Getting the University of California, Berkeley to incorporate a diversity plan into its overall strategic plan was a long and hard-fought battle, but the more critical work of implementing the plan and achieving results is still in its early stages.
Such was the impression left Tuesday during a presentation about the plan that was given at the annual conference of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, or NADOHE.
The conference, which drew about 180 diversity officers from across the nation, was held in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the larger annual conference of the American Council on Education, which drew close to 1,700 attendees.
Among the presenters at the NADOHE conference was Dr. Gibor Basri, an astrophysicist who holds the UC-Berkeley post of vice chancellor of equity and inclusion.
When not searching for the stars of the lower heavens, Basri has spent his time trying to get the university to institutionalize the way it seeks to discover academic stars from underrepresented populations.
His vice chancellor post, created in 2006, is an outgrowth of his efforts to make UC-Berkeley more inclusive at all levels, from student enrollment and graduation to faculty positions. To that end, Basri helped launch the Haas Diversity Research Center with a $16 million grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund of San Francisco.
But Basri concedes that — despite five years millions of dollars — it’s too early to see any concrete results.
