Arbiter Held UCSD Chaos to Minimum

William J. McGill, the man picked by Mayor Maureen O’Connor to facilitate the labor dispute between musicians and the San Diego Symphony, earned his administrator’s stripes by jawboning conflicts.

McGill, 65, now retired and an adjunct (non-salaried) professor of psychology at UCSD, may bring to the mayor’s proposed symphony arbitration sessions the same style he used in the 1960s to wear down angry college protesters with argument. At UCSD, he refused to call in police but earned a reputation as a tough administrator and peacekeeper by wading into crowds of abusive student protesters and defusing potentially violent confrontations through hours of arguing.

Appointed chancellor of UCSD in 1968, McGill became known for arguing “with you until it would improve your point of view and clarify his at the same time,” a faculty member recalled.

A champion of academic freedom, McGill incurred the wrath of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, the UC Board of Regents and the American Legion for his decision to reappoint Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse to the faculty and for his defense of the right of Marcuse’s protege Angela Davis to teach at UCLA.

In the same year, McGill had to face down a group of militant minority students, headed by Davis, who demanded that the name of UCSD’s new Third College be changed to Lumumba-Zapata College and that its courses reflect Marxist doctrine and Third World ideology. The scenes of that era--students chanting: “McGill, McGill, you better start shakin’! Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon!”--became recurring nightmares for him years after.

McGill later recorded the student turbulence of his first year at UCSD in a book, “The Year of the Monkey.” He succeeded at keeping order in a world of chaos during that tumultuous period, including his early years as president of Columbia from 1970 to 1980.