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Friday, 25 September 2009
1. California University Cuts Protested
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
September 25, 2009
Berkeley, Calif.— Thousands of students, faculty members and employees at the 10 University of California campuses protested budget cuts, unpaid faculty furloughs and tuition increases on Thursday.
OFFICIALS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, estimated that several thousand protesters were in Sproul Plaza chanting and waving signs. Most academic departments on campus reported that some classes had been canceled because faculty members and students walked out. Other campuses reported smaller turnouts at rallies and marches....
The online walkout petition was signed by 1,221 of the 19,000 faculty members statewide. A union representing more than 11,000 university professional and technical staff members supported the protest and called a one-day strike....
Among the more contentious items are a proposed 32 percent increase in student tuition by fall 2010, and decisions made by the university president, Mark Yudof, over how to handle mandatory faculty furlough days, which will reduce pay by 4 to 10 percent. Average yearly tuition and fees for undergraduates this academic year are $8,720.
“I chose Berkeley over all the other universities because it offered me a very good education at a price my family could afford,” said BRANDON PHAM, 17, A FRESHMAN POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJOR who skipped the day’s classes in protest. Mr. Pham held a sign that read: “We make the university. They make the crisis.”...
“We are operating on the assumption that the state’s disinvestment will continue,” said CHANCELLOR ROBERT J. BIRGENEAU OF BERKELEY, adding that the university would now have to rely on higher fees, private foundation donations and better investments. The pain of budget cuts will be felt broadly, he said, and “paying for public education is going to be increasingly difficult for middle-class families.”
CATHERINE COLE, A PROFESSOR IN THE THEATER DEPARTMENT, who canceled her classes on Thursday to attend the rally, said: “We’ve hit a tipping point. What is emerging here is people realizing it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Still, many students at Berkeley did not participate in the protest and walked about campus as they would on any other Thursday. “I haven’t been near Sproul Plaza today,” said RAY LIANG, 18. “I have classes to go to and homework to do.” Full Story
2. 5,000 at UC Berkeley protest tuition increases, furloughs, layoffs
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 25, 2009
Berkeley — An estimated 5,000 students, professors and other employees packed UC BERKELEY'S SPROUL PLAZA on Thursday to protest budget cuts and fee hikes they said are decimating the university system.
The two-hour rally — believed to be the largest Berkeley demonstration since the 1960s — coincided with a faculty walkout that moved many classes off campus for the day. Professors across the 10-campus UC system participated in smaller assemblies at other campuses to protest the university's handling of furlough days....
"What's really important is this is just the beginning," said SENIOR NHUNHU NGUYEN, A STUDENT GOVERNMENT SENATOR. "We should use our mobilization to hit the roots of the problem, which is legislative."
CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU, who did not attend the rally, said he understood the anger, but said that Sacramento and California residents — not the university — are to blame.
"I don't blame the students and staff for being angry," he said. "They have to direct their anger somewhere."
The protests remained peaceful throughout the day, beginning with picketers at the entrances to campus....
GEOLOGY PROFESSOR GEORGE BRIMHALL was one who said he felt a responsibility to be in class for any student who wished to be there, though he gave them the choice of attending or not. He also planned to repeat the course for those who missed the early session.
"I feel like I still have a contract with any student who wants to be here," he said. "I'll lecture to one student if that's who shows up." ...
[This story also appeared in the Oakland Tribune and San Jose Mercury News] Full Story
3. UC campuses hit by protests
On what was the first day of the new academic year for most of the system, students and staff protest cuts and fee increases brought on by California's budget crisis.
Los Angeles Times
September 24, 2009
Reporting from Berkeley and Los Angeles -- Protests, rallies and scattered class cancellations roiled University of California campuses across the state Thursday, on the first day of the fall quarter for many students. But predictions by some organizers that the 10 campuses could be shut down by demonstrations against fee increases and pay cuts did not materialize.
The size and intensity of the protests and related activities varied significantly across the UC system. An estimated 5,000 people demonstrated at UC BERKELEY, the oldest campus; just 20 or so took part at UC Merced, the newest....
