Robert Arthur Huttenback (March 8, 1928–June 10, 2012)^[1] was the third Chancellor of UC Santa Barbara from 1977 to 1986.^[2] He was ousted from the post in July 1986 after allegations surfaced that he and his wife Freda had embezzled more than $170,000 from the university to perform renovations on their home.^[3] After two UC presidents (David P. Gardner and David S. Saxon) testified against him, Huttenback and his wife were convicted by a Santa Maria jury in July 1988.^[4]

Huttenback was a German Jew whose family fled to England in 1933 when he was a young boy. Although his family lived in England for only about six years before moving again to the United States, Huttenback spoke English with a British accent for the rest of his life.^[4]

Huttenback received his B.A. in 1951 and his Ph.D. with a historical dissertation in 1959, both from the University of California, Los Angeles.^[4] Before returning to UCLA to earn his doctorate, Huttenback served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.^[4] From 1960 to 1977, he was a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He was a lifelong specialist in the history of British imperialism.^[4]

Huttenback initially blocked the tenureship of Jenijoy La Belle, who became Caltech's first female professor when his decision was overturned.^[5]

Sources

Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan, eds., The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. With a Biobibliographic Guide, New York: Berghahn Books, 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9, pp. 13, 34, 36, 384‒85.