Chancellor's Statement
There is no place like California. It is a state born of discovery, bursting with novel ideas, innovation, and industry. California’s vitality comes from people who are unique — both as a population and as individuals whose talents and perspectives form the foundation of our success. Diversity here is not an abstract concept; it is a reality. Inclusion here is not an aspiration; it is an imperative. These are California’s greatest strengths. This is who we are.
The state we serve is now in the midst of sweeping, irreversible demographic changes and, as always, California depends on our university to provide leadership through our research, innovation and actions. We must educate a new generation of leaders who are prepared to thrive in a multi-cultural society. We must explore and demonstrate how we can live together and prosper in a new California. We must ensure that all of our communities, here and across the globe, benefit from the products of our work. This is what it means to be a public university. This is who we are.
Like California, this university has thrived not in spite of diversity, but rather because of it. Berkeley alumna Joan Didion once described her alma mater as “California’s highest, most articulate idea of itself, the most coherent — perhaps the only coherent — expression of the California possibility.” I could not agree more. At Berkeley we express that possibility in the diversity of our pursuits, from public health to poetry, from classics to cosmology. We express it in the talented mix of students we teach, and the lives and communities they transform. We thrive on ideological, intellectual, economic, cultural, religious, racial and ethnic variety. Diverse interests and origins generate diverse questions, and deep, challenging questions are the lifeblood of a great university. This is who we are.
My conviction that we must now reinvigorate our commitment to equity and inclusion is more than a response to our unfolding demographic future. Thomas Jefferson insisted that a democratic nation must use education to build an aristocracy of talent to replace an aristocracy of inherited power. When Abraham Lincoln created our system of public, land-grant universities he called them the “people’s colleges”. These values are an indivisible and treasured part of Berkeley’s past, present and future. This is who we are.
I know that we face a difficult challenge: to reflect the diversity of our state in our faculty, staff, and student body, within the parameters of existing laws and without compromising our unique ability to utilize diversity—of every kind—in support of our abiding commitment to excellence. We do not have all the answers, yet the stakes could not be higher and Berkeley could not be better suited to the task. We do not shy from complex challenges, we embrace them. We do not follow, we lead. This is who we are.
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