The Scandal of Cal
Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley

There is a lot of grave-robbing in the history of UC Berkeley, well into the twentieth century. The university’s poor track record with indigenous people is the major focus of The Scandal of Cal, but it is not the only focus. I would recommend this to anyone who has been affiliated with Cal or has l......more

Excellent research and pungent opinions from a former Cal professor about UC Berkeley’s history, especially the anthropology department. The author, a refugee from 1960s activist culture, fills this book with little known facts about the movers and shakers who created UC Berkeley. Most of those facts......more

Working on campus, I have seen a number of recent post-2020 changes to the rhetoric and thinking about Cal and it's history, it has been refreshing (well well overdue.) There have been sporadically intentional efforts by academics, workers and students to reframe the history of UC Berkeley in a more......more

Interesting book with lots of facts and strongly-held opinions. I'm more willing to tolerate, eg, atomic research than the author is, but disagreement on stuff like that isn't what drove my low rating. One factor is that the list of offenses is exhaustive to the point of being exhausting. Perhaps it......more

Really important. If you already know about these uniquely California and UC Berkeley issues, the genocide, grave robbing, hoarding of ancestors, and eugenics, and you don’t want to slog through the details, just read the last chapter, Reckoning.......more