Jack Walter Peltason (August 29, 1923 – March 21, 2015) was the president of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, and former chancellor of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...

. He died of Parkinson's disease in 2015. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Peltason was a member of the Smith College faculty from 1947 to 1951 and then joined the University of Illinois-Urbana faculty. He became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1960. In 1964, he left Illinois to become vice president of academic affairs at the University of California, Irvine. In 1967, he returned to Illinois to become the first chancellor of the Urbana campus and stayed there until 1977 when he returned to Irvine. Peltason served as president of political science honors society

Pi Sigma Alpha Pi Sigma Alpha ( or PSA), the National Political Science Honor Society, is the only honor society for college and university students of political and social sciences in the United States. Its purpose is to recognize and promote high academic ...

from 1978 to 1980, and was also on the executive council of the society from 1970 to 1978. Peltason served as UC president for the last three years of his long career. His relatively brief tenure was marked by two major controversies. First, in more prosperous times, UC had approved generous deferred compensation for its chancellors and other top executives which was no longer politically defensible during the

early 1990s recession The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...

, and Peltason was forced to spend a great deal of time on the tasks of trimming back UC's executive salary and benefits programs and defending them to the public. Second, in 1994, Regent

Ward Connerly Wardell Anthony "Ward" Connerly (born June 15, 1939) is an American political and anti-affirmative action activist, businessman, and former University of California Regent (1993–2005). He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civi ...

and Governor

Pete Wilson Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 36th governor of California from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as a United States senator from California bet ...

launched a campaign to prohibit the use of affirmative action in UC admissions. Despite strong opposition from Peltason and most UC senior executives (including UCSF associate dean and future UC President

Michael V. Drake Michael Vincent Drake (born July 9, 1950) is an American university administrator and physician who is the 21st president of the University of California. From 2014 to June 2020, he was the 15th president of Ohio State University. From 2005 to 2 ...

), Connerly and Wilson were able to persuade a majority of the Board of Regents to approve two resolutions to that effect on July 20, 1995.

References

External links

Guide to the Jack Peltason Papers.
Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. * http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/president
Anteater Chronicles: Jack W. Peltason Bio
1923 births 2015 deaths Presidents of the University of California System Chancellors of the University of California, Irvine Leaders of the University of Illinois Princeton University alumni University of Missouri alumni People from St. Louis Smith College faculty {{US-academic-stub