lot, but on the other hand, there were times when there was just absolutely nothing happening except Watergate. You go to work. You go have some coffee, then you pick up the Washington Post. You go read the Washington Post. Then it was time [00:24:00] for lunch. You go down for lunch, pick up afternoon paper, read the afternoon 00:24:00paper, go down for coffee, and then go home. I mean, there were days like that as well. It was I think understanding that there's always a time, and you have to make decisions. I think probably subconsciously I guess I'm kind of always thinking [00:24:30] of that because I made the decision to leave the deanship because you just have to understand when it's time.

TEICHER: When it's time to make the move. Did you feel yourself starting to start thinking about academic career in teaching? Was that part of it too?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah, that was. The Hastie was kind of an ideal situation.

TEICHER: It served its purpose?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. It got me into teaching and kind of been [00:25:00] downhill or uphill ever since.

TEICHER: Your first journey along that way was at Howard University, right?

BERNSTINE: Right, right.

TEICHER: How did that come about?

BERNSTINE: Well, again that was the attraction of DC. Well, first of all, it was probably at the time certainly the highest paying offer that I'd got, but it was also in DC. The opportunity to be in a predominantly [00:25:30] minority environment seemed intriguing. My then wife was a Howard grad, undergrad, and so I always heard a lot about Howard. In fact, I had applied to Howard law school and ended up not going. It just seemed like kind of a -

TEICHER: Time for that.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah.

TEICHER: You were there for how long?

BERNSTINE: It's hard to say. Back and forth a lot. I started there in 74 [00:26:00] or 75.

TEICHER: You were there for like three or four years.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, three years, then I came back here.

TEICHER: Yeah. How did you like Howard? As a teacher I'm talking.

BERNSTINE: Oh, enjoyed it. Oh yeah, I enjoyed it. Some of those students are still good friends. Some good friends on the faculty. I went there at a time when the law school had moved to a new facility. As it turned out, the new facility had [00:26:30] more classrooms, but they were all smaller than the old law school. Rather than build larger classrooms they just hired more faculty. I kind of came in with a group of kind of young mavericks. There were some tough times, kind of the factions and back and forth.

TEICHER: It was sort of like an old [00:27:00] Turk, young Turk thing. Were you 00:27:00a member of the young Turks? What were the issues that you were -

BERNSTINE: We were basically nine Howard grads, I mean, it was really kind of turning the school over in terms of people who had not necessarily gone to Howard or other predominantly black schools either as undergrads or [00:27:30] as law students. There were battles, a lot of tenure battles, trying to impose new standards at the institution. It was fun. It was interesting, but at times it was also very frustrating.

TEICHER: Yeah, those are [00:28:00] the kind of things that wear on one after a while.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, right, right. Actually, I came back here in 78 because just kind of got tired of the battles.

TEICHER: When you were teaching at Howard, what courses?

BERNSTINE: I've always taught the same stuff, civil pro, federal jurisdiction, occasionally labor law, torts once or twice.

TEICHER: You enjoy teaching?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. I do.

TEICHER: What about research?

BERNSTINE: [00:28:30] My research areas have been primarily the same thing, in the civil pro, federal jurisdiction areas. Pretty much stuck to that. Haven't really done much at all lately.

TEICHER: Lately. The higher you get, the tougher it gets is what I've been able to gather from the people I've interviewed.

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. I was on a kind of ping pong back and forth between here and Washington. I'd come here [00:29:00] for a year then something threw me back 00:29:00to DC. Mostly family, and then eventually got divorced. Just being near my kids was drawing me back to DC as much as anything. I'd go back to Howard, and they'd piss me off. I mean, I was actually denied tenure at Howard.

TEICHER: You were?

BERNSTINE: Yeah.

TEICHER: I didn't know that.

BERNSTINE: It was kind of odd. I got denied tenure because [00:29:30] I didn't wear a tie.

TEICHER: You're very casual.

BERNSTINE: Yeah. One of my colleagues came in one day and said that it would really help matters if I would wear a coat and tie to class. I would. I mean, I would occasionally. I certainly would at least a couple times [00:30:00] a year 00:30:00even if for no reason other than to show students that yeah I can do it, but ... I wasn't trying to make a point. I'm really basically a casual person. My view is that it's more than looking like a lawyer. I think for a lot of students, certainly during that era, they felt like if they dressed up then they were performing. There was no relationship between performance and how [00:30:30] you dress.

TAPE IS STOPPED FOR ONE MINUTE [00:31:00]

TEICHER: [00:31:30] You said that you weren't trying to make a point. Were they maybe trying to make a point?

BERNSTINE: Yeah, yeah. Got denied tenure, came here, the next year got tenure in that year, and then Howard gave me tenure. Actually when I became dean, I became acting dean at Howard, [00:32:00] for my first faculty meeting, at that point I 00:32:00had to dress up because, not because I was dean but I was also general counsel to the university. I was doing two jobs, but I always had to wear a suit because I was in the administration building. For my first faculty meeting as acting dean, I actually changed clothes and put on my jeans.

TEICHER: Was that noticed?

BERNSTINE: Yes, yes. A number of the people [00:32:30] that had voted against me