University of California administrators received their assignment
from the Board of Regents last July: End preferential policies in
admissions by Jan. 1, 1997. Shortly thereafter, the Board of
Regents chose a new president, Richard Atkinson, and his pledge to
carry out this particular assignment was definitely part of the
deal.
        Atkinson may not have been enthusiastic about the new
policy, but he seemed, at least, less unwilling to obey than the
other candidates for the top job, who were openly in rebellion.
        Half a year passed, and on Jan. 18 the regents declined to
rescind their July vote. What's been happening in the meantime? Not
much, apparently, because last week Atkinson announced he was
delaying implementation of the no-preference policy for a year.
        There wasn't time, he said, for the UC system to make the
change. "There simply are too many issues and too little time to
finish the job in time for the 1997 admission cycle," Atkinson
said.
        But administrators could have started planning six months
ago. The students who will enter UC schools as freshmen in
September 1997 had not yet started their junior year then. This
spring, they will begin collecting catalogs and applications.
They'll submit their applications this November and admissions
decisions will be made in the spring of 1997 — after the date set
by the regents.
        There would have been sufficient time. The problem is that
the people who were supposed to do this really didn't want to, and
they put it off hoping the regents would change their minds.
        But the regents didn't budge, and aren't likely to. Gov.
Pete Wilson's high-profile involvement with the issue of
preferences no doubt affected the timing of the regents' vote in
July, but not its composition — 14 to 10 in favor of ending
preferences in admissions, 15 to 10 in favor of ending them in
hiring and contracting.
        Student protests make for dramatic television footage and
are widely covered, but they have in fact been small. The student
newspaper at UC-Berkeley even endorsed the regents' new policy,
although only after a bitter debate on the editorial board.
        And as the regents now know, the faculty, although divided,
is more in favor of the board's change in policy than it is
opposed. A poll of faculty members conducted by the Roper Center
for the California Association of Scholars showed that overall,
only 31 percent of faculty supported a preference policy, and 48
percent supported an equal-opportunity policy that did not rely on
preferences. There was a definite gender gap, with 42 percent of
female faculty endorsing preferences compared with only 28 percent
of male faculty. But that says as much about women's motives as it
does about men's.
        The Roper poll was a scientific telephone survey of 1,000
members of the academic senates, with an exceptionally high
response rate of 80 percent, and a sampling error of 3.5 percent.
The CAS has long been opposed preferential policies, but it didn't
design the questions to elicit a desired response.
        Martin Trow, professor in the Graduate School of Public
Policy at Berkeley, presented the poll results at the regents'
meeting. He has been the chairman of UC's Academic Council and a
faculty representative to the board, and has years of experience in
the Machiavellian politics of higher education.
        In his testimony, Trow explained why the perception of
faculty attitudes is so different from the private reality. Faculty
Senates on all nine campuses have passed resolutions condemning the
regents' July vote.
        "The University recruits scholars and teachers," Trow said,
"not fearless Green Berets.
        "From the president's office on down, every campus, every
college has an administrative office and Senate committees to plan
and enforce preferential policies; every department has an
'affirmative action' officer to monitor its behavior."
        In this climate, it's not surprising that faculty members
who disagree keep their views to themselves, and they don't seek or
obtain administrative posts.
        "All the chancellors," Trow said, "supported the policies
of group preferences, as also the provosts and deans on every
campus, who didn't become provosts and deans unless they did."
        Yes, faculty members have tenure, but there are lots of
ways to make professors' lives miserable short of firing them
outright. Everything from office space and secretarial help to
teaching schedules and committee assignments is at the disposal of
department chairmen and senior administrators.
        And Atkinson, it seems, was following his administration's
lead in opposing the regents. That is really very peculiar. It's
hard to imagine a newly appointed CEO outside in the real world
deciding to defy the company's board of directors on a central
issue. And indeed, the chairman of the board (the governor of
California) called Atkinson to Sacramento to deliver an
explanation. Afterwards, Atkinson backed down a little; he'd follow
orders on graduate-school admissions, he said, but undergraduates
would have to wait until 1998.
        That wasn't far enough back, and with a closed-door meeting
of the regents scheduled for Wednesday, he now says he erred in not
adequately consulting the regents before deciding to postpone.
        The regents should not accept either defiance or the excuse
of not enough time. Both public opinion and the state of
constitutional law are turning against the overtly discriminatory
policies that UC has been enforcing for decades.
        And Atkinson, who is after all a professor, should remember
that starting your assignments late is not grounds for an extension
of the due date.
        
        
Subj:     Re: Affirmative Action and UC regents (fwd)
Date:     96-01-26 12:48:31 EST
From:     linsee@well.com (Linda Seebach)
To:  valleytms@aol.com



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 00:00:36 -0800
From: Martin Trow <trow@violet.berkeley.edu>
To: Linda Seebach <linsee@well.com>
Subject: Re: Affirmative Action and UC regents

Linda:  May I share my hunches with you without being quoted?  

        For what its worth, I cannot recall a situation in which
the
President of UC so directly and flagrantly disobeyed a clear
directive from
the Regents.  It is quite unconstitutional, and at the very least
wholly
forfeits the trust of the Regents majority which voted for the new
policy. 
It could be seen as a kind of adminstrative coup, or declaration of
war by
the President against the Regents.  

        But for Atkinson as the leader of the administrative party
(which I
have begun to call the "nomenclatura"), the move was very shrewd. 
I
believe,without direct evidence, that Atkinson would not at all
mind being
fired for this act.  He would leave the University in a blaze of
glory,
defending its autonomy against Regential interference into the
heart of
administrative discretion, and would soon be awarded the Clark Kerr
Medal
-- all a highly attractive alternative to years of harassment by
Regents,students and Chancellors, ground between the upper and
nether
millstones of passion and conviction.  Moreover, there is no
successor in
sight; all the Chancellors are disqualified by insubordination, and
who of
any distinction from outside would take this job now?  Moreover,
firing
Atkinson would set off an unholy uproar inside the University and
on all
the editorial pages of the state.  So Atkinson can't lose.  Indeed,
I think
he will win this one, and will not be made a martyr by the Regents,
but at
the price of continued mistrust and harassment by Regents and
Sacramento.

        Before this week I thought Atkinson wanted to settle this
issue,
leave it for the initiative (where the Regents left it last week),
and get
on to other problems.  This action, along with sending the most
vocally
anti-Regents Chancellor (ie., Chuck Young) to "negotiate" with the
investigatory AAUP committee, suggests to me that Atkinson is
actively
committed to the defeat of the Regents and their policy.  A very
risky
game.

        The AAUP committee, as you may know,is a hanging jury.  I
know some
of its members, who are and have long been strongly committed to
the
preferences policy. Atwell, until recently President of ACE, was a
strong
advocate of the activist affirmative action policies of Middle
States, the
regional accrediting body that Lamar Alexander had to curb when he
was Secy
of Education a few years ago. That committee was brought into being
at the
request of Karabel's group of faculty activists to put outside
pressure on
the Regents; sending Chuck Young to work with them tips Atkinson's
hand; in
my view, he is now one with them.

        This at least is my reading of the current situation; it
involves a
sharp turn in my views since last Thursday.  But I may be as wrong
today as
I was then. I will be interested in your take on events, and look
forward
to seeing anything you write on the subject. 

                                                Regards, Martin
Trow  

Martin Trow
Professor 
Graduate School of Public Policy
U.C. Berkeley
CA. 94720, USA
e mail:  Trow@violet.Berkeley.edu
fax: 510 643 9657 

Dear Linda: Thanks for your note. I was busy writing the attached
for presentation to the Regents today, It was very well recrived;
almost the only dissenting viewe in a morning full of repetitive
attaks on the Regents decision of last July, but you would not hear
a word on it in coverage. But that is to be expected; the media has
also managed to ignore the survey of UC faculty which produces just
the findings that Atkinson anticipated and everyone feared. I
attach my talk to the Regents, and the place to call for the press
release on the poll. Can I be of any help? Martin Trow


