The Meaning of Taking Responsibility

These times pose great challenges for us as individuals and as a nation. We are being called upon to look beyond our own narrow interests and to make changes in our behavior to keep ourselves and others safe. In reflecting on my interviews over the past year, most of which are not yet publicly available, I see people who have identified problems and engaged with them directly. I see people having hard conversations, which includes taking some degree of responsibility, either personally or institutionally, for something that has gone wrong, or that has been going wrong for quite some time. I see people who act in accordance with their values.

In the San Francisco Opera project, I see Dramaturg Emeritus Kip Cranna and former General Director David Gockley having difficult conversations about budgets and staffing during periods of crisis, which, in the arts, is always a relative term. I see former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau spending a lifetime advocating for the excluded and disadvantaged, and taking criticism after making difficult administrative decisions. I see Susan Graham—one of the first professors of computer science at UC Berkeley—participating in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that was established during the Obama Administration, which recently warned the federal government of the urgent need to replenish the national stockpile of personal protective equipment that had nearly been depleted after the H1N1 pandemic. And although I did not conduct the interview with nurse administrator Cliff Morrison, I felt close to his story, as it features prominently in the podcast I worked on about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. After spending a career caring for people living with AIDS, Morrison is currently participating in a study of the long-term effects of COVID-19, having contracted the disease while performing similar acts of service in this latest pandemic. In Cliff’s story, he took the stepaudacious for the early 1980sof asking patients what they needed and providing it for them, overriding an established hierarchy in the hospital by doing so. Although he was not the first to suggest patient-centered care, his act of courage was an important catalyst for the development of the “San Francisco Model” of nursing care that has since become a standard around the world. 

But one of the interviews that really stays with me is with Bob Kendrick, who had a 60-year career in the mining industry. He tells a story of a mine accident that happened while he was the superintendent. What he relays in the story—and the fact of his telling it—is an example of taking responsibility that I take to heart.

 

And finally, there’s the oral history of George Leitmann, an engineering science professor at UC Berkeley who returned to Europe and risked his life to fight the Nazis and to make the world a better place.

In recent months, we have all been reminded, again, of the call to respect one another and to act to reduce harm to others, whether this involves simple acts of observing public health recommendations or speaking out and acting against organized discrimination, implicit bias in our own work, and systemic problems with police brutality against African Americans.  Many of the oral histories listed below are examples of people who have spent their lives serving some idea of the greater good. I am grateful to all of my narrators this past year for reinforcing the importance of stepping up and taking responsibility for the world we live in, and the world we want to live in.

This year, we celebrate the completion or near-completion of the following interviews:

Bob Kendrick – Global Mining and Materials Research

George Leitmann – University History

John Prausnitz – University History

Bruce Ames – University History

Robert Birgeneau – University History

Susan Graham – University History

David Gockley – San Francisco Opera

Kip Cranna – San Francisco Opera

George Tolley – Economist Life Stories