Berkeley Pipeline Shutoff - Now Reversed

We posted last month about the shutdown of ISSI [Institute for the Study of Societal Issues] at Berkeley.* It seems that the decision has been reversed.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Following an outcry, UC Berkeley is reversing its plan to disband a campus institute that for four decades has served as a pipeline into the social sciences for students of color and has lifted them into the highest echelons of academia.

The Chronicle reported in December that the university planned to dismantle the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, which supports mainly Black and Latino students earning doctorates in the social sciences. About 220 students have gone through ISSI since 1976 and have gone on to teach at dozens of leading universities, including Harvard, Morehouse College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The institute was to close at the end of the current semester.

The Chronicle article “brought the situation to the attention of some powerful faculty members (and others) who had not been aware and who started advocating on our behalf,” said Deborah Freedman Lustig, associate director of the institute, who added that ISSI received offers of financial help and was “inundated with emails of support.”

Hundreds of people also added their names to a petition that had been posted since the summer to try to save ISSI, bringing the signatures to about 1,300, Lustig said.

The response “made clear that there has been insufficient prior consultation with faculty and other stakeholders” about UC Berkeley’s plan for the institute, a network of academic programs, said a letter Thursday to ISSI from Linda Haverty Rugg, associate vice chancellor for research, and Randy Katz, vice chancellor for research. The letter said the university had intended to dismantle the institute but preserve its individual programs.

“Our plan’s impact on the broader campus intellectual support for social justice research was inadequately addressed,” the letter said.

Rugg and Katz said the university will “suspend all decisions and actions related to ISSI’s programs and organizational structure,” a proposal from Katz approved by campus Chancellor Carol Christ...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/UC-Berkeley-reverses-course-and-will-not-close-15876471.php

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/12/berkeley-pipeline-shutoff.html