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"Dark times": Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan discuss our fast food nation
 When
is a hamburger just lunch? Never, if you're Eric Schlosser or
Michael Pollan. For these two investigative journalists, that
patty is a microcosm for serious problems plaguing this
nation in public health, the environment, animal welfare, labor,
immigration, and more.
More >
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
October 20, 2006)
One
on One: Into Africa
News about the 49 African
countries south of the Sahara tends to be of the biblically
dire variety—famines, massacres, coups, plagues.
Yet U.S. companies continue to do business in many
of these places, with little fanfare. And there are
a couple of small but stable and functioning African
countries that rarely make the U.S. media. Development
expert Carol Lancaster tells how Botswana and Mauritius
have managed to blossom. More >
(Corporate
Board Member,
Sept./Oct. 2005)
Look who's exempt from one new regulation
"Controlled
companies" can opt to have a board on which insiders
outnumber outsiders. But not everybody likes the idea,
including the man who handles Bill Gates's money. More
>
(Corporate
Board Member, May/June 2004)
Campus
Protesters, Class of '05
Okay, their chants might
not be as catchy as those of the '60s, but campus activists
are back at it — and this time they're
reaching for the keys to the boardroom.
More >
(Corporate
Board Member,
May/June 2005)
One On One:
Winona Ryder, Meet Eliot Spitzer
Former SEC commissioner turned Stanford law professor Joe Grundfest warns that
we may be scaring off America's best directors, and explains the connection
between the New York attorney general and a Hollywood shoplifter.
More
>
(BoardMember,
May/June 2005)
Controversial
reporter Judith Miller plans to defend journalism's role in a democracy
— all the way to prison
 Judith
Miller has been vilified by her peers and
the public for her pre-war reporting on Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction. But their attacks are nothing
compared to the assault on Miller by the federal government. "I
could be going to jail for a story I didn't write, for reasons I don't
know, for something that may not actually even be a crime," she
told fellow investigative journalist Lowell
Bergman in an event for Berkeley's Journalism School. More
>
(UC Berkeley
NewsCenter, 18 March 2004)
Science
writer Michael Pollan
has a beef with McDonald's
antibiotics announcement
 McDonald's
announcement that it would
ask its meat suppliers
to cut back on antibiotic
use has been hailed as
a step toward healthier
meat production. But Michael
Pollan, the Knight Chair
in Journalism at UC Berkeley's
Graduate School of Journalism
and an expert on factory
farming and the meat industry,
is less optimistic. More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
01 July 2003)
Robert
McNamara, Errol Morris share lessons learned from "Fog of War"
 Former
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and filmmaker
Errol Morris, both UC Berkeley alumni, discuss the
scope of the Oscar-nominated documentary they made
together, "Fog of War." Journalism professor Mark
Danner, in the role of moderator, tries to get McNamara to apply his
hard-won lessons from the Vietnam War to Iraq — not
quite in vain. More
>
(UC Berkeley
NewsCenter, 05 February 2004)
Sticklers
for accuracy: Tiny needles
provide better treatments
for restenosis, diabetes,
and more
The
hypodermic syringe hasn't
changed much since its
invention in 1853. Needles
still hurt, and they deliver
drugs to specific organs
with little more accuracy
than a shotgun. But advances
in integrated circuit
fabrication have made
it possible to manufacture
needles so tiny they can
introduce highly accurate
doses of a drug painlessly
and, when necessary, with
pin-prick precision. More
>
(Acumen
Journal of Sciences,
May 2003)
Lifting
the fog of war: Human
Rights Center Director
Eric Stover reports on
chaos and lawlessness
in Iraq
 While
hundreds of journalists traveled with U.S.-led coalition
troops, there were only two human-rights investigators
in all of Iraq during the war. "It's very
easy to write about the bang-bang of war," says
veteran human-rights researcher Eric Stover, one of
the two investigators in Iraq. "It’s much
harder to find out what's actually happening on
the ground and analyze it." More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
29 April 2003)
Assessing
George W. Bush: From a
"caretaker president"
to a "revolutionary"
of "missionary zeal"
In "Bush
at War: The 22nd Annual Review of the Presidency," part
of a series sponsored by UC Berkeley's Center
on Politics, the three panelists headlining an assessment
of the 43rd U.S. President may have differed on the
details, but overall they agreed that George W. Bush
is floating high on a wave of wartime patriotism — one
that might easily carry him to victory in the 2004
Presidential Elections. More >
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
22 April 2003)
A
sinking feeling for offshore
corporations
In
the good old days—less
than a year ago, in fact—corporate
regulators and watchdogs
cared little about where
a company was incorporated.
Then came the Tyco International
scandal, a fiasco that
blackened the reputation
not only of accountants,
auditors, art dealers,
and shower curtains, but
also of offshore corporations.
Tyco’s Bermuda registration
became the red cape that
now infuriates the bull
of public opinion. Companies
might want to think twice
before giving up their
U.s. citizenship. More
>
(Corporate
Board Member, March/April
2003)
Cal's
varsity rugby team smashes
records and stereotypes
Cal
has had few rivals on
the rugby field for years.
