This week, we’re proud to share the pilot season of a new podcast made by students at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. It’s called The Stakes Explained. Each episode tries to make sense of the executive orders that continue to flood out of the Oval Office.
Today's show features:
- Graduate student Erika Zaro interviews Travis Bristol, who researches the role of race and gender in educational settings. She asks him about some of President Trump’s education executive orders focused on ending diversity, equity and inclusion.
- Reporter and recent J-school graduate, Meg Tanaka interviewed Eric Greenwald, a Senior Researcher at the Lawrence Hall of Science whose life’s work involves making science education accessible to ALL children.
- An interview with the head of the audio journalism program at Cal, Shereen Marisol Meraji, who explains how this podcast project came about.
BAY MADE: THE STAKES EXPLAINED, EPISODE 1 (TRANSCRIPT)
DAVID BOYER:You're listening to Bay Made, a mix of local stories and storytellers from the Bay Area, only on KALW.
Hello and welcome to Bay Made. I'm DAVID BOYER. Each week on the show, we spotlight a different Bay Area producer or podcast. You may hear things you totally agree with and some stuff that you don't. That is the point of the show to share a range of perspectives, ideas and stories that reflect the diversity of the Bay Area.
This week, we are proud to share the pilot season of a podcast made by the students at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. It's called The Stakes Explained. Each episode tries to make sense of the executive orders and actions that continue to flood out of the Oval Office.
And before we listen to these student-led interviews, their professor, SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, joins me to talk about how this podcast project came about.
Hey, Shereen, I should also add that you're also on the KALW board.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: I am, and I want to say that we're an all-volunteer board, so I'm not getting paid to be on this board. And it is an honor to be a part of the KALW community, which I love.
DAVID BOYER: We thank you.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: But my paid gig, as you know, David, is as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where I run the school's audio program. And I also teach a course each spring called Race and Journalism. And it was in that course this past spring where this idea for a multimedia interview series came about.
And to give you some background, in this Race and journalism seminar, aspiring journalists from all mediums, so I'm talking about print, and audio, and video journalism. All of these aspiring journalists come together in a classroom to learn about race.
And in my opinion, it is absolutely crucial for journalists to have at least a basic understanding of the legacy of colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and how the legacy of those systems continue to impact us and affect us.
It's why racial disparities persist in wealth in this country, in education, in housing, in healthcare, in policing, in incarceration, you name it.
And I firmly believe that you can't meaningfully report on these issues unless you have an understanding of how race operates in our society.
So that said... My race and journalism class, it's a seminar class, we read a lot. We have a lot of classroom discussions. I invite academics to come speak to the students. I invite journalists who are doing this work to come and speak to students. We pay really close attention to all kinds of stories that intersect with race and we critique those stories in our classroom discussions.
So when President Trump signed a bunch of these executive orders that intersect directly with race. I suggested that my students interview experts at UC Berkeley to help them make sense of the new anti-DEI policies, immigration policies, and regulatory rollbacks. I know people's eyes start to roll into the back of their head when you say regulatory rollbacks
DAVID BOYER:Not mine. I perked right up.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: (laughter) It's quite interesting. OK, good. And education reforms that are coming out of the Oval Office at breakneck speed.
And I know this because I was a full-time journalist for 20 years, most of that time at NPR. You know this, because you're still a full time journalist. We know how difficult it is to include historical context and policy analysis in a news story, because you’re only allowed so many words, or in our case, just a few minutes of airtime.
It's something that's always frustrated me about the work that we do and it continues to. So these interviews that my students conducted are really meant to slow things down, provide some of that context, provide some of that history.
DAVID BOYER:So over this next week on Bay Made, we're gonna be listening to interviews that your students conducted in your race and journalism course, yeah?
