Former UC-Berkeley chancellor Chang-Lin
Tien dies Former UC-Berkeley chancellor Chang-Lin
Tien dies
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP--Chang-Lin Tien, who as chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, was the first Asian-American to head a major U.S. university, has died. He was 67. Tien, an engineering professor who served seven years as chancellor, died Tuesday, Berkeley officials said Wednesday. He suffered a stroke after surgery for a brain tumor two years ago.
An expert on thermal science, Tien helped developed the insulating tiles for the space shuttle and worked on the Saturn rocket boosters used in the space program. In 1999, the International Astronomical Union renamed an asteroid Tienchanglin in his honor. Tien also was an outspoken supporter of affirmative action before and after UC's governing board of regents dropped race-based admissions in 1995.
Born in Wuhan, China, on July 24, 1935, Tien fled Japanese troops during World War II, escaping with his family to Shanghai. In 1949, after civil war put Chinese communists in control, they fled again, to Taiwan. In 1956, Tien traveled to Kentucky to get his master's degree at the University of Louisville.
He never forgot the racial discrimination he encounted in the South in the 1950s. In a 1990 interview with The Associated Press, he recalled standing in confusion before water fountains labeled "whites only" and "colored." Which one, he wondered, was for him? Tien got his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1959. He finished fast, in 20 months. He had an incentive: His family had forbidden Tien and fiancee Di-Hwa to marry until he got the degree. That year, Tien joined Berkeley's faculty. He became chancellor in 1990.
In his first year, Tien dealt with a fraternity house fire that killed three students and a hostage taking at a bar near campus in which a gunman killed one student and wounded seven before being fatally shot by police. In 1992, a mentally ill activist broke into Tien's campus residence wielding a machete. Police shot and killed the woman. In a less serious crisis, he dealt with the Naked Guy, a student who briefly led a go-bare movement until Tien countered with a nudity ban.
One of his biggest challenges was financial, as the California recession of the early 1990s shrank state education funding. Tien put his formidable fund-raising skills to work, helping bring in millions in donations. In 1995, the UC system attracted national attention with the regents' tense 14-10 vote to drop affirmative action programs.
Tien argued for keeping race-based admissions and later lamented the drop in the number of black and Hispanic students at Berkeley following the vote. In 1996, Tien submitted his resignation as chancellor, saying he had accomplished his goals. Later that year, he was in the running for President Clinton's energy secretary until it was reported that he had helped relatives of Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady, the focus of a controversy over Democratic campaign financing involving Asian money. Riady asked Tien for help getting three relatives into Berkeley and donated $200,000 to Cal. The donation was legal and Tien was never accused of any impropriety.
A small man with a big smile, Tien was an unabashed Cal booster. He was a fist-pumping fixture at Berkeley games and was apt to slip a "Go Bears!" into speeches and conversations. The 5-foot-6 Tien, who for one year played semiprofessional basketball in Taiwan, used to joke that his one frustrated ambition was to play in the NBA. "I worked really hard but my height never changed in the upward direction," he told Asian Week in 1997. In addition to his wife, survivors include three children.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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