Nicholas B. Dirks will resign as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, the university announced Tuesday evening. He will step down after his successor has taken office.
Mr. Dirks, 66, has confronted an array of controversies since becoming chancellor three years ago. Most prominently, the California flagship has been accused of not doing enough to deal with professors accused of sexual harassment. In March the UC system’s president, Janet Napolitano, told chancellors that they had to adopt a tougher response to such allegations, and Mr. Dirks outlined steps that the university said it was taking to strengthen prevention efforts and to respond to complaints more quickly.
Ms. Napolitano said in a written statement that she had accepted Mr. Dirks’s resignation with “deep appreciation” for his efforts on the university’s behalf.
Berkeley has also recently acknowledged that it faces significant financial challenges, in the form of a $150-million budget deficit. In February, Mr. Dirks said that a “new normal” had prompted the university to consider making major structural changes in order to shore up its finances.
The Los Angeles Times reported last month that Mr. Dirks himself was facing an investigation after a whistle-blower complaint alleged that he had employed a campus fitness trainer without payment, among other things.
“Over the summer I have come to the personal decision that the time is right for me to step aside and allow someone else to take up the financial and institutional challenges ahead of us,” Mr. Dirks said in a message to the campus. He said he was proud of efforts such as Berkeley’s work to improve the undergraduate experience, to strengthen opportunities for interdisciplinary research, and to improve its fund raising.
He added that Berkeley’s most important challenge was finding a way to put the university on sound financial footing at a time of “significantly diminished” state support.
“While we have made important progress, substantially reducing our deficit for the coming year and developing a plan to balance the budget over the subsequent two to three years, there remains much work, and many difficult decisions ahead of us,” he said. “We need fresh approaches and new ideas as Berkeley forges a path to maintain its excellence along with its full commitment to a public mission in the current funding environment.”
News of Mr. Dirks’s plan to step down emerged just a week after another leader in the UC system, Linda P.B. Katehi, resigned as chancellor of the Davis campus. Ms. Katehi had fought publicly with Ms. Napolitano over allegations related to her service on corporate boards, her family members’ employment, and efforts to improve Davis’s image in the wake of the university’s infamous pepper-spray incident.