Social Sciences (Faculty & Staff)

As chatbots get smarter, humans’ unique language abilities are becoming less special

July 14, 2025

AI platforms like ChatGPT are widely understood to be sophisticated prediction machines. Trained on vast troves of content ranging from news articles and books to film scripts and Reddit posts, they anticipate the next most likely letters and words when prompted. While their responses can give the impression they’re sentient thinkers, that sci-fi scenario hasn’t yet panned out.

But new UC Berkeley research reveals for the first time that AI chatbots can now analyze sentences like a trained linguist. The study...

New poll finds most Californians believe American democracy is in peril

July 14, 2025

An overwhelming number of California voters think American democracy is being threatened or, at the very least, tested, according to a new pollreleased Thursday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

The poll, conducted for the nonprofit Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, found that concerns cut across the partisan...

Berkeley Talks: Ezra Klein on building the things we need for the future we want (revisiting)

July 14, 2025

Today we are revisiting an October 2023 Berkeley Talks episode in which Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties liberal governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world. He joins in a conversation with Amy Lerman, a UC Berkeley political scientist and director of the Possibility Lab.

“To have the...

He pioneered the cellphone. It changed how people around the world talk to one another — and don’t

July 7, 2025

“Dick Tracy” got an atom-powered, two-way wrist radio in 1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it.

The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola’s research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone. Cooper rejected AT&T’s wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with “a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.”

Fifty-two years ago, Cooper declared victory in a call from a Manhattan sidewalk to the head of AT...

When warnings never cease, can we still trust our instincts?

July 7, 2025

UC Berkeley political scientist Marika Landau-Wells first watched the 1990 movie Arachnophobia as a kid. Her mom warned her not to see it: The horror-comedy, about a California town terrorized by a deadly species of spider accidentally imported from a Venezuelan jungle, was PG-13, and Landau-Wells was a lot younger than 13. But some of her friends were going to the theater to see it — at least one of their parents thought it was fine — so she went.

“I now have this deep-seated conviction that all spiders are at least 8 inches in...

The Exam-Free Experiment: What Happened When One University Bet on Group Projects

July 3, 2025

To promote deeper learning and fairer outcomes, many education systems have moved away from traditional in-class exams toward lower-stakes, more flexible forms of assessment. Yet despite the growing popularity of this shift, we still know little about its long-term consequences. What began as a single in-class exam has evolved into a mix of midterms, finals, take-home tests, re-takes, problem sets, and participation-based grading. In some cases, assessments now depend more on whether students complete their work than how well they perform. This trend has extended beyond the classroom: many...

Big Ideas course explores mass incarceration and collective safety

June 24, 2025

While the United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, it holds almost 25% of the world’s incarcerated people, according to the U.S. Census and World Prison Population List. Why?

“Prison Abolition,” an interdisciplinary American Cultures course sponsored by the College of Letters & Science Big Ideas program, explores this issue by examining the social impacts of incarceration and its alternatives. During the Spring 2025 term, the course was taught by Ethnic Studies Professor and Former Department Chair Keith Feldman alongside...

New research says framing protests as fights for civil rights ‘backfires.’ So what might work?

June 23, 2025

Millions of people took to the streets last weekend in solidarity against President Donald Trump. Protest signs and public speeches decried his administration’s attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups. Many protesters deemed current policies an affront to civil rights.

But framing modern...

Lowriding was once banned in Sacramento. Now, it’s celebrated on Capitol Mall

June 23, 2025

Armando Lara-Millán was about to join hundreds of polished, modified and brightly colored cars in Sacramento when the back windshield of his new lowrider flew onto the highway.

Lara-Millán’s destination was the third annual Lowrider Holiday Celebration where cars like his lined four blocks of Capitol Mall Sunday afternoon. Without a windshield, Lara-Millan went from participant to spectator.

“It’s all good,” Lara-Millán, an associate professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, said. “It’s all part of the game.”

The Lowrider Holiday Celebration was organized by Cruising for...

It’s Not Just Trump Voters. Both Parties Are in Denial.

June 23, 2025

Sociology Professor Emerita Arlie Russell Hochschild spoke to The New York Times for an episode of "The Opinions" podcast.

In this episode of “The Opinions,” the editorial board director David Leonhardt talks to Arlie Russell Hochschild about why voters in Appalachia continue to support the president, despite the broken promises of Trump’s first term and looming cuts to social programs they depend on.

Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the...