Trees, torture and technology

SOMEWHERE OVER THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY -- As I sit on the plane headed to State College, PA, sick of reading over my job talk for the gazillionth time, my thoughts turn to this week’s developments on the Berkeley campus. It’s been a busy week for the forces of good and the forces of evil at Cal, so let’s have a round-up.

People began living in the grove of oak trees situated just outside the gates of Memorial Stadium on December 2nd (which will live on in our memory as the day I went to the Big Game). The tree-sitters gained national attention last week when Shirley Dean (former mayor of Berkeley) and her cronies, all over the age of 70, spent a few hours with the rest of the considerably younger treehuggers. After an article in the New York Times on the ladies, one complained to the Berkeley Daily Planet that she is 90, not 91. Fair point.
Anyway, on Monday an injunction was handed down to halt the University’s plans to demolish the grove and expand their athletic facilities, at least temporarily. Officially, the injunction was passed because the area may or may not be right on the Hayward Fault, but the treesitters celebrated nonetheless. Berkeley’s home page, however, ominously declared that they would not be deterred by this latest “setback,” proving, I guess, that the Regents are no friend to the trees. File this under “evil.”

But then, also on Monday, Berkeley held a triumphant celebration of the latest works of Latin American artist Fernando Botero. Botero’s Abu Ghraib series depicts his characteristic ample figures in various states of torture, inspired by the photos of the prison. I attended a conversation with the artist, along with what seemed like the entire population of Berkeley, and later visited the exhibit, which is housed in the main library. Botero’s paintings are disturbing and unambiguous; images, like the photos from Abu Ghraib, that one is not likely to forget. That, Botero told Robert Haas, was the point. This exhibit was rejected by something like 45 other museums and public institutions when Berkeley requested it and then put it smack dab in the middle of the library. File this under “good.”

And today, Arnold announced that UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Lab are going to be one of the host institutions for BP’s Energy Biosciences Institute for the study of clean, alternative energy. Despite academically being many light years away from the kind of alchemy they’re cooking up there at the Lawrence Labs, I can’t help feel some sense of pride in Cal for being so green.

Now, if they’d only stop cutting down the oaks, we could all be unconditionally proud, hmm?