Christopher Kutz Chair, Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate State of the campus Spring 2010: Despite the conventions of these statements, these are obviously parlous times, and I
would not be honest if I reported simply on the residing strengths of the campus. As we
all know, the campus, University, and state face challenges that rival if not overtake any
that we have faced before, and the solutions are far from obvious. However, before I
detail some of the significant issues before us, I do want to make sure we recognize what
we have managed to retain this year: a commitment to world-changing research and
teaching. We have celebrated already our new Nobel, MacArthur, Guggenheim, and
other faculty awards, which consistently remind us of the extraordinarily high standards
to which we can and must hold ourselves. We must also celebrate the equally
extraordinary stability of our graduate admissions, where – even in this difficult year –
we have had great success recruiting the very best graduate students, including again
hosting the largest cohort of NSF awardees of any university in the country.
It has been one year since President Yudof and Chancellor Birgeneau both appeared at
this meeting to answer our concerns. In the interim, we have been faced with an
extraordinary array of challenges. I take great pride in seeing how faculty both on our
campus and systemwide have risen to the occasion and have engaged in the process of
finding solutions in a manner that was inconceivable a year ago. We have benefited from
intense and productive working relationships with all levels of our staff colleagues. I
believe that the level of policy discussion of the past year has surpassed all recent history
of shared governance within the university – and I firmly believe that both the faculty and
the administration have found this valuable.
This unprecedented level of engagement ranges from efforts to preserve the educational
excellence and diversity of our campus, to concerns about the welfare of students, staff
and fellow faculty, to service on committees and commissions, to critical reflection and
voicing of concern about the choices and actions we have both witnessed and are faced
with. There are many moments we can all take from this year that have been
(surprisingly) inspirational and courageous, thanks to the efforts and energy of faculty,
students, staff, and alumni, acting both within our usual processes as well as taking our
concerns out of doors, all the way to Sacramento. All of us on Divisional Council have
been especially struck by the extraordinary leadership shown by the officers of the ASUC
and the Graduate Assembly during this period – all of whom have also gotten much more
than they counted on. This level of energy and passion is what we must all aspire to
make our way through what will be a number of years of budgetary pain. I would like to
offer a special thanks to the staff of the Senate, who have also risen heroically to these
demands.
Let me offer you some specific indicators of the state of the campus and the role of the
Senate in addressing these issues:
1 (1) Recruitment and retention of faculty: One of the biggest fears, when the
furlough policy was announced, was that we might see an exodus of faculty,
particularly at the mid-career level. As you know, the Senate pushed vigorously
to restrict the furloughs as a one-year emergency measure, lest the university be
seen as on a downward spiral. We are pleased that President Yudof has promised
to end the furloughs as of August. Hard work by the Budget Committee and the
administration has also enabled us to retain our faculty despite the increased
recruitment efforts of other universities. We also are pleased that the campus
administration has allocated funds to resume more significant faculty hiring for
next year, up to 50 new positions on state funds.
We recognize that resuming hiring and ending furloughs for faculty and staff
comes with serious costs, including steep tuition increases and the need for
reductions elsewhere. Nonetheless, we believe that the administration’s
commitment to keeping and recruiting an outstanding faculty is the key to
Berkeley’s future.
(2) Our Budget Working Group has been working assiduously, and with significant
progress, both on establishing principles for budgeting in these straitened times,
and on developing a more transparent public budget. We have found here a
terrific partnership with AVC Erin Gore on this project; she and her team have
put in an enormous amount of time trying to translate the campus budget
numbers into a holistic picture of our finances. We hosted a discussion of the
general character of the budget, and are planning another open discussion on
indirect cost recovery. Meanwhile, the Budget Working Group has been
focusing recently on anticipated changes to the way in which common goods
(such as internet access and utilities) are accounted for and funded on campus.
These changes could be a central determinant of our institutional culture going
forward, and require broad discussion and consultation.
(3) Enrollment and the lower division: The general deterioration in our financing
has highlighted the significance and severity of over-enrollment at Berkeley. The
Senate and administration formed a joint task force to address this issue. That
task force made recommendations at the end of last summer on the proper
number of admissions, and recommended an increase in non-resident admissions.
Those recommendations were mostly followed. It has been meeting for the last
year on changes to our lower division curriculum, to allow students to move
more easily through gateway and other requirements. The already-distributed
report provides some information about this, and co-chair George Johnson will
take some questions on it shortly.
(4) Graduate education: I have already mentioned the good news that we remain an
extraordinarily attractive place for the best potential graduate students in the
world. The Senate has been active in working with the Graduate Division to
ensure that this remains true. A second major round of activity has involved the
new campus interest in new revenues has been the development of proposals for
2 self-supporting and online graduate degrees. Such programs, in principle, could
raise additional revenue while expanding access to our teaching and research
mission. The problem is that the campus has not yet developed adequate criteria
by which to evaluate such programs, or for evaluating the risk that they may
crowd out other portions of our mission. Hence, the Senate has formed two
working groups to develop criteria for assessing such proposals, with an eye to
ensuring their academic rigor, and their compatibility with the rest of our
mission. These committees will report out later in the spring.
(5) Athletics: Pursuant to the resolution passed at our last Division Meeting, a task
force has been meeting to work out a set of recommendations for curtailing our
expenditures on intercollegiate athletics. The Senate believes firmly that the
deficit spending of Intercollegiate Athletics must be brought under tighter
control, and that the program must be rendered consistent with a sustainable
conception of its finances. Chair Calvin Moore will make a report on the task
force’s progress at the meeting; a final report will probably issue in early fall.
