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Film Screening: Budrus

When: Wednesday, April 4,  7:00 PM

Where: 105 North Gate Hall

Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel's Separation Barrier.  Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women's contingent that quickly moves to the front lines.  Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today.

In an action-filled documentary chronicling this movement from its infancy, Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat.  The movie is directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha, and produced by Bacha, Palestinian journalist Rula Salameh, and filmmaker and human rights advocate Ronit Avni. (MORE)

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Nadav Greenberg, the Outreach and Programming Coordinator at Just Vision Media.

The Horace M. Albright Lecture in Conservation
The U.S. Farm Bill: What’s at Stake?

When:  Thursday, April 5,  6:30 PM

Where:  Wheeler Auditorium

The U.S. Farm Bill is the single most important piece of legislation determining what Americans eat. Join us for a panel discussion on what’s at stake in the upcoming U.S. Farm Bill with:

Michael Pollan, John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, UC Berkeley
Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture
Ken Cook, President and Co-Founder of the Environmental Working Group

Patricia Crawford, Director of the Atkins Center for Weight and Health and Adjunct Professor, College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

Moderated by Gordon Rausser, Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

This is a free, public event. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Free tickets are available at the Wheeler Auditorium Box Office at 5:00 PM on the day of the event. Doors open at 6:00 PM.

This discussion will be recorded and available online after the event.

Event Contact: Sasha Keller | 510.643.1051

Living Portraits of the Human World: A conversation with JONATHAN HARRIS, computer scientist, storyteller, statistician, designer and Cowbird creator

When:  Monday, April 10,  1:00 PM

Where:  North Gate Hall Library

Jonathan Harris makes projects that reimagine how humans relate to technology and to each other. Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, his projects range from building the world's largest time capsule to documenting an Alaskan Eskimo whale hunt on the Arctic Ocean. He is the co-creator of We Feel Fine, which measures the emotional temperature of the human world through large-scale blog analysis, and created recent projects about online dating, modern mythology, anonymity, news and language.

View the Cowbird website here.

Does Narrative Journalism Have a Future Online?

When:  Monday, April 16,  6:30 PM

Where:  North Gate Hall Library

A panel discussion with Gerry Marzorati (former editor, New York Times Magazine), Mark Bryant (editor, Byliner) and Eric Ratliff (editor, The Atavist).

******* EVENTS OF INTEREST *******

Primal Ireland: Photo exhibit by Sally Mack

When:  March 1-31, 2012

Where: The Faculty Club

The Newgrange Passage Tomb (Bru Na Boinne) is 5,000 years old, its purpose unknown.  It had been closed up for untold centuries before its re-discovery in 1699 when the owner began building a road through the hillside, uncovering the front of the tomb.  It's on a hillside so rocky that at times it has been used as a quarry.

From 1699 through the 1960s, the tomb was open, people entered at will, carving their names in the stones, removing any grave goods (or anything else) that might have given clues to the purpose of the tomb.  It has a "light box" above the entrance which aligns perfectly with the rising sun on the day of the winter solstice.  The groups of three carved spirals on the stone in front of the entrance and inside the tomb are comprised of a single line.

Some photos of the exhibit can be seen on Sally Mack's website.  All photos were taken on film with a classic Hasselblad camera and printed through an enlarger from the original negatives.

Please contact Sally Mack (photos@sallymack.us) if you would like more information to to see more photos.

"Understanding the Political Landscape: The Use and Abuse of Polls"
Jon Cohen, Director of Polling, The Washington Post

When:  Monday, April 2,  12:00 PM

Where:  Harris Room, 119 Moses Hall

Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Jon Cohen is director of polling for The Washington Post. He is responsible for conceptualizing, implementing and analyzing all Post polls, and co-directs the Post-ABC and Post-Kaiser-Harvard surveys. He instituted the Post’s polling blog, Behind the Numbers, and frequently discusses public opinion on radio and television, as well as online chats. Before joining The Washington Post in 2006, he was assistant polling director at ABC News in New York and associate survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. He holds an M.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. In addition to reporting on Post polls, Jon is primary editor, gatekeeper and reporter for all public opinion content used by The Washington Post.

Event Contact: 510.642.1473

The Robert T. Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service presents the 31st Annual Review of the Presidency

When:  Monday, April 2,  7:30 PM

Where: 105 Stanley Hall

As President Obama seeks a second term, we examine his presidency and the 2012 election. Is the president to blame for the stagnant economy that has bedeviled his administration? Would any president have been able to engineer a speedier economic recovery? How has the president managed the foreign policy challenges of his time? Has he met the need for symbolic leadership from the president? And what of the Republicans who seek to replace him? Four years after a dramatic election that made American history, what should we expect from the election of 2012?

