Darren Zook
Description: Darren Zook is a Professor of Political Science and International Studies at UC Berkeley. His work focuses on international law, human rights, and Asian comparative politics. In this episode Professor Zook shares the value of travel as a research method, detailing his time in North Korea, where he was able to conduct research on governance, legal practices and societal dynamics. We then explore his approach to fostering understanding through meaningful engagement and open discussions that challenge narrow definitions of identity. As we wrap up, Professor Zook talks about the role of humor in bridging cultural divides and how respect for a range of perspectives can transform conversations about racism and foster true diversity.
Website:
Publications:
Decolonizing Law: Identity Politics, Human Rights, and the UN
Reforming North Korea: Law, Politics, and the Market Economy
Developing the Rural Citizen: Southern India
Making Space for Islam: Religion, Science, and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia
Articles:
Show Notes:
[0:04] Introduction to Professor Darren Zook
[1:37] Journey into Global Studies
[3:42] Academic Travel Experiences
[5:15] Learning Local Cultures
[9:12] Insights from North Korea
[18:55] The Role of Law in North Korea
[20:48] Discoveries in North Korean Law
[23:33] Understanding Comparative Politics
[25:27] Surfing and Democracy Connection
[33:12] Decolonizing Law Perspectives
[42:36] Human Nature and Group Identity
[47:43] Diversity Initiatives at Berkeley
[53:16] The Role of Comedy in Politics
[58:03] Approaching the Upcoming Election
[1:03:04] Encouraging Diverse Perspectives
[1:08:01] Closing Thoughts and Resources
Unedited AI Generated Transcript:
Brent:
[0:01] Welcome, Professor Darren Zook. Thank you for coming on today.
Darren:
[0:04] Thanks so much for having me. Welcome to another sunny day in Berkeley.
Keller:
[0:08] We'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about what got you interested in global studies and comparative politics and how you ended up at UC Berkeley.
Darren:
[0:14] Well, I started life as, you know, my academic life as an undergraduate, actually as a math major, and made a relatively large switch when I decided to go to graduate school. Still love math, always have loved math, but just decided it was not something I wanted to do as a career. So I decided, you know, what do I like to do? I like to get involved with people and I'm always interested in politics. And so that started me down the road of doing that. I knew I wanted to do something international. So I ended up, my original dissertation work was in India. And then my curiosity has just taken me further and further from there and around the world.
Keller:
[0:58] Was there a particular reason you decided to go to India for that research or had you been drawn to Asia beforehand?
Darren:
[1:05] No, it was really just a gut feeling. I had not really traveled at all outside the United States. I went to high school in Texas and I'd been to Mexico across the border, but I hadn't really had a chance to travel. My family didn't travel all that much. And I knew, but I always had that sense of, I just want to see the world. I want, I want to just experience things that are different. So went to graduate school and then just, there was something, I still can't explain it, but there was just something that said, India is where I need to be. And that's how it all started.
Brent:
[1:37] It seems like travel has been a big part of your academic career. Is that right?
Darren:
[1:41] That's correct. Yes.
Brent:
[1:42] How do you approach traveling maybe as an academic and then personally as well?
Darren:
[1:48] When I travel personally, I travel the same way as I travel as an academic. It's just how I travel. I'm always looking for different things. Like if I showed you my travel photo collection, every photo I take is about how can I use this in a lecture or how could I use this in something else. And so it doesn't look like a normal photo thing. I have no selfies, number one. And, and I just, you know, all, it's like, I don't take all of the pictures you would expect from say a travel photo portfolio. So even if I travel for, you know, a vacation, which I, I, I just, I can't stop, but think about all the things that interest me. And suddenly I'm back into academic travel mode.
Darren:
[2:33] Um so one of the things that that academic travel does that's quite different is usually when you travel for academic reasons you you get a longer period like i'll go a place for an entire summer as opposed to i'm going to finland for a week i'm gonna go to finland and stay there the entire summer so you really get a chance to feel like you're living there you get a chance to kind of see the patterns of life um and there are certain things you can look at so if i if i do go to someplace for a shorter amount of time you know there's there's a toolkit you develop over time for what to look for um so i i i've never written it down at some point i might you know uh i don't know what i maybe write a book about a short book about you know how to travel differently uh because i do think the more i notice tourists it's interesting i'll see other american tourists as i travel and i'll see them as like foreigners like that you know it's like that they're from a different country that that's not me kind of thing, because what they're looking at and the way they're acting is not at all what I do. And so I always knew it. Like I said, I wanted to see the world. And so I intentionally set up my academic career. So I had a good excuse to go as many places as I could.
Keller:
[3:43] And is that methodology you have for traveling? Is that something you feel like you had when you first went to India or like you solely developed throughout your career and now kind of have a good grounding for you could be placed in any country? And, you know, throughout that month period, throughout that time, you have kind of, like you said, the toolkits to really understand the area.
Darren:
[3:59] I think it's a great question. I think I perfected it in India in the sense that when I first went to India, I went for three months and then went back for a multi-year stay, largely because it was cheaper as a graduate student to live in India. It was great for language practice. But even for three months, you realize you have the time to relax. And one of the things I did is I, you know, tourists don't take the local buses in India, but I was like, well, I'm here three months. I may as well learn how the buses work. And then people notice that, you know, one of the things you're looking for when you do research is, is you want people, you know, they're never going to look at me and say, oh, is he Indian? And it's not, you know, you're not going to pass as a local, but people are going to see that you are taking the time to learn the rhythm of life, the way things are done, the patterns of behavior. And they appreciate that you're building trust is what you're doing so that if you end up doing research, people are more likely to talk with you because it's like, oh, you're not just here to take information and go back to, to Berkeley and use the information I gave you. It's like you're building professional relationships, but you're also trying to establish trust and friendship. And I think I just I had the time to do that in India and it has served me well everywhere else I've gone.
Brent:
[5:16] Do you have a few examples of some of the things you try to do? If you just show up to a place, how do you get acquainted quickly?
Darren:
[5:23] A lot of it is observation. But actually, let me back up. The first thing you should do is learn the language. And there's two languages you learn, one of which is the language people speak. The other is the language of what people do. And both of those are equally important. Um even if you don't become fluent the fact that you made the initiative um people respond to it and i mean more than thank you you don't think everybody does that it's like okay you know you're in korea it's like okay we get that um but even just a little bit more than that it's like okay you've made the effort and and that that people always respond positively that the one place i went where they did not result well i should say they respond with amusement is i did i did learn finish for a research project in finland and every time i would start speaking finnish people would just start laughing and i thought maybe my finish is just terrible what turns out, for them everybody in finn finishes a very difficult language to learn and everyone in finland learns english so they were like why would you waste time, learning a language that even we know is quirky uh when we all speak english and i was just like you know it's just the point of doing it um so that's one thing the second thing is you know observation goes a long way, which is to, is to observe what people do or don't do. Do people speak quietly or do they speak loudly? Americans are famous for going places. And it's like, you can always tell the Americans because of the loudest people in the room. Right.
