Uc Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures (audio)

Modern slavery, which encompasses 45 million people around the world, is intricately linked to the economy, politics, violence and war, gender and the environment. In this panel discussion, Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery and research director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, talks about the impact of contemporary slavery with three UC Berkeley professors, Arlie Hochschild, professor emerita, Department of Sociology, Enrique Lopezlira, Ph.D., director, Low-Wage Work Program, and Eric Stover, adjunct law professor and faculty director, Human Rights Center. Slave-based activities, like brick making and deforestation, are estimated to generate 2.54 billion tonnes of CO2 per year – greater than the individual emissions of all the world’s nations except China and the U.S. Globally, slaves are forced to do work that is highly destructive to the environment. This work feeds directly into global consumption in foodstuffs, in minerals – both precious and for electronics – constructio

There are 45 million enslaved people in the world today. The links between slavery, conflict, environmental destruction, economics and consumption began to strengthen and evolve in the 20th century. The availability of people who might be enslaved dramatically increased in line with population growth. According to Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery and research director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, the large and negative environmental impact of modern slavery is just now coming to light. Slave-based activities, like brick making and deforestation, are estimated to generate 2.54 billion tonnes of CO2 per year – greater than the individual emissions of all the world’s nations except China and the U.S. Globally, slaves are forced to do work that is highly destructive to the environment. This work feeds directly into global consumption in foodstuffs, in minerals – both precious and for electronics – construction materials, clothing, and foodstuffs. Most of this work is unregula

As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1789, there was no experience, anywhere in the world, of a successful republican executive over an extensive nation — one with sufficient authority and independence to make things work on a national scale, but without the risk of becoming a monarch. This Jefferson Memorial Lecture shows how the delegates, and especially the Committee of Detail, went about constructing such an executive, and what it means for separation-of-powers law today. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 38613]

The world has lived through 2+ years of the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening the awareness of the links between health and other aspects of life including education and the economy. Future pandemics are a real risk but there are a number of other threats to human health and well-being as well. These include climate change, the rise of obesity, inverted population pyramids, inter-state conflict, rising inequalities, antimicrobial resistance. Counterbalancing these threats are the opportunities that may come through the health sector and broader innovation. Using a comprehensive future health scenario framework, Christopher Murray, professor and chair of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, explores the range of future trajectories that may unfold in the 21st century. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Business] [Show ID: 38271]

A hallmark of every developed nation is the provision of a social safety net – a collection of public programs that deliver aid to the poor. Because of their higher rates of poverty, children are often a major beneficiary of safety net programs. Compared to other countries, the U.S. spends less on antipoverty programs and, consequently, has higher child poverty rates. Professor Hilary Hoynes discusses the emerging research that examines how the social safety net affects children’s life trajectories. The long run benefits are significant for the families, but also show that many programs prove to be excellent public investments. This has implications for current policy discussions such as the expanded Child Tax Credit. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 38275]

Disability rights activist Judy Heumann has been fighting for inclusion for over six decades, in ways that transformed legal and societal understandings of equality. Her life-long experience has included co-founding the organization Disabled in Action, working on Capitol Hill to shape landmark disability rights laws, co-organizing the extraordinary protest and advocacy efforts that spurred the implementation of Section 504, and advising presidential administrations and the World Bank on disability issues. In this conversational program, Heumann focuses on those aspects of her journey that are most salient to the perils and possibilities of the present. Heumann sees in this moment a fragile and imperfect democracy, but one that is nonetheless worth investing in. She also sees deep structures of exclusion, vigorously defended but also vulnerable to political pressure and moral suasion. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Show ID: 37730]

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) began in 1991 sponsored by the World Bank and the World Health Organization to fill a critical gap in global health information. It has grown steadily to become an active collaboration of more than 8,000 scientists, researchers and policy-makers from 156 countries working together to quantify health at the national and subnational level. In this program, Christopher J.L. Murray, Professor and Chair of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), discusses what we've learned over the last 30 years studying global health. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 38270]

Philosophy almost alone among disciplines appears to lack a distinctive subject matter. The world has chemical, biological and political aspects, but no philosophical aspects. If subject matter does have a role to play here, it’s to do less with the field’s descriptive ambitions than the genealogy of philosophical problems. MIT's professor of philosophy's Stephen Yablo’s interests are wide-ranging, from metaphysics, philosophical logic and epistemology, to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mathematics. A prolific writer, Yablo is the author of a two-volume collection of papers called Thoughts: Papers on Mind, Meaning, and Modality (2009) and Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties (2010). His most recent book, Aboutness (2014), attempts to make topic an equal partner in meaning with truth-conditions, applying meanings so conceived to knowledge, logic, ontology, discourse theory, and philosophical methodology. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 37732]

