Photo by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0 “(UC Berkeley) is supporting those impacted in accordance with its long-standing procedure for a visa revocation,” said campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore in a statement This article is no longer being updated as of April 10 Twenty-three members of the UC Berkeley community have had their visas terminated and non-immigrant status revoked this week This includes 17 additional affected individuals after six were initially confirmed this weekend “(UC Berkeley) is supporting those impacted in accordance with its long-standing procedure for a visa revocation,” said campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore in a statement updated today “We are providing them with resources to navigate the process and are encouraging them to seek legal counsel for guidance.”  Fifteen of the 23 impacted students are currently enrolled — ten are graduate students while five are undergraduates The remaining eight are recent graduates currently involved in the Optional Practical Training program which allows certain F-1 students to receive a 12 or 24-month extension for training post-graduation Gilmore added that campus cannot provide any additional information on the specific circumstances of visa revocations the numbers are subject to change," Gilmore said in an email Approximately 90 students and recent graduates have been impacted by visa terminations across all UC campuses according to a statement released by UCOP on April 10th "The government has not coordinated with UC leaders on their decisions or provided advance notice to us but has indicated in government databases that the terminations were due to violations of the terms of the individuals’ visa programs," read UCOP's statement The UCSD Guardian reported five UCSD students facing F-1 visa terminations The Daily Bruin reported multiple UCLA students’ visas being similarly revoked The Trump administration’s increased scrutiny on non-citizens follows a litany of executive orders and federal investigations. UC Berkeley’s International Office website noted on March 17 that campus is “seeing active measures” being undertaken by the Department of State Department of Justice and Homeland Security to seek out and cancel the visas of international students involved in campus protests “We continue to monitor and assess (the) implications for the UC community and the people affected,” read UCOP’s press release “We are committed to doing what we can to support all members of our community as they exercise their rights under the law.” Campus's Office of the Chancellor released a statement on April 7th noting that they have no knowledge of federal immigration enforcement activity on campus the right and ability of immigrant and international students and faculty to participate fully in the campus experience," read the chancellor's statement Email notifications are only sent once a day We're an independent student-run newspaper and need your support to maintain our coverage Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: A student at UC Berkeley in California has been paralyzed from the waist down after falling from an outdoor staircase at the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house Just three weeks shy of graduating with a degree in Data Science 21-year-old Bandna Bhatti had been welcoming prospective students to campus last month on 'Cal Day' when UC Berkeley throws open its doors for public tours Shortly after 1pm on Saturday April 19 during the festivities Phi Kappa Tau was hosting a party at its house on Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley It was there Bhatti fell at least 12 feet from an external metal stairway hitting her head and landing in a narrow alleyway beside the fraternity house Bhatti injuries were catastrophic: a spinal fracture She also suffered broken bones and was later diagnosed to have been paralyzed below the waist Bhatti lay undiscovered for up to 15 minutes before being found and taken inside the fraternity house But instead of calling for emergency assistance her family says fraternity members told her friends to leave Her companions then took her to her nearby apartment seemingly unaware that she had suffered grave internal injuries It wasn't until almost seven hours later that 911 was finally called 'She cannot walk. She cannot move her body,' her mother, Sukh Bhatti, told KTVU at Highland Hospital in Oakland Bhatti's mother has not left her bedside since the accident She's so happy and so lovely - strong lady.' Bandna's family released a public statement on a GoFundMe page that has been set up was just three weeks away from graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Data Science - a milestone she had worked so hard for - when our world was turned upside down 'These injuries are not only life-altering but will require extensive and ongoing medical care and specialized support to help her navigate this new chapter,' they added As of Sunday night the fundraising campaign raised more than $97,000 to support her long road to recovery including the costs of adaptive equipment and home modifications CEO of Phi Kappa Tau's national organization issued a statement 'We are deeply concerned by recent reports of an incident involving a young student who was reportedly injured near the Phi Kappa Tau chapter house at the University of California 'Our thoughts are with the individual and their loved ones during this challenging time and well-being of all individuals in our community remain our highest priorities We are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident and are fully cooperating with university officials and local authorities.'  UC Berkeley also acknowledged the seriousness of the incident We are following our protocols to offer support to the student and their family.' Berkeley Police have also launched an investigation into the timeline of events - particularly the decision not to call for the emergency services immediately Authorities have not publicly stated whether any charges are being considered or if the university will impose disciplinary action Bhatti's fall echoes those tragedies, but what sets this case apart is not just the horrific injury itself but the inaction that followed. Despite the trauma, Bandna's loved ones are holding onto hope. 'She will walk. I will make sure she walks. I'll do whatever it takes,' her mother vowed. Her sisters and close friends are rallying as well. Several ran a half-marathon on Sunday to raise additional funds for her recovery.  The event has turned into a tribute of sorts, a public show of love and belief in her strength. A family spokesperson described Bandna as 'a brilliant, compassionate, and resilient young woman who has worked tirelessly toward her dreams.' 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Contact them at rwymer@dailycal.org or on X @rae_wymer The views expressed here are the author's own Reach for the stars with Diablo Women's Chorale's (DWC) electrifying 2025: A Space Rhapsody Embark on a celestial adventure that transcends time and space 2025: A Space Rhapsody guides you through a cosmic journey--from the vibrant energy of Age of Aquarius to the haunting echoes of A Space Oddity and the empowering self-discovery of Defying Gravity where mysteries unfold and magic awaits beyond the stars Director Erin Fishler brings passion into each piece drawing from her extensive performance and teaching experience This includes recording backing vocals on a track of the Grammy-nominated album With Love by arranger Jeremy Fox Accompanist Rebecca Hass contributes her talent and experience as an accomplished recording artist To Purchase Tickets: diablowomenschorale.org Step out of the noise of daily life and into a sacred sanctuary of sound under the glow of stunning stained-glass windows in a peaceful This immersive sound bath is more than just a chance to relax—it's a monthly ritual for nervous system nourishment and soul restoration Led by Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Erica Skone-Rees and musicians Bryce Mulholland and Shannon Hopkins each session begins with a gentle grounding meditation and flows into a sonic journey designed to move your brain into the restorative theta state Let the healing tones of crystal and Tibetan singing bowls Bring anything that helps you feel cozy and supported: or quietly move during the sound bath—whatever feels wise for your body we simply ask that you move toward the back or along the sides to help maintain a peaceful space for others This is your time to rest and receive in a way that honors your body’s needs RESERVE YOUR SPOT: https://www.mindbodysoundcolle... Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice James B. Milliken, who has led major public university systems in New York and Texas was named president of the University of California on Friday Milliken comes to the role from the University of Texas where he has served as chancellor since 2018 He has also held leadership roles at The City University of New York the University of Nebraska and the University of North Carolina The UC system has 10 campuses, including Berkeley He will be paid nearly $1.5 million a year “The University of California is universally regarded as the preeminent public research university in the world and I am deeply honored to have an opportunity to join the many talented faculty and campus leaders in their vital work," Milliken said in a UC press release "It is more important than ever that we expand the education and public service for which UC is so widely admired and which has benefited so many Californians.” The announcement comes at a time when the Trump administration is targeting federal funding at universities in an attempt to get them to comply with the Republican president’s political agenda is among dozens of colleges under investigation by the U.S Education Department over its ties to The PhD Project a group aimed at diversifying the business world and higher education faculty The Trump administration is also investigating Berkeley over allegations of antisemitism linked to pro-Palestinian protests against the war in Gaza that broke out last year across campuses nationwide Berkeley said it has “an unwavering commitment” to fighting antisemitism The Trump administration also launched probes into three University of California campuses over their admissions policies to determine whether they comply with the U.S Supreme Court's decision to overturn affirmative action in college admissions Drake was the first Black person to serve in the role in the system’s more than 150-year history Drake announced last year that he would step down after serving as president since 2020 leading the system through the coronavirus pandemic a graduate student strike and various campus protests His announcement last July that he planned to step down followed a particularly tumultuous spring Over several days last April and early May counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA that had grown on campus and law enforcement waited hours to step in authorities in riot gear dispersed more than 1,000 people who had gathered to support the encampment Drake said Milliken “has the depth of wisdom and experience” to deal with the challenges that come with leading one of the nation's largest public university systems “I have great confidence in both his leadership and his commitment to the University’s enduring values," he said in a statement "I’m excited about his appointment and look forward to seeing all that he will accomplish at the University.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that he was excited to see Milliken selected for the role to “drive the next chapter of innovation, talent, and progress that will shape California and the country for generations to come.” Get vaccinated for COVID-19, report a crime, access homeless services Apply for a permit, schedule an inspection Apply for a business license, get business assistance, find bid & proposal opportunities Attend a City Council or commission meeting apply for jobs, look up City holidays This meeting will be conducted in a hybrid model with both in-person attendance and virtual participation. Live captioned broadcasts of Council meetings are available on B-TV (Channel 33) and via internet video stream at http://berkeley.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=1244. All Council meetings are recorded This meeting will be conducted in accordance with the Brown Act Any member of the public may attend this meeting please do not attend the meeting in person.  The City Council may take action related to any subject listed on the Agenda.  city council agendas Translation Disclaimer This meeting will be conducted in a hybrid model with both in-person attendance and virtual participation please do not attend the meeting in person. The City Council may take action related to any subject listed on the Agenda The Marsh Berkeley presents the hilarious folie à deux from national television stars Caryl Kristensen and Marilyn Kentz: The Mommies: The Last Trimester reflect on their notoriously hysterical duo act and the trials that went into their two television shows Indulging audiences in all the juicy details the pair onstage explores the joys of aging in show business in a warm-hearted journey home The Mommies: The Last Trimester promises an unforgettable journey celebrating fame The Marsh Berkeley will extend writer/performer Kathryn Seabron’s bold and insightful solo show Inspired by a personal and painful experience at a nonprofit this resonant one-woman show delves into the microaggressions and systemic misogynoir that Black women face in the workplace and beyond Seabron creates a compelling blend of vignettes to explore the intersection of racism and misogyny that Black women navigate daily The performance also confronts the weaponization of White women’s tears shedding light on their use as a tool to silence and disenfranchise Black women and the broader implications of these dynamics in professional and social spaces Angry Black Woman 101 invites audiences to witness and challenge the pervasive injustices Black women routinely endure a storyteller at heart or someone who simply enjoys meaningful conversation We will gather for an evening of connection and discovery to explore the stories that shape us all–from our own plot twists and protagonists to the unexpected chapters in our lives The Night's Theme - "There's No Place Like Home." Home isn’t just a place—it’s a story we live in From childhood bedrooms to the spaces we create as adults We’ll explore the homes that have defined us and the ones we carry with us—just like a favorite book that stays with us long after the last page Story Warm-Up: playful prompts to ease into the theme Small Group Storytelling: guided conversations in cozy groups Reflection & Connection: share takeaways and explore what's next Arrive with an open mind and curiosity to explore the stories that shape us Interactive storytelling night led by Story Coach and Consultant Liz Morrison–an Elmwood resident and Book Society Member who spent 15 years shaping human-centered narratives for Airbnb and even a Bravo dating show before starting her own business helping ambitious professionals and innovative leaders unlock the power of their personal stories Wine or non-alcoholic beverage options paired perfectly with an evening of conversation and curiosity Traversées is a musical journey from Asia to the New World through Africa—a dialogue of deep layers of musical conversations and exceptional harmony between Persian Setar master Kiya Tabassian Join SFEMS in a musical journey with Montreal-based Ensemble Constantinople an ensemble at the crossroads of artistic encounters; drawing from the heritage of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance from Europe to the Mediterranean and the Middle East 7:30 PMFirst Presbyterian Church1140 Cowper Street at Lincoln 7:30 PMFirst Presbyterian Church of Berkeley2407 Dana St Mark’s Lutheran Church1111 O’Farrell Street this class will enhance your skills as a confident individual and communicator All Out Comedy provides an inclusive and supportive environment where we can all raise each other up and have fun Learn the core fundamentals of improv to act and create as an individual performer and in a group We make the art of improv accessible to anyone who can say "yes and..." to themselves and their peers or Thursday classes available8 week courses - 2.5 hours /class (20 hours) Registration: $364/Early Bird Discount $340 Wellness: If you have symptoms of feeling sick the day of class Missed Classes: You can make up a class in another Level 1 or in the next session for up to 2 classes for free You can also retake a whole session for 1/2 off All students will receive a student ID card during their session This gives students access to watch as many shows for free while taking classes May 10 - June 8 || Wed & Thurs - 7PM  |  Fri & Sat - 8PM  |  Sun - 2PM  |  ASL Interpreted Performance - May 28 Shotgun Players proudly presents David Henry Hwang's award-winning satirical play Yellow Face follows Hwang's semi-autobiographical protagonist as he inadvertently casts a white actor in the role of an Asian character while-ironically-attempting to combat racial misrepresentation in the media self-aware comedy that flirts with hypocrisy and invites audiences to confront the complexities of identity politics in America challenges and entertains audiences with its humor and relevance Yellow Face has been lauded for its daring humor and social critique winning an Obie Award for Playwriting and earning a Pulitzer Prize nomination Shotgun Players' production continues the theater's tradition of staging bold thought-provoking works that challenge audiences to engage with pressing cultural issues https://shotgunplayers.org/  The most-read stories on IEEE Spectrum right now Biomanufacturing is a type of production that harnesses the molecular machinery in microbes and plants to produce a variety of valuable compounds This approach enables efficient biomanufacturing of products that are traditionally made in limited quantities or using environmentally unfriendly practices and to make entirely new molecules with exciting properties biomanufacturing is currently estimated to add more than $210 billion to the economy every year and this number will likely increase as more bioproducts are developed Berkeley Lab scientists are celebrated experts in all facets of biomanufacturing from the first stage of designing host organisms up to the final work of refining production processes at the pre-pilot and pilot scale which are important steps on the way to industrial scale Read on to learn about five of our strengths in this rapidly evolving field director of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division in the Biosciences Area speaks on how biomanufacturing supports the U.S including the insertion of 35 plant genes and modifications to ten native yeast genes The breakthrough will allow drug makers to generate large quantities of vinblastine using an easily cultured microbe - in fact the same microbe humans have been using for millennia to make beer and bread The drug is used in chemotherapy regimens against many types of cancer and is often in shortage because the high demand can't be met by the traditional manufacturing process which relies on harvesting very small quantities of two precursor chemicals from the native plant In addition to their longstanding work designing multi-gene pathways for medicinal compounds, Keasling and his colleagues apply their approach to making a diverse range of other products, including new-to-nature energy-dense fuel molecules for aviation and rocketry and polymers for infinitely recyclable plastic These efforts represent some of the longest synthetic gene pathways ever designed One of the core missions of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) a DOE Bioenergy Research Center managed by Berkeley Lab is to develop techniques to convert the planet's abundant supply of non-edible plant material hundreds of millions of tons of herbaceous and woody plant tissues are left over from post-harvest crops or generated by forest management practices The energy stored within these plant tissues often goes to waste because it's difficult to efficiently break the complex polymers into simpler building-block molecules waste biomass could one day be converted into useful products at biorefineries or manufacturing plants ideally located near their sources: hundreds of facilities near agricultural and forested regions across the country Biosciences Area faculty scientist Jennifer Doudna conducted foundational research into the naturally occurring bacterial immune defense system that she and colleagues later modified to invent the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR-Cas gene editing platform CRISPR-Cas technologies provide a streamlined toolkit that scientists can use to modify genes in any organism ushering in a new era of biological research and enabling development of revolutionary bio-based products and medical treatments CRISPR-Cas is now the go-to approach to engineer a host species for biomanufacturing It allows scientists to insert complex sequences with multiple genes and turn off unnecessary genes with significantly greater efficiency than previous methods Doudna's initial investigation into CRISPR was funded by the Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program allows national laboratories to invest in innovative research that might not be covered by traditional funding sources Doudna is currently using advanced CRISPR tools to develop methods for enhancing lignin breakdown using gene edited microbial communities at JBEI where she is a scientific lead in the Biological Lignin Depolymerization group Berkeley Lab is home to a unique group of experts who specialize in developing production processes for new bio-based products Our teams collaborate with scientists from other institutions and industry to bring exciting new technologies from the lab bench to the market We help refine genetic modifications to increase yield and efficiency troubleshoot challenges that arise when culturing organisms at large scales and design purification processes to effectively isolate the target compounds The ABPDU is one of the only facilities in the world that offers access to the technical support and equipment necessary to bridge the gap between pilot scale and industrial scale Berkeley Lab is also a member of the Agile BioFoundry a consortium of national laboratories that focuses on accelerating bioproduct development from initial host engineering to scale up and engages in partnerships that result in technology transfer to industry And for researchers and companies that can't work with us directly, our experts have developed two publicly available web-based software tools that can quickly test different scenarios and explore viable bio-based fuels and products Empire of The Sun performs at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on May 3 BERKELEY — Australian electronic duo Empire of the Sun brought its tour in support of 2024 album Ask That God to the Greek on Saturday Ask That God is Luke Steele’s and Nick Littlemore’s first new collection of songs in more than eight years and the band hasn’t performed in the Bay Area in more than half a decade so for fans waiting to hear new Empire of the Sun music The duo and its band opened the show with a cinematic entrance to “Changes,” accompanied by two dancers in geisha masks The dancers pranced across the stage while Steele sang Other new songs like “The Feeling You Get” and “Cherry Blossom” followed while the band also snuck in “Half Mast,” from its first album Steele played an electric guitar animatedly while leaning into the crowd The retro-futuristic visuals and eye-catching costumes complemented the songs taking the audience to different levels within the band’s universe Empire of the Sun transitioned to hit “We Are the People” as the dancers next to Steele  switched to sparkling mirrored outfits “Television” was partnered with trippy visuals of a bunch of static televisions playing the song’s music video “It’s a true dream come true to play at the Greek,” Steele said during the euphoria-inducing “Music On The Radio,” off Ask That God which was accompanied by visuals of a person dancing with a bunch of Maneki-neko (lucky cat figurines) Steele showed off his guitar prowess with solos during “Swordfish Hotkiss Night.” His bright red guitar played a pivotal role as a spotlight shined off it Other highlights included new tunes “Ask That God” and “Happy Like You.” A sudden shift of lights signaled crowd favorite “Walking on a Dream.” Attendees chanted the song word for word as Steele ran through the crowd Roi Turbo performs at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on May 3 The performance concluded with “Standing on the Shore” and “Alive.” Steele grabbed a guitar “Love each other while we are all on this small planet,” Steele said London-based electronic duo Roi Turbo opened the show blended elements of techno and surf rock together to create a tropical dance vibe Their 45-minute set included several songs from just-released Bazooka EP including “Dystopia” and the title track Other highlights included “Super Hands” and “Hot Like Fire.” Follow photographer Matt Pang at Instagram.com/mattgods Matt Pang continues to surround himself in photography after his love of music introduced him to it His fondest memories include watching replays of VH1 music video countdowns He lives in San Jose and enjoys watching the Giants in his free time “Ask That God.” Australian electro-pop duo Empire of the Sun enjoyed its fair share….. Empire of the Sun performs at Golden Gate Park at Outside Lands on Aug and website in this browser for the next time I comment Copyright © 2023 RIFF Magazine | All Rights Reserved | News Website Website by Blue Astral This week's notable humans are Maya Merhige a Berkeley teen who completed her fourth Oceans Seven swim; Tim Friede whose work self-injecting snake venom has aided crucial antivenom research; and Brighid Kohl creator of an innovative anti-bullying and leadership program at her college Berkeley teen Maya Merhige spent 14 hours crossing New Zealand’s Cook Strait last month — stung by jellyfish every few seconds swimming 27 miles through pitch-black seas and pushing her body to the edge of collapse It was the latest in her quest to become the youngest person ever to complete the Oceans Seven a marathon swimming challenge that spans some of the world’s most dangerous waters Merhige has already crossed the English Channel and now the Cook Strait — four of the seven swims required to join the elite club She swam mostly at night, not just to avoid sunburn, but because she preferred not seeing the jellyfish — which struck her face, lips, and ears every few strokes. “Out of sight, out of mind,” she told CNN “They’re not there if you can’t see them.” and terrifying sea life — including sharks and whales — Merhige says the ocean is where she feels most herself She’s used her swims to raise over $130,000 for pediatric cancer research and plans to finish the Oceans Seven by 2028 even as she heads to college on a pre-med track “There are kids in hospitals right now getting chemo,” she says Bay Area transplant Tim Friede has spent two decades putting his body on the line to help save lives — by self-injecting venom from some of the world’s deadliest snakes His goal has been to build immunity that could lead to a universal antivenom and prevent tens of thousands of snakebite deaths each year Friede began his experiments in Wisconsin while working as a truck mechanic With no formal medical training but a deep interest in science he developed a radical routine: injecting himself with venom from cobras He’s survived more than 200 venom exposures — including several near-fatal encounters — and developed a rare immune response that scientists now study closely In 2023, Friede moved to San Francisco to collaborate with researchers at UCSF, who are analyzing his blood in hopes of developing more accessible antivenoms. “I do this so others don’t have to,” he told National Geographic which profiled him in a recent documentary “Snakebite is one of the most neglected global health issues out there.” Snakebites kill more than 100,000 people each year mostly in rural areas without access to region-specific treatments and species-specific — making Friede’s vision of a broad-spectrum alternative especially urgent Friede is transforming decades of self-experimentation into data that could revolutionize antivenom — proving that even the most unconventional paths can lead to lifesaving breakthroughs Brighid Kohl, who’s autistic and has a stutter, created the “You Are Not Alone” (YANA) program at the College of Adaptive Arts (CAA) in Saratoga Inspired by a Canadian YouTuber’s anti-bullying campaign Kohl wanted to offer a space for students who felt alone or bullied She pitched the idea to the CAA administration through a PowerPoint presentation The weekly YANA class fosters a supportive environment where students check in with each other and share heart gestures if someone is feeling down Kohl's leadership has had a significant impact on the class helping students build stronger social skills Kohl has become an associate professor at CAA where students are encouraged to take on leadership roles including teaching and administrative positions Kohl’s work at CAA has not only improved the experience for her peers but has also highlighted the value of inclusive education Her leadership in the YANA program and role as an associate professor are examples of the opportunities CAA provides for students with disabilities to take on meaningful roles and contribute to the community CAA remains focused on supporting students in achieving their academic and personal goals offering an environment where students can develop social Kohl’s story is a testament to the impact of an inclusive educational approach that recognizes the potential in every student Image via Instagram Previously: Notable Humans: Thomas Bennett’s Dedication To Miyako Ice Cream And The Fillmore Community Marine vet Nathan Hoang died in Hayward police custody after being sedated with midazolam during a mental health crisis raises concerns over sedative use and police response to psychiatric emergencies Get the latest posts delivered right to your inbox Get all the latest & greatest posts delivered straight to your inbox Journalists Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas discuss the decline of housing mobility in the United States and its impact on economic opportunity in the country Follow Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. See all Berkeley Talks The Atlantic journalists Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas discuss the decline of housing mobility in the United States and its impact on economic opportunity in the country Courtesy of Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas Appelbaum, author of the 2025 book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity began by tracing the history of housing mobility in the U.S one out of three Americans moved to a new residence every year pack up their things and find a new place to live on an annual basis.  made possible by the constant construction of new housing created a new kind of social order,” said Appelbaum and most people “ended up better off for it.”  The sharp decline in residential relocation caused largely by rising housing costs and restrictive zoning is a major driver of the decline of social mobility “the largest and least remarked change in America of the last 50 years.”  Demsas said that exclusionary housing policies have shifted mobility from a widespread opportunity to a privilege for the affluent and well-educated.  “Most Americans no longer stand to gain by moving toward the places in this country that offer them the greatest opportunities — the greatest professional opportunities, the best education for their children,” said Demsas, author of the 2024 book On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy which deepens inequality and limits their potential for economic advancement.  The conversation, held in March 2025, was moderated by Paul Pierson, a UC Berkeley professor of political science and director of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI). The event was co-sponsored by BESI and the Berkeley Center for American Democracy Watch a video of the conversation and read more about the speakers here. (Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions) Anne Brice (intro): This is Berkeley Talks a UC Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts Also, we have another show, Berkeley Voices. This season on the podcast, we’re exploring the theme of transformation. In eight episodes, we’re looking at how transformation — of ideas, of research, of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at Berkeley. You can find all of our podcast episodes on UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts Paul Pierson: Really happy to have everybody here for this event at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative have really been looking forward to co-sponsoring this with the Berkeley Committee … David Broockman: Center for American Democracy And we’re really happy to have Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas here with us I’m going to introduce them in just a second I wanted to just say a little bit about the logistics of how this is going to work really wonderful book on the stuff that we’re going to be talking about today And unlike the academics who I usually hang out with but they also have a lot of great ideas about a really we were talking about this a little bit beforehand it’s nice to be talking about a really really serious social problem where we’re trying to craft solutions that doesn’t immediately involve us in talking about what’s going on right now in Washington but I think this is something where it’s happening in California as much as it’s happening anywhere maybe more than it’s happening anywhere else and where a lot of the things that need to happen need to happen in California and in other states I’m going to turn it over to each of them to talk for about 20 minutes about the work that they’ve been doing BESI staff will be here to … Some of you probably have note cards already If there’s a question that you want to ask put it on the note cards so we’ll try to work through a bunch of questions and comments as efficiently as we can I’m going to ask these guys some questions I had a chance to read both these wonderful books in the last week and then we’ll take a bunch of these questions from the audience So that’ll take us up to about 5:30 p.m And then we actually do have another half hour or so if people want to stick around We’ll have a little bit of food and drink over here and we’ll have a reception that’ll last for about half an hour if your question is directed particularly at the work of one of our two great authors if you put that at the top of the note card just will make it a little easier for me as I’m multitasking to process what questions should be directed where Let me just quickly run through the bios of our two speakers and then turn directly to letting them talk about their books Yoni Appelbaum is the deputy executive editor of The Atlantic and the author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity He’s a social and cultural historian of the United States he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she covers housing I will say the deliciously wonky Good on Paper as in that idea seemed like a good idea on paper how does it do in the real world where each week Demsas and a guest take a closer look at the facts I listened recently to the conversation that she had with David Brockman about how people think about housing and housing affordability and whether they want more housing in their neighborhood I’d recommend that you start with that episode I think actually it’s more the question Her new book on the housing crisis collects selections of her writing in The Atlantic to offer an accessible guide to this wide-ranging issue and I think we’ll start with Yoni to talk about his project for giving me the excuse to escape Washington and come out and talk to all of you about housing and thought that I was going to be writing a history of zoning but the project turned on me the way that research often does I want you to go back in your minds 500 years to the old world where most identities were inherited at birth You were born someplace and attached to it legally in general practically by lots of other social conventions You could go out to the church graveyard and see rows of gravestones with your last name on them and you expected one day you would be buried there and your children and your grandchildren after you That was how the world worked through much of human history in most times and most places And it was how the early European colonists who came to what is now the United States expected that the world they were constructing would work as well They did not mean to set off a revolution in human freedom of leaving your proper place in the world and going someplace new turned out to be a very difficult genie to stuff back into the bottle if you’d wanted to show up in colonial New England and move into a town it didn’t matter if you had bought a house or rented a farm or gotten engaged to a girl in town the community had the power to warn you out And in the communities where we have the best records we can see that they warn most aspiring new entrants out We don’t accept you as members of our community.” it didn’t occur to me that the neighbors could deliver a notice to my door within two weeks telling me I wasn’t welcome there it’s how it worked well after the revolution It’s not until the early-1800s that there’s a legal revolution in America which makes residence a matter of individual choice rather than communal consent that the system had been attenuating for several decades But there’s a series of rulings and legal changes that allow people in the United States to go places and to say “I am a resident here because I intend to be a resident here.” And that was enough once we open the possibility of human mobility Americans start moving at a sort of astonishing rate one out of three Americans moved every year which is sort of really hard to conceive of now There was this institution in many cities and many farming regions where farm tendency was the prevailing form of ownership called Moving Day All the leases would expire on a single day half the people would get up and