As a Berkeley (note there are three Es) Alum I will share my insights:
There is a big difference between the City of Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley (Cal). While Cal may lean liberal, so do most colleges, and there is a constant influx of new students all of whom must be very intelligent in order to be accepted. In fact, I would say more students come from more-conservative Southern California...probably to get away from their parents. Cal professors discovered Plutonium, were instrumental in building the Atomic Bomb and continue to run 3 of the 9 DOE National Laboratories. Cal is home to one of the original six NROTC units, the first CO of which was then-LCDR Nimitz who later became a Regent of the University. Finally, in response to the surrounding liberal madness, Cal has one of the nation's largest and most active College Republican chapters.
I often wore my uniform on campus and was also commissioned on campus and never ran into these problems from either students or faculty (a few crazy bums were the exception)
Out in town in Berkeley or San Francisco is another story, however. The hippie mecca image of these towns does tend to attract the craziest, most irrational liberals. Cindy Sheehan, for example, moved to Berkeley after she was run out of her hometown of Vacaville. But clearly she is too stupid to have ever gone to Cal. Regrettably, the closing of the Bay Area naval bases will only lead to less contact between servicemembers and these liberals allowing for the deepening of their narrow-minded misconceptions.
