The chancellor’s farewell party, held at the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Plaza outside Memorial Stadium, featured a barbecue lunch with the chancellor and various campus speakers who spoke of the dedication to service the chancellor and his wife have shown over their tenure.

“He’s done a fantastic job,” said Haas School of Business professor David Vogel. “He’s steered the university through some tough times, and I’m sad to see him leave.”

Speakers included Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, ASUC President Connor Landgraf and Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab. In addition, both Birgeneau and his wife gave speeches recounting their experiences on campus, also thanking the students and staff members.

“In academia, there’s no other organization more important than UC Berkeley,” Birgeneau said in his speech. “It has been my privilege to serve.”

Several speakers and attendees commended Birgeneau’s efforts to build an inclusive campus community.

“I will always see him as a champion of diversity,” said A. Ruben Rodriguez, the campus’s associate development director in the Division of Equity and Inclusion. “He led the fight with undocumented students, and I’ve witnessed him speaking with a passion.”

However, some campus staff members who attended the event criticized Birgeneau’s leadership, claiming that the chancellor, in focusing on improving the school’s public image, has not prioritized workers’ needs.

“Honestly, the chancellor hasn’t done much for staff,” said Theresa Hirashima, an employee at International House. “I have had four salary increases in my 13 years here … yet we’re being asked to do more and more. They say we’re all in this together, but we’re really not.”

About five members of the bp Off Campus Coalition, a subgroup of Occupy Cal, also voiced complaints about Birgeneau, protesting outside the entrance to Memorial Stadium. According to the coalition, the chancellor has played a large role in the privatization of UC Berkeley and allowed the police to use violent means to subdue nonviolent protests.

The protesters also rushed into the event toward the end, reenacting a scene of alleged police brutality from the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal Day of Action.

“It is extremely important to have a chancellor who genuinely supports free speech, sustainability, accessibility and integrity,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Ian Saxton, one of the protesters. “We’re here to remind people that Birgeneau has failed in all these aspects.”

Birgeneau has served as UC Berkeley’s chancellor since September 2004 and has also been involved in the campus department of physics. He has received several awards since the beginning of his tenure for his leadership and his work in physics.

Though Birgeneau will be replaced by Chancellor-designate Nicholas Dirks on June 1, he will be staying on campus as a physics faculty member.

“He was resolute in his belief of the right thing to do,” said Tim Ravey, a UC Berkeley alumnus and a current admissions officer for the school. “Despite shortfalls … he was able to put the campus in a more stable position for the future.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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Following months of controversy, UC Berkeley announced that it will withdraw from the systemwide UC Student Health Insurance Plan in the fall.

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced the decision to withdraw Thursday, joining four other UC campuses that are abandoning at least some parts of UC SHIP. The announcement comes after the systemwide Council of Chancellors approved various changes to UC SHIP, including campus withdrawal, in a meeting Wednesday.

“Today I am stating my support for the students’ position and, following their urging, announcing that UC Berkeley will be withdrawing from UC SHIP and returning to a UC Berkeley-operated student health insurance plan,” Birgeneau said in a statement.

Beginning Aug. 15, UC Berkeley will transition back into a campus-managed, fully funded insurance plan similar to what the campus had in place for decades before joining UC SHIP in 2011.

UC SHIP follows a self-funded model in which those paying the costs, in this case the UC system, are responsible for absorbing the plan’s risks, according to Bahar Navab, UC Berkeley’s student representative to the UC SHIP Advisory Board. Fully funded plans place risk on a separate insurance provider but generally have higher premiums.

UC SHIP currently has a $400,000 lifetime cap and a $10,000 prescription drug coverage cap. As a fully funded plan, UC Berkeley-provided insurance would also have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits these coverage caps.

In a letter sent to Birgeneau last month by UC Berkeley student representatives, Navab and ASUC President Connor Landgraf wrote that poor management from the UC Office of the President and a desire for more local control were some of the reasons students favored withdrawing from UC SHIP.

“I think that localized control and more decentralized governance is what’s best for our campus right now,” Navab said. “It’s a two-year plan, and we can always re-evaluate after two years. If UC SHIP has changed enough that we want to go back to it, we always have that option.”

UC Berkeley’s decision to withdraw comes in light of UC SHIP’s projected $46.5 million net deficit, which earlier prompted the possibility of premium increases across the board.

