UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks ordered a new investigation Friday into Cal football’s strength and conditioning program in light of a Chronicle report showing that football staff had personal ties to previous investigators and helped select athletes to be interviewed.

Dirks announced his decision Friday in response to a request from the Berkeley Faculty Association a day earlier that he not renew the $150,000 annual contract of Cal’s popular football strength and conditioning coach Damon Harrington until a new investigation could resolve whether the coach’s actions contributed to the death of one player in 2014 and the hospitalization of another in 2013.

Yet Dirks’ letter did not address Harrington’s contract, which was up for renewal Friday, leaving its fate unclear. Nor did the letter say whether the new investigation would review Harrington’s role in the incidents, and the omission left faculty leaders dissatisfied.

“While I am gratified that the chancellor is taking the matter seriously, I am disappointed that the new investigation he proposes is confined to (assessing the current program) and not the culpability of coach Harrington,” said sociology Professor Michael Burawoy, co-chair of the Faculty Association, who signed the letter to Dirks. “It suggests that the university is in thrall to its athletics department, or more precisely, the revenue it is supposed to bring.”

Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan, also a co-chair, said: “We’re asking the administration to make a serious commitment to investigating allegations of abuse.”

The original inquiry in 2014 followed two serious events: the death of defensive lineman Ted Agu, 21, after a highly strenuous workout, and a teammate’s locker-room attack on running back Fabiano Hale, then 18, which knocked him unconscious and sent him to the emergency room with a concussion.

The locker-room attack occurred in November 2013 after Hale missed a workout. Players told campus officials that Harrington turned tough workouts into “torture” as punishment for such infractions. Two players told The Chronicle that on the day Hale was attacked, Harrington told players to discipline Hale themselves. Another player told police in 2014 that the coach had said they should do it “by any means necessary.”

Harrington admitted to Agu family lawyers that he created the workout that preceded Agu’s death without consulting the team physician. He also said he was unfamiliar with NCAA guidelines for players with sickle-cell trait, which he knew Agu had. This year, UC Berkeley admitted negligence and settled with the family for $4.75 million.

The incidents were barely mentioned in the brief report by two outside investigators that cleared UC Berkeley football coaches and trainers of employing abusive, punitive and medically reckless practice drills. The report made no recommendations for changes to the program.

The Chronicle’s report revealed that the investigators — John Murray, a private strength coach, and Jeffrey Tanji, medical director for sports at UC Davis — acknowledged having personal ties with Cal staff. Murray disclosed in the report that he was a friend and colleague of Mike Blasquez, Cal’s director of strength and conditioning. And Tanji had trained Casey Batten, the football team physician. Both said in the report those relationships did not influence their findings.

But the legal settlement required a number of changes. In his letter to faculty, Dirks pointed to those reforms. For example, coaches are now trained in handling athletes with sickle-cell trait. Harrington’s direct supervisor must also review plans for football workouts and observe all but the most routine team workouts. And workouts also get at least one review for safety.

“However, in light of the questions that have persisted,” Dirks said, he and Cal’s athletic director, Mike Williams, “intend to identify and appoint an independent investigator to assess the current state of the program and the efficacy of the many changes we have made in recent years.”

John Cummins, a former chief of staff to four Berkeley chancellors who oversaw Cal athletics in the mid-2000s and has researched intercollegiate athletics for years, said he was pleased at the prospect of a new review.

“That’s encouraging,” Cummins said. “There really has to be an independent investigation where there is not even an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

He said the investigator must not ignore Agu’s death and the attack.

“If they continue Harrington’s contract, that becomes even more important,” he said. “It cost the university $4.75 million — and it cost the death of a student and an assault where Harrington is implicated. How did that happen?”

Harrington has not responded to requests for comment. Cal Athletics spokesman Wesley Mallette has said Harrington denies inciting the attack in the locker room.