Chancellor Robert Birgeneau

He's a main character and a strange presence in the film, not least because of his wide, ever-present grin and his Canadian accent. Of course Wiseman gives him a fair shake and he comes off as a competent, energetic administrator, though I was troubled by his condescension to the student protestors. He compares them unfavorably to the demonstrations he participated in during the 1960s and characterizes the students' demands as incoherent, unrealistic and unworthy of substantive response. I'm sympathetic to his point of view that the university is hamstrung by declining state funding, but I wouldn't want to hear these harsh truths (on funding priorities or, for another example, on tenure positions) from a man who can't stop gleefully smiling, no matter what topic he's discussing.

UC Berkeley IS expensive, for a state school. It costs $12k/year in tuition alone for in-state students (much more if you aren't from California). We kvetched about tuition increases at my own undergraduate institution in the SUNY system, but when I graduated under 10 years ago my tuition was about a third of that figure, if memory serves. Nevertheless I was impressed by the statistic Mr. Birgeneau repeats a few times, that the previous academic year saw the most low-income students enroll ever in the school's history. This is probably a better metric for equality in education than strictly looking at tuition cost. If California's state university is more open than ever to people from low-income backgrounds, that's a good thing, and I was surprised that when the student protestors get this information in a letter from Birgeneau in the film, they respond with derisive groans. However, the movie does a good job of conveying the other side of tuition increases: large student loans necessitate a well-paying job after graduation, and thus de-incentivizes Berkeley grads from finding employment in the public or non-profit sector, where they could do major social good. It's true that free tuition (one of the students' demands) sounds preposterous in this day and age, but it is a compelling vision.

Since the film has no title cards I was unsure whether we would see the events of 2011 that ultimately lead to Mr. Birgeneau's resignation. We don't - the long sequence in the second half of the film is an October 2010 protest that ends quietly. I didn't follow the Occupy-linked protests of 2011 closely (I live on the East Coast and I've actually never been to California, I'm embarrassed to say) but I understand that protesting students escalated their disruptive activities and Mr. Birgeneau took a more hardline approach against the protests than he does in At Berkeley. In fact, there's a scene in Wiseman's film where Birgeneau, UC Berkeley Police Chief Mitch Celaya (who also retired in the wake of the 2011 protests) and others are discussing the process for enlisting the assistance or "mutual aid" of surrounding police departments. They conclude that for large-scale, but non-crisis protests, they will use the assistance of Berkeley city police, who apparently have a good understanding of the university's priority to give protesters as much latitude as possible. However, if the protest becomes a "crisis," they'll need to enlist the help of the county sheriff's office, whose personnel they can't control as well. In November 2011, the Alameda County sheriff's office was called to campus in response to a permanent Occupy encampment, which resulted in arrests and beatings of UC students and faculty.

I decided to post about this because I'd read four or five reviews of At Berkeley and was surprised to find that none of them mentioned the way the tensions in the film played out in a dramatic way within a year. Does anyone with a more detailed understanding of the campus dynamics have any thoughts on what Wiseman's film brings out about Chancellor Birgeneau and the lead-up to the ugly clampdown on the 2011 protests?