 Welcome to this edition of Campus Conversations. My name's Dan Mogulov. I'm from the campus office of communications and public affairs and totally pleased and honored to have Chris Treadway with us today. As usual, a brief introduction. Chris will have a few comments about what she and her office are up to now. Then I have a few questions. And then as we go, if you have questions, write them on the index cards, hold them up in the air and we'll collect them. So Chris Treadway is the assistant vice chancellor for government and community relations here at UC Berkeley. As the assistant chancellor, she is responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive integrated government relations strategy that aligns with and supports the overall goals and vision of the campus. In her role, she serves as a political advisor to the chancellor and senior leadership and manages strategic relationships with elected officials, external advocates and the UC regions. Chris has 30 years of experience in working in government and higher education. She started her career in Washington DC working for the House Education Committee and the subcommittee on post-secondary education. She then spent six years working in this role as a congressional staffer before escaping, I mean moving to San Francisco for a job in government relations at San Francisco State University where she served as the executive director of government relations there for 12 years. In 2005, she wisely decided to move across the bay where she'd been living here since 97 and started at Berkeley as the director of state government relations. She then moved into a leadership role as executive director of the office of government and community relations. And in 2007, she became the assistant vice chancellor for government and community relations. And in 2013, finished her empire building in her current role as assistant chancellor. So without further ado, Chris, a few words to set the table and then we'll go from there. Thanks, Dan. Happy to be here. Unlike some of your more famous guests on the show, some of you are probably not as familiar with the work of government and community relations. So I thought I would just talk a little bit about what our office does. We're down to about an elite eight. So we're small but we're mighty, small staff. But we, the overall mission of our office is to demonstrate the value and importance of UC Berkeley in front of elected officials, government agencies, local community, and the general public. So a large part of what we do is building relationships. Of course, the state is still our largest donor despite some recent disinvestment, giving the campus about $300 million every year, 350. And the UC system about $3 billion a year. So they're a very key constituency for us. So we build a lot of relationships with them, educate them on what we do, find out issues of interest to them, and try to match up our experts in order to help their agenda as well. So there's a lot of communications and messaging work that goes along with that. We work closely with the UC system on system-wide strategies. And of course, with our public affairs colleagues, thank you very much for your support guys in telling our story in Sacramento and Washington, DC. We do a lot of political advising to the senior leadership as they're making decisions. Let them know what the political implications might be of those actions. And we deal a lot with public policy. We track legislation, follow issues, and engage our faculty directly with policy makers at the state and federal level. A lot of this work is frequent trips to Sacramento and Washington, DC. In fact, we had our staff, I think, four or five trips to DC just this spring with several deans and faculty members advising congressional folks on artificial intelligence, water policy, ag and CNR issues. So sometimes we have major policy briefings that we hold for staff. If staff are working on some big issue- You mean congressional staff? Congressional staff, legislative staff. And then sometimes it's just, we take faculty to meet one-on-one with legislators and members, and again, sometimes it's to advance our own interest in increased funding for their research or sometimes it's to advise a policy maker if they have a bill they're working on and want more information. And then finally, I would say, we're also kind of a complaint desk or maybe a help desk would be a better way of phrasing that. We get a lot of inquiries from the legislature, from the public, UC, Office of the President. But a lot of times constituents will call their local elected official and want help with an issue. And so they'll bring that to us. So we do a lot of problem solving. You mean the university issue? So like what's an example of that? Examples can be admissions questions or residency questions or financial aid problem or, you know. And so we're fixers. We try to sort of solve and navigate those problems. We work with a lot of our colleagues here to just solve those issues as they come up. And then we, I thought maybe it'd be good to give you a little flavor of kind of the issues at all these levels. So I'll start off with the federal level. We're actively tracking, continue to track immigration, visa issues, DACA, the Congress is starting a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which sets the stage for all of the financial aid issues for our students. So working on Pell grants and those kinds of issues. And then we're actively advocating for increased funding for science. The President's budget that was just introduced calls for a lot of major cuts to sciences. I think it's a billion dollars out of NSF, a billion dollars out of Department of Energy's Office of Science, five billion from NIH and seven billion out of Department of Education. So a lot of concerning cuts on the table there. Then at the state level, it's all about the state budget primarily this season. The UC budget, the