Join us on Friday, Oct. 22, at 10:30 AM (PT) for a talk by John Battles on the major challenges facing California in regard to wildfire risk and climate change. Despite being an international leader on limiting climate change, California confronts a wildfire crisis that has ravaged the state. Getting ahead of this impending interlocked catastrophe requires a vision and strategy that will accelerate learning and rapidly transform new insights into effective practice. Battles, Professor of Forest Ecology at UC Berkeley, is a field scientist engaged in long-term research of temperate forest ecosystems. His goal is to understand how and why forests change. All are welcome to join this online event! RSVP here to attend.

There are many promising climate change solutions, but they face multiple hurdles — technical, procedural, political — before they impact policy at the scale needed. Join us on Friday, Oct. 29, at 10:30 AM (PT) for a talk by Ken Alex who will discuss some of the hurdles to scaling-up and how we might overcome them. Alex is the director of Project Climate at UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy, & Environment. He was a senior policy advisor to former CA Governor Jerry Brown. Prior to that, he was the head of the California Attorney General’s Environment section. All are welcome to join this online event! RSVP here to attend.

All are welcome to join us for our Winter Showcase on Friday, October 29 at 1 PM (PT) — a great opportunity to hear directly from faculty about their upcoming winter courses, including explorations of climate change, race and European art, American opera, the Kennedy dynasty, high modernist poetry, China and India, the Fab Four and the Stones, and much (much) more. This event is free and open to all. RSVP here to attend. Our winter term starts the week of January 17. 

COVID-19, ironically, has offered fertile ground for experimentation and discoveries on how technology can benefit older adults. OLLI members and campus colleagues are invited to join us on Friday, Nov. 5, at 10:30 AM (PT) for a talk by David Lindeman on how specific technology-enabled interventions that support older adults and family caregivers rapidly expanded during the pandemic and what may lay ahead for the future. Lindeman is Director Health, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), UC Berkeley, and Director, Center for Technology and Aging (CTA). RSVP here to attend.

OLLI members and campus colleagues are invited to join us on Friday, January 28, at 10:30 AM (PT), for important conversation about how we as individuals, as communities and as a society can chart a better path to diversity and social justice. The panel discussion will be moderated by Berkeley professor Darren Zook. More information and the link to RSVP coming soon.

Join us on Friday, February 4, at 10:30 AM (PT) for a conversation with community leader and lawyer Zach Norris, who will lay out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment toward growth and support systems for our families and communities. Norris is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which creates campaigns related to civic engagement, juvenile justice, and police brutality, shifting economic resources away from prisons and punishment and towards economic opportunity. This online event is free and open to all. The link to RSVP will be posted shortly.

The ACLU is actively considering litigation challenging bans on inclusive education that have been introduced or adopted in dozens of states and localities. These laws and policies claim to target "critical race theory," but their implications are far broader than any particular scholarly discipline or school of thought. On their face, and as applied by local officials, many bans on inclusive education violate the First Amendment. Join us on Friday, February 25, at 10:30 AM (PT) for a presentation by Emerson Skyes, attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who will discuss how to fight bans on inclusive education. This online event is free and open to all. The link to RSVP will be posted shortly.