Transcontinental REACH: How the EU's Chemicals Policy can Promote Green Chemistry in California

Klaus Berend of the Chemicals Unit in the European Commission's DG Enterprise and Industry, which deals with legislation on chemicals, and currently EC Fellow at UC Berkeley will examine the current state of progress of draft legislation for implementing a part of California's Green Chemistry Initiative. He will also set out recommendations on how the legislation should look to take advantage of and create synergies with the implementation of the EU's chemicals policy known as REACH. Wednesday, December 2, at 4 pm.

EU Asylum and Immigration Policy: Fortress Europe?

EU Center of Excellence Newsletter

UC Berkeley's Spring 2009 EU Center of Excellence Newsletter is now available for downloading in .pdf format. Read about our events and our guests and activities during our first year on the Cal campus. Download the Newsletter here.

European Union Center of Excellence at UC Berkeley

The Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley are pleased to announce the establishment of a new European Union Center of Excellence at UC Berkeley. A joint effort of these two Institutes, the EU Center is funded for three years with a € 300,000 grant from the European Commission in partnership with these Institutes and is working in cooperation with the School of Public Health, the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, and the Boalt Hall School of Law. With the creation of this EU Center of Excellence, UC Berkeley will play a vital role in promoting a deeper understanding of the European Union and raise the level of dialogue and discourse on transatlantic relations throughout the State of California.

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In April 2009 students from Northern California universities participated in the Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union. Its primary purpose of is to enhance undergraduate student understanding of the European Union and US-European relations, foster inter-campus exchange and collaboration, and recognize “excellent work achieved by students.”

This year 53 student participants from 22 schools presented papers to faculty discussants from ten campuses nationwide. EUCE Project Director Jeffrey Pennington served as a panel discussant for the panel on NATO and EU Enlargement, and eight students from four universities in northern California including seven from UC Berkeley were accepted for participation. Their papers ranged through such diverse topics as “The Islamic Stigma”; “European Union New Member Case Study: Hungary; Union Citizenship: The Long Path of a Concept”; “The European Union and LGBT Rights”; “An Analysis of the Split of Counterterrorism Policies in the Western World”; “Romania: The Politics of Implementing the Economic Stimulus”; “The European Union and the Bologna Process: Finding a Common Language”; and “Environmental Politics: A Thermometer for European Unity”.

The Center is also providing the authors of the top three papers with a study tour to Brussels, organized in collaboration with the University of Washington and accompanied by EUCE Project Director Jeffrey Pennington.

For information on the conference agenda, student and faculty participants and paper texts please go here.

Joan Wallach Scott

Historian of France, Joan Wallach Scott, professor in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, spoke on ”The Politics of the Veil” while a guest of the EU Center and IES last month as part of a Islam, Gender and the West program.

IIS Director Harry Kreisler welcomed her during a videotaped interview in which she traced her intellectual odyssey and recalled the impact of the women's movement on her research and teaching. Professor Scott also described the intellectual influences that led her, more than twenty years ago, to write the now classic article, ”Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” Part of the discussion focuses on her recent book The Politics of the Veil, an analysis of the political, cultural, and social factors that led to the French ban on the wearing of the veil by Muslim young women in public schools.

Go to the Conversations with History section of YouTube to view this interview.