At UC Berkeley, demonstrators gathered for a boisterous noon rally and teach-in at Upper Sproul Plaza. Afterward, some protesters blocked a nearby intersection with a sit-in that lasted about two hours.
UC BERKELEY CLASSICS PROFESSOR ANTHONY LONG moved his ancient Greek philosophy class to a lawn at the edge of campus so students wouldn't have to cross picket lines.
Instead of the usual subject matter, he taught from Plato's "Crito," a dialogue on the topical subject of civil disobedience. About 14 of the 35 or so students showed up, including Jacqueline Johnston, a 21-year-old political economics major who wore a red headband in solidarity with the walkout. All of her four classes Thursday were canceled or changed in some way, she said.... Full Story
4. Regional Update: Thousands Gather For Rallies Against UC Budget Cuts
KPIX Online
September 24, 2009
Thousands of University of California students, faculty and staff gathered in Berkeley today for one of many rallies held statewide to protest how the system's Board of Regents has dealt with reductions in state funding....
In a teleconference with reporters today, UC BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU defended the decisions made by the Board of Regents. He blamed bad economic conditions for the cutbacks and fee increases, and said the furloughs have helped to save hundreds of jobs.
Birgeneau also blamed state legislators who cut $813 million out of the UC budget for 2008-09 and 2009-10 compared to the general fund support for 2007-08.
He said he hopes that the rally "raises the consciousness of Californians so that they will vote for legislators that support public education."
[Other stories on this topic appeared in hundreds of sources nationwide, including the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Associated Press, Time Magazine Online, Guardian (UK), Monthly Review, California Progress Report, Nation, and Chronicle of Higher Education (link by subscription only). Broadcast stories aired on KQED's Radio News and California Report(link to audios), as well as KGO TV (link to video)] Full Story
5. Editorial: UC walkouts hurt more than help
Professors protest requirement that they take unpaid furloughs on non-teaching days.
Orange County Register
September 25, 2009
Students on University of California campuses throughout the state got a surprise Thursday: Their teachers were absent.
On the first official day of the fall quarter for many campuses, UC professors – supported by union bosses – walked out on their classrooms to protest the Board of Regents' decision to institute campuswide furloughs, fee hikes and other cutbacks to offset shortfalls in the UC budget.
The biggest concern amongst the faculty orchestrating the protest seemed to be the administration's announcement restricting teachers from taking furloughs on days they are supposed to teach. Instead, teachers would have to take furloughs on days they are not scheduled for in-class student instruction – days they have office hours, are doing research or are off-campus.
This seems reasonable to us. Teaching should be the first priority of a teacher....
Walkouts won't force the Regents or the Legislature to change their plans. They won't magically close the budget gaps in Sacramento or line the pockets of the UC. What walkouts will do, however, is rob one day of instruction from the very people the faculty and their unions claim to protect: students. Ironically enough, if the demands from the faculty are met students would stand to lose even more days of classroom instruction.... Full Story
6. Tech Plays Key Role in UC Protests
KCBS Radio
September 25, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. (AP/KCBS) -- Students, professors and other employees at the University of California's 10 campuses demonstrated Thursday in protest of deep budget cuts that have led to layoffs, furloughs, course reductions and higher fees....
Many protestors took advantage of technological devices to keep fellow demonstrators, as well as people who couldn't attend one of the demonstrations, up-to-date on the day's events.
"I recorded some videos, I put them up on YouTube and within minutes there were thousands of people looking at it and thousands of people sending it out," declared ADAM, A SENIOR AT UC BERKELEY. "Just really revolutionized and I feel like even if I'm not holding a sign I'm still sending something out," he said of his constant updates on Twitter.
[Link to audio] Full Story
7. Zennie 62 Blog: Ellen DeGeneres tweets, makes UC Berkeley walkout place to be - but for a sexy strip down?
San Francisco Chronicle Online
September 25, 2009
Yesterday's giant UC Berkeley student, worker, and teacher walkout protesting the planned tuition increase and the privatization of Cal was aided by the tweet of the always interesting Ellen Degeneres, who's Twitter account has over 3 million followers (I'm one of them)...