swap residences between sunup and sundown And most people who swapped residences ended up better off for it They ended up … If you built a small number of luxury units for the rich And people who are a little less rich would move into the really luxurious houses they’ve been living in 15 moves with everybody moving into a place that was in some way better than the place that they were giving up They thought of homes the way I might think of an iPhone or a car These constant moves in America made possible by the constant construction of new housing created a new kind of social order When people would come here from Europe to visit they typically remarked on two things that they found to be profoundly weird about the United States saw this as a tremendous character flaw in the United States Tocqueville accused us of being restless in the midst of prosperity that although we … They understood that you could move if you were desperate that you could be displaced by famine or … But what they didn’t understand was that you had an adequate living and you wanted something better for yourself And Americans persisted in doing OK and thinking that they could do better and their children could do even better than they had The other thing that they all remark on is that we have a mania for association and they can see the rich array of civic groups and voluntary associations that Americans have created and they have something that they’re envious of and they never put the two halves together It simply does not occur to them that it is America’s extraordinary rate of geographic mobility which creates the rich and vibrant and diverse communities that Americans will belong to has been the only place on earth where a majority of adults no longer belong to the church or confession into which they were born And the reason for that is when you’re moving someplace new there’s a place where all your neighbors are going you push yourself beyond your comfort zone It’s awkward to walk into a large hall where everybody else knows everybody who’s there And so you get this extraordinary social vibrancy If you match Americans of really any decade against their peers in you’ll find that the Americans are moving more often over longer distances into better effect That is the Americans who relocate always do better than the Americans who stay in place but they also do better than people in Europe who are relocating from one place to another The extraordinary mobility of the society gives outsized returns to geographic mobility they do better in terms of the occupational brackets that they occupy And then those effects are actually amplified in the second generation Their kids do even better relative to the kids of those who have stayed where they are and they do even better relative to the kids of the people who’ve moved within Europe And so you get this extraordinary degree of social vitality and civic life you get amazing fluidity in terms of climbing the economic ladder and occupational mobility There’s a great study by University of Chicago psychologists and then follows up a year later to say like And now tell me about your life.” The movers grow more optimistic they grow likelier to be accepting of others and of differences more likely to become engaged in the communities in which they’ve landed and likelier to see the success of those communities as reinforcing their own success and their own success is dependent on the success of those around them So these are characteristic American traits often that we’ve pushed beyond the breaking point that the famously optimistic Americans who barrel around the world and can’t see problems out of this extraordinary mobility that we experienced So that was the greatest discovery of the research The question is why don’t we do this anymore And I should say we don’t do this anymore The decline in social mobility is the largest and least remarked change in America of the last 50 years And I believe that it is driving many other much more discussed changes And we stopped moving for a very simple reason it was possible to change your fortunes by relocating if you were a janitor in rural Alabama and you relocated to San Francisco to the Bay Area and stayed in the same job 40% more than if you stayed where you were but you ended up with more money in the bank account at the end of every month if you made that same move from Alabama to the Bay Area your wages would still go up by the same amount roughly but the cost of living here would more than offset your wage gains You would end up with less in the bank account at the end of every month than if you’d stayed where you were And so people are simply staying where they are There was a convergence between the richest and poorest parts of this country for 200 years the richest and the poorest places in the country are on divergent paths Mobility is now a privilege exercised by the affluent and the well-educated Most Americans no longer stand to gain by moving toward the places in this country that offer them the greatest opportunities We know that the single most important decision you’ll make as a parent is not how you sleep train your kids choosing your kids’ odds of success in life Americans are no longer moving toward the places that have the greatest degree of opportunity they’re moving to the places that have the cheapest housing It is a profound change in the social geography of this country much of the anger and frustration that we see The book that I wrote is ultimately a history California is where zoning is invented in the United States in 1885 in Modesto in a law that was intended to push the Chinese out of Modesto It was the third thing that they had tried in Modesto The first thing they tried was vigilante violence where they put on hoods and marched through the streets and beat up Chinese residents who they encountered piled their belongings in the street in [inaudible 00:16:24] But the Chinese wanted their piece of the American dream They tried burning down the Chinese laundries that they were operating in the largely white neighborhoods of the cities And then they found a much more effective tool of racial segregation They wrote an ordinance that pushed all of the laundries in the city and there is only one block on that map that is west of the tracks and south of G Street It was an implicit racial segregation of the city done in facially neutral language And the courts here in California will uphold that There’s a huge part of this that I hope we’ll get into later set here in Berkeley which invents single-family zoning over in Elmwood And zoning jumps to the East Coast in New York where it’s used to push the Jews back into the Lower East Side in a way from the thriving department stores along Fifth Avenue And that gives us our first city-wide zoning ordinance partially through the good offices of Herbert Hoover but largely at the behest of the federal government in the New Deal there’s a second turn to this story where starting in the 1970s we give people … there’s a revolt on the left against big government And the critique is that big government has been captured by big business The remedy that is proposed has a downside though it is to empower local communities and individuals to challenge any government decision making So we spend the first half of the 20th century making every matter of land use even on privately owned land subject to government regulation We then empower anyone with enough time and money and resources to challenge any decision a system in which individuals are empowered to block things from happening It is particularly in progressive jurisdictions that this is a problem that is a crisis because I can look around and see by real estate prices that Americans want to live in those jurisdictions they appreciate their investment in public services Many Americans feel that it is in fact a matter of life and death to live in such jurisdictions If you’re a woman seeking at this moment to exercise a right to choose if you’re a member of the LGBTQ community being in such a place can feel incredibly important But those are the jurisdictions that have made it hard to build That is where the housing crisis have gone up by the most in the United States And it is sadly the case that the more progressive a jurisdiction There’s a great study of California which says that for every 10 points in liberal vote share a community increases the number of new housing permits that it issues goes down by 30% And so I look at this as a self-induced crisis of progressivism that through a set of legal changes each of which was intended to address a real problem we’ve arrived at a situation where the places where Americans most want to live where they can give their children better lives where they can lift themselves up economically where they can join vibrant social communities those places have become impossible to build in and therefore impossible to move to except for a privileged slice at the top of American society And what is a tragedy for that worker in Alabama is also a crisis of progressivism as a political movement because to the extent that you can’t move into these places to the extent that even people born in these places or with jobs in these places often can’t afford to stay there are fewer electoral votes in the blue states they tend to adopt the political views of those around them It is instead shifting the American population in a more conservative direction And so that is the tragedy that the book unfolds But it is also … and I’ll turn over to Jerusalem here in a moment it is also a story that I think we can regard with a fair amount of optimism These are problems that progressive America has created for itself That means that they do not rely necessarily on federal solutions You don’t need our dysfunctional Congress to get itself together and act you don’t need the current presidential administration to act in a beneficent way state law that has delegated power down to municipalities And the municipalities in the states have the power to reverse this I think you’ve got to go back to the place where I started We began as a country of exclusionary communities that walled themselves off from new arrivals We made this country prosperous and pluralistic by tearing down those walls and enabling Americans to move where they wanted giving Americans a profound sense of individual agency in the process stripping away some of the exclusionary powers that we have redelegated to communities and allowing people to go where they want Jerusalem Demsas: So it’s funny because I’m the opposite case of Yoni’s book I have never re-signed a lease until just this past month and so I think I’m just moving for everyone else So Yoni talked a bit about the … Well Yoni gave you a full history of the historical context of zoning and how we got here My book is really about the small democratic problem and crisis in local government Originally when I started working on this issue I was concerned about the issue of housing affordability and as someone who is an immigrant to this country myself I was concerned about the crisis of mobility And I discovered along the way that the questions we were all asking ourselves were really fundamental ones over who gets to decide what happens to the land that we all have but people get to benefit from it all the time When someone’s sitting on a house that’s worth $1.5 million and they bought it when it was $500,000 they didn’t really do anything to make that happen But they get to accrue all of those benefits all the same So that is the major question of the book that I wrote and it starts with an essay that I reported in Denver where there was a defunct golf course there are not large plots of land just sitting around waiting to be developed Those are often at the fringes because we have mostly developed center city there was a defunct golf course because in 1997 the city of Denver had paid $2 million to the owners of the golf course to put a conservation easement on this property it must always have the ability to function as a nineteen-hole golf course And eventually what happens is a development firm decides to take a bet They think that they can get this conservation easement lifted either through the court system or they can get it lifted by getting the city of Denver to vote to allow them to lift it they buy it when the conservation easement is still on it And so that’s depressed the value of the land I think surprised this risky taking development firm and they vote 59 to 41 nearly 20 points not to allow them to remove the easement and this is after the developer has fliered every single home in the surrounding neighborhood reserved two-thirds of the 155 acres for open space permanently that was going to be developed into open space for the community 2,500 homes that would include affordable housing They were going to develop a fund to allow the community members to be able to access homeownership opportunities people who were long-time members of this community Every single thing that you could tick down the box They had promised someone that they could have a soccer field somewhere because their kids like to play soccer in that area Any one of those complaints that ended up coming up they had tried to resolve them and it still ended up failing And the reason why this attracted my attention is not just because That’s kind of the classic story right now in American housing politics But the reason why this attracted my attention is because Denver is not a city that you would just immediately expect to be wholesale opposed development It’s a place where it’s a purple state It’s not some place where it’s a hostile to business or development the very same election when Denver voters say “We don’t want you to develop this 155 acre golf course.” They also vote into office two … They have a runoff election And both mayoral candidates were in favor of that development So the same voters that were like don’t develop this are now voting also to say pro-housing affordability candidate to be in office.” And at the same time you have governor Jared Polis who has made it his key signature issue to say I don’t think that local government should have a solitary purview over how housing gets developed These are not just issues that can be decided at the very hyper-local level.” He pretty popular governor in Colorado He’s also someone who has continued to make this his calling card has continued to pass legislation on this issue even after this fails Because the democratic voice of the people is saying a bunch of mixed things a million dollar bond measure to fund affordable housing And so the issues at play here are how do you hear these voices when government officials are trying to figure out what it is the populace actually wants And the thesis of my book is essentially is that when you delegate housing and land use authority to the local level the only thing you are allowing is people’s parochial concerns to come into play The only thing you are allowing is for people’s concerns when they’re thinking You don’t allow them to access the parts of their brain when they’re voting for governor when they’re thinking about bigger issues when they’re thinking about what about the housing affordability crisis And that’s the big problem I think with housing is that we’ve delegated to a level of government that actually just cannot resolve this problem because it doesn’t even ask people to think in this way When people engage with their local government they’re thinking about resolving these small concerns and they’re thinking about the ways in which their life can be harmed by changes They’re not thinking about these bigger macroeconomic problems that they want to see resolved I think there are a bunch of ways that I explore this in the book and a bunch of reasons why we see this happening I think there’s this problem in political science called the boundary problem which is how do you decide what the area of concern is before you even hold vote and say “We’re going to have the city of Berkeley vote on whether or not to do X or Y.” You have to decide what is the city of Berkeley What is the jurisdiction that we’re talking about here And you can get kind of ridiculous with this because even in a place like San Francisco is an international housing market It affects someone in China about if they’re going to come here and study if home prices are too high So you have to have some sorts of logistical constraints the problem with housing is that the benefits that accrue to building new housing are so diffuse that the beneficiaries are almost the large part of them are never included I live in Washington DC and when someone builds or doesn’t build a house in Arlington but that’s still the housing market I live in And it’s really interesting the way that people kind of conceptualize this problem because I was at a zoning board meeting in Arlington Virginia once and they were talking about whether or not to allow I think it’s literally 36 new townhouses to exist I always immediately beeline for the people who I’m assume are going to be the most opposed just so I can sit next to them And so I go and sit next to these people and they’re muttering they’re talking about how annoyed they are And this man gets up and he’s one of the very few people who get up who’s not an older white person the woman next to me turns to the person she’s sitting with and goes “I bet that guy’s from Washington DC We shouldn’t even let people from DC talk.” And the assumption I think Northern Virginia’s a pretty diverse place but there’s obviously some racial undertones going on in that conversation so I can’t 100% confirm that was going on And I think the reason why this is important is that it goes to show how much these very liberal people I mean it’s voting quite heavily for Joe Biden And at the same time when you get them in these local community meetings all of these other commitments fly out the window I don’t know where this guy was from why is it not equally relevant to him whether or not Arlington builds housing That artificial line that divides DC from Arlington it may be relevant for whether or not we have access to congressional representation but it’s not relevant for whether or not it affects your home prices And the way that people live their lives are crossing these jurisdictional boundaries all the time and the book is quite harsh on local government but I don’t want to be harsh on people who work in local government who I think most of who I talk to are fantastic hardworking people who want to make the world a better place And I think the challenge that they have is because of the regional nature of this problem Any individual small city in a larger metropolitan area that wanted to address the housing crisis like just take a look at what’s happening in Jersey City near New York valiant jumps to try to address the housing crisis and I think are giving some serious room to New York City to not build a lot of housing that removal of pressure also enables a lot of NIMBYs to say so we don’t really need to build that much in Brooklyn.” And that kind of interplay requires a more regional It requires that sort of 30,000 foot view of the problem because you do need to balance a bunch of different interests It wouldn’t be good if we raised every single park in the city and turned it into housing You do want to protect some places from development but how do you make those trades when you’re in city government and the only thing you can control is yes or no do I develop this plot of land we’re going to protect that area and that town and we can develop here.” that kind of negotiation cannot happen at the local level And I think that we’re seeing that in how the housing movement has really turned its attention in this country from trying to get these locality by locality wins towards focusing on state level action The biggest amount of pressure that I’ve seen in the last couple of years has been in state houses across the country because people are realizing you cannot go council member by council member and try to resolve a housing crisis But I think that there’s a bigger even problem in local government which is just this fundamental problem of representation and I’m not going to yell at you for this because I know everyone yells at everyone for this Nobody knows who their local elected officials are I don’t know all of the local elected officials that exist I have to go on my phone and Google every time there’s a local election in DC Can I find any information on them somewhere Has an environmental group said anything about them?” You’re doing all of this work because unlike with federal campaigns this kind of information is not readily available to you even if you wanted to be a super informed voter There aren’t really avenues for you to access this Someone’s not really covering every single zoning board race There’s not the kind of coverage that you would need in order to really evaluate whether someone was able to do their job well or not But even more concerning is even if you had an army of grad students at every single zoning board in the country and historic preservation committee taking notes could they even accurately identify who is responsible for the bad outcomes I’m not supposed to mention Donald Trump “I’m going to do tariffs.” Everyone knows what’s happening That’s the President of the United States He’s saying he’s able to enact that policy by himself and he’s going to do it There’s a very clear attribution of what’s happening and why Do we blame the person who right now is mayor and didn’t build enough housing Do you blame the Historic Preservation Committee because they made it a bit too hard to conform to some certain design standards It’s impossible to really attribute who’s actually responsible for this outcome in a way that could allow for democratic feedback loops to really come into play And the way that you see this coming out is that even people who engage in local government are coming to races that are almost entirely unopposed I wrote these numbers down because I wasn’t going to remember them and 64% of judges were unopposed elections There was a study done about elected prosecutors that found that 95% of the time And 85% of the time they were running for reelection unopposed So even if you were to become the best civically engaged person in the world you were to know and able to perfectly attribute who had caused all the problems in local government you would not be able to even make your voice meaningfully heard in local government the place where everyone says you can have the biggest impact I think is something that I think goes under addressed And I think most people don’t think about it when they think about crises of democracy Our attention is drawn to other places right now but I think part of the problem is that we don’t even see what’s going on in local government because we don’t have a lot of engagement in the space and we don’t have people voting and we don’t have media paying attention to it you do see that there’s a massive representational issues and that 65 and older that’s who’s voting in local races Portland State University did this a while ago and they found that in the 65 and older residents in the poorest and least educated parts of the city were two to five times more likely to vote than 18 to 35 year olds in the wealthiest and most educated parts of the city That creates massive problems in how elected officials view their job I’m not saying people 65 and older don’t deserve but this kind of imbalance creates a problem whereby government is influenced by people who are most adverse they’re at the end of their working life They care less about economic growth opportunities bringing in new businesses here maintaining things in their final decades of life some neighborhoods in DC make it impossible for bars to even be loud after 10 PM anti-future policies that you have to balance against people who are younger who are less invested in the aesthetic goals of 20 or 30 years ago These things are not balanced in local government and when you look at higher levels of government you can actually see this working a lot better is controlling how land use is done in this country But this doesn’t just apply to housing Why is it so difficult to get California high-speed rail built in this state here I’m not going to attribute it to one thing but the fragmented nature of local government in this state means that every single time that project wants to get a permit we’re getting a permit for this entire section of land here Every single local government needs to be OK when the state’s coming and saying You need to make sure you’re following certain guidelines but still you get the permit because California gave it to you.” That project has to go locality by locality begging them to give them a permit they basically need to just give them whatever it costs in order to get them on board And that’s how you get a line that’s costing $70 $100 billion to go from Fresno to Bakersfield And this is not something that happens in other countries I have a friend who works in the transportation space and he was talking to a Swedish transportation planner about this process And this guy legit would not believe him that you did not get right of way if you had already gotten permitting from the national government “You don’t know what you’re talking about No one would ever do transportation policy this way This kind of localization doesn’t exist.” And it doesn’t exist in the rest of the world other than maybe India We have 90,000 units of local government in this country That’s not what’s happening in Germany It’s not happening in any of the Swedish countries we’re talking about It’s not happening in East Asian countries This is an anomaly and it is causing most of the problems because you can’t get that kind of centralized decision making and taking hard choices even if people want to get aligned and build high-speed rail Even if there’s statewide federal money being put on the line I do not think there’s going to be a high-speed rail line from the Los Angeles to San Francisco So that was a lot of things about a lot of things about local government But the one thing I want to leave you with is people often hear this and they go “I just need to get more involved in local government We could just fix this if we all decided to show up to all our zoning board meetings and really advocate for policies we care about.” And I’m not going to tell you not to do that But I think that there’s this quote that always sticks with me from Robert Dahl where he says politicians and political agents are prone to overstate the interest of the audience and their performance.” We should probably add journalists to this too But the reason this quote sticks with me is because there’s this sense that there’s something wrong with the populace That the lack of local civic engagement is a reflection of our failures as our civic duty is weakened they would have us go to these participatory democracy seminars where I had to argue with the most right-wing guy in the class This is horrible.” And they kept saying you would just do participation.” But it’s not a reflection of our failures that government isn’t working for us This system wasn’t meant to hear everyone’s voices and actually create outcomes that work for everyone and it is this kind of fragmentation only exists to make it difficult to get big things done to solve big problems affirmatively a couple of things before we launch into questions if you’ve got a question you want to ask fill out a note card and give it to one of our staff people and they will bring it up to bring it up to me I’ve got a bunch of questions so I could ask questions all day about these presentations So we’d like to get to your questions And then the other thing I should just say quickly at this point is just a big shout-out to all the Bestie staff for being here and making this event happen none of this could have happened without you guys so I do want to spend a bunch of time asking you guys about democracy and how we think about democracy and the way that you guys think about democracy and mostly I’m going to focus this on more contemporary stuff But I think all of us want to figure out how do we get unstuck But one aspect with the history I did want to get to just before we turn to talking about this question about democracy and local democracy But so one of the interesting things about how unusual the American case is and the power of these local governments I was trying to impress this on my students today I was teaching them about American federalism and I was trying to explain American federalism is actually really they have no status in the American constitution States have a big status in the American constitution Jerusalem Demsas: Municipal associations get very angry when you say this to them So that makes it kind of doubly puzzling what you’re describing And so just a quick passage from Jerusalem’s book where she writes “Preferences that flourish out of a desire to separate Americans by race have evolved into a labyrinthine exclusionary and localized system that is at the heart of the housing crisis.” And so I just wanted to give you guys a chance to maybe talk a little bit more about the role of race in both creating this system Yoni talked about how Chinese exclusion really spurs us in California What we also see is during the Great Migration when we see African Americans come from the south to northern cities just an explosion of land use regulations that result from that move That there is an immediate desire block by block to segregate by race to not have people who are coming in from the south seeking a better life to have access to these northern cities that are becoming boom towns there’s the causal evidence for this And I think it’s funny now because most NIMBYs I mean we’re talking about in progressive areas I actually think they don’t have problems living next to Black people They don’t have problems living next to Asian people They have problems living next to poor Black people They have problems living next to middle class Black people and middle class Asian people And I was reading about the concerted effort that it took to get Americans OK with living next to people of different races and how the civil rights movement had to really shop around and find the most palatable But that kind of person to make you feel like Don’t Blame Us is a great book by Lily Geissmer about the Boston suburbs And if you’re interested in this history in the 1970s And you see the work being done by affordable housing advocates and civil rights advocates to get these middle class doctors to come be the first people to move into these areas and get people acclimated to it when I read those transcripts of how people would talk about Black Americans anyone who wasn’t really kind of a wasp moving into their neighborhood and I hear now how people talk about the idea of a middle class person even moving into their neighborhood but this just a different culture of person coming in here They’re going to affect the neighborhood in a way where they’re going to have their boom … I mean literally their boom boxes are going to be really loud.” Or whatever it is And it’s something where I’m like I think a similar sort of class movement in this space to acclimate people to the idea not every middle class person is this caricature you’ve built in your head from but there’s a level to which people are right now do not actually think it is wrong to segregate by class at this dinner with a bunch of rich people who were telling me why they were NIMBYs in Connecticut and they were like but it’s different with poor people because we bought into this to have a nice place So you need to be able to buy into this nice place.” So this link between my place will be degraded if someone even earning $100,000 less than me moves in there and you’re like a millionaire but I mean this is what we see in Atherton where we see Mark Andreessen who is someone who’s a proponent of building things and incumbents need to be broken down And the idea that a few millionaires could move into giant town homes it makes him and his wife irate and that sort of thinking that these kinds of class divisions are actually real in a way that race wasn’t real It makes me think we’ve kind of forgotten what happened with race The very same arguments were being made about Black people about people who weren’t wasps all the time it starts with a Supreme Court case in Louisville Kentucky where you were not allowed to sell your house to a Black person if the block was already majority White and then they overturned that explicit racial zoning and then it becomes we can just do this by class And they’re like the places that used to say “Whites only,” they just change it to R1 And so this class segregation is a direct descendant of racial segregation that was just facially unconstitutional They’re indistinguishable from the beginning if you’re going to segregate by class you are segregating a large measure by race you start Modesto with a Chinese exclusion Los Angeles then does the same thing with its laundries in 1906 jumps to New York often these are anti-immigrant laws in their early guys which in the early 20th century does mean at least in the minds of their drafters segregating by race you get the nation’s first single family zoning ordinance and it comes from a guy who is like many others people discover that they can commute back and forth to San Francisco He’s working in a nine-story building as an architect during the day in San Francisco but he’s commuting home across the Bay and what he does not want and what he’s very explicit about not wanting is he doesn’t want the working class coming home with him to Berkeley He talks about the inferior floating rental class and wanting to keep it out of his community And because he’s an architect and not a lawyer he doesn’t know that it’s blatantly unconstitutional to draft a single family zoning ordinance which is why nobody else has tried it in America to that point because it’s usually lawyers who draft these things But he goes through with it anyway and is going to somebody has built an apartment building down just down Piedmont Ave He’s really upset that down the block somebody has built an apartment building in his backyard and so he gets the state to pass an enabling statute and then Berkeley to draft an ordinance And then he writes the report for the committee in Berkeley and designates America’s first single family zoning ordinance in Elmwood as a way to keep working class immigrants out of his community That is just fundamentally intertwined with the history of zoning And if the question is zoning about race or class it is about race and class and the two things are very hard to separate in the American context Even if today it is true that in many of the tightly zoned very affluent communities you have a high measure of racial diversity professional class people of every ethnicity and background and people are fine with that but that is not representative of the American public at large It remains the case that the people who are negatively impacted by really restrictive zoning are overwhelmingly racial minorities because of the class structure in America So these things are very tightly intertwined and I don’t think there’s a way to tease them apart at some level Jerusalem Demsas: What’s that guy’s name and he really believed this and then evangelized for another communities that you could he didn’t want California to be like the East coast which was full of immigrant apartment buildings He wanted this to be an entire state full of single-family homes And to some substantial extent that vision wins in California to the detriment of California so let’s talk a little bit about democracy And I think you guys are both very effectively withering in your analyses of limitations of local democracy The idea that the foundation of democracy is local democracy and you both have pithy ways of putting it Yoni has the title of one of his chapters is a Plague of Localists and Jerusalem writes about the macro-micro disconnect like the parts of our brain and our vision of the world that are activated when we only focus on the local and also by the idea that this is actually quite unusual to the US that people really see local democracy as kind of the cornerstone of democracy We had Ezra Klein out here last year and he was talking about Tokyo and how different and he said they don’t think of Tokyo as belonging to the residents of Tokyo They think of it as belonging to Japan.” And so they built a ton of housing I think it’s still the biggest metropolitan area in the world It’s affordable to live in Tokyo because there’s this basic orientation I don’t think it rings … It’s going to resonate with most Americans I think it’s hard to make that resonate with most Americans there’s tons of survey research that would suggest that people feel much better about their local governments then they feel somewhat less good about their state government and then they feel much worse about the federal government how do you make that resonate in American culture to say we really need to push decision making up to a level that’s not so local.” Jerusalem Demsas: So I am not a politician I just get really angry and I write articles But when I look at what’s happening in other places I don’t think you have to convince everyone to hate local government in order to make this work Just I think what you see now is that activists are focusing on engaging with state governments and you have to make it clear to state governments that their interests are at stake here So you have a problem where the political science literature on whether voters actually hold their elected officials accountable for failing is quite depressing But one thing that you do see is that there are some findings that show governors when the economic outcomes of a state unemployment are relatively better And when they’re relatively worse than other states nearby And you see this sometimes replicated with mayors as well So governors are very concerned about being held accountable for the economic outcomes that voters see them as responsible for really mad at their local governments for making them the scapegoat of their own problems And I’ve talked with governors about this issue and they will say “Obviously housing is a regional problem Obviously housing is regional.” And of course their voters are mad about homelessness crises They’re mad about cost of living that’s happening in their states even now voters are holding the presidential candidates responsible for housing decisions that are being made in their own backyard they don’t realize