Fiat Vox

Growing up, Linda Kinstler knew that her Latvian grandfather had mysteriously disappeared after World War II. But she didn't think much about it."That was a very common fate from this part of the world," says Kinstler, a Ph.D. candidate in rhetoric at UC Berkeley. "It didn't strike me as totally unusual. It was only later when I began looking into it more that I realized there was probably more to the story."What she discovered was too big for her to walk away.In 2022, she published her first book, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends. It follows her family's story in Eastern Europe through the war and its aftermath, and queries all the ways we’ve been told that justice was conducted for those responsible for the genocide of European Jews during the war.It then moves into the present, and asks: What position do we find ourselves in now? And how can we truly remember the Holocaust — a systematic murder that some are trying to erase — when the last living witnesses are dying? Is this how the Holoc

At 6 months old, Britt H. Young was fitted with her first prosthetic arm. "The belief was that you would get started on using an adaptive device right away and that would be easiest for you, rather than learning to adapt to your body the way that it is, rather than learning about how to navigate the world with the body you have," said Britt, who is graduating from UC Berkeley with a Ph.D. in geography on May 15.Born missing part of her left arm, Britt never went to school without wearing her prosthesis. "But when I came home, I would take it off immediately," she said. "And in that way, I was spending countless hours practicing being in my body and learning how to do things my own way."During graduate school, after nearly three decades of wearing a prosthesis every day, Britt decided to stop using it for good."The geography department at Berkeley, it sounds cliché to say it was a safe space, but it really felt like a welcoming space, and it really felt like a good space to be myself."It has been rea

Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx woman, and refuses to change for anyone."Being that queer trans person completely owning herself I hope gives other people permission to be themselves, too," she says. A master's student in UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice, Gericault explores in her art Philippine mythology and her experience as a trans woman. One time, she dressed up like a manananggal — a kind of monster that detaches from her lower body at night to look for unborn babies to eat — and then slept in an art gallery for six hours. "I look at the manananggal as kind of a metaphor for how society sees trans women — how this is literally a woman detached from her reproductive organs. And what are you as a woman if you can’t reproduce?"When Gericault came out to her parents as trans in her early 20s, they disowned her. For her thesis project, Gericault will unravel huge tapestries with images of her parents' stomachs on them. "It’s about disconnection and severance," she sa

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 Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo courtesy of Ali Bhatti.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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 th

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 fee

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 ex

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,

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 confirme

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 news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot

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 a transcript and see photos on news.berkeley.edu.Follow Berkeley Voices and review

In episode 99 of Berkeley Voices, Berkeley Law student Indi Garcia, who is graduating on May 13 with pro bono honors for her work on the Post-Conviction Advocacy Project, talks about how meeting with incarcerated men as a college student inspired her anti-prison and criminal justice work. "These men were just brilliant," said Garcia. "They were so much more than the crimes that led them there."Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of Berkeley Voices, Hope Gale-Hendry, a fourth-year student in ecosystem management and forestry at UC Berkeley, shares in her own words how she discovered her deep interconnectedness with all living things, and why she decided to study the American pika. "We have a shared history on this planet," said Hope. "That is the lesson that I have been able to use to foster my passion for conservation and foster this love and admiration that I have for my cousins on this planet. Not just humans, but moss and squirrels and horses and farm animals and lichen and every beautiful and unique species that has been on their own journey."Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo courtesy of Hope Gale-Hendry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of Berkeley Voices, UC Berkeley professor of global change biology Bree Rosenblum talks about why we need to stop blaming each other for the environmental crisis that we’re in, and instead confront its root causes and expand our ideas of what it means to be human on our planet. "We are in such an individual and collective squeeze point," she said. "Do we want humanity to mean what it has meant in the past, or do we want to create a new meaning for our species?"Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today, we are sharing an episode from The Edge, a podcast by California magazine and the Cal Alumni Association: "Should we bring back woolly mammoths?" Hosts Laura Smith and Leah Worthington sat down with a genetic engineer and an ecologist to understand how de-extinction works and to explore its unintended consequences. This episode was originally released in June 2021.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.(Photo by Timothy Neesam via Flickr) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Berkeley Law professor and anthropologist Khiara Bridges discusses the history of reproductive rights in the U.S., what’s at stake when Roe v. Wade is overturned and why we should expand our fight for reproductive justice. "Roe v. Wade didn't fall out of the sky," says Bridges. "In 1973, the justices weren’t like, 'You know what we should make up? A right to an abortion.' Roe v. Wade was actually part of a long line of cases dating back to the 1920s." And it likely won’t stop at abortion rights, says Bridges. By saying that Roe v. Wade isn’t good law, it suggests that these court decisions that led to Roe v. Wade were also improper interpretations of the Constitution.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.Follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As a kid growing up in New York City, Roqua Montez was interested in everything — comics, dinosaurs, science, music and dance, martial arts — and his calendar filled up fast. Now, as the executive director of communications and media relations in UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs, he still has a lot to keep track of. To manage his activities and responsibilities, Roqua has relied on something that we all rely on: the seven-day week.The week has been used as a timekeeping unit and calendar device to organize society for about 2,000 years, says David Henkin, a professor of history at Berkeley and author of the 2021 book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us Who We Are. But it's only for the past 200 years in America that the week has had a grip on our daily lives.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News.If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Free

Between 1910 and 1970, about 6 million Black Americans moved from the rural South to cities in the North, the West and other parts of the United States. It’s known as the Great Migration. Musicians who moved to these cities became ambassadors, says UC Berkeley history professor Waldo Martin, “not only for the music of the South, but for the culture from which the music emerged. And the music was made and remade, and continues to be today. On Feb. 17, mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and jazz pianist Jason Moran — and an all-star roster of jazz collaborators — will perform their remaking of the music in Two Wings: The music of Black America in Migration for UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances.Listen to the episode, read a transcript and see photos on Berkeley News. If you haven't already, follow Berkeley Voices and review us on Apple Podcasts!(UC Berkeley illustration by Neil Freese) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.