Atkinson Wins Confirmation as UC Head

At the end of a contentious closed-door meeting, the University of California Board of Regents on Friday voted 19 to 1 to make UC San Diego Chancellor Richard C. Atkinson the 17th president of the nine-campus, 162,000-student system.

The internationally respected experimental psychologist, who has headed UC San Diego since 1980, will replace President Jack W. Peltason, who steps down Oct. 1. Atkinson, 66, will earn an annual salary of $243,500, the same as Peltason.

“The people of California have created the finest public university in the world, and I’m committed to maintaining its preeminence,” Atkinson told the regents after his confirmation was announced. “This institution has a very special place in my heart, and I will do my utmost to ensure its future.”

Atkinson will take over a university that faces many financial and administrative challenges. During the past three years, UC has lost about $300 million in state revenues, and student fees have risen more than a third.

A recent decision by the regents to prohibit the consideration of race or gender in the university’s hiring, contracting and admissions has raised thorny questions about how to ensure UC’s continued diversity and has heightened emotions among UC faculty and students. And a scandal at UC Irvine over its fertility clinic has threatened to undermine the university’s reputation.

The vote came after several hours of private meetings at which Atkinson talked with groups of students, faculty, alumni, staff and various UC administrators. During one break, the genial chancellor appeared weary as he joked to reporters, “I’m getting nervous. They sent me out of the room. This is like Ph.D. orals.”

But the moment the board called its open session to order about 3 p.m., its decision was obvious.

“Can we start some applause right now?” Regent William Bagley asked as Atkinson walked into the room. Atkinson and his wife, Rita, then took their seats in the front row, where they were joined in an apparent show of support by two other men who had been contenders for the president’s job: UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien and UC Davis Chancellor Larry N. Vanderhoef.

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Before the vote, Student Regent Ed Gomez had told reporters he planned to nominate Vanderhoef as an alternative to Atkinson. But he apparently changed his mind. Sources said the meeting was largely spent arguing over how the search had been handled, not who was chosen. Gomez was the sole dissenting vote, while Regents Tom Sayles, Glenn Campbell and David Lee abstained.

Vanderhoef, who had been interviewed by the search committee, said Friday that at this point, he was not interested in the job.

“Not now,” he said. “Atkinson will be fine. Let’s get on with it.”

Tien, who had reportedly protested an earlier effort by some regents to push his candidacy, offered a one-word description of his state of mind Friday: “Relieved.”

Atkinson’s appointment came despite the efforts of an anti-abortion group to persuade the board that he was unfit for the job. On Thursday, a San Diego group called American Victims of Abortion faxed 20 of the 26 regents to draw attention to a 1981 lawsuit filed against Atkinson by a former Harvard University professor named Lee Perry.

Perry alleged that Atkinson had impregnated her in 1977, then had tricked her into having an abortion by promising to father another child in the future. Atkinson settled the suit in 1986, agreeing to pay Perry up to $275,000. He denied her charges but said he and his wife wanted to put the matter behind them.

At a news conference after his appointment, Atkinson said, “I have never in my life at any time advised anyone to seek an abortion. That really is all I have to say about that matter.”

Atkinson was more expansive, however, about his plans for the university. Asked how he would accommodate the regents’ decision last month on affirmative action, he said that while he had not welcomed the vote, he thought it provided an opportunity for UC to work with the state’s K-12 system to better prepare students for admission.

Atkinson also said that given the current financial climate, UC will have to begin to specialize in certain areas on each campus. And he took the opportunity to send a gentle message to those who make the funding decisions for UC, asserting that a coming tidal wave of high school graduates would necessitate the building of a 10th campus at the chosen site in Merced.

In what appeared to be a rare personal reference, Atkinson closed the news conference by talking a little about his family. His advisers, he said, had told him that “I am not human enough in my appearances.” He then said he was a first-generation American, the son of a French mother--who immigrated to the United States lacking even cursory command of the language--and an English father.

His mother “learned to write the English language when I did,” Atkinson said. “What’s made a difference in my life has been higher education.”

The approval of his candidacy ends a seven-month search that officials said drew 160 candidates from around the nation.

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The search proved difficult and at times embarrassing. In June, the search committee’s top choice for the job, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee, withdrew his name just hours before the full board was to consider his candidacy. Then, in the wake of Gee’s withdrawal, came the board’s controversial and divisive affirmative action decision.

Several regents, including search committee chairman Roy T. Brophy, said the decision to largely gut affirmative action programs would make it much tougher to find a new president. Insiders said the vote ended hopes, expressed by several regents earlier in the process, of finding someone from outside the UC system who would take the job.

Regent Clair Burgener, the chairman of the board, said, “I’m very proud of Dick. I hope he stays a long time.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, who has long backed Atkinson’s candidacy, issued a statement congratulating the university on “a very good choice.”

“By selecting Richard Atkinson president today, the University of California took a step that guarantees the best public university system in America steady, proven leadership into the next century,” said Wilson, who was in New York.

Atkinson has won strong support from the faculty throughout the process. When the search committee’s faculty advisory panel considered the nine UC chancellors, Atkinson was its top pick to become UC president.

Atkinson’s name became public only Monday, soon after the search committee voted 6 to 2 to nominate him. That vote, like the rest of the search process, was conducted in private, but word began leaking out within a few hours.

The next day, sources told The Times that only a few weeks before the committee nominated Atkinson, however, it had voted 7 to 1 against him. Several regents confirmed that the committee was more impressed by Vanderhoef, the UC Davis chancellor.

When The Times reported that the search committee had changed its mind about Atkinson within a period of just a few weeks, some regents who were not on the committee denounced what they described as a deeply flawed process.

On Friday, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who has been outspoken about the need for reforms, proposed that a series of possible changes be considered at the next regularly scheduled regents meeting in September.

Brophy said he would support such an inquiry, but warned that open searches often lead to failure because either good candidates are scared off by potential publicity, or they apply and their current employers woo them to stay put.

Atkinson, a millionaire who has numerous investments in real estate, electronics and perfume manufacturing, is described by those who know him as brilliant and energetic. Colleagues note that during his 15 years at UC San Diego’s helm, he has increased enrollment 62%, enlarged the faculty by 47% and expanded the campus’s facilities--including student housing, classrooms and medical school space--by 121%.

He is also considered an unstoppable fund-raiser who can, in the words of one admirer, “charm the skin off a snake.” He is credited with boosting UC San Diego’s private giving program and with raising the university’s stature throughout the community.

Those successes are just the latest in a long string that began when he graduated from the University of Chicago at the youthful age of 19. He and his wife of 43 years, renowned psychologist Rita Atkinson, have co-authored what is considered the bible of psychology textbooks. And he is widely respected for his scholarship on human memory and cognition.

Those who have worked with Atkinson say his temper can be formidable. But he does not hold grudges. “It’s an explosion and it’s out of the way,” said one person who knows Atkinson well.

Before he came to UC San Diego in 1980, Atkinson spent five years at the National Science Foundation, having been appointed first by President Gerald Ford and then by President Jimmy Carter.

Before 1975, Atkinson was on the faculty of Stanford University for 20 years in the fields of psychology, applied mathematics and statistics and engineering, among others. In the late 1950s, he also taught for four years at UCLA.

Atkinson has been awarded honorary degrees by more than a dozen American universities and holds honorary memberships in several foreign societies and academies. In addition, a mountain in Antarctica has been named in his honor.