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'Faculty need to participate directly in remaking the State of California,' says Academic Senate chair

By Public Affairs

A law professor specializing in ethics, criminal law, and legal and political philosophy, Chris Kutz has served since August 2009 as chair, and before that as vice chair, of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate. Faced with an alarming budget crisis, the Senate has become a hub for faculty deliberation and activity on an array of important decisions — “some of them reversible,” he says, “some not” — concerning the character and structure of the campus and the UC system. He sat down recently with NewsCenter writer Cathy Cockrell to share his perspective on the challenges of shared governance in a time of unprecedented change.

Q. What was your initial agenda as Senate chair? Have you had to switch course as the campus’s financial situation has deteriorated?

Chris Kutz

Academic Senate Chair Chris Kutz teaches in the Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program and directs the Kadish Center for Law, Morality & Public Affairs, both at Berkeley Law. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Berkeley and his law degree at Yale. (Peg Skorpinski photo)

A. When I agreed to take the job two years ago, I thought we would be dealing with very different issues. I had been co-chair of a task force on large-scale industrial partnerships like the BP/Energy Biosciences Institute. I thought the Senate would be thinking a lot about private funding in relation to our public mission. We have , in fact, but in a very different context. Not “How do we maintain our autonomy in a shower of private dollars?” but “How do we get some of those dollars to replace the public ones that are disappearing?”

I was also eager to try to make the Senate a more efficient governing body, by taking greater care in how we ask for and use the extraordinarily limited resource of faculty time and deliberation. We have made a little headway here, in trimming back on standing committees so that we can ask more faculty to serve on specific “task forces,” for example those dealing with athletics or the budget.

It became clear last year that the funding of intercollegiate athletics was going to be a big issue. Athletics would have been an issue even without the budget crisis, but the huge budget shortfall has given it steam, even though it accounts  for a fairly small fraction of the campus’s budget. Athletics — while it’s significant and needs attention — has more symbolic than financial impact.

One thing I was not ready for is the degree of anger in the community. You cut people’s salaries, hike their tuitions, or threaten layoffs, and they get angry.

Q. How has that anger manifested?

A. It has manifested, for example, in the Nov. 5 faculty meeting about the funding of athletics, in which tempers were very short. I’m greatly concerned about the poor state of our labor relations, which I think is hindering UC politically. We need to mount a unified front politically in support of higher education — represented workers, non-represented workers, and faculty, together. We have a common institution and a common future.

Q. What is the Academic Senate’s central challenge at this time, in your view?

A. We’re in a period in which large decisions are being made, decisions with potentially quite far-reaching consequences — some of them reversible, some not. These include the character of our undergraduate population; the nature of the fee hikes and their effects on the socioeconomic diversity of our students; the structure of the university system and the autonomy of the different campus programs.  While I don’t think the latter will affect Berkeley as much as some campuses, the Senate has discussed questions of cross-program consolidation.

Q. So if you want to take x subject, go to y campus?

A. Exactly. Similar to what was done with the libraries: “The system holds a book; you can get it from UCLA if you want it.” Those kinds of decisions are happening fast. I think the UC Commission on the Future will recommend some pretty far-reaching changes. The Senate has to be in a position to respond constructively — oppositionally if necessary. Substantively, we need to help create a political environment in which higher education is funded by the state. That requires making our value known, but it also means participating directly in remaking the State of California — political reform, efforts to give us a tax base to support investments the state needs.

The UC Commission on the Future will recommend some pretty far-reaching changes. The Senate has to be in a position to respond constructively — oppositionally if necessary.