Diplomat's Progress

When Raymond B. Allen resigned last month as president of the University of Washington, his loyal board of regents voiced only mild regrets. "Allen is one hell of a good man," explained one regent, "but my God, he is never here." In the last two years Allen had been spending more & more time on Government business, and when Harry Truman appointed him director of the Psychological Strategy Board, it seemed that he might be out of the academic world for good. But last week Raymond Allen announced that after spending the next few months in Washington, he would be right back in academic harness--as chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles.

Allen's name had been high on U.C.L.A.'s list ever since the job fell vacant two years ago. The faculty wanted a nonmilitary man (considered and rejected Generals Mark Clark and Albert Wede-meyer), the regents wanted a good administrator, and President Robert Gordon Sproul wanted someone he knew and liked. On all counts Allen fitted the bill perfectly, and U.C.L.A. was quite content to wait a while to get him.

At 49, Raymond Allen is a big, affable man who has a knack for getting along with almost anyone. Twice a doctor (M.D. and Ph.D.--in experimental pathology--from the University of Minnesota), he has threaded his diplomatic way through a succession of high posts, from an associate deanship at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons to deanships at Wayne University and the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and finally, in 1946, to the University of Washington.

There, he doubled the university's floor space, saw new schools of dentistry and medicine rise, got his campus elected to the Association of American Universities (membership: 37). He appointed a glittering array of deans (among them: former President Harold Stoke of Louisiana State University), and in spite of his Rotarian diplomacy, he knew how to take a stand. He steadfastly refused to accept federal subsidies for any research that the university itself could pay for, and he was one of the first U.S. college presidents to announce a clear policy on Communist teachers, i.e., they should not be protected by the claim of academic freedom, since they themselves were not free to follow an objective search for truth.

At U.C.L.A., Allen will be in charge of 13,400 students and 800 facultymen. Under the University of California's new administrative setup, he will be all but autonomous, reporting only to President Sproul. Last week he was quick to say how he felt about his new boss--"one of the most able men in American education." Diplomat Allen obviously would have no trouble continuing his diplomatic ways at U.C.L.A.

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