Ok. Once again, Ellen's shown the power of Twitter, but in the process managed to give the impression that students were just hanging out with nothing better to do. In the video that appeared on the show there's no mention of the issue that caused all of those students to be out there that day.
Plus, there's no tweet from Ellen expressing support for the protesters or the students - many of whom are followers of Ellen on Twitter - who are being squeezed by the cost to get an education....
Samsung may not have wanted to get involved in a political statement as the sponsor of this tweet stunt, but given that students need money to buy their products, Samsung missed the boat here. Moreover, Ellen has enough juice to have talked them into something more productive than was done yesterday.
Like what? Well Ellen could have driven followers to the UC Student Walkout website for them to "get educated" on the issue and how it impacts students.... Full Story
8. Questions for Mark Yudof: Big Man on Campus
New York Times Magazine (*requires registration)
September 27, 2009
[Deborah Solomon]: As president of the University of California, the most prestigious of the state-university systems, you have proposed that in-state tuition be jacked up to more than $10,000, from $7,788. Are you pricing education beyond the reach of most students?
[Mark Yudof]: In 2009, U.C. adopted the Blue and Gold Program, guaranteeing that no student with a family income below $60,000 would pay any fees, and this guarantee will continue in 2010. That’s the short answer.
DS: U.C. is facing a budget shortfall of at least $753 million, largely because of cuts in state financing. Do you blame Governor Schwarzenegger for your troubles?
MY: I do not. This is a long-term secular trend across the entire country. Higher education is being squeezed out. It’s systemic. We have an aging population nationally. We have a lot of concern, as we should, with health care....
DS: Do you raise a lot of income from private donations?
MY: We don’t do it in the office of the president. The focus is campus by campus: Santa Cruz or U.C.L.A. or BERKELEY or San Diego, Davis. They have their own development offices, and I’m there to — some of the things I do very well. I smile, I shake hands, I tell jokes....
DS: What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, $400,000?
MY: Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House? Full Story
9. San Francisco banker teams up with journalism school, public broadcaster on local news venture
Los Angeles Times
September 24, 2009
San Francisco (AP) — A San Francisco investment banker is teaming up with the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA'S JOURNALISM SCHOOL and public broadcaster KQED to create a nonprofit news organization that he says will fill a gap in local coverage left by newspaper cutbacks.
When it is launched next year, the Bay Area News Project will use a combination of paid reporter/editors and journalism students to produce stories for a Web site, KQED's radio and television outlets, and a print edition, said Warren Hellman, the financier and philanthropist spearheading the venture scheduled to be announced Friday.
Hellman's private foundation is giving $5 million to start the project, but he hopes it will be sustained primarily through individual and corporate donations, much like public broadcasting stations are....
NEIL HENRY, DEAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, said collaborating with Hellman makes sense both for the school and its 120 students, who already are producing stories for Web sites focused on seven San Francisco Bay area communities. Besides content for the new news venture, the journalism school expects to provide overall editorial guidance and possibly technological and fundraising expertise, Henry said.
"The more partnerships we can build, the more collaborations we can seek, I think that serves everybody well," he said. "It serves the public well, and it serves the future of watchdog journalism."...
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the Washington Post, Sacramento Bee, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News. Other stories appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Business Times, and Wall Street Journal Online. Dean Henry also discussed this topic on KQED Radio's Forum with Michael Krasny (link to audio)] Full Story
10. Berkeley Lab confirms new superheavy element
San Francisco Business Times
September 24, 2009
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory confirmed the existence of superheavy element 114, which was first created a decade ago in Russia.
The two researchers — HEINO NITSCHE and Ken Gregorich — used a gas-filled separator in the lab’s 88-inch Cyclotron to replicate the work of Russian researchers at the Dubna Gas Filled Recoil Separator.
Because their decade-old discovery has been confirmed, those Russian researchers will get the right to name this new element, Nitsche told the San Francisco Business Times.
