Charles Muscatine (1920–2010)

Charles Muscatine (1920-2010) was an influential Chaucer scholar and an educational reformer. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he received his Ph.D. in English from Yale in 1948 and joined Berkeley's English department. In 1949 Muscatine and 30 other professors refused to sign the anti-communist loyalty oath required by the state. He was fired, but returned to Berkeley in 1954 after the California Supreme Court ruled the oath was unconstitutional. Sympathetic to student demands about free speech issues, Muscatine mediated between them and the university administration during the Free Speech Movement. Subsequently, he led a faculty committee charged with proposing educational reforms at the university. Their publication"Education at Berkeley" (1966) was widely known as "Muscatine Report"; it promoted nontraditional and interdisciplinary courses. In the 1970s, Muscatine helped found and directed the Collegiate Seminar Program, better known as Strawberry Creek College. The program influenced community colleges and experimental universities across the country. Muscatine retired in 1991 but continued to advocate for reform in undergraduate education. Charles wife, Doris Muscatine (nee Corn), was a food, wine, and travel writer, and a historian of the Bay Area culinary scene. She died in 2006 at the age of 80.