Berkeley Voices

Yesterday at sunset marked the start of Ramadan, the ninth and holiest month of the Islamic calendar. For Ali Bhatti, a Ph.D. candidate in science and math education at UC Berkeley, it’s a time to feel closer to God, to break habits and to remember what he’s thankful for. In this episode, Ali describes, in his own words, what the month means to him. He also talks about how 9/11 shaped his childhood in New Jersey, finding his Muslim community at Berkeley and how Islam, and the support of his family and Berkeley community, helped him get through the hardest time of his life.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/23/ali-bhatti-on-ramadan-and-his-faith

Photo courtesy of Ali Bhatti.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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In this episode of Be the Change, host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Purvi Shah.

Shah is the founder and executive director of Movement Law Lab and a civil rights litigator, policy advocate and law professor who has spent over a decade working at the intersection of law and grassroots social movements.

During their conversation, they talk about the nuts and bolts of founding a legal nonprofit in response to current events, and the intellectual and philosophical theory behind “movement lawyering,” a type of lawyering that aims to support and foment lasting social change.

"It’s not that we have to have all of this stuff, all of these virtues amassed, before we can engage in the work," Nolan says. "Doing the work actually helps us amass what we need in order to do it better."

"That, to me, is one of the biggest beauties of being in social justice work: If you’re doing it right, all you have to do is show up and be persistent and committed and have your words, like what you say you’re going to do, actually be what you do," says Shah. "But the work over the years will transform you. It will teach you. And that hope and that imagination, that sense of it’s possible, I think that’s such a powerful thing."

Shah and Nolan also talk about when it might be a good thing to loosen your grip on your power, how confidence is a process, and moments that give you chills — in a good way — as a lawyer.

This is the last episode of season two of Be the Change, a collaboration between UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs and Berkeley Law. In the series, Nolan interviews changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. You can find all episodes on the Berkeley Voices podcast.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/22/be-the-change-s2-ep3-purvi-shah

Photo courtesy of Purvi Shah; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese.

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In this episode of Be the Change, host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Nazune Menka.

Menka is a lecturer at Berkeley Law and a supervising attorney for the campus’s Environmental Law Clinic. She is Denaakk’e from Alaska and Lumbee from North Carolina. In fall 2021, Menka designed and taught a new undergraduate legal studies course called Decolonizing UC Berkeley, and she taught Indigenous Peoples, Law and the United States at the law school in spring 2022.

During their conversation, they talk about how to bring a decolonial lens to education, and about the joys and challenges of being a trailblazer who is pushing against the inherited wisdom and mythology surrounding UC Berkeley — "a place we love deeply and, therefore, as James Baldwin said, claim the right to criticize and to call to higher levels of intellectual and moral honesty," Nolan says.

"This can be a unique space, right?" Menka says. "The university — it is a place of power. I know that. It's important that we are able to understand that if you have a voice, if you are in the room, you should use it."

They also get into how instinct can be a particularly powerful gift when you're part of a subordinated community, and storytelling as a portal to individual and communal healing.

Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/15/be-the-change-s2-ep2-nazune-menka/

Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese.

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Host Savala Nolan, director of Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, interviews Khiara M. Bridges. Bridges is a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Law and a powerful public intellectual who speaks and writes about race, class, reproductive justice and the intersection of the three.

During their conversation, they talk about the process of Bridges claiming and using her voice as a prominent Black woman. And they discuss the complexities of presentation and adornment for members of marginalized communities — especially in academia — and about approaching work with a sense of liberation, creativity and hustle.

"Those things that I do to adorn myself, a lot of folks are going to read them in light of my identity as a Black woman," says Bridges. "So, my nails become read in a particular way and my tattoos will become read in a particular way. And the way that I wear my hair, you know, and my septum piercing, in a particular way. And I'm comfortable with that. I'm happy with that. And I feel that that affirms my identity as a Black woman."

Nolan and Bridges also talk about getting comfortable with the Socratic method, and what it feels like to start law school with no idea what's going on or what you've gotten yourself into, but ultimately finding your way.

Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who have started something that wasn't there before, and that makes the world a better place. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.

Listen to the episode and read a transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/08/be-the-change-s2-ep1-khiara-m-bridges

Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese.

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Embodying the change you want to see in the world can feel ... well, intimidating. Impossible, even. But Berkeley Law's Savala Nolan wants to help us all figure it out — one step at a time — in her podcast, Be the Change. 

"We're talking about transforming the world and being the change and these very lofty concepts," says Nolan, director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice. "But I hope what they see is that big, lofty concepts really contain lots of little, teeny, tiny steps that are repeated and built upon over time."

In season two of Be the Change, a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News, Nolan interviews three changemakers who have started something that wasn't there before, and that makes the world a better place. 

"I wanted to contribute something to the community that would help folks really be brave," says Nolan, "and think about their lives and their gifts and their work as things that are full of possibility and as things that are potentially really, really expansive and transformative."

