From the NY Times: The University of California, Berkeley, will open an institute named for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who rose to become the first woman to lead the House and one of President Trump’s most ferocious adversaries. Campus officials are billing the institute as a nonpartisan, academically rigorous operation focused on the tending of American democracy. But the announcement comes as the university faces extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration, which has spent months pelting the campus with investigations...
The institute’s emergence comes as dozens of schools have started civics programs. Many are in Republican-controlled states and are often perceived as having a conservative bent. Centers in places like North Carolina and Ohio regularly focus on Western civilization and civil discourse, with supporters hoping that they will act as counterweights to academic cultures many conservatives view as ideologically intolerant.
...Ms. Pelosi insisted that she viewed her role in the institute as “almost an emancipation from partisanship.” ...Although some details are still being discussed, Berkeley officials said they expect the institute to offer undergraduate students a public leadership track that will begin as a certificate program and could someday evolve into a major or a minor. The institute, also slated to include a visiting fellows program and research opportunities, will feature a course taught by Ms. Pelosi and Eric Schickler, a U.C. Berkeley professor who has written extensively about Congress and who said he was eager to test political science theory against Ms. Pelosi’s in-the-room recollections. Berkeley said it had already raised $35 million for the institute. The university declined to identify the donors, but Ms. Pelosi, among the wealthiest members of Congress, said she would be contributing and helping with fund-raising...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/berkeley-pelosi-democracy.html.
Announcement video:
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkww2gWKbbc or https://ia601802.us.archive.org/14/items/newsom-may-june-2026/UC-Berkeley%20Pelosi%20Institute%20for%20Representative%20Democracy%206-29-2026.mp4.
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