Governor's budget that got introduced was a good start for UC. I think we're looking forward to working with this Governor, but there are still few outstanding issues we're trying to get the legislature to include additional money for tuition buyout and make that permanent and some enrollment funding. The other major issue with the state is trying to get funding for capital. As you know, we have significant deferred maintenance and seismic needs on our campus. There is a bill that's been introduced for a general obligation bond to go on the 2020 ballot that the legislature is currently considering that provides about eight billion dollars between UC and CSU. So we're really hoping we can get some traction and get that passed this year. And at the local level, here's a lot going on at the local level. I think the really good news here is that the chancellor and the mayor have had a great working relationship. As you know, they're working on a lot of issues of mutual interest, including the housing crisis and homelessness. And so the chancellor's student housing initiative that she announced, where we're trying to double the number of beds in the next 10 years will require a lot of consultation with the community. There's about eight or 10 sites we're looking at to be developed in that process. We also just announced the start of the long range development plan planning process, which will be about a two year effort that will also require a lot of engagement with the community. But we have a ton of relationships with the community, not only in Berkeley, but Oakland, Richmond, Albany. And so our staff work closely with a lot of the educational partnerships that are going on in the city, and we manage the chancellor's community partnership fund, which is about $250,000 a year, basically in grants, 300 in grants that we give out every year. And these are really meant to improve the quality of life for the Berkeley community, citizens of Berkeley. And so we have nonprofits partner with the university on these projects, and they support everything from education projects, arts and culture, community safety, environmental stewardship, things like that. I think we've spent about two million, three million in the last 12 years of this fund. So it's been a great way to interact with the community. And if you want more information about all of these activities we do with the community and our work in general, subscribe to our newsletter. It comes out every week, our fabulous Jen Loy edits that, and it'll give you the full scoop on what we're up to. Got it. So I actually want to start with a personal question. So I think you have politics in your family background. You've been in the political game for a long time, and I know we all have some pretty passionate opinions about the political world now, but what attracted you then, and do you think the game has changed over the years since you first went to work on the Hill? Well, I actually got into politics when I was in Montana. I come from a rural background, moved around a bit because my father was in higher education, but I was living in Eastern Oregon in a town of 12,000 people, and went to college actually in Montana and started as a music major. And from there, I got interested actually in the US-Soviet policy issues that were going on at the time, the arms race, and I spent a year at the University of Maryland studying that US-Soviet relationship, and while I was there, I interned in Washington, DC, and so I met the congresswoman from Montana, and then by the time I graduated, he asked me to come and work for him in Washington, so that was pretty terrific, and while I was working for him, I met his son, who turned out to be my husband, so a long story short there. So we're very involved, yes, and then he served in the congress for 20 years, and then his wife was actually the first Senate majority leader in the state of Montana. She went into politics when he retired and came to Montana, so. So it's in the blood. It's in the blood, it's in the blood. So what do you like about it, and has it all changed? Oh, it's changed a lot. When I first went to Washington, there was a lot of collaboration between Democrats and Republicans. This was in the late 80s, and it was very collegial. While there would be disagreements, staff would usually just get together and over pizza, we would hammer out differences in conference bills and work it out, and so there was a lot more collegiality. You would see the members getting together, even spending time with each other, out to dinner together, arch enemies out to dinner, and then I think it started to shift in 96 with the Republican Revolution and Take Over the House, and it started to get a lot more political, and even committees like mine, which were very much policy-based, where you would just sit down and work out the details of the policy you were trying to do, turned into more political conversations, and so the environment there is extremely heightened politically and divided, so. So how do you think that politicization is impacting, at least in Washington, higher education issues? Have we become a political football, meaning the whole sector? How is that affecting us, do you think? Well, I think there's definitely a tendency towards thinking universities are elite, and that they are sort of a liberal bastion, more and more and more becoming, I think, perceived as elite institutions, and an interesting thing that some of the Pew Center has done some polling between Republicans and Democrats, and how do they feel about higher education, and it's pretty different, and the messaging that universities are using, even around scientific issues, we are starting to use different phrases instead of climate research, you can talk about impact on agriculture or natural resources, or they like the term health research, more in medical research that is really tied directly to people's concerns, and so I think that