Berkeley

Savio lecturer: Speak up for workers ‘behind the kitchen door’

Published

12 years ago

October 8, 2014

By Barry Bergman, UC Berkeley News

As recently as 2001, Saru Jayaraman admitted Thursday in Wheeler Auditorium, she was just another “oblivious, happy consumer,” a recent arrival in New York City dining out as often as three times a day and rarely giving a thought to the people who served and prepared her meals.

It was the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center — in which 73 workers in the Windows on the World restaurant, mostly immigrants, lost their lives, and which caused the loss of thousands of food-industry jobs throughout lower Manhattan — that opened her eyes, and helped make her one of the country’s most impassioned, articulate voices on behalf of restaurant workers.

Last Thursday night, as the featured speaker at this year’s Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, Jayaraman — now the director of UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center — urged her audience also to “speak up, in the same way that you spoke up 50 years ago,” at the birth of the Free Speech Movement.

And, reflecting at least one way activism has changed since the 1960s, now there’s an app for that, courtesy of the workers’-rights organization Jayaraman founded post-9/11, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United.

The evening, coming toward the end of a weeklong 50th-anniversary celebration of the FSM, began on a technological note, as Lynne Hollander Savio, Mario’s widow, read a message from Edward Snowden, whose release of thousands of classified documents in 2013 blew the whistle on widespread U.S. government surveillance.

“Berkeley’s unparalleled traditions of student activism and community engagement have been both a challenge and an inspiration to human-rights movements worldwide,” wrote Snowden, now in exile in Russia. “They compel us to imagine the world that we want to live in and to stand up for it — and they show us that with vision and persistence, we can change the world.”

That was a message shared by Jayaraman, who agreed that “surveillance is the issue of our generation,” together with “corporate control of our democracy.”

How is it possible, she asked, that the U.S. restaurant industry — “one of the most profitable and fastest-growing industries in America” — continues to provide the “absolute lowest-paying jobs” in the nation? How is it possible that 90 percent of the country’s restaurant workers — many of them involved in preparing food — don’t get even a single earned sick day?

It’s possible,” she explained, “due to the power and influence of the trade lobby called the National Restaurant Association, which we call ‘the other NRA.’”

In 1996, led by former Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, the “other NRA,” she said, “struck a deal with Congress”: It would not oppose a modest boost in the federal minimum wage, so long as the minimum wage for tipped workers “stayed frozen forever” at $2.13 an hour. (California is one of just seven states that do not have a separate minimum wage for tipped workers.)

“The NRA has managed to paint a picture of who tipped workers are,” Jayaraman said. “They say the white guy, working at Chez Panisse, earning $18 an hour in tips, or $100,000 a year — he’s doing quite fine.” In fact, however, “70 percent of tipped workers in America are women — women who work at the IHOP, and Applebee’s, and the Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Women whose median wage, including tips, is $8 an hour.”

Tipped workers have a poverty rate three times that for the rest of the work force, Jayaraman said, and use food stamps at double the rate — “which means,” she added, “the women who put food on our tables in America can’t actually afford to put food on their own family tables.”

Women in the restaurant industry are also subject to constant sexual harassment, she said, both from their managers and from the customers on whose tips, absent a livable wage from their employers, their financial survival depends.

Jayaraman, who attended UCLA before going on to Yale Law and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, was organizing restaurant workers, custodial workers and day laborers on Long Island when she was enlisted to start a relief center to help Windows on the World survivors and their families get back on their feet in the wake of 9/11.

That effort eventually grew into Restaurant Opportunities Centers United — ROC-U — a national restaurant-workers organization with 13,000 members in 32 cities. Jayaraman has written a book, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” and has drawn national attention to the cause via countless news profiles and television appearances.

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UC Berkeley Named Top Public University in the U.S. and No. 7 in the World by ‘U.S. News’

Berkeley has been consistently awarded the distinction of the U.S.’s top public university since the Best Global Universities list was first published in 2014. “A strong position in the Best Global Universities rankings recognizes a school’s profound commitment to world-class research and cross-border academic excellence,” said LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News.

Published

1 day ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley.

The 2026 Best Global Universities rankings evaluated 2,250 research institutions from more than 100 countries

By Lila Thulin

U.S. News & World Report has ranked UC Berkeley No. 7 in its 2026 list of the best global universities, which assesses more than 2,250 research institutions worldwide.

Berkeley also claimed the honor of top public university in the U.S.

Released on Monday, the list evaluates universities from more than 100 countries on 13 metrics such as global and research reputation (as reported by academics and peers) and number of highly cited scholarly papers.

Berkeley has been consistently awarded the distinction of the U.S.’s top public university since the Best Global Universities list was first published in 2014.

“A strong position in the Best Global Universities rankings recognizes a school’s profound commitment to world-class research and cross-border academic excellence,” said LaMont Jones, managing editor for education at U.S. News.

