PLATFORM TWO: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY
LIGHT THE WAY: THE CAMPAIGN FOR BERKELEY
AND
THE FUTURE OF OUR NATION
Light the Way: The Campaign for Berkeley is a comprehensive effort to raise $6 billion by the end of 2023 to invest in Berkeley’s extraordinary faculty and students, research for the public good, and learning, living, and work spaces. The campaign—among the largest ever undertaken by any university—builds on Berkeley’s distinctiveness in transforming lives, fueling social mobility, and changing the world.
The campaign mobilizes the entire Cal community to stand together, demonstrating its collective power, to illuminate knowledge and realize a common vision for our future.
The Idea of American Network is now in full partnership in Light the Way. We will be working closely with all of the resources at the university to advance our goals of promoting the common good, strengthening our Democracy and working toward a more just and inclusive America. We fully embrace and support the five clearly defined challenges facing our nation that the Light the Way campaign has identified and embraced in what the university terms “Illuminating Solutions.”
“Drawing from a wellspring of fundamental research and a deep desire to serve, we have identified several themes that represent complex challenges facing our world that Berkeley is ideally suited to address. Since each problem is much bigger than any single discipline can understand or solve, this campaign, more than any before it, will support groundbreaking research that builds on our historic leadership and integrates the disciplines in ways still unimagined. Your support of these areas will motivate faculty and students to break from the status quo and find a better way forward.”
Office of the Chancellor
University of California, Berkeley
What are the specific complex challenges facing our world
that Berkeley intends to address?
Democracy and Equality: Study the institutions and practices of democracy and how to make them better, such as closing the income gap and making access to education, work and well-being more inclusive, just and equitable.
Data Science and Artificial Intelligence: Give students from all backgrounds the skills to analyze and compute data in a rapidly evolving digital world, and then apply them to any field. Ensure that the uses of artificial intelligence are safe, fair, ethical, and compatible with human intelligence.
Energy, Climate and Environment: Understand the depths of environmental change, speed up strategies for mitigating and adapting to it, and ensure that vulnerable populations can participate in transforming to clean energy and other needs.
Health and Basic Discovery: Uncover the molecular mechanisms of disease and build new tools, therapeutics and treatments for human health, particularly for neurodegenerative and genetic diseases.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Inspire all undergraduates to become agents of innovation and social change by building their capacity to turn imagination into novel products or new industries that will make a difference in the world.
COMMITMENT OF IDEA OF AMERICA NETWORK
We have committed to the leadership of the university to focus our efforts on illuminating solutions for the “Democracy and Equality” challenge. In doing so we will be speaking to the future of our Democracy and the importance of our founding values, our legacy in expanding those values to be more inclusive of all Americans and the goal of achieving a more just and equitable nation.