there is a crisis in the perceived cost of education, the lack of access, and some of the elite mentality. We'll come back to the federal level, I wanna jump over to Sacramento for a second, I know you have to be really diplomatic, but lean in as much as you can. So the last governor was known to have a complicated relationship with the UC, let's say. What's it looking like with the new governor? What are you sensing and hearing from the new administration, and how does it bode for us? Right, well I wanna, seriously, our role is to be nonpartisan, but I will have to say that I personally think that this Governor Jerry Brown was actually very good for the state of California. He came in in a terrible time, I think the state was facing $27 billion deficit, and he came along and really applied this fiscal conservatism to his job, and he was very successful in turning, had a large role, I think, in turning the economy around, and he ended up with projected $15 billion surplus, the rainy day fund, I think is $14 billion, $15 billion now. So he really held people's feet to the fire to be very conservative with the spending, which I think was important, and of course he really left a legacy of climate change, and he really did a lot for the working poor and the quality issues. So I think, generally speaking, he was terrific for California. It's no secret that he had issues with UC, and some of that, I think, really was in his philosophy. He rejected, bristled at the idea of excellence, and it really didn't like- But also with elitism, right? Elitism, exactly, and did not appreciate us always saying we had to compete with Stanford and Harvard, and so he wanted us to just be good enough for California, and so there were some challenges there with him, but I think that overall, it came down to him wanting to be more fiscally conservative, and I will say one of the toughest things for us was probably the holding tuition flat for six years, and that had, I think, a great impact, and maybe more than he fully realized. And Governor Newsom, so what are we hearing? What are you sensing? What's the prognosis? He has a bold agenda. I will say he's done great in hiring a lot of really, really smart, wonderful people in the administration, and he's charting a really, really impressive course for the future with expanding healthcare and universal preschool and wanting to have more access for early childhood education, the housing crisis and homelessness he wants to tackle, so those are big price tag items. I think he even wants to have two years of free community college, so he's putting a lot of bold ideas out there and we'll just have to see if the state coffers can handle that. I don't know, I'm just getting word that the revenues from taxes aren't quite up to par yet, but we're hoping in the next week or so that that will get raised, so. But we're hopeful, we're excited. So even as we're talking, a few questions came in directly related to this and I think what people really wanna know, and I'm gonna push you on here a little bit. So when I talked about prognosis, not to beat around the bush, talking about the possibility of a return to the good old days or at least a step back towards a different sort of partnership and financial support for the UC, how do you think that might play out in what do our current efforts look like to support advocacy to increase funding? Oh well, I'm very hopeful actually because I think that again, the Governor Newsom really, I think understands and appreciates the research mission of UC and I think he can understand the differences between what UC does and the role of CSU for example. So I know he has a lot of interest in several research areas of the university. I think he understands the economic impact that the UC has on the state, which is extremely impressive and significant. So and I feel like the relationships in Sacramento are getting better, campuses are spending a lot of time up there with alumni and students, lots of advocacy efforts have been underway. So I'm pretty hopeful that we're gonna get to a place where we can have a more increased funding for UC. I think there's gonna have to be a deal with the legislature and the Governor's office clearly about issues of affordability and access and there are a lot of concerns about the large numbers of non-resident students that have been coming in recent years, which was in a direct response to the budget cuts. So, but I think that there will be some progress made on this, at least I'm hopeful. So maybe you could unpack something for us. I mean, something I've always wondered about. Whole number of studies show that states get back anywhere to $4 to $7 for every dollar they put into higher ed, which makes it seem like a no-brainer. Why has, why is increased funding for higher education, whether the UCs and or the CSUs, why is that not a no-brainer in Sacramento? Why is that something that's been tough to achieve in recent years given the substantiated benefits of investments in higher education? It's a great question. We ask our legislators this often and if you poll most Californians, they put education at the top of the list for their priorities. I think in California, you know, the budget, the discretionary budget is quite constrained. And so there are a lot of competing interests. And what ends up happening is, you know, healthcare is a big priority. Prison funding competes with the UCs, unfortunately. And so there's a pretty small piece of the pie that the discretionary money can support. And I think that for a long time, as the budget, we were in the heat of budget crises, the legislature felt like the universities have the ability to raise taxes unlike what they could do on Californians through increased tuition, through philanthropy, through bringing in more non-residents than that. And that helped us for a while and that was other sources of funding. But we sort of hit a tipping point, I think, with that and