Welcome, everyone. My name is Kat Kanaisal. I'm a university development and alumni relations. We're so happy you could join us today to honor Michael Omi, and we really appreciate your support of homecoming. We all benefit from many generations of donors like you. So now to start things off, I am honored to introduce our Chancellor, Carol T. Christ. I'm delighted to welcome you to this symposium, an honor of Michael Omi on the occasion of his retirement. One of the gratifications of having as long a history at Berkeley as I do is the opportunity it gives you to see the arc of a colleague's entire career. I remember vividly when Michael joined the faculty, and I remember our first conversation about racial formation and racial classification. Michael has taught me more about those subjects than any scholar I've met. Michael, to me, is an ideal Berkeley faculty member, one who represents our ideals as an institution. He's done groundbreaking work that has changed how we understand race, work that has had incredible staying power. First published in 1986, racial formation in the United States was released in its third edition in 2015, a remarkable shelf life that reflects its importance. Indeed, that work is the subject of this symposium. But Michael also excels in the other dimensions of a faculty member's responsibility. He won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1990, when he was still a junior faculty member. And Michael has excelled in leadership. He served as director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change, now the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, as associate director of the Haas Institute for a fair and inclusive society, now the Othering and Belonging Institute, and as founding chair of the Asian American Research Center. Beyond the campus, he's been the co-editor since 1995 of the book series on Asian American History and Culture at Temple University Press. From 1999 to 2008, he served as a member and chair of the Daniel E. Koshland Committee for Civic Unity at the San Francisco Foundation. Since 2002, he's served on the project advisory board on race and human variation for the American Anthropological Association that resulted in the current traveling museum exhibit, Race Are We So Different, which has just been displayed in over 35 cities throughout the United States. He's a founding member of the Faculty Steering Committee of the Center for New Racial Studies, a University of California multi-campus research project based at UC Santa Barbara. He's won the Community Changemakers Award from Asian Health Services in 2008 and the inaugural Distinguished Teacher and Mentor Award, the American Sociological Association section on Asia and Asia. Americans gave him in 2005. Since I've become Chancellor, I've observed Michael's leadership on many occasions, as he's worked for change through many campus groups. Michael was born in Berkeley and he earned his undergraduate degree here. In so many ways, he demonstrates what we aspire to as a community. Congratulations, Michael, on your retirement. But in true Berkeley fashion, I look forward to your active engagement on the campus and beyond for years to come. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Stephen Small. I'm a professor of African American Studies and director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, which is one of the sponsors of today's event and one of the many institutes, departments and centers on campus where my dear friend Michael Omi has had a big impact on a significant leadership role. I'm very excited about that in the Chancellor's remarks. The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and the other sponsors of today's event, including Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, the Asian American Research Center, the Othering and Belonging Institute, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice and the Center for Race and Gender. I know that many of the students and centers are so pleased to have the opportunity to celebrate Professor Omi. Thanks also to the homecoming team for making this possible, and thanks to all of you for being in attendance today. During Michael Omi's career thus far, and it's not over yet, he has touched so many lives, including my own. And he's made enormous contributions to our understanding Today, we're going to hear briefly from three different scholars, as well as from Professor Omi and Self. In the interest of time, I'll keep my introductions brief to each of the scholars, where you can find far more information on their biographies in the links to the Symposium website, which should be posted in the YouTube chat. First, it's my pleasure to introduce Professor Victor Rios, Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara, and one of Michael's former students. Welcome Professor Rios, please go ahead. Thank you, Professor Small. It's wonderful to be here celebrating the intellectual contributions of Michael Omi. I'll just start by giving you my own intellectual trajectory. I've been in the field of sociology for about 16 years. I received my PhD in ethnic studies from Berkeley in 2005, and so after ethnic studies, I found work in sociology and found a meeting in sociology and was able to contribute a lot to that discipline. One of the traces that you see in terms of conversations about race throughout the 15, 16 years I've been in the discipline of sociology is that you always have people going back to racial formation theory. You always have people going back to Omi and why not, whether it's quantitative papers, whether it's qualitative papers, thousands of them that have centrally focused on the work of racial formation, whether it's books, hundreds of them in just the discipline of sociology alone, where racial formation theory continues to be the dominant theory in sociology. Now I have to admit that when I was at Berkeley as a grad student taking courses with Michael and having him on my committee, I took it for granted. I didn't understand the kind of immense contributions and the immense influence of this theory on various disciplines, including sociology. As I navigated through my assistant professorship, associate professorship, in the discipline of sociology, people would want to know where did you do your work, who trained you and of course one of the people I would say was Michael Omi and right away people kind of understood that that meant I understood how to analyze race in sociology. So my own work, my own theoretical contributions, whether it's looking at the youth control complex or looking at cultural misframing have been really anchored in the work of racial formation in the influence of Michael Omi and Howard, why not? So as an example, I get to Berkeley and I'm trying to figure out my own background, my own kind of trajectory, and you can't separate at least in my sort of background and in my tradition of learning of intellectual development and training, you can't separate the personal and the intellectual. You have to talk about both. So in trying to understand the personal and Michael Omi being very patient, hearing students talk about our personal experiences and backgrounds, and then giving us the tool set, this macro tool set to understand our condition. And so racial formation, understanding racial projects, for example, understanding hegemony as it relates to race, and then understanding emancipatory movements really helped me frame the 1990s because that's where I came from. I came from Oakland, California in 1990s. I was a street kid that ended up getting lucky and graduating college going on to Berkeley. And so understanding how to analyze the school to prison pipeline, to understand how to figure out why the super predator thesis in the 1990s was so influential where black and brown young people were being criminalized left and right in the media, criminalized left and right at school, criminalized left and right in society by police during this time period. And me showing up with just scattered information and then being given a framework to understand, right, racial formation theory to understand how this was a racial project, a contested racial project, because there was also resistance going on or young people were fighting the ways in which the system was constructing them. So early on in the 2000s, I'm presenting my work on criminalization and sociology and criminology. And people are pretty much saying, look, we don't know what you're talking about, right? Criminalization is something that's de jure. It's in the law. There's no de facto criminalization here. Folks in ethnic studies had always been talking about this. But bringing this knowledge to the mainstream in terms of criminalization has been my endeavor really for the last 16 years. And so one of the outcomes of this has been this big explosion in understanding race and criminalization within criminology, within the study of crime and justice in sociology. So now scholars are using criminalization, are using racial formation to understand how the racial state controls racialized populations through crime, control technologies, resources and strategies. It's been interesting to see that development that now you talk to someone about criminalization in mainstream, mainstream disciplines and they get it, they understand. So that I think has been an incredible contribution of racial formation. It's hidden in the backdrop of various theories that we've created over time in my research lab, right? But it's always there influencing the way in which we understand the racial state. In particular, I think what's been really dynamic about racial formation theory for me is it's anchoring in hegemony and in Gramsci because for me, that's the place where you can sort of navigate multiple worlds, understanding capitalism and those with the means of production and how those with the means of production kind of control populations and then understanding culture and race and how those two kind of bridge together and also intersectional justice, other frameworks that connect really well here. So in terms of being a public intellectual, racial formation theory has allowed me to really be able to plug into the contemporary time period and understand and also explain to mass audiences, say politicians for example, say grassroots organizers for example, how is it that in this moment where we have a different strand of racial formation taking place?  