Ron Katz

Interviewee: Ron Katz (Missouri & Balliol 1967) [hereafter ‘RK’] 

Moderator: Jamie Byron Geller [hereafter ‘JBG’]  

Date of interview: 12 September 2024 

[file begins 00:04] 

JBG: This is Jamie Byron Geller on behalf of the Rhodes Trust, and I’m here on Zoom with Ron Katz (Missouri & Balliol 1967). Today’s date is 12 September 2024 and we are here today to record Ron’s oral history interview, which will help us launch the first ever comprehensive Rhodes Scholar oral history project. So, thank you so much, Ron, for joining us in this initiative. Before we begin, just a few formalities. Would you mind saying your full name for the recording? 

RK: My full name is Ronald Stanley Katz. 

JBG: And do I have your permission to record audio and video for this interview? 

RK: Yes, you do.  

JBG: So, we’re having this conversation on Zoom, Ron, but where are you joining from today? 

RK: I am in Palo Alto, California, in my home, in the guest room of our home. 

JBG: And how long has Palo Alto been home? 

RK: I’ve lived in Palo Alto since 1982. So, that would be 42 years.  

JBG: Wonderful. And so, as we begin, I’d love to go all the way back to the beginning and ask you where and when you were born, Ron. 

RK: I was born on 1 May 1945 in St. Louis, Missouri. My parents were living at that time in a suburb of St. Louis, University City, Missouri, which is where Washington University is, and that’s where I grew up. 

JBG: Okay. Wonderful. And did you live in University City for your entire childhood? 

RK: Yes. Until I went to college at age 18, we lived in what’s called U. City.  

JBG: And I would love to know a little bit about your childhood, Ron, what hobbies might have been important to you during that time, and a little bit about your earliest educational experiences. 

RK: Well, I wasn’t big on hobbies. I think the educational experience starts with the fact that my sister was eight years older than I was. My parents didn’t think they could have any more children. So, when I came, I would say that I got more than my share of unqualified love, which was very good.  

And then, my educational experience was also a lot of positive reinforcement. At that time, you know, we had fast reading groups and slow reading groups. I was always in the fast reading group, and then it was tracking, which I think is now illegal, but I was always in the smart classes. There was an enrichment class which I was chosen for. So, at a certain point there were quite a few people telling me I was smart. 

JBG: And were there particular subjects that you gravitated towards, in high school, for example? 

RK: No, I wouldn’t say that there was. I was not a very intellectual child. I liked doing well in school, I liked having a lot of friends. I liked playing sports.  I was a very typical Midwesterner. 

JBG: What sports did you play? 

RK: Well, the usual: baseball, basketball and football were the big ones at that time, and I was okay. I was not a star. I did get a letter in high school for cross-country. But I was what you would call a good gym class athlete. 

JBG: So, you did your undergraduate degree at New York University, is that right? 

RK: Yes, that’s correct. 

JBG: Okay. I’m curious: having grown up in Missouri, what attracted you to NYU? 

RK: Well, I would have to say that I was pretty clueless about the college application process. We were lower middle-class people. So, I worked from the time I was 14. My dad had some drapery stores – custom-made draperies – and I worked for him, and that was actually quite a formative experience.  

He just assumed that I would go to Washington University, which was our local university – I mean, it’s a good school, but not one that I wanted to go to – and that I would work my way through.  

I guess the one thing I knew was that I absolutely did not want to do that. I wanted to go East to college, whatever that meant, I wanted to go to a college that had a campus, and I wanted to go to a college that was co-ed.  

That was as far as my thinking got until it got to be about my junior year or so, and my dad just said, you know, ‘Look, you’re going to Washington U. and you’ll work for me, and that’s that. I’m not going to pay for anything else.’  

I said, ‘I’ll take care of it. Just don’t worry about it.’ I had no idea what I was talking about, so I started looking around, and the high school I went to, University City High School, was quite a good high school, and it was really the peak time of baby boomers coming of college age, so there was a lot of change in the East Coast colleges.  

They were really looking for geographical diversity. We were lower middle-class people. We didn’t really want for anything, but we definitely were not wealthy in any way, shape or form. And there was something at the time that determined whether you would get a scholarship or not. It was called the College Scholarship Service. I think tuition at that time at a private college was, like, $1,500 a year. My family was too poor to send me to college, but they were too rich for me to qualify for a scholarship.  

So, I was really in a pickle. But NYU came to my high school, and NYU was a funny kind of school.  

People didn’t really know, was it a private school, was it a public school? It actually was the largest private school in the country at that time, probably still is. I think they had 43,000 students on several campuses and they were headed by a Rhodes Scholar, a guy named Jim Hester (California & Pembroke 1947), who was a very distinguished Rhodes Scholar and later on became the president of International University, and he was president of the New York Botanical Gardens, I think. A very, very distinguished gentleman.  

NYU did not really have a very good reputation at that time. Its reputation was mainly, if you wanted to go to school in New York and you didn’t get into Columbia or CCNY, which was a good school at that time, then you would go to NYU. It had a lot of commuters.  

President Hester wanted to change that, so, he figured out that the way to change that was to go out and find students like me, you know, really good students – I was editor of the high school newspaper. I was a desirable candidate, and I could have gotten into the Ivy League Schools had I wanted to – and that he would offer a full scholarship. It was called the University Scholarship, and there was no requirement of need.  

So, I got a University Scholarship. NYU was co-ed, so, it fit my other category. And it actually did have a campus. It’s little known, but at that time – it’s no longer the case – NYU had a 47-acre campus in the Bronx. It was called the University Heights campus. So, I took up residence at the University Heights campus of NYU as a University Scholar, and that was probably the most significant decision of my life.  

JBG: Had you spent time in New York prior to that move for college? 

RK: Never. I took a Greyhound bus to New York with my two best friends, who had gotten into Wesleyan College, which I had never heard of, and we got off at the Port Authority, which is, of course, quite a dizzying place. I remember some fellows came and they “helped” us with our baggage. I’m not sure we consented to that. And I got into a taxi and I went up to the Bronx, and that was the first time I ever set foot in New York. 

JBG: Wow. What was the experience like of living in New York after having grown up in Missouri and the Midwest? 

RK: Well, I was never really intimidated by New York. [10:00] I mean, as fantastic as it is, you know, to me, it was just really the same as St. Louis. We had the same TV programmes, for example, so, what’s the big deal? I was a good student in St. Louis, I was a good student in New York. I was a good athlete in St. Louis, I was a good athlete in New York.  

It just seemed to me to be a continuation, except that you could get on the subway and go downtown and see a Broadway play. And, of course, the University Scholars’ programme was very enriched.  

So, I think our first programme as University Scholars was that we went to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? on Broadway. I was a Midwestern guy. I thought all families were like my family. So, that was quite an eye-opener, to see that play.  

Then, we went to somebody’s apartment afterwards. I think it was on East 67th St. It turns out, it was Bobo Rockefeller’s apartment. She had this big grand piano, and I remember there was music on the piano and it said, ‘To Bobo, from Richard Rodgers’.  

It was just an amazingly enriched programme, because Jim Hester had decided he wanted to put NYU on the map. He had gone to Princeton as an undergraduate, and he wanted NYU to be like Princeton, and, particularly, he wanted the Heights to be like Princeton, because the other undergraduate campus that NYU had at the time was in Washington Square.  

