Remodeled UW-Superior library will carry on name of a very controversial college president.   6/25/2008 by Richard Thomas

(Photo: portrait of Jim Dan Hill by Doris Howard Long.)

On May 19, the University of Wisconsin-Superior closed the Jim Dan Hill Library for a $7.8 million renovation to begin in July. Library operations will move to Rothwell Student Center until September 2009, when the renovated facility reopens with the same name.

Ask campus students or faculty members, "Who’s Jim Dan Hill?" and many will be hard-pressed to answer, other than to say he was one of the college’s presidents. Less known is how intriguing and controversial he was.

Born in Texas in 1897, Hill served in the U.S. Navy during World War I.

He was a high school principal in Texas even before receiving his bachelor’s degree from Baylor University in 1922. He earned a master’s at the University of Colorado in 1924, then moved to Wisconsin and headed the social science department at River Falls State Teachers’ College. He earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota in 1931, the same year he became president of then-Superior State Teachers College.

During World War II, he left the campus, returned to the military to take part in the Normandy Beach assault, and served as colonel in command of the 190th field artillery regiment in Europe. After the war, he commanded the Wisconsin National Guard 32nd Infantry Division as a major general from 1946 to 1956.

Along the way, he authored several military history books: "Sea Dogs of the Sixties" (about the Civil War), "The Texas Navy," "The Minute Men in Peace and War," and "The Civil War Sketchbook." He also wrote a regular column for the Superior Evening Telegram.

In 1952, two area citizen groups attempted to recruit Hill to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by the notorious anti-Communist crusader from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. Though a Republican like McCarthy, Hill opposed the senator but declined to run.

He served as the college’s president until 1964, when it was called Wisconsin State University-Superior. During his years the campus grew from 18 to 65 acres and enrollment increased from 783 to 1,608.

“He ran the school as though it were a military encampment,” said Superior attorney Toby Marcovich, who served on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents during 1997-2005, including two terms as president.

Hill gained notoriety for firing teachers, often in the middle of the school year. In 1953 he fired a first grade instructor at McCaskill Laboratory School, a campus teacher training program. An upscale elementary school with a waiting list, parents reserved enrollment for their children years in advance.

Laura Bowden, a parent of one first grade student, later testified about the teacher being “ejected from the classroom in such an unpleasant manner…my son came home crying.”

A group of parents signed a letter supporting the teacher. The McCaskill director told Bowden that Hill had “ordered him to get this thing stopped.” Bowden later received a letter from Hill saying he “believed someone was being used as a cat’s paw.”

One of the parents who signed the letter was the wife of George Ball, an educational psychology professor at the college. Hill confronted Ball and demanded he get his wife’s signature off the petition. Ball responded he did not speak for his wife.

It was one of many minor clashes that led to Ball’s own termination in 1957. “George was a very good professor, but he wasn’t good at taking orders,” said Marcovich, who was a member of Ball’s legal defense team. “Hill figured that if George got away with it everyone would.”

Hill actually fired three professors simultaneously. One told the Telegram that four educators held his post in the last eight years. Ball, the only professor with tenure, appealed, resulting in a highly publicized case that brought out many Hill detractors.

Hill provided a lengthy list of charges against Ball, including inefficiency, failure to cooperate, conduct unbecoming, and incompatibility. Ball’s attorney, Carroll Metzner, called the charges “a conglomeration of little things…lengthy but based on innuendo, indirection and gossip.”

During Ball’s hearing before the state Board of Regents, Hill admitted the evidence was collected after the firing. One regent responded it made no difference when the evidence was collected as long as it was substantiated.

Hill also accused Ball, after his firing, of inciting students to post protest signs around campus, such as, “We want an educator not a dictator— Go home Texan.”

The regents also held a stormy hearing on the Superior campus to address long-simmering complaints against Hill. A reported 150 people packed into Crownhart Hall for an event marked by outbursts and calls for order.