are the result of their local governments what’s going to happen is the political system is going to force state governments to state legislators to make local governments care about this issue and work on it there’s no US constitutional authority granted to local governments even though I’m railing against local governments I’m really railing against state governments that are allowing localities to do this I mean right now if the state of California wanted it could truly choose to dissolve local governments US federal government can’t do that with states legally But local governments do not have any kind of authority outside of some state constitutions where even then you can actually amend those constitutions and take those authorities away really bad these local governments are doing think they should feel bad about themselves They think they shouldn’t do these kinds of things you just have to get states to start caring I mean all of that I think is exactly right One thing that you’ve written is that at each level that you go up town the broader and more participatory and more representative the electorate becomes So often we think about local decision making as empowering people It gets championed and giving voice to the voiceless allowing communities to represent themselves And the only thing that is less representative than a municipal electorate is the cross-section of people who show up at a local hearing and it’s increasingly comprised of homeowners as opposed to renters So the more local and parochial you make the interests the less representative the community that is weighing in most of us don’t think about it this way There’s this sort of this illusion of local control where it’s like if it’s my local community making the decision I find that talking about that actually is not a bad thing to do that as people think I did show up in the presidential race that there are levels in which my voice is being heard here and that can actually be good The other thing that is really tough to resolve though I mean local communities are not in the constitution but one reason they’re not there is they were sort of assumed that the constitution is a compact among states The local communities were in many cases functionally they were corporations of the states functionally they set the boundaries of their membership They could warn out at the time of the founding they could worn out residents they didn’t want That was sort of a assumed element of the system I don’t think we’re getting rid of local government tomorrow What is not deep in our political DNA is local land use law It was not constitutional for local communities to try to regulate almost anything about how private landowners use their land other than if they were using that land in some way that hurt their neighbors The nuisance standard was the legal test that you apply So if I want to put a tannery on my land or a brickyard and I’m hurting my neighbors from the runoff that’s something a local community can regulate But a local community did not have the power to say “You can’t turn that one family home and into two-family home You can’t tear down the two-family home and put up an apartment building.” Simply didn’t exist It is very recent that this is anywhere in America It’s not really until the New Deal that it becomes nationwide There are many people living today who are born into a country in which you could build on your private property So I think that if you’re going to focus the eye on local government here part of it is about reframing who makes the decisions but the bigger part of it is recovering just how recent these changes are just how profoundly they’ve reshaped our society and just how reversible they are I mean the reason they’re building so much in Japan is that zoning there is a federal power from 1970 until about 2000 Tokyo was on the same trajectory as New York increasing challenges to any new construction rising housing prices and the feds intervene in Japan and they say the most restrictive zoning that you can now apply anywhere in the city has street-level retail and multifamily housing above it You can slap that label anywhere you want on the map of Tokyo we have 11 other categories you can choose from there even less restrictive but there’s going to be no single-family zoning here You’re going to be able to build as of right with light manufacturing And that turns the Tokyo housing market around and Tokyo again becomes an engine of economic development within Japan So these are recent choices that we’ve made as a country They are unusual choices to Jerusalem’s point and they’re reversible choices I’m going to ask one more and then I’m going to turn to the questions that we’ve gotten here from the audience so hopefully maybe interject a little bit of a note of optimism What do you guys think of the rise of the YIMBYism which I would say is to me pretty striking in the degree of progress that is made certainly in terms of the kinds of conversations that people are having around these issues in a really short period of time I could drive you up and down Shaddock Avenue in Berkeley and just “There’s a new apartment building There are a lot of new apartment buildings going up.” So I don’t know if the glass is half empty or half full from your perspective but it does feel like there’s been a shift a significant shift in the conversation in a relatively short period of time And I’m just interested in what you guys think about that when I first started thinking about these problems I started calling political scientists to ask them about this issue I mean there’s a huge problem in democratic governance of land at the local level NIMBYs are totally in charge of local government You should move on and work on something else.” That was the prevailing viewpoint of not just political scientists who paid attention to these issues I found this book by this brown professor who has passed away “If you allow zoning ordinances to reduce the supply of housing you will see mass racial and class segregation in American cities.” before you see this happening in San Francisco and before Silicon Valley’s Like most of these places are still pretty affordable It was not confusing what would happen if you restricted the supply of housing such that only a few people would get access to housing And so the thing that is really surprising is that now anyone is doing anything about it and it’s something that I think it’s worth puzzling out what’s going on here is that the population of people who began to be affected by housing costs in high-opportunity areas stopped just being lower and lower middle-income people very poor people have had a housing crisis in San Francisco for a long time lower middle-class people have been priced out of these areas I bought a house here and now there’s no way my 25-year-old could afford to rent near me or near where I was going to be That becomes a different political dynamic very important and is becoming more and more active especially as Millennials enter their prime home buying years in the last five years or so And that becomes a political force in local and state government in a way they weren’t before because they weren’t homeowners And so I think that’s really important The other thing that’s really important is eventually people are willing to travel a good amount They’ll commute to get to a good job the rule of thumb is like the max commuting zone is two hours but that’s kind the max commuting zone We basically either built that out or we banned housing in much of that area then you start seeing much of this pressure happening like before but it’s not the end of the world to have to sit in an hour of traffic to get to work That’s what people were doing in DC and Los Angeles once you have a workforce development issue and you start seeing some businesses are getting involved in why is there no longer a way for me to hire people to come work for me there’s a ridiculous case right now in Vail Colorado where they literally cannot get people who can work the resorts because they don’t have affordable housing there is that there are political dynamics that are changing here and also that local government is so unrepresentative that basically a small group of people can hijack the system And that’s what you’re seeing I think with YIMBYs is that there’s not massive amounts of people now coming out to these zoning board meetings and now it’s representative It’s just like there’s now a counterweight to the unrepresentative NIMBYs Now you have the unrepresentative YIMBYs there too so there’s cover for someone to do the right thing Yoni Appelbaum: The most crowded and contentious local hearing I’ve ever attended in my life and I worked in municipal government covered municipal government was when Cambridge and the line was literally around the block If you want to quickly launch a political movement in this country really piss off affluent professionals and degrade their quality of life and they will come out and force And there is a way in which that is what the YIMBY movement is testifying to is that because this was a crisis located in blue cities It wasn’t the incumbents who’d bought their house back in 1975 That’s where the organizing energy was and I give a lot of credit to some of the public intellectuals who first sort of highlighted this people help them make sense that their individual struggles and finding housing were part of a broader pattern I would say is that it’s really hard to change people’s minds You usually get big political change in this country as a matter of generational succession We are currently still governed by the Baby Boom generation to a surprising extent particularly at the municipal level as Jerusalem was pointing out and that is a generation that came of age with a few basic political truths Growth is bad and profit is inherently suspicious there’s a different set of political truths They worry about not being able to build densely and sustainably They worry less about sticking it to the man than they do about trying to create the kinds of communities in which they can thrive They worry about the declining diversity of their communities Their orientation toward political problems is really different And so to the extent that this is a movement that is taking flight it is taking flight in part because of the changing demographics of the country as those younger voters comprise a larger and larger portion of the electorate you’ll see more and more support for these kinds of pro-growth and pro-density policies So whatever the problems out of the growth-oriented mindset are the kids of the people who are currently showing up at these hearings to testify in favor of development The academic version of that is science advances one obituary at a time which is an idea that I found more persuasive a couple of decades ago than I do now So a couple here that I can group that I think are riffs on something Yoni said which is this is a self-induced crisis of progressivism “Why do you both believe that restrictive zoning regimes and other small D checks in development are so much more prevalent in progressive jurisdictions?” Right And somebody else asked up on another element of this is do you think the failure to build housing in progressive jurisdictions has motivated support for Donald Trump?” Yoni Appelbaum: I’ll take a first stab at this I think that the reason that this is particularly crisis and progressive jurisdictions is that progressives believe that government can be a force for good in the world and so many of these regulations are intended to achieve no volumes really have moved towards centering a concept of harm if a policy can be shown to have an adverse effect there ought to be a mechanism for blocking the policy But that gets to the boundary problem that Jerusalem was talking about a minute ago It may be bad for people on the block if an undeveloped lot where their kids are playing gets developed progressive jurisdictions empower people to block that development The guy from Alabama who’s not moving to change his life not putting his daughter in your kid’s elementary school he’s being harmed in a way that will utterly alter the trajectory of his life and of his daughter’s life But he’s not included within the boundary So this is why this is such a problem of progressive jurisdictions and they believe in using it to minimize harm But the way that we’ve drawn the boundaries really makes that calculus one where the ultimate harms can be quite different Like CQA was originally a law here in California intended to restrain sprawl There has been no more effective mechanism of sprawl in California than the CQA It made it almost impossible to build in places with existing residents than push the development out So you can see that perverse dynamic that this generates Do I think that this is causing support for Donald Trump I mentioned earlier the study of what happens to people when they move “I intend to move.” And they move What I love about that research is they also followed up with all the people who said that they intended to move and then did not more withdrawn socially and detached from local organizations They also reoriented themselves toward a zero-sum mindset in which others gains were coming at their expense where I believe 26 points more likely to vote for Donald Trump than those who had been able to move You can look across a broad range of indicators here and what you see is support for Donald Trump is up the most in places where mobility is down the most People in those places report seeing the world with a zero-sum mindset where things like immigration and mobility are perceived as threats “I’m against change in my community because every time it changes in my community if you’ve been stripped of the agency that you expected to have as American if you didn’t get your slice of the American dream because you weren’t able to move toward the opportunities that you expected to have you may not be able to put your finger on it “Zoning regulation screwed me out of the life I was supposed to have.” But you know that something has gone wrong and you’re right to be pissed about it There is real anger in the country because large parts of the country are stuck economically They are not having the lives that even their parents had much less their grandparents Donald Trump has a positive genius for identifying and exploiting grievance And there was an enormous well of grievance in this country from the people who had been shut out and had come to bitterly resent the areas where they could see people leading the lives they wish they had but not letting them move in to be their neighbors I think that there’s basically a necessary prerequisite for people to feel open to immigrants other people’s different ways of life is they have to feel like it doesn’t come at a threat to their own interest and the interests of the people they care about I read this article for The Atlantic after it just didn’t make it into the book There were a lot of people who felt that new immigrants were taking homes away from them and from people in their communities And the thing that’s interesting about this is that increased demand does increase prices if supply remains stagnant or does not keep up whether they’re immigrants or yuppies or whoever it is coming into your community and the amount of housing remains stable those people’s demand is competing with your demand are you going to be the kind of high-minded person who goes I know about supply-side economics and I understand that it’s important to place the blame in the hands of the people who are blocking new supply then there will be enough supply for me and my children.” Probably not really good person who doesn’t hate immigrants I think a big reason why you’re seeing this turn against immigration I was talking to someone who was an affordable housing lawyer in Brooklyn And she was talking to me and she’s a very liberal person very oppressive person and she witnessed seeing the migrant wave coming to downtown in Midtown Manhattan this is a massive affordable problem.” This is someone who understands the housing industry “There’s not enough housing for these people They just can’t come here.” I think that we need to not expect as liberals to believe that people are going to overcome when they’re being asked to pay for in expense of increased housing costs I don’t think that if people embrace a pro-housing agenda that means that liberalism will reign forever and we can just sit back But I do think that you cannot get other liberal priorities through if people don’t feel comfortable with the amount of economic growth and opportunity that’s available to them And the biggest thing they pay for every month is their housing costs but this is about inequality and thinking about inequality in this context I’m going to paraphrase a little bit “What needs to happen for us to create more equal and equitable city infrastructure and landscapes and also air pollution from local industry et cetera?” And I’ll just connect to that I thought there were interesting inequality issues raised in both of your accounts posing somewhat different dilemmas or tensions that we need to wrestle with A lot of opportunity now is actually in suburbs because that’s where the best schools are on average It’s probably easier to build housing in the already dense places because people who live in dense places they don’t mind a little bit more density whereas in the suburbs you get a lot more resistance to it They move to places like that in part because they don’t want to be in dense places there are big inequality implications I think you just talked about this very briefly in the book So if you increase mobility and you make it possible for people to migrate where there are opportunities what is that going to mean for the communities that they leave it’s actually going to be good for them because the housing prices will go down there and there’ll be less competition for things.” But I kind of wondered about that I think you look at what’s happened not just in the US a lot of the most productive people in those communities are going to leave and what is going to be a left behind General thoughts about inequality and where it fits into these stories So a big question about inequality and how to improve urban form in there So I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind First is that something that I think is present a lot of what Yoni was talking about earlier is there’s this desire within progressive spaces to optimize for so many different factors when trying to do anything When you’re trying to resolve a crisis of affordability the more things you try to optimize for outside of that the more difficult it becomes to solve even the original problem This doesn’t mean that you let everything die It’s not saying we should have slave labor in order to build a new housing but there’s a level to which there’s not an awareness of this in liberal jurisdictions because you have a highly educated populace and there are folks who are used to going like I’m sure I could just figure out every single variable and then perfectly optimize for it and then get there.” And that sort of thinking creates a problem wherein you’re now not just trying to solve an affordability crisis you’re trying to optimize for the exact aesthetic makeup of an area And all of these things can be important to different extents but we have to decide whether or not we’re in a housing emergency or not Is it an emergency where the most important thing is to get homeless people into permanent supportive housing or is it not and it’s OK to wait a little bit in order to make sure you’re paying the prevailing wage Wait a little bit to make sure the facade is appropriate with historic preservation Wait a little bit to make sure that you’re not cutting down too many trees There’s some level of all of these things that you should do You shouldn’t throw away all of these other concerns but how much should we invest in these different concerns when I think most Californians are saying they think it’s unacceptable that there are tent encampments in their cities And so I think that that’s something to keep in mind when we’re thinking about optimizing for other concerns I care a lot about residential segregation That is the main reason why I started working on these issues it’s actually a very exclusionary suburb called Potomac And I never really thought about when I was growing up there’s one townhouse development that we live in and every other Black person lives in I never really thought about what was going on there But later I looked it up and I started working in housing and I realized that some progressive planners had created an inclusionary zoning requirement that said “If you’re going to develop these massive single family homes you have to create a middle income housing opportunity.” And that is the only reason I lived in that place and I had access to those schools I was able to stay in the school that I was going to because my dad could get an apartment where I could walk to school If that apartment building had not existed not only would I have spent less time with both my parents I would not have been able to go to the school I went to but it’s massive impact on people’s lives when you don’t have access to those kinds of opportunities So I’m not going to say that I don’t think that’s something that’s important I think the most interesting and coolest tool for trying to increase class integration in exclusionary suburbs is a cooler tool that’s being tried out by Montgomery County “We’re going to fund through bond measures through a revolving fund We’re going to have a developer develop the whole house we’re not really trying to make a profit off of it We just need to cross subsidize.” So you have rich people paying higher rent in there for that poor people and cross subsidization You cannot get enough production from these sorts of funds order to build 4 million homes which is the deficit we’re at right now “We’d like to make sure that we have a bunch of housing where the good schools are that’s accessible to people.” You can build that That’s actually possible for people to do and that can be complementary to a policy that’s saying “We’re also going to let a bunch of new housing exist wherever the demand is and where developers can build.” So I think you could explore those tools I think it’s just really important not to let those tools become the thing that you’re doing to resolve the housing crisis because they can’t do that on their own Yoni Appelbaum: I’m really glad you asked the question about what happens to communities that people leave One would be like a cold-blooded economist historically places in America have boomed and then they have gone bust.” If you have high rates of residential mobility what happens to the places that have gone bust is yeah They send back what in the international context we would call remittances that is that they send some of their earnings back home to help support the people who for whatever reason have chosen to stay Their absence tightens the local labor market and drives up wages for those who are still there pulls people into the workforce who otherwise because of disability or substance abuse issues as many of these communities would otherwise have been excluded from the workforce that community will do better with high rates of people flowing out of the community than it does if everybody stays where they are But I don’t think that’s a sufficient answer That doesn’t speak to the pain and the loss of watching a community in decline It doesn’t speak to what it feels like if your kids all go off and move someplace else I spent a week while I was writing the book but I went there because there are neighborhoods in Flint Flint was once the best place you could go to bet on your child’s future it pulls tons of workers up from the south who are seeking better lives for themselves and their kids in Flint and they find it I wanted to go to the worst places in America to raise your kids And Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Atlas showed me census districts in Flint that were in the first percentile the odds that those kids will earn anything that they were down in the first percentile for income for the first percentile and mobility relative to where their parents were And I talked to people because I wanted to know “Why do you live here?” And people have all kinds of stories “Have you ever left Flint?” And you start to get lots of stories I got a job.” But then he lost his apartment so I moved back to Flint and I’ve been here ever since.” And you hear many And so the way I started to think about this was that we tend to get place-based policy wrong because we start with the places but we ought to be starting with the people I can sit in my house in Washington DC and imagine that it’d be really great if Flint revived and that we should come up with lots of programs that strongly incentivize people currently in Flint to stay and invest for the future But then I got to look that dad in the eye who’s living in a place where his kids’ opportunities are in the first percentile and say I’ll give you a federal tax incentive if you lash your daughter’s future to this community I will pay you to stay in a place where your child will have less opportunity.” I think place-based policy becomes a whole lot less attractive the thing that drew wave after wave of immigrant to this country was we let people make their own choices “Go to the places where you think you can build a better future for yourself It’s not good news for the places that are currently in decline and the best hope I have for those places is that many of them have revived historically but they don’t revive by keeping a large pool of underemployed people who are angry and bitter and resentful about being trapped in that community They revive restoring American mobility and having people move there purposefully in order to build a better future for themselves And you can see this in places like Springfield where it got a large influx of Haitian immigrants for whom Springfield was not a depressed industrial community that was well passed its prime It was a place that they thought they could build better futures for themselves and their family That one didn’t have a happy ending but it is a model for what can happen if you make mobility your principle rather than place-based policy Jerusalem Demsas: I think I want to just add a couple of things here you have infinite world demand to have population increase There are people for whom it is only increasing their quality of life escaping different horrible outcomes that they might face in their home countries And there’s a great idea coming out of the economic innovation group’s idea of Heartland Visas where and there’s some places that do require ask for this “We’re facing population decline We want vetted former Afghan translators who are helping us We want Ukrainians who are trying to resettle to come here.” Maine Maine is a great example of this where the Somali population These very rural towns ask for a small influx of Somali immigrants And it completely revives the community in town increasing not just the economic vibrancy of it And I’m not saying this happens without any conflict Of course there’s always conflict when there’s cultural intermixing And the second thing I’ll add is this There’s an essay I have in my book called it’s about where all of the Black people in cities went Gentrification is of course a major concern in urban policymaking But when you look at the most successful policy that kept people in their communities it was not allowing middle-class Black Americans to move to the suburbs until the late 1970s and beyond this is something now where people are looking at a lot of these places If you look across the river in Washington DC and you see a lot of the deprivation that’s there it’s a heavily African American community The reason for that is largely because a lot of Black middle-class people who were not allowed to move to the suburbs The solution then would be to not allow them to buy into the upper-income suburbs that they wanted to go to So whenever people talk about this problem when they’re like it’s such an issue that there are people who are left behind.” I really want them to operationalize what they’re saying Are you saying that you think the people who made the decision to pursue a better life in Prince George’s County Maryland should not have been allowed to do that But I think the big problem here is that we can have sympathy for places that change They’re not inherently valuable outside of that Paul Pierson: That’s the academy board Yoni Appelbaum: They’re playing us off the stage Paul Pierson: I cannot recommend these books too highly maybe we could get Jerusalem Demsas or Yoni Appelbaum to come out and then we found out they would both come and talk to us So we started referring to it as the Dem-Apples meeting Anne Brice (outro): You’ve been listening to Berkeley Talks, a UC Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts. At Berkeley Lab, we’re accelerating the pace of science. Our teams and facilities are powering a new era of discovery, combining artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced data processing into integrated systems of rapid discovery.  From robotic labs that rapidly test new materials to AI-optimized lasers and supercomputers that analyze experimental data in real time, we are fast-tracking breakthroughs for an abundant and reliable energy future.  Our integrated approach is advancing the scientific enterprise across the nation, transforming the speed of discoveries and the way science gets done. These capabilities are critical in enabling the United States to compete in a global race for innovation powered by artificial intelligence. said they had no plans to sell the rare animal which is called Angel and Zeke Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Our teams and facilities are powering a new era of discovery and advanced data processing into integrated systems of rapid discovery From robotic labs that rapidly test new materials to AI-optimized lasers and supercomputers that analyze experimental data in real time we are fast-tracking breakthroughs for an abundant and reliable energy future Our integrated approach is advancing the scientific enterprise across the nation transforming the speed of discoveries and the way science gets done These capabilities are critical in enabling the United States to compete in a global race for innovation powered by artificial intelligence from the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive painted by the famed Mexican artist Diego Rivera Measuring over 5 feet tall and nearly 9 feet wide depicts workers tending an orchard in California bathed in the glow of white-blossoming almond trees A basket holding the fruits of their labor surrounded by children with outstretched arms “What I love about this piece is it actually feels like it’s drawing you in,” said Beth Dupuis UC Berkeley’s senior associate university librarian who led the library’s efforts to display the painting on loan from the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) “It almost feels like a window into another world.” For decades after it was gifted to the campus “Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees,” was on display in Stern Hall the campus’s first dormitory for women it’s starting a new chapter at Doe Library anyone — from art aficionados to stacks-bound students to members of the public — can take in a slice of history and witness firsthand the rare beauty of a work by one of the world’s most celebrated artists The mural’s prominent placement at Doe, which nets hundreds of thousands of visits a year is the result of a conversation started by Julie Rodrigues Widholm a large audience can appreciate the artwork and experts at the nearby museum can more easily monitor its condition “This is a huge opportunity — not just for Berkeley but for anybody who’s interested in art,” said John Alexander BAMPFA’s director of collections and exhibitions who led the museum’s efforts to publicly display the mural In the fall of 1930, Rivera and fellow artist Frida Kahlo journeyed to San Francisco after a lengthy campaign by Bay Area residents to draw the muralist and his talents northward who had married the year before their arrival forged connections with such luminaries as photographer Dorothea Lange and immersed themselves in their art.  But he had yet to paint a mural in the United States While in the Bay Area, he undertook several commissions, including his first painting in the U.S.: “The Allegory of California,” an enrapturing mural gracing a stairwell at the Pacific Stock Exchange Luncheon Club a Berkeley alumna and Olympic gold medalist served as the model for the main figure in the painting — a mythical warrior queen who hails from a 16th-century Spanish novel and has often been portrayed as the “Spirit of California.” Rivera painted “Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees,” now on display in Doe The mural was a private commission by Rosalie Meyer Stern Rivera captured an idyllic scene of laborers working in the Sterns’ orchard The artwork has echoes of Rivera’s home country of which California was once a part — its people and the bounty of the land “He felt a very deep connection with the physical landscape of Mexico and California,” Alexander said “He really kind of saw them as a continuum of culture and physicality.” The youngsters in the foreground of the painting “The figures in the mural originally were me, my sister, and strangely enough, my sister’s imaginary friend, whose name I don’t remember right now,” recalled Peter Haas, one of the Sterns’ grandchildren, in an oral memoir based on interviews at The Bancroft Library’s Oral History Center Rivera had apparently initially neglected to include Walter Haas but corrected the omission by painting him into the background as one of the laborers who was around 8 or 9 years old at the time remembered Kahlo’s presence on the property while Rivera worked “Her charm kind of eased the pain of sitting there for a few hours for my portrait,” said Haas who went on to become the president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co “Her appearances on the scene made life a little more interesting for this young boy.” In 1956, upon Rosalie Meyer Stern’s passing, the mural was bequeathed to the University of California, where it was displayed in Stern Hall at Berkeley The dorm was a fitting location: Its namesake provided funding for the construction of the residence hall The artwork had its most public outing when it was featured in an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The show, “Diego Rivera’s America,” opened in 2022 and brought together more than 150 works to highlight the artist’s output from the 1920s to the mid-1940s a time when Rivera’s travels in Mexico and the U.S were shaping his conception of North America.  “I was very excited to learn that UC Berkeley had this important artist’s work when SFMOMA requested to borrow it for its major Rivera retrospective,” Rodrigues Widholm said “I began to wonder if it could be placed in a more public place on campus upon its return.” the mural came under the care of BAMPFA and officially joined the museum’s renowned collection of more than 25,000 artworks The long-term display of the mural in Doe supports the library’s goal of enriching the lives of students as well as Rodrigues Widholm’s vision to make BAMPFA’s collection more publicly accessible and to foreground the work of Mexican artists “I’m so grateful to our library colleagues who supported the idea of having the artwork installed in Doe Library,” Rodrigues Widholm said the mural is on display in a protective case at a well-traveled crossroads on the first floor near the entrance to the Main (Gardner) Stacks and across from the doorway to the AIDS Memorial Courtyard Although anyone can behold the artwork’s beauty at Doe a Cal ID is required to enter the library after 7 p.m It’s “wonderful and fortuitous” to have Rivera’s work on display in the library a professor in the Department of History of Art Olson hopes to look at the mural with the students in his undergraduate seminar on still life “It is important to see the painting as an artifact — a human-made thing a craft object — that is related to the artist’s body as it is related to our own,” Olson said.The library provides “pretty unprecedented” access and broad exposure to the work of an artistic luminary “I just hope that (the mural) would either ignite or continue to sustain interest in his work and the museum.” but it also has the potential to spark curiosity and inspire inquiry into a range of topics from art to agriculture to the story of the mural itself its subjects and its historical context.