Inauguration Week Events

The first week of our new semester coincides with the Inauguration of a new President of the United States.  Recognizing that our campus is brimming with activities and events that address the timely issues of our shared political landscape, the offices for Equity & Inclusion and of Arts + Design have collaborated with Campus Public Affairs to create a schedule of events, lectures, and other gatherings that address a range of topics and welcome diverse perspectives.  We invite you to join the many different campus organizations that are addressing important issues for 2017.  

Programming at our university serves many roles; some events offer safe spaces of reflection and of healing; others offer spaces of deliberation, provocation, self-reflexive learning, or creative problem solving. As a public research university, our spaces are arenas for learning and for debate, propelled by a commitment to deep inquiry, empirical research, and thoughtful investigation.

The Value of Difficult Conversations in the Classroom
The American Cultures Center and the Division of Equity & Inclusion

Multicultural Community Center, MLK Jr. Student Union 
12:00-2:00 pm
To learn more, please visit the event page. 

Given the very real and fraught conversations elicited by the election, its racism, xenophobia, sexism, and so much else, please join AC faculty, Brandi Wilkins Catanese, Michael Cohen, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Khalid Kadir, and Zeus Leonardo, in a discussion addressing the value of coming together around difficult conversations? How might we, or can we, best prepare to engage our students in articulating their thinking and learn with each other? 

RADICAL CRAFT JAM: A Day of Pre-Inauguration Artistic Resistance + Production! 

Art Practice Department

All day
Wurster and Kroeber Halls

The art studios at Wurster and Kroeber Halls open up for a day of drop-in visual resistance and production in the lead-up to the January 20 Inauguration (J20). Students, staff, faculty, and the general public are invited to work together to make screenprints, fabric banners, ceramic talismans, laser cut stencils, political puppets, and more! Come with ideas and creative energy, and leave with your very own forms of visual resistance! Presented by “Someday Is Now”, a collective group of students, faculty, and staff at UC Berkeley’s Art Practice Dept.

#OurTomorrow 

Nationwide Social Media campaign across colleges and universities including Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Brown, Columbia, Wisconsin/Madison, Cornell, Tufts and others.

Division of Equity and Inclusion
Launching on Monday, January 16, 2017 thru Inauguration Day and beyond

Students, faculty and staff are invited to use #OurTomorrow on all social media platforms to show and tell the country what you and your fellow students and colleagues are doing to support equity and inclusion and have an impact during these changing times. For example, Tweet information about a gathering you're going to on Inauguration Day or send an Instagram of the work you're doing to help protect and expand the civil rights of our DREAMer students. 

Since the 2016 election, many of us have been experiencing fear and uncertainty along with the desire and need to take action. In response, campuses across the nation are joining together in a campaign to provide support to students during this time of change, promote equal opportunity for all, and encourage people to get involved locally, nationally, and globally through civic and public service. This effort is nonpartisan, inclusive of diverse perspectives, and a celebration of the profound power we all have to make change.

Urban Ghosts: The Future Of Artists, Place and Displacement in The American City

Berkeley Arts + Design | Arts Research Center
7pm
The David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
Contact: lauren.pearson@berkeley.edu

Traditionally, artists have flocked to the cities, turning them into engines of creativity. But after Ghost Ship and under a new Trump presidency, what are the prospects for artists and culture in the American city? Is the era of Maker culture and place-making giving way to an era of intensified displacement? How might artists, educational institutions, government institution, the non-profit sector, and creative companies respond to the new conditions? What strategies might we use to preserve affordability, diversity, and creativity?

Featuring: Roberto Bedoya, Cultural Affairs Manager, City of Oakland; Jeff Chang, Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts; Moy Eng, Executive Director, Community Arts Stabilization Trust; Walter Hood, Founder, Hood Design and Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design, UC Berkeley; Marta Riggins, Director of Employee Experience & Marketing, Pandora; and Fantastic Negrito, Musician. Moderated by Shannon Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design, UC Berkeley.

Supported by Berkeley Arts + Design, The Arts Research Center, and the David Brower Center.

#J18: Teach! Organize! Resist!  

All day
For more information, please visit their event page 

The American Cultures Center and The UC Berkeley Labor Center are pleased to announce an evening discussion 'From Direct Action to Social Movements,' which will include a panel of community organizers, faculty and labor leaders, addressing movement building is created and sustained.  

Separating Fact From Fantasy:  Is Fake News Undermining the Truth?

School of Journalism 

Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall  
5:30pm
Please register here in advance of the event  

The proliferation of fake news and what can be done about it comes under scrutiny by a multidisciplinary panel of experts assembled at the University of California, Berkeley.

After a deluge of criticism and widespread expression of concern, Facebook announced steps to partially address the threat of never-ending information wars. The incentives to spread misinformation, disinformation, lies, fantasies and propaganda include great financial and political gain. Do tech companies and news sites have the ability and/or the responsibility to contain a flood of inaccuracy? Can they do that without bias or censorship?  

Gender & Women's Studies
GWS Café

602 Barrows Hall
12:00-4:00pm, and every Thursday during the semester

The GWS Café is a sanctuary space/conversation space for the campus and GWS community, and will be especially be so the day before and week after the inauguration (January 19th and 26th).  This series will act as a regular community gathering space for students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Calapalooza
LEAD Center 

Lower and Upper Sproul
11:00am- 4:00pm

To learn more, please visit their event page.

Calapalooza is the University’s premier twice-a-year student activities fair. Featuring over 500 student organizations and 30 departments, Calapalooza is a great way to connect with co-curricular and leadership development opportunities!

Academic Engagement for Our Changing Times: 
Inauguration Day Dialogue with Berkeley Faculty 
Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and Divison of Equity & Inclusion 

2:00 – 3:30 pm
Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall
Contact: ascharf@berkeley.edu

Academic Engagement for Our Changing Times is a faculty panel planned for Inauguration Day to discuss the ways in which our academic lives and work might be effected in these changing political times. Moderated by Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion Na’ilah Nasir, and featuring distinguished faculty from a range of disciplines, this session is designed to pose the questions: How do the outcome of the election and the prospect of our country’s new leadership impact our work as academics? What types of research and knowledge creation are now needed? How can scholars, students, and the campus community push for the kinds of changes and policies that we’d like to see in this era? What does scholarly resistance look like? What is required of us as public intellectuals? Open to faculty, students, staff, and community scholars in all fields and departments. Co-sponsored by the American Cultures Center.

R&R: Creating Spaces of Resistance & Resilience
Center for Educational Partnerships

2150 Kittredge Street, Suite 2c, Berkeley CA
1:00-5:00 pm
To learn more, please visit their event page.

Potluck followed by watching clips based on R&R (MLK, Malcolm X, Mike Norton, Maya Angelou, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Victor Rios, among others). The event will conclude with a group discussion on moving forward. Using this challenge as an opportunity to reflect on how we can build grassroots movements of resistance, and maintain personal resilience in light of ongoing pressure and threats to our everyday well being. 

Reading for Resistance 
Comparative Literature  

Grass near Valley Life Sciences Building
11:00
Contact: aurelia.cojocaru@berkeley.edu

Led by Graduate Students in comparative literature, Reading for Resistance will last for about an hour, beginning with a brief talk about the importance of working across languages and of art as a form of resistance in times of crisis. Following this introduction, several graduate students and faculty members will present poems from the disciplines they represent. Featuring Professors Chana Kronfeld and Francine Masiello among other faculty members and graduate students. This event will help to create space and visibility for marginalized languages and cultures, and to promote the idea that art can serve as a public act of resistance. 

Ethnic Studies Open House
Ethnic Studies 

554 Barrows Hall
2:00-4:00pm
Contact: 510-643-0796

Open house to create connections, build community, and provide a safe, supportive space during a difficult time.  All are welcome.  Refreshments will be provided.