They bring out a new model every year. And so we have to understand that new model every year and racial formation theory allows us to do that. And I'll conclude with understanding emancipatory movements and how racial formation theory has allowed me to really analyze that. So I've been to Ferguson, Missouri early on after just a few weeks after the killing of Michael Brown by police. I've been in various areas, Oakland, California, Watts, where young people have been killed by police and in seeing the movements against police violence, right, trying to understand how young people are always contesting not just the violence by police, but also the way in which they're being framed and understood. So the very notion of race itself, how is it that race and crime come together to define the entire existence of an inner city population? So really understanding emancipatory movements of young people as movements that are constantly reconstructing, recreating, and hopefully at some point, reducing a new understanding of race that will hopefully benefit the population and its movement in the long run. So I'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Michael, for your contributions. I know for me intellectually, I've come a long way. Many thanks to that work that you introduced me to early on in grad school and that legacy that you've left behind for others in sociology and beyond to continue to grow that scholarship. Thank you very much, Victor, for a very timely presentation, much appreciated. Now I will hear from Lisa Lowe, Professor Lisa Lowe, who is the Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies and Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University. Welcome, Professor Lowe. Thank you. It's a real privilege and joy to be a part of this group of scholars gathered in honor of Michael Omi, a dear friend and colleague for over 30 years. We'll hear over and over today that racial formation in the United States has co-authored work with Howard Winant has been an altogether transformative work. And since his publication in 1986 with revised editions in 1994 and 2014, it's completely changed the landscape for discussing race and made possible so much scholarship that's followed as Dr. Rios has just explained in the disciplines of sociology, political science, and history, but also in the interdisciplinary fields like American Studies and Ethnic Studies and Black and Asian American and Latinx Studies. I couldn't have written my own 1996 book on Asian American racial formation, Immigran Acts, without their work. The conceptual advances of racial formation in the US were profound when it was published and its relevance hasn't diminished today. It remains crucial to the university curriculum and still provides the necessary tools required for deciphering racial politics in our present moment. Let's consider some of their core definitions and arguments about race that continue to guide us today. Firstly, that race is not a fixed identity or fixed category. It's not determined by biology or heredity, but is rather a socially constructed process and racial meanings change in relation to specific conditions. Race can't be reduced to phenotype and racism is never merely a matter of individual personal bias. Secondly, they've well established that race is always a social relation, a shifting formation and a living process designating a relation of power on the social terrain. Rivals over race are always mediating a variety of conflicts and contests, social, political and economic, and race is always articulated with other social differences such as gender, class, sexuality, nation, ability and religion. And finally, racial relations mediate hegemony. Like the British cultural theorist Stuart Hall, Omi and Wynand drew from the Marxist Antonio Gramsci to elaborate race as a central to the process through which a particular group or party gains, holds or seeds dominance. Hegemony is not static but is actively constructed and maintained in any given historical moment. In their now famous formulation, they say that, quote, race is an unstable and dissentered complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle, unquote. In other words, racial meanings shift in the dialectical relationship between the state that names racial categories and the social movements and communities that inhabit, contest and transform those categories. So in this way, racism and racial inequality can't be corrected by merely changing individual attitudes or individual prejudices because they are the result of a society that has not materially reckoned with its foundational histories of indigenous dispossession and removal, slavery and Jim Crow segregation, stolen labors of indentured and immigrant workers and the lives lost in imperial wars. Until this work of reckoning and transformation is done, race in the United States will continue to be a terrain of struggle over belonging power and survival. What I want to emphasize most of all, as Dr. Rios has said as well, is that racial formation in the U.S. not only guided us in how to understand race and civil rights in the 1980s, but it also explains the reasons that race continues to be the locus of the contradictions we live and struggle with today. In analyzing the relationship between the racial state and anti-racist social movements in the 1960s, Omi and Wyand explained that social movements demanded not only an end to segregation and racial inequality, but many groups from the Black Panthers, young lords, Iwo Kien and the American Indian movement to third-world, anti-colonial, anti-imperial and anti-war groups all demanded a radical redistribution of property, jobs, housing and political power. In this sense, while the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was a response to these broad, active social movements, it didn't resolve the contradictions between the state founded on racial colonial exclusion and the communities disenfranchised by these histories. Even as it created anti-discrimination laws, laws in themselves could not provide the necessary means and resources to resolve persistent racial injustice. As they state, quote, the racial order is equilibrated by the state, encoded in law, organized through policymaking and enforced by a repressive apparatus, but the equilibrium thus achieved is unstable for the great variety of conflicting interests encapsulated in racial meanings and identities can be no more than pacified at best by the state, unquote. What I take this to mean is that Omeon Renat's idea of racial formation helps us to understand that civil rights in 1964, outlawing discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin, shifted racial meanings and may have pacified some radical demands, yet de jure civil rights were not enough to bring thorough or fundamental changes to the racial state or to the racialized social and economic order. Although social movements prompted the Civil Rights Act, the granting of civil rights proved to be a state reform, one that offered racialized citizens nominal inclusion in a state and society that continued and still continues to reproduce racial hierarchies. Civil rights altered yet deferred the contradiction between white supremacy and demanded social change so that it has continued to erupt over and over in subsequent periods. As we've seen, these contradictions have resurfaced in the dialectic between state exclusion and the racially dispossessed in the battles over affirmative action in the 1980s, over multiculturalism and color blindness in the 1990s, in struggles against Islamophobia and anti-Blandtists in the 2000s, in the backlash against the Obama presidency, and most recently in the campaigns against critical race theory and teaching the history of slavery and K through 12 education. Because racial projects, as only in why not discuss them, condense and mediate a wide variety of antagonisms over dominance, extraction and political power. The achievement of racial justice is limited when the struggles are confined exclusively to racial recognition by the state, whose history has always been, the state's history has always been to racialize and gender citizenship in the service of capitalism, and which has served to protect a society structured in white dominance to slightly modify Stuart Hull's formulation. Well, me and why it's racial formation has been part of the curriculum for generations of college students since the 1980s. Students learn how grassroots social movements challenge racial segregation and education, housing and labor, and that these were crucial to the transformation of race and racial power. But racial formation also provides a social theory with ramifications beyond that period, which explains how racial emancipation and enfranchisement during reconstruction, during the civil rights era, and today can significantly remake the meanings of race, even as those redefinitions may fall short of transforming the social order or resolving material racial inequality. Furthermore, transnational migration from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, and the intersections of race with gender and sexuality class and region have complicated older descriptions of race and racism. Yet even as racial