Click here to view webcast of the event (Real Audio Format).

Monday, September 27, 2004 from 5:30-7:30
2050 Valley Life Sciences Bldg, UC Berkeley

This event is co-organized by Berkeley Watch, Students for Progressive Action at the University of Missouri, and the Environmental Coalition at Berkeley

Click here for PDF version of the event flyer.

About the event:
This is the first event of its kind that will have LIVE web interaction between the two university communities. A lecture by Dr. Chapela will be followed by interactive, facilitated discussion with the university communities at Berkeley and Columbia, Missouri. Central to our discussion are questions of organization and action to support existing biological and human resources to confront the next century. We confront and oppose the challenge to the public University as a central locus for such discussions.

What the event is about:
Some have forecast the 21st Century as the Age of Biotechnology. We have indeed witnessed an unprecedented increase in our capacity and willingness to radically alter living systems through technological interventions. Yet, the science of Biology has not kept apace and we have not seen, since the Inquisition, such suppression and manipulation of biological inquiry. Together, these trends may mean an epoch defined by large biological transformations- with an absence of infrastructure, physical and conceptual, to confront it. What is the character of this century without Biology? What are the possible options to weather its effects?

About Ignacio Chapela:
Ignacio Chapela is Assistant Professor of Microbial Ecology, Division of Ecosystem Sciences, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California Berkeley. He is also the founder of The Mycological Facility, in Oaxaca, Mexico. Dr. Chapela has worked for the pharmaceutical/agrochemical industry as well as the USAD Agricultural Research Service. He was also a member of a National Academy of Sciences committee reviewing the environmental effects of transgenic crops. In 2001, in Nature, Dr. Chapela reported transgenic DNA in traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca. This study is one of many ways he is engaged in the current debate over biotechnology.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.berkeleywatch.org, or email events@berkeleywatch.org

For more information on Prof. Ignacio Chapela's tenure case go to: http://www.tenurejustice.org