Professors Group to Investigate UC : Education: Panel will examine whether regents’ vote to end affirmative action was influenced by political pressures.

In a move that shines a spotlight once again on affirmative action at the University of California, the nation’s largest organization of college professors launched a formal investigation Friday into the UC Board of Regents’ decision to end race-based preferences in hiring, contracting and admissions.

A seven-member panel appointed by the American Assn. of University Professors will examine whether the UC regents adequately shielded the university from political pressures and whether their July vote violated accepted principles of institutional governance.

The inquiry, which is unusually broad in scope, also is notable for its participants. Robert Atwell, the president of the American Council on Education, the nation’s preeminent higher education advocacy group, is on the panel, as is A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., a Harvard University professor and former appellate judge from Philadelphia.

The impact of the panel’s findings, which will be reported by next May, may be largely symbolic because the Washington, D.C.-based group has no authority over the regents’ decision-making.

But a critical report could embarrass UC while also drawing renewed attention to an age-old idea: that universities should be governed cooperatively, with decisions shared by trustee boards, administrators and faculty.

“The future of higher education is at stake,” said Joan Wallach Scott, a social science professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton who will head the panel.

“We in the academic community need to take a hard look at the way in which political pressures are intruding into traditional institutional governance practices and how such intrusions affect our ability to establish sound professional standards,” Scott said.

The investigation begins while the faculties on seven of UC’s nine campuses are calling upon the regents to rescind their decision, complaining that it violated principles of shared governance.

Many professors have mixed feelings about the probe, worrying that it will sully the university’s reputation, but hoping that it will put pressure on the regents to reconsider their vote.

“Whether you’re administrators, regents or faculty, we’re all concerned about damage to the prestige of the university,” said Larry Wallack, a professor of public health at UC Berkeley. “When you have an outside organization putting a spotlight on your institution in a very negative way, you have to start thinking about what kind of damage is being done.”

Psychology professor Arnold Leiman, a regent who heads UC’s academic council, worries that the inquiry will further inflame passions among the regents. While the American Assn. of University Professors does not have the clout to force changes at UC, he said, its investigation “contributes to a climate where it gets harder to accomplish some of our academic goals. . . . Our growth is impaired by the sense that something is wrong.”

Critics have contended that the regents’ July vote was a blatantly political decision masterminded by Gov. Pete Wilson, who was in the midst of a short-lived presidential bid that had opposition to affirmative action as its centerpiece.

This charge raised hackles at UC more than it would have at other public universities because the state Constitution is intended to protect UC from political interference, making it independent of the Legislature. Still, the governor is the president of the regents and appoints regents to their 12-year terms.

But the sponsor of UC’s affirmative action ban said the national inquiry is politically motivated as well.

“This panel is rigged,” said Regent Ward Connerly, who worked with Wilson to push the measure through, then announced this week that he will take over as head of the flagging statewide campaign for a ballot initiative to ban affirmative action.

The most eminent members of the professors panel, Atwell and Higginbotham, are well-known supporters of affirmative action, Connerly said. “My position is as solid as a rock. No rigged panel is going to deter me.”

On Friday, one regent who voted against the rollback of affirmative action said he believes that the professors panel would have no trouble finding proof of political intervention.

“The vote was influenced by politics. And political intrusion is inappropriate in the operation of the University of California,” said Regent Roy T. Brophy, who unsuccessfully lobbied the regents to delay their vote. “The president of the board [is] the governor. . . . And the governor obviously is more persuasive than a single member such as myself.”

Regent Ralph Carmona said Connerly’s new job as manager of the so-called “California civil rights initiative” campaign makes the university look bad. “His association with this new initiative effort clearly shows an unfortunate connection,” Carmona said. “It shows that the university has been contaminated by the mainstream political process.”

Connerly shot back, saying that he sees no conflict between his role as a regent and his new political position.

He recalled that Brophy said recently that if the “civil rights initiative” does not qualify for the ballot, he will ask the regents to reconsider their vote.

“I don’t know. Maybe he gave me an incentive to make it qualify and shove it down his throat,” Connerly said.