UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures
Education & Explainer
About
The University of California, Berkeley presents the Graduate Lectures. Seven lectureships comprise the Graduate Lectures, each with a distinct endowment history. These unique programs have brought distinguished visitors to Berkeley since 1909 to speak on a wide range of topics, from philosophy to the sciences.
Episodes
- The Constitutional Right to Transition: Reconstruction and the Political History of Transphobia
Award-winning historian Jules Gill-Peterson examines transgender identity and politics through the lens of American liberalism, arguing that anti-transgender politics cannot be understood by analyzing conservatism alone. She traces the eme…
- Is This Your Only Life?
Embodiment affects how we understand personhood, moral status, and whether this life is our only life. Mark Johnston, Henry Putnam University Professor, Princeton University, explains how competing theories of mind and matter shape the que…
- Three Ages and Three Intelligences: Exploit Explore Empower with Alison Gopnik
A common model of AI suggests that there is a single measure of intelligence, often called AGI, and that AI systems are agents who can possess more or less of this intelligence. Cognitive science, in contrast, suggests that there are multi…
- Can a Liberal Polity Survive the Politics of Grievance?
Contemporary populism is almost everywhere; a right wing phenomena that focuses on a politics of white working class grievance. A set of grievances that are to be addressed, when in power, with policies of expulsion, exclusion, and dominat…
- The Squiggly Line with Katelyn Jetelina
How do you navigate a nonlinear, “squiggly line” career in science and public health? Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and scientific communicator, explores challenges of science communication within academia—from cultural resistanc…
- The Soul – Spirit is My Altar with Marta Moreno Vega
Espiritismo traces its roots to the sacred knowledge of West and Central African peoples carried into the Americas by enslaved ancestors between the 15th and 19th centuries. Marta Moreno Vega, Ph.D., scholar and co-founder of Corredor Afro…
- Public Health: How to Make the Invisible Visible with Katelyn Jetelina
Public health often works behind the scenes—preventing illness, protecting communities, and generating research that too often stays hidden behind paywalls. In a world of eroding trust and rising falsehoods, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidem…
- Evolution and Animal Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, explores the evolutionary roots of consciousness by surveying animal evolution and the emergence of felt experience in several lineages. He ex…
- The Times of Possibility
Legal scholar Annabel Brett explores the idea of “moral possibility”—the boundary between what laws demand and what people can realistically or ethically be expected to do. Drawing from early modern thinkers like Aquinas, Suarez, and Hobbe…
- Times of Change: Possibility Virtue and a Democratic Politics of Time
Political theorist Annabel Brett of Cambridge University explores how the concept of “moral possibility” shapes law, politics, and public obligation. She explains that laws must be realistic for people to follow—what is morally possible va…
- Seas the Day: A New Narrative for the Ocean
It's time for a new narrative for the ocean, one that reflects current scientific knowledge and acknowledges innovative new partnerships and solutions that center the ocean in our future. In this program, Jane Lubchenco, Professor of Marin…
- Science in the White House: Integrating Solutions to the Triple Crises of Climate Change Loss of Biodiversity and Inequality/Inequity
Three major global challenges – climate change, loss of biodiversity and its benefits, and inequality and inequity among people – are typically tackled within three separate silos. However, scientific knowledge tells us that the three are…
- Subjects and Citizens: The Possibility Condition Law and Democracy
There's a powerful idea in the history of European legal and political thought: that laws must be possible for people to follow. Annabel Brett, professor of Political Thought and History at Cambridge University, describes how from ancient…
- The Moral Economy of Resource Extraction and the Future of Industrialization
The "energy transition" is actually a shift from relying on fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas) to using metals to generate energy. However, extracting metals has always been a significant environmental and political issue, especially f…
- Forging a New Political System 2024 and Beyond
Historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson joins UC Berkeley professor of law and history Dylan Penningroth in a timely conversation about the reshaping of the United States’ two major political parties. A professor of 19th…
- The Arc of Energy Justice: A Pursuit to Ensure Affordable Reliable and Clean Energy for All
We are at a critical moment in our society. While we advance efforts to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, across the globe, millions are experiencing issues of energy affordability, reliability and equitable access to modern energy…
- Do Cash Transfers Save Lives?
