UC Berkeley Chief Reveals Plans to Resign

In a sudden and surprising announcement Tuesday, the much-beloved chancellor of UC Berkeley, Chang-Lin Tien, said he will resign next year, dealing another blow to the battered reputation of the nine-campus state university system.

At a hastily scheduled news conference, Tien--the first Asian American to lead a major research university in the nation--declined to elaborate on his reasons for leaving the $212,100-a-year job, other than to say he wants to spend more time with his family and devote himself to his research and teaching.

According to those who know Tien--who spent 29 years at Berkeley before becoming chancellor in 1990--the bespectacled engineer had become increasingly frustrated with the UC bureaucracy and Board of Regents, which last July voted to roll back affirmative action despite his and other chancellors’ impassioned pleas.

But the 60-year-old Tien, who appeared alternately misty-eyed and buoyant Tuesday, would acknowledge only that budget concerns and the difficulty of satisfying often conflicting constituent groups had made the chancellorship more challenging in recent years.

“It is becoming a very tough job,” he said. He will leave the post no later than June 30, 1997.

Tien’s decision comes at a trying time for the flagship UC campus, which plans to announce a $1-billion fund-raising campaign in the fall. Tien, the most prolific fund-raiser in UC Berkeley history, has helped bring $780 million to the campus during the past six years.

Officials said Tien timed his decision to allow the next chancellor to take charge of the new campaign, but his departure may hurt the university’s ability to tap the largess of Asian donors, who have given generously during Tien’s tenure--including a recent $15-million donation from a group of Taiwanese alumni.

Tien’s announcement also signals what many view as a broader leadership crisis at UC, which is already seeking a successor for UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young, who ends 27 years of service on the same day Tien plans to step down.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson has been in his job less than a year, and two of the nine chancellors are new appointees. With Tien’s departure, the administrator with the longest tenure will be UC Riverside Chancellor Raymond Orbach, who was appointed four years ago.

“This means a massively critical transformation for the leadership of higher education in California,” said California State University Chancellor Barry Munitz, who called Tien’s decision “a major blow for all of higher education.”

Controversy has been brewing over the direction of UC since last summer, when Gov. Pete Wilson pushed the regents to ban affirmative action over the objections of all nine chancellors and faculty leaders on every campus. In light of this, some say the university will have a difficult time finding a suitable replacement for Tien.

“Anybody who has credibility is going to wonder if it’s worth their while to come to this institution and face the same harassment and interference,” said Ling-Chi Wang, the chairman of UC Berkeley’s Asian American studies department.

Wang speculated that Tien may be “throwing in the towel” because “every major program he believes in is either being attacked, obstructed or ruled illegal. Enough is enough.”

The three most outspoken chancellors to oppose the rollback of affirmative action were Tien, Young and UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Karl S. Pister--all of whom have announced their resignations in recent months.

In addition, sources said Tien felt embarrassed by the way regents handled the search for a new UC president last summer. Tien did not seek to be considered, sources said, but agreed to be drafted when a few regents told him a majority was behind him.

When the board members chose Atkinson, after weeks of sniping among themselves, some say Tien believed he had been used by some regents to further their own agendas and felt betrayed.

On Tuesday, however, Tien was characteristically gracious, refusing to point a finger of blame. “The Board of Regents has been so supportive and generous to me, I have no complaints whatsoever,” he said.

But Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who sits on the regents board, said he believes the regents’ handling of the presidential search, coupled with the affirmative action vote, did a lot to dampen Tien’s enthusiasm for his job.

“The regents never fully appreciated Tien’s leadership skills, even though Berkeley was recently rated top graduate school in America,” Davis said. “On some occasions he was treated downright shabbily. Many of my fellow regents need to look in the mirror and shoulder some blame for the loss of this cherished educator.”

Regent Meredith Khachigian, who was vice chairwoman of the presidential search committee, disagreed.

“I regret some of the things that went on during the presidential search, but we made every effort to work with Chancellor Tien, and I think he feels like we did,” she said. “He’s an exemplary leader--high energy, great enthusiasm for the job--and he’ll be missed.”

And Regent Ward Connerly rejected the idea that the recent loss of several leaders at UC threatens to leave it rudderless.

“I count myself among Tien’s greatest fans. But while we lose some institutional memory, we [will] bring in somebody who is eager to try new things,” he said.

Tien apparently had been mulling his decision for months, but he revealed his plans to only a few close confidants--and, he said, to a select number of wealthy donors.

He consulted none of the regents when he was trying to make up his mind, sources said, and did not notify Atkinson and Board of Regents Chairman Tirso del Junco of his decision until Monday.

Sources suggested that a rift may have developed between Tien and Atkinson after Atkinson bungled handling of a plan to delay implementation of the regents’ ban on affirmative action earlier this year. By failing to inform the governor, Atkinson sparked a political feud that sabotaged the plan for a one-year delay.

“The general feeling among many on the Berkeley campus is that Dick [Atkinson] allowed both the university and himself to be subjected to a level of humiliation that was unbecoming,” the source said. “A lot of people Tien talks to hold that view and have shared it with him.”

Atkinson, meanwhile, issued a statement that mourned Tien’s departure as a “loss to the university. . . . We owe Chancellor Tien a tremendous debt of gratitude for his many accomplishments.”

In part because Tien himself was so closemouthed, California’s higher education community spent much of Tuesday wondering whether he had simply gotten a better offer. One source said that if President Clinton is reelected, Tien--who has been wooed by other prominent universities in the past--might opt to leave academia and take a job at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Others speculated that Tien, who was born in China and got his college degree from National Taiwan University, might be weighing a job offer from Chinese industry.

Tien’s announcement “dropped like a bomb on campus,” said Wang, the Berkeley professor. “Everybody was caught off guard.”

The news stunned Berkeley students, who had grown fond of the gregarious chancellor who shook their hands and attended their football games and other events. During final exams, Tien would stroll through the library and offer an encouraging word, students said.

Tien’s commitment to students was best illustrated, however, when he launched the “Berkeley pledge”--an outreach program unveiled in response to the regents’ affirmative action decision. The pledge, which Tien and his wife Di-Hwa supported with a personal donation of $10,000, was designed to help prepare disadvantaged students to meet UC Berkeley admissions requirements.

“He’s really a big figure on campus,” said Andy Schwiebert, a junior anthropology student. “He was always helping students get jobs or survive academia.”

Times education writer Elaine Woo contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Chang-Lin Tien

* Born: Wuhan, China, on July 24, 1935

* Residence: Berkeley

* Education: Bachelor’s degree, National Taiwan University, 1955; master’s degree, University of Louisville, 1957; master’s degree, PhD, Princeton University, 1959

* Career highlights: Faculty member in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, 1959-1988; executive vice chancellor, UC Irvine, 1988-1990; chancellor, UC Berkeley, 1990-1996.

As a consultant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Tien helped solve the problem of keeping heat-shielding tiles from falling off U.S. space shuttles. As executive vice chancellor at UC Irvine, he was credited with bringing more minorities onto the faculty, giving professors more of a say in administration and guiding the school’s academic master plan.

* Family: Married to Di Hwa Liu; three grown children, all UC Berkeley graduates.

* Quote: In 1990: “I think the most important thing is that excellence and diversity are not in conflict. They are complementary to each other.”