Berkeley Talks

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Why racial equity belongs in the study of economics Jul 24, 2020

Show notes

"Economists begin with this notion of the free market invisible hand, and we need to be clear that the hand has a color — it's a white hand, let me say, a white male hand," said Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University. ... I was a major in sociology and economics... I ended up choosing sociology, in part because of the foundation of economics is assumptions about the rational actor making decisions on a cost-benefit basis in something called efficient market. And we all know that the Homo sapiens — they're a complex animal shaped by multiple social forces and group divisions."

Bonilla-Silva joined a panel of scholars — Daina Ramey Berry, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Arjumand Siddiqi, a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Toronto; and Mario Small, a sociology professor at Harvard University — for a discussion on July 13, 2020, about how the conceptual approaches of economics discount Black and Latinx perspectives, and what they think economics could learn from other disciplines. The discussion was moderated by Sandy Darity, a professor of economics, public policy and African and African American studies at Duke University.

This talk was sponsored by UC Berkeley's Department of Economics and Economics for Inclusive Prosperity, co-founded by Berkeley economics professor Gabriel Zucman.

Read a transcript and listen to the episode on Berkeley News.

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Thelton Henderson on the bravery to do what's right Jul 17, 2020

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“I’ve seen a huge capacity for redemption from people… if given a chance.” That’s Thelton Henderson, a renowned civil rights lawyer who spent 37 years as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in conversation with Savala Trepczynski in a 2017 podcast series, Be the Change.

Be the Change was created and hosted by Trepczynski, the executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at Berkeley Law. The series highlights people who Trepcyznski says “embody, and therefore model, a progressive and subversively compassionate way of being a human being.”

Henderson, who graduated from Berkeley Law in 1962, was the first African American lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the early 1960s. In the interview, he shares what it was like working alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists in the South, investigating local law enforcement and human rights abuses, and how the bravery he saw at the time inspired his work as a judge.

Listen to the interview and read the transcript on Berkeley News.

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Can you imagine a future without police? Jul 10, 2020

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This Berkeley Talks episode features an interview on Who Belongs?, a podcast by UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. Host Marc Abizeid, joined by co-host Erfan Moradi, talk with Erin Kerrison, an assistant professor of social welfare at Berkeley, about why she thinks the U.S. needs to dismantle capitalism and police, and build a new system free of crime and punishment.

"What is deemed illegal is not necessarily harmful — there's a whole lot of stuff that wreaks havoc in people's lives that is not illegal, that is not criminal," said Kerrison. "So, that sort of construction, that needs to be thrown out immediately ... when I say there's a possibility that we don't have to have crime, it's so true. It's so true because it's a construct. If we didn't have crime as such, because communities were stronger, then yeah, we wouldn't need police because police respond to crime, which is, in large part, a symptom of much, much bigger and deeper social and structural ills."

(Photo by risingthermals via Flickr)

Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

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How higher ed is transforming during the pandemic Jul 03, 2020

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The switch to remote learning, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, is realigning several education fundamentals. In this talk, top leaders at UC Berkeley — Chancellor Carol Christ; Bob Jacobsen, dean of undergraduate studies; and Rich Lyons, chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer — discuss how Berkeley is challenging convention in its new approach to instruction and learning, and consider what the implications for higher education are likely to be.

Listen to the talk and read the transcript on Berkeley News.

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Fighting racism: How to restructure society so it's open to all Jun 26, 2020

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"Now, some would like us to believe that racism can be cured pharmacologically," said Amani Allen, executive associate dean at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "One major problem with this argument is that it suggests that racism is primarily facilitated through individual actors, and if we can just fix those bad people, everything will be fine. Well, racism, I would argue, won’t be cured by a pill. And that’s because what we’re talking about is systemic."

On June 9, 2020, Allen joined epidemiologist and civil rights activist Camara Jones, a 2019-20 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, in the first of a webinar series by the American Public Health Association that examines racism and its historic present-day impact on health and well-being.

In their talk, "Racism: The ultimate underlying condition," Jones began by defining racism as a two-sided open/closed sign, and how those on the open side might not recognize that the other side says "closed."

