Senator Assails Santa Cruz Chancellor Over Angela Davis Honor

ACADEMIC ARMAGEDDON: While other state senators were focusing on the affirmative action debate before the UC regents, state Sen. Don Rogers was captivated this week by a campus issue he found more riveting.

An outraged Rogers, a Republican from Tehachapi, called for the removal of UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Karl Pister for naming Angela Davis to the prestigious presidential chair.

“The appointment of such a person to this position--the highest honor that the university can bestow--clearly shows a lack of judgment and sensitivity that calls into question Pister’s continuing as head of the Santa Cruz campus,” Rogers declared.

He added that he found the appointment all the more offensive in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a member of the American Legion.

“I am appalled that Davis is a tenured professor at Santa Cruz, much less has been given this recognition,” he said.

Rogers said the issue came to his attention while he was attending the quarterly meeting of the conservative California Republican Assembly Board, which drew up a resolution to fire Pister and any others responsible for “this seditious act against the law-abiding taxpayers of California.”

He called Davis, a vice presidential candidate on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984, a “well-known and longtime Marxist,” and said that “for someone of her background and philosophy to be so honored by a tax-supported university campus really is beyond belief.”

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ARTS BATTLE: With the National Endowment for the Arts on its deathbed, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) fears the country as a whole will suffer if the organization succumbs.

“I think we’re going to be worse off as a nation,” said Waxman, who sought in vain last week to save federal funding for the arts organization, the NEA. “It just seems to me our society will be remembered for our artistic and cultural contributions.”

No federal agency has stirred more wrath than the NEA, which funnels grants to artists, sometimes very controversial ones.

Critics have long condemned it for using taxpayers’ money to pay for what they say essentially amounts to smut. Backers of the 30-year-old arts endowment, however, point to what they call important artistic developments that might not have surfaced without the aid of the NEA.

Saying the private sector ought to handle such funding, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted Tuesday to sharply reduce the embattled agency’s funding over the next two years and to completely eliminate its budget after that. The related National Endowment for the Humanities met a similar fate.

The debate has since moved to the Senate, where a committee voted Wednesday for less severe cuts in the two endowment budgets.

Waxman said his support for federal arts funding does not mean he supports everything the NEA has funded over the years.

“I take the view that it’s not relevant what art I might enjoy or find to be in poor taste,” Waxman said. “Art involves creativity. With creativity comes experimentation and new ways of expression, and I think there is always a risk that some of these endeavors are going to fail in pleasing some of us, maybe all of us.”

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LINING UP SUPPORT: Organizers of the proposed California Civil Rights Initiative, which would wipe out the state’s affirmative action programs, have enlisted congressional candidate Rich Sybert as a coordinator for the western San Fernando Valley.

They have also extended an invitation to Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), whom Sybert challenged in last fall’s election and whom he intends to take on again next fall.

“Tony Beilenson is welcome as an honorary co-chair,” said Joe Gelman, who is statewide campaign director for the initiative and one of Mayor Richard Riordan’s appointees to the city Civil Service Commission. “I called his office to extend the invitation, and I’m extending it again right now.”

The proposed initiative, which is backed by Gov. Pete Wilson, would prohibit state and local governments from using “race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group in the operation of the state’s system of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

A spokeswoman for Beilenson said he has not received such an invitation to join the leadership of the proposed initiative, but he has not yet taken a position on the matter anyway.

A coalition of Valley-based civil rights organizations has formed to fight the initiative, which has not yet qualified for the ballot. The San Fernando Valley Affirmative Action Coalition includes the local chapters of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Organization for Women, along with church groups, labor unions and student organizations.

As for Sybert, he has embraced the concept that race-based programs ought to be wiped out.

“So-called affirmative action is morally wrong,” Sybert said recently. “It merely continues in a different guise the same race-based discrimination that was wrong in the first place. First-class people come in all colors, and it’s our job to find them based on merit.”

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Over the past four years, Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs has charged the city $676 for 72 lunches he said he ate while discussing city business, according to receipts filed with the city controller.

The amount may not seem unusually high for a four-year period. What is unusual is that each of those lunches was with the same person, Greg Nelson, his chief of staff. And almost all of them were at the same place, Wok Inn, a Chinese fast-food restaurant in a food court near City Hall.

Wachs has filed each receipt to seek city reimbursement, arguing that the lunches are part of his job.

Nelson explained that the lunches are part of Wachs’ rushed schedule that affords him precious little time to discuss office issues and policy matters at a leisurely pace. He said the two usually rush to Wok Inn, grab Chinese chicken salads and discuss the pressing matters of the day before rushing back to the office.

“We have gotten very good at eating and talking at the same time,” he said.

The meals are apparently so rushed that Nelson said he gets angry when other people interrupt Wachs to chat.

“They are very productive,” Nelson said of the lunches. “But I don’t know how good they are for the digestive system.”

Craft reported from Sacramento, Lacey from Washington, D.C., and Martin from Los Angeles.