Stan Barer, a University of Washington law graduate and philanthropist who helped write the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and paved the way for reopening trade with China, passed away this month at 82. He’d been fighting a 10-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
“Stan represented the best in the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam — repairing the world. He clearly left this world a much better place for his being here,” Bobbe Bridge, Barer’s law partner and a former state Supreme Court Justice, said in a statement from the UW.
Barer was born in Walla Walla and graduated from Walla Walla High School in 1957. After going to law school in Seattle, he found his opportunities for jobs at some law firms were limited because of his Jewish ancestry, so he got a job working for U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson, one of Washington state’s most influential politicians.
It was, perhaps, kismet: Magnuson was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which was writing the public accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Barer acted as counsel. This was the start of a long legal and political career; Barer was Magnuson’s chief of staff, a premier Democratic fundraiser and a mentor to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.
Barer’s friends and colleagues described him as dedicated and fair-minded, with a liberal bent and a belief that common ground could be found with leaders of every country. But he could also be tough, and was hardly a radical: Joel Connelly, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist who worked under Barer on Sen. George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972, wrote that when Barer caught Connelly and other young campaign staffers smoking marijuana on the roof of campaign headquarters, he said, “George McGovern told me I could fire every one of you.”
“Barer was a shaper, somebody who wasn’t just present at the creation but a creator,” Connelly wrote on the opinion site Post Alley.
In his legal work, Barer took clients as large as China’s state-owned shipping conglomerate while it was trying to gain access to the U.S. market. His legal interpretations cleared the way for U.S. cargo vessels to sail to Shanghai in May 1979, and the next month, a Chinese vessel came to Seattle. After decades of hostility between the two countries, China is the single largest source of imports through Washington.
“He was the one who really enabled trade and commerce between the U.S. and China, and especially the Pacific Northwest,” former U.S. Ambassador to China and former Washington Gov. Gary Locke said in a tribute to Barer.
Barer was heavily involved at his alma mater the UW, spending eight years as a regent, and in 2010 creating the Barer Institute for Law & Global Human Services which offers fellowships each year to leaders from developing nations such as Indonesia, Nigeria and Colombia.
“We will miss Stan deeply, but we can take comfort from the many ways he changed our lives and our world for the better,” UW President Ana Marie Cauce wrote in a blog post, “including inspiring each of us to lead with our values: to be generous, to live with integrity, and to seek the common humanity we all share.”
Barer is survived by his daughter, Leigh, and four grandsons.
