UC Berkeley Events - 2013 Podcasts

Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, discusses his book Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley 2011) in conversation with UC Berkeley faculty members and graduate students.

October 24, 2012 In his new book, Subversives: the FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power (2012), journalist Seth Rosenfeld chronicled J. Edgar Hoover’s determination to undermine UC Berkeley’s student protest movements, starting as early as the 1940s. Based on more than 250,000 pages of secret FBI files --which took the author almost three decades to obtain -- and the archival collection at the Bancroft Library, Subversives provides an extraordinary chronicle of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, and its lasting impact on politics in California and in the United States. Featured speaker: Seth Rosenfeld, journalist and author of Subversives: the FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power

The 26th annual Benjamin Ide Wheeler Society Lecture.

Chinese have interacted with Muslim populations and communities for over a millennium — since the early days of maritime entrepots and silk road caravans — exchanging goods, arts, and ideas. Today, relations between China and the Muslim world remain complex and varied. China's increasing power brings a new hunger for markets and material, a hunger that has driven overtures to Muslim regions around the world. This conference considers historical connections and contemporary realities of Southeast Asian, Central Asian, and the Middle Eastern relations with China. What factors and interests mediate each region's interactions? To what extent has China has confronted or accommodated Islam, in its various forms, in pursuing its national interests? How has China negotiated international relations in light of recent events, such as a nuclear Iran or the surge of activism collectively called the Arab Spring? And in what ways has exchange with the Muslim world shaped Chinese thought, culture, and contemporary realities? This conference brings together specialists in historical and contemporary relations between China and Muslim regions for an exploration and assessment of interaction and exchange.

Sergei Guriev is the Morgan Stanley Professor of Economics and the Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. He is also president of the Center for Economic and Financial Research at the New Economic School. He received his Doktor nauk in Economics (2002) and PhD in Applied Math (1994) from the Russian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include contract theory, corporate governance, and labor mobility. He currently contributes a monthly column to Forbes Russia and a biweekly column to the leading Russian business daily Vedomosti. He is on the board of Sberbank, Rosselkhozbank, the Agency for Home Mortgage Lending, and the Dynasty Foundation and is a member of the President of Russia’s Council on Science, Education and Technology and of the Scientific Council of Bruegel think tank.

“The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History” Conference, April 16, 2013, featured prominent international scholars. Cosponsors: Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, Austrian National Bank, UCB’s Institute of European Studies & EU Center of Excellence

“The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History” Conference, April 16, 2013, featured prominent international scholars. Cosponsors: Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, Austrian National Bank, UCB’s Institute of European Studies & EU Center of Excellence

“The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History” Conference, April 16, 2013, featured prominent international scholars. Cosponsors: Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, Austrian National Bank, UCB’s Institute of European Studies & EU Center of Excellence

“The Future of the Euro: Lessons from History” Conference, April 16, 2013, featured prominent international scholars. Cosponsors: Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, Austrian National Bank, UCB’s Institute of European Studies & EU Center of Excellence

Author Isabel Allende will be in conversation with Berkeley professor Beatriz Manz about her new novel, Maya's Notebook. In it, Allende narrates the tumultuous life of Maya Vidal. Raised by her Chilean grandparents in Berkeley, California, Maya steps off the straight and narrow when her grandfather dies and ends up addicted and on the run in Las Vegas. Eventually found by her grandmother, Maya is sent to Chiloe, a remote island off the coast of southern Chile, to hide from her pursuers. There she tries to rebuild her life, sheltered by a septuagenarian recluse still haunted by his years as a political prisoner. Isabel Allende is the award-winning author of 19 books, including The House of Spirits and Eva Luna. Her works have been translated into 35 languages and have sold 57 million copies worldwide.

Sixty years ago, Francis L.K. Hsu in his Americans and Chinese: two ways of life (1953), described the people of both countries as culturally and psychologically exceptional. Today all the talk is about two powerful countries, exceptional now in a different world. Like the book, this lecture will focus on people. Were Chinese who left China exceptional, or exceptional only after they left? Did it matter if they moved not to the West but within the region? When they remained or became Chinese, was that what distinguished them outside China? For several centuries, more than 90 per cent of them lived, worked and settled in various parts of the Nanyang or Southeast Asia. What was exceptional and Chinese about them, and what happens when China now seeks to be exceptional anew? This talk is part of the Institute of East Asian Studies Distinguished Speaker Series.

Political philosopher Michael Rosen (Harvard) discusses his book, Dignity: Its History and Meaning (Harvard, 2012) in conversation with UC Berkeley scholars Martin Jay (History), Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (History), Zachary Manfredi (Rhetoric), and Hans Sluga (Philosophy).

Influential playwright Stan Lai has stretched the boundaries of the theatrical experience in his native Taiwan, in China, and around the world. He has negotiated the fraught landscape between China and Taiwan through drama, and in recent years through active efforts to reshape the theatrical culture of China. In a wide-ranging conversation with Professor of Modern Chinese History Wen-hsin Yeh, Lai explores his work, his ideas, and his unique vision.