According to Kim LaPean, communications manager at the Tang Center, the new plan is expected to include a 13 percent premium increase for undergraduates and a 20 percent increase for graduate students, though the campus has yet to finalize rates. LaPean said benefits will not decrease under the campus plan and that officials are working to ensure that students will be able to see the same outside carriers.

“Berkeley students were really clear that they did not want to lose benefits,” LaPean said. “The changes that they’re going to see are all going to be in the favor of the student.”

Other campuses that decided to partially withdraw from UC SHIP include UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara. Some campuses, like UCLA, have opted to stick with UC SHIP.

Students with coverage through UC SHIP next year will also see changes, including lifting the lifetime maximum, annual pharmacy cap and other caps on essential care. The UC Office of the President is currently reviewing options to close the deficit, but UC spokesperson Brooke Converse said students will not have to pay for the deficit through premium increases.

“Our job right now is to respect the campuses that want to leave,” said Scott Arno, the UCLA student representative to UC SHIP Advisory Board. “No campus should be forced into this plan. We need to make it run better so that they’ll want to come back.”

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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Brown decried Dirks’ $50,000 salary increase over that of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at a time of fiscal austerity for the university.

The public spat — emblematic of the troubled relationship between the state and university — appeared to set an uneasy tone for the start of Dirks’ tenure.

But when Dirks assumes office on June 1, he may find an unlikely ally in Brown at a time in which state funding has fallen to constitute just above 10 percent of UC Berkeley’s budget.

Dirks and Brown have quickly developed a close friendship. Privately, the two call each other, dine with their wives together and have long conversations about the history of the Indian caste system.

“We like talking to each other,” Dirks said of Brown in a recent interview with The Daily Californian.

Both Brown and Dirks have been called “big-idea” leaders. Both have followed in their fathers’ footsteps and entered public service. Both have spent time studying Asian cultures — Brown having studied Zen Buddhism and Dirks being an expert on Indian history and culture.

“Nick is a very interesting man in himself,” said Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies at Columbia University. “Like Brown, he really is an idea man. I think that Brown will get a kick out of that.”

Dirks’ arrival coincides with a critical time for the university in its relationship with the state.

“Nick is a very
interesting man in himself.
Like Brown, he really
is an idea man.” – Peter Awn, Dean
of the School of General Studies
at Columbia University

Both the passage of Proposition 30 and the flurry of new legislation related to higher education being introduced in Sacramento hint at the potential for a reset in recent trends.

For Dirks, Brown represents an opportunity to bridge unstable ties between the university and the state. For Brown, Dirks is a leader who shares his steadfast commitment to cost efficiency as a solution for the university’s problems.

(Sharon Liu/Staff) Sources: Columbia Spectator; Berkeley News Center; LA Times

Tight pockets

At January’s UC Board of Regents meeting, Brown — who has become markedly more involved in the state’s higher education system — called for the university to cut back on what he deemed excessive spending.

The governor voiced the need for limitations on executive pay, student unit caps and a move toward expanding the university’s online program in the name of cost-saving.

“Teaching costs have to be brought down,” Brown said at the meeting. “I won’t tell you how to do that, but you need to figure it out.”

According to Gareth Lacy, a spokesperson for the governor, Brown remains “absolutely committed” to holding the line on tuition hikes.

“Students should not be the default financiers of higher education in California,” Lacy said.

Brown’s recommendation follows his deep cuts to social services, including millions of dollars of reductions to programs such as state child care and college scholarships.

Brown could not be directly reached for comment.

Like Brown — who famously chose to sleep on a bare mattress on the floor of his simple apartment during his first term as governor rather than in the governor’s mansion — Dirks has developed a reputation as an administrator dedicated to cost efficiency even in the face of public concern.

At Columbia, where he served as the executive vice president and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, Dirks helped push forward an administrative restructuring of the faculty of arts and sciences. In 2011, the consulting group McKinsey & Company, which was hired by Dirks and Columbia President Lee Bollinger, made recommendations about how to implement this structural streamlining.

“His goal administratively was to increase efficiencies, quicken decisions and to try to build more collaborative relationships among the various deans,” Awn said.

But the program drew significant criticism from both students and administrators. In 2011, the former dean of the undergraduate Columbia College, Michele Moody-Adams, resigned abruptly. Both The New York Times and the Columbia Spectator reported that her decision to step down was related to her concerns regarding the administrative overhaul.

“Dirks is thought of as positive in some ways, but he’s also seen by some undergraduates as someone who is centralizing power and taking it away from individual schools, especially the undergraduate school,” said Jared Odessky, an elected student representative on the Columbia University Senate. “The problem is, when allocating financial resources, a lot has gone to the top.”

