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UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl stunned the city and university community Wednesday when he announced that he will step down after the end of this school year. 

“It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my life to serve as chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley,” Berdahl said. “I believe we have accomplished a great deal and that we have taken the steps necessary to ensure that this campus is fully prepared to continue its great tradition of excellence well into the future.” 

Berdahl assumed the chancellorship during a tumultuous political time and his tenure has been marked by various campus and off-campus crises. He arrived at UC Berkeley in 1998—the year UC implemented Proposition 209 which ended affirmative action—and was immediately thrust into the debate on campus diversity. 

“The Chancellor has been committed to dialog on campus and has made strides for diversity,” said Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel. When the Academic Senate was drafting the university’s long range academic plan, Quindel said Berdahl demanded that the document address diversity issues.  

In 1999 a plan to slash the university’s ethnic studies programs led to student strikes, with many demonstrators blaming Berdahl for the cuts. Although the ethnic studies programs were spared, his reputation with diversity advocates remains tarnished. 

Yvette Felarca, an ASUC Senator and member of affirmative action advocacy group By Any Means Necessary, blamed Berdahl for not increasing enrollment of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans during his tenure. “I’m happy to see Berdahl go,” she said. “I’d like to see the university appoint a new chancellor who really fights to diversify the UC Berkeley campus.” 

Around the time of the ethnic studies strike, Berdahl faced another crisis—a student housing shortage that landed some incoming students at local hotels. In 1999 and 2001, student activists camped outside his house demanding more housing. 

“He was a miserable failure on the housing crisis,” said Paul Hogarth, a Berkeley Rent Board commissioner and former UC Berkeley student. Hogarth said Berdahl stepped into a tough situation with the university already behind on building dorms, but never made housing a priority. 

Berdahl did, however, oversee one completed and two ongoing dormitory projects that will create space for 800 students within the next couple of years. 

The chancellor maintained frosty relations with the city, feuding with Councilmember Kris Worthington, and drawing the ire of southside neighborhood activists who feared the a university building boom would damage their quality of life. 

“He never once said hello, visited me, or said a nice word to me,” said Worthington, who was among those camping outside his house during the housing crisis. 

But former Mayor Shirley Dean said Berdahl understood the city’s positions and did the best he could under tough circumstances. 

“He was the first Chancellor to visit Council,” Dean said. “I believe he was sympathetic to our concerns about traffic and [population] density, but he was told by the Regents he had to take 4,000 more students.” 

Dean credited Berdahl with implementing a seismic retrofit project on university buildings that she said would safeguard students and the local economy in the case of an earthquake. 

Since the project’s inception in 1997, the university has spent $479 to retrofit buildings with an estimated $400 million still in the works. 

Berdahl invested heavily in the campus’ buildings and libraries. In June 2003 the Association of University Libraries ranked UC Berkeley as the top public university library in North America and number three overall behind Harvard and Yale. 

“I have believed since my first days on the campus that the most pressing need Berkeley faced was to restore the facilities necessary to attract and retain the best faculty and students,” Berdahl said.  

Students praised him for mostly staying out of their business while giving them a greater voice in the university. “He put students on some committees and gave student leadership a say in some university processes,” Quindel said. 

Students will get to participate in the nationwide search for a replacement that commence next week. Regents, faculty, alumni and staff will also serve on the advisory committee. 

Outgoing UC President Richard Atkinson said Berdahl’s successor will have a tough act to follow. “Bob Berdahl has been an outstanding leader for the Berkeley campus and will be greatly missed,” he said.