Nicholas B. Dirks. At the start of her first academic year as chancellor, Christ responded to the 2017 Berkeley protests in which protests against conservative speakers led to violent outbreaks. In a letter to the campus which quoted John Stuart Mill, she affirmed the administration's commitment to free speech and urged the community to remember its roots as part of the Free Speech Movement. She later took other steps in this direction which included moderating a panel on free expression and committing $800,000 to providing security for controversial speakers. In a September 2017 interview, she stated that some students find the concept of free speech objectionable. Christ is a trustee of Central European University, served on the board of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) and was a trustee of Sarah Lawrence College and Dominican University of California. Honors Christ was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2013. Additionally, she was awarded Yale University's Wilbur Cross Medal in 2007, and in 2011, the American College of Greece awarded her an honorary doctorate. Personal life Christ's late husband, Paul Alpers, was a scholar of Renaissance English literature and the founding director of Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities until his death in 2013. She has two grown children, Jonathan and Elizabeth Sklute, from a previous marriage, as well as two grandchildren. She currently lives in Berkeley, California. Selected publications References 1944 births Living people American women academics American academics of English literature Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Women heads of universities and colleges Literary critics of English Writers from New York City Rutgers University alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society Presidents of Smith College 21st-century American women