Insider Insights: Celebrating Berkeley’s Leadership and Legacy Donors

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. I'm Julie Hooper. I'm the interim vice chancellor for university development and alumni relations, and I am delighted to have returned to campus in March, and I'm delighted to be here with all of you for this exciting program today. Oh, thank you. Thanks. Uh today marks a special occasion as we bring together two of our most dedicated groups of supporters, the Benjamin Ide Wheeler Society and the Charter Hill Society, for a new signature event celebrating the full spectrum of your philanthropic leadership. Looking around, I see so much pride and devotion concentrated in this auditorium. Collectively, your vision and generosity make it possible for Berkeley to remain the great public university. I'm excited for the dynamic and inspiring afternoon ahead. So, if you haven't been on campus recently, let me give you a quick view of three areas that showcase your support at work. Just last month, we held a ribbon cutting to celebrate the near completion of the Barbara and Gerson Baker Gateway. Located on the north side of campus on the former site of Tolman Hall, the state-of-the-art facility is the new home of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. It's open, light-filled design makes it easy for people from diverse fields, from law and public policy to chemistry and material sciences to climate science and astronomy, to collaborate and communicate. That is absolutely necessary for not only developing world-changing computing and AI technologies, but also harnessing them to solve major challenges ethically. In addition to meeting spaces and multidisciplinary labs, two levels in the Gateway are explicitly devoted to our undergraduate students, which brings me to the next program, Discovery Hubs. This initiative is a powerful new effort to get more undergraduates, regardless of their major, engaged in hands-on research. There are nine hubs to date organized around different areas that include things like energy, nanoscience, and new music and audio technologies. In each hub, graduate students mentor undergraduates on a research project, and then they co-present their work at a symposium. A new hub just launched in Berkeley's growing collaboration with NASA that will give our undergraduate students experience in space life sciences. This culture of innovation and exploration doesn't stop in the classroom or the lab. It extends onto the athletic field as well. We held a first-ever summit last month that explored how Berkeley's expertise in data science can transform Cal's competitive athletics. Following a review of all 30 sports and 20 support units, we identified challenges with how we collect data and how it can be used to improve recruitment, training, performance, and engaging with our fans and donors. Now the work begins to turn the ideas that emerged at the summit into projects that will impact Cal's student athletes, coaches, and our community. The summit was quintessential Berkeley, collaborating across disciplines to address a multi-layered challenge and opportunity. With these and so many other areas of campus, you have provided both the immediate resources to help Berkeley's programs thrive in the present, as well as visionary support through your planned gifts that will sustain our foundation for generations to come. Thank you for your belief in Berkeley, your partnership, your loyalty. Berkeley thrives because of your support. Now, I'd like to shift into today's program. There is no one more appropriate to talk to as campus insiders than University of California President J.B. Milliken and Chancellor Rich Lyons. President Yes. Yes. >> [applause] >> President Milliken oversees UC's world-renowned system of 10 campuses, six academic health centers, three affiliated national laboratories, more than 290,000 students, and 230 230,000 faculty and staff. He has more than 30 years of experience at large institutions, including most recently as Chancellor of the University of Texas system from 2018 to 2025. At UT, the president led efforts to meet the needs of a growing and diversifying state and nation, including increasing training, education, and research programs in information technology, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, public health, and medicine. Chancellor Rich Lyons began his term as the 12th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley almost 2 years ago, and he is the first undergraduate alum to serve as Chancellor of the campus, receiving his BS degree from Berkeley in 1982. He returned to Berkeley in 1993, joining the faculty after earning his PhD in economics from MIT and following 6 years on the faculty at Columbia University. Many of you know Rich from his time as Dean of the Haas School of Business and his leadership on campus in innovation and entrepreneurship. President Milliken and Chancellor Lyons, will you please join me on stage? >> [applause] >> Thank you both for being here. Um I'm going to start with some quick questions so we can get to know you both. Uh what is your favorite Berkeley restaurant? This is the hardball section. >> I feel like the only safe answer is Chez Panisse. >> That's a good answer. Rich. >> You know what? I really I know it's a rapid-fire question, but I had to think a little bit about it. And I I just love going with Jen to La Cocos. It's it's on Shattuck. It's a favorite. But if I'm being less guarded, I would say Top Dog. >> Top Yeah, okay. It's a crowd favorite. They're both They all three are. What is your favorite UC or UC Berkeley-themed possession? >> I'll start on that one. Um if you've been to University House and you've seen that rose garden in the backyard, uh we don't own it, but I absolutely love it. >> Well, I also love the president's residence. They a wonderful Julia Morgan house in Berkeley, but I'm going to say my favorite possession sits on the shelf in my office. It's an Oski bobblehead that that an alum gave me when he heard I was coming to the University of California. So in Austin, Texas, he gave me the bobblehead and I've kept it with me. >> Thank you. What book are you currently reading? >> I'll start. Joseph, one of the great things about this