9. Changemaker: UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons on Leadership and Innovation

Episode 9 Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/3hbr4bwc

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” Chancellor Richard K. Lyons notes in episode 9 of ELN! He describes how he was the only person in his family who pursued a PhD and how UC Berkeley opened that possibility to him. He is also the first UC Berkeley alum to hold the chancellor position, and embodies the leadership qualities that this institution stands for. Both Chancellor Lyons and our host, Dr. Jabari Mahiri, share a similar story of being the first in their families to pursue a PhD. Mahiri notes, “When I arrived, I was 50% of the Black faculty in the School of Education. But if you go to our website now, you will see that at least half of our faculty are scholars of color. They're there because they're the best in their field, not just diversity hires.” For Chancellor Lyons, these are examples of development, expansion, and continuous commitment to making UC Berkeley a more inclusive, diverse, and innovative community by seeing the systems and changing the systems through their leadership. 

Chancellor Lyons’ vision includes transforming UC Berkeley into a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Lyons reflects on his journey in higher education, emphasizing how his experiences at Berkeley shaped his leadership style. He emphasizes the importance of creating robust pipelines for underrepresented students pursuing PhDs, advocating for initiatives encouraging youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to consider academic careers. Lyons believes that education should foster a sense of agency among students, a vision encapsulated in the Berkeley Changemaker initiative, which aims to equip students with critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills.

Chancellor Lyons also addresses the role of the UC Berkeley School of Education in enhancing educational equity through research and practice, particularly in pre-K–12 education. Mahiri indicated that this is revealed in the Berkeley School of Education’s successful partnerships, under 21CSLA, guiding school leaders across the state.

Addressing the current landscape of higher education, Lyons highlights both opportunities and challenges, particularly in relation to AI and societal trust in academic institutions. He advocates for Berkeley’s unique role in advancing innovation and maintaining high standards of research and education.

Finally, the dialogue touches on the balance between fostering student activism and ensuring an inclusive environment. Lyons discusses his commitment to diversity and inclusion, referencing initiatives to attract underrepresented groups to Berkeley. Lyons highlights the historical context of activism at Berkeley and the University's commitment to upholding free speech while ensuring emotional and physical safety for all students. He proposes educational initiatives aimed at equipping students with the skills to engage with diverse viewpoints constructively. He stresses the importance of outreach and authentic engagement in creating a more inclusive educational environment. Through these efforts, Lyons aims to prepare and support future leaders who embody the principles of equity and excellence.

Equity Leadership Now! hosts conversations with equity-conscious leaders from pre-K through university settings who transform structures and strategies for educating students, particularly for those from historically marginalized communities.

Transcript

Changemaker: UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich
Lyons on Leadership and Innovation
Berkeley School of Education: Leadership Programs

Jabari Mahiri Host, Editor, and Producer
Brianna Luna Audio Editor and Production Specialist
Mayra Reyes External Relations and Production Specialist
Becca Minkoff Production Manager
Diana Garcia Communications Manager and External Relations
Audra Puchalski Communications Manag er and Web Design
Jennifer Elemen Digitally Mediated Learning Coordinator
Jen Burke Graphic Designer
Robyn Ilten-Gee Editor and Media Consultant
Rian Whittle Sound Technician

Transcript
Brianna Luna 0:17
Equity Leadership Now! hosts conversations with equity-conscious leaders from Pre-K
through university settings, who transform structures and strategies for educating,
particularly for those who are marginalized. We complement the mission and goals of the
21st Century California School Leadership Academy, 21CSLA.
Housed in the Leadership Programs of Berkeley School of Education, we acknowledge our
presence on unceded Ohlone land.
We explore innovative ideas and compelling work of educational leaders at the intersection
of research, policy, and practice to realize individual social and environmental justice
because our democracy depends on it.

Jabari Mahiri 1:09
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Equity Leadership Now. We're
delighted today to have a conversation with UC Berkeley Chancellor, Rich Lyons. Dr. Rich
Lyons began his term as the 12th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley on July
1, 2024.
He is the first undergraduate alum to serve as chancellor, receiving his BS degree from
Berkeley in 1982, and he returned to Berkeley in 1993 joining the faculty after earning his
PhD in Economics from MIT and following six years on the faculty of Columbia University.
Before accepting the role of Chancellor, he served as both the dean of Berkeley's Haas
School of Business, and over more than four and a half years, led the development and
expansion of innovation and entrepreneurship campus-wide at UC Berkeley.
Chancellor Lyons, welcome to our podcast, Equity Leadership Now. Before you address
your vision and aspirations for launching what you have termed in another document "a
new era of excellence for UC Berkeley", can you share some key milestones and
motivations in your personal leadership journey in higher education?
Rich Lyons 2:16
Well, sure. Happy to. I think, you know, fundamentally, I was an undergrad at Berkeley, and
I love this phrase, as an educator, you can't be what you can't see. And it's so true. Neither
of my parents had a four-year degree. I couldn't see a pathway of getting a PhD and living
the life that I lived, and Berkeley opened that up to me. I could say more about specifically
how that happened, but I'm grateful, and it certainly wouldn't have played out that way if
Berkeley hadn't been the way it was.
So, you know, that's one of the milestones for me, is all of a sudden I was going into the
business world, and then, bang, I'm going to graduate school, and I'm shooting for an
academic life, and it ended up being the perfect fit for me. And then, you know, later on in
my life, there's a point where you're doing research and you're teaching. I love to teach. I
absolutely love teaching. And of course, my research was as exciting as all get out when I
was first jumping fully into it. And then you start thinking about, well, maybe I can add a
little bit more value by, I became a dean. There were a couple of service roles that I had
before that, and then, you know, you realize, hey, I actually kind of like fundraising as
strange as that sounds, I care about this institution so much. I'm just happy to meet with
people that care about it as much as I do, and hopefully, they'll invest. Anyway, so, long

story short, the chancellor role opened up, and I thought, well, I'm going to give that a shot.
If my point of view doesn't have enough heft to it, they won't choose me. They ended up
choosing me. I can't speak to whether it's hefty, but they did choose me.
Jabari Mahiri 3:57
Well, the response so far has been definitely favorable for them choosing you, and we're so
excited to have you as our new chancellor too.
You've talked about currently being on the cusp of an exciting new era in higher education
generally. What do you see as the opportunities and challenges for this new era, including
those presented by AI, and how will UC Berkeley lead in bringing about these opportunities
and meeting these challenges?
Rich Lyons 4:22
Well, you know this, there's a lot of room in that question. It's an important question. Even
the AI topic, there are many things that we could talk about that connect to that, whether
it's what we teach or what we research, or how we do our work together, or how we
connect with our alumni, all of those things are going to be touched by AI. So we could drill
into that. When we think about an exciting new era, it's easy to define any given era in
one's own terms, as maybe being the cusp of a qualitative change. But take, for example,
society's trust and confidence in higher education. It's really at a historically low ebb, and
that shows up in analysis after analysis.
Whether we've hit bottom or not, I don't know, but asking questions like, what would it take
for society to actually increase its trust and confidence in higher education, and what are
some of the things that society, I think, needs to see more of. Look, we want Berkeley to
excel. Of course, we do. We want Berkeley to deliver on its mission, even more, its mission,
and mission of the UC system being, providing long term societal benefit. That's right at the
core of the why. And we do that, of course, through research, teaching and service.
But this idea of the cusp of a new era, it's both technology enabled. We often talk about
access and excellence right? I think there's no private institution that educates at Berkeley
scale, and I often say and believe that there in the data support that there's no public
institution that researches at Berkeley's quality. So Berkeley's not just outstanding, it's
unique, genuinely unique by a number of measures. And how is it going to lead? How is
Berkeley going to lead in this next chapter of higher education? And I think we have a role
to play there. And AI is just one piece of that. I'll give a specific example in AI.


I don't get to talk to Eric Schmidt all the time. I had a conversation with our alum, Eric
Schmidt, former Google CEO, and one of the things he was talking about is AI for science.
How does AI qualitatively change our capacity to do science, whether we're talking
chemistry or physics or engineering or biology, right? And it really is transforming things.
And it's not just like, oh, it's going to accelerate things just a little bit here, it's how we
design proteins in biology, or there's so many different areas where our scientists are
thinking–I'll put it this way. I'll close on this idea, I was with somebody today. I shouldn't
mention who it is. It doesn't really matter, but the president of another university, and she
said, you know, I've always been a science fiction fan, and it feels like for the first time in my
life, I'm actually living in science fiction. It's that rapidly changing.
Jabari Mahiri 7:12
You were the chief creator of the Berkeley Changemaker Initiative. What are ways that this
approach to change-making in higher education can have productive impacts on schooling
and society beyond our university?
Rich Lyons 7:23
Well, thank you for that. You know, Chief Creator, like anything, it's a team sport. There are
a bunch of people that worked on this. I had a slice, and a bunch of other people had slices,
and I'm certainly not the Chief Creator of the content. But in any event, it is a very exciting
initiative, and I think one way to think about Berkeley Changemaker is, you know, how do
we, if you said we want to develop a curriculum that helps people develop a mindset and a
skill set for greater agency in life, like more impact on the world, impact that aligns with
their values, living a life of agency, or another way to say that might be, how many of our
students would benefit from thinking more entrepreneurially? Most people answer that
with 100% right. Now, you don't deliver into that by saying, oh, we're going to teach six new
sections of entrepreneurship, because people don't see themselves in that word. They
don't see themselves– many people who don't see themselves in that narrative.
Whereas change making, in particular, we're not the first to use the word changemaker,
but the phrase Berkeley Changemaker, it sings, it's our history, right? Questioning the
status quo. There are many other values. If you said questioning the status quo, and then
you said Berkeley, people would say, well, of course. And if you said questioning the status
quo and then you named another, you know, great private university, people would say,
not so much, even though there are great scholars that are, of course, questioning the


status quo. So putting all of that together and creating a narrative, lots of wonderful impact
on schooling and society.
So just to be more concrete, it's like, well, what is Berkeley Changemaker? It's three things.
It's three content throughlines. And we have over 30 courses now that are in this Berkeley
Changemaker category. Throughline number one, critical thinking. Number two,
collaboration, team skills, right? Critical thinking, collaboration, and communication,
especially oral. How do you stand up in front of people and get them inspired? And so
forth. It's growing organically, and it's the kind of narrative-based education that I think a
lot of young people, it's like, that's kind of who I want to be. That's not just an interesting
class, that's kind of who I want to be. And we love it when we get a chance to develop
curriculum that way.
9:36
[music break]
Jabari Mahiri 10:06
Interestingly, in education, we use the term changemaking a lot, but we also don't often
think of innovation being so central to education. So, names and terms make a difference
apparently. You've been quoted in a recent Berkeley News article saying that if you were
obsessed with anything, it was how leaders work with their people to strengthen culture.
So why is this issue of culture and strengthening organizational culture so important? And
what are the key ways that you think about making that happen?
I want to explore that just a little bit because you know diversity is a key possibility and
asset, but also a challenge for culture. So, how do you see your leadership evolving in
higher education, particularly in terms of fostering more diverse and inclusive leaders
across the UC Berkeley departments and programs?
Rich Lyons 10:49
Well, I'll talk a little bit about my time at Haas when I was a dean. We also did a lot of work
while I was overseeing innovation and entrepreneurship on campus to try to make that
more inclusive. And even Berkeley Changemaker, actually I'll start there because that's very
recent. The idea of, oh, it's a more inclusive way to teach entrepreneurial thinking, oh that's
a fun phrase, sorta like– is it in the data, show me. Show me there are more first gen
students taking Berkeley Changemaker courses than Berkeley undergraduates as a whole,
or women, or people from socioeconomic disadvantaged groups, etc. And in every


