Forums

Each forum is a series of Youtube videos. Begin watching the first and you will be directed to subsequent videos.

WHAT A LIFE! SOCIOLOGY BEYOND THE ACADEMY

February 15, 2007 with Judy Auerbach, Gary Delgado, and Mona Younis. See full playlist here.

Too often we think that the Berkeley PhD is only good for an academic career. Our three panelists put this myth to bed, telling us how they spiraled outward and with what role for sociology. Judy Auerbach left Berkeley in 1986 to take up a series of high level appointments in federal science programs, including ones in the National Institute of Health, National Academy of Sciences, all the way up to the White House. She’s now back in the Bay Area with the San Fracisco AIDS Foundation. Her dissertation examined work family relations long before it became the fashion. She has received awards from and has been President of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Gary Delgado left Berkeley in 1983 to found and direct first the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) and then the Applied Research Center (ARC). He is a nationally famed researcher, lecturer and activist. His dissertation, published as Organizing the Movement, traces the origins and growth of ACORN, the pioneer of community organizing. Mona Younis left Berkeley in 1996 to become a prominent human rights organizer and funder. Her dissertation, published as Liberation and Democratization, explained why the African National Congress was a more successful nationalist movement than the PLO. She’s now heading the human rights program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (in 2 parts, 1hr51min total)

WRITING OUT OF BERKELEY

April 27, 2006 with Professor Arlie Hochschild. See full playlist here.

Author of such inspired, and now classic, works as the Managed Heart, The Second Shift and Time Bind, Arlie Hochschild’s writing has won the hearts of many. Her contributions to newspapers, magazines, and journals as well as her books have engaged audiences well beyond the academy and the nation. After an illustrious 35-year career at Berkeley she reflects on what writing has meant for her as student, as teacher and as public sociologist. (in 2 parts, 1hr15min total)

A DEBATE ON THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

April 27, 2006 with Professors Robert Bellah, Mike Hout, Loic Wacquant, and Margaret Weir. Featuring Robert Reich. See full playlist here.

This second forum on public sociology took place on Wednesday, April 27th. The discussion took as its point of departure Robert Reich’s recent essay in The New Republic, “The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative”, which argues that Democrats have lost the battle for the great narratives of American political life. Robert Reich introduced the exchange and responded to the reflections of four distinguished public sociologists from Berkeley’s sociology department. (in various parts, 1hr50min total)

TEACHING AS PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

November 16, 2006 with Professor Mary Kelsey. See full playlist here.

It is one thing to teach public sociology, for example, through service learning. It is another thing for teaching to be public sociology, that is to regard students as a public unto themselves. Virtuoso teacher, Mary Kelsey, provides a model for doing precisely that, namely seeing students not as empty vessels to be filled but as embodiments of lived experience to be elaborated in a triple dialogue: first, with sociological texts, second, with fellow students and third, with secondary publics beyond the university. (64min)