Recent hard right political mobilizations in the West are commonly framed as rebellions against neoliberalism. In this lecture Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown questions that framing as it identifies neoliberal reason with the aim to replace robust democracy and social justice with authoritarian liberalism, traditional morality and, of course, unregulated markets. Politically pacified citizens disciplined by patriarchal families and free markets, themselves secured by lean, strong...

Myths symbolize ideas, values, history and other issues that are important to a people. They may be true or false, mundane or fantastic; their significance is their meaning, not their narrative content. Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. Its conclusions tentatively may be true or false, but its significance is its explanatory power: one has confidence in the process of science, even though some explanations change over time. Myth and science thus seem very different, but...

Scientists are often puzzled when members of the public reject what we consider to be well-founded explanations. They can’t understand why the presentation of scientific data and theory doesn’t suffice to convince others of the validity of “controversial” topics like evolution and climate change. Eugenie Scott, Founding Executive Director, National Center for Science Education, highlights the importance of ideology in shaping what scientific conclusions are considered reliable and acceptable....

Deborah Tannen discusses how interacting via text messaging services challenges relationships. Tannen is on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Department of Linguistics. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 34069]

Sometimes the soul seems a more precise concept than the body. In this lecture Marilyn Strathern, goes to a place and time where all kinds of beings (including food plants) have souls and where the bodily basis of life is immortalized through cloning. She comments on the way present-day anthropology brings fresh illumination to what we thought we knew. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 33308]

The ACLU is committed to civil rights and civil liberties issue. David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU and Georgetown law professor, explores what Trump's first year as president tells us about about constitutional law and the future of civil liberties and civil rights in the United States. David Cole was named Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2016. He oversees approximately 1,400 civil liberties lawsuits, both state and federal. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate...

The Trump Presidency is a symptom of the fracturing in American society that goes deeper than economics and politics to the meaning of being an American. George Packer, Staff Writer for the New Yorker, argues that none of the currently available narratives of national identity point a way out of our failure and asks if there is another way to think of ourselves as Americans. George Packer is a contributor for numerous journals and magazines, including The New York Times magazine, Dissent,...

Deborah Tannen discusses how interacting over social media is changing and challenging relationships, amplifying both the risks and the gifts of voice-to-voice conversations. Tannen is on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Department of Linguistics. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32999]

Deborah Tannen draws on her interviews with eighty women, ranging in age from 9 to 97, and on years of research examining how ways of talking affect relationships, to explore the role of talk among friends, with particular focus on women’s friendships, how they compare to men’s, and the consequences of such differences. Tannen is on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Department of Linguistics Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32998]

Arlie Hochschild describes her journey from Berkeley, her own liberal cultural enclave, to Louisiana, a conservative one. She explores her choice of research site, her effort to remove her own political alarm system, and during five years of research, to climb over what she calls an “empathy wall.” She focuses on her concept of the “deep story” – a version of which underlies all political belief, she argues, and will end with the possibilities of finding common ground across the political...

Large and growing food movements in the United States seek policy changes to promote healthier and more environmentally sound food choices. Marion Nestle reflects on recent progress. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32980]

Gisela Striker shows how the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, on whose work Cicero based his own treatise, actually presented what might be seen as a complete version of Stoic ethics without the theological and cosmological elements for which Cicero and other Stoics are sometimes criticized. Striker is Professor of Philosophy and of the Classics, Emerita, at Harvard University. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32263]

Skin is the primary interface between ourselves and our environment. Nina Jablonski, Pennsylvania State University, looks at what makes our skin unique and, perhaps, more important than we realize. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32129]

Nina Jablonski explores the nature and sequence of changes in human skin through prehistory, and the consequences of these changes for the lives of people today. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Show ID: 32130]

The paradox of today’s global food system is that food insecurity or obesity threaten the health and welfare of half the world’s population. Underlying these problems is an overabundant and overly competitive food system in which companies are forced to expand market channels to meet corporate growth targets. The contradiction between the goals of public health and food corporations has led to a large and growing food movement in the United States, which seeks policy changes to promote...

Ann Swidler first inquires as to what makes institutions good before questioning how such institutions might be achieved given our current political, social, and economic conditions. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31680]

Thomas Jefferson had a vision for the United States of America but race and slavery complicated his views of what kind of society was possible on the American continent. One of the foremost scholars on Jefferson, Pulitzer prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of American Legal History at Harvard University. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31530]

There are two questions pertaining to the self – the metaphysical and empirical - that are often confounded. The latter is best approached through neurology as V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UC San Diego, illustrates in this fascinating lecture at UC Berkeley. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 30558]

The Montreal Protocol has limited global uses of chemicals that deplete stratospheric ozone. Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences, compares its features and success with unsuccessful (to date) efforts to stabilize global climate by limiting greenhouse gas concentrations such as carbon dioxide. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 30557]

Power, money, gold and wine in the making of California. All that, and what it’s like to write best-selling books and operate Berkleyside, the respected local online news site. Award-winning author and journalist Frances Dinkelspiel is in conversation with Deirdre English of Berkeley’s Graduate School. of Journalism. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 30555]

Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences,reviews up-to-date data on temperatures of air and water, rates of ice losses and of sea-level rise and illustrate the driving forces of greenhouse gases in an energy-balance model of Earth. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 30556]

Although many recent advances, such as building codes and construction techniques, have reduced some aspects of risk to natural disasters, other features of modern society— including population density and the networking of transportation, power facilities, and communications systems—have led to increased vulnerability in California and beyond. Lucy Jones, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction, U.S. Geological Survey, discusses and answers questions about interdisciplinary research to measure...

A fundamental of scientific analysis is the rejection of stories. Anecdotes can mislead you and solid analysis of the data is needed to ensure that coincidence is not mistaken for correlation. But one of the fundamentals of communication is the human need for stories to make an emotional connection to the information provided. Lucy Jones, Science Advisor for Risk Reduction, U.S. Geological Survey, explores the successes and challenges in bridging this gap between scientists and the larger...

John Witt explores the subject of how American constitutional law was “reinvented,” as he proposes, during the early twentieth century. Taking up a small cast of characters who self-consciously aimed to disrupt the ideological structures of American law, Witt tells a story of social experiment and constitutional transformation that explains our constitutional past and offers powerful, if sometimes troubling, implications for our constitutional future. Witt is the Allen H Duffy Class of 1960...

The Egyptians believed Pharaoh to be a god on earth who after his death would fly up to heaven and unite with the sun, his father. After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, this idea of royal immortality became accessible for non-royal persons but dependent on justification before a divine tribunal, the judgment of the dead. Immortality became a question, not of royalty but of morals. Jan Assmann, Professor Emeritus of Egyptology, University of Heidelberg, explores the origins and evolution of...