measure of diversity, those courses Berkeley Changemaker, are more diverse than
Berkeley undergraduates as a whole, and Berkeley undergraduates as a whole aren't as
diverse as they might be, but they're quite diverse. It's in the data, and it’s like, well how do
you make that happen? You have to Reach out, there's something on campus called Stiles
Hall, reaching out to the athletic program, reaching out to pools of people that might not
know about you that are more diverse in one way or the other. Reaching out to the
advisors at the high schools that send us a lot of students, and send us students from
disadvantaged backgrounds, who's doing that? Does Berkeley do that? Now, does our main
admission team do that? Of course they do. But what curriculum program does that? It's
sort of like, game on. Are you going to take this seriously or are you just going to wave your
hands and hope the right people take your courses? Reaching out to high school advisors,
it's like wow, at the program level. So that's one small example. Something similar when i
was dean at Haas, there's something called the Consortium for Graduates Schools of
Business, and the idea was to get underrepresented groups through top business schools,
and Berkeley participated in the consortium. Anyways long story short, I won an award
from them for having worked very hard to make sure that Berkeley was attracting as many
of them as we could. We were beefing up not just the funding that we were putting into
fellowships in that program, but for several years I would call every admit to our MBA
program that came to our consortium, I made those calls myself. I was busy. I think part of
it is prioritizing and putting yourself out there, and authentically communicating that
message that you know, we mean this stuff, and if it looks like we don't mean it, call us out
on it.
Jabari Mahiri 13:25
You mentioned some of the athletic programs and of course you know we have a sports
program here in the School of Education, but I was also on the board for Stiles Hall for
more than a decade, but this is more than a decade ago. They do good work. This is really
exciting in terms of these opportunities for diversity with students. Talk to us a little bit
about your ideas you have for diversifying leaders on campus. I'm talking about people
across various departments and programs, professors, and new emerging leaders who are
academics and trying to transition into higher education leadership.
Rich Lyons 14:07
Good question. I'll start with the faculty side of things. You know PhD programs, how do we
support our PhDs not just at Berkeley, but in lots of different programs around the country
and the world so that those pipelines are as rich as they can be. There's a lot of investment
in trying to make sure that, what I mentioned earlier, I think I used this phrase, you can't be


what you can't see. The notion here is how do we get more young people, like I was at
Berkeley, people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds or underrepresented groups
and get them thinking about possibly getting a PhD.
So there's a lot of work that's going on sort of at that very earliest part of the funnel, and
you could say that pipeline starts far before that, but I think there's a lot of work with
students that might end up getting a PhD and becoming potential faculty members. And
then if you look at the diversity of faculty, across gender, across race, across socioeconomic
background, and other measures, Berkeley's actually made some great strides. And I think
you know our faculty in general, the awareness of what that process looks like, and how
unbalanced we've been, I think it's hard to find a faculty member that isn't sensitized to
walking into a faculty meeting and having one female in the room or into a faculty meeting,
it's like, wow, we all look the same. We all come from some very similar backgrounds, or
what have you. I think that we're much, much more sensitized than we used to be, and we
have a lot more work to do. I think part of it too is, how do we help people think about
where their way to contribute most is in making a more diverse and inclusive faculty or
educational environment more generally.
Jabari Mahiri 15:59
Well, I can testify a bit to that, I came here maybe about the same time you did, 1992 more
than 30 years ago. And my joke to myself is that, when I arrived, I was 50% of the Black
faculty in the School of Education. But if you go to our website now, you will see that at
least half of our faculty are scholars of color, and they're there because they're the best in
their field. They aren't, you know, diversity hires necessarily for the sake of diversity, but
they just happen to be the best in their field, and we're proud about that. But speaking of
our School of Education, we're a School of Education in an educational institution, so give
us a little bit of a hint of what roles you see for Berkeley School of Education, specifically in
bridging and advancing our university's interests and impacts in pre K-12 education, locally,
statewide and nationally?
Rich Lyons 16:54
Well, that's a big question, and I'm not an expert in education, so I'll do my best to answer
your question, but I think your own faculty would have a deeper view. I've had a chance to
speak to your dean about where things are headed and where we might go. You know, part
of what's exciting about Berkeley, I think, in unit after unit, is this idea. I think of it as sort of
a federated creativity process, and education, like so many other parts of Berkeley, is
breaking new ground. It's kind of how we define ourselves. We respect most of those