Darren:
[6:53] How do, you know, if, if you're like in, in Japan and you're, there, there are strict rules in many cultures for things like drinking. So if you want to go out and have a drink with someone, And the fact that you know how to drink or how to order or, you know, what order, if you're giving a toast, how to give a proper toast, that's the second language you learn. You could go to Japan and not know a word of Japanese, but if you know that much, again, people are watching you and it's like, okay, you've either spent a lot of time here or you have done some research in to what we feel is proper behavior.
Keller:
[7:27] And with language, this might be like a very rudimentary question, but do you have a way that you approach learning language? You know, you're not going to necessarily keep for the rest of your life, but you're going to keep it for that trip. And you know, you have a month to get to a certain level. Is there a way you go about learning that that's maybe different from traditional learning?
Darren:
[7:45] I mean, so maybe it's just my brain, but for me, there are three things that my brain processes exactly the same. And that's math, music, and language. It's just, I love learning languages in the same way that I love doing math or I love playing music. So in many ways, learning a language to me is like learning a new song. So if I hear a song on the radio, I can pick up a guitar and kind of just figure it out pretty quickly. So that might be partly my brain. But for me, you know, a lot of, say, online language courses are they teach the spoken language, whereas I'm actually more interested in learning grammar and how to read because most of the stuff I'm going to do is going to be text based.
Brent:
[8:28] All right.
Darren:
[8:31] Yes, it's great to be able to interview people in a local language, but I want to be able to read the signs. I want to be able to read the text that I bring back. you know when I when I took my first trip to North Korea because I actually was very respectful to my government minders we kind of got to go off the standard itinerary and they I ended up getting a huge treasure trove of these legal documents from the the law faculty at Kim Il-sung University, which I didn't even know existed so I was able to bring them back and then translate them and write an article about the North Korean legal system and that's just that was just an added benefit of kind of knowing how to do things.
Brent:
[9:12] That's a perfect segue. Could you talk a bit more about your experience in North Korea? Like what prompted you to go there and what that was like? Because it kind of feels like a black box to most Americans.
Darren:
[9:22] Yeah. And that's probably why I wanted to go because, you know, I'd seen, you know, documentaries and they're usually by journalists and every documentary you see on North Korea is, and I do teach Asian comparative of politics. And it's like, I've been to all these places and that's the one I haven't been to. So in 2008, the ban on Americans traveling to North Korea was lifted. It's now back in place, but as soon as it was lifted, I just immediately applied. Did not think that they would let me in, you know, Berkeley professor, we don't want something like that. But lo and behold, I got the notification and then I had to fly into North Korea from Beijing. So I had to fly to Pyongyang, Um, so every documentary you'd see, it always starts with, you know, unprecedented access. We got, you know, and I was always like, really? And then once you get there, even though you technically can't do formal research there because you have your minders with you all the time and it's actually illegal for North Koreans to speak to foreigners.
Brent:
[10:21] Um, but the general populace, besides the government official with you.
Darren:
[10:25] Yeah. My minders are great. I can talk to them all day. Uh, so, but just if I were to walk up to someone on the sidewalk and say, you know, hello, you know, I'm Darren, that person will probably get arrested. It's like, how did he know you? He wants to be a spy. Right. So, so they're not going to want to talk to you. So what that also means is any, any North Korean you talk to, that's a security clearance for them. So you do know that, but even just the first day I was there, you realize all the documentaries you've seen is it's a very narrow slice of life that they're allowed to see. And even though I It wasn't allowed to take pictures of a lot of the things I saw just being there. Absolutely transformed the way I would look at and see North Korea. So it was, it was an invaluable experience. Did a return follow-up trip in two, first time 2009, second time 2012. And it just makes such a difference to know where things are, to know what, you know, what the roads are like. How does the subway work? So when I'm giving lectures on my classes about North Korea, it's not... Me summarizing a documentary saw it's me talking about my experience um and it's, it it's definitely one of the most different places i've ever been right uh and i'd be happy to talk more about it if you would like me to but if you have any specific questions let me know.
Keller:
[11:47] I mean i'd definitely be curious to know like when you first applied did you apply with like being clear that you were going to go into law research there or.
Darren:
[11:56] When you went in.
Keller:
[11:57] Did you apply like with research even as a factor?
Darren:
[12:00] No, I mean, I applied just to go. You have to fill out, you know, several forms about what you do. They ironically don't want journalists. So you have to sign a form that says you're not a journalist and you're not going to write journalistic articles because they're famous for trashing North Korea. So I just said, I'm an academic. Why do you want to go? All that kind of stuff. And then you apply to a North Korean agency that's actually in China because there's no direct communications between the US and North Korea. And then you hear nothing. And then suddenly they give you a window. It's like, yes, you can come and you have to come during this time. So you have to kind of drop everything and go. Unfortunately, both times I was able to do that. Uh it's very expensive to go to north korea and and you know there's ethical considerations about that because you pay in hard currency you can't pay in you know north korean currency you pay in euros or dollars and it's very expensive i mean for a 10-day trip it was about six thousand dollars, um so some people would say well you're just giving hard currency to this you know regime that shouldn't be getting hard currency but i'm like for the education that i can now share with people, I thought it was worth it. Um, and then, like I said, as soon as I arrived, you know, first day you're like, okay, everything I thought I knew about North Korea is either wrong or has it, you know, it's very different from what I was expecting.
Brent:
[13:23] What were some of those biggest differences? Perception?
Darren:
[13:28] So, so one of the nice things is, is as you're even on the first day, just driving around Pyongyang and you're, you're looking at the quality of the roads, But you're also looking at just how people, you know, I can't talk to them, but I can watch them walk down the street. I can I can see what school kids are wearing on the way to school. And none of those show up in documentaries. Right. You're just like, oh, OK, so there are schools here. Kids wear backpacks here, too. And they, you know, push each other on the sidewalk like American school kids do. It's, you know, so you there's a sense that, you know, you like you said, North Korea is kind of a black box. But there's also the sense that everybody's just some obeying automaton who just follows the regime like a religion. And, you know, you see people doing different things. You see kids being kids and you're like, you know, that changes the way you think about North Korea. My minders, for instance, when they found out what I did were nothing but respectful of me. Sure, that's their job.
Brent:
[14:26] Yeah.
Darren:
[14:27] But they didn't have to be. They could have been very different towards me, but they were always respectful. Um i dinner with them every evening because like we had to but but you know we had after you spend seven dinners with somebody you kind of start having better conversations with them um you know for first time i left north korea one of them said to me you know please say hello to your family from me and i was like i don't think they'll care but that was a really nice touch yeah so uh so anyway that's one example.
Keller:
[14:54] And we're able to see like from 2009 to when you went back in 2012 any changes and just kind of like the general more like atmosphere perspective when you're walking around? Was there anything that felt different or not quite?
