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Ira Michael Heyman

IN MEMORIAM

Ira Michael Heyman

Professor of Law and City and Regional Planning, Emeritus

Chancellor, Emeritus

UC Berkeley

1930-2011

 

Ira Michael Heyman, the sixth Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley (1980-1999) died on November 19, 2011. A Berkeley faculty member for nearly five decades, he joined the Boalt Hall School of Law in 1959 and in 1966 was given a joint appointment with the Department of City and Regional Planning. His administrative contributions included six years (1974-1980) as Vice Chancellor, and ten years as Chancellor (1980-1990), the longest tenure in that position in Berkeley’s history. He was a supporter of civil rights and affirmative action and while Chancellor the percentage of under-represented minority and low-income students increased appreciably. So did private giving. It was under Heyman’s leadership that “Keeping the Promise”-Berkeley’s first major private fund-raising campaign-was launched. Former Chancellor Albert Bowker credited the four hundred and fifty-five million dollars that it raised with being “a new record for a public university without a medical school.” (“Tribute: Ira Michael Heyman,” California Law Review, October 1993).

 

Born on May 30, 1930, in New York City, Heyman attended public elementary and junior high schools, including the Bronx High School of Science. His last three high school years were spent at Horace Mann High School, a private preparatory school where he served as student body president and earned both academic and athletic honors. Upon graduation he enrolled at Dartmouth College and spent his fourth year as a student intern and a legislative assistant in Washington, D.C. Following graduation in 1951 he joined the United States Marine Corps and served as a First Lieutenant during the Korean War. He then enrolled at Yale University to study law. He was editor of the Yale Law Journal, and received his J. D. degree in 1956. He then served as law clerk for Chief Justice Charles E. Clark at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1957-1958) and then as chief law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Supreme Court (1958-1959).

 

In 1959 Heyman joined UC Berkeley’s School of Law as Acting Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor two years later after passing the California Bar Examination. In 1966 he was awarded a joint appointment with the Department of City and Regional Planning, and worked with environmental organizations such as the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. He also served as a visiting professor at Stanford and Yale law schools.

 

One of the many tasks that confronted him as Chancellor were the major changes that were occurring in the biological sciences and Berkeley’s need for better and more modern research facilities. Berkeley’s new, and much needed, Life Sciences Building Addition was completed in 1990 and plans for the massive renovations that resulted in what now is known as the Valley Life Sciences Building were well underway as his term as Chancellor was ending.

 

Heyman served as Selvin Professor Emeritus of Law and Professor of City and Regional Planning from 1990 to 1993 and then from 1994 to 1999 as the tenth Secretary (Chief Executive Officer) of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex. Heyman continued to contribute his expertise to the Berkeley campus from 2000 to 2002 as Interim Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education.

 

His wife of 54 years, Therese Thau Heyman, a noted curator of photography with whom he had one child (a son), died in 2004.

 

Committee on Memorial Resolutions

UC Berkeley