UCSC

---

see ucschit = hit = attack

---

nyt 5 26 dowd

Amodei, who majored in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that “studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever. A lot of these models are actually very good at STEM. But I think this idea that there are things that make us uniquely human — understanding ourselves, understanding history, understanding what makes us tick — I think that will always be really, really important.”

Other billionaires and execs — Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, Ginni Rometty at IBM, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Mike Novogratz at Fortress Investment Group and Jack Clark at Anthropic — have warned of the need for emotional intelligence and storytelling in a world dominated by A.I.

ggl 3 26

UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) is a premier public research university, consistently ranked #1 among US public universities and top-5 globally for highly cited researchers (2025, 2014-2024), according to Clarivate. Its faculty produce research in the top 1% of citations, particularly in physical sciences, astronomy, and genomics.

ebook +2

Key Scientific Citation Metrics:

• Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate 2025): Top 1 public university in the US and 5th in the world, reflecting the high impact of its research.
• Research Influence (2014–2024): Ranked as the #1 public research university in the world for the impact of its researchers.

• UC Santa Cruz was ranked the #1 public research university ...

Nov 20, 2025 — UC Santa Cruz was ranked the #1 public research university in the world for highly cited researchers over the past 10 years (2014-

Facebook·UC Santa Cruz

• List of most highly cited researchers features 19 UCSC scientists ...

Nov 15, 2022 — List of most highly cited researchers features 19 UCSC scientists and engineers. ... A new list of the world's most highly cited r...

UC Santa Cruz

• UC Santa Cruz is the top public research university in the world for highly cited researchers amid strong 2025 list - News

Nov 12, 2025 — According to Clarivate, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz) is the top public university in the United States...

UC Santa Cruz - News

Twenty-five researchers associated with the University of California, Santa Cruz, earned a spot on the 2025 Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate, and an analysis by the same organization ranks UC Santa Cruz as the No. 1 public university in the United States for highly cited researchers and No. 5 in the world.

This prestigious annual list recognizes researchers globally whose papers rank in the top 1% by citations for their respective fields and year of publication, highlighting their substantial influence in the research community.

A Clarivate analysis of the Highly Cited Researchers lists from 2014 to 2024 finds that UC Santa Cruz is the top public research university, and the fifth institution overall, with the most researchers who have consistently appeared on the list over this 10-year period. Also in the top five are Harvard University, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Max Planck Society, and Stanford University. The analysis notes that if the UC system was accounted as a single institution rather than individual campuses, the system would be first in the world.

Faculty on the 2025 list include: Jonathan Fortney, professor of astronomy and astrophysics; Garth Illingworth, distinguished professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics; David Haussler, distinguished professor of biomolecular engineering and director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute; Karen Miga, associate professor of biomolecular engineering; Benedict Paten, professor of biomolecular engineering; and Yat Li, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Staff researchers on the list include: Mark Diekhans, technical director of the Genomics Institute’s Computational Genomics Laboratory, and James Kent, creator and former director of the UC Santa Cruz Genome Browser, along with Genomics Institute research and bioinformatics staff members: Galt Barber, Jonathan Casper, Hiram Clawson, Jairo Navarro Gonzalez, Maximilian Haeussler, Angie Hinrichs, Robert Kuhn, Brian Lee, Christopher Lee, Brian Raney, Kate Rosenbloom, Matthew Speir, and Ann Zweig. Daniel Magee, a staff programmer with the UC Observatories, also made the list.

Three researchers who specify UC Santa Cruz as their secondary affiliation made the list: Steven Bograd, adjunct professor of ocean sciences; Elliot Hazen, associate adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; and Rychard Bouwens, former UC Santa Cruz postdoctoral fellow and now an associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

---

4 26 AI GGL

AI Overview

In 2025, the Trump administration and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon initiated a major crackdown on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts at federally funded educational institutions, specifically impacting the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Key Developments (2025-2026):

• Grant Cuts for Minority-Serving Institutions: In September 2025, the Education Department announced the termination of roughly $350 million in discretionary grants for Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), arguing that eligibility requirements based on race were discriminatory.

• Impact on Santa Cruz Institutions: These federal cuts heavily impacted the Santa Cruz area, with reports indicating UCSC and Cabrillo College faced losing approximately $3 million each for minority-serving programs. These funds were vital for programs serving Latino students and first-generation undergraduates.

• DEI Crackdown & Investigations: Secretary Linda McMahon announced investigations into over 50 universities, including University of California campuses, for allegedly engaging in "race-exclusionary practices" and maintaining ties to DEI-focused nonprofits like The PhD Project.

• Funding Recovery & Legal Battles: While the administration initially cut funding, legal challenges found the anti-DEI efforts violated procedural rules. By late 2025, UCSC had recovered some federally terminated research grants after court rulings, but university officials warned that the temporary cuts caused significant disruption to student training programs and research.

• System-wide Changes: In response to federal pressure, the UC system implemented a hiring freeze and, in March 2025, moved to prohibit the requirement of DEI statements for applicants.

• 2026 Outlook: As of early 2026, the Trump administration's legal appeals against rulings blocking their DEI efforts have been dropped, but the administration maintains its opposition to DEI and continues to pressure institutions.

Lookout Santa Cruz +10

---

Earlier this year, the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts targeting universities resulted in about 40 terminated grants totaling approximately $30 million in losses at UC Santa Cruz. Those cuts covered a wide variety of research, from the development of diagnostics for pediatric tumors, a study of desalination plants in the Middle East and another that studied marine mammal safety in the proximity of heavy boating activity.

But in June, in at least two lawsuits, federal judges ordered the reversal of hundreds of grant terminations, saying that federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, had illegally canceled the grants. As a result, the judges’ rulings reinstated the majority of UCSC’s terminated grants, leaving about 10 grants still terminated for a loss of $4 to $5 million.

University of California researchers are still fighting the administration’s ongoing attack on the university system. UC unions and faculty associations recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and its $1.2 billion fine for UCLA, alleging that the federal government is coercing the UC system to adopt a conservative ideology and is violating UC employees’ freedoms of speech and due process rights....

---

AI Overview

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in symbolic systems. He was affiliated with College Eight, now known as Rachel Carson College, which focuses on environmental themes and sustainability.

• College Affiliation: Hoffman was a student at College Eight during his time at UCSC.
• Renaming: College Eight was formally renamed Rachel Carson College in 2016 to honor the environmentalist author.
• Background: UCSC is known for its undergraduate research and innovative spirit, aligning with Hoffman's later work in technology.

