Berkeley Sees Dirks Claiming Place as Ivy With Public Mandate

After helping lead Columbia University’s 17-acre expansion in upper Manhattan and its $5 billion fundraising campaign, Nicholas Dirks is taking a pay cut to run the University of California, Berkeley, the pre-eminent U.S. public college that has seen its state funding fall 47 percent in the past five years.

State universities across the U.S. are reeling from budget cuts and face increasing pressure to control rising tuition. At Berkeley, students have clashed with riot police and the Ivy League has raided its faculty. None of that deterred Dirks, 62, Columbia’s former executive vice president and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences.