Berkeley Talks

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 of a just defender, it’s a peace based upon forcible change. Now, Arthur seemed to suggest that there’s no coherent alternative to the just defender’s limited aims in war, that any other conception of war makes war a matter of what he called extermination. Even for an aggressor’s state, that seems to me an exaggerated characterization.”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, industrialist and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner, who was also a member of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Utah. He was also an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. Tanner’s goal, in establishing the lectures through the Tanner philanthropies, was to promote the search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. He hoped that the lectures would advance scholarly and scientific learning in the area of human values, and contribute to the intellectual and moral life of humankind.Learn more about the 2019 Tanner Lectures.Listen and read a transcript of this talk on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, industrialist and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner, who was also a member of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Utah. He was also an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. Tanner’s goal, in establishing the lectures through the Tanner philanthropies, was to promote the search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. He hoped that the lectures would advance scholarly and scientific learning in the area of human values, and contribute to the intellectual and moral life of humankind.Listen and read the transcript on Berkeley News.Learn more about the 2019 Tanner Lectures.Stay tuned for the third installment of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Berkeley Talks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 universities: UC Berkeley, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, Utah, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. This series was founded in 1978 by the American scholar, industrialist and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner, who was also a member of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Utah. He was also an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. Tanner's goal, in establishing the lectures through the Tanner philanthropies, was to promote the search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. He hoped that the lectures would advance scholarly and scientific learning in the area of human values, and contribute to the intellectual and moral life of humankind.Read more about the 2019 Tanner Lectures.Stay tuned for the second and third installments of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Berkeley Talks.Listen and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 meet these ambitious but achievable goals.This lecture is part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).Listen and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 American family physician originally from Phoenix, Arizona. After completing his family medicine training at UCLA, Tafur spent two years in academic research at the UCSD Department of Psychiatry in a lab focused on mind-body medicine. After his research fellowship, over a period of six years, he lived and worked in the Peruvian Amazon at the traditional healing center Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. There he worked closely with master Shipibo shaman Ricardo Amaringo and trained in ayahuasca shamanism.In his new book, The Fellowship of the River: A Medical Doctor’s Exploration into Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine, Tafur shares his unique experience and integrative medical theories. He is now focused on his work with the nonprofit Modern Spirit and the Modern Spirit Epigenetics Project.For upcoming events, visit the Heart Museum of Anthropology’s website.Read a transcript and listen on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, their current limitations and the prospects for novel and more effective immunotherapy approaches, including those based on research in the his laboratory.This lecture is part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).Read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 accomplishments of UC Berkeley faculty and alumni and Berkeley natives — with composers, scholars, writers, filmmakers and performers bringing new and recent work to campus. Dance and contemporary music ensembles perform Cal Performances co-commissioned work and the season concludes with a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission project staged in collaboration with lead commissioner Stanford Live. Artists and ensembles with meaningful, decades-long relationships with Cal Performances and Bay Area audiences return, and master performers from across the globe travel to Zellerbach Hall for presentations that revive and refresh traditional and contemporary music and dance practices.Read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.(Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater photo by Andrew Eccles)  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more 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 models of bridging that give us examples of how to build and sustain a diverse, pluralistic society underpinned by a new, inclusive social compact where group-based difference and forms of identity — whether race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, among others — are not dehumanized nor are they subsumed, but instead are celebrated and included in our imagined and real community.Learn more about the Othering and Belonging conferences.Listen and read a transcript on Berkeley News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.