Background

Sherle, welcome to Berkeley.

Thank you very much.

Tell us a little about your background. Where were you born and raised?

I grew up in south-central Nebraska, which is on the cusp between where the Corn Belt ends and the West begins. The landscape begins to change, and so does the political culture. You move from small family farms to the Christian libertarian, ranching, gun-toting country. It was very interesting to be able to grow up on this cusp between the conservative yet progressive family farm tradition and the cowboy country to the west.

How did you parents shape your thinking about the world, do you think?

They probably indirectly taught me the importance of common sense.

Oh, that's rare in foreign policy!

It's grounded in trying to deal with real-world problems, how to cope with them. You can't get swept away by fanciful notions. Being on the farm, you're confronted with many, many difficult, practical tasks each day that require multiple skills in that sense.

More broadly, what I learned from my experience, and something that people from that part of the world have forgotten, was that public investment matters. My generation in Nebraska, growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, benefited enormously from the influx of the interstate highway system which [facilitated] transportation, allowed us to move our goods to markets more rapidly; the Tri-County irrigation system that brought irrigation to farmers and allowed prosperity; the agricultural system which allowed us to develop new techniques of growing crops; and the commitment to education, which allowed us to have good public schools and access to university.

The other pivotal event in my lifetime, which probably made me a détentist, was that the grain sales during Richard Nixon's administration to Russia in 1972-'73, just at the point where I was going to college, allowed me not only to go to college (because wheat and corn prices doubled right after the corn and wheat sales), it allowed me then to go on to law school and graduate school.

You got an education out of it.

So I owe my current position to Richard Nixon's détente policy with Russia.

Before I get you to law school, what I hear you saying is that your background was rooted in the interesting history of the area, but it also broadened your horizons to issues like world trade.

Exactly. I became very aware that how we conducted our policy to Russia affected the livelihood of Nebraska farmers, and we became very dependent on trade. We became very dependent on federal farm policy, agricultural policy as well.

Where were you educated beyond high school?

I went to the University of Nebraska. I was in an experimental program called the Centennial Education Program, which was a special honors program that brought students from around the world and from all fifty states. It was unusual because it was this post-Vietnam [era]; even Nebraska had special programs to test out new educational ideas. We had a marvelous group of faculty and had this luxurious faculty-to-student ratio of about 10 to 1. You designed your own courses and study and program, yet we were actually very much challenged by the seriousness of the faculty and professors.

Is that where you got the foreign policy bug?

I probably got the foreign policy bug when I was still on ... yes, there was a fascination with the world ...

You were able to develop it there ...

Yes, and also, doing what then became the mandatory year abroad in various parts of Europe also tends to reinforce that.

Did you say you went to law school?

I did go to law school, yes, and taught one year. I taught International Law for one year as well.

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