OLLI Director Susan Hoffman in the classroom
At OLLI @Berkeley, the spotlight is on you.
This is your learning community — built to your expressed interests and the ways you like to learn and engage with others. We heard from you in our Annual Member Survey that OLLI hit the mark 99% of the time with the quality of faculty and in the hybrid learning experience.
Our fall harvest of courses and events continue to enhance the learning opportunities.
For some, it may be an introduction to an entirely new topic, while for others it’s the continuation of conversations begun long ago. We know several members who've returned to the classroom with teachers, writers and thinkers from their own campus days 50 years ago. You know who you are!
For most, of course, we explore entirely new terrain and new faculty.
Our community is fresh with insight and a cosmopolitan learning community that spans the country. Livestreaming has allowed us to reach beyond the Bay Area as well as beyond decades. Your voice — wherever you are — contributes to Berkeley’s breadth and rigor.
In the News, In Classrooms
While media and memes spin out the national politics, OLLI wrestles with how to take you beyond the headlines with Adam Hochschild’s and Richard Bell’s courses, where both reveal the threats to American democracy, persistent antagonisms over race, immigration and workers' rights. Arlie Hochschild gives us sociological research on how America’s disaffected and most dependent upon federal subsidy remain resolutely anti-government. We are reminded by Art Eckstein’s selection of films from the Reagan era about how powerful and misleading that yearn for the simpler times truly is. And Bill Sokol brings us his outraged view of the politicization of the Supreme Court and the remedies we have yet to instigate.
History also paves the way to a greater understanding of Gaza. Historian Marwan Hanania, Jordanian born and Ivy League educated, offers a more complete tutorial on Israel and Palestine. The lessons of history: Mick Chantler’s "Democracy in Peril: England Between the Wars," shows how antisemitism steers in close proximity to fascism, and Marion Gerlind’s course on German writer Heinrich Böll’s short stories and novels, how devastating war is.
Anthropologist Eric Simon’s take on Darwin will illuminate what our Berkeley colleague, Professor Dacher Keltner says was Darwin’s real intention, the survival of the kindest. In our frightening mix of national and international tensions, can “we” find peace?
Learning About Ourselves, Life's Questions ... and Joy
This fall, Stephanie Wells explores the intellectual and cultural depths of sexual identity, while Bill Smoot and Tony Kashani delve into humanity and the meaning of life. Pierluigi Serraino takes us inside our own response to design and architecture and Barry Schwartz offers the social imperative for practical wisdom.
Two courses — Lauren Carley’s Joy of Singing and Sara Orem’s Cultivating Joy — show us how and why to experience joy. And celebrated music faculty Pete Elman, Ben Simon, and Dave Raudlauer bring us joy through sharing the work of music legends—Beatles, Rolling Stones, Leonard Bernstein, SF’s Harlem of the West. For a chance to laugh, Mill Valley film curator Karen Davis brings an appreciation of the Coen Brothers.
Additionally, check our calendar for upcoming conversations in Vital Aging on life stages, America’s Unfinished Work on how to counter conservative arguments against reparations and gender affirmation, and our biannual Words Over Time for an intergenerational exchange on misinformation and disinformation during this national election period.
Every day, we work to provide insightful ways to better know ourselves and our world, and reasons to be hopeful.
See you in the classroom!
Susan Hoffman
Director, OLLI @Berkeley