Berkeley's 9th Chancellor: Robert J. Birgeneau

Chancellor Emeritus
Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Professor of Physics, Materials Science and Engineering, and Public Policy
University of California, Berkeley

If you look west from the Berkeley hills as the sun sets, framed by the Golden Gate, you will see what was once the far edge of the Western frontier. Today Berkeley is positioned at the leading edge of new frontiers -- the frontiers of knowledge and education. In our age the threshold of the unknown is intellectual rather than geographic.

Berkeley's role as a model public university is so important that we must summon ourselves to its highest aspirations. Any failure to lead as a pre-eminent research and teaching university not only diminishes Berkeley but also diminishes the standards to which public education in this nation aspires.