UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons greeted incoming students moving into campus dorms Monday afternoon as families rushed to get their recently minted Golden Bears settled.
Amid the chaos, Lyons took questions from The Daily Californian on student housing, federal restrictions on international students and his newfound mustache.
Lyons, who has rocked a beard at least since he began his term as chancellor in 2024, revealed his new mustache in an Instagram story Thursday. He said the change came at his daughter’s suggestion while the two were traveling.
“My daughter is 23, and I was with her on vacation. We were traveling and she said, ‘you know, a lot of the young people are wearing just the ‘stache and not the beard,’” Lyons said. “And she said, ‘Would you allow me to shave it off?’ And so she shaved it off for me, and we had so much fun doing it … it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. But I’d been wearing the beard for a long time. It was fun to make the change.”
Lyons is entering his third academic year as chancellor, during which campus has faced protests, federal funding cuts and multiple investigations — including one from the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. In 2024, he told the Daily Cal he wanted to be measured on three principles: transparency, engagement with the student body and protecting students’ rights.
The Daily Cal asked Lyons how he would uphold these commitments. Lyons said campus has been protecting students in ways he cannot speak about publicly.
“I think when student leadership needs to talk to me, I’ve always tried to make room for that,” Lyons said. “There’s some things that I can’t talk about in the wider angle, where we’ve been protecting students in ways that we can’t talk about publicly, but I think if people knew what I know about the kinds of things that we have done to protect students, their privacy and other elements, they would be excited that we are taking a firm stand. And I can’t really say much more than that.”
International students, meanwhile, have faced a wave of restrictions since President Donald Trump took office in 2025. Last week, the Berkeley International Office temporarily suspended all applications for Course Credit Curricular Practical Training — a program that allows international students to work and gain practical experience off campus either for degree requirements or for course credit — after ICE sent a letter to nearly all American colleges and universities threatening officials who improperly authorize training applications.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will be enforcing a new regulation that will limit international students’ stay to just four years; students whose programs require more time must apply for a federal exception.
Lyons said he was not ready to speak on the new restrictions because certain details are still “in flux.”
“I think the one thing I do want to say is my field is international. I’m an economist, but I’m an international economist, so ‘international’ is a really big deal for me,” Lyons said. “And Berkeley’s profile and its ability to draw talent from around the world is absolutely fundamental to what it is, both in terms of the quality of its faculty and the students that we’ve been attracting, graduate and undergraduate. So keeping Berkeley internationally connected is a top priority for me, and I promise you that.”
On housing, Lyons said UC Berkeley has been able to provide undergraduates two years of campus housing since October and credited Judith E. Heumann House, the 1,110-bed People’s Park housing site slated to open fall 2027.
Lyons also pointed to the Bancroft-Fulton project, a 23-story student housing project that officially started construction in March. He also said other sites for student housing are being discussed, but no new projects have been approved.
Lyons said keeping student housing affordable is “absolutely critical,” explaining that it comes down to how much outside money UC Berkeley can get to support housing projects.
“When we get public funding, we’re able to charge less when we offer it to the students,” Lyons said.