Washington Square is very nice right now, but at that time, it was drug-infested. It was a very, very dangerous place. Jim Hester had this vision, and it started with the University Scholars, with people who were exactly like me. 

JBG: And what did you major in for your undergraduate degree? 

RK: I was a history major, and my history professor became my mentor – Jay Oliva – and he later on became the dean of University Heights College and became the provost of the university. Then he became the president of the university. He’s now deceased.  

So, I maintained my relationship with the university for many long years, a very close relationship. I majored in history and particularly in Russian history, because Jay Oliva’s specialty was Russian history.  

You sent me recently my Rhodes application essay. It devotes a substantial amount to Russian history, because that’s what I knew about at the time. 

JBG: As you were going through your undergraduate experience, did you have a sense of what you hoped to do with that degree later in life? 

RK: Oh, yes. I had a very clear sense that I wanted to be a lawyer. I knew that. And I wanted to go to Harvard Law School. So, my whole undergraduate programme, ambition, etc., was to get good grades so that I could go to Harvard Law School.  

Actually, it’s a funny story, because my two best friends were high-school wrestlers – they were state wrestling champions – and they got into Wesleyan because of that.  

They didn’t really know much more about college than I did. But there was something at the time called Lovejoy’s College Guide, which said that Wesleyan was a very good college, and NYU was really quite a mediocre college.  

Well, it takes about 20 years for these reputations to catch up with reality. Actually, NYU was a very good college at the time, but it did have a mediocre reputation, which, of course, is why they were starting programmes like the University Scholars.  

But my friends just lorded over me what a great school they went to despite the fact that I was just so happy: I got the scholarship, I was able to go East, I was able to achieve my objectives.  

But I was determined: ‘Okay, well, they went to Wesleyan, so, I’ll go to Harvard. I’ll just do very well in college, and I will go to Harvard Law School, and then, that’s it. That will be that.’ That was my goal. 

JBG: And I imagine that from your relationship with Jim Hester, you probably were aware of the Rhodes Scholarship fairly early on as an undergraduate. Is that right? 

RK: I mean, I was aware of it because I’m from Missouri. So, Bill Bradley (Missouri & Worcester 1965), who is one of the most famous Rhodes Scholars, he was one year ahead of me. And, of course, Pete Dawkins (Michigan & Brasenose 1959) had gotten a Rhodes Scholarship at that time. He was a famous football player at West Point.  

So, I knew about the Rhodes Scholarships, but I had no thought of being a Rhodes Scholar. It would never have occurred to me to apply. It was just a separate world. 

JBG: Yes. When did you start to think about it for yourself? 

RK: I was called into the dean’s office at the beginning of my senior year, and the dean said, ‘President Hester has decided that NYU should have a Rhodes Scholar and that it should be you.’  

So, I said, ‘Well, I’m not really qualified to be a Rhodes Scholar. I’m not an All-American athlete like Bill Bradley or Pete Dawkins.’  

She said, ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. You know, you have some other things going.’ I’d gotten a straight-A average at NYU and I was, I guess, the proverbial big man on campus, whatever that is. 

She was quite encouraging, and she said, ‘And President Hester will tutor you. He will coach you.’  

So, he used to send his limousine – because he was in Washington Square – he would send his limousine up to the Bronx to pick me up, and then the limousine would take me down to Washington Square where he would give me some guidance, which was obviously very helpful.  

His vision was coming true. When he had the vision of University Scholars, he obviously thought that something like this would happen. Then he just needed a person, and it so happened that I was that person. 

JBG: Had NYU had many previous Rhodes Scholars? 

RK: It’s unclear whether it had had any. I had heard, ‘Well, they had one in the 1930s, but he committed suicide.’ It’s very unclear. Nobody has ever been able to tell me the name of any Rhodes Scholar that preceded me. 

JBG: Okay. So interesting. 

RK: It was a very, very, very big deal for NYU. 

JBG: Yes. And so, was your final selection interview in New York?  

RK: No. I don’t know what the rules are now, but at that time, you could have your interviews either in your home state, which for me was Missouri, or where you went to school, which would have been New York.  

I thought going to Missouri might be less competitive than New York, although that turned out to be incorrect, because everybody else has the same thought. All these guys from Harvard, Yale, Princeton who are from Missouri would go back to Missouri.  

JBG: And what was that moment like, of learning of learning that you had been selected? 

RK: Well, that was pretty amazing. Since this, sort of, came to me unbidden – it wasn’t something that I had worked for for years, or anything like that. So, I, sort of, took it in my stride.  

I just thought, ‘Well, it’s just a competition, I just have to compete with these guys and they’re no better than I am. In fact, it seems I’m better than they are.’ So, the competition really didn’t phase me.  

In fact, many of the guys were from private school backgrounds, etc., and they struck me as very entitled, whereas I was upwardly mobile, scratching my way upwards. So, I didn’t really view them as much competition, quite frankly.  

I said to myself, ‘It’s just a competition, like any other competition. Why shouldn’t I win?’  

I wasn’t nervous about it at all. It had come to me quite unasked for.  

My dad and I had not been getting along very well at all, because I was still working for him in the summers, and he didn’t really understand the world that I was in at that time, the world of New York. He had not gone to college. So, we were not getting along well at all when I left for my senior year.  

But then, when I got interviews, first for the Marshall and then for the Rhodes, he got very excited about that. My interview for the Marshall was in Chicago, but it’s not far from St. Louis, about 300 miles from St. Louis.  

He actually came to meet me there before my interview. I mean, he was really into it.  

He bought me a new suit. And then, the Marshall, at that time, you didn’t find out the same day. So, I interviewed for the Marshall and then a week later, I interviewed for the Rhodes.  

I went back to St. Louis where my interviews were going to be, and my dad bought me another suit, with money he really didn’t have, and he was just very excited, [20:00] because I think he saw I could win. I was very self-confident, probably to a degree that I would not appreciate today.  

In Missouri, there were 14 candidates and they chose two. That was very difficult, I thought, because I looked around the room and I said, ‘Well, assuming that I’m chosen and I had to choose one other person out of these other 13 people, could I choose somebody?’  

And I couldn’t, I couldn’t find something to distinguish them. So, the state competition was harder, actually, than the final.  

I was one of the two, and then we went to Des Moines, Iowa and there were, I think, six states that were in that region, and each sent two. So, there were 12, and out of those 12, they were going to choose four. So, actually, your odds were very much better.  

The process lasted all day, and they called me back for a second interview. By that time, I was getting a little nervous, I have to say. At the end of the day, they just come into the room and they say, ‘Okay, it’s Duff [Michael Duff (Missouri & Worcester 1967)], Katz, Pedersen [Richard Pedersen (Nebraska & Oriel 1967)] and Frederickson [Michael Frederickson (Minnesota & Jesus 1967)]. So, that’s it. You’re a Rhodes Scholar.  

The first call I made was to my dad, and he was at our home in St. Louis. He had gathered together all the family and the relatives, etc. They were all waiting for this.  

