Extra

Many fluff pieces have been celebrating the tenure of Carol Christ as chancellor of UC Berkeley, particularly extolling her fundraising prowess. However, there is a dark side to her seven years at the helm, chief among them her obsession with People’s Park, which according to a former Berkeley mayor began decades ago. 

Obviously the relationship between UC and People’s Park over its long history has not been an easy one; it has veered from uneasy accommodation to outright antagonism. However, there were times when a positive future for the park could have been assured as an internationally-recognized asset to Berkeley and the university. 

According to former UCB Vice Chancellor for Real Estate, Bob Lalanne, who left his position in 2016, building on People’s Park was off the table, and in fact there were proposals considered to improve it and make it more inviting for the entire community. This was reversed when Carol Christ took the helm in 2017, and as statements indicate it became her vanity project. A recent L.A. Times article stated she “is proud of her relentless efforts to build housing at Berkeley’s iconic People’s Park.” She also repeated in the article some of the misinformation that she and UCB PR flak Dan Mogulof have been spewing about the park. Early this year she also told the Times that the park’s “redevelopment” will go down as “one of the most important things I’ve done.” 

Besides the misinformation, Christ and Mogulof have committed major acts of omission, never mentioning the park’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places and its recognition by the country’s leading preservation organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Likewise the anti-environmental act of destroying a park with its many redwoods, oaks and other trees brings to mind the attitude of Ronald Reagan who stated, "If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." 

Carol Christ will go down in the annals of history arm-in-arm with Ronald Reagan, who formulated the original attack on the park, the invasion of Berkeley by the National Guard, and the killing and maiming perpetrated by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. 

People’s Park was created after the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movements in the midst of the Vietnam Anti-War movement and preceded the first Earth Day. It is tied to and symbolizes all these movements. We can only wonder what possessed Chancellor Christ to recently speak in conversation about Free Speech with Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, champion of the Iraq War and accused war criminal. Was this another snub to the history of the park? 

Park supporters have outlived the tenure of Christ as chancellor, but the UC machine will keep moving to acquire more property in Berkeley with disregard for our city’s historic properties and the housing displacement caused by its increasing enrollment. 

People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, the People’s Park Committee, and many others have pointed out why the People’s Park construction project is an avoidable bad idea. Those many reasons will not be repeated here, but it is clear that the project was never about housing but about destroying the park and its historic legacy. If constructed on an alternative site, it would be nearly completed by now. 

The inappropriate location of the project and the resultant delays have wasted millions of dollars of public funds due to increasing construction costs, legal and police costs, and the shipping container wall with razor wire. This money could have been better spent in so many ways, chief among them increasing the budget for returning the Native American remains and artifacts hoarded by Cal and legally mandated by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed by Congress over thirty years ago. 

We are not alone in our criticism of UC corporate-like expansion and its façade of social concern. Book length critiques can be found in Tony Platt’s The Scandal of Cal and Christopher Newfield’s The Great Mistake. Likewise Davarian Baldwin’s book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower analyzes universities’ growth, resulting gentrification, policing, and monetization schemes. 

We honor fact-based research and support social justice. We think of these as values that should be associated with UC Berkeley. Therefore, it is disappointing in the extreme when UC Berkeley behaves like a greedy and abusive corporation without a conscience, but with a big budget for public relations and legal representation. 

Long Live People’s Park!