Matrix Podcast

On February 15, 2023, Social Science Matrix was honored to host Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for a Matrix Distinguished Lecture entitled "Reimagining Global Integration." A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mariano-florentino-cuellar-reimagining-global-integration/. Abstract Whether they live in vast cities or rural villages, people in virtually every corner of the world have experienced enormous growth in cross-border economic, political, and social connections since World War II. This latest chapter in the story of transnational activity has coincided with enormous changes in the well-being of billions of people. As China gained access to global markets and its share of worldwide trade increased eight-fold in a single generation, for example, the percentage of its population living in extreme poverty plunged from 72 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2010. Global life expectancy has risen from less than 47 years in 1950 to 71 years in 2021, and the male-female gap in primary and secondary schooling globally has almost disappeared. But increased cross-border trade, migration, flows of information, and political ties have also engendered an intense backlash to "globalization" and related concepts. Today, at a time of major geopolitical upheaval and technological change, policymakers and the public are vigorously debating the merits of domestic policies suitable for an interconnected world. They are exploring new trade and migration rules, reviving strategies for national industrial and technological development, and reflecting on the lessons of 1990s-style globalization for international law and institutions substantially influenced by the United States. Discussions of "reshoring" supply chains and United States-China economic "decoupling" are just two examples of rising concerns in Washington about cross-border ties. Yet global cooperation remains vital to solving many of humanity's most urgent challenges: mitigating and adapting to climate change, harnessing technology for the benefit of humanity while taming its risks, reducing poverty, and preventing violent conflict. By better understanding the long-simmering conflicts over global cooperation and integration, policymakers and civil society can further develop the ideas, institutions, and coalitions necessary to create a stable foundation for a more reflective version of global integration: one that addresses the connections between economic well-being and security, and better aligns domestic realities with international norms to tackle the pressing issues of our time. About the Speaker A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar served two U.S. presidents at the White House and in federal agencies, and was a faculty member at Stanford University for two decades. Before serving on California's highest court, Justice Cuéllar was the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. In this capacity, he oversaw programs on international security, governance and development, global health, cyber policy, migration, and climate change and food security. Previously, he co-directed the Institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation and led its Honors Program in International Security. While serving in the Obama White House as the president's special assistant for justice and regulatory policy, he led the Domestic Policy Council teams responsible for civil and criminal justice reform, public health, immigration, transnational regulatory issues, and supporting the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. He then co-chaired the U.S. Department of Education's Equity and Excellence Commission, and was a presidential appointee to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States. As a California Supreme Court justice, he oversaw reforms of the California court system's operations to better meet the needs of millions of limited-English speakers. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cuéllar is the author of Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies (2013) and has published widely on American institutions, international affairs, and technology's impact on law and government. Cuéllar co-authored the first ever report on the use of artificial intelligence across federal agencies. He has served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Social and Ethical Implications of Computing Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on Accelerating Climate Action. He chairs the board of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and is a member of the Harvard Corporation. He currently serves on the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Earlier, he chaired the boards of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies, and co-chaired the Obama Biden Presidential Transition Task Force on Immigration. Born in Matamoros, Mexico, he grew up primarily in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. He graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, and received a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. He began his career at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

On February 1, 2023, Social Science Matrix presented an Authors Meet Critics panel on Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present, a book by Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. Professor Riley was joined by two discussants: Colleen Lye, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley, affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, and Donna Jones, Associate Professor of English at UC Berkeley and Core Faculty for the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory and the Science, Technology and Society Center. The panel was moderated by Alexei Yurchak, Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and was co-sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities. A transcript of this panel is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/dylan-riley-microverses-observations-from-a-shattered-present/. About the Book Microverses comprises over a hundred short essays inviting us to think about society—and social theory—in new ways. Lockdown created the conditions for what Adorno once termed 'enforced contemplation'. Dylan Riley responded with the tools of his trade, producing an extraordinary trail of notes exploring how critical sociology can speak to this troubled decade. Microverses analyses the intellectual situation, the political crisis of Trump's last months in office, and love and illness in a period when both were fraught with the public emergency of the coronavirus. Riley brings the theoretical canon to bear on problems of intellectual culture and everyday life, working through Weber and Durkheim, Parsons and Dubois, Gramsci and Lukács, MacKinnon and Fraser, to weigh sociology's relationship to Marxism and the operations of class, race, and gender, alongside discursions into the workings of an orchestra and the complicatedness of taking a walk in a pandemic. Invitations rather than finished arguments, the notes attempt to recover the totalising perspective of sociology—the ability to see society in the round, as though from the outside—and to recuperate what Paul Sweezy described as a sense of the 'present as history.'