meanings have shifted, race continues both to mark the enduring contradiction between the promise of liberal inclusion and the material conditions of racial exclusion, and to illuminate precisely those points where protest, pressure and rebellion can affect maximal change. Today, it's Black Lives Matter, Indigenous protesters demanding an end to line three of the Keystone Pipeline, policing and prison abolitionists and migrant justice activists condemning border violence and migrant expulsion, who are the most recent voices calling attention to enduring racial justice. In his 35 years at UC Berkeley, Michael Omi has made an unparalleled contribution not only to the study of race and racism, but also and perhaps more significantly to their transformation. Without Michael, so many of us could not do the work we've done and must continue to do. So Michael, I wish you the very best and give you love and admiration as you begin your next important chapter. Thank you very much, Lisa. We appreciate your important contribution and comments on the wide variety and range of Michael's career. Next, I'm delighted to welcome Troy Duster, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus here at UC Berkeley, founder and former director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change. Troy has been a close friend and mentor to me personally and professionally for many decades. He's also been a mentor and close friend and colleague of Michael Omi, as well as many others. Welcome Professor Duster. Thank you. Well, let me begin by placing into a kind of a larger social historical context, the contribution of Michael. Let's go back to the middle of the 20th century, where people were teaching courses in race relations. There was something called the Canon. The Canon is the agreed upon textual materials for a given course of inquiry. So in that period, race relations was dominated by the idea of personal prejudice. The textbook for the period was by Gordon Alport, and it was called The Nature of Prejudice. So throughout that whole period, there was pushback, it wasn't only that there was a notion of personal prejudice as dominant, but the Canon, what you had to deal with was the Alport framework. Well, even the early work by Gunnar Myrdal and his associates, which produced the American Dilemma, they concluded that America was involved in this remarkable contradiction between its stated aims of being a nation of individuals who had equal rights and the history of slavery and of course, the oppression of blacks. So even in Myrdal, we had this idea that if you just are able to get to people's minds, get them to stop seeing the world in terms of racial prejudice, then you'll begin to resolve the American Dilemma. So late fifties, there was pushback, Herbert Bloomer wrote a piece called Race Prejudice as a function of group position. And that forming, that framing began to put a little dent in the notion of personal prejudice as being the way in which you understand race relations. Again, let's go back to some examples of that period. Blacks could not enter certain restaurants or hotels. And the only would say things like, well, I'm myself, I'm not personally prejudice. But as the owner of this restaurant, I can't afford to let people in who are people of color, because I'll lose customers and others.  And the same with covenants, which were restricted. Supreme Court will strike them down in 1948. And covenants meant that you could not, by law, sell your home to a Jewish person or a black person. And even though that was restricted, stricken, it went on for another 20, 30, 50, and even some would say it goes on today. Now, Lisa and Victor have gone into rich detail about the ways in which racial formation really transformed the study of race. But I want to add a notion that there was a particular dialectic that was going on between the race prejudice canon, what would become the new canon, the new canon is racial formation. And the genius of it was that it regarded race as both fragile, ineffable, and also deeply structural. How is that possible? How can it be that something was both fragile and rigid? Well, the fragility of the concept was clear, if you looked across different jurisdictions, from Louisiana to Illinois, the notion of race meant very different things. And across nations to Brazil, across the Pacific to Hawaii, that race was obviously a concept that was fluid and fragile. And at the same time, there were these rigidities, the notion that, again, covenants were in place, which would make it impossible to sell your home. If you were a white person who was quote, not prejudice, and wanted to sell your home to a minority person, you could not. Indeed, the real estate agents of the period were enjoined not to sell across racial lines, or they would lose their licenses. And here was the genius of racial formation. You could have quote, the absence of racial prejudice at the individual level of real estate agent who would willing to sell a home across racial lines, but they would lose their license. Enter racial formation, which now began to explain how it could be both fragile, elusive and rigid. And for the next 20 years, the canon of racial prejudice was upended and replaced by the new canon of racial formation. Now, in some sense, the current political football around critical race theory, and whether or not there's in America systemic racism, that that that political football which has been taken over by the right. And it's not reached the point where they're saying, you can't teach race theory, critical race theory, because it makes whites feel uncomfortable. That's actually the language of at least six or eight different state laws now prohibiting critical race theory. Critical race theory owes a part of its genesis to racial formation. In the very real sense that we're talking now about systems of structures, laws, systemic racism. You remember doing the George Floyd demonstrations, we began to hear the term for the first time from media talking heads, we heard the term systemic racism. Actually, I have a assistant who put up a graphic showing that in the first few weeks after the George Floyd demonstrations, anchors were using systemic racism at about 15 to 20 times more than they'd ever used it before. And that's I think a function of the success as Lisa was indicating of the ways in which racial formation theory, it was introduced, penetrated and began to dominate the canon for the last 30 years. So many of those demonstrators without knowing its social origins were manifesting the insights of racial formation in this idea of structural, institutional, systemic racism. But that's not the only kind of influence that Michael has had. Let me move now to his his vital role in the way the census counts and categorizes people of color. Because of his work on racial formation, Michael was invited to join the National Commission that reviews the census categories. Let me just give you one figure which I think you'll find dramatic. In 2010, those in America who self identified as mixed race was nine million. 10 years later last year, 34 million Americans identified as mixed race. That is a dramatic shift. Indeed, in 2010, twice made up 64% of the US population, self identified. Last year, it dropped to 57%. And I think in that simple framing of the problem, we can begin to understand the surge of the far right. The ways in which white, especially white males feel fragile. They feel the circumstances have been altered. We're getting Tucker Carlson talking about replacement theory. Replacement theory, that's borrowed from French fascism, that somehow those who are not quote, French are immigrating into France, and they're replacing traditional white French males. Well, that has now been imported into the United States. Replacement theory is now part of this surge that we're seeing in the media. People are getting on in marches talking about Jews will not replace us. And the anger about the Afghanistan situation in which hundreds of thousands of people from Afghanistan are migrating into Europe and in the United States. And what's happening? Well, the Republican Party just voted a few days ago, 50 to zero in the Senate, not to not to permit this to go on. So here we have it. Michael's contribution as a sympathetic and supportive mentor to students from all kinds of frameworks and backgrounds is well known. He's been a low key mentor with graduate students from all frames, all perspectives in the last decade. He's been an every man, particularly that particular ethnic students ranging in methodology and in interest. So with that, I want to congratulate Michael. And with that remarkable portfolio, he moves into retirement. Thank you. You're on mute, Steven. Yes, yes, I should pay attention. Thank you, Troy. For those comments, I'm forgiving us this larger framework. Now it's the man of the hour, Michael himself. Let me first extend my deep and abiding personal appreciation for everything that you've done, Michael, for the Institute of which I'm currently director for the students and scholars and indeed for staff at UC Berkeley. And I'd also like to take the opportunity following Troy to wish you the very best in retirement. I'm delighted that you plan to stay active, hopefully not too active, you have your life to live. Well, we look forward to continuing to work with you over to you, Michael, to make a few comments. Thank you, Steven. Really appreciate that. Let me see here. I'm going to bring a view here. And thank you all for those wonderful and very insightful remarks from all our panelists. Let me say first that I'm putting some of my retirement in quotes, because I continue to have to nudge students to finish their various writing projects as well as still intending to be involved in some of the centers as well. So it feels like a slow