the amount of money that we're charging. Non-resident students has reached an all-time high. So people are starting to say, okay, now maybe we need to shift this balance back a little more. So I think there's a recognition that they do wanna invest in UC and CSU but it's all about access and affordability and that we need to produce something like a million more degrees over the next 10 years in the state. And are there still concerns in Sacramento about the extent to which the UC as a whole is a good steward of the resources it's provided with? I mean, shortly after you and I started here on campus there was the whole, what's called the compensation scandal. Is that a gift that keeps on giving or taking, I should say? Like in the private moments that when legislators lean over the table and say, Chris, I'd love to support you, but. Yeah. What are they ogie about up there? So thankfully, I think the executive compensation issue is not as hot a topic these days, at least with most of the members we talked to. I think that issue was problematic, but I think for the most part people understand that the university has a lot of sources of funding and we need to attract the best and brightest in order to make new inventions and new discoveries in healthcare and how much we give back to the economy in that respect. The main issue is really about the concerns over non-residents at the moment. And I feel like the trust in UC is getting better. I mean, we're pretty transparent. Everything's up on the web. It's open information. We're a public institution. We have many, many, many public records requests for information. So I think the legislators are willing to make the investment. It's just, it's a matter of competing resources for the most part. So don't take this the wrong way, but why do we have a state relations office? Do we have, does Berkeley have separate business from the rest of the UC? When we go there, are we advocating for Berkeley specific things? In other words, why is it not just the UC system as a whole? What do you guys carve out? Good question. So let me step back for a minute. In the four term limits were enacted. For years, the university system had a very close relationship with legislators. The Willie Brown days and long standing members up there were there for years and years. And so the university had really close ties up there. Once term limits came into effect and there were more and more legislators brand new to the job, we started having several years where a third of the legislature would be brand new people and turning over. So it was a much greater need to start educating those folks. And that was really where we started to see some of the growth in government relations offices where there was a need for more people to be interacting with them. So campuses in the UC have always tended to have some kind of government relations presence. And it really is about advancing the interests of the UC when we go up there on budget issues. It's we speak with one voice because there is one line item to the university. But we tell them what the impact is for our campus. And we have lots of researchers again who have projects they're doing with state agencies or they may be expert in an issue that will help legislators. And so we give them access to that. So another question came in and it's something you and I have talked about. Also, what opportunities and do staff, faculty have talked about a little bit and students have. I mean, do you bring staff and students up to Sacramento? Does that make a difference? Is this something where broader engagement helps our cause? Talk to us a little bit about explain what we do and how that all works. Yeah, so our advocacy efforts have sort of ebbed and flowed throughout the years, depending on the issue, I would say when we were facing the billion dollars in budget cuts. We What do you mean the system as a whole? The system had, yeah, billion as a whole. I mean, Berkeley, our funding was cut in half. Essentially, I think we were about 500 million went down to about 250. So we had a very aggressive advocacy effort in those days where we did involve a lot of external alumni, but also staff and students in lobbying or advocating on our behalf. We tend to be pretty directed because we're a small office. We try to be targeted in our efforts so that we can approach the right people with the right message at the right time rather than bombard people. In the old days, you kind of used to send in postcards and you'd get 10,000 postcards sent to a legislator on an issue. And honestly, I think these members are much more sophisticated now about how they interact with their constituents. And so bringing the people in that can answer their questions, I think builds the best relationships for them. But we obviously always welcome people to go to their local district offices and know their legislators and let them know that you support you see. And it's a pretty broad message. I think everyone always says to me, what should our messages be? What is UC really trying to do? And at the end of the day, it's tell your story. Tell them why you care about UC and why it should be supported because that resonates the most with them. So I'm just wondering, sometimes I hear from alumni and others and say, you guys only get 12% of your budget from the state. It's not just go private or, I mean, oh, it's crazy, but is it worth it? What's your response to people who say, look, we put up with so much, they would say. And we only get 12%. What's the pushback? What's the response to that? Well, first of all, we're a public institution that was founded by the public. And so we're a state entity. So our buildings are state owned and we're state employees. And so even though we may not get a majority of our funding from the state, that we have a public interest. So I think becoming private would be a real challenge because there's a lot of investment here that they ask