Learn more about OLLI's courses, lectures, and social programming and hear directly from the faculty about the courses and workshops they will be teaching.

Meet Lafayette faculty and OLLI members and learn about the courses and workshops offered in Lafayette! 

The last 8 years have seen a revolution in approved cancer treatments, based on the development of medicines that arouse our immune systems to attack and eliminate our own cancer cells. These breakthroughs in immunotherapy of cancer were based on a deep understanding of the immune system itself, coupled with the first direct evidence that immune responses that attack human cancers occur naturally, albeit weakly. The treatments amplify natural immune responses against cancer, and are effective in some types of cancer, leading effectively to cures in many patients. They are less effective or not effective in many other types of cancer. The success has galvanized major new efforts by researchers and drug companies alike to develop complementary and more broadly effective medications to treat other types of cancer. The talk will describe how these medicines work, their current limitations, and the prospects for novel and more effective immunotherapy approaches, including those based on research in the speaker’s laboratory.

Weaving a Dialogue Between Science and Spirituality
There is widespread agreement that the nature of mind is among the greatest mysteries in contemporary science: who are we as conscious beings and how do we relate to the physical world we find ourselves in? How does our mind / consciousness relate to our brain and body? Questions concerning the nature of mind can easily evoke associations to spirit and soul, and the many emotional reactions people may have in response to these notions. This can bring us close to what is often considered the domain of religion (and apparently outside the domain of science), a proximity that can be disturbing to some. I argue that the science of mind is poised at a revolutionary turning point, with profound implications for an evolving dialogue between science and spiritual / religious traditions. Indeed, I view this evolving dialogue as perhaps the major challenge of our present era.

The injustices of the American criminal justice system are blatant, confirming the common sense prejudice that poor people are the most criminal, the most dangerous, the most deserving of social exclusion and persistent distrust. Under the Trump administration, law and order policies have intensified, but they have a long, bipartisan history. Drawing upon his latest book, Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States, Tony Platt also explores the long history of efforts by reformers and activists to change the inequities that permeate policing, courts, and prisons. They have mostly failed, and in some cases resulted in the expansion of the net of social control. We need bold new ideas and a strategic vision of what it will take to achieve justice for all in this era of authoritarian disorder.

Learn more about OLLI's courses, lectures, and social programming and hear directly from the faculty about the courses and workshops they will be teaching.

Doors open at 9:30 a.m., program begins at 10:00 a.m. No need to RSVP!

Meet Lafayette faculty and OLLI members and learn about the courses and workshops offered in Lafayette! 

What are some of the current challenges to maintaining social welfare programs for the nation's most vulnerable people in the Trump era?

A forgotten history of how our government segregated America.

Transformation of work through the gig economy and through the decline of unions presents unprecedented challenges for regulating work for the common good. But it also presents opportunities for a fresh start.

How are individuals and groups racially classified, what are the meanings attached to different racial categories, and what impact do these categories have on a range of policies and practices? Taking the U.S. Census as a site of racial classification, we'll examine shifting state definitions of race and how individuals and groups assert, embrace, reject, and negotiate different racial categories and identities.

Marshall Krause and Roy Ulrich will discuss the Supreme Court's 2018 term.

Marshall Krause is the former chief attorney of ACLU of Northern California, and a former professor of political science at SFSU.

Roy Ulrich teaches at UC Berkeley's Goldman Scool of Public Policy.

The Living New Deal has been identifying, mapping, and interpreting the vast physical matrix of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal for over a decade. Like those of a lost civilization, these artifacts speak to us in a language we have been made to forget of a time when government was designed to serve all of its citizens rather than those who could afford to buy it.

With OLLI faculty writers:

Speaker: Corrina Gould, spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone