The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea

March is Women’s History Month, and we’re marking it by featuring the voices of women shaping California at every level of leadership.  This program brings together three trailblazing statewide elected officials—Eleni Kounalakis, Fiona Ma, and Malia Cohen—for a timely conversation about California’s past, present, and future through a woman’s perspective. Moderated by Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, this discussion will explore how women leaders are carrying forward hard-won progress, governing in the moment, and building a more equitable future for the next generation. About the Speakers Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis is the 50th lieutenant governor of California and the first woman elected to the office. From 2010 to 2013, Kounalakis served as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Hungary and in 2015 published her acclaimed memoir, Madam Ambassador, Three Years of Diplomacy, Dinner Parties and Democracy in Budapest. Prior to her service, Kounalakis spent 18 years as an executive at one of California’s most respected housing development firms, AKT Development. Throughout her career, she served on numerous boards and commissions, including California’s First 5 Commission, the San Francisco War Memorial, San Francisco Port Commission, and the Association of American Ambassadors. Eleni Kounalakis graduated from Dartmouth College in 1989 and earned an MBA from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 1992. She holds honorary doctorates of law from the American College of Greece and the University of Piraeus and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  State Controller Malia M. Cohen was elected in November 2022, following her service on the California State Board of Equalization (BOE), the nation’s only elected tax commission responsible for administering California’s $100 billion property tax system. She was elected to the BOE in November 2018 and was chair in 2019 and 2022. As chief fiscal officer of the world’s fifth-largest economy, Controller Cohen’s primary responsibility is to account for and protect the state’s financial resources. Cohen served as president of the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco. As a supervisor, she served as chair of the Budget and Finance Committee and the Audit and Oversight Committee. During this time, she also served as president of the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS). Cohen was born and raised in San Francisco and attended public schools. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from Fisk University and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.  Fiona Ma, C.P.A., is California’s 34th state treasurer. She was first elected on November 6, 2018, with more votes than any other treasurer candidate in the state’s history and reelected on November 8, 2022. She is the first woman of color and the first woman Certified Public Accountant (CPA) elected to the position. Her office processes about $3 trillion in banking transactions a year. She provides transparency and oversight for the government’s investment portfolio and accounts, as well as for the state’s surplus funds.  Moderator Nancy Tung was elected as chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party in April 2024. She previously served as an elected member of the party’s local leadership for four years. She deeply understands the impact the Democratic Party has on our local elections and is guiding a new caucus of moderate Democrats in the party. Nancy’s core issues are public safety, improving public schools, increasing the housing stock, and supporting small businesses. Outside of politics, Nancy is a career prosecutor, having served at the state and local level for 24 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the war on diversity upends government, corporate and education policies, the history of the idea of diversity has never been more important. David Oppenheimer, a diversity skeptic turned diversity admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last 200 years, how it evolved as it was adopted by commerce and science, and what the implications are of the current backlash.The diversity principle—the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, identities, and viewpoints produce better work by engaging with one another—was a core tenet of the first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. It was the inspiration for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, a touchstone of academic freedom; a hallmark of Charles Eliot’s remaking of Harvard in the late 19th century to promote the “clash of ideas”; and a foundation of the 20th-century efforts toward equality of Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Pauli Murray. In telling the story of the diversity principle through the experiences of these and other remarkable thinkers, Oppenheimer argues for affirming diversity as a central value of education and an “essential ingredient for a robust intellectual and political culture.” Join us for a fascinating discussion about an important concept that underpins our intellectual, social, and economic lives. A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. ORGANIZER George Hammond Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than perhaps any other state, Hawaii has major incentives to decarbonize. Imported oil accounts for about 90% of Hawaii's total energy consumption, and electricity prices are more than three times the national average. So it may not be surprising that Hawaii was the first state in the nation to set a 100% renewable energy goal by 2045. But that’s a hard goal to achieve, especially given the realities of geographic isolation and the costs of importing fuel and materials.  Hawaii Governor Josh Green is bullish about the island state’s decarbonization and wants all options on the table. That includes making liquified natural gas part of the mix, along with solar, wind, and geothermal. His administration passed the first “green fee” which imposes a tax on Hawaii visitors and is expected to generate $100 million for climate resilience projects. What can we learn from Hawaii’s decarbonization process?  