We will fail on each of these three dimensions unless we are inclusive and diverse, reflecting the richness of the great state we seek to serve. How so?

It is beyond serious dispute, I hope, that the leadership of tomorrow's California cannot reflect yesterday's demographics. That way lies disaster. In loftiest terms, we will have failed to produce a cadre of well-prepared people for the complex challenges of leading businesses, governments, civic organizations, classrooms, and communities. For our democracy and our economy to flourish with our inevitable pluralism, there cannot be a color line dividing the powerful and privileged from everyone else. If the engines of opportunity, like UC, fail to test and ultimately erase that line, our heirs will justly judge us harshly. In more prosaic terms, if UC isn't perceived as serving everyone, at least symbolically, then the elected representatives of excluded communities will eventually see little reason to support us.

And there's more. Most (but not all) academics also acknowledge that in many fields the highest "excellence" in learning and research requires exploiting the enriching opportunities made possible by diversity in its many senses. Among these senses, race, ethnicity, and gender are critical because of their enduring importance in societies around the world. Whether the subject is criminal law or poetry, Roman history or marketing, banking regulation or linguistics, diversity plays an increasingly important role in contributing to what our students learn from one another, what our scholars learn from one another, what we judge to be worthy of study, and whom we choose to see as "us," and not "them."

So inclusion is important not only for the university's civic role and financial survival but also for its academic quality in truth-seeking and its intellectual capacity to make enduring contributions and ensure that young men and women are competent for their day. We take in dreams and talent to produce truth and opportunity, so inclusion is vital.

If this is all true, then failure may well be upon us. Ten years ago this fall, the university's mission suffered a severe blow. California voters adopted Proposition 209, amending the state constitution to effectively eliminate most forms of race- and gender-sensitive voluntary affirmative action in the public sector. The ballot measure reinforced a July 1995 policy from the Regents, "SP-1," which similarly banned affirmative action in admissions. (The Regents reversed course in 2002, but it was only a gesture, because Prop. 209 controls.) The effects at Berkeley were most severe. Freshman representation of Latinos and African Americans decreased by 49 and 43 percent respectively from 1995 to 1998. The numbers, although somewhat recovered, remain discouraging on almost every campus.

It can be argued that the proximate cause of our problem is not Prop. 209 but the K-12 "pipeline." True, too few Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, Filipinos, and other underrepresented groups get opportunities and supports that generate academic credentials necessary for admission to the highly selective UC system. (Disadvantaged Asian and Pacific Islander subgroups aren't counted by UC as "underrepresented," but they should be.) But this begs two crucial questions.

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