Interview with Lee F. Browne - Caltech Oral Histories

Browne–20
COHEN: Of course, you were right. It didn’t integrate the classrooms.
BROWNE: No, of course not. And I told him that. I said, “They’ll run away. People will run.”
For a while, when I was at Caltech, I worked at the Chandler School in the morning. I taught an
integrated class. Do you know Chandler?
COHEN: The private school, yes.
BROWNE: And for that reason. So my life after about, oh, the Storer College years, when I was
about sixteen or so, has just been frothed with these social issues against learning. I still was
involved in chemistry and in molecular biology and in learning the math that makes that
possible, but some of these social issues were more burning. And that’s what motivated me after
Caltech investigated me for three years at Blair.
COHEN: Did you know that they were doing that?
BROWNE: Well, I knew it after about a year. The reason they were doing that was because I
taught many of their sons and daughters and grandchildren.
COHEN: And at that time they had already decided to have some kind of program?
BROWNE: No.
COHEN: I mean, what was going on?
BROWNE: They were investigating me because their kids would come home and say, “Daddy,
you were wrong. That’s not what Mr. Browne said at all. And then I looked it up in the book,
and here it is.” You know, many professors took courses long ago, and they forget all of the
changes that have been made.
COHEN: Sure, sure.
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Browne_L