Berkeley Talks

Aaminah Norris is an assistant professor at Sacramento State in the College of Education. She has more than 20 years of experience supporting schools and nonprofit organizations in addressing issues of educational equity for low-income students from historically marginalized communities. She researches, teaches and advocates for the use of digital and social media in formal and informal learning environments to address racial and gender inequities.Norris sat down with Abigail De Kosnik, an associate professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, in April 2019 to discuss transmedia storytelling, police brutality against women and girls of color and the essay she co-authored, #Sandra Bland's Mystery: A Transmedia Story of Police Brutality."“A lot of the work that I do is helping people to understand that they have a responsibility to disrupt media messages and not just consume,” Norris tells De Kosnik. “You can't just be thoughtless consumers of thes

Writer, speaker and activist Virgie Tovar speaks with Savala Trepczynski, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, about the process of divesting from diet and body image culture and investing in rehumanization, community building and a new vision for our lives."I do experience fat phobia in an interpersonal and social sense," Tovar tells Trepczynski. "Meaning that I've had the lifelong effects of, you know, constantly having my body policed by others. Every time I leave my house, I'm deeply aware that someone might say something to me that's really dehumanizing and stultifying. Because we're just in that environment where people feel the right to police and speak out violently against fat women, in particular.""One thing that’s really important to me is to allow yourself to be angry. Anger is a really sacred practice and I think, for women, anger is one of the least feminine behaviors that we can do and so there’s a big taboo around anger. And this goes back to the idea

On Wednesday, June 19, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) celebrated Juneteenth — a national commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States — with a visit by Mildred Howard, a widely acclaimed artist and longtime Berkeley resident whose family has deep roots in the Bay Area’s African American community. Howard appeared at BAMPFA for a screening of the new documentary, Welcome to the Neighborhood, which highlights her own family’s history in South Berkeley and the neighborhood’s transformation over the past 50 years.Following the screening of the 30-minute film, Howard was joined in conversation by Leigh Raiford, UC Berkeley associate professor of African American studies, and Lawrence Rinder, BAMPFA’s director and chief curator. Their discussion touched on a range of topics, from South Berkeley’s ongoing struggles with gentrification, to the role of the university in supporting diverse communities, to Howard’s own work as an artist. Some of her works are on display in

Dean Baquet is the executive editor of the New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. In February 2019, he sat down with Edward Wasserman, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, to discuss the 2016 elections and the future of fact-based journalism."I don't want to be a leader of the opposition to Donald Trump," he told Wasserman. "This is perhaps the hardest thing about navigating this era. A big percentage of my readers, and I hear from them a lot, want me to lead the opposition of Donald Trump. They don't quite say it that way, but what they say is, 'Why quote his tweets? Why go to his press conferences? Why not? Why not just call him a liar every day? Why not essentially just take him out and beat him up? What are you waiting for?' I think that would be the road to ruin, for a bunch of reasons. But, to me, the most powerful one is if you become the leader of the opposition, eventually the people who you're aligned with come to power, right?"This conversation is featured on On Mic

"We are here in the middle of the first mass movement against sexual abuse in the history of the world," said Catharine MacKinnon, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, about the progress of the #MeToo movement. "This one sprung from the law of sexual harassment, quickly overtook it, and is shifting law, cultures, and politics everywhere. At the same time, electrifyingly demonstrating what I’m calling butterfly politics in action ... butterfly politics means that the right, small intervention in the structure of an unstable political system can ultimately produce systemic change. ... To ask what made #MeToo possible is to ask what, for the first time, made it harder to keep the sexual abuse inside than to put it out."MacKinnon, a feminist legal scholar who pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination in employment and education, spoke at a three-day Berkeley Law conference, "The Worldwide #MeToo Movement: Global Resistance to Sexual Harassment and Violence." The conference

For the 2019 Tanner Lectures at UC Berkeley, Arthur Ripstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Toronto, argues that the very thing that makes war wrongful — the fact which side prevails does not depend on who is in the right — also provides the moral standard for evaluating the conduct of war, both the grounds for going to war and the ways in which wars are fought.In the last of three days of lectures and discussions, which took place on April 9-11, commentators Chris Kutz, a law professor at UC Berkeley who focuses on moral, political and legal philosophy; Oona Hathaway, a professor law at Yale Law School; and Jeff McMahan, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Oxford, provide commentary on Ripstein’s previous two lectures.“What’s puzzling is that Arthur seems to want to link up this principle to the idea of a future peace and internally to the principle of action by the aggressor,” said Kutz in his commentary. “The peace imagined by the aggressor nation isn’t the peace o