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: We are definitely going do that. Once again, these are UC Berkeley journalism graduate students and some of them are fresh out of undergrad, others are career changers. Many had never recorded an interview for broadcast in their lives, but we did not let that stop us. I turned this once a week class into a podcast production house, and as a class, my students looked for experts, they wrote booking emails, they made many, many, many calls to try and book on-campus scholars. The younger generation, they don't like calling people on the phone, they'd rather text (laughter)so that was like a challenge for them and really great. So they made all these calls, they did a bunch of research, came up with questions, they set up the cameras, the audio equipment, they recorded the interviews. They edited the social videos that are going to be accompanying the interviews that run this week on Bay Made. Because as you know, David, we have to blast everything out on multiple platforms. I really miss just doing radio.
DAVID BOYER: We sure do. Now you've probably already answered this question, but what's been the hardest part about getting this project off the ground?
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: So much has been challenging. As you know, starting anything is hard, getting by-in and all of that. And on top of that, I'm working with students and these students are taking other demanding courses. They have other deadlines, they have jobs. Some of them have full-time jobs, some have kids and families to take care of. So I'm having to work around their very busy schedules and I'm having to work around my own.
And as you know, because you also work with aspiring journalists because the KALW training is really embedded into the DNA of the station: early career professionals, they're still learning. So things take a little bit longer.
And another thing that was really challenging, especially in the very beginning of getting this together was just the sheer amount of No’s these students were getting. Professors were understandably concerned about losing federal funding. They were concerned about being targets of the Trump administration. So there was a lot of anxiety about speaking with the media. Let alone the student media.
And that was really discouraging, I'm not gonna lie. I had to remind myself, someone's gonna come through, someone's going to come through and talk to us. And things finally started to look up at the very end of March when my students booked their very first Stakes Explained interview with a professor named TRAVIS BRISTOL. So shout out to Travis for being the first.
DAVID BOYER: Shout out.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: He researches the role of race and gender in educational settings. And so you're going to hear my former student and reporter, ERIKA ZARO, asking him about some of president Trump's education, executive orders that are focused on ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
DAVID BOYER:So you said a former student…
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: Yes, she graduated.
DAVID BOYER: So a lot of the people that we're going to be hearing from will have graduated and are now making their way in the world. Is that true?
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: Some of them. So half of them and the other half have another year to go.
DAVID BOYER: It's hard, you know, the first one is always a challenge.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: And because so much has been thrown at us over the past few months, I really think it's important to remind our audience that this president has attempted to get rid of the Federal Department of Education. Do you remember that, David?
DAVID BOYER:I sure do.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: He has not been successful at that, but the Department of Education under President Trump has created what they call an “END-DEI” portal where parents can make complaints about educators or educational institutions that are working on diversity efforts in their classrooms or their schools. And you're going to hear ERIKA ZARO ask TRAVIS BRISTOL about some of these issues in that conversation.
DAVID BOYER: All right, Shereen, let's get into it!
TRAVIS BRISTOL: I am Professor TRAVIS BRISTOL. I'm a professor of teacher education and education policy.
ERIKA ZARO: So Travis, I wanna start by talking about Executive Order 14190 that aims to end radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling. Can you break-down the executive order for our audience?
TRAVIS BRISTOL:I'll probably zoom out first and ask us to consider what radical indoctrination is. If radical indoctrination is presenting an accurate telling of her-story and his-story to the children in our public schools, then I'm not sure how that's radical. If radical indoctrination is de-centering the contributions of White people and whiteness, to include the contributions of Native Americans, of Black Americans, of Asian Americans, of Latinx Americans, I'm not sure what radical indoctrination is as the Department and the President are defining it.
What is radical is to erase her-story and his-story. THE GOAL is to not talk about race. It's an attempt to present a very narrow sense of what this country is and what this country is aspiring to be.
And for me, that is radical.
ERIKA ZARO: What do you think the Trump administration is trying to do with this order?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: Some scholars have talked about this moment as being the second nadir of race relations. The first nadir race relations sort of comes after reconstruction, right? When Black people begin to find their way into this American project, this thing called “America.” And after reconstruction we see the rise of the KKK, we see Plessy Ferguson. The second nadir begins many would say with the election of President Barack Obama, a Black man, like me. And that created a great sense of cognitive dissonance for White people.