Does giving cash up front improve the health and wellbeing of people in poor communities? In this program, Edward (Ted) Miguel, professor of economics and co-director of the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley, talks about hi…
- The Search for Paradise
This program explores the decolonizing potential of Indian aesthetic-social philosophy by challenging two entrenched colonial prejudices: the supposed radical dissimilarity and inferiority of pre-modern Indian traditions compared to modern…
- Character and Agency
What defines a person’s character, and how does it shape who they are? In this lecture, Susan Wolf, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, challenges traditional ideas about character. She argues that charact…
- The Deadly Trade in Oil and Gas
Oil and gas are the most traded commodities on the planet; they are also the chief causes of the most grievous harm our species has yet faced, the burgeoning climate crisis. Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury…
- American Thanatocracy vs Abolition Democracy: On Cops Capitalism and the War on Black Life
In this program, Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, examines how police in the neoliberal era–in tandem with other state and corporate entities—have become engines of capital…
- Minority Rule in the United States
Placing the U.S. in comparative perspective, Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University, discusses uniquely American counter-majoritarian institutions. Ziblatt is also director of the Transformations of Democracy group a…
- U.S. Majorities vs. U.S. Institutions
America’s contemporary democratic predicament is rooted in its historically incomplete democratization. Born in a pre-democratic era, the constitution’s balancing of majority rule and minority rights created still-unresolved dilemmas. Plac…
- American Democracy and the Crisis of Majority Rule
America’s contemporary democratic predicament is rooted in its historically incomplete democratization. Born in a pre-democratic era, the constitution’s balancing of majority rule and minority rights created still-unresolved dilemmas. Plac…
- 'I' and Self-Consciousness
What does it mean when we use the first-person pronoun ‘I’? And how does it relate to self-consciousness? In this program, Béatrice Longuenesse, professor of philosophy emerita at New York University, compares the analysis of philosophers…
- Policies to Restore the American Dream with Raj Chetty
Where did the American Dream of hard work equals upward mobility go? And what will it take to bring it back? In this talk, Raj Chetty, director of Opportunity Insights and professor of public economics at Harvard University, focuses on thr…
- The Science of Economic Opportunity: New Insights from Big Data with Raj Chetty
Children’s chances of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century in America. How can we restore the American Dream of upward mobility for all children? In this talk, Raj Chetty, director of Oppor…
- A Conversation with Ezra Klein about Liberalism
California’s deepest problems — the skyrocketing cost of housing, the lagging development of clean energy, the traffic choking the state — reflect an inability of Democratic governments to build real things in the real world quickly and af…
- How Modern Slavery Touches Everyone
Modern slavery, which encompasses 45 million people around the world, is intricately linked to the economy, politics, violence and war, gender and the environment. In this panel discussion, Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery an…
- How Modern Slavery Impacts the Environment with Kevin Bales
There are 45 million enslaved people in the world today. The links between slavery, conflict, environmental destruction, economics and consumption began to strengthen and evolve in the 20th century. The availability of people who might be…
- Constructing a Republican Executive with Michael McConnell
As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1789, there was no experience, anywhere in the world, of a successful republican executive over an extensive nation — one with sufficient authority and independe…
- 21st Century Global Health Priorities with Christopher Murray
The world has lived through 2+ years of the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening the awareness of the links between health and other aspects of life including education and the economy. Future pandemics are a real risk but there are a number of…
- The Social Safety Net as an Investment in Children with Hilary Hoynes
A hallmark of every developed nation is the provision of a social safety net – a collection of public programs that deliver aid to the poor. Because of their higher rates of poverty, children are often a major beneficiary of safety net pro…
- The Status Quo Loves To Say No: Disability Rights and the Battle Against Structures of Exclusion with Judith Heumann
