UC Berkeley Press Release

UC Berkeley names two new deans

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 14 June 2004

BERKELEY – A distinguished chemist with many years on the faculty and a sociologist who is an expert in East Asian studies have been named as new deans at the University of California, Berkeley, campus by Chancellor Robert Berdahl.

Charles B. Harris

Charles B. Harris, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, will become dean of the College of Chemistry, effective July 1, 2005, and John Lie, professor of sociology, will be dean of International and Area Studies (IAS), effective July 1, 2004. Harris will replace Clayton Heathcock in chemistry, while Lie succeeds David Leonard in IAS.

"Both new deans are acclaimed in their fields and have a solid understanding of how to sustain excellence in those fields at Berkeley," said Chancellor Berdahl in announcing the appointments. "Charles Harris's 35 years on our faculty give him deep ties and an excellent perspective on the future of one of our most critical areas of science. John Lie is a recent addition to the faculty, bringing us an unmatched breadth of experience in international studies scholarship and programs. These are two terrific appointments for Berkeley."

John Lie

Lie, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, joined the UC Berkeley sociology faculty in 2003, following stints at the University of Oregon, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan. He holds the C. K. Cho Chair in Sociology, and chairs the campus's Center for Korean Studies, a unit of the Institute of East Asian Studies within IAS.

His research interests include social theory, political economy, and the Korean diaspora. Among his publications are the books Modern Peoplehood (Harvard University Press, 2004), Multiethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2001), and Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford University Press, 1998). Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots (which Lie co-authored with Nancy Abelmann) was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award in 1995.

Harris, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been on the chemistry faculty since 1967. The author of more than 200 papers, he is the Joel H. Hildebrand Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He is also a Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Harris is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received many other honors, including Alfred P. Sloan and Alexander van Humboldt fellowships and appointment as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition, he is the former associate director for Energy Sciences and director of Chemical Sciences at LBNL.

David Leonard, dean of IAS since 1999, will return to full-time teaching and research in political science at UC Berkeley, where he has taught since 1975. He calls Lie "a brilliant scholar of exceptional and proven administrative ability. I am delighted to be leaving the IAS division in such excellent hands."

Heathcock, dean of chemistry for five years, lauds Harris's goal of building a materials chemistry group, calling it "an obvious but difficult direction for the college to head in." Because Harris has been chair of the chemistry department for only one year, Heathcock has agreed to remain as dean until July 2005.