NITSCHE, who heads the heavy element nuclear and radiochemistry group in LBL’s nuclear science division, is also a CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR AT U.C. BERKELEY, just down the hill from the lab....
The Dubna research center near Moscow and U.C. Berkeley are together responsible for the experimental creation of many of the transuranic elements. Neptunium, plutonium, americum, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and lawrencium were created by Cal researchers like Glenn Seaborg and Albert Ghiorso.... Full Story
11. University lab demonstrates 3-D printing in glass
R & D Magazine
September 25, 2009
A team of engineers and artists working at the University of Washington's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory has developed a way to create glass objects using a conventional 3-D printer. The technique allows a new material to be used in such devices....
RONALD RAEL, AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, has been working with the Solheim Lab to set up his own 3-D printer. Rael is working on new kinds of ceramic bricks that can be used for evaporative cooling systems.
"3-D printing in glass has huge potential for changing the thinking about applications of glass in architecture," Rael said. "Before now, there was no good method of rapid prototyping in glass, so testing designs is an expensive, time-consuming process." Rael adds that 3-D printing allows one to insert different forms of glass to change the performance of the material at specific positions as required by the design.... Full Story
12. Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen
Wired
September 24,
Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind.
Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.
Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers.
“It’s what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device,” said JACK GALLANT, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY NEUROSCIENTIST.
The research, led by Gallant and BERKELEY POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER THOMAS NASELARIS, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options.... Full Story
13. Grand jury stymied in probe of Contra Costa County's foster care
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 25, 2009
Roadblocks and delays have forced Contra Costa County's grand jury to shelve its plan to examine the county's foster care program....
Stress on foster care locally is mirrored statewide and nationwide where foster care programs are in trouble because of budget cuts and the economy, said JILL DUERR BERRICK, AN AUTHORITY ON FOSTER CARE AT UC BERKELEY'S SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WELFARE.
"Counties are having to be more parsimonious in things like (post-foster care) services at the same time many states are reporting a very rapid increase in the numbers of child-abuse reports, which may be due to the economic distress that families are under," Berrick said.... Full Story
14. 7,000 attend talk by controversial food author
Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee)
September 24, 2009
Madison — Here's some advice: Don't buy any foods you've seen advertised on television.
That was one of the tips of a controversial author speaking Thursday before more than 7,000 people at the Kohl Center in the heart of America's Dairyland.
MICHAEL POLLAN visited the campus as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's "Go Big Read" program, after UW chose his book, "In Defense of Food," as the subject of the program. The book was given free to all incoming freshmen and incorporated into more than 60 courses from engineering to art....
THE JOURNALISM PROFESSOR FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY challenges the U.S. food market, taking shots at large farm operations and food scientists.
"We didn't purposely choose a controversial book, but food and food production is important to the people of this state," UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin said. "The interest and the controversy is all positive."... Full Story
15. What Price for Good Coffee?
Time Magazine
October 5, 2009
Ever since Jesuit monks brought coffee to Guatemala three centuries ago, raising the beans has been a losing business for small farmers. Conditions are miserable--try lugging 100 lb. of fertilizer up a mountain--and even though coffee is the world's second most valuable traded commodity, after oil, the money it brings in is measly. "It's not enough to live on," says Luis Antonio, who has grown coffee near Quetzaltenango, in Guatemala's western highlands, for three decades but gets deeper in debt each year. "What we earn isn't enough to buy food for our children."
Antonio and the world's 25 million other small coffee growers don't have a lot of career alternatives. So you'd think they would be enthusiastic about Fair Trade--a global campaign that for 25 years has sought to bring struggling Third World farmers, including Antonio, out of poverty by paying them higher-than-market prices for everything from coffee to quinoa....
But the future of the Fair Trade--coffee movement is in question, as some backers raise concerns about whether it has reached the limit of how much it can help....