Hoffman's time at UCSC provided a foundation in interdisciplinary studies, which he often cites as influential to his career in technology and business.

Sustainability Now! Sunday, April 13^th, 5-6 PM

Big agriculture is Big! And it appears to be getting Bigger, as the leading companies in four critical sectors—equipment, seeds, fertilizers and chemicals—consolidate in order to dominate their markets and the farmers who buy their products. Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Clapp, who has just published Titans of Industrial Agriculture—How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters.Clapp is Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-analysis-finds-planet-heading-toward-temperature-threshold-not-seen-in-34-million-years/

comm dr

a newly publishedstudyconducted by a team of climate scientists warns that—barring prompt and rigorous efforts to minimize greenhouse gas emissions—”Earth is on track for some of the strongest, fastest climate change the planet has ever experienced.”

Undertaking what Chelsea Harvey of Scientific American described as “one of the most comprehensive investigations of the Earth’s climate history,” the researchers used chemical analyses of ancient sediments to discern information about our planet’s climatological record.

The sediments—obtained by drilling the ocean floor in various locations around the world over the course of several years—contain “the preserved shells of tiny organisms that can tell scientists about the temperature and chemical composition of the ocean when they were formed,” Harvey explained.

Some of the sediments are 66 million years old, which enabled the research team to “reconstruct Earth’s climate history going back to the mass extinction that killed three-quarters of the planet’s species, including dinosaurs,” Harvey reported.

what the scientists found is that the planet has gone through four distinctive climate phases, which they label “warmhouse, hothouse, coolhouse, and icehouse states.”

In general, transitions between climate states have hinged on changing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, typically generated by “volcanic eruptions and other natural processes,” as well as “shifts in the Earth’s orbit that affected the amount of solar energy reaching the planet,”Scientific American noted.

Fifty million years ago, when Earth was in its hottest phases and long before the existence of humans, planetary temperatures were more than 10 degrees Celsius hotter than they are at present. However, reaching those temperatures took thousands or even millions of years, which is much different than the accelerated warming occurring today, warns the study, published in the journal Science.[twt]

while the world has been in an icehouse state for millions of years, explained Harvey, “Earth could once again reach a temperature threshold not seen for at least 34 million years” in only a few centuries unless society limits greenhouse gas emissions.

Prior to the industrial era, it would have taken thousands of years, at least, for such dramatic levels of warming to unfold.

According to Jim Zachos, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a co-author of the new paper, the worst-case scenario by 2300 shows “the change in mean global temperature is larger than most of the natural variability going back over the last 66 millions years related to changes in the Earth’s orbit.”

Harvey pointed out that “feedback processes that can speed things up or slow things down” make it difficult to “predict future change, especially over relatively short periods of time.”

However, by “reconstructing the Earth’s long-term climate history,” this study can help scientists test the accuracy of models used to make projections about the future by comparing them to simulations of the past, which could yield useful knowledge about “how climate change could unfold in the coming decades and centuries,” explained Scientifc American.

“It’s not an inevitable future,” Harvey stressed, adding that “with immediate and stringent action to reduce climate change, the world can keep global temperatures from rising more than a few degrees above their preindustrial levels.”

---

---

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/18/emails-show-uc-santa-cruz-police-used-military-surveillance-to-suppress-grad-student-strike/

Emails show UC Santa Cruz police used military surveillance to suppress grad student strike

UC police used "friendly force trackers" and FBI tech to surveil grad student strikers protesting for a living wage

NICOLE KARLIS

MAY 18, 2020 11:45PM (UTC)

The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) Police Department, with assistance from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and the California National Guard, used military surveillance to suppress the UC Santa Cruz graduate student wildcat strike earlier this year, according to emails acquired through the California Public Records Act.

Vice first reported the content of the emails on May 15 which provided insight into the coordinated efforts between the UC Santa Cruz Police Department, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, to police the protests. As Salon has previously reported, police and campus officials reacted to the nonviolent labor action with threats, arrests, firings, and violence from the police with batons, according to grad students at the strike, for months as grad students demanded a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) to help alleviate the rent burden of living in a pricey coastal California town. 

The new emails, which have been reviewed by Salon, dive deeper into the efforts to police the protests that went beyond what the grad students observed on the picket line. They show the UC Santa Cruz Police Department requested mutual aid from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office to police the protests as early as December 31. Notably, UC Santa Cruz is located in Santa Cruz County, not Alameda County — which is about 40 miles north.

"It's disturbing to be part of a labor action like this and to see the militarized nature of the university's response," Will Parrish, a PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness program, told Salon in an interview. "I felt disturbed to see both the level of militarization and the casualness of their discussions in their email threads."

Specifically, the UCSC Police Department requested deputies, trucks and vans in the case of arrests. All expenses, including food and lodging, were paid for by UCSC police for at least 65 officers. At the time, grad students were on a wildcat strike, withholding final grades for the fall quarter until their demand for a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) was met. Withholding grades evolved into a full wildcat teaching strike in February, meaning they withheld teaching, grading, and office hours, as their demands continued to be dismissed.

According to emails dated February 11 and 13, the California National Guard provided "friendly force trackers," which is a military surveillance technology, as part of the effort. Police also had access to a federal surveillance portal operated by the FBIcalled LEEP, an acronym for "Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal." The FBI's page on LEEP describes it as "a secure platform for law enforcement agencies, intelligence groups, and criminal justice entities" that "provides web-based investigative tools and analytical resources" to help said groups "collaborate in a secure environment, use tools to strengthen their cases, and share departmental documents." Some of the sample use cases for LEEP that the FBI cites include "active shooter incidents," "child abductions" and "takedown operations."

The emails don't specify exactly how these technologies were used, nor do they specify the amount spent on the efforts. However, grad students believe that it could be in the millions.

"Rather than meet us at the bargaining table the UC instead spent close to five million dollars in deploying dozens of UCPD from across the state, California Highway Patrol, and Alameda County sheriffs, and even solicited assistance from counterterrorism intelligence agencies," UCSC Literature PhD student Hannah Newburn said in a statement. "Since when did asking for a raise become a threat to Homeland Security?"

Carlos Cruz, a UCSC PhD student in the history department, told Salon he was given evidence, and an audio clip that Salon listened to, to add to speculation that he was being surveilled by police during the protests. In the audio clip, presumably a police officer is stating Cruz's whereabouts and said his name "Carlos." He also had an alarming in-person encounter with a sergeant.

"I had a sergeant who was able to identify me by first, middle and last name and date of birth," Cruz said, adding there were racist undertones to the exchange. "It's really scary to see how they got my info and knew who I was."

