A recently appointed vice chancellor whose express responsibility is the promotion and assurance of diversity and inclusion on campus called on students, staff and faculty yesterday to work with him to accomplish tangible results as his tenure begins.

Gibor Basri, appointed by the UC Board of Regents in July as the university’s first vice chancellor for equity and inclusion, delivered a welcome address at the University House noting that he hopes to work closely with the campus community to achieve his goals.

“I always say ‘we’ because I’m not going to do it, and you all know that I’m not going to do it. One person can’t do it,” Basri said, emphasizing that his role will be to facilitate greater diversity on campus rather than to work on specific issues directly.

At the event, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Berkeley Academic Senate Division Chair William Drummond and former co-chair of the Berkeley Diversity Research Initiative Alice Agogino, commended Basri’s work in cutting through what they called sometimes excessive bureaucracy and supporting women and ethnic minorities in the workplace.

“He has a can-do attitude,” Agogino said. “Sometimes there’s 1,001 reasons why (committees) can’t do something, but Gibor would always ask, ‘Why not?’”

Birgeneau created Gibor’s position last year to combine and coordinate student, staff and faculty efforts to increase diversity on campus after he found that no specific offic had been delegated the responsibility.

“(Basri) decided to find out whether this was just being politically correct or whether or not I really meant it,” Birgeneau said.

Students who attended the event said they were excited to see an administrative position aimed at backing student organizations and focusing on diversity.

“I feel like we’re being taken seriously and that we’re moving a step forward,” said Danise Olague, co-president of the Mixed Student Union.

Both students and faculty spoke of the challenges that might face the vice chancellor in an unprecedented office.

“If it were easy it would’ve been done before,” Drummond said, adding that he was prepared to offer any help he could as the Academic Senate chair.

Although he said he intends to devote his full attention to his position, Basri is also an astrophysics professor and chair of the faculty workgroup of the regents’ Study Group on University Diversity.

He said he plans to use his vice chancellorship as a tool to combine the fragmented efforts on campus to increase diversity and the sense of inclusion.

“We don’t have the luxury of focusing on one at a time,” Basri said. “That’s sort of the idea behind this position, is to have a holistic approach to the whole thing and you work on all aspects at once.”

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