New episodes come out every week on Wednesday. Savala's next interview is with Khiara M. Bridges, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Law and a powerful public intellectual who speaks and writes about race, class, reproductive justice and the intersection of the three.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/03/01/introducing-be-the-change-season-2

UC Berkeley photo design by Neil Freese; photo courtesy of Savala Nolan.

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We’ve heard the acronym DEIBJ a lot on campus, especially in the past few years. For those who might not know, it stands for diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice. A growing number of people at UC Berkeley have positions dedicated solely to this incredibly important work.

But sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what DEIBJ means, what it actually looks like in practice — now, in our day-to-day lives, but also in the future, when initiatives and policies and other on-the-ground work has transformed our institution.

So, we talked with Ty-Ron Douglas. He's the associate athletic director of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice at Cal Athletics. Douglas, who joined Berkeley two years ago, explained the nuts and bolts of DEIBJ in his upbeat and clear-eyed way that he seems to apply to all things he does.

He also talked about growing up in Bermuda, a precocious kid feeling like he didn’t belong; why sport is a legitimate academic discipline; and how "justice is the juice" of DEIBJ.

"For us, for me, I really see this work as life and death," says Douglas. "Not just of human life or death, but also of potential, of that glow in a person's eyes when they know that they belong. You can see it, you can feel it. Belonging has a feeling, and you can feel the healthy space."

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/02/09/ty-ron-douglas-bridging-the-academic-and-athletic-worlds/

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo courtesy of Ty-Ron Douglas.

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In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Berkeley Law student Hoda Katebi discusses how, after she began wearing the hijab as a sixth-grader in Oklahoma, she learned that clothes are inherently political. "It played a huge role in shaping my own personal growth, as well as my relationship to politics," Katebi says.

Since protests broke out in Iran nearly three months ago, sparked by the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini by Iran's so-called morality police, Katebi has been an outspoken supporter of the protesters. 

"The main demand that we're hearing is, 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadî,' or, 'Woman, Life, Freedom,' which is a Kurdish, anti-imperialist, feminist, anti-capitalist chant," she says. "I think that that's what is really hitting at the core and distinguishes these protests from others before — this is one that's calling for nothing short of the end of dictatorship, which means everything from women's rights to education to class, gender, everything."

Although a senior official in the Iranian government confirmed on Monday, Dec. 5, that the morality police had been shut down — the first concession by the government since the protests began — the mandatory dress code remains in place. It’s unclear how the government plans to enforce the laws moving forward.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/12/07/hoda-katebi-iran-protests/

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by Aubrey Trinnaman for the New York Times.

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On Nov. 20, 1969, a group of Indigenous Americans that called itself Indians of All Tribes, many of whom were UC Berkeley students, took boats in the early morning hours to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They bypassed a Coast Guard blockade and took control of the island. The 19-month occupation that followed would be regarded as one of the greatest acts of political resistance in American Indian history.

Everardo Reyes is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at Berkeley. After taking several classes with John-Carlos Perea, who last year was a visiting associate professor in Berkeley’s Department of Music, Reyes was inspired to research how radio and music were used during the Alcatraz takeover to capture mass attention and amplify the Red Power movement.

Listen to the episode and read a transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/11/08/sound-and-music-of-alcatraz-occupation

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Charles Yu discusses his 2020 book, Interior Chinatown, which goes inside the mind of a young Asian American man trying to make it in Hollywood. Incoming UC Berkeley students read the book over the summer as part of On The Same Page, a program from the College of Letters and Science.

"This is really a book about roles and how we play them," Yu said. "Sometimes they are fundamental to who we are, but they can also be very limiting or reductive. I hope that people can see that, in one way or another, all the characters in this book are wearing a mask and a costume, to some extent, and it doesn't fit them perfectly. And we, hopefully, see the ways in which the person underneath peeks out and can't be fully covered by what's there. In those moments, when the mask slips and you talk out of character, real connection can come about."

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/08/24/on-the-same-page-interior-chinatown

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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When Roe v. Wade was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, which protected a woman’s right to an abortion, “it changed everything,” says Kristin Luker, a professor emerita of law and of sociology at UC Berkeley. “It was so revolutionary — I argue it was on a par with the American Revolution or the French Revolution.”

Last Friday, the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe, giving states broad power to curtail or end abortion. As of today, abortion is now banned in at least seven states, and about half of states across the country are expected to ban or severely restrict the procedure in the coming days.

In this Berkeley Voices episode, Luker talks about why doctors began writing anti-abortion laws in the 19th century, the experiences women had ending unwanted pregnancies in the decades before Roe v. Wade and how she doesn’t see us returning to the normative sexuality and reproduction of the 1950s.

Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on UC Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/29/kristin-luker-on-roe-v-wade

Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo by the Associated Press.

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