In an emailed statement to Salon, Scott Hernandez-Jason, the Director of News and Media Relations at UC Santa Cruz, told Salon: "Throughout the strike, UC Santa Cruz police officers were focused on supporting the safety of our community on and off campus and protecting the rights of everyone in our campus community, including those engaged in expressive activity."

Hernandez-Jason said the department used the trackers "to know the location of on-duty officers who were helping keep people safe."

"To infer anything else about the use of the trackers would be erroneous. UC Santa Cruz is built across 2,000 acres of hilly land with two entrances, so understanding the location of officers was vital to coordinate their efforts," Hernandez-Jason said. "There was no tracking of students or strikers."

The emails also revealed that after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) :{tweeted on February 19:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in support of striking graduate students at UC Santa Cruz, an officer from the Governor's Office of Emergency Services emailed the California State Threat Assessment Center commander Eli Owen to request assistance to "verify/validate Mr. Sanders schedule." The email referred to the tweet as "intel" that Sanders might appear on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

Hernandez-Jason said about this email that "UC Santa Cruz was paying attention to his publicly posted campaign schedule so that it could begin planning in case he chose to visit the campus."

This isn't the first time military tactics have been used to spy on protesters. The Intercept previously reported on how FBI emails and intelligence reports suggested federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests. Similar surveillance happened in the 1960s and 1970s during anti-war protests. Sara Hinkley, a Policy Research Specialist at :{UC Berkeley Labor Center:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, told Salon in an emailed statement that whether such a move was worth it for UCSC will be calculated by how tarnished its reputation is for the handling of the wildcat strike.

"In the case of UC, the loss of reputation and academic stability will likely have repercussions for many years," Hinkley said. "It's unfortunate that they chose to treat their own students and employees as an enemy meriting military surveillance."

Hinkley added: "I think it's likely that decision will end up costing them much more than if they had recognized the students' demands and fairly bargained a solution to the real financial stress that graduate students are experiencing."

NICOLE KARLIS

Nicole Karlis is a news writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.

==

Laurie Garret hot zone pandemic kpfa

https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-1360

https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/10/falcon-humanrights.html

New Human Rights Lab trains students to investigate wrongdoing

Students use high-tech sleuthing tools to help hold perpetrators accountable

==

Coral reefs provide flood protection worth $1.8 billion every year – it’s time to protect them

Michael Beck, University of California, Santa Cruz

A new report shows that coral reefs reduce damage from floods across the United States and its trust territories by more than $1.8 billion every year – and pinpoints that value state by state.

==

UC History, Santa Cruz: Bibliography:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/general_history/campuses/ucsc/bibliography.html

includes

Carlos G. Noreña

The Rise and Demise of the UCSC Colleges

https://web.archive.org/web/20080505150820/http://humwww.ucsc.edu/humbooks/colleges.html

==

https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2019/03/18/ucsc-organizations-discuss-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

Israeli-Palestinian conflict has impacted communities around the world, and students at UC Santa Cruz are no exception. Student groups representing opposite sides of the issue hosted two events to discuss the conflict on March 7.

One event, promoted as bipartisan and hosted by UCSC College Republicans, College Democrats and Slugs for Israel, brought speaker Neil Lazarus to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Zionism. In response to this event,Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) hosted a counterevent, which showed a documentary on pro- Israeli efforts to dox pro-Palestinian and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions supporters followed by a group discussion.

...A Counter to Zionism

In response to the bipartisan event, SJP hosted a counterevent, “Building Power Through Knowledge,” to educate students on their organization’s platform and viewpoint. The event consisted of a documentary viewing of “The Lobby,” followed by group discussion for newcomers to learn about the conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

“Events like [“Is there Light At the End of the Tunnel?”] held last week make us feel neglected, undermined and enraged,” said SJP member Laila Issa. “An invitation for a Zionist [Neil Lazarus] to speak on campus is a direct undermining of the Palestinian struggle. It legitimizes the Israeli occupation and apartheid that are directly affecting the livelihood and rights of the Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine.”

Issa said the counterevent attracted a good-sized crowd to the Graduate Student Commons. The atmosphere was inviting

as attendees established communal guidelines and settled in for the film.

The SJP event’s group discussion brought up concerns of how Zionist doxxing could

impact organization around their mission. Doxxing is the search for and publishing of private or identifying information on the Internet with malicious intent. Attendees brainstormed ways to organize in the face of suppression.

“The pro-Israeli supporters in the film attempted to conflate messages and paint Palestinian-supporters as anti- Semitic, when they are simply advocating for the freedom of a very oppressed group of people,” said SJP event attendee and third-year Efren Lopez. “The event demonstrated how connected this pressure is to things on an international level. To see these microscopic events, such as UC Berkeley’s campus, depicted in the film, is very revealing.”

Political Strains At UCSC

As the documentary “The Lobby” suggested, tension associated with the Israeli occupation of Palestine appears to be affecting “microscopic” aspects of life, including college campuses. Attendees of both events said this tension can be seen on UCSC’s campus as well. The tension is demonstrated by these opposing events, revealing the differences between pro- Israel and pro-Palestinian perspectives.

...

omfg

Kanarymission.org/individual/Laila_Issa

deanz ucb kanarymission.org/individual/Viana_Marie_Lopez

==

horo rant cf:

uC Santa Cruz agrees to all demands from black student group

20205 Shares

KSBW Updated: 4:55 PM PDT May 5, 2017

Amy Larson

KSBW.com Digital Media Manager

Phil Gomez

Reporter

Play Video

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. —

Students protesting what they believe is a "hostile climate" toward black students at the University of California Santa Cruz were locked inside an administrative building for three days until they scored a sweeping victory Thursday.

Members of the university's African/Black Student Alliance organization took over Kerr Hall Tuesday, locked all of the doors, covered the windows with slogan-filled posters, and vowed to not leave until their demands were met.

RELATED CONTENT

UC Santa Cruz building takeover enters Day 3

"If the university fails us, there will be no business as usual," A/BSA told the university's newspaper.

Chancellor George Blumenthal sat down at a negotiating table with 10 protesters at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Blumenthal declined to negotiate inside Kerr Hall because he had received threats and feared for his safety, protesters said.

Instead, the meeting was moved to the biology building, and Blumenthal ultimately agreed to meet all four of the group's demands.

The student's primary demand was over the Rosa Parks African-themed house, as well as combating racism at the university.

A/BSA issued the following list of demands:

1) "Similar to EOP students and International students’ housing guarantees, we demand that ALL African Black Caribbean identified students have a 4 year housing guarantee to live in the Rosa Parks African American Themed House. Guaranteeing this would provide a viable living option to all (Afrikan/Black/Caribbean) identified students regardless of housing status and college affiliation. We demand a written agreement by the opening of housing applications in April 2017."

