Wednesday, 3/5/97
New chancellor to be named Thursday
Penn, Harvard provosts among group of top candidates
By Edina Lekovic
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The search for UCLA’s next chancellor is over, but UC President
Richard Atkinson is keeping the identity of the nominee under his
hat until Thursday.
Atkinson reportedly chose Chancellor Charles Young’s successor
late last week but decided to keep the name under wraps until a
special meeting of the Board of Regents convenes Thursday afternoon
in order to appoint both UCLA’s and UC Berkeley’s new chancellors
in the same session.
Should the regents confirm Atkinson’s choices, the names of the
new chancellors for both schools will be announced immediately
following a closed session Thursday.
The contenders for the UCLA position, including two UCLA deans
and two Ivy League provosts, were interviewed by a 17-member search
committee last week behind closed doors.
Of the finalists, University of Pennsylvania Provost Stanley
Chodorow and Harvard Provost Albert Carnesale have been described
as the front-runners by sources close to the search process.
Sources also noted that some members of the search committee
were less enthusiastic about Gerald Levey, provost and dean of the
UCLA Medical School, and Law School Dean Susan Prager. However,
Levey is said to enjoy strong support among the regents.
Internal candidates for the Berkeley chancellorship include
current vice chancellor and provost Carol Christ and former White
House economic adviser and economics professor Laura d’Andrea
Tyson.
Current UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang and Robert
Berdahl, president of the University of Texas at Austin, reportedly
round out the short list of outside candidates.
A regents’ committee will meet in closed session to make a
recommendation on whether the full board should approve Atkinson’s
choices while a separate committee will review the proposed
salaries for the candidates.
Atkinson, who has been meeting with advisory committees of
students, faculty, administrators and alumni for both positions in
closed meetings over the last five months, can either choose
candidates recommended for the positions or others of his own
choice regardless of the committee’s input.
"The nature of this process is that the choice belongs totally
to the president," said Terry Colvin, spokesman for Atkinson. "He’s
free to pick a name from those that the committee reviewed or pick
any name that he wants."
While Colvin defended the closed search process as preserving
the confidentiality of the candidates, Student Regent Jess Bravin
attacked it for the very same reasons.
"As a public entity, we (should) choose people in a way that is
responsive to the people of the state and not in a clandestine way
that feeds suspicion and rumor," he said.