Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings
BAMPFA
Roughly 26,000 objects are housed at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. But of all the research requests that BAMPFA receives, some 75 percent pertain to just one collection: the work of late artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha ’73, MFA ’78.
This January, for the first time in over 20 years, the museum will mount a major retrospective of the locally beloved and internationally acclaimed artist’s work.
Perhaps best known for her experimental novel-poem hybrid, Dictee, Cha was a prolific artist in nearly every medium. In just a decade, she produced a repertoire that ran the gamut from experimental film to live performance.
“She was working in such a visionary way,” says BAMPFA senior curator Victoria Sung. “She was working with themes of migration, memory, diaspora, before the contemporary art world fully turned in that direction. She has become this artistic forebear.”
Cha was born in South Korea in 1951 and emigrated with her family to the United States when she was only 11. She spent her formative years in the Bay Area and enrolled at Berkeley, where she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in art practice and comparative literature. The town and campus would become her artistic home for the duration of her brief but fertile career. Following her murder at age 31, Cha’s family gifted almost the entirety of her archives to BAMPFA—a testament to her affinity for the university.
The upcoming exhibition, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings, will feature more than a hundred pieces primarily from BAMPFA’s collection. In addition to celebrated projects, such as photo documentation of her 1975 performance Aveugle Voix, the retrospective will also highlight early works, including ceramics and small-scale fiber pieces never before displayed in a museum. Visitors will also be able to explore works by Cha’s contemporaries and artistic descendants. Those so inclined can even participate in a marathon reading of Dictee.
Runs January 24 to April 26, 2026, at BAMPFA.
—Leah Worthington
An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights
By Scot Danforth
Ed was the first. The first student with severe disabilities to attend Cal. The first to head up California’s Department of Rehabilitation, the largest in the nation. And the first to lead the Berkeley-based Center for Independent Living (CIL), which espoused the then-radical idea that disabled people could make their own choices.
At the same time, let it be noted, Ed Roberts ’64, M.A. ’66, wasn’t CIL’s first director. He wasn’t even in town as the organization was preparing to open its doors in 1972; a rising political star, Ed was pursuing opportunities elsewhere. He assumed leadership of the CIL only after returning.
From the start, this biography of Roberts, who died in 1995, takes pains to avoid the “folk hero mythology” surrounding the man some have called the “Martin Luther King Jr. of disability rights.” Instead, it endeavors to tell the real story of the Burlingame boy who fought polio and discrimination to live life to the fullest.
What emerges is the story of an independent man who was also entirely dependent on others, including fellow activists Judy Heumann, MPH ’75, and Hale Zukas ’71. Only together were they able to force the suits in Washington to pay attention to their demands, culminating with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
—Esther Oh
Tell the Whole Damn World!
Listen up, diehard Golden Bears fans: Here’s a show for you. Reza Sirafinejad ’99 cohosts this unabashedly rah-rah Cal sports podcast with an assist from CAA board member and former Golden Bears defensive back Ahmad Anderson ’83, the man behind the “Bear Territory” chant from which it takes its title. Kicked off last year, the podcast, which has a decidedly homespun look and feel (you can also watch on YouTube), has now logged more than 60 episodes and appears to be going strong. Guests have included Cal women’s head basketball coach Charmin Smith; television analyst Mike Silver ’88; and former Cal running back and all-time leading rusher Russell White ’93. Occasional episodes delve into Cal history with amateur historian and third-generation alum Leslie Mitchell ’81 as guide. Fanaticism and facts. Go Bears!
—Pat Joseph
Why Everyone Hates White Liberals
(Including White Liberals)
By Kevin Schultz, M.A. ’00, Ph.D. ’05
In 1963, Playboy magazine published the transcript of a debate between William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer. The title of the piece—“The Conservative versus the Liberal”—sent Mailer into a rage. In a letter to the editor, he wrote, “I don’t care if people call me a radical, a rebel, a red, a revolutionary, an outsider, an outlaw, a Bolshevik, an anarchist, a nihilist, or even a left conservative, but please don’t ever call me a liberal.”
If the sentiment resonates, that’s no surprise. The roots of anti-liberalism run deep, according to Kevin Schultz, professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In his latest book, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals), Schultz examines the origin and evolution of the term liberal, the demonization of which he calls a political “assassination.… coldhearted, deliberate, and designed to transfer power in America.”
Tracing the label’s history from Franklin Delano Roosevelt—“the first white liberal”—to the neoliberals of today, Schultz argues that it might be time to retire the term in favor of something less loaded.
—L.W.
Lost & Found in Cleveland
Codirected by Marisa Guterman ’10
Guterman makes her directorial debut in this understated comedy. The film follows five characters whose paths cross when a traveling appraisal show stops in Cleveland, Ohio—“the best location in the nation.” Think PBS’s Antiques Roadshow with Best in Show vibes, Christopher Guest on the Cuyahoga. The ensemble cast stars Martin Sheen, Jon Lovitz, June Squibb, and Stacy Keach.
—P.J.
Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups
UC Press
Here is an insider’s account of how UC Berkeley went from proverbial ivory tower to veritable IPO launching pad.
It’s no secret that Berkeley, as a revered public institution, has long been ambivalent about entrepreneurship and venture capital to a degree that its rival Stanford never was. For decades, the campus wrestled with the risks of corporate entanglements (recall the dustups over campus arrangements with Novartis and BP?) and the fear of getting too fully in bed with industry.
This book charts how those tensions played out over time and how Berkeley ultimately built a formidable innovation ecosystem of its own—SkyDeck, BEGIN, the Berkeley Startup Cluster, RADLab, RISELab … the list goes on—meant to keep startups close to campus and tied to its public mission.
The success of the experiment is not widely known, but the book stresses it upfront: Berkeley now boasts more VC-funded startups by undergraduate alumni than any other university, not to mention faculty-founded unicorns like Databricks.
While the tone here is often more boosterish than critical, there are nods to the hazards: Not all innovation is progress, and commercialization can crowd out basic research if left unchecked.
Startup Campus is more prospectus than narrative—fitting, perhaps, for a culture where pitch decks are the coin of the realm. Nonetheless, the book offers a useful chronicle of a great public university adapting to a world that celebrates disruption even as it tries to stay true to its founding values of research, education, and service.
—P.J.
