Education
Workingman’s Economist
By Kweku Opoku-AgyemangWhen Cal professor and labor economist David Card got the early-morning phone call from Sweden last October informing him that he’d won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics, he thought it was a buddy back home in Ontario pulling his leg. “My old friend, Tim, who lives in Guelph, I thought it was one of his practical jokes,” Card told the Canadian news media.
Losing Joan Didion
By Pat JosephWriter Joan Didion, who graduated from Berkeley in 1956, died on December 23, 2021, at age 87. She will be remembered as one of the most distinctive voices not only of her generation but in all of American letters.
What to Read, Watch, and Listen to This Spring
Here are a few of our favorite books, shows, and films by people from Berkeley.
Fishing for Answers with Robert Tjian
By Pat JosephThe professor of biochemistry on the intersection of science and entrepreneurship
First Person: Berkeley Student and Afghan Refugee on Why She Hasn’t Given Up on Afghanistan
By Maryam Karimi, as told to Dhoha BarecheOn the pain of leaving home and hopes for the future
UC Berkeley Was Ranked the Top American University. But What Does it Mean?
By Gitanjali PooniaExperts are skeptical of college rankings.
A Pandemic and a Reckoning with Race: It Was an Unprecedented Year for this Oakland High School
High school has always been hard, but its challenges are now unprecedented. Peter Nicks’s new documentary, Homeroom, which began streaming on Hulu on August 12, follows a group of Oakland students as they move through their final chapter of high school. Their academic year began in 2019 before it was, of course, interrupted by the […]
We the People
By Laura SmithBefore Elaine Kim came to Berkeley as a Ph.D. student in 1968, she was used to being the only Asian person in the room. Kim, who is Korean American, was born in New York and raised in a predominantly working class white suburb of Washington, D.C., the daughter of a migrant farmworker mother and waiter-turned-diplomat […]
Mills College Closes, but Opens Its Doors to Berkeley Students
A new solution to Cal’s housing and classroom shortage In early March, the leadership of Mills College announced that the institution would discontinue its enrollment for first-year students after fall 2021. By 2023, the small private college in Oakland, established in 1852 for the education of undergraduate women, will be officially closed. When one door […]
Editors’ Picks: What To Read, Watch, and Listen To This Winter
Some of our favorite new books, films, and podcasts, for your entertainment Our editors have curated a list of entertainment to indulge in this autumn. Here are their top picks of web series, podcasts, films, and more, all produced by UC Berkeley faculty and alumni. Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast Co-hosted by Matt Levin […]
Deworming Reaps Long-Term Health and Economic Rewards For Young Kenyans
A cheap pill improves education and career outcomes among students. The findings of the 2004 study were startling: A campaign to treat thousands of children in western Kenya for parasitic worms yielded significant, long-term health and educational benefits. Across the 75 primary schools involved, rates of intestinal worms and student absenteeism decreased—the latter by around […]
Stiles Hall, Always in Style
From the beginning, Stiles Hall has been a safe haven for students. For Arlinda Ruiz the road to higher education was not an easy one. A 45-year-old domestic violence survivor, she worried there wouldn’t be a place for her in the world of academia. “I’m this short Mexican girl, dark, Indigenous, blasted up with tattoos,” […]
