The Editor's Back Fence

UC Berkeley's own Matthew Taylor has a piece in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explaining the new militancy of young American Jews like himself.

Richard Brenneman forwards a link about a possible new buyer for Golden Gate Fields which appeared in a trade publication.

Chris Hedges has a terrific column in Truthdig about what happened to academics who refused to cooperate with those who were intent on purging dissenters, featuring mathematician Chandler Davis, author of a recent Planet commentary on fighting for free speech.

The much anticipated first volume of autobiography of legendary American author and humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, best known by his pen name Mark Twain, lands on bookstore shelves today (Monday, Nov. 15), 100 years after his death, courtesy of editors at the Mark Twain Papers and Project at the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library.

A sublimely silly piece from the San Francisco Chronicle about Berkeley's Measure R, written by someone who doesn't seem to know how to follow the money. Write to them, and cc us so we can print your letters when they don't.

Richard Brenneman continues to track misdeeds at the University of California on his blog:"It’s been a bad year for University of California students, but a very good year for UC Berkeley bioengineer Jay Keasling. During the same UC Board of Regents session that boosted student fees by another eight percent, the regents handed the professor an 11 percent raise just a few weeks after his private corporation went public and earned him more than $10 million worth of stock."