A Writer of Books Housed in Libraries
By Aleta GeorgeDorothy Lazard’s first library—the one that cracked open her world and made her love libraries—was the Western Addition Branch in San Francisco.
Education
Special Edition of “What to Read, Watch, and Listen To”
By the editors of California magazineTry one of these this summer
Notes to Selves
By Margie CullenIn high school, one of Nancy Rubin’s teachers had his students write a letter to themselves that he surprised them with at the end of the semester.
Saving a Language from Extinction
By Madeline Taub90-year-old Berkeley alumna Rebecca Contopoulou speaks Greek, Italian, French, English, Spanish, and another language that sounds a lot like Spanish but is actually Ladino, a Sephardic language that traces its origins to Medieval Spain.
Seamus Heaney in Berkeley
By Edward O’SheaMany Berkeleyans know that Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz taught at Cal for many years. Fewer likely remember that his fellow laureate Seamus Heaney.
Awe is the Secret Ingredient to a Good Life
By Laura SmithWhat Dacher Keltner teaches isn’t likely to land you a job on Wall Street or even make you more hireable, but that’s not really the point.
How an Unusual Alaskan Town Inspired Iris Yamashita’s First Murder Mystery
By Margie CullenIris Yamashita has always loved fiction writing, but it was a winding road to her first novel, City Under One Roof (Berkley/Penguin, January 2023). As she explained, “I have Asian parents and they really expected me to be a doctor or engineer or something. Writing was okay as a hobby, but not okay as my main focus.”
Cheered Up: You Can Be a Dancer and a Lawyer
By Rachel Schuster ’17, J.D. ’23 as told to Margie Cullen, M.J. ’22When I was really young, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
Discriminatory Bylaws and Free Speech
By Pat JosephOn September 28, 2022, an opinion piece ran in the Los Angeles–based Jewish Journal that carried the alarming headline, “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones.”
![Clark Kerr [l], former President of the University of California, leaves a meeting of the Board of Regents after they fired him at Governor Ronald Reagan's insistence.](https://alumni.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/EdNote_Reagan_1F-1024x457.jpg)
The Winter Issue’s Editor’s Note
By Pat Joseph“The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”
What to Read and Watch this Winter
The best from Berkeley’s writers and film makers
How Berkeley is Improving Equity and Inclusion
By Lizeth De La LuzFive Questions with Dania Matos, Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion
