University Of California Los Angeles Faculty

"I think that by constantly questioning what goes on around them, writers end up with the gift of foresight."

"Creative writing programs are an invention of American universities. In the Francophone world we believe that the power to write is a gift which cannot be taught. My fondness for writing comes from my knowledge of literature from different parts of the world. It is by reading certain authors that I learned how to write and influence my readers. I have never studied otherwise. Reading for me is my master. (2017)"

"In 1943 fear that the German war machine might use s was abating and among s another fear was taking its place - that of a postwar nuclear arms race with worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons. Manhattan Project scientists and engineers began to discuss uses of in the postwar world. Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, James A. Franck and others launched a concerted effort to lay groundwork for international control of the technology. Realizing the devastation nuclear weapons could cause and that they could be made and delivered much more cheaply than conventional weapons of the same power, they tried to persuade policy makers to take into account long range consequences of using atomic bombs and not base their decisions on short range military expediency alone. They met with little success. The scientists' main message, unheeded then and very relevant now, is that worldwide international agreements are needed to provide for inspection and control of nuclear weapons technology. Their memoranda and reports remain as historic documents eloquently testifying to their concern."

"Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard worked together at in 1939-40, just after was discovered, to ascertain the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction, and then on the construction of the first nuclear reactor. Szilard believed a nuclear bomb could be built, and that the Germans may be doing so, but Fermi was sceptical. The Anglo-American project to build a bomb began late in 1941 after brought the to the attention of U. S. physicists. Szilard recalled "On matters scientific or technical there was rarely any disagreement [but] Fermi and I disagreed from the very start of our collaboration about every issue that involved not science but principles of action in the face of the approaching war. If the nation owes us gratitude — and it may not — it does so for having stuck it out together as long as was necessary." As the war with Germany was drawing to a close and the successful construction of the atomic bombs was well underway, these two men took opposing positions regarding use of the bombs."

"Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between and s. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract algebra, it is of some historical interest to examine how she came to make these discoveries. The present paper is an historical account of the circumstances in which she discovered and proved these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as . The work was done soon after . The failure of local energy conservation in the general theory was a problem that concerned people at that time, among them David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein. Noether's theorems solved this problem. With her characteristically deep insight and thorough analysis, in solving that problem she discovered very general theorems that have profoundly influenced modern physics."

"Although she was primarily a particle theorist, her most important work may well be her contribution to our understanding of superconductivity. She was a trailblazer for and, in her retirement, led the effort to chronicle the contributions of women to physics in the 20th century."

"Enrico Fermi lived from 1901 to 1954, a period of great progress in physics and a period in which opportunities for women to study and work in institutions of higher learning increased significantly in Europe and North America. Though there are a few examples of women who made important contributions to physics in the 18th century such as and , it was only in Fermi's time that the number began to increase significantly. It is remarkable that almost immediately after they gained entrance to laboratories and universities, among them appeared women of great creative ability who made lasting contributions to physics. This talk is mainly about some of these whose scientific lives are not as well known as their contributions deserve — Emmy Noether, , , . Additionally, some outstanding women whose work played a role in Enrico Fermi's life in physics are noted - , , , and ."

"I would like to talk about deformable models, which are physically-based models of nonrigid objects. I have worked on deformable models for graphics applications primarily with Kurt Fleischer and also with John Platt and Andy Witkin. Deformable models are based on the continuum mechanics of flexible materials. Using deformable models, we can model the shapes of flexible objects like cloth, plasticine, and skin, as well as their motions through space under the action of forces and subject to constraints."

"Physically-based modeling adds new levels of representation to graphics objects. In addition to geometry — forces, torques, velocities, accelerations, kinetic and potential energies, heat, and other physical quantities are used to control the creation and evolution of models. Simulated physical laws govern model behavior, and animators can guide their models using physically-based control systems. Physically-based models are responsive to one another and to the simulated physical worlds that they inhabit."

"Here is a simulated physical world — a very simple world consisting of a room with walls and a floor. A spherical obstacle rests in the middle of the floor. You’re seeing the collision of an elastically deformable solid with the sphere. Of course, we’re also simulating gravity."

"Physically-based techniques facilitate the creation of models capable of automatically synthesizing complex shapes and realistic motions that were, until recently, attainable only by skilled animators, if at all."

"thought that it had to be a tall, pink man that interacted with the astronauts, and that nobody was going to listen to a little brown woman."

"When I first went to MIT I thought I would be working for Bob Brown in fluid mechanic simulation, because my undergraduate thesis was on the Newtonian fluid flow simulation, and my undergraduate research advisor graduated from Washington, Seattle, working for Bruce Finlayson."

"And, I do want to thank the AVS Society again for this recognition."

