[Final reflections]: A conversation with Carnesale

He might be head of one of the most prestigious public
universities in the world, but Chancellor Albert Carnesale is not
an imposing man.

Impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, he greets visitors to
his office with a firm handshake and a quick smile. He exudes quiet
reserve and a wealth of knowledge, more like a shrewd professor
than a head of higher education.

Indeed, it is in part because he wants to be a professor again
that Carnesale is retiring from his position on June 30, passing on
the torch to an as-yet-unnamed successor. Carnesale loves to teach.
He loves to talk, and he loves to listen. And he still wants to
learn.

His nine years at UCLA might pale in comparison to the length of
the term of his predecessor ““ former Chancellor Charles
Young, who was chancellor for 29 years ““ but that by no
stretch has made Carnesale’s time at UCLA easy.

He has seen the university through burgeoning construction
projects, a massive fundraising campaign and a few tragedies and
scandals.

But though Carnesale might be stepping down just two days shy of
his 70th birthday, one has the sense that he is not fading into
retirement, merely moving on to the next part of his life.

Daily Bruin: (Former Chancellor Charles) Young saw the
campus through the Vietnam War and six presidential
administrations, among many other things. What are the historical
events or movements that you think most significantly impacted your
time at UCLA as chancellor?

Albert Carnesale: There were two that clearly stand out. One is
that I arrived just as Proposition 209 went into effect, so while I
was not here during the political debates about SP-1 and SP-2 and
Proposition 209, I arrived just as it became effective. The second
of course was 9/11, not only the event itself, but its aftermath.
Those were two ““ one being statewide, the other being
worldwide, not just national ““ major events going on in the
world that certainly affected this campus and my
chancellorship.

So, with Proposition 209, the year that it went into effect, we
saw our enrollments of underrepresented minorities, certainly
African Americans and Latinos, drop by almost 50 percent, I think
the number was 43 percent, in the first year. It was a marked and
tragic loss. I didn’t know how big it would be when I
arrived, but I was determined to do the best I could within the
law. And of course it was a change from which we have not yet
recovered, not by a long shot.

… I think the most painful part of it, personally, which I had
not anticipated, was the extent to which, because I am the leader
of the university, people identified this loss with me. Well, not
everyone, but some did. And I became a personal target for those
that were so terribly frustrated along with me with what had
happened. So that was the personal piece. So you had both the
substantive difficulty as well as the personal.

Second, of course, 9/11. A major event here on this campus in
many ways. The biggest one was the uncertainty of what’s
going to happen next. Los Angeles was perceived as a very
attractive target for the same terrorist groups, being the home of
the American entertainment industry and the like. So what’s
the best way to proceed by adopting those measures that really make
the campus as safe as it can be for everybody, to make sure that
there’s no guilt by association, that we treat each other
with the tolerance and respect that was characteristic before, and
that we try to contribute to the understanding and solution of
these issues? That’s been a continuing thing, trying to find
the right balance, just as it is nationally, on the campus, between
civil liberties and the requirements of security.

DB: After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, you gave a
speech to the UCLA community in front of Royce Hall. What sort of
role did you see yourself as having to fulfill in the immediate
aftermath of Sept. 11?

AC: We needed to understand that we were a piece of this, that
not only is this New York and Washington, but it’s also us
and everybody. There was a new level of perceived vulnerability.
… We were just as vulnerable on Sept. 10 as we were on Sept. 11,
but we all became aware of it on Sept. 11.

Second of all, there was a good deal of personal involvement
because this is my field. I’ve worked a good deal of my life
not so much on terrorism per se, but on reducing the likelihood and
the danger of nuclear war, but also of war. … Many of the things
you do to try to reduce the likelihood of any war may indeed
increase the chance that if there is a war, it will be a nuclear
war. So I’m used to thinking about those problems and
I’ve dedicated the better part of my life to try to reduce
those dangers.

And I believed at the time, and I may well have been right, I
don’t know, that one of the greatest dangers we faced was
that we would look inward and blame everybody and anybody who
looked Arab, or anybody who looked like they came from the Middle
East, whether American citizens or not, and there was great danger
and we did see some of that around the country after 9/11. But we
didn’t see it here, and I think actually the country got its
act together pretty quickly after that. But that was my greatest
worry. It wasn’t that we needed bomb shelters around campus.
It was the fear of misinformed reaction and overreaction would make
things worse.

DB: What was going through your mind when you wrote (the
speech), and how did you decide to say what you said?

AC: As you know, very often I get help on speeches, but this was
one where I sat at home, I remember, and wrote it myself. And I
think what was going through my mind was what I said earlier. I
knew, number one, that people would be quite frightened, and
understandably so. Secondly, I knew there would be students and
families out there. … Just think of freshmen in particular, think
of their parents. Here they are, leaving home and going off some
place just at this time when no one has any idea what dangers may
lurk, and fear there may be more of this.

So I wanted, you know, well, there were several things I wanted
to accomplish, but one was to assure people that our highest
priority was to ensure the safety of everyone on this campus,
students, faculty, staff, visitors and the like. It was again,
those three things that were on my mind. That and expanding it so
that people would understand this was not just an attack on
Washington or New York. Things had changed.

DB: To go back to Proposition 209, shortly after you
took office, you said at a forum that the goal of the university
was to provide access to education, and denying this to anyone
“is as un-American as anything I can think of.” And
I’m assuming you were talking about race and ethnicity, since
it was a forum on Proposition 209. Do you still stand by that
statement?

