Over the past year, higher education in the United States has come under attack. The Trump administration and its political allies have initiated an overwhelming assault on research funding, free speech, international student representation and administrative freedom in an attempt to redefine the traditional notion of an “American” university.

While Columbia fell to federal scrutiny and Harvard faced increasing pressures in what may be a yearslong legal struggle, the University of California appeared intact.

The UC Board of Regents, tasked with overseeing the security and survival of the state’s ten campuses representing 560,000 students and staff, initiated a tactic of strategic appeasement as the Trump administration proved its willingness to attack higher education in the U.S.

First went mandatory diversity statements in recruitment, then a systemwide hiring freeze and maintenance delays. Pressure from the state legislature saw an overhaul of time, place and manner regulations following the contentious handling of campus Free Palestine Encampments in 2024.

While UC campuses remained seemingly immune from direct federal attacks, disregarding the widespread elimination of research grants across the country, the concessions made by the Regents seemed, at the very least, effective.

Then, on July 27, UCLA was hit as Trump froze over $500 million in federally administered grants. The government demanded immediate institutional oversight and a payout of $1 billion.

Preemptive appeasement was no longer a viable option. However, the Regents have offered little transparency during prolonged negotiations with the federal government, as recently leaked letters from UC President J.B. Milliken to the California legislature suggest UCLA was only the start.

Milliken, the ex-Texas chancellor who joined the UC in August, offered a harrowing warning to the State in what appears to be a desperate plea for emergency resources in the likely event of a systemwide funding slash.

“I hope my message to all was clear: the stakes are high, and the risks are very real,” Milliken wrote in the letter. “It is hard to conceive of a more damaging consequence for our state.”

As the UC now faces what Milliken called “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history,” I spoke to Chancellor Rich Lyons and student body President Abigail Verino to investigate what powers UC Berkeley leaders hold as the stakes keep rising.

As the leader of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate student population, Verino won her seat in last year’s ASUC election by more than 20 points, bolstered by the support of a wide coalition of community groups and advocacy organizations.

UC Berkeley’s ASUC holds a special power in the UC system. In 1977, the UC Berkeley student government was granted independence as a nonprofit organization by the Regents.

Two years later, Lyons, a Bay Area local, entered his first year as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Our now-chancellor graduated from the Haas School of Business in 1982 before finding his way back to the school after a career on Wall Street. Lyons climbed the ranks as a professor and eventual dean almost 30 years later.

In 2024, Lyons was appointed UC Berkeley chancellor at a time when university headhunters began to favor uncontroversial leaders amid the politically charged landscape of nationwide pro-Palestine encampments.

Lyons was the approachable suit that could steer UC Berkeley away from the tumult that sank university leadership at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia and UCLA as the federal government began to crack down on what it saw as “campus radicalism.”

The incoming chancellor promised to uphold university policy, suggesting he would take a strong line against future encampments while protecting free expression.

Lyons said his vision of a public research institution is founded on UC Berkeley’s core values and “fundamental freedoms.” These, he said, include research, teaching and service; arguing individuals should see the university through its tangible mission.

“People get lost in phrases like ‘academic freedom’,” Lyons said. “It’s a very important phrase, but at the end of the day: can we research what we want to? How about freedom? Do we have the freedom to teach, learn and discover?”

As the Trump administration initiated the widespread elimination of research grants, banned funding requests relating to DEI, attacked international student immigration and imprisoned student protesters affiliated with the pro-Palestine movement, I asked Lyons if we still have these “fundamental freedoms.”

“I think we have a lot of those freedoms,” Lyons said. “Federal funding is drying up for certain things in this world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask the question.”

For Lyons, the “question” alludes to a matter of censorship. He said his administration may not be able to support all inquiries financially, but he insists that students and staff will never be told that there are “unacceptable questions.”

While the chancellor is often seen as the final arbiter of campus policy, Lyons admitted his discretion is not unlimited. For example, when the UC Office of the President, or UCOP, announced its hiring freeze and widespread maintenance deferral policy, Lyons was not consulted.

These blanket policy decisions make it difficult for campus administrators to plan ahead. When I spoke to UC Berkeley’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin last spring, he expressed frustration with UCOP’s universal decision to postpone planned maintenance.

“One of the things we just cannot do anymore is defer maintenance; that’s really going to come back to bite us,” Hermalin said. “One of the biggest complaints that you’ll hear from many faculty and others is just the poor condition of our facilities at this time. That’s just really gotten to a kind of crisis level.”

While Lyons claims that such unilateral moves by the UC are “rare,” he said campus chancellors generally don’t interact directly with the Regents. Instead, the UC President acts as a go-between, leading to situations in which chancellors operate unaware of conversations occurring two levels above them.

As such, Lyons is placed in a precarious situation. In the face of federal attacks across the UC system, UC Berkeley is ultimately unable to respond of its own accord. Instead, its survival is entrusted to the 26 Regents and the Office of the President, neither of which is directly accountable to students and staff.

“There are situations where UCOP will make a decision, like right now, for example, with what’s going to happen with UCLA, where we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lyons said. “I literally don’t have the details about exactly where that discussion with (UCLA and) the Department of Justice is going.”

Despite his best intentions, Lyons cannot be the champion of student demands. This role implicitly falls on Verino as the leader of the UC’s only independent student government.

UC faculty, administrators and leaders are bound by the policy positions and decrees made by UCOP. The ASUC is well aware of this entrenched bureaucracy.

“The Chancellor’s responsibility is the campus and my responsibility is the students,” Verino said. “Even if (the student voice) doesn’t align with how (the administration) sees the university, as long as I’m putting forward what I hear in my classrooms or walking through the halls, that’s how I know I’m doing my role.”

