Michael Heyman, Berkeley Chancellor Who Championed Diversity, Dies at 81

I. Michael Heyman, who as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s made affirmative action a key tool in his efforts to broaden campus diversity, died on Saturday of emphysema, the university announced on Monday. He was 81 and had been associated with university for more than half a century. During his 10 years as chancellor, the longest such tenure in Berkeley history, the university sharply increased its proportion of non-white and low-income students, and diversified the faculty as well. Mr. Heyman, who was also a professor of law and of city and regional planning, remained a staunch advocate of considering race, gender, and ethnicity in admissions and hiring, even after California voters banned the practice in a 1996 ballot measure. By then, he had become secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the first nonscientist to hold the post. His leadership of the museum was noted for controversy over a planned exhibit of Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. After critics said the exhibit was too sympathetic to the bomb’s thousands of victims, Mr. Heyman changed the show to a mere display of the plane, drawing additional criticism from historians and others who said the move suggested certain topics were off-limits to discussion.