Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints podcaster pal to UC Board of Regents

Lia Russell, The Sacramento Bee on Jul 22, 2026

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Scott Galloway, a liberal media personality and New York University marketing professor who has appeared on the governor’s podcast, to the UC Board of Regents on Wednesday.

Newsom said Wednesday that Galloway, who lives in Gulf Stream, Florida, and London, would join the UC system’s 26-voting-member governing board if approved by the Senate. Galloway will not earn a salary, nor do UC regents have a residency requirement.

Galloway hosts three podcasts and previously served on the boards of the New York Times, Urban Outfitters and Panera Bread. He earned degrees from UCLA and UC Berkeley, and has written about his skepticism of higher education, calling it a “wonder drug” and comparing elite universities that charge high tuition to “a hedge fund offering classes.”

He has also emerged as a liberal masculinity guru and corrective to the right-wing “manosphere” and written about the crisis of loneliness among young men, which he has attributed to a wide range of issues like the rise of pandemic-era remote work and increasing temperance among members of Gen Z.

He has also influenced some of Newsom’s thinking on the masculinity crisis. On an April 2025 episode of “This Is Gavin Newsom,” he blamed some young adult men’s isolation on younger generations’ downward economic mobility and the influence of Big Tech, which he said explained their support for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“I think that modern masculinity from the right is ‘be coarse and cruel, and from the left, it’s ‘be more like a woman,’ ” he told Newsom. “People are more isolated, more lonely, and more disconnected.”

Newsom later signed an executive order directing the state to address suicide rates and mental health among young men and boys.

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