Presentation to the Board of Regents of the University of
California, 1/18/96
               Martin Trow
         Graduate School of Public Policy
         University of California, Berkeley

  Introduction:

I am Martin Trow, Professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy
at Berkeley. Some of you know me: a few years ago I sat with you as
Chairman of the Academic Council, and Faculty Representative to
this Board.  I have also served on most of the Senate committees
and as Chair of the Berkeley Division. So I have some experience of
university governance, and some appreciation of the problems faced
by the Regents, the President's Office and the Academic Senate as
together they try to govern the University of California. I also
have for many years been a trustee of Carleton College in
Minnesota, and have some experience of university life and
governance as a longtime student of higher education in this
country and overseas. If I say that I did not come to abuse you or
threaten you, I hope you will not be disappointed. I have come to
try to shed some light on the way the university is governed, how
we have to come to be where we are, and how we might move on from
here.

The Roper Survey 
Let me begin by saying that on the issue of affirmative action no
one can speak for the faculty of this University, not myself, and
not even, or perhaps especially not, those who claim to do so with
the greatest passion.  And that is because attitudes and sentiment
among the faculty are divided very sharply, and almost down the
middle, on the substantive issues that your policy of 9 July last
spoke to. Here I do not have to call on my impressions or
anecdotes. Just a few weeks ago in December the Roper Center for
Public Opinion Research, based at the University of Connecticut and
directed by a distinguished political scientist, conducted a
telephone survey of 1,000 members of the Academic Senate of this
university. They were distributed on all nine campuses of the
university, selected at random, and included the whole range of
members from Instructors through full Professors, and sampled in
proportion to the relative size of the campuses. The response rate
to the survey was 80 percent, thanks to the persistence of Roper in
calling back; that, as you may know, is a very high response rate
for any kind of survey.  The response rate also may have been high
because the survey asked only four questions, all focused around
aspects of affirmative action. The survey was sponsored by the
California Association of Scholars, an organization of faculty
members, administrators, trustees, and advanced graduate students
at private and public colleges throughout California.  But the
design of the questions were shaped and approved by Roper, and they
were in charge of the actual survey itself. They have since
reported the bare bones of the findings in a press release this
past Monday.
Very briefly, voting members of the Academic Senate were asked
whether they favored granting preferences to women and certain
racial and ethnic groups, or whether they favored promoting equal
opportunities in these areas without regard to an individual's
race, sex, or ethnicity. A wide plurality (48 percent) favored the
latter policy; only 31 percent favored the granting of race and
ethnic preferences.  These findings are consistent with polls on
this issue over the past twenty years, both among academics and in
the general population.
When the question was put differently, in the form "Do you favor or
oppose using race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, or national
origin as a criterion for admission to the University of
California," the findings show a bare majority (52%) for retaining
those as "criteria." On the issue of retaining these criteria for
appointments and contracts, the support falls to 47%. Both these
questions reflect the language of the resolutions passed by the
Regents in July of 1995, and the results reflect the subsequent
controversy within the University over the timing and degree of
consultation with the faculty before the policy was changed. But
when asked in yet another question about their own understanding of
the term "affirmative action," given the choice between "granting
preferences to women and certain racial and ethnic groups," or
"promoting equal opportunities for all individuals without regard
to their race, sex, or ethnicity," the faculty sample showed a
preference for the second definition over the first, by 43% to 37%.
Another 15% accept neither statement as their own meaning of the
term.  Indeed, one might note that over the years the University
highjacked the term "affirmative action" to refer to its policies
of group preference, contrary to the views of so many of our
academic colleagues who still think it means "promoting equal
opportunities." We ought to try to take it back; it was a good idea
and still is. 
Incidentally, there are sharp divisions on this issue not only
within our faculty but also among students. The national survey of
American undergraduates conducted annually by UCLA's Higher
Education Research Institute has just reported results. The report
notes that "When presented with the statement "Affirmative action
in college admissions should be abolished, a full 50% agreed." (San
Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 1996, p. A3).
Attitudes regarding the use of race, ethnicity and gender in
admissions and appointments divide the members of the University.
But it does not take a survey for me to say with confidence that
there is a broad consensus regarding the importance of broad access
to the University, and the desirability of a wide diversity among
the faculty and students. If attitudes regarding racial and ethnic
preferences divide us, attitudes regarding diversity bring us
together. And that suggests the direction of our future policies
and programs. Those policies must include plans for the University
to involve itself more deeply in primary and secondary education,
and find ways to improve education all through society so that weak
preparation does not preclude potentially able students of all
backgrounds from coming to our campuses. Berkeley's Pledge is an
important first step in that direction, pointing the way in which
the University can come together around policies which will benefit
not only the university, not only disadvantaged students, but the
society at large. And that is certainly part of our broad mission
as a public university.
The "faculty" and the "Academic Senate"
But the question may arise in your minds, as it has in mine, of how
