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Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has canceled his appearance Saturday as the keynote speaker at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law graduation ceremony because he does not want to cross union picket lines. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299 has said it will picket any UC Berkeley commencement ceremony at which a public official or prominent politician is scheduled to speak. Several speakers, including Dean, have agreed to honor picket lines at graduation ceremonies through May 22. The union, which represents custodians, landscape maintenance workers and food service workers...

BERKELEY - Several thousand UC Berkeley graduates and their families flocked to the university's Hearst Greek Theatre for Wednesday's commencement convocation, only to have their graduation speaker leave campus rather than cross a picket line. California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, declined to speak while 15 to 20 members of the union representing University of California service workers demonstrated outside the theater to protest low wages for UC custodians. "The speaker doesn't cross picket lines," said Nunez spokesman Richard Stapler. UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stepped up as the substitute speaker. Leaders of the American Federation of State, County and...

BERKELEY, CA—The California Patriot, Berkeley’s student-run conservative magazine, and the Berkeley College Republicans are demanding an explanation from the University of California, Berkeley, regarding a study that links childhood personality traits to political ideology. The study, which was performed by a UC Berkeley psychology professor and has been published in the Journal of Research in Personality, suggests that “whiny, insecure” children grow up to be conservatives, while “confident, resilient, self-reliant” children are more likely to become liberals, according to a recent article in The Toronto Star. The editors of The Patriot have responded with an online editorial, which states, “The...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Peter E. Haas Sr., an heir of Levi Strauss & Co. who helped build the jeans company into a socially conscious clothing empire, has died. He was 86. Haas died of natural causes Saturday in his San Francisco home, company spokesman Jeff Beckman said Sunday. A great-grandnephew of Levi Strauss, Haas continued the tradition of the jeans pioneer, teaming up with his older brother, Walter A. Haas Jr., to transform the small maker of Western apparel into one of the world's most famous clothing brands during his 60-year career with the company. "Throughout his career and...

Mark Danner: Blaming America for the Global JihadBy Robert SpencerFrontPageMagazine.com | October 10, 2005 The New York Times marked the fourth anniversary of 9/11 by publishing in the New York Times Magazine a long and lavish cover story by the  Mark Danner, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, author of  Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, and a longtime opponent of America wars against totalitarian enemies. Danner didn’t write anything for the anniversary that would cancel dinner invitations for him in Berkeley. Instead, he repeated the radical line he has adopted for...

BERKELEY – Charles Pierce really likes playing video games. He practices piano and violin. He used to study aikido, but lately he's been more interested in taking up fencing. Lately, however, the 13-year-old has mostly been hitting the books. Charles is the youngest transfer student this fall at the University of California, Berkeley, where he's now in his junior year. His 14-year-old sister, Mayumi, also transferred in this fall as a junior. Attending UC Berkeley is a bit of a family tradition: Their parents, Wincie Pierce and Qin Ma, met and married while they were students at UC Berkeley in...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

Here is the list so far for sponcers to this hate America fest: ANSWER Code Pink UFPJ NION Al Awda World Workers Party Ruckas Revolutionary Communist party Moveon.org ACORN Campus Antiwar Network International Socialist Org Greens Party Muslim Student Association CPUSA

Among the closest associates of Khomeini, there were many Communists who had conveniently grown beards. Mustafa Ali Chamran had studied in California and Egypt before he founded a Red Shi’ite secret society. His pupils included later foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, oil minister Mohammed Gharazi, and a Lebanese fellow student in Berkeley University, Hussein Shaikh al-Islam, who led the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran. This occupation, shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, focused Iranian radicalism into anti-Americanism. (Taheri, p. 78 and 139-140) Mohammed Beheshti, whose death at a bombing on June 28th, 1981, remained a mystery, had resided...

I missed the fun at the Berkeley campus yesterday. Apparently students from the "Berkeley Stop the War Coalition" were there to prevent military recruiters from coming on the campus. Protest Warrior and the College Republicans were present to offer an alternative viewpoint to the "Stop the War" crowd. I would like to hear from you if you were in on the mission. If you have pictures, please post them here.

"Ending Intellectual Slavery" by Conservative author and Berkeley alumnus David Horowitz WHEN: Thursday, February 3rd TIME: 8 pm WHERE: 2050 VLSB (Map) David Horowitz will be on campus to give a speech “Ending Intellectual Slavery” which will discuss liberal indoctrination in university campuses and classrooms. Mr. Horowitz will argue that college faculty use classes as a way to inculcate their beliefs into the student population without providing the proper political balance—it will be an argument in favor of greater academic freedom. His last speech on the Berkeley campus, “The Argument Against Reparations for Slavery,” was held four years ago....

