On May 14, John A. Pérez, Chair of the Board of Regents, and Michael V. Drake, UC President, made a joint statement, congratulating Governor Newsom for “proposing the largest state investment in UC’s history.” The statement waxed enthusiastic about the transformative impact of the revised budget.  Reading between the lines and examining the often–elusive details, Chris Newfield comes to a different conclusion. When you separate out one-year from multi-year funding, and ongoing from one-time funding, the revised budget loses its shine. Still, it is better than the cuts to which UC has become accustomed.

This news came after the BFA Board met on May 4th – the last Board meeting of the year.  We discussed two issues that were broached in the Academic Senate meeting of the previous week: the creation of a College of Data Sciences and Berkeley’s relationship to the dissolution of Mills College.  But precious little information was available on either project.  Paul Fine, outgoing chair of CAPRA (the Senate Committee on Academic Planning and Resource Allocation), expressed his frustration with the limited role of Senate leadership in campus decision-making. We published his final report in BFA’s newsletter last week.  In addition:

  • Eric Hays reported on developments in Sacramento
  • Anne-Lise François reported on “Cops off Campus” and plans for Abolition May as well as the regressive moves by UCOP for the reform of campus police.
  • Leslie Salzinger reported on paid family leave and campus childcare

Many of these issues are explored further in the Annual Report which can be found here.

We also discussed principles for intervening in matters not directly related to the basic concerns of BFA and, finally, we outlined plans for next year. Due to COVID we did not have any public meetings this past year. So, in the Fall, we need to have a members’ meeting to discuss (a) how to strengthen the alliance between Senate faculty and campus lecturers, particularly as lecturers consider a strike; (b) whether lecturers should be given the chance to be members of BFA; and (c) proposals for reform of campus police. We also decided to suspend the newsletter and replace it with novel ways of engaging the membership–through podcasts, as incoming co-Chair Shard Chari proposed, as well as with occasional blogs and a regularly updated website.

Over the past year Greg Levine, Wendy Brown and Shannon Steen left the Board – all three have been stalwart members since the BFA’s revival in 2009. At the same time, we welcomed three new Board members: Alastair Iles (ESPM), Cori Hayden (Anthropology), and Poulomi Saha (English). Sharad Chari (Geography) will be the next co-chair together with Leslie Salzinger (Gender and Women’s Studies) in the Fall and James Vernon (History) in the Spring.

Since this is the last newsletter, we would like to thank Deborah Rosenberg for her consistent and patient publishing of our weekly newsletter, That Was the Week That Was. She was always ready to do whatever was necessary, no matter what the time of day. In every issue, for nearly five years, Tyler Leeds provided readers with a concise summary of media reporting on the university, and Berkeley in particular. Thanks to Deborah and Tyler for their devotion to TW3!

We wish you a summer of recovery from an exhausting year.

Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan for the Board of the Berkeley Faculty Association.