Robert Birgeneau

President Joe Biden rejected a resolution Feb. 16 by Congressional Democrats, which would have forgiven up to $50,000 in debt per student. In the days that followed, the UC Berkeley community expressed mixed responses to his decision.

Almost a year after stepping down as chancellor of UC Berkeley, Nicholas Dirks will be joining Whittle School & Studios in July as chancellor and vice chairman of the school system's Global Education Design Committee.

Former chancellor Nicholas Dirks will be paid $434,000 by UC Berkeley through the next academic year, more than 80 percent of his pay as the campus’s former top administrator — even though Dirks will not return to teaching on campus until fall 2018.

Today, Christ becomes the 11th chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. She takes the helm of a school under siege from all sides.

Almost a year after announcing his resignation, Nicholas Dirks officially stepped down from the position of chancellor Saturday.

Carol Christ became UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor Saturday, stepping into the role at a critical juncture in the campus’s history.

It began when students who held a rally commemorating the 30th anniversary of the creation of UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies programs moved in mass to Barrows and locked its front doors with chains.

Today, Christ says that she wouldn’t have addressed the protest in the same way.

Francis, or “Frankie,” Guzman, a 2007 UC Berkeley graduate, returned to his alma mater Sunday afternoon to address the second graduating class of the Underground Scholars Initiative, a pioneering program unique to UC Berkeley that connects campus resources to formerly incarcerated students and students with formerly incarcerated family members.

The last four years have provided unique challenges to the chancellorship, from routine budget and funding issues to the campus’s changing political climate.