UCLA Chancellor Young to Retire

Charles E. Young, the outspoken, charismatic chancellor of UCLA who helped transform the Westwood campus into a world-class research university, announced his retirement Wednesday, effective June 30, 1997.

Young’s announcement comes on the heels of a bitter, public dispute between UC President Richard Atkinson and Gov. Pete Wilson over the implementation of a ban on affirmative action in UC admissions--a ban that Young has loudly opposed. Some members of the UC Board of Regents had speculated that Young was behind Atkinson’s apparent defiance of Wilson, prompting speculation that Young’s days were numbered.

Young said Wednesday that he played no role in Atkinson’s decision to delay the affirmative action ban and said the latest flap, while it has taken a toll, “was not the motivating force” behind his decision to retire. Instead, he said, he believed that it would be easier for UCLA to move forward on several fund-raising and reorganization projects if he made clear how long he planned to stay.

“It has become increasingly hard as I talk to people and one of the first things they want to know is, ‘Chancellor Young, what are your plans?’ ” said Young, 64, who has occupied the top job at UCLA for 27 years. UC’s mandatory retirement age for chancellors is 67.

But Young acknowledged that recent clashes with regents over affirmative action and issues of governance have been a factor. “A decision of this kind, you have to take into account all of the data that’s there. I know what some regents think about me. I think my actions and views are misinterpreted and misunderstood. Obviously, that situation has to play a part in it,” he said.

One of Young’s most public critics has been Regent Glenn Campbell, who greeted the news of his decision to leave in 16 months with characteristic irreverence.

“By gosh, June 1997? Why not now?” Campbell asked, adding that he believed Young was retiring “because he doesn’t want to give the regents a chance to fire him. I know some people wanted to do it. I wasn’t one of them, particularly.”

But other regents said Young’s departure would be a major loss for the university.

“When he took the helm, UCLA was a relatively small campus. Now it’s an academic powerhouse,” said Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who is a regent. “There are a number of regents who have no appreciation for [that]. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Regent Roy Brophy, who allied with Young in opposing the board’s July 1995 decision to ban race and gender preferences in UC’s contracting, hiring and admissions, said he would sorely miss Young.

“You may disagree with Chuck Young, but he tells things the way he believes they are. I have a lot of respect for the guy,” Brophy said, adding, “I don’t blame him for retiring. After all these years of service, our present times are troubling to all of us.”

The regents meet today in San Francisco to consider a proposed timetable for implementing the affirmative action ban in undergraduate admissions. After a clash with the governor, Atkinson offered to put the ban into effect for students who seek to enter UC in the spring 1998 term. The proposal is expected to be approved.

Informed sources said that in the wake of the latest squabble, Young had become deeply concerned that certain board members would continue to attack him so frequently that he was in danger of becoming a liability to the university he has spent much of his life serving.

Young, who has run a major American university longer than anyone in the nation, has openly sparred with the regents for years over student fees (he believes they should be higher), over governance (he believes some regents are meddlesome), and most recently over affirmative action.

Last year, with his trademark frankness, Young compared Regent Ward Connerly, an African American who spearheaded the abolition of race-based preferences at UC, to Jesse Helms, the conservative Republican senator from North Carolina.

At the time, Connerly responded by noting that Young had been at UCLA “a long time. I say maybe too long.”

On Wednesday, Connerly said: “Young has served the University of California with distinction for 27 years. Although he and I have had public disagreements on occasion, I have great admiration for his contribution to UCLA and I wish him well in his retirement.”

Young’s departure presents UC with a widening leadership vacuum. UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Karl S. Pister is retiring this year, while the promotion last year of Atkinson, who was chancellor of UC San Diego, has left a vacancy there. Moreover, Atkinson has yet to fill the UC provost’s job, the university’s second in command.

“Without overstating it, you’ve got the greatest research university in the world undergoing a massive governance transformation,” said California State University Chancellor Barry Munitz.

On Wednesday, Young said he believed it would be more difficult to fill those jobs than it would have been before the affirmative action battle revealed a deep rift between the regents and the UC administration. That rift, he said, “is going to give some people pause.”

“The fact that there’s a constant ferment, that regents are attacking the administration, that there doesn’t appear to be a cooperative relationship” is widely known, he said. “It’s obvious that there’s a deep problem. Governance is a real issue here.”

Young announced that he would leave his $212,100-a-year position at a luncheon Wednesday with his deans and vice chancellors at UCLA’s faculty club. One person who attended the one-hour lunch described its as “very subdued,” but said Young “was upbeat.”

As word began to leak out, students were surprised. When Kumani Armstrong, 22, a fourth-year political science student, heard the news his eyes widened in disbelief.

“Wow, I’m shocked,” he said, praising Young for his defense of affirmative action. “I’m scared about who they’re going to pick to replace him. Will the person be conservative or liberal?”

