Peter Zhou, who retired in June 2025 after 25 years of service to UC Berkeley, received the Berkeley Citation at last week’s Luncheon in the Library event. The recognition celebrates Zhou’s decades of collaborative and visionary leadership at the UC Berkeley Library.
The Berkeley Citation is one of the campus’s highest honors, awarded to individuals whose achievements exceed the standards of excellence in their fields and whose service to the university goes far beyond the call of duty. Established during the university’s centennial year, the award recognizes extraordinary accomplishment paired with deep commitment to the campus community.
During his tenure as assistant university librarian and director of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Zhou helped shape one of Berkeley’s most significant academic and cultural assets. He played a central role in bringing to life the East Asian Library and complementary Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies. Opened in 2008, the $52 million facility was the first in North America developed exclusively to house an East Asian collection and is now regarded as a global destination for researchers. His leadership also strengthened donor partnerships, enabling major acquisitions such as the Paul Kendel Fonoroff Collection for Chinese Film Studies and the James Soong Archive, and he championed digitization projects that expanded worldwide access to rare materials.