Guests:  Josh Green, Governor of Hawaii Rylee Brooke Kamahele, Youth Plaintiff, Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation Tessa M. Hill, Oceanographer and Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, UC DavisFor show notes and related links, visit ⁠ClimateOne.org⁠. Highlights: 00:00 Intro 03:08 Josh Green on achieving Hawaii’s climate goals 07:11 Josh Green on offshore wind 13:17 Josh Green on the effect of the wildfires and the recovery 18:09 Josh Green on decarbonizing 20:22 Josh Green on the health effects of the climate crisis 23:30 Rylee Brooke Kamahele on growing up 24:26 Rylee Brooke Kamahele on community action 29:06 Rylee Brooke Kamahele on the outcome of the lawsuit 34:27 Rylee Brooke Kamahele on the responsibility of older generations 37:55 Tessa M. Hill on rapidly changing oceans 41:43 Tessa M. Hill on the impact to common fish 44:44 Tessa M. Hill on the winners and losers of the changing oceans ********** Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on ⁠Patreon⁠, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today at ⁠patreon.com/ClimateOne⁠.  Ad sales by ⁠Multitude⁠. Contact them for ad inquiries at ⁠multitude.productions/ads⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1993, the San Francisco organization that would become the Young Women’s Freedom Center made history by becoming one of the first nonprofits in the country run and led entirely by young women. Its mission was to create a support system and community to assist women and girls who had been living on the street and had experienced incarceration, foster care, poverty and trauma. In the decades since, it has developed a model for training and developing peer leaders with lived experience in the juvenile justice and foster care systems, creating a place of healing for young women and a force for community organizing and empowerment. The Center has helped lead the fight to end juvenile incarceration in California and has developed a set of powerful young leaders—including Rep. Lateefah Simon, the U.S. congresswoman who now represents Oakland and Berkeley and is a former executive director of the Center. The program has had remarkable success. For example, young people who complete YWFC programs are up to 85 percent less likely to recidivate or be incarcerated again. Up to 90 percent of those who complete the program maintain employment and reach educational goals. Its success has also enabled it to expand beyond its roots in San Francisco to operate programs in Los Angeles and Oakland, as well as Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. In this Women’s History Month forum, MindSite News, the nation’s only news organization devoted to reporting on mental health, will be in conversation with Rep. Simon and two members of the current team at Young Women’s Freedom Center. We’ll explore the ways that the organization is nurturing young women, helping them to heal and develop their potential as individuals and community leaders. About the Speakers Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland) represents California’s 12th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has deep roots as a Bay Area leader and activist, with over three decades of experience in organizing, advocacy, and philanthropy. In one of her earliest positions, she served as executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center for 11 years, starting at the age of 19. Emani Davis is vice president of strategy & operations, NorCal, of the Young Women’s Freedom Center. A nationally recognized movement strategist with more than two decades of experience, she began publicly advocating as the teenaged daughter of an incarcerated father in the 1990s, helping elevate awareness of the impact of mass incarceration on children and families. Julia Arroyo is executive director of Young Women’s Freedom Center and a movement leader with more than two decades of experience in reproductive justice, community health and rape crisis intervention. She has lived experience in foster care, the underground street economy, and incarceration and is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation and helping shape a future rooted in healing, dignity, and collective power. Rob Waters is an award-winning health and mental health journalist and the founding editor of MindSite News. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, STAT, theatlantic.com, Mother Jones and many other outlets. He was a 2005 fellow with the Carter Center for Mental Health Journalism. Nell Bernstein is the author of In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison, published in November, and two other books. She is a contributing writer for MindSite News, where she wrote about the work of Young Women’s Freedom Center. A Psychology Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. ORGANIZERVeronica Ortega & Patrik O'ReillyNOTES Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Turley writes, “From redcoats to robots, our challenges have changed. Yet, we have remained. Our greatest danger is not forgetting the history detailed in this book, but forgetting who we were in that history.” On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, law professor, legal analyst, and bestselling author Jonathan Turley shares his exploration of how the unique origins of American democracy set it apart from other revolutions, whether it can survive and thrive in the 21st century, and how the unfinished story of the revolution will play out in our rapidly changing world. Like many nations, the United States was born from revolution. At the birth of this country, the Founding Fathers faced the quintessential question of self-governance: How do you keep democracy from devolving into anarchy or despotism? As the nation enters a new era marked by artificial intelligence, robotics, and profound economic shifts, Turley says America is again faced with the pressure of radical forces that seek to curtail natural liberties under the guise of popular reform. In this mix, there are many politicians and pundits who are questioning the very principles of American democracy, and some law professors are even calling for scrapping the Constitution. Turley, author of the new book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, draws on everything from history to philosophy to the arts to offer a hopeful account of how the lessons of the past can guide us through today’s “crisis of faith” in democracy and see us into the future. Join us in person or online to hear what he has to say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Carly Schwartz, former San Francisco Examiner editor in chief and founding editor of HuffPost’s San Francisco bureau, for the launch of her debut memoir, I’ll Try Anything Twice: Misadventures of a Self-Medicated Life. In conversation with KQED’s Sydney Johnson, Schwartz will discuss how her quest to escape from depression and addiction led her on a dizzying international journey through multiple communities and a maze of mental health treatments, before she found recovery where she least expected it. She will explore the universal topics of mental illness stigmatization, substance use denial, privilege, power, and the pressure of navigating a cutthroat career—all through the lens of her wildly unconventional experience. Described by early readers as “Eat Pray Love gone horribly wrong,” Schwartz’s book offers a vivid, candid, and darkly humorous take on the search for belonging, the definition of success, and the risks we’re willing to take in order to learn how to love ourselves. The event will include a fireside chat, audience Q&A, live reading, and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase, or you can pre-order your copy with your ticket. This program contains EXPLICIT language.