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2022 Winter

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Berkeley’s High Flying Falcons Rebounded From the Brink

If you look up at the Campanile these days, you may just spot one of Berkeley’s celebrated peregrine falcons diving from its heights.
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For Our Print Readers

Changes to Our Print Distribution

In 2023, the magazine will appear in print twice per year instead of quarterly. Learn why.

Featured

(Illustration using Canva)

He Was British, Not Irish! And Other Things You Didn’t Know About Saint Patrick

According to Dan Melia, there are a lot of myths about Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
(Courtesy of the O'Donnell Family)

“You always have each other’s back.”

When Shawn O’Donnell lost her life on July 20, just a few days after the Cal grad (’04) celebrated her 40th birthday by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, America lost a dedicated public servant and people all over the world lost one of the more memorable people they had ever met.

Current Issue

2022 Winter
Harmony, 1982; private collection, courtesy 
Matthew Marks Gallery; © Estate of Joan Brown

The Beautiful Life, Tragic Death, and Fascinating Career of Joan Brown

By Laura Smith

Let's start at the end.
Neshat (right) with subject Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (Jorge Herrerera/NPG/Camera P​ress/Redux)

Berkeley’s Women Artist Trailblazers

By Laura Smith

Berkeley claims one of the first graphic novels, famous communist sculptors, and more
D-O-A-R: U.S. Justice Department attorney and Berkeley Law alumnus John Doar on the long walk to Montgomery, March 21, 1965. (1976 Matt Herron/Take Stock/TopFoto)

The Surprising Story of the Berkeley Attorneys Who Helped Desegregate the South

By Rob Gunnison

Anthony Lee simply wanted to go to high school.
(Illustration by Monica Hellström)

Cheered Up: You Can Be a Dancer and a Lawyer

By Rachel Schuster ’17, J.D. ’23 as told to Margie Cullen, M.J. ’22

When I was really young, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

Top Stories

Nancy Rubin sitting in her backyard home garden (Courtesy of Magnolia Network)

Notes to Selves

In 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. 
(Cal Intercollegiate Athletics)

Batter’s Choice: Coach Zamloch’s Reversible Baseball

Unless you’re a hardcore baseball fan, you’re likely unaware of the new rules coming to major league baseball in 2023.
Hu Xin writing Nushu (Feng Tiebing)

Hidden Letters: The Co-optation of a Once Secret Language

When filmmaker Violet Du Feng, M.J. ’04, returned to China after earning her master’s degree at Berkeley, she was struck by a kind of gender inequality she hadn’t noticed before.
(Alyssa Case '18)

Saving a Language from Extinction

90-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.

Listen to The Edge Podcast

California magazine's Laura Smith and Leah Worthington host The Edge, a podcast for surviving today's modern world.

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Quick Reads

(Illustration using Canva)

The Science of Love

To help us get a handle on the subject in time for Valentine’s Day, we turned to Simon-Thomas for answers on questions about the biological basis for love, the different kinds of human love, and unconventional arrangements like polyamory.

Phil Wong, Jomar Tagatac, and Erin Mei- Ling Stuart in The Headlands(Kevin Berne)

Sunset Noir

Playwright Christopher Chen is a homegrown talent. Hailing from the Sunset District of San Francisco, a neighborhood his family has lived in for generations, he went on to study music composition at UC Berkeley, where he got his start in writing and directing after joining the Asian American arts group Theatre Rice.
Iris Yamashita (Anthony Mongiello)

How an Unusual Alaskan Town Inspired Iris Yamashita’s First Murder Mystery

Iris 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.”
Tetons are Awe-ful (Dexter Hake)

Awe is the Secret Ingredient to a Good Life

What 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.

For more than 125 years, California magazine has told the story of Berkeley.

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From the Archives

Image source: MORGAN: Julia Morgan Papers, Robert E. Kennedy Library; GEE: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; DIDION, COUGHLIN, DOUDNA, NAPOLITANO, HARVEY: Associated Press

150 Years of Women at UC Berkeley

What a journey it has been. Today's students stand on the shoulders of the late 19th century trailblazers studying engineering and agriculture in rooms dominated by men, and every pioneering scientist, artist, and politician who followed.

My Scarf, Myself, and You: Hijab Is About More, and Less, than Religious Expression

The tiny, default, unisex photo thumbnail haunted me for days.
Image source: Berkeley Law

Swift Justice: The Historic Fight for Gender Equality at Berkeley Law

ELEANOR SWIFT LEFT THE DEAN’S office at Boalt Hall, walked upstairs, and started packing her things. After a promising legal career and eight years as one of Berkeley School of Law’s most beloved professors, she had just been fired—her tenure denied by her overwhelmingly male peers.
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