Clarence Cook (C. C.) Little (1888-1971) was president of the University of Michigan from 1925 to 1929.
Clarence Cook Little was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1888. He graduated from Harvard in 1910 and received a D.Sc. from Harvard in 1914. He was president of the University of Maine from 1922-1925 and president of the University of Michigan from 1925-1929. In 1929, he founded the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, to conduct cancer research. He retired from Jackson Labs in 1956, and accepted the position of scientific director of the Tobacco Industrial Research Committee, which he held until his death in 1971. He was also director of the American Cancer Society.
More information
- Clarence Cook Little, Faculty History Project, University of Michigan
- Guide to the Clarence C. Little Papers, Special Collections Department, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine
- The strange career of C.C. Little, Christopher Zbrozek for the Michigan Daily, September 2006
Aside from the building that bears his name, former University President Clarence Cook Little hasn't left a very visible legacy on campus. His signature project, the creation of a University College that would teach a unified curriculum to all undergraduates for their first two years, never got off the ground. The automobile ban he instituted in an attempt to keep students from "necking" and driving to Prohibition-era speakeasies is a distant memory, to which anyone who has ever tried to park in student neighborhoods can attest. It's perhaps just as well, though, that Little's time at the University was brief and the impression he made fleeting. On first glance, it's difficult to see Little's career as anything but a blemish on our collective past.
- Little, Clarence Cook, Sc.D. (CTR Scientific Director, 1954-1971) Tobacco Documents Online
The end of his tenure came shortly after the Washtenaw Tribune ran an article predicting an "exodus" of prominent faculty members if Little's presidency continued. Just as ominously, the article noted that the board of regents had grown tired of the school being "much in the public eye" as the result of the "rather iconoclastic views" of its president. Under pressure, Little presented his resignation to the board on January 21, 1929, effective at the end of the school year.
Commentary
- Dignity for Sale, "Gin and Tacos", September 2010
As his public statements became increasingly controversial and his professional opinions were disproved Little was run out of Ann Arbor on a rail. So he did what any professional who crosses the line into quackery would do: he sold out to corporate interests who were in search of a shameless quack. Thus Clarence Little became the scientific director of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, vehemently arguing that lung cancer was genetic and not conclusively linked to smoking.