job is you get to talk to other presidents and it it's boys in a sharp group. Joseph Aoun, who's at Northeastern, wrote a book called Robot Proof. I know Joseph from before and I'm I'm getting into to Robot Proof and there are just some very interesting ideas in there. Like, he talks about working intelligence, things like coachability. Now, obviously, things like immersive learning, like the Discovery Hub and so forth. But, there are a lot of robust ideas in that book. >> So, I'm not bragging about this. I'm I'm simply um revealing a weakness. Um I'm reading about five or six books right now. And I don't know if you've ever seen this thing from the Middle Ages. It was a a big wooden wheel that the monks used. Uh and they had books on the shelves, so you could have like a dozen books on this wheel and keep reading them. I figured those are the That's the predecessor to streaming on the internet. And so, instead of getting my data that way, I get it out of multiple books. So, I'm not reading really anything too new. I'm reading Sapiens because I missed the first time around. I'm reading Enlightenment now because I let it sit around on the shelf for a while. I am rereading uh the first volume of The Golden and the Blue, Clark Kerr's memoirs, which I read probably 20 years ago. Uh and I am rereading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. And the reason I'm rereading that, I've read it before. I I I I love um the message uh in that in that book, which was written as advice to himself really, not not ever to be published. But, I I'll confess that the reason I'm reading it is I saw a brief interview with Jerry Seinfeld where he said he's reading it, and it's one of the best things he's ever read. So, I thought, "Well, I got to go back. Maybe there's some funny parts in here I missed." >> There you go. Okay, finally, your favorite famous UC alum. >> I'll go first. >> Rich Lyons. >> Oh my, [laughter] that's wow. >> Wow, great answer. >> kind, too kind actually. >> I think you're blushing. >> So, 1939 PhD in economics. I have to say Clark Kerr, you mentioned the blue and the gold, but you know, we're still talking about the California master plan and how powerful it's been for the state and and how we evolve it and it it's just just remarkable. I mean, I quote him all the time. One of the quotes you've probably heard me here seen in something I've written. Um, you know, we're we're not engaged with making ideas safe for students. We're engaged with making students safe for ideas, right? The world is messy, it's tough, and they need to be ready when they get to the other side. We're not going to dumb down or soften the ideas they have to learn how to confront. >> That's a great segue to the next part. The not softball questions. Uh, thank you, Rich. So, JB, for you, um, why did you decide to join UC at one of the most challenging moments for higher education in the country? >> I called a friend of mine after I'd been here about a month or two. His name's Mitch Daniels. He was the president Purdue and the and the governor of Indiana. He's a smart guy and I I asked him a question about what he thought about an issue that was I was facing. I said, "So, you have any advice?" And he said, "Yeah, don't leave Texas." Um, >> Oh. >> So, um, I I I hadn't, um, thought this is the the fourth university system that I have led. And I hadn't thought about doing a fourth one. I sort of had a plan of what my life was going to be like after UT and it included a lot of reading, maybe getting one of those wheels in my library, and some writing and seeing my new grandchildren. Um So, you know, I'm going to tell you this sappy story just um because I can. So, I was thinking about it um and we told our kids that we were thinking of the holiday was my technology I guess for my new grandchildren. And uh um we talked to them about it. They tried to talk some sense into me. I went to bed that night thinking I wasn't going to do this. And then I woke up in the morning and I wrote my children, my three children, a letter um about why I was going to do it. And the the impetus for the letter uh behind my thinking was what would I want my first grandchild, Jamie, what would I want Jamie to know that his grandfather did? Did I stay in a place where I was inoculated from the federal government, not the state government by the way, but the federal government, or did I come to the premier university in the world uh that was facing the greatest challenge that it had seen in modern history? I don't have a Messiah complex, but I thought having worked in two red states, two blue states um led four university systems before this maybe I could contribute something at this point in history uh where nothing could be more important. And so, um I gave up what was um at the relatively comfortable and what I was used to to at a advanced age come to Berkeley, to the University of California, because I wanted to be part of the fight. I wanted to be involved in the forefront of what is the most important struggle for higher education in my lifetime. Uh so, >> [applause] >> when in my family, we now refer to this as the Jamie decision, uh my grandchild, but one of my kids said it would have been much easier if we just put uh Jamie in the middle of the room, he's a 1-year-old at the time, and sat around and said, "Here's Texas, here's Berkeley, and see which way he crawled." And then we could have done it that way. Anyway, sorry. I'm using up all the time with this ridiculous story. [laughter] >> No, thank you. Well, can I follow up on that and ask um you know, what are your top priorities for UC right now? >> Me? >> Yes, you. Yeah. >> Um well, you know, when I when I interviewed with the Board of Regents sometime last spring ago, um I told them that I thought there were two things that the University of California faced at the moment, which were potentially existential, uh but I was certain, I'm an optimist, they were not. But how we dealt with these two things over the next 5 years are going to have an enormous amount to do with at least the near-term prospects for the university. And the first was Trump, and the administration in Washington, and what was happening. And the second was AI, and the change that that was going to