Voices

Archive

"Experienced" vs. "qualified" in the presidential race

Oct 8, 2008 When it comes to the presidential race, "experienced" and "qualified" are not one and the same and it is dangerous to suggest that they are.

Nice swing – but can you spell it?

Sep 30, 2008 It's high time, argues professor Kyeyoung Park, that Americans considered the bias against people who speak English as a second language, as evidenced in a recent LPGA decision to suspend players who are not proficient in English.

Politicians campaigning for votes underestimate
blue-collar, service workers

Sep 23, 2008 We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism. But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands.

How to restructure the U.S. financial sector after the Wall Street crisis

Sep 16, 2008 The U.S. financial system is never going to be the same, writes Donald Straszheim, visiting scholar at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

UCLA’s admissions policy corrects a grave imbalance

Sep 16, 2008 Both the University of California's mission and UCLA's holistic admissions philosophy rightly invoke important factors that "the numbers" alone cannot capture — factors that we know are crucial to the success of the state's future leaders.

Sound Bites

Sep 8, 2008 Readers respond: What factors will figure into your vote for president?

Dodgy visitor settles in for summer, outfoxing us all

Aug 29, 2008 A coyote tries to join Claire Panosian's family, living in a rustic Los Angeles neighborhood.

Sound Bites

Aug 12, 2008 Readers respond to our question: How are high gas prices affecting you, and how are you coping?

The virtues of living near the heart of UCLA

Aug 12, 2008 Living in the heart of Westwood has numerous benefits for this UCLA staff member.

Why are the great masters of Western thought being expelled from their disciplines?

Aug 12, 2008 Freud, Marx, Hegel and other great masters of Western thought have vanished from their home disciplines, observes Russell Jacoby, professor in residence in UCLA's history department.

Sustainability 101: the fertility factor

Aug 8, 2008 The number of children that a couple has is not a component of anybody’s "environmental sustainability" equations.

The world is looking to Obama — and America

Jul 15, 2008 Electing Barack Obama president would be a message of positive change in America to many foreigners, says Anna Spain, a mediator and the assistant director of UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations.

Social attitudes toward leprosy still in the biblical age

Jul 2, 2008 Op-ed by Claire Panosian, co-founder of UCLA's Program in Global Health, about the stigma of leprosy.

Temporary tax hike can resolve state budget woes

Jun 24, 2008 In 1967, 1971, and 1991 the state faced a budget crisis eerily similar to the one now upon us.

Archaeologists hope to reach accord in Mideast

Jun 24, 2008 Groups of experts are working together to create the ideas and seek out the information on which a final peace agreement might be based.

Sound Bites

Jun 24, 2008

China drew the right lessons from Tiananmen Square

Jun 10, 2008 Donald Straszheim, a visiting scholar at the Anderson School of Management, writes that China deserves credit for facilitating an unprecedented economic advance.

Mark Yudof on policy, priorities and plans

May 22, 2008 Incoming UC President Mark Yudof gives the campuses a sneak peek at some of his plans in a Q&A with faculty and staff newspaper editors.

Sound Bites: What's your favorite place on campus, and why?

May 20, 2008 What is your favorite place on campus, and why?

Top-down control dooms our public schools

May 20, 2008 Wellford Wilms argues that administrative authoritarianism in schools perpetuates problems.

Cutting clutter, recycling can change your life

May 20, 2008

The promise of congestion pricing

May 6, 2008

Sharing the cost of insuring those with health risks

May 6, 2008

Sound Bites

May 6, 2008 Sound Bites question: Do you participate in Web 2.0 social networking, blogs or wikis?

Americans can't escape the tyranny of the penny

Apr 22, 2008

The other side of sex scandals

Apr 22, 2008

Sound Bites

Apr 22, 2008

Blindness and elected office -- the history behind the headlines

Apr 8, 2008

Immigration: the elephant in the room

Apr 8, 2008

Sound Bites

Apr 8, 2008

Who's to blame for the toxic toy crisis?

Mar 25, 2008

Sound Bites

Mar 18, 2008

Top-notch faculty recruitment is critical

Mar 17, 2008

Our consumption factor imperils us all

Feb 20, 2008 The average rate at which people consume resources is 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.

Why dieting doesn't work

Feb 20, 2008 Doctoral student of social psychology, Janet Tomiyama provides insight into why diets don't work.