A transcript of this interview can be found at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/alumni-interview-adriana-kugler-world-bank-executive-director-for-the-us/. This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Adriana D. Kugler, the World Bank Group Executive Director for the United States. Dr. Kugler was appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. She is the first Latinx person and first Jewish woman to be appointed to this position since the foundation of the World Bank in 1944. She is also a proud UC Berkeley alumna who graduated with a PhD in 1997. Prior to joining the WBG Board, Dr. Kugler had a long and distinguished career in research and policy as a development and labor economist. Her contributions on the impact of government policies and regulations on labor markets were recognized with the 2007 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association, and with the 2010 First Prize for Best Contribution in the area of "Globalization, Regulations and Development" from the Global Development Network. Dr. Kugler has also served in high-level leadership roles in the public and private sectors. She was Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor between 2011-2013. Dr. Kugler was Professor of Public Policy and Economics (2016-2022), and Vice Provost for Faculty (2013-2016) at Georgetown University. She was Chair and Chair-elect of the Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association in 2020 and 2019, respectively; was a member of the Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (2019-2022); and served in the Technical Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016-2019). She was an elected member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Labor Economists (2003-2009) and of the Executive Committee of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (2015-2019). Dr. Kugler serves on the Audit Committee (AC) and Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE). Kugler received her Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University in 1991, graduating with first class joint honors in economics and political science. This interview was conducted by Danny Yagan, Associate Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, who is on leave as Chief Economist of the Office of Management and Budget. Yagan was a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Associate of the Berkeley Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and Faculty Co-Director of the Taxation and Inequality Initiative of the Berkeley Opportunity Lab. Learn more about Social Science Matrix at https://matrix.berkeley.edu.

What role did American social and moral reformers play in managing human migrations? J.T. Jamieson, a Phd Candidate in UC Berkeley's Department of History, examines how social reformers in the first half of the 19th century sought to control migration and insert their own understandings of morality, social benevolence, and humanitarianism into the lives and experiences of migrants. In so doing, he argues, their reforms frequently perpetuated racial supremacy, religious supremacy, and Christian expansionism. In other words, they sought to determine who belongs in America — and who doesn't. Jamieson's dissertation, "A Mere Change of Location: Migration and Reform in America, 1787-1857," integrates the histories of religion, immigration, slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and Western expansion to argue that 19th-century social and moral reformers attempted to control the mass migrations of various peoples: African Americans, Indigenous peoples, European immigrants, and American settlers. A forthcoming journal article, "Home Work: Religious Nationalism and the American Home Missionary Society," will appear in Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal in 2023. On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Jamieson about his research. A transcript is available on the Matrix website at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/migration-and-reform-in-early-america-an-interview-with-j-t-jamieson/

Monica Ellwood-Lowe is a PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology whose research focuses on differences between outcomes for students of different socioeconomic status, as well as the societal barriers that might hinder student success. Ellwood-Lowe tries to answer such questions as, what skills do children develop when they come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes, even in the face of societal barriers to success? Do children's brains simply adapt to their respective environments? Ellwood-Lowe is co-mentored by Professors Mahesh Srinivasan and Silvia Bunge. She earned her bachelor's degree from Stanford University. Her work is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship, and the Greater Good Science Center. For this episode of the Matrix podcast, Matrix Content Curator Julia Sizek spoke with Ellwood-Lowe about her recent research on the topic of children's cognitive performance, and how we might think about removing barriers to children's success. A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/reconsidering-the-achievement-gap-an-interview-with-monica-ellwood-lowe/.

