Commencement Spotlight: The Honorable Marc Nathanson, MA `69

I think it had a definite affect, because a lot was going on...but when Jane and I were still at the University of Denver, we were a small part of the anti-war, anti-Vietnam War sentiment. After we got married, we immediately moved to Santa Barbara when there was a presidential campaign going on. So, I volunteered to work---while I was in graduate school at UCSB---for Robert Kennedy, who was running for president. During the California primary, I was a part-time advance man for Kennedy for the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, to try to get people to support him. As you know, he won the California primary, but he was assassinated not too long after. That was a very traumatic experience.

At the same time, I was taking classes studying American politics, the history of American politics, and what was going on in Europe and in other parts of the world. And so this all came into focus....In 1969, there was a lot of turmoil going on in the world. This was all very intellectually exciting -- not just from a theoretical point of view, but to actually go in and talk to voters and other people there really helped me focus on politics and the change that politics can make in our society.

My wife got pregnant three months after we were married, when we were in Santa Barbara. She got pregnant with our daughter Nicole, who was later born in Chicago. But the pregnancy occurred while we were living in Santa Barbara, so I decided to double up on my course load because I had to support three people instead of two.

So I doubled up so I could complete the coursework. I also had to be a teaching assistant, which was part of the fellowship that I received from the National Science Foundation while I was at UCSB. I could write my thesis while I was in Chicago and send it back to my professors, Dr. Turner and the other advisors in the UCSB Political Science Department. I was there a year and several months, living in Santa Barbara. I finished my coursework, and I submitted my thesis...and it was accepted the following year.

There's an unspoken responsibility that comes with the privilege of finishing graduate school and going out into what is a very complex global arena. Some of this I'm going to discuss in the Commencement address, where I'm going to tell some stories that I think have lessons for those graduate students going out into the workplace or going on to work in government service or in the private sector.

I think what really critical--and I really focused on this while I was at UCSB at the time--was that the Political Science Department was affiliated with the Center for the Democratic Institutions...which no longer exists. At the time, it was a think tank based in Santa Barbara and later affiliated with UCSB. Graduate students at UCSB could get credit for attending seminars there. They were very interesting. There were intellectuals from all over the country. The Center, developed by Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago originally, was run by Harry Ashmore. We had great exposure as graduate students to what was going on, not just in the classroom, but also at this think tank, right here in Santa Barbara.

It was a very exciting time and taught me that I wanted to someday be more involved in government, not just in business. Unfortunately, as I indicated, I had to support a growing family---so I had to go out and get a job. But I loved the stimulation I got in graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

I was born in Los Angeles, but my parents moved away from Los Angeles six months later. World War II had ended, and they returned to their home in Minneapolis, where they were both raised, and they both went to the University of Minnesota. When I was four years old, they moved the family--my brother, my sister, my parents--to Chicago. They thought they were moving to the warm climate, going from Minneapolis to Chicago. (laughs) I'm not quite sure that's true.

But when I got to Santa Barbara, I thought, "this is Paradise." The campus was so beautiful...and the location of the campus was to me just breathtaking. My favorite place on campus was walking on the beach, right near campus, right there below the university. We didn't have anything like that in Minneapolis or Chicago where I had spent most of my life up to then...even though I was born in California.

I loved it.

When I was an undergraduate, you could apply for a National Science Foundation Fellowship. The federal government gave scholarships. You had to have recommendations from teachers and you obviously had to have good grades...particularly in the area that you were studying. They actually gave you choices of schools based on criteria that they had, where you could study your intended majors. In my case, it was political science. When you got one of these fellowships, you automatically chose the university you were going to and they paid for the tuition. You also had to be a T.A. and do some other things.

It was a very good fellowship, and it actually went through to a PhD. But, as I said, my wife was pregnant, and I had to make a living. At one time, I was thinking of staying in Santa Barbara to go all the way and get my PhD in political science at UCSB. But I had to change my plans and pivot a little bit....to go back to Chicago and get a job after I finished my coursework and worked on my thesis. But, obviously having the fellowship was helpful...in particular, as I think master's students are challenged to find funding and fellowships.