So, I said, ‘Well, I made it,’ and he said, ‘I knew it. Ronald Stanley Katz, R.S. Katz, Rhodes Scholar Katz. I knew it when I named you.’ So, he was just over the moon. And that was quite a thing. 

JBG: That’s so very lovely. Thank you for sharing that. So, this is the fall of your senior year. So, I imagine you finished the year at NYU and then, did you sail over with your class the following fall? 

RK: Well, actually, even before that, I was on the sailing committee. There were two guys from Princeton that were chosen, Steve Oxman (New Jersey & New College 1967) and Chuck Peters (Indiana & Balliol 1967) and the three of us were designated to be on that sailing committee, which meant we interviewed the three steamboat lines at that time that went across the pond.  

So, one was Cunard, and the Rhodes Scholars had sailed with Cunard forever, and then another one was the SS France, and the other one was the SS United States. We met all three representatives of these three huge companies who came to meet us at the Princeton Club.  

I’d never been to the Princeton Club before. I’d never been to any club.  

We were sitting in this nice room at the Princeton Club, and these guys would come. You know, they were wearing pinky rings and the like. It really, from my point of view, was, sort of, a joke.  

And they were, of course, courting us. The first guy that came was the Cunard guy. Well, he just thought he had it all sewed up, because the Rhodes Scholars had not taken anything but Cunard in recent years. 

So, I didn’t know much about transatlantic sailing. I found out about, you know, ships have first class, second class, blah, blah, blah.  

We were going to be in second class. The Cunard representative spent all this time telling us how special we were, we were Rhodes Scholars, and this and that and the other thing. So, I said, ‘Well, you know, we’d really like the run of the ship,’ and he looked horrified. It would be, like, on a plane today, that you would just walk from the back to the front of the plane with no problem.  

I said, ‘Yes, we’d really like that.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, obviously we can’t do that.’  

I said, ‘What? You just told us we’re special. We’re Rhodes Scholars, you know? You really should be able to do that.’ 

And he became very flustered, and, I remember, he closed his briefcase when he left – because he had just thought he was going to coast to a sale – and he closed his briefcase on the tablecloth on the table we were sitting at, sort of, like a comedy routine.  

And then, the next guy was the SS United States. Of course, he was very hungry for the business. By this time, we knew a little bit more about the process, because we had had the one experience with Cunard.  

I think my Princeton classmates were just, sort of, horrified at my conduct. It was, like, ‘What are you doing? We should just accept what’s given to us.’ Anyway, they finally got into my bargaining technique, and, long story short, we did take the SS United States and we did have the run of the ship. 

JBG: And we’ll talk about this a little later in our conversation, Ron, but it just really strikes me that your service to your class and the Rhodes community started before your time at Oxford. I just feel like that’s very telling, and such a testament to your service to this community.  

RK: Well, I’m not sure I thought of it in that way. I just thought of it as an adventure.  

But yes, looking back on it now, with the perspective of 60 years, I would say, ‘Yes.’ If you are put in a position of service, then you see how good service is not just for the people you’re serving, but for yourself. But I can tell you frankly that I did not think of it in that way at that time.  

JBG: What was the experience like of sailing over with your class? 

RK: Oh, that was fun. You know, the alcohol was, like, ten cents a drink, something like that, and, you know, our Bon Voyage Dinner was at, I think, the New York Athletic Club.  

Since I had gone to school in New York, I had quite a few people come to see me off, including my girlfriend at the time. And you’re just getting to meet your classmates, you’ve been given this award, which I think was even more unique at that time than it is now, because now, there are many, many scholarships.  

The Rhodes Scholarship is still number one, in my opinion. At that time, there was the Marshall, and the Fulbright and the Woodrow Wilson, but there weren’t all these-, you know, Schwarzman and Gates and whatever, Knight-Hennessy, etc. 

There were very few scholarships and there was no question that the Rhodes was at the pinnacle of that. So, you’re meeting these other guys, and of course, it was all guys, but our class was fairly diverse for that time.  

We had, I think, 18 different schools represented, and I had never met anyone before from the military – we had three or four from the military – and I had never met anybody before from the South – we had probably half a dozen from the South. I’d never met anybody before who was, like, a minister or was studying to be a minister. So, it was quite an eye-opener for me.  

JBG: And so, you arrive in Oxford in the fall of 1967. Had you been to the UK before? 

RK: No, I had never been outside the country. I mean, as I said to you, I’d never been to New York before I went to NYU. I was not a world traveller.  

Things were different at that time. If you went to Europe, it meant you were rich, and I wasn’t rich. 

JBG: And did you live in college? 

RK: At Balliol? Well, actually, it was interesting, because I lived in Holywell Manor, which was the first co-ed housing in Oxford, and Balliol, in its wisdom, had as the head of Holywell Manor its oldest tutor, Russell Meiggs. He was 80 years old at the time. So, Oxford wasn’t ready for co-education, let’s put it that way.  

JBG: Was that both years you lived there? 

RK: No. Senior status people like myself, we got thrown out of Holywell Manor because of issues related to its co-ed status. We had to live in college the second year, and of course, we were fearful of living in college, because colleges at that time were pretty grotty.  

But they had a new wing at Balliol at that time, and since we were, sort of, naughty people, we were given the last priority for choosing.  

We didn’t think we’d be able to get into the [30:00] new housing. But, as it turns out, the English boys didn’t want to live in the new housing.  

They wanted to live in the housing from, like, the thirteenth century that their grandfathers and great grandfathers had lived in. So, we got into the new housing. But I can tell you, the new housing was not all that great. 

JBG: What did you read at Oxford? 

RK: PPE. 

JBG: Okay. And are there particular tutors, that stand out when you think back on your Oxford time? 

RK: Oh, yes. Tony Kenny was my tutor in moral philosophy. He was my so-called moral tutor, which is, sort of, like, your guidance counsellor. And then he later became, as you know, Master of Balliol and Warden of Rhodes House, and, I think, the pro-vice-chancellor of Oxford.  

He’s written 50 books. He and I are still in touch. He’s now into his 90s. So, yes, he was very significant. 

JBG: What about your fellow Rhodes Scholars? Were they a large part of your Oxford experience? 

RK: I would say at the time that I was in Oxford, there were two kinds of Rhodes Scholars. There were Rhodes Scholars who mainly associated with other Rhodes Scholars, mainly American Rhodes Scholars, and there were Rhodes Scholars who mainly associated with non-Rhodes Scholars.  

I was one of the latter. I wasn’t going to England to meet more Americans. So, basically, my best friends were a Tanzanian fellow who, like me, did PPE at Balliol, and a French Canadian fellow who did PPE at Balliol. The Rhodes Scholars that I did know were the other Rhodes Scholars at Balliol, and Balliol always had a reasonable number of Rhodes Scholars. 

Rhodes House was not a centre of activity at that time. If you went to Rhodes House three times a year, that would be a lot. So, your activities were mainly centred in the college. 

JBG: And what kind of activities were you involved in outside of your studies? Were you still playing sports at that time? 

RK: I did rowing. Rowing was something I really had very little familiarity with and, to me, it was quite exotic. So, I did that.  

Then I did have an experience with Tony Kenny that was very interesting. My two friends did PPE and were senior status people. The English kids were young, much younger than we were.  

