GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • Daily Digest
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Cornell videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
    • How donations will help us
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2021 articles
      • 2020 articles
      • 2019 articles
      • 2018 articles
      • 2017 articles
      • 2016 articles
      • 2015 articles
      • 2014 articles
      • 2013 articles
      • 2012 articles
      • 2011 articles
      • 2010 articles
      • 2009 articles
      • 2008 articles
      • 2007 articles
      • 2006 articles
      • 2005 articles
      • 2004 articles
      • 2003 articles
      • 2002 articles
      • 2001 articles
      • 2000 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • How donations will help us
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Cornell videos
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
  • Donations
SUBSCRIBE TO REVIEWS

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE-EDITED CROPS & FOODS

Help stop the new threat

GM Fed pig

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

2004 articles

Protests at Berkeley graduation ceremony / The walking spreadsheet narrates

  • Print
  • Email
Details
Published: 19 May 2004
Created: 19 May 2004
Last Updated: 22 October 2012
Twitter

Last Thursday's graduation ceremony at the University of California Berkeley was marked by protests over the treatment of Dr Ignacio Chapela.

Here's an account from the blog of someone who participated as a walking spreadsheet, wearing UC Berkeley's Chancellor Berdahl's face and his infamous penchant for muffles! (item 2)

Item 2 gives the delicious 'alternative' schedule for the Commencement Program - handed out during the protests.

1.The walking spreadsheet narrates...

2."Selling out the modern way" and "The role of the spineless Chancellor"...
---

http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/raj/blog/

I've a long track record of being dressed funny. My mother enjoyed trussing me in earthy corduroy, tight dungarees, and cotton prints and, although I atoned by wearing nothing but black polyester for six adolescent months, I still feel that my mum's fashion experiments are responsible for my vulnerability to the Green Party, and my fondness for herbal tea.

Today I had a bit of a flashback. I was at a protest at the Berkeley Commencement, in support of Prof Ignacio Chapela, and in condemnation of the University Chancellor. Ignacio has been a professor of soil biology at Berkeley for eight years, and was up, last year, for tenure. His case is unimpeachable. His department wants him. External reviewers admire him. His students think he's great. He's a great educator, academic and activist. There's a problem, though. Like many of his colleagues, Ignacio has been troubled by the encroachment of large corporate interests, particularly biotechnology interests, onto the Berkeley campus. Unlike many of his colleagues, he has spoken out about it. Nothing but external pressure from the likes of Novartis ('partner' in a $25m agreement with Berkeley), and a particularly craven Chancellor, Robert Berdahl, can explain the track of this very odd tenure decision. There's more on this here and here.

Back to fashion, though. At the protest, I found myself wearing an Edward Tuftian nightmare. Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is, incidentally, required reading for anyone with eyes. One of Tufte's main concerns is the withering of our collective visual imagination, a demise that has been expedited by Microsoft's instant-eye-candy-generating software. In fairness, this isn't the fault of Bill Gates - one could hardly credit him with the innovation. I remember Harvard Graphics being one of the first bits of software to take the intelligence out of data presentation. Microsoft just copied the idea and crippled the company. And the issue of crappy representation isn't a problem limited to Powerpoint; it's endemic to any software that encourages the assumption that the ease with which visual information can be generated translates into a similar ease with which the information will be digested.

Point is, though, that I was wearing a spreadsheet.

Or rather, a spreadsheet and a graph, on a large, person-sized sandwich board. On one side, a list of dates at which different tenure letters were sent, and whether they were supportive (most were) of Ignacio's tenure. On the other side of the sandwich board was a graph subdivided into categories of folk who approved or disapproved of Ignacio's tenure. You couldn't see exactly what it all meant, and there wasn't space to put a legend on the sandwichboard, so you had to ask the person wearing it, me, what each shade of grey stood for.

As it happens, I was wearing a paper bag over my head, with a picture of the chancellor on it. There were small cutouts for eyeholes, which proved useful in avoiding bumping into things. The absence of a mouth-hole, however, meant that questions about what the graph meant were met with a helpful "mmm, fmmmmefrrr" sound from the effigy of Robert Berdahl.

The protesters inside the Commencement ceremony had a better time of it. They managed to embarrass the Chancellor, hand out a good many 're-wired' commencement programs, and garnered a bit of media attention too.
---

The Commencement of 2004
http://www.tenurejustice.org/files/MockGraduationProgram2004.pdf
University of California Berkeley
Commencement Program
Fiat Lux - Let there be light

Schedule:

Opening procession and music

"Selling out the modern way: How corporate university partnerships can enrich both administrators and investors" - Former College of Natural Resources Dean, Gordon Rausser, and Novartis Agricultural Institute President, Steven Biggs

"Circumventing ethical concerns and inconvenient facts: A case study in personal conflicts of interest and suppression of academic freedom" - Jasper Rine, Professor of Genetics and Development

"The commodification of the public university: The role of the spineless Chancellor" - Berkeley Chancellor, Robert Berdahl

Keynote talk: " The media's failure to criticise abuse of power in the 21st century" - Ted Koppel, ABC News

Reading of the names of the graduates

Procession and music
....

Prof. Ignacio Chapela of UC Berkeley has been unjustly denied tenure by Chancellor Robert Berdahl after a protracted and irregular three- year process, despite the near-unanimous recommendations from experts within Berkeley and around the world in favor of tenure.

He previously had the bravery to speak out against a $25 million research agreement with the biotechnology giant Novartis. After publishing research showing that transgenic DNA has contaminated native corn in Mexico, he withstood an industry-coordinated smear campaign.

He is being silenced for speaking out against the University working for transnational corporations instead of the people of California.

Your tuition dollars have supported the suppression of academic freedom. You can learn more by visiting the web site www.tenurejustice.org.

Please contact Chancellor Berdahl and tell him you support academic freedom and a fair tenure process for Prof. Chapela. He can be reached at:

Office of the Chancellor 200 California Hall #1500 Berkeley, CA 94720- 1500 (510) 642-7464 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

  • Prev
  • Next

Menu

Home

News

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

How Donations Will Help Us

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

RSS

Content 1999 - 2021 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design