For most coffee growers, Fair Trade is still slightly more lucrative than the open market. Two years ago, the Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which sets worldwide prices and standards, raised the minimum per-pound price of nonorganic coffee 9¢, to $1.35 (a dime of which goes to social programs like scholarships for growers' children). That's 15¢ higher than the current market rate. And yet, according to Fair Trade RESEARCHER CHRISTOPHER BACON OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, the per-pound price that's needed for farmers to rise above subsistence is really more than $2. ... Full Story
16. A special report on telecoms in emerging markets
Eureka moments: How a luxury item became a tool of global development
Economist [UK]
September 24, 2009
How did a device that just a few years ago was regarded as a yuppie plaything become, in the words of Jeffrey Sachs, a development guru at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, “the single most transformative tool for development”? ...
Does the spread of mobile phones promote economic development? At first the evidence was anecdotal....
In the past few years the anecdotal evidence has been backed up by studies that measure the economic impact of mobile phones directly. One example is the analysis of fish prices on the coast of Kerala, in southern India, carried out in 2007 by Robert Jensen, an economist at Harvard University....
Similarly, JENNY AKER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY carried out an analysis of grain markets in Niger, published in 2008, to see how the phasing-in of mobile-phone coverage between 2001 and 2006 affected grain prices. She found that it reduced price variations between one market and another by a minimum of 6.4%, and often more in remote and hard-to-reach markets. As a result, prices for consumers were lower and profits for traders higher. During a spike in food prices in 2005 grain was 4.5% cheaper in markets with mobile coverage.
Such microeconomic studies provide support for macroeconomic analyses that suggest a link between mobile phones and economic growth. ... Full Story
17. Torture at Abu Ghraib subject of Berkeley Art Museum show
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
September 24, 2009
In 1963, the UC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM (BAM) got off the ground with a major gift from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann. The abstract expressionist donated 45 of his revered paintings to BAM, along with a $250,000 check.
This year, the museum received another boon — 56 paintings and drawings from Colombian artist Fernando Botero. The works are from the artist's intensely political paintings and drawings "The Abu Ghraib Series," which shines a very painful light on the torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq. A showing of the donated works is now on display.
"Botero is a very, very well-known artist and has been for three decades," BAM CHIEF CURATOR LUCINDA BARNES says. "It's fantastic to get a gift like this. It recognizes his short history here in Berkeley. We're thrilled."
Botero was inspired to create the series, featuring more than 80 works, after reading an article by Seymour M. Hersh in the New Yorker about the abuses in Abu Ghraib. He spent 14 months drawing and painting, working nearly nonstop on pieces that have been compared to those done by Goya and Picasso.
After he completed the series in 2005, several American institutions were approached to host an exhibition and, in 2007, UC-BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES was the first to agree to show the anguished graphic paintings and drawings in the DOE LIBRARY....
Barnes says the museum is working on making the Botero exhibit a traveling one. It is presented with a 100-page catalog....
Exhibit
What: Fernando Botero: The Abu Ghraib Series
When: Through Feb. 7
Where: Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays
Admission: $8 adults, $5 youth ages 13 to 17, free for UC-Berkeley students and children 12 and under.
More Info: 510-642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News] Full Story
18. Opera pays tribute to Balinese gamelan music
San Francisco Chronicle
September 25, 2009
The music of the Indonesian gamelan, with its clangorous sonorities and intricate, smoothly interlocking rhythms, has exerted its allure on countless composers and listeners over the past century.
One - perhaps the most influential - was the American composer Colin McPhee, who did more than anyone to introduce gamelan music to Westerners. Another is Evan Ziporyn, whose dance-opera about McPhee, "A House in Bali," has its U.S. premiere at UC BERKELEY this weekend.
Ziporyn, 49, who teaches composition at MIT and is a founding member of the Bang On A Can All-Stars, has been intimately involved in Balinese music since 1980 (which was soon after we got to know one another as fellow undergraduates). In addition to many works for conventional Western forces, he has composed extensively for Gamelan Galak Tika, the ensemble he founded and leads at MIT....
"A House in Bali": The opera is at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. Tickets: $32-$68. Call (510) 642-9988 or go to www.calperformances.org. Full Story