I would say we were not really the best philosophy students in the world, and there was something called the Jowett Society. Benjamin Jowett was a very famous master of Balliol from the 19th century, and he started a philosophical society, and, at the time, in 1968, it had fallen on hard times. It was basically just graduate students reading their boring papers to other graduate students and, you know, attendance had dropped off, etc.  

Tony Kenny saw that we weren’t the greatest students, but he thought we might have some business acumen. So, he asked us to revive the Jowett Society, and we agreed to do that.  

At that time, Oxford really was the centre of the world in terms of philosophy, and particularly linguistic philosophy. And what happens in a place like Oxford is that you have the superstar professors, tutors, and they have these philosophical theories, and they all hate each other, because they’re all competing, their theories are competing.  

We decided that we would invite them to debate one another, but of course, we needed something to attract them. So, we went to Blackwell’s. Blackwell’s, as you know, is the biggest bookstore in Oxford, and it’s also a publisher.  

We went to Blackwell’s and we said, ‘Look, if we get these philosophers to argue with one another at our Jowett Society meetings, would you publish the proceedings?’ And Blackwell's said, ‘Oh, yes, we’ll do that.’  

And then we went to the professors, and we said, ‘Well, Blackwell’s agreed to do it. Would you do it?’ And they said, ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’  

So, the Jowett Society, all of a sudden, became a very hot item. And there was one professor in particular whom we wanted.  

His name was Richard M. Hare, R.M. Hare, and he was the leading moral philosopher in the world at that time, and a very arrogant person. He was always being attacked, his theories were always being attacked, and he was always defending himself quite fiercely.  

We invited him and the way we did it was, we had the Jowett Society for three terms, so each of us was president of the Jowett Society for one term. My term was coming up, and I had to arrange for the debates.  

I wrote to Professor Hare – this would have been in the Trinity Term of 1968 – I wrote to him at the beginning of term saying ‘Would you come?’ and I didn’t hear back until the last day of term, right before the summer break.  

The reason I hadn’t heard back was that he was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan that term, so it took a while. All we had was snail mail, so it took a while.  

Anyway, he wrote back and he said, ‘Well, I think you’ve ruined the Jowett Society. It was wonderful when it was just graduate students reading their papers to other graduate students. I think what you’ve done is very bad. So, I will agree to debate, but I will only agree to debate a student.’  

I went around to all my friends, asking them, ‘Well, how about debating Professor R.M. Hare?’. It would be like a little ant debating an elephant. I mean, there’s no way a student could debate this man.  

And of course, everybody just laughed in my face and said, ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ So, I had a choice: either we wouldn’t have Professor Hare at the Jowett Society or I would be the sacrificial lamb. So, I debated Professor Hare. 

JBG: Wow. 

RK: And I am published. I have a philosophical paper published. In fact, I could show it to you. Can we just take a break for a second? [break 37:19-37:27]. All right, so, you can see this is the Jowett Papers. 

JBG: Wow.  

RK: And it’s edited by B.Y. Khanbai and R.S. Katz and R.A. Pineau, and it’s published by Blackwell’s, and then, if you look at the table of contents, you can see my paper: R.S. Katz, ‘Liberals, fanatics, and not-so-innocent bystanders,’ and then a reply, ‘Reply to R.S. Katz,’ by R.M. Hare, who was the most famous moral philosopher in the world at that time.  

I would have to say that this debate, if you want to call it a debate, got a lot of publicity in Oxford. I can’t remember where it was. It was in a pretty big hall, and they were hanging from the rafters.  

Everybody came to this, because it’s like going to a public hanging, you know? It has a certain fascination. A lot of people came.  

So, we had solved the problem of the Jowett Society that Tony Kenny set for us: it was successful. The Jowett Society was successful.  

Of course, having a book published by Blackwell’s was prestigious. But that was my swan song as a philosopher. That was my first and last published philosophical paper. And that all came from Tony Kenny, who remains a friend to this day.  

JBG: Wow. That is an incredible story. I’m curious if you had the opportunity to learn from R.M. Hare how he felt after the debate with regards to the society, if you moving forward with that changed his perception at all. 

RK: It’s hard to describe just how arrogant he was. He was the top philosopher at the top university for philosophy in the world.  

So, just to give you an example, I was trying to just be courteous to him – this was just a few days before the debate – and I said, ‘Would you like me to send you my paper, so you can be prepared?’ [40:00] And he said, ‘Oh, that’s not necessary until the morning of the debate.’ This guy was arrogant. He was really arrogant.  

JBG: Oh, goodness. 

RK: Actually, he fell from grace after that. I think that John Rawls superseded him. And actually, even though I can’t say I did very well in the debate itself, if you read his paper and my paper, I think I got him. I think my paper found a hole in his philosophy that he could not fill. But suffice it to say that no one ever made me an offer of a job to be a philosopher.  

JBG: That is a very unique Oxford experience, though, I would imagine. 

RK: Yes, that was quite unique. 

JBG: So, were you still thinking, Ron, when you were in Oxford, that law school would be next for you? 

RK: Oh, yes. I never swerved from that. You know, that was my goal, and specifically the Harvard Law School, and of course, I might have had trouble getting into the Harvard Law School from NYU, but getting into the Harvard Law School from Oxford was not a problem. 

JBG: And so, did you go right from Oxford, so, beginning Harvard in the fall of 1969? 

RK: I did.  

JBG: And what was your experience like at Harvard Law? 

RK: Well, Harvard Law is really the opposite of Oxford. Oxford has the tutorial system. Harvard Law School at that time was – probably still is – the largest law school in America. So, you’re in a section with, you know, 150 other people, and I found it to be a very impersonal experience, with one exception, which is that I met my wife there. She was a classmate of mine.  

My main memories of our law school have to do with meeting my wife and courting my wife and marrying my wife. We actually got married on our graduation day. We didn’t go to graduation. We got married.  

She was from Ithaca, New York, so, we got married at Cornell. So, the law school experience for me was just getting a credential.  

And of course, there were a number of my classmates from Oxford who were also at Harvard. 

JBG: And did you stay in the Boston area after law school? 

RK: No, my wife and I got something called an International Legal Center Fellowship. Law and development was a very hot topic at that time, because you’d had all these countries that were ruled by colonial powers and then they were throwing off the colonial powers and starting their own governments.  

But it was a very difficult transitional period. So, the International Legal Center was a spinoff of the Ford Foundation, which at that time had more money than it knew what to do with.   

They would send recent law graduates to what we called underdeveloped countries – now I think they’re called developing countries – to basically show them how to be like the United States. So, it was a little bit of a neo-colonialist attitude.  

My wife and I went to Indonesia. We lived in Bandung, Indonesia for two years, and we taught at the University of Padjadjaran there.  

Actually, law and development is something I mentioned in my Rhodes application essay, so I was very pleased that I was actually able to do something that I mentioned there. We were teachers and our boss was the dean of the law school, the rector of the university, and the minister of justice. He later became the foreign minister. His name was Mochtar Kusumaatmadja.  

I had, therefore, as his assistant much more responsibility and power than you would think a young punk would have at that time. So, basically, for example, when my boss was Minister of Justice, I essentially wrote the labour laws of Indonesia. 

JBG: Wow. 