In this episode of Who Belongs, a podcast produced by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, we hear from john powell, director of the Haas Institute and a professor of law and African American studies at UC Berkeley.In this interview, powell discusses a brand new primer the Haas Institute just published on the targeted universalism policy approach, a model conceptualized by professor powell. The primer was co-written by professor powell, along with assistant director Stephen Menendian and Wendy Ake, the director of the Just Public Finance program.Targeted universalism is a platform to put into practice social programs that move all groups toward a universal policy goal. It supports the needs of the most marginalized groups, as well as those who are more politically powerful, while reminding everyone that we are all part of the same social fabric.Download a copy of "Targeted Universalism: Policy & Practice."Read a transcript and listen on Berkeley Talks. See acast.com/privacy for

For the 2019 Tanner Lectures at UC Berkeley, Arthur Ripstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Toronto, argues that the very thing that makes war wrongful — the fact which side prevails does not depend on who is in the right — also provides the moral standard for evaluating the conduct of war, both the grounds for going to war and the ways in which wars are fought.In the second of three days of lectures and discussions, which took place on April 9-11, Ripstein talks about why it's wrong to target civilians and makes a distinction between those who are and are not a part of war. Following the lecture, Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, and Jeff McMahan, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Oxford, provide commentary.The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is presented annually at nine universities: UC Berkeley, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, Utah, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. This series was founded in 1978 by the American scholar, indu

For the 2019 Tanner Lectures at UC Berkeley, Arthur Ripstein, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Toronto, argues that the very thing that makes war wrongful — the fact which side prevails does not depend on who is in the right — also provides the moral standard for evaluating the conduct of war, both the grounds for going to war and the ways in which wars are fought.In the first of three days of lectures and discussions, which took place on April 9-11, Ripstein talks about the rules for wrongdoers. He says, "The thing that's wrong with war is war is the condition in which might makes right. Now, that doesn't mean that no one could every be justified in going to war, but it means that war is always morally problematic. It's morally problematic because who prevails in the war depends on strength and is entirely independent of the merits." Following the lecture, UC Berkeley law professor Christopher Kutz provided a commentary.The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is presented annually at nine u

Climate change is a pressing and urgent global issue and a challenge that needs planet- and human-focused solutions. The state has signed into law numerous policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emission from buildings, industrial processes, vehicles, agricultural and solid waste management, electric power and fossil fuel production and freight transport. Those policies are continuously evolving to reflect change in technology, markets and public opinion. UC Berkeley and the UC system have pledged to be carbon neutral from building and fleet energy use by 2025, and from transportation and other sources by 2050.Kira Stoll, the director of sustainability at UC Berkeley, and David Wooley, a visiting professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and executive director of the Center for Environmental Public Policy, gave a talk on May 1, 2019, about what is underway in green building, energy efficiency, clean electricity, resource management and behavior-based programs, and how these can help

Drawing from his first-hand experience at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual, a traditional healing center near Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon, Dr. Joe Tafur reviews the role of spiritual and emotional healing in modern healthcare.Tafur gave a talk on April 18, 2019, for the Lounge Lecture Series at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, alongside the new exhibit, Pleasure, Poison, Prescription and Prayer: The Worlds of Mind-Altering Substances, which runs March 15 to Dec. 15.In this talk, Tafur discusses how emotional trauma contributes to medical illness, and how spiritual healing techniques can lead to improvements in the mind and body. Ayahuasca shamanism and other psychedelic-assisted therapies may be effective, in some cases, because of their ability to induce relevant changes in epigenetic imprints associated with emotional trauma stored in the psychoneuroendocrine immunologic network, which Tafur theorizes is the physiologic manifestation of the emotional body.Dr. Joe Tafur is a Colombian Ame

The last eight years have seen a revolution in approved cancer treatments, based on the development of medicines that arouse our immune systems to attack and eliminate our own cancer cells. These breakthroughs in immunotherapy of cancer were based on a deep understanding of the immune system itself, coupled with the first direct evidence that immune responses that attack human cancers occur naturally, albeit weakly. The treatments amplify natural immune responses against cancer, and are effective in some types of cancer, leading to cures in many patients. They are less effective or not effective in many other types of cancer. The success has galvanized major new efforts by researchers and drug companies alike to develop complementary and more broadly effective medications to treat other types of cancer.David Raulet, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, gave a lecture on April 10, 2019, about the revolution of cancer immunology. In this talk, Raulet describes how these medicines work, t

On Thursday, April 18, 2019, Cal Performances’ board of trustees co-chairs Helen Meyer and Susan Graham, and executive and artistic director Jeremy Geffen, announced the organization’s 2019-20 season, programmed by associate director Rob Bailis. Hear Bailis in conversation about the season with Cy Musiker, a KQED radio news reporter, anchor and recently retired host of KQED's weekly arts showThe Do List. Musiker is an alumnus of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.Cal Performances' 2019-20 season showcases an exhilarating and expansive breadth of dance productions, from grand to intimate in scale, featuring a broad range of international performance traditions and starring renowned companies from the US and abroad in Zellerbach Hall, widely considered the finest concert dance venue on the west coast; virtuoso soloists and conductors making their Cal Performances debuts; and immersion in key bodies of work by Beethoven, Bartók and Liszt.An interdisciplinary set of projects explores the artistic ac