2) "We demand the university remove the beds and release the Rosa Parks African Themed Houseloungeso it can serve its original purpose. We demand the lounge be returned by Fall 2017."

3) "We demand that the university fund the ENTIRE exterior of the Rosa Parks African American Themed Housebeing painted Pan-Afrikan colors(Red, green, and black) by the start of Spring quarter 2017. These Pan Afrikan colors represent Black liberation, and represent our diaspora, and the goals of our people."

4) "We demand that all new incoming students from 2017-2018 school year forward (first years and transfers) go through a mandatory in-person diversity competency training in the event that the online module is not implemented by JUNE 2017. We demand that the training be reviewed and approved by A/BSA board every two years. We demand that every incoming student complete this training by their first day of class."

The Rosa Parks house is currently offered as housing for any student interested in "historical, present-day, and future experiences of predominately Black/African American peoples," UCSC's website states.

University spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason said housing is a concern for all students.

"We are working to increase the number of beds on campus through a student housing initiative," he told KSBW Wednesday.

The only television news interview that protesters have agreed to so far was with the national Fox News network.

"Having that red, black and green house in the middle of Stevenson College, which is a predominantly white-serving college, is a matter of symbolism and visibility," A/BSAleader Imari Reynolds told Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The African/Black Student Alliance said its mission as an organization is "the liberation of all black people," and to serve as "a place and space for Afrikan/Black/Caribbean students to learn together, to teach together, to offer support for the various racialized macro-and-microaggressions, and also to challenge each other around some harmful ideologies we may hold toward practicing a fuller love for ALL Black people."

Students asserted that their building takeover should be described as a "reclamation," not "occupation."

==

50th townsend

https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/birth-of-ucsc.html

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/organic-agriculture-is-going-mainstream-2562961777.html

Organic Agriculture Is Going Mainstream, But Not the Way You Think It Is

By Jeremy L. Caradonna

One of the biggest knocks against the organics movement is that it has begun to ape conventional agriculture, adopting the latter's monocultures, reliance on purchased inputs and industrial processes.

"Big Organics" is often derided by advocates of sustainable agriculture. The American food authors Michael Pollan and UCSC Julie Guthman, for example, argue that as organic agriculture has scaled up and gone mainstream it has lost its commitment to building an alternative system for providing food, instead "replicating what it set out to oppose."

New research, however, suggests that the relationship between organic and conventional farming is more complex. The flow of influence is starting to reverse course.

Practitioners of conventional agriculture are now borrowing "organic" techniques to reduce the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers and excessive tillage, and to increase on-farm biodiversity, beneficial insects and soil conservation.

All of a sudden, many conventional vegetable farms are starting to look organic.

Organic Goes Mainstream

Next to nothing has been written on this subject. A rare exception is a 2016 article in the New York Times that profiled conventional farmers in Indiana who had started to use "cover crops."

These non-commercial crops build organic matter into the soil, fix atmospheric nitrogen and add biodiversity to an agroecosystem, while allowing farmers to reduce artificial fertilizer inputs.

As organic agriculture has scaled up, it has gained credibility in the marketplace as well as on the farm. Organic farming has roots in market gardens and smaller farms, but there is nothing that prohibits organic production at larger scales.

That often means bigger farms, hundreds—or thousands—of acres in size.

This move toward the mainstream has caught the eye of many conventional farmers, who have either transitioned to certified organic production or begun to integrate organic practices on conventional plots.

Market Share Not the Whole Story

Even with the upscaling, the market position of organic agriculture remains limited.

In Canada, organic sales grow by nearly 10 percent per year, and the total value of the organic market is around $5.4 billion. Yet the reality is that the industry is still dwarfed by conventional agriculture.

There are more than 4,000 certified organic farms in Canada, totalling 2.43 million acres. But this accounts for only 1.5 percent of the country's total agricultural land.

Also, aside from the two organic heavyweights—coffee (imported) and mixed greens (mostly imported)—the market share of organic groceries is pretty small, at around three percent.

Yet the influence of organics is felt well beyond its own limited market.

Testing the Market

...

~ NAS

https://senate.ucsc.edu/committees/caf-committee-on-academic-freedom/index.html

==

book, We Will Not be Silenced, teach us about activism and academia

http://mondoweiss.net/2017/07/palestine-academic-repression/

WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics

Edited by William I. Robinson and Maryam S. Griffin

Forward by Cynthia McKinney and Preface by Richard Falk

280 pp. AK Press, 2017. $19.95.

There are many ways to try to silence people whose ideas you don’t like. You can bully, blackmail, violate, isolate, punish, and smear them until they shut up, back down, and/or lose the platform upon which they were speaking.

It’s not just autocratic despots or crooked attorneys who wield such strategies with tyrannical efficacy. The forces of the pro-Israel lobby have long carried out systematic campaigns of vilification and repression with a pugnacious energy that rivals even the mob’s. Anyone in the public eye who dares to level a critique of the State of Israel could find themselves targeted. And if you are a prominent and vocal Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activist:[uggedaboutit](https://youtu.be/pS6zJ7IsJkM)uggedaboutit.

This climate of censorship is especially hard felt on college and university campuses where a historic upsurge in successful pro-Palestine activism has led to a corollary increase in McCarthyist pressure by the dozens of Zionist organizations who have formed into a network called the Israel on Campus Coalition. Characterized by their shameless meddling in internal university proceedings, well-organized groups like the AMCHA Initiative, Stand With Us, Campus Watch, Canary Mission, and ADL are the most visible tip of a slander-industrial complex whose mission is to purge professors and students who challenge their own narrative.

When fear of reprisal has become the norm, speaking out becomes an act of courage and resistance. This is the premise of “We Will Not Be Silenced,” AK Press’s excellent new collection of first-hand testimonial accounts penned by pro-Palestinian scholars who have been targeted on U.S. campuses. With more than a dozen essays by some of the luminaries in the movement such as Richard Falk, Saree Makdisi, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Steven Salaita, Joseph Massad, members of the Irvine 11, and many others—”We Will Not Be Silenced” serves as an instructive compendium of the pro-Israel lobby’s bag of underhanded tricks and an invaluable playbook for how to preempt and defeat them.

Across the breadth of these infuriating yet illuminating essays, a consistent pattern of tactics emerges. Most of these tactics are predicated on the lobby’s willingness to breach basic standards of academic freedom and common decency to achieve their aims.

In their helpful opening essay, David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi discuss the alarming implications of the Hasbara Handbook that is distributed by organizations like StandWithUs to help train pro-Israel campus activists to be effective propagandists. The handbook explicitly encourages its acolytes to avoid legitimate argument and debate with pro-Palestinian activists in favor of deceitful strategies like point scoring, emotional manipulation, and name calling—to create negative connotations “without allowing a real examination of that person or idea.”

The direct and damaging results of these methods are on full display in the pages of “We Will Not Be Silenced” where victim after victim narrates the life-altering consequences they have faced for their criticism of Israel.

William Robinson, one of the co-editors of the book, was brought up on spurious charges at UCSB for circulating a photo-essay that juxtaposed images from Operation Cast Lead in Gaza with the images of the Warsaw ghetto, accompanied by a text condemning Israel’s human rights record. After a strenuous fight, Robinson was cleared of all charges, but at a steep cost to his research and reputation.

David Delgado Shorter, whose only “crime” was to offer his students the optionof researching the BDS movement as a case study in his “Tribal Worldviews” course, survived a demoralizing ordeal at UCLA at the hands of AMCHA that included death threats and false accusations of anti-Semitism that damaged his professional and personal life.

David Klein, a math professor at Cal State, Northridge and prominent BDS activist, was subjected to a similar coordinated campaign of censorship that stretched out for years and may not even be over yet. Unlike most of the scholars in this collection, Klein was fortunate that Harry Hellenbrand, the president of CSUN at the time, was an outspoken supporter of Klein’s academic freedom.

Most of these political witch hunts have been instigated and/or vigorously pursued by outside lobbyists, powerful politicians, or alumni donors. While these forces hold no contractual or professional affiliation with the universities, they often interfere with impunity in internal governance procedures. In some cases they help pro-Israel students file official complaints against pro-Palestinian faculty members, but often dispense with even that “nicety.”

What is especially disturbing is the alacrity with which many upper administrators quickly cave and often collude with pressure groups who have no interest in research and knowledge production, but rather have a vested interest in censorship and knowledge suppression.

The Israel on Campus Coalition has shown few scruples about smearing its opponents as supporters of terror, self-hating Jews, or anti-Semites. Groups like AMCHA, Hillel, StandWithUs have worked with political allies around the clock to cement the erroneous notion that opposition to Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and that a hatred of Israel’s policies of racism, ethnic cleansing and dispossession is the same as hatred of Jews qua Jews.

Given the horrific history of anti-Semitism, and the deplorable reality of its continued existence, even among some who identify as “supporters” of Palestinian rights, the grave charge of anti-Semitism is not to be taken lightly. As several of the essayists in this book point out, this highly fraught context gives the lobbying groups the perfect straw-man weapon to combat its opponents; and they wield it with a vengeance, in reckless disregard of the lives and livelihoods ruined in the process, and in reckless disregard of the important task of defanging the real anti-Semites.

The question becomes why—why are these extra-academic interests given such wide berth to operate on U.S. campuses? The answer, in part, has to do with the rise of the neoliberal university and the decline of faculty protections across the board. Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton, a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, situates his own persecution within the broader context in higher education—the increasing reliance on vulnerable adjunct labor, the steady elimination of tenure, and a prevalent “boardroom mentality” where administrators have become chiefly concerned with protecting “carefully cultivated brands.”

Lisa Rofel and Steven Salaita both draw pointed and sustained attention to the decline of the public university and its traditional commitment to the common good. In an era of “neoliberal graft,” where students are viewed as consumers, adjunct labor is exploited, and administrators command exorbitant salaries, we see a sharp increase in the profit-motives of upper management. In such a climate, wealthy donors, lobby groups, and board members are able to sway and even dictate hiring decisions and curriculum.

Though the death knell of academic freedom is tolling, all is not lost. The apt title of this book “We Will Not Be Silenced” indicates that the tables are beginning to turn. Despite cause for anger and outrage, these stories are leavened with encouraging lessons. In nearly every case, some small victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat. With the unwavering support from scores national and international progressive and civil rights organizations, most of these scholars were eventually vindicated.

Despite appearances, the pro-Israel lobby is not winning these campus skirmishes. All of us who work for social justice should take heart and fight smart. We should embolden ourselves to speak out and assert our rights. We should donate and build stronger alliances with the organizations like the AAUP, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, FIRE, Palestine Legal, and many others that have been steadfast in support of civil rights. We should denounce anti-Semitism where we find it, and strenuously educate on the immense difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Those of us working in academia should purchase the book, read it, and lend it our colleagues and administrators so they too can strengthen their resolve to defend our campuses from these unseemly and costly attacks. Rather than squelching discourse and avoiding “controversy,” campus leaders—whether students, faculty, staff, or administrators—should help cultivate an atmosphere of intellectual debate based on time-tested principles of academic freedom.

Professors and students have a right to engage in research and to disseminate that research, even it challenges long-cherished dogma. Colleges and universities are sites traditionally dedicated to the dialogical process of learning where ideas are put forth, tested, and debated, then accepted or rejected on the merit of the arguments. The misuse of money and power to warp this process is not just damaging to the brave individuals who refuse to be silent, but to the entire project of participatory democracy.

==

In the latest analysis of the world’s top universities published by Times Higher Education (THE), UC Santa Cruz ranked third in research influence as measured by the number of times its faculty’s published work is cited by scholars around the world.

Published as part of the THE World University Rankings 2018, the analysis measured overall research influence based on the average number of citations per paper, using a database of almost 62 million citations to more than 12.4 million research publications published over five years, from 2012 to 2016.

With a citation score of 99.9, UC Santa Cruz is tied for third place with Stanford University. St. George’s University of London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were tied for first. UC Berkeley ranked just behind UCSC and Stanford with a citation score of 99.8.

The 2018 rankings list the top 1,000 universities in the world, comparing them in five areas: teaching (the learning environment); research (volume, income, and reputation); citations (research influence); international outlook (staff, students, and research); and industry income (knowledge transfer).

The research influence indicator looks at the role of universities in spreading new knowledge and ideas. As explained on the website for the World University Rankings, "The citations help to show us how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge: they tell us whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, has been shared around the global scholarly community to expand the boundaries of our understanding, irrespective of discipline."

UCSC’s overall ranking in the THE World University Rankings 2018 was 162 out of 1,000 institutions worldwide. In the United States, UC Santa Cruz ranked 55 out of 154 institutions.