Disability rights activist Judy Heumann has been fighting for inclusion for over six decades, in ways that transformed legal and societal understandings of equality. Her life-long experience has included co-founding the organization Disabl…
- Metrics in Action: Lessons Learned from 30 Years of the Global Burden of Disease Study with Christopher Murray
The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) began in 1991 sponsored by the World Bank and the World Health Organization to fill a critical gap in global health information. It has grown steadily to become an active collaboration of more than…
- The Demarcation Problem for Philosophy
Philosophy almost alone among disciplines appears to lack a distinctive subject matter. The world has chemical, biological and political aspects, but no philosophical aspects. If subject matter does have a role to play here, it’s to do les…
- A New Measure: The Revolutionary Quantum Reform of the Modern Metric System
The International System of Units (the SI), the modern metric system, has recently undergone its most revolutionary change since its origins during the French Revolution. The nature of this revolution is that all of the base units of the S…
- Time Einstein and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe
At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed the way we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times low…
- Counterfactuals Compatibilism and Rational Choice
There is a puzzle about counterfactuals that parallels a more familiar puzzle about free will. The familiar puzzle is the apparent incompatibility between free will and determinism. Robert Stalnaker, Professor of Philosophy at Massachusett…
- Weaponizing Narratives: Why America Wants Gun Control But Doesn’t Have It
If having a gun really made you safer, then America would be one of the safest countries in the world. It's not. Gary Younge (Manchester University) explains that while Americans consistently favor more gun control, gun laws have generally…
- Deep Soul: Twentieth-Century African American Freedom Struggles and the Making of the Modern World with Waldo Martin
Twentieth-Century African American Freedom Struggles transformed both US and World History. These seminal liberation struggles include the important yet relatively unknown series of early twentieth-century southern African American streetc…
- On Uncertainty: Wittgenstein: Habits of Thought and Thoughts of Habit
This lecture by South African writer, playwright and academic Jane Taylor considers Ludwig Wittgenstein’s paper, “On Certainty” in which the philosopher engages with the taken-for-granted in everyday thought. Taylor notes, “In our contempo…
- Prison Abolition and a Mule with Paul Butler
By virtually any measure, prisons have not worked. They are sites of cruelty, dehumanization, and violence, as well as subordination by race, class, and gender. Prisons traumatize virtually all who come into contact with them. Abolition of…
- The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives are No Substitute for Good Citizens
It is widely held today on grounds of prudence if not realism that in designing public policy and legal systems, we should assume that people are entirely self-interested and amoral. But it is anything but prudent to let "Economic Man" be…
- Progress in the Sciences and in the Arts
The view that the sciences make progress, while the arts do not, is extremely common. Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, challenges it. Scientific progress has social dimensions. A socially embedded…
- Shaping a 21st Century Workforce – Is AI Friend or Foe?
Jennifer Granholm, former Governor of Michigan, identifies some of the most interesting policy ideas to address the problems of displaced workers, the skills gap and resulting inequality in an age of robots and artificial intelligence. Gra…
- Evolution and Creationism as Science and Myth
Myths symbolize ideas, values, history and other issues that are important to a people. They may be true or false, mundane or fantastic; their significance is their meaning, not their narrative content. Science is a way of knowing about th…
- Why Do People Reject Good Science?
Scientists are often puzzled when members of the public reject what we consider to be well-founded explanations. They can’t understand why the presentation of scientific data and theory doesn’t suffice to convince others of the validity of…
- Texting Etiquette Varies by Generation
Deborah Tannen discusses how interacting via text messaging services challenges relationships. Tannen is on the faculty of Georgetown Universitys Department of Linguistics. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 340…
- Souls in Other Selves and the Immortality of the Body
Sometimes the soul seems a more precise concept than the body. In this lecture Marilyn Strathern, goes to a place and time where all kinds of beings (including food plants) have souls and where the bodily basis of life is immortalized thro…