The San Francisco Business Journal reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was one of the top donors to UC Berkeley in 2012, having given nearly $20 million to the campus in support of research. It wasn’t the first time the Microsoft founder had given to the University. In 2009, for example, the Gates Foundation gave Berkeley researchers a five-year $10.9 miliion grant “to evaluate several interventions to combat diarrheal disease in developing countries.” Read more »

With the Supreme Court poised to rule on a case that could end the practice of universities using race as a determining factor in admissions, pundits like New York Times editor Bill Keller wonder whether affirmative action should be based on class rather than race. In a recent editorial, Keller writes that factoring economic class into admissions “…is controversial, the execution is complicated and it doesn’t come cheap, but it promises a richer kind of variety – and it is less likely to run afoul of the Supreme Court… .” Read more »

Has the Ugly American been supplanted by his Chinese counterpart?  In the upcoming issue, California looks at the growing resentment in the developing world over Chinese business ventures abroad.

It wasn’t so long ago that Chinese engineers and economists were welcomed with enthusiasm by struggling Asian, African and South American nations. The Chinese were seen as both technically proficient and simpatico. They didn’t have to tote the baggage of – well, Americans, who were often viewed as overweening, grasping and arrogant. Read more »

Nothing is free, least of all money, so when Japan pledged $32 billion in support to Africa at the 5th Tokyo International Conference on African Development, what were the motives? Are they any different from those of China, currently one of Africa’s biggest investors? Read more »

Today’s Supreme Court ruling allowing police to take DNA swabs as a routine part of any arrest has civil rights advocates issuing jeremiads about pending constitutional collapse. The American Civil Liberties Union claimed the decision from the deeply divided court constituted a “gaping new exception to the Fourth Amendment….” Read more »

Chase Livingston ’12 has been a musician all his life, and in December 2012 he released his first album, Black and White: We Are One. In large part, he says, the achievement was fueled by Berkeley professor of African music and dance, C.K. Ladzekpo (see our upcoming Summer 2013 issue for a profile of Ladzekpo). Read more »

We reported on Laurence Frank’s lion and hyena preservation programs back in 2009 – and on his generally gloomy perspective on the odds for African wildlife. Some things have happened in the intervening four years, however, to make the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology emeritus associate’s disposition a little sunnier. Read more »

The Bay Area titans of tech are having a rough week, at least in the press. While news organizations reported on the billions of dollars in taxes that Apple has allegedly avoided paying by maintaining large foreign subsidiaries, the New Yorker’s George Packer pondered Silicon Valley trickle-down socio-economic theory. Read more »

Director Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby was released in theaters on May 10 and has since grossed more than $60 million. But another interesting Gatsby-related work you may not have heard about was released a little over a year ago: The Great Gatsby Curve. Read more »