In the eyes of the nation, Berkeley, Calif. is the nerve center of radical social protest.

From the Free Speech movement in the 1960s to the city council's 1991 abolition of Columbus Day in favor of 'Indigenous Peoples' Day,' the city and the university have together led the crusade for liberal social change.

So when Berkeley activist and education scholar Pedro Noguera told the university's student newspaper he was accepting a position at Harvard in part because the venerable New England institution had a stronger commitment to diversity, more than a few jaws dropped in amazement.

Not only will his Berkeley students and colleagues mourn the loss of Noguera's scholarship and activism, but his unorthodox pronouncement has set tongues wagging on both sides of the land.

Backsliding in Berkeley

Coming from a working-class background in Brooklyn, N.Y., Noguera, 40, says he might not have gotten into Brown University without the benefit of admissions policies which took into consideration his potential contribution to the school's diversity--not just his grades.

But although he admits to experiencing "a bit of culture shock," as a student from a family in which neither parent had gone to college, he quickly distinguished himself academically.

Noguera stayed at Brown to receive his master's degree in sociology, in addition to a teaching credential, before heading to the West Coast to work on his PhD. After earning a doctorate in sociology from Berkeley in 1989, Noguera initially chose to teach there because of the school's relatively high level of diversity, he told the San Francisco Chronicle in November.