Political Science Chair Scott Straus was featured in an article in The New York Times titled, "U.C. Berkeley Will Start Institute Named for Pelosi."
The University of California, Berkeley, will open an institute named for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who rose to become the first woman to lead the House and one of President Trump’s most ferocious adversaries.
Campus officials are billing the institute as a nonpartisan, academically rigorous operation focused on the tending of American democracy. But the announcement comes as the university faces extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration, which has spent months pelting the campus with investigations.
Ms. Pelosi’s new role at U.C. Berkeley, which will include teaching and fund-raising, may not tamp down the animosity. Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Trump have been frequent antagonists; she has described him as a “vile creature,” and he has called her an “evil woman.”
But the professors who approached Ms. Pelosi, who will leave office in January, said they were inspired, in part, by the former speaker’s stature and by organizations like Harvard’s Institute of Politics, a decades-old haven for debates about campaigns and public policy.
“We really want to emphasize leadership in public service for students to be able to be better advocates for the causes they believe in, whatever those are,” said Scott Straus, the chair of Berkeley’s political science department.