31st Annual Review Panelists
Andrew E. Busch, Professor of Government and Associate Dean of the Faculty at Claremont McKenna College
John Fund, Senior Editor, The American Spectator and author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy

Anne E. Kornblut, White House correspondent for the Washington Post and author of Notes From the Cracked Ceiling
Paul Pierson, John Gross Endowed Chair, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley and author of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

Event Contact: 510.642.1473

ASMP NorCal Presents Lee Foster on “Entrepreneurial Travel Photo Publishing”

When: Tuesday, April 10,  6:30 PM

Where: 141 McCone Hall

ASMP member Lee Foster will talk about what he calls “Entrepreneurial Travel Photo Publishing.” Lee hopes to provide ASMP members with practical information and inspiration on how their photo marketing can flourish in a more entrepreneurial manner.

Lee Foster is an award-winning travel writer/photographer, winner of eight Lowell Thomas Awards, the highest prize in travel journalism. All of Lee’s contemporary work in travel writing/photography can be seen at his website www.fostertravel.com. Lee has published 10 books, 3 apps, and 3 ebooks. His work has appeared in all the leading U.S. travel magazines and newspapers, from Travel + Leisure to the New York Times. His partnership with the main worldwide travel book company, Lonely Planet, has presented his photos in more than 225 of their books. Lee’s first “independent” book was his travel literary book (with photos) titled Travels in an American Imagination, which is now out as a print book and an ebook.

Purchase tickets here.

Event Contact: 415.839.3049

The Mugging of Main Street in America: Implications for the World with Robert Scheer

When:  Thursday, April 26,  7:30 PM

Where:  International House

Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief of "Truthdig.com", has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. His in-depth interviews have made headlines, including the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter confessed to the lust in his heart and notable Los Angeles Times interviews with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and many other prominent political and cultural figures. A USC professor and radio personality on Left, Right and Center with Arianna Huffington, Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street. Mr. Scheer will speak to the current social, political, and economic climate in the U.S. and its implications for the world today.

Purchase tickets here.

Event Contact: ihprograms@berkeley.edu, 510.642.9460

Philosophy Talk: Live at The Marsh

When:  Sunday, April 29 (see below for times)

Where:  The Marsh Theatre (2120 Allston Way, Berkeley)

Philosophy Talk, the nationally syndicated radio program that, "questions everything, except your intelligence," is back in Berkeley on April 29th, to record two new live episodes:

At noon, it's "Identities Lost & Found in a Global Age" with U.C. Berkeley English Professor Bharati Mukherjee.
Throughout human history, people have tended to live and die in the same place, or at least the same region, in which they¹re born. Place is an important part of one's identity. But what happens when people are deprived of this sense of place? What psychological effects do emigrants, exiles, and expatriates endure? What happens to the importance of place when community membership can be based on common interests among people linked by email and facebook? Do we risk losing an important part of human life? Or do we gain freedom from the lottery of birth? John and Ken situate themselves with UC Berkeley English Professor Bharati Mukherjee, author of Miss New India and other novels exploring migration, alienation, and identity.

At 3pm, we confront "Hypocrisy" with Lawrence Quill, from San Jose State University.
Hypocrites believe one thing, but do another. Jefferson opposed slavery, but owned slaves. Jesus professed universal love, but cursed an innocent fig tree. Jerry Brown opposes the death penalty, but as governor of California will be responsible for executions. Hypocrites all ­ but vile hypocrites? Surely it was better that Jefferson was a hypocrite, and articulated the case against slavery, than not opposing it at all. Does it take courage to defend a view that you, yourself, don't have the courage or the character to follow through on? John and Ken try to practice what they preach with Lawrence Quill from San Jose State University, author of Civil Disobedience: (Un)Common Sense in Mass Democracies.

Purchase tickets here.

Event Contact: 415.826.5750

Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, by Raymond Bonner

A book discussion with Raymond Bonner and Mark Danner

When:  Thursday, March 15,  6:30 PM

Where: 132 Boalt Hall

In January 1982, an elderly white widow was murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a poor, mentally challenged black man with no previous felony record.  Barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The case has all the issues that mark the debate about the death penalty — race, mental retardation, "snitch" testimony, DNA-testing, a strong claim of innocence, bad defense lawyers, and prosecutorial misconduct writ large.  The book also tells the inspirational story of a lawyer, Diana Holt, who fought to save Elmore's life. Reviewing the book for The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen called it "the book of the century about the death penalty." Publishers Weekly described it as a "lucid, page-turning account" and "not only a gripping human story but a first-rate introduction to the more problematic aspects of American criminal law."  

Bonner examines Elmore's defense through three jury trials and many complex legal proceedings.  He also explores the moral and legal issues in a case that has been in the courts for three decades.

Raymond Bonner earned a law degree from Stanford in 1967 and practiced before teaching law at UC Davis and founding the Public Interest Clearinghouse at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Later, he became an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent for The New York Times and received numerous awards and honors, including the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism, from the Nieman Foundation Fellows, in 1996. He was a member of the Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for articles about the sale of American technology to China. He has also been a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written for The New York Review of Books. His first book, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador, received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; his second, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy, received the Overseas Press Club and Sidney Hillman book awards. He now lives in London.

