Ronald Reagan

Steven Hayward, the conservative columnist and Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, begins a three-year term as a visiting scholar at the campus Institute for Governmental Studies, where he will teach classes and hold events in an attempt to expose UC Berkeley to conservative thought.

Each summer, thousands of newly admitted UC Berkeley students flood campus for two-day crash courses on time-honored Cal traditions and to sign up for their first set of classes. Since its inception in 1968, CalSO was intended as a space where baby Bears could learn to navigate the campus and meet some of their peers before officially starting school in the fall.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the grandeur that surrounds you on the Berkeley campus. Regal buildings plant themselves alongside groves of ancient eucalyptus trees, Strawberry Creek flows along banks and under bridges, and above all of this the Campanile rises, proud and tall, marking the hour as they pass.

The legacy of the Reagan administration is tainted by the Iran-Contra affair and even the controversy of Reaganomics, but I invite students here at Berkeley to look at Reagan beyond the things we already know. This was not an evil man hell-bent on destroying the Soviet Union or disregarding human rights. Reagan took great thoughtfulness in his actions as president — as both an ideological man and a man of practical compromise.

Today, we say goodbye to a man who tested the limits of free speech, who held up a magnifying glass to the shriveled hearts of bigots everywhere, who existed as a shining beacon of what it means to go too far.

Seth Rosenfeld, UC Berkeley alumnus, was asked by his editor at The Daily Cal to look into FBI activities on campus in the 1960s and 1970s, he ended up embarking on a quest that would last more than three decades and culminate in his soon to be published book.