New Directions for Higher Education

It is with great sorrow that we at Jossey-Bass report the death of Martin Kramer, the co-editor-in-chief of New Directions for Higher Education. Martin died of natural causes on Tuesday, September 13, in Berkeley, California, where he had lived for many years. He was truly a scholar and a gentleman, someone for whom the word “courtly” was wholly appropriate—one of his colleagues said that his rejection letters felt kinder than most acceptance letters. In addition to his responsibilities to the journal he spent a generous amount of time with his two sons, Theodore and William, who admired him very much.

Martin came to the journal as a consulting editor in 1980 and took over as editor-in-chief with the first issue of 1982.

For 30 years he guided the journal with great success, alone until 2007 and after that with the collaboration of a co-editor. He was a thoughtful, careful steward, and New Directions for Higher Education was recognized as a reflection of the breadth and depth of his interests and knowledge.

Martin was an honors history undergraduate at Harvard and, as a Rhodes Scholar, received a D. Phil. in philosophy from Oxford. After two years at Harvard Law, he left to teach philosophy at UT Austin. Starting in 1961, he worked in the federal government: the Bureau of the Budget, the National Institute of Mental Health, and finally the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, where he rose to be director for higher education planning. He was a member of the panel that wrote the 1971 Newman Report, a call for reform that raised hackles across the leadership of higher education. At the end of the 1970s, as a senior fellow of the Carnegie Council on Higher Education, he contributed to their final report, Next Steps for the 1980s in Student Financial Aid. In 1979–1980, he served as president of the American Association for Higher Education. During his tenure as journal editor, he worked as a higher education consultant, contributed often to Change magazine, and taught higher education finance at the University of California, Berkeley.

Martin Kramer was a pleasure to work with and a pleasure to be with, and we are all better for the privilege of having known him.