"I’m type O-positive. What type are you?"

"Doesn't matter where you are from or what you look like. Doesn't matter if you're poor. A human being can learn and can achieve whatever they set out to do (or come near to it). I've spent my life studying human potential—and stretching my own.Don't give up. No matter how bad or scary it gets. Not even when you ask yourself "What am I doing here?""

"[Structure does not] just sit there, constrain­ing actors by its formal characteristics, but recurrently poses problems to the actors, to which they must respond”. [At the same time, structure also provides a range of problem solving options for actors that will] generate both personal satisfaction and social respect."

"The critical point is that language and ethnic shift can take place without radical change in the material particulars of life and with an amount of change in the gene pool so small as to be for all practical purposes undetectable. We should not replace the fallacy of assigning all significant culture change to migration with the fallacy of thinking that language shift and the spread of new ethnic self-identification occur only with major or radical cultural transformations."

"I go through the steps one by one, no matter how long it takes. It's like running a race with them, and you're out of breath sometimes, but it's worth it when we make it to the finish line"

"Our students would not accept it if we stood still; we would lose them. I learn students’ names and encourage them to participate. I ask for volunteers to go to the blackboard. The first time, girls especially will say, 'I have never been to the blackboard.' I say, ‘Come with me, don't worry; help me.'”"

"Let's be honest: The best science students are going to learn anyhow. They don't need to be pushed. I prefer to teach students who hate physics. I tell them not to be intimidated. They can all do it once the fear is removed.""

"Just the fact that it exists makes the collaboration more welcoming. We invite professionals to give talks on equity and inclusion issues. We have discussions about issues such as implicit bias, the gender gap, systemic racism, and about what actions we can take to help."

"Go for your goal! Your race doesn’t matter. Your gender doesn’t matter. What people say doesn’t matter. If you put in passion, professionalism, and determination, people will recognize that you deserve to be where you are, and most importantly, you will succeed.”"

"I enjoy working with undergraduates and find nothing more rewarding than seeing a student understand who was having a hard time"

"The mere fact of talking about it is important. When I saw the video [of Floyd’s killing], I was upset. And it changes my views of my white colleagues even if I don’t want it to. It was good for me to vent my frustrations. And discussing the issue with my colleagues helped me not feel like it was me versus them. It supports good professional relations."

"When we sent that first message, there weren't any reporters, cameras, tape recorders or scribes to document that major even. We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was. What I missed was that my 97-year old mother would be using the Internet today, and she is"

"I think that in a society that requires people to be more and more educated, the college degree is almost equivalent to what the high school degree was 25 or 30 years ago. (2016)"

"....you’ve got to keep up appearances, as we say among the Society for Ambient People and Persons of Elegance, SAPPE, which, without wanting to be contentious, is an invention from back home, born in the Bacongo district of Brazzaville,towards the Total roundabout. We’re the ones who exported “Sappe” to Paris, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because lately there are so many false prophets swarming these streets in the City of Light, to the point where it’s getting difficult to separate the wheat from the"

"Éditions du Seuil, 2009"

"A white guy who learns how to play tom-tom, it’s normal, it’s chic, it says"

"Listen up, my boy, be realistic! Drop your sitting around and writing every day, there’s people much better at it, and those people, you see them on telly, they talk well, and when they talk there’s a subject, there’s a verb and there’s an object. They’re born for that, they’re raised in that, while us blacks, it’s not our thing, writing."

"I’m a man open to the other cultures of the world and I’m not racist at all."

"He says that the African man was the first man on Earth and that the other races only came after. Therefore, all men are immigrants except African people who are right at home."

"A Black man who plays the tam-tam, it sucks, it’s too much back to his roots, back to square one, back to his natural state, back to having the beat. It ain’t surprising that Europeans are interested in tom-tom that way. It is to understand how things went in our country when we had no other of communication."

"I am not a poet: I can enjoy the talents and artistic sincerity of a Rig Vedic poet, but I cannot emulate it or imagine how it feels to be part of this creative tradition. I am a scholar (though not a theologian), and I can appreciate internally the intellectual effort and acuity employed to make sense of the religious traditions that confronted the scholar of the Bráhmana period. I would hope to have in some measure the same controlled intelligence, the flashes of insight, and the empathy that these ancient scholars brought to bear on the tradition they were trying to explain, and I would also hope that they would appreciate the fact that this tradition remains an absorbing intellectual puzzle to this day."

"The more I read the Rig Veda the harder it becomes for me – and much of the difficulty arises from taking seriously the aberrancies and deviations in the language… One can be blissfully reading the most banal hymn, whose form and message offer no surprises (I have come to cherish such coasting) – and suddenly trip over a verse, to which one’s only response can be ‘What??!!"

