William J. McGill; Served as Chancellor of UC San Diego in Tumultuous Late ‘60s

William J. McGill, the research psychologist who guided UC San Diego through those tumultuous years of student unrest when the Vietnam War, civil rights and free speech often took precedence over academics, died Sunday, the university announced Monday.

McGill suffered a heart attack Wednesday and was being treated at UC San Diego’s Thornton Hospital at the time of his death. He was 75.

McGill headed Columbia University from 1970 to 1980 after leaving the chancellor’s post in San Diego in 1970.

Most recently he was an adjunct professor in the psychology department at UC San Diego.

“Somehow, he brought a sense of community to the campus during those very difficult times, and he always emphasized excellence in scholarly work,” said UC President Richard C. Atkinson, who had known McGill for four decades.

“Recruiting more minority group members to the university was a very important agenda item for him.”

McGill was raised in the Bronx. His father was a musician, and his grandfather was an Irish immigrant dockworker. As a youth, McGill sold shoes in New York City and ran an elevator at Radio City Music Hall.

An interest in music remained with him throughout his life, and in the late 1980s he was a major force in healing a labor dispute between the San Diego Symphony Assn. and musicians.

His higher education began at Fordham University in New York City, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. In 1953, he received a doctorate in experimental psychology from Harvard University. McGill was an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1956.

He then joined the faculty of Columbia University. In 1963, he was named chairman of the university’s psychology department.

McGill joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1965 as a professor of psychology and co-founded the department of psychology. In 1968, as head of the university’s Academic Senate, he chaired a search committee to select a chancellor. The group came up with five finalists but, with unrest dividing the campus, no one would accept the job.

McGill was recruited and later said that he accepted grudgingly.

Almost immediately he faced hostility from within and without when he reappointed Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse to the faculty. Gov. Ronald Reagan, the UC Board of Regents and the conservative right objected strenuously. That escalated when Angela Davis and fellow civil rights activists demanded that instruction in the campus’ new Third College, now Thurgood Marshall College, adhere to Marxist doctrine. Soon McGill was being called a “pig” by the left while such groups as the American Legion wanted him fired.

He brought dialogue to the situation and managed to defuse the conflict.

In 1971, from his vantage point at Columbia, he found the current campus environments “so outwardly serene as to make you wonder if the last several years might not have been a nightmare.”

He recalled those years in a memoir, “The Year of the Monkey,” published in 1983. The title referred to the monkey god of the Chinese calendar known for trickery but who also controls malicious and evil spirits.

In 1979, President Carter named McGill to head the Commission for a National Agenda for the ‘80s, a group of 45 prominent leaders.

McGill is survived by his wife, Ann; a daughter, Rowena Springer of Reno; a son, William R. McGill of San Diego; and two grandsons.

Private funeral services are being planned by the family, and a public memorial is being organized by UC San Diego, according to university spokeswoman Leslie Franz.