Nathalia Alcantara

Dec 10, 2024 | alumni.berkeley.edu | Nathalia Alcantara |Pat Joseph

Look, there he is, the new chancellor, introducing himself to freshmen on Sproul Plaza. “Hi, I’m Rich. I’m new here myself.” Well, not exactly true. He’s certainly in a new role, but with the exception of grad school at MIT (Ph.D. in economics), a six-year stint on faculty at Columbia, and two years at Goldman Sachs, Chancellor Rich Lyons ’82 has been at Berkeley since he was an undergrad himself, making him the first leader of the university since Robert Gordon Sproul to call Cal alma mater.

Dec 10, 2024 | alumni.berkeley.edu | Nathalia Alcantara |Pat Joseph

Sixty years ago, in the fall of 1964, the staff of this magazine—then called California Monthly—had the foresight to drop everything to cover a student uprising that was then roiling campus. The Free Speech Movement scarcely had a name, but the Monthly was on the job. Assistant Editor Don Kechely ’55 shot photographs, many of which are still among the most iconic and familiar images from that time.

Nov 12, 2024 | alumni.berkeley.edu | Nathalia Alcantara

In the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Erika Weissinger, Ph.D.’13, noticed a growing reluctance among her students to engage in dialogue across differences. Many of them, she observed, felt “bewildered, angry, overwhelmed, and confused.” But she was not surprised. As an assistant professor of practice at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP), she has a front-row seat to these shifts.

Oct 1, 2024 | alumni.berkeley.edu | Nathalia Alcantara

Sixty years ago today, around 11:45 a.m., two UC Berkeley deans and a university police lieutenant approached Jack Weinberg, a graduate student in mathematics, who was soliciting funds at a table outside Sather Gate for a national civil rights group. Weinberg refused to leave or identify himself, leading to his arrest for trespassing. As he went limp in protest, police called for a squad car to remove him.

Jun 17, 2024 | alumni.berkeley.edu | Nathalia Alcantara

From real-time raw images of war to the sight of Pope Francis wearing an AI-generated puffer coat, social media content pulls us in every direction. In this sea of information, the line between reality and the distortions of our digital echo chambers has never been blurrier. Despite its undeniable benefits in democratizing information, social media’s fragmented reality forces us to question whether anything we see online is real.