Mark Danner, Chancellor's Professor of Journalism, Politics and English at the University of California at Berkeley, has written for more than two decades on foreign affairs and international conflict. He has covered Central America, Haiti, Balkans and Iraq, among many other stories, and has written extensively about the development of American foreign policy during the late Cold War and afterward, and about violations of human rights during that time. His books include Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War (2009), The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History (2006), Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror (2004), The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travel's Through the 2000 Florida Vote Recount (2004) and The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (1994).

Presented by the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic and the Graduate School of Journalism.

VALLEY OF SHADOWS & DREAMS: Reception and Book Signing
and Current Exhibition at the North Gate Hall Gallery (January 17-May 15, 2012)

When: Friday, March 16, 6:00 PM

Where: 105 North Gate Hall

Photography by Ken Light | Text by Melanie Light | Forward by Thomas Steinbeck

“Valley of Shadows and Dreams explores a different California from the one that most people know—a California far from Hollywood and Malibu and San Francisco, a California that in some elemental respects has not changed much since the days of the Spanish conquistadors.  The same sort of manual labor prevails in the fields, the same exploitation of the weakest and poorest still blights the land.  In this book you will find a powerful indictment not only of what has happened lately in America's largest state, but also of what is happening across this country right now. The abuse of illegal immigrants, environmental degradation, the madness of a real estate bubble, and all the other problems of the Central Valley are unfortunately relevant nationwide.  Ken and Melanie Light bring great compassion and an eye for beauty to this subject, facing hard truths but refusing to despair.  As John Steinbeck argued more than seventy years ago, the demand for justice and the need for true democracy are timeless, essential things.”

—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

******* EVENTS OF INTEREST *******

Is Democracy on the Retreat?  Europe Between Market Pressure, German Rigour, and Technocracy

When: Thursday, March 1,  4:00 PM

Where: 223 Moses Hall

Federico Rampini is la Repubblica's New York Bureau Chief. Previously, he has served as a columnist and correspondent for la Repubblica in Beijing, where he inaugurated the publication's China bureau in July 2004. As a special envoy, he travels frequently to India, Japan and Southeast Asia. From 2000 to 2004, Rampini was la Repubblica's West Coast correspondent based in San Francisco, California. From 1997 to 2000, he was the European editor of la Repubblica. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism and at the Shanghai University of Economics and Finance.

The Iranian Crisis: Is War Inevitable?

When: Monday, March 19,  4:00 PM

Where: Sutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium

As the U.S. and Israel reach a dangerous turning point in their relations with Iran, a panel of distinguished analysts will focus on these issues:

• Can Iran be stopped in its drive to produce nuclear weapons?
• If Iran succeeds, what will be the consequences for regional stability?
• In what ways do domestic politics and regional dynamics drive the principal actors—the U.S., Iran, and Israel—in their choice of war or diplomacy?
• How has the Arab Spring changed the dynamics of regional politics and the outlook for proliferation?
• How will the American Presidential elections affect the crisis?

Avner Cohen is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies  and a Professor in the Graduate School of International Policy and Management.  He is widely known for his path-breaking history of the Israeli nuclear program, is an internationally recognized author and expert on nonproliferation issues, focusing on the Middle East. His most recent publication is The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb.

Karim Sadjadpour is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment. He joined Carnegie after four years as the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Washington and Tehran, where he conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials, and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others.  He is a regular contributor to BBC TV and radio, CNN, National Public Radio, PBSNewsHour, and Al-Jazeera. He contributes regularly to publications such as theEconomist, Washington Post, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and Foreign Policy.

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.  His publications include his best-selling book,The Stakes: America and the Middle East.  He has been a principal investigator in the annual Arab Public Opinion Survey, conducted since 2002 in six Arab countries.

The Robert T. Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service presents the 31st Annual Review of the Presidency
Election Year: The Obama Presidency and the 2012 Campaign

When:  Monday, April 2,  7:30 PM

Where: 105 Stanley Hall

As President Obama seeks a second term, we examine his presidency and the 2012 election. Is the president to blame for the stagnant economy that has bedeviled his administration? Would any president have been able to engineer a speedier economic recovery? How has the president managed the foreign policy challenges of his time? Has he met the need for symbolic leadership from the president? And what of the Republicans who seek to replace him? Four years after a dramatic election that made American history, what should we expect from the election of 2012?

31st Annual Review Panelists
Andrew E. Busch, Professor of Government and Associate Dean of the Faculty at Claremont McKenna College
John Fund, Senior Editor, The American Spectator and author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy

Anne E. Kornblut, White House correspondent for the Washington Post and author of Notes From the Cracked Ceiling
Paul Pierson, John Gross Endowed Chair, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley and author of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class