it is that meetings of campus Senates on all nine campuses can have
passed resolutions condemning the Regent's actions of last July,
while the survey just described shows the faculty pretty evenly
divided on the issues. There are several reasons. For one thing,
the University recruits scholars and teachers, not fearless Green
Berets. The University over the years has developed a strong
climate and organizational structure in support of its policy of
racial and ethnic preferences: from the President's Office down,
every campus, every college has administrative offices and Senate
committees to plan and enforce preferential policies; every
department has an "affirmative action" officer to monitor its
behavior. All the Chancellors, with I suspect varying degrees of
enthusiasm, supported the policies of group preference, as also the
Provosts and Deans on every campus, who didn't become Provosts and
Deans unless they did. But there was and is no equivalent
organization of people and energy devoted to criticizing the old
policies, or trying to reform them. Even professors with tenure do
not like to run afoul of their Deans and Provosts, much less their
Chancellors, all of whom can on occasion be very clear about their
preferences, though not always on paper. In all candor, I must
confess that if I were still Director of Berkeley's Center for
Studies in Higher Education I might not be speaking to you this
way.  I wonder if these senior administrators have any idea of the
chilling effect on dissent of their strong commitments on these
issues which divide us, commitments which as we see give voice to
only one side. 
In addition, and apart from the weight of this "affirmative action"
community and its real power in the University, there is always the
danger for critics of those arrangements of calling down on
themselves the charge of "racist." No matter how unwarranted and
unfair, it is an awful epithet, and can affect one's relations with
one's colleagues and students — indeed, one's whole life and
career. Intimidation is perhaps too strong a word, but it is not
far off.  Can you be surprised if most faculty members who did not
share the official doctrines on admissions and appointments might
have preferred to keep their views to themselves, at least until
they had the protection of anonymity in a survey being conducted
from Connecticut?
Let's look for a moment at these resolutions passed at meetings of
the campus Senates. They are all votes of those attending, and we
know that such meetings are ordinarily not well attended, and those
who come are disproportionately those who have very strong
interests in the outcome. In this case, for reasons already
suggested, they tended to be members ideologically committed to the
existing policy of preferences. There had not been a broad or deep
discussion of the new policies throughout the faculty (for reasons
I will return to in a moment), and thus no way of distinguishing
between the policies themselves and the procedures that led to
their enactment. But this is an old and familiar story. Twenty-five
years ago Professor John Searle, reflecting on the campus wars of
the '60s, commented on the behavior of the Academic Senate and its
meetings in what I believe is the most penetrating analysis of
those events. His remarks may help us understand the present
disturbances, and faculty reactions to them:     "The striking
thing [about faculty meetings around contentious issues] is the
extent to which a small group of really determined left-wing
faculty who know exactly what they want and are prepared to seize
the rhetorical initiative and fight for what they want, can exert
an influence wildly disproportionate either to their own numbers or
the size of their constituency in the faculty. The moderates not
only tend to be unclear and indecisive about what they want, but
they are also anxious to avoid a fight.  They don't like being in
adversary relationships, and they would like to keep peace in the
faculty family as long as they can. At these meetings everyone is
anxious to avoid a "divided faculty." (John Searle, The Campus War,
New York, The World Publishing Company, 1971, pp. 147-148.) 
Or, as W.B. Yeats said in another time and place, "The best lack
all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
(From "The Second Coming.") 
In the present instance, opponents of the new policy could not find
anything like a consensus behind a condemnation of the substance of
the Regents' new statement on affirmative action, for reasons
suggested by the survey: there simply was and is no consensus, or
even a clear majority, against the policy in the faculty. But in
response to the cries of outrage against the Regents' action from
activist faculty and students (and some administrators), the Senate
members who were not themselves opposed to the principle of
affirmative action without group preferences could find consensus
where it is always easiest to find it: in condemnation of the
procedures leading to the decisions. There is always a favorable
response in the faculty to the cry of "inadequate consultation,"
both because consultation is the Senate's chief avenue of influence
on decisions in the University, and also because it is often a
well-founded complaint; consultation with administrative officers
is often inadequate. Administrators often want or think they need
to do something quickly, while the Senate's process of consultation
through committees is notoriously slow. And administrators commonly
shorten or even bypass consultation on the familiar ground that
"there isn't enough time; a decision has to be made by next
Tuesday." So some of these controversies over consultation are
inherent in the relations between an administrative bureaucracy and
the guild of academics organized in the Academic Senate, a guild of
equals in which no one can give orders, but only try to persuade. 
But complaints about "inadequate consultation" are not always so
well-founded. It is not uncommon in a system run largely through
consultation, discussion and compromise for some who do not gain
their ends through consultation to complain that therefore the
consultation was inadequate — confusing consultation with
agreement. "You haven't done what we urged you to do," they say, "
therefore you didn't really listen to us, or consult properly with
us, or take our views into account." I think some of this confusion
of consultation with agreement is present in the current
controversy. (Indeed I believe President Peltason warned about this
in his farewell address).
This leads me to a more general observation about the Academic