“We’re a library so we’re always about education and learning,” she said “I think it could be a good exercise for people of any age to look at the mural and think more deeply about the world around them.” A suspicious device investigation shut down an intersection near the Oakland and Berkeley border Police said late Friday afternoon they were trying to determine if a suspect in a pursuit threw a hand grenade from his vehicle Watch NBC Bay Area News free wherever you are The incident was reported at Rose Street and Martin Luther King Jr Police said the situation started with a high speed chase involving the California Highway Patrol Authorities said the suspect officers were following threw something that looked like a grenade out of the window A bomb squad responded and cleared the suspicious device Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news with the Housing Deconstructed newsletter a material used in photovoltaic solar panels This advance builds on over 20 years of research and brings the scientific community one step closer to replicating the productivity of a green leaf in nature “Five Ways LiSA is Advancing Solar Fuels.”) “Nature was our inspiration,” said Peidong Yang a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering involved in the published work “We had to work on the individual components first but when we brought everything together and realized that it was successful To build a system that mimics photosynthesis Yang and his team followed the natural processes that occur in the leaf of a plant Each individual component of a leaf’s photosynthesizing elements had to be replicated and refined Tapping into the decades’ worth of research the scientists used lead halide perovskite photoabsorbers to imitate a leaf’s light-absorbing chlorophyll And inspired by enzymes that regulate photosynthesis in nature they designed electrocatalysts made of copper that resemble tiny flowers Previous experiments have successfully replicated photosynthesis through the use of biological materials but this work incorporated an inorganic material While the selectivity of copper is lower than biological alternatives the inclusion of copper presents a more durable and longer-lasting option for the artificial leaf system design Work led by researchers in the LiSA project developed the cathode and anode components of the new device. Instruments at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry allowed Yang’s team to integrate the device with metal contacts a solar simulator mimicking a consistently bright sun was used to test the selectivity of the new device Prior innovations across research groups enabled an organic oxidation reaction to take place in the photoanode chamber and created C2 products in the photocathode chamber This breakthrough created a realistic artificial-leaf architecture in a device about the size of a postage stamp – it converts CO2 into a C2 molecule using only sunlight The C2 chemicals produced from this device are precursor ingredients for many industries that produce valuable products in our everyday lives – from plastic polymers to fuel for larger vehicles that can’t yet run off a battery Building upon this fundamental research milestone Yang is now aimed to increase the system’s efficiency and expand the size of the artificial leaf to begin increasing the scalability of the solution The Molecular Foundry is a user facility at Berkeley Lab This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science it is using biology and biological systems to perform certain operations in the manufacturing process The goal is to produce goods and products that can be sold in the marketplace Division Director of Biological Systems and Engineering in the Biosciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory describes how biomanufacturing supports the U.S Blake Simmons is the Division Director of Biological Systems and Engineering in the Biosciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Simmons serves as the Chief Scientific and Technology Officer and Vice President of the Deconstruction Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute Simmons has been part of the Senior Management team at Sandia National Laboratories most recently serving as the Senior Manager of Advanced Biomanufacturing I am Dianne Wentworth with Strategic Communications at Berkeley Lab and I’m here today with Blake Simmons who is the Division Director of Biological Systems and Engineering in the Biosciences Area at the Lab Can you briefly describe what biomanufacturing is Blake Simmons: Biomanufacturing can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it depending on how far in the weeds you want to go it’s how can we use biology and biological systems to perform certain operations in a manufacturing-relevant scenario so that you can produce goods and products that you sell in the marketplace but at its foundation is how do you industrialize biology so that we can create an advanced manufacturing enterprise that is more aligned with our national priorities and manufacturing dominance in the United States Dianne Wentworth: Can you give me some examples of biomanufacturing biomanufacturing has been around for quite a while That’s probably the first example of biomanufacturing at scale Every time that people go out and enjoy their adult beverage of choice in a responsible way we celebrate biomanufacturing because that is feeding sugars to an organism known as brewer’s yeast Other examples include pharmaceuticals and vaccines Those are almost all produced using microbes including the adjuvants that go into vaccines And so I would put forward the biggest contributor to biomanufacturing as it currently stands is in therapeutics Biomanufacturing has been with us every step of the way in human evolution; it is the template for how we exist Dianne Wentworth: Is there money to be made in biomanufacturing The National Academies report highlighted that it’s close to a trillion dollars a year right now across the world It is expected to grow with the era of genomics and biology and the industrialization of biology Dianne Wentworth: Berkeley Lab is known for its innovation What is the Lab doing in this area of biomanufacturing that makes it really stand out from other labs or other organizations Blake Simmons: Biology has been in the DNA of Berkeley Lab all the way back in its beginning And I’d say Berkeley Lab has been at the forefront of that industrialization and maturation of biology Berkeley Lab is rather unique in the ability to scale up biology from the bench to an industrial-relevant scale like the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit that is at Berkeley Lab That is a scale-up facility that is really geared around the critical transition point between things that happen at the bench and going up to 300 liters of production in a fermentor The ABPDU has really demonstrated the power of working with early-stage technologies to get them to scale as quickly as possible It does so in a collaborative facility framework that really gives startups and other companies the ability to de-risk their technologies and realize their presence in the marketplace faster It sounds like biomanufacturing depends on team science to make it all work And I would say that every manufacturing sector out there that is in existence today and has been around for a long time is based on integrated team science in order to make it what it is today There’s a great kind of 0.2 metaphor in the semiconductor industry that back in the early days of the fifties to the seventies there were artisanal semiconductor fabrication facilities That there were pretty much one-offs on the chip design and very rudimentary beginning stages of what would become a technology that would transform the world And it was in the seventies and eighties where they started adopting and transforming it from an artisanal science to an industrially relevant and robust technology That’s where you saw the tipping point and this non-linear gains in the systems and impacts that they could have on society which we move from artisanal practice to industrial standard practice And that’s where you’re going to really see the significant improvements in innovations that will Dianne Wentworth: Is Berkeley Lab leading that tipping point to go to the manufacturing level for biomanufacturing Blake Simmons: I think we’ve been stitching together those integrative tissues for a long time and we’ve also helped set the stage for what comes next in the transfer to the marketplace by virtue of the entrepreneurial spirit that is also at Berkeley Lab and our ability for PIs to start up companies That’s also been a really foundational contribution to establishing what comes next I would say projects like the Agile BioFoundry the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit the National Microbiome Data Collaborative all of the Scientific Focus Areas that we have from the Office of Science What Berkeley Lab is able to do is take that integrated team science approach apply it to really fundamental science and discoveries and innovation and then apply that and transfer it over to the applied side that is more industrially relevant that continuum from fundamental science to use-inspired mission-driven science that’s really driven and defined by the application and or industry interests That full spectrum integrative bioengineering capability and philosophy has kept us at the leading edge and that’s why industry comes to us so often to work with them to advance their state of industrial manufacturing what is different than what we have today from a consumer standpoint so I’m going to give you a very optimistic view of the world I think we’re going to be in an era where our ability to harness biology understanding the plant-soil interface as well understanding plants as biomanufacturing factories as well I think what we’ll have is biology on demand be it a production of an advanced material like locavore; that phenomenon that came out of the California area – think global but act local I think it’s going to be the same thing for manufacturing It’s not going to be reliant on supply chains that come from other parts of the world necessarily You can basically come up with a biological replicator but instead of being synthesized by little atomic printers it’s actually done by microbial communities and the like Dianne Wentworth: So I have one final question for you What excites you about working at Berkeley Lab it’s always the people and the mission Berkeley Lab is an incredibly dynamic place to work at It is always a foundry of new ideas and new approaches and always questioning things and not accepting them as they are but willing them to be what you want them to be and working as a team to get that done And the fact that we are open to new ideas You always feel like you feel lucky every day you come into work You feel like you have your fingers on the pulse of pioneering science and innovation and you get to work with world class scientists from across the world I’ll just say if the future is to be fermented We need to have the engineering discipline and robustness in order to harness that potential and make it a reality I really appreciate your time for our conversation and we’ll look forward to doing this again sometime Milliken has been serving as the chancellor of the University of Texas system since 2018 The University of California Board of Regents today approved the appointment of James B Milliken as the 22nd president of UC’s world-renowned system of 10 campuses and three nationally affiliated laboratories.   Milliken has been serving as the chancellor of the University of Texas (UT) system since 2018 His distinguished career also includes serving as chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY) from 2014 to 2018 president of the University of Nebraska from 2004 to 2014 and senior vice president at the University of North Carolina from 1998 to 2004 It is more important than ever that we expand the education and public service for which UC is so widely admired and which has benefited so many Californians,” said Milliken.  UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons welcomed Milliken as UC’s next president citing his expertise and readiness to collaborate “On behalf of the UC Berkeley community I want to congratulate and welcome James Milliken to the University of California family,” Lyons said “James clearly has a wealth of valuable experience and expertise which will serve us well during a time of challenge and change I look forward to close partnership and collaboration with our new president.” Guided by his commitment to expanding opportunity and student success Milliken has been a leader in expanding access to higher education for low-income students he led a bold initiative to cover the full cost of tuition and fees for qualifying students whose families have incomes under $100,000 Milliken’s leadership at UT also includes record-setting enrollment levels and almost $5 billion in annual research expenditures is one of the largest health care providers in the nation.   “Chancellor Milliken embodies the qualities and leadership experiences the University of California community needs at this moment,” said Janet Reilly “He understands how critical UC’s contributions are to the state and the country and he has decades of experience leading public institutions during times of unprecedented change in higher education Chancellor Milliken is simply the right person for UC at just the right time.”  Milliken expanded a pilot program called ASAP (Accelerated Study in Associate Programs) nearly doubling the three-year graduation rate of community college students and oversaw the launch of the CUNY School of Medicine focused specifically on underserved communities in New York City Milliken was a distinguished professor of Law Public Policy and Education at The CUNY Graduate Center Milliken led a record fundraising campaign and launched a partnership with the United States Strategic Command creating one of the few University Affiliated Research Centers in the country he provided free tuition and mandatory fees for students whose family income was less than $50,000 he held faculty positions in the schools of law and public policy.    “Chancellor Milliken has the depth of wisdom and experience to handle the challenges and opportunities of this position,” said current UC President Michael V M.D. “I have great confidence in both his leadership and his commitment to the University’s enduring values I’m excited about his appointment and look forward to seeing all that he will accomplish at the University.” Milliken was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Nebraska and earned a law degree from New York University He has received numerous prestigious honors including the Distinguished Nebraskan Award presented by the state’s governor the Lifetime Achievement Award from City & State New York and the President’s Award from One Hundred Black Men of New York.  Milliken is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education and previously served on the board of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations “Over the last year we heard extensively from students alumni and partners about the profound impact UC has had on their lives and their aspirations for the future In Chancellor Milliken we found common ground in support of a leader who will serve with integrity openness and a deep commitment to the promise of public education — to advance opportunity access and outcomes in service to the diverse communities of this state,” said Carmen Chu UC regent and chair of the Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President “Chancellor Milliken’s distinguished career and lifelong commitment to public education prepares him to lead the University of California in this new era it is critical we engage leaders adept at navigating change and positioning the institution for long-term success I am proud to welcome Chancellor Milliken and look forward to working with him I would be remiss if I did not thank my colleagues on the Special Committee for their unwavering dedication and guidance in the process and our amazing search team for their partnership and advice through this process.” Milliken will assume his role as UC president on August 1 with a Board-approved annual salary of $1,475,000 who has served as the University’s president since 2020 and who announced that he would step down in July 2025 “Chancellor Milliken’s strong track record of collaborative leadership and his talent for building consensus serve him well as we enter a time of great change in higher education,” said Steven W we have found a highly respected leader who shares our highest aspirations for UC I am confident that he will build on the University’s tradition of academic excellence and exceptional talent to ensure its continued positive impact on society and the world.” The six-month-long search for the University’s next systemwide leader began in November 2024. Guided by rigorous criteria approved by the regents the extensive search process incorporated valuable input from a broad range of stakeholders With nearly 300,000 students and generating over $80 billion in economic activity UC enhances the daily lives of people in California and across the country through world-class educational opportunities “Serving on the search committee was a tremendous responsibility and an opportunity to represent student voices,” said Student Regent Josiah Beharry we were searching for more than just a leader — we were looking for someone who could speak the language of equity with action who understands that affordability is not a privilege we found someone who not only believes in the transformative power of public higher education but who knows how to communicate its worth — to students He is someone who will champion those within the UC system and honor our responsibility to the communities beyond its walls His collaborative spirit and unwavering belief in the power of education to open doors make him the kind of leader this moment demands.”   Researchers find that Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the North American desert iguana — evidence of the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any land animal Iguanas have often been spotted rafting around the Caribbean on vegetation and evidently caught a 600-mile ride from Central America to colonize the Galapagos Islands A new analysis conducted by biologists at the University of California and the University of San Francisco (USF) suggests that sometime after about 34 million years ago Fiji iguanas landed on the isolated group of South Pacific islands after voyaging 5,000 miles from the western coast of North America — the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any terrestrial vertebrate Overwater dispersal is the main way newly formed islands get populated by plants and animals often leading to the evolution of new species and entirely new ecosystems Understanding how these colonizations happen has fascinated scientists since the time of Charles Darwin the originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection to be published next week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the arrival of the ancestors of the Fiji iguanas coincided with the formation of these volcanic islands is based on the timing of the genetic divergence of the Fiji iguanas biologists had proposed that Fiji iguanas may have descended from an older lineage that was more widespread around the Pacific but has since died out leaving Brachylophus as the sole iguanids in the western Pacific Ocean Another option was that the iguanas hitchhiked from tropical parts of South America and then through Antarctica or even Australia though there is no genetic or fossil evidence to support this The new analysis puts those theories to rest “We found that the Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the North American desert iguanas, something that hadn’t been figured out before, and that the lineage of Fiji iguanas split from their sister lineage relatively recently, much closer to 30 million years ago, either post-dating or at about the same time that there was volcanic activity that could have produced land,” said lead author Simon Scarpetta a herpetologist and paleontologist who is a former postdoctoral fellow at  UC Berkeley and is now an assistant professor at USF in the Department of Environmental Science “That they reached Fiji directly from North America seems crazy,” said co-author Jimmy McGuire UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and herpetology curator at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology “But alternative models involving colonization from adjacent land areas don’t really work for the time frame since we know that they arrived in Fiji within the last 34 million years or so This suggests that as soon as land appeared where Fiji now resides Regardless of the actual timing of dispersal While sailors today can take advantage of favorable winds to reach Fiji from California in about a month an iguana — or more likely a group of iguanas — would probably have taken much longer to ride flotsam through the doldrums and