This summer, the 14th cohort of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program graduated. The Beahrs ELP summer program brings mid-career professionals to Berkeley for professional training and I was fortunate enough to be the co-director of the program, alongside Dean Keith Gilless. When Dick Beahrs gave us the means to start the Beahrs ELP, I thought … Continue reading »
Berkeley
Modern great books: David S. Landes’s “The Unbound Prometheus” and nineteen others…
The most important economic historian ever to teach at U.C. Berkeley died last month: my old teacher David S. Landes taught at Berkeley starting in 1958 until Harvard lured him away until 1964. From a student’s perspective, he was ideal: he knew more than you did, was eager to share, could and did make everything … Continue reading »
Nurturing environmental leaders: The Beahrs ELP
Last Friday we celebrated the graduation ceremony of the 13th year of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program [ELP], a three week summer program that targets up-and-coming environmental professionals. The ELP has 502 alumni from 102 countries, and the geographic composition of the participants changes over time. This year we had 38 participants, twenty from Africa … Continue reading »
Bob Evenson: An economist with heart
Recently I learned one of my dear colleagues, Bob Evenson from Yale University, passed away. Bob grew up on a farm in the Minnesota and got his PhD at the University of Chicago. He became a leading development economist, and taught for more than 30 years mostly at Yale. My early impressions, as a student … Continue reading »
Is it best to be greedy in tough economic times?
There’s a certain logic to the idea that greed is good when resources are scarce: when there’s not a lot to go around, what could be better than hogging the goods for oneself to ensure one’s survival? If this logic were to hold true, one would expect natural selection to have favored self-interested behavior as … Continue reading »
There’s something happening here…
and yes, what it is ain’t exactly clear. Tomorrow afternoon, the Academic Senate of the University of California, Berkeley will convene a Special Division Meeting, in response to a request from 47 named faculty. The agenda consists of a resolution authored by three faculty which is formally a vote of no confidence in the top … Continue reading »