A French Chevalier for scholarly societal contributions

Professor Judith Butler receives the French Chevalier for her contributions in philosophy, ethics, political and literary theories from French Consul General Pauline Carmona in San Francisco.

Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Berkeley’s Program of Critical Theory, where she served as founding director, received the formal honor from Consul General Pauline Carmona at ceremonies in San Francisco. Butler was awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry in 2013. This week she was pinned with the medal itself.

Professor Judith Butler receives the French Chevalier in the Order of Arts et Lettres for her contributions in philosophy, ethics, political and literary theories from French Consul General Pauline Carmona.

Professor Judith Butler receives the French Chevalier for her contributions in philosophy, ethics, political and literary theories from French Consul General Pauline Carmona in San Francisco.

Carmona noted at the award ceremony the strength of Butler’s links with French scholars and intellectuals and the profound impact her work has had on France’s society, especially in the fields of feminism and gender studies.

Butler is active in gender and sexual politics, human rights and anti-war politics, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She was recently the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-13). She received the Adorno Prize from the city of Frankfurt (2012) in honor of her contributions to feminist and moral philosophy, as well as the Brudner Prize from Yale University for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies.

She is the past recipient of several fellowships including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Ford and American Council of Learned Societies, and was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and at the College des Hautes Etudes in Paris. She has received honorary degrees from Université Bordeaux-III, Université Paris-VII, Grinnell College, McGill University and the University of St. Andrews. In 2013 she was awarded the diploma of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Cultural Ministry. In November 2014, Butler received an honorary degree from the Universite Fribourg in Switzerland.

She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984.

Source: UC Berkeley

Walter Gordon: A Pioneer On The Field And Beyond

Walter Gordon was the first African-American student at the Boalt Law School. Courtesy: Cal Athletics

While Walter A. Gordon was a trailblazer during his days as a Cal football player, it’s the ground he broke after he left Berkeley that really made history.

Gordon was a star player along the Bears’ offensive and defensive lines from 1916-18, and after his senior season he became the first All-American football player in Cal history. His selection also made him the second African-American ever to be named All-American.

Gordon went on to become a pioneer in many ways after graduating from Cal. He was the first African-American on the Berkeley police force and the first African-American student at the Boalt Law School, from which he received his JD in 1922. Later in his life, Gordon was appointed to the position of Governor of the Virgin Islands by President Dwight Eisenhower.

Gordon was born in Atlanta, Ga., in 1894 as a second generation free African-American. His father was a Pullman porter, who moved his family to Riverside, Calif., in 1904. Gordon’s father enrolled his children in Riverside Polytechnic High School, a predominantly white high school, in an attempt to give his son a better education. Walter was deeply affected by this and was known to quote his father in later years, asserting that color should not be an influence in access to education.

Walter entered UC Berkeley in 1914 and quickly became involved in a variety of activities. Although now known primarily for football, Gordon was a talented athlete who also excelled in wrestling and boxing, winning the state championship in both of these sports during his time at Cal. He also founded the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African-American Greek-letter fraternity.

In football, Gordon was a star player. He was also the first African-American player on first string. Extremely versatile, he played every position on both the offensive and defensive lines except center throughout his three years on the varsity. He shone as both a blocker and a tackler, a large man who was remembered by all who knew him for both his brute force and a surprising amount of litheness. In 1918, his senior season, Gordon was selected as a member of the third All-American team by the “Father of American Football” himself, Walter Camp. Gordon was the second African-American player to receive the honor of All-American, and the first player from Cal. That same year, Gordon was honored with an outstanding player award, presented in front of a large audience at the Greek Theatre.

Walter Gordon

Gordon experienced a great amount of success during his tenure as an athlete; however, he was also faced with challenges on account of his skin color. During his participation on the Cal heavyweight boxing team, prejudices against African-Americans sometimes kept Gordon out of the ring. In one such incident, the Stanford boxing team refused to compete against Berkeley due to Gordon’s presence. Gordon was forced to sit on the sidelines as another boxer was substituted in his place.

Racism followed Gordon into football as well. Andy Smith (coach of the “Wonder Years” teams) became head coach in 1916 and was unsure of how to navigate the sensitive subject of an African-American player on the team. When Cal was booked to play in Seattle, Smith was uncertain if Gordon should be allowed to come along. When put to a vote, the team decided that if Gordon made first string, he should be able to come with them and play the game. Nevertheless, as soon as the train arrived in Seattle, Gordon left his teammates to find lodging in an African-American part of town, reappearing the next morning to take his place in the game. He was unable at that time to stay in the same hotels as his teammates. Those who knew him say Gordon consciously handled situations regarding race this way, pushing boundaries, while leaving other battles for a later day.

