diversityofficermagazine.com

Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, University of California, Berkeley

“IF YOU DIDN’T SIT BACK PASSIVELY, BUT ACTED POSITIVELY IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE CHANGE” —Chancellor Robert J. Birgineau

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is one of the two most intriguing modern higher education leaders. One reason is that this outspoken and action-oriented proponent of equality became chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley some time after California passed the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209. Shortly before it passed by majority vote, Chancellor Birgeneau made a strong public statement about the potential harm of passing Proposition 8, the anti-same gender marriage proposition. Diversity Officer Magazine has conducted numerous interviews with leaders that profess a commitment to equity and inclusion. In our opinion, few are committed enough to stand up to issues that create barriers to equality. Chancellor Birgeneau is a model leader in this respect.

DO Magazine: Can you describe what diversity leadership means to you, Chancellor Birgeneau?
Chancellor Birgeneau: Let me preface my response by saying that I went into professional life first as a researcher, then as an academic and finally as an academic leader. I don’t think that I viewed myself as being a diversity leader so it is not something that I set up as a professional goal for myself. I would say that I had a couple of experiences when I was young that had a huge impact on my approach to life.

I came from Toronto to Yale as a graduate student at age 21 and started doing graduate work in physics. I found that just doing physics was not completely fulfilling, so a friend of mine from East Texas with similar views said “Why don’t we got out and go to different boys clubs and see if we can find one where we can play a helpful role?”

Then we went around in New Haven, and because I had never experienced anything like this before literally in my life, we ended up going to this place called Dixwell Community Center, which was about five blocks away from the campus. I was amazed to discover that at the center there were literally no white people. I was literally shocked by this. And in the projects near the center—there was an incredible level of poverty. After looking around I said to myself and my friend from East Texas, let’s volunteer here because there is something fundamentally wrong which we need to help right. Juxtaposed to this great university filled with all of these privileged, overwhelmingly white people there is all of this poverty , and the two worlds are completely disconnected. Someone should try to bridge these two extremes of society.

Keep in mind that I was only 21 years old at the time. So, my friend John Norvell and I became leaders for a group of African American teenage boys from the projects.  I am not sure how much good we did for them, but they did a lot of good for us in that it was really an eye-opening experience in terms of understanding how different cultures operate.  We also came to appreciate very quickly the tremendous disadvantages these young men operated under compared to the privileged lives of the students at Yale just five city blocks away.

I did have one significant success. There was a person in the group, a 14 year old named John Williamson, who we helped direct toward college, an aspiration he would never have had otherwise. He not only went to college, but he ended up playing basketball in both the ABA and the NBA; indeed I believe that he ended up being a star in the NBA. I take some credit for partnering with this young man at a critical stage in his life and showing him the life he could possibly lead.

After this, I spent some time in South Carolina and Georgia teaching at an HCBU and doing civil rights work.  I will not go into detail about my experiences in the South in this interview because it would take too long; however it was quite shocking to see the disparities between Whites and Blacks and how badly Black people were treated in the old South.

So, these experiences among others helped educate me and increased my sensitivity to injustices in society.   I gave you an example of at least one person whose life  I really did impact in a very positive way. In fact, if you didn’t sit back passively, but acted positively it is possible to make change.

If I now go from there to the present situation, what diversity leadership means to me is working continuously towards a just society in which everyone is treated fairly.  Most importantly, one must make diversity and social justice part of everything that one does; first and foremost, one must build equity and inclusion into the very culture of the institution.  The one thing one must not do is say: “Well,   there is an equity office over there so I do not have to worry about diversity anymore”.

Leadership in diversity requires that one ensures that diversity is a fundamental value of the institution. Some challenge me on that. I will give you an example. Someone said, “Yes, but suppose you are meeting with your head of capital projects. How does he or she build diversity into capital planning?” The answer is straightforward. It turns out that when we are proposing building projects that are, for example, at the 100 million dollar level, there are very few minority contractors in the Bay area who can bid for contract at that level. However, if you break the job down into its constituent parts so that you have a 5 million dollar job here and a 10 million dollar job there, suddenly you open up the field completely;  then minority contractors can compete fairly for the part of  the project where they have the requisite skills and scope.

I often give capital construction as an example because the answer is not obvious; basically if you have equity and inclusion as part of your fundamental values it means that it will pervade everything you do. Then, even your business model for capital construction is conceived in such a way that there will be equal access for all members of the community.

DO Magazine: What do you see as your major responsibilities as a university leader in promoting equity and inclusion?
Chancellor Birgeneau: I use the phrase: “equity and inclusion” deliberately rather than “diversity” because of an insightful comment made to me by a Berkeley Professor of African American Studies, Charles Henry.  Charles is famous for, among other things, discovering the “Bradley Effect”.   In my first meeting with him he suggested that I should stop using the word diversity. He said because a university hires an upper class physicist from Argentina it says: “Well, we’ve taken care of that. Now we are diverse.” Charles said: “That’s not what diversity is about in America.” I thought “Now that is a person who really gets it. I’m going to listen to him.” So I deliberately changed the language to equity and inclusion.

However, it is not enough to treat people equitably. People have to be included. By that I mean that every single person must feel that Berkeley belongs to them as much as it belongs to anybody else. So, it’s not just that we are going to let Native Americans or Blacks or Chicanos attend Berkeley because it is a public institution, but rather each of these absolutely owns Berkeley  as much as any other group . It is fundamental to our values that every members of our community must feel that she or he fully owns the institution.  That is what we mean by inclusion.

It is rather difficult if not impossible to find a leader in America who doesn’t say that she or he is fully committed to equity and inclusion. Indeed, in contemporary America you would probably never be appointed to an important leadership position if you didn’t say that. The responsibility of a person like me as a leader of an institution is to ensure that this isn’t just one more thing on the list of “must do’s” that one ticks off.  Rather it must be fundamental one’s belief system and culture. I want people to understand that I am serious about equity and inclusion, and that I am not doing it to be politically correct. I am doing it because first of all it is a matter of fairness and social justice and secondly it critical to fulfilling the university’s mission; only the will the university function at the highest level that it can.

Diversity literally must start at the top. If people in the trenches feel that the leader is advocating for equity solely out of political correctness, they will see through that immediately. True leadership requires sincerity and a genuine commitment to having a fair and inclusive university.

DO Magazine: What special leadership knowledge and skills do you feel are needed to do this part of your work?
Chancellor Birgeneau: I think that one of the most important characteristics is a willingness to listen to people. I just came from a Town Hall meeting with the staff up at the Haas Business School. That’s why I have a sandwich on my desk.  Just listening to what people have to say and creating an environment in which they feel that they can speak openly and honestly is critical; also, the staff need to know that you will respond to them in an honest way. So, the first characteristic is a willingness to listen.

Second, I think that, for better or for worse, it helps if you have real life experiences that emulate those of the segments of the community that often feel alienated. This could come from working with kids living in the projects or perhaps you happened to grow up poor and disadvantaged yourself. Clearly, it helps, but it isn’t absolutely necessary to come from a difficult background yourself. However, in the end you cannot provide diversity leadership if exclusion is something that is entirely foreign to your own life experience.  You need to understand the challenges that marginalized people face on a day by day basis.

DO Magazine: Who are some of the people you look up to in this work?
Chancellor Birgeneau: You may think that I am pandering to your readers here, but one of my heroes is Martin Luther King. When I was young, he was a real inspiration to me. However, let me tell you an interesting aspect about Dr. King and his politics where I was completely wrong. As I mentioned earlier, during the time period when I was at Yale in New Haven, I also went down to South Carolina to teach physics at Benedict College.  The environment in South Carolina at that time was very challenging. In fact, one of the teachers visiting from the North who preceded me actually was killed by a local White person who hated these outsiders coming in to his state; thus, being there required a genuine commitment. This was not the same as standing on Sproull Plaza protesting and going back to one’s dorm room at night.

