William M. Roth

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William Matson Roth was a shipping executive, special ambassador for trade, member of the ACLU executive committee, and Regent for the University of California.

In 1966 he was targeted (along with Clark Kerr and Elinor Raas Heller) by a fellow Regent, Edwin Pauley, for his alleged 'ultra-liberal' views.[1] Ronald Reagan made the Free Speech Movement and Opposition to the Vietnam War on the Berkeley campus one of his major campaign issues. Pauley, working with J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, succeeded in having Roth and the others removed from Berkeley when Reagan became governor of California in 1967.[2]

President Johnson appointed him United States Trade Representative from 1967-1969.

Among other activities, Roth worked as special representative for trade on US-European trade talks (named the Kennedy Round negotiations). See photo of Roth at a 1967 U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference alongside US Secretary of Commerce Alexander B. Trowbridge; Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, and Under Secretary of Labor James J. Reynolds.

William M. Roth, Commerce Secretary Trowbridge, Agriculture Secretary Freeman, and Labor Under-Secretary Reynolds, 1967.

Roth had a summer home on Sonoma Mountain with substantial area, having purchased the holding around 1950; the Roth family gifted this property to the Nature Conservancy, who transformed it into a nature preserve, presently known as the Fairfield Osborn Preserve. Now his daughter Maggie Roth, wife of artist David Best,(David has two children from previous marriage) lives on the property.They have two children together. Today William Matson Roth is 91 and lives in Ireland (for summer and spring) and New York (Fall and Winter). He lives with his wife Joan Osborn and has 3 children with her.

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