UCSD Ends Bid to Name College After Dr. King at His Widow’s Request

At the request of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, UC San Diego has discontinued a two-year effort to rename its Third College after the slain civil rights leader, officials announced Thursday.

Third College Provost Cecil Lytle said that Coretta Scott King sent word last week that she would not endorse the renaming because she still hopes to build a college in Atlanta that would be named for King.

“Our view is there are indeed several Loyola Marymounts and George Washingtons. Martin Luther King is such an important figure it would be possible to represent him bicoastally,” Lytle said. But he said Mrs. King felt “there is only one Stanford and one Harvard, so there shouldn’t be two King Colleges.”

Reached late Thursday, Steve Klein, a spokesman for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, said he was unaware of Mrs. King’s decision.

According to Lytle, UCSD’s minority-oriented college first contacted the King family early this summer, after a review involving students, faculty and administrators approved the proposed renaming. Lytle said it was his hope that, as the college celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, the new name would more clearly identify its commitment to diversity, social justice and the principles for which King fought.

Negotiations soon began in earnest and, as recently as one month ago, officials believed they were on the brink of an agreement. Associate Chancellor Donald Tuzin described as “no problem at all” the King Center’s requests that the college issue a statement in support of nonviolent social change and establish a scholarship fund or an endowed chair in his name.

“When the discussions got to the point of conditions, and the conditions seemed so easily acceptable to us, we hoped we were on the verge of clearance with this,” said Tuzin, who said school officials had expected that Mrs. King would be pleased by the request. “I don’t think it was ever in anybody’s mind that she would have reacted otherwise.”

In November, when a Stanford University historian said King had plagiarized numerous passages in his doctoral dissertation and other academic papers, Third College administrators reiterated their desire to take King’s name.

College officials said then that Mrs. King was concerned about the depth of San Diego’s support for her late husband after proposals to name Market Street and the convention center after King failed in recent years. But Lytle said the letter he received last week made no mention of those concerns, focusing instead on Mrs. King’s desire to build her own academic monument to King.

Asked whether he wished he had contacted the King family earlier, Lytle said no.

“It would have been difficult if we had gotten the approval of the family before we knew what the university wanted,” he said. “The course of action we took was the appropriate one. This is not embarrassing. It’s simply a difference of opinion. Had we done the opposite, it would have been worse.”

Lytle said he will not try to find another name for Third College.

“It would be more stressful if we prolonged it,” he said. “We don’t take second choice in anything else, and we shouldn’t do it with our name.”