He was raised on rural farms outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, first in the Stony Creek area and then in the Oley Valley after age 10.

[1] Even after Kerr became one of the most prominent academic administrators of his generation, he always regarded himself as a "Pennsylvania farm boy" and expressed frustration with intellectuals who showed condescension towards agriculture.

Kerr gained respect from his stance and was named University of California, Berkeley's first chancellor when that position was created in 1952.

The university president in the United States is expected to be a friend of the students, a colleague of the faculty, a good fellow with the alumni, a sound administrator with the trustees, a good speaker with the public, an astute bargainer with the foundations and the federal agencies, a politician with the state legislature, a friend of industry, labor, and agriculture, a persuasive diplomat with the donors, a champion of education generally, a supporter of the professions (particularly law and medicine), a spokesman to the press, a scholar in his own right, a public servant at the state and national levels, a devotee of opera and football equally, a decent human being, a good husband and father, an active member of a church.

Raymond B. Allen had been widely expected to succeed Robert Gordon Sproul as systemwide president, but Allen's tenure as UCLA's first chancellor was marred by athletics scandals, poor campus planning, and the perception among the southern regents that he had not put up enough resistance—especially in comparison to Kerr—to Sproul's stubborn refusal to delegate anything to the campus chancellors.

[6] With a clear mandate for change, Kerr led UC's rapid transformation into a true public university system through a series of proposals adopted unanimously by the regents from 1957 to 1960.

[7] Kerr's reforms included delegating to the chancellors the full range of powers, privileges, and responsibilities which Sproul had previously denied them.

[7] Kerr's term as UC president saw the opening of campuses in San Diego, Irvine, and Santa Cruz to accommodate the influx of baby boomers.

[11] He later withdrew the nomination after the FBI background check on Kerr included damaging information the agency knew to be false.

Almost 40 years later, in 2002, the FBI released documents used to blacklist Kerr as part of a government campaign to suppress subversive viewpoints at the university.

[13][14] Hoover agreed to supply Pauley with confidential FBI information on "ultra-liberal" regents, faculty members, and students, and to assist in removing Kerr.

[16][17] But as a matter of principle (because he felt the Board of Regents should have stood up for the university's institutional autonomy from the rest of the state government), Kerr chose to not make it easy for Reagan by not resigning, even though he believed it would mean bearing the lifelong stigma of being dismissed.

Since 1968, it has been awarded annually by the UC Berkeley Academic Senate to recognize an individual who has made an extraordinary and distinguished contribution to the advancement of higher education.