Senate, its strength and limitations. In my view the Academic
Senate is an enormously valuable institution for the protection and
application of broadly held academic and scholarly values to the
life of the university. There is behind everything we do in the
University a broadly shared commitment to excellence in both
teaching and research. There are indeed often arguments among
academics about how best to pursue or achieve excellence, but as
always when there is a solid underlying base of shared values,
lengthy discussion and compromise almost always leads to some
action which is broadly accepted by the faculty as legitimate, even
when you don't quite agree with the outcome. On issues of
curriculum, on the criteria for academic advancement, on the
quality and effectiveness of this program or that research
institute, for example, we can always reach some agreement because
we all agree that our common aim is to be "the best." And we accept
that the lengthy procedures of discussion and consultation within
the Senate and its committees are the best way to get both good
decisions and legitimate ones. 
 But the Senate is not so good or effective in relation to issues
on which there is no underlying consensus, on issues involving
conflicts of values that have their sources outside of academic
life. The Senate has something of the character of a secular Quaker
meeting; it is constantly searching for consensus through reasoned
discussion and compromise. It is best at trying to improve the
quality of a program or the implementation of a policy that is
broadly accepted, and it is quite prepared to wait for a sense of
the meeting to emerge. That may drive administrators crazy, but it
also ensures the legitimacy of the resulting decisions or
recommendations within the academic community.  On those issues the
Senate and its Council is the voice of the faculty. And that points
to its legitimate role in the present controversy, one that I
believe it has already taken on - that is, the refinement and
implementation of the new policy.
Responsibility of the President's Office and the Chancellors
But there is a further complication in the current dispute over
consultation. The fact is that the Senate ordinarily advises the
President and his officers (or at the Campus level, the Chancellors
and his or her staff.) In the present case the issue centers around
the consultation between the Senate and the Regents, in relation to
a forthcoming change in Regential policy. But in fact there are no
regular lines of communication between the Regents and the Senate,
apart from the presence of the Chair and Vice Chair of the Council
at meetings of the Regents as representatives of the faculty as a
whole. There is in addition formal provision for the presentations
of petitions by the faculty directly to the Regents, a rare event
indeed. But the unwritten constitution of the University, which is
central to its governance, is (or was) clear that the faculty
ordinarily communicate with the Regents chiefly through the
Academic Council and then through the President; to go around the
President directly to a Regent is what is called pejoratively an
"end run," which tends to undermine the authority of the President,
is (or was) properly resented by him, and undermines his
relationship with the Council and its Chair.  Of course this does
not preclude ordinary social relationships or friendships between
faculty members and regents, but it does mean that there is no
provision in the way we are organized for conducting formal
consultations and negotiations directly between Regents and the
Academic Senate apart from the representatives of the Senate who
sit with you here. To the extent that these rules and norms have
been weakened in the present dispute, to that extent the authority
of the President has been weakened. 
Now the issue is raised whether the consultation with the Faculty
in relation to the Regents' actions last July was adequate. It is
my understanding that Regent Connerly did discuss his plans (though
not the exact wording of his resolutions) with the then Chair and
Vice chair of the Senate in the months before the July meeting. But
those discussions, if I am correct, did not involve the President,
who had already declared his firm opposition to the proposed
changes in policy, and perhaps was unwilling to do anything that
might increase its chances of passage. So there were not the
extended discussions with faculty representatives that might
fulfill our expectations about the right kind and degree of
consultation on such an important issue, so close to central
academic interests and values
There are real costs to a deep and public split between the
President of the University and the Regents, and this was one of
them: the blocking of the chief channel of communications between
faculty and Regents. Another was the mobilization of the
President's Office behind the effort to defeat the new proposals,
and the loss of that able staff as a resource for exploring
alternatives, or of creative ways to implement the policy. And a
third consequence of the commitment of the President to the defeat
of the resolutions was, I suspect, a loss of confidence by the
Regents, or at least by some Regents, in that office and in its
work on this issue. These all weakened consultation, another word
for cooperative working relationships among the several elements of
university governance. Those relationships are all based on trust,
and the loss or weakening of that trust may be the largest price of
all.
The public commitment of the President's Office on this issue was
very unwise. Equally unwise, and part of the same campaign, was the
vote of the Council of Chancellors to oppose the Regents'
initiative. I believe it was reckless and irresponsible of them to
challenge the Regents' authority to bring the University into line
with public sentiment and the developing direction of public law on
the issue. I think it was dangerous to establish a University
orthodoxy on an issue on which at least half the faculty hold
opposing views.  I think it was foolish to undermine the
institution from which their own authority derives. As men and
women who hold and exercise authority, they should know how easily
it is lost, and how difficult it is to regain.          I can well
understand how all this developed. In the months before the July
vote, with public opposition to the proposed changes by the
President, all the Chancellors, and the Academic Council, it might
have seemed that the proposals could and would be defeated by the
Regents as a whole. We are all paying the price of that grave
miscalculation.