Dirks’ management of the program was in part facilitated by the administrative flexibility afforded to him by the private nature of Columbia — a comfort he will no longer benefit from at UC Berkeley.

“One thing I’ll say about University of California is there’s a high level of transparency,” Dirks said. “I’ve never had transparency like this in my life.”

“I’ve never had transparency
like this in my life.”
-Chancellor-designate Nicholas Dirks

While administrators at private schools like Columbia have more maneuvering room, by virtue of being at a public school like UC Berkeley, administrators are required to be more cautious, according to Director of the campus Center for Studies in Higher Education C. Judson King.

“I’m fine with the transparency and the open records, but sometimes it makes it more difficult to make decisions,” said UC President Mark Yudof. “Of course it may be easier to make a decision at somewhere like Harvard than Berkeley, but at the end of the day, we have a public university with a public mission.”

Still, Dirks hopes to spark dialogue with the campus’s active community. He said he plans on holding regular fireside chats and meetings with student groups during his visit to the campus in May.

(UC Berkeley NewsCenter/Courtesy) Dirks shakes hands with Chancellor Birgeneau after being confirmed by the UC Board of Regents in late November of 2012.

“I like that professor Dirks is really engaged with students — he’s very open-minded, intelligent and trustworthy,” said Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab, who sat on the chancellor search committee.

Creative solutions

Both Dirks and Brown have a history of looking for outside partners to help finance state and university programs.

Recently, Brown secured a deal with a China-based investor to help pay for a $1.5 billion development deal in Oakland. During a trade mission last week in Beijing, Brown also sought support from China for the state’s recently approved high-speed rail project.

As the senior administrator working on the development of global outreach, Dirks was a fundamental force in seeking international support for Columbia, according to Kathy Okun, vice president for university development at Columbia. Under his leadership, the university established five global offices to represent it.

(Joy Lee/China Post/Courtesy) Dirks speaks to students at Doe Library in November of 2012.

“It is critical to engage Berkeley’s global community — and in order to do just that, I recently  completed a tour of Asia, where I met with the Berkeley Clubs in Mumbai, Delhi, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore,” Dirks said.

Over the last decade, UC Berkeley has put increased emphasis on garnering private support through different campaigns, initiatives and a shift in alumni relations. Haas School of Business development efforts, such as the thank-you letter event, are among the many programmatic efforts toward closing this gap through a cultural push toward philanthropy, said David Blinder, former associate vice chancellor for university relations.

“Ironically, we need more private money to sustain our public character,” Birgeneau said.

“Ironically, we need more private money
to sustain our public character.”
- Chancellor Robert Birgeneau

In 1987, the state funded 54 percent of the university’s budget. In 2012, the state supplied only 11 percent. Over the last eight years, total yearly private giving has increased by around $80 billion.

Although UC Berkeley still lags behind its private peers, with an endowment about half the size of Columbia’s, the university’s efforts have significantly increased in recent years, said Vice Chancellor of University Relations Scott Biddy.

“We are not simply wringing our hands,” he said. “We are working hard to sustain our excellence … and to ensure that Berkeley competes academically at the very top tier on the global stage — one of the ways we do this is by raising private gifts.”

The new chancellor’s history of engaging with alumni and donor communities comes to the University of California at a time of heightened stakes. His experience as a fundraiser at Columbia may be key in Brown’s advocacy for the university to seek a larger degree of financial independence from the state.

As vice president, dean and primary fundraiser of Columbia’s faculty of the arts and sciences, Dirks raised more than $900 million of the $5 billion Columbia Campaign — the largest campaign in Columbia’s history.

(Chris Taggart/Courtesy) Dirks and his wife, Columbia associate professor of history Janaki Bakhle, pose with Columbia trustee William Campbell.

“In order to have successful philanthropy, you need two things: big ideas and people who make those big ideas happen,” Okun said. Dirks has both, she said.

Like both state and university administrators, Dirks agrees that the university needs to search for new sources of revenue. But he remains reluctant to embrace Brown’s leading proposal that the university take on a more expansive online education program.

In January, Brown proposed a budget that allocated $10 million for the development of online education, calling for the university to take advantage of new forms of technology to improve graduation rates and increase access to the university.

Although Dirks helped create online extension programs at Columbia, he has come down against the use of such programs as a one-stop solution to the university’s financial problems.

