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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amid the chaos, Lyons took questions from The Daily Californian on student housing, federal restrictions on international students and his newfound mustache.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s suggestion while the two were traveling.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter is 23, and I was with her on vacation. We were traveling and she said, \u2018you know, a lot of the young people are wearing just the \u2018stache and not the beard,\u2019\u201d Lyons said. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018Would you allow me to shave it off?\u2019 And so she shaved it off for me, and we had so much fun doing it \u2026 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lyons is entering his third academic year as chancellor, during which campus has faced protests, federal funding cuts and multiple investigations \u2014 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\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when student leadership needs to talk to me, I\u2019ve always tried to make room for that,\u201d Lyons said. \u201cThere’s some things that I can\u2019t talk about in the wider angle, where we\u2019ve been protecting students in ways that we can\u2019t 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\u2019t really say much more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 a program that allows international students to work and gain practical experience off campus either for degree requirements or for course credit \u2014 after ICE sent a letter to nearly all American colleges and universities threatening officials who improperly authorize training applications.<\/p>\n
In July, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will be enforcing a new regulation that will limit international students\u2019 stay to just four years; students whose programs require more time must apply for a federal exception.<\/p>\n
Lyons said he was not ready to speak on the new restrictions because certain details are still \u201cin flux.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the one thing I do want to say is my field is international. I\u2019m an economist, but I\u2019m an international economist, so \u2018international\u2019 is a really big deal for me,\u201d Lyons said. \u201cAnd Berkeley\u2019s 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\u2019ve been attracting, graduate and undergraduate. So keeping Berkeley internationally connected is a top priority for me, and I promise you that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Park housing site slated to open fall 2027.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Lyons said keeping student housing affordable is \u201cabsolutely critical,\u201d explaining that it comes down to how much outside money UC Berkeley can get to support housing projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we get public funding, we\u2019re able to charge less when we offer it to the students,\u201d Lyons said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons greeted incoming students moving into campus dorms Monday afternoon as families rushed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[32158,173163,111887,173162,143,145,144,11650,3020,52369,149],"class_list":["post-436233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-international-office","tag-course-credit-curricular-practical-training","tag-daily-californian","tag-judith-e-heumann-house","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-peoples-park","tag-president-trump","tag-rich-lyons","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}