They've had a history where they were placed in the center. And I think we saw this with the birtherism from the current President, trying to discredit the fact that this Black man was the president of the United States. So some of this comes out of the fear that White people were grappling with. And the response, the backlash of this coloring of America is to make America great again, or white, again.
ERIKA ZARO: What do you think the role of race in education, you know, what's the importance?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: I'm wondering if the question is why talk about race in schools, in education. And for me, America comes into being, it grows into its economic prowess, its economic prowess is in many ways based on a racial project, which was the subjugation of Black bodies. It becomes hard to disentangle because the country, in its founding, was a racialized project. We talk about race because, one, it's important for all children in this country to understand their her-story, their his-story.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, I went to an Afro-centric school. In the first grade, I learned, and I asked my students this, you know, how many of you have heard of Crispus Attucks? I learned about Crispus Attucks in the first-grade. I learned that Crispus Attucks was a Black and Indigenous man who was one of the first persons killed at the start of what would become the American Revolution. And I learned that part of this country fighting against the colonial empire, England, was that a Black man and an Indigenous man had to lay down his life.
Those kinds of lessons should not only be taught to Black children, but it should be taught White children. So much of the conversation that we're having in this country around not talking about race or not talking about sensitive issues is an attempt to protect White people, White children.
And I fundamentally believe that White children, they have the intellectual capacity to hold that White people have done some harm in this country and that white people have made contributions to the United States, as well as Black people and Latinx people and Asian-American people and Indigenous people.
Lots of my research is around diversifying the educator workforce. How can White children compete in a global economy if they have singular notions about history if they aren't exposed to diverse cultures as children?
ERIKA ZARO: How do you think the Department of Education's portal to report DEI in schools will affect educators?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: So I believe it will and it won't. For our generation, it feels new, but historically we've been here before. To my undergrads here at Berkeley, I talked about the work of Black educators during Jim and Jane Crow.
They developed the capacity of their students in their classrooms to understand the hypocrisy of what was in the founding documents and what was being manifested through conversations at the federal government. And what that did was it birthed a generation of civil rights leaders.
Who was in the classrooms of Black educators in the South in the 20s and the 30s? King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, individuals who then became the leaders of the civil rights movement.
So one, I just wanna underscore that we've been here before and what I believe that the individuals in the Trump administration may not understand about the complexities of schools is that they close their doors and they continue to do. And so I think that you'll have lots of educators who will continue to do what they need to do to prepare their children to be successful in this global economy. And that's talk about diversity, to talk about equity, and to talk about inclusion, in this moment, you'll have teachers talking about how we are stronger when we're more diverse. And diversity isn't only race, it's ability, it's gender. So we'll have teachers continuing to do that.
But I also recognize that there will be some pain. I've told my students here at Cal that it will get worse before it gets better. You will have individuals who, and I think we've seen this with some of the Moms for Liberty, reporting teachers, reporting principals. I mean, you're seeing people lose their jobs. You'll see universities acquiesce to the demands of the department. I believe it will be for a season because you cannot stop work that, by its very nature, is centered around justice.
ERIKA ZARO: In 2021, California passed an ethnic studies curriculum. I'm curious to hear your thoughts, do you think the state will stop enforcing it out of fear of budget retaliation?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: The U.S. Department of Education does not set curriculum. They don't set curriculum standards for teachers or for students. That's solely the responsibility of the state. And so I think it's also important to note that it's been passed by legislation, but not fully adopted. And I think there's some conversation about extending the official rollout. And I think that this is an opportunity for us in this Golden State to... exercise our golden tickets, if you will, that we in this State essentially drive the economic engine that is America.
Am I concerned? I mean, only if individuals in the state house in Sacramento decide to say that we're going to roll back ethnic studies.
Do I think that that's a possibility? With this administration, I don't think anything's off the table. So my hope is that we don't go back. You know, the motto is, as California goes, so goes the rest of the country. I'm trusting that we'll stick to that and we'll continue to implement with fidelity because we're not there yet. That we'll implement with Fidelity the ethnic studies curriculum and that we will be a model for the rest of the county about what it means to be a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society.
ERIKA ZARO:For our listeners who don't know, Travis is on the California Department of Education Teacher Diversity Advisory Group. So I'm curious how this will affect your position, if it will at all?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: I actually chair the group and I serve at the request of the current state superintendent who is term limited. And he's in his second to last year, state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurman. And the department recognizes that because of the clear evidence that children of color and White children benefit from a diverse educator workforce, the data are clear around this. And so it's a priority for the department. I don't see what's happening in Washington affecting that particular role.
ERIKA ZARO: Is there anything you think our audience needs to pay attention to when it comes to public education under the Trump administration?
TRAVIS BRISTOL: It's important for people to know that the President cannot shut down a department of education. A president can work to undermine the work of the department, but that's an act of Congress.
And I'm saying it because I think the more that we give a strong man more imagined power, the more power that strong man will lean into and take.
And as I've reminded students in my class, the only thing that we have is our voice. That in this moment, what I have, this medium that we're engaged in right now, this is the one thing that I have.
I don't know fully what will happen tomorrow, but today what I know is that in the midst of what might be happening in Washington, that I have an obligation to my students to continue to present what I believe is an accurate telling of what's happening, a reminder that we've been here before, a reminder that a country that's built off of a racial project, of course, will want to run away from talking about race.
And, I, like probably many teachers in K-12 schools, are going to focus on today. Recognizing that we may not see the seeds that we're planting today how they'll blossom for tomorrow, but I know that they will.
History will remember what we do in this moment, how we acquiesce or choose not to acquiesce in this moment, because this is… this is a moment. This is a MOMENT.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: You've been listening to TRAVIS BRISTOL. He's a UC Berkeley professor of teacher education and education policy, and he was speaking with reporter ERIKA ZARO. Erika recently graduated from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism in spring of 2025. You're listening to The Stakes Explained, a show produced by students at UC Berkeley Graduate School Of Journalism. I'm SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, head of the audio journalism program at Cal.
And next, we're going to hear from ERIC GREENWALD, a senior researcher at the Lawrence Hall of Science whose life's work involves making science education accessible to all children.
Reporter and recent J-School graduate, Megumi Tanaka interviewed ERIC GREENWALD for The Stakes Explained.
MEG TANAKA: Can you tell us a little bit about your work and what originally drew you to this field?
ERIC GREENWALD: Yeah, so I am a learning sciences researcher. I look at how cutting edge technologies can be brought into math and science classrooms at the K-12 level and in informal learning spaces with an emphasis on learning design that works for communities long minoritized in STEM.
I was a high school math and physics teacher for five years and then became really interested in education policy. I went to get a Ph.D. That kind of morphed into an interest in learning sciences and understanding how kids make sense of wild and wacky ideas like AI.
MEG TANAKA: So making science accessible has kind of always been your passion.
ERIC GREENWALD: Always. A lot of my work is at the intersection of AI, computer science, and math and science subject areas. And so we're looking at ways to integrate AI concepts, ethics, computational thinking into math and sciences core subjects so that all kids have an opportunity to learn these things.
MEG TANAKA: I mean, AI specifically, we're seeing it expand at such a rapid rate. I can definitely see how the impacts of that would be really important. And along the lines of that, if you could speak directly to policymakers about the importance of inclusive science education, you've kind of already mentioned some of the importances of that, but what would you say?
ERIC GREENWALD: We need to position youth for success in future STEM careers. And we need to broaden the pool of people who can participate in those careers, just from a numbers perspective, but also from a quality of work perspective. For example, in AI, if the developers are all coming from a particular background and it's not representative there's a blindness to the problems that it can create.
