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Kevin Starr: “These are grand themes, they’re promotional themes, booster themes."
In a wide-ranging campus presentation on Dec. 2, eminent California historian Kevin Starr traced the emergence of San Diego as first defined by the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park.
The 90-minute event, part of the Helen Edison Lecture Series, is now available on UCSD-TV.
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Starr with KPBS-TV host Peggy Pico
Discussing the value of such civic celebrations, Starr said: “These are grand themes, they’re promotional themes, booster themes. But they’re also envision themes, themes of San Diego as a ‘garden city’ and a ‘city of health’ and of a sensitivity to the biological basis of life.”
He continued: “That begins with the climate, the rise of the health culture. It moves forward and results in a great zoo, and it goes all the way forward to biotech, starting with the rise of Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the emergence of UC San Diego in the early 1960s.”