assets that they own. So that would be a trick. But I know I think there's frustration sometime with the amount of oversight and overreach. We really are governed by the UC regions and they have constitutional autonomy, but because of the relationship to the budget, we try to be as responsive as we can to the legislature. The autonomy is really set up to prevent political persuasion on the university and so that way they could preserve academic freedom. And so for the most part, all of that I think is still intact. But if the legislature is giving us $300 million a year, I would think they can tell us kind of what they want us to do with it. That would seem to me. Generally speaking. That would seem to buy some influence. In terms of the agenda, another question came in and that has to do with whether the campus is advocating in the capital for money for student housing or for new development. And this is something we hear a lot about that we don't have debt capacity or the state's not in the game anymore in terms of providing funds for capital projects. Is that part of our agenda? And what's that situation in terms of not so much the operating budget, but access to capital for construction. Right, so that's another very fascinating question. The state used to fund, they now are providing only about a 10th of the capital they used to fund for the university. We have not had a general obligation bond since 2006 on the ballot. And general obligation bonds were used to finance construction. To finance construction for new buildings. Because of the campus's recent budget difficulties with our structural budget deficit, we did not have very much access to capital to issue our own debt. But because we've now balanced our books there is some indication from office of the president that we will maybe be able to use some of our funding for particularly student housing. We've been exploring a public-private partnership models to also build housing and provide other needs on the campus. So the capital funding we really need to try to get through a general obligation bond because the state just doesn't have the resources to support that anymore. Do you think any chance of that may change in the future? Here too, like a return to the good old days in that sense? I doubt it for capital. I mean, I think the governors proposed $138 million just for deferred maintenance to just help us keep pace with the existing buildings and the upkeep. And of course Berkeley has a very significant deferred maintenance and seismic issues on our campus. So we have a lot of need there. But so without a general obligation bond I don't see that there's just not that much one-time money available to be able to address that. So a couple more questions about Sacramento that will move into the town gown and maybe if we're feeling really brave talk a little bit more about Washington. I'm just curious, you take the chancellor to Sacramento on a regular basis and I think those of us who've heard her speak know that she has pretty extraordinary communication skills. Does that make a difference? Has her engagement, do you think, had any impact on the way our campus is seen and the extent to which we're meeting some of our objectives up there? Absolutely. Chancellor Christ has been amazing in all of her political engagement and she really did make it a priority to be engaged locally and to be engaged with state legislature. She hasn't done as much engagement federally but she really wanted to focus on trying to get increased funding from the state and it's definitely noticed. Their chancellors have been going to Sacramento I think more frequently but we get a lot of response from staff and from legislators telling us how much they appreciate having the chancellor's face up there. It demonstrates the commitment of the campus and that she's really spending the time and she spends a lot of time there. So it's paying off and she hosts people here. We have a lot of legislators that come to campus and she's hosted them a number of times. We have had a member here yesterday, Senator, who came to campus. So there's a frequent interaction but it makes a difference. You're gonna see the governor here? I would hope so. Yes, hopefully we will. A lot of his staff have been coming through and so I'm sure that- Well one of them is an alum, right? Joey Freeman is one of his senior legislative staff. Anna Leary is his chief of staff, is also an alum. I mean there's a lot of them so it's great. I think we have at least 150 legislative staff who are alums in the legislature. We have the most members who are alumni, actually with 15 members. So yeah, even more than UCLA or anyone else. All right. Sorry. We're gonna turn to town gown but just to remind if folks have questions now that have come to mind once we started talking, again fill out your cards, hold them up and we'll scoop them up as we go. So let's turn to town gown. A lot of people here as the chancellor was signaling her intentions to develop People's Park just was like, oh my God, she's grabbing the third rail. It's Armageddon, it's gonna be a disaster. And the announcement was made and not that much, I mean some opposition but very different than what people anticipated. What do you think's happening? What does that say about what's happening in town in terms of the town gown relationship, in terms of the relationship with the mayor, sort of kind of weigh in on that whole phenomenon that I think surprised a lot of long-time residents here. Wow, you just went right for it. Yeah, People's Park. I was surprised somewhat also that it's been difficult to get leadership here to wanna take that on. I mean it's a, we've been talking about it for many years and the need to really clean it up because it's not the best use of the space, frankly. And we've had a lot of difficult issues around the park. So I was thrilled when the chancellor said that she thought this was the time to take it on and it