Berkeley Talks

"Law students are too risk-averse. There's too much planning and too little jumping in. You should experiment." That's U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in conversation with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky on Monday, Sept. 23 in Zellerbach Hall."I think sometimes people look at my resume like mine, and they think, 'Oh, it's just like this golden life.' What you're seeing are the jobs I got. What you're not seeing are all the jobs I didn't get ... when a door closes, a window opens. Sometimes the things that you think you wanted, it turns out that you're better off not getting them."Kagan began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as Associate White House Counsel and later as policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. She then became a professor at Harvard Law School, and in 2003 was named its dean, its first woman dean. In 2009, she became Solicitor General of the United States, the officer responsible for representing the federal government before the Supreme Court. And in 2010, President Barack Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court itself to fill the vacancy arising from the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.During the conversation, Kagan discussed the mutual respect among justices and their shared passion for the law."I find it perplexing that you can’t like someone you disagree with, even on important matters,” she added. “I was extremely close to Justice Scalia, and spent the past few days writing a foreword for a book of his opinions. I like all my colleagues and feel close to many of them. There’s more to people than what they think about issues.”Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“If you’re looking for an opportunity to make a real change in this society, you need to go and work at a public school,” said Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of Admissions, Femi Ogundele, on Wednesday, Aug. 30, at this fall semester's first Campus Conversations, a series where top Berkeley leaders discuss campus issues and take questions from staff, faculty and students.In an hour-long conversation, Ogundele, who started his post in January, talked about why he came to Berkeley, the power of strong messaging and targeted outreach and how the Chancellor's Diversity Initiative is an opportunity to "reimagine and reengage" students who haven't necessarily been engaged in in the past.Read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Friday, Aug. 30, UC Berkeley held a symposium that marked the start of a yearlong initiative, "400 Years of Resistance to Slavery and Oppression," commemorating the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies with a daylong symposium. It drew hundreds of attendees who heard from more than a dozen historians and social scientists about the impact and legacy of slavery in society today.In his keynote speech to close the symposium, john powell, director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and professor of law, African American studies and ethnic studies, discussed the link between slavery and white supremacy. Slavery, he said, created anti-black racism, which was necessary for the extraction of capital.“It was never about, ‘I don’t like you because you’re different, because you have more melanin than me.’ It was about capital. It was about the U.S. industrializing … It was about the elites trying to figure out how to extract as much capital as possible and using people and people’s land to do that. Slavery is about America,” he said.Read the transcript and see photos on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the launch of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, reports of hate speech targeting various minority groups have risen dramatically. Although this surge is well-reported, it remains difficult to quantify the magnitude of the problem or even properly classify hate speech, let alone identify and measure its effects. Keyword searches and dictionary methods are often imprecise and overly blunt tools for detecting the nuance and complexity of hate speech. Without the tools to identify, quantify, and classify hate speech, we cannot even begin to consider how to address its causes and consequences.Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science and author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Ecstatic, Fragile Politics of Networked Protest in the 21st Century, discusses hate speech research being conducted at UC Berkeley through the Social Sciences D-Lab, focusing on corporate responsibility and the importance of preserving free speech.This talk was the keynote lecture for the spring 2019 Digital Humanities Fair, which showcases recent scholarship in the digital humanities and hosts a campuswide conversation on the state of the field. Learn more about the Digital Humanities at Berkeley.Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sal Levinson, who works on native propagation at the UC Botanical Garden, led a tour on July 9, 2019, about the plants people have used to heal pain, cause pain, bring pleasure, celebrate the sacred and symbolize faith. From the Cycad, a poisonous plant that the dinosaurs ate and some people have learned how to eat, to California native rye, a type of grass that gets a fungus called ergot that has been used to treat migraine headaches."Ergot is effective for stopping bleeding," Levinson tells a group of 20 on the tour. "The wise women in ancient times would commonly use it after childbirth. Some women would start bleeding out after childbirth, and if they used this drug, they could stop the bleeding and save the women."This walk was hosted in conjunction with the current exhibit on view at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Pleasure, Poison, Prescription, Prayer: The Worlds of Mind-Altering Substances.Listen to the talk and read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the "Science of Happiness" podcast episode, "Finding awe in every step," musician and activist Diana Gameros talks about how she moved to the U.S. from Mexico at 13, and the heartbreak that came with it. She spent years writing about longing to go home to Juarez, Mexico, and the experience of undocumented immigrants in America."When I moved to the United States, I found