The Man from U.C.L.A.

When Franklin David Murphy was inaugurated as chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles six years ago, he announced as his goal for the campus nothing less than "scholarly distinction in worldwide terms." Ambitious enough a thought for an Ivy League school, it seemed like an all but impossible dream for U.C.L.A., which then had a reputation as a soporific commuter college for beautiful loafers.

Today, while U.C.L.A. has not quite reached the top rank of U.S. universities, educators concede that it may well be the nation's most impressively improved institute of higher learning.

Somewhat grudgingly, Chancellor Murphy concedes that U.C.L.A.'s sister campus at Berkeley is "more prestigious"--but then he will reel off a host of statistics to prove how much the gap has narrowed. This fall, student enrollment at U.C.L.A. has finally caught up with Berkeley at about 27,500--the planned maximum. Six years ago, U.C.L.A. took in a scant $10 million in research grants; now it gets more than $36 million a year, and its annual budget has more than doubled, to $85 million. On U.C.L.A.'s sprawling campus in Westwood, 31 new buildings costing $142 million have gone up during Murphy's tenure. "Buildings don't make the university any more than clothes make the man," the chancellor says, "but in these days you can't do sophisticated research in tents."

Welfare for Watts. To do the research, U.C.L.A. has created the nucleus of a truly first-rate teaching staff, luring men from other campuses with annual salaries of $25,000 or more. From Rome's Istituto Superiore di Sanita came Chemist Daniel Bovet, a Nobel prizewinner in 1957. Another Nobel recipient, Willard Libby, helps make U.C.L.A.'s chemistry department one of the ten best in the U.S. In the past six years, U.C.L.A. has created ten new interdisciplinary study centers, ranging from brain research to medieval and Renaissance studies to space science, a College of Fine Arts, Schools of Public Health, Dentistry, Architecture, and Library Service.

U.C.L.A. has consciously tried to put its intellectual resources at the service of the community in which it lives. One experiment in this direction is a new urban studies center, at which scholars of different disciplines are teaming to help solve some basic problems of the Los Angeles megalopolis, such as the best way to integrate public and private welfare services in Watts. As a cultural catalyst, U.C.L.A. last year drew 500,000 Angelenos to concerts, lectures and stage performances on campus. At the same time, its centers of African, Near Eastern and Latin American studies have drawn international acclaim for excellence, and U.C.L.A. claims to teach more languages than any other university in the world.

"Political Animal." Almost to a man, students and teachers agree that U.C.L.A.'s strides toward greatness are largely due to Chancellor Murphy, 50, a self-styled "political animal" who has persistently badgered the regents and the legislature for a greater share of funds for his school. The son of a Kansas City doctor, Murphy earned his own M.D. at 25, and seven years later became dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Within three years, he became chancellor of Kansas, a post he held until moving West to U.C.L.A.

Known to his Westwood staff as "the super chief," Murphy divides his twelve-hour day between campus work and a host of extracurricular duties, including board membership on the Ford Motor Co., the McCall Corp. and the Menninger Foundation. Art Collector Murphy is also on the board of the National Gallery of Art. With all this activity, there are bound to be some student murmurs about absenteeism in the front office, but the chancellor is such a familiar sight on campus that his customary outfit of blue blazer and grey flannel slacks is known as "the Murphy uniform." Murphy seldom misses a U.C.L.A. football game, often leaves his seat on the 50-yard line to pace nervously behind the bench when his team is in trouble.

Courtesy of Dialogue. Considering the fact that Berkeley and U.C.L.A. are part of the same university, why did the Free Speech riots not spread south to Westwood? One reason, answers Murphy, is that Berkeley has traditionally had a bigger share of student activists than U.C.L.A., and thus far more troublemaking "nonstudent hangers-on in the periphery." But Murphy is critical of the way in which Cal's administrators mishandled the disorders. "You can't substitute memos and bulletins for the courtesy of a dialogue and an explanation," he says. To preserve U.C.L.A.'s record of relative stability, Murphy makes himself easily accessible to chain-talk with students or teachers on university problems.

Like Berkeley, U.C.L.A. is simply one of nine theoretically equal campuses of California's vast state university system. Although he admires and respects Cal President Clark Kerr, at meetings of the regents has made it clear that Kerr "doesn't speak for me," and has successfully fought for more U.C.L.A. autonomy in such matters as budget making and seeking federal funds on its own. Proud of his school's progress so far, Murphy envisions U.C.L.A. becoming a model modern counterpart of the great medieval universities, blending quality and quantity, serving as an intellectual laboratory for an increasingly urbanized world.

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