The Berkeley Forum Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Berkeley Forum
The Berkeley Forum is a non-partisan forum for the expression and debate of a wide range of ideas. Founded in 2012, the Forum organizes panels, debates, and talks by leading experts and distinguished persons on issues both topical and timeless. The Forum is run entirely by undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley from a diverse range of academic and professional backgrounds. The Berkeley Forum Podcast aims to highlight voices in the Berkeley community in hopes of deepening discourse on important and timely issues on campus and beyond.
Affirmative action, particularly as it relates to college admissions, is the practice of favoring individuals belonging to minority groups that have been discriminated against, and who continue to face discrimination. Since its inception in the 1960s in the United States, affirmative action has been a contentious topic with polarizing perspectives leading to a number of court cases that consider the legality and ethicality of the practice. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that educational institutions are allowed to consider race as a factor when admitting students (Grutter v. Bollinger). However, some states, including California, have passed constitutional amendments banning public institutions from practicing affirmative action. In recent years, the scope of that ruling has been challenged, notably, in lawsuits involving Harvard College and the University of Texas at Austin. In this debate on whether affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions, we will present a diverse range of speakers with nuanced views on the subject to empower individuals to articulate their own opinions or build upon existing ones.
A special thank you to Dr. Prudence L. Carter for joining us on this episode.
For more information on the Berkeley Forum, please visit www.berkeleyforum.org.
Over the last two decades, the valuation and market share of America’s largest technology companies has increased massively. Now, some of these companies are under investigation for abusing their customers’ privacy, abusing freedom of expression, enabling foreign powers to influence the American political process, and engaging in anti-competitive activities. Many now argue that the U.S. government should use anti-trust legislation as a mechanism for breaking up or regulating these companies. Such action would directly impact the economic environment of the Bay Area and also affect the digital services that each of us uses daily.
A special thank you to our guests for joining us on this first episode!
Camille Crittenden | Executive Director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, and co-founder of the CITRIS Policy Lab and the Women in Tech Initiative at UC. She also chairs the California Blockchain Working Group.
Hany Farid | Professor at the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Author of Fake Photos.
Tejas Narechania | Assistant Professor of Law at Berkeley Law. Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.
For more information on the Berkeley Forum, please visit www.berkeleyforum.org.
This episode is dedicated to Courtney Brousseau.