Responsibility of the Council

        But there were difficulties in the way of full consultation
on this
issue which were neither of the Regents' making nor the
President's.  The
Academic Council on its own initiative could have begun a broad
discussion
of the issue well before the Regents acted, one which tried to
explore all
sides of the issue, brought into the discussion the varied opinions
within
the Senate, and explored various alternatives that might be
consistent with
the Regents' broad aims.   This is exactly what the Senate does
best; such
discussions within the Council and on the campuses both improve the
quality
of decisions and help make them acceptable throughout the
University. This
kind of discussion is ordinarily carried on through the standing
committees
of the Senate, the most important of which are represented on the
Council,
and through those committees is carried back into the Senate
structures on
the campuses.  But for reasons which I can understand if not share,
the
then Chair of the Council chose to place the issue solely in the
hands of
the State-wide Committee on Affirmative Action, and not also in the
hands
of the Senate's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools
(BOARS) and
the University Committee on Academic Personnel.  This Committee on
Affirmative Action which performs the useful function of bringing
the
interests and concerns of women and minority members in the
University to
the attention of the Council, is also the only  Senate committee
which is
understood to represent a special interest, and to be an advocate
for those
interests; all other Senate committees are expected to address
problems not
from the point of view of a special interest but from the
perspective of
the University as whole.  Referring the issue of the Regents'
proposed
changes of policy on affirmative action to the Committee on
Affirmative
Action alone was to guarantee the outcome, which was, predictably,
a quick
strong verbal recommendation to the Council to reaffirm the
existing
arrangements and reject the proposed changes in policy.   

