Why I Give a Damn About Politics and You Should Too

October 22, 2013 | Simmi Dhillon Remember that one time the US federal government shut down? Oh, right, that was only three weeks ago. As can be expected, this wave of popularity towards politics is subsiding as quickly as it swelled. As a cynic (but really, an idealist) who has seen this way too many times, I can’t say I’m Read More

“Inequality For All” Fails to Ask The Tougher Questions

September 28, 2013 | Hanna Morris “I’m sorry sir, we only have the 70% cacao dark chocolate at the moment.” The movie theater concession salesman’s apologetic revelation of the theater’s dearth of 92% cacao dark chocolate bars (which seems like a dangerously high percentage of cacao anyways) is met with an upturned Read More

The Snowden Showdown

July 1, 2013 | Hanna Morris Insults are a funny thing. Although I am a true fan of adopting new and creative comeback words and phrases for when my own limited mental prowess fails (see a selection of my working list of personally developed insults at the end of this blog post), I do realize (for the most part) my own ignorance. Read More

The Context of Radical Islam

May 13, 2013 | Rohit Islamic radicalism is one of those issues that the American media always completely fails to properly analyze. Recall back to the aftermath of 9/11 – the airwaves were cluttered with talk about “why do they hate us?” and the “clash of civilizations” and other polarizing, binary rhetoric. I actually Read More

Please, Don’t Frack My Mother!

April 11, 2013 | Hanna Morris “You can do anything that you want to do…just please, don’t frack my mother!” This lyrical ballad written by Sean Lennon and featuring notable celebrities ranging from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Yoko Ono to Adrian Grenier, has generated a rather hostile Read More

How Debate Destroys Communication: Six Principles of Effective Argumentation

April 11, 2013 | Grant Suk “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” Read More

Rage Against the Japanese

April 7, 2013 | Sarah Tang If you keep up with foreign politics like a good Berkeley student does, you may have heard about the China’s renewed animosity towards Japan sparked by a territorial dispute over a group of small rocky islands near Taiwan that the Chinese call Diaoyu and the Japanese call Senkaku. The contention Read More

Reflecting on Robert Reich, Part III: Class Struggle

March 30, 2013 | Rohit This is Part III of a three-part reflection on an interview with Robert Reich. You can read the full transcript here, and you can pick up a free copy of Caliber to read the feature article on the interview. This part contains a discussion of the general politics and social change – specifically, Read More