==

==

cfhttp://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20171020/NEWS/171029947

10/20/17

ANTA CRUZ >> Days after a handful of protesters crashed a UC Santa Cruz College Republicans meeting, yelling and accusing the group of being fascists, Nazis and white supremacists, the student organization has regrouped and gained new interest.

On Sunday, three of the five or six USCSC students protesting the club were arrested on allegations of disturbing the peace at McHenry Library.

Thursday, an ethnically and gender-mixed student group packed together in a Cowell College classroom and devoted much of its meeting to establishing hostile protester confrontation protocol and underlining fire safety concerns.

They heard introductions for each of the 55-plus attendees, a fivefold increase over Sunday’s turnout. Many were new faces, curious to hear details of Sunday’s scuffle, and several identified themselves as non-Republican.

Club president Brandon Lang read a statement condemning threats of violence against student protesters before relating the events of the weekend protest.

“They didn’t really take the time to ask us if we believed those things and I guess they seemed to say that name, ‘Republican,’ literally meant that,” Lang said of accusations of white extremism. “I’m not exaggerating.”

The political backdrop for UCSC’s clash includes President Donald Trump’s sharply divisive first year in office and a national discussion over freedom of speech on college campuses. The scheduling of high-profile conservative pundits at nearby UC Berkeley in recent months led to several violent campus altercations. Club members said Sunday’s protest was one of numerous negative interactions they had been involved while identifying as Republicans.

In an 11-minute video clip of the student interaction posted to social media via UCSC student Philip Vogel’s “City on a Phil” Facebook page, Sabina Wildman, 20, who is listed as a UCSC Student Fee Advisory Committee member, urged a library employee to shut down the meeting for not complying with university “principles of diversity and justice” and for making other students feel unsafe. One of the 10 club members present told Wildman she should not make generalized assumptions about all Republicans, based on Trump’s idealogies.

“What happens to people of color. What happens to Muslims. What happens to queer folks. The same (expletive) thing,” Wildman said. “So, why aren’t you standing up for them?”

As of Friday, the video clip had earned more than 84,000 views and been shared more than 700 times. The footage, an unedited segment of a larger amount of recordings, prominently features Vogel, who describes himself as a registered Democrat and belongs to both the College Republicans and College Democrats club. The two clubs have held bipartisan get-togethers in the past, representatives from both organizations said.During Thursday’s meeting, at least one club executive member suggested that the student protest had backfired in the club’s favor. The club has gained new membership interest that could lead to financial sponsors and, eventually, funding for Republican speaker events, representatives said.

PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY

Stephanie Federman, the Republican club secretary, said that early in the altercation, protesters were offered pastries and invited to stay and discuss their opposing political opinions.

After some two hours of loud debate, however, three students — Wildman, Mariam Stone, 21 and Adam Walker, 21 — were arrested and issued noise, trespassing and unlawful assembly citations, according to UC Santa Cruz police arrest logs. The arrests came after intervention efforts from library staff, community service officers and campus police failed, said UC Santa Cruz spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason.

“Our officers intervened so that we could protect the students’ right to meet,” Hernandez-Jason said. “UC Santa Cruz vigorously supports our students’ rights to peacefully and lawfully assemble.”

The students were later released, and potential formal charges are still under review by the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office.

The dean of students will review the campus policy violations and could face disciplinary procedures, with sanctions ranging from written warnings up through dismissal, Hernandez-Jason said.

Chancellor George Blumenthal said that freedom of speech is a “fundamental right” that UCSC members “believe in fiercely.”

“A university is a marketplace of ideas. It must be. We grow intellectually by listening to other opinions, sometimes liking them, sometimes not, but always listening to them,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “This free interchange of ideas is integral to our mission, and we are committed to protecting everyone’s right to peacefully and lawfully assemble

Sabina Wildman - Crown Rep.

:{swildman@ucsc.edu

}:Office Hours by Appointment Only

video

https://www.facebook.com/CityonaPhil/videos/vb.1899262290312430/1931545607084098/?type=2&theater

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/453357/campus-shout-down-rate-quadruples-free-speech

campus Shout-Down Rate Nearly Quadruples

:{

}:

11/2/17

fdn mic

http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3217

==

http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/SANTA-CRUZ-Military-recruiters-confronted-by-2537613.php

SANTA CRUZ / Military recruiters, confronted by crowd, leave campus job fair / Anti-war protesters at university block doors to building

Diana Walsh, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 12, 2006

==

Worst School in America:{By: David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin

}::{FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, September 13, 2007

}:

Misuse of the classroom by … allowing it to be used for political indoctrination … constitutes misuse of the University as an institution.

-- University of California Regents, “Policy on Course Content,” as amended September 22, 2005

Nestled in a redwood glade on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, the University of California at Santa Cruz is one of the most picturesque campuses in America. Its 15,000 students attend classes in 62 majors at 10 colleges, in an environment that would seem an ideal locale for the contemplative life. In the hard sciences, it can be said that Santa Cruz handsomely fulfills its academic expectations. Its physics program is ranked among the best in the country, while its Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, which houses the Lick Observatory, is a world class scientific institution. But inside the classrooms of its liberal arts division something besides the life of the mind is being nourished. In these environs, UC Santa Cruz is beyond any doubt the most radical university in the United States, its curricula anything but academic.

Emblematic of the politicized state of this public institution was the appointment in February 2005 of Denice Denton as university chancellor. A professor of engineering, Denton had made a name for herself as a radical feminist and anti-war activist. In her brief career as chancellor she made an additional mark as one of the academics whose angry protests led to the resignation of Harvard president Larry Summers. Denton’s intemperate behavior extended beyond politics, leading to a series of scandals (a $600,000 renovation of her university residence and a $192,000-a-year university post for her lesbian lover) which brought her career to an abrupt end. The blowback from these and other episodes, along with her tortuous private life, culminated in her suicide on June 24, 2006, barely eighteen months after her appointment.

On the other hand, the regency academic radicals have established at Santa Cruz will continue without her. The school’s most celebrated faculty member is Angela Davis, a lifelong Communist, who retained her membership card even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Davis is one of seven designated “University Professors,” a title normally “reserved for scholars of international distinction.” Davis has produced nothing in her academic career besides ponderous Marxist political tracts. Her real distinction is to be a tireless agitator for radical causes, including a personal crusade to abolish the “prison-industrial complex.” In Davis’s view, all criminals who are members of racial or ethnic minorities are to be regarded as “political prisoners” and victims of American racism, and should be released. Davis’s holds an academic chair in Santa Cruz’s “History of Consciousness” program, which awarded a Ph.D. to Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton. Newton’s sole academic credentials were his radical rap sheet and a political tract exculpating the criminal organization he headed as a victim of government persecution. Santa Cruz accepted this worthless document as his doctoral thesis.