really is the urgency of the moment in needing to have more housing and that the city embraced that with us as well. I think one of the biggest reasons why this has been at least so far, people are not protesting in the streets about it, not yet, is that the chancellor really made a strong commitment to address the issue of homelessness. And so she actually hired someone, a social worker to be in the park and partnered with the city on trying to figure out how we can solve this problem together rather than just, okay, we're gonna fence it and on off we go. And so making that commitment to have supportive housing on site for long-term homeless and some kind of a memorial to the park, we won't forget its history. But I think that's been key to why we've had the response thus far. So that's an area where the city and the campus seem to be collaborating effectively. What do you think are some of the existing or perhaps future potential friction points? Because obviously our interests and our objectives are not identical. And I think that's true for every university in every town within which they're situated. So what do you see? What's on the horizon? What are the issues that your office is sort of looking at right now to get ahead of that curve? Yes, great point. I mean, historically, town gown campuses that are located in big cities have this natural tension of what the impact of the campus is on the local community. As many of you may know, we did have a lawsuit with the city the last time we went through our long range development planning process. And so we could have another lawsuit this time. I think the campus has significantly grown in population. But we have done a lot of work to mitigate many of those impacts. So even on the things like the carbon footprint or transportation and parking issues, we've tried very hard and I think have actually have some recent data that shows that our impact is not what we thought it would be, even 15 years ago. So it's less than what we thought initially. And so even though the population has grown, I think that there will be conversations about other impacts that are not recognized as part of the formal CEQA process, which is what we have to comply with. But I think having these conversations with the city now is really what the chancellor has been trying to do and outreach with the mayor's office to understand community's concerns, find areas where we can collaborate and partner and try to address those up front this time. I mean, again, it's a long process. We'll be taking a lot of feedback from the community, but this chancellor's been ready and willing to have those conversations. Let's move into Washington DC for just a little bit. How have things changed in this administration? I don't wanna start a whole political conversation here, but came in with stated intentions to cut federal support for research and I thought there was a lot of concern across the higher education sector. That seems not to have played out as per the administration's initial statements, or maybe it has, or maybe it's just an abeyance. From a higher education and UC Berkeley perspective, what's happened in Washington in the last couple of years? So yes, the president's budget like it has just been announced recently, proposed lots of cuts and the Congress, for the most part, walked those cuts back. Even things like the National Endowment for the Arts was on the chopping block and that got walked back. I think that the reality for us is that we have very strong coalitions that we work with nationally to advocate for things like science and tech policy and financial aid obviously is an issue that we have a lot of folks that will weigh in and advocate heavily for. So the reality of the day to day is that when we hear about things being proposed, we send lots of folks up to make our case and again, work with the National Association to put out our messages and just work those members one at a time. We try to partner with higher education institutions in red states, for example, and go to those members who are on key committees to make our case. And so for the most part, I think, other than this most recent round of pretty significant cuts to the science budgets, we've been okay. I think the Higher Education Act, if they move forward on that reauthorization will be interesting given the dynamic where they're always trying to make some modifications with student aid issues will be something we'll have to really pay attention to. And of course, we hoped the DREAM Act would get enacted and that continues to be something where pretty bipartisan, there was a lot of bipartisan support for that. And so we're hoping that that can continue to be possible. Do you see Congress continuing to be a counterbalance to perhaps some of the administration's desires? Is that gonna? Oh, definitely, yeah. And with the Democrats now in control of the House, that's obviously gonna shift the dynamic here. It's hard to say. It sounds like there are certainly a lot of Democrats who really wanna continue down this sort of investigations path of the president. Some even talking about impeachment, but Nancy Pelosi's been pretty clear about how she doesn't wanna go down that path. So it's hard to see, I would imagine that we're gonna be back to gridlock again on a lot of issues. But there are ways to come together with the Republican leadership to, again, I think advance issues of importance to the country, particularly in scientific innovation that we can come together on those. Yeah, a couple of questions on our related front. So this one is, and I think you answered the first part, does your office engage in lobbying for increased federal funding? But the second part here is how can centers, and I'm assuming research centers and institutes on campus and individuals be involved with that advocacy? And also asking how your office works with the vice chancellor research's office that also engages with