bring uh to uh to higher education and to everything else in our lives. In fact, I had a um um and I I met with the New York Times editorial board and I told them this story and I said, you know, I had my hands up. I said, "Trump and AI." But now, I think uh in terms of long term for the university, it's AI up here and Trump down here. And one of the reporters said, "Oh, great. Here's our headline. UC president says AI worse than Trump." Uh >> Oh god. >> So >> Wow. >> The third thing I will say, and I think we'll get maybe to some of this in the whether it's speech or whatever, um it It's not going to sound like much of a priority, but something that I've been thinking about for several years now, um before October 7th, before the second Trump administration, is the precipitous decline in public confidence in higher education. And we saw this in 2023 in a Gallup poll that showed a uh 20% drop over 9 years, the greatest that they'd ever seen. And for a public university in particular, that's uh incredibly important for us to try to understand and to grapple with. Um because we don't exist if the public doesn't have confidence in the in the university. Um So, we still have a lot more confidence than than uh Congress does or journalism, but we're not where we ought to be. So, I think there are a number of things we have to do to try to shore up uh that support so that when policy makers in Sacramento or Washington are thinking about the University of California or higher education writ large, uh they're hearing from their constituents about how vital it is to opportunity and to innovation and health and etc., etc. >> That's also a great to my next question for both of you actually is you know you have taken you've both taken the helm during a time of massive transition in higher education and government including here in California which will soon meet its new governor. Looking at the landscape in Sacramento in DC, what is one thing that keeps you up at night? And is what is one thing you feel optimistic about? >> Maybe I'll start on that one. I also want to include the city of Berkeley. I mean obviously Sacramento matters a lot. Mayor Arreguin is a grad of Cal. Arreguin and I were friends. Jen and I had dinner not long ago with the mayor of Berkeley and and her husband. And I want to credit my predecessor. I mean Carol did a I mean the town gown relationship right now it has been transformed. It is really quite remarkable. So there are a lot of parts to that but I want to start there on the positive. On on the California front, I'm obviously relatively new in my role but yesterday I sent a couple of texts to legislators. I won't mention who. Said you don't have to get back to me. They got back to me. Said thanks. Go Bears. You know it was like it feels it feels good, right? So we've invested all of us have invested a lot in those relationships at Sacramento and also when we were last in DC both senators made time for us and many other things. So that that part feels great. On the on the downside, I mean the the big question is how are we going to keep this magnificent research enterprise funded so that it's thriving the way it's been thriving for so long. And you know there's a lot of adjustment that will take place and we kind of need to think about new economic models and I think it's it's it's safe to assume that in a secular sense federal funding for research is going down and I don't think that's just in the in administration by administration thing. Uh if you're following indirect cost recovery and things like that, it's going down and that's going to go down and stay down. So, um you know, it's going to have ups and downs, but we're thinking about how to create a more diversified, more robust funding model for for the great research that the world needs Cal to be doing. Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, I think that's um that's a great point. Um the high water mark for public investment in higher education this country was 1986 if you measure the the percentage of state's contributions to universities total budget. And I realize that's a national number, but it's not the the the trajectory is the same pretty much everywhere. Uh so, there's been a great decline and we've been replacing that with other sources, raising tuition where didn't have paid tuition at one point. Um but our costs are still growing at a rate that's unsustainable relative to our revenue even under the current model and the and the sources of revenue. So, what Rich says is absolutely right. We have got to stop thinking the way we have in the past and start thinking about how in a in a new world um we are finding ways to sustain the incredible research that goes on here, the incredible opportunity that and they're very different than what existed when we were depending largely on state general funds and tuition as the sources because um they're both um limited. And the kinds of things we do cost money. I mean, the human capital is uh is our greatest area of expanse and there we're not going to be able to replace great faculty in another way. We're going to still be hiring them and the faculty we hire are going to be people that everybody else who wants to be the best are going to try to hire. >> And can I jump in just real quickly to give you a concrete example? We have the Council of Deans, okay? And the Council of Deans met earlier this week and we had a presentation in the Council of Deans meeting about venture capital funding that actually wants to come to Berkeley and and fund what we would call fundamental research way upstream. Now they're they're not interested here's the whole continuum of like basic the most fundamental upstream research. They're not saying we're happy to fund any of that, but they're saying that slice right there, if you can figure out that mechanism, I'm I'll fund that for you cuz I can see a whole cascade of opportunities and I want to be first in line to see that. So the idea that venture funding would actually start funding fundamental research at Berkeley it's like that's a different ballgame, right? And I'm not saying that's getting really big, but it's getting big enough to do a whole session on it for for the Council of Deans. >> The only thing I would add to