Republican, That Is : Pepperdine: Party School by the Shore

The past president of Pepperdine University likes to take note of two campus landmarks: the place where U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist played tennis and the evergreen planted by President Reagan. The first, he says, is known as the Supreme Court. The second is the Reagan Bush.

Those designations are made in jest, but Howard A. White, the grandfatherly historian who tells the tale, also has plenty of serious stories to repeat about Reagan Administration connections to Pepperdine.

Rehnquist, for example, found out about his confirmation as chief justice while he was teaching law students there; the law school dean passed him a note with the news of the Senate’s vote. Arthur Laffer, creator of the “Laffer Curve” that came to symbolize Reaganomics, spent two years at Pepperdine recently before leaving to go into business.

Draws Big GOP Speakers

The school regularly draws big Republican speakers, including First Lady Nancy Reagan, economic adviser Beryl Sprinkel, who announced Friday that he will resign as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in November, and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a Reagan appointee, is scheduled for December.

And among the donors who give Pepperdine $1,000 a year are Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, former White House aide Lyn Nofziger and Ronald Reagan himself.

Pepperdine has not attained the academic luster of a Stanford, a UC Berkeley or a UCLA--a status that its administrators crave. But the Christian school in the Malibu Hills, which is marking its 50th anniversary this weekend with a variety of celebrations and ceremonies, is becoming known for more than its production of Olympic water polo players and its prohibitions of on-campus drinking and dancing.

Transformed Itself

In less than two decades, Pepperdine has transformed itself from an obscure South-Central Los Angeles college of 1,500 to a thriving seaside university with 2,500 students and satellite schools pushing total enrollment past 6,000.

There is little dispute that the changes are directly related to administrators’ solid ties to the Republican Party in general and the Reagan Administration in particular--ties that are at least as strong as the school’s links with the Churches of Christ. The rise of Pepperdine parallels the rise to national power of the California Republicans first courted by college officials in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when other campuses were engulfed in turmoil over the Vietnam War and an assortment of radical causes.

“Pepperdine didn’t change its politics,” said William Banowsky, who was university president in the 1970s. “Its politics just became less disreputable.”

But the pervasive Republican atmosphere has become a matter of controversy on campus as well as off. Dissident faculty and students and even some high-ranking administrators question the wisdom of such a political tilt at a school with ambitions for national prestige.

“Whatever a student’s tentative conclusions about politics, they need to be challenged,” said Paul Randolph, a history professor who describes himself as a moderate Democrat. “But here, one of the limiting factors is that the student who comes from a staunchly conservative background will probably escape that challenge.”

Active in GOP Circles

Many of Pepperdine’s administrators have been active in Republican circles, either before or during their tenure at the school. They range from conservative to moderate.

Banowsky, for example, was appointed by then-Gov. Reagan to be Republican National Committeeman for California. He also conducted high-profile flirtations with candidacies for Congress and governor. John T. McCarty, who died in 1985, was a director of the American Conservative Union and Pepperdine’s vice president for development. Michael F. Adams, vice president for university affairs, is a former Senate aide to Howard H. Baker Jr., now Reagan’s chief of staff. Former President Gerald R. Ford is an active member of the Board of Regents.

Top university officials are also involved in efforts to nurture a new generation of traditionalists. Chancellor Charles B. Runnels organizes “Youth Citizenship Seminars” for high school juniors that feature big-name conservatives such as commentator Bruce Herschensohn and singer Pat Boone. Regent Margaret Martin Brock, whose name adorns the university president’s house, is an important Republican fund-raiser. She regularly donates hundreds of tickets for Pepperdine students to attend high-powered Republican affairs.

The resulting network of connections has been important in attracting the big-name speakers, who in turn have lured donors to fuel Pepperdine’s advance. “Republicans either have got more money or are more willing to give it away,” ex-President White said.

There is occasional contact with Democrats. Mayor Tom Bradley, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and City Atty. James Hahn have all spoken on campus. Pepperdine students have served academic internships in the Democratic offices of Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, state Sen. Gary K. Hart, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally of Compton. “I think it would be a mistake to characterize Pepperdine as a right-wing university,” said Norman Cousins, a university advisory board member and former editor of the liberal Saturday Review.

The Republican presence, however, is clearly overwhelming. “You get six speakers that would be notably conservative for every one that’s the other way,” Randolph said. Most of the faculty is Republican, he said, though the school has no political litmus test in hiring.

