On May 1, 1970, News Service director Bob Beyers called Los Angeles Times higher education reporter John Dreyfuss with some news: students were planning to take over an administration building to protest ROTC. According to Dreyfuss, Beyers told him, “You are going to write about it. I’d rather you see it firsthand so you can know what’s going on.”
Students blockaded Encina Hall, but Beyers and five other News Service staffers slipped into the building during a lull and reclaimed the News Service office. They stayed there to monitor events for reporters, who were unable to get inside. (The press later dubbed Beyers and his team the “Sleeping Bag Six.”) Beyers sent daily news reports to more than 1,000 faculty and media as the holdout dragged on for 11 days. “He was on the phone constantly—to reporters, faculty, administration, demonstrators, the papers,” recalls Karen Bartholomew, ’71, a News Service employee at the time.
It was emblematic of Beyers’s style. In his 30 years at Stanford, he gained a national reputation for candor in reporting Stanford news—good and bad. “He was absolutely devoted to the conviction that you had to report all the news as fast as you could accurately do so,” says president emeritus Richard W. Lyman, who was provost during that 1970 protest. “[He was] always a journalist.”
Beyers, 71, died of pancreatic cancer at his Palo Alto home on October 18.
He drafted his own obituary for release to the press. “He always liked to be first with the story,” says his son, Robby, ’80, MS ’82, PhD ’89.
Born in New York City, Beyers graduated from Cornell, where he was editor-in-chief of the Cornell Daily Sun. He reported for the Marshall News Messenger in Texas, directed public relations for the U.S. National Student Association and edited the Reporter newspaper in Michigan before working for the University of Michigan News Service. He joined Stanford in 1961. In 1964, he coordinated media and police relations for the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
At Stanford, Beyers helped create the monthly alumni newsletter Stanford Observer and the weekly internal newspaper Campus Report (now Stanford Report). The Faculty Senate’s information officer from 1968 to 1990, he gradually opened meetings to local media.
As News Service director, Beyers brought national attention to cutting-edge research by Stanford faculty. “He contributed substantially to Stanford’s rapid rise in reputation,” Lyman says. “Anyone who needed specialized academic advice contacted Bob because he would steer them to the right person.”
In 1983, he received the Kenneth M. Cuthbertson Award for exceptional service to Stanford.
“He had a dual allegiance to the University and to the journalistic profession,” says Lyman. “He could be prickly about his standards, but I believed in what he was doing. It was to the University’s advantage.” Beyers resigned in 1990, at odds with what he saw as a move away from straight news coverage by the University.
Following his retirement, he consulted for Harvard, Oxford and various educational organizations and volunteered for Pacific News Service. From 1986 to 1997, he served as board chair of Editorial Projects in Education, which created the Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week and Teacher magazines. With his wife, Charlotte (Kempner), ’53, MA ’70, Beyers produced 12 documentaries about various social and medical topics.
Beyers is survived by his wife; three children from his first marriage to Alice Mencher, William, Robby and Amy; four stepchildren; and 13 grandchildren.
