UC regents OK, laud Berkeley’s new chancellor
As the UC regents unanimously approved Carol Christ on Thursday as the first female chancellor in UC Berkeley’s 149-year history, they didn’t merely applaud the 72-year-old scholar. They gave her a standing ovation. “We are very lucky,” Chairwoman Monica Lozano said, turning to face Christ after the regents voted in San Francisco. “We are absolutely certain that you are the right leader for UC Berkeley at a time like this.”
Christ will take the helm of the renowned public university on July 1.
For UC Berkeley, it’s been a time of deep financial problems overshadowed, at times, by public criticism for its apparent tolerance of sexual harassment by high-profile administrators and professors. Morale problems have accompanied the difficulties.
“Berkeley is a troubled campus in terms of people learning to get along with each other,”
Regent Dick Blum told his colleagues before the vote. “We needed someone from inside the place” to lead it.
Christ’s understanding of UC Berkeley’s culture, her experience as a “tireless champion of gender equality and diversity” and her habit of “making things better” all were considerations for UC President Janet Napolitano, who chose Christ from five nominees culled from 500. “She builds strong relationships, and trust, with diverse groups and diverse individuals, and then forms consensus and finds solutions,” Napolitano told the regents.
Even faculty who freely criticize campus administrators expressed approval. News of Christ’s appointment prompted a flurry of emails among professors that included love poems and verses from Handel.
Students also applauded her accessibility.
A scholar of Victorian literature, Christ joined UC Berkeley in 1970 as an assistant professor. She has served as chair of the English department, dean of humanities, provost, dean of letters and science, and in 1994, as executive vice chancellor before returning to teaching in 2000. She left the campus in 2002 to become president of the private Smith College in Massachusetts, and returned in 2015 to head the Center for Studies in Higher Education.
Meanwhile, UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Nicholas Dirks revealed in February 2016 that the campus faced a $150 million deficit. He said departments should make cuts, and that he would eliminate 500 staff jobs over two years. In May, he asked Christ to return to her jobs as provost and executive vice chancellor — second-in-command to the chancellor — in charge of campus finances.
Asked Wednesday about the difference between running a private college and a large public university, Christ cited a key difference in fiscal oversight: At Smith, attentive trustees require the campus president to update them on finances four times a year; UC campuses have no such individualized structure. She said that a previous chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, proposed such a structure, but it went nowhere.
To address the budget crisis, “We must reimagine our financial model,” Christ told the regents, adding: “This is a difficult historical moment for our campus — one more difficult, I believe, than any since the 1960s.”
She said she intends to “diversify the revenue stream” at UC Berkeley with more fundraising. And instead of focusing almost entirely on elevating the campus profile, as some of her predecessors have done, Christ said she believes “Berkeley is as much about the community-college transfer student from Modesto or Fremont ... as it is about its Nobel Prize winners.”
A top priority will be addressing the campus’ critical shortage of student housing, she said.
Christ will earn the same $531,939 base salary that Dirks received and will live in a university-owned house.