The International System of Units (the SI), the modern metric system, has recently undergone its most revolutionary change since its origins during the French Revolution. The nature of this revolution is that all of the base units of the SI are now defined by fixing values of natural constants. Our measurement system is now, both philosophically and practically, strongly quantum. Nobel Prize recipient William Phillips, Ph.D., a Distinguished University and College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, talks about why this reform was needed and how it is done. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 37728]

At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed the way we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe. Nobel Prize recipient William Phillips, Ph.D., a Distinguished University and College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, talks about laser cooling and ultracold atoms and how they relate to time. Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 37727]

There is a puzzle about counterfactuals that parallels a more familiar puzzle about free will. The familiar puzzle is the apparent incompatibility between free will and determinism. Robert Stalnaker, Professor of Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues, first, that the general puzzle gives us reason to look more closely at the details of the semantics for counterfactuals, and second, that the parallel with the standard argument for incompatibilism (labeled ‘the Consequence Argument’) gives us reason to look more closely at the central role of counterfactuals in practical reasoning. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 37310]

If having a gun really made you safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It's not. Gary Younge (Manchester University) explains that while Americans consistently favor more gun control, gun laws have generally become more lax. That is partly due to the material resources of the gun lobby. But it is also about the central role of the gun, what it represents in the American narrative, and the inability of gun control advocates to develop a counter-narrative. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 35770]

Twentieth-Century African American Freedom Struggles transformed both US and World History. These seminal liberation struggles include the important yet relatively unknown series of early twentieth-century southern African American streetcar boycotts as well as the iconic Civil Rights-Black Power Insurgency (1935-75). First, Waldo Martin examines why and how these foundational freedom struggles proved essential to the making of the modern African American Freedom Movement. Second, he examines the centrality of the modern African American Freedom Movement to both the creation of the modern United States and the development of the modern world. Waldo Martin is the Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History & Citizenship at the University of California, Berkeley. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 35148]

This lecture by South African writer, playwright and academic Jane Taylor considers Ludwig Wittgenstein’s paper, “On Certainty” in which the philosopher engages with the taken-for-granted in everyday thought. Taylor notes, “In our contemporary context of the precarious, on one hand, and the political vehemence of conviction, on the other, it seems timely to pay attention to the faltering and tentative mode of regard and thought of one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic thinkers.” Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 35149]

By virtually any measure, prisons have not worked. They are sites of cruelty, dehumanization, and violence, as well as subordination by race, class, and gender. Prisons traumatize virtually all who come into contact with them. Abolition of prison could be the ultimate reform. Georgetown Law Professor Paul Bulter explores what would replace prisons, how people who cause harm could be dealt with in the absence of incarceration, and why abolition would make everyone safer and our society more just. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 35147]

It is widely held today on grounds of prudence if not realism that in designing public policy and legal systems, we should assume that people are entirely self-interested and amoral. But it is anything but prudent to let "Economic Man" be the behavioral assumption that underpins public policy. Samuel Bowles (Santa Fe Institute) supports his position using evidence from behavioral experiments mechanism design and other sources, and proposes an alternative paradigm for policy making. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Business] [Show ID: 34354]

The view that the sciences make progress, while the arts do not, is extremely common. Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, challenges it. Scientific progress has social dimensions. A socially embedded notion of scientific progress then allows for a parallel concept of progress applicable to the arts. Kitcher specializes in the areas of pragmatism (especially Dewey), science and social issues, naturalistic ethics, and philosophy in literature. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34353]

Jennifer Granholm, former Governor of Michigan, identifies some of the most interesting policy ideas to address the problems of displaced workers, the skills gap and resulting inequality in an age of robots and artificial intelligence. Granholm teaches Public Policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School and is the chair of the American Jobs Project, a multi-state research initiative on creating industrial clusters in clean energy. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 34013]

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 each has been utilized by proponents of both sides of the Christian creationism and evolution controversy. Eugenie Scott, Founding Executive Director, National Center for Science Education Understanding, explores how this role is essential in comprehending (much less mediating) this persistent conflict. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 34011]

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. This research is quite relevant to the evolution wars and the opposition to climate change, and to other questions of the rejection of empirical evidence. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 34010]