“The emphasis of online education should be on enhancing the learning experience, not thinking of it as some great fantasy for revenue production, which is completely untried and untested at this point,” Dirks said.

Looking forward

As both Brown and Dirks move forward, they will have to negotiate what in recent years has been a testy relationship between their two institutions.

“Although the state is only (about) 10 percent of our budget, our relationship with the state is important,” Birgeneau said. “We need to keep it straight.”

Between their shared history of controversial efforts toward fiscal discipline and their search to find more sustainable sources of revenue for the university, the brewing friendship between Dirks and Brown comes at a true inflection point for the university.

“Governor Brown and I are having so much fun talking that we haven’t had the chance to think about the next Prop. 30,” Dirks said. “But we will.”

Contact Alex Berryhill and Shirin Ghaffary at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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UC SHIP, which is run through the UC Office of the President, is projected to have a cumulative $46.5 million deficit by the end of the 2012-13 plan year, prompting the possibility of student premium increases, according to Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab, who spearheaded the straw poll, in an email.

“Given that SHIP info has been changing so rapidly (new info comes out or UCOP scenarios change) we don’t have time to run a new survey for every new change,” Navab said. “So instead, we gauged what the senators wanted as representatives of the student body given the latest options.”

The poll will be included in a memo to be sent to the chancellor along with recommendations for what the campus should do next year, according to Navab.

“I think that they have shown that (the UC Office of the President is) unable to properly manage UC-wide SHIP, and we need to reclaim agency of our own decision-making with regards to student health plans,” said CalSERVE Senator Daley Vertiz.

The vote indicates interest in recommending to the chancellor that UC Berkeley pull out of UC SHIP and enter its own fully funded plan. Furthermore, it recommends that chancellors across the system hire a third-party firm to formally investigate UCOP’s alleged mismanagement UC SHIP.

“I believe that (investigating mismanagement) is a necessary step to hold UCOP accountable, identify the deficiencies in oversight that led to this mess and develop concrete changes that will prevent future mismanagement,” said CalSERVE Senator Nolan Pack.

Ally Rondoni is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at arondoni@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that UC SHIP is projected to have a cumulative $57 million deficit by the end of 2012-13. In fact, an updated projection reports a total deficit of $46.5 million.

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Representatives from the UC Office of the President urged the board to take a firm position on the coverage caps, but board members refrained from taking a position until student groups had a chance to present their views, according to campus board representative and Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab.

“The consensus of the discussion on caps was that the majority of campuses were in favor of lifting the caps, but we’re going to hold off on making any decisions until all the campuses have had time for student consultation,” Navab said.

The SHIP lifetime and annual coverage caps limit the amount of lifetime health care coverage to $400,000 and the annual pharmacy coverage to $10,000 per year. Eleven students have exceeded the lifetime cap on coverage, and 150 students have surpassed the annual pharmacy cap in 2011-12 alone.

In an open forum last Tuesday night, students proposed alternate solutions to eliminating the UC SHIP deficit. A universitywide survey conducted by the UC Student Association and the UAW Local 2865, a union representing UC student workers, revealed that 71 percent of undergraduate respondents and 78 percent of graduate respondents want caps eliminated.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau said he is supportive of lifting the coverage caps.

According to an open letter released Monday by the UCSA and UAW Local 2865, lifting the lifetime cap would cost approximately $32.28 per student per year, and eliminating the annual prescription drug cap would cost an average of $12.63 per student per year.

Composed of student representatives, student health directors and other members of the UC community, the UC SHIP Advisory Board will make a recommendation to an executive committee as to what they think the next step for UC SHIP will be, according to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse.

After the committee reviews the suggestions, they will be sent to the Council of Chancellors, which is expected to make the final decision regarding the future of UC SHIP on May 1.

Time is an issue for this decision, too, because UC SHIP affects students’ financial aid package, according to Converse.

“They want to get it done, so financial aid can be adjusted before the start of the next academic year,” Converse said.

The UCSA, UAW Local 2865 and the university are expected to meet on March 25 to discuss the elimination of caps and opposition to fee hikes, reported Charlie Eaton, financial secretary for UAW Local 2865.

Contact Matt Trejo at mtrejo@dailycal.org.

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At the meeting, the first in a series of forums to collect student input on the issue, Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab led a presentation aimed at informing students of UC SHIP and stimulating proposals to deal with the insurance plan’s projected $57 million deficit.