AI is filled with examples of that. And so it's really, really critical to me that those conversations about how to develop AI, whether or not to deploy AI, include all voices.
MEG TANAKA: The Trump administration has introduced policies restricting the use of federal funds for DEI initiatives, and we've seen significant cuts to science research as well as education outreach. What do you think is the reasoning for these cuts? And I would also like to ask how have these changes directly impacted your work?
ERIC GREENWALD: The reasons given are efficiency and alignment with priorities. It's hard to understand how those could be the actual reasons. Let me give you an example of a program that got terminated. A few months into a multi-year grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences, I was working with a science museum to help them use data more effectively, to improve operational decisions, to make them more data-driven, and to be more responsive to visitors. And so when I think about what efficiency means, that seems like we were working on efficiency with this museum. But that got terminated. There's no rationale that makes sense to me.
These attacks on science,you know, focusing on DEI and stuff like that, like I think that it's an attack on all of science. The idea that you investigate and let the evidence lead rather than letting ideology lead is all in question right now. You know, these are profoundly ideological decisions being made. It's the opposite of science. I think it's a tremendous tragedy to the health of our society. We're shooting ourselves in the foot and it's so sad.
MEG TANAKA: A lot of the efficiency related cuts have actually, it seems like, caused more work that is mitigating efficiency in different institutions, whether that be rewriting grants or rewording websites or reallocating funding within an institution.
ERIC GREENWALD: Yeah. The energy that I and my colleagues have been expending over the past months to try to figure out what of our work might still get funded. What of it might get pulled, how to pivot. It's exhausting. It's stressful. It feels so depressing. Yeah, so many of us are engaged in this. We're in science education, like we're trying to position students for success. You know, this is public service work and to have it maligned in the way it's being maligned, it is so hard.
MEG TANAKA: What would you like the public to know when it comes to publicly funded university level research?
ERIC GREENWALD: The first thing is how competitive these grants are to win. These are not slush funds. These are projects where tremendous planning goes into the proposal. Teams of people with diverse expertise come together to construct a plan for how they might do the research. Developing that plan takes a tremendous amount of energy and time. And then the proposal is reviewed by other experts. I've been a part of review panels, the idea that something gets funded that doesn't have merit is ridiculous. Yeah, so I think that's a really important piece of just how competitive these grants are, that are being terminated.
MEG TANAKA: We talked a lot about the doom and gloom and of it all, which I think is important to address. And I know it's really hard for you to, you know, articulate all of this. And I really want to appreciate you for that, first of all, but I also want to ask you if you have any hope for the future of the field of science education, STEM education, even in the face of such challenges?
ERIC GREENWALD:It's interesting because I think part of what my sadness comes from is how far we've come, especially over the last 10 years or so, in understanding how to design learning experiences that serve all students and that position kids for involvement in STEM fields.
The sadness I feel is the potential loss of that, but the hope I feel is that there's something really valuable that we've been building , collectively, that if we can figure out a way to maintain some of it, we have really good ideas.
MEG TANAKA: Yeah, well, the ideas aren't going to go away.
ERIC GREENWALD: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to need some really loud pushback. And I know a lot of people are ready for it.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI: That was reporter Megumi Tanaka interviewing ERIC GREENWALD. He's a senior researcher at the Lawrence Hall of Science.
And we have an interview update: The federal government canceled another one of Eric's grants and the Lawrence hall of science has lost at least $6 million in federal funding cuts over the last couple of months.
DAVID BOYER: Thanks for listening to today's Bay Made, and thanks to SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI and her students for sharing your new series. If you want to learn more about the project, head to https://hub.journalism.berkeley.edu/thestakes/
And tune in to Bay Made tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. For more of The Stakes Explained from the students at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
That's right here on 91.7 FM, KALW San Francisco, Bay Area.