Darren:
[15:06] You could see there were new places. I mean, one of the things there were some new apartment buildings and they it, Like there was a new hamburger place, right? There was also a new pizza place. And it's like, we would just think of it as it wouldn't do well in Berkeley. I'll put it that way. But it was, you know, it's like, okay, so foreign food is becoming an interest now. Before that, there's this interesting thing in North Korea where they tend to name things very functionally. So there's four department stores in Pyongyang. And they're called department store number one number two and you're like okay i get it uh and the restaurants would be like this is duck restaurant it's like wonder what they serve there i bet it's duck yeah um so to have a pizza place in a hamburger place it showed that something was changing either there was new wealth or that they were trying you know new things because it used to be you know we shouldn't eat foreign food and now it's like it's okay we're gonna have pizza Now, it's very North Korean pizza. It's like, I don't think any place in Berkeley serves kimchi pizza. But, you know, still, you could tell things were different. And the new apartment buildings looked like they were architecturally trying to do interesting things. So, yeah, even in those three years, you could see things were changing.
Brent:
[16:26] Are you familiar with Naomi Park at all? How would you compare your experience to the things that she's talked about about North Korea?
Darren:
[16:35] You're talking about the defector?
Brent:
[16:37] Yes. Yeah.
Darren:
[16:38] So, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't sugarcoat things in the sense that I'm not trying to make it look like it's a great place. There's, there are other things I, you know, I, obviously she, she grew up there. She, that's her lived experience. And I have no reason to doubt any of it. And I think she's doing a good service to people To try to educate them about What she experienced in North Korea There are things that I saw that would clearly Back up, What she said obviously my minders have a great Interest in showing me the better things But here's an example You could just tell there were other things going on So we were.
Darren:
[17:14] On the road It's a port city called Nampo, And it's a crazy Like 10 lane highway and we were the only car on it so but there were people walking on the far lanes so the first thing you think of is why is everybody walking so that tells you public transportation is clearly lacking, but as our car would be coming you could see people just holding stuff up usually cigarettes right so we're going down and somebody just they would go like this and you quickly figure out what doing is they want to ride. It's like, this is what I can pay you in, you know, what will three packs of North Korean cigarettes get me? A kilometer, two kilometers.
Darren:
[17:56] Now, of course, it's all illegal. That's why you can't say, hey, I'll give you this. You just hold it up and then we get in the car and oops, I left my three packs of, you know, so, you know, there's this informal economy going on and people would only be doing that because they're trying to survive. So you realize that people, you know, are spending a lot of time surviving this regime as best they can. So in that sense, you know, when you see that, I didn't clearly experience the things that Nomea Park has experienced, but I know other American tourists have. You know they've ended up in prison or worse um so yeah i mean it's my experiences it wasn't like her experiences are negative and i'm not the counterpart to that sure i was treated with respect as i said and maybe that's their job but they seemed pretty genuine about it and and for educational purposes i'm glad i went yeah.
Keller:
[18:47] You do explain a little bit more about the article that you wrote when you got
Keller:
[18:50] back about law and kind of the role that you think that plays in reforming or change. I don't know what the right wording is necessarily, but the kind of future of North Korea.
Darren:
[18:59] Right. So, so one of the reasons I was excited about writing, what happened is, is I, you know, aside from kind of, again, knowing how to act in North Korea, my minders had picked up on the fact that I showed a genuine interest, you know, how are things done? And it's easy to look at North Korea, for instance, and dismiss the law as nothing but lies on paper. There's a constitution, for instance, and we wouldn't normally say, well, what does it matter?
Darren:
[19:24] They'll throw you in jail if they want to, so they don't follow their own laws. But I was like, there's probably more to it than that. And North Korea was trying to open up at the time to South Korea and try to create some free trade zones within North Korea. And you can't do that unless you have a law in place. No one's going to sign an agreement. Even China is not going to sign an agreement unless they know you're going to follow the agreement they signed with you. So when I told them I had this genuine interest in how that's all going to work, they were very excited. So that's why they ended up saying, well, we can take you and you can talk with people about this. And they set it all up. And I came back with a stack of documents. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to write an article, which eventually got published in the Stanford International Law Journal, Stanford Journal of International Law, I think, was what the formal title is. That would be useful for people to understand what role law plays in North Korea and what North Korean law actually says, which is to treat it seriously based upon what I read, not to write an article in which like, well, here's what it says. And we all know that's not true. So it was meant to, for any lawyer who was interested in say comparative law between North Korea and say China or North Korea and South Korea for it to be a useful resource. And so it was that it was also about if North Korea wants to reform its economy or open up to the outside world, what would it have to change? What would it have to reform and things like that? So that's, that was the motive behind that.
Brent:
[20:49] Were there any interesting insights or surprises when you were reading the text?
Darren:
[20:54] I mean, the most interesting thing that I have on North Korean law that did surprise me, I knew it existed. And then they let me buy a copy. I was, they probably thought it was the dorkiest person because I was so excited. I was like, oh my God. It was a dictionary of human rights they had published in Pyongyang in 2002. And it surprised me because that it was published at all. And when I finally got my copy and got a home and started reading some of the entries, it was, you know, it wasn't human rights are capitalist tools. Actually, they did a pretty decent job with translating most of the major concepts.
Darren:
[21:32] So if you if you read the law, I mean, now, some of it is amusing. I mentioned this in my article, for instance, the Constitution guarantees full and equal rights to all minority populations, of which there are zero. Right so there are things like that it's like they didn't have to say that but they did so there it is um but when you read it you know for serious content you can read between the lines and things but it's interesting to compare each of the constitutions every time there's a new leader in north korea they get a new constitution and it's interesting to compare them because they do change in terms of for instance the most recent constitution no longer declares north korea to be a socialist country. The new justification for the state is to protect the state ideology which is called Juche and Juche just means kind of self-reliance. So even socialism is now seen as a foreign concept and the idea is we're carving our own path. You would only know that from reading the Constitution.
Keller:
[22:31] Is Juche like a North Korean term or does that come from some of them?
Darren:
[22:35] Yeah. Self-reliance means North Korea doesn't depend on anyone but it also means north koreans as people, are also self-reliant in the sense that they exist to protect this juche idea which they embody uh and it's it's interesting because it's it's the it's the idea that like north korea in the north korean context juche is the perfect ideology right no other ideology not even marxism comes close to being that perfect and so the point is the way north korea presents itself through its own constitution and through its own political rhetoric to his own people is we alone created this perfect ideology. The rest of the world is jealous. They want to steal it, which is why they want to attack us and things like that. So we have to safeguard it as a country and U.S. Citizens, your job is to safeguard it as well. And that's, for instance, is why it's illegal for them to talk to foreigners.
Brent:
[23:32] Sure.
Darren:
[23:33] Right.
Brent:
[23:33] So anyway.
Keller:
[23:35] Yeah. And stepping out a little bit more broadly, Could you just explain what comparative politics are, kind of the role that plays in understanding individual nations?