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A pioneer of social psychology, Stanford scholar Claude M. Steele is renowned for Whistling Vivaldi, a runaway bestseller that analyzed societal stereotypes—from beliefs about racial and gender test score gaps to the athletic prowess of Black men—and how to mitigate these “stereotype threats.”  In his new book Churn, Steele captures the most commonplace tensions of life in a multifaceted democracy and how to minimize their corrosive effects in everyday life. With “churn,” Steele has coined a new term to identify “the agitation we can feel in diverse settings,” such as everyday exchanges between teachers and students; police and the public; managers and employees; parents and children; and strangers, or even friends, of different sexes and races.  Steele braids together psychological research with his own biracial life story, demonstrating how initial wariness between people of different identities is as much a product of our history as of our biases. And his latest work reveals how trust building can be a fresh and surprisingly powerful strategy for mitigating these tensions in the real–life settings of our lives and for realizing the full potential of our multiracial, multiethnic, multi-classed democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes, because of the current political pushback, one can get the false impression that the academic attention that has recently been paid to increasing a university’s diversity, equity and inclusion profile is a new phenomenon—one that developed after the civil rights gains of minorities and women in the 1950s-70s. But the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints would produce better work by engaging with each other was a core principle of the first modern research university—which was founded in Germany in 1810. The health sciences are especially dependent on accurate data, and imaginative but reasoned analysis of that data, and both the accuracy of the data and the usefulness of its analysis are put at risk by pretending that diversity, equity and inclusion are harming universities, including medical research universities, rather than helping them. The known inaccuracies caused by a historical research emphasis on male health, and inappropriate applications of those conclusions to female health due to the lack of research data on women, are examples of the risks involved. Join us to hear Dr. Robert Hiatt, whose central focus at UCSF has been on building a strong transdisciplinary research and training program in epidemiology, make the case for how scientifically harmful deemphasizing diversity could be, and how the emergence of Big Data will be derailed quickly if the data that it uses has been corrupted by political whims distorting its scientific objectivity.  In association with The Lundberg Institute and the Philip R Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Organizer: George Hammond  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, as it nears its 50th anniversary, Apple is a global behemoth, one of the most valuable companies on the planet. But it’s been a rough and wild ride from scrappy startup to market leader. On April Fool’s Day in 1976, two twentysomethings named Steve founded a little company with the intention of spreading the computer revolution to everyone. Over the next five decades, Apple reshaped the technology and cultural landscapes, introducing the public to breakthroughs like the mouse, laser printing, CD-ROM, WiFi, digital video, home networking, touchscreen phones, and tablets. Steve Jobs’s obsessive eye for detail set the stage for products—Mac, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch—that married advanced technology with beauty, simplicity, and fine design.“CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent David Pogue comes to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to give the life story of Apple: how it was born, nearly died, was reborn under Steve Jobs, and became, under CEO Tim Cook, the giant it is today. He tells this story in his new book Apple: The First 50 Years, for which he conducted new interviews with 150 key people involved in the company’s growth, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers and executives. Come hear Pogue’s take of the little company that did. Pogue busts some long-held myths, goes backstage for big successes and big failures (remember Lisa?), and looks at what can challenge Apple in its second half century. Note: This podcast contains Explicit Language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it seems impossible. Over the last 75 years, says author and environmentalist Judith Enck, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace.  In her new book The Problem With Plastic, Enck critically examines the paradox of this material, first celebrated for its innovations and now recognized for its devastating environmental and public health impacts. A former regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Enck reveals how plastic pollution contributes to poisoned oceans, polluted air, and overwhelming waste, particularly affecting marginalized communities. Enck highlights the pervasive presence of microplastics in the environment and the human body, and she challenges the belief that recycling can solve the crisis.  Enck emphasizes the urgent need for action against what she calls plastic’s toxic legacy. Join us to hear her practical, actionable solutions, including a “household waste audit,” which people can use to track and reduce their own plastic consumption.  Judith Enck is the founder and president of Beyond Plastics and a professor at Bennington College. She is a former regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and deputy secretary for the environment in the New York Governor’s Office. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices