I’m Having a Flashback
And don’t get me started about People’s Park.
Did you see that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is investigating UC Berkeley for anti-Semitism? And have I said enough times that I’m soooo glad I don’t work at UC Berkeley anymore?
During my time there my office was seldom directly affected by government investigations. I had to produce documents and endure a couple of telephone interviews when the California Legislature had the State Auditor investigate UC’s response to sexual harassment complaints, but that was pretty much it. My office was often indirectly affected, however; at least one campus lawyer would be stuck handling an investigation almost exclusively, which made it harder for me to get one when, for instance, I needed help explaining to a professor why he couldn’t build tiny houses on remote campus property and invite students to live in them.
I’m retired and haven’t talked to anyone involved in the new investigation, but based on past experience I think it’s safe to say the administration is getting pulled — hard — in three directions. First, by the Jewish students, staff, and faculty who feel the campus has become a sufficiently hostile environment to justify a lawsuit from two off-campus organizations. Second, by the students, staff, and faculty so outraged by what’s happening in Gaza they feel justified blocking Sather Gate, a principal route through campus, and forcibly preventing a conservative Israeli from speaking. And third, by politicians pandering to their bases.
So nice to just watch it all on TV.
There’s a false assumption underlying the arguments of all three constituencies: that the administration has control over everything that happens on campus. UC Berkeley is a community of more than 50,000 people, most of whom aren’t fully mature (and I’m not referring only to undergraduates). As a public institution, the university is subject to government restrictions on the regulation of speech, assembly, and protest. As an educational institution, the university is committed to academic freedom and to treating student organizations as independent, unincorporated associations. So by design, the university is largely an anything-goes kind of place. When it works, which is most of the time, it’s beautiful. When it doesn’t work, there’s not much administration can do unless someone can prove an offender violated law or campus policy (and campus policy cannot contradict the law).
When I was risk manager, the campus was sued by a Jewish student claiming the university failed to prevent a Palestinian student from injuring her. (He rammed her with a shopping cart.) There was more to her argument, of course, but it boiled down to an expectation that the university act in loco parentis — which no campus has been legally allowed to do since 1961. The case was a slam dunk for the defense, and if I recall correctly the student and her lawyers had the good sense to withdraw it. (They were not precluded from pursuing criminal charges for assault.)
If anything, today the feeling is even stronger — on all sides — that university administration has an obligation to act as protective parent. What do you do when two of your kids fight, accuse each other of starting it, and you didn’t see what happened? As a parent, you separate them until they cool off. As a university administrator, you have no authority to enforce anything like that. So you formulate a set of rules for conduct and hope all parties honor it — and when a puffed-up, attention-seeking stranger sees your kids acting out and accuses you of being a bad parent, you figure out how to explain yourself more convincingly than Claudine Gay or Liz Magill.
