In Memory of Chang-Lin Tien
By William Wong
Special to AsianWeek
Chang-Lin Tien, the former UC Berkeley chancellor who just died at the age of 67, had many skills, but the one I will always remember was his ability to remain upbeat in the face of adversity and cynicism. He was also a superb bridge-builder, not in a mechanical engineering sense, but in a political and cultural sense.
I got to know Tien best in 1996. I had just lost my job as a columnist for The Oakland Tribune. As a freelance writer, I managed to get an assignment to write a couple of speeches for Tien. We had actually met years earlier, when he first became chancellor of my alma mater. His appointment in 1990 was a ground-breaker, as he was the first Asian Pacific American leader of a major U.S. research university.
We would meet in his campus office to discuss the overall message of the speeches he wanted me to draft for him. It was during those private moments when I saw and heard a man I had admired from afar.
He shared with me the inside story of his almost getting the secretary of energy job in the Clinton Administration. The Clinton team felt at that time it needed a Latino cabinet member more than it did an APA one, so he didn’t get the job. Later, when the Wen Ho Lee case exploded, I was curious how he might have handled it, since the case was partially tied to the energy department.
He also told me how he served as a quasi-ambassador, although he would never use such an exalted title. Tien was born in Wuhan, China, and grew up in Taiwan, one of many Chinese affected by World War II’s apocalyptic events and the subsequent brutal civil war between Mao’s communists and Chiang’s nationalists. He came to the United States as a young man and did graduate studies in the south, where he learned first-hand about white-vs.-black racism and the ambiguous role that people of Asian descent played in America.
With that kind of background and his natural ebullience, Tien was destined to strive to understand cultural differences and to build as many bridges as he could to narrow those differences. So over the years, he cultivated friendships with the top leaders of both China and Taiwan. Because he was chancellor of one of America’s top public universities, he gained noteriety in top-tier U.S. political and educational circles too. He traveled across the Pacific Ocean a great deal in his years as chancellor and even afterwards.
When James Sasser was appointed U.S. Ambassador to China in 1996, he sought Tien’s advice about how to approach the presidents of both China and Taiwan. “Because of my own cultural background, I have been able to see Jiang Zemin and Li Peng (of China), and I have been able to meet with President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan, while our U.S. diplomats are often kept several steps removed,” Tien said in a speech to the Asia Society in New York. Privately, I thought perhaps Clinton had appointed the wrong man as U.S. Ambassador to China.
Even after he stepped down as chancellor, he remained active in APA political circles. I recall seeing him urge bickering factions of a primarily Chinese American political organization to put their differences aside to work for the common good.
Some at Cal mocked his sunny disposition and his constant refrain that diversity of faculty, staff and curriculum were strengths, not divisive weaknesses. He brushed off that kind of cynicism and continued to walk around the Berkeley campus, leading cheers for his beloved Bears teams — and for a world that could overcome its myriad of self-interested grievances.
Since Sept. 11, we’ve grown even more melancholy. That is why the passing of Chang-Lin Tien is so sad. He brought to public service a rare optimism and energy that is absent today in our highest political and cultural enclaves.
William Wong is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer and author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (Temple University Press 2001).
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