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EppsNet Archive: UC Berkeley
What We’re Shown May Not Be What’s Really Happening
Shouldn't they be studying for finals?https://t.co/DZoaKGLPWY — Paul Epps (@paulepps) April 25, 2024 During the time my son was at UC Berkeley, they had a fair number of campus protests. Usually the protests were about tuition hikes or something race-related. As a parent paying tuition, I was against tuition hikes, but I was also against my kid participating in protests when he should be studying. Whenever I heard about a Berkeley protest in progress, I’d check in with the boy to make sure he wasn’t participating, which he wasn’t. I got the impression from the way he talked about it that not only was he not participating, none of his friends were participating and no one with any sense was participating. I was at the Berkeley campus myself during one of the protests. There were 100 people, maybe less, blocking Sather Gate to protest a microaggression or something, but it… Read more →
Supreme Court Kills Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. — thenation.com The author of that piece really hates white people. I don’t recommend reading it, you will not be a better person for having done so, as it consists solely of sweeping generalizations, broad judgments, unfounded inferences and racial insults. Even if five points (out of a possible 100) were deducted for each verifiable fact, it still scores at least a 95. Grammar and spelling are passable. The only “fact” I remember being cited in support of affirmative action is actually false: In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets, AAPI enrollment goes up a little bit, and whites flood the remaining opportunities. The article that the author links to doesn’t even say that. Black and Latino enrollment in the… Read more →
Go Down, Moses
I read yesterday that Moses Hall became the fifth building at UC Berkeley to lose its name( because of the allegedly racist views of its namesake, Bernard Moses, a prominent faculty member from 1875 to 1911. All of the buildings have been unnamed since 2020. “Disappearing” people is straight out of the Joseph Stalin playbook and I’ve never learned to see Stalin as a role model. According to the Berkeley news article that I read, Niko Kolodny, former chair of the philosophy department, said he became aware via email that Moses’ name “had been deeply disturbing to several people of color.” The University of California established a Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture in 1937, and Moses Hall was named in 1965. The fact that it took more than 80 years since Moses was first recognized for the university to familiarize itself with his views (via an email!) and deem them inappropriate… Read more →
A Berkeley Prof Explains Why Grocery Prices Are Skyrocketing
The question is why are they skyrocketing NOW? There's nothing in your tweet that hasn't been true for 10 years. You don't have to be a Berkeley prof to know that so why are you pumping out this BS? https://t.co/rtp6bJM65G — Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 22, 2022 Read more →
Harvard, Yale, Berkeley Pull Out of Law School Rankings
Law schools at Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley have pulled out of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings over concerns that the system is biased against equity programs. It seems unlikely that the system is biased against equity programs or that the rankings even consider equity programs, but if “equity programs” means what I think it does, it means that the schools reject accomplished candidates who are White, Asian or Jewish in favor of less accomplished candidates who are not White, Asian or Jewish. That would show up indirectly in rankings if the rankings look, as I’m sure they do, at LSAT scores, GPA and other indications of merit. It seems like one of two things can happen as a result of equity programs. One is that the schools teach classes to the level of the students, so if you reduce the qualifications of the students, you teach classes at… Read more →
Bye Bye Berkeley
UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall was stripped of its name earlier this year because the building’s namesake — Alfred Louis Kroeber, born in 1876 and the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West — is a powerful symbol that continues to evoke exclusion and erasure for Native Americans. I hope I’m not being too cynical when I say that I don’t believe there are more than a handful of Native Americans in the country who could actually say anything of substance about Kroeber. I’d never heard of him myself. Granted I’m not a Native American or an anthropologist, but I’m well-informed. It turns out Kroeber was quite an accomplished scholar, a pioneer of American anthropology, author of more than 500 publications, a co-founder and president of the American Anthropological Association, presided over the American Folklore Society and founded the Linguistic Society of America. Among the key reasons highlighted… Read more →
Planet Berkeley: Strawberry Creek
Doe Library
View this post on Instagram “My favorite library, Doe Library.” ? #berkeleypov by @amincaptures #ucberkeley #library #books Edited by UC Berkeley A post shared by UC Berkeley (@ucberkeleyofficial) on Nov 13, 2018 at 9:46pm PST Read more →
Universities Are Beautiful, California Is Beautiful, UCs Are Beautiful
“It’s those nights when you hike up to the Big C at 5 am, just to take pictures, that make college worth it.” ? #berkeleypov by @a.sp.m #ucberkeley #campanile #nightlights Edited by UC Berkeley A post shared by UC Berkeley (@ucberkeleyofficial) on Feb 6, 2018 at 5:57pm PST And just like that, it's Friday again @ucsandiego | Photo credit: @alexislzarco? ? ? ? ? .?????????? .?????????? .???? ? ? ? ? #uofcalifornia #uc #ucsd #ucsandiego #sd #socal #southerncalifornia #cali #california #regram #geisel #geisellibrary #sunset #sunsetlover #sunsetlovers #sunsetgram #colors #colorful #triton #tritons #book #books #sky #skyline #purple #pink #lajolla #campus #college #weekend A post shared by University of California (@uofcalifornia) on Feb 9, 2018 at 7:27am PST Read more →
Berkeley Sunset
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When You Lose the Mayor of Berkeley, You’ve Lost America
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest. “I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa. — San Francisco Chronicle Read more →
No Political Violence on the Left?
I’m still shaking my head on this one: Even left-wing stalwarts like The Atlantic know that the Post’s “no violence on the left” premise is bogus: Look how peaceful and non-violent everyone is in the Post photo. Contrast that with, for example, these protesters at Berkeley earlier this year: I’m drawn to Berkeley examples because our son went to Berkeley and still lives in the area, because I know some current Berkeley students, and because Berkeley, ironically, used to be synonymous with the Free Speech Movement. The photos above show the protesters who showed up to violently shut down a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, but the same thing seems to happen whenever any university schedules a conservative speaker. Here are a couple more left-wing protests, in Chicago and Charlottesville: We could go on and on with this . . . we’ve all seen this before so I don’t know… Read more →
It’s Hard to Tell the Violent, Intolerant Fascists Without a Scorecard
Sometimes it’s hard to remember which side the violent, intolerant fascists are on. 🙂 Mario Savio is spinning in his grave (I hope) . . . Read more →
Shake it Off (aka Haters Gonna Hate)
A Chinese woman tells me that being around white guys inhibits her ability to make edgy (i.e., racist) comments about white guys . . . I reply, “White guys didn’t get to be what we are by peeing in our pants and crying for our mamas every time someone calls us a name. Haters gonna hate. That has been amply demonstrated. We’re just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake it off.” Some people are offended by absolutely everything, some people are offended by nothing, and everyone else is somewhere in between. The people at the easily offended end of the spectrum get most of the attention. People who hear a trigger word or a dog whistle that wouldn’t bother a normal person and they’re bleeding out all over the place like hemophiliacs. That’s where most of the focus is, it seems to me. It’s a distorted view of reality. My… Read more →
Chancellor Dirks Resigns
“Among other things,” Dirks said, “I’m tired of damned fools stopping me in the street for photos.” Read more →
2015 Cal Graduation Video
I have a short video from the Haas Business School graduation last year, I don’t think I ever posted it . . . Read more →
Chillin’ With the Chancellor
I was walking west on Durant crossing Telegraph a block south of the UC Berkeley campus (see map below) when I saw a couple of good-looking yellow labs, probably less than a year old, crossing in the other direction. I was so focused on the dogs that I didn’t notice until I had passed them that they were being walked by none other than the chancellor of the university, Nicholas B. Dirks, and his wife. Gee, I wish I had gotten a photo with him but rather than run back across the street after him like a nut, I walked north to Bancroft and turned right to parallel the way he was walking on Durant. At the next street, Bowditch, I turned right again toward Durant to see if I could intercept him, which I did. I’m staying at the Berkeley Lab Guest House, a university facility . . .… Read more →
Hanging Out With the Cal Drum Line
Haas, Campanile, Sunset
@_kateashley encapsulates sunset, season, Campanile, and @berkeleyhaas all in one #myucberkeley shot. #ucberkeley #cronkgate #berkeleyhaas #sathertower #campanile #campanile100 Photo edited by UC Berkeley. A photo posted by UC Berkeley (@ucberkeley) on Oct 16, 2015 at 7:35pm PDT Read more →