Uc Berkeley

Hunger. Environmental degradation. Political instability. These were among the consequences of rapid global population growth documented in a five-part series in The Times in July. Now, Opinion has invited leading scholars to consider what, if anything, people and governments can do to address the issue. In the brief essays that follow, Malcolm Potts from UC Berkeley sets up the situation we are facing, and population experts from around the globe explain some of the approaches they've seen work -- and the reasons others have not. The series, by Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss and staff photographer Rick Loomis, can be found at latimes.com/populationrising.

Despite strong opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC Board of Regents on Tuesday gave the incoming chancellor of UC Berkeley a $50,000 - or 11.4% - pay raise over the current campus head. The extra money will come from private donations, not state funds, the regents said. Nicholas B. Dirks will be paid $486,000, which officials said is $14,000 less than his current salary as a high-ranking administrator at Columbia University. Brown, who is a regent, described Dirks as an excellent choice but said he would not vote for the salary given the austerities that the state and the 10-campus UC system still face.

A high-ranking Columbia University administrator and an expert on the history and culture of India will be the next chancellor of UC Berkeley, officials announced Thursday. Nicholas B. Dirks will succeed Robert J. Birgeneau in one of the most prominent positions in American higher education. Dirks is Columbia's executive vice president and dean of the faculty for Arts and Sciences at that New York campus, overseeing 29 academic departments. He will start as UC's Berkeley leader June 1. The 36,000-student UC campus often ranks as the best public university in the nation by various measures, and its student body is among the most politically active.

Bravo's reality television series "Silicon Valley: Start-ups" has been getting a bad rap for how unreal it is. There may be nothing more unreal than the real life of cast member Dwight Crow. Crow -- who made quite the impression in the first episode, which aired Monday night, by ripping sheets off someone's bed for a toga and drunkenly debating obscure algorithms -- is a brainy 26-year-old "brogrammer" with a degrees in chemical biology and computer science who lets Bravo's cameras follow him around as he tries to rev up his startup.

Arthur Jensen, a UC Berkeley professor whose scholarly contributions to the field of psychological measurement were often overshadowed by the furor over his findings on race-based differences in intelligence, has died. He was 89. One of the most provocative figures in 20th century psychology, Jensen died Oct. 22 at his home in the Northern California town of Kelseyville. He had Parkinson's disease and other ailments, said his son-in-law Joe Morey. In 1969, Jensen reignited a long-simmering debate over race and intelligence with an article in the Harvard Educational Review defending studies showing whites scored an average of 15 points higher than blacks on standard IQ tests.

In the latest chapter of a long-running controversy over anti-Israel protests at UC Berkeley, the U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into whether Jewish students at the university are the victims of a "pervasive hostile environment" in violation of federal civil rights laws. Given the importance of free speech, especially in a university setting, the department needs to tread carefully. The department responded to a request from lawyers for two recent Berkeley graduates who earlier had sued the university complaining about a "dangerous anti-Semitic climate" at Berkeley.

UC Berkeley announced Tuesday that it is joining the new online education website founded by Harvard and MIT that offers free, not-for-credit courses to a worldwide audience. The addition of UC Berkeley will give edX its first expansion into a prestigious public university and a foothold on the West Coast away from its Cambridge, Mass., base, officials said. UC Berkeley will offer two courses, one in software engineering and the other in artificial intelligence, on the edX platform in the fall.

An independent report released Wednesday criticizes the use of force by University of California police during the Occupy Wall Street protests at UC Berkeley last fall. The report, written by the campus' independent Police Review Board, found that officers appeared to have strayed from campus policies and norms in their use of batons against protesters and called on the university to better explain when the use of force is appropriate. "Strictly confined limits, as precise as possible, should be articulated regarding the use of force by law enforcement during any protest events," the report said.

On an unseasonably warm day in May 1997, Isaac Guillen marched in a stream of graduates to collect a diploma marking a new stage in his life: Juris Doctor. Beneath his gown were tattoos of barbed wire, reminding him of his violent younger days and the years he spent in juvenile lockup. This was the first time many of his friends and family had set foot on a college campus. Surrounded by a pearls and cashmere crowd, they cheered loudly for the triumph of one of their own. On stage at the UCLA commencement, a graduate crooned a Beatles tune: I know I'll never lose affection For people and things that went before I know I'll often stop and think about them Guillen, then 36, had struggled to escape a difficult past.

Political advocacy corrupts academic institutions. Why? Because the mind-set of a genuine academic teacher is in every important respect the opposite of a political activist's. Academic teachers want to promote independent thought and analytical skills; political activists want conformity. The one fosters intellectual curiosity and encourages opposing viewpoints; the latter seeks to shut it down. This vital distinction is well understood. In California, the state Constitution contains this unambiguous statement: "The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom.