Robert Max Berdahl (born March 15, 1937) is a retired American college and university administrator.

Born inSioux Falls, South Dakota, Berdahl received aBachelor of Arts fromAugustana College in 1959. Additionally, he obtained aMaster of Arts from theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1961. He would later followOtto Pflanze to theUniversity of Minnesota where he received his doctorate in 1965, with a dissertation on the Prussian Conservative Party during German unification circa 1870.^[2]

Berdahl was an assistant professor of history at theUniversity of Massachusetts from 1965 to 1967.^[3] From 1967 to 1986, Berdahl was a history professor at the University of Oregon. In addition to his duties as professor, he served as dean of the university's College of Arts and Sciences from 1981 to 1986. Later on, Berdahl would go on to serve as vice chancellor for academic affairs at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from 1986 to 1993.

He was president ofUniversity of Texas at Austin from 1993 to 1997 and later chancellor of theUniversity of California, Berkeley from 1997 to 2004. He served as president of theAssociation of American Universities from May 2006 to June 2011.^[4] In addition, he currently serves on the Board of Directors ofLam Research Corporation.^[5]

In December 2011, theOregon State Board of Higher Education asked Berdahl to serve as the president of theUniversity of Oregon on an interim basis. The presidency of the University of Oregon had recently been vacated by Richard Lariviere following his early termination by the state board.^[3] Three months into Berdahl's presidency the faculty voted to form a union affiliated with theAmerican Federation of Teachers andAmerican Association of University Professors, and a month later Berdahl agreed to end efforts to prevent certification by the Oregon Employment Relations Board.^[6]Michael R. Gottfredson succeeded Berdahl effective August 1, 2012.^[7]

• "New Thoughts on German Nationalism,"The American Historical Review Vol. 77, No. 1, February 1972
• "Conservative Politics and Aristocratic Landholders in Bismarckian Germany,"The Journal of Modern History Vol. 44, No. 1, March 1972
• "TheStände and the Origins of Conservatism in Prussia,"Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 6, No. 3, Spring 1973
• The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology, 1770-1848 (Princeton University Press, January 1989)

• Official website of the president of the University of Oregon

• 1937 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American historians
• American male non-fiction writers
• Augustana University alumni
• Leaders of the University of California, Berkeley
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Writers from Sioux Falls, South Dakota
• Presidents of the University of Texas at Austin
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
• University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
• Presidents of the University of Oregon
• University of Massachusetts faculty
• 20th-century American male writers
• Historians from California
• Presidents of the Association of American Universities

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