UCI to endow $1 million professorship in Peltason’s name
November 26th, 2007, 3:00 am · Post a Comment · posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
Big Alaska quake caused odd tremors in Southern California … Editor of journal Science to speak at UCI Wednesday … 3.1 quake near Big Bear …
UC Irvine is preparing to create a $1 million endowed chair in the name of Jack Peltason, the noted constitutional law scholar who helped establish the campus as a nationally renowned research center during eight years as chancellor.
Such professorships are honorary titles that are used to reward, retain or recruit top faculty. Chair holders typically use interest earned on the endowment to support their research. UCI has used endowed chairs to recruit such internationally known scholars as geneticist Doug Wallace, physicist Wilson Ho and evolutionary biologist Michael Clegg.
UCI has yet to formally announce the source of funding for the new chair. But all or some of the money may come from the Irvine Co., which has been involved in creating many of the university’s more than 60 professorships.
The Peltason Chair will be the “first to go to a faculty member in the Center for the Study of Democracy,” says William Schonfeld, the political scientist who serves as the center’s director.
Schonfeld said in an e-mail that he pushed for creation of the professorship “to recognize the enormous contributions Jack Walter Peltason has made to UC Irvine and more generally to the UC System. Moreover, he was critical to the development and success of the Center for the Study of Democracy — not surprising for someone whose scholarship has been driven by a desire to understand the foundations of the American system of government, and whose public university leadership was a model of how such a role should be assumed in a democratic society.”
Peltason is a political scientist who co-wrote “Government by the People,” one of the most acclaimed and widely used poli-sci textbooks of the past half-century. It was first published in 1952. He later became a founding faculty member at UCI, helping to create the school’s first academic plans. Peltason left in 1967 to become chancellor of the University of Illinois, guiding it through tense student demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
Peltason also led the American Council on Education before returning to UCI in 1984 as the university’s second chancellor. He helped craft Irvine’s “brain campaign,” an effort to broaden and improve the university’s research faculty. Peltason also deepened campus ties with the community, and helped raise millions of dollars for everything for endowed chairs to student scholarships.
He stepped down in 1992, but was quickly appointed president of the University of California system, which he helped lead out of a deep budgetary crisis over the next three years.
The 84-year-old Peltason today lives in UCI’s University Hills. He’s been slowed in recent years by Parkinson’s disease. But he’s still regularly seen having lunch with friends and colleagues at the University Club.