that is that we have a pretty big pot of funds ourselves that we invest as a fiduciary to support pension and to and for our endowments and when somebody else comes in venture private equity and says we want to do this, the only thing I want to say is we should look at it first. >> I agree. >> Thank you. And and I think you know, this audience is comprised of our donors, our long-standing donors and I think when we when we talk with our donors, they're very proud to invest in Berkeley, but they also ask us, you know, how are we navigating the evolving state budget in California? And you know, JB, this might be a question for you, but you know, do you have innovative ideas for our donors here in terms of how they can help Berkeley get ahead of crises in state funding and bridge the gap between sort of surviving and thriving? And Rich, you may have ideas, too. >> Well, I mean, no great university, certainly, of course, no great private university, but no great public university has ever existed, at least in the last 50 years, uh entirely based on public support. It's impossible. And so, forever, we have talked about what private philanthropy is able to do that our state support can't do. Uh and the kinds of facilities that we need, the kind the competitiveness for the greatest faculty and researchers, those are the kind of things that, um a place like Berkeley with its tradition and its uh alumni who believe so deeply in it has a natural advantage. And it's why you had a record in the capital campaign. And it's why places like Michigan and UT Austin and others are doing the same thing. And by the way, going to beat that record, so we got to get get the competitive juices going here. But it it really is the It's it's it is essential. I mean, especially after what we just talked about about the the you know, we're not but we're not looking for philanthropy, um to fill holes in the budget. Um we'll figure out how to meet our payroll. What we need, uh is great ideas, is partners that help us think. I mean, many of the greatest uh advances at universities that I've seen have come from a partnership with philanthropists who have their own great ideas and bring it to us and we go back and forth and they get shaped and and it makes a tremendous difference. So, it's it's partly that partnership. >> Thank you. Rich, do you want to add anything? >> agree more. I think, you know, there's a category of gift and I saw some of you earlier and you're participating in this. It's a category that we sometimes call gifts that keep giving, right? So, I mean, at this broad level when we talk about funding this magnificent research enterprise in ways that are consistent with our values. I want to double underscore that. In ways that are consistent with our values, Berkeley needs to participate pay more in the economic upside that we are helping to create, okay? And that's kind of obvious, but but one of the examples there is um we have a we have these funds, these external funds that are investing in Berkeley companies. And we received a lovely gift from somebody in this room and and and but it came to the campus with the restriction that you need to invest it in one of these funds and that fund is investing in Berkeley companies, but we're a limited partner as Berkeley and when it comes out the other side, it's relatively unrestricted and we can use it for lots of things. It's like, that's really interesting. Last July, a year ago, the UC Regents approved a Chancellor's Venture Capital Fund at Berkeley where when we have very special opportunities and there are lots of checks and balances on this, we can actually put our own capital into a company. And you might say, well, what kinds of things are you talking about? I mean, we shouldn't be spending money that could be going to the library or graduate students, right? So, I hadn't planned to do this, but I am going to do this. This is an email that a faculty member sent to me. 1 second, I'm just going to find it. But when somebody says, well, what kinds of things would you have that you could put this in that would be valuable enough for you to spend this, right? What's a special opportunity that you have? This is a November email from one of our AI faculty. I'm not going to mention his name. I didn't used to get emails like this. This person is famous. He's created a number of unicorns. Subject line, timely quick question, just to me. Hi Rich, there's a new company being started around VLLM, which is the most popular open-source inference engine for large language models today. This is coming from my lab. I won't mention the name and it is started by my students and postdocs. Is there a way to donate some shares to Berkeley or maybe for Berkeley to participate in the round? The round is led by A16Z and with participation from Sequoia and Lightspeed Ventures. These are three of the very best venture capitalists. Thanks, uh, first name. So, it's like this is part of how we get, you know, this participate in the non-linear upside. This company that we did buy into because I could put some of my own balance sheet into this. Sorry to talk jargon. Is now worth four times what we put into it and it was just last November. Now, you could say AI is vaporware and don't Yeah, we're not banking on that, but those are special opportunities. There are a lot of professional professional venture capitalists that wanted on that cap table, as they say, would have loved to invest in that and we got access because it came from one of our faculty. >> Thank you for sharing that, Rich. Um, again, you guys are ahead of me. It's like you're reading my mind on the questions here. Uh, I want I wanted to ask, looking sort of future looking here. So, I think all of us are constantly amazed by what's coming out of Berkeley's labs and other spaces of discovery. What are two to three breakthroughs from the UCs that you think will change the world? >> Well, they are they already have. I mean, we can look we can look over history, even recent history, Uh, and look at things CRISPR is you know, an example that everybody is aware of. We can look at the most recent and great sport on immunology that um well, when I was in Texas, one of my faculty got a Nobel Prize for immunology. Turns out he did the work at Berkeley. >> Yeah. We might know him. >> But we didn't put him in any of our materials. >> [laughter] >> But you know, I'm going to divert your question just a little bit or at least my answer. So, last fall when it was announced that there were six American Nobel Prize winners and five were from the University of California. >> [applause] >> I called Rich and I said, "Are you going to go?" And he said, "Oh, I can't go." And I can't remember what it was. And I said, "You know, I've been places before we've had Nobel Prize winners. So, I thought it would be kind of fun." I've never been any place where five of the six were from the institution. So, I went. And it was a week in in Stockholm celebrating with our five winners. And people and of course, this is last December and we're in the throes of battling the administration over NIH funding and NSF funding and um people everywhere I went when they learned I was from the University of California, they said, "How how do you do this? What is going on at the University of California that you have five of the six American Nobel Prize winners?" Uh and I wish that people in this country, and I think a lot of them do, but not everybody would realize what a monumental accomplishment that is. 75 Nobel Prizes at the University of California. There's nothing like it. When I we did some polling last year in California partly on the confidence issues. We wanted to learn if there was differentiation in the state versus the national picture. And I was stunned by the answers, the responses to some of the polling questions. One was, is the University of California better, about the same, or worse than other public universities in this country? And the majority said about the same. And I thought something isn't right here. We're not >> [laughter] >> we may just not be communicating well enough because no university that has 75 Nobel Prizes is about the same as Oklahoma State University. I don't want to make anybody angry, but but it's just it's incredible. I can tell you something having been in five other states doing this work. Everybody knows that the University of California stands alone. Everybody knows that it is the premier, and I'm not going to say public university, university in the country. And so just to get back to your question, the it's that way in large part because of the incredible work done here by our faculty over decades and decades. >> Yeah. >> I you know, I I wanted So, one of the things that you're going to get in your follow-up is something we haven't produced, but most of you have seen most of it. It's called Points of Pride. It's a single page. If you had 15, 10, 12 bullet points that make you most proud of Berkeley, we just wrote them down on a page. You're going to get a copy of that page. But, we're now sending that page to people when they get admitted to Berkeley. For crying out loud, tell the story, okay? And it is absolutely remarkable what this Berkeley has produced and of course the University of California more widely. So, we are getting less timid about telling our story. And then to answer the question specifically, you know, last week I was I guess it was Monday, so it was this week. I was at UCSF for half a day with Sam Hawgood and 40 faculty members. And there's this lovely galvanizing gift coming in and it's all around computational biomedicine. So, we had 15 people in that room who manage data sets. I've got all this clinical data. I've got all this cancer data. I've got cancer data. I've got all this genomic data. Jennifer Doudna was in the room. It's that quality of person. How do we pull those data sets together? How do we make them interpretable and and accessible through AI and other things? And it's just fascinating for me as a non-expert in the field to see these experts getting excited about that next level of being able to test stuff they didn't think they could test and bring therapeutics to the world that they couldn't have imagined bringing to the world even even a few years ago. So, those are the kinds of things that, you know, that's this week. I I I could tell a number of other stories, but that's part of what's fun about this job, is seeing that happen in in real time. >> Indeed, thank you. So, we've talked we've mentioned AI, you know, a dozen times already and I think um we all know society at large is at an an inflection point with AI. Uh but recent media reports say that even tech leaders are seeking employees with skills cultivated through the study of the arts and humanities. Um so, first question for both of you is you know, what role can the humanities play in a world that's challenged by wars, climate change, troubled economies, and other threats? >> This has uh been something like confidence that I have been thinking about for a number of years now. Um I used to call it how to save humanities. Um I think AI may save humanities. There's a great uh column by uh David Brooks that was in the Atlantic maybe a week or two ago about the rise of humanities education across the the country. Um we've listened to the co-founder of Anthropic talk about um the importance of humanities education now more so than ever. Um I believe it's true. I believe the one thing uh and I hope it's not just Pollyannaism, but I think the the thing that that AI can't do um you know, I'm not sure I would say it as eloquently as the Pope did in his encyclical, but uh the thing that AI cannot do is replace that thing that is most human about us. That thing that is that that that how we understand human interaction and and and and the and human emotion and those things that make us human. Grappling with those ideas about meaning, life, relationships, et cetera that are um most uh most importantly generated in the study, I think, of arts and the humanities. So, I I think we're on the cusp of a um resurgence of arts and humanities education and focus because it's clear that maybe unlike coding, it's not going to be replaced in the next iteration of chat GTP. >> Interesting. And I think we're seeing it in the data, actually. So, demand for humanities majors is up. Music and some of the others is the fastest growing majors on campus. So, this campus has really bucked the national trend by being very strong on the humanities demand. In fact, Sarah Guyer was asked this question at a recent board meeting. She's our dean of of the humanities. And she she gave a a strong answer and a good answer. It's cuz you know, we've offered and it's great and it's great curriculum. I I I would go one step further. I think the the fact that we have it, of course, is a necessary condition. But, I think the more sufficient condition here is because we're all struggling philosophically. Because a lot of our students, it's like, "Give me an anchor, please. I need an anchor in the good, the true, and the beautiful. I need to see something that right now, right?" So, I think that's sort of the the defensive answer of why people are feeling a very deep need to connect with things that matter, that give them meaning in life. The more offensive part of it is, you know, when when people talk about, like I mentioned, robot proof. I mentioned that article, right? It's sort of like coachability, empathy, curiosity. These are some of the things that are going to make you robot proof or AI proof or resilient, right? And some of these are the kinds of things that our humanists are the very best at delivering across our curriculum. So, um I think there's both defense and offense reasons why that this is a this is a good good period for our humanists. >> That's hopeful. I'm I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. And I I a second question for both of you is, so what what can we as university leaders, as alumni and donors, what can we do to protect study and research in the arts and humanities? Or maybe to help it flourish at this time of growth. >> Well, many of the people in this room have been helping us do that, right? And so, thank you for that. And And part of it would goes back to something JB said said earlier. I mean, if there's a passion spot there, if there's something that's like, this is the the the piece of it that's so important to me, let's talk and create something creative and and and help deliver it. So, ultimately, it it's it's that conversation. But, I think one of the things, for example, as we go into our strategic planning process, and we're in it right now, right? So, you'll you'll get copies of that soon or drafts of it. It's not finished yet. And and faculty and staff and deans and many people have have sent us a lot of ideas. But, if we if Well, I'll give you a concrete example. If somebody said, "Berkeley's going to produce the strongest generation it has ever produced of critical thinkers." No university has said that. Our humanities are fundamental and our social sciences, you know, more broadly. But, but I think the core of what we think of as critical thinking, of getting better at asking better questions, is going to be in our humanities. Now, your interest in the humanities might be very different than what I just said. But, it's sort of like, find your spot, and let's talk about what we could do because this really is important that we keep this strong. And Berkeley's comprehensive academic excellence obviously extends straight through the humanities. And having Berkeley add up to even more than the sum of its parts, its humanities, its social sciences, its sciences, that we need to bring that together in new ways because those are the deeply differentiating things that Berkeley he to bring to the table. >> Thank you. Jay, would you like to add anything? You have nothing to add. Thank you. So, last question before we take some audience questions. If you had a magic wand that you could wave, what are one or two things you might change about UC UC Berkeley? >> What are one or two things I might change about UC Berkeley? >> Or UC or the UC >> Um well, uh I could uh riff on on Clark Kerr and talk about parking for the faculty. >> [laughter] >> I already took that one. >> Uh football for the alums and I won't go to the third one. Um Uh you know, it it's hard for me, you know, I could say the obvious things about the sort of interference with what we're doing and the and the pressures from the outside. That that really isn't what your question's getting at. When I think about um Richard referred to the the the the the master plan, its enduring um uh lessons. I think about the the master plan for the 21st century and uh by that I don't mean a document that Clark Kerr and two other guys in a car on a ride thought of and and I mean because that isn't the way the world works anymore. W- what I mean is um in 2026, what going forward, what do we need more of from the University of California? And I think about the difference that when the master plan was written, there were 14 million people in the state and there are 40 million uh today. The college going rate was a fraction of what it is today. There's much more demand on what we have and there are 230,000 lucky Californians who are undergraduates at one of our nine undergraduate institutions. What What I think we need to think about is how do we extend the tremendous quality and opportunity of the University of California what it offers to more people. In especially more Californians, but more people beyond that. How do we think about um education for a lifetime for our graduates who are going to need it? How do we think of education that is through AI and many other tools that we have more available for people across the state in ways that they can take advantage of it. I think that's the real challenge we have is not thinking traditionally. There're still going to be those wonderfully fortunate people who have the opportunity to be undergraduates at our institutions, and that's an experience like none other. But I think we need to be thinking about how do we extend this beyond uh the four walls of the of our campuses and make sure that we're taking full advantage of the richness of the resources that we have that can help better society and provide opportunity beyond our matriculating students. >> Thank you. Magic wand. >> Thank thank magic wand. Well, you um Thomas Friedman you wrote a column recently where he talked about mostly he was talking about AI, but he said this is the big one. It's not just another technology. For those of us that live in earthquake count country that that means something. But but the notion that this isn't anything that's precedented. It really isn't. Uh I Many of you know Randy Katz. He served as our vice chancellor for research for many years among many other roles on campus. He interviewed some 20 25 university presidents about setting strategy for universities, and he put a quote right up front. It's a wonderful paper, but the first quote that he put up front was from Charles Darwin. And the Darwin quote was this, "It's not the strongest that survive or the most intelligent. It's the most responsive to change." I think Berkeley needs to increase pace of its adaptability, right? We're a big organization, lots of right what we we change, but we need to change faster, and we need to change faster soon. Um one of the things that I've talked a lot about is uh no more no because. No more no because. We are in a yes if world now. Put your if conditions on the table. We got to take them seriously. Right? We will be clear-eyed about your if conditions, and then we'll bring our creativity to mitigate or eliminate them, but the default is yes now, not no. And so those are the kinds of things that's just one tactical element of how we increase what sometimes people call the clock speed, right? The speed at which the pace at which we adapt. But Berkeley needs to move faster, right? That would be it. >> Thank you. So we have an audience question. This is a Berkeley audience. It is not a softball question. >> [laughter] >> Um the recent faculty statement about the SAT and academic academic preparedness for college is concerning. Is this a problem at Berkeley? Is standardized testing coming back? >> Yeah, I I can start. Um you know, the regents make that decision. I don't and you know, you are a regent, but but there are other regents. Um but I thought I don't want to duck the question. I think here's one of the things is math preparedness an issue right now? No question about it. No question about it. Are are they ready to go into the calculus the way you were when you got here or I was? Hope I was. Um, In in some, of course, but it's like a U shape. I mean there's a tail of 10 or 20 or 30% where it's sort of like not quite ready, right? And maybe some a lot not ready. Um, so we we need to increase math preparedness, right? If you can't take math 1A or math 16A if you were those were the numbers when you were here, right? You may have to take something like subject A in in the reading and writing uh equivalent back when you were a student and that may make it impossible for you to take the physics and the chemistry and other things and it may mean a fifth year, right? So these things set you back if you're not ready to start those curricula, especially in STEM fields. Now, it just so happens that the quantitative part of the of the SAT isn't all that good a signal of whether you're ready for precalculus. It's covering a lot of other stuff. So the idea that if we just had that number, we could either force you to take a prep course or at least we would know whether maybe you should have even be at Berkeley or not and it's actually not designed to answer that question. Now, does it give you some signal that will help us to identify who really needs kind of pre-work and who doesn't? Yes, it will. And then the question is does it give us enough signal? Um, I think one of the things at least in my view, if you said great, right? If you can go through a whole high school or college curriculum if you are allowed to using a chatbot and you could learn nothing and get straight A's. That's been true for a couple years now. So if you say what's the signal in grades, that's that that signal value is going down in in a chatbot world, okay? So now we have to ask ourselves, I think at least for me in my view, this is I I can't Now I'm speaking personally, not for the university, but I think having SAT information to at least have a diagnostic to route people into pre-preparation before they start at Berkeley would be extremely valuable, even if you're not going to use it for admissions. And that feels like a smart direction to go. So I'll stop there. >> So I agree with everything Rich said, and in fact, at the University of Texas, we brought back the SAT for placement purposes, largely for people in STEM disciplines, but not for for admissions. And I think our folks thought it was was useful there. I think And by the way, I say that we are going to take this up at the next Regents meeting. We are going to come back and we're going to look at what the case that's been made. We're going to look at the report that the faculty did in 2020 on this very subject. We're going to look at our history over the past few years, which by the way, retention rates are higher now than they were five or six years ago when we when we used the SAT six years ago for admissions. I think the the real question, and Rich hit on this in his first comments, is about preparation for college, and in in this area, in math in particular. This is a broader issue than whether we need a test that will help us filter out Californians. We need to think about the preparation that our state is offering. Half the high schools in California now do not offer a full complement of math courses that would make them prepare them at the highest level to be a STEM major at Berkeley. And that's a serious systemic state issue. And that needs to be addressed. And we're we cannot I'm not pointing the finger at at K-12 or anyone else, but I'm just saying what everybody would understand. We can't just buy a test at at UC address all of these challenges. Uh and it's and we can't flip a switch on the SAT and say, well, if we just do that, then everything's going to be fine again. There are a series of challenges that we need to deal with and that's part of what the Faculty Senate is doing right now and going to have a report for us. It's part of what our board will talk about this summer when we meet. >> Thank you. So, this is our last question. This is a really good audience. So, we're ending with athletics. >> [sighs] >> I wonder whether the recent changes in college athletics signal the end of an era or the beginning of a new one. How do you envision the future of college athletics and how can you see in Cal lead in this environment? Should they? >> I'll