A daily selection of stories about UC Berkeley and higher education that have appeared in the local and national media.
Monday, 8 February 2010
1. Advice for the Concord City Council: Don't leap without parachute
Oakland Tribune
February 8, 2010
Concord stands poised to take an enormous step that will shape the East Bay for generations: creating a community on the long dormant land of the Concord Naval Weapons Station. Whether this is a leap to a better tomorrow or a plunge to an uncertain future depends on the environmental and social safeguards built into the project now....
Environmental review of the project is incomplete. Measures to mitigate its impacts on traffic and greenhouse gas pollution are toothless. The plan falls far short on commitments to lock in the promised benefits of its compact development footprint — local jobs near affordable homes, public transportation and preservation of natural resources. Nor is there an adequate commitment to protect Mount Diablo Creek.
We know what will happen if the city doesn't plan ahead. A UC BERKELEY STUDY concluded that without better labor and housing planning, the project will create just one home for every 11 moderate and lower-income jobs — forcing 15,000 workers into long commutes or overcrowded houses. This is bad news for our community and our planet....
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2. Children under stress need supportive parents
Bolo Health
February 8, 2010
Mumbai: A new study says that children who are of sensitive nature are likely to perform better in supportive environments. The STUDY CONDUCTED BY THE SCIENTISTS at the University of British Columbia, the University of California, San Francisco, and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, appeared in the January/ February 2010 issue of the Child Development journal.
It was always believed that kids who cannot handle stress are more prone to facing difficulties and may have mental and behavioral problems than their friends. But this new study offers a different perspective. Though it may not be easy to raise a sensitive child like other normal children but they can prosper and grow up as exceptional individuals in an encouraging, supportive and nurturing environment....
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3. Why are car-pool lanes sometimes difficult?
OC Registrar
February 8, 2010
...Take High-Occupancy-Vehicle (car-pool) lanes.
"On State Route 55, as well as most of Orange County's freeways, the basic rule of HOV access is to provide a corridor that gives incentive to long-range car-poolers, not just local trips between successive ramps," says Caltrans spokesman Alex Valdez.
As for the placement of access points, Valdez added: "Based on the origin-and-destination analysis ... our traffic operations division determines from which ramps most vehicles will exit the car-pool lane, and then places the openings accordingly. They also strive to reduce potential merge disturbances with long-range commuters already in the HOV lanes."
"The latest formula involves a plan to convert the entire Orange County HOV system to 'continuous access' to allow ingress and egress along the entire freeway length," Valdez says. "This stems from conclusions drawn from the PATH transportation STUDY UNDERTAKEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY."...
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4. Why are liberals so condescending?
Washington Post (*requires registration)
February 7, 2010; B01
Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.
It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. "We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives)....
Prominent liberal academics also propagate these beliefs. GEORGE LAKOFF, A LINGUIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY and a consultant to Democratic candidates, says flatly that liberals, unlike conservatives, "still believe in Enlightenment reason," while Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist and Democratic consultant, argues that the GOP has done a better job of mastering the emotional side of campaigns because Democrats, alas, are just too intellectual. "They like to read and think," Westen wrote. "They thrive on policy debates, arguments, statistics, and getting the facts right."
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5. J.D. Salinger's complaint
San Francisco Chronicle
February 8, 2010
J.D. Salinger may be gone, but his ability to persuade a New York court to ban Swedish author Fredrik Colting's novel "60 Years Later" makes his estate the center of one of the biggest intellectual property battles in the land.
Last year, Salinger and his literary trust persuaded New York Federal District Judge Deborah Batts to enjoin publication of Colting's homage, which profiles the dotage of both author Salinger and Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." The New York Times Co., the Tribune Co., Gannett, the American Library Association and ATTORNEYS with the Stanford, UC BERKELEY and Georgetown law schools have all filed amicus curiae briefs supporting Colting's appeal.
Batts' decision to ban the novel has enormous impact on the free speech rights of writers, critics and other creative artists. If the decision is upheld, authors, professors and anyone with an interest in the written word could be victim of this decision to uphold Salinger's belief that he alone controlled his characters' lives and their thinking....
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6. For UC's Commission on the Future, nothing is off the table
With California's public university system shackled to a shrinking budget, a group of chancellors, students and others considers ideas -- from banal to radical -- to keep quality up and costs down.
Los Angeles Times
February 8, 2010
Why not abolish student fees at the University of California? And in exchange, how about requiring graduates to pay the university a percentage of their income for a while after college?
That may sound outlandish at a time when UC is substantially hiking student fees and the state budget crisis has left the 10-campus system strapped for cash. But that's precisely why UC BERKELEY PUBLIC POLICY PROFESSOR ROBERT REICH raised the idea to a commission trying to chart the university's course into the future.
"We've never been here before, not only the university but the state of California," Reich, a former U.S. Labor Secretary, said in an interview. "So, many ideas that would never before see the light of day are now being examined seriously."...
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7. In cash-strapped state, how will we pay for public higher education?
Sacramento Bee
February 7, 2010
On a mild, overcast day in October 2007, a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GRADUATE lobbed a rhetorical bomb at his alma mater: What if the public university went private?
"Suppose," mused state Treasurer Bill Lockyer in a widely distributed report on California's fiscal future, that "the state eliminated all its direct general fund support from the UC system, allowing it to set its own budget and raise revenues to replace the state's share."
Lockyer's supposition, which he was quick to point out he wasn't advocating, sparked an uproar among academic leaders and editorial writers, then slipped back into the Capitol's sea of partisan squabbling and budget crises....
But the issue has never really stopped making waves. As California's iconic Master Plan for Higher Education marks its 50th anniversary this year, and the state struggles to balance its books, variations of Lockyer's "privatization" question are being posed more frequently.
Similarly, the federal government mandates minimum state spending levels on many health and welfare programs. But the 10-CAMPUS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA and the 23-campus California State University system have no such protection. As a result, the state's support of higher education in the past few decades has ranged from shaky to problematical:...
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8. When Students Strike Back: The New Social Movement at the University of California
Huffington Post
February 8, 2010
On November 20th, a group of BERKELEY STUDENTS held Wheeler Hall hostage, and their first demand was to rehire 38 custodians. The administration and the media were confused by this request; they asked themselves, why do the students care about janitors? From the perspective of the UC administration, students should only be protesting against the escalating fees they are being forced to pay; however, students, unions, and workers have begun to form a new type of coalition that cuts across traditional class and employment divisions. By uniting around a group of diverse demands representing different social groups, the UC ACTIVISTS have pointed to the future of progressive social movements.
While many pundits and politicians have been arguing that the only political movement on the ground these days is the loose band of right-leaning tea partiers, the protests at the University of California offer an alternative political force. On the one side, we have the libertarian anti-government tax revolt that often takes its marching orders from conservative talk show hosts and Fox News, and on the other side, a coalition of university students, faculty, and unionized workers supporting equitable taxes and a defense of public institutions. This battle demonstrates the real fight for the future of the country, and like so many other things, it all starts in California....
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9. Focus on graduation could be rough for small private colleges
Contra Costa Times
February 8, 2010
OAKLAND — Here at serene Holy Names University, warning bells are about to ring.
Graduation rates are likely to move to the forefront of national higher-education discussions this year, putting particular pressure on schools such as Holy Names, where just 17 percent of the students who arrive as freshmen put on a cap and gown within six years.
With President Barack Obama calling on colleges to dramatically increase the number of graduates over the next decade, Holy Names and other small private schools are entering an era of self-examination. For many, it is a matter of figuring out how to improve their dismal numbers without turning away the students who tend to contribute to those low rates.
By comparison, Cal State East Bay in Hayward graduated about 44 percent of its students within six years — about average for the 23-campus California State University system — and UC BERKELEY graduated 90 percent. The national average hovers around 60 percent....
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10. GW has most Peace Corps volunteers of mid-sized schools
University leads list for second year in a row
GW Hatchet
February 8, 2010
For the second consecutive year, GW has more graduates in the Peace Corps than any other medium-sized university, the organization announced Thursday.
This marks the second year in a row and third time in four years that GW has placed first in the rankings for the category of colleges and universities with between 5,000 and 15,000 students. Currently there are 53 undergraduate alumni from GW serving in the Peace Corps, more than any other university of this size.
