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California Today

Meet the New Leader of the University of California

Wednesday: Michael V. Drake is the first Black president in the 152-year history of the U.C. system.

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The nearly deserted campus of the University of California, Davis, last month.Credit...Tommy Ly for The New York Times

Good morning.

(This article is part of the California Today newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.)

First, here’s a dispatch from Shawn Hubler, about a new chapter for the University of California system:

At a moment of historic challenge, the University of California has a historic new leader.

Michael V. Drake, who previously led Ohio State University and the University of California, Irvine, was named Tuesday by the Board of Regents as the 21st president of the U.C. system. He is the first Black president of the 152-year-old public university.

A physician, seasoned administrator and longtime champion of access and inclusion, Dr. Drake, who turns 70 this week, succeeds Janet Napolitano amid the pandemic, financial distress and sweeping social unrest. Having stepped down just last month as the head of Ohio State, where he drew $1.2 million in compensation, he will now helm a sprawling 10-campus system whose budget has been slashed in anticipation of a brutal recession and whose students, most of them nonwhite, have been rocked by racial reckoning and scattered by the coronavirus.

“It’s an awful time,” Dr. Drake agreed in a Zoom interview Tuesday evening. In fact, he said, he and his wife, Brenda Drake, a lawyer, had planned “something easier for this phase.” But the U.C. job, which pays $890,000, also brings him back to the system where he earned his medical degree and served as a faculty member and administrator for three decades.

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Michael V. DrakeCredit...University of California

“The awfulness is also compelling,” he said. “I just believe it’s a time to be engaged, and if there’s a way to help, to lean in and try to help.” In remarks after the board’s vote, Dr. Drake said that he was “excited to be rejoining my U.C. family.”

[Read about what Ms. Napolitano thinks the U.C. will be like in the fall.]

The U.C. system enrolls some 285,000 students, includes five medical centers and three national laboratories, and is the third largest employer in California. Its nearly $40 billion operating budget rivals that of the state of Illinois.

Like most universities, it also is now facing potentially devastating financial and operational challenges as state funds have been cut and students weigh the cost of tuition against benefits of mostly remote instruction. Its undergraduate campuses, which admit the top 12.5 percent of California high school seniors, also are struggling with intensifying demands to increase admissions among Black and Latino students.

Earlier this year, the regents voted to phase the SAT and ACT out of the university’s formula for admission, and to support a November ballot measure that would end the state’s ban on affirmative action in university admissions. Among the 29 criteria for the next president settled upon by faculty, staff, students and alumni were an understanding of academia and a record of promoting inclusion, equity and diversity.

In an interview last month, Ms. Napolitano also emphasized the managerial complexity of the U.C. president’s job, which is more like running a conglomerate than heading a single academic institution. “I think the U.C. needs a strong leader who can balance centralized leadership with the desire of campuses to act independently,” she said. “Sort of like the federal government and the states.”

[U.C. Merced recently introduced its next chancellor. Read about him here.]

Dr. Drake led Ohio State for six years before stepping down June 30, but the bulk of his career has been at U.C. He spent nine years as chancellor at University of California, Irvine, and, before that, was the U.C. system’s vice chancellor for health affairs. He also taught for more than 20 years at the U.C.S.F. School of Medicine, where he was the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and senior associate dean.

At Ohio State, he set records for fund-raising, research spending, student diversity, retention and graduation. He also implemented a tuition guarantee to stabilize college costs for students, an idea that regents have been considering at U.C.

And he acquired two of the more intriguing side hustles on his CV, joining the boards of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, based in Ohio.

While he was at U.C. Irvine, undergraduate applicants nearly doubled, the graduation rate rose and the campus added schools of law and education and a joint degree in medicine and public health aimed at serving the Latino community.

He also tangled briefly but famously in 2007 with Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal law professor, after recruiting him to start the law school and then rescinding the offer. Amid national academic furor, Dr. Drake reconsidered, Mr. Chemerinsky became the dean, the dispute blew over and the two went on to teach a civil rights class together. On Tuesday, Mr. Chemerinsky, now the dean of the law school at U.C. Berkeley, expressed delight at Dr. Drake’s hiring.

“I think the U.C. needs someone who will be a strong advocate for it, and he is. I think the U.C. needs someone with real experience in higher education, which he has. And he’s also just a wise person with great judgment,” said Mr. Chemerinsky. “I’m thrilled.”

[See California’s coronavirus cases mapped by county.]


We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

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“I realized that I might be deported back to my home country,” said Loay Alem, 19, an engineering student from Saudi Arabia who attends the University of California, Los Angeles. “It was so absurd, so insane.”Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
  • The White House announced a new measure on Monday that would strip international college students of their visas if their coursework is entirely online. The move was met with widespread confusion and alarm from students and universities still scrambling to plan for the fall. [The New York Times]

  • Justin Levitt, an election scholar and associate dean at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, is tracking almost 130 pandemic-related election lawsuits. They will determine how easy, or how hard, it will be to cast a ballot. [The New York Times]

  • The state correction system’s top medical officer is being replaced amid devastating outbreaks at state prisons. [The Los Angeles Times]

If you missed it, the coronavirus arrived in San Quentin after busloads of prisoners were transferred from another facility where infections were rising. [The New York Times]

  • The Crews fire in the Gilroy area prompted evacuations, destroyed a home and ripped through thousands of acres. [Gilroy Dispatch]

  • In an abrupt about-face, the state approved Santa Clara County’s plan to reopen more quickly. [The Mercury News]

  • A San Diego woman has sued her former employer, saying she was fired because her children were making noise during business calls. The allegations highlight the ways the pandemic has made life even harder for mothers balancing jobs and child care. [The New York Times]

  • A family was celebrating a birthday at an upscale Carmel Valley restaurant. A tech C.E.O. hurled anti-Asian racist obscenities at them. One family member started taking video and a staff member quickly stepped in and told him to leave. [ABC7]

If you missed it, anti-Asian hate incidents have exploded this year. [The Los Angeles Times]

  • Thandie Newton has seen a lot over her decades in Hollywood. She shared some insights. [Vulture]

  • If you must be indoors, here’s how you can minimize your coronavirus risk. [The New York Times]


California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

Shawn Hubler is a California correspondent based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times in 2020 she spent nearly two decades covering the state for The Los Angeles Times as a roving reporter, columnist and magazine writer, and shared three Pulitzer Prizes won by the paper's Metro staff.  More about Shawn Hubler

Jill Cowan is the California Today correspondent, keeping tabs on the most important things happening in her home state every day. More about Jill Cowan

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