Be the Change is the Henderson Center’s first-ever a summer podcast series featuring conversations with people who, in their lives and work, are the change we need to see in the world.
EP 1: MELISSA MURRAY
My first guest on Be the Change is Interim Dean Melissa Murray. We talk about how leaders make decisions, how to spark a potent feminist revolution at Berkeley Law, what she’ll miss when she’s in New York, and why black motherhood is a political act.
Episode date: 6.28.2017
EP 2: HON. THELTON E. HENDERSON
The singular and beloved Judge Thelton Henderson is my guest on the second episode. We talk about his youth in South Central Los Angeles, working closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the ’60s, one way he knows he’s doing something right as a jurist, and his favorite provisions of the Constitution. This conversation was incredibly fun to record and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Episode date: 7.9.2017
EP 3: VIRGIE TOVAR
The third episode of Be the Change features writer, speaker, and activist Virgie Tovar. A radical theorist with a background in critical race theory and queer feminism, Tovar’s work liberates people from the patriarchal, racialized, and phobic system of oppression commonly known as the beauty industry. Virgie and I explore the process of divesting from diet and body image culture and investing in rehumanization, community-building, and a new vision for our lives. I hope our conversation resonates with everyone, but especially with social justice lawyers and activists: Sustaining our intense work requires rich communal- and self-care practices that, by definition, are at odds with the endless task of conforming to normative beauty and body standards.
EP 4.: ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
Somehow, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky found time in his first days on campus to sit down with me for the fourth episode of Be the Change. We had a lovely conversation and talked about his experiences growing up on the south side of Chicago, the role that tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of healing the broken world, plays in his life, and what would happen if he could take a red pen to the Constitution and make a few changes. There’s also a little insider information that Barbri alumni will appreciate.
Episode date: 7.31.2017
EP. 5: EVA PATERSON
I’m delighted to share one last episode of Be the Change with you. This time, I talk with Eva Paterson, the co-founder and president of Equal Justice Society. We talk about her groundbreaking July 2017 victory in Sanders v. Kern High School District, how she became radicalized, the joys of blackness, and her vision for the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection.
Episode date: 8.14.2017