Daniel Ziblatt has spent a career studying why democracies develop and how they die. Along with his co-author and fellow UC Berkeley alumnus, Steven Levitsky, he has done so from a perch at Harvard, and his focus has always been different places and times: Ziblatt is an expert on democracy in modern Europe, including the age of Hitler and Mussolini, and Levitsky specializes in Latin America.
Posted on January 25, 2018 - 2:10pm
There appears to be a consensus among UC Berkeley law professors that despite his offensive views, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous had a legal right to speak on campus last September.
Posted on January 18, 2018 - 4:54pm
MIT Technology Review says 2017 was the year robots backflipped into our hearts, with exhibit A being Atlas, Boston Dynamics’ incredibly gymnastic bot, which (resisting the urge to say ‘who’) not only sticks the landing on an honest-to-god backflip, but raises its arms afterward as if in celebration.
Posted on January 12, 2018 - 3:22pm
The tenure of Federal Reserve Board chairwoman Janet Yellen is drawing to a close. In February, she’ll leave her post—arguably the second-most powerful position in Washington after the presidency—and will be replaced by Trump appointee Jerome Powell, a member of the Fed Board of Governors.
Posted on December 18, 2017 - 4:19pm
In life, as in fishing, there are always a few that get away. And so it is with most issues of the magazine. Take our Bugged issue, for example. We had all kinds of bugs in there: insects, cyberbugs, surveillance devices, viruses, even VW bugs. The one thing we wanted to include but didn’t find a solid enough Berkeley connection to was Bugs Bunny. We looked and looked.
But we didn’t look hard enough.
Posted on December 15, 2017 - 4:03pm
This —2017—has been the year of liberal vs. conservative free speech arguments—from qualms over t-shirt logos at polling places to violent protests of alt-right speakers. Coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally) the Supreme Court has decided to take on four free speech cases this year, all brought by conservative plaintiffs. This decision, according to UC Berkeley lecturer and constitutional law expert William Turner, author of Free Speech: Supreme Court Opinions from the Beginning to the Roberts Court, could provide a huge leg up for politically conservative causes.
Posted on December 13, 2017 - 3:37pm
The Affordable Care Act, never a particularly robust program, now appears headed for the ICU. But that isn’t to say the dream of universal health care is dead.
Many advocates say we can still get there from here; we just have to go through the states. Or more accurately, big, blue and economically powerful states. California, specifically.
Posted on December 6, 2017 - 5:28pm
Robert Reich is one of the country’s most influential and prolific political analysts. While Reich has held a variety of high-profile media and advocacy positions and serves as the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, he remains best known for serving as President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor.
Posted on December 5, 2017 - 1:56pm
Having trouble keeping up with this week’s news? Don’t sweat it—here’s California’s summary of hot buttons in the press.
With the Republican tax bill now in the Senate, many students are worried about a provision that would tax tuition waivers as income. Such waivers are regularly granted to graduate students who serve as teaching assistants and research apprentices.
Posted on December 1, 2017 - 4:56pm
When Donna fled her abusive marriage with her two toddlers in tow, she left with nothing but dreams for a better life.
Finding refuge at a domestic violence shelter, Donna—who agreed to be interviewed under a pseudonym—learned about FreeFrom, a non-profit startup founded by UC Berkeley School of Law graduate Sonya Passi, that helps domestic violence survivors become entrepreneurs.
Posted on November 28, 2017 - 2:44pm
Of all the potential flash points around the world these days, none are more worrisome than North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom is a black box, and it’s exceedingly difficult to know what’s going on within its borders. A couple of things, however, are clear: its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities are improving, and the mutual bellicosity between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are making a bad situation worse.
Posted on November 27, 2017 - 4:53pm
If the past year has taught us anything about free speech at UC Berkeley, it’s that it comes with a price—and the university has to pay. In February, the damage reaped upon university property by the black bloc protests of Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech cost the university $100,000.
Posted on November 16, 2017 - 5:10pm
Representatives from three of Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech firms—Facebook, Google, and Twitter—trooped up to Capitol Hill last week and told senators they were really, really sorry the Russians hacked their platforms and may even have influenced the recent presidential election. But their contrition wasn’t followed by substantive plans to remedy the situation.
Posted on November 9, 2017 - 3:11pm
UC Berkeley played host to myriad free speech controversies this year—including violent Antifa protests of conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos and a proposed faculty boycott of classes during Free Speech Week—much of it predicated on the assumption that speech is harmful.
Posted on November 6, 2017 - 2:20pm
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s lawsuit against NFL owners for colluding to keep him out of football because he launched the “take-a-knee” protests against racial injustice evokes an earlier landmark sports case, one involving another player whose surname shares a phonetically identical initial syllable with Kaepernick’s.
Posted on October 23, 2017 - 3:08pm
