Bridging divides: from anger and mistrust to belonging — and hope
By Edward Lempinen | Berkeley News | September 23, 2024 As UC Berkeley celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, it is emerging as a national leader in developing science-based practices that nurture constructive dialogue. The goal: Cool tensions, promote understanding and ease polarization.
Berkeley Talks: What is understanding? Berkeley scholars discuss
In Berkeley Talks episode 208, three UC Berkeley professors from a wide range of disciplines — psychology, biology and ethnic studies — broach a deep question: What is understanding?
Berkeley Buffet
With more than 1,500 faculty members, including a handful of Nobel laureates, scores of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows, and abundant National Academy of Sciences members, Berkeley offers far more than any student could ever hope to explore during their time here. But a first-of-its-kind course endeavors to provide students with a generous, semester-long sampling of […]
Anthropology Professor Kent Lightfoot receives the Society for American Archaeology’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award
UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor Kent G. Lightfoot received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Archaeology for his innovative approach to combining archaeology with contemporary social justice issues which contributes new understandings of the Anthropocene era. Professor Lightfoot’s research explores the interactions between Indigenous peoples and European settlers, highlighting the history and […]
Amidst misinformation, critical thinking needs a 21st century upgrade
In 2013, the University of California, Berkeley, debuted a course to teach undergraduates the tricks used by scientists to make sense of the world, in the hope that these tricks would prove useful in assessing the claims and counterclaims that bombard us every day. It was launched by three UC Berkeley professors — a physicist, […]
‘Third Millennium Thinking’: How to use scientific tools to solve everyday problems
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter, philosophy professor John Campbell, and social psychologist Robert MacCoun teach a course at the University of California Berkeley on using scientific tools to approach everyday problems. They’ve now turned that course into the book “Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense.” Perlmutter joins host Scott Tong to […]
He led Cal to Olympic gold in 1928. Now his rowing medal is back at UC Berkeley
By Jason Pohl | January 30, 2024 For decades, in a family’s home in West Marin, a set of rowing oars hung horizontally over the French doors leading to the patio. Below the oars was a finish line photo of the moment UC Berkeley’s undefeated 1928 men’s varsity eight won the world championship. And next […]
New Brilliance of Berkeley course introduces undergrads to 28 luminaries — in one semester
By Gretchen Kell | January 18, 2024 With so much brilliance at UC Berkeley — from headline-grabbing research to stellar faculty members across disciplines — it’s impossible for undergraduates, many scouting for their academic passions, to sample it all while on campus. But this week, a new spring semester course, Brilliance of Berkeley, kicks off […]
New ‘Boys in the Boat’ movie — and a unique campus class — spark pride in Cal’s rowing history
By Jason Pohl | December 5, 2023 In the 1920s, when football fans first packed California Memorial Stadium, thousands of people also lined the Oakland Estuary, eager to spectate the campus’s original sport. They cheered as eight Cal rowers and a coxswain crammed in a narrow shell and raced in college sports’ fiercest rivalries. Next […]
UC Berkeley’s Alison Gopnik wins Rumelhart Prize in Cognitive Science
Alison Gopnik, a University of California, Berkeley, psychology professor whose research has transformed our understanding of how children learn and what they can teach us about ourselves, is this year’s winner of the prestigious David Rumelhart Prize in Cognitive Science. Read more >