The UC Office of the President announced in January the possibility of student premiums increasing by an average of 25 percent systemwide to close the deficit, including a 19.8 percent increase for UC Berkeley students.

Students weighed in on several options to tackle the deficit, including the administration’s proposal to raise premiums across the board and an option to increase SHIP users’ necessary c0-payments for office visits.

Charlie Eaton, a financial secretary for UAW Local 2865 representing UC student workers, said that he opposed any alternatives that could disproportionately affect individuals heavily relying on the health plan.

“The people who need the services the most are usually folks who have income problems,” Eaton said.

Students at the meeting also discussed raising health premiums more steeply for graduate students due to their higher usage of the health plan. According to Claudia Covello, executive director of University Health Services, only 55 percent of undergraduates are enrolled in UC SHIP, compared to 90 percent of graduate students that use the service.

Students at the meeting proposed a final option to “jump SHIP” and revert to a UC Berkeley self-funded insurance program that the campus used until 2010.

“If we start causing deterrents to students using care, then what’s the point of SHIP?” Navab said.

According to Navab, no solid financial figures for any of the three options were provided, yet students are rushed to form a collective response before the systemwide Council of Chancellors decides whether to continue using UC SHIP or to implement an alternative health insurance plan for students by June 1.

“We’ve pushed for numbers, and (the university) hasn’t given any,” Navab said. “They said these options can only mitigate — not eliminate — the problem.”

The next two student forums will take place Thursday from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. at 105 Boalt Hall and Friday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 88 Dwinelle Hall, and they will be open to the public.

Virgie Hoban covers Research and Ideas. Contact her at Vhoban@dailycal.org.

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Had SHIP set more realistic premium levels, the current deficit would have been avoided by spreading out premium increases.  Officials blame the mistake on the firm responsible for setting premium levels. The university has since hired new firms to work with UC SHIP, as it should have, but important questions remain.

First and foremost, UC students need to know whether financial aid will cover the potential double-digit premium increase. While a UC spokesperson told The Daily Californian that health insurance costs will continue to be factored into financial aid, UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab, who sits on SHIP’s advisory board, said she was told differently. Those conflicting messages need to be reconciled as quickly as possible.

The whole issue casts UC administrators in a dim light. Even though they are shifting much of the blame to the previous firm, it is incredibly concerning that, given the university’s acute financial struggles, an error this large occurred over what essentially amounts to a miscommunication. At this point, the university appears to have no other option than to raise premiums, but the entire situation reflects poorly on how well the administration functions.

With more than 130,000 students voluntarily enrolled in UC SHIP, the university has an obligation to keep the plan affordable. If the price escalates too quickly, more students will begin to opt out of the plan. As Navab pointed out, that could leave students with the highest cost of insurance in the plan.  Preventing that from happening will require the university to restore some of the good faith it has lost.

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The funding request comes as a formal proposal to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees, a body within the Graduate Assembly. The advisory committee reviews funding proposals regarding the use of student fees and recommends a policy decision to the chancellor.

“This year, we’ve identified that Cal Corps has grown significantly over 15 years,” said Megan Voorhees, director of Cal Corps, “(but) we get the same amount of money (from the campus) as when I started 15 years ago.”

The Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees is made up of campus representatives serving an advisory role to the chancellor. The committee hears proposals from campus programs that request additional funding through student fees.

“Sometimes, there is an increase in student fees,” said Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab. “Sometimes, there is a surplus of what was previously allocated that needs to be reallocated. The committee acts as an advisory to the chancellor on these issues.”

According to Voorhees, money from grants and off-campus sources have funded all of Cal Corps’ growth in recent years. Some university service programs, such as the University of Wisconsin’s Morgridge Center for Public Service, have turned to endowments to support their operations.

“Right now, we get about 50 percent of our funding from campus dollars” said Nancy Mathews, director of the Morgridge Center. “The remainder of that funding comes from interest off of our endowment with some funding from grants for programs.”

Those programs are also seeing growth in the number of students involved in community service through their programs. Mathews said the center anticipated growth of more than 500 students in addition to the more than fourfold growth it has seen in recent years.

Like Cal Corps, the Morgridge Center has pursued grants coming from both private foundations off campus and public sources on campus. The Morgridge Center has pursued grants from the Evjue Foundation, national grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and some University of Wisconsin system grants.

Cal Corps was founded in 1967 as the Community Projects Office and was originally funded entirely by the ASUC. Cal Corps now reports to the campus Office of the Dean of Students and is financed by a combination of campus contributions and outside private sources.