After Gordon’s graduation, Smith hired Gordon as a part-time coach for the football team. He became the head coach for the Goofs, later known as the Ramblers. This team was the equivalent of the junior varsity. Gordon also became the head scout for Smith during the team’s Wonder Years and continued on through the tenure of famed head coach Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf.

Gordon’s responsibilities included both scouting new players and attending the games of Cal’s opponents to study their plays. Those who worked with Gordon claimed he was so perceptive he could predict the other team’s next play based solely off of their movements. Gordon’s skill was also apparent when he assisted in planning plays for Cal. He was thought to have a keen sense of what would happen; one player claimed he felt that when he stepped on the field, he was acting out a scenario that had been written by Gordon. Additionally, he worked closely with quarterbacks. In this era, no plays could be called from the sideline during a game, so the quarterback was essentially an offensive coach on the field. This meant quarterbacks worked a lot with the scouts to determine plays.

Gordon was considered a valuable member of the coaching staff, yet he was an understandably frustrated coach. During the 1920s and 30s, no African-American was allowed to hold any place of significant importance on the staff. Gordon was only allowed to be a coach for the Goofs, though he sometimes ran plays with the varsity linemen. Smith also kept Gordon out of all coaching staff pictures because he felt that seeing an African-American coach would discourage recruits from coming to Cal.

At the beginning of his term, Gordon had to change in a separate room from the rest of the coaches. When he went on scouting trips, he was subject to law allowed by the infamous Plessey v. Ferguson Supreme Court case, which legalized separate transportation and lodging for African-Americans. Gordon was forced to ride on the day coach in trains, regardless of the duration of a trip, and continued to stay in separate accommodations from his white counterparts.

Eventually, Gordon made some headway against the challenges of segregation. He got an “individual privilege” to stay in white hotels while on scouting and coaching jobs in major cities, although he still had to sneak in the side door. The trains also granted concessions, awarding Gordon with his own Pullman section compartment – a much more comfortable way to travel.

Gordon stayed very involved with football at Cal while continuing to expand his horizons. From 1919 to 1929, he served as a member of the Berkeley Police force, where he was once again the first black member. In the ’20s and ’30s, Gordon was active in the NAACP, eventually becoming president of the Alameda County branch. He married May Elisabeth Fisher in 1920, and together they had three children. He attended Boalt Law School and was the first African-American student and JD recipient when he graduated in 1922. Afterwards, he held a joint practice for many years, serving a mostly white client base, while gaining enormous respect in his field. Gordon also served as the vice president of the Lawyer’s Guild of San Francisco and was invited to speak at the L.A. Bar association.

In 1943, Chief Justice Earl Warren, himself a 1914 Boalt graduate, appointed Gordon to the California Adult Authority Board, which dealt with matters of state parole. Gordon ended his private practice a year later and for the next nine years served as chairman of the Board. Throughout his tenure, Gordon was credited for helping to change attitudes towards crime, focusing on humane policies and rehabilitation.

In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Gordon to the position of Governor for the Virgin Islands. Gordon served as Governor for three years, during which time he aimed to better the struggling society. After his term, he became a Federal Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands, and for the next 10 years used his law degree to try and better people’s lives.

Those who knew him remember Gordon as a charismatic and determined individual. He aimed to be an “inspiration to members of his race” and frequently insisted that the world should not think less of him based on the color of his skin. He took pride in all that he did and what he had accomplished, as well as his history and family.  He made no apologies for his heritage and achieved a great amount in his 82 years before passing away in 1976. He was chosen the California Alumnus of the Year in 1955, received the Citation Award from the Law School in 1964, and was named to the National Football Foundation’s College Hall of Fame in 1975. Today, he is remembered through the Walter Gordon Memorial Fund, established in 1991 to provide money for summer internships at the Law School.

Allison Spivack (UC Berkeley, Class of 2017) did the research and writing of this story as part of her Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship with Professor Margaret Conkey (Anthropology), which has brought together four undergraduates at Berkeley who are researching various aspects of Cal's student-athletes and the athletic program.

Source: Calbears

The Power of the Past

If you grow up in the working class, neither love nor money can trump your blue-collar roots, a Duke sociologist has found.

Her study of couples from different social classes suggests that those who “marry up” still make life decisions based on their upbringing.

                             Cover of Streib book by Eric Ferreri, Duke News & Communications
                          Sociologist Jessi Streib’s book “The Past” is about class structure in marriages.