inspiration or I found this motivation to write about the things that I was feeling about being away and I think, you know, I was inspired by folk music to create these songs," Gameros tells host Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor and co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley."For me, it’s very humbling to know that some of the stories and the messages I give, or that I sing about, are resonating with other people whose stories are similar to mine," Gameros continues. "And I began to notice that they became a source of inspiration and of empowerment to them. And so I also see it as a as a responsibility to use my platform. I have a microphone. I have an audience. I have a stage. And so, for me it’s a way to give voice to those who don’t have a means to express it."In each episode of "Science of Happiness," a guest chooses a practice from the Science of Happiness free online course from the Greater Good Science Center that's been shown to increase happiness, connection and kindness. Gameros chose the Awe Walk, which she did both in California and Mexico, where she recently visited for the first time in 16 years.Listen to more episodes of "Science of Happiness" at https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts.(Artwork by Whitney Anderson)Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is widely held today on grounds of prudence — if not realism — that in designing public policy and legal systems, we should assume that people are entirely self-interested and amoral. But it is anything but prudent to let Homo economicus be the behavioral assumption that underpins public policy. Samuel Bowles, a research professor and director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, explains why this is so, using evidence from behavioral experiments mechanism design and other sources, and proposes an alternative paradigm for policy making.Sponsored by UC Berkeley's Graduate Division, Bowles gave this lecture on Feb. 25, 2019, as part of the Barbara Weinstock Lectures on the Morals of Trade.(Santa Fe Institute photo)Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his book Rock ’n’ Film: Cinema’s Dance with Popular Music, music historian David James explores how rock’s capacity for cultural empowerment and its usefulness as a driver of commerce and profit have been reproduced in various kinds of cinema: independent documentaries and concert films including Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter; narrative films, such as King Creole and Privilege; and the experimental cinema of artists, like Kenneth Anger.In a June 22, 2019, lecture at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), James explored the rich legacy of cinema’s dance with popular music. Illustrating his talk with clips from classic rock films like Blackboard Jungle, A Hard Day’s Night, and many others, James shared with his BAMPFA audience how rock music was distinctive from other cultural developments of its era because of its multiracial appeal, anticipating and helping to precipitate the utopian ideals of the civil rights era and other left-wing movements.These transformative energies, James said, were channeled into a growing body of films that became important to the development of rock music — not just as delivery mechanisms of the new sound, but as engines for its production. Marquee musicians like Elvis and the Beatles found themselves able to experiment with new forms of creative expression in films that captured the exciting and transgressive spirit of their musical moment.James’ lecture was delivered in conjunction with an ongoing film series at BAMPFA inspired by his work, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, which runs through Aug. 31. For more information, visit bampfa.org/program/its-only-rock-n-roll.Read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As of 2017, there were more than 273 million smartphones in use in the country and 5 billion subscriber connections worldwide.“This is a big, big business,” says Joel Moskowitz, the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health at the School of Public Health. “This is an industry that’s probably been unparalleled by any other industry in the world, in terms of reach.”Moskowitz gave a talk last spring called “Cell Phones, Cell Towers and Wireless Safety” for Be Well at Work, a University Health Services program at UC Berkeley.Moskowitz, who has conducted research on disease prevention programs and policies for more than 30 years, says that with the influx of smartphones has come hundreds of thousands of cell towers. These towers receive and transmit radio frequencies called microwaves — the same waves used in microwave ovens.In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization classified radio frequency radiation as possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on studies of cell phone radiation and brain tumor risk in humans.“Currently, we have considerably more evidence that would work a stronger classification,” says Moskowitz, an adviser to the International EMF Scientist Appeal signed by more than 240 scientists who publish peer-reviewed research on electromagnetic radiation. “Many scientists today feel that it’s time for IARC to re-review the literature given all the research that’s been published since 2011 to upgrade this to at least probably carcinogenic to humans, if not actually carcinogenic.”Read the transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

California's agriculture has been impacted by dwindling bee populations. In this episode of Just Food, a podcast from the Berkeley Food Institute at UC Berkeley, experts discuss what farms can do in response — not only to protect honeybees, but also to restore native pollinator species.This episode was originally published in September 2017.This episode features:Colin Muller, a beekeeper at Muller RanchClaire Kremen, professor of environmental science in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC BerkeleyPaul Muller, part owner of Full Belly FarmThis podcast was produced by the Berkeley Food Institute in partnership with the UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute at the Graduate School of Journalism.See photos and listen to more episodes of the Just Food podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.