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Chancellor Jack W. Peltason records (University of California, Irvine)
AS.031  
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Access
  • Publication Rights
  • Preferred Citation
  • Acquisition Information
  • Processing History
  • Historical Background
  • Chronology
  • Collection Scope and Content Summary
  • Collection Arrangement
  • Separation Note
  • Appraisal Note
  • Processing Note
  • Related Collections

  • Contributing Institution: Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries
    Title: University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Jack W. Peltason records
    Creator: Peltason, J.W. (Jack Walter)
    Creator: University of California, Irvine. Office of the Chancellor
    Identifier/Call Number: AS.031
    Physical Description: 35.6 Linear Feet (41 boxes and 2 oversize folders) and 2.2 unprocessed linear feet
    Date (inclusive): 1969-1993
    Date (bulk): 1984-1992
    Abstract: This collection comprises records documenting Jack W. Peltason's work as the second chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, a position he held from 1984 to 1992. Included are records relating to Peltason's administrative duties, community involvement, and professional activities, as well as memorabilia and records related to his inauguration.
    Language of Material: English .

    Access

    Most of the collection is open for research immediately upon request. However, because the collection contains personnel records, some materials are restricted. In Series 1, Administrative Records, and Series 4, Personal and Professional Files, restricted materials have been identified and separated, and they are marked as such in this guide's contents listing. Series 2, Correspondence, contains personnel records interfiled throughout the series, so unrestricted materials in this series can only be made available with advance notice. Finally, materials in Series 7, Audio Recordings, must also be requested in advance so use copies can be made. Researchers who wish to request access to materials in Series 2 and Series 7 should contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives.
    In addition, this collection contains unprocessed additions which may contain restricted materials. Please contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives in advance to request access.

    Publication Rights

    Property rights reside with the University of California. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the University Archivist.

    Preferred Citation

    University of California, Irvine, Chancellor Jack W. Peltason records. AS-031. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.
    For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.

    Acquisition Information

    Transferred from the Office of the Chancellor, 1993-2008. Additional material transferred in 2014 from Aldrich Hall.

    Processing History

    Processed by Dawn Schmitz, 2009.

    Historical Background

    Jack. W. Peltason was the second chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, serving from 1984 to 1992. A distinguished political scientist and constitutional scholar, Peltason was also one of UC Irvine's founding faculty.
    Peltason was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 29, 1923. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1947.
    His first academic position was at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he taught from 1947 to 1951. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he rose to the position of dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1960.
    It was during this time that Peltason co-authored his classic textbook Government by the People. Since its first publication in 1952, the book has been issued in numerous editions and is considered a fundamental text on American democracy for political science students.
    As a member of UC Irvine's founding faculty, he was appointed dean of the College of Arts, Letters, and Science in 1963 when the campus was still in the planning phase. As dean, he had responsibility for approving academic plans for each division and recruiting faculty to a campus that had not yet been built. In 1964 he was named UC Irvine's second vice chancellor of academic affairs. In this position he played a leading role in guiding the creation of the university's original academic plan.
    In 1967 Peltason returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as chancellor, a position he held until 1977. He then became the chief spokesman for higher education as the president of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., from 1977 to 1984.
    Peltason returned to UC Irvine in 1984 to become the campus's second chancellor. Early on he established the UCI Medal to recognize the contributions of university and community members to the campus; the Medal has since been awarded to numerous distinguished individuals and is the campus's highest honor.
    During his eight-year term UC Irvine underwent unprecedented physical growth, increased funding for endowed chairs and distinguished professors, initiated community partnerships, and attracted major institutes, notably the UC Humanities Research Institute in 1987 and the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering in 1988.
    In 1992 Peltason was appointed president of the University of California during a major budgetary crisis. He was able to stabilize the UC budget through an agreement with Governor Pete Wilson.
    When he retired from the presidency in 1995, Peltason passed up deferred salary and pension funds and instead donated the $230,000 towards an endowment. As a result, the Jack and Suzanne Peltason Scholarship provides merit-based awards to help UC Irvine political science majors advance their educational careers. In 2007 an anonymous donor pledged more than $1 million to UC Irvine for the creation of the Jack W. Peltason Endowed Chair, which goes to a faculty member within the Center for the Study of Democracy.
    Following his retirement, Peltason was active in many community and professional organizations, even after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2002. As of 2009 Peltason could still be found having lunch at the University Club on the UC Irvine campus with his wife, Suzanne. The couple has three children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

    Chronology

    Chronology

    1923 Born in St. Louis, Missouri
    1943 Graduates from the University of Missouri
    1944 Receives master's degree from the University of Missouri
    1946 Marries Suzanne Toll
    1947 Receives Ph.D. from Princeton University
    1947-1951 Serves on faculty, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
    1949 Understanding the Constitution, written with E.S. Corwin, first published by Sloane
    1951-1964 Serves on faculty, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    1952 Government by the People, written with J.M. Burns and Thomas E. Cronin, first published by Prentice-Hall
    1960-1964 Serves as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    1963-1964 Serves as dean of the College of Arts, Letters, and Science, University of California, Irvine
    1964-1967 Serves as vice-chancellor, academic affairs, University of California, Irvine
    1967-1977 Serves as chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    1977-1984 Serves as president, American Council on Education, Washington, D.C.
    1984-1992 Serves as second chancellor of UC Irvine
    1984 Establishes the UCI Medal as the highest honor awarded by the campus
    1988 Secures the final funding to build the Irvine Barclay Theatre through a partnership between UC-Irvine, the city of Irvine, and major donors
    1988 Establishes the UC Irvine "Think Tank" on cultural diversity
    1991-1992 Total funding for UC Irvine is $600,000,000, up from $322,000,000 at the beginning of his term as chancellor (1984-1985)
    1992-1995 Serves as president of the University of California
    2005 Awarded the Clark Kerr Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate
    2007 Endowed chair in UC Irvine's Center for the Study of Democracy named for him

