4 UC Regents Seek Meeting on Affirmative Action Vote : Education: But several officials on both sides of the issue say they will not attend. Topic is whether board ignored faculty in deciding to end racial preferences.

Did the University of California Board of Regents unduly disregard the views of its faculty when voting to roll back affirmative action last summer?

Just days after a national faculty group launched an investigation into that issue, four regents have called for a special board meeting next week to discuss it. The focus of the meeting would be the widely accepted principle that universities should be governed cooperatively, with decisions shared by trustee boards, administrators and faculty.

“Faculty have communicated to the board that they take the July 20 decision [on affirmative action] to be the most serious breach of shared governance in over 40 years,” reads a letter the four regents are planning to send to the entire board. “This violation . . . is so central as to create a division that may damage board relationships with the university community for years to come.”

Regent Ralph Carmona and the three other board members who have requested the meeting believe that by listening to the faculty, they can begin to repair that divide. But they appear to be in the minority. Several of the remaining 22 regents--including those who opposed and those who supported the decision to end race-based preferences at UC--say they will not attend the meeting, now planned for Dec. 14.

“I’m not going to be there,” said regents Chairman Clair Burgener, who voted to scale back affirmative action in contracting, hiring and admissions. “We have two faculty members on our Board of Regents and we should always go through them.”

Board Vice Chairman John Davies said he had other engagements that day that would prevent him from attending. He and Regent Ward Connerly both said they believed that the faculty had its say before the affirmative action vote.

When asked whether he would attend the Dec. 14 meeting, Connerly said, “I think I have a conflict. I’m trimming my toenails that day.”

On the other side of the issue, Regent Roy Brophy, who has been outspoken in his support of affirmative action and the traditions of shared governance, said he, too, would be absent.

“There’s nothing left to say right now,” he said. “Until we’re ready to really discuss it with some proposals that will mediate and change, discussions at this time are unnecessary.”

Some faculty members say the meeting is important because the regents’ action flew in the face of a long tradition that delegated decision-making on admissions and faculty selection to the faculty. Separate from the issue of affirmative action, these people say, a troubling precedent was set when the regents overruled the faculty, effectively stripping them of these powers.

To date, the faculty leaders at eight of UC’s nine campuses have called on the regents to rescind their decision, and 1,800 faculty members have signed a petition to the same effect.

Last week, the American Assn. of University Professors launched an investigation into the regents’ decision to end race-based preferences at UC. The inquiry will examine the shared governance issue and whether the UC regents adequately shielded the university from political pressure.

“The fact of the matter is . . . there certainly is a big disagreement about whether the faculty voice has been heard or not,” said Larry Wallack, a professor of public health at UC Berkeley who is organizing the UC petition drive. “The issue simply will not go away.”

But not all the faculty sees things as Wallack does. Arnold Leiman, a psychology professor who sits on the Board of Regents because he heads UC’s academic council, said he will attend the special meeting, although he does not support it.

“We don’t need more commotion on this. Having another hysterical regents meeting is not the answer,” said Leiman, who called the outcry over shared governance “disingenuous.” The planned special meeting, he said, “really is a discussion about affirmative action. And regents’ meetings on this topic are a piece of the least pleasant aspects of human social interaction.”

Carmona, the regent who spearheaded the call for the special meeting, said it would take place no matter how few regents showed up.

“No one’s going to look pretty if they don’t show. But we have legislative sessions in the state capital all the time with just one or two members of a committee and no one screams about it,” he said.