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The University of California (UC), Berkeley, announced this week that it will launch the Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy in January 2027. Housed within the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, the institute promises to be “a hub for research, teaching and civic engagement.” According to Berkeley, it will tackle issues ranging from “political polarization” to “artificial intelligence,” all with the goal of strengthening democracy. Pelosi herself is expected to co-teach a course on Congress.

I find the arrangement odd because Berkeley is asking its students to take seriously the idea that Pelosi has something insightful to offer on matters of democracy. There are several things I hope the students bring up.

On “political polarization,” for instance, it would be interesting to hear what Pelosi has to say about her June 2020 stunt when she led congressional Democrats in kneeling on the Capitol floor while wearing Kente cloth scarves, to give tribute to George Floyd, who had a decade-long criminal record, including a 2007 guilty plea for armed robbery.

Likewise, students should ask Pelosi why she fought the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions, and why in 2020 she endorsed California’s Prop 16, which sought to overturn Prop 209 and would have restored racial preferences in hiring, contracting, and college admissions. As Minding the Campus contributor Wenyuan Wu has written, rather than seek to end race-conscious policies, “California’s political establishment has been doubling down with new proposals for discrimination.” (Also, give Gail Heriot’s “Will the California Legislature Ever Stop Trying to Overturn Proposition 209?” a read).

Moreover, if the institute is truly committed to strengthening democracy, students should ask whether Pelosi intends to use her position within the UC system to reduce the university’s ties to, and influence from, the Chinese Communist regime. Sources say Pelosi built a decades-long reputation for confronting Beijing: she unfurled a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen Square in 1991, pushed for a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, and defied Chinese threats to visit Taiwan as House Speaker. But her new academic home complicates that record. The UC system itself has climate and energy ties to China. As my boss, Peter Wood, recently wrote, “UC Berkeley is an excellent place to begin to unravel the web of dependencies.” Will Pelosi press her new colleagues on those entanglements?

What I find most unpalatable, however, is the mismatch between the institute’s mission and its namesake. If the goal is to strengthen democracy, then Pelosi’s own record is precisely the sort of thing students should be encouraged to scrutinize. Take her entrenched power. When Pelosi exits Congress, she will be 86, well past the retirement age most Americans think reasonable. (Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in their 30s and 40s. The oldest was Ben Franklin at 70.)

“[Pelosi] has also contributed to the decay of a vibrant and representative democracy. By staying in power for decades, Pelosi and other career politicians have contributed to a troubling and accurate depiction of D.C. as a place for ‘elite’ politicians,” Kevin Frazier wrote in Fulcrum. “Gone are the days of Mr. Smith going to Washington–this is the era of Mr. Smith going to Washington and planning to die there. From 2000 to 2012, seventeen members of the House passed away while in office.”

But entrenched power was never just about staying in office. Four decades in Washington also made Pelosi extraordinarily wealthy. When she entered Congress in 1987, she and her husband reported a net worth between $610,000 and $785,000, held primarily in their shared stock portfolio and built through their investments and Paul Pelosi’s business ventures. Today, estimates put the family’s fortune above $245 million, much of it built on stock trades her husband executed with uncanny timing. According to Yahoo Finance, he sold 2,000 shares of Visa in July 2024, just before the Department of Justice sued the company for monopolizing the debit card market. But that’s just one of countless trades by Paul that have raised eyebrows. Pelosi insists that no inside knowledge has anything to do with her husband’s portfolio; he just has a flawless sense for exactly when Congress is about to move markets. Indeed, his timing is so consistent that whole apps now exist for the sole purpose of tracking and copying him—by some measures, the Pelosi family’s percentage gains have outpaced Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

A woman who used four decades in public office to build political influence and immense personal wealth while advancing divisive racial policies and presiding over an era of expanding Chinese influence is an odd choice to teach students about democratic institutions.

Berkeley has already raised $35 million of its $50 million goal, with Pelosi’s own help. I suppose the university can honor whomever it likes. But universities also teach by example, and this example is bad.

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