To the Berkeley Campus Community,
As you may be aware, on Sunday, Aug. 27, from 1 to 5 p.m., a demonstration called “No to Marxism in America” is scheduled to take place at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, three blocks west of campus. There also is planned demonstration activity the day prior, on Saturday, Aug. 26, in San Francisco.
Carol T. Christ, UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor and the first woman to lead the nation’s top public research university, unveiled plans Tuesday for a “Free Speech Year” as right-wing speakers prepare to come to campus.
Dear students, faculty and staff,
The beginning of the school year is always a magical time for me – a blank sheet of paper, the first page of a novel. You feel the excitement of all the beginnings that surround you – new students embarking on their college or graduate school years, new faculty beginning their Berkeley careers. It was in my first year as a faculty member here that I fell in love with Berkeley – a love that still animates me now.
Dear campus community,
I, like so many of you, am horrified by what occurred in Virginia over the weekend. Today, I join with millions of others to condemn the reprehensible acts of the racist groups that brought violence and mayhem to Charlottesville and to the University of Virginia campus.
A self-described "positivity activist," Shola Richards knows how to connect to a crowd. On stage at UC Berkeley's fifth annual NOW Conference, Richards, author of "Making Work Work," has been tasked with infusing UC Berkeley's staff with a healthy dose of positivity — something that he works on daily.
"I try to leave a person or place just a little bit better than you found them," he tells a full auditorium. "It's not forever. It's just today. And today. And today," he says with a smile.