On October 26 the GSPP community received official news from Dean Michael Nacht that he intends to step down after ten years as dean of our school. He will take a sabbatical for the academic year 2008-2009 and return in Fall 2009 to resume his full-time position at GSPP teaching and researching US national security policy and management of complex organizations.

Dean Nacht writes:

It has been a privilege and great pleasure to serve the School and UC Berkeley for the past decade, and I very much look forward to continuing as a member of the GSPP community.

I'm sure many of us, even the newcomers to GSPP, can testify to his wisdom, strength of character, and talent both at the front of the School and in front of a classroom.

To better know our Dean, read this 2003 interview with him from the Conversations with History series by the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies.

Here was his last question and answer in that interview:

How would you advise students to prepare for the future, in terms of their education, either at the University or elsewhere? We know you think they should get a degree from the Goldman School, but beyond that, what advice would you give them?

A couple of years ago we had Condoleezza Rice as our commencement speaker. She didn't speak at all about foreign policy. This was before the Bush campaign really got under way. She spoke about the role of the policy analyst, and she offered one bit of advice, which would be one of my two answers to your question, and that was, read things that you know you don't agree with. If you're a conservative, read The Nation. If you're a very liberal person, read the National Review or something. Educate yourself fully about the views of those you think you disagree with, because there are serious people with a lot of data and information and arguments on that side, and you'd better at least understand what they have to say, even if you don't support it. You'll need to do that to refute them, and you may wind up changing your mind. So that's one thing. In other words, cast your intellectual net widely. Just don't keep working the same areas, surrounding yourself with people who think the same, articulate the same, read the same publications, watch the same programs, and all that. That would be one.

The second thing is, just of a general nature, travel if you can. Travel widely. Travel outside the United States. See what real people think and how they live in different parts of the world. As I mentioned at the beginning of the program, I had not traveled. I traveled extensively in the United States, but had not traveled outside of the United States until I was an adult -- in fact, until I was married with young children. Now, many years later, I can say I've been in many, many countries. It's one of the great benefits of my whole personal experience. I've sat down with people, sometimes in professional settings, and sometimes in, you know, a restaurant, and just see what people ... walk the streets, see what life is like.

If you want to work in this field, in foreign policy, in international affairs, you have to get there. It's different. Walking around Moscow is not the same as walking around Berkeley. It's not the same. And you won't know it until you're there. It's sort of like looking at a rollercoaster versus riding a rollercoaster. You may see it going up and down, you may hear the people screaming, but you don't know what it feels like until you're in that first car going down. You need to do that. This is part of learning by doing. That's one of the thrills of being in this field.

Thank you, Dean Nacht, for helping GSPP spread its net widely, and get its students started on great roller coaster rides!