Sunday Shout-Out picks out the week’s stories that simply slipped our minds.

* Oh, BTW, we can totally make solar panels cheaper … in five to 20 years. [Daily Cal]

* Stop bugging your GSIs. Chances are, they’re depressed. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

* They’re probably depressed they’re not as wanted as our Boalt professors. Sad face. [Contra Costa Times]

* Say goodbye to Healthy Heavenly Foods in the Bear’s Lair? But what of our cheap sandwiches and banana eggrolls?! [UCB LJ]

Image Source: Shannon Hamilton, Daily Cal
Earlier: The Crazies and the Crazed

As the new President-elect meditatively contemplates a buckling economy, gears in the political machine are a-turnin’, and the new administration’s eyeing fresh meat for key appointments in high positions. Who out of the Berkeley academic crypt could possibly be so well-regarded as to deserve such a lofty designation?

A Haas professor, for one. The name of Laura D’Andrea Tyson’s being bandied about with a handful of others in consideration for an earth-shatteringly important economic post, like, oh, secretary of the Treasury. Competition’s fierce, though — former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker or former secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers might end up with the job instead.

The new management’s also recruited the dean of Boalt School of Law, Christopher Edley Jr., whose academic work concerns civil rights and administrative law. According to a post by The Atlantic, Edley’s been named to serve on Obama’s transition team advisory board. Edley was recruited in 2004 to bring the high and mighty to Berkeley law, but before that he was a professor for 23 years at Harvard Law School. Actually, Obama used to serve as a young Jedi-in-training under Edley when he was at Harvard Law himself.

Reports are speculating that the new administration might appoint him to a high Justice Department position–maybe even to a cushy spot on U.S. Supreme Court. Edley himself demures, claiming that he’d rather not dip a toe back into the shark-infested waters of DC. Still, he doesn’t completely quash every possibility of working for Obama.

Image Source: sandrino under Creative Commons
Californians may be on Obama’s short list [SF Chron]
Berkeley law school dean named to President-elect Obama’s transition team [PolitickerCA]

This past week, MacArthur genius grant recipients learned in a single phone call from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

Ostensibly this means they can slag off their academic duties and canoodle with loved ones in exotic vacationing spots across the world, but past MacArthur fellows have shown themselves more inclined to, oh, investigate lava. Build sculptures out of Scotch tape and paper clips. Research the aerodynamicism of fruit flies.  We dig.

This year’s batch includes 13 in the science fields and eight involved with the arts.  You can check out the breakdown here.

Image Source: leekelleher under Creative Commons
25 New MacArthur Fellows Announced [MacArthur Foundation]

Guggenheim Fellowships, brought to you by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation since 1925, are awarded every year to cool people “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” quite a number of whom are also Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. Plus, we know from experience that if it’s got a Guggenheim’s stamp of approval, it’s got to be pretty darn interesting.

Image Source: Finlay McWalter under GNU Free Documentation
Six Professors Win Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships [Berkeley News Center]
Guggenheim Fellowship [Wikipedia]
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation [Wikipedia]

A week ago, delivery interrupted a graduate seminar that Roy was teaching to heap much adulation and apples and purty flowers upon her unsuspecting person. The formal Golden Apple Award ceremony will take place in Dwinelle Hall at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, when she’ll deliver her “Ideal Last Lecture” and rack up a couple of grand for being just that awesome.

Roy teaches the wildly popular course, “Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millenium”, every fall semester. Reportedly, the class started out as an eight-week seminar with space for about a couple dozen students. Then it expanded. And expanded. And kept right on expanding. It was like the universe or Google or something.

From a couple dozen, space allotment jumped up to a hundred plus, and then to 600 last fall. Unable to keep up with student demand, Roy and her graduate students had to turn away scores of students last semester, and still the stairs in Dwinelle Hall were so clogged from people using the steps as seats that the place beggared navigation. The Clog was there, and we can tell you that, at 5 to 6:30 every Tuesday and Thursday, the auditorium was packed to full capacity. No one ditched — ever. Sound holy freaking impossible? We speak truth.

Speaking of which, posters advertising the class have been going up around campus again. Check it out. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll be able to tell the IMF from the WTO at the end of it all.

Image Source: smackbox under Creative Commons
Fruit and flowers honor a teacher who ‘knows her stuff’ [Berkeley News]

A recently declassified 2003 memo authorizing brutal interrogation methods on Guantanamo Bay detainees wouldn’t be news, really, because we’re jaded like that. The catch? The damning signature on the memo belongs to a lawyer cum professor, and that professor teaches law at a school of ultra liberal, Bush-bashing yukkity-yuks: our very own UC Berkeley.

Dubbed by national media as the John Yoo torture memo, the piece argues that the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections and the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruelty fails to apply to Guantanamo Bay prisoners because they’re aliens, damnit. Also because the President’s powers must be augmented during times of war. Mr. Yoo opines that, furthermore, “international law is not federal law and the President is free to override it at his discretion.”

Political pundits admit that Mr. Yoo probably wasn’t the driving force behind the torture referendums, only a “convenient idealogue who was there to sign on the dotted line”. Blithely violating decades of established humanitarian convention aside, Mr. Yoo teaches classes on international law, foreign relations and civil litigation at Boalt. It’s enough to make baby Jesus cry.

Image Source: mjb under Creative Commons
The Green Light: Attorney Phillipe Sands Follows the Bush Administration Torture Trail [Democracy Now]
John Yoo: A Touch of Evil [Rolling Stone]

With the state’s deficit crisis on one hand and the filthy rich coffers of private universities on the other, Berkeley’s not in a very good position to compete for top-notch faculty or even keep the ones they’ve got now. We’re still the, quote, “jewel in the crown of public higher education.” But since 2003, we’ve lost at least 30 faculty members to eight main competitors. Leading them? Harvard. No one is surprised.

The extra money will go towards endowing chairs for 100 positions. Most of us can only dream of jobs where “$130,000 a year” means “30% underpaid”, but fingers crossed – these are our professors, after all.

Bloomberg.com: Berkeley Raises $1.1 Billion to Keep Professors From Ivy League [Bloomberg]

In 2007, students nominated a total of 54 professors. Five were finalists, and department of history Professor Leon Litwack eventually claimed the honor during his last semester teaching.

The 2008 nomination process is now open and goes until Apr. 6. After choosing the winner, the ASUC, California Alumni Association and Berkeley Hillel go to the professor’s classroom with an undoubtedly welcome surprise of a $2500 award and a symbolic basket of apples.

Want to be a part of the post-nomination selection process? Turn in a resume to participate in choosing the “fairest” professor of them all!

Image Source: Abrahami under Creative Commons
Golden Apple Award [ASUC]
Students adore retiring historian [News Center]

Who’s the favorite among the profs? None other than college-student favorite, Barack Obama. He ranks No. 1 with $1.5 million donated in the campaign’s first six months. Hillary Clinton follows him with almost $940,000 collected.

The University of California is one of the top donors, second only to Harvard University. Hell, we even beat Stanford in the dollar race.

From Education Nation, the top colleges (thanks to their professors) stand as follows:

bq. 1. Harvard University
Total: $266,044 81% Democrat / 19% Republican

bq. 2. University of California
Total: $248,488 90% Democrat/ 10% Republican

bq. 3. College of William & Mary
Total: $136,200 99% Democrat / 1% Republican

bq. 4. Columbia University
Total: $114,108 78% Democrat / 22% Republican

bq. 5. Apollo Group
Total: $113,900 90% Democrat / 10% Republican

bq. 6. University of Chicago
Total: $102,880 92% Democrat / 8% Republican

bq. 7. Stanford University
Total: $97,608 89% Democrat / 11% Republican

bq. 8. Georgetown University
Total: $86,917 85% Democrat / 15% Republican

bq. 9. University of Pennsylvania
Total: $80,990 90% Democrat / 10% Republican

bq. 10. Northwestern University
Total: $70,575 82% Democrat / 18% Republican

Does it seem odd to you, too, that professors were able to amass this much? We all know profs don’t earn the highest salaries, at least if they’re in the humanities/not in Haas.

They must be ready for a change–now they’re putting their money where their mouths are.

College Professors for Obama [Education Nation]