tell you that the you know, one of the great advantages of being the head of a system uh as opposed to a campus is that uh I'm able to go watch when UCLA wins the women's basketball. I'm able to watch when Cal wins rugby uh the national championship. But I don't have to grapple with all these questions uh in uh raising uh the funding for it and uh meeting with the NCAA and the conference. So, I'm going to delegate this to Rich. >> Ouch. >> So, look, most all of us rue the loss of amateur sports as we knew it, at least in in football and increasingly in basketball. I mean, I think that's safe to say. So, um that's certainly my case. So, I I to answer your question, it is the ending of an era and and the beginning of another. You don't have to like that. Um you can completely decouple from it, right? You could say is there going to be sort of a parallel Ivy League that will get created where people say we're not going to play and invest at that level. We're going to do something else. Um that that's one one scenario. Um all of that said, um Cal has, you know, a remarkable tradition of excellence across an awful lot of sports. And part of what happens here is that if you can uh not to get into the the world of media contracts, but um if you are a sort of top 25 or top 30 team in football, uh that more than pays for itself. So, basically, the world we were in was a world going back 3 4 5 years ago where football cross-subsidized the other sports that we have at Berkeley. We have 30 varsity sports. Football cross-subsidized to the them to the tune of 20 million or so dollars. Um once this House settlement, I won't go into that, but once the House settlement happened, uh beyond scholarships, which we could always pay, we could start paying athletes uh actual income. How much per year? About 20 million. That to to rough approximation, that ate up the whole 20 million dollars this current year. This current year is the first year that this was applied. So, it's sort of like that cross subsidy just disappeared. Now, what are you going to do? Okay. So, I what we are doing right now is investing at least for a few years to see whether or not we we've got arguably the best quarterback in the country. You don't have to agree with what we've chosen to do, but we have arguably the best quarterback in the country. We have arguably, you know, Ron Rivera and so forth. And we're going to see whether or not we can play at that level. Um if we can't pull this off, then, you know what? A 30-sport portfolio is going to get hard to sustain. I'm just being honest with you, right? Given the way things are going. We don't have a cross subsidy from football anymore. So, I know that's kind of a harsh way of talking about it, but I actually think we're on a trajectory where we are going to get a a media contract in in some number of years that will uh it's very non-linear that will allow us to keep a thriving excellent 30-sport portfolio and be competitive in football at better than the median of whatever conference we're in. But, we shall see. >> Thank you. And on that, um I want to >> Let me just say one thing just before you you close it out. And as as as the newest Californian in the room, probably, um I I just want to say uh to all of you cuz I don't want you to be like those 50% of the people in the poll that thought that UC's like every other state university. What I have been incredibly impressed by the level of talent, the level of um commitment, and uh loyalty to the University of California. As I go across the 10 campus university, it's just it's been an extraordinary experience. I wish every Californian could have it, could see what I see. We have a a cadre now of of great leadership across the University of California, and I think Rich is exhibit A, but we have chancellors at every one of our campuses right now that I think are doing a terrific job. But it's mainly the strength of this place, the faculty across the university and the staff, and the kind of students that that attracts. But if if you take away anything I said today other than the you know, the Jamie role, um just take this as an as a newcomer who has spent almost 40 years in higher education in every part of the state. There's something very special here. There We are not living on our past. This today is the greatest university in the world, and we're so fortunate to be a part of it. I feel so fortunate to be a part of it, and I thank you for what you do in supporting the University of California, Berkeley. Uh it makes an enormous difference. >> Thank you for that, JB. Thank you for that. And we we appreciate that you came to the University of California. If I could just offer very one quick comment because it actually relates to a couple of things that you said. Uh Jay Hartzell, who was the UT Austin was the president, uh he was the leader of an accreditation review committee that came to Berkeley in my first year here. And most of those are kind of pro forma exercises, but they spend a few days talking to our faculty and staff and others. And Jay and at the end of that, I get a one-on-one with Jay. I knew Jay from before, and he came into my office to talk more substantively than just, you know, Berkeley was going to get accredited. But the first thing out of his mouth, he said, "Rich, you know what we saw in your people? A culture of devotion. Phew. It's it's almost religious the way people feel about this place, right? They They are putting their Many of them their whole lives into this place. And when they think about the measure of a life type questions like at the end of my life, how am I going to feel about having spent my life this way, they feel good about that. That goes a long way. >> Thank you both. Can we give these guys a round of applause, please? Thank you. >> [applause] >> And to all of you in the audience, I want to also say thank you to you. Berkeley would not be what it is today without your support and commitment. We are very grateful and again, thank you. So, JB, I know that duty calls and you're not able to join us for the reception, but thank you so much for your time here with us. And for everyone in the audience, Rich and I will be delighted to join you in the Alumni House and with that, Fiat Lux and Go Bears.