Brown v. Board of Education was hailed as a landmark decision for civil rights. But decades later, many consider school integration a failure. UC Berkeley professor Rucker C. Johnson's new book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works shows the exact opposite is true. The book looks at decades of studies to show that students of all races who attended integrated schools fared better than those who did not. In this interview with Goldman School of Public Policy Dean Henry E. Brady, which took place on Jan. 9, 2019, Johnson explains how he and his team analyzed the impact of not just integration, but school funding policies and the Head Start program.This lecture was recorded by UCTV, the UC Public Policy Channel.The Goldman School of Public Policy, with the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans, also produces a podcast, “Talk Policy To Me.”Listen and read a transcript on Berkeley News. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a pastor and social justice advocate building a broad-based grassroots movement, grounded in the moral tenets of faith-based communities and the constitution, to confront systemic racism, poverty, environmental devastation, the war economy and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism in America today.Barber delivered the closing keynote speech on April 10 at the 2019 Othering & Belonging conference, organized by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley. The Othering & Belonging conferences are dynamic and uniquely curated events that aim to elevate work nationally and globally in "othering and belonging," a critical lens developed by the Haas Institute under the leadership of john a. powell for defining structural exclusion and inclusion, and an analytical and applied framework which we can use to design and advance institutions, narratives and policies that support a more fully inclusive “we.”The 2019 conference highlighted mode

Jennifer Doudna spoke at UC Berkeley's International House on Feb. 21, 2019, about the revolutionary gene-editing tool she co-invented, CRISPR-Cas9.Our technological capacity to make changes to genomic data has expanded exponentially since the 2012 discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 as an RNA-programmable genome editing tool. Over the past seven years, this genome editing platform has been used to revolutionize research, develop new agricultural crops and even promises to cure genetic diseases. However, ethical and societal concerns abound, requiring a thoughtful and ongoing discussion among scientists and stakeholder groups.Doudna is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley and is Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Professor in Biomedical and Health. She is a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, Doudna received a Medal of Honor from the A

1.5 degrees Celsius. That's the maximum global temperature increase allowable before we see catastrophic impacts on food security, ecosystems, water access, frequency and extremity of weather events, according to a special 2018 report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report warns global leaders and policymakers that failing to limit the earth’s temperature increase will result in a world that is unrecognizable – and extremely difficult to live in.  Given the urgency and magnitude of climate change, what are individuals’ role in helping to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius? How do our lives and habits need to change? How does our responsibility, as residents of the wealthiest country in the world, compare to those living in poverty? And how does individual responsibility for carbon reduction interact with corporate and industrial responsibility? Does it matter that we recycle and buy local produce and use public transit when the U.S. continues t

Amy Heineike is the vice president of product engineering at Primer AI. One area the company is active in is around news data and news cycles — they model the contrasting narratives that people are telling around global stories using millions of statistical observations about entities and their relationships. Another area that they’re active in is around Wikipedia — human-written summaries and maintaining these summaries is extremely time intensive and Primer AI has formulated approaches to creating and maintaining pages.For her talk, Heineike focuses on an idea that Primer AI had from the very beginning: How we think about humans and machines interacting with AI, how we understand the data and then, how we overcome the bias we discover.Heineike gave her lecture on March 8, 2019, during the annual Women in Technology symposium at UC Berkeley. The daylong event was sponsored by WITI@UC, a joint initiative of Berkeley Engineering and CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.Read the t

Ellen Ullman is a computer programmer, essayist on technology and culture and an author of four books — two nonfiction and two novels — on the human side of technology. Her most recent book, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology, in 2007 was named by the San Francisco Chronicle among the best books of the year.Life in Code bookends her earlier work, in 1997, where that was named Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents, recounting life as a woman technologist amongst and almost exclusively male workforce at the start of the global digital revolution. Twenty years later, Ullman reflects on digital technology's loss of innocence and reckons with all that has changed and so much that hasn't.Dean of engineering Tsu-Jae King Liu spoke with Ullman on March 8, 2019, during the annual Women in Technology symposium at UC Berkeley. The daylong event was sponsored by WITI@UC, a joint initiative of Berkeley Engineering and CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.Read the tran

For millennia, humans have cultivated deep relationships with psychoactive plants — relationships embedded within and guided by ritual frameworks honoring the powers of these plants as allies. As cultures have evolved, so also have these plant-human interactions, often in ways that are highly interdependent.David Presti, who teaches neurobiology, psychology and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, gave an opening talk March 21 for the Lounge Lecture Series at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, alongside the new exhibit, Pleasure, Poison, Prescription and Prayer: The Worlds of Mind-Altering Substances, which runs March 15 to Dec. 15.Presti has been on the faculty of Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology for 28 years. He teaches classes on topics related to brain, mind, consciousness, neurochemistry and psychopharmacology. For more than a decade, he worked in the treatment of addiction and of post-traumatic stress disorder at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Sa