        And with that recommendation from that committee before
them, the
Council and the rest of the Senate  could not see their way clear
to
rejecting it; it became the position of the Academic Senate, as
thereafter
embodied in resolutions from the Council and from the Campus
Senates.  But
the report of the Committee on Affirmative Action did not initiate
the
broad discussion and debate within the Senate that could lead to
constructive discussion with the Regents.  Nor, may I say, did such
discussions emerge from the President's Office, whose reports were
still
aimed at preventing the change in policy rather than refining or
implementing it.  Indeed, a fundamental obstacle to beginning the
kind of
consultation the Senate is good at lay in the belief both in the
President's Office and in the Council that the resolutions could
and should
be defeated, rather than refined and creatively implemented.

Responsibility of the Regents

        I have spoken somewhat critically of the role of the
President's
Office and the Academic Senate in the events leading up to the
Regents
meeting of last July.  But we surely cannot understand our current 
problems without recognizing the circumstances in which the
Regents'
proposals were presented.  They were broadly seen, not least in the
University, as an element in the Governor's campaign for the
Presidency. 
And that fact has tended to override discussion of the intrinsic
merits or
demerits of the policy itself.  The academic community is not
wholly naive
about the role of politics in university life,  but the timing of
this was
particularly troubling, subordinating as it did the merits of the
issue to
its political value.  And coupled with the broad hostility of the
University leadership, and the thinness of consultation with the
academic
community that I have already discussed, it does not surprise me
that
opposition to the policy among the faculty should be wider than the
opposition to its principles and merits.  Nor does it surprise me
that
opposition to the policy should take the form of attacks on the
"procedures," and on the near absence of consultation with and
within the
Senate.  

        I have already  indicated that the weakness or absence of
such
consultation was not wholly the responsibility of the Regents;
nevertheless, the circumstances under which the  new proposals were
presented and adopted certainly gave substance to the attacks on
it, and
deprived it of the legitimacy that University policy should have if
it is
to be broadly accepted and implemented.  I believe many faculty
members of
good will who would accept or welcome the change in policy were
troubled by
the circumstances of its passage.  It may well be that given the
strength
of the "affirmative action" community in the University, and of the
strongly held values among many of its leaders, broad consultation
with the
Senate might have led to even stronger opposition to the policy;
that may
be what the proponents of the new policy on the Regents anticipated
and
feared.  A good deal would have depended on how the issue was
framed for
the Senate, and that in turn would depend on behavior of the
President and
his relationship with the Regents, and particularly with the
proponents of
the new policy on the Regents.  But it didn't happen that way, and
there is
enough blame for that to go around.

Conclusion and Recommendations

        If my own views are not already apparent, let me make them
clear.  
I think the new policy is a good policy, but gravely compromised in
the
timing and nature of its passage.  I am not disturbed that this
should have
been an initiative of the Regents; on the contrary, the Regents
have the
responsibility to determine the fundamental nature of the
University and
its broad relationship to the society which supports it.  This is
a
fundamental issue of public policy; retaining the old preferences
would
have been a Regential action as much as was abolishing them.   No
one else
could have taken this action, not the President of the University
(any
President), nor the Chancellors and certainly not the Academic
Senate.  The
only alternative would have been through a statewide initiative to
be
placed on the ballot.  That was a real alternative, and many
believe it
would have been preferable to what happened.  At least it probably
would
have saved the University from many of the troubles it has
inherited.  But
that begs the question of whether the University should confront
more
directly some of the central moral issues of the day.  Should we be
out in
front on such issues? I myself would have preferred a delay till
after the
election, but I am one of those seekers after peace and
conciliation that I
spoke of earlier.  But I accept there is something to be said on
both sides
of that question, though we cannot turn time back to change the
decision
that was made.

