Global Insights (Audio)

What is the best way to help the poor? Giving money to charities and non-governmental organizations that then determine how the money should be allocated? Or giving cash directly to those who need it most and letting them decide how to spend it? Economist Paul Niehaus offers evidence that suggests direct cash transfers are more effective in reducing poverty, and describes GiveDirectly, a program he co-founded that allows donors to select recipients and transfer cash through mobile phones. Niehaus is presented as part of the “Degrees of Freedom” series at UC San Diego. Series: "The Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 29102]

First elected to Congress in 1980, Barney Frank represented Massachusetts’s 4th District for 32 years. He is known as a superb legislator and a pragmatic politician whose sharp intellect and sense of humor made him one of Washington’s most influential and colorful figures. While in Congress, Frank worked to adjust America’s spending priorities to reduce the deficit, provide less funding for the military and more for domestic programs. He argues here that the US could safely trim its military budget if American allies took more responsibility for their own defense.

As chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank was a key author of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In 1987, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as openly gay, and in 2012 he married his longtime partner, becoming the nation’s first congressman in a same-sex marriage while in office. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29451]

Anthropologist Nancy Postero describes the political rise of indigenous peoples in Latin America, as they called for more recognition from the state and more inclusive forms of citizenship. Where that was impossible, they sought international attention by demanding human rights, especially human rights to culture. Postero explores what kinds of freedom these two frameworks of rights offer and how the struggles of indigenous peoples demonstrate the contradictions and limitations of liberal notions of rights. Series: "The Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 29101]

Ari Shavit discusses his book “My Promised Land” in which he draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters to examine the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition. His intent is to promote a deeper, better-informed, and far more balanced discussion of Israel and the Middle East. As the great American democracy and the frontier Israeli democracy face dramatic challenges, Shavit contends that we should all be engaged in profound, free, and civilized discussion of the past, present, and future of the Promised Land. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29250]

Berkeley fellow Kweku Opoku-Agyemang's research in Ghana examines how the use of mobile survey-taking technology used by radio stations, can expand the public's political power.

Opoku-Agyemang is a Development Impact Lab Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Blum Center for Developing Economies.

Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29318]

Berkeley student and mother, Valeska Castañeda, spent much of her summer leading a 350-mile walk from Merced to Mexico in support of immigrant rights. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29319]

Berkeley fellow Kweku Opoku-Agyemang's research in Ghana examines how the use of mobile survey-taking technology used by radio stations, can expand the public's political power.

Opoku-Agyemang is a Development Impact Lab Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Blum Center for Developing Economies.

Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29318]

Many of the 9.9 million people in Bangalore, India, never know when they’ll turn on the tap and find water flowing. Water is scarce and rationed. Each household gets about 4.5 hours of running water every other day — but when, and if, the water runs can be unpredictable. While high-income households can afford tanks that automatically turn on when the water does, low-income households cannot, meaning that women can devote hours on a weekly basis to waiting for and storing water. UC Berkeley graduate student Christopher Hyun spent his summer working on a research project examining how the people of Bangalore can get more reliable and timely information about when and how long they’ll get water each day. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 29311]

Karima Bennoune, Professor of International Law at UC Davis and author of “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here,” gives the keynote talk for the “Defying Extremism” conference focusing on how moderate Muslims, women and their allies can stand up to violent extremism. Bennoune is presented as part of the Joan B. Kroc Distinguished Lecture Series at the Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. Series: "Peace exChange -- Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 28819]

Award-winning historian Wendy Lower discusses the lives and experience of German women in the Nazi killing fields. Her study chillingly debunks the age-old myth of the German woman as mother and breeder, removed from the big world of politics and war. The women Lower labels “furies” humiliated their victims, plundered their goods, and often killed them, and like many of their male counterparts, they got away with murder. Lower is the John K. Roth professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and has published widely on the Shoah in Eastern Europe. She is presented here as part of the Holocaust Living History Workshop at UC San Diego. Series: "Writers" [Humanities] [Show ID: 28811]