According to Sunday's S.F.Chronicle, House Democrats meet tomorrow with UC Berkeley linguistic prof George Lakoff in hopes the wordwright can correct their spin. Watch this one!!!! Lakoff is expected to advise the politician on what terminology to use. The big question is this: will the mass media follow? My money says it will. I have 40 years experience in the news media to back my bet. Need proof? The media was powerful enough to limit "choice" to one subject. That alone should be cause for watching the "watchdog." Remember when the press was called "the running dog" of the establishment?...

"On November 18, several researchers from UC Berkley released a working paper [local]. The paper alleges to present statistical evidence that, in the 2004 Presidential elections, the use of electronic voting machines in Florida gave to Bush votes that he would not have otherwise received. The finding was covered in a Wired News article. Once I correct for this shift, the "electronic voting machine effect" disappears.In response to this, I wrote a paper [html, pdf] that shows that the model used by the Berkley team is flawed. Specifically, the model fails to account for demographic shifts between 2000 and 2004....

FOR YOUR WEEKEND VIEWING PLEASUREOn Sunday, CSPAN 2 Book TV will air my speech at UC Berkely as its featured program.You can catch it at 1:15 Eastern or 9:00 PM Eastern time. I can safely say that it was the most memorable experience I've had so far in my career.Update: Great photo essay on the UC Berkely event here. (photos of the protestors posters)

Insight on the News - Features Issue: 7/22/02 The Last Word By Susan L.M. Huck Kerr: Patron Saint of Campus Radicals Ah, the folks they love to hate! On June 9, the San Francisco Chronicle published an eight-page report titled "Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare." That UC is for the University of California at Berkeley; the reference to Reds who were swarming there is intended to elicit a sneer. The target here was Ronald Reagan. As an actor, Reagan had been a standard-issue liberal until, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, he learned about the penetration and...

Hatem BazianAt LGF is a transcription of remarks made by UC Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian at a "peace" rally in San Francisco on Saturday.Here is a link to a video of Bazian calling for an intifada in the US, and related videos.Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country?Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN,...

Fascism at BerkeleyBy Cinnamon StillwellChronwatch.com | February 16, 2004 If reaction to Daniel Pipes’ lecture on Tuesday (2/10) was any indication, fascism is alive and well at UC Berkeley. Pipes was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at the college campus known for its leftist politics. But ironically, the home of ''free speech'' and ''tolerance'' has shown itself to be distinctly intolerant to those who express political views other than their own. And Daniel Pipes happens to fit that description. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, a member of the U.S. Institute...

Sit-in Sentences Soon for UC TrioBy JAKOB SCHILLER (10-31-03) Following a heated five-hour sentencing hearing Tuesday, three UC Berkeley students—Michael Smith, Snehal Shingavi and Rachel Odes—are waiting to learn what, if any, punishments the university will mandate for their actions during a March 23 campus anti-war protest. After hearing proposed punishments from campus Judicial Officer Neal Rajmaira and a spirited defense from the students, a panel of professors, staff and students has one week to draw up a letter spelling out its own recommendations to Dean of Students Karen Kenney. Once the recommendations are submitted, the students will be able...

Activists Convicted of Campus Code ViolationsStudent Protesters Declare Hearing ‘Witch Hunt,’ Storm Out By SHAUNA SWEENEYContributing WriterWednesday, October 15, 2003 After abruptly walking out of their own hearing yesterday, three prominent student activists arrested in an anti-war protest last spring were found guilty of violating university code by a campus committee. Michael Smith, Rachel Odes and Snehal Shingavi, all active members of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, were found guilty of disturbing the peace and failing to comply with an official. Smith was also convicted for restricting and resisting a university official. However, the three students were cleared of two...

Campus Remembers Attacks By TAMI ABDOLLAH, REGINA CHEN and CATHERINE HO Contributing Writers Friday, September 12, 2003 Amid uncertainty over the conflict in Iraq, UC Berkeley students paused with the rest of the nation yesterday to remember an event that has, for many, defined a new era of U.S. foreign relations. "As the memory of Sept. 11 fades, it's still important to realize how many millions of lives were affected not only at that moment, but also those who died as a consequence of those actions," said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl. About 50 students, a smaller crowd than...