RK: Once he ceased to be the minister of justice, then of course they were no longer the labour laws. But for a short period of time, I was the author of the labour laws of Indonesia. 

JBG: Wow. That is remarkable. And you said that you and your wife were in Indonesia for two years? 

RK: Yes. Bandung, Indonesia is actually a very beautiful place. If you know of any city in Indonesia, it’s probably Jakarta, and Jakarta is a very unattractive place. But Bandung is in the hills. It’s where the Dutch people, who colonised Indonesia, would go for their weekends.  

It’s the centre of their universities. The University of Padjadjaran is one of their leading universities, and it was just a fabulous experience. It was our honeymoon. 

JBG: How lovely. And so, did you come back to the States after those two years? 

RK: We did. We came back and we did some writing. Indonesia was a Muslim country, and they had changed their marriage laws: they were trying to modernise their marriage laws, because under Islamic law, you can divorce your wife by just saying, ‘I divorce thee’ three times, and you can have four wives.  

So, they were reforming that, and we wrote an article about that, which was published in The American Journal of Comparative Law.  

Then a year or two later, we went back to Indonesia to do field research, to see how that reform was coming, and then we wrote a second article for The American Journal of Comparative Law. So, we did some writing and research when we got back, and then, I went to work for the government.  

I was not really attracted to the international life. At that time, if you were in a place like Bandung or if you were in the State Department, or whatever, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of adultery. It's just not a good situation for the long-term.  

But I was still very interested in international law. So, I worked at the Department of Justice in the Antitrust Division, in something called the Foreign Commerce Section. We investigated and prosecuted antitrust conspiracies that had an international aspect to them. That’s what I did for the next couple of years after I came back from Indonesia. 

JBG: And was that in DC, that you did that work? 

RK: Yes. Although we had grand juries in Chicago, because we were investigating a fertiliser conspiracy. It was a potash conspiracy, and potash is mined in Canada and in New Mexico, and there was a conspiracy between those two areas.  

There was an Arab oil embargo at that time. I worked on that, from the point of view of whether it was an antitrust violation. It was very interesting work. It was definitely on the frontiers of antitrust law at that time. 

JBG: And you said that was for a few years, so, is this about the late 1970s? 

RK: That was from 1975 to 1977.  

JBG: Okay. 

RK: And then, in 1977, my career paths, sort of, converged again, because there was an Indonesian version of TIME magazine, which was called TEMPO, and we spoke Indonesian, so, we would still get TEMPO every week or so.  

My former boss was the foreign minister at that time, and he had invented this thing called the archipelago theory.  

Indonesia is an archipelago of 3000 islands. It used to be the case that the territorial sea extended three miles out to sea from the shoreline. That was called the territorial sea.  

The way it worked for Indonesia for many years – Indonesia was a colonial subject of the Dutch – was that they would draw a line around each island and say, ‘Your territory is that island plus three miles.’ [50:00]  

Mochtar changed that. He drew a circle around the whole archipelago, and said, ‘We control all of this.’ That area is oil-rich and there are very important navigational routes like the Straits of Singapore.  

So, I was reading about that and then reading that Elliot Richardson, who would have been the attorney general during Watergate, at that time, he was the ambassador=at-large to the Law of the Sea Conference.  

That was the largest international conference ever at that time, trying to make a so-called constitution for the seas, and one of the most important things was something new under sun. 

There were these manganese nodules at the bottom of the ocean, and they had developed the technology to exploit them. It’s like sending a vacuum cleaner down 18,000 feet, so, it’s a big deal, and the problem is that, in order to exploit them, in order to have a viable mine site, you had to have territory the size of the state of Rhode Island.  

Of course, that’s out in the middle of the ocean. Nobody owns it. It’s freedom of the seas. That was a huge problem, and I got to work on that.  

I went to work for the State Department. I was the deputy director of the Officer of the Law of the Sea Negotiations, and my special responsibility was deep seabed mining and negotiating at the conference, which was held at the United Nations in New York and at the United Nations in Geneva. So, it was quite exciting and quite glamorous. 

JBG: That is really fascinating. I’m curious what the result of that work was. 

RK: It was very difficult, because the developing countries, which at that time were called the ‘Group of 77,’ they basically said, ‘We have to share all this.’ Of course, the developed countries like the United States, had the technology.  

There was a phrase invented by the ambassador to the UN from Malta, named Arvid Pardo, and he called the resources under the ocean the ‘common heritage of mankind.’ So, that was the challenge, how to negotiate the common heritage of mankind which was the opposite of the principles of capitalism and the principles of free enterprise.  

Negotiation was what the U.S. did for many years. I did it for about a year. Then the Carter administration changed into the Reagan administration. I think Elliot Richardson was the only Republican working in the Carter administration.  

He got to point where he recommended signing and then Reagan came into office, and Reagan was very much against this. So, basically, there is an agreement now, but the United States has not signed the agreement, and there is an authority, a seabed authority, in Jamaica, and there is a court for seabed issues in Jamaica.  

But without the United States as a member of the treaty, as a signatory to the treaty, it just, sort of, limped along. It could have been the first example of international economic cooperation , but it failed in that sense. 

JBG: And so, what years were you involved in this work, Ron? 

RK: 1977 to 1978. 

JBG: Okay. And this was still in DC? 

RK: Well, it was in DC, but I spent a good amount of time in New York, a good amount of time in Geneva. I travelled a lot. I remember, I think the biggest travel I ever took was, I went to Geneva once, from DC, for lunch. 

JBG: Oh, my goodness. Wow. 

RK: That was the kind of job it was. 

JBG: Yes. And what was your next step after that role?

RK: Well, I had to make a deal with my wife because, you know, basically, she wasn’t going to see me much for a year or so. And her father was a very distinguished law professor at Cornell, and at that time, they had mandatory retirement for law professors at age 65.  

But there was a law school in California at that time. It was called Hastings. I think now it’s called the University of California Law School.  

It was a very good law school, and they had something called the 65 Club. They went out and got all these law professors who had to retire and brought them to Hastings. They were great law professors, and at age 65, they were still in very good shape.  

So, basically, I said, ‘Well, if you allow me to have this year at the UN conference, then we’ll move to San Francisco.’ She very much wanted to be near her parents and her family. And so, that was the deal.  

The easiest way to move to San Francisco professionally was to get a job in private practice. So, I got a job at one of the big law firms in San Francisco, and at that time, it was unheard of to go to a big law firm six years after you graduated law school. There was no lateral entry. Basically, you signed up when you graduated law school and then you were there for the rest of your life or as long as you lasted there.  

But, in my case, I did try a case at the Justice Department on international antitrust, and it turns out that that was a huge case. A similar case was being tried by this law firm in San Francisco, before the same judge that I had been before, so, they were dying to hire me, even though I wasn’t really qualified for that. So, we moved to Berkeley, and I went into the private practice of law. 

JBG: And at that point, your career was focused on antitrust as well? 

RK: Yes. This big case that they had – it was a uranium cartel – was a big international antitrust conspiracy. At that time, I think it was probably the biggest antitrust case in history. 

JBG: Wow. 

RK: 34 major companies who produced uranium, like General Electric, etc., had conspired to fix the price of uranium. 

JBG: And how long were you at that firm? 

RK: Well, I was at that firm until 1982 or so, and then I continued in the private practice of law for the next 43 years. But it was a time of great flux in law firms, law firm mergers, a lot of law firms going bankrupt, etc. So, I’ve been in four or five law firms. But basically, I was at that law firm until 1982.  

Then I moved to Palo Alto, because Silicon Valley was really just starting to develop at that time. I think there might have been a few hundred lawyers in Palo Alto at that time. There are probably now 30,000 lawyers in Palo Alto.  

Palo Alto is really the centre of Silicon Valley. It was Stanford, really, that would develop Silicon Valley.  

In 1982, I came here and then I practised law in Palo Alto, with three or four different law firms in Palo Alto, and in San Francisco, for the next 43 years. I was a trial lawyer.  

JBG: Wow.  

RK: So, I started out with antitrust law and then I went into more intellectual property law, because that’s very important for high tech companies. And then, the last ten or 15 years of my career, I was a sports lawyer. 

JBG: In that latter part of your career, what attracted you to sports law? 

RK: Well, there are a lot of antitrust issues in sports, so I knew about that, and, basically, I love sports. I admire athletes. I produced a lot of business for my firm.  

My firm, at that time, was a traditional business law firm, and the way things work at those law firms is that, if you bring in a lot of business, then you have a certain amount of power, because you can just walk out the door with your clients, who didn’t care what law firm I was at. [1:00:00] They just wanted me to be their lawyer.  

I had the opportunity to represent a class of retired baseball players, because what people didn’t understand at the time, probably still, is that retired players had a very difficult existence. These were players that had retired before 1948, and they didn’t have pensions, and it turns out Major League Baseball was using their images without permission and without paying them.  

I took that on as a class action. I represented 400 retired players. They didn’t have to have retired before 1948, because we changed the issue from the pension to the right of publicity. And some people in that class were very famous. Willie Mays, for example, was in that class.  

JBG: Wow.  

RK: We sued Major League Baseball on a pro bono basis. Obviously, it’s not the kind of thing my law firm did. They normally weren’t plaintiffs and they didn’t do sports law. But basically, they couldn’t say ‘No’ to me, and we won the first jury verdict in history against Major League Baseball. 

JBG: Wow.  

RK: Then what happened was, I got a lot of publicity, and then I just went back to being an antitrust lawyer, intellectual property lawyer, general litigation lawyer. At that time, these sports right of publicity cases weren’t worth very much, because it was before the internet.  

You could put your image on a T-shirt, you could put your image on a teacup, or something like that, but it wasn’t a big deal, whereas, with the internet, you can put your image in front of hundreds of millions of people, so that sort of case became more valuable. And another thing about the internet is, once you do something, it’s on the internet forever.  

So, if somebody who wants to search for someone who is crazy enough to sue a major league sport, they wouldn’t find many people, but they would find me. There was a football player in Florida who found me that way, and he said, ‘Oh, I’m a retired football player. Retired NFL players are just in terrible shape. They have dementia, they have no money, they have no medical care. Would you represent us against the NFL Players Association?’  

I took that case. We had a class of about 2000 people and we won a $28 million verdict against the NFL Players Association. At that time, I became a sports lawyer.  

This was a very famous case and I got some very famous clients. I don’t know if you’re a football fan or not, but, for example, Jim Brown was one of my clients.  

JBG: Wow. 

RK: He’s one of the best football players of all time. Also, I published in that area, and then I was teaching sports law at Santa Clara University. I started something called the Institute of Sports Law and Ethics, because I saw that there were a lot of ethical issues in sports, like concussions, antitrust issues, etc., use of images without permission. We put on a symposium every year. We published the proceedings of that symposium, which got some national attention. 

JBG: Is the Institute of Sports Law and Ethics associated with Santa Clara? 

RK: It was. It no longer exists. It existed for about seven years and then I went on to do something else, and they were not able to sustain it after I left. But yes, it was supported by the Santa Clara University law school, the athletic department, and they had something there called the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.  

Those three organisations within Santa Clara University supported the Institute for Sports Law and Ethics, and it was very successful. We had symposia every year. We had the top sports executives, the top athletes, the owners. Everybody wanted to come to these symposia. 

JBG: Wow. And were you practising sports law through the final years of your law career? 

RK: I did sports law. That was, of course, the best known thing that I did. I was also still litigating business cases, but the sports law was really the most fun and the most gratifying.  

JBG: And what year did you retire, Ron? 

RK: 2021. 

JBG: Okay. And so, thinking of your experience at Stanford with the Distinguished Careers Institute, was that right after retirement? 

RK: Basically, yes, during the phase-down of my career. When you’re in the career of law and you have your own business, you can, sort of, control your own destiny. You start phasing down, so, you know you’re not going to be able to do this forever. It’s really a young person’s game.  

I’ve always been academically oriented. I published over 100 articles. I published a couple of books.  

That fit in with a programme at Harvard, I think it’s called ALI (Advanced Leadership Initiative) for people who were getting to be retirement age, but they still felt they had something left in the tank and they wanted to change careers, etc. So, that had been going on for a while. And as I was approaching retirement, quite frankly, it’s a little depressing, because you identify yourself in large part through your profession.  

My wife said – she reads all of our alumni publications – ‘Oh, look, Harvard has this stuff. Why don’t you apply to that programme?’ At that time, I was 70, so I thought I was too old for the programme, quite frankly.  

I contacted the guy who was the head of the programme and I said, ‘Well, am I too old for the programme?’ Of course, they can’t say you’re too old. This breaks the law. ‘Oh, no, no, you’re not too old at all.’  

I applied for that – it was a very onerous application – and as we got closer to the time, it became clear that I was going to become an ALI Fellow, or whatever it’s called, which would have meant we had to move to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a year and it would have been quite disruptive. 

So, my wife, who had suggested that I do this, suddenly, she was raising a lot of questions. I said, ‘Wait, you suggested that I do this.’ That was not a very effective argument on my part.  

She’s a lawyer too, so, she was representing Stanford, she had a matter for Stanford. One day she said, ‘Oh, I just met today somebody at Stanford who is the head of something called the Distinguished Careers Institute’ – which is Stanford’s version of ALI – ‘and it just started, and why don’t you apply to that?’  

So, I said, ‘Okay,’ and I looked it up and, of course, it was already May of 2015, and it was too late. The deadline had passed.  

So, I sent them an email and said, ‘Gee, could I apply?’ So, that’s one of the great things about being a Rhodes Scholar, that there’s not a lot of questions asked. They just said, ‘Oh, yes, of course you can apply, and in fact, we’re going to set up an interview for you in two weeks.’  

By that time, I knew I was going to get into Harvard, and of course, Harvard is very hoity-toity, and the thing about that programme at Harvard at that time was, they said, ‘Well, first you have to say you’re going to accept us before we accept you.’  

That time was coming, and it was sooner than two weeks. I was going to have to do it within five days.  

I told Stanford, [1:10:00] ‘You know, it’s very nice that I can have an interview in two weeks, but in two weeks, it will be academic. I have to have an interview within the next five days.’  

I get a call back about an hour later. They said, ‘Okay, you’re going to have an interview tomorrow.’ So, I went in for the interview  

The interview went very, very well, because, you know, Rhodes Scholars are good at interviews, in general, and then the director of the programme said, ‘Okay, well, we’ll let you know in about a month.’  

I said, you know, ‘I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but in a month I’m going to be somewhere else.’ I didn’t say I was going to be at Harvard, but it was obvious there was only one other programme at the time.  

He said, ‘Well, you know, we have our rules and regulations.’ So, I said, ‘Yes, okay, fine. See you later.’  

And then, I got a call the next day, which said that I had gotten early admission to this programme. I was in the early admissions programme, which I don’t think had existed before.  

The emphasis of that programme was intergenerational cooperation and lifelong learning, and that is my sweet spot. So, my wife and I did that for a year. We got to take any course we wanted at Stanford, and we were in a cohort of about 35 other people who were just like us.  

One of the courses I took was about the history of the mystery novel. That’s where I got the idea of writing mystery short stories, which is what I do now.  

JBG: Yes. Will you say more about that, Ron? So, did you start your writing in 2015, 2016? 

RK: No. There are two kinds of Distinguished Career Institute Fellows, DCI Fellows. First, there’s somebody who knows exactly what they want to do after the fellowship and, second, somebody who knows exactly what they want to do and then they change.  

I was in the second category. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to start a programme that combined privileged kids and underprivileged kids and math and sports and prepared these underprivileged kids for getting into good schools and such, because, if you’re an underprivileged kid and you’re bright and you get into a good school, that’s just half the battle, because culturally, you’re not prepared for it. You’ve never had a cultural experience like that.  

This concept was very ambitious and it required cooperation with a lot of different people and organisations. And of course, I’ve been a litigator, I’ve been a trial lawyer, so I wasn’t really used to co-operating with people. I was used to fighting people.  

Then, I took this mystery course and I said, ‘Well, gee, why am I beating my head against the wall? If I write mystery stories, I can just do it on my own time, do it myself.  

I think I could do it,’ you know, because everybody thinks, ‘I can write a mystery story.’ I just had one idea, but it was, sort of, a joke.  

First of all, it had to be somewhat different to what had happened before. I couldn’t just write about a retired policeman who was alcoholic whose daughter had been killed, or something. You know, that had been done.  

So, I had to think of something new, and what I thought of was an adaptation of a famous book called The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett.  

It’s about a young detective couple. It was published in 1933 and it’s still in print.  

I thought I would just update that, make that a baby boomer couple, because then they would have all the foibles of age and of being in a long marriage, etc.  

They say, ‘Write what you know,’ and, of course, I know what it’s like to be a baby boomer. I’ve been a baby boomer my entire life. But, all I really had was the title at that time.  

I was still practising law, and the title was, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Reading Glasses.’ That would always get a laugh from people, because, once you’re a certain age, you have reading glasses and, once you have reading glasses, you lose them at least once a week.   

A couple of years passed and, basically, I said to myself, ‘Well, either I’m going to do this or not,’ and I didn’t know if I could do it. So, I sat down and wrote a 5000-word short story called ‘The Mystery of the Missing Reading Glasses,’ and then I wanted to see if I could publish it.  

They used to have all these publications like Ellery Queen mystery stories and Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. They would be at barber shops back in the day.  

They would just be little, paperback things, maybe four by seven, five by seven, something like that. Well, now all of those have become what they call e-zines. They’re magazines that are online.  

So, I submitted to a lot of e-zines. The great thing about e-zines is that it’s easy to submit to them. You just have to click and you’ve made your submission. And the bad thing about them is that it’s easy to submit, because a lot of people write mystery stories and lots of people submit.  

But anyway, mine got accepted by a publication which is called Mysterical-E, and I still don’t know whether Mysterical-E has ten readers or ten million readers, but I was very proud of that. I told my kids, and of course, they pooh-poohed it.  

They said, ‘Oh, nobody reads these things. This is not the way to do it. You have to use social media, blah, blah, blah.’ So, I put it on Facebook and now I have 5,500 Facebook followers and I’ve published 20 of these stories. 

JBG: Wow.  

RK: You can find them on Amazon if you want. And I’ve also done a TV pilot script. So, I’m submitting it to streaming companies, and hopefully they’ll take a chance on a 79-year-old screenwriter.  

The screenplay I actually did with somebody who is in the entertainment business. So, that’s occupying my time now. I’m having a lot of fun doing it.  

Actually, there was an article in the Rhodes Scholar, the magazine of the Trust, in 2020, about this process: ‘Working to Become a Mystery Writer at 74.’ 

JBG: Oh, lovely. 

RK: So, that’s my current job. At first, I felt funny saying I was an author. Now, I don’t feel funny saying it. That’s what I do.  

I’m not John Updike, I realise that, but I’m having fun with it and it does have some potential, and I have very loyal fans, very, very, loyal fans. They seem to me to be mainly retired high school teachers and retired librarians. They just love those books.  

And the great thing about being on Facebook is that they can post about the books. The postings have been very positive, and they make my day. 

JBG: That’s really lovely. Congratulations. That is amazing. So, as we move to the latter part of our interview, Ron, I would love to ask you a few questions related to the Scholarship and the Rhodes community.  

RK: Sure. 

JBG: And so, first, you have contributed in so many ways to the Rhodes community and we are so, so grateful. You have been so supportive of the Scholarships. You have had incredible leadership on the AARS and have been so wonderful in helping to keep your class connected and in so many other ways, and I was wondering if you would mind sharing a little bit about what has inspired you to stay connected in that way and to stay in service to the Rhodes community. 

RK: Well, you have to understand that the Rhodes Trust was very different back in the day. They had more money than God, they didn’t need to raise money, they didn’t need to reach out to Alumni.  

As a result, when you left Oxford, you’d get a warm handshake from the Warden, he would wish you well – and that was it. I mean, it always amazed me that this was one of the greatest human resources in the world, the Rhodes Scholar Alumni community, but the Rhodes Trust was doing nothing with it.  

Fortunately, my class was very close, starting with our sailing venture, and we’ve held-, [1:20:00] at this time, 57 years out - we’ve had about 15 reunions. So, at first, we had them every five years. Now, as we’re getting a little bit older, we have them every two years. So, my class is very close. We’ve always been close.  

Then, of course, the Rhodes Trust went through a financial crisis and things changed. Now, the Trust does a lot of fundraising. I think they do a lot more alumni outreach, and Rhodes House is much more a centre now than it was when I was there. 

I mean, in my time, the idea of a Character, Service and Leadership Programme would have been unheard of, the idea that you would have orientation for two weeks.  

In my time, you got in a bus at Southampton from the ship, raining cats and dogs, they dropped you off at your college, and that was it.  

I was ready to get started with my studies. I was very excited. The system at that time was, you would get little notes.  

You had a cubbyhole and these little notes would appear in your cubbyhole, and they said, ‘Well, you’ll be hearing from your tutors soon,’ and it was, like, three days, four days. I hadn’t heard from anybody.  

So, I sent the Warden a note and I said, ‘Can I come to see you?’ I went to see him and I said, ‘Well, I haven’t heard from anybody yet. Should I reach out to them?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, I think that would be a little pushy.’ Then, the next day, I did hear.  