Sound bites

Feb 20, 2008

Preparing for global warming's health crisis

Feb 5, 2008

Be more aware of the world's 'bottom billion'

Feb 5, 2008

Sound Bites

Feb 5, 2008

How 'they' become 'us'

Jan 23, 2008

His life, legacy are a call to action

Jan 23, 2008

Sound Bites

Jan 18, 2008

California's wildfires are inevitable

Dec 11, 2007

Letter to the Editor: Don't test addiction on animals

Dec 11, 2007

Sound Bites

Dec 11, 2007

Answer our next Sound Bites question

Nov 30, 2007

Sound Bites

Nov 20, 2007 UCLA's FITWELL program is promoting healthy activity and lifestyle choices. What are you doing to stay fit and healthy?

State funding for universities benefits everyone

Nov 20, 2007

Student screenwriters have a stake in outcome of strike

Nov 20, 2007

Disaster planning for disabled is a 'SNAP' away

Nov 6, 2007 UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge is developing a new project to aid those with disabilities in time of disaster.

Prof. targeted by animal rights extremists speaks out

Nov 6, 2007

Sound Bites

Nov 6, 2007

First steps for peace in the Middle East

Oct 23, 2007 Steven Spiegel is professor of political science and director of the Center for Middle East Development

Does the tobacco research policy go far enough?

Oct 23, 2007 Michael Ong is an assistant professor in residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine; Linda Sarna is a professor in the school of Nursing.

Sound Bites

Oct 23, 2007 Campus members tell us if they're taking advantage of campus Happenings.

Asian Americans are California's new 'sleeping giant'

Oct 10, 2007 California Asian Americans are growing in number and political influence

The health of our children must be secured

Oct 10, 2007 Support passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)

Sound Bites

Oct 10, 2007 Are college textbook prices too high, and what can be done about it?

Raising the minimum wage is not enough

Sep 25, 2007

Bringing the arts back to school

Sep 25, 2007

Weapons are more lethal than words

Sep 25, 2007

Sound Bites

Aug 14, 2007

Our sad retreat from desegregation

Aug 13, 2007

Fixing faculty salary scales is a high priority

Aug 13, 2007

Where passion for Bruin sports burns hottest

Jun 26, 2007

Men, too, are prone to depression

Jun 26, 2007

Giving books a second life in Iraq

Jun 26, 2007

Letter to the Editor

May 22, 2007

A bold idea for advancing public education

May 22, 2007

Some survivors live with 'gift' of breast cancer

May 22, 2007

Cities reap benefits by going green

May 22, 2007

The perils of expanding DNA searches to relatives

May 8, 2007

Students suffer when campuses are too PC about sex

May 8, 2007

What Mother's Day cards don't say

May 8, 2007

Be alert to warning signs of a student in crisis

Apr 24, 2007

sound bites

Apr 24, 2007

Paradoxically, piracy sometimes spurs innovation

Apr 24, 2007

Letters to the Editor

Apr 24, 2007

The roots and global dimension of modern terrorism

Apr 10, 2007

Parking in Westwood Village: an inconvenient truth

Apr 10, 2007

To the Editor

Apr 10, 2007

Apartheid accusations: impediment to peace

Mar 20, 2007

Tackling an invisible invader

Mar 20, 2007

Sound Bites: 4th Anniversary of Iraq War

Mar 20, 2007

Is this not apartheid?

Feb 21, 2007 Former President Jimmy Carter has come under sustained attack for having dared to use the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's policies in the West Bank. However, not one of Carter's critics has offered a convincing argument to justify the vehemence of the outcry, much less to refute his central claim that Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land while denying the same rights to indigenous Palestinians.

Like speech, romance in the ivory tower is a fundamental right

Feb 21, 2007 The fundamental issue, I believe, is not whether campus romance should be encouraged or prohibited but whether the choice to engage in a campus romance should be protected or precluded.

Iraq needs a surge in diplomacy, not troops

Feb 21, 2007 President Bush has announced a "surge" of additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Will this deliver a "win?" Probably not. But it will distract us from facing the deep-seated regional issues that must be resolved.

UC regents should ban tobacco funding for research ...

Feb 6, 2007 The University of California Board of Regents is currently considering a proposal to prohibit future acceptance of research funds from "manufacturers or distributors of tobacco products, their affiliates, or any entity controlling or controlled by such companies that are used to study tobacco-related diseases, the use of tobacco products or the individual or societal impacts of such use." The regents want feedback from the Academic Senate to gauge faculty opinion.