fade more than a kind of really sharp break in what I'm doing. And, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. That's an easier way to sort of transition. Let me say to that, each of you have offered some really interesting takes on on on me on my work with Howard Wine. And I want to thank Victor Rios, for example, about criminalization, about looking at and extending some of the work around racialization or racial formation into new areas. And let me say that Howie and I have profited immensely from people who have sort of expanded the framework of racial formation, oftentimes pointing out our flaws, or inconsistencies, or lapses, and really extending them into new fields, which has been really productive and just enlightening and for us to see how people have sort of ran with the ball. I also want to thank Lisa for giving a better presentation of racial formation than I could. And also for her incredibly expansive work about racism, about capitalism and imperialism, and the ways in which she's really, to me, sort of expanded my outlook to think much more in terms of the globe, in terms of the world, and how that unfolded. And I guess, lastly, Troy, thanks for that contextual argument there, you know, drawing from the work of Herbert Bloomer and the work you've done with Herbert Bloomer around race and group position. Those insights were very important for Howie and I to think about a theory of racial formation to begin with. Let me just make a few comments since, you know, we're running kind of late in the hour. I also want to say that much of that work remains incomplete around thinking about racial formation in terms of the current sort of social, economic, and political issues, the divisiveness, which racks our own nation. And to encourage people to think about and take up those topics much more deeply. Troy's right. I mean, one of the things is quite replacement. I mean, drawing from the book, a 20-lang book by Renaud Camus about French and French identity being seriously eroded by the presence of Muslims has been a sort of, we've written a real global right wing racist nationalist resurgence. And our own country has not been immune to that. And in many ways, this notion of white replacement, I mean, it goes way back to, there's always been fears about this. Madison Grant talking about the passing of a great race, the ways in which immigration restrictions were always in place from these fears of diluting a particularly Western European white stock. We've seen various political incarnations of movements which have arose in protest of this from the know nothing party to various, you know, variants and incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan. And in many respects, what we're seeing now, the proud boys, you know, the Boogaloo boys are really just the latest contemporary expression of those same themes that we've been plagued with for quite a long time. But Troy's quite right too about the diminishing the ways in which a racial demographics of this nation are rapidly changing and what they, what kinds of things they forebode. For example, I think there's a statistic like a third of the counties in the United States are now majority people of color. Now that's an amazing shift. And in many respects, I mean, it depends how you count white, obviously, but what is seen as this declining white majority and fears in fact, and it's gendered as well, particularly among white males, fears of a fall in status and grace as a result of these kinds of changing things. And we need to think about voter suppression laws, immigration reform, and yes, current debates about the teaching, the very teaching about race and racism are, you know, pretty much a manifestation of these broader things which are going on for us. And really they beg people to take racial formation of whatever kinds of theories and begin to talk about it to explain it in many ways. And also we need to think very seriously about what white we might mean by anti-racism. What is an anti-racist ideology policy or practice and how might we encourage and draw and learn from social movements as well about the forms of kind of resistance and challenges that we could make to the present structure of race and racism in the United States. So there's a lot to do and I'm, you know, I'm grateful and and I'm sure you know how he's grateful as well that some of what we've done, at least it becomes a starting point for other folks to take up the torch and begin explaining the kind of world around us as well as to think deeply about what we can do to change it. Thank you. Thanks Michael. Thanks for your summary. Thanks for your encouragement. We all love you. We will miss you. We hope you stay around. We have a couple of minutes. Let me just tell one quick story before I close. We have six minutes left. Colleagues on the panel have spoken about many of your impressive personal characteristics and contributions. They haven't mentioned your sense of humor and your ability to deliver a quick line at the right time. Now we all know you and our colleagues have spoken about you as a scholar, as an analyst, as someone who is a mentor and intellectual, someone who is deeply committed to social change. But you and Diane also need to put food on the table for you and your family. So I came back from England in the 90s and I told you I've just spoken with the editor of Routledge who publishes your book and she told me, Stephen, if you're going to write a book can you write it like Michael Omi and Howard Winant? And I said oh why is that? And she said because that's our best-selling book at the present time. And Michael said to me I wish they had told me it was the best-selling book. I haven't seen any royalties for a while. I hope they've given you your royalties. I hope it enables you and Diane to continue to put food on your table. Okay we wish you every success. We do have time for a quick question before I thank the speakers. Do we have an ability to do that? Does anyone on the panel want to make a final comment or raise a final issue? We do have time for the rest of the day for those who are here. Okay you've left them speechless Michael. That's okay. That's fine. My thanks to everyone. Let me just close. Okay thank you Professor Omi and thanks again to Professors Rios, Low and Duster. Thank you all for providing such rich and nuanced reflections on Michael's work and on his contribution. Finally thank you again to everyone who joined us today and is in attendance. If you're here in the Berkeley area in Berkeley itself please join us for the in-person symposium that will continue this very fascinating conversation for the rest of the afternoon and for the rest of the day. If you need details about the symposium you can find them in the chat. Thank you also to the staff and technicians who have made this presentation possible. Thank you everyone and have a good day.


Time for the first ever grab bag breakdown. I tweeted out, give me a random date, 2013 to 2020. Random inning and a random number of outs. Leo Martinez at Lanzio. He was the first one to reply with all the proper criteria, July 24th, 2014. Top of the sixth inning and two outs. So I took that information. I went to baseball reference. I found every game played on that date and I searched for a top of the sixth inning that had some action. Mets, no. Cubs, Diamondbacks, no. Royals, Indians, no. White Sox Detroit, one run. Keep it in the back of the brand, Houston A's, no. Phillies Dodgers, no. Cardinals, Mets, no. Reds, Pirates, ooh, two runs. Ooh, the final score was two to one in this game. So those two runs loomed large. Let's go to YouTube, find the game. Sinsey at Pitt, April 24th, 2014. Here's the game. Now we gotta find the sixth inning. See what happened, click around, stumble upon it. Thank you, Leo, for this perfect find. Let's, come on, find the spot. Find the spot, click it around. Here we go, Compton, Compton pitching. He hits, Vado, is it Compton? I'm not familiar with this pitcher. He hits Vado on the sleeve to open the inning. There's a base runner right there. Next up, Brandon Phillips, grounds out, moves the runner over, gets himself out. Then Jay Bruce comes up. He strikes one, strike two, strike three. Jay Bruce. Now we are at the position that Leo told us to be at. July 24th, 2014, top six, two outs. My man, Todd Frazier steps up to the dish. Let's see, he's one for two with a double in this game. The first pitch, beautiful Pittsburgh skyline. Second pitch, gets hit. So the two base runners have both been hit by pitch. How about this? How about this? Look at this lady. I mean, is she famous? If she's not famous, she's famous in her local town. Oh my God, the pink purse to match behind her. Wow, quite the getup. Probably a big Reba fan. All right, July 24th, 2014, top six, two outs. We're still there. And now Ryan Ludwick steps up to the plate and check this out. He had been hit by a pitch earlier in this very game. So you got two guys on base that have been hit by pitch and you got a guy in the box that says, I know how you guys feel. I got hit earlier. I will avenge all of us. First pitch, wha-bam, splits the gap, McCutcheon tracks it down. It hits the thing. It's up to the wall. Cutch throws it in. Two runners score. Ludwick is on second, hit by pitch gang. They're happy with each other. Look at that, just a nice pretty swing. Lady and pink flushes behind us hustling in for the double saying, hey, pirates, stop hitting us. Which I think is something that a lot of people have said, a lot of people have said from like 2010 to 2020. Ludwick, hero of the game. He wins, grab bag breakdown is over. This one's brought to you by Talking Baseball. If you like baseball, go listen to it. It's a podcast, comes out during the off seasons every Tuesday and Thursday. Interviews with players, predictions, nonsense.


All right, so everyone back, everyone back from pizza. OK, I'm going to keep this quite short, because that was nice and long, and I hope the panel is going to be nice and long and involved as well. So I'm Jamie. I work for With Associates. We're a digital agency. We build stuff on the web platform, some of it's with Rails, and increasingly, a lot of it's with Ember. Last month, Shimon demonstrated his new project called Ancient Oak. And it's an immutable data trees library written in JavaScript. He's kind of come from the closure, closure script background and brought some of those ideas into a sort of micro library. And he gave this really sort of thorough explanation of how it works under the hood, why and how it's efficient, and some of the abstract reasons you might want to use it, but not a real kind of application demo. And I was really captivated with the library, but I think a lot of us in the pub afterwards were kind of trying to think of what I'd use this for. Why would I use persistent data structures in an Ember app or something like that? So for anyone who wasn't here or doesn't know what they are, I've got a probably fairly inaccurate little walkthrough of what I think they mean to an Ember app. So let's say you've got an Ember app, and this is the data structure that your UI is manipulating. And you've got a user object, which has got some fields on it, and a basket which has got some items and some other bits and bobs and that. And you mutate the email, and that implies that the user object has also been mutated. And then let's say you mutate the color here, that implies that this item has been mutated, as is the basket, all the way on up to the user. And Ember makes sure that all those mutations notify every part of the UI or other parts of the app that you might be interested in. And then you bind up other bits of the UI. And it's brilliant until you reach a moment where, actually, you don't want to just hand over a piece of this data to some part of the UI that might go ahead and change it willy-nilly. I think the example of this is, I think this is my next slide. So you've got an edit route. So let's say you have an edit route for your user. You transition into it. And there's an input text field that's bound to someone's name. And it's kind of magic when you use Ember for the first time or Angular. You start editing the name. And immediately, everywhere that it's used also updates. But I think if you're editing your profile, that isn't the expected behavior. So one answer to this is you kind of make a clone of the user, give it to the edit route so that you can kind of edit in isolation in this buffer, make your changes, and then either apply them back to the kind of canonical user model that's in memory or discard them if you want to cancel it. And that totally works. But you've got to remember to copy the model. Like you'll hit a bug where things are changing you didn't expect, and it's because you forgot to copy it. And then you might add something to your template that clobbers the basket. Like maybe it sets a basket property on this copy of the user. You re-apply that to the canonical user, and then your whole basket tree has gone away and you've lost it.  And that's maybe if you forgot to add the true flag to say this is a deep clone of this object. So this is where that color's good on this projector. So now it's green. This means this is immutable, which means none of this can be changed. All you can do is produce new versions of this tree. And this is what ancient Oak Shimon's library does and what things like, I think it's Mori, which is David Nolan's port of the Clojure Script library. So this thing is effectively frozen, and it really is frozen. Shimon's is unique in that it will do a deep, immutable tree. You feed it this tree from then on in. All you can do is make new versions of it. And then you can hand that thing to edit route. And when edit route sets stuff, or this is the idea, you're not changing that original tree, which is tied to other bits of your application. You're creating a new version of it. But because it's a persistent data structure, and this is kind of where the memory optimization, the efficiency comes in, those fields that haven't changed still point to the old places in memory that shared with the original version of this tree. The only thing that's new is this new thing that you've changed, the thing that you've set in your brand new version. And if you hit Save then on your edit route, you would promote your new version of the user model, let's say, up to be the new canonical version. And it still uses all the old tree. So there are implications there for it being quicker and allocating less memory, and therefore less garbage collection. And with this example, it's so trivial that it doesn't completely make the case. But imagine your tree was much more complex. And the idea of doing a deep clone of your tree, if you just wanted to give it to another part of your app, gave you the sweats a little bit. Even better, rather than simply kind of promoting this new version, you could keep a stack of all the versions. And they're not a complete brand new tree each time. They just point to the bits that are just for them and all the bits that are shared between all the trees. And then flicking between versions is just a matter of picking the one you want and then following it down. And you'll get all the stuff like that stuff is guaranteed to be shared. And it's going to flick over to the other one, and you'll see the new tree. So I wanted to see whether this could be made to work with Ember without giving up on data bindings, without giving up on all the nice stuff, basically. This experiment isn't finished yet, so I'm just going to do a quick walkthrough of where I've got to so far and hopefully plant the seed of where you could go with this and that they're not incompatible ideas. So I think I may be best served by turning mirroring off. Let's say a bit of recursive video recording capture, by the way. OK. So I'm just going to, I think I'm on the new version now. So this is without. So this app looks like, let's see, the root of first. So it's got a user edit root and a basket root. And you can see those in action like that. And so let's have a look at what the edit root looks like, because that's kind of what we're interested in for this purpose. So this is how I've chosen to implement this. And I'm not saying this is the best way to do this, and there are, I think there's a nice concept of a buffered form that you can look into if you're interested in that. But the way I'm isolating this edit view from changing the canonical user record is just to pluck off. This is my clone. Let's get properties. I want to pluck off the name and email from that user object and present it as a new model for my root to work with. If I didn't do that, if I just gave it the user directly, so actually, I'll do that. So if you don't isolate your model, you end up sort of updating bits of the UI that you maybe didn't intend to. And again, this is like the surface example of this problem. Like that isn't a problem, but there might be if you extrapolate it out and imagine bits of UI changing stuff that you didn't intend them to, then there will come a point where you'll get bitten. So as I say, a way to isolate that is now, this root is working on an entirely new clone of the data. When I save it, it's just going to get that user model, get the model I'm currently working with, and then just punch down the properties I've set on this new one onto my old one, and that saves. And then it does update. But other weird stuff could happen here. So this new model that I've created, you could, like I say, set a basket property on that, and you'd end up setting it on the user and clobbering your own basket. And again, so with this example, to discard your changes, all you need to do is forget about this model up here. You can just let it get garbage collected. You don't need it anymore. So this was kind of the toy app I started working with to try and work ancient Oak into the mix. And let's see. This is kind of similar at the moment. I haven't quite got. So ideally, what I wanted to be able to do was just return this.getUser and trust that that is safe. And any updates that this would make, I'm guaranteed to get a new version of the user just inside of this root. And then I can choose to mutate that canonical user, sort of promote that version up to being the main version. But I haven't quite got there yet. But what you can see down here is a versions flag. So now if I go edit Joe Smith, and now I've got a second version. And I can roll back between my versions. And so what I wanted was for all these new versions that have been created of the user model, the user tree, to work in that way that my sort of boxes and sticks diagram demonstrated where you can just pop to a different one. And it's all still pointing to the same original data plus the new stuff that you've added on as the apps progressed. So what I ended up with, the user object that's injected into this app looks a bit like this. It's a new ancient oak. That's not the API for ancient oak. Ancient oak is just a capital I. And then you feed it some data. And then you work with what it returns. And it's all kind of encapsulated in a closure. I've made it sort of object oriented. And it's meant to behave like an ember object. So I feed it my starting data structure, my version one. And then I've tried, broadly, to implement the stuff you'd expect on ember objects on this. So let me just make that a bit bigger. So it's just an object that mixes in array and innumerable. And you see it's got this versions property, which gets set right here. You can see this is an ancient oak's API.  And I'm just going to store that as my first version in my array. And then a bit like Ruby has method missing. Ember has unknown property and set unknown property. So I'm using that when you call get on an object in ember. And you haven't explicitly defined the property or a computer property. This will get a chance to do something. So what I'm saying is I'm going to look in current, which is just an alias for the top of the stack of versions. And again, this is ancient oak's API. When you want to get something from it, it's a function. So you just call it with the key. And it will give you back, if it's a primitive, it will give you a string or a number or whatever that primitive is. If it's another tree, it will give you another ancient oak object back. So what you see here is oak or primitive with whatever comes out of the tree for this. And oak or primitive says, if it's another ancient oak object, wrap it in another one of my kind of objectified ancient oak objects. Otherwise, just return the primitive as is. So that's how the getters get implemented. Ancient oak has this dump method, which just gives you a pojo back of your data tree for that particular version. Length is quite nice. Ancient oak's got this reduce function, which acts much as you'd expect. So you can't call length on an ancient oak object, but you can for each on it. And you can reduce it. So that's reducing all the keys it can see. Because of the nature of a raise in JavaScript, you can kind of think of them as a dictionary where the keys are integers. And so object at, you can see that kind of here. Object at is almost exactly like a guess, except instead of a key, you call the ancient oak closure with an index. And then the nicest part of the APIs is patch method here. So what happens is you have your ancient oak immutable data tree. You call patch on it with a kind of subset of a tree that you want applied to your original. And it will go through, kind of merge the two trees and give you a new version back. The original is unaffected. You get a new version back. I push this new version onto this version's array. And then sadly, and this is a part that I'd love to make neater, this bit's OK. So