Tribute - Professor Ira Michael Heyman

Summary

• Article is a tribute to Ira Michael Heyman, tenth Smithsonian Secretary. It is authored by three university colleagues writing separately as he departed a Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, professorship in 1993 to move to a position as Deputy Assistant for Policy to the U. S. Department of Interior Secretary. The three authors comment on various phases in Heyman's career at the university, from his coming to Berkeley as a law professor in 1959, as Vice Chancellor from 1974 to 1980, then as the sixth University Chancellor from 1980 to 1990, when he rejoined the law school faculty until his 1993 departure. Bowker, the first and most lengthy of the three tribute authors, gives Heyman a perfect grade point average in evaluating his service to the university.
• Bowker had Heyman as his deputy while serving as University Chancellor and writes glowingly of Heyman's abilities in the areas of gaining and maintaining academic excellence standards; fund raising success and organizational skills; achieving more representative admissions and faculty-hiring policies; working to improve the university's relations with all levels of government, especially local. Herma Hill Kay writes of joining the Boalt faculty in 1960 as only the 14th female law professor in the country and of becoming the dean of that law school in 1992. She writes how Heyman encouraged her, helped her to understand the relationships among various levels of academic administration, and praises his commitment to student admissions and faculty-hiring diversity, as well as his enthusiasm and dynamic leadership.
• Former law professor Stolz writes his part of the tribute as a letter addressed to Heyman in which he singles out what he sees as Heyman's greatest accomplishments during 34 years at Berkeley: fund raising campaigns with a resulting campus construction boom; changing the demographics of Berkeley's student body and faculty; interest in regional government and environmental protection, alongside involvement in state and local government affairs.

Subject

• Heyman, Ira Michael 5/30/1930-11/19/2011
• Boalt Hall School of Law
• University of California (1868-1952)

Category

Smithsonian Institution History Bibliography

Contained within

California Law Review Vol. 81, No. 5 (Journal)

Contact information

Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu

Date

October 1993

Topic

• Secretaries
• Biography

Place

California

Physical description

p. 1088-99

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