As a trustee of Stanford, I hear about what’s going on in higher education, and I kept hearing about the growing difference between salaries at Berkeley and salaries at the privates because of the rising cost of running research universities. I thought to myself, “This just can’t continue like this. Berkeley should stay right up there with the privates both because of the work that’s done here and because of its public mission.” There’s no other place like Berkeley, and if we let the public institutions — starting with Berkeley — decline, that would be a very hard thing to reverse.

We owe it to our citizens of this state and the country to keep Berkeley strong. From everything I know there’s a huge amount of support for Berkeley among its alumni and supporters. If Stanford, Harvard, and Yale can get the kind of gifts they are getting from their alumni then there’s no reason that Berkeley can’t get the same kind of support.

First of all, Berkeley is a great research university so it deserves support on those grounds alone — the same kind of support that a Stanford or an MIT deserves. But over and above that, as a public institution, it offers access to a large group of students who would not be able to attend private universities. I think our country has a great tradition of public education that goes back more than 100 years. It’s part of what makes us a great society, and it’s extremely important that we support and continue having great public institutions of higher education, and Berkeley is the crown jewel of public higher education.

The mission of the foundation really is to help solve some of the most difficult social problems we face in our society and in the world. To carry that out we have four or five program areas, including education. These areas only account for about two-thirds of our grant capacity. The other third we set aside for what we call extraordinary grants or think of as extraordinary opportunities — places where a big idea comes along where we feel the timeliness of it can really make a difference. So the grant to Berkeley is not part of the education program, it’s an extraordinary grant — an extraordinary opportunity and the right time to do it.

First of all, I hope that donors will be as generous as they possibly can be. People have asked me how the Hewlett Foundation determined the size of the gift. This was the most money we could give for this at this time, which is to say that I hope we can give more at some point. Certainly, as one trustee, that’s what I would like to see. And what I’d like to tell other donors is “Be as generous as you can. This is an extremely worthy cause.”

I just love it. I have strong family ties to Berkeley. My mother, grandmother, grandfather, my mother’s brother and sister, and my own brother went to Berkeley. My wife and daughter also have degrees from Berkeley, so this is a really happy day for me. I’m really excited by this.