A group called Citizens Committee for Academic Freedom (of which Bowden was secretary) brought up its own list of charges, including: a continuous level of unfounded charges brought by the president against faculty; teachers compelled to conform or retire with threats and intimidation; special privileges for favored faculty; and spying.

“The militarizing of our college is such that it no longer has the appearance of an institution of higher education but that of an army post,” stated the committee’s complaint.

The committee also said the graduate school was in jeopardy because of Hill’s failure to follow regulations, and also blamed him for an overall steep drop in enrollment.

To no one’s surprise the regents stood by Hill. They took only one hour to reach their decision supporting Ball’s dismissal, and in turn dismissed the charges against Hill as “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

The regents even put two professors who testified in Ball’s favor on academic probation and denied them a pay raise along with the rest of the faculty. One of the professors, Jay McKee, testified, “This campus is filled with fear…Faculty members have said to us, ‘Why not cooperate 100 percent? It’s profitable.’”

Ball appealed to the circuit court, which in 1958 ordered the regents to either reinstate him or give him a new hearing. The regents appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the circuit court in a 4-3 ruling. The majority opinion stated Hill was “not one to brook any opposition to his policies by members of his faculty.”

In June 1959 the regents agreed to pay Ball $9,774 to resign. He already had obtained a position at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls.

The case set a legal precedent and is recorded in the Harvard Law Library. Interest in the Ball case was rekindled when another UW-Superior tenured professor, John Marder, was fired in 1999.

Ironically Marcovich, as a regent, became a target of Marder’s lawsuit, which is still pending.

Hill stayed on as college president but was viewed as a dinosaur in the 1960s.

Hunter Gray Bear (John Salter), a Native American activist who taught at the Superior campus in 1961-62, recruited faculty into the American Federation of Teachers and helped organize students when Hill suspended student government.

Bear writes on his Web site, “An increasingly incoherent General Hill got control of his voice long enough to denounce me repeatedly as a ‘Communist, an atheist, and an advocate of free love.’ Exactly what he meant, especially on the final point, was never clear.”

By 1964 most of the regents who had supported Hill in 1957 were gone, and the board tried to talk him into retiring three years before his mandatory date. He refused, so instead they shuffled several positions.

They appointed Hill as co-director of the State Coordinating Committee for Higher Education. Hill replaced Robert DeZonia, who was moved to assistant director of the state college system. DeZonia replaced Karl Meyer, who was moved into Hill’s position at Superior.

“Some members of the college regents conceded privately that the move was aimed primarily at getting Hill out of Superior,” the Milwaukee Journal wrote at the time.

But even this move proved divisive. The coordinating committee voted 9-5 to urge regents to reconsider. One committee member said the abrupt appointment, which bypassed the normal process of consulting faculty groups, “had the secrecy of a coup.”

The Green Bay Press Gazette denounced the spat as political. “The efforts of some of the Democrats on the college regents to demonstrate their potential power was certainly the primary motivation in the effort to end Jim Dan Hill’s tenure as president of Wisconsin State College of Superior,” the newspaper editorialized. “It should not be forgotten that [Governor] John Reynolds as attorney general refused to handle the anti-Ball case.”

Yet Governor Reynolds, a Democrat himself, opposed the move. He held a news conference to say he was “literally shocked” that the regents replaced DeZonia, the committee’s most experienced staffer. “I do have confidence in Mr. DeZonia and I don’t know anything about Mr. Hill,” the governor said.

The Milwaukee Journal wryly noted, “It was probably inevitable that the stormy 32- year career of Jim Dan Hill as president of Superior State College would end in controversy.”

Having held positions of power throughout his career, Hill was none too happy with move either. But he served as committee co-director until 1966 and spent his final year in the system as “Special Assistant to the Director of State Universities.” He retired in 1967 and returned to Texas. The original library named after him was built in 1968. He died in 1983.

Hill’s “speech and physical stature are as blunt as his name,” the Milwaukee Journal wrote upon his retirement. The article quoted him, “As president, you’re getting paid for people to get mad at you.”

He also said, “Actually I’ve had almost no personal friction with anybody.”

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