Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The 1990 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties recounted events from the history of activism at the California State University at Berkeley. This documentary advanced the idea that protest is a legitimate form of civic engagement. Talking head interviews and archival images were objectivity codes that gave credibility to this film as a balanced depiction of the Berkeley student movements, even though the film privileged the perspectives of former activists. An analysis of the film and its journalistic reviews suggests that the documentary’s formal structure played a central role, perhaps more than the content of the film, in the construction of the film’s legitimacy. Alternatively, an analysis indicates the presence of objectivity codes may delimit opportunities for controversial ideas to have legitimacy in popular culture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I will present and examine Berkeley's mathematical objections to the foundations of Calculus.

In 1734 Bishop Berkeley criticized the new Calculus of Leibniz and, especially, Newton in a publication titled "The Analyst" where he displayed, very pointedly, the fuzziness of some of Newton's arguments and sarcastically referred to Leibniz's differentials as "the ghosts of departed quantities."

This much can be gleaned by reading the marginal "Historical Notes" of many modern calculus texts.

However the precise mathematical arguments Berkeley used to refute the foundations of Calculus are generally not well known. In particular, one of his claims is that Newton, rather than reasoning clearly, makes two mutually compensating errors in his development of "fluxions" (derivatives). I will examine this argument in particular.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Why do young technology start-ups use (and not use) the patent system? Researchers administering the 2008 Kauffman-Berkeley Patent Survey contacted over 10,000 young companies in the software-internet, biotechnology, and medical device sectors, asking top managers about their companies' business models, innovation characteristics, and reasons for using patents. We will report on the utility to entrepreneurs of using patents for capturing profits from innovation, securing capital funding, and improving the likelihood of a successful "liquidity event," among others. The results of our survey not only offer insights into a heretofore little-understood topic, but are also relevant to those interested in seeing this dynamic segment of the economy better represented in arguments about the appropriateness of patent-system reform.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The sit-in address delivered by Mario Savio in December of 1964 on the steps of Sproul Hall at the University of California at Berkeley is ranked as one of the top 100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century. However, not one article in the discipline has analyzed this address or the 1960s protest rhetoric by the students at Berkeley in general. As a historical project influenced by materialist rhetorical criticism and theory, this essay therefore asks, “What did the 1964 Berkeley protest rhetoric do?” A preliminary analysis of Savio’s public address offers one answer to that question. Specifically, I argue that the 1964 Berkeley protests resituate college students as a participatory citizen class who create American history. I suggest that this new construction comes about through a unique pragmatic American style of détournement—the real life negation of an autocratic administration and temporal situation, and crucially, the re-orienting of it. This project has implications for understanding the position of college youth in America, contemporary social reform, and the material future of rhetoric.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: In the course of the twenty years following the end of World War II, the field of political theory was profoundly transformed. By 1970, new divisions had solidified within the field; many of these, including the normative/empirical distinction, had not been widely used during the preceding decades. Yet from 1970 on, the normative/empirical distinction became one of the principal frames for understanding the place of political theory in political science - for non-theorists and many theorists alike.
My paper examines how political theorists affiliated with U.C. Berkeley understood and responded to the growing importance of the normative/empirical distinction in their field. I argue that from the early 1950s up through the mid-1960s, Berkeley political theorists devoted their attention to trying to forge an intellectual alliance with those who later came to be identified with “empirical theory.” Relying on readings of published works and unpublished documents from the 1950s and 60s, I begin by offering an account of what the field of political theory looked like in the 50s and early 60s from the perspective of the Berkeley theorists. I then speculate on why Berkeley theorists were initially more inclined to criticize the Straussian approach than the empirical one and try to identify when and why they turned their critical focus to the normative/empirical distinction.