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November 7, 2009

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California on the cusp

Editor's Note

In the first essay I wrote for this magazine, on the centennial of the Greek Theatre, I recounted some of the themes that have made Berkeley Berkeley. A powerful theme was its reinvention of tradition. Many of the intellectuals, artists, and civic leaders who shaped Berkeley’s future shared a vision of the place as the new Athens, a cultural pot of gold at the end of the American pioneer trail. Their hope for a Hellenic rebirth both emerged from fin de siecle prosperity and fought the oft en ruthless entrepreneurial energy that, combined with California’s inestimable natural wealth, helped produce the state’s rosperity. Nor did the ironies and tensions of the time end there—a notable and generally noble endeavor, for instance, was the devotion of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his cohorts to record the California native cultures only recently decimated by the rush for gold.

A tension between invention, innovation, and progress on the one hand, and preserving what is valuable, continues to deﬁ ne Berkeley. At its best it is a creative one wherein traditions are ﬁ rmly held in their essence, but renewed to match contemporary needs. Most days, I ride to work on my bicycle, whose up-to-date engineering puts to shame the Schwinns of my youth. My bike is both a throwback pleasure—I get a boyish thrill crossing the wooden bridge over Strawberry Creek—and a contemporary luxury, given the hours some friends spend pinned down on local freeways. Recently, the creek has been brown and swollen with rain, but when it is clear and its banks more stable, I often glimpse students from the Valley Life Sciences Building collecting samples there. If contemporary methods for crunching data, like genomics, inform their study of the local ecosystem, the goal for some research is to renew a ritual older than the Greeks: to understand what it would take for salmon, an ancient creature that we know is key to the health of the riparian habitat, to return to spawn in these waters.

This magazine, too, has its traditions, most honorably its editorial integrity, which is borne of its independence. Our core conviction is that the respect we hold for our readers’ intelligence is best served by honest, eyes-wide-open reporting. That tradition also, I believe, needs renewal in order to survive intact.

California is on the cusp, once again, of profound changes—in technology, in demography, in culture, and in media—that promise to ripple through the nation and world. Berkeley’s mandate, inscribed into its charter as a public university, is to serve California and its citizens. In coming months in these pages, based on Berkeley’s intellectual leadership, we promise to immerse you in some of the great discoveries and debates of our time and place. In this way, as your new editor, I hope to honor Berkeley’s—and your—deepest traditions of public service, while renewing them for these times.

Kerry Tremain

Articles

• Cover Page
• Coolness in controversy
• Bold! Outrageous! Funny!
• Picture this
• Editor's Note: California on the cusp

Departments

• Alumni Almanac
• A Personal Essay
• Calendar
• CalZone
• In Memoriam
• Keeping in Touch
• Letters
• Recalling Cal
• Talk of the Gown
• Twisted Titles

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