UC Irvine's Jack Peltason will receive the Clark Kerr Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education, an award presented by the UC Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate to individuals who have made an extraordinary and distinguished contribution to the advancement of higher education.

Peltason -- 16th president of the University of California (1992-1995) and UCI Chancellor Emeritus (1984-1992) -- will receive the senate's highest award tomorrow at UC Berkeley.

"This is a wonderful honor and one that especially delights this university," said UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake. "All of higher education has benefited from the leadership and vision of Jack Peltason, but at UCI we are especially grateful for the vital roles Jack has played -- and continues playing -- to make this university one of the nation's best."

As a founding faculty member, Peltason served as UCI's first vice chancellor of academic affairs before leaving in 1967 to become chancellor of the University of Illinois -- an institution where he had previously served as an assistant professor of political science. After 10 years at Illinois, he became president of the American Council on Education until returning in 1984 to Irvine as chancellor. In 1992, Peltason was tapped as president of the University of California -- a position he held until 1995, when he returned once again to UCI as a professor emeritus of political science.

Peltason earned great distinction early in his academic career for path-breaking work in political science on the subject of constitutional law and the judicial process. His book, "Fifty-Eight Lonely Men," a study of the federal district judges in the South and their role in overseeing desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education, and his work on the state courts are regarded as classics in political science literature.

His name also is well known to several generations of college students as principal author of "Government by the People," a leading textbook on American government that remained in print through 21 editions over a 40-year period. He is described by one member of the senate awards committee, Harry Scheiber, the Riesenfeld Professor of Law and History, as "a giant in the scholarship of modern social science, no less than he has been a dominant figure in leadership of American higher education." His later distinctions include serving as co-chair of the Western Center of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, helping found UCI's Center for the Study of Democracy, and endowing a fellowship fund for incoming doctoral students.

In 1968, the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate created the Clark Kerr Award as a tribute to the leadership and legacy of President Emeritus Kerr. Past recipients include former California governor and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, renowned American historian and race relations scholar John Hope Franklin, and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger.

According to UC Berkeley Senate Faculty Awards Committee Chair Bob B. Buchanan, professor in the plant and microbial biology department, "President Peltason's contributions to higher education, his commitment to the principles of shared governance, his outstanding scholarship, together with his being an exemplary representative of the legacy of Clark Kerr, were among the many reasons for his selection by the faculty committee."

About the University of California, Irvine: Celebrating 40 years of innovation, the University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.