Carol Christ was the 11th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. Christ received her B.A. (1966) from Douglass College, and her M.Ph. (1969) and Ph.D. (1970) from Yale University. Her term as Chancellor started on July 1, 2017. Prior to serving as Chancellor, Christ spent much of her career at UC Berkeley. She joined the English Department in 1970, and rose through the ranks to serve as Chair of the English department, Dean of the Division of Humanities, and Provost for the College of Letters and Science. Christ’s academic contributions have included two books, The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry (1975) and Victorian and Modern Poetics (1994). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Christ was appointed as UC Berkeley’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost from 1994 until 2000. In this role, she worked tirelessly to maintain Berkeley’s academic and intellectual tradition. She also undertook major initiatives in areas including neuroscience and bioengineering.
In 2002, Christ left Berkeley to serve as president of Smith College, one of the country’s most distinguished liberal arts colleges. At Smith, she led a strategic rethinking of its academic programs. She stepped down from her role at Smith in 2013. In 2015, Christ returned to Berkeley to direct the campus’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, and was appointed interim executive vice chancellor and provost in April 2016 before being named chancellor in March 2017.
Since her appointment as Chancellor, Christ has been a highly effective leader. While no campus leader is ever likely to garner unanimous support on every issue, Christ is nevertheless widely admired by the Faculty for her steady hand navigating the numerous crises the campus has faced during her tenure as Chancellor, including ongoing financial challenges, People’s Park, and the global COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, despite constant short-term challenges, Christ has managed to keep her eyes on the horizon and has set in place a vision for Berkeley’s future. She has worked to foster community and improve the campus climate for people of all backgrounds, celebrate the institution's longstanding commitment to free speech, strengthen Berkeley's financial position, address a housing shortage, and develop a ten-year strategic plan for the campus.
Christ led one of the largest capital campaigns launched by any public or private U.S. university — UC Berkeley’s Light the Way: The Campaign for Berkeley. Its ambitious $6 billion goal was vastly surpassed, with more than $7.37 billion raised — the largest total in history for any public university and for any university without a medical school. Christ retired as Chancellor on June 30, 2024.