Verino calls herself an activist and said she became politically engaged following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the subsequent social movement. She said her ASUC will be responsive to the student body, but the question remains: What can the ASUC actually do?

The answer, Verino said, is resolutions.

ASUC resolutions are statements of opinion and intent. In ASUC governing documents, these resolutions cannot be censored by the campus administration and act as the voice of the undergraduate population. However, resolutions are largely rhetorical as campus administration is not bound to act on them, which limits the ASUC’s power in internal governance.

While the Trump administration increases campus scrutiny and UCOP expands unilateral decision-making, many campus students have expressed frustration with their government’s lack of tangible action.

One point of contention came this summer after former UC President Michael Drake emphasized a policy stating student governments could not financially boycott any particular nation. Both the ASUC and Graduate Assembly, or GA, had previously passed resolutions calling for divestment from Israel.

When asked if she would continue to pursue divestment of the ASUC’s funds from Israel despite the UCOP policy, Verino said she would not.

“Resolutions and statement writing are the only things we can do right now,” Verino said, explaining that any further action may be seen as a provocation to the Regents. “At the end of the day, the UC Regents can revoke our status as a nonprofit organization.”

While Verino said neither UCOP nor the Regents has threatened to revoke the ASUC’s non-profit status, she said they want to be “proactive” as the UC has offered little transparency in its decision-making and the ASUC should not “poke the bear.”

What such provocation may look like is still unclear. While the ASUC is heralded as UC Berkeley’s “independent” student government, its internal structure suggests otherwise.

In 1996, the ASUC went bankrupt, resulting in an overhaul of its financial architecture in a deal with campus administration.

The agreement stipulates that the ASUC’s budget and accounting are controlled by university-funded staff. If the ASUC wants to use its student-originated funds, it must request disbursement from campus.

As university employees currently control its funds, the ASUC would need to alter its structure if it wanted full autonomy over its finances.

However, this does not appear to be something Verino wants to pursue. When asked what the ASUC’s greatest lever of power would be in the event of a crackdown by UCOP or the federal government, Verino cited her “strong” relationship with campus administrators.

This relationship, Verino said, is essential to her defense strategy against incoming federal attacks. When asked how she reconciles aligning the ASUC with a campus administration that may not be responsive to student demands, Verino said it’s a necessary compromise.

“The best way I could see (our defense) is compromise, and also aligning myself with how the Chancellor may want to approach it,” Verino said.

Verino repeatedly sang Lyons’ praises, referencing his stated altruism and vision for UC Berkeley. Verino said she wanted to be a “realist,” pointing to the resources and strength of the UC Berkeley administration as a necessary ally in these trying times.

Nevertheless, recent campus actions have highlighted the distance between its promises to students and its bureaucratic obligation to the UC higher powers.

In early September, UC Berkeley administrators sent an email to more than 150 students and staff to inform them that their personal information had been shared with the Trump administration. Campus spokespeople claimed this disclosure was a legal obligation as UCOP had directed UC Berkeley to comply with a federal investigation into campus antisemitism.

Despite the stated reasoning, students and staff called this act a “betrayal” and said the university should have fought the request. If Verino claims the ASUC’s greatest powers lie in its connection to campus, what can they do when that administration delivers student information to the federal government?

Verino did not attempt to bluff — the ASUC’s power is limited, and her cards are not winning. Lyons, to his credit, is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He should be able to speak up for students, but the Regents can trump all his moves.

The larger question now was one posed by a UC Berkeley student during the Free Speech Movement when students levied accusations of corruption against the regents. In 1965, Marvin Garson published “The Regents”, an analysis of Regential makeup and purpose. In his concluding paragraphs, Garson presented a pressing question that is of equal importance today: To whom are the Regents responsible?

Below, I will insert an abridged section of his findings:

“In fact, the Regents cannot help feeling responsible to the huge private corporations that dominate-indeed, constitute the economy of the state of California. In their minds, this is not corruption or prostitution; they cannot see that things could or should be any other way. Big business they call “industry,” and “industry” is society.

Shouldn’t the Board of Regents and their University be at the service of society? The corporations do not merely buy the University’s products and hire its graduates; they reproduce in the heart of the University itself their own bureaucratic power system, their own goals and values.

The University’s power structure is explicitly modeled after that of the corporation. We have a Board with final and total authority; a President and Chancellors responsible only to it; and a mass of students and faculty with no rights except those they can extort by the threat of direct action.”

While the Regents are no longer exclusively composed of corporate executives, current members include top industry professionals in banking, consulting, entertainment, real estate, lobbying and public health.

Lyons will champion the strengths of his campus, but may not be able to defend students when the Trump administration comes knocking. When I asked Lyons how he deals with the challenges of working under UCOP and the Regents, he said sometimes he contests their rulings, but understands his power is limited.

“Sometimes I speak up and I’m really firm about it,” Lyons said. “I don't do that often, but I do that when I feel like, ‘look, sorry, this is a really big deal.’ I think that's kind of the best that I can do.”

UC Berkeley’s so-called autonomous student government was created in order to give campus students the power to advocate for themselves in a time of persecution and calamity. Throughout the past 25 years, financial pressures have put these powers on a leash.

Verino’s leadership is grounded in her connection to the community. Few ASUC leaders in the history of the organization have faced challenges at the scale she does today. Historically, these leaders have risen to the occasion, securing the freedom and autonomy the ASUC enjoys today and pushing the envelope on social issues that have defined UC Berkeley.

“Despite all the fear-mongering tactics the federal administration has implemented, at the end of the day, we are student activists,” Verino said. “If push comes to shove, we will respond in the way that puts students and their experiences first.”