The rankings also assess a university’s strength in various subject areas; these assessments are separate from U.S. News’ 2026 Best Graduate Programs rankings released in April.

This year, Berkeley was named in the top three nationally in seven subject areas – environment/ecology, ecology, water resources, physics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering – and in the top five for a total of 17 subjects. Subject rankings are based heavily on scholarly publications and citations as well as reputation.

In September, U.S. News also released its 2026 Best Colleges list, in which Berkeley was also named the No. 1 public institution among American universities.

That honor joins other accolades judging campus to be the best public university in the country, such as those from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education.

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Arts and Culture

Farwest Region Deltas Celebrate Centennial With “September Breakfast” Honoring Vivian Osborne Marsh

The region was established in 1925 under the leadership of Vivian Osborne Marsh, who became its first Regional Director. Marsh was a pioneering scholar and civic leader, earning recognition as the first Black woman to receive both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in anthropology from UC Berkeley.

Published

9 months ago

September 14, 2025

Oakland Post

Farwest Regional Director, Kimberly Usher, Mayor Barbara Lee, US Representative Lateefah Simon, and Farwest Regional Representative, Radiya Ajibade. Photo courtesy of Farwest Regional Photographer Vicki P. Love.

By Antoinette Porter

Hundreds of members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and their guests gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union at the University of California, Berkeley, to mark the 100th anniversary of the sorority’s Farwest Region.

Marsh went on to serve as Delta Sigma Theta’s 7th National President, where she launched the sorority’s National Library Project to expand access to books in underserved Black communities in the South. During her presidency, the organization also became a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, lobbying Congress to pass anti-lynching legislation.

Bak in the Bay Area, Marsh devoted her career to advancing educational opportunities, mentoring young people, and strengthening community life. That commitment continues to shape the region, which supports initiatives in education, social justice, and economic development. Current projects include raising scholarship funds for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, voter education campaigns, and health and wellness programs.

A century after its founding, the Farwest Region of Delta Sigma Theta remains active across California and other western states, carrying forward Marsh’s vision of service and advocacy.

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Arts and Culture

Cal Performances Presents Angélique Kidjo & Yo-Yo Ma in Sarabande Africaine at UC Berkeley Greek Theatre on Aug. 30

On Saturday, Aug. 30, the pair will debut the Bay Area premiere of Sarabande Africaine, joined by pianist Thierry Vaton, percussionist David Donatien, and special guest Sinkane. The program illuminates centuries of musical interplay between African traditions and Western classical forms, using the Baroque sarabande dance, and its African ancestor, the Congolese spirit dance Zarabanda, as a gateway to exploring the deep, interconnected roots of global music.

Published

10 months ago

August 25, 2025

Oakland Post

Angelique Kidjo and Yo-Yo Ma. Wikimedia photos.

By Carla Thomas

On Labor Day weekend two of the world’s most celebrated musicians and cultural ambassadors, Grammy Award–winning vocalist Angélique Kidjo and legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma join forces for an evening of music, history, and cultural dialogue at UC Berkeley’s historic Hearst Greek Theatre.

Both Kidjo and Ma have built careers not only as great performers but as passionate advocates for cultural understanding. Sarabande Africaine is as much a conversation about shared heritage as it is a musical performance, blending genres, geographies, and histories.

“Every day there are moments when all of us can feel we are on the inside of something and also when we feel we are on the outside of something,” said Yo-Yo Ma. “To be able to understand both at the same time and oscillate between the two gives us a larger perspective on the world.”

“If your mind is open, and there is no fear, it’s easier to listen, and to question yourself,” said Kidjo.

The upcoming performance is presented within Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Exile & Sanctuary” series for the 2025–26 season. The production explores exile as more than just physical displacement, but a disruption in identity and belonging, while sanctuary represents both refuge and the creative space where new connections and communities can take shape.

Cal Performances’ Illuminations bridges performances with UC Berkeley’s academic research, pairing the arts with conversations about urgent global issues.

Kidjo’s continued partnership with Cal Performances includes her 2021–22 artist-in-residence, premiering her music-theater work Yemandja, set in 19th-century West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade.

She also participated in the Bias in Our Algorithms and Society panel alongside campus leaders like Jennifer Chayes, and joined the Black Studies Collaboratory for a dialogue on music, diaspora, and the world.

She has since returned to Berkeley for multiple performances, most recently in 2024 at Zellerbach Hall.

Yo-Yo Ma’s history with Cal Performances spans decades, beginning in 1997. One notable project includes the 2018 performance of Bach’s complete cello suites at the Greek Theatre, a testament to his devotion to creating “transformative concert experiences in iconic spaces.”

For tickets and more information, visit calperformances.org.