The “Department of Community Studies” at Santa Cruz is a typical example of the cornucopia of radical studies programs available to its students. One department offering is “The Theory and Practice of Resistance and Social Movements,” whose contents are described in the Santa Cruz catalogue in these terms: “The goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution. We will learn what communities past and present have done and are doing to resist, challenge, and overcome systems of power including (but not limited to) global capitalism, state oppression, and racism.”[[1]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn1)

An entire Santa Cruz curriculum devoted to similar revolutionary agendas is also one of the oldest and most influential Women’s Studies programs in the country. Its creators have renamed it the Department of Feminist Studies to reflect their real agenda which is to provide a training center for political radicals. The chief architect of these academic programs is Bettina Aptheker, a former Party comrade of Professor Davis and a well-known Berkeley radical in her own right. Like Huey Newton, Aptheker received her PhD from the Santa Cruz History of Consciousness program, which allowed her to submit as a “scholarly” thesis, a collection of political articles previously rejected by the Communist Party’s publishing house because of her deviation on the “woman question” (Aptheker is a lesbian activist).

In a recently published autobiography, she described her initial reluctance to take on an academic career,[[2]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn2)and explained how she overcame her hesitation when Marge Frantz, a lecturer in American Studies at Santa Cruz and, like Aptheker, a Bay Area Communist, advised her: “It’s your revolutionary duty!”[[3]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn3) Aptheker was duly made the instructor for the “Introduction to Women’s Studies” course in the fledgling program: “I redesigned the curriculum and re-titled it, ‘Introduction to Feminism,’ making it more overtly political, and taught the class in the context of the women’s movement.”

According to Aptheker, most of her students “were activists themselves”[[4]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn4) and nothing remotely academic entered her lesson plan: “Teaching became a form of political activism for me, replacing the years of dogged meetings and intrepid organizing with the immediacy of a liberatory practice,…”[[5]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn5) This abusive approach to education was made possible by the abdication of university authorities and the shirking of their legal obligations to students and the public.

In its formal regulations, California’s public university system makes clear that its campuses must observe clearly defined academic standards and that political indoctrination is an abuse of its classrooms and students. This is a contract not only between the university’s faculty and its administration but between the university and the public, whose taxpayers support it. While professors are “free within the classroom to express the widest range of viewpoints,” university regulations require that these viewpoints must “accord with the standards of scholarly inquiry and professional ethics.” The “Standing Orders of the Regents,” passed in September 2005, make unmistakably clear that political indoctrination and partisan interest have no place in the university curriculum and that the uregents are obligated to maintain its standards:

[The Regents] are responsible to see that the University remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interest. Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination, for purposes other than those for which the course was constituted, or for providing grades without commensurate and appropriate student achievement, constitutes misuse of the University as an institution.[[6]](http://websat.frontpagemag.com/Editor/HtmlEditor.aspx?item=dnn_ctr463_dataform_Body#_ftn6)

In the liberal arts programs of the University of Santa Cruz, however, the violation of this policy and the consequent abuse of the institution and its students is a routine fact of academic life.

Department of Community Studies

In contravention of the Standing Orders of the Regents, the clear purpose of the Community Studies program (as described on the departmental web page) is overtly political rather than academic: “The UCSC faculty offers courses related to social justice -- including broad structural and social changes and community based organizing...”

“Social justice” is the term for a wide range of causes favored by the political left and the curriculum offered by the Department of Community Studies is explicit in reflecting these agendas. Listing several “social justice domains” on which courses in the department are based, the departmental website provides several telling examples of politicized curricula. Thus, the areas covered by the Community Studies program include “labor studies, including the history of the working class,” “youth cultures, youth activism and empowerment,” “race and racism” “cultural work in social change,” “gay and lesbian issues,” “social justice, sustenance and sustainability in agro-food systems” “resistance and social movements.” That this is explicitly a training program for political activism, not a course of scholarly inquiry, the departmental statement makes clear: “The [Community Studies] major provides an opportunity for the student who is committed to social justice to work on a full-time basis beyond the university.”

Students who do not subscribe to this leftwing party line are automatically excluded by the subject matter (as framed by the department) from opportunities offered to student radicals who adhere to its partisan orthodoxies. The entire process is a violation of the students’ academic freedom and every academic standard set by the Regents of the University, although no university official seems to care. By requiring students to adhere to a political orthodoxy, the Department of Community Studies also violates the fundamental contract between the Regents and the taxpayers of California, who are funding, unbeknownst to them, a training program in radical politics.

Theory and Practice of Economic Justice

CMMU 100E..

ucsc big data

https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/06/data-science-center.html

http://www.ecowatch.com/carbon-capture-india-baking-soda-2177070984.html

good news?

dicaprio

...Carbon Clean Solutions is not the first company to attempt to commercialize a process to convert CO2 emissions into commercially marketable products.

In 2012, a U.S. startup named Skyonic raised $9 million from investors to build a plant to convert carbon emissions from a cement plant in San Antonio, Texas. The investors included ConocoPhilips, BP and PVS Chemicals. The facility opened in October 2014 at the Capitol Aggregates plant and became operational in January 2016. Outputs include baking soda, bleach and hydrochloric acid.

Skyonic has said that, at full capacity, the plant will be able to capture 75,000 tons annually of CO2. The company claims that its process uses 30 percent less energy than more common carbon capture technologies. The plant was financed with the aid of a $28 million award under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

California-based Blue Planet produces concrete and other building materials from sequestered CO2. The company says its concrete can be carbon neutral or carbon negative. Climate activist and actor Leonardo DiCaprio is a member of the firms' government affairs advisory board.

...

The company captures industrial carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories and transforms it into concrete materials. Photo credit: Blue Planet

Brent Constantz, Blue Planet’s founder and CEO, said in a statement on the formation of the advisory board: “Bringing these leaders together to advise the company will guide our important initiatives with world governments. We encourage policies that promote carbon mitigation technology on a massive scale. We welcome the expertise, passion and unique platforms that Leo, Daniel and Durwood bring to the company. I look forward to working closely with them.”

DiCaprio—who urges a "transition to a clean energy economy that does not rely on fossil fuels"—is a powerful advocate for environmental action. In September 2015, DiCaprio pledged to divest from fossil fuels as part of the Divest Invest Coalition, which encourages business leaders to divest from fossil fuels and in businesses that contribute to climate change and to invest in environmentally conscious companies instead.

Oscar-nominee and environmental philanthropist Leonardo DiCaprio has joined the newly-formed government and policy advisory board of Blue Planet, a prominent developer of carbon capture technology based in Los Gatos, California....

