Chancellor Hardin, dressed in chancellor academic robes, hands his son Clifford Jr. his diploma. Clifford Jr. graduated while Hardin served as chancellor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Chancellor Hardin with mother and his wife, Martha Love Wood Hardin and an unidentified man.

                  In 1954, the University of Nebraska sought to replace its chancellor, Reuben Gustavson. Because the search was consistently attacked by the press, this proved to be extremely difficult. Things grew so tense that the University Board of Regents chose to move their interviews to Chicago. After making the short list, Clifford Hardin was ushered into a Chicago hotel secretly where his interview was conducted in the regents’ rooms. Once finished, Hardin had to exit the hotel through the fire escape and pass through a back alley to avoid being seen. According to a board member, they soon discovered their rooms were bugged and had to find a new location, “Perhaps the newspaper people had seen too many movies” (Knoll 120). In April, Hardin was offered the chancellorship, but after ten days of deliberation, he declined, saying he enjoyed his place at Michigan State College. The interview committee refused to accept this answer and traveled to Michigan to convince Hardin to take the job. On May 7, 1954, Clifford Morris Hardin became the new chancellor for the University of Nebraska.

                At the beginning of his chancellorship, Hardin sought to provide the faculty with a higher salary and to expand the physical campus. Hardin explained his philosophy for higher education centered on teachers and research, “for a university to fully meet its obligation to society, it must have good teachers. I am mentioning teaching as the number one qualification because I believe that it is the heart and soul of a university. [Research] is the well-spring from which new knowledge is born. It gives bloom to our teaching and substance to our total program. I want…the University of Nebraska to be a center for research” (Sawyer 170). Well-liked by the faculty, Hardin “taught us to think big about the future of the University” (Knoll 120).

Sources

     Knoll, Robert E. Prairie University: A History of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Print.

     Sawyer, McLaran R. Centennial History of The University of Nebraska: The Modern University 1920-1969. Lincoln: Centennial Press, 1973. Print.