Berkeley News

Three people seated on a stage holding microphones and speaking to an audience about the importance and challenges of protecting free speech.

Campus & community

How the Berkeley Liberty Initiative champions free speech in divided times

In a divisive election year and with tensions high on campuses nationwide, the BLI is beginning its next chapter under new program leadership and expanded outreach to students and faculty. It’s also holding to its founding principles.

huge plumes of smoke billow into the sky over New York City's buildings after the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001

Campus & community

9/11 shaped the U.S. in unimaginable ways. This class helps Gen Z students grasp how

Cars drive through smoggy air on a California highway

Mind & body

California has dramatically improved its air quality, but racial disparities persist

Karla Vega Cervantes, a UC Berkeley Chemical Engineering student, sits before foliage in the background.

Campus & community

How one chemical engineering student came to thrive at Berkeley

Spotlight: Election 2024

photo illustration showing, on left, two U.S. men in 2024 offering the Nazi salute, and on right, hundreds of Nazis offering the same salute in 1930s Germany.

Fascism shattered Europe a century ago — and historians hear echoes today in the U.S.

Vice President. Kamala Harris wears a serious expression as she stands before a pair of microphones

Kamala Harris’ hidden foe: pervasive bias against powerful middle-aged women

Kamala Harris speaking at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, with a crowd of people cheering behind her.

A UC Berkeley linguist explores what Kamala Harris’ voice and speech reveal about her identity

Research

A crowd of supporters holding signs and wearing Trump-branded shirts cheer as Donald Trump, blurred in the foreground, walks onto a stage.

Politics & society

Sociologist examines Appalachian voters’ rightward shift, with Trump as their ‘shame shield’

UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild traveled to eastern Kentucky to study how pride and shame affect people’s politics. Then came ‘a perfect storm.’

outline sketches of grains: corn, wheat and rice

Research

Agriculture accelerated human genome evolution to capture energy from starchy foods

Landscape architect Walter Hood sits, smiling, as he speaks to the camera next to a still photo of a bridge.

Research

Landscape architecture is more people than plants, says UC Berkeley professor

a bearded man wearing goggles adjust equipment inside a fume hood

Research

New process vaporizes plastic bags and bottles, yielding gases to make new, recycled plastics

an orange slice of bread and an orange liquid in a white bowl being topped with a drop of amber liquid from a pipette

Research

Can fungi turn food waste into the next culinary sensation?

Arts & culture

The white cover of an artist book with a sepia-toned drawing of an eye next to a row of several vials labeled things like,

Artists’ books shine in new exhibit at the UC Berkeley Library

A black and white illustration depicts an artist’s imagining of an aquifer, showing a large underground mass sprouting a collection of small arms that reach for the roots of plants growing above.

Can an aquifer be injured? Scholar brings a disability lens to ecological repair

More Arts & culture

Podcasts

Aileen Liu, Hernan Garcia, Christian Paiz and Arianne Eason sit in chairs on a dark stage and talk

Berkeley Talks: What is understanding? Berkeley scholars discuss

Michael Pollan and Mina Kim sit on stage in conversation

Berkeley Talks: It’s not just psychedelics that change minds, says Michael Pollan. Storytelling does, too.

People

A portrait of Eric T. Meyer standing with his arms crossed.

Meet Eric Meyer, the new dean of Berkeley’s I School

Rich Lyons: What free speech, community mean to UC Berkeley

Campus & community

A bagpiper plays and walks through the crowd at the 2024 campus memorial.

UC Berkeley gathers to remember those lost over the past year

A photo of students on Cal’s men’s and women’s golf teams standing in 2 rows

$23 million gift for Cal Golf marks largest endowment in Athletics history

More Campus & community