this goes through each key in this new diff for the patch and just calls a notify property change on it. So all the bindings for the rest of the app can update. And then rollback. Rollback's a bit of a shame. So my thought with rollback was, well, this is cool. I can just jump to any version in my version's array or can just pop versions off or pop the number I want to off. But to get bindings working, I need to know what keys change between each version. So what I resorted to just for this demo was to just say, before I popped it off, what were all the keys available at the top level of that tree? And after, and I've just put them in a set. So I've got this set of the unique keys that might have changed. Sadly, they probably won't have all changed. And then just notify all of them. So when you do a rollback, all of those observers will fire. And that's as far as I've got so far. So I'm going to keep pursuing this because I think these things are really interesting and potentially very, very useful. And if they can be made to talk Ember's language and give you access to Ember's normal tools in this kind of safe, efficient way, then that would be pretty cool. So that's all I've got. Any questions? It looks like you're cloning the ancient oak objects in your setting up versions. The wrapper, yeah. So I'm having to allocate a new ancient oak object. Ideally, I'd like to be able to, I'm not sure. So that's kind of for a subtree is the thing. It would be really nice not to have to do that. There's loads of compromises in this code. All right, I understand. So you're getting a key and it's a subtree. So what do you do with it? Maybe you could just sort of make the rest of your application aware of how to interact with ancient oak closures. But which is what? Maybe it's just the way the wrapper is. Yeah. It's going to be a little more thought through. Yeah, maybe just a way to make the wrapper allocate as little as humanly possible. Because that wrapper will then get its own versions, all right? It would be nicer if it was sort of aware that it was a subject of some parent tree object, like, as one root node. So Jamie, I know you fought in love quickly. And you were in love last time when you saw this. Are you still in love? Do you think it's a great idea? And do you also think it's a highly practical idea you expect to use? I'm still searching for the really good practical demo for it. I think the API for Schumann's library is really, really delightful. It's lovely. But I think I can't think of an app I'm working on right now where I'd need a persistent data structure in it somewhere. But I really want to find one. I think the idea is so cool that I'm willing to make trouble just to find a new excuse, Joe. I'm wondering if perhaps there is not a specific application in terms of app. But if we can rip out the entire Ember computed property logic and replace it with immutable objects, do you think that's possible? I'm not sure. I had a bit of a deep dive into Ember Messel to see how these things are implemented. And actually, there are hints of assistant data structures in there. They do. There are frozen objects get made in several different places, and I can't really explain it very well, just like I can't explain persistent data structures very well in terms of implementation. But I think, yeah, you could potentially create something which behaves much like bindings is the tricky part. I think maybe because ancient oak is such a closed system, if there were a way to hook into ancient oak a little bit more, then that might open up some possibilities. So something I might discuss with Shimon. I saw one good use case was a cave of chess where you preserved state for every move. That's awesome. Yeah. I was wondering, is there any disadvantages to having all those copies and models in memory near the onion mobile devices? Is that memory? Yeah, I'll just repeat. Then can you persist this type of data to the server neatly? So I'll just repeat the question for the sake of the recording. So the really good example is a game of chess and using a persistent data structure to capture each state of the board, which is a really good example, I wish I'd thought of that. And the question then was, should you be wary of allocating so many objects? And I think the answer is that a persistent data structure should help you with that. Because you're only going to allocate changes to the tree. And whatever you don't change, you're always referring to the same spot in memory. You're not making a copy of the whole tree. Yeah, you never make a complete clone of the tree. You just make a new tree with a new root node. And new branches out to your brand new values, but the old branches point to the old tree. So it shares as much memory as it possibly can in principle. And yeah. As you show, there's a pretty good model, a fact line. There's a data store, very much like the end of the data store with a lot more power than dirty objects and individual changes. And you can just do store it safe. What will you change back in the server? You can merge changes from the server. If you've been offline for a while, go back to your laptop, use your Wi-Fi. You can keep making changes offline. And then merge changes on the server, changes on the client. Because you've now got a record of your versions. You've still got a version of the process of data. I was wondering about your roadmap. You appear to be, every layer of your stack is the entire object. Obviously, with the nice supporters in the back end. But I wonder if, instead, you should make each layer a sparse set of just the ones you've changed. Just the diffs. So for a key, for the first one off, it's not there goes an x and goes an x until you find one. That's the latest version of that property. And I immediately said, well, to roll back, you just lose that layer at the stack. And it might make the patching quicker as well. Yeah. So I'll repeat some of it. There was some really good stuff in there. So what was the name of the library in C-sharp? Bold, originally. Bold. OK. It sounds a little bit like it. It sounds a little bit like Core Data, I guess, in Cocoa on that platform. So keeping a load of diffs in a stack, that sounds like Git, which sounds like a really good idea. So yeah, I totally agree. This was an excuse to use ancient oak one or anything else. And I do like it. And I think there are lots of places that could be applied. And it's lovely and lightweight. But yeah, keeping a stack of diffs is definitely another approach. And I'm sure it could be made to be very performant. The other option would say, do a patch. Could you tell me what you patch? Yes. Exactly. If you have query ancient oak for the date. Because it must know what's with patch. Yeah, patchable hasn't even happened. Yep. And rather than try and keep it as a layer on top of it, you know actually you can extend it, you know? Actually, I'll just put up the ancient oak side again. In fact, I'll tell you what, I'll bring up the repo just to give Shim on some credit. What credit is it to you? It's actually, I think it's best explained by its APIs. OK. I've got a view of all the content of the grid. And for what one of the credit is done, I've got a way of the screenshot. Yeah. Well, I actually need good content here. Does the oak is EPF? Do you have an EPF? Yeah, the Ember Persistence Frame. I wouldn't use that, but that does something similar. I don't know if it's a musical, but it does something similar of praising the versions. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? And then merging it back in. I haven't actually used it. Likewise. It definitely looks interesting. Great audience. I'm not sure if we'll be able to find. You're right. It definitely does work on that basis. I think perhaps storing diffs is the way it works. Again, like it. Any other questions? So the Gent app back was talking about storing data on a server, which assists the data for a greater period of time. Yep. Is there any way that you can export your states from H&O to the system on a server and then bring them back into the application at a later date? Yeah. So H&O has, along with Dump, it's got JSON. So turn your particular version of your tree into JSON and send it over the wire. It's what I'd imagine you'd want to do. But even over? You could persist every state. So perhaps every time you get a new version, you send the whole lot back or send a diff back. Or you just choose your moments and say, right, here's a moment I want to commit this version or this last few versions. But I think having those versions in memory, I don't think you'd ever want a bunch of complete clones in memory and persistent data structures like H&O to protect you from that and having diffs protect you from that. So yeah, and then if you've got them all there, you get to pick and choose as to what you send back. So normally, you press save. That's going to persist whatever event of back up to a server, you'll save that version. There, you're just persisting it on the client. At some point, you're going to have to sync it back up to the server. You use the JSON thing. I guess I've done this before. And then they're dumping it back in the day where you want to keep a history of everything that you've done over time and then allowing people to go back. So I wrote a medical app for a hospital where everything they've done, they want to be able to go back and see history of all note changes and be able to bring one back from the stack and bring it back. So this is the same similar idea that you do locally. You could take what you've got, persist the entire tree back up to the API, and then use agent oak on the server to then reconstitute that and then save all your versions down and then save the tree into your data store. The magic then is working out what the data store looks like. And then the end of your trick is normally, if you've got two clients and you've got to have some sort of locking system who wins on that change, of someone's adding notes, if you've got version, client over here, one, two, three, four, five, client over here, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then they say that your numbers are going to get. How do you answer them? My head hurts thinking about this. But if you've got a, if someone's working on their own data, for example, then on your fairly, you could use data time for the version numbers instead of using half that sort of accumulator number. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so ancient oak on the server, it's, I mean, it's a fully node compatible library. So definitely. Anything else? Sorry, I missed the introduction to ancient oak in the previous. So I'm just curious, how does it actually enforce the new ability to get some sense of it? Yeah, so I'll, I'll, it's probably explained all pretty well here.  So it's a closure. So all the data is contained within this function. You can't get at it. And what's more, this function is frozen as well. So you can't even add extra methods to it. And then you get, by calling the function with a key, you set by calling set on it. I think that's an example of that. Oh yeah, so if you, this is the example of if you're, if you're kind of burrowing down the tree, you can just throw keys at it like that, set pretty self-explanatory around your version. Yeah, you don't, you don't change the original version. You get a new tree, but that shares memory with the other version. And then, yeah, all these other nice methods that you've put in it. And I think under the hood, this is a, the implementation is a, is a binary tree type of a thing. I've put my slides away, but yeah, it's a, this is a clip of his slide. And it's kind of what it looks like under the hood. It's, it's very optimized. It is better examples. Shimon. Using, using ABCD doesn't help. The chess game, I think would, or a CMS, but the chess games are nicely, it's got rules. It's contained, like, yeah. OK, awesome. Thank you, Jim.


