UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Crist took office seven years ago amid a backlash over free-speech conflicts, financial woes, a sexual assault scandal and a leadership crisis under the previous leadership.
During her tenure, the crisis never seemed to abate. The epidemic strikes. Another budget shortfall has emerged. Her housing plans in People’s Park faced fierce opposition. Growing enrollment puts pressure on campuses. Pro-Palestinian protests divide communities.
But there are some bright spots. Record-breaking $7.4 billion fundraising campaign. Visionary academic endeavors, including the first new school in more than 50 years dedicated to computing and data science. Research surged, and a Berkeley professor won a Nobel Prize for advances in gene-editing methods.
Crist will step down on Friday, more than 50 years after he first came to Berkeley as an assistant professor in the English department and served in various leadership roles before taking the top job. In a recent interview, Christ shared candid, even self-described “heretical” thoughts about the highs and lows of her tenure and the hot-button issues she faces.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” said Christ, an 80-year-old expert on Victorian literature, quoting Charles Dickens. “There’s a very difficult political crisis right now, but at the same time there are some extraordinary things happening at the university that are changing all of our lives.”
Protests: Call for talks, not police
She left at the most painful moment of her tenure on campus.
“This Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tearing this community apart,” Christ said. “It’s student against student, teacher against teacher. It’s creating the highest levels of anxiety, fear and protest that I’ve ever seen in my life.
Crist revealed that she resisted pressure from the UC Board of Trustees and others to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment (using police if necessary) in historic Sproul Plaza, the site of Berkeley’s famous 1964 free speech movement Born here.
In April, students set up tents to protest Israeli military bombing of Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack. They voluntarily dismantled the camp on May 14 after Christ expressed support for reviewing whether university investments are consistent with UC Berkeley’s values of upholding human rights, equality and abhorring war. Crist also said the university would review all complaints about global exchange and internship programs to ensure they do not discriminate against Palestinians and others.
“I have a long history at Berkeley,” Crist said. “In my experience, protests don’t end with police actions. They end with negotiations. Every time the police intervene in a protest, it escalates.
Her approach received strong support from Berkeley’s Academic Senate, which issued a statement supporting Christ’s use of dialogue to peacefully end the encampments. In contrast, the chancellors of UCLA and UC San Diego faced votes of censure and expressions of no confidence from faculty after they decided to hire police to dismantle encampments, although the motion failed on both campuses.
However, Berkeley’s agreement with protesters sparked anger and frustration among some Jewish clergy and community members. In a letter this week, Crist reiterated her opposition to actions explicitly targeting Israel and announced a significant expansion of anti-Semitism education for all freshmen, a new minor in Israel studies and more funding for the Center for Jewish Studies. Much support.
Admissions: Constant demand inspires bizarre ideas
In an effort to satisfy persistent demands for more coveted UC seats, Christ proposed a rather provocative idea: integrating some California State University campuses into the UC system.
She also believes community colleges should be given full authority to offer bachelor’s degrees, pointing to a study that found California ranks 49th among states in the number of four-year institutions relative to its population.
Christ said that given the turf wars in higher education, “people would be angry that I would express such an idea.” But she said the state’s higher education blueprint was broken in its design to allocate the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates to the University of California and the top one-third to Colorado State University. Community colleges are open to everyone; most offer two-year degrees and certificates, although some offer limited bachelor’s degree programs.
“I think you really need to increase the number of coveted spots at four-year institutions,” she said. “People are very frustrated with the extremely low chances of admission to the highly competitive Cal State.”
She added that she does not support fully online undergraduate degree programs on campus because students grow and thrive in academic learning, relationships and extracurricular activities. But she said more online courses, coupled with satellite campuses and faster degree completion, could help UC open more seats.
Crist also said each UC campus has its own character and culture and should be more independent from system-wide oversight — setting its own nonresident tuition, for example, or without the “cumbersomeness” of central control Create new graduate degree programs.
Housing: a “human right”
Christ is proud of her tireless efforts to build housing in Berkeley’s iconic People’s Park, ultimately winning after years of lawsuits and protests. She said the park has become a public safety hazard and shelter is a human right. Six years after she raised the controversial issue that the former chancellor had long dodged, the state Supreme Court this month approved the start of construction on housing for 1,113 students and a separate building with permanent supportive housing for 125 low-income community members.
“I am both relieved and excited that we can now take an extremely important step to address the student housing crisis and the needs of Berkeley’s homeless population,” Crist said. “This is a wonderful moment for the campus and the city A win-win situation.”
Berkeley has developed seven housing projects under Christ’s leadership — two are completed, two will open this fall and three are under construction, including People’s Park. These plans will provide more than 6,200 additional beds and help Berkeley, which currently has the largest housing shortage of the 10 UC campuses, provide two years of guaranteed housing for first-year students and one year of guaranteed housing for transfer and graduate students. The goal. Berkeley will open approximately 1,535 new beds this fall.
Marianne Smart, former Academic Senate president and music professor, said Christ’s handling of People’s Park underscores the chancellor’s unwavering sense of mission, the strong will behind her graceful demeanor, and her relationships with, including Berkeley’s mayor and City Council members Ability to work with others, including others.
Environmental economist and Academic Senate President Maximilian Auffhammer said Christ’s “moral compass” and respect for shared decision-making with faculty — fundamental values at UC that many fear Such values are being eroded—and widely appreciated.
Christ’s willingness to listen to and engage with students stands out, particularly in her handling of pro-Palestinian encampments, said McCallie Steen, chair of the Graduate Student Assembly at Berkeley and a doctoral candidate in environmental science, policy and management. While Steen disagreed with decisions around People’s Park, particularly the deployment of hundreds of police officers to clear out protesters, she gave Christ high marks.
“Being president of any university, especially Berkeley, is an impossible job,” she said.
Money: State bailouts ‘unrealistic’
On other issues, Crist said it was “impractical” to restore full state funding for public higher education without changing tax policy to secure more revenue. Private fundraising, entrepreneurial initiatives, new degree programs and other ways to raise money are now crucial, she said.
Berkeley launched a $7.4 billion financing campaign at the onset of the 2020 pandemic, the largest ever for a public university. The most exciting gift, Crist said, is funding for a fully equipped transfer residence hall that will open this fall and offer faculty, scholarships and research programs.
But Berkeley Faculty Association co-president James Vernon criticized Crist’s approach, saying campus buildings are crumbling, faculty workloads are increasing and the quality of education is at risk due to a lack of state funding and growing enrollment. .
“The Christ-based model of saving universities by promoting them is unsustainable for everyone — faculty, students and surrounding cities,” he said.
Crist said she wishes she had made more progress in supporting Native American and Black students, building campus housing faster and rebuilding broken communities after the pandemic.
She worries about “huge gaps” in college readiness among incoming students, reflecting disparities in pandemic-related learning setbacks and the increased difficulty in assessing math skills after UC eliminated standardized tests as an admissions requirement in 2020 — —She still supports the decision. Berkeley needs to provide additional assessment tools, remedial classes and perhaps even a calculus course taught with high school teachers, she said.
But with Christ entering her post-principal life, with plans to read, write, travel and play her beloved viola and piano, she was ready for a new captain to guide the program at Berkeley. She will be succeeded by Rich Lyons, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Business and a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship.
“We’ve come a long way,” she said, “but there’s still a long way to go.”