Darren:
[23:46] So comparative politics is, and I define politics very loosely. I mean, you can compare things like quality of parliamentary systems, fairness of elections. You can do all the standard comparative politics stuff. But the questions that really interest me are really questions of identity politics, You know, things like racism, discrimination, you know, how people formulate identities, national identities, minority identities, indigenous identities. And what comparative politics does is you can take the same question and just take it everywhere. It's one of the reasons when I try, I love to travel so many new places as you go to, you know, you go to Finland and it's like, okay, how does Finland perceive new immigrants? Okay, well, Finland's doing this. How about Sweden? And how is Sweden different from France? And how is France different from Bolivia? So you take the same question around and what comparative politics gives you is a toolkit to solve the puzzle of why it's different everywhere you go. And that's why when I travel, I just think that's the question that always, you know, I have a set of questions that really interest me. So even if I was on vacation, I just, you know, I'm not going to grab a lawn chair and a lounge chair and sit on the beach.
Brent:
[24:57] Yeah.
Darren:
[24:58] I'm like, okay, there's other more interesting things to look at over here. Because, you know, I'm looking at graffiti and graffiti is saying something about racism. So that means there is racism. So, you know, that's how I travel. So comparative politics just gives you kind of a really nice analytical toolkit to try to make sense of the differences you see.
Brent:
[25:19] Yeah. And then this might be a little out there. We saw in one of your papers the connection between surfing and democracy.
Brent:
[25:28] What was that?
Darren:
[25:29] And as you can see from my board, I'm a land and sea surfer. Um and that's so that that idea came to me as a result of doing a lot of research in the pacific islands places like the cook islands or new zealand uh you know even places like rapanui which some people call easter island but rapanui is the actual title pacific islanders have a special attachment to the sea and it was it's interesting especially in hawaii where surf culture there's actually a specific person who brought surf culture to california and he's he's kind of one of my heroes of american history he's probably well-known hawaii but not outside of hawaii and that's duke kahanamoku who was he was a you know swimmer in the in the 1912 stockholm olympics, but he was a big believer that surfing was a transformative experience not just because it was you know riding a wave because the values of surfing because it was there's there's a deep set of values that go along with surfing from Polynesian culture. And he thought, if I could share this with the world, it would create its own culture. So there'd be surfing culture everywhere. So it's an interesting story, not of cultural theft or cultural appropriation, but of him wanting to bring it somewhere. And so two people that worked with him brought it to California, a little bit of local history. It was supposed to be, surf culture was supposed to first start in Northern California. It was supposed to be San Francisco, but it turns out the water's too cold. And that's how it went to SoCal.
Darren:
[26:58] But if you look at the values that Duke Hanamoku and most surfers, there's always bad surfers, by which I mean people that.
Darren:
[27:09] Don't follow the rules, but for the most part, it's, it's, it's basically a recipe for a close knit community. And the close to the community in this case would mean something like civil society, civil society being the autonomous actions of citizens, how we interact, you know, freedom of association and the stronger civil society is the stronger democracy becomes. And so in many ways, serve culture is, is part of the idea. I mean, like you don't mess with somebody's belongings when they're on the beach. You know, if somebody sees you looking for somebody's wallet while they're surfing, it's not going to end well because it's like it's just the unwritten code that we don't steal. We don't do this. We don't do that. And it's it's an interesting kind of everywhere you go. If you if I'm in Rapa Nui and I rent a surfboard and jump in the water and again, I know what I'm doing. Everybody responds to that. It's like it's like even if I didn't speak a word of the local language, it's like, OK, he knows that surf culture always is this. You know, if I'm in Indonesia, if I'm Bali, anywhere like that. Um, so that's, that was what that article, that's where that article came from.
Keller:
[28:13] And what are some of the other people that don't know surf culture? What are some of the, I guess, like tenants that make it so unique and make it able to be, like you said, in Bali or SoCal or anywhere in the world, you go to a surf town, it's generally very much the same feeling.
Darren:
[28:29] So there's a deep respect for nature. Um, surfers are always the first to say, you know, if there, if there's a shark near the beach they're like don't chase it away don't bring out your guns don't shoot the sharks you know we're in the shark's territory um you know live and let live that's part of it um there's um in fact there's a there's a great story from i was in um what's the uh bora bora for the elections in in in french polynesia and there was a guy who was just getting ready to go out in his boat and So I started talking with him and it wasn't a surfer, but it's, it's the same idea. And he was, I basically invited me to go out with him and he said, every, every year on this day, I go just outside the reef around the Island and I dive in the water and there's a specific shark that I apologize to. And I'm like, Oh, you apologize to the shark. And apparently his brother was one of these tour operators. And one of the things they do, it's very unethical. They throw chum in the water to attract sharks so the tourists can see them. And his brother was doing that and the shark bit his brother's hand off. So in his mind, he apologizes to the shark for his brother's bad behavior.
Brent:
[29:44] Right?
Darren:
[29:45] He mistreated the shark. That's very much kind of a mindset of surfer culture. There's the instant help. If a surfer's in trouble, everybody, you drop what you're doing, you help, right? So if a surfer's in trouble, you don't say, well, you know, I'm going to take this wave anyway. It's like, no, you just let the wave go by and you help. The idea of not stealing, the idea that there's just this instant trust because you do have to leave stuff in your car or on the beach and stuff like that. There's also a hierarchy, which is you figure out who the better surfers are and you let them have the better waves. You know if you're a beginner who's like i'm gonna jump on this wave and you it's like it's not going to end well because you don't know the rules so it's a sense of respect uh that the people that have developed a better skill set just a few things like that.
Brent:
[30:30] Yeah yeah that isn't shifting a little bit away from that uh we wanted to like talk about the decolonizing law paper you wrote as well can maybe like give like a brief highlight of what you were talking about in that before we dive deeper.
Darren:
[30:45] Okay i mean so decolonizing law was kind of a first draft of you know as i mentioned a few minutes ago i have this deep interest in identity and decolonizing law was my first foray into how human rights law or how law in general either does or does not get identity right um and i used decolonizing law as a semi-provocative title because usually we say decolonizing law and we're talking about um the need to overturn you know white values and law or something like this and what i was actually getting at was the idea that that by putting so much of colonialism into identity, we were actually creating an active injustice because in, say, Western academia or American academia, the idea is, oh, if you look closely, if you read international law closely, it's what embodies things like white supremacy or colonial oppression. But if you take that approach and then you begin to deny the possibility that, say, a population that is not European or colonizers cannot make those mistakes, cannot oppress, you end up taking...
Darren:
[32:14] A large chunk of humanity and leaving them vulnerable to oppression which they do experience i've never been to any country on earth that doesn't have a racism problem for instance, if you if you try to drag all of it back only to the association with european imperialism, you actually weaken the protective laws by saying that by denying that it could happen anywhere else and so decolonizing law to me was a way of saying we've got to take colonialism out so that we can see racism and oppression and all these things for what they are anywhere in the world as opposed to trying to trying to drag them back into a discussion about who can or cannot be racist which to me is a non-productive question.
Keller:
[32:57] And how do you go about like weighing those historical injustices and i think a lot of it in my perspective ends up becoming like a vocabulary issue because it ends up being okay colonialism you're thinking about the past but like the same things like you just said, like are still going on today.
Keller:
[33:13] How do you go about, because you're not taking it away, but you're just trying to put it in the right context. How do you navigate that?
Darren:
[33:21] So one of the things I didn't say it in the decolonizing law article, but I've come to believe, and it sounds like a paradox is the way to get to no racism has to go through more racism first. And what I mean by that is I'm not denying that there is colonial races, right? I'm not denying that there were, there was past historical injustice, although we can talk about, you know, history is full of injustice, right? There is no point in history when somebody wasn't oppressing somebody else. So I'm not denying any of that. I'm not trying to switch the attention to something else. And I think that's what people often fear. It's like, oh, you're trying to erase this and only look at this. What I am trying to do, however, is I'm trying to say, look, there are people in, say, Colombia, the country, not the university, who are experiencing racism. And they're experiencing racism at the hands of people who are not white. And we have to acknowledge that as its own racism, which means we have to get more racism. We have to acknowledge all of it first, which is the only way to end all of it or minimize it. And that's why I say we're going to expose all existing racism means we need to expose, we'll have more racism that we see, which is the only way to get rid of it because we have to attack all of it and not just some of it.
Brent:
[34:39] So you think the last few years where racism, I feel like, especially growing up in school, we were always told like only whites in America can be racist. Do you think we've defined racism too narrowly now?
Darren:
[34:51] Yeah. And that's kind of what that first article is about.
Brent:
[34:53] Yeah.
Darren:
[34:54] And again, to reiterate the point, it wasn't about trying to deny that there are white racist people. It was trying to say there are a lot of racist people, some of whom are white. And we are either defining it too narrowly or we are making people vulnerable to oppression and injustice by denying their lived experience. Like I said, I've never been to a country that didn't have people that I would talk with that will talk openly about the racism they experience. And I can't say to them, I don't see how anybody can say to them that that's not real.
Brent:
[35:31] Okay.
Darren:
[35:31] If they experience it that way, then we have to call that out as racism.
Keller:
[35:34] Yeah and have you been to a country in your travels that you felt like like not that there wasn't racism but that that tension between ethnic groups like felt, more coming from a place of understanding than it was targeted i was like for example we were just in in singapore and like they really like to like flaunt i think the fact that they're all united but in a lot of things we're seeing in articles or the day-to-day it did feel like that the relationship still was a, at the end of the day, a racist experience.
Darren:
[36:07] Yes. In fact, I just gave you a lecture yesterday in my class. Exactly on this guy. I lived in Singapore in, uh, in 2012. I took a sabbatical from, from Berkeley and, and, uh, was there for almost all of 2012, which is great. I mean, I often say, how long were you in Singapore?
Brent:
[36:23] Four months.
Darren:
[36:23] Oh, four months. Okay. Yeah. So I, I often say to people, if you're, if you go to Singapore for less than three weeks, you'll come back thinking it's perfect. If you stay longer than three weeks you start saying you know you look under the hood it's like oh i see what's going on here so i think you're exactly right um singapore did go out of its way to depoliticize race and ethnicity all the way back in 1965 when the country became independent and and i think that's a you know they have tried i have to give them credit where or credit is due. The problem is by depoliticizing it, they took away the.
Darren:
[37:02] The the the vocabulary to talk about racism when it did occur because the answer was always well we don't have you know we don't have racism so you can't you know it's kind of what i was talking about so if you don't admit that it's a possibility um and then people get very frustrated because i lived when i lived in singapore i lived in a neighborhood called juchat which is a um a malay majority neighborhood and i i heard you know from all my neighbors that were just like you know don't believe the rhetoric it's like it it's we malaise have it rough here um but at the same time there was no official recognition that there was discrimination or that there was kind of racism a couple things recently from singapore for instance um the the book and movie crazy rich asians yeah which see here in the added states and this goes back to to decolonizing law here in the United States, we celebrate this movie. It's a, you know, triumph of diversity, all Asian cast, you know, what a, what a great step forward for Hollywood.
Darren:
[38:01] When that was happening, you know, I was getting emails from friends in Singapore who were like, what is wrong with you? You know, what is wrong with your country? What are they not seeing? Because in Singapore, it's seen as, because it's a country that has a Chinese majority, it's seen as a racist film. It's the opposite of diversity because it says it prop you know people were saying it propagates the idea that, that asian is defined as chinese and everything that's not chinese is somehow an inferior imitation of what it means to be chinese so they saw a non-diverse racist film as opposed to what we saw and that that's exactly what my article decolonizing law was really all about that we need to be able to see see racism for what it is everywhere we look uh more recently there's um, very controversial video that you can probably still find on youtube but there was a public persona in singapore that you might know social media her name is she goes by pretty please do you know this is okay so pretty please made there was a an advertisement campaign for let me think now it's um i think it was like a mobile payment thing kind of like venmo if i remember correctly.
Darren:
[39:09] It wasn't that but it was something similar to that right um and they decided it would be clever to use a chinese actor to basically portray different personas a chinese a malay woman an indian so you know so the response was pretty brutal that was like that's brown face number one is what it's called and it's like you know we do have actual malay women who could play that you You could just hire them. So Pretty Please did this...
Darren:
[39:40] It's it's it's pretty scathing critique of that whole thing and and singapore did try to ban it but uh you can probably find it online it's it's it's basically her take on on what the chinese racism she perceives in singapore yeah.
Brent:
[39:54] And do you think at like a societal level we'll be able to like get close to having a non-racist society because i think at an individual level it can work very well but at a large group like you said every country you've ever been to there's racism.
Darren:
[40:13] Yeah so i mean step one is as i said a few minutes ago we have to recognize all of it okay we can't this this idea of you know only certain people can be racist we have to drop that because we're just missing a huge part of the picture you know a non-racist society i think is possible um that doesn't mean it's kind of like when people say well you know could we have a society without conflict or, you know, a nonviolent society or, you know, a world without war. And it's like a world without war is possible, but that doesn't mean we're not going to have a world without conflict. The reality is, is we'll always have conflict, but there may be better ways to deal with it. If we can resolve conflict before it becomes war, then that's what we really mean. The same is true with racism. We're always going to have people that just are ugly. And I I mean, ugly, not physically, but I mean, they're just going to harbor values they're going to hate. We have, so a society without racism means really when people adopt those hateful values that we are able to successfully contain them from catching on or from spreading. We're just always going to, it's like, it's like crime. I'd love to have a crime-free society, but we're probably not going to have one, but we might be able to just be better at making sure crime doesn't get out of control or spread or harm many more people. So I do think it's possible at the individual level, of course, I mean, you just be a better person. That's rule number one.
Darren:
[41:41] But at a social level, I think it is possible. I'd love to see it happen. And without, I think the way we're trying to do that in the last few years is wrong. Cause we're, we're doing this, you know, I don't like the way you think, so I'm just going to cut you off. You know, Pick your word, ghosting, gaslighting, cancel culture. And it's like, no, no, you want to engage people, right? It's like, look, what you just said is something I can't agree with. And let's talk that through. What you want to do is either change minds if you can, or get people to see there's a better way to do things. I don't like this idea. I'm a big, big fan of what's called civil discourse, which means talking to people who think differently, not to convert them, but just to try to get them to understand that the way they are thinking is harmful to others.