In 2000, the UC Berkeley Service Task Force issued a report to then-chancellor Robert Berdahl calling for increased support for community service and the Cal Corps program on campus. No changes in funding were made on that recommendation.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees is a body within the graduate assembly. In fact, the committee is a separate campus body that serves as an advisory group to the chancellor.

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Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard, along with ASUC and Graduate Assembly representatives, negotiated with the students — who occupied Eshleman’s sixth floor for four hours — to end the occupation around 9:40 p.m. Campus administrators agreed to grant the occupiers amnesty and to create a transitional review team to assess the multicultural center’s administrative structure and goals.

At the time he was informed of the occupation, Basri said he was in the middle of discussions with Graduate Assembly representatives to create a task force to address issues similar to those raised by the protesters.

ASUC President Connor Landgraf said students met multiple times with Basri this semester to suggest alternatives to the consolidation of the Multicultural Student Development offices but could not make headway until Eshleman’s occupation.

“The crux of (the discussion) was the vice chancellor’s unwillingness to consider students’ ideas,” Landgraf said of his conversation with protesters Tuesday night.

According to Basri, the offices’ changes were intended to streamline administrative tasks and to allow for more resources to be used for outreach and the retention of minority students. He said the fact that the changes did not receive any attention until a year after their implementation suggests that students were not negatively affected by the consolidation.

“I’m sad that we are finding ourselves spending time on an issue that I don’t see as advancing equity and inclusion but rather is taking time away from our real issues,” Basri said. “But my office has open access — anyone with an appointment can have one.”

ASUC senators have also expressed frustration with structural issues within the multicultural offices, although the senate was not tied to the protest. The senate passed a bill in September urging Basri to reconsider budget cuts and structural changes to development offices, and many senators recognized similarities between their demands and those of the Eshleman protesters.

“I’m glad that the wider public is starting to hopefully converse about this,” said CalSERVE Senator Klein Lieu at the protest.

The transitional review team, created as a result of Tuesday’s occupation, is expected to convene in the spring semester. The team will create a list of proposals on multicultural student development and report directly to the chancellor later in the semester, according to Landgraf.

Contact Libby Rainey and Alex Berryhill at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Dirks, who is expected to begin his term on campus June 1, 2013,  comes to UC Berkeley after leading a diversity initiative for Columbia Arts and Sciences, expanding programs in international, ethnic, African American and gender studies and helping rebuild multiple academic programs, according to campus press release announcing the appointment.

“Nicholas Dirks is a highly accomplished leader with the sensibilities and knowledge of a humanist, as well as extensive fundraising, academic and administrative expertise,” Yudof said in the statement. “His global perspective, leadership of diversity efforts at Columbia and experience with both public and private universities will serve him and the campus well.”

Dirks’ appointment awaits confirmation by the UC Board of Regents, which is scheduled to vote on the terms of his appointment at a special meeting Nov. 27.

His colleagues describe him as a likable person and dedicated academic.

“Nicholas Dirks is a wonderfully resourceful, wide-ranging scholar with broad experience in academic administration,” said David Hollinger, a campus professor of history who has known Dirks for nearly 30 years. “He is a good listener and is likely to be popular with faculty and students at Berkeley.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree in African and Asian studies at Wesleyan University and his doctorate in history from the University of Chicago, Dirks began his career at California Institute of Technology, where he taught Asian history for nine years until he took a position at the University of Michigan.

In 1997, Dirks became the chair of Columbia’s department of anthropology, where he researched British colonialism, the history of colonialism and cultural theory. Additionally, Dirks has authored three books on India, where he spent part of his childhood.

“It’s a positive sign that the university chose someone of a social science background,” said Terry Deacon, chair of UC Berkeley’s anthropology department. “The social sciences are becoming a more important part of the university.”

To accommodate Dirks’ moving timeline, outgoing UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has agreed to continue serving until May 2013, even though he announced in March that he would step down at the end of December.

In April, Yudof appointed an advisory committee of UC Berkeley students, staff, alumni, foundation representatives, UC faculty and regents to recommend Birgeneau’s successor. After reviewing hundreds of nominations, the committee submitted final recommendations in early October.

“We looked for not only academic qualities but also commitment to diversity and appreciation for the importance of maintaining Berkeley’s accessibility,” said Bahar Navab, Graduate Assembly president and the graduate student representative on the selection committee.

Contact Dan Kwak at dkwak@dailycal.org.

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