“Your social class never goes away,” says Jessi Streib, an assistant professor of sociology whose findings are revealed in her new book: The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages. “It stays with you in terms of how you live your life. The class you’re born into sticks with you and shapes you, even when you marry into more money and a far more financially secure life.”

Streib’s findings derive from interviews she conducted with white, heterosexual Midwestern couples. She interviewed 32 couples in which one spouse came from a working class background, the other from the middle class. For comparison, she also interviewed 10 couples in which both spouses grew up in the middle class.

Streib defines working class as people raised by parents with high school educations; the middle class subjects were raised by college-educated parents.

Her findings run contrary to the notion held by many scholars that strivers can outrun a difficult childhood by getting a college degree and good-paying middle-class job.

While the findings suggest that a middle class upbringing isn’t required to excel in the American workplace, those upwardly mobile people from working class roots may still miss out on opportunities if they can’t or don’t subscribe to the unspoken norms of middle class culture, Streib notes.

Streib found that couples from different classes held onto their own, firmly-rooted beliefs regarding money and parenting, often negotiating fervently with each other over the proper amount of career planning and nurturing of children. Should children be left to grow and discover on their own, or should goals and schedules be set for them?

“Those are the sorts of tiny battles cross-class couples have all the time,” Streib said. “These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they are certainly common and consistent.”

Source: Duke Univesity

Cuba opens door to its health care system for visiting nursing students

Students and faculty from the UCLA School of Nursing visit Casa de Maternidad, where women with high-risk pregnancies can live to receive special care. Credit: UCLA

The timing couldn't have been better for 18 UCLA School of Nursing graduate students and two faculty members headed for Cuba on an educational mission. As they were boarding a flight to Havana from Miami on Dec. 17, big news was breaking: The U.S. was re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, mending a break that has lasted more than 50 years. 

One hour later, the UCLA group arrived in Havana, where they were greeted with exuberant hugs, kisses and tears of joy by an excited group of Cuban health leaders over the historic turn of events.

That was the auspicious beginning of a five-day, action-packed visit for the UCLA group. To learn about Cuba’s health care system, they met with physician-nurse teams, engaged in Pan American Health Organization-based discussions on major causes of illness and death, among other topics; and visited community-based consultorios, polyclinics and sex education centers as well as nursing and medical schools.

Eager to see different health care settings, they spent time at a home for seniors and a residence where women with high-risk pregnancies went to live to receive special care.

Ties between Westwood and Havana

This was not the first time that UCLA nurses have connected with their counterparts in Cuba. In 2011, Maria Elena Ruiz, assistant adjunct professor at the school, attended an International Health Conference in Cuba as a member of the American Public Health Association. Through those meetings, she saw firsthand how a first-world, prevention-focused primary health care system functions with third-world economics.

When she returned to UCLA, Ruiz, together with Adey Nyamathi, associate dean for international research and scholarly activities, developed a program that would provide similar experiences for nursing students, who would receive partial credit for a public health course, complete required readings, participate in pre- and post- conferences, and write daily reflective papers.

How do they do it?

Cuba, the UCLA nurses learned during their visit last December, is a third-world country with some impressive health outcomes, including an overall life expectancy that rivals that in the U.S. (78.4 years for Cubans versus 78.6 years for Americans), immunization rates that are nearly 100% and low infant mortality. Yet their health care costs per capita are nearly 15 times lower than that of the United States.

Primary care and an emphasis on prevention are key to the success of the Cuban health care system.  

“Their system shows how primary care really does work,” said student Vladimir Camarce.  “And when implemented correctly, you can see great outcomes. Historically, the U.S. system has been focused on acute and tertiary care, but we are now starting to see a shift with the Affordable Care Act.”

In Cuba, public service announcements about health are shown daily on television. “They don’t have traditional television commercials like we do here, so the government uses the opportunity to deliver messages about hygiene or reminders on vaccines,” observed student Stephanie Phan.

Another reason for Cuba’s success is its focus on personalized, community-based care. Doctors and nurses work as a team and live in the communities they serve.  They might see patients in a clinic in the morning, said graduate student John Scholtz, and then visit patients who can’t get to the clinic at home “to ensure that they are receiving their checkups and following through with the recommendations.”

The students also noted the personal nature of health care in Cuba. “Patients are referred to by name,” said Phan, “not by 'the patient in room 11' …  They told us, ‘They’re not patients, they’re people.”

There is also a strong integration of traditional, herbal and western medicine. It’s all considered good health care. “I believe we should find a way to incorporate that integration into our practices because we do get a lot of patients who use complementary therapies,” said Camarce.