Teachers are encouraged to be role models, and many discuss politics and current affairs with their students outside of class. But, according to Randolph, most of the Democratic professors keep quiet about their political feelings. “We have too many closet Democrats,” he said. “Once in a while, a (colleague) will say, ‘I’m a Democrat.’ I’d say: ‘You’ve been here five years. I never would have suspected.’ ”

Need for More Discussion

Said Randolph: “I feel the need for a two-party system, the need for much more discussion than we have on this campus.” Another professor, who requested anonymity, added: “If a university is a place for a free interchange of ideas, why would you always want to stack the deck in a particular direction? And the answer is, if you didn’t, you would upset these conservative donors.”

University administrators are quick to say that Pepperdine as an institution is politically nonpartisan. They say they have pledged to instill values in the students, and they are proud that Pepperdine is different from many American colleges in that respect. But they say they limit the school’s official endorsement to the Judeo-Christian tradition and the free-enterprise system.

When it comes to speakers, said David Davenport, Pepperdine’s president since 1985, “it’s not a conscious decision to exclude” Democrats.

“But we don’t have the quick and immediate entree to some people that we have with others,” he added. Davenport, 36, worked for Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and in the Nixon White House while he was in college. He said he is not involved with politics now.

“I have been pretty conscious about being balanced politically,” he said, in part because “I don’t think you work effectively in Sacramento walking down just one side of the aisle” and in part because “I am concerned about our teaching role.”

Some faculty Democrats back that assessment. “He’s obviously Republican, but he doesn’t make that a big-ticket item in his relationship with you,” political science Prof. Stanley W. Moore said.

Indeed, Tom Hayden, a liberal Democrat who represents Pepperdine’s Malibu district and chairs the Assembly Higher Education Subcommittee, says Davenport has talked with him several times about the need to expose the university community to many points of view.

Trying to Strike Balance

“My sense is that he is trying to strike a balance between their conservative roots and the openness that is necessary in a university setting,” Hayden said. “He is trying to tread a line between ideology on the one hand and their purpose on the other, between their contributors and their purpose.”

But Davenport said he is also committed to preserving Pepperdine’s “original base, which gives us many natural advantages.” The high-wire act, he added, “is a challenge, of course.”

In 1985, for example, Davenport was asked by some donors why the school was sponsoring a conference of Soviet and American writers. “Fortunately, President Reagan was getting ready for a summit with the Soviets,” Davenport said. “We were able to have a conservative rationale for that one.”

And given the school’s reputation, Davenport said, liberals and Democrats approached for contributions or speaking engagements are often surprised and wary.

Such responses mirror the reaction in the late 1960s to solicitations of support from liberal philanthropists for Pepperdine’s financially troubled South-Central campus. A sociology professor said at the time that most of those solicited wondered if Pepperdine “can blow two tunes out of the same trumpet.” The Los Angeles facility was sold to an Inglewood church in 1981.

Democratic observers think even-handedness is a long way off. “I spent four years being told I was a radical protester,” said Ernie Mantes, an admirer of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). As president last year of the school’s Young Democrats Club, Mantes led four active members.

To Hayden, Pepperdine continues to be “a different kind of university. They’re not an open university in the full sense, which is troubling to me. At best, they’re ‘twixt and ‘tween.”

What’s the Fuss About?

Others, though, wonder what the fuss is about. “What about the liberal influence in (the rest of) academia?” asked Clark Bowers, who graduated from Pepperdine last year. Bowers said he gave up a basketball scholarship at Biola University in La Mirada and transferred when he heard that Laffer had been hired at Pepperdine.

“Pepperdine is one of the few schools that actually has a few conservatives,” Bowers said. “I’m interested in foreign policy, in the Soviet threat. But at Biola, everything I learned was on my own. All I ever heard was on the other side.”

Pepperdine’s Republican tradition began with its founder. George Pepperdine, head of Western Auto Supply, established the college at 79th Street and Vermont Avenue in 1937 to train business leaders. He wanted the school to have close ties to the Churches of Christ, a predominantly Southern denomination that believes in a literal acceptance of the Bible. But to prevent church domination of the school, he determined not to ask the sect for donations.

Pepperdine was no Democrat. Over the years, he “liked Barry Goldwater. He liked Ronald Reagan,” said M. Norvel Young, the school’s chancellor emeritus, who was a close friend of Pepperdine’s.

By 1957, when Pepperdine was no longer able to finance the school himself, it seemed natural to turn to political conservatives who liked the combination of a big-business orientation and a religious, but not too religious, backdrop.

A crucial backer was wealthy businessman Frank Seaver. Young recalled asking him in the mid-’60s to donate $1,000 to make a film for students comparing democracy with Communism. “He smiled and wrote a check for $7,500,” Young said.

After the Watts riots near campus in 1965, talk intensified about expanding elsewhere. Seaver’s widow, Blanche, made the project possible by donating land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula that could be sold to raise the money to build on a site acquired in 1969: a rugged hillside setting overlooking the Pacific in Malibu. At the dedication ceremonies of the new flagship campus, Blanche Seaver would urge students in attendance to join the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth group.

Then-Gov. Reagan was the keynote speaker at a gala dinner announcing plans for the Malibu campus. There was not much competition for his presence from other colleges. Reagan was being vilified on the Berkeley campus at the time. Protests against the Vietnam War were sweeping the nation’s universities.

Wanted to Honor Reagan

“We didn’t ask him out of cynical disregard,” said Howard White. “Most of us pretty well approved of his policies and wanted to honor him.”

Reagan’s presence drew scores of his supporters. One was Margaret Brock. She did not know much about Pepperdine, and a rainstorm almost persuaded her not to go to the event. “But the Century Plaza was near home ,and I did want to hear the governor,” she said.

She was impressed with what she saw and readily agreed to Banowsky’s request that she ask then-Sen. George Murphy to speak at the coming dedication. Soon Brock was one of Pepperdine’s most generous contributors and ardent backers. She is involved with other Southern California schools, but “Pepperdine is my favorite,” she said.

In addition to her gift of a house for the university president, Brock finances several $2,500 grants for law students each year. “I doubt if there are many liberals applying for the Brock scholarship,” said one recipient, third-year student Ted Weggeland.

Less conservative Republicans also have been drawn to Pepperdine. When Leonard Firestone, President Gerald Ford’s ambassador to Belgium, supported Tom Bradley for mayor over Sam Yorty, “I told (him) that he could help moderate the Pepperdine image and at the same time help moderate his reputation with some of the others in the party,” recalled Banowsky, who is now a broadcasting executive in Dallas. The result was Pepperdine’s Firestone Fieldhouse.

Still, the school had its troubles in the 1970s. The rapid pace of construction on the Malibu campus drained Pepperdine’s coffers. Banowsky sometimes sat up suddenly in bed in the middle of the night, wondering how the school would meet its next payroll. The faculty became enraged by revelations of a $247,000 trust fund set aside for five top administrators. Young, then chancellor, was convicted of drunk driving in an accident on Pacific Coast Highway that killed two elderly women. He said he had been worried about the costs and pressures associated with a scheduled visit to campus by President Ford--a coup that had been 18 months in the planning.

Pepperdine made headlines only once for academics in those years, and those too were embarrassing: The leader of a university-sponsored expedition said her group had discovered the lost continent of Atlantis off the southwest coast of Spain but later acknowledged that she had no evidence to back her claim.

But Pepperdine recovered.

After Reagan became President, the pace of big-name appearances accelerated. Conservative columnist George F. Will addressed a dinner for major contributors. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor judged a moot court competition at the law school.

“We raised more money than we had ever dreamed we could,” said White, who became Pepperdine’s president after Banowsky left for the University of Oklahoma.

That money brought the school from the bottom 20% in a 1975 survey of faculty salaries at 1,900 colleges to the top 20% in 1981, a rank that has been maintained. Two business professors have received the school’s first Fulbright Fellowships.

Applications have more than doubled since 1975. The caliber of the students, as measured by grades and test scores, has gone from mediocre to above average.

Most of those students, whose parents are attracted to the school’s conservative reputation, have a solidly Republican background. A 1984 poll of students showed 85% favoring Reagan over Walter F. Mondale in that year’s election. And a psychology class last year listing deviant traits included thief, drug abuser . . . and Democrat.

Many of them say they don’t particularly mind that most people on campus share a Republican outlook.

“There are a lot of very conservative people that I associate with, but then I’m very conservative myself,” said Allen Denver, a 20-year-old junior from Hanford. “We don’t really keep up with political issues here.”

Falls on Republican Side

Another junior, Shawn Cowles, said the atmosphere has helped him find himself politically. “Not too long ago, I would have said I was in neither camp,” he said. “But here, I’m starting to realize I do fall on the Republican side.”

Cowles, a 20-year-old from Westminster, said he is a registered Independent. But he spent the summer reading and thinking about talks he had last year after class with his political science teacher, John Watson, who also is Pepperdine’s vice president for student affairs.

And this month, when Cowles returned to campus, Watson offered him one of the tickets Margaret Brock had donated to hear President Reagan speak at the Century Plaza Hotel. Howard White gave him a ride to the luncheon.

“I was on Cloud Nine going there,” Cowles said. “That grand, elegant ballroom, that really swank hotel. . . . We started eating and they announced President Reagan. There was a thunderous ovation.

“It made me feel real patriotic. We do live in a free society and myself, a college student, could hear our leader speak.”

This year, Cowles said, “I think I might join the Young Republicans.”