California students have UC Berkeley alumna Lisa Lewis to thank for the extra winks they’ll be able to catch before starting the school day, under a law just signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The law, which goes into effect in 2022, makes California the first state in the country to mandate later start times for middle school and high school students.
The Humanities Research Fellowship (HRF) program supplements the sabbatical salaries of assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors at UC Berkeley who are engaged in humanistic disciplines or who work in the creative arts. Funded by the McEnerney Endowment in the Division of Arts & Humanities, the HRF program enables faculty members to take research leaves ahead of the normal sabbatical-leave schedule.
If adversity sparks innovation, the deadly Tubbs Fire fueled alumna Bailey Farren to develop Perimeter, a mobile app to help first responders and citizens alike respond more quickly when wildfires approach. Farren, who earned a double major in cognitive science and rhetoric, is the CEO of Perimeter and heads a seven-member team. Except for one, all are Berkeley alumni; among them is Trevor Greenan, whose childhood home burned in a wildfire in October 2017.
Last Friday, UC Berkeley initiated a year-long initiative commemorating the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies with a day-long symposium. It drew hundreds of attendees who heard from more than a dozen historians and social scientists about the impact and legacy of slavery in society today. This initiative at UC Berkeley and similar ones across the country are being organized in the spirit of the “400 Years of African-American History Commission Act” that was signed into law last year.
Barry Stroud, an influential thinker who challenged the prevailing attitudes of mid-20thcentury philosophy and sought to understand enduring and inescapable questions about knowledge, perception and reality, died of brain cancer at his home in Berkeley on Aug. 9. He was 84.
The College of Letters & Science supports an impressive array of learning opportunities, evident in the departments, programs, centers, majors, minors, and instructional support units below.
Two indigenous dance groups — Mirki Performing Arts from Australia and the Northern Pomo Dancers from California — will perform Bayal Kaymanen on UC Berkeley’s Memorial Glade on Aug. 2. Hosted by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, the dancers will perform a series of stories that explore the relationship of fire between the Yidinji Nation from Cairns, Australia, and the Northern Pomo from the Redwood Valley Rancheria, in California — two of the world’s oldest living cultures.
From ancient times to the present day, people around the globe have raised fundamental questions about life through the arts, literature and philosophy. In the Arts & Humanities Division, faculty and students explore the human experience across an exceptionally broad range of subjects.
Tonika Sealy-Thompson, a PhD student in Global Urban Humanities, left Berkeley for the chance to serve her home country of Barbados as ambassador to Brazil. At 42, Sealy-Thompson is Barbados’ youngest-serving woman ambassador and one of the youngest ambassadors to Brazil. She credits her time at Berkeley as being integral to her readiness to take on the high-profile job.
From ancient times to the present day, people around the globe have raised fundamental questions about life through the arts, literature and philosophy. In the Arts & Humanities Division, faculty and students explore the human experience across an exceptionally broad range of subjects.