    Collection Scope and Content Summary

    This collection comprises records documenting Jack W. Peltason's work as the second chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, a position he held from 1984 to 1992. Included are records relating to Peltason's administrative duties, community involvement, and professional activities, as well as memorabilia and records related to his inauguration.
    The collection includes incoming and outgoing correspondence from the Office of the Chancellor, typescripts and drafts of speeches he delivered, briefing materials on labor issues, records of initiatives related to increasing diversity on campus, meeting materials for the Council of Chancellors of the University of California, and planning materials for his transition to the presidency of the University of California. Many records such as correspondence, memoranda, agendas, and meeting minutes document Peltason's involvement in professional and community organizations. Also included are memorabilia; inauguration planning materials such as committee notes, protocol manuals, and scripts; and inaugural documentation such as an audio recording and event programs. The collection also includes an audio recording of an interview with Peltason conducted for an oral history project of the American Political Science Association, an organization of which he was a longtime active member.
    The collection includes some records from the previous administration, that of Daniel G. Aldrich, as well as the records of Dennis Smith, who served as acting chancellor of UC Irvine between October 1992 and June 1993.

    Collection Arrangement

    This collection is arranged in 7 series.
    • Series 1. Administrative records, 1969-1993, 3.1 linear feet
    • Series 2. Correspondence, 1985-1993, 16 linear feet
    • Series 3. Council of Chancellors meeting materials, 1982-1989, 2 linear feet
    • Series 4. Personal and professional files, 1984-1992, 10.1 linear feet
    • Series 5. Inauguration materials, memorabilia, and awards, 1984-1990, 1.2 linear feet
    • Series 6. Speeches, 1984-1993, 2.8 linear feet
    • Series 7. Audio recordings, 1985-1991, .4 linear feet
    The collection also contains two unprocessed additions:
    Accession 2014.016. Unprocessed addition 2014, 1982-1987, 2 linear feet Accession 2014.039. Unprocessed addition 2014, 1984-1989, 0.2 linear feet

    Separation Note

    Personal papers of Jack W. Peltason that were not created during his tenure as chancellor were separated and added to MS-F019, Jack W. Peltason Papers. The following publications were removed from this collection and cataloged separately in the UC Irvine Libraries catalog ANTPAC :
    • American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Higher Education-Economic Development Connection: Emerging Roles for Public Colleges and Universities in a Changing Economy. Washington, D.C.: American Association of State Colleges and Universities, 1986.
    • American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Issues in Higher Education and Economic Development. Washington, D.C.: American Association of State Colleges and Universities, 1986.
    • Boyer, Ernest L. The Condition of Teaching: A State-by-State Analysis. Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1988.
    • Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Eighty-Second Annual Report. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1987.
    • Journal of Orange County Studies 2 (1989).

    Appraisal Note

    Personal financial, tax, and medical records of Jack W. Peltason and his wife, Suzanne T. Peltason, were not retained. The following publications found the chancellor's personal and professional files that were already available in the UC Irvine library were also not retained:
    Scheiber, Harry N., ed. Federalism: Studies in History, Law, and Policy: Papers From the Second Berkeley Seminar on Federalism. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1988.
    Boyer, Ernest L. and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

    Processing Note

    In order to facilitate access, the collection was minimally processed. Most dates are approximate. Most of the materials are in their original folders or were taken out of binders and placed in new folders. (An exception to this is Series 2, Subseries 1, the chronological files of outgoing correspondence, which were kept in their binders.) Since materials have not been re-foldered, many folders contain their original labels and are therefore not labeled with titles identical to those found in the contents listing in this guide, which were written to aid the researcher by adding further description. Moreover, some of the folders in Series 5, Personal and Professional Files, are labeled on each folder's side rather than the top owing to the type of filing cabinet in which the files had been stored and used. To facilitate access, folders were numbered during processing so numbers written in pencil on folders match those in the guide.
    When they arrived in the University Archives, most of the materials were generally grouped in the series identified in this guide; however, similar materials were not always found in consecutive boxes. During processing, the collection was not completely re-arranged, so materials in the same series are still in boxes that may not be consecutively numbered. Researchers will find that navigating the materials in this collection will be facilitated by keeping a copy of the contents listing with them during their research.

    Related Collections

    A large proportion of the records generated by the Peltason administration were filed by the Central Records Unit of the University of California, Irvine. These can be located in AS-004, Central Records Unit Records. For researchers interested in Peltason's work as a scholar or as the president of the American Council on Education, please see MS-F019, Jack W. Peltason Papers. Both collections are located in the Department of Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. For researchers interested in Peltason's 10-year term as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, please see Jack W. Peltason Papers. Series Number: 24/01/020. University of Illinois Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Audiocassettes -- 20th century.
    Chancellors
    College administrators -- California -- Irvine -- History -- Sources
    Peltason, J.W. (Jack Walter) -- Archives
    University of California, Irvine. Office of the Chancellor -- Archives
    University of California, Irvine -- Archives
    University of California, Irvine -- Administration -- Archives