"Within its soberly academic trio of hardback volumes, however, seethes an incoherent mix of mumbo-jumbo and misplaced obscenity, most of it apparently meaningless. It reads like a burlesque version, in the style of Hamlet Travestie, of a long lost original... Strangely, though, ‘spoked wheels’ have been introduced twenty-two times into this translation, as a new interpretation of the word aratí. This epithet of the fire god was previously understood to mean ‘servant’ or ‘messenger’... Given the current frantic search for evidence of ‘spoked wheels’ in the remains of the Indus Valley Civilization, the translation could even be considered irresponsible... As Hamlet Travestie slid into Dogg’s Hamlet I found myself wondering: could this be a long-hatched plot by the Pentagon to destroy Hindu fundamentalism at its heart?"

"Many of the most obscure images and turns of phrase in the Rig Veda make sense as poetic realizations of specific ritual activities […] every apparent barbarity in syntax, in word choice, in imagery is deliberate and a demonstration of skill whose motivation I must seek."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"The new book – Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote – is the first comprehensive, evidence-based history of the American suffrage movement to appear since 1959. That book [Century of Struggle] was written by Eleanor Flexner...Since Flexner wrote her superb book–on which I and virtually every other suffrage historian has relied–there has been tremendous amounts of new research that has enhanced our picture of the suffrage movement, or I might say, suffrage movements, particularly on the activism of African-American women, who were segregated out of the white-dominated movement in the late 19th and early 20th century."

"Women’s liberation hadn’t really gotten started outside of New York City or Chicago in 1968. Instead I (and other soon-to-be feminists) was involved in anti-war and civil right activism. At Wellesley, although a women’s college, we worked hard on draft resistance and anti-war mobilizations. And, of course, responded to the incredible events of that year: Johnson’s announcement that he would not run again, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Women’s liberation was not on our radar, although I do remember noting to myself that women were basically running the office of the Boston draft resistance group behind the scenes. I was deeply involved because I had a draft resister boyfriend. That’s how most of us were involved..."

"By the middle of my second graduate year, I was committed to writing the history of early woman suffrage, which became my first book Feminism and Suffrage, as my doctoral degree. I had two professors: Christopher Lasch (while recognizing my ability, disparaged the topic) and Robert Wiebe (an historian of American democracy, gave me great support). I soon connected with two senior women doing women’s history, Anne Firor Scott and Gerda Lerner, and with about a dozen other young scholars, all graduate students, following their women’s liberation inclinations into history."

"My goal here is to make it clear that the campaign for women's suffrage was part and parcel of every era of American history. It wasn't something happening over here. In the beginning, it was part of the radical changes surrounding the campaign to end slavery. In the middle, in the late 19th century, it was part of a very conservative historical period and in the early 20th century it was an important part of the progressive movement. It can't be told separate from American history."

"My first article, published in 1970 in a movement journal entitled Women: A Journal of Liberation, was focused on the first historical figures that caught my attention: Sarah and Angelica Grimke. From there, I moved on to Seneca Falls and the early women’s rights movement and Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (to whom I have remained attached ever since)."

"Feminism was an entirely political movement then. Those of us in gradate school who began raising these issues in fields (history, anthropology, literature, etc.) did not think of ourselves as entering or even pioneering an academic field but rather producing serious intellectual resources for our movement. At the time, it hardly seemed like a smart academic move: there were no positions, no recognition from our profession. When it came time to get jobs, those of us who found them did so because women students pressed their colleges and universities for a different kind of education and some of those institutions–mostly public ones–reluctantly gave in. That’s how I got my first job at the State University of New York at Buffalo, as part of one of two or three women’s studies programs in the country."

"Rose remembered Tom Paine, who was in danger of being forgotten for his radical hopes for the American Revolution. In a similar spirit, we remember Rose, in honor of those aspects of her vision of a free womanhood that have not yet been realized and that continue to inspire. To remember our ancestors is an act on our own behalf as well as theirs."

"I believe that the myths perpetrated by all monotheistic religions — all religions indeed — have caused more lasting harm to the human race than any other single set of beliefs (2008)"

"The ancient antagonisms that tore Europe apart twice in the twentieth century (and countless other times in the preceding centuries) are no more and, we can only hope, will never be resuscitated. The virulent racism that dominated so many of the ways other peoples were seen in the West during the nineteenth century may not have vanished, but it has certainly withered. (2008)"

"The greater the uncertainties of the world, the greater is the possibility that profits would go to venturesome and lucky rather than to logical, careful, fact-gathering individuals."

"Where foresight is uncertain, “profit maximization” is meaningless as a guide to specifiable action."