Chang-Lin Tien

Chang-lin Tien GBM (Chinese: 田長霖; pinyin: Tián Chánglín; July 24, 1935 – October 29, 2002) was a Taiwanese-American academic, mechanical engineer, and university administrator.

After the Regents banned the use of racial preferences in 1995 for university admissions, Tien launched the "Berkeley Pledge," an outreach program designed to recruit disadvantaged students from the state's public schools.

Amid an 18% budget cut, Tien launched "The Promise of Berkeley – Campaign for the New Century", a fundraising drive that raised $1.44 billion.

[4] In December 1996, President Bill Clinton put him on the shortlist of candidates for United States Secretary of Energy, but Tien was removed after the Chinese campaign finance scandal made headlines; the unsealed Federal Bureau of Investigation file for Tien showed he had been investigated as a potential foreign agent as early as 1973, but no evidence ever was found to support this assumption.

He was commonly seen picking up trash in Sproul Plaza, appearing in the library in the middle of the night during finals week, or checking up on students in the residence halls and classrooms.

[4] Shortly before instruction for the 1992–93 academic year started, a young woman named Rosebud Denovo was killed by police after she broke into University House, the chancellor's residence, during an apparent assassination attempt.

The Tien Center for East Asian Studies is housed in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at UC Berkeley (2013)