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UC Berkeley may be legally barred from considering race in admissions, but that doesn’t mean race isn’t still very, very important at the school. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Bob Egelko indicates that California’s flagship public university just received a $16 million gift to promote diversity and racial studies on campus:
The university said a gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund will establish an ambitious program of teaching, research and public service on inequality and diversity. The project will endow five faculty research chairs, including one on disability and another on the rights of lesbians and gays.
Although the newly announced program does not address student admissions, [Berkeley Chancellor Robert] Birgeneau said, it is designed to make UC Berkeley’s environment “more inclusive” and therefore make the university “progressively more attractive to people from diverse backgrounds.”
The Haas family of San Francisco has been incredibly generous to Berkeley in the past; both the school of business and a pavilion in the center of campus are named for the family. The family, whose fortune derives from Levi Strauss and Company, has also made numerous anonymous donations to the school and the Bay Area.
With matching gifts, the Haas Fund could increase to $31 million.
African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans made up 26 percent of Cal’s freshman class in 1995, before Proposition 209 prohibited state institutions in California from making hiring or admissions decisions based on race. The three minority groups constitute 15.4 percent of today’s Berkeley freshmen.
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Milan Moravec on June 02, 2010 3:27 PM:
The problem at Cal is UCB Chancellor Birgeneau Loss of Credibility, Trust
The UCB budget gap has grown to $150 million, and still the Chancellor is spending money that isn't there on expensive outside consultants. His reasons range from the need for impartiality to requiring the "innovative thinking, expertise, and new knowledge" the consultants would bring.
Does this mean that the faculty and management of a world-class research and teaching institution lack the knowledge, impartiality, innovation, and professionalism to come up with solutions? Have they been fudging their research for years? The consultants will glean their recommendations from interviewing faculty and the UCB management that hired them; yet solutions could be found internally if the Chancellor were doing the job HE was hired to do. Consultant fees would be far better spent on meeting the needs of students.
There can be only one conclusion as to why creative solutions have not been forthcoming from the professionals within UCB: Chancellor Birgeneau has lost credibility and the trust of the faculty as well as of the Academic Senate leadership that represents them. Even if the faculty agrees with the consultants' recommendations - disagreeing might put their jobs in jeopardy - the underlying problem of lost credibility and trust will remain.