Following GW in the medium-sized rankings is American University with 51 participants and Cornell University with 46 participants....
The UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY still maintains the most Peace Corps participants of all time with 3,412 involved with the program....
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11. Interview with John Yoo on the Treatment of Detainees
Real Clear Politics
ZAKARIA: John Yoo -- you will remember the name, I imagine -- he was the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the so-called "torture memos" during the Bush administration. Those were the legal justifications that allowed what some regarded as torture and other controversial treatments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and beyond.
After leaving the Bush administration in 2003, YOO RETURNED TO HIS POST AS A PROFESSOR OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, perhaps a lonely place for a conservative with that resume. Yoo has just published a book called "Crisis and Command,"...[Read Full Story for Q&A]
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12. Virtual pioneer Jaron Lanier warns: Machines make bad masters
Los Angeles Times
February 7, 2010
"People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts," Jaron Lanier was telling me. "Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good."
It sounded a little bit like Dickens, and a little bit like a line from the "Terminator" movies. But it was all reality, coming from a true computing pioneer and one of modern technology's most insightful critics.
Lanier, 49, has been pondering the effect that the World Wide Web -- its ideology as well as its design -- has had on creativity, society and commerce for years.
The inquiry resulted in a book, or "manifesto" according to his own label, published this year titled "You Are Not a Gadget." The title should provide a clue that he hasn't found much to like.
Lanier is an imposing man with dark brown hair wound into long dreadlocks, and a way of throwing off incisive observations about technology and the world in a soft, almost apologetic tone of voice. His resume places him squarely in what he might himself term nerd royalty: He was an early pioneer in virtual reality, a term he "either coined or popularized," according to the bio on his home page.
A college dropout, he has been a VISITING FACULTY MEMBER at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania AND UC BERKELEY....
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13. Lawrence Hall of Science explores race in America
Oakland Tribune
February 8, 2010
What do we talk about when we talk about race? The answers, according to the exhibit "Race: Are We So Different?" at UC BERKELEY'S LAWRENCE HALL OF SCIENCE, are as thought-provoking as they are complex.
The traveling exhibit, organized by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota, takes a look at the science and history behind race and its effects on American society. Partly composed of interactive elements that allow visitors to test their assumptions and knowledge, the exhibit is a forum in which to explore misconceptions about the ideas of race, says Barb Ando, Lawrence Hall of Science director of public programs.
"We all live with the idea of race and yet, as a concept, it's not something you talk about very often," Ando says. To enhance the conversation, UC Berkeley students are available to lead school groups in discussions about what they see on display....
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14. Gunneras - plants from the days of dinosaurs
Giant-leaved Gunnera tinctoria - the spike in the center...
San Francisco Chronicle
February 7, 2010
We used to scoff at nurseries that advertised gunneras as "Dinosaur Chow." Gunneras couldn't be that old, after all. Everybody knows plant-eating dinosaurs were limited to a diet of tree ferns and primitive conifers.
Wrong: It all depends on which dinosaurs you're talking about. Fossil gunnera pollen dated as 93 million years old has been found in Peru, and 80-million-year-old gunnera leaves turn up in the Judith River Formation in the badlands of Montana. So late-model dinos - the horn-faced triceratops or the duckbills -could easily have munched on those enormous leaves....
Botanists have differed on how to classify these odd plants. Most taxonomic arrangements put them in their own family and order.
Some scientists propose a close relationship with the saxifrages. The name for the genus honors J.E. Gunner, an 18th century Norwegian bishop....
South American gunneras do well in our area. You can see specimens of several rarities in BERKELEY'S UC BOTANICAL GARDEN and the San Francisco Botanical Garden, notably the Ancient Plants exhibit, as well as other parts of Golden Gate Park. They're hard to miss. G. tinctoria has naturalized in San Francisco and Marin County, but so far, the California Invasive Plant Council hasn't listed it as a problem species. Plantsman Daniel Hinkley has described good results with G. cordifolia, the New Zealand G. prorepens and the African G. perpensa in his Puget Sound gardens....
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