Washington. So how can all of us be involved? Is there some role and also how do you integrate in your efforts with other parts of the campus that have a big skin in the federal game? Right, so first of all, technically we don't lobby. We're not registered federal lobbyists, our campus, and there is a slight difference. We advocate on behalf of the campus for increased funding, but our campus does not take a position on a bill or the way traditional lobbying works. So it's very similar, but we call it advocacy. Our office works very closely with the vice chancellor for research on connecting with agencies to increase funding and also to work with faculty who wanna visit the hill, for example. So centers, people who want to advocate for increased funding for their projects, our office works very closely with them. Because we're small, we sort of sit down with folks and talk through what they really need, what the likelihood of success would be for what they're asking for and kind of do a little bit of a political matrix of assessment around what they're asking for. But generally speaking, we're here to help, we're here to help them connect even if we don't have bandwidth to take them ourselves, we can work with actually the office of the UC's federal relations office in DC can often jump in and help to staff people or give them information and help connect them on the hill. So we're here as a resource and frequently do take people around and help them get funding. So another one from the audience here. Can you elaborate on your current policy or advocacy efforts on immigration issues for international students, scholars, or faculty, staff, and also DACA? This person is interested in your or your office's current priorities for these groups. And again, I understand these groups to be dreamers as they're called, international students, scholars and employees around immigration. So that's a big field, but maybe are you involved, is your office involved with this? Is the UC? What are we doing? UC is very involved. It's been at the top of their priority list for some years. Our office is also very involved. Again, we have been educating our legislators about the needs of our DACA students and the importance of our international community and our international students. We work closely with congressional folks often on visa issues. When we have people in our community who are having problems with their visa. So we provide a lot of information. We do advocate for these bills on a regular basis. And so yeah, we're very engaged and it continues to be a top priority of UC overall. The other, another federal question, it's a good one is sort of a question of is it become harder to advocate for just sort of basic research? And they're interested in the language you might use when you argue for basic research. Yes, this is one of the issues that I was alluding to between the Democrats and the Republicans and how they view basic research. The data shows that the Republicans don't respond as well to basic research, but they do respond to medical research or health research. So we take the lead again from Vice Chancellor for Research on what their top priorities are for us. It guides the kind of issues and efforts that we get involved in on that side of things, but yes, the language does matter and yes, we tailor our messages to different audiences because we wanna educate them about what this means for them no matter where they fall on the political spectrum because we think it is important for everyone to support this kind of activity. And here's a more targeted question. It says, can you address whatever you might be doing around cannabis or CBD research and the extent to which we might be seeking or be interested in federal estate funding? This person says it seems like a significant part of the California economy right now. So anything like that on your radar? You know, the issue has come up. I believe we do have cannabis research going on on our campus. It hasn't been something that I've directly been involved in. Maybe my staff have had some connections with them to educate our legislators about what we're doing with cannabis research. It's probably the extent of it at the moment that I know of, but I haven't been intimately involved with that. Got it. We're gonna swing back to the state side for probably the last few questions here. This is an interesting question. Do you think there's any chance that Proposition 209 and that's the proposition for those of you who don't know precludes the campus from looking at ethnicity among other things when it comes to admissions and I think hiring practices as well. So this person asked, do you think there's any chance that Prop 209 might ever get reversed? That's an interesting question. I would say there were about maybe five or six years ago, there were a lot of efforts around this, working with different constituencies to really push to get this overturned. I think the reality of how UC does admissions right now, most of the other campuses have followed Berkeley's lead in doing this very comprehensive approach to admissions where we don't just look at one thing and it's a holistic approach. I think we have 14 criteria we look at and so we're really kind of moving away from that mentality, I think. And so I feel like the admissions, we're gonna have a lot of scrutiny on admissions process given the whole admissions scandal going on and so we have state audits happening, we have our own internal audits happening, there's legislation. So there's gonna be a lot of oversight over our admissions policy, but I think it's pretty solid right now in that it includes a lot of different factors, not just race. Yeah. We're only gonna have time for a few more so I see some people who are writing on cards and probably won't be able to get to it so we only have a few more minutes, but we'll try. Sorry, just for a second, this one. So I'm gonna hop back to the federal