What amazed the students was that the Cubans achieve all this with a scarcity of equipment and health resources. “They don’t have the equipment we have, the technology we have or the pharmaceutical industry,” noted student Jacqueline Marroquin. “They make do with so little, but they are able to accomplish so much.”

“What medical equipment is available resembles a scene from the old MASH television series,” said Ruiz. “And yet we were overwhelmed with the kindness and eagerness of our hosts to share their health experiences with us.”

Also surprising: On average, nurses and doctors make only $20-$30 a month.  But their education and housing are free or subsidized, and they don’t have student loans to pay off.

“In the U.S., you wouldn’t have a lot of people pursuing these professions for that kind of pay,” said Scholtz. “But in Cuba, you have a lot of people interested in being doctors or nurses. They go into it because they want to make a difference in their community.”

Part of the reason why the Cuban system works is the collectivist-based culture and the population perspective, the students said. Many things that have been adapted in Cuba, however, wouldn’t work in the U.S.  “We might be able to integrate some of the ideas in a micro-community,” suggested Marroquin.

Leaving hehind impressions — and hand sanitizers

While the students were there to learn, they also taught Cubans something about Americans.  “Our interactions showed them that we were open to ideas and willing to learn from them,” said Scholtz. On a more tangible note, the group left behind hand sanitizers.  And pens. Lots of them.  “There is a real need for basic hygienic supplies, everything we take for granted,” added Ruiz.

But more importantly, the UCLA visitors came away with a new resolve. “As nursing students, as nurses, we really need to understand what is going on across our borders,” said Marroquin.

Nyamathi added:  “These students are now motivated to make a difference, to learn more about other countries and to question our health system, health care costs, disparities, and what we can learn from others to improve health and health care in the U.S.” 

It’s also a hope that, with the dawning of warmer relationships with Cuba, the U. S. health care community may be able to learn a lot more from their neighbor, they said.

Source: UCLA

A mobile app for conducting opinion polls

Opiner is an open source tool for opinion polling. Credit: Image courtesy of KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

Soon anyone can conduct public opinion polls to drive issues that are important to them, using a new open source tool being developed at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Researcher Konrad Tollmar and his colleagues intend for the mobile app, Opiner, to be used as a tool for direct democracy. Tollmar says that once Opiner is publicly available, it will enable anyone to conduct surveys, drive public opinion and influence political decisions.

"This will be an alternative to services that can cost millions to use," says Tollmar. "It gives people an opportunity that historically only large organisations have had."

Public opinion polls are an important tool for interest groups, which regularly hire commercial firms to conduct polls for them. The ability to take stock of -- and present -- public opinion enables interest groups to control the narrative around their issues, establish their communications themes and influence how the media and policymakers grasp a given subject.

"Polling can be expensive," he says. "But Opiner enables anyone to drive public opinion or conduct surveys."

Opiner could also have the benefit of energising more people to become politically involved. And it's not just for activists. Media organisations big and small can use the tool for their own purposes.

"We're working on a form of direct democracy. That people can have a voice in society," he says.

"But Opiner can be used for just about anything, large or small," he says, noting that one of the strengths of Opiner is that it can be context-specific.

Targeting mobile devices means that Opiner pollsters can make use of both space and time 

to find out what people think, and ask relevant questions based on these two parameters. For example, what do people think about public transportation when they are riding on the subway? What do students think about the quality of lunch while they're sitting in the school cafeteria?

"There is evidence in behavioral science and what is called "Experience Sampling," that surveys get a more true result when people are asked what they think in the moment, instead of afterward," he says.

Opiner also offers transparency. In addition to implementing polls, users can analyse the performance and freely share it. The system includes a toolkit to easily visualise the results in an understandable way.

"There are a lot of great tools on the web for public polling, but they are closed and commercial. Opiner is fully open and works on all types of newer phones. The system is open source, so anyone can download the software and set up their own Opiner," he says.

But it's not just the political benefit that Tollmar hopes to spread. In beta tests with teachers and students, the research team found that the act of surveying itself serves an educational purpose: as a way of developing students understanding of politics and language.

"First, we talked with their teachers about which questions should be asked. That worked so-so," he says. "The students didn't think the questions were always relevant. It was much better when the students themselves had to formulate their questions."

Opiner is part of the European research project, FlashPoll. Flashpoll has a mature Android app available, but what makes Opiner stand-out, Tollmar says, is its truly open platform -- from the establishment of questions, running the polls and analysis, to the sharing of results. "You should rather see Opiner as a research prototype of the next generation of Flashpoll tools," he says.

Tollmar is among a group of researchers at KTH who have worked with various digital tools over the last several years to help people make their voices heard, including Måns Wrange, Patrik Hernwall, Igor Isaksson och Mats Gustavsson.