... Or shouldn't: A ban would only undermine UC's mission

Feb 6, 2007 Money to do research is the researcher's lifeblood for scientific inquiry — without it, much less research gets done. But money, especially from commercial sources, comes with strings.

Regents finally make room for staff at table

Feb 6, 2007 "It won't happen — there simply is no more room at the table," said then-UC Regent John Davies during his presentation at the Council of UC Staff Assemblies (CUCSA) quarterly meeting back in February 2003 at UC Santa Cruz. As the UCLA senior delegate to CUCSA that year, I sat listening to him in utter disbelief.

How hip-hop culture is changing the wor(l)d

Jan 23, 2007 Hip-hop culture — born out of the politically abandoned streets of Black and Latino U.S. inner-city hoods — has become, in many senses, a global language.

Sound Bites

Jan 23, 2007 As we begin 2007, Voices Editor Ajay Singh went around campus asking people which issues — local, national or international — they felt must be resolved this year.

Look to history to understand why global capitalism is hated

Jan 23, 2007

Understanding UC's retirement plan

Dec 12, 2006 A healthy and robust UC Retirement Plan (UCRP) is critically important to faculty, staff and UC itself. UC wisely provides a defined benefit plan.

What should America's strategy be in the Middle East?

Dec 12, 2006 Until the end of the cold war, American foreign policy in the Middle East was pulled between those who wanted to cast our lot with Arab nations and those who looked to Israel as our key partner in the region. That debate has been replaced since the early 1990s by one in which the question is not whether to support Israel, but how.

Sound Bites

Dec 12, 2006 As 2006 comes to a close, capping a year of political upheaval at home and wars abroad, Voices Editor Ajay Singh went around campus asking people to identify the one national or international event this year that personally affected them the most.

We are a forgetful nation

Nov 21, 2006 As we celebrate our hospitality and embrace our identity as an immigrant nation, we turn a blind eye to the fact that we have gradually become an intolerant nation, neither hospitable toward newcomers nor generous toward those who do not share our values.

Returning vets need educational support

Nov 21, 2006 What the classroom full of veterans wanted most from their teacher was help in explaining to their families what they had gone through in the war. They were taking a course in communication that was part of a federally funded education program for Vietnam veterans in the early 1970s, and their teacher was a colleague of mine.

Light pollution harms our ecosystems

Nov 21, 2006 A photograph of the Korean peninsula from space at night recently made national news, showing bright lights blanketing South Korea while North Korea was dark. It was meant to show that although North Korea has the bomb, it is still an impoverished, undeveloped nation. But the photo told another story as well.

Cartoon: By Carole Cable

Nov 21, 2006

Fraternizing at work benefits us all

Nov 7, 2006 After-work socializing can be a time to network, make new friends and possibly share ideas with a senior employee. Yet in this era of heightened concern about sexual harassment and the taboo of workplace romance, many men and women choose to forego any non-work-related activities with coworkers who are not same-sex.

Sound Bites

Nov 7, 2006

The racial politics behind anti-immigration jokes

Nov 6, 2006 When friends joke and laugh together, they share in an age-old practice that generates warm feelings, bringing them closer together. But what happens when 6 million people laugh at a political joke — more precisely, the jokes of late-night talk show host Jay Leno?

California needs faster trains, not more freeways

Oct 24, 2006

Holistic evaluation makes admissions fair

Oct 24, 2006 UCLA's Academic Senate voted last month to adopt a new admissions process that will be implemented in the fall 2007 freshman class: a 'holistic' model in which each application will be reviewed and evaluated in its entirety. This is a major change in the admissions process at UCLA, where the applicant pool is stunning.

Nurses need to step up and speak for themselves

Oct 24, 2006 The real question is, why do professional registered nurses need unions?

Cartoon: Iambic tetrameter?

Oct 10, 2006

L.A. becomes guiding light of U.S. labor

Oct 10, 2006 A century ago, Los Angeles proudly proclaimed itself an “open shop” city. Wages were low, unions were weak, and employers were determined to keep it that way. Today, the opposite is true: The L.A. labor movement is a national model.

How I read -- and live

Oct 10, 2006 I am a thanatologist, a person who specializes in the study of death and dying as well as suicide prevention. Although my patients — suicidal and dying persons — have been my teachers, without books I would be illiterate. For me, a library is a sacred place. My avocation is reading.

Sound Bites

Oct 10, 2006 The UC Board of Regents is currently considering whether or not UC should continue to accept tobacco industry support for research, as some UCLA researchers have. Voices Editor Ajay Singh recently asked people on campus what they thought about the controversy.