side. Actually, I meant to ask it before and this person is asking about your office's involvement in the whole foreign influence and research conversation. For those of you who may not be aware have had a lot of interaction with federal agencies about support or contributions from foreign companies, particularly China and scholars from China and faculty who are involved in China, there's a lot of energy around that right now. And so this person is asking, this person notes the Department of Energy recently released memos potentially restricting researchers receiving funds. I guess this has to do with, again, interactions or collaborations with China or with Chinese researchers or Chinese entities. What's going on with that? How would you assess the situation? Are we, is it peaking? Is there more to come? And what kind of involvement does your office have? So there is a lot of work being done on this in Washington. There are, I think, at least eight congressional committees between the House and the Senate looking at the issues around foreign influence. It continues to be a topic of great interest to them. There are, I think, inquiries going on even with the National Science Foundation, NIH, around existing grants and they're reaching into universities and asking all sorts of questions. Our campus is part of a pilot project with Department of Defense looking into some of these issues and how we can balance the federal oversight with privacy issues and for our researchers and our students and faculty. So it's a hot topic. We're engaged, again, with the UC System on this. The UC System had two different Tiger teams on internationalization and foreign influence looking at these and there is a committee on our campus co-chaired by Randy Katz and Lisa Alvarez Cohen who are looking at all the implications for our campus. So yes, we're engaged in it and it'll be, I think, going on for some time. So what's the university's stance? Is it like, nah, there's nothing to worry about here. This is just another red scare or, oh my God, yes, we're freaking out or somewhere in the middle there's some legitimacy to these concerns. What's our stance as the UC or Berkeley or wherever you wanna put it about all this? Well, we're taking it very seriously. I mean, there were indictments around the Huawei partnerships and so Vice Chancellor Katz has been actively involved in that and stopped our current engagements with Huawei. Actually, future. Future, yes, right, suspended future, thank you. So it's not a nothing and it's not a hair and fire. I think we're walking this line of how we need to be responsive, clearly to the government's interests but also be responsive to our faculty and our researchers and our students who come from other countries and have a right to be here. So here's another interesting question. You mentioned in the beginning that you had a small, the elite eight but somebody asked a good question. So if you had more people, would it help? I mean, what's, what's? Yes. No. Who got paid off here? I mean, in other words, if you had more people, what else would you be doing if you could? What, what there is being, is being left unaddressed? It's being left unaddressed. Well, look, what we have to do with the smaller team is just scale back the amount of work that we can do on any topic. I mean, we tend to be people who have to deal with a lot of different things and so we were kind of a mile wide and an inch deep although we build up expertise in particular issues as needed. But there's so much going on at the federal government and at the state government that, I mean, let's just take local just given what we have on our plate for this housing strategy and all the work with the community. We used to have four people in our office doing community relations that we now have two, one and a half or two. So it's just limits the amount of effort that you can give to these issues and it's a lot, a lot to juggle. So I think we could be advancing more of our interest particularly in Washington and in the state and then locally if we have more. So this is gonna lead to what is the last question and you addressed it partially before but I really wanna come back to it because it's something that I think we hear a lot and particularly in the context of the fact that perhaps you don't have the size staff that in a perfect world you might have and the question is what kind of institutional mechanisms or support can students leverage to get involved? And I just to really talk about that student angle besides just writing to their congressman, are there effective beneficial avenues that students who wanna advocate and get engaged can access? So first of all, I'll just do a quick pitch for UCAN which is the UC's Advocacy Network. Everybody can sign up for that. The notifications and the work that's done through the UCAN network gives people a lot of information about what's going on, tells you ways you can get involved. From our office's perspective, we partner with students and student leadership in particular to not just send letters or make phone calls but we engage with them in actually visiting legislators' offices. The chancellor has actually brought students with her on her visits to the Capitol and so they're an important voice and we just had our UC Berkeley Day in Sacramento where we brought two different teams with alumni and the chancellor and a regent as well as students. So we try to include them because they are a critical voice for us, so it's good. Super. So before I thank Chris formally, just to note that the next campus conversation will be on May 13th with none other than chancellor Chris and executive vice chancellor and provost Paul Alavisados and that'll be in here. We're gonna have it here, so look forward to seeing all of you then and otherwise Chris, I wanna thank you for walking that tightrope really, really well today and for all the work that you guys do. Thank you. Thanks for having me.