Wilson Steps Up Affirmative Action Attack : Politics: Governor says preferences raise threat of ‘the deadly virus of tribalism.’ He vows to push UC regents to end the policy.

Gov. Pete Wilson acknowledged Tuesday that junking affirmative action policies at the University of California would cause turmoil. But a greater danger, he said, is that divisive racial preferences threaten to infect the nation with “the deadly virus of tribalism.”

In a speech that was highly charged with presidential politics, Wilson said he will challenge UC regents at a meeting in San Francisco on Thursday to eliminate UC policies that grant racial and gender preferences in admissions.

The session could produce the most explosive political confrontation involving the nine-campus, 162,000-student UC system since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan forced UC administrators to crack down on student dissidents.

At the time, students were protesting not just the Vietnam War, but also the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the giant university system’s student body and faculty and in its curriculum.

Now, Wilson’s proposals are meeting resistance from university administrators, some regents and civil rights groups. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, has threatened to disrupt Thursday’s meeting as a form of protest. If he does, Wilson has said, he will be ejected.

Wilson said Tuesday, “I understand that some are concerned about the turmoil that making these changes will cause. But we can’t afford to shy away from what’s right simply because there are those who will loudly object.”

Wilson, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the argument, raised by those he labeled as “apologists for preferences,” that the primary outcry against affirmative action programs comes from angry white males.

Addressing a group of Los Angeles business executives at the Biltmore Hotel, Wilson said Americans of all races and creeds--and women as well as men--are “disgusted” with a system that results in reverse discrimination.

“What we owe the people is not to ignore the unfairness and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Wilson said. “We owe them the leadership and the courage to change what’s wrong and set it right.”

The governor asked rhetorically whether President Clinton would have the courage to revise federal affirmative action programs in a speech that he is scheduled to make today at the National Archives.

“Or will he instead try to placate and buy off the vocal apologists for unfair racial and gender preferences who are so determined to keep the status quo in place?” Wilson asked.

As affirmative action gained momentum as a political issue, Clinton promised five months ago to review federal programs to see if they need to be revised in view of 30 years of civil rights legislation and regulation. Wilson guessed that Clinton would “stand courageously on both sides of the issue.”

A Clinton aide said in Washington that the President will support affirmative action “without apology.” No details were expected from the White House until today.

Although Wilson has focused on affirmative action since June 1, Tuesday’s speech was perhaps his harshest broadside against government programs designed three decades ago to overcome discrimination against women and minorities in various areas of public life.

While the governor said Americans must not tolerate discrimination of any kind, he argued that the United States is threatened again with being “a house divided against itself,” as it was during the Administration of President Abraham Lincoln over slavery.

“Americans today are rightly concerned that the fundamental principles that unite us as a nation are withering away,” he said. “We must not allow our country to be infected by the deadly virus of tribalism.”

In spite of the passion of his rhetoric, the audience did not interrupt Wilson’s speech with applause a single time. That is a rarity for a Wilson address to business executives, who normally are ardent supporters. The audience, members of the Employers Group, did stand and applaud the governor at the end of the speech.

Wilson’s appearance was another in a series this week designed to intensify attention on Thursday’s UC board meeting as the first direct public confrontation between Wilson and supporters of affirmative action programs.

The governor has moved to eliminate, by executive order, those limited affirmative-action policies over which he has direct control. He also is supporting a proposed ballot initiative that would seek to write such prohibitions into the state Constitution.

While the governor appoints most of the 26 voting members of the UC Board of Regents and serves as its president, the university is independent from the governor. Any major change in policy must be approved by a majority of regents.

Wilson said some progress has been made in correcting abuses of preferences at UC, and administrators have promised to do more.

“But promises alone aren’t enough,” he added. “We need a fundamental change in policy. . . . So I’m going to urge my fellow regents not to simply tinker at the edges of this morass, but to overhaul the admissions process to ensure that every student, regardless of race or ethnicity, gets equal treatment in admissions.”

UC President Jack W. Peltason and the nine UC campus chancellors have expressed strong support for continuing the system’s “30-year commitment to the twin goals of diversity and excellence.”

Some modifications are needed, Peltason said, but generally “race-attentive” programs are worth defending and keeping. The current policy is to require the nine campuses to have student bodies that represent the racial, cultural and economic diversity of California.

Admissions are based on academics, geography, ethnicity, gender and special talents or experience. No student is supposed to be admitted on the basis of race alone. And even those who receive preferential treatment, with few exceptions, still must meet UC academic requirements.

Affirmative action has become the centerpiece of Wilson’s late-blooming bid for the GOP presidential nomination, much as he used Proposition 187, the ballot measure to cut off state aid to illegal immigrants, during his 1994 reelection campaign.

But Wilson’s national campaign has been severely abridged since April, when he underwent throat surgery and was ordered by doctors not to use his voice for weeks. Now, Wilson is being held close to Sacramento because of failure to agree with Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature on a 1995-96 state budget, an impasse that now is in its 19th day.

Emotions over affirmative action at UC are bound to escalate even more before Thursday’s regents’ meeting. A daylong student forum on the issue will be held today in San Francisco. Heavy national media coverage is expected today and Thursday.

Times education writer Amy Wallace contributed to this story.