It's safe to say *The Revenant* star knows a thing or two about carbon capture. According to the announcement, DiCaprio made a personal investment in Blue Planet and produced last year's documentary film Biomimicry, which covered carbon capture technologies, including those developed by the company. Watch here (starts at 7:50):

==

omfg http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/University%20of%20California%20-%20Santa%20Cruz.html

2006 scrape, zombies

http://socialsciences.ucsc.edu/research/publications/crime-prison-reading-list.html

Craig Reinarman, Professor in the division’s Sociology Department, specializes in law, crime, and social justice and most recently published various arguments for loosening drug policy in the USA.

Reinarman comments in the Santa Cruz Sentinel how"Drug problems cannot be understood apart from the matrix of other social problems in which they are embedded. The solutions will not be simple. Not all drug abuse, licit or illicit, can be considered addiction and not everyone arrested for drug possession needs treatment. But there is a growing consensus that we cannot incarcerate our way out of our drug problems."

Julie Beck, who earned her PhD from the division's Sociology department in 2006, has gone on to research and study Prisons in California. She is currently an Associate Professor at California State University where she teaches about police and community relations, crime theory and women in criminal justice.

Beck co-authored an important chapter in the book Courts, Law and Justice (2006) about the impact of DNA evidence on the criminal justice system and wrote a piece about "lifers" in San Quentin Prison and the problems they face.

haney

“There are few, if any, forms of imprisonment that appear to produce so much psychological trauma as isolation. There’s very little doubt in psychology that enforced isolation is psychologically harmful.”

The Psychological Effects of Incarceration

Psychologist Craig Haney, PhD, studies the use and impact of solitary confinement on inmates in super-maximum security, or “supermax,” prisons. 

“There’s very little doubt in psychology that enforced isolation is psychologically harmful and for some people will be very damaging,” says Haney, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Despite the shared perspective many psychologists have about the dangers of isolation and social exclusion, less research has been done into the psychological impact of enforced solitary confinement. Haney’s goal is to get the data in order to evaluate whether such confinement is harmful, how much damage it can inflict and who is most susceptible.

Studying the Supermax

Haney has inspected many supermax prisons across the U.S., conducting systematic psychological assessments of nearly 1,000 inmates in solitary confinement. In addition to conducting observations and face-to-face interviews with inmates, mental health staff and correctional staff, he has performed an extensive literature review of personal accounts and prison documents relating to the operation of confinement units.

Through his research, Haney has found little evidence to support claims that prisoners or prison systems benefit from solitary confinement. Even those prisoners deemed to be the worst offenders don’t require such extreme isolation and deprivation. Many, he argues, are placed in supermax conditions not for what they have done but on the basis of a prison official’s judgment that they are dangerous, disruptive or a threat. Often, he says, they can and should be handled differently.

Solitary Confinement and Social Deprivation

“There are few, if any, forms of imprisonment that appear to produce so much psychological trauma as isolation,” Haney says. “For many prisoners, the absence of regular, normal interpersonal contact creates a pervasive feeling of unreality.”

Haney’s research found that among the population of inmates in supermax prisons, there is a higher rate of mental illness than the general prisoner population. Some inmates entered the prison system with existing mental health problems, while others show signs of mental illness that emerged after confinement. He assessed 400 randomly selected inmates to determine if they were experiencing symptoms of psychological distress or demonstrating isolation-related psychopathological symptoms. More than half of the assessed inmates experienced 11 of the 12 recognized signs of psychological distress. Approximately two out of three of those interviewed reported having anxiety attacks and feeling on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Some inmates also reported more extreme symptoms, such as depression and suicidal thoughts.¹

His research showed that even in the correctional system, people need human interaction to be healthy psychologically. 

“It borders on being common sense, but it is common sense with empirical research to support it,” Haney says. “So much of what we do and who we are is rooted in a social context. When people experience extreme isolation and social exclusion, they suffer.”

¹For example, see: Haney, C. “Mental health issues in long-term solitary and ‘supermax’ confinement.” Crime and Delinquency, 49 (1), 124 – 156. Retrieved from http://www.supermaxed.com/NewSupermaxMaterials/Haney-MentalHealthIssues.pdf

Social Psychology

Social psychologists are interested in all aspects of personality and social interaction, exploring the influence of interpersonal, intergroup and intragroup relationships on human behavior.

Learn more about the science of social psychology

usly, in 1971 Alice Waters opened a small café in Berkeley,

California, named it Chez Panisse, and began to serve simple meals to her

friends. Feeling that the best food was made from fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients, Waters bought most of her produce from local farms

and was the first to put “organic” on the menu in what later came to be

a world-renowned culinary institution. There is little question that Alice

Waters pioneered a revolution in food tastes, not only inventing “California cuisine,” but also, through her penchant, bringing local, organi-cally produced food into the mix. Waters inspired a rash of imitation—

many Bay Area chefs trained with Waters and went on to open their own

restaurants and become celebrity chefs in their own right—and quite instrumentally contributed to the diffusion of organic consumption.17

The alternative production movement also had its adherents in California. In 1967, Alan Chadwick, a British-born Shakespearean actor,

began a garden club at the University of California at Santa Cruz based

on the premise that gardening is best done without chemical pesticides

and fertilizers (Gaura 1997). Eventually the garden expanded to a

twenty-five-acre farm and became the only university-run research and

extension service devoted solely to organics. The program was decidedly

countercultural; prevailing leftish political sentiments and a cultural milieu of what Belasco (1989)

called “communal bare bones living, vegetarianism, and sexual and pharmaceutical libertarianism” created an

image for organic farming that lasted long after the 1960s had passed.

Nevertheless, the program played an important role in diffusing organic

farming. Not only were many organic technologies tried, tested, and extended through the now-named Center for Agroecology and Sustainable

Food Systems, but also its apprenticeship program spawned many private farms as well as public service gardening and farming programs.

As a result, Santa Cruz, in particular, was to become a center for the

California organic farming movement as it began to take more institutional forms. The first certification agency, California Certified Organic

Farmers (CCOF), began there in 1973 as a grassroots organization of

small organic farmers. In 1990, Bob Scowcroft and Mark Lipson, formerly of CCOF, started the Organic Farming Research Foundation with

the purpose of fostering the improvement and widespread adoption of

organic farming practices (OFRF 1999).

Somewhat later, a second node of the California organic farming

movement materialized in Yolo County, in proximity to the University

of California at Davis (in spite of its teaching and research emphasis on

industrialized farming).18 I