Wilson reflects on his subsequent roles in California government, including service on the first Coastal Zone Conservation Commission and the State Board of Forestry, as well as the presidency of the Planning and Conservation League. In 1991, he was appointed director of the Department of Forestry in the Pete Wilson administration, where he reorganized the fire fighting and prevention programs and succeeded in incorporating a sustained yield plan into the department’s regulatory process. His focus on the working landscape and his vision of the sustainable forest as a metaphor for a sustainable society are central themes in Wilson’s life and work.

The final interview in the oral history tells the story of Wilson’s whistle-blower lawsuit against Charles Hurwitz of Maxxam Corporation, who had acquired ancient redwood forests in a hostile take-over of the historic Pacific Lumber Company. As director of the Department of Forestry, Wilson suspected fraud in Hurwitz’s sustained yield plan, filed as part of the notorious Headwaters agreement. His oral history tells how his suspicions were substantiated, and the course and outcome of the lawsuit, which resulted in an out-of-court settlement in 2009.

An oral history retrospective on Koshland’s final eight years preceding his death in 2008 is in progress. Interviews with his second wife Yvonne and several colleagues on and off campus will document his advisory role to two Berkeley chancellors, his funding and planning of the Marian Koshland Science Museum in Washington, D.C., and his philanthropy and honors.

The question of how much national debt the United States could bear was among the most important issues dividing national politics from 1985 to 2000. After reaching a postwar historic low at the end of the Carter Administration in 1981, the United States national debt skyrocketed from just over 30% to nearly 70% of the GNP during the twelve years of Presidential administrations of Reagan and Bush I. During his eight years in office, President Clinton and his advisors engineered a historic turnaround. By the end of his administration, national debt was significantly reduced, the economy was booming, with prosperity spreading to groups and regions long side-lined from the benefits of a dynamic American economy. George W. Bush’s administration returned to the pro-debt policies of earlier Republican administrations. The initial project of Shorenstein Program in Politics, Policy, and Values will explore the Clinton policy of debt reduction including the strategies by which it was successfully enacted and the volatile international context in which it was engineered. A primary focus of interviews will be to explore which Clinton administration policies succeeded when and why, which were less successful and why, but, equally importantly, why they generated intense partisan opposition, as well as disagreement within the Democratic Party.

Interviewing begins this spring. In October 2011, a public symposium will present and analyze important lessons to be learned from interviews collected on the politics of debt. This event will be accompanied by on-line release of interview transcripts. Additional research topics under the sponsorship of the Shorenstein Program in Politics, Policy, and Values will be announced over the coming months. This new ROHO initiative has been made possible through the generous support of Walter H. Shorenstein.

"I'm grateful to UC Berkeley and Bancroft Library for all their hard work in producing an exceptional manuscript from my oral history. With their help, I've had a chance to revisit many fond memories from a lifetime of challenges and accomplishments."
—Walter H. Shorenstein        Read Walter H. Shorenstein: An Oral History