The Berkeley Blog

Hunger for hope: Solitary confinement and administrative detention in California and Israel

Jonathan Simon — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:09:04 +0000

Cross-national comparisons in penology are notoriously tricky, all the more so when the practices involved are the highly problematic one of holding prisoners in solitary confinement, especially under “administrative” rather than legal judgment (meaning it is up to prison officials if or when the prisoner will be released). Comparing California and Israel is especially problematic since the former is a sub-national state and the latter is involved in an ongoing civil conflict over the identity and boundaries of the national state.

Those caveats aside, it is interesting that rare, sustained political protests within prisons have taken place in recent months (and ... More >

How to keep your child safe (and happy) online, part 1

Christine Carter — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:48:08 +0000

Like a lot of parents, I’ve been struck by how active — though not savvy — my kids and their friends are with social media.

It’s a little like we’ve given our kids keys to a new car and said, “Have fun! Be safe!” without actually teaching them to drive.

Will they crash? My kids’ friends have Instagram accounts that let them post pictures of themselves and their friends — which they do, innocently — all over the Internet. These photos are often geotagged, making it easier for creepy pedophiles to locate them in the real world.

The FBI estimates that there ... More >

The Precarious Couple Effect

Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:30:35 +0000

(Part II of the series “When Not to Trust an Intuition of Compatibility”)

Research shows that certain types of couples don’t work very well together. Bill Swann at UT Austin and his colleagues have identified one such type of couple, whom they dub the “Precarious Couple.” Precarious couples are the specific combination of a quiet, verbally inhibited man with a verbally disinhibited but highly critical woman. These couples have been shown to have extremely poor relationship quality, in part because the man may feel like he can never get a word in, and the woman feels like he has no spine. ... More >

Three lessons from Mitt Romney about bullying

Jeremy Smith — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:55:30 +0000

Last week, the Washington Post reported that presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was a bully in high school.

The most serious incident, reconstructed from interviews with both witnesses and perpetrators, involved chasing down a student thought to be gay and pinning him to the ground. Romney, who witnesses say was the ringleader, then took scissors to the boy’s hair as the victim cried and yelled for help. One witness described the victim, John Lauber, as “terrified.”

Romney’s response has created controversy. At first, he denied remembering the incident, which the other perpetrators vividly recollect. “To this day it troubles me,” said ... More >

More false attacks on what and how we teach at Berkeley

Mark Peterson — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:27:45 +0000

On Monday, May 7, the print edition of the Wall Street Journal carried another op-ed piece by Peter Berkowitz, of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, who in recent weeks has falsely accused the UC system of “indoctrinating” our students, including the remarkably foolish claim that “on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered” (WSJ, March 30, 2012). This would come as a great shock to my colleagues, who offer exactly this course, History 5, to hundreds of students every semester.

Berkowitz’s latest diatribe claims to explain “Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist ... More >

Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who’s the best mom of them all?

Christine Carter — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:28:51 +0000

Last year, Tiger Mothers were superior. This year, French mommy-hood has been deemed a cut above. Are other mothers generally better than us at producing high-functioning and high-achieving kids? And do they enjoy parenting more than we do?

Maybe. Tiger mothers, soccer mothers, French mamas, working mothers, stay-at-home-mothers: We each have our strengths. We don’t have a lot of empirical evidence about what brand of mommy is “best,” but we do have a lot of data about what makes for good parenting. I’ve spent the last 10+ years deep in that research. In honor of Mother’s Day, here are my ... More >

Sometimes people really are out to get you

Dan Farber — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:11:11 +0000

The Guardian has a rather startling story about organized efforts to stamp out wind and solar energy. (I suppose the fact that I find it startling is an indication of my naiveté.) Not too surprisingly, the Koch oil interests are a major funding sources.

The Guardian lists some of the efforts to eliminate clean energy, which seem to be at least loosely coordinated:

A new $6m election ad buy by the ultra-conservative group Americans for Prosperity attacking Barack Obama’s support for wind and solar power.

An email and telephone campaign by the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform to repeal ... More >

A question of timing: What America can learn from the revolt in Europe

Robert Reich — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:41:21 +0000

Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders.

Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: “When people think about the economy they don’t see it through the dry numbers of the deficit figures, trade balances or inflation forecasts — but instead the things that make the difference between a life that’s worth living and a daily grind that drags them down.”

Cameron, whose own economic policies have worsened the daily grind dragging down most Brits, may be sobered ... More >

Minority students, self-esteem, and education

Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:47:45 +0000

Check out this video:

No, seriously, click on the link above before reading the rest of this post.

Like many of the students I have shared this clip with, this video may have inspired in you a strong sense of the inherent injustice of stereotypes; negative stereotypes that lead African American children to reject a Black doll only “because it’s Black.” The original study that Kiri Davis based her study on, by Herb and Mimi Clark (1947), had such a strong impact that it was actually used by the U.S. Supreme Court as a cornerstone in its decision to abolish school segregration in the ... More >

Still under God

Claude Fischer — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:59:57 +0000

James Bryce, who would later be the British ambassador to the United States, wrote a major work on American society in the 1880s. The American Commonwealth was a re-do, about 50 years later, of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. One of Bryce’s acute observations was about Americans’ religiosity: “Christianity influences conduct . . . probably more than it does in any other modern country, and far more than it did in the so-called ages of faith.” The common expectation has been that modern times have been eroding Americans’ faith ever since, but as best as historians of religion can estimate, Americans ... More >