The Bears have won a record-setting
19 of 23 championships
since the National Collegiate
Rugby Tournament began
in 1980, including emerging
from the scrum as national
champs for the last 12
years in a row. Over the
past 40 years, no college
team in any sport has
been more dominant. More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
18 April 2003)
'Horrendous':
Nobel economist George
Akerlof criticizes Bush
administration's
economic stimulus package
 "Ten
Nobel Laureates Say the
Bush Tax Cuts are the
Wrong Approach" proclaimed
a full-page advertisement
in the Feb. 11, edition
of the New York Times.
Among the 10 is George
Akerlof, co-winner of
the 2001 Nobel Prize in
Economic Sciences. The
NewsCenter talks to Akerlof
about why the petition
was needed and what flaws
he sees in the current
economic stimulus package.
More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
12 February 2003)
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Former
PUC president Loretta Lynch on the forgotten lessons
of California's 2000 energy crisis
California's a slow learner. Remember the energy crisis of 2000? Checking the newspapers to see if your neighborhood was scheduled for an emergency rolling blackout? Sound familiar? Loretta Lynch, who was president of the PUC from 2000 to 2002, says there's a simple reason for this dejα vu: the state won't acknowledge that its partial deregulation of the power industry failed.More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter, April 23, 2005)
Investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets of the Iraq quagmire
 The
Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit
has been "disappearing"
people since December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably
Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. These
were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh
before a Berkeley audience on Oct. 8. More
>
(UC Berkeley
NewsCenter, 11 October 2004)
Linguistics
professor George Lakoff dissects the "war on terror" and other conservative
catchphrases
 Following
up on last year's dissection of how conservative language
dominates politics, Berkeley professor of cognitive
linguistics George Lakoff examines the considerable
progress Democrats have made in getting their ideas
across. In this interview, he dismantles such phrases
as the "war on terror" and "liberal elite," and
tells how to argue effectively with conservatives. More
>
(UC Berkeley
NewsCenter, 25 August 2004)
UC
Berkeley faculty analyze,
criticize and defend
Iraq war
 A
panel of UC Berkeley faculty convened on Tuesday evening,
April 1, to discuss the economic, political and regional
implications of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The question
that the speakers seemed most compelled to examine
was the most elemental of all: was the war in Iraq "just," or
defensible, whether for reasons of national security,
international stability, or moral responsibility. More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
02 April 2003)
Refuseniks:
Three Israeli soldiers
tell why they will not
serve in the occupied
territories
Three
Israeli soldiers shared
their stories of what
finally led them to a
position whose unpopularity
has trailed them from
Israel to much of the
United States. All three
have signed the "Combatants
Letter of Courage to Refuse,"
declaring that although
they will carry out their
responsibilities as Israeli
Defense Forces, they will
not serve in Israel's
occupied territories.
More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
13 March 2003)
"The
wrong direction":
Health policy expert Helen
Halpin decries Bush's
Medicare proposal
The
challenge of reforming
Medicare, the U.S. federal
health insurance program
created in 1965 for the
elderly, has defeated
several U.S. leaders.
On March 4, the 43rd president
took a stab, unveiling
his administration's
plan for modernizing Medicare.
To evaluate the proposed
changes, the NewsCenter
turned to a UC Berkeley
faculty expert on the
subject: Helen Halpin,
Director of the Center
for Health and Public
Policy Studies. More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
07 March 2003)
Edward
Said scorns U.S. military
action, asserts Israeli
human rights abuses
yet still sees hope for
peace
There
can be no peace in the
Middle East until the
injustices committed by
the Israeli government
against Palestinians cease,
argued Edward Said. Rather
than go to war against
Iraq, the United States
should examine its support
of Israel and by extension
that country's considerable
human rights violations,
said the well-known writer,
scholar, literary critic
and political activist
in a Zellerbach Hall lecture
on Wednesday evening,
February 19. More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
20 February 2003)
Law
students raise $18,000
to publish anti-war protest
Beginning
last semester, some of
the students at UC Berkeley's
School of Law were having
a hard time with their
classes. It wasn't
academic pressure, but
what they perceived as
the vast chasm between
the principles being taught
in their constitutional,
civil rights, and international
law courses and the actions
of the U.S. government.
They decided to put their
money where their mouth
was and buy a bullhorn
in the New York Times
to proclaim their views.
More
>
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
14 February 2003)
Suspicion!
Is your CEO holding out
on you?
You
know the feeling. Something
is off. Maybe the CEO
of the company whose board
you're on has stopped
communicating as frequently
as he once did, or maybe
he's sticking to the big
picture when he used to
pore over every fundamental.
Perhaps the second CFO
in as many months has
quit, trailing a blimp-sized
golden parachute, with
"Not her fault, it
just wasn't a good fit"
as the CEO's only explanation.
Is he hiding mistakes?
Or is he a crook? Better
find out what's going
on. More
>
(Corporate
Board Member, Sept/Oct
2002)
Student
nuclear-engineering conference
seeks to change attitudes
in the nuke-free zone
(UC
Berkeley NewsCenter,
04 April 2003)
Angel
Investors Fill Void Left
by Risk Capital
 Even
in a gathering of some
70 people, spotting the
money seekers was easy.
They were the younger
men huddled off to the
sides, clutching glasses
of mineral water and trying
not to look anxious.All
around them, mostly gray-
haired or balding Silicon
Valley veterans in semiformal
attire traded jokes and
gossip over cocktails.
The Band of Angels was
convening again. More
>
(New
York Times, August
2001)
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