York Chang, undergraduate student body president, said Young’s decision could only be seen as “just another explosion” that stems from the regents’ affirmative action stance.

“The regents’ decision shows how little they really care about input from anyone in the university about education, including top-level, long-established administrators like Young,” Chang said.

The planned departure of Young signals the end of an era. At the age of 36, he became the youngest chancellor in UC’s history, and he has run the campus in his irascible, hard-charging manner ever since, turning UCLA into a sprawling intellectual and athletic enterprise employing more than 18,000 people and ranked academically among the very best.

Young was the handpicked successor of Franklin D. Murphy, the man credited with bringing UCLA out of UC Berkeley’s shadow. They were very different men--Murphy was garrulous, Young was blunt--but they enjoyed an unusual closeness and even after Young took the helm in 1968, he relied heavily on the counsel of Murphy, who left to become chairman of Times Mirror Co.

Young quickly won kudos for keeping the peace at UCLA in the late ‘60s while UC Berkeley erupted. He chose not to summon police to demonstrations and met face to face with student leaders.

If anything made his reputation, it was his defense of acting professor Angela Davis, a Communist whose politics drew the ire of UC regents. In a test of wills, Young refused to fire her. The regents finally did it themselves.

Known for his decisive leadership style, Young has a penchant for details, a distaste for bureaucratic protocol, the enthusiasm of a football coach and a formidable temper that, when unleashed, was impossible to forget.

He also has foresight. Even before taxpayers delivered their angry message of Proposition 13, he was warning about dwindling state support for education. He responded with a push that increased private giving 250%, making UCLA one of the top fund-raisers among public universities. UCLA’s annual operating budget has grown tenfold under his reign--to $1.7 billion.

As the university grew, Young’s job changed. Increasingly, he navigated a complicated world of high finance, administration and fund-raising. UCLA became a bigger and bigger business and Young became its top businessman--a fact that sometimes prompted criticism from those who felt he had made the university too corporate.

But among national higher education leaders, his reputation remained golden. On Wednesday, Robert H. Atwell, president of the American Council on Education, called Young “one of the most admired and respected figures in American higher education. He brought a good university to greatness. He is a man of extraordinary courage and high principles.”

Closer to home, UC President Atkinson issued a statement saying Young’s decision disappointed him, but thanked the chancellor and his wife of 45 years, Sue, for what he called their selfless dedication to UCLA.

“UCLA today is the epitome of a thriving, modern research university, thanks in large measure to the indefatigable efforts of Chancellor Young,” Atkinson said.

In recent years, some have suggested that Young had stayed too long at UCLA. Particularly after he was unsuccessful in his bid to become UC president in 1992, some said he had disengaged from the campus and become less hands-on. But during the past year, many said the affirmative action issue had brought back to life the fierce leader in Young.

He was steadfast and often eloquent in his public statements about the importance of maintaining programs that ensure that the doors of public universities are kept wide open to underrepresented minorities and women.

“The notion that we’re doing it for ‘them’ is wrong,” he said last year. “This is something we do for all of us.”

On Wednesday, Young said he was looking forward to finishing out his tenure, getting a $1-billion fund-raising campaign on track and ensuring that a management restructuring effort goes smoothly.

“I plan to be working 150% for the next 16 months,” he said. But, he added, “It’s about the time in my life to begin to think about moving on.”

Times correspondent Mary Moore contributed to this story.

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Career Highlights

UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young earned his bachelor’s degree at UC Riverside and his doctorate at UCLA in 1960. He was an administrative analyst, political science professor, assistant chancellor and vice chancellor before he took the helm at UCLA.

* 1968: Becomes chancellor of UCLA, the youngest person ever appointed to head a UC campus.

* 1969: Refuses to fire philosophy professor Angela Davis, a communist whose politics had drawn the anger of regents. The regents finally fire her themselves.

* 1977: Young is linked with a scandal over misspent funds of the UCLA Foundation, the university’s fund-raising arm. After the firing of one vice chancellor, the state attorney general launches a probe of foundation expenditures, some made on Young’s behalf. The probe is dropped when foundation officials volunteer to pay back the questionable expenditures and vote retroactively to approve those made on Young’s behalf. Investigations clear Young of any involvement.

* 1979: Young becomes a member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.

* 1982: Young and the UCLA Foundation set the goal of raising $200 million for the university and eventually raise nearly twice that amount. The UCLA campaign is the first campuswide fund-raising effort to support academic programs.

* 1993: Young announces his decision not to give department status to UCLA’s Chicano studies program, inflaming student protesters, who go on a headline-grabbing hunger strike.

* 1995: UCLA is ranked among the nation’s premier research universities in the National Research Council Survey.

Source: Times news file; Who’s Who; UCLA Public Information Office

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times