The ASUCLA Speakers Program owes its existence to former Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy. Dr. Murphy brought influencial speakers to the campus throughout his tenure at UCLA from the years 1960 to 1968. In the socio-political chaos of the 1960s many guest lecturers and speakers came to the campus to offer their views to the student body and faculty. Presidents, emperors, revolutionaries and justices spoke at UCLA in these years. Franklin D. Murphy appointed Art Levine to be the Chairman of the Speakers Program here at UCLA and in 1966 and 1967 he brought such speakers as Mark Lane, a well known author and critic of the American Supreme Court, President Gerald Ford, Floyd B. McKissick, the Nation Director of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), Prince Phillip of England, Justice Stanley Mosk, Senator Strom Thurmond and Timothy Leary, a psychiatrist famous for his radical experiments with LSD.
Additional information concerning the UCLA Speakers Program for the years 1964 and 1965 can be found here.
Franklin D. Murphy was born on 29 January 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended the University of Kansas where he graduated in 1936. Dr. Murphy graduated with an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941. He then served in the US Army during World War II. He worked on developing cures for tropical diseases and by the time he left the army in 1946 he had obtained the rank of Captain. From 1948 to 1951 he served as the Dean of Medicine at the University of Kansas. In 1951 Dr. Murphy was named Chancellor of the University of Kansas where he remained until 1959 when he moved to Los Angeles. In 1960 he accepted the position of Chancellor at UCLA, a position that his friends warned him against. They told him that it would be a constant struggle against the administration at Berkeley, and it was. He struggled and defended his school. Most notable was his struggle with Clark Kerr. During his tenure the School of Library Service and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning were established. Chancellor Murphy was instrumental in the passage of the 1962, 1964, and 1966 bond issues which afforded UCLA 95 million dollars in construction fees for his vision of making UCLA a world class institution. Perhaps his greatest and most recognizable contributions to the school are Pauley Pavilion and the Jules Stein Eye Institue. Fraklin Murphy left the University in 1968 to become the
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
of the Times Mirror Company. Without Dr. Murphy UCLA would not be the same instiution that it is today. At UCLA the administration building, Murphy Hall, and the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden are named in his honor.
Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy
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