Stanford Business

MAY 2006


Story Behind the Book in Arjay’s Portrait


Photo by Steve Castillo

In the official oil portrait commemorating his years as Business School dean, Arjay Miller sits with his hand resting on a book titled Marriner S. Eccles, Private Entrepreneur and Public Servant. It well may be the only book ever published by the School but—as with most things Miller created during his tenure—it has an interesting story. Eccles, a banker and industrialist from Utah, served as governor of the Federal Reserve Board under President Franklin Roosevelt and was an author of some of the major banking reform bills of the 1930s. Miller was president of Ford Motor Co. when he first met Eccles at a conference in the 1960s, and the two became good friends. Miller eventually accepted Eccles’ invitation to serve on the board of his firm, Utah International.

After becoming dean, Miller, always a man of direct action, was trying to recruit Alain Enthoven to the Business School faculty and thought an endowed chair might help close the deal. “They told me I was wasting my time because Eccles had said he would only give money to Utah,” Miller recalled. He prevailed and Eccles established an endowed chair. Miller then decided it would be good for Stanford to publish a biography of Eccles but grew frustrated at the slow process as Stanford University Press debated how to move forward. “I decided, well, the Business School can publish a book, and we did.” Enthoven became the first Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management in 1973.