Pelosi institute launching at Berkeley after former speaker leaves Congress

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will lend her name to a new institute at the University of California, Berkeley after retiring from Congress, with the school announcing Monday it has already raised $35 million toward a $50 million goal for the center, which will focus on representative democracy and public leadership.

The Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy, or NPI, opening in January 2027 when Pelosi is set to leave Congress, will serve as a hub for research, teaching and civic engagement, according to the university. The institute will also allow Pelosi, the first Californian elected speaker of the House, to co-teach a course on Congress.

According to UC Berkeley, a university known as a bastion of progressive activism, the institute will focus on four areas: strengthening American democracy, addressing major social, economic and environmental challenges, promoting human and civil rights, and "ensuring political leadership that represents the full spectrum of perspectives and backgrounds in California and the country."

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The university said locating the institute at UC Berkeley will make its programs accessible to a diverse student body, including many first-generation and low-income students, while giving future public leaders opportunities typically associated with Ivy League schools.

"The work of democracy is never finished, and securing its future is our greatest calling," Pelosi said in a statement. "UC Berkeley has a long, proud history of challenging the status quo and producing leaders who run toward the greatest challenges of our time. I am honored to partner with this exceptional community of scholars and students so we can equip the next generation with the tools they need to strengthen our democratic institutions and forge a future that serves the public good."

In a statement, Rich Lyons, chancellor of UC Berkeley, said that the purpose of the institute "will be defined and strengthened by Berkeley’s ability to bring together world-class faculty and extraordinary students and by our commitment, as the country’s preeminent public university, to advancing the greater good."

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"We intend to do more than simply study democracy; we are building this institute to strengthen it," he added.

Fox News Digital reached out to UC Berkeley for further comment.

Pelosi, 86, served two four-year stints as the first, and to date, only female Speaker of the House. Her first was from 2007 to 2011, spanning the end and beginning of the Bush and Obama administrations, and her second was from 2019 to 2023.

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