Of course, I was very upset about the situation for African Americans in the United States.  However, just at that time Dr. King shifted his focus from civil rights to the war in Vietnam.  I was very upset by this change in emphasis, feeling that this was almost a betrayal of his own courageous work on behalf of civil rights. It took me a couple of years to realize that MLK was completely right in understanding the real significance of what was happening in Vietnam; he saw clearly that the same racism that pervaded America also underlay the war in Vietnam and that you could not end one without ending the other.  I realized later that this was illustrative of Dr. King’s brilliance and it showed how deeply insightful he was into American society.

There are many other people who I think are really doing important work. Fast-forwarding to the present, there’s a woman in New York, Debbie Bial, who created the Posse concept “posse” concept for kids from inner city neighborhoods going to elite, predominantly white colleges and universities.  Her basic idea is that you take a large group of kids directly     out of high school and form a “posse”. The college admits the entire group and these kids then form a community whose members provide each other support, thus helping them to survive in an otherwise alien environment. It is a very creative idea that turns out to be remarkably successful. Our admissions system here in California and the laws we operate under make it difficult to implement Debbie’s idea here.  We are, nevertheless, making an attempt at it with the Posse Foundation’s help.  I consider it remarkable that Debbie Bial started from zero with this idea and has turned it into a national program.

I admire the work Senator Durbin of Illinois and all of the effort he has put into regularizing the situation of undocumented students. The treatment of undocumented young people is one of the things right now that I am most offended by.  It contradicts everything that the United States stands for. America’s greatness rests on its immigrant population, their children, their grandchildren etc. whether they are from Mexico or Ireland or Zimbabwe.

DO Magazine: Anyone else?
Chancellor Birgeneau: There are so many people that I have difficulty picking out any single one of them.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not mention President-elect Barack Obama.  Early on, I was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the U.S.  However, about a year and a half ago my daughters gave me a copy of “Dreams from my Father” for Father’s Day.  I was simply astounded when I read this book.  I felt that Senator Obama showed that he understood the complexities of multiculturalism better than any politician I had ever encountered.  In my view, America’s greatest challenge is not the economy or terrorism or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The real challenge for the U.S. is to prove that not only can we make a multicultural society function but that we can build on our multiculturalism to make a truly great society that is much more than the sum of its parts. President Obama is the first politician I have met who understands these issues well enough that he has a real chance at making genuine, lasting progress.  Accordingly, the minute that I set down “Dreams from my Father” I became a loyal Obama supporter.  I believe that America will be a stronger, more humane and more just society as a result of his presidency.

DO Magazine: What special talent or gift do you think makes you successful?
Chancellor Birgeneau: First of all, I am not ready to agree that I am successful yet! But, I will tell you in five years from now if we have been successful here at Berkeley. I think I have been successful in energizing people and convincing the university community that we are serious about equity and inclusion and that we need to make progress here. Now it is my responsibility to make sure that these are more than just words.  Check in later.

I received a lot attention when I first arrived here at Berkeley, when, against a lot of people’s advice, I published an Op-Ed in the LA Times about Proposition 209. I was motivated to write this article for a very simple reason; I had only been here at Berkeley for a few days when I learned that the in-coming freshmen engineering class that arrived at the same time I did had 800 students in it and not a single one was African American. I found this simply shocking. In a state that has close to three million African American people, it was impossible to believe that not one was qualified to study Engineering at Berkeley. So, clearly, there was something fundamentally wrong. It was clear to me that one of the most important causes of this dysfunction was Proposition 209.

Prop 209 has two parts. On the one hand, it says that we are not allowed to discriminate. On the other hand, it says that we are not allowed to show racial preferences. However, no one can deny that race is a factor in all aspects of contemporary American society and that people have different life experiences depending on what their race is. To deny that is discriminatory. But Prop 209 says that we are not allowed to take race into account in any decision regarding admissions or employment.  Clearly, Prop 209 is inherently self contradictory because it does not allow us to take into account the reality of race and the impact of race on a person’s life experiences; that means that we are discriminating against them.  This law must be repealed by the people of California.

DO Magazine: We really appreciate your taking time out of your busy schedule for this interview, Dr. Birgeneau.
Chancellor Birgeneau: Thank you. I have enjoyed it.