But now, I think the Scholars go, have two weeks of orientation, which I think is great, but we just didn’t have anything like that. And so, for many years, my activities centred around my class, and also, I would go every ten years to the Rhodes reunion in Oxford.  

I’ve gone to every single one of them, since 1983, and, in 2003, there were two of them, one in South Africa and one in England. I went to both of those, which were great.  

But it just so happens that at the time that the Rhodes Trust was gearing up to reach out to Alumni, I had attended this DCI programme at Stanford, the pillars of which are lifelong learning and intergenerational cooperation. So, really, when you think about it, that’s what Rhodes should be: lifelong learning and intergenerational cooperation.  

So, I decided, after, you know. 54 years, that I wanted to be in the AARS.  I have a classmate who is a very good writer, and he wrote a ten-page single-spaced nomination for me. And I had an interview, during which I just kept saying, ‘Lifelong learning and intergenerational cooperation.’ And at that time, I think Warden Elizabeth Kiss was relatively new and she was saying the same thing.  

So, everything came together at once, and I was elected. I’m now a member of the board. 

And then, sort of, a funny story. I had one idea. When I was at Oxford, there was a speakers’ bureau. The US Embassy organised the speakers’ bureau of Rhodes Scholars. If you signed up for it, then they would send you around to British private schools to speak – like, high schools.  

I was a member of that speakers’ bureau, and I had some very interesting experiences going around and speaking in England.  I thought that AARS should have the same thing, and that was my one goal, to do a speakers’ bureau, and now, we have one. If you go on the AARS website, you can find a speaker, and it’s been very useful for us.  

Also, you have to be on an AARS committee if you are a board member. I was on the reunion and events committee, and the chair of the committee was a young woman. I think she was maybe 26 at the time, or 27. So, she was the chair of the committee. I was a member of the committee.  

In my way of thinking, she’s my boss, and that initially rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. Here I am, you know, I’m old, I’m experienced, etc., and my boss is this 26-year-old young woman.  

And then I thought to myself, ‘Well, either you believe in intergenerational cooperation or not, but, if you believe in it, then you can have a 26-year-old boss. There’s nothing wrong with that.  

And in fact, she knows a lot of things that I don’t know. She knows how the world works now, how people look at it now.’  

So, anyway, I was a very good member of the committee. I made myself very useful to the chair. We had a nice relationship.  

And then, because she was in her 20s, she had all sorts of things going on: she was getting married, and she was getting her PhD, and I think she had a sick member of her family, etc.  

One day, I got an email from her saying, ‘Oh, I have to resign as head of the committee.’ So, I called her up – I liked her – I said, ‘Oh, that’s terrible. You’ve done a great job. I wish you well.’  

And she said, ‘Oh, by the way, I recommended you as the next chairman.’ I’d been such a loyal employee. So, I said, ‘No, really, I’m not looking for that. I don’t want to do that.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you have to talk to the officers.’  

I talked to them, and they persuaded me to do it. I said, ‘It really should be a younger person.’ They said, ‘Oh, no, no, we want age diversity.’ So, how can I argue against age diversity. That’s my own argument.  

So, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ even though I was quite reluctant.  

Of course, it’s the opposite of litigation. You have to get people to cooperate with you. You have to pick up the phone, persuade people to do things. Of course, if you have the power of the Rhodes Scholarship behind you, it’s a little bit easier to do that, and most Rhodes Scholars do want to give back, so, it’s actually a pretty easy job. And then, you get to meet a lot of people, and we put on some very interesting programmes.  

Ironically, although I was quite reluctant to do it, I’ve really enjoyed doing it, because the committee is an important part of the AARS.  

So, I’ve become active in management and, of course, in our interactions with the Rhodes Trust. We’re trying to establish more and more cooperation with the Rhodes Trust, and we’ve actually put on a couple of joint programmes with the Rhodes Trust and other national Rhodes Scholar associations. It’s been a very gratifying experience. 

JBG: You do a remarkable job, Ron.  

RK: Thank you.  

JBG: So, just a few more questions regarding your thoughts and reflections on the Scholarship, the first being, what impact would you say the Rhodes Scholarship had on your life? 

RK: I’ve had a number of different jobs, and they were all quite different. And so, it enabled me to do that and really, it enabled me to just be myself, because it’s such a good credential. 

It’s really, sort of, a self-validating credential, so that you don’t have to cater to other people. Basically, most people will defer to you just because you are a Rhodes Scholar. Very important is the ability to just be yourself - ‘To thine own self be true’ is a wonderful blessing.  

JBG: Lovely. We just celebrated the 120th anniversary of the Scholarship last year, so, part of the hope for this project is to celebrate the history of the Scholarship, but it’s also a really natural opportunity to look ahead to the next chapter of the Rhodes Scholarships, and I’m curious to know what your hopes for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship might be. 

RK: Well, it’s still the most prestigious scholarship in the world. So, I hope that will continue.  

And we’ve had very good Wardens, we’ve had a very good board, and I have no reason to doubt [1:30:00] their leadership ability. There’s a lot more scholarship competition out there now than there was before.  

I know there are some people who want the Trust to do this or want the Trust to do that. I’m very happy to leave the management of the Trust in the good hands of the people that are managing it now, so long as it continues to be the most prestigious scholarship in the world.  

I now know that there are other scholarships and fellowships that are administered by the Rhodes Trust. You know, those, quite frankly, don’t mean very much to me, and I hope that they’re not a distraction from the main focus of the Rhodes Trust, which should be the Rhodes Scholarships.  

But I think the Wardens that I’ve known have all been fantastic. Elizabeth Kiss has been fantastic, and I wish her well. I have no reason to think that it will not continue to be the most prestigious scholarship. 

JBG: I’m curious if you have any advice or words of wisdom that you would offer either the Rhodes Scholars of today or, perhaps, the Rhodes Scholars of tomorrow.  

RK: Well, I know a lot more about the Rhodes Scholarship now. I have a lot more perspective about it than I did when I was 22 years old. As I said, I was clueless when I was young. 

When I came to Oxford, I was probably even more clueless. But I was very well grounded. You know, I knew where I came from and I took it step by step, and I realised that I couldn’t do everything and I couldn’t know everything. I just had to be myself.  

So, that’s what I would advise Rhodes Scholars of today. It’s impossible to comprehend Oxford. It’s impossible to comprehend the Rhodes Trust. You just have to take it one step at a time.  

And then, when you’re 79 years old, like I am, you will have a much better understanding, a much better perspective. For some things, it will be too late, of course. For other things, you can still help going forward, but no young person could possibly comprehend the breadth and depth of this experience at a 750-year old institution. 

JBG: Well, I’m so grateful to you, Ron, for your partnership, in helping us to launch the oral history project and your wonderful friendship with the Scholarships, and I would love to invite if there’s anything else you’d like to share before we close. 

RK: Well, thank you for the opportunity. I think you’ve done a great job, and I look forward to seeing the result. I don’t know exactly where this interview fits in, but it can’t be bad. You know, it’s history, it’s facts, it’s my experience over a slice of time, but I’m sure when you have enough of these things, you’ll see patterns will start to emerge. 

JBG: Wonderful. I will stop our recording there. 

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