The UCLA Library’s Oral History Program has completed an oral history with former Chancellor Charles E. Young. The three-volume publication can be consulted in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections at UCLA and in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
Young will be honored at a reception on Thursday, May 20, at the Research Library, where he will be presented with the completed publication.
“This campus and its Library would not have achieved our present level of excellence without Charles Young’s vision, determination and many years of dedication,� said University Librarian Gary E. Strong. “We are delighted to be able to honor him at this event and to preserve and make available his personal recollections of his eventful years here through this oral history.�
Young was named as chancellor in 1968, becoming at age 36 the youngest chancellor in UC’s history. He served in that position for 29 years until his retirement in 1997. Under his leadership, UCLA rose to national prominence for the excellence of its teaching and research and also achieved ambitious fundraising goals in support of its programs. Throughout his tenure, Young was an advocate of academic freedom and a proponent of the view that a public university education should be accessible and affordable to as many individuals as possible.
During Young’s years as chancellor, the UCLA Library system, which comprises a campuswide network of libraries serving programs of study and research in many fields, grew to rank among the top five research libraries in the United States, and its overall collections increased from fewer than three million to some seven million volumes. The University Research Library was renamed in Young’s honor in 1998 as the result of a $7.5 million gift from an anonymous donor to the UCLA Library.
Contents of the oral history
The interviews for the oral history were conducted by James V. Mink and Dale E. Treleven, former heads of the Oral History Program. The sessions took place during 1984–85 and 1998–99 and resulted in a total of 34 recorded hours that covered Young’s life and career in roughly chronological order.
Young was born in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 30, 1931. He met and married Sue K. Young in 1950. He was called to active duty with the Air National Guard during the Korean War. Sue Young died in 2001. In 2002 Charles Young married Judy Cornell.
Following the Korean War, Young attended San Bernardino Valley College, then the new UC in Riverside, where he majored in political science and served as the campus’ first student body president. He pursued graduate study in political science at UCLA, where he was involved with the Graduate Students Association and the Student Legislative Council. He completed his master’s degree in 1957.
Young received an internship from the American Political Science Association to serve as a Congressional fellow in Washington, D.C., during 1958–59. He completed his doctorate at UCLA in 1960; his dissertation examined legislative redistricting.
Young worked as an administrative analyst in the UC Office of the President during 1959–60. Among the issues he was involved with were the Master Plan for Higher Education in California; the Donahoe Act of 1960, by which provisions of the master plan became law; and the decentralization and growth of the UC system. He also was an assistant professor of political science at UC Davis during 1960.
In 1960 Young returned to UCLA as assistant to the chancellor and an assistant professor of political science. He became assistant chancellor in 1962, vice chancellor for administration in 1963, associate professor in 1966, chancellor in 1968, full professor in 1969 and chancellor emeritus in 1997.
Young’s inauguration as chancellor took place on May 23, 1969, the 50th anniversary of the university’s founding. Shortly thereafter, he faced his first controversy when he opposed the decision of the UC Board of Regents to dismiss UCLA philosophy professor Angela Davis because of her public membership in the Communist Party. Student activism and unrest on campus related to the Vietnam War and civil rights protests also were a challenge during his early years.
From the beginning of his tenure, Young supported affirmative action efforts to increase the ethnic diversity of UCLA’s students, faculty and staff. By 1991 the student body was recognized as the most ethnically diverse of any public research university in the country. Young publicly opposed the UC Regents’ decision in 1995 to abolish gender and race as considerations in admissions and the passage in 1996 of Proposition 209, which prohibited affirmative action in admissions procedures at the state’s public universities.
UCLA’s academic programs expanded and flourished under Young. By 1982, when the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils ranked the quality of faculty at more than 150 American research universities in 32 disciplines, 17 UCLA departments were included in the top ten and 30 were in the top 16. In a 1995 National Research Council survey, 31 of UCLA’s Ph.D. programs ranked in the top 20 in the country, placing it among the nation’s leading research universities. In 1997 UCLA was among the first recipients of the National Science Foundation’s Recognition Award for the integration of research and education.
Both academic and public arts and cultural programs on campus also expanded. The School of the Arts and the School of Theater, Film and Television were established in 1989 in a reorganization of the former College of Fine Arts, and the Westwood Playhouse was acquired in 1995. The Fowler Museum of Cultural History opened in 1992, and the university took over management of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in 1994.
In 1982 Young launched UCLA’s first major fundraising campaign with a goal of $200 million; a total of $373 million in private money had been raised by the time it concluded in 1988. Funding received through research contracts and grants also increased significantly throughout his tenure, particularly for projects in the sciences. Young launched a second major campaign just before his retirement in 1997, with an initial goal of $1.2 billion.
The physical landscape of the campus changed dramatically during Young’s chancellorship. New buildings included the Doris and Louis Factor Health Sciences Building, the John Anderson Graduate School of Management, the Molecular Sciences Building, the Doris Stein Eye Research Center, Engineering IV, the UCLA Medical Plaza, the John Wooden Recreation Center, two major expansions of the School of Law and the Tom Bradley International Center.
In addition, three major expansions of the student residential complex and two major expansions of Ackerman Student Union were accomplished during his tenure. Both before and after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, major seismic renovation of the campus’s original buildings was undertaken under Young’s direction, particularly the two central landmark buildings, Royce Hall and Powell Library.
Young also was actively involved with the UCLA athletic programs. Among the acclaimed coaches who served during his tenure were John Wooden, Terry Donahue, Al Scates, Dick Vermeil and many others. As of Young’s retirement in 1997, UCLA teams had won a total of 76 NCAA titles, leading the nation in team championships. UCLA was a focal point during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, both for the number of UCLA athletes who won medals and for hosting the gymnastics and tennis competitions and the Olympic Village.
Among the major UC and UCLA figures Young discussed in the oral history are UC President Clark Kerr, UCLA Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy, and UCLA Vice Chancellor and UC president David S. Saxon. He talked about the circumstances surrounding his being passed over for the position of UC president in 1992 and his withdrawal from consideration for the position in 1995. And he discussed the effects of the gubernatorial administrations of Ronald Reagan, Edmund J. Brown Jr., George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson on the UC system in general and UCLA in particular.
Young’s oral history covers only his time in the University of California. Subsequent to his retirement from UCLA in 1997, Young served as interim president (1999–2000), then president (2000–04) of the University of Florida. His oral history does not cover those duties. Young stepped down as president of the University of Florida in January 2004 at age 72.
More recently, he has accepted the position of president of The Qatar Foundation for a two-year term.
About the UCLA Oral History Program
The UCLA Oral History Program was established in 1959 to collect and preserve oral recollections, primarily regarding the history of Southern California. The program’s collections now total more than 500 interviews.
Major subject areas include African American history, biomedical science, books and fine printing, civil liberties, jazz, politics and government, and visual art. Oral histories with major campus figures supplement the holdings of University Archives, which is the official repository for non-current university records that have permanent historical, legal, fiscal or administrative value.