Listen to the Jan. 27th session of the Regents' president search at Berkeley

The Regents' president search committee held another campus forum on January 27th, this time at UC-Berkeley. As we have noted with regard to past such forums, the sessions tend to produce a laundry list of all the problems speakers want the incoming UC prez to fix, rather than what kind of leader might be best at this time. The Berkeley session followed that mold, but with some notable exceptions.

After greetings from the Berkeley chancellor, there were calls for the new prez to deal with diversity issues, housing, problems of transfer students, TMT (Hawaiian telescope), green new deal, immigrant students, affordability etc. However, the secretary of the Berkeley Faculty Association, Prof. Michael Buraway, got more into the issue of leadership. He asked if the faculty might in some way put up a candidate. He wanted someone who had experience in higher education previously and would regularly come to UC campuses. Prof. Oliver O'Reilly wanted someone who could deal with the state on budget matters. Another faculty speaker said he wanted someone with advocacy skills for UC, but it didn't matter whether that person was an academic or not.

You can hear the session at the link below:

or direct to:
https://archive.org/details/regentsberkeleysearch12720