Brent:
[42:31] Yeah. Do you ever fear, though, that there's a level of human being?
Brent:
[42:37] Biology or psychology that wants to group everybody like i want to be part of a group or i want to feel part of a group and like therefore some level of racism racism will be endemic to or a byproduct of the the need to group.
Darren:
[42:51] It depends i mean the need to group sure we can say it's biological even if it is it doesn't mean it's our destiny, right in the sense that we can group ourselves together in different ways and this is you know one of the things that you're going from decolonizing a law into how I approach things like diversity, because we tend to think of diversity as identity based groups that are based upon appearances, you know, that, that, you know, if I go to Singapore, for example, the last thing I want to do is find all the other Americans who are like me. Right. And just hang out with them. It's like, I, that's not why I'm there. I can do that in Berkeley if I want to, you know, so I intentionally as a practice, everywhere I go, try not to just find a pre-made community. But that's the easiest thing to do. That's what people think of diversity as, find your group and then stick to it. And I don't want to say that's always wrong, but then think of all the other ways we can group ourselves together.
Darren:
[43:55] I'm a surfer, so there's surf culture. I'm a mathematician. I like math, so I can find people that like math. I can find people that share musical interests and things like that. And what that means is, is now I've got five, six, seven, eight identities. Um, and it's not just the one of, Oh, he's always, you know, where, where, where, where the other white Americans, you know, that's not what I'm searching for. And if we all do that, we're less likely to see people as being kind of a part of a defined, very visible identity-based group.
Keller:
[44:31] And how do you propose, and again, there might be many ways of doing this, of getting that message out in terms of diversity? Because I think right now, because it is already pre-packaged very well, whether it's from institutions or from the media or from whatever X group, it's already really well bundled in a convenient way that is appearance-based. And to try to break out of that is not only difficult to get people at the individual level to think differently about that, but also there's pushback from, you know, institutions don't want to be like, hey, you know, if you're a surfer, you know, that's maybe a crude example, but an example that is harder to actually quantify or to really look at on paper. It seems like a very daunting task.
Darren:
[45:15] Well, it is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. And it comes down to just personal ethics, personal practice. It's not the hard to do example. Um, if you want things to be different, the first thing you have to do is to incentivize it. Okay. So, you know, elsewhere I've written about this, what I would like to see it say at the university level is I would like to see universities incentivize people to seek out difference, not to seek out sameness, right? Like let's suppose we have a point system and you, you, you can't graduate from Berkeley or from any university until you get, you know, a score of 10 points on diversity. And what we incentivize is not seeking out sameness, but it's like you do things that are different. So if you're say of, you know, let's say you're of Korean heritage and you get a chance to study abroad, if you decide to go to Korea.
Darren:
[46:11] Then you might get one point. But if you go someplace that's completely unfamiliar, say you go to Chile instead, that's three points, right? It's like you incentivize people to say, well, I'm familiar with this, but I have no idea about this. And so it seems scarier. It's, you know, we always go with the easiest choice and do things on campus. You can think differently, for instance, you know, I'll stick with the example of Korean identity, not because there's anything I'm not picking on it. But, you know, the difference between, say, a student group that was the Korean Student Association versus the Association of Students Interested in Korea, because then it's like I'd show up for that. You know, I've sometimes said, you know, if you put me in a room filled with with white American men, I can probably relate at most on a good day with two of them. And one of those is me. Right. That's because I, you know, the values I've picked up and travels and things, I feel very comfortable in environments that are not the environment that I grew up in or that are my own culture. And I like that, right? I like the fact that I can fly to Tokyo today and just feel like it feels like home to me.
Brent:
[47:16] Yeah.
Darren:
[47:16] Right. And I think that's the kind of thing we should aspire to. It doesn't mean you abandon your own group. I'm not saying we should, we should spurn people who are like us. But if we seek out other groups so we're not only associated with one i think that's the first step towards you know doing diversity right doing what i'd call more of an interactive engagement of diversity as opposed to just simply
Darren:
[47:39] finding a group and going back to your point i think that would do wonders for eliminating racism.
Brent:
[47:43] Yeah have you tried to implement anything here on campus at berkeley or or do you like have issues with the way berkeley is currently like doing it because.
Darren:
[47:53] You know, it's interesting. I do a freshman seminar, which is called Diversity, Identity, and Social Justice. And I've been doing it now for like the last six or seven years, and it's been a wonderful experience. But one of the things I often ask my classes, and I love to hear from my students, is I'll say, you know, do we do diversity well here at Berkeley? And the answer is always either no, or there's a real sense of skepticism, but it's not all because the fact, you know, it's not like, oh, the administration is blah, you know, it's, it's not that it's also a bit of self-blame. It's like, I get here and I, to make a community is hard to join a preexisting community is easy, you know, and I'm here for four years and they're like, we know we probably shouldn't be doing that, but that's what we do. You know, and if at the start of the semester, you can go over to Sproul, Sproul Plaza and you can see all the student groups are trying to recruit and stuff like that so i you know i i understand the need for belonging but if you don't go beyond that then you then you you get rewarded for basically not seeking out difference and that's you know that's very common on university campuses all across the united states yeah.
Brent:
[49:07] Do you find students who like take that your freshman seminar sign up thinking it's something that might it might not be because they threw this conversation diversity and like social justice is not like you're taking a different approach to it.
Darren:
[49:21] True um you know and i just because i take a different approach to it you know i i would know i don't i don't teach an ideology all i teach is a skill set you know and if if somebody wants to ask me as you have you know how do you feel we should do things i'm happy to talk about it, but you know if there are students in that in that class or any other class who are like no no i think this i like this you know i'm happy to have a civil discussion with them and just say well you Here's why I think this is better, but you don't get an A if you agree with me. It's not that kind of a thing. So the freshman seminar is great because it's discussion-based. And to be honest, yes, if they ask me questions, I'm happy to talk with them about my experiences. But I learned so much from them as well.
Darren:
[50:05] So to answer your question, no, I've never had a student be like, oh, this is messed up. I thought I was getting something different, and I got this. It's, it's, you know, the last week's discussion, we were talking in fact about, um, uh, how music defines us, how we use music to define ourselves. You know, people, I'm a Swifty and it says a lot about, you know, these kinds of things, but it's, to me, it's, it's very encouraging because when I ask questions like how many of you listen to music outside of your, your generation, your cultural group, however you define it, the number of people that do that gets larger and larger every year. And to me, I think it's a great development, you know, even, even, even if it's k-pop that makes you want to explore korea that's fine okay um so i that to me is encouraging and so that's what the class is about is exploring how not only how we see other people's identity but getting people getting students to understand things that they took for granted about their own identities might not be as settled as they think.
Brent:
[51:04] Yeah and then do you do you think your approach to like these types of conversations and seeking maybe diversity of thought and like different experiences is common within the faculty here?
Darren:
[51:16] No, I don't think so. I think, and I think there's a lot of fear around it a bit. There's always this fear that people are going, and I'll be honest, I mean, and everyone's probably had this from time to time, people will walk out on me, you know, in a class because it's like, oh, he's, it sounds like something they've never heard before. And, you know, it's, it's Berkeley. So you have your own personal protests and you're just like, I'm, I'm up and out of here. And it's sad because I wish they would stay and just let's talk it through. But for the most part people are very willing to listen uh and and if i you know if i start talking about things you'll see a lot of heads nodding you know like like yeah now when i think about it i can kind of see that um but i think there's there's a fear you know i i always tell usually on the first day of classes i always tell my students there there is no topic that i will not talk about if you ask me a question i will i will be happy to talk about it because it's a university. And that's what we're supposed to be able to do.
Darren:
[52:11] I usually don't share my personal opinions unless somebody says, well, how do you feel or what do you think? Again, my approach education with the idea of, you should, you know, here's a skill set on how to think things through and you should always be prepared to admit that something you believe to be true might not be true. As long as you do that, education is working. But yeah, I do not think we have, um, I think open, creative, constructive discussions about how to do diversity better. Um, I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be, who just don't want to hear what I'm saying about, you know, there's tremendous levels of racism in Mexico. It's like, no, there's not, you know, it just can't be, it's gotta be only in this one context. It's like, I've been there and I've talked to people who will tell you, you know, it's there. Uh, I can't, I can't steer away from that because like I said, I feel like I'm denying someone's personal experience. I'm denying them access to justice, which I don't think is fair. And I find people very receptive to the argument,
Darren:
[53:10] um for the most part as long as you do it in ways that are respectful of everyone's view yeah.
Keller:
[53:16] And kind of going back to one of the videos we saw of you was the comedy in politics and it ties in perfectly to like one of the antidotes or possible solutions to the diversity problem or the issues of racism is comedy and the role that that can play in kind of normalizing these tensions um i've great to hear kind of your spiel on that and then also kind of within that topic the idea of like who can laugh at what and kind of your view on that.
Darren:
[53:44] Yeah so i in that talk i i say there's two questions you know who who can laugh at whom and who can tell what kind of jokes about whom um and the the approach i came to i mean i'm fascinated by by comedy across cultures, and the way that we've gone after comedians in this country in terms of you can't tell that joke. And what I came up with, and this goes back to this idea of how we can do things better, is at the end of that talk I say the most empowering thing in the world is to laugh with someone as opposed to laughing at. And that goes hand in hand with the idea of not taking offense. There's a great quote, and I say it in that talk from Ricky Gervais, who says, you know, offense is never given, it's only taken. And what I mean by that is, you know, let's take the example of Dave Chappelle, who I don't think I talk about in that talk, but it was very much in my mind.
Darren:
[54:50] So a lot of people are very angry at Dave Chappelle because he's telling jokes that are transphobic, right? And the idea is he can't tell those jokes. And even though he has the story of of you know the comedian the the friend he made with this uh trans woman and and all that it's like it doesn't count it's like you can't tell this joke, but to me you're putting the power in you're putting a power in dave chappelle, that you can also share with him and that is if you're say whether you are a trans person or you are an ally of the trans community if you laugh with dave chappelle you have risen to the same level right if you take offense at the joke it means you're accepting kind of a marginalized position, And, you know, you practice what you preach. If somebody tells a joke about whatever I am, you know, I will laugh right along with it, right? You know, if I'm, you know, people sometimes it's like, oh, everything's funny. There was the, there was the, uh, in the series South Park, the, uh, the actor, Isaac Hayes, who played chef, did a show about Scientology and he left the show. And it was like, every, it's funny to make fun of everything else except my religion, right? I'm a Scientologist, you made fun of it, I've got to leave the show. And they very, very unceremoniously kill him off in an episode that's.
Brent:
[56:17] Actually quite funny.
Darren:
[56:20] But that's, you know, it's like, so if I'm a person of faith and somebody's telling jokes about my faith, I have to laugh. Laughing shows that I'm not threatened by the humor. If I'm like, oh, if I'm threatened by it, it means I'm insecure in my identity. So there's no better way than to claim your space at the comedy table than to laugh with. even when a comedian says things that might offend you.
Brent:
[56:44] Do you think comedy is shifting back now a little bit?
Darren:
[56:48] Yeah, I think a lot of comedians have basically, people forget how important comedy is. Comedy is like this liminal moment that takes all of us out of normal conversation. That's why comedians can say things that if you were just talking, it was like, I can't believe you said that. If a comedian says it, it's like, oh, okay. So we get to go into a different place, Which is great because in that different place is where we can recalibrate our ideas and our identities. We become something different. And I do think comedians are fighting back not because they want to tell offensive jokes, but because we need comedy. Comedy has a tremendous power, political power among them to help us talk things through or reimagine things in a way that nothing else can do.
Keller:
[57:36] I saw Dave Chappelle live and it was like at one of the MGM, like 50,000 people. And that was kind of like a moment of realization. It's like, Oh, everyone here is pretty much looks different or has every scope of, of type of person in here. Everyone was just so dialed into the moment of sharing those laughter together. And it was like, that was my like come to Jesus with comedy of like, there is clear, clear use.
Darren:
[58:02] Very cool. It's always good to have experiences like that.
Brent:
[58:04] Yeah. And now, given kind of pivoting a bit towards some of your recent work with the election coming up, how are you teaching that and how are you maybe taking your life experience and your approach, your worldview, and applying it to your outlook on the election?
Darren:
[58:25] So, one of the things I do, and you'll see a general pattern here, is I know it's Berkeley, but I never, in a classroom, no matter whether it's undergrads, graduate students, or the Berkeley community, I never assume everyone is a Democrat, right? I know there are conservative people here on campus because they often come to office hours and they appreciate things like that, right? I'm not going to say, you know, it doesn't matter how I personally feel about Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. To me, it's about, you know, how can you best, how can you cast the best, most informed vote? That's, you know, if you decide it's a conservative, that's as long as you thought it through, that's great. Um so what i tend to do you know is i don't use the classroom or or a lecture as advocacy you know here's why you have to vote for so and so it's kind of like look let's understand the phrase democratic backsliding what does that mean there's all this fear that democracy in america is is you know weakening and falling apart and it's like let's understand what that means okay and once we understand what it means what is the best way forward to fix that and that way when you're looking at the policies, whether it's Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or Jill Stein or anybody, you know, whoever you are looking at.
Darren:
[59:47] You're, you're, you have a context. It's like, it's like, if I want to fix democracy, if I think we have to do ABCD, then I can say who's, who's platform is closest to that.
Darren:
[59:57] Um, I also go out on my way to, you know, I have, I have family outside of California and a lot of, especially in the Bay area or perhaps in SoCal, you know, the coastal coastal Californians, we have a tendency to think that what we do is normal when it's not, uh, you know, you can go to Davis and Davis. Has a very different perspective on things. But if you go to a family in Ohio, for instance, and Ohio is a red state, and I understand that.
Darren:
[1:00:29] I am happy to sit down and talk with Republicans or Democrats, Trump supporters, Kamala Harris supporters, because I just want to know what their decision is based on. And again, I was once in Texas and introduced myself as somebody from Berkeley and they were automatically hostile because they were just assuming it was going to be, you know, and I was like, look, look, look, you know, I did, I'm, I'm just here to listen. Um, it was, it was an interesting conversation because it was about, uh, in fact, Donald Trump. And it was like, the response was, let me guess you hate Donald Trump. And I was like, well, you know, let's, let's rephrase this. And what I ended up doing is I said, you know, here's why I don't think, you know, I don't like Donald Trump as a president. And I said, here's what i want to here's what the here are the values i'd want to see in a leader and for me it was like donald trump doesn't have those values this is when he was in in the presidency and i said that's what i'd want and what we could agree upon were the values yeah right so and it didn't it wasn't like me saying and therefore you better not vote for trump it wasn't it was like i wasn't trying to convert him but it was like we have a similar you know our values are actually similar and you You know, it didn't mean that I thought, you know, Joe Biden was the perfect president. It just meant, you know, here's what I want. I'd like to see.
Darren:
[1:01:47] And those conversations go very well. I've had good experience with it. So when I approach the upcoming election, it's like, look, I get it. If you, if, you know, current students came of age with basically 2016 election, the 2020, now we have 2024, 2016 election. And to a certain extent, 2020, but definitely 2016 was kind of what I call the ultimate lemon of an election, right? It's like, if it was hard to get excited about democracy because it got so ugly and it was name calling back and forth. So, you know, part of me is like, look, democracy is worth fighting for. Even if you don't like either of the candidates, even if you want something different, it only gets better if you engage with it. So I, in many ways I approached the election as, you know, don't give way, don't fall victim to apathy. It's worth fighting for. It does get better over time if you do that.
Brent:
[1:02:40] Yeah.
Keller:
[1:02:41] You mentioned you have family in Ohio and a lot of the students in California are exposed to just other Californians that have very similar views. Do you have any ways you encourage students to hear those perspectives? Because a lot of times I feel like news articles don't quite get the same picture as talking to a person in those areas that might be more right or have those
Keller:
[1:03:01] different perspectives within the country itself? Have you done any kind of exercises with the students to get them to sit down and hear those things?
Darren:
[1:03:10] I mean, I've always encouraged them to do that. The nice thing is that even though we have a lot of Californian students at Brooklyn, we have students from out of state as well. And they might be from Ohio or Minnesota, so they can also bring those kinds of perspectives in. And I'm always happy to tell personal stories. I mean, I had an experience in Ohio, for instance, where a woman brought me a news article in the local paper. And she was very angry because it said it said something along the lines of white, uneducated persons who tend to favor Trump. So it's like, why do people think that Ohioans are just all stupid because we didn't go to Berkeley or something? It's like, why is this assumption that if I didn't go to college, I'm dumb? And if I'm dumb, I vote for Trump.
Darren:
[1:03:56] And the person who said this was not a Trump voter, right? It was just like, it's like, I get tired of people, you know, you probably know this, you know, Ohio is now a reference, you know, kind of thing. Like, and it's not necessarily like only in Ohio kind of thing, but you know, you kind of humanize this, you know, the fact is when I was last in Ohio, it was just in July. There are Trump signs everywhere. Okay. It's, it's a red state, but I find that if you just, even if someone is a Trump voter or if they're a Harris, you know, Kamala Harris voter, it doesn't matter. If you ask the respectful questions, if you show a genuine interest to understand, even if you don't agree with them, it's a good conversation. And I think we all benefit from that as opposed to this kind of hyper partisan fighting back and forth. And so, you know, going back to original question of, you know, how am I covering the election? I'm focusing more on things like that. These are conversations we need to have. We need to understand difference. Going back to, you know, our discussion on diversity as well. It's like understanding what is not you, whether it's ideologically or in terms of identity, it's a very valuable exercise and we should incentivize that. And so I figure approaching it that way helps them understand how to cast the best vote they can.
Brent:
[1:05:10] Yeah. And then would you say in your experience? You kind of already alluded to the values are often a lot more similar than they are different, but maybe the weighting of which values is what ultimately swings people to one side or the other. Yeah.
Darren:
[1:05:27] I would definitely say that. I mean, I published an article, I want to say a month ago. It was about the relationship of religion, church and state.
Brent:
[1:05:36] Sure.
Darren:
[1:05:36] And American politics. And what people don't realize is the separation of church and state, which is a staple phrase we use, is actually not in the Constitution, right? So it was kind of a plea to say, look, there are a lot of persons of faith in the United States, okay? In Berkeley, we tend to be secular liberals and we think people who are religious are stupid or they believe in things like make-believe things, right? It's very disrespectful, right? So it's like even if you're secular, approach someone who is a person of faith who is religious with a sense of respect, right? Like, your goal is not to show them how dumb they are, just like their goal is not to bring, you know, drag you to church and say, you'll see. It's like people think differently. So, yeah, I mean, it's about exactly as you said it. It's like you need to understand that there are people that think differently. And that's not a challenge for you to prove them wrong. Right. It's a challenge to understand them.
Brent:
[1:06:46] I also think when you come at it with understanding, like they might, the willingness to admit wrong, like they might be wrong, they might have a misbelief is way, way higher.
Darren:
[1:06:58] Yeah, exactly. And even if they don't, if they just stay whoever who they are, you can still have the sense like, okay, I'm not trying to make you give up your faith. And if you see things differently or you become more tolerant of those who say are secularists, then it's a win-win, right? You can walk away with your beliefs. I can walk away with mine, whatever mine are. And at least I know we can be friends, right? I can be friends with people who think differently for me. If I'm a Democrat, I should be able to have Republican friends. If I'm a Republican, I should have Democrat friends. And that's the way it should be. But we've reached this point, and it's gotten so much worse since 2016, where we have only one of two possibilities, which is you either agree with me or you're a Nazi.
Brent:
[1:07:47] Right.
Darren:
[1:07:48] And that's that's a that's a pretty truncated list of choices in terms of political identities.
Keller:
[1:07:53] I think that's a really important message. And as we wrap up here, do you have any other closing remarks you want to share to students? Resources you want to point to?
Darren:
[1:08:02] Um resources to point to well i mean i'm actually pretty easy to find and so anybody's listening to this wants to you know have a if they have a question want to keep the conversation going, uh i'm easy to find reach out to me um not a problem i i my email inbox is is always hopelessly full but i'll do my best to respond um but i i think you know rather than suggest resources i I think, I think the one thing that's so valuable to do is to let go of the fear that maybe the things you believe to be true may not be true. I use education as a chance for introspection and I don't just get others to be introspective. I do it to myself all the time. And it's, it's, you know, it helps us become better people. And that's, if somebody said, you know, why do you do what you do? I think that's the answer just to help myself and help others be better people.
Keller:
[1:08:56] Wonderful.
Brent:
[1:08:57] Thank you. Thank you.
Darren:
[1:08:58] Thanks for having me.