Listen to the talk and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

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Journalist Nahal Toosi on national security reporting under Trump Jun 19, 2020

Show notes

"One myth I think that increasingly people are realizing, and I think Trump has accelerated this, is that national security is really about military and crime," said Politico reporter Nahal Toosi at a UC Berkeley event in March. ...I think what we're learning increasingly is that it's about the economy. It's about cyber issues. It's about climate. It's about migration. It's about the coronavirus.

"...I'm having to work with our health reporters because we're realizing these things are all coming together. So, it's not just about war and it's not just about the FBI or whatever. It's all these other things that have to work together."

Toosi joined professor Mark Danner at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism on March 2, 2020, to discuss what it's been like working as a foreign affairs correspondent during the Trump administration.

Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

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Using peer pressure to fight climate change Jun 12, 2020

Show notes

In adopting a different diet or driving less, a person has an effect on the planet, says Robert Frank, an economics professor at Cornell University. But not for the reason they might think.

"If you don't do it, the world will be the same as if you do it," said Frank, who spoke at UC Berkeley in January. "But the effect you have through your own actions are only a small fraction of the total effect you have because when you do something, other people see you do it, and they do it, too."

Frank, author of the 2020 book Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work, joined Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at Berkeley, at the campus's Goldman School of Public Policy on Jan. 28, 2020, to discuss how he sees peer pressure as a powerful tool to fight climate change.

Listen to the talk and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

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America wants gun control. Why doesn't it have it? Jun 05, 2020

Show notes

"If having a gun really made you safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It’s not," said Gary Younge, a professor of sociology at Manchester University and former editor-at-large at the Guardian, in a lecture at UC Berkeley on March 4, 2020.

"Yet while Americans consistently favor more gun control," Younge continues, "gun laws have generally become more lax. That is partly due to the material resources of the gun lobby. But it is also about the central role of the gun, what it represents in the American narrative, and the inability of gun control advocates to develop a counter-narrative. ... When the national narrative is a story of conquering, dominating, force and power, a broad atavistic attachment to the gun can have more pull than narrower rational arguments to contain it."

Listen to the lecture and read a transcript on Berkeley News.

Detail of a mural by Kyle Holbrook and local youth in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Terence Faircloth via Flickr)

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Thirty-six questions to help us connect when we're apart May 29, 2020

Show notes

For the first week of quarantine during the global COVID-19 pandemic, Rebecca Vitali-DeCola's 82-year-old dad, Joe DeCola, seemed upbeat.

"He was like, 'I got my dinner and I have this beautiful bouquet of flowers.' He just sounded, like, tucked-in and content."

DeCola has stage 4 lung cancer. He's become accustomed to isolating himself from time to time, especially during flu season. But after a few months sheltering in place this time around, his daughter said it started to get harder for him. "...He said, 'I’m feeling so lonely. I’m just really, really lonely.'”

That's why Vitali-DeCola, a teacher who has been staying at home with her husband and son in Brooklyn, while her dad is all by himself in Manhattan, decided to do a happiness practice by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center called "36 Questions for Increasing Closeness." She recently joined host Dacher Keltner on the Science of Happiness podcast to discuss her experience.

Listen to the interview and read the transcript on Berkeley News.

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The global politics of waste May 22, 2020

Show notes

"All waste is global," said Kate O'Neill, a professor in the the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, at a campus event in February. "What we throw away has value. What we throw away often travels the globe. And that's not just the things we know about like electronic wastes, but also plastics... and things like cars, used cars, secondhand cars, clothes, bikes — even discarded food — will actually travel to some other countries, someplace where it may or may not be used..."

O'Neill, author of the 2019 book Waste, gave a Feb. 5 lecture, sponsored by Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), about how the things we throw away go through entire lifecycles after we toss them. And she discusses how China's 2017 decision to stop importing paper and plastic scrap in the condition it had been has disrupted the global waste economy and changed how communities around the world recycle.

Read a transcript and listen on Berkeley News.

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