Black Lives at Cal introduces self-guided Black history tour of campus

Black Lives at Cal created a self-guided Black history tour of UC Berkeley’s campus, featuring various Black students, faculty and events from the past 100 years, The Daily Californian reported.

Black Lives at Cal (BLAC) is a multi-year initiative to celebrate and advance the legacy of Black people at UC Berkeley.

The tour was established by BLAC committee member and campus alumna Gia White, as well as fourth-year media studies major and BLAC content creation team leader Daniella Lake. The project stemmed from an essay by White about the first Black woman on UC Berkeley’s campus in the early 1900s.

“The tour is composed of 14 stops right now. The thing about it is we’re just scratching the surface of the black history on campus; there’s so many stories,” Lake told The Daily Californian. “(We) call it the starter pack.”

The first stop of the tour highlights Walter Gordon, the first Black student to graduate from UC Berkeley School of Law and the UC’s first all-American football player. Listeners of the tour can also learn about the presence of James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. on UC Berkeley’s campus.

“It’s been far too long that people didn’t know their names or their contributions. And it’s truly insane, all the stuff they did, for it to be dusted under the rug,” Lake said. “This project is so much bigger than us, because this is for the Black trailblazers who came before us.”

UCSF professor Diana Greene Foster named 2023 MacArthur Fellow

UC San Francisco professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences Diana Greene Foster was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow — a prestigious honor in academia, science and the arts — on Oct. 4, UCSF announced.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is an organization that supports creative people and institutions to build a more just and peaceful world. Through its annual MacArthur Fellows Program, the foundation awards $800,000 stipends to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction,” according to the program website.

Foster has conducted extensive research on policies surrounding reproductive health care. Her 2020 study, titled the Turnaway Study, examined the financial and health outcomes of people who are denied abortions. 

“Diana has provided us with the best evidence yet of the long-term consequences this issue has on women and their children,” UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood said in the press release. “She has produced research that is indispensable to understanding the impact that abortion restrictions are having across the country.”

Foster said that she hopes the findings of her study and her research in the field will be used to inform future policy decisions surrounding abortion. 

“My hope is that state judges and state legislators will look at the effect on their constituents and fellow citizens and understand this decision is not an easy one politically, but has wide-ranging implications for people’s health and the wellbeing of kids,” Foster said.

A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the Oct. 19, 2023, print edition of the Daily Nexus.

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Alex Levin
Alex Levin (he/him) is the University News Editor for the 2023-24 school year. Previously, Levin was the Assistant News Editor for the 2022-2023 school year. He can be reached at alexlevin@dailynexus.com.