Dave Smith deployed to Iraq twice during his time in the Marine Corps. Now he’s a Berkeley senior, about to earn his bachelor’s degree in political science. What he saw and did in Iraq hasn’t made for an easy ride. Smith talks intimately about student life after war, in an interview on KALW radio.
Audio archive
UC Berkeley recordings of Ishi added to Library of Congress registry
April 6, 2011: Recordings of songs and stories told by Ishi, a Yahi tribe member who was taken in by UC Berkeley anthropologists in the early 1900s, have been added to the Library of Congress registry. Ishi, who emerged from the Mount Lassen foothills in 1911, was initially thought to be the last-surviving member of the Yahi tribe. The recordings are part of the collection at Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
Newt podcast with Botanical Garden director Paul Licht
March 3, 2011: The UC Botanical Garden is home to two newt species, Taricha torosa (California newt) and Taricha granulosa (rough-skin newt). The winter rains prompt the newts to migrate to the Garden’s Japanese Pool where their mating rituals and general cavorting can be easily observed by visitors. The garden is offering several opportunities to get up close and personal with newts this March including this podcast with garden director Paul Licht.
Jim Crow signs as symbols of subjugation, trophies of triumph
February 15, 2011: In the mid 1960s, landmark laws brought an official end to the system of legal segregation known as Jim Crow. Professor Elizabeth Abel explores the “visual politics” of a system that shaped experience and perception throughout the American South (and beyond) for nearly a century — in a book praised by literary critic Henry Louis Gates as giving “new focus to our national dialogue on race.”
Legalize marijuana? Pro, con, or undecided, Berkeley students sound off on Prop. 19
October 19, 2010:
On Nov. 2, state voters will decide on a controversial and quintessentially California ballot measure, Proposition 19, the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010.” Where do students at Berkeley, with its reputation for liberalism (accurate or not) come down on the issue? Eleven campus undergraduates think out loud about the pros and cons of Prop. 19.
Gulf oil drilling is just one facet of South’s surfeit of heavy industry
August 17, 2010:
Cal alum Rachel Edmonds ’09 is keenly interested in places like the Gulf of Mexico, where “dirty” industries provide jobs but can mar the landscape and degrade the environment. She recently visited many such sites in the American South — where much of the nation’s heavy industry is found — on a travel fellowship given annually by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning.
How Japanese Americans preserved traditions behind barbed wire
June 10, 2010: For several decades, Berkeley staff member Shirley Muramoto Wong has tracked down elderly artists who, during World War II, taught traditional Japanese arts while imprisoned in far-flung “relocation” camps. In coaxing out and recording their memories, Muramoto — herself a master of the koto — has helped bring to light a little-known aspect of U.S. history.
Student parent, born in an Andean village, aims to go global in defense of the dispossessed
January 15, 2010: Consuelo Bustinza’s journey has taken her, so far, from a tiny Andean village to a place she describes as “a big ocean of knowledge and opportunities” where one learns to “solve big problems,” UC Berkeley. Diminutive, energetic, and startlingly self-possessed, the campus senior aspires to one day be a voice for the dispossessed in the international arena.
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