Charles E. Young, UCLA’s longest serving chancellor, dies at 91
Charles E. Young, the fiery, fiercely outspoken chancellor of UCLA credited with turning the campus into an academic powerhouse, died of natural causes Sunday at his Sonoma home. He was 91.
At the helm of UCLA for 29 years, Young oversaw its transformation from a small regional campus to one of the nation’s premier research universities.
In 2017, Young stepped out of retirement to steer the Sonoma Valley Unified School District through turmoil as its interim superintendent.
“During his long tenure, Chuck Young guided UCLA toward what it is today: one of the nation’s most comprehensive and respected research universities and one that is profoundly dedicated to inclusiveness and diversity,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement announcing Young’s death.
When Young started at the post at the age of 36 in 1968, he was the youngest chancellor in UC history. When he retired in 1997, he would be one of the longest-serving leaders of an American university.
UCLA grew rapidly under his watch. Its annual operating budget increased tenfold to $1.7 billion. The number of undergraduates increased from 19,000 to 24,000. And the number of endowed professorships rose from 1 to over 100.
At the time of his retirement, the president of the American Council on Education called Young “one of the most admired and respected figures in American higher education.”
Young regularly sparred with his bosses at the UC Board of Regents.
Just months after becoming chancellor, Young famously refused to fire political activist Angela Davis, then a acting professor in UCLA’s philosophy department despite pressure from the regents after they learned she was a member of the Communist Party.
Young would call the episode a “seminal moment” in his career, catapulting him into the national spotlight and allowing him to clearly carve out a position on academic freedom.
And when the UC Board of Regents debated how to implement a ban on affirmative action in admissions, Young, a staunch supporter of affirmative action, rallied loudly against the plan. He often spoke publicly about the importance of ensuring public universities are easily accessible to a students of color.
“The notion that we’re doing it for ‘them’ is wrong,” said Young, a year before he retired. “This is something we do for all of us.”
Through the years the academic leader, widely known as “Chuck,” rode out the turbulence of campus radicalism and state politics. He was a commanding figure who came to be recognized as a superb manager with an exceptionally quick mind. And he lived down early skepticism that he was too young, too much the hand-picked choice of his predecessor, Franklin D. Murphy, and not enough of a scholar to last long amid the intellectual battles of academia.
Charismatic and sometimes fiery-tempered, Young defied the image of a bookish academic leader. He sought to run UCLA more like a private institution and was a respected fund-raiser who developed a network of high-profile entertainment friends such as composer Henry Mancini, movie producer Walter Mirisch and actor Charlton Heston.
Young earned a doctorate in political science from UCLA — only eight years before becoming the campus’ chancellor — but he had little or no work published in academic journals.
“Young makes no pretense of being a scholar,” said a 1968 article in Time magazine about his selection by the Board of Regents to head UCLA. He was chosen, the magazine said, “primarily because of his record as an administrator who can get along with students,” during a time of heightened political tension because of the Vietnam War and the growing Black empowerment movement.
By the time he retired, UCLA’s faculty had doubled and the school’s operating budget was more than 10 times larger than when he started. On his watch, the number of endowed professorships climbed from one to nearly 120.
During his reign, UCLA emerged as an athletic powerhouse, winning 61 men’s and seven women’s NCAA Division I team championships in an array of sports. He was not a distinguished athlete himself — his main achievement in organized sports was playing football in his senior year of high school. But he was an enthusiastic spectator at UCLA athletic events, rarely missing a home football or basketball game.
Early on, Young earned praise for his sympathetic handling of student unrest. A few months after he became chancellor, two student members of the Black Panther Party were killed on campus in an alleged dispute over the leadership of the Black Studies Center. Young helped calm the jittery school. Later, during Vietnam War protests, he refused to allow police to clear out students who occupied administration offices.
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