AC: Yes. Yes. And I’ve always felt … that my
responsibility as chancellor is to … maintain and hopefully to
enhance, the quality of this university and its education, research
and service. And because we learn so much from each other, we need
a diverse student body. We need a diverse faculty. Because the fact
is in the United States that some perspectives are shaped by your
experience being poor or rich, living in urban or rural setting, or
being black or white.

So diversity is important and enhances the value of an
education, and, in many instances, the research, to have people
that bring those different perspectives. Those are not the only
perspectives … it’s also important to have liberals and
conservatives.

The second reason I always gave, which I believe in strongly, is
that, especially as a public university, our responsibility is to
prepare leaders for all segments of society. Well, to do that, you
need to have students from all segments of society, otherwise you
can’t do it effectively.

And the third reason does relate to the United States, and
that’s this is what the American dream has been about, for
immigrants and others, or poor people. The streets may not be paved
with gold for you, but they will be for your children and your
grandchildren. The thing, more than anything else, that enables
people to rise economically, and therefore socially, has been
education. That’s been the key, more than anything else.
I’m an example of that, and the wonderful thing about it is
that it’s not unusual.

If you gathered 50 leaders from government, academia, business,
the different professions, and go around the room and ask them what
their grandparents did, you’d be terribly disappointed if a
substantial faction of them weren’t taxi drivers or cobblers
or immigrants. That’s been one of the great things about this
country, and it’s important to maintain it.

DB: There was an Undergraduate Students Association
Council meeting you attended in 1998 where about 80 students
surrounded you with signs that had slogans such as “Take a
stand or take a hike,” “Legal segregation lives”
and “We love you Carnesale, Sincerely Bruins for Spineless
Bureaucrats.” Was it hard to take that
criticism?

AC: Well, I’m used to taking criticism, but I was hurt not
because it was criticism but because of the subject matter of the
criticism. I think if one would have look at my history, for
example at Harvard, when I was dean for a relatively short time, we
made more diverse appointments of faculty than had ever been done,
both of women and minorities … and we made some great joint
appointments with the Kennedy School and African-American studies.
This one was painful because I was labeled as something when it was
clearly not true, and none of my actions would support that it was
true.

DB: In 2001, when students took over Royce Hall in
protest of SP-1 and SP-2, you played a key role in negotiating with
the students and holding off the police. Why did you approach the
situation the way you did?

AC: … Certainly I do understand and empathize with the
students’ frustration. If you asked me what was the greatest
disappointment, it is that we, I, have not been able to figure out
this problem within the law. That’s my greatest
disappointment at UCLA.

So there I am, sympathetic with people and empathize with people
who share, because I really do share their frustrations. So they
deserved to be treated with respect. It’s not as if
they’re doing something, or their motivation is selfish.

At the same time, I believe, as I believed earlier, that other
people have rights too. … They have a right to demonstrate, that
is correct, but I do not think that I should be supporting their
right to disrupt the educational activities of others, and trying
to find the right balance between those two is part of what I
should be doing. “

DB: Since 1997, UCLA’s won about 22 national
titles. What has it been like to see UCLA through a pretty good run
in athletics?

AC: I think it’s wonderful for UCLA, and if you tried to
list … the universities in the country that have in-depth
excellence academically and in-depth excellence athletically
““ I’m not talking about one outstanding team or two
good departments ““ you’d put UCLA, Stanford and
Michigan at the top, and then people would differ as to what comes
next. And I’d say in many ways UCLA is at the top. … Many
people believe you can’t do both. There are many
universities, that focus very strongly on athletics and are just
not very good academically. And then there are others that are vice
versa, that just don’t try to compete at a Division I level,
feeling that it’s inconsistent with a good university, and
they’re just wrong. At UCLA, you can do both of those.

DB: If a friend came up to you and said, “What was
your favorite moment when you were at UCLA?” What comes to
mind first of all?

AC: No, there are too many … You meet wonderful people, there
were successes, or you recruit some terrific people, and when they
accomplish something wonderful … Well, I’ve got my Final
Four watch on, that was great fun … Going to Stockholm to see one
of our faculty members awarded the Nobel Prize, or realizing that
more than half of our students live on campus or within a mile,
when 92 percent of our freshmen live on campus, or when we have
more students on Pell Grants at UCLA now than there are in the Ivy
League, not in some Ivy League school, but the entire group …

There are many things to be proud of. But I don’t
distinguish the ones that are me and the ones that are
UCLA’s. Because that’s my job. I should be measured by
the success of UCLA, not by the success of me. I don’t
deserve credit for everything good that happens, and I don’t
deserve blame for all the bad things that happen. But surely my
objective is to have UCLA be as successful as it can be, and
that’s how I’d measure it.

DB: Why do you plan on coming back to UCLA to teach? Why
here?

AC: … I do think there’s something literally unique
about UCLA: an excellent public university in a major metropolitan
area. That combination is really quite special and doesn’t
exist at this scale anywhere else.

It’s a vibrant international city, and I do international
affairs, (there’s) a continued engagement with the national
laboratories and with RAND, as well as UCLA. Those are powerhouses
in this field. So those are good strong academic reasons.

And then you get to the personal ones. Of course, I met (my
wife) Robin here, her business is here. She could do most of it in
other places.

We have two sons here, a 5-week-old granddaughter here, and I
think it’s valuable to go back to Cambridge once every 10
years to go through a winter just to remind yourself how wonderful
it is to live in Los Angeles.

Interview conducted by Charles Proctor, Daily Bruin senior
staff.