Graduations are for celebrating, not bad behavior, wife of UC Regents chair says | Opinion
My connections to the University of California run long and deep. I graduated from Berkeley in 1984 with a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and then followed the path of many lost-soul English majors to pursue a legal career, enrolling at the UCLA School of Law. At a 1988 law school graduation party in Westwood, I met a sweet UC Santa Barbara grad attending night law school. We married and had three daughters.
Throughout my three decades as a mom, I’ve admonished my daughters to “be mensches” (Yiddish for good people who treat others with respect), often deploying the logical, foul-mouthed corollary, “Don’t be a*******.” These admonitions induced much eye-rolling, but imprinted core values.
I’ve thought a lot about my parental advice this graduation season. Why now more than ever?
Opinion
My dear husband, Rich Leib, long dreamed of being a UC Regent, a volunteer position where he could shape policy and improve educational access at the UC’s 10 campuses. In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown granted his wish, appointing him to the Board of Regents. For the past two years he’s served as board chair. But it has proven to be a dubious honor during these turbulent times.
As the wife of the regent chair, I’ve witnessed abundant bad behavior from students and faculty.
In December of 2022, approximately 50 grad students showed up early on a Friday morning at the 27-unit gated town-home community we call home. They set up two tents blocking the only access gate and circled around for hours, chanting through megaphones and banging on pans. One neighbor experienced this obnoxious ruckus while on home hospice dying of cancer.
Three days after Hamas invaded Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023, a UC Davis assistant professor suggested in a post on X that “Zionist journalists” and their children be attacked in their homes and schools.
In February 2024, after Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza, a small number of students’ behavior spiraled beyond bad behavior into violence. Bears for Palestine protesters smashed a window at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse and threatened a few dozen Jewish students.
On April 30, a pro-Israel vigilante mob shamefully attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment in front of UCLA’s regal Royce Hall. Chaos and multiple injuries on both sides ensued.
After dismantling the encampment, UCLA officials discovered Royce Hall’s 95-year-old bricks and arches covered in graffiti. The university’s clean-up tab for this vandalism? Over $300,000. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block called it “a dark night in our campus’s history,” reflecting bad behavior on all sides.
On May 7, four days prior to UC Berkeley’s campus-wide graduation ceremony, I had lunch with Chancellor Carol Christ — California higher education’s version of Britain’s late Queen Mum, a benevolent and much-loved woman. Christ began her academic career teaching English literature at UC Berkeley in 1970 while in her mid-twenties. Now 80, she’s retiring after seven years as chancellor.
When I asked about her tenure, Christ — a Victorian literary scholar — quoted Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was ‘the best of times and the worst of times.’” The best because UC Berkeley boasts the most diverse student body ever, stands on sound financial footing, is constructing new student housing and has produced scientific advancements to better the human condition.
Yet the protests over the war in Gaza, the skirmishes at the Bears for Palestine encampment in Sproul Plaza located near Berkeley’s main entrance and the demands of balancing students’ First Amendment right to free speech with campus safety troubled her kindhearted soul.
“It’s painful to see student versus student and faculty versus faculty,” Christ told me. “The two sides seem to be talking past each other, often without empathy or understanding.”
She hoped for a peaceful campus-wide graduation ceremony in the California Memorial Stadium May 11. But a small percentage of students dashed her hopes. Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters chanted in unison, drowning out their student body president’s speech and Christ’s introductory remarks. The Jewish Journal reported that some parents felt intimidated by these students whose disruptive behavior reduced other attendees who had come to see the first in their families graduate from university to tears.
I’m all for peaceful protests. But this Cal/Bruin mama bear says: Please don’t be a*******.
The only tears family members should shed are those of pride and joy watching their students graduate from the University of California — not dismay and sorrow due to classmates’ bad behavior.
Sharon Rosen Leib is a freelance journalist and contributing writer to The Forward, Times of Israel and San Diego Jewish Journal. She is married to UC Regent Chair Rich Leib.
