Vacancy at Berkeley

For six years, Berkeley's chancellor, Roger Heyns. 52, did his best to cool down the original hotbed of U.S. student activism. Last year he was unfairly blamed for the way police handled student demands that one of the university's empty lots be turned into a "people's park." While zealously removing demonstrators, the police and National Guardsmen left one man dead, 150 people injured and nearly 900 arrested, many of them innocent bystanders. But apart from that crisis, Heyns was widely admired for starting an ethnic studies program, aiding poor students and dealing fairly and firmly with both radicals and the conservative board of regents. This fall, Berkeley has been remarkably peacefuland academically as good as ever.

Last week Heyns announced his resignation. He is leaving partly because of a mild heart attack last summer, partly to gain relief from grueling 16-hour days, partly to end the frustrations of coping with Governor Ronald Reagan's majority on the board of regents. Above all, this fall's calm gave him a chance to leave without appearing to quit under fire and to return to his old job as professor of psychology and education at the University of Michigan. His exit confronts the troubled, nine-campus University of California with a second hard-to-fill vacancy. The other is the chancellorship at San Diego, which William J. McGill left two months ago to become president of Columbia University. So far, neither San Diego's faculty nor California's regents have been able to find a good man willing to become McGill's successor. Finding another Heyns for Berkeley may be just as difficult.

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