Records of the Vice President and Dean of Faculties and Provost, Raymond W. Mack

The Records of Raymond W. Mack span the years 1958 to 1986. The records include documents from Mack's years as Vice President and Dean of Faculties and as Provost, with the majority of records relating to the Provost's office. Although Mack became Vice President and Dean of Faculties in 1971, a small number of documents with earlier dates are also included in this series. Some of these are from the office of Payson Wild, who served as Provost before Mack, and others are Mack's own papers. These documents have been left in the files in which they arrived at the Archives.

The bulk of the records consist of correspondence both within and outside of the University, proposals and reports by various committees and groups, charts and statistics on budgets, enrollment and other topics, and minutes from meetings. The records are divided into two main subseries: General Administrative Files and Academic Departments, Programs and Centers. The second subseries includes three further categories: College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) General, CAS Departments, and Programs, Centers, Graduate Programs and Professional Schools.

General Administrative Files, spanning the years 1966 to 1986, includes files on a wide range of topics from the Block Gallery to the Dean's Council to student exchanges with Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Yearly and long-term budget making processes are documented in fifteen folders. Many files in this series are devoted to or include minutes, reports and correspondence from committees that Mack either met with or served on. A large amount of correspondence is found throughout the series; this includes both correspondence to and from Mack and correspondence which Mack received copies of. These letters and memos reveal Mack's regular role as a mediator between faculty members and students and the rest of the administration. Within the subseries, folders are arranged alphabetically by topic. Documents are arranged chronologically within each folder; where several pages of documents are stapled together, they have been filed according to the date on the top page.

Of particular interest in the administrative files are several folders on Arthur Butz. Butz was a tenured professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern when he published a book describing the Holocaust as a "hoax" fabricated by Zionists. The majority of the Butz files consist of letters to the Provost and other administrators denouncing Butz and the administration's slow or insufficient response to his publication, as well as a few letters in support of Butz' position. There is also a collection of articles written on the Butz controversy and other related topics. The fact that these folders include documents from 1976 through 1984 show that Butz' views and his book were a recurring issue for the Northwestern administration.

Academic Departments, Programs and Centers spans the years 1958 to 1986. The first category is CAS General, which includes only one folder (devoted to issues related to the entire College of Arts and Sciences). The CAS Departments files include relatively small files on many of the CAS departments. A large proportion of these files consist of correspondence on such topics as departmental needs, faculty appointments, the creation of new departments and programs, and the status, future and direction of particular departments. Also included are proposals of various types and annual reports. The final category in the subseries is Programs, Centers, Graduate Programs and Professional Schools. Like CAS Departments, this category contains substantial correspondence relating to the creation and operation of programs and centers, as well as proposals and reports. Documents pertaining to the various schools include correspondence on faculty issues as well as topics like buildings, libraries, and the status and direction of the school in question. In this subseries folders are arranged first by category; they are placed alphabetically within their category and documents are arranged chronologically within each folder.

Note: The names of departments and schools appear here as they were known at the time the records were created. CAS (the College of Arts and Sciences) was renamed Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in 1998, the Technological Institute (School of Engineering) was renamed the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1989, and the School of Speech was renamed the School of Communication in 2002.