Being in government for the last 25 years, I got involved with the Fulbright scholarships because this was all part of the United States Information Agency, which was then disbanded and merged into both the State Department and the United States Agency for Global Media. I was the first chair of that agency under Clinton when it became an independent agency. We dealt with the Fulbright scholarships and many other scholarships. I am a strong, strong believer in foreign students, foreign journalists, and other people coming to this country and getting degrees and/or advanced degrees here. Throughout the world, whenever I met people---even high school exchange students who had experience in the United States---they were much more pro-American than people who had never visited or had that experience. I not only believe that we are a nation of immigrants, which has made this country and state great...but in addition, I believe that people who went back to their home country after getting their master's or PhD, went back with a very positive attitude toward the United States and the academic lessons that they received here. I've been a strong believer and supporter of that throughout my life.

You find that people throughout the world---whether we're talking about in the Philippines or in Norway or anywhere else in the world---are human beings with interesting stories and the same concerns as all of us have about family and so forth.

The world is global. One of the things I think is much different today for graduate students than in 1968 and 1969, when I was getting my degree, is today everything is global. And so students who understand other countries, other cultures, who speak other languages...I think that is a real plus, whether they're going into the job market in business or academia or in government. I encourage everyone to have those experiences.

Jane and I had a very interesting conversation about students in graduate school today in Santa Barbara, and how the university deals with AI and all of the new technology. I considered my business career to be in technology, because when I started in the cable TV industry, very few people had cable TV in the world, much less the United States...less than 5% of the country.

So as cable grew and offered more programming and more channels, and as we developed it in other countries---in India, in the Philippines, in England, in France, in Brazil---we found people throughout the world had an insatiable appetite for more education, for more learning, for more news, fmore sports, music...and, that's what we could provide. And of course, later, the internet with fiber optics became very important. So I was up to the philosophy of embracing the changes in technology, just as we saw with radio and then television, cable...and today, in streaming. This is all the evolution. Many young people don't even know what a hard-line telephone is anymore. They rely totally on their cell phones. To me, this is all fine. We should embrace these changes. But obviously, good scholarship and good communication skills are very important. Whether we're in the job market or we're talking about an employee of the State Department, writing skills are very important. I worry that if they rely too heavily on artificial intelligence that will get in the way of them learning to write themselves. Again, AI can be very helpful in research and learning things...but I think graduate students in particular must have good communication skills and must have the good ability to write.

On public speaking...you know, my mother, Evelyn, could not get up at a family dinner and give a toast. She was too nervous. My father, on the other hand, who was an advertising man, could speak on any subject at any time in a very clever way. I was never afraid of public speaking. In high school at Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illinois, I would always emcee all the dances, and get involved in student politics, etc....So I was never hesitant or frightened or had stage fright about public speaking. However, I must admit, in eighth grade I played Freddy in My Fair Lady, which was a singing role...and I was off-key the whole time...and my mother laughed the whole time....I never had another singing part the rest of my life. 

Before UCSB and before I was married, to Jane, I had worked, as a camp counselor. Then one summer, while I was an undergraduate in college, I worked in San Diego for a CBS TV station, where I had gotten an internship in the sales department. In addition to that, I had worked one summer in Wisconsin and in Minnesota selling cable TV door-to-door. If you want to learn about marketing---even though I don't think we do it very much anymore in this country, but we used to do it a lot, particularly in smaller towns--go knock on strangers doors and try to sell them something. You learn a lot about marketing and the likes and the dislikes of people when you try to sell them something...that was a very good summer experience for me,

In hindsight, I wish I'd stayed in Santa Barbara all my life. We do have a home in Santa Barbara, and we find it really to be the ideal place to live...but now we're old. Maybe I wouldn't have felt that way at 22 or 23 years old. The advice that I would give myself back then would be to really explore areas and interests that you don't typically think of. The more exposure to professors and subjects outside of your normal interests makes you well-rounded...and more interesting.

Santa Barbara had all kinds of opportunities when I was there, which certainly was not the case in Denver or when I was growing up in Chicago. I also got very interested in the environment, because there was a lot of issues in Santa Barbara during that time with the oil wells that really got my interest...which has carried through since that time, particularly about clean oceans, and dealing with plastics and other issues. 

You need to get those exposures, you need to attend those lectures, you need to be involved in things that you're interested in...and if you're not, try something else. But don't be afraid to try something because that's not in your major ot area of study. Do original research, exchange with other students, and network...this is really very important. And I wish I had done more of that when I was in Santa Barbara, if I could talk to Marc Nathanson back in those days.