Meanwhile, four members of the Senate (Moore, myself, Fiona Doyle, and Meg
Conkey) have been asked to join a new Council on Intercollegiate Athletics, with
four distinguished alumni representatives. All of us share the goal of making
intercollegiate athletics a sustainable part of Berkeley, compatible with our
academic mission.
(6) Retirement: The Senate has for a number of years been warning that the
contribution holiday we have all enjoyed for our post-employment benefits had to
come to an end. The different proposals for reconciling our benefits to our
resources, and to meeting our current liabilities, will be the subject of a number
of important discussions over the next weeks. Funding our retirement benefits
will be, clearly, one of the greatest challenges going forward. We have been
actively discussing the preliminary options presented by the Presidential Task
Force, and will be hosting, on April 29th, a Senate discussion of the different
options.
(7) Political activity on campus: This has been a year of important political
activism by students, staff, and faculty. This is something to celebrate, as many
of us rediscover the grounds of our commitment to this institution. It has also
had a large and largely positive effect on the politics of higher education
financing. As always, with vigorous political energies, some demonstrations
have gone beyond expression, to pose real obstacles to the performance of our
mission, and have undermined the rights of students, faculty, and staff. The
November 20th prevention of classes, the December attack on University House,
and the March vandalism of Durant Hall, were the basis for serious concern by
the Senate, whether the new generation of activists could find a way to
demonstrate the urgency of their cause without undermining the institution they
sought to defend. Happily, the statewide demonstrations on March 4th, many of
which involved our students, faculty, and workers, showed that dynamic but
mutually respectful forms of protest are still possible and valuable.
3 Of course, the concerns arising from this year’s political protests do not center
only on activities by some of the protestors. The Senate has also had and
expressed grave concerns about some of the ways in which protests have been
addressed by police and by the Office of Student Conduct. The televised
incidents of police use of force outside Wheeler Hall were scenes that all of us
hope we would never see on our campus. And we have had serious concerns
whether the adjudicative processes on campus following some of those events
have met the high standard of procedural fairness to which we believe the
campus must be committed. On the first, we worked actively with the Police
Review Board and the Chancellor to ensure that there be an objective review of
the UCPD procedures and practices surrounding the Wheeler events. That report
will come forth later this spring. And we have been in active discussion with the
Office of Student Conduct about the adequacy of the code and the procedures
with which it is implemented. While we have not yet resolved these concerns,
we believe the dialogue has been constructive. The Senate believes that
protestors who choose a path of civil disobedience must be held responsible for
their choices, but that such responsibility must be meted out only through
unquestionably fair procedures. More importantly, we believe that Berkeley’s
tradition of dissent and protest is an essential part of our identity, one that must
be protected.
Let me add a further note about politics off-campus. I have said before, and
continue to believe, that the only real path forward lies in reinventing California’s
non-functioning fiscal and governance systems – and I believe that the University
of California can play a role in that reinvention. Our Office of State and
Government Relations has been very creative and ambitious, and I have been
trying to ensure that the Senate plays as productive a role as possible in these
efforts. I will be joining the Chancellor in Sacramento on April 27th to discuss
the importance of funding for higher education. I have also been trying to assist
the important efforts of Goldman School Dean Henry Brady in creating a
“Speaker’s Bureau” of Berkeley speakers, who can directly prove out the value
and interest of what we do; I have also been trying to reinvigorate the role of
Berkeley in educating legislators about the range of policy questions they
confront.
(8) Tolerance and community on campus: All members of the UC community were
horrified at the episodes of intolerance on our sister campuses, directed at
students of color, Jewish students, and LGBT students. While we are very glad
we saw no such extreme episodes at Berkeley this year, we must not pat
ourselves on the back. The Senate remains very concerned that all members of
our community find Berkeley a safe, supportive, and intellectually stimulating
place to learn and work. Through our committees on the Status of Women and
Ethnic Minorities, and Student Diversity and Academic Development, we have
been working with students and the administration to ensure that this is so – but
conditions remain fragile. The needs for support, financial resources, and a sense
4 of security and community for members of underrepresented groups cannot be
underestimated.
(9) Operational Excellence: An important part of our path forward will involve
improving administrative services while also finding savings. This is the project
of “Operational Excellence,” on whose steering committee I have served. I am
convinced that we can find significant savings, perhaps of as much as $75M per
year, improve a range of back office services – and at the same time make the
career paths of our staff much better as well. Faculty involvement so far has
been at the level of the steering committee, and in individual interviews. But as
we move to the phase of designing the new systems, we will need much more
involvement by faculty, on the design teams. We will need your help and
support. I realize that there are hardly deep reserves of institutional trust on
which to draw for these efforts. But I believe it is simply true that we cannot
reside in the status quo – there simply is not enough money, or enough slack in
the system, to permit us to continue to muddle on. The good news is that I
believe that with proper design and political will, we can not only adapt our
systems to our more constrained resources, but that we can actually improve the
lives of our faculty and workers, by creating administrative systems that are more
transparent and easier to use.
I began this statement with a comment about the challenges before us. I believe that we
all believe we will see our way past these challenges, and that Berkeley will remain the
great institution we cherish. But this belief cannot be a dogma, a matter of faith. It is,
rather, a self-fulfilling prophecy: Berkeley will remain a great institution if we put our
minds to making it so, not only in the research and education that we do, but in our
efforts to imagine its future across this landscape.
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