UC Berkeley (Audio)

Carol Christ, Director for the Center for Studies in Higher Education, talks with Jamie Merisotis on his new book, America Needs Talent. Merisotis explains that to usher in a new era of innovation and success, deliberate choices must be made by government, the private sector, education, and individuals to grow talent in America. In America Needs Talent, Merisotis proposes bold ideas to successfully deploy the world’s most talented people-from rethinking higher education to transforming immigration laws, revitalizing urban hubs, and encouraging private sector innovation. Series: "Center for Studies in Higher Education" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Education] [Show ID: 30165]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Jan Assmann, Honorary Professor of Cultural and Religious Studies at the University of Constance, for a discussion of his career as a Egyptologist and scholar of comparative religions. After reflections on his formative years in a German medieval town suffering from the ravages of World War II and its aftermath, Assmann describes the community of Egyptologists and the intellectual influences that shaped his scholarship. He also characterizes the intellectual joys and hardships of field research in ancient tombs. Finally, he touches on some of the themes of his scholarship including the evolution of ideas that characterize religious change; comparison of Moses and Akhenaten; and the importance of writing, canonization, and exegesis to cultural memory and the resilience and survival of religions. Series: "Conversations with History" [Humanities] [Show ID: 30173]

Stephen Kosslyn focuses the conversation on key aspects of the Minerva Program. Minerva is a unique undergraduate education experience which allows students to be globally immersed and live in other cities around the world. Each city becomes a campus, and Minerva uses its resources to engage students in innovative learning. The entire curriculum is designed to help students master four core competencies, two cognitive and two social. The cognitive competencies are critical thinking and creative thinking and the social competencies are effective communication and effective interactions. All the seminars are face-to-face, in real time, and have a professor guiding the class virtually. Students live together in Minerva residential halls, which allows them to have a full social life as well as a chance to engage in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Series: "Center for Studies in Higher Education" [Education] [Show ID: 30113]

US Rep Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) presents his bill to reduce the interest rates on student loans by allowing borrowers to refinance at the lower rates offered to banks by the Federal Reserve. He says that the costs will be offset by increasing corporate tax rates on companies that pay their CEO more than 100 times the median compensation of all its employees. How will this work? DeSaulnier explains the details of his plan to a group gathered at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 30124]

“Rich Schools, Poor Students: Tapping Large University Endowments to Improve Student Outcomes” was a study that was published by the Nexus Research & Policy Center in April 2015. Jorge Klor de Alva covers the compelling findings outlined in this report which reveals that not all private universities are private. Many of the richest universities in the country, sitting on hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in tax exempt endowments, receive government subsidies through tax laws that dwarf the appropriations received by public universities and colleges. Moreover, access without success is not opportunity. And welfare to the wealthy through hidden subsidies is not good policy. This study shines light on the latter and proposes a revenue neutral way to apply money generated by reforming existing tax policy to provide real opportunities for success to community college students. Series: "Center for Studies in Higher Education" [Education] [Show ID: 30112]

Scientists agree that California’s droughts are cyclical and appear to be growing worse. While some technologies have been developed to address shortages, water policy remains a divisive issue in the Golden State, and not necessarily along traditional Republican-Democratic party lines. Instead, the splits are evident between agricultural and urban industries, the Central Valley and coastal communities, and environmentalists and fracking proponents, among others. Join moderator Dick Beahrs, State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus, former US Representative Mel Levine and David Sedlak, director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley for a timely discussion on finding bipartisan solutions to ensure a sustainable water supply in California. Presented by the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 30123]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Yale Law School Professor John Fabian Witt for a discussion of the craft of legal history. Topics covered include: understanding context in legal narratives; nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the evolution of civil liberties and tort law; and the importance of slavery, emancipation, and the established laws of nations in the making of Lincoln’s Code, a revolutionary change in U.S. laws of war. The conversation concludes with thoughts on how legal history could inform a discussion of the sharing economy’s impact on the law Series: "Conversations with History" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 30077]

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 Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. Professor Witt’s work has ranged widely over the history of American law from the founding era to the Cold War. His most recent book Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (2012) was awarded the 2013 Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 30083]

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio engages on raising the minimum wage and the need for progressive taxation as potential solutions to addressing income inequality with Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and now at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Series: "UC Public Policy Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 29859]

Jane Hirshfield reads from her book of poetry at UC Berkeley. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29935]