Carla Hesse

UC Berkeley professor of sociology and South and Southeast Asian studies Raka Ray was appointed Friday as the next dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science.

The campus announced Monday that Carla Hesse, executive dean of the College of Letters & Sciences, or L&S, and dean of Social Sciences, will be stepping down from both positions at the end of next summer.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced the appointment of campus linguistics professor Sharon Inkelas to serve as the Special Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor on Sexual Violence/Sexual Harassment in an email sent to campus Friday evening.

UC Berkeley’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library recently acquired film historian Paul Fonoroff’s rare Chinese film studies collection, making UC Berkeley the home of the largest collection of Chinese film archives in North America.

In a report released Jan. 31, the Chancellor’s Senate/Administration Committee on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment recommended improving sexual assault education and data collection in an effort to reduce sexual assault on campus.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced in a campuswide email Tuesday that the campus has begun searching for a permanent campus lead on sexual violence and sexual harassment.

UC Berkeley’s latest attempt to address the campus’s convoluted sexual misconduct adjudication process is a new campus peer review panel — a solution that arrives one month after the panel's previously announced deadline.

At the ASUC Senate's regular meeting Wednesday, UC Berkeley administrators addressed developments in the campus’s approach to sexual violence and harassment cases, and the senate took steps toward the creation of an ASUC Intimate Partner Violence Commission.

Hesse said she hopes to announce the membership of a UC Berkeley peer review committee next month — independent of the systemwide committee announced by Napolitano in March — which would serve as "a confidential panel of peers” to advise the chancellor on proposed sanctions for sexual assault and harassment on campus.

On Monday, Carla Hesse, executive dean of the College of Letters and Science, rescinded her suspension of the controversial DeCal course previously titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis.”