Berkeley Voices

For the first three years of Justin Davidson's childhood in Chicago, his mom spoke only Spanish to him. Although he never spoke the language as a young child, when Davidson began to learn Spanish in middle school, it came very quickly to him, and over the years, he became bilingual.Now an associate professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Davidson is part of a research team that has discovered where in the brain bilinguals process and store language-specific sounds and sound sequences. The research project is ongoing.This is the final episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first two episodes: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish" and "A language divided."Photo courtesy of Justin Davidson.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are countless English varieties in the U.S. There's Boston English and California English and Texas English. There's Black English and Chicano English. There's standard academic, or white, English. They're all the same language, but linguistically, they're different."Standard academic English is most represented by affluent white males from the Midwest, specifically Ohio in the mid-20th century," says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. "If you grow up in this country and your English is further away from that variety, then you may encounter instances where the way you speak is judged as less OK, less intelligent, less academically sound."And this language bias and divide can have devastating consequences, as it did in the trial of George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. This is the second episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first and third episode: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish" and "One brain, two languages."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.AP photo by Jacob Langston. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spanish speakers in the United States, among linguists and non-linguists, have been denigrated for the way they speak, says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. It’s part of the country's long history of scrutiny of non-monolingual English speakers, he says, dating back to the early 20th century."It’s groups in power — its discourses and collective communities — that sort of socially determine what kinds of words and what kinds of language are acceptable and unacceptable," says Davidson, an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.But the U.S. is a Spanish-speaking country, he says, and it’s time for us as a nation to embrace U.S. Spanish as a legitimate language variety.This is the first episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to other two episodes: "A language divided" and "One brain, two languages."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his research, UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Saagar Asnani looks at music manuscripts from between the 12th and 14th centuries in medieval France. He says only recently have scholars begun to use a wider variety of media and artistic expressions as a way to study language. "If we unpack the genre of music, we will find a very precise record of how language was spoken," Saagar says. To read medieval music, Saagar learned five languages — Latin, German, Italian, Catalan and Occitan — making 10 languages that he knows in total (for now, at least). In losing the history of pieces of music, Saagar says, we’ve lost languages and cultures that were present and important to the time period. And today, at a time when linguistic boundaries are crumbling before our eyes, he says, instead of judging someone who speaks differently from you, realize that “it's actually a way of speaking a language and that we should cherish that because it's beautiful in its own way."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brandon Sánchez Mejia stood at a giant wall in UC Berkeley’s Worth Ryder Art Gallery and couldn’t believe his eyes. In front of him were 150 black-and-white photos of men’s bodies in all sorts of poses and from all sorts of angles. It was his senior thesis project, "A Masculine Vulnerability," and it was out for the world to see."It came from this idea that as men, we are not allowed to show skin as scars or emotions or weakness," said Sánchez, who will graduate from Berkeley this May with a bachelor’s degree in art practice.Sánchez’s cohort is part of the Department of Art of Practice’s 100th year, a milestone that department chair Ronald Rael said is cause for celebration."There have been moments in art practice’s history when it was unclear that art should be at a university at all," said Rael, a professor of architecture and affiliated faculty in art. "And here we are, at 100 years, and it’s one of the most popular majors on campus."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). This is a companion podcast to a feature story about Sánchez, published earlier this month on Berkeley News. There, you can view more photos and read about about how Sánchez's mom made him stay inside for a year as a teenager in El Salvador out of fear he'd join a gang. And how, against his mom's wishes and without any money of his own, he decided to pursue an education — no matter what it took. UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The self-guided Black history tour at UC Berkeley begins at Memorial Stadium, where student Walter Gordon was a star of the football team more than 100 years ago. It then weaves through campus, making stops at 13 more locations, each highlighting an important person or landmark related to Black history.There's Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House, named in honor of the first African American woman to teach in Oakland public schools. Next is Barbara Christian Hall, named for the first Black woman to be granted tenure at Berkeley. Other stops include Wheeler Hall and Sproul Plaza, where Black visionaries, like James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr., gave famous speeches."Just knowing this history, walking around campus and knowing it, you really feel like you belong," said student Daniella Lake, who's on the Black Lives at Cal team that created the tour. "Black people have been here for the past 100 years, and if they were doing all these amazing things then, I can surely do it now."You can find the self-guided Black history tour at Berkeley on Black Lives at Cal’s website. And soon, on the site, you’ll also be able to sign up for upcoming in-person walking tours.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Illustration by Heaven Jones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bonobos and chimpanzees — the closest extant relatives to humans — could have the longest-lasting nonhuman memory, a study led by a UC Berkeley researcher found. Extensive social memory had previously been documented only in dolphins and up to 20 years."What we're showing here," said Berkeley comparative psychologist Laura Simone Lewis, "is that chimps and bonobos may be able to remember that long — or longer."Berkeley News writer Jason Pohl first published a story about this study in December 2023. We used his interview with Lewis for this podcast episode.Photo courtesy of Laura Simone Lewis.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Historians have long assumed that immigration to the United States was free from regulation until the introduction of federal laws to restrict Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. But UC Berkeley history professor Hidetaka Hirota, author of Expelling the Poor, says state immigration laws in the country were created earlier than that — and actually served as models for national immigration policy decades later.This is an episode of Afterthoughts, a series that highlights moments from Berkeley Voices interviews that didn’t make it into the final episode. This excerpt is from an interview with Hirota featured in Berkeley Voices episode #115: "They built the railroad. But they were left out of the American story."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Photo from the Library of Congress. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we're sharing the first episode of the new season of the Berkeley Remix, a podcast by UC Berkeley's Oral History Center. The four-episode season, called "From Generation to Generation: The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration," centers the experiences of descendants of Japanese Americans incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. It explores themes of activism, contested memory, identity and belonging, and creative expression as a way to process and heal from intergenerational trauma. This first episode is called "It's happening now: Japanese American Activism."Listen to the podcast and read the transcript on Berkeley News.Artwork by Emily Ehlen.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The U.S. transcontinental railroad is considered one of the biggest accomplishments in American history. Completed in 1869, it was the first railroad to connect the East to the West. It cut months off trips across the country and opened up Western trade of goods and ideas throughout the U.S.But building the railroad was treacherous, brutal work. And the companies leading the railroad project had a hard time retaining American workers. So they began to recruit newly arrived immigrants for the job, mainly Chinese and Irish. And these immigrants, who risked their lives to construct the railroad, have largely been left out of the story.In recent years, though, there has been a new emphasis on reframing the narrative to include the perspectives, contributions and struggles of railroad workers, not only in scholarship, but in the arts.On Nov. 17, Cal Performances is presenting American Railroad by Silk Road Ensemble, as part of its 2023-24 season of Illuminations: Individual and Community. It's one of several notable works in recent years that explores the lives of the immigrants who built the U.S. transcontinental railroad.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Music by Silkroad Ensemble and Blue Dot Sessions.Photo courtesy of San Francisco Public Library. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UC Berkeley's first social justice theater professor, Timmia Hearn DeRoy, talks about how Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival practice, rooted in emancipation, drives her work today."Trinidadian Carnival, it’s social justice theater in practice. Every moment, it’s all about emancipation, the subverting of the powerful narrative through humor, through performance, through doublespeak. And it just taught me so much about the possibilities of the art form."Photo courtesy of Timmia Hearn DeRoy.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was summertime in the early 1970s in New York City. Fifteen-year-old Jim LeBrecht boarded a school bus headed for the Catskill Mountains, home to Camp Jened, a summer camp for people with disabilities. As the bus approached the camp, he peered out the window at the warm and raucous group below."I wasn't exactly sure who was a camper and who was a counselor," he said. "I think that's really indicative of one of the many things that made that camp special."Over several years, the camp changed him in profound ways."I, for the first time, understood that I didn’t need to be embarrassed about being disabled, that I could have pride in who I was," he said. "And that it was possible to fight back against the system that was keeping us down."Nearly five decades later, in 2020, LeBrecht and filmmaker Nicole Newnham released on Netflix the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, about Camp Jened and the activism it inspired. "What did we used to say, it was like Wet Hot American Summer meets The Times of Harvey Milk?" said Newnham. "It’s an activist history story. It’s the origin story of a political and identity-based community, the disability community. But it’s also a coming-of-age story and a joyous sort of celebration of youth and disability culture coming together." All incoming undergraduate students at UC Berkeley watched Crip Camp over the summer as part of On the Same Page, a program of the College of Letters and Science. "We had a couple of goals with our film," said LeBrecht. "One of them was to reframe what disability meant to people with and without disabilities. We also wanted to start conversations. I hope that this plants a seed within all of these students that they do talk, they do think differently, and that this is something they hold for the rest of their lives that will make the world a better place."Photo by Steve Honigsbaum/Netflix.Music by Blue Dot Sessions.Listen to the episode, read the transcript and see photos on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Holocaust ends?"It's not a prescription, but rather a warning: an effort to call attention to the fact that we are in this moment of endings, where survivors are no longer with us," she says. "Undeniably, we are entering a new period of memory. ... We need to think more seriously about what we do with this memory."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo by Pete Kiehart. UC Berkeley graphic by Neil Freese.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 really interesting now going without a prosthesis and experiencing the world in a totally different way and seeing ... not just frustrating designs and inaccessible designs and hostile designs for disabled people or just for people with my body geometry, but for anybody."After she graduates, Britt will be working on a book about techno-optimism, the pitfalls of so-called human-centered design, prosthetics and the future of the human body.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu). Photo by Gabriela Hasbun.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 says. "I’m thinking about how much of myself is a part of them and how much of them are a part of me, and it’s kind of this final goodbye."Gericault's final MFA piece is part of the Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, which opens on May 10 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).UC Berkeley photo by Sofia Liashcheva. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 your words, like what you say you’re going to do, actually be what you do," says Shah. "But the work over the years will transform you. It will teach you. And that hope and that imagination, that sense of it’s possible, I think that’s such a powerful thing."Shah and Nolan also talk about when it might be a good thing to loosen your grip on your power, how confidence is a process, and moments that give you chills — in a good way — as a lawyer.This is the last episode of season two of Be the Change, a collaboration between UC Berkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs and Berkeley Law. In the series, Nolan interviews changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. You can find all episodes on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).Photo courtesy of Purvi Shah; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. 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 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 that. It's important that we are able to understand that if you have a voice, if you are in the room, you should use it."They also get into how instinct can be a particularly powerful gift when you're part of a subordinated community, and storytelling as a portal to individual and communal healing.Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who embody the transformation they want to see in the world. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on Berkeley News.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 feel that that affirms my identity as a Black woman."Nolan and Bridges also talk about getting comfortable with the Socratic method, and what it feels like to start law school with no idea what's going on or what you've gotten yourself into, but ultimately finding your way.Season two of Be the Change is a collaboration between Berkeley Law and Berkeley News. In the series, Nolan interviews three changemakers who have started something that wasn't there before, and that makes the world a better place. New episodes will come out every week on Wednesday as a special series on the Berkeley Voices podcast.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small; UC Berkeley design by Neil Freese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 expansive and transformative."New episodes come out every week on Wednesday. Savala's next interview is with Khiara M. Bridges, 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.Listen to the episode and read a transcript on news.berkeley.edu.UC Berkeley photo design by Neil Freese; photo courtesy of Savala Nolan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.