faculty who are pioneering new ideas and breaking into new fields and things along those
lines. And so, when I think about preK, for example, I maybe shouldn't mention individual
faculty, but you know, one of your faculty that I've talked to a lot when thinking about
adolescent development, right? It's sort of like, oh my gosh, I'm hearing about this. I'm a
social scientist, so in some sense, I'm not that far away from that work.
But how do we take the deep research that we do, the fundamental research, Berkeley's
preeminence, the root source of that is fundamental research. It really is, and we are
known the world around us because of our terrific fundamental research. We can't forget
that. And so what I love, I'm just using this person as an example, the deep research on
adolescent development or child development, and thinking about, how do we develop a
curriculum that sort of connects to some of the deep lessons that we're getting out of the
research. So there are a million ways you can add value. There are a million programs that
you're working on. There's a lot of you know, how does online education really work? How
do people learn from online education? How do we evolve it based on what we've learned
since the first MOOCs were launched? And, you know, there are many things like that that
are super valuable, but I think that the deep red thread for this education school is, we take
deep thinking and we connect it to the world and that's what we're known for.
Jabari Mahiri 19:04
Wow, if I can add a little plug as a faculty member in the School of Education for how we
see being part of that bridge of the larger university to the community. We've been
successful in getting some significant funding from the California Department of Education.
Five years ago, we got the first three-year cycle. Now we're in the second year of the second
year three-year cycle under the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy. And so
we have eight, we have the center, and then we have seven regions all over the state. And
our role and goal, and it's important that it's coming from UC Berkeley, is to guide and
support, influence, leadership development at the teacher level, site level, and district level
across the entire state. And so we have a bunch of programs that we're involved in. But to
make this shorter, the key in terms of the notion of the importance of the research is our
orientation towards research to practice projects, so that we do the research, but we're
also involving practitioners at every level, even in our webinars and our leadership of the
retreats and summits that we have, and that combination of people coming from practice
and people who are dedicated researchers finding that common ground is, you know,
essentially what we've been working on for the last five years and having some nice impact.


Rich Lyons 20:29
Super powerful, you know, I think there's a phrase that you would know, of course, among
our colleagues, especially social scientists, of community, engaged scholarship, right? It's
not, it's not scholarship on, it's scholarship with, right? And helping to understand what the
right questions are, and so forth anyway. So much of what you're doing is very much in
that, in that theme.
Jabari Mahiri 20:50
So that's my plug for our School of Education, but to move to a close, and we really
appreciate your time and your insights on all of these questions, but understanding UC
Berkeley's values of diversity and inclusion for all students, what is your vision and
leadership and transforming UC Berkeley into a Latinx thriving institution. You know, we
have a lot of things on the horizon in that regard, too.
Rich Lyons 21:16
Well, so one of the things that was in our last strategic plan is making sure that Berkeley
became, and this is really just the first step in that thriving vision, a Hispanic Serving
Institution. And I don't remember the latest number, but we're in the low 20s. 25 is the
threshold to become an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institute). So you know, that's more about
numbers than it is about thriving. I think when we think about, what does it mean for any
given identity group to be thriving at Berkeley, I think one of the things that we're working
hard at, for example, is our principles of community.
There happen to be seven of them. They are absolutely fundamental. I think people
probably refer to them. Over the last year, it's been a challenging year in terms of
community dynamic at universities generally. And we are strengthening those principles of
community greatly. And I think we want to make sure people know there are seven. We
would like to make sure that people could actually name three or four or five or six or
maybe seven of them. Free speech is one of them, but other things, one of them, I heard
our Chancellor introduced at an event recently where somebody said, she understands the
intrinsic relationship between diversity and excellence. That is exactly the phrasing that
comes out of our principles of community. I realize I'm taking a very values-based
approach, but I think the idea of, we need to lean into that community even more because
they are underrepresented here, that's part of becoming an HSI. But I think the way that we
really get to Latinx thriving and thriving more generally, is to lean more explicitly into our
principles of community and making sure that people understand this is not just some
abstract website. Here's a set of behaviors that we're going to hold each other to.


Jabari Mahiri 23:10
So these are still our last two questions. The first one is, let me reverse the order, though.
With our long history of activism at UC Berkeley, how do you balance encouraging student
activism while ensuring an inclusive environment where all perspectives feel safe and
heard?
Rich Lyons 23:27
As fundamental a question at this moment as any and really a fundamental question at all
times and in history. So today happens to be, we're recording this on October 1. And
October 1 is the day that Mario Savio stood on top of that police car in Sproul Plaza. This is
the day of the free speech movement. There were some events that led to that, but, but
this is really the fulcrum day, if you will, 60 years ago, of course.
So that activism is not just fundamental to Berkeley. One of the deans on campus, I won't
attribute to the name, only because I don't know that he or she would want that, but she
said, you know, nothing important has been achieved societally without activism. It's like,
well, that's an interesting proposition, and I think it's largely true. I think it's a quite
defensible proposition, right? So the idea that activism is some sideshow, and, you know,
do we permit it, or time, place, and manner? It's sort of like, no people sort of acting up, in
some sense, expressing their activism, and their view, drives change.
Now, okay, so the spirit of your question is, how do we make sure it's as inclusive as we
need it to be? And you know, the safety question, are we talking about emotional safety?
Are we talking about physical safety, right? So, the First Amendment, we know that not all
speech is protected, but an awful lot of speech is protected under the First Amendment.
And, we live in an environment where the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s has something called
Title Six, and it says, if people are feeling harassed if they're feeling unsafe, if they're feeling
like they don't have access to all the educational opportunities at Berkeley, we have a
positive obligation to make sure that they feel like they they are fully welcome and belong.
And there are times when that logic of the First Amendment butts up against Title Six, and
they are in conflict. And anyway, I'm just specifying sort of the core to your question. And
what we're trying to do is, like this is one example. We're launching a new course called
Openness to Opposing Views. There's a skill set here. We actually have to get better at this.
All of us can get better at this, and many, many other things that are going on, in many
other courses. We need - it's a famous Clark Kerr quote. I'll say it again here. Clark Kerr
said, “Our job is not to make ideas safe for students. Our job is to make students safe for


ideas.” They need to be able to confront this world, and it's complicated out there, and it's
challenging, and we're not going to soften up the ideas. We have to get them ready. And so
I think the idea here is, it's not going to be hard. A great education at Berkeley ain't for the
faint of heart, and we're going to do it in a way that as best we can, people feel safe, even if
it feels like it's been, sometimes a rough ride.
Jabari Mahiri 26:32
Chancellor Rich Lyons, we want to end our conversation here and just say thank you so
much for taking some time to share your ideas and insights with us here at Equity
Leadership Now. Thank you.
Rich Lyons 26:42
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Brianna Luna 28:02
Thank you for listening to Equity Leadership Now. Our podcast team includes Jabari Mahiri,
Brianna Luna, Mayra Reyes, Becca Minkoff, Diana Garcia, Audra Puchalski, Jennifer Elemen,
Jen Burke, Robyn Ilten-Gee, and Rian Whittle.