Ron Katz

Born in 1945 in St. Louis, Missouri, Ron Katz attended New York University before going to Oxford to read for a second undergraduate degree in PPE (philosophy, politics and economics). After Oxford, he went to Harvard Law School and then worked in Indonesia as an International Legal Center Fellow, in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, in the U.S. Department of State and in the private practice of law. In private practice, Katz tried cases in antitrust law and intellectual property law, later moving into sports law. After retirement, he became a Fellow of the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute and then began to write and publish mystery stories about the ‘Sleuthing Silvers’, a baby-boomer detective couple. Katz has been a generous supporter of the Rhodes Scholarship and is an active member of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars (AARS). This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 12 September 2024.  

‘A lot of positive reinforcement’ 

Growing up, there were quite few people telling me I was smart. My sister was eight years older than me, and my parents didn’t think they could have any more children, so when I came along, I would say I got more than my share of unqualified love, which was very good. 

My educational experience also gave me a lot of positive reinforcement. I was in the fast reading group and the smart classes, and then the enrichment class. I liked doing well in school. I liked having a lot of friends. I liked playing sports. I was a very typical Midwesterner.  

I was pretty clueless about the college application process. I had worked for my dad since I was 14, and my parents just assumed I would go to Washington University, which was our local school, and that I would work my way through. It’s a good school, but the one thing I knew absolutely was that I wanted to go East to college, I wanted to go to a college that had a campus and I wanted to go to a college that was co-ed. But I was in a real pickle, because my family fell into the category where they were too poor to send me to college but too rich for me to qualify for a scholarship.  

On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship 

Luckily for me, NYU was looking to boost its reputation, and it was being run at that time by a very distinguished Rhodes Scholar named Jim Hester (California & Pembroke 1947). He figured out that the thing to do was go and find really good students and offer them a full scholarship regardless of need.  

Well, I was a desirable candidate, and NYU gave me what they called a University Scholarship. Going there was probably the most significant decision of my life. I was never really intimidated by New York, and the programme for University Scholars was so enriching. I remember the first play I went to see was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf on Broadway. That was quite an eye-opener! 

Although I’d heard of the Rhodes Scholarships, it would never have occurred to me to apply. But I was called into the dean’s office at the beginning of my senior year and told, ‘President Hester has decided NYU should have a Rhodes Scholar and it should be you.’  

I was a very competitive person, and at the interviews, I said to myself, ‘Well, it’s a competition, just like any competition. Why shouldn’t I win?’ When I rang my dad and told him, ‘Well, I made it,’ he said, ‘I knew it. Ronald Stanley Katz. R.S. Katz. Rhodes Scholar Katz. I knew it when I named you.’

‘I was not going to England to meet more Americans’ 

At that time, the Rhodes Scholars from the U.S. would sail over to England together. I was actually put on the sailing committee, along with two guys from Princeton When I found out that the ship they used always put the Rhodes Scholars in second class, I didn’t know any better, and I just asked all the companies we saw why we couldn’t be in first class. Long story short, we took the SS United States, and they gave us the run of the ship.  

At Oxford, there were two kinds of American Rhodes Scholars: the ones who mainly associated with other American Rhodes Scholars, and the ones who mainly associated with non-Rhodes Scholars. I was one of the latter. I was not going to England to meet more Americans. My best friends were a Tanzanian fellow and a French Canadian fellow, both of whom were reading PPE, like me.  

I rowed for Balliol, and rowing felt quite exotic for me. My philosophy tutor, Tony Kenny, asked a group of us to revive the college’s philosophical society, the Jowett Society. We were not the best philosophy students in the world, but attendance had dropped off, and he thought we might have some business acumen.  

Oxford had superstar philosophy professors, so we went to Blackwell’s the publisher and asked whether they would publish the society’s debates if we got the top professors to contribute. They agreed, and the professors agreed too, or most of them did.  

The very best of them, R.M. Hare, wouldn’t agree to debate another philosopher, because he thought it was against the ideals of the Jowett Society. He would only debate a student. But he was so terrifyingly brilliant that I couldn’t find anyone who would agree to do it.  

So, I had to be the sacrificial lamb. Huge numbers of people came to watch the debate. I think it was a bit like going to a public hanging. But I got through it, and that resulted in my first and last published philosophical paper.  

‘I was fortunate to have a varied career’ 

All through NYU and Oxford, I had never swerved from my goal, which was to become a lawyer, and specifically, to go to Harvard Law School. The experience there was so different from Oxford. I found it to be very impersonal, with one exception, which is that I met my wife there. She was a classmate of mine, and we actually got married on graduation day instead of going to our graduation.  

We got an International Legal Center Fellowship and went to live and work in Indonesia for two years, in Bandung, which was a fabulous experience.  

Back in the US, at the State Department, I found myself working on questions around the law of the sea, which was something my boss in Indonesia had been working to change. We made a lot of progress on reaching agreement about sharing deep seabed resources, but when the Reagan administration came in, that all fell away.  

A treaty does exist, and a court in Jamaica deals with seabed issues, but the US never signed. It could have been the first example of international economic enterprise, but it didn’t work out that way. 

Then my wife and I moved to California so that she could be closer to her family, and I went into private practice. I was recruited straight into the upper echelons of a big law firm, which was unheard of at that time, but they were working on an antitrust case very similar to another I had worked on at the Justice Department.  

I spent the next 43 years in the private practice of law, and in the last ten to fifteen years, I was lucky enough to get involved in sports law.  

I love sports, and I had the opportunity to represent a class of retired baseball players. They didn’t have pensions, and it turned out that Major League Baseball was using their images without permission and without paying them.  

I took it on as a class action, and we won. That gave me a name, and other athletes started to seek me out.  

All through my time in practice, I’d researched and written legal articles as well. Then, when I retired and my wife and I went into the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute, I took a class in the history of the mystery novel.  

I had this idea about writing one, and I was inspired by the young detective couple in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. I decided to update that with a baby boomer couple.  

The first story was called, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Reading Glasses,’ and now I’ve published 20 stories and I’ve got a very loyal fan base. I’m having a lot of fun doing it and I’ve even written a TV pilot script.  

‘Just take it one step at a time’ 

The Rhodes is still the most prestigious scholarship in the world. I have every reason to think that will continue.  

For me, the Scholarship enabled me to just be myself, because it’s such a good credential. It means you don’t have to cater to other people, and ‘To thine own self be true’ is a wonderful blessing.  

When I came to Oxford, I was clueless, but I was very well grounded. I knew where I came from, and I took it step by step. I realised I couldn’t do everything.  

That’s what I would advise Rhodes Scholars of today. At age 22, it’s impossible to comprehend Oxford. It’s impossible to comprehend the Rhodes Trust. No one could possibly comprehend the breadth and depth of this experience. You just have to take it one step at a time, and you just have to be yourself.