On this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two scholars whose work focuses on explaining how mass incarceration has changed over the last 30 years. Alex Roehrkasse is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Butler University. He studies the production of racial class and gender inequality in the United States through violence and social control. He was previously a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Sociology at Duke University and at the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University. Christopher Muller is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies the political economy of incarceration in the United States from Reconstruction to the present. He is particularly interested in how agricultural labor markets, migration, and struggles over land and labor have affected incarceration and racial and class inequality in incarceration. His work has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Forces, and Science. A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/the-rise-of-mass-incarceration-interview-with-chris-muller-and-alex-roehrkasse/

Why do people choose to go to college (or not)? What impact do race-based or financial aid policies have on higher education and the broader economy? In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley-trained economists whose research focuses on higher education and its impact on the broader economy. Maximilian Müller completed his PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley this year and is now starting a position as Postdoctoral Fellow at the briq Institute on Behavior & Inequality in Bonn. In Fall 2023 he will join the Toulouse School of Economics as an Assistant Professor. Maximilian is a behavioral economist studying questions in fields such as education, development, and family economics. In his research, he examines social influences on individual behavior around big life decisions, such as career choices, and their potential consequences for society-wide outcomes, such as social mobility. Prior to his PhD, he obtained an M.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford and a B.Sc. in Economics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Zach Bleemer is an Assistant Professor of economics at the Yale School of Management and a research associate at UC Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education. His current research uses natural experiments to examine the net efficiency and equity ramifications of educational meritocracy, with recent studies on race-based affirmative action, race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action, and university policies that restrict access to high-demand college majors. Zach holds a BA in philosophy, economics, and mathematics from Amherst College and a PhD in economics from UC Berkeley. A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/economic-benefits-of-higher-education-zach-bleemer-and-maximilian-muller/

In countries around the world, the "Green Revolution" has changed the scale and economy of growing crops, as pesticides, fertilizers, and new kinds of hybrid seeds have transformed the agricultural production process. In this episode of the Matrix Podcast, Julia Sizek spoke with two UC Berkeley scholars who study agrarian life in India, where farmers have been forced to adapt in the face of new technologies, as well as environmental and social change. Tanya Matthan is a S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in Berkeley's Department of Geography. An economic anthropologist and political ecologist, she finished her PhD in Anthropology at UCLA in 2021. Her current book project, tentatively titled, The Monsoon and the Market: Economies of Risk in Rural India, examines experiences of and responses to agrarian uncertainty among farmers in central India. Aarti Sethi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist with primary interests in agrarian anthropology, political-economy, and the study of South Asia. Her book manuscript, Cotton Fever in Central India, examines cash-crop economies to understand how monetary debt undertaken for transgenic cotton-cultivation transforms intimate, social, and productive relations in rural society. A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/a-changing-landscape-for-farmers-in-india-an-interview-with-aarti-sethi-and-tanya-matthan/

How do American child welfare and obstetric healthcare converge? Matty Lichtenstein, a recent PhD from Berkeley's Sociology Department, studies how state and professional organizations shape social and health inequalities in maternal and child welfare. Her current book project focuses on evolving conceptions of risk in social work and medicine, illustrated by a study of the intertwined development of American child and perinatal protective policies. She is working on several collaborations related to this theme, including studies of maltreatment-related fatality rates, the racialization of medical reporting of substance exposed infants, and risk assessment in child welfare. In another stream of research, she has written on social policy change, with a focus on educational regulation and political advocacy, and she has conducted research on culture, religion, and politics. Dr. Lichtenstein's work has been published in American Journal of Sociology, Qualitative Methods, and Sociological Methods and Research. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. In this interview, Matrix content curator Julia Sizek asks Lichtenstein about her research on the transformation of American child welfare and the impact of that transformation on contemporary maternal and infant health practices. A transcript of this interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/institutionalizing-child-welfare-an-interview-with-matty-lichtenstein/

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was insulted on the Capitol steps in July 2020, it was a brief media sensation. But what does being called an "effing bitch" mean for how we think about political speech? This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Gabriella Licata, a PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley, who discusses how the standard language ideologies of political speech come to shape perceptions of language and people in Congress. Gabriella utilizes mixed methodologies to assess language behavior and linguistic bias in sociolinguistic experiments, social media, and political discourse. She tells us about her paper, recently published in Journal of Language and Discrimination, which discusses the aftermath of an insult on the Capitol steps, and how it reveals the norms of American political speech. A transcript of this is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/race-gender-and-political-speech-an-interview-with-gabriella-licata/.