"I sense some discomfort among my colleagues and in the audience as we talk about things in terms of black and white," Connerly said near the end of a debate he instigated this week on the merits of affirmative action in U.S. law schools, according to the Los Angeles Times. "That's understandable. But it's vitally important."

In 1994, after meeting with a white couple who told him that several UC medical schools had rejected their son even though he was more qualified than other applicants, he took up the cause against affirmative action.

Recalled the Times, after an emotionally charged 13-hour session marked by a bomb threat and protests led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson in July 1995, the regents approved two Connerly-written resolutions to ban the consideration of race and gender in the university's admissions and employment. The UC president, all nine campus leaders and many faculty leaders opposed the votes.

Said John McWhorter, a former UC Berkeley linguistics professor and now a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute: "Ward took an H-bomb approach to the racial preference problem, no doubt, but that was the only way that any change could be made. The people who were in charge of that policy were so deeply committed to it, and so deeply committed to keeping the real nature of the program out of the public eye, that you couldn't have mended it."

Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley's law school, Boalt Hall, who has often debated Connerly on affirmative action, told the Times: "He has an outsize legacy, and while I think much of its direction is unfortunate, his impact in and beyond California continues to be enormous. And he is willing to frame the disagreement clearly, rather than disguising or suppressing the issues, and that is much to his credit."

Connerly, who attended his final public session as a regent Thursday and received a standing ovation at its end, told the Times that he had no regrets.

"I gave it my best," he said. "On each issue, I made my decision, argued it as forcefully as I could, and I wasn't afraid to lose."

But he added that at 65 it is time to step down. "I'm tired," he said. "You reach a point where you begin to burn out, and I'm there."

His parting advice to his Board of Regents colleagues: "There will now be great temptation here to relax on the issue of race. For God's sake, don't do it."

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