Just over a week after taking the controversial step of removing the University of Oregon’s president, the State Board of Higher Education today named an interim president to serve until a permanent successor is selected. The interim president is Robert M. Berdahl, who has held a long series of prestigious appointments and who stepped down in June as president of the Association of American Universities to become special assistant to the university’s president, Richard W. Lariviere, in an unusually generous financial deal.
Mr. Lariviere was fired last week, a decision that was deeply unpopular on the campus, after a series of differences with the state board that largely boiled down to disputes over the university’s proper place in the Oregon University System at a time of dwindling state support. Mr. Berdahl taught history for 20 years at Oregon, and also served as dean, until 1986. He then held top administrative posts at other public universities, including president of the University of Texas at Austin and chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.
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