So listen, the rumors are true. There are college majors out there that are both easy and they also lead to high paying jobs. And if you pick the right major, you can actually enjoy your college experience, not be stressed out all the time, and then afterwards get a high paying and fulfilling job. And that's why today I'm gonna be revealing the seven easiest college majors with high pay. And I'm also gonna be talking about why they have high pay. So not only will you know seven good ones, but you're also going to recognize other opportunities as well, just in case one of these don't fit your personality.  And I'll let you in on a little secret. 40% of people drop out of college. And of the ones that finish, 50% of them regret it. So that means college is a disaster for over half the people who go. But that won't be the case for you as long as you follow along. And number seven on the list is going to be one that is incredibly valuable in the modern world because it's going to deal with data. That's right, with the rise of big data, companies are looking for people who can sift through all of that information and make sense of it. And if you think about it, data is incredibly valuable. So I'm a fan of chess for instance. And who do you think is more likely to buy a chess set? Right, so let's say a company is spending a million dollars to advertise a chess set. Right, who's more likely to buy something?   And it also shows that they're a fan of the show, The Queen's Gambit, or somebody who has never watched or played chess before. Obviously it's going to be the person who has been interacting with chess. And that's exactly what data is going to tell you. In one case, if the company spent a million dollars on somebody who's never interacted with it, they probably would lose like $900,000. And in the other case of the company spent a million dollars on people who are chess fanatics, they'd probably end up making two or three million. So this is the power of data. And that's why it's more valuable than oil or gold. Now the average salary of a data analyst at the entry level is going to be around $70,000 according to Glassdoor, which is fantastic. Now the reason I put this one as being easy is because I have personally coached clients to get into data analytics in less than a year. Now, if you chose to go to college, the degree you'd get is probably going to be statistics, but at some universities, they do offer data analytics specific degrees. And now obviously if somebody is able to get into this and learn all the skills necessary in six months to a year, you can definitely do it in a four year degree much more easily. Now I know some people out there are thinking, Shane, data analytics is not easy, statistics is not easy. And the reason you came here is because you wanted a relatively easy degree. Now the truth is some opportunities out there are going to be better than others. But there's nothing out there that's going to be like an easy button where you just push it and you have a fantastic job. You're going to have to have a little bit of patience and you're going to have to put in that hard work in order to reach your goals, right? So I'm sorry, but on this channel, I'm not going to give you like fake motivational content with subway surfer in the background. No, you're going to have to try a little bit. So some of the pros here are going to be high demand. So this is a rapidly growing field with high demand for skilled professionals. Another great thing is high pay. So the salaries here are going to be fantastic. Even at the entry level can be $70,000 plus, but down the line, you can make a lot more than that. Then there's varied job opportunities. So data analysts can work in a variety of industries. So just about every industry out there is using data analytics from healthcare to finance to of course technology. Another thing about data analytics is it's going to let you see the value of tapping the like button on videos that are well researched and give you a ton of value like this one. Nice. Now some of the cons here are you do have to learn extremely technical skills. So you have to have a very specialized skill set in order to get into data analytics. And another con is that the technology is rapidly changing. So you might learn some kind of language or framework right now that isn't necessarily what you're going to use five or 10 years from now. So if you're not the type of person who likes to stay up to date on this stuff, it may not be for you. Now, speaking of data, I pretty much autistically studied this stuff like college degrees and careers for the last five to 10 years of my life. And on top of that, I got a doctorate myself and that's why I know so much about these subjects. And before I get into the next one on the list, which is basically the future of technology, I also want to say that a lot of the information you hear on the internet about college degrees is really, really bad. It's bull. But this next topic I'm going to talk about is extremely hot and it's one of the easiest super high paying jobs that you can get into. Companies will be willing to pay you top dollar for this and it's actually related to data analytics somewhat because one big problem that companies have with all this data is they need a place to store it and they need this place to be both secure but also easily accessible by everyone who should be able to access it. And that's where cloud computing comes in. So with cloud computing, you're going to be working with stuff like AWS, which is Amazon web services, Azure, which is Microsoft's cloud platform and GCP, which is the Google cloud platform. And with all the data breaches that you've seen that cost companies millions and sometimes maybe even billions of dollars, it's incredibly important that this data is stored securely. But at the same time, it needs to be available to the people who really need to use it. So this is almost like a catch 22 type situation where it's almost impossible to do. And this is another one where clients that I've worked with have started from scratch and they've been able to get a job in something like six months. Now this is one where you can get a college major. Some colleges actually do offer cloud computing specialized degrees such as WGU. But like most technology related careers, it's something that you don't necessarily have to go to college in order to get into. Now according to a report by researchandmarkets.com, the global cloud computing market is expected to reach $832 billion by 2025. And it's growing at a rate of 17.5% per year. And according to Glassdoor, cloud computing careers make around $88,000 a year. So the pros here are going to be extremely high demand. This is a very rapidly growing field. There's also very high pay. Flexibility is another pro. So there's a lot of opportunities for remote jobs. And I know that a lot of people who watch this channel want to work either remote or semi remote jobs. And there's also a variety of job opportunities. So cloud computing is in just about every industry out there. Now this one has the same cons as the last one. So you are gonna have extremely specialized technical skills and it's going to be a rapidly changing technology. So again, if you're not the type of person who likes to stay up to date on this stuff and just be a continuous learner for the rest of your career, this may not be for you. Now the next one on the list is a noble profession that happens to pay really well. And it's also relatively easy. And I know that I'm gonna get a lot of flack for saying this because nurses think that nursing school is the hardest thing ever. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it really isn't.  Medical degrees are not as hard as engineering or mathematics related degrees. And nursing is one of the easier medical degrees. And I can already see the comments down below. There's probably nurses that are just furiously typing right now, but it's just the truth. Like I went to pharmacy school, we were in the same building as nurses. We did a lot of activities together and sometimes we would even tutor the nurses and we saw the kind of work they were doing and it wasn't that difficult. Now you might be thinking, Shane, I'm a guy.  And that makes sense because about 80% of my audience are guys. But actually, one, there's a much higher demand for male nurses than there is for female nurses.   So there's that. Now, according to Glassdoor, entry level nurses make about $69,000 a year and they can make a heck of a lot more than that down the line, depending on the specialty that they go into. For instance, I knew a travel nurse that made around $500,000. So the nursing curriculum is relatively easy but they are gonna keep you busy.  