Source: KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

Attitudes about knowledge, power drive Michigan's wolf debate

MSU research has identified the themes shaping Michigan's wolf debate and offers some potential solutions as the debate moves forward. Credit: Courtesy of Michigan DNR

With both wolf proposals shot down by Michigan voters on election day, the debate over managing and hunting wolves is far from over.

A Michigan State University study, appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management, identifies the themes shaping the issue and offers some potential solutions as the debate moves forward.

The research explored how different sides of the debate view power imbalances among different groups and the role that scientific knowledge plays in making decisions about hunting wolves. These two dimensions of wildlife management can result in conflict and stagnate wildlife management.

The results indicate that tension between public attitudes about local knowledge, and politics and science can drive conflict among Michiganders' stance regarding wolf hunting, said Meredith Gore, associate professor of fisheries and wildlife and co-lead author of the study.

"Given the trend in wildlife management toward increased stakeholder input, finding solutions that approach science and politics as complementary, rather than competing, approaches may aid the public participation processes," she said.

This study represents a first attempt at defining and describing the association between knowledge and power in contentious management of a species recently delisted from endangered status. This study focused on wolves, but it has applications for other endangered or invasive species, added Gore, an MSU AgBioResearch scientist.

These findings shed light on why the voting and support for the issue appears to be muddled, at least in terms of traditional quantifiers. Knowing these splits explain, in part, why the issue won't likely be resolved by swaying the pro- or anti-hunting vote.

Gore and Michelle Lute, former MSU fisheries and wildlife graduate student and co-lead author who's now at Indiana University, unearthed these disparities by conducting in-depth interviews with many stakeholders close to the wolf debate. Rather than trying to prove a specific theory, the researchers allowed the interviews to reveal the main criteria driving the issue.

The researchers unearthed four themes and offered potential solutions to each.

• Mistrust among decision-makers -- Some interviewees view wildlife management agencies as political agencies rather than supporting what's best for wildlife. Increasing transparency and gathering more stakeholder input could increase trust.
• Special interest groups leaving many voters disenfranchised -- Strong lobbying groups leave some individuals feeling powerless and their votes meaningless. Striving for equitable distribution of risks and benefits among all stakeholders could address these feelings.
• Political influencers overriding science -- Some believe that scientific studies are downplayed by political officials. Equitable sharing of responsibility, risks and benefits may ease perceptions of tension between politicians and scientists.
• Decision-makers ignoring local sources of information -- Some interviewees felt cast aside, and their knowledge was labeled as mythology or folklore. Processes that seek shared-learning outcomes may balance local and scientific knowledge.

"Our research shows that as any management process moves forward," Gore said, "all sides should address the issue from the perspective of these four criteria. Regardless of how people voted, these aspects may represent common ground for all sides."

Source: Michigan State University

Global warming skeptics unmoved by extreme weather

What will it take to convince skeptics of global warming that the phenomenon is real? Surely, many scientists believe, enough droughts, floods and heat waves will begin to change minds. Credit: © lightmemorystock / Fotolia

What will it take to convince skeptics of global warming that the phenomenon is real? Surely, many scientists believe, enough droughts, floods and heat waves will begin to change minds.

But a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar throws cold water on that theory.
Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012, Aaron M. McCright and colleagues report in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Many people already had their minds made up about global warming and this extreme weather was not going to change that," said McCright, associate professor in MSU's Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology.

Winter 2012 was the fourth warmest winter in the United States dating back to at least 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some 80 percent of U.S. citizens reported winter temperatures in their local area were warmer than usual.

The researchers analyzed March 2012 Gallup Poll data of more than 1,000 people and examined how individuals' responses related to actual temperatures in their home states. Perceptions of warmer winter temperatures seemed to track with observed temperatures.

"Those results are promising because we do hope that people accurately perceive the reality that's around them so they can adapt accordingly to the weather," McCright said.

But when it came to attributing the abnormally warm weather to global warming, respondents largely held fast to their existing beliefs and were not influenced by actual temperatures.

As this study and McCright's past research shows, political party identification plays a significant role in determining global warming beliefs. People who identify as Republican tend to doubt the existence of global warming, while Democrats generally believe in it.

The abnormally warm winter was just one in an ongoing series of severe weather events -- including the 2010 Russian heat wave, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines -- that many believed would help start convincing global warming skeptics.

"There's been a lot of talk among climate scientists, politicians and journalists that warmer winters like this would change people's minds," McCright said. "That the more people are exposed to climate change, the more they'll be convinced. This study suggests this is not the case."

Source: Michigan State University