Elaine Kim on a Reckoning With Race Many Years in the Making
Before Elaine Kim came to Berkeley as a Ph.D. student in 1968, she was used to being the only Asian person in the room.
From the Summer 2021 issue of California.
Human Behavior
Men Behaving Badly: David Buss on the Ancient Origins of Sexual Harassment
IN MARCH, FACING MULTIPLE COMPLAINTS of sexual harassment, New York’s three-term Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, issued an apology. “I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable,” he said. “I never, ever meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyone pain.”
“One of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, David Buss lays out a theory of sexual conflict between men and women involving a co-evolutionary arms race.”
From the Summer 2021 issue of California.
Death, Life, and The Right to Draw Your Own Line
DEBORA ENDED HER LIFE on a clear spring night in a Japanese hotel in San Francisco. She had sent her farewells to a few of us—close friends and her sister’s family—and left final instructions on the table beside the bed. Just after midnight, she drank two small bottles of the barbiturate, Nembutal, washed down the bitter taste with fruit juice, fastened a plastic bag over her head, and lay down on the bed to die. She knew it would be quick.
From the Summer 2021 issue of California.
The Edge Episode 6: Are Cities Over?
Posted on May 19, 2021 - 8:43am
The Myth of the Asian Woman
“Why and how is it,” writes Laura Hyun Yi Kang in her 2020 book Traffic in Asian Women, “so many Asian women continue to suffer in the same coeval space of so much publicity, knowledge production, and activism?”
Posted on May 7, 2021 - 10:02am
We All Waste Food. One Researcher Wants to Know Why and How We Can Waste Less.
One July morning in 2016, in the predawn quiet of a Nashville suburb, Laura Moreno and her team of assistants looked more like investigators on a clandestine raid than scientists. With goggles, gloves, and coordinated efficiency, they removed garbage bags from every bin on the block, just barely beating the garbage truck to the spoils. They spent the next several weeks in an unventilated facility where they sorted and tallied everything from unpeeled bananas and sprouting russet potatoes to half-eaten take-out and sealed boxes of cereal.
Posted on April 22, 2021 - 10:40am
Super Real: Alfred Day Talks Nerddom, Comics, and Getting Through 2020
Posted on January 5, 2021 - 12:36pm
Huge Hand-Crafted Holiday Display Outlives Its El Cerrito Creator—a Sikh Immigrant
* For up-to-date information about the 2020 Sundar Shadi Holiday Display, click here.
Posted on December 23, 2020 - 9:26am
A Social Media Celebrity Talks Leaving Twitter, Finding Joy
Friends have called me “Twitter famous,” but you’ve probably never heard of me. One night in 2015 I fell down an internet rabbit hole. It started with a list of violent acts against women and stopped when I read a graphic description of violence against a woman who said the wrong name during sex. I sort of lost it. My thumbs couldn’t keep up with my brain as I tweeted on my phone.
From the Winter 2020 issue of California.
COVID-19 May Have Long-Term Effects on Childbearing in the U.S.
For Americans, raising children is more expensive, in both money and time, than ever before. Even before the pandemic, when many parents were suddenly forced to become teachers and full-time caregivers, the cost of raising a child can be upwards of $13,000 a year for a middle-income family.
Posted on December 8, 2020 - 12:13pm
Transitioning with Grace: Coming Out in Academia
For Grace Lavery, coming out as a trans woman was nerve-racking at first. A professor in Berkeley’s Department of English, she was afraid of how her colleagues and students would react. As she explains, a certain amount of criticism comes with the territory of being in academia, adding that, “in my profession, there’s always some degree of anxiety.”
From the Fall 2020 issue of California.
Will Distance Learning Make Education Inequality Worse?
Ever since Bay Area school districts announced they would begin the fall 2020 school year with distance learning due to the still-increasing rate of COVID-19 infection across the region, parents have been scrambling to figure out how to manage their children’s schooling.
Posted on September 3, 2020 - 10:28am
She Was A Victims’ Advocate Long Before #MeToo
ON SUNDAY MORNINGS IN THE EARLY ’70s, Freada Kapor Klein could be found sitting on her living room floor talking on the phone to strangers.
From the Summer 2020 issue of California.
Curfews Didn’t Stop Cal Students From Joining Black Lives Matter Protests
Ray Durham, a law student at UC Berkeley, had a decision to make: break the law and risk his life, or abandon a protest about proving that it matters.
Posted on July 7, 2020 - 12:20pm
Coronavirus Has Changed the Game for Alumni Travelers
In January of 2014, a woman in her 80s, who sometimes used a cane to walk, stood on a platform hundreds of feet up in the canopy of a Costa Rican forest, getting ready to leap into the sky.
“Nobody thought it was a good idea,” says Darek DeFreece, who was president of the Cal Alumni Association at the time. CAA was leading the trip through its Cal Discoveries Travel program. “I went and talked to her, and she said, ‘Look, I’ve got one more chance to do this in my life, and I want to go.’”
Posted on May 29, 2020 - 9:36am
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