And that means if you make a mistake, there's going to be real world consequences from it. He's dying! Now, some of the pros here are nursing is in high demand. There's basically been a shortage of nurses for like 20 or 30 years. There's also a ton of job security. So for instance, in recessions, it's been shown that healthcare-related careers are some of the most stable jobs. They basically don't change at all. There's also lots of opportunities for specialization which means if you don't like your job, you can probably just switch relatively easy into a different specialty. And on top of that, there's lots of opportunities for advancement. So there's lots of different types of nurse. There's basically nursing at the associate level, bachelor's level, master's level, and even doctorate level. There's some types of nurses like nurse anesthesiologists that make nearly as much as a doctor. And a lot of the time nurses are the ones that are at the top of hospitals. So they can have those high level positions like president or vice president. And that totally makes sense because nobody really knows a hospital as well as nurses do. Some of the cons here are nursing can be very high stress. It's a super fast-paced, hectic environment. It can also be really emotionally and physically draining work. And you have high levels of responsibility. You're dealing with people's lives here.  So there's that. Now the next one on the list is another career that is incredibly common and it's needed in just about every type of business and every type of industry out there. And they are gonna be focusing on tracking money, the ins and outs of money. And you need to know how to use a calculator. But this is one of the most stable degrees and careers that you could possibly get. And of course I'm talking about accounting. So yeah, it's well known that accounting isn't rocket science. It's not the hardest thing in the world. Probably the most difficult part of accounting is interpreting the law. But other than that, there's pretty much clear guidelines and principles that you follow. And you're just gonna be focusing on basic math and using logic. There's probably gonna be a few pieces of technology that you're gonna need to get relatively good at like Excel or QuickBooks. But those are not that difficult to learn. Now there definitely are some more challenging careers that you can go for and these are careers that are really high paying. For instance, I interviewed Bill Hanna who is the financial controller on this channel. And financial controller is a super high paying career. You're probably gonna make over $200,000 a year. And it's also going to be a lot more difficult than a basic accounting type job. But with that being said, it's a choice to go down that route if you want to, you don't have to. So some of the pros here are there's very high demand and it's probably never going to go away. There's also high pay in accounting. It's going to teach you how to manage money so it's gonna teach you personal finance skills that you can use in your real life as well. Some of the cons here are it's very detailed oriented work. So you have to be extremely meticulous and detail oriented with your work. Also during tax season, you're probably going to be working long hours. And let's be honest here, accounting in some cases can be relatively boring. The next one on the list has to do with money as well. And I think it's a little more interesting in my opinion. And instead of focusing on the money that flows in and out of small businesses, it focuses more on the big picture. So it focuses on how money flows throughout countries and the entire world. And of course, what I'm talking about is economics. And this is incredibly important because economics is the lifeblood of a country. Now this one is technically a social science degree. And social science degrees do tend to be relatively interesting. And not only are they interesting, but they also tend to be a little bit easier as well. But this one has really good numbers. So for instance, economists make about $99,000 a year. So some of the pros here are there is very high demand.  But even at the bachelor's level, there's lots of jobs for people who graduate with economics degrees. Another pro here is high pay. And another pro is it is truly a super important role in society. And you play a critical role in shaping economic policies and decision-making. Some of the cons here are there is a bit of an academic focus. I'll be honest, I think some parts of economics are BS. I think microeconomics is awesome and it makes a lot of sense. And macroeconomics is basically a way of justifying doing whatever you want, AKA the money printer go burr. Another con is that it can be relatively limited in terms of job opportunities. Now the next one on the list is going to teach you about all things tech related. And in my opinion, it's going to be the easiest career to get into in the technology industry. And I've talked about this many times on the channel, but the technology industry is probably the best industry you can possibly work in. There are so many benefits to working in tech from high salaries to job satisfaction to being able to work remote. It really is like the S tier industry to go into. And this college major, which is going to lead to a career path that's relatively easy to get into is going to be information technology. So on this channel, I've actually interviewed a ton of people who were able to get into IT related roles. One of them was James, for instance, who was in a dead end job as a delivery driver. And he was able to land a role in IT in just a few weeks and he didn't even have access to a computer. He actually was able to do all of it just by using his iPad, right? So no excuses guys, this guy had every excuse in the world, but he just decided to do it anyways. So this is one where when you look at the statistics for an IT degree, they're actually really good, but like many different technology related careers, you do not necessarily need the degree to get into it. Now for an entry level role, for instance, information technologist, you'll make around $66,000 a year. So some of the pros here, like many of the technology related degrees and careers is there's high demand, there's high pay, lots of different job opportunities. So if you're able to get into an IT help desk role, for instance, I think that is the easiest way to get your foot in the door in the technology industry. Once you get in, it's very easy to move around to all kinds of different types of roles, but IT is probably the easiest one for you to break into. And it's also extremely flexible. So it's very easy to get a remote job in IT. Some of the downsides are very common with technology related careers and degrees. You have to have a very technical and specific skillset. You also have to adjust to rapidly changing technology and it can be relatively high stress. So when the technology infrastructure breaks down, the company basically comes to a halt. And as the IT person, you are responsible for fixing it as fast as possible. Now the next one on the list is technology related, but it also has a business component to it as well. And it has an emphasis on data. So this is probably one of the best combinations of skillsets out of any college degree that I have ever seen. And this is one of my favorite college degrees. In fact, this is my number one favorite business degree. And that is going to be management information systems. So somebody that I interviewed a few months ago is Antoine from the channel, Black Heights. So he got a management information systems degree. I believe he started off in IT. Then he moved to kind of like a logistics type role. Then he moved to cybersecurity. Then he moved to software development. And then he moved to tech sales and he now pulls in over $540,000 a year. And by the way, the company that he recommends to get into IT as well as tech sales with is called Course Careers. And Course Careers has helped literally thousands of people get jobs at this point. It's a super affordable way to get into careers. It only costs about $450 if you use the $50 off coupon code. And they even offer a free training, which I will put down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. So the pros here are extremely high demand. This is a skill set that basically nobody has. Also extremely high pay. You also have very job opportunities. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of management information systems graduates making it to like a CTO, CEO, or at least like an executive type role. And the cons are gonna be the same ones for all the other technology related careers and degrees. You do have to learn very specific technical skills. And on top of that, the technology is rapidly changing. Although this one does have more of an emphasis on the business side of things. Now, one thing that I commonly see on this channel is people who are trying to get remote or semi remote jobs. And MIS can be a great degree to get one of those careers. But I actually made a tier list that ranks the most common and the best remote jobs from S tier, which is the best to F tier, which is the worst. And you can check that out by clicking right here.