across the equator to Fiji and Tonga iguanas are large and herbivorous and used to long periods without food and water And if the flotsam consisted of uprooted trees “You could imagine some kind of cyclone knocking over trees where there were a bunch of iguanas and maybe their eggs and then they caught the ocean currents and rafted over,” Scarpetta said there are over 2,100 species in the suborder Iguania a large group that also includes animals such as chameleons What most people think of as iguanas are the Western Hemisphere family of lizards that include and mostly look like the widespread green iguana of Central and South America that Carl Linnaeus described as Iguana iguana in 1758 There are 45 species of Iguanidae living in the Caribbean and the tropical These include the well-known marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands but also the chuckwallas of the American Southwest sitting all alone in the middle of the Pacific The four species on Fiji and Tonga are listed as endangered predation by invasive rats and exploitation by smugglers feeding the exotic pet trade lived around the Pacific Rim and somehow made their way to the middle of the Pacific They may have journeyed by land and sea from America via the Bering Land Bridge and on through Indonesia and Australia or down along the Pacific coast of the Americas and through Antarctica Or they could have rafted from South America with the Humboldt Current Previous genetic analyses of a few genes for iguanid lizards were inconclusive about the relationship of the Fiji iguanas to all the rest while a postdoctoral fellow with McGuire a few years ago embarked on a comprehensive survey of all genera in the Iguania to clarify the family tree of the group “Different relationships have been inferred in these various analyses none with particularly strong support,” McGuire said “So there was still this uncertainty about where Brachylophus really fits within the iguanid phylogeny Simon’s data really nailed this thing.” Scarpetta collected genome-wide sequence DNA from more than 4,000 genes and from tissues of more than 200 iguanian specimens housed in museum collections around the world one result stood out clearly: The Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the iguanas in the genus Dipsosaurus The most widespread of these is the North American desert iguana which is adapted to the searing heat of the deserts of the American Southwest and northern Mexico The other species in the genus is native to Santa Catalina Island in the Sea of Cortez are resistant to starvation and dehydration if there had to be any group of vertebrate or any group of lizard that really could make an 8,000 kilometer journey across the Pacific on a mass of vegetation a desert iguana-like ancestor would be the one,” Scarpetta said The analysis determined that the two lineages which doesn’t fit with earlier theories of the origin of the Fiji iguanas “When you don’t really know where Brachylophus fits at the base of the tree then where they came from can also be almost anywhere,” McGuire said “So it was much easier to imagine that Brachylophus originated from South America since we already have marine and land iguanas in the Galapagos that almost certainly dispersed to the islands from the mainland.” And because the Fiji Islands emerged from the sea also about 34 million years ago the iguanas may have serendipitously intersected the islands not long after Other islands aside from Fiji and Tonga could also have harbored iguanas but it is the nature of volcanic islands to disappear as readily as they appear snakes and lizards since before high school continues to analyze genome-wide data for Iguanian lizards to learn more about their evolutionary relationships and to infer their movements and interactions through time and space Other co-authors of the paper are Robert Fisher of the U.S Benjamin Karin and Ammon Corl of UC Berkeley Jone Niukula of NatureFiji-MareqetiViti in Suva and Todd Jackman of Villanova University in Pennsylvania Scarpetta was supported by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellowship The organization convenes leaders from across disciplines to examine new ideas and work together to meet the nation’s challenges Six UC Berkeley faculty members from a diverse range of fields are among nearly 250 newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization announced in a recent press release The new Berkeley electees include leading experts in mathematics neurobiology and comparative literature.  the academy has honored excellence and convened leaders from across disciplines and divides to examine new ideas address issues of importance and work together to meet the nation’s challenges “These new members’ accomplishments speak volumes about the human capacity for discovery They are a stellar testament to the power of knowledge to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding,” said Laurie L “We invite every new member to celebrate their achievement and join the Academy in our work to promote the common good.” Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge Ian Agol Agol studies the geometry and topology of curved shapes and spaces Yang Dan professor of molecular and cell biology and of neuroscience and Pivotal Life Sciences Chancellor’s Chair in Neuroscience Dan’s lab uses a variety of techniques — including optogenetics imaging and virus-mediated circuit tracing — to identify which circuits in the mammalian brain control sleep and how the frontal cortex of the brain exerts top-down executive control.  Leslie V. Kurke professor of ancient Greek and Roman studies and of comparative literature Kurke specializes in archaic and classical Greek literature with particular emphasis on archaic Greek poetry in its social context Donald C. Rio Rio’s lab studies how certain pieces of DNA move around in the genome and how proteins can modify gene activity in different tissues by cutting up and reassembling messenger RNA These processes are critical for understanding evolution gene regulation and the origins of some diseases Dawn X. Song professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences Song’s studies security and privacy issues in computer systems and networks applied cryptography and the intersection of machine learning and security Philip B. Stark Stark studies inference problems and uncertainty quantification with applications in the physical and social sciences His accomplishments include creating methods for auditing elections in more than 15 U.S A pet store in Berkeley that lays claim to the title of oldest reptile shop in the US has been taking care of a California king snake with a rare mutation — and even more rare is that it has survived over six months Two-headed snakes are rare finds but not incredibly so. As The Reptarium explains occurs in about 1 out of 100,000 snake births which means two brains to operate one body system." East Bay Vivarium employees Angel Hamilton and Zeke White tell the Chronicle this week that they were excited to find the newly hatched two headed snakes have limited mobility and are more easily susceptible to becoming prey — even if they have fully functioning internal systems has seen several two-headed snakes hatch over the years but they never survived more than hours or days To everyone's surprise, though, Angel/Zeke, as the snake has been named, seems to be doing okay more than six months on. So they decided to share their find on Instagram in late March An x-ray that you can see below shows Angel and Zeke's shared digestive system which the pet shop staff says seems to be fully functioning And while the two heads each have minds of their own, literally, pulling in opposite directions at times, only one, the right head, has been doing the eating when presented with food. Still, they think when the snake reaches adulthood, the left head may do some of the eating as well, and has shown interest in food. (Here's a reel of the feeding process involving a frozen and thawed baby mouse The shop staff also thinks that the smaller may be a bit smarter and/or aware of its surroundings Follow the store on Instagram for updates on Angel/Zeke Emberton still isn't too confident that the snake will survive a long time he is considering selling it to a museum or zoo Kamala Harris is reportedly planning to sharply criticize Trump in a speech in SF tonight; Oakland teachers are still intending to strike tomorrow; and we can expect some rain this weekend around the Bay Barmann is a fiction writer and web editor who's lived in San Francisco for 20+ years UC Berkeley researchers explain how a brain-computer interface restored Ann Johnson’s ability to speak after 18 years Follow Berkeley Voices, a Berkeley News podcast about the people and research that make UC Berkeley the world-changing place that it is. Review us on Apple Podcasts. See all Berkeley Voices episodes. When Ann Johnson had a rare brainstem stroke at age 30 she was playing volleyball with her friends she’d been a talkative and outgoing person and coached volleyball and basketball at a high school in Saskatchewan She’d just had a baby a year earlier with her new husband.  Because the connection between her brain and her body didn’t work anymore It’s thanks to researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco who are working to restore people’s ability to communicate using a brain-computer interface has enormous potential to make the workforce and the world more accessible to people like Ann.  we’re exploring the theme of transformation of perspective — shows up in the work that happens every day at UC Berkeley New episodes come out on the last Monday of each month See all episodes of the series. Anne Brice (narration): This is Berkeley Voices It had been 18 years since Ann Johnson heard her own voice when she had a brainstem stroke while she was warming up for a volleyball game with friends and Ann lost the ability to speak and move all the muscles in her body She’d just had a baby a year earlier with her new husband and had given a joyful 15-minute-long speech at their wedding It’s what’s commonly known as locked-in syndrome It’s a rare condition when someone has near complete paralysis and no ability to communicate naturally It’s most often caused by a stroke or the neurological disorder ALS She was part of a clinical trial being conducted by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco that’s trying to restore people’s ability to communicate using a brain-computer interface has enormous potential to make the workforce and the world more accessible to people like Ann Gopala Anumanchipalli: My involvement on this project Anne Brice (narration): Gopala Anumanchipalli is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley to understand how speech happens in the brain what’s enabling us from going into what we are thinking to what we’re actually saying out loud here is the part of the brain that is actually responsible for speech production and here is how we can computationally model this process so we can synthesize just from brain activity what someone might be saying they figured out how to go to the source of knowledge — the brain — and then bypass what’s broken — the connection to the body — and restore what’s lost they’re using a neuroprosthesis that’s reading from the part of the brain that processes speech and Ann joined as the third participant in 2022 which is part of the Berkeley AI Research Lab He was a co-lead on the study with Anumachipalli and Chang where he worked with researchers to create an AI model that would help restore Ann’s ability to communicate Kaylo Littlejohn: My role in the trial was primarily to lead the modeling efforts so training the decoders and also working with the participant working with clinical research coordinators to really try and train a good model that can translate Ann’s brain activity into the desired output which is to restore her natural voice and the content of what she’s trying to say Anne Brice (narration): Although the population of people who lose their ability to speak in this way is relatively small they are among the most vulnerable in terms of quality of life She communicates mostly using an eye-tracking system that allows her to select each letter to spell words out on a computer screen She can only write about 14 words per minute So when she finally heard her thoughts out loud for the first time in nearly two decades Anne Brice (narration): To give Ann an embodied experience researchers had her choose from a selection of avatars And they used a recording of her wedding speech to recreate her voice An implant rested on top of the region of her brain that processes speech Then they showed her sentences and asked her to try to say them and she has the brain implant and a connector from that brain implant into the computer nearby and she essentially tries to speak as best as she can and the neural recording device is sensing those signals and then she’ll essentially try to speak a sentence And the neural decoding device will sense those signals and then they will be sent to the computer where the AI model resides Just like how Siri translates your voice to text this AI model translates the brain activity into the text or the audio or the facial animation Gopala Anumanchipalli: The attempt to speak is such a strong signal that we don’t even need an AI model there the voltage is there that you can look at precisely which is what enables us to easily sense the intent to speak which is very different than thinking casually It’s a very volitional system because the intent of speech is very even if her body currently is not capable of that my colleague at UC Berkeley News who co-produced this episode is really for her to assume that if you are speaking a sentence but we believe she is cooperative and she is doing that here she’s trying to speak and this is what the data looks like That’s the training process which lets the AI model to learn: OK you have to really be trying to say something We really wanted to give her the agency to do this In some sessions where she’s doing nothing and it does nothing because she’s not trying to say anything Only when she’s attempting to say something do we hear a sound or action command this brain-computer interface is not reading all thoughts in a person’s mind it’s picking up strong signals when a person tries to talk When you watch a video of Ann speaking with the brain-computer interface when she first joined the clinical trial you can hear her voice piecing together words in singsongy tones Here she is speaking in the clinical trial in 2023 Recording of Ann speaking using the brain-computer interface during the clinical trial in 2023 (courtesy of the Anumanchipalli Lab/UC Berkeley and the Chang Lab/UCSF): What do you think of my artificial voice Anne Brice (narration): You can’t hear it here but there was about an eight-second delay between the prompt and when the avatar speaks But just last month, the team published new research in Nature Neuroscience that shows a dramatic decrease in this delayed response Gopala Anumanchipalli: The paper from 2023 it had this sequence-to-sequence architecture meaning we had to wait for an entire attempt of a sentence and then convert that sentence to sound or movement and so on Whereas now we are working with this streaming architecture much like how we’re speaking right now We are not speaking a full sentence and then producing it; we are speaking on the fly Anne Brice (narration): Now the models are listening in and translating relaying all the information and converting it to sound in real time with only about a one-second delay the avatar moves its mouth when Ann’s talking and makes little movements when she’s asked to make a face Although the avatar wasn’t used in the most recent study researchers believe the streaming architecture will work with the avatar Anumanchipalli says it’s possible there could be 3D photorealistic avatars Gopala Anumanchipalli: We can imagine that we can completely create a digital clone that is very much plugged in like how Zoom lets us have all these effects like when do you imagine … things are just advancing so fast Gopala Anumanchipalli: I definitely think so we need multiple avenues with which developments must happen One is the breakneck speed of research that is happening in AI in enabling all these avatar kinds of worlds the groundbreaking research that we have been involved in with respect to prosthesis development All of these three have to happen hand in hand It’s not something that we have off-the-shelf models that we can use now So the development must happen in the science as well — all of them together to make this happen Ann had her implant removed for a reason unrelated to the trial But she continues to communicate with the research team Gopala Anumanchipalli: Ann is very eloquent She sends us very elaborate emails using her current technology on what she felt how it went and what she likes and what she prefers to see Anne Brice (narration): She enjoyed hearing her own voice and the streaming synthesis approach made her feel in control She also wants the implants to be wireless instead of plugged into a computer — something the research team is working on Anne Brice: Thinking further in the future communicating exactly what they want with people around them but what I’m seeing are innovations that enable us to let people have the best quality of their lives And if that means they have a digital version of themselves communicating for them that’s what they need to be able to do What we are working on are much better models that are faster that don’t need a lot of training time to get there you have prosthetic hands that one could buy We need to be able to have neuroprostheses so that it becomes a standard of care and not The whole metaverse is one way of thinking about it where there is a digital avatar of yourself where you’re communicating and interacting and actually be as able-bodied as the rest of us in a Zoom call can be (Music: “Hedgeliner” by Blue Dot Sessions) Anne Brice (narration): When writing about her stroke But she’s come to realize that she can use own experiences to help others She now wants to become a counselor in a physical rehabilitation facility ideally one day using a neuroprosthesis to talk with her clients She’s written, quote “I want patients there to see me and to know their lives are not over now I want to show them that disabilities don’t need to stop us or slow us down.” a UC Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs This episode was produced by Kara Manke and me Script editing by Tyler Trykowski and Gretchen Kell You can find Berkeley Voices wherever you listen to podcasts To watch a video of Ann using the brain-computer interface, and to read a transcript of the episode, visit UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts There’s a link to the story in our show notes This was the seventh episode of our series on transformation we’re exploring how transformation — of ideas New episodes of the series come out on the last Monday of each month Our last episode of the series will come out at the end of May that features lectures and conversations at Berkeley You can find all of our podcast episodes on UC Berkeley News at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts You can also try using the site navigation or search tool to find your content