        This is not the place or time to explain adequately why I
think the
old arrangements were bad: the unjust and unwarranted stigma of
"affirmative action" carried by women and some because of their
race or
ethnicity; the transparent injustice of preferences granted to
students
from highly advantaged backgrounds arising out of old racial and
ethnic
stereotypes; the problems posed for the administration of
affirmative
action by  the growing numbers of Americans of multiracial origins;
the
University's inability (and understandable reluctance) to detect
plain
fraud in claims of  preferential group memberships -- for all these
and
other reasons the policy was not only unfair, but also occasioning
more
resentment among all groups, becoming a significant factor in
dividing the
academic community rather than bringing us together.  

        I have raised these issues, most of them of recent history,
not to
rehash old arguments but to try to contribute to our understanding
(and my
own in the first case) of what brought us here, and how aspects of
University governance failed in the face of this issue.  It is not
a happy
story, nor is it a search for a cheap symmetry to say that all
parts of the
system were involved in the failure.   But if the errors and
failures of
the past are confronted, they may also help in seeing where the
University
should go from here.  On the governance side, I am clearer than
ever that
the welfare of the University depends on the relationship of the
Regents
with the President; they must be on the same page, and support each
other,
at least publicly.  On the substantive side, I believe that the
University
must move on to the question of how best to implement an
affirmative action
policy that does not provide categorical preferences, but serves
the whole
community, ensures access to all without regard to their race,
ethnicity or
sex, and continues to reflect the diversity of the population of
the state.
   

        But if that is to be more than empty rhetoric, it means
taking
seriously the role of the University in improving the quality of
primary
and secondary schooling in the state,  especially in those places
and
schools where it is weakest, and least productive of University
entrants. 
The University has had a deep relationship with almost every major
institution in the society: from our earliest days with
agriculture,
increasingly with industry, with the Federal government through the
Energy
Labs and in many other ways, with state and local governments and
all the
professions.  We need to be as deeply involved with the schools. 
I am
proud that Berkeley has pioneered this new commitment with the
Berkeley
Pledge, and I look with hope to the President's new Plan to Enhance
Educational Participation  (PREP).  I strongly suspect that these
important
new initiatives would not have been taken if the Regents had not
changed
University policy last July.  The old preference system was the
cheap,
quick and easy way to get diversity; improving education and the
schools is
a harder but an infinitely better way.  Those programs, and others
like
them on every campus, must be our commitments for the long run.  In
the
short run we must find ways to recognize and admit students who
have
overcome handicaps and adversity and shown qualities of character
that may
not yet be reflected in their grades or test scores.  I also warmly
support
the suggestion made by some wise members of the University that the
Regents
appoint a special committee bringing some of their own number,
administrative officers and leaders of the Academic Senate together
to
shape policies and programs in these directions -- and also to
provide a
line of communications among them.  

         But none of this will work if we are still debating the
recision
of this policy.  That would keep alive the adversarial and divisive
elements of a University at war with itself, and that struggle
might indeed
become a permanent part of the way the University is governed. 
That would
change not just governance but the University utterly.  As you
know, that
is frankly and explicitly desired by some inside and outside the
University.   For those, the real target is not a particular policy
but the
authority of the Board of Regents, and its very nature.  I think
their
numbers are small, though their voices are loud.  In my view their
success
would be the greatest disaster for the University which I love and
to which
I have given a good part of my life.  I count on you not to let
that
happen, and to find not one but many ways to bring us together
again, on
this as on the other issues that may divide us.


Martin Trow
Professor 
Graduate School of Public Policy
U.C. Berkeley
CA. 94720, USA
e mail:  Trow@violet.Berkeley.edu
fax: 510 643 9657