Openness to Opposing Views Contributing Faculty

Arlie Hochschild, Professor Emerita, Sociology

Arlie Russell Hochschild ’62 H’93 is a professor emerita in the department of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Hochschild graduated from Swarthmore in 1962 before earning her M.A. and Ph.D in sociology at Berkeley, where she has spent the majority of her career.

Ronald Dahl - Berkeley Changemaker Faculty Director

Professor Dahl is a pediatrician and developmental scientist with more than 30 years of experience working at the interface of research, practice, and policy with the goal of improving the lives of children and adolescents. He is a distinguished professor in the School of Public Health. He served as Director of the Institute of Human Development for 12 years, and was founding director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent.

Ben Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost, Professor of Economics, and the Thomas & Alison Schneider Distinguished Professor of Finance at Berkeley Haas

Benjamin E. Hermalin is the University of California Berkeley's executive vice chancellor and provost (EVCP), and holds professorships both in the Economics Department and at Berkeley Haas. In the latter, he is the Thomas & Alison Schneider Distinguished Professor of Finance.

Mark Brilliant - Associate Professor Margaret Byrne Chair in American History

Mark Brilliant is an Associate Professor and Margaret Byrne Chair in American History. He is contributing faculty for the Openness to Opposing Views course.

Oliver O'Reilly - Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education

Oliver M. O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). Subsequently, he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University. At Cornell, he studied under Phil Holmes and Frank Moon. After spending two years as a postdoc at the Institut für Mechanik at ETH-Zürich under Jürg Dual, he joined the faculty in Mechanical Engineering at Cal.

Lisa Armstrong - Faculty, Asst. Professor

Lisa Armstrong is an award-winning journalist with credits in The Intercept, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, and other outlets. She has reported from several countries, including Sierra Leone, Kenya, and the Philippines.

Ron Hassner - Chancellor's Professor of Political Science and Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies

Ron Hassner teaches international conflict and religion. He is a recipient of the Berkeley Undergraduate Political Science Association’s “Distinguished Teaching Award”, the Berkeley Division of Social Sciences’ “Distinguished Teaching Award”, Berkeley’s campus-wide “Distinguished Teaching Award”, and the American Political Science Association’s “Outstanding Teaching in Political Science Award”. He is a faculty director of the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. He holds the Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

Laura Paxton Hassner - Strategic Advisor to the Chancellor | Professional Faculty, Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas | Executive Director, Innovation & Entrepreneurship | Executive Director, Berkeley Changemaker

Laura Hassner is the Strategic Advisor to the Chancellor of UC Berkeley. She is also the Executive Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Changemaker academic program. Hassner co-created and co-leads the Berkeley Changemaker® academic program. Berkeley Changemaker’s identity-making curriculum activates students’ passions and helps them develop a sharper sense of who they want to be and how to make that happen. In its first 5 years, over 8,500 students have become Berkeley Changemakers.

Michael Lu - Dean of the School of Public Health

Michael C. Lu, the current Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, has a deep-rooted passion for health equity and social justice. He has dedicated his research to the development, testing and translation of a new theory on the origins of maternal and child health disparities.

Lisa Garcia Bedolla - Vice Provost for Graduate Studies, Dean of the Graduate Division, and a Professor in the Graduate School of Education

She uses the tools of social science to reveal the causes of educational and political inequalities in the United States, considering differences across the lines of ethnorace, gender, class, geography, et cetera. She believes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach is critical to recognizing the complexity of the contemporary United States. She has used a variety of social science methods – participant observation, in-depth interviewing, survey research, field experiments, and geographic information systems (GIS) – to shed light on this question.