A Rose by Any Other Name …

Our name, the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, speaks volumes about us and each part of the name reveals an important aspect of who we are and how we are perceived. The University of California is the greatest public university system in the world. It is the envy not only of every one of the other 49 states, but also the rest of the world. Berkeley is the flagship campus of this system and, in its own right, a name that means excellence in higher education. Although we may be “Cal” locally, the name that is known and admired globally is “Berkeley.” Finally, Haas ties us to the best in business leadership — financial success combined with a strong ethic of corporate responsibility and social conscience.

Our name, however, is also a mouthful. And as someone with a “mouthful name,” Benjamin, I am well aware of the natural temptation to shorten such names. Certainly it would be a bit much to imagine us marketing the “Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley MBA.” We could try, but, like my parents who fought hard initially to have everyone call me Benjamin, we would soon find this a losing battle — others will simply choose how to shorten it for us. Marketing our MBA degree as the Berkeley MBA strikes me as the best compromise when we need to use a shortened name. Berkeley, with its connotations of excellence in education, reflects much of the “University of California” portion of our name. Berkeley, with its connotations of social awareness, also reflects some of what we are most proud of in the “Haas” portion of our name. Finally, Berkeley, more so than the other parts of our name, reflects the idea of challenging convention, which is, in many ways, at the core of who we are and what we do.